Religous debates and questions

well I only found out about the screaming bit when I went to visit my folks home later, I told my mum where we had been and that I had felt scared for no reason, as I said it was a happy sunny day and I wanted to enjoy myself, then she told me what had happened when I was 6, I had forgotten it all, apart from the driving there in the car. I asked her why she had never mentioned it, but she said she didnt want to upset me for no reason, and my grandparents had been a bit worried about it,so best not to mention it. She said 'dont you remember when you were 6 and you started screaming to be let out of the house?', and I said no, no way, I was quite shocked.

I see mathematics as choices, then follow rules and see what happens. It's sort of like a fractal generator of images. What's strange is that in many cases mathematicians have said "let's see what happens if we assume so and so" and decades later the same patterns are discovered in the real world. The key comes in following the rules, whatever they may be.

Thats kind of what I mean Mrs Figg- you didnt need to know about before going for it to be triggered by a forgotten memory. More likely you would not know, and when the feelings arose you had no idea why or what they were associated with.

It was the second most scared I have been, so it was powerful whatever it was.
The most scared I have been was a spooky tale too.

Referring to the creepy spooky feeling, wherever it comes from I've learned to trust it. I think it's an older pre-rational way of understanding the world, which used to be referred to as "horse sense" in a more equestrian time.

If you've ever worked with horses you'll know that they don't do very well with cause and effect reasoning. " A implies B, and B implies C. Therefore A implies C" makes no sense to them. Sometimes they appear to spook at nothing.

But there are many many stories of people whose lives have been saved by horses suddenly and inexplicably refusing to cross bridges, go down certain trails etc. I've got a couple my self.

It doesn't pay to sell horse-sense short!

Ive learned to trust that feelin gto- in fact a good part of the ethos behind the Casteneda stuff is making those feleings less ambiqous and more useful- they call it cleaning the link with intent.

Mrs Figg wrote:
The most scared I have been was a spooky tale too.

Wellllll...[drumming fingers on table impatiently] are you going to tell it or not?

halfwise wrote:I see mathematics as choices, then follow rules and see what happens. It's sort of like a fractal generator of images. What's strange is that in many cases mathematicians have said "let's see what happens if we assume so and so" and decades later the same patterns are discovered in the real world. The key comes in following the rules, whatever they may be.

And this inevitably leads to contradictions if pressed far enough.

But not to drift too far off topic, let's assume that both Albert Einstein and Casteneda's Don Juan are intelligent rational men who aren't afraid to face the contradictions in their experiences. Both men use rational thinking and a fair dose of metaphysics to explain the world. Both men develop interesting and useful models within their respective traditions.

Is one inherently more rational than the other? I'm inclined to think each person's answer will depend on their experience and what questions they choose to ask.

Thats a fair point David- when its hard to even disguish what rational thought is how do you tell?
But I would say that Don Juan was probably more rational in that his system not only expects contradictions and impossibilities but encourages the seeking out of them to a certain degree. The strange thing about his system is that it it similuteanously demands a rigourous rational approach whilst at the same time undermining all rational thought by insurmountable contradictions. Rational thought in Don Juans view is both humanities greatest achievement and the bars of the cage it traps itself in- therefore the greatest praise is reserved for those who can foster their rational when needed and yet completely cast it aside when it is a hinderence.

Hate to interupt but heres the next (shorter than usual) bit on my Jesus thingy- there is more to follow but I thought I'd put the first bit up now incase I dont finish the rest tonight.


Ok we are aprroaching the final week in the life of Jesus. As its been a while lets do a quick recap of where we are so far.
Jesus almost certainly first gained his reputation as a young healer. He specialised in exorcisms (by far the most numerous type of healing he performs in the NT).
At some point he became a follower of John the Baptist. John preached that the end days were coming and that God would return and bring the Kingdom and now was the time to repent.
After Johns death Jesus set out on his own with a small group of folowers. He took on John's message of the Coming Kingdom but insisted it would happen in his lifetime and that of his followers, and that he, Jesus, would be something akin to Gods viceroy in the Kingdom and his disciples would be its Judges-putting Jesus and his closest followers above all else and only subordinate to God. He also seems to have deemphasied, or more likely abandoned altogther the call to repent-replacng it instead with the message God would love you anyway.
These views seem to have made Jesus a lot less popular than John was and in John's last days he casts doubt over whether Jesus is the right man for the job. Consequently Jesus never gains the support John had and his followers remain small in number.
Part of the reason for this seems to be that Jesus made statements or demands of people which were not only diffiuclt to accomplish but went against peoples sensibilities- chief among these was to leave even burial of the dead because follwing Jesus was more important.
This seems to have got Jesus marked down by many as arrogant at best and deeply offensive at worst. His own family temporarly disown him when he takes his message back to hs home town and the people their won't have anything to do with him.
None of his paints a picture of the hugely succesful preacher whose claim to divinity was beyond all doubt that we have come to know.

It is this Jesus who now looks ahead to the coming Passover and which brings us onto a very important question and one which is crucial to his trial. Who did Jesus think he was? What did he call himself?
The matter of titles is important as so much emphasis has been put on them ever since. But what did the titles Jesus is given or takes on actually mean at the time?
There are three main titles used in the NT- Messiah, Son of God and Son of Man.

Messiah is the easiest one, it simply means 'the annointed one'- in Judiasm three types of people are annointed-Kings, High Priests and sometimes Prophets. (In Greek Messiah is Christos- so Christ means exactly the same thing-annointed one- it was never a part of Jesus name but is a title added after the event).
So out of the three possibilities-King, Priest or Prohpet-which one was Jesus meaning? Well the unfortunate answer is we dont really know. He does seem in some form or another to see himself
as King- he rides into Jerusalem to cries of 'Hosanna to the son of David' fro his followers and the riding in itself is an enactment of a prohpecy in Isiah (one which Jesus would have been perfectly aware of) and which was about the king. I will come back to this event later but for now it is just worth noting that Jesus delibretly associated himself with a prohpecy about a king.

He could of course merely have been meaning messiah in that he was a prohpet who saw himself as integral to God. This is possible but lacts any direct or indirect evidence to point towards it.

The priest claim is on the surface the least likely- however Jesus' mother Mary we are told is a 'daughter of Aaron'- in the days of King David, and subsequently, the Jews had not one but two leaders- a King and a Priest- the Kingly line was through David (and Jesus is given descent from David through Joseph in the NT- so the NT authors wanted to assoiate him with David) but the priestly line was through Aaron. Jesus therefore could claim this line too through Mary his mother.
It is worth mentioning that John was the son of Elizabeth who was also a 'daughter of Aaron'- it is quite possible John saw himself as the Priestly representive and that Jesus was meant to be the Kingly.
But following John's death Jesus decided he could in fact claim both titles-King and Priest- and it was this which caused the schism with his family and John's followers- althougth this view is the most radical of the three possibilities I present here it is I should say the view I think is correct.

So in effect we cannot be certain exactly what the use of messaih (and in Jesus presence it is only used once by his disciples and once at the trial against him- and the trial does not help sovle the issue- when asked if he is the messiah the gospels all give us different answers amounting to yes,no and maybe- in otherwords it covers all bases and tells us nothing for sure) meant to Jesus. When his disciples use it of him he tells them to tell noone- we dont know if this out of fear that it would get him noticed by the authorities (jewish and Roman) or if he just did not think it apllied to him.

And there is also the question of if he is the annointed one- who annointed him?
Well there is only one real contender for this in the NT and its a contenious bit of the Gospels as its almost certainly been long since censored. It is the washing of Jesus feet and his annointing with oiils by mary Magdelene- it also comes in a scene where the disciples complain that Jesus shows her to much favouritism.
But who was she?- so much has most likely been purged about her by the early male centric church its hard to be sure anymore.
Her name Magdelene either denoted she was from the samll town of Magdela on the Sea of Gallille- or, as it can also mean 'tower' and 'elevated magnificance' it could well have been a ttle given to her, possibly even by Jesus himself for either her physical appearence (very tall) or for how he saw her (magnificant and above others in some fashion).
We first meet her when Jesus drives seven demons from her (another example of his leaning towards exorcisms). She subsequently becomes a close follower and from the few tantalising glimpses left of her we can discern she was very important to Jesus- she provokes the envy of her fellow disciples for her closeness to Jesus, she annoints him and she is present when the male disciples have fled at his crucification, his tomb and his resurrection.
The idea that it was she who annointed Jesus as Messiah has long troubled the Catholic Church, therefore in 591 Pope Gregory the Great announced that the 7 demons driven out of her were sins proving that previously she had been a prostitute and that the oils she used to anniont Jesus were not infact annointing oils or Holy at all but perfumes from her trade.
I include this here because the hostility the early Church had to any notion that Jesus allowed women equal standing to his male disciples (indeed greater standing) effected the editorial choces of the early Church.Had Jesus treated her equally to the men the Church would have no grounds to deny female priests- so to this day they do not accept that she was even a disciple.
There is also the matter of the mystery disciple in the Bible- referred to only as the 'beloved disciple' there has been much debate over who this could be and some scholars (correctly in my view)
associate her with Mary and that her name was redacted and replaced by the early Church.
What we can say is that she did, in some fashion, annoint Jesus. The question then arises was she annointing him as a would be King, a prophet, a priest or something else? A question sadly we may never know the answer to with any certainty. We shall have to delve deeper in to the other titles in the NT so see if they help any. (next part of this due up shortly- just got some other stuff to do first-sorry!)

I never heard of mary magdalene being put forth as the beloved disciple. I thought since it only occurred in John (and only in scenes in which mention of John was excluded) that everyone assumed it was John.

It does only occur in John Halfwise- the thinking is as John was written later that by that time the decision to purge her had been taken hence the inclusoion in that gospel of a 'beloved disciple'- the association with John and that disciple is one the Church itself encouraged- but then they would if its purpose was to cover up the presenc eof Mary- but I should say if I didnt already that is the view of some scholars- its by no means a universally accepted one.

halfwise wrote: Roger Penrose wrote a book called 'the Emperor's New Clothes' that tried to relate Goedel's theorem to quantum mechanics, though I remember being unconvinced. I will probably go back and reread it because it had the best explanation of Goedel's theorem I've ever seen.

Halfwise, did you by chance mean "the emperor's new Mind"? I tried looking it up on Amazon and it made that suggestion.

Do you think it's any good? I'm curious, but I tend to be careful about pop-sci books. They often make me crabbit and get thrown into the corner with the cat litter box.....

Yes, it was emperor's new mind. Roger Penrose is a very serious physicist, and has more respect for his audience than many. My major complaint with him is he's drunk the Copenhagen Cool-aid (reference from upcoming article I may eventually get done - working on an interlude to the series right now) so tries to connect Quantum Mechanics to Conciousness via Godel's theorem. The outer two fields he's quite competent to discuss and does so very well, the middle theme has him going loopy.

Sounds good. I'll give it a try then. I'm curious to see how he tries to bend Gödel to his own nefarious purposes.....

I always enjoyed reading Robert Anton Winston talking of folk who blend different things togeher without necessarily understanding them all- but boy can he turn a phrase.
And hes good on the perception side of things.

http://spurgeon.wordpress.com/2012/04/19/training-children-for-gospel-centered-reading/

Gotta start 'em young?

I'm not sure what "the strains of truth and deception in them" means. Are they going to praise Star Wars and Harry Potter for their heroic themes of self-sacrifice and helping others or are they going to criticize them for drawing inspiration from Eastern religions and folklore/magic, respectively? And what's wrong with just enjoying a story without constantly referring back to a "gospel-centered" mindset, anyway?

Sorry, I really did not mean for this big gap to creep into my Jesus piece.

You may wish to read the last shortish one again on the subject of the first of Jesus titles- Messiah.

I want now to go onto his other Biblical two titles- Son of God and Son of Man.

Jesus use of Son of God is I think quite telling. The first thing to note is that it in noway shape or form would to the minds of the people of his day suggest anything supernatural about him in any way.
The idea of Divine beings having children with mortals was a Greek world view. It did not exist in Judiasm in any form.

The term Sons of God was used by all Jews to describe themselves. God was the Father and the Jewish people his children.
However that was Sons of God, the singular version is unique to Jesus. This would probably have raised an eyebrow or two, or annoyed some folk on the basis it was a bit presumptious-like claiming all Jews were sons of God but he was a favourite son of God.
Besides its use in the birth narrative (where it should be noticed his lineage is also traced through his father Joseph) its other use is at his baptism where a voice from heaven addresses him with 'You are my beloved Son' (Mark)
This is a quotation from Psalm 2.7 and the term Son of God in it refers to the King of Israel-a normal human being.
The meaning in Mark seems to be that God gave Jesus a special status, first among equals if you like, at his baptism.

This to my mind suggests that we should think of Jesus baptism in more than just religous terms. It seems to have marked an advancement within the movement of John or some form of change to its ordering in which Jesus has been choosen to perform a specific purpose. John when in prison seems to have had doubts he made the right choice which further suggests the baptism had some political context as well.
Then as now religon and politics were the same thing in the Holy Land and intrinsicly linked. If you had a God who told you how to live in every aspect of life it could be no other way.
We don't know what gave John his doubts, nor when John died why his followers did not follow Jesus. Clearly something happened that alienated or called into doubt Jesus' role in the movement, enough so that his own followers were always relatively few and he never achieved the popular ststus John had. (I have my own theory about what the thing which caused the sepration was and may include it when I have finished the main piece on Jesus).

Another good reason to think the notion Jesus was a literal, supernatural Son of God is a later invention is the early Church did not think it was so.
Paul wrote; 'all who are led by the Spirit of God are Sons of God....we are Childen of God, and if Children, the heirs, both heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ'.
In other words you dont become a son of God with holy sperm, but adoption by God when you turn to worship of Him.
The divine version is probably not what we might think of as fraudulent or just made up, it seems to have developed quite quickly as an idea and this is most likely because the new religion of Christ was drawing in a lot of Gentiles- and they had a Greek world view. So when their new religion told them Jesus was a Son of God that immediately suggested to them part divine, the truer Jewish world view of the term was simply consumed and lost.

There is only one instance in the NT where the term Son of God could mean anything supernatural- and that is at his trial, as in one gospel account Jesus comfirms the title and the High Priest cries 'blashemy', which strictly speaking it is not unless Jesus was claiming to be a literal son of God. I will come back to this in its proper context however of his trial.

Son of Man.

This phrase is not unique to Jesus but appears in several places in Jewish scripture.
In Ezekiel its simply what the prophet calls himself and it sometimes, quite appropriately, translated as 'mortal'.
In Daniel the phrase is used to refer to the nation of Israel, or at least to its divine representation as in this part of Daniel it is visions, and the nations are represented by various beasts except Israel which is the figure of a man.
In the pseudopigraphical work I Enoch the Son of Man is a heavenly figure who judges the world. But in one of those o-so typical quirks of history just about the only bit of I Enoch which cannot be definently dated to being pre-Christian is that bit. So we do not know for certain that the idea of a Son of Man who was also judge at the end of days had been established in Jewish thought prior to its appearence in early Christianity. It is however reasonably likely, just not proved.

The NT uses the term in several ways as well. Sometimes it seems to be genric such as in; 'The sabbath was made for humans, not humans for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath'.
Here the meaning is simply 'so humans are lord even of the sabbath'- reiterating the main point in summary.
However when Jesus says 'Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head'- he is speaking of himself and the hardships involved in following him.
Jesus again uses it to refer to himself not long before his arrest when the NT says 'He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things.'
In Mathew we get the end of days version of the Son of Man; 'the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father'
And Jesus himself refers to it in this capacity too, also in Mathew, 'Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom'.

Unfortuntely its not clear here if Jesus thought this meant himself or if he was using the term more like in I Enoch.
However we can note that there is no time when the use of the term to mean Jesus, and the use of the term to mean a future person who will usher in the kingdom, are together. It nowhere says anything along the lines of; 'The Son of Man must suffer die and return'. We never get a direct link.
Also at his trial Jesus himself distances himself from the future version;

'And the High Priest said to him....'tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.'
Jesus said to him, 'You have said so. But I tell you, hereafter you will see the Son of Man seated on the right hand of Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven.'

The word 'but' is adversative: 'But on the other hand', and so Jesus expected a heavenly figure, not his own return.

So what can we say about the use of Son of Man?- that it had several meanings. Sometimes Jesus used it of himself and sometimes he used it to mean all Jews and sometimes a future being who would bring the Kingdom.
However there is nothing in the NT which can tell us for certain one way or the other that Jesus thought of himself as both the Son of Man and the future version. And indeed by a tiny margin the evidence would seem to hint that he did in fact think of the future Son of Man as a seperate thing from himself and more like it is represented in I Enoch.

Taking the three titles, Messiah, Son of God and Son of Man all in they actually do not provide the definitve information to tell us exactly what Jesus was saying about himself.
But titles became hugely important to the Church and they put a lot of emphasis on them- which is why I have given them a bit of time in this- but the Church often stretched the point of their original meaning way beyond breaking. They also confused the terms and blurred them all together to create the impression of a divinely born Jesus who would return to bring the Kingdom. And that the titles told you this beyond dispute.
The evidence in the NT itself however does not support this view.

Next...the good stuff- the final week- trouble at the stalls, swords, trials and death!

another interesting and thought provoking episode Petty, I had always assumed Jesus had made it clear he was referring to Himself as The Son of God as in being the Saviour. I always thought that was what really got the Pharisees goat. That particular claim. It seems he didnt, and if he didnt, well it makes the whole thing unravel. The current Pope is a scholar surely they know all this so why do they seem so sure?

Thanks Mrs Figg.
On the point about him gettng the goat of the Pharisees I will leave that for the next bit as what (little) if any involvment they had in his arrest will be discussed there.

Regards the Churches stance- well I would say the early Church delibretly, for social and political reasons, pandered to a Greek centric world view in order to maximum members. For that audience Jesus being divine and born of a God was more acceptable than him being a lowly Jew.
By the time of the Council of Nicaea there were a lot of divergent arguments about Jesus by prominant and imporant factions within the various versions of Christianity that had sprung up- these ranged all the way from an ordinary man to full God.
Given the time period, the Churches attempts to consolidate political power and establish itself as a single coherent body, it is not perhaps suprising that the most popularly acceptable view of Jesus won- that he was born of a God.
But the convoluted decision- the Church decided he was not as it were 50/50 God/Man but rather 100% man and 100% God- shows how twisted the negotions became between the groups- the version of Jesus we have as presented by the Church is basically a bad compromise of the sort you only get when a larg Committee is involved. Its a fudge.
On the one hand the Church could see the merits in a lowly caprenter becomes Gods Choosen SOn and dies for our sins and is resurrected. It appeals to the everyman, to joe-blogs. Its fits well with meek inheriting the earth, beggars before kings and the like.
But on the other hand they could see the populaist benefit to him being a Son of God who is divine and dies for our sins and is reincarnated. This was a God that so loved the world he mated with a human and sacrificied His own son to save the world from sin and who offered a new covenant with the people.

The compromise let them tell both stories and get away with it.

what I dont understand is, that if it wasnt clear from the beginning, and by that I mean the time when the followers of jesus were still alive and some of them were being eaten by lions, if it wasnt clear Jesus was the Son of God, Saviour, why did people die in the arena, how could a world religion spring from such shaky foundations? It doesnt make sense. Surely everyone at the beginning was pretty sure that Jesus was The One or why die for him?, why become Christian in the first place? I know the Church put a spin on things, but everyone can read the Bible and suss it out that he never actually claimed to be an actual Son of God.

You are getting ahead of me Mrs Figg- that will be the central issue of the final part- about the resurrection- and I dont want to premept that just now so if you could bare with me a bit longer I will be getting to this, promise.

alreet

You're questions are right on the money however- these are the sort of questions to be asking given what the NT describes as his ministry taken in light of what we know historically and politically of the setting.
So good on you for being completely on the ball.