Jesus: Why I believe He was a failure.

This question at AIG is super-funny Allowing for the VB, how does he have a Y chromosome at all? Did he get his the same place Adam did? Did Adam even have one? After all "he" gives birth to Eve.Anyway Mark deals with this whole argument a totally different way. The citation is from Psalm 110, from whence also comes this gem Moral: neither a Davidian nor a Levite be ...

Right, see what I can do.A) The questioner has some bad ideas about DNA, acquired from the popular press. We don't get just our "Y-dna" from our father, we get half a set of chromosomes for our nucleus pairs altogether. We don't just get our "mtDNA" from our mother, we get the other half of our chromosomes for our nucleus pairs, plus a complete mitochondrion.The confusion comes from the fact that there is one chromosome that must pass from father to son, the Y, because Mom doesn't have one, she is XX where men are XY. If the half of that pair the father contributes happens to be his X, a daughter is born. The Y is a little stunty thing, useful only for developing particular male-only attributes.In the same way the DNA in the mitochondria must pass from mother to child, as the father doesn't contribute any. But the mother contributes a lot more than that, half a nucleus worth. She simply can't contribute a Y chromosome though, as she doesn't have one, unless she's some sort of hermaphrodite.Which leads to the part I found really funny, above and beyond arguing about DNA in a first-century setting, which is: where did he get his, then? His particular male-only attributes, the ones men get due to the Y chromosome of their fathers, where did they come from?To paraphrase a certain admiral: "Excuse me... Excuse me... I just wanted to ask a question. What does 'God' need with a Y-chromosome?"B) Jesus deals with the whole question about paternal descent from David in the passage I cited by proving that David worshipped the Messiah while still alive, in the Psalms, so he couldn't possibly be his son. The common folk eat it up, because they are sick to death of silly inbred Habsburg types wandering by going "Hello, line of David here, clean my boots with your tongue, peasant" and so forth.C) The same psalm, as later quoted in Hebrews, also deals with another big-deal Jewish bloodline, the Levitical priesthood, making the Messiah instead a type of an older priesthood, that of the king that Abraham paid tithes to. All royal, all priestly, no inbreeding required, this year only at Messiah Dot Com !!!D) Don't you know this stuff already? It's not a secret.E) Just to confine the OT to the one post, mitochondria are a particular species of ricketsia that infected the common ancestor of all Eukaryotes (us, sheep, bugs, amoebae, nearly everything you can think of other than bacteria) and have lived inside us ever since. They store energy for us and help us manipulate it, and in return we feed them and keep them safe from the wide world.In the Star Wars prequels George Lucas calls them "midichlorians". They are the reality behind The Force, and pass only through the maternal line. They are really parasites though, which is why The Dark Side is stronger.Edited by Iblis, : no question about it, Kirk would kill the Force in 44 minutesEdited by Iblis, :

The Bible is a wonderful book if you take it for what it is, a cumulative anthology of human experience with idolatry. Read in this straightforward way, it shows the evolution of our religious thought, from simple polytheistic patronage and monolatry through true monotheism and the abandonment of material worship altogether to an understanding of the real source of divinity and true responsibility for our creation and salvation. The point where the nonsense starts is when you try to use it as an authority on history, biology, physics, government, and every other thing in the word except what it is. This mistake is due to an inability to understand and distinguish between various kinds of literature in conjunction with a profound resentment for reality and a defective relationship with real authority.The person you are trying to respond to is arguing that this plain understanding of the written word is inaccurate, false, an illusion. He is specifically taking the position, regarding prophecy, that it does not say what it appears to say, that it has a secret meaning, which only he and those who are "in the know" can understand, and that it is this hidden understanding that is the real truth about what the seers foretold.Unfortunately for him He is seriously going to argue that this verse actually supports his point. This is because, as he has demonstrated repeatedly in his statements about the Law, he is not forbidden to lie. He is not even forbidden to lie about being forbidden to lie. His interpretation is more important to him, than what is being interpreted.This is why you will find a good solid half of his time at this site is spent arguing with other believers and telling church elders that they don't know much about theology. He's a millstone roped around the neck of any sort of real faith. I dreamed I called Jesus Christ on the phone and asked him, say, Man, did you really forgive them for they knew not what they did?

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"Verily, verily, I say unto you," he replied, "I made my position on authority-and-submission as clear as I could: 'You know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you.' Matt. 20:25. 'Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation.' Matt. 12:25. 'If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.' Matt.15:14. 'For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them upon men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.' Matt. 23:4. They be blind leaders of the blind, baby, and mechanical laws of punishment-and-conditioning lead them in little grooves of robot-life."

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But, but I protested is there anything outside conditioned behavior? Is there a real freedom, Man? Is there?

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"Find the place where Sade and I agree," he said, "and there you will find the beginning of a definition of liberty."

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And the line went dead with a sudden click like the sound of a bedroom door closing as a little boy is pushed outside.-- Robert Anton Wilson

Oh, are we back on fictionality now? Good, good. Here, have some Josephus:a miraculous birth the child prodigy Jesus and his disciples sending forth the 70 the little Apocalypse Jesus betrayed and abandoned by his disciples crucifixion and resurrection

The whole story dissolves when you look at it with a tiny amount of common sense and even the slightest understanding of Aramaic.When there is an event of political/social significance, we normally see protestors don't we? And they are never just on one side. One group is shouting "Free Willie! Save the Whales!" while the other group shouts "Native rights! Blubber is our culture!" Go down to an abortion clinic or a pseudo-town-hall-meeting and see for yourself.Now, when we look at the name Barabbas we find that bar Abba means "son of the Father". Obviously, in Mark's source (traditionally the sermons of Peter) one side demands that myth-boy be released to them, while the other side wants him crucified. The evangelist is writing for a Gentile audience though, under imperial rule, so he needs to take every step he can to absolve the legitimate government from accusations.In order to do this, he has to make the audience unanimous, show them as somehow pressuring the procurator into doing what they want. This is totally out of character for Pilate, but that can be blurred by exploiting the fact that he is known to do things on a whim. The trick is to make Jesus and "the son of the Father" into two different people, and suggest that Pilate will only release one of them.This becomes even clearer when we look at some of the earliest variants, such as the Matthew version in the Aramaic in the Peshitta and the Caesarean text-types in Greek What are the odds of Pilate having two separate prisoners, one known as Jesus son of God and the other called Jesus son of the Father; at the one time in history and legend where he is reported to have done what the Jews wanted without at least killing a thousand or so to make them know who's boss first; and killing the guy he liked and respected because they wanted him to release the robber/seditonist?

Oh, it's much worse than that. One of the scriptures being used as toilet-paper in this argument is Genesis 3:15. The claim is being advanced that it would have made no sense at all to the original audience, and therefore must be construed as somehow referring to Jesus. This is plain nonsense, any mature adult with the slightest understanding of Hebrew figurative language knows exactly what is being described in this passage.It isn't even so much allegory as light euphemism. The archetypal Man and Woman have just had their first experience with the sexual act, the "forbidden fruit" which is the source of adult rights and responsibilities (the knowledge of good and evil.) The first consequence is immediate physical soreness. The "serpent" (male sexual organ), which had stood surprisingly upright, now droops down and its head is bruised from the breaking of the hymen, which also results in the female sexual organ ("heel") being wounded, ie shedding blood.This is confirmed by the consequences which follow. The Woman will bear a child, which is a painful and unpleasant process. Bringing children into the world and the responsibility that entails affects not only the mother but also the Man, who must work hard for the rest of his life to care for his offspring.Genesis 3:15 is not referenced as referring to the Messiah at any point in the New Testament. This even though Matthew and Hebrews go to any lengths available to twist every Old Testament prophecy they can around to serve this purpose. It simply won't work even for them, as it would be like trying to claim that the phrase "the birds and the bees" is a prophecy of the future establishment of Israel as a modern state in 1948. And the New Testament audience isn't that naive....

Whose inspiration, Origen's? While I certainly think the man was inspired in places, I am talking about a quality of poetry and creative writing; whereas you are referring to a perverse doctrine that characterizes God as taking the prophets and the apostles and sticking his hand up their ass and using them as sock-puppets.In any case, Origen is following Philo's lead in interpreting the Hebrew scriptures as allegorical in every case, only shifting the target to be shored up from Alexandrian gnostic Judaism to his own commentaries on the New Testament. These commentaries are the source of numerous attempted deletions to the Gospels and Epistles. I don't think you approve of these cuts and chops, certainly not all of them; so why would you approve of the doctrines created to support them?Answer: you have no idea what I'm talking about, do you? Nonsense! Here and here and here and here. Had enough? Let's move on then. Why shouldn't I understand "love they neighbor as thyself" as meaning to always spank the little children before and after raping them? Why couldn't we interpret the torture and persecution of Jews and pagans by the medieval Catholic church as being "spiritual" tolerance? Why wouldn't you accept the revelation that everything is clean in Acts 10:9-16 as indicating that sodomy and bestiality are now okay?Answer: Words have meaning. They can't be muddled up and interchanged at will the way your pseudo-theology treats them. "Church" (called out) is not the same as "kingdom" (marked in). "Redemption" (buying back) is not the same as "salvation" (preserving from loss). "Son of man" (mortal) is not the same as "son of God" (angel). And "seed" (ejaculate) is not the same as "Jesus" (savior). The story of Eve and the Garden is not even mentioned anywhere else in the Hebrew scriptures, much less asserted to be literal. The only place even Adam is ever referred to again is in a genealogy of David at First Chronicles 1:1, written up by the same team that compiled the late Babylonian commentary in Genesis 1:1-2:3 on the Creation Hymn (represented in its original form in Psalms 103 & 148 and referenced in numerous other places) in together with the deliciously-dirty series of shaggy dog stories that begin at Genesis 2:3 and continue on and off every few chapters through the Law and the Former Prophets (Deuteronomic History.)The fact that you profess those scriptures to be holy, while at the same time getting totally grossed out by any attempt to translate the puns which are their purpose in such a way as to make their meaning understood, is a naked, throbbing sign of the bizarre conditioning you have been put through to make you a good slave.As for the angel you are slandering, he is only portrayed in one book of the Old Testament, the framing story of Job. There, he is depicted as obeying the commands of his God and doing the job for which he was created. In most occurrences of the word in the Hebrew scriptures, as in Numbers 22:22, the "adversary" being referred to represents Yahweh himself (he is who he is.) And you will have to admit that the New Testament verses that haven't been totally subverted in your mind by your masters paint much the same picture. Let me just ask you this: if "serpent" means that angel you mistakenly think you are not required to forgive, then what is this verse about? Answer: he's leveraging the qabalistic teaching that "serpent" (nachash) and messiah ("annointed") represent the same total in Hebrew arithmetic, 358, and are therefore considered in some sense to be equivalent. This is part of the not-very-secret doctrine that God is playing both ends against the middle in a cosmic game of Tarocci solitaire: The authors of the gospels and epistles do this sort of thing all the time. The New Testament has almost as many instances of gematria as the Old does off-color puns. Why do you not know about any of this stuff?Answer: the people whose teachings you are entrusting the fate of your immortal soul to have no understanding whatsoever of the culture they claim to be "experts" on! They are just links in a long chain of charismatic liars, who know nothing except how to manipulate ideas in a manner suited to cause you to have uncontrollable feelings that you mistake for true spiritual experiences, and thereby recruit you into carrying on the process into the next generation. And if there is some curiosity in your mind, as to what the word "ditch" might mean here, in some prophetic sense, have a clue You have a picture of God that portrays him as wanting things, and not getting them. If such a picture were even remotely true, he really would be a failure! Father, forgive them; they know not what they do.-- JMFCEdited by Iblis, : "humor" withdrawn

Very good! I rather thought I might meet One in this thread.Now, perhaps more for the sake of our audience than yourself, I must warn you not to re-imprint. A model is only as good as the situation it is used to master. Certainly when you find gods, choose those that make you burn inside. But never let them weight you down, always rise to them. Barabbas and Paul are no more "real" than Christ and Pilate, nor you nor I. The only thing real in this question is, as you have signed, that in me to that in you.Having said that, I am interested in your views of the first century. You seem to be familiar with the son of Sapphias and perhaps the son of Ananus as well, but do you know much about bar Gamaliel? His father was one of the foremost students of Hillel and allegedly Paul's teacher as well. If anyone taught the oral law to the masses in dramatizations in the way portrayed in the Gospels, it was him; he is the youngest person recorded to have made rabboni (judge not requiring consensus, full member) in the Great Sanhedrin before its dissolution, this would have taken place in the time of Pilate.He went on to become high priest in 63 AD. He is believed to have been the "Jesus" (Yehoshua) recorded to have led the party of venerable sages who joined Eleazar at Masada at the final hour in 73 AD to receive communion with him. Does this mean we should drink the kool-aid? Far from it, we have things to do. But in due time (I assume you are vowed) then certainly, we "must be born again."Peace!

As you know, I don't believe these are "errors" in Matthew at all. My position is that he knew exactly what he was doing. In order to understand this, it's necessary to understand not only his sources but also his setting. He has Sayings material in common with Luke, not only that which they tend to agree on almost word for word (Q) but also that which Luke uses totally differently (M); and all three synoptics have Narrative content in common which constitutes nearly the entirety of Mark (K). But he is doing his own job, in a way that sometimes differs wildly from the way the other Evangelists handle their text.Matthew is working, probably in Antioch, against sets of rival teachers commonly grouped as "Judaizers" like the Brethren, Ebionites, and Mandeans. These are the folks who want to make the emerging Gentile Christianity into a sect of Judaism, urging them to conform to the written and oral Law and observe practices like circumcision and kosher diet and so forth. This conflict forms much of the plot of the Acts of the Apostles and orthodox position papers reflecting the allowable extremes of the argument are found throughout the New Testament, particularly in Romans, James and Hebrews.The fact that the teachings of these proto-heretics are a distortion of real Judaism is not a problem for Matthew. He is perfectly willing to fight them with their own weapons! Seen in this light, it becomes obvious that Matthew is systematically working to prove that Jesus is not the Messiah expected by these Judaizers.Let's examine a couple of famous tongue-in-cheek constructions from toward the beginning of the Gospel, to see how this works:Matthew 1:22-25
The Messiah proclaimed by the Judaizers should be named "Immanuel";
Jesus is named "Jesus".Matthew 2:23
The alleged Messiah would be a Nazarite, a member of a Jewish order ordained in the Law to maintain strict ritual cleanliness, not cut their hair, never drink wine, and refrain from approaching dead bodies;
Jesus is a Nazarene, inhabitant of an area that throughout the first century functioned as a mausoleum, unclean for any legalistic Jew and profoundly unclean for the snotty, longhaired, make-up-a-new-oral-law-every-day Judaizers.See the idea? These sort of reconstructions aren't unfamiliar to the Hebrew scholar, they in fact bear a strong resemblance to a lot of the (mostly) minority opinions found in the Mishna and Gemara.Here's a nice parody of this line of thought from the Babylonian Talmud which is particularly suited for this thread: http://www.come-and-hear.com/sanhedrin/sanhedrin_43.htmlNote in this passage that Matthew, the only recognizable disciple, is also the one whose alternative interpretations are closest in meaning. This reflects the fact that while he departs from the literal interpretation, he does so much less than his rivals on either side, as seen also in the texts from Qumran in one direction and those of Nag Hammadi in the other.Hebrews and the other position statements also tend to operate in this same current of thought, although in a much more relaxed and positive way. Any attempt to understand prophecy in the New Testament without a proper grasp of this situation can only lead over the same cliff the Judaizers fell off of.

I predicted this whole performance already in Message 40. Talk about prophecy!Peter specifically says, contrary to the position being argued by his alleged followers, that no prophecy has any sort of hidden later double meaning unknown to the prophet. To understand what he means by this, let's look at his context Notice that the main example of prophecy that Peter is talking about in this passage isn't some pun from Isaiah, it's a vision he personally had himself. His argument is that, just like the OT prophets, he is in charge of his own material! Other people are twisting things around and making bizarre claims, that he is the Rockof Ages for example. Look how he deals with these mockers here and here and especially here. The reason that Peter is using Old Testament prophecy in his epistles is because that is what his opponents are doing, and they are twisting them around to mean whatever they want them to mean. If this is to be allowed, well then, he can do a better job of it, being much more learned, and a prophet in his own right besides! But the people he is against, the ones perverting the word, are the same people Paul is talking about when he complains about the "endless genealogies" that Matthew is parodying in his own sally against these same sleazy Torah-thumpers.Words have meaning. They aren't interchangeable. They mean what they say they mean, not some other thing someone afterward built a complicated, unstable Jenga blind-faith religion on. Edited by Iblis, : The ambition of Caesar and of Napoleon pales before that which could not rest until it had seized the minds of men and controlled even their unborn thoughtsEdited by Iblis, :

Always a fun read!Here's an early Jewish document which is indisputably a satire on the Messianic cults, and which strongly resembles Matthew in its use of prophecy.http://www.essene.com/History&Essenes/toled.htmFor example

Are we done then? At least with this round?Let's count up the current score on both sides First place
Brian, arguing Jesus is a failure: excellent documentation, compelling construction;
Buzsaw, arguing he just isn't done yet: also very good documentation, appeal to scientific method Second place
PaulK, arguing that he is "largely obscured" by euhemeristic myth: extremely good documentation, persistence in the face of adversity;
slevesque, arguing he is misunderstood: not so great with the texts, but introduces some interesting resources Third place
Jazzns, arguing that he is confusing: also low on text, but good comments and questions;
Son Goku, switching sides to argue that he is one Being but three Persons, so the two genealogies aren't a problem Honorable mentions
purpledawn, arguing that he is satirized;
hooah212002, switching sides to argue that he isn't so much a failure as a bastardDarwin awards
Barabbas126, for introducing a totally unsupported conspiracy theory, which is nevertheless charming enough to make me break character;
the top poster, for flooding, begging the question, appealing to authority, arguing ad hominem, and "willfully choosing to believe a lie." (Damn I miss Ray.)Edited by Iblis, : ten dollar word addedEdited by Iblis, : added qualifiers and a suffix

Corrected.

Hi Buzsaw! I think you have the most viable argument against the "failure" hypothesis. I have some questions though. Do you think that when he gets back, and fulfills the "Conquering King" and "Mighty Messenger" groups of prophecies, the Jews will then recognize him as their messiah? Other people might stick on the point that claiming to be God is a no-no for Judaism no matter how many prophecies one fulfills, but I don't believe you have to deal with that particular setback.Then also -- this is the rough part -- how about the Moslems? They also say that they expect him back for the End Times, to defeat the false messiah and reunite all the Abrahamic religions. Jesus in Islam - WikipediaIs he going to be able to do it? Or are they a lost cause?

Hi Brad, sorry it has to be me to break it to you, but you've been swindled. We have no first century copies of Josephus, Tacitus, or Pliny. (Nor the New Testament!) We derive our knowledge of all these texts from allusions to them made later, and copies preserved from even later than that by the Vatican.Third century supergenius Origen spends thousands of words trying to defend the historicity of Jesus against the heretic Celsus, and would have killed for references like these. He has copies of all three collections, but does not find these passages in them. They aren't there in his time.The first reference to the Josephus testimony is in the fourth century, by Eusebius. All the copies we have now are derived from his, and the passages have long been considered false on purely philological grounds. The Testimonium Flavium is a clear insert into a section about three persecutions of the Jews, instigated by Pilate; it is slammed in between the introduction of the third persecution, and the actual story of the massacre regarding the aqueduct which is that persecution. The James story is even more obvious, the Jesus mentioned in that passage pre-editing is clearly James's brother, Jesus son of Damneus, who is made high priest by the governor in the course of cleaning out the Ananus-Caiphas faction.The first mention of the creed recital in Tacitus is by Sulpicius Severus, in the fifth century. Again, all modern copies are derived from his. The fraud is inserted into a sequence of accounts of Nero's good points, and purports to blame him for the burning of Rome and to create an unfounded myth of Christian martyrs which is entirely contrary to the historical fact of Roman religious freedom. Nero was in Anzio during the fire, and his response to it was to increase the head-tax on Jews, not your fictional first-century Christians.The alleged letters between Pliny and Trajan are not part of the 9 books of correspondence prepared by Pliny himself, consisting of 247 such letters that he himself specifies by number. They are appended to his work during the Middle Ages as an undocumented 10th book, supposedly derived from the imperial library in Rome by the Catholic scholars there. Nor are they the least bit believable, in them Pliny claims to be unfamiliar with a point of law, though he had been a lawyer, held high political rank, and on close terms with the imperial government since the age of 17. They depict him as seeking advice about this minor matter from the emperor himself!The only way we could put any credence in such a mass of contradictory and convenient "testimonies" is if we had reason to believe that Eusebius, Sulpicius and the medieval Vatican were somehow trustworthy sources. Eusebius is the author of the Letters of Antoninus Pius, a pseudoepigraphal fraud, and the 12th Book of Evangelical Preparation, the 32nd chapter of which is entitled "How it may be Lawful and Fitting to use Falsehood as a Medicine, and for the Benefit of those who Want to be Deceived." Sulpicius Severus is the author of the Life of St. Martin, which attributes more miracles to the Pelagian political speaker in question per chapter than the whole New Testament attributes to Jesus. The Vatican is where the Borgias are born, to their father Pope Alexander VI.If you want to actually fight these fine points out, as usual, find another thread to do it in. Brian has conceded fictionality already, just to make his argument that even a historical Jesus who does everything the NT says he did, still can't be the messiah predicted by the Hebrew scriptures.