Matthew:
Jesus does not say he’s returning – I am with you always, until the end of the age.
Mark (Shorter Ending):
The gospel ends before Jesus ascends.
There are no recorded words of Jesus after the resurrection.
A young man tells them Jesus of Nazareth has been raised. The young man knows Jesus is on the way to Galilee and he tells that to the women.
Mark (Longer Ending):
Jesus does not say he’s returning – like Matthew’s I am with you always: Mark 16:20 they went forth and preached everywhere while the Lord worked with them (from Heaven)
Luke:
Jesus does not say he’s returning, just blessings, parted from them, and taken up to heaven.
John:
No Ascension narrative and Jesus does not say he’s returning
What difference does it make, as long as in every way,
whether in pretense or in truth,
Christ is being proclaimed?
– An Authentic Letter of Paul to the Philippians 1: 18
Paul is not a foundation for establishing the existence of Jesus or any second coming of Jesus.
The pretense of Jesus’ second coming proclaims Jesus. Just say anything about Jesus, attribute anything to Jesus, just keep the name of Jesus trending (a term we use now).
Second, what can a person do after believing Jesus when Jesus spoke about his kingdom and it did not come? Console one another in pretense or in truth.
Then, we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with those who have died.
We will meet the Lord in the air. Thus, we shall always be with the Lord.
Therefore, console one another with these words (and picture: the dead and the living suspended in mid air with Jesus).- An Authentic Letter of Paul, First Thessalonians 4: 17
gmatthews said
In John 14 Jesus says (in summary) he’s going to go prepare a place for his followers and return for them.
John 14: 2-4
In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself so that where I am you also may be. Where I am going you know the way.
Jesus is talking to his disciples not to generations of humans.
Jesus is talking about a spiritual place not an earthly place.
All of the 12 do not die on the same day at the same hour.
These verses do not refer to “The Second Coming.”
Jesus brings the 12 some place. Paul has living and dead people suspended in mid air. If Paul followed the Gospel according to John, its oral tradition, he would have moved his collection of living and dead people to mansions Jesus prepared for all the faithful.
John 14: 19
In a little while the world will no longer see me.
There is no Second Coming for the world, especially not for Jesus to have a longer tenure as The Son of Man owning the Kingdom of God/Righteousness/Heaven on Earth, a temporal kingdom. I’m willing to accept Jesus was this Son of Man from the time he told the blind man he healed, I am the Son of Man and from the time he declared publicly the kingdom of god is at Hand. Jesus knew declaring a new kingdom would cause great tribulation because there already was a standing kingdom, the Roman empire. But, after the tribulation, whoever won, God will have chosen who would reign has Son of Man, post-tribulation. It was not Jesus.
According to Dr. Michael Newton, author of Journey of Souls, there are soul groups in Heaven, between life incarnations. Jesus is going to prepare a place for his 12 disciples. Fine. But, there is no second coming after Jesus came back to life with his resurrection. In fact, if John 14: 19 is correct those who see Jesus after the resurrection are a select group and not a resurrection as second coming to the world.
In the synoptic Gospels Jesus often refers to himself as the Son of Man. The term has more than one meaning. It can be used as a modest way of referring to oneself, like saying “yours truly”. This kind of usage is employed by the prophet Ezekiel. It can also simply mean “a man”, as in Daniel 7:13-14 which refers to “one like a son of man”. There’s another usage which appears in apocalyptic passages of the synoptics where Jesus apparently uses the term to denote someone other than himself – a cosmic judge figure that God is going to send down from heaven to separate the wheat from the chaff, rescue God’s chosen people from all oppression, sickness, disease, suffering, strife and flat beer, and establish the kingdom of heaven on Earth (Matthew 16:27-28, Mark 8:38, Luke 9:26-27). This kind of usage appears in the apocalyptic flavoured Book of Enoch. Jesus may well have been influenced by Enochian Judaism and envisaged God sending down to Earth this mysterious figure to do His will. After Jesus was crucified, the early Christians conflated the apocalyptic Son of Man with Jesus himself, hence their expectation that He would return very soon. Paul expects this event in 1 Thessalonians 4:17. He envisages the faithful dead (sounds like a rock group) being resurrected very soon and meeting living believers in the sky for a kind of jolly jamboree. The author of Revelation writes an extended progressive rock version of the same concept with his vision of Jesus coming on a cloud with hair like wool and sword sticking out of his mouth to judge the world and cause all sorts of fireworks.
Like Revelation, the Gospel of John is much later than the synoptics – estimated time of writing after 90 CE. The non-arrival of the kingdom of heaven had become glaringly apparent by that time, and John’s author had other ideas than reiterating the apocalypticism of the synoptics. Instead of envisaging the resurrection as an imminent real time event, John improvises a theology whereby Christians who accept Jesus as their personal Saviour will never die but instead will enter into eternal life in the here and now.
Critical NT historians tend to treat John with circumspection when seeking to find out what the historical Jesus probably believed and preached. The Gospel is thought to lean more towards creative theology by its author than true history.
I think that’s basically it. Jesus himself doesn’t say he’s returning for a Second Coming but after the crucifixion the early Christians cast him in the prophesied soon-to-appear cosmic Son of Man role.
I think the main reason Jesus didn’t say he was returning was because he didn’t think he was leaving the first time. Far from being a divine plan for salvation the arrest, trial and execution of Jesus was most likely a completely unforeseen disaster. It’s entirely possible he went to his death convinced that Yahweh was about to intervene and establish the Kingdom either through Jesus himself or some other Chosen One. (We will probably never get any closer to Jesus’ own self-understanding.) Perhaps Jesus’ cry of despair from the cross in Mark is the most authentic item in the historical tradition and he wasn’t quoting Psalms 22 at all?
Jesus says , about the coming of the Son in Matt 24:34 ** you do not have permission to see this link **“
For me, it is clear or at least probable that Jesus was convinced that he would come back. Paul had evidently Heard about this promise and he believed it and preached it.
But that generation died without having seen the coming of the Christ. Therefore it is very logical that the gospel of John, written when all persons from the Jesus generation were gone. transforms Jesus into something more vague but still comforting. I Think that Bart explains that very well in Lost Christianities.
PS. For me this was an intellectual wow-experience. In my childhood , raised as a Jehovas Witness, I was told that the “generation” in question were the people who were born around 1900 and that meant that Doomsday had to come Before they died. As a 8 year old Child I was scared to my bones during the Cuba Crisis, because that seemed to predict the coming of the Son and the subsequent killing of all my buddies in school who did not have the Truth.
Klas said
Jesus says , about the coming of the Son in Matt 24:34 ** you do not have permission to see this link **“For me, it is clear or at least probable that Jesus was convinced that he would come back. Paul had evidently Heard about this promise and he believed it and preached it.
But that generation died without having seen the coming of the Christ.
It is not probable that Jesus was convinced he would come back because he says, “Soon, the world will no longer see me.”
Paul had no grounds for saying Jesus was coming back. Jesus sent the Holy Spirit because he was not coming back.
Furthermore, Jesus gave us the Parable of the Wicked Tenants explaining the Jewish Son of Man was killed and the role of Son of Man would be fulfilled by another, someone other than the Jewish tenants; henceforth, a Gentile. Looking for the Son of Man after the crucifixion of Jesus obligates one to go through the Parable of the Wicked Tenants and see that a Jewish Jesus does not get a second coming/chance at the Son of Man, but a Gentile completed what needed to be completed before the generation contemporary to Jesus passed.
You can see an instructional video about it on YouTube. Put WBFbySteefen in the search. Choose the 2+ hour video on Jesus.
Steefen said
It is not probable that Jesus was convinced he would come back because he says, “Soon, the world will no longer see me.”Paul had no grounds for saying Jesus was coming back. Jesus sent the Holy Spirit because he was not coming back.
Well, if you read the Bible to conform to what you believe, then you might arrive to that conclusion. But then we start a discussion about faith, not about historical events.
Klas said
Steefen said
It is not probable that Jesus was convinced he would come back because he says, “Soon, the world will no longer see me.”Paul had no grounds for saying Jesus was coming back. Jesus sent the Holy Spirit because he was not coming back.
Well, if you read the Bible to conform to what you believe, then you might arrive to that conclusion. But then we start a discussion about faith, not about historical events.
Your position is that Jesus did come back? Tell us about that historical event.
Your position is that Jesus is coming back? That would be a future event, not a historical event, therefore, your position is one of faith.
The problem is always the same.
Were the words that Jesus spoke faithfully translated or indeed accurate? Bart explains even with his students who are given the task of copying text with the bible in front of them make many mistakes. So how could any writer one, ten, twenty, fifty even years later not make mistakes in what Jesus said? How would the Sermon on the Mount be memorised over that time period, word for word, that is?
Was it the Jesus Seminar that looked into all this and came up with likely percentages? I’m guessing and could look it up again but it was a small fraction that was likely to be true. Paul invented atonement via blood sacrifice as that was not essentially preached by Jesus himself. I will start a new thread on that.
Steefen said
Matthew:
Jesus does not say he’s returning – I am with you always, until the end of the age.Mark (Shorter Ending):
The gospel ends before Jesus ascends.
There are no recorded words of Jesus after the resurrection.
A young man tells them Jesus of Nazareth has been raised. The young man knows Jesus is on the way to Galilee and he tells that to the women.Mark (Longer Ending):
Jesus does not say he’s returning – like Matthew’s I am with you always: Mark 16:20 they went forth and preached everywhere while the Lord worked with them (from Heaven)Luke:
Jesus does not say he’s returning, just blessings, parted from them, and taken up to heaven.John:
No Ascension narrative and Jesus does not say he’s returningWhat difference does it make, as long as in every way,
whether in pretense or in truth,
Christ is being proclaimed?
– An Authentic Letter of Paul to the Philippians 1: 18Paul is not a foundation for establishing the existence of Jesus or any second coming of Jesus.
The pretense of Jesus’ second coming proclaims Jesus. Just say anything about Jesus, attribute anything to Jesus, just keep the name of Jesus trending (a term we use now).Second, what can a person do after believing Jesus when Jesus spoke about his kingdom and it did not come? Console one another in pretense or in truth.
Then, we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with those who have died.
We will meet the Lord in the air. Thus, we shall always be with the Lord.
Therefore, console one another with these words (and picture: the dead and the living suspended in mid air with Jesus).- An Authentic Letter of Paul, First Thessalonians 4: 17
You misunderstand what Paul meant by pretense or truth. Paul preached what he believed was the Truth, but many other groups (including what became the Catholic Church) preached a pretense. Their Jesus was a man of the world, one they could honor through traditions, titles, scholarship, legalisms, money, power and legends. Diotrephes, in John’s letter, was such a man – maybe the first Archbishop, a man who wanted the pre-eminence among his followers. But still, through such breakaway groups others heard about Jesus.
As for Jesus second coming. He addressed this with many parables. In Zechariah we read of the Jews mourning for the heavenly King they so long waited for – but he was the one they already knew – the return of the lowly man who they pierced.
Klas said
Jesus says , about the coming of the Son in Matt 24:34 ** you do not have permission to see this link **“For me, it is clear or at least probable that Jesus was convinced that he would come back. Paul had evidently Heard about this promise and he believed it and preached it.
But that generation died without having seen the coming of the Christ. Therefore it is very logical that the gospel of John, written when all persons from the Jesus generation were gone. transforms Jesus into something more vague but still comforting. I Think that Bart explains that very well in Lost Christianities.
PS. For me this was an intellectual wow-experience. In my childhood , raised as a Jehovas Witness, I was told that the “generation” in question were the people who were born around 1900 and that meant that Doomsday had to come Before they died. As a 8 year old Child I was scared to my bones during the Cuba Crisis, because that seemed to predict the coming of the Son and the subsequent killing of all my buddies in school who did not have the Truth.
If you read Zechariah there are two references to the two Messiahs. Just as there are two returns of the Jews, as Isaiah spoke of, so there are two visitations. Jesus is both Redeemer and King. The Jews will see their kingly Messiah, but to their sorrow it’s the lowly one who they pierced.
If you read Zechariah there are two references to the two Messiahs. Just as there are two returns of the Jews, as Isaiah spoke of, so there are two visitations. Jesus is both Redeemer and King. The Jews will see their kingly Messiah, but to their sorrow it’s the lowly one who they pierced.
I have read Zechariah and in the context in which it was written it doesn’t mean what you, and most Christians apparently, think it means. Zechariah 12:10 especially seems to suffer from what can only be interpreted as deliberate mistranslation.
From the translation of Hebrew scholar David Alter:
On that day, the Lord shall defend Jerusalem, and the faltering among them on that day shall be like David and the house of David like a god, like the Lord’s messenger at their head. And on that day I will set about to destroy all the nation’s coming against Jerusalem. And I will pour out upon the house of David and upon Jerusalem’s dwellers a sprit of grace and graciousness, and they shall look upon those who were stabbed and mourn for them like the mourning for an only child, and they shall grieve bitterly for them as one grieves bitterly for a firstborn.
-Zech 12: 8-10
In context Zechariah is saying that even if the people are successful against their enemies the cost will be such that they will mourn their dead grievously. This not a Messianic prophecy and to quote-mine out of context as a prophecy of Jesus’ crucifixion is somewhat dishonest at worst and willful ignorance at best.
Stephen said
If you read Zechariah there are two references to the two Messiahs. Just as there are two returns of the Jews, as Isaiah spoke of, so there are two visitations. Jesus is both Redeemer and King. The Jews will see their kingly Messiah, but to their sorrow it’s the lowly one who they pierced.I have read Zechariah and in the context in which it was written it doesn’t mean what you, and most Christians apparently, think it means. Zechariah 12:10 especially seems to suffer from what can only be interpreted as deliberate mistranslation.
From the translation of Hebrew scholar David Alter:
On that day, the Lord shall defend Jerusalem, and the faltering among them on that day shall be like David and the house of David like a god, like the Lord’s messenger at their head. And on that day I will set about to destroy all the nation’s coming against Jerusalem. And I will pour out upon the house of David and upon Jerusalem’s dwellers a sprit of grace and graciousness, and they shall look upon those who were stabbed and mourn for them like the mourning for an only child, and they shall grieve bitterly for them as one grieves bitterly for a firstborn.
-Zech 12: 8-10
In context Zechariah is saying that even if the people are successful against their enemies the cost will be such that they will mourn their dead grievously. This not a Messianic prophecy and to quote-mine out of context as a prophecy of Jesus’ crucifixion is somewhat dishonest at worst and willful ignorance at best.
So I take it David Alter has an agenda of his own, just as he claims that of others? His translation of “pierce” is interesting because others on this forum referred to King David’s crucifixion scene in Psalm 22 not as saying His hands and feet were pierced but that he was mauled like a lion.
Looked up this Alter. He wrote concerning his own translation, “I try to write lucidly and with a certain amount of flair, so together with sensitivity to the Hebrew, I also think that I have a certain resourcefulness about what you can do with literary English.” He isn’t explaining, he’s explaining away.
Interlinear says they will look upon him whom they pierced. The first born. The only son. The lowly man upon a donkey, just and having salvation. Why else would the Jewish nation mourn?
So I take it David Alter has an agenda of his own, just as he claims that of others?
Certainly Alter has an agenda, you quoted it yourself. The editorial comments above were mine. Alter probably doesn’t waste his time commenting on Christian misinterpretations and mistranslations. (The most popular translation, the NIV, is particularly execrable. ** you do not have permission to see this link ** is an online article detailing the problems with the NIV.)
King David did not write Psalm 22 and it is not a “crucifixion scene”. The brilliant writer of the gospel of Mark took Psalm 22 as a template for how he shaped his own crucifixion scene.
He isn’t explaining, he’s explaining away.
Alter is explaining what the Hebrew Bible meant to the people who composed it. Are you not interested in that?
Interlinear says they will look upon him whom they pierced. The first born. The only son. The lowly man upon a donkey, just and having salvation. Why else would the Jewish nation mourn?
I think I answered this already. The Jewish nation is mourning its own war dead.
Stephen said
So I take it David Alter has an agenda of his own, just as he claims that of others?Certainly Alter has an agenda, you quoted it yourself. The editorial comments above were mine. Alter probably doesn’t waste his time commenting on Christian misinterpretations and mistranslations. (The most popular translation, the NIV, is particularly execrable. ** you do not have permission to see this link ** is an online article detailing the problems with the NIV.)
King David did not write Psalm 22 and it is not a “crucifixion scene”. The brilliant writer of the gospel of Mark took Psalm 22 as a template for how he shaped his own crucifixion scene.
He isn’t explaining, he’s explaining away.
Alter is explaining what the Hebrew Bible meant to the people who composed it. Are you not interested in that?
Interlinear says they will look upon him whom they pierced. The first born. The only son. The lowly man upon a donkey, just and having salvation. Why else would the Jewish nation mourn?
I think I answered this already. The Jewish nation is mourning its own war dead.
There’s one salient point in this business of “Christians”
In the beginning these were Jews who heard or even met Jesus. THEIR READING OF THEIR OWN SCRIPTURE CONVINCED THEM JESUS WAS THE MESSIAH. Remember, there’s two Messiahs – Redeemer and King. Jesus fitted perfectly the Redeemer who came to shed His own blood for His people.
Robert said
Stephen said
If you read Zechariah there are two references to the two Messiahs. Just as there are two returns of the Jews, as Isaiah spoke of, so there are two visitations. Jesus is both Redeemer and King. The Jews will see their kingly Messiah, but to their sorrow it’s the lowly one who they pierced.I have read Zechariah and in the context in which it was written it doesn’t mean what you, and most Christians apparently, think it means. Zechariah 12:10 especially seems to suffer from what can only be interpreted as deliberate mistranslation.
From the translation of Hebrew scholar David Alter:
On that day, the Lord shall defend Jerusalem, and the faltering among them on that day shall be like David and the house of David like a god, like the Lord’s messenger at their head. And on that day I will set about to destroy all the nation’s coming against Jerusalem. And I will pour out upon the house of David and upon Jerusalem’s dwellers a sprit of grace and graciousness, and they shall look upon those who were stabbed and mourn for them like the mourning for an only child, and they shall grieve bitterly for them as one grieves bitterly for a firstborn.
-Zech 12: 8-10
In context Zechariah is saying that even if the people are successful against their enemies the cost will be such that they will mourn their dead grievously. This not a Messianic prophecy and to quote-mine out of context as a prophecy of Jesus’ crucifixion is somewhat dishonest at worst and willful ignorance at best.
Alter’s translation is a creative attempt to make sense out of a very difficult text in Hebrew, as can be seen by the alternative attempts to interpret this text in the ancient translations of the Hebrew in the Old Greek and the Targum, neither of which match Alter’s translation or the standard Christian interpretation.
It is not surprising that early Christians exegetes latched upon a text that was already difficult to understand, and the Christian interpretation (moreso in Revelation, somewhat less so in John) is related to yet another traditional Jewish interpretation of this difficult text. They thought their new messianic experience enlightened an already difficult text and actually allowed them to read the text more literally than this traditional Jewish reading.
Although the common Christian interpretation is certainly not what was intended by the original author, it can be based on a more literal reading of the Hebrew text than Alter’s. He seems to be either making an emendation in the underlying Hebrew (נדקרו instead of דקרו) that is not supported by any manuscripts or he may be freely adapting a non-literal traditional Jewish interpretation similar to the one I mentioned above. Does he give any explanation of this particular translation?
This “translation” frankly doesn’t even make sense to Jews. Be interesting how he “translates” Psalm 69 and Isaiah 53 etc.. I read somewhere that Jews prior to Jesus read David and Zechariah as saying someone was pierced. Similar Alter style arguments are made about the suffering Messiah in Psalm 22 by dealing with the “pierce” word – ignoring, more or less, the whole thrust of the whole Psalm. Thus you bamboozle people with one particular interpretation of a single word and convince people you have dealt with the whole body of text and its context.
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