hi to all
I have been watching most of the videos for Bart, and I was so interested in almost most of them,
I have a question that I need some input on it, if Jesus is as claimed to be god, why was he born as a normal birth ( from a a woman , regardless of the miracles way ), and why he had to live a normal life, grow, learn, get educated and then start his teaching?
wouldn’t it be better that if he was god to just appear in a human form and tell the people what to do ?
what is the objective of taking the normal process of been born and having a normal life?
if I can have your views on that point it will be great.
thanks and happy to join this blog.
Welcome shadybasta!
Good questions. I’m not a believer so I imagine my answer will not be as interesting theologically as it might be coming from a believer. Jesus was a human being whose followers came to believe he was divine. So in divinizing him they were forced to accommodate his humanity. Of course some came to deny even that.
My question is why the whole incarnation thing was necessary at all. An infinite god could surely have made himself and his desires instantly known to all people in all places. Why not just do that? Why did mercy and forgiveness require violence? It all just seems completely time bound and culture bound. I just can’t believe in a system of thought that seems so incoherent.
hi Stephen
actually I like the discussions with non believers, since they always have a view outside the box that makes traditional believers to look in that direction that they haven’t discovered before.
I recently started to look to things in a different way, and for the same reason that you have known before I started having a lot of questions even on the traditional answers that we normally get.
coming back to the subject you mentioned, why do you think that Jesus believers though he is divine ? is it because of the miracles that he did ? or the miracles where just stores that were created by people?
I know that bart have mentioned before that Jesus followers or who ever wrote the bibles, they worked backwards in making Jesus more and more divine and more more greater. so does that mean there were no miracles at all? my main question is why did they made him divine ? what was the reason that made them do so?
about your concern of infinity god and incarnation, it is sure a very valid point that if god is so great and in control then why all of this suffering and violence, but you will get the normal answer that the violence and evil is always been created by humans and its always god who tries to get them back in the correct way because he love humans so much, and also because he love us so much he doesn’t want to just illuminate us, its like he is giving us the choice to be good. its part of his fairness and wisdom.
thanks
coming back to the subject you mentioned, why do you think that Jesus believers though he is divine ? is it because of the miracles that he did ? or the miracles where just stores that were created by people?
I know that bart have mentioned before that Jesus followers or who ever wrote the bibles, they worked backwards in making Jesus more and more divine and more more greater. so does that mean there were no miracles at all? my main question is why did they made him divine ? what was the reason that made them do so?
I think they made him divine because they had experiences which they interpreted as Jesus having been resurrected from the dead. They had visions or dreams or some such engendered by the shock and cognitive dissonance resulting from the crucifixion. Over a period of years his disciples went back and reinterpreted his life and teaching though this lens. I suspect the miracles were just stories that were told because a figure like Jesus would be assumed to have special powers.
about your concern of infinity god and incarnation, it is sure a very valid point that if god is so great and in control then why all of this suffering and violence, but you will get the normal answer that the violence and evil is always been created by humans and its always god who tries to get them back in the correct way because he love humans so much, and also because he love us so much he doesn’t want to just illuminate us, its like he is giving us the choice to be good. its part of his fairness and wisdom.
Yeah it’s always our fault. But the excuses for God’s inaction always strike me as rationalizations for why he only seems to be absent. But if I saw a child wandering towards the highway I would stop him without any concern at all for his “choice” to play in traffic. And certainly god is further above us than we are as adults to children.
…considerations like this are probably what led the later gospels, mark and john, to remove the birth narratives and have jesus make his first appearance as an adult.
brenmcg that doesn’t make any sense at all.
Pharaohs were gods who were born.
Paul was the Egyptian prophet who made up Jesus.
A Christ figure is a king, an anointed person.
Pharaohs survived death after going through the hours of the amduat.
The Amduat (literally ‘that which is in the netherworld’), also known as the Book of the Hidden Chamber, is a funerary text that describes the journey of regeneration of Re, the Egyptian sun god, through the 12 hours of the night from sunset (symbolising death) to sunrise (symbolising rebirth).
Jesus’ story has this foundation but is altered to fit messianic culture, for example, the Gabriel Revelation says, “after three days, live!”
Stephen said
…considerations like this are probably what led the later gospels, mark and john, to remove the birth narratives and have jesus make his first appearance as an adult.
brenmcg that doesn’t make any sense at all.
The original post made statements like
“if Jesus is as claimed to be god, why was he born as a normal birth ( from a a woman , regardless of the miracles way ), and why he had to live a normal life, grow, learn, get educated and then start his teaching?”
“wouldn’t it be better that if he was god to just appear in a human form and tell the people what to do ? “
If a first century greek speaking christian redactor of the gospels of Matthew/Luke shared these sentiments, he would most likely have removed the nativity and early childhood accounts.
Robert said
Bren actually considers Mark not mentioning Joseph’s name to be a higher christology than Matthew and Luke mentioning that Jesus had a human father without a biological role in the virginal conception, which he thinks was an earlier Jewish messianic belief. But I think he has also tried to say that Matthew or Luke might not have believed in a virginal conception.
No the erasing of any mention of an earthly father in Mark that is the later development. In Matthew/Luke, Jesus at least has someone who acts as his earthly father.
–
Luke explicitly mentions Mary to be a virgin. But Matthew only quotes greek Isaiah 7:14. The only way we can know Matthew thought she was a virgin is if we also know greek Isaiah 7:14 meant her to be a virgin. I think we can know this in both cases.
If a first century greek speaking christian redactor of the gospels of Matthew/Luke shared these sentiments, he would most likely have removed the nativity and early childhood accounts.
Or Mark held to an early Adoptionist Christology and wasn’t interested in Jesus’ physical birth which was like all human beings.
reply to stephen
I think they made him divine because they had experiences which they interpreted as Jesus having been resurrected from the dead. They had visions or dreams or some such engendered by the shock and cognitive dissonance resulting from the crucifixion. Over a period of years his disciples went back and reinterpreted his life and teaching though this lens. I suspect the miracles were just stories that were told because a figure like Jesus would be assumed to have special powers.
In the old testament there are others who have made same miracles like Jesus, and they had followers as well, mostly the Jewish people if I am not mistaken, why will it be so special that Jesus followers will make him divine that much more than the others before him, to an extent he became god himself, this is what’s confusing me.
Yeah it’s always our fault. But the excuses for God’s inaction always strike me as rationalizations for why he only seems to be absent. But if I saw a child wandering towards the highway I would stop him without any concern at all for his “choice” to play in traffic. And certainly god is further above us than we are as adults to children.
I agree, but take the example like this, if the kid was saved before been hit by a car then what happened was a lesson to his parents so that they know and understand his value. if the kid wasn’t saved then they will tell you that his parents didn’t deserve to have him and god have chosen him at the correct time, and the person who hit him was sort of a sinner and god needed to open his eyes in a certain way by this acciednet ( I think this will be the normal response for such)
Stephen said
…considerations like this are probably what led the later gospels, mark and john, to remove the birth narratives and have jesus make his first appearance as an adult.
brenmcg that doesn’t make any sense at all.
The original post made statements like
“if Jesus is as claimed to be god, why was he born as a normal birth ( from a a woman , regardless of the miracles way ), and why he had to live a normal life, grow, learn, get educated and then start his teaching?”
“wouldn’t it be better that if he was god to just appear in a human form and tell the people what to do ? “
If a first century greek speaking christian redactor of the gospels of Matthew/Luke shared these sentiments, he would most likely have removed the nativity and early childhood accounts.
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can you please elaborate more on your response ? I didn’t get the point clearly.
thanks
In the old testament there are others who have made same miracles like Jesus, and they had followers as well, mostly the Jewish people if I am not mistaken, why will it be so special that Jesus followers will make him divine that much more than the others before him, to an extent he became god himself, this is what’s confusing me.
Well if we ask “Why Jesus?” in the larger sense there’s probably no real answer. That’s just the way history tuned out. At the time who could have imagined that an obscure itinerant prophet would start a movement that would change history? But then who is alive now in our age in some obscure spot on the globe we will never notice whot will be the cause of sweeping changes over the centuries to come? To completely mangle an Emerson quote which I can’t remember, “Staring at the turning wheels of history makes us dizzy”. How contingent it all seems! All that seems so inevitable now could have been completely different given but a few changes here or there.
One event that makes me dizzy to consider is that humans owe our entire domination of the world to the fact that 65 million years ago a comet or asteroid impacted the earth at the modern day Yucatan region, causing a mass extinction that wiped out 85% of all land fauna (including most famously the non-avian dinosaurs), clearing out the eco-system thus allowing our ancestors (a small rodent like creature that lived in the roots of bushes and trees) to dominate its environment and flourish. In other words we owe our success as a species to the celestial equivalent of a traffic accident. Think about that for a while and see how queasy we become.
…but take the example like this, if the kid was saved before been hit by a car then what happened was a lesson to his parents so that they know and understand his value. if the kid wasn’t saved then they will tell you that his parents didn’t deserve to have him and god have chosen him at the correct time, and the person who hit him was sort of a sinner and god needed to open his eyes in a certain way by this accident ( I think this will be the normal response for such)
True if one is committed to the god concept such rationalizations are endless. There is always a lesson to be learned or a point to be made. We don’t do well with the idea that things happen for no reason.
Stephen said
If a first century greek speaking christian redactor of the gospels of Matthew/Luke shared these sentiments, he would most likely have removed the nativity and early childhood accounts.Or Mark held to an early Adoptionist Christology and wasn’t interested in Jesus’ physical birth which was like all human beings.
But Mark didn’t have an early Adoptionist Christology.
Mark 12:6-7 “He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, They will respect my son. But those tenants said to one another, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.”
This is the parable of the vineyard about the treatment of the son of god sent to the Jews. Same language as the baptism. Jesus was a beloved son sent by god to humans, not a human being adopted to sonship.
shadybasta said
can you please elaborate more on your response ? I didn’t get the point clearly.
thanks
The standard view of scholarship is that Mark wrote first and Matthew used his gospel as a source for his. One piece of evidence often given to support this order is the lack of a virgin birth in Mark. Its seen as a part of the mythology added to Jesus story over time.
But if Mark shared your belief that it would be more appropriate for Jesus as god to appear as an adult male, rather than growing up from a baby, we can see Mark’s lack of a birth narrative as indicating a later writing of his gospel. Jesus as a historical man for Matthew/Luke needed a birth account, but as god for Mark/ John it would be undignified to describe his infancy.
So we should disagree with traditional scholarship and see Matthew as original to Mark.
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shadybasta said
can you please elaborate more on your response ? I didn’t get the point clearly.
thanks
The standard view of scholarship is that Mark wrote first and Matthew used his gospel as a source for his. One piece of evidence often given to support this order is the lack of a virgin birth in Mark. Its seen as a part of the mythology added to Jesus story over time.
But if Mark shared your belief that it would be more appropriate for Jesus as god to appear as an adult male, rather than growing up from a baby, we can see Mark’s lack of a birth narrative as indicating a later writing of his gospel. Jesus as a historical man for Matthew/Luke needed a birth account, but as god for Mark/ John it would be undignified to describe his infancy.
So we should disagree with traditional scholarship and see Matthew as original to Mark.
but I do think that Mark, and other gospels Except Johan, have never seen Jesus as god himself, from their writing and words you could consider him as prophet, please correct me if I am wrong, its only in Johan that you will see clearly that Jesus is saying that I am god ( of course in other words, like, before Abraham was I am…etc).
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Well if we ask “Why Jesus?” in the larger sense there’s probably no real answer. That’s just the way history tuned out. At the time who could have imagined that an obscure itinerant prophet would start a movement that would change history? But then who is alive now in our age in some obscure spot on the globe we will never notice whot will be the cause of sweeping changes over the centuries to come? To completely mangle an Emerson quote which I can’t remember, “Staring at the turning wheels of history makes us dizzy”. How contingent it all seems! All that seems so inevitable now could have been completely different given but a few changes here or there.
One event that makes me dizzy to consider is that humans owe our entire domination of the world to the fact that 65 million years ago a comet or asteroid impacted the earth at the modern day Yucatan region, causing a mass extinction that wiped out 85% of all land fauna (including most famously the non-avian dinosaurs), clearing out the eco-system thus allowing our ancestors (a small rodent like creature that lived in the roots of bushes and trees) to dominate its environment and flourish. In other words we owe our success as a species to the celestial equivalent of a traffic accident. Think about that for a while and see how queasy we become.
the example that you gave following your response of why this have happened with Jesus only makes me question more now 🙂 , because what I understood from your example is that due to what happened 65 million years back we are what we are now, so I am considering the same for what have happened with Jesus so that Christianity have spread on most of the world that fast.
Robert said
There’s nothing in this parable that contradicts an adoptionist christology. Adoption established someone as a son and heir.
The owner of the vineyard having a son whom he loves is prior to this son being sent to the vineyard to the collect the fruit.
Either the parable is not about Jesus or Mark does not see Jesus being adopted at the baptism.
BDEhrman
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Robert