Jesus is just all right with me

[vovat]

Reading all four Gospels have confirmed what I've long suspected, and what many other people have said as well. While I don't agree with all of Jesus' teachings (for instance, he is reported to have said both that those who are not for him are against him, and vice versa, which I consider to be dangerous philosophies), he did say a lot of good stuff. When not being purposely mystical and mysterious (and it's John's Gospel that has the most of that, and seems to have contributed to a lot of the ideas of the Triune God), a lot of what Jesus did to rail against hypocrisy. "Judge not, lest ye be judged" and "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" are pretty good guidelines for anyone. I know I don't always notice the log in my own eye before noticing the speck in my neighbor's.

A few more observations about the Gospels, most of which have already been made multiple times, but...well, you haven't seen them here yet, have you? {g}

What a Paine! - Despite Newt Gingrich's assertion that the Founding Fathers were hardcore Christians, Thomas Paine (of Common Sense fame) was known to be a Deist, who believed in God but not Christ. Back in college (but not for class), I read an essay he wrote, where he mentions that a lot of the prophecies that Jesus is said to have fulfilled (particularly by Matthew) were taken out of context, and sometimes not even intended as prophecies in the first place. For instance, a passage from Isaiah 9 becomes essentially just a list of places in Matthew 4:12-16. Much more famously, there's the case of a verse in Isaiah about a "young woman" giving birth being mistranslated as a "virgin" in the Greek, and then being used by Matthew as a prophecy of Jesus' virgin birth. Of course, a virgin giving birth is pretty miraculous whether it was prophesied or not. (Incidentally, Matthew 1:25 strongly hints that Mary had other children in the normal way after the birth of Jesus, which doesn't really fit in with the idea of her perpetual virginity. There are also other references to Jesus' siblings, and I don't mean his brothers Satan and Hong Xiuquan.) And while modern exclamations have placed Jesus on a bike, a pogo stick, a sidecar, and various other means of conveyance, Matthew actually has him ride into Jerusalem on two donkeys at the same time, which some believe to be based on a misinterpretation of the repetitive language in Zechariah 9:9. The impression seems to be that any verse in the Old Testament was fair game for interpretation as a messianic prophecy, regardless of its original context.

O Little Town of Bethlehem - Was Jesus actually born in Bethlehem? Well, both Matthew and Luke say he was, while John 7:42 has people denying his status as Messiah because he isn't from there (although it's possible they don't actually know his origins). Whether or not he was, the census story in Luke seems a bit suspect. Why would a census require people to go to the towns where their ancestors lived 1000 years previously? It's a good thing they don't do that nowadays! It might make more sense if Joseph had originally been from Bethlehem himself, but even then, wouldn't census takers be more likely to be concerned with where the people were living at the time? Also, the passage famously quoted by Linus Van Pelt has an angel refer to Bethlehem as "the city of David," when that designation is usually used for Jerusalem. I believe Bethlehem is only eight miles from Jerusalem, which might make it a suburb by modern standards, but I don't know that that distinction existed back then. ("Unto you is born this day, in the suburbs of David, a savior"?)

Begin the Begat - Both Matthew and Luke are eager to show, by means of genealogy, that Joseph is a descendant of David. Their genealogies are totally different, though, from which son of David is Joseph's ancestor (it's of particular interest to me that Luke says he was a descendant of Nathan {g}) right down to the name of his father. I've seen it suggested that one of the genealogies (usually Luke's, I believe) is actually that of Mary, which is an appealing idea since Joseph isn't supposed to have been Jesus' biological father anyway, but I don't know that there's any actual historical evidence for this. The genealogies seem to have been fudged somewhat anyway, seeing as how Matthew's has only twenty-seven generations in what is commonly believed to have been 1000 years, and leaves out a few names from the Old Testament. One of the people in between David and Joseph on both lists is Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel, the governor from after the Babylonian exile.

Deva Vu - While a lot of Jesus' sayings and deeds are mentioned in all four Gospels, they're sometimes described somewhat differently, and occasionally in a different order. One of the most blatant examples is how John has Jesus drive the money-changers out of the temple pretty early on in his career, while the other three have it occur not long before his crucifixion. And Matthew 14 and 15 have Jesus multiplying loaves and fishes to feed a crowd twice in short order, with the disciples being skeptical both times. I suppose a liberal Christian might say that, while Jesus did all of these things, some of the details had gotten confused over time. I'm not sure how a Biblical literalist would see it, though. Do they think Jesus did the same basic things over and over again, with an extra show on weekends?

Messianic Mess - A common explanation of the difference between Christianity and Judaism is that Jews don't believe Jesus is their Messiah. While this is undoubtedly true, I've been wondering whether Messianic Judaism is all that common nowadays, or if that was a popular idea in the time of the Greek and Roman occupations of Judea that's fallen in prominence over the centuries. Does anybody know?

My next stop will be the Acts of the Apostles, a book about which I really don't know that much. While a lot of the stories from the Gospels are very much in the public consciousness, it kind of seems like what's commonly known of Acts can be summed up with, "Saul of Tarsus had an epiphany on the road to Damascus, and decided to take a new name that rhymed with his old one."

Comments

[dragonxbait.livejournal.com]

Now I have that song stuck in my head. Curse you!

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Sorry. I had to call the post SOMETHING, though, didn't I? {g}

[k1cup.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I set about to read the Old Testament. Let's just say, it's quite a project. I'm slowly making my way through Psalms, but I think what will happen is that I'll end up skimming a lot of it.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I just recently finished with the Old Testament, and the Psalms do get pretty tedious. I don't think they were really intended to be read all in a row. As I mentioned back then (http://vovat.livejournal.com/347699.html), the idea of 150 songs with the same basic topic seems to have been the precursor to modern Christian music.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

Re: the Deja Vu paragraph: I have a little Gideon New Testament, says it's the KJV, and one time I read the Gospels one after another and was really annoyed to discover that whoever had translated it had, like, COPIED AND PASTED the various verses where the same event was described from Gospel to Gospel, apparently so literalists wouldn't be too confused when, like, in one Gospel just Mary Magdalene discovers the empty tomb and in another Gospel it's her and several other women. So maybe that's how literalists deal with things like that-- they copy and paste to their own liking in their translations?

I actually had some people in the library the other week who told me they were Messianic Jews. I guess to explain why they were checking out both Christmas and Hanukkah books? Not that I had anything against them checking out both to begin with, but I suppose she somehow felt the need to explain herself.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

So maybe that's how literalists deal with things like that-- they copy and paste to their own liking in their translations?

Maybe so, although the irony there is that I would think people who edit the text to fit their own preconceptions are actually taking it LESS literally than others do.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

Seriously. But I suppose you have to assume a certain level of foolishness with literalists in general.... Not to go off on a tangent, but I just came from church and the first reading was from Genesis, and I was marveling at all the Deep Stuff in it and feeling sad for the people --both the literalist fundamentalists who believe it AND the atheists/agnostics who dismiss it-- who believe that it's simply meant to be a FACTUAL ACCOUNT OF CREATION. It's about the relationship between God and Humanity! It's about Human Nature! It's so NOT a science textbook! But me and my sadness at people who don't take Myth seriously has been done before.

But man, that was annoying. I mean I have a full NIV translation downstairs on the bookshelf, but little New Testaments are so HANDY, it would be nice if they were also ACCURATE.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I sometimes wonder how literally people took stories like the Garden of Eden in earlier times in history, especially the people who actually wrote (or edited) them. It seems to have been pretty common back in the day for people to write books and attribute them to ancient prophets. Did they actually feel that these prophets were speaking through them, or just that using those names would make their points more valid? Or did they not even feel that it really mattered?

What's particularly odd is when people insist that they're taking the Bible literally, but then insist on adding in additional material that has no basis in the Bible OR science, like humans living alongside dinosaurs or Noah's Flood being caused by an ice meteor. I think that, for these people, it gets to the point where the important thing is that evolution and other scientific explanations are wrong, rather than that the Bible is right.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

Well like all folklore the Bible began in an oral tradition, and key in telling stories is to tell them as IF they actually happened, but rarely do the storytellers tell stories to transmit FACTS. They tell them to teach morals and/or to entertain. Because it didn't matter to people in ancient times and it shouldn't matter to us now, in the day-to-day goings on of life, whether there actually was a witch with a gingerbread cottage in the middle of the woods OR whether the world was created in six days, what matters is that you shouldn't go around eating other people's houses and that the world was created by a loving Creator who takes interest in His Creation. My point is people didn't use stories to teach facts, they were used to teach truths. So it didn't matter if they were believed FACTUALLY or not.

Noah's Flood being caused by an ice meteor
Wow, I've never heard that one. I thought that the story was pretty clear that the flood was caused by 40 days and 40 nights of rain, anyway.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Noah's Flood being caused by an ice meteor
Wow, I've never heard that one. I thought that the story was pretty clear that the flood was caused by 40 days and 40 nights of rain, anyway.

That was the idea of Kent Hovind, a Young-Earth Creationist and friend of Jack Chick who was recently incarcerated for tax evasion. He's known for having all kinds of ideas about dinosaurs living alongside people and breathing fire, a vapor canopy over the Earth in the antediluvian period enabling people to see far out into space, and vaccination being part of some Satanic plot, among others. Radio preacher Harold Camping said that he thought the Flood might have been caused by the Earth passing through a giant space raincloud. In both of these cases, I assume they do believe that there were forty days and nights of rain. They just think the reason for it was some inexplicable, unscientific weather phenomenon. I've always had to wonder why they insist on coming up with explanations like that when they also keep saying God is omnipotent. Surely an omnipotent being wouldn't have to use meteors if He wanted to flood the world, right?