Oh, so what do all of you think about this guy Jesus? Share YOUR thoughts but please, keep on track!

There are so many differing and contradictory statements made in this post that one has trouble knowing where to begin.   I'll have more time to respond later this evening to the specifics of the post, but for now, you wrote:

"We have very littel secondary sources to even acknowledge any of his behavior, except that he did exist."

Since there are no primary sources from Jesus, all we can rely on in terms of the knowledge of his life and teachings are secondary sources, including the New Testament letters themselves. On one hand you say we can know very little of his behaviour due to the very minimal secondary sources, and then on the other you proceed with certainty to say 'Jesus did this' or 'said that' - on which secondary sources do you base these claims?

To me, much of the problem with Jesus comes down to the fact that he is primarily a mythological figure (though one likely built around an historical core) and the stories about him have as much metaphor as hard fact. The miracles, the resurrection, the  birth narrative, are all meaningful stories but very likely didn't really happen, at least not in a literal sense. They happened to the extent that they represent key spiritual events that shaped the beliefs of those who wrote about him, but aren't "historical" in the modern sense of the term. So it isn't whether Jesus got things wrong or right but how much the tellers of those stories got right or wrong and what parts of the stories are meaningful to us that determine his value for us today. I find his teachings on forgiveness and compassion very meaningful and very much a part of my ethics even after leaving Christianity. I find the birth narrative and the resurrection meaningful, not because I believe that they literally happened but because they carry metaphorical meanings that speak to me.

Hope that at least partially answer your question. Love your introductory post, BTW, Lumbylad. Lots of thought in there.

Mendalla

 Honestly, I think everybody's thinking too much. Your intellect is trying too hard. 

The only records of the existence of Jesus are the new testament as we know it and the apocryphal writings of St.Thomas that were important to the ancient Christian sect in India that Thomas is alleged to have founded.

We can't be sure of anything about Jesus because the written accounts of him cannot be verified and could be exaggerations or fictions.

Yours found the bible and has been sleeping on the couch ever since.

You have some good thoughts, and try to make a good case for how you feel. I find it encouraging that you can put them down in a short way for others to try to follow. The stories about Jesus were written many many years after the events occurred, some of the facts may be not as accurate as could be, but i believe the writers did their best to get it all down properly. Sure a lot is done as a story, as a symbolic journey, but due to the possible police actions against the writers they had to come up with symbols to stand for real people.

I think Jesus got it right and we have been trying to get it right as individuals ever since.

GO RIDERS!!!!!

The original post by LumbyLad claims that Jesus travelled to India, Ethiopia, and surrounding countries.  There are no historical accounts or traditions that claim this and it is more likely that someone who lived at that time and place didn't travel much.  In Roman-occupied Judea at that time most people walked.  If they had access to boats they didn't go on pleasure cruises.  They lived a rough life without luxury and if Jesus was a carpenter as tradition claims, he wouldn't fit some people's image of living the "prosperity gospel".

I don't believe Jesus got it wrong, but I do believe that we are still misinterpreting what He taught and how He lived. Were His miracles exaggerated. Possibly. He was a hero after all to the poor and oppressed. Jesus must have been a very powerful figure in his day, so much so that He threatened the status quo and was killed for it. But that is a whole other discussion

well i think He has  the best recipt  for wine making

so I've heard

Hi LumbyLad:

Good to see you back at the Café!

I think Jesus was divine, but so are we. He brought us the message of our divinity, but we misunderstood his message, divinized only him, and left ourselves mundane.

That's why self-styled prophets like me step forth and repeat Jesus' message.

But, unlike Jesus, I'm not out to accumulate a following.

That is an interesting look at it Arminius.

I would have to ask myself why would it be so important for Jesus to accumulate a following & was the message He delivered one that would construde that those who are following Him would be as following God the Father, It would seem He bolstered this in His message, & promoted His ministry for the sole purpose of finding the Kingdom of God whithin each & every person who wopuld have faith in it.

That doesn't sound exclusive in any way & it doesn't sound that Jesus' ego was at play, mainly because I beleive his ego & the Spirit of God are the same, & of the same mind & the same purpose & the same God.

So Arminius, I beleive you have had revelation, but you are afraid that by putting a name on it you would be promoting an exclusive message all the while this exclusive message was flawed from the very beginning.

I just believe that all this division is all our own fault & God's way always promoted unity.

I don't mean to phyco analyze you, perhaps I am being too bold in saying this.

Perhaps I'm so bold as to put a name like "Jesus" on my revelation, but it's all I know my friend.

I just believe we have both have been offered something that we both find quite extrordinary.

Bolt

Well, Bolt, I also promote unity.

The reason I don't put a name on it is that cosmic unity is an experience. The experience is absolutely true and real, not the name we put on it. I want people to strive for the experience, and express it in their own words.

To me, spirituality is experiential. I want to encourage people to seek the experience of unity. I think Jesus meant the unitive experience when he spoke of the "kingdom of God," the "kingdom within" or the "kingdom of heaven." To experience cosmic unity, and to act directly from the consciousness of that experience, was Jesus' vision and mission. As followers and disciples of Jesus, it ought to be ours. It is mine.

In Cosmic Unity,

Arminius

LUMBYLAD

Well, if you are comparing xianity to Mormonism or Jesus to Joseph Smith, you do run into a few issues.  Jesus is a feature in Mormonism, in that he is the spirit brother of Satan.  Because Jesus is resurrected, it shows that we all will be resurrected and then the really great Mormons ( the ones with the most sexslavebaby making machines that they keep uneducated and abused will get their own planet which they will populate with spirit children.  I am not making any of this up.  According to the LDS, and all of the splinter groups as well, Jesus was a pluralist ( apparently, he got it on with Mary and other woment -  but not with Peter and the Xll bro's. --  , I just don't know how they make these assumptions, you know?)

The differences between Joseph Smiths' plural playboy mansion lifestyle religion, ( early 19th C Hugh Heff palace???? or was the guy just a robberhusband?  Half of his 32 wives were married to other men) and the Jesus story is that Jesus was here to emancipate all humanity and Smith was here to establish an earthly business elite who would basically buy their way into the 'celestial kingdom".  Smith is a church, much like the RC's running parallel to the gov't of the United States, much as Rome ran/runs parallel to Italy.  Jesus was perhaps, socialist, but the effect of the philosophies of Jesus was that he intended to live his beliefs within the system of the prevailing Gov't without blinding anyone to anything in particular.  

Varieties of puritanism and evangelism have exploited a lot of the sense of Jesus's word ( I don't mean the literal -words as in the words in the Bible, but the word - meaning his life) by attempting to impose perfection upon something that had no perfection.

Lumbylad, for me this is a very confusing post.

LumbyLad

I agree almost completely.

The only part I would change is that Jesus likely taught exactly the right stuff but our record of it is badly flawed. For starters - anything that smelled of Gnosticism got thrown ot.

No Jesus didn't die for our sins. He carefully explained what "The Kingdom" (the world of spirit) is and how we could enter it but that part really got downplayed in the Holy And Approved Record.

Jesus was an advanced mystic, so much so that he entered the "Christ Level". We unfortunately know him now as "Jesus Christ" rather than "Jesus who became fully aware of the Christ". I think Jesus was saying (in fact he did) that we are no different and can accomplish the same things. I'm working on the water into wine part first.

I agree with your comments but wanted to pick up on this one part. The churches can't keep saying that he was killed by a mob and then say that he died for our sins. Either he died intentionally or he didn't. I say he did, and that it had nothing to do with a three-day sacrifice for our sins.

The issue of did Jesus get it wrong is a strange question for it confuses the witness of the early community with what Jesus taught- basically he taught that one can experience God in the world and within the self - that God cares for this world - that he inlfuenced others to join the way - he taught a way - the stories around him are first century means to explain how the historical Jesus effected them and used the narrative of the past to affirm their experience

So Jesus did not get it wrong - God is in the world and the world is in God and God is more than the world - that is a modern restatement of his teachings.

Yes he was killed, and it was part of a round up of those who were a threat to Rome.  It was not meant to be.

 I think the issue of whether or not Jesus was killed is more important to those who need to prove a weird perspective of our existence in infiniti.   If he was human he had to die. If he was a god he didn't.  Being put to death for political reasons is the reality of that politcal world, for many many many.  It continues today, just listen to the lives of Afghani's and Pakistan, the Philipines, et al et al. Isreal.  It's just day to day reality. 

The big burden is the resurrection.  It's only there to prove Godhood and Godhood is only necessary to prove because that's what Empire did.  It was up to the xians to both circumnavigate Empire and yet overbear it by creating the ONLY GOD.  And by making Jesus a bizarre aspect of the ONLY GOD ( which in no state of awareness even resembles anything but an interesting faery story _ item from the Celts, "why tell the  truth if a good story will do?"  - )

I don't think Jesus got it wrong - everyone else did. We don't hear Jesus' message through his own scriptures but through the compilation of stories and observers' accounts selected by an elite groupe of men centuries after Jesus died. The way we interpret his message, his actions, even his history... just because we're told it's true doesn't necessarily mean it is. A lie told over centuries eventually becomes the truth, and history is written by the winners.

Part of a process that just wont die away, that began way back in the Before and will continue into the Yet.

Those who take it literally deserve it.  Those who don't continue to love mucking aboot in being wrong.

There will continue to be people who are good (and fortunate) at promoting their BS and who will have it adopted by 'fans'.  Going going gone are the modern days predicated on having a few points of view that everyone should try to adopt...we're returning to a more tribal time, when we have a lot of fan clubs instead of just a few of them...Jesus was part of the process that helped make that possible...

"You came to take us

all things go, all things go

To recreate us

All things grow, all things know..."

--Chicago by Sufjan Stevens

Just a Self-writing poem,

Inannawhimsey

The gospels are an interpretation of the life of Jesus.  They are not biography though they probably contain some history.  I doubt Jesus got it wrong though on a few points I think he was.  The gospels reflect what the early church had come to believe about this man.  Their experiences of Jesus must have been profound, profound enough to change the course of history.

  People complain there is not much evidence for this man.  Examin the situation.  He was a peasant a Jewish peasant of no account to the society whatsoever.  Who will remember me by name some 2 000 years hence?  I doubt anyone.

It seems to me that Jesus, would be appalled at what we have done with him.  Scholars do not believe that he ever made any claims to divinity.  This is not to deny the divinity of the risen Christ.  Nor is this to deny he was the Messiah.

Shalom

Mate

Why does there have to be only one messiah?

jlin

Now that is a good question.  What about Gautama, Mahatma, or Muhammed etc?

Shalom

Mate

Hi jlin and Mate:

How about everyone his or her own messiah?

If Christ is Lite as such is in old languages; would IT fall differently on each perspective?

Wouldn't that make it dance across a dark pool of shadow ... like de mind as d'M'N ... a wiz-per in the recesses ... beyond a shadow of doubt!

Well put folks, everyone has something to contribute ... if we could only put all the words together ... would another story be wrote?

Thanks Arm for the metaphor of: "How do I Love thee, let me count the wahs!" And the proper response to the Song of the Sole a' M'N was don't take a census ... it seems th'y wern't finished yet! The Epraim always lags ... like light and dark ... out of phe saL-ite?

Just a ripple in the infinite Eumerus ... plasma?

WB

God is love, and God is light,

To those who dwell in realms of night.

But does a human form display

To those who dwell in realms of day?

-William Blake

God is in love with the creations of time, and the creations of time are in love with God.

Hey Folks:

Thanks for keeping on track. The question was "Did Jesus Get it Right?" and the test was to see if you could get it right. The "Facts" for me are not in what was true at the time and if those who wrote about it later got these facts right, but the cumulative result.

Thanks James K. You make some good points. Personally, I think that Jesus just GOT IT. It was HIS experience of God that mattered and he believed that he was the son of God and likely that we all were equal to him and able to "be like him". I don't think he thought of himself as God at all. He did want to show his followers and others the power of the mystical mind and a whole new way of Jewish mysticism.

It gets tricky with the ressurection for me. I guess I just don't need it in my Christian life. I think it was a construct put in later, but I may be wrong. I don't need a heaven and I don't need a hell. I do need a God and I am really glad this guy Jesus came along to try to tell his people that God is a god of ALL people and religions. The sooner we get this straight the better we will be. The rest is intellectual and mystical speculation.

Thank you all for your comments, eH?

As for some other comments. The Bible I consider to be a primary source, not the people who are talked about. A secondary source is some writing independent from this source. And Yes, there is evidence of Jesus travel to other countries if you search the records.

If at one time God's Light was known as IC, or IHS as direct translation from Greek, is this like an integrated loupe of words ... wild logic loop?

The Book tells us in the beginning of the Gospel of John that Word was in the beginning  (silence) , God and word all equal ... and that there wasn't enough room on earth (at the end). Is this a dual or even triple meaning ... more? Is that just an alternate word for metaphor, or satyr, the riony of IT all? If you don't think Jesus did this sort of action to hide hymnself as synchronicity in th' inque'n on a page (hated by illiterate Romans and such), why did he go to hell? Was it a learning experience for the afterlife ... to take a thought of the otherside of the story when he left?

Something to think about, but don't let the authorities catch you doing such a thing when they expect you to live by the book, no resilience to situations what-so-ever ... life is fixated ... established here so it won't bother any other's spaces ... cosmoe-logical Arminious? Like Arama-IC light ... spirits that nations have tried to eliminate for years in the dumbing down of the populatiion of common folk without realizing what they are doing to the integral process! Seems like dinasaur-Love to me, an old pure God to be trashed in Light ... midst a 'c' of understanding Pi-Lars of the earth. You should research the old word Lars, something akin to Gael-IC Eris, or even Cyrillic Aries! Like a hiss in the aura on a dark winters night ... up north you can actually hear them. But don't tell anyone ... Light is sacred as a collective item ... integral to Life? It's a penne trait in thought like chuckles in a flowing stream ... alien on a page? Should we attempt to learn about our intuitions?