Reddit mentions of Jesus and the Victory of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God, Volume 2)

Unfortunately, it is difficult for people with a Western Post-Enlightenment worldview to simply interpret what Pre-Modern Hellenistic Jews were writing, especially if unaware of the context.

I was supplying interpretations from biblical scholars and showing that there are multiple ways that people understand Jesus' divinity. I wasn't making any value statements that they are better or even exclusive of one another. These are just the ways that people read the text.

Edit: If you want to read some biblical scholars and their interpretations of what Jesus meant by claiming divinity.

[N.T. Wright- Jesus and the Victory of God] (http://www.amazon.com/Victory-Christian-Origins-Question-Volume/dp/0800626826)

[Marcus Borg- Jesus: A New Vision] (http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Vision-Spirit-Culture-Discipleship/dp/0060608145)

[Richard Bauckham- Jesus and the God of Israel] (http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-God-Israel-Testaments-Christology/dp/0802845592)

[John Dominic Crossan- Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography] (http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Revolutionary-John-Dominic-Crossan/dp/006180035X)

[Reza Aslan- Zealot] (http://www.amazon.com/Zealot-Life-Times-Jesus-Nazareth/dp/0812981480) Edit 2: Apparently his credentials are in some dispute and this particular book is pretty "pop theology" but I found this [post] (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2013/08/two-scholars-respond-to-the-actual-content-of-reza-aslans-take-on-jesus/) by a theologian I respect that gives some insight into the whole thing.

[Thomas J.J. Altizer- Contemporary Jesus] (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1876258.Contemporary_Jesus)

What you have done here, essentially, is dehistoricize Jesus by making him out to be the timeless preacher of agreeable aphorisms. While Jesus certainly conveyed a message of love and solidarity, to reduce the teaching of the historical Jesus to this alone is to (1) divorce him from the Second-Temple Jewish context, rife with eschatological expectation, in which he lived and which you acknowledge in your first paragraph; and thereby to (2) deprive his message of its depth and historical resonance.

Most New Testament historians will agree that the concept most central to Jesus' preaching was the arrival of the 'kingdom of God,' which, if N. T. Wright is correct in his series Christian Origins and the Question of God, was associated with the fulfillment of Jewish eschatological expectation. You propose that "if you and the people in your community lived in fear of things like being killed for gathering firewood on the Sabbath or being forced to marry your rapist... a traveling young rabbi by the name of Jesus is anything but ordinary," and while I find nothing objectionable in this proposition, I think you have forgotten the larger crisis for which the Jews desired a resolution. Yes, individual persons might have desired redress from particularly burdensome provisions of the Mosaic Law; but the Jewish people, in the Second-Temple period, collectively longed for an end to exile consisting in the return of YHWH to Israel in the establishment of the 'kingdom of God' and the inauguration of a new creation.

The Jews, in the centuries prior to the life of Jesus of Nazareth, had faced a series of existential crises: the Northern Kingdom had fallen, which led to the subsequent dispersal of ten(?) of the original twelve Israelite tribes in a diaspora; the Babylonians had taken Israel captive, destroying the Temple in which God's shekinah, his presence, was thought to dwell; and Israel itself had fallen subject to foreign domination, having been conquered variously by regional superpowers and eventually by the Romans. What the Jews were expecting in the late Second-Temple period was the reversal of all of these misfortunes, a reversal that had been prophesied by Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, among others. They were anticipating the overthrow of their pagan subjugators, the ingathering of the exiled members of their nation, the absolution of their sins, the extension of blessing to the Gentiles, and, finally, the return of YHWH to Israel in the capacity of a ruling king, and they were anticipating that these things would transpire through the agency of a messianic figure.

Jesus' message must be situated within this context. Yes, he preached peace, love, forgiveness, and compassion, but he preached those things with the explicit intention of inaugurating the kingdom of God. You mention that Jesus made a point of welcoming those of the "the poor, weak, marginalized, and female class"; I want to ask, to what greater purpose?

If you notice, Jesus' miracles are performed as restorative actions among communities who were previously thought ritually unclean and thus excluded from 'Israel.' Lepers are unclean and thus excluded from Israel; he heals them. The woman who discharged blood was ritually unclean (even more, by physically touching her it was thought that one would be ritually defiled oneself); yet when she touches Jesus, Jesus does not become impure but rather she becomes whole. The blind, who again are not incorporated as full members of the community on account of their disability, are healed. Yes, Jesus is healing these people (1) because healing is itself objectively good and (2) because he wants to express a special solidarity with marginalized persons by affirming their dignity. But he is also doing something beyond that: he is re-incorporating into Israel people who previously were, to some degree or other, excluded from it. He is making Israel complete, ingathering the excluded, even conferring blessing to people not traditionally considered part of 'Israel' (by, say, healing Samaritans and Gentiles), and so is fulfilling Jewish eschatological expectations.

It is also generally acknowledged among New Testament scholars that Jesus stood, in some way or other, against the 'Temple establishment' and even pronounced threats against the Second Temple itself (to which the shekinah of YHWH was thought not to have returned following the Babylonian exile). In some sense, Jesus' opposition to the Temple establishment can be interpreted as an act of resistance to calcified authority, as taking a stand against legalism for legalism's sake; but it is more comprehensively, again, to be interpreted as the fulfillment of eschatological expectation. Jesus is quoted as claiming to be the Temple himself (see John 2:19); the point is that he believes the presence, the shekinah, of God to be returning to Israel in and through his person, for which reason the physical Second Temple and its governing authorities are no longer relevant.

So again, we see that Jesus does admirable take moral stances, but he does so precisely because he believes himself to be the person who is effecting the arrival of the kingdom of God—to be, in other words, the Messiah. His moral teachings, his parables, his call to practice mercy and forgiveness are all inseparable from this notion of inaugurating the kingdom of God. Jesus instructs his disciples to forgive others not only because forgiveness is good in itself but because the forgiveness of sins is characteristic of the utopian kingdom of God and in conformity with eschatological prophecy. He reaches out to the marginalized not only because marginalizing people is wrong but also because the coming of the kingdom is prophesied as the time at which Israel is again made complete, in which all its members are restored to it. To ignore this is to fail to see how "Jesus was a Jew preaching Judaism to other Jews."

Finally, to the notion of resurrection: in the Second-Temple period, members of the Pharasaic movement had come to believe that, in the eschaton, those who belonged to faithful Israel would be physically resurrected. This was theologically justified with appeal to God's love of his covenant people: if God truly loved faithful Israel, he would not simply let its members perish, but would restore them to bodily life. Within the scriptural context, death is understood as a destructive, aberrant force that mars God's good creation, and thus the kingdom of God, if it is to be the realization of all of God's intentions for Israel and the creation, is to be characterized by an overthrow of death. The point of Jesus' resurrection is that he is inaugurating the eschaton, that he is reversing the corruption of death in creation and thus fulfilling, again, eschatological expectation (notwithstanding the fact that the resurrection was not expected to occur to one person in advance of everyone else; the Pharisees believed, and their rabbinic successors today believe, that the resurrection will be a general resurrection of all of faithful Israel at once). It is all about the kingdom of God, the fulfillment of God's promises to Israel, and the realization of God's purposes for creation.

>So to me, Jesus the man is just as worthy of following as Christ of faith.

>You're essentially saying that if Jesus was not resurrected then there's no point in trying anymore.

Morally good action would still be desirable, and Jesus' moral teachings would still possess independent truth-value, had he not been the Messiah. However, had Jesus had not been resurrected and his messianic claims not been vindicated through that event, it would have meant that he had failed in the essential task which he had set out to complete: he did not inaugurate the kingdom of God, and so is not to be recognized as Messiah. Perhaps it would be worth taking his moral advice, but it would not be worth placing one's faith in him as the person in whom God's promises to Israel and purposes for creation are realized. Contrary to your claim, then, taking the death-defying supernatural capabilities away from Jesus does, in fact, lessen his credibility.

For more information on the above-discussed subjects, I recommend N. T. Wright's Jesus and the Victory of God and his The Resurrection of the Son of God.

To add to this, I've seen arguments made that the gospels portray Jesus (Yeshua), The Holy Spirit (Ruach HaKodesh), and God (YHWH) as one and the same. They've explained further that this would not be a problem to the Hebraic mindset as opposed to our modern western minds that need a neat rational explanation for everything.

I've, also, seen arguments made by Bart Ehrman, in How Jesus Became God, that Jesus is simply a preacher that was, over time, glorified to the position of God by later followers.

On the other hand, I've heard arguments from N.T. Wright, in Jesus and the Victory of God, that Jesus is the prophet-messiah and the embodiment of YHWH as King.

Try this. Paul reworked the Shema so that Jesus received a place of mention beside the Father. Also note how Paul sometimes treats them as interchangeable.

For non-biblical sources, N. T. Wright has put out a couple books on the subject: Jesus and the Victor of God is perhaps the most relevant, but his recent monster of a book Paul and the Faithfulness of God dedicates a portion of the book to Monotheism in Paul's thought. If you're into academic stuff you could give PatFoG a try, as it goes over historical research in the time as well. It's 1700 pages though.

Not sure what sorts of perspectives you're looking for, but NT Wright is a top notch academic writing from a somewhat conservative Anglican perspective, and has written a ton on these two guys:

Jesus and the Victory of God

The Resurrection of the Son of God

Paul and the Faithfulness of God

And if ~3200 pages isn't quite enough to scare you out of attempting the project, you should also read the first volume in this series, The New Testament and the People of God.

If you're in for a hefty read, Jesus and the Victory of God is his defining work. If you want something a little lighter, Scripture and the Authority of God is a bit lighter. He also has several more pastoral works that are very good.

Good comments. I have only this in return. The Judaic nationalism was pervasive, even beyond Palestinian borders. How each self-identified sect interacted with "gentiles" varied, but the degree of retention of religious and national identity was well maintained. That maintenance varied in idea but not really to the degree that you ever came out the other side doing anything other than concentrating your exclusivity. I think the evidence for this is quite strong. Jewish nationals were quite persecuted, even in Alexandria (see the Book of Wisdom e.g.) which is sometimes held out as the embodiment of Greco-Roman inclusion and was home to Philo). In the end the Jews were "put down" so to speak.

Actually, the volume by Wright prior to the one mentioned above (here ) is cover to cover about how Jesus was constantly only condemning nationalism.

Edit: and the volume after is about Paul taking up the same dispute.

There are accounts of such things happening. It's not fair to say they've "never" happened. That's unprovable.

Your second paragraph has a lot of questions. But Jesus had to be sacrificed in order to maintain justice. A just judge won't "forgive" someone, ever. Justice must be served. Jesus chose to take our punishment for us.

Please actually read the Bible. Not speaking against something specifically doesn't mean he wasn't very obviously against it.

Your last statement isn't a just conclusion to me. Please consider reading:

Short read: http://www.wsj.com/articles/eric-metaxas-science-increasingly-makes-the-case-for-god-1419544568 Long read: http://www.amazon.com/Victory-Christian-Origins-Question-Volume/dp/0800626826