Response #2 to History for Atheists’ “JESUS THE APOCALYPTIC PROPHET”

23 thoughts on “Response #2 to History for Atheists’ “JESUS THE APOCALYPTIC PROPHET””

1. “(R.G. Price’s book Deconstructing Jesus covers this theme as well.)”

   Not me. Deconstructing Jesus is Robert M. Price, haha the confusion sets in! 🙂

   Anyway, another big issue is the Parable of Wicked Tenants. I think the Parable of the Wicked Tenants is clearly a parable against the Jews in favor of the Romans.

   So how again is Jesus the Messiah that the Jews were hoping for? I mean, the Jesus of Mark is practically an anti-Messiah. The irony of Tim’s claim is that the Gospels offer horrible support for the idea that Jesus was worshiped by Jews because he was the Messiah, as the Gospels clearly depict Jesus being rejected by the Jews, which is the whole point of their theme, lol.

   If Jesus was just a clear messiahic prophet, then why do the Gospels depict everyone hating him and all of his followers misunderstanding him?

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   1. the Jesus of Mark is practically an anti-Messiah.

      Messiah~Christ, lol.

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   2. Ouch. Of course. Apologies.

      Reply

2. I had to add just one more reply:
   More problems for this thesis you’ve laid out. It’s very clear that the Jesus character of the Gospel of Mark is not intended to be a Jewish savior and isn’t someone who would ever be confused by Jews as a messiah.

   Let’s look at the big picture we get of Jesus from GMark.
   1) Jesus’ followers don’t understand him. They fail to comprehend any of his teachings, they fail to recognize him as the messiah, and ultimately they all abandon him. The Jews as a whole reject him and are fearful of him.

   It is a gentile woman that first really understands him. It is a Roman solider that declares he is the son of God.

   This is a very odd story about a man that somehow persuaded a bunch of Jews to worship him as the eternal son of God who would usher in a new perfect world with the overthrow of Roman rule!

   2) The Parable of the Wicked Tenants is one of the clearest pieces of symbolism in the whole story. The Parable of the Wicked Tenants is a literary allusion to Isaiah 9, but it is clearly, both directly and as a literary allusion, an allegory against the Jewish people.

   “Mark 12:
   1 Then he began to speak to them in parables. ‘A man planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a pit for the wine press, and built a watch-tower; then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. 2 When the season came, he sent a slave to the tenants to collect from them his share of the produce of the vineyard. 3 But they seized him, and beat him, and sent him away empty-handed. 4 And again he sent another slave to them; this one they beat over the head and insulted. 5 Then he sent another, and that one they killed. And so it was with many others; some they beat, and others they killed. 6 He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, “They will respect my son.” 7 But those tenants said to one another, “This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.” 8 So they seized him, killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard. 9 What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. 10 Have you not read this scripture:
   “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone;
   11 this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes”?’
   12 When they realized that he had told this parable against them, they wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowd. So they left him and went away”

   To quote myself from my book:
   “The meaning of the parable is fairly basic and self-explanatory, though it is further explained via the literary allusion. The vineyard represents Israel or Jerusalem, and the man who planted it represents God. The tenants are the Jews, and the people that the man sends to collect from the tenants are supposed to represent various prophets. The “beloved son” whom the man eventually sends of course represents Jesus. The conclusion of the parable is that the “owner” will come to destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others, of course meaning, in this context, that God will destroy the Jews and give their land to the Romans.

   I highlight this parable for obvious reasons. The parable lays out the basic course of events that essentially explains the entire Gospel of Mark. The Jews kill Jesus; therefore, God destroys the Jews. This is the summary of the entire allegorical story. The subtext and deeper meaning behind it deal not with Jesus but with the perceived corruption of the Jewish people, who are believed by the authors of both Isaiah and the Gospel of Mark to have brought destruction upon themselves.”

   How can you glean Jesus being a sought after champion for the Jews from the Gospels? There is really only one Gospel that can give this impression and that is the Gospel of Luke, which clearly is just a revision to the Markan narrative meant to re-cast Jesus as a more Jewish friendly figure. In Mark and John especially Jesus is clearly strongly against not just the Jewish leadership, but his own followers and the Jewish people as a whole.

   Matthew is a bit more neutral and Luke turns Jesus against the Romans to put him on the side of the Jews.

   But as I lay out in my book, the best explanation of GMark is that it is a story written by a follower of Paul. Paul’s message was against the law, against many aspects of Jewishness, he was against the pro-Jewish leaders of the Jesus movement (James, John and Peter). Paul told his followers that the law was overthrown (not a message that was welcome to Jews at all), that there were no differences between Jews and Gentiles, and Paul railed against Jews who tried to push Jewish practices on Gentiles.

   These are ALL of that exact same characteristics we see in the Jesus of Mark.

   But GMark and Paul also tells us why a real person like this would never have been even considered a leader or messiah among Jews: the Jews rejected Paul! Again, we see in GMark Jesus as Paul. The Jews reject Paul, the Jews reject Jews. The crucifixion of Jesus is the figurative crucifixion of Paul that Paul talked about so much in his letters. But any real Jesus in the likeness of GMark would have been rejected by the Jews for the exact same reasons that they rejected Paul, in that the Pauline message was anathema to Jews, which Paul himself admitted!

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   1. Does the gentile woman who “truly understands him” act or speak any differently from the way a few of the Jews (e.g. Bartimaeus; others healed completely) who are healed appear to understand and follow him?

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      1. Is Bartimaeus a Jew?

         It says his name means son of Timaeus, and Timaeus is Greek, or at least so I think.

         Is the Gerasene demoniac Jewish or gentile?

         Anyway, the dialog with Syrophoenician woman I think is a bit different because it’s a real dialog where they have a conversion. He grants her please because of the wisdom of her reply. Also, it seems that the others who recognize Jesus do so because they are possessed by demons and its actually the demons that recognize Jesus as in the case of the Gerasene demoniac.

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         1. Bartimaeus was a blind man outside Jericho who recognized Jesus as a son of David and then willingly followed him on the way to Jerusalem. (I don’t think there was anything unusual about Judaeans having Greek or Latin names, especially Hellenized Jews and the name in this case suggests.)

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         2. Per Stephen L. Huebscher (21 August 2017). “Heavenly Worship in Second Temple Judaism, Early Christianity, and Gnostic Sects: Part 5”. Dr. Michael Heiser (blog).

            Gordon Lathrop . . . has pointed out significant parallels between the blind man in Timaeus and the blind man (his name in Aramaic is “Bar-Timaeus,” which Mark carefully explains means “the son of Timaeus”) in Mark’s gospel.

            At the junction of the two major parts of the Second Gospel, between the Gospel’s ‘Galilee’ and its ‘Jerusalem,’ exactly between the ministry narratives and the passion story, there stands the account of a blind man (Mark 10:46-52).  He is called ‘the son of Timaeus.’  The name itself strikes us at least three ways.  First, this is the only recipient of the healing ministry of Jesus in the entire Gospel who is given a name at all.  The name matters.  Second, the name is intensified, this patronymic being repeated both in Greek and in Aramaic. . . .  And third, as many commentators have noted, the name is very hard to place in a Jewish context.  It is not a recognized, current Hebrew or Aramaic name.  . . .  It is a Greek name and, in fact, one with a very specific and recognizable history.  Here is the ‘son’ of Timaeus, Plato’s Timaeus, and, ironically, he is himself blind, crying out in lament, seeing nothing, going nowhere.  This cry for help occurs at the very place, structurally, that the lament of the blind man occurs in the Timaeus:  at the juncture of the two major parts of the book. (Gordon Lathrop, 30-31).

            Unlike Plato’s blind man who laments without hope, Bar-Timaeus abandoned his cloak (perhaps a philosopher’s cloak?) and came to Jesus.  After calling Jesus “my teacher,” he received sight and followed Jesus “in the way” (Mark 10:52).

            It occurs at a place that corresponds, in the Timaeus, to the ethical culmination of the argument, to the turning of the consideration of all things toward the ordering of the life of the wise.  Only now the wise—together with everyone else—are invited to the wise folly of the cross. (Lathrop, 33)

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3. One of these days, probably more like years, historians will come to know that there was no Jesus. I don’t have to explain that to anyone here. It would help people to learn the old ways of saying things. By that, I mean that the words used today lead us astray. Historians search in the wrong place because the words are not right. “The Kingdom of God is near” could never have been said. They are modern words. For one thing, John was not a god worshipper, would have never said “God”; he would have never said “Kingdom”, also modern. Yet there is a celestial time when change comes upon the earth and its people, the end of a cycle. The “King of Light” simply means the highest light. The indigenous Hawaiians talk of the King Tides. This means the highest tides. Unfortunately, the word “King” translates very badly, and becomes sexist in the long run. Kings demonstrate power and control over their subjects, period. King is no longer an adjective when talking about highest light, tide, wisdom or anything else. John is no longer known. Nothing is known of him. He taught people how to use the highest light. It simply means, the kind of light that works and comes from following the magnetic fields of the earth which come from the sun, and which originate in the mind. Amidst all of their corruption, the Catholics held onto one word, “will”, as this kind of light really has to do with consciousness and willing something into existence.

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   1. Please allow me to show off some of my expertise here. My pertinent specialties include lack of detailed knowledge of the ancient Mediterranean world and ability to ask stupid questions.

      Were there not kings in the ancient world, and would not there therefore have been words nearly equivalent in meaning to ‘kingdom’ that could have been used metaphorically? I wonder whether the question almost answers itself.

      A trickier question, and one that has often bothered me, is the degree to which there were words in the region at the time that were nearly equivalent to ‘God’. We know that English translators have done a bit of sleight of pen in translating the words for ‘Yahweh’ and ‘Elohim’ as LORD and God, but was there a word meaning approximately ‘God’ in the region at the time? For example in Persia? What about in Greek?–when I read a translation of an ancient Greek play and see ‘God’ was there a word meaning something like our ‘God’? In Rome and in Latin?

      [I do have some professional knowledge about the magnetic fields of the earth. They do not at all come from the sun though they are ever so slightly modulated by solar phenomena. Whether they and other things originate in the mind is up for philosophical or religious debate or speculation.]

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      1. Or to put my stupid question about ‘God’ another way, perhaps the Zoroastrians were monotheistic (I don’t know much about them), but otherwise was there anything in the ancient Mediterranean world truly equivalent to our word ‘God’? I appreciate that with most Christians there is ambiguity about a single entity what with the Trinity, but is it possible that even Jews were as much polytheistic as monotheistic what with all the angels/demons/archons/whatevers manipulating earth and the various heavens? Was what from that time and region gets translated as ‘God’ include far more than gets used by that term nowadays, and was it, as Christine perhaps implies, much less of A Thing back then?

         A naive (and perhaps unanswerable?) question.

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         1. In Latin, the standard term for “[a/the] god” was (in the nominative case) deus. In Greek, if I understand right, the standard term for “[a] god” was (in the nominative case) theos (θεός).

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         2. Yes, as Buddhist says, there was a term for “god”. Sometimes it would be used to express the idea of one God above and over all, and if we didn’t know better we might even think the authors were monotheists and speaking of “our God”.

            The people who produced the Jewish scriptures appear to have been re-working the myths of different deities of people around them and changed their gods into human heroes or angels. This may have been done under the influence of Plato’s complaint that many of those tales of gods were either silly, demeaning or immoral. See posts here with reference to Russell Gmirkin‘s books and Philippe Wajdenbaum.

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         3. Van Kooten, George H. (2014) [now bolded]. “The Divine Father of the Universe From the Presocratics To Celsus: the Graeco-roman Background To the “father of All” in Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians”. In Felix Albrecht; Reinhard Feldmeier. The Divine Father: Religious and Philosophical Concepts of Divine Parenthood in Antiquity. BRILL. p. 294. ISBN 978-90-04-26477-9.

            . . . before the Father (πατήρ), from whom every lineage or “fatherhood” (πατριά) in heaven and on earth takes its name (πρὸς τὸν πατέρα, ἐξ οὗ πᾶσα πατριὰ ἐν οὐρανοῖς καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς ὀνομάζεται). (Eph 3:14f.)

            In this phrase, we have the long, descriptive form of what is later, in good Greek fashion, condensed to πατὴρ πάντων, the “Father of all.” The concise term is then embedded in the terminology of what Gregory Sterling has styled Greek “prepositional metaphysics”: the Father of all is the one ὁ ἐπὶ πάντων καὶ διὰ πάντων καὶ ἐν πᾶσιν (“who is above all and through all and in all”). In his designation of God as the Father (πατήρ), from whom all cosmic fatherhood (πατριά) takes its name, the author seems to be unique: I have not found any comparable expressions in the surviving literature that combine πατήρ and πατριά in this way. This could be taken as a sign of how intensely the author had appropriated the Greek view of God as the cosmic Father of all.

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         4. Not forgetting our earlier posts on this topic:

            How Polytheism morphed into Monotheism: first steps

            How Polytheism morphed into Monotheism: philosophical moves, 1

            How Polytheism morphed into Monotheism: philosophical moves, 2

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            1. Thank you, all of you, for your comments. I have reading to do.

               Another thing I have wondered — I am scared I will provoke people to waste time responding, but perhaps I can perhaps provoke people to think — is the extent to which there might have been a spectrum in the ancient Med world from those who took the deities literally to those who didn’t (total skeptics who pretended to believe, those who believed but in a consciously figurative sense, those who saw the deities figurative manifestations of some life force etc).

               [[In thinking over the matter I noted to myself that in some versions of Christianity where there is God there not only is the Trinity but there are saints who are treated almost as if deities, esp the Mary of the birth story, and perhaps in some localities where Christianity was forced on locals by conquest, such that certain saints tended to get merged a bit with prior deities.]]

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               1. • What time period did you have in mind?

                  The difference between “Middle Platonism” and “Platonism” is crucial, they are not the same.

                  See” Arthur F. Holmes. “A History of Philosophy | 18 Middle and Neo-Platonism”. YouTube. wheatoncollege. 14 April 2015.

                  Per Stephen L. Huebscher (28 July 2017). “Heavenly Worship in Second Temple Judaism, Early Christianity, and Gnostic Sects: Part 2”. Dr. Michael Heiser (blog).

                  [Per Second Temple Judaism] The variety of groups and beliefs at this time was reflected in the variety of sacred texts used. It was common to believe in joint human/angelic worship. “The notion that the community in its prayer life participated in some way in the liturgy of the angels is well attested in first-century Judaism, and will later emerge as an element in Christian liturgical practice,” (Attridge 51). Also within this mix it is becoming more apparent to scholars that it was acceptable for Jews to believe in a “second power” in heaven who was worshiped along with Yahweh.

                  Cf. Attridge, Harold W. (1989). The Epistle to the Hebrews: A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews. Minneapolis:Fortress Press. ISBN 978-0-8006-6021-5.

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4. My latest reply to him:

   Tim, what you’re failing to grasp is that the Jesus cult clearly started out as a Jewish cult. The Jesus of this cult had to be a figure who appealed to Jews. The Jesus of the Gospels is already a fictional character meant to appeal to Gentiles. This figure can’t possibly have anything in common with the Jesus that initiated the worship of the cult.

   We know exactly what happened because we have an account of it in Paul’s letters. The Jesus being worshiped by the founders of the cult was a Jewish savior figure, like Melchizedek, like the predicted messiahs in the line of David or Aaron. Then Paul came along and started espousing his Gentile version of Jesus. Paul argued with the Jewish leaders, told people not to follow them, and tried to convince his followers that he actually knew more about Jesus than they did.

   This Gentile-friendly-Jesus of Paul is the Jesus we are presented with in the Gospels.

   Now, in reply to my question about why don’t the early epistles talk about Jesus the man, you say, “Why does 1Clement and 2Clement make almost no mention of him as a man at all? Theology. ”

   Really, theology? But let’s look. The Epistle of James is a very Jewish letter, that has about a dozen places where we would expect the author to talk about Jesus, yet he never does.

   Example #1:
   “James 1:2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.”

   Right out of the gate. Why no discussion of Jesus’ trials and tribulations? Why not use Jesus as the example. Surely it would be fitting. > Whenever you face trials, remember Jesus and all that he went through, yadda, yadda…

   “James 2:2 My brothers, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?”

   Wow, perfect place to talk about how the Jewish leadership didn’t believe in Jesus and thus killed him. But no, instead we get a discussion about how you shouldn’t shun the poor. Why not address the fact that many people failed to recognize Jesus as the messiah here? What about all the other non-believers who scoffed as Jesus? No mention of any of that.

   “James 2:21 Was not our ancestor Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was brought to completion by the works. 23 Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,” and he was called the friend of God. 24 You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.”

   Wow, now we are talking about the importance of works. What better example to give than the works of Jesus himself! Surely the author will point the example that Jesus set for us to follow! Nope, the author points out the deeds of Abraham and then the prostitute Rahab. If you are looking for someone to emulate, looks to Abraham and prostitutes. Our Lord Jesus? He proved no examples.

   “James 5:15 The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. 16 Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. 17 Elijah was a human being like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. 18 Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain and the earth yielded its harvest.”

   Ahh… here we see talk about the Lord (Jesus) raising the sick, but this is achieved through prayer! And how does the author convince his readers of the power of this prayer? Through the example of Elijah! This would be the perfect place to pass on a story about the real human Jesus healing people with the power of prayer, but no…

   And we are assured that “humans like us” can wield the power of prayer. Not with Jesus as the example, but with stories of Elijah from the ancient scriptures.

   And to top it all off, we have the ultimate example:
   “James 5:10 As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. 11 Indeed we call blessed those who showed endurance. You have heard of the endurance of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful”

   Yes, brothers, when it comes to enduring suffering, look to the prophets of old as your example, never mind our “glorious Lord Jesus” who was tortuously crucified to death in a public spectacle!

   How does someone who knew of Jesus as a person who was going around shouting apocalyptic teachings, who was rejected by most Jews, and who was killed by the Jewish leadership write this letter?

   They don’t. This letter can only be accounted for by disregarding it or coming up with weak rationalizations. Certainly the clearest interpretation of this letter is that it was written by a Jew who only knew of Jesus as a heavenly savior that had been revealed by prophets, not as a real person who was himself a prophet. There is no attempt in this letter to assuage people’s doubt or fears about Jesus. There is no need to convince them that, despite the fact he was killed by the leaders, he was relay a good guy. There is nothing like that. Nor does Paul engage in that either. Why didn’t Paul need to address widespread fears about Jesus being a false prophet? Because there was no Jesus who was ever perceived as a false prophet, that’s why. But the Jesus of the Gospels, the only Jesus ever presented as a prophet, is someone that Paul and James would surely have to address. The idea that such a Jesus man could just be ignored by the early proponents of the cult is ludicrous.

   If the Jesus cult began with the Jesus of the Gospels the early epistles would have to have been constantly addressing that person and dealing with the existing fears and doubts that existed among the people about him. Yet the rabble-rousing prophet who spoke against the leadership and the temple is totally ignored, as is nothing he did had ever happened. Well, that’s because it didn’t.

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   1. Are you saying that “the Jesus [of Nazareth] cult clearly started out as a Jewish cult” because of the canonical Epistle of James?

      My understanding is the Epistle of James is hardly attested until the fourth century and, even then, not fully attested until Cyril of Jerusalem does so in the early fourth century (and that is the case with other non-Pauline epistles such as 2 John, 3 John, and even the Epistle of Jude (which seems to have been known to Clement of Alexandria, and may have been known by Tertullian).

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      1. “My understanding is the Epistle of James is hardly attested until the fourth century”

         That may be, but its also widely acknowledged as an early work by biblical scholars as well.

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         1. G.A. Wells. “Earliest Christianity”. infidels.org.

            [The] earliest literature includes, additionally to the genuine Paulines, three post-Paulines ascribed to Paul (2 Thessalonians, Colossians and Ephesians) and also the letter to the Hebrews, the epistle of James, the first epistle of Peter, the three epistles of John and the book of Revelation.

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   2. Tim, what you’re failing to grasp is that the Jesus cult clearly started out as a Jewish cult. The Jesus of this cult had to be a figure who appealed to Jews.

      Hoshana! Hoshana! Hoshana! 🙂

      Reply
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