Was Jesus a bastard?

[ravengod]

I myself am a religious character
however atheist one may be to say that Jesus was a bastard is a little bit too much
especially because what he preached was something great for that time
Under my reign you are all equal and free
stop being so hypocrite:the guy had a point!

[Beccie]

Jesus was not a bastard. He stood with the poor and disadvantage against the religious elite. He denounced the Pharisees (arguably the most religious people at the time of Jesus) for advantaging of social structures that forced other people to the margins of society. He constantly preached that one couldn’t have abundant money and be a lover of God. To follow Jesus you had to give up your possessions for the needs of other people. He advocated peace and social justice for all. He was a pacifist and wonderful person.

[Domitian]

Just incase this is directed at those who said they didn't like Jesus.

When I said I'm not FOND of Jesus because Christianity was one of the reasons the Roman Empire fell.

It doesn't mean I hate him or dislike him (It just means it's harder for me to love him than just feel neutral), It just means the Roman Empire and the stablity of the Ancient Western World is more important to me than a faith.

[redstar2000]

Funny, I thought you were asking if "Jesus" was illegitimate? And I was going to answer you that there are hints in several of the letters of "Paul" that he might have been. Also according to the Jews, "Jesus" was the illegitimate son of "Mary" and a Roman soldier...and was married off to an old man--"Joseph"--to avoid scandal. But there's no real documentation of that; it's a legend dating from the 2nd century at the earliest.

(I put the names in quotes because those were not their real names. Jesus is a Greek transliteration of Yeshuah, for example.)

:cool:

[canikickit]

I thought the same thing Redstar.

I don't think Jesus was a bad guy. I think he was probably a good guy. He was probably more than one guy.

If he was one guy, then he lived for thirty three years two thousand and three years ago. I don't really care what he was like. His actual life has not effected mine greatly. I don't find him that interesting. Bit of a wierdo, really.

[Umoja]

Jesus alone didn't lead to the fall of the Roman Empire, it was already becoming unstable, with Ceaser Augustian as Emperor. Even before Christianity had a huge effect (Pre-Constantine times) Dictators were rising and falling like crazy. Numerous other factors contributed to the actual fall, and if you think that a Devolved Republic continuing to stand was a good thing that's pretty crazy.

And Redstar, Jesus is just the commonly excepted English translation. Why do you insist on calling him by his Aramaic name, it doesn't really prove much.

[I Bow 4 Che]

Je-who?

heh-stupid topic


-I am Jacks arrogance-

[Domitian]

Quote: from Umoja on 4:41 am on Jan. 19, 2003
Jesus alone didn't lead to the fall of the Roman Empire, it was already becoming unstable, with Ceaser Augustian as Emperor. Even before Christianity had a huge effect (Pre-Constantine times) Dictators were rising and falling like crazy. Numerous other factors contributed to the actual fall, and if you think that a Devolved Republic continuing to stand was a good thing that's pretty crazy.

And Redstar, Jesus is just the commonly excepted English translation. Why do you insist on calling him by his Aramaic name, it doesn't really prove much.


For the last time, I said it was ONE of the reasons Rome fell.

[Non-Sectarian Bastard!]

He considerd himself as a higher human beeing. But also promoted equality among the others.

He was a bastard, because he considerd himself as a higher human beeing.

[Blibblob]

Yes, thank you.

All religious bastards would tell you that he never said that he was god's son, and everytime he says it in the bible, they say it was a misprint. Idiots.

And RELIGION is fucking bulshit, it is nothing more than a capitalist dictatorship that holds every1 who follows it. It has nothing to do with faith.

[redstar2000]

Umoja, I call him Yeshuah because that was HIS NAME. Yeshuah ben-Yosif to be as exact as possible. And, by the way, he was a JEW, NOT a "christian", a reforming rabbi in the tradition of someone like the Hillel father & son team.

Also, real names are interesting and, sometimes, revealing. For example, why "Paul" instead of "Saul"? Theologians have "explained" for centuries that this name change was due to the fact that "Paul" was a "new man", "reborn in Christ". The reality is a little different.

When Saul of Tarsus went to Antioch, he entered the world of Greek-speaking Jews. The Greek for Saul is "Saulos" and it has a vulgar meaning...it means slut-assed, the exaggerated hip-swing of prostitutes.

"Paulos", on the other hand, simply means "shorty"...and he evidently was, as is said these days, "vertically challenged". So Paulos of Tarsus it was...and remains.

"The truth," Umoja, "shall make you free." :cheesy:

[Blibblob]

Well, they are all kinda dead, why should it really matter what their true names were?

[redstar2000]

Blibblob, are you only interested in people who are alive? Have you no curiousity about what happened before you graced this planet with your presence?

:cool:

[Umoja]

Yeah, but if I'm correct Yeshua was his litteral name. Jesus is more of a title. So, I guess calling him Yeshua is proper, if your not a Christian.

I'm confused with what your saying about Paul and Saul though.

CCCP, if any of the other stuff the Bible said was true, he didn't only rise from the dead but made others rise from the dead as well (two I believe), so according to the actual story he proved himself to be God's Son, of course I don't take much of the bible litterally until after I've really felt the verse.

[Beccie]

Quote: from CCCP on 1:39 pm on Jan. 19, 2003
He considerd himself as a higher human beeing. But also promoted equality among the others.

He was a bastard, because he considerd himself as a higher human beeing.


If that is true then why did he sacrifice himself in order to save humanity from sin? Why did he stand with the poor?

Blibblob:

You sound intolerant & ignorant. Maybe you should learn something before you speak.

[redstar2000]

"Jesus is more of a title." No, "Jesus" is how someone who speaks Greek would write and pronounce "Yeshuah". In English, by the way, it's "Joshua".

"Christ" is the title; it comes from a Greek word that means "the annointed one"...that is, the messiah.

As to "Saulos/Paulos", what I'm saying, Umoja, is that Saul didn't like the Greek version of his name ("slut-assed") so he CHANGED it himself to Paulos ("shorty"). It had nothing to do with "redemption" at all.

"Why did Jesus stand with the poor?" Well, did he? "The poor ye shall always have with thee" doesn't actually sound very encouraging. "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" is not my idea of a communist perspective. The best that "Jesus" had to offer was "pie in the sky when you die"...and even then, you still had to beieve in him. Poor people who'd never heard of him presumably went to Hell with the rich.

"Why did he sacrifice himself to save humanity from sin?" I suspect it was unintentional...that is, he expected God to step in at the last moment and save his ass. Remember his cry from the cross: "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" Sounds very much like someone who thought he had a deal worked out only to be bitterly disappointed by the betrayal of the other Party. Jesus filled his side of the bargain, where was God now that he needed Him?

And that has been the cry of the deeply religious ever since...though seldom voiced aloud. Where is God when disaster, disease, and death come calling?

Where indeed!

(Edited by redstar2000 at 7:56 pm on Jan. 20, 2003)


(Edited by redstar2000 at 7:58 pm on Jan. 20, 2003)

[Lardlad95]

Quote: from redstar2000 on 2:54 pm on Jan. 20, 2003
"Jesus is more of a title." No, "Jesus" is how someone who speaks Greek would write and pronounce "Yeshuah". In English, by the way, it's "Joshua".

"Christ" is the title; it comes from a Greek word that means "the annointed one"...that is, the messiah.

As to "Saulos/Paulos", what I'm saying, Umoja, is that Saul didn't like the Greek version of his name ("slut-assed") so he CHANGED it himself to Paulos ("shorty"). It had nothing to do with "redemption" at all.

"Why did Jesus stand with the poor?" Well, did he? "The poor ye shall always have with thee" doesn't actually sound very encouraging. "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" is not my idea of a communist perspective. The best that "Jesus" had to offer was "pie in the sky when you die"...and even then, you still had to beieve in him. Poor people who'd never heard of him presumably went to Hell with the rich.

"Why did he sacrifice himself to save humanity from sin?" I suspect it was unintentional...that is, he expected God to step in at the last moment and save his ass. Remember his cry from the cross: "My God, my God, why has Thou forsaken me?" Sounds very much like someone who thought he had a deal worked out only to be bitterly disappointed by the betrayal of the other Party. Jesus filled his side of the bargain, where was God now that he needed Him?

And that has been the cry of the deeply religious ever since...though seldom voiced aloud. Where is God when disaster, disease, and death come calling?

Where indeed!


As much as I hate to admit it, Redstar is infact correct about all the phoenetic bullshit

My only thought is that the authors of the bible tried to make these things much more spiritual and or simpler so that the illeterate could understand.

That doesn't necasarily disprove Jesus' divineness it just means that the bible isn't as complete as the bible belt religious fanatics claim it is

[Beccie]

You have made some points that will be hard to dispute, redstar.

I think you need to realise that the bible is not the actual word of God. The four evangelists wrote the bible a while after Jesus' death, for different purposes and audiences. They had different theological perspectives hence the contradictions between the four Gospels. They are not historical accounts.

Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew and Mark "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" yet little is known about the Jesus of history. Were these his real words or are they addressed to the audience? In the Gospel of Luke Jesus says "Father into your hands I commend my spirit" and in the Gospel of John Jesus proclaims, triumphantly that "it is finished". How do we know what Jesus' real last words were?

"Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" This was defiantly said for a theological purpose and is probably not the words of the Jesus of history. This was said just before Jesus was put to death. In his trial, Jesus is accused of forbidding the people to pay taxes. The reader knows this is not true, they have just read otherwise. The evangelists want to lead the audience to believe that Jesus did not die for a political reason his death was for humanity.

[Blibblob]

Here, ya changed me, screw earlier. We know nothing, and unless we invent a time machine that will allow us to go back that far, we will never know.

[redstar2000]

Well, commie01, you are certainly right about the "gospels"--scholars know they could not have been written before 70CE...because they assume the destruction of the Temple by the Romans after the great uprising in Palestine.

Scholars consider "Mark" and "Matthew" the earliest versions; "Mark" because of the sparseness of his tale, "Matthew" because of the predominant Hebraic orientation. A small point in favor of their version of "Jesus's" last words on the cross is that the writers render them in Aramaic...the language that Yeshuah actually spoke. (Aramaic was a semitic tongue related to Hebrew and Arabic; it was widespread in the Near East at the time of Yeshuah of Galilee.)

And yes, the writers of the "gospels" were already turning Yeshuah from a Jew into a "christian" and would eventually promote him to divine status (a common fate of those who became prominent in the world of classical antiquity). We really have no idea of what Yeshuah actually taught...though the theory that makes him a reforming Jewish rabbi seems to me to be the most plausible conjecture.

There is one theory that appeals to me...that Yeshuah died because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Palestine in 30CE was very much like Palestine is now -- seething in opposition and marked by periodic rebellions. The Romans may have wanted to teach the Jews a "lesson"...and executed the popular preacher from Galilee simply because he was available.

If so, it was one of history's world-class all-time blunders.

[Umoja]

Okay, the main point you said was "Give unto Ceaser what is Ceasers, and Give unto God what is God's". This has a strong meaning to me, to me it means that one must seperate the material things from the spiritual things. I spoke of this publicly before, but it was quite awhile ago.

[Non-Sectarian Bastard!]

This is so ridiculous. Religion is ridiculous.

Your only documentation of "God" is an old book wich you even doubt.

Religion is something, that has been stamped into children's minds by their parents,"....there is a god, a higher power, Jezus this, Jezus that, Mohammed......".

Religion has always been growing on humans ignorance. First you had "Firegods", "Sungods" etc. because people thaugt it was some sort of magic....power....higer power...superior...divine...GOD.

Where knowlegde appears, religion disapears.

Religion will eventually disapear. That is ofcourse if "patriotism" and "good old values" don't overtake our sweet small world.

There are still questions wich we can't answer, par example:"How did the universe excist?" We need answers on these sort of questions, we seek answers. A simple way to explain it, would be..

Children are more sensitive for religion, because they have more answers to seek for. As they grow up, they start doubting and then they don't follow the "Bible, Koran or whatsoever" not so precize, because they know that there are mistakes in the "holybooks".

Live your own life, don't let the thinking be done for you by a "holy book".

(Edited by CCCP at 2:50 pm on Jan. 21, 2003)

[Larissa]

Quote: from redstar2000 on 9:52 pm on Jan. 18, 2003
Funny, I thought you were asking if "Jesus" was illegitimate? And I was going to answer you that there are hints in several of the letters of "Paul" that he might have been. Also according to the Jews, "Jesus" was the illegitimate son of "Mary" and a Roman soldier...and was married off to an old man--"Joseph"--to avoid scandal. But there's no real documentation of that; it's a legend dating from the 2nd century at the earliest.

(I put the names in quotes because those were not their real names. Jesus is a Greek transliteration of Yeshuah, for example.)

:cool:
I agree with you, plus I think he was a real socialist even when he was not aware of it.

[SuicideisPainless]

religion = bullshit pure and simple,

[TheFriendlyBolshevik]

No,no,no you guys got it all wrong. Jesus, or Yeshua (a common name in the year 3071) was a time-traveller from the future. How else can you explain curing lepers and turning water into wine? The guy obviously had some kind of futuristic healing device and a highly advanced chemical knowledge that only could be aquired in the future.

Now if you want to talk about religious prophets sent from the heavens let's talk about Ash from army of darkness. Now there was a real holy man.

[red warlock]

Quote: from Blibblob on 3:33 am on Jan. 21, 2003
Here, ya changed me, screw earlier. We know nothing, and unless we invent a time machine that will allow us to go back that far, we will never know.


oh, come on man....if we have to relyonly on what we see in our lives, and we say that some documents are not to be trusted than we have to doubt Marx , Feurbach, Engels, Lenin... we might say that some of their works were written by somebody else...the examples are not very aqurate, but I hope you get my point....
______________
for the revolution!!!!!!!!

[Eastside Revolt]

Quote: from SuicideisPainless on 4:00 pm on Jan. 21, 2003
religion = bullshit pure and simple,


I'm not religious but why brother? They often do a good job of bringing out the goodness in people: like Jesus.

[redstar2000]

"I think [Jesus] was a real socialist even when he was not aware of it."

It's certainly possible that such was the case--we simply don't know.

The "Acts of the Apostles" suggests that the first "christians" (actually, they were still very much Jews) arranged their internal economy along communist lines...and enforced that with Stalinist vigor. Recall the couple that sold a piece of property and only put part of the proceeds into the common fund...they were struck dead by the "Lord". (presumably a mortal hand performed the actual executions.) But we don't even know if that story is true...the account of those events was written down not less than 70 or so years after the events it "describes".

In evaluating Yeshuah of Nazareth, I keep getting stuck on that quote: the poor ye shall always have with ye. If that quote is authentic, then what does it mean to say he was some kind of early "socialist"? To me, it suggests exactly the kind of resignation in the face of "God's Will" that is found at the root of all religious belief...and is exactly the opposite of the refusal to accept the world as it is that lies at the root of all attempts to change it.

----------------------------------

The religious "often do a good job of bringing out the goodness in people, like Jesus."

History rather strongly suggests the opposite is the case.

:cool:

[Smoking Frog II]

Technically, Jesus was a bastard, however, he didn't act one.

[Non-Sectarian Bastard!]

Damn not a single reply to my piece

[Umoja]

I'm beganning to realize these arguments are worthless basically. We could continue fighting over these forever, but as long as no one hurts anyone does any of this really matter? If their was enough glaring truth either way, we'd both change our minds. I'm really not in a mood to argue either.

[Blackberry]

Quote: from Umoja on 1:52 am on Jan. 23, 2003
I'm beganning to realize these arguments are worthless basically. We could continue fighting over these forever, but as long as no one hurts anyone does any of this really matter? If their was enough glaring truth either way, we'd both change our minds. I'm really not in a mood to argue either.

No, arguments advocating something that is totally irrelevant and doesn't exist is worthless.

[redstar2000]

Umoja, I can't speak for others, of course, but I can tell you why I personally keep arguing these matters concerning religion whenever a thread appears on the subject.

It has to do with a <whisper> gaping hole in Marxist theory.

According to Marx and Engels, the working class in the advanced capitalist countries should be the most class conscious and revolutionary of all. <whisper again> It hasn't happened, at least not yet.

Why? Bourgeois sociologists don't care what the reason or reasons might be...they're happy to dismiss Marx and Engels as a couple of wankers. But I care! And I think communists have to care about this issue.

My hypothesis: religion has proven to be a critical obstacle to the development of revolutionary working class consciousness.

I won't argue this now...it deserves a thread of its own and the presentation of some evidence and argument. I'll just say for now that I'm convinced that wide-spread atheism is crucial for the success of the communist project.

That's why I don't let the matter rest.

:cool:

[Umoja]

I can see what you mean, and that is probubly true in most cases, but I believe what I believe is an exception to the rule because I'm an ass, but yes, I guess you are right.

[ID2002]

....Jesus is dead and gone. While he probably was a social advocate much like Sidhartha, only his teaching got screwed over by power hungry, capitalistic minded rascist idiots. Naturally using it as divice to concure and subdue.

I'm glad that Buddhism has remained for the people. It is rare that you find a religion that still remains true to its roots after 2550 yrs.

Marx believed religion was proven to be a critical obstacle to the development of revolutionary working class consciousness. In summery, I believe he was illuding to western beliefs because that is what he was studying. He was never fully exposed to Eastern beliefs....especially Buddhism. I see a lot of Marx's statements to be true...but you can't lump all of religion onto a single page. oh well, I can only imagine what he felt in 20's.

(Edited by ID2002 at 6:04 pm on Jan. 24, 2003)

[Umoja]

He was speaking of EuroCentric beliefs. Most other people didn't go through nearly as epic stuggles as Europeans did over religion. Ethiopia, and Egypt still maintain basically the same church, and Islam hasn't really fractured to much either (three branches if you count Sikhism). For the most part, as European city-states became more powerful they looked for a greater means of control and that came from the Church because the Roman religion held little sway over the people, but yet they were still an authoritarian state.

[Uhuru na Umoja]

Umoja, if you do not think Islam has fractured much try talking to the muslims. There may be only two or three (depending on your definition) broad forms, but those are as broad as Protestantism, Catholicism and Orthoxody within the Church. Many muslims even go so far as to deny that Ismailis are muslims... that hardly sounds like a united religious community. Moreover, you seem to be suggesting that Sikhism is without schisms. Over recent years there has been much in-fighting amongst the Sikhs and there were even killings at the main Gurdwara (Temple that is - I'm not sure about the spelling, my apologies if it's wrong) in Vancouver. Therefore I consider it VERY dangerous to suggest that Islam is less plagued by factionalism. Many muslim friends of mine would suggest that Christians are more united than muslims.

PS. As for epic conflicts... look to the Sunni-Shia split in Islam, or - for that matter - the conflicts between Islam and Hinduism in India and Pakistan (which have been occurring since the formation of the Moghul Empire over 500 yeras ago). Then try to tell me that religious conflict is primarily a European theme.

[Umoja]

These are not nearly as epic when compared to European beliefs though, and Europeans had a huge amount of infighting over nearly identical beliefs.