tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11840313.post8789047934834232248..comments2024-03-10T10:54:59.776-07:00Comments on Ben Witherington: SEEKING THE IDENTITY OF JESUS-- PART ONEBen Witheringtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017701050859255865noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11840313.post-11167561191369945022009-02-23T06:43:00.000-08:002009-02-23T06:43:00.000-08:00"One of the essential problems is the accuracy of ..."One of the essential problems is the accuracy of that description of the relationship between the two. That is, John as the self-conscious and deliberate forerunner of Jesus. Most contemporary scholars would see that to be a construct developed by the early church to help explain the relationship between the two. Because for the early church it would have been something of an embarrassment to say that Jesus, who was in their minds superior to John the Baptist, had been baptized by him, and thereby proclaimed some sort of subordination to him, some sort of disciple relationship to him...."<BR/>www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/portrait/john.html<BR/><BR/>Attridge finds in the minds of the early followers of Jesus the notion that baptism connoted "some sort of subordination." And whatever baptism signifies, he who baptizes has an office--an authority to cleanse or whatever--not occupied by he who is baptized.Jameshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02594317489026507409noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11840313.post-29959269614015419822009-02-22T18:15:00.000-08:002009-02-22T18:15:00.000-08:00Hi James:Beware of anyone who says "it was general...Hi James:<BR/><BR/>Beware of anyone who says "it was generally understood that the baptizer was considered spiritually superior", without providing a shred of historical evidence that this was so. Thank goodness my pastor doesn't think this about those he baptizes, and I doubt John the Baptizer felt that way about Jesus either.<BR/><BR/>Blessings<BR/><BR/>BW3Ben Witheringtonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06017701050859255865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11840313.post-15614000773509315682009-02-22T17:49:00.000-08:002009-02-22T17:49:00.000-08:00"There were clearly many many people who got bapti..."There were clearly many many people who got baptized by John for repentance of sins, and never became a follower of John. They were not looking for a movement to join, they were looking for cleansing from sin, a different matter."<BR/><BR/>One student of the period, Bart Ehrman, says "it was commonly understood that one doing the baptizing was spiritually superior to the one being baptized," and refers to Jesus beginning his activities by "showing his devotion to" John.Jameshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02594317489026507409noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11840313.post-65277371672409051962009-02-20T07:55:00.000-08:002009-02-20T07:55:00.000-08:00BW3,The schtick Roman Hellenist is J-sus. Roman H...BW3,<BR/>The schtick Roman Hellenist is J-sus. Roman Hellenism is the assimilation of Judaism into Roman/Greek culture. At the point of mixing Judaism, that is defined by Torah, with any other culture/religion you no longer have Torah defined Judaism for it is forbidden to mix the kadosh with the chol. Have you read the Torah (instruction) of the nidah, the leper, and those that have come in contact with the dead? They had not sinned but they needed the mikveh to allow them to again enter the Beit Hamikdash. If there was a willful/errant misstep of Torah it sometimes required a korban but not a trip to the mikveh. Every Jew that entered the Beit Hamikdash went in the mikveh not because of "sin" but to be sure he had not come in contact inadvertently with a situation that would make him/her tamei, disqualified to enter. It is a gross misunderstanding at best and at worst a displacement theology to look at the mikveh, which was what Yochanan supervised as the Xtian baptism for forgiveness of sins. A man and a woman that were married needed to go to the mikveh simply after marital relations. Was that a sin? Yes Yehoshua, the real man, the real Jewish teacher, the Mashiach, was JEWISH. And he taught to keep the Torah not to pick and choose from it much less to do away with it. J-sus is simply the greatest identity theft of history. They are not the same. One is the Mashiach the other is the anti-Mashiach.Eliyahuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09550781249705011630noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11840313.post-58965427149826883352009-02-20T07:04:00.000-08:002009-02-20T07:04:00.000-08:00Hi Eliyahu: You are quite right, the mikveh is for...Hi Eliyahu: You are quite right, the mikveh is for ritual cleansing. However, it is a huge mistake to sever ritual from moral cleansing. The consequences of ritual impurity in early Judaism was often isolation, even being put outside the community, which is certainly a moral consequence. <BR/><BR/>You need to give up the 'Roman Hellenistic' schtick. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the portraits of Jesus in the Gospels-- they are throughly Jewish in character. Roman and Hellenistic folk did not believe in resurrection, they believed in the immorality of the soul, a very different sort of afterlife, nor did they believe in the atoning value of a human sacrifice. They saw no redeeming value in crucifixion, unlike Jesus and his followers. <BR/><BR/>Blessings,<BR/><BR/>BW3Ben Witheringtonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06017701050859255865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11840313.post-44789077029267458382009-02-20T05:35:00.000-08:002009-02-20T05:35:00.000-08:00The mikveh is not for cleansing of sin. That is a ...The mikveh is not for cleansing of sin. That is a Roman Hellenist Xtian definition that has no substance whatsoever in history. Read the Encyclopedia Judaica for the correct history and definition.Eliyahuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09550781249705011630noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11840313.post-36120088704860625812009-02-20T05:00:00.000-08:002009-02-20T05:00:00.000-08:00James I agree its possible Jesus spent time with t...James I agree its possible Jesus spent time with the Baptist, that is not the issue. You seem to assume however that because one person baptizes the other, this makes the second person a follower of the first. This hardly follows. Water rituals were common in early Judaism, indeed most Jews went in and out of a mikveh every day. There were clearly many many people who got baptized by John for repentance of sins, and never became a follower of John. They were not looking fora movement to join, they were looking for cleansing from sin, a different matter. You are right that the Gospels stress the subordination of John to Jesus, and this is because John continued to be a popular figure and his practice popular long after he was killed (see Acts 18-19). This latter fact, and not the assumption Jesus must have followed John, better accounts for the evidence we have.<BR/><BR/>Ben W.Ben Witheringtonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06017701050859255865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11840313.post-91449868656754511482009-02-19T21:26:00.000-08:002009-02-19T21:26:00.000-08:00Well, if a guy is known as a baptizer, and baptize...Well, if a guy is known as a baptizer, and baptizes me, surely that suggests I might be his follower. It isn’t pushing the evidence that leads to this inference, just trying to follow where it might lead. Similarly, if Jesus endorses John’s ministry he’s necessarily commending following him to others, and again that might suggest he did some following himself. <BR/> <BR/> In several passages, most notably in John 1:20, 34 and 3:30, and the well-known “stoop down and untie the thong” passages, early followers of Jesus lay great stress on John the Baptist’s assumption of a role subordinate to Jesus. Why did they bother? Why did they speak of John the Baptist at all? When they did, why did they ascribe to him a self-assigned inferior role? If Jesus had begun his career as a follower of John, and followers of Jesus who wished to elevate his status encountered resistance from those who recalled his early acceptance of John’s mission, their insistence on John’s inferior role makes perfect sense. <BR/> <BR/>I’d like to add a theological point. It would be no shortcoming at all for Jesus to have at some point in his career been more follower than leader. Few men and fewer women, when they begin their careers, ministries, missions, whatever, skate forthwith to the top. It’s a part of the normal human condition to experience subordination, and if Jesus did too, why then it only adds to his humanity.Jameshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02594317489026507409noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11840313.post-88177056616311788042009-02-19T18:01:00.000-08:002009-02-19T18:01:00.000-08:00Hi Jim:Thanks for this. I don't put any stock in a...Hi Jim:<BR/><BR/>Thanks for this. I don't put any stock in arguments for a supposed oral tradition that covers over a millenium with no textual evidence whatsoever to support it. But the more fundamental problem with the literature you are referring to is that it does not comport with the character of Jesus as portrayed in our earliest Christian literature. Furthermore, we are well aware of the tendency of Indian literature to make extravagant claims for example about Thomas as someone who evangelized India. These sorts of claims are understandable since everyone wants Jesus and the apostles to be "one of us" in some sense, but as for historical credibility, I don't know any Biblical scholars of whatever degree of orthodoxy or lack thereof that take these late claims seriously. <BR/><BR/>Blessings,<BR/><BR/>Ben W.Ben Witheringtonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06017701050859255865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11840313.post-71961645207747056182009-02-19T16:27:00.000-08:002009-02-19T16:27:00.000-08:00Ben, may I discuss your three points in your 5:03 ...Ben, may I discuss your three points in your 5:03 AM post above? <BR/>There’s good reason why there’s a lot more oral than written tradition on the "lost years" subject. It was just as unacceptable to early Christians as it is to present-day Christians, and as we know, such writings tended not to survive, even outside of the Holy Land. <BR/><BR/>1. Regarding early literature that was witnessed but is/was safeguarded from destruction, both Notovitch and Abhedananda were witnesses to the Tibetan copy of <BR/>the Jesus-in-India ms, which was a transcription from the earlier writing in Pali kept at a different monastery for safekeeping. The independent translations each made from the Tibetan version are available for study and comparison.<BR/><BR/>And at the Puri Jagannath Temple in India, both the present and previous Shankaracharya are on record, from rare interviews, as admitting that writings <BR/>disclosing Issa's or Isha's presence there, in his youth, are/were located in the Temple's archives. <BR/><BR/>There is also the Talmud of Jmmanuel, which mentions both trips to India, and whose editor is still alive to vouch for the antiquity of its Aramaic text, which he co-discovered in 1963, and which did not survive past 1974 due to its heresies.<BR/><BR/>So this constitutes testimonial evidence that such traditions existed in written form prior to the modern era.<BR/><BR/>Re early written literature that is available, there is the Bhavishya Maha Purina, placing Jesus in Kashmir during the reign of King Shalivahana (39-50 CE). Written in Sanskrit, it reportedly dates back to 115 CE. (Of course, this involves the other topic, his <BR/>survival of the crucifixion and later life.)<BR/><BR/>2. This "lost years" evidence is more complementary than contradictory to what meagre <BR/>New Testament clues exist of Jesus' youth. One must allow that much of Luke's account of the Nativity and Jesus' early years could be myth or imagination, and especially the one verse that covers the "lost years" time period, Lk 2:52, which merely repeats Lk 1:80 and 2:40 (and 1 Sam 1:21b).<BR/><BR/>3. The idea that Notovitch was anti-Semitic doesn't accord with the text of the Lost Years Manuscript. In its recapitulation of the accusations against St. Issa and the trial, he is exonerated by the Jewish authorities but strongly condemned by Pilate.Jim Deardorffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04517653430586348063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11840313.post-91917360688840211912009-02-19T12:51:00.000-08:002009-02-19T12:51:00.000-08:00Hi James:Actually, it is not at all historically c...Hi James:<BR/><BR/>Actually, it is not at all historically clear that Jesus was ever a follower of John the Baptist. What is clear is that he was baptized by John and some of John's followers became some of Jesus' followers, and that Jesus endorsed the ministry of John the Baptist. There is a connection between the two ministries, but it would be pushing what evidence we have much to far to claim Jesus was a follower of the Baptist. <BR/><BR/>BW3Ben Witheringtonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06017701050859255865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11840313.post-49503213225240601832009-02-19T12:34:00.000-08:002009-02-19T12:34:00.000-08:00Allison concludes as follows: "Every piece of evid...Allison concludes as follows: "Every piece of evidence we have indicates that from the beginning Jesus, whatever appellation he did or did not bestow on himself, was the leader, and everyone else a follower."<BR/>Isn't this conclusion inconsistent with what we can reasonably infer from Mark 1:4-8 and parallel passages? Didn't Jesus begin his career, or precede his career, as a follower of John the Baptist? E.P. Sanders and Paula Fredriksen and other skilled historians have thought so. Or at least, is "every piece of evidence we have" a little on the strong side?Jameshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02594317489026507409noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11840313.post-51368646958454693242009-02-19T11:27:00.000-08:002009-02-19T11:27:00.000-08:00The real problem is that you have a definition of ...The real problem is that you have a definition of a Jewish man that is historically provable and you have mixed that with a myth that can be proven to be completely subjective. The Jewish Ribi Yehoshua is not the Egyptian/Greek/Roman/Persian ad infinitum myth J-sus. But J-sus is a source of income for seemingly endless pseudo scholars. www.netzarim.co.ilEliyahuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09550781249705011630noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11840313.post-74524994535696682732009-02-19T05:09:00.000-08:002009-02-19T05:09:00.000-08:00The problem with the traditions about Jesus travel...The problem with the traditions about Jesus traveling to India for a historian are threefold: 1) we have no evidence that any such traditions existed prior to the modern era. This is just the opposite of the Biblical traditions we have which we even have manuscript evidence for, going back to the second century A.D.; 2) more crucially the traditions you are referring are contradictory to various aspects of the earlier traditions about Jesus, and so must be rejected as later attempts to rewrite the story of Jesus, much like the later Gnostic traditions about Jesus which have no historical basis. <BR/><BR/>Ergo, purely on historical grounds, and not because of any sort of theological prejudice, historians have and continue to reject the whole legend of Jesus goes to India, not least because it is anti-Semitic in character, and Jesus beyond any historical dispute was a Jew. Even anti-Christian scholars are in agreement on that point. One could add that the evidence of rampant anti-Semitism in the very area where Notovitch came from needs to be taken into account, and could explain why, like Joseph Smith, he decided to make up a myth<BR/>about Jesus and the early Christian tradition.<BR/>Blessings anyway,<BR/><BR/>Ben W.Ben Witheringtonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06017701050859255865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11840313.post-6402583027323723502009-02-18T20:26:00.000-08:002009-02-18T20:26:00.000-08:00In seeking his historical identity, history needs ...In seeking his historical identity, history needs to be explored free from false conclusions that can arise out of theological commitment.<BR/><BR/>To illustrate, consider the evidence that he traveled to India in his youth, and traveled and studied there under the master Buddhists and Hindus of that day for many years before returning. The evidence for this uncovered by Notovitch in 1894 was later independently verified by Swami Abhedananda in 1922. <BR/><BR/>Upon studying the refutation of Notovitch by Max Mueller and an unknown professor J. Archibald Douglas, you might find, as I did, that the claims against Notovitch were unjust, inaccurate or irrelevant, and Notovitch's responses to them ignored. Claims by Edgar J. Goodspeed also do not stand up, and those made later by Per Beskow, after Abhedananda's confirming explorations, did not even take the latter into account.<BR/><BR/>It seems to me that the theological conviction of these naysayers improperly colored their conclusions. My collection of information on this is <A HREF="http://www.tjresearch.info/ecumensm.htm" REL="nofollow"> here</A>.<BR/><BR/>Knowledge that Jesus had traveled to India, etc., gives cause to revise the common conception that he was raised a Jew.Jim Deardorffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04517653430586348063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11840313.post-38933912423788952302009-02-18T19:09:00.000-08:002009-02-18T19:09:00.000-08:00Hi Ivan:Yes, absolutely,Ben W.Hi Ivan:<BR/><BR/>Yes, absolutely,<BR/><BR/>Ben W.Ben Witheringtonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06017701050859255865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11840313.post-19799238598078964282009-02-18T18:43:00.000-08:002009-02-18T18:43:00.000-08:00Dr Ben, thanks.How about Historical Jesus.Should t...Dr Ben, thanks.<BR/><BR/>How about Historical Jesus.<BR/><BR/>Should this study also involve theological concepts.<BR/><BR/>Regards<BR/><BR/>Ivan Karel-JakartaIvan Karelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01830230103276362863noreply@blogger.com