I don’t care if he was purple, his message was be kind to each other and we’ve failed to grasp even that simple philosophy.
If he actually lived it might even matter.
There are historical records of somebody named Jesus that lived at the time. The Bible story is just horse shit. He was an apocalyptic preacher just like today, and probably had undiagnosed schizophrenia, thought he could talk to God, and was the son of God. Plenty of people think that today, and we put them in Institutions instead of create a whole ass religion out of their life.
I will say this, I can’t think of a thing Jesus says in the Bible that isn’t pretty based. He prioritized pragmatism over rules and protocol, compassion and understanding over judgment, generosity over greed, forgiveness over scorn, acts over words. Everyone following his death like Paul seem to be the ones that start to miss the point.
The desire to control people who follow compassionate teachings is what turned sound advice into the dogma we see today. It’s an unfortunate history, not unique to Christianity.
It’s the institutionalisation of religion that’s a problem.
If everyone would just focus on finding their own connection with god/the universe/whatever, nobody would have a problem.Fuck churches and using religion for politics.
That’s why we have the separation of church and state at least - although not enough and currently it’s backpedaling…That’s why we have the separation of church and state
Weeps in Utahn
I agree he said a lot of cool stuff for sure but ultimately he was an apocalyptic preacher. I think it’s immoral to tell people they need to accept your God or you’ll go to hell, personally, so that’s one not cool thing.
“Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned.”
Pretty messed up given that belief is not something you can even really choose.
Yup. Born and die in a place where it wasn’t possible to believe because knowledge hadn’t spread yet? Believe it or not straight to hell.
There’s no such thing as hell in the Bible. Jesus said sinners would cease to exist.
I’m not a biblical scholar but my understanding was there was biblical basis for it. Especially mentioned by Jesus as he was an apocalyptic preacher. Something like this sounds like it fits the bill pretty well:
The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Like I said though I’m not a biblical scholar. Although I’m not sure simply being denied an infinite reward is that much better really. It’s still effectively an infinite punishment for something you have no control over.
The closest thing to hell in the Bible is shoal. And that’s just the word for the ground people are buried in.
Hell came long after either Bible was canonized.
What’s the whole weeping and gnashing of teeth thing, is that something different to hell?
37 He answered, “The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man. 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one, 39 and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels.
40 “As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them.
If you’re pious, you live forever in heaven. If you’re sinful, you die. No eternal torment, no hanging out with demons. Dead.
While forgiveness is good, I’m not sure forgiving all sin just for following Jesus is so great.
It’s literally thoughts are more important than acts. I’m not convinced.
Fucking paulists ruined Christianity
I agree. His motivations were purely political in order to keep people in line when he realized this new movement wasn’t going away any time soon.
Which is why on one hand we have Jesus calling for freedom of oppression, while Paul was telling slaves to obey their masters, even the cruel ones
Religion has always been politically motivated to control people.
Umm there’s a few
When he spoke of division instead of peace (Matthew 10:34-36, Luke 12:51-53)
“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
Acting like a gate keeper of Salvation (John 14:6)
“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Slavery and servanthood (Luke 12:47-48)
“The servant who knows the master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what the master wants will be beaten with many blows.”
Gentiles as ‘Dogs’ (Matthew 15:21-28)
When a Canaanite woman asks for help, Jesus initially replies: “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”
There’s a few more, but I’m too lazy to keep going. The problem with the bible is it tried to be too many things at once. Especially trying to sell the concept of fear and love in one, which isn’t possible.
Most of that was written hundreds of years later (and rewritten several times since), so who knows what was added later for religious control purposes.
He could have sat around all day stoned off his nut.
I like stoned Jesus. Weed stoned, not biblical punishment stoned that is.
Knew a theology professor (ended up in his class for credits somehow) who went with the “multiple Jesus’s” theory. Apparently it’s quite possible that stories of a variety of healers/figures got combined into the Jesus mythos. Explains a lot of the time and geographical inconsistencies with the historical record iirc
Could be, it always interesting to get theology professors take on it. A lot of times they were preachers who went into it to understand “god” more, or historical Jesus, and rhen come out of it an atheist or agnostic at least.
I feel like this professor pissed off a lot of students who joined his class expecting sermons or something. Did more to reinforce my atheism than anything else. He was a good dude
He never claimed to be the literal son of God, this is something that was addded into the dogma 2 to 3 centuries after his death during the Council of Nicaea (check Arianism).
There are historical records of somebody named Jesus that lived at the time.
No, there are no contemporary primary sources about him from his purported lifetime. All sources stems from several decades to centuries after his purported death.
The consensus about his existence is established based on the likelihood of him existing, but his existence can never be verified with absolute certainty. And what he actually did or said is impossible to determine as well. On that we can only rely on what people living relatively long after his purported death wanted him to have said.
The best argument for Jesus’ existence comes from Christopher Hitchens.
It goes like this: We know the nativity story is made up because of the census. There was a census near the time, but it was after Harrod’s death and cannot fit the story. But why fabricate the nativity? Probably because Jesus of Nazareth is supposed to be born in the “city of David”: Bethlehem. So then, if Jesus was invented whole cloth, why not make him Jesus of Bethlehem and save the aggravation?
Yeshua of Nazareth is a historically confirmed individual. He was real, really the son of a god? Probably not.
Since it was a fairly common name, you might as well say John from Richmond is a confirmed individual.
Yes, because historians were like “yeah there was a guy named that, so this religious book must be right about him existing.”
Don’t be daft.
Right, that’s kind of what I’m saying, the book mentions a person with a name and location (ish). Then finding a guy there when the name is fairly common does not equate all things said about him to be true. Far from it it seems. Especially if the book has fantastical claims outside the realm of reality about said person and is inconsistent on his story.
At best you get a King Arthur story, was there a king or ruler in said period for (part of) England? Probably. Did he become king because he pulled out a magical sword from the rock? I would assume not.
There are even stories that Arthur never died and will return one day…
There are historical accounts that align with some of the events that as recorded in the Bible. The person existed and went around claiming to be the son of a god. This we know. The rest of it is myth and legend.
He existed alright but we have zero idea if he claimed to be the son of God. That was added much later after his death.
Jesus could in fact be an algamation of various men at the time who led the religious/social movement that would eventually become Christianity, and not all early versions claimed him to be the son of God. Some even claimed him to be a new God here to rescue us from the original God who was harsh, vindictive and punishing. Lots of wild shit.
So even the “he said he was the son of God” is a myth and legend.
But there definitely was a dude who was alive back then who had a LOT of complaints concerning the church and the government.
We don’t know that, because there are no such sources. But we have concluded that a Jesus most likely did exist. What this likely existing person did and said is not concluded in the slightest.
Can I see evidence or info you have of those historical accounts?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus
This article is well sourced. There is a section on non-christian sources as well. Although that section does not list all the sources I am aware of. It may be excluding Jewish scholars.
It even highlights the view that he didn’t exist as a fringe stance.
Yeshua of Nazareth is a historically confirmed individual.
He is not. We have no contemporary primary sources for his existence. However there is a general historical consensus that he most likely did exist. But absolute confirmation is an impossibility.
We have an American commercial illustrator named Warner Sallman to blame for the canonical Jesus’ melanin deficit.
Yeah, I think Italian Renaissance painters may have pre-dated that somewhat.
Blonde, light-skinned with blue eyes? Nope.
i think it goes back a little further than some dude from the US…
That’s a ridiculous claim.
Here’s a picture of Jesus’ baptism from Normandy, painted in 1185.
Plenty of others here: https://smarthistory.org/standard-scenes-from-the-life-of-christ-in-art/
Europeans tended to paint Jesus as white because they didn’t understand there were no photos or movies or TV around, so someone in Norman France didn’t know there was an alternative possibility.
After reading that I just had an idea for what I think would be a good premise for a film. In the 70s Jesus “returns” in the US somewhere, but as someone who gets labelled as a black man, noone believes him. Because he keeps getting knocked down at every turn due to systemic racism, and because he is so fed-up with the “White Jesus” trope he joins the Black Panther Party. He ends up being shot by a cop. Final shot slow-zooms in to show cop’s name on a tag. First name Judas.
Nah, he would have been seen as Arabic and thus be labelled as a Muslim, being even more intenselly and more widelly hated in the US than if he had been deemed a Black man.
Also in terms of probability he would’ve probably ‘return’ to somewhere in Asia or Africa since there’s were most of the population is nowadays.
I was going to paste the same link. :) Have my upvote instead.
I have family, DEVOUT Christians, that live in the actual holy land. I asked them “who is that?” in response to their posting a picture of white-as-fuck Jesus on the Facebook page for the family village. They have yet to respond
He rode into battle on his noble T-Rex named Herbert. He can be any color he wants.
The original whitewashing
These days it is way more widely accepted
Before it was problematic since religion was used to justify hate crimes against people of color
He had albinism, next question
Levantine people don’t have very dark skin, they definitely aren’t as white as Western Europeans though
Modern Levant and Levant people three thousand years ago are both different in appearance. You can thank the Romans and Crusaders from Europe for changing this.
To expand on this with some small context albeit way older than the Romans. Egyptians gave the Peleset land in the Levant. Theorised that they were warrior peoples of the sea and the Philistines of biblical text somewhere in the late second millennium BC before the bronze age colapse. There is an incredible documentary by Pete Kelly (History Time) on youtube. Well worth the watch. Another great video he did about the Akkadians called The first Empire. He also did a great video about the Hittites. His whole channel is a goldmine of knowledge of the ancient world.
Any way the ancient world is filled with peoples from all over, moving around. Trade was a major factor. War was another. People from all over the Mediterranean and beyond mixed knowledge, their trades, their crafts, blood on battlefields and likely genes. Probably long before there was a written word pressed in clay.
Were all muts.
Sure, but we all know you’re a liar, who tells one truth per dragonbreak. Where did you get a potion of eternal youth anyway?
M’aiq is very practical. He has no need for mysticism.
Ancient but Romans weren’t even really white. More olive toned.
There aren’t any white people in the Bible.
All Europeans are white… You mean to tell me Italy is not in Europe or that the amount of melanin in their skin is inconsequential?
no white people in the Bible
What about the Greeks?
I could give two shits about the Bible, but what you are saying is dumb as fuck.
Like I said, more Olive toned. Sorry it offends you but ancient Europeans, especially people in the Italian peninsula and Greece didn’t exactly look like the Europeans of today, being as most of them came from a different part of the world
They weren’t white people who left the middle east, they were middle eastern people who eventually turned white due to the different climate conditions of the area.
Not dumb as fuck, nuanced. History is neat like that
Good info. Looks like I’m the one here who is dumb as fuck.
Even relatively recently, Italians weren’t really considered “white”, especially by Americans. The KKK considered them “coloured” people with their olive skin and dangerous Catholicism. There was a big wave of “italiapobia” in the late 19th/early 20th century.
The governer of Louisiana in 1911 described Italians as “just a little worse than the Negro, being if anything filthier in their habits, lawless, and treacherous”.
People can be pretty terrible when it comes to race and ethnicity.
Got any further readings for this? Thank you for sharing that knowledge. Yeah racists are going to racist
You’re not dumb as fuck.
It’s a common misconception. Wasn’t even really until around the time of Queen Isabella (Might have the wrong queen as it’s pretty late here) that fair skin was considered preferable and a sign of religious purity.
Humans are a weird species.
Italians and Irish weren’t considered white just 100 years ago. Haven’t you seen the photos of signs posted on US shops that read “Help Wanted, Irish and Italians need not apply!” ?
If I learned anything from all of the Sunday school my parents forced me to go to it’s that Jesus was a white dude with amazing abs.
Korean Jesus?
“Too many,” or is “far to many” a new phrase that the younger folk are using? I’m trying to keep up with the changes to language.
Yes, it’s a strategy to make low frequency events seem like major problems
Isn’t there a physical description of Jesus in the Bible that says his skin is the color of bronze and his hair was wooly like a sheep? 🤔
That was Revelations, which was written far after anyone who ever saw Jesus would have died, and describes Jesus’ divine form. The only gospel that describes anything about him was about a transformation. “His face shown like the sun,” but that is in Luke, so between 50 and 80 years after his purported death, and continued to be edited throughout the second century. So essentially it’s all made up and none of it matters.
I remember when I learned all the gospels were written decades after the “fact.”
I can’t remember what I ate for lunch yesterday, and we are supposed to believe people played a game of telephone for a few decades and got everything correct when writing it down?
Sure, Jan.
The fact that the Egyptians never kept the Israelites as slaves negates the entire story IMO.
The gospels were, while written decades after the fact, written by people who were alive at the time. It’s not really a game of telephone.
It turns out that when a guy dies in his early 30s, most of his buddies are still alive 30-50yrs later.
I think the majority consensus is that none of the Gospels were written by contemporaries of Jesus, and they were edited and changed up to 200 years after his death.
They were changed much, much longer than 200 years.
Hell, the book of Mark, the oldest version we have (that both Mathew and Luke are copied from) has a completey different ending and vibe than what he have now
A grumpy, almost cynical Jesus who gets annoyed pretty often that people don’t listen to him or his instructions. It’s hilarious.
What’s also wild to me is if these were buddies of Jesus, they had this story of his birth, then nothing for thirty years, then a couple things, then death.
Where are all the stories about teenage Jesus doing sick jumps off a camel or whatever? We are missing a few decades of knowledge about this supposed most important person ever.
There are about 30 gospels that didn’t make it into the final version of the Bible, some talk about a little about it.
Most were ordered destroyed and not rediscovered until pretty recently in Egypt.
I’m not a Christian, just someone with an interest in it. There’s pretty much no doubt Jesus was someone who actually was alive, but what we have concerning his “story” could possibly be an algamation of different people who led both a religious and social revolution at the time
One theory suggests that Jesus actually has a brother who looked strikingly similar (James) enough to actually pull off pretending to be him.
Which would explain after his death why people purported to have seen him. Possibly a tactic to keep the revolution alive
None of the Gospels were written by the apostles. They didn’t even have names until much, much later. I’m talking centuries.
Life expectancy was also much shorter
Mathew and Luke are both just re-writes of Mark. Mark is the oldest out of them all, and the oldest surviving versions we have are not designated a name.
It was a marketing ploy much later to give each gospel a name of one of his apostles to give them more credibility.
Some parts of Mathew and Luke are even word for word copies from Mark, which suggests that they are revisions from a different party who decided to edit in their own ideas.
Hell, the original version of Mark actually has a different ending than the one we got in the modern Bible.
John comes much, much later which is why it’s so different than the other three. It’s Spaceballs.
None of the Gospels were written by anyone who personally knew him.
Yeshua Hamashiach, the person modern Christianity knows as Jesus, rumor according to records that have been found, show not only did Yeshua actually exist, they were likely light skinned. That doesn’t mean they were white, and since we have no living person to question, and assuming the romans were being correct in their documents(I think romans, I’m being lazy and not looking it up, also it might be buried in a tome somewhere, or a history journal where they classified someone known as Yeshua Hamashiach as roman inflection or some such meaning lighter skinned), Yeshua might have been somewhere between Ricky Ricardo and the Weekend. Also I’ve never found a lick of evidence for turning water into wine, so not saying the miracles are true or not(miracles can happen, tho I do wonder how many miracles would actually be miracles if we just understood the actual process taking place), but Yeshua Hamashiach, aka Jesus seems to have actually existed. Probably a granola eating hippy type that preached about equality, and freedom for all, and was the first to do so and melted everyone’s damn mind…
Oh, well if there’s a rumor…
Also, “Hamashiach” means the exact same thing that “Christ” means- “messiah.” It wasn’t his name. His name would have been his name and then the name of his father, like any Jew. And since people didn’t generally agree with him on who he claimed his father was, he would have been Yeshua bin Yosef.
Incidentally, if you are going to go with Hamashiach as his title, it means “anointed one” (as does messiah). You know who else has been anointed by holy oil? Donald Hamashiach Trump.
In todays standard Jesus would be a communist.
ICE would say “Papers, please” to him
I think “Gotcha, filthy Mexican!” would be more likely
They can tell the difference between a Hispanic person and a Middle Easterner. I know because they call the latter group an extremely offensive racist slur while wearing their ICE gear.
In all fairness, most men named Jesus they would come across are either Mexican or have Mexican ancestry.
https://www.biblestudying.net/communal_living.html
Pretty much.
Lemmy moment
People also think that Jesus was all love and light and goodness because they ignore or don’t know about the other parts about Jesus.
Like when he says, just two verses after the famous John 3:16 verse, that you worship him or go to hell:
18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son
Then there’s him being super racist:
21 Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. 22 A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.”
23 Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”
24 He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”
25 The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said.
26 He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”
Mark 15:21-28
Or when he says in Matthew 19 that you can only divorce a woman (and, of course, a woman can’t divorce a man) if she’s cheating on you, essentially condoning domestic violence:
8 Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. 9 I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”
There’s more where that came from.
I’m sure some Christian would be happy to come in here and hand wave it all away with being out of context or misinterpreted or whatever. And yet quoting the Bible out of context happens every time they go to their church and they have no issues.
People most often praise Jesus for the Golden Rule. He didn’t invent it.
The bible contradicts itself a few times. I think ultimately faith is faith based. (shocking I know)
The golden rule is so stupid too, I want to be left alone, should I leave people alone? My friend likes people coming to his place unannounced, should he come to places unanounced?
It’s like everyone takes the rule and twists it so it benefits/excuses how they live and do.
Oof. Where do I begin? You actually incorrectly cited the source of the verse you are quoting, so we’re off to a great start.
First off, you’ve incorrectly cited the verse to Mark 15:21-28 which is about Jesus’ crucifixion instead of Matthew 15:21-28 which you also sneakily removed the last two verse (27, 28) which are necessary to understand the context.
27 “Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”
28 Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.
Also, Jesus alludes to his Parable of The Lost Sheep (Matthew 18:10-14, Luke 15:3-7) when he said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel”. In this context, the Canaanite woman in Matthew 15 is just one of many lost sheep.
In regards to marital divorce in Matthew 19; yea, this one is pretty easy if we take into consideration that social customs have been continuously evolving. The first verse in Matthew 18 begins with Pharisees attempting to catch Jesus in an ideological “gotcha”.
“Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”
Jesus responds by saying, “…they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Keep in mind, when the Israelites were autonomous from foreign rule, they imposed the death penalty to those who committed adultery. It wasn’t until Moses that the concept of a divorce certificate was created, eliminating death to adulterers, which was a socially progressive move for that ancient time period. After all, you can’t create the act of divorce without first creating the act of marriage. I’ll continue with Matthew 19:7:
“Why then,” the Pharisees asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?” Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning.”
The hearts of the people during Moses’ time had become hardened, cold, unsympathetic to those who committed adultery and sentenced them to death. The certificate of divorce that Moses proposed allowed for the hearts of people to soften instead of, you know, killing in the name of law.
So, when the Pharisees present this question to Jesus, he doesn’t actually say anything about whether women can or cannot divorce their husband, as you seem to imply. Jesus simply explains the history of the Pharisees’ own religious law back to them. They wanted him to take a definitive side so they could have him arrested for heresy and he didn’t take that bait.
Hey, I called it.
Well, you did incorrectly cited your source and disingenuously remove the last two verses of the passage you were trying to attack.
Adding a tag at the end of your comment that “some Christian is going to tell me I’m quoting out of context or misinterpreting the text” doesn’t dispel you of literally doing those things. Also, I didn’t “handwave” away your argument. I systematically approached each of your points and rebutted them with the correct sources.
