30 verses of Bible say " Jesus did not die on the Cross".

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muhammad_isa said:
No .. Jesus did not teach those creeds .. they were invented by men to distinguish "true believers" from heretics.
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Avoided all the questions in my previous two posts ...
 
muhammad_isa said:
The answer to your 2 questions is "no".
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If Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate, why should the fact not be included in the Apostles creed? It's you who bought it up ...
 
Thomas said:
LOL, you make it sound as if it's something bad.
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Depending on the intention, it might be..
It seems as if the intention is to focus our attention on the crucifixion..
..and make that the heart of belief.

Certainly, the Romans didn't want to focus on the same things as the Ebionites, for example.
 
muhammad_isa said:
the intention is to focus our attention on the crucifixion..
..and make that the heart of belief.
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What did Jesus say that it should not be so? He foretold his death and resurrection in all the gospels, and both his death and resurrection are recorded in all the gospels. The same people who recorded the words of Christ, also recorded his crucifixion and resurrection as central to their accounts. The message of the life and death and resurrection are central to all the books of the New Testament.

Paul wrote before the Apostles creed was formulated. He was the first Christian writer. He spent time with Peter and James, Jesus's brother, and together with John, who had also known Jesus very well, they all accepted him as an apostle. They all accepted the crucifixion and resurrection as central to Christ's message to mankind as Emmanuel, God with us.
 
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muhammad_isa said:
Depending on the intention, it might be..
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LOL, you do love a conspiracy!

muhammad_isa said:
It seems as if the intention is to focus our attention on the crucifixion..
..and make that the heart of belief.
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Can you explain how? There are twelve propositions in the Creed, the crucifixion is one of them, not even first place.

muhammad_isa said:
... didn't want to focus on the same things as the Ebionites, for example.
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Well the Ebionites, among others, disagree with Apostolic Tradition, so indeed, the Creed was a means of stating Orthodox belief in the face of errors and assumptions.
 
Thomas said:
Well the Ebionites, among others, disagree with Apostolic Tradition, so indeed, the Creed was a means of stating Orthodox belief in the face of errors and assumptions.
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Exactly, the creed was designed to establish certain beliefs about Jesus.

Since historical records by the Ebionites are scarce, fragmentary and disputed, much of what is known or conjectured about them derives from the Church Fathers who saw all Jewish Christians as Ebionites and confused different groups in their polemics whom they labeled heretical "Judaizers".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebionites

The above speaks for itself. The Romans did not want to promote any religion close to Judaism.
What better way to divert attention by death on a cross and being G-d himself?
 
muhammad_isa said:
Exactly, the creed was designed to establish certain beliefs about Jesus.

Since historical records by the Ebionites are scarce, fragmentary and disputed, much of what is known or conjectured about them derives from the Church Fathers who saw all Jewish Christians as Ebionites and confused different groups in their polemics whom they labeled heretical "Judaizers".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebionites

The above speaks for itself. The Romans did not want to promote any religion close to Judaism.
What better way to divert attention by death on a cross and being G-d himself?
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But Christianity as a sect of Judaism advocated by Ebionites or others was rolled over by the tidal wave of Christianity for everyone. It is the parable of the good Samaritan. Christianity very quickly flowed over the established breakwater walls. It happened long before the creeds were written, and centuries before Nicea.

Obviously there were Jewish based factions that didn't like what was happening. But it caught hold all the same. It broke the boundaries. It can't all be blamed on Paul

There are still people who don't like it or accept the idea, imo
 
Eucharistic Christianity was everywhere long before Constantine, as recorded by several Roman writers such as Pliny the Younger, Tacitus and Celcus and others, who were hostile. It couldn't be stopped, no matter how they were persecuted and murdered. Rome tried but couldn't stem the tide. Constantine just gave into the inevitable, imo

There are people who for their own vested reasons just cannot accept or tolerate that resurrection Christianity is real, not faked, and they will continue to argue against against it till the end of time, but it's like Canute raging against the sea, imo
 
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Not to say men have not abused and committed evil in the name of Christianity. I'm sure the same is true for all great religions.
 
badger said:
Jesus was not a teacher or the people would have understood him better. He was no teacher.
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I do think that the New Testament does not paint a very flattering portrayal of Jesus's teaching abilities.

He uses a lot of vague and ambiguous metaphors that seem to have caused confusion and sectarianism almost immediately after his death by Paul's account. He also had a habit of calling other people foolish when he failed to explain a concept to them well.

Most of what he says are just assertions. There's not really a lot of reasoning behind his claims outside of appeals to his own authority. Also not a sign of a good teacher.
 
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RJM said:
To be clear, I use the word spiritual as concerned mostly with the unseen world, opposed to the physical and material world. I'm sure you can find out-of-context passages to prove Jesus Christ a worldly and material man, and I can find the passages to contradict them -- but honestly it's such a futile exercise it's not worth serious consideration, imo
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Unseen World....? I think that puts your use of the word 'spiritual' in its correct place.

Jesus was most certainly a worldly man, but he was not materialistic. Maybe that is a true description of what a Christian is.... in this world but NOT materialistic. I don't know any.........
 
RJM said:
In other words for the aqueducts to be of Roman construction, Pilate and his troops needed to lay the stones themselves -- with their own hands? I don't know where you're trying to go with this?
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I was trying to discover more about the aqueducts around Jerusalem. I asked a question about these. I asked another member who might know about them.

But Pilate would resent a wanabee revolutionary jeopardizing his main function as legate -- which was to keep things peaceful in order to ensure the smooth flow of tax money to Rome, imo

The temple intervention was not mentioned at Jesus's trial by Pilate or by the Jews, so perhaps it's wasn't such a main event at the time? A storm in a teacup?
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Are you suggesting that causing mayhem in Anna's Bazaar, criminal damage and violence...by Jesus and his followers, followed by picketing the Temple Courts........ 2 days running, was a storm in a teacup?
 
RJM said:
To suffer death by suffocation hanging nailed from a cross with broken legs was quicker than a spear thrust?
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And with less effort? And a more effective way to kill? Is that what you are suggesting?
So that's why they didn't do that to the other convicts.....
How's this working for you?
 
Thomas said:
Who was absent for most of Pilate's reign. But have you evidence of his sympathies?
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On the occasions that there was no Legate in adjacent Syria, then Pilate would have received supervision either direct from Rome or from a 2ic, I'm guessing. Or do you have more information to show that Pilate was more than a Prefect?

I think it was a 'you scratch my back' situation – Pilate kept Caiaphas in office his entire reign, which was not common, and as soon as Pilate was recalled, Caiphas was out.
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I don't think that the Prefect controlled the position of Chief Priest. He wasn't allowed in the Temple, either.
 
Thomas said:
"New research (Dec 2021) suggests that the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate is the one that built the Biar Aqueduct, the most sophisticated ancient aqueduct of the Jerusalem area..." Haaretz

""He (Pilate) spent money from the sacred treasury in the construction of an aqueduct to bring water into Jerusalem (principally, his palace), intercepting the source of the stream at a distance of thirty-five kilometers. The Jews did not acquiesce in the operations that this involved; and tens of thousands of men assembled and cried out against him, bidding him relinquish his promotion of such designs. Some too even hurled insults and abuse of the sort that a throng will commonly engage in. He thereupon ordered a large number of soldiers to be dressed in Jewish garments, under which they carried clubs, and he sent them off this way and that, thus surrounding the Jews, whom he ordered to withdraw. When the Jews were in full torrent of abuse he gave his soldiers the prearranged signal. They, however, inflicted much harder blows than Pilate had ordered, punishing alike both those who were rioting and those who were not. But the Jews showed no faint-heartedness; and so, caught unarmed, as they were, by men delivering a prepared attack, many of them actually were slain on the spot, while some withdrew disabled by blows. Thus ended the uprising." (Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 18:60-62 and again in The Jewish War 2:175-177).

"Analysis of the samples indicates the aqueduct was likely built in the early first century C.E. and was refurbished in the second century after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. As such, the team suggests that the Bier Aqueduct could be the same aqueduct attributed to Pontius Pilate by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. According to Josephus, Pilate used money from the Temple’s treasury to build the aqueduct, which led to riots in the city (Antiquities 18.60–62). Despite several aqueducts feeding into the Temple area, the Bier fed into the upper city where the governor’s palace would have been located, thus perhaps explaining Josephus’s reference to the riots that broke out across the city." (emphasis mine. Biblical Archaeology Society)
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Thank you very much for that info. The Romans surely were the most amazing civil engineers, right across the lands that they occupied.
Do you think that this seizure of Temple funds happened during the time of Jesus or afterwards? The report suggests that these troubles happened after the time of Jesus, maybe involving the actions that caused Pilate's recall?
It certainly shows that Pilate was not at all empathic about the Great Temple, or it's priesthood. This tends to show just how strained relations were between Pilate and Temple.

Without doubt, he enjoyed any upsets that were caused to Temple of Priesthood. I don't think that he 'got on' very well with the Tetrarchs, either.
 
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