ksazma posted:D2 posted:I often told you, there is the need to discover what is said for its truths and a need to have basic tools to be critical on the onset. One satisfies their needs and creates their world view from these approach. You are in the latter.
Jesus is profound. He is direct. He is simple and penetrating. He connects the distant past of his people to the present and directs them on a path to the future. The sermon on the mount is one of the places one can find all of this and it is where he has the most sustained dialog. It is structurally the most beautiful poetic utterances about the principles for a good and moral approach to living.
It is the place where most Christians concentrate on to get the seminal understanding of the faith and it contains some of the worlds most recognizable phrases that practically everyone living has heard them and they immediately grasps its understanding.
It includes the famous beatitudes and the lords prayer. This section is not only vast in its scope and profound philosophically; anyone from any religion or not can grasp its truths.
D2, wouldn't you agree that almost everything Christians think of Jesus are what is said of him and not what he actually said or did? No doubt there are volumes written about Jesus but as one analyzes them it becomes very clear that they are assumptions of who/what Jesus is and not what the Bible actually records him saying or doing. In fact, the negative things he said and did are more clearly recorded in the Bible. Indeed, most of what Christians think of Jesus is what Paul wrote of him and not what he actually did. Don't you agree?
- Based on the account in the Bible, Jesus did not teach much and did even less.
That is what I am responding to now. The other digression can wait. I give you specific examples of his profundity. I said he was conscious of his theological legacy and punctuated his preaching with emphasis on how what was discussed mattered and in general terms that they are prescient across time and across cultures.
Pauline theosophy is another thing for another time but there I disagree with you also because while he did indeed impressed a world view on Christianity it was in the methodology of his proselytizing and not because he invented christian history or words for Jesus.
Paul was a an educated jew and his arguments with James and the Jerusalem church and his confronting of Peter in Antioch was to emphasize Christ and Christianity not Judaism even if he admits to a continuum. Anyway the above is what concerns me. I do not have time but will respond as time permits.