The Passion of the Christ

[Keith_Hixson]

No Historical or Scholarly evidence exists that Jesus was ever married. The theological implications of that is beyond imagination.

Keith

[BLUEHAWK]

Keith,

I suppose the implications are fairly serious in one way of thinking about the idea... but then maybe mo' betta for Christianity in the long run?

My fingers aren't any longer on the books (and they were not novels or science fiction :-), but the histories I read several years ago showed pretty convincing evidence that our Christ was an Essene as a young man (i.e. from about age 12 - late twenties) in and around the wadis of Palestine and Judea, working as a mason (with wood, too, for structural/form support), his sect probably had something vital to do with the Dead Sea Scrolls getting written and/or hidden, was a full blown "scholar" of the Old Testament or at least an ardent practitioner, and had a regular almost lifelong liaison with Mary Magdalene... though I have not seen (or cannot recall to mind) any attempt to date or place their actual marriage. The thing about them having 3 (or some say 4) children is fairly rarely claimed... and I remember thinking how unlikely it was that if so, then no mention of the kids appears in Gospels.

However, having said that, it would make sense that if a group of devotees (of which St. Paul was the leader) intended to present an image of Jesus as a perfect and only Son of God, then his birth and life would need to be miraculous too, in order to keep with the mythology... sorta like the way the Aztecs and Inca presented their kings... anyhow, that's what the evidence seems to suggest.

Either way, Jesus did seem to me, from what little of his own words we actually have to go by, to be a blessed man, but an ordinary man like the rest of us... one who had uncountable courage, and saw or did things with his life that nobody else in his time (or ours!) could possibly even dream.

[Keith_Hixson]

All this nonsense about Jesus and Mary Magdalene is really base on several Dark Age Novels written to appear as gospels. The scholarly community has done numerous age tests on these "books" and the oldest is around 600 AD. All of the New Testament books have copies going back into the first century AD. The basic conclusion is that these supposedly historical documents are "practical jokes" fictional reading of the time.

Anti Christians and the Jews quoted them as fact, because they just didn't care for Christian theology. However, there is no proof that they ever existed in antiquity. Therefore Biblical scholars have long ago discounted them as being athentic. Liberal scholars recently and some programs on the History channel have looked at the "other gospels" and almost came up with the conclusions you mention. Those conclusion are indeed built upon a fictional record. Good novels of the day, made to look like the real thing. Even older documents once considered for the Canon of Scripture always supported the divinity of Christ and His celebacy. Until recently this has never been an issue. But people will believe what they want but the facts don't support your opinion.
The gospels are the most document of all ancient documents and as history are very reliable.
The writings of all the New Testament, not just Paul, support the idea of Jesus being the Sinless lamb of God.
Another far fetched idea not base on fact but fiction from the Middle Ages, is that Paul and his friends were the only ones believing in Jesus as being the Christ.



Keith

[PHO127]

Kind of like the Titanic, I already know how it ends.

[SEATJERKER]

...Probably won't see it for years, if at all,...

...I know that our Lord died on the cross for everyone many years ago,...

... That is what I was taught from my parents,...

... That is what their parents taught them,...

... That is what their parents taught them,...

...etc, etc, etc,


......Word of mouth by millions down through the passages of time,...

...

[BLUEHAWK]

Blessed brother Keith...

We will always be together, as one brotherhood... but it is not correct to say either that, "the facts do not support...", when some facts certainly do, nor to say that is was my "opinion".

Brother Keith, I did not come up with those ideas myself, nor did I seek them out, nor did they come from my having read ancient books, other than the Holy Bible of course There is a surplus, today, of scientific, factual, historically-based scholarly literature which suggests, I repeat, SUGGESTS, some(and more) of the little bit I have come to embrace about the true life of our Saviour.

Isaac Asimov wrote two very difficult and dense volumes about the history of old and new testaments, as they were written, and when written, in accordance with known things pertinent to the era. It would be very difficult for me, and perhaps for you or others, to imagine writing a wholly accurate (to say nothing of it being "perfect") account of anything, not one thing, 100 years or more after the event. Our beloved Bible is said to have THE only version, yet there are and have been many versions written, sometimes at tragic cost in human life.

Again, I come to this conversation from the vantage point of being the son and grandson and step-grandson of respected Methodist ministers, and the great-nephew of an old school Elder in our home town Church of Christ.

To my eye and heart, trying to follow the teachings of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount (if it is anywhere close to accurately transcribed 100 years later as told in scripture), it would seem that he was advising us to not deify him, but to praise God from whom all blessings flow. He gave his life for that precept, against the Elders of his own people, and for that he was slain by them and by those who profited from his forced absence.

At least inferentially, Jesus spoke out most strongly against what we today would call sectarianism, or denominationism... for he rightly saw how those comforts defy the will of God.

As he said, too, in so many words, there is but one God, who reigneth over all; Jew and Gentile, Moslem and Buddhist, Agnostic and Atheist, Native tribes and Urban ones, who takes special care of children, drunks and the infirm.

A parting thought... my beloved great-uncle Porter (a died-in-the-wool Ozark man) sown in the faith like seed upon God's earth, so often admonished me (and everyone) to take the Gospel literally, and so I did. I sat at his feet as a child on our dairy farms, and later in the church house pews in rapt attention to our familial spiritual CINC... whose church house my family built with our own hands, and whose previous house of God our forebears had built likewise from other stuff at Beef Branch (still standing) in the late 19th century.

One day I came to Beef Branch with my lady, to learn and listen, to share communion with (mostly) members of my own very very large family. Being rightly baptized in the holy waters of Shoal Creek by none other than Elder Porter, with all able members in standing witness...

I was told, TOLD, by his successor Elder, that my presence in the church our family built and nurtured to this very day was unwelcome Keith. My mother, my grandmother, her only sibling sister, all my cousins and nephews have given, and still do, their lives to those church houses and to the teachings of Jesus, as do I. I was cast out Keith, made anathema and excommunicated (in effect) from "my" own church house.

Why? Because I was living with a woman not my lawful wife. She was a fine person Keith, and I strove to do right by her... eventually she rejected me.

I knew beforehand that since I had not been the husband of only one wife, I would be excluded from any part in the Eldership of my own church. That is fine.
One pays for one's own errors, and God knows I have truly made a fair bit more than the share I should have made. But still, being shunned as I was that day struck me as being against Jesus' teachings (if I might think I could know what those teachings were after Paul got through with interpreting them )

So, brother Keith whom I respect deeply, tell me please how my church could shun me and Jesus welcome me into his own heart... and there not be SOME kind of discrepancy between what Jesus taught and what he is said to have taught, and done with his own life?

[melody1181]

Well I went and watched it today. I know words can be powerful...but I think in this day in age alot of folks need visual stimulation to get it through there thick skulls. This movie was a very moving thing to watch.

[BLUEHAWK]

Right Melody!

A man, a human man, suffered terribly and then he died a horrible awful tortured death... with his wife and mother at his feet, asking God to forgive them who knew not what they did.

Praise be...

[Arrow]

To many people in one place for me...

Keith,

You're agentleman and a scholar not to mention a patientpastor. Thank you.

Curtis,

Might be true ofsome but no one passed nothin' to me concerning my faith. As a matter of fact the harm done me by those professing to know Christwas so devasting that it would have turned any one away from faith.

The last part of my growing up was in a place where people thought God's last name was damn it. So not much of chance there either. Don't ask me little brother where my faith came from but I'm guessin' that somebody somewhere saw I was in big trouble as a kid and said a word or two of prayer for me.

It's a darn good thing they did because my faith in the death and resurrection of the Christ and his Word have carried me through some mighty rough waters. Some people see faith as a crutch for weak people. I can't deny it. I lean on it every day that I live to get me through.

Arrow>>>>>>>

[BLUEHAWK]

Blessed beloved friends here on this mother earth... Jesus was a man, just a man like us, a homo sapien with wants and needs just like ours (so he himself said over and over again, we are told in scripture... nobody would listen then, and few are hearing now).

The primitive unions available to a mason back then demanded no dues in money... and they gave no bennies at all I hear. Yet and still (as Marine PFC John Jordan used to say), the buildings got built