Well, for my shekels, I prefer the Nazarene's contemporary Seneca's good teachings for how to live as superior in every way to the "Sermon on the Mount" & "Kingdom of God" preachings of the crucified, rabble-rousing, street rabbi.

Can you blame his tendencies though? Oppressive tax collectors, leadership that was nominally Jewish (Herod), and ones that were flaunting pagan symbols (Roman standards) and corrupt priesthood. However, the status quo may have been better than the revolt that resulted in destruction and exile. It's all about context. We tend to universalize it. Paul seemed to start that trend.

The issue l addressed is the questionable merits of Christ's preachings and not "his tendencies" (whatever they were) or "the oppressive ... status quo".

Right, but I was just wondering if his teachings were mainly a response to what was taking place. At least, as much as we can surmise of the ever-so-buried "historical" Jesus of 1st century Judea under the rule of Herod Antipas and Roman procurators.

No doubt they were.

Cool. We are on the same page I think. That's all I was getting at. So I guess to put it together with your other ideas of better philosophers, I don't think Jesus' ideas were even really relevant beyond his immediate surroundings and the people of the community of that time and space. Greek philosophers, like Plato, and such were meant to be doing universalized philosophy. They were intentionally creating theories of metaphysics and epistemology that though came out of a particular culture, was less relevant to "being Greek" at some time an place, and more about just "understanding the world" (however wrong or right they might be about their ideas of the world).

:up:

I agree. Jesus did not start the messianic movement. It is a mode of escapism that was transformed into what some of the hopeful took to be the truth in action, while others still wait.

There is what I take to be a reasonable and not necessarily secular alternative, human responsibility.

I agree. Jesus did not start the messianic movement. It is a mode of escapism that was transformed into what some of the hopeful took to be the truth in action, while others still wait.

There is what I take to be a reasonable and not necessarily secular alternative, human responsibility. — Fooloso4

Yeah. It does seem that he formed communal societies of sorts where pooling resources and charity and such was a thing. Perhaps, this was in imitation of Israelite prophetic books and their exhortations of corrupt kings. Clearly, he is borrowing from John the Baptists' ideas, who in turn seems to have cultivated a slight innovation or variation of sects like the Dead Sea Scroll sect.

However, his message of the Son of Man, and better days at a future Kingdom of God that will be ushered in "very soon", seem to undermine his more earthly efforts to establish proto-communes of sorts (if he did that at all). My guess is he was educated to some extent as a Hillelite Pharisee, based on his interpretations of Law. At some point he joined John's more "action over theory" Essenic splinter group and essentially carried those ideas out mixing it with his Pharisaic understanding of following Mosaic law. The unfortunate part of being mixed up with John's ideas is the idea of an immanent End of Times coming soon. Thus, again, the communal aspects were thwarted by the apocalyptic aspects.

I do realize this is all very speculative, but using Occam's Razor to the context of time and place. Clearly Galileans and Judeans of the lower classes (the Jews of 1st century Palestine in general) were not doing well under Roman and Herodian rule, and hopeful figures talking of better times and more charitable acts, and elites being last, seemed appealing. I'll give him a B- for effort and balancing the two ideas. He would have gotten an A if he stuck with the action and less of the "Son of Man coming at the End of Times" :wink:.

With regard to an alternative I was thinking of a movement in American Judaism beginning in the 19th century: "tikkun olam,” a Hebrew phrase meaning “repairing the world.”. Rather than a messianic figure who arrives, it is up to the people to act.

Whatever Jesus might have taught, the crucifixion became the central focus, and Paul's Christ the central teaching. It was a much more attractive story promising Heaven on Earth to everyone without requiring any of the work or effort of following the Law.

However, his message of the Son of Man, and better days at a future Kingdom of God that will be ushered in "very soon", seem to undermine his more earthly efforts to establish proto-communes of sorts (if he did that at all). — schopenhauer1

I agree. I think this is why Paul closed his eyes and turned his back. He decided the Law does not matter. Do your best, which is not much given his opinion of man's weakness and sinful nature, but don't worry. Be joyful it is all about to end at any moment and the faithful will be saved.

With regard to an alternative I was thinking of a movement in American Judaism beginning in the 19th century: "tikkun olam,” a Hebrew phrase meaning “repairing the world.”. Rather than a messianic figure who arrives, it is up to the people to act. — Fooloso4

Indeed, probably a better version, but let's not anachronize it to Jesus' time when ideas of a messiah were very fluid. Son of Man / Enoch tradition seemed to have popularity. I believe Son of Man is/was still popular in even Hasidic and Kabbalistic writings. The Metatron tradition probably came from this. Merkabah mysticism was popular in the early centuries of the common era in Rabbinic circles, for example. Metatron was a central figure in Enoch 3, and associated with Enoch as his transformed angel counterpart. That tells of Rabbi Ishmael's "ascent" into the divine realms, etc. This is much later literature though. Certainly parts of Enoch 1 were around the time of Jesus as is attested in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Anyways, my point here is don't discount apocalypticism as an important element of even mainstream "Judaisms" of 1st century Judea, even ones that eventually became Rabbinic Judaism post-Temple. The Son of Man was the angel that judged people at the end of times and wrote good and bad deeds, etc. Again, associated with Enoch and then Metatron. So, this is all to say, Jesus was probably not something akin to a post-Enlightenment Reformed Jew :wink:.

I agree. I think this is why Paul closed his eyes and turned his back. He decided the Law does not matter. Do your best, which is not much given his opinion of man's weakness and sinful nature, but don't worry. Be joyful it is all about to end at any moment and the faithful will be saved. — Fooloso4

Yeah certainly this was all original to Paul's ideas. He had the bizarre notion that you had to be perfect to follow the laws, so why bother. Nowhere before that did anyone presume such a thing. Rather, that was the point of constantly atoning at every holiday, the Sabbath, in prayer, at synagogues, etc. It was a way of constantly trying to follow the rules more closely. You didn't have to be perfect at it. I think gnostic ideas preceded Paul (as can be seen in writings akin to Philo), and Paul kind of took smatterings of Greco-Roman gnostic / Platonic ideas along with a good dose of Greco-Roman-Near Eastern resurrecting god cultic practices that were popular around the area of Tarsus and beyond.

but let's not anachronize it to Jesus' time — schopenhauer1

I agree. It was intended as a follow up to my comment:

while others still wait. — Fooloso4

The hope for a messiah, whether it is the second coming, or even a bloated orange savior, is still with us.

Anyways, my point here is don't discount apocalypticism as an important element of even mainstream "Judaisms" of 1st century Judea — schopenhauer1

Yes, this was the Messianic age. But I think it was Jesus through Paul's Christ who reversed this from the few who are righteous to all who have faith in and are saved by Christ. It was, I think, because of this that Jesus was believed to be the true messiah and all the others false. Without Paul I think it very likely the movement would have died out.

Paul kind of took smatterings of Greco-Roman gnostic / Platonic ideas along with a good dose of Greco-Roman-Near Eastern resurrecting god cultic practices that were popular around the area of Tarsus and beyond. — schopenhauer1

Plus a great talent for synthesis and rhetoric.

Agree with all of this. I am interested in your ideas on what the Son of Man (or son of man?) was at that 1st century time. Was it later interpolation or pre-Christian? I tend to think there was an odd element associated with the angel that came as fan-fiction literature from the Book of Daniel. Daniel could be interpreted as "son of man" meaning "the elect of Israel" (or just Israel), or it could have meant some real super-hero type angelic entity, The Son of Man.

Clearly it is from Daniel 7: 9-28.

I'm not sure how much of this is interpretation/projection after the fact (though I can find some quotes to support it), but I tend to understand a purer strain of Christianity in terms of the internalization of virtue.

Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man. https://biblehub.com/matthew/15-11.htm

You can break yesterday's food taboos, but your heart must be pure, as manifested here by what you say. But the essence is behind or beyond every external demonstration,

For they are actions that a man might play;
But I have that within which passes show,
These but the trappings and the suits of woe virtue
https://www.enotes.com/shakespeare-quotes/that-within-which-passes-show

Was this move from Jesus to Hamlet necessary ? Did Christianity contribute to a tradition of radical interiority? Infinite space in a nutshell ? God is love. God is a feeling. God becomes indeterminate. Supremely immaterial. Transconceptual. Music.

The true, albeit hidden, sense of the saying “Feeling is the organ of the divine” is that feeling is the noblest, the most excellent, i.e., the divine, in man. How could you perceive the divine through feeling if feeling itself were not divine? The divine can be known only through that which is itself divine – “God can be known only through himself.” The Divine Being perceived by feeling is in reality nothing but the being of feeling itself which is enraptured and fascinated by itself – feeling that is blissful in itself, intoxicated with joy.

This goes to explain that where feeling is made the organ of the infinite, the subjective essence of religion, the object of religion loses its objective value. — Feuerbach

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/feuerbach/works/essence/ec01_1.htm

Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man. — plaque flag

This sounds like Paul. It claims that the Law and the laws of Kosher are not important. Jesus' disciples split with him over this. They reached a compromise in which Paul would go away and preach elsewhere.

Did Christianity contribute to a tradition of radical interiority? — plaque flag

I think the majority of influence came from the various Greek and Roman schools of philosophy and Judaism. The latter at least in part due to persecution.

Based on past conversations, you know much more about this. A few general comments on gods and men. The status of some divine or semi-divine being is not clear. There is mash ups - did Jacob wrestle with God or an angel or a man (Genesis 32:24-30)? And smash ups - the sons of God and the daughters of men (Genesis 6:2).

This sounds like Paul. It claims that the Law and the laws of Kosher are not important. Jesus' disciples split with him over this. They reached a compromise in which Paul would go away and preach elsewhere. — Fooloso4

Actually, it's put in the mouth of the Jesus. I do remember talk of this stuff by Paul as well, and maybe that affected what got written ? Christ is the end of the law. I find that moving.

It is in direct contradiction to the Sermon on the Mount and the letter of the Law. My guess is the influence of Paul, which can b seen throughout the synoptic gospels.

Did Christianity contribute to a tradition of radical interiority? — plaque flag

One does not have to decide about the limits of the law (in regard to Paul's view) to see how Augustine made the issue about a personal choice.

And the idea that a person was a locus for changing or not changing things became a thing, set against a background of relentless continuity. The City of God versus the City of Men.

I am not ascribing to that view but think it is closer to what Feuerbach was talking about than the Gospels taken by themselves.

It is in direct contradiction to the Sermon on the Mount and the letter of the Law. My guess is the influence of Paul, which can b seen throughout the synoptic gospels. — Fooloso4

Oh I did notice the contradictions in that protagonist. Your guess is plausible.

Even with the contradictions (because of them?), it's a powerful tale.

One does not have to decide about the limits of the law (in regard to Paul's view) to see how Augustine made the issue about a personal choice. — Paine

Can you explain ?

I am not ascribing to that view but think it is closer to what Feuerbach was talking about than the Gospels taken by themselves. — Paine

To be clear, I did rip that Feuerbach quote out of context. I was also thinking of this, which never fails to move me.

If I understand anything at all about this great symbolist, it is this: that he regarded only subjective realities as realities, as “truths” —that he saw everything else, everything natural, temporal, spatial and historical, merely as signs, as materials for parables. The concept of “the Son of God” does not connote a concrete person in history, an isolated and definite individual, but an “eternal” fact, a psychological symbol set free from the concept of time. The same thing is true, and in the highest sense, of the God of this typical symbolist, of the “kingdom of God,” and of the “sonship of God.” ...the word “Son” expresses entrance into the feeling that there is a general transformation of all things (beatitude), and “Father” expresses that feeling itself—the sensation of eternity and of perfection.

The “kingdom of heaven” is a state of the heart—not something to come “beyond the world” or “after death.” The whole idea of natural death is absent from the Gospels: death is not a bridge, not a passing; it is absent because it belongs to a quite different, a merely apparent world, useful only as a symbol. The “hour of death” is not a Christian idea—“hours,” time, the physical life and its crises have no existence for the bearer of “glad tidings.”... The “kingdom of God” is not something that men wait for: it had no yesterday and no day after tomorrow, it is not going to come at a “millennium”—it is an experience of the heart, it is everywhere and it is nowhere....
...
This “bearer of glad tidings” died as he lived and taught—not to “save mankind,” but to show mankind how to live. It was a way of life that he bequeathed to man: his demeanour before the judges, before the officers, before his accusers—his demeanour on the cross. He does not resist; he does not defend his rights; he makes no effort to ward off the most extreme penalty—more, he invites it.... And he prays, suffers and loves with those, in those, who do him evil....
— Nietzsche

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/19322/19322-h/19322-h.htm

Jesus triumphs over the Resentment Industrial Complex. He transcends low emotions, fearless and loving hero of the flaming heart....

If I understand anything at all about this great symbolist .. — Nietzsche

So sayeth Nietzsche, this great symbolist and ironist and inverter of values.

This “bearer of glad tidings” died as he lived and taught - not to “save mankind,” but to show mankind how to live. It was a way of life that he bequeathed to man — Nietzsche

What is this way of life?

... a new way of life, the special evangelical way of life. It is not a “belief” that marks off the Christian; he is distinguished by a different mode of action; he acts differently ...

The life of the Saviour was simply a carrying out of this way of life—and so was his death.... He no longer needed any formula or ritual in his relations with God—not even prayer.

... he knew that it was only by a way of life that one could feel one’s self “divine,” “blessed,” “evangelical,” a “child of God.” The deep instinct which prompts the Christian how to live so that he will feel that he is “in heaven” and is “immortal,” despite many reasons for feeling that he is not “in heaven”: this is the only psychological reality in “salvation.”—A new way of life, not a new faith....

(33)

The question immediately arises: can we live this way? Such a way of life, if taken literally, is a turning of the will to power, the will to life, against itself.

But let us be careful not to see in all this anything more than symbolical language, semantics an opportunity to speak in parables. It is only on the theory that no work is to be taken literally that this anti-realist is able to speak at all.

...

The idea of “life” as an experience, as he alone conceives it, stands opposed to his mind to every sort of word, formula, law, belief and dogma. He speaks only of inner things: “life” or “truth” or “light” is his word for the innermost—in his sight everything else, the whole of reality, all nature, even language, has significance only as sign, as allegory.

(32)

Nietzsche's Jesus, the only Christian (39) is Dionysian.

So sayeth Nietzsche, this great symbolist and ironist and inverter of values. — Fooloso4

:up:

Yes. To be clear, Nietzsche's Christ is a literary creation. Nietzsche himself, as he let us know him through his books, is also such a protagonist/fiction/mask. No less than Hamlet he overheard himself, and in the same way he was then his only worthy audience. Summer porn posthumously.

What is this way of life? — Fooloso4

The triumph over resentment ? The triumph over system ? There's nothing there to refute. It looks like subrational or transconceptual mysticism to me --an extremely negative theology. Even the concepts God and Father are mere 'formal indications.'

How could you perceive the divine through feeling if feeling itself were not divine? The divine can be known only through that which is itself divine – “God can be known only through himself.” The Divine Being perceived by feeling is in reality nothing but the being of feeling itself which is enraptured and fascinated by itself – feeling that is blissful in itself, intoxicated with joy. — Feuerbach

He no longer needed any formula or ritual in his relations with God—not even prayer. The “kingdom of heaven” is a state of the heart—not something to come “beyond the world” or “after death.” ... The “kingdom of God” is not something that men wait for: it had no yesterday and no day after tomorrow, it is not going to come at a “millennium”—it is an experience of the heart, it is everywhere and it is nowhere.... — Nietzsche

The question immediately arises: can we live this way? — Fooloso4

This reminds me of Kojeve. This Christ is not unlike the skeptic who escapes into a 'free' interiority from the risk of life required for the attainment of genuine, worldly freedom. We philosophers are the heirs of this antithetical slavish ideology. For us the balcony. For kings the stage.

One does not have to decide about the limits of the law (in regard to Paul's view) to see how Augustine made the issue about a personal choice.
— Paine

Can you explain ? — plaque flag

Paul expected the world to change forever and the sooner the better.

By the time of Augustine, waiting for the change required an adjustment of expectations. A dual citizenship of sorts was encouraged. The cleanliness of the inside of the cup compared to the outside is now entangled with the future of the world.

Paul expected the world to change forever and the sooner the better.

By the time of Augustine, waiting for the change required an adjustment of expectations. — Paine

:up:

Ah. OK. So the end of the world was running late.

Or a beginning of a new one required more work than originally anticipated.

Project Management is born.

What do you make of the end of the world ? Is it important to your vision of Christianity ? Was/is it a wrong thing to expect ?

Christianity has come to be different things at different times to different people. Placing Feuerbach in a more specific context was a thought I had about how the personal became something different than what was expressed before.

The basis upon which that observation is made is not the same as how I see the matter by myself. I am not going to do that here.