Quote:
Originally Posted by SpareBen
Your Joshua point is mind-blowing.
I retract my claim to disprove. There's a lot of "in me" and "in you" on that link, and it has been interpreted in many ways. My original point stands. I wrote that Jesus didn't claim to be God. Keith said he absolutely did. Keith the the one whose point cannot be proven. But hey, I've gotten atheists to argue in favor of Jesus being God. My work here is done.
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Dude.
Atheists are trying to correct a claim that you made about Jesus which goes against almost all Christian theology and scripture. Just because we have better theological understanding than you doesn't mean we believe it ourselves. Part of the reason so many people are 'strong' atheists (as opposed to someone who grew up not attending church) is that we *did* study all this from the inside. Our studies finally convinced us it's all bullshit.
This link (not that you'll read it) has a lot of good detail on how and why Jesus claimed to be God, and why all who heard him speak understood that this is what he was claiming. I copied a lot of scripture, but I'll just use one example since you probably aren't reading this thread any more...
Is Jesus God?
John 5:17-18
17 But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”
18 This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father,
making himself equal with God. (ESV)
More importantly, while you may not find Jesus being quoted as directly, explicitly saying "I am God" neither will you find him saying "No, I'm not God!" in spite of all the people around him coming to that conclusion. There is more on that topic in the link above.
Having said all that, no, I don't believe that most of this is true, starting with Jesus being an actual historical person.
Having said ALL THAT - this is just what is in the Bible. If you look outside the Bible, and if you forensically analyze all the early scripture, ONLY THEN can you start to say that Jesus didn't claim to be God. But at that point you're outside of any sort of traditional Christianity, so maybe that is where Spare Ben is coming from? No idea.
The Jesus Seminar did a lot of work in this area - one of their conclusions is this:
"Eighty-two percent of the words ascribed to Jesus in the gospels were not actually spoken by him, according to the Jesus Seminar."
This is some fascinating reading, if you're into the academic angle and forensics and shit:
https://www.westarinstitute.org/proj...ings-of-jesus/