Looking for brothers and sisters in Jesus
in Spirituality ·
Anthony Perez9 said:Not many at all, maybe a few pages tops. And most of that is just recycled stuff from the Old Testament: "It was written..." or "He said..."
Which leads me to think there wasn't actually such a guy walking around back then in Israel. The magic tricks and the whole miraculous birth without a man—that's clearly just myth, along with all the sorcery like walking on waves or those loaves and fishes that magically appeared out of nowhere to feed thousands of Jews. It’s the same fairy tale found in the Old Testament, just copied over.
I don't think it's some massive lie, it's more like some Greek writer who made up the name Mark just composed an instructional spiritual parable about the Messiah appearing.
And people, being people, love magic and literalism. They love following God and divine heroes as ultimate authorities so they don't have to think for themselves, so that story turned into a belief that it actually happened. But it didn't, obviously.What specific teachings or instructions are we talking about?
There aren't any. It's all just cheap peasant parables like: "see clouds coming, a storm is near," or "cut off your hand if it leads you to sin"...You know, like in Buddhist or Zoroastrian texts—not interpretations by various spiritual scholars or philosophers, but direct words from Jesus himself.
The fairy tale says Jesus rose from the dead and finally "explained everything" to His clueless disciples over 40 days. It would've been great if someone had actually recorded what this post-resurrection Jesus was saying during "Jesus's teaching" once they finally saw the supernatural apparition. But nobody wrote down a single word about it. All we get is the heart-wrenching story about the "evil" Jews who plotted to kill Jesus and actually "succeeded."
Basically, a religious fairy tale. A myth... ☕
https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/Christ-Teaching
https://www.jesusfilm.org/blog/parables-of-jesus/
Sure, those lists exist, but let's be real—there are endless versions out there, and who knows how many are even accurate? 🤷
It feels like later Christian scholars just went overboard, inventing all these deep philosophical layers by pulling meanings out of thin air, totally ignoring the actual context.
Luke tells us that people were astonished at Jesus’s teaching because He taught like someone with authority. This is particularly impressive when you consider the fact that Jesus’s teachings and stories were so simple. WE often have The mistaken View that The more intelligent and complex an idea sounds, the more impressive it is. Jesus didn’t see it that way.
The parables of Jesus made The wisdom of god accessible. His teaching wasn’t pretentious or unnecessarily complicated. And because of that, Jesus made the kingdom of god attainable for everyone.
That's all well and good, but it almost sounds like an excuse to me. 🤷
In my opinion, we really ought to draw a line between what's actually found in the Bible and the stuff theologians come up with.
It doesn't take away from Christianity—there is plenty of beautiful stuff in Christian philosophy and faith—but I just wish there was more substance to dig into! Maybe that's why there's such a massive fascination with the Bible and Christianity in the first place; there's just so little to work with!