(September 9, 2019 at 9:46 pm)Belaqua Wrote:(September 9, 2019 at 9:39 pm)Succubus Wrote: Of course the first one is true, its nice. The second one is obviously not true because...
That's the beginning of a hermeneutic method: to say that the nice ones are literal and the not-nice ones aren't. Personally, I don't find that method persuasive.
I think the passage from Matthew may well be literal, and I can be clear about the reasons.
It seems to me likely that the real Jesus was one of those holy men who radically give up the world and live in opposition to its traditions. There are still such men in India, and Greece had the example of Diogenes the Cynic and his followers. To recommend such extreme disconnection from the status quo would obviously cause a rift with one's family, if the rest of the family didn't go along.
Later Christians watered this down, and now we're to the point where many American Christians advocate more or less the opposite of this.
I understand that my interpretation can never be proven with certainty. But given what I know of the time and the rest of the NT, I think it is a plausible reading.
I think the best way to make sense of the real Jesus (if there ever was one) is as an apocalypticist, based on hints and indicators in the synoptic Gospels.
