RE: Contradiction or Forgetfulness
February 8, 2022 at 2:34 pm
(This post was last modified: February 8, 2022 at 2:35 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
No. I'm referring to the use of camels as a literary device in stories set before their domestication. Just as people take the stories that include this element as some kind of history, they presume that what magic books says jesus said is a history of his remarks. Such that we have two conflicting accounts of a historically factual nature. Neither is this case. The new testament cannot be read as the minutes of a meeting with god in the flesh.
Disparities between their accounts are not examples, even, of a "jesus-the-man" being inconsistent. It's an issue of an author using a literary device to narrate their ideological persuasions. If you dig into it, you'll find that you've quoted selections from at least five different authors. We don't think that all of these authors collaborated with or were fully appraised of the contents of each others work, separated by time, by community, by tradition, by opportunity. They did not (and could not) forget what they may not have known.
Still, I think we can charitably and credibly read the accounts in the synoptics as variations on a singular underlying theme. He comes off like a social activist. He sees the poor and the needy and the oppressed - he sees their effort, he sees inequality between the haves and have nots..and sides with the have nots as the possessors of true virtue. He tells people do do decent things for the least of us. By ephesians and acts...though.. jesus the activist is long dead, christ risen in his place, and with christ the salvation his death on the cross is asserted to bring. The promised world has failed to materialize, christians are persecuted by the state. Works, in short, hadn't worked.
Disparities between their accounts are not examples, even, of a "jesus-the-man" being inconsistent. It's an issue of an author using a literary device to narrate their ideological persuasions. If you dig into it, you'll find that you've quoted selections from at least five different authors. We don't think that all of these authors collaborated with or were fully appraised of the contents of each others work, separated by time, by community, by tradition, by opportunity. They did not (and could not) forget what they may not have known.
Still, I think we can charitably and credibly read the accounts in the synoptics as variations on a singular underlying theme. He comes off like a social activist. He sees the poor and the needy and the oppressed - he sees their effort, he sees inequality between the haves and have nots..and sides with the have nots as the possessors of true virtue. He tells people do do decent things for the least of us. By ephesians and acts...though.. jesus the activist is long dead, christ risen in his place, and with christ the salvation his death on the cross is asserted to bring. The promised world has failed to materialize, christians are persecuted by the state. Works, in short, hadn't worked.
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