Knowing everything and allowing evil

[Abracadabra]

Except that he doesn't seem to have been a historical figure, and there are more things we have to remove (more than just the christ claim and miracles claims) before he becomes anyone I would even shake hands with, let alone hold up as an example.

Well, that's certainly understandable. That's the "Jesus" that you created.

In other words, evidently you're looking solely at the biblical text, accepting that everything that is said about this man, as well ever quote assigned to him, is indeed a verbatim picture of who this character has to be.

I would tend to agree with you from that perspective. If I had to accept that verbatim picture of "Jesus" then I would no only renouncing him as a lunatic man, but I would even renounce him as a lunatic God.

If you're going to imagine Jesus as a real person, then you are free to realize that the New Testament writings are indeed rumors written about this man long after he had died.

Moreover, if you don't believe the claims of divinity then neither do you need to believe that these rumors should have any "magical merit" of being the absolute truth or 'word of God'.

Now you've got nothing but a collection of extremely questionable rumors written by people who are attempting to make out that Jesus was "The Christ".

But if you've already rejected that claim, then these rumors no longer hold any weight for being a correct verbatim description of this man.

~~~

From here you can take two different paths. You can simply reject the whole thing as being nothing more than entirely made up fables. Many people do take that stance. And that's fine.

However, a second perfectly valid vantage point is to question what sparked these rumors? Maybe there was a man who taught against the immoral teachings of the Torah, called the Pharisees hypocrites, and was indeed horribly crucified publicly on charges of blaspheme.

When I consider this possible scenario, I then go back and re-read these rumors from this perspective. What I see is that a Mahayana Buddhist Bodhisattva could have easily said and done many things that would have been misinterpreted by many people.

• Would a Mahayana Buddhist take the stance that he and the Father are one?

Absolutely. Pantheism is a core belief in Buddhism.

• Would a Mahahana Buddhist point the Torah saying, "Does it not say in your law, I have said ye are Gods?"
  

Sure. He says, "I and the Father are one". He's then accused of blaspheme and points to the Torah showing that this is true of everyone. It makes perfect sense to me.

When questioned he claims that he did not come to change the laws. Yet that precisely what he set out to accomplish.

Does it make sense that an actual demigod would do that? No.
Does it make sense that a mortal man would do that. Yes.

He's trying his best to teach better moral values without blatantly rejecting the accepted religion.
After all, in this culture to blatantly reject the religion is indeed blaspheme! You'd be crucified for that!

Jesus had no choice but to try to work within the context of this religion.
He was trying to improve moral values without coming right out and renouncing the religion.
To just blatantly renounce the religion was a certain death sentence in this culture.
He had no choice but to try to work within that framework.

Obviously it caught up to him in the end and he finally was crucified on charges of blaspheme.

And then the rumors started.

• Would a Mahayana Buddhist Bodhisattva take on disciples? Yes!
  
• Would a Mahayana Buddhist ask his disciples to also become Bodhisattvas too (i.e. teachers). Yes!
  

Everything fits like a glove. Including the fact that Mahayana Buddhism was enjoying it's peak growth at that some time in history.

Could this have been what sparked these New Testament rumors?

Sure. It's absolutely possible.

Did it actually happen this way?

I have no clue. It could be entirely fictional as some people suggest.
All I'm suggesting is that Jesus could have easily been a misunderstood Mahayana Buddhist Bodhisattva.
And that was the spark that gave rise to these rumors of Jesus as the "messiah".

Jesus couldn't have been the messiah predicted in the Bible anyway since he was never handed the throne of the King of David.

So that's not even a viable rumor.

In fact, I hold that if people had made this story up from scratch they probably would have had Jesus becoming the Kind and then being crucified. The idea that they had to restrain themselves to rumors about an actual person makes sense to me.

And I believe that person was a Jewish Mahayana Buddhist Bodhisattva.

It makes sense to me. If I were a betting man that's where I'd place my money.

But I could lose. It could be entirely made up fiction like many people believe.

That's why I don't bet.

In the meantime I imagine that some real guy, rejected the immoral teachings of the Torah, called the Pharisees hypocrites, and was indeed crucified on charges of blaspheme. It's not a hard scenario to imagine. So I personally feel that it's probably more likely than not.