Thanks for the thoughts, Lek. I would encourage you to read N.T. Wright, who provided all the material. I'd also encourage those of other beliefs to read him, for the same reason I read Bart Ehrman.
Perhaps I can help potential discussion partners out a little by looking at a serious flaw in the post. I failed to differentiate between the beliefs of the Early Church and the beliefs of the first disciples.
If you want to know what an organisation believes, you start with what it says. Few on this forum would agree with ISIS, but if we wanted to know what they believe, we would look at what they have said. The Early Church were exceptionally clear in their writing that they believed that Jesus performed surprising 'signs'; that point should now be clear enough to move on.
Linking that back to the disciples' belief needs a bit more work, but isn't too hard. I would repeat the two paragraphs from my previous post, that the signs are inseparable from the message. 'God's kingdom has arrived, and big new things are happening- here's some early examples'. I would also emphasise that standard historical procedures give a very clear verdict that Jesus' contemporaries believed in general that he did very notable things (although saying which individual cases are historically likely to go back to events from Jesus is more difficult).
Moreover, it is clear from Paul that the disciples were still running the Xian show in the mid fifties. It is logical to suppose that their eyewitness accounts of Jesus were canonical. That leaves a very short gap for any miracle variations to creep in before Mark appears (AD70 is the centre of gravity for professional academics). Quite impossible for them to be integrated in the way sometimes suggested.
Finally, it is unthinkable that some apparent form of return from the dead would, in itself, convince the disciples that Jesus was God (it's a non-sequitur, anyway). Things must have happened before that, and that would almost certainly have to include astonishing signs of God returning to Israel as He had promised.
Perhaps I can help potential discussion partners out a little by looking at a serious flaw in the post. I failed to differentiate between the beliefs of the Early Church and the beliefs of the first disciples.
If you want to know what an organisation believes, you start with what it says. Few on this forum would agree with ISIS, but if we wanted to know what they believe, we would look at what they have said. The Early Church were exceptionally clear in their writing that they believed that Jesus performed surprising 'signs'; that point should now be clear enough to move on.
Linking that back to the disciples' belief needs a bit more work, but isn't too hard. I would repeat the two paragraphs from my previous post, that the signs are inseparable from the message. 'God's kingdom has arrived, and big new things are happening- here's some early examples'. I would also emphasise that standard historical procedures give a very clear verdict that Jesus' contemporaries believed in general that he did very notable things (although saying which individual cases are historically likely to go back to events from Jesus is more difficult).
Moreover, it is clear from Paul that the disciples were still running the Xian show in the mid fifties. It is logical to suppose that their eyewitness accounts of Jesus were canonical. That leaves a very short gap for any miracle variations to creep in before Mark appears (AD70 is the centre of gravity for professional academics). Quite impossible for them to be integrated in the way sometimes suggested.
Finally, it is unthinkable that some apparent form of return from the dead would, in itself, convince the disciples that Jesus was God (it's a non-sequitur, anyway). Things must have happened before that, and that would almost certainly have to include astonishing signs of God returning to Israel as He had promised.
