(March 16, 2022 at 10:09 pm)Rev. Rye Wrote: In fairness, the Gospel of Matthew at the very least was written as propaganda. Admittedly, not by the ruling regime, but more for them. A lot of details were added to appease the Romans and absolve them of any wrongdoing in this case, and the long-standing political tensions between the people of Judea and the Romans are barely touched upon beyond the reference to how much the Jews hated the taxes and how they supposedly hated Jesus.
From the fact that they had Joseph and Mary travel to his hometown [read: that of a distant ancestor from a millennium prior] for a census [one that apparently happened… when Jesus would have been a teenager] showed them to be good Roman citizens, and the way they place blame on the Crucifixion squarely on the Jews (even though anyone who knows anything about how the Jews approached capital punishment in this age should be able to see why it doesn’t make any sense to do so) and portrays Pilate, who IRL was notorious enough for his cruelty that the Emperor Tiberius had to recall him back to Rome for being too harsh as a thoughtful man, reluctant to kill Jesus and literally washing his hands of any responsibility for doing so.
The impression that I received is that some of the jews were looking for a messiah to lead them to victory. They had a lot of hope that their god would send them one and he would help them repel the Romans via magic.
I assume that idea was around for quite a while. When did Rome invade and conquer Israel/Palestine?
I'm sure that a few people claiming to be the messiah came and had followers and they were probably killed by the Romans.
The Romans probably executed some of the priest leaders as well.
I think that at some point in time, the priests decided that it is better to cooperate with the Romans rather then have the entire jewish population killed.
The NT often urinates on the saducees, pharisees and the priestly class. I think this is evidence that there was cooperation between the priests and the Romans. This way, the new messiah gets killed and the followers get dispersed. Rome is happy. The jews survive and life goes on.
Somehow, the story turned into something about the jewish god wanting to have a child with a human and something about a unique son that must be sacrificed and the rest would be spared. Yes, the rest of the jews were spared but the NT text doesn't directly tell us this.
The Bible is full of magical numbers: 3, 7, 12, 40 and numbers derived from them appear often in the Bible.
This is an indication that the stories are fake, among many other clues that the story is fake.
So, if you think about it, when did Israel get into a war with Rome and Rome destroyed their temple. It was around 70 CE, right?
70 is another magical number for the jews. Usually, 7 seems to mean the big finale, the big curtain goes down, or completeness.
So, they positioned Jesus's birth so that it would align with the number 70.
