[Serious] The Story

[The Grand Nudger]

The traditional interpretation of the servant songs is that they refer to the nation of israel.  Certainly not christ, and not christian redemption.

Thanks for your thoughts!

The suffering servant certainly does refer to Israel, but also to Jesus. To unpack what was mentioned earlier, it had always in the OT been the calling of Israel through suffering to free the world from sin/death. Israel failed in this task, and it fell to Jesus as representative for Israel to fulfil their destiny.

The various texts in the Suffering Servant (Isaiah 40-55) seem to flow from Israel to a servant-figure who stands over against Israel, and the Servant could be seen in the second-Temple period as a reference to the Messiah.

-and yet...jewish people remain in the world, and don't appear to agree that this is what their establishment myths or legends are referring to.  

 However, if you've never been made aware of the disagreement in proto-christianity regarding this issue (which did persist in some forms for some time in the early church) you'll find no shortage of verses de-emphasizing the necessity of cultural and ritual (or moral/ceremonial..if we prefer) jewish identity in the NT in Acts, as it's product.

I think you're conflating a number of separate issues here. The necessity to obey Torah was the subject of considerable debate. The idea that Jesus was the most recent part of the Jewish story that began with the OT was not debated. Jesus only meant what he meant because of the complete OT context.

Mhm, inclusivity and appropriation as two sides of the expansionary coin.  

There is no longer jew or greek. There is no longer slave and free. There is no longer male or female. All of you are one in christ.  

This refers to the change in definition of God's People, rather than whether Jesus was the next part of the OT story. Xians are defined by their relationship to the Messiah of Judaism.

Yes, the definition of gods people is what I think the christians got -morally- right, whereas they, and now here you are too, contend..more importantly, that the jewish people, historically, got their own culture wrong.

Wherein the jews are cut off from the tree by their unbelief, and the gentiles grafted in through faith in christ

But the plan was always that Israel would be a “light to the nations”. That the promise to Abraham was that “through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed”. And so on.

The penny dropped that rather than the People of God consisting of just one nation with the rest locked outside, it was open to all- especially Jews. Rather than fighting for a patch of land in the Mediterranean, the whole world had been won. Rather than defeating the Romans, sin and death had been defeated.

All of this was totally in line with the OT story, but very different to how people were expecting it to play out.

Some plan.  I feel at this point that it would be useful to remind you that there is no assertion of the articles of your christian faith that I find historically compelling, even as a matter of mere translation.  It is entirely certain that different translations have produced disparate religions.  Jewish people exist.    Judaism is theologically distinct from christianity.  

I don't see any way to explain the demographic explosion of christianity after the romanizers work aside from a very successful appeal to the gentiles.  

If you were going to invent a pitch to gentiles you wouldn't start with 'this is the ongoing story of the Jewish nation' and continue it with what they would have understood as a zombie story.

It was unsuccessful until the romanizers hit it.    ..............?  The first proto-christians in rome...as we're both aware I'm sure, were apprehended as ignorant yokels who believed in shit like zombie god-man and cannibalism....and any remaining attempt to aggressively proselytize on behalf of judaism proper (ala the pharisees jewish universalism)would just be rebellion, because that's pretty much how the roman public saw jewish people and judaism.  Having recently been in open rebellion, and all.  

The arc of the narratives creation is (ostensibly) from jewish man to christian god.  That the christians trashed jewish culture while claiming it's god and de-judaizing it's god and paganizing it's god and cults is a mere fact of history, not a point over which any useful debate between you and I can be had - and certainly not through the repeated assertion of specifically christian articles of religious faith that stand in contrast to the articles of that other faith to this very day.  That the christian religion as pitched to romans was persecuted is mythmaking in and of itself.  Modeled after the later christian purges of other christians - but recast as the establishment myth of state christianity - much the same way the OT uses then-present realities set in the distant past to resolve current items of societal and political dispute.

[Jehanne]

@The Grand Nudger

In my opinion, you're being too generous with the texts.

I think that JoN was an apocalyptic, desert-preaching loon, who was ignored by almost everyone of his day as being a crank. When he decided to take his show on the road, the Romans delt with him, and after that, his scattered followers continued to be ignored. However, after that, Paul came along, and suffering from a Messiah complex and an apocalyptic view of the end of the World, Paul gave the floundering faith a voice with written words, and after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, came an identity followed by a theology and an organization and hierarchy.

And, the rest, they say, is history. And, so, here we are...

[The Grand Nudger]

I do tend to be more generous when discussing these things than a person chiefly consumed by claims to historicity, as, if historicity is a necessity then the worlds major religions are flatly and simply false as a point of fact - but since factual historicity is not a necessity of religious belief or revision, they cannot be false on grounds of issues with factual historicity.

It's no coincidence that, in the grafting example, genuine understanding of our shared predicament as human beings that will form a basis of an ideology we might all appreciate as improvement on those grounds is immediately undercut by a claim to the jewish people having been cut off from their own religion and gods...as an item of factual historicity.

The assertions to historicity do not certify the religious claims, and, in most cases, they actively harm them. Ala..the jewish people did not historically get themselves wrong, "paul" got an item of moral import right...and it's one of the major distinctions...ideologically, from judaism.

[Jehanne]

As long as it is understood that Judaism, in Jesus' day, as well as before and after, was not monolithic, indeed, far from such. Ditto for the early Christianities.

[John 6IX Breezy]

Apologies to everyone. I didn't notice the thread was getting responses. Here's a short rough summary of the narrative in SDA circles, both for comparison and as an example for what I'm looking for:

The central plot revolves around a universal conflict regarding God's laws and character. It is said that there was war and rebellion in heaven and that this rebellion was later taken to Earth. After the creation, humanity got involved in this political and philosophical controversy between good and evil, in a very real and personal way. And since humanity fell via deception not rebellion, the plan of salvation is intended to restore humanity to its original place. Adam was created perfect and brought humanity down into sin, Christ was born into sin and brings humanity back up to perfection.

SDA's believe that earth is not only the arena for that warfare, but that God is essentially on trial here. This is where claims against his character, laws, and sovereignty are being put to the test for the universe to see. The warfare is supposed to end with the earth and humanity being restored, God's government being proved right, and sin and the rebellion being removed.

I believe this is the official church statement/explanation of it: https://www.adventist.org/the-great-controversy/

[Jehanne]

You expect us to take seriously a website from the 7th Day Adventists??

[John 6IX Breezy]

I'm more interested in the overarching narrative you personally believe or were taught—I shared the SDA one as a template.

The reason for this thread is that I sometimes come across atheist objections that seem odd, or don't make sense within my particular narrative. They are like asking what phlogiston is made of (an outdated substance) using modern chemical terms. It's a question that exist outside of, or in contradiction to, the modern framework.

[Neo-Scholastic]

At a cosmic level if God created a Perfect Being it would also be God. And since there can be only one God it follows that it cannot be done. The notion that creation is imperfect is embedded in the narrative. There's a snake in the garden.

So something can't be perfect unless it's omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent? Ordinarily, perfect means 'without flaws'. I wouldn't say not being all-powerful is a flaw.

Edit: Sorry for the double post.

I am using the word perfect the same way scholastics and some classical pagan philosophers would have....in the absolute sense that only applies to the All, or One. Barbasol may be the 'perfect' for its intended purpose as an inexpensive
and effective shaving cream but that is not the sense theologically.

[John 6IX Breezy]

At a cosmic level if God created a Perfect Being it would also be God. And since there can be only one God it follows that it cannot be done. The notion that creation is imperfect is embedded in the narrative. There's a snake in the garden.

So something can't be perfect unless it's omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent? Ordinarily, perfect means 'without flaws'. I wouldn't say not being all-powerful is a flaw.

I agree. It seems to me that perfection is a measure of how closely a thing is to it's intended or ideal type. A perfect circle is perfect insofar as it conforms to whatever specifications a circle must meet, even though it is nothing like a square.

Now, I would assume that when Genesis called each creative act good, even exceedingly good, that it implies that creation was perfect insofar as it aligned with God's intended outcome.

Perhaps this is an example where the overarching narrative matters. Neo treated the snake in the garden as a flaw, or imperfection. However, within the SDA narrative the snake is an outsider, an intruder. It is Satan, and that was the beginning of bringing the heavenly war to Earth.

But we can see from Neo's comments that there is perhaps a different narrative that people believe, in which the snake was unintentionally created. Or perhaps it was intentional for the sake of avoiding perfection.

[Jehanne]

I'm more interested in the overarching narrative you personally believe or were taught—I shared the SDA one as a template.

The reason for this thread is that I sometimes come across atheist objections that seem odd, or don't make sense within my particular narrative. They are like asking what phlogiston is made of (an outdated substance) using modern chemical terms. It's a question that exist outside of, or in contradiction to, the modern framework.

We did not descend from two human beings; if you want to respin that narrative, go right ahead.