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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Grainne who wrote (34263)	4/10/1999 2:53:00 PM
From: Grainne	Respond to of 108807

Jesus, continued: "Given that the true facts of his life are so elusive, it's perhaps no surprise that interpretations of that life's meaning have been so widely at variance. He's often described as a prince of peace, though the gospels clearly say that his associates carried weapons. His name is invoked in the cause of reconciliation, though he himself said that he had come "to set father against son", and to bring "not peace, but a sword" to the world. And what can we say about the gospels themselves? How accurate are they as historical documents? Not one of them was written contemporaneously. Mark is the earliest account, dating from around 50 years after Jesus's death. Matthew was written in the AD90s, John around the turn of the first century, Luke around AD120. Taken together, they present the familiar composite narrative of Christian belief: Jesus was the son of God who became human, performed astonishing miracles, preached belief in his own divinity, strongly advised preparation for the forthcoming end of the world, was crucified and came back from the the dead before ascending to heaven. But a much earlier source, known to biblical scholars as 'Q' or 'Quelle' powerfully suggests that most aspects of this narrative are simply invented. Q is a collection of the sayings of Jesus, dating from a mere 20 years after his death. Unlike the gospels, it may well have been written down by people who actually knew Jesus. There is no mention of resurrection in Q. In it Jesus makes no claim to be divine, nor even to be a prophet. There is no injunction to his followers to set up a church, no papal or episcopal authority sanctioned by Jesus, no reference at all to miracles, healings or supernatural events. In fact, a close reading of Q suggests that the early Jesus movements may not have been explicitly Christian at all, that the first followers of Jesus did not regard him as the long-prophesied Messiah, but rather as a pious, enlightened but deeply humble preacher, whose aphoristic pronouncements were not as much social as spiritual. They did not see his mission as an indictment of Judaism. They did not regard his death as sacramental. Clearly, the Q people did not believe that Jesus was the son of God, nor that he rose from the dead; nor did they worship God in his name."