Jesus a Zealot? Sorry, No, He Wasn't A Member Of The Jewish Tea Party.

It was convenient for Romans to misunderstand Jesus as a revolutionary, to be sure, but if anyone preached a kind of realized eschatology analogous to what the Christian Church, especially modernist protestantism, has preached, it was not Jesus but the Zealots, who thought that by human action they could restore the independence of the Jews. Onward Christian soldiers, His truth is marching on.

The apocalyptic basis for Jesus' radical ethics, which included poverty and flight from the wrath to come, not fighting for it and actually meting it out, and his prediction of the imminent judgment of the world, have to be jettisoned on this view, which is therefore no more explanatory of all the evidence than is the Fourth Gospel's recourse to a heavenly kingdom to which the Son of Man repairs, world without end, Amen.

Reza Aslan in his new book says all we need to know about Jesus is that the Romans crucified him between two bandits. Well, that's all the Romans cared to know. Reductionism of this sort is characteristic of minds predisposed to ideological thinking. Who is Lord, Jesus or Caesar?

The terrible simplifiers of post-Enlightenment times aren't so "post". 

Anthea Butler, Black Athena, Puts Us In Our Place

Here:

"In this age of pseudo parity, when everyone, anyone with a computer can critique one's work and life, what passes for knowledge? We know how to measure the worth of articles and books in the academy. The public has another standard altogether."

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Yeah, that's why she turns off access to her Twitter when the natives get restless, which is wholly in keeping with ridding the university of the Great Books and replacing them with the fake books, you know, like those by Martin Bernal. There's no sense reading the old stuff from the past, no sense listening to different political opinions either, or, as Rachel Jeantel might put it: "they old, that’s old school people. We in a new school, our generation, my generation."

All together now: 

"O, come let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the goddess, our PhD with tenure, who knows better than we do."

I Doubt Rachel Held Evans Would Follow The Real Jesus Even If She Met Him

No one else has.

In "Why Millennials Are Leaving The Church" here:

"You can’t hand us a latte and then go about business as usual and expect us to stick around. We’re not leaving the church because we don’t find the cool factor there; we’re leaving the church because we don’t find Jesus there. Like every generation before ours and every generation after, deep down, we long for Jesus."

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You mean this one?

Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me. But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions.

-- Matthew 19:21f.

The authenticity sought by the young is ever disappointed, but not until they are older and take a good long look in the mirror and meet all the hypocrites they've ever known.

It Is Not Right For The Slave To Be Master

"Under three things the earth trembles; under four it cannot bear up: a slave when he becomes king, and a fool when he is filled with food; an unloved woman when she gets a husband, and a maidservant when she displaces her mistress."

-- Proverbs 30:21ff.

Jesus' Teaching About Evil: Rational Only If God's Final Judgment Of Evil Is Imminent, And It Wasn't

14 million killed

"But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also."

-- Matthew 5:39

"But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."

-- Matthew 5:44

30 million killed

70 million killed

Mary Of Magdala, Just One Of The Many Problems Of The Fourth Gospel

Philip Jenkins correctly warns about taking "John" too seriously when it comes to Mary of Magdala, here:

Instead, we have to remember that virtually everything we hear about the special relationship between Jesus and the Magdalene comes from one scene in one gospel, and should be understood as the literary creation of that one author. Perhaps the author of John's Gospel just found the Resurrection meeting scene so wonderful that he could not resist writing it, even if he had to bury the other material he must have known, including Mary's seven demons. Sometimes, an artist just has to create, and never mind the consequences. Over many centuries, that outlying story became the standard popular vision of the Resurrection.

The case is similar with things like being born again, foot-washing and realized eschatology.

As With Jesus, Money Also Lay At The Very Beginning Of Luther's Message

"Cur Papa, cuius opes hodie sunt opulentissimis Crassis crassiores, non de suis pecuniis magis quam pauperum fidelium struit unam tantummodo Basilicam sancti Petri?"

"Why does the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of Saint Peter with the money of poor believers rather than with his own money?"

-- Thesis 86 of Martin Luther on the power and efficacy of indulgences, 31 October 1517

Pope Francis Brings Back The BatShitCrazy Papacy Of Yesteryear

And high time, too, since things were getting pretty boring for us Protestant ne'er-do-wells.

The full story comes from our ever helpful friends on the left at the UK Guardian, here, from which this explanatory excerpt:

'Indulgences these days are granted to those who carry out certain tasks – such as climbing the Sacred Steps, in Rome (reportedly brought from Pontius Pilate's house after Jesus scaled them before his crucifixion), a feat that earns believers seven years off purgatory.

'But attendance at events such as the Catholic World Youth Day, in Rio de Janeiro, a week-long event starting on 22 July, can also win an indulgence.

'Mindful of the faithful who cannot afford to fly to Brazil, the Vatican's sacred apostolic penitentiary, a court which handles the forgiveness of sins, has also extended the privilege to those following the "rites and pious exercises" of the event on television, radio and through social media.

'"That includes following Twitter," said a source at the penitentiary, referring to Pope Francis' Twitter account, which has gathered seven million followers. "But you must be following the events live. It is not as if you can get an indulgence by chatting on the internet."'

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How easy it is to get out of seven years in ppppurgatory when there's not a thing you can do to escape eight years of Barack Obama. "Greater things than these shall ye do" my foot.

George Washington, My Kind Of Protestant

From George Will, here:

George Washington famously would not kneel to pray. And when his pastor rebuked him for setting a bad example by leaving services before communion, Washington mended his ways in his characteristically austere manner: He stayed away from church on communion Sundays. He acknowledged Christianity's "benign influence" on society, but no ministers were present and no prayers were said when he died a stoic's death. This, even though Washington had proclaimed in his famous Farewell Address (which to this day is read aloud in Congress every year on his birthday) that "religion and morality are indispensable supports" for "political prosperity." He said, "Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion." He warned that "reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."

Deny Communion To George Zimmerman?

And you thought The Inquisition was over.

Story in blue, here.

To Die Is To Become A Kneaded Clod

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;

To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;

This sensible warm motion to become

A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit

To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside

In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;

To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,

And blown with restless violence round about

The pendent world; or to be worse than worst

Of those that lawless and incertain thought

Imagine howling: 'tis too horrible!

The weariest and most loathed worldly life

That age, ache, penury and imprisonment

Can lay on nature is a paradise

To what we fear of death.

-- Claudio, Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, Act 3, Scene 1

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Is "To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice" the source for Robert Frost's "Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice"?

What Deaths Others Have Died We Also Shall Be Able To Accomplish

"The world has lasted six thousand years now, and, with the exception of those at present alive, the millions who have breathed upon it -- splendid emperors, horny-fisted clowns, little children, in whom thought has never stirred -- have died, and what they have done, we also shall be able to do."

-- Alexander Smith, "Of Death And The Fear Of Dying" in Dreamthorp (Edinburgh: 1888), p. 65.

Sins Cannot Take Anything Away From God, Nor Good Works Add To Him

"Look up into the sky, and see the clouds high above you. If you sin, how does that affect God? Even if you sin again and again, what effect will it have on him? If you are good, is this some great gift to him? What could you possibly give him? No, your sins affect only people like yourself, and your good deeds also affect only humans."

-- The Voice Of Elihu in Job 35:5ff.

"Go Not Into The Way Of The Gentiles"

"The Road Not Taken"

BY ROBERT FROST


Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Sin Is Not Counted Where There Is No Law?

few are chosen

 

Sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. ... Law came in, to increase the trespass.

-- Romans 5:13, 20

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Was sin not counted as in the days of Noah? Were they not all destroyed, but for the few?

 

And what's the point of increasing the trespass if the "lesser" trespass made God repent of the creation itself and bring it to utter annihilation?

 

Paul argues as if he is completely ignorant of the flood narrative. 

And to think Hans Dieter Betz really meant it when he called Paul a genius.

The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

-- Genesis 6:5ff.

Jesus' Own Family Thought He Was A Little Nuts

One time Jesus entered a house, and the crowds began to gather again. Soon he and his disciples couldn't even find time to eat. When his family heard what was happening, they tried to take him away. "He's out of his mind," they said.

-- Mark 3:20f.

Paul The Stoner: Do Not Associate With Sexual Sinners In Your Midst

Saul watched their coats (Acts 7:58)

It isn't my responsibility to judge outsiders, but it certainly is your responsibility to judge those inside the church who are sinning. God will judge those on the outside; but as the Scriptures say, "You must remove the evil person from among you."

-- 1 Corinthians 5:12f.

This is what Paul is quoting:

[I]f it is true and certain that such an abominable thing has been done in Israel, then you shall bring forth to your gates that man or woman who has done this evil thing, and you shall stone that man or woman to death with stones. On the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses he that is to die shall be put to death; a person shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness. The hand of the witnesses shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people. So you shall purge the evil from the midst of you.

-- Deuteronomy 17:4ff.

Evidently Paul was unmoved by this, if he knew it at all:

"Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such. What do you say about her?" This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her."

-- John 8:4ff.