Against the Pharisees' core tenet of resurrection, Luke's Jesus insists it is superfluous

  

And the Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these things: and they derided him. And he said unto them . . . There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day:  And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.

And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried; And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.

And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.

But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.

And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.

Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father's house: For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment.

Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.

And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.

And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.       

-- Luke 16:14f., 19ff.

cf. John 5:45ff.:

Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?

Eschatological prophets don't leave gospels behind

 

p52, a 2nd century fragment of John from a codex

Jesus trying to keep his miracles quiet is in the news, by Father John Perricone, Ph.D., who alas in "Is Christ a Magician?" can't even get Matthew 16:4 right:

But, to our more serious question above. We should preface these words by God’s: “It is a wicked and perverse generation that asks for signs and wonders” (Matthew 16:4). 

The verse says nothing about wonders, which is a technical term most familiar to us from the Book of Acts, but also from the little apocalypses found in the gospels. The verse in question goes like this:

A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. And he left them, and departed.

The father is right that we observe a Jesus who does occasionally try to keep his miracles quiet. They are "often accompanied by a stern admonition to tell no one". The thing is, not all the time. And the Christian gospels are replete with them nevertheless. 

Mark's Jesus is even more emphatic about this than is Matthew's. Mark's Jesus was unequivocally against signs of any kind, not even the sign of the prophet Jonah, and not just to the Pharisees, but to his entire evil generation.

It's a downright odd thing for someone to say who is supposedly leaving a trail of them in his wake in exorcisms, healings, and nature miracles. The gospels proclaim a miracle worker who wanted the miracles kept quiet? This is akin to the problem known as the Messianic Secret. "I'm the Messiah, but don't tell anyone".

The eschatological context of this sign business is preserved by Mark, although at a distance, as it is by Matthew in like manner in his doublet of the saying (Matthew 16:1ff., 27):

And the Pharisees came forth, and began to question with him, seeking of him a sign [σημεῖον] from heaven, tempting him. And he sighed deeply in his spirit, and saith, Why doth this generation seek after a sign? verily I say unto you, There shall no sign be given unto this generation. ... Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.

-- Mark 8:11f., 38 (cf. Matthew 12:38f.; Matthew 16:1ff., 27; Luke 11:16, 29f.).

The emphasis of the eschatological Jesus is on his message of repentance, not on his deeds.

Vincent Taylor recognized long ago that the eschatological Mark 8:38 was quite out of place where it is.

A lot of things seem loosely connected together in Mark, not just this. Just read the form critics.

In Mark's unskilled hands, signs likewise aren't yet quite exactly the same thing as miracles either. Miracle in Mark is instead typically referred to, when it is referred to at all, as the palpable expression of divine authority [ἐξουσία] (Mark 1:27; 2:10; 3:15; 6:7), or of divine power [δύναμις] (Mark 5:30; 6:2, 5, 14; 9:39).

And from the start, Mark presents Jesus as more than willing to demonstrate to the Scribes his divine authority to forgive sins by performing a miracle to prove it (this despite later noteworthy teaching requiring mutual forgiveness between men if there is to be forgiveness of men by God, in Mark 11:26, which is rather different; is that blasphemy, too?):

But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (he saith to the sick of the palsy,) I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house. And immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went forth before them all; insomuch that they were all amazed, and glorified God, saying, We never saw it on this fashion.  

-- Mark 2:10ff., Matthew 9:6ff., Luke 5:24ff. (similarly John 10:37f., 14:11).

We go back again the other way, though, in Mark 11:27-33, where Mark presents a Jesus who will NOT condescend to the chief priests, the Scribes, and the elders to demonstrate by what authority he had cast out of the temple the buyers and the sellers, the money-changers, and specifically the sellers of doves:

And Jesus answering saith unto them, Neither do I tell you by what authority I do these things.

So which is it?

 

In the same willy-nilly fashion, Mark has Jesus do an exorcism, a resurrection, and a healing of a deaf/dumb man in Galilee, one which Jesus wants declaimed, but the others which Jesus wants kept quiet:

Howbeit Jesus suffered him not [to follow him], but saith unto him, Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee. And he departed, and began to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him: and all men did marvel. 

-- Mark 5:19f.

And he charged them straitly that no man should know it; and commanded that something should be given her to eat. 

-- Mark 5:43

And he charged them that they should tell no man: but the more he charged them, so much the more a great deal they published it; 

-- Mark 7:36.

So which is it?

  

Eventually Mark inexplicably makes Jesus actually respond positively and at great length to the question from Peter, James, John, and Andrew "what shall be the sign" of the coming of the destruction of the temple, in Mark 13:4, the beginning of the infamous Apocalyptic Discourse.

But why would Jesus do that, all of a sudden, and condescend to a question about signs  if "no sign shall be given"?

Obviously the Apocalyptic Discourse is post-resurrection re-interpretation of Jesus' original eschatological message that judgment was imminent. The warning had been the man and the message, but he got himself crucified, and with the man now gone they are in a new situation which is under pressure to explain itself. Like the supplied endings to Mark, the Apocalyptic Discourse bears all the marks of another time and other hands. But that is another matter.

As quickly, however, as Jesus deigns to entertain such talk of the sign of the end, Jesus warns in 13:22 that it is false Christs and false prophets who will come and do "signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect".

And with that we're right back to negativity about signs, which shows just how much that view was the original, dominant view going back to the historical Jesus and persisting beyond him in their memory.

So no sign it is.

(The positive embrace of miraculous signs in the supplied long ending in Mark 16:17, 20 may be dismissed as unoriginal to Mark on stylistic grounds, and not in the least because it conforms to the later ideas expressed for example by Luke in Acts).

 

This picture painted by Mark shows overall that he is confused and indecisive about what exactly to present as the actual content of Jesus' message, which Matthew and then Luke in their turn attempt to smooth over and remedy. It is one reason why Mark was not that popular in early Christianity. The relative paucity of witnesses to Mark, and the missing ending, if it really is missing, after 16:8 as late as Codex Vaticanus is . . . kind of a sign.

In the case of Mark 8, Matthew and Luke retain the harsh, negative evaluation of sign-seeking, but they augment the unequivocal "no sign shall be given" with "except the sign of Jonah", i.e. that the resurrection of Jesus after three days in the belly of the earth is the ultimate sign to this generation.

So the miracle of the resurrection is THE ONE legitimate sign, but none of the other miracles are signs? What are they then? Or were there no other such signs? Matthew and Luke haven't really thought this through. But of their post-resurrection re-interpretation of the original saying Mark knew absolutely nothing.

This is yet more evidence that the tradition is not solid, to put it mildly, and that the evangelists are willing, shall we say, to tamper with the word of God for theological reasons.

The solution of Matthew and Luke does little, either, to alleviate the wider problem involved, which is the failure of this evil generation to have faced the final judgment of the coming Son of Man predicted by Jesus.

But it is evidence of a trajectory of re-interpretation we see running through the Synoptics culminating in John, where we come to the explicit development of the completely different, positive understanding of sign as miracle.

And whereas the Synoptic witness is full of miracles by other names, and against signs more than not, miracles are now routinely called signs in the Fourth Gospel:

Turning water into wine at Cana of Galilee (John 2:11);

Destroying the "temple" "of his body" and rebuilding it in three days (John 2:18f);

Nondescript miracles which Jesus did in Jerusalem (John 2:23) which impressed Nicodemus (John 3:2); 

Healing a boy who was near death (John 4:48), Jesus' second miracle in Galilee (John 4:54);

Healing many who were sick (John 6:2);

Feeding the five thousand with five barley loaves and two fish (John 6:14, 26, 30);

Jesus' miracles generally (John 7:31);

Healing the man born blind (John 9:16);

John the Baptist performed no miracles but was right about Jesus (John 10:41);

The Pharisees are beside themselves what to do with Jesus, who does so many miracles, after Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead (John 11:47);

Some of the people hailed Jesus (triumphal entry into Jerusalem) as if he were king because of the miracle of raising Lazarus from the dead, as did also some of the authorities (John 12:18, 37); 

The appearance of Jesus in his crucified body to doubting Thomas was one of many miracles Jesus did after his resurrection (John 20:30). 

This last example in John rings the composition with the 2:18 allusion to Jesus' resurrection and echoes the re-interpretation of Mark 8 observed in both Matthew and Luke, who feel compelled to supplement Mark's "no sign, period" with "no sign but the sign of the prophet Jonah . . . who was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale" (Matthew 12:39f.; cf. Luke 11:29f.), which they put forward as a type of the resurrection.

The resurrection itself has now become a tool for proof of the truth of a different gospel, whereas Jesus as eschatological prophet had nothing to prove. Jesus insisted on the imminent end for this, his evil generation because "the kingdom of God is at hand" (Mark 1:15).

"Repent ye and believe the gospel".

That Jesus, the historical Jesus, was not interested in vindication by miracles and heavenly portents, but in actual demonstrations of repentance by his hearers, so that a few at least would be saved from that imminent judgment. Without those demonstrations there isn't any belief, and no salvation.

The new Jesus emphasizes the believing, which many can now get indefinitely into the future, even from a book:

And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name. 

-- John 20:30f.

The miracles are now constitutive of the message, so much so that John's Jesus can say:

. . . though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him. 

-- John 10:38.

Whereas one may aver that to the final eschatological prophet who followed John the Baptist, the palsied fruit of repentance was a good thing (Matthew 3:8), not something to be healed from:

And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched:

-- Mark 9:45.

Charitable me would say this is simply laughable ignorance, but I know better

Was Paul a Slave? The surprising argument that Saul of Tarsus was born into bondage. By Mark R. Fairchild and Jordan K. Monson, Christianity Today, April 22, 2024:

But Paul was neither a proponent of slavery nor an abolitionist, despite efforts to use his letter to Philemon to make him out as one or the other. In truth, neither option was available to him.

It’s difficult for modern readers to understand that in the Roman Empire of Paul’s time, abolitionist thought was virtually nonexistent. According to Jeffers, “No Greek or Roman author ever attacked slavery as an institution.”

It was a given that slavery would always exist. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, “All available evidence suggests that even those ancients who were born slaves and later freed, several of whom have left us very beautiful texts, envisioned servitude in the same light.”

Instead, the first Christians had their minds almost exclusively fixed on the Second Coming, which they believed was imminent. There wasn’t time to reform entrenched Roman injustices.

 

The article is replete with tendentious statements, attempts to redefine words, and special pleading. It's lying by omission.

What will be next from Christianity Today? That Paul was a tranny?

I can't wait.

Meanwhile, free-born Roman citizen, self-described Pharisee from a wealthy family in Tarsus*, Paul the Apostle, not only endorsed freedom from slavery, Second Coming or no, but well understood the possibility of it under the Roman system:

Were you a slave when called? Never mind. But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity. ... You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men. 

-- I Corinthians 7:21, 23.

   

*A property qualification of 500 drachmae was fixed for admission to the roll of citizens, perhaps by Athenodorus sometime after 30 B.C. (Dio Chrysostom, Oration 34.23).

-- F. F. Bruce, The Book of the Acts (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), p. 432.

A Hellenized Jew might well recognize in Paul's three descriptions of his conversion experience and of his life in general a man judged by God according to Greek Deuteronomy

The LORD shall smite thee with madness (παραπληξίᾳ, stunned confusion), and blindness (ἀορασίᾳ, sightlessness), and astonishment of heart (ἐκστάσει, being out of one's mind): And thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness, and thou shalt not prosper in thy ways: and thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled evermore, and no man shall save thee. 

-- Deuteronomy 28:28f. 

Stunned confusion

And he [Saul] said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. 

-- Acts 9:5

And I answered, Who art thou, Lord? And he said unto me, I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom thou persecutest.

-- Acts 22:8

And I said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest. 

-- Acts 26:15

Sightlessness

And Saul arose from the earth; and when his eyes were opened, he saw no man: but they led him by the hand, and brought him into Damascus. And he was three days without sight, and neither did eat nor drink. ... And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales: and he received sight forthwith, and arose, and was baptized.  

-- Acts 9:8f.,18

And when I could not see for the glory of that light, being led by the hand of them that were with me, I came into Damascus.  And one Ananias, a devout man according to the law, having a good report of all the Jews which dwelt there, Came unto me, and stood, and said unto me, Brother Saul, receive thy sight. And the same hour I looked up upon him.  

-- Acts 22:11ff.

Being out of one's mind

And [Saul] hath seen in a vision (ὁράματι) a man named Ananias coming in, and putting his hand on him, that he might receive his sight.  

-- Acts 9:12

And it came to pass, that, when I was come again to Jerusalem, even while I prayed in the temple, I was in a trance (ἐκστάσει);  

-- Acts 22:17

And there arose a great cry: and the scribes that were of the Pharisees' part arose, and strove, saying, We find no evil in this man: but if a spirit or an angel hath spoken to him, let us not fight against God.  

-- Acts 23:9

Whereupon, O king Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision (ὀπτασίᾳ):  

-- Acts 26:19

And as he thus spake for himself, Festus said with a loud voice, Paul, thou art beside thyself (Μαίνῃ); much learning doth make thee mad (μανίαν). But he said, I am not mad (μαίνομαι), most noble Festus; but speak forth the words of truth and soberness.  

-- Acts 26:24ff.

Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one--I am talking like a madman (παραφρονῶν)--with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I have received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I have been beaten with rods; once I was stoned. Three times I have been shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brethren; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. 

 -- II Corinthians 11:23ff.

Then said Agrippa unto Festus, This man might have been set at liberty, if he had not appealed unto Caesar.  

-- Acts 26:32

 

Sohrab Ahmari learns something valuable from Catholic historian Henri Daniel-Rops: Rome lent Christianity inspiration to be a world religion

 The ­universalist—in the sense of world-spanning—religion of this new church was from the ­beginning suited to and even prefigured by the political universalism of the Roman Empire. Roman-ness, this history teaches, is of the essence of ­Christianity. ... Roman reality structured the Christian mind and lent it the same universalist impulse. ...

Christian life in the centuries prior to the Constan­tinian conversion was already developing authoritative structures, and at a relentless pace. Such structures are always necessary for governance, spiritual and temporal. The general tendency of these structures was expansion, away from the margins and into the center of human affairs. 

More.

 

 

Certain partisans will object strenuously to the idea that pagan Rome lent the universalist impulse to Christianity, but they will be wrong.

They are already unwilling to accept that the aims of the historical Jesus were more modest, who insisted he was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matthew 10), whose twelve disciples were to judge the twelve tribes of Israel in the imminently coming eschatological kingdom of God (Matthew 19) in Jerusalem. To it many in Israel were called, but only few were chosen.

The germ of the universal religion idea certainly came from elsewhere, from the likes of St. Paul the Roman citizen and his intellectual and spiritual kin who, inspired by Isaiah the prophet among others, thought God's aim was to have mercy on all the nations (Romans 11).

For his part, Paul combined in himself two streams with a single and much more ambitious agenda. The Hellenistic Jew of the proselytizing Pharisee variety not coincidentally was still the enthusiastic missionary despite a crisis of conversion, but with a now much wider field of opportunity. And the Roman citizen by birth who was at liberty to travel and study in Jerusalem became himself an itinerant teacher, exploiting his favored position both at the margins and finally at the center of the empire.

My ambition has always been to preach the Good News where the name of Christ has never been heard, rather than where a church has already been started by someone else. ... In fact, my visit to you has been delayed so long because I have been preaching in these places. But now I have finished my work in these regions, and after all these long years of waiting, I am eager to visit you. I am planning to go to Spain, and when I do, I will stop off in Rome. And after I have enjoyed your fellowship for a little while, you can provide for my journey. But before I come, I must go to Jerusalem to take a gift to the believers there.

-- Romans 15:20ff. 

Ahmari chalks it all up to the divine will. The evidence chalks it up to the civis romanus and Pharisee.

Mary the mother of Jesus attempted a family intervention

A plot for His assassination was secretly on foot. And at this juncture the incident of my text, which we owe to Mark alone of the Evangelists, occurs. Christ’s friends, apparently the members of His own family--sad to say, as would appear from the context, including His mother--came with a kindly design to rescue their misguided kinsman from danger, and laying hands upon Him, to carry Him off to some safe restraint in Nazareth, where He might indulge His delusions without doing any harm to Himself. They wish to excuse His eccentricities on the ground that He is not quite responsible--scarcely Himself; and so to blunt the point of the more hostile explanation of the Pharisees that He is in league with Beelzebub.

Conceive of that! The Incarnate Wisdom shielded by friends from the accusation that He is a demoniac by the apology that He is a lunatic! . . . 

There is nothing that commonplace men hate like anything fresh and original.

 

-- Alexander Maclaren (1826-1910), Exposition on Mark 3:21

Who lives that's not depraved or depraves?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Who lives that's not depraved or depraves? 

Who dies, that bears not one spurn to their graves 

Of their friends' gift? 

I should fear those that dance before me now 

Would one day stamp upon me: 't has been done;

Men shut their doors against a setting sun.

-- Apemantus, William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, Act 1, Scene II 

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are as graves which appear not, and the men that walk over them are not aware of them. 

-- Luke 11:44

LOL, Presbyterian David French is completely unfamiliar with the far-right road show in revolutionary America which repeatedly called the people to arms from Protestant pulpits

He's shocked, I tell you, shocked:

 If you think it’s remotely unusual that a truly extremist event (which included more than one person who’d called for hanging his political opponents) was held at a church, then you’re not familiar with far-right road shows that are stoking extremism in church after church at event after event. ... We know that fanatical religious subcultures can do an immense amount of damage to the body politic. ... what we face is an Christian subculture that is full of terrible religious purpose. The seeds of renewed political violence are being sown in churches across our land.

 More.

In 1776 the David French of 2022 would almost certainly have been a Loyalist, and the sworn enemy of the Presbyterian Rebellion condemned by George III.

Unlike today's fire-breathing right-wing lunatics, French is a proud proponent of "elite Evangelicalism" and "elite American culture" for whom "Christian nationalism" is an oxymoron. Those crazy Pentecostal patriots supporting Donald Trump come from the other side of the tracks, in case you needed reminding. David French is above all that, and stands for everything good, proper, and reasonable, you see. Like the Pharisees did. He is not like other men.

But his idea that a "new insurrection is being organized, in a sanctuary near you" is just as crazy as his idea that January 6th actually was one.

How a now de-Christianized America is suddenly going to embrace a bunch of religious fanatics with their hair on fire is not explained, but the "apocalyptic message" of "national doom" comes for us all, including for David French.

Is there a public Christian today who is more out of touch with the deeply political nature of the history of Protestant experience in America than he?

The Pharisees would not have agreed with Krister Stendahl . . . at all

 

For Judaism has never thought that God's hottest dream was that everyone become a Jew.

-- Krister Stendahl, here

 

 

 

 

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. 

-- Matthew 23:15

For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh:  But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God. 

-- Romans 2:28f.

Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham.

-- Galatians 3:7

George Weigel thinks the resurrection of Jesus made possible "the individual" in the West when it was really the example of Jesus

Rebels like Paul and Luther would be unthinkable without that example.

Catholics used to understand this. It is amusing that Weigel argues like a Protestant fixated on the resurrection instead of on the life and teaching of Jesus.

Who Invented the Individual? 

George Weigel, First Things

Before Christianity, immortality was a family concept: One lived on in one’s family. The Resurrection of Jesus and the promise of a “resurrection like his” (Rom. 6:5) changed all that, as the individual human being became the locus of immortality—and thus the bearer of a unique, personal, “individual” dignity. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

None of that would have been even thinkable were it not for the example of the supreme individuality of the forerunner as the "true man", whose vertical faith relation to God superceded [sic!] the social dimension and made it irrelevant:

 

And [the Pharisees] sent out unto him their disciples with the Herodians, saying, Master, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest thou for any man: for thou regardest not the person of men.

 

-- Matthew 22:16

This aloofness of Jesus, if we may call it that, is one of the things which marks out the unique individual qua individual so characteristic of the figures we name "religious founders". For good or for ill, it is that attitude which triumphed in the West and has been democratized to an extreme degree, in large measure due to Protestantism. Positively it has evolved into what we call "leadership". Negatively it is what is known as "a Messiah complex".

The example of Jesus is not unalloyed.

Christian financial guru Dave Ramsey appeals to the invisible hand of capitalism like the Pharisees appealed to the tradition of the elders

Dave Ramsey, quoted here:

If I raise my rent to be market rent, that does not make me a bad Christian. I did not displace that person out of that house if they can no longer afford it. The marketplace did. The economy did. The ratio of the income that they earn to their housing expense displaced them. I didn’t cause any of that. And so you are not displacing them. You are taking too much credit for what is going on …

 

 

 

 

 

"Not my problem" is man's perennial problem:

But you say it is all right for people to say to their parents, 'Sorry, I can't help you. For I have vowed to give to God what I would have given to you.' In this way, you let them disregard their needy parents. And so you cancel the word of God in order to hand down your own tradition.

-- Mark 7:11ff.

LOL, let's just pretend Saul of Tarsus and the Pharisees never existed, nevermind the other sects of the "chosen" people

It is later Christians, rather than first century Jews, who seek to exclude others based on interpretive disagreements.

-- Candida Moss 

Yeah, those guys at Qumran weren't exclusionary at all, and salvation was never "of the Jews".

The heterodox Mormon Vision of the Redemption of the Dead of October 3, 1918 expands religious identity to the point of Universalism

The "vision" is notable for the way the Second Coming of the Son of Man as judge is minimized and rationalized away in favor of a now all-consuming Universalism.

Such rationalization is a feature of religion, not a bug.

The Pharisees were liberal democritizers of Judaism with their synagogue system, expanding the availability of the holiness of the Temple priests to the hinterlands of Israel and to the Diaspora. Paul for Christianity expanded membership in the lost sheep of the house of Israel saved by Christ to the Greek-speaking Gentile world of the Mediterranean. Even Muhammad for the Arabs gave them their very own Book which rewrote the erroneous Jewish and Christian Bible in their own language. The Protestant Reformers of hierarchical Catholicism created a  priesthood of all believers transmitted in the vernacular thanks to Gutenberg.

But Mormons would flat out save the entire human race, expanding the availability of salvation even to the dead. The specific impetus is the belief that the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel were scattered globally, multiplied, and are basically unknown even to themselves, and that the Mormon mission is to gather them in to the House of Joseph in America, the twin of the House of Judah in Israel.

It's not unlike the Muslim view of its own legitimacy asserted through Ishmael, not Isaac. Mormonism is to American Protestantism, particularly nonconformist Protestantism of the Second Great Awakening in Western New York, as Islam is to Eastern Orthodoxy, particularly Nestorianism.

It's as ingenious as it is unconvincing.  

The Whole Earth Shall Be in Commotion

It was just a few weeks before his own death when President Smith was in the depths of sorrow over the sudden death of his oldest son when he received the crowning heavenly revelation known as “the vision of the redemption of the dead.” In this vision, he not only saw his father in the Spirit World but the great gathering of millions of the righteous who had died into the arms of Christ. He also saw the offering of redemption to those who had done wickedly on the earth on the condition of their repentance in the Spirit World. This was Christ’s visit to the Spirit World during the 3 days His body was in the tomb, fulfilling His promise recorded in 1 Peter: 3, 4 . . .

 

While yes, Christ’s Second Coming will cleanse the wicked from the earth, after death, He offers healing to all who will accept it. He wants us to come home.  This gathering overcomes all the “separateness” and chaos that evil inflicts upon us. It not only gathers us into the arms of Christ but into the arms of each other. Even as we approach the Apocalypse and the center stops holding on earth, it does hold in eternity. I rejoice to know that, in the end, all things in heaven and earth will be gathered together as one in Christ.

As America becomes less Christian its people grow more delusional

Nearly half of Americans think they’re a better person than EVERYONE they know!

In a recent survey of 2,000 U.S. residents, 81 percent say they believe that humankind is inherently good. Three in four believe they themselves are fundamentally a good person. When researchers asked respondents how they would compare themselves to others in their lives, 46 percent went a step further, admitting (in their eyes) they’re “better” than everyone else they know.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans say they’re more selfless than ever before thanks to pandemic

 

64 percent of Americans say 2020 has made them more selfless than ever before. ... Researchers find 74 percent believe 2020 has made them more aware of the needs of others.

Seventy-two percent of those surveyed found themselves caring about the health and wellbeing of others significantly more than ever before. Despite the economic crash, a staggering 87 percent of Americans have donated a portion of their paycheck during COVID-19.

 

The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.

 -- Luke 18:11f. 

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? 

-- Jeremiah 17:9

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 

-- I John 1:8

That Jesus conceived of the coming eschatological kingdom as a Jewish kingdom of the twelve tribes of Israel is the simplest explanation of the evidence

There are but two survivals of the explicitly Jewish conception of the coming kingdom in the Gospels, without any thought of inclusion of Gentiles, in Matthew 19 and Luke 22.

But the choice of twelve disciples by Jesus as a function of this explicitly Jewish conception of the imminently coming kingdom as a kingdom of the twelve tribes of Israel is also evidence. If the former nearly was expunged from the record, the tradition of the twelve survived because they did.

Those elements, the future Jewish kingdom and its twelve Jewish judges, are consistent with other surviving evidence of Jesus' original Jewish Gospel, for example with the charge in Matthew 10 and 15 not to go into the way of the Gentiles but to go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, as well as with the scattered derogatory references to Gentiles, for example as dogs.  

Needless to say, a future Gentile kingdom would have required more judges than the twelve, and a Gospel to the Gentiles worked out to go with it. The latter was the innovation of Paul, not coincidentally a missionary Pharisee. The former never existed but for him.

And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life. 

-- Matthew 19:28f.

Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations. And I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto me; That ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. 

-- Luke 22:28ff.

That this conception of a future Jewish kingdom was there from the beginning explains the many instances of the disciples' fascination with who would be greatest in that kingdom which survive.

Those discourses need not be historical in all their particulars. The failure of the Jewish kingdom to appear necessitated rationalization of the conception involved under and for the new circumstances. Hence the emphasis upon selfless servanthood in the light of the reinterpretation of Jesus' death as a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world.

At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? 

-- Matthew 18:1

But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant.

-- Matthew 23:11

And he came to Capernaum: and being in the house he asked them, What was it that ye disputed among yourselves by the way? But they held their peace: for by the way they had disputed among themselves, who should be the greatest.

-- Mark 9:33f. 

Then there arose a reasoning among them, which of them should be greatest.

-- Luke 9:46

Luke says the dispute among the twelve persisted even to the Last Supper, which is remarkably self-absorbed of them given the supposed gravity of the moment. It also suggests the lectures by Jesus all along didn't do them much good. It's almost as if the fact of the incipient nativism were a pretext for Luke's narrative invention. And then there's the irony that even in correcting the disciples' preoccupation with themselves, Luke still makes Jesus contrast the proper behavior with the improper behavior in terms of Jew vs. Gentile. 

And there was also a strife among them, which of them should be accounted the greatest. And he said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve. For whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that serveth? is not he that sitteth at meat? but I am among you as he that serveth.  

-- Luke 22:24ff.

But ye shall not be so.

It is easier to explain the more inclusive conception of the kingdom of God with Gentiles as a development from this original narrower one without Gentiles than the other way around. 

The narrower conception died hard, especially for example in the person of Peter, whom Paul accused of lingering hypocrisy about it in Galatians 2.

Luke, on the other hand, paints Peter in a more sympathetic light, in Acts 10, 11, and 15, showing how God himself miraculously intervened to change Peter's opinion about Gentiles.

But that Peter persisted in the nativism so long is the point. He didn't invent it. He got it from someone and stuck with it the whole time almost up until the moment he disappears from Luke's narrative never to be heard from again.

What does an elite tribe do when it runs out of its own tribes to exploit?

It invents more tribes, expanding the number and morphing from Judaism for Jews into Judaism for the whole world by way of Pauline Christianity.

And, behold, I have given the children of Levi all the tenth in Israel for an inheritance, for their service which they serve, even the service of the tabernacle of the congregation. -- Numbers 18:21

If any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more: Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; -- Philippians 3:4f.

For it hath pleased them of Macedonia and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor saints which are at Jerusalem. It hath pleased them verily; and their debtors they are. For if the Gentiles have been made partakers of their spiritual things, their duty is also to minister unto them in carnal things. -- Romans 15:26f.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. -- Matthew 23:15

Jesus' encounter with the Sadducees is pro-Pauline propaganda, not history

God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

-- Matthew 22:32

He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living.

-- Mark 12:27

For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him.

-- Luke 20:38

The idea that Jesus got into a dust-up with the Sadducees over the intermediate state and resurrection and basically ended up taking the position of the Pharisees for himself is absurd. This is evidence of the later Pauline consensus contaminating the tradition, at the expense of the eschatology of the historical Jesus.

Talk of an intermediate state, for example, between death and final judgment where the dead go to be with the Lord interjects a fatal pause to the present time, which for Jesus is pregnant with eschatological expectation. That pause necessarily would have undercut the present sense of urgency which informed the call to repent and escape what is surely coming.

With an intermediate state awaiting at death instead of judgment imminently confronting, one rationalizes away the extraordinary current moment in favor of the continuation of human history as it has always continued.

 

The need to leave all and follow Jesus evaporates (Matthew 4; Mark 10; Luke 5; Luke 18), replaced by less consequential belief.

 

The establishment of a settled life and therefore a church is made possible, which accomodates itself to time instead of revolting against it.

 

A Gentile mission, specifically ruled out by Jesus (Matthew 10), becomes possible in Athens where "in him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28) has more currency than "the kingdom of God is at hand" in Jerusalem (Mark 1:15). The kingdom focused on Jerusalem recedes from view, as does the God who is coming there soon to judge this generation's guilt for the blood of all the prophets!

The problem for historians is that there was never a sound proponent of Jesus' eschatology who followed him who could match the thoroughgoing Pauline theology. And why should have such a person arisen if his followers "after the flesh" had truly understood Jesus as they must have? Their expectation also would have continued to be for an imminent end, even despite the death and resurrection of their master: "Wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?" (Acts 1:6). There was no impetus to document anything for posterity, since posterity would never come to exist. This means that the gospels must be viewed with great suspicion everywhere, for they are the products of the subsequent, already compromised, period. They are not of the Urzeit. Only out of respect for Jesus do they preserve any of the conflicting evidence from his teaching.

Consider that if an intermediate state is put forward in the mouth of Jesus, all sense of urgency about the imminent coming judgment he predicted would necessarily melt away with authority. Belief in the restyled message of atonement could more easily become the message, relieving everyone of the onerous original obligations of discipleship. The obvious failure of the kingdom's coming meant Paul's rationalizations were ready made for the occasion, and came as a relief. In he stepped and supplied the solution to the ongoing disappointment caused by the delay of the parousia, and the death of the disciples' generation simply made all this a fait accompli.

Jesus did not view himself as Paul viewed him. "Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more" (2 Corinthians 5:16). Jesus viewed himself as the people viewed him, as a prophet. Thinking himself destined for death as so many of the prophets before him were, Jesus is unique because he thought of himself as the final prophet. Even as he's about to die he can say that history as we know it is about to end, too:

"[Y]e shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven."

-- Mark 14:62

"From the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, which perished between the altar and the temple: verily I say unto you, It shall be required of this generation."

-- Luke 11:51

This is where Muhammad got his idea to style himself as the final prophet, but armed with a sword, centuries later! More than most New Testament critics of modern times, Muhammad long before sensed the inadequacy of the gospels' handling of Jesus' eschatological message. And if Paul of Tarsus could receive direct revelations from God and refound a movement, so much more the better. So could he!

There is no dying and rising as a sacrifice for sins in Jesus' mind, only prophets perishing unjustly in Jerusalem. The rising is added under the influence of hysterical women, and an unstable Pharisee, Paul.

The fanatical Benjaminite had recourse to the resurrected Jesus to make sense of his own personal conversion experience, which was really a mental breakdown if one is to be perfectly frank about it. After all, after a surprising, brief period of activity as a Jesus advocate instead of as the well known and feared Jesus persecutor he had recently been, Paul disappears for a period of ten years, if the chronology and the account are to be believed. This is hardly the behavior of a settled individual convinced by his experiences one way or another, but of a still-troubled person. It was during this time that Paul must have developed his ideas of Jesus' sacrificial death and resurrection under the influence of the direct, supernatural visions and revelations he claimed were the sole basis of his gospel: "For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ" (Galatians 1:12). What these really were is anyone's guess, but in his own time people already were calling him crazy. To be sure they are at the same time productive of ingenious solutions, as his letters testify. These solutions eventually supplied Paul with a ready escape from the offense of his own Jewish particularity, which he experienced as a Roman citizen in his Asian backwater, and at the same time validated the Pharisaic impulse, which he imbibed as a youth and to which he remained committed, to democratize Temple holiness by making proselytes and founding synagogues. His possession of the Roman franchise reinforced his ideas of human equality under God and their legitimacy.

The body of Jesus temporarily and hastily buried was missing on Easter morn because it was moved. The disciples to a man did not believe Jesus rose from the dead, only the women in their hysteria at discovering this did. (If one is looking for the incipient enthusiasm later displayed by early Christianity described in Acts, it is here). The gospels' portrayal of the general dim pall of ignorance of a predicted rising on the third day which hung over the movement despite all the supposed evidence to the contrary makes no sense if Jesus were in fact a resurrection preacher and intermediate state believer first and foremost. That "evidence" became part of the narrative ex post facto. The idea otherwise should not have been rejected so out of hand by his very own disciples as it was. The plainest explanation for their unbelief on the third day is that they had no prior knowledge of the idea of resurrection on the third day, and that because Jesus had never preached it.

Paul the Apostle is the true founder of Christianity. He co-opted the sectarian Jewish eschatological religion preached by Jesus. An enthusiast for Pharisaism to the end, Paul's personal ambition was to make Judaism safe as a universal religion, relegating present Jerusalem to the discarded past: "She is in slavery with her children" (Galatians 4:25). By turning Jesus into a Pharisee, he succeeded.

Nevertheless I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following; for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!

-- Luke 13:33f.