Many Christians (including me, for years) live in a fantasy world where the Jews of Jesus day engaged in polite Pharisee vs. Sadducee squabbles, the Romans kept a bemused and wary eye on things, and Jesus appeared out of the blue as a peaceful wandering sage who said and did Son of God things that finally irritated the Jewish authorities past the breaking point.
NOTHING could be FURTHER from the truth. The 100 years before Jesus and the 100 years after were violent, bloody and out-of-control almost beyond belief. Jews vs. Jews, Jews vs. Romans, Jewish-leaning Romans vs. anti-Roman fanatics, knife-wielding Jewish terrorists that terrorized the populace, pseudo-Messiahs and wonder-workers all over the place, the Chief Priesthood for sale to the highest bidder, yada yada. There is no mystery about it. Itâs all well-documented.
Iâm not saying it should change or harm anyoneâs faith, but a knowledge of this period would be a major eye-opener for anyone living in the fantasy world described above. It likely would change your perspective (and not necessarily for the worse) on what the gospel accounts are all about. (The Romans didnât just âdestroy the Templeâ - they turned Jerusalem into a wasteland.) Iâve never understood why so many believers actually seem to prefer willful fantasies.
I never find it productive to make reading suggestions - and would be accused of bias even if I did. The 100 years before and after Jesus are well-documented by vast quantities of serious secular scholarship. None of it is any secret except to those who are willfully ignorant and fear it might change their perspective on the Bible and even Jesus. Although scholars are not by any means in agreement on exactly who or what the âhistorical Jesusâ was, they are in agreement that there is huge chasm between the historical Jesus and the âChrist of faithâ and that the historical Jesus is best understood in the context of the 50 or 100 years before and after his ministry.
I havenât read it, but in skimming the table of contents it doesnât seem to focus in depth on Jesusâ milieu. What I have gained the most from are serious secular scholars who focus specifically on the state of Judaism and Jewish-Roman relations in the period Iâm talking about. I am going to order it, however. Even good old Josephus wrote his first major work, The Jewish War, in 75 AD, before any of the gospels except possibly Mark, while The Antiquities of the Jews was written in 94, roughly contemporanously with the Gospel of John and Revelation.
No, not the point of my thread at all. The point of the thread is that most Christians âneed to get out moreâ but rather curiously resist doing so.
Yawn. Itâs like suggesting that âif you are going to fly, you should read up on aeronautical engineering.â Most folks would think it rather unnecessary.
You seem to be working hard to miss the point. âYou might want to read up on the principles of flightâ would be appropriate advice to someone who insists jumping off a cliff with homemade bird wings is a good idea. The Christians Iâm addressing are those living in the fantasy world of the NT as accurate history.
Yale University Press, 744 pages, published 2022. The folks to which my post was addressed might be better advised to start with Wikipedia and branch out from there.
@MrEâs example totally applies to this situation. Itâs called âhyperbole.â A hyperbole is âa statement or claim not to be taken literally.â @Bingo, I think you took his words literally lol.
âThe pointâ that apparently flew past @Bingo is- that you donât need to understand aeronautical engineering, nor the history of flight in order to fly. You just need a ticket to ride.
Maybe if you understood the âJewsâ of Jerusalem were and still are pagans of the synagogue of Satan things would suddenly become clear.
Iâll give you a fact you are ignorant of: The Ark of the Covenant had been missing for 619 years by the time Jesus years confronted the High Priests.
They knew that as the son of GOD he knew that the ark wasnât in the Holy of Holies and could not be sprinkled with blood each Passover to erase the previous years sins.
They knw that that knowledge must be kept from the public or they would riot and probably kill the priests. So Jesus had to be gotten out of the way.
By today the Jews have accummulated 2610 years of sinsâŚand they increase that total each time the deny Jesus is the Son of GOD.
Stick to the Bible Only, thatâs the only book that should read and understood.
Anything else are menâs impressions, doctrines of men, the church changing times and doctrines of the devil whose deceived the whole christian world !
That is absolutely the worst thing a believer can do. Knowledge of original languages, the history and culture of the ancient Middle East is imperative to understanding the scripture.
