If so, then he could not be the perfect sacrifice.
If not, then he had no human side and was pure god, and god cannot die which, makes the sacrifice a lie.
Could these facts be why the Jews have no Original Sin concept in their religion?
Is that also why Jews rejected Jesus as their messiah, or did they just recognize the immorality of anyone using a scapegoat and the abdication of one’s responsibility for their actions, which is against all moral legal systems?
Why have Christians embraced such an immoral and illegal concept?
Animal, human, and god sacrifices.
Sacrifices were a part of ancient thought.
Feeding demons fresh blood.
Jews switched it up so that God gets sacrifices, and it is a holy act to offer your life up to ‘god’.
God doesn’t need you to cut a goats throat and burn the flesh on an alter.
God does not need or want sacrifices.
But oh well, they missed that part, and now, they believe in holy sacrifice.
Christianity is an inversion in many ways.
What was seen as foolish was then seen as great.
Yes Christianity emerged as a transvaluation of pagan and Hebrew values. The myth of original sin seems to be a reaction of the religiously enculturated symbolic ideal ego against one’s own inexorable human primate instinctual drives. Jesus was probably a human primate like the rest of us. Which is not to deny the possibility of the redemptive power of his transcendence values on people.
I’m an atheist, but I don’t think this is a problem for Christians.
Adam wasn’t born with original sin, but he was still a man, and had freewill to sin.
Jesus -fictional character (probably based on some actual historical figure); Adam & Eve -fictional characters; Most of the characters in the Bible -fictional characters.
The Hebrews/Jews were great storytellers. The purpose wasn’t to describe actual historical events and persons, but create parables that taught their children about life, morality, customs etc. Even St. Paul (when you look at his authentic letters) does not refer to Jesus as though he were an actual person. When Christians got hold of these stories, they failed to appreciate this fact, and started taking them literally. The stories were meant to simultaneously teach many truths, but the Christian scholars looked at them, and said, “This is what the Creation Story means, and everybody who does not agree is a heretic.” The concept of original sin is a Christian interpretation of a story, which Christians completely misunderstood.
Now take this concept of Jesus as the perfect sacrifice. Like all the other stories in the Bible, there are many ways of interpreting it. Adam disobeyed, even under the threat of death, but Jesus was obedient, even to the point of dying. Does one man’s good deed cancel out another’s misdeed? If you’re a Christian, it does. But maybe there are other ways of interpreting this “sacrifice”. Jesus was all over those who could talk the talk, but who couldn’t walk the walk. He criticized them sharply, and in the end, they ended up rejecting him. When we are rejected, we feel anger, and we are tempted to hurt others. Sacrificing oneself for those who will ultimately reject you, and fail to appreciate that sacrifice is a sacrifice made in vain, that only hurts the ones who really love you, i.e. the ones who don’t need you to sacrifice yourself. So, if this is the case, then Jesus was angry, and wanted to hurt the ones who had believed in him. And thus Jesus was not the perfect sacrifice: He talked the talk, but couldn’t walk the walk, and was condemned for his own hypocrisy. Just another interpretation among many possible interpretations.
Yours is more thoughtful than what most Christians try to sell.
I tend to have to chastise both Christians and Jews for not thinking well on this.
The Jews for not stepping up to defend themselves against those who think they hold the responsibility for Jesus dying.
That chastisement usually ends with me telling them they should not deny it and take a bow for letting Jesus test the prophesy the way he wanted to by his suicide. Of course the Jews would put it on their heads as they wanted the benefits, if the myth happened to9 be true.
With immoral Christianity and their scapegoat riding sheeple, I get more to the point with this old O.P.
On Jesus dying for you.
It takes quite an inflated ego to think a god would actually die for you, after condemning you unjustly in the first place.
You have swallowed a lie and don’t care how evil you make Jesus to keep your feel good get out of hell free card.
It is a lie, first and foremost because, like it or not, having another innocent person suffer or die for the wrongs you have done, — so that you might escape responsibility for having done them, — is immoral. To abdicate your personal responsibility for your actions or use a scapegoat is immoral.
You also have to ignore what Jesus, as a Jewish Rabbi, would have taught his people.
Ezekiel 18:20 The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.
Deuteronomy 24:16 (ESV) "Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin.
Psa 49;7 None of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him:
There is no way that you would teach your children to use a scapegoat to escape their just punishments and here you are doing just that.
Jesus is just a smidge less immoral than his demiurge genocidal father, and here you are trying to put him as low in moral fibre as Yahweh.
This shows I can be a crusty old B.
BTW, welcome neophyte.
You seem to have a dent mind set.
If you are here to argue religion, unfortunately you will not find too many decent Christian apologists.
I do not know if it is because Christianity is shrinking or because they have been driven out by more able non-religious apologists.
As a Gnostic Christian, I get it from both sides but do mange to get a few non-believers on my side.the.
OK! Slow down! Don’t be too quick to draw conclusions about me, before I’ve barely had time to introduce myself. Perhaps I should have elaborated a little more in my original post. I should do that now.
I agree with the serpent being a female entity. She is sometimes associated with Lilith, Adam’s first wife. But how did Lilith, a flesh and blood creature, become an immortal, like God. The Genesis story has Adam being created in God’s own image. So where did God come up with the plans for Lilith? In the misogynist, monotheistic culture of Judeo-Christianism, there was no room for an omnipotent female being, who was God’s equal. In the Egyptian mythology, from which Judaism takes a lot of inspiration, this goddess would be Isis. Adam, who was made in God’s image, could not tolerate a woman being his equal, and so Adam and Lilith parted, and God made Eve to be Adam’s wife. This misogynist culture is the real original sin, and woman holds the key to man’s redemption. This serpent, in Christian theology, became Satan /the Devil. But the Devil is mostly an invention of these Christian scholars in order to explain an imperfect creation at the hands of a perfect God, and thus it is also apparent how Lilith came to be demonized.
As for Jesus, I make a distinction between the pre-Crucifixion Jesus, and the Resurrection Jesus. In the equivalent Egyptian myth, the pre-Crucifixion Jesus would correspond to Osiris, Isis’ brother and husband, who gets murdered by an ambitious brother, and usurper of the throne. The pre-Crucifixion Jesus is also Adam, or a representation of mankind in his infant stage. The Resurrection Jesus corresponds to Horus, the post-mortem son of Osiris, by his surviving wife, Isis. The Resurrection Jesus is one who has reached maturity in his spiritual development, the old, imperfect self having died.
All these various myths relate similar themes, and each one has it own merits for their clarity in relating these deeper truths. I prefer the Isis/Osiris myth to the Jesus legend, but if I had to choose one exemplary myth/story that bests all the rest, in all honesty, it would be “Gone with the Wind”. Not normally thought of as an allegory on human history, and the story of salvation, but this is only because most people don’t see the deeper meaning of what is going on, and what the various characters represent.
I’m not looking to argue with people over their beliefs, or try to convert them, or sell them anything. My chief concern is for the Chosen, and I suppose this is where my beliefs take their most radical turn from mainstream thought. These Chosen would be Horus, or the children of Adam and Lilith, or the Resurrected Jesus, and to use a Gone with the Wind analogy, the child of Melanie. They represent a single generation that is offered immortality, but unfortunately, it is a gift that is squandered by the majority of this generation. Most do not even appreciate what it is they are throwing away. They say stuff like, “Oh, Jesus died for my sins, so I have nothing to worry about. I can live my life any way I choose.” I don’t see immortality as a gift that is handed out haphazrdly -it couldn’t be. How many people live rich fulfilling lives, and by the time they reach middle age they’ve lost all zeal for life? How would they manage as immortals? Immortality is something one is prepared for from the time of birth, and the preparation work is something that cannot descend on every single generation of history, from start to finish. If this sounds absurd, try reading the sci-fi novel “Childhood"s End”, by Arthur C. Clarke.
You show that you too are an esoteric ecumenist, I think, as you compare various myths and stories.
I share your thinking from the Jewish POV but Christianity does not recognize Lilith and interpret the two creation myths as only being about A & E.
They miss the built in contradiction, and the choice between equality of all or the hierarch Yahweh creates in Gen 3., as they wanted to really hang on to their misogyny and forgot to treat the Lillith story as a doublet out in to create a debate.
I read the novel “Childhood’s End”, by Arthur C. Clarke.
That was too long ago for me to remember the details. That is my history and for much of my reading and knowing my poor memory even back then, I seem to have decided to hold fast to the moral teachings while my mind discarded/forgot the details.