In a perfect world you would reply with constructive criticism or a link to you reading this:
shuffled a few things around, replaced a few apostrophes with end quotes
Final edit.
It is rather difficult to come up with constructive criticism to something that is a two-hour read. It obviously lacks originality and doesn’t really put the words of the Gospels into a new light. I can see what you have attempted to do, but I think that we really need it in story form, and stories today are a little different to what they were two thousand years ago. There is a lot of evidence that the sources of the Gospels may have looked quite similar to what you have done, before Mark came along and wrote his tragedy, which Matthew and Luke couldn’t allow to remain the way it was. And John? Well, he wanted a completely different portrayal of the events around Jesus.
What came out of a condensed reading of the Gospels for me was the thought that the Kingdom was emerging, or should emerge, rather than the common idea of it arriving out of the sky, gleaming and beaming as in Revelations. What we assume from the letters and acts of the apostles, in the expectation of the end of the world, people actually did allow a new Way to emerge, and although it received a scathing reception from the Romans for being heretical, many simple people were enthusiastic. But it seems that the spread of churches didn’t happen without inward fighting either, which Paul was very critical of, which brings the whole development down to earth.
I still believe that this new Way can emerge, but the question is what could move people towards a radical change, being as the multiple apocalyptic visions have as yet failed to transpire, and Christians have largely returned to the mundane, with a high note on Sundays? What could inspire us to go this other Way, rather than take the highway?
It beats universal slavery? It is the answer to all the deepest Why questions? It is the synthesis reconciling every antithesis? I dunno. Stuff like that.
Thanks 
Yours is a kind of sayings gospel . It reminded me of Q. As modern historians poured over the gospels of the New Testament wondering which had been written first they set the gospels side-by-side for comparison and notice two kinds of correspondence. One correspondence was that the storyline in Matthew and Luke agreed only when it followed the gospel of mark. From that fact they deduced that Mark was the earliest narrative gospel and the source for the plot used by Matthew and Luke. The second correspondence was that Matthew and Luke contained a large quantity of sayings material not found in Mark and much of this material was identical. From this they deduced that Matthew and Luke had used a second written document in addition to the gospel of mark. They called this document Q as a shorthand for Quelle which means source in German. So the theory is that Q was a book of the first followers of Jesus which came to light after being lost for 1800 years.
There is definitely something fishing going on here
One man’s Heaven is another man’s hell.
I would rather poke myself in the eye with a wooden bodkin that read any BS from scripture.
That is just a rambling river of verbal Diarrhoea. Why would anyone want to go down shit creek?
Should read stuff by Lydia McGrew & watch vids by Tim McGrew
The Gospels are much earlier & Q is a mere hypothesis.
Buuuut that’s not why I started this thread.
Universal slavery is the shit creek to hell this kingdom avoids.
Ten minutes into this youtu.be/T4v_tisDAj8 it doen’t seem credible. Why would actual disciple Matthew defer to plot from 3rd party (follower of Peter John Mark? ) rather than his own eye witness account?
What are you doing with your read but quoting the so-called “red letter” words of Jesus? That’s what Jefferson did a couple hundred years ago. Why do it again?
Maybe can discuss Lydia’s vid in new thread?
Jefferson didn’t only use Jesus’ words, and he left a lot out. I only left out what isn’t in the earliest manuscripts. I wanted to get a Keynote. I like harmony.
The interesting thing about this video is that it is all about reliability. She keeps on saying that if Matthew did follow Mark, some people would be saying that he was making things up. I don’t see that as an issue at all. It seems to me quite clear that Mark was the first, but as he wrote the gospel in the style of a Greek tragedy, the writers of the two other synoptic gospels didn’t want it to stay that way. After all, where’s the “Good News” in a tragedy?
Having said that, I see all of the gospels as compositions, as arrangements of sources, and the Q theory seems quite acceptable, although there may have been many sources. The thing is though, just as Mark wrote a tragedy, with an obvious intention behind his writing, the other writers were not “reporting” in a way that journalists might tell the facts, but rather they were proclaiming. This can’t be forgotten.
My constructive criticism is that this is a PHILOSOPHY web page.
Your document contains no philosophy of any kind, not even religious philosophy.
No. That is laughable.
The kingdom is the purest form of mental slavery. And you have placed your mind in chains.
Better still. Why not find a completely different forum? One that deals with religions and other fantasy worlds?
I’m not going to spend two hours on it, but in the second paragraph I came across this sentence (my emphasis):
+++He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, and to preach the year of the Lord’s favor.+++
So go on then, I’m listening.
It does not mean physically blind. But keep listening. Two hours. Not even but a blip.
Yes, I thought it might be something like that. I don’t think I’ll bother, thanks.
Any time.
Really? How did you determine that?
There was a context when it would have been meant physically—when he is replying to John the Baptist.
biblegateway.com/passage/?s … ersion=NIV
…but in this case, the blindness was spiritual. It is based on the passage from Isaiah. They are imprisoned in darkness.
Yes, he does actually heal both kinds of blindness (not guaranteed, in the case of physical… can be a blessing), but the context of the moment determines which kind.
I’m not a salesman… in case you’re wondering why I didn’t say that in the first place. I didn’t see until now it was a set up giving me an opportunity to pitch, either…
Whatever, man!
I get it. I have a skeptical mind, too, and could not wrap my head around it … and am still amazed. It never ends. You sometimes get in the way… you lose focus… you forget. But. You’re ruined for… Well. We kinda start out ruined, anyway, don’t we? Anyway I’m rambling.