Jesus was not a nice man

[sarahmichigan]

I'm sorry, but Jesus was not a nice guy. He was a fucker. I know a lot of New Agers want to believe that all the awful teachings in the Bible are confined to the Old Testament or to the teachings of Paul. But according to the New Testament, Jesus wasn't all love and light, and he even contradicted himself a bit.

-He said he came to bring a sword, not peace.
-He advocated disowning your family once you became a follower.
-He suggested cutting off body parts to keep yourself from sinning.
-He said that looking at another person with lust was as bad as committing adultery (Thought Police extraordinaire!).

So, if you are a "Cafeterian" and like to uphold the nice teachings in the Bible and ignore the not-so-nice ones, fine. Just don't try to tell me what a loving, peaceful teacher Jesus was.

What do you really know about what the Bible says?

http://www.ffrf.org/quiz/bquiz.php

Comments

[cabell.livejournal.com]

Pretty much all mainstream historians recognize the real existence of Jesus the man; whether you believe he was the divine son of Jehovah is, of course, quite another matter. I'd recommend taking a look at the Jesus Seminar's Five Gospels, however, before according equal credibility to all statements attributed to Jesus the historical religious reformer/leader/nut (as you prefer). They're a group of Biblical scholars (certainly NOT fundamentalists), and they have a very nice system of color-coding utterances attributed to Jesus according to whether it was almost certainly something he said, something he probably said something like, probably not something he said, or definitely not anything he ever said (see: entire Gospel of John).

The book also includes the Gospel of Thomas, which is Gnostic in character and certainly a different perspective on early Christianity and its portrayals of Jesus. It features Jesus bringing clay birds to life and striking some guy dead for bumping into him on the street, which rather overshadows your canonical examples of violent Christ behavior. :p

I was not raised Christian and, in fact, grew up in Rush Limbaugh's home town, where not being Christian was heavily sanctioned by my peer group; ironically, this aroused in me an interest in the history and philosophy of Christianity. Personally, I'm pretty okay with Jesus; having met my share of crazy pagans, I feel that there is pretty much no doctrine/teaching/whathaveyou that a determined idiot cannot twist to suit their own desires.

[sarahmichigan.livejournal.com]

Pretty much all mainstream historians recognize the real existence of Jesus the man; whether you believe he was the divine son of Jehovah is, of course, quite another matter.

Wow, it's not my impression from the (rather extensive) reading I've done that there's the kind of consensus you're suggesting. I'm not saying that there was absolutely no historical reality to the Jesus myth. I'm just that I have my doubts that any man that the Biblical accounts are describing was much like our surviving accounts, and I suspect that reports of different men were conflated in the Biblical accounts.

[cabell.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if you're arguing that Jesus the man didn't perform miracles, talk to God, get tempted by Satan, etc.--I don't believe that aspect of what you term the Jesus myth, either--or if you're arguing that he didn't say things people say he said (or do certain things that are less miraculous in character, like yell at moneylenders). You did, however, say earlier in comments that you didn't believe Jesus existed, which I maintain is a generally accepted fact. Whether or not there was a person named Yeshua who engaged in religious/political activity is not a subject of mainstream historical debate. Whether specific ideas/acts should be attributed to that figure is, and is the focus of research by scholars in the Jesus Seminar and outside of it.