flip flop

[Robban]

Was Jesus a watercombed toothless flip flop or,

was he a radical of radicals,

He seemed to say things in a way that on the surface could be taken one way,

yet was that what he meant?.

example.
"Let the dead bury their dead."

(Matt 8:22)

 

[Thedictator]

Jesus was never a radical, he has been misjudged as one but he was never one. He was in full submission to God's will, word, and law. He was an obedient son to God. In no way could this be defined as radical. His teaching sometimes where misconstrued as radical but again they are not.
they where the norm for what was righteous. It is us who are the radicals, who disobey God. Jesus refused the way of rebellion against God, and that was looked upon as radical.

 

[miamited]

Hi robban,

I'm just curious what 'watercombed' means?

God bless you,
In Christ, ted

 

[cloudyday2]

Was Jesus a watercombed toothless flip flop or,

was he a radical of radicals,

He seemed to say things in a way that on the surface could be taken one way,

yet was that what he meant?.

example.
"Let the dead bury their dead."

(Matt 8:22)

I can't guess what deeper meaning Jesus had in mind, but I suspect the obvious meaning was not what Jesus had in mind because burials were so important in Jewish culture.

Daniel Boyarin makes a similar argument about quotes from Jesus that seem on the surface to dismiss the Torah and the kosher regulations. He argues that Jesus was actually arguing that the Pharisee's oral traditions were obscuring and in conflict with the deeper truths in the written Torah. So I suspect this is a similar example. Just my uninformed guess.

 

[Robban]

Hi robban,

I'm just curious what 'watercombed' means?

God bless you,
In Christ, ted

An expression,
"watercombed and toothless"= looks nice but no bite.

 

[Robban]

I can't guess what deeper meaning Jesus had in mind, but I suspect the obvious meaning was not what Jesus had in mind because burials were so important in Jewish culture.

Daniel Boyarin makes a similar argument about quotes from Jesus that seem on the surface to dismiss the Torah and the kosher regulations. He argues that Jesus was actually arguing that the Pharisee's oral traditions were obscuring and in conflict with the deeper truths in the written Torah. So I suspect this is a similar example. Just my uninformed guess.

There are things he said that can be traced back to strict Halakah,

Radical was the only word I could find to try and get this thought in writing,

A convert for example is expected to accept that their new behavour will awaken some

reaction,

today in some countries it would be enough to get one on a watchlist.

You brought a good point,

Who was more raical, the then Jewich leaders or Jesus?

By radical I mean groundlig.

It is not always easy with words.

.

 

[JackRT]

I regard Jesus as a thoroughgoing radical of his day and age. His teachings threatened both the Jewish priestly establishment and the Roman political authorities.

 

[Cearbhall]

His teaching sometimes where misconstrued as radical but again they are not.
they where the norm for what was righteous. It is us who are the radicals, who disobey God.

Labeling something or someone as radical is not a moral judgment or an inherently derogatory term. It's a relative description. In his time and place, he was certainly a radical, and to such a degree that he was executed for it. It's a useful and necessary term for understanding the significance of Jesus of Nazareth in his historical and political context.

 

[Thedictator]

I regard Jesus as a thoroughgoing radical of his day and age. His teachings threatened both the Jewish priestly establishment and the Roman political authorities.

I would agree to some degree with the Jewish priestly leadership but what teaching threatened the Roman Empire, he went out of his way to not upset Roman Authority?

 

[Robban]

I would agree to some degree with the Jewish priestly leadership but what teaching threatened the Roman Empire, he went out of his way to not upset Roman Authority?

Well, it did not take much to upset the Roman authority.

Consider this,
Rabbi Chananya ben Tradyon, one of the ten martyrs,

When the Romans discovered him teaching the outlawed Torah,
they wrapped him in a Torah scroll,

piled bundles of twigs around him,

and before setting him afire they placed damp woolen cloths on him to prolong the agony of
being burned to death.


And this for teaching Torah.

 

[Thedictator]

Well, it did not take much to upset the Roman authority.

Consider this,
Rabbi Chananya ben Tradyon, one of the ten martyrs,

When the Romans discovered him teaching the outlawed Torah,
they wrapped him in a Torah scroll,

piled bundles of twigs around him,

and before setting him afire they placed damp woolen cloths on him to prolong the agony of
being burned to death.


And this for teaching Torah.

And this has what to do with the Teaching of Jesus against the Roman Empire???

 

[Robban]

And this has what to do with the Teaching of Jesus against the Roman Empire???

I did not mention him teaching against the Roman Empire.

But Haman pops up all the time,

You know, the dictator type,

Ester 3:8,

And Haman said to King Ahasverus,
"There is a certain people scattered and seperate among the peoples throughout all provinces of your Kingdom,

and their laws differ from (those of) other people,

and they do not keep the kings laws."

 

[Robban]

I did not mention him teaching against the Roman Empire.

But Haman pops up all the time,

You know, the dictator type,

Ester 3:8,

And Haman said to King Ahasverus,
"There is a certain people scattered and seperate among the peoples throughout all provinces of your Kingdom,

and their laws differ from (those of) other people,

and they do not keep the kings laws."

BTW, just to avoid any misunderstanding, my mention of dictator had absolutely nothing to do with your user name.

I don,t pull cheap tricks.

I respect you as any other poster.

 

[JackRT]

Jesus did not teach directly against the Roman authorities but he did counsel covert defiance. However, any claim to be a messiah was viewed by the Romans as a claim to kingship and that was a direct threat to the legitimacy of their rule. The Jewish Sanhedrin (high court) did not lose the right to execute (by stoning) for the crime of blasphemy until AD 39. However, a claim to be the messiah was a political and not a religious statement and that is why the High Priest had to go the Romans to get rid of Jesus.

 

[Thedictator]

I did not mention him teaching against the Roman Empire.

But Haman pops up all the time,

You know, the dictator type,

Ester 3:8,

And Haman said to King Ahasverus,
"There is a certain people scattered and seperate among the peoples throughout all provinces of your Kingdom,

and their laws differ from (those of) other people,

and they do not keep the kings laws."

Again how does this apply to what I wrote? or to the subject of this OP.

 

[Thedictator]

BTW, just to avoid any misunderstanding, my mention of dictator had absolutely nothing to do with your user name.

I don,t pull cheap tricks.

I respect you as any other poster.

My user name comes from be being a Missionary to Russia and later a public school teach and Coach. One of my Students said Russia is a country of Dictators you must be one too, and it stuck ever since.

 

[Thedictator]

Jesus did not teach directly against the Roman authorities but he did counsel covert defiance. However, any claim to be a messiah was viewed by the Romans as a claim to kingship and that was a direct threat to the legitimacy of their rule. The Jewish Sanhedrin (high court) did not lose the right to execute (by stoning) for the crime of blasphemy until AD 39. However, a claim to be the messiah was a political and not a religious statement and that is why the High Priest had to go the Romans to get rid of Jesus.

That is completely false, over the past few years some Christian leaders have tried to divert blame away from the Jews to the Romans to prop up a false doctrine about the Jewish nation. The Bible is clear that it was the Jewish leaders who wanted Jesus dead, The Roman Governor wanted to let Jesus go because he saw that he committed no crime against Rome, but because the Governor feared a riot
he had Jesus executed. The Roman Empire did not care about Jesus because he taught his followers to obey the Roman Government and not to rebel.

 

[cloudyday2]

For anybody who is interested, here is link to a summary of Boyarin's argument that Jesus was actually not so radical as most Christians are taught.

'17 After leaving the crowd, he entered a house where his disciples asked him about that riddle. 18 He said to them, “ Don’t you understand either? Don’t you know that nothing from the outside that enters a person has the power to contaminate? 19 That’s because it doesn’t enter into the heart but into the stomach, and it goes out into the sewer. ” By saying this, Jesus declared that no food could contaminate a person in God’s sight.'
Mark 7:17-19 CEB

The traditional interpretation is this: Mark is telling us that Jesus just overturned the whole system of food laws–food can’t make you unclean before God, not even pig or shrimp.

Contextually there is one particularly problematic feature of such an argument: Jesus had just condemned the Pharisees for abolishing the commandments of God in favor of their own tradition. Could Jesus really, then, turn around and abolish the law of God in favor of a new tradition?

Boyarin follows the argument of Yair Furstenberg in saying no.
...
Boyarin’s point is this: the kosher laws are not purity laws.

What Jesus and the Pharisees are arguing about is not whether certain foods are kosher, but whether certain ways of handling foods could make them impure.

In this context, the Pharisees have created an additional tradition: even kosher foods can be rendered unclean if eaten with defiled hands.

Jesus, according to Boyarin, is arguing against this “liberalizing” of the tradition, arguing for a more “conservative” reading of the law.
...

Jesus Kept Kosher (Boyarin, Pt. 3)

 

[Robban]

Again how does this apply to what I wrote? or to the subject of this OP.

The subject of the OP is reported statements of Jesus,

What did he mean?

The example I gave from Matt 8:22 you have not mentioned.

It is from a passage "to follow Jesus"

there it is one of two converations,

"Follow me and let the dead bury their dead."

What do you make of it?

 

[JackRT]

That is completely false, over the past few years some Christian leaders have tried to divert blame away from the Jews to the Romans to prop up a false doctrine about the Jewish nation. The Bible is clear that it was the Jewish leaders who wanted Jesus dead, The Roman Governor wanted to let Jesus go because he saw that he committed no crime against Rome, but because the Governor feared a riot
he had Jesus executed. The Roman Empire did not care about Jesus because he taught his followers to obey the Roman Government and not to rebel.

When Jesus was dragged before the high priest and the “elders’ it is quite unlikely that there was any kind of formal trial at this time. To begin with there was no substantive religious charge that could be brought against him. It was not blasphemy to claim to be the "messiah" or a "son of God". If there was a blasphemy, a trial before the Sanhedrin would have brought that out and a sentence of death by stoning could have been brought down. The Sanhedrin did not lose the right to impose the death penalty until the year AD 39. The execution would have to be ratified by the Roman governor. This was just a rubber stamp procedure, after all what did the Romans care about Jews stoning one of their own to death for some obscure religious crime?

We also must take into account the nature of the Sanhedrin itself. It was a very dignified body of seventy elders somewhat in the nature of a supreme court. The high priest chaired but did not control the Sanhedrin, the majority of whose members were Pharisees. The Pharisees opposed the high priest at just about every turn. The high priest was in fact perhaps the most hated man in Judea. Under Roman administration, the high priest was personally appointed by the Roman governor. Caiaphas was the personal choice of Roman procurator Valerius Gratus. The Pharisees regarded Caiaphas as a collaborator and a traitor. The Sanhedrin was not likely to respond to a sudden midnight summons from the high priest. As a matter of fact, it was explicitly forbidden for the Sanhedrin to meet at night or on a religious holiday. They were also not to meet in any place but the Chamber of Hewn Stone on Temple Mount.

You might recall from the Acts of the Apostles that Peter and some of the disciples were actually charged with blasphemy and brought to trial before the Sanhedrin. They were dismissed after being defended by Rabbi Gamaliel who was himself a member of the Sanhedrin and a prominent Pharisee. If Jesus appeared before the high priest at all it was simply to be remanded over to Pontius Pilate. The Romans wanted him for a lot more than disturbing the peace in the temple. They wanted him for sedition and treason.

I am also convinced that the trial before Pilate was a foregone conclusion... a trial in name only. The Bible, however, portrays Pontius Pilate as a reasonable person, a gentleman who thought Jesus was innocent, albeit a little deluded. We also get the impression that Pilate is somewhat of a wimp in that he allows himself to be manipulated by the high priest and elders into executing Jesus.

In truth this portrayal of Pilate is far from factual. He was an ambitious, greedy and brutal man. He once ordered his troops into the temple to loot the treasury. It must be noted that he was not the first nor the last Roman governor to do this. This serves to indicate just how much he was swayed by the opinions or threats of the elders or the high priest who was after all his personal appointee. He was also responsible for the suppression of a number of rebellions at great loss of life. His main objective during his tenure of office seems to have been to be to see just how much he could get away with in offending Jewish religious sensibilities. He was eventually dismissed from office by the emperor for "causing an unnecessary massacre". I suppose that this by way of contrast to all the necessary massacres he was responsible for. Are these the marks of a wimp? of a reasonable man? Certainly not! The trial of Jesus, if there was one, was in name only. Jesus had challenged Roman political authority...Jesus must die.