Jesus, what did he really say?

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So I want to take a trip back to the day of Jesus and what he himself preached to people. Firstly Jesus was jewish and as a jew their ideology does not mention a hell as we know it to be. What was Jesus really saying? We need to take a look at the words prescribed to the notion of hell and their definition.

Hell- /hel/ Noun: A place regarded in various religions as a spiritual realm of evil and suffering.

Sheol- /SHēôl/ The Hebrew underworld, abode of the dead. Later ascribed to the word limbo or purgatory.

Gehenna- noun: The valley of Hinnom, near Jerusalem, where propitiatory sacrifices were made to Moloch. II Kings 23:10. A deep narrow glen to the south of Jerusalem where adulterous jews offered their children as sacrifice. It afterwards became a receptical for the refuse of the city. Here the dead bodies of the animals, criminals and all kinds of filth were cast and consumed by fire kept always burning.

Queber- grave, pit.

What we do know is that, the translated word for hell (that Jesus used 11 out of the 12 times he said it) was the word Gehenna. We know Gehenna was an actual place outside the city he lived in.

So considering that lets re-read a passage where he used Gehenna translated into the kjv as hell and see if it makes sense...

King James Bible (Cambridge Ed.)
Matthew 18:9
"And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell (Gehenna) fire."

So a rough literal interpratation would be as follows:

If you look at a chick and want to bang her or you covet your neighbors ****, you should go ahead and gouge your eyes out. Its better to live a pious riotous life with one eye, than to have both sinful eyes and be tossed in the fire across the hill over there where all the other trash and all the other sinfull assholes are! - that's modern talk Smile

But anyway the point is if you read all of the passages where jesus mentioned hell, he was talking about Gehenna.... a real place in Jerusalem. They used the word hell as its translation.

I would like to get some opinions ..

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Type: Discussion • Score: 7 • Views: 12,847 • Replies: 41

@Sins Of The Wicked,

Yeah, crappy translations have lead to tortured exegesis.

It makes a mockery of the idea of Biblical inerrancy.

2 Replies

@InfraBlue,

I blame Paul for his writing abouth nothing but the horrors of hell. Its like his main goal was to scare people into believing his ideology of hell and salvation. What's worse to me is the way the kjv is organized. Everything the jews attribute to their Messiah is what is depicted as the anti-christ in Christianity.

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@InfraBlue,

But I suppose that's why the church was so anti-semetical and helped the nazi extremists post ww2 escape.

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No example of "new testament scripture" survives which is any more recent than early- to mid-fourth century. We have no idea what the so-called Jesus said, leaving aside that we have no evidence that the so-called Jesus even existed. Speculation about what he said, if indeed he ever existed, is a futile exercise. I have no doubt that it will continue to be one of the most popular cottage industries.

4 Replies

@Setanta,

The reason we have no evidence of legitimate pre- Constantine Scripture is because, in his endeavors to make Catholicism the universal religion (Catholicism in latin translates to meaning "universal") it became so muddled in mythology from every other religion. Take the story of jesus fasting for fourty days in the desert for example. It is consistant with the story of the Buddha and the devil. The y both were offered everything they could want and both had their divenity contested. The only real difference is the Buddhas devil was a part of himself and christians believe the devil was a physical being.

1 Reply

@Sins Of The Wicked,

Utter incoherence. There is no good reason to assume that Constantine had any desire to make Christianity the "universal religion." In convening the council at Nicaea, he was solving a potential political problem in the eastern portion of the empire. All claims that Constantine was a Christian are based on nothing more reliable than Christian propaganda. Christianity was not declared to be the state religion of the empire until after his death. As for Catholicism, the council at Nicaea convened members of what eventually became known as the Orthodox Church--it had nothing to do with the Bishop of Rome and what became known as the Roman Catholic Church. Your claim ignores, by the way, the existence of the Byzantine Catholic Church, as well as the various "Catholic" denominations of several Christian sects in the Middle East.

Any claims which link Gautama, the so-called Buddha, and the putative Jesus are utter nonsense.

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@Setanta,

I'm sure original documentation exists. Probably burried so deep under the vadican they'll never see daylight again, and for good reason I'm sure. If they were released it would destroy the church. And wouldn't be consistent with any of their doctrines. Besides most christins wouldn't believe a word of it because its not written in the king james.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

As far as the existence of jesus goes he is acknowledged by the jews to have lived, by islam to be a prophet, and by christianity a saviour. If billions of individuals over the past 2,000 years acknowledge a single persons existence. You may as well consider it a fact. As for Constantine pushing the christian agenda he definatly helped wether he himself believed in it or not. The whole buddah/Jesus consistancy.... anyone can find similarities in anything if they want to. That was just an example. If you'd like look in all the other religions you can find a virgin birth or a resurrection if you want. There are at least 280 documented religions known to have existed. Not tryin to sound like an a-hole.

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@Sins Of The Wicked,

But, as Setanta originally put it, who cares what someone who most likely didn’t even exist said, half of which is arguably BAD- not to mention what he didn’t say but should have.
Why not ask- “Santa, what did he really say?”

1 Reply

@Sins Of The Wicked,

Sins Of The Wicked wrote:

As far as the existence of jesus goes he is acknowledged by the jews to have lived, by islam to be a prophet, and by christianity a saviour. If billions of individuals over the past 2,000 years acknowledge a single persons existence. You may as well consider it a fact.

If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.

-- Anatole France

Quote:

As for Constantine pushing the christian agenda he definatly helped wether he himself believed in it or not. The whole buddah/Jesus consistancy.... anyone can find similarities in anything if they want to. That was just an example. If you'd like look in all the other religions you can find a virgin birth or a resurrection if you want.

So, you're acknowledging you were talking through your hat on that BS?

Quote:

There are at least 280 documented religions known to have existed. Not tryin to sound like an a-hole.

When you make a statement like that, you may not sound like an *sshole, but you certainly sound like a fool. From Religious Tolerance-dot-org:

Quote:

According to David Barrett et al, editors of the "World Christian Encyclopedia: A comparative survey of churches and religions - AD 30 to 2200," there are 19 major world religions which are subdivided into a total of 270 large religious groups, and many smaller ones. 34,000 separate Christian groups have been identified in the world. "Over half of them are independent churches that are not interested in linking with the big denominations."

1 Reply

@Telamon,

You know, there's a wonderful recreational thought experiment that a scientist came up with once which he called the "Santa Claus hypothesis." It states that one doesn't need to canvass the possibility of reindeer propulsion systems, or elfin sweat shops at the north pole--all one has to do is a little math. So, he points out that even if one concedes (for the sake of discussion) that Santa could travel instantaneously from house to house, and only spends one second at each house, it is a mathematical impossibility that he could visit all the houses in, say, Canada between sundown on December 24th and sunrise on December 25th, never mind the United States and most of Europe.

I can never see "Santa" now without chuckling over that.

********************************************************

As for organized religion, i'm not trying to beat up on anyone personally here. However, the religiously devout are as prone to make wild, unsupported statements as are the politically obsessed. Just 280 religions known to have existed? There's a hell of a lot more than that of which we know that have not been practiced in centuries--or even thousands of years . . . Astarte, Baal, Nodens, Thor, Mithras . . . the list seems almost endless.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Quote:
According to David Barrett et al, editors of the "World Christian Encyclopedia: A comparative survey of churches and religions - AD 30 to 2200," there are 19 major world religions which are subdivided into a total of 270 large religious groups, and many smaller ones. 34,000 separate Christian groups have been identified in the world. "Over half of them are independent churches that are not interested in linking with the big denominations."

AKA there’s a lot of bullshit being spread, and who wants to guess which one is right? Maybe….just maybe….perhaps none of them? (ps- thats correct)

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@Setanta,

Not to mention the ones that have died out unknown to anyone. Or those beliefs held by individuals as a ‘variant’ of others, slightly different in their own mind.

1 Reply

@Telamon,

Telamon wrote:

Not to mention the ones that have died out unknown to anyone. Or those beliefs held by individuals as a ‘variant’ of others, slightly different in their own mind.

Which is exactly the point of mentioning 34,000 Christian sects. I've always liked the Norse attitude toward the gods. They believed that the gods had their own lives, and weren't interested in middle earth and what went on there. They believed that if one were bold enough, courageous enough and took risks, one might interest the gods enough to convince them to intercede on one's behalf. Thor was the most popular of their gods, because they believed he would reward the bold, courageous warrior. Most Norsemen and Danes wore a hammer amulet to signify their devotion to Thor. Sort of a "hey, look at me, look at me" approach to religion.

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@Sins Of The Wicked,

Sins Of The Wicked wrote:

I would like to get some opinions ..

My opinion is that your thread title is awesome.

0 Replies

@Sins Of The Wicked,

Sins Of The Wicked wrote:

I blame Paul for his writing abouth nothing but the horrors of hell. Its like his main goal was to scare people into believing his ideology of hell and salvation.

I blame the early church leaders for choosing Paul over Peter. I see Paul as a tortured soul (possibly gay) who needed a redemptive Christ and thus created one. I see the early church as a bunch of supposedly celibate men, living within a vertical hierarchical construct who rejected any scripture showing Jesus promoting a communal, inclusive, "we're all in this together", horizontal structure that included women as equals. Read the letter of James and the gospel of Thomas for a fairly clear feel for non-Pauline Christology.

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@Sins Of The Wicked,

In the Book of Conrad (Conrad 13:2-3)
Jesus sid unto them;
"Keepest thou thy curtain within the bounds of thy shower tub for in whenst thou turnest on the water"

1 Reply

@Sins Of The Wicked,

Sins Of The Wicked wrote:

I blame Paul for his writing abouth nothing but the horrors of hell. Its like his main goal was to scare people into believing his ideology of hell and salvation. What's worse to me is the way the kjv is organized. Everything the jews attribute to their Messiah is what is depicted as the anti-christ in Christianity.

Paul also doesn't mention hell, or hades, either. He talks about God's wrath, condemnation, punishment and death, but he does not mention hell.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

Im not a Christian by any means, nor do I carry the title of any other religious denomination. My goal in posting the above was to gather opinions oh how, if, and why you may or may not believe the scriptures in the bible were mistranslated about hell and its specific qualities, mainly of eternal and everlasting spiritual damnation and torture. You poke fun in saying Jesus was a myth and there is no documentation pre 4th century. I say you should probably read the works of the historian Josephus, he was born 37A.d. the birth of Jesus is believed to date between 4-6A.d. which puts his death between 37-39A.d. He also mentions the death of Jesus brother James who died in 62A.D. They were alive at the same time, considering the fact Josephus was born and died following the jewish faith, I see no reason to believe he had a hidden christian agenda in writing of the events. Also, considering he had access to people with first hand accounts makes his claims reliable enough, with his death being dated to around 100A.d. My writing was not intended on being a debate on weather or not Jesus the man existed. Read Antiquities in the Talmud and decide that for yourself. Regardless if the man existed or not he sparked a revolution that this little blue speck in the universe has never witnessed before. So back to my actual intent of this discussion. Why does the Christian faith rely so heavily on hell and death for its fufillment considering Jesus was jewish and the jewish faith has no mention of hells eternal torture and damnation of the soul? Whereas it was mainly focused on how you live your life. If your going to go back to the jesus was a myth thing than kindly go back to reading Richard Dawkins and not post it here because that wasn't my actual purpose to debate that. Thanks.

1 Reply

Jesus, what did he really say?

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