Work in Progress: December 29, 2024

Jesus Mortal

jesusstatue

inerrant

According to Jewish tradition, scripture is inerrant, though what counts as scripture and what is meant by inerrant are open to question. Christian tradition follows Judaism’s lead, declaring scripture to be inerrant without agreeing on which books are scripture or what it means for them to be inerrant. Originally, being inerrant meant pretty much what you think it means: not being in error. The holy spirit had a special role of inspiring human “authors” to write just such and so, and for human church leaders to make all the right decisions in deciding which books and which versions of them would be scripture. And it was taken as fact. When medieval philosophers could pretty much prove that most of the motion of the heavenly bodies resulted from the daily spin of the earth around its axis, they still had to sign on to the scriptural doctrine that the earth doesn’t move. Events such as the tower of babel, where the LORD confused humanity’s languages, and the great flood, in which the LORD obliterated 99.9% of life on earth, were taken as historical events. But as the natural sciences, archeology, and scriptural analysis advanced, the errors and contradictions in the bible became apparent. The concept of biblical inerrancy became rather more nuanced, with large chunks of scripture, such as the garden of eden, given a pass. Bible interpreters explained that no one was expected to take that stuff literally. In 1965 as part of Vatican II, the Roman catholic church, developed a new definition of inerrancy, which is basically the kind of inerrancy that isn’t disproved by errors. It’s a handy sort of inerrancy to have because their previous sort of inerrancy was vulnerable to being convicted of error. The holy spirit, it seems, only guarantees as inerrant those parts of the bible that it desired to include for salvation. Anything that might get proven wrong can therefore be categorized as not necessary to salvation, leaving the stuff that hasn’t been proved wrong as still spotlessly inerrant.

 

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contents

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table of contents you're already looking at it

introduction for the inquisitive reader

biographical overview who he was and wasn't

 

afterlife not Jesus' concern

animal sacrifice bloodless religion

apocalypse did Jesus preach hellfire?

baptism sin wash for Jesus and others

beatitudes Jesus' words and others' words

beloved disciple witness for the un-gospel

bible scripture old and new

bishop the unjesus

body focus on the physical

Buddha Jesus' close kin

charity key Christian virtue and legacy of Jesus

The Da Vinci Code secret (and false) messages

divorce women's status

dreams convenient literary device

Elijah Jewish prophet with his own second coming

equality ancient source of modern egalitarianism

exorcist Jesus and demons

failure reinterpreting Jesus as a failure

faith from trust to blind belief

father Jesus on titles of honor

Francis of Assisi the most Christlike Christian

Gandhi the 20th century's most Christly holy man

Galilee Jesus' inauspicious homeland

gentiles Jesus' inadvertent audience

god how Jesus became god

golden rule key to Jesus' success

gospels competing accounts

heaven from sky to spiritual home

hell revenge fantasy

humanism Jesus' legacy

inerrant Christian treatment of scripture

Thomas Jefferson ethics of Jesus

Jewish guilt Christian libel

John's gospel the un-gospel

John the baptist, see John the washer

John the washer Jesus' apocalyptic mentor

Judaism libeled religion of Jesus

kingdom of god what Jesus promised

Lao Tzu poet of the cosmic way

logos jesus as the word of god

C. S. Lewis famous, flawed trilemma

little drummer boy Luke beats Matthew

logos Jesus as the divine word

LORD Yahweh transitioning to the one god of all

Luke's gospel the all-around best gospel

Mark's gospel the gospel that lost its point

Mary of Magdala women, visions, and sex

massacre of the innocents bloodshed starts early

Matthew's gospel best gospel for church reading

Mormon, see Joseph Smith

Moses Jewish lawgiver

Muhammad a prophet who got it right

mystery Orpheus and transubstantiation

oppression origin of Jesus' compassion

The Passion of the Christ Luke as buzzkill

Paul revealer of the revealer

private and public public Jesus and secret Christ

relativism the secret power of the golden rule

sacrifice Jesus' death and Christian sacrament

Albert Schweitzer Jesus as a failure

sheol dark pit of death

show Jesus' deeds as put-ons

slavery abolished by Jesus' efforts

Joseph Smith flesh-and-blood Jesus

Socrates secular Jesus

son of god on close terms with the man upstairs

soul, see body

synoptics three gospels that agree

temple center of Jewish religion

trinity unifying and divisive doctrinre

vision, see dreams

Yahweh, see LORD

Zoroaster Persian dualistic holy man