Thank you again for these. I'm 35 and I've myself trying to better understand the Bible recently. This is great listing. Currently on my front porch listing to nature, smoking my pipe and appreciating the work you've put into these podcasts. It's a beautiful day, and you've made it even more so. God bless and happy Easter! Please keep these up, they help a lot. Side note,I've been looking into Lutheranism. What are your thoughts? I've liked what I've seen/read so far on its ideas.
Great episode! So many thoughts I had about the Trinity were answered. I can tell this will be an episode I’ll listen to again. If you ever made a Nightmare Vision episode free on YouTube I’d recommend this one
The other problem here is the problem of the Incarnation.
And the biggest problem with the idea of the Incarnation is that it is not supported by the synoptic gospels, nor the earliest statements of the Jesus movement and the disciples.
Here is one Bible scholar discussing the fact that everything up until the Gospel of John (one of our latest sources chronologically) somehow omitted to mention that Jesus was God:
Many people are aware that the version of Christianity which we have is not a 100% honest reflection of what Jesus or the early Jesus movement actually thought and practiced, but rather a religion that was created by St. Paul using Jesus as the central figure. Pauline Christianity is what won, in those early days. Most likely this was due to the fact that nobody could hold a candle to St. Paul when it came to proselytizing.
St. Paul himself though most likely did not believe that Jesus was God. Here is another great biblical scholar discussing this, Dr. James Tabor:
From my own perspective and reasoning from first principles, it is somewhat blasphemous and nonsensical to think that God in all glory and majesty could find articulation within one instance of the human form. There are caveats to that, of course. We all contain a divine spark of God, and on a level we are not aware of generally, we are all expressions of God. We are all one with God, we just don't know it. Also, humans can achieve heights of God-realization that are quite incredible, channeling the Divine in amazing and mysterious ways, and from my perspective, Jesus certainly did do this. But from my perspective, the idea of God-in-Man* is just bad metaphysics. It misunderstands how vast a thing God is.
*typo corrected
For more historical investigation on the doctrine of the early disciples and the Jesus movement, there are good books on this: "How Jesus Became God" and "Christology In The Making".
Good to hear from you, Mr. NightmareVision. I hope you'll allow me to offer some thoughts, although admittedly, somewhat heretical.
As societies and social structures change over time, things go by the wayside.
The Jesus movement and the early Church could rely on a widespread knowledge of Jewish scriptures, because the early Jesus movement was confined largely to Jewish communities. Jesus' teachings offered a "soft repudiation" of significant portions of Judaism as practiced in his day, and you can see this just by thinking about what his teachings actually were. Most often he simplified, dismissed or discounted the existing Judaic traditions, while remaining in a respectful and tolerant stance towards them. Emphasizing the importance of ethics over Judaism's behavioral rules was a consistent pattern: "It is not what goes into a man's mouth that defiles him, but it is what comes out of his mouth, that defiles him." "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath."
This, what I'm calling the "soft repudiation" of Judaism, was a very wise and subtle stance to take vis-a-vis his coreligionists. It allows him to speak to a larger audience ("You choose how much Judaism you want to keep"), while preventing him from being castigated for disrespecting the traditions of his people.
We should understand that Jesus' teachings on Sin amount to a similar "soft repudiation" of the concept. Almost the only times he speaks on this concept - which is central to the religious life of Jews in this period - is to go against the grain of how this concept was traditionally used. For one, he forgave sins. According to the Judaism of the time, only God could forgive sins, and maybe the temple priests could mediate. If you use ChatGPT to look up all the mentions of "Sin" made by Jesus, you'll find he is almost always talking about the forgiveness of sins - which he administers himself but also advises others to likewise do (whether he considers this forgiveness metaphysically binding in a larger sense or not, the emphasis he placed on forgiveness does indicate that this teaching is a central part of his ministry).
What do you infer about how someone feels about something, when every time you ask them about a Big Problem, they tell you either that it doesn't matter ("Your sins are forgiven") or that you can avoid it by not making a big deal about it? ("Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven..", “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”).
What I infer from that, is the repudiation of the concept itself (in the traditionally received sense)! Clearly Jesus did not believe that Sin existed in the traditional sense of Genesis, if every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven, and if merely by forgiving others, we achieve forgiveness ourselves.
This confusion is due to the spread of Christianity outside the bounds of the early Jewish communities, and the subsequent canonization of the early Judaic scriptures. Jesus' ministry and teachings occur in the context of an existing religious tradition - his teachings are offered in contradistinction to an existing, living religious tradition of the time. Kind of like how Night Owls exists in a context of the modern American culture of the 2010s and 2020s. When Christianity spread to new communities where this previously existing context did not exist, the early Church faced a dilemma: should they take the Marcionite approach, and consider the writings of the Old Testament as being subsumed and eclipsed by the Gospels? Or should they include the Old Testament as part of the Canon and the Bible? They went with the latter approach.
I suspect this was done because Churchmen are religious nerds, who were bound to wish to know the religious context in which Christianity existed - even though Christianity is distinctly and definitively non-rabbinical, in that all of its teachings can be conveyed in simple parables. What I am saying is that Jesus' ministry and the original message of Christianity were definitely not made to be buttressed by a legacy of vast rabbinical arguments from scripture - that is why the pithy parables are pithy parables. That is why they are easily related orally, containing simple metaphors and imagery.
What is the downside of canonizing the Old Testament scriptures? Well, it conveys the implicit understanding that these old works of scripture are co-equal with the Gospels. All subsequent Christian minds would henceforward receive this understanding in their mother's milk. It would become an understanding undergirding all thought produced by the Church. All the work of Jesus' "soft repudiation of Judaism" is effectively undone by the fact that the ancient scriptures he was ever-so-slyly riffing off of and basically correcting, are now tacked on to the beginning of the book which contains his teaching! The *beginning* of the book! Clearly a message to all students: read this first! This is very important!
That's one reason why Christianity has been so mired in confusion, historically. Negative concepts such as "sin", which Jesus was softly repudiating in his gospels, are re-invigorated with each generation that gets brought into the study of these ancient and brutal, bronze age scriptures!
This is the weird problem faced by a culture that transitions from oral traditions to written traditions, and expands outside the bounds of it's original ethnic/cultural base to include foreigners.
Nice, looking forward to listening.
Also, is we getting Christ resurrection
Have a great day.
I don’t have much knowledge of Christian philosophy. This was great and very fitting for the holiday. Happy Easter NV
Very good Nightmare. He has risen.
Thank you again for these. I'm 35 and I've myself trying to better understand the Bible recently. This is great listing. Currently on my front porch listing to nature, smoking my pipe and appreciating the work you've put into these podcasts. It's a beautiful day, and you've made it even more so. God bless and happy Easter! Please keep these up, they help a lot. Side note,I've been looking into Lutheranism. What are your thoughts? I've liked what I've seen/read so far on its ideas.
Buona Pasqua!
Real niggas remember the 2022 SoundCloud era…
This is really great stuff, man. Thanks for this.
Great episode! So many thoughts I had about the Trinity were answered. I can tell this will be an episode I’ll listen to again. If you ever made a Nightmare Vision episode free on YouTube I’d recommend this one
This was great, do more like this.
Really amazing work here. Better than anything I sat through in college.
Night Owls if Moldovan wasn't coughing. Just kidding, but great work, can't wait for more!
The other problem here is the problem of the Incarnation.
And the biggest problem with the idea of the Incarnation is that it is not supported by the synoptic gospels, nor the earliest statements of the Jesus movement and the disciples.
Here is one Bible scholar discussing the fact that everything up until the Gospel of John (one of our latest sources chronologically) somehow omitted to mention that Jesus was God:
https://youtu.be/2STiabRV8TE?t=770
Many people are aware that the version of Christianity which we have is not a 100% honest reflection of what Jesus or the early Jesus movement actually thought and practiced, but rather a religion that was created by St. Paul using Jesus as the central figure. Pauline Christianity is what won, in those early days. Most likely this was due to the fact that nobody could hold a candle to St. Paul when it came to proselytizing.
St. Paul himself though most likely did not believe that Jesus was God. Here is another great biblical scholar discussing this, Dr. James Tabor:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIj8Pe4X-OA
From my own perspective and reasoning from first principles, it is somewhat blasphemous and nonsensical to think that God in all glory and majesty could find articulation within one instance of the human form. There are caveats to that, of course. We all contain a divine spark of God, and on a level we are not aware of generally, we are all expressions of God. We are all one with God, we just don't know it. Also, humans can achieve heights of God-realization that are quite incredible, channeling the Divine in amazing and mysterious ways, and from my perspective, Jesus certainly did do this. But from my perspective, the idea of God-in-Man* is just bad metaphysics. It misunderstands how vast a thing God is.
*typo corrected
For more historical investigation on the doctrine of the early disciples and the Jesus movement, there are good books on this: "How Jesus Became God" and "Christology In The Making".
Good to hear from you, Mr. NightmareVision. I hope you'll allow me to offer some thoughts, although admittedly, somewhat heretical.
As societies and social structures change over time, things go by the wayside.
The Jesus movement and the early Church could rely on a widespread knowledge of Jewish scriptures, because the early Jesus movement was confined largely to Jewish communities. Jesus' teachings offered a "soft repudiation" of significant portions of Judaism as practiced in his day, and you can see this just by thinking about what his teachings actually were. Most often he simplified, dismissed or discounted the existing Judaic traditions, while remaining in a respectful and tolerant stance towards them. Emphasizing the importance of ethics over Judaism's behavioral rules was a consistent pattern: "It is not what goes into a man's mouth that defiles him, but it is what comes out of his mouth, that defiles him." "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath."
This, what I'm calling the "soft repudiation" of Judaism, was a very wise and subtle stance to take vis-a-vis his coreligionists. It allows him to speak to a larger audience ("You choose how much Judaism you want to keep"), while preventing him from being castigated for disrespecting the traditions of his people.
We should understand that Jesus' teachings on Sin amount to a similar "soft repudiation" of the concept. Almost the only times he speaks on this concept - which is central to the religious life of Jews in this period - is to go against the grain of how this concept was traditionally used. For one, he forgave sins. According to the Judaism of the time, only God could forgive sins, and maybe the temple priests could mediate. If you use ChatGPT to look up all the mentions of "Sin" made by Jesus, you'll find he is almost always talking about the forgiveness of sins - which he administers himself but also advises others to likewise do (whether he considers this forgiveness metaphysically binding in a larger sense or not, the emphasis he placed on forgiveness does indicate that this teaching is a central part of his ministry).
What do you infer about how someone feels about something, when every time you ask them about a Big Problem, they tell you either that it doesn't matter ("Your sins are forgiven") or that you can avoid it by not making a big deal about it? ("Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven..", “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”).
What I infer from that, is the repudiation of the concept itself (in the traditionally received sense)! Clearly Jesus did not believe that Sin existed in the traditional sense of Genesis, if every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven, and if merely by forgiving others, we achieve forgiveness ourselves.
This confusion is due to the spread of Christianity outside the bounds of the early Jewish communities, and the subsequent canonization of the early Judaic scriptures. Jesus' ministry and teachings occur in the context of an existing religious tradition - his teachings are offered in contradistinction to an existing, living religious tradition of the time. Kind of like how Night Owls exists in a context of the modern American culture of the 2010s and 2020s. When Christianity spread to new communities where this previously existing context did not exist, the early Church faced a dilemma: should they take the Marcionite approach, and consider the writings of the Old Testament as being subsumed and eclipsed by the Gospels? Or should they include the Old Testament as part of the Canon and the Bible? They went with the latter approach.
I suspect this was done because Churchmen are religious nerds, who were bound to wish to know the religious context in which Christianity existed - even though Christianity is distinctly and definitively non-rabbinical, in that all of its teachings can be conveyed in simple parables. What I am saying is that Jesus' ministry and the original message of Christianity were definitely not made to be buttressed by a legacy of vast rabbinical arguments from scripture - that is why the pithy parables are pithy parables. That is why they are easily related orally, containing simple metaphors and imagery.
What is the downside of canonizing the Old Testament scriptures? Well, it conveys the implicit understanding that these old works of scripture are co-equal with the Gospels. All subsequent Christian minds would henceforward receive this understanding in their mother's milk. It would become an understanding undergirding all thought produced by the Church. All the work of Jesus' "soft repudiation of Judaism" is effectively undone by the fact that the ancient scriptures he was ever-so-slyly riffing off of and basically correcting, are now tacked on to the beginning of the book which contains his teaching! The *beginning* of the book! Clearly a message to all students: read this first! This is very important!
That's one reason why Christianity has been so mired in confusion, historically. Negative concepts such as "sin", which Jesus was softly repudiating in his gospels, are re-invigorated with each generation that gets brought into the study of these ancient and brutal, bronze age scriptures!
This is the weird problem faced by a culture that transitions from oral traditions to written traditions, and expands outside the bounds of it's original ethnic/cultural base to include foreigners.