My Conclusion: Jesus Christ was an Anti-Establishment Revolutionary

[Homer12]

Who was against the power of Rome and the established Jewish Clergy.

In the end these were his most powerful attributes, trying to change a system of corruption and privledge.

He was not the son of god, a demi-god, or a deity, He was a man with a message.

The Irony is Organized Religion took his message and twisted it so now they have power over other people, and even worse people give up the free will to these organized religions.

[rwenos]

1. Why do you think he was killed?!

Jesus was completely and totally a revolutionary.

"What you do to the least among you, is also done to me."

[ret5hd]

2. So I take it you don't believe in the Easter Zombie?

[jakem]

6. Mmm. love the Easter Zombie...

bringing baskets of fresh brains...

[liberal N proud]

3. If Jesus walk the streets of America today HomeLand Security would

tag him as a terrorist and send him to to a secret prison to torture him.

[no_hypocrisy]

4. Woody Guthrie said that Jesus was the first socialist outlaw.

[BlueStateModerate]

5. You should probably drop the 'Christ' then

Seeing as it isn't a surname. ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ

[Igel]

7. What did he say about Rome? n/t

[Arwennick]

9. that they smell like olives

BWAHAHAHA

[Kagemusha]

10. Mainly, give Caesar's unto Caesar and God's unto Gods

in other words, pay your taxes and praise the Lord.

Edit: Which was, and remains, inherently offensive to Jews.

[NormanYorkstein]

12. how is that "inherently offensive to Jews"?

Jews pay taxes too.

[Kagemusha]

13. Because a Messiah is supposed to bring war, not peace

So Jesus' message of peace was inherently insulting. If Jesus had liberated Palestine from the Romans, they might've accepted him. Having the temerity to die crucified as a common criminal having not liberated a single Jew from bondage is not something they have ever forgiven.

[madrchsod]

15. the guys who ran the temple were corrupt-money changers-

and were sharing the profits with the romans. they also claimed that jesus was a "king" thus pissing off the romans..jesus never declared he was a "king"

[Leopolds Ghost]

23. No, you don't understand the context.

Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's means, if Caesar printed
the money, then don't withold taxes from Caesar's hands.
Give it back to him. You're not supposed to value Caesar's money.

As for what is God's -- what isn't God's? The Romans interpreted
this phrase as a tax revolt. The Money-changers at the time were
setting up a "bourse" in the Temple where you could pay temple tax
with Roman denarii by changing it at the temple. Jesus was saying
don't fund the temple with Roman dollars. Doing so was supposed
to be against Temple law, not to mention Jewish sovereignty.

[TalkingDog]

8. My Conclusion: Jesus was the Gingerbread Man.

Look at the evidence:

All those signs everywhere today saying, "He is Risen."

Initally he decends to a very hot place, comes out of that and "disappears". "Run, run, run, as fast as you can. You can't catch me, I'm the Messiah." or something like that.

And that whole body of Christ thing...I mean, nobody wants to eat a dead guy...but a Gingerbread Man? Count me in!

[Peace Patriot]

16. Har, har! But where does fish eating figure in?

There are a number of strange and contradictory fetishes that the Gingerbread Man story doesn't quite cover.

Drink blood, eat flesh on Sat, Sun, Mon, Tues, Wed, and Thurs, but don't eat meat on Fri. Eat fish. Receive the 'body of Christ' on your tongue, but your hands cannot touch it. Only the priest's hands. Total "clean" fetish. Him swishing around up there in his lace and gold-threaded Byzantine dress. Women after childbirth can't go near it, until they are "purified." A lot of stuff going on here.

Hansel and Gretel comes to mind, for some reason. Children who lose their way, straying into the clutches of the Old Witch in the forest, and getting fattened up to be roasted in the oven, having left a trail of bread crumbs behind them, to find their way home.

The Church "faithful" are the children. Its rejection of the Goddess is the forest. The Old Witch is the third aspect of the Triple Goddess (virgin, mother and crone), who receives the human body back into the earth for "rest" (the earth, the cauldron of natural ferment out of which life emerges). The danger to the children is not the Old Witch--a natural phenomenon of return--but rather the Church itself, which projects a vision of hellfire as punishment for those who "sin" (stray off the path; disobey the Church and its often insane and fetishistic dictates). The "bread crumbs" are the path back to Enlightenment that has been obscured by powermongers and fascists. Balance, wholeness, male and female principles in harmony.

So, we need a new story: The Gingerbread Woman.

[Peace Patriot]

11. You got it! The remarkable thing is that his message still comes through with

crystal clarity after about 1,500 years of the opposite message getting promulgated by a hugely errant church, including numerous editings, rewrites, and other tamperings with the stories of the New Testament, most of which occurred in the 5th century AD, when the "official" gospels were selected and all the others--including several that were older (closer to Jesus' time) than the official ones--got burned, suppressed, thrown out. That was the period in which the christian movement was cemented with state power, to be enforced by violence.

It's like a beacon shining through the ages of western civilization: The kingdom is within you. Love thy neighbor as thyself. Communal. Egalitarian. Y'all come. Peace be with you, my peace I give unto you.

For all the effort that went into killing this revolutionary idea, they couldn't.

Thomas Jefferson picked up on this. He wrote a book called "Jefferson's Bible," in which he attempted to extract the essential revolutionary message of love from all the editings, rewrites and other tamperings. It's a fascinating work.

I have always suspected the line "Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church" as an interpolation from the 5th century. It is like nothing else Jesus ever said. He was anti-institutional, and clearly would have been appalled by the monstrosity that the church became--with its repression of women, witch-burnings, inquisitions, "baptism by the sword," vast rich properties, alliance with fascists, and bloody Crusades.

And yet, is this horrid institution nevertheless an inadvertent carrier of an ancient philosophy that can save the human race from self-immolation? Perhaps. In truth, they COULD NOT extinguish that philosophy. It's there, in the New Testament. It shines through. And would we be aware of it, had the institutional church not carried its texts forward--or rather, had good and intelligent individuals within the institution not preserved its essence? It's possible that Jesus' message--which bears great resemblance to Buddha's--is so essentially a part of human evolution that it would recur no matter what was done to stamp it out. But I do like the ironies of history--that perhaps the church did something beneficial, in the course of its violation of all christian principles for 1,500 years.

[Perky]

14. So...what is the basis of this conclusion?

[Perky]

18. Jesus was very clearly counter culture

But what he railed most against, when he railed, was the politicization of the religious culture. He was a reverant Jew, but he opposed the pharisees and the Sadduceees and even the Chief Priese becuse of their neglect of the Law and the benign neglect of the congregation of Isreale.


But it should also be understood that his 'ministry was far more than mereley launching the occasional attack ont the religious leadership.

I think it is somewhat incongruiys to deal with Jesus on the political level but totally avoud the miracles and the healings and what he said baout the realtion ship between God and Man, The Pharisees were so upest with him and wanted him punished because he challenged their religios authority by firest and foremost saying what they considered to be blasphemous AND healing the sick and toucvhing the unclesn on the Sabbath.

It was not theat he was a hearler and performaed miracles but that he was doing these thing on the Sabbath. It was not simply that he challenged their political authority, but that he stood up in the middle of the entire congreagtion of Isreal in the inner court of the temple at theheight of the Feat of Tabernacles and said "I am the Light of the World"

[madrchsod]

17. he was a prophet

as was many before him and after after him. who is to say that gandhi,king,or mandela won`t be looked on as a prophet in a hundred or more years.

[truebrit71]

19. Almost right....

He was the one of the first liberals. He spoke of love and compassion and equality.

I differ though in that I believe He was the Son of God.

He spoke against the oppressors and the appeasers and was crucified for it.

How fucked up are we then?

[Perky]

20. Thrown in the DU's religion ghetto again

I guess I underestand the reason's why. I just wish they would treat all OPs that focus on religion )pro or con) the same way.

[More Than A Feeling]

21. Hey, the R/T forum is a happening place.

Just imagine if they tossed into the one of the religion groups.

[L. Coyote]

22. Rome was a slave state and opposition to slavery was integral to Jewish history

so no big surprise that Rome's invasion and conquest of Palastine was opposed.

Speaking of zombies, what was on the sponge of bitter bile, tetradoxin? Escaping a Roman death sentence was a slick trick. Heroic even!

[MistressOverdone]

24. I think so

In a lifetime of trying to follow his example, I am hitting about the 15 percent mark now. Big improvement on the '80's, though.