Quote:
Originally posted by kang
I don’t understand your question. I thought I explained that. I gave two explanations. One explanation is that his claims to be the son of god were misunderstood. By this I mean he meant a more casual relationship, like the father/coach analogy, but it was taken literally, like a real father/son. The second was that what he said when he was alive and what got written down some decades later are two different things. In other words, when he was alive, his relationship with god was correctly understood. They understood he did not mean a literal father/son relationship. But some decades later, it mistakenly got written down as literal father and son.
|
I am glad to respond.
First, as I say, amateurs commonly sidestep question like this by inferring the writings were inaccurate. Historicians don't do this. They consider the written text to be faithful to the events themselves. While it is true that the apostles did not write the gospels in their own handwriting, it is not true that the events and the writing were separated by many many years. Jewish and Hebrew oral tradition has been shown to be reliably, stunningly accurate. And when a document is dated to have been written perhasp as early as 40 AD, that's seven years after Christ's crucifixion. If it's dated at 70 AD, that's 37 years after His death.
Okay, you're talking about the "son of God" v. "Son of Man" controversy. Again, that controversy does not exist in the scholar community. Historicians know what that phrase meant, and its meaning is quite clear. But let's set that aside. Jesus also said, on more than one occasion, point blank, that all authority over Heaven and Earth has been given to him by God. That's a pretty flat-footed statement. No wishy-washiness in that. If he was an ordinary man with no supernatural powers, then what do you conclude about him making these statements? Yes, you can conclude that the real story has been clouded by the poor memories of the story tellers, or by mistakes in literary interepretations.........but that's not what people say after receiving graduate degrees in this subject area and spending decades reviewing the record.