@Flimzy Did you miss my followup post that they were simultaneously to convict the Jews for their unbelief? The types of miracles Jesus performs in say the gospel of Mark, power of sickness, weather, death, demons, are all powers ascribed to God in the OT. But their failure was part of the plan, through Jesus' general "hearing they will not hear, seeing they will not see" strategy
What is being taught in regard the identity of the the prophet Yehoshua the Nazarene in Judaism?
Specifically, how are the following questions being answered:
A) Did such a person exist?
B) Is the account of his deeds and words in the New Testament correct in the main aspects? Is the whole nar...
@curiousdannii @Flimzy I'm pretty sure the bible says Jesus gained many followers every time he did a public miracle. The only people that continually had a problem with him were the religious authorities, probably because he kept calling them names.
They even said they didn't want to stone him for his good works. They conceded that they were real.
I'm curious about how to ask a question. I'm wondering about the earliest church writing that speaks about the dead going to heaven in the context of consoling or reassuring those left behind (much like Paul in Thessalonians). Is that even on topic here? It's not a history of scripture interpretation question so I can't ask it on BHSE.
It's just that every NT and ECF writing I can find always talks about the resurrection in such cases. I'm trying to find when shift from "they will be raised" to "they are happy in heaven" happened from a historical theology perspective.
An associate wrote an open letter (email) of condolence to a friend who'd lost a child. The letter stated that that deceased was now an angel in heaven with wings. What is the ultimate source of this belief?
@LeeWoofenden Yea I've been going through all related Q's I can find. Ignatius is earliest I can find which...kind of, maybe, depending how you read it, says he's looking forward to death and being with Christ and not to mourn him. But I'm asking from more of a "what are believers told to hope for in death" kind of thing
@Joshua Is your question actually historical? Or are you looking for current answers? If it's historical—i.e., about the history of Christian doctrine on a particular subject, that's certainly on topic here. It might take a little background research to frame the question well, but yes, questions about the history of Christian doctrine are on-topic here.
@Joshua If it's more seeking current advice on the subject, that would be off-topic unless you skirt the issue a bit by asking for the teachings of a particular denomination on the subject.
@Joshua It all depends on exactly what you want to know, and why you're asking.
@Joshua Incidentally, I've posted several articles on my blog for people who have lost children, parents, and so on. They do receive a steady stream of hits, and also comments from people who have lost loved ones and are looking for comfort and assurance.
I know of a few early church writings that can be understood as saying we go to heaven when we die. But that is not what I'm asking. Rather, I'm looking for the first known case (post NT) where, in the context of consoling those left behind, we are told the deceased is in heaven.
For example, wh...
I read in a biography that before Muhammad (pbuh) became a prophet, he always prayed and fasted in the mountain of Hera. So that probably means that he knew about Allah and Jesus (pbuh) and all the other prophets before Gabriel revealed the first ayah to him. Was he following Jesus's faith as a t...
@curiousdannii They weren't to convict people for their unbelief, either. How would feeding 5,000 people convict people of unbelief? They were already listening to Jesus for hours... they believed.
@fredsbend And? How does that relate to a proof of divinity?
Remember, Christians themselves didn't even come to an internal consensus that Jesus was divine for decades, if not centuries, after the Resurrection.
Why would we have any reason, whatsoever, to think that Jesus' contemporaries took miracles as a sign of divinity, when we know beyond any doubt that others of his contemporaries, and predecessors, were believed to do miracles as well?
Jesus was even accused of doing miracles in the name of Belzebub... because people "knew" that miracles could come from other sources than "god"
The idea that Jesus' miracles were a proof of divinity is an absolute absurdity, brought about by a materialistic, post-enlightenment, Western world view.
@Flimzy I was thinking of passages like Matthew 15:32-16:4 and John 6. The people had some kind of positive reaction to miracles like the feeding of the 5000 or 4000, but they quickly turned to grumbling and distrust. "An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah." Many people responded to Jesus in faith because of the signs, but for the nation as a whole, they just showed how far their hearts were from God
John 20:30-31: Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
The author of the Gospel of John tells us his purpose in writing and giving the signs he does. Perhaps you're right that the focus was on the Messiahship of Jesus rather than his divinity, but within John at least the title Son of God is very definitely a title of divinity.
@Flimzy Within John "Son of God" does. That would be the natural interpretation of passages like 10:29-39 (the Jews saying Jesus was making himself God by calling himself the Son of God) and 17:1-5 (the Son sharing the glory of God since before the world existed) I would think.
@curiousdannii 10:29-39 appears to make the opposite point. Jesus is pleading that 'I am God's son' should not imply divinity.
On the purpose of Jesus' miracles, NT Wright says: > One way in which Jesus' mighty works were evidently understood by some was that they were signs of the long-awaited fulfilment of prophecy. For a first-century Jew, most if not all of the works of healing, which form the bulk of Jesus' mihty works, could be seen as the restoration to membership in Israel of those who, through sickness or whatever, had been excluded as ritually unclean. The healins thus function in exact parallel with the welcome of sinners, and this, we may be quite sure, is what Jesus himself intended. He never performed…
In that light, proof of divinity isn't even a consideration. Messiahship (as understood by Jesus' contemporaries) is a secondary one.
The real point wasn't the miracles.. it was the recipients of the miracles.
Which, to @LeeWoofenden's point, makes the historicity of the miracles much less important. (Although I, like him, tend to believe they did happen)
To me, what matters from a historical perspective, is that the people who saw Jesus' ministry were convinced by whatever he did (whether "miraculous" or not, from a scientific perspective), that the Kingdom of God, the forgiveness of Israel's sin, was being accomplished, and they were invited.
Which is indirectly related to being convinced that he was the Messiah.
But not at all related to being convinced of divinity.
@David MODERATOR HELP: I just deleted a question I asked about resurrection, but I decided I would change the question and undelete it. Can a moderator or user who can see my deleted questions please reply with a link? Thank you.
@Flimzy I think the idea is the character of the works in the context of prophecy, not just that he did works. C.f. John 14:11- His testimony is meant to be the proof, the works are secondary.
@El'endiaStarman My education and vocation are in mathematics. I joined Math.SE first. If I remember correctly I discovered Christianity.SE while browsing the site list after asking a few questions at Math.SE. Obviously I am more actively a Christian than a Mathematician.
@El'endiaStarman I think of SE (at least a few years ago) as mostly a programming thing. I discovered SE while googling questions while debugging. I know that some other active members here are programmers.
@El'endiaStarman Would you mind reading the question and casting a re-open vote, if you think that it's appropriate?
@El'endiaStarman Congratulations. Good work. I have a bachelors in mathematics and I took some graduate courses but I didn't finish- partly because I was spending so much time studying the scriptures. I played with the idea of taking some courses to get into a M.Div program, but I found a good job teaching and got married so that got moved back. My current employer will reimburse 50% for graduate tuition in my field so I might try to finish up a master's degree in the next three or four years.
@El'endiaStarman A Hilbert Space is an infinite dimensional complex inner product space in which every Cauchy sequence converges. The state space of a quantum wave-function (a solution to a Schrodinger equation) is a Hilbert space, for example. I am curious, I'll certainly check it out if you share a link.
@El'endiaStarman Observables in quantum mechanics are self-adjoint linear operators that act on vectors in the Hilbert space. Did you study tensors at all? One of the reasons I wanted to study math in the first place was to understand Einstein's General theory, but I never got around to studying tensors.
@Andrew I wondered about generalizations of matrices, like 3D matrices, and asked about it somewhere and that's when I learned that's basically what tensors were. I asked the guy that said that to continue explaining, but he never got around to it, I guess.
So I still don't really get tensors.
Tensors are probably something that I would need someone to teach to me.
@El'endiaStarman Me too. I've read all of the online overviews I can. I need a good textbook. Maybe I'll get around to that this summer. If I find anything really useful I'll try to remember to point you in a good direction.
@El'endiaStarman A linear operator on a hilbert space is also a generalization of a matrix- an object in a hilbert space is like a vector with an uncountably infinite number of elements, and a linear operator is like a matrix with uncountably infinite rows and columns that acts on the elements just like a 3x3 matrix acts on a 3-vector.
@El'endiaStarman likewise. I've got to go forr now. Peace!
The JEDP theory basically states that the first five books of the bible (the Pentatauch) were not written by a single person, but rather by four different people.
I'm trying to understand if this theory is even remotely valid or if it is complete nonsense.
Specifically (to avoid this being cl...
@Andrew @El'endiaStarman AND... When beetles fight these battles in a bottle with their paddles and the bottle's on a poodle and the poodle's eating noodles... Owait. What were you guys saying?
What is being taught in regard the identity of the the prophet Yehoshua the Nazarene in Judaism?
Specifically, how are the following questions being answered:
A) Did such a person exist?
B) Is the account of his deeds and words in the New Testament correct in the main aspects? Is the whole nar...
An associate wrote an open letter (email) of condolence to a friend who'd lost a child. The letter stated that that deceased was now an angel in heaven with wings. What is the ultimate source of this belief?
The JEDP theory basically states that the first five books of the bible (the Pentatauch) were not written by a single person, but rather by four different people.
I'm trying to understand if this theory is even remotely valid or if it is complete nonsense.
Specifically (to avoid this being cl...
