Jesus' teachings. Profound?

[McCulloch]

Perhaps, but for me the miracle things are secondary, in comparison to what Jesus taught. The teachings of Jesus are for me the greatest thing, not the miracles.

In what way are Jesus' teachings extraordinary? Can it be demonstrated that Jesus had great insight? What profound wisdom is there in Jesus' teachings?

[JewishVolcano]

[Replying to post 110 by JP Cusick]

I am comfortable that only God gets to judge my life in that way.

Of course. We are all human. We may sometimes steal or be promiscuous or fail to live up to Bible in other ways but in the end only God gets to judge us. Nobody else. I'm an atheist but I still like this attitude.

[JP Cusick]

[Replying to post 110 by JP Cusick]

I am comfortable that only God gets to judge my life in that way.

Of course. We are all human. We may sometimes steal or be promiscuous or fail to live up to Bible in other ways but in the end only God gets to judge us. Nobody else. I'm an atheist but I still like this attitude.

Well you misunderstood me again, or just misrepresented what I said again.

I full well believe in judging people and judging things and events and we are to judge virtually everything.

And the only few exception is when we judge our self and when God judges us because these over rule the judgements of other people.

It is in fact impossible for any person to stop judging because our brain is a judging machine, and to judge is how the brain functions, except most people do not comprehend it, as in we judge the weather, judge the day and judge our feelings, judge words and judge each other person, judge animals, we judge everything, and as such it is factually impossible for any person to not be judged. FYI.

What you asked of me was crossing the line as none of your business, and I just tried to word my reply as nicely as possible.

[marco]

To turn the other cheek is a principle to the wise, but it is not a commandment for fools.

Then it was misdirected, for of course we would want it to be applied by fools since the wise are the ones who advance civilisation. In any event you've moved to the supposition that since it doesn't apply to "fools" it therefore doesn't apply to authority. I can sympathise with this view to a large extent. However, when we're attacked by a machete-wielding thug and there are no foolish police officers around and we see ourselves as, well, fairly wise, then we should resist, despite the advice.


But I suspect you mean "wise" in a very special way. Those people clever enough to interpret Scripture in the right fashion can turn the other cheek, and possibly the machete-wielder will do the same, miraculously. Hmmm. I hope I am never called to verify this claim.

[JewishVolcano]

[Replying to post 112 by JP Cusick]

Well you misunderstood me again, or just misrepresented what I said again.

Even if I did misrepresent what you said here, I sure as hell didn't do it before and you wouldn't be able to show where I did so. You're making stuff up.

FYI, 'to judge' has two meanings. First means 'to form a factual opinion', second means 'evaluate behaviour and either express approval or disapproval' with the possible punishment in case of disapproval. What you said strongly suggested the second meaning so I addressed it as such.

What you asked of me was crossing the line as none of your business, and I just tried to word my reply as nicely as possible.

I personally don't care if you're being nice or not. And what line has it crossed? What are you trying to hide? I mean if you profess believing in 'turn the other cheek' and in reality every time, majority of time or at least on some occasions when somebody slapped you or shoved you (or in other way infringed upon you) you shamingly and defiantly invited him to continue - why not just say so? Why reply with 'only God can judge me'? So to me you actually replied - you're not following 'turn the other cheek' at all.

And you haven't replied to me asking you to elaborate on your assertion that there are other ways of self-defence except violence. What are those?

[Zzyzx]

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[Tired of the Nonsense]

I would be willing to accept this argument as valid IF you could only provide a copy of the Q source. And if you cannot, then it is essentially an argument based on nothing more than imagination and baseless assumption.

We do have a copy of the Q source found in the text of Matthew and Luke.

The Q source only means an unknown source - but we do still have the text of Q in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.

This website shows the text as deciphered in 1910 = HERE.

So we do have Matthew and Luke as the source, along with that example in John.

My own view is that the principle of "turn the other cheek" is so profound that it would not matter to me if it came from an ancient talking donkey who was a slave in old Babylon, because the principle is profound regardless of its source.

Why is it not included in the Gospel of Mark? we can only speculate.

I find that Mark is written simply as an accounting of the life, and it was not intended to be about doctrine.

Wikipedia
The Q Souce
The Q source (also Q document, Q Gospel, Q Sayings Gospel, or Q from German: Quelle, meaning "source") is a hypothetical written collection of primarily Jesus' sayings (logia). Q is part of the common material found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke but not in the Gospel of Mark. According to this hypothesis, this material was drawn from the early Church's Oral Tradition.

Along with Markan priority, Q was hypothesized by 1900, and is one of the foundations of most modern gospel scholarship.[4] B. H. Streeter formulated a widely accepted view of Q: that it was written in Koine Greek; that most of its contents appear in Matthew, in Luke, or in both; and that Luke more often preserves the text's original order than Matthew. In the two-source hypothesis, the three-source hypothesis and the Q+/Papias hypothesis Matthew and Luke both used Mark and Q as sources. Some scholars have postulated that Q is actually a plurality of sources, some written and some oral.[5] Others have attempted to determine the stages in which Q was composed.

Q's existence has been questioned.[6] Omitting what should have been a highly treasured dominical document from all early Church catalogs, its lack of mention by Jerome is a conundrum of modern Biblical scholarship.[7][dubious – discuss] But copying Q might have been seen as unnecessary as it was preserved in the canonical gospels. Hence, it was preferable to copy the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, "where the sayings of Jesus from Q were rephrased to avoid misunderstandings, and to fit their own situations and their understanding of what Jesus had really meant".[8] Despite challenges, the two-source hypothesis retains wide support. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_source

Wide support among Christian theologians who simply made the concept up and declared that it must be true. No one even supposed such a document existed until the idea was conceived around 1900. No such document was ever mentioned historically, and there is no actual evidence that such a document ever existed. But the idea served to answer the synoptic problem. Church tradition held that Gospel Matthew was written BEFORE Gospel Mark. And yet virtually the entire Gospel According to Mark is right there in the pages of Gospel Matthew. If Gospel Matthew was written first then Gospel Mark is reduced to an abridged version of Gospel Matthew, and not an independant source. The obvious conclusion is that Gospel Mark was actually written first. And that is now the consensus opinion. But Christian theologians were not satisfied. Why would the author of Gospel Matthew, traditionally identified as the apostle Matthew, use the testimony of a non eyewitness in writing his Gospel? And the solution that was reached in 1900 was that there must have been an earlier document in existence which all there synoptic authors. Matthew Mark and Luke referred to when writing their gospels. Problem solved. EXCEPT THEY SIMPLY MADE THE WHOLE IDEA UP!


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synoptic_ ... ic_problem

So why did the apostle Matthew use non eyewitness testimony in writing his Gospel. The apostle matthew did not write the canonical Gospel According to Matthew!

[JP Cusick]

Wikipedia
The Q Souce

Why would the author of Gospel Matthew, traditionally identified as the apostle Matthew, use the testimony of a non eyewitness in writing his Gospel? And the solution that was reached in 1900 was that there must have been an earlier document in existence which all there synoptic authors. Matthew Mark and Luke referred to when writing their gospels. Problem solved. EXCEPT THEY SIMPLY MADE THE WHOLE IDEA UP!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synoptic_ ... ic_problem

So why did the apostle Matthew use non eyewitness testimony in writing his Gospel. The apostle matthew did not write the canonical Gospel According to Matthew!

Discovering the Q source is just a theory because no one knows if there ever was a Q document or was it an oral (spoken) tradition passed down, and so the final answer to the Q source is still unknown.

Scholars give us theories and otherwise we have nothing, and yes a THEORY is just a made up idea based on the research.

I agree that we do not know who wrote the Gospel of Matthew, but we do not really know who wrote Mark or Luke or John.

So if we try to honor this thread topic - then - the riddle and puzzle and the mystery of who wrote the Bible and what is the secret behind the synoptic problem and what parts are true and what is not - these are very PROFOUND aspects of the Gospel and of Jesus too.

Beside the obvious teachings of Jesus being profound, we also have another layer of profound teachings in the ambiguity of the = who? what? when? where? and how?

[Monta]

[Replying to post 117 by JP Cusick]


"Beside the obvious teachings of Jesus being profound, we also have another layer of profound teachings in the ambiguity of the = who? what? when? where? and how?"

The older I get the more irrelevant are the questons about who wrote what and when.

Jesus said, my words are Spirit and they are Life.
This the only reality that matters.

[Zzyzx]

.

Jesus said, my words are Spirit and they are Life.
This the only reality that matters.

IS that 'reality'? Can it be determined if Jesus actually said that -- or if someone 'put the words in his mouth'?

If a wandering preacher did say such thing, could that indicate he was delusional?

[JP Cusick]

The older I get the more irrelevant are the questons about who wrote what and when.

Jesus said, my words are Spirit and they are Life.
This the only reality that matters.

You do seem to be contradicting your self in this comment.

You say it is irrelevant who wrote [or who said] the words, and then you say that the only thing that matter is Jesus saying the words.

I agree that it does not matter who said or wrote the message so much as if the message has merit or not.

Some of the saying attributed to Jesus do not hold up under scrutiny, and yet other sayings are very profound.

I say to judge the message more-so than the messenger.