Do you believe in Jesus Christ or just Jesus of Nazareth?

Post Reply New Topic

Do you as a Christian find it compelling to believe, that Jesus was not just the son of unrenowned middleclass couple Joseph and Mary, but more so, a descendant of King David?! To me this is a huge obstacle for me to embrace basic concepts of Christianity. No, not walking on water, cureing the sick and other miracles, or the resurrection or being the son of God.
My beef with these genealogies presented in Mark and Luke is that they are so obviobsly unsourced and invented and no care has been given into even making them credible or consistent. 14 generations in a span of 1000 years?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genealogy_of_Jesus
Yes, some apologetic theologians have found the required loopholes to make sense of it all, but should I respect this mainstream belief? Jesus came to save man, not to be king of Jews.

What's your position?

I believe in an normal human person, called Jesus being born, that had for his time really good ideas and concepts. But nope, no halfgod stuff.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljRKhZ81aqY[/youtube]I believe that the biblical Jesus isnt real and I also believe that http://godisimaginary.com/ .

If he even existed he was just an ordinary man, possibly with a psychiatric condition - mental hospitals are full of people who think they are the Messiah. Other than that, he said some positive things regarding morality, but they were nothing new. Other philosophers and teachers have said much the same thing long before and after him.

Your avatar is the true messiah!

There are historians who say the same about Socrates and Joan of Arc--and there are historians who believe that everything regarding the dark ages is a lie and that Charlemagne did not exist. Just because a few historians say something based on a few holes, does not mean that they're right.

Just because it was written in a book doesnt mean it was true either, if depictions of unicorns were written in a book does that mean they are real?

I'm not sure how many fallacies you managed to cram into that sentence (it's at least an association fallacy), but I'm not talking about a book as a final proof. Evidence of the existence of Yeshua has been found by archeologists, and there are independent Roman writings not related to the jews describing his existence as at least a political agitator.

Im pretty sure he was just an ordinary man who became a buddhist and people made a religion out of him!

Maybe Jesus was simply a victim of the times... The Jewish people were looking for a leader or the Messiah to help them rise up against the Romans and Jesus was basically a well meaning dupe with schizophrenia or bipolar or other disorder that led him to believe he was the prophesied Messiah. He spoke well about morality and the combination of his charisma, neurological condition and circumstances made him irresistible to the Jewish people who publicly elevated him to be their saviour - a symbol of hope for the oppressed if nothing else. However, things didn't work out as the people had hoped and he ended up being crucified like anyone else who stirred up trouble with the occupying Romans. The cult of Jesus followed his death along with the mythology of various miracles / resurrection attributed to him and thus Christianity was born. An ordinary man swept along by circumstances and made into a cult figure after his death.

I believe that Jesus is the one and only Son of God. He was called "the Christ" as a reference to His divinity, not a surname. Nazareth was where he grew up, and from what I've heard, it was something of a "red light district" in first-century Israel. That's why so many didn't believe Mary, even Joseph at first.

The one key to understanding the geneologies is realizing that they are two different paths. One goes through Joseph, while the other ends up at Mary. Both were distant relations of King David, who ruled Israel about 3,000 years ago, not 1,000.

This is also what I believe. It even explains the absence of any biographical stories from his youth. Some scientists believe he went to the east through India (and maybe even to Nepal) as a kid, and was educated in Buddhism before returning. His philosophies, as described in the Bible, correspond pretty much exactly to what Buddhists would say.

Given that Buddhism is about 500 years older than Christianity, it's not even unlikely.

That time period had a ton of people claiming to be the Messiah, complete with disciples. In fact, a few of them had followers claiming that their Messiah did things oddly similar to what Jesus' disciples claimed.

Frankly, I don't see any compelling evidence that Jesus even existed.

For all I know, I could be a descendant of King David.

I thought he came from Bethlehem.

Even if Jesus 'the man' existed, I think his words have long since been taken out of the context to the point that they've lost relevancy.

He said nothing about hating on gays, slaughtering muslims, condoning the molestation of children, slaughtering other christians or not practicing safe sex or not having abortions.