3 Ancient Questions About Jesus That You've Never Considered

if you're a little bit like me you've spent some time exploring some interesting questions about Jesus what did he really look like because judging by many of his popular depictions you wouldn't think he was a carpenter from ancient Palestine more like a carpenter from a 1970s Ikea was he concerned about moderation and drinking alcohol I mean turning all the water at a wedding into wine sounds like a good time but it could also be interpreted as a bit of a cry for help either way let's just be glad that Jesus did not in fact Take the Wheel that night how Rowdy did he get turning over the merchant tables in the temple did he just turn one over and give everyone a sermon or did he really charge in there and eat those things like a real son of a God now if you're a lot like me you grew up considering And discussing larger theological questions pertaining to Jesus does his turn the other cheek bit imply that he was a total pacifist did his soul suffer in hell for three days for our sins while his body remained in the Tomb and exactly how does the Trinity work these questions are not uncommon in the least however there are certain questions about Jesus some that have been the subject of furious debate which most of us have never heard of much less considered based on what theological narratives are popular in our time and place most of us assume the answers to these questions one way or another within our theological positions treating them as a given a non-issue ancient people closer to Jesus time though probably wouldn't have seen these things the same way in fact the questions we'll explore here were likely quite common among Christians in the first few centuries CE before we finally get to these questions let me clarify to those of you new to my Channel that I am not religious and did not intend to argue for any theological position in this video I just really enjoy studying the development of religious systems and thought it would be fun to just share some things that I've read about with you guys so if you'd like to join me for that let's get to it did Jesus have a physical body yes this was a very real serious question which early Christians hotly debated it existed within the larger debate over whether Jesus was human a god a mix of the two or something else entirely if he was God they wondered how could he truly be human humans have needs and limitations that God doesn't have and if a human doesn't have those needs and limitations because they're Divine are they really human at all likewise God presumably has knowledge and abilities which humans don't have so if one is truly human wouldn't they lack the knowledge and abilities of God to better illustrate why there was disagreement over this question allow me to contrast two early Christian sects who held to polar opposite views on the issue we'll begin with a sect called the ebionites this sect believed as many early Christians did that Jesus was a man who because of his strict and righteous observance of the law of Moses please God so much that God adopted him as his own own son on the day of Jesus baptism they did not believe that he was inherently Divine or born of a virgin naturally they thought that Jesus had a physical body just the same as any other human a sect called the marcianites would have disagreed entirely or at least that's what available sources seem to tell us unfortunately the writings of marcian the founder of this sect are lost are sources on Marcy Knight theology are limited to the writings of its direct opposition such as early Christian writer tertullian's work against marcion that said it's important that we take what's been said about the Marcy knights with more than a grain of salt the Marcy Knights believed that the material world including our physical bodies was imperfect even corrupt to them Divinity was incompatible with the material world in this case the flesh so the Jesus they believed in was in some ways the exact opposite from the Jesus of the ebionites he didn't have a physical body made of flesh and blood in fact he was never even born Jesus was so truly Divine that his appearance must have simply been a projection of some kind one that had the appearance of flesh and blood but was somehow Just an Illusion The View that Jesus was fully human only in appearance is called docitism to be clear one doesn't have to think that Jesus body has no substance or that Jesus was purely an apparition to be a docitist this term simply refers to the idea that Jesus appeared to be fully human when he wasn't I think it could be argued that there are a lot of docitas still around I'd imagine that plenty of Christians if asked if Jesus had had the ability to understand speech as an infant or read the thoughts of others or perform physical Feats that humans can't typically do would say yes of course if he wasn't able to do those things he wouldn't be an omnipotent God so in this way I'd guess that plenty of people would indicate their belief that Jesus didn't have the physical or cognitive limitations of humans in being omnipotent but appeared thoroughly human even so neither Ebbie and Knight or marcianite theology ultimately came to dominate the Christian world marcian was actually an incredibly successful evangelist seeing his message become the original and majority Christian view in some areas of Asia Minor however in the ancient Roman World there existed suspicion toward new or novel religious movements to appeal to Roman sensibilities on a grand scale a religion needed to be grounded in the ancient as we'll see in the next part of this video marcianism was fully divorced from Judaism or any other previous philosophy so it makes sense that it didn't ultimately win out as for the ebionites by the end of the second century non-ebby night Christian writers didn't seem to treat ebony Knight theology as much of a threat to their Orthodoxy suggesting that the group wasn't bringing in many converts this makes sense as the ebionites held to Jewish law meaning non-jewish converts had to begin a Kosher diet and get circumcised with those requirements it isn't a shock that the view went out of style in just a couple of centuries was Jesus in League with Yahweh the god of the Old Testament remember how I said Marcy Knight theology was fully divorced from Judaism yeah that might even be an understatement marcianites believe that the loving merciful Jesus stood in stark contrast to the jealous wrathful God of the Jewish scriptures aka the Old Testament they also thought that there was too much suffering and misery inherent to our world to have been created by an entity as merciful as Jesus their solution the Old Testament God and Jesus were not only not in cahoots but stood in direct opposition of each other the god of the Jews in the eyes of the marcionites was a wrathful sadistic fool who not only ordered needless Bloodshed in the Old Testament but created this material world broken full of flaws which cause hardship for his creation Jesus on the other hand was a loving savior who is sent by a supreme benevolent God a completely different never-before-seen deity seeing the torments to which the wicked creator of this world subjected Humanity the Supreme God sent Jesus to Earth to create a way for for humans to escape their Tormentor and live with him in the afterlife now you can see why Marcia Knights believe that the material world including the flesh was corrupt and incompatible with Jesus Divinity the material realm was a creation of the wicked Creator God so if Jesus really was divine he couldn't have had a physical body now this may all sound very unusual given how far removed it is from popular Christian theology today but in the ancient world this was a view many Christians seriously considered our sources indicate that marcian as previously mentioned was a very successful evangelist in his time especially in Asia Minor and if we stop to consider why it isn't hard to see marcianism's appeal first of all marcian established what was probably the first closed biblical Canon ever in other words the first version of a new testament was created by marcian and served as the official text of his church it consisted of 10 of the letters of Paul which marcian edited to remove Jewish sounding passages which he considered later Corruptions of The Originals as well as Martian's own version of the Gospel of Luke and a book written by marcian himself called antitheses which directly compared certain Jewish scriptures with the teachings of Jesus in order to show their contradiction marcianism was also probably appealing to many because it offered Clear Solutions to the questions of why suffering exists and how we can escape it without all the guilt involved with the idea that suffering is a result of sin the god of the marcianites had no checkered past and was not responsible for all the ills of this world his words and actions offered only love mercy and salvation also marcianism was in no way tied to Judaism or the extensive Jewish law which made the religion more appealing to Gentiles especially those who you know didn't want to turn their hoodie into a turtleneck it was also probably appealing to those who didn't really care for the Jews because remember kids no matter what part of History you're studying you can always expect to find one thing bigotry [Music] well marcianism was ultimately unable to spread across the entire Roman Empire some Concepts within martianism continue to exist in other Christian sects Christian gnosticism for example is an umbrella term which contemporary Scholars use to identify various Christian sects which occupied a certain school of thought one feature of that school of thought was a dualistic theology much like marcians the monad a superior perfect God working to thwart the will of the demiurge and inferior God who created the material world by the way if you want to listen to a story from a gnostic text about secret agent Jesus coming to undermine the demiurge check out my video where I covered the Gospel of Judas so this question of whether Jesus and Yahweh were aligned or in opposition is one which Christians disagreed on for centuries one may even wonder if past Christians of a more Gnostic or marcinist persuasion took their answers to this question for granted with the same confidence as those Christians who'd answer it completely differently did Jesus believe in heaven and hell it may surprise you to learn that most critical Scholars those who employ historical and scientific methodologies in examining the biblical text and whose work is accountable to the scrutiny of other critical Scholars of various Specialties agree that Jesus subscribed to the view of Jewish apocalypticism within this view were specific beliefs about the Body Soul divide the cause of human suffering the afterlife and of course the end times in this Jewish Tradition at the time there was no delineation between the body and soul the life force of humans was just called the breath and wasn't thought to live on after the death of the Body for the apocalypticus like many other Jews bodily death was death the apocalyptic view also positive that demonic forces in the world were the source of suffering and that God was coming soon to overthrow these forces and create a utopian Kingdom on earth once God had come to establish that Kingdom those throughout time who had served God in life would be raised bodily from the dead and along with the righteous amongst the living brought into the kingdom to live blissfully on Earth with God the living Wicked who remained however would be punished not in any afterlife but by being cast into a real Earthly place called gehenna to die and then be made non-existent for the rest of Eternity a little background on gehenna this was a real place in Jerusalem According to second Kings 23 10 of the Hebrew Bible King Josiah desecrated and burned the place because it was thought to be where some of the kings of Judah had once sacrificed their own children by fire to the god Molech naturally it was considered a pretty vile place if whether alive or dead your body was thrown into a Blasphemous fiery pit of rubble instead of buried that was understandably considered incredibly shameful this view likely Jesus owned did not include the concepts of a soul the soul spirit leaving the body at death a non-material afterlife or eternal torment for sin so on the question of whether or not Jesus taught about heaven and hell as well as the question of whether or not the earliest Christians believed in heaven and hell the likely answer according to critical scholarship is null as someone who's been told they're going to hell a lot like a lot like really really a lot this comes as a kind of an unwelcome surprise I mean myself most pagans Darwin Sagan the creators of Pokemon all the people who've been told that they're going to burn in hell one day you know we had a get-together planned and I mean now that's it's all ruined something Jesus certainly did teach though was that God was coming to establish his kingdom soon within the lifetime of some of the Apostles even since that time never came it's no wonder this apocalyptic view of Jesus teachings was discarded those who still believed in Jesus Divinity had to come to a different interpretation of his teachings in the early years most of those coming into the Christian church had a Greek background which would have included the idea that the soul was Immortal separates from the body after death and lives on somewhere else it may have been quite natural for Greek Christians to conclude that since the end had still not come perhaps Jesus actually meant that the kingdom of God was in heaven heaven and that the righteous would be rewarded by having their soul raised there after death likewise many Greeks had a concept of The Souls of the unrighteous being punished after death for those who thought that the righteous would be taken somewhere good and be rewarded after death it may have been a natural conclusion that the unrighteous would be taken somewhere terrible to be punished after death with all of Jesus talk of the unrighteous being cast into the shameful fiery pit of gehenna Christian Gentiles May well have taken this bit of Jewish lore about a physical place in Jerusalem to actually describe the Greek idea of the afterlife for the unrighteous if taken as a Jewish apocalypticist who predicted the imminent coming of God's kingdom Jesus seems to have made predictions that weren't ever fulfilled is it any Wonder then that those who held on to the idea of Jesus being Divine came to a different interpretation of his words than Jesus contemporaries who viewed him as a Jewish apocalypticist the question of whether or not Jesus taught anything about heaven and hell may have really been a difficult quandary for the early Christians who survived the apostles as I hope this video has demonstrated even our most basic assumptions about Jesus today have been the subject of debate and disagreement since the beginning even as someone with no theological dog in this fight I find the study of these questions and their many theological answers incredibly Illuminating it's a way we can learn about the cultural sensibilities and psychology of ancient people for me studying the Christian story teaches me about the human story of which we're all apart while anger and vitriol could certainly be facilitated by this discussion I find it more of an exercise in expanding my sense of empathy if I found myself in the socio-cultural context of say an ancient ebionite who's to say I wouldn't live and believe as they did the same goes for any other sect if I were educated in their historical context I'd probably we find myself in agreement with them this is an idea that I try to carry with me day to day disagreements are to be expected but if I do my best to empathize it's clear that most people shaped by circumstance are doing their best to answer life's big questions just as I am alright I hope you enjoyed this video as per usual I'd like to recommend one of my sources for further reading heaven and hell is New Testament scholar Bart ehrmann's latest book wherein he follows the fascinating evolution of the judeo-christian afterlife from a time when Heaven and Hell were unheard of up to today read the book either way but if you'd like to listen to it as an audiobook as I did while supporting my channel in the process you can get a 30-day free trial from audible by going to audibletrial.com GM skeptic the link is in the description as well as the pinned comment thanks for watching I've been Drew of genetically modified skeptic a special thanks to my patrons for their constant love and support if you want to hear more from me subscribe and follow me on social media at the handles below as always if you're an apostate in need there are resources Linked In the description to help you find Community and Mental Health support remember to be kind to others in the comments I'm not really looking forward to this comments section because people are going to be mad at me please be nice to each other and until next time stay skeptical

Channel: Genetically Modified Skeptic

Views: 909,112

Keywords: atheism, atheist, agnostic, skeptic, skepticism, genetically modified skeptic, gm skeptic, questions about jesus, docetism, marcionism, marcion, ebionites, ancient christian sects, christian gnosticism, gnostics, Jewish apocolypticist, Did Jesus teach about heaven and hell? Bart Ehrman, Did Jesus have a physical body, Was Jesus the son of Yahweh, critical scholarship, new testament studies, jesus, gospel of judas

Id: -PgOsslDABo

Length: 17min 32sec (1052 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 13 2020