Cardinal Koch: "Israel Remains the Chosen People"

[Hakeem]

I have some question and I don't know the answers.

How did the apostles of Jesus pray? Meaning what was the mode of prayer and what did they say in the prayers.

Did Jesus ever lead them in prayer and how? Did any of them ever lead others in prayers?

If Jesus was, say, a Jew, how did he pray to the almighty? Did he practice the Jewish form of prayer?

Thanks.

[Michael]

I have some question and I don't know the answers.

How did the apostles of Jesus pray? Meaning what was the mode of prayer and what did they say in the prayers.

Did Jesus ever lead them in prayer and how? Did any of them ever lead others in prayers?

If Jesus was, say, a Jew, how did he pray to the almighty? Did he practice the Jewish form of prayer?

Thanks.

In Matthew's Gospel (6: 5-14)

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
9 “This, then, is how you should pray:

“‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
10 your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us today our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation,[a]
but deliver us from the evil one.[b]’
14 For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.

And again, in John's Gospel (14: 10-14)

Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. 11 Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves. 12 Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. 13 And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.

[Pastaneta]

But you know what? Even if Jesus existed, he was a jewish preacher who had nothing to do with Paul's invention. He certainly was not "the Lord" and given that Paul's invention also plagiarized from ancient cults, what reason did jews at that time to believe in all that nonsense?

Agreed... But even his existence is doubtful. In this I take Josephus Flavius. From him we know that John the Baptist exists and we know about the Messiah claimants of his time in details. And Jesus was not mentioned. So Christians of later times who notices this discrepancy had to forge the Testimonium Flavianum...

[Michael]

But you know what? Even if Jesus existed, he was a jewish preacher who had nothing to do with Paul's invention. He certainly was not "the Lord" and given that Paul's invention also plagiarized from ancient cults, what reason did jews at that time to believe in all that nonsense?

Agreed... But even his existence is doubtful. In this I take Josephus Flavius. From him we know that John the Baptist exists and we know about the Messiah claimants of his time in details. And Jesus was not mentioned. So Christians of later times who notices this discrepancy had to forge the Testimonium Flavianum...

Among contemporary pagan sources, it depends whether you take Tacitus (Annales 15: 44) as authentic. Most Classicists do and the misspelling in the Second Medician MS [chrestianos[/] for [i]christianos]and the disparaging tone both argue against a later, Christian, interpolation. Personally, what I find most persuasive is that I simply do not believe that some Carolingian monk could have imitated Tacitus's very distinctive style so effectively.

[Pastaneta]

Tacitus only speaks of the followers of Christus who lived in the past. It is like I speaks of the followers of Buddha... I don't know if Buddha existed (and do not care) but it is a way of Characterizing them

Suotenius writes:

Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus [Emperor Claudius in 49 CE] expelled them from Rome." (Claudius 5.25.4)

To say that Chrestus (an actual Greek name) is Christus is a stretch especially if you take that this Chrestus was in Rome.

Even if it means Christians all it says is that there were Christians in Rome, not that Christ existed.

[charleston]

Geza Vermes:


Questions arising

John Crace meets the professor of Jewish studies whom many dub the greatest Jesus scholar of his generation


http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/mar/18/academicexperts.highereducationprofile

his most recent book, The Resurrection, is published this week.

The Resurrection is the final instalment of Vermes's Jesus trilogy, which began with The Passion and The Nativity. Vermes again adopts his trademark forensic textual analysis to separate fact from myth: "I wanted to explain exactly what the New Testament does tell us about the resurrection. People usually rely on others to interpret the gospels for them and St Paul's assertion of the physical resurrection has become a cornerstone of Christianity for many people. If Jesus didn't rise from the dead, then faith is rubbish.

"Yet if you look at what Jesus actually said, then you get a different picture. If he did talk about the resurrection, he forgot to write it down; so it's more likely he didn't. And if he did, then why did his resurrection come as such a surprise to the apostles? No one said, 'Of course, Jesus said it would be like this' when his tomb was found to be empty; even Mary Magdalene assumed that someone must have moved the body. Nobody's reactions correspond to the expectation of a resurrection."

Vermes goes on to argue that subsequent sightings of Jesus are best understood as visions in which the apostles felt his charisma working as it had done when he was alive. "Jesus had promised to be with them and he was," he argues. "It's a resurrection of the spirit in the hearts of believers. The idea of an afterlife predates the Christian era and the preaching of eternal life is well attested; a physical resurrection is not essential to a belief in spiritual survival."

This won't thrill the Christian traditionalists, but then Vermes has never been what one might call orthodox. He was born in 1924 in Mako, a small town 200km south-east of Budapest, where his father worked as a journalist, and seven years later his whole family converted to Catholicism.

He is one of the leading scholars in the field of the study of the historical Jesus (see Selected Publications, below) and together with Fergus Millar and Martin Goodman, Vermes was responsible for substantially revising Emil Schurer's three-volume work, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1973, ISBN 0-567-02242-0, 1979, ISBN 0-567-02243-9, 1986-87. ISBN 0-567-02244-7, ISBN 0-567-09373-5. His An Introduction to the Complete Dead Sea Scrolls, revised edition (2000), is a good study of the collection at Qumran.[5]

He is now Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies and Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford but continues to teach at the Oriental Institute in Oxford. He has edited the Journal of Jewish Studies[6] since 1971, and since 1991 he has been director of the Oxford Forum for Qumran Research at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies.

Professor Vermes is a Fellow of the British Academy; a Fellow of the European Academy of Arts, Sciences and Humanities; holder of an Oxford D. Litt. (1988) and of honorary doctorates from the University of Edinburgh (1989), University of Durham (1990), University of Sheffield (1994) and the Central European University of Budapest (2008). He was awarded the Wilhelm Bacher Memorial Medal by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1996), the Memorial Medal of the city of Makó, his place of birth (2008) and the keys of the cities of Monroe LA and Natchez MI (2009). He received a vote of congratulation from the U.S. House of Representatives, proposed by the Representative of Louisiana on September 17, 2009.

Vermes describes Jesus as a 1st-century Jewish holy man. Contrary to certain other scholars (such as E. P. Sanders[7]), Vermes concludes that Jesus did not reach out to non-Jews. For example, he attributes positive references to Samaritans in the gospels not to Jesus himself but to early Christian editing. He suggests that, properly understood, the historical Jesus is a figure that Jews should find familiar and attractive. This historical Jesus, however, is so different from the Christ of faith that Christians, says Vermes, may well want to rethink the fundamentals of their faith.[8]

Important works on this topic include Jesus the Jew (1983), which describes Jesus as a thoroughly Jewish Galilean charismatic, and The Gospel of Jesus the Jew (1981), which examines Jewish parallels to Jesus’ teaching.[9]

[Jeffrey555]

Hakeem » Mon Nov 22, 2010 5:16 am

I have some question and I don't know the answers.

How did the apostles of Jesus pray? Meaning what was the mode of prayer and what did they say in the prayers.

Did Jesus ever lead them in prayer and how? Did any of them ever lead others in prayers?

If Jesus was, say, a Jew, how did he pray to the almighty? Did he practice the Jewish form of prayer?

Thanks.

Hakeem,
In every day terms, we realize we are before the Living God who loves us and we speak to him, His response to our prayers is his life in us. The New Testament Writers saw Jesus as the one who connects us to God, the bridge or mediator, we trust in Jesus as our way to connect to God and God places his life in us - the Holy Spirit

[Marcus]

David,

I can read anti-Christian trash lots of places, but that I'm now able to read it associated with First Things is why I cancelled my subscription some months ago. Please tell the guys at the office to save postage by sending me no more offers to subscribe.

Ain't gonna happen,
J

[Frodo]

Someone should explain to David that insulting people in order to win them over isn't what is meant by "tough love".

[oao]

I suggest you reread carefully what I wrote and particularly the last line -- the "concession" does not have the implication you suggest. In the apocalyptic soup and fluidity existing at the time there were many groups and sects developing similar theologies. Paul's was the one that took for reasons that one can readily discern in his giving his gentile targets what they wanted to hear.

Others provided more reasoning and doubts in line with my comments.

I did mention my doubting his existence. Only one mention outside the gospels relative to the miracles and resurrection is simply not persuasive. For all practical purposes it's as if he did not exist, let alone defied the laws of nature.

As we just saw here, to answer specific questions about what Jesus did and said one has little choice but rely SOLELY on the gospels, which are neither historical records nor unbiased nor consistent -- they had a theological, not objective recording purpose -- in fact, they targetted different audiences, hence the variations, not to mention that they were copies of copies of copies with many mistakes and changes over time, as well as copies of each other.

But my point was that even if somebody like Jesus had actually existed, it was not anything like what Paul and the gospels made him to be and certainly his religion was not anything like Paul's. I don't recall if Vermes is a believer or not, but if he is, then even he, as an historian could not disregard the results of his research.

Our esteemed Spengler, his intellect and knowledge notwithstanding, has a weak spot when it comes to religion and his attitude towards christianity. But that is not uncommon -- I know quite a few people with that combination.

[CognitiveDistoibance]

... Paul's was the one that took for reasons that one can readily discern in his giving his gentile targets what they wanted to hear. ...

Yeah. The gentiles wanted to hear that the Jewish God sent His Son, His Jewish Messiah, born a Jew, to the Jews, to fulfill the Jewish Law, and die a substutionary death for the salvation of all, the Jew first, then the gentile. Yup. Clearly tailored for gentile targets.

As to "objective purpose," there seems to be precious little of that from present day conjecturers, Ehrman included.

[Spengler]

Oao,

Reasoned and informed criticism of the other person's religion is allowed; your posts don't meet the standard. This "trash" (as someone appropriately put it) can be found anywhere. Spare us.

Hakeem,
To anthropomorphize God as "Father in heaven" (Avinu shebashamayim) is typically Jewish; also as mother (Isaiah), husband (Amos) and bridegroom (Song of Songs). There is not a single such characterization in the Koran. That helps clarify why Judaism and Christianity have so much in common (along with expiatory sacrifice), and much less in common with Islam.

[oao]

As far as I know Paul did not stress jewishness anywhere near the way you do.

But even if he did, in those times there were only pagan religions and monoteism proved very attractive, it's one reason the 3 big ones took. Furthermore, the pre-christian gentile world was not anti-semitic and the jewishness of the source was not a negative. It took christianity to introduce it.

It looks like Paul initially thought he was bringing Judaism to the gentiles. He seems to have realized at some point that this was not working and he altered it as he went in order to make it work. In the process he lost the jews and he became increasingly anti-semitic.

You are looking at that time with 20th century eyes.

[ALotLessThumb]

... Paul's was the one that took for reasons that one can readily discern in his giving his gentile targets what they wanted to hear. ...

Yeah. The gentiles wanted to hear that the Jewish God sent His Son, His Jewish Messiah, born a Jew, to the Jews, to fulfill the Jewish Law, and die a substutionary death for the salvation of all, the Jew first, then the gentile. Yup. Clearly tailored for gentile targets.

As to "objective purpose," there seems to be precious little of that from present day conjecturers, Ehrman included.

Agreed; it is hard to take Ehrman seriously when he refers to "Ebonite" sources that don't quite exist but are theoretically fascinating enough for the next Dan Brown novel.

I question if they ever existed, and I have it on good sources that when you separate the myth from the reality, these sources actually referred to Moses' love for pepperoni pizza.

What makes Mr.Goldman's views so fascinating isn't a weakness but a recognition that the destruction of the Temple produced what is now Judaism and Christianity and until God says otherwise, the 'twain shouldn't meet by wasting time in trying to degrade one another.

Christians aren't Odinistas; Jews aren't perfidious.
Should they get along and compromise? No.
But there are roving Amalekites who are much more important to deal with right now.

As for Paul's Judaism, I find myself more in agreement with the views espoused by Alan F. Segal who argues Paul's "Jewish orthopraxy/orthodoxy" should be taken seriously and that one of the problems has been that the gentiles Paul interacted with didn't or dismissed them for other reasons. After all, Marcionism is a very attractive and pervasive heresy in Christian history for a reason- it is a way for "Christians" to totally dismiss Judaism and the fact that their nations will pass away.

[oao]

Spengler,

I am really surprised that somebody of your caliber reacted the way you did.

Could you care to explain how exactly is what I said "trash"?

Because if that is trash, then so is the work of Macobby, Ehrman, Eisenman and others, on which my comments rely. And if what I argue is uninformed and unreasoned then so is theirs and that is the case then I DK what informed and reasoned is anymore.

I have not seen anything in the comments arguing the opposite that comes any close to that. Or is the side one takes defining what is informed and reasoned?