Saturday, February 24, 2018

Jesus was not a Preacher or a Peasant!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yte-ad6Y31s
In an interview about his book, "How Jesus became God, the exaltations of a Jewish preacher from Galilee", Bart Ehrman starts on the wrong track. The title of the book is an error common among Protestants. Jesus was NOT a preacher and nor a peasant.  
He was a an anointed Teacher in the Temple -- a post that required both a proven Aaronic genealogy and a higher level of education than the priests and lawyers inside the Temple. The high priest of the time was inferior because he was not anointed. No one could enter the Temple unless he could prove his father and mother back over nine generations, unsullied by marriage to a gentile -- as the book of Ezra shows. A priest (Cohen) had to marry the virgin daughter of a Cohen or an Israelite.
Jesus was also a son of David through his father, Joseph, an Israelite of the tribe of Judah, as Matt 1 shows. Hence king of Israel and king of the Jews. Anointing applies to 3 offices, king, priest and prophet. 
John the Baptist was an Aaronic priest and had the power and authority to anoint, provided he had the special holy oil. Some vials of a special oil have been found among the Dead Sea caves, as then reported in the New York Times. This is covered in the book Jesus, James, Joseph, p306.  
Ehrman is also wrong in saying there is no historical contemporary evidence of the Resurrection. Several letters to Roman Caesars affirm this. I am not aware of any imperial documents of the first century attempting to deny the Resurrection. The proof was evident -- and other archaeological finds affirm it, such as the imperial Edict plaque found near Nazareth, p530 of my book. It is dealing with bodies missing from unpillaged, empty graves! This shows that the Romans were also aware of other people resurrected to physical life among early believers. 
I agree Pilate was a nasty anti-semite and mean personality but he did not bow to religious sensibilities as Ehrman says. He realised that he had broken Roman law and an imperial treaty because Jesus was a king and you cannot kill a king without consequences. He had no warrant to do so either from the Emperor or from the Senate. When this was explained to him by Joseph of Arimethea (who held a Roman title and held an imperial office), he took the body down. Sharpish. A treaty had been made with Jewish leaders and Julius Caesar and Pilate had ignored this. Pilate wrote reports to Tiberius trying to explain. So say early Christian writers. But he was hauled off to Rome to a Court process and punished. 
Ehrman is also wrong about no documents existing in the first 20 years after the Resurrection. RCC and Protestants just ignore the Nazarene documents because they do not agree with their Church doctrine, that arose with Constantine in the 300s. Ehrman also gets confused because he uses modern ideas, based on pagan Greek ones, to deal with the divinity of Christ. He should deal with Hebrew theology and philosophy.
He also omits the fact that the pagan gods were destroyed by the impact of the Resurrection. The empire changed to sun worshippers! 
Further information about the Nazarenes and how to get a free copy of the book, Jesus, James, Joseph and the past and future Temple, can be found on the Nazarene Project website. nazareneproject(dot)com.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yte-ad6Y31s
Terry Gross is the host and co-executive producer of…
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