Jesus
"Love your enemy, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate
you." --Jesus
Jesus Christ (original name Yeshua, meaning Yahweh saves, also Jesus of
Nazareth, about 4 BC to 33 AD) was a [1]jewish preacher that's said to
have been the messiah, son of [2]God, whose life along with alleged
miracles he performed is described by the [3]Bible (specifically its New
Testament) and who is the center figure and founder of [4]Christianity,
the world's largest religion; as such he is arguably the most famous of
all men in [5]history (probably followed by [6]Hitler, kind of his
opposite). Just one fact proving this claim is that we count our years
more or less from his birth. He gained many followers as he lived in times
when the coming of messiah was greatly expected. Historical facts about
him are most likely extremely distorted by now, but traditionally it's
said he preached love of God and other people and established a kind of
universalism in religion: according to Bible he said that God has changed
his laws and would accept all "well behaved" people into his heavenly
kingdom -- that is not just [7]jews, the chosen people, as was previously
the case, established by the God of Old Testament. For having stirred up a
social disturbance, a kind of revolution, and for calling himself the
messiah he was later crucified, as he himself allegedly predicted --
according to the Bible he sacrificed himself by this act to redeem the
sins of all people, was resurrected after death and came up to the heaven
to dwell by the God's side. Along the lines of Martin Buber's quote -- "I
don't believe in Jesus, but I believe with him" -- also we appreciate his
teaching alone, that is without necessarily subscribing to any mass
religion or even having to believe in [8]God (but also without taking away
the freedom to do so), our [9]LRS is highly aligned with much of the
teaching of Jesus, especially that of [10]non violence, [11]love of all
people (even one's "enemies"), modesty, frugality and so forth.
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"Artist"'s depiction of our Lord and Savior.
{ Jesus Video by Andreas Eschbach is an amazing fiction book about
literally what the title says, one of the best books I've ever read. The
movie is shit, read the book. Also the 2006 book Jesus Dynasty about
historical Jesus is excellent -- the view of historical Jesus here is
mostly taken from this book. ~drummyfish }
As perhaps the most influential man in history whose image has been
twisted, used and abused over the centuries, we have to nowadays
distinguish two separate characters:
* Jesus of the Bible: Jesus as described by the Bible, a book full of
centuries worth of distortion, copying mistakes, inaccuracies,
censorship and purposeful religious propaganda, further on also
distorted just by the long time and cultural forces (e.g. his
depictions in art). This kind of Jesus is to a great degree a
fictional character, though based on a real man; he is the son of God
(some even seeing him as actually the God himself somehow), a man
without sin, born from a virgin, who performed countless miracles like
healing the blind and even resurrecting dead, who spoke the word of
God, was resurrected after death and is now overlooking us from the
heaven.
* historical Jesus: The true man, as seen by [12]history, that actually
lived and was almost definitely just a mere mortal like any of us,
preaching ideas that are probably quite different from today's
traditional Christianity. Most historians agree that Jesus lived (with
some minority disagreeing), though of course they reject that he would
possess any supernatural powers -- these, they say, are things spawned
as a legend, a propaganda of mass religion, added later on etc.
Historical Jesus was different from Biblical Jesus in many ways, many
things he says in the Bible were only added later, many of his sayings
and actions may have been censored etc.
Jesus was [13]anarchist, pacifist, [14]communist and explicitly rejected
[15]capitalism and all violence (even in self defense and against those
who would "deserve" it), though stupid American capital and military
worshippers [16]tattoo shit such as "What would Jesus do?" on their asses,
they somehow seem to masterfully apply selective blindness and completely
ignore his quotes such as:
* "A camel will go through the eye of a needle before a rich man enters
the kingdom of God." --Jesus
* "If someone wants to sue you and take your shirt, give him your coat
also." --Jesus
* "I say to you love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to
who hates you and pray for those who abuse you and persecute you."
--Jesus
* "Whoever has two coats must share with those who have none, and
whoever has food is to do the same." --Jesus, clearly a communist
* "If someone throws stone at you, throw back at him as well but with
bread." --Jesus
* "I tell you: do not resist an evil man. If anyone slaps you on the
cheek, turn to him the other cheek also." --Jesus
* "Thou shalt not kill." being directly in ten commandments lol (maybe
they don't understand because the language is archaic, one may always
find an excuse)
* "If your brother does bad to you, correct him. If he changes, forgive
him. Even if he does bad to you seven times a day, forgive him seven
times." --Jesus
* ...
(Americans are stupid idiots who say they love Jesus but rather love to
reference Old Testament for their pragmatics life decisions, however the
law of Old Testament was explicitly cancelled by Jesus and [17]updated to
a new one, based on love and nonviolence rather than violence, punishment
and revenge -- this is the whole point of why Jesus came to [18]Earth in
the first place. Old testament is basically the Jewish part of the Bible,
obsolete for Christians -- some Christians even completely reject Old
testament, e.g. Cathars. It's why the book is called New Testament, it
means "The New Law". But as it's been said, Americans are stupid.)
fun facts about Jesus:
* He had siblings (or at least half-siblings), according to both the
Bible and historians: brothers James (who after Jesus's death took
over his "movement" which is a fact suppressed by mainstream
Christianity), Joses, Simon, Jude and some sisters.
* He was most likely crucified naked, as was common practice to dishonor
the crucified people. Covering his nudity in most depictions may be
because of the effort to make it less obvious he was a [19]jew, i.e.
that his penis was circumcised.
* He is acknowledged by other religions such as the [20]Islam, though in
these he usually plays some minor role of just some mortal preacher.
This picture of him is actually more aligned with historical Jesus, it
is consistent with the sources (e.g. the lost Q source) talking about
the original early Christianity that didn't see Jesus as son of God at
all.
* We do not sport any anti-white [21]political correctness, however the
traditional depictions of his looks are likely wrong, he most likely
looked much different from the bearded, long-hair white man depictions
we see in paintings -- these were likely affected by the Greek ideals
of what gods look like. Jesus was a jew, probably of darker skin like
all people from the area he lived in, possibly without long hair as
some of his followers mention in the Bible that it is inappropriate
for a man to have long hair.
* There are some non-canonical gospels (not accepted to Bible) that talk
some funny shit about Jesus, e.g. the Infancy Gospel of Thomas talks
about how Jesus as a child killed other children in revenge with his
supernatural powers.
* His father is sometimes theorized, by historians, to have been a roman
soldier Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera to whom point some of the clues
and whose grave has been found in Germany.
* Bible gives his genealogy back to Adam: Luke (however with some
disagreement with Matthew) recounts all ancestors of Jesus back to God
(who created Adam) -- Jesus is 77th in row here.
* His profession probably wasn't a "carpenter" in the sense of "working
mainly with wood", he was more likely a mason/stonecutter/builder --
the translation in Bible is firstly inaccurate and using wood as a
material wasn't that common back then. He was likely a very poor
laborer whose life conditions may have been even worse than that of
some slaves living in bigger cities.
* He was a [22]Jew, he was circumcised, read Jewish scriptures, believed
in Jewish God and prophecies, kept to Jewish rituals and traditions --
it's an obvious but often overlooked fact that's been further obscured
by the orthodox church and Christian culture established by Paul the
Apostle after the death of Jesus -- it was rather Paul who made
Christianity what it is today (based purely on his own visions of
him), not Jesus (Jesus himself probably didn't even say he was the son
of God). There was no other religion than various branches of Judaism
in Jesus's culture, Jesus didn't come with the idea of starting a
brand new religion, he rather saw himself as a Jewish messiah foretold
by the Jewish texts, walking what he believed to be the true way of
the religion that was all around back then and which he was part of --
he most likely DID preach universalism, i.e. accepting even non-Jews,
but he still separated Jewish and non-Jewish people. Today's
Christianity is probably something Jesus wouldn't even embrace --
parallels to this kind of evolution of religions may very well be seen
in the world of non-religious ideologies as well, for example see the
hostility and differences between [23]free software and [24]open
$ource that emerged just in recent decades: the [25]founder of free
software himself highly disapproves of open source, open source
already breaks many of the essential premises and rules of original
free software movement, despite it all being very recent and having
everything recorded, even in live memories of people -- now imagine
this evolution stretched to 2000 years, with no reliable records of
the original events, with politics and corruption mixed in and so on.
* Jesus is supposed to return and judge the people: this is known as the
Second Coming and is hinted on in the Bible, though the details on the
date or even the nature of the event are unclear and interpreted
differently. Before the second coming a number of antichrists, or
false prophets, are to appear.
* There are highly controversial theories that he had kids with Mary
Magdalene and that his bloodline survives until today (Dan Brown has
famously written some books about it).
* The gospels of Bible were written anonymously, long after Jesus was
dead. People often think the gospels were written by the apostles in
"real time" as they were following Jesus -- that's not the case, we
don't know who wrote them, and the earliest (Mark) was written about
70 AD. It is also proven many important things, such as the
resurrection of Jesus, were missing in some of them and were added
later on.
* ...
Is Jesus God? Or was he just his son? Or is God and Jesus the same? What
about the "holy spirit"? This seems to not actually be easy to answer,
different people will tell you different things, some point to passages in
Bible where they believe he literally says he is the God, others say the
translation is not precise or even that it doesn't matter (anyone can
really say he's a God) etcetc. The whole thing around holy trinity and so
on is not easy to resolve objectively (some Muslims have even been
entertained by this fact that Christians can't even get to agree on who
their god is), but basically most Christians pray to Jesus, call him "our
Lord and Savior" and generally treat him as if he was the same as God, so
we can really see him that way.
Life Of Jesus In Summary
This is a quick summary of life and death of Jesus Christ, mostly
according to the gospels (which however sometimes disagree) but also
taking into account the views of historians, let us see this as a summary
of the traditional plot plus our "best guess" of reality.
{ There is a nice safe public domain book from 1898, digitized on
gutenberg.org, called Bible Pictures and Stories in Large Print -- it's a
very nice, quite short retelling of the Bible, with nice pictures, like a
Bible tl;dr. Check it out. ~drummyfish }
Jesus was born around 6 to 4 BC (this offset is cause by an error made in
Middle Ages when they wrongly calculated his birth year, the error was
only revealed once year counting had already been long established) in
Bethlehem (which is in Israel, however some say he was actually born in
Nazareth) to Mary and Joseph, with Mary still being a virgin -- a miracle
claimed by Bible but denied by historians and even some churches; his
father is said to be God, Mary was made pregnant by Holy Spirit. Some
historians theorize Mary got actually pregnant with someone else before
Joseph, maybe the roman soldier Tiberius Pantera, and that Joseph then
took her for wife, adopting Jesus by doing so (and after that had other
children with Mary). Jesus grew up in Nazareth and became a "carpenter"
(or rather a mason), like Joseph (though there is actually quite very
little evidence about his profession). Even as young he was very
knowledgeable about the scripture, something like a "prodigy".
The gospel of Matthew gives a legend that says that Jesus's birth was
followed by a bright star appearing above Bethlehem that led many people
to visit the place and bring gifts to baby Jesus, among them three wise
men from the east. The king Herod heard about this and that "a new King of
the Jews was born in Bethlehem" and out of fear he ordered all children
under 2 years of age to be killed there (Jesus and his family escaped to
Egypt so he was saved) -- this is known as the massacre of the innocents,
but no evidence of it having happened was ever found.
There is almost nothing known about the majority of his life -- before he
started his ministry -- this is called his unknown years. Some wild
theories state that he traveled to Egypt, Asia or even the British
islands, however those are mostly not accepted. More realistically it is
thought that during this time Joseph (his father) died (he may have been a
lot older than Mary), as he stops being mentioned completely later on, and
that Jesus had to take care of his family, he probably had to work very
hard; he may have worked on rebuilding the city of Sepphoris.
An important event was the baptism (the ritual of "purification by water")
of Jesus in Jordan river by John the Baptist around 28 AD. This is seen as
a real historical event nowadays. John the Baptist was a preacher similar
to Jesus -- some historians even say they were genetically related and
knew each other since young years. John started a kind of movement and
baptized people in the Jordan river, and he foretold the coming of Jesus
-- many of John's followers then went on to follow Jesus. Some historians
say John's role has been greatly downplayed by the church so as to make
Jesus the one true prophet, but more realistically it seems that John and
Jesus were equals or perhaps that John was at times seen as even greater
than Jesus; the Jewish prophecies for example talk about two prophets, not
one, and before John's imprisonment (and execution) John and Jesus were
both baptizing people together (something not often shown). Later gospels
leave out more and more things that hint on this fact, there is likely a
lot of divergence between the church version and historical truth.
After this Jesus went on to preaching, he chose twelve apostles (each as a
ruler for one of the twelve Jewish tribes), the closest followers to
further preach his words to others; they were (there seems to be some
differences between the gospels) Peter, Andrew, James, John, Philip,
Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew, James, Judas, Simon and Matthias. Some of
them were likely his own brothers. Jesus spoke in parables and is said to
have performed miracles like healing the blind, walking on water, feeding
masses of people with only five loaves of bread and even resurrecting dead
(Lazarus). His preaching was mainly about the [26]love of [27]God, coming
to God's kingdom after death, forgiveness (people should forgive others
and their own sins will in turn be forgiven by God) and loving other
people, even one's enemies, he advocated [28]nonviolence, modesty and
frugality.
As he arrived to Jerusalem, he was very famous and seen as a messiah by
many, and as he broke many religious traditions, he began to upset the
Jewish religious leaders, creating tension. He criticized practices of the
leaders, e.g. commerce in temples. The Jews decided to arrest Jesus and
lead him to Roman court.
Another important moment is the last supper, the final meal of Jesus which
he shared with his apostles, that took place on 3rd April. After this one
of the apostles, Judas, betrayed Jesus (which Jesus foretold) in Mount of
Olives by leading the temple police to Jesus; Judas did this for the
reward of 30 silver coins, later he regretted it and committed
[29]suicide.
The Jews have taken Jesus to Pontius Pilate, Roman governor, to be put on
trial for the various offenses he committed. According to Bible Pilate
didn't find Jesus guilty but as the Jews pressured, he gave them a choice:
he said he would either release Jesus or Barabbas, a murderer. The Jews
chose Barabbas to be released, condemning Jesus to be crucified. Before
this Jesus was also sent to Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee. Bible
paints a picture in which he isn't found guilty in the trials but the
pressure of Jewish people leads to his execution -- this was again
challenged by historians as an attempt at blaming the Jews for the death
of Jesus and for showing Romans in favorable light, to strictly separate
Christianity from Judaism; this seems to be inconsistent with historical
facts such as that Pontius Pilate was known for his cruelty and letting
people be executed whenever he could, and with Jesus actually having many
supporters among Jews.
The crucifixion of Jesus is also seen as a true historical event now,
which took place most likely in 30 or 33 AD, on April 4th, according to
some^([not important who]) it happened from 9 AM to 3 PM (when he died).
Before death he was tortured, whipped and was put on a crown of thorns (to
mock that he was supposed to be the "king of Jews"). He was led to a hill
in Golgotha, just outside Jerusalem, to where he had to carry his own
cross, onto which he was then nailed and left to die, alongside two other
criminals. According to some gospels he said various things on the cross,
for example "father, forgive them for they don't know what they do",
"father, why have you forsaken me?" and finally "it is finished".
Historically speaking he probably didn't believe to be the son of God and
didn't think he would be resurrected (a myth created later on), he just
thought he was a prophet, he may have believed he would be saved from
death by God in last moment, hence the words about God "forsaking him".
His body was then buried in a tomb (which by historians is seen as
unusual) of one of his followers -- this burial was probably just quick
and temporary because celebration of Passover were near. According to
Bible, 3 days later he was resurrected (his tomb was found empty) and left
the tomb, he went and visited some of his followers, and then, 40 days
after the resurrection, ascended up to the heaven. Historically this is of
course denied and there is a lot of mess around the resurrection, for
example the gospels themselves disagree greatly on who and when discovered
the empty tomb, and the original version of oldest one (Mark) doesn't even
say ANYTHING about resurrection at all! It literally ends with the tomb
being discovered empty, which doesn't imply anything about resurrection --
it might just have been that someone took the body from the temporary tomb
and buried it properly. I.e. the oldest source apparently doesn't bother
to mention probably the greatest and most important part of the today's
version of the story of Jesus; it is proven that a new ending with the
resurrection was added to Mark later on, so it's all probably just made up
propaganda. Besides this there are also "alternative" theories that Jesus
for example didn't actually die on the cross, that he was just in coma and
woke up in the tomb but these also seem to have very little support.
After his death his brother James probably took over leading the movement,
but this branch of original "jewish Christianity" was to be suppressed by
the interpretation of Paul the apostle who actually never met Jesus, but
who got a "vision" of him and created the kind of universal religion we
know today, he came up with the idea that Jesus was son of God, that whole
Torah (Old Testament) is obsolete etcetc.
See Also
* [30]Christianity
* [31]Muhammad
* [32]Buddha
* [33]Richard Stallman
* [34]Gandhi
* [35]Elvis
* [36]Hittler
* [37]Che Guevara
Links:
1. jew.md
2. god.md
3. bible.md
4. christianity.md
5. history.md
6. hitler.md
7. jew.md
8. god.md
9. lrs.md
10. non_violence.md
11. love.md
12. history.md
13. anpac.md
14. communism.md
15. capitalism.md
16. tattoo.md
17. update_culture.md
18. earth.md
19. jew.md
20. islam.md
21. political_correctness.md
22. jew.md
23. free_software.md
24. open_source.md
25. rms.md
26. love.md
27. god.md
28. nonviolence.md
29. suicide.md
30. christianity.md
31. muhammad.md
32. buddha.md
33. rms.md
34. gandhi.md
35. elvis.md
36. hittler.md
37. che_guevara.md