Jesus as an opponent of the rich

[SoonerCoug]

Why would Jesus say this:

“But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.

I've been reading and thinking about the following based on what Reza Aslan has written:

I think Jesus hated rich people.

Think about it. He didn't just talk about the last becoming first. He always talked about how the first would be last. He was not advocating equality. He advocated that the rich be taken down. He wanted to start a social revolution.

He was advocating for a complete reversal of social and financial status within Palestine.

And he certainly wasn't a pacifist. After all, he was telling people to sell their cloaks and buy swords.

There was nothing unique about Jesus being a miracle worker since there were lots of healers and miracle workers in Palestine at that time. Instead, Jesus was unique because he offered his services to the poor for free.

The notion of turning the other cheek was a common phrase from the Torah that was only applied among Jews based on what I have read.

[TripletDaddy]

We are 3-0 and a few hours away from maybe going 4-0 and cracking the top 20. Even SeattleUte posts about football and basketball every now and then.

[SoonerCoug]

We are 3-0 and a few hours away from maybe going 4-0 and cracking the top 20. Even SeattleUte posts about football and basketball every now and then.

BYU by 20. Michigan by 30.

[HuskyFreeNorthwest]

From your description it sounds like he hated educated people too. I'm rich, but stupid. I think Jesus is neutral on me.

[SoonerCoug]

From your description it sounds like he hated educated people too. I'm rich, but stupid. I think Jesus is neutral on me.

You might be right about him disliking educated people. Jesus was almost certainly illiterate.

He was a builder (a tekton). His profession was so lowly that Romans used the word tekton as a swear word. Tektons could not read or write.

[Harry Tic]

Jesus was almost certainly illiterate.

For someone that knows Greek, you almost certainly don't know what the hell you're talking about.

[SoonerCoug]

For someone that knows Greek, you almost certainly don't know what the hell you're talking about.

Why do you think Jesus was literate? Most historians believe that he was almost certainly illiterate.

Why do you think a tekton would have been literate?

Only 2% of Palestinians at that time could read or write. Tektons would not have been in that 2%.

If you're going to make a claim then you ought to defend it. You tell me I don't know what I'm talking about. Tell us all what you know and how you know it. Are you trying to say that Greek authors living in another country and writing 50 years after Jesus died knew more about Jesus than one could extrapolate based on what we know about Palestine from Roman record keeping? Maybe. But enough of the New Testament is factually inaccurate to put almost anything they wrote in doubt.

If he was truly a tekton, it's almost certain that he was illiterate.

[SoonerCoug]

From a WSJ interview with reza aslan:

Well, first of all, it may sound shocking to some people, but just because the gospels say something doesn’t mean it’s actually factual. The Gospel of Luke was written 60-70 years after Jesus had died, when Christianity was quintessentially a Roman religion and no longer a Jewish religion and the gospel writers were very interested in making Jesus someone who would appeal to a non-Jewish audience. But the facts of history speak for themselves. And I would say the vast majority of Biblical scholars would agree that the illiteracy rates in Jesus’s world were somewhere around 98 percent. 98 percent of Jesus’s fellow Jews could neither read nor write. The notion that a tekton, as Jesus is referred to in the Bible, a woodworker, which would make him the second-lowest rung on the social ladder in his time just above the slave and the indigent and the beggar, the notion that he would have had any sort of formal education, let alone the kind of education necessary to debate theological points with the scribes and the Pharisees, is difficult to reconcile with what we know of the history of the time.

But examining the broad sweep of historical trends of a particular time doesn’t necessarily tell you anything about an individual person.

It tells you everything about an individual.

It doesn’t necessarily tell you anything about an individual person. More than 99.999 percent of human beings can’t run as fast as Usain Bolt. You might conclude, given those trends, we couldn’t have a Usain Bolt. And yet we do.

What you are asking me is, is it conceivable that as a poor peasant from the backwoods of Galilee, who grew up a woodworker, a day laborer really, an artisan, in a village that was so small and so poor that it didn’t have any roads, or bathhouses or synagogues, and its name did not appear on any maps, could he have nevertheless been so well educated that he could not only read and write but debate the scriptures, is that possible? Sure. But is it likely? No. It’s the job of the historian to talk about what is most likely.

[SCcoug]

We are 3-0 and a few hours away from maybe going 4-0 and cracking the top 20. Even SeattleUte posts about football and basketball every now and then.

Reminds me of Snipe back on cb. He'd still be droning away about the dastardly things the "dems" and "libs" were up to during game time.

[SoonerCoug]

Reminds me of Snipe back on cb. He'd still be droning away about the dastardly things the "dems" and "libs" were up to during game time.

Game hasn't started yet.

[Omaha 680]

Can someone move this to the final testimony thread?

[SoonerCoug]

I'm still waiting for someone to discuss the issue instead of taking pot shots at me.

Someone remind me how this board is different from cougarBOARD.

A formerly prominent member of this board recently mentioned to me that the board is dead. She might have been right. It's a damn shame that so many cougarboard types infiltrated what was once a vibrant community with plenty of smart discussion.

[Pelado]

Someone remind me how this board is different from cougarBOARD.

vBulletin?

[Clark Addison]

I am curious about this, but I can't discuss it on the morning of game day. Bump it after the game.

[All-American]

The only sources (the gospels) that call Jesus a "tekton" ("craftsman" more than "woodworker"-- as likely to be a stone mason as a carpenter) also depict him reading the scriptures in the synagogues.

As unusual as it may have been for a tekton to be literate, most historians agree that Jesus was a pretty atypical person.