Did the original Christians expect Jesus to be crucified for the sins of the world? Or did they expect something else? Something very different? And if so, how did Jesus become the Savior worshipped by Christians today? These and other fascinating questions are explored in depth by RFM in this episode.
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Just wanted to help you with some basic math.
You mentioned 2000 years. Crucifixion occurred in AD 30 or AD 33 by most studies.
That would put us in 2030 or 2033. 8-11 years from now.
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Truth is a fractal with levels of scale. Waste and wear out our lives to bring the truth from the darkness (D&C 122:13?)
How can you re-create truth in a world filled with lies. You have to start somewhere. The number 7 and 10 are two important numbers that you have studied to some degree. Read the counsel in Daniel (chapter 7). 10 were invited to the party, a third part (3) left the counsel, 7 remain.
Look at your hands and tell me how we have a 7-day week? I see 10 fingers. If you study ancient calendars (Egypt, China, Nordic, and so on), they are called decans. Isaiah taught we need to stop using the moon for our calendar. The equinox begins the year, there are 12 months of 30 days. A month has three equal periods of 10 days (read Daniel carefully). The extra days are called chaos days in the Mayan and celebration days by the Hebers, a 13-month right before the spring equinox. 5 or 6 days depending on the year. 40 days or 70 years or 7 times 70 are all intentional.
Yeshua as the Lamb of God is another clue to seek truth. The passion we have is not correct, but the Old Testament leaves us clues to how it really happened. And the New Testament confirms this, is carefully studied. Yeshua is the “truth”, look up the word in Hebrew (Alef, Mem, Tav as the beginning/middle/end … that is Jehovah), look at the original characters. OX – WATER – CROSS. And this links to the original meaning of Water Ox in Chinese (https://hanzicraft.com/character/%E7%99%B8%E4%B8%91%E5%B9%B4) keeping of time in 60 year intervals (rather than the Jubilee counting of 50 years). Notice that both time scales gets us to 600 years: 60×10 or 50×12. Jacob of the book of Mormon was born at the true Sinai 600 years before Yeshua was born. There were stars and signs in heaven. Nephi’s word salad is when he wants to say something, but doesn’t. They are traveling through the desert and stars are never mentioned? That is evidence in itself.
I guess my point is that your logic against Mormonism needs to be applied to Christianity as well as general history. Where can we start with truth? The times and seasons is my current best guess. The brethren look through the vailed glass darkly, yet the ‘knowledge of Jehovah will still fill the world as waters fill the sea’ regardless.
May God bless and keep you during this Pascua season.
Very insightful. Thank you.
Reading the Bible once I left mormonism blew apart my belief in Jesus as the son of God. As Mormons, the Bible is cherry picked to survive as one big proof text of mormonism. Once your mind is free to read and study, it didn’t take long to find all the holes and discrepancies in the OT and NT. First to be exposed for me was the writings of Paul. It was loud and clear different authors penned the letters of Paul.
My freedom reached its climax when I decided to read the OT and read all of Genesis in one night. I was laughing by the end and have enjoyed studying it now that the covers are pulled back and I no longer believe God had anything to do with scriptures.
Is there a God? Don’t know and that has given me a freedom to love others beyond what I could have deemed possible. When there isn’t a God to fix it for people, I need to do what I can to help as I may be all that comes along.
Thanks for coming along my path RFM. It was a pleasure to meet you last November at the “debate”. You and Bill are a dynamic duo.
Not to mention that the OT and NT were not written for our time. It was written for their time. And there are three authors of Isaiah and probably one or a cohort of scribes who wrote Joshua through Kings. As I read the OT after my awakening from Mormonism, I came to dislike and detest it. Same with Revelations. If you believe what the Greek scribes wrote in the four gospels and Paul’s seven epistles, Revelations is disconnected from Jesus’ teachings. But, we have no eye-witness accounts of Jesus’ life or ministry. I believe he was born a Jew, taught the Talmud to the Jews and died as a Jew.
RFM is awesome!
James
What is your source for the theory about Judas around the 25 minute mark? That Judas betrayed Jesus as a catalyst for change? That’s a big part of Jesus Christ Superstar, but I’m not familiar with it in New Testament scholarship. Thank you!
RFM,
Thank you for all you do. This podcast brought me back to Marcus Borg’s book, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time.
Wondering if you have read this book and what you think of his evolution of thought and understanding of Jesus.
I have been deconstructing the doctrines while trying to hold onto faith in Jesus. It is complicated and challenging to know who Jesus was/is and what is conjecture.
I appreciate your choice of words “faith crises” to describe the disciples after Jesus’s death. As you said it must have been so shocking and confusing.
It’s amazing the Christian movement survived at all.
I really appreciate your podcasts and thoughtful exploration of topics.
To borrow the words of Terryl Givens, if the resurrection of Jesus is not historical, then all of Christianity is nothing but a pious fabrication. What then really is the purpose of this podcast? You don’t really have to poke the Mormon leaders for their faults because in the end Jesus was a liar.
That kind of takes us back to the question of is there a God? If not, it does seem like moral code is all just a matter of opinion and in the end pretty meaningless. Love one another is just as “good” as not doing it. To me, if there is no higher why, then who are we to point to an action as good or bad. Moral codes are just social fads. Joseph Smith’s polygamy, probably fine then. And what’s even more interesting is that during that time period, as I understand it, polygamy was actually a widely practiced thing outside the US. It’s only “bad” in the context of our moral code that is informed by the denominate religions in the US. The oppression of women in the Middle East. Who are we to be the moral code police and say that is bad. It gets pretty dicey pretty quick.
So I guess the real question is how do we personally encounter or discover God? Not the God we make in our own image, but the real God. I don’t think we are going to find him in the body of scholarly work, personally, as that encounter has to be deeply personal. And I think we have to be willing to set aside our personal notions of things. As this podcast deconstructs things, it is left with the burden of explaining away the personal experiences of hundreds of thousands of people past and present who have personally encountered God, Jesus or the divine in some way. I’ve had very personal experiences that I can’t explain away that keep me in the search and continually trying to seek after God and Jesus. I wish everyone could have those, but I know many don’t.
RFM, you spend a lot of time studying, but has the rubber met the road anywhere for you? Where are you at with God? Do you have a spiritual practice? Is that something you actively cultivate?
Beautiful exposition of how failure of prophecy drives changing theology. I love it!
RFM, you began your podcast with the statement: “It was this ‘in between time’ (between Jesus’ crucifixion and His resurrection) in the despair and darkness experienced by the disciples which lead to Jesus becoming ‘the Savior.’” It is ironic that you produced this podcast about how you believe Jesus “became the Savior” during the Easter season without mentioning the significance of His resurrection. The irony is that because of their experience with the resurrected Jesus, His disciples were in a unique position, knowing with certainty that Jesus was truly the Son of God (Rom. 1:4) and His resurrection validating His work (Rom. 4:25). In fact, Jesus made ten separate appearances to His disciples between the resurrection and His ascension into heaven, over a period of 40 days. Some of those appearances were to individual disciples; some were to several disciples at the same time and even to 500 at one time. Yes, even after His resurrection, Jesus lead people to know the mystery concerning Himself, by showing how He fulfilled Old Testament scripture. For example, as He journeyed with two men on their way to Emmaus “beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures” (Luke 24:25-27). Particularly noteworthy is that there were no accounts of witnesses who came forth and disputed these appearances or called it a “hoax.”
This is a very nice, concise linear progression on human nature and the bias of beliefs. It’s quite possible the best summation I’ve heard. It certainly fits the natural course of things.
Whoever decided belief was a virtue was very keen on the foibles of human psychology —give man brownie points for doing what he can’t help but do—believe. The natural man isn’t an enemy to god—the natural man is the believer. Well played. Belief is its own religious koan.