Why is Jesus considered a groundbreaking moral teacher when Stoics taught the same principles hundreds of years before...

In the past, before the invention of the printing press, people would orally transmit and preserve knowledge mate.

And that method was not accurate. The theology and beliefs evolved over time. Early leaders like Paul would have a massive influence on the theology of early Christians.

>And that method was not accurate.
groups which use oral preservation today do so with remarkable accuracy.

>And that method was not accurate.

According to you.

>/co/ think giving everything up and living in poverty is stupid
>worships fucking Diogenes

>remaining impassive to everything that happens because it's all transitory anyway and you're just another nobody
yeah, that sure sounds like christianity and jesus to me

Would you describe yourself as Christian?

NOT MYSELF, BUT MY SPIRITUAL DOCTRINE.

>Paul
Writes most of the New Testament
Never physically met Jesus

*cough*codex sinaiticus*cough*

He revealed mimesis and the scapegoating mechanism

Jesus and his disciples were Jewish. They wouldn't be around preaching shit that went against Jewish theology, like God taking human form and the like.

All that came after Paul.

Good answer.

>"Jewish" meant a unified belief at this time
lol ok. Take some history classes mate.

Christianity just happened to became a populous Abrahamic religion amongst similar ones. Hype just like iPhone.

>"Jewish" meant a unified belief at this time

And Christianity was?

He's not known primarily as a teacher of morality. He's considered the Son of God, and the creator of the universe by those who know him best.

So in a sense, Jesus is the objective basis for all morality, as without God, and Jesus is God, there is no objective basis for morality.

The universe was created through him, not by him.

>''''oldest'''' is best
>codex fagoticus is better than all other older sources from other languages just because it's in le greeks language

No? But that does nothing for your argument that the 12 apostles would have been forced into some sort of box of ideas because they were "jews."

Greek is one of the best languages to understand the world.

because he died and rose again
when his followers saw this they committed their lives (literally died for) his teaching
stoics didn't do that

Where did i say it isn't a good language?

None of the gospels are meant to be accurate. They are literary works that intentionally make up things in to increase the appeal of the message and to push the particular opinion of the author/authors. This is why there are enormous differences that are unreconcilable between the different gospels which (excluding John) were composed very close to each other in time and sharing some of their sources.
The only way you can try to find what Jesus might have believed is by seeing what is common to all four works. Since the high Christology of John is unique to John (and keeping in mind that John is the last of the gospels to be written) we can dismiss a lot of it for the purpose of gaining a perspective on the historical Jesus.

Why do people follow this religion again?

They're mostly unfamiliar with the source material. The ones that are tend to employ colossal doublethink to resolve the contradictions. Probably some kind of internal sunk cost fallacy defense mechanism.

>backing up my stupid theory which is devoid of spiritually and metaphysics as well as understandings of comparative religious studies
just stop
tip harder.

this, it's marketing OP.

the stoics were took greek and too obscure and gay and shit.

(the ancient greeks are probably the only group I'd agree the term "misogynistic" really applies too when it comes to most of "western" history)

>took greek

*too greek

Greeks weren't' obscure. Hellenism was in vogue throughout the leadership of the East. And certainly the West.

>They wouldn't be around preaching shit that went against Jewish theology, like God taking human form and the like.

Unless Jesus literally beleived Himself to be the Son of God and His apostles came to believe it as well. It's actually one of the subthemes of the Bible.

>They are literary works that intentionally make up things
>make up things
>enormous differences that are unreconcilable between the different gospels
Give me an example.

there was no coherent Jewish belief at this time.

The birth places of Jesus is inconsistent, as his genealogy, as his is Christology (Jesus only becomes devine in Mark during the baptism in John he is coexistent with God, the order of events change between the gospels, some include events that others don't, some include elements withing events that others don't (such as the earthquake upon Jesus' death), and the time he died is different, among many other things.

"As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain people not to teach false doctrines any longer or to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies."

you could use that quote. you seem rather caught up with geneologies and no so important things.

>groups which use oral preservation today do so with remarkable accuracy.

How do we measure this?

Yeah, no. The Stoics taught morality, Jesus taught the "morality" of "do what I say or you burn in fire forever".

>you seem rather caught up with geneologies and no so important things.
The genealogies and Christology is extremely important. Jesus' Christology is perhaps one of the most important questions that any Christian could ever have. That's hardly nitpicking. Knowing the gospels well necessarily means knowing their contradictions. That's not obsessing.

Jesus was a moralist extremely interested in character. Simply doing what he said wouldn't have been enough. He has parables about this very idea.

did that and took what came to him like a champ

>groups which use oral preservation today do so with remarkable accuracy.
No they fucking don't, what a total load of horseshit. Oral traditions are notoriously unreliable, we know this because we recorded the oral traditions of various tribes of savages and found that even within a single generation they would become embellished and modified.

No he wasn't, he didn't give a SHIT about your character, only that you swore subservience to him. Show me where, in the Bible, he rejected a potential follower because of the content of his character. Quite the opposite, as the parable of the lost sheep and the prodigal son make clear: ONLY slavish obedience is acceptable to him, nothing else AT ALL matters.

The Gospel of John is pure fiction

>implying ONLY that gospel is fiction
user, I...

Implying it had to do with the quality of his philosophy and not his followers success at gaining converts and expanding.
Stupid rabbles prefer simplistic and superstitionist figures rather than logical and comprehensive thinkers. Look at who wins elections.

He brought the 'magic' of cannabis oil to back up virtue with miracle at a time of great disassociated malcontent in the paradigm and grew to fill the gaps and cracks.

Jesus was originally a cannabis cult first and primarily.

ITT people who think Paul's existence devalues Jesus.

Did Paul apply Roman Stoicism and Greek philosophy to Christianity? NO SHIT. Was Paul appealing to the people in the letters he wrote? NO SHIT. He was a well educated dude who studied that stuff. Why would he not apply the truth he saw in it to the thing he considered to be truth itself.

It's like saying "Aquinas never met Jesus so his writings are meaningless." Being able to know Jesus through supernatural means of prayer and sacraments is an essential part of Catholicism.

Every single gospel writer talks about the divine nature of Jesus in one way or another. He is clearly set aside by all writers in all translations to be set aside from the Jewish prophets and more importantly the son of God.

Most importantly Christianity isn't a religion founded on a religious text. It's a religion founded by a man (Jesus) who is supposedly God who founded it on an imperfect mortal man (Peter) and carried on by followers. The text is considered sacred and true but it is not the end all be all of Catholicism.

Take Mathew, But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. This is entirely about character and is the central theme of Mathew. The gospel of Mathew goes against the law abiding external practices of certain Jewish groups at the time and proposes a morality that extends into what you think and believe. It is a morality intimately involved in the conception of character.

>This is entirely about character and is the central theme of Mathew

So Jesus will turn you away if you commit this "sin"? No, of course he won't, he'll just tell you that if you swear eternal subservience to him, he will simply magic away your "sins". Hell, you don;t even have to give up sinning, or promise not to sin again, in fact Jesus EXPECTS you to keep sinning and so to keep relying on his magic sin-removal spells. This is not how a teacher concerned with morality behaves, its how a cult leader seeking personal power and influence behaves.

The anti-Paul people are almost entirely liberals or non-Christians who just want to discard basically all of Christian theology, but still hold onto the fortune cookie wisdom they see in the gospels.

>Why is Jesus considered a groundbreaking moral teacher
lol by who? people have a boner for him because he's god made flesh you fucking herretic

>Every single gospel writer talks about the divine nature of Jesus in one way or another.
Except they don't

More importantly, the gospels are fanfic written decades after the facts, the foundation of Christianity is it's earliest writings, which are the letters of Paul.

A rough idea of what these are saying is that your character will always be shit compared to God's. Since God is all good and loving anything you do wrong is infinitely worse than God.

Having human standards for yourself is therefore foolish. Jesus presents new fulfillments to the commandments that are in In our human nature these range from hard to achieve and follow to impossible. However he says that they are possible if you follow him and accept his mercy. Therefore one is not made perfect in his actions but through submission to God. Submitting to God would also bring you true fulfillment, joy, healing, peace, etc. so it's quite the opposite of slavish to a believer.

Here's a really dumb apology. A child is running around outside and is bored so they start doing dumb or dangerous things. The parent inside has bought them a brand new video game console and made them cookies. The parent goes out and tells the kid to stop lighting fires for fun because it's dangerous and that the kid should come inside to use the video game system and eat cookies. The kid could just stop lighting fires and behave outside but the parent would still want them to come inside and enjoy the video game and cookies.

Just like how the parent is troubled when the kid does dangerous things, a Christian God is troubled when you sin. Just like how the kid would still be bored if he behaved outside, you would still be unfulfilled if you didn't sin but refused to be with your parent inside.

One of the fundamental parts of Christian Philosophy is that God is the greatest good for you.

>A rough idea of what these are saying is that your character will always be shit compared to God's. Since God is all good and loving anything you do wrong is infinitely worse than God.

So in other words your character doesn't matter to Jesus. Thanks for agreeing with me.

>Jesus presents new fulfillments to the commandments that are in In our human nature

So he doesn't care about teaching good character either, he just demands you obey.

>Here's a really dumb apology

It sure is.

>One of the fundamental parts of Christian Philosophy is that God is the greatest good for you.

So he doesn't care about your character, only that you obey. You can frame it as "obeying without question is what's best for you, therefore it's moral to demand total obedience on pain of eternal suffering!" but this is some twisted and perverted version of "morality" that only a true slave could appreciate.

You have to be woefully ignorant of the rest of the Bible to think this. Jesus doesn't always say "HEY IM GOD." But he is doing things that heavily imply it through the context of the old testament. He was literally killed for calling himself God in the gospels.

>Jesus doesn't always say "HEY IM GOD."

Yeah, he literally never says it.
>HURR muh context

Why does the all-powerful creator of the Universe require people to learn Hebrew and study the OT to understand his message in the NT?

>You can frame it as "obeying without question is what's best for you, therefore it's moral to demand total obedience on pain of eternal suffering!"

literally every raging atheist poses Christianity as obedience or eternal suffering. Hell is only hell because it's being totally without God, heaven is only heaven because it's being totally with God. Since God is the greatest good that's all heaven really is, perfect union with him. Eternal suffering would then just be having no good, being totally without him. Something you would choose.

Once again you push off God being the highest good on the grounds that it's "twisted" slavaery. Obviously it's twisted to you because you cannot spend five minutes to think about the consequences of God being the highest good, let alone believe it.

>He was literally killed for calling himself God in the gospels.
King of the Jews*

I don't know Hebrew so clearly it works.

Truth can come through many means. It's not a religion based on a text, it's a religion that has a text.

You are dumb as rocks my dude.

The Jews wanted him killed for calling himself the son of God. Pilot (a Roman) gave into their wishes and executed him but wrote King of the Jews on the cross to piss off the jews.

I'm not even Christian but cmon.

>he literally never says it.
Dude, I'm low Christology as a motherfucker, but that's simply not true. Mark, Matthew, and Luke never feature Jesus calling himself God, but Luke does.

>"Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am."

>Hell is only hell because it's being totally without God

Nice fanfic, where's your citation?

>heaven is only heaven because it's being totally with God.

Nice fanfic, where's your citation?

>Since God is the greatest good

According to him, sure. His actions tell a very different story, tho.

>Something you would choose.

Yeah, we "choose" to be tossed into a fiery pit for all time because we didn't or couldn't believe a literal fairytale about a magic Jew and his sin-erasing superpowers. That's totally reasonable and sane, and not at all the demented ravings of a Stockholm Syndrome sufferer.

>Once again you push off God being the highest good on the grounds that it's "twisted" slavaery.

Not even close to my view. I reject Yahweh (and Jesus) as being divine because their actions are manifestly wicked. The fact that their "argument" for why I should worship them is literally "do it or I'll make you pay!" really just cements my certainty that this is a fairytale made up by men to control other men.

>Obviously it's twisted to you because you cannot spend five minutes to think about the consequences of God being the highest good, let alone believe it.
>HURR u jst never thought about it lmao!

Why do you think I reject your claims? Because I HAVEN'T thought about them? Fuck off, arrogant dimwit.

Clearly it doesn't because clearly you're just going off what some child-molester in a skirt told you. If you haven't read the Bible in Hebrew, then you haven't read the Bible.

apparently that's too "subtle" for these edge lords

>inb4 lol written by someone after he died so didn't happen

>literally more reliable than Plato's texts

>the governor of the famously pious, aloof, and arrogant Romans kowtowed to a literal mob of savages and abrogated his solemn and sworn religious duty to uphold Roman law

This part is the real shit cherry on the turd sundae of the Gospels. No. This is nonsense, it didn't happen and it couldn't have happened, no Roman governor would do such a thing and if he did, he wouldn't remain for long in his position.

>Luke

Really? You're gong to claim Luke is reliable? Wow, that's incredible. Also, this isn't actually a claim to divinity, what he means by it is cryptic but if he meant to say "I am god", then why didn't he just say, "I am god"? Does he WANT to be misunderstood?

"Are you king of the Jews?

"It is as you say"

>>Luke

John*, of course.

fanfic? You mean common Catholic philosophy? Like I said the Bible isn't the end all be all of Christianity. Just because it's not what your Christian neighbor said doesn't mean it's "fanfic".

>Aquinis
>Augustine
>Chesterton
>Merton
>Descartes
>etc.

Read a book.

>fanfic? You mean common Catholic philosophy?

Yes, fanfic. Show me in the Bible where Jesus says "lol Hell is just a metaphor lmao, I would never toss you into a lake of fire like I literally and explicitly threatened to do! :^)"

>HURR u cant understand the all-knowing creator of the universe without devoting your life to studying our fanfic about him!

Yeah, some message! What kind of dimwitted "god" needs all that retarded shit written by mere HUMANS for anyone to be able to make sense of his message? The only conclusion is that he WANTED to be misunderstood.

Yeah, I meant John. My bad.

>if he meant to say "I am god", then why didn't he just say, "I am god"?
He does. "I am" is literally one of the names of God, and any person remotely familiar with the Hebrew Bible would recognize it as such.

>God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.'"

And whether it's reliable as a historical text or not is a completely non-issue. You said that Jesus never calls himself God in the Bible. In John, he does, very explicitly, and you have to be deliberately obtuse to say otherwise.

>"I am" is literally one of the names of God

So every time someone in the Bible introduces himself to someone else, he;s claiming to be god? Wow, impressive number of gods you "monotheists" have! Also, "I am" is NOT a name of god, "I am that I am" is a nickname like HaShem or LORD, but "I am" is nothing.

And again,
>HURR U NEED TO STUDY HEBREW TO UNDERSTAND NT!
Yeah, some message! Clear as pigshit.

>You said that Jesus never calls himself God in the Bible. In John, he does, very explicitly, and you have to be deliberately obtuse to say otherwise.

"I am" is not a name of god, saying "I am" is not claiming to BE god, if you think this is "clear" then you are a deluded imbecile. Also
>John

>Nice fanfic, where's your citation?
Not him but that is the actual beliefs of Orthodoxy.

>According to him, sure. His actions tell a very different story, tho.
If Christianity is true then God is the good. You can't accept one without accepting the other. You're not a Christian, that's fine, neither am I, but this conversation makes no sense unless we both assume that God exists.

>That's totally reasonable and sane, and not at all the demented ravings of a Stockholm Syndrome sufferer.
This only makes sense if he doesn't exist. If he does exist then he is the good and if our ideas of what we think are good are different then we are the ones who are mistaken. Again I get it, you don't like Christianity, but you aren't saying that Christianity is a shit religion from the outside, you are saying that Christianity from the inside is shit. You are literally telling people they don't actually believe what they believe and that they believe what you tell them they believe.

I'm this guy. I'm not going to continue this conversation if you are going to be a confrontational edge-lord won't even try to understand the opposition. The problem is that you assume you are right and then you say the other side is wrong because you are right. Going back to this
>Nice fanfic, where's your citation?
It shows you don't know what a major element of the second largest branch of Christianity in the world. And this
>So he doesn't care about your character, only that you obey
Only shows that you won't even try to engage with the material presented to you because your assertion is not a logical necessity from what was presented to you. You just want it to be because you want to frame Christianity in the worst possible light.

Continued

>but this is some twisted and perverted version of "morality
This is my main gripe, you are assuming a meta-ethical position that is antagonistic to Christianity. If Christianity is true then your meta-ethical position is false. You are saying the literal equivalent your system of mathematics that says 2+2=4 is wrong and my system of 2+2=5 is correct because I have assumed it. You haven't tried to dispel the meta-ethical claims of Christianity assuming it were true, you have just said that it's wrong because my system is correct even though this conversation is taking place in the former system.

> Show me in the Bible where Jesus says "lol Hell is just a metaphor lmao, I would never toss you into a lake of fire like I literally and explicitly threatened to do! :^)"
Or maybe you could attend a university course on the literary genre of apocalypticism to see the ways in which the writings of things like Revelations are meant to be interpreted. You are just out to assume the very worst for Christianity rather than trying to actually understand what is true. You might as well be a bible belt thumper with that level of bigoted ignorance.

Saying what something logically must be isn't a metaphor? Since hell exists outside of our reality you can't really say much about what it is our isn't except from what you understand from other things that can exist outside of our reality like a Christian God. You make logical conclusions starting from assumptions of God's goodness and assumptions that heaven and hell do exist to understand what heaven and hell are. It's not much of a metaphor.

>HURR u cant understand the all-knowing creator of the universe without devoting your life to studying our fanfic about him!

You can't know and understand God without seeking to know and understand him and learning from other people who sought to know and understand him? Seems fair enough.

All shit aside, Chesterton is an asshole but I do recommend reading Merton and Aquinas. Not that you will or should believe everything (Aquinas says some dumb shit) but it's good to understand why people think what they think.

Reading philosophical texts is important in understanding religions and I think that's why thinkers are keen towards budhism because you just get blasted with it as an introduction.

>Not him but that is the actual beliefs of Orthodoxy.

So fanfic? Why should I care what some cabal of child molesters says, again? Didn't Jesus come to tell us what he actually thinks, clearly and unambiguously? So where's your BIBLICAL reference for this absurd claim?

>If Christianity is true then God is the good. You can't accept one without accepting the other.

Well since god manifestly isn't good according to his own holy text, I guess you've convinced me that Christianity can't be true.

>If he does exist then he is the good and if our ideas of what we think are good are different then we are the ones who are mistaken

I LOVE this pathetic apology, "hahaha when we say god is good what we MEAN is that all the terrible, wicked, vile, hateful, murderous and downright psychopathic things he does are in some magical way good things!" So how are we supposed to recognize good, when we see it? Clearly our puny human ideas of what is good are irrelevant, so unless the Bible has a specific ruling on a situation, I guess we literally have no way to determine it! Bible doesn't mention abortion, I guess we can't know if its good or bad! Bible doesn't mention torturing children to death, I guess we can't know if that's good or bad, either!

>waagh why you so rude ;_;

Grow a thicker skin, retard. If you're going to go around shilling terrible and retarded ideas, expect to be mocked for it.

>You are saying the literal equivalent your system of mathematics that says 2+2=4 is wrong and my system of 2+2=5 is correct because I have assumed it.

Mathematics is axiomatic, if your axioms support 2+2=5 then it's true, and I have no issue with that. Religion is nothing like mathematics, it deals with objective reality, so no, I won't respect your attempt to redefine words to mean whatever you want them to mean.

>HURR u have to devote years of study to understand Jesus simple message, because his message is universal and intended for everyone so it makes perfect sense than only 0.0001% of people will ever understand it!

I can also post intimidating jpgs to look like I have a point

Fucking this guy gets it.

You don't want to consider the assumptions for Christianity that's OK with me. But to say all the logical advancements made from the assumptions are foolish is just ignorant.

Stoics weren't cucks or Jewish supremacists.

>Saying what something logically must be isn't a metaphor?

What? How is a lake of fire a metaphor? Why would Jesus make up such a horrific metaphor if he didn't actually mean it? Is he trying to terrorize us, to make us worship him out of fear of punishment?

> You make logical conclusions starting from assumptions of God's goodness

Conclusion one: If god is good, the Bible is fiction.

>You can't know and understand God without seeking to know and understand him and learning from other people who sought to know and understand him? Seems fair enough.

Yeah, no. Seems like something someone who WANTS to be misunderstood would demand, but makes zero sense for a god who claims his message is for everyone, if not everyone can understand it.

>All shit aside, Chesterton is an asshole but I do recommend reading Merton and Aquinas.

I've read Aquinas, I honestly couldn't believe how terrible and weak his arguments were. Most of them were refuted CENTURIES before he wrote them, why he's held up as some kind of deep thinker is beyond me.

>Reading philosophical texts is important in understanding religions

I agree, because religions are a human construct and can only be understood in that sense. If, on the other hand, God was real and Jesus was God, then I wouldn't need anything but his words to understand him.

I agree that the logical conclusions you derive re sound, but this proves exactly nothing if your PREMISE is flawed.

>Why should I care what some cabal of child molesters says, again?
You seriously can't tell Orthodox apart from Catholic?

>Didn't Jesus come to tell us what he actually thinks
This displays an ignorance of the things I have already said to you. It shows that not only do you understand Christian understanding of their own texts you don't even understand academic historical understanding of the texts or an ability to remember what I said about them only a couple of hours ago.

>I LOVE this pathetic apology
I'm not even going to green-text the rest. It's convenient that you complexity avoided the question of meta-ethics which is the whole in your argument that I am trying to address. I'm being serious, I want to engage with you but you won't even acknoledge that the meta-ethical even exists. The way you conceive of morality is correct and can't be argued against and therefore it is impossible for anyone to argue for Christianity to be ethical even if it were to be true.

If we are working under the assumption that God is real and that Jesus was sent to redeem man from sin make your argument for why this is unethical. Put forward your meta-ethical position. If you can't or won't then I'm done.

>What? How is a lake of fire a metaphor? Why would Jesus make up such a horrific metaphor if he didn't actually mean it? Is he trying to terrorize us, to make us worship him out of fear of punishment?

Hell is being without God

God is everything good

Hell has no good

Hell is the worst thing ever

Jesus talks in metaphor a whole lot. "The kingdom of heaven is like" He does this because people listened and gained a deeper understanding. It's kind of his "thing" to tell parable.

You're once again showing you can't understand simple consequences of a simple assumption. If hell is the worst thing ever it WOULD BE WORSE than a lake of fire. He's not trying to terrorize but in his Christian based reality Hell is really bad and he's trying to convey that to people who can't actually go check out hell. He wants them to know what it's like because it's reality, it's the truth for him. If hell actually exists why would he not tell people about it?

Fair enough but premises that exist detached from our reality tend to be pretty hard to disprove.

>inb4 also impossible to prove

sort of true and fair enough

>So fanfic? Why should I care what some cabal of child molesters says, again? Didn't Jesus come to tell us what he actually thinks, clearly and unambiguously? So where's your BIBLICAL reference for this absurd claim?

>calls the Bible fake
>denies sound philosophy by requiring Biblical reference for all claims