quote:
NoNukes
at least one rather famous reference to God calling Jesus his son
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Mark 1:11
And there came a voice from heaven, saying, Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
Thou/You is 2nd person singular. God is talking to Jesus.
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Matthew 3:17
And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased."
This is a demonstrative and God is talking to the people.
I find it amazing that people obsess over "the trinity" when the very sources don't seem to agree on whether God was talking to the people or to Jesus himself.
A big event in the history of man, but we can't even get a 100% accurate account of what exactly was said by God and who he was saying it to.
Start with a premise that the Bible is literally a word for word dictation of God, as opposed to a collective work of many men far removed from each other and the events they attempt to report on.
That's step 1! Make an argument from ignorance.
Then go hunting the heretics because they have such a divergent view on the relationship between spirit and body.
How about worrying about why Jesus in Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21, Matthew 16-17, Mark 8-9, etc. and Paul in 1 Thes 4 & 1 Cor 15 seemed to indicate that the new age would begin in the lives of the Apostles.
Perhaps the Gospel of Thomas had it correct
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(113) His disciples said to him, "When will the kingdom come?"
"It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying 'here it is' or 'there it is.' Rather, the kingdom of the father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it."
Thomas has the oldest form of sayings (logoi) of Jesus, as linguists and scholars will attest. Other prophecies of Jesus (fulfilled in 70 AD), in Thomas reflect a less developed form than Matthew and Mark.
All 114 of them are here.
Gospel of Thomas (Lambdin Translation) -- The Nag Hammadi Library
Scholars studied Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John throughout the 1800s and early 1900s and noticed that there was a Logoi of Jesus behind large parts of Matthew and Luke that Mark did not posess.
Critics called the majority of scholars fools for claiming that there was a SAYINGS GOSPEL OF JESUS that simply contained sayings with very little narration, but the scholars insisted the evidence backed that up.
"Hypothetical rubbish", the critics said.
Then in the 1920s, Thomas was found. It starts off saying that it is the "sayings" of Jesus. Logoi. And it indeed largely lacks narration, just as the scholars predicted.
It has the oldest Gospel verses in existence, though most, of the 114 verses, date later than the 4 Gospels.
I suspect that Jesus and Paul knew that the world wasn't going to end, and Thomas proves it. No sudden change from flesh body to spirit, though the New Testament authors might have telescoped 2 different concepts (a slow evolution first, then sudden end of world later).
Lets ask why the Bible contradicts itself before we judge others for having difficulty in delineating the exact relationship among the angels, dead persons, and the "Trinitarian" figures.
And lets give credit to where it is due to the scholars who made correct predictions. The scholarly consensus that a sayings Gospel Q existed is still not as strong as the consensus that feels Matthew copied from Mark, but the prediction was made that a sayings gospel would would turn up AND indeed it did!
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