Book Comment: Who's Who in the Age of Jesus

The 2005 book, Who’s Who in the Age of Jesus, by professor Geza Vermes, is an extremely interesting book for those who love history, biography, and the Bible.  Dr. Vermes intended the book to emphasize the unassailable historicity and the intense Jewishness of Jesus. 

Many of the people Dr. Vermes discusses are persons you have never heard of before.  He talks, of course, about the Roman emperors, governors, procurators, and legates and the Jewish High priests, but also about important women such a Mariamne and Drusilla,  rabbis such as Yohanan ben Zakkai and Simeon ben Shetah, Jewish mystics such as Simon the Essene and Honi the Circle-Drawer, Jewish revolutionaries such as Simon bar Giora and Judas son of Sapphoreus, writers such as Josephus and Justus of Tiberias,  and important persons.

The book also contains genealogical charts and a chronological table.

Dr. Vermes was born in 1924 in Hungary into a Jewish family, some of whom (including his parents) died during the Holocaust.  The family became converts to Roman Catholicicsm and young Geza went on to become a Roman catholic priest.  Vermes is essentially a scholar and academic and became a specialist in Hebrew, Aramaic, Christian and Jewish history, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the life of Jesus. 

 Dr. Vermes questions some of the traditional Christian understandings of Jesus.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/mar/18/academicexperts.highereducationprofile

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A general caution: books may give you wonderful new insights and explanations of subjects, but you should never base your Christian beliefs on any one book or the teachings of one person, no matter who they are. All teachings must be consistent with scripture. Read as the Bereans did, with discernment. “… for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.” Acts 17:11 NASB

Any doctrines must be consistent with the historical full body of Christian thought. Doctrines or teachings inconsistent with scripture in any way must be rejected. You would not eat cheese which had a fuzzy fungus growing on it.

More on Edgar Cayce

Yesterday, I posted about Edgar Cayce, the Sleeping Prophet.  Search your Bible and test some of the other teachings of Edgar Cayce.

1. The Christ entity came to Earth in many different time periods in order "to manifest the first idea."  At various times it manifested in the following men: Adam, Enoch, Melchizedek, Joseph, JKoshua, Jeshua, and Jesus.

2. Christians serve "the Master Jesus who became the Christ." The Christ entity is a created being and is not a man; Jesus was the man.

3. Enlightenment comes when we realize our own divine nature and become at one with God.  This is classical pantheism.

4. Each of us is the same as Jesus, a spirit child of God. We each may have the Christ consciousness, the Holy Spirit.  The Creator Consciousness desired to have companions and so it created entities like itself from within itself, the first being Christ.  This means that every soul is a portion of God and therefore is divine and existed before this life.

5. Jesus was an Essene.  His mother Mary was one of twelve young girls chosen by the Essenes to be trained to become the mother of the Messiah.  Jesus and Mary were twin souls. Both were trained in the teachings of India, Egypt, and Persia and studied astrology, numerology, phrenology and reincarnation under the tutelage of the leader of the Essenes, Judy, "the first of women."  Judy's parents were Essenes at Carmel.

(Poster's comment; This teaching is totally absurd. The Essenes were a Jewish ascetic sect which strove for absolute ritual cleanliness and purity. They took ritual baths each day and avoided women to the point of not even allowing female animals in their communities.)

6. Cayce life readings dealt with telepathy, past lives, auras, telepathy, out-of-body experiences, and communicating with the dead.

7.  The power in gemstones can be harnessed.  The ancient city of Atlantis was powered by a giant crystal ball.

8.  Cayce predicted that in 1958 the United States would discover a death ray which was used on the ancient city of Atlantis.

9. Soul entities on Earth had sex with animals to produce giants.

10. The five human races were created separately but simultaneously on the Earth.

11. Many modern people were associates of Jesus in prior lives.

12. We are usually associated with people we knew in past lives.

13. Reincarnation gives a soul entity time to correct and perfect itself in its way back to oneness with God.

On the Human Knowledge of Christ, Part 2

      "Unless he was human to the lowest depths of his conscious and unconscious life, he was not truly human at all." John Knox said this and then went on to declare that we can't really say that Jesus was sinless without separating him from true manhood.  If, in any respect, even in sinning, Jesus did not share with us , he only seemed to be human.

     Aside from rejecting the idea that Jesus ever sinned (see Hebrews 2:17-18; 4:15), I must also quarrel with Knox on another point.  He seems to take the viewpoint that sin is an attribute of human nature.  An attribute is an essential characteristic of a thing or person which cannot be altered  and still have the one to which it is attributed remain the same person or thing.

     Sin is not an attribute of human nature.  It is a gangrene attacking human nature; it is not essential to it.  Jesus, in His life, showed for all time that it is possible to be sinless and fully human at the same time.

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     The question of Jesus' human knowledge has been presented as have been several possible approaches to the discussion.  IT would now be fruitful to begin our study by examining several possible sources of Jesus' human knowledge, for the time being ignoring and supernatural source.

     P. J. Temple says that there were three major sources of knowledge open to every Israelite; cultural traditions, nature, and the Scriptures.  It is obvious from His actions and His teachings that Jesus was intimately familiar with the Law and the Prophets, the Psalms, and Daniel.

     At least one scholar, the Unitarian theologian, Charles Francis Potter, makes much larger claims for Jesus' education.  He feels that Jesus obviously knew classical Hebrew and the commonly spoken Aramaic as well as the surrounding culture's Koine Greek.

     With this supposed knowledge of Greek "Jesus could ransack some of the chief depositories of religious books in Galilee.  These repositories were in the private houses of well-to-do people, in the meeting places of various religious circles or sects whose books were held in common, as well as in the synagogues."  Potter comes to dubious conclusion; Jesus became an Essene from studying their literature and that Christianity is an Essene sect.