Quote:
Originally Posted by Makarov
I'm afraid that you're missing the entire point. I propose to file Jesus under the heading "people who hear voices, etc.) On what pricipled basis can one distinguish between his supernatural claims, the Dalia Lama's, and the claims of the guy on the bus?
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Did Jesus himself make any "supernatural claims"? If so, what were they? Furthermore, given what I have already stated about the religious saturation of the culture in which Jesus MUST be understood, how important or relevant are these so-clled supernatural claims relative to other parts of Jesus's teaching?
As someone who has probably committed more than an average amount of tine to investigating the life, teachings, claims, and the "myth" of Jesus, I am not at all convinced that he made any out-of-the-ordinary "supernatural" claims. He most certainly did not claim to be god or the son of god, and I have my doubts that he "heard voices". We must bear in mind that his type of rhetoric was a religious cultural phenomenon; it was a method whereby one taught, and it was a commonplace thing for a Jew to claim that he (not she) spoke for God, because every Jew concerned himself with "what the scriptures mean".