Message #18695

[KTCat]

Hmm. Mr. Paine was an interesting fellow indeed. The arguments presented are certainly not without merit.

I absolutely have to agree that there are so many inconsistencies in the Bible, we must question much of what it says. However, I do, absolutely believe that Jesus existed and was crucified.

But I too have come to quite different conclusions than the doctrines preached by the churches. In the first place, I think it nigh onto impossible that Jesus could have been considered a man descendant from the royal family of David of the Tribe of Judah. And I think that way not because I've read somebody else's expose', but because it is the only possible conclusion that makes any sense.

Both the Sadducees and the Pharisees were firmly entrenched in Judaic law, and basically that law maintained that any man who could prove he was a direct descendant of David and part of the royal line from the Tribe of Judah, had the right to be declared a prophet, a messiah or a king. That man could have been a saintly man or an absolute tyrant, Judaic law made no exception for that; it required only that the man be able to prove he was a direct descendant from the royal house of Judah. No priest in his right mind would have dared call for the crucifixion of someone who could prove his bloodlines to King David. Had they called for the death of a descendant of David, you can pretty will count on the fact that the people of Israel, led by the Tribe of Judah,  would have stoned any priest to death for even daring to suggest such a thing!

Whoever Jesus was, he absolutely could not have been from the Tribe of Judah. If he had been, by law, the priesthood would have had to declare him their king or at the very least a prophet. There were only two out of the twelve tribes of Israel that were even called Jews. The rest of the ten tribes were thought of as gentiles. It was only the tribe of Judah and the tribe of Benjamin that were called Jews. Yet they mocked Jesus during the crucifixion and called him "King of the Jews" in jest. That points to the fact that he probably was a Jewish man, rather than a gentile, and again, no one would have dared to mock a Jew as king if he came from the royal line of David, but they certainly would have mocked a man from the Tribe of Benjamen.

We are told from the records that Jesus and the people who followed him to Jerusalem came out of Galilee. Originally, way back in Genesis, when lots were drawn to see which tribe got which territory, Jerusalem was declared the territory of Benjamin. However, after the Jews returned from their Babylonian exile, circa 600 BC, the Benjaminites were restricted from settling in Jerusalem, it was declared the City of David, and most of the people who settled there were connected by blood to either the Tribe of Judah or the Levite priesthood of Sadducees, which were in charge of the Temple of Solomon. The tribe of Benjamin was pretty much forced to settle in Galilee at that time, and no doubt, there were bitter feelings about the whole thing.

When you realize all of these things, it's easy to see why any man declared a Messiah by his followers who came out of Galilee and rode into Jerusalem with people marching beside him, may have well been viewed by the priesthood with considerable alarm. Their worries would not necessarily have been due so much to the message Jesus preached, but because accepting any man as king who came out of Benjaminite Galilee would have been seen as a threat to the wealthy ruling class.  Both the priesthood and the Tribe of Judah would have certainly felt threatened, after all, every last one of them realized that by Jewish Law, the territory of Jerusalem actually belonged to the Benjaminites.

And then there is another little problem the churches fail to consider. It is adamantly clear in Kings 1, 11:11 that the God of the OT, who was evidently seriously ticked off at Solomon said to the tribe of Judah, "I will surely rend the kingdom from thee and give it to thy servant!" In other words, not only had Solomon blown it with the OT God, that same God made it quite clear that he was no longer in support of the notion that only someone from the Tribe of Judah could be king. This of course, blew apart the rather elitist concepts preached by the priests that only the men descended from the wealthiest tribe of Israel were fit to be declared kings.

It's hard to tell what really happened in the Resurrection stories, however, based upon nothing but logic, it seems reasonable to suggest that the priesthoods would have certainly jumped to take advantage of the resurrection rumors that must have been circulating throughout Jerusalem right after Jesus' death. It seems to me that originally Jesus taught the concept of resurrection as a way of confirming the eternal reality of the soul. However, when we read the New Testament resurrection accounts, we read of men claiming to be Jesus who were definitely not immediately recognized by either Magdalene or any of the original disciples as Jesus. Apparently the disciples were obviously coming in contact with somebody claiming to be the resurrected Jesus, who didn't look anything like the Jesus they had known. He evidently talked the talk, but the New Testament stories certainly suggest the disciples were just plain confused by what they were confronted with. In fact, it's only the resurrection narrative in the Book of John that even mentions the gardener episode. So there are some extraordinarily conflicting stories about the whole resurrection thing in the New Testament.

However, simple common sense and logic alone seems to point in one direction… In my view, the stories about the resurrection seem to suggest that not only did the priesthood have the real Jesus crucified, those same priests would have been very familiar with Jesus' teachings about the resurrection of the soul into eternal life, which was a major part of the message he preached.

Although I'd probably get called a heretic by most churches for daring to even say this, to me it seems more than evident that the Jewish priesthood not only contrived to have Jesus crucified, they probably already had a man chosen and ready and waiting, a man who no doubt had clear bloodlines to the royal family of David,  and they immediately sent him in and billed him as the "resurrected Christ," right after the crucifixion.

In fact, I think the evidense indicates that there were at least other two men that were billed as the "Resurrected Christ". One would have logically been a man from the royal house of Judah, and the other one would have been a high priest after the Order of Melchizedik.

That's the only thing that makes any sense to me.