From: gpalo@digi.lonestar.org (Gerry Palo)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Problems with Paul's history of Jesus
Date: 19 Nov 92 19:46:04 GMT
Organization: DSC Communications Corp, Plano, TX

In article <fVs9KXt@quack.sac.ca.us> pharvey@quack.sac.ca.us (Paul Harvey) writes:
>In article <1992Nov17.235036.27187@digi.lonestar.org> 
>gpalo@digi.lonestar.org (Gerry Palo) writes:
>>The argument over whether Christ or the Gospels or Paul state authoritatively
>>that Christ was the Son of God is less interesting than the way in which
>>Christ himself approached the issue.
>
>Jesus spoke in Aramaic and we don't have a record of his speaches in
>Aramaic so we have no idea what he himself actually said. Case closed.
>For all we know, the Christian gospels in Greek may have been written
>or edited by Paul and so we are dependent on Paul's history of Jesus
>since there are no other accounts of Jesus, if he even existed as an
>actual historical figure.
>
>>Another difficulty with the fundamentalist (and also main stream) view of 
>>Christ is the idea that knowledge and acceptance of him can only come 
>>within the bounds of this one life on earth.  The more I read and 
>>participate in this forum the more convinced I become that Christianity 
>>needs desparately to come to terms with the reality of repeated earth 
>>lives, and destiny (karma) as fundamental to the central principles of
>>Christianity, in other words to understand it in terms of the reality
>>of Christ's incarnation, death and resurrection.
>
>Are you sure you don't mean reincarnation instead of resurrection?

No, I don't mean his reincarnation.  I am firmly convinced that
Christ incarnated once and only once in Jesus of Nazareth, that he
died, and rose again. And that he will come again, but not ever again
in a fleshly body.  The The resurrection is something entirely different 
and of the most enormous significance, for the whole of creation, let alone 
for individual human souls.  This is critical to an understanding of
reincarnation in the light of Christianity.  Likewise the idea of 
salvation, of redemption through the deed of Christ on Golgotha takes
on a new dimension when it is seen as a process of growth, not all
at once and absolutely, but over a longer period of time  through
many earth lives, the cycle of which in due course will also have a
final end.

The point is that reincarnation and karma in the light of Christianity
is revealed to be something quite different than it was understood to
be in the older eastern religions.  This is important, because a number
of new age movements are looking for a reincarnation of Christ to happen.
It would be a most grievous error to think that Christ will appear again
in an earthly physical incarnation. 

This is only a sketchy indication, but I felt it needed to be said.
I would be happy to discuss it further, including by e-mail.

As four first paragraph, there is good evidence to believe that Jesus
actually did speak Greek most of the time.  It was the lingua franca
of the Roman Empire (even the Romans didn't speak Latin except in 
court).  The Jewish Bible was written in Greek, and certainly all but
the very lowest classes spoke Greek rather than Aramaic.  And even the
poorer classes most likely knew enough Koine to get along.  As for
Hebrew, it is acknowledged that only a small number of the rabinnical
sect around Jerusalem cultivated Hebrew any more.  So it is very possible
that the recorded words of Christ are really what he said in the original
language.  There are a few places where he apparently did speak Aramaic,
and often these places are indicated by the gospel writers.

A few years ago I heard a lecture in Germany from a linguistic
scholar, the late Karl Friedrich Althoff, on this subject.  Althoff was
as fluent as you and I are in English in all the dialects of ancient Greek 
from Attic to Koine and even modern Greek, Hebrew, classical and medieval 
Latin, Aramaic, and even Sanskrit.  A really remarkable man.  He had an 
inner sense for each language that is really rare.  Well, he tried an 
experiment of rendering the Lord's Prayer in Hebrew and Aramaic.  He 
discovered, to his expert ears anyway, that the Lord's Prayer could not
be rendered in Hebrew or Aramaic, and couldn't be a translation, especially 
from the latter. He went into some detail, which I have since forgotten, 
and it certainly was a matter beyond the subtlety of my language ability,
but I thought it was interesting.  Anyway, there was recently an article 
in Biblical Review, or Biblical Archaeology Review, or one of those, that
advocates the same thing.

As for your question about whether Jesus existed at all, that debate
I leave to others on this forum.

Cordially,
Gerry Palo (e-mail to 73237.2006@compuserve.com)
Xref: sparky talk.religion.misc:21521 alt.atheism:21647