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[Urist is dead tome]

He told people to not tell others he as the Messiah.

[Zrk2]

Why would he do that? It doesn't make sense based on my comprehension of how his life (supposedly) went. Could you please explain this?

[fqllve]

There are interesting parallels with the non-canonical Gospel of Judas.

[Urist is dead tome]

Why would he do that? It doesn't make sense based on my comprehension of how his life (supposedly) went. Could you please explain this?

I really can't explain it. I simply can't. A possibility is that he intended to fulfill the Messianic prophecy. But this clearly did not happen.

There are interesting parallels with the non-canonical Gospel of Judas.

That is definitely a different take on this.

[fqllve]

There are interesting parallels with the non-canonical Gospel of Judas.

That is definitely a different take on this.

Definitely. But it is also a very Gnostic statement that I'm surprised to hear is in the Christian canon. It's especially important that it's in Mark, since that's supposedly the original gospel.

From my understanding of the Gospels and Christianity what's important is faith. Faith is the path to salvation. (Of course there are certain sects that have other beliefs. Isn't it the Calvinists who believe grace is the path to salvation?) But here Jesus almost explicitly states that knowledge is the truly important part. Which is pretty much the basic tenet of Gnosticism.

Now, in the Gospel of Judas it is Judas who is given the secret teaching. But in Mark here all the apostles are given the secret teaching. And since I think Mark predates Judas that gives a canonical basis for the later Gnostic teachings.

[Willfor]

Wait, I thought it was about how the Old Testament was originally a polytheistic Hebrew account of mythology that was later co-opted by politically powerful worshipers of the war god Yahweh, who clumsily edited it to look like it had always been about a monotheistic account of Yahweh?

And the New Testament being written way after Jesus' death, by people who never encountered him.

At least, I think that was what we were talking about.

I was a Christian for some time and what I heard was is nobody knows but everyone assumes the whole thing was written some time after Jesus' death. I'm not very sure though. I don't think anybody knows for sure.

Biblical scholarship is honestly not that hard to find from any side of the equation. The sheer amount of research that has gone into it from Christians, Jews, Atheists, Buddhists, and pretty much anyone means that a simple search in google can provide you with all of the information you require on the topic.

First result of "when mark was written." Oh hey, it's even an atheistic source.

[Zrk2]

And then you get guys writing allegories for it, too (CS Lewis, F Scott Fitzgerald...) And everyone has there own take on it... Just mix all of it together and you should get a good idea.

[Siquo]

What's your take on all this?

I think he meant that just "passing the word" and "telling facts" is not enough to understand. Even though you hear the words, you don't fully understand. That's why he used parables, to say something that can't be understood otherwise. In that case, God, or his message, is like poetry: The message is not in the words or their meanings, but in the emotion/feeling they convey.

[Euld]

I'm stepping foot into the religious threads again, hope I don't mess things up this time 

As I recall, there was a big misconception among the Jews with the idea of what role the Messiah was going to play.  The Old Testament contains prophecies about Jesus's First and Second Comings; first as the suffering servant who dies for the sins of the world in the Gospels, then later as a conquering hero in Revelations.  The general population was expecting the conquering hero Messiah because the Romans were occupying Israel and they desperately wanted to be free.  Jesus's First Coming was about forgiveness and repentance however, and telling people he was the Messiah would only invoke their hope of revolution.  Even the disciples didn't quite get it; later a few of them asked if they could be his right and left hand men when he began ruling his kingdom, to which he said "you don't know what you're asking," and those places were for the robber and murderer who were crucified with Jesus.  Peter even rebuked Jesus when Jesus told them outright that he was going to die and rise again.  (Jesus rebuked him back with the famous "get behind me, Satan!" speech.)

[Phmcw]

Kinda amusing that Mahomet was a conqueror then.

[Urist is dead tome]

I'm stepping foot into the religious threads again, hope I don't mess things up this time 

As I recall, there was a big misconception among the Jews with the idea of what role the Messiah was going to play.  The Old Testament contains prophecies about Jesus's First and Second Comings; first as the suffering servant who dies for the sins of the world in the Gospels, then later as a conquering hero in Revelations.  The general population was expecting the conquering hero Messiah because the Romans were occupying Israel and they desperately wanted to be free.  Jesus's First Coming was about forgiveness and repentance however, and telling people he was the Messiah would only invoke their hope of revolution.  Even the disciples didn't quite get it; later a few of them asked if they could be his right and left hand men when he began ruling his kingdom, to which he said "you don't know what you're asking," and those places were for the robber and murderer who were crucified with Jesus.  Peter even rebuked Jesus when Jesus told them outright that he was going to die and rise again.  (Jesus rebuked him back with the famous "get behind me, Satan!" speech.)

You lost me when you started with the prophecies. One of the reasons Jews don't believe that Jesus was the Messiah is because they weren't told there would be a second coming. Even if Jesus didn't die he didn't fulfill the prophecy.

Kinda amusing that Mahomet was a conqueror then.

I'm not sure he was.

[Zrk2]

Oh he did. I think. i would produce a link by my internet is too weak to find one.

[Phmcw]

Wikipedia suffice.

[Zrk2]

Apparently he politicked his way to power until he raised a force to conquer Mecca.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Muhammad.html

[Euld]

Wasn't Muhammad born in the year 570 AD, while Jesus was born in 4 BC?  Yeah not really contemporaries o_O.  Unless we're going to stretch the definition of "contemporaries" to allow a Galileo vs. Hubble telescope debate or something 

You lost me when you started with the prophecies. One of the reasons Jews don't believe that Jesus was the Messiah is because they weren't told there would be a second coming. Even if Jesus didn't die he didn't fulfill the prophecy.

This website has a pretty good list of the prophecies we use to justify the first coming.  I know, I know, that website doesn't exactly have the best layout, but at a glance it seems to have everything I was looking for.  True, I couldn't find an exact prophecy that said Jesus would come to earth twice, but when you look at all the prophecies (I'm a bit annoyed how this website says there's about 60 and it only lists 45, this isn't helping my case much...) you start to see a contradiction.  On one hand, the Messiah is going to be betrayed and killed, but on the other, he's going to save Israel.  With that in mind, and along with the accounts of the Gospels where Jesus pretty much explains how role at the time, we Christians believe in a first and second coming.

I'll just rest my case here.  I doubt I've convinced anybody but oh well, that's what we believe, and in a round about way, why Jesus told his disciples not to tell anyone he was the Messiah (at least not tell anyone at the time).