Comment by alganet
1 day ago
It is known that the specifics of the story were modified.
The current text is kind of frozen by its own similarities to itself.
The use of extracted quotes is probably a mistake. You have to find the same event in a lot of other books beyond Matthew to be able to find a tiny whiff of historical information, very faint, very difficult to do with translated versions.
> You have to find the same event in a lot of other books beyond Matthew to be able to find a tiny whiff of historical information
The same event is described in the book of Mark (10:32-34) and the book of Luke (18:31-34).
There are two other predictions that appear in all three books:
Matthew 16:21-23
Mark 8:31-33
Luke 9:21-22
Matthew 17:22-23
Mark 9:30-32
Luke 9:43-45
I mean a lot of other books, not just slightly different accounts.
> I mean a lot of other books
Such as?
Luke 17:20-37 also seems to support the idea that Jesus was trying to tell people the kingdom was spiritual, not physical. The kingdom as a concept wasn't some novel idea, either. Jesus was claiming he was the fulfillment of the messianic prophecy in Judaism. He was reinterpreting the prophecy, though, as a spiritual rather than literal liberation.
Tangential, but you can interpret the anti-christ in christian belief to bring the alleged kingdom, as a sort of anti-fulfillment of the prophecy.
All of these declared disputes in meaning, names and events is precisely what I am referring to.
One could argue that Jesus is the book itself anthropomorphized, edited so many times by so many sinners (crossed), that whatever salvation was contained within (a prophecy, a guide, a story) is not there anymore. It only serves to spare those who changed and betrayed it (to support churches and beliefs not originally present in it).
Thus, the book died. It is said that once it briefly was brought back to life. It is a reference from the New Testament to itself. Then it died again (once a living, thriving narrative of human history constantly being augmented, now unable to be that again, eternally locked in disputes and conflicted interpretations, thus, dead).
The "Kingdom of Heaven" was not a contemporary concept in first-century CE Judaism, to my knowledge.
Not that term, but a Messiah that will establish / lead a powerful Jewish nation was
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