The God of the Old Testament is named “YHVH.” It is unpronounceable and most scholars translate this to “I AM.”
In the New Testament, Jesus calls the god he reveres “Abba.” “Father.”
Jesus also teaches the doctrine of salvation–something the Old Testament God certainly does not teach. Jesus also teaches a new prayer to “Abba” and all but says, “Forget the old ways, this is the new way.”
Therefore, it is logical to assume that Jesus is teaching his followers to revere a different god from the one in the Old Testament.
(This is not a new idea by any stretch of the imagination, but most people have never heard of the gnostics or any of the other Christian heresies that the Catholics put down [re: “murdered”], and I was thinking about it today, so I decided to write it down.)
Likewise, Paul had his own religion going on. He talked a lot about Jesus, but take note of this: nowhere in Paul’s writings does he mention anything about Jesus’ life other than the crucifixion. Nothing. So, in other words, he doesn’t mention
the virgin birth,
Herod killing the firstborns,
John the Baptist,
40 days in the wilderness,
the temptation of Satan,
turning water into wine,
walking on water
no healings,
no casting out of demons,
“… cast the first stone,”
the arrival in Jerusalem,
the last supper,
the betrayal of Judas,
or any other of the events of Jesus’ life
With that evidence in mind, is it possible Paul was talking about a different Jesus? After all, lots of folks named Jesus at that time. A common name. And the Romans were crucifying whole metric shit tons of people. So, maybe the “scholars” of the bronze age (if you really want to call them scholars) got things mixed up and mingled the stories of two different men called “Jesus.”
It’s possible.
Or maybe the four different gospels in the Bible are written about four different men named Jesus. After all, the stories are similar, but not identical, and there are a lot of descrepencies. So, maybe there were a few men in Jerusalem calling themselves “the messiah” and more than a few of them were named Jesus.
It’s possible.
Of course, if you want to be an archeologist and print any of this in a shcolarly journal, you’ll need some proof.
But, if you make it your religion, you don’t need to prove any of it. You’ve got faith.
Just some thoughts on a Sunday.