God: Benevolent or Malevolent?

Somebody did a public service announcement on this. It's a lot easier to figure what he would not drive than what he would drive.

 

Hey, if they can get Christian pastors to join the army to tell young men that Jesus is okay with them dropping bombs on civilian cities, and if there are Christian pastors who preach from the pulpit that personal wealth is a sign that god favors them, there will certainly be people who will argue that Jesus would have driven a Hummer.

Personally, I agree with the posters above who say that he would have walked or ridden a "grass guzzler." (Good one, Hidyho! :rockon: )

 

The more I thought about this... what a great question! I submit that Jesus drives many types of vehicles. For those people that have truly submitted to His lordship, He lives within (Galatians 2:20). Like D's favorite Biblical character Paul for example. I would imagine there are those types that drive a Hummer and quite possibly a Prius... whatever it takes to deliver the Good News of the Gospels.

Blessings

 

Remember, you're talking about a person who could turn water into wine. Most likely he could also turn water into Top Tier gasoline, and convert the exhaust gases into mountain fresh air.

Tom

 

Nope. My favorite Bible character is Daniel. They threw him in with the big kitty cats, but the cats wouldn't bite him. Cats always like people named Daniel.

I like Solomon, too, because he wrote all those great dirty poems.

And let's not forget the fish that swallowed Noah. People seem to think the fish must have been a whale, and I like cetaceans. There's some dispute over whether a whale is a fish or not. Scientists say it's not, so the fish in the Bible much have been a shark, as the only fish big enough to swallow a man. But Herman Melville, an undisputed expert on whales, having actually sailed on a whaling ship before he wrote his famous book, says that the whale is an air-breathing fish. So I like the fish in the Bible just because he's a whale and whales are cool.

I kind of like Job, too, because he talked back to god, even though he kow-tows to him in the end. His story shows just how nasty god (as a fictional character in the Bible, not as a real person) can be when he's in one of his capricious moods.

I like Shadrach, Mishach, and Abednigo, just because they have such cool names.

Then there's the good Samaritan. Who can fail to like that guy?

And absolutely not least in my estimation by any means, is Jesus himself. He taught absolute pacifism, love of your enemies, told people to give away everything they owned to the poor but the one shirt on their back and never to own anything. He told people to treat everyone with love and respect and never to judge anyone else, never to harm anyone. If Christians followed the teachings of Jesus rather than Paul, I would respect, honor, and revere them as the best of the human race.

But Paul, I do not like him. He took the memory of a great man, threw away most of what he had taught, and replaced it with a cult of personality, creating a religion where "believing" in Jesus was more important than behaving as Jesus taught.

 

As a Middle Eastern carpender he would probably drive a small van.

 

And that's because you can't leave your tools out... just saying...

 

Not entirely true from the book... if you remember his tyrade in the temple...

You are spot on about Paul... he helped put the hate back into it... which the christ worked diligently to reduce.

 

Something a little too simple to say in just a picture...

I personally don't think the creator is this... involved.

 

Jesus did not stick out - why was Judas paid to ID him?

So I'd rule out any luxury vehicle or one with bling - this is the easy part.

Because Jesus attacked the self-righteousness of the rabbis, I have doubt he would drive most hybrids or an EV - it might look self-righteous in a green sense....an older one maybe.

One of my best bets is a recent Toyota Corolla banger - decent-looking, fairly green, but non-descript and bland.

Cases could be made for motorcycles, bikes, walking, the bus.

He was a carpenter - would he still have a van or pickup?

 

He was the step-son of a carpenter (if we go with the whole virgin birth thing). I don't think there's any mention in the Bible that he ever actually held a hammer or a saw in his hand. We are told that as a child he put the rabbis to shame with his Talmudic knowledge. Then there's no word of him until he began preaching. Why does everyone assume that he followed his step-father's profession in between?

 

Because we were told so by Indiana Jones.

Jesus could also have been a potter. His farther did show quite the craftmanship with clay, given that he made all of humanity

 

This is what confuses so many folks that say they follow the christ...

If you want to say that what happens in the biblical accounts of Judas, is the truth, then you are also saying what he did he was destined to do... and if he is destined to do this, then according to this line of thinking he cannot be held as evil for doing the will of god...

A lot of christians don't get that...

Now there is discovered another Gospel of Judas that turned up that reads a lot like the other two... that along with the several they have from Phillip and Andrew, and the written pieces they attribute to Nathanael/Bartholomew... none of which is biblical because of Nicaea...

 

All that and only three tequilas...

no way...

 

What car would Jesus Chrystos drive?

Most probably a Chrysler...
after all the company too has risen from the dead...
twice.

And is it mere coincidence that Lee Iacocca had Italian antecedents
and the current Fiat/Chrysler CEO, Sergio Marchionne, is Italian?
And both have connections to the Pope:
Lee Iacocca – Where Have All The Leaders Gone?
Pope weighs in on Fiat's planned closure

I rest my case.

 

Danial, just a couple of points...
1. Jonah was swallowed by the great fish--not Noah
2. A whale is a mammal, not a fish. So it couldn't have been a whale that swallowed Jonah (original Hebrew text says "a great fish").
3. Melville's experience as a whaler does not make him an expert on classifying aquatic animals. Most likely it was a shark of some sort that swallowed Jonah (assuming the story has any truth behind it at all).
4. Whales are warm blooded, so they're not all that "cool" like a fish would be.

 

Back in that era, was there a distinction between fish and mammals?

 

Taxonomy was somewhat simplified in those days. So was the periodic table: Fire, Earth, Air, and Water.

Tom

 

Oops! I think I must have posted before I'd had my morning coffee or something. :redface: Thanks for the correction.

As others have pointed out, the Bible was written before the Linnaean classification system was invented. To them, a whale was a fish.

I was being silly. Melville was a great writer and Moby Dick was a great, though disturbing, book. Melville devotes a good chunk of time to a discussion of whether or not a whale is a fish. He was well aware of the scientific classification, but chose to use the word "fish" differently than biologists do. In fact, in his day, he knew more about the physiology of whales than any scientist, since he had helped to cut so many of them into small pieces, and they had only studied the rare skeleton.

Common language is often distinct from scientific language. Most plants and animals have a scientific name, and many common names. The word "theory" has very different meanings in science (where it means a well-established and well-verified construct) and in common usage (where it means an unfounded hypothesis).

So it would be no surprise at all if the writers of the Bible called a whale a fish either out of scientific ignorance, or because they chose to use the word "fish" in its then-common meaning rather than the scientific meaning it would have millennia later (or centuries later if we are just speaking of the translation). Was there even a word for "mammal" in ancient Hebrew??? Did the people of that time know anything about whales? Would the people of the Mediterranean of that time ever have seen a shark big enough to swallow a man? Most likely they had seen whales from a distance and assumed them to be fishes.

It pleases me to use the archaic common meaning of the word from time to time.

And of course the event being related never happened. It's a story. We're talking about characters from a book that mixes history, fiction, fantasy, poetry, and mythology.

They are warm on the inside, but they are the temperature of the surrounding water on the outside. (Sounds like a Monty Python line. ) Touch a whale and it will feel cool. But of course, here again, I was using the common meaning of the word, rather than its literal meaning.

So, in conclusion, in my list of Bible characters I like, I include the fish that swallowed Jonah.

And thank you for pointing out my silly mistake regarding Noah and Jonah.