You forgot my favorite parable, The Cleansing of the Temple:
And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables; And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father’s house a house of merchandise. John 2:15-16
Jesus whipping money lenders will always make me chuckle.
It wasn’t about money changers, it was about the people selling animal sacrifices. The money changers just enabled them.
This is more explicitly laid out in Mark where it prohibits carrying anything through the temple.
That gets conveniently left out in Matthew where he copies from it as there’s a bit of a theological paradox if it’s Jesus’s death that makes animal sacrifices pointless and he’s telling people to stop killing animals to cleanse their sins while still alive.
It gets even more juicy if you learn the context at the time. It was about loans. Jesus wiped the debt records. Jesus;DROP TABLE HIGH_INTEREST_LOANS
The concept of racism didn’t exist in 1st Century Judea. That being said, the parable of the Good Samaritan relies on bigotry.
Despite being superficially a complement, “Good Samaritan” is supposed to be ironic. Samaritan “goodness” must be unexpected for the story to work.
Imagine a parable of “the generous Jew” or “the industrious black man”, and you’ll get the idea.
Mitchel and Webb did a great sketch on this:
The story makes sense (in context) because of animosity between Jews and Samaritans, going back many years. A modern equivalent might be a Trump supporter helping out a democrat, or a Russian helping a Ukrainian.
John 4:9 gives a good illustrates this situation. In that story, a Samaritan woman is surprised that Jesus would talk to her when he is a Jew. It also illustrates that Jesus very much went against the culture of the day in his relations with Samaritans.
So, Jesus’ wasn’t making a statement about whether Samaritans were good or bad - he was explaining that being someone’s neighbour is about how you treat them, not who you are. A modern parallel might be the famous 'today you, tomorrow me’ story on reddit.
The story makes sense (in context) because of animosity between Jews and Samaritans, going back many years.
The story relies on prejudice, that’s my point. Jesus didn’t say “Seminarians were as good as Jews”, he said “Jews are worse than Seminarians”.
There are dozens of examples from the Bible where prejudice and bigotry are explicit. Hell, the whole concept of a “chosen people” implies that some people are better than others. Jesus ordered Saul to genocide the Amalekites. And if you notice, Jesus punished Saul for not killing every single last one, which implies that genocide isn’t just permissible, but a moral duty.
( I know that these stories are from the OT and you’re probably annoyed that I said Jesus instead of God, but according to the sign out on route 519, Jesus is God. Y’all still believe that, right? )
The concept of racism didn’t exist in 1st Century Judea
The concept is as old as mankind. Details (replace ‘race’ with ‘guy from next tribe’, same concept) or it’s name maybe not.
That’s called bigotry or jingoism, depending. Racism is a distinct flavor, and much like “Orange didn’t exist as a color before the 15th century,” there lacked the basic concept of a race as determined by skin color vs other identifiers such as language, city-state-affiliation, or religion.
The concept of racism didn’t exist in 1st Century Judea.
Were Jews not already looking down on others as the “chosen people”? They may not have had supremacy, but I would expect that they considered their rulers inferior. Maybe my mind is polluted by what Zionism has become. Also, I recognize that not all Jews are Zionists.
That’s what I dont get. White Nationalists hate the Jewish but worship Jesus, who is also Jewish?
They love their made up Jesus.
Their made up jesus loves Guns, Racism, Money, and hates brown people and kindness.
Which is fitting for people who have never bothered to read the bible outside of some mistranslated quotes their greedy, money grubbing and hate mongering preachers repeat ad nauseam.
Also remember that today’s Bible was retold by a game of telephone before being written down. It was then written in a tongue the average person on the street could not read, this was so that they could not translate it themselves and were at the mercy of a preacher to tell them what it said. It was illegal to translate and/or distribute a copy of the texts.
This is all to say that had any of it been real, it is more than likely to have been reshaped over the years, before white nationalists have now added their own spin.
I sometimes wonder if any of it was a game of telephone. If you take out all the parts that are borrowed from Greco-Roman and traditional Jewish writings you are left with so little. Enough that it could have been made up by the authors. We don’t have direct evidence of the oral tradition or even someone remotely natural hinting it existed.
Everyone reimagines the story in their own image. Whatever you want him to be be is what he is. That’s the great thing about fiction. Why Vampires glitter now.
You just made me remember Twilight, thanks I hate it
Time to rewatch the intro to hellsing ultimate abridged
“Who is it?”
“Oh you know, * BLAM * a real fucking vampire.”
Pretty sure he had an AR-15 and lived in a trailer park in east Kentucky, check your facts dude
