If Jesus really existed does anyone really think he wanted the people who basically crucified him to come together at the Council of Nicea and make a religion out of his life with certain books attributed to the exclusion of others?
Do you think Jesus wanted churches and priests and popes and a massive religion named Christianity to exist at all?
Or do you think he just wanted people to be more compassionate and loving in general without all that extra stuff that can be somewhat easily corrupted?
The other day I posted a really long article about some of my recent research into the subject of Jesus..
And.. I'm starting to lean more in the direction that he might have been a real historical figure.
I still have no clue, I'm not saying he is. I wasn't alive back then.. These are all ancient words to me that many people can't even agree on the translations of..
So.. I mean who really knows.. Though based on my recent research.. It does appear as if there was a different story of Christ than the one popularized and codified by the Romans.
This is a much different version than most Christians are used to and it will probably make them uncomfortable since most of them probably enjoy eating animals.
However, what some scholars believe to be the "original" Christians and followers of Christ were almost all vegan, and it's believe virtually all of his family and apostles were vegan as well except for Saul/Paul the one apostle who never met Jesus in person and who basically created the "Westernized" version of Christianity.
In fact.. It appears as if Jesus cared about the animals so much.. That he might have even been crucified for that reason.
We commonly blame the money changers or the "bankers".. Though in the gospels that talk about this, Jesus seems more upset at the animal exploitation going on.
It looks like they were selling animals to be sacrificed there and he didn't want any of that going on around or inside the temple.
"When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the Temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords and drove all from the Temple, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said: 'Get out of here.' (John 2:13-16)
Whether it was about the animals or about the money changers, or a combination of BOTH. It does appear as if Jesus is upset at the animal sellers.
And this actually goes back to like 600 years earlier when Jeremiah did the same thing and claimed the temple was full of robbers, yet it is believed there were no money changers at that time.. So.. It was likely Jesus was reenacting what happened earlier in history and was trying to stop animal sacrifice at the temple.
Either way. Fascinating that I never knew that or put 2 and 2 together there.
"The gospel of Mark correlates Christ's attempt to dismantle the sacrificial system with the plot to kill him. Like Matthew's gospel, Mark's account of the Temple Cleansing starts by saying that Jesus "began driving out those who were buying and selling there." It goes on to relate how he explained to the people why he was doing this, by quoting Jeremiah's opposition to animal sacrifice: "My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations. But you have made it a 'den of robbers.'" And in the verse of scripture immediately following that statement, Mark reports that "The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard about this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him because the whole crowd was amazed at his teachings."(Mark 11:18)
So here it is suggesting that Jesus was killed because of this action at the temple, whether it was the money changers, the animal sacrificers, or both!
To me, that makes him so much more heroic to me.. That he was possibly trying to defend the animals and got killed for it! If so, he's much more of a beautiful soul than I used to think.
Furthermore there's lines like this one in the bible.
"Acts 15:29 (ASV) that ye abstain from things sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication; from which if ye keep yourselves, it shall be well with you. Fare ye well."
Yesterday in my other post I claimed all food that isn't personally hunted is basically sacrificed to the idol of money, so if you buy dead animals.. You're contributing to sacrifice to idols.
Additionally, I forgot to touch on this part but it says.. "abstain from blood".. That's pretty much all meat!
Jesus right there is saying, DON'T EAT MEAT AT ALL.
If you're a Christian I hope you seriously take time to reconsider who Jesus really was and if you love him and God so much..
Maybe you should stop eating blood and sacrificing animals to an idol.
Strangely enough I think that above quote was from Paul... Yet it seemed like he is contradicting himself because he was basically at odds with all the other apostles and Jesus about such.
Yet.. In my mind he was an effort to take over the religion, so he had to sort of "play both sides".
He's some quotes to support Jesus was a vegan, there's more.. But I wanna keep this post shorter than the last one so maybe more people will read it!
The Ebionites accepted only the Gospel of the Hebrews as authentic and believed that this gospel was the original Gospel of Matthew. In their version of the Gospel of the Hebrews, known as the Gospel of the Ebionites, Jesus said:
“I am come to do away with sacrifices, and if you cease not sacrificing, the wrath of God will not cease from you.”
"According to the Gospel of the Ebionites, Lord Jesus also rejected the Passover meal:
“Where wilt Thou that we prepare for Thee to eat the Passover?”
To which he replied:
“I have no desire to eat the flesh of this Paschal Lamb with you.”
The Syriac Sinaiticus was found in the St. Catherine Monastery on Mt. Sinai in Egypt in 1892, and the Curetonian Gospels were brought from the Wadi El Nat-run monastery in Egypt to the British Library in 1842. In the Old Syriac Gospels, Luke 21:34, Jesus is quoted as saying:
“Now beware in yourselves that your hearts do not become heavy with the eating of flesh and with the intoxication of wine and with the anxiety of the world, and that day come up upon you suddenly; for as a snare it will come upon all them that sit on the surface of the earth.”
If any of that sounds interesting to you.. I'd be happy to hear your thoughts! And.. I will include a link below to my post on steemit from the other day talking about this in much greater detail if you'd like to check it out.
Peace! :)