God never knew Jesus would be killed?

by venus 16 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  venus

  Jesus gave an illustration with a landowner being the central character:

  “There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place.When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit. “The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way. Last of all, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said.

  “But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’ So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.” (Mathew 21:33-39)

  This illustration was my stumbling block when I a Witness. I asked many elders about this, but none of them gave me a convincing answer.
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  Nevuela

  My only takeaway from this parable is, that landowner is out of his fucking mind for not evicting the tenants and turning them in to the police for murdering his servants the first time it happened, and then for sending more servants and his son to certain death.

  Also, unless the son just happened to be carrying his entire inheritance on him, how the ever-loving fuck do the tenants expect to take it from him?

  And finally, how does this story even begin to suggest that God didn't know Jesus would be killed? It reads like the exact opposite. This is textbook foreshadowing if I ever saw it.
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  TheWonderofYou

  A single passage that maybe be a last straw like I had also my straws. If one cant imagine that killing the son was god's PURPOSE, one will find many of such passages even in the bible, the bible is actually a jewish book in general and the jewish picture of God, which is reflected in the parables of the bible, was not the same as JW have.
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  venus

  Here any sort of interpretation is ruled out because in His message to Judah, God Himself says sacrificial killing of a son is “something I did not command, nor did it enter my mind.”—Jeremiah 7:31
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  tor1500

  Hi,

  God may not have known but Jesus knew....he spoke of it many times in the NT.... Jesus even asked that he didn't have to do it but only if his father willed it...

  I think God had hope that it wouldn't turn out the way it did....his hope was for humans to resist Satan...Judas could have changed his mind....but he didn't. The play had been thought out, Jehovah all the time hoping we would resist the Devil.....

  But let's really take a look at this picture, reminds me of a gangsta picture, the boss asked one of his pals or sons to take the fall for mankind, the boss says, don't worry, you won't take the fall for long...as a matter of fact, you'll be free in three days, whaddaya think...can you do it...now it's gonna hurt and you'll be humiliated...but just think in 3 days, you'll be up and free before you know it...So Jesus agrees to sacrifice himself....why? Well, he is a good guy,& he loves his Father, but this is not in the bible, or maybe man got it wrong when they wrote the bible....Jesus may have asked...You sure you are gonna resurrect me in 3 days?

  Here's a question for all...would you sacrifice your life if you knew you were going to be raised to life in 3 days ? Most folks wouldn't sacrifice a ham sandwich at 11 o'clock at night....

  The Bible is full of parables...they are just lessons for life... the Bible has been re-written by man...maybe God really said, I hope they respect my son....but if not..

  Tor
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  waton

  The parable's situation would be, to some degree, consistent with the picture one could have of a deist's creator, who, being eternal, is already in the eternal future, (the dimension of time) and is observing what might develop in the outworkings of creation, bound by the given laws, as the universe expands through time.

  leaving all options open, anything is possible, even a change of hearts.
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  venus

  To1500,

  You ask: “would you sacrifice your life if you knew you were going to be raised to life in 3 days?”

  When God asks, anybody would do it without any second thought, hence it won’t be sacrifice at all.
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  David_Jay

  Jehovah's Witnesses have to put on blinders when it comes to this and like sections of Scripture. But Christianity is general doesn't suggest much better.

  To illustrate, in the NABRE, the official Catholic Bible of the United States of America, the footnote to this parable reads:

  Because of that heavy allegorizing, some scholars think that it does not in any way go back to Jesus, but represents the theology of the later church. That judgment applies to the Marcan parallel as well, although the allegorizing has gone farther in Matthew. There are others who believe that while many of the allegorical elements are due to church sources, they have been added to a basic parable spoken by Jesus. This view is now supported by the Gospel of Thomas 65, where a less allegorized and probably more primitive form of the parable is found.

  This, mind you, is from the Roman Catholic Church, the denomination that makes claim to writing and officially selecting and canonizing the Gospel of Matthew. (If one counts this this happened when the Catholic Church was united with the Orthodox Church before the schism, this claim is not without some historical merit.) In other words, contrary to JW teaching (and due to critical analysis of manuscript transmission), this was not a "prediction" of Jesus or even uttered by him.

  After the death of Jesus, his followers had to develop a way of making his crucifixion appear as if it were "part of the plan" from the beginning. In this instance a parable of Jesus appears to have been extended and such liberties taken with it that it now reads in such a manner to teach that the upcoming Passion events of Jesus never caught Jesus off guard (and thus shouldn't shake his followers who may be stumbled by the idea of a suffering and dying messiah).

  It needs to be emphasized that Catholics see this type of interpolation as part of the "inspiration process." Jesus never really spoke this parable exactly, but by virtue of the fact that his followers wrote this and the Church canonized it emphasizes their conviction that this "added" meaning was written under the direction of the Holy Spirit. This is how John 16:13-14 is interpreted in reference to this, not that the Spirit would introduce further teachings but would interpret what had occurred and been said by Jesus in a new light.
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  TheWonderofYou

  This is the passage from the "Gospel of Thomas", edited by Benton Layton

  http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/thomas/gospelthomas65.html

  http://gnosis.org/naghamm/thomas_poxy.htm
  
  

  LAYTON
  (65) He said, "A kind man owned a vineyard, and put it in the hands of cultivators for them to cultivate, so that he might get its produce from them. He sent his slave so the cultivators might give the produce of the vineyard to the slave. They seized, beat, and all but killed his slave, and the slave went and spoke to its owner. Its owner said, 'Perhaps they did not recognize it (the slave),' and he sent another slave. The cultivators beat the other slave. Next the owner sent his son and said, 'Perhaps they will show respect for my son.' Those cultivators, since they recognized that it was he who was heir to the vineyard, seized him and killed him. Whoever has ears should listen!"

  However the "killing of the Son" is included also in this version. Therefore supposedly the story or parable has a very early origin. The other gospel writers put the parable in a scene - the dispute with the pharaseans and highpriest - and write that they understood that they were meant as evil tenants, what in the Gospel of Thomas is not the case though.

  However the "The killing of the son" part of the story may have been part of the original saying of the 1st century church reflecting and giving sense to Jesus death. But in the interpreation of the parable the death of Jesus is not the main aspect at all.

  Most commentaries write that it turns about a lession of the kingdom of God, namely that God awaits his people to bear fruits in the vineyard and living in the kingdom means living as we had only the last chance too to show respect for what he gifted us as our portion of his vineyard.

  Examplary comment:

  God is in the parable also pictured as "winegrower" who knows of the fail of the vineyard Israel (Isa 5) Once more God lets decide the people if they want to shape their lifes in accordance with God.But as in the parable of Adam and Eve who secretly ate what was not entitled to them, here men publicly and forced want to take life and its fruits in their hands. Both times the human wish to be "heirs of God" ends in death and expulsion, there from the paradise, here from the vineyard. Although this time even the "Son" was sent they forgot that without God they would have harvested nothing.
  The parable is a story about a often newly granted chance.
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  venus

  David_Jay,

  You got it correctly when you said: "After the death of Jesus, his followers had to develop a way of making his crucifixion appear as if it were "part of the plan" from the beginning."