"Give to every human being every right that you claim for yourself." - Robert Green Ingersoll
I reserve the right to disobey that advice. ;)
Right, so yesterday I saw a rather thought-provoking chat-status about Jesus working best as a metaphor. I mentioned it to my dad on the way to school this morning, and he shared an interesting bit of information that he learned in his Religious Symbolism class that he took in college.
He learned a grand total of two things in that class that he currently remembers. The first is "religion" meaning "re-binding," meaning it's a thing you must do repeatedly to keep yourself close to God. Meaning that (most forms, anyway, of) Christianity is technically not a religion, since the whole point is that God is always with you all the time. But that's not what this post is about.
This post is about the second thing: that during Biblical times, apparently, when Jews referred to someone as "the son of" somebody, they were referring to the cultural tradition that when a boy/man comes of age, he can then speak for his father in business deals. So calling Jesus "the Son of God," by this reasoning, means that people just really liked his teachings and thought they made sense so he may as well be speaking on behalf of God- not that he was literally His son.
And regardless of whether you believe that, or whether or not you think Christ works best as a metaphor, it's an interesting interpretation. And I'm all for unique interpretations (as long as they're not completely out of the ballpark, anyway).
Fascinating. Interesting read there.
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