Jesus was NOT omniscient
The following are verses showing that Jesus did NOT know all things."And Jesus saith unto them. How many loaves have ye?" (Matt. 15:34)
"How is it that ye do not understand that I spoke not to you concerning bread, but that ye should beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees?" (Matt. 16:11)
"... he asked his disciples, saying, Who do men say that I, the son of man, am?" (Matt. 16:13)
"..., how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you?" (Matt. 17:17)
"And he saith unto her, What wilt thou?" (Matt. 20:21)
"... Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" (Matt. 20:22)
"... What will ye that I shall do unto you: (Matt. 20:32)
"But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels who are in heaven, NEITHER THE SON, but the father." (Mark 13:32)
"And he went a little farther, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt." (Matt. 26:39)
"And Jesus said unto him, friend, why art thou come?" (Matt. 26:50)
"..., My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Matt. 27:46)
"And he asked him, What is thy name?" (Mark 5:9)
"And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that power had gone out of him, turned about in the crowd, and said, Who touched my clothes?" (Mark 5:30)
"He saith unto them, How many loaves have ye? Go and see." (Mark 6:38)
"And he asked them, How many loaves have ye?" (Mark 8:5)
"And he sighed deeply in his spirit, and saith, Why doth this generation seek after a sign?" (Mark 8:21)
"...; and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw anything." (Mark 8:23)
"And he asked the scribes, What question ye with them?" (Mark 9:16)
"And he asked his father, How long ago is it since this came unto him?" (Mark 9:21)
"..., he asked them, What was it that ye disputed among yourselves on the way?" (Mark 9:33)
"And he said unto them, What would ye that I should do for you?" (Mark 10:36)
"And Jesus answered and said unto him, What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?" (Mark 10:50)
"And Jesus INCREASED IN WISDOM and stature, AND IN FAVOR WITH GOD and man." (Luke 3:52)
"And he said unto them, Where is your faith?" (Luke 8:25)
"And Jesus asked him, saying, What is thy name?" (Luke 8:30)
"...; and he asked them, saying, Who say the people that I am?" (Luke 9:18)
"And said unto them, Why sleep ye?" (Luke 22:46)
"And he said unto them, What things?" (Luke 24:19)
"And he said unto them, Why are ye troubled? And why do thoughts arise in your hearts?" (Luke 24:38)
"..., he said unto them, Have ye here anything to eat?" (Luke 24:41)
"..., he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the son of God?" (John 9:35)
"And said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto him, Lord, come and see." (John 11:34)"Jesus answered them, Do ye now believe?" (John 16:31)
"..., and said unto them, Whom seek ye?" (John 18:4)
"Then asked he them again, Whom seek ye?" (John 18:7)
"Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepiest thou? Whom seekest thou?" (John 20:15)
"Then Jesus saith unto them, Children, have ye any food?" (John 21:5)
"He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonah, lovest thou me?" (John 21:17)
To avoid much repetition, only one question is written from the four gospels. Also, several times Jesus asked a question, obviously to provoke an answer. None of these types of questions are quoted here, but only the questions that seem as if the answer is not known.
submitted by Bill Henness
Comments
In fact, the word is not in the New Testatment.
Well, someone does read the posts on other threads, touche.
Let's be clear on this point. If a mortal father asks a question to get his children to think, the father is likely responsible and has assessed the risk of the child coming to the wrong conclusion, and possibly even further making a wrong decision. Call it part of life's lessons.
Now, when regarding a Holy Bible, that is considered by many religious people, the literal "word" of a God, the sole doctrine and guide for "salvation", one can only make a few observations...
A non-answer to a question;
1-That part of the bible, doesn't hold eternal consequence for "wrong" answers, goodie for me.
2-That part of the bible, was written by someone incompetent/sadistic, if that part of the bible knowledge, holds eternal consequence, like torture in hell, or salvation.
How unfortunate, that mortal fathers can help their children grow, by allowing them to learn from life's consequences, and a "book", which is unrelenting on eternal consequences doesn't hold such flexibility. Well, unless one accepts that the bible wasn't actually written by a God, and with eternal consequences, and therefore, can be updated;
2 Timothy 3:16 - "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:"
Well, that makes sense I suppose, but, that means... "...no hell below us, above us only sky..." - John Lennon
"So what, Jesus did not claim to be omniscient."
Anonymous said... All this proves is that you do not know how how to use context. You are a great example of proof texting. It was a great attempt!
Anonymous said... So if your professor asks you a question in a college class, is it because he doesn't know the answer, or is it because he wants you to think...
-----------------------
Hi everyone (yes again..LOL),
Because I'm fairly new to this site, I haven't really dug into the archives, but I promise I'll get there..... eventually.
I'm a bit confused as to the controversy here with this post.
Let me explain my confusion and maybe someone can clue me in to what I might be missing here?
Firstly, I'm making a grand assumption here, for sake of argument alone, that Jesus was real.
(Yeah, I know that's a "leap of faith", but it's necessary for THIS post alone, so forgive me, okay)
Perhaps I missed something in my somewhat diverse religious instructions of long ago, but I have to say that I was never taught by any sect of Christianity that Jesus, while in human form, had any type of 'infinite' powers, like god is assumed to have.
In fact, I recall being taught that he had to born and die a *normal* human, in order to 'save us' from that original sin stuff.
[[Yeah I know, it makes no sense to me either, how a son of god could fix such a sin problem by living and dying in human form for us, but hey, that's what the believers tell us is the case.]]
If someone believes he did have such all-knowing powers while on earth, then I have to ask; When exactly did he come into such powers?
From .......http://www.jesuswalk.com/lessons/2_39-52.htm
We read the following:
"He didn't start out from infancy with all knowledge -- he had "emptied himself" of omniscience when he became a man (Philippians 2:7)."
Putting aside this obvious piece of scripture, let's try and reason this problem out in a more human way.
Let's begin our exploration at a time when Jesus was just beginning his life on earth.
Surely as a fetus he didn't need to be all-knowing and I'm pretty sure he didn't as a baby either. The bible says nothing about Jesus being able to speak right from the womb, so what good would it do to be all-knowing if one can't communicate. Obviously Jesus would need to learn a verbal language in order to share any knowledge with anyone.
(Let me guess, Baby Jesus and his mother knew sign-language instead)
The only power he really needed as a baby was one that would keep him alive, no matter what, and that would be only if god didn't provide some guardian angel to keep him safe etc..
If Jesus was a true human as a baby, then he had the brain of an infant and such a brain is quite immature when compared to even a human adult's, so it would be a huge leap to think such an immature human physical brain could contain such vast supernatural knowledge.
(Before anyone suggest to me that we only use 10% of our human brain, and baby Jesus used all 100%, let me say that this 10% brain belief if just plain bogus !!)
Now we can't talk about the time from when he was a baby till the time he became 12 years old, for the simple reason that our wonderful bible doesn't see fit to tell us about those years. Let me guess though....he was a 'perfect little'--- errr---- 'angel' for his parents....LOL
The age of 12 seems to be a magical age in the Jewish religion and before we read of Jesus as an adult, this is the only other age mentioned in the bible about him.
While he had gained much wisdom by age 12, there is nothing to indicate he was all-knowing.
I'd like to discuss his teenage years, but again, the bible is silent about those troublesome teen years, that most of us who are parents of teens, deal with in our lives.
Important Footnote:
If there was EVER a time when Jesus would proclaim to his parents that he was all-knowing, then as anyone who has raised a teenager understands fully, all teenagers become all-knowing, almost overnight, and are happy to inform their parents of their vast sudden knowledge [grin]
So yes, I will venture to say that Jesus was indeed all-knowing, but only while in his teen years. Once he left his teen years, this all-knowing stuff subsided, just like it does with our own teens entering adulthood.
Let's look at two sample versus quoted by Bill......
"And Jesus saith unto them. How many loaves have ye?" (Matt. 15:34)
"..., My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Matt. 27:46)
While it might be possible that Jesus as an adult, was given vast amounts of knowledge by his father, this knowledge wasn't an all-knowing knowledge.
Obviously he didn't know every single thing going on around him, let alone in the rest of the world. He had no magical powers to know ahead of time how many loaves there were, nor do I think he would have needed powers for such mundane purposes.
In the second verse it becomes obvious that he realized his father left him "High-and-Dry".
If we assume Jesus knew all along that he was destined to die (which the bible supports), then this question is interesting because it implies that Jesus didn't know his father would turn his back on Jesus at such a critical time....Surprise!!!
Even without being all-knowing, wouldn't it have been an easy assumption on the part of Jesus, that at some point his father would have to do this to him.
So here it seems Jesus is not very 'knowing', let alone all-knowing, if you ask me.
"And Jesus INCREASED IN WISDOM and stature, AND IN FAVOR WITH GOD and man." (Luke 3:52
This verse clearly indicates that Jesus had an increase in wisdom, therefore he couldn't have been all-knowing from the start. He gained wisdom as he grew in stature...just like all humans tend to do.
Bottom line:
I fail to understand what the point here is about showing that Jesus wasn't all-knowing.
Are their some christian sects that believe Jesus was all-knowing while in human form, that author Bill was trying to prove otherwise to?
I also fail to understand why these Anon persons SEEM to object to the author making a case of Jesus not being all-knowing, claiming Bill failed to use proper 'context' in his argument and such.
From a down-to-earth standpoint, it just seems to me that if Jesus had been all-knowing while in human form and could see in advance all the horrid things he would have to face as a mortal human being, his life would have been filled with great anxiety.
I doubt that god would have wanted his now human son to live out his human life filled with huge amounts of anxiety, anymore than most of us would want to give it to our own children.
I can't say for how long Jesus would have known he was doomed to be tortured and killed, but one would think that god wouldn't have told him about the details of his fate when he was still a child.
Once again we SEEM to have touched upon yet another biblical controversy, which just gives us more credence to dismiss the bible as being from fact, because it's anything but clear about it's own teachings to us.
AtheistToothFairy
Notwithstanding, if "God", the one-and-only, Almighty creator of the Universe existed, and this being wasn't all-knowing..i.e.."omniscient", then there's absolutely no way that this being could know what's best for the future of mankind, thus, rendering any "plan" he might have highly suspect. Seriously now, should we just have "faith" that this alleged "plan" would be right? I don't think so. In fact, I'd hate to think where we'd be if we had substituted "faith" for scientific discovery all this time. Think about it.
Numbers at the time the bible was being written, held magical/mystical importance. The number "3" was considered "perfection/divine" for many sects (Pythagoras considered it peace and piety).
Hence, there is the "trinity", the "3" wise men, 33 books in the OT, and 33 in the NT. The age "12", when separated into 1 & 2, create the sum of 3. 3 day resurrection, Jesus died at the age of 30 or 33, in either case only three appear. Three years did Jesus minister... 3 points on the cross, and on and on and on.
There are unanswered questions, about the character Jesus' knowledge level, but one can't take the numbers in the bible at face-value. They lose their meaning when assumed to have literal western numeric values, and not the mystical values asigned them.
Post a Comment