I too have enjoyed this thread. I have only recently been following telicthoughts but have been intrigued by the information presented on this site. My background is in Software Engineering so I don't have the physical or biological sciences education that many on this site have. However, I do find the dialogues interesting and simply had to get engaged in this particular thread. I agree with Pez's post above regarding the N.T. view of "high Christology" in that other N.T. writers besides Paul record for us this view.

Thanks for the dialogue. I look forward to being involved in others.

P.s.
Thought Provoker, if you wish, there is one other question I would like to ask you regarding Christ's claims. But, I will leave it alone unless you wish to pursue that dialogue…

"It would be difficult to find more typically Talmudic expositions of Scriptures than those in the Epistles of Paul.
…
Truly Paul was a Jew not only in his physical appearance, but he was also a typical Jew in his thinking and in his entire inner life. For Saul-Paul was not only 'a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees', but also one of those discipoles of the Tannaim who were brought up on the exegesis of the Torah, and did not cease to cherish it to the end of their days.
Paul lived by Jewish law like a proper Jew; also he knew the Old Testament in its Hebrew original and meditated much upon it … Hence there are Semitisms and Hebraisms in the language of the Epistles, in spite of the richness of their Greek.
…
Hebrew of Hebrews' and 'a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees', educated in Jerusalem and able to make speeches in Hebrew (or Aramaic), obviously not a 'Septuagint Jew'"
…
"Paul is a trained Pharisee who became an apostle to the Gentiles."
…
"Paul was a scholar, an attendant of Rabban Gamaliel the Elder, well-versed in the laws of the Torah."
…
"Paul had an openly avowed knowledge of Hebrew and of Pharisaic tradition
…
proves an independent and creative master of the genre (Midrash)
…
"Paul's use of Scripture, of midrashic techniques and of contemporary exegetical traditions in Romans 9:6-29 yielded a highly sophisticated composition. It cannot have been the product of an uneducated mind. If he was not trained by Gamaliel, then he was taught by some other Jewish master. In any case it seems clear that Paul received a formal education in the Judaism of the time"

By the same token, Jesus and His brothers also spoke Aramaic and taught in Hebrew while being conversant in Greek.

Before you get too carried away with the supposed Hellenism of Paul (I presume you are thinking there might be undue Pagan influences) and his knowledge of the Stoics, recall that he was primarily a Jew among Jews, a Pharisee's Pharisee, the last of the Apostles, and not the first, and even followed Peter in reaching out to the Gentiles.Ben Witherington, What Have They Done With Jesus? page 230
He continued after his conversion to reckon time by the Jewish festivals and advanced much further in Judaism than others of his age. 231
He was probably a member of an extreme faction of Pharisees who were trying to emulate the Elijah or Phineas. 234
Although many want to paint Paul as a Hellenized Jew of the Diaspora "we must assume that Paul's formative years were spent in the Holy Land, and in fact mainly in Jerusalem", born inTarsus but raised in Jerusalem, the son of a Pharisee. "Paul could well have gottent he rudiments of a good Greco-Roman as well as Jewish education right in Jerusalem." 235
"He would not claim to be a Hebrew of Hebrews if in fact he had grown up in the Diaspora and did not know the sacred language." 236
"No one disputes the notion that Paul's Jewishness was more a primary factor in determining his identity than was his roman citizenship." 245

Before Paul, there were the brothers of our Lord:
James the Just (Jacob), the brother of Jesus, the so-called Christ, was a pious a observant Jew, respected by Jewish Christians and very strict Jews alike.
Ben Witherington,What Have They Done With Jesus, page 212
Jesus' other brother, Jude (Judas, Judah) also (obviously) knew Hebrew, Aramaic and some Greek. He had great rhetorical skills a good Greek vocabulary and oral skill in Greek, but his syntax was not honed - it was not his native language. He and James both make use in their letters of extra-canonical Hebrew works not part of the Septuagint.
220
His letter can be conceived of as a midrash on the Old Testament. His book is also more evidence of an early high Christology and the Biblical use of the Trinity. 221

All of the inner circle of Jesus were Jews advocating what they took to be a Christological reformulation of Jewish monotheism with the premise that the Old Testament was God's good revelation for God's people , including his Christian ones - … Jesus was confessed, worshipped, and proclaimed as the risen Lord in all of the communities addressed in the New Testament era that we know of.

224

A late take on a high Christology is historically false. … the earliest Christologies were some of the highest ones, seeing Jesus as both human and divine. This is because those who knew him best and earliest knew that this was a fair representation of how he presented himself, what he taught and did, and what the implications of his resurrection were. Such ideas characterized Jude's theology just as much as they characterized Paul's. Thus, Paul cannot be seen as the inventor of such ideas about Jesus, as we shall now see.

225

"I don't think, then, that we can talk about Pauline Christology or Pauline eschatology as if he had somehow invented these ideas. Although Paul was their most able and clear exponent, and in some cases the first exponent, other early Christians were equally prepared to talk about the preexistence of the Son of God, and to call Christ God."
249

Likewise we never see in the New Testament any arguments against a Q community or a community that thought Jesus was merely a teacher or sage - because there were no such communities then to argue against.
250
We also don't see any arguments against or traces of what really happens when Jesus teachings are given a Hellenistic spin - as in the Gosepl of Thomas.

Lastly, from this book,
"Paul … was right when he said already in his earliest letter, Galations, that there is no other gospel than the one originally proclaimed by the inner circle of Jesus. There seems not to have been any major Christological dispute among members of that circle."
273

Sorry about my absence for the last couple of days, but real life priorities kept me away and will continue to distract me for a while.

Thank you for this interesting discussion. I am optimistic that it provoked some independent thinking in the listening audience.

It is a good bet that will have more opportunities to discuss this in the future.

Meanwhile, I will look more into the possibility that "take up the cross" predated Yeshua Ben Yosef's execution along with the "no cross, no love" concept FMM has suggested.

I have also come to better understand just how much of the New Testament is dependent on Paul and his followers. Thank you for bringing this to light. This warrant's further understanding in Paul's Hellenistic upbringing.

Thank you all again for providing the counter balance to this exercise in independent thinking. I look forward to the next time.

Thank you for your comments.

I am glad I reminded you of some happier moments.

Your understanding has a rather demotivating effect when dealing with other people who do not Grok science fiction.

Why doesn't everyone see the value in exploring and embracing multiple independent thoughts and concepts?

Again, I am glad to have met you.

For some reason that version lost its opening.
Here it is …

Hi TP,
Forgive me for the repetition here if this posts twice.
It disappeared upon posting and when I retrieved it much was missing. I'm going to try to recreate what was missing.

For the first half of your comment I didn't see much contradiction to what I said with maybe a side comments or two and asking a rhetorical "does it?".

I'm glad to hear it. Here are some of the clarifications I added in that half that you say did not contradict your posting and which you have not disputed here:
Jesus' claim to divinity was revealed again.
We don't need the original autographs in order to accept that the Bible presents a reliable historical record.
Pauline philosophy was not an extension of Greek teaching.
The record indicates that Christians were worshipping Jesus as God and were preaching His Crucifixion and Resurrection from the earliest of times - these were not later legendary accretions.
Monism fails as a philosophy in its various forms for its failure to account for the individual and non-unity.

I guess I have two versions of a comment stuck in the filter.
If you wouldn't mind posting the second one (with my attempted html tags) I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks.

We also know that this same reliable source offers us the testimony of a first rate historian in Luke (perhaps the finest of ancient times) , who wrote more of the NT than even Paul did. These two highly educated men, whose historicity and general honesty you admit, had a very high view of Christology and had it early and before legendary embellishment had time to set it.

As you admit that Jesus really existed, and that His followers and greatest chroniclers were not making up stories wholesale all you have to do now is ask yourself why these people believed as they did, worshiped this "man" and suffered and or died for their taking up their crosses in His name.

Why did Christianity come into being?

While you seem sure the phrase "take up the cross" predated Jesus' crucifiction, you didn't provide anything besides your assertion.

True. That's because as I peruse my shelves I can't for the life of me recall the source.
I hate to use a blog as a reference, but at least this has a discussion of the use of the phrase. It doesn't make the exact point I wish to (that others used the phrase, pre-Jesus) but it does show the literal meaning before it took on the added symbolism deriving from Jesus' Crucifixion (and anticipated and directly prophesied by Jesus). The point being, Jesus would have had a deeper meaning pertaining to coming events, and that meaning would be clear to those looking back later, but the phrase still had its own popular meaning to those listening with no knowledge (or at least no thorough understanding) of its portent.
http://practicaljesus.blogspot...
Another look at why this saying was not a distraction from Jesus' message but was a clear statement to His listeners at a very accessible level ( although it would soon have greater significance even - which context He had already expounded immediately prior to these words anyway):

This is not the way Jesus used the phrase, "…take his cross…" To understand Jesus' use of the figure, one must place himself on the streets of Jerusalem during the first century. Imagine standing on a street corner talking to a friend, when you hear a commotion down the street. You turn and look to see a squad of Roman soldiers coming toward you. In the midst of them is a man struggling with a cross. This was a common sight. It was not unusual and you had seen it before. You knew what was to happen. Soon the man you were watching would be outside the gates of  the city. He would be forced to the ground and nailed to the very cross he was carrying. The cross would then be raised to an upright position and he would hang there until he was dead. This was the picture created in the minds of those who heard Jesus. Jesus was not asking for a token commitment. Jesus was asking for total commitment. Jesus was saying that he wanted your life. Just as you knew that the life of the man who was carrying that cross no longer belonged to him, but belonged to Rome, so Jesus is saying that in order for one to be his disciple, their life will not belong to them but will belong to Him! Just as the life of the one struggling down the streets of Jerusalem with a cross was forfeit to Rome, so the one who would become the disciple of Jesus will forfeit his life to Jesus. Jesus will be the one to determine how that life will be conducted.

http://www.bible.ca/ef/exposit...
You commend yourself for the depth of your thinking and understanding when it comes to your vague use of the word love but why not challenge yourself to plumb the depths of not only the sayings of Jesus but the very profound writings about them? God has not written a one-dimensional story but one that resonates in layer after layer - in history.
http://www.jesuswalk.com/lesso...
===

I would be interested in understanding this. Is this concerning the Jewish prophesies concerning the "mashiach"?

Correct. Jesus saw Himself as the Messiah, consciously and unconsciously fulfilled the prophecies regarding this claim ( according to our the two very credible historical figures discussed above) found in such places as Psalms 22 and Isaiah 52 and 53 (among other places), and was neither mad or bad. We are still left with the third choice - God.
On the other hand, I presume you continue with your fourth choice, that the NT authors were liars. But the plausibility of that position is fast fading (further illustrated above) as we look into even your acceptance of their veracity and find that common ground you established earlier. We are establishing more and more the veracity of the writers and the early (pre-100 AD, let alone 325) existence of these beliefs.

To me saying "I would say love and consciousness have similar problems with objectivity." For some reason, you asked…

"Does it work for masochists as well?"

Not quite. I asked this question because you claim to be Love, fashioned out of Love. To determine what you meant by "Love" I asked about certain attributes you either demonstrate or have admitted to and wondered if they were aspects of your idea of "Love".
You defended your claim by saying that said behaviour (including arrogance, boastfulness, impatience, etc.) was loving - as though by definition - because you were "doing unto others…".

But if this kind of relativism reigns then a masochist, as an example, could follow your lead and do unto others as he would like them to do unto him.
By other standards, however, he would be considered cruel. Does your definition of "love" allow that he has as much right to define loving behaviours as you do?

Interesting question.

Which you've avoided twice. Will you answer it this third time?

What is the standard Christian answer for that?

As for me, I can answer your pushback on the first try. No, the definition of love is not this far up for grabs. Boastfulness is not love; neither is arrogance, pride, impatience, deceit, burning with cigarettes, punching in the face ….
Regardless of whether or not the person doing such things would like it if others were to do the same unto him.

Actually, the leaping in and boldly challenging was your (repeated) nose-thumbing at Bradford and the rest of us with this comment and the one that followed it.

This is a fair critique.

Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

It is my hope and expectation that our back and forth as helped provoke some independent thinking in others listening in.

Yes, mine as well. If they have been fooled by popularized skepticism and faux scholarship on the issues of, for instance, the Council of Nicea, the Trinity in early belief, Jesus' claims to equality with God, the nature of His mission, what His disciples claimed, what Paul believed, the Jewishness of Paul and the Apostles, etc., I would hope to be able to do some small service to liberate them from such culturally-dependent misconceptions.

I have a Regis Neptunis on the wall right above my computer. There's a note scribbled in the lower right margin from my Dad to my Grandmother. The award was Dad's (first crossing of the equator, a regular big deal in the Navy). Not to worry - he ended up at the Pentagon, then teaching nuclear engineering at the Citadel before retiring and doing much more fun things…

From the USS Indianapolis, an NIS vessel which had a rather unique role in the bombing of Hiroshima. For those of you who remember "Jaws," pleasant nightmares! §;o)