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eli-kittim · 1 year

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Kittim’s Eschatology:

The Kittim Method

By Eli Kittim 🎓

Kittim’s eschatology is a view in biblical studies that interprets the story of Jesus in exclusively eschatological terms. This unique approach was developed by Eli of Kittim, especially in his 2013 work, “The Little Book of Revelation.” Kittim doesn’t consider Jesus' life as something that happened in history but rather as something that will occur in the last days as a fulfillment of bible prophecy. It involves a new paradigm shift! Kittim holds to an exclusive futuristic eschatology in which the story of Jesus (his birth, death, and resurrection) takes place once and for all (hapax) in the end-times. Kittim’s eschatology provides a solution to the historical problems associated with the historical Jesus.

Biographising the Eschaton: The Proleptic Eschatology of the Gospels

Kittim views God's inscripturated revelation of Jesus in the New Testament gospel literature as a proleptic account. That is to say, the New Testament gospels represent the future life of Jesus as if presently existing or accomplished. According to “The Free Dictionary,” the term “prolepsis” refers to “the anachronistic representation of something as existing before its proper or historical time.”

According to Eli Kittim, the gospels are therefore written before the fact. They are conveyed from a theological angle by way of a proleptic narrative, a means of biographising the eschaton as if presently accomplished. By contrast, Kittim’s work demonstrates that these events will occur at the end of the age. This argument is primarily founded on the authority of the Greek New Testament Epistles, which affirm the centrality of the future in Christ’s only visitation!

In the epistolary literature, the multiple time-references to Christ being “revealed at the end of the ages” (1 Pet. 1:20; cf. Heb. 9:26b) are clearly set in the future. It appears, then, that the theological purpose of the Gospels is to provide a fitting introduction to the messianic story beforehand so that it can be passed down from generation to generation until the time of its fulfillment. It is as though New Testament history is written in advance. It is therefore thought advisable, according to Kittim, to consider the collection of New Testament writings as strikingly futurist books.

The Epistolary View of Christ

The Epistles contradict the Gospels regarding the timeline of Christ’s birth, death, and resurrection by placing it in eschatological categories. The Epistolary authors deviate from the Gospel writers in their understanding of the overall importance of eschatology in the chronology of Jesus. For them, Scripture comprises revelations and “prophetic writings” (see Rom. 16:25-26; 2 Pet. 1:19-21; Rev. 22:18-19). Consequently, the Epistolary literature of the New Testament sets Christ’s birth, death, and resurrection in a different light, while apparently contradicting some of the Gospel material. Only the Epistles give us the real Jesus. Thus, in order to have a high view of scripture, one doesn’t have to accept the historicity of the Bible, or of Christianity for that matter!

Kittim’s Eschatology: The Kittim Method

Ephesians 2:4-7 alludes to a redemption established •in faith• prior to the coming of Jesus. This implies that believers in Christ can receive the Holy Spirit •retroactively• “through faith” (1 Pet. 1:3-5) based on the merits of the prophetic message revealed by God in the New Testament! Similarly, Titus 1:2-3 talks about a salvation which was promised a long time ago “but at the proper time revealed” (cf. Isa. 46:10). This is not unlike Hebrews 1:1-2 which states that Jesus speaks to humankind not in Antiquity but in the “last days” (ἐπ’ ἐσχάτου τῶν ἡμερῶν). First Peter 1:10-11 also suggests an eschatological soteriology, given that the holy spirit “predicted the sufferings of Christ.”

What is more, Second Peter 1:16-19 demonstrates that the so-called “eyewitness accounts” were actually based on visions (i.e. prophetic words) that were then written down as if they had already happened (proleptically). Similarly, Acts 3:19-21, in speaking about “the regeneration,” implies that the Messiah will not be sent to earth “until the time of universal restoration” (cf. Mt. 19:28). Put differently, the legend of Jesus precedes his arrival.

The same anachronistic (or proleptic) interpretation is brought to bear on the issue of the Messiah’s future incarnation in Revelation 12:5. Despite the fact that the reference to Christ’s birth in Revelation 12:5 is clearly future, Christian theology has, nevertheless, always maintained that it already happened. Thus, the notion of a historical Jesus does not square well with the context and content of these prophecies. In fact, according to Luke 17:30, the Son of Man has not yet been revealed (cf. 1 Cor. 1:7; Phil. 1:6; Col. 3:4; 2 Thess. 1:7; 1 Tim. 6:14; 2 Tim. 4:1; Titus 2:13; 1 Pet. 1:13; 1 Jn. 2:28). That’s precisely why the New Testament accounts of Jesus are essentially prophetic. For example, according to Revelation 19:10d, “the testimony [to] Jesus is the spirit of prophecy”!

Christ is born in the Fullness of Time

Interestingly enough, Ephesians 1:9-10 defines “the fullness of time” (τὸ πλήρωμα τοῦ χρόνου, which we also find in Galatians 4:4) as the consummation of the ages. Thus, according to Galatians 4:4, Christ will be born in the end-times! That’s why 1 Peter 1:20 (NJB) informs us that although Christ was foreknown through visions and revelations by the agency of the Holy Spirit, nevertheless he will make his one and only appearance “at the final point of time.” What is more, Hebrews 9:26b (KJV) states quite explicitly that Jesus will die for the sins of the world “in the end of the world (KJV), or “at the end of the age” (NRSV). A historical-grammatical study of the phrase ἐπὶ συντελείᾳ τῶν αἰώνων demonstrates that it refers to “the end of the world” (cf. Mt. 13:39-40, 49; 24:3; 28:20; Dan. 12:4 LXX; see also G.W.H. Lampe [ed.], “A Patristic Greek Lexicon” [Oxford: Oxford U, 1961], p. 1340)!

Christ’s Death and Resurrection at the End of the Age

In the Greek NT, Romans 5:6 intimates with hardly any ambiguity that Christ “died” (ἀπέθανεν) at some unspecified time of human history by using the phrase κατὰ καιρὸν, which means “at the right time” (cf. 1 Tim. 2:6), or at “the proper time,” and does not necessarily warrant a reference to history. Similarly, Isaiah 2:19 offers us a markedly different interpretation concerning the timing of the LORD’s resurrection, namely, as an event that takes place in the end time. Isaiah does not simply say that “the LORD” rises, only to quickly evanesce, but that he “rises to terrify the earth.” In other words, there’s no 2,000 year gap between the LORD’s resurrection and judgment day. What is often overlooked in Isaiah 2:19 when doing exegetical work is the significance of the Hebrew term קוּם (qum), which is rendered in English as “rises,” and is often used in the Bible to mean “resurrection” (see e.g. Job 14:12; Isa. 26:19; Mk 5:41). Astoundingly, the LXX translates it as ἀναστῇ (i.e. resurrection). The word ἀναστῇ (e.g. Mk 9:9; Lk. 16:31) is a derivative of ἀνίστημι, which is the root word of ἀνάστασις and means to “raise up” or to “raise from the dead.”

There is biblical support for this conclusion in Daniel 12:1-2. For instance, the end-time death and resurrection of “the great prince” in Daniel 12:1 (παρελεύσεται Dan OG 12:1 LXX; ἀναστήσεται Dan Th 12:1 LXX) occur just prior to the general resurrection of the dead (Dan. 12:2). Similarly, “Christ the first fruits” is said to be the first to rise from the dead during the future general resurrection of the dead in 1 Corinthians 15:23. This is confirmed in Zephaniah 1:7 in which the Lord’s sacrificial-death takes place during “the day of the Lord”!

Conclusion

Exegetes must interpret the implicit by the explicit and the narrative by the didactic. In practical terms, the NT Epistles and other more explicit and didactic portions of Scripture must clarify the implicit meaning and significance of the Gospel literature. Accordingly, this paper argues that the Epistles are the primary keys to unlocking the future timeline of Christ’s only visitation.

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ultralaser · 1 year

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How much do you want to bet that Jesus would hate most of what calls itself Christianity today?

i think he'd be about 50/50, and it would mostly depend on whether we were talking about christians like mlk and raphael warnock, or mike huckabee and lou dobbs et al

well, 50/50 might be optimistic, but he would definitely say that most christians probably mean well but are held back by their own biases or their leadership

as a palestinian jew living under martial law in roman occupied judea, historical yeshua would find a lot of common ground with the palestinian struggle today, and find the mike pence end times death cult to be a bunch of people being waylaid by their own prejudices, and their leadership taking advantage of them to enrich themselves, same as the rest of the christian right / white supremacist wing of america

but he would love the black church, and he would love mlk and obama's attempts to reframe the ideals of christianity / the united states as things we are still striving towards, not something we ever had and then left behind. that re-reckoning with and reclaiming of and active resistance to and undermining of the systems of imperial domination would feel very familiar to him

i think for most of the christian right he would adopt their own mantra of love the sinner hate the sin, and push for them to leave the worst branches of american christianity and reject the core tenets of the gop. for everyone else he would mostly say the same things he did the first time about doing more for each other than ourselves

in a lot of ways the world isn't that different, he would immediately recognize us hegemony as roman rule and speak out against it in much the same language as mlk did, and he would be hated for it just as they both were by conservative elements in their own time

#jesus #yeshua #historical jesus #white jesus #ask party

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stpauligirl · 2 years

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Lift up the receiver.

#colonizer jesus #historical jesus #personal jesus

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st-george-and-the-dragon · 2 years

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Afaik the church has no required teachings about the appearance of Jesus so I choose to believe in small Jesus.

Imagine the disciples lifting him up on their shoulders like Rudy after he debates some Pharisees.

#short jesus #historical jesus #christianity #catholicism #jesus christ #catholic #history

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rivage-seulm · 2 years

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Ascension Sunday: What’s Christianity for Anyway? (Sunday Homily)

Readings for Ascension Sunday: Acts 1: 1-11; Ps. 47: 2-3, 6-9; Eph. 1: 17-23; Lk. 24: 48-53 http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/050913-ascension.cfm This is Ascension Sunday. For us Catholics, it used to be “Ascension Thursday.” It was a “holy day of obligation.” That phrase meant that Catholics were obliged to attend Mass on Thursday just as they were on Sunday. To miss Mass on such a day was to…

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noknowshame · 1 year

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why is religious Christmas imagery all so joyful and pleasant? where is the inherent horror of the birth of Christ? A mother is handed her newborn child, wailing and innocent. Her hands come away sticky. Red. Simply by giving her son life she has already killed him. He is doomed from the beginning. Her love will not save him from suffering. Because the thing cradled in her arms is not a baby, it is a sacrifice: born amongst the other bleating animals whose blood will one day be spilled in the name of what demands it. the night is silent with anticipation. Mary, did you know? That your womb was also a grave?

#instant conversation enders for my multiple youth pastor cousins #don’t say it (I’m gonna say it)#The Child is The Price #but i mean come on #as someone who isn't actually even christian the real-life historical version of this is still cursed as fuck #i mean we know that jesus was a person who existed. whatever circumstances he was born in #its terrifyingly ominous to imagine being so unaware of the affect your child will have on the future of humanity #time itself will one day be counted around your birth of him #and all because he will suffer an excruciatingly painful death that you will not be able to prevent #not only that. but regardless of his or your intentions #regardless of whether there is a god #for millenea unfathomable millions will have blood spilled and will spill blood in his name #atrocities will be committed that you cannot even conceive of #and all on his and your behalf #you love your child. its beautiful. but there's horror in what you've done. because everyone else will love him too #and what's more dangerous than that?

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leewoof · 2 months

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Jesus Was Not White

Jesus was not White. He wasn’t Black, either. Jesus was Middle Eastern. Biblically, he was descended, not from Japheth, nor from Ham, but from Shem. Historically, he lived, not in Europe, nor in Africa (though he did spend some time in Egypt as an infant), but in the Middle East. A Galilean man Physically, he probably had olive skin, brown eyes, and brown to black hair, similar to this modern…

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#Christianity #Historical Jesus #Jesus #Jesus Christ #Joseph #Mary #race relations #Shem Ham and Japeth #the birth of Jesus Christ

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thinkingonscripture · 5 months

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What Jesus Suffered in the Hours Prior to His Crucifixion

Jesus loved the Father (John 14:31) and submitted Himself to do the Father’s will (Matt 26:39-44; cf. Rom 5:19; Phil 2:5-8), which included enduring the illegal trials of His accusers, as well as the eventual mockings, beatings, and crucifixion. All that Jesus suffered was prophesied in Scripture (Gen 3:15; Psa 22:16-18; Isa 50:4-7; 52:14; 53:3-12; Matt 26:67-68; Mark 10:32-34). God the Father…

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rw7771 · 8 months

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#podcast #historical #history #historical Jesus #Jesus Christ #mark vinet #history podcast #parthenon #parthenon podcast

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frankencanon · 8 months

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 1 year

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Okay, but if Jesus isn't real, why do historians believe he is real if the gospels are made up?

There are two things we need to be careful of: what we mean by "historians" and what we mean by "Jesus."

History is studied based on evidence. There are multiple lines of evidence for someone like Alexander the Great or even Pontius Pilate. For Jesus, there are zero. Jesus never wrote anything. People who supposedly knew him didn't write anything about him. No record keepers - or what we might regard today as journalists - traveled along with him to see what was up with this amazing man who definitely existed.

If a person existed today who could verifiably walk on water, wouldn't journalists and reporters follow that person around trying to get interviews and pictures and record everything they could about what this unique-in-all-of-history person said and did?

The bible says that people came from far and wide to have their illnesses cured. There aren't any records from doctors to indicate anything of the sort occurred. There aren't any records showing chronic leprosy outbreaks suddenly vanishing. We should be able to trace a pathway through the Middle East as he conducted his ministry, a route along which diseases were miraculously eliminated, with unusual levels of health and wellbeing. Even if we can’t find him, we should be able to see the effects of his activities.

Instead, what we have in the bible is stories written decades after by anonymous authors who weren't there, revised, expanded, rewritten and elaborated for 200 years before being canonized. There’s nothing anyone can tell us about Jesus that doesn’t come from the bible.

The only thing we can find in history is people who believed he existed. Even the bible admits this. But this doesn’t get us anywhere. We can also find people in history who believe Slenderman, Paul Bunyan and interstellar aliens existed.

None of the gospels were actually written by anyone named for the books. Believers often claim that they're eyewitness accounts, but we know they're not, and we know that the names given to them are by tradition, not by authorship.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel

The four canonical gospels were probably written between AD 66 and 110. All four were anonymous (with the modern names added in the 2nd century), almost certainly none were by eyewitnesses, and all are the end-products of long oral and written transmission.

The word “pseudepigrapha“ is a deliberately obscurantist term referring to bible lies. Many of the non-gospel writings, such as the epistles have questionable authorship: a good half of Paul’s epistles are regarded as fraudulent (that is, pseudepigrapha), having been written by other people pretending to be Paul; while other epistles are anonymous, falsely attributed to people who didn’t write them, or ambiguous.

Mark was the first gospel, and wasn't written until at least 30 years after Jesus' death. Believers like to cite writers like Thallos, whose writings were sketchy at best, and Josephus and Tacitus, despite Josephus not even being born until at least four years after Jesus’ supposed death.

Thirty years ago, the Rodney King riots broke out in Los Angeles. Imagine if no record of this event existed until today. Imagine if we relied entirely upon the records of someone born four years after, in 1996, to understand what happened at that time. The problem with citing either Josephus or the gospels themselves is that we know they didn’t get it first-hand. If these writers had sources, we should be getting those sources instead. But we’re not.

We know that the Resurrection story from Mark 16:9 onwards was added on much later by someone else (i.e. it's fraudulent). This isn't even controversial. We also know that Matthew is an attempt to revise and redact Mark and was written even later. In many cases it copies word-for-word what Mark says. Luke is similar. When they're not copying each other verbatim, they're often saying completely contradictory things.

John makes things even worse. The Jesus of John might as well be a completely different person. He's doing different things for different reasons. He isn't the “gentle Jesus, meek and mild” Jesus of Mark, Matthew and Luke, he's bolder and unambiguously divine. Or as one writer put it: "John portrays Jesus as 'a God striding over the face of the earth.'" Just the kind of story you'd write if you were creating propaganda for a new cult.

We know that the nativity story was added at least a hundred years later. We know that the crucifixion story is ahistorical; crucifixions were not carried out that way or for those crimes, and bodies were left up to rot as a warning to others. He would not have been taken down and buried; the Romans would never have cared about Jewish custom. And there are no records of the other men who were supposedly crucified alongside him.

We also know that the depictions of characters such as Pontius Pilate contradict what we know of the real people. And nobody can actually find where Jesus supposedly was or did at any particular time.

We know the Cleansing of the Temple - where Jesus disrupted the moneychangers - is ahistorical. Despite most artwork showing a few dozen people being chased out of a church, the temple itself was multiple times larger than a sports stadium, taking multiple years to finish.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Temple#Herod's_Temple

Reconstruction of the temple under Herod began with a massive expansion of the Temple Mount temenos. For example, the Temple Mount complex initially measured 7 hectares (17 acres) in size, but Herod expanded it to 14.4 hectares (36 acres) and so doubled its area.

A standard American football pitch is about 0.7 hectares (1.7 acres).

Because the moneychangers were a necessary part of Jewish worship - pilgrims were expected to bring an animal to sacrifice, but many traveling from afar would need to buy one locally and would only have their own currency - the act itself would have been regarded as an antisemitic scandal, comparable to plastering swastikas all over your local sports stadium, and reverberating throughout the Jewish community. It's written about nowhere in Jewish records. And considering it was supposedly perpetrated by a Jewish man, it’s clear the author had no idea of the significance of these practices.

None of this constitutes "history." It's not just that the gospels are explicitly not historical, it's that the history we do know about doesn't line up with what the bible says.

This is historical Neil Patrick Harris.

This is Harold and Kumar (H&K) Neil Patrick Harris.

Historical NPH is a gay man. H&K NPH is a drugged-out, heterosexual creep. It’s entirely possible that Historical NPH has gone to White Castle at some point in time. Does that make H&K NPH real? No. The existence of Historical NPH goes no way towards making H&K NPH real.

Likewise, even if anyone could find a Historical Yeshua - and nobody can - we can concede the existence of some Jewish apocalypse preacher roaming around the countryside without any anxiety or pain. His existence goes nowhere towards substantiating the claims of the bible.

The Jesus of the bible was specific. He did specific acts, said specific things. Although even the bible itself is contradictory about what those things are. For example, the bible gives two contradictory genealogies leading from Adam - who we know to be fictional anyway - through to Jesus. As mentioned, we know that the Pilate of the bible is a fictional version of real-world Pilate, in the same way as H&K NPH.

Historical fiction is a genre of writing. “Gone With the Wind” is set against the backdrop of the American Civil War and Reconstruction. Didn’t happen. The film Contact depicts then-US President Bill Clinton telling us about alien contact. Didn’t happen.

We know that it’s only recently that writings in the “biography” genre are intended to be historically accurate. Prior to only a couple of hundred years ago, “biography” referred to a class of writings that were intended to be inspirational or to promote admiration for the subject, not tell an unbiased, accurate account of their life. In the case of Xianity, “hagiography” refers to this kind of propaganda intended to inspire people to convert.

The bible not being a historical document is even stated so at times by the authors. Paul openly states that he lies - he becomes like one of whomever he wants to convince. The author of John, in a section literally called “The Purpose of John’s Gospel,” claims to have written it so “that you may believe,” not to state reliably what happened. The author of Luke begins by saying that there are a lot of stories about what went on in those days, and that he’s going to provide the true account. And then proceeds to mostly regurgitate Mark.

The gospels aren’t even written like eyewitness accounts, being consistently in the third-person no matter who is around, including when Jesus is alone by himself, when Jesus is alone with Pilate, or alone with the Devil. Nor are they written like historical record, since they don’t provide the account of where this information came from, who told who, the records the author used to construct this history. They’re all written like fictional narratives. It’s weird believers don’t notice this.

The argument around a historical, real-world counterpart to the character in the bible is nothing but a distraction. Believers propose a divine, magical man, literally the son of a god, but when pressed on it instead try to justify it by the mere existence of some unremarkable Jewish man. It’s what’s called “playing tennis without a net.” When the net is imaginary, every ball you serve, no matter how weak, goes over it.

Any amount of historicity in the bible - and there isn’t as much as most believers think - is irrelevant.

Believers must find their magical, water-walking, water-to-wine-making, demons-in-pigs, fig-tree-cursing, flying-into-the-sky Jesus. The one the bible actually describes.

But first, they should actually try to write down a coherent sequence of events of his life using all the gospels, without leaving anything out. When they figure out that it’s not possible to form a coherent history of Jesus’ life, they should reconsider why they thought any of it was historical in the first place.

Until they can and do, we don’t need to put much thought into storybook characters. Much less worship them.

#ask #christianity #jesus christ #historicity of jesus #myth of jesus #bible jesus #historical jesus #bible #bible study #bible nonsense #religion #religion is a mental illness

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eli-kittim · 1 year

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The Da Vinci Code Versus The Gospels

By Eli Kittim 🎓

Bart Ehrman was once quoted as saying: “If Jesus did not exist, you would think his brother would know it.” This is an amusing anecdote that I’d like to use as a springboard for this short essay to try to show that it’s impossible to separate literary characters from the literature in which they are found. For example, when Ehrman says, “If Jesus did not exist, you would think his brother would know it,” his comment presupposes that James is a real historical figure. But how can we affirm the historicity of a literary character offhand when the so-called “history” of this character is solely based on, and intimately intertwined with, the literary New Testament structures? And if these literary structures are not historical, what then? The fact that the gospels were written anonymously, and that there were no eyewitnesses and no firsthand accounts, and that the events in Jesus’ life were, for the most part, borrowed from the Old Testament, seems to suggest that they were written in the literary genre known as theological fiction. After all, the gospels read like Broadway plays!

Let me give you an analogy. Dan Brown writes novels. All his novels, just like the gospels, contain some historical places, figures, and events. But the stories, in and of themselves, are completely fictional. So, Ehrman’s strawman argument is tantamount to saying that if we want to examine the historicity of Professor Robert Langdon——who is supposedly a Harvard University professor of history of art and symbology——we’ll have to focus on his relationship with Sophie Neveu, a cryptologist with the French Judicial Police, and the female protagonist of the book. Ehrman’s earlier anecdote would be akin to saying: “if Robert Langdon did not exist, you would think Sophie would know it.”

But we wouldn’t know about Robert Langdon if it wasn’t for The Da Vinci Code. You can’t separate the character Robert Langdon from The Da Vinci Code and present him independently of it because he’s a character within that book. Therefore, his historicity or lack thereof depends entirely on how we view The Da Vinci Code. If The Da Vinci Code turns out to be a novel (which in fact it is), then how can we possibly ask historians to give us their professional opinions about him? It’s like asking historians to give us a historical assessment of bugs bunny? Was he real? So, as you can see, it’s all based on the literary structure of The Da Vinci Code, which turns out to be a novel!

By comparison, the historicity of Jesus depends entirely on how we view the literary structure of the gospel literature. Although modern critical scholars view the gospels as theological documents, they, nevertheless, believe that they contain a historic core or nucleus. They also think that we have evidence of an oral tradition. We do not! There are no eyewitnesses and no firsthand accounts. All we have about the life and times of Jesus are the gospel narratives, which were composed approximately 40 to 70 years after the purported events by anonymous Greek authors who never met Jesus. And they seem to be works of theological fiction. So where is the historical evidence that these events actually happened? We have to believe they happened because the gospel characters tell us so? It’s tantamount to saying that the events in The Da Vinci Code actually happened because Robert Langdon says so. But if the story is theological, so are its characters. Thus, the motto of the story is: don’t get caught up in the characters. The message is much more important! As for those who look to Josephus’ Antiquities for confirmation, unfortunately——due to the obvious interpolations——it cannot be considered authentic. Not to mention that Josephus presumably would have been acquainted with the gospel stories, most of which were disseminated decades earlier.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to downplay the seriousness of the gospel message. I’m simply trying to clarify it. The gospels are inspired, but they were never meant to be taken literally. I’m also a believer and I have a high view of scripture. The message of Christ is real. But when will the Jesus-story play out is not something the gospels can address. Only the epistles give us the real Jesus!

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