I do not suggest the exclusion of John; I suggest we look at John critically, something I suggest we do with each of the Gospels.

Was Jesus not tempted by Satan? Just as Buddha was tempted by Mara, Jesus was tempted by Satan, and the result was the same in both cases - the devil, upset with the prophets wise answers, left. The story is the story of Jesus casting away the last of Satan's grasp upon his soul.

Before I go much further with this, I only speak English. I am certainly no authority on translation regarding Biblical texts. I think part of the problem exists also in that the virgin birth of Jesus is not addressed in our earliest texts, and is something that appears in later texts, leading some scholars to think the notion of a virgin birth was an addition made by later Christians and not part of Jesus' own doctrine.
Also, in Isaiah, instead of using the Hebrew word for virgin, a more general term is used which means young woman. This has lead some to argue that Isaiah does not predict the virgin birth of the messiah.
However, in the time of Jesus, and to the present, the prevailing thought among practitioners is that the messiah is to be born to a virgin. This may be the reason why early Christians added the virgin birth to their accounts of Jesus (appearing in Mathew and Luke), so as to make Jesus more appealing to Jews, just as many pagan traditions were adopted by Christians to make Christianity more appealing.

Rejecting the notion of miracles does not mean one must reject all Biblical teaching. Why should it? If we reject miracles, why must we reject the notion that love for all human kind is a good thing, something to be practiced?

And I quote "Our father, who art in heaven..." If God is the father of all, then we are all His children, sons of God.

You are right to say that Jesus and the disciples see Jesus as something special - he is the messiah, their teacher and certainly was thought to be a holy man, more holy than any other perhaps. I do not argue that Jesus was no more holy than anyone else - he seems to have been far more holy. What I doubt is that this holiness which we ascribe to Jesus can only be attributed to Jesus.

But he seems to teach otherwise when he instructs those gathered to pray "Our father".

All in all, I think the fact that Jesus teaches us that God is "our" father is enough to show that being the son of God is not a unique title. As for the OT prophecies, I want to bring up again what Jesus says about the prophets and the laws - that the value in them is their instruction with respect to loving God and loving our neighbors as we love ourselves. I'm not convinced that Jesus was, or that we should be, concerned with the dogmatic beliefs many OT lines have spawned, as Jesus is clear that we should not let them become dogma.

If you want some background information, the wiki article is decent. You can find full versions of the text in a simple google search.

this is probably very dim and misses the point of this discussion, so apologies in advance, but has no one considered that what we know of jesus from the bible has been subject to various other agendas of the people who actually put the book together? i mean that for various different people throughout history it has been beneficial for jesus to come across as god personified ect.
you said at the start, unless i misunderstand, that you wnated to seperate what jesus actually taught from what we have been told he taught. but surely what is written in the new testament is a result of what numerous other parties wanted it to look like he taught, and jesus' actual teachings in their original form are lost to history...

Your concerns are more than valid - they're spot on.

Luckily for us scholars, the history of the Bible is well documented. This leaves us the messy job of sorting out the records we have; no easy task. For any given book of the Bible, an original copy simply does not exist. What we have instead are a number of early copies, and references to even earlier versions. Wikipedia has a decent series on Biblical scholarship of this sort.

Given the nature of the subject, no one would suggest that any amount of study and research will allow us to definitively sort out true Jesus from invented Jesus. What we can do; however, is look at the information we have and sort out what is most likely Jesus from what is most likely added.

One interesting example of this is the Jeffersonian Bible and a study done on the language of Jesus. Thomas Jefferson collected, from a wide variety of translations and versions, sayings of Jesus which he found to be spiritually valuable in his own practice. Recently, scholars and linguistic experts studied the language Jesus used to highlight sayings most likely used by Jesus. Jefferson's Bible and the teachings these experts decided can be attributed to Jesus with a degree of certainty turned out to be remarkably similar in content.

Didymos Thomas

I may be mistaken here (which wouldn’t be the first time) but what I find interesting is the scepticism on who or what Jesus is. Considering the "christian church example" it may be warranted, but just the same. Jesus is about the Truth and the Mercy of God. The concept of all men as son’s of God was God’s intention according to scripture. In other words, are we sons of God or are we suppose to become son’s of God?

Adam is referred to as a son of God in Luke: 3
38: Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.
(was the son of God is also key) but Jesus is referred to as the only begotten Son of God, I think there is over 10 references to this in the NT and some in the OT. Which supports the "virgin" claim. Not of a man but of God through a woman. And why would the apostles themselves proclaim this if Mary didn’t tell them so, she did hang out with them a lot.

Why there would be a conspiracy to fake the world into believing that God’s mercy is no further then one turning to God to become that which God made man to be (With God and not without God), so that he can know the Living God. I don’t get the motivation to deceive. If you do so, will you not know? If He is who they say He is, and one calls upon His name( in private mind you) asking Him to be one’s Lord and Savior, would you not know?

If the concern is christian abuse of submission as a submission to them or the church. Oh ya that is true, they seek it from others all the time. But the true submission is to the Mercy of God through the acceptable Way ordained by God. Which is Jesus. Not religion.

It is proclaimed that He fulfilled the OT. Most jews that except, including rabbis, Jesus as the Christ, the Promised One. Usually come to that Truth when studying Isaiah.

Another thing to take into consideration is the people that wrote and maintained the OT do not consider Jesus as the Christ, but yet it prophesy's Him. So it would have to be a collaboration of two opposing beliefs. Which back in the day, where venomous towards each other.

I'd like to believe that we are all sons and daughters of God and that we can and should follow the path of Jesus. I believe that Jesus believed in many of the same beliefs taught in other religions and would not be opposed to other religions.

I think the skepticism is justified due to the nature of the information we have about Jesus. Record of him outside of Biblical literature is almost non-existent. What we do know amounts to him being some sort of Jewish spiritual teacher, in the general vicinity of where the Bible claims, and that he was executed. As for the Biblical literature, we must also be careful. What we have is an oral tradition (though a recent one) being written down, and copies being produced by hand, rarely by trained scholars. The original copy of each work is long lost to time, and even within the earliest versions we find, discrepencies appear.
As for your question about our relationship to God, I can explain my perspective. Looking at scripture, and seeing the phrases "Son of God", "Our father", ect., I found value in the following understanding: We are all the children of God, we are all of God, thus we should strive to act as children of God should act.

As for a conspiracy, I'm not sure what you mean. The point I was trying to make was that the most common perspective is that Jesus, as the only Son of God, is of a more divine nature than the rest of humanity.

Except that the Old Testament, rather, the books that compose it, predate Jesus. Of course the authors of the OT did not think Jesus to be the Messiah, Jesus was yet to be born.

You should check out Karen Armstrong's "Living Buddha, Living Christ" if you haven't already.

Acharya S
http://www.TruthBeKnown.com

just to clarify

How can one be the son of that which he does not know? A son knows his father and the father knows his son. If one doesn’t have a relationship with God then one is not a son of His.

Interesting video. (The music was a bit dramatic though... ) Some of it seemed a little fabricated, or was at least reaching pretty far. (Example: I don't think any Christian scholar really thinks Jesus was born on the December 25th, we know that that was added later.) It also didn't take into account that a lot of Christians believe in Christ-types that point to the truth of Jesus (though I understand from their perspective that sounds absurd). I wish they would have expounded a bit more on how they think the story was actually fabricated, not just on what part of the story simbolizes what sign, etc.

It reminds me to a degree of some of the one-sided videos produced by Christians themselves: Far reaching claims that can't really be substantiated in 1/2 an hour, dramatic music, one-sided arguments, etc.

Definetely a worthwhile one to watch for Christians, unless you are quickly angered or confused by people who hold very different world-views and support it with arguments, in which case maybe you'd better steer clear.

Edited to add: Just wanted to add that I started doing a little "research", and though I don't want to start an argument, some of the "facts" in the video don't line up with what I'm finding (mostly wikipedia though ). Just adds to my opinion that it seems a bit like one of those "one-sided" videos that people make (both Christians and others), which can be interesting and informative but definetely set up to look more complete than it is...

Going back to finish up my thoughts on the Gospels' testimony about Jesus' Divinity, virgin birht, etc. I didn't end up with anything conclusive, but here are the few thoughts I had:

As far as the Gospel of Thomas goes, I am no expert, but it seems to me that it is in direct disagreement with at least two of the others. And since it seems to be the most questionable (open to debate of course), and it is outnumbered, I'd probably eventually go with a consensus of the others if I can. Of the other four Luke and Mathew clearly (to me anyway) spell out Jesus' virgin birth, and therefore His divinity. Mark gives no background whatsoever, but starts right in with the baptism of Jesus and God saying "You are my Son". And John begins with Jesus being described as devine, though again no birth details are given. So from all of that, I think I'd say that if I was going to take just those 5 books as my resources, I would come away with the idea that Jesus was the (singular) Son of God, and this was demonstrated through a fatherless birth.