Eating Bread

[Detales]

Where is anything, Spirithound? It is always in your mind first, and you project it out as the scenario you wish to experience as your version of a consensus. “Jesus” came into your mind as an idea cluster, and you manipulate that idea according to the connections you make with it. If your understanding of Jesus was Real, we all would have it off the bat, irrevocably. But we don’t. Jesus is contents, pointing to Real Substance. Your way of accounting is the root cause of the misunderstanding of the Identity statements attributed to Jesus, and to Horus, and to others. There is a reason for that.

 

[Spirithound]

Where is anything, Spirithound? It is always in your mind first, and you project it out as the scenario you wish to experience as your version of a consensus.

Well, there’s a penny right in front of me. Sure, I had to know what a penny is, and “in front of me” is a relative term which is only good until I move, but the penny is still there.

“Jesus” came into your mind as an idea cluster, and you manipulate that idea according to the connections you make with it. If your understanding of Jesus was Real, we all would have it off the bat, irrevocably. But we don’t. Jesus is contents, pointing to Real Substance. Your way of accounting is the root cause of the misunderstanding of the Identity statements attributed to Jesus, and to Horus, and to others. There is a reason for that.

I must be super-thick. I don’t understand this part at all. “Jesus” didn’t come into my mind as an idea cluster, that would be an impossibility. Ideas enter the mind one at a time, and associations are built over time. I also don’t know what you mean by “Real”, or why it’s capitalized. Is there anything that everybody gets right off the bat?

 

[Pax]

Pax, I forwarded your post to a friend on here, Simeon Harvey, whom you may look up under that name. Here was his response.

What am I to make of someone who, apparently thinks, “(i.e. Adam and Eve [ate an] apple).”? The Bible doesn’t tell us what they ate only that it’s fruit.

They fell because they ate? No it was because they didn’t follow God’s will and an express commandment, one rule. Despite His warning that when they ate from that tree they would die, which they didn’t, Adam lived 130 years. Genesis 5:3.

Jesus never spoke figuratively? What then are the parables?

Eating a loaf of bread manifestly isn’t literally eating the body of Christ. The Eucharist is a holy union with Christ until we can be with Him in paradise. For a long, long time (centuries maybe, I’d have to look it up again.) the rumor was spread that Christians were cannibals.

As for the manna prefiguring the Eucharist, Nietzsche said, some people will grab onto “any stick of wood in the Old Testament and say it prefigures the cross.”

…
…

I wonder why the writer left off 59? It’s at the bottom.

49 your fathers did eat the manna in the wilderness, and they died;
50 this is the bread that out of the heaven is coming down, that any one may eat of it, and not die.
51 I am the living bread that came down out of the heaven; if any one may eat of this bread he shall live--to the age; and the bread also that I will give is my flesh, that I will give for the life of the world.' 52 The Jews, therefore, were striving with one another, saying, How is this one able to give us his flesh to eat?’
53 Jesus, therefore, said to them, Verily, verily, I say to you, If ye may not eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and may not drink his blood, ye have no life in yourselves; 54 he who is eating my flesh, and is drinking my blood, hath life age-during, and I will raise him up in the last day; 55 for my flesh truly is food, and my blood truly is drink; 56 he who is eating my flesh, and is drinking my blood, doth remain in me, and I in him. 57 According as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, he also who is eating me, even that one shall live because of me;
58 this is the bread that came down out of the heaven; not as your fathers did eat the manna, and died; he who is eating this bread shall live–to the age.’
59 These things he said in a synagogue, teaching in Capernaum;

---

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…”

Simeon Hovey :compcoff:

So…Simeon is unhappy with my reference to Adam and Eve and the eating of the fruit? I used the common reference of the “apple” and this is problematic? That is pretty weak. Moreover, what am I to make of someone that quotes Nietzsche for purposes of exegesis?

I also fail to see even a shred of refutation by way of scripture. Likewise, I do not deny that Jesus spoke in parables. He simply was not using a parable in this particular passage. The evidence for this is quite evident even to someone as simple minded as myself. First of all, Jesus is not using the pattern of a parable in his presentation. Moreover, we have a huge indicator that he is not speaking in terms of a parable or symbol because of numerous other things which are as follows:

1. Jesus precedes the discourse on the bread of life in John’s gospel by a series of miracles. The miracles are the changing of water into wine at the marriage feast of Cana, the miracle of the loaves and fishes, and Jesus walking on water. The first two miracles show us what Jesus can do with food, and the third miracle shows us what he can do with his body. These miracles precede the discourse in John’s gospel to set us up for believing what he tells us about the promised miracle of the Eucharist in John 6.
2. There are no parables before the discourse on the bread of life and there are no parables subsequent to the discourse until much later in John’s gospel. The discourse is actually bracketed by miracles which is a strong indicator that John 6 is in reference to a miracle and not a parable.
3. Within the discourse itself we have references to two miracles. Those miracles are those of the manna in the desert from the OT and the ascension of Jesus into heaven which is a future miracle to be fulfilled after Jesus death. Jesus actually compares his promise of giving us his body and blood as true food and true drink to these two miracles. It makes no sense to make a comparison between two miracles and a parable or a symbol.
4. Finally, if Jesus is only speaking symbolically then we have a new problem to deal with. In Jn 6:51 Jesus says:

I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh."

Jesus is telling us that the bread he intends to give us is his body as true food, and he says that this bread is the very flesh that he will give for the life of the world. If the Eucharist is only symbolic, than so is his flesh that hung upon the cross for our salvation. No one believes the latter and it is therefore impossible to believe the former based upon the words of Jesus himself.

I do not understand why Simeon Hovey would ask about verse 59. Perhaps he or you could be specific about yours and his concerns.

God bless.