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    The Mind of Christ
    The Mind of Christ
    The Mind of Christ
    Ebook68 pages1 hour

    The Mind of Christ

    By Ed Hurst

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    About this ebook

    To be a Christian means following Christ. From our grounding in our Western intellectual heritage, we are crippled in our pursuit of all we could know about Jesus. This is a short booklet exploring the unique Hebrew intellectual heritage of Jesus the man, so we can better grasp the mind of Christ the divine.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEd Hurst
    Release dateOct 29, 2012
    ISBN9781301162093
    The Mind of Christ
    Author

    Ed Hurst

    Born 18 September 1956 in Seminole, OK. Traveled a great deal in Europe with the US Army, worked a series of odd jobs, and finally in public education. Ordained to the ministry as a Baptist, then with a non-denominational endorsement. Currently semi-retired.

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      Book preview

      The Mind of Christ - Ed Hurst

      The Mind of Christ

      By Ed Hurst

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2012 by Ed Hurst

      Copyright notice: People of honor need no copyright laws; they are only too happy to give credit where credit is due. Others will ignore copyright laws whenever they please. If you are of the latter, please note what Moses said about dishonorable behavior – be sure your sin will find you out (Numbers 32:23)

      Permission is granted to copy, reproduce and distribute for non-commercial reasons, provided the book remains in its original form.

      Table of Contents

      Chapter 1 - Apologia

      Chapter 2 - The Task

      Chapter 3 - Reign of Justice

      Chapter 4 - Common Sense

      Chapter 5 - Background

      Chapter 6 - Messianic Expectations

      Chapter 7 - All in the Family

      Chapter 8 - Rolling with Roles

      Chapter 9 - Parables and Miracles

      Chapter 10 - Limits of a Broken Covenant

      Chapter 11 - Give Them Room

      Chapter 12 - The Special Case of Peter

      Chapter 13 – Epilogue

      Chapter 1 - Apologia

      You can have the mind of Christ.

      In 1 Corinthians 2, Paul explains in part why the Corinthians struggled so with the gospel message. At the end this explanation (verse 16), he uses the term mind of Christ. Much has been written on this, several books with that phrase as the title. We can’t fault the work of those who came before us, but it should be obvious to anyone, if we already agreed with their work, we need not bother writing something fresh. It occurred to me Paul explained in that chapter of his letter something it seems so many people miss. Christianity is in essence an Eastern religion, and the Corinthian believers were still clinging to their Western intellectual roots. Paul attacks the Western intellectual approach to understanding the world as a force contrary to the very mind of Christ and the will of God.

      Paul could claim to have the mind of his Savior because they shared a common Hebrew heritage. But more, they shared a common spiritual orientation built from that heritage. It’s no secret Paul had to throw away his very substantial position among the Sanhedrin to become a Christian. While both were nearly pickled in the intellectual assumptions of the Pharisees of their day, they clearly rejected the Pharisaical approach to Scripture.

      What was that Pharisaical approach? It was a mixture of Hebrew content with Hellenistic assumptions and analysis. Hellenism is the common academic term referring to the intellectual assumptions of the Greco-Roman civilization of that day. Today it’s roughly equivalent to the term Aristotelian, a reference to Aristotle, the great philosopher and teacher of Alexander the Great. During his years of conquest in that part of the world, circa 300 BC, Alexander was a hard-core evangelist for the intellectual culture of the Greek intelligentsia, and the those people called themselves Hellenes (after Helen of Troy). Thus, their intellectual legacy is Hellenism, and we can trace how the rabbinical scholars of that time embraced Hellenism. In so doing, they dismissed the ancient Hebrew intellectual approach. (See Edersheim’s Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, Book I.) The religion of Judaism is not the same thing as the Old Testament religion of Moses.

      That the two are quite different is easily proven, and yet so often ignored by most modern Christian scholars. Even among those who are aware of this conflict, it seems they side with the Pharisees, seeing no problem with reading the entire Bible from that Aristotelian approach. Perhaps these Christian scholars really do not understand how completely different it is; they seem to ignore how Jesus Himself, and His followers such as Paul, rejected Hellenism in favor of the ancient Hebrew approach. While none of the New Testament writings state it in those modern terms, it seems obvious from how they expressed themselves that they were favoring the Hebrew way over the Greek, even as they expressed Hebrew thoughts in the common Greek language. Centuries of serious academic work support this interpretation, and even secular scholars can point it out.

      Believers who become aware of this are left wondering why so few Christian writers today can offer an explanation of Scripture from this more Hebraic approach. As noted, it’s not out of reach, and it doesn’t require advanced degrees in philosophy, theology or the like. Further, there’s every reason to struggle for that understanding. This ancient Hebrew way is God’s own choice for His revelation. Indeed, not simply something He found and liked, but something He created Himself, as we can see by whom He chose to build His nation and carry His message. So why do all those today claiming to offer God’s message eschew the ancient Hebrew approach? We may never know, but let us determine we will not continue in what seems such an obvious mistake.

      Today’s Western scholars use dismissive terms such as mysticism for this approach. While technically correct, the connotations are unfortunate and inaccurate. It shares nothing with New Age beliefs or any other brand of mysticism. The term mysticism itself means simply non-rational inputs to our minds. The whole idea God can

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