As a religiously neutral person (I don’t fit with either atheists or agnostics), I like the idea of this.
There is a finite amount of information about Jesus… and a lot of speculation. There are also other books that are not part of the Bible because those who curated the Bible chose not to include them. The first five books of the New Testament for example, the Gospels of Luke, John, and the others, are the stories of Jesus, but they differ slightly due to each disciple’s interpretation. You may ask why Judas didn’t get a book? He wrote one. But it was not included because he was the traitor who betrayed Jesus. So he doesn’t get a say. But, what if he did?
I’d like to see this chat bot be very transparent about its sources. By default it should limit itself to what is in the Bible, but it should also be possible to add other sources as well. If Christians are truly serious about the command by God to not add anything to the Bible, a Jesus chatbot should be more trustworthy than some Biblical scholar’s book about Jesus. The latter is speculation while the former should only be sourced from the Bible. Sure, it might be sacrilege, but if it’s done right, I think it could be an invaluable tool for priests who want to run their planned sermon — since a lot of them now are writing them on a computer anyway — by “Jesus” to have “Him” tell them if anything goes against the Bible and how they could improve it.
I’d just be curious what it says about certain controversial topics, especially if it goes against the Christian grain, and can source its reasoning with Scripture. To avoid blasphemy, it should also tell you straight up that it is not pretending to be Jesus, but rather, is only using the entire Bible (+ whatever sources you add) to help you understand what Jesus, as portrayed in those sources, would say. I imagine it would be against abortion, for example, since the act of a married het couple is an act of God and the fetus would have a soul. It would be less sure if the parents were not married, but I think it would still be against it. That said, it would probably be for immigrants and the poor. It would point out that homosexual sex is considered an unclean act, but the actual love and relationship itself is not and that a pious life would counteract that, and it could also point out that everyone sins and lives unclean lives, and that’s the whole point of John 3:16. But, what do I know, I’m not a Christian. I’ve just read the Bible. A long time ago. But I feel like I got the message.
So you definitely don’t have education on Christianity in a theological or religious studies capacity. To begin with: it’s absolutely certain that none of the gospel writers met Jesus. They compiled stories of him into cohesive narratives. There were other gospels floating around (including Judas’s, but that’s highly unlikely to have been written by Judas Iscariot). Hell, Paul of Tarsus who wrote a lot of the epistles never met Jesus. The creation of biblical canon was a difficult process and to this day Protestants use 7 less books in their Bible than Catholics (the deuterocanonical books). The orthodox have even more deuterocanonical books.
These books aren’t just curiosity. They contain some of the fundamental disagreements between Protestants and Catholics, such as purgatory, angelic/saintly intercession thanks to prayer, and the idea that salvation may be possible through good works. And this isn’t getting into sola scriptura vs Tradition, but that’s also huge, as Catholics believe that formalized beliefs and practices passed down through the centuries can be just as legitimate as scripture (in part because what counts as scripture is also passed down in that way).
So let’s say that a person asks this app what Jesus would say about what’s going to happen to a good friend who is a deeply moral person but just doesn’t believe in Jesus. The protestant answer would be that if they don’t accept him as their personal savior they’re going to hell, though they may get a final chance as they die. The catholic answer would be that if they’re a good person who lives a life of minimal sin there is reasonable hope for their salvation, but even if not they’re likely to spend time in purgatory as the sin is removed from their soul so that they can eventually belong in heaven. It may then give some saints to ask for intercession.
These are wildly different answers and it’s not touching on orthodoxy or the writings on Jewish ideas during the rabbinic age (Jesus was Jewish and therefore would have opinions on the religion he was a part of). Or on different protestant teachings. Protestants who believe every word in the Bible is literally true, and have no disagreement on what passages are in the Bible still schism with each other. Then there’s translation. The Bible was written in several different languages. The various translations have different proponents and they’ll fight over it. The very popular King James is apparently beautifully written and poorly translated.
Then there’s the other crux here: what did and didn’t Jesus say and what did he mean. He came not to abolish the old law but to fulfill it, so can you have gay sex (see also translation concerns), foreskin, a cheeseburger, shrimp, or mixed fiber clothing? He didn’t say shit about abortion, but a lot of Christians have pretty firm opinions on that issue (and many protestant denominations changed their mind on it in the late 20th century).
Biblical scholarship is scholarship, and it’s difficult and controversial scholarship a lot of the time. There’s a reason you need what amounts to an advanced degree to just an ordinary advanced degree in a relevant topic to become a pastor in some Christian denominations, yet in others you just have to start preaching.
Also if someone asks Jesus what he thought of when he first arrived in America you’re gonna find out really fast if the creator of the app considers Mormons Christian.
You may ask why Judas didn’t get a book? He wrote one. But it was not included because he was the traitor who betrayed Jesus.
More that it was a weird heretical Gnostic text. And extremely doubtful that it would have been Judas who wrote it - really seems more like a second century text. There are tons of pseudepigraphal gospels floating around.
I imagine it would be against abortion, for example, since the act of a married het couple is an act of God and the fetus would have a soul. It would be less sure if the parents were not married, but I think it would still be against it.
I mean, heresy was invented to suppress politically conflicting directions of Christianity. Gnosticism was a popular direction at one point in history, dominating the “mainstream” in some parts of the world. There were more Marcian churches than trinitarian. Gnosticism is only weird from your perspective, after it was already basically outlawed. Admittedly, that is probably a valid justification for calling it with weird, but I’d like to make a distinction that it is not weird on its own, only because it got banned. In fact, in the context of being influenced by Greek philosophy, it was quite logical. Judas gospel was probably not written by Judas, but other, canonical gospels werw probably not written by original authors either, at least some of them.
As a religiously neutral person (I don’t fit with either atheists or agnostics), I like the idea of this.
There is a finite amount of information about Jesus… and a lot of speculation. There are also other books that are not part of the Bible because those who curated the Bible chose not to include them. The first five books of the New Testament for example, the Gospels of Luke, John, and the others, are the stories of Jesus, but they differ slightly due to each disciple’s interpretation. You may ask why Judas didn’t get a book? He wrote one. But it was not included because he was the traitor who betrayed Jesus. So he doesn’t get a say. But, what if he did?
I’d like to see this chat bot be very transparent about its sources. By default it should limit itself to what is in the Bible, but it should also be possible to add other sources as well. If Christians are truly serious about the command by God to not add anything to the Bible, a Jesus chatbot should be more trustworthy than some Biblical scholar’s book about Jesus. The latter is speculation while the former should only be sourced from the Bible. Sure, it might be sacrilege, but if it’s done right, I think it could be an invaluable tool for priests who want to run their planned sermon — since a lot of them now are writing them on a computer anyway — by “Jesus” to have “Him” tell them if anything goes against the Bible and how they could improve it.
I’d just be curious what it says about certain controversial topics, especially if it goes against the Christian grain, and can source its reasoning with Scripture. To avoid blasphemy, it should also tell you straight up that it is not pretending to be Jesus, but rather, is only using the entire Bible (+ whatever sources you add) to help you understand what Jesus, as portrayed in those sources, would say. I imagine it would be against abortion, for example, since the act of a married het couple is an act of God and the fetus would have a soul. It would be less sure if the parents were not married, but I think it would still be against it. That said, it would probably be for immigrants and the poor. It would point out that homosexual sex is considered an unclean act, but the actual love and relationship itself is not and that a pious life would counteract that, and it could also point out that everyone sins and lives unclean lives, and that’s the whole point of John 3:16. But, what do I know, I’m not a Christian. I’ve just read the Bible. A long time ago. But I feel like I got the message.
So you definitely don’t have education on Christianity in a theological or religious studies capacity. To begin with: it’s absolutely certain that none of the gospel writers met Jesus. They compiled stories of him into cohesive narratives. There were other gospels floating around (including Judas’s, but that’s highly unlikely to have been written by Judas Iscariot). Hell, Paul of Tarsus who wrote a lot of the epistles never met Jesus. The creation of biblical canon was a difficult process and to this day Protestants use 7 less books in their Bible than Catholics (the deuterocanonical books). The orthodox have even more deuterocanonical books.
These books aren’t just curiosity. They contain some of the fundamental disagreements between Protestants and Catholics, such as purgatory, angelic/saintly intercession thanks to prayer, and the idea that salvation may be possible through good works. And this isn’t getting into sola scriptura vs Tradition, but that’s also huge, as Catholics believe that formalized beliefs and practices passed down through the centuries can be just as legitimate as scripture (in part because what counts as scripture is also passed down in that way).
So let’s say that a person asks this app what Jesus would say about what’s going to happen to a good friend who is a deeply moral person but just doesn’t believe in Jesus. The protestant answer would be that if they don’t accept him as their personal savior they’re going to hell, though they may get a final chance as they die. The catholic answer would be that if they’re a good person who lives a life of minimal sin there is reasonable hope for their salvation, but even if not they’re likely to spend time in purgatory as the sin is removed from their soul so that they can eventually belong in heaven. It may then give some saints to ask for intercession.
These are wildly different answers and it’s not touching on orthodoxy or the writings on Jewish ideas during the rabbinic age (Jesus was Jewish and therefore would have opinions on the religion he was a part of). Or on different protestant teachings. Protestants who believe every word in the Bible is literally true, and have no disagreement on what passages are in the Bible still schism with each other. Then there’s translation. The Bible was written in several different languages. The various translations have different proponents and they’ll fight over it. The very popular King James is apparently beautifully written and poorly translated.
Then there’s the other crux here: what did and didn’t Jesus say and what did he mean. He came not to abolish the old law but to fulfill it, so can you have gay sex (see also translation concerns), foreskin, a cheeseburger, shrimp, or mixed fiber clothing? He didn’t say shit about abortion, but a lot of Christians have pretty firm opinions on that issue (and many protestant denominations changed their mind on it in the late 20th century).
Biblical scholarship is scholarship, and it’s difficult and controversial scholarship a lot of the time. There’s a reason you need what amounts to an advanced degree to just an ordinary advanced degree in a relevant topic to become a pastor in some Christian denominations, yet in others you just have to start preaching.
Also if someone asks Jesus what he thought of when he first arrived in America you’re gonna find out really fast if the creator of the app considers Mormons Christian.
More that it was a weird heretical Gnostic text. And extremely doubtful that it would have been Judas who wrote it - really seems more like a second century text. There are tons of pseudepigraphal gospels floating around.
See the ordeal of the bitter water for what the Bible has to say on abortion.
Also genesis describes the soul entering at the first breath.
I mean, heresy was invented to suppress politically conflicting directions of Christianity. Gnosticism was a popular direction at one point in history, dominating the “mainstream” in some parts of the world. There were more Marcian churches than trinitarian. Gnosticism is only weird from your perspective, after it was already basically outlawed. Admittedly, that is probably a valid justification for calling it with weird, but I’d like to make a distinction that it is not weird on its own, only because it got banned. In fact, in the context of being influenced by Greek philosophy, it was quite logical. Judas gospel was probably not written by Judas, but other, canonical gospels werw probably not written by original authors either, at least some of them.