Dear David f, you wrote:
"The people who wrote the Bible wrote with the knowledge of their time. It is unreasonable to expect them to be knowledgeable beyond that."
I would have thought it was very reasonable to expect them to "be knowledgeable beyond that." I thought they were supposed to be divinely inspired. Surely God knew the shape of the Earth at that time?
This is what annoys me about the so called age of miracles. They were all designed to impress the people of the day. It would have been far more miraculous if God had shown a little bit more awareness of future ages.
If Jesus had said something simple, like "E=MC squared" or, "the Earth is a ball of rock which revolves around the Sun"; demonstrating knowledge with no empirical evidence would have been a miracle worthy of a God.

>>If Jesus had said something simple, like "E=MC squared" ...<<
May I paraphrase what I wrote a few posts ago: What an irony that exactly those who emphasize that humanity is not in the centre and purpose of Creation/evolution insist that OUR TIME should be seen as privileged time, the “scientific centre” of history, that Revelation should have revealed/reflected scientific knowledge as humans understand it exactly TODAY.

In centuries and millennia to come what we now think “demonstrates knowledge” will be as outdated as is (from our point of view) what in the Middle Ages they thought “demonstrated knowledge”. Why Einstein’s formula that for almost two millennia would have been incomprehensible to everybody, and probably will be old hat in a few centuries or even millennia (if humanity survives)?

George, define "our time". We have known for several centuries that the Earth is a ball of rock revolving around the Sun.
I still contend a true miracle would be a prophecy that would be meaningless to the people of the day, but meaningful to people a thousand years hence.
As a self described 'Jesuan', I believe the alleged Jesus (or his creators) were thousands of years ahead of his/their time, in their moral philosophy. This is evidenced by the fact that very few if any people today can live up to the standards set. Certainly Bush/Blair/Howard showed little sign of 'loving their enemies', or 'forgiving those who trespass'; this I would suggest could be described as remarkable, but hardly miraculous.
As Jesus said: "all these things will come to pass, before this generation passes". Hardly an example of divine precognition.

Dear Grim,

Jesus really said nothing new about love and compassion. From about 3,000 BCE we have documents containing expressions of humanity. From "History Begins at Sumer" p. 106 the ancient clay tablets which are the earliest writing we know of:

Who knows the orphan, who knows the widow,
Knows the oppression of man overman, is the orphan's mother,
Nanshe [the goddess] , who cares for the widow,
Who seeks out (?) justice (?) for the poorest (?)
The queen brings the refugee to her lap,
Finds shelter for the weak.

[break]

To comfort the orphan, to make disappear the widow,
To set up a place of destruction for the mighty,
To turn over the mighty to the weak............,
Nanshe searches the heart of the people.

Some of Jesus' best lines come from Leviticus in the Torah:

Leviticus 19:18 Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD.

Shortly after to make it plain that decent treatment should not be restricted to your neighbour

Leviticus 19:33 And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. 19:34 But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.

Jesus repeated what he had learned as a Jew.

David f,
What you say is essentially true – Jesus would not have existed it weren’t for the Jewish religion and to make no mistake, he certainly considered himself as fundamentally Jewish. As for what he embodied, yes it had always existed – as you’ve read Augustine you’re probably aware of this, "What we now call the Christian religion existed amongst the ancients, and was from the beginning of the human race, until Christ Himself came in the flesh; from which time the already existing true religion began to be styled Christian." - St Augustine.

A very postmodern outlook is this: it subordinates actual truth for “my” truth. And the validation for “my truth” is not anything objective; it is, rather, based on sentiments which can shift like the wind. Command and sympathy, power and charm, authority and affection, cheerfulness and gravity, are the some of the qualities making the analysis of any character impossible, and yet they are timeless - they don't shift. The beautiful way of doing the right thing, in the right way, at the right time, opens all hearts to its possessor.

Relda cited Augustine: "What we now call the Christian religion existed amongst the ancients, and was from the beginning of the human race, until Christ Himself came in the flesh; from which time the already existing true religion began to be styled Christian." - St Augustine.

Dear Relda,

The above is one concept that I object to in Christianity. The claim to have the true religion. A similar gestalt also exists among Muslims who claim that Abraham was really a Muslim. That claim denies both the syncretic nature of religions and the worth of ideas in other faiths. I find that sort of attitude that is common to both Islam and Christianity terribly arrogant.

Everything Jesus said cannot be ascribed to the Jewish religion. Injunctions to non-violence such as 'turning the other cheek' to the best of my knowledge are not met with in early Judaism. However, Ahimsa goes back much before Jesus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahimsa

Ahimsa is a Sanskrit term meaning to do no harm (literally: the avoidance of violence - himsa). It is an important tenet of the religions that originated in ancient India (Hinduism, Buddhism and especially Jainism). Ahimsa is a rule of conduct that bars the killing or injuring of living beings. It is closely connected with the notion that all kinds of violence entail negative karmic consequences. The extent to which the principle of non-violence can or should be applied to different life forms is controversial between various authorities, movements and currents within the three religions and has been a matter of debate for thousands of years. Though the origins of the concept of ahimsa are unknown, the earliest references to ahimsa are found in the texts of historical Vedic religion, dated to 8th century BCE.

Whether Jesus was influenced by Ahimsa or developed the idea independently is moot.

I have heard Christians say, "Jesus brought love into the world." That is a terrible denial of humanity before Jesus.

IMHO the attitude, "We have the true faith." accounts for the violence and brutality in religious wars. Those who believe otherwise are denied humanity.