Nietzsche and Christianity meet Hegel

It may logically be stated that Jesus, at the point of his harshest suffering, abandoned God:

“I and the Father are one”
“Father why have you abandoned me?”

Considering the vehemence of Jesus’ spiritual passions, the following citation from Zarathustra may explain what happened:
“Spirit is life that itself cuts into life; by its own agony it increases its own knowledge”
Jesus suffering increased his knowledge to the extent that he saw that God was not. (God died) This was followed by his own quick death.
Did the last Christian become a Nietzschean at the cross?

However formulated, Nietzsche’s philosophy can be seen as following this ultimate cosequence of Jesus’ life. The ultimate consequence of Jesus’ philosophy was it’s negation.

We have in the Christian doctrine of an objective good a thesis, and in Jesus’ final coutcry an antithesis of a subjective suffering. Nietzsche deified the suffering. The God of Jesus was dead but Nietzsche surrected God again, as the antithesis of the dead one - as it’s murderer.
What happened here?
Hegel says:
“Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.”

In The Birth of tragedy, Nietzsche’s starting point, the opposites of Apollo and Dionysos - Dionysos as the beast, the threat and final redemption of the ‘All’, Appollo as man. But maybe this allready great work was only a metaphor for what was to come; Nietzsche’s life, in which he was increasingly drawn to fortifying against the dissolving powers of Christianity, and it’s oblivious mercy, with a philosophy of harsh coldness.
Now for the reason for this whole argument; Nietzsche’s final outcry (before he lapesed into insanity) was also a negation of his own philosophy: It was a cry for mercy on behalf of an animal.
This all sounds suspiciously consistent. But how does one draw an synthesis of two sets of unresolved theses and antitheses? This is difficult for me.

But maybe we don’t need Hegel after all; if the examples of both men suggest anyhting it is that we might be better off leaving God up for speculation.

“It is not necessary to take Jesus’ last words into consideration: they are an invention in some phase or other of the tradition. This is something all scholars agree on. Namely, that it was a common literary topos in antiquity to put last words into the mouth of anyone famous who was dying. Indeed, Mark, and after him Matthew, have the famous ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’; Luke has instead: ‘Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit’; John, showing little respect, has him settle his last Will and Testament—‘Woman, behold thy son! … Behold thy mother’—then toast to it—‘I thirst’—and to set the seal on it—‘It is finished’. Everybody has put something different into his mouth: this proves that he said nothing, otherwise there would only be one version.”
[Francesco Carotta, Was Jesus Caesar?]

How do you do this, Sauwelios? Are you free-typing these quotes or do you have a collection that you draw from on disk?

Is there anything you don’t have a quote for?

Walk with me for a while and ask me questions, lad. Seek in me answers, knowledge, and wisdom, that you cannot find on your hard-drive.

I have an enormous database of quotes. Many of them are collected in somewhat old-fashioned compilations of paper sheets called “books”; but most are scattered across a collection of hard-drives called “the internet”.

I have the Dutch translation of Carotta’s book, War Jesus Caesar?, but I got that English translation from Carotta’s homepage.

That Jesus was really Caesar is one of my “convictions”: it is highly probable that it is so. Another is that Nietzsche suffered from a meningioma. There is no proof, there is good scientific evidence for both claims.

Hail Caesar!

You’re pretty cool, Saully.

I’ll be watching you.

This is idiocy, which is what happens I suppose when quote collection becomes a hobby. First off, the words in question are not even originally Jesus’ own, but rather a quotation of the first verse of psalm 22. Secondly, discrepency proves nothing at all. (And certainly “all scholars” do not agree). Only people who like to pile up “evidence” for a position they have already concluded think, and “reason” like this. There is no more or less proof of what he said, or that he was “silent”, if all the gospels reported the same thing, or all different things, neither of which is the case. Amazing.

Now try to say that without a dose of righteous indignation.

The point is not that it is “proven” that Jesus said nothing when (and if) he died on the cross - I, too, disagree with Carotta’s reasoning here -, but that it is not certain that, and if so, what words, he spoke on that occasion.

Likewise, it is not certain that Nietzsche ever embraced a horse.

By “certain” here I mean “evident”: I am not convinced.

Like I said, the entire quote is specious in its reason and its form, and only somehow who just likes the sound of its conclusion would bother to quote it, as if it provided some kind of authority. There is not even a modicum of “proof” here, and the canard “all scholars agree” crap, which is actually a rhetorical trope more than anything else, make of this quote of yours just so much misdirection and fabrication of “evidence” or even argument. In word, nonsense.

Um, Dunamis, he’s agreeing with you more or less about the credibility of cited sources.

You don’t have to get the last word on this one.

Sheesh.

If he is agreeing with me that the quote is worthless. Then I wonder about the desire to search it out and then post it.

As I have said, the point is that there are no “famous last words of Jesus” because, even if there was indeed a Jewish rabbi named Jesus who died on the cross (and there is hardly any evidence for that), there is no consensus as to what his last words were even among his believers.

And unless I read Jakob’s post incorrectly, your point is meaningless to the Original Post, which seems to be operating under the auspices of Christ in historical Christianity, and not the epistemic foundations of what some guy actually said.

And as I suspect, someone who goes around quoting admittedly specious arguments on behalf of his own belief, regardless of the quality of those arguments, should perhaps be more worried about the foundations for his own position, (never mind factuality of what I quote, its the spirit that matters), rather than the accuracy of the gospels.

There indeed are “famous last words” of Jesus, just as much as there is a “sermon on the mount”. They were recorded by Mark and Matthew, and have historically operated as such for two thousand years. They are central to the contemporary constuction and historical understanding of Christ.

Are you by any chance a Christian, Dunamis?

The day you pigeon hole me, will be your self-deluding day. What I am is an anti-bullshiter. I strip away what is fraudulent, like your pretty little quote which masquerades as either scholarship or even reasoning. That you quoted as if it possessed some kind of “authority” was I would say rather symptomatic of your means and your thinking.

[ahem]

D’you guys see the game last night?

Helluva game, helluva game.

You take it much too seriously. I quoted it to show that 1. there are several versions of Jesus’ famous last words, and 2. to introduce the thesis that Jesus was Caesar.

I am somewhat relieved that you’re not a Christian.

By the way, what did you think of the possible parallels between capio and nemo that I introduced?

I have never said that I wasn’t a Christian. But your desire to locate me in your memorized discourses is perhaps more a revelation of the nature of your “Nietzschean” power than such a location would say of me.

I take nomos back to territorializations, land-rights and even nomadic beginnings, hence the double meaning of the word by accent. I see no inherent “taking” in division, but that is because unlike Niezschean mythologizers of the Universe, I do not see everything as a Master/Slave, dominated/dominator dichotomy.

Well, let me suppose, then, that you are a Christian. That would explain something about your invective against Nietzsche, wouldn’t it?

Dunamis the Christian, quibbling away all the notions of “evil” from such noble Greek words as nomos, kalos, and need I add logos?..

Sure. As long as you are fantasizing about your world, you can suppose that I am a Jew, a Woman and a Black. That would “explain” a lot for you as well.

That you are a woman seems rather obvious. And I don’t judge that by you avatar picture (which is probably a still from a “classic” movie), but by the fact that your tone perfectly reflects the look on that woman’s face.