Phoenix
by Dale J. Sprague
White Papers
The Crucifixion
As the Sanhedrin were two thousand years ago, the sense of God is still, today, held to be an anthropomorphic supernatural being by both Christian and Jewish faiths.
The record of Yeshua's Sanhedrin trial in the New Testament, the inquiry and renting of clothes must have been witnessed and recorded by someone, if that someone was not Yeshua, himself, who survived his crucifixion to tell the story. What got him nailed to Dogwood beams was a difference of semantics between Yeshua and the Sanhedrin.
The essential religious practice is for one to atone with whatever one believes to be their sacrosanct deity. For Yeshua, it was atonement with JHVH, or 'all and everything,' a non supernatural entity. To the extent that he atones, is the extent that he refreshes his zero'infinity faculty, which enables him to become wiser. It is of this process of atonement that Yeshua regarded himself as a son. This periodic atonement enabled him to be receptive to the wise who helped him see wisdom, and so he describes himself as the 'son of man,' or woman, whoever helped him to see wisdom.
Yeshua regarded the Sanhedrin sense of God, a supernatural being, no differently than deities of the sun, Earth, fertility, or gilded calves of prosperity, however undefined with omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. Yeshua saw that the original Hebrew covenant was lost where God or JHVH meant all power, all knowledge, and everywhere within and without..not an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent supernatural being.
As the only record of Yeshua's trial, there is no mention of any Sanhedrin query as to what Yeshua meant by the word, God. Rather, they, with extreme prejudice, held that his meaning of God was the same as their own. Yeshua was aware of this semantic schism between himself and them, and knew he would be judged as a blasphemer by the Sanhedrin.
In Matthew 26 and Mark 14, the Sanhedrin asks Yeshua, "...tell us whether you be the Christ, the Son of God." And Yeshua replied, "...you have said it," in the sense of as you believe, "...nevertheless, I say to you, hereafter shall you see the son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." These words were enough for the Sanhedrin to interpret in their own terms, rather than "power" given to mean by Yeshua as the power of wisdom, and 'clouds of heaven' as the light by which wisdom sees.
In Luke 22, there is a slightly different account. "Are you the Christ? Tell us." And Yeshua said to them, "If I tell you, you will not believe, and if I also ask you, you will not answer me, nor let me go." A dialogue was not possible on the meaning of God. Again they ask, "...are you then, the Son of God?" And Yeshua said to them, "You say that I am." They already believed that Yeshua believed himself to be the son of God as they envision what God is.
What Yeshua meant by "God" and what the Sanhedrin meant was very different. The Sanhedrin's meaning was anthropomorphic, or pagan, and Yeshua's was self'transcending, and new age. From the accounts given by Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Yeshua allowed them to make their assumptions that his sense of God was the same as his. In this way, he committed himself into their hands. Heart'sickened that his people had lost the original covenant, he committed himself into their hands.