RE: The 'only-way' query

Hare Krishna Vivek Prabhu, _/\o_

> Am currently having an eDebate with one of my childhood friends
> who was misguided into converting to Christianity in Australia.
> I want to show using the New Testament that Jesus never ever
> claimed that he was the only way.
>
> Could you please help ?

A brief Vaishnava view of Christianity is presented by HG Prithu Prabhu at
www.iskcon.net/oregon/jesus/

I don't remember if he mentions also this 'only-way' thing so I'll tell you
how I came to understand it.

First thing to consider - did Jesus really say it? This is a concern of
scholars because the John's gospel is quite late (AD 150+). The genuine
Jesus sayings accepted by scholars are in the Q (from German quelle =
source) material. Prithu P. showed that Biblical scholars reach conclusions
which Prabhupada accepted years before.

The believers don't accept this concern, for them the Bible is the perfect
scripture. This is however not true. Just in the gospels there are many
incongruences of historical and other facts. Quoting Prithu P., my comments
in []:

--
That the Gospels in no way are historically reliable can be shown easily as
follows. Take for example the events preceding the birth of Jesus:
The only evidence we derive is based on the Gospels of Matthew and Luke in
accounts, which are impossible to reconcile and in fact mutually excluding
each other.
In Matthew Joseph is visited by an angel and NOT Mary while in Luke Mary is
visited and NOT Joseph.
In Luke the divinity of Jesus is announced to shepherds by angels while in
Matthew a star appears in the sky, an event which is entirely omitted by all
other Gospels.
In Luke the shepherds of the fields of Bethlehem appear to adore the
new-born child while in Matthew the Magi appear to worship Jesus.
According to Matthew it appears that Joseph's home is to be Bethlehem.
>From there he and his family flee to Egypt, based on a warning in a dream to
Joseph while Herod the Great, based on the evidence of the Magi is engaging
himself in an extraordinary massacre of children, an atrocity which would
not possibly have evaded the attention of the famous historian Josephus, who
reported on events of much lesser importance in Israel and of the ongoings
at the court of Herod.
We do know however from Josephus that Herod was cruel (Antiquities
XIV:11-16) and that killing of innocent children to destroy a possible
pretender to the throne could not be considered out of character.
>From Egypt then Joseph and his family, being "afraid to return" again due to
another warning in a dream (2:22) went to Nazareth.
Opposite to the tremendous disturbances accompanying the birth of Jesus in
Matthew, in Luke the home of the holy family is Nazareth.
>From here Mary and Joseph set out to Bethlehem, to abide to a census of
Augustus which is not mentioned in any of the other Gospels nor possible to
corrobarate by contemporary sources. They continue to journey to Jerusalem
which would be according to the description in Matthew have meant to enter
the lions (Herod's) den, presented there the child in the temple and
returned to Nazareth (2:39) where they lived in peace. [No trip to Egypt.]
Hence scholars in generally and since long have suggested that the events
described above might not be taken to be actually historical but rather to
serve as embelishments or as constructions to fulfil predictions from the
Old Testament and to substantiate the Messianic claims of Christianity in
particular.

Further idications of contradictions:
The genealogy accounts of Jesus' descent:
If Jesus was to be the Messiah he would appear in Betlehem. He needed to be
a descendent of the house of David.
In that sense one would think the extensive efforts to establish the
genealogy of Jesus in both Luke and Matthew are to be understood, which are
again not recorded in Mark and John.
Not are both genealogies proposed by Luke and Matthew in agreement with
each other. Even if they were, the problem is that the whole genealogical
section of the two gospels which aims to present the pedigree descent of
Jesus from the house of David fails to do so being at variance with the
virgin birth accounts. It traces the ancestry of Joseph, while the whole
point of the virgin birth report of Jesus is that not Joseph but the Holy
Spirit is the father of Jesus. [Another (rarely mentioned) thing is that the
Jewish pedigree is taken from mother's side, not father's.]
If you study the empty grave reports, again:
You will find four Gospels reporting four stories not just contradicting put
completely excluding each other.

--

Even if we accept thesee things as secondary (and mentioned 'to bewilder the
demons' as we say 8) still there are linguistic problems. There are many
Bible translations and some differ very much. This is seen even in this
specific text:

John 14:6: "I'm the way, the truth, the life. No one comes to the Father
except through me."

Greek:
ego eimi ha hodos kai ha alatheia kai ha zoa,
ondeis ERKETAI pros ton patera ei madi

Dr. Boyd Daniels (American Bible Society): "Oh, yes. The word 'erketai' is
definitely the present tense form of the verb 'emon'. Jesus was speaking to
his contemporaries."

He was the only teacher of devotion in Palestine at that time. The 'way' can
thus refer only to his devotional teachings (bhakti). It is indeed the only
way to God. There are other ways (karma, jnana) but not going so far as to
reach God.

Position of Jesus can be understood by understanding one of the most
difficult Vedic subjects - guru-tattva, teaching about the guru. It says
that guru is incomprehensibly one and different from God at the same time
time. This is acintya-bhedabheda-tattva, the ultimate Vedic philosophy.

God means the Supreme Person; by definition there can be only one God, not
that each tradition has its own God. Christian exclusivity ("Jesus the only
way") would mean God chose only fraction of people who ever lived on this
earth, what to speak of others in this universe. (Compare with BG 4.7-8:
Whenever and wherever there is a decline in religious practice, o descendant
of Bharata, and a predominant rise of irreligion - at that time I descent
Myself. To deliver the pious and to annihilate the miscreants, as well as to
reestablish the principles of religion, I Myself appear, millenium after
millenium.)

Hope this helps.

ys bh. Jan