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man06
Was Jesus only preaching to Jews?
"The earliest stratum in Christianity does in fact have Jesus
preaching only to the Jews, though by Mark and Matthew it had been
expanded. "
"It does seem as the cult was aimed at the Jews only, and only after
the Jews rejected them that they took it to the gentiles. Why have 12
disciples?
"
"I think biblical criticism reveals that the earlier versions of
Christianity were pretty much exclusively Jewish, and that the
passages that encourage Gentile conversion/evangelism come from a
somewhat later period of "the Gentile mission(s)" and certainly cannot
be attributed to Jesus.
"
storytime: "If the disciples were told to go into all the nations of
the world, then why did Jesus not go into Rome?
If Jesus purpose was to make disciples from all nations of the world,
would he have not intended they become Jewish? Or do you think Jesus
would have been promoting Gentilism - no laws, no covenants, and
worship of other gods such as Apollo, Mercury, Jupiter, etc. ? "
Some comments regarding the empty tomb.
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=218030
koyaniskatsi
As many others before me have pointed out, this alone is highly
suspicious. The whole point of crucifixion was to put the condemned on
display (as they died over days of exposure and blood loss). There
were far more simpler ways of killing Jesus, like cutting his head
off, but "the Jews" at the passover festival inexplcably demand he be
crucified and Pilate (even more inexplicably, if that's possible)
acquiesces to their demand, even though he had just seconds prior
publicly declared Jesus' innocence three times.
He goes to all that trouble so as to not provoke a Jewish riot
(something he didn't fear in the slightest as his past history proved)
and actually orders that a man he just publicly declared to be
innocent nevertheless suffer the most final and most brutal form of
capital punishment on the Roman books, only to then say that night to
a petitioning Jew, "Sure, no problem. Take him." And this after he
allegedly posts guards to ensure the very thing he just acquiesced to
did not happen; that Jesus' body be taken down prematuraly by Jews so
that they may later claim he resurrected. Highly doubtful all the way
around.
Not to mention the fact that Pilate was the top Roman dog and would
therefore not likely be the person to petition for the release of a
body, let alone allowing it. Bribing the guards left behind on
Golgotha to guard against anyone stealing his body would be the likely
and simpler scenario and probably something that had happened several
times in the past when other criminals had been so crucified.
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=217797
did paul kill christians?
amaleq:Paul claims to have persecuted "the church of God" prior to his
conversion but that neither requires nor implies that he killed
anyone.
--
I'm certainly no expert in Greek but it seems to me that murder isn't
something one would use this word to describe. My impression is that
it is more consistent with what Paul is supposed to have experienced
subsequent to his conversion (e.g. beatings, chased out of town).
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=215740
Lee Strobel's "A Case for Faith"
d Cynic wrote :
Logos, the primary problem with Strobel's empty tomb arguments is that
he presumes a lot of facts not in evidence -- namely that the Gospels
are reliable sources of information in their claims about the tomb and
the alleged witnesses. Since the historical reliability of the Gospels
is exctly what he's trying to prove, he's engaging in circular logic
when he tries to cite them as a source for something like what the
Jews supposedly said about the tomb.
If you substitute just about any other work of fiction, the clearly
fallacious nature of this approach should become obvious to you. If
100 characters in a Stephen King novel all see a werewolf, that
doesn't mean you have 100 witnesses for a werewolf and just because
some characters in the Gospels saw an empty tomb or a risen Jesus
doesn't mean any such people really existed or made any such claims.
The empty tomb is a fairly late development in Christian tradition. It
doesn't exist in the earliest Christian literature (The Pauline
Epistles, Q, Thomas). It appears first in Mark (c. 70 CE at the
earliest) and the other Gospel writers got it from Mark.
For a variety of reasons which I won't go into, the mere claim that
Jesus would have been allowed to be placed in a tomb at all is highly
implausible. Theoretically possible? Perhaps, but it's a claim which
has to be proven in and of itself before the alleged "emptiness" of
that tomb deserves any consideration at all.
The fact of the matter is that there is no good historical evidence
that any human being on earth ever claimed to have seen an empty tomb
or to have seen a physically resurrected Jesus. None of the Gospels
were written by witnesses. None of the claims about the tomb are made
by witnesses. None of the apostles (if they existed at all) left any
written record. We actually don't know what any of Jesus' direct
followers (assuming there was a Jesus at all) believed about Jesus or
about any kind of resurrection.
Paul claims to have known some apostles but is quite vague in telling
us exactly what they beleived and Paul seems to know nothing at all
about an empty tomb.
Getting to the specific claim of how "the Jews" reacted -- there is no
evidence that the Jews reacted at all. Matthew's claim that the Jewish
leadership claimed the body was stolen is completey uncorroborated,
unsupported hogwash. Ther first Jewish responses to historical
Christian claims don't surface for over a century after the alleged
crucifixion and even then, they are clearly responding to already
existing Christian literature and tradition.
These are hardly the only problems with Strobel's work. His books are
riddled with recycled fallacies, special pleading and circular
arguments. Strobel appeals to unsophisticated evangelicals and to
people inexperienced with Biblical criticism not because he says
anything original (he doesn't), but because his presentation is
presented in a simplistic enough manner that his arguments (such as
they are) are easy to grasp and because his pretense to being a
hardboiled journalist gives his fans the illusion that he's being
objective and finding the bottom line.
The reality is that he interviews only other fundamentalists, never
challenges their claims and never interviews skeptics or even
mainstream Christian scholars. Trust me when I say Strobel is laughed
at by any serious historian or Bible critic (or journalist, for that
matter). I think that his books are most useful as illustrations of
the worst kinds of apologetic fallacies and can just about be utilized
for classroom exercises in dissecting invalid arguments.
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=217860
The dating of the Epistles
Now, bearing this in mind, I find it difficult to understand why the
authors called Matthew, Mark, Luke or John , believed to have written
later, never mentioned this Paul, the magnitude of his ministry and
missionary work or his epistles in their gospels.
man06
Technically, that's correct. However, it begs the question of why
various authors of the Gospels accidentally or intentionally left out
significant details of an event which, to believers, is central to
eternal salvation. If I was a believer, or an ancient author intent on
getting people to believe the story, and the omitted details (i.e.,
additional witnesses) would materially strengthen the story, then I'd
be a poor journalist indeed if I omitted or overlooked those details.
A similar incident is found elsewhere in Matthew, in the "resurrection
of the saints" episode, when all manner of zombie Old Testament heroes
left their graves and walked and talked among the living in Jerusalem
at the time of Jesus's crucifixion. That event, to my way of thinking,
would deserve an entire book for itself in the New Testament - it's
prima facie evidence of the validity of the claims, and would
certainly be noticed by other independent disinterested observers. Yet
the author of Matthew thought to give it only one sentence in passing,
while the authors of the other three Gospels overlooked it completely.
Either it didn't happen, in that the author of Matthew took the
opportunity of bullshitting us, or else it is a symptom of extremely
negligent writing on the part of the author of Matthew, combined with
total incompetence on the part of the authors of the other three
Gospels.
how many women?
Quote:Mark 16 1When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the
mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to
anoint Jesus' body.
Mark says there are three people that go to the tomb. But who is Mary
the mother of James? Could this be a different Mary then Jesus'
mother, or was Mark trying to reinforce James position as Jesus
successor? And who exactly is Salome? Jesus' sister, half-sister, or
just one of his follower?
Here's Matthew's version...
Quote:Matthew 28 1After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the
week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.
Matthew, possibly unhappy with all the questions stirred up by Mark,
strips Mary of her attachment with James and just calls her the "other
Mary." Salome has disappeared. However, it seems clear that Matthew
intends to show that only two people went to the tomb.
Now here's Luke...
Quote:Luke 24 9When they came back from the tomb, they told all these
things to the Eleven and to all the others. 10 It was Mary Magdalene,
Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told
this to the apostles.
Luke also includes Mary as the mother of James, includes Joanna, and
also mentions "others with them." Why does Luke mention Joanna? Joanna
was supposedly the wife of Chuza, an adminstrator to Herod Antipas. Is
luke trying to add some legitimacy to the "empty tomb" story by
including someone who is connected in some way to the Romans?
And now John...
Quote:John 20 1 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still
dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been
removed from the entrance. 2 So she came running to Simon Peter and
the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, "They have taken
the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put
him!"
John only mentions Mary Mag specifically but has Mary say "we don't
know where they have put him" implying there were others present. Also
notice how John has Mary going to the tomb when "it was still dark"
while Matthew has them showing up at dawn. John presumable had the
benefit of reading all three other gospels before creating his
version, and probably decided to dodge the whole issue and just stick
with the one consistent participant, Mary Magadalene, refer to the
rest in generalities, and have it all happen under the cover of
darkness.
The questions I've include in this post are legitimate questions that
I'm searching for answers on. What I find frustrating is Christians
who brush off these contradictions/differences as insignificant. Grow
a brain! Rediscover your childhood curiosity! There is real meaning
behind these differences, but you have to want to look and ask
questions.
empty tomb
"At that moment [of Jesus' death] the curtain of the temple was torn
in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split. The
tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were
raised to life. They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus'
resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many
people."
Now, if that really happened, Price points out, then Jerusalem would
have been literally filled with empty tombs (pardon the oxymoron) that
weekend, and people all over the city would have been experiencing the
exact same thing Jesus' disciples were - which is encountering the
walking corpses of their dearly departed loved ones. Not only does
this utterly diminish the uniqueness of the disciples' experience with
Jesus but the uniqueness of Jesus' empty tomb as well. In fact, Jesus'
tomb would have been the last to open, making him rather the Johnny-
come-lately of the group. Also, imagine the utter chaos taking place
in the city at that time. The disciples' experience would have been
just one of many similar dramas taking place concurrently throughout
Jerusalem. And how could such an extraordinarily unprecedented
widespread event go unremarked upon in the histories of the time (or
the other gospel accounts even)?
I know this has been discussed many times on here before, but somehow
Price's book really brought the absurdity of it home to me for the
first time by dramatizing it so effectively.
after , before or at the same time?
William L. Petersen, in Helmut Koester's "Ancient Christian Gospels:
Their History and Development." Trinity Press International, London:
1990, pp425,426. Chapter on Tatian's 'Diatessaron.' "Supporting this
conclusion [that the Diatessaron preserved an earlier reading than
Matthew's gospel -JF] is another apparent Diatessaronic reading in the
same passage. It is an omission, and therefore one must be careful in
arguing from it, for the argument is e silentio. But in this case, the
omission is an active omission, that is, it changes the meaning of the
text. Therefore, it elicits greater credence than a passive omission,
that is, one which does not alter the meaning of the text. In numerous
Diatessaronic witnesses, both East (Ephrem, twice in his Commentary,
and in three of his hymns; twice in the Commentary of Ishocdad; and
twice in the hymns of Romanos) and West (twice in the Pepysian
Harmony; The Heliand), the resurrection and appearance of the risen
"dead" occur simultaneously with Jesus' death on the cross. In other
words, the Diatessaron omitted the canonical "after his resurrection,"
which--most bizarrely--delays the appearance of those resurrected for
three days! Rather, according to the Diatessaron, the "dead" were
raised and revealed there and then as one more sign of the gravity of
Jesus' death. The reading of the Pepysian Harmony gives some idea of
the scene, according to Tatian:
"And with that, the veil that hung in the temple before the high altar
burst in two pieces, the earth quaked, and the stones burst, and the
dead men arose out of their graves. And so said the centurion..."
In the canonical account, the delay of the appearance of those
resurrected for three days defeats the whole purpose of having them
raised when Jesus dies on the cross; but the delay does bring the
canonical account into line with Pauline theology, which proclaims
Jesus the 'first fruits' of the resurrection (I Cor. 15:20). According
to Pauline theology, one cannot have the 'saints' arising before Jesus
himself has risen. It would appear the the Diatessaron preserves a
more primitive version of the text at this point than does the
canonical text, which has been revised to bring it into conformity
with Pauline theology."
--
As many times as I've looked at that passage and wondered about it, I
never noticed that the many dead who arose hung around in the broken-
open tombs for a couple of days. Those resurrected dead were supposed
to be walking around Jerusalem at the same time resurrected Jesus was
appearing to his disciples. Even more incredible!
Matthew 15:51At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two
from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split. 52The tombs
broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised
to life. 53They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus' resurrection
they went into the holy city and appeared to many people.
And there are absolutely no mentions anywhere by anyone other than the
writer of GMatthew.
matthew 15:51
The absurdity is that had this happened, many would have noted this,
especially lawywers and judges. If a man dies, and his wife remarries
and he is all of a sudden alive again, who's wife is she? Has he
comiitted adultery? Is his property his again? These "saints" also
would have become somewhat celebrities, at least among the Christians
of that day. Nobody thought to write any of this down?
paul persecute
Paul claims to have persecuted "the church of God" prior to his
conversion but that neither requires nor implies that he killed
anyone.
paul
"You think you're devoted to the cause? Well, I was once a Jew; even
stood by while those other dirty Jews stoned a 'christian' to death
for blasphemy, so my conversion is more miraculous than any of yours
and further testament to the truth and the glory of Jesus the Christ.
Who, by the way, was not killed by the Romans. You've got that all
wrong and your hatred of the Romans accordingly should stop. It was
the Jews who killed Jesus, not the Romans so stop all this silly
insurrectionist movement against your oppressors and focus all your
hatred like we....I mean the Romans do; on the Jews."
At the very least, it reads more like Paul is trying to prove his
"street cred" (to use modern vernacular) than anything else.
And by the way, since when were Jews enlisted by the Romans to hunt
down and imprison anyone, let alone members of another Jewish sect
(which is what the early christians would have been to the Romans)?
Were there Jewish prisons, run by and for people committing "acts
against Judaism" or the like?
This is just more of Paul's anti-Jewish progrom, IMO, offering further
proof of my theory that Paul was a Roman operative sent in to
infiltrate an insurrectionist movement and switch the blame for one of
their leader's deaths onto the Sanhedrin and other Jewish cult leaders
during a time of mounting Jewish revolt against the occupation that
would shortly culminate in Roman military action in 70 C.E.
Right about the time when "Mark" rewrote history with the trial
sequence that never would have happened the way it is depicted; where
the Romans are exonerated for all blame in Jesus' death and it all
falls incongruously and illogically on the "crowd of Jews" at the
passover festival (you know the ones the Sandhedrin were so terrified
of just two days prior that they supposedly concocted an elaborate and
transparently ridiculous frame up job on Jesus to force their enemy to
do what they could have done at any time by stoning, as demonstrated
by the alleged fact that they tried to do twice before)?
You've got a "converted" Jew establishing himself as top dog during a
mounting revolution telling other Jews (as they were still Jewish at
that point) in the fringe, outlaying regions that their leaders in
Jerusalem are all evil messiah killers and you've got anti-Jewish/pro-
Roman propaganda being written all around the time when this mounting
revolution is getting so dire that the Romans are faced with having to
send in the military to just wipe them all out.
And the victors writing the history turn an insurrectionist Jewish
martyr into a messiah killed by the very people he was sent by God to
save; a messiah who preached pro-Roman sentiments (turn the other
cheek to authority; obey earthly authority; remain meek and consider
yourself blessed for being oppressed; render unto Caesar; etc) and
whose divine status was so threatening to the very people who would
have been the first to praise their God for his deliverance,
inexplicably conspiring with their enemy to kill what they would know
(as religious men) could not be killed by man; a "new testament" that
is essentially diametrically opposed to the old testament, where the
"chosen people" are now christ killers to be hunted down like vermin
and wiped from the face of the earth.
Some "new" testament. More like the Roman Anti-Judaism Primer 101 that
is still being used in that fashion some two thousand years later.
empty tomb
In my opinion, the issues of WHERE Jesus was buried, and WHO saw him
buried, are much more important than the issue that the tomb was
EMPTY. It does little good to cite a specific empty tomb as evidence
if you cannot reasonably prove that the body was in a specific tomb in
the first place. If some people actually saw an empty tomb, unless
they also saw the body put in the tomb, how could they be reasonably
certain that the body was ever in the tomb?
paul's gay argument
quote:When trying to prove that Jesus was resurrected, Christians have
always relied on the empty tomb as proof that Jesus was
resurrected.quote
That's not true actually. At least one Christian never used the empty
tomb argument and that Christian was Saint Paul. In fact, he had to
rely on the fallacy of adverse consequences:
"Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of
you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no
resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if
Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and
your faith has been in vain."
1 Corinthians 15:12-15 NRSV
fact checking paul
Read the Epistles and see. Paul and his audience do not seem very
impressed by rational, historical, scientific, or dialectical evidence
(check out 1 Corinthians 2), so these get no significant mention in
his letters. Instead, Paul always 'proves' the truth by appealing to
the efficacy of apostolic miracle-working, to subjective revelation,
to scripture, and to his upstanding behavior or 'suffering' as proof
of his sincerity.[2] That's pretty much it. After all, Paul and his
flock believed 'truth' had to be grasped spiritually, on faith (1
Corinthians 2:15-16), not through skeptical investigation. Consider
the argument of Galatians:
I am amazed that you are so quickly abandoning the one who called you
in the grace of Christ, for a different gospel, which isn't really
another gospel, except there are some people who trouble you, and
would pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from
heaven, should preach to you any gospel other than what we preached to
you, let him be anathema! As we have said before, so say I now again,
if any man preaches to you any gospel other than that which you
received, let him be anathema. (Galatians 1:7-17, emphasis mine)
Here we have a serious situation: Christians are abandoning the faith
for some alien gospel. Surely here, of all places, Paul would pull out
all the stops in emphasizing the proper empirical methods for checking
the truth of what Jesus really said and did, and hence what the true
gospel really was. Yet what do we get? A question-begging criterion of
blind dogmatism: anything you hear that contradicts what we told you
is false. Period. No fact-checking required. Even a vision from heaven
won't cut it! Paul is so adamant about this criterion that he repeats
it twice. This is clearly the criterion of truth he and his
congregation should and do employ. Yet it is exactly the opposite of
the empirical standards Holding wants to pretend Paul advocated.
Paul continues (emphasis mine):
For I make known to you, brethren, regarding the gospel which was
preached by me, that it is not according to a man, neither did I
receive it from a man, nor was I taught it. Rather, it came to me
through a revelation of Jesus Christ. For you have heard of my manner
of life in time past in the Jews' religion, how that beyond measure I
persecuted the church of God, and made havoc of it: and I advanced in
the Jews' religion beyond many of my own age among my countrymen,
being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers. But
when it was the good pleasure of God, who separated me, even from my
mother's womb, and called me through his grace, to reveal his Son
inside me, that I might preach him among the Gentiles, right away I
did not consult with flesh and blood, nor did I go over to Jerusalem
to those who were apostles before me.
Think about this argument for a minute. Paul is surely using the best
argument he knows will persuade his audience, and get them back into
the fold--so we can say his audience must have found this line of
reasoning more persuasive than anything else he could think to say.
But his line of reasoning is the exact flip-side of empirical
standards: whereas a good critical thinker would only trust a man who
immediately went and checked all the facts before believing, Paul not
only explicitly declares he did not do that at all, but the fact that
he didn't is actually his very argument! In other words, he expects
his audience to be impressed by the fact that he didn't fact-check! So
important is this point that he actually goes out of his way to
insist, "I'm not lying!" (Galatians 2:20).
Thus, Galatians 2 expresses values exactly the opposite of what
Holding wants. Paul and his audience are thoroughly uninterested in
Holding's idea of "fact-checking." To the contrary, the testimony of
men, indeed even of angels, is inherently suspect--so suspect, in
fact, that they can dogmatically reject it a priori. What is
persuasive is simply and only this: that God spoke to Paul in a
private revelation. That is the only kind of evidence his audience
will accept--indeed, even so much as a hint that Paul checked the
facts before believing the vision would destroy Paul's credibility
entirely. For if he showed any doubt at all that the vision was true,
if the vision was so insufficient that he had to seek reinforcement or
additional instruction from mortal men, then this would cast doubt on
the vision being an authentic communication from God. After all, his
audience were the sort of people who thought God punished Zacharias
(by striking him mute) for merely asking for evidence (Luke 1:18-20).
That's how hostile the Christian mind was to Holding's dream of "fact-
checking." The Christian moral was that Zacharias, and hence all of
us, should simply trust a vision--no questions asked, and no facts
checked. The same twisted logic also makes sense of Paul's tactic of
pointing out how he did a total 180 from enemy to friend, as proof
that his vision must really have been from God. The fallacious logic
here would impress many people back then. But we have no good reason
to buy it today.
man06
was buried? If you have credible eyewitnesses to any event, regardless
of where the event happened, the eyewitnesses who saw the event can
corroborate where the event occured. So, who saw the body buried? The
texts say that Joseph, Nicodemus, Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary
saw the body buried. That is obviously not sufficient evidence where
the body was buried. I am not aware of any credible extra-Biblical
evidence regarding who saw the body buried, and yet many scholars,
including some skeptic scholars, claim that the body was buried in a
specific place, although they do not always agree on the specific
place. Now how in the world can some scholars credibly claim that the
body was buried in a specific place without having accompanying
evidence WHO saw the body buried in a specific place? If 1,000 people
see an empty tomb, and they did not see a body put in the tomb in the
first place, what good is their testimony that the tomb is empty? Am I
missing something here?
But WHICH tomb? I did not read the entire article. I did a word search
for the name Joseph of Arimathaea, it appears that Craig never
mentioned him. In order to make a legitimate claim that a tomb is
empty, you first have to provide reasonable evidence that a body was
put in the tomb in the first place, and in the case of Jesus, not just
a body, but a SPECIFIC body. If a body was put in Joseph's tomb, what
evidence is there that it was Jesus' body?
Will someone please tell me why some scholars believe that Jesus was
buried in a specific place? Isn't the most important issue WHO saw
Jesus buried in WHICH specific place? If person A sees a body placed
in a specific tomb, and person B discovers that that tomb is empty,
but did not see the body placed in the tomb, his testimony is much
less credible than person A's testimony, right? If credible
eyewitnesses did not see Jesus' body put in a specific tomb, how can
anyone make a good case that Jesus was buried in a specific tomb?
Simply stated, the most important issue is not an empty tomb, but
where the body was buried in the first place. You can't have a
specific empty tomb unless you first start with a specific occupied
tomb, at least regarding the story of the burial of Jesus. I am tired
of hearing Christians bring up the empty tomb without providing
credible evidence where the body was buried in the first place. How
could the Jews have claimed that the body was stolen unless they knew
where it had been buried?
man06
man06
James, thought Jesus was nuts and living a double life.
Is this a joke?
Mary supposedly was told by an angel that she was carrying God, and
the 'family of Jesus' (ie his cousin John the Baptist) kicked for joy
in the womb!
Then Joseph got a message.
And various other amazing things happened at the birth.
Then his family must have observed the literally Christ-like behaviour
of Jesus, and noticed that he was the only Jew who never made a sin-
offering.
So one Gospel has the family of Jesus kicking for joy in the womb at
the news that Jesus was arriving (!), while another Gospel has the
family of Jesus regarding him as nuts.
What minimal fact? The whole thing is a joke.
-------- ----------------- ----------
1). Habermas takes too much for granted in assuming that the Peter in
the epistles is the same Peter that we find in Mark's gospel. No where
does Paul even suggest that Peter and the rest knew Jesus personally
when he was a man here on earth. Yes, we do have the James, brother of
the Lord statement, but others like Doherty have mounted at least
reasonable arguments showing that this phrase may not mean the same as
"brother of Jesus."
2) Also, since so much of Habermas' argument rests on Paul having met
Peter and the rest, shouldn't he at least point out that Paul's
listing of Jesus' post-resurrection appearances doesn't match the ones
we find in Luke and John? For instance, Paul says Jesus appeared FIRST
to Peter, THEN to the twelve. When, in either Luke or John, do we see
Jesus showing himself to Peter first? Moreover, who are the twelve?
Judas is long gone by this point and, even in John, (though not in
Luke), Thomas is absent (which would make it ten).
3) In addition, since Habermas makes such a big deal about Paul's
timeline of not visiting the apostles for three years (and then only
seeing Peter and James), then going back for a second time 14 years
later, how does he square that with the account in Acts, where Paul is
shown meeting all the apostles almost immediately upon his conversion?
Habermas is strangely silent on that contradiction.
4) Habermas states, with utter confidence, that we know Peter and Paul
were martyred. What are his sources for that? And even when he
mentions the execution of James in Josephus, Habermas never clarifies
the fact for his gullible audience that Josephus never even implies,
let alone states, that James was killed due to his belief in Jesus.
man06
Quote:Originally Posted by username What I noticed was that you are
very focused on how individual words could be translated rather than
overall context.
What a word means from its usage is how you start your analysis. You
should read how the word is used. You will start to see why modern
reputable translations use "young woman" in Isa 7:14. It should be
clear that the word itself has nothing to do with virginity.
manwithdream has shown you that there is a masculine form and an
abstract noun formed from the same word. The feminine these days would
probably be translated by anthopologists as "nubile". Now someone who
is nubile may indeed be a virgin, but that notion is not derived from
(LMH. The word has a relatively simple meaning. Check its usage and
get back to us. Don't just give the kneejerk doctrinaire reaction.
Context is very important. That's why one should disregard the virgin
retrojection. It's simply not derived from the text. In fact all this
virgin quibbling usually indicates that the quibbler isn't reading
what the purpose of the Isaiah passage emerges to be: it is a prophecy
about the rapidity of the destruction of Samaria and Damascus. But
people who want to ignore that never get past Isa 7:14 to the
following verses. Their minds are already made up and it has nothing
to do with the Isaiah context.
Quote:Originally Posted by username I read your discussion of the
word translated as 'virgin' which has also been translated as 'young
woman'. This is fine, but the bible as a whole presents a virgin birth
scenario.
No, certainly not the bible. Perhaps you mean your doctrine based on
the Matthean speculation based on the sloppy Greek translation of the
Hebrew.
Quote:Originally Posted by username In other words the 'correct' way
to translate the word in question to obtain the writer's intent (or
the intent of the various translation committees) can be determined by
it's context, not just the individual word which may have multiple
reasonable translations.
While I agree with the sentiment, your position catches you in error.
You don't seem to care about the context at all. Otherwise you'd see
that the term is consistent with its context. Amaleq13 has already
explained that she is already pregnant. The woman herself is not
important, neither is the child to be born, but the amount of time
before the destruction of Samaria and Damascus, ie before the child is
able to know right from wrong they will have been destroyed.
Quote:Originally Posted by username In the gospels,...
But the gospels were written centuries after Isaiah. You cannot
interpret Isaiah from the musings of someone writing centuries later.
Doing so means that you aren't interested in Isaiah's text whatsoever.
Quote:Originally Posted by username
...for example, we see Joseph thinking Mary cheated on him and wants
to dump her until and angel informs him that she is pregnant although
a virgin. While I personally believe it more likely Joseph was a
cuckold than married to a woman who got pregnant while a virgin, it
doesn't mean the overall picture the bible portrays is that Mary was
simply a young woman rather than a virgin. As such the 'correct'
translation of the word is virgin rather than young woman when the
overall context is taken into account.
Would you say that Charlie Manson was right in his interpretation of
Beatles lyrics? I'd rather work from what we know from the time when
the Beatles were writing their songs, not trust the cogitations of
someone performing eisegesis well after the fact.
We can see why Matthew presented the virgin birth issue based on
Isaiah: he was using a poorly translated Greek text which wrongly had
the word "parQenos" for (LMH. That's what the evidence points to. Deal
with the evidence.
Anyway, you seem to have recanted your context argument here:
I agree it may not be the context You therefore have no currently
stated reason for maintaining your willingness to have "virgin" in Isa
7:14. Do you now accept manwithdream's data, or will you go and try to
find some other way to bolster the erroneous reading?
man06
MORE: Paul said, ?It was necessary that the word of God should first
have been spoken to you: but seeing ye put it from you, and judge
yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles.
-------
Why? Because no orthodox Jew is going to fall for such nonsense, just
as they still have not fallen for such nonsense for over two thousand
years! Look, you can't win this. Paul was a liar if the synoptic
accounts are true and if they aren't, well, then, you tell me where
that places your cult. Regardless, he was more than likely just
another in a long series of scam artists who was trying to form his
own cult; a cult he either made up from whole cloth or he simply
became the Malcolm X of an already growing cult to brainwash other
ignorant sheep into hating their original masters and loving a new
one. When that didn't work and none of the more mainstream Jewish
factions bought his nonsense about a resurrected Messiah (since they
all knew the scriptures and no such prophesy had been fulfilled by
anything they saw in their time) he FOCUSED instead on the Gentiles.
They didn't know what the "prophets of old" prophesied, so Paul could
get away with a hell of a lot more bullshit, as is evidenced today by
your fumbling apologetics.
The mainstream Jews wouldn't follow his cult; the radical, reformist
Jews wouldn't follow his cult; so, he travels FAR from any of it and
focuses on the Gentiles, aka, pagans, who are so desperate to believe
anything that they believe just about everything. After all, was Jesus
(as depicted in the NT we have today, anyway) preaching judaism? No.
Not in the slightest. He changes every orthodox law (including what is
permitted on the holiest of all holy days, the Sabbath) and his
ministry is all about feeling great about being oppressed, because it
means you'll win the big prize when you're dead. We're all immortal!
Hooray! When you die, you get to live forever! Hooray! So long as you
do what you're told to do by everyone on Earth (including your priests
and cult leaders, of course) you never have to think at all about
anything, ever. It's all taken care of.
Well, what idiot wandering desperately through the desert back in
those times of Roman OPPRESSION and slavery wouldn't want to hear that
they are blessed for being oppressed and that they will live in
splendor and wonder after they are brutally murdered by the State for
breathing wrong on a Centurion or their master and that they never
have to do anything at all for any of this blessing, other than to
just believe that some guy named Jesus died for their sins! Hell they
don't even have to pay for their sins! It's all been taken care of for
them so just continue to live in drudgery and pretend it's paradise in
your mind until the point of the blade chops your worthless head off,
all right little plebian? Tote that barge and lift that bail and sing
hosannah all you want, so long as you never rise up against your
oppressors like the Jews do and you'll be just fine.
That's what Paul was pushing and he wasn't even pushing it to the
people who allegedly knew of Jesus the best; the Jewish people in and
around Jerusalem! Why? Oh, um, that's uh, that's because,
um.....they're the ones who killed him! Yeah, that's it! I'm preaching
to you non-Jews about the Jewish messiah, um, because, those Jews--
well, you all know what problems they are! Hell, I was even one of
them myself! "They" killed their own Messiah! "They" cast us all out!
"They," "they," "they!" But what "they" didn't understand is that the
power of "their" God--the power that has kept the Jewish people strong
for thousands of years--can be had by all of us, through Jesus! For
this one time only offer of just $19.95, you too can have the power of
the One True God without having to cut anything off your -------! Or
keeping glatt kosher; or sacrificing your unblemished livestock or
growing grain; or keeping any of the orthodox laws holy; or even
worshipping on Friday sundown to Saturday sundown or any of that silly
nonsense! Why, you can keep your own pagan holidays, too! Hell, you
can even keep your pantheistic beliefs, because the One True God is
actually three gods in one! The only requirement is that you believe
what I am telling you and nobody else. That's it! Eternal life in
God's great swimming pool and a powerful delusional state that let's
you remain a pawn and not care all for one act of faith in me....I
mean, Jesus, through me.
---
If it were "prophesied" yes. You're the one claiming that Jesus was
prophesied in the OT. So, go on. Where does it mention Pilate or Herod
or the trial or that Jesus' life, death and ministry would mark none
of the events the other prophets prophesied, with the pathetic
exception of riding in on the ass (of two donkeys)?
Where does Isaih say, "You will know the Moshaich by his death and
resurrection; his presence shall mark at least two thousand years of
absolutely nothing changing in humanity, other than technological
progress. His death will go unnoticed and unheralded for hundreds of
years, until the very empire that had him murdered shall instead
preach his word through brutal police action and for centuries mankind
throughout the globe will be forced--often at knifepoint--to convert
from Judaism, particularly, and Paganism to what will then be called
Christianity. Although his birth was not on a pagan ritual holiday,
nonetheless December 25th--a pagan, ritual holiday--will inexplicably
be celebrated as his birth day and upon the anniversary of his death
and resurrection, bunny rabbits laying chocolate eggs will commence
forth!"
It's just as assinine as anything Isaiah ever wrote and equally
detailed, so you tell me. Isaiah wrote about many messengers of god,
never once (to my recollection) calling any one of them the Moshiach.
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=205632&page=8
...as there is no evidence at all that I am aware of that any disciple
was killed for believing that Jesus resurrected from the dead and
since there is equally no evidence ...
The more likely scenario would be that they would be killed (if
caught) because they were equivalent to terrorists to the Roman
occupiers.
---
For example, if such a person were crucified by the Romans, it would
most likely be because they were either a murderer or a seditionist;
the two most common applications of the use of crucifixion and
certainly not because they were found completely innocent of all
crimes, but Pilate was afraid he'd have a riot if he didn't do what
the crowd of Jews he was there to subjugate was inexplicably
threatening him to do during a ritual that never existed.
If Jesus existed and were crucified (and I see no reason to doubt
either), the most likely reason would be because he was the leader of
what the Romans would have considered a "terrorist" organization.
Which also explains why he allegedly instructs his disciples that if
the shit hits the fan, they should all leave their women and children
behind and run like cowards and how they would be "persecuted" for
knowing him. Of course they would be; they were seditionists.
That's the most likely, reality version of why any "followers" of
Jesus might have been hunted down and killed, though, again, as others
have pointed out, we have no reliable confirmation that this actually
happened.
It also would explain, however, why they might have been killed "for
their beliefs;" because what they believed in was sedition against
their oppressor, so the first question I guess I would ask your
teacher is what did a first century Roman think one of Jesus' alleged
disciples was? A Jew? Certainly, no questioning that. A Jew who
believed that Jesus was God? No evidence in the gospels that I know of
confirms this, but even if it were true, why would any Roman kill a
Jew who thought another Jew was their God?
Try thinking from the only perspective that matters in regard to the
"disciples" being hunted down and killed; that from the hunter, the
Romans. Would a Roman give one tiny shit about a small group of
religious whackjobs who went around "professing their faith" that one
of their dead Rabbis was actually their own resurrected God?
Do you give a shit about, say, twelve people you've never met or heard
of who are right now in, say, Wyoming going around "professing their
faith" in Bozo the Clown being their God?
The story only means something from the perspective of the cult; not
from the perspective of anyone outside that cult and in 35 C.E. those
who were supposedly inside the cult of Jesus meant about. let's say,
twenty people. Those outside it? Millions.
---
Mark, the creator of the passion narrative myth, makes no mention at
all of any of the disciples witnessing this and ends his story with a
"young man" sitting in the open, empty tomb telling Mary and some
other women that Jesus is "risen," which could just as easily mean "he
didn't die."
----
Err...no. The GOSPELS claim that the apostels saw Jesus resurrected,
that the apostels spoke with him and touched and ate with him.
The apostels never wrote a single line of text that is kept until
today. Paul doesn't count, he never met Jesus. Peter doesn't count,
the letters from Peter in NT is most certainly forgeries and not from
the Peter described in the gospels.
We do not have a single statement from any of the apostles except from
the gospels. The gospels should therefore be our focus. How
trusttworthy are they?
---
EXCELLENT!
There are things about 1st century Judea you appear to not be aware
of. Shortly after the supposed events of the gospels there was heavy
unrest in Judea. War etc. Jews were dispersed and the temple
destroyed. Even assembling anyone who was a witness to the events
around 30-40 years earlier would be difficult and assembling a group
large enough to debunk the claims would be impossible. In addition the
christians didn't go to Jerusalem and make their claims, they went to
Greece, Rome etc far away and told about this guy who got crucified in
the far away city of Jerusalem only to be resurrected 3 days after. It
was next to impossible to debunk their claims. In addition few people
cared. The early christians was a small group of radical fanatics who
preached among the poor, the uneducated and the disposessed. The
educated rich people couldn't care less about a fringe cult and their
claims.
By the time the christian cult had moved up in the hierarchy and
reached the richer and more influential people any persons left who
could debunk their claims was long gone and if one long lived person
stood up and said "I was there, I never saw this Jesus fella do those
things as you said" the christians would simply ignore him.
---
We cannot trust too much in this. It is well known that the gospel
writers had their own agenda and one in particular purposely tried to
show jews as dim and mean people for whom we need not have much
sympathy. Christians has through the years used this anti-jewish
sentiment of some of the gospels to support anti-semittism - Martin
Luther for example. Later Adolph HItler also built on the same
tradition.
----
Even if the Romans did execute some of Jesus's disciples - and we have
no way of knowing they did - it doesn't mean they were executed for
what they believed. They may well have been executed just for
associating with Jesus.
---
EXCELLENT
Did the Romans kill any of Jesus' disciples just because the disciples
"professed their belief in Jesus"? The answer would unquestionably be,
"No." Why? Because in the NT, the Romans had just heard their own
leader (Pilate) declare that Jesus had committed no crime, was
innocent of all wrongdoing and was a free man. It was the ever fickle,
easily manipulated "crowd of Jews" who somehow threatened Pilate into
killing Jesus.
So why would any Romans hunt down any disciples of a completely
innocent man, let alone kill them for "professing their beliefs in
him?"
If you can't answer that question, then all cult claims of disciples
being hunted down and killed "for their beliefs" must be little more
than cult mythology (and rather poorly thought out cult mythology at
that).
man06
whether this Jesus is the son Sappias, Gamala, Joseph, Mary, or any
other person. The TF does not state what this Jesus did, it says,
without specificity, that this Jesus did wonderful works. Now, killing
Romans was wonderful work at one time in the 1st century.
The TF stated the Jesus was seen alive three days after he was
crucified, but strange enough, Josephus also had three of his
acquaitances crucified and got permission to take them down and one of
them magaged to survive after being under the care of a physician.
What you should realise by now is that the name Jesus does not
inherently describe the Jesus in the NT. Josephus described events
surrounding Jesus, the son of Sapphias and Jesus, the son of Gamala in
the 'Life of Flavius Josephus'.
man06
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=118612&page=36
man06
"There are other changes in the textual tradition that appear to be
driven by the desire to show that Jesus, as true son of God,could not
have been "mistaken" in one of his statements, especially with regard
to the future (Since the son of God, after all, would know what was to
happen). It may have been this that led to the change we have already
discussed in Matthew 34:36, where Jesus explicitly states that no one
knows the day or the hour in which the end will come, "not even the
angels of heaven nor even the son, but the Father alone." A
significant number of our manuscripts omit "nor even the son." The
reason is not hard to postulate; if Jesus does not know the future,
the Christian claim that he is a divine being is more than a little
compromised. "
The particular variant you refer to above (which is Mt. 24:36, BTW) is
a good example, not so much of sects, but of how the concept of Jesus
grew over time. From righteous man to divine son to god himself. The
earlier manuscripts include the words OUDE O UIOS (not even the son)
but the later in time the manuscripts get, the more it starts to
disappear. Thus, we see the words in Sinaiticus (aleph 01) but the
later corrector removed them. The words also appear in Vaticanus (B),
D and the latins and others. The words are taken out in the later
manuscripts of the Byzantine line, the ones used as the basis for
Textus Receptus and our King James version. At that point, of course,
Jesus and god were one. It would seem that that was not how he was
regarded early on. What we know as orthodoxy today was never part of
the beginning and grew only slowly in the first few centuries.
Any ancient authority that didn't attack the phrase is not likely to
have survived. Remember, orthodox monks copied manuscripts. Why would
they copy anything that spoke of heresy. This is the reason why
'heresy' is still a grey area. In this case, the phrase was cited by
Jerome but we find both variants in various manuscripts. See, when a
church father who quoted the bible was copied, the scribe would
frequently use his version of the bible text that was quoted even
though he copied the authors comments. Sometimes he just replaced it
with a more 'correct' version, sometimes he just jotted down what he
probably knew by heart, and sometimes he wrote faithfully what the
author had quoted. This is why the manuscripts of the church fathers
count very little in textual criticisms. I can check the passage in
SQE but I am too tired for that at the moment and I am going to
Manhattan for a couple of days, but when I get back I can take a look.
Also, remember that they didn't generally deal with the bible as one
book until much later. They dealt with individual books and had
individual christian beliefs. As the Byzantine text type started to
take over we are starting to see the polish that characterizes many
modern versions but that wasn't the case in the early days. You can
remove a passage from one gospel but you may not be copying the
others.
It is a highly complex topic and many books have been written on this.
Maybe if you try to very specific questions I can give you a more
precise answer. For a good overview, try Ehrman and Metzger's The Text
of the New Testament.
nor even the son...
It's not in the Byzantine texts, which means the phrase is excised
from the majority of early, extant manuscripts. It's in the
Alexandrian texts, which are earlier and more accurate but fewer in
number. The fact that the phrase is omitted in the Byzantine texts
means that it was omitted from the Textus Receptus (which was compiled
from the Byzantine sources) which means that it didn't make it into
the KJV.
why omit if the phrase was in mark?
I think that your first hypothesis is most likely. The omission in the
Byzantine line of transmission probably occurred before there was a n
established canon and either the scribes did not know Mark or they
considered Matthew to have more authority. If they saw Mark as a
competing text, the contradiction would not have bothered them.
Whoever made the redaction Matthew was only working on Matthew, not
the whole NT. The assumption that they would have made the same
redaction in Mark assumes that the same people were copying both
Gospels. They weren't. Most of the early copyists were only working on
one book. They were not being disseminated as a collection or a Canon
but as individual books. Why does he think anybody would have been
able to make changes in both Gospels? If he doesn't understand that,
then he just doesn't really want to understand it.
...
Read the relevant section here where all the sayings are examined in
detail and where divergences between them are noted:
http://www.vincentsapone.com/writings/mark.html
divorce contradiction
...
In short, Matthew has made certain changes to the story related in
Mark Mark 10:2-12. According to Mark, the pharisees question Jesus
about divorce and Jesus asks them about about the command in this
regard given by Moses. Jesus then explains why this command was given
-- "It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this
law." Jesus goes on to say that, "what God has joined together, let
man not separate." Later, once in the house, the diciples also
question Jesus to which he replies: "Anyone who divorces his wife and
marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she
divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery."
Period, end of story.
Matthew relates the above story in Matthew 19:3-12, but he makes some
changes. The placement is changed -- rather than asking the pharisees
"What did Moses command you?" as Jesus does in Mark, in Matthew Jesus
starts off by referring to Genesis. It is the pharisees who, in
reaction, ask Jesus to explain the command of Moses and Jesus then
gives his reply to that. Furthermore, while in Mark the disciples get
to question Jesus "in the house," -- away from the pharisees -- in
Matthew the scene appears to be unchanged and the disciples simply
offer the suggestion, in light of Jesus' earlier verdict regarding
divorce, that it is better not to marry at all, to which Jesus later
comments. Jesus' verdict on divorce in Matthew, which includes the
exception clause, is formulated in the midst of his discussion with
the pharisees and not "in the house" when he is with his disciples.
man06
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=227013&page=3
The only evidence of the resurrection of Jesus is found in the Bible,
and the Bible is a collection of books that exists in the form that we
know it today precisely because those books contained therein
supported the orthodoxy of the group with the power to select the
books in the first place. Orthodoxy drives canon. (Taken a step
further, one might argue that some of the books included in the canon,
for example the Jacobite letters, conflict in perspective with others,
in this case the Pauline letters. The unifying theme in such cases may
not be that those books agreed with each other, but rather they each
disagreed with certain unorthodox beliefs.)
Now, if the Resurrection of Jesus occurred as it is portrayed in any
one of the Gospel accounts (the four Gospels differ significantly in
the Resurrection accounts, and trying to harmonize them is something
of a Quixotic task), it would have been quite a remarkable event. Yet
there is absolutely no corroborating evidence to be found in any
contemporary source - nary a mention. Isn't this puzzling?
Please also consider that appealing to one part of the Bible to prove
stories in another part of the Bible is circular reasoning - you're
defining it in terms of itself. One need only consider the many works
of fiction written in styles that suggest they're recounting actual
events to realize that for a book to claim itself to be true doesn't
mean it is. (Go read Dracula. It's written as a series of letters and
journal entries composed by the main characters in the narrative. It
internally supports its own truthfulness pretty well, but nobody in
2007 is claiming the events in it actually happened.)
---
The point was that the Gospel writers had the same pool of potential
motivations to compose fictional works as anyone else. Read the
Gospels carefully. Each one has a different set of subtexts and themes
to it that can give you clues about the motivations of the author.
Consider GMark, for example. The author of Mark portrays the apostles
as being, well, losers. They dont get it, despite everything Jesus
does. The author of Mark also relies heavily on OT types to define
Jesus and what he did, suggesting that Mark was using the OT to
indicate what a Messiah would do, in the absence of firsthand accounts
of what Jesus did. In other words, Jesus and the apostles in GMark
look a lot like characters in a fictional story.
Your post reminded me of the last time I read GMk, when I indulged in
an exercise of striking through all the text having obvious (to me)
apologetic motivation, being centered around a miraculous event, or
both, to see what was left. What was really interesting to me was
that, not only are you correct about GMk's portrayal of the disciples,
you can almost say the same thing of Jesus's family (in terms of not
getting it). Of course, there's also the Messianic Secret theme, but
also - and I've seen much less written on this - there is a
significant amount of explanation as to why Jesus avoided the larger
cities - Jesus seems not to have enjoyed the rock star treatment he
got when word of his miracles made its way around. This is why Jesus
often charged the beneficiary of the miracle with not telling anyone.
If we put all this together, then "Mark" seems to be saying:
1. Jesus did many miraculous deeds, but he often required the
beneficiary to keep it a secret.
2. Jesus was active primarily, if not exclusively, in the less
populated regions, because he tended to attract large crowds when he
went into large cities where secrecy regarding miracles was much
harder to maintain.
3. Successful miracles required faith.
4. Jesus's disciples really struggled to "get" what Jesus was about.
5. Jesus's family members held no special position.
6. Jesus knew all along that he was the Christ, but it didn't suit his
purposes to have it known.
Which could be an attempt to explain to his readers why:
1. He wasn't widely (if at all) known in his lifetime as a miracle
worker.
2. Few, if any, in the large cities (e.g., Sepphoris, Tiberias) ever
heard of him.
3. People in his hometown, who should know him best of all, remember
him as an ordinary guy, not a miracle-worker.
4. The disciples views on Jesus's life, death and deeds aren't
necessarily trustworthy/authoritative.
5. Ditto for Jesus's family members.
6. Nobody associated Jesus with the Christ during his lifetime (e.g.,
no messianic movement).
Seems to me that "Mark" had a very tough task.
man06
Assuming conclusions. You are merely accepting uncritically texts
written at times you don't know, as though they could simply be used
for historical purposes. When did christianity move out of diaspora
Jewish circles? For that matter, when did christianity actually reach
them? Acts is not a historical source until one can make it one, just
as the Satyricon is not a historical source, but it does have a clear
historical "background".
So must the Jews "have noticed the success of the following of
Jesus..."? This is highly contentious because all the sources were in
christian hands, hands that were well known for slipping at time to
time -- false Ignatian letters, false Pauline letters, gospels
rewritten and updated (just look at the literary efforts of gMatthew
and gLuke). The TF if partially original shows evidence of christian
hands. Christians cannot be trusted as keepers of ancient reality.
They have been proven to have already reworked materials. It is merely
bias to ignore the Orwellian dictum of who controls the present
controls the past, for christianity controlled the literary present
for centuries.
MARK V MATTHEW
Mark repeatedly attacks the disciples who never really get anything
right. In a later post you use synoptic parallels. The synoptics are
not particularly relevant here since Mark didn't know them and the
question before us relates specifically to the gospel of Mark. But to
take your first example, it is true that the episode appears in Mt.
16:23, but it is also true that Matthew is far kinder to Peter than
Mark was. Let's take a look.
In Mark we have Peter rebuking Jesus which is obviously a bad thing
for a disciple to do. Matthew must soften this, so he adds some speech
to Peter where it becomes clear that Peter is merely concerned for
Jesus' life. Much more tolerable than the direct and unmitigated
rebuke by Peter in Mark. Jesus then rebukes Peter right back and tells
him off. In Matthew we have another softening that happens by removing
the descriptive phrase. To summarize, in Mark we have Peter rebuking
Jesus for no good reason and Jesus rebuking Peter and telling him off.
In Matthew Peter is rebuking out of concern but Jesus tells him off, a
much milder presentation. This is how it goes in Mark, always
denigrating the disciples, one way or another. You must learn to read
it as a standalone work. The other gospels should be forgotten while
reading Mark, just like all the gospels must be abandoned when reading
Paul.
So, the obvious question was 'why does Mark put down the disciples?'
Well, the most reasonable grounds for that, in my mind, would be to
show that those who appeal to apostolic tradition for legitimacy are
wrong and that Mark (and his community) has the answers. If you have a
different explanation, feel free to present it. My explanation fits
and seems to me the best one, but I doubt it is the only one and it
may not end up being the best one. Try your luck.
man06
pretend their movement has been a victim of persecution. This is true
of many idealogical, political and philosophical groups throughout
history. "Poor us, we've been so mistreated. Boo-hoo!"
It garners sympathy.
---
You cite the christian content in Tacitus, when the passage itself is
under question for its veracity as part of the text written by one of
the best orators of his time. We've looked at the passage and found
that it is a change in general topic uncharacteristic of Tacitus. It
uses some very ugly Latin. It makes a bad mistake regarding Pilate's
rank, when Tacitus has shown that he knew the situation in Palestine
well. There are sundry other problems, but you feel free to cite it as
though it's kosher.
Suetonius refers to matters of public order, when suddenly there is
stuff about the execution of christians. Another really coherent bit
of writing.
Citing 1 Clement begs a secure dating rather than the hopeful rubbish
that has been used in the past, for without 1 Clement there is little
in favor of the reputed Neronian persecution.
The state of assumptions about texts needs to be investigated before
we blithely accept undated texts or interpolations.
The Tacitus passage in Annals 15.44 does not help the Christian case
in any way. The passage has at least 5 fundamental problems.
1. It does not confirm that Christus is Jesus of Nazareth.
2. It does not state that Christus was crucified.
3. It does not state when Christus died under Pilate.
4. It does not state where in Judea Christus was killled.
5. It does not state the age of Christus when he died.
Without these fundamental information, it cannot be stated, without
doubt, that the followers of Christus were the followers of Jesus of
Nazareth
roger....@googlemail.com
> You cite the christian content inTacitus, when the passage itself is
> under question for its veracity as part of the text written by one of
> the best orators of his time. We've looked at the passage and found
> uses some very ugly Latin. It makes a bad mistake regarding Pilate's
> well. There are sundry other problems, but you feel free to cite it as
> though it's kosher.
These objections have no validity, however, and the authenticity of
the passage is denied by no modern scholar. A few 19th century cranks
made objections, but these were derided even at the time.
For instance, there is nothing wrong with the Latin. There is no
change of topic. The description of rank is exactly what it was when
Tacitus was writing, and there is no certainty that it may not have
been correct for the period in question.
> Suetonius refers to matters of public order, when suddenly there is
> stuff about the execution of christians. Another really coherent bit
> of writing.
This objection is very contrived. There is no evident reason why he
should not discuss expelling the Christians as a matter of public
order.
> Citing 1 Clement begs a secure dating rather than the hopeful rubbish
> that has been used in the past, for without 1 Clement there is little
> in favor of the reputed Neronian persecution.
Again this seems a strange statement. The dating of 1 Clement is
fine; who says otherwise? The persecution under Nero is recorded by
Tacitus, recorded by Clement, recorded by Tertullian. Against this
is... what? Nothing.
Isn't this the kind of revisionism that consists of finding excuses to
ignore the evidence and then arguing that absence of evidence is
evidence of absence (two fallacies in one)?
> The state of assumptions about texts needs to be investigated before
> we blithely accept undated texts or interpolations.
The same applies to unsubstantiated denials of what may be found in
any textbook.
> TheTacituspassage in Annals 15.44 does not help the Christian case
> in any way. The passage has at least 5 fundamental problems.
>
> 1. It does not confirm that Christus is Jesus of Nazareth.
What, one wonders, would be 'confirmation'? Name a single person
documented in the historical record named 'Christus' recorded as
founding the 'Christiani', an illegal movement who were persecuted
under Nero, and was executed by Pontius Pilate.
> 2. It does not state that Christus was crucified.
Nor indeed provide video footage.
> 3. It does not state when Christus died under Pilate.
Ditto.
> 4. It does not state where in Judea Christus was killled.
> 5. It does not state the age of Christus when he died.
Ditto to both.
> Without these fundamental information, it cannot be stated, without
> doubt, that the followers of Christus were the followers of Jesus of
> Nazareth
Why?
I'm afraid that these objections appear obscurantist to me, designed
only to obscure what is plain and well-documented by interposing
unevidenced excuses. Don't do this.
All the best,
Roger Pearse
man06
in Damascus" mentioned in v. 22. Similarly, in Acts 13:50, "Jews"
reasonably refers to the Jews in Antioch, the locality mentioned
already in vv. 43 and 45.
But that still does not address the problem of collective punishment
and guilt, which can be extended to a whole group even if not all of
its members were present, or even if they did not all perform any
specific action described. Holding ignores that one need not be
present or even alive not be reckoned with being guilty of a crime
committed by one or a few people belong to a particular group.
Yes, the Bible repeatedly punishes whole groups of people for the
actions of a few, as follows:
1. The killing of all men, women, children of the earth in Noah's
Flood (not to mention all animals not aboard Noah's Ark). The biblical
author had no problem with biocide here, even if animals and infants
did not participate in any "sins" for which God destroyed humankind
(except Noah and his family) in Genesis 6-7.
2. Children to the fourth and fifth generations for those who hate
Yahweh (Exodus 20:5).
3. The killing of Amalekite children for the actions of their
ancestors (1 Samuel 15:2-3).
4. All of humanity for the sins of Adam (Romans 5:12ff), especially if
you follow some orthodox Christian interpretation of imputation
Given such notions of collective punishment, what would prevent NT
authors from holding similar views about Jews, especially if they are
redefined as those opposed to the true Jews (= Christians) as
suggested in Revelation 3:9? Thus, the collective guilt imputed to
"the Jews" by some NT authors (e.g., Matthew 27:25) is very much
consistent with this view of collective guilt and punishment we find
repeatedly in the Bible.
Furthermore, Holding's complaint that I have succumbed to political
correctness and paranoia because I point out the anti-Gentilism in the
NT overlooks that rather conservative academic scholars have also
commented on anti-gentilism in the NT. One example is Luke T. Johnson,
who says: "The NT's harshest polemic by far is reserved for Gentiles,
in which it appropriates the themes of contemporary Jewish
polemic" (Luke T. Johnson, ,"The New Testament Anti-Jewish Slander and
the
Conventions of Ancient Polemic, Journal of Biblical Literature 108,
no. 3 [Fall, 1989]:441, n. 66).
In sum, what Holding seems to hate is his own Bible's support of
collective punishment. He cannot stand the fact that this is a morally
reprehensible practice, and so he tries to pretend it does not exist
among his cherished NT authors.
man06
I agree that he has a bit of a scratchy voice;however, I think he also
loses out in this debatebecause of his strategy. Why doesn't he ask
Craig tocite any of the sources by name who apparently"witnessed" this
resurrection? Why doesn't he ask himto reference extra-biblical
accounts from any of thesewitnesses to collaborate his claims?
And though Avalosasks him to demonstrate his methodology and
exegesis,he doesn't pin him down enough on his gyrations
andhypocrisy. Avalos does a great job showing that all of
Craig'sassertions fall on the fact that he doesn't have anobjective
critical tool for saying what is metaphorand what is fact. Did you
catch Craig's slight ironictone when he dismissed dragons coming to
life and thesun stopping its course in the sky juxtaposed with
hisearnest and heartfelt sincerity in saying that theresurrection is
fact? Unbelievable that people chooseto overlook this claptrap.
Certainly it would have been advantageous of Avalos toask Craig to
cite an actual source for the assertedhordes of witnesses to this
resurrection. It wouldhave done a great deal of damage in a
morestraightforward way. Also Craig is allowed to sidestepthe issue of
source text references because Avaloschooses to expose his hypocrisy
only with referencesto other religions (a fair point, but one that
doesn'tcorner Craig enough in my opinion).
In the Q & A section, Craig admits that he has no ideawhy so many
literary characters in the NT don'trecognize Jesus for who he is. He
is as baffled bythis as most laymen are apparently. Yet, Dennis
RMacDonald has done an excellent job establishing astrong link between
Homer and the Gospels, especiallyfor those who see Mark as the
youngest of the fourtestaments to resurrection. This admission is
lethalon Craig's part since it means that he doesn't know orchooses to
ignore a direct link to Greek mythology andtranscription philosophy,
the same Greek that is usedto create the NT. His own set of rules for
historicitythen would require him to see as "historical" thefantastic
mythology embedded in the Odyssey.
I only wish Avalos had taken this notion and slammed him onit
regarding how texts are seen as historical. I don'tsee how Craig would
have been able to sweet talk hisway out of that. In fairness to
Avalos, he went for the jugular or thesupport beam instead of a point
by point refutation ofthe typical 4-part defense of the resurrection.
Forthe learned listener, Avalos does a fine job in thisregard. For
those emotionally tied to theirmythological beliefs, well Craig is
right.
They will continue to believe based on their emotionaldiscoveries and
not with any set of rationalstandards. A quick side note: I think it
is imperative that atheists and skepticswho end up being audience
members at these debateskeep their emotions in check. There were a few
moronswho lost it at the microphone, making the religiousnutcases look
as though they were not the only ones.This is counterproductive to our
cause I'd say.
man06
have dogs, A company of evil doers have compassed me, Piercing my
hands and my feet. "
Ever wonder why no bible gospel author knew anything about that verse?
And why it only makes its first appearance in the heretical Gospel of
Peter and the Roman Catholic Justin Martyr from the mid second
century?
Ever wonder how a translation of a Greek version of a Psalm could be
"from the original" since the Psalm was presumably originally written
in Hebrew?
Ever wonder how any mistranslation ever arose in any text if the first
translation to ever be made was from "the original"? According to your
argument, if it was from the original it had to be a correct
translation. And so therefore a later translation of that translation
also had to be accurate because the first translation was from the
original . . . . and on and on through every translation. At what
point would or could anyone ever make a mistranslation? Or is there no
such thing as a mistranslation and can the Hebrew and Septuagint
meanings of this verse be reconciled with enough faith?
But I do appreciate this being brought to my attention -- in ref to
another thread it establishes the Gospel of Peter as indeed late,
drawing on a Christian rendition of the LXX.
http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=236929
"The problems I have with crucifixion is that all Christian testimony
indicates Roman authority would not have considered Jesus a serious
political threat, "Mark's" original crucifixion story is completely
unbelievable and it doesn't make sense that if the leader of a
movement was crucified in Jerusalem his movement would be free to
continue promoting him in Jerusalem. There also appears to be no
quality evidence that anyone who knew Jesus claimed he was crucified."
man06
the Jews?" Pilate asked them. 13"Crucify him!" they shouted. 14"Why?
What crime has he committed?" asked Pilate. But they shouted all the
louder, "Crucify him!" 15Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released
Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be
crucified.
"Look at the reality of what would have happened, which is that the
Romans would only have crucified him if he were an insurrectionist or
a murderer, the two primary capital offenses they reserved for
crucifixion. That makes the Romans "christ killers." Well, the Romans
wrote the history, so they had to come up with a way to make
themselves look good, so that the cult member ignores the fact that
ultimately they killed Jesus. They weren't brutal oppressors, it was
the "Jews" that were the bad guys. It wasn't us that killed god; it
was them. Heck, we even tried to save him! We gave them a choice and
they are the ones who chose to have us brutally torture and murder
god. We used to release one criminal--any one they chose so it was
entirely their fault we brutally flayed and nailed god to a cross.
See? How else do you spin the fact that you killed god by nailing him
to a cross for insurrection?
"All of Judea has spent the better part of two years, allegedly,
following Jesus wherever he goes and begging just to touch the hem of
his garments; a fanatacism in such a large faction that the Sanhedrin
conspires secretly to kill him due to their fear of the crowd and as
soon as Jesus is up on the block, the Sanhedrin are able to overcome
their terror in order to "stir up" the crowd to have them ask for
Barabas' release and Jesus' crucifixion."
bart d ehrman
misquoting jesus
page 193
the jewish crowd then utters a cry that was to play such a horrendous
role in the violence manifest against the jews down through the middle
ages, in which they appear to claim RESPONSIBILITY for the death of
jesus: "his BLOOD BE UPON US AND OUR CHILDREN" (MATT. 27:25-25)
PAGE 194
THE textual variant we are concerened with occurs in the next verse.
pilate is said to have flogged jesus and then "handed him over to be
CRUCIFIED.: ANYONE reading the text would naturally assume that he
handed jesus over to his own (roman) soldiers for crucifixon.that
makes it all more striking that in SOME EARLY WITNESES, Including one
of the scribal corrections in codex sinaiticus, the text is changed to
highten even further the jewish culpability in jesus's death.
ehrman says according to these manuscripts , pilate "handed him over
to THEM [i.e., to the jews] in order that THEY might crucify him."
other source:
"You can't even try to spin Paul as saying that the "Jews" coerced
Pilate to kill Jesus and that's what he meant, since, again, Paul
makes it clear in Thessolonians that it is the "Jews" who killed
Jesus and that these are the same "Jews" who killed the "prophets" and
had the power to drive them out. No mention of Pilate or the Romans or
any connection at all to the events alleged in Mark. "
man06
the four Gospels were being written, there was virtually a clean
'historical' slate for the Jesus story. Palestine was geographically a
world away; Jerusalem had been destroyed (C.E.70) and the Apostles
Jerusalem Church, was gone. About 1.1 million Jews had been killed and
others were enslaved or exiled. They would have had more to worry
about than some new developing pagan religion far off in the land of
the heathens. Despite the relative safety, the first written Gospel is
still cautious and in its actual final line and provides an excuse for
the previous dearth of 'history' for Jesus' resurrection. It says that
the female witnesses to the empty tomb were afraid and didn't tell
anyone (Mark 16:8). Even the more fantastic Matthew has the Apostles
going to a remote and discreet place, a mountain in Galilee (about 75
miles away), to see the risen Jesus. Luke, on the other hand, has them
boldly staying in/near Jerusalem for the monumental event.
Martyrdom:
A common argument for the Resurrection's historicity is the testimony
and martyrdom of the Apostles. Why would they die for a lie? But this
argument assumes that they were genuinely executed, that they espoused
the NT/Gospel accounts of the Resurrection and that that was the crime
for which they died. It also assumes that they were unique. But many
religions have martyrs. Islam claims 80,000,000.
Before the Gospels, there was little flesh on Jesus' life/death and
nothing to indicate that the Apostles' risen Jesus wasn't like Paul's
risen Christ, a spiritual entity (Acts 22:7-9). Despite their generous
volume, Paul's epistles, the first NT documents, provide hardly any of
the Gospel tradition. Paul displays little familiarity with Jesus-the-
man, his deeds and teachings, including the resurrection details. He
presents Jesus essentially as a metaphysical messiah. Though the
Gospels had not been written in Paul's time, it is still remarkable
that this evangelist would not employ a verbal form of them in his
teaching. Over and over he misses opportunities to do so. Paul teaches
mostly Paulinity and the Old Testament. James' Jerusalem Church
appears even further removed from Gospel Christianity. It presumably
comprised of the original Apostles, Jesus' family and real-time
followers. They maintained devout Judaism and a mutual tension with
Paul. As for their dying over witnessing the Gospel's bodily
resurrection of Jesus, we don't know that they even espoused it.
Let's examine the 'martyrdoms', starting with Peter. The Church
enthusiastically teaches that Peter was crucified upside-down. That
comes from the rejected Gnostic text, "The Acts of St. Peter". The
Church omits that it has Peter dying over his preaching about
chastity, rather than over Resurrection issues. Prior to this second-
century document, there were no details of the alleged execution.
What about Paul, who never met the man Jesus (the dead or undead)? The
Church Father Tertullian said he was beheaded. That was in, "Against
the Heretics" (200), about 140 years post-Paul! But Tertullian also
said that John was thrown into boiling oil and escaped unhurt! The
first account we have (185-195) is from "Acts of Paul", another
Gnostic Christian text rejected by mainline Christianity. It reports
milk flowing from Paul's truncated neck.
With James, the brother of Jesus, the historian Josephus (Antiquities
20) reports that the people rose up at his execution with the high
priest Ananus being deposed. Nasty, but it hardly sounds like
sanctioned systematic Christian persecution. There was no mention of
Resurrection proclamations. While Josephus has James stoned to death,
the Church father Eusebius, via the 2nd century Christian chronicler
Hegesippus, has him being thrown from a building, stoned and finally
clubbed to death.
Acts (of the Apostles), which was written about C.E.85, only records
two martyr deaths. Remarkable! Surely this is the book where high-
profile martyrdoms, as those mentioned above, would have been
recorded. Acts reports the persecution of Stephen, a non-disciple. His
crime was regarding Moses' law and the temple (Acts 6:14). The other
was James, brother of John (not Jesus), which receives six Greek words
(12:2). Again, testimonials to the bodily Resurrection aren't
mentioned.
The cautious observe a footnote on page nine of "Foxe's Book of
Martyrs", that says the accounts of martyrdom are traditional!
man06
----------------------------
And she simply repeats her claim that the disciples were baffled by
the idea of Jesus rising from the grave, while the enemies of Jesus
knew exactly what had been prophesied.
Why did the disciples see Moses return from the grave, never to die
again, and still think nobody could return from the grave? After all,
the disciples had been given the power to raise the dead in Matthew
10.
I'm sure that if Jane had the power to raise the dead, like the
disciples had, she would not be baffled by the concept of the dead
rising.
Yes, if I had been given the secret of the kingdom of God and had been
given the power to raise the dead, I would be baffled if the man I
followed said he would rise from the dead.
After all, I had seen Lazarus rise from the dead, just a few days
before, so I would definitely be bewildered by claims that Jesus would
be just as alive as Lazarus was.
They were not concerned with what Jesus had said?
'The next day, the one after Preparation Day, the chief priests and
the Pharisees went to Pilate. "Sir," they said, "we remember that
while he was still alive that deceiver said, 'After three days I will
rise again.'So give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the
third day. Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the body and
tell the people that he has been raised from the dead.'
How come the enemies of Jesus understood the words of Jesus better
than his followers?
After all, had they seen Moses return from the grave (something you
claim is not a resurrection!!)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After the supposed resurrection of Jesus, the soldiers guarding the
tomb come back to the city and tell the chief priests what had
happened and that the tomb was empty.
The elders bribe the guards and tell them to say ""His disciples came
by night, and stole him away while we slept.""
Now isn't this the dumbest most ignorant statement that you have ever
heard? If the guards were SLEEPING, how could they possibly know that
Jesus' followers had removed Jesus' body?
When a person is sleeping they are unconscious and would have no idea
what was happening around them. If they did, they would have woke up
and stopped Jesus' followers from removing the body.
---------------
I just can't believe that the chief priests and elders could have
possibly thought that any reasonable person would have believed the
story...."" His disciples came by night, and stole him away while we
slept.""
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Whatever anyone says about Jews, you always have to admit that they
are very smart people. My Doctor, my Dentist, my Lawyer, my
Accountant, and my Boss are all Jews. They are smart people. It is
impossible that the smart Jews would have said to the guards....Say
that ""His disciples came by night, and stole him away while we
slept.""
-------------------------------
The gospel writer, Matthew, wants us to believe that a smart bunch of
Jews, chief priests, and elders, concocted such a dumb explanation for
the empty tomb.
This whole passage is so dumb it stinks of fabrication.
--------------------------------------
'While the women were on their way, some of the guards went into the
city and reported to the chief priests everything that had happened.'
The guards told the chief priests that an angel had come down and that
his clothes were as white as snow and announced that Jesus had been
resurrected?
And the chief priests believed this story, and did not have the
soldiers arrested?
--------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks for making this important point. We have evidence of Attis
being worshipped as a resurrected God circa 160, although we may
suppose that it may have started slightly earlier.
We may take it that the original Christ crucifixion story reflected
the popular novels of the mid-first century where lovers appear to be
dead but aren't. First Mary (Lazarus, in the rewrite) appears to be
dead, but it turns out that she isn't, then Jesus appears to die of
crucifixion, but doesn't, reuniting with Mary in the final tomb scene.
This original text was probably Samaritan and may have been in the
form of a mime play. I suspect Simon was the lead character's name.
A Christian John-the-prophet cult which apparently worshipped the God
Jesus developed also in the First century.
The cult of Antinous (130 C.E.) presented a real challenge to the John
and Attis cults. Here was an historical man made into a God. Antinous
had died for the good of the empire and been resurrected as a God. His
worship spread like wildfire.
The Attis cult, during the time of Antoninus Pius (138-160) added the
motif of resurrection to its story to compete with the Antinous cult.
At the same time, the time of Antoninus Pius, the John/Jesus cult must
have done the same. It is at this time that the old Samaritan Mary-
Simon love story gets changed into the resurrected Jesus Christ story
with both Mary and John the prophet reduced to minor characters.
It is true that the Christians did not follow the Attis worshippers in
adopting the resurrection motif and the Attis worshippers did not copy
the Christian movement in adopting the resurrection motif. They both
copied the Antinous cult around the same time (138-160).
This scenario proposes that the Mark, Matthew and Marcion texts are
all from the period of Antoninus Pius, although they are rewrites of
earlier text.
-----------------
man06
*why doesn't no other christian mention this accusation in the 1st
century?
*Why doesn't no Jewish document include this accusation?
*why isn't it in any actual enemy source?
*When we do find Jewish polemic in the Talmud it never mentions
this...
*It always mentions other attacks on crosstianity.
*acts does not mention this accusation
even though acts records a lot of the Jewish attacks against the
church...
*The gospels themselves show signs of an increasing rate of a
legendary development. They get more fabulous and polemical overtime.
The whole flesh polemic appears in luke... but gets his original basic
story from mark which doesn't contain that polemic...mark tended to
look at the 2 body view of the resurrection...
*Mark and matthew don't mention jesus being touched or eating food or
whooshing up into heaven before the crowds... only later sources of
luke and john contain such details.
*Paul never mentions the empty tomb; never mentions any of the details
regarding flesh and yet we would expect him to when he is talking
about the nature;the nature of the resurrection of the body...
Gospels tell us jesus appeared and disappeared and sometimes wasn't
recognised.
More consistent with visions than a physical body...
man06
The entire sequence is meant to exonerate Pilate and blame the Chief
Priests of the Jews for the death of Jesus. The text suggests five
times that Pilate is not to blame, but the Chief Priests are to blame.
----
The Jews tell Pilate that Jesus is evil and should be put to death.
Pilate doesn't want anything to do with it. They should judge him
themselves.
The Jews then tell Pilate that they want to put him to death, but need
his approval. Pilate interviews Jesus and finds him innocent.
The Jews still demand that he be killed. There is some kind of custom
(unknown historically, but highly theatrical) where Pilate gives the
Jews a choice about whom to crucify. They choose Jesus.
---
Pilate tries a fourth time. He has Jesus roughed up. The Jews aren't
satisfied. They must have him killed because they have a law saying
that anyone who says they are the son of god must die. Pilate again
interviews Jesus. Jesus exonerates Pilate as someone just doing his
job, but blames the Jews for his impending death. Pilate again seeks
to free Jesus for the fifth time.
-------------------------------
The Jews now threaten to accuse Pilate of treason. Only when faced
with a threat that could result in his own death does Pilate give in
and order the death of Jesus.
--------------
the author deeply hates the cheif priests....
It appears clear to me that the author deeply hates the Chief Priests
and blames them for the death of Jesus. It appears quite likely to me
that Pilate was, in fact, entirely responsible. The entire scene is a
rhetorical and theatrical presentation. We may doubt every detail. Did
the chief priests hand over Jesus? This is unlikely as the text
suspiciously tell us they NEVER entered the Praetorium. The text feels
compelled to explain why nobody saw the chief priests inside the
Praetorium. The text makes up some nonsense about the Priests not
entering because of some cleanliness restriction (unknown
historically) Could it be rather, that they were never inside the
Praetorium because they never delivered Jesus to Pilate?
---------------
excellent!
The person with the power to try and execute Jesus doesn't do it and
the people without the power to do these things are given the power to
do it. We are dealing with a theatrical fiction that turns historical
fact upside down.
http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=187750&highlight=Of+all+of+the+throngs+of+believers
---
they turn on jesus in 2 days...
Deceit? This is presumably the same Jewish crowd that the Sanhedrin
were so terrified of just two days prior that they supposedly decided
to inexplicably get the Romans to kill Jesus to begin with; for fear
that if they attempted to kill him (as they supposedly already tried
twice before to do, btw) the crowd of Jews would turn on them and kill
them.
----
powerful authority like pilate is helpless?
Helpless? Pontius Pilate, their oppressor is "helpless to resist
them?"
You simply must be joking as that is utterly and incontrivertibly
preposterous. Pilate, if you'll recall, was so brutal and so anti-
semitic that he slaughtered almost an entire town and was recalled to
Rome as a result, where, in his shame, he later committed suicide.
----
But that's just it, why in the hell would the Jewish crowd so feared
by the Sanhedrin just two days prior due to their undying love of
Jesus now want him killed for no reason?
-----
2 days prior....
ETA: If they didn't want to "rock the boat," then why would they take
Jesus to Pilate in the first place (since he had limited judicial
authority and Jesus had committed no Roman crime), threaten Pilate
with a riot for not doing their bidding when Pilate thrice pronounced
him innocent, and risk their own lives (as they feared just two days
prior) by attempting to rile up this miraculous crowd of apparently
two-faced robots into somehow forcing Pilate into murdering a man he
just officially declared innocent?
----
did they enter into the praetorium?
First compare this to our other gospels:
John:18.28 Then they led Jesus from the house of Caiaphas to the
praetorium. It was early. They themselves did not enter the
praetorium, so that they might not be defiled, but might eat the
passover.
18.29 So Pilate went out to them and said, "What accusation do you
bring against this man?"
Mark: 15.1And as soon as it was morning the chief priests, with the
elders and scribes, and the whole council held a consultation; and
they bound Jesus and led him away and delivered him to Pilate.
Matthew: 27.2 and they bound him and led him away and delivered him to
Pilate the governor.
Luke: 23.1 Then the whole company of them arose, and brought him
before Pilate.
Note that in the synoptics, there is no mention of the Jewish priests
not entering the Praetorium. The implication is exactly the opposite
that they "brought" or "delivered" Jesus directly to Pilate. When one
hears these words, one immediately thinks that they entered into
Pilate's Palace or administrative place of work and brought Jesus to
him. Without John, nobody would have suspected any differently.
In the John account, we are asked to believe that Pilate without being
told the charges against the man, left whatever he was doing, and went
outside to meet the priests who would not come inside with Pilate
because it would make them unclean.
As you mention, there were numerous and often cited priestly rules
regarding impurity. However, as far as I know, there is no text that
mentions Jewish priests not entering into Roman places to avoid ritual
impurities. If anybody has such relevant text, I would be quite
interestested in it. The Jews had been living under Roman occupation
for some 80 years at this point. I would imagine that if a there was a
law prohibiting priests from entering Roman houses before Passover and
other holidays, somebody might have mentioned it. Lacking that
evidence, we may just as well assume that the writer is making up such
a restriction in order to explain why no priests were seen
"delivering" or "bringing" Jesus to Pilate. It is far easier to
believe that than to believe in Pilate being so deferential to the
Jewish Priests as to come out to them and hold a trial at their
request.
-------------------------------------------
tried to stone him twice....
If the Sanhedrin truly feared riots from "the crowd" if they tried to
kill Jesus (which they supposedly already tried to do by stoning him
twice before) then why wouldn't they fear riots when they attempted to
rile "the crowd" up to get them to inexplicably force Pilate into
killing him, just after Pilate announced the Sanhedrin's betrayal of
Jesus by proclaiming he was not just innocent, but that he could find
no crime against him in the first place?
And what is the deal with this mythical "crowd" of anonymous Jews that
are so easily riled up en masse to threaten their oppressor into
killing a completely innocent man? They were magically bewitched into
not just demanding Jesus be imprisoned, but that Pilate crucify him
all due to the influence of the very people who were so terrified of
influencing them two days before?
-----------------------------------
different jewish sects...
why would "king of the jews" matter?
There were many different non-orthodox sects in the area each
preaching their own version of Judaism, so the Sanhedrin wouldn't have
cared if one Rabbi among them claimed to be a title that doesn't exist
in any significant, actionable way
No Roman official (including Caesar, I would argue) would have given a
shit if some local Jew were going around claiming to be the "King of
the Jews" no matter what Caesar decreed, as is evidenced in the
narrative when Pilate allegedly says it's not his problem, take him to
Herod, so how could he be "blackmailed" by "the crowd" the next day?
-------------
Neither Pilate, nor "the crowd," apparently, considered Jesus to have
been the "King of the Jews" that you are making a case for.
So why would the Romans mock a man that Pilate had declared innocent
(let alone kill him) by calling him by a title that no one claimed he
actually had, including Jesus?
---
Pilate did not, historically, fear either a riot, or his inability to
stop one. In fact, he anticipated them and took military steps to
brutally quell them as he absolutely would have done on Passover.
----
prevention of riots...
Phoenix, my apologies, but I'm growing very tired of having to cover
ground I already did and you have not addressed. Josephus recounts how
Pilate not only anticipated a riot during the aquaduct debacle, he did
not fear one, but instead took covert steps to ensure that if any riot
broke out, there would be a sufficient multitude of soldiers posing as
a part of the crowd to quell it efficiently (and did so, no less, when
one erupted).
That would be a part of his job, incidentally; to control the region
and be prepared at all times for any uprising. The Passover festival,
for an obvious example, would most certainly have been a time when
Pilate was absolutely concerned and therefore likewise prepared for
any kind of uprising, particularly if he did not have the troop
support he thought he needed.
---------------------------------
But, again, you have not addressed the fact that for Pilate to have
been susceptible to blackmail, he would have had to have believed that
"the crowd" had something on him to blackmail him with.
He publicly declared that Jesus had committed no Roman crime (that
would include Caesar's decree), so he could not possibly have believed
that "the crowd" could blackmail him with something he had already
officially declared as a duly authorized representative of Rome that
which was not a crime in his mind.
Pilate would have had to have believed that "the crowd" would be able
to prove to Caesar that Jesus had claimed to be the "King of the
Jews."
-------------------------------------------------------------
..publically confirmed that no one considered jesus to be king of....
He did not; Pilate knew this, allegedly ruled on it and then publicly
confirmed that no one considered Jesus to be the "King of the Jews,"
so there would be no grounds in Pilate's mind for any kind of
blackmail, if, indeed, such a man as Pilate feared such sophistry from
a crowd of subjugated Jews.
------
Look bad? "The Jews" as you put it denounced Jesus as a "King of the
Jews," thereby concurring with Pilate's findings that Jesus was not
and never claimed to be (as you concede) the "King of the Jews."
"I have found this man has commited no Roman crime. He does not claim
that he is your king, your Sanhedrin claimed he claimed that and I do
not beleive them. Is he your king?"
"We have no king but Caesar, but if you don't kill Jesus, we're going
to tell our mortal enemies and our oppressors that you refused to kill
him for claiming he was the King of the Jews."
excellent!
"You just publicly declared that you don't consider him to be the King
of the Jews; he has publicly declared he is not the King of the Jews;
and I have officially, publicly declared that he has committed no
Roman crime. The record is clear, fuck you."
"Then we shall riot!"
"Beside the fact that I already anticipated such a possibility on this
day particularly, because I'm not a fucking idiot, you mean you're
going to riot if I don't kill the completely innocent man that you all
agree is not your 'King' even though you all supposedly love him so
much that if you found out that your leaders had conspired to try and
kill him (as I just told you was precisely what they did) you'd riot
against them, but now, inexplicably are not going to, because you're
all just so susceptible to 'office politics' that don't yet exist?
Gee, I never thought of that possibility on this the most militarily
prepared day of the year for such a contingency. GUARDS!"
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
terrified of the crowd 2 days before....
I asked why were the Sanhedrin terrified of "the crowd" (presumably
the same festival crowd that was there two days prior for the
Passover) that prompted them to concoct a false charge that Jesus had
claimed to be the King of the Jews and then not terrified of the crowd
two days later when they allegedly walked among them and somehow
convinced them to demand that Pilate murder an innocent man; a man
that they evidently did not consider to be the "King of the Jews?"
---
where were the multitudes hiding???
The (gospel) sum of the circumstances behind the arrest and trial
betrays the fable behind the man-god. To wit:
Two days before a most holy feast, Matthew has the high priests et al
declining to subdue and kill the man of whom they object so as not to
raise the ire of the Jewish citizenry. (26:1:4). Obviously Matthew in
portraying the Jewish powers that be, felt that the crowd is more
inclined to rail against the breaking of doctrine than to be riled at
a man charged with political crimes.
But then we witness a total about face per Matthew. The man Jesus who
sat and ate his Passover meal which can only happen on the advent of
this most holy day, is subsequently arrested by the minions of the
Jewish leaders. (26:47:57)
These same leaders, priests; elders; scribes, as Matthew would have us
believe, shirked their duties to the laws of Moses as well as the
flock in deference to hearing testimony against the man-god and held
trial against him on the very same high holy day they arrested him.
Finding him guilty, they advanced his conviction to two governing
personages which obviously had nothing better to do in tumultuous
Judea than to hear the case of Jews against another Jew--post haste.
By morning, he is found guilty; is assaulted and paraded in front of a
crowd of Jews who should have been observing the Passover; is marched
through a few hundred feet of the Jerusalem streets; hung on a cross
and conveniently dies at 3pm, long enough to bury him in Jewish custom
before sunset.
Of all of the throngs of believers the gospels would have us think
followed Jesus and greeted him in his excursions throughout their
towns, it would only have taken two to maintain the credibility of the
man. But they all stayed home! Peter--the pontiff yet, lied to save
himself, James, Matthew, John, Mary, Mary and Mary, Joseph, Lazarus
and all the rest are nowhere to be found as character witnesses.
Two witnesses! That is all that was required of Jewish law to proclaim
one's innocence. And not one from the multitude came forward. Instead,
they all supposedly condemned the man to die. All the throngs who
cheered on his arrival; all the familial members of those whom he
raised from the dead, all the healed and fed--they all stayed home!
Is this believable? Only to those who do not understand that the
Romans under Pilate, as was succinctly stated by another poster, gave
not one wit about the sensibilities of the Jews. Pilate, as was the
governor, was all about Rome, appeasing his emperor and concerned only
about those who threatened Roman rule. Some upstart who claimed to be
king of the Jews and opposed by Jewish elders, hardly qualifies.
The gospels as we have them are but the undated writings of authors
unknown--a reflection of propaganda during the first few centuries of
the common era.
man06
man06
"Note that there is a definite artile on (LMH, thus making it refer to
someone specifically. Furthermore, pregnant is an adjective - so (LMH
is already pregnant (the verb to be is very often left off). YLRT is a
qal participle, so it is not "she will have a son" but "she is bearing
a son". "
"We see that "Parthenos" has a primary meaning of "maiden, girl" and
may or may not indicate a Virgin. So "Parthenos" is equivocal as to
virginity. Looking through the usages in the Literature I don't see an
especially strong connotation of "virginity" by usage. If someone here
wants to add up the usages, be my guest, but what you're going to run
into is that "virginity" will be unclear in most uses.
Brown confesses in "Birth" that at this time "Parthenos" was equivocal
and it was because of "Matthew's" usage that it developed a stronger
connotation of virginity."
" No one should be surprised that with "Matthew's" nebulous/dishonest
proof-texting he would take a word with equivocal meaning and spin it
to the specific meaning he wanted. "
"...parthenos...I present a Lexicon showing it doesn't simply mean
"virgin" which is particularly"
Christian Greek translations of the Jewish Bible use "parthenos" for
Dinah after she was raped
"Can one really argue that in 2 Sam 11:5 HRH is anything but the
current state? I note the valiant but stupid form given in YLT: "I am
conceiving!", but that is only incredibly tortuous. The verse says,
"She conceived [THR, related to HRH] and sent and told David, "I am
with child." The present continuous is without any merit."
"There is no evidence for translating HRH in the future and a lot for
translating it as the current state.
If she is already with child, then she is not BTWLH (virgin), though
there's no trouble with her as (LMH (young woman). It is a
misconception that while circumstances make a word imply some
particular meaning, that the word must mean which the statement
applies.
Example, in "the man scolded his son", "the man" is obviously a
father, but one cannot conclude that "man" means "father". One can use
"young woman" to imply "virgin", but you cannot eke "virgin" out of
"young woman". It is only through context, eg "the young woman had
never known a man". She was implicitly a virgin, though "young woman"
doesn't bear the meaning itself."
*********
"Brown writes in "Birth", "The Liddell and Scott Greek Lexicon gives
several instances [understatement] of the secular use of parthenos for
women who were not virgins. But the word seems to have become more
specialized in later Greek". Within Christian literature "parthenos"
aquired a primary meaning of "virgin" because of "Matthew's" use.
Almost all extant Greek Jewish Bibles are Christian. It's unclear if
Christianity accurately preserved any such Jewish product. Therefore
Christian Greek Jewish Bibles generally translated "betulah" as
"parthenos" and "almah" as "neanis". "
"We derive “virgin” from the sentence, not the word “girl”, which is
neautral as to her virginity."**
"Jewish writings show no awareness that "parthenos" in 7:14 was ever
understood to be "virgin". The entire translation by Aquila was a
reaction to Christian Greek translations, not Jewish ones. There
probably were no Jewish ones at the time. Origen confirms that the
Christian translations were corrupt and that Aquila's was the accurate
one. " ***********
...the notion of a mother considering her son insane for acting like
he was the Son of God is clearly incompatible with the notion that she
had received an angelic message informing her she would become
pregnant by god and, subsequently, became pregnant despite being a
virgin.
"
Virginity has nothing to do with the matter, I'm quite certain. I'm
confident at the 90% level that the Urtext of Isa 7:14 read almah and
not betulah. I agree with spin's analysis of almah in the Hebrew
Bible. The word betulah in Isaiah is used metaphorically, to describe
Israel, or together with bechorim in 23:4, which draws on a common
expression used elsewhere in the HB (see here -- you never responded
directly to this post, by the way). Even if it could be convincingly
demonstrated that the lexical range of almah included
"virgin" (instead of merely allowing for it as a subclass of almah),
the context of Isa 7:10-16 offers absolutely zero support for
identifying the almah as a virgin, and it is laughable to suggest that
Isa 7:14 refers to a virgin giving birth. The parallelism of Isa
7:10-16 with Isa 8:3-4 also rules this out." *********
the DESTRUCtIoN!!!!
"However, in two verses, the virginal aspect is emphasized by saying
that the betulah in question "had never known a man". One example is
the description of Rebekah in Gen 24:16. Elsewhere in this chapter she
is referred to as a na'arah (24:14,28) and an almah (24:43), but the
explanatory v'ish lo y'da'ah follows/explains betulah. The second
example is Jdg 29:12, when 12,000 men were sent to annihilate Yavesh-
Gilad:
And this is the thing that you shall do: every man and every woman who
has known in bed a man you shall destroy.' And they found among the
inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead four hundred young virgins, that had not
known man by lying with him; and they brought them unto the camp to
Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan.(Jdg 29:11-12)
My point is that when the text wants to emphasize that someone is a
virgin -- and we have an admittedly small selection of such verses --
it does so by stating explicitly that she had never "known a man." If
the virginity of the almah in Isa 7:14 were the crux of the matter,
rather than the ethical maturation of Immanuel, I'd think it likely
that the author would have made a similar comment."
"Certainly one would expect such an emphasis/clarification if the
almah gave birth as a virgin, as Christian dogma maintains. The other
word (`almah) was used in such passages as Genesis 24:43 where,
although translated virgin in many English versions, reference to the
sexual purity of the woman wasn't necessarily intended."
"Neither the pregnancy nor the child had any special per se
significance to the prophecy. God said, "before that kid is of
elementary school age your enemies will be gone." It's no different
than saying "before this football game is over," or "before the snow
melts."
One of Isaiah's children is maher-shalal-hash-baz (MSHB for short),
whose birth and significance are recounted earlier in chapter 8, in
Isa 8:3-4. This MSHB unit is clearly parallel to the Immanuel unit in
Isa 7:10-16. In both cases, the birth of a male child with a symbolic
name is a significant event, and the child himself is a chronological
marker to which a prophecy of redemption is pegged. Both units use the
same precise language, ki b'terem yeida hana'ar X = "for before the
child knows how to X, in announcing the prophecy.* Further proof that
Isaiah considered his son Maher-shalal-hash-baz to be the fulfillment
of his prophecy is seen in a close examination of context. When he
made the prophecy to Ahaz (as a sign that the Syrian-Israelite
alliance would not prevail), he also promised that "before the Child
shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land that you
dread (Syria and Samaria) will be forsaken by both her kings" (7:16).
This same prediction (prophecy, sign, whatever) was repeated after the
child Maher-shalal-hash-baz was born: "For before the child shall have
knowledge to cry, `My father,' and, `My mother,' the riches of
Damascus and the spoil of Samaria will be taken away before the king
of Assyria" (8:4). Both statements are identical in substance; both
show also that Isaiah intended his prophecy to apply to a political
situation of his day rather than to some event in the far-flung
future. And, more important for the moment, the context of the passage
gives sufficient reason to believe that the child who was named Maher-
shalal-hash-baz instead of Immanuel was contemporarily considered a
fulfillment of the prophecy.*
The birth of MSHB is entirely ordinary. Isaiah goes to his wife, who
conceives, and bears a son. The ordinariness of MSHB's birth, the
strong parallels between the MSHB and Immanuel units, and the fact
that MSHB is to serve as a sign according to Isa 8:18, combine to rule
out any interpretation of a miraculous birth for Immanuel in 7:14.
• Sign (birth of Immanuel) signifies ticking clock.
• Immanuel reaches age of moral discernment signifies alarm bell.
• When alarm goes off, remove prophecy from oven for delicious
redemption of Jerusalem.
• Amazing YHWH self-cleaning feature dispenses with charred remains of
Ephraim and Damascus.
Gen 16:11
HNK HRH WYLDT
idou su en gastri exeis kai texh uion (2nd sng)
Jdg 13:5
HNK HRH WYLDT
idou su en gastri exeis kai texh uion (2nd sng)
Isa 7:14
HNH (LMH HRH WYLDT
idou h parQenos en gastri exei kai texetai uion (3rd sng)
The only difference is that the third case is announced about a
person, not to the person.
HRH is functionally an adjective which means "with child",
"pregnant" (the notion of incipient "conceive" isn't in the term, but
usually indicate by verb aspect missing here) and at any point of time
it reflects the state at that time, ie if talking about a future point
in time, the woman is pregnant at that time. In the present, the
pregnancy is present, so that when an angel announces HNK HRH, it
should be understood as, "behold, you are pregnant". There is no
reason to believe that Jdg 13:5 should represent a future.
The problem I think arises because of difficulties in the expression
of Jdg 13:3, in which the angel points out that she is barren and
childless, but still tells her she is pregnant and that she will give
birth.
Please supply some reason to read HRH as having future content in Isa
7:14, when it doesn't itself bear any. In all indisputable examples it
carries the meaning of being pregnant at the time of reference. What
evidence from the verse leads you to think Isa 7:14 is linguistically
different??
I'm puzzled why you don't respond directly to my simple yet rigorous
analysis of Isa 7-8. To recapitulate, Isa 8:18 identifies that the
prophet and his sons serve "for signs and for wonders in Israel." One
of his sons, MSHB, is introduced in the very same chapter. His
conception is completely ordinary -- explicitly so -- but his name,
like that of Immanuel, is unique. (Isa 7:14 is the only instance of
the name Immanuel in the Hebrew bible. It goes without saying that 8:3
is the only instance of the name MSHB in the Hebrew Bible as well.)
What, then, is the miraculous "sign" associated with MSHB? The strong
parallels between the MSHB unit in Isa 8:3-4 and the Immanuel unit in
Isa 7:10-16 rule out any miraculous birth for Immanuel. Could you
respond to these points, please?
By the way, you haven't dealt with the meat of my argument. What is
the sign associated with maher-shalal-hash-baz? How do you view the
parallel between the MSHB unit in Isa 8:3-4 and the Immanuel unit in
Isa 7:10-16? Doesn't the fact that the word ot applies to Immanuel in
7:10 and to Isaiah and his children in 8:18 plausibly suggest that
Immanuel is Isaiah's child, and Immanuel's mother is Isaiah's wife?
*********************************************************************************
There is no future tense in Hebrew as I've said, so one cannot use
such a notion to force a future onto the pregnancy. Behold doesn't
point to a future so it's no help. The pregnancy itself is not the
sign and the text does not dwell on the pregnancy, being much more
interested in the notion of the child's ability to choose between good
and evil and that the child will not have reached that age before the
events happen, just as with the next child prophecy involving Maher-
shalal-hash-baz, he will not have reached the age of being able to say
"father" or "mother" before Aram and Samaria get done in by Assyria.
You're trying to cite Matthew in order to prove that Matthew's own
cherry-picked, cut-and-paste approach to Messianic exegesis was
correct? First, Matthew was reliant on the Septuagint which contained
the erroneous translation of almah as parthenos in Isaiah 7:14.
Matthew, who was never one to care about context seized upon this as
an excuse to contrive his virgin birth fiction. Never mind that the
verse had nothing to do with the Messiah. Secondly, it's irrelevant
what Matthew thought about the passage because Matthew didn't write
it, apparently didn't understand it and was not really interested in
any information which didn't serve his agenda anyway.
This is simply an example of Semitic parallelism, and actually
provides additional evidence that betulah does mean virgin. In the
most frequent form of Semitic parallelism, which is absolutely
ubiquitous in the Old Testament, the same idea is repeated twice in
succession in two different ways. It seems to have been a habitual
manner of expression. Such parallelism is found in every book in the
Old Testament, in all genres of literature without exception (although
it is most common in poetry). Some examples from Genesis similar to
this case, selected on a purely random basis:
"Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time" (Gen 6:9 NASB) -
Being righteous (tzadiq) in Hebrew terms entailed being blameless or
perfect (tamim). You could not be blameworthy and also righteous. So
why the added phrase, which provides no extra information?
"Now the men of Sodom were wicked exceedingly and sinners against the
LORD." (Gen 13:13 NASB) - Does being "wicked exceedingly" (ra`im ...
me'od) not adequately state their condition, without adding the
redundant "and sinners against the Lord" (vechatta'im laYHWH)? Could a
person be "wicked exceedingly", but not a "sinner against the Lord"?
Note: the placement of the word exceedingly (me'od) in English
translation is arguable, but doesn't affect the argument.
In the article linked in the con piece, a limited set of examples of
redundant repetition are examined. But even if we accept the examples
given in the article as the only such cases, which they certainly
aren't, the main point is that to treat strictly redundant repetitions
as distinct from other instances of parallel repetition involves, from
the point of view of Hebrew discourse, making a distinction without a
difference. Whether the added phrase is strictly redundant, or almost
redundant, or partially redundant, has little to do with the reason
for its addition. The added phrase is there because of a Hebrew
literary convention, not because the author thought that added
information was required. Genesis 6:9, 13:13, 24:16 and numerous
others all show the same phenomena: they are employing a standard
Hebrew literary structure. The additional phrase was added for reasons
of convention, not reasons of logic. To distinguish parallelisms where
the second phrase is strictly redundant, as in the article linked in
the con piece, from parallelisms where it isn't precisely redundant,
is to erect an entirely artificial distinction from the point of view
of Hebrew discourse, even if it is possible from a strictly logical
perspective.
---- ---------------------------- ------------------
------------------
This has been consistent and deliberate misrepresentation on praxeus's
part which shows that he neither understands that the Hebrew itself is
the major element in the analysis nor that the Greek, of which
Vaticanus is the chief representative for the Jewish literature, is
supportive of the Hebrew in Jdg 13:5 (and is backed by its equivalence
in Gen 16:11) and that he is continuing a discussion he knows he
cannot win by honest linguistic analysis.
No Hebrew analysis is proffered by praxeus from his apologetic
sources. I have indicated that the Hebrew supplies an adjective which
means "pregnant". There is nothing in the text which suggests that the
pregnancy is to come. As the adjective is stative, not inceptive, it
is extremely difficult to translate it with the implication of "become
pregnant". All one has to do is provide an instance in which HRH
actually must mean "become pregnant" with future implication, ie "will
become pregnant". Naturally, praxeus has not done so. The Hebrew is
plain: the adjective HRH is the resultant state of having conceived.
He has consistently refused to deal with Gen 16:11 which is a direct
illustration of where there is no contest that the Greek supports the
Hebrew. He suffers from memory loss on the issue, preferring that it
didn't exist for if he acknowledged its existence he would know that
he would look an utter fool.
The same Hebrew wording is translated by the same Greek wording. And
praxeus says they should not be the same, despite the fact that
praxeus knows nothing about the languages.
Gen 16:11
HNK HRH WYLDT
idou su en gastri exeis kai texh uion
Jdg 13:5
HNK HRH WYLDT
idou su en gastri exeis kai texh uion
What does praxeus say about the fact that the Hebrew and the Greek are
the same in each? He says, , nothing... other than attempt to shoot
the Vaticanus. Understandable, but in vain.
What does he say about the translation I cribbed together from the
Hebrew for the first part of Jdg 13? Once again he says nothing. He is
unable to criticize the translation on any level. He is unable to
offer a translation of his own. He cannot engage in the problem in any
meaningful way.
My personal view is that the the conception and pregnancy are either
in the future or in the very recent past in Judg 13:3-5, based largely
on context. In verse 4 the angel warns Manoah's wife not to drink
alcohol and not to eat impure foods. I think this warning makes most
sense at or before the start of her pregnancy. Manoah's words in 13:8
suggest to me that his wife might already be pregnant. In fact, one
might think that the pregnancy is what provoked the initial visit from
the angel.
Finally, I think spin makes a valid point with regard to the Greek in
Judges 13. You don't have to buy his argument, of course, but it is
foolish for you to ridicule him, since he has language skills you
lack.
Instead of talking about the text, the only thing that praxeus does is
to manipulate language. He was upset because he discovered that the
Greek text of Jdg 13:5 as found in Rahlfs has a present text, yet a
later text, 100 years later has a future tense. Now he's suddenly
upset because I used the words "the Greek", so to avoid talking about
the text he manipulates language and bleeds through the nostrils about
"the Greek".
man06
man06
alleged rape of the Midianite virgins. However, no one on earth can
prove that the Midianite virgins were raped or even used for sexual
pleasure.
TILL
No one on earth can prove (1) that the massacre of the Midianites
even happened or (2) that if it did happen, the order to keep the
virgins alive was made because of the value that men in those times
placed on virginity.
McDonald
No one on earth can prove that massacre of the Midianites ever
happened. However Till and those of his persuasion call it a real
moral atrocity. How could it be considered a moral atrocity if it
didn't happen? All Till can logically say is "if it did happen it
would constitute a moral atrocity." Since he says it can't be proved
that it happened he can't call it a moral atrocity.
TILL
If it never happened, then, of course, it wasn't a moral atrocity,
because that which did not happen can't be anything but a tale. If,
however, biblicists like McDonald are going to contend that it did
happen, they must bear the burden of proving that it was morally
right
to kill children taken as captives in battle and to kill nonvirgins
but keep the virgins alive for themselves. Anyone who doesn't have
an
inerrancy act to grind will read this story and understand that it
was
obviously saying that, if it happened, the virgin girls were kept
alive for sexual reasons. For the sake of argument, however, let's
just suppose that McDonald's source [snicker, snicker] Gleason Archer
was right and that the virgins were spared just to be servants. That
still leaves him with the problem of explaining what is so morally
right about forced servitude.
--- ---
Till
and (2) if it did happen, that the virgin Midianites were kept
alive
just to be servants, as McDonald's source quoted in our debate
(Gleason Archer) claimed.
McDonald
As I pointed out in our oral debate in 1991 if they were used as sex
slaves there would have been no reason at all for God to have been
angry with Israel for having sex with them. The account begins in
Numbers chapter 25 where Israel was led off into idolatry and
fornication by the Midianites. In Numbers chapter 31 Israel was
given
clear orders to kill them all. When they brought back the spoils of
both men and women Moses was angry with them and told them to kill
all
the men and all the women who had known man by lying with him.
TILL
All the men had already been killed, if we are to believe this
inerrant story.
Numbers 31:7 They did battle against Midian, as Yahweh had commanded
Moses, and KILLED EVERY MALE. 8 They killed the kings of Midian:
Evi,
Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba, the five kings of Midian, in addition to
others who were slain by them; and they also killed Balaam son of
Beor
with the sword.
The captives that they brought back, according to this inerrant
story,
were women and children.
Numbers 31:9 The Israelites took the women of Midian and their
little
ones captive; and they took all their cattle, their flocks, and all
their goods as booty.
Some of these "little ones" were males, whom Moses ordered his
soldiers to kill.
Numbers 31:14 Moses became angry with the officers of the army, the
commanders of thousands and the commanders of hundreds, who had come
from service in the war. 15 Moses said to them, "Have you allowed
all
the women to live? 16 These women here, on Balaam's advice, made the
Israelites act treacherously against Yahweh in the affair of Peor, so
that the plague came among the congregation of Yahweh. 17 Now
therefore, kill EVERY MALE AMONG THE LITTLE ONES, and kill every
woman
who has known a man by sleeping with him. 18 But all the young girls
who have not known a man by sleeping with him, keep alive for
yourselves.
---- ---
For the sake of argument, let's just assume that the Israelites were
justified in killing the nonvirgin females because of the incident at
Peor. To so assume, we would have to suppose that every last
nonvirgin female brought back as captives had participated in the
orgy
at Peor. I will show later that this scenario is inconsistent with
the rest of Numbers 31, but to give McDonald the benefit of the
doubt,
let's just assume that every nonvirgin female among these captives
had
participated in the event at Peor. That still leaves the males among
the "little ones," whom Moses ordered his men to kill.
-- -----
Let McDonald explain to us the objective morality in doing that,
because these male children would not have been involved in the orgy
at Peor. Oh, I forgot! The male children were killed to "
cut off the seed of the Midianites." How silly of me not to
recognize
that.
McDONALD
These women were probably killed because they could be pregnant and/
or
they would lead the Israelites off into fornication again.
TILL
As I pointed out in our written debate, notice how often McDonald
will
resort to "probablies" and "could-bes" to explain biblical
embarrassments. I keep wondering just where someone who has so much
linguistic difficulty writing his native language could have such
amazing insights into what the Bible doesn't say.
Here is a good place to mention that Church-of-Christ preachers often
boast that they speak where the Bible speaks and remain silent where
the Bible is silent, so I would really like for McDonald to show us
where the Bible speaks about all these things that he somehow knows
about the Midianite massacre.
McDONALD
The males were killed to cut off the seed of Midian.
TILL
Oh, is that so? Is this speaking where the Bible speaks and
remaining
silent where the Bible is silent?
-- ------ ---
Didn't Yahweh know that killing these male children would not "cut
off" the seed of Midian? Midianites were mentioned several times
after this, even though EVERY male Midianite had presumably been
killed either in the invasion or the massacre of the "little ones,"
so where did the Midianites mentioned later (Judges 6:2-7, 11-16;
7:1-7, etc.) come from? If there were Midianites later on, what
good,
then, did it do to "cut off the seed of the Midianites" by killing
the male "little ones"? Didn't the omniscient Yahweh not know that
killing the males among the "little ones" wouldn't "cut off the seed
of the Midianites"?
You won't forget to answer that, will you?
-- ---------------- --
I assume that everyone is noticing that McDonald is willing to defend
the most despicable of human acts in order to defend his precious
inerrancy belief.
McDONALD
The only ones that were allowed to live were the women who had not
known man by lying with him (virgins). Now if God was going to allow
the Israelites to have sex with these virgins, if sex was on the
agenda, he would have punished the Israelites and the Midianites for
no reason because they were being punished for committing
fornication. Virginity had nothing to do with qualifying them for
servitude, but it had everything to do with qualifying them for life.
God had strict laws against having sex with someone outside of
marriage. He just didn't allow it. Why would he break that edict in
this matter?
TILL
Is this speaking where the Bible speaks and remaining silent where
the
Bible is silent? I have a simple question for McDonald. If this is
really what Moses meant, i.e., just servitude, when he told his
soldiers to keep the virgins alive for themselves, then why didn't he
just say, "Keep the virgins alive to be your servants"? Shouldn't we
have the right to expect an omniscient, omnipotent deity to guide his
inspired ones to communicate in clear language so that disputes like
this one would never arise?
That aside, I would now like to ask McDonald to point out where this
text said anything at all about these virgins working as servants. I
will urge him in his answer to speak where the Bible speaks and
remain
silent where the Bible remains silent.
-- ----------- ---
Finally, let's have a look at McDonald's claim that the nonvirgins
were killed because they had led the Israelites into idolatry and
fornication. If we are to believed the inspired, inerrant word of
God, only 24,000 Israelites were killed for having participated in
the
orgy at Peor Num. 25:9). If we assume that each of the 24,000 had
each had a Midianite sexual partner--or maybe they were Moabites (see
Num. 25:1)--that would mean that there had been 24,000 Midianite
participants in the orgy. The tale in Numbers 31, however, tells us
that 32,000 virgins were kept alive that day (to be servants, of
course). Are we to assume then that the young virgins were more
numerous than the nonvirgins, whom we could reasonably assume were of
various ages ranging from adolescence to old age? One would
certainly think that a tribal society would have had more nonvirgins
than virgins in its population. In other words, even if there had
been as many as 24,000 Midianite women involved in the Peor orgy, we
could hardly imagine that all of the nonvirgin captives had been
involved in this incident. To so imagine, we would have to assume
that the Israelite men had had multiple partners or that the
nonvirgin
captives were fewer than the younger virgins.
All that aside, I have been curious for some time to know how that
Israelites were able to determine which women were virgins. Maybe
McDonald can tell us.
-- ----------- ----
Till
In my reply to Archer's "servant explanation," I pointed out that
(1)
if these females were kept alive just to be servants, there was no
reason at all to kill the nonvirgins (as if nonvirgins couldn't work
as servants)
McDonald
As I pointed out in 1991 I will point out again. Virginity had
nothing to do with qualifying them for servitude; it had everything
to
do with qualifying them for life. Nonvirgins would be more apt to
lead the Israelite men off into fornication again and eventually into
idolatry.
TILL
And in what way was McDonald able to determine that this was Yahweh's
reason for having the nonvirgins massacred? Is he speaking where the
Bible speaks and remaining silent where the Bible is silent. Anyway,
given the importance that men in those ancient societies placed on
virginity, wouldn't a pretty young virgin have been more tempting
than
a nonvirgin who had been around the block a few times?
Till
and that (2) the cultural emphasis that societies then placed on
virginity would be a more likely explanation for why the virgins
were
spared (if this event actually happened). In support of this view, I
pointed out (1) that when a successor was chosen for Queen Vashti,
only virgins were considered as candidates to fill the position
(Esther 2:1-4),
McDonald
Yes the culture did place an emphasis on virginity just as our
culture
used to and some are trying to get back to that idea. When a
successor was chosen for Vashti virgins were brought before him. Not
because having sex with a virgin was so pleasurable, but because
virgins were considered sexually pure and the Kings servants didn't
want to bring a woman to him who was not sexually pure.
TILL
Is everyone noticing how McDonald always knows the motivating factors
in biblical stories, even when there is nothing in the stories that
even implies what he is saying? Is this what he calls speaking where
the Bible speaks and remaining silent where the Bible is silent?
Till
that (2) when David lay on his deathbed, the virgin Abishag was
appointed to lie in bed with him to keep him warm (1 Kings 1:3).
McDonald
Yes, this is true, but a virgin was brought to him so no scandal
could
be started. If she was a virgin and known to be a virgin then people
would not go around talking about her lying with David to keep him
warm.
TILL
See what I mean? McDonald always knows everything that was involved
behind the scenes in these stories. I could just as well say that
they provided a virgin for David just in case he should regain some
of
his former sexual vigor. In such an event, he would have been
rewarded with a female worthy of his stature. That observation would
be just as valid as McDonald's.
McDONALD
Only a woman who was considered sexually pure could do this. If
David
was so sick that he needed someone to place her body next to his to
keep him warm, I doubt that he was going to be much interested in sex
anyway.
TILL
Is this speaking where the Bible speaks and remaining silent where
the
Bible is silent? I cited this example merely to emphasize the
importance that men in those days attached to virginity. I didn't
cite
it so that McDonald could show us how he knows everything that went
on the behind the scenes in this tale. I have shown that the
importance attached to virginity in those days is a very reasonable
explanation for why the nonvirgin Midianite captives were killed but
the virgins kept alive for the men... er, excuse me, to be servants
to
the men.
Till
I don't recall without reviewing the manuscripts if I mentioned any
other examples, but there are plenty in the Bible that could be
cited. If McDonald doesn't know the value that males in biblical
times put on virginity, then he really has no business trying to be
an apologist. Anyone who doesn't have an inerrancy axe to grind can
look at he text and see the obvious probability that Moses told his
soldiers, who ould all have been males, to keep the virgins alive
for
themselves for
sexual reasons.
McDonald
You can bring up all the accounts that you please, but you can't
prove
that these virgins were used for sex.
TILL
The text certainly implies it, and you can't prove that they were not
so used. Until you can explain why Moses told the men to keep the
virgins alive "for yourselves" rather than to keep them alive to
become servants, reasonable readers will assume the more likely
meaning.
McDONALD
I do know the value that males in Biblical times placed on virginity,
but it wasn't because having sex with a virgin was so pleasurable.
It
was because virgins were considered sexually pure and if a man was
going to find a wife, he would want someone who had not been with
another man.
TILL
Well, I won't dispute that. To put a little frosting on the cake of
my position in this matter, I will cite the case of Reuben and
Bilhah.
Genesis 35:22 While Israel lived in that land, Reuben went and lay
with Bilhah his father's concubine; and Israel heard of it.
Because of this, Jacob later pronounced a curse of sorts on Reuben.
Genesis 49:3 Reuben, you are my firstborn, my might and the first
fruits of my vigor, excelling in rank and excelling in power. 4
Unstable as water, you shall no longer excel because you went up onto
your father's bed; then you defiled it--you went up onto my couch!
Jewish literature indicates that this offense was so grievous that
Jacob (Israel) never had sexual relations with Bilhah again.
And now, children, love the truth, and it shall preserve you. I
counsel you, hear ye Reuben your father. Pay no heed to the sight of
a woman, nor yet associate privately with a female under the
authority
of a husband, nor meddle with affairs of womankind. For had I not
seen Bilhah bathing in a covered place, I had not fallen into this
great iniquity. For my mind, dwelling on the woman's nakedness,
suffered me not to sleep until I had done the abominable deed. For
while Jacob our father was absent with Isaac his father, when we were
in Gader, near to Ephratha in Bethlehem, Bilhah was drunk, and lay
asleep uncovered in her chamber; and when I went in and beheld her
nakedness, I wrought that impiety, and leaving her sleeping I
departed. And forthwith an angel of God revealed to my father Jacob
concerning my impiety, and he came and mourned over me, and touched
her no more ("Reuben's Testament" in Testaments of the Twelve
Patriarchs).
The guys took sexual purity seriously in those days, and that ancient
attitude is sufficient to explain why the Israelites were told to
keep
the virgin Midianites alive for themselves.
This is enough for McDonald to chew on for a while. I will continue
my reply in part (2).
man06
life of Jesus when you don't know when the gospels were written, who
the authors were, or where they were written? Usually we need to show
that our sources 1) can know about the time they declare to refer to;
and 2) contain at least some verifiable information related to the
core of their content.
The gospels we have are texts written in Greek, so there is no
necessary connection with the land they try to represent. In fact the
earliest gospels, Mk, has difficulties with geography, suggesting it
was definitely written outside the Judean context. Mk also features a
number of Latin linguistic influences which strongly suggest a Roman
context of writing, ie not simply a place under the possession of the
Romans, but where Latin was spoken and the most likely location is
Rome.
Two of the other three use Mk as their primary source, so they can in
no way help us establish any historical content for the gospel
tradition.I would like to hear any evidence you have which will change
the status of the gospels, so that they could be conceived of as we
would classical sources such as Tacitus whose works are full of
verifiable information, sources which offer problems of their own, but
which leave know doubt that they contain the food for history.
this was written by spin.
man06
that Mt and Lk used Mk as their main source suggests that they are
merely derivative.
What could we make of Tacitus's account of the actions of Nero if we
didn't have external materials to compare it with (eg coins,
monuments, sculpture, inscriptions and much more from the specific
period)? The value of Tacitus would be untestable on the subject and
we cannot simply take Tacitus's word for it. The same goes with any
report. The central material needs verification.
People can get things wrong. For example Tertullian believed that a
certain Ebion was the founder of the Ebionite christian movement which
was aberrant so Tertullian wrote against him. However, Tertullian was
wrong: there was no Ebion. Yet the figure of Ebion evolved further
from the time of Tertullian to that of Epiphanius from whom we learn
that Ebion's hometown was Choseba -- not bad for someone who didn't
exist!
We cannot simply take veracity for granted: it must be demonstrated.
Luke may provide very specific information (well not that much
really), but nothing from the central figures of his story that can be
verified. So let me reiterate my original statement:
I would like to hear any evidence you have which will change the
status of the gospels, so that they could be conceived of as we would
classical sources such as Tacitus whose works are full of verifiable
information, sources which offer problems of their own, but which
leave know doubt that they contain the food for history.
written by spin
man06
And Paul is the perfect model of that, with his practice that became a
foundation stone of messianic Paulinanity:
"To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews; to those
under the law I became as one under the law - though not being myself
under the law - that I might win those under the law. To those outside
the law I became as one outside the law - not being without law toward
God but under the law of Christ - that I might win those outside the
law." (I Corinthians 9, 20)
Recalling that every apostle and disciple of 'Isa 'alaihi as-salaam
was thoroughly kosher, in every respect a keeper of the Law of Moses,
and that kosher followers of 'Isa were hunted down and slaughtered for
the three centuries before and the three centuries after the triumph
of Constantine and the Council of Nicea, we see Paul setting forth the
method by which such Christians were located and identified, even
where they practiced in secret for reasons of the Ten Persecutions of
the ten Roman emperors preceding Constantine.
Paul's mission, you will recall and all Paulines agree, was to spread
his gospel message as the New Covenant to be fully realized in the
future Millennial Kingdom, identifying Jesus as the bringer of
salvation promised throughout the Old Testament Scriptures.
The kosher followers of Jesus, who knew those Scriptures intimately
from birth, knew better. Jesus himself recognized each of them and
appointed them as rabbis, and each of them read from open Scripture
that the Law had previously kept closed to the goyim, just as Jesus
did, and they knew what Paul was doing. Paul was the Temple official
responsible for counterintelligence and suppressing subversion against
Temple Israel ~ deception of this nature, to spy out heretics,
dissidents, and particularly minim ("minim" is what the followers of
Jesus are still called today), and to foster cryptic mystery sects to
deflect them from successful restoration of liberty, was second-nature
to him.
So when Paul went among the keepers of the Law, he pretended to be a
keeper of the Law and played the pharisee to gain their confidence and
in the evenings, in intimate brotherly conversations, insinuated his
departure from the Law and falsification of the Good News. When he
went among those without any Law, he pretended to have no Law; while
in fact he knew the Law intimately and "kept it" as he chose from
moment to moment, or rejected it, just as he says throughout his
writings, or falsified it, claiming that Jesus
had "finished" the Law and it was no more, or that "all things" were
already "fulfilled" in some future pie-in-the-sky scenario.
> Paul says: THAT I MIGHT WIN the jews and the gentiles.
To a completely novel "No-Law" mystery religion with a solar calendar
and pagan festival seasons, monogamy and subjugation of women, and an
always-in-the-future "Kingdom" that is "not of this world" when "the
Saviour" returns to depose Caesar and rule with a rod of iron wielded
by "the elect of God." Paulinanity in a nutshell.
Kosher Christians kept Passover and prayed and fasted and spread the
real Good News, which had entire tribes of them waiting in Tema when
the Messenger of the Covenant of Malachi 3:1 arrived. But Paulinanity
was set up with deception and treachery to root them out and kill as
many of them as the bishops could manage, which was a lot more when
the Pauline trinitarian intelligence organs took over
control of the legions.
3:71. O people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians): "Why do you
interfuse truth with falsehood and conceal the truth while you
know?"
Those who know are those few who pursue Scripture through to find what
it actually says, and then fail to go where it tells them to go for
salvation. Negus Najjashi accepted Islam and remained the King of
Israel on the Lion Throne of Judah that Solomon 'alaihi as-salaam had
sent south to Abyssinia with his son Menelik. But then Najjashi
wasn't lying about Jesus, either. Today's quasi-Talmudic Princes of
Paulinanity aren't about to give up their crimson thrones and pacific
estates built on false expectations and falsehood.
Instead they continue the war of Temple Israel against God and His
Messenger, to deprive the goyim of their heritage in Abraham and rule
the nations in the name of jaeysus, whom they despise. And then their
pawns come to places like soc.religion.islam and try to challenge
the Messenger of the Covenant with empty rhetoric.
It must be hell for them. I guess it is, since they're still waiting
for God's mercy to come in the clouds with the angels, so they can sit
on their thrones for a thousand years and rule the world.
Yeah, that sounds like a hell, waiting forever for the power to
tyrannize people in the name of Jayesus.
man06
#1) We can see from an examination of the Gospel of Mark that many
literary references are made back to the the Hebrew scriptures.
#2) We see in the Gospel of Mark a series of references made to the
Elijah/Elisha narratives in 1 Kings and 2 Kings.
#3) We see that the apparent references to the Elijah/Elisha
narratives fall neatly into a section of the Gospel and follows
distinct patterns. The Elijah/Elisha narrative parallels are used
within the first third of the Markan narrative where the characters
are being identified and constructed. The actions that Jesus takes,
the miracles that he performs, are patterned on the miracles of
Elisha.
#4) The feeding scenes are themselves apparently based on the miracles
of Elisha. The feeding scenes in Mark are almost word for word copies
of the feeding scene in 2 Kings.
#5) The two feeding scenes in Mark are set within a larger "doublet".
That "doublet" (for lack of a better word) ends in Mark 8 with a
teaching scenes that summarizes the lessons of the "doublet". This is
Mark 8:14-21, which specifically addresses the Pharisees and the
feeding scenes.
This is all indicative of quite a complex and multi-layered
constructed symbolic narrative that was carefully crafted by the
author, it is not at all indicative of someone simply compiling
various random tales that have been handed down to him.
If we agree that the feeding scenes are based on the Elisha feeding
scene in 2 Kings, then are you claiming that the "sources" which the
author of Mark used were also both based on 2 Kings? Are you claiming
that the author of Mark took two sources and then reinterpreted them
int the light of two Kings? Are you claiming that all of the Elijah/
Elisha parallels came from "other sources"?
How do you explain Mark 8:19-21?
Here all of the numbers are repeated again, specifically calling out
12 and 7. (In my estimation 12 = Israel, 7 = Rome)
Why would this scene be included if the two feeding scenes were just
the passing on of two different traditions?
Why would the author even bother with the two feeding scenes when in
reality there only real different between them is the numbers?
Very clearly is appears to me that the author was engaging in symbolic
math here, he wasn't repeating these two things because one guy told
him one set of numbers and someone else told him a different set.
According to the "two source" theory the numbers here are meaningless,
totally unimportant, they just happen to be two different sets of
numbers that cropped up in two different threads of the traditions.
My explanation of these two feedings scenes is much more complex than
that, and much more holistic, dealing with the narrative elements
regarding Jews and Gentiles that separate the two scenes.
My view of it is that in the one scene he is feeding the people of
Israel, in the other scene he is feeding the Gentiles. The Jews are
fed first, then the Gentiles, which reflects the passage that
separates these two scenes where Jess says that the Jews are to be fed
first, then the Gentiles.
taken from
man06
Jesus did not fulfil this law, because he didn't stone the woman
himself.
Indeed, this story actually confirms that Jesus was a sinner himself:
because only "he who is without sin" could throw the first stone...
and Jesus could not.
Of course, the sinful nature of Jesus is in the NT already, even
without this story: Mark 10:18 "And Jesus said unto him, Why callest
thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God".
http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=241430&page=2
man06
Yahweh: I saw Yahweh sitting on his throne, with all the host of
heaven standing beside him to the right and to the left of him. And
Yahweh said, 'Who will entice Ahab, so that he may go up and fall at
Ramoth-gilead?' Then one said one thing, and another said another,
until a spirit came forward and stood before Yahweh saying, 'I will
entice him.' 'How?' Yahweh asked him. He replied, 'I will go out and
be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.' Then Yahweh said,
'You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go out and do it.' So
you see, Yahweh has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your
prophets; Yahweh has decreed disaster for you"
From the heavenly host around his throne, Yahweh asked for volunteers
to propose a plan by which Ahab could be enticed to go up and fall at
Ramoth-gilead. One suggested one thing and another still another,
until "a spirit" came forward with a plan to go forth as a lying
spirit in the mouths of Ahab's prophets. In response to this, Yahweh
said to the spirit, "Go out and do it." Does this sound as if Yahweh
was doing nothing but allowing Ahab to be deceived by the lying spirit
in the mouths of his prophets? No, it doesn't. It specifically says
that Yahweh commanded the spirit to "go out and do it." Furthermore,
this story has the prophet Micaiah concluding the recital of his
vision with this statement: "So you see, the LORD (Yahweh) has put a
lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets." He did not say
that Yahweh had allowed a lying spirit to enter the mouths of Ahab's
prophets; he clearly said that Yahweh himself had put the lying spirit
into their mouths. That would have made Yahweh an active participant
in the deception.
If I actively enlisted the help and advice of friends on how I could
lure Tom to invest money in a con game that would bilk him of his
savings, would I be a guilty party to the deception and fraud if I
later ordered one of these friends to carry out the deception? Or
could it be said that I had only allowed Tom to believe the deception?
The vision implied that Yahweh, the alleged creator of the universe,
couldn't think of a way to entice Ahab to go to Ramoth-gilead, so he
had to enlist the help of the heavenly host around his throne. One
would think that these heavenly beings would have been exceptionally
intelligent creatures, but, like Yahweh, they themselves seemed
momentarily stumped. One proposed this, another proposed that, until
finally an enterprising "spirit" came forth and volunteered to become
a lying spirit in the mouths of Ahab's prophets. Yahweh liked the plan
and commanded this "spirit" to go do it. The whole idea was to deceive
Ahab into going to his doom at Ramoth-gilead. So if the plan was to
work, one would think that secrecy would have been of the utmost
importance, yet right in the middle of the conspiracy, while the
prophets who were under the influence of the "lying spirit" were
telling Ahab that victory was assured if he decided to go up to Ramoth-
gilead, along came Micaiah to blow the whistle on the plan. Yahweh had
gone to great lengths to come up with a plan, and then right in the
middle of its execution, he let one of his own prophets come onto the
scene and give it away. This makes Yahweh look like an absolute
nincompoop, and anyone who could believe the story has to be an even
bigger nincompoop.
Threatened by a message from king Sennacherib of Assyria whose army
had laid siege to Jerusalem and other Judean cities, king Hezekiah
rent his clothes, put on sackcloth, and went into the house of Yahweh.
The prophet Isaiah sent word from Yahweh for the king not to be
afraid. "Behold, I will put a spirit in him (Sennacherib)," said the
message from Yahweh, "and he shall hear tidings, and shall return to
his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own
land."
The chapters end with an account of Sennacherib's assassination by his
own sons, but that is only incidental to the story. The important
thing is that Isaiah, as did Micaiah, depicted Yahweh as a god who
dealt with troublesome men by putting lying spirits into them to
deceive them and lure them to their deaths.
Another problem passage concerns the intertribal dispute between
Israel and the Benjamites. Outraged at the rape and murder of a
Levite's concubine at Gibeah by a group of Benjamite homosexuals, the
other Israelites demanded that the tribe of Benjamin deliver up to
them the "base fellows" who had done this thing so that they could be
put to death (Judges 20:12-13).
When the Benjamite leaders refused the demand, the Israelites took an
army of 400,000 against the Benjamites, who numbered only 26,700. It
looked as if it were going to be a complete rout, so the Israelites,
apparently seeing no need to send their entire army out to battle,
went up to Bethel to ask "counsel of God":
Who shall go up for us first to battle against the children of
Benjamin? And Yahweh said, Judah shall go up first (20:18).
Well, Judah did go up first, and lost 22,000 men in a resounding
defeat! So what happened here? The Israelites had asked counsel of
Yahweh, and he told them to send Judah out to battle first. One would
have to be completely idiotic to think that the Israelites had asked
"counsel of Yahweh" to find out which army to deploy in order to be
defeated. Obviously, they wanted to know what army would secure a
victory for them. So if anything like what is related in this story
ever happened, we can conclude only one of two things: (1) Yahweh
deceived the Israelites into thinking the forces of Judah could win
the battle or (2) Yahweh is not omniscient. Either way the inerrancy
doctrine suffers irreparable damage.
But this story didn't end with the defeat of the Judean army. In great
distress, "the children of Israel went up and wept before Yahweh until
evening; and they asked of Yahweh, saying, Shall I again draw near to
battle against the children of Benjamin my brother?" And what answer
did they receive? "And Yahweh said, Go up against him" (v:23). So on
this "counsel" from Yahweh, the Israelites went to battle the next
day, and this time the Benjamites "destroyed down to the ground of the
children of Israel again eighteen thousand men" (vv:24-25).
In profound anguish, the Israelites had asked their god Yahweh if they
should again go to battle against the Benjamites, and he told them to
go. If that was not deception, then someone should explain why it
wasn't.
If I absolutely knew that John Jones had infallible ability to look
into the future and see what was going to happen and, knowing that, I
asked him if I should buy stock in company A, would Jones be guilty of
deception and lying if he said, "Yes, buy it," and then, after I had
bought the stock, the company went bankrupt?
Zev
news:f66451be-b082-4455-
b8ec-0d4...@8g2000hse.googlegroups.com...
>1 Kings 22:19-23: Then Micaiah said, "Therefore hear the word of
> Yahweh: I saw Yahweh sitting on his throne, with all the host of
> heaven standing beside him to the right and to the left of him. And
> Yahweh said, 'Who will entice Ahab, so that he may go up and fall at
> Ramoth-gilead?' Then one said one thing, and another said another,
> until a spirit came forward and stood before Yahweh saying, 'I will
> entice him.' 'How?' Yahweh asked him. He replied, 'I will go out and
> be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.' Then Yahweh said,
> 'You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go out and do it.' So
> you see, Yahweh has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your
> prophets; Yahweh has decreed disaster for you"
You seem to miss the fact that Micaiah, the only one here
who is called a "Prophet of God", is telling the kings the truth.
Even Ahab, who takes astonishing precautions to avoid the fate
that Micaiah had predicted for him, seems to understand that.
Jehoshaphat suspects that Ahab has surrounded himself
with sycophant "prophets", doesn't trust them,
and asks for a real prophet.
Ahab admits that he doesn't want to hear
a prophet who speaks against him.
> Threatened by a message from king Sennacherib of Assyria whose army
> had laid siege to Jerusalem and other Judean cities, king Hezekiah
> rent his clothes, put on sackcloth, and went into the house of Yahweh.
> The prophet Isaiah sent word from Yahweh for the king not to be
> afraid. "Behold, I will put a spirit in him (Sennacherib)," said the
> message from Yahweh, "and he shall hear tidings, and shall return to
> his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own
> land."
> The chapters end with an account of Sennacherib's assassination by his
> own sons, but that is only incidental to the story. The important
> thing is that Isaiah, as did Micaiah, depicted Yahweh as a god who
> dealt with troublesome men by putting lying spirits into them to
> deceive them and lure them to their deaths.
It would have been more dramatic if lightening
would have struck him on a clear, cloudless day,
but what's wrong with the way it happened?
Isn't life frequently like that?
> Another problem passage concerns the intertribal dispute between
> Israel and the Benjamites. Outraged at the rape and murder of a
> Levite's concubine at Gibeah by a group of Benjamite homosexuals, the
> other Israelites demanded that the tribe of Benjamin deliver up to
> them the "base fellows" who had done this thing so that they could be
> put to death (Judges 20:12-13).
> When the Benjamite leaders refused the demand, the Israelites took an
> army of 400,000 against the Benjamites, who numbered only 26,700. It
> looked as if it were going to be a complete rout, so the Israelites,
> apparently seeing no need to send their entire army out to battle,
> went up to Bethel to ask "counsel of God":
> Who shall go up for us first to battle against the children of
> Benjamin? And Yahweh said, Judah shall go up first (20:18).
> Well, Judah did go up first, and lost 22,000 men in a resounding
> defeat! So what happened here? The Israelites had asked counsel of
> Yahweh, and he told them to send Judah out to battle first. One would
> have to be completely idiotic to think that the Israelites had asked
> "counsel of Yahweh" to find out which army to deploy in order to be
> defeated. Obviously, they wanted to know what army would secure a
> victory for them. So if anything like what is related in this story
> ever happened, we can conclude only one of two things: (1) Yahweh
> deceived the Israelites into thinking the forces of Judah could win
> the battle or (2) Yahweh is not omniscient. Either way the inerrancy
> doctrine suffers irreparable damage.
The lesson here, which recurs throughout the OT,
is that if you take God for granted,
if you think God needs you more than you need Him,
you're in trouble.
Of course they expected to win.
But they didn't ask if they would win, even though
that was the most important question.
They thought it was inevitable!
It was only later, after being sobered
by the heavy losses you mention,
that they asked if they would win
(actually, they asked if they should fight or not).
Another example can be found in I Samuel ch.4-5,
where the Hebrews try to maneuver God
into a position where he *must* save them
in order to save the holy ark.
In the end he saved the ark *without* saving them.
Still another example can be found in Jeremiah 8 and Ezekiel 13.
The sycophant 'prophets' who surrounded the king,
telling him and the people what they wanted to hear,
argued the following:
1) God would never allow *His* city (Jerusalem)
to fall to the pagan Babylonians.
2) In contrast to the 10 lost tribes which had disappeared over 100
years
before, the people of Judea and Benjamin had not sunk to total idol
worship
and held the Torah in high regard, even if they didn't always obey its
laws.
If they were to go into exile, the Torah and with it
the traditions and lessons of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob etc.
along with whatever God was planning to build through Israel,
would all be lost.
The message was that God *couldn't* let it happen,
and Jeremiah said that it would happen.
man06
What DtC said, plus, denying or even disproving the miracles, which
several people in the 2nd and 3rd century did do, doesn't prove that
there was no Jesus.
Let's assume that Jesus did not exist and that the general development
of the Christian cult follows roughly Earl Doherty's view, i.e. that
from about 20-70 CE there various small Jesus cults that worshiped a
heavenly messiah.
At this time there was no claim of a real Jesus to even deny. No one
would have even been able to prove that Jesus never existed because no
one claimed that Jesus ever existed, or if they did, the claim was so
vague, like in Hebrews, as to be meaningless.
Let's then assume that the next stage took place after the destruction
of Jerusalem, some time around 70 CE. Let's say that Mark was written
in 70 CE.
So, Mark was written, and for a period of about 20 years it circulated
around largely orally, inspiring the view of Jesus that we know today,
of a guy killed by Pilate.
By around 90 CE the story finally became widely circulated enough that
non-Christians started to hear something about it.
By 100 CE it became popular enough that Roman officials started to
take minor notice of it, but not to pay it much heed.
By around 150 CE Romans would have started caring something about
countering this movement, but not much.
By around 200 CE they really cared.
So, let's just say that around 100 CE some Roman may have cared to
look into these claims of a guy named Jesus who was supposedly killed
by Pilate and whom now a reasonable number of Jews and Romans were
getting hot a bothered about. What would they do then?
#1) Why would they have even suspected that this guy never existed?
#2) Even if they did suspect it, what would they have done about it?
Take the letter of Pliny the Younger for exmaple:
Quote:
Meanwhile, in the case of those who were denounced to me as
Christians, I have observed the following procedure: I interrogated
these as to whether they were Christians; those who confessed I
interrogated a second and a third time, threatening them with
punishment; those who persisted I ordered executed. For I had no doubt
that, whatever the nature of their creed, stubbornness and inflexible
obstinacy surely deserve to be punished. There were others possessed
of the same folly; but because they were Roman citizens, I signed an
order for them to be transferred to Rome.
Soon accusations spread, as usually happens, because of the
proceedings going on, and several incidents occurred. An anonymous
document was published containing the names of many persons. Those who
denied that they were or had been Christians, when they invoked the
gods in words dictated by me, offered prayer with incense and wine to
your image, which I had ordered to be brought for this purpose
together with statues of the gods, and moreover cursed Christ--none of
which those who are really Christians, it is said, can be forced to
do--these I thought should be discharged. Others named by the informer
declared that they were Christians, but then denied it, asserting that
they had been but had ceased to be, some three years before, others
many years, some as much as twenty-five years. They all worshipped
your image and the statues of the gods, and cursed Christ.
They asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or
error had been that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before
dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind
themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft,
or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust
when called upon to do so. When this was over, it was their custom to
depart and to assemble again to partake of food--but ordinary and
innocent food. Even this, they affirmed, they had ceased to do after
my edict by which, in accordance with your instructions, I had
forbidden political associations. Accordingly, I judged it all the
more necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female
slaves who were called deaconesses. But I discovered nothing else but
depraved, excessive superstition.
Letter to Trajan; Pliny the Younger, 112
Pliny had never even heard of Christianity prior to this. He then
interrogated some Christians, we don't even know from this that those
Christians even said that Jesus was a man or was on earth, and all he
finds from them is "depraved superstition". Why and how would he
launch in investigation into the existence of Jesus? #1 If he thinks
is nothing but depraved superstition, then why bother doing anything,
he just simply discounted the whole thing obviously. #2 Even if he did
care, what would be do then, and why on earth would he think it would
matter? Surely he couldn't present evidence to these people, as if
they would listen.
As DtC said earlier, the Romans had no motivation to go on a fact
finding quest regarding Jesus. The region was full of false prophets
and tall tales of miracle workers, they were a dime a dozen, so it
wouldn't have sounded anything out of the ordinary. The only issue was
that these people weren't honoring the state gods, who cares was
nonsense prophet or god they worshiped, that was irrelevant, and in a
land with thousands of gods and hundreds of petty miracle workers and
stories about miraculous healers and the like, the story of Jesus was
just a dime a dozen.
Lastly, as has also been pointed, many Christians of the time, the so-
called Gnostics, didn't even believe in a human Jesus anyway, so how
can you argue that such a Jesus did not exist when the believers
themselves hold a view of the deity which doesn't even depend on him
having "existed" in any meaningful way in the fist place?
man06
>
> >1 Kings 22:19-23: Then Micaiah said, "Therefore hear the word of
> > Yahweh: I saw Yahweh sitting on his throne, with all the host of
> > heaven standing beside him to the right and to the left of him. And
> > Yahweh said, 'Who will entice Ahab, so that he may go up and fall at
> > Ramoth-gilead?' Then one said one thing, and another said another,
> > until a spirit came forward and stood before Yahweh saying, 'I will
> > entice him.' 'How?' Yahweh asked him. He replied, 'I will go out and
> > be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.' Then Yahweh said,
> > 'You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go out and do it.' So
> > you see, Yahweh has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your
> > prophets; Yahweh has decreed disaster for you"
>
> You seem to miss the fact that Micaiah, the only one here
> who is called a "Prophet of God", is telling the kings the truth.
> Even Ahab, who takes astonishing precautions to avoid the fate
> that Micaiah had predicted for him, seems to understand that.
>
according to your crosstian chum on s.r.i it is wrong for Allah to
decieve ppl who disobey Allah and CAUSE harm on earth.It is said in
the Qur'an that Allah 'misleads' them and leads them 'astray'.if the
mischief makers cause harm and deceive ppl then what is wrong with
Allah misleading them? in the verse quoted above yhwh needs GUIDANCE
on how to corner sir ahab.one of the angels come out with a suggestion
that prompt yhwh to say " go do it".
'How?' Yahweh asked him. He replied, 'I will go out and
> > be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.' Then Yahweh said,
> > 'You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go out and do it.'
robert, your crosstian chum should ask why his god could not come up
with a suggestion to corner and destroy ahab in the 1st place? why
depend on angelic advice? and why allow an angel to go out and deceive
ahab? isn't that wrong according to robert? my friend just pointing
out the 2 faced hypocrisy that jesus's alleged crucfixion has created
in your christian brethren.
> Jehoshaphat suspects that Ahab has surrounded himself
> with sycophant "prophets", doesn't trust them,
> and asks for a real prophet.
> Ahab admits that he doesn't want to hear
> a prophet who speaks against him.
>
> > Threatened by a message from king Sennacherib of Assyria whose army
> > had laid siege to Jerusalem and other Judean cities, king Hezekiah
> > rent his clothes, put on sackcloth, and went into the house of Yahweh.
> > The prophet Isaiah sent word from Yahweh for the king not to be
> > afraid. "Behold, I will put a spirit in him (Sennacherib)," said the
> > message from Yahweh, "and he shall hear tidings, and shall return to
> > his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own
> > land."
> > The chapters end with an account of Sennacherib's assassination by his
> > own sons, but that is only incidental to the story. The important
> > thing is that Isaiah, as did Micaiah, depicted Yahweh as a god who
> > dealt with troublesome men by putting lying spirits into them to
> > deceive them and lure them to their deaths.
>
> It would have been more dramatic if lightening
> would have struck him on a clear, cloudless day,
> but what's wrong with the way it happened?
> Isn't life frequently like that?
>
yhwh gives false and incorrect information by calling it 'tidings'
the x thinks the 'tidings' are true but really the 'tidings' will
lead to x's DOOM.
but robert the christian on s.r.i considers yhwh's works to be
evil.look @ his post on s.r.i.
inevitable not only because of thier number but becasue they felt that
yhwh was on thier SIde.but
> It was only later, after being sobered
> by the heavy losses you mention,
> that they asked if they would win
> (actually, they asked if they should fight or not).
>
after fasting and offering burnt animal bodies did they secure victory
for themselves.
Zev
It may have been the best way
to save Israel from Sennacherib's army.
King Saul was once chasing David,
as he was about to catch up to him,
he heard 'tidings', and he had to turn back.
God saved David the same way.
Your comments here indicate that
you don't understand what I said.
The Bible never describes God as a "deceiver",
as the Quran does in 4:88 and 14:4.
I read Robert's posts, just as I read yours.
I am no more responsible for the contents
of his posts than I am for yours.
I suggest you address your comments on his posts to him.
If Biblical descriptions of God's interactions with this world
are a problem for you I suggest you read
"Guide for the Perplexed" by Moses Maimonides.
You can find it here:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/gfp/index.htm
man06
Canaan (Deut. 7:1-2), to leave no one alive to breathe (Deut.
20:16-17), and to possess every place that the soles of their feet
would tread upon (Josh. 1:3) sounds rather "exhaustive" to me. We will
see where Mr. Miller tries to make a great deal out of passages where
the Israelites were told not to destroy trees, vegetation, and city
buildings, but these were nothing more than common-sense instructions
for a people intent on grabbing the land of the Canaanites, living in
houses that they didn't build, and eating the produce of fields and
vineyards that they didn't plant. I don't need to quote the passages
that said this, because Mr. Miller cites them below as mitigating
"limitations" on the Israelites.
http://www.theskepticalreview.com/JFTMillerGoodQuestion5.html
man06
man06
man06
gnostic concerns. Just to take one other similar example before moving
on to other kinds of scribal changes, we might consider the cry of
dereliction that I've just mentioned from Mark 15:34, where Jesus
breaks the silence he has maintained throughout the entire crucifixion
scene by crying out, in Aramaic: elwi elwi lema sabaxqani, a quotation
of Ps 22:2, for which the author supplies the Greek translation of the
LXX, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
13. As I've already intimated, at stake in the Gnostic controversy was
the meaning of the Greek verb in this verse, e)gkate/lipej, literally,
"left behind." The proto-orthodox took it to mean "forsake" and argued
that because Christ had taken the sins of the world upon himself, he
felt forsaken by God; the Gnostics, on the other hand, understood the
word in its more literal sense, so that for them, Jesus was lamenting
the departure of the divine Christ: "My God, my God, why have you left
me behind?"
14. This is clearly the interpretation given by the gnostic Gospel of
Philip, which quotes the verse before explaining that "It was on the
cross that Jesus said these words, for it was there that he was
divided." The words appear to be construed similarly in their
reformulation in the Gospel of Peter, where on the cross Jesus cries
out, "My power, O power, you have left me."
15. Until recently, scholars have failed to recognize how this
controversy over the meaning of Jesus' last words in Mark relates to a
famous textual problem of the verse. For in some manuscripts, rather
than crying out "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" the dying
Jesus cries "My God, my God, why have you reviled me?"
16. The witnesses that support this reading indicate that it was in
wide circulation already in the second century. But it has proved very
difficult for scholars to imagine that it was the original reading of
Mark, for lots of reasons that I don't need to go into here. Assuming
that Mark's Jesus cried out "why have you forsaken me," why would some
scribes have changed it to "why have you reviled me"? Surely it's not
unrelated to fact that Gnostics were using the verse to support their
separationist christology. For them, Jesus' despair at being "left
behind" by God demonstrated that the Christ had separated from him and
returned into the Pleroma, leaving him to die alone. The change, then,
may have been made to circumvent the "misuse" of the text, and
naturally suggested itself from the context. Just as Jesus was reviled
by his opponents, those for whom he died, so too he bore the reproach
of God himself, for whose sake he went to the cross in the first
place.
17. Variations such as this, that relate in one way or another to the
early christological controversies, have been studied at some length
in recent years. The same cannot be said about variants that relate to
other kinds of issues confronting Christian scribes of the second and
third centuries. There are a number of fruitful avenues of
exploration, just begging for intelligent attention. We can begin by
looking at variants involving the apologetic concerns of early
Christianity."
The same Separationist controversy exists at the other end when
original "Mark" of 1:10 says the Spirit came "into" Jesus, likewise
supporting the Gnostics just as 15:34 does. Proto-orthodox
subsequently either mistranslated or Forged "onto" to avoid the
original meaning. If "Mark" is theology it clearly is Separationist
although the Ironic Contrasting style that all in "Mark" are subject
to including Jesus indicates that Vorkosigan is probably right. "Mark"
is primarily Literary art, a Greek tragedy, and not primarily Theology
or a Greco-Roman biography.
JW:
This exchange is illustrative of what Separates us. Andrew left behind
Ehrman's explanation that the offending word has a literal and primary
meaning of left behind (as opposed to only "forsaken me"). Ehrman
mentions this on Andrew's quoted Lost Christianities reference. Ehrman
provides even more emphasis to this in The Orthodox Corruption of
Scripture and provides excruciating emphasis in my excerpt.
The literal and common meaning of "left behind" is key to Ehrman's
point as that is what supports Separationism, not "forsaken me". Here
the Gnostics were favored by the literal meaning, specific context of
the pericope and general context of "Mark". Hence the orthodox need to
replace the offending word with a different word (just as they did on
the other side with 1:10). "left behind" has a physical meaning and
"forsaken me" has a figurative meaning. For you to miss this after I
corrected Andrew in detail is Amazing.
I deliberately avoided attributing motive to Andrew's characterization
that the offending word was simply "forsaken me" which the Gnostics
interpreted Gnostically which makes it seem as though it was the
Gnostics who were straining here. But since you belabor the point...
Since Andrew is Christian unlike you I think you both missed Ehrman's
key point, but for different reasons. I'll explain in a parable to
help you understand:
Way back when I was an auditor the most disagreeable controller I ever
met worked for a company that manufactured ceiling fans in an outlying
part of Houston. The company barely paid minimum wage and it's cooling
system consisted of some of it's ceiling fans (the defective ones)
haphazardly attached to the ceiling (which doubled as a showroom).
When it got over 100 (May to September) they would extend the courtesy
to their employees of turning the fans on "high". The people who
worked here were the ones who couldn't get a job at the local (air
conditioned) Dairy Queen. The main effect for people like me was this
had a severely negative effect on the accompanying female gene pool.
One day, in the course of spending about a half hour trying to avoid a
simple yes or no auditing question, the controller revealed in
unnecessary conversation that two of the most unattractive (anywhere)
female employees were sisters. We auditors (the controller always
insisted on an audience when answering questions) were greatly amazed
because the sisters looked nothing alike and were fearful that each
was outstandingly ugly in their own way. (Hell, they were ugli (plural
for ugly). They looked like a low flying plane hit them in the face
and than backed up and did it again.) Whereupon, the controller
gleefully responded to our observation that they looked nothing alike,
"And both are glad!"
man06
"Left behind" (I think "Mark" would find it quite Ironic that the best
selling series chose the name of what happened to his Jesus) is the
common meaning so that is the starting point. If, in addition, we have
a good reason for "Mark" to have meant "left behind" than it is Likely
that "left behind" is what he meant. "Mark" as a whole is a highly
structured and balanced story. Having the Christ Spirit at the End
leave Jesus is balanced by having the Christ Spirit at the Beginning
come to Jesus. Jesus' cry of "left behind" also fits the Ironically
Transferring and Reversal style of the Passion. Jesus Christ's
emotions are gradually reduced to -0- while emotion is transferred to
everyone else. "Mark's" implication is that during the crucifixion, in
which "Mark" literally counts the hours, as opposed to the Ministry
which goes by in seconds, Jesus is silent. It is not until the Christ
Spirit leaves him and he is left behind, that he shows any emotion or
makes any sound. Just as he never did anything noteworthy until he
received the Spirit. Some are born great, some achieve greatness and
some, like "Mark's" Jesus, have greatness thrust upon them. All this
equals "left behind" is likely.
All Ehrman indicates is that there was an orthodox manuscript reaction
to "Mark's" use of a word with a common meaning of "left behind".
Ehrman does not discuss what he thought "Mark" meant.
man06
verses in each of the books of the New Testament as seen in the three
collations, we obtain 4336 verses (~54%) absent in the Patristic
citations of the New Testament. This staggering number of missing
verses stands in complete opposition to the writings of the
missionaries and apologists for the last 165 years, all of which have
claimed between six and eleven verses are missing from the New
Testament, and that the entire New Testament can be reconstructed from
the citations of the early Church Fathers from the first three
centuries.
man06
very important god-king, as it was portrayed in one of the most famous
Egyptian sites that endured for some 2,000 years. Egypt, it should be
kept in mind, was a mere stone's throw from the Israelite homeland,
with a well-trodden "Horus road" linking the two nations and
possessing numerous Egyptian artifacts, including a massive, long-
lived fort and Horus temple at the site of Tharu, for instance.
Moreover, at the time when Christianity was formulated, there were an
estimated 1 million Jews, Hebrews, Samaritans and other Israelitish
people in Egypt, making up approximately one-half of the important and
influential city of Alexandria. The question is, with all the evident
influence from the Egyptian religion upon Christianity presented in
Christ in Egypt, were the creators of the Christian myth aware of this
highly significant birth scene from this singularly important temple
site in Egypt? If not, these scenes were common enough right up to and
into the common era - could the creators of Christianity really have
been oblivious to them?
man06
quote:
1 Kings 22:19-23: Then Micaiah said, "Therefore hear the word of
Yahweh: I saw Yahweh sitting on his throne, with all the host of
heaven standing beside him to the right and to the left of him. And
Yahweh said, 'Who will entice Ahab, so that he may go up and fall at
Ramoth-gilead?' Then one said one thing, and another said another,
until a spirit came forward and stood before Yahweh saying, 'I will
entice him.' 'How?' Yahweh asked him. He replied, 'I will go out and
be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.' Then Yahweh
said,
'You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go out and do it.' So
you see, Yahweh has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your
prophets; Yahweh has decreed disaster for you"
From the heavenly host around his throne, Yahweh asked for volunteers
to propose a plan by which Ahab could be enticed to go up and fall at
Ramoth-gilead. One suggested one thing and another still another,
until "a spirit" came forward with a plan to go forth as a lying
spirit in the mouths of Ahab's prophets. In response to this,**
Yahweh
said to the spirit, "Go out and do it." Does this sound as if Yahweh
was doing nothing but allowing Ahab to be deceived by the lying
spirit
in the mouths of his prophets? No, it doesn't. It specifically says
that Yahweh commanded the spirit to "go out and do it." Furthermore,
this story has the prophet Micaiah concluding the recital of his
vision with this statement: "So you see, the LORD (Yahweh) has put a
lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets." He did not say
that Yahweh had allowed a lying spirit to enter the mouths of Ahab's
prophets; he clearly said that Yahweh himself had put the lying
spirit
into their mouths. **That would have made Yahweh an active
participant
in the deception.
If I actively enlisted the help and advice of friends on how I could
lure Tom to invest money in a con game that would bilk him of his
savings, would I be a guilty party to the deception and fraud if I
later ordered one of these friends to carry out the deception? Or
could it be said that I had only allowed Tom to believe the
deception?
*
The vision implied that Yahweh, the alleged creator of the universe,
couldn't think of a way to entice Ahab to go to Ramoth-gilead, so he
had to enlist the help of the heavenly host around his throne. One
would think that these heavenly beings would have been exceptionally
intelligent creatures, but, like Yahweh, they themselves seemed
momentarily stumped. One proposed this, another proposed that, until
finally an enterprising "spirit" came forth and volunteered to become
a lying spirit in the mouths of Ahab's prophets.
*
Yahweh liked the plan and commanded this "spirit" to go do it. The
whole idea was to deceive Ahab into going to his doom at Ramoth-
gilead. So if the plan was to work, one would think that secrecy
would
have been of the utmost importance, yet right in the middle of the
conspiracy, while the prophets who were under the influence of the
"lying spirit" were telling Ahab that victory was assured if he
decided to go up to Ramoth- gilead, along came Micaiah to blow the
whistle on the plan. Yahweh had gone to great lengths to come up with
a plan, and then right in the middle of its execution, he let one of
his own prophets come onto the scene and give it away. This makes
Yahweh look like an absolute nincompoop, and anyone who could believe
the story has to be an even bigger nincompoop.
Threatened by a message from king Sennacherib of Assyria whose army
had laid siege to Jerusalem and other Judean cities, king Hezekiah
rent his clothes, put on sackcloth, and went into the house of
Yahweh. The prophet Isaiah sent word from Yahweh for the king not to
be afraid. "Behold, I will put a spirit in him (Sennacherib)," said
the message from Yahweh, "and he shall hear tidings, and shall return
to his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own
land."
The chapters end with an account of Sennacherib's assassination by
his
own sons, but that is only incidental to the story. The important
thing is that Isaiah, as did Micaiah, depicted Yahweh as a god who
dealt with troublesome men by putting lying spirits into them to
deceive them and lure them to their deaths.
But this story didn't end with the defeat of the Judean army. In
great
distress, "the children of Israel went up and wept before Yahweh
until
evening; and they asked of Yahweh, saying, Shall I again draw near to
battle against the children of Benjamin my brother?" And what answer
did they receive? "And Yahweh said, Go up against him" (v:23). So on
this "counsel" from Yahweh, the Israelites went to battle the next
day, and this time the Benjamites "destroyed down to the ground of
the
children of Israel again eighteen thousand men" (vv:24-25).
In profound anguish, the Israelites had asked their god Yahweh if
they
should again go to battle against the Benjamites, and he told them to
go. If that was not deception, then someone should explain why it
wasn't.
If I absolutely knew that John Jones had infallible ability to look
into the future and see what was going to happen and, knowing that, I
asked him if I should buy stock in company A, would Jones be guilty
of deception and lying if he said, "Yes, buy it," and then, after I
had bought the stock, the company went bankrupt?
end quote
"1 Kings 22:19-23: Then Micaiah said, "Therefore hear the word of
Yahweh: I saw Yahweh sitting on his throne, with all the host of
heaven standing beside him to the right and to the left of him. And
Yahweh said, 'Who will entice Ahab, so that he may go up and fall at
Ramoth-gilead?' Then one said one thing, and another said another,
until a spirit came forward and stood before Yahweh saying, 'I will
entice him.' 'How?' Yahweh asked him. He replied, 'I will go out and
be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.' Then Yahweh
said,
'You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go out and do it.' So
you see, Yahweh has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your
prophets; Yahweh has decreed disaster for you"
zev: You seem to miss the fact that Micaiah, the only
one here who is called a "Prophet of God", is telling the kings the
truth.
******************************************
*******************************
I will try to draw a picture here that even you might be able
to understand. Let's suppose that someone who doesn't like you
should
conspire to lure you into a situation where you would probably be
killed. To do this, he has a third party, whom he knows you will
trust, go to you and tell you that you will be successful if you,
say,
fly a hot air balloon across the Atlantic Ocean when in reality he
knows that an atmospheric disturbance in the mid-Atlantic is
developing into a severe storm that will have hurricane force. Since
you trust this third party and are eager to make a name for yourself,
you embark on the journey, run into the hurricane, crash into the
ocean, and die.
In this scenario, the man you disliked died because of a deception
that you instigated when you sent the third party to lure him into an
undertaking that you knew would probably result in his death. In
that case, are you guilty of lying, even though you didn't personally
speak to the man who was killed? If you can't see that you were
guilty of deception and lying in this scenario, then you need help.
*******************************************************************
zev: Even Ahab, who takes astonishing precautions to
avoid the fate that Micaiah had predicted for him, seems to
understand
that. Jehoshaphat suspects that Ahab has surrounded himself with
sycophant "prophets", doesn't trust them, and asks for a real
prophet. Ahab admits that he doesn't want to hear a prophet who
speaks against him.
*********************************************************** **********
So? Your point is what? The fact that Ahab didn't like Micaiah
doesn't change the fact that, as this little yarn was spun, he chose
to believe the lying spirit in the mouths of his prophets and take
his army to Ramoth-gilead, where he was killed. As the yarn is also
spun, Jehoshaphat chose to go to Ramoth-gilead too (1 Kings 22:29),
so
he, despite his original doubt, apparently chose to believe the lying
spirit that Yahweh had put into the mouths of "all these your
[Ahab's]
prophets" (v:23). If Yahweh put the lying spirit into the mouths of
these prophets, then Yahweh lied to Ahab and Jehoshaphat. If not,
why
not?
Don't bother to reply unless you answer that question and explain why
the deity who put the lying spirit into the mouths of the prophets
was
not himself guilty of lying. The prophets who, as this yarn was
spun,
had the lying spirit from Yahweh in their mouths had said to Ahab and
Jehoshaphat, "Go up [to Ramoth-gilead] for Yahweh will deliver it
into
your hands" (v:6). The outcome of the battle at Ramoth-gilead
clearly
shows that this statement was not true; it was a lie, so explain to
me
why it was not a lie that had come from Yahweh if indeed he was the
one who had sent the lying spirit into the prophets to have them tell
the kings this lie.
*************************************** *************
For once in your life, try to answer an argument.
quote:
Threatened by a message from king Sennacherib of Assyria whose army
had laid siege to Jerusalem and other Judean cities, king Hezekiah
rent his clothes, put on sackcloth, and went into the house of
Yahweh. The prophet Isaiah sent word from Yahweh for the king not to
be afraid.
"Behold, I will put a spirit in him (Sennacherib)," said the message
from Yahweh, "and he shall hear tidings, and shall return to his own
land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land." The
chapters end with an account of Sennacherib's assassination by his
own
sons, but that is only incidental to the story. The important thing
is
that Isaiah, as did Micaiah, depicted Yahweh as a god who dealt with
troublesome men by putting lying spirits into them to deceive them
and
lure them to their deaths.
end quote
zev:
It would have been more dramatic if lightening would have struck him
on a clear, cloudless day, but what's wrong with the way it happened?
Isn't life frequently like that?
************************* *********
Well, I am not concerned with what would have been more dramatic if
such and such had happened. I am interested in the way this yarn was
spun by the biblical writer, and as he told the tale,Yahweh "put a
spirit" into Sennacherib that lured him back to Assyria, where he was
assassinated. the verse says a "spirit" lured Sennacherib back to
Assyria, and I doubt that Isaiah meant for us to think that the
spirit
told Sennacherib to go home so that he could be killed, so whatever
Isaiah had in mind about what the "spirit" told Sennacherib, the
story
implies that it was something that Sennacherib thought would be to
his
advantage to return. Hence, the story implies that Yahweh sent a
"spirit" to tell Sennacherib a falsehood.
If you can't see that, then you are too far gone for me to help you.
****************** **********************
> Another problem passage concerns the intertribal dispute between
> Israel and the Benjamites. Outraged at the rape and murder of a
> Levite's concubine at Gibeah by a group of Benjamite homosexuals, the
> other Israelites demanded that the tribe of Benjamin deliver up to
> them the "base fellows" who had done this thing so that they could be
> put to death (Judges 20:12-13).
> When the Benjamite leaders refused the demand, the Israelites took an
> army of 400,000 against the Benjamites, who numbered only 26,700. It
> looked as if it were going to be a complete rout, so the Israelites,
> apparently seeing no need to send their entire army out to battle,
> went up to Bethel to ask "counsel of God":
> Who shall go up for us first to battle against the children of
> Benjamin? And Yahweh said, Judah shall go up first (20:18).
> Well, Judah did go up first, and lost 22,000 men in a resounding
> defeat! So what happened here? The Israelites had asked counsel of
> Yahweh, and he told them to send Judah out to battle first. One would
> have to be completely idiotic to think that the Israelites had asked
> "counsel of Yahweh" to find out which army to deploy in order to be
> defeated. Obviously, they wanted to know what army would secure a
> victory for them. So if anything like what is related in this story
> ever happened, we can conclude only one of two things: (1) Yahweh
> deceived the Israelites into thinking the forces of Judah could win
> the battle or (2) Yahweh is not omniscient. Either way the inerrancy
> doctrine suffers irreparable damage.
zev:
The lesson here, which recurs throughout the OT, is that if you take
God for granted, if you think God needs you more than you need Him,
you're in trouble.
************************* *************************** **************
No, the lesson here is that the Israelites asked Yahweh who should go
up first against the Benjamites, and the text clearly says that
Yahweh
SAID--Yahweh SAID--"Judah shall go up first." You conveniently
ignored this statement in the article.
*
The Israelites had asked counsel of Yahweh, and he told them to send
Judah out to battle first. One would have to be completely idiotic
to think that the Israelites had asked "counsel of Yahweh" to find
out which army to deploy in order to be defeated
*
Having received "counsel of Yahweh," Judah went up first and
suffered
a defeat that resulted in the deaths of 22,000 men. Hence, Yahweh
deceived the Israelites into believing a lie. If not, why not?
Don't bother to reply to this unless you answer that question. I
have
had enough of trying to correspond with inerrantists who won't answer
arguments.
******************** ********************
zev:
Of course they expected to win.
**************************** *******************
If their god Yahweh was indeed omniscient, then he would have known
their expectations, so his answer was misleading. It lured 22,000 of
them to their doom. If such as this could actually happen, would you
not consider it to be an event that happened because of the deception
of an omniscient deity?
Don't bother to answer, unless you answer this question.
*************************** ******************* ********
zev:
But they didn't ask if they would win, even though that was the most
important question.
******************** *************
reply:
Well, let's imagine another scenario. Let's suppose that I am an
expert on racing horses who has a record of never losing a bet on a
race. Knowing this, you ask me which horse you should bet on in the
next race. "Bet on Greased Lightning," I tell you, and you put all
of
your money on him. The race is run and Greased Lightning loses. You
then learn that I had bet heavily on the winner Galloping Georgie. If
you confronted me after learning that I had bet on the winner, would
you contend that you had not deceived me because I had not asked you
who would win the race?
*********************
zev:
They thought it was inevitable!
*******************************************************
Of course, they did, just as you, in the scenario above, would have
thought that I was telling you that Greased Lightning would win the
next race. I seriously doubt that you would have had much respect
for my honesty if I had said, "Well, you asked me what horse to bet
on; you didn't ask me which one would win."
***********************
last quote
"One would have to be completely idiotic to think that the Israelites
had asked "counsel of Yahweh" to find out which army to deploy in
order to be defeated. Obviously, they wanted to know what army would
secure a victory for them. So if anything like what is related in
this
story ever happened, we can conclude only one of two things: (1)
Yahweh deceived the Israelites into thinking the forces of Judah
could win the battle or (2) Yahweh is not omniscient. Either way the
inerrancy doctrine suffers irreparable damage.
But this story didn't end with the defeat of the Judean army. In
great
distress, "the children of Israel went up and wept before Yahweh
until
evening; and they asked of Yahweh, saying, Shall I again draw near to
battle against the children of Benjamin my brother?" And what answer
did they receive? "And Yahweh said, Go up against him" (v:23). So on
this "counsel" from Yahweh, the Israelites went to battle the next
day, and this time the Benjamites "destroyed down to the ground of
the
children of Israel again eighteen thousand men" (vv:24-25).
To believe that this ridiculous tale is part of the verbally
inspired,
inerrant word of God is too absurd to deserve comment, but to argue
that if it did happen as recorded no deception was involved on
Yahweh's part would be even more absurd. In profound anguish, the
Israelites had asked their god Yahweh if they should again go to
battle against the Benjamites, and he told them to go. If that was
not deception, then someone should explain why it wasn't.
Usually, when the Israelites experienced military defeat, pestilence,
famine, or other calamities, the Bible attributed it to some sin or
disobedience. When Joshua's army was routed at Ai, for example, it
turned out that Yahweh was punishing his people for the sin of one
man
who had kept some of the spoils for himself after the battle of
Jericho (Josh. 7).
David sinned in numbering Israel (2 Sam. 24:1-10), but Yahweh
punished
all of Israel for it by sending a pestilence that killed 70,000
people
(vv:15-16). As unjust as it is to punish someone for the "sins" of
another, that was clearly the practice in Old Testament times, and
bibliolaters dutifully defend it as justification for Yahweh's having
on occasion retracted his promises. There is nothing in Judges 20,
however, that even suggests the Israelites were guilty of some
offense
that would have "justified" Yahweh's retraction of his implied
promise
of victory. To the contrary, the Benjamites were the offenders. They
were harboring a group of men who had committed a despicable crime.
Yet the Israelites were losing all the battles--and that after they
had asked "counsel of Yahweh" and had been told to go against
Benjamin! It had to be either deception or a pathetic lack of
foreknowledge on Yahweh's part.
After their second defeat, the Israelites went up to Bethel again
"and
wept, and sat there before Yahweh, and fasted that day until evening;
and they offered burnt-offerings and peace-offerings before
Yahweh" (v: 26). None other than Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the
son
of Aaron, was the priest who stood before the ark of the covenant
while all of this counsel-seeking was going on, and for the third
time
the Israelites asked Yahweh, "Shall I yet again go out to battle
against the children of Benjamin my brother, or shall I cease?" The
answer? "And Yahweh said, Go up; for tomorrow I will deliver him into
your hand" (v:28). They went to battle the next day, and, by luring
the Benjamites into an ambush, finally defeated them, if suffering
40,000 casualties in order to kill 25,000 Benjamites could in any
sense be considered a victory. Maybe it was the fasting and offering
of sacrifices before the third battle that finally brought victory to
the Israelites, or maybe it was just that the third time was charmed.
At any rate, the Israelites finally won, according to the story, but
at the cost of considerable damage to Yahweh's reputation for
honesty.
An inerrantist once told me (with a straight face) that Yahweh did
not
specifically say until the third inquiry was made (v:28) that he
would
deliver the Benjamites into the hands of Israel. So to his warped way
of reasoning, there was no deception in the answers that Yahweh gave
to the first two inquiries of the Israelites. He had just told them
to
go to battle without indicating either way how the battles would go.
Can you imagine an inerrancy defense any lamer than that? If I
absolutely knew that John Jones had infallible ability to look into
the future and see what was going to happen and, knowing that, I
asked
him if I should buy stock in company A, would Jones be guilty of
deception and lying if he said, "Yes, buy it," and then, after I had
bought the stock, the company went bankrupt? To ask the question is
to
answer it."
man06
quote:
1 Kings 22:19-23: Then Micaiah said, "Therefore hear the word of
Yahweh: I saw Yahweh sitting on his throne, with all the host of
heaven standing beside him to the right and to the left of him. And
Yahweh said, 'Who will entice Ahab, so that he may go up and fall at
Ramoth-gilead?' Then one said one thing, and another said another,
until a spirit came forward and stood before Yahweh saying, 'I will
entice him.' 'How?' Yahweh asked him. He replied, 'I will go out and
be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.' Then Yahweh said,
'You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go out and do it.' So
you see, Yahweh has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your
prophets; Yahweh has decreed disaster for you"
From the heavenly host around his throne, Yahweh asked for volunteers
to propose a plan by which Ahab could be enticed to go up and fall at
Ramoth-gilead. One suggested one thing and another still another,
until "a spirit" came forward with a plan to go forth as a lying
spirit in the mouths of Ahab's prophets. In response to this,^**^
*
*
end quote
******************************************
*******************************************************************
***********************************************************
**********
end quote
zev:
****************** **********************
******************** ********************
zev:
******************** *************
Well, let's imagine another scenario. Let's suppose that I am an
expert on racing horses who has a record of never losing a bet on a
race. Knowing this, you ask me which horse you should bet on in the
next race. "Bet on Greased Lightning," I tell you, and you put all of
your money on him. The race is run and Greased Lightning loses. You
then learn that I had bet heavily on the winner Galloping Georgie. If
you confronted me after learning that I had bet on the winner, would
you contend that you had not deceived me because I had not asked you
who would win the race?
*********************
zev:
They thought it was inevitable!
*******************************************************
Of course, they did, just as you, in the scenario above, would have
thought that I was telling you that Greased Lightning would win the
next race. I seriously doubt that you would have had much respect for
my honesty if I had said, "Well, you asked me what horse to bet on;
you didn't ask me which one would win."
*********************** **********************************
******************
man06
"A brief research of Spanish web pages on the subject casts much doubt
regarding the authenticity/interpretation of the findings. Example:
The claimed 'basque' inscriptions would lead to the conclusion that
SAID LANGUAGE HAS NOT CHANGED in almost two thousand YEARS, which is
doubtful "
"Hmmm. The closer you look at it the more hokey it gets. "Requiescat
in Pace"??? That seems like a very Roman Catholic sort of phrase. Do
you know WHEN that phrase was in USE? Was it current in the 3rd
century?"
man06
Christianity would've "borrowed" those concepts earlier *IF* they
could've gotten away with it. The fact will always remain that the
concepts were popular and came long before Christianity was ever
created.
You're admitting that major concepts, motifs and characteristics found
within Christianity were indeed in existence practically everywhere
before the common era - and that conclusion is in fact the general
premise of Acharya's work.
In order for YOUR premise to work, the creators of Christianity would
have had to live in a hermetically sealed bubble devoid of contact
with the rest of the Mediterranean. In your scenario, Christianity
would thus truly represent divine revelation.
You're suggesting that some miraculous minded Jews just happened to
come up with all these concepts on their own, without any influence
from all of the religions and cults of the Roman Empire surrounding
them? That would be a miraculous genesis indeed!
Logic dictates that the creators of Christianity did not live in a
hermetically sealed bubble but were quite familiar with the plethora
of concepts that existed in the Roman Empire, particularly at
Alexandria, which contained a massive library and which also was home
to many thousands of Jews, Hebrews and Samaritans at the time. The
evidence points to THESE Jews as being the major contributors to
Christianity, and they were surely not oblivious to the very obvious
religious concepts all around them, including and especially as
concerns the highly popular Isis, Osiris and Horus.
In order to uphold this hermetically sealed bubble thesis, we would
need not only to suspend logic but also to remove completely the
milieu of the Mediterranean at that time, leaving the creation of
Christianity within a miraculous vacuum.
One reason we find these concepts all over the place is because many
of them are dependent on observations of natural phenomena,
constituting the ancient sciences of archaeastronomy, astromythology
and astrotheology.