Another Denier Wakes up and smells the coffee,,

The mistranslation of the word for "young woman" into "virgin" is such an old story that anybody who is not aware of it has about as much credibility in the debate as a flat-Earther has in a discussion of the solar system. But, no, I am not able to type Hebrew characters on my computer. And as for sheol, any introductory class in comparative religions will show you that the Christian concept of hell bears no resemblance to anything in Jewish theology.

 

happy thanksgiving everyone!:hungry:

 

Jesus was a Jew. He had no interest in preaching to non-Jews. (That was Paul's idea.) Among early Christians were the Ebionites. They believed that Jesus was the Messiah, but they did not believe that he was god. They believed that he was purely human, and was "adopted" by god at the time of his baptism. The Ebionites continued to practice all aspects of Judaism, and believed that for a man to become a Christian he first had to become a Jew, including being circumcised.

Non-Jews wanting to become Christians, understandably found Paul's theology more appealing, as Paul did not require converts to have their penises cut.

But Jews believing in Jesus is nothing new. I do not know whether these modern-day "Jews for Jesus" are Ebionites, or Pauline trinitarians. That's the first question I'd ask if I met one.

 

That would be me

And yet, I speak hebrew and can make up my own mind how much the translation is off.

Addendum: The hebrew (aramaic?) word is Almah עלמה
which indeed is approximately a young woman.
So the entire 'virgin' legend is based on no less than three discrepancies:

1. the translation is wrong
2. This is from Isiah, which is not the Torah and even among jews is acknowledged to be written by man;
and 3. Even if one wants to jump to the errant conclusion that a young woman has to be a virgin, the original sentence just implies that Jesus' father was her first sexual encounter.

Gross nonsense. More interesting I suppose is why this mistranslation became a myth of such power among Christians.

 

One explanation I've heard is that 'virgin birth' was a euphemism for being raped by a roman soldier. I'm not aware of any religious groups that worship this particular version of christianity.

 

WTH (what the heck) are you talking about? Matthew 28: (18-20) - The Great Commission:
Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them ina the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.â€

And don't go starting in on how the Bible is this or that. It is the source of our faith and is the living, breathing word of God. Fine, we can agree to disagree but just let it be. The Bible has been for a couple of thousand years and has not been alter in meaning and has not been proven false in any way.

Goodnight sir.

 

The Bible has actually been proven false in a number of ways.

Item: Darius the Meade (Book of Daniel) never existed. (And the Jews never would have addressed a king with the words "Oh King live forever" as quoted in a section towards the end of Daniel that clearly, based on scholarly study, was added later, but is today part of the Bible.)

Item: The Exodus never happened. There are no records of it except in the O.T. even though the alleged route would have taken them through occupied lands, and it would have been commented upon.

Item: If the sun had "stood still" it would have actually meant that the Earth stopped rotating, and if that had happened, everything on the surface of the planet would have gone flying and nobody would have survived.

Item: The age of the Earth has been proven to be closer to four billion than six thousand years.

Item: The claim that the world was created in six days is too idiotic to comment on, and anyway, the Bible has two different versions, and they cannot BOTH be correct, so the Bible proves ITSELF to be false.

Interestingly, the church authorities who compiled the modern Biblical canon were well aware of the contradictions and some few of the errors. They never intended the anthology to be taken literally. In this they were smarter than today's fundamentalists. They intended the books of the Bible to be read for their inspirational value, not as (pardon the expression!) "gospel truth."

It wasn't until many centuries later that Luther decided that this "inspirational" book should be taken as a greater authority than the church hierarchy, and it was later still when the idea popped up among genuine nut cases that every word in the Bible was literally true. All the more amusing when you recall that (as noted above) the people who originally compiled this diverse collection of writings into one book never regarded it as literal. They did believe some of the silliness in it. But they did not regard it as literal, as shown by the fact that they included two mutually exclusive creation accounts in it. That is, they believed that god created the world, but they regarded Genesis as allegory, not journalism.

 

As long as you're going to keep posting these...uh...'opinion pieces', others will respond.

 

I love to read statements from folks that define their religious beliefs as facts with irrefutable references to scripture. I am happy that you have total faith in your beliefs ---- that you have a heavenly reward waiting for you and those with identical convictions --- enjoy your status but please ---Shut up --- those with different beliefs don't care. Live within your own glorious salvation and leave the rest of us alone. Happy Thanksgiving.

 

You should write one. This thread is already a good start.

 

The Jesus Seminar is an interdisciplinary, scholarly study of all available, extant information about Jesus. It resulted in the publication of The Five Gospels, published by Harper Collins. In this work, the words of Jesus are color coded to indicate which of four categories they fall into:

Red: "I would include this item unequivocally in the database for determining who Jesus was." [I.e. Jesus probably said this.]

Pink: "I would include this item with reservations or modifications." [I.e. Jesus probably said something to this effect, but maybe not exactly this.]

Grey: "I would not include this item in the database, but I might make use of some of the content in determining who Jesus was." [I.e. Jesus probably didn't say this, but it might express an idea he held.]

Black: "I would not include this item in the primary database." [In other words, Jesus probably didn't say it and it probably has nothing to do with him or his ideas.]

The words in Matthew 28:18-20 which you quote above are given in black in this book. In other words, in the opinion of a wide collection of scholars in a variety of disciplines, Jesus never spoke those words and they do not express an idea congruent with his beliefs.

They were inserted in the gospel in order to Justify Paul's project of creating a multinational cult of personality around Jesus.

I am sorry that you find this disturbing, but the Bible is an account of the faith of the authors and compilers, much of it allegorical, and it is not an authority on history, or an accurate biography of Jesus, or a reliable source of information about geology, planetary physics, or paleontology, even though it does have some history mixed in with the mythology and fiction, and many, if not most, of the places mentioned did exist.

 

One what?

The Book of Daniel (my favorite book of the Bible, on account of the kitty cats) already exists. And plenty of stuff exists demonstrating that Darius the Meade didn't exist. There are even far better refutations of religion in print than I could write.

 

i believe the problem began many many years ago... in post #5.

 

If you were so "happy" you would not have commented.

Happy Thanksgiving.

 

Irrelevant.

 

It's relevant because it gives us actual scholarly EVIDENCE about Jesus, rather than relying on the contradictory mish-mash of fairy tales and history compiled by a bunch of church managers (the religious equivalent of MBAs) to promote their own religious dogma.

By the way, when you alter a quote you're supposed to put your alternations in square brackets. Just a little information, for you, though of course we know that Bible literalists are allergic to information.

 

I'll be interested to ask the messiah which of the many versions of true faith is right if SHE arrives in my lifetime. Who will be able to ascend to the mountain top and proclaim to all ----" I told you so." Won't they be filled with pride and self-righteousness. What a day that will be !! Even for the losers.

 

Losers? Oh, this is starting to make more sense. It's not about doing the right thing, living responsibly and sustainably, or being a kind and moral person. It's about being on the winning team. Thank you so much. I get it now.

 

There's a story about a man who died and was revived. It wasn't just a brief heart stoppage. His brain was dead. He was gone. But somehow he came back. His first words were: "I was dead! I was in heaven! I saw god!"

The doctors and nurses were amazed. They asked him, "You saw god??? What was god like?"

And he answered:

"She's Black."