By Ted Belman
From now on comments on every post must relate to the content of the post.
Comments that don’t relate to the post must go here.
Any person who contravenes this demand will be put on moderation. Also their offending comment will be trashed.
The reason for this demand is so that people who want to read comments which pertain to the post, don’t have to wade through the chatter.
Everyone will be happier.
dweller Said:
What a load of crap I am laughing so hard I’m going to puke..
You are really sick!!!! But I do wish you to speedily join your yeshu wherever he is.
dweller Said:
Yes in Jewish tradition
Abimelech was informed that Abraham was a prophet who would pray for him.(Genesis 20:1–7
@ bernard ross:
In another disputation R Joseph Albo argued that since the Jews experienced a National Revelation at Sinai the only way that G-d could amend, abridge or cancel his covenant with the Jewish people is to call every Jews back to Sinai or another designated place and tell us himself. Otherwise we hold to the original covenant and Mitzvot given to us by the creator of all things.
christian claims not only go against the given word of our G-d to the Jewish people but are a negation of our claims and beliefs and a desecration of our G-d.
The worst of the worst are born Jewish traitors. like our friend(Not)!!!!!
@ bernard ross:
Moses Nachmanides and The
Debate in Barcelona, Spain, 1263
The most famous of all Jewish-Christian disputations was between the apostate Jew Pablo Christiani and Moses Nachmanides (the Ramban).
“…To Nachmanides, it seemed most strange “that the Creator of heaven and earth resorted to the womb of a certain Jewess and grew there for nine months and was born as an infant, and afterwards grew up and was betrayed into the hands of his enemies who sentenced him to death and executed him, and that afterwards… he came to life and returned to his original place. The mind of a Jew, or any other person, cannot tolerate this.” Nachmanides told the Spanish monarch…”
@ mrg3105:
Could well be. Such are the hazards of compilation.
Why from the Vatican specifically? What makes you think THEY would have the originals, and that nobody else does?
You make two assumptions here, neither of which allows for the “editing” matter you raised in the first issue, above.
That’s news to me. Was Avraham a navi?
Who cares what the church thinks? If you do, ASK them.
It means she hadn’t been intimate with a man; that presumes sex
— not that the expression is the only one ever used when referring to a sexual encounter (“he went in unto ___”) is used occasionally as well.
However, this talk of rape & halakhah is a lot of hair-splitting — inasmuch as the context for the exchange between Miriam & Gavriel leaves no doubt whatsoever as to the REASON for her making the assertion. She is expressing astonishment & perplexity at his announcement to her (hence, the term, Annunciation) that she will bear a child.
She knows how it’s done, and she knows it hasn’t BEEN done — at all; it’s just that simple. (Check out the text for yourself.) Gavriel knows this, and he tells her that the present circumstance is deliberately atypical.
Sorry, but that’s a stretch by any definition. In any case, the issue is virgin conception; virgin ‘birth’ is a sloppy rendering.
Because he was, like Adam, a direct and original creation (except He was born thru a woman), he came into the world, like Adam, not subject to yetser hara, and thus not subject to compulsion either.
And because, unlike Adam, he never yielded to temptation, he never lost his bright nature and never became subject to compulsion.
Not naive in any sense of the word. He was never at any point in the narrative unaware of the configuration of events. Innocent, but never a ‘victim.’
He was indeed extraordinary by ANY measure.
dweller Said:
Describe how he did it if you know???
Btw the Davidic line must go through Solomon. Where does that leave your demigod???? 🙂
dweller Said:
Mr. presumptuous tells him that he had to work with what he had……. this he tells to the omnipotent creator of the universe and all species. If he doesnt have, he merely can create… he does not have your lack of imagination or creativity. How ludicrous that this magnificent omnipotent entity would need to engage in your ludicrous narratives and schemes concocted by little men. I doubt that such a being has any interest in your fairy tales about what He must work with. It is not the world according to dweller that operates with Him. You are indeed hilarious in your silly stories.
@ mrg3105:
Not bad!! 🙂
Then she might have as the Talmud claims have had an illicit affair with a Roman soldier got knocked up and claimed supernatural impregnation to cover up her situation and making poor Joseph a public mockery as a Cuckold!!!!! She placed him in an untenable position. 🙂
dweller Said:
There are NO reliable and uncompromised texts that either the Eastern or the Western churches can offer.
Within the contemporary setting of the events Jewish culture did not recognise anything written without nevua (prophecy) as reliable, and certainly not in Greek.
Several analysts over the years have shown that NT had been edited, in some cases extensively, so it is quite impossible without a complete disclosure from Vatican to know what the texts’ contents were in the first place.
And besides all that, the supposed authors of the texts were poorly informed in their own culture they had abandoned.
In Jewish law a woman can not testify, in any case, very few people have EVER been recorded to testify of contact with angels. All had been navim (prophets). Does the church claim prophecy for Miriam?
Her claim that she has “not known a man” may be true, yet does not mean she didn’t have sex with one. To “know” a man or a woman is an expression that comes from the Torah, used to refer to the union between Adam and Hava. It is a term which defined gender relationships before Torah, i.e. the Noachide laws. What Miriam was saying is that she had not experienced a Torah-form of relationship with a man, i.e. not with a Jewish man, and not an erusin (marriage) relationship either. She was, by other means, was saying she was raped by a non-Jew. There is no stigma in Jewish culture to be a rape victim, as undesirable as such a crime is.
Saying that Yoseph “knew her not till she had brought forth her first born son.” is simply the confirmation of the above. She had no sexual relationship with Yoseph perhaps bacuse she was raped by a Roman soldier during her period of their engagement, which at the time was a year. The halakhik term for that is biah, but the Talmud says ‘we don’t behave that way’. Since she was pregnant during the period of engagement, she could not conceive after marriage took place.
The point is that in ‘Jesus’ time and culture, a virgin was a woman that hadn’t yet given birth, not a woman that has never had sex. By this definition any first childbirth was a virgin birth in Jewish culture.
What made ‘Jesus’ so extraordinary?
At the time of the destruction of Yerushalaim there were several groups fighting Romans, albeit for different reasons, and which were in fact at odds with each other. Each of these groups had leaders, the names of some of whom we know, including Josephus. Unlike ‘Jesus’, these leaders had significant followings, and these groups translated ideas into actions enough to force Rome to commit military forces to Yehuda. ‘Jesus’ had done none of these things. He was perhaps openly outspoken, but perhaps due to his naivety as a rural inhabitant. He was not extraordinary by contemporary Jewish measure.
dweller Said:
Self description christian????
You caould not have described yourself more accurately.
I’d call it a case of projection.
More self description and projection??? You are on a roll!!!
Now if everyone is expected to figure out the NT texts then nobody can be deemed correct. Each person would deem his rendering the correct one including you it appears.
Is that why there are over 40,000 christian denominations in the world?????
Everybody interpreting the Gibberish in that book according to their own biases, agendas and level of imagination.
Hard to know where your imagination begins and your diminished mental state ends. You are nothing but a demented cult follower.
bernard ross Said:
you also said this
dweller Said:
DUH?????? 😛 😛 😛 😛
yamit82 Said:
the RC and protestant churches called themselves christians and dweller said we should listen to what people call themselves. We do not listen to a quack who calls himself doctor or a murderer who calls himself innocent. However, in this case the incredulous jew killers called themselves christians and so did everyone else. Dweller was not handed down his copy of his christian bible from a jewish source. I t is my understanding that there exists no copy of the NT which was passed down through Jewish hands. Therefore, even if it was written by jews the known revisionists would have revised it to elevate pandera. Dweller claims he did not say his pandera was a half god but when a god and a woman mate you get a half breed. DUH???
mrg3105 Said:
I so enjoy reading men discuss something about which they know nothing, women !!!!! When does a man lose his virginity ? Perhaps the entire concept of female virginity is highly over rated, except of course to men ??
Bernard Ross Said:
I used to think you were playing pretend at amateur psychology but now that I read your adoration of JC revealing everyones “secret sins” I realize that you are casting yourself as Jesus because you beleive that when you psychobabble you are like jesus exposing everyones secret sins. I knew you had delusions of grandeur but did not realize you were aping your mythical half god half man “jewish” messiah
Bernard Ross Said:
LOL, you said your god had a union with a woman and out popped your jewish messiah. DUH????? a god mating with a woman produces a half god half man. DUH????? Perhaps this issue of dominant rece3ssive genes could say that one side had more influence over the half breed progeny.
dweller Said:
DUH???? when two breed the result is a mixed breed or half breed DUH???? again.
dweller Said:
LOLROFLMAO……. they called themselves christians and you said we must listen to what people call themselves.
you are pathetic coming here with your fairy tales of half god half man jewish messiahs as written in a a fairy tale which you take to be truth claiming it is a jewish source of the factual nature of the existence of the caharacters in the fairy tale and then switch to claim that the existence of your jc is based on his brilliant sayings… when we discover they are neither brilliant nor a basis for fact you fall back on your intuition
your intuition told you that the jewish messiah was born of a union between a god and a woman, died, was resurected and is coming back again. you are a jumping bean claiming jewish sources, brilliant sayings and intuition for your christian beleifs. why dont you folks stop stalking the jews with your fairy tales?
dweller Said:
lol, so dweller decides what G_D is capable of doing
Bernard Ross Said:
this is why it is irrelevant whether the original writers were Jewish because we already know that the christian sources had “dogs in the race” because they spent 2000 years lying, libeling, swindling, torturing and slaughtering Jews…
Obviously they cannot be trusted to speak truth about Jews.
LOL, THATS YOUR CREDIBLE SOURCE
Please show me WHICH NT DO YOU USE AND READ. Is it the king james version or a roman catholic version?
Once a jewish document is in the hands of christians we can expect a fairy tale, like those you tell.
dweller Said:
LOL, the NT calls them christians, the dictionary calls them christians but you think we should listen to you. We do not rely on an accused murderer as to whether he is a murderer, we do not rely on a quack calling himself a doctor as to who is a doctor… the medical certifying board decides what he is called, the same with a real estate salesman or a mortgage broker, or bill jones when he was born. We rely on others, what others decided they are. Christians are followers of Jesus, period, full stop… what dweller says means nothing, the dictionaries are right and dweller is wrong. Most people are named by others including when first born.
Those calling themselves christians libeled, swindeled, tortured and slaughtered Jews for 2000 years but you now say they werent christians but before you said we must listen to what people call themselves. You are a con artist who jumps from story to story to prop up his fairy tales of Pandera.
dweller Said:
Liberal?? Define Liberal as opposed to what?
If Brown was a Liberal and you use it as always as a pejorative after defining Liberal, prove Brown was such a liberal.
You don’t have to argue directly with the man. His ideas and opinions are long stated engraved so to speak in granit and is official Catholic positions re: the NT where contradictions can not as you always attempt to do rationalize and explain away said contradictions through a maze of convoluted twisting of what was never said or meant by the writers of the NT. Only the limitations of your imagination and vocabulary prevent you from futher twisting and gyrating in mental gymnastics whenever you come face toface with irrefutable contradictions and outright lies in the texts of that and your stupid book. You deny that which you cannot refute and try to misdirect debate away from the core of the discussion and attempt to make the argument on the character of the messenger and away from the message.
Forget brown forget whether he is a liberal or aan arch conservative theologian. Ans the questions posed to the church that he relied to in his written opinions.
There are so many errors contradictions and inconsistencies in the NT (240,000)that if you or anyone believe it to be divinely inspired, then the only logical and rational conclusion to be derived is that same deity was a mental retard.
Ans the questions put to the vatican as you understand it. Dismissing Brown as a LIBERAL is nothing less than you projecting your inability to refute what he said……
You challenge BR to ask christian clergy their definition. I showed you wheat at least some clergy had to say of someof your very core christological beliefs
We know you are a physical coward and now prove to be an intellectual one as well.
@ mrg3105:
Ample textual evidence to that effect as well.
Concepts notwithstanding, the text clearly has Mary flatly saying to Gabriel (at the time of the Annunciation) that she has “not known man.” It also states that Joseph “knew her not till she had brought forth her first born son.”
Moreover, were there no virgin conception, there would’ve been no metaphysical value in Jesus’ death, which was integral — and essential — to his mission.
It is one thing to view him as strictly a man, a created being; quite another to suggest that this means his existence must perforce have been an ordinary one. A man he was, but far from ordinary.
yamit82 Said:
But of course there is non-textual evidence that ‘Jesus’ or whatever his name, was in fact a man, and nothing else.
The Church, like Muhammad, simply lost quite a bit of content in the translation because it never actually looked at the Hebrew teachings on various subjects.
One of the more obvious evidence is the physical depiction of ‘Jesus’ which has been consistently with long hair. Yet the Church never realised that the long hair is in fact only to be found on the temples as a long-term (pre-Sinai) traditional form of hair style that commemorates Avraham. Because I suspect by this stage the reason for this was forgotten even among the Yehudim under Roman occupation, the depiction went from obvious curled side-locks (early Byzantine crucifixes) to just below the shoulder length hair. Of course this has meaning, though lost on Xtians, and sadly most modern Jews also.
Yet this tradition applied only to men of military service age, though of course grown since 13 to reach required length by the age of 20. Since those times, most communities that retain the tradition do not cut the side locks on boys of any age, the minhag having been subsumed by an unrelated mitzvah.
If ‘Jesus’ had grown his tiltelim, he clearly regarded himself as subject to military service, and what ‘god’ would do that? Whatever his name was, from this evidence alone we see that he regarded himself as very mortal, and very Torah-observant.
The other issue is the ‘virgin conception’. Here the misunderstanding is with the concept of virginity, i.e. halakhik vs non-Jewish.
The halakhik view is that a woman is definitely not a virgin after her first birth. However, in many circumstances she may not be a virgin even when not married. Sexual intercourse is not required to ‘loose’ virginity. When taken as a captive during a war, she is assumed to have lost her virginity in the process. Since Yehuda was occupied by Romans, euphemistically/metaphorically one could suggest that ‘she’ had been ‘raped’. ‘Jesus’ would have been seen as the by-product of this ‘rape’, i.e. ‘virgin birth’, and perhaps seen as someone seeking to avenge his ‘mother’.
Yet later Church authorities didn’t want this to be about Israel and the Jews since political needs changed. So they just adopted the utterly non-Jewish ‘virgin’ birth concept, editing out the underlying ‘local content’ to make ‘Jesus’ ‘universally appealing’. Marketing at its best when launching a local product success onto a larger market.
It isn’t within the sphere of my interest, but I wonder if somewhere online there is a source for all ‘sayings’ of ‘Jesus’ in the NT culled from the rest of the texts, and if anyone had gone to the trouble of comparing these to contemporary Jewish concepts as expressed in the Talmuds to identify how ‘Jesus’ the observant Yehudi may have never said the things attributed to him.
@ yamit82:
Didn’t attack Brown. I attacked RCC:
— for endorsing him.
Brown was a known entity, and they had to know what they were getting when they went for him.
It’s not a cop-out to recognize the typical liberal modus operandi, which is to deny or “spiritualize” what appears contradictory, embarrassing, or less-than-comprehensible on its face, as written.
I incline, instead, to leave that kind of a matter an open question until such time as I have greater clarity over it.
The attitude is more responsible, more scientific, more sure-footed. But it requires the discipline of patience and an genuinely open mind, as opposed to feeling like one has to make a judgment one way or another merely because a question exists.
It was MY kind of approach — not Fr Brown’s — which led, in time, to the discovery of David’s palace at Sha’aryim in the face of the massive doubting that had preceded it for decades.
So?
No, it DOESN’T ‘speak for them’ because they don’t elect the Vatican officials or anybody else. RCC is not a ‘democratic’ institution. The only election that ever takes place in it is the cardinals’ election of a pope. But the cardinals themselves are appointed — by popes.
That’s the partisan in you speaking, not the seeker
— and we both know it, bubbele.
No, he was intellectually chickenshit, unlike me. (There, FIFY.)
@ dweller:
You always attack the messenger when you can’t dispute the message. Calling him a liberal is a cop out. Liberal or conservative, he had the official Vatican stamp of Kashrut.
That speaks for 1.5 billion Catholics and who knows how many non Catholics. He got it right more than you. He was intellectually honest unlike you.
But if you must argue with him pls do join him asap I’m sure you will have a good time.
@ bernard ross:
Yes, it’s coming from the same place that MOST of the psychobabble around here comes from:
— your own projected fantasies.
@ bernard ross:
Nah. I’m not clairvoyant. But then, one needn’t be clairvoyant to see thru you, boychik. You telegraph your every move. It’s easy to read you thru your posts.
Now, THAT is truly psychobabble.
I’ll delightedly answer this question just as soon as you show me the post where I’ve said that the “author” (or indeed ANYBODY) was a “half god.”
@ yamit82:
Seen it before. Typical of what’s become of the RCC.
Raymond Brown was its chief liberal apologist.
Can’t argue with him, however, as he’s been dead for 17 years.
@ dweller:
🙂
The Catholic Church’s Response
to Our Critique of Christian Credibility
Because Christianity offers the second-most credible claim of any world religion, we opted to provide its most traditional branch — the Catholic Church — with an opportunity to respond to some of our critical observations. In early December, 1995, we forwarded the following three questions to Pope John Paul II:
(1) The Gospels teach that Jesus appeared to the disciples after his resurrection. We are unclear, however, whether those appearances took place in Jerusalem or in the Galilee (or at both locales). According to our reading, the Galilean accounts seem to rule out prior Jerusalem appearances. Where did Jesus actually appear? If he appeared in Jerusalem, how should we read the Galilean accounts?
(2) We find the genealogy of Jesus provided by the Gospels confusing. Who was Jesus’ paternal grandfather? (We notice that Matthew says that his grandfather was Jacob, but Luke says it was Heli). Also, we notice that Matthew declares that Jesus was separated from King David by only twenty-eight generations, but Luke’s list shows a forty-three generation separation. What does this contradiction mean?
(3) The genealogical line linking Jesus and King David seems to pass through Jesus’ father. But since Jesus was the product of a virgin conception, then he does not share in his father’s Davidic ancestry. How is Jesus a descendent of David?
In a letter from the Vatican dated 19 December 1995, the Pope’s Assessor, Monsignor L. Sandri, responded in the Pope’s name. Monsignor Sandri declined to answer our questions, but informed us that the members of the French Dominican Fathers’ Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem would probably provide satisfactory explanations.
Through facsimile communications, we forwarded our questions to the Ecole Biblique. In a facsimile transmission dated 11 January 1996, Marcel Sigrist, the institute’s director, also declined to answer our questions, but suggested that answers could be found in the world of Raymond E. Brown, a well-known Catholic theologian currently on the staff of Saint Patrick Seminary in Menlo Park, California.
Again through facsimile communications, we forwarded our questions to Dr. Brown. In a letter dated 22 January 1996, Dr. Brown referred us to writings of his held by the library of the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem.
(
I. Post-Resurrectional Appearances: Galilee or Jerusalem?
In an essay carrying the Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur (official declarations by the Catholic Church that a book is “free of doctrinal or moral error”), Brown admits that the apparent contradiction in records of the post-resurrectional appearances is real. “It is quite obvious,” Brown writes, “that the Gospels do not agree as to where and to whom Jesus appeared after his resurrection.”[1] “Just as the Jerusalem tradition leaves little or no room for subsequent Galilean appearances,” explains Brown, “the Galilean narratives seem to rule out any prior appearances of Jesus to the Twelve in Jerusalem.”[2] Citing immense textual evidence, Brown then declares his disapproval of the simples solution to the contradiction: “We must reject the thesis that the Gospels can be harmonized through a rearrangement whereby Jesus appears several times to the Twelve, first in Jerusalem, then in Galilee.”[3] Rather, concludes the Church spokesman,
Brown makes clear that the post-resurrection appearance accounts are creative, substantially non-historical attempts to reconstruct events never witnessed by their respective authors.
II. Genealogical Contradictions
In the same essay, Brown observes that “the lists of Jesus’ ancestors that they [the Gospels] give are very different, and neither one is plausible.”[5] Brown takes the surprising position that “because the early Christians confessed Jesus as Messiah, for which ‘Son of David’ was an alternative title, they historicized their faith by creating for him Davidic genealogies and by claiming that Joseph was a Davidide.”[6] In another essay, also carrying the Church’s Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur, Brown expands upon this proposition:
Increasingly, the purported descent from David is explained as a theologoumenon, i.e., as the historicizing of what was originally a theological statement. If I many give a simplified explanation, the process of historicizing Davidic sonship is though to have gone somewhat in the following way: the Christian community believed that Jesus had fulfilled Israel’s hopes; prominent among those hopes was the expectation of a Messiah, and so the traditional title “Messiah” was given to Jesus; but in Jewish thought the Messiah was pictures as having Davidic descent; consequently Jesus was described as “son of David”; and eventually a Davidic genealogy was fashioned for him.[7]
Brown explains that Matthew probably created fictional genealogical links back to Abraham and David also “to appeal to the mixed constituency of his [Matthew’s] community of Jewish and Gentile Christians.”[8] As evidence that Jesus was really not a descendent of David at all, Brown points out that:
There is not the slightest indication in the accounts of the ministry of Jesus that his family was of ancestral nobility or royalty. If Jesus were a dauphin, there would have been none of the wonderment about his pretensions. He appears in the Gospels as a man of unimpressive background from an unimportant village.[9]
Brown goes even further, calling into question the reliability of large sections of the New Testament. He encourages his readers to face the possibility that portions of Matthew and Luke “may represent non-historical dramatizations:”[10]
Indeed, close analysis of the infancy narratives makes it unlikely that either account is completely historical. Matthew’s account contains a number of extraordinary or miraculous public events that, were they factual, should have left some traces in Jewish records or elsewhere in the New Testament (the king and all Jerusalem upset over the birth of the Messiah in Bethlehem; a star which moved from Jerusalem south to Bethlehem and came to rest over a house; the massacre of all the male children in Bethlehem). Luke’s reference to a general census of the Empire under Augustus which affected Palestine before the death of Herod the Great is almost certainly wrong, as is his understanding of the Jewish customs of the presentation of the child and the purification of the mother in 2:22-24. Some of these events, which are quite implausible as history, have now been understood as rewritings of Old Testament scenes or themes.[11]
Brown’s most extreme statement in this regard, appearing in the same essay, suggests that the Pope himself might reject the historicity of the resurrection altogether:
It was this interaction [of the eschatological and the historical] that Pope Paul pointed to in the same address when he spoke of the resurrection as “the unique and sensational event on which the whole of human history turns.” This is not the same, however, as saying that the resurrection itself was a historical event, even though editorial writers quoted the Pope’s speech to that effect.[12]
It is crucial to remember (a) that these words appear in an essay carrying the Church’s approbation; (b) that they were written by a scholar whose works were endorsed by the Ecole Biblique; and (c) that Ecole Biblique is the institution that we were referred to by Vatican authorities.
III. The Virginal Conception
Brown cautions that “we should not underestimate the adverse pedagogical impact on the understanding of divine sonship if the virginal conception is denied.”[13] On the other hand, admits Brown, “The virginal conception under its creedal title of ‘virgin birth’ is not primarily a biological statement.”[14] He stresses that Christian writings about virginal conception intend to reveal spiritual insights rather that physical facts. Because record of the virginal conception appears only in tow Gospels, and there only in the infancy narratives (which Brown suspects are largely fictional), the Catholic theologian tactfully concludes that “biblical evidence leaves the question of the historicity of the virginal conception unresolved.”[15]
“Virginal conception was a well-known religious symbol for divine origins,” explains Brown, citing such stories in Buddhist, Hindu, Zoroastrian, Greco-Roman and ancient Egyptian theologies.[17] He proposes that early Christians “used an imagery of virginal conception whose symbolic origins were forgotten as it was disseminated among various Christian communities and recorded by evangelists.”[18]
Alternatively, Brown also considers the possibility that Christianity’s founders intended to create the impression that an actual virginal conception took place. Early Christians needed just such a myth, Brown notes, since Mary was widely known to have delivered Jesus too early: “Unfortunately, the historical alternative to the virginal conception has not been a conception in wedlock; it has been illegitimacy.”[19] Brown writes that:
In summary, Brown leans towards a less miraculous explanation of Jesus’ early birth.
@ bernard ross:
No, in summary, you as usual have much of it wrong. There’s no “Hebrew G_D.” There’s just God; the one & only real one, who called the Jewish people into being; created them from scratch.
No, I never said Moshiach was a “half god.” I’ve denied that probably two or three dozen times over the years on this site, and at least 4 or 5 times in the past couple weeks alone. I said very clearly & unambiguously that he is in no way and to no degree a ‘god.’
No, I did NOT say NT is “Jewish as opposed to christian.” Au contraire, I said it is both Jewish AND Christian — because altho it was written by Jews, it was subsequently compiled by goyish Christians.
@ bernard ross:
For the purpose stated? — yes, absolutely; the best kind of evidence for that purpose.
The matter at hand was the possiblity that some of the gospels might have originally been first committed to writing in Aramaic or Hebrew. What better way to examine the question than by noting the idiomatic differences between semitic languages & yaphetic ones as seen in the gospels?
Not in this way or for this purpose. If you think they do, show me an instance. Could prove interesting.
@ bernard ross:
Yeah, I’m ‘weird’ all right; ‘weird’ for seeing you as you ARE, rather than as you POSE.
Apples & Oranges. Terror would not have helped them; it would’ve only paralyzed them in a different way. Their problem was not a failure to read NT, and it’s the height of stupidity for you to imply so.
This is all evasive talk on your part. You don’t KNOW that any direct causal relationship exists between the gospel’s teaching and the despicable behaviors to which you allude. You only make that assumption because you dare not consider the contrary; you are manifestly terrified of making that discovery. And your terror makes you intellectually dishonest.
No, of course you don’t. That’s why you’ve spent dozens of posts sneering & jeering over it.
What a crock. I’ve never denied anybody’s evil behavior. I defy you to find a single post of mine which lets ANYBODY off the hook. What I DO deny — heartily, vigorously & obstreperously — is the insouciant readiness with which you lump together everybody calling him/herself a “christian” w/ persecution.
It’s neither psychobabble — because it was quite sound (I see right thru you, weasel)
— NOR ad hominem — as it did not constitute an attack, but a sober & judicious assessment of what you are trying to do w/ me. You’re just irked that you didn’t get away with it because I caught you in the act, and called the game on you.
I’ll stand by my remarks all day, any day, EVERY day. I know where the real distraction lies, and you will not build your Jewish bona fides on my heimish tuchas. ‘Deny the Holocaust,’ indeed. There may be some others you can pull that stunt with around here; not me. Got that?
You BET it is, absolutely (but not in the way you mean it).
@ bernard ross:
Didn’t have to ‘tell’ me; any Jew w/ his eyes open could see it. There just aren’t many Jews around who DO have their eyes open.
Oh? — what “fictional characters” would they be? And be sure you establish that they ARE ‘fictional’ characters when you identify them.
They ‘solved’ nothing for you. You didn’t want anything solved. All you wanted was support for your malevolence & bigotry. The dictionary was handy; its objectivity was never of value to you — only its cachet, its overrated presumption of authority.
Your brass-bound arrogance is amazing. I wonder how YOU’d like it to have your Christian neighbors be telling you who is & isn’t a JEW.
@ yamit82:
Nor can either of you turkeys.
LMSS. Of the three of us, I’m the only one who DOES have cogent argument (at least as to these matters).
YOU don’t argue. You just snow a reader under with mountains of other people’s blather.
And your tag-team partner just gets off on argument for its own sake.
Yup.
Nope; now you’re projecting, big time (esp as to your partner).
@ bernard ross:
No, NOT as ‘everyone’ states. Only as everyone to whom you find it convenient to LISTEN states.
Right. Ask everybody and their Aunt Mathilde to define who is a Christian. Ask everybody EXCEPT the Christians themselves.
— Your arrogance is boundless. Your chutzpa, freakin’ unlimited.
You don’t give a rusty screw about Jewish persecution. You just think the more you talk about it & rail against it, the more you establish your bona fides as a Jew after a lifetime of ignoring or denying it. You’re a 24-karat fake. I know the breed; know how they walk, know how they talk, know how they smell.
Right; you’re expected to figure that out for yourself. (“Well, it’s plodding time again; you’re gonna bore me. I can see that ‘pole-axed steer’ look in your eye…” Apologies to Buck Owens.)
The exact rendering is “…they taught much people, and the disciples were called “christians” first in Antioch.”
Doesn’t say they first called THEMSELVES by that name; it’s not reflexive, but passive — “…were called…”
— Now, by whom would they have BEEN called that? — the mailman? Cousin Charley? Joe Sixpack?
Antioch was on the Greek philosophical lecturing circuit. The Greeks were big on philosophy of every variety & description, and speakers would arrange lecture gigs throughout the Islands & the Anatolian peninsula — like our entertainment, comedy club, vocalist circuits today — and make the rounds that way.
If a speaker named “Apollo” regularly drew a gathering about himself, those who came frequently to hear him were typically labeled “Appolonians.” But if his name was Apollo and every other word out of his mouth was about “Adonis” on every occasion of his appearance, it came as no surprise that his regular listeners would come to be called “Adonisians.”
All the disciples & adherents of “The Way” talked about Christ constantly, so they — AND those who came to hear them speak — all came to be informally identified as ‘christians.’ It was not, however, their term for themselves — not nearly that early in the game.
The “Christian sources” got it first FROM Jewish sources. If that’s not good enough for you, I suggest you take your blubbering to the rabbis & Jewish educators in the Jewish community. (Unless you think you’re more Jewish than they.)
But whether you do or you don’t, I really hope you haven’t been allowing yourself to get the ludicrous impression that I’ve been trying to convince you of ANYTHING. That’s not why I post responses to these boneheaded remarks of yours.
I post for the readers generally, not solely for individual bloggers — let alone, malefic bigots who remind me most strikingly of the very people they most vituperatively decry.
Unlike you, I take every source on its face and on its own terms. There will always be time to challenge it later if questions arise or contradictory sources emerge. First, though — and as a matter of intellectual discipline — I hear it out to get its own view of itself.
As a Jew, I’ve faced a bellyful of bigotry in my life — and from more quarters than you can CONCEIVE of. But it never made ME a bigot. Everyone gets a fair hearing with me
— even obnoxious twerps like PresentCompany.
@ bernard ross:
It’s not ‘pretending.’ Anybody who hates Jews, hates Jesus. It’s that simple.
If you hate my family, you hate me.
If you kill my family, and you do it in my name, you might as well be killing ME
— and I don’t give a rip WHAT you call yourself when you do it, because you sure-as-bloody-blue-blazes aint my friend.
It is correct to say that some persons and groups of same have taken the NAME of Christ as cover for their malignancy & criminality toward the Jews, intermittently, for some 1500 years.
Your easy, blanket condemnations, however, strongly suggest that were the tables turned, you would be leading the mob with the nooses & the torches & the pitchforks. As I’ve said before, it’s amply clear that the bigots have succeeded — beyond their wildest imaginings — in making you one of them.
@ bernard ross:
It’s actually quite common to do so, and you know it. The fact that he didn’t is testimony to his lack of narcicism. Testimony also to his desire that they remain Jews, not set apart from the community.
But they don’t state what THAT means, nor who is to be the arbiter of its practice.
There are, however, certain core beliefs which the overwhelming majority of Xtn adhere to, and foremost among them is the ‘divinity’ of Christ. Absent that belief, one is NOT considered a ‘Christian’ — not among other Christians.
And if you read the gospel for yourself, you would know why. But you won’t do that, because then you’d have to treat persons as individuals, and there’s just so much malevolent pleasure to be had in lumping them all together as a target for your vile hatred.
Am not a Christian; I reject the doctrine of the divinity-incarnation etc of Christ.
But that’s okay. Just as I’m not a Christian, you’re not a Jew.
@ bernard ross:
No; standard research protocol. Get over it. (And get over yourself.)
Then I guess you’re stuck, aren’t you? — unless you can produce conflicting accounts from the period.
If you truly believed that, you wouldn’t have spent several dozen posts trying to ‘debunk’ the assertion of Jewish authorship of NT. You say it’s ‘irrelevant’ now only because it’s begun to dawn on you that you get nowhere trying to dispose of it by denying it.
Nope; that’s just not so, and it won’t become so merely by virtue of your repeating the silly old saw. Told you already (and more than once) that my belief PRECEDED my relating to NT.
I had read it, from-time-to-time, out of curiosity, on many occasions before I believed — but the reading had NEVER led to any belief in me.
When I came to believe, the phenomenon was altogether independent of anything I’d read anywhere any time. And that faith CONTINUES to grow likewise independent of my reading of the scripture.
The paragraph from which the above remark of yours was taken is a prime example of the very pattern it describes. You’re just rehashing all your old, tired claims in the matter. One can almost hear the hinges on the door screeching as it opens & closes.
@ yamit82:
I think he plays the greatest role he ever played right here as J Pandera; psychobabbling everyone and pretending to know everyones’s “secret sin”……. perhaps he is also a half god half man jewish messiah….. in his own mind…… Now I understand where his psychobabbling is really coming from
Dweller Said:
He thinks he has strong antennae like Pandera when he psychobabbles………
next stop, Bellevue! 😛
yamit82 Said:
LOLROFLMAO… 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛
@ bernard ross:
Chit Chat is great he can’t hit and run when the thread times out because Ted renews it. He has no cogernt argument, he has conviction and circular logic, He is like a video in loop mode. P a t h e t i c!!!!!!!!!! 🙂
@ bernard ross:
That’s funny; I don’t recall EVER alluding to the Nazarene as a “half god, half man.” Seems to me I’ve always characterized him as a man — all man, and NOT a ‘god’ of any sort. If you have a post of mine saying or suggesting otherwise, I’d like to see it.
That’s NOT the reason you suggested that, and we both KNOW the reason. You’re not fooling anybody (except maybe yourself, if you think you’re going to get that one to fly). It’s always easy to see you coming from way up the road.
He neither ‘lowered’ Himself NOR ‘mated’ with a woman. You make the Almighty sound like some kind of incubus. Yecch! GAG me.
Maybe yours wouldn’t; the real one would, however. And it had nothing to do with any pagan myths. A true God is a spirit, and has no need (or desire) for fun-&-games that a flesh body relates to.
(What’s more, you know nothing of how that ‘silly process’ occurred anyway — since you’ve yet to check out the story on your own; you know only what you’ve heard from persons no less confused than yourself, but who’ve at least had the stones to do their own reading.)
After Adam there was now already in existence a human species, albeit a fallen one. Adonoi had to work with what He had — or would you prefer that He simply abandoned the notion of redemption altogether & just started over from scratch?
@ bernard ross:
Oh? — what’s ‘offensive’ about that?
Fine. Remain in denial.
The significant point, nonetheless, is that WHOEVER performed that mission had to be a man; could not be a ‘God.’
Besides, he himself made quite clear beyond a shadow of doubt that he didn’t presume to be divine:
He said, “Of myself I can do nothing. The Father within me, He doeth the works.” This is somebody who thinks he’s ‘God’??? If he were ‘God,’ there is damned-near nothing that, of himself, he could NOT do. Thus, no claim to omnipotence, an attribute of divinity.
When asked the time of his return, he said nobody but the Father knows. Neither the angels in heaven nor even the Son himself know. So the Father knows stuff that the Son doesn’t know. The Son is not omniscient. The Son of God, thus, is NOT ‘God-the-Son.’
It’s self-evident. Either you see it or you don’t. You (apparently) don’t. Either that, or you’re just making argument for its own sake.
You’re sounding more like a self-styled “Christian” all the time. They take the same view as you’ve just expressed.
But the truth is that “an omnipotent God can do whatever men can do or whatever men can conceive of or imagine” ONLY if He’s made in the image of Man (instead of vice versa).
If He is in fact God, then there are some things which He cannot do. Dying is one of them. (Lying is another; breaking His word is a third.)
They were not, in fact, dead, pronouncements to the effect notwithstanding. They were erroneously perceived as dead.
Still thinking like a Christian, I see. (The irony here is most amusing, under the circumstances.)
The answer to your question (though you may find it less than satisfying) is that God is NOT limited by my ‘imagination.’ QTC, He is ‘limited’ by His own infinite INTEGRITY & FIDELITY.
Furthermore, while He is self-existent, His creation is not; it depends on His eternal deathlessness and He will not abandon it. That is His nature.
dweller Said:
No great invention there, where was the deeply metaphysical part that so impressed you to decide the author was half god half man?
dweller Said:
of course you find this psychobabble impressive, thats becuase you beleive that you also see everyones “secret sin” or defect, etc. You see yourself in the the same role… you often present yourself here like a jesus character psychobabbling all and presenting “their secret sin”
LOL, this is the deep metaphysical writing which leads you to believe that the author must be a half god half man jewish messiah born of a union between a god and a woman?
Any body writing that must be at least a half god. 😛 😛 😛
dweller Said:
are those the names of panderas disciples, did they write the gospels?
dweller Said:
in summary, you arrived here as usual with your talk of a Hebrew G_D in a union with a woman who produced a half god half man Jewish messiah, who died, was resurrected and is coming back for his next act all according to your new testament which you say is Jewish as opposed the christian.
I have been unable to locate a “jewish” version of your new testament that did not arrive untouched by non jewish hands after it left the hands of your alleged Jewish writers of the fairy tale. Perhaps you can get a copy of your jewish new testament version from your jew for jesus friends? which version of the NT do you use and read?dweller Said:
you call citing from the NT evidence? Thats what the Jehovahs witnesses cite as evidence also.
dweller Said:
in summary, you arrived here as usual with your talk of a Hebrew G_D in a union with a woman who produced a half god half man Jewish messiah, who died, was resurrected and is coming back for his next act all according to your new testament which you say is Jewish as opposed to christian.
I have been unable to locate a “jewish” version of your new testament that did not arrive untouched by non jewish hands after it left the hands of your alleged Jewish writers of the fairy tale. Perhaps you can get a copy of your jewish new testament version from your jew for jesus friends?
Which version of the NT do you use and read?
dweller Said:
good thing he told you so you could set everyone straight, although its clear that you also have taken all sorts of liberties with regard to the intentions of fictional characters.
dweller Said:
the dictionaries solved the matter for me.
dweller Said:
you are weird, there is no terror in realizing that a culture has been guilty for 2000 years of the most despicable behaviors. Many Jews in nazi germany also did not have the terror of them until it was too late.
dweller Said:
dont care about their faith, it is their behavior over 2000 years, the behavior which you deny.
dweller Said:
No surprise that you once again resort to a mountain of psychobabbling ad hominem in an attempt to distract from the intellectual bankruptcy of your “arguments”. you have gone around in the same circle umpteen times and arrive back at the same pathetic and delusional place. This comment is the best demonstration of what you are and what you must ALWAYS resort to when your arguments are pathetic.
dweller Said:
LOL, what rididculous rubbish, the only source supporting the ridiculous notion that the NT myths are real facts is the Christian church. there are no Jewish sources which attest to or support the NT as factual. I repeat for you rthick head that jewish authorship is irrelevant becuase Jews write fairy tales too.
Your ridiculous method of belief in yeshu apparently derives from your adoration of his deep mystical literature. many writers who wrote deep mystical literature were not virgin birthed jewish messiahs. there are no Jewish sources which attest to the NT as fact and your beleif that Jews wrote it, even if true, does not make the tales into facts. furthermore, your adoration of your yeshus sayings does not a virgin birthed Jewish messaiah make. you just keep repeating the same old same old like a Jehovahs witness who keeps returning with their shpiels.
dweller Said:
only a self absorbed narcicist would refer to his own followers with his own name. Your argument is ridiculous and pathetic hinging only on your ridiculous assumptions regarding human. behavior.
dweller Said:
DUH?? NOT ME…. I quoted dictionary definitions which restate the obvious
a christian is a follower of christ. christians disagree as to whether other christian sects are real christians and you disagree that the christians who persecuted jews for 2000 years are real christians. You christians use this story to pretend that the christians did not persecute the jews for 2000 years.
Do you deny that the christians, their churches their orgs have been persecuting the Jews for 2000 years?
dweller Said:
I told you that the neigbors, the dictionaries and me are much more accurate in defining who is a christian. That is how we know who has been persecuting the Jews for 2000 years….. funny you never noticed that, pauline.
dweller Said:
I looked it up and the “neignbors” were never mentioned in that quote. I could not find a Jewish source for this citation of yours. Usually I seek a jewish source because like I told you, I give no credibility to christian sources on Jewish matters for reason already given. you told me the NT was a jewish source but I only found christian sources of the NT. Perhaps you can give me a Jewish source but it is my understanding that there have been no publications which we can access that come directly from the Jewish sources you allude to. It is my understanding that all available versions of the NT, including the one you are reading and using, have at one time or another passed through the hands of christian or secular authorities. Perhaps your Jewish version of the NT was passed down to you unfiltered through non Jewish sources, please send me which is the version you are using?
dweller Said:
no more offensive than saying the Hebrew G_D had a union with a woman in a virgin birth of your nitzri.dweller Said:
no such thing as jesus
dweller Said:
why is that? certainly an omnipotent G_D can do whatever men can do or whatever men can conceive of or imagine. Men die and suddenly awake, men die and are “resurrected” by medics, men have woken up in caskets after being pronounced dead. Why limit G_D with the limits of your imagination?
The idea that the Hebrew G_D of Israel would “unite” with a women to create a half god half man mythical pagan being is just as preposterous, which is why I suggested you go the whole hog and embrace the trinity… it is no more absurd. IN fact, it makes more sense than G_D lowering himself to mate with a woman… A G_D who created Adam would not bother to go through that silly process just for the purpose of satisfying the pagan myths of gods entering into women.
@ bernard ross:
Wynken, Blynken & Nod.
Flopsy, Mopsy & Cottontail.
Larry, Curly & Mo.
It doesn’t matter what NAMES they took for themselves, nor what names they were given at birth. What matters is who they were, not what names they had. Authors take pseudonyms for themselves all the time without nefarious reasons.
I spend as much time online as is available to me. I don’t ‘avoid’ comments (even witless ones, like yours).
Coming as that does from a bullshit factory like Bart Ehrman, and published on a purveyor of BS, like the Huffing-&-Puffington Post, how could one have expected to read otherwise?
No way a man can be ‘God.’ The idea is absurd (not to say, offensive).
Moreover, there’s no way that Jesus’ mission could’ve been accomplished by a ‘God’ — it absolutely HAD to be a man; just as Adam was a man.
No matter how powerful a ‘God’ may be, the one thing he cannot do is DIE.
And Christ’s mission required, among other things, his death.
@ yamit82:
Says who? — This was 80-100 years BEFORE the Maccabbean struggle; much closer in time to Alexander than Antiochus.
By whom? —Ptolemy Philadephus???
For 300 years, the Septuagint was freely consulted and relied upon by Jews. It was only after the established Church began to use it in its appeal to “supercede” the by-then established rabbinical Judaism, that the move was on to discredit Septuagint.
Guess I should be grateful that you at least call it a “theory.”
OTHER theories are just as well supported by that little factule, however — not the least of which is that the Hebrew or Aramaic copies of NT were destroyed by those who saw them as a threat, or buried by those who feared that they would be destroyed. Wouldn’t be the first time that chunks of Jewish history had been suppressed by the Jewish authorities. . . . as you know.
@ yamit82:
One example is the use of the word, the nations.
During his lifetime, Yeshua sends the apostles out into the countryside “only to the lost sheep of Israel” [Mt 10:6] — tells them explicitly, per Matthew, to avoid the gentiles & the samaritans, and go only to the Jews.
After his resurrection, however, he sends them out AGAIN, this time though, he apparently reverses the paradigm — desiring (evidently) to reserve the preaching to Jews for the course of his own earthly lifetime, and not after
— perhaps because he couldn’t correct any teaching or preaching errors of the apostles after his death. (I’ve long suspected that he didn’t wish his fellow Jews be proselytized except strictly during his own earthly existence.)
So this time, he directs the apostles instead to “teach the nations.” [Mt 28:19] But most versions render this “teach ALL the nations.”
In Israel, however, there was no such concept as ALL the nations. There was only “the nations” [haGoyim] and Am Yisroel, and Jesus was a Jew directing other Jews.
What if Matthew was originally written b’ivrit, but in translation “the nations” became “all the nations”?
Mark has it “…go into (all) the world.” [Mk 16:15] Same question, since haGoyim has traditionally also meant “the world other than am yisrael.”
And Luke renders it “preach repentance & remission of sins among all [the] nations beginning at Jerusalem” [Lk 24:47] — altho it isn’t clear whether this means beginning with Jerusalem first OR, rather (as I suspect), with Jerusalem as HQ (which it, in fact, became for the movement in Judea). Again, as regards the word, nations (or all nations), same question.
Moreover, beyond the cultural peculiarity specific to Israel, it stands to reason that more generally in the translation from one language to another — and especially from a semitic language to a yaphetic (or “indo-euro”) one, like Greek — it’s just these kinds of problems that are bound to arise, and that’s the reason (one of ’em) why I suspect some of the gospels may have been first committed to writing in Hebrew or Aramaic.
@ yamit82:
Off-point and wrong. They skulked away NOT because their thoughts were ‘sinful’ but because their thoughts embarrassed them. They realized that their guilts were greater than hers, and that he could see right thru their hypocrisy; that they were in no position to cast the first stone.
— VERY Jewish indeed, you betcha.
Wrong. And wrong. Conscience is peculiar to the human species and to no other. It is the singular evidence than man is created b’tzelem elohim. So conscience is pre-birth, and pre-learning.
Show me an example of the ‘tripe’ you find in it. Show me how it’s ‘garbage.’
No way a Roman could’ve written anything remotely resembling it. If you think there is, then SHOW me some Roman literature of comparable sentiment & expression.
A JEW might’ve approached the rudiments of the Sermon on the Mount, but not the mass of it and in no way the expression & transmittal of it. This stuff is strictly sui generis, and you’ve got a horse that won’t run, Huff’n’puff.
Josephus could write history — not metaphysics.
Let’s see the ‘pacifism’ in it.
@ yamit82:
“The NY“??? — Hunh?
Asked & answered. Move on.
But I do know. 1st century Jews.
I can read. The ideas are Jewish and can often be found in other Jewish literature, altho rarely expressed so consistently well. (Even for nice Jewish boys who have a way with words there’s usually a limit. Not where the utterances of the Nazarene are concerned.)
No, I did not. My reply (“Sheer speculation”) was in response to your link to an ARTICLE entitled, “The true authorship of NT.” I said the ARTICLE amounted to sheer speculation and that you should come back & see me when you could produce something MORE than speculation on the subject. Re-read my post [#33, prev pg].
You assume wrongly. I’m not the one playing word games around here. The author is the writer; the writer is the author. The authors’ names are simply pseudonyms, like “O. Henry” or “Mark Twain.” But what of it? How’s it material?
If you never learned Mk Twain’s birth name, would you still retain questions as to whether the man known to history as ‘Mk Twain” was the author of Connecticut Yankee… or Huck Finn? Would you have nagging doubts as to his background?
Produce ANY post of mine which evidences ANY of these claims.
Supplying material cannot ‘debunk’ a position or belief. Only an argument can do that. Supplying material may (or may not) be able to ILLUSTRATE elements in an argument and it may (or may not) be able to provide EVIDENCE supporting an argument — if properly identified — but “material” by itself cannot do your arguing for you.
A case that is based on “material” offered in lieu of substantive argument is what is colloquially known in the business of rhetoric & forensics as a SNOWJOB.
And how would knowing their names do that? Thin, weak, shallow. By the first century, Jews made up a tenth of the Empire. No reason to assume they would all (or even mostly) retain Judaic-sounding names. This is one time when the overwhelming bulk of the Jewish community, rabbonim & Jewish educators (across the spectrum) agree with me, not you, boychik: NT was written by Jews.
If you have contemporaneous accounts from the same era which offer differing narratives from those of the Gospels & Acts, then produce them. Otherwise, the NT assertions stand.
@ bernard ross:
Here is a dictionary definition”
Christianity
“The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree… yeah, makes perfect sense.”