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.
@ bernard ross:
It’s broadly acknowledged that the ONLY part of his writings that is suspect because of its Flavian sponsorship is The Jewish Wars, because it reflects directly on Vespasion & Titus themselves, his patrons.
The references to Jesus, to John-the-Baptist, and to James-the-Just, however, are not in that volume, but in the Antiquities, which consists essentially of a chronicle of the Jewish people up until the time of the war of 66-73.
Your cited article notes that the overwhelming majority of researchers agree on the authenticity of the James entry [Antiquities 20:200], which characterizes him as the brother of the “Jesus called the Christos.”
And as to the direct quote in re Jesus himself [Antiquities 18:63], there had long been suspicion that the passage, while not fabricated from whole cloth, had nonetheless been subject to interpolation. However, Prof Shlomo Pines of Hebrew Univ announced his discovery [1972] of a different manuscript tradition of Josephus’s writings (from the commonly followed one until then), this being the Agapian text containing none of the suspect phraseology — and which reads:
The language is such as a Jew could have written without becoming a disciple. Unlike the standard version, which declares Jesus “was” the Messiah, this one says he was “ perhaps the Messiah.” The vocabulary & grammar are quite similar to the style elsewhere in Josephus. Y’shua is characterized as a “wise man” [sophos aner], a phrase not typically employed by Xtns in referring to him, but most surely characteristic of Josephus in speaking of other figures from Tanach (Solomon, David, etc) , and significant majorities of scholars are satisfied with the passage’s authenticity in this rendering.
Shlomo Pines, An Arabic[-language] Version of the Testimonium Flavianum and its Implications [Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1971]
dweller Said:
although it is an irrelevant submission because the assertion of fact can easily be made by a liar….however, for the sake of amusement:
dweller Said:
the phrase “once upon a time” infers that the events which follow actually occurred:
whereas the “sworn” declaration of fictional characters such as baby bear or yeshu are given little weight in a court of anything but church.
dweller Said:
was he ever called as a witness or his statement notarized?
I think it was notarized by those who took every opportunity to lie about jews, hardly a solid basis for a witness affidavit or even a hearsay affidavit. Serial, congenital liars are expected to give false sworn statements.
LOL, when the christians tell a Jew that the Hebrew G_D begot a Jewish messiah son with a woman it is less believable than goldilocks 3 talking bears eating the porridge.
dweller Said:
dweller Said:
😛 😛 😛
as if Jews needed to explore this:
only a non jew or an idiot could believe that this is not a major obstacle
dweller Said:
to dweller, the Hebrew G_D begetting a jewish messiah son with a woman is simply a “matter of doctrine” not a serious obstacle.
😛 😛 😛
dweller Said:
the rational faculty being the one which accepts that:
dweller Said:
the facts speak for themselves, his brilliant sayings consistently inspired over a 2000 year period the opposite of what he suggested(according to you) An astounding coincidence for a purported son of a god. Sounds more like your soton giving a cosmic sting, getting all his followers to reject the hebrew G_D and instead to worship a man.
bernard Ross Said:
no need to just like there is no need to prove that aliens did not impregnate human women long ago as some other fiction writers suggest. I cant prove that the 3 talking bears did not eat the porridge as according to goldilocks either.
dweller Said:
😛
he worked for the romans..
😛 😛 😛
not only that but I dont think josephus mentioned the Hebrew G-D begetting a jewish messiah son with a woman…
dweller Said:
so are you saying you dont eat the wafer and wine nor the spaghetti and meatballs? of all the names you chose for your yeshu I like this one because it best symbolizes the factual nature of your tale.
@ bernard ross:
Good luck proving THAT negative.
Not if it had been suppressed by the Jewish authorities of JC’s day. (Wouldn’t be the first time such a thing had happened in the Jewish community.) And, as it happens, there was, as a matter of transitory rabbinical policy, very little Jewish religious writing in that era. In fact, a major proportion of what Jewish writing there WAS is what ultimately (a couple centuries later) became the NT canon.
Not one mention of the MACCABEES either, because the Jewish authorities didn’t preserve those books.
It was left to the early Church to do that. And they did.
Not ‘rubbish,’ but standard policy & practice.
— You may not like the policy, but it IS standard — and routinely honored by researchers, except when a document is seen on its face to be a total forgery.
That possibility always exists in ANY document. Nonetheless, the policy & practice remain a staple of research.
The “christian world” did not write the gospels; JEWS wrote them. All the XTNS did was compile the NT.
WHAT “lies” specifically do you refer to here? — Lies in the Gospels?
in any case, where matters “suspect” are concerned, I’m afraid that you have not approached the argument with clean hands. Until you are prepared to read the NT for yourself, the earnestness of your concern will ITSELF be highly suspect.
Yet you DO rely on the “Christian world” for everything you know about the Jewish story of the Maccabean struggle. How do you know that that isn’t the sheerest BS? How do you know it ever happened — or if it did, that it happened as recounted in the Books of the Maccabees? (which are not part of Tanach).
As for “Jewish attestation,” I GAVE you the example of Yoseph ben Mattityahu (“Flavius Josephus”) — who writes not only of Y’shua but also of Yokhannan ben Zkhar’ya (“John-the-Baptist”), and Ya’acov ben Yoseph (“James,” the brother of haNitzri & leader of the Jerusalem disciples)
— and Josephus remained a mainstream Jew of his day, never did become a disciple.
Only to one for whom “the circumstances” include the fact that he has failed to do the basic homework of reading the document for himself — and in its absence has nothing but the overactive imagination of an uninformed buffoon to rely on.
There is nowhere in the Goldilocks tale that it asserts itself to be actual, literal, material fact.
OTOH, the Gospels do precisely that. There is absolutely no basis for comparison here; all there IS, is your compulsive need to make what you haven’t the balls to read for yourself into a topic of ridicule — even if your effort to do so is quite patently forced & artificial.
Tell that to your lawyer.
You are effectively saying that if only one man is privy to an occurrence involving himself, he may not offer testimony to that effect; that his word does not constitute evidence.
You are mistaken.
The courts will tell YOU that the Gospel of John, for example, is in the nature of a sworn affidavit:
— admissible in court as evidence, and that — in the absence of differing original documentation or testimony (or clear & compelling indications of utter forgery) — it is entitled to the presumption of veracity until disproven by challengers, who are accordingly saddled with the burden of proof by the policy.
What I am GETTING is that you are simply too full of . . . yourself . . . to see that there’s a world of difference between a sworn declaration on the one hand
— and “Once-upon-a-time” on the other.
@ bernard ross:
There’s NO evidence that that was part of his mission.
But you’ve offered LOTS of evidence that this bilious rot is what you’re made of.
@ bernard ross:
Since when has ‘making sense’ been an item on your agenda?
@ bernard ross:
No, NOT major obstacles for most Jews, because most jews have never had occasion to seriously explore such things; not seriously.
The scarring connected with the two matters to which I alluded has prevented anything else.
If most Jews DID have occasion to consider doctrinal matters associated w/ the gospels, those things might (or might not) BECOME issues. But as matters stand, even the most cursory examination of doctrinal issues associated with the gospels is colored by the trauma of ‘blame’ for the death of Y’shua, so things never get beyond that.
It is simply absurd to say that matters of doctrine in re JC are “overwhelmingly rejected” by the Jewish community, when the community has never seriously considered them. Some isolated rabbis & lay advocates have written on occasion about such things, but they do not constitute the great bulk of the Jewish community.
No; that is not evidence of rejection of the narrative. What it’s evidence of is anguish destroying a part of an otherwise rational faculty; it’s strictly a defensive reaction. Massive trauma does that, puts a man’s reasoning inclinations on-hold in regard to a matter, the way scar tissue thickens the skin over a wound & desensitizes it.
honeybee Said:
Sí jefe lo haré en en pocos minutos 😉
@ yamit82:
Se hace inferma, va a cama. Ahorita
@ dweller:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49l-g_TtGhI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NUylyDsE-c
dweller Said:
@ bernard ross:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49l-g_TtGhI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NUylyDsE-c
@ bernard ross:
If they are Jews who don’t believe that “Son of God” is synonymous with ‘God-the-Son,’ then yes, absolutely, it constitutes Jewish attestation.
Is Josephus old enough for you? He refers to Jews of his day who did.Most scholars believe that his references to Jesus have been elaborated on with interpolations, but that they are not forgeries. or fabrications.
bernard ross Said:
Me too !!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAWEvZh8flg
@ mrg3105:
You’ve got this backwards. That show came out around 1970.
It followed the advent of long hair on “rockers and hippies” by some 6 or 7 yrs.
The “British invasion” of America by rock bands began around 1964. They were making good money, and resented having to give up the lion’s share of it to Her Majesty’s TREASURY (at least until the arrival of Margaret Thatcher on the scene 15 yr later).
So the Beatles, Stones & others came stateside, where the tax structure was a lot less unreasonable — because of the Kennedy Tax Cut (eventually known as the Revenue Act of 1964). With them came the hair, etc.
@ yamit82:
That’s Puff’n’fluff’s way of telling you what he’d like to do with YoursTruly.
— He just can’t get over the fact that he’s not my type.
@ bernard ross:
Communion is a 24-hour thing, and what is consumed is not eaten, nor physical; what is taken in is the Word.
@ yamit82:
Not when it’s per order from haShem. The only reason you see it as “egotistical & narcissistic” is that you project your OWN vanity onto him and onto God.
You don’t know that Xty & Christ are the same unless you KNOW both and are able to make the comparison.
And it’s abundantly clear that you not merely do not know both
— but that you don’t, in fact, know EITHER.
That’s all right; you don’t know much of anything anyway.
And most of what you DO ‘know’ is either not so or not worth knowing.
I said his mission required his dying.
— Didn’t say it required him to ‘stay’ dead.
And I’m sure you’re NOT sure; you only wish it
— though it’s a little late for that.
No friend of mine — Xtn, Buddhist, or Wiccan — ever talked that slop. Maybe you confuse MY friends with YOURS. Inconceivable, I know, but no other explanation is more likely.
1. It’s not a ‘tragedy,’ in either the modern OR the classic sense.
2. It’s not in any way a ‘commercial enterprise.’
3. YOU don’t get to write any ‘sequel’; the Author won’t brook any futzing w/ His original script.
Try reading it sometime when you’re sober; it gets better.
The greatest of intellects know — better than the smallest ones — that, as possessions go, Intellect doesn’t really amount to much
— indeed, compared to the Grand Prize, little more than “filthy rags.”
It’s invariably the smaller intellects that worship at the altar of Intellect. In fact, that’s usually the first evidence of their smallness.
@ bernard ross:
dweller eats his messiah’s Pud at communion every day.
One Fegele communing with the other Fegele, we can derive from such a communion the real meaning of cosmic sting. 😛
dweller Said:
do you eat spaghetti and meatballs at your communion?
dweller Said:
another integral part of his mission seems to be getting billions, of those purporting to be his followers, to do the opposite of what he said for 2000 years(according to you) and worshiping him instead of G_D.
Sounds like the anti christ to me, or “soton” in a cosmic sting 😛
yamit82 Said:
LOL, nothing is unreasonable in fairy tales, novels and fiction.
e.g. gods shtupping women who beget jewish messiahs named spaghetti and meatballs who then morph into soton who gets everyone to worship him instead of G_D in a great sataninc cosmic sting.
I preferred the movie “them”
dweller Said:
Egotistical and narcissistic
dweller Said:
Call it whatever it’s the same let’s call it breaded Pork Chops, Spaghetti and Meatballs heck you know the drill of playing semantic word-games don’t you Fegele? 😛
Don’t know that name, I thought you worshiped the ‘Niztri”???
AH demigod of a thousand names that’s what all you pagans did named your gods with a myriad of descriptive names J’shua. Mithra, Zeus, Oden Dionysus, Horus a let’s call him piggy. 🙂
Well I’m glad he’s dead and I’m sure he will stay dead in hell burning in torment never ending…. I won’t mention what some of your christian friends said on another blog but they believe the Talmud said yeshu burns in hell in a vot of boiling semen. No shit that’s what they said and must believe.
Like any literary tragedy your hero has to die in the end very tearfully but since this is above all else a commercial enterprise you need a sequel so we will write him back into the script for 2nd coming sequel.
Stupid and illogical script disjointed and contradicts itself every 3rd or 4th line.
A great intellect such as yourself (truly) can do better this this pig slop passed of for scripture?????
Then no reason to expect anything rational from a crazy irrational egotistical megalomaniac who plays biblical characters in blog sites.
Shitty characters
Shitty script
shitty author
dweller Said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIvH2dPolsM
@ yamit82:
I wouldn’t know about Xty. It’s strictly peripheral to my world.
I DO know that J’shua didn’t worship death. Mt 26:39; Lk 22:42.
But dying was an integral part of his mission.
So it’s not unreasonable that he would want his friends to commemorate his death.
Your shallowness & superficiality never cease to amaze.
dweller Said:
So you admit that christianity is a religion that worships death ie., a death cult!!!!!
So you have so much in common with Islam. 😛
mrg3105 Said:
ok lets make another change
Finally its starting to make sense.
The word supersessionism comes from the English verb to supersede, from the Latin verb sedeo, sedere, sedi, sessum, “to sit”,[4] plus super, “upon”. It thus signifies one thing being replaced or supplanted by another.[5]
The word supersession is used by Sydney Thelwall in the title of chapter three of his 1870 translation of Tertullian’s Adversus Iudaeos. (Tertullian wrote between 198 and 208 AD.) The title is provided by Thelwall; it is not in the original Latin.[6]
Types: Punitive, economic and structural
See also: Biblical law in Christianity, Progressive revelation (Christian) and Marcionism
Both Christian and Jewish theologians have identified different types of supersessionism in Christian reading of the Bible.
R. Kendall Soulen notes three categories of supersessionism identified by Christian theologians: punitive, economic, and structural:[3]
Punitive supersessionism is represented by such Christian thinkers as Hippolytus, Origen, and Luther. It is the view that Jews who reject Jesus as the Jewish Messiah are consequently condemned by God, forfeiting the promises otherwise due to them under the covenants.
Economic supersessionism is used in the technical theological sense of function (see economic Trinity). It is the view that the practical purpose of the nation of Israel in God’s plan is replaced by the role of the Church. It is represented by writers such as Justin Martyr, Augustine, and Barth.
Structural supersessionism is Soulen’s term for the de facto marginalization of the Old Testament as normative for Christian thought. In his words, “Structural supersessionism refers to the narrative logic of the standard model whereby it renders the Hebrew Scriptures largely indecisive for shaping Christian convictions about how God’s works as Consummator and Redeemer engage humankind in universal and enduring ways.”[7] Soulen’s terminology is used by Craig A. Blaising, in ‘The Future of Israel as a Theological Question.'[8]
These three views are neither mutually exclusive, nor logically dependent, and it is possible to hold all of them or any one with or without the others.[3]
Christian views
The early Christian theologians saw the New Covenant in Christ as a replacement for the Mosaic Covenant.[9] Historically, statements on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church have claimed her ecclesiastical structures to be a fulfillment and replacement of Jewish ecclesiastical structures (see also Jerusalem as an allegory for the Church). As recently as 1965 Vatican Council II affirmed, “the Church is the new people of God,” without intending to make “Israel according to the flesh”, the Jewish people, irrelevant in terms of eschatology (see “Roman Catholicism,” below). Modern Protestants hold to a range of positions on the topic.
In the wake of the Holocaust, mainstream Christian communities began the work of “undoing” supersessionism.[10]:64–67
New Testament
[icon] This section requires expansion. (July 2014)
In the New Testament, Jesus and others repeatedly gives Jews priority in their mission, as in Jesus’ expression of him coming to the Jews rather than to Gentiles[11] and in Paul’s formula “first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.”[12] Yet after the death of Jesus, the inclusion of the Gentiles as equals in this burgeoning sect of Judaism also caused problems, particularly when it came to Gentiles keeping the Mosaic Law,[13] which was both a major issue at the Council of Jerusalem and a theme of Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, though the relationship of Paul of Tarsus and Judaism is still disputed today.
For most of Christian history, supersessionism has been the mainstream interpretation of the New Testament of all three major historical traditions within Christianity — Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant.[14] The text most often quoted in favor of the supersessionist view is Hebrews 8:13: “In speaking of ‘a new covenant’ [Jer. 31.31-32] he has made the first one obsolete.”[15] However, the authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews is still openly debated today.
Church fathers
Many Early Christian commentators taught that the Old Covenant was fulfilled and replaced (superseded) by the New Covenant in Christ, for instance:
Justin Martyr (about 100 to 165): “For the true spiritual Israel … are we who have been led to God through this crucified Christ.”[16]
Hippolytus of Rome (martyred 13 August 235): “[The Jews] have been darkened in the eyes of your soul with a darkness utter and everlasting.”[17]
Tertullian (ca.160 – ca.220 AD): “Who else, therefore, are understood but we, who, fully taught by the new law, observe these practices,—the old law being obliterated, the coming of whose abolition the action itself demonstrates. . . . Therefore, as we have shown above that the coming cessation of the old law and of the carnal circumcision was declared, so, too, the observance of the new law and the spiritual circumcision has shone out into the voluntary observances of peace.”[18]
Augustine (354–430) follows these views of the earlier Church Fathers, but he emphasizes the importance to Christianity of the continued existence of the Jewish people: “The Jews … are thus by their own Scriptures a testimony to us that we have not forged the prophecies about Christ.”[19] The Catholic church built its system of eschatology on his theology, where Christ rules the earth spiritually through his triumphant church. Like his anti-Jewish teacher, St. Ambrose of Milan, he defined Jews as a special subset of those damned to hell, calling them “Witness People”: “Not by bodily death, shall the ungodly race of carnal Jews perish (..) ‘Scatter them abroad, take away their strength. And bring them down O Lord”. Augustine mentioned to “love” the Jews but as a means to convert them to Christianity.[20] Jeremy Cohen,[21] followed by John Y. B. Hood and James Carroll,[22] sees this as having had decisive social consequences, with Carroll saying, “It is not too much to say that, at this juncture, Christianity ‘permitted’ Judaism to endure because of Augustine.”[23]
Roman Catholicism
“ In this Torah, which is Jesus himself, the abiding essence of what was inscribed on the stone tablets at Sinai is now written in living flesh, namely, the twofold commandment of love. . . . To imitate him, to follow him in discipleship, is therefore to keep Torah, which has been fulfilled in him once and for all. Thus the Sinai covenant is indeed superseded. But once what was provisional in it has been swept away, we see what is truly definitive in it. ”
—Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Many Religions, One Covenant[24]
Supersessionism is not the name of any official Roman Catholic doctrine and the word appears in no Church documents, but official Catholic teaching has reflected varying levels supersessionist thought throughout its history, especially prior to the mid-twentieth century. The Codex Justinianus (1:5:12) for example defines “everyone who is not devoted to the Catholic Church and to our Orthodox holy Faith” a heretic. The Second Vatican Council (1962–65) marked a shift in official Catholic teaching about Judaism, a shift which may be described as a move from “hard” to “soft” supersessionism, to use the terminology of David Novak (below).[25]
Pope Pius XII held supersessionist views.
Prior to Vatican II, Catholic doctrine on the matter was characterized by “displacement” or “substitution” theologies, according to which the Church and its New Covenant took the place of Judaism and its “Old Covenant,” the latter being rendered void by the coming of Jesus.[26] The nullification of the Old Covenant was often explained in terms of the “deicide charge” that Jews forfeited their covenantal relationship with God by executing the divine Christ.[27] As recently as 1943, Pope Pius XII stated in his encyclical “Mystici corporis Christi”:
“By the death of our Redeemer, the New Testament took the place of the Old Law which had been abolished; then the Law of Christ together with its mysteries, enactments, institutions, and sacred rites was ratified for the whole world in the blood of Jesus Christ… [O]n the gibbet of His death Jesus made void the Law with its decrees fastened the handwriting of the Old Testament to the Cross, establishing the New Testament in His blood shed for the whole human race.”[28]
At the Second Vatican Council, which convened within two decades of the Holocaust, there emerged a different framework for thinking about the status of the Jews’ covenant. The declaration Nostra Aetate, promulgated in 1965, made several statements which signaled a shift away from “hard supersessionist” replacement thinking which posited that the Jews’ covenant was no longer acknowledged by God. Retrieving Paul’s language in chapter 11 of his Epistle to the Romans, the declaration states, “God holds the Jews most dear for the sake of their Fathers; He does not repent of the gifts He makes or of the calls He issues… Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures.”[29] Notably, a draft of the declaration contained a passage which originally called for the “the entry of that [Jewish] people into the fullness of the people of God established by Christ;”[30] however, at the suggestion of Catholic priest (and convert from Judaism) John M. Oesterreicher,[31] it was replaced in the final promulgated version with the following language: “the Church awaits that day, known to God alone, on which all peoples will address the Lord in a single voice and ‘serve him shoulder to shoulder’ (Zeph 3:9).”.[29]
After the death of Pope John Paul II, the Anti-Defamation League stated that “more change for the better took place in his 27-year Papacy than in the nearly 2,000 years before.”[32]
Further developments in Catholic thinking on the covenantal status of Jews were led by Pope John Paul II. Among his most noteworthy statements on the matter is that which occurred during his historic visit to the synagogue in Mainz (1980), where he called Jews the “people of God of the Old Covenant, which has never been abrogated by God (cf. Rm 11:29, “for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” [NRSV]).”[33] In 1997, John Paul II again affirmed the Jews’ covenantal status: “This people continues in spite of everything to be the people of the covenant and, despite human infidelity, the Lord is faithful to his covenant.”[33]
The post-Vatican II shift toward acknowledging the Jews as a covenanted people has led to heated discussions in the Catholic Church over the issue missionary activity directed toward Jews, with some Catholics theologians reasoning that “if Christ is the redeemer of the world, every tongue should confess him,”[34] while others vehemently oppose “targeting Jews for conversion.”[35] Weighing in on this matter, Cardinal Walter Kasper, then President of the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, reaffirmed the validity of the Jews’ covenant and then continued:
“[B]ecause as Christians we know that God’s covenant with Israel by God’s faithfulness is not broken (Rom 11,29; cf. 3,4), mission understood as call to conversion from idolatry to the living and true God (1 Thes 1,9) does not apply and cannot be applied to Jews…. This is not a merely abstract theological affirmation, but an affirmation that has concrete and tangible consequences; namely, that there is no organised Catholic missionary activity towards Jews as there is for all other non–Christian religions.”[36]
“ God’s grace, which is the grace of Jesus Christ according to our faith, is available to all. Therefore, the Church believes that Judaism, [as] the faithful response of the Jewish people to God’s irrevocable covenant, is salvific for them, because God is faithful to his promises. ”
—Cardinal Walter Kasper, May 2001[37]
Recently, in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium (2013), Pope Francis’s own teaching on the matter closely mirrored these words of Cardinal Kasper.[38] In 2011, Kasper specifically repudiated the notion of “displacement” theology, clarifying that the “New Covenant for Christians is not the replacement (substitution), but the fulfillment of the Old Covenant.”[39]
These statements from Catholic officials signal a shift away from a “hard” supersessionist model of displacement. Nevertheless, the references to the Church as the “new People of God” and the New Covenant as “fulfilling” the Old Covenant (irrevocable though it might be) imply a clear Christian superiority and thus comport with a “soft” supersessionism. It should be noted that fringe Catholic groups, such as the Society of St. Pius X, strongly oppose the theological developments concerning Judaism made at Vatican II and retain “hard” supersessionist views.[40] Even among mainstream Catholic groups and official Catholic teaching, elements of “soft” supersessionism remain:
The Catechism of the Catholic Church refers to a future corporate repentance on the part of Jews:
“The glorious Messiah’s coming is suspended at every moment of history until his recognition by ‘all Israel,’ for ‘a hardening has come upon part of Israel’ in their ‘unbelief’ toward Jesus [Rom 11:20-26; cf. Mt 23:39]. … The ‘full inclusion’ of the Jews in the Messiah’s salvation, in the wake of ‘the full number of the Gentiles’ [Rom 11:12, 25; cf. Lk 21:24], will enable the People of God to achieve ‘the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,’ in which ‘God may be all in all.'”[41]
The Church teaches that there is an integral continuity between the covenants rather than a rupture.[42]
In the Second Vatican Council’s Lumen Gentium (1964), the Church stated that God “chose the race of Israel as a people” and “set up a covenant” with them, instructing them and making them holy. However, “all these things…. were done by way of preparation and as a figure of that new and perfect covenant” instituted by and ratified in Christ (no. 9).
In Notes on the Correct Way to Present the Jews and Judaism (1985), the Church stated that the “Church and Judaism cannot then be seen as two parallel ways of salvation and the Church must witness to Christ as the Redeemer of all.”
Protestant
Protestant views on supersessionism revolve around their understanding of the relationship between the various covenants of the Bible, particularly the relationship between the covenants of the Old Testament and the New Covenant. The most prominent Protestant views on this relationship are called Covenant theology, New Covenant Theology, and Dispensationalism. These views are not restricted to a single denomination. However, beginning in the 1980s, the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, and the United Methodist Church have worked to develop a non-supersessionist theology.[43]
Mormonism
The Latter Day Saint movement rejects supersessionism.[44]
Jewish views
See also: Christianity and Judaism
From a Jewish perspective, however, the Torah was given to the Jewish people as an eternal covenant (for example Exo 31:16-17, Exo 12:14-15) and will never be replaced or added to (for example Deut 4:2, 13:1), and hence supersessionism can be regarded as contrary to the Hebrew Bible or antisemitic.[45] For religious Jews and other critics, supersessionism is a theology of replacement, which substitutes the Christian church, consisting of Christians, for the Jewish and B’nei Noah people.[clarification needed]
Novak
While some modern Jews are offended by the traditional Christian belief in supersessionism,[46] Rabbi and Jewish theologian David Novak has stated that “Christian supersessionism need not denigrate Judaism. Christian supersessionism can still affirm that God has not annulled his everlasting covenant with the Jewish people, neither past nor present nor future.”[47]
Novak suggests that there are three options:[48]
The new covenant is an extension of the old covenant.
The new covenant is an addition to the old covenant.
The new covenant is a replacement for the old covenant.
He observes, “In the early Church, it seems, the new covenant presented by the Apostolic Writings (better known as diatheke ekaine or novum testamentum) was either taken to be an addition to the old covenant (the religion of the Torah and Jewish Pharisaic tradition), or it was taken to be a replacement for the old covenant.”[49]
Novak considers both understandings to be supersessionist. He designates the first as “soft supersessionism” and the second as “hard supersessionism.” The former “does not assert that God terminated the covenant of Exodus-Sinai with the Jewish people. Rather, it asserts that Jesus came to fulfill the promise of the old covenant, first for those Jews already initiated into the covenant, who then accepted his messiahhood as that covenant’s fulfillment. And, it asserts that Jesus came to both initiate and fulfill the promise of the covenant for those Gentiles whose sole connection to the covenant is through him. Hence, in this kind of supersessionism, those Jews who do not accept Jesus’ messiahhood are still part of the covenant in the sense of ‘what God has put together let no man put asunder’ [emphasis original].”[48] See also Dual-covenant theology.
Hard supersessionism, on the other hand, asserts that “[t]he old covenant is dead. The Jews by their sins, most prominently their sin of rejecting Jesus as the Messiah, have forfeited any covenantal status.”[48] The hard supersessionists base their views on the bible passages found in Matthew 21:42-46 and Romans 9:1-7. This classification provides mutually exclusive options. Hard supersessionism implies both punitive and economic supersessionism; soft supersessionism does not fall into any of the three classes recognized as supersessionist by Christian theologians; instead it is associated with Jewish Christianity.[50]
@ mrg3105:
Not even close. Curious, though, that for somebody w/ an apparent interest in language, you should be so FAR off-base here. To illustrate does NOT mean to adorn, does not mean to ‘decorate.’
— QTC, to illustrate means to show visually or in some other more graphic or otherwise more readily apprehensible manner something which has been presented in a less easily understood or appreciated form. ‘Decoration’ has NOTHING whatsoever to do w/ it.
Never had a Xmas tree. Never celebrated Xmas. Never wanted to.
In the gospels, J’shua hardly ever mentioned his birth, and certainly NEVER asked anybody to commemorate it
— only his death.
Evidence of what? — So far, I’ve been asking you to substantiate your case, because YOU’ve been making the charges in this exchange — and you’ve come up w/ one big goose-egg.
It’s worse than that — because it was YOU who said that you don’t get to produce your evidence at all. [see above, bolded ]. When you are given multiple opportunities to do so & fail to take them, one gets the distinct and entirely reasonable impression that PresentCompany is less than sincere in his protestations. . . .
No ‘tactic,’ no ‘lashing out,’ and not feeling the least bit threatened.
— Feeling trifled with, perhaps, but not threatened.
The idea that you would expect anybody to buy into the proposition that “JC was crucified for…[being] stupid enough to try and convince the Roman military, many of them not even Latins, that Torah is THE WAY,” sounds like the meanderings of an undisciplined mind and an ego carried away w/ itself.
You do seem hyper, and caffeine seemed a not-unreasonable suspect. As to your regarding the decaf remark as ‘abuse,’ it’s clear that you haven’t read as many posts here (or on any other blogsite) as you imply — not if you find mild sarcasm like the decaf remark as ‘abusive.’ That’ you could find that to constitute ‘abuse’ was almost droll. (Almost.)
Look in Jewish culture to understand that J’shua was executed for trying to persuade the Roman military that Torah is the Way??? — You ARE pulling my leg, right?
No. Oh, how childish, just like a child.
NOBODY’s got the market cornered on childishness.
Haven’t watched the tube in over 15 years, and I never had any use for evangelists of any sort. What I know I discovered for myself, or reasoned-out for myself.
I know. (He told you, right?)
I forgot to tell you, his real name was Manny.
Though it could’ve been Thomas Mopather, or George Sand, or Bill Porter, or Sam Clemens, or Bernie Schwartz, or William Claude Dukenfield — or for that matter, Spaghetti-&-Meatballs.
Doesn’t matter what ‘NAME’ somebody’s called by
— what matters is who they ARE.
There’s no such thing as seeing His ‘voice.’
You may be able to see/read the words that somebody else wrote after HE ‘heard’ them.
— But no, Sir; you don’t see His ‘voice.’ (Nor is His voice a matter of the intellect or study.)
If you aren’t, consciously or otherwise, listening for it, you can’t ‘hear’ it.
In the end, that’s the ONLY way to know the difference betw your voice & His.
@ mrg3105:
Laugh all you like; it’s true all-the-same. I think you assume the Freudian definition of “superego” for conscience.
— It isn’t.
“Conscience” comes from two words, meaning “with knowing.”
The knowing comes direct from ruach elohim; it’s a wordless knowing, a “nagging” of sorts, which appears in the consciousness as HINDSIGHT when the same wordless knowing, which had appeared in the consciousness as FORESIGHT (intuition), has been disregarded.
To a genuinely questing mind, it’s quite scientific and unerringly DEPENDABLE.
Nice to see that you’ve read so many of my posts. In that case, you should have no trouble citing a few representative examples to back up your assertions. Can’t wait to see what you come up with.
Perhaps not. But you are NEVER explicit. Which suggests you have nothing explicit to illustrate your claims. Just more pronunciamentos. You must understand, however, that this gambit gets tired rather quickly.
You’re being evasive. I do read my arguments (and unlike some around here, I usually read them over a few times BEFORE hitting “Post”). If you’re so sure of what you’ve said, provide concrete examples.
I don’t think you have a clue as to what I can or cannot see. If you see a “man of wood,” show me black-&-white evidence of it.
Why don’t YOU tell me. . . .
@ mrg3105:
In this matter, I think not. But thanks for your opinion.
No. That’s the evidence that He already had a relationship w/ Avraham before He ever announced His intentions to him.
How a man relates to the father he has SEEN constitutes not only the training for his relationship w/ the Father he has NOT seen — but also the PROOF of that latter relationship itself. And it is the higher reason for the Fifth Commandment.
haShem didn’t need a ‘reason’ for calling out Avram. He never needed to observe & analyze, etc, before ‘making up His mind.’ He knew what He would do, and with whom, before He ever created the universe.
So?
@ mrg3105:
Easy to prove that there must be a primary source to all of creation and tha’t called complexity. Could never have happened due to random fluctuations.
I believe G-d is a super intelligence a super mind beyond our capacity to understand even envision.
Not convinced he is omniscient.
He has stated many times regrets for his own actions and creations.
mrg3105 Said:
“Because that Abraham hearkened to My voice, and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws.'”
That was a hard one, what else do you want to quiz on???
dweller Said:
yeh, right LOL
Your entire line of argument here for months/years is based on this. You don’t need to be explicit every time.
Again, read your arguments. It is implied al the time, if only by the virtue of you NOT supporting statements from the oral transmission.
Its funny though that you can see a ‘straw man’, but not a man of wood. How’s Alice?
The synonym for ‘illustrate’, is decorate, i.e. to present something to APPEAR better than it really is. Did you like your xmas tree decorating last ‘new year’?
So try less decorating and more of presenting evidence.
[Yes, I know, I don’t produce evidence I ask for, but I am not defending myself]
I don’t drink coffee.
And its is a well known tactic that when someone is threatened, they lash out with abuse. Feeling threatened dweller?
That is my point – what I wrote is NOT in the NT. You have to look in the Jewish culture to understand the ‘missing link’.
For me to know, and for you to find out 🙂
[oh how childish, just like a ben Yisrael 🙂 ]
TV evangelists?
You liked JC? there is no such person! We have no name. There is no evidence that the name Yeshua was ever in use by the People Israel despite a great variety of names in our culture.
Yes, I can see His voice 🙂
yamit82 Said:
You need to know thy enemy before you can defeat him.
Much of the criticism of the Torah comes from literary analysis that in the 19th century sought to equate the words of a living God with those of human beings.
However, it has to be realised that every fictional story has at its inception a grain of truth that served as an inspiration, in the beginning.
This is the undoing of the Torah criticism, and also the support that indeed there is some basis for some part of the NT.
The logic that four different people wrote the books of Moses and Yehoshua fails in this logic because there is no identifiable kernel to all ‘four’ supposed books. Moreover, in every other culture that lesft contemporary written record, the writer is often known, or at least the addressee, usually some ruler. Both these features are absent in the Torah, written or oral. Instead we only have the oral confirmation of the writers in the third party.
In the NT document the opposite is true, either the addressee or the writer are ‘identified’, but there are not third party confirmations, i.e. no witnesses. On the other hand there is much material within that can only have come from the Torah culture, meaning the writers were immersed in this culture to some degree. And there is of course the ultimate proof I had already mentioned that JC was, at least initially, illustrated in carvings as having tiltilim, and since then, ‘long hair’, since the Church would have been embarrassed to try and explain why Xtians do not follow the practice of their man-god in hair styling. Of course long hair came back into fashion after ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ show :-)…among rockers and hippies
In this, NT is like a pig, it is only ‘somewhat kosher’ 🙂
Bernard Ross Said:
“truth be told”…? 😛 😛 😛 😛
Dweller appears to have left out some other major stumbling blocks like:
The Hebrew G_D doing something to, with or in a woman which resulted in the virgin birth of the Jewish messiah.
also
that one has to go to jesus for salvation or one cannot get to god.
😛 😛 😛 😛
of course dweller could not understand why this could be a “stumbling block” for Jews.
The evidence of the overwhelming rejection of the NT narrative as factual is that Jews have ignored it for 2000 years and continuing to worship G_D according to the Hebrew Bible.
those that accepted it, and their descendants would be mentioning Jesus today, like those that met the christian inquisition.
yamit82 Said:
If proving HaShem existed, exists and always will exist was that simple, there would be no atheists 🙂
You are literally looking in the wrong place
In any case, you know that the ktav is nothing without b’al peh
dweller Said:
not at all curious as it never happened; the NT story of a Jewish messiah being attested as factual by a significant portion of Jews would over 2000 years have had some mention aside from what the christians said. The Jews have all sorts of preserved literature for 1000’s of years and NOt A MENTION of your yeshu.
dweller Said:
absolute and utter rubbish. there can be no assumed presumption of veracity for facts asserted which may have been fabricated. The christian world lied about the jews for 2000 years and their vested interest in maintaining the NT narrative makes it immensely suspect that they would be capable of telling the truth when it comes to Jews. Without Jewish attestation about a Jewish story relying on the christian world is ludicrous. like you said:
dweller Said:
and that is exactly what the NT and christian narrative is.dweller Said:
I told you that the moment you stated that the NT asserted that the hebrew G_D begot a son with a woman and that son was the jewish messiah that it was a myth, a fairy tale, a falsehood, etc. that is the most reasonable assumption to make under the circumstances similar to assuming that goldilocks is a fairy tale and the baby bear is merely a fictional character in the novel. you have a need to beleive your novel but if you remove that need there is nothing else.
Still, it is basic common logic that you cannot cite a quotation from a character in a “book” as evidence that the facts in the book actually occurred. therefore it is correct to say:
bernard ross Said:
Bernard ross Said:
😛 😛 😛 😛
yamit82 Said:
dweller Said:
will the real dweller please stand up? 😛
dweller Said:
Yes, Lavan, I had just written to someone else about Lot and it was still on my mind.
You are wrong.
One of the reasons HaShem initiated the establishment of a relationship with Avraham is because of the relationship he displayed to a man, his father.
That is also not a p’shat 🙂
bernard ross Said:
dweller Said:
😛 😛 😛 😛 the only difference is that between this:
[probably]
and this:
[probably something more on the order of]
there is no difference in meaning in the sentence but you are apparently trying to avoid an objective sentence without your “marketing” embellishment and lipstick
we know you assert that the Hebrew G_D [did something to, with or in] a Hebrew woman which resulted in the virgin birth of the Jewish messiah.
you speculate that what he did was to [catalyzed a process of development in the womb of a Hebrew woman]
you are evading a conclusion by arguing about whether the act of speculation shown in brackets as [probably] should be expressed instead as [probably something more on the order of] even though either one placed in the sentence means the same:
’The Hebrew G_D [probably] catalyzed a process of development in the womb of a Hebrew woman which resulted in the virgin birth of the Jewish messiah’
or
’The Hebrew G_D [probably something more on the order of] catalyzed a process of development in the womb of a Hebrew woman which resulted in the virgin birth of the Jewish messiah’
😛 😛 😛 or
’The Hebrew G_D [probably something on the order of] catalyzed a process of development in the womb of a Hebrew woman which resulted in the virgin birth of the Jewish messiah’
or how about this:
The Hebrew G_D [did something to, with or in] a Hebrew woman which resulted in the virgin birth of the Jewish messiah.
Like I said, all your lipstick on your pig doesnt help make it kosher.
dweller Said:
thats right, I already explained that without the lipstick and rendered in a single simple sentence it removes the obfuscation. Of course I can understand why you dont want the lipstick removed or the simplification of your story. I expect its the same reason why you avoid the question of Jesus dying for the sins of others etc.:
bernard ross Said:
I wonder why you keep evading the issue of how far your following of jesus goes short of seeing him as god.
Bear Klein Said:
So much ‘cancer’
yamit82 Said:
But why did HaShem choose Avraham, and hence his progeny?
bernard ross Said:
dweller Said:
😛 😛 😛 😛
In other words you still have nothing, nada, zilch, bubkiss, rien, zero……
dweller Said:
😛 😛 😛 😛
Yes, your rabbis and jews who believe your yushka is the son of god…. this is what you submit as Jewish attestation?
bernard ross Said:
How old is that “jewish” (LOL) org? 2000 years and all you can dig up is a fringe group of current “Jews” who probably represent a number less than the number of Jewish psychotics and lunatics in todays world. Where is the attestation over a 2000 year period? They even fit your evasive definition of “Christian” as they beleive that jesus is god. Pictures of torahs and magen davids do not a jew make.
@ Bear Klein:
Thanks for the update.
When one is 10 time zones away, it comes most especially welcome.
Likud currently has a lead up to 27 seats.
LEFT: Labor (23) + Arab List (12) + Yesh Atid (11) + Meretz (5) = 51
RIGHT: Likud (27) + Bayit Yehudi (11) + Kulanu (7) + UTJ (8) + Shas (6) + Yisrael Beytenu (6) + Yachad (4) = 69
@ bernard ross:
That’s right; there isn’t any such need, once we’re on the same page. But we aren’t. Till we are, it’s BOUND to be impossibly complicated.
Right. It’s YOU who don’t know what you’re talking about.
Yet you want me to tell you what I think, as if you DID know what you’re talking about. Cute.
We’ve been down this road before; quite recently, in fact.
I’m sure you can pick up the meaning of those expressions from reading Xtn sites which incorporate commentaries. You don’t need me for that; it’s clear that you’re quite capable of doing the legwork.
So you can put that into YOUR words? — like you did w/ the Virgin Birth?
I think it’s safe to say that he didn’t die for my phraseology. Only YoursVeryTruly gets to do THAT (and on this website apparently).
Nu, don’t ask me.
— Ask him.
I’m not evading anything, but I can’t tell you what I don’t know. If you want my opinion, you’ll have to tell me FIRST what you understand the pertinent language to mean . There’s no value in my talking oranges while you’re talking apples.
And WHAT ‘non-Jewish ideas’ would those be?
You mean, as ‘evasive’ as YOU are being manipulative?
— on reflection I would say, no I’m not; not by a country mile.
Really? — What’s ‘important’ about it?
@ bernard ross:
You appear to not get the nature of research, which holds that original documents which explicitly represent themselves to be factual accounts are entitled to the presumption of veracity until proven false by their challengers, who bear the burden of proof.
If the events & characters in my ‘novel’ are as you say they are, then you are the LAST of persons to be asserting that — because you don’t KNOW it to be a ‘novel,’ as you have yet to crack the book containing the ‘novel.’ I’m happy carry on the dispute w/ someone who HAS, but you clearly have nothing to say about it, and WON’T be in a position to do so until you HAVE done the reading.
The three-bears story does not assert itself to be factual. If some future version of it does assert itself to be factual, and you want to issue a challenge to the factual nature of the three-bears story, you’ll have to first read it for yourself. No way around that.
I’m not the one who continually & repeatedly begs the question here; you are.
You ask for “Jewish sources,” or “Jewish attestation,” and when I give it to you, you define such sources out of existence by demanding external corroboration. That’s begging the question.
When you claim that the only parties affirming the gospel facts are “Christian sources,” and I ask you — again & again — whether that includes independent, non-church-affiliated scholars who make a specialty of NT studies, you suddenly become strangely silent. It’s apparent that you regard such researchers as “Christian sources.”
IOW: For you, if somebody concludes the gospels to be authentic & truthful, then they are ipso facto , a “Christian source.”
That’s circular reasoning, enabling you to beg the question.
That’s because the ‘joke’ is on you.
Not at all. There’s nowhere in the LRRH story where she makes a declaration that the tale is factual. OTOH, the gospels are, in effect, such a declaration; an affidavit, of sorts. And absent a contemporaneous such document declaring OTHERWISE, the gospels are entitled to the presumption of veracity until the stated facts are disproven.
There is no contemporaneous Jewish contestation from the era as “false.” Curious that that is not forthcoming “through” ANYBODY — including the Jewish community.
@ bernard ross:
What’s more, some of them have formed their own congregations, where they are free to preach as they see fit.
Why don’t you post them here. It’s YOU who spent nearly a month pulling up the Jews-For-Jesus website, which must have plenty of testimonials by rabbis, among others.
No, in other words I don’t have the luxury of time that YOU have, to go hunting for such things. For matters that pose an advantage to your positions, you’ve got all the time in the world; for anything that threatens or challenges that, however, you’re lazy and have no inclination to do your own homework.
“Discerned”? — LMSS; what presumption. You couldn’t ‘discern’ the front end of a horse from the other end. And I don’t ‘spin stories’; I tell you what I think — you can take it or leave it.
It’s only an insult if it isn’t true. But it IS true; you’re QUITE lazy w/ little curiosity about your world. What’s more, your maliciousness makes you dull & slow-witted. Here’s another website that probably has a bunch of rabbis & other Jews with testimonials to make. It’s all the time I can spare, however. They ARE out there, if you really want to know. If you don’t, that’s no surprise. . . .
I wouldn’t know about that. What I DO know is that they never tell it there the way I do (because they don’t know it the way I do).
@ bernard ross:
The gospels don’t have to be ‘shown’ to be factual. Absent explicitly contrary narratives of a contemporaneous nature, the gospel narrative enjoys the same presumption of veracity that any other account of ANY event has until and unless it can be proven to be false.
Wrong. The Jewish community accepts that the gospel accounts have a Jewish provenance — and the ONLY apparent elements in the narrative that are overwhelmingly rejected THROUGHOUT the Jewish community are the propositions that
A. responsibility for the death of Christ rests explicitly and exclusively with the Jews; and that
B. the central figure in the narration was/is ‘God in the flesh.’
But then, a careful perusal of the text reveals that neither assertion is to be found therein.
Of course, one would have to READ the text to know that.
As to the Jewish community’s attitude toward the rest of the narrative, the MOST one could say is that it has been ambivalent toward it; it has most certainly not “overwhelmingly rejected” it.
Truth be told, the [above] two erroneous propositions have stood as stumbling blocks PREVENTING the community from ever giving serious consideration, one way or the other, to the idea of the narrative’s veracity.
There’s no textual evidence that the authors of the gospels ever swindled or killed anybody’s parents or ever lied about them. If you have such evidence, produce it.
@ bernard ross:
Why the question?
Which NT is that?
Yes, it is; we agree on that.
So?
But then, ANYTHING I said would sound like a “Christian story” to you.
You have a rabbi? How quaint.
Again, why do you ask?