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To: JohnnyM

"Is Jesus a liar??"

That certainly is the $10,000 question, isn't it?

If he didn't walk out of that tomb alive, yes.
If he did, no.

I assume that he did walk out of that tomb, alive, and I think that the Edessa Shroud and Sundarium cloth are the burial garments of Jesus, and give us powerful forensic evidence that (a) the man was really dead, and (b) ceased to be in contact with the cloths after about 30 hours, and (c) was not dragged off the cloth (there is no chemical smearing of the image, nor of the blood on the Shroud).

Given this sign, left by God for us, I think we have good empirical basis to accept the story of the Resurrection, and therefore Jesus was not a liar. And therefore he was divine.

When I read the accounts of his life given in the Gospels, I do not see Jesus dwelling much in books.
Yes, he recounts various passages and stories from Jewish Scriptures. Of course, he includes in those references, as does Paul and Peter, about 117 references to words and acts in those books of the Jewish Scriptures of the First Century that are called "apocryphal" by some Christians today, and which were excluded from the Scripture on the authority of various men who established a new Biblical tradition in the 16th Century. Those books were good enough for Jesus to quote, but apparently not good enough for Luther's tradition of the canon of Scripture. This is an aside point, however, speaking to the problem of WHAT IS SCRIPTURE. You referred to references Jesus and the apostles made. They did indeed make such references, including to books you refuse to acknowledge are Scripture. The one thing that Jesus and the apostles didn't do was give a list to tell us what is Scripture and what isn't. So, we rely on our traditions. Your tradition excludes 9 books that my tradition includes. Jesus cited from those 9 books. Applying your hermeneutic, I would think you would admit them as Scripture. But your tradition says their not, and you almost certainly choose to follow your tradition over the citations of Jesus, in that instance.

Likewise, the Epistle of Jude cites explicitly to the Book of Enoch. Now, this is no lost book. I have a copy of the book of Enoch. It is referenced in Scripture, but our traditions, yours and mine, neither include them in the Bible. If we are going to use the hermeneutic that you propose, which is that reference somewhere in Scripture to another book makes something Scripture, then you are forced to admit all 9 books of the "Apocrypha", and you are forced to admit the book of Enoch. Since you will do neither, you are not following your hermeneutic of reading the words of the Bible, but are substituting your preference for the traditions of men, in the case of Enoch dating from Papal decisions and councils of the 400s AD; in the case of the so-called "Apocrypha", to the traditions of men dating from the 1550s and Martin Luther.

You are free to do this, of course, but I would expect that focusing on the fact that you are doing it, and thinking a bit about what Jesus had to say about the traditions of men, might give you pause.

If Jesus cited it, it's Scripture.
I'll accept that as a rule.
Jesus cited the "Apocrypha", indeed, the language he used refers to the Septuagint Greek version of the OT, not the Hebrew Massoretic text version (there are some obvious differences). That would make the Greek Septuagint Scripture, and every other version of the OT, such as the Jewish Massoretic Text, NOT Scripture where they differ from what Jesus cited, wouldn't it?

But let's move to the direct quote you made of Jesus saying that God made them, male and female. There is, of course, nothing in this to say that God didn't make them male and female through what we would call evolution. To us, that seems like a billion years, but recall "A thousands ages in your sight are like an evening gone..."
Evolutionary periods to God would be slow in coming.

I note too that Jesus, who was God incarnate, didn't content himself with "Poof, you're healed!" Frequently, he undertook a physical gesture, such as spitting on clay and rubbing it on eyes, for example. The woman with the hemorrage was healed when she physically touched Jesus' cloak, not before. When He walked the Earth, God sometimes did what He did not with "poof", but through a step of a physical process. Clearly he didn't need to (he simply called forth Lazarus), but equally clearly, sometimes he preferred to. Genesis 2 tells us that God didn't make Adam "poof", but formed him of clay. Obviously God didn't have to take the step of forming clay. He could simply have done it "poof". But the Bible doesn't say He did it that way. Why, then, would God bother to manipulate physical material he made, in order to make something new, such as he did to make Adam (or, with the removal of the rib, Eve, according to the Biblical story)? Why would he spit on clay and rub it to heal eyes instead of simply ordering it done? You'd have to ask him. Who can say, other than BECAUSE HE WANTED TO. Given that the Bible leaves us a "record" of God being pleased to use physical process to do things, instead of "poof", there's no objection in principle to the thought that He made us out of clay by building us up from the primates. Why not? He obviously liked the primates enough to make them out of clay too.

Coming back to those words about Jesus and "made them male and female", there's no objection in that phrase to Evolution as a scientific principle. But if we read a clause further, there IS an objection from Jesus to men and women ever getting divorced (except for lewd conduct, whose rule he does not provide explicitly). Jesus does a couple of important things in this passage, which is why it is serendepitous that you should bring it up.
One thing he does is lay out a strict no divorce rule. He calls the rule of divorce a part of the human tradition of the Mosaic Law, but says that it was not part of God's law: God's law was that the two shall become as one, and that those who divorce and remarry are adulterers. Pretty strong talk.

Does the human tradition of YOUR church allow men and women to divorce, ever (other than for the lewd conduct/adultery of the other party)? Yes? Does it ever allow divorced people to remarry? Yes? Does it not worry you that your church has a tradition of man that Jesus explicitly, directly and sternly condemned?

The more important thing that Jesus did in that passage, Scripturally, is say that another part of the Bible was wrong. Read what he said: he said that it was allowed by Moses because of the hardness of the hearts of the Hebrews, but that it was not that way with the law of God. But wait! If I page back to Leviticus and Deuteronomy, well, bless me! But isn't it GOD who is laying out the rules of divorce here?

In this passage, Jesus directly cites a law of Moses that is written twice in the Bible as part of what "God said", in the "Word of God" (according to the human tradition). But Jesus said that it's NOT the will of God.
By contradicting the Bible and overruling an earlier part of it, Jesus does many dramatic things here. The most important one is that He puts us all on notice that we'd better not just read the Torah and assert that THIS is ALL the Word of God, every letter of it. Because Jesus, who IS God, says that the divorce parts of the Torah aren't the law of God but the tradition of men. If two parts of the Torah are the traditions of men and not the Word of God, then what other parts might be?

About the Scriptures, Jesus actually says at one point that WE claim to find authority there. He preaches from his own. And on the very occasion you cited to prove the literal 7-days-truth of Genesis, were you to continue on with the rest of the clause, you would discover that Jesus tells you that your church's permission of divorce and remarriage is a defiance of God, and that where the Pentateuch, Leviticus and Deuteronomy, lay down God's law of divorce, that that's mere human tradition, of Moses, and is not and never was the law of God from the beginning.

Jesus punches a hole in the Bible here.
And a hole in the traditional practices of virtually all Christian religions. The only one I know of that doesn't permit divorce at all, per Jesus, is Catholicism. Not because of Catholic "tradition", but because of what Jesus actually said. He walked out of that tomb, so He was God. And he ought to know.


282 posted on 09/21/2005 11:22:55 AM PDT by Vicomte13 (Et alors?)
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To: Vicomte13
My Church is the Body of Christ, not a body governed by men. My authority is Christ and His Word, not some man in an ivory tower. So cease with the snap judgements. I am not going to participate in a "who's church is more holy" argument.

The Jewish Bible does NOT contain the apocrypha.

Jesus says from the BEGINNING of creation, this leaves no room for man's evolutiunary cycle.

The fact that you rely on fictional shrouds to validate your faith is telling.

Jesus said blessed are those who have not seen, yet believe.

We live by faith, not by sight.

JM
289 posted on 09/21/2005 12:04:27 PM PDT by JohnnyM
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