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The Neverending Story (The New Christian Chronicles)
Southern Baptists ending talks with Catholic Church ^ | 3/24/01 | AP

Posted on 10/15/2001 6:54:40 AM PDT by malakhi

The Neverending Story
An ongoing debate on Scripture, Tradition, History and Interpretation.


Statesmen may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue. - John Adams


Thread 162
TNS Archives


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: christianlist; michaeldobbs
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To: SoothingDave
also, why then do you celebrate Easter and Good friday?? Is 3 days not figurative??? If so, then why??

JM
31,621 posted on 03/04/2002 10:30:18 AM PST by JohnnyM
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To: PayNoAttentionManBehindCurtain
Where you been ya old toad? :)

Lol, do you remember the story of the little boy who we 5 years old and had never spoken a word. One morning his mother accidentally burnt his oatmeal, and he took one taste and through it across the kitchen and yelled I'm not eating that crap, to which his mom and dad stood speechless until his mother finally said, son, you haven’t said a word in 5 years, what's happened that you can suddenly talk?

to which the lad said.

"Up to now, everything's been all right."

Well, up to now everything has been all right, but now,..... I'mmmmm baaaack. hahaha JH

31,622 posted on 03/04/2002 10:33:19 AM PST by JHavard
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To: saradippity
Per your request:

Vatican stance on gay clergy criticized

31,623 posted on 03/04/2002 10:34:08 AM PST by malakhi
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To: JohnnyM;trad_anglican
Why then do you believe 40 days and 40 nights is figurative

Because it is idiomatic. As trad_anglican already said "40 days and 40 nights" means "a long time." "A thousand years" means "a really, really long time."

SD

31,624 posted on 03/04/2002 10:34:56 AM PST by SoothingDave
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To: SoothingDave
""But all prophecy where time periods are used are literal." It has been shown that the weeks in Daniel are not literal weeks."

I firmly disagree with you assessment of this as well. The fact is that if the interpretation of week is a 7 year period or if it is a period of 7 days it would still be a literal interpretation no matter which one you choose. The fact is you don't seem to understandstand the terms literal and figurative. To interpret Daniel's 70 weeks as 490 days or as 490 years is still a literal interpretation. So I stand by my statement. Any time period, using days, years, months, weeks, nights. Just show me one, and I will get off your case.

JM
31,625 posted on 03/04/2002 10:36:05 AM PST by JohnnyM
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To: SoothingDave
"Because it is idiomatic"

Your not answering the question. Why do you believe it to be idiomatic?

JM
31,626 posted on 03/04/2002 10:38:00 AM PST by JohnnyM
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To: ksen
What about the Aaronic priesthood? I thought God chose to use them as mediators between the nation Israel and Himself. After all, not just anybody could enter the Holy of Holies and go into the direct presence of God. Only the High-Priest could do that, and then he could only do that once a year.

The existence of the priesthood and the temple did not diminish the ability of Jews to pray to God directly. Look at all the mention in the gospels to the synagogues. They were houses of study, worship and prayer. These synagogues were not run by the priesthood.

31,627 posted on 03/04/2002 10:39:52 AM PST by malakhi
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To: angelo
So then God's appointment of a Priesthood was facetitious?

JM
31,628 posted on 03/04/2002 10:40:46 AM PST by JohnnyM
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To: JohnnyM
also, why then do you celebrate Easter and Good friday?? Is 3 days not figurative??? If so, then why??

What about Lent? We make that 40 days literally?

My point is that the 40 days of Noah or of the Lord in the desert might or might not have been literally that many days. Likewise, the "1000 years" of Revelation might or might not be literally that time period.

Insisting upon a literal interpretation is where problems come up.

SD

31,629 posted on 03/04/2002 10:41:20 AM PST by SoothingDave
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To: JohnnyM
I firmly disagree with you assessment of this as well. The fact is that if the interpretation of week is a 7 year period or if it is a period of 7 days it would still be a literal interpretation no matter which one you choose. The fact is you don't seem to understandstand the terms literal and figurative. To interpret Daniel's 70 weeks as 490 days or as 490 years is still a literal interpretation. So I stand by my statement. Any time period, using days, years, months, weeks, nights. Just show me one, and I will get off your case.

OK, you win. If you can define 70 weeks to mean either 490 days or 490 years and still insist that you are taking it literally, then I won't argue with you.

Please define for me what "literal" and "figurative" mean then. SD

31,630 posted on 03/04/2002 10:43:24 AM PST by SoothingDave
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To: SoothingDave
"..might or might not have been literally that many days"

Yes, but what makes you come to that conclusion. What makes you say that this is figurative as opposed to literal??

JM
31,631 posted on 03/04/2002 10:43:37 AM PST by JohnnyM
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To: JHavard
Well, up to now everything has been all right, but now,..... I'mmmmm baaaack. hahaha JH

Well good, its been really boring in here. Dave and Reggie have been holding hands lately, and even Havoc is being nice.

Did you read what they said about you while you were gone? Its was.....BAD! :)

BigMack

31,632 posted on 03/04/2002 10:44:19 AM PST by PayNoAttentionManBehindCurtain
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To: JohnnyM

To interpret Daniel's 70 weeks as 490 days or as 490 years is still a literal interpretation.

JM: I am trying to follow the discussion but you lost me with this statement. If the bible says 70 weeks and you interpret it as 70 years how is that literal?

I believe this is the same method of interpreting time that Kirk and Spock employ in Wrath of Kahn. :>)

31,633 posted on 03/04/2002 10:44:20 AM PST by Joyful Wisdom
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To: ksen
I am sorry that the testimony of John's contemporaries that he was around after 70AD is not good enough.

In other places Eusebius disputes the opinion that Revelation was written by the Apostle John. And this despite the fact Irenaeus (who claims to have known Polycarp, who knew John) was certain that the Apostle wrote It. For some reason, obviously compelling to Eusebius, he felt justified in contradicting Irenaeus’s emphatic statements regarding the Johannine authorship of Revelation. Eusebius’s countering of Irenaeus’s witness in this area surely indicates that this great chronicler of the Church did not conceive of Irenaeus as above reproach on historical matters.

In Against Heresies we read a very unusual historical statement: For how had He disciples, if He did not teach? And how did He teach, if He had not a Master’s age? For He came to Baptism as one Who had not yet fulfilled thirty years, but was beginning to be about thirty years old; (for so Luke, who bath signified His years, bath set it down; Now Jesus, when He came to Baptism, began to be about thirty years old:) and He preached for one year only after His Baptism: complet- ing His thirtieth year He suffered, while He was still young, and not yet come to riper age. But the age of 30 years is the first of a young man’s mind, and that it reaches even to the fortieth year, everyone will allow: but after the fortieth and fiftieth year, it begins to verge towards elder age: which our Lord was of when He taught, as the Gospel and all the Elders witness, who in Asia conferred with John the Lord’s disciple, to the effect that John had delivered these thingsunto them: for he abode with them until the times of Trajan. And some of them saw not only John, but others also of the Apostles, and had this same account from them, and witness to the aforesaid rela- tion. Whom ought we rather to believe? These, being such as they are, or Ptolemy, who never beheld the Apostles, nor ever in his dreams attained to any vestige of an Apostle?

The careful detail he meticulously recounts in his argument, and the reference to the eyewitness accounts, should be noted. Yet, no respected New Testament scholar asserts that the biblical record allows for a fifteen year or more ministry for Christ, or of His having attained an age in excess of forty. We must vigorously assert that Irenaeus was “strangely mistaken about the age of Jesus.”

31,634 posted on 03/04/2002 10:46:08 AM PST by vmatt
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To: SoothingDave
The difference is in definition of the "week". There is factual basis for defining a week as 7 years or for defining it as 7 days. So the difference is NOT in the literally-ness of the passage (it literally means 7 weeks), but what time-period the term "week" is referring to. To take it figuratively would mean that "70 weeks" as a whole is an indiscrimanately long period of time.

JM
31,635 posted on 03/04/2002 10:47:37 AM PST by JohnnyM
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To: JohnnyM
Now on what basis do you determine that the 40 days and 40 nights of Jesus's temptation was not literal???

No you're back to the gospels, again. I thought you were talking about prophetic language. I'm really confused. I believe forty days and forty nights, when used in the bible, does not mean exactly forty consecutive 24 hour periods. I believe it means a long time. The same way that seventy times seven doesn't mean exactly 490, but many many times.

As far as prophetic language, I marvel at those who can, seemingly without effort, interpret prophesies. I do not have that gift.

31,636 posted on 03/04/2002 10:48:51 AM PST by trad_anglican
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To: angelo
The existence of the priesthood and the temple did not diminish the ability of Jews to pray to God directly. Look at all the mention in the gospels to the synagogues. They were houses of study, worship and prayer. These synagogues were not run by the priesthood.

After the giving of the Tabernacle, did God ever accept sacrifices done by any-old-body done any-old-where?

Just because God allowed their existence doesn't mean that He blessed the goings on. He never commanded the Synagogues to be set up, He did however command the building of the Tabernacle, and the commissioning of the family of Aaron to act as priests.

I think the synagogues served a useful role. In every major city there was a synagogue full of people who knew the Scriptures. These acted as starting points for Paul's missionary activities in the cities he visited.

Didn't the synagogue get its start from the Jews of the Babylonian Captivity? For some reason I remember reading this somewhere, maybe in Edersheim's Life and Teachings of Jesus the Messiah.

-ksen

31,637 posted on 03/04/2002 10:53:21 AM PST by ksen
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To: JohnnyM
The difference is in definition of the "week". There is factual basis for defining a week as 7 years or for defining it as 7 days.

Where is the English or Hebrew or Greek word for "week" defined as 7 years?

What is this factual basis you speak of?

SD

31,638 posted on 03/04/2002 10:53:29 AM PST by SoothingDave
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To: trad_anglican
I thought you were supporting SD, who is arguing the point of 40 days and 40 nights. I am asking the question then why do you believe it to be idiomatic or figurative? Why is the 40 days and nights of Jesus' temptation figurative? What makes you come to that conclusion? What makes you come to the conclusion that the 1000 year reign (which has a beginning and an end as described in Revelations) in Revelations is a figurative amount of time?? That is the question I am asking. Do you default to figurative interpretation when you read the Bible or any book for that matter??

JM
31,639 posted on 03/04/2002 10:53:50 AM PST by JohnnyM
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To: trad_anglican
As far as prophetic language, I marvel at those who can, seemingly without effort, interpret prophesies. I do not have that gift.

I hear you can buy a 3 record set from 700 Club to help you to become a prophet in 3 easy lessons. :)

BigMack

31,640 posted on 03/04/2002 10:55:24 AM PST by PayNoAttentionManBehindCurtain
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