VANITY: Question for Christians

3/30/2004 | me

[Warlord David]

In beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Then the Word became flesh, not paper and ink. You have demonstrated the danger that many "Bible only" types fall prey to: the confusion of the Bible with the Word.

The different is whether one holds to the letter of the WORD or the spirit of the WORD. As for the bible their are many different bibles, just as their our different gospels being preach today. Gal.1:8 false christ come in three different forms either as 1. a false messiah in the flesh. 2. False christ thru a different gospel. 3. Or a false spirit, such as the spirit of the antichrist.
1 John4:3

It not the bible, but the type of bible you preach from.

[Warlord David]

I do not agree that the Bible is the Living Word of God. Jesus is.

In beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Then the Word became flesh, not paper and ink.

O'really
Lo I come in the volume of the book(paper and ink), it is written of me to do thy will O God. Hebrew 10:7

You catholic really do not understand.

The bible is the living Word of God. For by the Bible which is the Word, we shapes or chisel out, the living image of God, which his Jesus, in our hearts and minds. And the more false doctrine or false ideal of him that we hold to, we twist that image into an idol. Which is what many catholic have done. Seeing that the catholic bible like the mormon bible has extra books that describe a different Jesus. Therefore a different image.

[xzins]

Since the artists who made the ark of the covenant were told to carve 2 angels, and since a graven snake on a pole was used by Moses, then we can safely interpret that it wasn't the act of carving something that was prohibited.

It was carving something that you bowed down and worshipped like IT were a god.

The golden calf was worshipped as if it were Jehovah.

There might be someone out there who thinks a cross or a crucifix is Jesus, but I bet there's not many of them.

A crucifix is no different than a photo of one of your loved ones that you keep in your wallet. You don't think the photo "is" that person. It's simply a keepsake that reminds you of them.

[dangus]

Are you Jewish? I note you write out the name (and its capitalized, so it is a name) God. Most Orthodox Jews write the word, G-d.

The crucifix (and it properly contains the corpus) is a reminder that God became Man. I do know that that is rejected by Jews.

[dangus]

As a Catholic, I am inclined to agree with you that it would be best to stay in the bas-relief technique of iconography... but this is an issue of proper style, and not heresy to me.

[dangus]

I was thinking:

WHAT? FIRST COMMANDMENT? Now I KNOW OP is really a Romanist, Papist mole!

Bwahahaha!

[yonif]

I am Jewish. God is not the name of God. There is another name, which I will never say nor write. In the Hebrew language I would never write God in itself as well, but say HaShem. In English, it doesn't bother me to write God, though you are right many Orthodox Jews in America write G-D.

[dangus]

" Seeing that the catholic bible like the mormon bible has extra books that describe a different Jesus."

Oh, brother!

Um, you do know that the Essene canon (c. 200-50 BC), which is the same as the Alexandrian canon, used by the Catholic Church (c. 100 BC), predated the Palestinian canon (c. 100 AD), used by most Protestants by hundreds of years, right?

And think of this: Presuming that Jesus considered there to be a canon of what constituted scripture, would he refer to a canon which already existed, or one which did not yet exist?

Take your pick of canons:
1. Essene (includes deueterocanonicals), BC.
2. Pharisaic (includes Prophets and Moses, but not Scrolls, such as Proverbs, Job or Chronicles), BC.
3. Alexandrian (includes deueterocanonicals, but in Greek), BC
4. Saducees' (includes only the books of Moses), BC.
5. Masoretic-Palestinian (does not include deuterocanonicals), AD

O and there's this: the OT scripture quotations are closer to the Alexandrian canon than the Masoretic-Palestinian canon over 90% of the time.

[dangus]

>> God is not the name of God. <<

Well, yeah, but a lot of his friends call him that, informally. ;^)

[Warlord David]

You present a interesting dilemma.

But in dealing with the Old Testament. In 90AD the last Jewish council held before they were totally scattered. The Jews religious leaders set the books of the old testament, as the protestant bibles have today.
This council rejected the books of the Apocrypha, along with other books of that time. Because of the growing false religious sects at that time, that had their own agenda. Christianity was one of those sects.
Therefore to avoid canonizing errors in their bible they ended the old testament at around the time of Ezra the prophet. And canonized 39 books of the old testament that the protestant hold to.
As for the New Testament it was the first council of hippo in 393ad. That we protestant hold to, who canonized the books of the new testament. Along with the 39 books of the old testament. The 2 and 3 catholic council of hippo confirmed again these books. The first council of hippo was not a official a catholic council, although other say other wise. And have twisted the truth, on this alittle.
Therefore seeing that the decision on what will be what in the bible has already been decided. I will have to decline your gracious offer of choices. Thanks but no thanks. But I will concur with what already has been done by council. And you will no doubt do according to your churches council.

[tessalu]

I do not think that dead people are praying or doing anything else, for the bible says that they know nothing.


"The living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun." "There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest." Ecclesiastes 9:5, 6, 10. "The dead praise not the Lord." Psalm 115:17.


People will tell you just anything at all.

[Gamecock]

I do not think that dead people are praying or doing anything else, for the bible says that they know nothing.

All I can yell you is what I know, Calvinists in the outer darkness can communicate with us.

[biblewonk]

Not true. God told Israel ~"When I spoke to you I didn't appear in any form, therefore don't make any image to represent me". You totally miss that point.

[dangus]

The irony of using the council of Jamnia, of course, is that that council was specifically opposing Christianity. One of the principal reasons ther rejected the deuterocanonicals was precisely that they found them to contain passages which proved Jesus.

I wasn't literally telling you to pick whatever canon you liked; I was pointing out that the Masoretic/Palestinian canon was the least sensible. You compared the other canons to Mormon canon; I was showing how sensible they were. The writers of the New Testament clearly were not using the Masoretic text as their guide, but something much closer to the Alexandrian canon, or the Essene canon.

Isn't it wierd to pick the one canon created to dsicredit Christ?

[RnMomof7]

Not true. God told Israel ~"When I spoke to you I didn't appear in any form, therefore don't make any image to represent me". You totally miss that point.

I agree with you BW. That was in their mind an "image" of God .

[Warlord David]

Go point. I never though of it quite that way. I guess the Lord works in mysterious ways.

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

Not true. God told Israel ~"When I spoke to you I didn't appear in any form, therefore don't make any image to represent me". You totally miss that point.

Right, and no-one (Jewish or Christian) is authorized in any passage of Scripture to make an Icon of the Father or of the Holy Spirit (well, in the case of the Holy Spirit, Christendom has generally permitted that His activity may be abstractly represented with the image of a Dove -- an Iconic representation which is often found in Protestant imagery).

But that doesn't change the fact that the Jews were directed to make Icons of the Heavenly Cherubim, which we must therefore conclude did not violate the Second Commandment (Second Commandment, OP... SECOND Commandment!)

Nor does it change the fact that Jesus Himself is, according to Hebrews 1, the "Express Image" of the Invisible Father.

[dangus]

O, and for the record, "Apocrypha" is a word commonly used by Protestants to demean the deuterocanonicals. The word refers, however, to a much broader category of literature, including such works as "Jubilees," "1-2-3 Enoch," "3-4 Macabees," "Shepherd of Hermes," "the Didache," etc. That so many scholars use it, in spite of the confusion it causes, only attests to the purposeful bias of such scholars. When you refer to a specific, defined collection, it makes no sense to use a word which also refers to a much broader collection.

[biblewonk]

But that doesn't change the fact that the Jews were directed to make Icons of the Heavenly Cherubim,

More importantly, the making of the Cherubim does not change God's original desire for us not to make images that represent God.