Posted on 05/08/2011 4:01:12 AM PDT by GonzoII
So your unstated but obvious conclusion is that Jesus was a mad man. Got it. Have you ever spent any time reading C.S. Lewis? You might, might, learn a thing or two about Christianity.
Thats what you got out of my post? That is a stretch.
Have you ever spent any time reading C.S. Lewis?
I have read the Screwtape letters and Mere Christianity.
Both good books but based, like all of Christianity, on mistranslantions and eisegetic renderings of the Hebrew.
I think blasater1960 is Jewish. He is not going to believe that Jesus is the Jewish messiah. His presenting a case for a different understanding of OT verses that we take as prophesying the birth of Jesus and presenting a different understanding does not tell us what he personally believes about Jesus. It simply is a defense of the Jewish understanding of those verses and why they (to them) do not show Jesus is the messiah.
He may think Jesus was a liar, he may think he was a lunatic. But that is for him to say and not for us to presume.
Your conclusions stamp Jesus a mad man because of what Jesus said of Himself. You not only deny what He said of Himself, you pose your position as so refutational that only a mad man would not dump the pretense you assume for the founding of Christianity. If you were familiar with Lewis, you would know that he posed the issue as one reading of Him can make only one of two choices: He was Whom He said He was, or he was a mad man on the level of claiming he was a fried egg.
Today is not my first or even fifth reading of balaster’s railings. We’ve had a Christian Rabbi of FR refute him and he refuses to acknowledge his own errors.
I don’t know the background and I still think we should not presume somebody else’s meaning. There is no such thing as a Christian Rabbi. Christianity and Judaism are two different religions.
“Christian Rabbi?” ... no such thing...
You know, if the man hadn’t healed the sick by touching them, if he hadn’t given sight to the blind by applying his saliva and mud, if he hadn’t walked on water, if he hadn’t come back after being brutally executed, if he hadn’t calmed storms with a word, if he hadn’t raised the dead, if many dead had not come out of their graves when he died on that cross, if there wasn’t eye-witness accounts for all the above, I’d say you might have a point.
When you look at Jesus's criticisms of the phariseess and the sribes, he points to hypocrisy as a big issue. This is very much like the prophets, very much like Amos, Obadiah etc. His teachings are much like the minor prophets.
The problem is that Jesus did not write one book by his own hand. So all we have is other men writing about what he said. The problem is that a lot of the NT contradicts, mistranslates and invents messianic passages from the OT. Whos fault is that...Jesus's? Or the men who wrote the NT? Since Jesus didnt write a word of it...I blame the authors of the NT. What did Jesus really believe of himself? We will never know. He wrote nothing.
All I know is that the NT is riddled with error both in eisegesis and theology.
The original Jewish christians neither believed in virgin birth nor in the divinity of Jesus.
Your messianic pastor has never refuted any of my arguments. He is no Rabbi.
Yes they did.
C.S. Lewis’ argument does have its place. But it is not the only Christian apologetic available to Christians. I don’t believe he was even trying to use it against the Jewish understanding of Jesus but against secularists who tried to make the claim that Jesus was only a good man.
Exactly right. The best Christian for Christian-Jewish polemics I would say is Michael Brown. I have read most of his stuff too. No matter though, even he fails (IMHO) to make the case because even he can not make a square hole round...and he trys very hard.
A four-legged stool is very stable. Take away a leg and space the remaining ones evenly and the stool is still stable.
The three legs that support Christianity are 1. The Virgin birth (because it says that God, not Joseph, is Jesus’ father), 2. The crucifixion (because that solved the sin problem for every individual who wants it solved) and 3. the resurrection (proving He was God and prototyping every believer’s coming resurrection and qualifcation for eternal life).
These three are what is necessary for real Christianity, and they are proved by the fact that The Word Of God says they are so.
God’s enemies try to take His Word apart and remove key elements, because they are destructive to Satan’s kingdom.
While you may argue the merits of this on other points - the presence of the scroll of Isaiah (from which the passage in question is present) predates the Christian era by several centuries and if virtually identical to the Masoretic text that is 1000 years older. So on this point, the issue is moot.
Even Luther, Zwingli and Calvin believed in the Virgin birth and that Mary was a perpetual virgin!
Aeiparthenos (An Anglo-Catholic Priest on Mary's Perpetual Virginity)
[Why I Am Catholic]: Because of the Protestant Reformers Beliefs On Mary
Catholic Biblical Apologetics: Mary: Virgin and Ever Virgin
Luther, Calvin, and Other Early Protestants on the Perpetual Virginity of Mary
Luther, Calvin, and Other Early Protestants on the Perpetual Virginity of Mary
The Protestant Reformers on the Virgin Mary
Zwingli’s’ Mariology: On Mary “Full of Grace”
To what are you referring?
The questionability of the Masoritic text.
DSS great scroll of Isaiah is dated about 200 BC and is virtually identical to the oldest masoritic text a 1000 years younger.
Since the discussion is the prophetic verse from Isaiah, and your comments regarding the questionable later ‘altering’ of the masoritic, my point is that at least in the case of Isaiah, that hasn’t happened.
Would such a masoretic text of Isaiah contain vowel markings? The masoretic text of the Pentateuch should, as it was recited aloud in a formal setting. But why would Isaiah contain vowel markings?
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