Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article

To: Mr Rogers; MarkBsnr
Happily, we have excellent texts of John, dating back to about 200 AD, with small fragments earlier.

Yes happily, but I have to see them on Internet. They have been discovered quote some time ago and all I hear are references to them but I have yet to see them.

The Synoptics need to be understood in light of the OT, being written from a Jewish viewpoint. John was written later, and for a Gentile audience, and is more explicit for those who haven’t studied the Old Testament

I agree, but most people will tell you that John was explicitly written for Jewish audiences, whihc of course is nonsense.

As for your implication on "they fell down and worshiped him" there is nothing in the word proskyneo in Greek to suggest they were worshiping God. It means profund respect, which can apply to God as well as men or high rank.

Mat 2:2 makes it clear they didn't come to worship God but the new "King of the Jews." So, no divine worship would be appropriate. The correct term for divine worship would be lautreo (to serve). Proskyneo is reverence. And in all these instances the word proskyneo is used, as is in Mat 28:17 relating to a risen Jesus! Not even then is he worshiped as God!

The term lautreo (as expected) is used in Mat 4:10 when Jesus says "You shall revere (proskyneo) the Lord your God, and serve (lautreo) only him." The distinction is immediately clear to a Greek reader, but not to an English reader because the English Bibles (and most others) are a fraud.

In English, both words are translated as "worship" and messenger is translated as two different words, depending on what implied meaning was intended. That is a man-made Bible, my friend and you've been had believing otherwise.

Your attempt to link Mat 8:29 with divinity is likewise flawed. The term "son of God" refers to any anointed (meshiyah) person. In terms of the Jewish messiah, the warrior-king would have extraordinary powers granted him by God to prove that he is the chosen warrior-king, God's favorite, but not necessarily divine.

After all the apostles were supposedly healing people and raising people from the dead and and no one though they were divine because ofd these powers were granted them. Peter's shaddow was all that was needed to "heal" people! Yet no one said Peter was divine.

You yourself recognize that the Synoptics were written from the OT point of view, and in the OT there is no divine messiah anywhere. The Jewish messiah was never supposed to be divine. So, the Synoptics could not possibly hint at Jesus' divinity.

The term Son of God being taken as a a divine person is a result of Christian theology, and it would logically mean a divine person to Greeks (in whose language and for whom the Synoptics were written), but it is not what it meant to 1st century Jews, Christian or not.

As for Mat 13:41, Matthew took the "send the angels' from Mark 13:27 and made into "send his angles," but the word itself (aggelos, pron. angellos) doesn't necessarily mean God's angels; it simply means envoys or messengers,, just as Christ doesn't mean Jesus, but the anointed one. However both words are used in their original in Christian translations in order to imply divinity. This is an artificial distinction.

When you say only God sends angels, I am on the floor laughing. Read Luke 7:24 it reads in Greek:

The word in red (aggelon) is the same word otherwise translated as "angels" except, because these are John's "angels" it is translated as "messengers." Totally artificial distinction intended to fix a meaning the word never had in the original. Such is the extent of biblical fraud.

No first century Greek would read the word aggelos and immediately "filter out" the meaning; to him it would all mean one and the same thing—a messenger, some of God and others not. He would never say "angels are only sent by God" because nothing in Daniel's vision suggests the returning Son of Man (another fraud, the word is ben adam, son of Adam, a human being, no divinity implied) would be sending God's messengers.

Elsewhere in the Bible where it is meant to mean God's messengers the Bible plainly says messenger(s) of God which we redundantly translate as 'angel(s) of God.'

1,657 posted on 12/20/2009 4:19:16 AM PST by kosta50 (Don't look up -- the truth is all around you.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1620 | View Replies ]


To: kosta50

Busy morning - I’ll reply later today or tomorrow.


1,659 posted on 12/20/2009 7:16:30 AM PST by Mr Rogers (I loathe the ground he slithers on!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1657 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson