Jesus Christ and Atheism

Discussion in 'Agnosticism and Atheism' started by bird_migration, Aug 9, 2018.

  1. themnax

    themnax Senior Member

    Messages:
    27,694
    Likes Received:
    4,465
    christ was cool, but christianity doesn't own god. and threw christ under the bus when it cannonized saul of tarsus.
     
  2. Tishomingo

    Tishomingo Members

    Messages:
    4,983
    Likes Received:
    5,679
    Bill Maher in his 2008 box office satirical documentary Religulous, isurprises an unwary Christian with the following exchange:

    Bill Maher: But the Jesus story wasn’t original.
    Christian man: How so?
    Maher: Written in 1280 B.C., the Book of the Dead describes a God, Horus. Horus is the son of the god Osiris, born to a virgin mother. He was baptized in a river by Anup the Baptizer who was later beheaded. Like Jesus, Horus was tempted while alone in the desert, healed the sick, the blind, cast out demons, and walked on water. He raised Asar from the dead. “Asar” translates to “Lazarus.” Oh, yeah, he also had twelve disciples. Yes, Horus was crucified first, and after three days, two women announced Horus, the savior of humanity, had been resurrected.

    Wow! What in uncanny resemblance! That pretty much cinches it, right! Those Christians were just a bunch of copycats! Only problem is, on closer inspection it doesn't hold water. Horus was Osiris' son, alright, conceived and born posthumously after his uncle killed Osiris and chopped his body into pieces, which his mom, Isis, managed to sow back together except for one--his missing penis. Born of a virgin? Isis fashioned a magic golden prosthetic penis for Osiris and had sex with that to conceive Horus. Not what we usually think of a virgin birth, but certainly miraculous. And baptized in the river by Anup the Baptizer (just like John the Baptist). Except there was no Anup the Baptizer, and no record of Horus being "baptized"in a river. Anap seems to be a corruption of Anubis or Anpu, the jackal-headed god of the dead, and the closest he ever came to baptizing anyone was in sprinkling them with palm oil during the mummification process. He was never beheaded. Why that's sorta like baptism isn't it? The corpse gets wet! But baptism in the Christian religion symbolizes rebirth and admission of a person into the Christian religion . Mummification occurs after death when a person has left the community and is ready for the long journey for the afterlife.Like Jesus, Horus was tempted. Not exactly. His Uncle Seth, the same one who chopped up his Dad, tried to rape him. But clever Osiris intercepted the semen with his hand and deposited it in a marsh. "He raised Asar from the dead and that tranlates to Lazarus." No it doesn't. Asar is another name for Osiris, judge of the dead. Horus didn't raise Asar, his mom, Isis, did. And it wasn't really a resurrection in the sense of coming out of the tomb and returning to the land of the living. Asar remained in the land of the dead to judge newly arrived deceased. As for the twelve disciples, this is a contribution of the late amateur archaelogist who spotted twelve reavers depicted on the wall of a tomb and decided they must be Horus's twelve disciples. No other mention of Horus having disciples.

    Now comes the crucifixion scene--the only problem being that Horus was never crucified. This story seems to be based on a statue of him with his arms outstretched;from his sides. (the dude is a falcon). That's it. Actually, there's a story of Horus being stung by a scorpion and revived by Thoth, but no actual death and resurrection. Horus is the sky god, incarnated together with the sun god Ra as the living pharaoh. And in death, Pharaoh becomes Osiris.

    Poor Bill Maher got his information from the Zeitgeist documentary which relied on late S.Acharya (aka, Dorthy Murdock) who got her misinformation from Massey and from other ureliable sources. No wonder he's confused, but he thinks he's really socked it to those Christians.What has obviously happened is that the details of the Egyptian story have been stretched and misrepresented to make them seem like they're the same as the Christian story.

    Before we leave Egypt, we might look at the other main candidate for Jesus' copy, Osiris. The big problem here is that Osiris never returns to the land of the living and is shown as a mummy. He is , however, connected with the spring floods, and the renewal of vegetation, so in that sense he is associated with rejuvenation--celebrated by consumption of wheat cakes that have been compared to the communion bread. Pyramid texts indicate that the return of Osiris from oblivion was a source of comfort to Egyptians, especially at the time of death. So much for the Egyptian "parallel".
     
    Last edited: Feb 3, 2021
  3. Tishomingo

    Tishomingo Members

    Messages:
    4,983
    Likes Received:
    5,679
    In terms of "almost identical writings", the curious role reversal between the Christian and Egyptian stories might be noted. In Christianity, God gives His Son to die for us. In the Horus-Osiris myth, Osiris (the father) is the one who died and was revived (and nothing said about doing it for anyone including himself) while Horus (the son) lives. There is no real sacrifice involved, which is pretty crucial in the Christian version. And there is no "once and for all" rising. These details might seem trivial to an atheist, but they are really central to Christians.
     
    Last edited: Feb 3, 2021
  4. Tishomingo

    Tishomingo Members

    Messages:
    4,983
    Likes Received:
    5,679
    Did you get that idea from Dan Brown? God's role, if any, in the process remains a mystery, and the role of Constantine also remains unclear and relatively minor. The canon was well-established before Constantine. The earliest Christians seem to have used the Septuagint version of the Hebrew Bible, eventually adding Christian writings as they became available. The first canon of the New Testament was put together by Marcion of Sinope in 144 A.D.--deliberately excluding the entire Hebrew Bible, which he thought had been written by a false god, and including various epistles of Paul and only the gospel of Luke. He was declared a heretic. Bishop Melito of Sardis put the Hebrew Bible back in the Good Book as the Old Testament in 170 A.D.One of his opponents, Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, in 180 A.D.put together the first four-gospel New Testament canon with 21 of the 27 books we use today--famously arguing that there had to be four gospels, since there were four directions, four principal winds, etc. Actually, this was a bid for a degree of uniformity in what they accepted as the "word of god"--but at the same time, was politic in not excluding the major gospels which were being used in Christian churches. Irenaeus was one of the earliest heretic hunters, and he had a particular thing against Gnostics, so nothing approximating the Gnostic thinking had a chance of getting in. Fortunately, some Egyptian monks had the foresight to bury the Gnostic gospels for later retrieval at Nag Hamadi. You can pick up a copy at your local library and tell us what you think. The next big contributor was Origen of Alexandria who gave us the 27 book canon around 240-250 AD. Constantine didn't get into the act until 322 AD, and then only to commission production of 50 copies of scripture. As a good pagan at the time, Constantine wasn't into the intricacies of Christian theology, so he delegated the task to his right hand Christian sycophant Eusebius. What editorial license Eusebius might have exercised is unkown, but he was familiar with the Origen and Milito canons, and he delivered fifty spiffy copies to Constantine in short order--thought to be our oldest extant bible, the Codex Sinaiticus.

    The figure who first applied the term "canon" to Christian scripture was Athanasius of Alexandria, the first to pronounce the 27 book New Testament as kanonizomenia , in his Thirty-Ninth Festal Epistle in 367A.D. Constantine was long dead by that time. The decision was made official at the church Council of Rome in 382 A.D.,under Pope Damascus I, and and three councils under the authority of Saint Augustine of Hippo: the Synod of Hippo in 393 AD, and the Councils of Carthage in 397 and 419 AD. If this was the work of Constantine's bishops, he performed a miracle from beyond the grave.

    How they could justify the choices they made as to which scriptures to include? That's a matter of speculation, but I have my own opinions. Many Christians think the whole process was guided by the Holy Spirit, but since this is the atheist forum, let's put that one aside. Precisely because there were so many competing ideas about who Jesus was and what He was all about, some Christians felt a need to draw lines, especially since people's eternal souls were at stake. Would the label "Christian" mean anything? Would living a Christian lifestyle simply mean "whatever"? The big issues in the first four centuries were: was Jesus divine, and was He human, and if so, how much? And what, if any, are the obligations of Gentile converts to the law of Moses? There were also the challenges of dealing with the changing structure of the church--the transformation from house churches hosted by women to the buildings more familiar to us presided over by male pastors and bishops. And as always, there were strong-willed, combative individuals who thought they understood God's will and saw it as their mission to drive out the heretics. Irenaeus and Athanasius were two of these. Face it, some of the excluded scriptures were pretty strange. The Gospel of Peter, for example, with its giant Jesus, talking cross, and virulent antisemitism. Or the Acts of Peter, in which the Apostle resurrects smoked fish and makes dogs talk. Or the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, in which a child Jesus is presented as a supernatural juvenile delinquent. or the Gospel of Thomas, saying 114: "Simon Peter said to them, "Mary should leave us, for females are not worthy of life." Jesus said: Look, I will lead her that I may make her male, in order that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who makes herself male will enter into the kingdom of heaven." hooboy! Which scriptures did they leave out that should have been included?
     
    Last edited: Feb 5, 2021
    Sexwise likes this.
  5. Tishomingo

    Tishomingo Members

    Messages:
    4,983
    Likes Received:
    5,679
    There is no systematic set of Roman records of individual crucifixions. Any that we have are haphazard cases that somebody felt the need to report on (as they did in the gospels). There apparently was no SOP for crucifixion. For example, Josephus reported that in carrying out the mass crucifixions of Jewish rebels after the destruction of Jerusalem , the Roman soldiers amused themselves by crucifying them in different positions. Crucifixion, horrific as it was, was widely practiced. Some of 6,000 of Spartacus' followers were crucified after his defeat. It seems to have been used by the Romans quite a lot in Judea--General Varus crucifying 2,000 Jews in the year 4 B.C. alone. There is no Roman record of Jesus specifically being crucified, because to the Romans he was just another Jewish troublemaker. To his followers, He was the Messiah, but a number of messiahs with followers had been crucified during his lifetime. Nothing that special about him.

    Your description of the typical fate of crucified victims is accurate. Jesus Seminar scholar John Dominic Crossan assumes that's what happened to Jesus, too: no tomb, just left there to rot or be eaten as carrion. The Bible tells us His body was claimed by family and placed in a tomb provided by a rich member of the Sanhedrin, Joseph of Arimathea, a secret follower of Jesus, who makes a cameo appearance in history for the occasion. The body of a crucified man named Yehohanan Ben Hagkol, who lived in the early part of the first century AD, was uncovered in a tomb in Jerusalem, so sometimes they made it to tombs. A Tomb in Jerusalem Reveals the History of Crucifixion and Roman Crucifixion Methods
    Another crucifixion victim about the same age as Jesus and from about the same time period was found--not in a tomb, but buried in the ground in northern Italy.

    Although there is no Roman record of Jesus' crucifixion, I think it's likely that he was crucified--because all the biblical accounts say he was, and it's not something that Messiahs were supposed to do. Why would they make it up? No other religion before Christianity had a god who was crucified, despite the claims of Kersey Graves. In Old Testament tradition, the Messiah was supposed to be either great a warrior king type in the tradition of David or a priest, and He was supposed to overthrow the enemies of Israel. There had been plenty of claimants to the title of Messiah in first century Palestine, and the Romans proved them wrong in the usual manner: crucifixion. Not only was Jesus executed as a common criminal, but the manner of execution is mentioned in Deuteronomy 21:23 as making the victim "cursed". This time, the die hard followers, instead of giving up, went back to the drawing board, poured through Jewish scriptures, and came up with a Hail Mary: the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53. True, it doesn't say the Suffering Servant was the Messiah. Nobody made the connection before. Jewish scholars think it's a metaphor for Israel. Picky, picky. It works for Jesus!
     
    Last edited: Feb 5, 2021
    Sexwise likes this.
  6. Tishomingo

    Tishomingo Members

    Messages:
    4,983
    Likes Received:
    5,679
    Of course not! Fortunately, not all Christians believe that. Whether they do or don't depends on their theology, their temperament, how literally they interpret scripture, and which of the 1,200 denominations (in the U.S. alone) of Christianity you're talking--ranging from hardline biblical inerrantists to progressive Christians and universalists. There has been a trend toward liberalization even within the Catholic church. On the other hand, there is still a nasty, virulent streak of the hateful "Ol' time religion" out there. I suspect it fuels the Trump base. Anything I say about it will be highly impressionistic and biased, since I have no real data and am simply going by my take on what I see and read. I consider myself a "progressive Christian" and a member of a Methodist Sunday school and a Church of Christ social group of folks of similar outlook., as well as a Freethinkers group of atheists and agnostics. I know that there are lots of Christians who think non-Christians are going to hell, although I don't have much contact with them.

    I had a much longer reply that apparently has been lost in cyberspace. I'll try again when I regain my strength.I personally believe that hell is a bad attitude, and that heaven is a potential of indescribable happiness we could achieve by loving one another and behaving decently toward one another.
     
    Last edited: Feb 6, 2021
    Sexwise likes this.
  7. Tishomingo

    Tishomingo Members

    Messages:
    4,983
    Likes Received:
    5,679
    I received in the mail today and watched this evening a DVD that some of you might be familiar with. American film director and atheist activist Brian Fleming's The God Who Wasn't There. Some anonymous donor sent this to me, apparently knowing me and thinking it would be up my alley. (S)he was right! The video is a polemic against Christianity by a man who was one of its victims. It outlines many of the arguments raised by New Atheists against Christians, including what he calls "Moderate Christians", in which camp he'd probably place me and my friends from Sunday school. I thought it might offer a useful framework for looking at the issues between atheism and Christianity, and give me a chance to present the "moderate" (or as we prefer "progressive" ) Christian position and how and why we differ from the conservatives. Basically, I and the Christians I hang with ascribe to Borg theology, by which I don't mean "you will (necessarily) be assimilated. I'm referring here to the theology of the late Marcus Borg of the Jesus Seminar. Borg believed in an historical-metaphorical approach to the Bible, and thought that the central message of Christianity was not a god-man dying for our sins but rather peace, love and understanding, and dedication to social justice. Rather than wishy-washy enablers, we are friendly adversaries of the fundies. Fleming, like most New Atheists, thinks that "moderate Christianity makes no sense" and prefers Christians who at least have "the courage of their convictions". One thing you can say about Hitler and Marjorie Taylor Greene--they had/have the "courage of their convictions", as do most dangerous fanatics. I suspect that the attraction of New Atheists to fundamentalists is that the latter's version of Christianity is easy to refute for rational people. The traditionalists thump their bibles and claim to be the true Christians, just as their political counterparts wrap themselves in the flag and claim to be the true Americans. I think it's important for us "moderates" or "progressives" to stand up to them. What I propose to do is to take a critical look at some of the particulars of the video and offer my own take, which I hope will then stimulate discussion from atheists in this forum.

    Fleming's central thesis is that it is likely that an historical Jesus never lived; that he probably was a mythical character concocted from pagan myths which were current at the time or from Old Testament lore, with historical details added later. I propose to argue that : (1) while the evidence is sparse, it is more likely than not that an historical Jesus did exist; (2) resemblances to pagan and Jewish mythology most likely resulted from devoted followers drawing on legends to present their hero as divine. I should state that there is really no firm evidentiary basis for stating conclusively which of these theses is correct, but in my opinion, it doesn't much matter, because the important thing about Jesus was the central teachings attributed to him. From an historical standpoint, however, it is useful to consider which of the alternative views is more plausible, to get an idea of how the Jesus story got started, how it might have been distorted in the process of spreading to Gentile communities, and how Christianity became the world's largest religion. I hope you will join me in this discussion. Comments and criticisms always welcome.
     
    Last edited: Mar 19, 2023
  8. Tishomingo

    Tishomingo Members

    Messages:
    4,983
    Likes Received:
    5,679
    Before getting down to the central issues, I'd like to comment on the propagandistic nature of the video: the effort to play on emotions instead of logic and evidence, to make the case. Fleming starts off with the Galileo affair; Christians once believed the sun revolved around the earth rather than vice versa, and resisted scientific truth. That is true but irrelevant. There are certainly science resisters among Christians today, especially on the matter of evolution. They got that way by a literalist view of the Bible. And many of their ideas about Jesus are based on the concept of the Bible being inerrant. I reject that view, as I plan to bring out in the course of the discussion.

    The video proceeds with a recap of the traditional Jesus story using dated clips from corny bible movies--obviously for the purpose of making the whole thing out to be ridiculous. We then move to "Christian on the street" interviews, in the manner of Bill Maher's Religuolus , showing not surprisingly that these people have only a sketchy idea of how Christianity spread after the death of Jesus. Several mentioned Pentecost, but that wasn't good enough for Fleming. He notes how enthusiastic and happy they seem, but implies they're idiots. Polls taken by Pew Research and other outfits indicate that Americans have a thin knowledge of religious and political matters. This isn't surprising, since many Americans practice rational ignorance--not holding much knowledge about things that they don't need in daily life, and plugging in established belief systems to save them the time and trouble of information gathering. Particularly outrageous are the charges that Christianity produces specimens like Charles Manson (who may have thought he was Jesus) and other psychotics, including a woman who cut off the arms of her baby. Conservapedia has compiled a list of atheist mass murderers he might have included to balance things out. List of atheist shooters and serial killers - Conservapedia And to round things out, Fleming makes much of the Mel Gibson Passion of the Christ to illustrate the supposed Christian obsession with blood, violence and sacrifice. Cheap shot. Graphic violence is what Mel does: Apocalypto, Brave Heart, etc., to the point of being borderline pornographic. It's good box office, because humans, not just Christians, are attracted to it. Playing up the blood and guts tends to be a Catholic, especially Hispanic, cultural thing. Episcopalians, Lutherans and Presbyterians don't go in for it much.

    I did find other aspects of the video moving. Fleming was obviously deeply scarred by his experience at a Christian school where he had his "born again" experience that didn't take. He gets his payback by interviewing the head of the school about his indoctrination there. He argues that passages in the Bible like Mark 3:39 saying that denying the Holy Spirit is unforgivable lead to brainwashing by equating doubt and thinking with unforgivable sin. Toxic faith syndrome is a problem for some Christian churches, especially the more fundamentalist evangelical ones. Several atheists I've encountered in the Freethinkers group I belong to were traumatized by churches and families that emphasized hell fire and damnation.
     
    Last edited: Feb 7, 2021
  9. Tishomingo

    Tishomingo Members

    Messages:
    4,983
    Likes Received:
    5,679
    Fleming tells us that most of what we know of the period between Jesus' alleged death in 33 AD and the first gospel around the time of the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD is from Paul. I think that's correct if we underscore most and put aside the non-Pauline epistles--James, Peter, Hebrews. He then tells us that Paul didn't know much about Jesus. He knew about the crucifixion and the alleged resurrection and that's about it. He says he didn't even know Jesus was a human being and was writing allegory. That's false. Paul mentions that Jesus was born, of a woman (Gal. 4:4), who was descended from David according to the flesh". (Romans 1:3-4) He mentions that Jesus had brothers and a disciple Peter (Cephas) who were alive while he was writing (1 Cor. 9-5). and that he visited both Peter and James (the brother of the Lord) in Jerusalem (Gal.1:18-19), and subsequently had strained relations with them (Gal. 2:11-21). This visit happened in 36 AD, three years after Paul's conversion and six years after Jesus' crucifixion. He knew that Jesus had a close-knit group of twelve apostles (1 Cor. 15:5). He knew of the last supper (1 Cor.11:22-24), knew that Jesus condemned divorce (1 Corinthians 7:1-24) and knew that Jesus taught that preachers have a right to be supported by others.(1 Cor.9: 14. He knew that Jesus was a teacher who had a ministry to Jews (Gal. 4:4; Romans 15:8). And he knew that Jesus was crucified. He says nothing about this being in outer space or some Never Neverland, so we're entitled to assume it was right here on earth by the authorities who carry out such punishments.
     
    Last edited: Feb 7, 2021
  10. Tishomingo

    Tishomingo Members

    Messages:
    4,983
    Likes Received:
    5,679
    ...
     
    Last edited: Feb 12, 2021
  11. Tulsa

    Tulsa Members

    Messages:
    91
    Likes Received:
    107
    Grease is the Word
     
  12. themnax

    themnax Senior Member

    Messages:
    27,694
    Likes Received:
    4,465
    somewhere in that book written by humans christians claim to be the will of god, it had been noted that their manifestation prefered the company of athiests to that of fanatics.
    as for the aegypt thing, yes, i've heard the parallels from kemet, find them reasonably convincing in a way, that doesn't eliminate the possibility similar occurances recuring.

    at any rate not really a matter of concern, as the unknown being unknown owes nothing to what we tell each other, whether in a book or carved in stone or face to face.
    i believe what we see isn't all we get, but beyond that, anyone can tell stories, and the subjects of stories may well tollerate their doing so, if it does them no harm, or cannot.
     
  13. Tishomingo

    Tishomingo Members

    Messages:
    4,983
    Likes Received:
    5,679
    I'm having trouble finding that passage about jesus preferring the company of atheists, but I wouldn't put it past Him. He preferred the company of society's rejects, which subjected Him to quite a bit of criticism. The reference to "the aegypt thing" is a bit obscure. The most recent mention of Egypt on this thread was mine with reference to Horus and Osiris. Do you find any merit to comparisons between those myths and biblical accounts to Jesus? If so, what?
     
  14. Tishomingo

    Tishomingo Members

    Messages:
    4,983
    Likes Received:
    5,679
    I might mention that among the many groups I belong to is one consisting of atheists and agnostics. I was drawn to it as a result of what I took to be a suggestion by the Holy Spirit. My initial reaction was : Say, what?! But it turns out to have been an important step in my spiritual development. I had never met an atheist before and had a negative and apprehensive view of them. After getting to know them, they seem pretty much like the folks I know from my Methodist and First Christian Bible study groups. I've even persuaded a devout Catholic friend to join us for our monthly dinners. This was a practice of table fellowship which Borg and Crossan tell us was pioneered by Jesus.
     
  15. Alonso376

    Alonso376 Members

    Messages:
    1,252
    Likes Received:
    796
    Adam and Eve had two sons right? So did the human race originate entirely from them? Also, how was Mary a virgin? How do you explain the existence of Dinosaur and other older species fossils?
     
  16. Tishomingo

    Tishomingo Members

    Messages:
    4,983
    Likes Received:
    5,679
    I . And he's calling Jesus delusional! Fact is, while there is reason to think Jesus existed (why would any group, least of all Jews, come up with a crucified criminal as Messiah or say that He was baptized by an inferior to cleanse Him of His non-existent sins?), we don't have much to go on as far as the details of His life are concerned. Paul was the first to write about Him, but he was more concerned with His death and resurrection than His life and teachings. We have four different gospels by four different anonymous authors, with differing takes, based on stories that had been circulating orally since His death some four or five decades earlier--among numerous other accounts that were rejected by the councils that developed the canon. There is, however, substantial agreement on some basic features: a rabbi who hung out with social outcasts and preached a gospel of peace, love and understanding--especially for society's rejects and the least advantaged members of society. Seems to me to be nothing about that that an atheist would have trouble believing in, unless he were a Retrumplican.
     
    Last edited: Mar 19, 2023
  17. Tishomingo

    Tishomingo Members

    Messages:
    4,983
    Likes Received:
    5,679
    The mitochondrial "Eve" hypothesis, but my understanding is there are still scientists that take it seriously.
    Science: DNA evidence strengthens Eve hypothesis | New Scientist
    Science: African Eve theory takes a step back | New Scientist
    A high observed substitution rate in the human mitochondrial DNA control region | Nature Genetics
    Y Weigh In Again on Modern Humans
    Suffice it to say that this didn't occur 10.000 years ago!

    The Adam and Eve story is a myth designed to convey basic truths about human nature, as well as etiological explanations about how things came to be: why people die, why men have to labor for their food, why women suffer in childbirth, why snakes crawl on their bellies, etc. Here you have two people in Paradise, and they can't get their minds off the forbidden fruit. Is that typical or what? To me, this is the Christian version of what the Buddhists call taṇhā (grasping or craving)--in this case for divine knowledge. Anybody who takes it literally is missing the point. (That goes for atheists, too.)

    And how was Mary a virgin? She became a virgin because Matthew was scouring scripture for proof that Jesus was the Messiah. He found a passage in Isaiah 7:13-17. “Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel.”“Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel.” Or at least that's what it said in the Old Testament version he was using, the Septuagint, written in Greek. To say this was a prophecy about the Messiah is stretching it. Ahaz, King of Judea, was under siege by the armies of Samaria and Syria in the 7th century BCE because he wouldn't join them in an alliance against Assyria. Isaiah tells him not to worry, because the Lord would give him a sign that the siege would be broken. A woman whom the king knew would get pregnant and have a son, and call him Immanuel ("God Is With Us"), and this would be a sign from God that the Kings would be destroyed and no longer a threat. "Virgin" in Hebrew is "bethulah", but the Greek word in the Septuagint was "almah", which is better translated "young woman". Besides that, it seems obvious that the prophecy has nothing in particular to do with the Messiah or Jesus. But hey--any prophecy in a storm. Where Luke got the idea nobody knows. Probably from Matthew.
    A Virgin Shall Conceive…What Does it Really Mean? I just finished a study on the virgin birth by Catholic historian Fr. Raymond E. Brown, whose verdict seems to be: inconclusive.

    As for the dinosaurs, they were obviously too big for the Ark. But I prefer the alternative explanation: they evolved from archosaurs , probably from the genus lagosuchus. And they were extinguished by some natural disaster like a comet, meteor or climate change--before they could make it onto the Ark.

    Seriously, Genesis is mythology, which doesn't make it false but does make it metaphorical. People who take it literally are..., are.. Fundamentalists.(I was going to say something worse, but don't want to be suspended.)
     
    Alonso376 likes this.
  18. Tishomingo

    Tishomingo Members

    Messages:
    4,983
    Likes Received:
    5,679
    I might mention that I'm a Christian, because of a conversion experience triggered by a passage from Gen. 1--which I obviously don't take literally, but I do take seriously.
     
  19. Alonso376

    Alonso376 Members

    Messages:
    1,252
    Likes Received:
    796
    Best explanations I've ever read. Thanks for taking the time.
     
  20. themnax

    themnax Senior Member

    Messages:
    27,694
    Likes Received:
    4,465
    sorry christianity; you do not own god, and not owning it, you do not get to define it.
    if you did, it would not be a god. gods define themselves, no human ink on human paper, however otherwise well intended, has the authority nor prerogative to do so.

    its not about anything being disallowed to exist, but rather the unknown being unknown, and thus owing nothing to any human description.
     

Share This Page

  1. This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
    By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
    Dismiss Notice