critical thinking,

I have to point out that trunks2k is NOT a Christian. Look up archives of Existence of God 3Q or 4Q if you want a more historical account of his posting past. I have, and I assure you that from what I've seen of his posts he's an atheist. Either that or a REALLY convincing Christian who's been consistently going at it for 6 months or so without cracking.

DougI

Take it this way, Jesus is a politician and his campaign promise was to take away our sins. As expected it was just lip service to get votes and really doesn't mean anything. Christians who believe there is a difference before the year 0 and after the year 0 are just duped.

Thanks forr backing me up Monkey. BTW, I'm in the middle of watching EVA (1st DVD) it's really cool, I found it kinda funny that there are a bunch of Christian references in a show that is pretty much about the coming end of the world. I counted over 5 crosses in less than 10 minutes that were formed by explosions, lights and other random things. For example: a nuclear type blast takes a very distinct shape of a cross, I thought that was really funny, especially since I'm a Bad Religion fan and one of their songs, "American Jesus," has a line saying that Jesus is a nuclear bomb.

Originally Posted by: Amos123
While it is true that Jesus did not sin it is not true that there was no sin in his humanity, which was incarnate upon him through his lineage of Joseph down to David.


Beg to differ...

If you've ever had to suffer through a reading of the genealogy of Jesus, then you would notice certain breaks in the rhythmic "Blah was the son of Blah." This is because there is mention of four women in the genealogy of Jesus, three of who were of certainly questionable character. This serves a purpose, in the Jewish mind. The gospel of Matthew was written to address the Jewish viewpoint, and they put great stock in knowing the lineage. Including the lineage of Jesus is added proof of the miracle of his humanity and divinity all in one, supposedly. Having women who were sinners shows his background was just as soiled and dirty as the rest of humanity's.

Anyone else find it ironic that even though the women committed sins punishable by death, they are still revered? Take Tamar for example- she's the daughter in law of Judah, whose husband was put to death. (1 Chronicles 2:5) But she's later used as a blessing upon Ruth who marries Boaz. (Ruth 4:11-13)

Perhaps it's not bad enough to be the woman whose husband was put to death. Then you have the next mention of a woman, Ra'hab. Ra'hab was the woman who conveniently sheltered the two Israelite spies that came to take a look at Jericho's fortification. Unfortunately, someone in the city got word of the two spies, and Ra'hab kept them safe during a search and even helped them escape. It's the winning side that tells the story, any one notice that Ra'hab just betrayed her own people for two foreigners? But then again, according to one story, only a harlot would be allowed to shelter two strange men in a foreign city. Given the rather restrictive social rules against women at the times, that makes sense.

Next in line, another foreigner, Ruth the Moabite. She even marries into the next generation. She snags Boaz by "sleeping at the foot of his bed" during the night, when no one can see. Hmmm, it's another one of those dang, she's compromised, now I have to marry her situations. Except Ruth was instructed to do so by her mother-in-law, Naomi. Two women, without husbands scheme to get a man. Go read the book of Ruth in the Old Testament it's a measly five chapters and see.

Next woman up: Uriah! This was the woman whose husband was indirectly killed by David. He saw her bathing one day, how very kingly of him, and decided he wanted her. Upon finding out she was married to an army man, he promptly sent her husband to the war so he could die. Which he promptly did, and David was all nice and ready to snatch up his grieving widow who'd already born him one son. (That first son dies; Solomon is the second son of David by Uriah.)

As these drastically annotated version of bible passage illustrate, there was quite a bit of sin in the lineage of Jesus. Traditionally it served the purpose of showing he wasn't one lucky guy with one great family, he had humble beginnings like the rest of us.

This is the culmination of years forced to read the bible

Oh! I almost forgot- anyone else besides me, just another woman, find it rather fishy that only the women are used to literally mark the places where major sins occured in the genealogy?

[This message has been edited by LianaLi (edited April 25, 2001).]

[This message has been edited by LianaLi (edited April 25, 2001).]

Jesus did not die to take away our sins, God had already done that. God died to win back our trust. To show humans and the observing members of the Universe that He was worthy of their trust.

LianaLi, I don't think God minded that He had problems in His lineage, it does not mean that He Himself sinned. Also, Ruth at the foot of the bed is not a euphimism for sleeping with the man. It was a proposal of marriage. God (assuming God wrote the Bible) placed the stories of Ruth and Bathsheba etc in the Bible so it is not like He was covering up anything.

[This message has been edited by Freego (edited April 25, 2001).]

Metacrock writes:
<<<So like the students, Jesus enters into solidarity with us. That is he is willing to identify so closely with our problems that he becomes one of us and is even willing to die as one of us. Sure enough, he dies as the lowest level of human society.>>>

Let's see. He was man yet god at the same time. After somehow dividing himself into 3 he sends part of himself to earth. Being God he full well knew he'd be here 30-some years. Granted, he may have "suffered and died" but he was down for the count only 3 days. Worse yet, he knew he'd be back in heaven after it's all done. So did he really die? Can god die? Even if he did it was for only 3 days (God somehow brings himself back to life). Compare that to the eternity I get! Plus, he had PRIOR knowledge. I have 3,000 years of convoluted myths and contradictions with no hard proof.

You call that a sacrifice? That would be like me sacrificing a cake I baked. I can full well bake another! God could make an army of Christs! If a God can make 1 Universe, what's 1 man (god-man)? And that man "gets out of jail" in 3 days with knowledge of all that has been or will ever be. I have no prior knowledge and according to your religion if I do not believe I get an eternity of suffering! (some choice!)
Plus, according to your bible I am made flawed. Yet this same God creates other children (angels) that are almost flawless. That's fair! (sarcasm)

Could this be the myth of a primitive society? 3,000 years ago in a male dominated society a man's son was of great value. Could it be that the resurrection story (sacrifice of the son) was a way for the Jews to see to it that their centuries old prophecy of a savior coming was fulfilled? Could it be that at that time, the notion of sacrificing one's son would have hit home to a male dominated society and help perpetuate their prophecy? Remember, the Jews had centuries of the Egyptians kicking them around with numerous "false prophets" that never panned out. (before and after Christ)
Could it be that if the Emperor Constantine would have never sanctioned Christianity we'd wouldn't even be arguing the point?

-T

Lance

Jesus was intended to be a blood sacrifice, which was common in most religions of the early med region as well as in the Jewish religion. So it isn't even original.

But my question here is, why is it even called a "sacrifice"?

A sacrifice, in my mind, is actually giving up something. WHAT pray tell, did Jesus actually give up? His life? Nope...according to the myth he rose 3 days later...in a far superior form. Sounds to me like a better deal.

And then why the dramaticly touching and fake garden scene? Why is Jesus so fretful, so worried. If he is the son of God and does know the plan, he KNOWS what is going to happen. As portraited in the gospels, this is more like a man worried to death that the plan ain't gonna work.

Hell, if the man was truly going to conqueor sin and death, he shouldn't have been fretting, he should have been partying!

See how fake it is?

Oh, I'm familiar with the point, just raising technical issues to a claim made earlier that Jesus was of divine, and perfect lineage as a human being. Which, as his genealogy clearly shows, his human orginis were anything but free of sin.

The only special sort of dispensation that Jesus got was no orignal sin- he was born without the bloodguilt if you will, of Adam and Eve. That's the sin the rest of us are born with. And after that point, my church doctrine goes distinctly hazy.


[This message has been edited by LianaLi (edited April 25, 2001).]

Sorry LianaLi, but in my view Jesus was the "born again" Joseph (the name given to the carpenter called Joseph to whom the Christ identity was added by means of rebirth and hence the dual nature of Jesus). This means that Jesus as Jesus of Nazareth was without sin--if only because he who is in Christ cannot sin, 1Jn.3:9.

I did write that there was sin in the life of Jesus through the lineage of Joseph.

It was keen of you to observe the plight of women in the OT (sorry I have never read it but would like to share my take on what you wrote). Woman is the negative stand in the rout of creation and since all is created in sin woman is the cause of sin. Next, since all of creation is good sin is good, and therefore women are good as the subjective force behind creation. You should not take this personally and if you do be proud of it because our humanity is an illusion and therefore much more unstable than our womanity.

Jesus was born without the original stain of Adam and Eve means that Joseph was reborn of God and not of carnal desire or mans willing it or by blood. Read this in Jn.1:13. In other words Joseph was "reborn of God" and was therefore called Jesus.

Amos

I'd like to know what religious doctrine you get that idea from, since it's decidedly not the canonical, Roman Catholic version of that particular story. Because, quite honestly, that jump you make from Jesus to Joseph confused the hell out of this recovering catholic.

"And in passing, I would just like to point out that the first time he had the chance, Adam laid the blame on women." -Lady Nancy Astor

Quite an adequate sentiment for that statement, imho. To point out another common theme, I propose a new definition of woman should the word ever be used in religious/political context.

"Woman: the peg on which the wit hangs his jest, the preacher his text, the cynic his grouch, and the sinner his justification." -Helen Rowland

Now that I've basically declared myself a flaming feminist by bemoaning the treatment and attitude towards women in such contexts, anyone want to address the question of why women receive soooo much, well, out and out blame? Perhaps I ought to post this in another thread, since it's not quite related anymore to the original.


The point I'd like to address is this concept of "sin is good." Last time I checked, sin was defined as the choice to turn one's back upon the love of god, be it a decision to be cruel, to commit the sin of silence by not speaking out against wrongdoing, ect. Now, these definitions serve the purpose of establishing sin as opposed to good- so how is sin supposed to be good?

Then, if sin is good, why would an all loving, benevolent god allow such a thing as sin, when it works directly against him?

Or maybe he's not as good or benevolent as one would like to believe. Scary, isn't it?

Liana
"People call me a feminist whenever I express opinions that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute." - Rebecca West



[This message has been edited by LianaLi (edited April 25, 2001).]