TedM

You're right. It was a chapter or two later where God punished man's sin by death. As to your other comments, I don't have the patience today..

spin

Rehearsing apologetics is not showing anything.

Cut the bullshit, TedM. Apologetics is not evidence. Christians have had to face this issue for almost two millennia and they haven't come up with anything better than smoke. You just don't have any meaning for your term, "messiah". You may as well talk of Jesus Flezpik for the amount of meaning you can adduce from the term. (Incidentally, "pik" means "superfantastic-majestic-non-essential quasi-being of unlimited supply of adulation" and "flezzu" is "shitkicker" in Bath-Reumatoid and word order indicates a genitival relation. Make of that what you must.)

I tell you what TedM, show me a surefire Jewish reference to a messiah in pre-christian times that fits the bill of Jesus and I will know that you have discovered rocking-horse shit.

Well, why don't you provide your evidence for a pre-christian Jewish messiah description that is appropriate for your beliefs. That doesn't mean a suffering servant or a recently enthroned king or whatever else christians dragoon into the discussion for lack of anything tangible. I want something that must be taken as a description of the messiah.

And nothing comes from nothing.

Jaybees

So far as the official dogman of the RCC, the Orthodox Churches and many Protestant cults are concerned, partaking of communion means LITERALLY consuming the flesh and blood of a human being. Sounds like cannibalism to me, and that isn't easy to do without some sacrificing along the way.

TedM

What part of this do you find to be 'smoke' spin, and why? Seems to me that this guy might know a bit more than you on the subject of Messianic passages. In fact he has given hundreds of references and all you have given is your empty assertions:

spin

There is nothing in it but assertions. We aren't interested in rabbinical literature because it is post-christian origins. That means we look at the torah, prophets and hagiographa--which I hope means non-biblical Jewish religious works of the epoch. Of course, neither the torah nor the prophets deal specifically with the messiah (unless of course you want to talk about Cyrus). One has to bring baggage to the text in order to insert references to the messiah into it. That leaves us with the few tangible references in the inter-testamental literature--and the DSS, which were not available to the writer, if this is still Edelsheim.

Chili

And what comes across like canibalism to you is like transformation to the RCC where they look with their eyes but see with their mind, and would call your the canibal in opposite to which they are the saint.

rlogan

I don't understand the attaching of Christianity to Hebrew faith on this board. It is so superficial that even a junior varsity player like me can see through it. A hijacking of sorts, but in the main a rejection of the Hebrew faith.

In terms of more general practice, sacrifice (even human sacrifice) was widespread enough within and without the Empire so as to have no need of attaching the concept to any specific progenitor. A lot of the cook kids were doing sacrifice.

Look how the Aztecs and Mayans on this continent developed that independently. But in the Christian vicinity you have the Sumerians, Greeks, Romans, Germanics, Celts, and across Asia too in one form or another historically.

Christians did it in a unique way though, by abolishing the need to sacrifice through the ultimate sacrifice. That sacrifice was conceptually involved is nothing particularly Jewish, but that the Messaiah dies in such ignominy - that is most especially not Jewish.

TedM

That's a sweeping statement. We can't even find a reference to Jesus that is clearly the Gospel Jesus in the rabbincal literature, can we? As such, why would we think that they are highly compromised by Christian hands? All 558 references?

He did. 75 references

He did. 243 references

He claims 138 references.


I agree. Many of the passages seem to be about a known figure in history. Others however seem to be talking about a 'hoped for' future figure.

This seems to betray the actual facts of history. Just why do you think Christian sources saw the need to comb the OT for references to Jesus as the predicted One? Why did gMark fill his book with prophetic references? Why introduce a Jewish Savior at all if nobody Jewish was buying the story?
Why not a Roman Savior instead?

And again, why did the Jews who bought the story, buy it, if the concept of a Suffering Servant -- which the early Christian writers alluded to frequently -- was not applicable in the Jewish culture to the Messiah?

Is it the word 'Messiah' that you are objecting to? Would a different word have been better to use -- like 'the Chosen One' or something like that?

The fact that this Savior came from Jewish origins and was considered to be 'the One' they had been awaiting, should be all the evidence you need, spin, to conclude that the culture was flexible enough to accept the idea of a Messiah-like Jewish crucified Savior. What is it about that which you have such an objection to? Isn't the evidence in the method chosen? If not, why portray this Savior as the long-awaited Jewish Messiah at all, if such a portrayal was absolutely impossible to be conceived by them?

It makes no sense to do that if they weren't open to the idea. And, you can't just get away with calling it a 'Roman' religion when we know that the Jews were spread throughout the Roman empire. Were early Christian Romans just taunting the Jews by making fun of their Messianic expectations and coming up with a whole other one? Makes no sense spin.

TedM

Christianity came out of Judiasm. Without historical Jewish theology, Christianity loses all meaning. Christians see Christianity as the completion of Judiasm----the extension of God's plan, and not as a rejection of it. This has nothing to do with a rejection of the Hebrew faith and I don't really see why anyone here feels the need to defend the Hebrew faith anyway. Is this a Hebrew board or an atheist board? The Hebrews should be about 1000 times more offended by atheism than Christianity!


And yet, Christianity arose out of a crucified Jewish man/being. Why a Jewish one? There is no escaping that fact.


Yet it caught fire with the Jews. How could that happen if you are right?
And, if you say --no it was a Gentile religion-- then why even bother with making it an extension of Judiasm?

spin

Fuck, this is so hard for you, isn't it? There are no references to the messiah in the Hebrew bible. If you don't believe me, show me the examples as I requested in my last post.

And no-one is interested in fraudulent crap like Isa 7:14 or Ps 22:16.

Apologetic bullshit. Try to demonstrate 138.

We are talking about the messiah, not just some hopeful stuff.

Justification for misappropriating Hebrew literature.

There's no argument here, just wish-fulfillment.

You want me to theorize about your confusion? That's a waste. I'll wait for some real evidence for the Jewish messiah.

It is the misappropriation of the term "messiah" that I'm trying to communicate to you. That is what interests me. Your blindness to it.

If by "they" you mean the Jews, you are stitching together a fabric of fantasy, assuming that the various references across the Jewish literature refer to the same figure.

I have no problem with the fact that Jesus is represented as a savior, nor the story that he was crucified, nor that he was supposed to be Jewish. It is that you can unashamedly call him the messiah, an act of religious disinheritance of the Jews, while showing no understanding of the actual term.

If we have a religious nutter like Paul who felt that he understood how salvation was attained, all your rationalizations are for nothing.

I don't know where you got that idea. Christianity was a cuckoo in the Jewish nest.

What goes against dogma doesn't make sense to a credent.

Christianity stole the cultural heritage of the Jews--you know, what you facetiously call the old testament--, while not understanding much of it.