Clouseau

The return of Christ is not part of the Law, or the law. On the cross, Jesus said, "It is finished." The curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. That signalled the end of the Law, of law as a barrier between man and God, because the Son of Man had fulfilled law, to permit mankind to enter the Holy of Holies by faith in that fulfilment.

gstafleu

You are a strange kind of Christian . The Jewish and Christian God is wholly transcendent, wholly other. He stands, and always has stood, outside creation: he created creation (that's what one does with creations), but he is not part of it. A god who is part of creation is only found in other religions.

In Egypt e.g the gods were subject to "maat", in Sumeria they were subject to "me" (pr: may), in the veda's they were subject to "rta" (or "rita," I take it these sturdy warriors still had to park their chariots somewhere). Even the Greek gods were subject to moira. In these religions the gods are part of creation in the sense that creation contains parts of the gods (they mix their blood in the clay, they spit out, pee out or ejaculate out the first bits, etc.). But the judeo-christian god created everything, including the natural laws, and didn't put any little bits of himself into the result, so you cannot really say that he is subject to the laws he himself created--rather it is vice versa.

But then maybe you are a sumero-pharaonic-vedantic-christian ?

Gerard Stafleu

Clouseau

That could not be more wrong. The closeness, the down-to-earth practicality of the Christian deity is more than we can cope with. The God of the Bible paid us a visit, and we have not recovered from it. We set up false followings of this deity, treated the true following as pariahs, tried without success to convince ourselves that it never happened. Countless millions of 'Christians', Muslims, atheists, what-have-you go into deep shock and mourning annually because of the incarnation of the Christian and Jewish deity, drinking themselves into a stupor in many cases. It is hard to find anywhere in the world where this is not the case.

Lugubert

I'm puzzled. The incarnation is supposed to have been manifested at Christmas, but I know of no general cases anywhere of people getting drunk at that time because of "shock and mourning". Please explain!

Julian

We don't know this. There was some level of affinity but there were also divergences. We don't have a copy of this gospel.

Julian

Clouseau

Julian

The jewish laws are quite unpleasant so the Christians did away with them. They are unable to give a good reason for this so that leads to the goofy apologetics that were exemplified in the OP.

The verb λὑω means 'loosen, or destroy' as it says in the OP mentioned article. When rendered as καταλὑω it is merely a more emphatic reading adding strength to the verb. Like most words, it has some secondary and tertiary meanings that we can ignore here. In this case, Matthew really means to destroy or disintegrate. The opposite word in this context is πληρόω which is 'fill, fulfill, satisfy, finish, verify' and so on. There is no real reason, especially in context, to read this as anything other than the obvious meaning, i.e. that Jesus will not get rid of the law but that he will fulfill it in the sense of fulfilling its requirements. Live like a perfectly observing Jew, in other words. The main reason why fulfill cannot mean to 'fulfill and therefore complete and therefore make obsolete and irrelevant' in this case is simple. Jesus says that the law will not be abolished. If he fulfills it and makes it go away, he just did exactly that! His fulfilling it will abolish it when fulfill is read in the manner of the apologists.

A few posts later someone asked about the tense of the Greek 'whoever shall break the least blah blah' in verse 19 where Jesus explains exactly what he means, i.e. keep the law. The word is our old friend λὑω from earlier and it is written as an aorist subjunctive. A good translation, in my opinion, would be 'whosoever would break' since the subjuntive moves it to the realm of the hypothetical and aorist has no time sense associated with it. Especially not when it is not an indicative.

Hope this helps.

Julian

Clouseau

Prove it.

Toto

Here's the last thread on fulfilling the law:

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=149393

which you seem to have participated in.

Is there an idea here that fulfilling the law is related to fulfilling a prophecy, or is this just confusion?

Chris Weimer

But he also says that the Law will not be abolished until all is fulfilled. Early Christians/the Evangelist were not Marcionites. They knew that Jesus came from the Old Testament. They knew about the laws. They didn't want them destroyed. With the destruction of the Temple (which precluded Christians or Jews from performing certain laws relating to sacrifice), Christians needed something in its place. That was Jesus.