Chili

The HJ/MJ debate will never answer anything because to take a position is to stand aloof from the answer that we must be on top of.

So pretending that I know please allow me to solve some of the riddles that surround the Nativity. I like the exposition spin presented (thank you very much) because it is so unfolding.

So to wrap this up let me begin to say that the angel Gabriel of God did not appear to Joseph but only to Mary and it was an angel of the Lord who send this message to Joseph in a dream. Note here that the angel of the Lord is not of God but it is how Lord God gave royal consent to the force of the Immanent Will because Joseph was an upright Jew. This tugging took place in te mind of Joseph and that is how Joseph accepted this divine alter call.

The significance here is that to be reborn from above the Annunciation must precede the altar call as the first step and the consent of the Lord is the second and thus not the persuasion of the esteemed evangelist from his lofty stage above the crowd.

Emmanuel is futuristic with no specific person in mind while Jesus is 'this one' gets saved now.

Lovely prayer it is!

Let me venture to say that Herod was the sum total of Joseph's pride that must be in remission before the Journey to Bethlehem can take place in good accord. Matthew doesn't have this part because he doesn't really know what 'above' means in this context. To bring this closer to home, it was called "involutional melancholia" by Albrecht Durher on a woodcut by that name.

Bethlehem is where Jesus was born and indeed the Magi arrived with faith hope and charity as greater values in the life of the reborn Joseph. The infancy of John the Baptist was't there to show that Matthew's Jesus was not reborn of water but only of the spirit (they had circumcision and never learned to walk on water because Nazareth was in Galilea).

Nazareth is he city of God where the living water wells enough to get Zechariah excited and Elizabeth pregnant with the joy of the Lord before God, who in turn rewards the clan that represents the drive of the Immanent Will to find the ultimate destiny in life so that infinite peace of mind can become a reality in the life of Joseph (remember here that John was from the netherworld, which is the subconscious mind of Joseph).

The house of Joseph was his conscious mind that was empty but without the presence of Nazareth it will remain empty and that is why Herod was active and they fled to Egypt. They absence of the manger equals no spirtual nourisment for 8 days (I thought it was 10) by which the child grows to maturity in a hurry and will undergo natural circumcision as a result of this realization.

I'll stop here because nobody will read this anyway, but in the end I do not believe that Matthew's Jesus ever gets to heaven to make his a not so divine Senecan tragedy and back to Galilea he goes until he dies nonetheless. But I do not think that anyone will believe that either.

Lambert

Mythra

Oh good. The issue is settled then.

Thanks, Joe Wallack your post. That was the type of explanation I was looking for.

Diogenes the Cynic

I broke it down in detail in this post from my "Shredding the Gospels" thread.

Here is a brief summation from my linked "contradictions" post. All of these points are explicated in more detail within the thread. The main contradictiosn are as follows:


1. Two completely different genealogies for Joseph.
2. Luke places the date of Jesus' birth ten years later than Matthew.
3. Matthew has Mary and Joseph living in a house in Bethlehem when Jesus was born while Luke says they were living in Nazareth and travelling to Bethlehem for a census.
4. Matthew says that Jesus' family fled to Egypt after the birth and moved to Nazareth only after the death of Herod. Luke says they were living in Nazareth all along and returned there immediately after Jesus was circumcised.
5. Luke knows nothing of Herod's slaughter of the innocents or of a flight to Egypt. In fact, by Luke's chronology, Herod was already dead when Jesus was born.

Any questions?

I would suggest that the most glaring contradiction is the irreconcilable 10 year gap between when each author dates the birth of Jesus.

judge

The problem is that there is some circular reasoning going on here.
Yes Nicodemus misunderstood "born again", but you haven't demonstrated that the confusion was due to the again/above ambiguity yet.

You have merely asserted it was by trying to tie it to John 3:31

Clouseau

Indeed it is. Unless it can be proved that the dialogue was not in Greek, it cannot be said that this passage is inauthentic.

Diogenes the Cynic

You're grasping at straws. It is you who has the burden to show that the speakers were not intended to be understood as speaking in their native language as well as to show that an illiterate sub-peasant from Galilee would have been able to understand Greek at all.

Clouseau

That issue is never even contemplated by any gospel writer.

Literacy is irrelevant.

That has to be proved.

proudliberal

Ive been born again ten times in my life from different churches.Does that mean anything?

Clouseau

You love your car?

Amaleq13

Except, of course, when the authors place Aramaic on the lips of Jesus and then translate it for the reader.