NOGO

None of these are prophecies.
Even if they are simply not credible.

Take for example the virgin birth.
The original text does not have anything to do with virgins.
It says "a maid is with child"
Yes "is" in the present.
It is like saying "Miss Jones is pregant"
No one would assume that Miss Jones is a virgin but that all it takes to trigger a psudo prophecy.
Note that in Matthew the author expresses surprize, through Joseph, that a girl who is supposed to be a virgin would be pregnant. Definitely something unusual.
In Isaiah, however, there is absolute no surprized expressed at the fact that a girl who is supposed to be a virgin is with child.
The conclusion is obvious. The author of Isaiah did not mean virgin. A young woman who is with child is not a virgin. Everybody knows this and therefore no surprize.

Also the text clearly states that the birth of the child was a sign for King Azaz who lived 700 years before Jesus.

And finally there is no way to verify that Mary was a virgin.

What we are dealing with here is not only that the prophecy was fabricated but also fabricated was the event it was supposed to have prophesied.

The reason I say this is simple.
According to Paul (Romans 1) and Hebrews 1 Jesus was promoted to the status of "Son of God" after his resurrection when he returned to heaven.
Matthew and Luke make him "Son of God" at his birth.

Somebody is making this up.
I say both.

sodium

Let's get back to the god-eating. First, I'll refer people to the Catholic Encyclopedia for an interesting defence of the doctrine.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05573a.htm#3

But mainly I want to address the issue of a "symbolic" interpretation of this ritual. First, let's consider a possible symbolic interpretation that no one would actually advocate. The following quote is my invention.

"My church takes the Eucharist as symbolic. We believe the bread and wine only symbolically represent the blood and flesh of Jesus. The ceremony is not about bread and wine, it's really about cannibalizing that famous first-century preacher. But we can't literally eat his flesh, because we don't have any of it available, and anyway, that would be gross. So we do it symbolically with the bread and wine."

No one really thinks that the bread and wine symbolize the body and blood, and that's that. What people mean by a symbolic interpretation, I think, is that the bread and wine symbolize the body and blood, but these in turn symbolize something else, like Jesus's teachings or his sacrifice. And the internal meaning is meant to be overlooked. That is, we aren't meant to place much importance in the metaphor of eating flesh, because the flesh is just a stop-over on the way to what it symbolizes. For lack of a term, I'll call this a bridge metaphor.

When you think about it, the bridge metaphor is a strange way of expressing oneself. In fact, I have trouble bringing to mind any other example, not just from the Bible, but from anywhere. So, I'm curious if anyone can think of any examples.

Doctor X

IAsimisI:

Not to beat a dead horse, but the texts condemning the practice are trying to expouse one version and trying to vilify practices that were widespread.

And beyond just about everyone else. We just do not have the documents/evidence to reconstruct everything.

This is similar to a discussion on another thread. Basically, Mt links the birth to Herod--who is dead by 4 BCE and Lk links the birth to Quirinius who starts in 6 CE. Hence the problem. No one has harmonized the genaologies. Judas hangs himself in Mt but explodes in Lk-Acts. Some "harmonizations" of the last one get rather "creative."

Well you personal feelings aside you cannot then connect its theology to earlier theology.

Anyways, as other stated, check the references they are very good, and they are not "polemic."

I think some believers feel these references will be nothing more than:

they are not. Scholars with faith do have discomfort losing the Bible as a support as in--"this is true"--but I think they have their faith inspite of scripture. They recognize the texts were written by men.

For example: I have [Bored--Ed.] posters with comments of the mass-genocide-sacrifice of people, the herem, in the Conquest and other narratives of the OT. Neat. Well, if the Conquest never happened then the slaughter of the variouis Somethingorotherakites never happened.

So what is the problem?

The "problem" is the creators of these stories wanted a mythic past with the glory of their conquerors. That is a bit of a problem, for me, to want to glorify genocide. However, one can state that they reject that portrayal of religion and disagree with those texts of the OT, for example.

--J.D.

capnkirk

IAsimisI: Also the parallels I have seen that are made between Christianity and other religions are based on wild claims and speculation, they also distort the story in order to fit their goal.

Mageth: I agree that is sometimes the case. However, I think there is pretty good evidence that some pagan influence affected the formation of "orthodox" Christianity.

Capn: I suspect that the connection between Christianity, Judaism, and Paganism is much closer to home. These three lines intersect at a single point: Saul/Paul! According to Acts, Saul was from Tarsus, a pagan city with very public worship of several dying and resurrected pagan deities very closely resembling the Christ of Paul's letters. Pauls 'revelation' is where the pagan deites were conflated with the 'resurrected' Jewish Messiah, Jesus (an exclusively human messiah)...and Xtianity was "born". Speaking of his letters, he never once refers to Christ Jesus' "return" but consistently uses the term "coming" (like Christ hadn't ever been on Earth before). Doesn't fit very well with the Synoptics, does it? Maybe it was because the Synoptics were written later, by Xtian followers of Paul. Acts was written by an actual fellow traveler of Paul's (Luke). Sorry, IAsimisI, there's a lot fuller description, but this keyhole peek is all that space here allows. I don't want to completely hijack this far-wandering thread.

IAsimisI: I also agree that they were left out because they held views contradictory to the view of the early church.

Mageth: To be correct, contradictory to the "orthodox" part of the early Church, which won out in the end. The "heretical" beliefs that were left out were also views of the early Church.

Capn: The process most closely resembled a particularly nasty game of "Last Man Standing" where the winner gets to claim the title "orthodox". It was all about power...kinda' like elections down in the DR. The winner will have less to do with the will of the people than with who holds the political strings.

IAsimisI: Zoroastrianism is said to have been an great influence on Christianity especially during the time of the exile of the jews during the time of Cyrus, but I still need to read it’s sacred texts to confirm and read more both points of view and clash the evidence in order to draw my conclusion.

Mageth: Sumero-Babylonian mythologies, along with others, clearly had influence on Judaism. One needs go no farther than the Creation myths and the Flood myth to see that.

Capn: The changes to Jewish religion induced by the Exile were dramatic. The Exile ended because Cyrus conquered Babylon. Cyrus was Zoroastrian (Z); HE sent to Jews home specifically to rebuild their Temple and worship Yahweh. Z-ism was a dualistic, eschatalogical, apocalyptic, messianic, otherworldly religion. Judaism arrived in Babylon with none of these features, and left with all of them. IAsimisI, all the OT prophets of Christ you have quoted lived in this era. Before the Exile, there was no Satan, no afterworld (heaven & hell) for reward/punishment, in Judaism (this from Judaic scholars with no motive for bias on the issue). Z-ism featured two godheads, one all good and light, the other dark and evil. The gods of the other religions were aligned with one entity or the other. Yahweh was on the side of light, so Cyrus sent the Hebrews home to worship him. One of the main polarizing arguments between the Pharisees and the Sadducees was that the former believed in an afterlife, but the former didn't.

So yes, the influence was significant.

capnkirk

Doctor X said: There is quite a tradition of polytheism in the OT what with two gods--El and YHWH who were not the same god

On that issue, I would have to take exception. According to Friedman (Who Wrote the Bible), YHWH was El's name. He holds that the E author(s) used only God's "title", and the J author(s) used only God's "name". Check the reference for full details.