Hallandale

When you take a close look at the Virgin Birth Story there is another incident that is really crazy and unbelievable.

Read Luke 2:1,3 NAS
1Now in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus, that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth.
3And everyone was on his way to register for the census, each to his own city.
Read it again in the KJV
1And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.
3And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.

Notice that the NAS says ""all the inhabited earth. "" and the KJV says ""world"" But the Greek word is strongs#3625
Christians often try and say that this word only refered to Israel, however most assuredly this word means ""all the inhabited earth. "" or ""world"" ..
The same word strongs#3625 is used in Matthew 24:14
14And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.
Also in Acts 17:31
31Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.

So now that you understand what Luke meant by the ""World"" you can see that he was grossly exaggerating. After all, everyone knows that the people of China did not all return to the city of their birth for a census.

But let us suppose for a minute that the decree from Caesar Augustus was a command for everyone in the Roman Empire to return to the city of his birth for a census so they could be taxed.

Use your imagination and think about everyone who was now living in another city,in the Roman Empire, returning home during the month of December. (Was Jesus born Dec 25TH?)
Then they are all going back to where they were in the month of January.
You have to consider that December and January are the months with the least amount of daylight in a time when there were no electric lights.

December and January are also among the coldest months of the year. Could you imagine the elderly, the disabled, and the pregnant walking or riding mules and spending long hours outside in cold weather.

Feeding and providing shelter for many people in a primative condition would certainly be a great problem.

When you consider all the problems you have to realize that Luke wanted to invent a reason for Mary and Joseph to go to Bethlehem so he could fabricate the lie that Jesus was born in Bethlehem of the House of David.

The Roman Empire was one of the world's greatest. It is impossible to believe that they would disrupt commerce, put people's lives at risk etc so they could count everyone at his city of birth. They couldn't be that stupid.

Luke's account is fiction.

Hallandale

NOGO

You are so wrong.
Paul explains at length about the promise made to abraham, about the living word as opposed to the written word, about Jesus' sacrifice and the fact that Christians no longer need sacrifice etc etc.

Paul preaches all the time.
This is just off the top of my head. If you insist I will make you a list of ALL the things that Paul explains.


You are splitting hair. Declared and became is the same and here is the proof.

Hebrews 3-5
And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,

having become as much better than the angels, as He has inherited a more excellent (O)name than they.

For to which of the angels did He ever say,
"YOU ARE MY SON,
TODAY I HAVE BEGOTTEN YOU"?
And again,
"I WILL BE A FATHER TO HIM
AND HE SHALL BE A SON TO ME"?


I know this is not Paul but what Paul says in Romans can be interpreted based on similar beliefs held by other Christians, in this case, the author of Hebrews.

So what does Hebrews say.
Jesus did away with sin and sat at the right hand of the most high.
The most high then says that TODAY you are my son.
That pretty much settles it.

Here is another Christians who says that Jesus BECAME son of God on the day of his resurrection.

So what does Paul mean by "was declared son of God at his resurrection"?

"Declare" is pretty much what the Most High does in Hrebrews when he says "you are my son, today I have begotten you".

Paul.

The trinity was indeed invented much later.
But what does Paul believe?
For Paul Jesus was the Word of God who created the world. The Word was part of God and as John says was with God in the begining and the Word was God. If you have any doubt check this out.

Philippians 2:10 That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of [things] in heaven, and [things] in earth, and [things] under the earth;
Philippians 2:11 And [that] every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ [is] Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Compare with

Isaiah|45:23 I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth [in] righteousness, and shall not return, That unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.

The verse in Isaiah has Yahweh talking. The "me" is Yahweh but Paul repeats the same idea and attributes it to Jesus.

We do not need to call it trinity if you do not like it.
The point that I was making only requires that Paul see the two as one.

ichabod crane

I think you're misunderstanding Paul here, NOGO. Paul hasn't simply taken a verse relating to Yahweh and applied it to Christ. In fact, the reason he has applied the text in this way can be found within it. In Isaiah 45:23 the prophet says that "the word" (davar) is gone out of God's mouth, and will not return. This concept of "the Word" in Deutero-Isaiah becomes very important in middle Judaism and the New Testament in relation to speculation about a personalized emanated Word. Paul regards Jesus as God's Word, which has gone out, and as his representative. Everything will be put in submission to Jesus, "the Word", and thereby, everything will be put into submission to God. This is made quite clear, for instance, in 1 Cor 15:28:

And when all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him, that God may be all in all.

In other words, Paul thinks that every knee shall bow to God's Word, which he has sent out, and will thereby bow to God. Submission to the Father comes through the mediation of submission to the Word. In kneeling to Jesus, God's Word, they kneel to God; but that doesn't make Jesus God. The Word has a definitely subordinate position; he is not regarded as co-eternal or "co-equal" with God. He is the Word of God, of the same essence as God, but not God. But the Word is the mediator between God and man (see Isaiah 55:8-11 for another crucial example from Deutero-Isaiah). Man cannot access God except through the Word.

Note that in Philippians, Paul does not have everyone swearing to Jesus. Rather, he has people declaring that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father. The fact that every knee will bow to Jesus is to the glory of God the Father. There is no question that, in all of Paul's epistles, "God the Father" refers to OT Yahweh.

Paul in his letters (i.e. the 7 genuinely Pauline epistles) always maintains a strict distinction between "God", which always refers to the Father, and "Lord", which always refers to Jesus, except when quoting from the LXX. He never once refers to Jesus as "God". That is very un-Trinitarian of him. Hence the typical Pauline greeting is from "God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ". My question to you: If Paul really though that Jesus was OT Yahweh, why not just say so in so many words? It's easy enough to do in Greek.

Some evangelicals have said he didn't do this because he didn't want to create offence with the Jews, since they were strictly monotheistic. I find this explanation laughable. Much of what else he said would have caused massive offense to the Jews; indeed he himself states that his gospel is an offense to the Jews. So how would just saying "Jesus is, in fact, God" make things any worse?

Toto

Chili digression split off here

cass256

The problem for me is that when you make jesus the "word" to fit Isaiah 45:23, he doesn't return to God.

"that "the word" (davar) is gone out of God's mouth, and will not return"

So where did jesus go when he left earth, if we suppose the story is true? he didn't return to god according to the Isaiah verse.

judge

Paul explains at length about this promise because the Galatians did not understand this.
But let's look at your original point.

Paul does not mention it because there is no evidence the Galatians had a problem with it.
The Galatians did have a problem with the promise, so Paul explains.


You can if you wish but I'm not sure it will help your assertion that Paul would have mentioned it.



But you have cut this section off. If you had continued you would have seen.

IOW it's not as clear as you suggest.

Maybe maybe not.

[QUOTE=NOGO
Here is another Christians who says that Jesus BECAME son of God on the day of his resurrection.[/quote]

But are you sure that is what it says?

Actually IMHO the whole issue is slightly complicated, but I found that to understand it I first had to understand what happened at the resurrection. But that is just me.
Doesn't mean i am right , but perhpas there is more to this than might first meet the eye.

In Aramaic , Paul clearly sees jesus as Yahweh. Jesus is MarYah is what it says. But the Aramaic gives a slightly different take on this than the ideas that later developed from the greek.
But that is an whole nother issue.

All the best

ichabod crane

I think the meaning is that the Word will not return until it has done its job. It isn't going to come back empty-handed; it will only return after it has subjugated everything. This is made clear later in Deutero-Isaiah, where it reads:

Is 55:11 So shall My word be which goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me empty, Without accomplishing what I desire, And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.

These two verses (i.e. 55:11 and 45:23) have significant verbal parallels, with the same verb being used (yatza') for the sending of the word (davar)/my word (devari) in both cases, the word mipi ("from my mouth") being used, and the identical phrase "it shall not return" (lo-yashuv). It seems most reasonable to take the "it will not return" of 45:23 as not perpetual banishment, but as conditional on the accomplishment of the Word's purposes. 55:10, which compares the Word to the rain which descends, waters, and the ascends, makes clear that the Word does eventually return.

You should keep in mind that these ideas of a personalized Word were almost certainly not in the mind of the author of Deutero-Isaiah. These are ideas which much later Hellenized Jews, such as Philo, developed, with Deutero-Isaiah serving as the point of departure. So even if 45:23 doesn't envisage a return, that doesn't particularly matter, because what we are concerned with is how later interpreters developed the concept of the Word from all of Deutero-Isaiah (which they, of course, just saw as part of the whole book of Isaiah, although we now know differently). What is not in one verse (45:23), they obtained from another (55:11).

Clivedurdle

From Find article

So the concept of the word is from an exilic play?

cass256

I do not see where the water ascends, the verse says the rain descends and doesn't return to the heaven from which it came, as far as I can see. Did I miss something in my translation that shows the water ascending, or returning? I understand we are looking at how the idea of the "word" becoming Jesus and how that idea developed. I just do not see where they get the idea that that word returns. It says the word doesn't return void, but then it doesn't go on to show it returning at all. In fact it says the rain doesn't return: Other than the "thither" being a word not used today, is this translation wrong? Both Isaiah quotes show the word goes out and does it's job and doesn't return. That makes me wonder what was added to the New testament writings, that did not keep this fact of the "word" in mind.

ichabod crane

You've quoted the King James; the problem is that this renders the phrase ki 'im- as a conjunction, "but", cutting a phrase in half. ki 'im is better translated "without" or "until", hence "and do not return there without watering the earth ..." or "until they have watered the earth" (see the NASB, NRSV, etc). The KJV is problematic for other reasons; this phrase is followed by a string of vav-conjoined phrases in the Hebrew, which modern translations simply connect with "and" or commas, but the mistranslation of ki 'im in the KJV forces them to turn one of these into "that it may" in order to make sense, which is a bit of a dodge.

This was also the way the phrase ki 'im was understood by the translators of the LXX. They have translated it as the Greek heos an, which means "until". This gives us an important clue as to how Hellenized Jews might have understood it.