Calzaer

I'm still waiting for Egypt, Isreal, and Assyria to form that alliance of theirs. Wouldn't that mean Assyria would have to come back into existence? If Isaiah's a real prophet, it has to come true sometime....

Jack the Bodiless

...Uh, Mark was written first.

Of course, the notion of an imminent Second Coming also appears in Paul, which predates both Mark and Matthew. So, arranging these in chronological order, we have a picture of a Second Coming that's becoming increasingly less certain.

Is there any particular reason to reverse this and begin with an apparently unevidenced "older reading" of this situation? (...other than Christian wishful thinking?).

Atheos

I understand your logic from your POV. My POV says that if I can't trust some of it I can't trust any of it. If god wants me to believe based on what is said in the bible then it's up to god to make sure that what is written there is obviously far and away more enlightened, consistent, untainted and unquestionable than anything that humanity could have possibly authored. Otherwise god has no reasonable expectation to be taken seriously by anyone other than gullible people who happen to be exposed to the bible before they're exposed to some other brand of religion.

Apart from that the onus falls on god to provide direct proof to every living individual. As a parent I had the decency and morality not to spank my kid unless I knew for sure that he had no doubt of what my expectations were and that he had transgressed them. Any god who doesn't live up to at least that minimal standard doesn't deserve to be a parent, much less the god of all humanity.

In for a dime, in for a dollar.

-Atheos

johntheapostate

I think that this whole messiah fantasy resulted from the Jews refusing to come to terms that their God and their special relationship to him are nothing but a delusion.

In 2 Samuel we have gods( initially ) unconditional promise to David.

2 Samuel 7:11-16 “ The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you. When your days are over and you rest with your fathers will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father and he will be my son. When he does wrong, I will punish him with the rod of men, with flogging inflicted by men. But my love will never be taken away from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me, your throne will be established forever.�

God promises David that Davids throne will endure forever. Yet as history shows this is not the case. So instead of accepting reality and admitting that god must have made a mistake or that perhaps he did not exist, the Jews stubbornly held on to their faith. Instead their prophets said that gods promise had simply been misunderstood, that hidden in the plain text resided a profound truth that was not perceptible in the plain reading of the text.

Ans so the messiah fantasy was born, that someday a shoot from the stump of David would grow and lead the nation of Israel with an everlasting kingdom.

This is the reason that Jesus and every other would be messiah had to claim descent from David.

In my opinion Jesus did not even come close to fulfilling the requirement that the messiah was to be a flesh and blood relation to David ( offspring from your own body) as God is claimed as his father and Jesus is claimed to have existed eternally with God.

So Christians have only a delusion as a founder of their faith.

I am always amazed by the ability of the mass of humanity to deceive themselves and their unwillingness to accept a negative reality. They always find a way to reinterpret information so that it conforms to their world view.

Sven

Let's see what you wrote [emphasis mine]:

First, you talked about the folks listening to him. Then, you shift the goal posts to redactors centuries later.

Please answer my question: Why did Jesus not simply clear up the misunderstanding of his words by the folks listening to him?

Apart from this, Christian writings are supposed to be inspired. So I see no problem in inspiring the later redactors to get it right. If you don't think that Christian writers were inspired, please ignore this.

Sven

Umm... I was a liberal Christian...

Calzaer

That's because they can cherry-pick to their heart's content, by using any lame excuse they can come up with to justify arbitrarily putting more weight on the inspiredness of one passage than another, even if that lame excuse requires God/Jesus/et al to have done something or said something completely unbiblical.

At least the Catholics have a consistent oral tradition of "unbiblical explanations of biblical passages". Protestants just get inspired by the "holy spirit" in about 400 different and mutually-contradictory ways. "God is not the author of confusion" indeed!

Vinnie

Just to be clear on the Vinnie soap argument referenced by Sven. THis is what I wrote in another thread on intelligent design:

So that is my very own argument. Call it, "Let there be soap."

Vinnie

Metacrock

that just shows an incredible lack of understanding of liberal theology


really, I dont' think why so many people think they know so much about what ilberal theology is about and yet most of them have never read a single page of a liberal theologian

Calzaer

Neither have most liberal Christians. Why read other people, when the Holy Spirit inspires you directly, right?

How many Protestant denominations are there? Do any two non-denominational Protestants hold the same beliefs and put the same emphasis on specific Biblical teachings? If they were all reading these "liberal theologians", they'd all be one big "Reformed" denomination and the world would rejoice.

Again, at least the Catholics are consistant about their extra-biblical ad-hoc explanations of strange biblical things. Protestants can't even agree on which sort of baptism (dunking or sprinkling) sends you straight to Hell.