Agemegos

That's only if you interpret the creation of Adam in the Garden in Genesis 2 as being a recapitulation of the creation of Man on the 6th Day in Genesis 1. If you interpret Genesis as a straightforward sequential narrative there were other people created before Adam, and a multitudinous population outside the Garden of Eden.

I prefer the problem "Where did Jesus parents take him immediately after his birth? Egypt for refuge from Herod, or Jerusalem to be presented in the Temple?"

jeremyp

That's easy to reconcile. Luke tells us that Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem for a census under Quirinius (6AD) and Jesus was born at that point. They then took him to the temple soon after. Nearly two years later, the Wise Men turned up (we know this because Herod had every male child under two massacred) and Jesus's family moved to Egypt. The Matthew narrative starts anywhere up to two years after the Luke narrative or if we check out when Herod the Great died (4BC), at least 10 years before. There is plenty of time for jesus to go to Egypt around ten years before he was born. Where's the contradictiction?

A. Uiet bhor

Boomeister

Your rant sums it up well, i personally find the seed of David contradiction fatal to the messiah claim, thats why the Gnostic's considered Jesus "adopted" at the baptism, because they recognized that the David line had been lost centuries before. The question however is order, was Jesus a failed messiah, who's death messianic cultists (and there where many then) tried to rationalize, and who expected him to return to finish the prophecy (there's hints of this in the NT) or a Pauline spirit who was "historicalised" by various Jewish and gentile leaning factions and repackaged for pagans after the Jews failed to fall for it (again the NT hints at the frustration on the part of the early Xians to make many Jewish converts), and so gave jesus' trial and teachings a pro gentile spin? Like in Islam when Mo-Hamed-Mo_problems changed the prayer focus from Jerusalem to Mecca once for the Jews saw right through the sham.

We get the fallout when the intended audience turns out to know their own dogma enough to know a corruption of it, if Jews had been a little dumber maybe we, the West and the middle east wouldn't be under the yoke of Paul and Mo's polemical crap.

Most Xians worship a literal son of god, and give little thought to the davidic line aspect, it's just when they start claiming jews should except him that i find this starts to be a problem for them.

Elijah

an interesting sideline, yes when gentiles 1st got into the OT they took the jewish god to be evil, and Jesus a Saviour from him, problem is many aspects of Gnosticism like the earth being corrupted and the province of the dark god (now satan), as well as the idea that sex is wrong, and that snake stuff made it into the Xian cult that became the current one. Seems the Paulines took the worst from all versions of xtianity and left the good parts, like the egalitarian (socialist) elements, tolerance and pacifism of catharism, and became the shitest faith ever, i wonder if it was deliberate or if such aspects simply served another purpose.



"Where's the contradictiction?"

In the plain reading, as usual. just because it seems to fit doesn't mean it's the right answer, as you are required to take for granted.

John A. Broussard

None.

God can do anything. Why can't he go to Egypt (or Bhutan or Guinea Bissau) ten years before he was born?

Elijah

Agemegos

The Cain contradiction is strictly for fundamental Christians who believe that we came from 2 people 5 thousand years ago or so.
I don’t think you can take Gen 1 and 2 as a straightforward narrative too many other problems.
Unless you go with the garden not being a real place and instead a spiritual realm.
Which I’m all for, but takes you out of the Fundy Christian circles.

The Jesus on the mount contradiction is for people who may not take the bible literally but believes we still have some dude in the clouds passing judgment on sinners.
Two totally different gods whose disciples acted totally different…
one judges the other doesn’t. One you could see the other unknowable

A.Uiet bhor

Lost me sorry, I need to wikipedia some of those words.
When you mention Gentiles what do you think of;
a type of person with certain beliefs, a person of a certain area or a archetype of person?

Also what is the current Xian Cult?

A. Uiet bhor

"When you mention Gentiles what do you think of"

In that context non Jews of course. It's used nowadays by certain groups such as Mormons to mean non members of that particular cult, but in general the Mediterraneans and north Africans who converted out of ignorance of Jewish doctrine. The interrelationship between Jewish and gentile motifs and theologies is one of the most interesting and confusing aspects of the NT.

"Also what is the current Xian Cult?"

The one that out-did all the others, by either violence, propaganda or "appropriating" their rivels more popular or useful doctrine , resulting in a post Pauline church with Gnostic facets and a fake history borrowed from Greek and Jewish styles. Catholicism/Orthodox and its offshoots for the most part. I usually leave out the Coptic and other less significant groups, with the same age lineage. The term "cult" is used to define the fact that it fits both a doomsday and personality type, and the protestant versions are getting more like its cultic roots all the time. So religion is a word i use for cultural not phycological products. It started as a cult, and it hasn't changed enough, (cept perhaps in the UK) to be more Hindu or Jewish in its attitude and social impact.

judge

The third chapter of genesis (Genesis 3:14?) tells us that the woman has a seed......so it does seem to have some precedent.

Amedeo

Scriptural contradictions abound, and many examples have been given to you here and have been discussed, not to mention the handling and resolving of contradictions in "apologetics." (Rabbinical apologetics usually fall under the rubric of "scripture exegeses". Same thing.)

The issue of scriptural contradictions is so much at heart for professional theologians, because contradictory propositions cannot both be true. Hence scriptural contraditions destroy the claim that the Scriptures state the truth about God or anything else they speak of. / For myself, the Scriptures as they are -- contradictions and all -- are great documents for an ethnologists, for they display how some ancient people thought, what they knew, whether the cultural context of their lives was that of the Stone Age, the Agricultural Age, or the Humanist Age, or some other Age. The Bible is a great source of information about humans at a certain place and period of time.

The Scriptures, then, are viewed in terms of either true judgments or historical information -- as science or cutural history.

The contradictions in the O.T. and the N.T. which I myself discovered in studying the works have served as tools of discovery of historical facts rather than of illogical, inconsistent, minds -- precisely because, once I realized the the Scriptures are not science, then they are cultural historical records.
(If the scriptures were the output of one man, then I would have thought that either his mind was being illogical or that his received information was unreliable.)

Take the O.T. Here we have a compilation of writings which are traceable to lessons or teachings by various people at different historical times. The contradictions in the total text are the contradictions between different historical persons. For instance, if the writers are members, at different times, of the society of Habiri [where "society" is not a logical CLASS or mathematical SET, but an institution IN TIME], then If A says that all men are black, and B says that all men are white, this contradiction tells me that, while A and B are Habiri [such as people speaking the same language], the cultural context of A is different from the social context of B. There is no "logical contradiction here;" what we have is two distinct environments where two men respectively speak truthfully of their environments. The compilation of their sayings or writings into one book, or the fact that those two people speak the same language, is misleading unto others, unto us, as we simply notice contradictions. I have been noticing different cultures (where certain things are quite opposite in character).

Through my own studies, I have arrived at some conclusions which I will state. These are not hypotheses or theorems I am going to verify or demonstrate, since they are CONCLUSIONS of investigations. (I am not going to write 50 pages about the researches, for anybody who makes the researches will come to the same conclusions. The conclusions are not true by either either proclamation nor by demonstration; they are inductions from researches.) I will give some details here and in my next post for the benefit of people willing to search.

The O.T. manifests the presence of two religions [arising at different times] among the Israelites, namely the people which the Bible is all about. This begins to be evident by the first two chapters of Genesis, the first Book of the Bible. There are TWO accounts of the genesis of the world, as some Biblical scholars have discovered in modern times. But I say they are radically different accounts, not two different accounts which many people could give of one automobile (some concentrating on its anatomy and functions; others concentracting on the manufacting of an automobile; and others concentrating on the utility and the esthetics of an automobile). They are like accounts of cars which differ anatomically as well as in the manner of manufacturing them.

Genesis-1 tells of the Elohim (= the Gods, which are the known supreme gods of the Canaanites) who said words, and the spoken things appeared. This is creation by magic. (Abracadabra! and a rabbit appears in the magician's hat.)
The sequence of created things is spelled out. The last creation was of Man. Basically, the Elohim said: Let us make [speci-fy] Man in our own image, namely one male and another female. (The Elohim were the supreme divine couple.) In the course of time (of the Bible) only the male god, EL, is retained; females and other gods are repudiated. Moses will be told, "Thou shalt have no other god before me" -- and that's the monotheism of the Israelites.

Genesis-2 and most of the Bible speaks of the divine Yahveh. ("yahveh" does not mean "god;" the name is a personal one and is usually translated into English as "Lord." Well, the Hebrew word for lord is adonai and often Yahveh is addressed as adonai, wherefore the translation is good enough.)
Genesis-2 introduce the divine Yahveh (Yahveh elohim) -- mistranslated as the Lord God. Yahvey is not the Elohim (the Gods of Genesis-1) who is lordish; Yaveh is a god by the name of Yahveh; he is Yahveh divine.

Yahveh is no super-magician; he is a super-architect and sculptor who fashions the world. The constructed world is somewhat different from the created world, but the most important point is the the AGENTS of these worlds are differently PRODUCING agents; they are numerically and essentially different. They are two distinct gods. To look at one detail, Yahveh fashions Adam out of clay and breathes into him. This is not a production by magic. Furthermore, Yahveh is a male god; his human products are not according to the genders of the Elohim. Goddesses have already been banished from a hypothetical Yahveh pantheon. Eve is constructed as an afterthought for Adam, and after He did some more animal fashioning.

Whichever god is addressed in the course of the Bible, the impression is given that one and the same god is adressed, especial since the singular name, El is employed. [El, however, still has ministers: Gabrie-el, Satana-El, micha-El, etc. In modern Arabian cultures, El is the-god, al-Elah or Allah. Proto-Arabic was the language of the Canaanites, the Hebrews/Israelites, and the Arabs.]

"Yahveh" and many other words in the Hebrew language are not proto-Arabic; they are Indo-European. The divine Yahveh is actually attested in cultures, otside the Hebrew one, where the languages are either largely prot-Arabic or Indo-European. So, my conclusion is that the Hebrew population actually consisted of people from two different cultures, with their own gods and their own languages and their own bio-ethnic complexions.

In the course of time, in Palestine, there was a split in the Hebrew population. The two resulting political societies or nations were Israel, whose God was El; and Judah, whose God was Yahveh, with the temple in Jerusalem. Israel included Galilee, whose city Nazareth was the city of Jesus. When Jesus was nailed on the cross, he invoked his GOD, fortunately left untranslated in the Greek Gospels, "Eloi, Eloi, why hast thou forsaken me?"
When Yahveh's house, the temple in Jerusalem, was destroyed in 70 A,D., large numbers of Judeans abandoned Judea and are known as the Jews wandering in European countries. (In the US, you'll never hear a Jew worshipping The-God, Allah. His God is the Indo-European god or lord of Moses. Yet, societally, they are Israelites, that is, of the tribe instituted by Abraham's covenant with El. Undobtedly Abraham was an Arab leader of his People called Israel.)

Probably the commingling of cultures in the Levant took place a bit earlier than in eastern Mesopotamia. The Arab commingling with the Sumerians gave rise to Akkad. (Babylonia arose a while later.) Canaan -- of which the Hebrew clans were a part -- was the result of the commingling in the Levant.
It comprises today's Syria, Lebanon, and (pre-zionist) Palestine.

Amedeo

The Gospels are biographies of Jesus. The Joannine Gospel is unique inasmuch as it explicitly includes the author's own theology -- about the nature of God and the nature of Christ. So, in speaking of the gospels, I wish to refer to the three synoptic Gospels and the biographical narratives of John's Gospel.

The narrators of the Gospels tell of events in the life of Jesus and report saying and speeches of Jesus. Apparently none of the narrators knew Jesus personally and never heard or saw him. So, the contents of the narratives are based on reports by others. It is possible, however, that the narrators introduced in their teachings or scriptures something of their own. For instance, given the proposition that Jesus was a descendent of David, a narrator himself could have worked out a genealogy of Jesus according to his knowledge of some oral Judaic geneaologies. Anyway, who is the author of the two genealogies in the Gospels? Either the evangelists in question or/and previous narrators, and one of the narrators could have been Jesus himself. It's a simple and plain fact that the two given genealogies are not ascribed to any author. Ascriptions are made only in the cases of reported conversations and of Jesus's sermons.

When we look at some episodes in the life of Jesus, we ask, Who was the evangelist's source of what is reported? Assuming that the evangelists were not being briefed from heaven, there was some human being who gave the initial reports.

Take the episode of Jesus being tempted by the devil three times, of the conversations between Jesus and the Devil, and of Jesus being taken to different places by the Devil. The only person who could have told the story to the disciples or others was Jesus himself.... whether he was reporting a real event or an imaginary event. What did Jesus say when he was alone in the garden before he was apprehended and tried? Whatever he said must have been reported BY him to his disciples, or else the disciples INVENTED what Jesus said and what Jesus was doing or not doing. (Suppose there were battles before ancient Troy. Now, the Iliad reports conversations between enemies -- conversations which Homer must have invented, conversations which fitted with the types the enemies were and with the outcomes of the events. The Iliad is like a historical novel, like the epic stories that we find in the Old Testament, like some of the stories we find in the New Testament.)

In the case of the N.T. we can be certain that some of the stories about Jesus life were authored by Jesus himself. An episode is being told about Jesus and one of his brothers. Jesus was complaining that apparently nobody believed him, that a prophet is not welcome in his own town. Well, said his brother, IF YOU REALLY DO THE THINGS THAT YOU SAY YOU DO -- the miracles you perform -- you have a great opportunity: Go to Jerusalem for the Passover, do them in from of the large crowds,... and you'll have believers.

My god!!! Jesus had been preaching that he performed miracles, that he cured this or raised that from death, that he multiplied food for the multitudes, but the listeners were obviously not convinced! He did not follow his brother's advice precisely because what he demanded from his listeners was faith, belief in what he SAID; he was not after proving to people that he had the divine power to perform miracles! Probably he said to his brother under his breath, "Begone, Satan. Do do not tempt the Lord thy God."

Jesus was indeed an auto-biographer. His autobiography was told to people rather than being written down. If we understand that he constructed his life, which he taught, then we see that, as the Gospels say, this or that was done or occurred in order that the Scriptures might be fulfilled. Jesus was a biblical scholar by the age od 12 or so. He gathered all the statements about the future messiah of Israel and ascribed them to himself. Thus, he had to be born from the house of David; he had to be born in Bethlehem; from Nazareth. Joseph and Mary had to go to Bethlehen because the contemporary census required them to go to Bethlehem; and so forth. So,according to Jesus' autobiography, we can infer that he was born at the time of the census, around 6 A.D.

According to a biography by somebody else, he was the son of Joseph and Mary. Joseph was his real father... and the two genealogies (despite their discrepancies) show that his real father was Joseph, a descendant of David, hence royal in blood. The above one is the biography of Jesus the messiah of Israel; the present one is the biography of Jesus the king of Israel. Now, the Gospels tell few episodes that concern Jesus the king. The first one has to do with his birth. When Herod discovered that a new king was born, well, we know the rest. Accordingly we infer that Jesus was born around 5 B.C. Eventually Jesus will be crucified as -- in 3 languages -- "Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews." I have to read the Gospels again to look into the trial and surrounding circumstances to see how much they reveal of the political events which led to the crucifixion of a person who by right was king and must have headed an organization or revolt against the present ecclesiastical authorities which accepted the Herods and their protectos (the Romans).

My feeling is that Jesus the king acted non-violently, that he tried to reform the Israelites morally, so that they would strive for a theocratic rather than secular government. Jesus would be the king-priest, not a secular king. The kingdom of God he preached in parables was to be the kingdom of the new Israelites, of God's People, not of the Gentile Herods. He would say, Give Caesar what is Caesar's, and give God what is God's. Give allegiance to God; allegiance to Caesar is not due. At first sight, the trial of Jesus the Galilean, prompted by the Judean authorities, does not look like a political trial.... especially since the Gospel readers are conditioned by the Pauline interpretation of God'd kindom. Since Jesus the King failed, Paul imagined his return on a cloud and that the kingdom is a spitural kingdom. Others will see that god's kingdon is "the New Jerusalem" after the cosmic apocaypse. I see that Jesus' kingdom is of this earth, of the Israelites in Palestine. He is the good shepherd who came to gather his flock. This king by the name of Jesus was a shepherding king, not a warrior king.

The two biographies are interwoven. (They imply contradictions... and that's why I say that they are radically TWO.) Indeed, the personality of Jesus is at once the royal or ethnic one, and the messianic or imaginary one. The messiah is the sphepherd-king or priest-king. What is it that makes an Israelite a messiah? The fact that he is commissioned by God. Jesus believed he was the chosen one, the son of God, come to deliver the Israelites from political bondage. His application of the Scriptures to himself, a descendant of David, seemed to be totally proper, as the times seemed ripe for the appearence of the messiah.

Jesus is the Basileus-Christos, the King-Messiah of Israel and nothing more.
The deification and all the rest were done by others -- Paul, John, and the other Greek theologians. Jesus the new Dionysus was a Greek invention, as I pointed out in another thread.

---------------
A note about some evangelical facts. Since the Scriptures said that the messiah was to be born of a maiden [unwed woman], Mary is described as such a maiden. She was told by an angel that God made her pregnant. At that time, Joseph had not known her yet, so, he was informed by an angel about the situation. / What might have happened in real life is that Joseph made her pregnat before marriage. Jesus always maintained a hate for his mother, but he caught the occasion to create the myth that his real father is the heavenly God and that the pre-marital pregnancy was in fulfilment of the scriptures that he was to be born of a maiden. / Of course this myth was accepted by the Catholic Church, Greek and Roman, and for the sake of logical coherence, they invented the theory that, in order for Jesus to be from the house of David, Mary had to be from the house of David. I myself always though that this doctrine was based on the Gospels narratives. When I discovered that both scriptural genealogies state Joseph as the link between Jesus and David, I knew that the biography with the Scriptural prediction anout the maiden and the elaborations about the divine fatherhoof of Jesus was a different biography from the one which gives the geneologies. / The tale of Joseph and Mary having to go to their native town for the census is inaccurate; at the most, the head of a household would have to report in the town of his domicile, not his native town. The was no real reason why Mary would have to go to Bethlehem. At any rate, if she had to go to her native town, there is no implication that she is a descendant of David.
The episode was contrived so that the prophesy would be fulfilled that Jesus would be born in the city of David. There are no contradiction in: Jesus is born of an unwed mother; Jesus is born in the city of David; and Jesus is Davidic through his father Joseph. However, Jesus' repudiation of his parents later in life and his declaration that his real father is in heaven had to be reconciled. The reconciliation, probably by the first Gospel writer, was done in terms of tales of the divine messangers in dreams. This reconciliation actually annuls the royalty of Jesus proclaimed by the genealogies and the ancient concept that royalty is inherited through the father. (Why would a Gentile Gospel writer be concerned with issues of royalty now that Israel had been disbanded and Jesus' royalty was of no interest to the Christian church? Only with the conversion of Constantine to Christianity, we begin to see the revival of the notion of Jesus or Christ the King, which will culminate in the crusades. Christianity started embarking on being the religion of the cross and the sword that lasted for a thousand years, and some people wish it to continue even today.)

Amedeo

Matthew (1):

All this is stated quite plainly, innocently, and convincingly. It reads like a newspaper story.

According to the first paragraph, Joseph received a message in his dreams. He told the story to others, and eventually the story got recorded in the Mathhew Gospel.

What is said in the second paragraph is not ascribed to anybody. Perhaps Jesus, perhaps Matthew, perhaps somebody else authored the paragraph. It explains to the listener or reader that all this happened in fulfilment of what the Lod said. Now, what the Lord said can be found in the Bible. I presume the quotation is correct. But does the divine prphesy apply to what happened? Matthew says more. He says that all this happened IN ORDER THAT the prophesy may be fulfilled. So, he thinks that the prophesy was fulfilled. Was it?

The Lord of the Bible speaks of one whose name will be EMMANUEL. The case before us is the case of an infant who was called Jesus. The name of Jesus does NOT appear in the prophesy. Obviously the prophesy has been "FORCED: after the fact. That is, some real person was named Jesus. When Jesus grew up, he himself or somebody else realized that he was born of an unwed mother and that he intended to save his people for having gone astray and that he wanted to be the good shepherd. Well the, it is obvious that the Lord talked about him, even though the Lord said "Emmanuel" while this man is Jesus. [This is like arguing in this manner: "I read the news that George is a corrupt politician. Now, Martin, my next-door neighbor is certainly a corrupt politician. So, the newspaper is already talking about him. Martin IS George!]

When the scriptural account is about a man who already has a name, he has to be called jesus. So, if I want to create a story about Jesus, I have to use the name of Jesus in my story. The first paragraph is a tale invented during or after the adult life of Jesus. My fictitious angel has to tell Josep to call Mary's child Jesus. The justifier of the fictitious story had to use a real Biblical passage. So, he had to use the name of Emmanuel. // If these things had really transpired and that they transpired in fulfilment of a prophesy, the angel would have told Joseph that the child was to be called Emmanuel, and the angel or somebody else could have explained that the maiden pregnancy had to happen this way because the lord had said that it would. He being the cause of the pregnancy.

The biological Jeus was the son of Joseph and mary, whether the pregancy occurred before or after the marriage. Jesus was named jesus for no particular reason, and Jesus was in the line of kind David.

The messianic Jesus had to be born of a maiden, but the real father was not Joseph, was born in Bethlehem, had the name of Emmnuel. As the son of God, he assumed devine powers, such as forgiving sins and performing miracle. So, he had to tell story of his miraculous works, including the raising of people from death. Eventually a story was told to the effect that jesus was crucifies, died, and came back to lfe. So, he must have told the story after his resurrection, while some of his old acquaintances did not even recognize him (after some ordeal on a cross).

Apparently Jesus had three personalities: the royal, and two fictitious personalities: the messianic, and the divine (miracle-working; Dionysian; etc.)
The Divine personatility will become the second person of the Trinity (in John's theology).

The Gospels wer written after some proto-Gospel, which was written after the real death of jesus and after theology around Christ had already been growm, in the circle of the apostles and afterwards.

Will the real Jesus stand up?

His life was never mentioned by anyone (outside his circle of disciples) who had met him. For all intents and purposes, Jesus is a literary fiction that grew out of some real-life movement
to convert Gentiles to Judaism. The strategey: "If you can't win, win them over," and they will be at your service instead of being against you. The Roman legions could be dismantled in Israel, only by softening their hearts. So, the Acts of the Apostles are the really significant writings about a pacifist movement to restore Israel to itself. In that sense, there may have been a leader by the name of Jesus that headed the royal-messianic movement. The success of the conversion came too late, for in 70 A.D., the temple fell and so did Israel (until it was re-constituted as Zionism).