rhutchin

How do you know that these statements are true? Are they strawmen you created to generate your position?

Johnny Skeptic

There is not any credible evidence that the God of the Bible exists, let alone that he gave any laws to Moses. Why must you make speculative guesses? What do you have against using common sense, logic, and reason to conduct research?

How do you know that what the Bible writers said is true?

show_no_mercy

The general scholarly consensus is that Matthew wrote in Greek (according to Bart Erhman's "Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium") and quotes the LXX. He never quotes the Hebrew version of the Hebrew bible. Matthew actually could have known Hebrew, but shows no evidence of this in this particular gospel. Not only that, but it seems as though Matthew was using Mark as a template - Mark was also originally written in Greek.

As for Matthew not caring about the context of his LXX:

This is taking Isaiah 7:14 out of context. It doesn't even matter whether the text says "virgin" or not, but it's evidence that Matthew is reading the LXX version of Isaiah 7:14 and not the Hebrew version of Isaiah 7:14. The Hebrew version says "young woman" (almah) while the LXX version says "virgin" (parthenos).

Isaiah chapter 7 is describing how Isaiah is pleading with Ahaz to not make alliances with the Assyrians:

Here Isaiah is telling Ahaz to wait for YHWH for support instead of making alliances with Assyria. The "sign of Immanuel" is a timetable for when YHWH will destroy Ahaz's enemies. By the time the child Immanuel reaches puberty (telling Ahaz to wait for about 15 years - the time it takes for the woman in their company to give birth and have the child reach puberty), the kingdoms that Ahaz is fretting over will be defeated.

Matthew is quoting Hosea 11:1 which actually says "When Israel was a child I loved him. And out of Egypt I called my son". Matthew totally disregards the first sentence in Hosea 11:1 to quote-mine "out of Egypt I called my son" and make a "prophecy" about Jesus. It's pretty common knowledge that Hosea 11 is about the Exodus.

Here Matthew quote-mines Jeremiah 31:15, which is about Rachel's children in Assyrian captivity. The subsequent verses describe their return to Israel.

Here is the rest of Jeremiah 31 that Matthew conveniently left out:

kcdad

How do you get any other meaning out of the text?

How do you explain the lilies in the field or the birds of the air?
How do you explain "Give us this day our daily bread"?

Let me guess... we live in a society that requires money so God obviously couldn't be talking about THAT. I mean golly, Joel Osteen rakes in 50 million dollars a year from Lakewood Church... THAT can't be what Jesus was talking about... "selling the Gospel"... naaaaahhhh... God gave us Capitalism, it is Holy and Sacred.

Come matthijs, don't just get mad... think and come up with a REAL reply.

Net2004

And when they finished all things, according to the Law of the Lord, they turned back to Galilee, to their city Nazareth; 40 and the child grew and was strengthened in spirit, being filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him.

"And his parents were going yearly to Jerusalem, at the feast of the passover, 42 and when he became twelve years old, they having gone up to Jerusalem, according to the custom of the feast..."







what route did they take when they were going to jerusalem every year?
was it from egypt to jerusalem or was it from galilee to egypt then jerusalem?

luke does not seem to be worried about any danger that might await the child and the parents.
Clearly this is in conflict with matthews infancy account.

in lukes infancy narrative there seems to be no indication of danger awaiting the child.

if we do not read matthews version in to the words " and his parents were going to jerusalem..." then where were his parents coming from when they were going to jerusalem?

matthijs

By reading it, and trying to make sense of it. Is that allowed? My interpretation is my own, I've made no statement of absolutes, and I'm not here to preach. I explained in my second last post how I make sense of it. If you have a particular quibble with part of it, please present. I'm open to correction any day of the week.

I don't. Both of those are double-tradition material. I was addressing Mark's gospel.

And that would be a bad guess. You might have checked my profile, you would have learned that God has very little relevance to me.

I'm a communist, oddly. Do you erect straw-men of all your opponents? Or am I just extra special?

I scale the effort of my reply to the effort of the query. And I'm far from being mad. My fuse runs a pretty solid length. You might have to try harder to provoke me next time

Elske. (<--- If you still doubt my level of tranquility, you might look this word up.)

kcdad

"Jesus isn't really saying it's necessary to sacrifice possessions. He's instead making a mockery of the supposed faith of a rich man, who for all appearances is law-abiding, but who's commitment doesn't stand to scrutiny. It's a didactic tale, not a recipe for salvation."

ok... no absolute statements... uh huh

matthijs

I prefaced my post with "I think the point of the pericope (Mark 10:17-30) is non-intuitive." I then adopted a didactic style because it's easier than prefacing every sentence with "may" or "might" or "I think," and also because it has better pedagogical value--it's easier to parse. In the end, I was just sharing my thoughts.

If you truly want to play word games, that's fine. But you can't honestly expect a productive conversation by continuing in this vein, can you? All I'm getting is line-noise.

Elske.

kcdad

And what would you call:
"I prefaced my post with "I think the point of the pericope (Mark 10:17-30) is non-intuitive." I then adopted a didactic style because it's easier than prefacing every sentence with "may" or "might" or "I think," and also because it has better pedagogical value--it's easier to parse. In the end, I was just sharing my thoughts."
... other than word games?

Or is that you think when you post it has particularly "sacred" meaning and when anyone else posts it must be something else?

matthijs

I call it "explaining myself to the best of my ability." I'm sorry that I'm not living up to your standards, but all of your criticisms are quite vague. I really have no idea what we're arguing about anymore. I explained my rhetoric, whether I'm wrong about this or not, it's clearly time for you to move on. We could clutter this thread with scads of semantic hole-poking, or we could talk about something to do with history. It's your choice in the end.

I'm not sure what you're getting at. You questioned me, and I answered as best I could. I've yet to question you in the same manner, so it's still to be seen if I have double-standards.

You were clearly wrong in your characterization of me at first, a position that you've made no defense of. The correct response would have been for you to admit jumping the gun a little, but instead you've veered sharply into bickering over... well... I have no idea really. Weren't we talking about the parable of the young rich man? Can we get back to that?

If you have a specific criticism of my take of that parable, I'd like to hear it. If you're only interested in accusing me of bias, or intellectual dishonesty, then I might have to bow out of this one.

Elske.