wendel1808

I just want to clarify one thing I said in my last post referring to Tristan's claim that "he was referring to himself as a man, perhaps as Messiah that Daniel foretold, but not a god"...

I stated that "Jesus calls himself the "Son of Man" in reference to him becoming the Messiah," which is true. Jesus was not referring to himself as being equivalent to God in any of the Scriptures from Ezekiel or Daniel. Yet, Jesus is still God and was during his time on earth. Since Jesus is the Messiah, Jesus is worthy of our praise and worship because he is our Savior... Jesus is God. <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" />

This really relates to the idea of the Trinity.
If you read Matt 28:18-20, Jesus has been resurrected from the dead and comes back to earth. Jesus tells the eleven disciples (Judas, the 12th disciple, had committed suicide), "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." This concept of the Trinity is presented here, when Jesus says "with you" this refers to "God with us" in Matt. 1:23... where this whole debate began with the virgin Mary's conception of Christ Jesus. "God with us" also means that Jesus is saying he is God.

Bree

So...where does the idea of the Trinity come into play?

Amos

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Bree:
[QB]


Hello Bree, I wrote you a post this morning that would have explained everything (darn it). As luck would have it, just as I tried to post it the phone rang and I lost everything.

I'll try again later tonight.

Amos

Yes is Bree, which is kind of good, I think, so we can get to heaven before we die. Catholics do believe that purgatory can begin here on earth and if it can begin here on earth the possibility must exist that it can end here and if it can end before we die it must also be true that heaven begins before we die and end when we physically die. The question now becomes, if that is true can it also begin after we die?

Yes it is scriptural, kind of all over and sort of spread throughout the bible because it is an important part of salvation. In fact, that is what the gospels are all about and they show us how we are to "work out" our own salvation. From this follows that we work out our own salvation in purgatory and as you can probably tell, some of us are really "on fire" for the Lord while others are just a quiet "burning bush."

Notice that Christ was born unto Joseph the Jew and that his name shall be Jesus. The God nature of Christ was born to man, in this case Joseph, and the new identity shall be called Jesus. This is how the dual identity of Jesus became real and if that was true for Joseph the Jew so can it be true for Catholics.

From this moment of rebirth the old man Joseph needed to die and the new Christ identity become transparent until finally Jesus, who took upon himself the sins of Joseph the Jew, was crucified while the Christ identity was set free under the name of Bar-abbas (son of man).

If this can happen to Catholics we, too, will be "son of man" because we were also created in the image of God as man. Our rebirth identity will be the identity we left behind as a child when we were banned from Eden and followed our own ideals in the pursuit of happiness.

Others, will be not be "son of man" but will be "like son of man." To be "like son of man" is not the same but more like an imposter of son of man. The difference between these two is found in Jn.1:13. "who were begotten not be blood, nor by canal desire, nor by man's willing it, but by God."

This "but" signifies that two different kinds of rebirth are possible and they make the difference between "son of man" and "like son of man." To be born of God we must be born of the Immaculate Conception upon the initiative of God via the angel Gabriel. The other way is to be born from carnal desire such as fear, parents, age of accountability, girlfriend etc. In this case we will not be born from the celestial sea via Mary the IC but from the old earthly nature via Eve. Both will be on fire for the Lord but one of them will soon become just a burning bush.

In Rev. 13 the first beast comes out of the [celestial] sea and has ten horns studded with diamonds. These horns signify victory over sin and the seven heads signify the climax between the Cardinal Virtues and the Capital Sins. This means that this person has victory over sin and bears the 7 wounds of known as the stigmata. The 42 months are the time to spend in purgatory and so on. This beast soon will be like Christ and judge the living from the dead.

The second beast came out of the earth and has two heads to show that it is torn between the paradox sinful yet saved. It will continually point at the first beast and become/remains a Jesus worshipper for life instead of crucifying Jesus to bear the wounds of the cross. And so on.

Sorry I must go but will return if you should have anymore questions.

Amos

My understanding is different. Mary was without sin and Perpetual Virgin. It is a necessary condition for rebirth and is the gate to heaven. Mary will meet us at the beginning of purgatory and lead us into heaven.

We get that from tradition and don't have to search the scriptures to prove us right.

spin

spin:
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Just a small but relevant correction. The majority of manuscripts have Matt with "Eli, Eli, lama, sabachthani?", ie the Hebrew version of psalm 22. It is Mark who has the Aramaic.
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spin:
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Actually, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" from Matt. 27:46 is a mixture of Aramaic AND Hebrew which Matthew translated, which is also the translation in Mark 15:34.
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I did find hlwi in the Westcott and Hort, but the majority have hli. lama is Hebrew while a number of texts have either lema or lima (transliterations of Aramaic). It is the sabachthani which is the problem and is Aramaic. There has been a correction of the text of Mark in the Matt text to be more in line with the Hebrew original.

Wendel1808:
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[spin omitting the recourse to biblical translations]

So, whatever... I'm not about to override what over a hundred scholars said. Who am I to say which translation we have here is correct?
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It's alright, Wendel1808, you don't have to override anybody. I merely pointed out the basic fact with a generalization that the Matt text doesn't have the Aramaic text as you cited it.

Wendel1808:
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Possibly they are both correct because the relevancy is what's important. Jesus was called out to God, not Elijah as some of the bystanders thought.
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You want to believe that while the bystanders didn't understand what Jesus was saying, but the gospel writer who wasn't present did. You can live with that.

spin

Bree asks:
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So...where does the idea of the Trinity come into play?
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The trinity is the result of a few hundred years of theological contentions. There had been heresies which claimed that Jesus was only a man, and others which claimed that Jesus was only a god. The people who were to become mainstreamers streered a course which avoided both of these positions and as better definition was becoming necessary through the elevation of the position of the religion, one had to reconcile the early choices, ie not just god, not just man, while maintaining the idea of monotheism. This was bound to lead to binitarianism. As this was developing, there was a collateral development based on the giving of separate existence to the spirit of God. The net result is triple-think.

spin

Christians have to believe that Daniel deals with things that are still to come, because the religion has made such a mess of the book. However, the book of Daniel was related to a historical context, which almost all scholarly commentaries will explain.

Daniel is related to another book written in the early second century BCE called 1 Enoch (or at least a part of that book). They both feature a figure who looks at history from a distant past and presents the history in disguise as prophecy both down to the rebellion led by Judas the Maccabee against the Greeks. Daniel 11 is the longest continuous history of the relations between the Greeks of Syria and those of Egypt, the kings of the north and the kings of the south.

You can follow blow by blow the historical events between the Syrians and the Egyptians, the wars and the changes of ruler as listed in Daniel 11, merely by referring to a history of the period.

But there is more, ch 7 has a mini-history of the various kingdoms from the Babylonians, the beast like a lion with wings, the Medians, a beast which looked like a bear, the Persians, a beast which looked like a leopard, and finally the Greeks, as a beast which looked like an elephant, not strange this last, because the Greeks used elephants in warfare. The last representative of the Greeks is a little horn which uprooted three others. This is Antiochus IV who came to the throne after there had been a coup which involved the death of his brother, his son and a usurper. This Antiochus was also the last king of the north mentioned in ch 11, and was responsible for the pollution of the temple.

Ch 8 relooks at the same period, using the image of the ram with two horns, one coming first then one later (Medes then Persians), and the goat with the one horn (Greeks, and particularly Alexander). The Greeks dissolved into the four kingdoms out of one of which came out little horn once again. He pollutes the temple and overthrows the priesthood. Without a resolution this dates the text to between 167 and 164 BCE.

Ch 9 has the seventy weeks midrash of Jeremiah, which attempts to give a history of Israel from the time of the start of the exile to the present. Seven weeks of years marks the end of the exile and the arrival of Jeshua in Jerusalem (he is the high priest who returned with Zerubbabel, and is hence the anointed one, as are all high priests). From that time passes the 62 weeks which lead to the destitution of the high priest Onias III by the Greeks (Antiochus IV once again) and we are in the last week of the prophecy, which marks once again the pollution of the temple. Antiochus had the Jerusalem temple rededicated for pagan worship in his attempt at hellenisation of the Jews. This is how the abomination comes into the story, as a statue of the god was probably erected as in all other Greek temples.

Daniel is concentrated on a period which terminates in 164 BCE before the temple is recaptured and cleaned of the desecration. It deals with the same material four times in four different visions, looking at different aspects of it.

Josephus recognizes the relationship between Daniel and the Hellenistic Crisis (see the end of Antiquities 10,11,7). Porphyry daling with Christians poured scorn on the Christians for abusing Daniel without understanding the text. It would seem nothing much has changed with the majority. This is because one is constrained to believe the Jesus represented in the gospel who gets Dan 7 confused. I don't say that Jesus actually said it. I merely talk of the gospel writers and of course the industry the cropped up in Christianity which reused Jewish writings for purposes other than for what they were written.

However, Christian scholars are well aware of the Daniel material. This is why I recommend that one turn to a scholarly commentary of Daniel, not a "believer's" version, but one by a scholar of repute in the field (for example J.J. Collins, but there are numerous others).

spin

Wendel1808 wishes to persist in the following blunder:
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Da 7:13 and Da 8:17 are the only other places in the OT where the phrase "son of man" is used as a title (besides in Ezekiel). "Jesus' frequent use of the phrase in referring to himself showed that he was the eschatological figure spoken of in Daniel 7:13" (NIV notes).
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Again it has to be underlined that the Dan 7:13 talks of a figure which is "one like a son of man". This is not a title, it is a descriptive simile, saying what the figure looked like, while the other four were like various animals, but weren't, just as our figure was like a son of man, but wasn't.

Daniel deals with angels. Each nation had their own. That's what the beasts were that the good angels were fighting against. The Jewish angel was in the form of a human, as one would expect. The figure of the one like a son of man was not escatological so much as a constant defender and was almost certainly the archangel Michael, called "your prince" at the end of ch 10. He was fighting the prince of Persia, with the prince of Greece on his way.

Dan 7:13 simply doesn't deal with Jesus at all, despite what the gospels claim. We need to deal with Daniel in context not read as seen through the eyes of people writing a few hundred years later. As my previous post should indicate, Daniel is dealing with a specific historical period two hundred years before Jesus's time. It's "one like a son of man" is the archangel Michael, when one reads the whole text.

The use of "son of man" in Daniel is purely descriptive and shows no sign of having any special use in itself. If it had, one would expect the Jews to have picked up on it themselves, but they never did, although the figure in Dan 7 is referred to in later literature, though with no interest in the phrase "son of man" whose significance was clear in Jewish literature, that of mere generated human.

spin

wendel1808:
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My understanding is the following: Mary was just like every other person on the planet, sinful.
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Amos:
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My understanding is different. Mary was without sin and Perpetual Virgin.
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This of course explains how she could pop out another four sons according to the gospels, but perhaps they didn't actually come from her -- or they could also have been virgin births. This perpetual virgin had five kids according to the only literature available.

Amos:
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It is a necessary condition for rebirth and is the gate to heaven.
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This may be Catholic dogma, but what has that got to do with the religion as a whole?

Amos:
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Mary will meet us at the beginning of purgatory and lead us into heaven.
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And when you see her, say "hail Mary" from me.

Amos:
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We get that from tradition and don't have to search the scriptures to prove us right.
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Tradition is based on people. People are often wrong. How can one prove it right or wrong in this case? You simply have an opinion not based on the earliest material available to us and so have no support for it.