NOGO2

NOGO:
Elohim as you have already stated is God in the plural which you claim is so because of the trinity.

DavidH:
Maybe you didn't read my whole answer because I mention in it that I never have claimed this.


Please check your previous posts and you will find the following...

My argument has nothing to do with languages. Your attempt at dodging the issue is simply that a dodge.

Let me try again.

John 1:3
All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.

"Him" in John 1:3 is the Word. So all things were created by the "Word".

In Genesis 1 "Elohim" created everything.


So putting it all together we have ...

Elohim = Gods = trinity ______ This was your claim as stated in your previous posts.

"Elohim" created everything.

Since Elohim = trinity we can substitute and get

The Trinity created everything. ____ According to Genesis 1 and your claim above


John 1 says
The Word created everything

David, the logic here need not get languages involved. It simply goes like this.

If
X created everything
AND
Y created everything
THEN
X must be equal to Y

So Elohim = Word
but since Elohim = trinity
then
trinity = Word

if the trinity is the set T{Father, Son, Holy spirit|
and the Word is the Son
Then

T{Father, Son, Holy spirit} = Son

This is a contradiction.

Genesis is saying, according to you, that the trinity created everything
John 1 says that it was the Son who created everything.

As I see it DavidH you are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

You can admit that Elohim although plural refers to one God and does not imply the trinity. Then what you will have is the OT clearly stating that God is one.

Deut 6:4
"Hear, O Israel! The Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is one!

Not two, not three, not three in one, but ONE.

Or

You can admit that your interpretation of John 1 is in error.

[ September 04, 2002: Message edited by: NOGO2 ]</p>

wordsmyth

This is correct and I agree that this is what it shows, though it doesn’t necessarily show what you have a priori assumed it does. You are overlooking the distinctions made here. John 1 does not say, “Jesus was with God and Jesus was God”, because if it had there would simply be no confusion.

You have only shown that you have come to no other conclusion from John 1, however other conclusions can be drawn. Have you drawn any conclusion as to why a distinction is made between referring to Jesus as Jesus and/or The Word. You have made the inference from these passages that Jesus = God, though it doesn’t explicitly state that and I think there is an important reason for it.

First, lets define <strong>Word</strong>
lovgoß, transliterated logos

<strong>1.</strong> of speech
++<strong>a.</strong> a word, uttered by a living voice, embodies a conception or idea
++<strong>b.</strong> what someone has said
++++ <strong>1.</strong> a word
++++ <strong>2.</strong> the sayings of God
++++ <strong>3.</strong> decree, mandate or order
++++ <strong>4.</strong> of the moral precepts given by God
++++ <strong>5.</strong> Old Testament prophecy given by the prophets
++++ <strong>6.</strong>what is declared, a thought, declaration, aphorism, a weighty saying, a dictum, a maxim
++ <strong>c.</strong> discourse
++++ <strong>1.</strong> the act of speaking, speech
++++ <strong>2.</strong> the faculty of speech, skill and practice in speaking
++++ <strong>3.</strong> a kind or style of speaking
++++ <strong>4.</strong> a continuous speaking discourse - instruction
++ <strong>d.</strong> doctrine, teaching
++ <strong>e.</strong> anything reported in speech; a narration, narrative
++ <strong>f.</strong> matter under discussion, thing spoken of, affair, a matter in dispute, case, suit at law
++ <strong>g.</strong>the thing spoken of or talked about; event, deed
<strong>2.</strong> its use as respect to the MIND alone
++ <strong>a.</strong> reason, the mental faculty of thinking, meditating, reasoning, calculating
++ <strong>b.</strong> account, i.e. regard, consideration
++ <strong>c.</strong> account, i.e. reckoning, score
++ <strong>d.</strong> account, i.e. answer or explanation in reference to judgment
++ <strong>e.</strong> relation, i.e. with whom as judge we stand in relation
++++ <strong>1.</strong> reason would
++ <strong>f.</strong> reason, cause, ground
<strong>3.</strong> In John, denotes the essential Word of God, Jesus Christ, the personal wisdom and power in union with God, his minister in creation and government of the universe, the cause of all the world's life both physical and ethical, which for the procurement of man's salvation put on human nature in the person of Jesus the Messiah, the second person in the Godhead, and shone forth conspicuously from His words and deeds. Note: this definition was added later as the only person ever referred to in the Bible as the “Word” was Jesus.)

<a href="http://bible.crosswalk.com/Lexicons/Greek/grk.cgi?number=3056&version=kjv" target="_blank">LINK</a>

The Jews believed (and still do I suppose) that their messiah would be just a man and not divine at all. So, you might ask what the importance of this messiah would be if he were just a man. Quite simply, this messiah was to bring them the <strong>word of God</strong>. What is the <strong>word of God</strong>? We have only to look at the first two definitions above to find out. Go on, look again!

So, the Word refers to Gods edicts, decrees, plans, moral precepts, etc. and Jesus could simply be the embodiment of that. Christ means “anointed one of God” and though it would seem silly for God to anoint Himself its not silly to imagine that Jesus was anointed by God to bring His message or embody His “Word” here on Earth.

When Jesus says, “I and the Father are one.” Is he proclaiming himself a God and part of a Trinity or does he simply mean that he speaks for God and so his decrees and teachings are Gods decrees and teachings (i.e. of one mind)?
As I said in my previous post, this is just a theory of mine and I’m sure it won’t sway anyone in the least. My intention was only to show that it could be interpreted in another way.

(Edited because not having a preview option sucks)

[ September 04, 2002: Message edited by: wordsmyth ]</p>

Bede

joedad,

As NOGO says, pagan started off as a derogatory term (means peasant, I think) to describe non-Judao-Christian religions. It is not derogatory anymore (like conservatives are called Tories which used to be an insult) as evidenced by the fact that most neo-pagans are happy to use the term.

Basically, Steven was being a prat by asserting that Judiasm was included in the religions Justin is talking about and I called him on it.

Yours

Bede

Steven Carr

No, I was calling Justin.

Justin was so convinced of his belief that Christianity had not borrowed anything from pagan religions, that he stopped thinking and ended up writing what was literally nonsense. So much for claims that he is approaching the subject in a scholarly, objective manner.

He did literally write that Christianity had not borrowed from any religion, which is sheer nonsense.

Of course, any misreading on my part pales into insignificance when you quote Dawkins as saying a miracle has a perfectly good natural explanation when he actually says that this natural explanation is as likely as a cow jumping over the moon :-)

Fact. Christianity was *born* borrowing doctrines, and some of its key doctrines , borrowed from Judaism, were themselves borrowed by Jews (often from Zoroastrianism.)

BTW, how do you like German keyboards swapping the y and the z? (Sorry that should have been the Z and the Y, I mistyped)

Steven Carr

Your 'real scholar' writes 'Certainly, Frazer's star witnesses of Attis, Adonis and Osiris suffer from the fatal flaw in each case of dying and then failing to be resurrected.'

Is your anonymous 'real scholar' denying that Osiris died and then stopped being dead?

Amen-Moses

I take it you mean Dec 25th?

Dec 25th is the birthday of the Sun, i.e it is the first day that the ancient atronomers (read priests) could reliably say that the Day was getting longer again. This was made a 6 day holiday in Roman times (and possibly far earlier by the Egyptians) because the "logical year" consisted of 360 days + 5 extra Sun-God days.

This is attested by all the earliest cultures (and even seems to be built into many megalithic structures as a sort of Solar calander which could be used to denote the start of the extra days).

Coming forward in time from the Egyptians we have the Osiris-Horus-Isis trinity, later Middle Eastern religionists replaced Osiris with El (known as the father God, roughly analogous with Zues or Odin) which became the Hebrew Monotheistic God.

Isis became Sophia to the Greek Mysticists (based around Alexandria) and Horus became mixed in with Ra (probably due to the mix-up over Atenism/Ame-Ra cults which replaced him but used the same iconography of a Solar disc).

Isis-Ra-El became the name for "Gods" Land, i.e the "land of the trinity".

Isis = Sophia = Holy Ghost (yes she is female)
Ra = the Sun = Jesus (the risen, or Sun god)
El = the Father.

Reading Israel backwards gives you Father, Sun and Holy Ghost.

How'd I do!

Amen-Moses

Bede

He was dicklessly stuck back together again. I note that not even you can bring yourself to say he was raised or resurrected.

B

Steven Carr

This is because your 'real scholar' Justin Martyr is playing word games with 'resurrected'.

In the Osiris myth, Osiris died and came back to life, and Justin Martyr denies that this was a resurrection. No wonder he prefers to remain anonymous!

GunnerJ

Pedantic mode!

It meant "countryman" or "farmer." Basically, someone who lived in rural areas. As Christianity spread, it gained great influence in cities, and only those bumpkins in the rural areas still practiced the old religion's fertility rites.

BTW, dave, I'll reply to you later today.

NOGO2

Please do explain the difference.

When you die every single cell in your body dies.
Complex molecules start breaking up.
You become minced meat.

Bringing minced meat back to life requires much more than stitching.

Stitching large pieces together and breathing life back into a dead corpse is like taking mud shping it into a human body and breathing life into it. ie the though part is "breathing life into it"

During resurrection one needs to take molecules which have broken up and stitch them together again. But that is the easy part. Breathing life back into it is another matter.

Resurrection is a magic word which stands for breathing life back into it. Everything else is noise.

But when you are defending an undefendable cause splitting hair is all that you have.