aa5874

It would appear that Josephus contradicts you.

Antiquities of the Jews 3.9.3 Effectively, based on Josephus, a ram can be offered for deliberate sin.

Duvduv

Sins are specifically expiated by the Yom Kippur sacrifice of the high priest. This expiation is NOT the purpose of the Passover sacrifice (= the lamb of God).

Iskander

Why would a parallel Hebrew-English bible be a better translation than a Bible with only an English translation?

An English translation without footnotes if explained by a well-trained vicar would be more informative than a Bible with copious footnotes.
The language of the KJB is different from the language of contemporary England, but that alone is of no importance.

Modern Bibles are easier to read by the many millions who read them. Easy to read translations in modern English and a good vicar is all what is needed for most people.

J-D

To say 'Evolution is a result of differential survival rates of varying replicators' is not by itself an adequate explanation of any specific case, in the biological domain or any other.Doherty's account, if I have understood it correctly, seems to take the form that I have described: somebody (in the case of Doherty's account, Paul) preaching a religious message and other people accepting it.If there was no William Tell, then who was rhythm guitarist and backing vocalist for Something Corporate from 2001 to 2004?Indeed, there are many things we do not know. As far as I can tell so far, one of those things is how Christianity started.I suppose it's possible that an approach along these lines will produce answers, but I would see more reason to think so if there were any examples of an approach along such lines producing answers to any other questions.Repeating my own earlier words:

When I try to think of well-documented examples of the beginnings of religions, the common features I see are an individual preaching a religious message and other people accepting it. I don't know of any well-documented example of a religion starting without those ingredients.

Please note, I did not assert that to be the way all religions start; I asserted that I do not know of any documented instances of a religion starting in any other way. That strikes me as not conclusive, but highly suggestive; however, it may of course strike you differently.I did not use the expression 'documented religion'; I referred to religions whose origins are well-documented. I had in mind such examples as Lutheranism, Mormonism, Ahmadiyya, Hare Krishna, Sikhism, Baha'i, and Scientology.I suppose it might: and it might do so by the acceptance of the message of an individual preacher.I am not familiar with the origins of Unitarianism, but on browsing the information available in Wikipedia, it does appear that the Unitarian Church was founded by an individual, Theophilus Lindsey.

Robert Tulip

The “star in the east” is a fine starting point to help us reconstruct the cosmic Nazarene spirituality that developed the Christ Myth in ancient Israel. The Nazarenes emerged from the Danielic movement whose secret understanding was heavily influenced and informed by the captivity in Babylon, linking through the Natsar (watcher) line to the Babylonian star watchers with their impressive detailed empirical records of the movements of the heavens going back a thousand years before Ptolemy.

The “star in the east” has been the subject of constant metaphysical supernatural rubbish. My view is that the authors were basically scientific in outlook, but were living in a primitive society and so had to conceal their understanding in coded allegory. Watching the sky from the latitudes of Israel and Babylon and Egypt (ie not from Europe), when the three stars of Orion’s belt are seen to rise in the east at dusk at Christmas, by midnight, the watchers could look along the line of Orion’s belt past Sirius, the bright star in the east, to see the rising constellation Argo, Noah’s Ark, whose deck full of animals serves as the manger of Christ.

The Nazarite framework of this watcher myth is seen in the fact that Noah was regarded as the first Nazarite. Rene Salm discusses at Noah, the first Natsarene?.

This Orion-Sirius-Argo line is all fairly simply visible in the southern sky but there are no records to substantiate its link to the Nativity Myth, just as we have few other records of the oral teachings of ancient wisdom. Even the original constellation of Argo has been garbled, in a process extending through Jason’s Argonautica to the Greek astronomers who got it backwards because they couldn’t see it, to its drawing with poop deck by the modern Portuguese navigators who again discovered Argo. The visible coherence of the interpretation of the star in the east as Sirius makes it plausible as the real coded origin of the nativity myth, and also illustrates the extent of loss of ancient star lore under the baleful influence of supernatural miraculism and Eurocentric racism. I discuss Argo at http://freethoughtnation.com/forums/...t=2664&start=0

Speaking further of astrology in Gnosticism, Irenaeus condemns a doctrine he calls “the duodecad of the aeons”, meaning twelve ages, while Clement condemns the assertion that the twelve disciples are allegory for the twelve signs of the zodiac. (Clement says the Gnostic Valentinians “call the Aeons Logoi [and] say the Apostles were substituted for the twelve signs of the Zodiac”) These idiot anathemas indicate the existence of a detailed accurate cosmology which was purposively suppressed by the orthodox. In fact, this link between the twelve disciples and the stars of the zodiac was the real Da Vinci code, with the stars used by Leonardo Da Vinci as his real coded natural template for his fresco The Last Supper, as I have proven in ignored work.

Further on Davka’s question about Zoroastrian influence, this is clearly a deep factor arising from the captivity in Babylon. The ‘seventy weeks’ prophecy of the Messiah in Daniel 9 has historically been interpreted (eg by Luther and Newton) as an accurate prediction of the timing of Jesus Christ, on the argument that encoded claims use one time frame (the week) to really mean another (in this case the day as a year), as Psalms and Peter say a millennium is a day for God.

My interest in this rather obscure text is that as I have discussed earlier in this thread, ancient priest-astronomers including in Babylon were well aware of precession as the primary slow motion of the heavens, and this alleged prophecy of a turning point in time is very close to what they could realistically predict about the real movement of the equinox into Pisces in 21 AD. Certainly ancient astronomers such as Hipparchus knew this dating to the decade by the second century BC, based on his blood moon observation on the equinox on 21 March 134 BC. And as Luther said, "We cannot find and determine all days and hours so precisely, when we write history it is enough for us that we come pretty close."

Clearly Daniel was a Nazarite in view of his vow (Daniel 1) “that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's delicacies, nor with the wine which he drank; therefore …God gave them knowledge and skill in all literature and wisdom; and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams.” Here in the Nazarite Watchers of Babylon we see the secret cosmic prophetic Jewish tradition that constructed the Christ Myth based on observation of precession of the equinox, imagining that the observed shift in the heavens would parallel a similar change of ages on earth, reflected in the coded Lord's Prayer statement 'as in heaven so on earth'.
Yes. As someone somewhere said, flesh and blood has not revealed this to you. But I don’t accept your word ‘drek’ (is that Yiddish?) which implies that this cosmology was baseless. Rather, I take the view that the effort to understand history by using the stars as a clock provides a powerful natural basis for an authentic spirituality, with the cosmic skeleton enfleshed by detailed reinterpretation of revered literature.

We don’t actually have to assume that the prophecies were astrological, as the encoding of precession in the Bible was a primarily astronomical vision of the clicking of the hour hand of precession into a new age. Yes there is astrology there, such as the alpha and omega and the loaves and fishes, but for the sake of modern sensibilities we can ignore the symbolism and focus on the science. This cosmic observation of precession encoded in Daniel 9 shows how Christianity originated. The power and success of the political faith rested in its original basis in accurate observation of the cosmos, upon which all sorts of fanciful superstitions were woven, although the real natural framework still shines through the veil in the numerous cosmic symbols in the Bible.
I prefer to say, paraphrasing Voltaire’s comment about God, that if Jesus Christ did not exist it would have been necessary to invent him. The cosmic prophecy seen by the watchers of the common era and before was that the spring point had shifted from its traditional location in Aries (said by Philo to mark the timing of Passover) into Pisces. This was seen most vividly in the blood moon that rose over Jerusalem on the night of Passover on 23 March 4BC, when to the undoubted shock of the pious, the eclipse point was “at the foot of the woman” (Rev 12:1), and not where Moses said it should be, in Libra. This “great sign seen in heaven” marked the dawn of a new age.
Yes, and that is why I suggest we try carefully to analyse this material against a modern atheist scientific method, avoiding alarm or wild speculation. It is perfectly scientific to take as a rational hypothesis Davka’s formulation that “The combination of OT prophecies, astrological predictions, and various mystical teachings led a number of people to believe that the Messiah was due some time in the first century CE.”

Davka

It would appear that Josephus contradicts Leviticus.

Davka

I should have written "interlinear parallel . . ." Such a Bible enables the reader to follow up fairly easily on words and phrases which do not translate easily. The footnote marks it as in need of further clarification, and the interlinear allows the reader to see precisely which words in the original Hebrew are in question.

The language is unimportant. It's the actual translation which is in question. One egregious example is the one I mentioned to aa, which he has wisely decided to ignore: Job 22:30.

The original can be transliterated as "Y'malet i-naki oonemalet b'bar kefikha," or translated as "he shall deliver those who are not innocent, he will be delivered by the pureness of your hands." That second word, "i-naki," is the one that demonstrates my point. You see, in Hebrew the letter yod (i or "ee") is used a a prefix: the equivalent of the English "non" or "un."

When it's standing all by itself, however, i is a word. It means "island."

In this instance, the context makes clear that the i is a prefix, meaning "not." As in "not innocent." But the KJV translators chose instead to view the i as standing alone, so the passage is mistranslated as "island of the innocent."

So we have the KJV version saying "He shall deliver the island of the innocent: and it is delivered by the pureness of thine hands," which doesn't even make any sense, and we have the NASB correctly reading "He will deliver one who is not innocent, And he will be delivered through the cleanness of your hands."

And now that I've bored you to tears with this exposition, I'll add that my personal, unfounded opinion is that the KJV translators could not abide the idea of the Bible saying that God would save the guilty.

Not unless your vicar reads both Biblical Hebrew and Koine Greek fluently, and spends his time studying rather than gassing.

aa5874

Josephus was a Jew living in the 1st century who wrote the history of the Jews.

Perhaps you do not understand Leviticus or maybe something is wrong with your English translation.

Eusebius' Preparation of the GospelIn the 1st century Jews would NOT have to be banished or Killed if they sinned deliberately they just offered a ram based on Josephus, a Jew.

Grog

You continually miss the point. I said "Unitarianism" evolved, not the "Unitarian Church." I am saying "Christianity" evolved not the Roman Catholic Church, not the Lutheran Church.

I think you have either misread Doherty or not read Doherty at all. Doherty does not believe that Paul founded Christianity. He believes that Paul is an example of the early Christian beliefs.

J-D

It is not clear to me which religion is referred to by 'Unitarianism' but is not referred to by 'the Unitarian Church'.

Obviously there is a concept referred to by 'Unitarianism' which is not identical with the Unitarian Church, but a religion is more than just a concept.Here are Doherty's own words: 'In Galatians 1:16 Paul says: "God chose to reveal his Son in me, and through me to preach him to the gentiles." Paul claims he is the instrument of God's revelation. He preaches the Son, the newly-disclosed means of salvation offered to Jew and gentile alike.' That's what I described: an individual preaching a religious message. I didn't say that was enough by itself to explain the origin or a religion, only that it's an ingredient of an explanation, and there it is as an ingredient of Doherty's explanation.