I think I WILL study Daniel next. Right now I'm studying the Sermon on the Mount. I understand that multiple kingdoms are mentioned in the OT, but I haven't found a specific timetable yet. People have tried to use scripture to predict the time of the Second Coming since the scripture was written, and many have failed badly. My impression is that some of those OT predictions are so non-specific that scholars disagree on which historical events they actually point to. I know Jewish people say that their holy scriptures were modified or mistranslated so that they look like they point to Christ. They do not accept that their Messiah would die and be resurrected prior to coming back and establishing the temple and the peaceful world. I'm certain you will get more intelligent discourse with me after I study Daniel more in depth. I appreciate that this forum has highlighted my need for more Bible knowledge -- bowing out now....
Is the god of Christ the god of Jews?
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However, Sherwin Nuland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherwin_B._Nuland
a surgeon, pointed out that:
"When the brain has been starved of oxygen for longer than the critical two to four minutes, its injury becomes irreversible."
There have been many NDEs during which the brain was starved of oxygen for a much longer time than the critical two to four minutes without the near-death experiencers (NDErs) suffering any noticeable brain damage.
Ok...'nuff said
How about none?
"113. His disciples said to him, "When will the kingdom come?"
"It will not come by watching for it. It will not be said, 'Look, here!' or 'Look, there!' Rather, the Father's kingdom is spread out upon the earth, and people don't see it."
Gospel of Thomas
:roflmao:
However, Sherwin Nuland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherwin_B._Nuland
a surgeon, pointed out that:
"When the brain has been starved of oxygen for longer than the critical two to four minutes, its injury becomes irreversible."
There have been many NDEs during which the brain was starved of oxygen for a much longer time than the critical two to four minutes without the near-death experiencers (NDErs) suffering any noticeable brain damage.
Ok...'nuff said
Brain is a very delicate organ. Not all people react similary to trauma, drugs, etc.
No oxygen was just a suggestion, I'm not a neuroscientist.
Oh yeah:
"Is the god of Christ the god of the Jews?"
Yes.
The same God that brought the Jews out of Egypt into the wilderness is the same God that set a pattern for our faith as Jesus Christ the Son in the wilderness after being tempted of Satan.
The Jews were chosen so that Jesus Christ can come from a line of people whose faith God has sanctified for their righteousness through the covenant of Moses keeping them undefiled.
When Jesus established His ministry He selected disciples (who later became confirmed apostles) to guard His knowledge and steward it to believers.
After His death He had fulfilled God's will as through the shedding of the blood of the spotless lamb God set the terms of the new covenant in Jesus Christ the mediator. A new covenant in which the tools have been sprinkled with the blood of Christ thus making Him our contact point for faith and thus sanctifying our faith so that we are made conformable into His very image.
He is the altar, He is the sacrifice, He is the door to eternal life. This is why He rose again.
The Jews expected the Messiah to arrive much later than He did as was written in their scriptures. Even the demons were confused as they asked Him if He had come to torment them before their time.
He broke the law of the Sabbath day because He IS the Sabbath. Our souls can now find rest in Him when we labor with His knowledge and His tools. God's Spirit makes our faith living through these and His work in the inner man is made effectual.
Now is the time that true belivers will worship Him in Spirit and in Truth by His terms and conditions. The covenant of Jesus Christ which was purchased with His blood.
"Is the god of Christ the god of the Jews?"
Yes.
The same God that brought the Jews out of Egypt into the wilderness is the same God that set a pattern for our faith as Jesus Christ the Son in the wilderness after being tempted of Satan.
The Jews were chosen so that Jesus Christ can come from a line of people whose faith God has sanctified for their righteousness through the covenant of Moses keeping them undefiled.
When Jesus established His ministry He selected disciples (who later became confirmed apostles) to guard His knowledge and steward it to believers.
After His death He had fulfilled God's will as through the shedding of the blood of the spotless lamb God set the terms of the new covenant in Jesus Christ the mediator. A new covenant in which the tools have been sprinkled with the blood of Christ thus making Him our contact point for faith and thus sanctifying our faith so that we are made conformable into His very image.
He is the altar, He is the sacrifice, He is the door to eternal life. This is why He rose again.
The Jews expected the Messiah to arrive much later than He did as was written in their scriptures. Even the demons were confused as they asked Him if He had come to torment them before their time.
He broke the law of the Sabbath day because He IS the Sabbath. Our souls can now find rest in Him when we labor with His knowledge and His tools. God's Spirit makes our faith living through these and His work in the inner man is made effectual.
Now is the time that true belivers will worship Him in Spirit and in Truth by His terms and conditions. The covenant of Jesus Christ which was purchased with His blood.
Warning: preaching will not be tolerated, it will be deleted or moved to the Religion forum.
info: Your other post with the answer to it has been moved to the following thread: http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=67177
info: Your other post with the answer to it has been moved to the following thread: http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=67177
cool
I wonder if the current god of the Christians is the god of Jesus.
My knowledge of the Bible strongly suggests that Jesus viewed himself as a reformer rather than the initiator of a new religion. If so, the god of Jesus is the god of the Jews, but not the god of Christianity.
In reading the Bible, try to decide what Jesus actually said & did as opposed to what others claimed he said or did. Much of current Cristian theology is due to Paul, not jesus.
In particular, note his actions with the so-called money lenders at the temple. It is well known that the priest, money lenders, and sellers of sacrificial animals were co-conspirators in a scam.
My view of Jesus was that he thought of himself as a Jew who was qualified to advocate reform of what he viewed as behavior and concepts contrary to the Torah. He also seemed to want to tone down some of the jarsh punishments by indicating that almost all were guilty of some infraction of the mosaic code.
BTW: I think that posters to threads relating to religion (and certain other subjects) should provide some background. For example, some might surmise from my above post that I was Jewish and/or that I favored Judaism over Christianity, which is not the case.
I am an atheist raised by Christian parents. I went to Sunday school & attended religious services in compliance with my parents' wishes. My early religious training did not convince me that religion was a valid belief system, resulting in my becoming an atheist before I was an adult.
My knowledge of the Bible strongly suggests that Jesus viewed himself as a reformer rather than the initiator of a new religion. If so, the god of Jesus is the god of the Jews, but not the god of Christianity.
In reading the Bible, try to decide what Jesus actually said & did as opposed to what others claimed he said or did. Much of current Cristian theology is due to Paul, not jesus.
In particular, note his actions with the so-called money lenders at the temple. It is well known that the priest, money lenders, and sellers of sacrificial animals were co-conspirators in a scam.
- The so-called money lenders were actually money changers. Tribute to the temple had to be in Shekels, the official currency of Judaism. Those who came from a distance for Passover & other events at the temple often had only foreign currency. The money changers exchanged the foreign money for official shekels at very unfavorable rates, with the approval of the priests, who got a cut of the action.
- The priests would disapprove of sacrificial animals due to alleged minor blemishes. This forced the owner to buy an approved animal from a priest-sponsered vendor, who overcharged and gave the priest a cut. The visitor to the temple often sold the "blemished" animal to the vendor (at an unfavorable price) rather than take it home, which might be a long distance from the temple. Such animals would subsequently be approved by the priest and sold at a handsome profit to another visitor. The priests were given a cut on all such transactions.
My view of Jesus was that he thought of himself as a Jew who was qualified to advocate reform of what he viewed as behavior and concepts contrary to the Torah. He also seemed to want to tone down some of the jarsh punishments by indicating that almost all were guilty of some infraction of the mosaic code.
BTW: I think that posters to threads relating to religion (and certain other subjects) should provide some background. For example, some might surmise from my above post that I was Jewish and/or that I favored Judaism over Christianity, which is not the case.
I am an atheist raised by Christian parents. I went to Sunday school & attended religious services in compliance with my parents' wishes. My early religious training did not convince me that religion was a valid belief system, resulting in my becoming an atheist before I was an adult.
Thaks for your input. Can you please elaborate on how the early christian or Jesus's idea of god differed from the nowaday christian belief?
p.s. If people can refer to their sources so that the information can be checked it doesn't matter what faith or non-faith is the poster.
p.s. If people can refer to their sources so that the information can be checked it doesn't matter what faith or non-faith is the poster.
Here's a summary for a little hypothesis I have invented and been pondering on for a while.
Is the god of Christ the god of Jews?
I won't spend a lot of time giving references in the hope that the people here know the background information.
I'm sorry if you don't, but I'm too tired to dig through books right now.
So, consider the things we think Jesus Christ said (irrelevant if that was his name, or one person), he spoke of love and unity, and the kingdom of god here on Earth, a kingdom that is available to anyone, if (s)he opens the heart to the great mystery (God) and sees.
He spoke of the unity of all things and the manifestation of the realization of that unity is love, and that everyone who achieves that realization becomes just like he was - one with the father, God.
Almost Buddhist-like, yes? But that's another story altogether.
Now the god of the Jews - Jahve.
First see - the god of Jews, not the god of the world, only Jews were his chosen people and the only promised land was the land of the sandy Jerusalem and the territories around. He also proclaimed to be the only god and had a lot of other characteristics that by christian and nowadays standarts were not very pleasant, not a god of love at all.
So here comes Jesus and teaches about the universal God that is everything among people that generally were Jews and who also had only one god, but that god was tribal. So I think it is not a far too leap to assume that the Jews mistook Jesus god for Jahve, because they knew that there was only one god, and the others were devils, and if Jesus was talking about a God, then he was referring to Jahve
The people who didn't make that association were prosecuted and gradually disappeared, they were called the gnostics.
So here's what I think happened - the Jews together with Roman government assimilated christianity and transformed it into Catholicism, a new faith, a combination of the old judaism and the new christianity.
The real christianity disappeared with the gnostics, and the main reason for it was that a god of love is not a very good god to organise state and people around, and not a very good support mechanism of the priestly caste.
This is all in very few words, I hope you get the general idea and can fill in the blank pieces (with your knowledge) which I leaped across to save time and my fingers, because this is enough starting material for a Masters degree paper.
yes
Jahveh is sounded yahweh for those of you who didnt realize.
Also, I would say no, unless you are a Mesianic Jew. They keep the Jewish traditions, but still believe in the resurrection of Christ.
Also, I would say no, unless you are a Mesianic Jew. They keep the Jewish traditions, but still believe in the resurrection of Christ.
There really isn't much of a difference, besides the misinterpritations of the Bible that the early Christians had, and that we may have now.
Avatar, I may not know your religion. But, you show a lot more respect than most people do these days.
Also, there was a lot of corruption of the popes. And the crusades, which was one area where the Christians/Catholics did make a HUGE mistake, which is a huge factor to what pushes people away from the Christian faith.
Avatar: You posted.
Blood sacrifice is an old testament concept, strongly suggesting that the early Christians (like Paul) had Old Testment beliefs which were later distorted into viewing Jesus as a sacrificial lamb.
If an important tenet of modern Christianity seems to be unsupported by the words & actions of Jesus, I would claim that Jesus was not a Christian. His god was not the god of the modern Christians. His god was the god of the Old Testament made a bit more forgiving and less militant.
The above and my previous posts, are derived from my early study of the Bible and based on some literature relating to the Bible. A study of the 4 gospels strongly indicate that the god believed in by Jesus was the Old Testament god, not the god of modern Christians.
Similarly, it seems to me that the theology of Jesus was essentially what he believed to be the intent of the Torah modified by some compassion for people. His theology seems more like Old Testament theology than modern Christian theology.
To the best of my knowledge, there are no sources of information about Jesus other than the Bible and the documents translated to produce it. The only other source I ever heard about is a short paragraph about Jesus by the historian Josephus, written at least 100 years after the death of Jesus. Even this reference material is considered suspect by some scholars who claim that it was rewritten many years after Josephus wrote it.
Furthermore, the Bible has very little reliable information about actions of & words spoken by Jesus other than the information in the 4 gospels. The 4 accounts are similar, but differ on various non trivial details. The differences indicate some level of historical inaccuracy.
Some Scholars believe that Mark was a contemporary of Jesus and an eye witness to much of what he wrote, suggesting that his gospel is more reliable than the other three. No credible scholars make similar claims about the other three gospel writers.
I have neither the linguistic knowledge nor the sources required to verify the accuracy of various English translations of the Bible. I assume that the translators were competent and minmally biased.
The information in the New Testament was not written down for at least 50 to 100 years after the events. Hence its accuracy is somewhat suspect.
It is not related to the concept of god, but consider the modern dogma of many (?most?) Christian faiths and the words actually attributed to Jesus in the 4 gospels. Jesus as a sacrificial lamb atoning for all of our sins is central to most Christian theology. This concept is from Paul and others who preached after Jesus was crucified. It is not derived from the words or actions atrributed to Jesus in the 4 gospels.
Blood sacrifice is an old testament concept, strongly suggesting that the early Christians (like Paul) had Old Testment beliefs which were later distorted into viewing Jesus as a sacrificial lamb.
If an important tenet of modern Christianity seems to be unsupported by the words & actions of Jesus, I would claim that Jesus was not a Christian. His god was not the god of the modern Christians. His god was the god of the Old Testament made a bit more forgiving and less militant.
The above and my previous posts, are derived from my early study of the Bible and based on some literature relating to the Bible. A study of the 4 gospels strongly indicate that the god believed in by Jesus was the Old Testament god, not the god of modern Christians.
Similarly, it seems to me that the theology of Jesus was essentially what he believed to be the intent of the Torah modified by some compassion for people. His theology seems more like Old Testament theology than modern Christian theology.
To the best of my knowledge, there are no sources of information about Jesus other than the Bible and the documents translated to produce it. The only other source I ever heard about is a short paragraph about Jesus by the historian Josephus, written at least 100 years after the death of Jesus. Even this reference material is considered suspect by some scholars who claim that it was rewritten many years after Josephus wrote it.
Furthermore, the Bible has very little reliable information about actions of & words spoken by Jesus other than the information in the 4 gospels. The 4 accounts are similar, but differ on various non trivial details. The differences indicate some level of historical inaccuracy.
Some Scholars believe that Mark was a contemporary of Jesus and an eye witness to much of what he wrote, suggesting that his gospel is more reliable than the other three. No credible scholars make similar claims about the other three gospel writers.
I have neither the linguistic knowledge nor the sources required to verify the accuracy of various English translations of the Bible. I assume that the translators were competent and minmally biased.
The information in the New Testament was not written down for at least 50 to 100 years after the events. Hence its accuracy is somewhat suspect.
OU.ORG
THE RAMBAM'S THIRTEEN PRINCIPLES
OF JEWISH FAITH
1. I believe with perfect faith that G-d is the Creator and Ruler of all things. He alone has made, does make, and will make all things.
2. I believe with perfect faith that G-d is One. There is no unity that is in any way like His. He alone is our G-d He was, He is, and He will be.
3. I believe with perfect faith that G-d does not have a body. physical concepts do not apply to Him. There is nothing whatsoever that resembles Him at all.
4. I believe with perfect faith that G-d is first and last.
5. I believe with perfect faith that it is only proper to pray to G-d. One may not pray to anyone or anything else.
6. I believe with perfect faith that all the words of the prophets are true.
7. I believe with perfect faith that the prophecy of Moses is absolutely true. He was the chief of all prophets, both before and after Him.
8. I believe with perfect faith that the entire Torah that we now have is that which was given to Moses.
9. I believe with perfect faith that this Torah will not be changed, and that there will never be another given by G-d.
10. I believe with perfect faith that G-d knows all of man's deeds and thoughts. It is thus written (Psalm 33:15), "He has molded every heart together, He understands what each one does."
11. I believe with perfect faith tha G-d rewards those who keep His commandments, and punishes those who transgress Him.
12. I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah. How long it takes, I will await His coming every day.
13. I believe with perfect faith that the dead will be brought back to life when G-d wills it to happen.
THE RAMBAM'S THIRTEEN PRINCIPLES
OF JEWISH FAITH
1. I believe with perfect faith that G-d is the Creator and Ruler of all things. He alone has made, does make, and will make all things.
2. I believe with perfect faith that G-d is One. There is no unity that is in any way like His. He alone is our G-d He was, He is, and He will be.
3. I believe with perfect faith that G-d does not have a body. physical concepts do not apply to Him. There is nothing whatsoever that resembles Him at all.
4. I believe with perfect faith that G-d is first and last.
5. I believe with perfect faith that it is only proper to pray to G-d. One may not pray to anyone or anything else.
6. I believe with perfect faith that all the words of the prophets are true.
7. I believe with perfect faith that the prophecy of Moses is absolutely true. He was the chief of all prophets, both before and after Him.
8. I believe with perfect faith that the entire Torah that we now have is that which was given to Moses.
9. I believe with perfect faith that this Torah will not be changed, and that there will never be another given by G-d.
10. I believe with perfect faith that G-d knows all of man's deeds and thoughts. It is thus written (Psalm 33:15), "He has molded every heart together, He understands what each one does."
11. I believe with perfect faith tha G-d rewards those who keep His commandments, and punishes those who transgress Him.
12. I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah. How long it takes, I will await His coming every day.
13. I believe with perfect faith that the dead will be brought back to life when G-d wills it to happen.
Here's a summary for a little hypothesis I have invented and been pondering on for a while.
Is the god of Christ the god of Jews?
I won't spend a lot of time giving references in the hope that the people here know the background information.
I'm sorry if you don't, but I'm too tired to dig through books right now.
So, consider the things we think Jesus Christ said (irrelevant if that was his name, or one person), he spoke of love and unity, and the kingdom of god here on Earth, a kingdom that is available to anyone, if (s)he opens the heart to the great mystery (God) and sees.
He spoke of the unity of all things and the manifestation of the realization of that unity is love, and that everyone who achieves that realization becomes just like he was - one with the father, God.
Almost Buddhist-like, yes? But that's another story altogether.
Now the god of the Jews - Jahve.
First see - the god of Jews, not the god of the world, only Jews were his chosen people and the only promised land was the land of the sandy Jerusalem and the territories around. He also proclaimed to be the only god and had a lot of other characteristics that by christian and nowadays standarts were not very pleasant, not a god of love at all.
So here comes Jesus and teaches about the universal God that is everything among people that generally were Jews and who also had only one god, but that god was tribal. So I think it is not a far too leap to assume that the Jews mistook Jesus god for Jahve, because they knew that there was only one god, and the others were devils, and if Jesus was talking about a God, then he was referring to Jahve
The people who didn't make that association were prosecuted and gradually disappeared, they were called the gnostics.
So here's what I think happened - the Jews together with Roman government assimilated christianity and transformed it into Catholicism, a new faith, a combination of the old judaism and the new christianity.
The real christianity disappeared with the gnostics, and the main reason for it was that a god of love is not a very good god to organise state and people around, and not a very good support mechanism of the priestly caste.
This is all in very few words, I hope you get the general idea and can fill in the blank pieces (with your knowledge) which I leaped across to save time and my fingers, because this is enough starting material for a Masters degree paper.
Acttually it is the other way around. The G-d of the Jews is the G-d of the Christians since Christianity came from Judaism.
Since God is whatever you think it is, the Gods are different. Jews don't think God is that involved in our personal lives and there's no heaven or hell.