The Inerrant Bible?

[§outh§tar]

This is mainly directed at Christians, to shake up and measure faith after doing a little extra reading of my own:

Romans 1
3concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh,

Now according to this text, Jesus Christ would have had to be born by the sperm of Joseph for this prophecy to be fulfilled. Contrarily, Jesus was born by a miraculous event. If the seed of David never entered Mary, I ask, how is this prophecy at all fulfilled?

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Romans 3
22even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference;

Isaiah 53:5
But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed.


Now according to Isaiah, Jesus Christ died for our sins, PERIOD. As that is the case, what exactly is the point of having to believe to be saved if your sins are already paid for?

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Romans 7
1 Or do you not know, brethren (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives? 2For the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives. But if the husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband. 3So then if, while her husband lives, she marries another man, she will be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from that law, so that she is no adulteress, though she has married another man. 4Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another--to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God. 5For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death. 6But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.

There is simply no human being on earth who understands what the writer is going on about here Why is there such ambiguity, for a writer imbued with the Holy Spirit?

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Matthew 13
24 "But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; 25the stars of heaven will fall, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. 26Then they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory. 27And then He will send His angels, and gather together His elect from the four winds, from the farthest part of earth to the farthest part of heaven.

The problem with this verse is that it is all too consistent with a flat earth mentality. For the stars in heaven to fall would be a very bad thing for one, but there is a worse problem in saying He will come in the clouds. The mentality of that day, as it still is, is that heaven is up. Astronomy has shown that there are no pearly gates up there. The part about 'four winds' is also consistent with the 'four corners of the earth' mentality in Revelations, also reflective of a flat-earth ideology.

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Mark 13
30Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place.

Obviously this prophecy never happened, but keep this in mind as we take a look at the next verse:

32 "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

Now there are two main things wrong with this declaration. Firstly, how can God know, but not know simultaneously? As we know from Colossians 2:9, in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and therefore arguments that say that His human part did not know, but that His Divine self knew are incorrect. The second flaw here is that in the earlier verse (30), He claims to know WHEN He will be coming, but then contradicts by saying that "no one knows".

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Matthew 12:40
For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

No need to take the calculator out, this obviously means that He was resurrected on the FOURTH day and not the 3rd, as the Gospels claim.



Well, I expect some attempts will be made to explain these, and I patiently await them.

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http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/paul_carlson/nt_contradictions.html

 

[path]

What am I seeing here!? Southstar quoting from infidels.org
Now I can start to believe that judgement day is approaching

 

[§outh§tar]

Eh.. fortunately or unfortunately.


I have reason to believe Christianity is not what I once believed..

 

[786]

Well you are asking almost the same things that I tried to show were contradictions. You tried to give me the answers, but I refusd them. Then why are you asking the same questions which you tried to answers for?

For examle the prophesy of Jesus being in the grave like Jonas in the whale. The "Son" knowing and not knowing at the same time. Another one is that Jesus would return and the generations would not pass away.

You sure surprised me, of asking these questions that I asked.

I guess you are starting to see the confusion of the Bible. Well I hope you see the truth soon.

But anyways good questions. I shall be waiting for the answers aswell, because these are also my questions to the Christians.

Peace be unto you

 

[glaucon]

I'm just going to play Devil's Advocate here:

"Romans 1
3concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh," (damn quoty thingy won't work)

Now according to this text, Jesus Christ would have had to be born by the sperm of Joseph for this prophecy to be fulfilled. Contrarily, Jesus was born by a miraculous event. If the seed of David never entered Mary, I ask, how is this prophecy at all fulfilled?

(hmm, worked for this one...)

Anyways.... you're simply making the bigggest mistake most rabid Christians do: interpreting way too literally.
That passage from Romans simply means that Christ descended from the line of David.
Oh, and it is not a prophecy; no indication of that in the line.
If more people learned how to 'read between the lines', taking into consideration oral tradition, written tradition, transliteration and translation, the whole world would be a lot better off. Wars have been, and are, fought over such trivial things as the interpretation of a single word. lol. Gotta love religious freaks.

 

[786]

I'm just going to play Devil's Advocate here:

"Romans 1
3concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh," (damn quoty thingy won't work)

(hmm, worked for this one...)

Anyways.... you're simply making the bigggest mistake most rabid Christians do: interpreting way too literally.
That passage from Romans simply means that Christ descended from the line of David.
Oh, and it is not a prophecy; no indication of that in the line.
If more people learned how to 'read between the lines', taking into consideration oral tradition, written tradition, transliteration and translation, the whole world would be a lot better off. Wars have been, and are, fought over such trivial things as the interpretation of a single word. lol. Gotta love religious freaks.

My friend the Bible says that God is not the author of confusion.

First of all how do you know to read something literally or not? Did Jesus say it?

Because what I have noticed is that you take Jesus teaching and look at it in the context of Paul's teachings, who I think is the destroyer of the true Bible. If you were actualy acting like Christians you must take Paul's teachings and see if they correspond to Jesus's teachings. For example Jesus lived by the law, but Paul said that the law was a curse which through Jesus's death has been taken away. First of all did Jesus EVER say that the law is a curse?

Peace be unto you

 

[glaucon]

Blah, blah, blah...
Look.. Jesus was only concerned with one thing: love.
It's that simple.

 

[§outh§tar]

I'm just going to play Devil's Advocate here:

"Romans 1
3concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh," (damn quoty thingy won't work)

(hmm, worked for this one...)

Anyways.... you're simply making the bigggest mistake most rabid Christians do: interpreting way too literally.
That passage from Romans simply means that Christ descended from the line of David.
Oh, and it is not a prophecy; no indication of that in the line.
If more people learned how to 'read between the lines', taking into consideration oral tradition, written tradition, transliteration and translation, the whole world would be a lot better off. Wars have been, and are, fought over such trivial things as the interpretation of a single word. lol. Gotta love religious freaks.

Yes, but I am saying He could NOT have descended from David if He was never the product of Joseph and Mary. He was the product of God and Mary and therefore that leaves out the chance of being Joseph's offspring.

 

[786]

Blah, blah, blah...
Look.. Jesus was only concerned with one thing: love.
It's that simple.

LOL. Is it that hard for you to defend your Religion. I'm not even asking a tuff question. It is a simple one.

Did Jesus EVER say that the law was a curse?

Peace be unto you

 

[duendy]

alright, i feel you are trying to work all this out on a superficial level--LITERALLY. i mean that that mytholgy is written in levels of meanings, using various forms of literary devices, transliterations, using root -words for stories and god names, word play, puns, etc etc

many pagans knew this, about mythology, but the Christian myth as formulated by Paul and Augstine demans we believ it as historical. thus we 'worry' about whose 'seed' was which waht where.

but deeply, mythic motifs are relly for pointing to a direct experience.....for example, the pagan mythic motif of the 'Son'....the Son in pre-patriarchal mythology is the ever living ever dying ever regenerating god. now this god has many associations, such as Sun--the 'Divine child' (ie., it 'dies' and is 'reborn' ), Nature/seasons/vegetation, The hallucinogenic totem plant, of the Mother Earth, who dies back, and is reborn.....

what the christian myth did/does is demonize the 'below the Earth' which becomes 'Hell' of the 'Devil'.......now the god is the ever LIVING. he has gotten rid of ever dying ever regenerating. that now is beneath him as he ascends to his 'Father'....so, not this myth anit speaking to us. it is screwin us up. making us feel not-right....guilty, and stuck on getting TO a goal, instead of understanding BEING god. are you with me?

 

[duendy]

...let me xpand on what i mean by 'being god'
When earth religious people eat the 'god'...for example, Dionysos--who was a god-man, they eat and become 'possessed'-literally "enthusiastic"...they in affect become god. this means that in their state their SENSe of themselves expands, and there is orgiastic expression, ecstasy, dancing, sexuality, exploration, song etc. Direct experience

what the Pauline myth does is put-down all that, especially sex. For now 'god' is 'God'...'he' is ascended. and we now must behave, have 'faith' (which means no 'evil' drugs, or hanky-panky), so that we may ascend also. in TIME. no more direct experience. not we are caught in HISTORICAL time

 

[duendy]

sorry bout typos.. "NOW we are caught in historical time" it should read......"onward christian soldiers, marching as to warrrr!"

 

[§outh§tar]

Quite curious that Paul is the only one in the NT that represses "hanky-panky"..

In fact, even more curiously, he is the only one who keeps revisiting the subject...

Almost as if.. an inadequacy..

 

[786]

Hey duendy, are you a Christian? Just curious.

Peace be unto you

 

[Tiassa]

(Insert Title Here)

A note at the outset:

This is an interesting topic, to say the least. I shall restrict myself at this point to the passage from Romans 7; interestingly, the only mention of the passage I've found at the link offered in the topic post is rather quite silly and requires no direct response except to say that if such an issue troubles the author of that document, it's his own damn problem.

In the meantime, a more substantial examination:

There is simply no human being on earth who understands what the writer is going on about here

I can't possibly believe that. I mean, I don't see it as particularly difficult, and I can't possibly be that much smarter than everyone else. It may, in the end, be something so simple as assignation of context or an overstatement of the passage's value in the larger scheme of the Bible.

Let's start with Jesus Christ:

"Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man's foes will be those of his own household. He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it.

"He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me. He who receives a prophet because he is a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward, and he who receives a righteous man because he is a righteous man shall receive a righteous man's reward. And whoever gives to one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he shall not lose his reward."

(Matthew 10.34-ff, RSV)

In Romans, Paul writes in sequence of unbelief (1.18-ff), the impartiality of God (2.1-16), the guilt of the world (3.1-20), justification by Faith (3.21-4.25), the results of justification (ch. 5), and this is where we necessarily focus on the next stage of the progression.

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For he who has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. For we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions.

(Romans 6.1-12, RSV)

Romans 6 deals with the idea that the faithful are "dead to sin" and "alive to God". This leads nicely (or not) to the metaphor of Romans 7:

Do you not know, brethren -- for I am speaking to those who know the law -- that the law is binding on a person only during his life? Thus a married woman is bound by law to her husband as long as he lives; but if her husband dies she is discharged from the law concerning the husband. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress. Likewise, my brethren, you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God. While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.

(Romans 7.1-6, RSV)

It seems Paul is trying to put it simply for the congregation in Rome: redemption--that is, new life--in Christ transcends the law, just as a wife transcends the law of her dead husband. Note 7.4: "Likewise, my brethren, you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God."

Thus, being dead to sin (see Romans 6, above) and born anew in Christ, the law of the previous life has no authority.

Comparatively speaking, the "prior marriage" is cancelled by death.

This idea reflects somewhat Jesus' words in Matthew 10, and lends some insight to Paul's notion of justification by faith: The law of faith usurps the law of old (Romans 3.31); faith cannot show itself in a continuance of sinful works (6.1-2), which notion coincides neatly with one of the clearest indicators of faith and redemption the Lord ever gave:

"When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will place the sheep at his right hand, but the goats at the left. Then the King will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.' Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?' And the King will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.' Then he will say to those at his left hand, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' Then they also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see thee hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to thee?' Then he will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.' And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."

(Matthew 25.31-ff, RSV)

Paul exploits a familial metaphor just as Jesus did in Matthew 10 in order to reinforce the degree of separation on which so much value is placed. Jesus advises that following His mission is more important than family; Paul asserts the law of a new family. What comes of this in practical terms is an overriding of blood allegiances: "I cannot betray my brother," one might say. Or, "I must avenge my father."

But no, one must betray their brother if it is the right thing to do according to Christ's mission. One should forgive the wrong against the father, and offer up the other cheek.

Merely professing belief in Jesus Christ is insufficient. Merely pandering and "being nice" is insufficient. There is an asserted relationship between the one and the other that seems of the utmost. Jesus Christ instructed: "Follow me!" (John 21.22) Doing so completely separate from claiming to do so; Jesus set the standard in the Gospels; Paul is merely attempting to simplify the explanation of that standard. Strange that it should take so many words?

Well, Homer Simpson once said, "I kicked a giant mouse in the butt! Do I have to draw you a diagram?" (2F01)

And Paul? Well, at least he didn't have to draw diagrams. Or, if he did, they're not particularly well-known. But sometimes many words are required to explain simple ideas; it's human nature to demand things be that way.

And the congregations variously needed some help filling in this or that detail.

Understanding the passage is merely an issue of keeping it in its proper context.
___________________

• The Bible, Revised Standard Version. See http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/rsv.browse.html
• SNPP Episode Guide. "2F01 - Itchy and Scratchy Land." See http://www.snpp.com/episodes/2F01.html

 

[§outh§tar]

Yes, actually tiassa, I was referring to the wordy nature of the passage. Now considering this is a man who was "called to be an apostle", inspired of the Holy Ghost, it is simply curious that he would travel from A to Z just to get to B. I did understand what he was saying ultimately.

 

[glaucon]

Yes, but I am saying He could NOT have descended from David if He was never the product of Joseph and Mary. He was the product of God and Mary and therefore that leaves out the chance of being Joseph's offspring.

'Descended', does not necessarily mean 'born from'. ie: you are descended from your great great grandmother. That doesn't mean she was one of your parents.

 

[glaucon]

LOL. Is it that hard for you to defend your Religion. I'm not even asking a tuff question. It is a simple one.

Did Jesus EVER say that the law was a curse?

Peace be unto you

First, I never said Christianity was MY religion. (It's not)
Second, did Jesus EVER say anything? Which is exactly my point: you, nor anyone else alive, does NOT know what, if anything, this man said.
The existence of a record, does not imply the veracity of the supposed speaker.

 

[§outh§tar]

'Descended', does not necessarily mean 'born from'. ie: you are descended from your great great grandmother. That doesn't mean she was one of your parents.

I don't see how it could be any clearer:

The apostle Paul says that Jesus "was born of the seed of David" (Romans 1:3). Here the word "seed" is literally in the Greek "sperma." This same Greek word is translated in other verses as "descendant(s)" or "offspring." The point is that the Messiah had to be a physical descendant of King David through the male line. That Jesus had to be a physical descendant of David means that even if Joseph had legally adopted Jesus (as some apologists have suggested), Jesus would still not qualify as Messiah if he had been born of a virgin - seed from the line of David was required.

- From the site up top.

 

[okinrus]

Ignatius and Iraneus tell us that Mary is of the line of David, and Ignatius uses very similar language as this.