So Many Misconceptions—Where Even to Begin?

You started this thread because of me, so I feel that I should at least reply to something to get it started. I definitely stand by the things I said, but I can’t address them all at once because that would make an unwieldy discussion (I can definitely understand how you must feel with me sometimes, Tom!) But I will try to take 2 points first, and address them substantively.

1. First, a point of agreement:

“Jesus was not literally telling people to hate their parents. What kind of fool would be taken in by that canard?”

I agree! I even pointed this out. The takeaway from this particular verse is definitely not that the Bible is full of contradictions, but that you should be very careful when using the Bible to support *any* kind of statement, because who knows what the author really meant and if it’s applicable to the situation you are applying it. I think that *is* a valuable takeaway, and just want to make that point. It takes care of a lot of preaching which I think you and I would both disagree with — preaching that understands something to be literal, even though it may have almost no support in fact, and sometimes it’s hard to tell one way or the other. Biblical analysis is often closer to literary analysis than scientific reasoning.

2. Bill T brought up the way he must feel about atheists: taking verses out of context to support some point, and ignoring strong evidence that contradicts their point. I agree there are definitely atheists who do this, and I don’t have much respect for their arguments. They frustrate me as they do you, Bill. But I would like to say that in my experience, it is the people who presuppose a doctrine (such as Christian doctrines) that do these things very frequently in my experience. They mean well, but they merely parrot what others say.

I said:

I would say that I have usually seen verses taken out of context to support presuppositional beliefs much more frequently.

Tom responds:

You think very, very lightly of the hundreds of years of Christian polemic, through which teachings have been tested, disputed, and confirmed. The history of Christianity itself would not have permitted what you’re describing here.

I’m not entirely sure what you mean here, Tom. Let me illustrate my point first with a very obvious example:

The gospel of Matthew was written anonymously. Its author was describing the story of Jesus’ birth, and apparently attempting to relate it to Old Testament prophecy. In Matthew 2:13, he writes:

13. When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”

14. So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt,

15. where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

This author’s gospel is in the Bible. Notice what this author did: he claimed that the story he just told of Jesus’ childhood fulfills the prophecy of Hosea the prophet, canonized in the TaNaKh: “out of Egypt I called my son”. But let’s read the immediate context of this short prophecy, claimed by the writer to apply to Jesus:

Hosea 11

1. When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.

2. But the more I called Israel, the further they went from me. They sacrificed to the Baals and they burned incense to images.

Gee. We have the usual Jewish ideas of Israel not following God’s law, and having idol worship, and so forth. Yes, it is being spoken by Hosea, a prophet. But A) It is about Israel, B) The more God calls Israel, the further they go away from him — definitely not what Christians would say about Jesus, and C) This is not even a prophecy!

There is no other place in the entire TaNakh that the writer of Matthew could have been referring to. All the prophets have already been canonized in the TaNaKh for 300 or even 400 years, and well known to the audience this writer was writing to. There is no one else he could have had in mind. This is the clearest example I can think of, where an author *who made it into the Bible* engages in this sort of taking verses out of context.

I would bring many more examples lest you think this is an isolated incident. But let me limit myself to just mentioning one of the most prominent examples: Isaiah 53. Christians love to claim the song of the suffering servant as Isaiah prophesying about Jesus’ coming. I’ve seen billboards with Isaiah 53. I have seen it used to try to convert Jews to Christianity and prove to them that only Jesus could have fulfilled it. Yes, taken out of context it seems quite powerful. But in context, it is completely not about Jesus at all, and moreover (for those Christians who say it’s ALSO about Jesus) it has discrepancies with his actual life and ministry. I won’t say more about this, but you can read the actual original Hebrew and original analysis, line by line, and in context, here:

http://www.aish.com/sp/ph/Isaiah_53_The_Suffering_Servant.html

This is a tour de force. You cannot come away from this thinking the Catholic Church wasn’t overreaching. In fact, this is of an order different from my first example — for not even Paul nor any NT writer ever claimed that Jesus’ life and ministry and death on the cross ever fulfilled Isaiah 53. This was a later Christian invention, that made a presupposition — and then, decided to take verses out of context and twist them to support the presupposition. If you don’t believe me, read the link.

Just popping in to add my two cents, in response to the last few paragraphs of Greg’s comment #1 about Isaiah 53. Anyone who reads Greg’s link and comes away overwhelmed by the “tour de force” identifying the Suffering Servant as the Jewish people ought to read this document, which rigorously argues for a messianic interpretation, without presupposing such an interpretation:

http://images.acswebnetworks.com/1/934/ChristintheOTa.pdf

It is a scholarly article (published as a book chapter), and the author has a PhD in Hebrew from Oxford (and happens to be my pastor). I’m not trying to argue from authority here; I’m just trying to blunt the psychological force of Greg’s unfounded assertions about Isaiah 53.

So read Greg’s link, then read my link, and judge for yourself. But pay no attention to the bluster.

Wow, I just noticed this statement too:

In fact, this is of an order different from my first example — for not even Paul nor any NT writer ever claimed that Jesus’ life and ministry and death on the cross ever fulfilled Isaiah 53

Now, come on, Greg. This is ridiculous.

How about these:
“This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: ‘He took up our infirmities and carried our diseases.'” – Matt. 8:17

“It is written: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors’; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment.” – Luke 22:37

“This was to fulfill the word of Isaiah the prophet: ‘Lord, who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?'” – John 12:38

“The eunuch was reading this passage of Scripture:’He was led like a sheep to the slaughter and as a lamb before the shearer is silent, so he did not open his mouth. In his humiliation he was deprived of justice. Who can speak of his descendants? For his life was taken from the earth.’ The eunuch asked Philip, ‘Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?’ Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.” – Acts 8:32-35

“To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. “He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.” When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. For you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.” – 1 Pet. 2:24-25

Now I am not even asking what the correct interpretation of Isaiah 53 is. I’m just pointing out that you said “not even Paul nor any NT writer ever claimed that Jesus’ life and ministry and death on the cross ever fulfilled Isaiah 53.” Shouldn’t mistakes like this at least make you reconsider your grasp of New Testament theology?

-Neil

I have read all your responses so far, and there’s a lot to respond to, so I will try to do it in a coherent manner.

Neil:

Anyway, as to your specific questions, like Tom, it’s hard to know where to begin. In all honesty, your comments include quite a few unquestionable errors, and I am not saying this as a Christian but just as a person who has studied some of these issues. Let me just give one example. You say:

“Jesus is God” is one such doctrine — you will not find 100% clear support for it anywhere in the Bible, not even Paul said this.

Let’s take it one at a time. I will discuss this one with you, but first, I have focused on elucidating points 1) and 2), which I numbered. You haven’t addressed 1, but you have addressed a part of 2:

Wow, I just noticed this statement too:

In fact, this is of an order different from my first example — for not even Paul nor any NT writer ever claimed that Jesus’ life and ministry and death on the cross ever fulfilled Isaiah 53

Now, come on, Greg. This is ridiculous.

How about these:
…

Yes! You have amply convinced me on this point. I take back what I said about the NT writers. I accidentally paraphrased one of the points of the Aish article instead of stating it correctly. Let me restate: In the days of Jesus, nobody ever understood Isaiah 53 to be predicting the death of the Messiah. Not in the days of the NT writers. This is indeed a mistake on my part. Also, I realize that even this claim might be contentious to you, and it is technically unprovable by me, so I will withdraw it, because it has no bearing on point #2: that people who want to support a certain interpretation take verses out of context, when *in* context, they were meant totally differently.

By the way, what you did there — bringing evidence to change my mind — is what it’s all about. This is what I am talking about. No personal attacks, and no equivocating. Right there, bam. You said this, well what about that! And you showed me. Very good. Notice my response — I acknowledged I was wrong, explained why I thought what I thought, and re-evaluated my position. That is what I want to be happening in both directions. Many Christians should also consider the evidence others bring.

Now would you like to address the other parts of point 2? I gave two examples: one clear and one famous.

Charlie: In terms of the true meaning of the section, it speaks only of the people of Israel, which the prophets regularly call “Israel My servant” or “Jacob my servant.”

I will summarize some of the evidence from the original Hebrew text and invite you to interpret how it relates to Jesus:

1) Isaiah has four “Servant Songs”, and this is one of them. In the other ones, he specifically identifies the Suffering Servant as Israel at least 9 times, and no one else.

Isaiah 44:1, 44:2, 44:8, 44:21, 45:4, 48:20 49:3

2) Isaiah 53 verse 8 says, “… who could have imagined such a *generation* ? For he was removed from Eretz HaChaim, because of my people *THEY* were afflicted”.

In the original Hebrew, They is always plural. How do you interpret “they” to apply to Jesus?

Isn’t it clear that “they” refers to a multitude of people? Israel is often referred to both as a nation and as a single person, by God. Compare this to Deuteronomy 28.

3) Isaiah 53 verse 10 says that if the Suffering Servant *would acknowledge guilt*, then he would see offspring and live long days, and God’s purpose would succeed in his hand. What does this match?

A) The verses found throughout the Bible, for example Deuteronomy 30:

“1 When all these blessings and curses I have set before you come on you and you take them to heart wherever the LORD your God disperses you among the nations, 2 and when you and your children return to the LORD your God and obey him with all your heart and with all your soul according to everything I command you today, 3 then the LORD your God will restore your fortunes[a] and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where he scattered you.”

B) The Christian idea of the guiltless Jesus, who never needed to acknowledge any guilt and who has eternal life with his father in heaven (rather than offspring and long days).

4) Isaiah 53 verse 3 says: “he was despised and rejected of men, a man of pains and accustomed to sickness.”

The above verses already showed that we are talking about a nation. But let’s try again. Maybe this matches Jesus?

Matthew describes Jesus’ activities in Galilee as very successful:

23 Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. 24 News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed; and he healed them. 25 Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis,[g] Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed him.

Mark also describes his activities there as “great success”, maybe a little too great even:

7 Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the sea, and a great crowd followed, from Galilee and Judea 8 and Jerusalem and Idumea and from beyond the Jordan and from around Tyre and Sidon. When the great crowd heard all that he was doing, they came to him. 9 And he told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, lest they crush him,

Luke 4:14 specifically says Jesus was famous and welcomed in Galilee:

14And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee: and there went out a fame of him through all the region round about.

15And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all.

And not just in Galilee, but in all the country around there:

37And the fame of him went out into every place of the country round about.

Luke the historian also says of Jesus:

52 And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.

How do you square this with “despised and rejected of men, a man of pains and accustomed to sickness”? Why would he be accustomed to it?

Let’s start with just these 4. Don’t they show clearly that the passage is about the nation Israel, and fulfills the theme of Deuteronomy 28, Deuteronomy 29, and Deuteronomy 30? You don’t think it’s about Israel?

However:
You are correct that some rabbis in the Aggadah (tales) interpret Isaiah 53 as referring to the Messiah. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggadah) The Messiah in Jewish mystical thinking is the embodiment of all the Jewish souls who ever lived. However, they never said he would be killed at the hands of his enemies. You will find in NO book of the Jews, neither in the Talmud nor the Midrash, that the messiah, the descendant of David, would be killed or would be turned over to his enemies or would be buried among the wicked. In fact, even Jesus was himself not buried.

However, the Messiah *is* supposed to rebuild the physical temple, gather all the Jews in the physical land of Israel (Ezekiel 37:26-28) (Isaiah 43:5-6), and usher in an era of world peace without end (Isaiah 2:4). Did Jesus do these things? Once the Messiah (annointed king of Israel) comes, he will fulfill all four things. None of the prophecies ever say the messiah would be killed. Jesus preached a kingdom of heaven in the time of his listeners. But after his death, the nation of Israel was scattered from their land instead of gathered into it, and his very followers the Christians persecuted them for generations, and did not usher in an era of world peace by any means. So in what way do the Messianic prophecies refer to Jesus? It seems to me that a reader would have to be pretty biased to claim that despite all the above evidence, the prophecies definitely refer to Jesus.

My original point was that they were quoted out of context and/or mistranslated. But above you have some clear reasons why one would consider Isaiah 53 be about a nation. What do you have to say to that?

Bill R, thanks for posting that article. It makes some interesting points, but I am not sure it argues that this prophecy is about Jesus.

First, it affirms that this is one of four servant songs. And the other servant songs all identify the servant as Israel, specifically and by name. Can you explain why, if this is about Jesus?

one interesting reaction I had when Hugenberger said:

With reference to the fourth servant song, where the servant suffers,
dies, and yet apparently lives (53:10f.),

I looked up 53:10 in a Christian Bible (KJV) and indeed it says:

10 Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
and though the LORD makes[a] his life an offering for sin,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.

But in the original Hebrew, we find:
יהוָה חָפֵץ דַּכְּאוֹ הֶחֱלִי אִם תָּשִׂים אָשָׁם נַפְשׁוֹ יִרְאֶה זֶרַע יַאֲרִיךְ יָמִים וְחֵפֶץ יְהוָה בְּיָדוֹ יִצְלָח

this translates as: “if his soul will make itself atonement”

See for yourself in any authentic Jewish translation of the Tanakh. Don’t like aish? here’s Chabad.org: http://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/15984 .

Let me make a couple comments. First of all if you want to learn Indian Vedas – do you travel to Argentina and ask the local native tribes people? If you want to learn about the intricate details of the empire state building – do you travel to Romania and ask the local carpenters there? No. If you have a question about the vedas you travel to India and ask their sages. If you want to know the intricate details about the empire state building you ask the architect who designed it. The Torah is no different. The Torah is not a plain text left for personal interpretation. It comes with a vast oral tradition and a very specific method of interpretation and if you want the verses interpreted correctly you go to the only people who hold the key to this puzzle and that is the Jews and their sages. It is their text. It was given to them and they are the only who are qualified to interpret it. Its as simple as that.

Fishermen and a former pharisee are not qualified to interpret it for the Jews. God says right in Deuteronomy — follow your Sanhedrin, judges and council of sages on matters, and veer not the left nor to the right. So if you were a Jew living in the year 30 AD and some guys started interpreting the Torah for you contrary to what the sages said, you aren’t supposed to abandon everything and follow them. Deuteronomy 13:4-5

“It is the LORD your God you must follow, and him you must revere. Keep his commands and obey him; serve him and hold fast to him. 5 That prophet or dreamer must be put to death for inciting rebellion against the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt and redeemed you from the land of slavery. That prophet or dreamer tried to turn you from the way the LORD your God commanded you to follow. You must purge the evil from among you.”

It can’t get any clearer than that. God Himself is saying it.

On Jesus being God or being part of a Trinity or anything of this nature. This is a knife to the heart of Judaism. This cuts to the very core. Over and over again the Jews are warned to not commit one particular transgression – a transgression thats worse than all the other transgressions – and that of course is to not worship anything, anyone, any form any semblance – nothing but God alone. God that has no form, no parts, to be honest no physical description at all. And here comes Christianity and wants to convince the Jews that Jesus is God or in any way Divine. Like I said this cuts to the core of Judaism and that is why they have never accepted it for 2000 years. Jews are left with only one possibility – perhaps Jesus was the messiah.

On Jesus being the messiah. The simple fact of the matter is that Jews have been waiting for a messiah since the Exodus from Egypt. Nobody in the world is more qualified to spot the messiah than the Jews. They are the ultimate experts on the topic. And there’s nothing more that they want in life than to have this messiah come already. So if thats the case why do they so bluntly deny Jesus? After all he was a jew and reportedly from the house of David. Seems to fit the criteria so far. Well not exactly. Once again we have to resort to the oral tradition because Judaism is the oral tradition. And the tradition says that messiah is suppose to 1) build the 3rd temple. 2) gather all the Jews in Israel. 3) Launch an era of world peace and unprecedented perfection which will be obvious to all. Fact of the matter is Jesus didnt do any of these things. And thats really the only reason the Jews dont accept him as messiah. He didnt get the job done. But what about a second coming? As a matter of fact the oral tradition tells us that the messiah can come from the dead so technically this still gives Jesus a shot. Well there’s just one problem – the oral tradition tells us the messiah cannot be killed. He can die naturally but he cannot be killed. If he is killed he cannot be messiah. Well that takes care of that… Just to end on an optimistic note the Jews do have a deadline by which the messiah must come and that deadline is now just 230 years away. Also many Jews believe that the messiah will come within the next 30 or so years and if that happens then the truth will be obvious to all!

Isaiah 53:8

lamo in verse 8 … provide[s] a clue that the singular servant is actually a nation….

What’s wrong with these interpretations? Plenty! First, the phrase nega’ lamo, as rightly understood by the NJPSV, most likely means that the servant receives a stroke for them – in other words, for those for whom he is suffering. Second, Isaiah elsewhere uses lamo to mean “to it”, not “to them,” (in 44:15).

page 66

Regarding all attempts to defend the Christian interpretation of Isaiah 53:

Okay let’s keep this clean. Can anyone address my comment 9, numbered arguments 1 – 4?

Also, do you agree that Jesus did not gather all the Jews in Israel, rebuild the physical 3rd temple, and usher in a neverending era of world peace? I spoke of this also in chapter 9.

And finally, #3.
Yes, B.
It is Jesus. A guiltless, perfect offering poured out for our sins. The free gift of propitiation to be accepted with unending gratitude.

Did Jesus have offspring?
The idiom “see seed” is found only one time in the Tanakh; in Isaiah 53.
And zera can be used metaphorically in the Hebrew Bible, as it is in other places in Isaiah. A standard Hebrew lexicon says of “seed” that it is “marked by moral quality – persons of such a quality”.
page 84 of Michael Brown.

This servant is obedient and righteous, setting captives free, and according to the Targum, this servant is none other than the Messiah. This is confirmed by Rabbi David Kimchi.

Charlie: as I told you, in the aggadah, some rabbis consider this to be the Messiah, but once again, Christians attempt to seize on this while ignoring the fact that the same Targum indicates Messiah has not yet come.

There was a precedent already, where the great Rabbi Moshe Ben Nachman (Nachmanides) was challenged by a Christian friar to debate in front of the King. These very arguments were already covered. The famous result is that the rabbi completely won, and then was exiled as a result, and jewish villages were burned. But the topic of the debate was, “did the Messiah come already?”

http://israel613.com/books/RAMBAN_DIPUTE_E.pdf

Charlie: as I told you, in the aggadah, some rabbis consider this to be the Messiah, but once again, Christians attempt to seize on this while ignoring the fact that the same Targum indicates Messiah has not yet come.

Irrelevant.
The interpretation shows that the passage is seen as Messianic. It doesn’t matter at all if later writers denied that Jesus was that Messiah.

Out of the tons of cases I know of taking things out of context, this is the clearest one because had the guy taken the very next verse, or even *THE BEGINNING of the verse whose second half he quoted*, it would have been clear that his words make absolutely no sense.

This makes absolutely no sense, because …

Matthew is a trained scribe and knows his Tanakh very well. And he is writing to Jews who would also have much of it memorized. There is nothing wrong with quoting part of the verse, as the Talmud and Rabbinic literature did, and to expect your audience to know the whole. If his citation were erroneous it would have been spotted in a second and his Gospel would have been discarded, rather than preserved, as it was. He expected his readers not only to catch the reference to Jesus, but to also see the allusion to Israel’s history. Matthew is a Hebrew-speaking and writing Jew, using Hebraic expressions and often translating from the Hebrew Scriptures as opposed to the LXX. He knows what he is talking about.

Greg,

Speaking about taking words out of context:

Fishermen and a former pharisee are not qualified to interpret it for the Jews. God says right in Deuteronomy — follow your Sanhedrin, judges and council of sages on matters, and veer not the left nor to the right. So if you were a Jew living in the year 30 AD and some guys started interpreting the Torah for you contrary to what the sages said, you aren’t supposed to abandon everything and follow them. Deuteronomy 13:4-5

“It is the LORD your God you must follow, and him you must revere. Keep his commands and obey him; serve him and hold fast to him. 5 That prophet or dreamer must be put to death for inciting rebellion against the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt and redeemed you from the land of slavery. That prophet or dreamer tried to turn you from the way the LORD your God commanded you to follow. You must purge the evil from among you.”

It can’t get any clearer than that. God Himself is saying it.

Deuteronomy says follow your Sanhedrin? How about you cite a verse for that.

As for the prophets in this verse they are ones who say “Let us follow other gods’ (whom you have not known) ‘and let us serve them”. This whole chapter is a warning about idolatry.

Bryan: fair enough. I’ve been trying to respond a lot tonight (as you can see) so as not to leave anyone out. Sorry it took a while. I am going to sleep after this.

“Matthew wanted to emphasize the Messiah’s relationship to His Father as Son.”

That’s a nice theory, but you know, Matthew could have easily quoted the whole verse and explained that he wanted to emphasize the Messiah’s relationship to His Father as Son. It would have been a lot clearer than the cryptic second *half* of a verse that he quoted. It makes one think that he may have been trying to avoid the word “Israel”. A couple points:

1) Let’s stop calling him matthew, this is the writer of the gospel named Matthew *now*, but it was anonymously authored. We do not know it was “matthew” writing it.

2) My original point was that people who presuppose something (Jesus is the Son of God, begotten not made, one with the Father, and the Messiah prophesied by the prophets, for example) have quoted verses out of context. The writer of Matthew quoted Hosea out of context. He could have quoted the context, but he didn’t. Whatever his motivations were, my original point was that this is done often by those who hold a presupposition. See my comment above.

3) If you give the writer of Matthew so much leeway, perhaps you should give atheists leeway when they quote something.

4) Actually, it shouldn’t matter in the case of atheists. If you start claiming they are quoting it “out of context”, then they should be able to quote it *in* context and still make the same point. If they can’t, then you are right, they are committing the same problem that I’ve been pointing out: quoting verses out of context.

Anyway can we all agree to move on to the next points?

That’s a nice theory, but you know, Matthew could have easily quoted the whole verse and explained that he wanted to emphasize the Messiah’s relationship to His Father as Son.

He didn’t have to; his audience knew the whole verse and knew what he was saying.
Throughout his Gospel he demonstrates that he does not have to explain Hebrew idioms.

It makes one think that he may have been trying to avoid the word “Israel”.

Not really.

Let’s stop calling him matthew, this is the writer of the gospel named Matthew *now*, but it was anonymously authored. We do not know it was “matthew” writing it.

This is silly. Even if the author of Matthew was not a man named Matthew, why would we say “the author of Matthew” instead of “Matthew”?

The writer of Matthew quoted Hosea out of context.

Your original point is flawed. Matthew was not quoting out of context – he was fulfilling the context.

If you give the writer of Matthew so much leeway, perhaps you should give atheists leeway when they quote something.

Everyone should be given a gracious reading.

Anyway can we all agree to move on to the next points?

What are they?

Very little of the NT was written by fishermen, including only a few of the Epistles.

Charlie:

The interpretation shows that the passage is seen as Messianic. It doesn’t matter at all if later writers denied that Jesus was that Messiah.

That is not the point. If you are going to use a Jewish book of tales to support your point that Isaiah 53 was considered to be about the Messiah by one of the authors, then you should also consider Isaiah’s direct prophecies about what the Messiah will accomplish didn’t come true yet (everlasting world peace, etc.) You seem to pick and choose what you want the book to say. Anyway, my only point was back in comment 1 and you seem to agree with it: that people who have presuppositions (not just Christians, but others too) often take things out of context in order to support their point.

Your edit to that comment is also irrelevant.

Irrelevant to what? Your whole argument is irrelevant to my original points, I simply addressed it.

Let’s stop getting sidetracked with these off-topic arguments, okay? See my numbered points in comment 1.

Most Jews certainly did not expect their Messiah to die. That’s why even Jesus’ Disciples were confused by the goings on.

So you agree with my point that I made to Neil:
In the days of Jesus, nobody ever understood Isaiah 53 to be predicting the death of the Messiah.

By the way, I don’t completely stand behind this point because it’s unprovable. Maybe someone somewhere thought in Jesus’ time that Isaiah 53 applied to him. But I think it is very unlikely.

If you give the writer of Matthew so much leeway, perhaps you should give atheists leeway when they quote something.

Everyone should be given a gracious reading.

So then you agree with my original point #2! That was mainly what I was saying with it. Wonderful. Do you also agree with my point #1?

These were supposed to be minor points that we could dismiss quickly and get to the real heart of the matter

They have been dismissed quickly – as spurious attempts to undermine the New Testament and Christianity. They have failed to do so.

Those points weren’t even intended to undermind the NT or Christianity. The first point was actually an agreement and simply noting that we must be careful about preaching based on the Bible, because many times we may be mistaken about what the words being said mean, whether they are literal, and whether they apply to the situation being preached about.

The second point happened because Bill T in the previous thread dismissed the links I posted by saying the verses are all taken out of context. I had replied that in my experience, while there are many atheists doing this, there are also many theists throughout the ages doing this. I indicated the major presuppositions people have and how that makes them deists, sadducees, rabbinnical jews, messianic jews, christians, catholics… we could go on, muslims, mormons, etc. Each group has presuppositions, and it takes the previous texts and often quotes verses out of context, in order to support its point.

These were not supposed to be major or contested things. You have brought up a lot of side points but how about addressing those two main points, so we can move on? Do you disagree? People with presuppositions never quote things out of context when the presuppositions are Christian? Each example of quoting out of context by a Christian writer can be dismissed as being “anti-missionary” or whatever/whatever? But atheists quote out of context and therefore their arguments are wrong? I don’t get it. What is it that you are contesting.

Greg,

“That’s a nice theory, but you know, Matthew could have easily quoted the whole verse and explained that he wanted to emphasize the Messiah’s relationship to His Father as Son. It would have been a lot clearer than the cryptic second *half* of a verse that he quoted. It makes one think that he may have been trying to avoid the word “Israel”.”

First, I’ve just explained that Israel was established as a ‘Type’ of Messiah in Numbers 23 and 24. Balaam’s second and third oracles are intentionally similar (phrases) and different (pronoun usage), the point being that what God did for Israel, he will do for the “seed, star and scepter” that will “come out of Jacob” and “rise out of Israel.” Since 1st century Israel was a high context society, this would have been common knowledge so quoting the entire verse would have been unnecessary or perhaps irrelevant to Matthew purposes, and further, you seem to be forcing a 21st century, Western view with your opinions on how Matthew “should have done it.”

“1) Let’s stop calling him matthew, this is the writer of the gospel named Matthew *now*, but it was anonymously authored. We do not know it was “matthew” writing it.”

Without getting into a debate on the authorship of the Gospel of Matthew, this is semantical objection is irrelevant.

“2) My original point was that people who presuppose something (Jesus is the Son of God, begotten not made, one with the Father, and the Messiah prophesied by the prophets, for example) have quoted verses out of context.”

Well, if the writer of Matthew’s Gospel was Matthew or knew Matthew, or was recording true events, then it is something more than a presupposition.

“The writer of Matthew quoted Hosea out of context. He could have quoted the context, but he didn’t.”

The point is that in the Old Testament the typological Messiah would be called out of Egypt just like the nation of Israel. Some scholars believe that Matthew was actually quoting Numbers 24: 8. Given the cultural and literary background, I see nothing wrong with Matthew’s quotation. You’ll have to provide stronger evidence that the author had sinister intentions.

Charlie: correction, fishermen and a former pharisee. Happy? No one on the NT writing staff was part of the Sanhedrin, so my point stands. Your latest argument is strictly ad hominem.

I think we got really stumped on the first two points, and yet I am not sure if anyone actually disagrees with them.

To summarize, my points were:

1. First, a point of agreement.

The takeaway from this particular verse is definitely not that the Bible is full of contradictions, but that you should be very careful when using the Bible to support *any* kind of statement, because who knows what the author really meant and if it’s applicable to the situation you are applying it. I think that *is* a valuable takeaway, and just want to make that point. It takes care of a lot of preaching which I think you and I would both disagree with — preaching that understands something to be literal, even though it may have almost no support in fact, and sometimes it’s hard to tell one way or the other. Biblical analysis is often closer to literary analysis than scientific reasoning.

2. Bill T brought up the way he must feel about atheists: taking verses out of context to support some point, and ignoring strong evidence that contradicts their point. I agree there are definitely atheists who do this, and I don’t have much respect for their arguments. They frustrate me as they do you, Bill. But I would like to say that in my experience, it is the people who presuppose a doctrine (such as Christian doctrines) that do these things very frequently in my experience. They mean well, but they merely parrot what others say.

I noticed that no one disagreed with the first point.

Also, no one seemed to explicitly disagree with the second point. There was lots of interesting related conversation, but can any of you say that you think people who presuppose a doctrine do NOT ever take verses out of context to support a point? You are willing to say that no christians do this? I am willing to say that in *my* experience, it happened frequently.

Which of these two points do you find a problem with?

To support my second point, I brought only two examples. I can bring many. One was the author of Matthew, who made it into the NT, quoting half a verse. The other was a link to the aish explanation of Isaiah 53. If you don’t like aish, get Rashi’s explanation, or any other Jewish commentator. Or maybe you don’t like them all?

Many people quickly rushed to the defense of both presuppositions. So let me at least be intellectually honest and support my original claim that in my experience, I have seen a lot of these. I will list some more.

Matthew 2:16-18
Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, was in a furious rage, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in that region who were two years old or under, according to the time which he had ascertained from the wise men. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted because they were no more

The author of Matthew is claiming that the prophecy of Jeremiah is fulfilled here. But let’s see the full context:

Jeremiah 31:15-17
Thus says the Lord:
A voice is heard in Ramah,
lamentations and bitter weeping.
Rachel is weeping for her children:
She refuses to be comforted for her children,
because they are not.
Thus says the Lord:
Keep your voice from weeping,
and your eyes from tears;
for your work shall be rewarded,
says the Lord:
and they shall come back from the land of the enemy.
There is hope for the future,
says the Lord, and your children will come back to their own country.

This time the whole sense of the passage has been changed. In Jeremiah 31:17 we see that Rachel’s children, far from being slaughtered, will come back home! Seen in this context it is obvious what is meant by the phrase “they are not” in Jeremiah 31:15. It means that her children are at the moment not physically present in their homeland, they are in the land of the enemy where they shall return. So this time, Matthew had given a meaning to Jeremiah 31:15 that it did not have.

Let me bring modern Christian authors so as to maybe have more contemporary examples.

As I said — and this is the disclaimer — they mean well! I am not saying they did it maliciously. I am just simply giving examples to support my point.

http://www.josh.org Josh McDowell ministries
Book: McDowell, Evidence that Demands a Verdict: p141-166
Chapter 9, look at it yourself

Prophecy No.13: Jesus’ Pre-Existence
The prophecy given here is from Micah 5:2. This is the verse as given in his book:[6]

Micah 5:2
From you One will go forth for Me to be ruler in Israel. His going forths are from long ago, From the days of eternity.

The “fulfillment” of this prophecy is supposedly the passage below:

Colossians 1:7
And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.

McDowell is claiming that an unfounded claim by a (probably) anonymous author in the New Testament makes for fulfilled prophecy! Even if the author was Paul, the passage is nothing more than an empty assertion. How does the context support the conclusion?

But even worse is that the first verse — the prophecy — is itself a mistranslation. It should properly read:

Micah 5:2 GNB
but out of one of you I will bring a ruler for Israel, whose family line goes back to ancient times.

making the entire claim spurious.

Here are more of the same kind:

Prophecy No.15: Jesus Called Immanuel

McDowell quotes Isaiah

Isaiah 7:14
“Therefore the Lord Himself shall give you a sign: Behold, a virgin is with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel”.

Immanuel means God is with us in Hebrew.

Matthew 1:22-23
And this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin is with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel-which means ‘God is with us'”.

Interesting technique. The anonymous writer of the Gospel of Matthew simply quotes Isaiah, and thereby claims that Jesus was called Immanuel, fulfilling the prophecy. Nowhere in the gospels was Jesus called by that name. So doesn’t the context of the quote (of Matthew by McDowell) invalidate his argument that this is a fulfilled prophecy?

Another one, by McDowell again:

Psalms 110:4
“The Lord has sworn and will not change His mind, ‘Thou art a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”

McDowell claims that this “prophecy” is fullfilled here:

Hebrews 5:5-6
“So also Christ did not glorify Himself so as to become a high Priest, but He who said to Him, ‘Thou art My Son, today I have begotten Thee’; just as He says also in another passage, ‘Thou art a priest forever according to the order of Melchidezek.'”

both the author of Hebrews and McDowell refer to the same psalm, therefore this means the prophecy is fulfilled?! Again I think the proof of fulfillment is not cited properly. The context is somehow off, methinks.

I would like to note that for both the original NT writers and the current Christians, the first and foremost fact is that Jesus is the Messiah. Therefore it is understandable that they try to find as much evidence in the Old Testament so as to better support their presupposition. Muslims would do it, as would others who want to support their point of view. So do you disagree with my points or you just want to argue? 🙂

Greg,

Also, no one seemed to explicitly disagree with the second point. There was lots of interesting related conversation, but can any of you say that you think people who presuppose a doctrine do NOT ever take verses out of context to support a point? You are willing to say that no christians do this? I am willing to say that in *my* experience, it happened frequently.

Which of these two points do you find a problem with?

If you have particular points you want addressed then state those points only, don’t follow them up with reams of ridiculous assertions. You really seem to be unable to help yourself. Go easy on the cut and paste and give us one point at a time with just a summary of the reasons why you believe your assertion is true. I agree with your point 2, you have amply demonstrated it in this thread yourself, but do you think we should just allow your assertions to sit unchallenged? If they are not part of your argument don’t put them in.

Lovely, that cross-post with Melissa.

Likewise with B, if the Christians would include all four Suffering Servant songs, or even Isaiah 54 immediately following Isaiah 53, then they would have had toexplain why Isaiah keeps talking about Israel. If they translated verses from the Hebrew they would have to explain why it says “because of my people they suffered” — who is they, if the servant is Jesus? Perhaps Jesus is a multitude? Good questions, but ones neatly avoided by not considering the textual or linguistic context of the cited verse.

Greg, clearly you haven’t read the whole document to which I linked. Hugenberger answers your exact question. Furthermore, he goes through a detailed and nuanced analysis of the servant in all four of the servant songs, not just Isaiah 53 (you seemed to misunderstand that point earlier). He embraces and uses the textual and linguistic context of the verses to show that the servant is an individual — the “prophet like Moses” alluded to in the end of Deuteronomy.

You, by contrast, have ignored the textual and linguistic context that does not support your personal opinion. Do you actually want answers to these questions you’re asking? If you do, read what we link to. If you don’t, then just keep asking them without bothering to understand our answers and we’ll eventually give up. I used to think you were serious about these discussions, and I still want to believe that you are, but it’s difficult.

It is also fair to point out that Matthew’s interpretive method, throughout his writings, is quite typical of the best of ancient Jewish interpretation, reflecting literal interpretations, allegorical interpretations, plays on words, and midrashic allusions. Thus, in the first two chapters alone he cites … Jeremiah 31:15 where Rachel is heard allegorically weeping and poetically weeping for her children once again …
For Matthew – rightly so – the Hebrew Bible was the Messiah’s Bible, and therefore, given that 1) Yeshua was literally Immanuel, God with us, 2) the Immanuel prophecy was clearly directed to the house of David, 3) Miriam, Yeshua’s mother was an ‘almah who had never known a man, and 4) the surrounding context in Isaiah contained highly significant Messianic prophecies, it is no wonder that Matthew pointed to Isaiah 7:14 as being “fulfilled” in the birth of Jesus the Messiah. Who else fulfilled it?

pp27, 28

Rachel, the matriarch of Israel and her weeping:
http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Scripture/Parashah/Summaries/Vayishlach/Rachel_Weeps/rachel_weeps.html

In each of these cases, the author had a presupposition of a religious nature (eg that Jesus is the Messiah). And in each of these examples, the verse is part of the larger context, which is ommitted. Finally, when the verse is considered in context, its meaning differs dramatially from the plain meaning that it would have when read in the assertions in which it was placed.

So, no. The context is not omitted, it is presupposed. The context is what gives meaning to the claims that the OT was pointing to, talking about, and fulfilled in Jesus Christ. These ‘prophesies’ are not always, or necessarily, of the nature of “look, you said Messiah would be X, and Jesus is X, and therefore He is messiah”. Rather, they show how, as Messiah, Jesus is the fulfillment of all the OT had alluded to. His being Messiah shows what the office really is and demonstrates how the expectations were to be turned on their head in many cases.

Let me point out what is happening here. I think it’s important.

I came on to this blog saying that I think atheists are debating the wrong questions, and getting mired in side points with theists, when the entire debate can be avoided if one deals with the central question: Is Christianity True?

I want to debate those questions and want answers to those questions.

I have always made it very clear what I am interested in finding answers to. I have also made it very clear what my approach is, regarding belief, regarding religion, some of problems I come up against, and also what strategy I use (second part of that link). In short, I have clearly indicated that I am interested in finding out the truth, and that I do not enjoy getting mired in savant-like debates regarding fine points of theology or literary interpretation.

The one debate I was interested in was the moral debate, because that is useful to me in case I decide to become an atheist. That is why I participated in it.

This thread was started with the title “so many misconceptions, where even to begin,” and a bunch (like a dozen) of excerpts from my responses and comments were posted. Where to begin, indeed. I guess I should first note that this is not what I am interested in discussing. So to answer your question, Bill R,

Do you actually want answers to these questions you’re asking?

in this thread – sadly not really. As you can see from my opening comment on it,

You started this thread because of me, so I feel that I should at least reply to something to get it started. I definitely stand by the things I said, but I can’t address them all at once because that would make an unwieldy discussion (I can definitely understand how you must feel with me sometimes, Tom!) But I will try to take 2 points first, and address them substantively.

1. First, a point of agreement:

I was more interested in defending myself against the dump of excerpts and the title “misconceptions” that was suddenly thrust upon me. If you want to know what questions I *am* interested in pursuing, I have indicated them before on this blog and specifically linked to them.

This isn’t a threaded discussion board — if it were, I would simply start threads with the question I am interested in. But since Tom has taken the time to post a collection of excerpts by me, including my responses to other people, I felt like I should at least address some of them since the thread is about me. I don’t really want to do it. I am more interested in answering my questions about what is true and not getting mired down in the finer points. But as it is, I decided to start with just taking two, and took what I considered to be the least contentious points first.

Please read my comment 42 . As you can imagine it’s hard to respond to 10 people at once, and who are all bringing different arguments at me. Therefore if you think I have ignored you, I probably haven’t (since I have been trying to read the comments and respond in order). However, my main goal with comment 42 (my last comment) is to have you state what exactly you disagree with. I simply took two points from Tom’s list: 1 and 2.

1. I simply illustrated why I said what I said in the first point — that preaching or claiming things based on the Bible has to be done very carefully, and one has to wonder how they know that the verse they are quoting should be interpreted the way they said and applied to the situation they are trying to apply it — which was in response to Neil’s comment that we “have” a good, well defined notion of objective morality on Christianity, and I am saying hold on a sec, how do you know what to conclude when you have, among other things, apparent contradictions on the purely literal level? Once you allow non-purely-literal interpretations, you have to admit that it gets a little vague because different people will have different interpretations. My passing comment was highlighted in the “misconceptions” post and therefore I expanded on it.

2. Secondly, my passing comment to Bill T, about my impression of theists and the situation from my point of view, was also highlighted and commented on by Tom, who said

You think very, very lightly of the hundreds of years of Christian polemic, through which teachings have been tested, disputed, and confirmed. The history of Christianity itself would not have permitted what you’re describing here.

I simply wanted to back up why I have this impression, and I decided to post some examples. One was clear (to me), and one was famous. After much debate I decided to post a more extensive list, categorize it into four categories A B C and D, and explain what I mean by “taking out of context”. Bill T’s original comment was

Greg,

Your post #440 may be off topic for where Tom, Neil and lambda.calc are in the discission but I’d make a few brief comments about it. The website “Rejection of Pascal’s Wager” which you rely on for your information is a very typical athiest site which basically uses the a standard “new athiest” formula to create its conclusions. Take a Bible verse, quote it out of context or misinterpret it and then using that misinterpretation show how “wrong” it is. There are enough straw men on that site to put a scarecrow on every front lawn in America.

My response was:

Bill T: on the contrary, I am reading Reasonable Faith and trying to get to the bottom of it. I am interested in how Christians deal with these issues, but what I have found so far is that many issues don’t have any clear answer at all. Have you looked at rejectionofpascalswager.com ? Do you disagree with everything in it? I happen to think it is one of the better analyses.

Don’t think that the people compiling these things don’t have a good knowledge of religion and haven’t studied it. This, for example, was compiled by formerly Orthodox Jews, carefully researched and the conclusions are supported: http://www.talkreason.org/articles/list.cfm . I find resources like that far and few between. For example the “skeptics annotated bible” is frankly full of crappy comments, and less than 5% of them are actually problematic. On the other hand, both rejectionofpascalswager.com and the talkreason.org articles are quite well researched. You have no idea how much I have been studying about possible interpretations. Do you know the Jewish oral tradition, the talmud? I care about that, too. Do you?

Tom also said:

Greg,

The question is not whether the interpretation is obvious taken one verse at a time like that. It’s whether the interpretation can be obtained with proper study. We can do that.

I responded:

Tom, actually I completely agree with you. After all I grew up reading the Bible. I know there are interpretations that can pretty much explain anything. The only thing is that these interpretations are only necessary if you presuppose certain things and never stop believing them.

God created the world <– stop there? Deist
God appeared on Mount Sinai to Israel <– stop there? Sadducee
God gave an oral Torah to Israel <– stop there? Rabinnical Jew
Jesus was the Messiah <– stop there? Messianic Jew, early Christian
Paul was right <– All modern Christians
Jesus was God <– All followers of Nicene Creed
Additional apostolic tradition, you can pray to Saints <– Catholic church

People who do not presuppose one of these things can bring plenty of verses against the groups that do, showing problems. They can also cite history for why they don't believe. People who DO presuppose something (e.g. that Paul was right, or that Jesus was God) find verses in the writings of the Jews, to support their view. Bill T talked about atheists taking verses out of context, but I would say that I have usually seen verses taken out of context to support presuppositional beliefs much more frequently

This is one of the things that got highlighted, and I chose to answer because I decided to start by addressing just two.

If you read my comment 42 above, you will see me defending my passing assertion about my impression, which is important, but happened solely as a result of people dismissing the arguments going the other way by saying “they are out of context”. I pointed out that anyone who has an agenda does it. I did more than that — I pointed out what the presuppositions are by different groups, and that determines what they decide to focus on and quote.

So that kind of sums up where I”m at right now. I’m sorry if I ignored you. If you want to address comment 42 specifically, I will try to answer you. Otherwise, let’s move on to more substantive issues.

An aside: Tom, I don’t think this is a good format for addressing my main goal on this blog, which is also what I pointed out here:

https://www.thinkingchristian.net/2011/06/right-or-so-very-very-wrong/#comment-27399

I definitely don’t want discussions like that any more than you. My vision of a good discussion is people figuring out new things side by side, rather than close quarters aggravated combat, with “he said, she said” quotes just to prove whether or not someone’s been naughty.

Greg

BTW
Mike Anthony, your discussion of “fulfillment” is excellent and has been obscured a bit. In particular, by my careless acceptance of the word “prophecy” early on with regards to Hosea. Michael Brown, my main source on this thread, says just what you do in the books I’ve been quoting from.

You sure do write a lot, Greg.
What’s the point, again? Yes, I realize that it is that different verses can be interpreted in different ways depending upon the overall view.
But what is the point of this observation?

Charlie: if you fail to see the point, then I don’t know why you are commenting. It was to support my point #2.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but maybe this is really counter productive.

Anyway, I think this whole exercise is pointless. I will just leave it at

this

and respectfully bow out. I might be accused by some people of evading, or ignoring, or something, but I think I stated my case and overall position pretty clearly there.

Well, it was a nice exercise in squashing my points by dumping them all into one post. Was I supposed to debate 10 people on 12 topics? If you want me to realize atheist websites are wrong in every claim of theirs, this is not the way.

Neil, I am not interested in jumping from topic to topic. See my latest comments to this effect. If someone took excerpts of several of your comments and statements made in passing that are all on various topics and made a blog post entitled “so many misconceptions – where to begin” what would you do? Where to begin indeed? What is the point of this? I didn’t make this thread about me. See my latest comments. Tom, as for what you said, read my comment and especially the last part of it where I quote my response to your previous apology. This is exactly the sort of thing I said I didn’t want. I quoted to you my words what kind of discussion I think we both want. And no, I don’t find it ironic.

And Neil: I definitely appreciate where you’re coming from when it comes to the fundamental reasons to believe in Christianity. I also would like to focus on one thing, although a different thing than you.

Let me address what you are saying about the fundamental question of being a sinner directly, though. Let’s separate two things: 1) I don’t want to discuss 20 different theological topics at once, however 2) I don’t think the question of “are you a sinner” is a clear cut question.

The reason I ask “what is sin” is because it’s not at all obvious to me what is being asked. Lots of people believe different things about sin. If you are asking me whether I feel I am a profoundly fallen person who is a wretched doer of evil deeds with no desire to do good in his heart, I must say that I do *not* feel that way. But I can appreciate that Christianity thinks I have fallen short of a perfect standard, and intellectually I can grant that maybe this in some way lead to an afterlife different from the one in Judaism.

But you have to understand that the original concepts of sin and atonement in Judaism are radically different from the ones in Christianity, and indeed, *within* Christianity there are differences. I agree with you that this is a central point and maybe Tom will make *your* question a single topic, and it may be interesting to discuss.

In fact, one of the three questions that I care about is the fate of the unevangelized. How do Christians believe that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Solomon and all other the righteous Jews living before Jesus were saved if “there is no other name under heaven, given among men, whereby we must be saved” and “no one comes to the Father except through me?” Clearly not every Jew knew the name of Jesus. Even after Jesus’ death on the cross, people lived all over the world who never heard about Jesus. So either 1) they were saved somehow, in which case I want to know why we can’t have that deal today, or 2) they weren’t saved, in which case I would ask about how King David and the patriarchs got saved.

(An aside, to Tom: look what I did above. I elaborated on my point, so as to make it clear what I am saying, and enable the other person to understand where I am coming from answer my question better. It is *NOT* fair to take stuff like that and compile it into a big list of “hey look, Greg is quoting verses and making unfounded statements all over the place.” Let’s discuss topics, not people, in a post, due to the nature of a blog.)

You may think that I should have a simple answer to the question of “do you think you are a sinner”, but I see nothing clear cut about the Christian idea of sin. What is a sin, in Christianity? Christians say the stock definition: It is falling short of God’s expectations. But what are those expectations? Jews have it clearly spelled out: the law given to Moses. So I think related but important questions are: are Jews still under the law? Why are Gentiles under the law to begin with? Or are they? What constitutes a sin in these situations?

I find this to be important mainly because Christians, who use the argument that “you are a sinner and must accept Jesus” — the same guy who said “go and sin no more”, continue to sin if we apply the standard of the Law. My point is not that they are fallible and sin, but they don’t consider it to be sinning! And they have no interest in stopping it. So clearly they have a different understanding of what sin is, and I don’t get how they decide where to draw the line. (They eat pork, they light fires on the sabbath day, etc.) I don’t see why this would be a problem for gentile Christians. But for Jewish Christians it would seem to be a sin — but maybe not, since Paul rebuked Peter, and Paul thought we are dead to the law, etc. So really, I have no idea what sin is. All I know is, if you want to “sin no more”, it should be important to you what is and isn’t sin. And I’m sorry but it’s not clear to me.

I’m sorry if that sounds like rambling. It’s late at night and I just wanted to answer your question honestly and show you why I can’t simply answer you whether I am a “sinner” or not. I can tell you that I have definitely sinned according to Old Testament law. But Jewish conception of sin and atonement is very different from the Christian one. So I would need you to clarify what you actually mean before I can answer the question.

Tom, I knew you would bring this up:

You have made many, many, many drive-by charges against Christianity. You yourself requested another post to discuss such problems:

[EDIT: I am afraid you may reply that this is going off topic. I think you would be right. Personally I want to request – can we turn this comment (and the previous one) into a separate discussion somehow by giving it a post sometime?)]

Does this mean I completely forgot about and no longer stand behind my response to your apology, just a mere few hours before that:

https://www.thinkingchristian.net/2011/06/right-or-so-very-very-wrong/#comment-27399

However, with my rambling discourse and ADD tendency to respond to just about everyone, I fear I was largely responsible for the increasingly myopic and tense discussions that ensued with you, Tom. I definitely don’t want discussions like that any more than you. My vision of a good discussion is people figuring out new things side by side, rather than close quarters aggravated combat, with “he said, she said” quotes just to prove whether or not someone’s been naughty.

Back then, you said:

Thank you, Greg. I appreciate your spirit and tone, even if I disagree with you over who was most at fault

which was a nice gesture – you implied that you thought you were responsible for the large part of what happened 😛 I am stil of the opinion that it was mostly my “rambling discourse and ADD tendency to respond to just about everyone”.

But this time, Tom, I have to say, it *is* mostly your fault that this happened. Look at what happened. (I normally hate doing the “he said, she said” thing but in this case it absolutely must be done.)

Obviously if we had an understanding, you would realize this yourself easily.

1) I have always made it very clear what I am interested in finding answers to. I have clearly indicated that I am interested in finding out the truth, and that I do not enjoy getting mired in savant-like debates regarding fine points of theology or literary interpretation. Look at comment 51 for links supporting this.

2) In my response to your apology, in the very post preceding this one, I specifically agreed with you and said,

I definitely don’t want discussions like that any more than you. My vision of a good discussion is people figuring out new things side by side, rather than close quarters aggravated combat, with “he said, she said” quotes just to prove whether or not someone’s been naughty.

3) In the morality thread, I recognized we were going off topic and suggested creating a different post for the topic *sometime*. Considering this was within several hours of our discourse above, you might think that I still don’t like “close quarters aggravated combat, with he said, she said quotes just to prove whether or not someone’s been naughty”. So is it reasonable to assume that I *wasn’t* asking for what you did, namely:

A) Collecting responses to different people on different topics from several comments into one post

B) Titling the post “So many misconceptions, where even to begin”, and then inviting me to “do a lot of work”.

C) Leaving and inviting everyone else to debate with me on 10-12 topics at once.

Rather, I was asking for you to create one cohesive thought-out discussion that was about a specific topic, not about me and 10-12 “topics” that I didn’t even want to discuss in this format. Tom, if you are confused about what I mean, why not ask me? Why do you always assume I have been disingenuous and/or completely changed my position? Only by assuming I do that would you have possibly ignored the response I gave you just hours earlier where I strongly indicated my dislike of the very thing you seem to suggest I then requested!

4) As I said, what you consider “drive-by-charges” against Christianity are actually my attempts to back up and document my reasoning behind many statements I make. For a trivialized example, if I said, “I personally don’t believe the earth is round, because A) We can see it from space, B) If it were flat, how could ships disappear top-first?” and then in another comment I said, “I am not sure we should interpret the entire oral tradition in Judaism as infallible. For example, in the talmud it is written that lice arise spontaneously out of sweat, and that non kosher animals born with 5 legs will always die before the end of the year.” It is better than simply saying, “I personally don’t believe the earth is round. Period.” and I “I am not sure we should interpret the entire oral tradition in Judaism as infallible. OK cya”.

I understand why someone with a strong emotional attachment to the position I am skeptical about would say these are “drive-by accusations”. Many Talmud scholars over the years have defended the spontaneous generation of lice comments, as well as the animals with 5 legs comments. They may consider my simple mentioning of these things (and probably getting a couple details wrong, maybe it wasn’t sweat but skin) to be drive-by accusations. They are not intended that way at all!! They are things to *back up* and *illustrate* the major statement I am making, the major points I am bringing up.

It is not cool to take A, B from one comment, and C, D from another comment, dump them all into a post and say “Look, so many misconceptions”. If I scoured this blog I could probably do that to you, Tom, and post it on my blog and invite you to come and defend 10-12 passing assertions at once. How would you like that? It would serve one purpose: to try to strong-arm you into agreeing that your brief one liners and links to support your points are “drive by comments” and discouraging you from supporting your points. Everyone does it. If you would like, I could collect sayings of Neil Shenvi, who I can tell from his demeanor is quite an interested and well meaning and reasoned person, and invite you to post all of them in one place, where I dismiss them quickly.

What *is* cool is understanding my main point, and if not understanding it, asking about it, and working TOGETHER to post something about a TOPIC and not a PERSON. I understand you probably didn’t do it on purpose. But the ease with which you are able to decide I am not being consistent with my previous, very strong statement that I *don’t* like this kind of discussion, suggests to me that you really don’t think I am being consistent or participating in good faith, even in the strong statements I make in response to a very heartfelt thread / post by you. That is what I kind of resent. Wouldn’t you?

You can read comment 56 where I specifically outlined why what you did was not cool.

This post is getting long but I really hope you get the gist. The reason I said *sometime* is because I thought we could figure out a good topic to discuss. I will give an example. At the very bottom of my first letter to you (the WARNING: LONG COMMENT), I had a PS. That would make for a very good topic, imho. It highlights one of the crucial differences between Jews and Christians. You have long said you will post the rest of it sometime. Cool, *sometime* implies you will give it proper treatment — and I am happy to work with you — not combine it with 20 other things and put me on the spot to answer 10 people and leave.

Anyway, I hope we are on the same page.

I’ve sat back and read through most of these discussions, and finally decided to add in my two drachmas here.

One thing that seems to be missing from the discussion is the fact that Christian belief is more than just an intellectual exercise – at its heart, it is a relationship based on faith(that Christianity is the inference to the best explanation of *all* the data), trust and love, with the personal, Triune and sovereign, eternally self-existent Creator God.
There is more than sufficient evidence available to anyone who has the right heart attitude (see Psalm 19, Romans 1 & 2, for example), who is willing accept the evidence at face value and take that next step of obedience and commitment. It’s not a matter of “can’t believe’, but “won’t, or don’t want to believe”.

I recall from another thread that one skeptic said that “If Christianity were true, he’d certainly want to believe it”; yet these skeptics never seem to consider any reasons to believe that it just might really be true – instead, they look for *anything* that might suggest it isn’t. When we (Christians) give reasonable answers to these objections, or show that the objection is completely wrong (as with the Isaiah 53 issue that Greg raised), the response is all too often “well, OK, but what about [insert issue here]?”.

I wonder if these same skeptics would have claimed that the Standard Model in Particle Physics and the Standard Solar Model were false because of the missing solar neutrinos problem (until those missing neutrinos were found), or that General Relativity was false because the gravitational redshift of light could not be measured (until it finally was)?
Physicists don’t give up hard-won theories (those that we (I’m a physicist, too) have confidence in because of previous validation tests) so easily when we find problems. Those problems spur us on to look for answers – to put the theories to deeper tests. Resolving those problems gives us confidence that we are really finding the inferences to the best explanation.

A healthy dose of critical realism and ‘inference to the best explanation (using inductive, deductive and abductive reasoning)’ works well in science, and in Christian theology, too.

Determining if the Christian faith is the inference to the best explanation is a far more balanced, productive and rewarding approach (see Hebrews 11:6 – “Now without faith it is impossible to please him, for the one who approaches God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”) than mere attempts at falsification.
Sure there are problems that we’d like to resolve – many have very satisfactory answers, others challenge us to think more deeply about what the Bible is really saying, i.e., revising our interpretations when warranted, and still other issues seem to defy any clear, satisfactory resolution, given what we know at present, so all we can offer are tentative possibilities that seek to honor both the Bible as God’s inspired Word as well as the ‘conflicting data’.

Still, the starting point in all of this must be the person and life of Jesus of Nazareth. The inference to the best explanation is that He is really God the Son, the 2nd Person of the Trinity, who stepped into our spacetime, into our history, lived as one of us, who was crucified, died, buried, and resurrected – all to redeem us from our sin and separation from God. God offers new life and forgiveness to any and all who will come to Him through faith in Jesus, who will acknowledge Him as Saviour, Redeemer, and Lord.

Victoria, thank you for your sincere comment. I appreciate the sentiment and I understand where you’re coming from. I will make a substantive comment, but let me know if you want me to address something I missed.

1) About Isaiah 53: this is a side point, and I didn’t want to get bogged down in the details of literary analysis and theological discussion. I was linked to an entire paper by a Ph. D who spent months writing it, while Isaiah 53 was mentioned as a response to a quote of a passing comment.

2) I am very much interested in finding out whether Christianity *can* be true. Not that it is true, even, but that the belief “Christianity is true” is coherent and can hold in the face of evidence about the world that we actually have.

3) My very first words on this blog were “I think atheists are debating the wrong questions“, and getting mired in side points with theists, when the entire debate can be avoided if one deals with the central question: Is Christianity True

So I am with you in many respects. Why is Christianity a central issue for me personally?

A)
If I don’t believe Christianity and it happens to be true — particularly the version that includes eternal hell if you don’t believe Christianity — then it would be really unfortunate. I strongly want to avoid this situation. That said, I find it really problematic to believe this version, because I think it is incoherent. Christians themselves don’t seem to agree on a definition of sin, hell, salvation, or what it takes to get saved. By that I mean, different Christians have different ideas. Personally I also find the fate of the unevangelized to be a serious problem, and this puts the entire Christian message into a state for me where I want more answers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fate_of_the_unlearned

B) If I do believe Christianity in the sense of believing Jesus is Fully God of Fully God, and Judaism happens to be true (please, see my extensive comment above), then I have just violated God’s most important commandments. As a Jew by birth, I am not willing to do that. I take these things very seriously. If you read my comment above, you will see I am in substantially the same position as the Jews were in Jesus’ time. This explains why the Jews have not accepted Jesus for 2000 years, even as they very much wish for the Messiah to come and rescue the Jewish people, rebuild a third temple, and usher in an era of world peace. Isaiah 53 speaks of the nations’ amazement at the Jewish people which they persecuted for 2000 years. Why did these Jews, who want the messiah so much, not accept Jesus? Because the Christians’ message that Jesus is God and that you don’t have to follow the law anymore cuts to the very heart of Judaism. You will find more about this in my comment above.

4) I hope you can now understand why it’s a big deal for me to find out proof for Christianity or against it. To be honest, because I am Jewish, it is also a big deal for me to decide whether Judaism is right and Sinai really happened. Because if I am an atheist and God really gave the Jews this law — even if there is no afterlife as the Christians envision it — I have still committed a serious error. Even if I had good reasons to think it was all mythology. If I am wrong, it will be most unfortunate.

That is why I continue to search and debate.

I hope you see that I am not just an atheist with an agenda to debunk Christianity. My agenda is to find out the truth and although right now it seems strong to me that the stories in the Bible were disproven and therefore it is not the Word of God, I am open to the idea that I may be misunderstanding them. That is why I go one by one.

Last thing: Please understand that from my point of view, I get different answers from different groups. That was my point that I tried to illustrate here.

If you are a gentile Christian, the choice should be very simple. Keep believing Christianity, and be a good person (as described in the Noahide laws

http://www.chabad.org/therebbe/article_cdo/aid/62221/jewish/Universal-Morality.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Laws_of_Noah

and try to reconcile your beliefs with the first Noahide law as much as possible. I think Christianity and Islam both brought the knowledge of God to the world, and I am glad for that.

But as Jew, I have to decide for myself what to do. That is why I need to find out the truth, and why I debate. I know Jews think Christianity doesn’t have a chance, and I know that atheists have good reasons to think that all the abrahamic religions are based on a mythology. I want to find out who is right. It is one of the most important things in my life.

Greg,

Your insistence that Orthodox Jews have correctly interpreted the old testament is just begging the question against Cheistianity.

As you said we need to go back and understand what the Jews of Jesus day thought about the old testament which I have already addressed in an earlier post.

As to the oral tradition Jesus interacts with that in Matt 5 which is why I suggested you start there if you wanted to find an answer to this difficult question. So far you have not bothered to do that.

You have repeatedly argued that Jews would not accept Jesus as Messiah. That is clearly demonstrated by history to be false. The gospel of Matthew came out of a Jeeish context. I also was involved in ministry earlier this year with a Messianic Jew.

Greg says:

while Isaiah 53 was mentioned as a response to a quote of a passing comment.

I’m not quite sure what you meant in the sentence that this came from, but, just in case, and as a matter of fact, you brought Isaiah 53 up, out of the blue, in the first comment of this thread …

I would bring many more examples lest you think this is an isolated incident. But let me limit myself to just mentioning one of the most prominent examples: Isaiah 53. Christians love to claim the song of the suffering servant as Isaiah prophesying about Jesus’ coming. I’ve seen billboards with Isaiah 53.

You also say:

They are things to *back up* and *illustrate* the major statement I am making, the major points I am bringing up.

And everyone of your illustrations was debunked. That should say something to you about the major statements you bring up.
You say you want answers. You got lots of answers. In one case you even admitted you were wrong in your previous assessment.
——
Great comments, Victoria. You said to Greg:

And yet, in those turbulent days following the events of that circa AD 30 (assuming the corrected date of Jesus’ birth) Passover, the first Christians were Jews who came to believe that He indeed is the promised Messiah …

Indeed. And they remained for centuries practicing Jews and Christian at the same time. The source I’ve been linking in defence of Christianity against Jewish objections, Michael Brown, is Jewish. As are/were many Rabbis who have converted.

Victoria, let’s take it one step at a time.

First of all, you can understand why it’s important that I get things right before becoming a Christian. As I said, there’s one message God spoke to the Jews over and over and more importantly than any other: do not have other gods, walk in my ways, do not have idols. Let’s take the extreme leap to today’s Catholic church. They believe

1. Jews who accepted Jesus aren’t under the law, and they say it’s okay because we are “dead” to the law so nothing will happen if we don’t e.g. follow the Sabbath day prohibition of work (which carries the death penalty)

2. Jesus is God, and they specifically pray to Jesus by name, but they say it’s ok because that’s not like believing in an idol or another god.

3. They can (and do) draw God as a bearded man (sistine chapel) and figurines of Jesus and others, and don’t call it idol worship

4. Mary and other saints are regularly addressed in prayers, but Catholics say it is ok because they aren’t praying TO the saints, just with them, and they like to have their pictures like they would have pictures of their relatives.

Now please understand a real believing Jew would not take make a leap like this lightly — from following God’s law and praying to God directly and no one else, to doing 1, 2, 3, 4. You yourself probably think 3 and 4 are a little bit stretching it, if you are not a Catholic. Well, welcome to how Jews feel about all four things.

Now, as to your points:

And yet, in those turbulent days following the events of that circa AD 30 (assuming the corrected date of Jesus’ birth) Passover, the first Christians were Jews who came to believe that He indeed is the promised Messiah, that He was actually resurrected from the dead, and that in Him, God offered the forgiveness of sin, and new spiritual life through the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Just because a few Jews happened to be converted to the religion does not mean the vast majority of Jews would decide to abandon everything they and their forefathers did because some non-leaders said so (fisherman, a former Pharisee, etc.) Please see comment 73 for a detailed explanation as to why.

Secondly, people are all different. Some people accepted Shabtai Zvi as a messiah claimant, and also believed in miracles about him. In fact, way more Jews accepted Shabtai Zvi than Jesus. Like 1000x more Jews. Does this mean he was the Messiah? No. When he converted to Islam under pain of death most Jews gave up on this guy. To this day some Jews believe he was the messiah. But so what?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbatai_Zevi

Today, the Chabad movement has a few extreme people who believe the great Rabbi Menachem Shneerson is the messiah. Even though his grave is in Queens, many members of the sect believe he is not really dead, but merely hidden. Others believe he will come back to life and do everything the Messiah was supposed to do. They believe the time of Messiah is coming soon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menachem_Mendel_Schneerson#Schneerson_as_the_Jewish_Messiah

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chabad_messianism

Keep in mind that these are real orthodox Jews. Some of them even eat pork because they believe that the time of the Messiah has come. According to the wikipedia article, “A small minority believe that he has God-like powers,[4][5] or is the “creator”[6]” .

Sound familiar? These are Jewish ideas. But just because a small group of Jews believes someone is the Messiah, or even a large group of Jews believes it, doesn’t make it okay to ignore God’s words to Israel: walk in my ways, keep my commandments, have no other gods before me.

An important reason why many more Jews believed in Shabbatai Zvi than Jesus was because Shabbatai Zvi and his followers never claimed that the law was abolished, so Jews didn’t feel a big risk and didn’t have to switch religions to welcome their Messiah.

And finally, why is it so surprising that a few Jews accepted the claims of Jesus’ disciples? After all, if no one accepted Christianity we wouldn’t have been talking about it. The fact that way more Gentiles accepted it — people who had no idea about the whole framework of Judaism and Torah and Israel’s God, in which Jesus’ teachings and in which his authority is based — and a tiny fraction of Jews, should tell you something. It is significant.

It’s not just that Paul was better at spreading the message, it’s that the message was easier to spread. I make social apps for a living. I know a lot about virality and social networks. One of the reasons facebook took off is because colleges are tightly knit communities. Dating sites are loosely knit — you don’t know which of your friends is single necessarily, so it’s harder to spread it. Lowering the barriers to “user signup” causes a social network to expand faster. For actual Jews, the barrier was really high. For Gentiles it wasn’t, hence this took off in lots of places but never gained more than a small following among the Jews themselves, the very people Jesus said he came to save.

Matthew 22:
A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession.”
Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”
He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”

Jesus who is super powerful came only to save the lost sheep of Israel, but ultimately was able to get a small minority of Jews to believe in his message. But Paul was way more successful with the gentiles — by a factor of like 1 million.

What is more likely?

A) This is because the Jews are hard hearted and refused to see the truth. The usual Christian explanation.

or

B) Jews had a lot of barriers to believing this message, as I have explained. But Gentiles had very little barriers to “user signup” and Jewish ideas were packaged very nicely for them. They joined in droves. Eventually Constantine made it the official religion of Rome. European generals converted to Christianity from their pagan religions. But among Jews it never gained more than a foothold because Jews don’t abandon God’s ways just because a bunch of guys, who are not even in power, tell them the rules have changed.

You tell me.

One more point:

Now, our primary source of this information is found in the writings of the New Testament, which you claim is not historically reliable, despite scholarly works in peer-reviewed journals …

I agree that I will benefit from studying the historical reliability of the New Testament as it appears in its canonized form. I plan to study it further.

That said, “historical reliability” isn’t a panacea that will suddenly make atheists believe in miracles, and more importantly, Jews believe that God changed the rules and decided to tell them through a bunch of random guys.

It’s not all or nothing. Even if there are good reasons to believe the gospels have some historical basis, there are even better reasons to believe that they are legends! What about those reasons?

Greg
Where is your proof that the Gospels are legends?
The scholarly works that I referred to would disagree with that assessment.

Best of luck in your so-called search for truth.
You’ll need it.

Feel free to join in,

Thanks! 🙂

but please stop talking about the stuff that happened because of Comment 1. OK? This is much more important to everyone.

I will address whatever is germane and subsequent to my last comments, Greg. If you keep misrepresenting event he history of this thread I will keep pointing it out.
Thanks for your interest in moderating.

. But Charlie is right. I may have bitched too much about it, mostly because being attacked like that by lots of people was overwhelming and unpleasant.

You weren’t attacked. Your points were answered fairly and accurately. If they were good points it wouldn’t have mattered a whit if the responders were one, twelve or the actual seven.

In my opinion, this has actually been a very good thread, but kudos to you for your apology to Tom.

It is clear from the OT that God fully intended to extend salvation to the Gentiles, so your quote from Mt 15:22 (a) did not include the full context, and (b) does not consider the larger context of the both the Old and New Testaments.

Are you saying that because I don’t quote the whole Bible, Jesus’ stated mission of coming *only* for the lost sheep of Israel cannot be used to make conclusions about his intentions? I hope you aren’t. Because that would mean we would have to second guess Jesus’ own words about his own intentions, because who knows, maybe in another verse in this Bible, (which wasn’t canonized in his time yet), it might suggest he didn’t REALLY mean what he said.

I have made 3 or 4 arguments. Two of them asked you which is more likely, A or B. The other ones were arguments that would suggest that many of the claims in the Bible never actually happened. I am deciding between atheism, judaism, and Christianity. What is wrong with trying to find the truth? Do you think I shouldn’t be discussing these things on a Christian blog?

You also completely missed my point of comparison with 19th century physics – the facts of what they observed and experienced caused them to realize that God was in fact, making that new covenant with not just Israel, but all mankind. You are not even considering those facts at all, and why should you, since it is all legend to you anyway. It is the supreme irony that you actually quote from the Bible that you profess to not believe in.

I’m sorry Melissa, but I already responded to so much of what you said and wrote extensive comments, so I didn’t want to continue responding to ALL of it. But you likewise seem to have completely missed my arguments and my questions to you, so we’re even 😛

What can I say about the physics… I am not an expert in physics. The relevant difference is that nothing about Newtonian mechanics or Maxwell’s equations said “DO NOT FOLLOW OTHER SCIENTIFIC THEORIES OR MANY CURSES WILL COME UPON YOU”, and nothing about special relativity etc. said “DONT WORRY ITS OK, NOW WITH THIS NEW THEORY THE PREVIOUS WARNINGS ARE NULLIFIED”. There is no need for this stuff in science. In religion, the whole point is to make people do certain things and act in certain ways. There are threats issued and they are specific. You ignore them ONLY because you don’t know what it’s like to be Jewish! You don’t know what it’s like to have your people experience captivity in Babylon and their prophets telling the it’s all because they turned away from God’s commandments, and then come back to Israel and rebuild the temple. The last thing on these guys minds was to abandon the law again. After God repeatedly told them not to. So a bunch of random tax collectors and fisherman is not the way to get them to do it. God knew this. Therefore it is extremely unlikely that He would have used this means to spread such an important addition to the religion, that change everything. Especially after telling the Jews to listen to their leaders and priests *and not tax collectors*!

You are also committing the fallacy of appealing to the majority – truth is not a matter of majority opinion.

I think that it is the Christians who are doing that. Let me ask you something, what if Christianity didn’t have numbers on its side? What if it was a small sect that started right now like the heavens gate cult? How much would you care about their writings then?

My argument has nothing to do with majority opinion. It has to do with God’s words to the Jewish people.

Greg
So why then are you even bothering? You are just rationalizing your unbelief, through caricature, saying but not citing. You tell me not to take your word for it, but to do the research myself…I have news for you – I’ve been following that for 30+ years. I’m not saying that there are no unsolved questions or puzzling issues in how everything fits together – as a physicist I know that such things are not unusual; as a Christian I have faith that these puzzles do have answers.

Your reasoning is unconvincing, filled with logical fallacies and questionable information, and misses the key questions (Who is Jesus, and what happened back in AD30 that got Christianity off the ground?) You keep sidestepping those questions by claiming the accounts are mere legends (with no convincing substantiation), committing both the genetic and appeal to majority fallacies, and refusing to accept the possibility that this is the new covenant that Jeremiah spoke of (Jeremiah 31:31 ) and spoken of by Jesus (Luke 22:20 for example) and the author of the NT book of Hebrews (Hebrews 10:16 and 12:24). You are letting your presuppositions determine your conclusions, not following the data wherever it may lead; I guess if you were around in Galileo’s time, you would have refused to look through his telescope, too; you will never find the truth this way, not because it isn’t there, but because you won’t give up your intellectual pride. Christianity does ask for faith and trust, given from a receptive heart. I like how 2 Chronicles 16:9 puts it:

NASB© 16:9 “For the eyes of the LORD move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His. You have acted foolishly in this. Indeed, from now on you will surely have wars.”

With that, I will leave you to your unbelief, and pray that God will lead you to faith

Good comments, Victoria. I hope you’ll de-lurk more often.

I hear you. In fact, Greg has brought me temporarily out of my own semi-retirement with his comments.
God bless you.

OK one more thing….

In 1 Corinthians 1 and 2, Paul (the former Pharisee who met the risen Lord on the Damascus Road) says [I apologize for the format…]

The Message of the Cross

1:18 For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 1:19 For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and I will thwart the cleverness of the intelligent.” 21 1:20 Where is the wise man? Where is the expert in the Mosaic law? 22 Where is the debater of this age? Has God not made the wisdom of the world foolish? 1:21 For since in the wisdom of God the world by its wisdom did not know God, God was pleased to save those who believe by the foolishness of preaching. 1:22 For Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks ask for wisdom, 1:23 but we preach about a crucified Christ, 23 a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles. 1:24 But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. 1:25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, 24 and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. 25

1:26 Think about the circumstances of your call, 26 brothers and sisters. 27 Not many were wise by human standards, 28 not many were powerful, not many were born to a privileged position. 29 1:27 But God chose what the world thinks foolish to shame the wise, and God chose what the world thinks weak to shame the strong. 1:28 God chose 30 what is low and despised in the world, what is regarded as nothing, to set aside what is regarded as something, 1:29 so that no one can boast in his presence. 1:30 He is the reason you have a relationship with Christ Jesus, 31 who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 1:31 so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” 32
Wisdom from God

2:6 Now we do speak wisdom among the mature, 5 but not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are perishing. 2:7 Instead we speak the wisdom of God, hidden in a mystery, that God determined before the ages for our glory. 2:8 None of the rulers of this age understood it. If they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 2:9 But just as it is written, “Things that no eye has seen, or ear heard, or mind imagined, 6 are the things God has prepared for those who love him.” 7 2:10 God has revealed these to us by the Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. 2:11 For who among men knows the things of a man except the man’s spirit within him? So too, no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. 2:12 Now we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things that are freely given to us by God. 2:13 And we speak about these things, not with words taught us by human wisdom, but with those taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual things to spiritual people. 8 2:14 The unbeliever 9 does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him. And he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. 2:15 The one who is spiritual discerns 10 all things, yet he himself is understood 11 by no one. 2:16 For who has known the mind of the Lord, so as to advise him? 12 But we have the mind of Christ.

And in Philippians 2:

Phil 2:5 Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus,
Phil 2:6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped,
Phil 2:7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.
Phil 2:8 Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Phil 2:9 For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name,
Phil 2:10 so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
Phil 2:11 and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father

Turnabout is fair play, Greg – your claim that it would be fatal for the Jews to accept Jesus as the Messiah can be turned around to say that it would be just as fatal for all mankind to reject Jesus as the Messiah.

Again, you have not understood my physics analogy (and one does not have to be a physicist for this): those nasty facts showed us that classical physics was not the whole story – that it was incomplete and needed revision. The events circa AD30 cry out for a new covenant and a new understanding of God. As long as you refuse to consider that these events actually occurred in history, Greg, our discussions will come to nothing. If Jesus died on a cross, was buried, and was resurrected, it changes everything.

BTW I really dislike that captcha!

Greg
as for archaeology, Tom posted a link a while back
http://www.bib-arch.org/bar/article.asp?PubID=BSBA&Volume=37&Issue=03&ArticleID=06&Page=0&UserID=0

Also, there are plenty of peer-reviewed scholarly works on Old and New Testament Archaeology:

see F.F.Bruce New Testament History,
F.F. Bruce, The Books and the Parchments (New Testament documents)
John McRay Archaeology and the New Testament,
Alfred J. Hoereth Archaeology and the Old Testament
two older books with the same titles by Merrill F. Unger,
K. A. Kitchen On the Reliability of the Old Testament
Gary R. Habermas Ancient Evidence for the Life of Jesus
and of course, references therein.
These authors deal frankly with the issues and areas of research – they are honest about problem areas, but they also give a good account on the general reliability and trustworthiness of the Bible.
Why is this important? Knowing that the Bible is trustworthy gives us confidence to trust it as the Word of God – that my friend, is faith

Yes, there are issues in understanding how what the Bible has to say about history and science meshes with what we know; you seem to think that the only position is one of conflict and contradiction, whereas we think that there are possible ways to do justice to both (cf Tom’s answer to your Genesis Flood question). The example I like has to do with the geocentric vs heliocentric views, and how the Church read the geocentric view into Scripture as the only way to understand it. Well, today’s Christians take the view that perhaps the Bible authors are writing from an earth-centered vantage point to describe things ( a reference frame that General Relativity tells us is completely valid). We are not required to interpret the Bible in a way that conflicts with our modern descriptions of celestial mechanics.

Yes, I whole-heartedly accept Genesis 1 as truth, and I accept that Big Bang cosmology is currently our best inference from good, solid physics (after all, if General Relativity was completely wrong, GPS would not work). Young-earth creationists notwithstanding, many scientists (go to http://www.asa3.org) have given serious thought to revisiting our understanding of how to read Genesis 1 in ways that do justice to both Scripture and science.

Greg,

I’m sorry Melissa, but I already responded to so much of what you said and wrote extensive comments, so I didn’t want to continue responding to ALL of it. But you likewise seem to have completely missed my arguments and my questions to you, so we’re even

Really, you looked up Matt 5 to see how Jesus understands the law and oral tradition? You thought about why the prophets are considered favourably when they spoke against the official Jewish authorities? No Greg you repeated much of what you have already said and I have told you what was wrong with that. I have collected below the summary of what I think are your main points and my summarised responses. Feel free to respond to each of these numbered points. If you think I have missed anything add it as another number.

1. Christians are ignorant of Judaism.

Jews have an additional oral tradition that helps them understand the law in the Torah, which the Christians simply lack and for the most part do not wish to study.

Your constant insinuation that Christian scholarship occurs in some kind of vacuum without reference to the knowledge of other disciplines is frankly insulting. There is a huge amount of work done in studying the cultural context that the early Christian writings grew out of, including much research into second temple Judaism.

2. Orthodox Jewish belief is the correct interpretation of the old testament and in Jesus time the only people authorised to interpret God’s will were the official Jewish authorities.

We established that the Nation of Israel was set up in such a way that each individual Jew, if he indeed desired to follow what God commanded, would turn to the leaders, judges and priests, and abide by their decisions. Turn neither to the left, nor to the right!

Firstly to assume that today’s orthodox Judaism is the correct interpretation of the Jewish scriptures is just begging the question against Christianity. Secondly I have already addressed your “don’t turn to the left or the right” quote, with examples in the old testament where the official Jewish leaders were corrupt and had turned away from God. You ignored that and just continued to quote “turn not to the right or left”. Don’t those situations cause you to pause and consider that maybe it’s not quite so clear cut as you are making out. Also the situation around the time of Jesus was that there were diverse interpretations of the law.

3. Jews have the oral tradition to help interpret the written Torah and Christians don’t so have interpreted the old testament wrong.
Once again Jesus was interacting with the oral tradition in Matt 5. Christians consider Jesus interpretation of the law as authoritative therefore we follow His and His followers interpretation rather than the orthodox Jewish interpretation.

4. Jesus can’t be God because God is one.
Ans: The Trinity

5. No Jew would accept Christianity just because someone said they had the right interpretation.

Christians are fooling themselves if they think they can get real orthodox Jews to skirt so close to transgressing the biggest commandments in their faith, on the basis of some guys saying “don’t worry, my interpretation is correct! We are dead to the law! etc.”

You’re right they believe Jesus had authority to interpret the scripture because of the resurrection. The conversion of Jews throughout history since Jesus death shows that in fact Jews do convert.

6. FOLLOW YOUR JUDGES AND PRIESTS !!!

So what have we established? We established that the Nation of Israel was set up in such a way that each individual Jew, if he indeed desired to follow what God commanded, would turn to the leaders, judges and priests, and abide by their decisions. Turn neither to the left, nor to the right!

The passage you’re using to support begins by referring to cases of bloodshed, lawsuits or assaults that are too difficult to judge in the villages and you have continued to ignore the times when the Jewish authorities were corrupt and it was the prophets who spoke God’s will. In your own words:

The point here is not to make *your* own interpretation

7. God told the Jews not to listen to people like Jesus (insert passage here but make sure you don’t quote the section that explicitly states that they are prophets who teach the Jews to turn to OTHER gods.)

Jesus was not teaching the Jews to follow other gods so the passage is not relevant.

8. I know more than you because I’ve read some stuff on the internet.

I have done university level biblical studies including study of the origins and writing of the old testament.

Feel free to respond. It will help if you respond to each point separately and number

Hey, guys. I awoke today to find a flurry of activity here. It will be definitely not be easy to answer your all substantively, but I just want to address a few things, and I apologize if I may have missed something in one of your points.

First: why do I want to address them?

Tom makes a good point, that I must do my own research in addition to talking on the forum. I am already reading Reasonable Faith, and it is helping me become more conversant with modern Christian thought on the subject of Jesus. I will try to look at some resources pointed to by Victoria, and continue to gather more evidence.

That said, I want to make a distinction. The original post and subsequent discussion until around comment 51 were frustrating to me, and I don’t think were helping me or anybody else. (Well, certainly I can speak for myself here.) However, afterwards, I think my conversation with Melissa and Victoria, and now the rest of you, is productive. It is on a subject that I care about, and moreover, it helps me understand how *you* deal with the issues that have been troubling *me*. Tom,several of the references that you referred to have come out of this discussion — and that is to be expected, since I am addressing my issue to a multitude of Christians and they are coming back with responses.

I will not automatically consider every response to be the definitive answer or end to the conversation, however. For example, I have repeatedly pointed out to Victoria that I have addressed several of her questions and asked her how she deals with it (see comment 88 and questions of the form “which is more likely”). Of course, Melissa might come and say that she has debunked one of the previous assumption so therefore Victoria doesn’t have to answer… but I don’t think that’s what it’s about. If I am going to answer you, you should respond back to me and my questions, especially when my answer is of the form “why do I think this? here is why I think this: insert what I know about X. Now, you tell me, which is morel likely, A or B?”

I ask you guys if you can to please cool it a little on the ad hominem attacks though, because I am telling you that nothing productive can come of it. I already know I must do further research.

But the reverse is kind of amazing to me. When asked why I find it hard to just “accept the message” of Christianity, I cite numerous reasons. Of *course* I can’t expand each reason into an encyclopedia article here, nor would it be productive. I simply cite them, and am happy to discuss one at a time in another thread, as we did with the flood (productively, by the way). For example,

Regarding the proof: I think there are many good reasons to believe that the entire Judeo-Christian religion is based on legends. The flood story, the babel story, the exodus story, the archaeological evidence of the kingdoms of Solomon and David, they have serious issues with them that would make a critical thinker doubt that these things ever happened. Mostly because they make huge and testable claims that would leave evidence if they were true: the flood killed all humans and animals outside the ark, before the tower of babel everyone spoke the same language, 3 million people left egypt and wandered in sinai, while egypt suffered heavy losses, and the kingdom of Solomon was the richest and most well known kingdom in the world. All the external evidence about the past from geology, history, archaeology, seems to discredit these claims. Don’t believe me — research it yourself.

Meanwhile, the Greeks and other nations also had myths, some also about the flood (promethius giving fire to the humans, anyone?) And we consider these fictional stories. What makes one flood story fictional and the other not? The fact that one is “found in the Bible” and the other is not.

Does any one of you *also* feel that they might want to do some research in light of this, or did you all already consider all these questions, which I would consider important reasons to think the Bible may be falsified, and realize right away that they’re absolutely silly activities of someone who tries to suppress the “obvious” truth? I think this goes back to what Neil was saying in a previous thread, about believing the truth. Sure, if believing Christianity is more important to you, even if the majority of scholarship in their respective fields thinks that the OT stories were legends, then continue doing it. But know that I will try to put in some serious time researching whatever responses you give me, if not now then a year from now (for this all takes a long time, and as you can imagine we all have other important things to do), so please take care with your answers.

Not to suggest that I only use wikipedia for my sources (I have seen some people dismiss any internet link that doesn’t agree with their religious people’s views will immediately be dismissed as wikipedia/atheist nonsense/out of context quotations/etc.), take it for what it is: a responsible encyclopedia with neutral point of view and overseen by editors who can revert bad entries, and has been listed as comparable in accuracy to the encyclopedia britannica, let me just take one of these, the flood. And most importantly, a way for me to link you to a responsible summary regarding what I’m talking about and references to other resources.

Here is what makes it difficult for me to just accept many of your answers:

When you say “The Bible” is true, this may seem like a coherent statement to you, but it is loaded, in light of this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible

What do you expect me to say to that? OK, I accept the “Bible” is true?

When you say that a certain thing (like the trinity) is part of the Christian faith, realize that this is just the view of the Majority. To suggest that it is the truth is an argumentatio ad populum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontrinitarianism#Points_of_dissent

There are many approaches to interpreting the Bible:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bible_and_History#Overview_of_academic_views

Questions like “to what degree you are a sinner” are not coherent questions to me, if the questioner doesn’t define what “sin” is. Perhaps they are unaware of the various concepts of sin. What would my answer signify to the questioner? That depends on the sense in which sin is understood.

Many of the questions I encounter from Christians are of this sort, that is why I feel compelled to engage in clarifying and pointing to “difficulties” in prepackaged terms like “The Bible” being used in telling me something which is clearly very important to both of us.

I will try to write much more and answer several great points brought up here.

Now let me turn to why I think some of the Old Testament stories might be based on legends. Some people have cited scholarly articles so let me just cite major scholarly positions and consensus, and Bible verses.

Although I think that providing 7 or 8 illustrations or references to back up each of your points is a GOOD thing, I agree that subsequently discussing several issues side by side is not as effective. Therefore I will expand on my 3 things below, but if you want to discuss them individually, you can post on the flood thread and I will address it there, or please ask Tom to create a new thread for e.g. the exodus. I’m sorry but I am torn between explaining what I mean, and inviting tons of side by side discussion. I choose to explain — but definitely we should have a way to move this to a threaded discussion somehow. It would be way more productive!

1. The Flood – fact or fiction?

We already had an extensive discussion on the flood, and I think we came to a consensus that the flood could not have been both global and around 2104 BC. Several civilizations that existed before that time, continued to exist after the supposed flood, including Ur, Babylon, Egypt, China and India.

In fact, it could not have been global at all:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html

For example:
There is no evidence of a global flood in the geological record.
The geographical distribution of animal species and their actual abilities contradicts the account.
DNA studies in humans do not show a bottle neck in our population.

Personally, I find the arguments below compelling to conclude that the Bible indicates only a global flood:
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-c005.html

However, note that there are many people defending the idea of a global flood, and indeed in 2104 BC. The point I am trying to make is that anything can be “defended” with enough technique, so we should be careful and open to the evidence.

What can we say of serious scientists believing in the historicity of the flood today? Most of them don’t believe it today. Various editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica reflect the collapse of belief in the historicity of the Ark in the face of advancing scientific knowledge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah's_Ark#The_Ark_and_science

I remember our consensus last time was that the flood:
1) Certainly wiped out all the humans except the ones on the ark, but didn’t have to cover the whole earth
2) Could have happened much earlier, like maybe 3000 BC or 30,000 BC

But
1) Human DNA shows no bottleneck in our population at any time in the last 50 thousand years
2) To this I have a personal objection, that I think it was obvious that Genesis 11 genealogies were specially crafted so as to not leave room for any other interpretation than a literal one. Obviously some people disagree.

That is why I said I have made a personal decision about the flood. Although I think I can make a stronger statement in light of 1.

You have asked me to do research and I will. But when I do and present you with specific references to evidence that conclusively points the other way, and the majority consensus of scientists, you should do some research too. At the very least, you can easily check the mainstream views in an encyclopedia or wikipedia, and if you want to dig deeper, read peer reviewed journals or email one of the people who says this. Maybe you’ll change your arguments regarding what the Bible says – fine. But don’t just dismiss the results of the research.

2. The Exodus – a legend?

Exodus 5-12 gives a very impressive picture of the Israelite Exodus from Egypt: the Ten Plagues, starting with the Nile waters turning into blood and ending with the Plague of the Firstborns in which “all the firstborns in the land of Egypt had died. This is followed by 600,000 male adult Israelites leaving Egypt. As they were on their way out, at the coast of the Sea of Reeds, Pharaoh’s army reached them. Then G-d divided the waters of the sea to let the Israelites pass “into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground” (Exodus 14:22) – and when Egyptians, pursuing them, entered the dry ground in the midst of the sea, the waters closed over them.

Unfortunately, nothing like this story is found in Egyptian history. Egyptian history of the 2nd millennium BCE is very well documented, yet no papyrus, no stone pillar, and no inscription mentions the Israelites’ enslavement in Egypt nor their escape. No mention is found of any of the Ten Plagues, of a total defeat of the Egyptian army in the waters of the sea, or of millions of people leaving the country at one time. Much less significant events (such as an escape of a couple of slaves from Egypt) were carefully put down in the chronicles by royal scribes – but not a single word mentions the great upheavals of the alleged Exodus.

Historical documents of other peoples and kingdoms of that time (who would surely have paid attention to great cataclysms that devastated the powerful Egyptian empire) also remain completely silent concerning the Israelite enslavement or the Exodus, the plagues, the massacre of the Egyptian army, or the simultaneous escape of millions of people from Egypt.

About the alleged date of the Exodus: Egypt engaged in a decades-long war with the Hittite empire, a war that led to the great Battle of Kadesh, in which some 20,000 Egyptian warriors participated on Egyptian side. That battle did not resolve the war, and after 16 more years of indecisive fighting a peace treaty and a mutual defense pact were signed between Egypt and the Hittite empire (see Encyclopaedia Britannica, Hittite and Ramses II, Military exploits). Were the Egyptian army indeed to drown in the Red Sea waters and were the Egyptian economy totally destroyed by the Ten Plagues, Egypt would not have been able to withstand such a war, especially as, according to the Torah, the Egyptian army was not able to recover for at least 40 years (see Deuteronomy 11:4 and Nachmanides’s commentary there) – the same years that the army waged campaign after campaign against the Hittites and supplied 20,000 warriors for the battle of Kadesh.

The archaeological evidence of the largely indigenous origins of Israel is “overwhelming,” and leaves “no room for an Exodus from Egypt or a 40-year pilgrimage through the Sinai wilderness.” (What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exodus#Historicity_debate

3. Solomon’s Kingdom – was it embellished to legendary status?

The Bible claims Solomon was a king greater in wisdom and riches than all other kings of the earth, everyone not only knew about him but sought him out:
http://bible.cc/1_kings/3-13.htm
http://www.biblestudytools.com/1-kings/passage.aspx?q=1%20kings+10:23-29

But the picture produced by historians is that the kingdom of Solomon was nowhere near being the richest kingdom on the earth and certainly it’s worrying that external accounts of Solomon’s riches are missing, considering such a famous king should have left some traces in world history through books of other nations than just the Jews.

Kingdoms of Solomon and David,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon#Archaeological_evidence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ancient_Israel_and_Judah#Religion

————–

Let me summarize why I think there are good reasons to believe these stories are legends, and why it makes it hard for me to believe Christianity.

1) They make grand claims, which would imply that we should find evidence

2) We look for the evidence and we are able to find lots of evidence for OTHER things

3) But when it comes to things that MUST have left traces, it is utterly lacking in the places we should expect to find it

This is precisely what one would expect from a legend: grand claims that we should find evidence for, but after looking for it, we don’t find it.

In the face of this, I don’t see how any “historicity of the NT” arguments can be stronger. When we have consensus of the entire mainstream of the respective scientific communities that the exodus was a legend, and we can look over the reasons for their conclusions ourselves, that is an incredibly strong argument. Therefore how can the Bible be the infallible word of God?

I understand that you think the person of Jesus is the more important question. But to me, that is like ignoring all the evidence against the Koran being the infallible word of God (by citing many many seriously problems in it) because there are good reasons to believe it MAY be true. Christians certainly find no problem finding issues with the Koran in order to explain why they don’t think it’s God’s word. Can’t you see that I am in the same boat?

As I said, I brought up a lot of issues in one thread. I am prepared to discuss the first two — I am not an expert on the kingdom of Solomon (Israel Finkelstein et al have serious problems with it but I think they may be biased, so I can’t simply refer you to them to back up my contentions, even though they are famous.)

Greg – so between last night and this afternoon you actually read those books I mentioned, thought carefully about what they said, and dismissed them? (on what credible expertise?)

Victoria: you have not so much as responded to my questions. I find your comment 117 to be facetious and disingenuous.

Mike Anthony:

In fact the laundery list of things in the Bible that were claimed to have been mythical but are now accepted as having basis in fact because of archaeology would give any truly honest person considerable pause in making that accusation. Mythical kingdoms of david and Solomon are just the latest to be debunked———————.

I haven’t said that the kingdoms of david and solomon didn’t exist. I said that there is strong evidence to think that the stories in the Bible are legends and did not actually literally happen. See my comment 115 for a more thorough explanation of them. I am prepared to discuss the flood and the exodus as much as you want. I am not an expert on the kingdom of Solomon.

I wish I had some sort of threaded forum we could set up, although that is a bit of a selfish desire, because maybe I am the only one who wants to find out how Christians handle these serious problems (at least I consider potentially falsifiable information to be serious).

My main perspective this whole time is, on the one hand we have tons of evidence against the (literal interpretations) of the stories which are supposed to be inerrant, but on the other hand we have a “historicity of the NT” argument which to me is not as compelling. I know I am simplifying it and probably caricaturing a bit, but that’s the gist of my attitude toward it. So to simply stop asking about the tons of evidence against, seems to be wrong to me.

I affirm your search for truth. I suggest you focus your time more where you can get better answers than we’ve been able to give you. And I suggest you see this as a place to discuss some of that reading (one topic at a time) with a few people of the Christian persuasion. It will do you a lot more good in the long run.

I’ll look forward to any single issue post in the future that I can particpate in. I have debated on Internet forums, blogs and webistes for many years and I have never seen this kind of an approach lead to anything substantive . Its been universally a waste of time.

I agree! I also want to have single issue posts in the future.

Tom, if I gave you the impression that I wanted many of my points to on different issues be put into one post, I apologize. I think this post HAS been helpful, to ME, for reasons I explained in comment 113. But I still think it would have been even more helpful to focus on one topic at a time.

I apologize if I contributed to there being many topics on this post in the first place. It was not my intention. I do intend to back up what I say with 3-4 illustrations or links to further references in a comment sometimes. But, and I want to stress this, *that does not mean I am looking to make a single thread about several of my contentions on different topics!* If we can make one thread about a single topic sometime, that would be awesome.

Here are the questions that I am genuinely interested in finding the answers to.

You could answer all the points raised and the person will blink and the without much more pause move on to another issue because the end conclusion in truth has been drawn and the person no matter how they profess otherwise is just looking for a path to get there.

I think the accusation could be made to many people on both sides. I personally am open to changing my mind, but not on the basis of ad hominem attacks or saying “stop looking at those questions and look at the important question — the NT is historically reliable, so do you believe in Jesus or not?” I don’t have enough information yet to know why you consider the NT historically reliable, but still, I don’t accept this idea that “NT is historically reliable” means it trumps everything else when I have been pointing out problems with the very reliability of the Bible.

Melissa: I am enjoying the format of our discussion.

I have collected below the summary of what I think are your main points and my summarised responses. Feel free to respond to each of these numbered points. If you think I have missed anything add it as another number.

Cool. Let me just restate my main point.

What I am saying can roughly be divided into two parts.

1) Skepticism vs Judaeo-Christian Framework : I think there are strong reasons to believe the Bible contains legends, and therefore is not inerrant.

2) Judaic framework on which Christianity rests vs Christianity.

My discussion with you is about the second one. Even if we assume the framework of Judaism on which Christianity is based it seems more likely to me that Jesus was not who Christians claim he is, and I explain the reasons why.

A) First, I think it’s clear that God gave the Israelites a law and commanded them to follow it for all generations, telling them not to abandon it or follow prophets or dreamers who try to take them away from those ways. God warned Jews all the time that if they abandon the law, they will be punished and cast out of Israel. God also said to consult with their leaders when it came to matters of dispute. Therefore, it seems unlikely to me that God would make the old covenant obsolete, send his only son to die for everyone’s sins and create a new covenant, and then spread the message using former tax collectors, fishermen, etc. The Jewish people were convinced the first time by God Himself appearing to them on Sinai. God kept telling them to follow the law. In order to tell them that the rules have changed, I find it unlikely that God would employ such a dubious way of spreading the message which indeed didn’t convince more than 1% of Jews that it was from God.

B) Secondly, Jesus himself says he came to save the lost sheep of Israel. But out of the children of Israel ultimately less than 1% converted to Christianity. However, Paul, a mere man who never saw Jesus, was able start a viral movement (like Mohammad was able to do later) and Pauline theology (granted, also reinforced by interplay with the other churches) is now followed by over a billion people. So, why was Jesus’ stated aim not fulfilled to more than 1%, while throughout various times in history and in various places Christianity enjoyed a 95% or higher believer base? I believe the answer — for both Christianity and Islam — comes from simple social network analysis. Christianity as a religion had less barriers to “member signup” in places where people didn’t reject Jesus’ message. The vast majority Jews did. Therefore, this calls into question for me the entire veracity of Christian claims about Jesus, his resurrection and his stated goals. Do you believe Mohammad flew away on a winged horse or split the moon? If not, tell me, would you believe Jesus’ message if you thought his resurrection didn’t happen?

1. Christians are ignorant of Judaism.

Jews have an additional oral tradition that helps them understand the law in the Torah, which the Christians simply lack and for the most part do not wish to study.

Your constant insinuation that Christian scholarship occurs in some kind of vacuum without reference to the knowledge of other disciplines is frankly insulting. There is a huge amount of work done in studying the cultural context that the early Christian writings grew out of, including much research into second temple Judaism.

I do not insinuate that Christian scholarship occurs in “some kind” of vacuum, but I keep pointing out that things like “The Bible” or “Christian Scholarship” are not one atomic thing.

There are many scholars, some Christian, some not, studying all kinds of things. Lots of ideas about Christianity are spread by preachers — and from the representative sample I have seen (from my vantage point of being in the USA), I can tell you that few are conversant with original Hebrew, the oral tradition, and Jewish interpretations of their own scriptures. They (the vast majority of preachers) read the Bible in English, do not know Hebrew, have never read the Talmud, and most Christians are not even aware there is an oral tradition.

Now, as to the academics tucked away in universities, once again you must acknowledge that this scholarship differed throughout the centuries. As one example, the Catholic church engaged in book burnings for books like the Talmud. I don’t think this is consistent with a believing they calmly and rationally engaged with Jews to better understand the meaning of their scriptures. So when you speak of “some kind of vacuum”, you cannot simultaneously point to the willingness of modern scholars to engage with the Jews about their own writings, and use it to make a sweeping statement about ALL Christian scholarship at ALL times.

And anyway, my point was mostly about the Jewish beliefs about Judaism in Jesus’ time, and not about Christian understanding of Jewish beliefs throughout the ages. My point was not to disparage the latter, but to point you to more resources about the oral torah, its existence and importance in understanding interpretations of the law. And therefore, it is not *your* or *my* interpretation that is important to my main point, but the interpretation of the Jews in Jesus’ time. I have just been saying that the oral torah was present, and it’s a factor I don’t see hardly any Christians mention when talking about the NT. It changes a lot.

2. Orthodox Jewish belief is the correct interpretation of the old testament and in Jesus time the only people authorised to interpret God’s will were the official Jewish authorities.

We established that the Nation of Israel was set up in such a way that each individual Jew, if he indeed desired to follow what God commanded, would turn to the leaders, judges and priests, and abide by their decisions. Turn neither to the left, nor to the right!

Firstly to assume that today’s orthodox Judaism is the correct interpretation of the Jewish scriptures is just begging the question against Christianity. Secondly I have already addressed your “don’t turn to the left or the right” quote, with examples in the old testament where the official Jewish leaders were corrupt and had turned away from God. You ignored that and just continued to quote “turn not to the right or left”. Don’t those situations cause you to pause and consider that maybe it’s not quite so clear cut as you are making out. Also the situation around the time of Jesus was that there were diverse interpretations of the law.

By saying that it’s begging the question, I think you are admitting that orthodox Judaism leaves absolutely no room for Christianity to be true. Current orthodox Judaism *is* based on both the written torah, found in the bible, and the oral tradition, found in the Talmud (Mishnah, Gemorrah, etc.) So do you agree with me on this point?

Do you agree that in order for Christianity to be true, orthodox Judaism and the Talmud must be wrong?

Second, your point that Jewish leaders became corrupt may be a good one. Can you tell me the specific examples you are referring to? (I like examples. 🙂

Do you mean the corruption that is described in the Bible under king Jeroboam?

3. Jews have the oral tradition to help interpret the written Torah and Christians don’t so have interpreted the old testament wrong.
Once again Jesus was interacting with the oral tradition in Matt 5. Christians consider Jesus interpretation of the law as authoritative therefore we follow His and His followers interpretation rather than the orthodox Jewish interpretation.

First of all, once again there are many kinds of Christians. There is a slight chance that one of the denominations interprets all the scriptures exactly right. But it is extremely unlikely. I don’t know of any group of Christians that simultaneously studies the whole TaNaKh in Hebrew, understands all the nuances (including possibly Gematria) cross references with the hundreds of man years of Torah analysis encoded in the Talmud and subsequent analysis by Maimonides, Nachmanides, and Rashi, just to name a few of the more famous people who dedicated their lives to engaging with the Jewish tradition.

You have a version of this in Christianity, by the way. Catholics believe there is more than just the Bible — there is the apostolic tradition. I don’t think Protestants really engage with this tradition.

In fact, almost all Jews in Jesus’ time knew the Jewish traditions… as is evidenced by NT references to “work on the sabbath day” and “sabbath day’s journey”. (They knew exactly what this referred to. Do you? I myself have to look up the various things considered work on Sabbath, because I am not an orthodox Jew. I can’t imagine many Christians know any of this.)

Now, to address your main point: I do not dispute that Jesus was an learned Jew and knew a lot about Judaism. I don’t dispute that Jesus knew about the oral Torah — in fact almost all Jews at the time knew the Jewish traditions. I say (see my Argument #1) that had Jesus’ *disciples* really intended to convince everyone of this new covenant, it was unlikely at the outset that they would be successful. God being God would have known this! And therefore if God wanted to the people of Israel to know that a new covenant is upon them, and the old one is obsolete, God would not have chosen fishermen and tax collectors to spread the message.

4. Jesus can’t be God because God is one.
Ans: The Trinity

Due to all the following reasons and more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontrinitarianism#Points_of_dissent

it is reasonable to assume that many Jews would have not believed this message, especially coming from some former fishermen and tax collectors. The list above is just points that Christians themselves bring. For the Jews, the problem is much bigger:

http://www.simpletoremember.com/articles/a/jewsandjesus/

I suggest you read the link above to realize it is not at all obvious to Jews that the new covenant has been established.

(It is also covered here but someone here said they don’t like aish: http://www.aish.com/jw/s/48892792.html also talks about it)

Therefore, this relates to my arguments #1 and #2 as shown in the arguments. It also explains why Jews have been so reluctant to accept Jesus as their messiah for 2000 years!

5. No Jew would accept Christianity just because someone said they had the right interpretation.

Christians are fooling themselves if they think they can get real orthodox Jews to skirt so close to transgressing the biggest commandments in their faith, on the basis of some guys saying “don’t worry, my interpretation is correct! We are dead to the law! etc.”

You’re right they believe Jesus had authority to interpret the scripture because of the resurrection. The conversion of Jews throughout history since Jesus death shows that in fact Jews do convert.

Who is “they”?
Jews do convert, but I think it is an undeniable fact that the percentage of Jews who converted to Christianity is pitifully small, even in the lats 2000 years. Why do you think that is?

The fact that a tiny proportion of Jews accepted Jesus as the messiah is not a good argument that Christianity is therefore compatible with the mainstream Jewish framework on which it is based. Some people could have made mistakes — not many of them were the sages. As far as I recall, there is no evidence that ANY of the sages converted to this religion, although there is a claim made 40 years later that a wealthy Jew who sat on the council was secretly Jesus’ follower. I will grant that one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_messiah_claimants — many people believed in these guys. In fact, Shabbatai Zevi seems to have gotten many more Jews to believe in him than all of Jesus’ disciples combined ever did in their lifetimes. But does that make Shabbatai Zevi the messiah in your view? Probably not.

In addition, Alister McGrath, former Professor of Historical Theology at the University of Oxford (who seems like an interesting guy btw), claims that the 1st century Jewish Christians were totally faithful religious Jews. They differed from other contemporary Jews only in their acceptance of Jesus as the Messiah. Of course, this is just a claim. But certainly it calls into question the authority of Paul’s ideas about how the old covenant is obsolete, we are dead to the law, and his rebuke of “Cephas” for following Jewish customs. Sure these early Jewish Christians thought Jesus was the messiah, but did they follow Paul’s ideas?

6. FOLLOW YOUR JUDGES AND PRIESTS !!!

So what have we established? We established that the Nation of Israel was set up in such a way that each individual Jew, if he indeed desired to follow what God commanded, would turn to the leaders, judges and priests, and abide by their decisions. Turn neither to the left, nor to the right!

The passage you’re using to support begins by referring to cases of bloodshed, lawsuits or assaults that are too difficult to judge in the villages and you have continued to ignore the times when the Jewish authorities were corrupt and it was the prophets who spoke God’s will. In your own words:
The point here is not to make *your* own interpretation

I will grant you one thing here: I also noticed the specific mention of civil and criminal disputes in Deuteronomy 17, before the command to appear before judges and a priest, and follow what they say to the left and to the right.

From just a literal reading of the written Torah, and no knowledge of te oral tradition, one can definitely propose the following interpretation:

“Jews did not have to consult any authorities when it came to matters of Halakha, that is, the religious law. If a fisherman came to them and told them there was a new covenant, they would be able to stop following the old laws and do something else, because Deuteronomy 17 only talks about civil and criminal cases.”

I don’t consider this interpretation to be convincing, but notice that you will have to hang your hat on it if you will want to address my arguments #1 and #2. Because if Jesus’ disciples had any hope of convincing real, orthodox Jews who wanted to follow God’s law and read the prophets about what happens if they don’t, it was only if the Jews *didn’t* have to ask their leaders and priests about how to follow the law. However, one then wonders if every religious Jew in Israel had the freedom to interpret the law and God’s word however they wanted, which I think is a poorly supported position and there are a lot of good reasons to think this was not the case (see for example the book of Ezra).

7. God told the Jews not to listen to people like Jesus (insert passage here but make sure you don’t quote the section that explicitly states that they are prophets who teach the Jews to turn to OTHER gods.)

Jesus was not teaching the Jews to follow other gods so the passage is not relevant.

Once again, your interpretation is that the entire paragraph I quoted does not apply to people who simply try to “turn you from the way the LORD your God commanded you to follow. ” but in fact make you follow other gods.

First of all, see again my response to your point #4. Jesus’ followers, and/or later Christians, skirt close to making Jews transgress against the 1st and 2nd commandments by believing Jesus is God. Catholics definitely go quite a bit further by having churches with figurines of Jesus, pictures of God as a man in the sky, and beginning prayers with invoking the names of “Mother mary…” and the saints.

Secondly, I am not quite sure that “merely” trying to turn [Israelites] from the way the LORD your God commanded them to follow [in the Torah given to Moses] is not something that is “OK”. If I am right, then what Paul was doing therefore was not “OK”, and neither would anyone who says “the old covenant is obsolete” and “we are no longer under the law”.

If you would like, I can bring many more verses where God specifically mentions punishment for *not following the laws He gave to their forefathers*. Are you taking the position that there are no such verses? If there are, then how do you address my point #7? By the way, replace “people like Jesus” with “people like Jesus’ disciples”.

Let me add a 7.5 because I think we would otherwise be missing an important point:

7.5

A lot of the ideas which Jews have a problem accepting are mainly based in the writings of Paul. Paul in some places seems to indicate that Jesus is God. In many places he seems to indicate that Mosaic law was not necessary to be followed anymore, and that a new covenant had arrived. Paul himself describes that he was at odds with “Cephas” from the jewish church, and rebuked him for acting too Jewish.

I can elaborate on this point, but I will just bring one example:
Paul says (KJV Romans 3:28): “a man is JUSTIFIED by FAITH apart from WORKS of the law.”
James says (KJV James 2:24): “by WORKS a man is JUSTIFIED, and not by FAITH only.”
Jesus says: (NIV Matthew 5:18-19): “I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”

Note that Jesus’ words were about the people already in the Kingdom of Heaven — the saved. And yet they should follow the law, lest they will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. If we are to take Jesus’ words literally, it would sem Paul will be called least in the kingdom of heaven for what he was teaching.

Therefore, I would like to ask 7, but with “Jesus” replaced by “Paul”. Where does his authority to teach his seemingly different doctrine derive from?

8. I know more than you because I’ve read some stuff on the internet.

I have done university level biblical studies including study of the origins and writing of the old testament.

I don’t say that! I completely don’t rely on those kinds of arguments and point you to actual information at every turn. In fact my very point is that people should think for themselves. The fact that you have taken biblical study courses means we can have a more meaningful discussion. So I would probably suggest that we strike this one off the list.

Feel free to respond. It will help if you respond to each point separately and number

Done 🙂

Greg,

1.

So when you speak of “some kind of vacuum”, you cannot simultaneously point to the willingness of modern scholars to engage with the Jews about their own writings, and use it to make a sweeping statement about ALL Christian scholarship at ALL times.

I made no such sweeping statement.

And therefore, it is not *your* or *my* interpretation that is important to my main point, but the interpretation of the Jews in Jesus’ time.

Which is why you should read some NT Wright as Tom suggested. He has done a lot of study into both Jewish thought of this time and other ancient religious beliefs floating around at the time. His books will also cite further reading if you want to check what he writes about for yourself.

2.

Do you agree that in order for Christianity to be true, orthodox Judaism and the Talmud must be wrong?

I agree that orthodox Judaism and the Talmud are wrong about the Messiah.

Second, your point that Jewish leaders became corrupt may be a good one. Can you tell me the specific examples you are referring to? (I like examples.

I’m not saying necessarily that the Jewish leaders were corrupt but that prophets were often depicted rebuking the “official” leaders and were in fact persecuted by those leaders. The prophets are littered with rebukes of Jerusalem and the leaders. In the same way Jesus rebukes the official leaders of his time, of course they’re not going to like that.

3.

And therefore if God wanted to the people of Israel to know that a new covenant is upon them, and the old one is obsolete, God would not have chosen fishermen and tax collectors to spread the message.

Well that’s just elitist. If you understood the message Jesus brought then you would know that is exactly what God would do, in fact God has a track record of using people we wouldn’t expect.

4. Your original point was that Christians follow a different God. The Jews may believe that but once again to assume that interpretation is correct is to once again beg the question against Christianity. The reason given by the early Jewish converts to Christianity is that they had an encounter with the risen Christ. Obviously was enough to convince them that God was 3-in-1 even if they did not understand how.

5.

Who is “they”?

Oh yes, the no true scotsman fallacy, I was wondering when this would make an appearance.

But certainly it calls into question the authority of Paul’s ideas about how the old covenant is obsolete, we are dead to the law, and his rebuke of “Cephas” for following Jewish customs. Sure these early Jewish Christians thought Jesus was the messiah, but did they follow Paul’s ideas?

Actually the passage in Gal 2 rebukes Cephas for hypocrisy. “But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood self-condemned; 12for until certain people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But after they came, he drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction. 13And the other Jews joined him in this hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.”

and earlier talks about Paul’s visit to Jerusalem:
“and when James and Cephas and John, who were acknowledged pillars, recognized the grace that had been given to me, they gave to Barnabas and me the right hand of fellowship, agreeing that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. 10They asked only one thing, that we remember the poor, which was actually what I was* eager to do.”

6. Much of your issues would be non-issues if you stopped thinking of the bible as some kind of magic book dictated by God. You are reading it as if every passage must be some kind of universally binding command. You’ll never make any sense of it like that. That’s not necessarily your fault as it seems to be a prevalent tendency of both atheists and fundamentalists. Each part is written by particular people, into a particular situation, addressing that particular context. Of course there are timeless principles but first we must understand what was happening at the time of writing, before we try to apply it to our lives today. If you read those early parts of the bible you’ll see the Israelites were wild, they needed taming. Just from the types of laws specified you can see the kinds of problems the community faced. Of course they needed a strong direction and forceful language if they were going to survive as a nation.

7.5 Once again you’re taking a magic book approach to the bible.

A lot of the ideas which Jews have a problem accepting are mainly based in the writings of Paul. Paul in some places seems to indicate that Jesus is God. In many places he seems to indicate that Mosaic law was not necessary to be followed anymore, and that a new covenant had arrived. Paul himself describes that he was at odds with “Cephas” from the jewish church, and rebuked him for acting too Jewish.

See my response in point 5 above. Now you said you don’t like people taking texts out of context. Matt 5:17 (ie. one verse before your quote) says this “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil.”

In instigating the Lord’s supper in Luke 22:20 Jesus says “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.”

In the letters we see the early church working through some of the issues of what it means to faithfully follow Jesus.

The teaching of Paul is not at odds with Peter or Jesus he may have been at odds in some respects with James but he never says you’re saved by faith now go and do whatever you want which seems to what you are implying. In fact he is constantly imploring the brothers and sisters to use their freedom for good, to be dead to sin. James also in the passage you quote uses as examples the works of people who were not under the law so it doesn’t support your point.

Tom: I would rather not get derailed on “he said, she said” once again. But I will just address the first one.

Charlie said:

Very little of the NT was written by fishermen, including only a few of the Epistles.

Charlie says:June 3rd, 2011 at 3:32 am
And so, to quote:

But at the very least, the fact that you make such claims ought to cause you to question the veratcity of your beliefs on some of these issues.

-Neil

I responded that “fishermen” wasn’t supposed to be a 100% precise statement that they were ALL fishermen, but rather, to show that none of them was any sort of authority that Jews were commanded to respect and consult regarding matters of Halakha in Deuteronomy.

The second part, by quoting Neil, Charlie was saying that the fact I make such claims (they were “fishermen”, when they weren’t *all* fishermen) shows that therefore ought to cause me (and presumably anyone) to question the veracity of my beliefs on the other Christian issues I am talking about. I pointed out that it is an ad hominem argument.

An ad hominem (Latin: “to the man”), short for argumentum ad hominem, is an attempt to link the truth of a claim to a negative characteristic or belief of the person advocating it.

Tom:

3. And therefore if God wanted to the people of Israel to know that a new covenant is upon them, and the old one is obsolete, God would not have chosen fishermen and tax collectors to spread the message.

What did Moses do for a living for his second forty years? What did David do for a living before he was anointed king? How about Amos? Micah?

That’s just the thing. In the absence of God’s direct speaking to them, the Jewish people didn’t just believe and follow Moses when he brought the message.

Even when he was part of the pharaoh’s house, and they were slaves, they didn’t listen to him

The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, “Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?”
The man said, “Who made you ruler and judge over us? …”

The Jewish people didn’t jut believe Moses when he brought the message, even when he showed them miracles. They whined and bickered. They questioned Moses’ authority and said he took them out into the wilderness to die. *Not even miracles* were enough, for Pharaoh’s magicians also did miracles.

Until God spoke to them directly, and then they said, “go, Moses, and receive the law from God”. They trusted him completely.

For the Jewish people, this is crucial. Anyone can claim anything. Mohammad claimed he had just seen a vision and God spoke the Koran to him through the angel Gabriel. Paul claimed he saw Jesus in a vision while he was on the road to Damascus. All these religions started with a group of people claiming something. Judaism is the only religion that claims to have begun God speaking to all 3 million people of Israel. No other religion does.

Imagine the immensity of that: the whole nation heard God speak.

God said: here are my commandments. Never stray from them. They are for all generations. If you don’t follow my commandments, you will be cast out of your land.

In Jesus’ time, Jews were very well aware of all this, and of God’s repeated message: observe my laws and commandments that I gave to Israel. Even in the last chapter of the last book of the last prophet, we find:

“22. Keep in remembrance the teaching of Moses, My servant-the laws and ordinances which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel.”

Therefore, if God repeatedly tells the Jewish people that they are not to stray from the law, don’t you think that God would make a clear sign if a new convenant will happen, so people aren’t confused? The first time, the entire nation was brought out of egypt, ate manna for 40 years, heard God speak to them directly on Mount Sinai. The second time, a fisherman, tax collector and former pharisee wrote letters. And that was supposed to get Jews to abandon everything they were ever taught about following the law?

Do you see the difference? But it seems to actually be worse than that.

Jesus was teaching to follow the law, too. He was a practicing Jew. As for what we know of his teaching,

For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law, you will certainly not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until Heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

26“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”
27He answered: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’c; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’d”
28“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

it is useful to note that this is from Deuteronomy 6, which says:

1Now these are the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments, which the LORD your God commanded to teach you, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go to possess it:

2That thou mightest fear the LORD thy God, to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command thee, thou, and thy son, and thy son’s son, all the days of thy life; and that thy days may be prolonged.

3Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it; that it may be well with thee, and that ye may increase mightily, as the LORD God of thy fathers hath promised thee, in the land that floweth with milk and honey.

4Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD:

5And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

6And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:

7And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.

8And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes.

9And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.

10And it shall be, when the LORD thy God shall have brought thee into the land which he sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give thee great and goodly cities, which thou buildedst not,

11And houses full of all good things, which thou filledst not, and wells digged, which thou diggedst not, vineyards and olive trees, which thou plantedst not; when thou shalt have eaten and be full;

12Then beware lest thou forget the LORD, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.

13Thou shalt fear the LORD thy God, and serve him, and shalt swear by his name.

14Ye shall not go after other gods, of the gods of the people which are round about you;

15(For the LORD thy God is a jealous God among you) lest the anger of the LORD thy God be kindled against thee, and destroy thee from off the face of the earth.

Look how beautiful this verse. And so clear – this is addressed to every generation. That is why it says “your fathers”.

But along comes Paul, and his antinomianism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinomianism

“All things are clean, kosher laws are optional”
“The sabbath day is optional”
“The old covenant is obsolete … and will soon disappear”
“Is a man justified by works? No.”
“A man is justified by faith apart from works.”

(paraphrasing the content)

And maybe other people, I confess I don’t know the finer details of who among the disciples shared Paul’s ideas. Regardless, these people go against everything the Jews stood for and everything they were Commanded to do By God!

Sure, you today think they don’t. But I have already told you that the stuff above cuts right to the heart of what Jews received from God himself.

If you were a Jew who did not see Jesus teach, and let’s say Paul came up to you and said these things, what would YOU do?

Sure, you were able to answer and show that the evidence did not necessarily mean what they thought it meant; but that did not make their argument ad hominem.

That is not why I called it an “ad hominem”. I referred directly to Charlie’s comment. I explained to you:

The second part, by quoting Neil, Charlie was saying that the fact I make such claims (they were “fishermen”, when they weren’t *all* fishermen) shows that therefore ought to cause me (and presumably anyone) to question the veracity of my beliefs on the other Christian issues I am talking about. I pointed out that it is an ad hominem argument.

I make claims A, B, C, D, E, F. Charlie points out that I was careless in part of my claim “A”, saying “a bunch of fishermen” instead of “a fisherman, a tax collector, a former pharisee, etc.” . If he just stopped there it would not be an ad hominem at all. But then he said that this calls into question the veracity of my beliefs on B, C, D, E, F. That is by definition an ad hominem argument.

This is a minor point, Tom. And by the way, ad hominem is not always a fallacy. The character and tendencies of the person saying something may be important to the argument and how carefully we must approach it. If the person is careless once, we should watch out for other issues of carelessness. If the person is malicious once, maybe we can see if they have been malicious again, or establish a pattern of maliciousness. But just because it is not always a fallacy does not mean it is not an ad hominem argument.

Therefore, if God repeatedly tells the Jewish people that they are not to stray from the law, don’t you think that God would make a clear sign if a new convenant will happen, so people aren’t confused?

How about raising Jesus from the dead? That seems to be exactly the kind of clear sign you’re asking for — the kind of sign that would authenticate Jesus’s claim to be God, and give him the authority to inaugurate a new relationship between Israel (along with the rest of mankind) and God. You talk as if God expected the Jews to listen to some fishermen’s claims about Jesus, based on no particular authority at all. Wrong. God expected the Jews to listen to Jesus, His Son, who was God Himself, based on the authority of the greatest miracle ever performed in redemptive history.

So I ask you, Greg: will you deal with the Resurrection? Remember back in the thread on the Flood, when I gave you exactly what you asked for and wrote a bulleted post summarizing the evidence for the Resurrection? Did you respond (I can’t find it if you did).

Hint: if you can’t escape the Resurrection, then all your arguments are in shambles, because you have to either admit that i) Jesus has power over death and is, therefore, God, or ii) God at least raised Jesus from the dead and, therefore, wanted people (especially the Jews) to listen to him and follow him.

Greg, you wrote:

The Jewish people didn’t jut believe Moses when he brought the message, even when he showed them miracles. They whined and bickered. They questioned Moses’ authority and said he took them out into the wilderness to die. *Not even miracles* were enough, for Pharaoh’s magicians also did miracles.

Until God spoke to them directly, and then they said, “go, Moses, and receive the law from God”. They trusted him completely.

Perhaps I’m mistaken, but isn’t your OT history out of order? The Israeites did trust Moses based on the miracles God gave Moses to perform and based on his proclamation of God’s concern for his people (see Ex. 4:29-31). They then continued to alternate trust of Moses with mistrust of him both before and after the giving of the law at Sinai. The rebellion of Miriam and Aaron (Numbers 12), and Korah’s rebellion (Numbers 17) both occurred after Sinai.

I think I agree and disagree with Bill R.’s assessment. The Jews were not asked to believe on the basis of their first-hand observation of the Resurrection, because the Resurrection was not witnessed by all the Jews. But I would agree with Bill R’s first statement. The Jews were asked to believe on the basis of seeing God himself and hearing his words in the person of Jesus Christ. In this way, they had precisely the same opportunity as the Jews at Sinai.

Additionally, not only did the Scriptures predict the coming of the Messiah, but God attested to Jesus’ identity by numerous miracles, to which the apostles later appealed. Interestingly, the Jewish leaders rejected the signs they were given and demanded precisely what Greg is asking for: a sign from heaven. Greg might object that God ought to have done something more spectacularly public to announce the coming of the Messiah. But what’s interesting is that I don’t see any prophecy in the OT which says that the Messiah will be attested by a voice in the clouds or a sign from heaven. Istead, we read that the Messiah will come doing precisely the works that Jesus did: healing the sick, opening the eyes of the blind, and preaching the good news to the poor. Greg, have orthodox Jews historically believed that the Messiah would be authenticated by another Sinai-like public display? If not, then why would you expect Jesus to be authenticated in this way?

-Neil

Neil, that’s just it. By the way I carefully avoided saying that if God really had switched over to a new covenant with Israel, He should have given the Jews a clearer sign that there is a new covenant. I actually want to say that, but I realize that I am no one to tell God what to do.

Still that is my argument. Even if Judaism (as understood in Jesus’ time, and on which Christianity is based) is true, I don’t think it’s likely that God would first tell the Jews not to listen to guys like Jesus’ disciples, then make exactly those kinds of guys spread the message that a new covenant is here. I think that’s a pretty reasonable point.

The Jews were asked to believe on the basis of seeing God himself and hearing his words in the person of Jesus Christ. In this way, they had precisely the same opportunity as the Jews at Sinai.

Maybe Jesus’ own disciples and people who saw him perform miracles had some better evidence. But if you weren’t around and then some guy who used to be a fisherman but now is in Jesus’ church comes to your door one day and says “The Lord has raised Jesus from the dead! Jesus is fully God of fully God! You can eat pork now! You don’t have to keep shabbat anymore! Accept Jesus as your lord and savior and pray to him, for my friend Bob has seen him raised from the dead!” you would be like … “umm…. okay do you WANT to get stoned? Stop this right now. Who is Jesus?”

I seriously don’t even understand why it’s not obvious. If God said specifically to not leave his commandments, and you as a a Jew have never seen Jesus or heard anything, why would you trust some guy and his message?

I would go a little further and say that just because someone can do miracles doesn’t mean they have the truth about God. Balaam had a talking donkey. Egyptian magicians could do stuff. So what. Jews aren’t convinced by miracles, not even the 10 plagues got them to accept God. They only got the covenant when God Himself spoke to everyone. Therefore fine I will say it, if God wanted to change the covenant, He would have probably appeared to everyone.

When Moschiach comes in the next 200 years (Jews have a deadline) then it will be obvious to all! No one will wonder. Jesus said so himself. Don’t listen to someone who said “I saw him in the desert” or “in the inner rooms.” When Moschiach comes on the clouds of heaven the whole world will know. These are Jewish ideas!

Bill R: God raising Jesus from the dead cannot be used as first-hand evidence, otherwise it would be quite strong obviously.

If I knew for sure that
1. Jesus was raised from the dead
2. It was done specifically by God

In fact, if I knew for sure exactly what Jesus said, and knew for sure his message was authorized by God, then obviously I would follow it.

The thing is, we did not see Jesus preaching, Jesus doing miracles, or Jesus being raised from the dead. We just have to take the writers’ word for it. Paul says 500 people saw Jesus appear, some of whom were still alive as he wrote the letter. Well whoop de doo, people claimed Mohammad split the moon and many people saw it. THat doesn’t mean it actually happened.

I love predictability.

Neil, that’s just it. By the way I carefully avoided saying that if God really had switched over to a new covenant with Israel, He should have given the Jews a clearer sign that there is a new covenant. I actually want to say that, but I realize that I am no one to tell God what to do.

Still that is my argument.

Yes, Greg realises he is no one to tell God what to do but he will anyway.

Greg,

Let’s look at where we’re at.

1. Christians are ignorant of Judaism

I have explained that there is no monolithic thing called “Christian scholarship”, and one cannot make a sweeping statement that says “Christian scholarship has always occurred with thoughtful collaboration with Jews and consideration of Jewish ideas about their own religion”. Perhaps it does now, but it didn’t always (such as during the talmud book burnings and persecutions). Anyway this is beside the main point.

Again I made no sweeping statement. If you are looking for the truth you should read those who are thoughtfully engaging with other viewpoints not think that by dealing with the low-hanging fruit you have successfully shown Christianity to be false. You have shown no evidence that you have done that.

2. Orthodox Jewish belief is the correct interpretation of the old testament and in Jesus time the only people authorised to interpret God’s will were the official Jewish authorities.

You can say that the Jews were wrong about their own Messiah prophecies, but you’d have to back up that statement. Are you insinuating that Jews made their Talmud in some kind of vacuum?

If the resurrection occurred the Jews were wrong, it’s that simple.

I really thought you had some specific situation or example in mind. Because a lot of the time the ruling families behaved badly and were rebuked by prophets. I don’t particularly remember levite priests of the temple being rebuked by prophets.

Jer 2:8 The priests did not say, ‘Where is the Lord?’
   Those who handle the law did not know me;
the rulers transgressed against me;
   the prophets prophesied by Baal,
   and went after things that do not profit.

I think your attempts to undermine the idea that in Jesus’ time, Jewish people had judges and levite priests that they can go to is ambitious, but unsuccessful

I’m disputing their authority to interpret God’s will not their existence.

We can conclude that there is indeed precedence in the old testament for the authority of the official Jewish leaders to be questioned.

3. Jews have the oral tradition to help interpret the written Torah and Christians don’t so have interpreted the old testament wrong.

You’ve gone off topic on this point with this:

The point is, Jews didn’t accept the disciples message precisely because it was not authoritative to them.

Jews did accept the message. Jews still accept the message today. I have a friend who is a Mesianic Jew. You can keep flogging this dead horse but it’s not going to run.

Jesus’ own disciples seem to have continued observing all the law, by the way. So whatever the message is today, it probably changed since then.

They ate with the uncircumcised which was not allowed so apparently not quite. Converts from Islam today often keep their cultural distinctive and call themselves muslim followers of Jesus. It’s a similar situation. Textural criticism shows that the biblical text has not been changed in it’s message.

4. Jesus can’t be God because God is one.

Once again you’ve moved away from the original point so we agree that Christianity does not preach more than one God and if Jews think otherwise they are mistaken. Now without acknowledging the point you have moved onto questioning the resurrection. Tom has multiple posts on this very question somewhere. Maybe have a look for them.

Original disciples, with vested interest in the story

Yes it was to their advantage not to go back to fishing and instead preach the resurrected Christ, resulting in persecution, imprisonment and death. Great career move.

5. No Jew would accept Christianity just because someone said they had the right interpretation.

See my response at point 3. It seems that this is your default position for any challenge. As numerous other commenters have pointed out until you deal with the resurrection the rest of this conversation is pointless and basically irrelevant. Except possibly the inerrancy questions.

7.5 A lot of the ideas which Jews have a problem accepting are mainly based in the writings of Paul.

I think you are manufacturing contradiction where there are none. Yes Paul has a different focus, he is addressing mainly gentile churches.

Okay I will assume from now until the end of the comment that you don’t think the Bible is inerrant

Please do. As Tom mentioned much earlier on the question of inerrancy is very complex. In fact I think the confusion leads to misunderstandings. I prefer to describe the bible as authoritative.

You’re right. In other places Paul seems to say the Mosaic law is awesome. For whatever reason, he seems to kind of had different ideas at different times.

Exactly he is addressing different people in different situations.

He also wasn’t a fan of circumcision, but he personally circumcised Timothy.
but what gives Paul authority anyway?

The community of believers.

I think I am doing your “magic book” thinking, but I am not sure what your alternative approach is. I would like you to explain what YOU would propose as the alternative, and describe it so that I actually understand the method and can apply it myself

To understand the context the passage is written into. What problems are being addressed? What are the concerns of the community? You do realise that many stories in the bible are described multiple times with different emphasises that reflect the interests of the authors and the community they are writing into. This multiple viewpoint gives us a much clearer view of what is happening than if we had to rely on just one viewpoint.

A good entry level book on reading the bible is How to Read the Bible for All It’s Worth by Gorden Fee and Douglas Stuart.

Greg,
So you agree with my point about the historical order of the events in the OT? In other words, even after hearing the audible voice of God, the Jews continued to doubt and mistrust Moses. It’s almost as if the real problem was not the evidence, but their hearts. Perhaps they, like we, need not more evidence but transformed hearts to accept the evidence we have.

Second, you write:

Neil, that’s just it. By the way I carefully avoided saying that if God really had switched over to a new covenant with Israel, He should have given the Jews a clearer sign that there is a new covenant. I actually want to say that, but I realize that I am no one to tell God what to do.

Still that is my argument. Even if Judaism (as understood in Jesus’ time, and on which Christianity is based) is true, I don’t think it’s likely that God would first tell the Jews not to listen to guys like Jesus’ disciples, then make exactly those kinds of guys spread the message that a new covenant is here. I think that’s a pretty reasonable point.

So you do recognize that your argument are based on your expectations and assumptions about how God ought to work, right? Namely, he ought to have provided a sign from heaven for the Messiah rather than the many signs he gave in the OT which he indicated would validate the Messiah’s identity. And he ought not to have appointed witnesses from people like fishermen, or tax collectors, or a Pharisee studying under one of the leading 1st century Jewish rabbis, Gamaliel. He ought to have appointed witnesses from the Sanhedrin, even though his pattern throughout the OT was to send prophets from both within and outside the priestly class. Right? I just want to make sure that you agree that all your objections are based on these assumptions.

Finally, I am very confused about your own position. When we explain Christian doctrines, you often object to them based on rabbinic sources like the Mishnah, the Talmud, etc… Yet you later say that your own beliefs tends towards skepticism of the OT rather than belief in Judaism. Isn’t this inconsistent? Imagine if you made some objection to the Christian doctrine of judgement and I responded: “Yes, but Hindus don’t even believe in judgment. They believe in reincarnation. Look at all the clear teaching of Hindu sages throughout the milennia.” Wouldn’t this objection be disingenuous, to say the least? How can I respond to objections by appealiong to beliefs which I don’t even think are true? If you believe that rabbinic Judaism is true, then it makes sense for you to appeal to the authority of the Mishnah or Talmud. But if you personally don’t believe that these sources are true or authoritative, then why are you appealing to them?

-Neil

God authenticated Joshua before Israel by the use of miracles – as He would later with Elijah and Elisha in the battle with the Baals.

Joshua 4: 7 And the LORD said to Joshua, “Today I will begin to exalt you in the eyes of all Israel, so they may know that I am with you as I was with Moses. 8 Tell the priests who carry the ark of the covenant: ‘When you reach the edge of the Jordan’s waters, go and stand in the river.’”

Referring to point 7.5 (the comparision of Paul and James discussing faith and works)

Greg, you are committing the error of putting two verses together, collapsing the contexts, and ignoring both the immediate context of each, and the larger context of the NT. Christian scholars and biblically literate Christians have known about this for centuries – it has been asked and answered, as Tom said.

How do we resolve this in the light of the doctrine of inspiration by the Holy Spirit?
Well, if both James and Paul are writing under inspiration, then both statements are considered true. Well, we ask, how can two apparently conflicting statements both be true? If they are referring to different aspects of the same concept. If you take the time to read the contexts: Paul is talking about our standing before God: on what basis does He declare us righteous? Through our faith in Christ’s death and resurrection as the just and complete payment for our sins. Paul is saying that we can’t earn this justification by working for it and demanding that God pay up.

Paul is looking at our basis for being justified by God. James is looking at the fruit that this justification by faith should be producing, and asking “If the fruit isn’t there, is the faith genuine?”

It’s rather simple, really, when one considers the larger context. That’s how we Christians apply the doctrine of inspiration. As Tom said earlier, your idea of Christianity is not what ours is – perhaps we know it better than you do.

Mike Anthony:

For the Jewish people, this is crucial. Anyone can claim anything. Mohammad claimed he had just seen a vision and God spoke the Koran to him through the angel Gabriel. Paul claimed he saw Jesus in a vision while he was on the road to Damascus. All these religions started with a group of people claiming something. Judaism is the only religion that claims to have begun God speaking to all 3 million people of Israel. No other religion does.

This is totally and utterly false. By the time the jews hear the voice of God they are out of Egypt, goods are in tow, their lives are in upheaval, their families are on the line and they are standing in the wilderness. Why? because they believe Moses that God has told them to be there. Why? because they had seen miracles. Precisely the same as in the NT.

My apologies, I was using “Jewishese” much like Steve Drake was using “Christianese” with me. To Jews, the beginning of their main and latest Covenant is when they stood at the foot of mount Sinai and God gave them the Torah.

Let me phrase it in a way you will (hopefully) not disagree with. It is true that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are shown as having a covenant with God, and speaking with God and knowing Him. However this is exactly the type of situation found all over the world with false religions and myths: one guy or a couple guys “hear something” and then convince everyone that it happened. Jews do not believe in Judaism because of these events. When the Jews went into Egypt, 400 years later few of them seemed to remember or care about what happened.

The Jewish religion is the only one that claims that ALL THEIR ANCESTORS — the entire nation — stood at the foot of Mount Sinai and heard God Himself speak. They journeyed for 40 years in the desert and ate manna. Do you understand how a belief like this is much harder to get started if it didn’t actually happen, than a belief that openly admits one guy saying “I heard the angel of the Lord speak to me”?

Christianity – started with Jesus and his followers, so less than 100 people.
Islam – started with Mohammad and his followers
Heaven’s gate cult – didn’t really take off, killed themselves for what they believed in
“Drink the cool aid” guys – didn’t really take off, killed themselves for what they believed in

Judaism – the only religion that openly claims to have started with 3 million people simultaneously, the entire ancestors of the Jews today. And continues the tradition in a living chain from the time of Sinai and Moses to this day — surviving persecutions, spread all around the world, and much more, for 3000 years. Even in the remotest places of the world.

What is truly remarkable and even kind of eerie is that Deuteronomy 4:32 calls this out and makes a prediction that you will never see another claim like this.

The Lord Is God

32Ask now about the former days, long before your time, from the day God created man on the earth; ask from one end of the heavens to the other. Has anything so great as this ever happened, or has anything like it ever been heard of? 33Has any other people heard the voice of Goda speaking out of fire, as you have, and lived? 34Has any god ever tried to take for himself one nation out of another nation, by testings, by miraculous signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, or by great and awesome deeds, like all the things the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?

35You were shown these things so that you might know that the LORD is God; besides him there is no other. 36From heaven he made you hear his voice to discipline you. On earth he showed you his great fire, and you heard his words from out of the fire. 37Because he loved your forefathers and chose their descendants after them, he brought you out of Egypt by his Presence and his great strength, 38to drive out before you nations greater and stronger than you and to bring you into their land to give it to you for your inheritance, as it is today.

39Acknowledge and take to heart this day that the LORD is God in heaven above and on the earth below. There is no other. 40Keep his decrees and commands, which I am giving you today, so that it may go well with you and your children after you and that you may live long in the land the LORD your God gives you for all time.

It is one of the most remarkable proofs that makes me think the Bible could be true! If not for this kind of stuff I would dismiss it all as the scientific and historical evidence against the flood, babel and exodus stories is pretty extensive.

If Christians, Muslims, and others would have started a religion that claims to have begun by witnessing a mass revelation of the whole nation. it would have given them a lot of credibility. But no one can do that because the nation will just say “um, no my dad didn’t witness this. How come none of our ancestors remember this but you, Mohammad, do?”

Do you appreciate how this is important?

If Jews heard God give them the Covenant on mount Sinai, and as it says

“Keep his decrees and commands, which I am giving you today, so that it may go well with you and your children after you and that you may live long in the land the LORD your God gives you for all time.”

do you think they should listen to Paul who says

“the old covenant is obsolete”

What gives Paul authority? (Melissa said: the community of believers [in Christianity]) That authority is not nearly enough to overrule the Word of God directly to our ancestors.

The message continued with the prophets, to return to the land of Israel and keep the laws of God for ever! For ever and ever and ever… until heaven and earth pass away.

Furthermore Judaism did not start at Mount Sinai. it started with Abraham. God’s relationship with the Jews starts because they are descendants of Abraham and he had a covenant with God. If you are looking for some shared collective miraculous phenemenon then fine the NT has pentecost.

Did the whole nation stand before their God and receive the law?
Did God appear to say “The New Covenant Has Now Begun!”
Or did Paul write a letter to some people?

Please, read this and tell me what you think of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Apostle_and_Judaism#Proselytizing_among_Jews

Now why not another experience like Sinai for another covenant? Because the Jews didn’t like that experience the first time around and now Torah absolutely forbids there to ever be another sinai experience.

Funny interpretation. Do you think it’s convenient for the Jews to abstain from eating foods, abstain from sex within 7 days of a woman’s period, abstain from making a fire on shabbat, give at least 10% of their earnings to tzedaka, and hundreds of other things not to mention to be persecuted by the surrounding Christians for over 1000 years?

No.

They do it because God told their ancestors and they continue the tradition to this day. Romans are gone. Greeks are gone. Great nations have risen and fallen. But the Jewish nation is eternal – it is carrying God’s message into the world, and when the Messiah comes on the clouds of heaven to fulfill what has been prophesied, everyone will know – there will be no doubt – as Isaiah 53 says.

Then our debates will be completely unnecessary! 🙂

– Christians do not expect the destruction of the Earth, either by fire or flood.

–

They thought the world would end, they were wrong.

This is anachronistic thinking.

In this ,ore historically justifiable sense [the term ‘apoclyptic’] did indeed apply to both first-century Judaism and early Christianity. The work of such scholars as Christopher Rowland and John Collins has challenged head-on the assumption that so-called ‘apocalyptic’ literature, and the so-called ‘apocalyptic’ worldview itself, was straightforwardly dualistic, expecting the end of history, the end of the space-time universe itself.
…
thought in Paul , [was] dependent upon second-Temple Judaism.
…
Paul believed firmly that Jesus would come again as judge.
…
the language of ‘coming’ is at least potentially misleading. The word ‘parousia’, often rendered ‘coming’ within Christian scholarship, actually means ‘presence’ as opposed to ‘absence’.
…
What matters is not Jesus’ coming as though from a great distance, but His ‘personal presence’, or, indeed, ‘royal presence’.
…
There are some passages in Paul which are often taken to refer to this final apocalyose, but which Paul probably did not intend that way. When he speaks of God’s wrath coming ‘at last’ upon the inhabitants of Judea his is probably …thinking …of an interim judgment, warned of by Jesus himself, on the city and the people that had rejected their Messiah.
…
Here again I thiknk Paul is aware – and his allusions to what we know as Matthew 24 and parallels may bear this out – that early tradition included solemn warnings from Jesus himself about the immenent destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple.

N.T. Wright, Paul, chapter 3
—

I believe that Luke, a student of Paul and his theology of antinomialism and salvation simply through faith and not works, wrote the history, he decided to write

Paul was not an antinomialist. Nor an antinomian.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/januaryweb-only/heresyisheresy.html?start=2

Hi Charlie,
Thanks for your encouraging words. I pray for Greg each time I log into this blog. But I think Mike Anthony is correct:

from #153 above:
I don’t know Greg I am not sensing any great rigor in this pursuit of truth you claim. It certainly shouldn’t begin and end with wikipedia links you haven’t completley read. Furthermore you are dancing again between claiming to know the truth and still looking for it. You use the langauge of someone who has already come to a conclusion and is only pretending to be open.

I have to agree with Steve, Tom, at least until Greg does his assigned homework and is prepared to come to class having studied our recommended references

Hi Charlie,
On the other hand, as time permits, I enjoy sharing the information I have accumulated to demonstrate this very fact, and to provide possible encouragement to my brothers.

You like I, Charlie, are charged with sanctifying Christ as Lord in our hearts, being always ready to give a defense (apologia) to anyone who asks for the hope that is within us, yet with gentleness and respect (1 Pet. 3:15). Everyone here has endeavored to do just that with Greg. He has his answers in full, yet as Mike Anthony has noted, as I have noted, as Neil and Tom have noted, as Victoria and Melissa have noted, nothing is ever sufficient. It’s time to shake the dust off our feet and move on.

Greg,

I started investigating and found lots of good reasons to think that the Bible is full of legends, and so far see no good reasons to think the Christological argument is sound (I believe the part about crucifixion which I think has ample historical evidence, not the resurrection.)

You say this, but you haven’t even given one good reason for rejecting the Resurrection, nor have you dealt seriously with the historical argument for the Resurrection that I and others have outlined. You have either ignored the argument or blown it off with faulty comparisons. You’ve done this despite having just now advanced an argument for the historicity of God’s self-revelation at Sinai that is very similar in form and substance to the argument for the historicity of the Resurrection. I agree with your Sinai argument; I just don’t understand why you can’t see the parallel to the Resurrection argument.

What is your refutation of the Christological argument? I have not seen anything even remotely convincing from you in this department. Maybe you don’t have time to write it down? I would understand that, for I don’t have much time these days myself. If that’s it, let me know — I can be patient — but just don’t claim that you have evaluated the Christological argument without giving any indication that you have actually done so. It comes off as evasive.

Tom, thanks – there’s a lot of good stuff here.

There’s no denying the fact that the Jews were God’s chosen people to bring his revelation to earth. They were to be the people through whom all nations would be blessed (Genesis 12:3).

I agree.

There’s also no denying the fact that throughout most of their history, the Hebrews were a “stiff-necked people” who failed to heed God’s commands. That’s why God sent the prophets.

Yep, definitely agree. I should point out that a lot of the “stiff necked” part was about not following the law, and serving other gods. Deuteronomy specifically says that Jews will be cast out and live among other nations if they don’t follow the law.

(An atheist would say that that Deuteronomy was probably not written by Moses but by someone who had already experienced the assyrian or babylonian conquest and subsequent exile. That is why, they would say, Deuteronomy focuses on the things it does. It says that if the Jews return to God, and follow his Law, they will come back to Israel and live there and be his people.)

Jeremiah and Ezekiel in particular told of days coming when God would do a new thing on earth, when a new inward relationship between God and man would be instituted, a religion not just of laws but of heart.

Yes, except let’s look at the verses in context. This is often used by Christians to suggest a new covenant is coming.

31“The time is coming,” declares the LORD,
“when I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel
and with the house of Judah.
32It will not be like the covenant
I made with their forefathers
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband tod them,e”
declares the LORD.
33“This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel
after that time,” declares the LORD.
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
34No longer will a man teach his neighbor,
or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the LORD.
“For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.”

I agree, it is coming, but it hasn’t come yet. The verse continues:

35This is what the LORD says,

he who appoints the sun
to shine by day,
who decrees the moon and stars
to shine by night,
who stirs up the sea
so that its waves roar—
the LORD Almighty is his name:
36“Only if these decrees vanish from my sight,”
declares the LORD,
“will the descendants of Israel ever cease
to be a nation before me.”
37This is what the LORD says:

“Only if the heavens above can be measured
and the foundations of the earth below be searched out
will I reject all the descendants of Israel
because of all they have done,”
declares the LORD.

38“The days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when this city will be rebuilt for me from the Tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate. 39The measuring line will stretch from there straight to the hill of Gareb and then turn to Goah. 40The whole valley where dead bodies and ashes are thrown, and all the terraces out to the Kidron Valley on the east as far as the corner of the Horse Gate, will be holy to the LORD. The city will never again be uprooted or demolished.”

In fact, if you read Jeremiah 31 from beginning to end, you will find

1. Jews will be gathered back into Israel
2. A new covenant will be given where everyone will know the law intuitively
3. The physical city will be rebuilt, and physical locations are given
4. The city will never be destroyed

Yeah, when you quote only part of it, you may think that Jesus started the new covenant. But then you think, was the physical city destroyed after Jesus? Yes, it was, after the Bar Kokhbar rebellion and Judaic wars. Well, I guess the time of the new covenant *hasn’t* come yet.

I think both Christians and Jews agree that the prophecies where people wil turn their swords into ploughshares, etc. didn’t come about yet. The Messiah, when he *COMES*, will:

1) Gather all the Jews back into Israel
2) Rebuild a physical 3rd temple
3) Usher in an era of world peace until the end of the world!

You won’t be able to miss #3, don’t worry 🙂
I think we are all agreed it’s not here yet. Jesus could be the potential Messiah. Jews had lots of potential Messiahs. But until he comes back and these things happen, we won’t know for sure. When Messiah comes, EVERYONE will know. We won’t be having these debates.

The Jews looked for a Messiah who would be another leader of external religion and national salvation.

What do you mean by this “external religion” or whatever?

The Jewish idea of Messiah is a complex and spiritual one. What we do know is that the Messiah will

* come from the davidic line through solomon
* do 1-3 above

Please, read this as a good overview to understand Jewish views of the Messiah:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_messianism#Views_of_Maimonides

By the way, Bar Kokhba and Sabbatai Zvi were two messiah claimants who enjoyed much more success with Jews. And yet they probably are not the messiah either.

God had something else in mind; something far deeper, more intimately connected to him.

Let’s face it, this is just conjecture and interpretation. We don’t know what God had in mind. If you want to be an expert at interpreting scripture, you should also engage with the Jewish tradition of 2000 years of Torah study, at the very least read the commentary of Rashi, the “Guide to the Perplexed” and the Mishnah Torah by Maimonides. Then you can make your own interpretations being aware of the bigger conversation. That is why I am on a Christian blog discussing instead of just spouting atheist verses out of context 🙂 I want to make sure my ideas aren’t too off the wall and missed something obvious that Christians know. Likewise, you should read the authentic Jewish analysis of their own writings.

He had something in mind that would fulfill all the sacrificial and ceremonial law. (Have you read the NT book of Hebrews?) He had something in mind that would change men’s and women’s hearts. And he had something in mind that would truly and finally address our deepest need, which has always been to be freed from sin and reconciled to God in a state of forgiveness forever.

As an aside, I would like to say that Hebrews was written by someone somewhere between 60-65. We don’t know who wrote Hebrews, and the Church has traditionally ascribed it to Paul, but today this is generally rejected.

I understand that you and Neil may feel some sort of thing that you are “sinners” and failing to live up to your own standards. Personally I think of myself as a pretty good person and if not for Christianity and Judaism I would have never thought I was someone depraved or hopelessly degenerate. I wonder what the term “sinner” means for you. To the Jews it means that you transgress God’s commandments. The atonement is also spelled out — go to the temple, do animal sacrifice. Do you know about the days of Yom Kippur and Rosh HaShanah? These are days of God’s judgment every year, and mercy. Do you know about Jewish ideas of gehennom? It is a purgatory where the soul is purified before going into heaven. Some Jews also believe in reincarnation, although it’s mostly Kabbalistic knowledge. You don’t have to learn much about that, in order to understand orthodox Jewish understanding of “teschuva” meaning atonement. And no you don’t need an intercessor. Jews dont believe God is an angry parent that is best dealt with by having his son take all the blame for you — they believe that God is loving and merciful. Tell me, God is merciful in this life, why would He not be merciful in every life? Why would He say after you died, “sorry, you didn’t believe in Jesus correctly like the Christians said you should … I guess you can’t be in my presence now and have to gnash your teeth for ever” … this is not the Jewish view at all. Original Judaism was all about rewards in this life. The 6th year would bring a treble harvest so you wouldn’t have to plant the 7th year, in THIS life. God gave you the gift before you even did anything!

This new work of God was by no means the same as rabbinical Judaism, for the teachers had not anticipated it. Yet it was certainly on a consistent trajectory with all that God had done through the prophets to prepare for it. And that’s the key that you seem to miss. Jesus came to fulfill the prophets, but he opposed treating men’s teachings as if they were commandments of God. In other words, he regarded the Hebrew Scriptures as authoritative, but not the traditions surrounding those Scriptures.

I don’t miss this key. I am saying it just *seems* consistent if you take the apostles’ word for it that Jesus rose from the dead, healed people, fed 5k people at a time, etc. Then people look back into the OT naturally, to find support for it. Did you know that even some of the greatest Jewish sages thought Bar Kokhba (who lived shortly after Jesus) was the actual Messiah? Rabbi Akiba, the greatest rabbi of his generation, thought Bar Kohkhba (name means: “Son of a Star”) was the Messiah, looking at verses such as Numbers 24:17 .

15+ centuries later, Sabbateans ascribed lots of miracles to Shabbatai Zevi. Apparently this guy could call down fire from heaven. He won many believers from Jews and his kabbalistic teachings (which contradicted orthodox jewish understanding) were widely taught and followed. But then under threat of death he converted to Islam. For the next 200 years many Sabbateans still existed, persecuted by the Jews (sound familiar?) and some still exist to this day.

The movement was defeated within the Jewish community. If Paul and other disciples of Jesus didn’t go to the other nations (the ones who had never heard about any of this, and who didn’t have God’s prophets telling them to never stray from the law), who knows if Christianity would have ever had a serious following, let alone 1 billion people.

Please, read this and tell me what you think of it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Apostle_and_Judaism#Proselytizing_among_Jews

Paul admits himself that he couldn’t really make much progress with the Jews, the very people Jesus expressly stated he came to save. What really happened was that the gentile nations of the world got Christianity, and when the Jews lived among them in exile, they constantly tried to get the Jews to accept “the truth”. They often persecuted them, sometimes burned their talmud, etc. But for 2000 years Jews wouldn’t do it. If Jesus is spiritually so powerful and sits at the right hand of God, how come his expressly stated mission about coming “only to the lost sheep of Israel” ultimately had less than a 1% success rate? This is not what the Messiah is supposed to do. I think this is a strong argument that what Christian ideas were not something that was intended for Jews by God’s Son.

What happens is that after Jesus was crucified, the Nazarene sect kept meeting each other and never gave up hope. The claims evolved and Jesus eventually becomes more than the Messiah, he becomes claimed to be God himself, and people look back into the old testament and try to find support for it. We can see parallels today, with a sect within Chabad — they believe that the great Rabbi Menachem Shneerson, of blessed memory, is the true Messiah. As to be expected, they believe he will come back from the dead and finish everything. Some believe that he is just “hidden” right now. They make interesting arguments, such as that the United Nations was headquartered exactly in New York because that is where the Rebbe lived.

Well, so what? Suppose that was what Jesus said. What difference does his opinion make?

If Jesus was a man who mistakenly believed himself to be the Messiah, just as Sabbatai Zvi 1600 years later, then what he believes is not nearly as important as if he is who the Christians say he is. But realize that what today’s Christians think he is, is based on what was written about him later! Jesus wrote nothing himself. There is scant evidence of his life and ministry outside of the scriptures, all of whom were written by people with a vested interest in the idea that Jesus is the Messiah.

I come back to what I asked you this morning:

Here are four determinative questions for you.

I will try to give some preliminary answers to them.

First, a statement: you have a distinctly strong impression of what you think Christianity is according to the Bible.

Depends on what you mean. I prefer to say that I think there are many versions of Christianity, but they share something in common. One of those things is that the first five books of the Bible were God’s Word to Israel on Mount Sinai. Certainly Genesis was. But since I think there are extremely good reasons to think that Genesis contains legends (flood, exodus) which the majority of scientists and historians think never literally happened, therefore I think it is unlikely that the Bible is the Word of God.

Question One: Do you realize that the Christianity you think you know is not the Christianity of the Bible?

There are many versions of Christianity. Do you realize that there are non trinitarians? There were also many sects that aren’t around anymore. So there is no one version that “I think I know”. I am open to all sorts of interpretations. Totally literal / fundamentalist on the one hand, and “Jesus was just a great moral teacher and nothing supernatural occurred” on the other. The first one at least has no slippery slope. They don’t back down — either the Bible is literally true or we are hopelessly lost as to what is meant by its contents.

(As an aside, there was rampant persecution and execution due to religious beliefs, and it is important to note this because it shows that people weren’t free for hundreds of years to intellectually decide for themselves. The protestant Christianity you likely follow today might have been considered heretical somewhere else. I would have liked to see you espouse your views in that kind of environment.)

Question Two: Do you realize that the questions you ask about biblical Christianity have been asked and answered before?

Yes. But sadly I don’t see them being answered anywhere. If I saw atheists asking the questions I am (about the flood, exodus, etc.) and making the argument I am, I wouldn’t be debating so much. I would just watch videos. There should be a Quora for religion. But sadly there isn’t at the moment, so I have to discuss for myself.

My argument is simple, as I said. I consider that the scientific and historical evidence against the flood, babel and exodus to be so strong, that it trumps the Christological argument which you keep mentioning, as well as even the Kuzari argument (check out my blog if you are interested, I think it’s an extremely strong argument for the Torah being given by God).

Question Three: Do you or do you not want to know those answers?

Yes!

If you’re interested I can continue. If not, then please let us all know.

Very interested. But please, if you have 5 minutes,

1) Please follow the two links where I said “please look at this” and tell me what you think after reading them.

2) Please quote what I said just like I did. I think this will get us somewhere rapidly 🙂

Greg

I started investigating and found lots of good reasons to think that the Bible is full of legends, and so far see no good reasons to think the Christological argument is sound (I believe the part about crucifixion which I think has ample historical evidence, not the resurrection.)

You say this, but you haven’t even given one good reason for rejecting the Resurrection, nor have you dealt seriously with the historical argument for the Resurrection that I and others have outlined. You have either ignored the argument or blown it off with faulty comparisons. You’ve done this despite having just now advanced an argument for the historicity of God’s self-revelation at Sinai that is very similar in form and substance to the argument for the historicity of the Resurrection. I agree with your Sinai argument; I just don’t understand why you can’t see the parallel to the Resurrection argument.

I think the “kuzari argument” is a strong argument, and yet I still think there must be something wrong with it, because I think the scientific and historical evidence against the flood, tower of babel and exodus stories is so strong, that we can conclude Genesis contains fictional stories.

At this point I would ask you: why does the Word of God to Israel (which contains the law) also contain fictional stories?

This is the argument that propels me in my mind to debate the way I do. I will tell you another thing: WLC doesn’t believe in Islam, and he argues the same way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h51YwIMxtrQ

Watch this debate between William Lane Craig and Jamal Badawi. WLC says that he will show

1) there are good reasons to believe Christianity,
2) but no good reasons to believe Islam.

However, what he actually does largely talk about is that

1) there are good reasons to believe Christianity,
2B) there are reasons to believe Islam is false

Notice the difference in (2). This style of argumentation is normal and to be expected. And this is my point regarding atheists and Christians.

It would be very hard to prove a universal negative: there is no ball in this giant room, unless you search the whole room.

Similarly, it is extremely hard to show that there are no good reasons to believe Islam, or Christianity, or anything else. Perhaps there is a good reason that people haven’t found or realized yet. Perhaps there was one long ago, but was forgotten because those who argued it were suppressed. Who knows.

However, when you think something is the case (as WLC thinks Christianity is true), you give good reasons FOR it, and when you think something is not the case (as WLC thinks Islam is not entirely true), you give good reasons AGAINST it.

Notice though how these reasons against X are formed. The steps are:

1) Take part of what X says, call it Y
2) Demonstrate why you don’t believe Y is true
3) Therefore, you don’t believe X is wholly true.

Often there is an additional step:

4) Everyone who thinks X is infallible should now realize it’s not, and this is a slippery slope. Why do you believe the rest of X?

However, believers in X, in this case Islam, will come up with apologetics:

1) Sure, we agree that a literal reading of Y is not true.
2) But what makes you think that Y should be read literally?
3) Here are recent alternative interpretations of Y, which are at least possible.
4) Therefore, we believe that, with more subtle understanding, X is completely true and fits well with reality, and there is no slippery slope at all.

A committed and well-read Muslim could easily apply this argument against WLC’s arguments. That is the point of apologetics. In this case, a Muslim could say that William Lane Craig is not understanding the *real* meaning of the statements he cites as Islam’s contentions

My contention is that this happens in normal human debate, whether it’s Christianity vs Islam, or Atheism vs Christianity.

That is why I say that although atheists often get mired in long and entertaining discourses about stuff like, “is Christianity necessary for objective morality?” or the question of predestination, the central question they should be debating with a Christian is, “Is Christianity True?” And to debate this question, they should not say:

“there are no good reasons to believe Christianity” — because they not really show that

they should focus on the same things WLC focuses on when debating islam, which I called 2B: there are good reasons to believe Christianity is false.

So in light of that, it won’t be easy for me to go on your turf and address the Christological argument. You would first have to make it in premise form so I can then address the premises. Can we do that?

What is your refutation of the Christological argument? I have not seen anything even remotely convincing from you in this department. Maybe you don’t have time to write it down? I would understand that, for I don’t have much time these days myself. If that’s it, let me know — I can be patient — but just don’t claim that you have evaluated the Christological argument without giving any indication that you have actually done so. It comes off as evasive.

yeah, let me take some time to address this in a way that I think will be more complete. But please put it in an easy to address form.

Neil – because it’s pretty obvious to me that I am a good person by my own understanding. I care about people. I try to help homeless people. I don’t do something to others which I wouldn’t want them to do to me. I try to be reasonable and fair (I hope you can see it in my discussions here, in the face of some conflict… maybe I can do more but I have limited time and knowledge about how to address heated debates).

So no, there is nothing that would make me think I am not a good person. I read your article almost in its entirety. You say you feel that way and I can respect that. I don’t.

I actually as a Jew took a long time to figure out whether I can have premarital sex, while everyone else (including many churchgoing Christians) who were just doing it. I try to follow the commandments — not to work on the sabbath day, not to light a fire on it. I took “do not cover your neighbor’s wife” to imply that I should do research on a porn star to make sure she wasn’t married when she was photographed, if I was to use her picture for certain things 🙂

Why do I mention this? Because without Judaism, I wouldn’t even worry about these things. Many Christians don’t, despite Jesus saying, “go and sin no more”. They don’t seem to care about transgressing OT law. I have to care, because I am Jewish, and I think that if you accept Jesus and are Jewish that doesn’t mean you can ignore Jewish law. So Paul’s rebuke to Peter strikes me as wrong.

I am getting off topic. My answer to you is that if I never knew about Judeo-Christian ideas, I wouldnt think *ANYTHING* I did was really horrendous, let alone that I myself am super degenerate and hopelessly fallen. By Jesus’ two commandments I am doing very well. In another place, Jesus cited several of the 10 commandments — what about those? Do you light a fire or do work on the 7th day? WHY??? If you tell me that you are concerned about being a sinner, then stop sinning (against OT law).

Personally I think that is only important to you because you a Christian. I actually think if the Jews are right you have absolutely no obligation regarding the 10 commandments or the other 613, you just have to do the 7 noahide laws.

I happen to agree with R. Emden,who in a remarkable apology for Christianity contained in his appendix to “Seder ‘Olam” [53] gives it as his opinion that the original intention of Jesus, and especially of Paul, was to convert only the Gentiles to the seven moral laws of Noah and to let the Jews follow the Mosaic law — which explains the apparent contradictions in the New Testament regarding the laws of Moses and the Sabbath.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Apostle_and_Judaism#Proselytizing_among_Jews

I’ve been away…did I miss anything? 😉

Neil:

Now this is almost silly. How is it possible to “try” to do something that is so easy to do or not do? For instance, if I offered you $100,000 to do no work at all on some particular Sabbath, would you do any work at all? Of course not! What about for $10,000? Or $1000? I think I might even refrain from work for $100. So what does it mean when you work on the Sabbath despite your belief that God commands you not to? It means that you value obeying God less than $100. $100. That is apparently how little you (and I) value the commands of the God of the universe. Why do you (and I) love God so little? And what makes you think that if we love God so little that we are keeping the greatest commandment to “Love him with your wohle heart, mind, and strength”, let alone the other lesser commandments?

That is a twisted analogy. If you paid me $1,000,000,000,000 to blaspheme against God I wouldn’t do it, and if you paid me this money to work on the sabbath I most likely wouldn’t do it.

It is your Christian doctrine of original sin that causes you to believe in Christianity. But this is completely different than Jewish ideas. I really suggest you look at them, I already outlined them to Tom.

“Teschuva” – atonement
“Yom Kippur” – day of mercy actually!
“Rosh HaShanah” – when judgment is given

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur

You are correct in saying that pretty much everyone sins. Yet in your own Bible some people are described as sinless and blameless, who lived before Jesus (such as the parents of Zachariah). How could that be?

Because Jewish law teaches us that people can be cleansed. As I said, God is not an angry parent that is best not dealt with except through his son. If God is merciful in this life why do you think He is not merciful in the next? What is mercy to you?

In short, Jews don’t need an intercessor, never have. If you think they do, then how do you think all the “righteous” Jews of the past got saved without knowing anything about Jesus? How about all the righteous sons of Noah, and Noah himself? This idea that we are *all* fallen from Adam and therefore we all sin is actually not that easy to match with reality. Think of 1 babies who unfortunately died at 1 week. Are they degenerate sinners who need Jesus? You tell me. How does your “we are all under sin” factor into that?

Gregory Magarshak:

If anyone does have answers to the above, please let me know.

C’mon, man. This is what I’m talking about Tom, Neil, Bill T., Bill R., Victoria, Charlie, Melisssa, JAD, Steve K. and all others. What will it take to satisfy?

but if not then you can kindly explain to us all how God forgives iniquity, remembers it no more but you die from it at the same time.

First of all, if you showed me that the Bible contains two verses which in their intended meaning are absolutely contradictory to one another, regarding the same time period, or whatever, then I would consider that evidence for atheism (that the Bible is just people writing stuff).

So I don’t see why you are equating me to anti-missionary jews lol. And what’s with this hatred of anti-missionary Jews telling you how their own verses have been interpreted for 3000 years? How would you like it if Islam came to you and said that Jesus wasn’t really killed on the cross, that only a likeness of it was shown to you, and tried to convert Christians to Islam? So stop the hate 🙂

Now, lets deal with it. Although keep the above point in mind.

Yes – you are right – when you quote part of it you don’t get the truth. Heres what you left out

29. But each man shall die for his iniquity; whoever eats the unripe grapes- his teeth shall be set on edge.

So what does The Lord say? men shall die for their iniquity. But wait a minute didn’t you just quote this passage and say it was the same time period?

33. And no longer shall one teach his neighbor or [shall] one [teach] his brother, saying, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know Me from their smallest to their greatest, says the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and their sin I will no longer remember.

Now kindly tell us how God is going to forgive “all” from the greatest to the smallest of their iniquities and sin and at the same time “every man shall die for his iniquity”?

Gee you consider that addition of verse 29 “including the whole context”? Let’s include the WHOLE relevant context then, a little further back, like, say, the BEGINNING of the thought that INCLUDES verse 29

23 This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: “When I bring them back from captivity,[c] the people in the land of Judah and in its towns will once again use these words: ‘The LORD bless you, you prosperous city, you sacred mountain.’

People are in captivity. The prophet said that God will bring them back to the land of Judah and people in its towns will once again bless the city in God’s name.

24 People will live together in Judah and all its towns—farmers and those who move about with their flocks. 25 I will refresh the weary and satisfy the faint.”

Yay!

26 At this I awoke and looked around. My sleep had been pleasant to me.

This is Jeremiah speaking presumably. That sure is a nice dream, especially when you are in captivity isn’t it?

27 “The days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will plant the kingdoms of Israel and Judah with the offspring of people and of animals.

Offspring. I guess we are talking about a generation that is coming soon. In any case, offspring implies distinction from ancestors.

28 Just as I watched over them to uproot and tear down, and to overthrow, destroy and bring disaster, so I will watch over them to build and to plant,” declares the LORD.

People did bad things, God brought nations to overthrow them. So in the future, God will watch over Israel and the people living there, so that they will prosper.

29 “In those days people will no longer say,

‘The parents have eaten sour grapes,
and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’

I WONDER WHY YOU LEFT THIS PART OUT.

People in Babylonian captivity were saying, “our parents sinned, and now we are paying the price.” As is said in Deuteronomy will happen if … guess what … Israel *DOESN’T* follow the law.

The children are currently being punished for the parents’ sins.

30 Instead, everyone will die for their own sin; whoever eats sour grapes—their own teeth will be set on edge.

This is clearly in contrast to the PREVIOUS verse (the one you left out). In the previous verse, the children’s teeth are set on edge for the parents have eaten sour grapes. So in this one, children will NOT anymore pay for their parents’ sins. If the parents eat sour grapes, their own teeth will be set on edge.

I agree that the use of the word “everyone” seems (in a super literal interpretation) to be extreme. But if you had included the very previous verse it would make sense. If those who don’t return to Israel continue to sin, their own teeth may be set on edge.

That was easy, wasn’t it? In fact, the whole chapter is about Israel returning to their land.

Using your super literal interpretation, then, how can Jesus be God’s firstborn son if the same Jeremiah chapter 31 says:

because I am Israel’s father,
and Ephraim is my firstborn son.

Clearly your attempt with the “anti missionary jews” failed. But even if it didn’t, if the atheists are right this is kind of like people arguing about the matrix 2 vs matrix 1 discontinuities. If the matrix trilogy is fictional, who cares? Trying to show contradictions in Judaism isn’t going to help you prove Christianity.

Greg,

You wrote this earlier and I think it may be a major source of your troubles especially re your points 3, 7.

Depends on what you mean. I prefer to say that I think there are many versions of Christianity, but they share something in common. One of those things is that the first five books of the Bible were God’s Word to Israel on Mount Sinai.

Why must we believe that the first five books of the Bible were God’s Word to Israel on Mount Sinai. The bible doesn’t say that.

Your point 9 has been answered repeatedly.

Greg,

You wrote this earlier and I think it may be a major source of your troubles especially re your points 3, 7 and 9.

Depends on what you mean. I prefer to say that I think there are many versions of Christianity, but they share something in common. One of those things is that the first five books of the Bible were God’s Word to Israel on Mount Sinai.

Why must we believe that the first five books of the Bible were God’s Word to Israel on Mount Sinai. The bible doesn’t say that.

Aha, great. Now we are talking.

So you do not believe that the first five books of the Bible were God’s word to Israel on Mount Sinai? Do you mean that part of it could have been written when they were away from Mount Sinai? Okay, how about God’s word to Israel which was all authoritative and written down before they entered the land of Israel?

Most Christians do. You are a Christian. Therefore I assumed that you did.

Greg,

Okay, how about God’s word to Israel which was all authoritative and written down before they entered the land of Israel?

What do you mean by God’s word? That he dictated it to Moses?

Melissa: I mean that God meant it to be a revelation to all of Israel, God dictated it to Moses, Moses wrote it down, put it in the ark of the covenant so the Levites would read it every 7 years to Israel. It contains the truth about how the world came about, about their ancestors, and the previous covenants with Noah and Abraham. And it contains the details of the covenant with Israel, including laws that they should follow forever, and many other things. In particular includes the book of Genesis, which contains the flood story, and exodus story.

Greg,

It is not easy to talk to 10 people at once. Once you started numbering your points I think I have addressed every single one of them, and have asked you to look at some links (I was pointed at entire books, all I asked is that you look at a couple paragraphs on simpletoremember and wikipedia).

No, you have not addressed the points. You have continued to fork off into tangents which is what you will see if you look at the original points. Most of you arguments rest on a couple main points which I have shown are false and yet you have ignored that and continued with your arguments as if they are still valid.

Most of your points rely on assuming that the Jewish authorities at the time of Jesus were correct in their interpretation Jewish scripture. You have rested this on the foundation that only the official Jewish leaders have the authority to interpret the Hebrew scripture. I have shown where that is called into question in the old testament. Therefore unless you have something else to base that belief on, as far as I’m concerned all your points that rely on this have been dealt with.

If you have other points that do not rely on this that I have not addressed please set them out clearly.

Greg,

I mean that God meant it to be a revelation to all of Israel, God dictated it to Moses, Moses wrote it down, put it in the ark of the covenant so the Levites would read it every 7 years to Israel. It contains the truth about how the world came about, about their ancestors, and the previous covenants with Noah and Abraham. And it contains the details of the covenant with Israel, including laws that they should follow forever, and many other things. In particular includes the book of Genesis, which contains the flood story, and exodus story.

No I don’t believe God dictated it to Moses, Moses wrote it down and Moses put it in the ark. The bible is quite specific about what was on the tablets that God dictated to Moses and that Moses put in the ark.

Sigh, how trite. My comment 214 addressed your comment 213.

I think your departure will not cause us too many problems, so feel free. I am sorry if I don’t understand what your points were at the end.

Melissa, I will put it another way: Do you think it is possible that Genesis and the rest of the Pentateuch was written at a much later time, as most secular scholars believe, and certainly not by Moses? Is that what you are suggesting in your approach to understanding the Bible in its historical context? I am trying to get what YOUR position regarding Genesis.

Feel free to answer comment 210, or this one or both hopefully 🙂

Greg,

Melissa: When I was talking to you, I used Deuteronomy 13 to illustrate that Jews were supposed to follow God’s law for ever, and not listen to Paul’s or any other dreamer’s interpretation of it.

Here let me give a fuller case that the law is for ever, and the Jews knew this at the time of Jesus:

So if you look at the passage you will see that it doesn’t support your position.

As to your quotes about the law, until you deal with the fact that Jesus said He came to fulfil the law, the addition of more verses from leviticus does nothing. Let me remind you that you are trying to show that Christians are inconsistent in the way they interpret the bible.

Neil, since you said everything else is irrelevant for now, I just quoted the part that is relevant:

So here’s my suggestion. Why don’t we examine whether you are keeping the commandments of the God of Israel? I understand that you don’t know if this God exists. But if He does exist, then He expects 100% adherence to his Law. So we can ask, if the Torah is true, to what extent you keep His law. And we can also ask, if the Torah is true, what your deeds deserve. Right?

The questions of Noah’s flood, the fate of the unevangelized, the nature of the atonement, and indeed anything at all to do with Christianity is still completely irrelevant at this point. I’d like to hold you (and myself) both up to the standard of the God of Israel and see how we both fare. Sound good?

If the Torah is true, then I keep the major commandments that contain punishments, and don’t keep the other ones (non kosher food, etc.) I would say I’m about 80-90%.

As far as Jesus’ two commandments, I am like 99%.

Since I am a Jew, I am not doing as well as orthodox Jews who spend their lives keeping every commandment as much as they possibly can.

As far as you, let’s talk about you for a second… are you Jewish (you are if your mother was Jewish, otherwise you are not unless you specifically converted to Judaism and accepted the responsibilities).

If not, why do you think you have to follow God’s law for the Israelites, and not simply the seven Noahide laws?

Those 7 laws are quite a lot easier to follow and I think many non Jewish people in the world follow them perfectly. Even the non christian ones.

Today Dr. Michael Brown, the Jewish Christian referenced numerous times above, does a radio show on the historicity of Jesus.
http://www.lineoffireradio.com/

http://www.oneplace.com/ministries/in-the-line-of-fire/listen-live/

Is Jesus for Jews?
http://www.oneplace.com/ministries/in-the-line-of-fire/listen/jesus-the-messiah-of-israel-opening-up-some-major-messianic-themes-186464.html

Re comment #220
Actually, it is not necessary to postulate that the first 5 books of Moses were written down at a much later date than the events they describe, with the possible exception of Genesis 1-11, perhaps). We know from ANE archaeology that the art of writing goes back to at least the time of the Patriarchs, if not farther ( at least ~3000BCE or earlier). When Moses (alledgedly) wrote ( circa 1400BCE or 1200BCE, depending on how the Exodus is dated), the writing of massive books was a well-developed skill.
One of the original reasons for the so-called Documentary Hypothesis of the 5 books was that, in the 1800’s, it was supposed that writing did not originate until ~1000BCE, so of course Moses could not have written such books (the opinion of our Lord Jesus Christ notwithstanding). Well, surprise, surprise, surprise! By the time the facts about the development of writing were discovered, the Documentary Hypothesis was so entrenched in 19th century scholarship (at least the hyper-critical kind) that they just ignored any new data of this kind. If physicists did physics the way these scholars did their studies, we’d all be out of work.

Tom Gilson: I love God very strongly. I just have strong reasons to believe that He never appeared to humans and gave them any directions [EDIT: Well, I mean in the Judeo Christian framework, directions that would be binding to me.]. I also follow the golden rule as formulated by Hillel – I don’t do onto others what I wouldn’t want them to do onto me. I have consistent standards for myself and for others.

If I see someone in trouble and it costs me less to help them than my help would profit them, I help them. Of course, I don’t go to the radical degree of selling all my possessions and giving it all to charity. I actually believe that I can earn money at a faster rate and help more people if I don’t do that. And I also have Jewish ideas about helping your family first — if I gave everything away to people once then I’d lose my ability to help everyone. My goal is to make billions of dollars and help the world. 🙂

I don’t believe Jesus meant everything literally about hating your parents or about turning the other cheek or giving robbers more than they need. These things are not 100% literal and therefore I don’t think there is a strict standard that I can calculate how well I am performing. I would say 99% is a pretty good “vague” indication in the same way as if I asked you, “how much do you hate your parents on a scale from 1 to 100”?

JAD, Melissa, Victoria:

I am not claiming anything at this moment. I am *listening* — saying hey maybe my approach is wrong, can you please describe what YOUR approach is.

Appears to me that Greg thinks and believes that the Christian faith is a house of cards. For example, remove one of the cards the historicity the flood and exodus and the whole thing collapses. Consider the following:

Yes, that is the way I currently believe. If you invalidate the truth of the flood story (as having happened literally in the way intended to be understood by the chapters Genesis 9 – 11) then you invalidate the truth of Christianity. That is why I have such a strong position currently, and maybe the reason it pisses you off is because you don’t think this way.

So tell me: does invalidating the flood story (by proving a flood never happened which wiped out all humans except those on the ark) invalidate the truth of Christianity? I thought it does.

As you can see my mind is not made up and I am open to you telling me, but if you don’t tell me but simply say MY approach sucks, then you can’t accuse me of not hearing you out.

It sounds to me like Greg showed up here with his mind already made up. Was he up front and honest about that?

And if that wasn‘t clear enough he repeats himself a couple of posts later:

That’s right, I am honestly telling you what my position currently is right now and WHY. I actually don’t think you’re calling that dishonest because it *IS* in fact, honest. I am *telling* you what I think. However, I am *open* to a counter argument or different point of view that would directly address the reasons I don’t believe, and possibly change my mind. That is why I am here!

However, ironically, while Greg has been a waste of time, I don’t think this thread has been a total waste of time. A number of you have cited numerous sources that is going some time for me to sift through, so I am going to book mark this thread and come back to it for that reason.

It is too bad that Greg has dismissed all your hard work with an airy wave of the hand. It is also kind of sad.

I think this thread has many immensely useful points of information, on both sides. It certainly hasn’t been useless to me in terms of learning.

And as for “dismissing” — wow. Have you not seen my responses to almost every comment Melissa writes? They are point by point, detailed and try to explain exactly how I address what she says, where I stand and even provide links to a few paragraphs (unlike telling someone to go read a book) in a source I consider very highly. A source composed of people dedicating a million man hours to their work. So no, I don’t think I am “dismissing” anything. It’s hard to respond to 10 people at once, but when it comes to Melissa’s posts at least, this is definitely unjustified.

I on the other hand am asking one simple question. You tell ME what YOUR approach is. Don’t just say my approach sucks. Fine, maybe that is the problem. Tell me, doesn’t invalidating the flood or exodus story completely invalidate Christianity?

Speaking of load-bearing walls and inerrancy.
http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2009/12/if-the-bible-is-not-inerrant-then-christianity-is-false-and-other-stupid-statements/

Greg, you write:

If the Torah is true, then I keep the major commandments that contain punishments, and don’t keep the other ones (non kosher food, etc.) I would say I’m about 80-90%. As far as Jesus’ two commandments, I am like 99%. Since I am a Jew, I am not doing as well as orthodox Jews who spend their lives keeping every commandment as much as they possibly can.

I’m confused here. Over the last several hundred messaged, you have repeatedly pointed out that God commanded Israel to keep all of his commandments. Indeed, in the cursing section of Deuteronomy that I quoted, God is very clear that his curses apply to everyone who does not continue to obey all the commands given by Moses in the Torah: “However, if you do not obey the LORD your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you” (Deut. 28:15). But let’s even set that aside.

You claim to keep the two commandments which Jesus referred to as the greatest commandments to a level of 99%. But Jesus said that the greatest commandment is “Love the Lord with all [i.e. 100% of] your heart, mind, soul, and strength.” So what does it even mean to keep this commandment 99%? If my wife says, “Be 100% faithful to me in marriage”, does it make any sense for me to say “I keep this command 99%”?

More than that, you recognize that you “are not doing as well as orthodox Jews” in keeping God’s commandments. But why not? If you loved God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength (or even 99% of them), wouldn’t you at least desire to become an orthodox Jew to boost your percentage? What do you love more than keeping God’s commandments? And if you love something more than keeping God’s commandments, then in what sense do you love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength?

As far as you, let’s talk about you for a second… are you Jewish (you are if your mother was Jewish, otherwise you are not unless you specifically converted to Judaism and accepted the responsibilities). If not, why do you think you have to follow God’s law for the Israelites, and not simply the seven Noahide laws?

No I’m not Jewish. Recall that the questions we are trying to answer are: “Are you a sinner? To what extent are you a sinner?” I am trying to show you that by almost any standard of behavior, we are both desperately wicked. I was thinking of starting with the Ten Commandments to see if we keep them. We could also appeal to the two great commandments identified by Jesus as the essence of the Torah. Or if you’d like to examine our behavior according to the Noahide laws, we can do that too. My contention is that, by any of these standards, we are both desperate sinners living under God’s righteous curse and in need of radical salvation. I think that the two great commandments which Jesus quoted from the Pentateuch would be a good place to start, but I’ll leave it up to you.

-Neil

Ah!!! Greg, you are on the cusp of an absolutely key, foundational, watershed realization here: your concept of Christianity and our (well, at least my) concept of Christianity are vastly different! This is what Tom was getting at with his four questions above. Let’s stick with the house analogy.

Yes, Bill. I feel I am, also. I’m on my way to understanding how many of you approach Christianity.

Let me just set one thing straight. I am *not* saying that Christianity is a house of cards where removing *ANY* card makes it fall. For example, when God says “honor your father and mother” and Jesus said “unless one hates his father and mother … he cannot follow me” does NOT mean no one can follow God’s commandment and at the same time follow Jesus. I am open to subtlety.

But I am of the opinion that since the flood story — which unambiguously described a flood as killing all the humans save those on Noah’s ark — is found in several chapters of Genesis, which are devoted to it, and since

1) Genesis is part of the Jewish tradition since like forever, that Moses received it from God directly, and it contains truth

2) Jesus seems to have believed in this tradition. And if we assume he is the son of God, then certainly he should have known if it is true or not, and he quoted from it to give a parallel to what his second coming will be like, which he very much intended to be real

3) Until Jesus, the very law that the Jews had was written in the Torah, which was attributed to Moses, and included Genesis

It seemed to me that the flood story was not a mere card, but a structural card. And that to invalidate the flood story (as describing a flood that never actually killed all the humans in reality) is to invalidate Judaism and Christianity. Meaning: Jews said God gave the first five books to the Bible to Moses, before during and after Jesus time. Jesus agreed. But the book contains entire chapters describing events that *never* happened, and specifically saying (not metaphorically) that *all* humans were destroyed except the ones on the ark, etc. So therefore, I considered that since scientific and historical evidence overwhelmingly shows that no such flood ever took place (at least in the last 50,000 years) therefore Torah couldn’t have been given by God, and therefore the entire basis of Judaism and Christianity is based on legends. If that is so it didn’t seem to me that the Son of God — the same God of the Israelites, who they thought gave the torah to Moses — would endorse this kind of mythology. He spent a lot of time denouncing how the Pharisees practiced the law, but never once did he say anything about the Torah containing mythological stories about events that never happened.

So I thought that since it is the scientific consensus from across many disciplines — geology, genetics, anthropology, etc. — as well as history and language studies — that the flood and babel stories did not actually occur in reality, therefore the Judeo-Christian framework is completely undermined. That is mainly why I feel so strongly skeptical about Christianity.

TOM SAYS:

You are wrong, obviously wrong, persistently wrong, and stubbornly proud in your wrongness. You think you can’t be wrong, and that is what is so obviously, stubbornly, pridefully wrong.

On the contrary, I think I *can* be wrong, that is why I keep debating. It is not to change YOUR minds. It is to get an alternative explanation that actually *addresses* the issue I raise. (I am willing to get it at the risk of putting maybe some doubt in someone’s mind about their faith, although it is not my intention.) I press hard for actual, *coherent* alternatives. It’s not that I stubbornly want mine, it’s that I don’t understand the alternative as a coherent one. I said it over and over in the recent comments: don’t just say my point of view sucks, or is wrong.

A) Say what ALTERNATIVE point of view YOU have regarding the flood story. HOW is it to be understood?

B) Or if you can’t do that, at least, tell me what general approach you take that lets you decide how to view this story or that story.

I would VERY MUCH prefer if someone did both A and B. I would REALLY LOVE IT if anyone reading this could just answer A and B, and not just see that someone else answered it, because in my experience, everyone has a different approach and belief. I want to know what they are, so that *I* can edify *myself*, and through debate figure out maybe something I am not seeing. But telling me my approach sucks (which I think is the only reasonable approach until I am exposed to coherent answers to A and B) is not gonna do it.

And as I have shown you previously, that’s all we need to know in order for Christianity and the Bible to withstand this particular attack that you’re making upon it.

I get it. You say I am wrong. But I have repeatedly asked what is the approach you ARE advocating in the place of what I said above? I am asking for *coherent* alternatives to my approach. You clearly have them, so share! Don’t think I am merely making an attack on the Bible. I am simply trying to reason together, side by side, about how something that contains fictional stories can be true.

If you know what’s good for your own mind, Greg, you’ll drop it; and if you know what’s good for your strategic persuasive position here you’ll drop it even if you don’t know what’s good for your own mind.

Right I might consider dropping it if I could replace it with something else. Simply shutting down my critical thinking isn’t the answer, and I don’t think you are advocating that. You are advocating openness to subtlety and interpretation. I am saying, cool!

The best thing you all can do for me is tell me how YOU handle the issues I have described in this comment. I leave you with A and B, and the question

“Does invalidating the flood story — as describing a flood that never in reality killed all the humans outside the ark — invalidate Christianity”?

I ask this to Melissa (with whom this question originally came up in the discussion), Tom and everyone else.

And if atheists are right, Neil, then your question would be irrelevant, wouldn’t they? By my own standards I feel I am good.

I thought there was still some possibility in your mind that Judaism (or even Christianity) was true? Indeed, you said that you keep 80-90% of the important parts of the Law and 99% of the two great commandments. You told Tom that you have a great love for God and that you would gladly do anything he commanded you.

If you are a good person, who loves God, then what’s wrong with looking at God’s commands in the Torah and asking to what extent you keep them? I’m only asking you to consider whether you are a “good person” not by your own admittedly subjective and personal standards, but by the standards of the God of Israel.
In fact, you are free to pick the standard yourself: the Ten Commandments, Christ’s commandments, or the Noahide law.

What I am trying to show you is that you are utterly morally bankrupt by any of these standards. And deep down inside you know it. You are afraid to practice even the slightest amount of introspection in light of God’s Law because deep down inside, you know exactly what you will find. You will find that you are a despearately wicked sinner in need of radical forgiveness, just like all of us.

-Neil

(I am willing to get it at the risk of putting maybe some doubt in someone’s mind about their faith, although it is not my intention.)

How selfish. This doesn’t seem very loving.

Nice little skit there. But it seems a person who, himself, would wish to believe in Christianity if he could , and who says he loves others as himself, would not be so willing to cause them to lose their faith. Especially since he knows this might have eternal consequences.

edit p.s.
Your players aren’t asking the right questions. Whiner Faithington should actually be saying “why do you claim to love me when you don’t really?”
And Earnest McFoolsNoOne should realize he wasn’t offered an apologetic and should also realize his questions would be more readily answered if he actually did his own research rather than endangering others.

I didn’t know “risking someone to have doubts” is the same thing as what you said.

Thats because you don’t love others as yourself and, therefore, do not look at it from their perspective.

econdly, loving others as yourself still means you love yourself, right?

Not necessarily. The saying does not mean “love them in the same way as you love yourself”.

Perhaps if something was false, I would actually WANT to have doubts it, thanks to this guy asking questions. Gee, I guess that guy loves people after all!

But you don’t know whether Christianity is false or not. You are not convinced. You are open-minded and are only leaning toward atheism. So Christianity could be true, But here you are, to satisfy your own curiosity, risking the faith of other people who might abandon what could very well be true,
As I said, quite clearly, this doesn’t seem very loving.

Were the roles reversed, would I want someone to ask me a question regarding the truth? Why, yes I would.

Not believable. You would not want to lose your salvific faith because you were caused to doubt.

Ok, Greg. So let’s start with the first commandment. We’re asking two questions: “Are we sinners?” and “to what extent are we sinners?”

Here’s the first commandment: “You shall have no other God’s before me” (Ex. 20:2). What does this commandment mean? Does it mean that we can have other gods as long as the Lord is our #1 God? And what does it mean that the Lord is our God? Fortunately, God elaborates on this commandment (and all ten commandments) in the entire book of Deuteronomy, which I’d highly reomment that you read over the next few days. In it, Moses gives a farewell sermon(s) to Israel explaining the law and what it means to keep the commandments of God. The sixth chapter of Deuteronomy expounds on this first commandment, which Jesus pointed to as the essence of our duty towards God:

“Hear O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” (Deut. 6:4-7)

In light of this passage, let ask some questions of ourselves:

1. Do we believe in the Lord? That is, we are not asking “do we believe that some generic, nameless creator exists?” but “do we believe that the Lord God of Israel exists?” The first commandment is that the God of Israel is to be our God and none other.

2. Do we love God with all our heart? That is, are all of our motivations, goals, and affections centered on pleasing God, serving him, and obeying him? Practically speaking, what are our goals in life? What brings us the most pleasure? What do we dream about?

3. Do we love God with all our strength? Is there not even a possibility that we could do anything more to serve or love God? Are our physical resources, our money, and our time completely expended in service to God? Practically speaking, how much of our money is given to God? How much of our time is spent serving God?

4. Do we love God with all of our mind? Do we spend a large portion of each day meditating on all God’s commands, reading Scripture, thinking about his deliverances of us, thinking about his promises to us? Do we constantly meditate on his commands, whether we are going in or coming out, talking to our children, sitting at home, lying down or getting up? Pratically speaking, how much time do we spend reading the Torah? How much time do we spend talking about it with others? Is it easier for us to recite passages from the Torah, or the latest Lady Gaga lyrics?

So let’s start with this first commandment. What do you think? Do you keeping it? To what extent?

-Neil

Mike Anthony: very perceptive. But once again, your claims of my inconsistency or double standards are unfounded.

Greg – Once again they are proven founded.

I’ve made it clear there will be no continuing debate with you until you answer 206 second to last paragraph. I may comment on what others have said but I will not engage you on a debate of any other issue until you can show some intellectual honesty and address the issues put before you instead of pretending like you answered it.

I am also not going to entertain the idea that you think Judaism has been invalidated by the flood. Sorry we have you in this very thread talking about how powerful an evidence the Jews have in the revelation the wilderness at the giving of the law.

You don’t need to refer to /promote your blog again.. Its all here in this thread

So you ARE capable of seeing the merits of one part of the torah and not having the entire thing being invalidated by the flood and your arguments to dance around that won’t be entertained by me or your poor assertion that because the NT is based on Torah every story in the torah is a “structural card”

Now if you want to answer that point AFTER you address 206 that you have refused to for days then feel free but if you choose to respond once again dodging the question then it will be answered with just another reminder that you have dodged yet again.

Greg’s comment has been moved here — Tom