theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
It's like watching Hans Neimann playing chess against Magnus Carlsen.
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Merged (edited) General thoughts about Christianity and the bible
- Thread starter Rusty Tyler
- Start date
And the whole virgin birth and the immaculate conception of Mary could have been avoided if anyone had noticed that Matthew had misunderstood 1) what a prophecy is and 2) that the meaning of the greek word that he took to mean "virgin" had changed. If only the author of Matthew had been able to read biblical Hebrew!
sinnikal
Muse
And God said "let there be light" ... and you could see for ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ miles.
Rusty Tyler
Graduate Poster
I understand "in His image" to mean that we have a spirit. (body and soul)
The Bible says that angels took human women for wives and had children by them.
So. sex organs inferred for angels. (or demons) ???
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Of course. The existence of two different creation stories is prima facie evidence that they are stories. And if they are stories, then the telling doesn't matter so much. And if you can separate the story from the telling of the story, then the details that properly belong only to that particular telling can be disregarded. The main elements of Goldilocks and the Three Bears remain unchanged if one version says the bears' house is built out of bricks and another says it's a balloon-framed Victorian. And if the details aren't important, then maybe you can say God used evolution without risking hellfire.
The Mormons concluded that God is an "exalted" man, and was once mortal.
It's a great pun if you can understand the Hebrew. In Hebrew, articles carry more grammatical weight than they do in English. For example, to say the word for "today" you just put the article in front of the word for "day"—yom becomes hayyom. Similarly there is a punny interplay in the creation story between adam clearly intended as a proper noun and ha'adam having its generic meaning. I had a friend who named his dog "Dog."
I think it's hard not to anthropomorphize your God. But when the exact size, shape, and optional accessories are being talked about, it can get very silly very fast.
Rusty Tyler
Graduate Poster
How would that have changed the story?
The virgin birth was prophesied.
Isaiah 7:14 NIV
Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign:
The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel
Immanuel = God with us
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
You can believe that, but that's not how the Hebrew is properly understood. Tzelem comes from the verb that means "to cast a shadow." Tzelem always means physical form. When Adam has a son, that son is described as being in his tzelem. It's a tangible, physical resemblance.
Does God look like a human, such that tzelem means what it means? Are the "meat sacks" the same shape as God?
We're not talking about angels. Stick to the subject of what God looks like and what "in his image" could mean.
It always struck me as odd that the kid ended up being called Jesus.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
That's not the word in question. "Virgin" is the word in question. Almah doesn't specifically indicate virginity. It simply means a young woman of childbearing age. If you want to specifically indicate physical virginity, the right word is bethulah. Isaiah knew the difference because he used bethulah correctly elsewhere in context. In the Jewish tradition this passage has bugger all to do with the Messiah. The point remains that the authors of the New Testament weren't as conversant as they should have been with the Old Testament, therefore made a lot of mistakes, and therefore maybe don't read it too literally.
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Foster Zygote
Dental Floss Tycoon
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YHWH must have when he was paired up with Ashera. Then the religion evolved toward monotheism, but the priests in charge and the culture in which they resided were extremely paternalistic, so YHWH was still a dude, despite being the one and only.
The funny thing is that, from a biological perspective, something that reproduces asexually is still referred to as female. Something that doesn't reproduce at all would more properly be referred to as 'it' (sorry, 'It'). I guest depends on whether you consider making things in her/its own image counts as biological reproduction.
Rusty Tyler
Graduate Poster
Well... He sits on a throne, He talks to us and listens. He sees. His arm is not too short to save.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Hebrew doesn't have a grammatical neuter gender. As such it doesn't have a genderless pronoun ("it"). Everything in Hebrew is either grammatically male or female. That raises the issue of grammatical gender versus biological gender, which is kind of what I'm trying to eke out of our OP.
Because the hebrew word is not "virgin" - which the author of Matthew would have known if he had read the hebrew - and the prophecy refers to a young woman who is already pregnant, plus that prophecy is given to King Ahaz (sp?) as a sign that god will ensure Ahaz's kingdom will survive. Which then happens. In other words this is a prophecy that was fulfilled literally centuries before Jesus was born. It has nothing to do with the birth of the messiah to a virgin.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
As I said, anthropomorphizing your gods seems inevitable. But I'm looking for the veridical truth. Does God look like people? Do people look like God? Not in some metaphorical or poetic sense, but in the physical, optical sense. If the Christian God appeared in front of me today in his true form, would he look like a human male?
Mojo
Mostly harmless
Do you have any actual evidence?
From the descriptors we do have he is definitely humanoid, has parts that look like human parts and in Exodus he gets the lads over for a bit of a celebration and they act like "he's just a dude you know".
Rusty Tyler
Graduate Poster
That's a goods point.
There are several OT quotes that are used to confirm Christ.
But they are basically misquotes.
Matthew 1:22-23 NIV
All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet:
23 The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).
Rusty Tyler
Graduate Poster
Yes, I believe so. There is a family resemblance.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Do you still read them literally? Or do you acknowledge that they are mistakes and that you should probably not take them as truth?
Rusty Tyler
Graduate Poster
Go look in the mirror.