Jesus bloody christ!
- Thread starter Evil_Cope
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Hmmm...
What shall I say? You guys are all idiots. You start a religious thread in a forum that's about killing people and performing pelvic thrusts in front of large crowds. Go to church once in awhile if you wanna have a debate on religion.
And yes, I am a Christian. And yes, Jesus did die on the cross. And yes, you guys would all be burning in Hell if it wasn't for Him.
What shall I say? You guys are all idiots. You start a religious thread in a forum that's about killing people and performing pelvic thrusts in front of large crowds. Go to church once in awhile if you wanna have a debate on religion.
And yes, I am a Christian. And yes, Jesus did die on the cross. And yes, you guys would all be burning in Hell if it wasn't for Him.
The prophesy I'm referring to was Isaiah's prophesy to King Ahaz of Judah concerning the resolution of the upcoming war with Israel and Syria - "Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel.". The principal problem is that there is some evidence that Matthew's gospel may have been "tweaked" to make it appear that Jesus had fulfilled the prophesy. In the original it was written in the hebrew perfect tense, indicating that it had already come to pass - not that it would happen hundreds of years after the king was dead.
This might have happened after Alexander swept through Egypt and settled Alexandria (circa 200 BC?), and the Jews had to adopt Greek - apparently there was much embelishment to the original histories. The original hebrew texts were translated, and what emerged was the original text with a few alterations, as well as added passages and even books. The Septaugint was fairly mutilated. As you might be guessing, there's a lot more controversy than just Isaiah's prophesy that has risen from this (like Methusaleh living 14 years beyond the flood, and the dates of creation being off by over 1000 years). Thanks to a special kind of guy, Bishop Theophilus, answers are hard to come by - he was kind enough to burn the Library of Alexandria, containing the originals and 700,000 other texts. At any rate, the tense of the prophesy was screwed with.
As a side note, a lot of what was done in Alexandria was discarded by the church somewhere around the second century AD; one can only assume that they went back to something closer to the original. I don't know who did this, or exactly what they did - like I said, answers are hard to come by (thanks, holy guys!).
And there's also the matter of Jerome (St. Jerome, to be exact), a scribe/monk who did some translation work on the bible (circa 400 AD). The Church had a greek version of the bible, and a latin version, and there were some inconsistencies between the two. He translated the Sepatugint from the Church's greek version to latin for the Vatican to "smooth out" some of the inconsistencies. Then he later left the Vatican, went back to transcriptions of the original hebrew text, and came up with something different again. He apparently rendered a few words misleadingly in Matthew and elsewhere, like "almah" and "bethulah" - respectively "a young woman of marriageable age (regardless of marital status or virginity)", and "a virgin". He was later pressed to confess what he had done, and said that he had written a "lie to the glory of God." The church ignored his confession, preferring to stick with the more romantic version he had previously rendered. His "new" version is what you might now know as the Vulgate, or the Church's "accepted" translation. Now, re-read the line of the prophesy -
"Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel."
In direct translation to english, it apparently would read closer to
"Behold, the young woman has conceived, and beareth a son and calleth his name Immanuel."
I barely speak a word of hebrew, so I'm relying on what seems to be the commonly accepted translation. If you know someone who's fairly fluent, here's the hebrew from a transcription of the original Isaiah 7:14
"Hinneh ha-almah harah ve-yeldeth ben ve-karath shem-o Immanuel"
There's even more problems with the prophesy than that. It's most often taken entirely out of context, since that's the only way it can be considered a messianic prophesy fulfilled by Jesus. Take in the whole history of that passage, and you'll see the inconsistencies. To get you started, take a look at Isaiah vii:
First, God sends Isaiah to Ahaz to tell him "It shall not stand, neither shall it come to pass" and so forth. Then, next thing you know -
"Moreover Yahveh spake again unto Ahaz saying, ask thee a sign of Yahveh thy God; ask it either in the depth, or in the height above".
That could be explained away by saying that God had already spoken to Ahaz, he just used Isaiah the first time. But wait, there's more
"And he said, Hear ye now, O house of David; It is a small thing for you to weary men, but will ye weary my God also? "
Wait a minute, I thought God was doing the talking. No wonder the Bible confuses people. We move on to the maid bearing a child and all, and then -
"Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good. For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings."
Ok, I'm still a little confused as to who is talking, but it's commonly accepted that it's Isaiah. I don't know what eating butter or honey has to do with refusing evil and choosing good, but here's the deal - this is a prophesy about the upcoming war. Isaiah is telling Ahaz that he doesn't have to worry about the war, that both the kings of Syria and Israel will be dead when the child is young. When you take the direct translation of the prophesy, that means that he's talking about the son of a woman who is already pregnant, not a woman who'll be pregnant 3/4 of a millenium later. It makes perfect sense that way. Er, except the butter and honey thing. But then again, Isaiah rattled off a lot of gibberish. If you take the adopted translation as referring to Mary, then what does the prophesy have to do with the war? Nothing, everyone's dead by then anyway.
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"Almah" doesn't carry any implication of marital status, or chastity; just a girl or young woman of marriageable age. As touched on in my previous post, "bethulah" is, and was, virgin, and has always had the meaning it does today. "Almah" appeared only 7 times in transcripts of the original hebrew of the old testament, and "bethulah" 50 times. A few examples
Rebekah was a "bethulah, neither had any man known her" (Gen. xxiv, 16)
"He shall take a wife in her virginity [bethulah]. A widow, or a divorced woman, or profane, or a harlot, these shall he not take: but he shall take a virgin [bethulah]" (Lev. xxi, 13, 14)
"If a damsel [naarah] that is a virgin [bethulah] be betrothed," etc. (Deut. xxii, 23)
If a husband find his new wife "not a maid [bethulah]," then on his complaint her parents must "bring forth the tokens of the virginity [bethulah] of the maid [naarah]" (Deut. xxii, 14, 15)
Jephthah's daughter, doomed to be a living sacrifice to Yahveh, asked time to "bewail my virginity [bethulah]" (Judges xi, 37, 38)
Each time, the technical sense of a virgin is pretty clear. I don't know where you copy/pasted that crap from, but it doesn't seem very credible. As for sex in religion, you should see some excerpts from books that weren't cannonized. Solomon in particular might make Penthouse Forum readers blush.
Just what are tokens of virginity anyway?
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Re: Hmmm...
Already? I'm not even dead yet! That sucks.
Enlighten me a bit - where do I find a church with a Q&A session, or an open debate? I've been to Catholic, Methodist, Lutheran, and churches of a few other denominations; none of them let me debate religion, they all just told me what to think. I'd be interested in finding one like yours.
Already? I'm not even dead yet! That sucks.
Enlighten me a bit - where do I find a church with a Q&A session, or an open debate? I've been to Catholic, Methodist, Lutheran, and churches of a few other denominations; none of them let me debate religion, they all just told me what to think. I'd be interested in finding one like yours.
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lucifix
I did something m0tarded and now I have read only access! :(
I don't care if it's painted on every wall in your city, and read on the 6:00 news - it's clearly not true, and the most innocent assumption I can make is that it's just sloppy research. Where did you get it?
What shall I say? You guys are all idiots. You start a religious thread in a forum that's about killing people and performing pelvic thrusts in front of large crowds. Go to church once in awhile if you wanna have a debate on religion.
And yes, I am a Christian. And yes, Jesus did die on the cross. And yes, you guys would all be burning in Hell if it wasn't for Him.
Well...not really. you see ( most of us ) are actually intelligent individuals who can have a discussion, and not idiots. And anyway, going to church is the worst place to have a debate on religion because there will be mainly religious people there, so it wouldn't be much of a debate.
Vendetta : What i meant was that we must seem like we are incapable of higher thought and yet we have religion, so maybe we are underestimating animal intelligence. They almost certainly dont have a sophisticated idea of God but I think they do have emotions...
And yes, I am a Christian. And yes, Jesus did die on the cross. And yes, you guys would all be burning in Hell if it wasn't for Him.
Well...not really. you see ( most of us ) are actually intelligent individuals who can have a discussion, and not idiots. And anyway, going to church is the worst place to have a debate on religion because there will be mainly religious people there, so it wouldn't be much of a debate.
Vendetta : What i meant was that we must seem like we are incapable of higher thought and yet we have religion, so maybe we are underestimating animal intelligence. They almost certainly dont have a sophisticated idea of God but I think they do have emotions...
lucifix
I did something m0tarded and now I have read only access! :(
lucifix
I did something m0tarded and now I have read only access! :(
Both Matthew and Luke stated that Jesus; conception was not a commonplace one. In these gospels Mary was a virgin who became pregnant, not through sexual intercourse, but through the "power of the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 1:18; Luke 1:34-35). The gospel of Matthew explicitly mentioned that this virgin pregnancy took place in fulfillment of the scriptures:
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'".
Matthew is quoting the book of Isaiah (7:14) from the Septuagint. The word for virgin is rendered in the Greek Bible as parthenos. This word carries the explicit meaning of virgin. However, if we are to look at the Bible in its original Hebrew, from the massoretic text, the word used there is almah. Now the nearest English translation for almah is a young woman and does not carry with it any strong connotation of virginity. To show how far almah is from the meaning of virginity, I have quoted below some passages from the Old Testament where the word was used:
The word is used to describe occupants of a harem in the Songs of Solomon:
Songs of Solomon 6:8
There are sixty queens and eight concubines, and almah without number.
The occupants of harems are not, as a rule, virgins.
Finally we have a passage from Proverbs:
Proverbs 30:18-19
Three things are too wonderful for me; four I do not understand; the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea, and the way of a man in an almah.
Surely it could not be a virgin that is being referred to above. So while the use of the Hebrew word can sometimes mean a young girl of marriable age, as for instance, when it was applied to Rebecca before her marriage to Isaac (Genesis 24:43), sometimes simply a woman (see Proverbs 30:18-19 above) and sometimes even for women in a harem!
If the author of Isaiah wanted to make clear the prophecy, he would not have used the word almah for all the ambiguity that it entails. He would have chosen the Hebrew word that does explicitly mean a virgin: bethulah. This word would have been the Hebrew equivalent for the Greek parthenos. The Greek equivalent for almah should actually be neanis, which means young woman.
Matthew's assertion of the virgin birth being prophesied in the scripture is therefore based on a mistranslation of the Hebrew word for a young woman. The virgin birth is nowhere prophesied in the original 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'".
Matthew is quoting the book of Isaiah (7:14) from the Septuagint. The word for virgin is rendered in the Greek Bible as parthenos. This word carries the explicit meaning of virgin. However, if we are to look at the Bible in its original Hebrew, from the massoretic text, the word used there is almah. Now the nearest English translation for almah is a young woman and does not carry with it any strong connotation of virginity. To show how far almah is from the meaning of virginity, I have quoted below some passages from the Old Testament where the word was used:
The word is used to describe occupants of a harem in the Songs of Solomon:
Songs of Solomon 6:8
There are sixty queens and eight concubines, and almah without number.
The occupants of harems are not, as a rule, virgins.
Finally we have a passage from Proverbs:
Proverbs 30:18-19
Three things are too wonderful for me; four I do not understand; the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea, and the way of a man in an almah.
Surely it could not be a virgin that is being referred to above. So while the use of the Hebrew word can sometimes mean a young girl of marriable age, as for instance, when it was applied to Rebecca before her marriage to Isaac (Genesis 24:43), sometimes simply a woman (see Proverbs 30:18-19 above) and sometimes even for women in a harem!
If the author of Isaiah wanted to make clear the prophecy, he would not have used the word almah for all the ambiguity that it entails. He would have chosen the Hebrew word that does explicitly mean a virgin: bethulah. This word would have been the Hebrew equivalent for the Greek parthenos. The Greek equivalent for almah should actually be neanis, which means young woman.
Matthew's assertion of the virgin birth being prophesied in the scripture is therefore based on a mistranslation of the Hebrew word for a young woman. The virgin birth is nowhere prophesied in the original Hebrew.
lucifix
I did something m0tarded and now I have read only access! :(
Sorry Lucifix, I might have not made clear what I was saying was crap - I don't dispute that what people commonly believe or what's printed in the bible isn't what was originally there.
Examples I've posted show this to be crap. The meaning of "bethulah" hasn't changed. And since it wasn't originally written as virgin, what does this matter? Irrelevant smoke.
It has nothing to do with marriage; just marriageable age. An almah may be a married or unmarried woman. It only appeared 7 times in the text - it was rendered once as "damsel", twice as "maid", and four times as "virgin" - not exactly what I'd call often. In fact, I might rather say "selectively".
And again, "early church fathers" didn't translate it as virgin - you can thank Jerome for that. In fact, I don't think he was even ordained until after he had translated the Septaugint for the Vatican, and he never had a ministry. He did have a monastery, but I think that came some time after he had penned the Vulgate.
Actually, this is a more modern idea. Well, within the last few hundred years anyway. The ancients were nowhere as puritanical as people commonly believe. I just get the impression that the author of that piece is either A) relating poorly remembered hearsay and just doesn't know what they're talking about, or b) poorly relating hearsay in order to put the desired spin on it. A quick trip to any theoligian's library would have cleared up most of that; hence my assertion that any research by the author was patheticly sloppy. Seriously, where did you get that?
Examples I've posted show this to be crap. The meaning of "bethulah" hasn't changed. And since it wasn't originally written as virgin, what does this matter? Irrelevant smoke.
It has nothing to do with marriage; just marriageable age. An almah may be a married or unmarried woman. It only appeared 7 times in the text - it was rendered once as "damsel", twice as "maid", and four times as "virgin" - not exactly what I'd call often. In fact, I might rather say "selectively".
And again, "early church fathers" didn't translate it as virgin - you can thank Jerome for that. In fact, I don't think he was even ordained until after he had translated the Septaugint for the Vatican, and he never had a ministry. He did have a monastery, but I think that came some time after he had penned the Vulgate.
Actually, this is a more modern idea. Well, within the last few hundred years anyway. The ancients were nowhere as puritanical as people commonly believe. I just get the impression that the author of that piece is either A) relating poorly remembered hearsay and just doesn't know what they're talking about, or b) poorly relating hearsay in order to put the desired spin on it. A quick trip to any theoligian's library would have cleared up most of that; hence my assertion that any research by the author was patheticly sloppy. Seriously, where did you get that?
lucifix
I did something m0tarded and now I have read only access! :(
And since it wasn't originally written as virgin, what does this matter?
it doesnt, well to me anyway. i'm just pointing it out to the ignorant bastards who think she was an un-fuked saint.......
it doesnt, well to me anyway. i'm just pointing it out to the ignorant bastards who think she was an un-fuked saint.......