Wow.
We certainly think a lot of ourselves, don’t we?
So you’re willing to defend your statement as literally true, not just hyperbole?
OK: let me ask you this. In order for our hypothetical Jew to reach any conclusion about Jesus being, or not being, the prophesized moshiach, he would have to have two sets of information: (1) what the messanic prophecies are, and (2) what he knows about Jesus. He would then need to compare the two and decide if they match. Yes?
Now, you are saying that in that list of comparisons, NOT ONE characteristic could be checked off as a match?
If the answer to that question is ‘yes,’ then I’d ask you what facts about Jesus our hypothetical Jew may accept as true. For example, above you took issue with my claim that Jesus was “well-versed in Jewish law,” and pointed out that we don’t know this; only the Christian bible makes this claim.
On what sources may our hypothetical Jew rely to build list of Jesus’ characteristics?
Yeah, thanks for the warning. :rolleyes:
A good christian is one who knows what the hell they are talking about. I will not get into what makes a good christian beyond that however, since, never having been one, I believe my common sense answer will conflict with what the book tells them to do.
On what authority? My own, (and that of my common sense) same as why I pick up wallets, and give them back to the owner. No pie in the sky after I die needed, nor any need for any real authority to cite.
Yes, this is the second time I said it. Did you actually read my post before last?2.
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OK: let me ask you this. In order for our hypothetical Jew to reach any conclusion about Jesus being, or not being, the prophesized moshiach, he would have to have two sets of information: (1) what the messanic prophecies are, and (2) what he knows about Jesus. He would then need to compare the two and decide if they match. Yes?
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No. 
No. There is no reason to believe Jesus was the moshiach. No reason to think he is even in the running. The guy is suppost to come in the future, and once he gets here, jews have a check list of ways to prove he is what he says he is.4.
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Now, you are saying that in that list of comparisons, NOT ONE characteristic could be checked off as a match?
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Youv’e got it, and even if there was one, the fact that he doesn’t match the other disqualifies him.5
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If the answer to that question is ‘yes,’ then I’d ask you what facts about Jesus our hypothetical Jew may accept as true. For example, above you took issue with my claim that Jesus was “well-versed in Jewish law,” and pointed out that we don’t know this; only the Christian bible makes this claim.
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Well, my answer is yes, and as for what a jew can use to accept as claims about about jesus as true, my answer is: A TARDIS (a certan kind of sci-fi time machine)6
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On what sources may our hypothetical Jew rely to build list of Jesus’ characteristics?
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again, a tardis. As there are no trust worthy extra-bibilical (and extra-torah) sorces of jesus’s existance, we can find nothing.
So… our hypothetical Jew sits down to analyze whether Jesus is the prophesized moshiach.
“Wait a second,” sez he. “I don’t have a time machine. Therefore I can assume NOTHING about the existence of Jesus as true, not even his existence itself.”
Not even the fact that the prophesized moshiach will be a man can be considered as ‘fitting’. After all, Jesus may have been a man, but who knows for sure?
Well, I must admit… under those rules, Scott, you’re absolutely right: There is NOTHING about Jesus that fits the prophesies. Mainly because there is NOTHING about Jesus that is known, period.
Let me ask you: could a reasonable Jew, living in the time of Shimeon ben Kosiba, the Bar Kochba … could such a person reasonably believe AT THE TIME that the Bar Kochba was the moshiach?
See that? I go away for a few hours and everyone gets all wrapped up in a pissing contest, over details. Can’t we even shit on Santorum (kind of redundant isn’t it) without getting hijacked into an argument over words I can’t even pronounce?
It wasn’t a good time to find reasonable Jews: the temple had been destroyed, its ground desecrated with idols, Jerusalem was renamed Ælia Capitolina and dedicated to pagan worship, zealots were being killed by the score, etc., but certainly he was accepted as such by no less an authority on halakhic law than Rabbi Akiva. Who knows?
I am guessing that the House of David requirement was right out by this time. Scripture names 19 sons born to David and mentions other sons born of concubines; he also had daughters. Many of his male descendants were also polygamists, with grandson Rehoboam alone fathering 28 sons and 60 daughters. He lived a minimum of 800 years before Jesus (assuming that he lived at all and wasn’t a mostly mythical figure), probably closer to a full millennium; for perspective that’s about the time separating us from the monogamist William the Conqueror and he has tens of thousands of descendants who are documented- you’re probably looking at millions who are undocumented (and if you’ve read Kurt Vonnegut you know that “all Europeans are descendants of Charlemagne”). Considering the preference for endogamy of the Jews and the relatively small area and gene group, it would have been no great distinction to have carried David’s blood (and again assuming David’s existence and the accuracy of his biography as given in the OT) his lineage may in fact by this time have extended to the majority (if not the entirety) of the Jewish people. Surely this would have been the least part of the prophecies.
(My point in commenting on the inconsistent genealogy of Christ is to demonstrate the lengths that his early followers went to in order to make him fit the prophecies.)
Therefore, the other two prophecies you mentioned (great judge and master of laws) would have been all the more important most likely. Bar Kosiva was both of these things. So were any number of other men in Jewish history. Sure, why not, let’s say a sane person could have ruled him the Messiah, just as they could have ruled Isaac Luria or Baruch Spinoza the Messiah, and with as much credence as Jesus.
What this has to do with Santorum I’ve long since forgotten.
This is not a direct reply to you,Bricker, but I have read the Bible through (over the years) at least 24 times. It took me several years to begin to question what I had read.
I could be wrong, but I do not remember any where in the Bible that Jesus was anything but a Jew, nor did he ask anyone to write a book. I do remember Him as saying the Scriptures were good to read, but didn’t imply they were mandatory.
The first couple of centuries of Christianity there was no New Testament (as it is known today). The Apostles of Jesus were spreading the word (according to the Bible) in many different places, so it would mean that no Christian in the first centuries would know, or have read the New Testament.According to the above arguments there were no good Christians until after a couple of centuries when the writings were gathered under the orders of the Pope and church fathers.
The Bible was copied by monks and there were very few Bibles until the invention of the printing press, that would mean there was no good Christian for centuries?
Monavis
Not to speak for those on the other side of the aisle, but as I understand the argument, you’re not a good Christian if you have a reasonable opportunity to read the Bible, and you don’t. In both cases you mention - pre-Bible and pre-printing press - there simply wasn’t an opportunity; I suspect the people in this thread on the other side of this discussion would agree that with no books easily available, it didn’t mean that virtually all Christians were guilty for not reading the works in question.
But they can certainly speak for themselves.
I think that the point isn’t so much whether or not someone can be a ‘good Christian’ or ‘good Jew’ or what have you, without reading the literature their faith is based on. Honestly, I think that’s an issue for the various religious communities to settle in-house. (Although those outside the religion can still judge if someone is acting in accordance with their professed standards.)
I do think, however, that if someone tries to run my life based on their book, that the least we can expect is that they’ve actually read the whole thing. This of course excludes theocrats who want to run my life based on religious teachings which aren’t even codified.
I read this. Then I read this again. The moral of the story seemed to be ‘Fuck monogamy…so the bible tells me’.
Is this the moral you meant?
My point exactly!
I am not a Christian, or Jewish, my understanding from what I have heard is that Jesus main teaching was that His followers love one another. He is quoted as saying,“Love your enemies,do good to those who would harm you etc.” Those who take the Bible literally seldom use, or practice this. He is quoted also of saying,“Man was not made for the law,but the law for man”.
Monavis
I’m interested in Scott_plaid’s assessment.
Well, take it up with **Scott_plaid
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, who denied even this single point fit Jesus, despite - as you correctly point out - the strong likelihood of ANY Jewish male being able to trace his bloodline back to King David. It makes sense to me; Scott is the one waving his hands at th enotion.
Again - it’s Scott’s take I’m interested in.
At least he recognizes that “yada yada yada… SMITE THE PERVERTS… bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla… SMITE THE PERVERTS… meeble meeble meeble meeble meeble meeble meeble meeble meeble… SMITE THE PERVERTS…” doesn’t count as “reading the Bible”.
Logically, that simply isn’t true. To demonstrate that a text is correct and self-consistent requires a study of the entire text; to demonstrate otherwise requires the finding of only one unambiguous contradiction or error.
WTF??
The claim “I have a working time machine in my second-floor library” is extraordinary*. It is simply ludicrous to assert that the claim “I do not have a working time machine in my second-floor library” is in any way extraordinary.
*Especially if you have seen my house, and noted that it is clearly a one-story structure.
Not at all – the “extraordinariness” of a claim is readily judged by the degree to which it is incompatible with previously known facts. For example, no one (who is not being willfully obtuse) would find the slightest ambiguity in classifying “I rode to work on a bus” as ordinary and “I rode to work on a flying saucer” as extraordinary.
Not really. To be an unambiguous contradiction or error, it must be proven that the contradiction is not clarified elsewhere in the text.
It shows all the classic signs of work produced by one of those “too big to edit” authors.
While that’s technically correct, I can set up a pretty good prima facie case that a given text is errant by showing two contradictory statements within it. I’ve not won the game, set, match; but the ball is now in your court to show me that what appears to be a contradiction is elsewhere resolved.
Given that we’re mortal and fallible, we’ve got to choose where to put our intellectual attentions: we have neither eternity nor omniscience to help us in our debates. It’s a pretty good rule of thumb to consider a debate temporarily resolved once such a contradiction is demonstrated; the debate may be resumed once someone has shown how to resolve the contradiction satisfactorily.
Daniel