• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Search results

  1. M

    mormonism racist?

    I'm not justifying it at all, I'm contextualizing it. Please learn the difference. I'm not destroying any argument because I'm not making any argument. I'm simply correcting false impressions being spread by rather naive posters. I'll thank you not to make assumptions about my beliefs, as well.
  2. M

    Languages of the NT literature

    You keep saying that and it is repeatedly explained to you why this is not problematic in real scholarship. You don't seem willing or able to respond to that. Please do so or I'm not wasting any more of my time.
  3. M

    Languages of the NT literature

    I've never made that assumption. Nor this one. I never made any claim even remotely similar to that. My turn. I am a (professional) expert in the ancient Near East, and I do this for a living. I've never argued that the existence of Nazareth points to the existence of Christ, I was just...
  4. M

    Languages of the NT literature

    Why would we expect to find a literary contemporary writing about a homeless itinerant preacher who was executed as a common criminal with followers numbering in the single digits? That would be ridiculous. You're clearly not an historian.
  5. M

    mormonism racist?

    They couldn't in the Old Testament either. In fact, only one family could be ordained. How bigoted. In the New Testament the gospel was only meant for the Jews until well after Christ's death. Also bigoted. Men are the only ones who can be ordained in most Christian religions these days. Very...
  6. M

    Languages of the NT literature

    Arguments stand even less on the naked assertion that "there is no evidence." That logical fallacy doesn't seem to bother you, and yet you're adamant about rejecting a much less troublesome fallacy.
  7. M

    What version of the bible do you find most accurate?

    Actually it's Early Modern English. Middle English runs until the 15th century. KJV was executed in the 17th century. It's not even close to the most accurate word for word translation, the use of second person plural pronouns and conjugations notwithstanding. I think learning the languages...
  8. M

    What version of the bible do you find most accurate?

    Vastly mistaken, and I promise you I am ignorant in neither. To begin with, the Hebrew Bible never denies the existence of other gods. The texts from Deuteronomy and Isaiah most often appealed to in opposition to that fact make no such claims, but are rather simple rhetoric meant to reject the...
  9. M

    Languages of the NT literature

    You've already been shown that the town was unquestionably there, and you've been shown that text totally unrelated to Christian ideologies have the town labeled Nazareth within 100 years of Christ. This is far more evidence than exists for many towns from the Bible that are accepted by...
  10. M

    Languages of the NT literature

    Scholarship has moved beyond Q recently, and the chronological priority of Mark is not a given. Jewish texts place Nazareth as the name of the town at the Bar Kokhba revolt. There is little logic in arguing that Jewish scribes borrowed the name of this town from Christian scriptures.
  11. M

    Languages of the NT literature

    You're equivocating horribly, but you're still trying to take jabs as you back off your original claims. You're also arguing from silence, which is a fallacy. You can produce zero evidence to support your claim that it was not known as Nazareth. All you can produce is your own ignorance of what...
  12. M

    What version of the bible do you find most accurate?

    That depends on the text. And I have explained that they are not Jewish. You have not responded to that, you have just barked "Nu-uh!" at me. I'm not interested in participating in such a childish discussion. Your posts will be ignored from now on.
  13. M

    Dating the Gospels

    Not a lot of good information there. For instance, the article states: and: The Masoretic text is so named because it was compiled by Masoretes, and the textual tradition that underlies it is far removed from those of Qumran. I say "those of Qumran" because all the Pentateuch and many of the...
  14. M

    Languages of the NT literature

    No, there aren't. The language makes no such conclusion likely and the use of local vernacular makes primary composition outside of Syria-Palestine virtually impossible. Heavy editing and redacting did take place, however, elsewhere. Nazareth is a town very well attested in the archaeological...
  15. M

    What version of the bible do you find most accurate?

    Whether or not people actively proselytize to others does not and cannot have anything whatsoever to do with a privileged perspective on the proper interpretation of the Hebrew Bible. It's a question of ideological and socio-political context, and Jewish people are no more born with an innate...
  16. M

    How the Bible was changed by man! Is this true?

    Textual revision is difficult to assert in most of the Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts. This is most manifest in the fact that there are a number of variant manuscripts preserved for many of the more prominent texts of the Hebrew Bible. There are fifteen or so manuscripts of Exodus there, and...
  17. M

    What version of the bible do you find most accurate?

    Yes, the JPS translates that verse with "God." The "judges" reading of Exodus is most common these days in the Christian translations, like the NIV and NASB. That text is not quite as thoroughly misrepresented due to the possibility of reading the singular "God" rather than the plural "gods,"...
  18. M

    What version of the bible do you find most accurate?

    Special pleading. They have no more privileged perspective than anyone else. I cannot make that any more clear. Nothing about Jewish ethnicity or religion means they can, in virtue of that quality, better interpret a specific passage of scripture better than anyone else. But you ignored what I...
  19. M

    Jay, What does "Elohim" mean?

    Ugaritic doesn't use the word elohim. It uses 'ilm (although this is sometimes used as a singular with an enclitic mem), which is the equivalent of the Hebrew 'elim (see Ps 29:1). It absolutely comes from Syro-Palestinian sources and not Hebrew. That's not even debatable.
  20. M

    What version of the bible do you find most accurate?

    The modern worldview is far more closely associated with the Rabbinic (as modern Judaism is a direct outgrowth of Rabbinic Judaism), but you are technically correct. I am trying to be as general as possible, though, as to be much more specific would require a great deal more of my time than I am...
Top