Desert Snake
Veteran Member
There might be. I haven't found any.
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Are there any contradictions in the Bible?
- Thread starter we-live-now
- Start date
That is only a problem with one certain interpretation of the Bible that dates back to no earlier than the mid-1500's.
Midnight Rain
Well-Known Member
Is there a version of the bible where this iconic Jewish story where god is displeased because they slaughtered people rather than the opposite? And is there a version of the Bible that gives an alternative reason for Jesus's having to die on the cross for our sins?
It's not a version of the Bible that states that Jesus died on the cross to satisfy the wrath of an angry God. That was an interpretation made up by John Calvin; no one before him believed that. We have no records from any Christian before Anselm of Canterbury (who lived in the 1100's) who even comes close to professing the belief in the penal substitution view of the atonement. Rather, Jesus died to reconcile God and man (2 Corinthians 5:18-21; Colossians 1:19-20, 2:11-14; 1 Peter 3:18), ending the alienation that existed between us (Romans 5:8-5:11) to free us from slavery to sin and death (1 Corinthians 15:20-22; Romans 5:12-6:23; Ephesians 2:1-7; Hebrews 2:14), and to give us new life (John 3:14-16).
The Bible doesn't say that Jesus died because the Father had a hankering to take out His rage on someone. Nowhere does it say that. Jesus' death on the Cross was reconciliatory and life-giving, not anger-management.
Midnight Rain
Well-Known Member
I am well versed in what it means. But what about his sacrifice would be reconcilatory? And what needed be reconciled?
Because I believe the evidence that the biblical account is true is compelling and has withstood the attacks made against it.
St. Athanasius, the Archbishop of Alexandria who lived through most of the 300's, said in his work On the Incarnation that "God became man, so that man might become God." This is an idea that is echoed throughout the theology of early Christianity, and continues today in the theology of Orthodox Christianity. I'm including a Wiki link so you can have more resources (also check out the other Patristic theories of atonement to get an idea of what Christians originally thought about Jesus' atonement). Essentially, Jesus became man, lived among us and died to share in our human experience, so that in return, by raising us up from the dead with Him and opening up the gates of Paradise for us, we might share in God's Divine Life. By becoming fully human, Jesus bridged at an ontological level the rift between God and man. He took on our human nature and united it to His Divinity to heal us of the damage caused by our own sins. Whenever we sin, we damage our relationship to God, and estrange ourselves from Him; this is why it is said in the Scriptures that God is angry with us. Not because He actually feels anger and malice towards us, but because that is how we perceive Him when He tries to correct us, and that is the language God uses to condescend to our limited perception of Him. Jesus' sacrifice is reconciliatory because He took on our sins and died, taking our sin down with Him. It functions the same way as the Old Testament sacrifices did.
Midnight Rain
Well-Known Member
Such as?
And why is it that he created the rift in the first place? What would he becoming a man solve in actuality that couldn't have already been solved if he were all powerful? Did he not create the dynamic? Or is that different in the Eastern Orthodox as well?
outhouse
Atheistically
Not these contradictions below.
mark wiki
There is little evidence that "son of God" was a title for the messiah in 1st century Judaism, and the attributes which Mark describes in Jesus are much more those of the Hellenistic miracle-working "divine man" than of the Jewish Davidic messiah
- Jesus became God's son at his resurrection, God "begetting" Jesus to a new life by raising him from the dead – this was the earliest understanding, preserved in Paul's Epistle to the Romans, 1:3–4, and in Acts 13:33;
- Jesus became God's son at his baptism, the coming of the Holy Spirit marking him as messiah, while "Son of God" refers to the relationship then established for him God – this is the understanding implied in Mark 1:9–11;
- Matthew and Luke present Jesus as "Son of God" from the moment of conception and birth, with God taking the place of a human father;
- John, the last of the gospels, presents the idea that the Christ was pre-existent and became flesh as Jesus – an idea also found in Paul.[43]
God didn't create the rift, nor did He have any part in creating it. We created it through our own sins.
God could have snapped his fingers and immediately taken away death, taken away sickness, taken away sin and our ability to make sinful choices, sure. But for whom would you have more respect and be more inclined to follow:
-A general who always remains in a pristine uniform, sits in his clean, air-conditioned and heated office, never engages with his soldiers during training, and gives out orders from the safety and comfort of a well-fortified bunker?
-Or a general who leads the training runs, goes through all the mud and barbed wire and walls of the obstacle course to show your entire company how it's done, counts off the pushups your company has to do while doing them himself, and who personally leads you and the rest of your comrades into the fray?
Of course you would admire the second far more--he doesn't think himself to be so high and mighty as to be completely above his troops, but rather gets right down into the grit with you to lead you through it. He is still your general, and you follow his orders, but you can relate to him and you know he's no hypocrite.
Jesus is like the second example. God could have been like the first general and effortlessly snapped His fingers and fixed everything that is wrong with the world. But then, unless He took away our free will and disabled us from sinning, we would soon sin again, and so we would constantly be caught in a loop of us sinning, and God fixing everything for us. We would never learn. Instead, God went through this elaborate scheme of becoming man, living among us, teaching us, dying for us and rising from the dead, not only to show that He truly loves us ("There is no greater love than this--to lay down one's life for one's friends"), and to help us learn from our own mistakes, and to heal us from the disease of sin in our souls (for Christ is our Physician--Matthew 9:12, Mark 2:17, Luke 5:31). Only through this way of God coming down and becoming one of us and dying for us would we finally grow up and become spiritually mature.
Midnight Rain
Well-Known Member
Did he not create us knowing full well we would sin? In fact we were designed specifically to be flawed and sinful to the point it is literally impossible to hold up the standards that he wanted for us? Or in this version is god not all powerful but simply playing to the natural order of things that he did not create?
Not a general that intentionally screws with his soldiers and even kills some of them just to prove points. Or worse send them into suicide missions that will kill them knowing full well it will kill them. No I do not have respect for your version of god.
Jesus would only be like the second example if that General was the full fledged architect of the war. If he created every scenario and had the capability of making everyone super soldiers with automatic laser rifles that can blast through enemy tanks at will. This just makes him seem sadistic and evil to me.
If God knew we were going to sin, it was because we were going to sin. We didn't sin because God foreknew it. He also didn't create us to be flawed and sinful--rather, He made us in His image, that is, with the potential to become perfect as He is perfect. Our sinning against God distorted that image within us. Only when we ate from the tree and corrupted ourselves did our ability to meet God's high standards for us become impaired. At least one of the most influential Christian teachers to ever live (St. John Chrysostom, who came into prominence in the second half of the 300's and died in the year 407) stated that, before they ate from the tree, Adam and Eve knew the difference from right and wrong even better than we do, because they didn't yet have the taint of sin to distort their minds, hearts and souls.
I don't expect you to.
So what, God should just make us all like Him regardless of whether or not we want to be? He should give us the spiritual equivalent of a black belt without us having gone through any of the training? He should force us all into Heaven against our will? You're saying that nothing we do should ever have consequences. We should never have to learn anything the hard way.
If God were to give us all eternal life right now, it would be meaningless, because we would go on sinning forever.
Midnight Rain
Well-Known Member
It depends. What is right and wrong? Is knowing right from wrong the same as saying you know the difference between good and evil? Can you actually have a fundamental understanding of something you have no knowledge of? I think not.
Though he created the tree and left it for us. We sin because we will sin but he created us that way. He created us intentionally with the foreknoweldge we would sin. Had he created us differently we could have been however he wanted. God is not exempt from this responsibility.
I don't think he should damn us to hell. I don't think that he exists anyway but I do know that there is living hell and torture in this world that could have been prevented. Had he created us in a different way then we wouldn't have ever sinned and we could have lived with god with eternal life?
Well I am speaking like this with the sake of argument that this version of god is correct. I personally don't believe that at all. I believe there is good and evil in this universe and gods and goddesses are no different. That seems a much better explanation than some kind of round about justification of why god screwed up. Or rather how we screw up and god blames us.
Because it has been proven that these gospels were written well beyond the time frame of christ's life by the language structure, the language itself, grammar and so on as well as the paper and ink used for the time period. If you find joy in the Bible and believe it to be historically accurate why should it matter that others hold a different view? I believe in God strongly enough that if someone says to me prove it, I simply state I cannot but still choose to believe and move on. Seems your faith needs a bit of bolstering.
Pegg
Jehovah our God is One
Hebrew names held special meanings. For example, Abrahams name means 'father of a multitude'
Moses name means 'drawn out' because he was drawn out of the water as a baby.
Jacob means 'seizing the heel' because when he was born, he came out holding onto the heel of his twin brother esau.
So Hebrew names had their own individual meaning as do many names today. Gods name is no different. It too has a meaning and in this particular verse, he is saying to Moses that while he did appear to Abraham as God Almighty (El Shaddai), he did not reveal the meaning of his name. That meaning was soon to become apparent to the Israelites because of what was about to happen to them whereas Abraham had never experienced the full extent of what Gods name actually means.
So this is not a contradiction. The meaning behind Gods name is the subject here.... and Abraham simply did not have the full knowledge of what that meaning was.
Gods name Yahweh = ' He causes to become'. And he was about to reveal the meaning of his name to the Israelites.
Ouroboros
Coincidentia oppositorum
I'm sorry, but it doesn't make any sense.
Abraham knew God by the name YHWH, as is evident of that Abraham gave a place a name that was called "Lord will provide" (YHWH Yireh). Why would it be YHWH and not El Shaddai Yireh unless Abraham gave the name YHWH based on his knowledge of a name of God that was YHWH.
Abraham perhaps knew God by El Shaddai as well, that's not at question here, but Abraham supposedly didn't even know the name YHWH according to God when he spoke to Moses. Not concept. Not other name. Not different interpretation of the name, but the name YHWH wasn't known to Abraham. Abraham didn't even know the name YHWH, yet he named as place after YHWH.
It doesn't say that Abraham didn't have the knowledge of the interpretation or understanding or concept of YWHW, but it says clearly that Abraham didn't even know the name YHWH, but he obviously did (if he even existed at all).
I heard Microsoft is changing name after 30 years. They're changing it to Microsoft to signify a new beginning. So instead of Microsoft, which is old and dated, the new name Microsoft will have a huge impact on the market. In the light of the name change, they're also changing the stock ticker symbol from MSFT to MSFT. So remember if you trade any stocks or buy any software, buy it from Microsoft, the new name, and not from Microsoft, the old name. Clear as mud...
outhouse
Atheistically
No he did not.
That is all later redactions.
El was Abrahams god
Text are clear, and El was a Mesopotamian deity for thousands of years. Its why the Canaanites adopted him as Father of all gods.
Pegg just likes to argue inanely against their historical polytheistic past and the family of gods they worshipped.
Ouroboros
Coincidentia oppositorum
So then Gen 22:14 is wrong then? Abraham didn't name the place Yahweh-Yireh (the LORD will provide), and Moses (if he was the author) somehow mistook that there was a proverb even with the name in it "On the mountain of the LORD (YHWH) it will be provided" (So named by Abraham according to the author).
Gen 22:14
Abraham named the place Yahweh-Yireh (which means "the LORD will provide"). To this day, people still use that name as a proverb: "On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided."
Well, so then Yahweh-Yireh was called El-Yireh then? So who was mistaken here? Moses, the author(s), or the translators of Gen 22:14?El was Abrahams god
Text are clear, and El was a Mesopotamian deity for thousands of years. Its why the Canaanites adopted him as Father of all gods.
Still, if we read these two verses literally, the do contradict. If we start to interpret and add meaning that's not literally there, then we can solve any conflict, of course, as always, but on the face, without any particular tweaking, spinning, or interpretation, the two verses do contradict when read literally, as they are.
Unmodified they say:
Ex 6:3
I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as El-Shaddai--'God Almighty'--but I did not reveal my name, Yahweh, to them.
(Name, not underlying assumed meaning that we have to find out by reading philosophers and thinkers in more modern time to interpret them for us. It does say "name", not something else.)
Gen 22:14
Abraham named the place Yahweh-Yireh (which means "the LORD will provide"). To this day, people still use that name as a proverb: "On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided."
(If Abraham didn't know the "name" Yahweh, then how the heck could he name a place after that name and he meant it to mean "the LORD"?)
On the face, they do contradict. If we twist, turn, modify, interpret, spin, etc... yeah, we can make them work together, but on the face, no modification, they do contradict.
(By the way, I know your name has changed to outhouse instead of outhouse. Your old name "outhouse" I never knew about it. I always used outhouse instead of outhouse, but now I know it was outhouse instead. Just so you know.
)
outhouse
Atheistically
Brother.
That book evolved for hundreds and hundreds of years and went through a monotheistic redaction to Yahweh as a primary deity.
That means later traditions of Abraham had yahweh as a primary deity.
The oldest and original traditions however, had El as Abrahams deity.
Exodus 6:2–3:
I revealed myself to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as Ēl Shaddāi, but was not known to them by my name, Yahweh.
This is the later redactors covering up the polytheistic past of Israelite cultures.
outhouse
Atheistically
Hopefully this clears things up.
Israelite monotheism evolved gradually out of pre-existing beliefs and practices of the ancient world.[76] The religion of the Israelites of Iron Age I, like the Canaanite faith from which it evolved[77] and other ancient Near Eastern religions, was based on a cult of ancestors and worship of family gods (the "gods of the fathers").[78] Its major deities were not numerous – El, Asherah, and Yahweh, with Baal as a fourth god, and perhaps Shamash (the sun) in the early period.[79] By the time of the early Hebrew kings, El and Yahweh had become fused and Asherah did not continue as a separate state cult,[79] although she continued to be popular at a community level until Persian times.[80] Yahweh, later the national god of both Israel and Judah, seems to have originated in Edom and Midian in southern Canaan and may have been brought north to Israel by the Kenites and Midianites at an early stage
Israelite monotheism evolved gradually out of pre-existing beliefs and practices of the ancient world.[76] The religion of the Israelites of Iron Age I, like the Canaanite faith from which it evolved[77] and other ancient Near Eastern religions, was based on a cult of ancestors and worship of family gods (the "gods of the fathers").[78] Its major deities were not numerous – El, Asherah, and Yahweh, with Baal as a fourth god, and perhaps Shamash (the sun) in the early period.[79] By the time of the early Hebrew kings, El and Yahweh had become fused and Asherah did not continue as a separate state cult,[79] although she continued to be popular at a community level until Persian times.[80] Yahweh, later the national god of both Israel and Judah, seems to have originated in Edom and Midian in southern Canaan and may have been brought north to Israel by the Kenites and Midianites at an early stage