Colt
Well-Known Member
I'm completely sympathetic with sincere Atheists. I've never believed parts of the scriptures.
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If Jesus Died...
- Thread starter Nakosis
- Start date
paarsurrey
Veteran Member
" an innocent man be tortured to death "( why and what for??).
A good point from friend @Ebionite , please.
This idea smells to be Hellenistic, did Jesus/Yeshua- the truthful Israelite Messiah ever say such words, please, right??
If yes, then anybody to quote it in first person from Yeshua, please, right?
If not, then it is yet another accusation against Jesus/Yeshua- the truthful Israelite Messiah, please, right?
Regards
Ebionite
Well-Known Member
That's not supported by "that the whole nation perish not".
Ebionite
Well-Known Member
Maybe for people, but not for deity.
For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of Elohim more than burnt offerings.
Hosea 6:6
This verses is referred to twice in the gospels.
Ebionite
Well-Known Member
There are some verses, but they focus on the son of man, which is not an exclusive title.
And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:
John 3:14
For he taught his disciples, and said unto them, The Son of man is delivered into the hands of men, and they shall kill him; and after that he is killed, he shall rise the third day.
Mark 9:31
An omnipotent being could express [him]self via any set of personality traits [he] wished, yes.
I see a great deal of evidence in the bible that God is not righteous at all, much as righteousness is frequently claimed for [him].
For example I don't think human sacrifice is righteous ─ I think it's utterly barbarous ─ but God clearly does: the joke played on Abraham with Isaac, the reality of killing your first-born for God (Exodus 22:29-30) which you can avoid with a payment (Exodus 34:20) but tough luck if you're broke. Then God sets up Jephthah and secures the sacrifice of his daughter (Judges 11). Then God lifts a famine but only after seven descendants of Saul have been killed by impalement (2 Samuel 21).
And of course Jesus. Tell me, why was it necessary for Jesus ─ for anyone ─ to die before God would forgive sins? Why was Jesus sent on his suicide mission? What did it accomplish that nothing else could?
I'm not in favor of invasive war so I also see no righteousness in eg Deuteronomy 7:1-2 “When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations...then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy." (repeated at 20:16).
I'm not in favor of mass rape either, but God is ─ Numbers 31:9-18.
I don't thing children should be murdered for making jokes about someone old guy's bald head, but as 2 Kings 2:23 shows, that's God's view.
Nor do I condone the ripping open of pregnant women, but God is cool with that ─ Hosea 13:16.
So when you equate God with righteousness, we're not only not on the same page, we're not in the same library and we're not speaking the same language.
Why not snap those mighty fingers, avoid the gore, AND reach everyone in the world at the same time with the cheerful news?
Of course [he] can. According to Genesis 1:3 [he] brought the entire EM spectrum into existence just by a word of command.
paarsurrey
Veteran Member
" why was it necessary for Jesus ─ for anyone ─ to die before God would forgive sins? "
I agree with you here.
It smells a Hellenistic crafty idea, it has got nothing to do with Jesus/Yeshua- the truthful Israelite Messiah and his teachings, please, right?
If yes, then anybody kindly quote from Yeshua in first person, please, right?
Else, isn't it yet another accusation against Yeshua- the truthful Israelite Messiah, to malign him and his mission by those who harbor such ideas, please, right?
Regards
Of course Genesis 2:17 says nothing of the kind ─
"But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die."
They were always going to die. Why else would there be a tree of life in the Garden? If your claim were correct, there'd be no point to it. What's threatened here is simply EARLY death.
And of course Eve and Adam were incapable of sin at the time each ate the fruit, since God specifically has denied them knowledge of good and evil, so it's impossible for either of them to intend to do wrong until afterwards.
Instead, as Genesis 3:22-3 makes clear and explicit, God kicked them out of the Garden specifically to make sure they DIDN'T get to live forever. (Sin is NEVER mentioned ─ not even once.)
nPeace
Veteran Member
Yes. For example, an all powerful God could, torture a helpless created being, just for the fun of it.
However, this is if the all powerful God is lacking the qualities of love, justice, compassion, mercy....
In other word, just a lot of muscle, and that's it. Or just muscle and evil intent.
It's sort of like what some people are like today.
They have power, but no heart, or brain, to go along with it. By that, I don't mean, physical.
Okay, but I have found that is the case for people that don't know God.
This demonstrates what I said about people who don't know God.
If God wanted a human sacrifice, Isaac would be dead, but the Bible clearly tells us God was testing Abraham, so it's pretty amazing how everyone can read the same account, and some people can come to the conclusion that God wanted a human sacrifice.
I think some people just want to believe what they want, regardless, becase they want something to be true, so they can find a cause for complaint.
What to you think?
The same with the account of Jephthah's daughter.
I think it would be interesting to find one Jew, who thinks that account is referring to a human sacrifice.
Nobody thinks that Samuel was a human sacrifice, and he was given to Jehovah. (1 Samuel 1:24-28)
Reading the Bible in a superficial way, might indeed lead one to such a conclusion, since they read Judges 11:31, and that's it for them.
However, reading the Bible superficially is one way to come to wrong conclusions and lack understanding.
Reading the account, one sees, that that offering was just as in the case of Hannah offering Samuel to serve at the temple for the rest of his life.
(Judges 11:36-40) 36 But she said to him: “My father, if you have opened your mouth to Jehovah, do to me as you have promised, since Jehovah has executed vengeance for you upon your enemies, the Amʹmon·ites.” 37 She then said to her father: “Let this be done for me: Let me be alone for two months, and let me go away into the mountains, and let me weep over my virginity with my female companions.” 38 At this he said: “Go!” So he sent her away for two months, and she went to the mountains with her companions to weep over her virginity. 39 At the end of two months, she returned to her father, after which he carried out the vow he had made regarding her. She never had relations with a man. And it became a custom in Israel: 40 From year to year, the young women of Israel would go to give commendation to the daughter of Jephʹthah the Gilʹe·ad·ite four days in the year.
If she was a human sacrifice, how could the young women of Israel visit her four days in a year, to commend her?
They weren't visiting her "ghost", were they.
I think, this truly confirms what I said.
Some people don't want facts. They want misinformation, so that they can find excuses not to accept something that goes against their desires - They just look for faults where they are none.
The standard, or rule, life for life. If life is taken, life must be given - a balance of justice, required that Jesus' shed blood cover the sins of mankind, since his life was given in behalf of theirs.
In other words,
(Romans 5:12) . . .through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because they had all sinned. . .
Adam through sin, brought death to all mankind.
Justice required a life to be taken for the death of all mankind.
Not any life would suffice, because, sin, passed on by a perfect man, was the cause of death.
(Psalm 49:7-9) 7 None of them can ever redeem a brother Or give to God a ransom for him, 8 (The ransom price for their life is so precious That it is always beyond their reach); 9 That he should live forever and not see the pit.
Therefore, a perfect life was required to ransom mankind - that is, 1) cover the sins of mankind, and 2) redeem their life from death.
Only a perfect man could do this.
Hence, it could not be a human from earth, since they all inherited sin from Adam, resulting in death.
Someone from heaven had to be willing to do this.
God chose his only begotten son, because the Word was faithful and true (it had to be someone who would be faithful, since this purpose could not fail). The Word was willing. He loved mankind, He shared in their creation (Proverbs 8:30, 31)
The Word needed to be equivalent to Adam - a human.
Hence...
(Hebrews 10:5-7) 5 So when he comes into the world, he says: “‘Sacrifice and offering you did not want, but you prepared a body for me. 6 You did not approve of whole burnt offerings and sin offerings.’ 7 Then I said: ‘Look! I have come (in the scroll it is written about me) to do your will, O God.’”
Jesus life, was in place of the life of all mankind. His shed blood covered their sins.
The Bible says, the life of the flesh is in the blood. In other words, blood represents life.
(Leviticus 17:11)
For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I myself have given it on the altar for you to make atonement for yourselves, because it is the blood that makes atonement by means of the life in it.
I don't believe there is one man alive who knows everything there is to know about blood and life, so until that happens, which will be never, I accept, the creators knowledge of blood, of which he says, . . .unless blood is poured out no forgiveness takes place. (Hebrews 9:22)
I do understand the relation between that, and life for life though.
So these verses makes a lot of sense to me.
(Deuteronomy 21:1-9) 1 “If someone is found slain in a field of the land that Jehovah your God is giving you to possess and it is not known who killed him, 2 your elders and judges should go out and measure the distance from the dead body to the cities that surround it. 3 Then the elders of the city nearest to the body should take from the herd a young cow that has never been put to work, that has never pulled in a yoke, 4 and the elders of that city should lead the young cow down to a valley running with water where no tilling or sowing of seed has been done, and they should break the neck of the young cow there in the valley. 5 “And the priests, the Levites, will approach because Jehovah your God has chosen them to minister to him, to pronounce blessings in the name of Jehovah. They will declare how every dispute involving violence should be resolved. 6 Then all the elders of the city who are nearest to the dead body should wash their hands over the young cow whose neck was broken in the valley, 7 and they should declare, ‘Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it shed. 8 Do not hold this against your people Israel, whom you redeemed, O Jehovah, and do not let guilt for innocent blood remain among your people Israel.’ Then the bloodguilt will not be held against them. 9 In this way you will remove the guilt of innocent blood from your midst by doing what is right in Jehovah’s eyes.
(Deuteronomy 22:8) . . .“If you build a new house, you must also make a parapet for your roof, so that you may not bring bloodguilt on your house because of someone falling from it.
You need to understand the Bible, in order to really know God, but you can't understand the Bible unless you are humble and allow God to teach you.
I understand. See above.
It's a heart thing.
In other words, it's up to you, God won't make you what you don't want to be.
I wouldn't do that either, if I had the power, since I'd be encroaching on your rights, and depriving you of your human dignity.
God can make you heart like stone, simply by removing anything that would allow you to see clearly - spiritually that is.
nPeace
Veteran Member
That's exactly what it says... Exactly.
That's what blu says. Not the Bible.
The trees were there for a purpose.
The tree of knowledge of good and bad, represented God's right as sovereign to decide for his children what is good and what is bad.
The command not to tough it, was God exercising that right.
Adam and Eve's decision to obey or not obey, demonstrated if they respected Jehovah's sovereignty - his right as ruler, to determine for them what they can or cannot do.
Adam and Eve, taking of the fruit from that tree, was a rebellion against God, and independence from him.
They made the decision to decide for themselves what is good and what is bad, with its consequences.
They joined Satan's rebellion.
You don't understand the Bible.
God did not withhold knowledge of good and bad. He specifically told them what is good and what is bad.
Would you say it's fair to accuse a parent of withholding knowledge of good and bad from a child they told, not to take candy from strangers, just because the child went ahead and took candy from a stranger?
Yes, they were prevented from eating from the tree of life, which represented God's guarantee of everlasting life.
This shows God is fair, and just, and abides by his standards, so that he placed a guarantee for all his children to see.
If he went against his word, all his children would know.
And does so with the "descendants of Saul" by impaling seven of them.
Just as the book says ─ I quoted it to you,
The firstborn who weren't paid for died. Jephthah's daughter died. The seven mentioned above died. The boys who were rude to the bald prophet died. The pregnant women ripped open in God's name, and their unborn children, died. Jesus died. The surrendered populations who were murdered en masse died, except for the virgins kept for the mass rape, Not even a sniff of righteousness there.
As I said, getting Abraham ready to kill his son just gives you the measure of God's sense of humor. Righteousness blighteousness.
I think your saying that the Genesis Garden story is about sin entering the world is a very good example of that, The story itself says nothing of the kind, but for some reason you want it to say that so you pretend it does. Perhaps if you take some time and actually read it, you'll see what it's about.
The account of Jephthah's daughter that you give is simply not what is written in Judges 11. The young women don't meet with her after she's been sacrificed , because she's dead ie Jephthah has dealt with her according to his vow, to give God a human sacrifice.
So that's another example of your trying to make the text say what you want instead of what it actually says.
I don't know about you, but the Jews I personally know can all read, so I'm not aware of that problem.
I didn't say Samuel was a human sacrifice, I said the innocent descendants of Saul killed by impalement were a human sacrifice, and only when that was done, and only then, was God willing to lift the famine.
Once again it appears you determine what you'd like the text to say, and then feel it must say that, so you don't read it.
Wat about an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth? Are you running for public office on a platform of legislating such things?
Yes, even Paul didn't read the danged text before he sounded off about it. According to an article I found some time back when I was looking at it, the idea of the fall of Man with the fruit is first found among the Jews of Alexandria late in the second century BCE, as a midrash reading ie a flight of fantasy on what imagination could do with the words. Of course Paul's mention of it wasn't the source of the problem. Augustine of Hippo was the guy who realized how good it was for snakeoil sales, and ran with it.
Jesus wasn't perfect. He fights with his family, he's rude to his mother in all four gospels, and we only find the sole exception when we get to John 19:26-27. He assaulted the moneylenders lawfully trading in the temple, he killed the olive tree out of spite, there's no record of his ever paying compensation to the owner of the Gaderene swine, he engineers his own death so that the blame falls on the Jews ─ and so on.
Jesus is not God's begotten son in Mark. He's just an ordinary Jewish male until God adopts him once he's been baptized.
Jesus is God's begotten son in Matthew and Luke if you want fairy tales. Those fake genealogies showing Joseph was descended from David are for the person expressly NOT Jesus' father in those two versions.
There's no sense of that virgin birth nonsense in Paul or in John, the two Gnostic-flavored authors, who say Jesus pre-existed in heaven and (despite Genesis 1) created the material universe. We're not told who Jesus' parents were with those two, so we need to make something up, such as Jesus' spirit entering the zygote at the moment it forms for a standard but unnamed Jewish couple.
Not when it's the blood of a pregnant woman ripped open at God's command, or the blood of a population that's already surrendered. I confess when I was attending Pisco services the idea of pretending to drink someone's blood struck me as revolting, and indeed still does.
By killing an animal for symbolism? Kill it by breaking its neck? Vile.
No, you need to understand the bible as an ancient document the early parts of which go back to the bronze age, when human sacrifice, massacres of populations, slavery, subservience of women, murderous religious intolerance, invasive war, and so on were simply part of the social scene. Human sacrifice is found in the religions of Egypt, Greece, to some extent Rome, among the Celts, and so on. That it's found in Jewish records should be no surprise to you.
But I remain adamant that it's not righteous, whether done by God or Putin. Nor are the other things I mentioned that the bible attributes to God.
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nPeace
Veteran Member
One at a time.
I'll wait.
Please quote the verse where God impales anyone, and also please quote any dictionary that defines torture as execution.
I'll wait.
So what? They were denied the power to tell good from bad, so they were incapable of forming an intention to do wrong, so they were incapable of sin.
And as I said, sin is NEVER mentioned, not even once, in the Garden story. If we're to believe the words attributed to God in the tale, the reason God expelled them from the Garden was to stop them becoming like [him].
Nothing of sin. Nothing of original sin. Nothing of the Fall of Man. Nothing of death entering the world. Nothing of spiritual death.
Just read the text without all those little diktats in your head about what you demand it must say.
Oh, and I nearly forgot to mention that the bible says sin is not inheritable. The whole of Ezekiel 18 is about that topic, for example ─
Ezekiel 18:20 The soul that sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son; the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.
Colt
Well-Known Member
This isn't a defense of the points you raised about the wildly exaggerated Old Testament scriptures of the Israelite priest class and the behavior of bronze age men, rather it's an explanation of the mechanism in the evolution of religion as the scaffolding for the reception of revealed religion among spiritual truth teachers, prophets or even Sons of God on earth.
THE GHOST-SPIRIT ENVIRONMENT
86:6.1 "Man inherited a natural environment, acquired a social environment, and imagined a ghost environment. The state is man's reaction to his natural environment, the home to his social environment, the church to his illusory ghost environment.86:6.2 Very early in the history of mankind the realities of the imaginary world of ghosts and spirits became universally believed, and this newly imagined spirit world became a power in primitive society. The mental and moral life of all mankind was modified for all time by the appearance of this new factor in human thinking and acting.
86:6.3 Into this major premise of illusion and ignorance, mortal fear has packed all of the subsequent superstition and religion of primitive peoples. This was man's only religion up to the times of revelation, and today many of the world's races have only this crude religion of evolution.
86:6.4 As evolution progressed, good luck became associated with good spirits and bad luck with bad spirits. The discomfort of enforced adaptation to a changing environment was regarded as ill luck, the displeasure of the spirit ghosts. Primitive man slowly evolved religion out of his innate worship urge and his misconception of chance. Civilized man provides schemes of insurance to overcome these chance occurrences; modern science puts an actuary with mathematical reckoning in the place of fictitious spirits and whimsical gods.
86:6.5 Each passing generation smiles at the foolish superstitions of its ancestors while it goes on entertaining those fallacies of thought and worship which will give cause for further smiling on the part of enlightened posterity.
86:6.6 But at last the mind of primitive man was occupied with thoughts which transcended all of his inherent biologic urges; at last man was about to evolve an art of living based on something more than response to material stimuli. The beginnings of a primitive philosophic life policy were emerging. A supernatural standard of living was about to appear, for, if the spirit ghost in anger visits ill luck and in pleasure good fortune, then must human conduct be regulated accordingly. The concept of right and wrong had at last evolved; and all of this long before the times of any revelation on earth.
86:6.7 With the emergence of these concepts, there was initiated the long and wasteful struggle to appease the ever-displeased spirits, the slavish bondage to evolutionary religious fear, that long waste of human effort upon tombs, temples, sacrifices, and priesthoods. It was a terrible and frightful price to pay, but it was worth all it cost, for man therein achieved a natural consciousness of relative right and wrong; human ethics was born!" Urantia Book 1955
Thanks.
I agree with parts of that, but not all. We know, for example, that gregarious animals necessarily have an evolved sense of what is allowed and what is not, which makes gregariousness possible at all. Humans have an evolved morality: dislike of the one who harms, like of fairness and reciprocity, respect for authority, loyalty to the group, and a sense of self-worth through self-denial. (You can see that those tendencies contain potential conflicts eg between the first two and the second two.) Anthropologists have found supernatural beliefs in every human group, to account for the dead, for good and bad luck, for natural calamities like flood, drought, famine, plague, and so on.
Dimi95
Χριστός ἀνέστη
Some have described the potassium-argon clock as being a clock without hands-without even a face.
Perfect example of this is the Richard Leakey case.He discovered Skull 1470 near the east shore of Lake Rudolf in Kenya and thought the skull was 2.6 million years old.Leakey’s Skull 1470 was initially dated at Cambridge Laboratory (England) with the potassium-argon method. The first date was 221 million years.After more tests they got another date of 1.8 million years from the University of California, Berkeley.
It is very interesting how 'science' fits in someone's philosophy.
Hebrews 11 is clear Scriptural evidence.
Genetic inheritance is not a choice.
If another sperm had reached the egg,i would not be me today , it's just like that.
It's not the sin, more important is the essence to sin.
Dimi95
Χριστός ἀνέστη
Everyone bears the consequences of the first sin, the foremost of which is death, only Adam and Eve are guilty of that sin.
"For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man.For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive."
So we inherit nothing from our parents through genes, is that what you are trying to say?
Dimi95
Χριστός ἀνέστη
I agree , but i did NOT say that we inherit the guilt, i am Orthodox.
Colt
Well-Known Member
Jesus said “Go and sin no more “. Maybe people also use the original sin doctrine as an excuse?
Dimi95
Χριστός ἀνέστη
You forgot to mention this
"When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her."
The thing is that i fight spiritually about this question with Protestants and Catholics.
The problem lays in the idea of original sin,or the problem lays in the guilt.
Orthodoxy differs from other Christian denominations and not only in the idea of original sin , but on many more.