Is Jesus GOD?

[Pegg]

Still it is my understanding that if JW translate 'Elohim' as 'Jehovah' throughout the Bible, then passages that are meant to refer to "beings in Heavens" rather than the Supreme God, could lose some nuanced meaning that was intended.

If that were the case i'd agree. But im pretty sure the NWT hasnt changed all occurrences.

Can i just ask you how you distinguish between God Almighty and other gods mentioned in the bible?

 

[Ben Dhyan]

If that were the case i'd agree. But im pretty sure the NWT hasnt changed all occurrences.

Can i just ask you how you distinguish between God Almighty and other gods mentioned in the bible?

Does the word Jehovah appear anywhere in Genesis 1 of your bible?

Well where i see the word 'Lord' used, I generally accept it is referring to the Supreme God, and where the word 'God' is used, the context needs to be looked at to determine if it is the ONE or beings of Heaven. But also keep in mind that the bible uses all sorts of literary devices to convey things, metaphor, allegory, rhetoric, parable, etc.. For example if the Lord spoke to Noah "blah blah...", this would be to me a metaphorical use of anthropomorphizing YHVH in order to convey the point being made.

Grace is the most important factor in understanding.

 

[Pegg]

Does the word Jehovah appear anywhere in Genesis 1 of your bible?

yes it does.

Well where i see the word 'Lord' used, I generally accept it is referring to the Supreme God, and where the word 'God' is used, the context needs to be looked at to determine if it is the ONE or beings of Heaven. But also keep in mind that the bible uses all sorts of literary devices to convey things, metaphor, allegory, rhetoric, parable, etc.. For example if the Lord spoke to Noah "blah blah...", this would be to me a metaphorical use of anthropomorphizing YHVH in order to convey the point being made.

Grace is the most important factor in understanding.

I noted earlier how the KJV and the NIV both captialize LORD and GOD in places where the tetragrammaton is found in the original language manuscripts. Does your bible do that?


I agree grace is important and we cant be overly dogmatic for many reasons.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

yes it does.

I noted earlier how the KJV and the NIV both captialize LORD and GOD in places where the tetragrammaton is found in the original language manuscripts. Does your bible do that?


I agree grace is important and we cant be overly dogmatic for many reasons.

Well then it is as I thought, JW is translating 'Elohim' as 'Jehovah'.The source documents of Genesis 1 uses 'Elohim' exclusively as the representation of the Creator God.

My bible only capitalizes the first letters Lord for YHVH and God for Elohim. God is never used for YHVH and Lord is never used for Elohim as far as I know.

 

[Pegg]

Well then it is as I thought, JW is translating 'Elohim' as 'Jehovah'.The source documents of Genesis 1 uses 'Elohim' exclusively as the representation of the Creator God.

Ah, im sorry, I read your question as 'anywhere in Genesis'
You were only talking about Chpt 1, yes?
The name Jehovah is not in Chpt 1 in the NWT. The first occurrence is in Chpt 2 Vs 4.

My bible only capitalizes the first letters Lord for YHVH and God for Elohim. God is never used for YHVH and Lord is never used for Elohim as far as I know.

in the KJV and several other translations, YHWH is capitalized as 'LORD' to identify it and distinguish it from a general 'Lord' which could be 'David my Lord'
But the NWT will always use the name of God where it should be.

An example is Luke 20:41-44
'Jesus said to the religious leaders: “How is it they say that the Christ is David’s son? For David himself says in the book of Psalms, ‘Jehovah said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a stool for your feet.’ David, therefore, calls him ‘Lord’; so how is he his son?”

Jesus is quoting from the Psalm 110:1 where the tetragammaton is present:
The utterance of (YHWH) Jehovah to my (Adhoni) Lord is: “Sit at my right hand Until I place your enemies as a stool for your feet"

The KJV readsThe LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Thanks Pegg, I understand what you are saying.

Yes I was referring to Gen. 1, so it seems all is in order.

 

[lemie]

they will all be resurrected and given another chance at life according to Jesus... so will anyone who has died in recent times

John 5:28 “Do not marvel at this, because the hour is coming in which all those in the memorial tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who did good things to a resurrection of life, those who practiced vile things to a resurrection of judgment

and death will be done away with entirely
Revelation 21:4: “He will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be any more. The former things have passed away.”

Thanks for the explainations.

Correct. Jesus was Gods master worker according to Proverbs 8
“When [God] prepared the heavens I was there...then I came to be beside him as a master worker and I came to be what he was specially fond of day by day, I being glad before him all the time.” Prov. 8:27-30

“This one was originally with God. All things came into existence through him, and apart from him not even one thing came into existence. What has come into existence by means of him was life, and the life was the light of men.” John 1:2-4

Do you mean that he died for all mankind even for the people who lived before him? So, what about other prophets that came before him? What make them any different than Jesus? Did they all created by Jesus? Did they taught the same thing like Jesus did, I mean did they acknowledge Jesus as only god begotten son?

I hope that those questions are not so many. Sorry for that...

 

[Pegg]

Thanks for the explainations.



Do you mean that he died for all mankind even for the people who lived before him? So, what about other prophets that came before him? What make them any different than Jesus? Did they all created by Jesus? Did they taught the same thing like Jesus did, I mean did they acknowledge Jesus as only god begotten son?

I hope that those questions are not so many. Sorry for that...

yw

Yes, Jesus died for all those who lived before him...so all the ancient people who died in ancient times including people from all the different nations and tribes of the earth

God told Abraham at Gen 22:18 'And by means of your seed all nations of the earth will certainly bless themselves due to the fact that you have listened to my voice.’

The prophets who came before Jesus, prophesied ABOUT Jesus.
Luke 24:25-27 reports that Jesus explained how the prophets writings applied to him. This is why Jesus was superior to anyone else...he was the one promised to save mankind.
"So he said to them: “O senseless ones and slow in heart to believe on all the things the prophets spoke! 26 Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into his glory?” 27 And commencing at Moses and all the Prophets he interpreted to them things pertaining to himself in all the Scriptures.


You could say that the prophets were leading people to the Messiah, whereas the Messiah leads people to God.

 

[lemie]

yw

Yes, Jesus died for all those who lived before him...so all the ancient people who died in ancient times including people from all the different nations and tribes of the earth

God told Abraham at Gen 22:18 'And by means of your seed all nations of the earth will certainly bless themselves due to the fact that you have listened to my voice.’

The prophets who came before Jesus, prophesied ABOUT Jesus.
Luke 24:25-27 reports that Jesus explained how the prophets writings applied to him. This is why Jesus was superior to anyone else...he was the one promised to save mankind.
"So he said to them: “O senseless ones and slow in heart to believe on all the things the prophets spoke! 26 Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into his glory?” 27 And commencing at Moses and all the Prophets he interpreted to them things pertaining to himself in all the Scriptures.


You could say that the prophets were leading people to the Messiah, whereas the Messiah leads people to God.

So, did Jesus create the previous prophets too? Did he exist in the form of spirit before he was born in physical form? bcoz he must exist before all other prophets came to mankind.

 

[Pegg]

So, did Jesus create the previous prophets too?

According to Paul, all things came into existence through and for Jesus. This does not mean that Jesus is the Almighty, but that through & for Jesus, the Almighty God brought all other things into existence.
This is borne out for us in Proverbs where it says that Jesus was 'beside God as a master worker'

Paul explains at Colosians 1:15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; 16 because by means of him all [other] things were created in the heavens and upon the earth

So we can say yes... the creation of mankind, Adam & Eve, were directly created by Jesus....but under the direction and guidance of Jehovah his father. The prophets on the other hand were not individually 'created' as such...they were born like all of us were.

Did he exist in the form of spirit before he was born in physical form? bcoz he must exist before all other prophets came to mankind.

Yes.
Jesus existed in heaven with God before his life was transferred to Mary's womb to live as a man.

According to Jesus he came from Heaven
John 6:38 because I have come down from heaven to do, not my will, but the will of him that sent me

 

[lemie]

According to Paul, all things came into existence through and for Jesus. This does not mean that Jesus is the Almighty, but that through & for Jesus, the Almighty God brought all other things into existence.
This is borne out for us in Proverbs where it says that Jesus was 'beside God as a master worker'

Paul explains at Colosians 1:15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; 16 because by means of him all [other] things were created in the heavens and upon the earth

So we can say yes... the creation of mankind, Adam & Eve, were directly created by Jesus....but under the direction and guidance of Jehovah his father. The prophets on the other hand were not individually 'created' as such...they were born like all of us were.



Yes.
Jesus existed in heaven with God before his life was transferred to Mary's womb to live as a man.

According to Jesus he came from Heaven
John 6:38 because I have come down from heaven to do, not my will, but the will of him that sent me

TQ for answering all of my questions. It is very interesting to learn about Christianity. I wonder what makes you believe in the concept of Christianity. Maybe those ancient people saw the miracles done by Jesus and believe in him, but I'm not really sure what makes you believe in him after he left for so many years. It is hard for me to take a tall claim like that seriously. Even if he did exists, I'm not sure whether he taught the same thing. The time gap is very large. So many things could happen. Do you have the very first version of bible today? or something that directly connected to the time when Jesus lived, something that can become the proof for his teachings?

 

[Riverwolf]

***MOD ADVISORY***
Thread moved to Same-Faith Debates
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[Feralbeest]

That's strange because the translation in one of my Bibles uses the biblical Name Jehovah all through the Old and New Testaments.

. .

Astonishing as it may sound, it is an admitted fact that prior to the sixteenth century, the word "Jehovah," was unheard of. Whenever the origin of this word appeared in its true Hebrew form in Jewish Scriptures (read from right to left as in Arabic) Yet, Huh, Wav, Huh; or Y.H.W.H. these four letters were preceded by a substitute word "Adonai," to warn the reader that the following word was not to be articulated. The Jews took meticulous care in repeating this exercise in their "Book of God" six thousand, eight hundred and twenty-three times - interpolating the words "Adonai" or "Elohim." They sincerely believed that this awesome name of God was never to be pronounced. This prohibition was no ordinary affair: it called for a penalty of death on one who dared to utter it, and this taboo has been more successful than all the "DO's" and "DON'T's" of the Ten Commandments put together.

If Jehovah is the name of God Almighty, and if the 27 Books of the New Testament were inspired by Him, then it is an anomaly of the highest order, that He (Jehovah) signally failed to have His Own Name recorded in "His Word" (N.T.) the Christian addition to the Jewish Bible. The Christians claim that they have in their possession over twenty-four thousand so-called "originals" of their Holy Writ in the Greek language, and yet not a single parchment has "Jehovah" written in it. Curiously this "name of God" (?) has been sacrilegiously replaced by the Greek words ky'ri.os and the.os', which mean 'Lord' and 'God.'

 

[Pegg]

TQ for answering all of my questions. It is very interesting to learn about Christianity. I wonder what makes you believe in the concept of Christianity. Maybe those ancient people saw the miracles done by Jesus and believe in him, but I'm not really sure what makes you believe in him after he left for so many years. It is hard for me to take a tall claim like that seriously. Even if he did exists, I'm not sure whether he taught the same thing. The time gap is very large. So many things could happen. Do you have the very first version of bible today? or something that directly connected to the time when Jesus lived, something that can become the proof for his teachings?

this is an argument my husband makes alot..."it all happened so long ago that you cant prove any of it, it may not even be true"

but my reply is always the same, there are several ways to determine if the bible is true or not.

1 is its prophecies. So many prophecies that we have seen come true in our time and continue to come true. History testifies to many of the prophecies so they can be backed up by secular records too.

2 is its harmony. The bible was written by 40 different men over a period of 1600 years and yet every book is in harmony with the others. The fact that these books can be put together into one book is testimony to it having one author. The author is God who inspired those men to write his messages and its harmony is a strong testimony to that.

3 is the fact that the christians were willing to die for their claims about Jesus. If he was really just a myth and they all got together to invent him, then why would they be willing to die for something which was a trick? No one would do that. But you might do that if you were so convinced that it was true that you didnt care if you lived or died.

4 is that archeology has continually backed up what is written in the bible. There is so much archeological evidence that the places & people spoken about in the bible are not in doubt in my eyes. And the bible is not ambiguous, it uses dates and names of rulers...these can all be used to pinpoint when the books were written.

I have studied the bible for about 15 years now and im yet to find something that doesnt add up.

 

[Pegg]

If Jehovah is the name of God Almighty, and if the 27 Books of the New Testament were inspired by Him, then it is an anomaly of the highest order, that He (Jehovah) signally failed to have His Own Name recorded in "His Word" (N.T.) the Christian addition to the Jewish Bible. The Christians claim that they have in their possession over twenty-four thousand so-called "originals" of their Holy Writ in the Greek language, and yet not a single parchment has "Jehovah" written in it. Curiously this "name of God" (?) has been sacrilegiously replaced by the Greek words ky'ri.os and the.os', which mean 'Lord' and 'God.'

that may be true in most english translations, but its not true for all language translations.
In the German language, there are at least five “New Testament” translations that contain the divine name in several verses.

Dominikus von Brentano in 1796, uses the divine name twice in its main text. The Stolz bible published in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1781 and Professor Dr. Johann Babors translation published in Vienna, Austria, in 1805 both use the name at Mark 12:29
There is also the translation by Professor D. P. Dausch and published in Bonn, Germany, in 1932, which uses “Jahve” at Luke 20:37.

The fact is that we still have some very old fragments of the Septuagint Version that actually existed in Jesus’ dau and the name of God is in them. This means that when the christians were quoting verses from the Old Testament, they would have come across that name and, unlike the Jews, would have felt free to pronounce it.
The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (Volume 2, page 512) says: “The oldest LXX MSS (fragments) now available to us have the tetragrammaton written in Heb[rew] characters in the G[ree]k text..."

And there is evidence that right up until the 4th century the tetragammaton was still being used by translators because in the first half of the 2nd century C.E., a Jewish proselyte named Aquila made a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, and used the Tetragrammaton in ancient Hebrew characters. Its abrviated as 'Aq Burkitt' and was published by F. Crawford Burkitt in his work Fragments of the Books of Kings According to the Translation of Aquila, Cambridge, 1898, pp. 3-8. fragments of were found in the synagogue genizah in Cairo, Egypt. They were dated to the end of the fifth century or the beginning of the sixth century C.E.

In the third century, Origen wrote: “And in the most accurate manuscripts THE NAME occurs in Hebrew characters, yet not in today’s Hebrew [characters], but in the most ancient ones.”

And in the 4th century Jerome writes in his prologue to the books of Samuel and Kings: “And we find the name of God, the Tetragrammaton ,]יהוה[in certain Greek volumes even to this day expressed in ancient letters."


So the conclusion is that the name was removed from english translations much later... and my suspicions is that it was removed so as to not confuse the difference between Jesus and Jehovah. Triniatarians claim that Jesus is God, but if you read something like 'God says to Jesus' it kind of mucks up the whole trinity argument because you have to explain who this 'Jehovah' person is.

 

[Zardoz]

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Thread moved to Same-Faith Debates​

:clap
:run:

 

[lemie]

this is an argument my husband makes alot..."it all happened so long ago that you cant prove any of it, it may not even be true"

but my reply is always the same, there are several ways to determine if the bible is true or not.

1 is its prophecies. So many prophecies that we have seen come true in our time and continue to come true. History testifies to many of the prophecies so they can be backed up by secular records too.

2 is its harmony. The bible was written by 40 different men over a period of 1600 years and yet every book is in harmony with the others. The fact that these books can be put together into one book is testimony to it having one author. The author is God who inspired those men to write his messages and its harmony is a strong testimony to that.

3 is the fact that the christians were willing to die for their claims about Jesus. If he was really just a myth and they all got together to invent him, then why would they be willing to die for something which was a trick? No one would do that. But you might do that if you were so convinced that it was true that you didnt care if you lived or died.

4 is that archeology has continually backed up what is written in the bible. There is so much archeological evidence that the places & people spoken about in the bible are not in doubt in my eyes. And the bible is not ambiguous, it uses dates and names of rulers...these can all be used to pinpoint when the books were written.

I have studied the bible for about 15 years now and im yet to find something that doesnt add up.

What I mean was that through time, the true teachings from Jesus got mixed up with something else. I’m thinking that way bcoz so many authors involved. That’s why I want to know whether the very first bible still available or not.

Mind to share the prophecies and archeological evidences that you strongly convince of? Just wanna get some new knowledge about Christianity.

 

[Pegg]

What I mean was that through time, the true teachings from Jesus got mixed up with something else. I’m thinking that way bcoz so many authors involved.

true teachings are still in the bible. What was written back in the first century has not changed from what is written today and this can easily be proved by going to the oldest of the NT manuscripts and there are many of them available.

The only thing that has changed is how the various churches interpret what they are reading.

There really are not many writers in the NT, Paul wrote most of the letters (they are not actually books, but private correspondence) because he was the most active missionary in the first century and established many of the new congregations....the letters he wrote were either to individuals or to those new congregations. In all there are only 8 writers of the NT.

That’s why I want to know whether the very first bible still available or not.

According to one calculation, there are over 5,000 manuscripts in the original Greek which is known as 'Koine' Koine was the common language spoken from around 300 BCE to about 500 CE.
So any manuscripts written in this language were written in the first 500 years of Christianities history.

In addition, there are over 8,000 manuscripts in various other languages—a total exceeding 13,000 manuscripts all together. Dating from the 2nd century C.E. to the 16th century C.E.. The oldest known manuscript is the papyrus fragment of the Gospel of John in the John Rylands Library which is dated to around 125 C.E. Thus, this copy was written only a quarter of a century or so after the original.
You can see some of these manuscripts in museums around the world.

Mind to share the prophecies and archeological evidences that you strongly convince of? Just wanna get some new knowledge about Christianity.

Absolutely, i'll pm you so as to not take the thread off topic too much.

 

[horiturk]

There is a question I need to ask:

Is there a single unequivocal statement in the bible where Jesus Christ himself claimed that he was God?

If so, I would like to know the verses so I can see it for myself.

no,there isn't....most verses that trinitarians use to prop up their belief in the tirnity are verses by someone other than jesus speaking about him. no where in jesus' words will you find an unambigous statement claiming to be God incarnate. although the trinitarians love to use "before abraham was,i am"

 

[horiturk]

also the plurality of Elohim is the royal "we" similar to in the Quran