Why I Affirm The Virgin Birth

[psstein]

Regardless of theological persuasions, no scholarly work suggests that the Matthean and Lukan infancy narratives are later additions. The style is so similar to the rest of their respective gospels that it doesn't make sense to posit an additional author for them. With regard to Mark and Paul, Mark seems as though it could be an oral tradition written down, that is, one which had been preached. Paul is writing his epistles to discuss specific concerns in the churches (i.e. in Corinth, he's dealing with resurrection).

Also, if that were true, we'd likely find the early manuscripts omitting them, like we find with the Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus with Mark 16:9-20.

Gary seems to have missed my point about being cautious of pagan parallels. This why understanding the text is critically important. Most of the "pagan parallels" involve an anthropomorphic god coming down in human form and having sex with the woman.

Finally, this just in, one of Gary's "sources" for his blog called the late Maurice Casey a Christian theologian. Casey left the Christian faith in 1962, as per his book Jesus of Nazareth.

[The Pixie]

Sure there was. The place of forgiveness was the temple. The temple was the place where God dwelt. Jesus is claiming that He is the place where God dwells. He is greater than the temple. He can pronounce forgiveness apart from the temple. All Jesus did was a challenge to the temple system.

Yes, all that Jesus did was a challenge to the temple system, but that does not imply he was God incarnate.

If all He did was challenge, perhaps. Jesus did not just challenge but demonstrated.

You have misunderstood your own post.

This is part of the Western mindset that thinks Jesus has to say something. Fortunately, we in the West also have a saying. "Actions speak louder than words." Anyone could say words as the Pharisees noted. Jesus backed them by His actions. Jesus not only said He could forgive sins without the temple, but He did it. He did it also knowing the heart of the person who He was speaking to.

I am not sure how this is relevant to the discussion. This would all be so if Jesus was a man adopted by God, and then given the authority to forgive.

But I am curious: What outward sign was there that sins were forgiven. You say "Actions speak louder than words." How? What would the Pharisees actually see in the way of forgiveness, other than hearing Jesus' words?

It's also my point that it's so far beyond our minds that we can barely grasp it. That's the nature of the infinite. There's a story that Thomas Aquinas after nearly finishing the Summa Theologica heard God while praying say "You have written well of me Thomas. What do you desire as your reward?" The reply was "Only yourself." Later, he told someone that all that he had written, which is one of the finest works ever on the nature of God, was as straw.

The problem you have is that today people teach the trinity to children. And yet apparently God was unable or unwilling to teach it to his chosen people and Jesus was unable or unwilling to teach it to his disciples.

Saying it is complicated does not cut it - not unless your position is that people back then were much more stupid than they are today.

No. I think we've had more time since the revelation of Christ to work things out. Things were being worked out in the time of Christ. We have no account of Jesus rising and then saying "Now let me explain to you how this works with me and how the atonement works and ramifications for Gentiles now." No. He left that for us to figure out.

That is certainly the atheist explanation. I am struggling to mesh it into the Christian world view.

The ancient Jews had thousands of years, plus God speaking directly to numerous prophets and several kings too. Does God want us to understand the trinity?

And if we had claimed it had all been revealed back then, are you saying you would fall down right now and say Jesus is Lord? Doubtful.

You are putting words in my mouth.

You could just as easily say that it was a falsehood much like the BOM. I also don't think it was revealed because it's hard enough to understand God alone. Understanding Him as three-in-one which we have no experience of is even more difficult, especially in a heavily polytheistic culture.

Adam did not live in a heavily polytheist culture.

He was raised by God himself. Apparently that was not good enough to prepare him for the concept of the trinity. But Sunday school is.

In essence, He can't. If God could be explained, He wouldn't be God. He can give us an idea of who He is, but not the totality. People do not suffer for what they don't know. They do for not paying attention to what they do know or what can be known.

But he could give a better approximation.

It is like saying the world is spherical. It is not actually true, but it is a lot closer to the truth than saying the world is flat. It is still worth teaching children the world is a sphere, even though they are wrong, because it gets them closer to the truth.

In the same way it is better to teach children about the trinity, because it is closer to understanding the nature of God. Christianity does this; it teach children about the trinity, even though "If God could be explained, He wouldn't be God". God has apparently chosen not to teach people about the trinity. Christianity has ignored God's desire, and routinely teach children about the trinity.

Yes. Because He knew Adam would screw up and polytheism would be a great tempter and God started with baby steps with humanity as a whole.

Talk me through this. Specifically:

First, "polytheism would be a great tempter". So on the one hand we have a real God who is all-power, all-knowing, and has been known to appear to kings and prophets, and in Adam's case has actually conversed with him. But nevertheless these people were tempted to worship non-existent gods... Sorry, what is so tempting about that?

Then the "baby steps with humanity as a whole" thing. Why is that? What was different about Adam, compared to yourself? Why were you capable of learning about the trinity, when Adam was not?

We might as well ask why God doesn't explain Himself to everyone today. It's a kind of laziness on our part.

We might well ask that, we might well.

In a sense, yes, but they did so in the framework of ancient Second Temple Judaism. ...

Agreed.

... Within that system, plurality within the Godhead was allowed and considered.

I was not aware of that. Any references?

Oh yes. Son of man can mean just a man, but when we see it later on in places like Daniel 7, it's clearly not just a man. Again, we have the same problem. If man is the authority, then the Pharisees could say "We are men and we are the authority to interpret the Law." Jesus claimed to trump them. How could He? It's like He's saying "Because I am a man I can trump you." That would work both ways.

Jesus said he had the authority from God. He did not say all men had that authority. He was the one adopted by God.

Except this also doesn't fit. Jesus doesn't go up to anyone and say "You can do whatever you want with the Law." If anything, when He encountered the Law, He raised the bar. The Pharisees would just have asked by what authority Jesus could claim such a thing.

He said it specifically about the law for the Sabbath. He said mankind was lord of the Sabbath, not lord of the law, and he said that was because the Sabbath was made for mankind. As you say, he tended to raise the bar with regards to the Law, but the exception was the rules for the Sabbath.

So every case I cited referred to either travel or a pre-existent being coming from the throne, but now it doesn't matter....

Because Jesus also travelled.

To make your point you need to show that it could not have meant the prophet came from God.

Jesus regularly speaks in terms also of Himself as Wisdom meaning He has been at the right hand of God. He also speaks of coming into the world.

Can you point me to some verses?

In ancient Judaism, it was. Removing demons was Jesus taking on the forces of evil. Where demons ruled, the Kingdom of God could not. He saw it as proof of His having the Kingdom.

And yet his family thought he was mad when he did it.

So they were told Jesus was God incarnate by two angels, then there was the virgin birth, then when he grows up he is casting out demons, something apparently only God can do, but nevertheless his family assume mental illness.

Hopefully this shows how much evidence would be required to convinced me any of this is true.

But I digress. Can you offer anything to support your claim that the adopted son of God could not cast out demons (or that that was the belief of the time)?

Again, by this standard, Paul is not acknowledging God as Lord. This is why this kind of interpretation is so problematic. What Paul is doing is taking two terms for deity. One is theos and one is Kurios (And the latter was the way YHWH in the OT was translated into the LXX). He uses Theos to refer to the Father and Kurios to the Son. Both are found in the Shema in the LXX as well. This is Christianization and pointing out that there are two different person doesn't change that.

I am going to drop the Paul argument in he light of your arguments and tabibito's. I concede the evidence is not good enough to support my position. I am going to skip your next few points.

Bringing up textual reliability in the sense of did we have what they wrote is another question. We could have what Luke wrote and it's all nonsense.

Okay, I have lost the point of this. What is it you are saying?

On Elizabeth, yes. This is all we have that I know of right now. As for the approach, I'm talking about approaching the work as a whole. If all we had was a conviction that there was a miraculous birth from Elizabeth, that would not be so strong, but when I take into account all the other miracles in Scripture, including the resurrection, that I think I have justification to believe, it becomes different. When I take into account also other factors like the time of writing, time of earliest manuscripts, archaeological backing, genre of the text, etc., then things change. Does this mean you take an inerrant approach? No. It means you treat the work as a whole. It would be wrong to start off with "The Bible has to be true." That's a presuppositional approach I don't accept. It would be just as wrong to start out with "Miracles cannot be true." That is just as much presuppositional.

Taking into account the other miracles is just assuming the Bible is true on faith - unless you have good evidence outside the Bible that they happened. This is like saying someone who claims to have been abducted by aliens five times is more reliable a witness than someone who merely claims one abduction.

When we take into account the time of writing, some 80 to 90 years after the event, with no mention in documents written earlier, that points to the event being made up. The archaeological backing indicates it was written by people with some familiarity of the era and locale, but the issue with the census suggests Luke was not as familiar as he might be.

Okay, so we should not start with "Miracles cannot be true"; I fully agree that that is the wrong approach to take. But let us admit to the possibility that people with good intentions made stuff up if they felt it helped their purpose.

That they could not invent a glorious place is true, but they would not invent a shameful place. Jesus is not born in a notable place in any account. Bethlehem was not worth writing home about and Luke has Jesus born in the place where animals were kept and visited by shepherds.

Fictional things could be invented as could embellishments, but shameful details are not embellishments.

But they have Jesus born in Bethlehem specifically because it fits a supposed OT prophecy! I find the claim that he was born in Bethlehem almost as unlikely as the claim of a virgin birth.

The gospel writers were obliged to work with what they had. Jesus came from a poor background, so his birth had to be reconciled with that. And there was a multitude of angels, as well as shepherds, at his birth.

Except Luke is not writing to the poor. The poor could not read. Luke is writing to the elite and He is not going to win points with them by saying "Jesus cares for the poor!" The poor were viewed with suspicion. He is not going to gain honor for Jesus by having shepherds visit Him.

I thought the early Christians had a reputation for helping the poor. Is that wrong?

Jesus' ministry was for the poor; he chose to live in poverty himself and encouraged others to do likewise. Do you think the Gospel of Luke says otherwise?

Is it possible that those who could read would recite the gospel to those that could not?

The accounts are not glorious at all and very non-descript. When we read about the pagan gods becoming fathers of children, every little detail is practically spelled out. Jesus's account is simple and in many ways hurried through as it were.

Not sure what your point is. Are you saying that Jesus' nativity story is brief, so is more likely to be true? Which one?

We could also then ask if Mark thought the teaching of Jesus was unimportant because he does not spend much time on that. Mark's Gospel thrives on Jesus doing activity and there is an idea in there of "Who do you say that I am?" That's the central point of the narrative and where everything changes. Mark being a writer of mystery wants to leave the reader hanging. I think that's why he even ends the book with "for" instead of explicitly spelling out the resurrection, which he has said would happen. He wants the reader to put together the dots on their own.

None of which argues against Mark being an adoptionist or for a virgin birth.

Writing to Jews would mean avoiding stories of paganism and no, pagans did not really have virgin births. They had miraculous and unusual births, but they were not virgin births. ...

Okay, fine. So between the writing of Mark and of Luke and Matthew, Jesus' divinity gets moved to his birth, and, due to pagan influences, he needs an unusual birth to compete. Maybe someone, perhaps the author of Matthew, got the idea from Isaiah 7 that it was a virgin birth. It is now a miraculous birth.

... Also, as Bauckham and Hurtado have said, the earliest Christology is the highest Christology. The reason people saw Jesus as divine is because that was how He presented Himself.

I look forward to you presenting verses from Mark to support that view.

I have contended as has Gathercole that pre-existence is there beforehand and I see no reason to change this. This also shows up in the early Pauline epistles where Jesus is already seen as equal to YHWH in nature. John writes what He writes because He is writing a creation account for Jesus and showing how He fits in and in fact, John is a remarkably Jewish work.

Can you tell me where you have contended that?

Christians like Casey and Crossley? Both of them are agnostics and place Mark in the 40's. What about John A.T. Robinson who wrote the major work on this?

Other non-Christians disagree, and date it later. Should we go with the two you have cherry-picked? Or with the majority of Bible scholars?

And I will stick with my dating; it seems to be the scholarly view (outside conservative Christians anyway).
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/...pel_of_Matthew
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/matthew.html

The problem with saying conservative Christians are the culprit is that scholarship is scholarship and one does not disprove a position by saying "Conservatives hold it." One does by seeing why they hold it. It's not just the motives but the arguments they give. I could just as easily say "non-Christians hold to a late date because earlier testimony of Jesus makes the stories more likely to be reliable." That could be so, but that doesn't answer the arguments. In fact, many hold to a late date because of the Olivet Discourse and a disbelief in predictive prophecy.

The problem with conservative Christians is that they have already decided what conclusions they want to reach, and so it is not scholarship. If there arguments are good, other Biblical scholars will take note, and modify their views. However, we only have to look at creationism to see how assuming your conclusion clouds your ability to properly look at the evidence.

So do you think we should accept the majority view among Biblical scholars?

No. They thought He was mad because a Jewish man was to provide for His own family and not get caught up in affairs that would distract them from that position. Jesus was being so hounded in ministry He couldn't even do any work and yet He was allowing it. They thought that He surely must not know what He was doing.

Again, this is what we would expect if there was no virgin birth, no angels at his birth or his conception.

Mary expect her son to be a responsible Jewish man, because she believed he was a Jewish man. She had no reason to suppose he was God incarnate because no angel appeared to her, and the story of a virgin birth only appeared after she died.

Why not both?

Sure why not? Does that help your position at all?

And perhaps in this area it does. What of it? Biblical heroes are often painted realistically.

It shows you have a mountain to climb if you want to convince me Jesus was God incarnate. Mary had an angel visit her and her husband, and a virgin birth, and angels at the birth, and saw Jesus casting out demons, which only God can do apparently, and despite that she did not believe.

Let me know when you can get evidence half as good as that!

And those same disciples who had all seen those miracles and were ready to give up everything and had, turned and ran when the heat got turned on and often, especially in Mark, are chastised for their lack of faith.

So you will understand why I too do not believe it is true, given the much, much weaker evidence we have to hand.

What the Messiahs wanted to do was seen as what the true Messiah would do. That they failed showed that they were not the true Messiah. There's no reason to think Mary would think her son was the Messiah and then say "And now I know that because of that, we will not get deliverance from Rome as expected."

Sorry, not getting what you mean here.

I would suspect probably by being a powerful speaker and orator and making grandoise promises. We have record of only a few people doing miracles back then. Some Messiahs claimed miracles would happen when they acted, but of course, they didn't. It would be hard to know the specifics since quite frankly, we only know about these false Messiahs from Josephus.

Do you think Jesus was a powerful orator? Do you think he claimed miracles?

I suspect what he did was similar in many ways to the false messiahs. Different in other ways, sure, but close enough for him to be proclaimed King of the Jews, and to get crucified. Apparently not messiah-like enough for Mary. Pushy parent!

Again, why not both?

Sure, why not?

Seriously, why did Jesus not do both? He was God incarnate, so multitasking should be easy enough.

[tabibito]

When we take into account the time of writing, some 80 to 90 years after the event, with no mention in documents written earlier, that points to the event being made up. The archaeological backing indicates it was written by people with some familiarity of the era and locale, but the issue with the census suggests Luke was not as familiar as he might be.

If Jesus was 46 years of age at or shortly before the crucifixion, Luke would be right on the money. 12 BC - Quirinius was appointed prefect in Syria

Enrolment of Cyrenius

1) Quirinius was consul in 12 B.C. and appears in the list of consuls (Table 40) at this point: Messala et Quirino. (2) Sometime between 12 B.C. and A.D. 1 he conducted the Homanadensian War.

Of course, that would mean that the churches had messed their calculated age of Jesus at the time of his death, so maybe not. It would depend on what the calculation is based on. To date I have seen only the following kind of reasoning as supporting arguments:

CARM

To be consecrated as a priest, Jesus had to be: 1) washed with water, baptism, (Lev. 8:6; Exodus 29:4, Matt. 3:16). 2) Anointed with oil--the Holy Spirit, (Lev. 8:12; Exodus 29:7; Matt. 3:16). Additionally, He may have needed to be 30 years old, Num. 4:3, "from thirty years and upward, even to fifty years old, all who enter the service to do the work in the tent of meeting."

Bible Org

Neither is particularly compelling - and neither points to scriptural sources for their calculations.

All Jesus did was a challenge to the temple system.
~~
If all He did was challenge, perhaps. Jesus did not just challenge but demonstrated.

You have misunderstood your own post.

all Jesus did was ^A/_to challenge = Everything that Jesus did challenged.

[Gary]

My dear sweet Gary, the gods of pagan myth had sexual relations with mortal women in the pagan religions. Can you show me where the Bible says that God had sexual relations with Mary? Oops...



Ironic considering that you just have an argument from silence here, do you have any evidence they 'never heard of a virgin birth' or are you doing a little bit of speculation and assumption of your own?



That's because most of them are idiots, like you. Go ahead, explain why they have to be contradictory and second, there's no evidence of a 'early Christian civil war' of any kind sweety. People make it up because they want it to be true, but go ahead and present your evidence of this 'early Christian civil war' please or are you the only one allowed to speculate and make up things and nobody else can?



And fundy atheist don't need to bother themselves with facts or figures. I look forward to you actually backing up your claims with facts.

Until you can learn to conduct a conversation in a civil and polite manner, I will automatically ignore and skip all comments under your name.

[Gary]

Regardless of theological persuasions, no scholarly work suggests that the Matthean and Lukan infancy narratives are later additions. The style is so similar to the rest of their respective gospels that it doesn't make sense to posit an additional author for them. With regard to Mark and Paul, Mark seems as though it could be an oral tradition written down, that is, one which had been preached. Paul is writing his epistles to discuss specific concerns in the churches (i.e. in Corinth, he's dealing with resurrection).

Also, if that were true, we'd likely find the early manuscripts omitting them, like we find with the Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus with Mark 16:9-20.

Gary seems to have missed my point about being cautious of pagan parallels. This why understanding the text is critically important. Most of the "pagan parallels" involve an anthropomorphic god coming down in human form and having sex with the woman.

Finally, this just in, one of Gary's "sources" for his blog called the late Maurice Casey a Christian theologian. Casey left the Christian faith in 1962, as per his book Jesus of Nazareth.

I never claimed that someone added to the Gospels of Luke and Matthew. I am suggesting that the idea of a virgin birth did not develop until sometime after Paul's death and after the writing of the Gospel of Mark. When the authors of Luke and Matthew wrote their books, they had heard of the virgin birth claim and included it in their stories. Can I prove this? No. But can Christians prove that the earliest Christians prior to, say, 80 AD, had ever heard of a virgin birth. No. They cannot. I believe that the evidence points to the virgin birth being a legendary embellishment to the original "Jesus story".

Ok, so Yahweh did not take a human form when he "overshadowed" Mary, but he took some kind of form, as some form is required to cause a "shadow". I know that Christians will come back and say that the term "overshadowing" is symbolic only, but they have no proof of this. It is quite possible, based on the wording of the text, that the authors of Matthew and Luke believed that Yahweh took on some type of form to "overshadow" Mary and copulate with her. Howl as much as you'd like, but you cannot say, based on the literal interpretation of the text, that Yahweh did NOT copulate with a human female.

And while we are on the subject of Jesus birth and his alleged parentage, I have a question for the budding apologists: If one reads the two genealogies for Jesus, and believe that Matthew represents Joseph's genealogy and Luke Mary's father's genealogy, there is a very big difference in the number of ancestors listed between David and either's Joseph's father or Mary's father. It has been calculated, based on this large disparity in the number of ancestors, that Joseph would have been 300 years old when he married Mary. Since there is such a large number of ancestors in both lines, we can safely assume that the average age of "fathering" is about the same. Therefore, either we are to believe that Mary married a living fossil, or these two genealogies are seriously flawed. What is the Christian harmonization (I'm sure you have one) for this descrepancy?

[Gary]

Have fun at the pool, Gary! Don't drown!

I know that you will claim that this comment is simply in jest, but I would challenge to consider the amount of actual hatred you feel toward me and other skeptics. Why does religion ingender such strong negative emotions? I would never jest about any of you dying.

[Christianbookworm]

I know that you will claim that this comment is simply in jest, but I would challenge to consider the amount of actual hatred you feel toward me and other skeptics. Why does religion ingender such strong negative emotions? I would never jest about any of you dying.

Why would I hate you??? I just want to make sure people are safe.

[Mikeenders]

Until you can learn to conduct a conversation in a civil and polite manner, I will automatically ignore and skip all comments under your name.

so In other words you offer rewards for people who are not polite or civil to you?

[Gary]

so In other words you offer rewards for people who are not polite or civil to you?

I've grown to fond of you, Mike, to add you to my "ignore" list.

:)

[Gary]

Why would I hate you??? I just want to make sure people are safe.

I'm serious. I think that you (and several others on this thread) have very intense negative feelings for me. It is very possible, based on your comment, that subconsciously you really would prefer I were dead.

After all, if your belief system tells you that people who reject your God are "evil", "wicked", and worthy of "damnation", it would be very natural to develop a strong dislike, or even hate, of someone who so flagrantly rejects your God and your entire belief system; someone like me. In contrast, I don't view any of you Christians on this thread as "evil", "wicked", or deserving of ANY form of punishment. I may find some of you offensive, rude, insulting, obnoxious, and arrogant, but that is not sufficient reason to wish any of you some form of harm (punishment) or wish you dead. In your worldview, it would be much better if recalcitrant, blasphemous, outspoken skeptics/"sinners" are dead, whereas in my worldview, I would view the loss of any life as a tragedy.

If I fail to convince any of you that my belief system is right and that yours is wrong, I still wish each of you (even Nick and Mike) health and happiness. How many of you can HONESTLY say you feel the same for me or any other outspoken critic of the "Jesus cult". Admit, it folks. Deep down, you would really like me to get what I "deserve": Death.

Physical and spiritual.

And doesn't that say something about your belief system and your God? Why is it that Jesus asks us to forgive those who trespass against us...but he turns around and condemns to eternal punishment those who trespass against HIM?? If he is the Creator, he has the right to do as he pleases, but please stop calling him loving, just, and merciful. If he is what conservative Christianity says he is...he is a monster, not worthy of love and respect, only fear.

[Apologiaphoenix]

You have misunderstood your own post.

No. My point has been that Jesus did challenge the temple system. Nothing new really. A lot of people did. It was how He did it. The Qumran challenged it by setting up their own community but they still underwent ritual sacrifices and such. Jesus did nothing like that. Furthermore, He didn't just say the temple was obsolete. He showed it by His miracles. Now if the temple was where God's presence dwelt and Jesus is saying it's obsolete and He can fulfill all the functions of the temple in His presence, the very place where God and the world intersected, what is He saying about Himself?

I am not sure how this is relevant to the discussion. This would all be so if Jesus was a man adopted by God, and then given the authority to forgive.

But I am curious: What outward sign was there that sins were forgiven. You say "Actions speak louder than words." How? What would the Pharisees actually see in the way of forgiveness, other than hearing Jesus' words?

The miracle would show the authority of Jesus over nature. He not only knew what was in their hearts, a prerogative of God, but knew how to heal someone.

The problem you have is that today people teach the trinity to children. And yet apparently God was unable or unwilling to teach it to his chosen people and Jesus was unable or unwilling to teach it to his disciples.

Why should Jesus have gone around spouting teaching of the Nicene Creed?

Saying it is complicated does not cut it - not unless your position is that people back then were much more stupid than they are today.

It would be if that had been all that I said. It was not. It's what we call progressive revelation. God reveals more of Himself over time when necessary. The Trinity would be really misunderstood in a culture that was heavily polytheistic without a demonstration of it.

That is certainly the atheist explanation. I am struggling to mesh it into the Christian world view.

What's so different about it?

The ancient Jews had thousands of years, plus God speaking directly to numerous prophets and several kings too. Does God want us to understand the trinity?

Actually, not really. Let's take Abraham from Babylon to be about 1,500 years. There wasn't much revelation to the patriarchs comparably and after the Law, well Israel wasn't exactly known for studying their Scriptures. This didn't really start until around the time of the intertestamental period. Malachi still deals with the Jews being unfaithful in their practice. Thus, they had a few hundred years of intense study and even then they were scratching the surface, but they saw that there were hints of multiplicity within the one being of God.

You are putting words in my mouth.

Then why say it should have been revealed back then?

Adam did not live in a heavily polytheist culture.

He was raised by God himself. Apparently that was not good enough to prepare him for the concept of the trinity. But Sunday school is.

First off, we don't know what was revealed to him so maybe he did have that revealed. We don't know. I doubt it, but maybe.

Second, we don't know much about the culture he lived in either.

Third, even if we don't understand why something wasn't revealed, it doesn't deal with the data presented today.

But he could give a better approximation.

It is like saying the world is spherical. It is not actually true, but it is a lot closer to the truth than saying the world is flat. It is still worth teaching children the world is a sphere, even though they are wrong, because it gets them closer to the truth.

In the same way it is better to teach children about the trinity, because it is closer to understanding the nature of God. Christianity does this; it teach children about the trinity, even though "If God could be explained, He wouldn't be God". God has apparently chosen not to teach people about the trinity. Christianity has ignored God's desire, and routinely teach children about the trinity.

No. We've just come up with a way to explain what has been revealed thus far. We see in Scripture there is one GOd and three persons are called God and these three are distinct persons. Trinity follows from that. If there's a better explanation of the data, I haven't seen it.

Talk me through this. Specifically:

First, "polytheism would be a great tempter". So on the one hand we have a real God who is all-power, all-knowing, and has been known to appear to kings and prophets, and in Adam's case has actually conversed with him. But nevertheless these people were tempted to worship non-existent gods... Sorry, what is so tempting about that?

The same thing that is today. Very few people, even kings, got anything like a personal experience, and the pagan gods had a lot to offer. Following YHWH would lead to shame and ostracism from the culture. Following the pagan deities would give you blessings supposedly in the harvest and hey, those orgies really can be a nice little thing.

Then the "baby steps with humanity as a whole" thing. Why is that? What was different about Adam, compared to yourself? Why were you capable of learning about the trinity, when Adam was not?

About 2,000 additional years of revelation.

We might well ask that, we might well.

And it has been asked. I just simply ask "Why should He?"

I was not aware of that. Any references?

The best works on this would be those of scholars like Bauckham and Hurtado who write especially on this topic, but consider this from Philo:

(62) Why is it that he speaks as if of some other god, saying that he made man after the image of God, and not that he made him after his own image? (#Ge 9:6). Very appropriately and without any falsehood was this oracular sentence uttered by God, for no mortal thing could have been formed on the similitude of the supreme Father of the universe, but only after the pattern of the second deity, who is the Word of the supreme Being; since it is fitting that the rational soul of man should bear it the type of the divine Word; since in his first Word God is superior to the most rational possible nature. But he who is superior to the Word holds his rank in a better and most singular pre-eminence, and how could the creature possibly exhibit a likeness of him in himself? Nevertheless he also wished to intimate this fact, that God does rightly and correctly require vengeance, in order to the defence of virtuous and consistent men, because such bear in themselves a familiar acquaintance with his Word, of which the human mind is the similitude and form.

http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/t...lo/book42.html

And this:

"Till thrones were placed, and one that was ancient of days did sit' (Dan 7.9) Wy thrones? We have been taught; One for Himself and one for David. Such was the opinion of R. Akiva. R. Yose protested: Akiva, how long will you profane the Presence? One throne is for justice and the other for mercy. So R. Akiva accepted R. Yose's interpretation..."

The Jews were often perplexed. The Bible taught there was one God, but Wisdom was spoken of in terms of deity, sometimes the Messiah was spoken of that way, you have the Angel of the Lord that way, and then sometimes the Son of Man in Jewish writings is seen as sitting on the throne of God.

Jesus said he had the authority from God. He did not say all men had that authority. He was the one adopted by God.

Then Jesus is saying that it is not up to men but up to a man with the authority of God.

What would the Pharisees say?

We are in line with Moses and the prophets and we have that authority.

He said it specifically about the law for the Sabbath. He said mankind was lord of the Sabbath, not lord of the law, and he said that was because the Sabbath was made for mankind. As you say, he tended to raise the bar with regards to the Law, but the exception was the rules for the Sabbath.

That's because too many of the Sabbath rules were also focused on external regulations rather than the internal realities.

Because Jesus also travelled.

To make your point you need to show that it could not have meant the prophet came from God.

Jesus did travel, but Jesus then speaks about being sent and coming both and speaks of being on a divine mission. He speaks of knowledge of what goes on in the heavenly court as well.

Can you point me to some verses?

Matthew 11 has Jesus speaking of Himself with Wisdom being proved right by her actions. Jesus also claimed to be greater than Solomon, who was the most wise of all. Jesus said that foxes have holes to dwell in but the Son of Man has no place, which was also how Wisdom was said to have no place until God assigned one.

And yet his family thought he was mad when he did it.

They thought He was mad because He was letting all the work interfere with His family duties. What kind of guy does that?

So they were told Jesus was God incarnate by two angels, then there was the virgin birth, then when he grows up he is casting out demons, something apparently only God can do, but nevertheless his family assume mental illness.

Mental illness? Not necessarily. I'm not sure if they had that category back then. They just figured He wasn't thinking straight like He ought to.

Hopefully this shows how much evidence would be required to convinced me any of this is true.

But I digress. Can you offer anything to support your claim that the adopted son of God could not cast out demons (or that that was the belief of the time)?

Many people could cast out demons. I think the fascinating thing is how Jesus did it. He claimed to do it by the finger of GOd, which would harken back to what the magicians said to Pharaoh. Jesus used no incantations or rituals. He spoke and it was with authority.

I am going to drop the Paul argument in he light of your arguments and tabibito's. I concede the evidence is not good enough to support my position. I am going to skip your next few points.

Okay.

Okay, I have lost the point of this. What is it you are saying?

It was my understanding that the idea was brought up that the Lukan prologue for instance was a later addition. I pointed out that we have no textual evidence of that from the manuscripts. If it's shown that all the manuscripts have this, that does not mean it's true. That the text we have has been handed down reliably in form does not mean it is in content.

Taking into account the other miracles is just assuming the Bible is true on faith - unless you have good evidence outside the Bible that they happened. This is like saying someone who claims to have been abducted by aliens five times is more reliable a witness than someone who merely claims one abduction.

When we take into account the time of writing, some 80 to 90 years after the event, with no mention in documents written earlier, that points to the event being made up. The archaeological backing indicates it was written by people with some familiarity of the era and locale, but the issue with the census suggests Luke was not as familiar as he might be.

This places the writings at 110-120. I don't know why on Earth I should accept such a date. I also don't see why it would need to be mentioned earlier and I know scholars like Witherington read the Greek of Luke 2 to suggest that Luke is speaking about a census before the great census that we have a record of.

Okay, so we should not start with "Miracles cannot be true"; I fully agree that that is the wrong approach to take. But let us admit to the possibility that people with good intentions made stuff up if they felt it helped their purpose.

Okay.

Why?

A miracle worker would have been seen as a huckster back then. It was the cause of skepticism and even in Judaism, only two people were known to have worked miracles outside of Scripture. If anything, the account would be more disastrous since anyone could say "I was there. That didn't happen." Add in that Bauckham states that when a person is named in the Gospels, that would imply that unless they were a famous person (Pilate for instance) then they were a source and that names are not added generally, they are dropped.

But they have Jesus born in Bethlehem specifically because it fits a supposed OT prophecy! I find the claim that he was born in Bethlehem almost as unlikely as the claim of a virgin birth.

The gospel writers were obliged to work with what they had. Jesus came from a poor background, so his birth had to be reconciled with that. And there was a multitude of angels, as well as shepherds, at his birth.

Again, why make this up? This is shameful stuff. Bethlehem was not a town worth mentioning. Why would they have the Messiah come from there? Could some have interpreted Micah 5:2 as Messianic. Sure. Yet interestingly, throughout the whole Gospels, Jesus is always said to have come from Nazareth. Bethlehem is just mentioned and when Luke mentions it, it isn't because of a prophecy.

I thought the early Christians had a reputation for helping the poor. Is that wrong?

Jesus' ministry was for the poor; he chose to live in poverty himself and encouraged others to do likewise. Do you think the Gospel of Luke says otherwise?

Is it possible that those who could read would recite the gospel to those that could not?

Of course they did, but Luke was not writing to the poor. He was writing to the elite and if you are trying to convince the elite, you do not do that by pointing out that Jesus helped the poor. The poor were looked upon with suspicion. After all, who is more likely to steal from you than someone who doesn't have anything? If someone is poor, surely it is the curse of God on their lives. Christians did change all of that, but Luke wrote to the elite and of course those who could not read would have the Gospel read to them, but on a limited basis as time permitted. The rich are the ones who would have copies.

Not sure what your point is. Are you saying that Jesus' nativity story is brief, so is more likely to be true? Which one?

That would depend on if we reconcile them, but I am not here to defend Inerrancy. I am saying a major difference is the accounts are so non-descript. When accounts are made up, glorious details are added. Those are not really seen in the Gospel accounts.

None of which argues against Mark being an adoptionist or for a virgin birth.

Sure, but it is the content. I agree with Mike's point also on Isaiah being applied to Jesus with make way for the Lord coming and then Jesus showing up. I think Mark builds it up all throughout and then at the end wants to ask the audience the same question. "Who do you say that He is?"

Okay, fine. So between the writing of Mark and of Luke and Matthew, Jesus' divinity gets moved to his birth, and, due to pagan influences, he needs an unusual birth to compete. Maybe someone, perhaps the author of Matthew, got the idea from Isaiah 7 that it was a virgin birth. It is now a miraculous birth.

Why would Jews try to compete with pagans in that way? Especially since it would be risking attributing something like that to YHWH. That would be a bit scandalous to them. (The point of Instone-Brewer in The Jesus Scandals.) As for Isaiah 7, the number of people who saw that as a Messianic text is zero.

I look forward to you presenting verses from Mark to support that view.

I think I already have with Jesus showing He is where the presence of God dwells in contrast to the temple. Also, the earliest Christology we have is not in Mark. It is in the epistles.

Can you tell me where you have contended that?

In this thread when I pointed to the work of Gathercole earlier.

Other non-Christians disagree, and date it later. Should we go with the two you have cherry-picked? Or with the majority of Bible scholars?

We should go with what the data shows.

The problem with conservative Christians is that they have already decided what conclusions they want to reach, and so it is not scholarship. If there arguments are good, other Biblical scholars will take note, and modify their views. However, we only have to look at creationism to see how assuming your conclusion clouds your ability to properly look at the evidence.

This could be just as well turned the other way around. Non-Christians have decided the conclusions they want to reach, but more and more the evidence is lining up with a Jewish Jesus who fits well into His time and the Gospels I think are looking more and more accurate with better and better research. Even Ludemann for instance has recently changed his mind on the interpretation of the appearance to the 500 and said "I don't know what happened." I think the same thing is going on with non-Christian scholars. They rule out miracles at the outset and then have to interpret the data in other ways I don't find convincing. I have no interest also in defending creationism. I could grant evolution right now and it would not pose any problem to me. I think too much of creationism is just the same literalism showing up again.

So do you think we should accept the majority view among Biblical scholars?

I think we should accept what the data shows.

Again, this is what we would expect if there was no virgin birth, no angels at his birth or his conception.

Mary expect her son to be a responsible Jewish man, because she believed he was a Jewish man. She had no reason to suppose he was God incarnate because no angel appeared to her, and the story of a virgin birth only appeared after she died.

Except we see the same follies of the faithful even when people have experienced great evidence. You seem to expect Mary to be perfect. I don't. I expect her to not understand a lot of things.

Sure why not? Does that help your position at all?

Yes. Jesus could have been providing for His family and motivating people to go after Rome.

It shows you have a mountain to climb if you want to convince me Jesus was God incarnate. Mary had an angel visit her and her husband, and a virgin birth, and angels at the birth, and saw Jesus casting out demons, which only God can do apparently, and despite that she did not believe.

Let me know when you can get evidence half as good as that!

Then this tells me you won't change your mind unless you see your own miraculous evidence. Is this really the right way to approach data?

So you will understand why I too do not believe it is true, given the much, much weaker evidence we have to hand.

If you think the evidence is weak, I would go to the lynchpin of the resurrection and ask what the better explanation of the data is.

Sorry, not getting what you mean here.

Mark knew there were counterfeits. Why would the desires of the counterfeits change the desires of the real?

Do you think Jesus was a powerful orator? Do you think he claimed miracles?

Indeed.

I suspect what he did was similar in many ways to the false messiahs. Different in other ways, sure, but close enough for him to be proclaimed King of the Jews, and to get crucified. Apparently not messiah-like enough for Mary. Pushy parent!

I agree with Wright that the only way Jesus would be called King of the Jews at His crucifixion is if He gave some sign that that was what He was claiming.

Sure, why not?

Seriously, why did Jesus not do both? He was God incarnate, so multitasking should be easy enough.

Because He wasn't interested in a world of military conquest. That's Islam.

[Christianbookworm]

Why does Gary think we hate him? That doesn't make any sense.

[Apologiaphoenix]

Why does Gary think we hate him? That doesn't make any sense.

He could go see a doctor for his paranoia. It's sad you say to not drown and he says that as meaning the opposite.

[Mikeenders]

I've grown to fond of you, Mike, to add you to my "ignore" list.

:)

I'm just happy you have the 30 minutes you said you have and seemingly much more.....were your thirty minutes created by God with an appearance of age?

[Mikeenders]

If I fail to convince any of you that my belief system is right and that yours is wrong, I still wish each of you (even Nick and Mike) health and happiness. How many of you can HONESTLY say you feel the same for me or any other outspoken critic of the "Jesus cult". Admit, it folks. Deep down, you would really like me to get what I "deserve": Death.

Your total misunderstanding of Christianity shows up in some odd ways - a few things

A) we do not hope for anyone to die because we are assured everyone will and they will get whatever they deserve
B) evangelicals at least are pretty sure that everyone was deserving of death so that puts you right in the same boat we were all in
C) If you gave your life to Christ we would be as happy as a lark (we don't need you to for our own happiness so don't get to ego inflated like we are waiting with bated breath)
D) even if we could see no redeeming value in you our faith would force us to. Jesus died for the world and God put you in it so he finds you worthy of being saved (his ways are past finding out)
E ) your much too needy of attention to hate
F) "even Nick and Mike"? hmm seems like some of us have found a special place in your heart - why would we especially not be honored?

G) drum roll.....even if we didn't like you before how could we not now. Even "on vacation" with 30 minutes to spend you spend it all with us...just too warm and fuzzy to hate.

Why is it that Jesus asks us to forgive those who trespass against us...but he turns around and condemns to eternal punishment those who trespass against HIM??

Somebody needs to read the book....forgiveness is based on repentance. the 7 times 70 is for the brother who comes back and says he is sorry. NO passage indicates you get forgiveness from anyone while you are doing it.

If people went into eternity not needing to be changed....they'd junk up heaven too and for all time.