Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
That's a translation INTO Hebrew FROM Greek, is it not?
For we have no indication that the author of the Gospel of Matthew wrote in Hebrew. That used to be an older theory, long superseded by his dependence on the Septuagint for many of his quotations from it, among other linguistic markers pointing to a Greek original.
How does one explain the use of Hebraic Idioms in the Gospel according to Mathew?...
I have to laugh at such absurd thought processes. It's the chicken before the egg argument. These people were HEbrews from a HEbrew culture who grew up in Judaic households learning Aramaic and Hebrew, NOT Greek. Greek was considered unacceptable to speak or write or learn in a HEbrew family, do your homework on the cultures, NOT the lies of your forefathers being carried forward. The Shem Tov (Hebrew Matthew) has already been uncovered as others are nearly every year in their native Aramaic and Hebrew. Hebrew is NOT a linear language with MUCH deeper meanings in each word never revealed in the Greek linear way of thinking. It's just plain sad ANYONE would try to defend the Greek thought process where it applies to the writings of the MEssiah and HIS Talmadim. It's just ludicrous
I have to laugh at such absurd thought processes. It's the chicken before the egg argument. These people were HEbrews from a HEbrew culture who grew up in Judaic households learning Aramaic and Hebrew, NOT Greek. Greek was considered unacceptable to speak or write or learn in a HEbrew family, do your homework on the cultures, NOT the lies of your forefathers being carried forward. The Shem Tov (Hebrew Matthew) has already been uncovered as others are nearly every year in their native Aramaic and Hebrew. Hebrew is NOT a linear language with MUCH deeper meanings in each word never revealed in the Greek linear way of thinking. It's just plain sad ANYONE would try to defend the Greek thought process where it applies to the writings of the MEssiah and HIS Talmadim. It's just ludicrous
You are right to point out the non-linearity of our ancestors' mindset relative to the Greek or our modern one. You are right that the cultural imperatives cannot be ignored nor their impact on the interpretation of scriptures. BUT . . . you are wrong to suppose that their ignorant and superstitious understanding of God should be controlling given the advances in knowledge over 2000+ years.
Advancements in "knowledge" were a prophecy as well. Big surprise. What I'm really saying is the messages in scripture are only truly understood when taken BACK to the Hebrew and placed in proper context for their truths. Otherwise you're simply "reading" and not "understanding". Anyone can "read" scripture, which is what most people do or worse yet listen to some pastor's understanding that they have been taught erroneously over the years. It just perpetuates the lies. Oh well.....
Recently, a manuscript containing portions of the Gospel of Mark was discovered and dated by the world's leading paleographer to be from the first century. This is the first and only manuscript that has been discovered from that time, and is easily over 100 years older then our next oldest manuscript of Mark. It is highly likely that this manuscript dates to the time when eyewitnesses were still alive.
Right now the find is being subject to a peer reviewed process and won't be made available to the media until this research is completed. According to a scholar mentioned in the above article, "...if this Mark fragment is confirmed as from the first century, what a thrill it will be to have a manuscript that isTraditionally, the gospel is said to have been written shortly before A.D. 70 in Rome, at a time of impending persecution and when destruction loomed over Jerusalem. Its audience seems to have been Gentile, unfamiliar with Jewish customs (hence Mk 7:3–4, 11).!"
This can have a HUGE implication for not just Christians, but an unfortunate one for other spin-off cults like Mormonism, Gnosticism, etc as they believe that scripture had been in error at some point down the line. If what we have now matches with the old manuscript from 1AD, it could be a huge deal....
RESPONSE:
(1) All the gospels of the New Testament were written in the first century (except perhaps John's). All were added to at later dates, eg, the longer ending of Mark (second century), the story of the woman taken in adultery (John 7-8) added in the 4th century, etc.
(2) From the New American Bible, Revised Edition (2011), Introduction to Mark's Gospel:
"Traditionally, the gospel is said to have been written shortly before A.D. 70 in Rome, at a time of impending persecution and when destruction loomed over Jerusalem. Its audience seems to have been Gentile, unfamiliar with Jewish customs (hence Mk 7:3–4, 11)."
Let's see. A Gentile audience in Rome about 70 AD, not Jewish. How many would have been eye-witnesses to the events in Jesus' life in Israel?
Who first wrote the story of Jesus Resurrection? Was he a witness? Where did he get the story?
Last edited by ancient warrior; 02-21-2012 at 07:43 AM..
Reason: typo
pcamps, if you get the chance, look into the first meeting of the council of Nicea. It is HUGELY FASCINATING. Like you, I was skeptical until I looked into it myself.
The Council of Nicea took place a couple of centuries after Jesus' crucifixion. During this time, Christianity was growing leaps and bounds. Unfortunately, alternative religions and cult movements were being spun off. Emperor Constantine presided over a group of Church bishops and leaders with the purpose of defining the true God for all of Christianity and eradicating all the confusion, controversy, and contention within.
Tex --And therein is the whole problem. Man defining God.
Quote:
Basically the church wanted to clarify "who was this Christ?"
Christ can clarify who He is Himself; He does not need man’s opinion on who He is.
Quote:
Some people questioned his deity. Using the manuscripts written from after Jesus' time (perhaps the one that is mentioned in this thread?), and before the Council of Nicea was held, over 300 bishops did a majority vote deciding who Christ was.
While that nicea man votes on who Christ is and the majority wins, sorry but it does not work that way the majority is more often times wrong then they are right.
Quote:
The bishops voted to make the full deity of Christ the accepted position for the church. The Council of Nicea voted to make the Trinity the official doctrine of the church. However, the Council of Nicea did not invent these doctrines. Rather, it only recognized what the Bible taught, and systematized the doctrines.
Nonsense it only recognized what they wanted the bible to say, they believed in the trinity so of course the bible taught the trinity. However I read the same bible they read (or at least it is suppose to be) and it tells me nothing concerning a trinity.
Quote:
Today, scholars are using the same manuscripts that were used then--and some historians are dating a few of these to having existed a mere 30 years after Jesus' supposed death. I hope I explained it good enough. Don't let stuff like the Da Vinci Code be your history book :0P
The last time I read the bible it was the scholars of Christ’s day that He had so many problems with, I would not rely so heavily on man’s opinion if I was you. Everything you wrote above is only MAN"S opinion and has NOTHING to do with who the Father and the Son is.
I'm posting this from a different thread. You're going to have to come up with some pretty good references to counter what another member of this forum posted elsewhere.
If we go to the heart of the matter, we find that christians often make claims which are patently false in support of the beliefs. The claim that there are “25,000 ancient manuscripts from the New Testament, of which at least 5600 are copies from the original Greek. Of these there are only 40 lines of disputed text” is patently false, not to mention academically dishonest and grotesquely misleading.
There are no first century works. There are no second century works either. The earliest writings can only be dated to the first part of the third century, sometime between 200 and 225 CE. In spite of the fact that it is often claimed that there are 5,600 "ancient copies" of the New Testament, the reality is that there is one and only one complete version of the New Testament, and that is Codex Sinaiticus.
So, of the 5,600 alleged “ancient copies” of the New Testament, you have one complete copy (Codex Sinaiticus) and nearly 300 incomplete copies.
What about the other 5,300 “ancient copies?” They aren’t’ copies, as you will see.
Of the those, only a small percentage (12 out of 300 or 4%) even remotely resemble the New Testament. Those 12 are the only texts used when preparing editions of the New Testament (excluding the KJV which is based solely on the faulty Textus Receptus). The remaining 96% are not used because they are either too fragmentary, conflict with other texts, or both. I will list them in order of completeness:
1) Codex Sinaiticus circa 350 CE. Once again, this is the ONLY COMPLETE version of the New Testament.
2) Codex Alexandrinus circa 450 CE. It is nearly complete and very close doctrinally to Codex Sinaiticus, except for the Epistles. There are more than 40 disputed lines of text between Codices Alexandrinus and Sinaiticus.
3) Codex Vaticanus circa 350 CE. It is true that all of Revelation is missing, as are 46 chapters of Genesis, 30 Psalms, all of the pastoral epistles, and Hebrews 9 thru 13. This codex is doctrinally influenced by the Alexandrian school. The gospels differ greatly from Codices Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus (more than the 40 lines of disputed text).
4) Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus circa 450 CE. Most of you wouldn’t even recognize this as the New Testament, because there are 100s of lines of disputed text. It contains portions of every book except for 2 Thessalonians and 2 John.
5) Codex Bezae/Cantabrigiensis circa 450 CE. This book contains the gospels and Acts only. It is heavily Western influenced and contains dozens of lines of disputed text.
6) Codex Claromontanus circa 550 CE. It contains only the Epistles by Paul and Hebrews. This and the following two codices are based on Western Doctrine.
7) Codices Augiensis and Boernerianus circa 850 CE. Contains only Paul’s Epistles.
8) Codex Regius circa 750 CE. Only the gospels. It most often agrees with Codex Vaticanus. Again, several hundred lines of disputed text, not 40 lines.
9) Codex Washingtonianus circa 425 CE. No relation to President George Washington. A Byzantine work of portions of the gospels only. Parts of John appear to be copied from Codex Alexandrinus.
10) Codex Koridethi circa 850 CE. Gospel parts only. Parts of Mark appear to have been quoted from the works of Origen and Eusebius in the 3rd and 4th Centuries respectively.
11) Codex Athous Laurae circa 900 CE. Contains parts of gospels, Acts, most of Paul and the Epistles. A mix of the Alexandrian, Western and Byzantine doctrines. Hundreds of lines of disputed text.
That’s it.
All other copies are fragmentary. What about the other 280-odd “New Testaments?” The majority of those are the various versions of the Textus Receptus (there is no such thing as a “standard” Textus Receptus), a text which had at one time had 1,838 disputed lines of text, and all date after 1500, so they are by no means “ancient” in spite of what people claim.
The remainder are worse than Codex Athous Laurae. They exist only as a few chapters or parts of several chapters, and they conflict heavily.
Whoda thunk!
BTW, excellent post, chuckmann. Very interesting historical rundown of all the flawed manuscript trying to pass themselves off as the unadulterated Word of God.
Guess I may have to remind a few of some facts here.
There is an excellent and accurate account of the crucifixion in the Talmud as a good number of Jews witnessed it needless to say.
11 of the 12 Talmadim (apostles) that wrote their letters which were transcribed many times from their original Aramaic and Hebrew into Latin and Greek were from Hebrew speaking families (who also would have known Aramaic the sister language to Hebrew). Don't get all excited about accuracy because I can assure you of one well known fact. Greek is not a compatible language to Hebrew. It is a linear language and Hebrew is multi level.
Even Strongs concordance is of little value as it simply gives the Hebrew word reference, but does NOT break down the meaning and contextual understanding of the Hebrew words correctly. For that you'll need a Lexicon and the Gematria.
christianity in itself is a splinter religion which is not of the original. The original followers of the Messiah were taught from the scrolls (Torah/Tanakh). They were calle "Netzarim" (branches) or "Followers of the Way". Nearly ALL of the commentaries of the so called NT can be traced back to some place in the Tanakh. No surprise there since Messiah didn't come to start a new religion (men seem to like to do that however). HE came to clean up the faith that the Israelite people were taught from the beginning, but had been corrupted by the ruling Pharisee's of the time, who had added much to the Torah and were trying to place the people under their thumb for the sake of their power which was given to them by the Roman government.
This faith Messiah was cleaning up incorporated the Good News that HE was providing a "Path" for salvation through Teshuvah. Turning BACK to YHVH and away from one's sin. By doing so their sin would be forgiven (instead of them being stoned to death which was the Hebrew way of handling intentional sin at the time). Unlike the "church" interpretations it IS a "free" offering BUT and I do mean BUT one MUST make the choice to DO it. If they don't they are not demonstrating their desire to be HIS. This is stated quite clearly in numerous scripture (Matthew 7, 1st John and many others) but somehow the church has distorted it beyond recognition. IT IS A CHOICE....not a free ride. Our fruit is how HE know HIS people. I'll leave it at that for now.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
man votes on who Christ is and the majority wins, sorry but it does not work that way the majority is more often times wrong then they are right.
