Let US make man

Hey Full of Sea Water:

You ask what R. Yehoshua bar Yosef was talking about or referring to with the parable of the Swine and the Dogs?

These are two words the dead sea scrolls use to refer to Goyim (gentiles, i.e. non Jews)--both are "ritually unclean", which seems to be the point he was making : unfortunately the so called Sermon on the Mount in Matt chapters 5 through chapter 7 was a COLLECTION of Logia (sayings) spoken over a much longer period and worked up into a sermon by the gospel writer "Matthew" (from signficantly a mountaintop, like the New Moses giving the New Law to the New Israel). If you trace the sayings of the "sermon" to Luke and Mark, you will see that they were all spoken on separate occasions, but it is evident that the original "sitz im leben" (setting-in-life or "original context") has been totally lost, since the sayings circulated separately as Aramaic sayings/aphorisms/parables and were only at a later "literary stage" placed together in "written gospels" and in Greek after the failed Jewish War of AD 66.

R. Yehoshua (the "historical Jesus") carefully avoided preaching to Goyim (gentiles, whom he called "dogs") and specifically instructed his "disciples" on their preaching/healing ministries:

Matt 10:5 "Do not venture into any of the Towns of the Goyim (Gentiles)....but go and preach the Gospel of the Kingdom ONLY to the Lost Sheep of the House of Israel..."

In other words, "don't waste your sacred preaching material on the goyim: they'll just use your own words against you...."

That's what this man meant if you see the Aramaisms in the context of the dead sea scroll material which was still being copied out as late as June 68 AD...long after R. Yehoshua was executed....

Dare I ask if all of this is news to you? That's why careful reading and studying of the original languages and the history of the period is so vital to anything like a clear message of the earliest Christianities....

Originally posted by jake1997
Matt 11:18-19

Proverbs 31:6-7

Originally posted by NEOAMADEUS
Hey Full of Sea Water:

You ask what R. Yehoshua bar Yosef was talking about or referring to with the parable of the Swine and the Dogs?

These are two words the dead sea scrolls use to refer to Goyim (gentiles, i.e. non Jews) [...]

Matt 10:5 "Do not venture into any of the Towns of the Goyim (Gentiles)....but go and preach the Gospel of the Kingdom ONLY to the Lost Sheep of the House of Israel..."

BECAUSE everything first to the Jew then to the Gentile
YAHSHUA HaMASIAYCH was a light not only to the Jews BUT also to the gentiles

Read Rom s1-3
There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile; but glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For God does not show favoritism.

In other words, "don't waste your sacred preaching material on the goyim: they'll just use your own words against you...."

you are wrong. stop twisting scriptures.

btw, you have contradicted yourself more than once

I'm done striving w/you.

Hey Head Under SeaWater:

Where was the contradiction you claim? In your head, perhaps?

Originally posted by jake1997
Trinity



Of course it mentions God as a third person. Jesus Himself does it when He refers to the 'helper'.

Gonna have to disagree on this point. Duet 6:4-9, Mark 12:28-34, Malachi 2:10, Isaiah 45:6-8/45:2-6,21-23/46:8-9, I Cor 8:4-6, Sph 4: 5-6, I Tim 2:5, James 2:19, Rev 4:2-3. Kinda says God is one being.

Jesus being God is in Isaiah 7:14/9:6, Micah 5:2, John 1:1,14/1:10/8:24,58-59/14:6-11, II Cor 5:19 and I Tim 3:16.

As long as we can take the scripture in context of who is speaking (i.e. the flesh of Jesus and the Deity of Jesus) we are going no where in understanding the scriptures.

Remember the scripture is not open to private interpretation.

That passage in Genesis has nothing whatever to do with the Trinity. The name of God used, Elohim, is a masculine noun with a plural feminine ending, and might better be translated as "The Gods and Goddesses." This also makes better sense of "Let us make Man in our own image" conjoined with "They created them male and female."

There are a number of names of God used in the Hebrew. A more common name later on is Yahweh (JHVH). This refers to the God of the Hebrews, the one that the ancient Hebrews were supposed to worship before all others (but didn't always). No claim is made in the Torah (although it is made later) that JHVH is the ONLY God, only that "I am the Lord YOUR God, who brought you out of Egypt." Many passages imply polytheism, although they also command monotheolatry (worship of only one deity, not the same as belief in only one deity).

Although this is never explicitly stated, it's reasonable to infer that JHVH is one aspect, one manifestation, or one being of Elohim, not the entirety.

The religion of the Hebrews did not become truly monotheistic until at least the time of the Prophets, and I believe more likely during the Babylonian captivity. For that reason, I don't call the early Hebrew religion reflected in the Torah and the early histories Judaism; the very essence of Judaism is surely monotheism, and those early Hebrews were not monotheists.

Originally posted by Two Steps Forward
That passage in Genesis has nothing whatever to do with the Trinity. The name of God used, Elohim, is a masculine noun with a plural feminine ending, and might better be translated as "The Gods and Goddesses." This also makes better sense of "Let us make Man in our own image" conjoined with "They created them male and female."

There are a number of names of God used in the Hebrew. A more common name later on is Yahweh (JHVH). This refers to the God of the Hebrews, the one that the ancient Hebrews were supposed to worship before all others (but didn't always). No claim is made in the Torah (although it is made later) that JHVH is the ONLY God, only that "I am the Lord YOUR God, who brought you out of Egypt." Many passages imply polytheism, although they also command monotheolatry (worship of only one deity, not the same as belief in only one deity).

Although this is never explicitly stated, it's reasonable to infer that JHVH is one aspect, one manifestation, or one being of Elohim, not the entirety.

The religion of the Hebrews did not become truly monotheistic until at least the time of the Prophets, and I believe more likely during the Babylonian captivity. For that reason, I don't call the early Hebrew religion reflected in the Torah and the early histories Judaism; the very essence of Judaism is surely monotheism, and those early Hebrews were not monotheists.

I got one book for you view about proper translation. Strong's exhaustive concordance.

Strong's concordance, eh? Let's see:

www.eliyah.com...

The Strong's concordance is a very useful tool for studying the scriptures. It takes every single word of the King James Version and lists where each word can be found in the scriptures. It is useful for locating scripture verses that you know the words to, but don't know the book, chapter and verse. . . .

Also beside each verse reference there is a number. That number represents a Hebrew word (if in the Old Testament) or Greek word (if in the New Testament). In the back of the book it lists Hebrew and Greek words used to translate the bible into English. Each has a a number beside them so that we may only need to know the number to locate a Greek or Hebrew word. Then we can do a word study by reading the meaning of the original word. . . .

One thing to keep in mind is that while the Strong's Concordance is fairly reliable in its lexicon definitions, it is relying on 19th century scholarship. . . . Also, Hebrew especially has various verb forms, tenses and stems that can have different meanings. The Strong's Lexicon doesn't do much to address this

Guess not. I was hopeful for a second there that it was the work of John Shelby Strong, but no such luck.

Without denying the utility of a tool like this for some purposes, it can't really help with the kind of basic mistranslation that runs all through the Bible, because those errors are going to be repeated in all locations. That's especially true in that Strong's seems to rely on the KJV, one of the least reliable Biblical translations.

All Christian Biblical scholarship needs to be looked at skeptically. That's not to say it's necessarily wrong or totally useless, but Christians have an axe to grind about this book, and there are some ideas that many of them are incapable of fairly considering, such as the notion that the ancient Hebrews may have been polytheists. That Elohim is plural isn't contested, but Christians on this board have attributed this to the Trinity, even though that was a concept totally foreign to the ancient Hebrews, while the concept of multiple deities was all around them and is a far more likely explanation.

There are many passages in the Old Testament that are puzzling unless polytheism on the part of the ancient Hebrews is acknowledged. By polytheism I mean belief that multiple gods exist. It's also clear that the ancient Hebrews were only supposed to be worshiping one of them, but that's not quite monotheism, it's monotheolatry. Modern Judaism is certainly monotheistic, but apparently their ancient forbears were different. The change probably came about during the Babylonian captivity, which is also when Judaism became a faith that could be practiced anywhere, and did not require making sacrifices at the Temple in Jerusalem.

Worth noting here is that the Hebrews captured and transported by the Assyrians seem to have lost their faith and merged with the local population, while that did not happen to the ones transported to Babylonia. The resilience of modern Judaism to persecution and hardship is famous. But that resilience seems not to have been characteristic of the Hebrews transported to Assyria. This is why I believe they did not practice the same religion as modern Jews do, and one reason I believe Judaism, properly so called, was born in Babylon and not on Mount Sinai.

It's also difficult for Christian scholars to be dispassionate about the process whereby the New Testament documents were selected for the canon, while other contenders were rejected, or to consider how the sayings of Jesus, which the Gospels report in Greek, would read in the radically different language, Aramaic, that he actually spoke. But that's another subject for another thread.