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Originally posted by uberarcanist
I think the only people who take this argument by Marduk seriously are dyed-in-the-wool atheists who just want some moral justification for refusing to follow any authority other than their own whim.
Look, ask a million different scholars when a certain book of the Bible was written, you'll get a million different answers.
Furthermore, dates of writing prove nothing about antecedent oral tradition.
Originally posted by uberarcanist
Atheists are rebelling against moral principles that the vast majority of mankind has agreed to accept. Yeah, I've heard the tired old atheist line of "we're not atheists because we don't like the rules, we're atheists because the truth is that there is no God." What a load of hooey. The only good reason to be an atheist is that one doesn't want to follow a religion's rules.
Originally posted by uberarcanist
A person ought to follow community rules, even if they are religious rules, because "no man is an island". Following one's own whim is a recipe for chaos, not for utopia.
Originally posted by Agit8dChopEverything he did can be explained away through science.
Sitchin promotes himself as a Biblical scholar and master of ancient languages, but his real mastery was in making up his own translations of Biblical texts to support his readings of Sumerian and Akkadian writings.
He's let us know he's going to twist the translations around to support his thesis. Indeed, a reader of Sitchin's book would do well to keep a couple of Bibles handy to check up on the verses Sitchin quotes. Many of them will sound odd or unrecognizable because they have been translated from their familiar form (this is made harder by the fact that Sitchin rarely tells you just which verse he is quoting). This would be much more acceptable if he wasn't using the twisted translations to support the thesis that led to the twisted translations (Hafernik).
Most of Sitchin’s sources are obsolete. He has received nothing but ridicule from scientific archaeologists and scholars familiar with ancient languages. His most charming quality seems to be his vivid imagination and complete disregard for established facts and methods of inquiry, traits that are apparently very attractive to some people.
Originally posted by uberarcanist
Second observation: you merely assume Joseph and Mary were in love, Mary may not've even been pubescent when engaged to Joseph and also marriage at that time was often a business transaction that had nothing to do with love.
Originally posted by Marduk
this should really be useful for all those people who believe that the Bible is an original book dictated by God to Moses on Mt Sinai
Originally posted by David2012additions and alterations have been made.
Originally posted by David2012
e.g. did you know that mary being a virgin did not creep up untill the 17th century... but most people believe the virgin... ow well...
"Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel," (Isaiah 7:14).
Isaiah 7:14 says that a virgin will bear a son. The problem is dealing with the Hebrew word for virgin, which is "almah." According to the Strong's Concordance it means, "virgin, young woman 1a) of marriageable age 1b) maid or newly married." Therefore, the word "almah" does not always mean virgin. The word "occurs elsewhere in the Old Testament only in Genesis 24:43 (”maiden“); Exodus 2:8 (”girl“); Psalm 68:25 (”maidens“); Proverbs 30:19 (”maiden“); Song of Songs 1:3 (”maidens“); 6:8 (”virgins“)."1 Additionally, there is a Hebrew word for virgin: bethulah. If Isaiah 7:14 was meant to mean virgin instead of young maiden, then why wasn't the word used here?
The LXX is a translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek. This translation was made around 200 B.C. by 70 Hebrew scholars. In Isaiah 7:14, they translated the word "almah" into the Greek word "parthenos." According to A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature,2 parthenos means "virgin." This word is used in the New Testament of the Virgin Mary (Matt. 1:23; Luke 1:27) and of the ten virgins in the parable (Matt. 25:1, 7, 11). If the Hebrews translated the word into the Greek word for virgin, then they understood what the Hebrew text meant here.
Why would the Isaiah choose to use the word almah and not bethulah? It was probably because he wanted to demonstrate that the virgin would also be a young woman. Is it still a prophecy? Of course.
LINK
The commonly held view that "virgin" is Christian, whereas "young woman" is Jewish is not quite true. The fact is that the Septuagint, which is the Jewish translation made in pre-Christian Alexandria, takes almah to mean "virgin" here. Accordingly, the New Testament follows Jewish interpretation in Isaiah 7:14. Therefore, the New Testament rendering of almah as "virgin" for Isaiah 7:14 rests on the older Jewish interpretation, which in turn is now borne out for precisely this annunciation formula by a text that is not only pre-Isaianic but is pre-Mosaic in the form that we now have it on a clay tabletLINK
Originally posted by Doc Velocity
Marduk, you can give it your best shot, but I've heard better atheists than yourself make better and more informed cases against the Bible. Yours is the typical rant about timelines and the erroneous supposition that the various "books" of the Bible didn't exist until such-and-such date. Ho-hum. That's all very nice, and perhaps it lays out an infrastructure for your professed atheism; but, to the people who follow Christianity, or Judaism, or Islam, or Buddhism, or Hinduism, the revelations of an atheist amount to less than a hummingbird fart.
So who are you trying to convince? Other atheists?
— Doc Velocity
Originally posted by I am Legend
they arent revelations. they are facts. look em up. do a little research. for xtians and such, nothing hurts more than the truth.