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Elaine, if Paul was making a statement to counter any myths of a virgin birth, wouldn't he as a trained legal scholar have stated this more clearly? having a woman as a mother is rather unremarkable. He might as well have said "Jesus had a mother." That is not really a disputable fact is it? <BR> <BR>I think that your interpretation is disingenous and highly speculative at the least and is not consistent the level of detail associated with any of Paul's other discussions of any other "myths." <BR> <BR>(Message edited by pilgrim99 on April 15, 2009)
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Devon, with all due respect, let's make sure she understands what is being said, in case she is a stickler for spelling: <BR> <BR>disingenuous <BR> <BR>lacking in candor ; also : giving a false appearance of simple frankness : calculating
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Devon, another alternative would be that Mary, not being married might want to cover up her pregnancy by using this excuse. Who knows what they did to pregnant, unmarried women in those times. <BR> <BR>I choose to believe the virgin birth story, but, following your reasoning, it is another reason to explain away the idea of a virgin birth. <BR> <BR>renie
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Irene, I see no cover up in Devon's answer. Everyone has a mother and father, except someone with a virgin birth, they are "born of a woman" with no help from a man. I believe that is waht Paul is trying to say and does. And some scholars think so too. <BR> <BR>Glad you believe in the Virgin Birth, without it, if you worship at a local church, it is someone other than the Son of God.
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but the virgin birth runs contrary to hebrew prophecy!!!! the Messiah was to come from the house of David...and the Hebrews always accounted for their lineage thru the fathers, believing that a fathers semen contained the "seeds" of little people, and that the woman had nothing to do with conception, only providing a warm space for incubation. <BR> <BR>So, tracing Jesus lineage thru Mary is both wrong from the hebrew tradition, and does not prove jesus is thru the line of David as required. What it does emphasize is that Jesus was the son of God.... probably for the non Jews <BR> <BR>http://www.lifeofchrist.com/life/genealogy/luke.asp <BR> <BR>While resorting to calling Joseph as Jesus father, then tracing the lineage back thru David that way, seems to deny a "virgin" birth!!! but emphasize to jews the legal right to call jesus the Messiah by lining His ancestors thru David... <BR> <BR>http://www.lifeofchrist.com/life/genealogy/matthew.asp <BR> <BR> <BR>If our "salvation" depends on this, why wasn't it better documented? <BR> <BR>(Message edited by john8verse32 on April 16, 2009)
If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?
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John, either there was a virgin birth or an ordinary man was adopted by God, at the baptism of Jesus? <BR> <BR>There are plenty of studies on the issue of Mary's lineage and Joseph's lineage and the miracle that both ways could work with Joseph being the adopted father, but what are you trying to say. Jesus was the Son of God, but just an ordinary man?? <BR> <BR>(Message edited by Bob_2 on April 16, 2009)
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OR, are you out to cast doubt on the salvation story of belief in Jesus??? What is your belief and intention.
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<font color="0000ff">What is your belief and intention..... <BR>are you out to cast doubt </font> <BR> <BR>I'm merely pointing out that the doubt exists!!! <BR>don't shoot the piano player if you don't like the music and lyrics which were provided to read from. <BR> <BR>there are two stories here....I didn't make them up.... whoever wrote the Gospels did, and left considerable doubt possible as to what was in fact going on. <BR> <BR>one story comes from a writer who always strains to prove that Jesus was the long awaited Messiah... <BR> <BR>Matt writes an effort to convince the Jews (in their language) that their Messiah had come, in the form of Jesus. <BR> <BR>Matt in other stories, has Jesus riding two donkeys at the same time into Jerusalem in order to fulfill a prophecy which he misunderstood.... <BR> <BR>He has Jesus born after 3 perfect sets of 14 generations from Olde Abe... but messes up the last set badly....and omits patriarchs in the lineage which Luke lists in order to gerrymander his list. <BR> <BR>and here in this story Matt traces Jesus lineage thu his father, Joseph... with Joseph tracing his lineage back to David, thereby upholding the prophecy that the Messiah would be from the house of David. <BR> <BR>however, if there was a virgin birth, then Joseph was not Jesus biological father, and therefore Jesus was not from the House of David, according to Jewish tradition..... which is only one of the reasons the Jews still reject Jesus as the Messiah. <BR> <BR>Luke, otoh, writing in Greek, and probably for non Jews, seems to use Mary's geneology as Jesus lineage, and that does NOT trace back to David!!! Luke seems less interested than Matt in proving Jesus as the Messiah, because, again, according to Jewish rules, <BR>Jesus could not be the Messiah. <BR> <BR>If God the Father really was in charge of this process, sending His son to die and such, why organize and produce the event this way, leaving so much possible confusion (except among believers)? and so many ways that the Jews could be (and have been) blamed for Jesus death, all making it near impossible for God to help the Jews save themselves by converting into followers of the Messiah, and become Christians... which is what Christians claim is a prerequisite to being 'saved"? <BR> <BR>So in his effort to save people thru Christianity, God fails to organize the event in a way which would "save" His heretofore so-called chosen people ... the original followers and purveyors of "dogmatic Mosesianity" (thoughtfully coined by myself...not plagairized from anywhere as Bob charged) <BR> <BR>my intention? <BR> <BR>to find out why everything always has to be so confusing; <BR> <BR>to see if there are not alternate explanations which can better conform to the evidence given; <BR> <BR>could some (if not many) of the stories as written have been exaggerated by believers in order to convert their neighbors? <BR> <BR><font color="0000ff">either there was a virgin birth or an ordinary man was adopted by God, </font> <BR> <BR>or <BR> <BR><font color="0000ff"> there was </font> <i>claimed to have been </i> <font color="0000ff">a virgin birth </font> <i> by those who wrote the story in an effort to convince and convert</i> <BR> <BR>AND <BR> <BR> <font color="0000ff">an</font> <font color="ff0000"> extra</font><font color="0000ff">ordinary man was</font> <i>claimed by his followers to have been</i> <font color="0000ff">adopted by God </font> <BR> <BR>either way, all we have are the often incomplete, too often inconsistant, and probably completely unverifiable stories handed down over generations by people who may have had vested interests in how they told the stories. <BR> <BR> <BR> <BR> <BR> <BR>(Message edited by john8verse32 on April 16, 2009)
If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?
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<b><font color="0000ff"> "Everyone has a mother and father, except someone with a virgin birth." </font></b> <BR> <BR>Are we to assume that you know people who were born of a virgin? Do you have evidence of another way of birth than without male sperm and female ovum, O Devout and Learned Bob? <BR> <BR>John has explained it, and there is no way under the sun that both Matthew and Luke can both be right and neither of them trace Jesus' ancestry through Mary, which implies that he is Joseph's son, descendant from David. <BR> <BR>This story did NOT circulate until after the crucifixion but was a product of the Gospel writers to identify Jesus with the predicted Messiah. Please give one secular writer who even mentions a virgin birth for Jesus; even Paul and Mark, who wrote after the resurrection, knew nothing at all about such a wild story. Believe whatever you want about virgin births, but they are even more preposterous than extraterrestrial aliens from outer space. Or, is that how you arrived here? You are free to believe anything you wish, but don't try to show by logic that such things are possible. Doesn't work. Simply believe, but it's totally illogical and unrealistic and weird.
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bbbbbut...wasn't Dionysis born of a virgin, with Zeus as the God-father? <BR> <BR>so, maybe it does work in special circumstances.
If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?
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Elaine and John, take your act on the road, funny stuff, even if a little on the mocking side. <BR> <BR>Without the virgin birth there is no Christianity, PERIOD. The act of conception was via the Holy Spirit, not modern science, Elaine.
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We don't need no modern science, we's Bible readers who simply beleve.
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<font color="0000ff">Without the virgin birth there is no Christianity, PERIOD.</font> <BR> <BR>How is salvation dependent on the jewish messiah being born a bastard to a betrothed woman which breaks all kinds of Mosaic Laws? <BR> <BR>The Holy Spirit needed to commit adultery? Shouldn't they have found this spirit and killed it under the Law? <BR> <BR>I could go on and on with valid problems concerning this scenario. <BR> <BR>Look, the writers of the Gospels studied from the LXX which had a mistake in the translation of a word in Isaiah. They thought their messiah needed to be born of a virgin so they made him born of a virgin in their story. <BR> <BR>It completely destroys the requirement that the messiah was to be of the male royal line of David.
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<font color="0000ff">The act of conception was via ...</font> <BR> <BR>...maybe tradition? ancient myths and legends? <BR>the need for followers of a leader to glorify him with divine like attributes, and possibly a god for a father and an earthly mother to mean they are both human and divine? <BR> <BR><a href="http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/virgin.html#pagan" target=_top>http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/virgin.html#pa gan</a> <BR> <BR><font color="0000ff">The gentile cultures, religions and mythologies during the time of Christian beginnings around the first century CE were filled with stories of divine incarnation. For example in the Greek myth, Perseus was born of the virgin Danae. Danae was conceived by the God Zeus who took the form of a shower of gold. [6] In another Greek myth Dionysius was born of the virgin Semele. Semele was impregnated by Zeus with a bolt of lightning. <BR> <BR>And in almost all the popular mystery religions [a] around the Meditteranean, the beliefs of the uneducated masses, the divine personalities are born of virgins. For example, Mithra, an derivative of the Persian sun-worship, whose cult rivalled Christianity during the first few centuries of its existence, was conceived when God himself, in the form of light, entered a virgin. Phoenecian mythology had Adonis being born of the virgin Myrrh. Parthenogenesis was also the explanation for the birth of the Phyrgian deity, Attis from his mother Cybele. [7] <BR>The popular culture also ascribed to many famous men miraculous, divine and, sometimes, even virgin birth. [8] Thus the emperor Augustus, the reigning sovereign during the time of Jesus, was reputedly miraculously begotten when a snake descended upon his mother in the temple of Apollo. [9] So too, Romulus, the legendary founder of Rome, was born of a vestal virgin. [10] <BR>It was therefore to be expected, in fact inevitable, that Christianity, which vied for converts with these mystery religions, would itself be imbued with such mythological elements. It could happen in many ways. The Christians, desiring to provide conclusive vindication of their faith in the divine nature of Jesus, would naturally turn to the signs that were accepted in the culture as proofs of divinity. [11] New converts from the mystery religions would also naturally carry the mythological baggage from their previous beliefs.</font> <BR> <BR>need more virgin births? many before Jesus? <BR> <BR><a href="http://www.pocm.info/pagan_ideas_virgin_birth.html" target=_top>http://www.pocm.info/pagan_ideas_virgin_birth.html</a> <BR> <BR>the above is part of an extensive site to visit....suggesting that much of what we believed was passed on down to us from pagan myths...
If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?
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Ok, John you tell me the story you believe. Does it just end for you after you die. Is that it. No eternal life, no hope of an afterlife as the Bible teaches. No Father, Son and Holy Ghost????
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Elaine, if you don't want religion in the Public Schools, why can't this act be as transcendant as God is. You are making the condition that all miracles of a trancendant God have to be understood by modern science? Is that your point. Sources, just dreamt up by you and your professor, oh and Neal of course. Remember science is manmade, so you are making God and His Son a manmade creation rather than God creating man in His image???
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John, this is the problem with Evolutionary Science, if something look s alike they must be related or from each other. You use the same technique with the Virgin Birth if other gods in the region were born of a virgin in their story, then Christians also "looked to have" copied that concept also. You are playing a nonscientific game, looks alike therefore it is the same. Both Evolution and your Agnostic thoughts are very similar in origin, IMO.
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in geology, one of the basic principles is the Law of superposition...those layers farther down are probably older than the layers on top. <BR> <BR>same thing with history... Sargon's raft trip tale is a thousand years older than the story told about Moses.... if there was any copying going on, it had to be done by the later writers, not the earlier ones. <BR> <BR>thus, the Bible tale about baby Moses in the reed basket could seem to be a copy. <BR> <BR>in much the same way, the story of Jesus virgin birth is younger by hundreds if not thousands of years than many older stories which we recognize asmythological...stories told by the ancients to make their heros into gods. <BR> <BR>if the principle that the older story is the original is correct, then the younger story at least cannot be the original, and may in instances be a copy. <BR> <BR>this logic does not prove that the virgin story was a copy,... <BR> <BR>BUT..... <BR> <BR>if it were that important, and if it is a deal breaker, and if God is in charge of this "story of salvation", why didn't God take more precautions to have it well enuf documented so that there would no room for unbelief? <BR> <BR>Why do the "eyewitnesses" of the Gospel (and actually none of them were in fact actual witness) disagree over so many details? <BR> <BR>why couldn't it all have been presented and preserved with more clarity, more concision, more consistancy, and more verifiable credibility? <BR> <BR>I mean, If I were audacious enuf to threaten to kill people who didn't do what I told them, I would feel it incumbant on me to make sure my message was clear enuf for them to actually understand AND follow it.
If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?
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It amazes me that John Alfke wants God to think like him, then you would be happy, but is that your motive or you wish to impress people with your apparent critical skills. John, the Beloved as he was called had a more intimate relationship with Jesus and His mother Mary, so you would expect the story to me more intimate, with insights that are different than Mark and Luke who were not direct observers like Matthew and John. <BR> <BR>It also amazes me that you don't realize that people wrote from their culture's perspective. Not that they weren't inspired by the Holy Spirit, but it was a cooperative effort with the author and the Spirit. If God is declared the Son of God, able to forgive sin, declared the Messiah, and most of the disciples understood He was the Son of God, why does the story have to be stated the same way? If they believed things, and felt others also did, then they might not have felt the need to tell it exactly like the next guy. God appreciates man's free choice, even though Neal is sort of mocking me about free will choice as a mark of a human, I stand by how important that is. Why he wants to declare a fetus a human with rights of one born, that is not the way it was then or now, accept for those avid about anti abortion, wanting to declare the zygote a human from conception. It is sacred life, but does not have the label human until born. <BR> <BR>John, you seem so puzzled as to why the Virgin Birth is so important. If Christ was just another man, he can't forgive sin, why do you think the Pharisees wanted to kill him, for saying He was the Son of God able to forgive sin. That is important to that man healed of blindness, to you and to me, for eternal life.
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any extreme proposition needs extreme proof to be validated and believed. <BR> <BR>We don't see many virgin births nor risings from the dead these days...maybe they were common in the past, but the lack of documentation for those other than Jesus makes us call them mythical. Many today, because of the lack of documentation about jesus spectacular claimed extra human events, ascribe those stories to myth and legend also.... as usual, stories which grew about, around, or after a great leader, and which were published and propagandized by the leaders followers. <BR> <BR>I remember reading about Saddam H. setting an olympic record in the Tigris River!!! Mao Tse Tung is said at advanced age to have also set swimming records. Washington threw a coin over a wide river!!! Jefferson fathered a whole nation...well, that may in fact be true!!! <BR> <BR>it would have been nice for those who wanted us to believe these extra human "facts" to have given us more evidence to support the claims.
If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?
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Jesus was God incarnate, and sacrificed only once. No one else was to, or should have claimed what only God can claim. It wasn't going to be written the way John Alfke wanted, but the only Virgin Birth that counted, that allowed for God/man to live a perfect life, to experience all our temptations, and by His stripes heal us, why on this one significant, singular event do you want to stipulate how it was going to be revealed and in how many books of the Bible? Kind of arrogant when you read back over what YOU want and stipulate. I could hardly think of telling the God, creator of the universe, I'm not going to believe in you because those texts in Mark I didn't quite like, they should have been, well, more representative of the God of the universe. <BR> <BR>Hey, He was born in a manger, no Hilton here, not quite the way the Jews figured their Messiah would enter the stage, the crucifixion, or exit it. Did they have the right to reject him. Paul declared and called them on their arrogance, "His blood be upon you." Most appropriate for them, and us that get just as arrogant, IMO.
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All the gods that you Elaine and Neal claim had their story copied by Christianity, were inanimate stone or wood objects, capable of nothing. Why would Christianity want to copy that with proven miracles done by God incarnate. Puzzling logic!!!!
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<font color="0000ff">Why would Christianity want to copy that with proven miracles done by God incarnate.</font> <BR> <BR>Go through the 7 books of the NT that scholars agree were written by Paul. <BR> <BR>Point out even just 1 miracle performed by Jesus, or the live personal Jesus, or Paul's visit to Bethlehem to honor his LORD's birth, or his visit to Calvary, or Golgotha, or the tomb, or the non-existent City of Nazareth, or ANYTHING related to there having been a live Jesus on this flat planet. <BR> <BR>Everybody agrees that Paul was the first writer of anything that has been saved as the New Testament. Nobody knows who wrote the synoptic gospels or John. <BR> <BR>The thing that the christians copied was what was successful all around them- a dying and rising saviour which incorporated zoroastrianism, platonism, judaism, the Roman Mithra, and hellenistic Zeus. Paul even quotes a pagan poet's poem to Zeus. <BR> <BR>However, in gnostic fashion Paul claimed that flesh and blood could not inhabit heaven. So even if there was a Jesus, after he committed suicide-by-cop he appeared to his Post Traumatic Stress suffering disciples as a shape-shifter or spirit.
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Bob, instead of ridiculing positions that have been verified and validated many years by the most reputable scholars, you come up with your "logic" which is simply to restate your faith in everything written in the Bible. <BR> <BR>For you, it seems faith and literal facts are all the same. It is possible for one to have faith in the virgin birth, resurrection of Jesus, fairies and demons, so why try to prove what cannot be proved? If you want to believe in all these things, it is your freedom of religion to do so. <BR> <BR>But to insist that is is not your faith, but your insistence that everything in the Bible is both logical and verifiable is nonsense. If it is faith, it needs no proof or explanation: simply believe it. But don't try to convince anyone of its logic, can't be done.
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Bob <BR> <BR>Do you believe that 1 Corinthians was written by Paul?
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