Kizzy, we use his real Hebrew name (instead of the Greek transliteration of it) to differentiate this Galilean Jewish Rabbi, the biological son of Yoseph and Miriam, who faithfully served his Creator, from the virgin-born god-man Jesus, co-equal and co-eternal with the Father, who are believed in and followed by most Christians.
Kizzy, it is one thing to have great religious feelings and another to correctly *know* your duties. The latter belongs to the realm of proper biblical expositions. Hence the need for teachers.
I do not suggest that there is only one way to God. I believe everyone will be judged according to his/her merits - and there is no partiality with God. Your beliefs will not matter, nor any amount of biblical knowledge [talking about myself]. What will matter is how faithful you were and the righteous works of charity you did. Positive good deeds.
However, I do claim that if you desire to partake of the covenant of the Jewish people you must immerse into Yeshua's life of righteousness unto death - as he said,
Matthew 10:38 And he who does not take his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.
Luke 9:23 If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow me.
You can only do it if you come into the covenant, that is, if you convert to his religion, become a Jew like he was and obey the perfect Torah of God like he did.
If you only consider the Greek manuscripts you will only ever find his name transliterated into Greek as "Iesous".
"Iesous"' Hebrew name means "YHWH saves". We have another man with the exact same name, called Joshua in the English translations of the TaNaKH. His name is "Y'hoshua" in earlier Biblical Hebrew and "Yeshua" in the later Hebrew and Aramaic portions of the TaNaKh. "Yeshua" is a legitimate contraction of "Y'hoshua".
So yes, his real Hebrew name was "Yeshua", not "Iesous" and not "Jesus" (or "Jézus" as in Hungarian).
Yeshua is the name of the Hashidic Galilean Jewish Rabbi born to Miriam and Yoseph, who taught the Jewish people how to live righteously and was crucified because the Jewish leadership saw him as a threat.
I use this name to differentiate him from the historical Christian idea of the virgin-born god-man Jesus who saved the world.
54xmax stated that declared that "there is no god". I simply responded to his statement. My statement is as good and solid as his - ergo, we both believe what we said, but neither of us can prove it.
While he made this statement without supplying any proof, I stated myself that God's existence can neither be proven, nor disproven.
Do you suppose we cannot believe in something that we cannot prove? Oh, then how come scientists believe that most of the universe consists of "dark matter" that cannot be seen, observed, measured? They also believe in the so-called God particle, the "Higgs bosom" that is supposedly responsible for the mass of the matter. Science is notorious about believing in things that are not yet found and have not yet bee proven.
So, first of all, it wasn't me who made the claim. 54max claimed there was no God, so by your standard it is him that must come up with proof in the first place.
Medical science has discovered not long ago that there is a part of the brain that is responsible for religiousness. It is possible that you don't use it, so it is inactive, but it is there, it is part of you. There might be times in your life when this section of your brain will become active.
LOL. God has no gender. Not even a body. He is spirit. I am simply using the biblical definition when I refer to God as He.
Since the biblical idea is that God is an intelligent, self-existent being, the neuter pronoun cannot be used, you cannot refer to God as "it". We simply don't have a gender that we can use of God, so the masculine pronoun is fine.
In a matriarchal society you would use feminine, but the patriarchal ancient Hebrews used the masculine.
I have no intention to argue about the existence of the devil. It takes different shape in different religions. I adopted the definition of Judaism, because that is the definition given in the TaNaKh (incorrectly called OT in Christian bibles). Historical Christianity adopted the Zoroastrian view of the devil which is an anti-God. So for most Christians the devil exists. They need someone to blame for their own failures.
But in Judaism the devil is the personification of one's own evil desires.
Sure, people have the tendency to create many gods. They must have one for war, one for sickness, one for whatever else.
Monotheistic religion didn't start with Abraham. It was only reintroduced to him, who himself was heavily immersed in the idolatrous polytheistic system.
People with narrow minds can be harmful if they seek to enforce their view upon others.
Since I worked from a wide variety of sources, I doubt I qualify for the privilege of being called "narrow minded". And since, as I stated earlier, it is not my goal to convert anyone to my views, but to expose them to an interpretation system they may have never heard of, I cannot be accused that I have the "inate desire to make others conform to their narrow minded beliefs that lead to wars".
Yeshua's teaching was very specific. Would you call him "narrow minded"?
In order to develop a "relationship" with your Maker you need to understand the terms of that relationship. If you misunderstand these terms your "relationship" may easily be an illusion.
I am not interested in judging various people's "relationship" as I do not have an insight into their lives. My quest is to correctly understand these "terms", nothing less and nothing more.
It is very hard to give sources. I have been studying this for the last 15 years and read heaps of documents, including a few books, engaged in online debates, etc. So my knowledge is sourced from a variety of places.
We were taught in church that "in the OT the NT is revealed, and in the NT the OT is explained".
So theologians start with the NT and read it back into the OT. Beyond this, being unaware they employ a Platonic/Zoroastrian interpretation of the NT they inherited from the early church.
In my view it is a wrong way to go. Yeshua and the first disciples were practising Jews. They started a new sect within Judaism (which was not really new, but rather, renewed), but not a new religion. Therefore, the Tanakh must be understood from their point of view and using that knowledge we can explain the NT.
There is another interpretation, which suggests that the servant in these servant songs is Moses, foreshadowing the second Moses, the Messiah.
Shulman works from the Masoretic Text. More ancients texts don't have "deaths" as in plural (if you read it you will come across this). Also, the term "seed" was used in spiritual sense as well as physical sense. Nevertheless, Shulman's commentaries are interesting. Warning!!! Christians might find them offensive.
Whichever interpretation you follow the servant is always the faithful one.
Translators most often pick the readings that support their theology. You need to be mindful about it. The better ones, like the RSV and the NRSV, provide the alternative readings in the footnote. The Isaiah passage has been translated as such by the Jews.
The theology of Jesus dying for the sin of the world cannot be correct. It is said he fulfilled the Torah, but human sacrifices are forbidden in the Torah. How could he fulfil it by breaking it?
Therefore, his sacrifice was a self-sacrifice - being faithful unto death. Those who mimic his life of obedience unto death, that is "walk as he walked" purify themselves of all sins.
Thus, the removal of sin is the outcome, not the goal of his death.
For this reason, you don't need to believe in him. It is possible to live his life of faithfulness by obeying the Torah of God without knowing about Yeshua.
Another issue I may raise is the idea of being "saved". Why the extensive use of it in the NT (correctly Renewed Covenant scriptures). The explanation is simple. According to the prophecies a terrible time called the wrath of God precedes the Kingdom of God. Hence the urgency of the message - the gospel of the Kingdom ("repent, the Kingdom of God is near") was preached to all living. It is this wrath one had to be saved from as the first century disciples expected these events to take place in their lifetime.
OK, then why did the disciples of John the Baptist and all other righteous Jews had to hear about the death of Yeshua? Exactly, because of corporate guilt. They had to repent from the sin of their leaders. They had to make a choice whether to agree with his execution or disagree with it. This message (Yeshua's death) is *not* the gospel, the gospel is the gospel of the Kingdom, check it out. But because of corporate guilt everyone had to hear about his execution as well and repent of it.
Since these leaders are not ours, I doubt we share in their guilt. That was only for the first century people. And since in 70AD the Kingdom offer was withdrawn because the Jews refused to repent and return to God, a few years after they murdered Jacov the Just, the brothes of Yeshua, the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and exiled the people. Thus, the prophecy of Malachi became fulfilled:
Malachi 4: 4 “Remember the law of Moses My servant, even the statutes and ordinances which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel. [ie, you should obey them]
5 “Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the LORD. 6 He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I will come and smite the land with a curse.”
No, the reason was not to change anyone's views, but to expose them to ideas that they may not be familiar with, to stimulate thinking. What they do with the information is up to them. I *never* seek to convert anyone to my views.
Because there are many Christians on these forums, I thought I give a little challenge.
Christians believe Jesus' death on the cross was a sin sacrifice. He died for the sin of the whole world.
However, there is a little problem with the translation of the relevant passage that says that. The correct rendering of Isaiah 53 verse is
"he was pierced through because of our transgressions, he was crushed because of our iniquities"
The same applies in the Greek NT, where instead of "he died for our sins" it should be translated "he died because of our sins".
Therefore, it all comes down to the idea of corporate guilt. In ancient times when a king sinned, the whole nation suffered as a consequence - they all shared in his guilt. Yeshua was delivered up to the Romans by the Jewish religious authorities, therefore, both Jews and Greeks were guilty of his death.
On the other hand, Yeshua is referred to as the "Lamb of God". The lamb sacrifice of Exodus was a covenant sacrifice, not a sin sacrifice. The removal of the sin is the outcome of this covenant.
Maybe I stir up some emotions, because all these mean you don't need to believe in Jesus to go to heaven. You don't go to heaven anyway, that is a Platonic idea. The NT idea of believing in Yeshua means you are immersed into his life of faithfulness unto death, that is, you mimic his life.
You don't need to understand it. The early church modelled it after the Pagan trinities. This definition is not the definition of the TaNaKh (incorrectly called Old Testament), nor of the NT.
There is *one* God, whom the Jewish people and Yeshua called "Father", for He created the Jewish people. The term "son of God" refers to persons who are righteous, such as, angels, people, Solomon, and also Yeshua. The Holy Spirit, or the Spirit of the Almighty is His operational presence, but it is not Him. The term for "spirit" literally means "wind" or "breath". Your breath comes from you, but it is not you and doesn't exist on its own.
The language of the bible personifies the operations of the Spirit, just as it personifies other things. For example, trees clap their hands and wisdom builds a house and has children. Yes, these are not persons. The early Greek Christians did not understand the Jewish concepts, so they ended up interpreting the Jewish documents by utilising their Pagan religious and Platonic philosophical backgrounds. Hence, ideas like the virgin birth, souls being separate entities from the person and going to heaven or hell upon death, original sin, abrogation of the law, the trinity, etc were developed.
I don't care about what anyone believes and thinks, nor I am threatened. That is your opinion. But I have been witnessing all the ridiculing that has been going on on religious threads. Why bother if you don't believe it? If I want to debate with a Hindu or a Muslim I do it with due respect, without ridiculing their religion. Doing the other way is simply unintelligent.
revealer24 Forum Posts (985)
Sin sacrifice?
Kizzy, we use his real Hebrew name (instead of the Greek transliteration of it) to differentiate this Galilean Jewish Rabbi, the biological son of Yoseph and Miriam, who faithfully served his Creator, from the virgin-born god-man Jesus, co-equal and co-eternal with the Father, who are believed in and followed by most Christians.No offence intended.