The Reason for the Season

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_honorentheos
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Re: The Reason for the Season

Post by _honorentheos »

I agree with Chap in that the stories about the early life of Jesus in the New Testament are some of the furthest information from the early and reliable sources.

I've posted threads on related topics in the Terrestrial forum like this one that build off the recognition the resulting gospels we have today were creating a biography not original to the life of the historical Jesus to place him within a Messianic context:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=41977

Part of this process included attempting to reconcile the life of Jesus with a bad Greek translation of the Hebrew word, "almah" from Isaiah 7:14. The original author of the Gospel of Matthew was perhaps the most prone to take liberties when it came to shoehorning supposed Messianic prophecy into the life of the historical Jesus.

The idea that Jesus was born of a virgin, rather than being the first born of a young woman, was very likely the result of the cult forming around the Jesus mythology modifying his biography to hit every point of prophecy believed to apply to the Messiah. It's very, very unlikely that the religion around the adult Jesus rose out of his mother making up a story to cover up her being unfaithful which caught fire among the population and became a world wide religion. It's also helpful to remember that the Roman Catholic church views Mary as having remained a virgin her entire life and, as the custodians of the scriptures we have today, was instrumental in ensuring the virgin birth comes forward in the story. There are many fragmentary references in the New Testament showing places where various authors or scribes made edits to the text to remove relationships to Jesus that would have required Mary to have given birth though there are still explicit references to his having brothers for which the Catholics use the argument that it is not a reference to his biological siblings but some other relationship.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth?
~ Eiji Yoshikawa
_Chap
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Re: The Reason for the Season

Post by _Chap »

subgenius wrote:Naw, the incoherence was set forth by the OP....Mary's bastard son being an elaborate con for immaculate conception wasn't enough for me ...


You really are an ignorant person.

The immaculate conception is a Roman Catholic doctrine, according to which Mary was born without the taint of original sin that the rest of the human race was said to have inherited from Adam. This doctrine was not actually defined as a formal part of doctrine until 1854. It is nothing to do with the virgin birth of Jesus.

The doctrine of the virgin birth of Jesus is much more ancient; it has some of its roots in the New Testament, although Paul shows no awareness of it. It may, in part, be traced to a misunderstanding of a Hebrew word 'almah' (young woman, not 'virgin' in the sexual sense) used in Isaiah to describe the mother of the person who will soon (in Isaiah's day in the 8th century BC) be born to save the Jewish people.

Oh, and just to cheer you up: Muslims also believe in the virgin birth, because it's in the Quran ....
Zadok:
I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis.
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
_subgenius
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Re: The Reason for the Season

Post by _subgenius »

Chap wrote:Image
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires...seek discipline and find your liberty
I can tell if a person is judgmental just by looking at them
what is chaos to the fly is normal to the spider - morticia addams
If you're not upsetting idiots, you might be an idiot. - Ted Nugent
_Chap
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Re: The Reason for the Season

Post by _Chap »

The point is that you decided to contribute to a thread about the historical and textual background of Christian doctrine with little or no understanding of either.

I'd like to say that you made a fool of yourself by showing up your ignorance, but there would be a subtle technical flaw in any such claim.
Zadok:
I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis.
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
_canpakes
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Re: The Reason for the Season

Post by _canpakes »

subgenius wrote:
The incoherence that you seem to be experiencing appears to be internally generated, as usual.

Naw, the incoherence was set forth by the OP....Mary's bastard son being an elaborate con for immaculate conception wasn't enough for me, now explain why the grifters decided to add Lazarus, curing blindness robe, the resurrection, loaves/fishes, etc...
I mean, was there a meeting where the Illuminati pitched ideas? or was this a living document that evolved and refined its narrative at subsequent Acharya S society conventions?

(and when do i get to fold in the obvious involvement of the Clintons in all this?)

Well, that was a sloppy backpedal, and still doesn’t show any incoherence from the OP.

But, feel free to fill in some backstory about Jesus. After being born into instant recognition as a virgin-born messiah welcomed by kings, it’s indeed fascinating to consider that no-one cared to document his life aside from one or two alleged incidents, over the next three decades. Why do you suppose that was?

Or, just head back to your original failure to explain the supposed incoherence of a virgin birth story being incompatible with the ‘pagan appropriation protest’, and give that one another try?
_Dr. Shades
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Re: The Reason for the Season

Post by _Dr. Shades »

Maksutov wrote:Christianity is probably the same. In this case Mary may have been "overshadowed" by, say, a Roman soldier who moved on after producing the Messiah.

That might also account for Jesus's constant references to "my father." My theory is He was referring to Joseph, not God. Do you think His overly-frequent references to him may have been His attempts to convince others, and perhaps even Himself, that Joseph really was His father?
"Finally, for your rather strange idea that miracles are somehow linked to the amount of gay sexual gratification that is taking place would require that primitive Christianity was launched by gay sex, would it not?"

--Louis Midgley
_subgenius
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Re: The Reason for the Season

Post by _subgenius »

canpakes wrote:....it’s indeed fascinating to consider that no-one cared to document his life aside from one or two alleged incidents, over the next three decades. Why do you suppose that was?
...

clearly, and as usual, you have disqualified your posts by exhibiting sub-cursory knowledge for the topic.

3 decades? it seems that only about 18 years are unaccounted for...but again, you draw your opinions from seemingly magical and yet to be revealed sources.
Maybe Nag Hammadi? etc.

good luck!
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires...seek discipline and find your liberty
I can tell if a person is judgmental just by looking at them
what is chaos to the fly is normal to the spider - morticia addams
If you're not upsetting idiots, you might be an idiot. - Ted Nugent
_Chap
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Re: The Reason for the Season

Post by _Chap »

subgenius wrote:
canpakes wrote:....it’s indeed fascinating to consider that no-one cared to document his life aside from one or two alleged incidents, over the next three decades. Why do you suppose that was?
...

clearly, and as usual, you have disqualified your posts by exhibiting sub-cursory knowledge for the topic.

3 decades? it seems that only about 18 years are unaccounted for...but again, you draw your opinions from seemingly magical and yet to be revealed sources.
Maybe Nag Hammadi? etc.

good luck!


Let's see ... canpakes said:

"no-one cared to document his life aside from one or two alleged incidents, over the next three decades."

Jesus is widely held to have commenced his public activity around the age of thirty. So we have 30 years, three decades, between the events said to have occurred around his birth and the time when we begin to be given a lot of details of his activities in the New Testament. During those three decades we have only one substantive story about him - in Luke chapter 2, where his parents are said to have taken him to Jerusalem at the age of twelve.

Yup, so far as the New Testament is concerned,

"no-one cared to document his life aside from one or two alleged incidents, over the next three decades."

In fact, off-hand I can only think of one 'incident' worth referring to from those decades after the time around his birth.
Zadok:
I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis.
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
_Maksutov
_Emeritus
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Re: The Reason for the Season

Post by _Maksutov »

Dr. Shades wrote:
Maksutov wrote:Christianity is probably the same. In this case Mary may have been "overshadowed" by, say, a Roman soldier who moved on after producing the Messiah.

That might also account for Jesus's constant references to "my father." My theory is He was referring to Joseph, not God. Do you think His overly-frequent references to him may have been His attempts to convince others, and perhaps even Himself, that Joseph really was His father?


"Joseph", right. My peepstone confirms that Joseph Smith found a Nephite DeLorean and went back to nail Mary. :lol:
"God" is the original deus ex machina. --Maksutov
_schreech
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Re: The Reason for the Season

Post by _schreech »

Chap wrote:
subgenius wrote:Image


Let's see ... canpakes said:

"no-one cared to document his life aside from one or two alleged incidents, over the next three decades."

Jesus is widely held to have commenced his public activity around the age of thirty. So we have 30 years, three decades, between the events said to have occurred around his birth and the time when we begin to be given a lot of details of his activities in the New Testament. During those three decades we have only one substantive story about him - in Luke chapter 2, where his parents are said to have taken him to Jerusalem at the age of twelve.

Yup, so far as the New Testament is concerned,

"no-one cared to document his life aside from one or two alleged incidents, over the next three decades."

In fact, off-hand I can only think of one 'incident' worth referring to from those decades after the time around his birth.


What I find humorous is that when sid-the-subfaps' posts actually make sense (which is only like 1 in 10, generously), he almost always accidentally supports the point of the person he is attempting to contradict (since all he is really capable of is barely coherent "nuh-uh"ing day in and day out. Jeebus, what a crappy hobby...). Its obvious he is not smart enough to understand what most posters are trying to say AND its apparent he is not even bright enough to "nuh-uh" other posters without embarrassing himself. He is truly a gem and the perfect foil for the intelligent posters on the site. Then again, he seems to get off on being humiliated, day in and day out so maybe playing the dimwitted, barely coherent contrarian helps feed some kind of insatiable fetish. Eh, Who am I to question how people with too much time on their hands spend their days as long as they arent harming anyone from the their dank basements?

As to the OP. Lol. Joseph Smith just did that which has been done on other worlds, blamed aliens/angels with flaming swords/bigfoot/gremlins/demons/ghosts/bad cheese/etc. when caught humping the help.
"your reasoning that children should be experimented upon to justify a political agenda..is tantamount to the Nazi justification for experimenting on human beings."-SUBgenius on gay parents
"I've stated over and over again on this forum and fully accept that I'm a bigot..." - ldsfaqs
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