Who Would Jesus Vote For?

[Amianthus]

an all-powerful God fucked up the Egyptians for fucking with the Jews and then He got them out of Egypt and then He told them just what I reproduced here, this God speaking to them is the same one that got them out of Egypt, He's the only one there is and he's a jealous God.

But he's not all-powerful enough to appear as Jesus?

[Michael Tee]

<<But he's not all-powerful enough to appear as Jesus?>>

Sure.  He could appear as Little Richard too.  But there was that warning, "Beware of imitations.  Don't worship any other God."  Sounds kind of unsporting if He were planning to show up as Jesus one day, not to give any advance warning of such intention when he warned the Jews off false Gods.

I'll just put it this way - - there was a very clear and unambiguous warning and then there was a lot of twisted and torturous interpretation of that warning to try to show that there was an obvious exception to it.  I would think that if God intended His warning to have a built-in Jesus exception, He was a good enough communicator to have avoided the uncertainty in the first place and stated his views plainly.  Anyway, I'm cool with any Jew interpreting that warning any way he or she likes - - it sure as hell isn't my place to speak for God.  Maybe one day in the after-lie, if there is one, God, if there is one, will pin a medal on the guy and tell him "Congratulations!  You figured it all out.  Jesus there is my son!" meanwhile kicking dumb schmuck Tee down into the fiery furnace for failing to figure it all out.   Anything's possible, including that Little Richard, and not Jesus or the Cretan Snake Goddess, is really the Son of God.  But I am going to stick with my own interpretation for the time being, as most other Jews seem to be doing, and let those who favour the more complicated one take their chances on it.

[Universe Prince]

<<Except of course that Jesus, in Christian theology, is not another god. He is the God. He and the Father are one. The Father is God. Jesus is God. The Holy Spirit is God. It's called the concept of the Trinity, and it's weird, and hard to understand, but there it is. >>

It's not hard to understand at all.  Basically these guys are just a bunch of fucking pagans dressed up as monotheists and trying to have it both ways.  Why limit it to Three?

Or they are humans trying to make sense of something bigger than human imagination.

Why limit it to three? I believe because of scripture.

Why not ten?  Why not six billion? I wanna be God too!  Why can't Mother Teresa be God? Or Bo Diddley?

Thou art god? I see no need to drag Valentine Michael Smith into this.

Anyone who wants to can believe that weird shit.  Me, I'm a simple guy, I'd stick with the simple meaning of the words - - an all-powerful God fucked up the Egyptians for fucking with the Jews and then He got them out of Egypt and then He told them just what I reproduced here, this God speaking to them is the same one that got them out of Egypt, He's the only one there is and he's a jealous God.  Don't take up with some other fake god or your ass is grass.  I'll take that just as I found it or not at all.  There's no indication anywhere in Exodus that Jesus was any part of the whole Egyptian thing and there were no exceptions named when God told the Jews they had to stick with Him.

Again, no part of that means Jesus is not God. And if we're going to be technical about it, Genesis has a nice bit, in the very first chapter no less, where God says, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness."

Sounds kind of unsporting if He were planning to show up as Jesus one day, not to give any advance warning of such intention when he warned the Jews off false Gods.

What makes you think there wasn't any warning?

[Michael Tee]

<<What makes you think there wasn't any warning?>>

There's a very clear prohibition against worship of anyone or anything other than the God that got them out of Egypt, and then there's some kind of very subtle rider attached to the warning that some people can see and some apparently can't that says, "Oh yeah, by the way, for those of you who are really, really hip, I happen to have a son and it's OK to worship him too."

Occam's Razor, my friend.  A direct and plain-spoken warning, with dire consequences for violation, would not be followed up by cryptic and/or ambiguous exceptions.  The simplest explanation is the most plausible:  the warning to the Jews was plain and direct, unmistakeable.  There would be nothing subtle or ambiguous in any further modifications to the warning, otherwise you'd have to also explain the reason for the subtlety.

[Plane]

So there is a very basic disagreement on the nature of Messiah.

What is the nature of the Messiah you are expecting ?


Human , Angel , hybrid or something elese?

[Xavier_Onassis]

The Messiah was indeed mentioned in the Old Testament, but NEVER was the Messiah defined as the Son of God.

There is no mention whatever of any sort of Trinity in the Old Testament. None at all, not even a suggestion.

There is no mention that the Messiah is supposed to be a son of God, either. He is pretty much defined as a human leader from the house of David with perhaps less adventurous gonads than David, and better organizational skills so as to defeat the Jews' enemies.

And what is it with this Holy Spirit stuff, anyway? Humans come in two genders, and all three members of the Trinity are defined as masculine.

Jesus has a whole bunch of books of the Bible all for himself, but then some wacky theologians seem not to have appreciated a dual god and thought that a three-headed deity made more sense to them.

The Holy Mother Church admits that this is a wacky concept, by calling it by the name it gives all forms of wacky Catholicism: a "Mystery of the Faith".

[Michael Tee]

<<What is the nature of the Messiah you are expecting ?


<<Human , Angel , hybrid or something elese?>>

I think it would be a mortal Jewish man.  I never gave it much thought, that was just my first assumption.  I know that many of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect, the Lubavitchers, thought that their late rabbi, Menachem Schneerson, was the Messiah, and if anyone would know the sources of Jewish religious literature that foretell the Messiah, it would be them.  So if THEY saw Schneerson as a possible Messiah candidate, whatever characteristics are laid out for him in the religion must include that the guy is or at least can be, a mortal Jewish male, which fits in with my first assumption and is good enough for me.

[Plane]

The Messiah was indeed mentioned in the Old Testament, but NEVER was the Messiah defined as the Son of God.

There is no mention whatever of any sort of Trinity in the Old Testament. None at all, not even a suggestion.

There is no mention that the Messiah is supposed to be a son of God, either. He is pretty much defined as a human leader from the house of David with perhaps less adventurous gonads than David, and better organizational skills so as to defeat the Jews' enemies.

And what is it with this Holy Spirit stuff, anyway? Humans come in two genders, and all three members of the Trinity are defined as masculine.

Jesus has a whole bunch of books of the Bible all for himself, but then some wacky theologians seem not to have appreciated a dual god and thought that a three-headed deity made more sense to them.

The Holy Mother Church admits that this is a wacky concept, by calling it by the name it gives all forms of wacky Catholicism: a "Mystery of the Faith".

Matthew 16:16


As far as I know the trinity isn't mentioned as such in the New Testament either.
It is a way of understanding what Jesus was telling us about why he had to leave for a while.

Exodus 3:13
Moses learns to refer to God as "I Am".

Psalm 51:11
Isaiah 63:10-11

Holy Spirit gets mention

Isaiah 9:6
Messiah gets mention, is this just three names for the same person , or three aspects of a larger whole?

I don't feel qualified to determine. But the Trinity is there , but I don't consider it important to determine exactly what it is. In no scripture does acknowledgment of the Trinity become an important part of salvation , in several places the unity of a single God is emphasized , so no matter what we think it means , it cannot be construed as being three gods.




Moving to the New Testament.....

Matthew 1:20

Holy Spirit gets mention again


Jesus gets called Son of God ...
Matthew 4:3
By Satan...

Matthew 8:29
By heard of demons...

Matthew 27:54
Centurions...

Luke 1:35
Angels...

Luke 22:70
Crowds...

Mark 9:7
Huge voice from the clouds....

John 5:25  And himself....

I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live.

John 19:7
This causes a problem with the established religious authority.


So the idea becomes the foundation of Christianity.
Acts 9:20
 

Saul in Damascus and Jerusalem , Saul spent several days with the disciples in Damascus. At once he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God.

[Plane]

There is no mention that the Messiah is supposed to be a son of God, either. He is pretty much defined as a human leader from the house of David with perhaps less adventurous gonads than David, and better organizational skills so as to defeat the Jews' enemies.

I would like to see that scripture.

[Xavier_Onassis]

I read in an article about the Lubavitchers, who believed that Schneerson might be the Messiah, that he would only be considered such when he made the announcement, as a Messiah has to claim his title. So thousands of Lubavitcher men were equipped with beepers (ataet of the art at the time) which would all go off should that joyful moment arrive.

But it never did. Schneerson died without announcing his messiahship (messiahhood? messiahness?).

===============================
By the way, MT, did you catch the article about Sheldon Edelson, the self-proclaimed "richest Jew in the world"? He is the guy behind the Sands casino in Vegas and a number of major casinos in Macao. He does not seem to favor a two-state solution for Israel, either.

I know I read this in Harpers, the Atlantic or the New Yorker, but I can't locate the magazine at the moment. Harpers seems the most likely.

[Plane]

<<What is the nature of the Messiah you are expecting ?


<<Human , Angel , hybrid or something elese?>>

I think it would be a mortal Jewish man.  I never gave it much thought, that was just my first assumption.  I know that many of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect, the Lubavitchers, thought that their late rabbi, Menachem Schneerson, was the Messiah, and if anyone would know the sources of Jewish religious literature that foretell the Messiah, it would be them.  So if THEY saw Schneerson as a possible Messiah candidate, whatever characteristics are laid out for him in the religion must include that the guy is or at least can be, a mortal Jewish male, which fits in with my first assumption and is good enough for me.

Well that doesn't disqualify Jesus by itself.


Mark 9:12
Jesus replied, "To be sure, Elijah does come first, and restores all things. Why then is it written that the Son of Man must suffer much and be rejected?

[Xavier_Onassis]

There is no mention that the Messiah is supposed to be a son of God, either. He is pretty much defined as a human leader from the house of David with perhaps less adventurous gonads than David, and better organizational skills so as to defeat the Jews' enemies.





I would like to see that scripture.

=========================================
There is some brief mention of a coming Messiah in the OT, I forget in which book.
It was necessary to make a big deal of both Joseph and Mary being descendants of the House of David, because this was mentioned in the OT.

The part about the Messiah having less adventurous Gonads I made up in jest. David was pretty studly to lead a bunch of modest guilt-ridden dudes like the Jews, and this is my speculation.

Nowhere in the OT does it indicate that the Messiah would be anything other than a male Jewish human being.

The mentions that are construed by the Church as evidence of the existence of the Holy Spirit are in my mind pretty suspect, and seems to have their roots in early Egyptian thinkers like Plotinus and reflected in the writings of St.Augustine of Hippo (Hippo the African city, not the zoo animal).

I have enough trouble believing in one deity: three that is actually one, but still three at the same time, that is truly dubious to me.
I mostly discard the idea that the Bible is the divine word of anyone.

[Universe Prince]

<<What makes you think there wasn't any warning?>>

There's a very clear prohibition against worship of anyone or anything other than the God that got them out of Egypt, and then there's some kind of very subtle rider attached to the warning that some people can see and some apparently can't that says, "Oh yeah, by the way, for those of you who are really, really hip, I happen to have a son and it's OK to worship him too."

Perhaps I am not being clear. Jesus as God is the God who brought them out of Egypt. But I find amusing that an atheist is arguing for a strict and literal interpretation of the Old Testament. I think you're getting hung up on the words and missing the possibility of something beyond your expectation or understanding. But this is always the problem with God and language. Our words limit our thoughts, and so our thinking about God is limited, yet God is more than we can understand with our words. It is our stumbling stone.

[Plane]

I have enough trouble believing in one deity: three that is actually one, but still three at the same time, that is truly dubious to me.

There is more than one way to understand it , but it isn't all that complicated.

Can speaking of Africa , Asia and Austrailia be construed to be speaking of three diffrent planets? How can one planet have three such diffrent aspects?

[Universe Prince]

There is no mention whatever of any sort of Trinity in the Old Testament. None at all, not even a suggestion.

Actually, there is a suggestion, and I've mentioned it already.