(The Julian calendar aligns with the Roman calendar of the first century. The proleptic Gregorian would be two days off from that in that century. There's no issue which one you use, but IMHO most historians use the Julian because the locals did at that time.)
The leap year drift does account for why Christmas is December 25 instead of the solstice around December 21, because it took about 4 centuries of drift to solidify; but the solstice has always been in late December and not at the beginning (kalends) of a new Roman month. But God knows why he let different eras use different calendars, and no data point is contradicted by the existence of drift of "Christmas".
Thanks, Crazy, that's actually a better argument than Winston Smith was giving! As a Protestant I still hope for that extranormative connection to the True Church.
Howdy, Light, what you have just done is called by some here "Gish gallop", named after someone I respect Duane Gish, who was often accused of bringing up several unrelated points all at once. Fact is, if you're in a debate and there's enough time for all questions to be answered, it makes sense to let loose, but you should get the other person's permission and it should fit the debate format.
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It's reasonable to start with proof that God exists and what he is like, and then to search for his revelation in the world and to find the Bible and Jesus Christ to have high reviews for that status, and then to investigate and find this to have higher reliability and consistency than any other approach; that's not circular (although it's correct to say some formulations by Catholics, Orthodox, or Protestants are circular). The historical fact that the death of Jesus is associated with immediate reports of resurrection that became an ongoing movement among billions indicates that there may be something supernatural going on, and even if there isn't there's something that sustains and encourages more truth seekers than any other comparable narrative. When the veracity of the core is recognized, the possibility of other supernatural elements in the narrative can be reviewed too. But you don't have to start with the virgin birth if you're skeptical of that, start with the generally accepted fact that the gospel Jesus is unlike any human that ever lived, and look into why.
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Good things don't need marketing; forced conversions are a blot but they don't disprove a whole system but only a particular attempted application of it. The fact that missionaries believe they have such a good thing, that they don't market it for pay but live for years on subsistence to empathize with other cultures just to be able to share the good thing, suggests there may be something there. But obviously the 501(c)(3) that churns out self-help books in the name of Christ is not necessarily selling a good thing.
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The "higher school" of Biblical textual criticism is biased against the text, as the biographies of its 19th-century innovators show. However that's not relevant to the truth of the matter because I can go to any textual critic no matter how biased and, by God's grace, find the pathway to truth that works from what sources that person does accept as truth. The Bible is holistic in the sense that if you lose much of it you still have all you need. So if you're willing to state what your core revelation of truth is (whether it's a list of books, or a personal revelation that you can distinguish from other experience, or an outside source, or your own conscience), then you can still build to all truth from there. I find that lots of people who do that eventually realize the church's list of 66 books is Pretty Good Prophecy.
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I don't know how you know there were not two temple cleansings three years apart, as there is no contradiction or contraindication. There are several ways to harmonize texts if a person wants to treat them like any other historical documents; but if a person wants to disqualify them from the start he quibbles over minor issues instead of reads the main point. So that goes to what you want to do with the fact that there are two accounts of temple cleansing; have you got something better, or are you just complaining without a solution? Sincere question.
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(a) Matthew is giving an accurate, but incomplete, genealogy, where it is known that about 4 kings (regarded as of less account) are omitted, and other later names may be omitted. This is not regarded as deception, but as selection; the purpose of the selection is to emphasize that the genealogy is Davidic and the important parts of it can be remembered with 3 lists of 14 names (41 generations), which is easy to remember because of the gematria. Also culturally nobody quibbled about inclusive rather than exclusive counting. (b) I love Codex Bezae, but it doesn't indicate your narrative about Jesus becoming at one with God at baptism via soul birth. If you approach the text believing that it was intended to use false statements to teach mystical concepts secretly, that contradicts historical inquiry and invalidates ability to derive anything from the text, because the secret could be proposed to be anything. But people didn't do that in those days, they circulated historical accounts for the purpose of testifying historically what actually happened. If you investigate the sources of your claim, you'll find that they arise from a proposed oral tradition in competition with the oral tradition used by mainstream Christianity. When you look at the histories of the two traditions, the mainstream (despite its quirks) has a clear demonstration of being the actual tradition intended by the apostles, when compared to any esoteric tradition. So if you agree on what standards of proof you wish to use, the judgment of what is really true about the account can be made objectively, and I'd be happy to work with you on seeking that judgment jointly under any agreeable standards.
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It's actually irrelevant to argue whether Theophilus was a real person or an allegorical title, because those are both possible plaintext readings. What you're doing though is to find esoteric (secret-order) readings and then substituting them for the plaintext. It's an established canon of construction that Judean texts were to be judged on four levels, the first being the plaintext and the last being the esoteric, and all four levels were cooperative with the plaintext always being more determinative than the rest. (A secret might be intended, but the plain meaning is always intended.) The problem is that people who uphold convenient numbers like 432 also don't go very far in teaching that anything comes of it. Wow, I found 432 twice, that means what? Well, it means the text is holy, what else? Well, the person might say, I don't know because I don't believe the text actually means what it says. Such a person only has a feelgood experience from finding the number, and might get a (diminishing-return) experience again from finding another number, but is not using the text the way the person wrote it, which is to be a conduit for God's teaching on every level starting with the plain meaning.
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You are free to reject the plain teaching about sin, but you are not free to ignore that thousands of years of history support that the same plain teaching, as it developed, was upheld by a covenant preservative community. This community upheld the plain meaning and was not sustained by some secret symbolic reading. Some propose that there existed a secret community all this time that knew the secret, but you see that anyone could make such a claim and deny all evidence. Maybe I am the current exponent of a secret community that was founded 6,017 years ago and has preserved secrets that I speak to the willing in secret, which have never been written down but have always been transmitted orally and even nonverbally; how then could your claims of secrets compete with mine, except by our agreeing on objective judgment standards for truth?
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(a) I have a lot of experience with quantum physics, but you don't go to any specific so I can only guess your application; and much of quantum physics permits any religion to claim they have had a corner on what the physicists are arguing about but don't have consensus on. Sure we are to become like Jesus and pursue gnosis and reject pseudognosis. Have you protected yourself against including pseudognosis (false knowledge masquerading as real) in your experience? Gnostics have that problem of not being able to distinguish the two unless they know what standards distinguish truth from error. Look into it. (b) Historians have hidden the fact that the Hyksos expulsion of c. 1539 BC was attested to involve the departure of myriads of Semites from Egypt, and yet they don't think that's the Exodus, partly because they use excuses to late-date Moses and then ignore the Hyksos. Yes, Abraham came from the Canaanites and lived among them, and Israelites were influenced by Canaanite culture for centuries, but you don't have evidence that you can know for certain these things never happened.
TLDR: If you're interested in gaining more gnosis on these points, I suggest you share your standards for judgment and your commitment to pursue truth at all costs. If you're one of those who doesn't pursue truth because you think contradictions are fine, you won't have any way to protect yourself from actual lies or destructive narratives. But if you do pursue truth, you will be able to state how you distinguish truth from pseudognosis. The rest is detail on that theme.
Funny, I heard the same thing about bodies of dead Israelis.
I love how you mention two candidates and immediately jump to your undeniable certainty without evidence. Bethlehem is a suburb of Jerusalem and a perfectly fitting stayover for those who intend to commute to fulfill the festival requirements, there is no halakhah that says you must live within the Jerusalem boundaries for a week. The command, Ex. 23:14-17, doesn't even mention Jerusalem because it wasn't the location immediately intended anyway (its status had not been revealed); the intent was to appear before the LORD meaning wherever the ark was stored signaling his presence (which has an interesting history of movement). You express ignorance both of the taurat and of the injil.
Heh heh. I've already demonstrated that all these are in the category of typology, which would also include the new coincidence trail, and that should only be used as a secondary reference to confirm what is accurately witnessed by primary references, because typology can be twisted to produce any number of coincidences.
God allowed Josephus to record just enough data about the period to give us the general picture and to find more details by analysis. In particular, putting the birth of Jesus on that early date does not agree with the timing of Josephus, nor of the timing of Matthew in how long the kings would take to come from the east. I probably have some additional notes lying around here about why it's reasonable for the Chinese-observed comet to mark the beginning of the kings' journey. Further, Hyakutake can be calculated to have entered the solar system with a period of approximately 17,000 years, not exactly 2,000 years. So to hit a couple secondary matches doesn't help if there are several primary fails.
That's why I don't argue about it, but I also blithely say Jesus was born 6 Oct 4 BC at 3 a.m. on primary and secondary evidence.
These are all six manipulable, and all six have been documented as having been manipulated many times. I just proved that Bill Nye was shilling for provably false ice core data. So you just ask Jesus instead, who was there and knows how long ago things happened.
Imagine when we start dating the universe and every measuring tool amounts to being nothing more than light, how crazy the exaggerations get.
Dionysius miscalculated.
OP knows that I've proven Christ was born on 6 Oct at 3 a.m., 4 "BC" or Julian year -3, i.e. 3 years before Dionysius thought he was.
Yes, I've never hidden it. The Swamp Rangers org never had any intent to take over the forum. You missed my irony. No lies.
Yes, when you proposed modship I did for a day or two suggest I could do it until you remembered your past with me and bailed on me and I stopped promoting myself. The rest of this month it's been cleanup after you. But I accept your thanks for all the lying attacks I've been through.
Yes, the land Judea (Iudaea) was named after the Judahites. The Judahites had explicitly absorbed Levi and Benjamin, and implicitly absorbed some other tribes like Asher and Simeon. The "lost tribes", if they continued to exist, migrated from Assyria and might be anywhere. So the Judahites continue the Israelite polity today because the lost tribes didn't knowingly do so.
If you wish to say the lost tribes mostly informed the whites, that theory is pretty good for this forum. That's not relevant to my point.
Since Jesus was Ioudaios and Judahite, he was one with the people who eventually got called Ju. There is no other people in the land after the 7th century BC that "fought for power" from within the same collective; the Samaritans were from another race. Only the kingdom of Judah reconstituted around 620 BC continued the name of Judahite, and only they (with those who were born or naturalized to them) contribute to today's Jewish people.
Of course there are other Israelites, Hebrews, and Semites out there, but we don't get to contradict the Bible saying that Jesus was Ioudaios, and we don't get to contradict history saying Ioudaios became Jew.
As someone who agrees with not letting the Swamp Rangers organization take over, someone exposing the truth while being constantly attacked, I totally affirm this post. You're welcome. Since you ask, I will continue to defend this place from attack.
I think the Architect represents an intermediate being that has tabs on everything but does not have ultimate control of anything. The king on the asteroid who wouldn't get up, in The Little Prince by Saint-Exupery, is the type.
u/guywholikesDjtof2024, OP narrative is modifed from The Urantia Book, it's a total nother vortex to get into, they've spent decades reinterpreting the whole Bible so that they feel insulated, and they meet truth with just-noticeable twists. Not easy to interact with so I often don't.
Theistic evolutionists can shoehorn their way into the creeds. What they cannot do is say as Hitler said, "This planet will once again follow its orbit through space devoid of humanity." That's what contradicts the universal creed of the Second Coming. Usually theistic evolutionists don't do that, and even Tipler's Big Crunch is intended to be consistent with some thoughts of the Second Coming.
If theistic evolutionists want to handwave away both most of Genesis 1-11 and "by one man came death", even though Jesus says Adam was historical, they have a double shoehorn because they have to fit a bunch of alternate reading in and they have to deny aspects of evolution as well. They affirm humanity has meaning and received a spark of divinity, which is not intended by evolution at all and adds to its improbability, and they also must theorize that prior primates did not count as sapient and so some creatures are below others in the same interfertility group. Obviously today we call that racism, and I don't think Adam was racist against any primates he was related to.
So, while I'm not silent about by objections and criticisms, I'm not going to say old-earth contradicts the creeds, it just has to be very cagy about its interpretations. But future dooming does contradict the creeds.
They're not satanic, they're to direct discussion about satan. No prayers have been offered there, maybe you'd like to say a covering prayer.
Another side note, I don't have a problem with cavemen or Neanderthals being children of Adam. It's probable that many prediluvians lived in caves, and Neanderthals are interfertile with Homo sapiens and are basically just badly nourished humans with distinctive skulls. There is a measurable DNA barcode difference between Homo and Pan or any monkey.
There is also evidence that Roosevelt sent employees to request advice from House, who was in retirement. That really sealed the deal for me on the flow of American history being an attempt to narrate Philip Dru.
Jesus was Ioudaios (Greek), which is the same as Judaeus (Latin), which was elided to Ju (900s French). If you wish to posit some other people that have no ancestry from the sons of Judah, you'll need to demonstrate the history. I've asked and there is no evidence forthcoming.
I've repeatedly said I have no presence on Reddit. People make up what they want to believe. I have been a moderator on other small sites.
I don't have alts here and I don't dilute topics the community wants. I've posted a reasonable number of posts on topics I think the community wants, like anyone. But we don't have a focus here, so antinatalism, Hitlerism, anti-Judaism, Christianity, theistic evolution, meta, and whatever other topics get posted are chosen by the participants without reference to whether they should or should not connect to a central topic. I'm mystified as to what you think I'm "diluting", except for your quest for a mod that agrees with you, which I've never stood in the way of.
Your idea of who is "infesting" the forum differs from ideas of others. The way to find unity is through consensus-building, otherwise nobody will get modded and we're at the mercy of whatever present mod becomes active next. If you want to move forward I suggest you stop the meta and attacking and go back to your initial proposal of unifying things that contributors can do now without moderation.
Add: I see I spoke a bit hastily because obviously I use the right of doppelganger (u/SwampRangersAlt) and forgot to mention that in the above. I added the word "here" above, because I don't use alts on c/Conspiracies as I do for doppelganger purposes on forums like c/FlatEarth. In other statements of my right to use doppelgangers I've made this qualification, so I apologize for not stating it at first here.
Christianity Community has weekly prayers (formerly daily) and we pray with those who post individual prayers too. We've often taken action to help each other, though that is harder to do as anons. We read Christian books together and engage Bible studies whenever someone has a continuing study to present, and we share music (that too is less often than the past).
I'm sad to hear you felt hated, I thought discussions like this were pretty genial. You were not disciplined for any content, and videos showing that some Jews hate Christians are permitted, but I've pointed out that many people see "lies" in the Talmud without recognizing how its context works or what is taken as the accurate quotation of jokes or nonauthoritative statements. We can debate the truth of your characterizations in any forum, if you think it didn't work in that one.
But what about the black slaves?
And the children of Israel journeyed ... and a mixed multitude went up also with them (Ex. 12:37-38).
Have you considered analyzing Paul's words and flow and culture without supplying your own assertions that do not come from those sources? It looks like you're asserting one thing without supplying evidence and then shifting the burden of proof for your claim onto someone else who declines to believe it.