His name will be Emanuel?

[Wertbag]

So Isaiah gives a Messianic prophecy saying the Messiah would be named Emanuel.  Jump forward several centuries and Mary and Jo decide to call their kid Jesus, therefore failing that part of the prophecy.  Matthew writes his book later, and seeing this gap tries to work it in based on the names hebrew roots (Emanuel equals "God with us").

It seems that to reconcile this gap you have to ignore the clear literal words "his name will be..." and try to say they actually meant something completely different.  Apparently the name Emanuel only appears twice as a name in the bible, once when Isaiah says it and once when Matt tried to shoehorn it into Jesus's birth.  Never once is Jesus referred to by that name.

 

Am I missing anything about this?  Seems a pretty clear round peg to square hole situation, but perhaps there is some reason to think the words Isaiah said were actually not what he meant?

[♦ Fuego ♦]

I remember as a believer the willingness to settle for "oh, but he's god so that's close enough to call it good". But in other aspects, every single nuance had to be exactly right or it wouldn't be given the big OK of belief. Believers do that to us, saying we couldn't have believed because of the verse that says we were never among them, when we clearly were. So even when obvious reality is right there, nope a verse trumps that. Or "as soon as you even begin to believe, god is there for you 1000%". But if you deconvert, you didn't do belief just right. 

 

[◊ Weezer ◊]

3 hours ago, Wertbag said:

 

Am I missing anything about this?  Seems a pretty clear round peg to square hole situation, but perhaps there is some reason to think the words Isaiah said were actually not what he meant?

 

Thanks for the post.  Just one more of the dozens of inconsistancies that have popped up since I said "enough" and left the church 31 years ago.  Do you know of anyone who has compiled all these inconsistancies?

[Wertbag]

43 minutes ago, Weezer said:

Thanks for the post.  Just one more of the dozens of inconsistancies that have popped up since I said "enough" and left the church 31 years ago.  Do you know of anyone who has compiled all these inconsistancies?

I have seen some lists of bible errors, but I'm always doubtful at how careful they are with their research.  Some items sound incorrect, but there are solid apologetic reasons for them.  Give a Christian a single out and he'll throw the whole list away with a generalised statement "its all the same, easily debunked if you look deep enough".  I really want to find just a few gems rather than a large quantity.

I think one of the best contradictions was what was Jesus's last words?  3 different gospels give 3 different answers.  They can't all be correct, and yet the book was written by the Holy Spirit, so how do you get such variance?

[Silenthoofbeats22]

Rabbi Tovia discusses this often on his YouTube channel. 

I was raised in Xtianity but from a very early age I knew something was wrong. When I would read past the versus the preacher was quoting it often said something completely different than what he was talking about. 

I'm more agnostic but really questioning even that because in my 50 years on this Earth I've seen so much of what is suppose to be Xtianity, is actually very unloving, evil, whatever you want to call it. I truly believe most religion is about controlling people. 

[Joshpantera]

On 4/13/2022 at 5:53 PM, Wertbag said:

So Isaiah gives a Messianic prophecy saying the Messiah would be named Emanuel.  Jump forward several centuries and Mary and Jo decide to call their kid Jesus, therefore failing that part of the prophecy.  Matthew writes his book later, and seeing this gap tries to work it in based on the names hebrew roots (Emanuel equals "God with us").

It seems that to reconcile this gap you have to ignore the clear literal words "his name will be..." and try to say they actually meant something completely different.  Apparently the name Emanuel only appears twice as a name in the bible, once when Isaiah says it and once when Matt tried to shoehorn it into Jesus's birth.  Never once is Jesus referred to by that name.

 

Am I missing anything about this?  Seems a pretty clear round peg to square hole situation, but perhaps there is some reason to think the words Isaiah said were actually not what he meant?

 

You have to get into the trends around the time of the 1st century.

 

This one example, when you see it, then opens up a whole genre of similar writing throughout the New Testament. It's basically the same thing people do today when they take an isolated verse from the New Testament and use it in some way completely out of the context that it was originally written. In order to suite someone's personal agenda. 

 

Someone with an agenda, basically, would look through the scriptures and cite something completely out of its surrounding context in order to claim that their personal agenda is sanctioned by scripture. There was no virgin birth motif in Judaism. That was a popular pagan thing at the time, though. The writer went reaching for something that conformed to the pagan virgin birth motif of kings and rulers. What he sees in the Greek Septuagint version of the scriptures is a reference in Isaiah about a young women conceiving. Which can be interpreted as a virgin conceiving. And the child is to be named "Emmanuel," or God with us.

 

Isolated from its surrounding context, it looks like something that used to suite this writer's personal agenda. An agenda that had to do with appealing to pagan converts who 1) had no idea about the jewish scriptures and 2) expected something like the virgin birth motif for a king or ruler. And the writer wanted to claim that a prophecy was fulfilled with jesus. But Emmanuel was born and lived back in the context that Isaiah was writing about. It never was a prophecy of any type. It was written after the fact about a child named Emmanuel who would have already been born when the book of Isaiah was written. Completely different context than the personal agenda of the writer of Matthew. 

 

I've framed it as a dishonest act, and it may have been.

 

But these early christians seemed to think that the scriptures were a random code like this. Where little clues were sitting all over the place waiting to be noticed and plucked out here and there. And they were all doing it. The Isaiah quote mine is just the tip of the iceberg.

 

When you start to see it then it pops up all over the place. Basically, every time a writer in the NT cites an OT passage, go back and look at it very closely. And look at the surrounding context of the citation. You can start to see into the minds of the writers. And it opens up the writings much clearer. 

 

7 hours ago, Silenthoofbeats22 said:

Rabbi Tovia discusses this often on his YouTube channel. 

I was raised in Xtianity but from a very early age I knew something was wrong. When I would read past the versus the preacher was quoting it often said something completely different than what he was talking about. 

I'm more agnostic but really questioning even that because in my 50 years on this Earth I've seen so much of what is suppose to be Xtianity, is actually very unloving, evil, whatever you want to call it. I truly believe most religion is about controlling people. 

 

Yes, I noticed this in bible class by about the time of high school. My bible teacher was doing basically the same thing the NT writers were doing. He would jump from here to there and all over the place collecting a sentence or paragraph from one book and then leaping to something completely unrelated and pulling a few isolated sentences from there. And calling it a "Bible Study." 

 

What I noticed is that you can basically make the bible say anything you want. Like a murderer cutting out individual letters from media and gluing it together to make a note for the police to follow. Every single letter taken out of some context and pieced together one by one to create a note. That was basically his "Bible Study." Only instead of individual letters he'd take whole sentences or paragraphs out of their surrounding context. And them present it as supporting whatever his own personal agenda happened to be. I noticed this a teen. And it pissed me off! I was floored at the idiocy involved and the insult to all of our intelligence. But that's another story altogether. I rebelled against it, and I'll leave it at that. 

 

Let's look at John. Same thing Matthew was doing. Again, the writer of John wants to present a personal agenda as if it were sanctioned by scripture. So he looks for something that kinda sorta fits the description of what he's trying to claim.

 

He wants the character of jesus to mouth off to the jewish religious leaders. So he writes John 10:30 "And and the father are one." Then goes off into this back peddling explanation for the claim. Which cites Psalms 82.

 

He says, "is it not written in YOUR law, 'I have called you gods?'" First of all, Psalms is not the law. Second of all, what's with "YOUR" law? The writer is speaking as though he's not jewish himself and framing the jews as other. And Psalms 82 is one of the verses in the OT that speak about the old "Elohim" pantheon of gods, called the "Sons of El." From Israels then, nearly forgotten by the time of the 1st century, polytheistic past.

 

It's not god calling the people of Israel, 'gods.' But that's what the writer of John claims. 

 

It's actually El Elyon the most high god of the pantheon speaking to the 'sons of El' and calling them 'gods," because they were literally a pantheon of gods serving under the most high god. And El Elyon is threatening to send them down to sheol, the place of the dead, where they will 'die like mortal men.' It's literally referring to pantheon gods being stripped of their powers for mismanagement and dying like mortal men. It had nothing to do with trying to claim that the people of Israel were called sons of god, by god. Doesn't say that. It's about gods speaking one to another and the common people of Israel don't even factor into the quote mine. 

 

That's just two very popular examples. There are more examples of improper, out of context quote mining to further one's own personal agenda, all over the place in the NT. It was a thing at the time. People didn't think much about doing it. But at the same time, the jews were never convinced by any of this. It's easy to see why jews wouldn't go for any of this. It's blatantly incorrect usage of the jewish scriptures. And they wouldn't have been stupid enough to buy it. But pagan people who didn't have a clue, sure, why not? Sign me up! Leading to centuries of scorn and torture aimed at the jews because of these stupidly contrived myths that the jews were too smart to buy into. 

 

The early christians were deceiving people into joining a new cult whichever way it's spun. The cult of christianity. There's intellectual dishonesty involved in the very act of quote mining out of context. Make the pagans think that only the jewish god is real, and that the jewish god wants to recruit non-jews as his new chosen people. While trashing the jews the whole time and writing polemics. Leading to the Spanish Inquisition and Nazi Germany, to be quite frank about it. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[freshstart]

On 4/13/2022 at 9:11 PM, Fuego said:

"as soon as you even begin to believe, god is there for you 1000%". But if you deconvert, you didn't do belief just right. 

OMG. . .  this couldn't be more true. For the fledgling Christian , its okay if you stumble and doubt, your belief (,i.e. brainwashing) will grow strong over time. God will be with you all the way.

 

But when God fails to show up, its suddenly not okay to be struggling. Because we should "know better" ( i.e. be fully brainwashed). So now its our fault that God isn't showing up (i.e. the brainwashing didn't take full effect, or its wearing off).

The mental gymnastics is impressive.

[Wertbag]

On 5/28/2022 at 9:27 AM, Joshpantera said:

What I noticed is that you can basically make the bible say anything you want.

I saw an example of this highlighted during the Amercian civil war.  The Northern troops were Christians and would quote anti-slavery verses (Exodus 21:16 "Whoever steals a man and sells him... shall be put to death", Galatians 5:1 "For freedom, Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore and do not submit to a yoke of slavery" or Deut 24:7 "If a man is found stealing one of his brothers...  and treats him as a slave, then that thief shall die.  You shall purge the evil from your midst")

 

While the Southern troops were also Christian and would quote slavery verses.  Both sides fully justified their positions by the bible, and could believe they were following God's objective law as written on their hearts.  The holy spirit lead them to the right answer, even though it lead both sides to the opposite answers...

The ship owners, slave traders, ship crews and the politicians making the slavery laws were all Christians.  Later those politicians making the Jim Crow laws were all Christians.  

You can certainly justify any position if you cherry pick it just right.

[◊ Weezer ◊]

7 hours ago, Wertbag said:

 

You can certainly justify any position if you cherry pick it just right.

 

YEP!

[Joshpantera]

On 5/29/2022 at 5:32 PM, Wertbag said:

I saw an example of this highlighted during the Amercian civil war.  The Northern troops were Christians and would quote anti-slavery verses (Exodus 21:16 "Whoever steals a man and sells him... shall be put to death", Galatians 5:1 "For freedom, Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore and do not submit to a yoke of slavery" or Deut 24:7 "If a man is found stealing one of his brothers...  and treats him as a slave, then that thief shall die.  You shall purge the evil from your midst")

 

While the Southern troops were also Christian and would quote slavery verses.  Both sides fully justified their positions by the bible, and could believe they were following God's objective law as written on their hearts.  The holy spirit lead them to the right answer, even though it lead both sides to the opposite answers...

The ship owners, slave traders, ship crews and the politicians making the slavery laws were all Christians.  Later those politicians making the Jim Crow laws were all Christians.  

You can certainly justify any position if you cherry pick it just right.

 

I know! You have the opposite going on with, "Slaves, obey your masters." Total cluster fuck. It's all over the place. Further reason to justify treating mythology as mythology and not trying to insist that one mythology is really true and all others false. Different authors, contradicting each other. People grabbing for their preferred side of a contradiction while others are grabbing for the opposite.

 

Allowing some 40,000 plus christian denominations. This is beyond ridiculous. Luckily, it's fading out fast these days and losing steam in a demonstrable way finally. 

[Moonobserver]

https://jewsforjudaism.org/knowledge/articles/isaiah-714-a-virgin-birth
 

 

You may want to start watching this at 44:30---

 

https://youtu.be/jL4hUWzTO5Y

[alreadyGone]

On 5/27/2022 at 11:07 PM, freshstart said:

OMG. . .  this couldn't be more true. For the fledgling Christian , its okay if you stumble and doubt, your belief (,i.e. brainwashing) will grow strong over time. God will be with you all the way.

 

But when God fails to show up, its suddenly not okay to be struggling. Because we should "know better" ( i.e. be fully brainwashed). So now its our fault that God isn't showing up (i.e. the brainwashing didn't take full effect, or its wearing off).

The mental gymnastics is impressive.

 

Very astute observation, and worth repeating.

 

[DOA]

The word Emmanuel doesn't mean Jesus is God.  That perversion comes from diabolical people obsessed with the pipe dream of a trinity.  If anything - the word actually implies 'God is with Jesus'.