Your thoughts on 2 men, Trump and Osteen

[steve7150]

Finally, and a little off topic, but part of the original subject, can you give us evidence that Donald Trump is a fascist?








I know the question was not directed at me but,
for a guy in Trump's position he is amazingly inarticulate. He is concerned about Islam and with good reason, it is in fact a dangerous belief system. If he could explain why Islam is dangerous it would come across a lot better then saying "I want to ban muslims until we figure out what the hell is going on." Also the border is a real issue with heroin and virtually anyone poring across the border, open borders does put our citizens at risk. But instead of explaining why he wants to build a wall, he simply initially just said "we have to ban Mexicans."
Trump is a bully and he can be quite inarticulate, but he is not a fascist.

I like the other 3 Republican candidates better but unfortunately they have no chance to win. If you believe the fetus is a human being and a candidate says they are "pro-choice" then what is this choice referring to? That's why I can't vote for a democrat, since amazingly they have all become pro-choice.

[morbo3000]

Where is the error? Again, in my post I explicitly stated some of the errors:
1. Not believing that the Bible is inerrant.
2. Saying that the writers of the Bible did not claim that their writings were divinely inspired and so not assuming that the Bible is inspired.
3. Not recognizing that the church, by and large, thoughout the centuries has believed that the Bible is inerrant and is divinely inspired by God.

Those are errors against what you think is faithful Christianity. But they aren't failures of exegesis. And they aren't failures of faith. Only your brand.

I understand that inerrancy and inspiration are very important to you. However, they are not required to do exegesis with integrity.

4. Here's one that I did not mention earlier: Believing in a non-existent gospel of "Q" and drawing conclusions as if it did exist.

First of all, "Q" is a hypothetical document, not an actual book. There is no "new" material in it. It is a compilation of the verses that both Matthew and Luke share, but aren't found in Mark. If you've ever seen an interlinear Bible, you've seen how stories that are told in two, or three or even all four gospels are laid out next to each other so you can compare and contrast them side by side. When you do that, you can see that Matthew and Luke both relied on Mark's gospel in some places. And they each had their own material. But in some places, they both tell stories, with shared language from what is evidently a second source.

Second, I don't know why you would be threatened by it anyway. There is a lost letter to the Corinthians, written by Paul, that I'm pretty sure you would be excited to find. We are talking about 1st century material here, not gnostic gospels or pseudopigrapha books like the gospel of Peter or the gospel of Judas written from the 2nd and 4th century.

By the way, since Trump appears to be your enemy, how are you loving him, as Jesus told us to do?

I would non-violently protest against him. Which I guess would be loving rebuke. I wouldn't use violence. The majority of the protestors are non-violent. When they resort to violence, I would decry their actions. But by all accounts, the violent ones are Trumps supporters. But, YMMV.

I'm not going to get into Trump any more than I already have. The resource for determining fact from fiction with him is politifact.com (as well as every other candidate.) They are an independent organization tasked with measuring the truthfulness of public figure's statements. Anywhere from true to partly true, to partly false to false, to pants-on-fire false. They are non-partisan.

[Homer]

Morbo,

You wrote:

There is no "new" material in it. It is a compilation of the verses that both Matthew and Luke share, but aren't found in Mark. If you've ever seen an interlinear Bible, you've seen how stories that are told in two, or three or even all four gospels are laid out next to each other so you can compare and contrast them side by side. When you do that, you can see that Matthew and Luke both relied on Mark's gospel in some places. And they each had their own material. But in some places, they both tell stories, with shared language from what is evidently a second source.

I'm sure you mean a harmony or chronological compilation of the gospels rather than an interlinear New Testament. Anyway, if Matthew's gospel was first, as the early church believed, it is easy to see that Luke could have used Matthew as a source. Luke claims to have used eyewitness testimony. Matthew was obviously an eyewitness, being one of the twelve. Why would you think Matthew would need a second source since he was an eyewitness to the events? Who could that have been other than another Apostle? And Mark could have certainly used Matthew as a source fo a condensed gospel. "Q" appears to be speculation based on the questionable assumption that things always get expanded upon. Perhaps Mark wrote all he could remember from tradition he heard.

Are you aware that a great deal of what Jesus said was in the form of Aramaic poetry? This was done to facilitate accurate memory of what was spoken. C. F. Burney translated the Greek back into Aramaic and discovered the poetry. In Burney's book "The Poetry of Our Lord" you can see by the scripture index that Matthew recorded more than twice as many of Jesus' sayings than Mark. This seems to me to demonstrate that Matthew knew of many more sayings than Mark, who was not an eyewitness to them.

[Paidion]

Here we see the error of the so-called scholarly approach to Bible interpretation. Throughout the centuries, the church, including scholars have given their stamp of approval on the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible and yet that's not good enough for some people. God is more than able to watch over His word to keep it pure and understandable. The "wise and intelligent" will not see that, but "infants" will. Luke 10:21

How could the Church "have given their stamp of approval on the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible"? In the early centuries of the Church, there was no such animal as "The Bible"?

If there is an inspired and inerrant book, called the Bible, containing a number of writings by varied authors, how do you know which writings should be included in that inspired and inerrant book? Why, for example, is Esther included and Judith excluded? Each book is about a heroic woman who saved her Hebrew people. The book of Esther does not even include the word "God" (at least the Protestant version).

In the second and third centuries, the gnostics came up with a lot of writings that they ascribed to the apostles, whereas they composed them themselves. So the Church attempted to determine which were truly apostolic, and therefore qualified to be read in the churches. One of these writings that were read in the churches was Clement's letter to the Corinthians, written shortly after Paul and Peter's deaths. Clement was Paul's fellow labourer (Philippians 4:3). But it didn't become part of our "New Testaments". Do you reject its inspiration on that basis only? If so, why? Do you think fourth-century Athanasius and others were inspired to select the correct books to be included in "the canon of Scripture"? If so, there must be inspiration outside of the Bible.

Also, there were many in those early years who rejected 2 Peter as a forgery, and also doubted 2nd and 3rd John, Jude, and Revelation.

You may wish to do some research at this informative site:

http://www.bible-researcher.com/canon.html

Here are just two errors in the New Testament. How do you deal with these?

1. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, saying, “And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him on whom a price had been set by some of the sons of Israel, and they gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord directed me” (Matt 27:9,10). These words are not found in the prophecy of Jeremiah. Rather very similar words are found in Zech 11: 12-13, a passage from which this quotation was likely made. It seems that Matthew simply made a mistake and named the wrong prophet.

Some attempt to explain away this apparent mistake by pointing out that Matthew said these words were SPOKEN by the prophet Jeremiah, rather than WRITTEN by the prophet Jeremiah. However, if one looks at other passages in the New Testament which quote to prophets, one finds that it was usual for Matthew to write that his quotes were SPOKEN by the prophet. See Matt 1:22, 2:15, 2:17, 4:14, 8:17, 12:17, 13:35, and 21:4. John also did this (John 12:38). So this "explanation" will not do.

2. It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord came with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” (Jude 1: 14, 15)

These words have their source in the book of Enoch, and that book is still extant today (I have a copy). Clement of Alexandria, Irenæus, and Tertullian also thought the book was written by the historic Enoch, the seventh from Adam. But it wasn't. The book mentions the Parthians, and they were entirely unknown in history until the 250th year before Christ. This and other internal evidence indicate that the book of Enoch was written about the middle of the second century B.C. So Jude was mistaken in thinking that the prophecy that he obtained from the book of Enoch was the words of the historic Enoch, the seventh from Adam. Thus Jude's statement was erroneous that these words were that of the historic Enoch, the seventh from Adam.

[morbo3000]

I'm sure you mean a harmony or chronological compilation of the gospels rather than an interlinear New Testament.

Yep. Gospels in parallel. Inter linear was wrong.

Matthew was obviously an eyewitness, being one of the twelve. Why would you think Matthew would need a second source since he was an eyewitness to the events? Who could that have been other than another Apostle?

We don't know who wrote the Gospel attributed to Matthew. It is anonymous. It was attributed to a "Matthew" in the second century, passed down from Papius to Eusebius. I welcome corrections to this, but as far as I know, this is the only source we have attributing it to Matthew.

However the gospel doesn't contain the types of writing Papias describes, so consensus is that Papias was describing a document we no longer have, and not the gospel that was later attributed to a "Matthew."

My only opinion on that is that we shouldn't read too much into the gospel based on conjecture as to who wrote it.

This is a good summary of the opinions on Matthew's gospel. Plenty of sources if you want to dig into it more. It's ok if you disagree.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Matthew

Are you aware that a great deal of what Jesus said was in the form of Aramaic poetry? This was done to facilitate accurate memory of what was spoken. C. F. Burney translated the Greek back into Aramaic and discovered the poetry. In Burney's book "The Poetry of Our Lord" you can see by the scripture index that Matthew recorded more than twice as many of Jesus' sayings than Mark. This seems to me to demonstrate that Matthew knew of many more sayings than Mark, who was not an eyewitness to them.

That's interesting. I don't really know much about the Aramaic roots, except that approaching the gospels this way is problematic. The idea that Matthew was originally in Aramaic is based on Papius' claim, which doesn't hold up to close examination of the text. But I don't have a dog in that fight. It's above my pay grade. There's a good discussion of it here.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblic ... us_in_the/


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[dwight92070]

There is no proof that the Book of Enoch even existed at the time Jude wrote his book (most likely just before the destruction of Jerusalem) Also Clement of Rome (about A.D.96) and Clement of Alexandria (about A.D.200) both alluded to the authenticity of Jude. Because Jude was Jesus' half brother and his eye-witness knowledge of the resurrected Christ, and the content of his epistle, it was acknowledged as inspired and was included in the Muratorian Canon (A.D.170).

As far as Matthew saying that Jeremiah SPOKE something that Zechariah WROTE, that appears to be entirely possible, The Jewish belief is that they were contemporaries.

[dwight92070]

Who fact checks Politifact? It appears to have favoritism toward the left.

I'm still waiting to see evidence of Trump's being a fascist. Or proof that the protestors at his rallies are his own people.

[steve7150]

I'm still waiting to see evidence of Trump's being a fascist. Or proof that the protestors at his rallies are his own people.










They are from or inspired by "moveon.org" a left wing org financed by Soros. They asked one of the protesters "What did Trump say to upset you?" and after smiling and thinking for 10 seconds the fellow said "He wants to ban muslims, some of my friends are muslims." Sure, if you look on moveon.org they offer free teeshirts to show your solidarity with muslims.

[Homer]

In regard to Christians and politics, hopefully we would all (liberal or conservative) agree to the following excellent reminder:

http://johnmarkhicks.com/2016/03/14/the ... istries%29

[Paidion]

There is no proof that the Book of Enoch even existed at the time Jude wrote his book...

How could Jude have quoted from it, if it didn't exist? Surely the fact that he quoted from it, is the strongest proof that could exist.

Also Clement of Rome (about A.D.96) and Clement of Alexandria (about A.D.200) both alluded to the authenticity of Jude.

To allude to the authenticity of Jude and to affirm the inerrancy of Jude are two different stances.