Quote of the Day, by Dude I'm Free
@Marcus,
I feel saddened by your lack of faith. Just yesterday I read almost all of your numerous postings from a single topic from May. I fear for your soul. Why do you hate Zeus so much? I know for certain - 100% without any doubt - that Zeus has given you all good things.
It has been Zeus who has provided for you. In fact, everything good that has happened in your life has been directly because of Zeus' love for you. Yet, you still choose to hate Him, the almighty Zeus. Why? Why do you hate the one true God so much? You must have so much sin in your life, which has completely blinded you to the truth.
Because of everything good in your life, you should get on bended knee and thank Zeus. Anything bad that has happened in your life, it's your fault. Daily you continue to deny the very existence of the one true God; Zeus! May his name be praised.
You are deluded. And you will continue to be deluded until you repent of your many blasphemous sins and acknowledge that your made-up god does not exist. I believe that Satan has you in his grips. I believe that unless you repent of your sins and call out to Zeus you will be tortured for billions of years. Zeus loves you. Zeus wants your fellowship. Why do you hate him so much!?!
Please, Marcus. Before it's too late consider the fact that you worship a false god. Zeus is the only true God. The spirit of Zeus confirms it in my heart, therefore it is true. Zeus is real. Your god is not.
Please Marcus, stop hating Zeus. I am praying to Zeus for you! Maybe there is still time for you before Satan completely takes over your mind. Only Zeus knows. I will continue to have hope for you, Marcus.
25 comments:
Marcus didn't get this the first time it was posted...
Good reply.
The word θεὸς “Theos” (God) in the major Classical Greek Lexicon published by Oxford University Press:
A Greek-English Lexicon
Ninth Edition with Revised Supplement
H. G. Liddell, R. Scott, Henry Stuart Jones, Roderick McKenzie, P. G. W. Glare, and others.
God is defined by the deities of ancient Roman and Greece. As such, the Greek Classical textual tradition links “God” directly with the Classical Gods and not with the Christian pagan god Yahweh.
When Rome left the Gods that had made them great and became Christian, the mighty Roman empire began its decline until it was sacked.
It was Christianity and its god that ushered in the Dark Ages at the end of this great Classical period.
Maybe it's just me, but the "my god can beat up your god" concept seems flawed to me, if I understand the word "god" correctly, it's sort of nonsensical.
Good quote, I remember reading it the Day it was posted and thinking how good it was.
How can you argue against such nonsense? I mean if you insert the word Jesus instead of Zeus.
I believe that Satan has you in his grips.
Maybe there is still time for you before Satan completely takes over your mind.
Should be "Hades"
Maybe it's just me, but the "my god can beat up your god" concept seems flawed to me, if I understand the word "god" correctly, it's sort of nonsensical.
That is one its aspects - "My Daddy can beat up your Daddy". They're adult children; their development has been arrested, but they can't see it. To the contrary, they think we're the ones who are blind.
Harry,
1. You know you are not using lexical information correctly. Barr should have already warned you about context and semantics.
2. I don't suppose that, oh, economics, social dynamics, politics, and military tactics had anything to do with the fall of Rome. Or, I guess then Christianity really can take credit for the Renaissance and the scientific/industrial revolution.
Brad said,
"...2. I don't suppose that, oh, economics, social dynamics, politics, and military tactics had anything to do with the fall of Rome..."
That's correct. All those things had something to do with Rome's fall. COnstantine embraced Christianity not because it was true, but because he saw the potential of having armies of fanatics to obey his empire, and possibly save Rome from ruin.
It was political. It always was.
"God is defined by the deities of ancient Roman and Greece. As such, the Greek Classical textual tradition links 'God' directly with the Classical Gods and not with the Christian pagan god Yahweh."
Uh, no. Plato's and Aristotle's views of God, for example, have far more in common with the Christian God than the "false and lying" gods of classical paganism. And, of course, there were the Early Christians who read, wrote, and spoke Ancient Greek as their primary language.
"When Rome left the Gods that had made them great and became Christian, the mighty Roman empire began its decline until it was sacked.
It was Christianity and its god that ushered in the Dark Ages at the end of this great Classical period."
You don't know the first thing about Late Antiquity. The Christian Roman Empire in the East lasted until 1453 A.D. The Western Roman Empire collapsed because of barbarian invasions, inept rulers like Honorius (not that his brother was any better), and political machinations against skilled leaders like Flavius Aëtius.
"COnstantine embraced Christianity not because it was true, but because he saw the potential of having armies of fanatics to obey his empire, and possibly save Rome from ruin.
It was political. It always was."
You can add that to your stockpile of delusions.
Brad,
Would you agree that אלהים (Masoretic text) is masculine plural?
Would you also agree that ὁ θεὸς (LXX) is masculine singular?
So, in Genesis 1:1, did an assembly of male gods create the heavens and the earth or did one god create? (If you want to play the Trinity card, then I’ll let your explain the other names of אל + prefixes in the MT text.)
Can you show me why the divine name יהוה does not occur in the entire New Testament? Could it just be that “son of god” fit the Hellenic context of the Greek would while יהוה would have been an abhorrent pagan name for them, especially after the Jews were expelled from Rome in 46 CE?
Secondly, my view is in line with that of Edward Gibbons The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Weather or nor Gibbons was anti-Christian, his views of the end of the Roman Empire agrees with mine.
Another insider's look at how Christianity really worked in the late Empire is discussed in G.W. Bowersock’s award winning book: Julian the Apostate.
Julian, the grandson of Constantine, gives a horrific story about members of his own Christian family were murders and why he remained a non-Christian ("pagan", a derogatory tern I equate with "nigger").
Nice comeback.
If you had anything constructive to say about it I have no doubt you would not have withheld your opinions.
That, after all would be out of character for...
O'Brien.
Hey OBrien,
Since you know all the facts, I’ll redirect my MT & LXX textual questions to you.
Waiting....
Harry, this makes me reminisce about our knock downs from a while ago.
I just want to talk about your first point now. Are you getting this from mythicist literature?
Elohim is not cut and dry, because the "oh" is an additive. The basic 3mp form would be "elim", which is attested in the OT. Elohim is also used for plural, but not uniformly (don't forget Barr's warning on lexical information). But the way to distinguish is really pretty simple. In Ge. 1:1 the main verb, "bara" is the 3ms form. So in this sentence, the subject is singular. This is consistent throughout Genesis 1 until 1:26, where the 1st person plural is used (you know, with the nun on the front). This is where echoes of the divine council are seen, not in 1:1. If you hold to the Documentary hypothesis, which I assume you do, I have no idea how you would make sense of the Priestly writer in Genesis 1:1 allowing for a pantheon. The divine council is more of a literary device, with most of the rest of the evidence for it coming from wisdom literature.
Next, as to why there is no mention of "yahweh" in the NT. All you have to do is pick up a LXX and read Psalm 1. There YHWH is translated as the Greek "kyrios". This is consistent in the LXX and makes sense because YHWH is pointed in the Masoretic as the Hebrew word for "lord", "adonai." Fast forward to the "Hellenistic" gospel of John, and what is Thomas' confession at the climax of the book upon seeing the resurrected Jesus? "Ho kyrios mou kai ho theos mou!" (My Lord and my God!)
I have no idea why you bring up the Jews' expulsion from Rome in 46 AD, and it sounds like you're getting farther out on the branch here. "Son of god" is widely attested in 2nd Temple literature, so I also can't see how that would be anachronistic (don't believe me, as Thom Stark).
If you want to keep this argument up, it's going to need some serious revision.
*ask Thom Stark
Hi Brad,
Your claims deserve some serious consideration. I will give a full counter reply by this weekend.
I’m not sure Thom Stark’s place here, but I do have a number of the late James Barr’s books including The Semantics of Biblical Language and his Comparative Philology and The Text of the Old Testament I bought 25 to 30 years ago when Oxford University Press published both of them.
Stay tuned.
Harry
"Can you show me why the divine name יהוה does not occur in the entire New Testament?"
Um, maybe cuz it was written in Greek...
"Could it just be that 'son of god' fit the Hellenic context of the Greek would while יהוה would have been an abhorrent pagan name for them, especially after the Jews were expelled from Rome in 46 CE?"
No.
"Secondly, my view is in line with that of Edward Gibbons The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire."
Gibbon's work is 234 years old. I suggest the work of Peter Brown, A.H.M. Jones and Ramsey MacMullen
"Julian, the grandson of Constantine..."
Nephew.
I only studied Greek, not Hebrew, but if you are referring to Elohim, the following is from the Jewish Encyclopedia online:
Elohim.
The most common of the originally appellative names of God is Elohim (), plural in form though commonly construed with a singular verb or adjective. This is, most probably, to be explained as the plural of majesty or excellence, expressing high dignity or greatness: comp. the similar use of plurals of "ba'al" (master) and "adon" (lord). In Ethiopic, Amlak ("lords") is the common name for God. The singular, Eloah (), is comparatively rare, occurring only in poetry and late prose (in Job, 41 times). The same divine name is found in Arabic (ilah) and in Aramaic (elah). The singular is used in six places for heathen deities (II Chron. xxxii. 15; Dan. xi. 37, 38; etc.); and the plural also, a few times, either for gods or images (Ex. ix. 1, xii. 12, xx. 3; etc.) or for one god (Ex. xxxii. 1; Gen. xxxi. 30, 32; etc.). In the great majority of cases both are used as names of the one God of Israel.
The root-meaning of the word is unknown. The most probable theory is that it may be connected with the old Arabic verb "alih" (to be perplexed, afraid; to seek refuge because of fear). Eloah, Elohim, would, therefore, be "He who is the object of fear or reverence," or "He with whom one who is afraid takes refuge" (comp. the name "fear of Isaac" in Gen. xxxi. 42, 53; see also Isa. viii. 13; Ps. lxxvi. 12). The predominance of this name in the later writings, as compared with the more distinctively Hebrew national name Yhwh, may have been due to the broadening idea of God as the transcendent and universal Lord.
Harry, I'm subscribed to the thread, so I'll see your response when you post it. Patiently waiting.
@ Obrien:
"Can you show me why the divine name יהוה does not occur in the entire New Testament?"
Um, maybe cuz it was written in Greek...
RE: Ever hear of “Transliteration”? By your claim, the Semitic names David, Solomon, Abraham, Adam, Noah, the genealogy of Jesus should not be there either, nor should the Aramaic last words of Jesus from the cross be in Greek.
"Gibbon's work is 234 years old. I suggest the work of Peter Brown, A.H.M. Jones and Ramsey MacMullen."
RE: Peter Brown's specialty is Late Antiquity. Other than some short books on these topics, his major focused work was The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity. Brown does not write on Roman history, especially the period of the Caesars or the Republic.
A.H.M. Jones would be the nearest to objective modern Roman history today. He would be to Roman history what Peter Green is to Greek history.
Ramsey MacMullen (Yale University, emeritus) has been criticized for letting his pro-Christian views influence his works. Sadly, his best work: Enemies of the Roman Order: Treason, Unrest, and Alienation in the Empire is now long out of print.
Fergus Millar and his Emperor in the Roman World would be more effective than MacMullen on objectivity.
I’ll answer the rest in my reply to Brad.
Hi Brad,
Sorry about the delay, but other matters were more pressing. Since I last posted here, I have been elected President of our neighborhood association and in getting an attorney to make the county enforce zoning laws.
My reply will be posted tomorrow sometime in 3 – 4 parts.
Best,
Harry
Reply Part 1
Hi Brad,
First up is Elohim.
The Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (DDD, E.J. Brill; p668) states: The usual word for ‘god’ in the Hebrew Bible is ‘elohim, a plural formation of ‘eloah, the latter being expanded from the Common Semitic noun ‘il (=Eloah). // Since the Israelite concept of divinity included all praeternatural beings, also lower deities (in modern usage referred to as ‘spirits’, ‘angels’, ‘demons’, ‘semi-gods’, and the like0 maybe called ‘elohim. (p.669)
What follows in DDD are numerous examples of uses where אלהים is not the Judeo-Christian God, but false gods or teraphim (Gen. 31:30,32), or anonymous heavenly creatures (Ps. 8:6) and spirits of the dead (1 Sam. 28:13)also called אלהים.
While ‘el and ‘eloah are use as proper nouns in the Hebrew Bible, ‘elohim is not.
Your claim that ברא makes אלהים understood a 3rd person singular carries no real weight until the time of the Massoretes (600CE -750CE) when the text was standardized as drawn both from the LXX and rabbinic traditions. This is easily verifiable by photos of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Most Hebrew Lexicons will list verbs in their Qal / three letter roots, thus ברא is defined as “to create” and not as "he (god)created” as the late 7th century vowel pointing would have it read. (On this see: Williams Holladay’s discussion of the qal in his: A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament; Introduction, p. VIII. Plus, “to create” is not an infinitive either since it would have had the “ל” prefix to the root.)
What you have not considered in your apology is that אלהים, based on its etymology, could be anything from angles to demons doing the creating here, but I contend it means some type of “gods” for whatever reason the Temple scribe meant here.
Reply Part 2
Secondly, considering Genesis 1 & 2 are late stories (God’s Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea: Echoes of a Canaanite Myth in the Old Testament, by John Day (Cambridge University Press 1985)) even if it is of the Temple / Priestly authorship, you have not attempted to explain why a monotheistic religion would have used a plural form of a Semitic language when their nearest and older neighbors at Ugarit (1300 BCE)list their main god ’il (who is the head of the Ugaritic pantheon) as well as the younger ba’al as singular!
Even older Akkadian cuneiform texts from where these mythical stories of creation and Eden are set, list their gods in the singular, be they male or female (An Illustrated Dictionary: Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia, University of Texas Press, 2006).
So again, if Yahwehism is really monotheistic, why even use an undefined plural term in Genesis 1 that can carries with it numerous meanings?
Moreover, the use of
יהוה אלהים
beginning in 2:4 adds even more to the confusion in trying to identify this vague term with the Israelite creator god Yahweh.
Both the terms אלהי השמים
(Ugaritic: “Ba’al shamem” and Phoenician 10th century BCE) along with Yahweh are singular terms and much older than the vague and confused term used in
Genesis 1-2:3.
Reply Part 3
Thirdly, the LXX is a running commentary on the Hebrew text (See John W. Wevers' Notes on the Greek Text of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy).
The fact that the term Yahweh is not used in the New Testament points to the fact of a severe break with the original Jesus Jewish movement (represented by Peter and James) and Paul’s radical revision of Judaism which the Hellenists preserved.
Both Paul’s authentic letters and the Gospels have anti-Jewish interpolations in them (See Birger Pearson’s The Emergence of the Christian Religion: Essays on Early Christianity (Trinity Press International, 1997) especially Chapter 3: 1 Thessalonians 2:13 -16: A Deutero-Pauline Interpolation, pp.58 – 74).
This anti-Jewish polemic is placed on the lips of Jesus in the hash woes of Matthew 23:29 – 24:2 where the Jews and not just the Romans, “will crucify” (σταυρώσετε) prophets of god as if the Jews killed Jesus: “And all the people said, "His blood shall be on us and on our children!" Matt. 27: 25.
My point about the expulsion of the Jews from Rome in 46 CE is the matrix of the anti-Jewish polemics interpolated into the New Testament.
As such, the old Jewish Hebrew god Yahweh is replaced with the Greek pagan term "θεὸς" and the more genetic term “κύριος” used in the N.T. for both men and god.
Finally, as to your claim that “υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ” is “wildly attested in 2nd Temple literature” is vastly over stated:
See υἱὸς in Albert-Marle Denis, Concordance Grecque Des Pseudepigraphes D’ancien Testament (Universite Catholique De Louvain, 1987, pp 755 -758) where, in a quick scan, I counted only 5 or 6 references. (I didn’t need to ask Thom Stark, I looked the phrase up myself in a concordance.)
Best,
Harry
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