I no longer believe in the Virgin Birth of Jesus/ Yeshua!

I personally very much like the impression that near death experiencer Christian Andreason got regarding the Holy Spirit that She could well be God the Mother???!!!


http://www.politicalforum.com/showthread.php?t=305529

Theistic Evolutionary Theory and The Divine Feminine/God The Mother??!!
The masculine and feminine thought and behaviour patterns may have a basis in theoretical physics.

http://www.grandunifiedtheory.org.il/gender/g1.htm

……..

http://www.allaboutchristian.com/spirituality/index.html

 

The virgin birth story is not in Mark either. Jesus has his transformation to God-Like status at his baptism by John the Baptist.

Matt and Luke used Mark as a source document With Matt we get the addition of the immaculate conception but Jesus is not yet "God the Father"

Jesus refers to God many times but always refers to God as someone other than himself through Matt.

Much later - John was the last Gospel and it was written decades after the destruction of the Temple (90-120AD) by an unknown author who had very different ideas and a different style that the previous Authors.

In John the Godlike status of Jesus is elevated. He is said to have been a God even before Birth.

Never in any of the Gospels is Jesus said to have asked people to worship him or that his identity was God of the OT - God "the Father".

 

Good post giftedone. Though our perceptions regarding the authorship of John are at variance, I agree with most everything else you said. One exception is this:
Jhn 10:30 I and my Father are one.

In the red letter edition of the 'Bible' that statement appears as representing the words of Jesus. but of course you reject John as being a valid Gospel.

 

I do not reject John. John is more suspect than other writings for a number of reasons but they are all suspect at the end of the day. You yourself claim that all such writings are man made and therefore subject to error.

Even if those were the words of Jesus "I and my father are one" they could mean many different things. Jesus often spoke in metaphor.

It could mean that Jesus speaks to the people the mind of God. One in purpose, all humans are part of the same creator and so on. We just do not know.

The problem with the interpretation "Jesus is claiming to be God" are many.

1) We do not know that this is a claim to be God as there are many alternate interpretations.

2)When we look at Matt/Mark/Luke this interpretation seems absurd given the multitude of passages where Jesus is talking about God and he refers to God as someone other than himself.

3) Satan (God's son) who knows who God is but, asks Jesus to worship him. This makes no sense to the reader today but would have made zero sense to the Author if that Author thought Jesus was "God".

4) The last words of Jesus "My God my God, why have you forsaken me". This is crazy and would imply that God was going a bit crazy if that person hanging in the cross was actually God.

I mean really - Did God get delusional and forget who he was ?

5) The early Church fathers did not believe that Jesus was God - Jesus was thought to be subordinate to the Father
6) The Catholic Encyclopedia itself admits that there is no claim in the NT. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15047a.htm

The Catholic Encyclopedia then goes into a long apology why the Trinity should be accepted but the fact remains that even those who are ridiculously biased in favor of the Trinity (The one's who are responsible for making the Trinity the Church Doctrine) admit that it is never stated explicitly in scripture.

 

The more that you write within civil demeanor, the more I am beginning to think that you and I are perhaps speaking the same message, but with different words. Much like the Apostles having variations on the same story. Hence, I will take especial notice of your writings as long as there is a showing of civility. Another good post on your part.

 

Buddhist also have a myth of a virgin birth as do many religions that come before Christianity... but they are just that.. myths, same as the birth of the man we now call Jesus, funny he was never known by that name during life, you would think people would respect the real name of a son of God, rather then renaming him at there will because they think he should of been named a better sounding name in their opinion...

.

 

My theory is that the name Yeshua or Yahushua is too Jewish.... and we English attempted to Englishize his name???!!!

I watched an amazing video yesterday where an Israeli scholar goes into more detail on the name of Yeshua to him.......

http://www.facingeachother.com/

 

If nothing else, the OP shows how grossly over represented atheists are on this forum compared to normal America.

 

Yes.............. but this tendency fits with a statement by Rabbi Jesus/ Yeshua.....


Luke 16:8


And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light."

We Christians..... tend to be offended rather easily.... and thus give up on discussion forums like this just because we encounter so much disagreement....... Paul7..... I truly thank you for hanging in there and continuing to discuss these questions with all of us..... in spite of our many flaws and misunderstandings!!!!

If I am in error to have given up on the doctrine of the Virgin Birth.... I am sorry..... but whether I am in error or not.... there is tremendous value in honest discussion of this controversial topic.

 

Thank you, Dennis, I may have missed something but what is your issue with the Virgin Birth? IF God exists, miracles are no big deal.

 

It is certainly true that miracles are simple for God… but one issue with the Virgin Birth is that pagans had numerous traditions about their heroes being born of virgins….. which put pressure on the first and second century Christian community to respond to this challenge.

The fact that the Apostle Paul did not refer to the Virgin Birth…… is a powerful piece of evidence that it may have been added.

 

Correlation does not mean causation. There was no Jewish tradition of a Virgin Birth, there was however an Old Testament prophecy of this event to come. Is. 7:14 "Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel."

The argument from silence isn't a good one. Not all the Gospels refer to the Virgin Birth. As has been noted elsewhere, Paul was writing "problem-oriented" letters - so that there was really no need to go out of the way to mention anything that he did not have pertinence for.

It also matches the point that the NT was written in a "high context" setting on which people's background knowledge of events was substantially assumed, as opposed to our "low context" society in which we feel a need to explain everything, every time.

 

The Hebrew word translated "virgin" literally means young woman....... and yes... in that society at that time... young woman would mean "virgin" in English....... but...… there is an interesting analogy to the relationship of genuine Christians with the Messiah that would allow for the Holy Spirit to overshadow Mary and tell her to go sleep with her husband..... because the Word/Logos has power both over marriage....... as well as over life and death............. If G-d wanted a child .... or a pair of twins born at a certain time..... then the customs regarding marriage that developed within Judaism.... are subject to the will of G-d..... and the Holy Spirit has the authority to speak to people and inspire them to act in ways that may be thought of as shameful by a group of people within a culture...… that tend to exaggerate what G-d really expects of us????!!!!


Ecclesiastes 7:16


"Be not righteous over much; neither make thyself over wise: why shouldest thou destroy thyself? "

 

I may well be incorrect.... but I read insights about some sort of rapture event as shown to a near death experiencer that caused me to begin to take the rapture idea seriously........... If what was shown to Dr. Richard Eby is valid..... then there is some sort of snatching away of the bride....... that might seem to occur previous to the full fledged legal wedding of the Messiah to His metaphorical bride..... Also.... each spirit led Christian should have a genuine relationship with the Messiah.... that goes beyond the usual..........



Dr. Richard Eby, near-death.com:

 

A brilliant and tolerant response indeed Willys… I shall give you "reputation" for that!

I think you may enjoy this other brilliant response that I read a few moments ago:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/676292689105792/
My Near Death Experience (NDE)

 

This discussion is connected with this other thread......
The editing of the early Christian writings that taught reincarnation...
out of the Roman Catholic canon.....

helps to explain how the Virgin Birth idea got edited into....
the canon as accepted by the fifth century.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_Christian_biblical_canon

By the fifth century......
the Roman Emperors who had converted to "Christianity" had gotten rid of the
early Christian writings that affirmed the truth of reincarnation.

http://www.politicalforum.com/relig...hy-reincarnation-edited-out-christianity.html

Why reincarnation was edited out of Christianity?
On Saturday I began a Facebook group entitled Barbro Karlen and Anne Frank after one of the most famous cases of a child remembering a past life.

Yesterday I got the most logical explanation I have ever read as to why reincarnation may have been edited out of the Christian scriptures:


Bruce F. MacDonald:

www.thomastwin.com/

 

A Rabbi has predicted that the time is beginning when
Christians and Muslims will no longer be mostly united against Israel....
but instead Christians will support what the Jewish people must accomplish.


This subject will become more and more important over the coming years.

 

How can one believe some parts of the Bible and not others? Jesus being born of a virgin sounds very Godly like to me. A form of purity, unhindered by the evil at work, and created by the divinity of God in it's purist form. One that gives sight to one that was blind, and hearing to the deaf, movement to the paralyzed, and cure for the sick, riches in the form of thought and love to the poor, power to those without power, and weakness (humbled) to those with it. A complete divine man as it was intended.

 

Careful study of the Bible -from an academic perspective- reveals there was no virgin Birth.

The first and only Gospel that has any plausibly reliable connection to the real Jesus is Mark. Tradition holds that Mark - although he had never seen or heard the lord- was a disciple/interpreter for Peter.

Mark has no virgin birth. Jesus is deified at the age of 30 at his baptism. What is also interesting is that Mark does not contain any stories of Jesus wandering around in the flesh after death (the smoking gun for belief in resurrection).

The author of Matt (80-100 AD) is writing some 2-4 decades after the gospel of Mark. Christianity has evolved and with it the ideas surrounding the deity of Christ. Christianity is rife with questions about whether or not Jesus was the real fulfillment of the Jewish messianic tradition and what was the nature of his divinity. The answer depends on who you ask and there are many different answers.

The leaders of the Church of Jerusalem (founded by the disciples and led by James) have all been martyred or died (with the possible exception of John - whose fate we do not know with any certainty) and Jews/Jewish Christians (after the destruction of the temple) are not having a good time of it and nor is the Church of Jerusalem but, the Pauline Christian movement still going strong.

The author of Matt decides a new Gospel is necessary (Gnostic Christians are pumping out many different Gospels). He uses the Gospel of Mark almost in it's entirety, leaving out only a few passages that he feels are disparaging to Jesus and/or the disciples.

This type of artistic license (pious fraud by the sin of omission) gives us some insight into the Author. To fulfill messianic tradition the author of Matt adds a genealogy back to David and a virgin birth to the story. The divinity of Jesus is evolving.

He also adds the "smoking Gun" ... stories of Jesus wandering around in the flesh after death.

Paul - although he never knew Jesus and did not become a christian until years after his death, at least was around during the time of Jesus and active in Christianity and writing shortly after. Paul does not know of any physical resurrection. He likens the sightings of Jesus to his vision - similar to how we have people seeing the virgin Mary in the clouds today. This is not an "argument from silence". It is not like Paul does not talk about sightings of Jesus after his death. He does !! ... he just does not believe that it was Jesus in the flesh wandering around.

Paul does not know of any virgin birth either (but again we might not expect this from Paul as he did not know Jesus although he does mention that Jesus was born of a woman )

1 Clement is also a problem. He was the leader (Pope) of the Church (in Rome) around 95-100 AD. Clement talks about the resurrection (as all Christians did because this was part of the promise of Jesus). Clement, in his letter to the Corinthians, goes to great lengths to try and make a case for there being a resurrection - that it is real.

Clement talks about how we see death and rebirth in the changing of the seasons ( same as the belief found in almost all religions from people of that time ... the spring fertility ceremonies featuring Ishtar - Goddess of death and rebirth and so on - we did not even bother to change the name of the ceremony - Easter). He references some OT scripture. He even talks about the Pheonix myth (as if it were real) a bird that, after living 500 years is resurrected.

The letter is really long so fast forward to Clem 24.1 if you like.
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/1clement-lightfoot.html

Clement is working really hard to make a case for the reality of the resurrection. If Clement had heard the stories of "Jesus wandering around in the flesh after death" then he would have brought them up while making his case. It is well beyond absurd to think that Clement actually know of these stories but did not bring them up in his defense of the resurrection dogma.

Either
1) the gospel of Matt was not yet written.
2) Clement had never read Matt
3) Matt had been written and Clement was familiar with it but the physical resurrection stories were not there (added later)

The point of this is to show that the author of Matt added stuff that was not commonly accepted dogma - at a time when, if these stories were common - folks like Clement should know about them.

In the Clementine Homilies (Texts written about Clement but not by Clement around 350 BC - thought to be copied from earlier Judeo Christian texts= remnants from the Church of Jerusalem). Clement is reputed to have been converted to Christianity by Peter.

In these writings Peter is said to have affirmed that Yeshua never claimed to be God, and to have argued that "the begotten cannot be compared with that which is unbegotten or self-begotten" = no virgin birth.

This was also the belief of Ebionite Christians - (claim to be descended from the Church of Jerusalem)

 

Giftedone.... you answer astonished me when I read it yesterday..........

I have never really faced this question before.........

Wow!!!!!

 

Glad you enjoyed. I have been studying this issue for some time. I have looked at older Bibles such as the codex Sinaiticus - from around the time of Constantine. No long ending of Mark (physical resurrection story added to later Bibles). Here is an interesting summary giving some of the differences.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-e...t-does-it-reveal-about-the-bible-1734439.html

This "long ending problem" is so well known that most modern Bibles reference this in the footnotes. There were Bibles.

Artistic license (Pious fraud) , adding, omission, interpolation or intentional mistranslation to make the text better fit in with the dogma of the day has been quite significant over the centuries.

This article on Mark from from biblical archaeology covers much of the same material I did. Pious Fraud at it's finest

http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/...-of-mark-and-why-it-makes-all-the-difference/

 

Wow!

I would love to get your reaction to pages 107 to 170 in this book?

I was in something of a state of awe for over a year after reading this........

https://books.google.ca/books?id=kbiGjKJl4D4C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

But you think the Truth is in spite of you. You think the Truth is not you. And you think that when this body says "I am", it is not yours. You think there is another Self.
I am Self. Know this and you shall be free.
I am the Way.
I am the Life.
I am the Truth.
Don't lie about it. Know this and you shall be free.
But you think you are your body and mind. That is bondage.

 

You can not actually read those pages on google books but, I am familiar with the Gospel of Thomas and some of the controversy.

There were many different Gospels - a fraction of which were not burned by the Church over their 1000 year destruction of knowledge rampage after getting power around 325 AD. Some of these writings were rediscovered in more recent times - some of which can be found in the Nag Hammadi library.

We do not hear much about Gnostic Christians but they are a huge piece of the puzzle lost through the sands of time.

One good book I read many years ago was "The Pagan Christ" by Elaine Pagels. There are way too many similarities between pagan stories - that everyone was familiar with in the first century - and the story of Jesus to be mere "coincidence". The second major problem is that if the NT writings are "inspired" you think God might have avoided these similarities and come up with something new

Jesus was worshiped as the "Sun God" for many centuries - Stuff they do not teach in Sunday School. That is why Jesus is depicted in ancient art with the radient halo.
http://www.mountainman.com.au/ab_kuhn.html


Almost none of the early church fathers (prior to Constantine) believed in the modern Trinity - that Jesus was God (God the Father - God of Abraham). Even after the trinity doctrine was made cannon law - it took centuries to rid Christianity of the Arianism.

 

That link to the Codex Sinaiticus is to a fraud. Such links are always to fakes because the copies are of such poor quality that you can't read them. In addition this particular copy is written in modern Greek so it's clearly a fake.