Lord's Prayer: Pope Francis calls for change - BBC NewsPope Francis has been thinking.
No, it's not about how the church can avoid taking responsibility for the child abuses carried out by it's priests and nuns and certainly not about how it can compensate and support their victims and avoid creating any more.
It's about how to resolve a curious contradiction in the Bible that has been taxing the brains of theologians and biblical scholars for close on 1700 years, ever since the Bible was compiled. The contradiction is between James 13:1 with:
Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man.
James 13:1
And what Jesus is reputed to have told his followers to do. They were to prey to God and ask God not to tempt them:
After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
Matthew 6:9-13
The paradox of course is why Jesus tells his followers this if it's not something God would do anyway. Are we not to trust God and is God going to change his mind and not tempt us if we ask him not to, if we can't trust him?
Now, if this had been confined to Matthew we could have dismissed it as yet another of Matthew's bloopers like where he makes Jesus look like a false prophet, but it appears in Luke too (Luke 11:2-4).
But anyway, 'infallible' Pope Francis has now resolved that paradox - Jesus got it wrong. The person whom Christians traditionally believe founded their religion and was the living manifestation of God, come to Earth to tell us how to live, was wrong. We don't need to ask God not to tempt us like Jesus said. And Pope Francis has asked for a new 'translation' to be made, so it says what he thinks it should have said and not what the 'inspired word of God' said.
When is a translation not a translation? When it doesn't say what you think the original aught to have said, obviously! One wonders how many other times someone has decided that God couldn't really have meant to say that and kindly corrected him.
But at least we no longer need to believe that the Bible is the infallible word of an infallible god or that Jesus, being God, knew his own mind.
'via Blog this'
that's fine but what about ,
ReplyDelete1. Matthew and Luke disagree
Matthew and Luke give two contradictory genealogies for Joseph (Matthew 1:2-17 and Luke 3:23-38). They cannot even agree on who the father of Joseph was. Church apologists try to eliminate this discrepancy by suggesting that the genealogy in Luke is actually Mary's, even though Luke says explicitly that it is Joseph's genealogy (Luke 3:23). Christians have had problems reconciling the two genealogies since at least the early fourth century. It was then that Eusebius, a "Church Father," wrote in his The History of the Church, "each believer has been only too eager to dilate at length on these passages."
2. Why genealogies of Joseph?
Both the genealogies of Matthew and Luke show that Joseph was a direct descendant of King David. But if Joseph is not Jesus' father, then Joseph's genealogies are meaningless as far as Jesus is concerned, and one has to wonder why Matthew and Luke included them in their gospels. The answer, of course, is that the genealogies originally said that Jesus was the son of Joseph and thus Jesus fulfilled the messianic requirement of being a direct descendant of King David.
Long after Matthew and Luke wrote the genealogies the church invented (or more likely borrowed from the mystery religions) the doctrine of the virgin birth. Although the virgin birth could be accommodated by inserting a few words into the genealogies to break the physical link between Joseph and Jesus, those same insertions also broke the physical link between David and Jesus.
The church had now created two major problems: 1) to explain away the existence of two genealogies of Joseph, now rendered meaningless, and 2) to explain how Jesus was a descendant of David.
The apostle Paul says that Jesus "was born of the seed of David" (Romans 1:3). Here the word "seed" is literally in the Greek "sperma." This same Greek word is translated in other verses as "descendant(s)" or "offspring." The point is that the Messiah had to be a physical descendant of King David through the male line. That Jesus had to be a physical descendant of David means that even if Joseph had legally adopted Jesus (as some apologists have suggested), Jesus would still not qualify as Messiah if he had been born of a virgin - seed from the line of David was required.
Women did not count in reckoning descent for the simple reason that it was then believed that the complete human was present in the man's sperm (the woman's egg being discovered in 1827). The woman's womb was just the soil in which the seed was planted. Just as there was barren soil that could not produce crops, so also the Bible speaks of barren wombs that could not produce children.
This is the reason that although there are many male genealogies in the Bible, there are no female genealogies. This also eliminates the possibility put forward by some apologists that Jesus could be of the "seed of David" through Mary.
[Editor's note: As one reader has pointed out, "Genesis 3:15 says 'And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed.' So women can pass on 'seed' according to the bible."]
and what about,
ReplyDelete3. Why do only Matthew and Luke know of the virgin birth?
Of all the writers of the New Testament, only Matthew and Luke mention the virgin birth. Had something as miraculous as the virgin birth actually occurred, one would expect that Mark and John would have at least mentioned it in their efforts to convince the world that Jesus was who they were claiming him to be.
The apostle Paul never mentions the virgin birth, even though it would have strengthened his arguments in several places. Instead, where Paul does refer to Jesus' birth, he says that Jesus "was born of the seed of David" (Romans 1:3) and was "born of a woman," not a virgin (Galatians 4:4).
4. Why did Matthew include four women in Joseph's genealogy?
Matthew mentions four women in the Joseph's genealogy.
a. Tamar - disguised herself as a harlot to seduce Judah, her father-in-law (Genesis 38:12-19).
b. Rahab - was a harlot who lived in the city of Jericho in Canaan (Joshua 2:1).
c. Ruth - at her mother-in-law Naomi's request, she came secretly to where Boaz was sleeping and spent the night with him. Later Ruth and Boaz were married (Ruth 3:1-14).
d. Bathsheba - became pregnant by King David while she was still married to Uriah (2 Samuel 11:2-5).
To have women mentioned in a genealogy is very unusual. That all four of the women mentioned are guilty of some sort of sexual impropriety cannot be a coincidence. Why would Matthew mention these, and only these, women? The only reason that makes any sense is that Joseph, rather than the Holy Spirit, impregnated Mary prior to their getting married, and that this was known by others who argued that because of this Jesus could not be the Messiah. By mentioning these women in the genealogy Matthew is in effect saying, "The Messiah, who must be a descendant of King David, will have at least four "loose women" in his genealogy, so what difference does one more make?"
AND,
ReplyDeleteB. THE ANGEL'S MESSAGE
In Matthew, the angel appears to Joseph in a dream and tells him that Mary's child will save his people from their sins.
In Luke, the angel tells Mary that her son will be great, he will be called the Son of the Most High and will rule on David's throne forever. A short time later Mary tells Elizabeth that all generations will consider her (Mary) blessed because of the child that will be born to her.
If this were true, Mary and Joseph should have had the highest regard for their son. Instead, we read in Mark 3:20-21 that Jesus' family tried to take custody of him because they thought he had lost his mind. And later, in Mark 6:4-6 Jesus complained that he received no honor among his own relatives and his own household.
C. THE DATE
ReplyDeleteAccording to Matthew, Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great (Matthew 2:1). According to Luke, Jesus was born during the first census in Israel, while Quirinius was governor of Syria (Luke 2:2). This is impossible because Herod died in March of 4 BC and the census took place in 6 and 7 AD, about 10 years after Herod's death.
Some Christians try to manipulate the text to mean this was the first census while Quirinius was governor and that the first census of Israel recorded by historians took place later. However, the literal meaning is "this was the first census taken, while Quirinius was governor ..." In any event, Quirinius did not become governor of Syria until well after Herod's death.
D. THE PLACE
Both Matthew and Luke say that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Matthew quotes Micah 5:2 to show that this was in fulfillment of prophecy. Actually, Matthew misquotes Micah (compare Micah 5:2 to Matthew 2:6). Although this misquote is rather insignificant, Matthew's poor understanding of Hebrew will have great significance later in his gospel.
Luke has Mary and Joseph travelling from their home in Nazareth in Galilee to Bethlehem in Judea for the birth of Jesus (Luke 2:4). Matthew, in contradiction to Luke, says that it was only after the birth of Jesus that Mary and Joseph resided in Nazareth, and then only because they were afraid to return to Judea (Matthew 2:21-23).
In order to have Jesus born in Bethlehem, Luke says that everyone had to go to the city of their birth to register for the census. This is absurd, and would have caused a bureaucratic nightmare. The purpose of the Roman census was for taxation, and the Romans were interested in where the people lived and worked, not where they were born (which they could have found out by simply asking rather than causing thousands of people to travel).
I am not Christian and enjoy your blog, but this post is simply inaccurate. The phrase "lead me not into temptation" is based on older English translations (king james era), while the original Greek (and as used in other languages) is more accurately translated "deliver me from the time of trial." You weaken your case by being inaccurate in this way. If anything, the pope is trying to get the Lord's prayer in English closer to the original meaning.
ReplyDeleteYou need to take that up with the Pope who seems to he unaware of that.
Delete