119, just curious, are you ethnically jewish? Were you born a jew, is your mom jewish?

Last edited by Miguel (4/05/2018 3:57 am)

119 wrote:

I posed a challenge there: What ontological status did the Torah have for Jesus? Was he a rabbi of a religion that did not represent the Will of A-mighty G-d or not? Did he believe in an unreliable Torah of dubious accuracy, that he allegedly promised never to abolish? (Matthew 5:17)

Jesus did not "believe in" anything about God and his design. He KNEW (in his human intellect) all those truths directly because He enjoyed the Beatific Vision - in a higher degree than that of the Seraphim of Is 6:1-3 - from the moment of his conception, and in the Beatific Vision He saw all those truths directly.

119 wrote:

[You do not know] whether HaShem took the Children of Israel -- His "firstborn son" -- out of Egypt, or whether there was really a national Revelation, or whether the Book of Numbers lied about the census G-d commanded.

I hold the spiritual truth of all those narratives, with certainty of faith, as interpreted from the NT.

I hold their historical truth,
-- first, with certainty of faith, to the degree that the faith in God and Jesus requires me to hold it,
-- then, in addition to that, and as changeable opinion, to the degree that historical plausibility according to the current state of science indicates.

Thus, e.g.:

- The faith in God and Jesus requires me to hold the historical factuality of the creation of a first couple of human beings, but does not require me to hold the historical factuality of the chronologies in Genesis. So I hold, with certainty of faith, that Biblical Adam existed and that he was either Y-Chromosomal Adam or a patrilineal ancestor thereof (i.e., that all extant human beings descend patrilineally from him), but I do not hold that he lived a few thousand years ago. Rather, I provisionally accept current scientific estimations that he may have lived 250,000 - 300,000 years ago.

- The faith in God and Jesus requires me to hold that there was a revelation to the people of Israel, but does not require me to hold that all of the Torah, and particularly the Deuteronomy, was written by Moses at Sinai. Particularly when that would contradict the Torah itself.

- The faith in God and Jesus does not require me to hold the historical factuality of the statement that 603,550 men "from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war," plus their women and children, departed Egypt. So I am free to believe that a smaller number actually did, and Richard Elliott Friedman's hypothesis that they were the Levites seems for now highly plausible.

119 wrote:

Who do you think canonized the Nevi'im and the Ketuvim? [...] How do you know all those prophets you're always quoting were the Real Deal? Cuz the catholic church said so?!

Yes. Starting with Jesus as Head of the Church, since He quoted some of them Himself as divinely inspired Scripture, following with the Apostles quoting other books in their NT writings, and ending with the pronouncement of the divinely-assisted (according to a promise by Jesus) Church Magisterium on those books not quoted directly in the NT.

119 wrote:

How would they know?

By the assistance of the Holy Spirit, a statement which I hope you will not take as opportunity to blaspheme against Him.

119 wrote:

The Christian claim that the NT has the same status as a document dictated by G-d, which was never canonized, is absurd.

Of course the NT does not have the same status! It has a much higher status!

119 wrote:

If you're quoting Jeremiah to prove your religion has the new covenant, you can't point to your religion as the source of Jeremiah's authority.

And this why I decided to post again, because this brings us back to the OP question "Is your belief in Christianity contingent on historical evidence?".

The truth of Christianity is NOT based on argumentation on how greatly it fulfills such and such passage of the Torah, the Prophets, or the other Writings. This not said just by me, but by the foremost Authority in Christianity:

The Lord Jesus Chirst said and the Apostle John wrote:

"If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me. But if I do, even if you do not believe Me, believe the works, so that you may know and may understand that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father.” (Jn 10:37-38)

"If I had not done among them the works that no one else has done, they [those who rejected Jesus] would not have sin; but now they have both seen and hated both Me and My Father." (Jn 15:24)

Rather, the truth of Christianity is based:

- on historical evidence of an unequivocal divine intervention in history, particularly resurrecting several people through a Servant of His and, above all, resurrecting the Servant Himself, and

- on the presupposition that God would perform such an unequivocal exercise of his exclusive power only to lead people to truth and good. In other words, that God is truthful and good.

119 wrote:

Regarding G-d raising Jesus to some glorious state, I don't trust whoever wrote the NT. Period. If they're lying to me about the contents of the TaNaKh, why should I trust what they're saying about anything? I haven't addressed this issue directly because I've been positing, for the sake of argument, that Jesus had miraculous powers, which are not unheard of in Jewish history.

Now at long last you are talking sense and there is some hope you will get to the truth some time. Because otherwise this would be the summary of your position, including its outcome:

Postulates:

- Torah ontic comprehensiveness: the Torah contains all truths about God and his design, so that any proposition about God which cannot be deduced from the Torah is necessarily false and points to a false god.

- No limit on the degree of divine power exercised to support the claims of the false prophet of Deut 13:1-5, and no restriction in the character of the sign involved.

Case study: the founder of Islam.

- No new revelation on God. Similar food laws. No problem with Gentiles resting on Friday and praying towards Mecca.
- No miracles, so he is not the false prophet of Deut 13:1-5.

Verdict: he can be the prophet like Moses predicted in Deut 18:15-19, only for Gentiles.

Case study: Jesus.

- Major new revelation on God.
- Major miracles.

Verdict: he is the false prophet of Deut 13:1-5.

Hey, it all fits!

- The false prophet predicted that he will rise from the dead on the third day, and HaShem cooperated to support his claim and resurrected him to continue the test on the faifhful! But I stand firm clinging to my view of the Torah...

- The false prophet predicted that his followers would work miracles like he did, and HaShem cooperated to support his claim and worked the miracles of Catholic saints to continue the test on the faithful! But I stand firm clinging to my view of the Torah...

- The false prophet predicted that those who reject him will go to hell, and HaShem cooperated to support his claim and sent me to this fire to continue the test on the faithful! But I stand firm clinging to my view of the Torah...

Err... HaShem, will the test last much longer? These flames are really unbearable!
 

Last edited by Johannes (4/05/2018 5:19 pm)

Yes, I must say I agree. The Dark Ages might have been called by that name, not only because there is lack of historical evidence, but also because of the fact that the church left the general society in darkness and ignorance... The two might also be somehow relative

119 wrote:

To believe that a national Revelation has been "fulfilled," annulled, or replaced, I'd need one of two things. 1) Substantially greater evidence (a world revelation?) or 2) An explicit statement in the original Revelation that this will occur. Christianity fails both.

I disagree.

With respect to 1, I say the following.

First and foremost, there's the question of whether or not the evidence for the National Revelation at Sinai really is better than the evidence for Yeshua's resurrection. Consider that the consensus in NT scholarship is that all the books of the New Testament were completed by the end of the first century - within living memory of Yeshua's ministry. By contrast, there are very few OT scholars who would date the completion of the pentateuch prior to 600 BC - more than half a melinnium after Moses! Now, it is possible that the scholars are wrong (I personally accept Mosaic authorship of the pentateuch), but it's clear that the Christian is going to have an easier time establishing a connection between the texts and actual events.

In other words, before you appeal to the "best explanation" for the National Revelation at Sinai, you have to establish that the revelation actually happened.

Secondly, there's a difference between establishing that a covenant has been annulled, and establishing that it has been replaced. Moreover, while one could theoretically establish replacement and annullment in one go (by establishing that the covenant had, in fact, been replaced), there would be nothing wrong with breaking the argument into two steps - or even three, if you wanted to establish the necessity of a replacement prior to establishing the identity of said replacement.

Now, when looking at the evidence for the perpetuity of the Mosaic covenant, it is surely apparent that there is nothing problematic about a replacement for it, save insofar as replacement entails annullment. So if one's primary objection to a proposed replacement (such as Christianity) is that the Mosaic covenant does not seem to admit of annullment, there is no reason to pit the old covenant against the New one directly. One could instead use an entirely different and independent line of evidence to diffuse the objection.

I will now sketch how this may be done. First and foremost, consider the Name of G-d as revealed fully to Moses in Exodus 34:

"Ha'Shem, Ha'Shem, a G-d merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation."

Note that His wrath is limited to the third and fourth generation. Given the typical duration of a generation by Jewish reckoning (~40 years), we may presume that the Jewish people, no matter how badly they sin, will never be punished for more than 160 years consecutively.

Now we turn to a point of fact: viz, the destruction of the Jewish temple circa AD 70. In particular, note that it has been some forty-eight generations and counting since the destruction, and there are still no signs that it will be reconstructed. Note also that, without the temple, it is impossible for the Jewish community as a whole to obey some 244 of the 613 commandments. Moreover, note that the Torah itself gives no hint of allowing for prayers or the like to replace the sacrifices and burnt offerings prescribed by the Law. Note, finally, that the only parallels to this catastrophe in Jewish history - the loss of the Ark of the Covenant to the Philistines during the priesthood of Eli, and the destruction of Solomon's Temple by the Babylonians - occurred as punishment for sin, and lasted for under one generation and for seventy years, respectively.

From this fact (and the various corrolaries), we may conclude that either the Jews have been rejected entirely, or else that G-d has annulled the Mosaic covenant and replaced it. Now, from what has been said regarding the asymmetry between G-d's wrath and His steadfast love, it should be clear which horn of the dilemma ought to be taken.

Yet more can be said. And this is where we come to your second point and Jeremiah 31. While most of the discussion up until this point has focused on verse 31 and its proper interpretation, I would contend that we ought to focus instead on the entirety of the chapter - the constant reassurance to Israel that the G-d who had afflicted them would never abandon them. In light of this, combined with the manifest fact that the Jews as a community have been deprived of the means to fulfill some 40% of their covenant obligations for nearly two mellinnia, I would say that the New Covenant mentioned in verse 31 needs to be interpreted along the lines of a genuinely novel arrangement, rather than a restoration of the original.

As a final point (still related to the loss of the temple), Jewish ways of dealing with these problems need to be held to the same standard as Christian ways of doing so, and it's far from clear that the Jewish solutions will do a better job. Certainly, the Talmudic suggestion that the offerings in the temple are to be replaced by the prayers of the faithful has no basis in any "explicit statement" of the Torah itself. The question isn't whether or not the Torah has been replaced, the question is which parts have been annulled and what they've been replaced by. Which brings us all the way back around to the question of evidence. Does Christianity have better evidence in its favor than Rabbinic Judaism?

I'm going to take this in the opposite direction and say that my disbelief in Christianity is not predicated on any historical assertions. That is to say, even if it were proven to me beyond the shadow of a doubt that Jesus did in fact perform all the miracles he is said to have and even if he did rise from the dead - I still wouldn't go from Judaism to Christianity. Deuteronomy is quite clear that even in the face of miracles, one is forbidden to follow a prophet into idolatry. So no, even if a miracle did occur and Jesus rose from the dead I would still not worship him as a deity - an error made all the more idolatrous by Catholicism's subsequent doctrine of the real presence in the host. This error is compounded with the fact that Christianity seriously misunderstands the nature of the fallenness of man and its theological implications, as well as the necessity of the old law, the substance of Israel's mission in the world, and the ritual of blood sacrifice, all of which are misrepresented to serve Christianity's ends. Additionally, every purported Christian proof I have seen brought from scripture is nothing but a laughable misreading of the text, which is generally both mistranslated and torn out of context. So no, my (dis)belief in Christianity is not based on the truth or falsehood of the resurrection.

Edit: With regards to the "continuing miracles of the Catholic saints", Judaism is chock full of miracle stories as well - a relative of my wife's has been eyewitness to several of them done by Rabbi Yisrael Abuhatzeira. The Muslims and Eastern religions have many miracle workers as well. So yeah, not much to base on.

Last edited by Etzelnik (7/31/2018 2:11 pm)