Mark:

Although you addressed your comments to Zvi, there are points which you raised that I think should be raised.  You stated:
Christians believe (to the point of being willing to attempt to prove it to you) that their faith is in perfect harmony with Hebrew scripture.  From my experience, most also naively believe that Jews have simply never studied their own scripture, and that if they would do so, they would see that Jesus is their messiah.  Very few have taken the time to understand what Jews really know about Hebrew scripture, and how paradoxical the Jewish view is to the Christian view. 

I can accept you calling Christians irrational, because our "reasoning" must seem to fly in the face of simple logic.  But it is wrong for you to conclude that the "vast majority of Christians" are "not intellectually honest".
  Several points (actually A LOT OF POINTS):
  1. Christians can believe whatever they want and they have all sorts of back-bending, polemic-twisting ways "prove" that what they say is "in perfect harmony with the Hebrew scriptures".  Claiming something is not the same as producing concrete evidence.  How can something be in perfect harmony with the Tanakh when the NT violates everything about it?   

  2.  Your term of xian "reasoning" is based on willful deception and bold-faced corruption of Holy Scripture.  It's not "paradoxical", it's down-right disrespectful. Every single one of the proof texts xians try to produce (we're now up to 350 at last count) can easily be refuted by a simple reading of not on the Text of the Tanakh, but also the CONTEXT.  In doing so, we find that the alleged proofs fall into four categories:
  • Misquoted:  meaning, they simply refuse to quote the entire verse in context or purposely change word (the book of Hebrews is NOTORIOUS for this, purposely twisting the Psalms)

  • Misapplied:  Taking that which is meant for one person and applying it to Jeesus.  Case in point, the book of "matthew" takes the quote from the Prophet Hosea wherein the Prophet states (writing G-d's words )  "When Israel was a child, I loved him… Out of Egypt, I have called My son".  The "son" is Israel, but Matthew twists the passage and applies it to Jeesus.  And please spare me the "dual prophecy" nonsense.  That is a relatively new creation of xianity in light of the world being made of its gross mishandling of G-d's "Word"; the "Word" they claim is holy and sacred.  If it's holy and sacred, how dare you change it because you find it offensive to your theology.

  • Maligned:  they take concepts such as sacrifice and atonement and they make them mean that which they do not.  Case in point, this blood obsession by xians.  Xians preach, promulgate and yell that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin, but the verse they quote from Leviticus has nothing to do with offerings.  It has to do with the eating of blood.   So it's ironic.  The Torah states that one is not eat the blood of anything, yet accuse the Jews of doing so (via the Blood Libels), yet xians have a whole ritual of the Eucharist and the Communion wherein xians (and it doesn't matter if it's Catholic or Protestant) believe they really are eating Jeesus flesh and drinking his blood--- again literally or figuratively, it's still this practice ala the New Testament.

  • Manufactured.  If you can't find a scripture to support it.. Make one up.  In "Matthew" it states, "and he shall be called a Nazarene".  Search the Tanakh all day.. You'll not find a scripture that says this.  Also this manufacturing isn't limited to just making up scriptures, it's making up doctrines that are refuted by the Tanakh itself… Concepts such as Original Sin, Hell, Blood-only atonement, a dying Messiah, et al.   These concepts are not in the Tanakh

  • So how can axiality be in "perfect harmony" with the Tanakh when everything it spews is in complete contradiction to the Hebrew Scriptures; again, scriptures which most xians cannot read in Hebrew without some form of "help" either from a "concordance' or worse, from a xian well-versed in the bastardization of Hebrew (Dr. Brown, anyone?)
The Jewish view is not  "paradoxical" to the xian view.  Please learn what words mean and how you word them.  Judaism is not a Paradox to xianity.  Xianity is an anathema and an oppositional affront to Judaism, its G-d and its canon of Scripture  To state that the Jewish view is a paradox to the xian view is to assert that the xian view is the correct view and that the Jewish position is just an alternate, false, but true viewpoint (based only on historicity, not polemic).  Thus, it is not the Jew who views his or her own bible as a "paradox" to xianity.  It is the xian who, despite what the Jew knows to be truth concerning the Tanakh, willfully chooses to accept the following:
  • That the Jew is "blind" and "obstinate' (again per the xian's own NT which states thus) as it relates to the Bible.  
  • That the xian is right in his/her own "interpretation" of Scripture (with or without this nonsensical element called the "spirit); even if that xian doesn't know a word of Hebrew or knows the contextual nuance of the Hebrew. 
  • As such, how is this not intellectually dishonest?
Intellectual dishonesty comes when those who have been shown the truth of what the Hebrew Scriptures convey, reveal and delineate and yet willfully still hold to the error of their faith as it relates to that same Text.  A perfect case of someone with intellectual dishonesty is Dr. Brown. Even when faced with his errors, he still promulgates his nonsense that he knows the Hebrew Scriptures and now the Oral Torah (Talmud) better than learned Jews. 
  • As such any xian who has been shown what the Torah actually says about the issues raised and still wants to hold on to his jeesus must suspend logic in favour of the emotional attachment to Jeesus.  Belief in Jeesus and logic cannot co-exist since it born out of an emotional attachment to Jeesus.

  • So xianity does advocate some level of intellectual dishonesty, if only to suspend what the Jew has to say about his/her own Torah in favor of the belief that Jeesus alone is the "hope of glory" 

  • Therefore, if a xian willfully accepts the errors in Xianity as it relates to its interpretations of Scripture, the analysis of the Jewish People and the Nature of G-d, once those errors  have been presented, then that xian is willfully intellectually dishonest; especially when that xian then goes and parrots those errors to others and against the Jewish people (this forum is an excellent example of such; xians come here parroting what they've been told and what they think is the truth and even challenge the truth as presented by the Moderators and the Professor)

  • So the Great Commission is based, in part, on a level of dishonesty (as it relates to the scriptures), deception (the lies that are told about the human condition and lies the NT tells about Jews) and insistence (that its way is the only way to G-d).  How is that not intellectually dishonest?

(edited by Sophiee for legibility and clarity.  No content was changed)


Last Edited By: Sophiee1 Tue, 17-Sep-13 07:23:30. Edited 1 times.