Now HERE is something interesting about the New Testament!!

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SilverProteus
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19 Aug 2014, 9:57 pm

Lukecash12 wrote:
SilverProteus wrote:
ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
... Christians think coming of the Son of Man is Jesus but is that really what it means?


Wouldn't Jesus be the son of god in their religion? :? How is he also the son of man?


Re: fully god and fully man.
Re: the son of man in the book of Daniel.

Now, this doesn't necessarily imply a human father. And "son of god" doesn't necessarily imply god as a human father like we might think of one. The phrase used in the Hebrew is mis-o-pan or "from the seed of", which is used in different instances in the OT to mean "generated from", "a descendant of", "the son/daughter of", or "proceeding from".


"Fully god and fully man" makes no sense to me whatsoever but it's interesting nonetheless. I really should read the whole bible one of these days...


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19 Aug 2014, 10:51 pm

SilverProteus wrote:
Lukecash12 wrote:
SilverProteus wrote:
ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
... Christians think coming of the Son of Man is Jesus but is that really what it means?


Wouldn't Jesus be the son of god in their religion? :? How is he also the son of man?


Re: fully god and fully man.
Re: the son of man in the book of Daniel.

Now, this doesn't necessarily imply a human father. And "son of god" doesn't necessarily imply god as a human father like we might think of one. The phrase used in the Hebrew is mis-o-pan or "from the seed of", which is used in different instances in the OT to mean "generated from", "a descendant of", "the son/daughter of", or "proceeding from".


"Fully god and fully man" makes no sense to me whatsoever but it's interesting nonetheless. I really should read the whole bible one of these days...


If you're simply interested in it from a literary standpoint, you can take each book as a standalone work and enjoy them much like you can enjoy Plato's Apology, Republic, or Xenophon. For books mostly related to philosophy I would see Romans, Job, Ecclesiastes and Proverbs.

Regarding "fully god and fully man", it isn't exactly as hard to make sense of as many people tend to think. Probably the main issue in the way of people today understanding Christianity is the wall of tradition out there that has expressed all of these different ideas from people up to today which were had irrespective of the actual history and culture of biblical times.

As a Hebrew person would have understood it, for God to be "in three persons" and "fully man, fully divine" would have fit fairly simply into their scripture's philosophy on the contingent parts of a person. What I mean by contingent parts is that in Hebrew philosophy they took things one step past dualism before there ever was any idea of trinity. That the idea of trinity had to be explained by Athanasius and a number of other church fathers was actually because of confusion over the relation between scriptural and talmudic philosophy and Hellenic philosophy (neoplatonism in particular). Most modern doctrinal debate is, at it's core, a conflict trying to make sense of both Hebrew philosophy and Hellenic philosophy at the same time. This is how we get so many concepts that were foreign to most authors of the bible (and I say "most" because individuals like Luke, Paul, and the Apostle John were more aware of Hellenic philosophy), and they get inserted into the text instead of derived from the text, oftentimes without people even realizing they are doing it.

What we can see in the OT, across the board and especially in Psalms, are examples such as "I will love the Lord with all my heart and soul and strength". Modern Western readers and translators tend to take that as merely an emphatic statement, that the Psalmist is being poetic as he talks about piety and devotion. But the Hebrew text doesn't translate so easily and we have been thinking too literally without taking into account the larger context. What the Psalmists are actually talking about are the three contingent/"symbiotic" parts of a person, referred to at different points throughout the OT and NT as "heart, soul, and might", and "heart, soul, and mind" (heart and strength are actually referring to the same thing, it is just translated differently because the OT is in Hebrew and the NT is in Koine Greek). But let's just stick with the three parts of a person in Hebrew for starters before we begin to compare. One's soul/shaul is considered to be the incorporeal component of the person. One's heart/mind/nefesh is the center of contemplation, of both emotions and rationale. And finally one's might is the body, the center of action and outward representation of the first two. Digging deeper into how these terms are referred to we can also understand soul as conscience and mind/heart as inclinations both for and against conscience.

So when we apply this to God, it isn't really all that far fetched for an ancient Hebrew to think of God as having these three parts, however His inclinations and conscience are in agreement. Just the same as a mind and soul can inhabit a person's body, Jesus can be fully divine and fully human because He has a human mind (in agreement with the conscience but subject to constraint) and divine soul.


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19 Aug 2014, 11:03 pm

From looking up the phrase "son of man" on Wiki it doesnt seem to mean the antichrist.

In the OT the phrase "son(s)of man" (usually used in the plural) just means regular normal people (as opposed to the 'sons of God' meaning 'angels').

In the NT both 'son of God', and 'son of man' (usually only singular) seemed to be interchangeable phrases for "Christ" who was supposed to be both fully human, and fully divine.

So I was wrong about SOM meaning the antichrist. But it does seemed to mean Christ.



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20 Aug 2014, 12:59 am

naturalplastic wrote:
SilverProteus wrote:
ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
... Christians think coming of the Son of Man is Jesus but is that really what it means?


Wouldn't Jesus be the son of god in their religion? :? How is he also the son of man?


Exactly. Jesus is the Son of God. And the Son of Man presumably would be the Antichrist. The guy who is gonna persuade us to get bar codes tattooed on us. The two will fight the big final showdown at Armageddon.


OH my I really wish you guys would do a little reading rather than assume everything. Nobody who has read any scripture, or listened to the barest of discussion by biblical scholars could come to the conclusion that the son of man is the antichrist, The Son of man is exactly the opposite



The Son of Man

"For my purposes here I do not need to provide a thorough summary or analysis of the vision that led to the Son of Man speculations in later times. The ostensible setting of the book of Daniel is in the sixth century BCE ? although scholars are convinced that the book was not actually written then, but centuries later in the second century BCE. In this book Daniel is portrayed as a Judean captive who has been taken into exile into Babylon, the world empire that destroyed his homeland in 586 BCE. In chapter 7 Daniel describes a wild vision in which he sees four beasts arising out of the sea, one after the other. Each is awe-inspiring and truly terrible, and they wreak havoc on the earth. And then as he looks he sees ?one like a son of man? coming on the ?clouds of heaven.? Here is a figure that is not beastly, but is in human form; and rather than coming from the turbulent sea of chaos he arrives from the realm of God. The beasts who had caused such destruction on earth are judged and removed from power, and the kingdom of the earth is delivered over to the one like a son of man.

Daniel is unable to make heads or tails of the vision, but luckily ? as always happens in these apocalyptic texts that are disclosing sublime heavenly truths ? there is an angel standing by to interpret it for him. The beasts each represent a kingdom that will come, in succession to one another, to rule the earth. But at the end, after the fourth beast, a human-like one will be given the dominion over the earth. In the interpretation of the dream, we are told that this dominion will be given to the ?people of the holy ones of the Most High? (Dan. 7:27). That may mean that just as the beasts each represented a kingdom, so too did the ?one like a son of man.? The beasts were the successive kingdoms of Babylonia, Media, Persia, and Greece. And the one like a son of man, then, would be the kingdom of Israel, which will be restored to its proper place and given authority over all the earth. Some interpreters have thought that since the beasts can also be taken to represent kings (at the head of the kingdoms) so too the one like a son of man ? that possibly he is an angelic being who is head of the nation of Israel.

However one interprets Daniel in its original second century BCE context, what is clear is that eventually in some Jewish circles it came to be thought that this ?one like a son of man? was indeed a future deliverer, a cosmic judge of the earth, who would come with divine vengeance against God?s enemies and with a heavenly reward for those who had remained faithful to him. This figure came to be known as ?the Son of Man,? and nowhere is he described more fully than in the book of 1 Enoch, which we have already considered in relation to the Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1-36). The Son of Man, on the other hand, is a prominent figure in a different source that made up the final edition of 1 Enoch, chs. 37-71, which are usually called the Similitudes.

There are debates about the date of the Similitudes; some scholars put this part of the book near the end of the first century CE; probably more date it earlier, to around the time of Jesus himself. For our purposes a precise date is not particularly important. What matters is the exalted character of the Son of Man. Many great and glorious things are said in the Similitudes about this person ? who is thought of now as a divine being, rather than, say, the nation of Israel. We are told that he was given a name ?even before the creation of the sun and the moon, before the creation of the stars.? We are told that all the earth will fall down and worship him. Before the creation he was concealed in the presence of God himself; but he was always God?s chosen one, and it is he who has revealed God?s wisdom to the righteous and holy, who will be ?saved in his name,? since ?it is his good pleasure that they have life? (48.2-7).

At the end of time, when all the dead are resurrected, it is he, the ?Elect One? who will sit on God?s throne (51.3). From this ?throne of glory? he will ?judge all the works of the holy ones in heaven above, weighing in the balance their deeds? (61.8). He himself is eternal: ?He shall never pass away or perish before the face of the earth.? And ?all evil shall disappear before his face? (69.79). It is he who will ?remove the kings and the mighty ones from their thrones. He shall loosen the reins of the strong and crush the teeth of sinners. He shall depose the kings from their thrones and kingdoms. For they do not extol and glorify him and neither do they obey him, the source of their kingship (46.2-6).

At one point this cosmic judge of the earth is called the ?messiah? ? a term we will consider more fully in the next chapter. For now it is enough to say that it comes from the Hebrew word ?anointed? and was originally used of the king of Israel, God?s anointed one (i.e., the one chosen and favored by God). Now the ruler anointed by God is not a mere mortal, he is a divine being who has always existed, who sits beside God on his throne, who will judge the wicked and the righteous at the end of time. He, in other words, is elevated to God?s own status and functions as the divine being who carries out God?s judgment on the entire earth. This is an exalted figure indeed, as exalted as one can possibly be without actually being the Lord God Almighty himself. It is striking that a later addition to the Similitudes, chapters 70-71, identifies this Son of Man as none other than Enoch. In this somewhat later view, it is a man, a mere mortal, who is exalted to this supreme position next to God. As this exalted being, the Son of Man is worshiped and glorified by the righteous"


Bart Ehrman

The Son Of Man in Christian settings is what is kn own as a Low Christology, IE. Jesus as a man adopted by god to sit at his side


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20 Aug 2014, 1:20 am

naturalplastic wrote:
From looking up the phrase "son of man" on Wiki it doesnt seem to mean the antichrist.

In the OT the phrase "son(s)of man" (usually used in the plural) just means regular normal people (as opposed to the 'sons of God' meaning 'angels').

In the NT both 'son of God', and 'son of man' (usually only singular) seemed to be interchangeable phrases for "Christ" who was supposed to be both fully human, and fully divine.

So I was wrong about SOM meaning the antichrist. But it does seemed to mean Christ.


Like I said, please refer to the book of Daniel.


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20 Aug 2014, 1:23 am

DentArthurDent wrote:
naturalplastic wrote:
SilverProteus wrote:
ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
... Christians think coming of the Son of Man is Jesus but is that really what it means?


Wouldn't Jesus be the son of god in their religion? :? How is he also the son of man?


Exactly. Jesus is the Son of God. And the Son of Man presumably would be the Antichrist. The guy who is gonna persuade us to get bar codes tattooed on us. The two will fight the big final showdown at Armageddon.


OH my I really wish you guys would do a little reading rather than assume everything. Nobody who has read any scripture, or listened to the barest of discussion by biblical scholars could come to the conclusion that the son of man is the antichrist, The Son of man is exactly the opposite



The Son of Man

"For my purposes here I do not need to provide a thorough summary or analysis of the vision that led to the Son of Man speculations in later times. The ostensible setting of the book of Daniel is in the sixth century BCE ? although scholars are convinced that the book was not actually written then, but centuries later in the second century BCE. In this book Daniel is portrayed as a Judean captive who has been taken into exile into Babylon, the world empire that destroyed his homeland in 586 BCE. In chapter 7 Daniel describes a wild vision in which he sees four beasts arising out of the sea, one after the other. Each is awe-inspiring and truly terrible, and they wreak havoc on the earth. And then as he looks he sees ?one like a son of man? coming on the ?clouds of heaven.? Here is a figure that is not beastly, but is in human form; and rather than coming from the turbulent sea of chaos he arrives from the realm of God. The beasts who had caused such destruction on earth are judged and removed from power, and the kingdom of the earth is delivered over to the one like a son of man.

Daniel is unable to make heads or tails of the vision, but luckily ? as always happens in these apocalyptic texts that are disclosing sublime heavenly truths ? there is an angel standing by to interpret it for him. The beasts each represent a kingdom that will come, in succession to one another, to rule the earth. But at the end, after the fourth beast, a human-like one will be given the dominion over the earth. In the interpretation of the dream, we are told that this dominion will be given to the ?people of the holy ones of the Most High? (Dan. 7:27). That may mean that just as the beasts each represented a kingdom, so too did the ?one like a son of man.? The beasts were the successive kingdoms of Babylonia, Media, Persia, and Greece. And the one like a son of man, then, would be the kingdom of Israel, which will be restored to its proper place and given authority over all the earth. Some interpreters have thought that since the beasts can also be taken to represent kings (at the head of the kingdoms) so too the one like a son of man ? that possibly he is an angelic being who is head of the nation of Israel.

However one interprets Daniel in its original second century BCE context, what is clear is that eventually in some Jewish circles it came to be thought that this ?one like a son of man? was indeed a future deliverer, a cosmic judge of the earth, who would come with divine vengeance against God?s enemies and with a heavenly reward for those who had remained faithful to him. This figure came to be known as ?the Son of Man,? and nowhere is he described more fully than in the book of 1 Enoch, which we have already considered in relation to the Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1-36). The Son of Man, on the other hand, is a prominent figure in a different source that made up the final edition of 1 Enoch, chs. 37-71, which are usually called the Similitudes.

There are debates about the date of the Similitudes; some scholars put this part of the book near the end of the first century CE; probably more date it earlier, to around the time of Jesus himself. For our purposes a precise date is not particularly important. What matters is the exalted character of the Son of Man. Many great and glorious things are said in the Similitudes about this person ? who is thought of now as a divine being, rather than, say, the nation of Israel. We are told that he was given a name ?even before the creation of the sun and the moon, before the creation of the stars.? We are told that all the earth will fall down and worship him. Before the creation he was concealed in the presence of God himself; but he was always God?s chosen one, and it is he who has revealed God?s wisdom to the righteous and holy, who will be ?saved in his name,? since ?it is his good pleasure that they have life? (48.2-7).

At the end of time, when all the dead are resurrected, it is he, the ?Elect One? who will sit on God?s throne (51.3). From this ?throne of glory? he will ?judge all the works of the holy ones in heaven above, weighing in the balance their deeds? (61.8). He himself is eternal: ?He shall never pass away or perish before the face of the earth.? And ?all evil shall disappear before his face? (69.79). It is he who will ?remove the kings and the mighty ones from their thrones. He shall loosen the reins of the strong and crush the teeth of sinners. He shall depose the kings from their thrones and kingdoms. For they do not extol and glorify him and neither do they obey him, the source of their kingship (46.2-6).

At one point this cosmic judge of the earth is called the ?messiah? ? a term we will consider more fully in the next chapter. For now it is enough to say that it comes from the Hebrew word ?anointed? and was originally used of the king of Israel, God?s anointed one (i.e., the one chosen and favored by God). Now the ruler anointed by God is not a mere mortal, he is a divine being who has always existed, who sits beside God on his throne, who will judge the wicked and the righteous at the end of time. He, in other words, is elevated to God?s own status and functions as the divine being who carries out God?s judgment on the entire earth. This is an exalted figure indeed, as exalted as one can possibly be without actually being the Lord God Almighty himself. It is striking that a later addition to the Similitudes, chapters 70-71, identifies this Son of Man as none other than Enoch. In this somewhat later view, it is a man, a mere mortal, who is exalted to this supreme position next to God. As this exalted being, the Son of Man is worshiped and glorified by the righteous"


Bart Ehrman

The Son Of Man in Christian settings is what is kn own as a Low Christology, IE. Jesus as a man adopted by god to sit at his side


I wouldn't exactly suggest Bart D. Ehrman's work to just anyone. He is very much of a fringe name. Maybe a better skeptical name that has more generally appreciated renown is Dominic Crossan. I'd just as soon suggest names like Habermas so that we can have a balanced account of these things, however.


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20 Aug 2014, 2:39 am

Fringe in what way? He has 25 books translated into 27 language' and debates regularly with the "golden boys" of christian apologetic's, Now you may argue that his views are not widely held among scholars, something I have read from posters on this site, yet they were unable to substantiate this claim.

Even if you do not generally agree with his work what is incorrect with the passage I posted. As far as I can tell there is nothing in that passage that is controversial let alone inherently wrong.


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20 Aug 2014, 3:20 pm

So used in the plural "sons of man" just means mortal humans (as opposed to angels) in the early OT. But later in the OT, in the singular, it meant the coming Messiah that will deliver Israel from being a downtrodden vassal state of the succession of foreign empires to its rightful ass-kicking place as a superpower. Then finally when Jesus came he was adopted as that messiah by the sect of jews who became the christians. So in the NT "son of man", and "son of god" are interchangeable terms for Christ.

And in the prophecies in the NT the "son of man" will return. So that means Christ will return. Pretty straightforward. Christ will return.

And it probably does NOT mean the coming of high technology in the 20th/21st centuries or any other semantic stretching interpretation like that.



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20 Aug 2014, 6:01 pm

DentArthurDent wrote:
Fringe in what way? He has 25 books translated into 27 language' and debates regularly with the "golden boys" of christian apologetic's, Now you may argue that his views are not widely held among scholars, something I have read from posters on this site, yet they were unable to substantiate this claim.

Even if you do not generally agree with his work what is incorrect with the passage I posted. As far as I can tell there is nothing in that passage that is controversial let alone inherently wrong.


You're right, I was being snappy for no reason. Sometimes I get frustrated that Ehrman gets mentioned so much in discussions of this nature as if he is the be-all-end-all when he only represents a portion of what's out there.


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20 Aug 2014, 6:04 pm

naturalplastic wrote:
So used in the plural "sons of man" just means mortal humans (as opposed to angels) in the early OT. But later in the OT, in the singular, it meant the coming Messiah that will deliver Israel from being a downtrodden vassal state of the succession of foreign empires to its rightful ass-kicking place as a superpower. Then finally when Jesus came he was adopted as that messiah by the sect of jews who became the christians. So in the NT "son of man", and "son of god" are interchangeable terms for Christ.

And in the prophecies in the NT the "son of man" will return. So that means Christ will return. Pretty straightforward. Christ will return.

And it probably does NOT mean the coming of high technology in the 20th/21st centuries or any other semantic stretching interpretation like that.


Yeah, it was pretty straightforward. Many think that this prophecy started in Genesis:

13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate." 14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, "Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. 15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel."

This is generally considered to be a reference to God's seed (Christ) and the Devil's seed (anti-christ).


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20 Aug 2014, 6:54 pm

Interesting that the evil in the prophecy comes in the form of beasts from the sea. The ancient Jews never really got over that sea monster business. Finally comes up again in the NT book of Revelations when the beast is destroyed and the Earth is remade without a sea. I'll admit the deep is scary.



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21 Aug 2014, 12:19 am

simon_says wrote:
. I'll admit the deep is scary.
I should take you scuba some time! once you stop imagining massive sharks sitting just outside your field of vision it is magnificent.


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21 Aug 2014, 6:20 am

Lukecash12 wrote:
.... Sometimes I get frustrated that Ehrman gets mentioned so much in discussions of this nature as if he is the be-all-end-all when he only represents a portion of what's out there.


Fair enough.
For me I am attracted to Ehrman because of his apostasy. I have the utmost respect for someone searching for better ways to understand what they believe wholeheartedly to be true, who on uncovering evidence to the contrary, accepts this evidence even though it causes them a great deal of soul searching and pain to do so. Ehrman among others, epitomizes the maxim of "follow the evidence wherever it takes you"


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21 Aug 2014, 6:54 pm

According to Genesis 6, In the days of Noah, there were giants. I am waiting for them to come back.

I hope the KC Chiefs can pick up a few in the draft. We need the help.