Thank you peter! the one thing I want to say about your post is this: i consider it to be very very very beneficial to go to church and listen to someone else interpret the Bible s well. however, read it yourself and if you find something that doesn't fit with what they are teaching, leave the church for another one, or go talk witht he pastor and see if there is something you or he doesn't understand, or have been interpreting wrong. My psator knows greek and hebrew, and he goe back to the orginal translations sometimes, and i learn things from him that i could never have learned myself, beccause i cannot red the original lagnauges the Bible was written in.
ccfan213: please, say whatever you want! you have the right! nowadays we are being taught that all of us have the right to not be offended, and this is not a right of ours! the tyranny of the individual is becoming a huge problemin America, among other places. you are not going to offend me by disagreeing.
Now see, i disagree with you that the translations are different. First, lets define "different." yes, you make the very good
point that there are Hebrew words for which there is no engilsh. this will invariably lead to different words being used, but i would argue that they are not THAT different. The basic meaning is still the same even if every jot and tiddle is not exactly the same, just beecacuse they are different languages. The gospel message has not been changed because of hte translation. My next
point, about Jesus being the Messiah, and his coming being foretold in the Old Testament, goes along with this as well. I am not very familiar with the Torah, but i am assuming tht you could find Isaiah 53 in it, ,couldn't you? find it and read it, and find that same passage in, say the KJV bible. If you don't have a bible around,
www.biblegateway.com is a great website. I can garuntee they will have the same meaning, even if the words are slighty different. I know they will be the same. That passage talks about the Messiah, it foretells His life.
yes, Jesus was a "good Jew," a good "moral teacher." That is what i assume you mean by a good Jew, because he was a Rabbi, a teacher, and a good Jew. Now, tell me this: if Jesus was a good teacher, a good Jew, would he have lied? No. If he had lied, then wouldn't he have tried to fix it later? probably. Now, Jesus claimed to be Messiah, not only that, but he also never ever refuted anyone else's claims that He was Messiah. Looking at it, if he was a good moral teacher, a goodJew, then he was also Messiah. Otherwise, he was a liar, and he never tried to fix his lies, so he must not be a good Jew. Do you see my
point?
As to thinking the points and stories of the Bible are moot, i disagree. to me, the Bible is God's Holy Word. it is inspired byGod. Every word in it is useful for teaching! Also, if youo look at what archeologists are finding, it all agrees with the stories and writings in the Bible. I can give you an example--Luke makes mention of "politarchs" in his writings, yet archeologists had never head of those. They had heard of other terms for politocal officers, but never found any references to a politarch in any of their fidings. The
book of Luke was thought to have been made up later, dbeccause it did not agree with archeological evidence. Yet, recently, archeologists have found referencecs, for a brief time under one king's rule (forgot the king...sorry...i could find the information if you want it) to politarchs! see, Luke was right even when the archeological evidence didn't agree with him.
be proud of your culture!! When i say holidays are not important to religions, what i mean is, it's not the holidays, nor the religion, that saves you. By all means, be proud, you are a Jew! I am not tellig you that you need to be ashamed of your culture. but it's not the culture that gets you into heaven, it's a belief in Jesus as Messiah. There is only one way.