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Mickey
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Hello brother. Christ believes they are more alive than you or I.
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ckempston
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I belong to the ICOC, which is somewhat of an off-shoot of the Church of Christ.
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ckempston
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Yeah, I have it. Doesn’t mean I can hear millions of prayers at the same time, which would be required for Mary, or any other saint, to hear and “pray with us.”
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Mickey
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Strange mixture ya got there.
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ckempston
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Why would it be strange? Wherever the Traditional religions stick to the Scriptures, I tend to agree with them. We have a pretty Catholic view of Justification, the salvation “process”, the need for good works, etc.
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Mickey
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Is this the group run by Kip McKean and Al Baird?
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ckempston
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Actually, Kip started his own group, after elders throughout the church realized he had way to much power and marginalized him. An obvious problem of not having an authoritative body, with checks and balances, to appeal to. Having experienced this first hand, you can possibly see why I began to consider more Traditional denominations.
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NDfan
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I wasn’t implying that coming from a dictionary somehow invalidated them. If we read fragment 31 it doesn’t say that all relatives of Christ were cousins. It simply tries to align the children from scripture to the different Mary’s noted in scripture. But there’s no statement that reads. "The brothers and sisters of Christ were cousins only and Christ never had blood half brothers and sisters. I further don’t invalidate what Eusebius records as he also records other ECFs that imply Christ had blood half brothers. So if one was invalid then they all would have to be. But there’s definitely conflict somewhere.
I don’t think anyone can deny or confirm it. On the surface it looks like it came from a different time frame which could be a strike against it. But let’s assume the fragment is good. That doesn’t prove perpetual virginity.
It doesn’t indicate any truth. It just coincides with what the RC believes. What you believe and what is true are very different. At one time people preached and believed the world was flat. But that certainly wasn’t truth. Citing historical figures that say the world is flat doesn’t validate it as truth either. It just represents a belief they had. So if Eusebius records Ignatius as saying the world is flat. We know that argument would hold no water. So therefore we’d have to question when do we believe Ignatius and when do we not. Crude example but the principal is the same.
Well if they were half-brothers then again we have conflict amongst the traditions which would force us to question who do we believe. Half brothers comes from the Infancy Gospel of James which cannot be used a reliable source. There are no other writings prior to the mid 4th century that explicitly state Mary was a perpetual virgin. So again we’re back to traditions wanting to believe something about Mary, and then creating explanations to justify that belief. The belief does not make a truth.
Neither do I. But again the half brother explanation doesn’t hold up to what scripture tells us about the relationship between Mary and Joseph. By all interpretations of Matthew we see that this was an ordinary betrothed Jewish couple. Matthew 18 tells us before they came together using the word synerchomai which means conjugal cohabitation. So Matthew is communicating that sex was going to be a part of the relationship. If Mary had been found pregnant and was a virgin vowed to GOD, then Matthew wouldn’t be saying, before they came (synerchomai) together. He’s saying before meaning there was going to be a time when they would come together.
There’s no mention at all in any Gospel that Joseph already had children. The most convincing thing that proves this is when they had to go to Bethlehem for the census. Mary and Joseph went because that’s where Joseph was from. So then his children from the previous marriage would have had to go with them yet Matthew says nothing of this.
Well according to the flesh means when Christ lived in the flesh here on earth. It’s referencing Judas who is mentioned as being the Lord’s brother in the Gospels. So then again if it was cousin or half brother we still re-surface the same issues we’ve been discussing.
I read 44. Which part did I not respond to?
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NDfan
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No that’s not possible. Here’s why. If Mary was vowed to GOD then the Temple Priests would have found out she was pregnant eventually. They would have seen her. Taking the vow and showing up pregnant would have been an indictment on someone for violating that vow. Either Mary and her assailant, or her assailant if Mary was unwilling and had been raped. Saying Joseph put her away quietly just meant that he was not going to bring charges against Mary which would have disgraced her and her family. It also meant that he was declaring the baby did not belong to him.
If Joseph wanted to protect Mary he would have taken responsibility for the pregnancy and accepted the consequences. By moving forward with the wedding he basically was announcing that the baby would be his. Either way the Temple Priests would have gotten involved because Mary’s vow would have been violated. The fact that Matthew never tells us Mary’s pregnancy was counter to her vow is a major strike against her ever taking a vow. We see her showing up pregnant being described as a violation against her betrothal. That she would not be a virgin when they consummated their marriage.
Again that’s why Matthew 1:18 is so key to this because we are told she got pregnant before they (her and Joseph) came together. Meaning she cheated on Joseph. The word again used for come together is synerchomai which literally means conjugal cohabitation. So if we were to apply a very simple English translation to this it would say: Mary was engaged to Joseph but before they consummated the marriage she became pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Knowing the child was not his and not wanting to disgrace Mary and her family, Joseph considered divorcing her instead of filing charges against her publicly. While deciding on the matter an Angel appeared to Joseph in a dream he had letting him know it was Ok to move forward with the wedding. That Mary did not cheat on him because the baby was from the Holy Spirit. The Angel then told Joseph Mary would have a boy that would be named Jesus and would save everyone from their sins. This happened because it was spoken by one of GOD’s prophets that a virgin would have a baby and he would be considered GOD incarnate. After getting up from his dream Joseph did what the Angel told him and married Mary BUT he did not have sex with her until she had her baby which Joseph called Jesus.
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ckempston
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NDFan - sorry for hijacking your thread for a couple pages. You’re doing a good job with exploring the facts here. I’ll take my discussions elsewhere if they can’t stay on topic.
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NDfan
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Gabriel please don’t try and use the argument about document Q. This has no foundation at all.
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ckempston
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Yes, I pointed this out as well. The Q theory has the same origins as a lot of very liberal theories that likewise seek to discredit the Biblical Jesus, and attempt to “revise” the Bible to find what “really” happened.
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NDfan
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The protestant argument does hold water. The use of the word heos hou does not have the same meaning as heos. Heos confirms a status up until a time constraint is met. It does not confirm the status is continued after. But it does not deny the status continued.
Heos Hou is interpreted differently and can show the condition ending. People need to stop using examples from scripture that don’t apply. Saying Christ will be with us until the end of time does not use heos hou. Neither does the verse regarding John the Baptist being in the wilderness. Both cases use the word heos. In Matthew 28 the true Greek used there is not the end of time or the end of the world. The Greek word used is aion which is Greek meaning forever. So Christ was saying I will be with you forever. Til the end of time is an artistic way of saying the same thing as we know GOD is not defined by time. The constraint of Christ being with us is not determined by the word heos alone here. It’s defined by the parameter which is given by the word aion. Meaning the condition will continue.
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NDfan
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Ralph my brother be careful with this one. Matthew 28 as I just described in another post does not use heos hou. It uses heos. And the wording for until the end of time is the greek word aion which literally means forever. So Christ was not trying to signify a change is HIS status of being with us. HE was confirming that HE would always be with us. This is far different from saying Joseph did not have sex with Mary until Jesus was born. The birth of Christ signifies an end state of the previous condition which is marital relations.
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ralphinal
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I know. You posted that much after I did. The issue there is not with the until but with the what was the deadline, so to speak.
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NDfan
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Again this is not a valid comparison as the word heos is used here and not heos hou.
But in this case yes. He left the wilderness to come and preach the arrival of Christ to Israel. Hence at the end of verse 80 we see the word anadeixis being used which means public showing or commissioning. So Luke is saying that John was in the wilderness until his public commissioning which we know was to proclaim the arrival of and ultimately to baptize Christ. Did John ever go back to the wilderness? The intent of this verse is not to answer that but to show he was in the wilderness until his commissioning. Which means (HELLO) he wasn’t in the wilderness at the time of his commissioning. People really to study the Greek and understand how the language is used.
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NDfan
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Chip you’re fine. Keep going brother
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NDfan
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Yep. I can’t believe any Catholic would use this. Chip you ever read dissertations on Holy Scripture by William Whittaker. I know you don’t subscribe to scripture alone but he does a great job at discrediting the Q document.
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NDfan
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Correct I’m with you on that. In this case it confirms that there is no deadline. But it is derived not from the word heos by itself. It’s taken from the word aion which signifies forever. Actually a simpler way of stating the verse is: “and behold I am with you forever”. Matthew wrote it more artistically by saying until the end of time.
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ckempston
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That rings a bell; I’ll check it out. These claims always alarm me, because they indicate that all the gospel writers colluded and stole information from elsewhere rather than what they claimed to be: eyewitnesses, or interviewers of eyewitnesses.
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