The "Four" Crucified with Christ

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CindyGia

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Ok,
I posted this question twice on “Ask an Apologist” but my question never seems to show up there. I don’t want to post it again a third time.

My sister sent me this article forwarded her by her husband who is always on the road. She asked what my thoughts were concerning it and after reading a few paragraphs, I thought it could be a teaching by either Mormons or JW’s - or maybe even a non-denom heretical Protestant teaching.

Can any of you get to the bottom of it? Like I said, I posted on the “Ask an Apologist” thread but it just never seems to show up there. Thank you and God Bless!

“The Four Crucified With Christ”

www1.itech.net/~ydl/The_Four_Crucified_with_Christ.htm
 
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CindyGia:
Ok,
I posted this question twice on “Ask an Apologist” but my question never seems to show up there. I don’t want to post it again a third time.

My sister sent me this article forwarded her by her husband who is always on the road. She asked what my thoughts were concerning it and after reading a few paragraphs, I thought it could be a teaching by either Mormons or JW’s - or maybe even a non-denom heretical Protestant teaching.

Can any of you get to the bottom of it? Like I said, I posted on the “Ask an Apologist” thread but it just never seems to show up there. Thank you and God Bless!

“The Four Crucified With Christ”

www1.itech.net/~ydl/The_Four_Crucified_with_Christ.htm
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well, one thing they said can be considered true…
a malefactor is not necessarily a thief, but a thief IS a malefactor…

mal·e·fac·tor Pronunciation Key (ml-fktr)
n.
  1. One that has committed a crime; a criminal.
  2. An evildoer.
i can’t believe this is being taken seriously…

🙂
 
Your question, as I understand it, is “where did this teaching come from?” I have to say: I don’t know, but it sounds like the type of childish reasoning one would expect from JW’s, the more fringe SDA sects, or even Iglesia ni Cristi, a Fillipino sect. I was unable to trace this article to the original web-link, but it looks like someone’s personal page.

You may have more luck posting it on the JW forum–most of the experts hang out there.
 
Well, first of all, Luke was the only Gentile author in the NT, therefore malefactor and theif can be attributed to the different cultural background and language differences.
secondly, “where him they cruicified, and with him, two on this side and on that”… well, there was no punctuation in the original texts, considering there was no punctuation in greek, so it would have read “wherehimtheycruicifiedandwithhimtwoonthisideandthat” (more or less, so the placing of the punctuation is completely up to the translator… “with him, two, on this side, and on that side”
next, i point out that there were more than one soldiers, very possibly one on either side, breaking the legs of the other two, then going towards Jesus, not illogical at all.
 
Don’t worry about this at all. For one thing, it introduces nothing new in terms of doctrine or belief. In other words, if this is true, is has zero impact on our lives and our faith.

This is an example of someone who doesn’t know enough about Greek or translation to understand what he is reading, and who is going to get himself in a lot of trouble if he keeps reading the Greek without learning a little first. He is going to come up with all sorts of wild beliefs that really do change his doctrine and lifestyle if he’s not careful.

If you want to understand exactly what he is doing wrong, ask and I’ll try to spell it out.
 
Cindy,

My research indicates that the orignator of this idea is “The Way International” a fringe sect. It is my understanding that no mainstream churches give this idea any weight at all.

Hope that helps,
VC
 
Thanks Everyone! That helps alot! I’ll pass this information on to my sister and brother-in-law. My brother-in-law is very gullible and likely to believe this, so I wanted to get to the bottom of it as soon as possible!

You guys are terrific! God Bless.

btw, Fidelis - the JW Forum has been taken down now for weeks. Don’t think it’s anywhere on this forum anymore
 
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CindyGia:
btw, Fidelis - the JW Forum has been taken down now for weeks. Don’t think it’s anywhere on this forum anymore
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Whoa! I wasn’t even aware of that. :o I wonder why–lack of interest? I never frequented it myself, as I have limited contact with JW’s in daily life.
 
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Fidelis:
Your question, as I understand it, is “where did this teaching come from?” I have to say: I don’t know, but it sounds like the type of childish reasoning one would expect from JW’s, the more fringe SDA sects, or even Iglesia ni Cristi, a Fillipino sect. I was unable to trace this article to the original web-link, but it looks like someone’s personal page.

You may have more luck posting it on the JW forum–most of the experts hang out there.
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From the end of the article:
  • Remember, God is perfect, so His Word must also be perfect. Now you know that there were clearly four (4) crucified with Jesus Christ because that’s what the Word of God teaches.
This reasoning proves too much. If the Bible is perfect - why is the Greek of the Book of Revelation the worst in the NT ? Why is there even one single textual variation in it ?

There is no inherent logical connection betwen the statements “God is perfect” and “the Bible is perfect”; one cannot reason from the one to the other. Besides, perfection is not a Biblical category for thinking about God - it is so far from being Biblical, that it comes from Plato & Aristotle: from pre-Christian Greek pagan philosophy. IOW, a basic notion in Fundamentalist thinking about the Bible is not of Biblical origin - it is not even Hebraic. It can quite easily be seen as the kind of thing that is condemned by St. Paul in Colossians 2.8, where he warns against “vain philosophy”. Which would make it not only extra-Biblical, but anti-Biblical as well.

The reasoning in this article is the sort of reasoning that leads to distinguishing “the Kingdom of Heaven” from “the Kingdom of God”.
 
Gottle of Geer:
From the end of the article:
  • Remember, God is perfect, so His Word must also be perfect. Now you know that there were clearly four (4) crucified with Jesus Christ because that’s what the Word of God teaches.
This reasoning proves too much. If the Bible is perfect - why is the Greek of the Book of Revelation the worst in the NT ? Why is there even one single textual variation in it ?
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Actually I found the quote right before it most humorous…
This teaching will probably stay in your heart the rest of your life. It is one of the better examples of how private interpretation (i.e. guesswork) and tradition result in the wrongly dividing of God’s Word, mistranslations, and misinterpretations which only result in erroneous doctrine, very slyly introduced into secular religion by the god of this world.
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So we are not allowed private interpretation NOR any traditional sources…only the writer’s of this website have it correct…and obviously their interpretation is not private. 😛
 
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