Okay, reading this I had to say something, not that you have not done a great job in fact most of what I say you have already said, I just could read it without writing a response as I went. If there is anything I have added feel free to use it.
I'll also state that based on this, this dialog is going nowhere, but as you said it may help others so thanks for sharing it.
B wrote: First, your interpretation of Paul differs greatly from mine. I do not gather from an honest reading of Paul's letters that he had a disdain for the Torah. On the contrary, he says in his letter to the Romans: 12So then, the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. 13Therefore did that which is good become a cause of death for me? May it never be! Rather it was sin, in order that it might be shown to be sin by effecting my death through that which is good, so that through the commandment sin would become utterly sinful.
Your interpretation of his writings reminds me of 2 Peter 3:15-16: 15Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. 16He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction. Of course, one could just argue that that statement was added by Constantine or Erasmus or someone else.
My favorite response to this one is, sorry but I have yet to get my Paul decoder ring in the Cracker Jack box, I assume what he said is what he meat. So many people want to say, “What Paul meant was…” I think that is why he is so discussed and loved in Christianity he is so open to interpretation because you really REALLY have to work in order to make him not only fit what God said but what he said elsewhere. You did a good job addressing this by pointing out that Paul claimed to be all thing for all people so the fact that he is pro Towrah occasionally is irrelevant.
B wrote: Second, Paul, as a Pharisee, would have had the utmost respect for the Torah. The Pharisees were experts in the Law and demanded strict obedience to all the laws in the Pentateuch. This is widely known and accepted by almost all scholars. I have never heard otherwise, except from you. Furthermore, the Pharisees had a strong belief in human freedom and on a person's ablility to do good works prescribed by the Law. (By the way, I am using Law and Torah interchangeably, although I know that Torah may be better translated as "teaching" or "instruction".) Yes, I am aware that the Pharisees also believed in an oral law and often took things to the extreme in regard to legalism. However, they certainly did not disdain the the Torah. Rather, they studied it diligently in an effort not to break a single commandment.
Again you addressed this well. This idea that Jews and Pharisees were devotees of the Towrah is just plain wrong, and not supportable by the facts, the evidence and reality. They follow their oral laws not the Towrah. The fact that they think the rabbis can out vote Yah is proof of this.
B wrote: Third, you make several bold claims, such as: "Sadly, the transmission of the original message has suffered considerable distortion both deliberate and negligent." "Few if any extant Greek NT manuscripts have eluded the filter of Marcion's, Constantine's, Jerome's, Erasmus', Luther's and other's combined tweaking to reflect faith consistently..." This claim, supposedly supported by some Philip Comfort according to you, goes against the claims of many other (I dare to say the overwhelming majority of) well-respected textual critics. How do you decide who is right here? In any case, you certainly can't prove that the manuscripts we have today were tampered with by all of those people. And if they have been tampered with, how can a person tell which parts are genuine and which parts are spurious?
Actually Phillip Comfort would disagree with this assessment, he would agree with the “many other (I dare to say the overwhelming majority of) well-respected textual critics” It’s examination of the evidence that he presents which leads to this conclusion. Another good book to cite on this matter is “Misquoting Jesus” it actually shows the evidences that stories such as the let he who is without sin cast the first stone never existed. What I would recommend in this regard is to present evidence of these corruptions and changes, while he most likely won’t examine the evidence you present he certainly won’t examine the evidence you tell him to look up for himself. Most are too lazy to go look for the evidence themselves, if they weren’t they would have fond it already, it’s not hard.
And yes we certainly CAN prove that the manuscripts we have today were tampered with, that is not in the slightest bit hard, in fact I believe later B goes on to admit this. So that goes to show how irrational he is.
And how do I decide what is right? SIMPLE, I apply Yahowah’s test.
B wrote: On the other hand, it seems to me that if God really wanted us to know the truth, He, himself would have protected the transmission of the sacred texts from theological errors. Otherwise, why would He have bothered to inspire the writers of Scripture in the first place? There is no question that as the texts have been copied down, the copyists have made errors. However, most biblical scholars agree that the errors are small and inconsequential as far as doctrine is concerned.
Two word answer: FREE WILL. I know you already essentially explained that to him, but I thought I would point it out anyways. Understanding free will is essential to understanding Yahowah and Towrah.
Again he seems to put his faith in these self-proclaimed scholars. He needs to examine the evidence, and not the conclusions of scholars with a vested interest in the status quo.
B wrote: Fourth, you claim that you are not willing to believe anything that you don't know. You, yourself, seem to contradict that claim on several accounts. You seem to take it for granted that God exists, that He is one God, that at least some portion of Scripture is inspired by Him. How can you prove any of these things?
You already addressed this, but I’ll go ahead and add my 2 cents. We do not take these for granted; Yahowah has provided ample evidence for all of these. He isn’t interested in long answers so I won’t bother presenting the evidence.
That to me is the reason this dialog is doomed. He isn’t interested in investing the time to come to know and understand. He wants you to give short answers to disprove lies that have been accepted as truth for centuries. That is impossible. One of the reasons Yada stopped debating Muslims was a lie could be said in ten seconds, and it would take him 10 minutes to show it was a lie, and then they would just move on as if nothing happened. It takes long answers to provide the evidence and reason against these lies, if he is not interested in investing the time in long answers then there can be no satisfying answers. “I want you to completely and adequately defend your position and provide strong evidence against mine. But make is short I don’t have time.”
B wrote: For myself, I would not believe that any of Scripture is inspired if I did not believe with all my heart that God had established a church, a visible church here on earth, that through the wisdom given her by the Holy Spirit determined which writings were inspired and which were not. This whole idea of biblical inspiration does not make sense, otherwise. For, contrary to what others may think, there is no self-attesting canon.
This is circular reasoning pure and simple. You can’t argue with belief, it is impervious to evidence and reason. I used to think that faith was belief without proof, and while I was incapable of it I understood it somewhat, but experience has shown me that faith is really belief despite proof. No matter how much evidence you show him, no matter how much Scripture you cite he will never admit that God did not “established a church, a visible church here on earth, that through the wisdom given her by the Holy Spirit determined which writings were inspired and which were not.”
As for there being no self-attesting cannon, God would disagree and so would Dowd who wrote that the Tworah was complete and perfect.
There are two questions to ask in response to this, one you already asked when and where did Yahowah authorize as church to do this job. Second, who did it before the Church? Say you argue that it was the job of the 12 after Jebus, but who had it before that?
Also as you pointed out perfectly God told us this would happen.
B wrote: In your previous e-mail, you made the claim that the Catholic Church instituted certain Christian holidays that have their origins in ancient pagan rituals. This is certainly not a new accusation hurled against the Catholic church. While some Christian holidays may in fact coincide with pagan holidays, this obviously does not mean that pagans and Christians are celebrating the same things. In some cases, Christian holidays may have been introduced to provide an alternative non-pagan celebration, much in the same way that some Protestants, rejecting Halloween, have introduced harvest festivals. In other cases, the parallel holidays may be entirely coincidental. According to some theologians, Christians came to date Christ's birth on December 25 based on a belief that his conception and death occurred on the same day of the year. Whatever the case, Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus on December 25, not Tammuz's re-birth,and we celebrate his resurrection on Easter, not sun worship, sex, and death.
Same old same old none answers. You have the Protestants keeping Catholic tradition so that makes the Catholic tradition okay despite what Scripture says. And oh yeah the ever present, “That’s not what it means to me” argument.
So B, forget the Chruch (catholic and protestant) what does God, you know the creator of the universe, have to say about the adopting of Pagan practices? And what was Yahowah’s response when the Yisraelites decided that a Golden Calf was the embodiment of Him, and they were going to celebrate Him the way the pagans celebrated their gods? Did He look down and say, oh well they mean well, it doesn’t mean that to them? No He got royal pissed off and it didn’t end to well for them.
So how about you make an argument based on facts and evidence rather than your opinions.
B wrote: One of the other questions you asked in your previous e-mail is who testified to Paul's conversion other than himself. Luke testifies to it in Acts 9.
You already answered this M, but I’m going to reiterate it. Was Luke there when this happened? NO. Did anyone other than Paul actually see this happen? Depends on which version of his story you go with, but we have no evidence that if someone else did see this that Luke ever talked to them. So all we have is Luke’s record of what Paul told him, and that is good enough evidence for B.
So M, I want you to tell B that I meet with God down on Main Street last week and He told me that Paul was full of bull. If you attest to it even though you weren’t there it’s good enough for B right, so I must have meet with God.
B wrote: Acts also testifies to the apostles' acceptance of Paul and his message as well as his claim that Gentiles did not need to be circumcised in order to be Christians.
Well let’s start with the most glaring error here. The word Christian is never used anywhere in the Greek text so we can say 100% for sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt that the “Apostles” never spoke of what was needed to be a Christian.
Now on to the more pertinent point. They never said it was not needed, they merely were not requiring it of people because they wanted people to read the Towrah and think for themselves, not listen to what they had to say as though they were God, which ironically is how people look at it now. BUT let’s say for the sake of argument that they did accepted Paul’s claim that circumcision was not necessary. WHO GAVE THEM THE RIGHT TO CHANGE WHAT GOD SAID. These were 11 men, humans, yes they had spent considerable time with Yahowsha, but one thing is clear from the eye witness testimonies, these men were not perfect. SO even if they did agree with Paul that doesn’t change what God said.
If God had given men the right to change what He said, or He himself changed what He said, then He would be unreliable.
B wrote: think that it is very interesting that you regard John's apocalypse as being inspired, even though this was one of the disputed books that eventually made it into the canon, but you do not accept Paul's writings, which were among the first to be regarded as authoritative by the early Christians.
Well that’s because, pardon the language, I couldn’t give two sh*ts about which books are disputed and accepted by religious scholars.
B wrote: I have to admit that I'm very confused on your criteria for deciding which New Testament books are authoritative and which are not.
My criteria is that delineated by God (ou already gave him the places in Scripture to looks for this), I don’t know why it would confuse you that I would choose to accept His criteria over that of religious scholars, He’s not only the creator of the world, the savior, but also the one who those calming to write Scripture are claiming to be quoting.
B wrote: I also wonder why you accept the Old Testament writings as having been faithfully transmitted to us, but think that the New Testament texts have been corrupted. How can we trust that the current copies of the Old Testament manuscripts we possess have not been altered? Of course, I understand that you think that the translations cannot be trusted, but I am referring to the Hebrew manuscripts we have. After all, the oldest complete manuscript we have of the Old Testament is from 1000 A.D. Yes, fragments of all of the Old Testament books have been discovered in the Dead Sea Scrolls, but you have to be aware of the fact that when we compare all of the fragments we have from different manuscripts, there is certainly not complete agreement. So, my question to you is why do you consider the Old Testament books as being faithfully passed down to us? Certainly, the possibility of corruption exists with regard to the Old Testament text even more than for the New Testament because it was composed many centuries earlier.
Well this is as you pointed out M, just a straw man argument. As you pointed out, even with the TPP we have to be careful because they were subject to religious copy editing as well, thankfully Yah repeats himself to make sure the most important stuff stays there.
B wrote: Finally, and perhaps most importantly, even if you are correct in saying that we cannot trust our English translations of the Bible, you, yourself, are unqualified to make that judgment.
I suppose you have to have a degree from a religious institution to be qualified right? Examining evidence and drawing conclusion isn’t good enough, you have to have the authority of man for your words to mean anything.
So his basic argument here is that he is not smart enough and needs others to tell him what is right and wrong, and since he is not smart enough neither are you. Basically this means no matter how many lexicons and dictionaries you cite which show that the translators have it wrong it isn’t going to matter because they have “mastered” the language according to the powers that be and you haven’t.
B wrote: M, I fully understand your disgust and disdain for organized religion. During my own journey, I experienced this same shallowness and entertainment-based worship when I would visit certain churches. The church is constantly in need of repentance and reform because it is made up of sinful human beings. Yes, there is this dark side to the church, but there is also this other side that you aren't able to see right now. We have the witness of so many faithful saints who have gone before us. We have the witness of the martyrs -- men like Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp. We have the wisdom and insight of men like Augustine and Aquinas and Origen and the examples of holy women such as Catherine of Sienna and Teresa of Avila who offered themselves completely to God. And you seem to want to sever yourself from this body. You can't do it, Michael. You're not going to survive. You need the body. You can't be a lone ranger Christian. You're depriving yourself of so much that you aren't even aware that exists. Am I upset by this? How can I not be?
SO because there are members of your group that has “done good” that makes your group righteous and authorized to change God’s work, that makes it so we should overlook the evil they have done. If judging the behavior of the Church is what you think should be done to determine its righteousness then should we not put it on a scale and see how the balance comes.
What “Good” balances out the inquisitions, silent consent of the holocaust, the brutal murder of Jews in the crusades, and most recently the shifting around of and covering up of pedophiles to save face, just to name a few? If you want me to judge the Catholic church based on its merits I’m more than happy to, but all the martyrs and saints isn’t going to budge the scale with so much blood and pain on the other side.
And I have no desire to be a “lone ranger Christian” I don’t have a desire to be any kind of Christian. You can take all the men you want from that “body” and have them on your side, as for me and my house, we serve alongside Yahowah.