it doesn't matter. i could show you a few examples of god some apparently dishonest things too, also in the old testament.but this is not really god being sneaky. it's human beings doing it, and then claiming it's god. god is the reason we count david twice. it's not an insult. it's a valid point. how can we claim to follow god and not the devil if our god lies?

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אָרַח

you sure it's the same rahab?

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אָרַח

i think you should probably trust ramoss on this. i think he speaks more hebrew than you do. anyways, there is a hebrew word that does mean virgin. can "almah" apply to virgins? sure. some young women are virgins. but the problem is that almah itself does not indicate virginity.

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אָרַח

speaking of goofs, why does matthew have jesus ride into jerusalem on two donkeys, instead of just one? either he's being funny, or he doesn't understand hebrew too well. oh come on, you have to love godspell! i was going to post jesus christ superstar (my favourite) but it just wasn't fabulous enough.

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אָרַח

that's a spurious argument. has ramoss pointed out, it's used to describe women who are in or have been in sexual situations. dinah, post-rape, is a common example.besides, they DID have prostitutes back then.

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well, obviously, they are women, sometimes young, that are not virgins. exam by an obstetrician. there is a word for "virgin" in hebrew. it's ‘—. they also tend to use the expression " — " or some variant just to make it extra clear. of virginity? depends. for instance, lot uses a variant of the above phrase to describe his two daughters: —- . but as we find out six verses later, lot has two sons-in-law, and they are married to his daughters. the verse after that proves that those are his ONLY two daughters. so lot is lying.characters in the bible are not always honest about virginity. anyways. this is way off topic.This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 04-05-2006 10:02 PM

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or rather, his claim to the throne of the kingdom of israel, which has to be passed down through the royal line of david (not just any old relation). as i pointed out earlier in this thread, matthew makes a few errors in that line.the messiah is generally expected to sit on the throne of israel, which jesus did not.

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this is one of the great ironies of the christian religion. jesus DID conquer rome. he just did it 300 years after his death.

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that's not entirely accurate. the jews DID expect a spiritual leader, in the form of a king. one would have to meet both the material AND spiritual expectations to be the messiah. to the jews of the time, they were actually sort of the same thing. kicking rome out of israel was material concern, sure. but it was also a religous one, too. the mistake comes in separating the two -- they were very much the same to the people of the time.jesus did not meet their spiritual expectations. rather, he turned much of the religion on its head. instead of arguing, for instance, that they should kick rome and their taxes out, he argued that they should pay their taxes as well as paying their tithes. and it was something of a spiritual insult for israel to be occupied. it meant that they had lost their favor with god, and their promised and was no longer theirs. it meant the were subject to foriegn influence in terms of culture and religion -- things the bible takes very strong stands on. he basically told them to let it go, and that god still cared about them other ways.to argued that jesus fulfilled expectation and prophecies regarding the messiah is to completely miss the point. jesus came along and told them they were wrong about a number of things. he didn't meet their expectations -- he tried to change the focus of the religion. he may have been a messiah, just not the one they expected.

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jesus was anointed?the usual meaning of "anointed" in this context is "king."

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uh. ok. right.sounds like another cop-out to me.

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on the contrary, i think the argument for matthew being satire is quite convincing. evidently, someone mut have been discriminating enough to pick out the bits that were silly and make fun of them.(the irony being that nobody in today's more literate times gets the joke)

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