Did Jesus lie ?

As Archer pointed out long ago, the most likely situations are:1. Jesus really thought that a rapture like, worldwide event would happen within a few years, he was just plain wrong.2. Jesus never said this, it was only written by later Christians when the anonymous author of what we now call the GoMt wrote it around 80. (actually around 65 by Mk, since Mt just copied Mk).Those two are clearly the most likely. However, both of course don't fit the literalist, "Bible is the perfect word of God" image of the Bible that fundamentalists have.The apologetics offered by fundamentalists to avoid #1 and #2 above only seem to make things worse.One of these is that Jesus was talking about a "spiritual death" or that he didn't mean a rapture like event, but rather a seeing of the heaven after one physically dies. Both of these ignore what the Bible says and are unscriptural. They show that the person claiming them sees his or her own ideas as more important than what the Bible says - which is fine, as long as it is admitted, which it rarely is.Why is that? Because over and over Jesus clearly makes it out to be that the rapture/parousia is SOON. That's his main point over and over in the Gospels. Even in the verses we are talking about, in Mt 16, Mk 9 and Lk 9 (virtually identical, since Lk and Mt copied Mk), they are all taking about the here and now:here is what leads up to the line in question:

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Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.
Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. "Never, Lord!" he said. "This shall never happen to you!"
Jesus turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men."
Then Jesus said to his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father's glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done. I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom."

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(as a side note, that above is from Mt, and Jesus appears to be only talking to his disciples - there is no mention of anyone else. Mk and Lk have a crowd of people there.)It has always struck me as a little ironic that most fundamentalists, when faced with various problems such as these, respond by denying, chaning, or ignoring the actual text of the Bible. We see this often, such as when they make up the unscriptural idea of a "water canopy" in Genesis, or hyperevolution after the flood, neither of which are in the Bible. We saw this with the idea that Jesus was saying "race" instead of meaning "you standing here", or the idea that Jesus was only referring to the three other criminals crucified with him. His point appears to be to remind people that the kingdom is coming very soon - if he were going to say what he said only because the 3 criminals happened to be in the crowd (which the Bible also doesn't say), then Jesus was being deceptive.The whole "seeing heaven" argument doesn't work either, since Jesus often described the Kingdom as a physical thing, where people will be able to eat, drink, walk to from the east, or walk into from the west - a place on earth, a place you can be near, but outside of, where you can gnash your teeth (note - you still have a real body with real teeth). It wasn't until around the turn of the first century, after all this didn't happen, that Christians had to change their story - so then they wrote the GoJn.Take care all-
Edited by Equinox, : No reason given.

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-Equinox_ _ _ ___ _ _ _
You know, it's probably already answered at An Index to Creationist Claims...
(Equinox is a Naturalistic Pagan -  Naturalistic Paganism Home)

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Not only is Peter’s epistle a personal reference but the entire gospel of Mark is too. It is generally accepted that John Mark accompanied the Apostle Peter as an assistant and the gospel after his name consists of the messages delivered by Peter.

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and...

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Peter tells us that no lie was found in the mouth of Jesus (1 Peter 2:22).

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and....

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Peter has further personal references to what he knew about Jesus in the books of Acts as well.

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It sounds like someone is unfamiliar with the work of Christian Biblical Scholars since 1800. Mark may have written Mk, but it's unclear that he ever knew Peter. It's controversial at best that Peter wrote 1 Peter (and almost certainly not 2 Pt, which appears to be a forgery). What Acts says about what Peter did may also not be relevant, since Acts was written by whoever wrote Lk, which wasn't the disciple Luke for a number of clear reasons.

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You have no original document of ANY Bible book proving that what I DO have is distortion of what was originally written.

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Shifting the burden of proof. If one is going to use a book in the Bible as evidence, the burden of proof is on you to show that it isn't distorted, not on Brian to show it isn't distorted. I say that not because I agree with Brian (though I do), but because it's a simple rule of rational thought.

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hasn't been edited more times than tongue can tell, unlike the Bible.

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The people who keep tract of such things do so pretty well.

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Are you aware of the sheer scale of the disagreements in our MSS of the books of the Bible?Of the over 5,000 manuscripts of parts of the new testament we have, no two of them agree word for word, except for the tiniest fragments. There are more differences between our MSS than there are words in the entire new testament. Of course, some doctrines (like the existence of God) can be seen with decent certainty. Most of the errors are simple spelling errors, or missing or added words, but portraying our Bible as clearly known in great detail is simply misleading.A great resource for learning about the way we got our new testament (as well as summaries of the different parts) is this class from NC state on tape (35$), or the same class on DVD/VHS: This class has can give you a clear picture that otherwise may take a lot of work to get.The Great CoursesA great book to learn about the history of the New Testament is here:
Amazon.comWhen the books that eventually ended up in our bible were written, people later copied them by hand, then copied them by hand again from the second copy when another copy was needed, then when that 3rd generation copy was taken to another city, someone there copied it by hand, etc,. So all we have are old copies of the copies of the copies of the copies, and we don’t know how many times it was copied before our copies were made. Even our oldest copies of nearly all the books date to a hundred years or more after the books were written, and they all disagree on what the books actually say - you can expect that from hand copying (try it yourself sometime!).That’s not to mention the many well documented cases where the early Christians intentionally changed the text to fit what they saw as the “correct” doctrine. Tons of examples are in this very detailed scholarly book, which discusses the changes in their original greek:Amazon.comThis webpage describes what the oldest scraps are:http://www-user.uni-bremen.de/~wie/texte/Papyri-list.html
(note the “date” column - II = around 150 CE, III = around 250 CE, etc.)This page is useful too:
Server ErrorBe careful with anything you read, especially from Christian evangelist sites. They often have outright lies, know to be false by scholars (such as “all the books of the new testament were written by 95 CE” ), but more often have subtle deceptions, like saying that “a manuscript of the gospel of John dates to 125 CE, so we know that the Gospel of John is accurate”. That implies that when you read John, you are reading a translation of the entire gospel from 125 CE. What they don’t tell you is that the manuscript they mean (p52) only has 8 verses on it! The rest of John is from more recent manuscripts.This is part of the reason why the different English bible translations are so different - with different doctrines. It’s because they sometimes pick different ancient manuscripts to use for different paragraphs, and the ancient manuscripts say different things.This is getting off topic. Sorry, but I had to respond to claims that appear to be based on the idea that the Bible was written by witnesses.Have a fun day-Edited by Equinox, : copy error

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-Equinox_ _ _ ___ _ _ _
You know, it's probably already answered at An Index to Creationist Claims...
(Equinox is a Naturalistic Pagan -  Naturalistic Paganism Home)

Cat Sci's suggestion in post 163 (that Jesus in Mt 16:28 "some of you standing here will not die until the son of man comes" didn't mean that the parousia would come soon, but rather meant that some of those standing there would see the transfiguration in a few days) is another great example of what I just described in post 158 above. by that I'm referring to where Christians feel it is OK to pretend the bible says something else, and to read in a different meaning or even different events than what the text says. A term for this is exegeisis.It seems to me that if Jesus had wanted to say "three of you standing here will see me in radiant glory next week", he would have said that, instead of "some of you standing here will not die until you see the kingdome of God". Seems pretty simple, doesn't it?Remember in the 1800's (hell, the 1900's too), when everyone made Jesus into what they wanted him to be? Suddely Jesus was a radical Feminist if you talked to a feminist, a communist if you talked to the communists, a new-age guru if you talked to the New Agers, and a free-market capitalist if you talked to the Capitalists. I suppose it's nothing new to make up new sayings of Jesus.Have a fun evening-

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-Equinox_ _ _ ___ _ _ _
You know, it's probably already answered at An Index to Creationist Claims...
(Equinox is a Naturalistic Pagan -  Naturalistic Paganism Home)

Riverrat wrote:

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But remember this. The Holy Spirit is the spirit if truth. There is no lies when experiencing the spirit of truth. You know truth deep down in your heart, you know what that feels like. Times that by a thousand, and you can just start to feel what the Holy Spirit is like.

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Wonderful experiences like this are found in every religion. We've heard them from Muslims and Hindus, Buddhists and Pagans. Yet, when one is discussed, Christians say that the others are from the Devil, and Christian one is authenitic. How could that be so, if RR is clearly using the fact that one occurred as evidence it is from a good god? We have no evidence that the Christian one is somehow sweeter than the others.Plus, RR seems again to be contradicting the Bible, which says many times that holy-seeming visions can be deceptive, and that either Satan or God can be behind this kind of lying. For instance:2Cor11:14

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Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.

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and 2thes2:11

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God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie

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I'm glad that RR has had such a cool experience. I feel it is a great part of being a human to have these, regardless of what one attributes them to. Humans over the ages have attributed them to hundreds of different Gods, and often had repeated experiences that "confirm" these guesses. Plus, modern medicine has shown that by artifically stimulating part of the brain, these experiences can be caused to happen at will. They are a wonderful thing, but not a reason to condemn other religions as false, nor a reason to make excuses for an ancient text.All the best-

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-Equinox_ _ _ ___ _ _ _
You know, it's probably already answered at An Index to Creationist Claims...
(Equinox is a Naturalistic Pagan -  Naturalistic Paganism Home)

CatSci wrote:

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I think calling exegesis, 'pretending the bible says something else', is a little off.

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Sorry about the confusion. I wrote "EXEGEISIS", not EXEGESIS. While not commonly used, that extra "I" makes a difference. EXEGEISIS is taking an outside view, and reading it into the Bible verse (note order, outside into verse), while EXEGESIS is carefully interpreting a verse to get out of it the meaning that the original author intended (note order, original meaning out of verse to the outside).TL does a good job explaining what I mean further (Thank TL!):

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"Exegesis is that ingenius tool by which an exegete comes up with the many possible interpretations of a text so that he can pick the one that most closely agrees with is already systematized theology."

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Now, I'm not sure on the spelling, since I've seen people use both words to mean both things. However, there is a clear difference in the meaning between the two, one being trying to understand the original author, and the other being trying to get the original author to say what you want. We should have words for those two different things. Perhaps "exegeisis" and "exegesis" are good words to use.I've seen Christians of all stripes try to read other things into the Bible. Creationists may read in hyperevolution and a water canopy, liberal Christians may read a love of all homosexuals in Pauls letter to the Romans, or read in a "spiritual rapture" instead of a real one. It's not confined to one side or the other. Sure (CatSci), jesus does use figurative language - but that doesn't mean we can just call anything we don't like "figurative language" and proceed to creatively "interpret" it.In this case, look at what the Bible has:

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"the Son of Man is going to come in his Father's glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done. I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom."

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Jesus is clearly talking about the rapture type thingy, not some transfiguration. In the very sentence before 16:28, he's talking about the son of man coming with angels and judging people. There were no angels or judging people at the transfiguration. The whole transfiguration explanation seems to me to be as clear a case of "reading into" the Bible as is the liberal view that Paul loves homosexuals, and the other examples I mentioned. That's in addition to the clear implication that some (most?) would die first, again something that doesn't fit with the transfiguration.have a fun weekend, I probably won't be back until monday-Edited by Equinox, : No reason given.

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-Equinox_ _ _ ___ _ _ _
You know, it's probably already answered at An Index to Creationist Claims...
(Equinox is a Naturalistic Pagan -  Naturalistic Paganism Home)

ActSci wrote:

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Yes, thanks for the explanation. I understand the difference.

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Cool, we're communicating!

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Yep, and I agree that exegeisis, in general, is not a good thing. But, I also think we should not read the Bible literally. You have to interpret what it means, critically, and the intentions of the reader, or there purpose for interpretation, seems to determine if there should be an 'i' in there or not.

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I agree that a literal reading is not always right (see esp the song of solomon). However, I don't think the intentions of the *reader* should ever change what the *writer* meant. Think if we approached any other document this way. It could go like this:"Yes, judge O'Connor, that is what the Constitution says, but since my intentions as the reader differ, I decided that it should mean that having a King of New York is OK....."If the intention of the writer is important for ANY document, I'd think that Christians would consider the Bible to top the list - after all, the writer is supposed to be God, and deciding to put an "i" in there, and read in what you want, seems terribly disrespectful at best, indeed, blasphemous at worst.

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Sure (CatSci), jesus does use figurative language - but that doesn't mean we can just call anything we don't like "figurative language" and proceed to creatively "interpret" it.

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Of course not everything, but as far as the Bible goes, I'd say we can do that with most things. I also think thats how we are supposed to read it.

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Most? The Bible is over 80% old testament, with Jesus's parables occupying only a small fraction of the whole Bible. I think there are many clear places of figurative language where the author's intent is clearly figurative (parables, song of solomon, Daniel, etc). I don't think that's "most". For instance, it seems clear both from the text and from acts that the stories of Jesus' miracles were intended to describe real events, same for the exodus, the egyptian plauges, the ascension etc. Whether they are real or not is another discussion, but it seems clear that the author *inteneded* them to be believed.

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Yes, I don't think he was talking about the transfiguration. The Rapture, i dunno 'cause that is pretty well defined but a 'rapture type thingy', yeah, that's what I think he was talking about too.

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I think we are close enough here to agree.

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But I still don't think he lied.

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As I mentioned before, since I think Jesus was a human and not an omniscient God, I don't think he lied either, any more than Einstein did when he objected to Quantum Mechanics by saying "God does not play dice with the universe." Einstein was just plain wrong - QM works and has stood the test of experiment after experiment. That doesn't mean Einstein is some dummy - it just means that he guessed incorrectly in that case.

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Has the event happened yet? I don't think it has. Are the people he was talking to dead? Yes, they are.

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Ah, and there is the crux of this whole discussion. It goes like this:1. The evidence shows that the statement in 16:28 is incorrect.
2. The original text is the correct word of God.
3. The Bible has been preserved uncorrupted since the books in it were written.These three cannot all be true because they contradict each other. Since #1 stands up to scrutiny, that makes a logical, rational person look critically at #2 and #3. However, BOTH #2 and #3 are asserted to be true by fundamentalists, and logically BOTH must be true if one is to use the Bible as a guide to one's life or as an unquestionable source of faith/worldview/etc.SO - what to do???? One can either abandon the dogmatic belief in #2 and #3, OR, one can abandon logic and rationality. It's a choice each of us can make for ourselves.From

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So, I think he must have been talking about some kind of spiritual death, like...

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Does that answer feel honest to you? From that answer, it seems that the choice I just talked about has been made in favor of the Bible and not in favor of logic, evidence, and rationality. The mental gymnastics and wiggling needed to keep it up are things that I'm very familiar with - I did it myself for years. As more and more things like this surfaced, it became more and more mentally uncomfortable for me to say to myself that I was intellectually honest, while twisting the words as the need arose. I finally couldn't fake it anymore, and gave up on the idea that the Bible is all good and all correct. It felt like finally admitting a lie to a spouse.That admission need not destroy one's faith - even one's Christian Faith. Many Christians have freed themselves from the dogmatic belief that the Bible is inerrant. To each his own. Since I know how it feels, I don't want to give someone a really hard time about where they are. To be on the other side feels raw, scary, shameful, and guilty. Have a great weekend everyone-

jaywill wrote:

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I ask for specific challenges to any one or more of these points.

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Why? Why not stick to the topic of the thread, which we've seen over and over shows that mt 16:28 is simply incorrect?We've seen time and again that it is the fundamentalists who are most willing to distort the plain and simple original meaning of the authors of the Bible if it doensn't fit their pre-conceived ideas. More than that, we've seen time and again how people like Jaywill and RR are perfectly willing to insert a whole bunch of ideas into the Bible if they want them to be there.The big list on Jaywill's post is a good example of this. Many of them aren't anywere in the Bible, and are made-up, ad-hoc ways to try to wiggle out of a problem which was only created by their own dogmatism. I've posted many ideas on here that have been simply ignored, perhaps because it's easier for a literalist to ignore them and ignore the Bible rather than face what their own Bible says.Oh, and to touch on another topice - The books we now call the Bible were originally all in greek. This can be seen not only in the fact that our oldest manuscrpts are all greek, but has been confirmed linguistically. Anyone claiming to know anything at all about the Bible should know that, showing again that the literalists like Jaywill and RR don't know what they are talking about beyond having a warm and fuzzy feeling that they attribute to the holy spirit. Worse, they do that while spouting bigotry about how all the other warm and fuzzy feelings in all other religions are false.Worst of all, perhaps, is the insult to God that these literalists like Jaywill and RR keep repeating. That insult is the implication that God actually wants you to go through such a long and covoluted series of arguments from outside the Bible to understand his supposed word. Wouldn't any god worth his salt do a better job communicating his word? Any marketing major could do a better job, and they don't even have divine powers.Jaywill's list is a great example of this. If Jaywill really thinks that list is correct, and that it is at least somewhat important, than why didn't god include it in the Bible? Jaywill's list is well under 200 words. The Bible is approaching a million words. That's less than 0.04%. There is no need to make up all this extra (and extra convoluted) material, and to make it up like that is an insult to God. Edited by Equinox, : No reason given.Edited by AdminPD, : Warning

jaywill wrote:

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The weight of the evidence I think points to Christ telling the audience that some would witness a preview of His power and coming in His kingdom in a few days.

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No, it doesn't. We've discussed how that word genea only means generation. We've shown that the preceeding words of Jesus, as well as the rest of the synoptics support this. Saying that he was talking about the transfiguration does two things:1. It focuses more concern on keeping a certain doctrine than on what the Bible actually says.
2. It creates a disunity in Jesus's speech, making him look like a person with scrambled thoughts.

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That He knew whereas He was limited by His Father from knowing the precise day and hour of the final climax of His coming kingdom's arrival.

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What's the problem here? Jesus is clear over and over that the final judgement is coming very soon. That's practically his main point in the synoptics. He is also clear more than once that the precise day and hour are unknown. Here in Michigan, it's 44 degrees F outside this morning of Oct 24th. I don't know the precise day and hour that it'll be below 24 F, but truly I tell you, this generation will see the temperature go below 24 F. The ax is laid at the foot of the tree.Is one really Bible-based if they care more about what their priest (or apologetic website) says than what the Bible itself says?Edited by Equinox, : noticed admin note, so I removed any personal references. Sorry about that.

OK, I'm a little confused, between Jaywill and RR, there seem to be two fundamentalist explanations of the verse. One is that Jesus meant the transfiguration, so by saying "generation", he meant generation. The other fundamentalist explanation is that "generation" actually means "race" or "nation", so then Jesus WASN'T referring to the transfiguration.So my question is - do the fundamentalists who think that Jesus was talking about the transfiguration condemn the other fundamentalists for changing the meaning of the word "generation"? And conversely, do the fundamentalists who change the word "generation" into "race" condemn the others for changing the text of the Bible to refer to the transfiguration?Sometimes it seems that Fundamentalist Christians give other fundamentalist Christians a free pass, while they'll object to the same behavior in anyone else. Is that the case here? For instance, Here RR is arguing that "genea" doesn't mean "generation", so Jesus is referring the 2nd coming, which hasn't happened yet. So does RR join us in objecting to the transfigurationists who say that Jesus's statement of Mt 16:28 has indeed come true already, as Jaywill states?Oh, and I came across this great summary of the whole "genea" thing:I can find "genea" meaning "race" if I look specifically at Christian apologetics sources - as RR points out.The Skeptical Review » Internet Infidels

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You are still ignoring all the notes, and commentaries I posted. Why should I trust you over them?

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Legend and I aren't ignoring them. I've read them all - I just don't find them convincing. I've also read the whole book of Mormon - just because I'm not Mormon doesn't mean I'm ignoring it - it just means that it's not a solid argument. RR, I'm sure that you too have read things that you didn't ignore, but that you found unconvincing.It's not about "trusting legend" - it's about the evidence, and the words in the Bible.

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Do you even acknowledge that the true meaning of it is undecided by some, and a conflict exists to it's true meaning?

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and...

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there are books written and published about it, that agree with what I am presenting here.

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That's another fallacy to add to the list. Yes, there are many who take either the race line or the transfiguration line (or both simultaneusly - which I haven't figured out yet, other than it seems to be a complete abandonment of all logical thought). But the fact that those people exist doesn't mean they are right or even that the evidence isn't clear. There are thousands and thousands of people who sincerely believe that the sun goes around the earth. Does that mean that the evidence for a heliocentric solar system is weak? Of course not.Lastly - I thought you were going by the voices you heard inside, not human knowledge (that's how you knew you were right). A blend of the two is understandable - I'd also test internal voices if I heard/felt them.

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You need to take the word (genea) in context.

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well, sure - that's what legend has done over and over. The verse immediately before is talking about the 2nd coming, for instance.

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Listen, you can't say Jesus was wrong, without calling Him a liar. That's what your trying to do.

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Sure you can. My mother told me it was going to be sunny once, and it rained. I don't think my mom lied to me, she made a mistake by reading the weather report for the wrong day. Einstein rejected QM saying "God does not play dice with the Universe". He was wrong - QM has been repeatedly confirmed. Did Newton lie with his whole "gravity" thing? Of course not - even though it is not completely correct, since it ignores QM. Being wrong is not lying.

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At this point in time, I would be more willing to accept that the bible was written incorrectly, but I have no solid proof to believe that either.

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Accepting the overwhelming evidence that the Bible contains human contributions is perfectly compatible with many forms of Christianity. Seeing the Bible as containing some errors will preserve your faith, where as plugging your ears to the evidence of the errors may lead to a big eventual breakdown. There's lots of other well known evidence, such as the historical errors or the stories known to be added (such as the woman caught in adultery Jn8). But those are a topic for another thread.PS - just noticed jaywill's edit to add the 2Pet line. 2Pet is a topic for a whole other thread, since scholars (Christian and non-christian) agree that 2 Pet wasn't written by Peter, as jaywill claims, but rather is a later forgery (a pseudepigraph). A good overview of that discussion is here:
2 PeterHave a fun day--EquinoxEdited by Equinox, : added 2pet comment.Edited by Equinox, : fixed 2 pet attribution - I had on first glance thought that was written by RR.

Hi-Hey, this was posted while I wrote the other, so I'll respond to a few comments here.The lukan verse I talked about in an earlier post - if you know it'll happen this generation you still may not know the day and hour, just as I know it will get below 24degrees F this winter, but don't know the day and the hour of that.The 1 pet verse fits anyway since lying is not the same as being wrong. Even if the 2nd coming does come tomorrow, then Jesus would still be wrong, since it didn't happen in the generation he said it would happen in. Either way he wouldn't be a liar.have a fun day--Equinox

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If Jesus was wrong (lying or not) where is the discussion by the apostles in Acts, or in the epistles, or in Revelation, or anywhere correcting for, apologizing for, or otherwise making up for the misspeaking?

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Would you present your evidence that any of the early disciples noticed the error that you think you notice?

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There are at least two reasons why such evidence cannot logically exist.First, the statement in question about Jesus is that this generation (or some of you standing here) will not die before the parousia. Thus, if any of the disciples are still around to discuss anything, then their generation hasn’t passed away yet, so the disciples, by definition, can’t find a problem with the statement while they are alive. So of course they didn’t talk about how it failed. That’d be like you talking about how you had died.Secondly, we don’t appear to have anything, not a single jot or tittle, written by a disciple of Jesus. The gospels are all anonymous (the names were tacked on by the Catholic church long after the books were written), and the epistles that claim to be by disciples are forgeries (OK, 1st peter is very slightly controversial, but that’s the best of the cases). So even if they had been logically able to discuss the problem (which they weren’t), we may well not know. The Acts was written around 80 to 90 CE, when “some of those standing here” could well have still been alive (though very old).Interestingly, we DO have plenty of evidence of *early Christians* discussing the problem that Jesus clearly had said the parousia would come soon, and it hadn’t come even after a long time. We see this in the Gospel of John, which was written about 65 years after Jesus’ death, in places like Jn 21:21, where excuses are made for the lack of any 2nd coming yet.Another good example is 2pet 3:4 (written around 100 years after Jesus’ death), where whoever wrote the book describes how many Christians were beginning to doubt the idea that Jesus would come again. It’s important to remember that the Bible wasn’t put together until the 4th century, and you are talking about the time hundreds of years before that. So they had some books here and there, some of which would end up in the Bible and some that wouldn’t. They had rumors and guesses, stories and ideas. So discussion was difficult.I hope that makes things more clear. Have a fun day-

OK, so clarify things for me. Do you think RR is off his rocker in claiming that 'genea' means race, or instead do you think RR is wrong because he doesn't think that the transfiguration was the fulfillement of Jesus' statement?
Thanks-Equinox