Luther and Calvin were very closely aligned. I've got Luther's works here as well but I'm thinking in the form of sermons not commentaries. Maybe I'll check them out later.



could it mean as the note suggested mean, to "cut, dig or pierce?"

Even if it's cut or dug to me, as Lula said, it's basically the same idea. Remember David is prophetically writing this a thousand years before so even if he "saw" "dug or cut" he felt what Christ would feel a thousand years later in the form of crucifixion. David did not know about this form of punishment as it hadn't been used yet. Maybe the "pierced" is a translation the modern translators used after the fact knowing the correct English word is pierced not dug. However David wrote it, it was as he "saw" it.



I don't know Hebrew enough at all to answer this question. The way you put it makes it sound stupid but all I can say is this is what Calvin believed in the 1500's. He was a giant in the days of the Reformation and even today many read his writings as do I.

Christian Jewish circles and most Messianic circles as well.

Yeshua Hamashiach ben David (king Messiah to rule like David) is the term they use for the coming Messiah.

no because amputated would not fit. Dig or dug might fit as a description but not amputate. Another OT prophecy was quite clear that none of his bones would be broken so that would be a problem.

NIGHTSHADES POSTS: #686

Even though Saul didn't stone Stephen, he approved his death 22:20, and he was part and parcel of the Christian persecution and death of others 26:10. Verse 60, Stephen's last words were an intecessory prayer to God asking Him to not count their sin against them. The mention of Saul there is significant. Saul was a part of the "them" of v. 60. In fact, the only one of "them" who was specifically named.

So, yes Saul was forgiven and his hatred and persecution of Christians were changed, through the blood of the martyr. This is a good fruit of love and utter surrender to God. I understand that this makes no sense to some.

Lula posts:

St.Augustine (354-430) whose young life was full of pride and fleshly sensuality also experienced the "light" of conversion and was baptized in 387 and ordained a Catholic priest shortly afterwards and served as Bishop of Hippo for 35 years. His writings indicate that he was well aware of the Gospels and this quote comes from one of his sermons.

Lula posts:


Nightshades posts:


OKay....the difference is I believe that Jesus is God and am very much at ease in saying such.

Nightshades posts:


Hmmm..I see that you are a stickler to details...that's good! So, yes, Jesus was the Risen Christ at the time that He spoke to Saul while on the road to Damascus.



True Saul was persecuting all of Christ's followers, the first Christians, the emerging Church of which St.Stephen, the first Christian martyr was a deacon. And yet, Christ said, why dost thou persecute Me"?

And here's where it all comes together....

While Saul, the zealous Pharisee, is on his way to Damascus bent on imprisoning and returning Christians to Jerusalem, he was unexpectedly converted to Christ....boom! Suddenly, unexpectedly, the Light shone and just like that...the conversion was done! Saul was favored by gracemiraculously heard the voice of Christ..."Saul, Saul, why dost thou persecutest Me?"

Almost rhetorically, Saul asks, "Who art thou, Lord?" "I am Jesus whom thou art persecuting." We see St.Paul's teachings spring from his experience on the outskirts of Damascus...Christ identified Himself with the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ. 1Cor. 12:26-27; 12:13; 18-20; Col. 1:18.



And regarding the Light....2Cor.4:6, "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God on the face of Christ." Christ's Light blazed from within Saul from that moment on.

Already a convert of Christ, Saul asked, "What will you have me do?" 9:6. He realized it was a matter of "not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God showing mercy." Rom. 9:16. And the Lord simply directed him to Ananais and Ananais baptized him.

We know from reading 1Cor.15:8 that Saul, now Saint Paul himself regarded his conversion as an "untimely birth" into the power of Christ, Him Who had risen from the dead.

St.Paul's conversion wasn't only a call to personal sanctification, it was also a command to carry that Gospel to the whole world until the end of time when Christ's returns. St.Paul's ministry was preaching the reality of his own experience...a new existence, a new life radically transformed by the Death and Resurrection of Christ.

Okay I'll give you Stephen, but Stephen wasn't the only person that Saul persecuted or brought to death. There is nothing about those others that says they forgave him.




Because Augustine was aware of the of the Gospels doesn't mean that what he says is so, is so.



Christ didn't say it, Jesus did, and as I said before Christ would not have refered to himself as Jesus. Jesus the self, died the whole point of the crucifixion to begin with. He was reborn, the reason for the resurrection, as the Christ. An entirely different being altogether.



These are not the words of either Jesus or the Christ.



Funny all the men with him saw the same light, and it isn't said that they were instantly converted.



Who says so besides Paul and his supporters? I mean someone who actually saw it, and just didn't deduce, or assume it.



Why consider it "untimely"? There is no right time or any wrong time. Everything happens in God's own time.



I agree, but it wasn't the Christ that commanded it, it was the "Lord". And "personal sanctification" is still of the "self", not of God. If Christ had indeed commanded it he would have commanded it of his apostles who had the inner knowledge of his teachings and the ability to do so, not Paul.



Ananias pops up all over the place. Peter himself made the disciple Ananias and his wife "dead" for keeping part of the monies from the selling of the land. Acts Chapter 5 Verses 1 - 31. He later pops up again as the high priest in Jerusalem who Paul strikes in the face and then apologizes to after he found out that Ananias was the high priest. First of all Jesus nor Christ would not have ever have stuck this man.

This is all very interesting Lula, but it explains nothing of the obvious differences between the way Paul behaved and the way of behaving that Jesus taught. They are very much in contradiction to one another.

I am not saying that Jesus isn't the way, nor am I saying that his way isn't available to all that would follow regardless of religious affilliations. I am saying that Paul did not live or behave according to the instruction of Jesus, whom Paul founded a church on with Peter being the base.

Now I would kindly ask once more of you, why? Why are they in contradiction of one another?

lula posts: #601


Leauki posts: #601

I see it more like the Old Testament Hebraic religion is of the Lord God while Rabbinic or
Talmudic Judaism is a child of the Jewish people.



Here you are claiming Jesus minus His Messiahship.

Yes, Jesus, the Christ, was a Jew. He was born of a Jewish mother of the Jewish house of David, of the tribe of Judah, therefore in His veins flowed the royal blood of Israel's kings. After His birth He was presented at the Temple for His circumcision, at 12, entered the Bar-Metzvah-time, entered the Synagogue and read the Holy Scrolls, preached at the Synagague and celebrated Jewish feasts.


In truth, Christ was so much a Jew that He took to task those in His day who discredited the teachings of God through Abraham, Isaac and Moses to the children of Israel.

The followers He selected were all Jews, as were the first 3,000 converts who under the leadership of St.Peter formed the Infant Church. Christ's Cross bore the words, "King of the Jews".

I'm very proud that my religious belief finds its firm foundation in the Ancient of Days.

While researching more on Psalm 22, I found a textbook called Intoduction to the Hebrew Scriptures. In the sections about Jewish history, the most common reference I kept seeing is "Israelites as a nation" which led me back to this section of the discussion.

The point is I never saw Jews as a nation.

Lula posts: #601

Which Jewish law?

I mean strictly speaking by historical religious connotation, isn't a Jew, an inhabitat of Judea?

All I can gather from all this is that the term Jew is used very indiscriminately. It's very confusing....Jew is a nation, a race, a religion, a Hebrew, an Israelite, a person with a Jewish mother....

How can an atheist, an pantheist, an agnostic and anyone else who denies the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob be designated a Jew? Can someone please the rational behind how a Jew who becomes an atheist can still be a Jew?


Sodaiho posts:

I understand this. Strictly speaking Hebrew meant from beyond the river Euphrates, and denotes language and race. And I thought the term Israelite is distinctively a national designation becasue it refers to descendents of the kingdom formed by the 10 tribes which seceded from roboam, the son of Solomon, in the 9th century before Christ.

With the coming of Abraham, there came 2 divisions...Jews and Gentiles. Abraham was a Gentile when he was given the promise was he not? I mean he got circumcised late in life.

  I know it's a detail, but the details are most important. And the idea of "Jesus, the Christ", smacks too much of exclusivity, as though becoming one with God is something that only Jesus can posess. It's not. Everyone can posess this, and essentially anyone can become what Jesus became when he became the "Christ". We too often think of this a being a title, when in truth it is a state of being.

Jesus the Christ is God Incarnate...and God Incarnate is Jesus the Christ. (note: no comma for me!) Christ said, "I and the Father are one."



Jesus always was the Christ.

The church of which Jesus spoke of was the church of the heart, not a new religion, not a temple, not a cathedral. Was Peter the foundation of that church of the heart? You bet!!
Did Jesus give Peter the keys to the kingdom? Yep, he sure did. Those keys are the inner knowledge, something that Paul of Tarsus never posessed. If Jesus as he did indeed do, point out the hypocracies of the Pharisees with their parading in the temple for the adoration of the masses, their acumulation of earthly wealth, all their words about the law, that they did not themselves keep, why would he ever desire that another church/temple should take that hypocracy over for their own?

I've noticed Lula that you haven't addressed my questions about the descrepancies in behaviour between that of Paul of Tarsus and Jesus. I know what the new testament says, I can read it for myself. What I want to know is how you as individual would explain thiI would agree that Peter was martyred for his faith, and he died willingly without trying to avoid it. Paul of Tarsus, I would have to take exception with. He tried to avoid it with all the open avenues that were available to him.

The law given to the Jews by G-d through Moses in the written and oral Torah.




No. A Jew is a member of the tribe of Jehuda, which is almost all Israelites alive today. The region Judaea was named after the tribe when Israel took it from the Canaanite tribes that used to live there. (Those tribes then merged with the Jews and are acknowledges as converted.)




A hundred years ago Jews were called a race. And now some people refuse to acknowledge them as a people. Make up your minds, gentiles!

A Jew is, as I said, a person with a Jewish mother or a person who converted to Judaism.




A German remains a German even if he stops believing in whatever he used to believe or violates German law.

What confuses me is why anybody would think that it is somehow different for Jews.

(Perhaps you are confusing Judaism with Islam?)



I don't see why not. G-d created the world and gave man the ability to have children. Those children are man's (or in the Jewish case woman's), even if they stop believing.

Does G-d see non-believing Italians as Italians? What about Russians?

Does a member of a Germanic tribe who stops believing in Thor (maybe he became a Christian) stop being Germanic?

Was your ancestor who became a Christian (I assume your ancestor is from Europe) no longer an [perhaps Italian?] when he became a Christian (and stopped believing in his nation's G-d's and laws)?


You really shouldn't take another nation's local laws and make them into a universal religion if it confuses you so much.

 

Lula, Abraham became a Hebrew when God told him to take his family and cross over from Mesopotamia to Canaan. There was a large controversy as to whether Abraham was "kosher" and Paul used this to suggest Christians did not have to follow the Torah's dietary laws.

 

From My Jewish Learning:

Saul of Tarsus--who was to become known to the world as Paul, the leading ideologist of early Christianity--made considerable use of the model of Abraham to support his own belief that the observance of laws is not conducive to spiritual salvation.

 As developed in the fourth chapter of his Epistle to the Romans, Paul points to Genesis 15:6: "And [Abraham] believed in the Lord and he counted it to him for righteousness." Did Abraham, Paul argues, not live before the receiving of the Torah? Since he did, he could not have observed its laws. Nevertheless, God deems him righteous!

 In a typically "midrashic" exposition, Paul notes that the verse in question was placed before the account of Abraham's circumcision precisely in order to emphasize that circumcision (which for Paul represents the totality of ritual observance) is not a requirement for righteousness or salvation, which are earned through belief and trust in God.

 In view of such claims made by the early Church about Abraham, it is perfectly understandable that the rabbis would feel it essential to assert that he was a truly Jewish figure who had observed the precepts of the Torah even before they were made mandatory by the revelation at Mount Sinai.

The confusion over who is a Jew is understandable.  Modern Jews, including the rabbis and Israel itself, have been in constant flux and tension over this very question. In many instances, in fact, I think in most instances, the question arises and is defined by outsiders, as Leauki pointed out.  Nothing within Judaism is ever conclusive as we have no central authority. Even within each "sect" of Judaism there is no binding obligation to follow a particular ruling.  Jews have learned to live (even cherish) this fluidity.

So-called Jewish Christians are apostates.  Still Jews, but people who have adopted another religion.  They are no longer considered practicing Jews, but rather, Christians. Their testimony as to their Jewishness, what Jews believe and practice, would be considered highly suspect just as any traitor's words would be.  Now, if such a Jew abandoned there Christian beliefs, they would be welcome to return to the fold of practicing Jews. They would have to go through some ceremonies and a mikvah, but they would, indeed, be welcome.

Be well.

 

 

Leauki, there is quite a lot of material here: wwwlink