The meaninglessness of the Christian god concept

[fr0d0]

I regret to have to remind you that Christianity is based on the God of the Hebrew tradition who is no different from the gods of the Greek or the Sumerian tradition.

Based upon but very different to.

There are gods of the people and gods of the theologians and scholars.
In Christianity the only popular figure is Virgin Mary who does not belong to the divine family.

That is a misguided Islamic myth. Also: Catholicism isn't necessarily Christianity. In some places it goes directly against Xtianity, as happenned in it's history. Not saying all Catholics aren't Xtian.

In my country (Greece) she is the most loved one and she is also the one with the most temples devoted to her. She took over from goddess Athena.

Yes, paganism from paganism.

On the other hand, Christianity is already a religion of the past.
Try to have a conversation with a theologian and you will find out that he has already moved on to a God more spiritual, more remote and more obscure, to a god who is not of our universe (I know the term in Greek but not in English).

You aren't addressing my faith, where God is integral and is precisely the same God revealed to Moses, with no omissions whatsoever.

My faith is of current theology. Of a God fully involved in this reality right now. Fully rationalised and independant of your irrational materialism.

Christianity is based nowhere and belongs to nobody. The Creator God of Christianity is the God of the Old Testament who is a God of Hatred. The son who is the god of love was supposedly a Hebrew but is believed by most Christians (the authors of the gospels included) to have been preaching in Greek.

You say that God is a "God of hatred". Yet your source material is by a people who understood their God to be good and just. You are incredibly delusional.

If you start analyzing Christianity you will end up very disappointed. There is no official “Love each other”. Not even a single word of Christ (supposing that he existed) was saved because of the enormous blunder of translating his words to the then language of the elite: the Greek.

I see so this is a racist claim by yourself. You are the master race, I see.

In the name of Christianity many Greek treasures were destroyed. Certainly an anti Christ like act.

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MOAR BULLSHIT

Grow a brian Norfolk and go do some reading like you claim to be doing.

[dtango]

If you start analyzing Christianity you will end up very disappointed. There is no official “Love each other”. Not even a single word of Christ (supposing that he existed) was saved because of the enormous blunder of translating his words to the then language of the elite: the Greek.

I see so this is a racist claim by yourself. You are the master race, I see.

.
My English is not good but not that bad either as not to understand what I wrote above: The authors of the gospels did not speak Hebrew and most probably they were not Jews.
Four Hebrew words all in all are there in the gospels and these were copied from the psalms of the Old Testament, but the point is not that. The point is that those hearing Jesus crying “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” they did not understand the Hebrew words and thought that he was calling Elijah, which is a Greek name deriving from the word Helios “sun.”

What racist claims and master race are you talking about?

[Norfolk And Chance]

MOAR BULLSHIT

Grow a brian Norfolk and go do some reading like you claim to be doing.

This is the sum total of what I have reduced you to. Dry your eyes and grow a pair of empirical ones.

1-0 me.

LOL.

[fr0d0]

I am totally ok with empiricism and the authority of science unchallenged by religion Norfolk. Do you have a problem with that? Do you think I should be dissmissing science in favour of religion??

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What racist claims and master race are you talking about?

The ones quoted tango.

I agree that translations introduce many errors, and we seek to get to the precise meaning of the original text. Quite a hard task also given the cultural references of the time, that are mostly lost on a modern audience.

Are you seriously suggesting that only you know this secret about what Jesus said there? What I a calling racist is your natural native slant towards your own culture trumping everyone else's. Maybe racist is too strong a word, but you get my point.

[dtango]

I agree that translations introduce many errors,..

The Greek texts are the original ones. There has never been a gospel in Hebrew.
The supposed translation is just the excuse given.

What I a calling racist is your natural native slant towards your own culture trumping everyone else's. Maybe racist is too strong a word, but you get my point.

I do get your point but it is not atheist Greeks who slant, as you say, towards the ancient Greek culture because it was the ancient Greek philosophers who paved the way for Christianity.
The gospels were written in Greek but we do not know whether the authors were Jews, Greeks or Romans.

I myself I am an admirer of the Egyptian culture and I know very well that the wisdom attributed to Greeks was stolen from Egypt.

[fr0d0]

I meant the translations into english tango. I also wasn't referring to atheist Greeks, but all Greeks. I fully attribute parrallel philosophies and their influence on the Jewish tradition. Like I said, I think the Jews perfected it and made it completely coherent where all others failed. To understand the aincient Hebrew texts we need to take into account the parrallel traditions for a correct perspective.

"The books of the New Testament were written in Koine Greek, the language of the earliest extant manuscripts, even though some authors often included translations from Hebrew and Aramaic texts."

"Jewish culture was heavily influenced by Hellenistic culture, and Koine Greek was used not only for international communication, but also as the first language of many Jews. This development was furthered by the fact that the largest Jewish community of the world lived in Ptolemaic Alexandria. Many of these diaspora Jews would have Greek as their first language, and first the Torah and then other Jewish scriptures (later the Christian "Old Testament") were therefore translated into standard Koine Greek, i.e. the Septuagint."

Yes I've seen some good stuff from Egyptian philosophy. Some dire flaws too of course.

[Norfolk And Chance]

I am totally ok with empiricism and the authority of science unchallenged by religion Norfolk.

And so you should be. Your book of fables completely has NO authority to challenge science, which I might add, is real, testable and also, importantly, malleable based on new evidence.

Do you have a problem with that?

Of course not. When did I ever say I have a problem with your religion not challenging science?

Tip - do NOT go down the "god cannot be empirically tested" route, because I'll just have to destroy you all over again.

Do you think I should be dissmissing science in favour of religion??

Great illogic there - WTF are you chuntering on about now?

[fr0d0]

Norfolk - get a clue dude. Seriously... it's embarrassing.

[dtango]

To understand the aincient Hebrew texts we need to take into account the parrallel traditions for a correct perspective.

I quite agree on that!
I’ve read translations of the cuneiform texts and I’ve studied hieroglyphic texts because I’ve taught myself to translate the hieroglyphic script. I can assure you therefore that I understand the Old Testament and that I do respect it deeply.

The case of the New Testament is, however, quite different: The texts were written originally in Greek and there are no Hebrew or Aramaic texts from which… some authors included translations, as per passage you quoted.

By writing the gospels directly in Greek, the authors (if we assume they knew Jesus, or that they at least knew someone who had seen and heard Jesus) did translate the words of Jesus into a language he was not speaking. In this way they saved no original words of Jesus other that the four words already mentioned.
Isn’t it a huge blunder?

During that time the Greek language was used by the scholars, the aristocracy and the upper classes in general. Jesus was not preaching to them and the gospels are supposed to have been written for the common people to know the words of Jesus, but the layman did not speak Greek. Not everybody was speaking Greek then as not everybody is speaking English today. These countries are not Greek-speaking countries today.

So why write the gospels in Greek?
The only sensible answer is that the authors of the gospels did not speak Hebrew or Aramaic. The gospels, as well as the story of Jesus was made up, most probably based on a model case or based on the life of Julius Ceasar, as per the relevant theory.

[fr0d0]

I think it was written in Greek because that was the most common language of the Jews in that area, as already stated.