"The bible test" Answered.

[max-greece]

Jesus is talking about your physical heart.

Uh, no. not even close.

He shows in the quote that he has no understanding of medicine or the human body - or rather exactly the understanding that was prevalent at the time. Whilst he could be talking about a person's centre in much the same way we do that argument is totally undermined by "Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, 19 since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?”[f] (Thus he declared all foods clean.) "

Now keep reading sport:
20 And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. 21 For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, 22 coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

So it is your opinion that Jesus said all of the above mentioned comes from your physical blood pump?
Because contextually to me Christ is refering to the secondary meaning to the word:centre of all physical and spiritual life
the vigour and sense of physical life
the centre and seat of spiritual life
the soul or mind, as it is the fountain and seat of the thoughts, passions, desires, appetites, affections, purposes, endeavours
of the understanding, the faculty and seat of the intelligence
of the will and character
of the soul so far as it is affected and stirred in a bad way or good, or of the soul as the seat of the sensibilities, affections, emotions, desires, appetites, passions

I'm only going to respond to this one point as the rest are no longer worth it.

The point being made is that Jesus did not recognise the heart as being merely a blood pump. This is where he attributed thoughts, mind, soul, desires and so on to. In other words - there is a reason he never mentions the brain (anywhere) as he didn't know what function it served.

"For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts...."

We might today euphemistically refer to the heart as the centre of passions and so on but we do not have thoughts, evil or otherwise, allocated there. Even when we do allocate emotions to the heart we do so in phrases that make it clear it is the brain that does the thinking - letting his heart rule his head, for example.

It is exactly this sort of biblical evidence that shows us that Jesus was not privy to any information that could not have come from the period. In other words - none of the knowledge a god should have.

Draw your own conclusions.....

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There is an interesting summary of the perceived role of brain and heart throughout the ancient world at http://www.theskepticalreview.com/tsrmag/1brain93.html

It specifically draws attention to biblical interpretations of the functions of the various parts of the body.