RE: Hellenism and all christians
June 24, 2015 at 2:52 pm
(This post was last modified: June 24, 2015 at 2:53 pm by Metis.)
(June 24, 2015 at 2:34 pm)Won2blv Wrote: You can go to the wikipedia page and look up the quotes from there. I am not denying that there are some criticisms. But I just don't think that you're complete dismissal is valid. And what is the Amharic? I thought that was an Ethiopian language
It's also a version of their scriptures. The different Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches use different canons from both the Catholics and Orthodox for the OT, the Ethiopian Orthodox happens to be the largest so I can look to it for most of the books bar three which the Syriac churches use.
As for the wiki page they're really pretty dubious references, I certainly wouldn't advocate using them in an academic work for anywhere but a Jehovas Witness seminary.
Quote:I have never said that Michael is a reincarnation of Jesus. Jehovah's Witnesses believe that Jesus would be the archangel AKA Michael. Its not uncommon in the scriptures for kings and rulers or even apostles to have different names used for them.
Are you sure? I'm pretty sure Michael existed before the NT for most Christians, he's mentioned in the Book of Jubilees (Orthodox books). At any rate even supposing he later became an angel that's even stronger down the road that Angels and Humans are related which the rest of Christianity strongly denies.
Quote:The cross is worshipped and viewed as a holy relic. And what it represents is similar to the way the egyptians would carry around an ankh as it represented the symbol of eternal life.I can tell you now no Christians worship the cross, Catholics especially go to great pains to deny this. Egyptians didn't carry around Ankhs either, the Ankh was a divine symbol of which only Gods depicted in art or the Pharaoh could carry. Anyone else who did it was executed.
Quote:If I look at a table when I pray it has not spiritual meaning. If I carved a piece of wood into a symbolic relic that represented my beliefs then I would be guilty of carving out false idols. In Isaiah a man is virtually mocked for taking a piece of wood and using half to cook his food and half to carve out and idol to worship. The point is not that god thinks that idol will actually become a deity but rather that our faith and worship should not be needing a visible tangible item to go along with it.
You're mistaking veneration for worship here, and the point that Christians don't expect the item to "do" anything. It's to help them pray in the sense that if they look at a picture of Jesus when praying to him they won't be so easily distracted. They don't expect the cross or a statue of Mary to have any powers to help channel their prayers.
Quote:Jehovah is the most commonly known rendition for YHWH. Adonai is not a name and neither is kyrios. Yahweh is another separate rendition for YHWH. The fact that we don't use Yahweh is not a rejection of that but just a matter of convenience.
Adonai and Kyrios both equate to "Lord", and Adonai most certainly is a name; I know someone with that surname. I know you guys don't reject the word Yahweh, but my point is Jehova is a later innovation, you'd think the Jews would know about the OT since they've had the most time to study it and even they don't use that word.
