Showing posts with label Tovia Singer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tovia Singer. Show all posts

Saturday, July 12, 2025

Tovia Singer Considered Christianity a False Religion Close Enough to the True One for Certain Purposes


Well, if it's close enough to the true one, why isn't it the true one? But details, see below:


Why Did God Contribute to the Success of Christianity?
Tovia Singer | 9 July 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQHslgvSkkU


2:29 Without false religion, there is no freewill?

Are you even remotely serious?

Does the true religion per definition take away freewill once it's accepted?

3:17 Is "immediately" concluded from bappaam in verse 21 same chapter 16 of Jeremias?

I could interpret it as "this time" = "not that other time (i e Babel, Genesis 11)" and Jeremias 16 fits what Christianity did.

People after people actually did say "we have inherited lies and vanity" ...

3:49 We hold that Jesus' physical body is the Third Temple.

It is accessible in the Eucharist.

He could worship the Father inside the Second Temple. We can have Him worship the Father inside us.

5:00 Qualification.

We believe that, up to Golgotha:

  • Second Temple Judaism was perfectly true in its public and common tenets
  • Samaritanism was nearly true, with some false parts
  • the other teachers of Second Temple Judaism, apart from Jesus, were each wrong on some point, not necessarily the same for Pharisees who weren't disciples and for Sadducees, and not necessarily the same between different Pharisees who weren't disciples. The exception we would pose is Gamaliel, and I support the tradition that Sts. Paul and Barnabas prayed for their former teacher, and he died a Christian.


We do NOT believe that what you call Judaism was true. We do not believe it even existed. Your blatant misreading of Isaias 53 would have been impossible if it hadn't been for Jews before that already rejecting the true Messias.

One recent convert from Judaism said, when he took a look at the history of Judaism, the further back he went, Talmud rather than Maimonides, Mishna rather than Gemarah, perhaps he considered certain books we Catholics accept as "Jewish writings from the intertestamental period" and looked at them too, the less he recognised tenets of current Orthodox Judaism, and the more he recognised tenets of Christianity, like Hell exists and things like that.

I obviously agree.

5:20 If Jesus wasn't the Messias, Judaism wouldn't be true either, since the Old Covenant with the Temple Sacrifices was taken away with no sacrifice to replace it.

For these things were done, that the scripture might be fulfilled: You shall not break a bone of him.
John 19:36

In the English translation, that scripture in the OT has "bone of it" ... St. John says the Crucifixion fulfilled the Paschal Lamb. And therefore all the other sacrifices.

If there is no one true Church that would falsify Christianity since it is against the promise of Matthew 28:20.

So, the Old Covenant cannot be the true religion after year 70. The New Covenant couldn't be the true religion if the true Church had disappeared and had to be reconstructed by prophecies or Bible studies rather than simply inherited from the Apostles.

6:02 You pretend the Trinity heretical?

I'll cite Michael Heiser for you, even if he belonged to a heretical version of Christianity:

Twenty-five years ago, rabbinical scholar Alan Segal produced what is still the major work on the idea of two powers in heaven in Jewish thought. Segal argued that the two powers idea was not deemed heretical in Jewish theology until the second century C.E. He carefully traced the roots of the teaching back into the Second Temple era (ca. 200 B.C.E.). Segal was able to establish that the idea’s antecedents were in the Hebrew Bible, specifically passages like Dan 7:9ff., Exo 23:20-23, and Exo 15:3. However, he was unable to discern any coherent religious framework from which these passages and others were conceptually derived. Persian dualism was unacceptable as an explanation since neither of the two powers in heaven were evil. Segal speculated that the divine warrior imagery of the broader ancient near east likely had some relationship.


7:44 Rather, Jesus is the fulfilment of the Sabbath, and Jesus is celebrated on Sundays because of the Resurrection.

Monday, June 9, 2025

Has Tovia Singer heard of Athalia?


The most problematic passage of the New Testament?
Tovia Singer | 8 June 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU66YaPRTfI


The four names removed, for at least three of them, it's the generations after Athalia.

Thou shalt not adore them, nor serve them: I am the Lord thy God, mighty, jealous, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me:
[Exodus 20:5]

For the fourth, I have seen suggestions going three ways, either the name was a double, or it was one person who personally merited damnatio memoriae, or some of the transitions between kings were not father to son and so he's omitted as an uncle, not an ancestor.

Monday, March 31, 2025

Tovia Singer Judges Monotheletism ...


How Many Jews Will Tovia Singer Convert to Christianity? · Tovia Singer Judges Monotheletism ...

... but he thinks he's judging Christianity.

Judaism vs. Christianity on the Messiah: Why We Differ -Rabbi Tovia Singer
Tovia Singer | 10 Sept. 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_SWAcZqTbE


From the side of the human will, He could theoretically have sinned, as Adam sinned, though previously innocent.

From the side of the divine will, and of their perfect union, He could not have sinned. A will that in itself was capable of falling, was gifted by the divine will, of the same person, with the gift of impeccability, like that of the blessed after the Resurrection.

He was in the earthly life "simul viator et comprehensor" i e He was simultaneously in the state of those who haven't died yet and of those who are Resurrected in Glory (starting with Him and His Mother). Concretely, therefore, He could not have sinned, but there was in Him sth which apart from this circumstance could have. Which therefore could experience the strain of the temptation.

Thanks for reminding me Monotheletism (the doctrine He only had one will) is a heresy.

5:51 Isaias 2, first four verses: 1 The word that Isaias the son of Amos saw, concerning Juda and Jerusalem. 2 And in the last days the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be prepared on the top of mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it. 3 And many people shall go, and say: Come and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will teach us his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for the law shall come forth from Sion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

Catholic comment:

[2] "The last days": The whole time of the new law, from the coming of Christ till the end of the world, is called in the scripture the last days; because no other age or time shall come after it, but only eternity.-- Ibid.

[2] "On the top of mountains": This shews the perpetual visibility of the church of Christ: for a mountain upon the top of mountains cannot be hid.


The Catholic Church actually began teaching in Jerusalem, in Acts chapter 2.

6:20 That war will come to an end as soon as the Messias comes does not follow from the prophecies you have cited.

Two things should not be conflated:
  • Judah and Ephraim will make no more wars against each other and will have no armies (fulfilled in the Palestinian Christians who descend from First Century Jews and Samaritans, and by the way, they have not made wars against either Mitsrahi Jews or non-Christian Samaritans).
  • God's word of peace will go out to the peoples.


It has. It has not abolished all war, but it has changed the way war is viewed. You may have noticed a certain Herzog and a certain Netanyahu arguing for total war, as if you were Joshua fighting Canaaneans. You may also have noticed quite a few Christian voices basically stating "we don't do total war, we don't kill civilians" ... well, that's the effect of God's word of peace going out to the nations 2000 years ago. Class relations have changed. Sex relations have changed. Age relations have changed. Slavery has been abolished in Christian country after Christian country (South of US and Brazil were the last ones, at least among Catholic and Protestant countries, Russian serfdom may not have been quite the same, I'm not totally sure of conditions in Ethiopia prior to Italy and to Communism). Women are seen as fully honourable, equal in honour if not all other rights to men. Children are not slaves of parents, disobedient children are not stoned or decapitated.

6:41 Indeed, the first Christians were Jews who repented.

6:52 St. Paul doesn't say no one can repent.

He says no one can make an initiative to repent independently of God. Big difference. When God saves, in precisely St. Paul, the ones saved as adults repent.

Know you not that the unjust shall not possess the kingdom of God? Do not err: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, Nor the effeminate, nor liers with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor railers, nor extortioners, shall possess the kingdom of God. And such some of you were; but you are washed, but you are sanctified, but you are justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Spirit of our God

I e, the sinners whom Jesus saved were saved by repenting. I Cor. 6:9-11.

6:58 Here is the LXX text for Isaias 59:20

καὶ ἥξει ἕνεκεν Σιων ὁ ῥυόμενος καὶ ἀποστρέψει ἀσεβείας ἀπὸ Ιακωβ

The exact same wording is found in St. Paul's Greek in Romans 11, except there is no "kai" and "heneken" has been changed to "ek" ...

9:05 Jesus could as man fear God, while as God being God.

Again, no problem. He did the appropriate thing in both natures.

9:55 Again no contradiction. Eccl. 12:13

Let us all hear together the conclusion of the discourse. Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is all man:

Ah, wait, you translate "kal ha adam" as "all man's" and we as "all man" ...

But I think "kal" / "kol" can also be translated "the whole" ... now, "this is the whole man" ... what about the broken man who currently doesn't do that? He needs to become whole, which is where a Christian redeemer comes in. (I don't master Hebrew by the way, I consult the interlinear know what a status constructus is, guess "kal" is constructus for "kol" and consult 3605. kol for the range of meanings being All, every, whole, entire, total).

10:20 Obviously the "we" or "our sins" in Isaias 53 refers to the believers.

We don't say "Jesus died for our sins" is the only thing you have to believe.

The presence of the "we" obviously proves that the suffering servant is not the people of Israel.

10:41 No, freemasonry and some versions of Judaism (kabbalism, lots of mentorship going on) is that highly developed version of mystery religions.

11:24 No, as a Jew not believing in Jesus you are not a light to the nations. Jesus passed that office to those believing in Him:

You are the light of the world. A city seated on a mountain cannot be hid.
[Matthew 5:14]

The audience were Jews, they were not exclusively His disciples, the mountain was still Zion, but they were listening and believing. That is what Catholics do to this day. (Oh, not all of us, there are some bad Catholics too).

@ToviaSinger1
The Christian Lie About the Septuagint! -Rabbi Tovia Singer
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/O8FfKX1-H60


Already in the five books of Moses we have an example of Jews having a motive to change the text.

I'd also say the rest of the LXX was extant before Christianity came around, like when St. Paul refers to the Scriptures which St. Tim had known since childhood, since St Tim was a Hellenistic Jew, he knew them as the LXX.

Back to the motive. With a Masoretic Genesis 11, you could argue that Melchisedec was Shem, which was clearly not the opinion of St. Paul about the tithing of Abraham.

Monday, March 10, 2025

How Many Jews Will Tovia Singer Convert to Christianity?


How Many Jews Will Tovia Singer Convert to Christianity? · Tovia Singer Judges Monotheletism ...

Did Jacob Predict the Coming of Jesus When He Blessed Judah? - Rabbi Tovia Singer
Tovia Singer | 9 March 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP6Ijeoq3cg


3:39 I think you are actually wrong.

The staff of kingship means sovereignty.

While you may not count Daniel 13 as Scripture, you would count it as history. Susanna was going to be stoned, except that Daniel proved her innocense. And, here is the kicker, no one from the Babylonian side was interfering. When Stephen was stoned, Paul had to keep the cloaks as well as keeping a lookout for Romans, or the Romans would have interrupted that. But in Babylon, it was not like that.

So, from King David on, Judah always enjoyed sovereignty. Up to Herod the Great and Archelaos. THEN the Romans took that away.

So, the Messiah already came, more precisely under Herod the Great's autonomy, he was not completely sovereign, but he could send soldiers to some villages. Herod Antipas couldn't.

He had the capacity to put John the Baptist into prison, but not to make a public execution, this prophet was murdered in prison.

And he sent, and beheaded John in the prison
[Matthew 14:10]

Pilate therefore said to them: Take him you, and judge him according to your law. The Jews therefore said to him: It is not lawful for us to put any man to death
[John 18:31]

They didn't mean according to the Torah, they meant according to the Romans. BY THEN the Messiah had already come.

4:14 I obviously disagree about the Maccabeans.

While they were not of the line of Judah, but of Levi, they were doing rule of a sovereign kind in Judah, and therefore they guaranteed the non-interruption of sovereignty or near-sovereignty from King David to ... 6 AD. Before which, Jesus had come.

David Katz
@davidkatz341
It doesn't matter whether you agree or disagree. That is not with the versus mean. Maccabees were initially a great family of kohannim. But they did which was forget and claimed the kingship. The verse doesn't mean that there will be a king always on the throne because clearly they were huge gaps when there wasn't a game. What it means is the kingship is the line of Judah.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@hglundahl
@davidkatz341 You forget that sovereignty is a kind of kingship of the community.

As I have mentioned in another comment.

Judah was always able to punish its criminals, even during the Babylonian captivity, but this was taken away in 6 AD ... when the Messias was already born.

@ Wait, are the Maccabees you say were wrong after the ones described in 1 and 2 Maccabees?

Because, while I have a duty to honour the men described with approval there, it seems John Hyrcanus was the first king of the Hasmonaean dynasty and does not fall in that category ...

My bad, if so.

David Katz
@hglundahl The Book of Maccabees is not in the Jewish canon it's in the Christian canon. They were great leaders during the rebellion that We remember during Hanukkah. But as kohanim their members of the tribe of Levi and are forbidden to take the kingship.

@hglundahl I don't understand your point. Judah could punish criminals? You could have a governor. We had judges. But the kingship is of Judah. And by the way, I don't understand how Christians get by 2nd Kings. To be king and to be the final Messiah you have to be of Judah. Jesus is not of Judah. That's the end of the issue if Christians want to insist Jesus was miraculously born of a virgin. I mean the whole Matthew 1:23 misappropriation of Isaiah 7:14 is beyond absurd. However if we're going on the Christian claim then Jesus cannot be the Messiah because he had no earthly father. Christians make stuff up to fix this like they try to say Jesus is of Judah through Mary. Nice try but there's no documentation on that and why does the Christian Bible go out of its way to print two separate genealogies of Joseph? By the way genealogies that do not agree.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@ First, I am glad you honour the men who are mentioned in the book of Maccabees, even if you don't count them as canon.

Second, the interpretation of Tovia Singer and yourself of the verse is faulty because the verse actually doesn't mention king as such. Two words are mentioned:

šê·ḇeṭ - translated sceptre or tribe in various contexts
chaqaq - translated staff or commanders

So, the idea of sovereignty stands.

"Jesus is not of Judah."

Check Matthew 1.

Not having a physical earthly father doesn't mean He had no foster father, which legally counts.

"Jesus is of Judah through Mary. Nice try but there's no documentation on that"

Yes, there is.

Luke 3 gives a genealogy where someone is foster father on Joseph's side and real father on Mary's.

I think that answers your last point too.

@davidkatz341 Relation of Isaiah 7 and Matthew:

How Jews Changed the Scripture to Erase Jesus as the Messiah
Christian Chronicles | 16 March 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTaeeOSOZRY


David Katz
@hglundahl I'm aware of the apologetics that Christians come up with. But tribal affiliation is patrilineal. You know you're talking about the Jewish people. We know our scripture better than anyone. There is no such thing as tribal affiliation through adoption. And when there is no Jewish father the child has no travel affiliation. It's as simple as that. Now you mention Luke gives a genealogy where someone is a foster father. Can you point to the verse that says that?

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@davidkatz341 "There is no such thing as tribal affiliation through adoption."

So, what about levirate?

"Can you point to the verse that says that?"

No, but to a tradition. Here is a quote from the Haydock comment to Luke 3:


Remarks on the two Genealogies of Jesus Christ.

To make some attempt at an elucidation of the present very difficult subject of inquiry, we must carry in our minds, 1. That in the Scripture language the word begat, applies to the remote, as well as the immediate, descendant of the ancestor; so that if Marcus were the son, Titus the grandson, and Caius the great-grandson of Sempronius, it might, in the language of Scripture, be said, that Sempronius begat Caius. This accounts for the omission of several descents in St. Matthew. 2. The word begat, applies not only to the natural offspring, but to the offspring assigned to the ancestor by law. 3. If a man married the daughter and only child of another, he became in the view of the Hebrew law the son of that person, and thus was a son assigned to him by law. The two last positions shew in what sense Zorobabel was the son both of Neri and Salathiel, and Joseph the son both of Jacob and of Heli, or Joachim. --- "St. Matthew, in descending from Abraham to Joseph, the spouse of the blessed Virgin, speaks of a son properly so called, and by way of generation, Abraham begot Isaac, &c. But St. Luke in ascending from Jesus to God himself, speaks of a son properly or improperly so called. On this account he make use of an indeterminate expression, in saying, the son of Joseph, who was of Heli. That St. Luke does not always speak of a son properly called, and by way of generation, appears from the first and last he names; for Jesus was only the putative son of Joseph, because Joseph was the spouse of Mary, the mother of Christ; and Adam was only the son of God by creation. This being observed, we must acknowledge in the genealogy in St. Luke, two sons improperly so called, that is, two sons-in-law, instead of sons. As among the Hebrews, the women entered not into the genealogy, when a house finished by a daughter, instead of naming the daughter in the genealogy, they named the son-in-law, who had for father-in-law the father of his wife. The two sons-in-law mentioned in St. Luke are Joseph, the son-in-law of Heli, and Salathiel, the son-in-law of Neri. This remarks clears up the difficulty. Joseph, the son of Jacob, in St. Matthew, was the son-in-law of Heli, in St. Luke; and Salathiel, the son of Jechonias, in St. Matthew, was the son-in-law of Neri, in St. Luke. Mary was the daughter of Heli, Eliacim, or Joacim, or Joachim. Joseph, the son of Jacob, and Mary, the daughter of Heli, had a common origin; both descending from Zorobabel, Joseph by Abiud the eldest, and Mary by Resa, the younger brother. Joseph descended from the royal branch of David, of which Solomon was the chief; and Mary from the other branch, of which Nathan was the chief. by Salathiel, the father of Zorobabel, and son of Jechonias, Joseph and Mary descended from Solomon, the son and heir of David. And by the wife of Salathiel, the mother of Zorobabel, and daughter of Neri, of which Neri Salathiel was the son-in-law, Joseph and Mary descended from Nathan, the other son of David, so that Joseph and Mary re-united in themselves all the blood of David. St. Matthew carries up the genealogy of Jesus to Abraham; this was the promise of the Messias, made to the Jews; St. Luke carries it up to Adam, the promise of the Messias, made to all men."

Whatever the difficulties attending the genealogies may be, it is evident that they arise from our imperfect knowledge of the laws, usages, and idiom of the Jews, from our ignorance of the true method of reconciling the seeming inconsistencies, or from some corruptions that in process of time may possibly have crept into the text. The silence of the enemies of the gospel, both heathen and Jewish, during even the first century, is itself a sufficient proof, that neither inconsistency nor corruption could be then alleged against this part of the evangelical history. If the lineal descent of Jesus from David were not indisputable, he could not possess the character essential to the Messias, nor any right to the Jewish throne. We may confidently then assert, that his regular lineal descent from David could not be disproved, since it was not even disputed at a time when alone it could have been done so successfully; and by those persons who were so deeply interested in falsifying the first Christian authorities.



4:47 We admit there was for certain periods no Davidic King, but we do not admit there was no sovereignty.

Royal staffs in the hands of actual kings or "royal staffs held in keeping" by judges or priests or other people who could exercise an authority of sovereignty or near-sovereignty.

Like the Maccabees against Antiochus, like Daniel under Nebuchadnezzar. Unless you will say Daniel 13 is a complete fabrication, on top of excluding it from Scripture. I somehow don't think you will.

5:11 "if you have a king, it will have to be a Davidic king"

This is not grammatically possible.

The blessing said Judah was not going to lack kingship, i e for instance the right to execute criminals (publically, not by lynching or murdering someone in prison who wasn't even technically accused of a crime).

5:59 I did look it up. The next verse says:

And after this the children of Israel shall return, and shall seek the Lord their God, and David their king: and they shall fear the Lord, and his goodness in the last days
[Osee (Hosea) 3:5]

So, this doesn't mean the Messiah hasn't come yet, it means the Jews had not converted yet during the "many days" ...

Osee 3:5 ... parallels the prophecy in Apocalypse 7. In the end times, Jews will convert.

"shall return, and shall seek the Lord their God" obviously means a conversion, not just coming back physically to the Holy Land.

6:52 Osee only said so of the children of Israel.

For the children of Israel shall sit many days without king, and without prince, and without sacrifice, and without altar, and without ephod, and without theraphim
[Osee (Hosea) 3:4]

But by then the Messiah already has, for long time, had the Gentiles:

The sceptre shall not be taken away from Juda, nor a ruler from his thigh, till he come that is to be sent, and he shall be the expectation of nations
[Genesis 49:10]

So, Osee and Genesis 49 together make perfect sense if the Messiah is a Davidic King, but one who "for many days" is ruling over Gentiles rather than over children of Israel. Which is precisely what the Catholic Church claims has happened. And, by the way, I do not condone Antipope Ratzinger and his taking a distance from "replacement theology" ....

7:05 Sacrifice ... it's again only the children of Israel who are without a sacrifice.

For from the rising of the sun even to the going down, my name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my name a clean oblation: for my name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts
[Malachias (Malachi) 1:11]

We have an altar, whereof they have no power to eat who serve the tabernacle
[Hebrews 13:10]

So, Jews lost the right to public sacrifice a bit later than the one to sovereignty. By then a sacrifice that was ongoing among the Gentiles for the last 2000 years and still is, was already in place.

No, Genesis 49:10 is very far from a nightmare for the Catholic Church.

Friday, August 16, 2024

I'm Annoyed When Some Call Pius XII "Hitler's Pope" ... ESPECIALLY If they are Jews


Me and Messianic Jews · Catholic vs Jewish · I'm Annoyed When Some Call Pius XII "Hitler's Pope" ... ESPECIALLY If they are Jews · A Beautiful Meeting (and Two Comments of Mine)

I don't think Tovia Singer's attack on Candace Owens is a very dramatic thing. He was very understanding.

What some seem to understand less is, I have more in common with George Farmer than with people calling Pius XII "Hitler's Pope" ...

By the way, I think Tovia Singer is probably a bit mixed up about nuances between Mel Gibson and his father and which of the two is closer to George Farmer and so on ...

Why Did Candace Owens Turn Against the Jews? -Rabbi Tovia Singer
Tovia Singer | 15.VIII.2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9iPRMOytJs


1:08 I'm the exception.

On a Polish lesson, we were given verbs and verbal phrases of emotions, and I got "Nie lubię" ... a very reserved "I don't particularly like" ...

My example, the one thing I did not have strong feelings either for or against, and still important enough to come to my mind, were you guys.

My answer or example was "Nie lubię Żydzi", but apparently, if google translate is correct, it should as having a negated verb probably rather have been "Nie lubię Żydów" ...

The Polish docent or lector was devastated, and next lesson gave us a Polish Jewish composer's very sad composition, while mentioning he had died in a gas chamber.

NOT the best way to warm up my enthusiasm.

I'm a Catholic. The relations have not always been excellent.

2:03 I'm pretty fine with Candace Owens' husband.

2:36 I'm pretty fine with Mel Gibson too.

Adara Balabusta
@AdaraBalabusta
Yuck! I used to live on the same street as Mel. If you knew him as I do, you would not be okay with him unless you hold to no moral principles at all.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@hglundahl
@AdaraBalabusta I know what the Gibsons are hated for in public discourse.

You claim you lived on the same street, why is that not a trick to diffame him?

Paolo Rossi
@paolorossi8470
@hglundahl Mel Gibson used to live on the same street as Adara Balabusta. So, Mel knows that Adara is a dangerous fanatic.


2:42 I actually hold two popes have been elected after Pius XII.

Michael I in an emergency conclave, 1990.

Michael II in somewhat more orderly forms with clergy of Michael I already in place, in 2023, last year.

I do not hold to Nostra Aetate.

2:45 "Hitler's Pope" ... that's like calling Leo X "Luther's Pope" ... yes, Hitler and Luther were baptised, and Pius XII and Leo X were popes in their lifetimes.

When Hitler came to Rome, Pius XII first closed the Vatican, then withdrew to Castel Gandolfo so as not to be "home" when Hitler possibly came knocking on the door.

One of the less likeable things about Jews is the tendency to take Der Stellvertreter as a documentary, it was polemics, and it was only published when Pius XII was already dead, and lots of people in the Vatican II establishment were not so eager to defend him, because they thought him too conservative.

How about "Rescue of Jews by Catholics during the Holocaust" on wikipedia, where you can read:

From his Vatican office, Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty operated an escape operation for Jews and Allied escapees. Priests and nuns of orders like the Jesuits, Franciscans and Benedictines hid children in monasteries, convents and schools.


And a little further on:

In France, Belgium, and Italy, Catholic underground networks were particularly active and saved thousands of Jews, particularly in central Italy where groups like the Assisi Network were active, and in southern France.


That's not why I converted, but it's part of why I never regretted converting.

I have very little patience with nincompoops considering Pius XII as "Hitler's Pope" ... Tovia has the incomplete excuse of being a Jew, but it's very incomplete, since it's ignorance of Jewish history.

If you say Jo Wajsblat not dying in the gas chamber he was in was typical, in some countries you can be punished for "holocaust denialism" — which shouldn't be a crime, the question should be able to be discussed.

But when some Jews socially treat it as equivalent to this "crime" to not curse the man who did perhaps more than he should to save Jews, putting for instance Roncalli's soul at risks of heterodoxy, a man who to Jews lacking the faith was like Abiathar to David, that's disgusting.

Adara Balabusta
Worry about your own salvation. If you worship Jesus as a deity, you are an idolater. Repent and obey the Noahide laws. Your idol-boy was neither the messiah nor a deity. ️

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@AdaraBalabusta Apart from you being a very repetitive person, unless it's really a different one each time, you are not even obeying them yourself, since your gratitude is turned upside down in hatred of a benefactor who did not try to abuse that position to force you to convert.

@AdaraBalabusta "as a deity,"

I actually worship Jesus as Adonai, as the God that Moses saw and also didn't see, but definitely heard in the Burning Bush. The God Who Spoke Exodus 3:14.

Adara Balabusta
Then you are still worshiping another deity, not the one G’d of Israel.

I love G’d and I feel sorry for people (esp. Catholics) who have been led into idolatry.

If you have come here, listened, and read, you can no longer plead ignorance at your judgement.

Repent of idolatry and obey the Noahide laws.

@hglundahl No. Jesus did not do any of those things. There is only One G’d. The trinity is a damnable heresy that took the idolatrous church 300-ish years to invent.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@AdaraBalabusta Opposing the Trinity and the Messianity of Jesus are damnable heresies from the later part of the Mishna period, and make Judaism a heresy.

Newman proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that it was St. Athanasius who was defending the older Christian doctrine. (Before he converted and eventually was made a cardinal, btw).


OTHER ISSUE:

How Can You Be JEWISH And CHRISTIAN? | Street Interview
SO BE IT! | 16.VIII.2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ATrPR6ol-U


0:51 Disagree.

0:51 This is not about the Spanish Inquisition in 1492.

The Sanhedrin was an Inquisition, and the Church has powers to excommunicate.

However, the Church was also national religion of Christian kingdoms.

Was this what Christ wanted? Yes. Matthew 28 says "make all nations into [my] disciples" ... not just "people from all nations" but collectively too.

A Christian nation has a right to defend itself from being undermined from within, by apparent citizens who aren't Christians. The defense can take different forms. But one of the forms it took was the Inquisition.

It was harsh, I don't think it was generally unjust.

And in Spain, the Inquisition was less harsh or at least less partial than secular courts.

Thursday, May 2, 2024

Tovia Singer Fails to Discredit the Gospels


Licoricia of Winchester, Interest, Blood Libel · Look at This · Palestinian Origins · Christ is King of the Jews · Whaddo You Meme ?? Tried to Give His POV on Christ is King · Colin (Not a Pastor) on Fight For Truth Had a Better Take · Sharing : Isabel Brown · Some Responses to Candida Moss (Beginning of Video) · Christ is King of the Jews, even if Tovia Refuses to See That · Tovia tried to counter ... · When the True God Revealed Himself (sharing) · Tovia Singer Fails to Discredit the Gospels · Sharing on the Trinity in the OT

Why Would God Inspire the New Testament Authors to Write their Bible in Greek? Why Does it Matter?
Tovia Singer | 13 Sept. 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFMmiaI3an4


3:29 The narrative does not collapse.

Nicodemus was actually not wrong about "born again", and Jesus gave an explanation, which only in Greek translation looks like a "correction" of a double entendre.

4:48 Christian tradition is not univocal in identifying John the Gospeller as the Son of Zebedee.

Sources situated in Asia Minor where he died don't tend to do that.

St. Irenaeus does, but he was ordained at 16 and then left Asia Minor, meaning, some youthful misunderstanding is possible. Due to his high prestige for other reasons, and his being the most accessible / least idiosyncratically Asia Minor of the sources on John, his view gets great influence.

Fr. Jean Colson did a review of all the Gospel passages and all the Tradition mentions, including an old Gallican Martyrology, and concluded: * John was not the Son of Zebedee, not one of the twelve; * he was on the contrary a Cohen, a house-owner in Jerusalem, the Host of the Last Supper (where the Eucharist happened when he was leaving his guests among them).

The Cohen part comes in when (in the context of Easter Date) an Asia Minor father replies to the Pope "we have known John who has worn the golden headband" ... he did not say "who was one of the twelve" ... also, the Twelve were all bishops, so had John been one of them, why wasn't he a bishop in Ephesus, why was he acting as a simple presbyter under bishops like Timothy?

Chapter 7 of his Apocalypse shows he know Babylonian numerals. 144 000 = four corners in cuneiform. 12 X 12000 looks like a fish shape. The numbers indicate, the "four corners" are four corners of continents, outside which you have fish swimming.

Chapters 2 and 3 along with all of his Gospel shows his audience was to a high degree Christians of Jewish ancestry, who first needed to be told Jesus recognises them as the real Jews, and then that here on earth, it's the enemy who is called "the Jews" in daily speech.

5:12 Most people who lived long lived long due to good basic health and healthy living.

St. Alessio Falconieri, born in 1200, died in 1310. Modern medicine did not exist. One of his companions, St. Peregrino Laziosi, was a miraculously cured cancer patient. He had some kind of tumour in the leg. St. Peregrino only lived to 85.

The Seven Holy Founders of the Servite Order (Bonfilius, Alexis, Manettus, Amadeus, Hugh, Sostene and Buonagiunta) were seven men of the town of Florence who became bound to each other in a spiritual friendship. They eventually felt called by Mary, mother of Jesus, towards whom they practised an intense devotion. They reported a vision, apparently shared by all separately at the same moment. None of them was aware that the others also had experienced it. The call was to "leave the world, the better to serve almighty God". ... Alexis was born Alexis Falconieri (Italian: Alessio Falconieri) (1200 – 17 February 1310)

Peregrine Laziosi (Pellegrino Latiosi; c. 1260 – 1 May 1345) is an Italian saint of the Servite Order (Friar Order Servants of Mary). He is the patron saint for persons suffering from cancer, AIDS, and other life-threatening illnesses.


In the ancestry of both Lewis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the youngest dead persons who turn up some four or five generations earlier are Gonzagas of Mantua, the longest lived are at the Danish court, where the wife of James VI and I was from (his daughter Elisabeth Stuart was ancestral to both). Those ones reach 80--90, no problem, also no modern medicine, and the use of sugar and some other luxuries had made living less healthy than in Medieval or Antique times.

5:33 "thirty years"

Based on what statistics material?

6:16 He had written to seven provinces of Christ's kingdom on earth.

Smyrna, Ephesus, Sardis and four others.

6:39 Both Matthew and John are rich in logia.

Now, Synoptics wrote before the Temple fell.

John after. Meaning there were some things he no longer needed to be discrete about when it came to provoking or not any Jewish persecution.

6:51 No, there is no adoptionist theology in Mark, that's eisegesis into the Baptism scene.

8:04 Ps. 32:6 has By the word of the Lord the heavens were established; and all the power of them by the spirit of his mouth:

Hebrew as such is not mentioned. Probably He used some kind of Hebrew when talking to Adam, and it was probably different from the one we have in the Bible. Perhaps like Proto-Norse differs from Old Norse, or like Old Norse differs from Swedish.

What was the role of Egyptians in the life of Abraham? Well, that way, he had some outreach for the true God among Egyptians. It was early on, before idolatry took the roots it had by the time of Exodus, so, early dynastic or pre-dynastic pharaos. He may have met Narmer before Narmer conquered Bhuto.

Now, from Alexander the Great on, God had done a similar thing for the Greek nation. Or group of nations, many of whom wholesale or partially adopted Greek (like Egyptians did partially).

Hence why the NT books were with one exception written in Greek. That one exception is the Gospel of Matthew, as we know from Papias. Matthew then translated it himself to Greek.

8:19 No, the epistles of John are by John the Gospeller, not anonymous.

The NT has 8 authors, like there were 8 on the Ark. The four Gospellers and the Apostles, in order of appearance of texts, Paul, James, Peter and Jude.

8:44 Yes, Catholic and Fundamentalist scholars are the ones who are on spot here.

Pretty much like you'd better avoid asking Spinoza and Mendelson about what the OT means.

9:19 Abraham was around when the worship of the true God narrowed down to the Hebrew people.

The Church was when it suddenly spread out to the nations. And they left their idols behind.

9:44 Philo doesn't agree that all of Greek philosophy was antithetical to God.

Antiochus Epiphanes, not sure if he had much philosophy. He was definitely antithetical to God. He was also from a lineage which Jesus lampooned when He mentioned ...

And he said to them: The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and they that have power over them, are called beneficent
[Luke 22:25]

Just count the number of kings in that dynasty who are nicknamed Euergetes.

But we would disagree on your blaming Plato for those guys. EDIT, well, technically you didn't, but the era you named 200 BC to 200 AD, while highly anti-Hebrew, was also highly persecuting of Christians.

10:02 Moral beliefs of Greco-Roman world would be some kind of uneasy mixture of Stoicism and Epicureanism, for the majority, plus some superstition in Pythagorean package.

But the majority was going to change, thanks to Christ.

In order to get them to change, the Church needed to speak Greek and Latin.

10:29 You forget that Sparta and Rome were allies against Antiochus Epiphanes and against his successor (or against his successor).

And it was heard at Rome, and as far as Sparta, that Jonathan was dead: and they were very sorry.
[1 Machabees 14:16]

10:38 The Austro-Fascists spoke German too.

And while Heinrich Schenker's widow was deported to Theresienstadt, he himself had died very peacefully in his home in 1935, under Austro-Fascism.

13:58 I counted Matthew. Before counting, I'd have guessed, the sayings were maybe 25 %.

No. They are 56 ~ 57 % of the Gospel.

The description of Papias is a pretty accurate one, if you allow for naming a whole after the principal part.

14:21 Justin is mostly known from apologetics.

The genre is not primarily instruction for Christians, the genre is trying to convince Pagans, and once either trying to convince a Jew or using him to convince others.

I think that genre allows for either keeping to basics, or answering where Christianity was actually attacked, which at the time was not on the Gospels.

15:02 Here is a fragment which might explain why St. Irenaeus thought St. Papias wrong:

As the elders who saw John the disciple of the Lord remembered that they had heard from him how the Lord taught in regard to those times, and said]: The days will come in which vines shall grow, having each ten thousand branches, and in each branch ten thousand twigs, and in each true twig ten thousand shoots, and in every one of the shoots ten thousand clusters, and on every one of the clusters ten thousand grapes, and every grape when pressed will give five-and-twenty metretes of wine. And when any one of the saints shall lay hold of a cluster, another shall cry out, 'I am a better cluster, take me; bless the Lord through me.' In like manner, [He said] that a grain of wheat would produce ten thousand ears, and that every ear would have ten thousand grains, and every grain would yield ten pounds of clear, pure, fine flour; and that apples, and seeds, and grass would produce in similar proportions; and that all animals, feeding then only on the productions of the earth, would become peaceable and harmonious, and be in perfect subjection to man. [Testimony is borne to these things in writing by Papias, an ancient man, who was a hearer of John and a friend of Polycarp, in the fourth of his books; for five books were composed by him. And he added, saying, Now these things are credible to believers. And Judas the traitor, says he, not believing, and asking, 'How shall such growths be accomplished by the Lord.' the Lord said, 'They shall see who shall come to them.' These, then, are the times mentioned by the prophet Isaiah: 'And the wolf shall lie, down with the lamb,' etc. Isaiah 11:6 ff..]


Do you sense Papias could have been sensitive to Jewish hyperbole, in a way Irenaeus wasn't?

15:41 I had not heard that St. Mark was thought to have written at first in Aramaic, but to answer the question, the Greek if so translation would at this point first leave the cry untranslated, and then added a translation, even if the original didn't. A very minor adjustment.

In the Apocalypse we find a demon described in Hebrew and in Greek, in the Greek original.

However, in the Vulgate, we find:
Et habebant super se regem angelum abyssi cui nomen hebraice Abaddon, graece autem Apollyon, latine habens nomen Exterminans.
Hence Douay Rheims:
A king, the angel of the bottomless pit; whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek Apollyon; in Latin Exterminans
[Apocalypse (Revelation) 9:11]

16:19 You forget that for Greeks, who were not necessarily praying the psalms with the clergy, the leaving of a quote in Hebrew or Aramaic would serve to signal it is a quote from the OT.

16:36 The name that Simon is given ... Cephas sounds like the Aramaic version of Caiaphas.

17:23 You forget that Exodus doesn't claim to be written by Moses, and Gallic Wars doesn't claim to be written by Caesar.

Moses and Caesar also speak about themselves in the third person.

18:38 Matthew isn't "improving on" Mark, Mark is shortening Matthew.

Tiler Boston
@tilerboston5973
scholars seem to have the consensus that mark was the first gospel that was written and then matthew and luke used it as sources of their narrative. John uses it but to a lesser extent (it’s the latest gospel to be written as the rabbi says)

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@hglundahl
@tilerboston5973 "scholars seem to have the consensus"

That's Protestant and Atheist scholars, and the consensus starts out in the time of the Kulturkampf, in Prussian dominated Germany. While the learned promoter of the thesis was not obviously acting on orders of Otto von Bismarck, he was acting in tune with him. Modernist Protestants could pretend that Matthew (the main go to for Papal claims and other refutation of Protestant errors) was late and contained accretions.

So, the scholars you appeal to are far from unbiassed honest men following the evidence whereever it leads them, since back in Germany in the 1860's there has obviously developed a kind of bias of scholarly tradition.

@tilerboston5973 "John uses it"

John used the Synoptics mainly to check what had already been said and didn't need saying once more. On other topics, he uses his personal memories.

Sunday, April 7, 2024

Tovia tried to counter ...


Licoricia of Winchester, Interest, Blood Libel · Look at This · Palestinian Origins · Christ is King of the Jews · Whaddo You Meme ?? Tried to Give His POV on Christ is King · Colin (Not a Pastor) on Fight For Truth Had a Better Take · Sharing : Isabel Brown · Some Responses to Candida Moss (Beginning of Video) · Christ is King of the Jews, even if Tovia Refuses to See That · Tovia tried to counter ... · When the True God Revealed Himself (sharing) · Tovia Singer Fails to Discredit the Gospels · Sharing on the Trinity in the OT

Church Problem! Christians Do Not Grasp This Covenant! -Rabbi Tovia Singer
Tovia Singer | 5 April 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cshfjNBIX2c


"but if you're born to a virgin 1:43 you're the Son of God what's the big 1:46 deal right what makes someone great is 1:49 not they were never tempted"


For we have not a high priest, who can not have compassion on our infirmities: but one tempted in all things like as we are, without sin
[Hebrews 4:15]

Conquering a temptation makes one great.

Having actually sinned does not add to that.

If God is greater than Adam, and you admit (as I hope you do) that God made no mistakes, you have shown your objection wrong.

If you think God does make mistakes, that the Jewish people have to on occasion correct Him, you have worse problems with adoring God than writing out the name in full.

"one way is the way 3:06 Christians interpret 3:08 it and what what they argue is that this 3:14 passage means that always there would 3:17 always be a king from the tribe of 3:21 Judah 3:24 always"


This is actually, at least for Catholics, a misrepresentation of how we take it.

We are aware that Judah had no Kings of the Davidic line from Nebuchadnezzar's arrival to the arrival of Jesus.

Sure, Herod pretended to have Davidic ancestry, we dispute it. Dito therefore for his ancestry.

Here is anyway the explanation from Haydock:

Ver. 9. A lion's whelp, &c. This blessing of Juda foretelleth the strength of his tribe, the fertility of his inheritance, and principally that the sceptre, and legislative power, should not be utterly taken away from his race till about the time of the coming of Christ: as in effect it never was: which is a demonstration against the modern Jews, that the Messias is long since come; for the sceptre has long since been utterly taken away from Juda. (Challoner)

This none can deny. Juda is compared to a lion, which was the emblem of his royal dignity, and was borne in the standards of that tribe.

To the prey. Hebrew, "from the prey." He proceeds from victory to victory. He couches, ready to fall upon his prey; and, retiring to the mountains, is still eager to renew the attack. (Calmet)

Read the history of David and of Solomon, who, both in peace and war, were a terror to the surrounding nations.

Ver. 10. The sceptre. Almost every word in this verse has been explained in a different manner. But all the ancient Jews agree with Christians, that it contains a prediction of the Messias, and points out the period of his coming. Whether this was verified when Herod, a foreigner, got possession of the throne, and was acknowledged by the Jews, just about the time of our Saviour's nativity, as most of the fathers suppose; or it only took its full effect when Agrippa II lost all his power, the temple and the city were laid in ruins, and the whole nation dispersed for ever, it is not perhaps so easy to determine. In either supposition, the Messias has long since come. Jacob foretels, either that Christ would make his appearance as soon as the Jews should fall under a foreign yoke, and in this sense he was born about the 37th year of Herod the great --- or he should come just before the kingdom of Juda should have an end, which took place in the 70th year of the Christian era, or about 37 years after the public appearance and death of our Saviour.

The sceptre shall not depart irrevocably from the Jews; over whom the tribe of Juda had always the greatest authority in appointing the princes, when they were not selected from the tribe itself, or from his thigh; till the Messias, who has been expected so long, shall come and gather all nations into his Church. Then the designs of Providence, in watching over the Jews, being accomplished, their republic shall be dissolved, because they have shed his blood, instead of acknowledging his celestial beauty, ver. 12. The evident signs of decay in the kingdom of the Jews, were sufficient to excite the attention of all to look for the Messias; and we read, both in St. John iv. 25, in Tacitus, and Suetorius, that his appearance was fully expected about that time.

The sceptre is the emblem of sovereign, though not always independent, power. Juda and his posterity were always at the head of their brethren. They marched first in the wilderness; two of the judges were of this tribe. But their chief glory began with David, whose posterity the whole nation obeyed, till Jeroboam tore away the ten tribes. Still the tribe of Benjamin and the Levites adhered to Juda. During the captivity, there were judges admitted to superintend over their brethren; and King Joakim was raised to high authority. The rulers who came into power after the return of the Jews, were either of this tribe, at least by the mother's side, or were chosen and recognized by the tribe of Juda. Even Herod, in this sense, might be considered as a Jewish king, though a foreigner, as well as a Thracian might be counted a Roman emperor, without any diminution of the imperial authority of Rome. Perhaps indeed he was an usurper, till the nation acknowledged his authority two years after the birth of Christ. (Philo, de Temp. ii; Josephus, Antiquities xvii. 3.) "Herod was the first foreign king admitted by the Jews." (St. Augustine, City of God xviii. 45.) If, therefore, no stranger was to be acknowledged by the nation, till He came, who was to establish a spiritual and everlasting kingdom, the moment was arrived, when the Jews submitted to Herod, and Christ had actually been born two years.

["the moment was arrived, when the Jews submitted to Herod, and Christ had actually been born two years."

Presumably typo for "the Jews submitted to the Romans at the death of Herod" and so on.]


From Juda, or from that tribe; for Jacob gave peculiar blessings to each; (ver. 28,) and hence the fathers gather, that the Messias should spring from Juda.

Ruler from his thigh, lineally descended from him, or acknowledged at least by his posterity, as all the legal princes were till the coming of Christ.

Mechokek might also signify a teacher or scribe expounding the law of Moses, which subsisted for the same period; but this is more probably a farther explication of the sceptre, &c. (Calmet)

Till had ci, which words being joined together, are always taken in this sense. (Helvicus.)

Sent. Schiloach (or Ssolu�) seems to have been in St. Jerome's copy, though we now read Shiloh (or Ssole) "to whom" the authority belongs; Septuagint, "to whom all things are reserved; or till the things arrive, which are laid up for him. (Calmet)

Expectation, or congregation of nations, as Aggeus afterwards foretold, ii. 8. If we examine all the plausible explications which have been given to this verse, we shall find that they all tend to convey the same truth. "The sceptre (shebet, rod, crook, power or tribe) shall not depart (cease, be taken off) from Juda, (the tribe or the Jews) nor a leader (scribe, lawyer, or legislator) from his thigh, (between his feet, or from his banners) till He, who shall be sent, (shio, the pacific, his son, to whom it is, or the things are, reserved) arrive; and Him shall the nations expect, (and obey) to Him they shall look up (and be gathered). Whom will the Jews point out to whom all these characters agree, except our divine Lord, whom they also must one day adore? (Haydock)


4:56 "it does not mean that at all times, there would always be a king for the Jewish people"

1) Not quite the point. After Herod the Great, Judah lost autonomy.

When we read about stonings in the New Testament, attempted or actually gone threw with, they were lynchings. The power in place was such that this was offically not tolerated. If Jesus had said "OK, stone the adulterous woman" He would have found better reception among some Jews (although there is the question why the male adulterer wasn't there to be stoned), but anyone could then have tipped off Pilate He was a troublemaker.

This had not happened at any time before. In the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, the autonomy was threatened but reconquered. This is probably part of why stonings were popular in the time of Pilate, the ones doing or attempting them were dreaming of reconquering autonomy as against Antiochus Epiphanes (who by the way was part of Daniel's IV Beast, since he was a vassal of the Republic).

It had also not happened in the Babylonian captivity, since Daniel had to save an innocent woman from stoning, as we read in Daniel 13.

The loss of autonomy prophecied in Genesis 49 for only after the Messiah comes, coincides with the beginning of a peaceful coexistance with Ephraim, and Judah and Ephraim not carrying arms, things which you have somehow managed to cite as things He did not fulfill, when in fact He did it. And a great part actually united, and admitted Christ as their King, and rejoiced when Constantine became a vassal of that King. I speak of the Palestinians.

2) There is a more direct prophecy about non-lack of a king.

Jeremias 33:14 Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will perform the good word that I have spoken to the house of Israel, and to the house of Juda. 15 In those days, and at that time, I will make the bud of justice to spring forth unto David, and he shall do judgment and justice in the earth.

16 In those days shall Juda be saved, and Jerusalem shall dwell securely: and this is the name that they shall call him, The Lord our just one. 17 For thus saith the Lord: There shall not be cut off from David a man to sit upon the throne of the house of Israel. 18 Neither shall there be cut off from the priests and Levites a man before my face to offer holocausts, and to burn sacrifices, and to kill victims continually:

This is fulfilled in Christ.

5:23 They were in fact not revolting against the autonomous Seleucids, since Antiochus Epiphanes was already a vassal of Rome before trying to defile the Temple.

5:53 I think you need to read the two books of the Maccabees.

In the First Century AD, names connected to the Maccabees were popular in the Holy Land.

Jesus had two disciples named Judas, only one of them betrayed him, the other is usually called "Saint Jude" in the French form of the name. Two Simon.

In [1 Machabees 8:17] you find Et elegit Judas Eupolemum filium Joannis filii Jacob.

So, you have two or three John in connexion to Jesus, the Baptist who was His second cousin, the son of Zebedee, and the Beloved Disciple, whom some consider a Cohen.

You also have two Jacob among the twelve and another one as stepbrother of God (of Our Lord Jesus) who was the first bishop of Jerusalem.

There was a Mathathias in the book of Maccabees, and one of the twelve is Matthaeus, a later one, replacing Judas the traitor, is Matthias.

If Joseph was not among the Maccabaean era heros, a speech in first Maccabees two, specifically in verse 53 mentions the one in Egypt.

There was an Ananias in the Maccabee era, and one (very unhappy) Ananias in the New Testament. But another one, in Damascus, seems to have been a totally regular fellow, a prophet, and one who did not share your views on St. Paul.

Point being, the first century Jews did not share your view on the Maccabees.

6:37 For more than 500 years, there was no King. However, Judah retained legislative and jurisdictional autonomy at least.

As mentioned, this is what we think the sceptre means in this context.

7:23 "He was nothing more than a puppet of the Roman Empire"

True of Herod Antipas.

Not true of Herod the Great. Unlike Antipas, he was handling (by usurpation) a real sceptre, i e authority to execute, and that one he abused when slaughtering the innocents in Bethlehem.

When in Rome, he had to do as the Romans do (within limits, he was not required to eat pork). But when in Jerusalem, he could take initiatives, and one of them was, as said, very bloody.

So, a Roman soldier steps up to one Joseph in Nazareth one day. He tells him Caesar Augustus has stated all people all over the world need to be in their legal residence (words actually used "in their city") to sign onto a census.

Joseph answers "sorry, I'm actually not from here, my city" (a phrase which he would not have taken as exactly meaning legal residence) "is Bethlehem".

The Roman soldier tells him to go, but when Joseph arrives in Bethlehem, there were no census officers. Precisely as there are no IRS in Puerto Rico. Like Judaea was a protectorate under Rome, like Puerto Rico under US, but Judaea was at this time no more a province, than Puerto Rico is a state.

When the Gospel records the words as "all the world should take the census" it repeats what the swaggering Roman officer had said to Joseph, not the exact words of Caesar Augustus. Even in the garbled version, it was still issued from Augustus, as he had put the Roman soldiers into Galilee.

He had put no Roman soldiers in Judaea, however, and also no tax collectors.

7:34 "He wasn't a real king"

II Chronicles 33. Manasses was not a real king? Nebuchadnezzar treated him far more poorely than Caesar Augustus treated Herod.

The point is not he was legitimate, the point is, while an usurper, he still showed that Judah had a sceptre.

"the prophecy in 8:39 Genesis 8:40 49:10 is conveying that whenever there 8:43 would be a legitimate King it would be 8:45 from David"


In fact, there is no "whenever" in the prophecy, there is an until.

There is also no David or legitimate or king. There is however a ruler. I e, up to Jesus' arrival, Judah was ruled by people either ethnically from it, or accepted as equivalent.

Given how much Idumaeans and Jews had intermingled, by this time arguably Herod probably did have Jewish ancestry on some lines.

It is also probable that Judah and Levi were already intermarrying, as we see later on, in the Gospel, when Mary, of the house of David, has a cousin who is a Mrs. Cohen.

Hence, the Hasmonaeans too fulfilled the prophecy of being ruled by indigenous people till the Messiah came.

II Kings 7:8 And now thus shalt thou speak to my servant David: Thus saith the Lord of hosts: I took thee out of the pastures from following the sheep to be ruler over my people Israel: 9 And I have been with thee wheresoever thou hast walked, and have slain all thy enemies from before thy face: and I have made thee a great man, like unto the name of the great ones that are on the earth. 10 And I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and I will plant them, and they shall dwell therein, and shall be disturbed no more: neither shall the children of iniquity afflict them any more as they did before,

11 From the day that I appointed judges over my people Israel: and I will give thee rest from all thy enemies. And the Lord foretelleth to thee, that the Lord will make thee a house. 12 And when thy days shall be fulfilled, and thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, I will raise up thy seed after thee, which shall proceed out of thy bowels, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He shall build a house to my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever. 14 I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son: and if he commit any iniquity, I will correct him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children of men. 15 But my mercy I will not take away from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I removed from before my face.

16 And thy house shall be faithful, and thy kingdom for ever before thy face, and thy throne shall be firm for ever. 17 According to all these words and according to all this vision, so did Nathan speak to David.

So, what do we Christians make of this?

This was, like the words in Jeremias, only fulfilled by Christ.

On your view, God would have been neglecting that promise for 2500 years or more.

On ours, this has been fulfilled to a T ever since Jesus came. Challoner has sth to say:

[12] "I will establish his kingdom": This prophecy partly relateth to Solomon: but much more to Christ, who is called the son of David in scripture, and who is the builder of the true temple, which is the church, his everlasting kingdom, which shall never fail.

Nel G
@nelg3334
Jesus was not the true king, true messiah and definitely he wasn’t hashem manifested because suchidea of god becoming man is straight up blasphemous

Stop taking verses out of context because when you do God will not have you enter into heaven. Don’t add or subtract from the Tanakh be it in writing or in speach. You failed miserably to orove your point which is rooted in falsehood

Hans Georg Lundahl
@hglundahl
@nelg3334 "idea of god becoming man is straight up blasphemous"

You take that from the Quran?

Here is the prophecy of Baruch, chapter 3:36 This is our God, and there shall no other be accounted of in comparison of him. 37 He found out all the way of knowledge, and gave it to Jacob his servant, and to Israel his beloved. 38 Afterwards he was seen upon earth, and conversed with men.

Was seen ... Baruch did not think the idea of God becoming man was blasphemy.

"Stop taking verses out of context"

I looked at the exact verses that Tovia pretended were a disproof of Christianity.

"because when you do God will not have you enter into heaven."

You admit the Blessed go to Heaven? Do you have that from Christians?

In the Old Covenant, the blessed went to the bosom of Abraham, in Sheol, somewhat above the Gehenna of the damned. And if you won't take that from a Christian, how about taking the NT writings about it as a cue of what Jews believed in the Second Temple period?

Your oral torah is not the same as that of the Jews in the Second Temple period. Let alone that of Moses and Joshua.

Karen
@User-x5s3x
@hglundahl : You need to realize, research, and accept, that NOWHERE did God ever mention the "Jesus" character to us, NOWHERE did He tell us that we need to be "saved", and NOWHERE did He tell us that He requires HUMAN BLOOD (a purely pagan ritual that God ABHORS!!) as atonement for our sins.

NO FURTHER SCRIPTURES were given to mankind by God AFTER Mt. Sinai, therefore, Christianity absolutely did NOT come from God!

PLEASE buy a Hebrew Bible (says "Stone Edition TANACH" on the cover), and Rabbi Tovia Singer's books, as well as Rabbi Stuart Federow's book "Judaism and Christianity: A Contrast", to help you understand why Christianity absolutely did NOT come from God.

@hglundahl : You speak from profound willful ignorance! The Tanach CANNOT be understood WITHOUT the Oral Torah (Talmud)!

The ENTIRETY of the Hebrew scriptures were given to Moses at Mt. Sinai. See Ex. 24:12, Lev. 26:46, and Neh. 9:13-14.

I checked
all three references, and each is only saying that the five books of Moses, or the four that were not Genesis (plus chapter one of Genesis) were given to Moses on Sinai. Here they are:

And the Lord said to Moses: Come up to me into the mount, and be there: and I will give thee tables of stone, and the law, and the commandments which I have written: that thou mayst teach them
[Exodus 24:12]

And I will remember my former covenant, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, in the sight of the Gentiles, to be their God. I am the Lord. These are the judgments, and precepts, and laws, which the Lord gave between him and the children of Israel in mount Sinai by the hand of Moses
[Leviticus 26:45]

Thou camest down also to mount Sinai, and didst speak with them from heaven, and thou gavest them right judgments, and the law of truth, ceremonies, and good precepts Thou madest known to them thy holy sabbath, and didst prescribe to them commandments, and ceremonies, and the law by the hand of Moses thy servant
[2 Esdras (Nehemiah) 9:13-14]

Hans Georg Lundahl
@User-x5s3x "NO FURTHER SCRIPTURES were given to mankind by God AFTER Mt. Sinai"

The Psalms of David were given to Moses?

I don't think so.

The book of Ruth was given to Moses?

I don't think so.

Your oral Torah misrepresents the history of the Old Testament, unless you are misrepresenting it.

I agree that the content of the Scriptures cannot consistently be correctly understood except by tradition.

However, there was a promise by Moses that God would send someone greater than he, and He, the greater one, gave us (through His immediate disciples) a fuller understanding and a better tradition.

Meanwhile, you have destroyed YOUR tradition by rejecting Jesus from Nazareth.

@User-x5s3x When you tell me

"You speak from profound willful ignorance!"


you are going past the conventions of polite debate, which is what I am up for, and you are entering the domain as posing as someone lecturing me, which is more like criminal harassment.


Osee 3:3 And I said to her: Thou shalt wait for me many days: thou shalt not play the harlot, and thou shalt be no man's, and I also will wait for thee. 4 For the children of Israel shall sit many days without king, and without prince, and without sacrifice, and without altar, and without ephod, and without theraphim. 5 And after this the children of Israel shall return, and shall seek the Lord their God, and David their king: and they shall fear the Lord, and his goodness in the last days.

This latter is already fulfilled, it has been the last days for 2000 years now.

Challoner:

"[5] "David their king": That is, Christ, who is of the house of David."

10:57 The "many days" in Osee 3 were over 2000 years ago, and it has been the "last days" since then.

So much for the prophecy contradicting Christianity.

When it comes to Jesus being priest and sacrifice, take a look at:

Malachias 1:11 For from the rising of the sun even to the going down, my name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my name a clean oblation: for my name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts.

Oblation basically also translates as "food offering" ...

Now take a look at a Psalm:

The Lord said to my Lord: Sit thou at my right hand: Until I make thy enemies thy footstool
[Psalms 109:1]

Obviously, this is referring to a Davidic King. One who will triumph over all the enemies of Israel. Who is also a priest:

4 The Lord hath sworn, and he will not repent: Thou art a priest for ever according to the order of Melchisedech.

And now look up this latter person in Genesis.

14:18 But Melchisedech the king of Salem, bringing forth bread and wine, for he was the priest of the most high God,

To fit that bill, go to:
a) Jesus
b) and a Church claiming He founded that particular Church and instituted the Eucharist as a Sacrifice.

11:20 Will return and seek out.

Acts 2.

The audience for the Pentecost discourse were Jewish pilgrims from all over the world. And the ones who were convinced were seeking out in one person, both the Lord their God and David the King.

12:06 No, I don't even remotely "get" that the "last days" are still about to begin, they began 2000 years ago.

12:30 They did not have an unbroken sacrificial system for the 500 years concerned.

If there had been no rebuilding or rededication of the temple, you would not be celebrating Hanukkah.

The fact you do implies, this part of Osee had also been fulfilled before Jesus came.

Saturday, April 6, 2024

Christ is King of the Jews, even if Tovia Refuses to See That


Licoricia of Winchester, Interest, Blood Libel · Look at This · Palestinian Origins · Christ is King of the Jews · Whaddo You Meme ?? Tried to Give His POV on Christ is King · Colin (Not a Pastor) on Fight For Truth Had a Better Take · Sharing : Isabel Brown · Some Responses to Candida Moss (Beginning of Video) · Christ is King of the Jews, even if Tovia Refuses to See That · Tovia tried to counter ... · When the True God Revealed Himself (sharing) · Tovia Singer Fails to Discredit the Gospels · Sharing on the Trinity in the OT

Preface, on sth Tovia repeated often:

6:18 Maybe time to bring it up.

All of them are out to convince you for Christianity, yes, because they knew it was the truth.

You are there for convincing against Christianity, and you run that on wild speculation.

They want to make people into Christians

You want to make people into non-Christians.

Who Wrote the New Testament and Why did They Write It? -Rabbi Tovia Singer
Tovia Singer | 5 April 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY5vVkg9RZM


1:51 Codex Vaticanus is, as the name implies, a Codex.

"Julius Caesar may have been the first Roman to reduce scrolls to bound pages in the form of a note-book, possibly even as a papyrus codex.[17] At the turn of the 1st century AD, a kind of folded parchment notebook called pugillares membranei in Latin became commonly used for writing in the Roman Empire.[18] Theodore Cressy Skeat theorized that this form of notebook was invented in Rome and then spread rapidly to the Near East.[19]"

"Codices are described in certain works by the Classical Latin poet, Martial. He wrote a series of five couplets meant to accompany gifts of literature that Romans exchanged during the festival of Saturnalia. Three of these books are specifically described by Martial as being in the form of a codex; the poet praises the compendiousness of the form (as opposed to the scroll), as well as the convenience with which such a book can be read on a journey. In another poem by Martial, the poet advertises a new edition of his works, specifically noting that it is produced as a codex, taking less space than a scroll and being more comfortable to hold in one hand. According to Theodore Cressy Skeat, this might be the first recorded known case of an entire edition of a literary work (not just a single copy) being published in codex form, though it was likely an isolated case and was not a common practice until a much later time.[20]"

"As early as the early 2nd century, there is evidence that a codex—usually of papyrus—was the preferred format among Christians. In the library of the Villa of the Papyri, Herculaneum (buried in AD 79), all the texts (of Greek literature) are scrolls (see Herculaneum papyri). However, in the Nag Hammadi library, hidden about AD 390, all texts (Gnostic) are codices. Despite this comparison, a fragment of a non-Christian parchment codex of Demosthenes' De Falsa Legatione from Oxyrhynchus in Egypt demonstrates that the surviving evidence is insufficient to conclude whether Christians played a major or central role in the development of early codices—or if they simply adopted the format to distinguish themselves from Jews.[25]"


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex

2:52 In Acts, St. Paul argues with the Synagogue of Beroea.

A Christian Church to this day, by now since centuries and probably most of the time since 1053, Greek Orthodox.

This would be the context in which he does the same for Jews in Thessalonica.

And he praises them as basically his best Church.

3:06 It's years since I went through St. Paul's letters, but if your impression is "the big issue is if Christians have to keep the commandments" this gives a very huge impression that St. Paul's followers were in a big part of Jewish ethnicity.

3:39 That's like saying "we have no way of knowing Moses was the son of Amram"

We know that because of the Hebrew tradition, 2000 years ago common to those who were already Samaritans, those who became what we now call Jews and those who became Christians.

We know the authors were Hebrews, except St. Luke. For Hebrews, two suggestions involve Sts Paul and Barnabas, both disciples to Gamaliel. For the Johannine corpus, the majority position in tradition says "the son of Zebedee" while Fr. Jean Colson has made an argument the author is not one of the twelve, but instead a Cohen.

3:53 John, end of first century.
Matthew, 30's or 40's, first half.
Luke and Mark, around the middle.

Based on? Tradition, like identity of author of the Pentateuch with main participant of the Exodus event. Which we Catholic Christians already commemorated in the Easter Vigil, and you will presumably commemorate after Second Adar is over.

You attack Christian tradition? You shoot yourself in the foot.

Some Jews actually do not believe Moses existed, that's a different story. If you are not like them, and you shouldn't be, you base that on Tradition. Like we Catholics do with Matthaean priority and two of the Gospels by Apostles (according to Jean Colson, St. John would have been another tier of Apostles than the 12, but as a witness to the Resurrection, still an Apostle, the last surviving one of them).

"3:58 and believe these things 4:00 as Christianity would develop the 4:03 beliefs of what Christians uh seized uh 4:08 as it developed so the story just 4:12 snowballs and it's becomes more and more 4:15 embellished"


Like your speculations on how Christianity came to be without a Resurrection, you mean?

4:40 St. Peter reads alternatively from the Gospels of Luke and Matthew, skipping some, inserting some, and his secretary Mark takes notes, and this happened before St. Peter was killed by Nero and also before St. Mark came to Alexandria, as the first bishop there.

This is obviously not exactly the version of the tradition given by St. Augustine, but it is the one of Clement the Stromatist, who lived, precisely, in Alexandria.

"The Stromata (Greek: Στρώματα), a mistake for Stromateis (Στρωματεῖς, "Patchwork," i.e., Miscellanies), attributed to Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 – c. 215), is the third of a trilogy of works regarding the Christian life."


This means his life spans the following popes of Alexandria or patriarchs, or less anachronistically bishops:

(8) Markianos (142–152)
(9) Celadion (152–166)
(10) Agrippinus (167–178)
(11) Julian (178–189)
(12) Demetrius I (189–232)

He died after all of the following had died, the first being the Gospeller:

(1) Mark the Evangelist (43–68)
(2) Anianus (68–85)
(3) Avilius (85–98)
(4) Kedron (98–109)
(5) Primus (109–121)
(6) Justus (121–131)
(7) Eumenes (131–141)

To pretend Clement or Celadion and Agrippinus to name bishops from his youth didn't know what they were talking about won't fly.

4:52 There is no childhood narrative in either Mark or John.

Because Peter and John both became disciples when Jesus was already an adult, and because His older fosterbrother St. James' account of the childhood was already taken in patches by Matthew and Luke, not much to go for a third or fourth Gospel taken different ones.

5:01 Joseph had died before Jesus took disciples.

St. James the Theadelph obviously knew St. Joseph and who was his father as well as Our Lord's fosterfather, but he became a believer only later after the Resurrection, at least an open one.

So, no reason why either Mark or John should mention him. In Luke he's mentioned in connexion with the supposal that in Mark 6 is voiced so Peter heard it. However, the guys were not mentioning Joseph who had already died.

5:27 St. Mark is also not denying He was the Son of God who became Man at His conception. It's just that he's not telling the story of that.

5:33 "made up their own stories that are not related to each other"

Or rather, each took a pick from St. James' Proto-Gospel, so they are related. To each other because to fact.

5:54 There are two candidates, if you look at early tradition.

St. Irenaeus, who left Asia Minor at 16, affirms the Gospeller was the Son of Zebedee, one of the Twelve.

Those left back in Asia Minor do not seem to think so. One of them, defending 14th of Nisan, refers to a John "who wore the golden headband" meaning he probably served as Cohen Gadol one of the years in the Temple.

"5:52 it's very unlikely that John 21 was 5:56 written by whoever wrote John 20"


What's the exact problem?

"it's 5:58 very unlikely that whoever wrote John 6:01 1-8 mean chapter 1 verse 1 through Verse 6:04 18 also orth [wrote the] other part it's possible 6:07 it's just unlikely"


Again, what is the exact problem?

6:29 "the Jews are the bad guys"

1) Not in the mouth of Jesus. The guys St. John retrospectively qualifies as Jews hadn't yet stolen the name from the pious Jews who became the first Christians.
2) Some Jews actually did think "Jews" were the bad guys, they preferred to call themselves "Israelites" (I think this is Essenians). In John 1, at the calling of Nathanael, Our Lord is on board with what seems to be this usage.

So, what St. John presumably did was:

1) receive the word of Our Lord on Patmos, where He assures John and his audience that to Him, the bad guys do not own the name Jews, in the perspective of Heaven
2) receive the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, when He retrospectively calls the bad guys "Jews" from an earthly perspective, presumably to tell his audience to not call themselves Jews, presumably because they were mainly ethnically Jewish.

7:08 Even the Mishna is later than all NT books. Not each tractate in it, but their collection.

St. John had no Talmud to refer to, and was himself a great expert on Judaica. As his audience knew.

If he was "known to the High Priests" (a designation reflecting that the office had started to rotate, under impulsion of the Romans), it was probably not as their fishmonger. I don't think fish from lake Genesareth was sold in Jerusalem. It was because he was a priest. Which probably disqualifies him from being the "John" (companion to Peter) mentioned in Acts 4, but not from being the other John, the priest.

7:45 You are very inattentive.

Jesus never uses "Jews" of His enemies in St. John.

It is only John (the narrator) who does so — in retrospect. In a context where Josephus had already gone to court to say "I am a Jew, not a Christian" ... which gives the word "Jew" a somewhat different connotation than half a century or less earlier.

That's a very clear difference of voice.

Book Squid: Adventures in Home Therapy
@booksquidadventuresinhomet6856
John didn't write John. And Josephus was a satirist working for the Flavians.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@hglundahl
@booksquidadventuresinhomet6856 Do you have an argument, or just an allegation?


9:16 You pretend the citation is arrogant?

You despised not, nor rejected: but received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus.

You are totally out of touch with Christian values. He is simply saying:

  • you received me with the hospitality of Abraham in Mambre (Genesis 18) or Lot in Sodom (Genesis 19)
  • you received me with the hospitality that Jesus will one day reward as directed to Himself (Matthew 25:31 — 40).


In other words, he is saying they have shown the kind of hospitality that God will surely reward. He's not saying he's an angel, and he's not saying he's Jesus Christ. Very much on the contrary.

9:22 Try to trace one thing in Paul you disagree with to Greco-Roman Paganism ... just one. It's a challenge.

9:33 "His interest was power"

He died decapitated. He was often humiliated. He often took off from people who had received him well and honoured him to people who were going to treat him badly or he couldn't know in advance. Doesn't seem very power hungry to me.

9:55 You pretend Acts and the Epistles disagree sharply?

Is there an example that Testify hasn't already debunked? Eric Manning's channel?

10:24 Where in Acts do you pretend Paul went to Jerusalem to circumcise Timothy?

I did a search and found Acts 16, when he came from Jerusalem. The one big time he was there, the Apostolic Council.

10:39 There is a totally different reading of Galatians 2 in Clement. The Cephas that St. Paul opposed was not the Apostle Peter.

Paul was simply exposing frauds, which at first he had taken for people from Jerusalem, which they then weren't.

And when they had known the grace that was given to me, James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship: that we should go unto the Gentiles, and they unto the circumcision:

In other words, three men pretended to be chief apostles, weren't, but as Paul didn't see the real men all that often, he was at first taken in.

11:11 "they are not eyewitnesses"

Speculation, as tradition says the opposite of Matthew and of John.

Book Squid: Adventures in Home Therapy
Josephus Matthias —that gospel of Matthew's author—was indeed a personal witness to Eleazar's torturous death...at his hands. John the rebel may or may not have witnessed the scene. But he witnessed plenty of things in a century of conflict. For some reason though he was spared by Titus after the destruction of Jerusalem. And although he was taken to Rome, he didn't end up being included in the triumph sacrifice along with Peter.

John would not have written the gospel of John though. It's symbolic nature is fully conceptualized in other Josephus writing. Perhaps Tiberias was responsible for this version of the satire since he was said to be so especially enamored with astrology.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@booksquidadventuresinhomet6856 Did I get you right?

You claim that Matthew and John were both written by Josephus? Or perhaps his father or grandfather?

And as far as I have heard no one ever claimed that "John the rebel" wrote the Gospel of John, so why even take it up?

Can't you do better than those wild reconstructions against Traditional Authorships?

Saturday, March 30, 2024

Some Responses to Candida Moss (Beginning of Video)


Licoricia of Winchester, Interest, Blood Libel · Look at This · Palestinian Origins · Christ is King of the Jews · Whaddo You Meme ?? Tried to Give His POV on Christ is King · Colin (Not a Pastor) on Fight For Truth Had a Better Take · Sharing : Isabel Brown · Some Responses to Candida Moss (Beginning of Video) · Christ is King of the Jews, even if Tovia Refuses to See That · Tovia tried to counter ... · When the True God Revealed Himself (sharing) · Tovia Singer Fails to Discredit the Gospels · Sharing on the Trinity in the OT

Christians Weren't Persecuted! | Dr. Candida Moss
History Valley | 12 March 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAabysJO1OU


9:40 Tacitus had in his first work Agricola, about an uncle general, broken a "media silence" as it is to us, lasting from the last lines of Velleius Paterculus.

In those days, you weren't just terrorised for being a Christian, but even for being a decent historian — a bit like in Putin's Russia, but worse.

10:19 They had already been called Christians in Antioch, and Nero's wife Poppaea had a predeliction for Jews, which may have well been abused to get her to target Christians. At least rather Christians than Jews.

POPPÆA SABINA:
By: Kaufmann Kohler, Eduard Neumann
https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/12274-poppaea-sabina


Mistress and, after 62 C.E., second wife of the emperor Nero; died 65. She had a certain predilection for Judaism, and is characterized by Josephus ("Ant." xx. 8, § 11; "Vita," § 3) as θεοσεβής ("religious"). Some Jews, such as the actor Alityros, were well received at court, and Poppæa was always ready to second Jewish petitions before the emperor. In 64 Josephus went to Rome to obtain the liberation of some priests related to him who had been taken captive to that city for some minor offense. With the help of Alityros, Josephus succeeded in gaining the intercession of the empress, and returned home with his friends, bearing rich gifts with him.


a) Jews were already unpopular
b) Christians were unpopular among Jews
c) Poppaea persuades Nero to target Christians rather than Jews.

The word of Tacitus shows they were targetted.

11:08 Reference in legal texts is desired.

[for the claim that ...]

11:42 "It would have been Jews"

Except for Poppaea.

PhiladelphiYAHH&Smyrna Yeshiba
@philadelphiyahhsmyrna0
What is that supposed to prove?

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@hglundahl
@philadelphiyahhsmyrna0 Candida Moss speculated that Christians wouldn't have been targetted, Jews would have been so.

Poppaea was what would now be called a Noahide, so, she made sure Nero didn't persecute Jews proper. More open to having him persecute a Jewish sect which Jews had persecuted.

PhiladelphiYAHH&Smyrna Yeshiba
@hglundahl You're reaching. Noahide appears to be a modern concept that ancient Jews, especially rabbis, would not practice within 2nd temple judaism and the near after.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@philadelphiyahhsmyrna0 Back then it was called "god fearing" ...


11:58 The correspondence in Pliny's correspondence with Trajan shows Christians already being persecuted.

It does not mark a decision to persecute Christians.

The Romans were perfectly capable of persecuting Christians under a legal text which to them applied to "sth similar" namely Senatus Consultum de Bacchanalibus.

Sei quis velitod bacchanal habuisse ...


Romans were perfectly capable of classing Jews, Christians, Hindus and Buddhists as Bacchus worshippers.

They were also (with a little help from Poppaea) able to distinguish between different groups that they would tend to view as Bacchus worshippers.

John Cooper
@user-tf6rf5ch9i
Pliny would have been three when the Fire and persecutions happened.. If the persecution was limited to Rome as seems to be the case then his relative lack of knowledge is explainable. At the end of the day there are at least two sources that say Nero persecuted Christians.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@user-tf6rf5ch9i Thank you!

Tacitus and ...?


12:27 The reasons why Pliny and Trajan would still be having that conversation would be:

  • if the persecutions under Nero and Domitian had been intermittent, and ceased already
  • and their mediatisation had been inferior among Romans than among Christians
  • and on top of that had used legal clauses not originally meant for Christians.


henri
@Bluesruse
Pliny and Tacitus were buddies. Pliny's dad (the Elder) was considered a hero, and a contemporary to Nero.

It's absolutely ridiculous to suggest Tacitus wrote anything about any 'Christians' without Pliny knowing. Tacitus would have asked Pliny, or used his dad as a source, and Pliny would have known those sources by heart as well.

Tacitus wrote some dirt on Nero, because he didn't like him. Christians saw an opportunity to bullshit their way into history, just like they did with their so called 'Christ'. Case closed.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@Bluesruse Let's take a look at Pliny the Elder:

"At the earliest time that Pliny could have left the service, Nero, the last of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, had been emperor for two years. He did not leave office until AD 68, when Pliny was 45 years old. During that time, Pliny did not hold any high office or work in the service of the state. In the subsequent Flavian dynasty, his services were in such demand that he had to give up his law practice, which suggests that he had been trying not to attract the attention of Nero, who was a dangerous acquaintance."


This means, his son could have been aware of Nero's persecution without being sure whether this should count as legal precedent.

henri
@hglundahl When you lift a direct quote from somewhere, you should really say where it's from. In this case, Google lead me to Wikipedia, and the quote in question to be completely sourceless. The opinion of a random person online can therefore be left on its own.

But just to comment what's wrong there: Any Emperor could have of course been a potentially 'dangerous acquaintance', but on its own this is like saying 'you didn't eat a Snickers bar yesterday, so you must be allergic to nuts'.

A more accurate and honest description of Nero is pretty far from the popular image people know that the Christians fabricated. You could say that Nero suffered the greatest character assassinations in history.

Also, Pliny the Yonger in his letters to Tacitus pretty clearly describes his father as a 'good Roman'. Something Nero arguably was not in the way the term was understood and meant to be understood by Tacitus. Shortest way to describe the situation is: Nero was "gay".

And the Elder being an army man and a friend to the general who ultimately takes the crown after a civil war (Vespasian, whom with the Elder had served together with in German legions), there's quite a bit wrong with saying the Elder didn't hold office in Nero's court, because Nero was a 'dangerous acquaintance'. He didn't hold office, because there was a) no reason to b) because he didn't want to. Vespasian changed both.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@Bluesruse Thanks for noting it's from wikipedia.

Still more credible than your own totally unsourced claims.

Nero was a man who forced Seneca and Burrus to commit suicide and who was thought responsible for the murder of his mother.

This is in Annals book VI, not in wikipedia (at least the passage about his mother's death) which means that this was the view Tacitus had of him. This being so, it was probably the view Pliny the Elder had of him, on your information. This being so, it is once again very likely that Pliny the Younger could have been aware of Nero persecuting Christians and even so being unsure if this was supposed to be legal precedent.

henri
@hglundahl "This means, his son could have been aware of Nero's persecution without being sure whether this should count as legal precedent."

Oh, and this is just some apologist non sequitur nonsense. It's not what the quote you refer to means even if we would take it seriously, which we shouldn't.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@Bluesruse I have no reason to take you seriously.

And "this means" in English is not uniquely used of exegesis of direct meaning, it is also used of implication.

henri
@hglundahl Still more credible than your own totally unsourced claims.

Umm, actually no? It's still at most just as unsourced as anything else. Although, I think I've been pretty straightforward about where my information comes from (letters between Pliny and Tacitus, and Trajan). What claim do you think you need a source for, specifically? What claim is in dispute?

Funny you should bring up Nero's mother, Agrippina, who by the accounts of Tacitus, Dio Cassius, Suetonius, and Juvenal, was a serial killer who would sleep with her own brother (Caligula, the real sicko) as well as probably trying to sleep with her own son too (yuck), and who manipulated her son to the throne for her own power hungry gains; who thought she could control him, and who tried to have him replaced (read: killed) multiple times when that didn't work anymore: When Nero would "put his foot down" so to speak.

Seneca was also involved in the conspiracy to have Nero killed (Dio Cassius), with no other than himself (rumored by Tacitus). Although, whether Seneca was involved in the conspiracy directly himself is disputed. Nero did sentence Seneca to death in the aftermath, but not Burrus. Burrus' death also being in dispute.

Regardless, having usurpers killed is not the reason Pliny would say Nero to not be a "good Roman" like his father. Augustus was the Son of God who had tons of his rivals killed in the most brutal of ways, yet he was "the best" of the Romans.

This being so, it is once again very likely that Pliny the Younger could have been aware of Nero persecuting Christians and even so being unsure if this was supposed to be legal precedent.

It's not likely at all. Nothing you have said connects anything to 'Christian' persecution still. You are simply spewing a non sequitur, for reasons we can only guess (you are probably Christian yourself). There is still zero evidence Pliny knowing of any 'Christian' persecutions by Nero. But there is evidence against it (Pliny's correspondences with Tacitus and Trajan).

@hglundahl I have no reason to take you seriously.

Of course you don't. That would require you to listen to reason (pun intended). Something Christians have great troubles with sometimes.

And "this means" in English is not uniquely used of exegesis of direct meaning, it is also used of implication.

Nothing you said implicates that, either. Still a non sequitur of an argument.


Faurisson thought he could achieve some good for the Palestinians by a much better motivated questioning of the Shoah as usually described than "henri" (Bluesruse) is providing motives for questioning the persecution under Nero.

I wonder whom "henri" thinks he is favouring.

Perhaps his goal is simply to ruin Christianity. Some people, and that would include some Jews and Noahides, have that goal.

The Messiah is Among Us! -Rabbi Tovia Singer
Tovia Singer | 22 March 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiHqrMNSxAw


6:47 Jeremias 30:7 ...

Ver. 7. Great, and terrible for this city, the outer walls of which shall be demolished, (Beros.; Calmet) and all its glory perish. (Haydock) --- Of it. Cyrus liberated the Jews, 1 Esdras i.


Paula Wallace
@paulawallace8784
Christianity is the Last Beast, Enemy of Gd and His Chosen.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@paulawallace8784 Pagan Rome was the last beast, and Christianity is the stone that toppled the statue.

If you believe the suffering servant in Isaias 53 is Judaism, then you disbelieve Deuteronomy 28.


Fuller dealing with that video in a separate post.

Anyway, "henri" seems to have similarily dim views of Christianity. He wants to deny Christians existed under Nero to persecute, since that would create some distance between documented Christians (for the time of Pliny he doesn't deny them) and the "alleged" life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and "alleged" creation of His Church starting with people who had known him for up to three and a half years, and who were able to testify to both death on the Cross and seeing Him alive after that.

In order to do so, apart from doing his Antichristian Superiority Complex, trying to discourage me, and trying to paint me as "not listening to reason", he gives as argument that Pliny's correspondence with Tacitus showed that Tacitus couldn't really have known of the Christians persecuted under Nero, since if so, Pliny's letters to Trajan would be "inexplicable." For the argument given in the video and then refuted. He claims to have a much more credible source than my citations from the wikipedia, namely the correspondence of Pliny and Tacitus.

This consists of 11 Letters in Epistulae, 2 each from book 1, 7 and 9, 1 each from books 4 and 8, and a whopping 3 from book 6.

I could theoretically ask "henri" which of the only 11 letters would have been worded differently if the common sense assumptions about history being true history are true. Given his anti-Christian provocation, I refrain from doing it today, Holy Thursday, and the following days, it will be published on Easter Sunday, so people do not think I am compllicit with him.

Meanwhile, he hasn't shown that Pliny couldn't have doubted the legitimacy of Nero's persecution as legal precedent, even if it happened, as documented.

Pliny the Younger : Letters
https://www.attalus.org/info/pliny.html
 
Pliny the Younger : Letters - BOOK 1
https://www.attalus.org/old/pliny1.html


6 Cornelius Tacitus 20 Cornelius Tacitus

Pliny the Younger : Letters - BOOK 4
https://www.attalus.org/old/pliny4.html


13 Cornelius Tacitus

Pliny the Younger : Letters - BOOK 6 https://www.attalus.org/old/pliny6.html

9 Tacitus 16 Tacitus 20 Tacitus
 Pliny the Younger : Letters - BOOK 7
https://www.attalus.org/old/pliny7.html


20 Tacitus 33 Tacitus

Pliny the Younger : Letters - BOOK 8
https://www.attalus.org/old/pliny8.html


7 Tacitus

Pliny the Younger : Letters - BOOK 9
https://www.attalus.org/old/pliny9.html


10 Tacitus 14 Tacitus


Update 9.IV.2024, I answered "henri" thus:

@Bluesruse It so hapens, I decided to not ruin my week of Easter, or yesterday, which was the Feast of Annunciation (since March 25 fell in Holy Week) by talking to you online.

It is possible, and if so not to your credit, if you have made a point of talking to me where I have my luggage, so as to make my acts stand in apparent contrast to that word.

Because I actually published it, and made this remark about you. Since the morning of Easter Day, this is on my blog:

Faurisson thought he could achieve some good for the Palestinians by a much better motivated questioning of the Shoah as usually described than "henri" (Bluesruse) is providing motives for questioning the persecution under Nero.

I wonder whom "henri" thinks he is favouring.

Perhaps his goal is simply to ruin Christianity. Some people, and that would include some Jews and Noahides, have that goal.


[omitting here the full reference to other debate]

Fuller dealing with that video in a separate post.

Anyway, "henri" seems to have similarily dim views of Christianity. He wants to deny Christians existed under Nero to persecute, since that would create some distance between documented Christians (for the time of Pliny he doesn't deny them) and the "alleged" life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and "alleged" creation of His Church starting with people who had known him for up to three and a half years, and who were able to testify to both death on the Cross and seeing Him alive after that.

In order to do so, apart from doing his Antichristian Superiority Complex, trying to discourage me, and trying to paint me as "not listening to reason", he gives as argument that Pliny's correspondence with Tacitus showed that Tacitus couldn't really have known of the Christians persecuted under Nero, since if so, Pliny's letters to Trajan would be "inexplicable." For the argument given in the video and then refuted. He claims to have a much more credible source than my citations from the wikipedia, namely the correspondence of Pliny and Tacitus.

This consists of 11 Letters in Epistulae, 2 each from book 1, 7 and 9, 1 each from books 4 and 8, and a whopping 3 from book 6.

I could theoretically ask "henri" which of the only 11 letters would have been worded differently if the common sense assumptions about history being true history are true. Given his anti-Christian provocation, I refrain from doing it today, Holy Thursday, and the following days, it will be published on Easter Sunday, so people do not think I am compllicit with him.

Meanwhile, he hasn't shown that Pliny couldn't have doubted the legitimacy of Nero's persecution as legal precedent, even if it happened, as documented.


As Easter is over and Annunciation is over, we can resume the debate if you wish.