knglerxt
The Learned



Joined: May 09, 2003
Posts: 134
Location: USA
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Posted:
Fri Aug 01, 2008 10:38 am |
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Hey Infidels! I don't know if any of you guys remember me, but I used to frequent this forum a lot. I've been away for a couple years dealing with other issues. I'm glad to see Reggie is still going strong. He's the one that "woke" me up.
Anyway, what I wanted to discuss is the supposed Isaiah 7:14 messianic prophecy. It seems to me that this
one
verse, followed to its logical conclusion, destroys Christianity. I'm sure most of you know these details, but I want to state them to help make my point. Besides, if someone doesn't know about this, I don't want them to be totally lost.
1. Isaiah used "almah" which means young woman, not virgin. "Bethulah", the word for virgin, appears elsewhere in Isaiah so he obviously knew the difference between the two words.
2. The prophecy was for King Ahaz who lived about 700 years before Jesus was even born. The sign, of course, was that a child would be born signifying to King Ahaz that the two kings who were coming against him would not succeed. This child could not be Jesus. How much sense would it make for God to give Ahaz a sign that he would never see?
3. The child would be named Immanuel, which means "God with us". If you keep this in the
context
of Isaiah chapter 7, it makes perfect sense. It's just another way of saying God would be on King Ahaz's side. Also, Jesus was never referred to as Immanuel.
4. Isaiah told Ahaz that
before
the child is old enough to know right from wrong the land of the two kings would basically be destroyed. This would have happened way before Jesus was born.
5. Matthew cited this verse as fulfillment of a messianic prophecy because he was reading the Greek Septuagint which contained a mistranslation of the word "almah" into "parthenos"
6. This seriously calls into question everything about Jesus' life. If he wasn't born of a virgin, then he was completely human. This pretty much destroys the doctrine of the Trinity and the Christmas story. By the way, where did the birth story come from anyway? None of the Gospel writers or apostles knew Jesus at this time, so where did they get the story? If he was completely human, all the miracle stories and the resurrection are false. That's the main reason he had to be born of a virgin isn't it? I mean a human couldn't perform miracles and rise from the dead. He would have to be God incarnate to do that.
So where does that leave us? If the resurrection didn't happen, then Christianity doesn't have a leg to stand on. Paul even said that, and he's supposed to be the guy who started Christianity. How do Christians reconcile this? This makes Christianity fall like a house of cards. |
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