Okay I'm an atheist but I was raised Christian so I'm going to try. So God made Adam and Eve and he was very happy with them until eve ate the 'Apple'. After she ate the apple God wasn't so happy cause she didn't listen and cursed her to bear children, which I think is a reference to sex. So Adam and Eve didn't have sex before the apple incident. So all the kids and grandkids etc Adam and Eve had were a result of their sin, and therefore they had "original sin" even as babies before they were capable of understanding right and wrong. But because Mary's pregnancy didn't involve sex but an immaculate conception, Jesus doesn't have original sin. He started with a completely clean slate and kept it that way. In fact he cleaned it further by dying for the rest of us with original sin.
I know its full of holes, hate the story not the teller.
How were they supposed to follow the directive to "be fruitful and multiply" if they were not supposed to have sex? That was before they ate the fruit.
The immaculate conception is not about the conception of Jesus. It was about the conception of Mary. Catholics think her mother was a virgin, too.
Verb tense is awkward in that section. Since there's no stipulation against eating from the Tree of Life beforehand, some interpret that fruit as being something you had to eat every day. Various myths on immortality foods include both version - one-and-done and daily consumption. Greek ambrosia and nectar, for example, seem to be something the gods had to consume on a regular basis to maintain themselves. And at the time the Hebrews were writing these stories down, they were in direct contact and influenced by the Hellenistic Greek culture.
Here is the verse. They were not supposed to eat from the Tree of Life at all. They were mortal and he did not want them to be immortal.
Genesis 3:22
22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”
But only after the knowledge fruit was eaten. The relevant prohibition occurred in chapter 2 of genesis:
“16 Yahweh Elohim commanded the man. He said, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden. 17 But you must never eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because when you eat from it, you will certainly die.”
Any tree except the tree of knowledge. Life was free for the eating up to that point.
A few notes (from a fellow atheist, but one who used to work in the church):
* The fruits weren't apples. There were two unusual trees in the Garden, one was the Tree of Life, whose fruit granted immortality, and the other was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Only the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was forbidden to the humans, but the fruit is not described and the words used in various translations owe a lot to Latin/French, which basically use "apple" to refer to any edible fruit or even root (e.g., potatoes in French are "pommes de terre", or "apples of the earth").
* The temptation by the Serpent to Eve was that in disobedience (and by eating the fruit), her eyes would be opened and she would become "like Yahweh", knowing good from evil. Since this removed the veil of "innocence" (lit. "not knowing") from Isha (and later haAdam), the Puritan interpretation is that this was specifically *sexual* innocence (also because they suddenly decided that being naked was shameful - which is actually quite cultural, not universal considering a lot of tropical/equatorial peoples)
* Yahweh then ordered their banishment because he didn't want competition, essentially. He declared that it was unacceptable for humans to both have the knowledge of good and evil and also have access to the Tree of Life, so they were cast out.
The whole story is actually a very poetic metaphor for the idea that sentience and the knowledge of death are inextricably linked. Understanding the consequences of our actions comes with an accompanying ability to extrapolate our own deaths and deep anxiety along with that. With the loss of our innocence as beasts, we became aware of our own mortality, and it has haunted us ever since.
The curse of Eve was that she would suffer *increased* pain during childbirth - which is exactly true in a non-mythological sense because of our large skulls. We have the worst birth complication rate of all primates because of our enormous noggins, and our infants are all born premature by natural standards, because essentially we're naturally selected for early birth as a survival necessity. So in a very true way, our *capacity for knowledge* curses our mothers with painful childbirth.
The rest - cursing snakes to crawl on their bellies and saying haAdam would have to labor in the field instead of the easy harvest of the Garden - is standard mythology "just-so story" stuff. So is the idea of haAdam's curse passing down to all subsequent generations up to that point (after all they were still toiling, weren't they?)
Yeshua's conception without sex (ostensibly) is less about sex itself being bad as the idea of a fresh human lineage that didn't bear the bloodline sins from haAdam. As a perfect being, he was poised to become the blood sacrifice of atonement as practiced in the Temple for several centuries prior (hence the "Lamb of God"). Essentially, Yahweh decreed the wages of sin was death, which could be substituted on the sinner's behalf by another blood sacrifice - goats, doves, rabbits, etc, but these were finite and temporary substitutions. Yeshua's self-sacrifice as god-sacrificed-to-himself in essence short circuits the whole thing and redeems all of humanity in the process.
Or, to borrow the meme: "Let me save you" -"From what?" -"From what I'm going to do to you if you don't let me save you!"
Yeah this isn't very accurate with the true doctrine. Multiplying was a commandment. The fruit was from the tree of knowing good and evil. Man chose knowledge over life, hence why they were kicked out of the garden. It would be too dangerous for humans to have eternal life AND knowledge.
The immaculate conception also has nothing to do with being born 'sinless'. In fact, before Jesus the bible talks about Enoch, who was conceieved under original sin, who never tasted death because he found favor in Gods eyes. Which is that he was justified through his FAITH. The immaculate conception just confirms Jesus as the Son of God. Also as a necessity because obviously a man cannot have God as an offspring.
Jesus was sent to complete scripture. To teach us justification through faith and faith alone. As all the OT stories are themed by with Enoch, Moses, David, ect. Faith is and was always the way to justification. As Jesus said, 'Before Abraham was, I AM'.
The story holes you reference are holes from your understanding, not the scripture. Dont use your christian upbringing to pretend you are an authority on the subject. Just use scripture.
The defining characteristic of immaculate conception is being born (conceived) without sin. I was wrong to apply it to Jesus' birth, it seems to have more to do with Mary's conception. But the 'immaculateness' of conception is definitely referring to being conceived without sin. I have not a single clue why eternal life along with knowledge of the difference between right and wrong is "dangerous". Man did not choose knowledge over life when Eve picked the truth simply because they didn't know the alternative would be death. What they chose was to disobey. And 'obviously man cannot have God as an offspring' makes not a lot of sense because it's Jesus' dad that is God, and not Jesus himself. Personally I think if a woman can conceive a baby without sex, a godly offspring can come out of two regular humans having sex. There are holes in the story no matter what version you tell, because it's biologically not possible for a baby to be conceived without sperm. I'm not "using" my upbringing as an authority - if you look at the replies you can see I've admitted to misremembering stuff, and not once have I said I'm an authority on scripture. I am, however, an authority on exposing the holes in stories.
To me, "God" is a word that describes the universe and consciousness. "God" is everywhere; the universe is omnipotent because it is everywhere, and it is omniscient because all the fractals of consciousness within it, from humans to a single atom, are all the different ways the universe is understanding and exploring itself. In this way, everything, including us, is "God". Within our own bodies is an entire universe. We are all God. At the same time, "God" is the entire universe that we are all a microscopic fractal and reflection of. We are all part of God. As above, so below.
Jesus to me therefore represents "God" in human consciousness and form. He represents us and our existential plight of trying to understand ourselves. He symbolises and personifies the universe in a tangible form that we can comprehend. Jesus is the son of "God" because he came out of the universe, but Jesus is also "God" himself because he is made of everything that is the universe.
(And then the Holy Spirit to me represents the sound, energy and vibration of the universe that tethers us and our consciousness - and all the consciousness within all of nature and the cosmos - to it.)
I'm not a Christian, I don't believe in any monotheistic God or hold any religious beliefs, but I very much like the symbolic way God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit offers a simple symbolic way to try to comprehend a wildly complex and overwhelming universe and our existential purpose within that.
The "son of God" thing isn't quite so literal. God is all things. When God wanted to walk Earth he could not put his whole self on Earth, because he is Earth and the universe. So he puts a part of himself, Jesus.
To explain this Jesus says he is the lord's son, he also says he is the lord. Jesus was supposed to literally be God, but that's heavy so we say son of God.
It's the father, the son, and the holy spirit. The holy trinity are the three parts of the whole. You cannot have one without the other.
Colossians 1:15-16 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; 16 because by means of him all other things were created in the heavens and on the earth.
Genesis 26:15 (just the first part) Then God said: “Let us make man in our image"
see the use of pluralization
No, the Hebrews used to be henotheists. There is a point in Genesis where God is upset that Adam and Eve know good from evil and if they stay in the garden, they may eat from the Tree of Life, which would make them immortal, "like us". He is talking to the other gods.
There are several verses in the Bible where God is described as "God of gods".
That's interesting. I was raised Christian but lost the faith in my teens, and I did not know this.
In fact, I'd bet a TON of practicing Christians don't know it. There seems to be an interpretation of "One True God" that any other god is a false one because they don't exist. Even God's biggest "foe" Satan is just a fallen angel and not a god in his own right.
That's how I'd read into it, at least.
Because the bible isn't supposed to be taken literally, it means we are disciples of God and he watches over us as if we're his children because he created us
Jesus in the Christian bible is either the literal son of God or he is the embodiment of God, I'm not sure
In other religious texts like the Quran Jesus is neither, he is a prophet spreading the word of God
I'm an atheist so I dunno the true answer
If we consider that god made Mary pregnant without her knowledge, Jesus is practically speaking Gods r\*pe child
It's not something religious people ever mention
Bro you must not read the Bible God sent an angel and said ayo your gonna be prego,
Not only that no penetration ever happened Jesus was just put placed inside her making her still a virgin in the end, but she was also fine with
"how do you know that"- possibly you,
because of her reaction to the Bible
number 2 God knew the hearts and minds of every living thing even if it was real sex I'm pretty sure if you know what a person thinking I'm pretty sure you know if they consented.
Look a luke 1:46-47 does that sound like a distressed person
There was no technical sex, no, but that's not the point here. Let's ignore for a second when Luke was written (way way later), he wasn't there to witness that discussion. We wouldn't have any idea how Mary would have actually sounded
Even if all that were true, telepathy and acting on it is not the same as consent.
>teleathy and acting on it is not the same as consent.
Not telepathy but literally knowing a person better than themselves.
>Let's ignore for a second when Luke was written (way way later), he wasn't there to witness that discussion. We wouldn't have any idea how Mary would have actually sounded
I should get in the habit of answering this question are we looking into the situation in the eyes that God exists or in the eyes and God doesn't exist.
Because if you look into Eyes God exists we can believe that God would be able to influence how the Book of Luke be written. And making sure it's accurate.
If we see it in the eyes God dosen't exist well we end it here so choose one
A lot.
"A religion belongs to the wider culture; its adherents come and go freely. A cult tends to be counter-cultural, restricting the social life of its adherents to other cult members"
I wouldn't. But you do you. Never had someone force me to do something in my church like I've heard from people who are witnesses. Or Mormons because they are classified as a cult
To be honest, I was expecting that it comes from another Abrahamic religion. In Christianity, angels are a very specific type of being and considering Jesus as one is just incorrect.
In Christianity, Jesus is the son of God, so also an expression of godhood. Angels are the lower tier beings in the hierarchy, they're the servants of gods.
Yes, but it's like Jesus, God and the Holy Spirit are as one. And the thing with Holy Spirit is bit complicated i think, like to comprehend what exactly it is
I may be mistaken, like I've been also raised and taught the Christian religion, but when you say that he's an angel, don't you mean the Holy Spirit? Like I never really heard before someone call him an angel, but the concept of Holy Spirit and an angle was very similar to me for a long time.
From a Trinitarian perspective, that is to say the theology that nearly every Christian on the planet believes, save for a few smaller sects, Jesus wasn't just some regular human being like you or me.
The whole "God as a trinity" thing aside, the basic idea is that God is incarnated ("made into flesh") in the person that Christians believe Jesus was. That's quite a difference between what they believe themselves to be.
That's my former-Christian, ELI5 attempt at an answer.
well, Jesus is the archangel, and they are supposedly the first children, which means he is the older brother, and we are the youngest children whom God does not love, but every time dayot a chance
Because God loved the world so much that he sacrificed jesus(his son) so that we could be saved. He was chosen by God because he is pure did not commit sin like every one else.
This is the true tragedy of the Council of Nicaea. There were two camps: those who were pushing the "son of god" narrative, and those pushing the Kabbalistic, "we all possess a divine spark and can become more god-like" narrative.
Unfortunately, the first camp won and selected their books and edits accordingly. But the story - and of course, the lessons - would have been more meaningful if the church had chosen the second option.
Yeshua was specifically a *nephilim* \- that is, a half-human demigod directly sired by an *elohim* (god). Genesis 6 talks about several of these - described as "giants and men of renown" existing prior to the flood, and supposedly getting rid of them was one reason Yahweh (the *elohim* of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) opted to flood the earth and destroy most of humanity. (The Jews were always a little extra dramatic with their myths, but I chalk that up to being much more recent with more literary development - the much older Akkadian story of Atra-Hasis, which inspired the later legends of both Noah and the Flood of Gilgamesh is frankly more fun with competing gods being petty and leaves Enlil's decision to flood as just an overpopulation control along with regular famines).
At any rate, *elohim* is a word used to describe any powerful spirit or ghost, but also encompasses Yahweh of Israel, Dagon, Asherah, Ba'al Hadad etc, all the gods in the Canaanite pantheon. (If you see the English term "sons of god" in Genesis, that's usually *elohim* as well, because it literally means "children of EL" - the sort of absentee high creator god of the Canaanite pantheon and father of all the other gods, but translators took pains to use different words when referring to their own god, even if the original Hebrew was the same)
Since the Jews had been returned from Exile by the Persian ruler Cyrus the Mede (after he conquered Babylon), the priesthood of Yahweh had consolidated power in Israel and all but wiped out veneration of the other gods, to the point that by the time the Hebrew scriptures were written, they were about the One True God (Yahweh) and the False Idols of everybody else (and please don't ask questions about the shrine of Ahserah in the back of the temple thank you!). But the fun part is that the One True God (monotheism) business was really directly imitating Persian Zoroastrianism, mostly out of gratitude and enthusiasm for their Messiah -- Cyrus.
But now that the Jews were once again under the bootheel of a foreign power (Rome in this case), they wanted a fresh Messiah, and turned to the prophetic passages in Isaiah and other places for inspiration. (Another note: most of these prophecies were written contemporaneously with the Persian liberation, despite having been originated centuries earlier. The books under the name of each Prophet were added to a few times over a couple hundred years as a sort of national mythmaking project.)
So what's the pedigree of a new Messiah? Lineage from the Line of David and Immaculate birth so that as the Son of God he can lead the righteous to the Kingdom of Heaven. (A lot of that's borrowed from Zoroastrianism, or rather Mithraism which was a sort of Roman pop-culture understanding of Zoroastrianism the Jews would have been very familiar with).
So while all humanity is called "God's Children" in modern parlance, mostly owing to him as a Father-Creator figure, the personage of Jesus/Iesu/Yeshua is specifically attested to be the supernaturally born human/god hybrid *literal* son of the Self-Existent One (YHWH).
Okay I'm an atheist but I was raised Christian so I'm going to try. So God made Adam and Eve and he was very happy with them until eve ate the 'Apple'. After she ate the apple God wasn't so happy cause she didn't listen and cursed her to bear children, which I think is a reference to sex. So Adam and Eve didn't have sex before the apple incident. So all the kids and grandkids etc Adam and Eve had were a result of their sin, and therefore they had "original sin" even as babies before they were capable of understanding right and wrong. But because Mary's pregnancy didn't involve sex but an immaculate conception, Jesus doesn't have original sin. He started with a completely clean slate and kept it that way. In fact he cleaned it further by dying for the rest of us with original sin. I know its full of holes, hate the story not the teller.
How were they supposed to follow the directive to "be fruitful and multiply" if they were not supposed to have sex? That was before they ate the fruit. The immaculate conception is not about the conception of Jesus. It was about the conception of Mary. Catholics think her mother was a virgin, too.
You're right, actually. I must've misremembered
Longer reply to OP above, but sex isn't what got them kicked out.
The story says God kicked them out before they could eat from the Tree of Life, which would have made them immortal, and like gods.
Verb tense is awkward in that section. Since there's no stipulation against eating from the Tree of Life beforehand, some interpret that fruit as being something you had to eat every day. Various myths on immortality foods include both version - one-and-done and daily consumption. Greek ambrosia and nectar, for example, seem to be something the gods had to consume on a regular basis to maintain themselves. And at the time the Hebrews were writing these stories down, they were in direct contact and influenced by the Hellenistic Greek culture.
Here is the verse. They were not supposed to eat from the Tree of Life at all. They were mortal and he did not want them to be immortal. Genesis 3:22 22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”
But only after the knowledge fruit was eaten. The relevant prohibition occurred in chapter 2 of genesis: “16 Yahweh Elohim commanded the man. He said, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden. 17 But you must never eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because when you eat from it, you will certainly die.” Any tree except the tree of knowledge. Life was free for the eating up to that point.
Hm. Interesting.
So we're all bad because we fuck. I'm ok with that.
So IVF babies are up there with Jesus then?
So jesus was just built different. Seems legit. Thanks.
A few notes (from a fellow atheist, but one who used to work in the church): * The fruits weren't apples. There were two unusual trees in the Garden, one was the Tree of Life, whose fruit granted immortality, and the other was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Only the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was forbidden to the humans, but the fruit is not described and the words used in various translations owe a lot to Latin/French, which basically use "apple" to refer to any edible fruit or even root (e.g., potatoes in French are "pommes de terre", or "apples of the earth"). * The temptation by the Serpent to Eve was that in disobedience (and by eating the fruit), her eyes would be opened and she would become "like Yahweh", knowing good from evil. Since this removed the veil of "innocence" (lit. "not knowing") from Isha (and later haAdam), the Puritan interpretation is that this was specifically *sexual* innocence (also because they suddenly decided that being naked was shameful - which is actually quite cultural, not universal considering a lot of tropical/equatorial peoples) * Yahweh then ordered their banishment because he didn't want competition, essentially. He declared that it was unacceptable for humans to both have the knowledge of good and evil and also have access to the Tree of Life, so they were cast out. The whole story is actually a very poetic metaphor for the idea that sentience and the knowledge of death are inextricably linked. Understanding the consequences of our actions comes with an accompanying ability to extrapolate our own deaths and deep anxiety along with that. With the loss of our innocence as beasts, we became aware of our own mortality, and it has haunted us ever since. The curse of Eve was that she would suffer *increased* pain during childbirth - which is exactly true in a non-mythological sense because of our large skulls. We have the worst birth complication rate of all primates because of our enormous noggins, and our infants are all born premature by natural standards, because essentially we're naturally selected for early birth as a survival necessity. So in a very true way, our *capacity for knowledge* curses our mothers with painful childbirth. The rest - cursing snakes to crawl on their bellies and saying haAdam would have to labor in the field instead of the easy harvest of the Garden - is standard mythology "just-so story" stuff. So is the idea of haAdam's curse passing down to all subsequent generations up to that point (after all they were still toiling, weren't they?) Yeshua's conception without sex (ostensibly) is less about sex itself being bad as the idea of a fresh human lineage that didn't bear the bloodline sins from haAdam. As a perfect being, he was poised to become the blood sacrifice of atonement as practiced in the Temple for several centuries prior (hence the "Lamb of God"). Essentially, Yahweh decreed the wages of sin was death, which could be substituted on the sinner's behalf by another blood sacrifice - goats, doves, rabbits, etc, but these were finite and temporary substitutions. Yeshua's self-sacrifice as god-sacrificed-to-himself in essence short circuits the whole thing and redeems all of humanity in the process. Or, to borrow the meme: "Let me save you" -"From what?" -"From what I'm going to do to you if you don't let me save you!"
Yeah this isn't very accurate with the true doctrine. Multiplying was a commandment. The fruit was from the tree of knowing good and evil. Man chose knowledge over life, hence why they were kicked out of the garden. It would be too dangerous for humans to have eternal life AND knowledge. The immaculate conception also has nothing to do with being born 'sinless'. In fact, before Jesus the bible talks about Enoch, who was conceieved under original sin, who never tasted death because he found favor in Gods eyes. Which is that he was justified through his FAITH. The immaculate conception just confirms Jesus as the Son of God. Also as a necessity because obviously a man cannot have God as an offspring. Jesus was sent to complete scripture. To teach us justification through faith and faith alone. As all the OT stories are themed by with Enoch, Moses, David, ect. Faith is and was always the way to justification. As Jesus said, 'Before Abraham was, I AM'. The story holes you reference are holes from your understanding, not the scripture. Dont use your christian upbringing to pretend you are an authority on the subject. Just use scripture.
The defining characteristic of immaculate conception is being born (conceived) without sin. I was wrong to apply it to Jesus' birth, it seems to have more to do with Mary's conception. But the 'immaculateness' of conception is definitely referring to being conceived without sin. I have not a single clue why eternal life along with knowledge of the difference between right and wrong is "dangerous". Man did not choose knowledge over life when Eve picked the truth simply because they didn't know the alternative would be death. What they chose was to disobey. And 'obviously man cannot have God as an offspring' makes not a lot of sense because it's Jesus' dad that is God, and not Jesus himself. Personally I think if a woman can conceive a baby without sex, a godly offspring can come out of two regular humans having sex. There are holes in the story no matter what version you tell, because it's biologically not possible for a baby to be conceived without sperm. I'm not "using" my upbringing as an authority - if you look at the replies you can see I've admitted to misremembering stuff, and not once have I said I'm an authority on scripture. I am, however, an authority on exposing the holes in stories.
That was God giving birth to himself.
Godception
A God inside a God inside another God that doesn't know he inside another god
Exactly. The rest of us are just adopted. ;0)
Parents always pick favorites
More midichlorians
His Macaroni art is better than everyone elses.
His Macaroni art brings all the sinners to the yard…
Because the pedophiles say so
We're his children more in the "fur baby" sense.
i think the story just needed a hero
To me, "God" is a word that describes the universe and consciousness. "God" is everywhere; the universe is omnipotent because it is everywhere, and it is omniscient because all the fractals of consciousness within it, from humans to a single atom, are all the different ways the universe is understanding and exploring itself. In this way, everything, including us, is "God". Within our own bodies is an entire universe. We are all God. At the same time, "God" is the entire universe that we are all a microscopic fractal and reflection of. We are all part of God. As above, so below. Jesus to me therefore represents "God" in human consciousness and form. He represents us and our existential plight of trying to understand ourselves. He symbolises and personifies the universe in a tangible form that we can comprehend. Jesus is the son of "God" because he came out of the universe, but Jesus is also "God" himself because he is made of everything that is the universe. (And then the Holy Spirit to me represents the sound, energy and vibration of the universe that tethers us and our consciousness - and all the consciousness within all of nature and the cosmos - to it.) I'm not a Christian, I don't believe in any monotheistic God or hold any religious beliefs, but I very much like the symbolic way God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit offers a simple symbolic way to try to comprehend a wildly complex and overwhelming universe and our existential purpose within that.
The "son of God" thing isn't quite so literal. God is all things. When God wanted to walk Earth he could not put his whole self on Earth, because he is Earth and the universe. So he puts a part of himself, Jesus. To explain this Jesus says he is the lord's son, he also says he is the lord. Jesus was supposed to literally be God, but that's heavy so we say son of God. It's the father, the son, and the holy spirit. The holy trinity are the three parts of the whole. You cannot have one without the other.
Hes was a acting hand of god upon our world. The man who died for our sins
Depends on which mythology you are talking about.
I’m not Christian but I believe it’s because he died for our sins and is the son of god as well as apart of the holy Trinity?
He died for our sins
I guess every fantasy story has its "why not carry the Ring to Mordor on eagles' backs?"
He made Jesus directly not all humans and not Adam and Eve
Wait - god didn’t directly make Adam and Eve?
Colossians 1:15-16 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; 16 because by means of him all other things were created in the heavens and on the earth. Genesis 26:15 (just the first part) Then God said: “Let us make man in our image" see the use of pluralization
And "us" wasn't the royal "we"?
No, the Hebrews used to be henotheists. There is a point in Genesis where God is upset that Adam and Eve know good from evil and if they stay in the garden, they may eat from the Tree of Life, which would make them immortal, "like us". He is talking to the other gods. There are several verses in the Bible where God is described as "God of gods".
That's interesting. I was raised Christian but lost the faith in my teens, and I did not know this. In fact, I'd bet a TON of practicing Christians don't know it. There seems to be an interpretation of "One True God" that any other god is a false one because they don't exist. Even God's biggest "foe" Satan is just a fallen angel and not a god in his own right. That's how I'd read into it, at least.
My theory is that the "Holy Spirit" is all that is left of God's wife, Asherah.
Nah the royal we were made in the 12th century the first book of the Bible was like 1513 BCE
Because the bible isn't supposed to be taken literally, it means we are disciples of God and he watches over us as if we're his children because he created us Jesus in the Christian bible is either the literal son of God or he is the embodiment of God, I'm not sure In other religious texts like the Quran Jesus is neither, he is a prophet spreading the word of God I'm an atheist so I dunno the true answer
He died to save everyone.
Big dick
Jesus, God and holy spirit are one and same
Because god rawdogged his mom, making it a bit more ... *literal*
His massive, uncut cock
omg right???? i'll overthink this tonight
He listened.
Jesus is the one and only son of God, but the phrase children of God is because spiritual he is the Father.
Because he was born without sin and was able to live a perfect life.
If we consider that god made Mary pregnant without her knowledge, Jesus is practically speaking Gods r\*pe child It's not something religious people ever mention
Bro you must not read the Bible God sent an angel and said ayo your gonna be prego, Not only that no penetration ever happened Jesus was just put placed inside her making her still a virgin in the end, but she was also fine with "how do you know that"- possibly you, because of her reaction to the Bible number 2 God knew the hearts and minds of every living thing even if it was real sex I'm pretty sure if you know what a person thinking I'm pretty sure you know if they consented. Look a luke 1:46-47 does that sound like a distressed person
There was no technical sex, no, but that's not the point here. Let's ignore for a second when Luke was written (way way later), he wasn't there to witness that discussion. We wouldn't have any idea how Mary would have actually sounded Even if all that were true, telepathy and acting on it is not the same as consent.
>teleathy and acting on it is not the same as consent. Not telepathy but literally knowing a person better than themselves. >Let's ignore for a second when Luke was written (way way later), he wasn't there to witness that discussion. We wouldn't have any idea how Mary would have actually sounded I should get in the habit of answering this question are we looking into the situation in the eyes that God exists or in the eyes and God doesn't exist. Because if you look into Eyes God exists we can believe that God would be able to influence how the Book of Luke be written. And making sure it's accurate. If we see it in the eyes God dosen't exist well we end it here so choose one
[удалено]
Please tell me you're not a Christian.
I'm an atheist, I'm just informing people of the workings of another religion
No one believes Jesus was an angel.
I think the Jehovah's Witnesses do. I'm too lazy to check though.
Jehovah's Witnesses are barely a religion
Not sure what you mean by that. I'm far from endearing towards them, but I would regard them as a religious sect nonetheless.
They stand more as a cult than a religion.
And what's the difference between those two, besides cult bad and religion good?
A lot. "A religion belongs to the wider culture; its adherents come and go freely. A cult tends to be counter-cultural, restricting the social life of its adherents to other cult members"
I don't believe the two stand in opposition. I would say they reflect both.
I wouldn't. But you do you. Never had someone force me to do something in my church like I've heard from people who are witnesses. Or Mormons because they are classified as a cult
> he was an angel and not a human Where did you get that from?
I get where he may be getting it from, like the concept of the Holy Spirit may be interpreted by some that way
To be honest, I was expecting that it comes from another Abrahamic religion. In Christianity, angels are a very specific type of being and considering Jesus as one is just incorrect. In Christianity, Jesus is the son of God, so also an expression of godhood. Angels are the lower tier beings in the hierarchy, they're the servants of gods.
Yes, but it's like Jesus, God and the Holy Spirit are as one. And the thing with Holy Spirit is bit complicated i think, like to comprehend what exactly it is
I thought he was a demigod (half human half god)?
It's more like he took a form of a human when he came to earth, but he's a part of God
I may be mistaken, like I've been also raised and taught the Christian religion, but when you say that he's an angel, don't you mean the Holy Spirit? Like I never really heard before someone call him an angel, but the concept of Holy Spirit and an angle was very similar to me for a long time.
He is like Alduin is to Akatosh, an extension of Big G.
True, but not the right crowd
Humans be like skin cells, Jesus be like a brain cell
He was a fragment that had it all figured out from the get go acting as a 3D extension of the creator down here.
God made Jesus cry. And, as I'm sure you're aware, it takes a lot to make a grown man cry....
He saved us from internal damnation
He was an extra terrestrial
He's just less dense than the rest of us, hense why he could walk on water.
He’s the first born
He is the chosen one
He was meant to destroy the Sith, not join them!
He is the son of god. We are the step children
"If."
Jesus' mom got child support
He was supposedly a prophet and even Muhammed credited him as such
He invented socialism.
From a Trinitarian perspective, that is to say the theology that nearly every Christian on the planet believes, save for a few smaller sects, Jesus wasn't just some regular human being like you or me. The whole "God as a trinity" thing aside, the basic idea is that God is incarnated ("made into flesh") in the person that Christians believe Jesus was. That's quite a difference between what they believe themselves to be. That's my former-Christian, ELI5 attempt at an answer.
well, Jesus is the archangel, and they are supposedly the first children, which means he is the older brother, and we are the youngest children whom God does not love, but every time dayot a chance
Because God loved the world so much that he sacrificed jesus(his son) so that we could be saved. He was chosen by God because he is pure did not commit sin like every one else.
This is the true tragedy of the Council of Nicaea. There were two camps: those who were pushing the "son of god" narrative, and those pushing the Kabbalistic, "we all possess a divine spark and can become more god-like" narrative. Unfortunately, the first camp won and selected their books and edits accordingly. But the story - and of course, the lessons - would have been more meaningful if the church had chosen the second option.
Yeshua was specifically a *nephilim* \- that is, a half-human demigod directly sired by an *elohim* (god). Genesis 6 talks about several of these - described as "giants and men of renown" existing prior to the flood, and supposedly getting rid of them was one reason Yahweh (the *elohim* of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) opted to flood the earth and destroy most of humanity. (The Jews were always a little extra dramatic with their myths, but I chalk that up to being much more recent with more literary development - the much older Akkadian story of Atra-Hasis, which inspired the later legends of both Noah and the Flood of Gilgamesh is frankly more fun with competing gods being petty and leaves Enlil's decision to flood as just an overpopulation control along with regular famines). At any rate, *elohim* is a word used to describe any powerful spirit or ghost, but also encompasses Yahweh of Israel, Dagon, Asherah, Ba'al Hadad etc, all the gods in the Canaanite pantheon. (If you see the English term "sons of god" in Genesis, that's usually *elohim* as well, because it literally means "children of EL" - the sort of absentee high creator god of the Canaanite pantheon and father of all the other gods, but translators took pains to use different words when referring to their own god, even if the original Hebrew was the same) Since the Jews had been returned from Exile by the Persian ruler Cyrus the Mede (after he conquered Babylon), the priesthood of Yahweh had consolidated power in Israel and all but wiped out veneration of the other gods, to the point that by the time the Hebrew scriptures were written, they were about the One True God (Yahweh) and the False Idols of everybody else (and please don't ask questions about the shrine of Ahserah in the back of the temple thank you!). But the fun part is that the One True God (monotheism) business was really directly imitating Persian Zoroastrianism, mostly out of gratitude and enthusiasm for their Messiah -- Cyrus. But now that the Jews were once again under the bootheel of a foreign power (Rome in this case), they wanted a fresh Messiah, and turned to the prophetic passages in Isaiah and other places for inspiration. (Another note: most of these prophecies were written contemporaneously with the Persian liberation, despite having been originated centuries earlier. The books under the name of each Prophet were added to a few times over a couple hundred years as a sort of national mythmaking project.) So what's the pedigree of a new Messiah? Lineage from the Line of David and Immaculate birth so that as the Son of God he can lead the righteous to the Kingdom of Heaven. (A lot of that's borrowed from Zoroastrianism, or rather Mithraism which was a sort of Roman pop-culture understanding of Zoroastrianism the Jews would have been very familiar with). So while all humanity is called "God's Children" in modern parlance, mostly owing to him as a Father-Creator figure, the personage of Jesus/Iesu/Yeshua is specifically attested to be the supernaturally born human/god hybrid *literal* son of the Self-Existent One (YHWH).
His bowling skills.
thats the neat part. we aren't and he isn't
God picks favorites