• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Christians- How do you know Jesus and the Bible are true?

CG Didymus

Veteran Member
I believe they have no evidence that it is a parable.
What evidence could they have? The gospels say the tomb was empty. There was no dead body. Then Jesus showed himself to be alive and that he had flesh and bone. Now Jesus told parables, and it is clear when he's telling a parable, but when do the gospel writers tell parables of their own? But, of course, the only "proof" and evidence a Baha'i needs is that their religion says it was a spiritual, symbolic resurrection.
 

Trailblazer

Veteran Member
What evidence could they have? The gospels say the tomb was empty. There was no dead body. Then Jesus showed himself to be alive and that he had flesh and bone. Now Jesus told parables, and it is clear when he's telling a parable, but when do the gospel writers tell parables of their own? But, of course, the only "proof" and evidence a Baha'i needs is that their religion says it was a spiritual, symbolic resurrection.
The gospels say the tomb was empty. There was no dead body. Then Jesus showed himself to be alive and that he had flesh and bone.
So what? Anyone can write a story, but a story is no 'proof' that anything in the story ever took place.
Is the Harry Potter 'story' true?

Harry Potter, fictional character, a boy wizard created by British author J.K. Rowling. His coming-of-age exploits were the subject of seven enormously popular novels (1997–2007), which were adapted into eight films (2001–11); a play and a book of its script appeared in 2016.Apr 12, 2023
Harry Potter | Character, Books, Movies, & Facts | Britannica
 

CG Didymus

Veteran Member
Then Baha'is shouldn't call Christianity a true, revealed religion from God. But Baha'is do. But they only believe the parts they like and they can use to support and legitimize their prophet and beliefs. Anything that doesn't is "symbolic" and fictional? So much for "progressive" revelation then, because the only thing that the NT reveals is that people can make up a good story and call it a message from God. Is that the official Baha'is view? Sometimes, it seems so... a progression of fictional stories about God.
 

CG Didymus

Veteran Member
Well Baha'is, what is your response? Are you okay with one of your own comparing the New Testament to a Harry Potter novel?

Unfortunately, just because most Baha'is probably won't say it, that is essentially what the Baha'i Faith does to the NT, the Jewish Bible, and the Scriptures of Hinduism and Buddhism... It makes them fictional.

Even the Quran, which the Baha'i Faith claims to be more "authentic" than the Bible, has Jesus making birds out of clay and making them come to life. Did that happen or was that just some more "fiction"? The Quran has Mary giving birth to Jesus under a date palm. Is that true? Is the story in the NT about Bethlehem fictional? Which story do Baha'is say is true? Maybe neither? That both are just "fiction"?

In some ways, Baha'is are doing more to support those of us that doubt and are skeptical about the beliefs held by the different religions. But again, if the Scriptures of all the other religions are or are partly fiction, don't go claiming that God "revealed" anything through these supposed "manifestations/messengers" from the past. All we have is "fictional" stories that the people in the different religions wrote themselves and hold as true and sacred. But Baha'is don't. Even if they claim they do. It is trying to have it both ways that is the problem.

If Baha'is don't believe the Scriptures of the other religions are true, then make it clear. Don't play games by saying that, out of nowhere, a story like the resurrection is suddenly a symbolic, fictional addition to the story of Jesus. Just call it a hoax, a false belief, a made-up fictional story... like Harry Potter.
 

Truthseeker

Non-debating member when I can help myself
Well Baha'is, what is your response? Are you okay with one of your own comparing the New Testament to a Harry Potter novel?
She was saying that this story is not proof that a physical resurrection happened. This was written down years later after the fact. It would have to be proven to Baha'is that a physical resurrection happened for us to move off of how we see it. We consider that what what Abdu'l-Baha said as more conclusive than the story because we came to believe in what Abdu'l-Baha was saying for reasons other than the dispute about this story.

The different Gospels have details that appear to contradict each other, and we find the account that Jesus went bodily to heaven to be unbelievable. I don't want to argue abut those things, though, just assert here how I see it.
 

Trailblazer

Veteran Member
If Baha'is don't believe the Scriptures of the other religions are true, then make it clear. Don't play games by saying that, out of nowhere, a story like the resurrection is suddenly a symbolic, fictional addition to the story of Jesus. Just call it a hoax, a false belief, a made-up fictional story... like Harry Potter.
That's what I did. I said the resurrection was a fictional addition to the story of Jesus, a made-up fictional story... like Harry Potter.
But that was not good enough for you, it never is.

I never said it was symbolic, Abdu'l-Baha made it symbolic, and I don't think he 'needed' to do that. He could have just said it is a fictional story.
 

Kelly of the Phoenix

Well-Known Member
Almost the same as being made up during the Exile, just a slightly earlier date.
And of course the same connotations are applied.
What the story tells us is interpreted as a big lie and historians make up their own version of what happened and why, and this skeptic speculation becomes the alternative facts.
Also paleo-Hebrew seems to top out around the early monarchy IIRC, so how does scripture get written before they have a system of writing?
 

Brian2

Veteran Member
Also paleo-Hebrew seems to top out around the early monarchy IIRC, so how does scripture get written before they have a system of writing?

This find seems to show the existence of a system of writing a lot earlier than the early monarchy. Moses could have used it to write scripture.
 

Brian2

Veteran Member
They were not willing and it’s silly to say they were. They, including Jesus, didn’t exactly run towards their fate.

It's pretty usual to not want to be killed. Do you think they should have wanted to be killed?
Actually according to the gospels Jesus knew His fate that Passover and told His disciples what would happen and marched to His death saying that is why He came to earth.
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
This find seems to show the existence of a system of writing a lot earlier than the early monarchy. Moses could have used it to write scripture.
You need a lot more than "could have" since the conclusion that Exodus is a legend at best is not based upon the inability to write.
 

joelr

Well-Known Member
So there is not evidence that it is true even if the Jewish history book tells us about it.
No Jewish history books tells us any such thing. The Bible is mythology. Some events may have historical kings and the setting is historical. You would not call the Quran or Hindu scriptures "history books", yet Muhammad was a real person, the locations were real.
Every nation had a mythology and scriptures. None were literally true. The Israelite version is no exception. In fact Genesis relies on Mesopotamian mythology.



Better to believe skeptics and conspiracy theorists who make up histories about Israel and the Jews I guess, especially when ALL religions write stories that go back to the beginning and Judaism is no different and some people think that Abraham and Moses are literary characters.
I would not advise believing conspiracy theories and I am am weary of skeptics as well. What one should do is have reasonable beliefs related to an epistemology based on rational beliefs and empirical evidence. Just like a line of rational thinking and evidence suggests the Quran and The Bhagavad Gita are not literal stories the same applies to Jewish mythology.
Historians believe Abraham and Moses are literary characters because the overwhelming evidence points to that.
Your beliefs are only possible by suspending rational and critical thinking because there is no evidence the supernatural aspects of the story are true. AND there is plenty of evidence of shared myth and invention of stories.







It's not really a GROSS misunderstanding, it's just a wee error. What is a gross misunderstanding is to think that much of the Bible was made up in the Monarchical and Exilic and post Exilic periods and that the authors drew on things from Persian and other cultures. But that is what happens when you think the supernatural is rubbish and so the OT cannot be true, and when you think that Jesus did not exist and so the gospel was made up, drawing on the religions of other cultures and twisting what is written in the OT.
Yes it's a gross misunderstanding. The Pentateuch relies on only Mesopotamian and Egyptian myth, not Greek.
Isaiah has an influence from the Persians and the NT is all Greek Hellenistic theology.
I already pointed out that this has nothing to do with starting with an assumption that the supernatural isn't true. There is no evidence it isn't just another mythology. There IS evidence it's a Jewish version of other mythology. As well as other forms of evidence, like presented in the article about why Daniel is a known forgery.

The NT is Hellenistic. Savior deities who died and rose for the salvation of followers WAS happening in Greek religion. You seem to be in some sort of denial. I have presented far more than enough evidence to demonstrate this is true yet you continue to ignore it only to continue with this lame thesis about supernatural bias? Yet in EVERY OTHER religion you also assume it isn't true for that reason.

Had you engaged with any of the evidence I present you would see these arguments do not rely on a supernatural bias. I keep going over the same points and you don't respond.
The theology is Greek and Persian.
All nearby nations invaded by Greeks were combining Greek religion with their own, most before Christianity.
The Jewish nation was also occupied by Hellenistic Greeks.
They also came out with a mystery religion with all the same themes, showing it's a trend.
The stories are anonymous.
The gospels are all copied from Mark and freely edited to suit each authors need.
They use mythic language.
They use NO historical type writing.
There are 36 other gospels that are KNOWN TO BE MADE UP.
There are 7 Epistles known to be forgeries.
50% of Christianity was not what modern Christianity was. The 2nd century Gnostics were closer to the actual time of Jesus and held completely different beliefs.
No historian mentions anything other than people who follow the Gospels.
Pliny says it's all harmless superstition.

Just to point out a few.
 

joelr

Well-Known Member
Thanks for the references but none of it is true. We have been through it before.
So denial then? Ok, you are not interested in truth. Just say so then.
Or, provide a historian who disagrees and why. I am studying as many historical scholars on th eperiod as I can. There is no disagreement. David Litwa just came out with a book about this. Lataster also did. It's all peer-reviewed scholarship and not disputed. Except for fundamentalists who have to save certain beliefs. But they have no references, sources, cannot show why.
Please tell me which facts are wrong, source them so I can research them further.

Richard Carrier | Mystery Cults & Christianity

:20 a subject normally people are NOT lecturing to the general public

:45 how to spot trends in religions, at that time China, India, Iran did not have these religious concepts, the Mediterranean region did have saviors and similar mythology.

1:40 Apologists say Judaism would not allow outside influence, Judaism actually adapts and borrows material from surrounding cultures. Judaism is similar to other nearby Near Eastern religions.

2:26 One big influence, Persians, conquer Judea 539-332 B.C.

2:50 Persian religion, Zoroastrianism had ideas Judaism did not have but picked up.


- War of good God vs Evil God/light vs dark/ God vs Satan


- Bad people burn in hell, good people wait in heaven


- A river of fire will flow over the universe burning everything up (even hell itself)


- A new better world created in it’s place


- All good people will be resurrected by God to live in that new world happily ever after

4:37 Greeks conquer Judea 332 - 110 B.C.Greek idea (Hellenism) flow into Judaism

5:05 Romans conquered Judea 63 B.C. - 636 A.D. split off from East
5:26 Mystery cults, come from Greek religions. Every culture that was conquered by Greeks, Egyptians, Persians, Thracians, all took the Mystery cult theology and added it to their local religion and came up with the Mystery religions.

6:06 Basic Mystery cult, common features:


- Individuals “initiated” into the mysteries, ritually and by teaching sworn secrets about the universe. Something about the cosmos one needed to be saved, secrets. Many secrets are now lost.


- purpose was to gain salvation in the afterlife


- all use baptism and communion(communal meals)


- fictive kinship “brotherhood”

9:00 - Trends in Hellenistic religion


- Petra Pakkanen, Interpreting Early Hellenistic Religion (1996)


- Four big trends in religion in the centuries leading up to Christianity


- Christianity conforms to all four

9:16 Four Trends


- Syncretism: combining a foreign cult deity with Hellenistic elements. Christianity is a Jewish mystery religion.


- Henotheism: transforming / reinterpreting polytheism into monotheism. Judaism introduced monolatric concepts.


- Individualism: agricultural salvation cults retooled as personal salvation cults. Salvation of community changed into personal individual salvation in afterlife. All original agricultural salvation cults were retooled by the time Christianity arose.


- Cosmopolitianism: all races, cultures, classes admitted as equals, with fictive kinship (members are all brothers) you now “join” a religion rather than being born into it

12:34 Savior deities, dying/rising, pre-Christian, Osiris, Adonis, Romulus, Zalmoxis, Inanna (oldest 1700 B.C., female deity resurrected in 3 days)

13:32 Worship of Inanna was continued in Tyre during the origin of Christianity (Tyre is mentioned in Bible). Highly unlikely it’s a coincidence that a Jewish sect decided to build their own version of a dying/rising deity using the Jewish concepts of angels instead of Gods.


15:37 bad scholarship on internet, Horus not a dying/rising God. Mithras is also not. Mithras does undergo a passion, no death.


18:30 All Mystery religions have personal savior deities


- All saviors


- all son/daughter, never the supreme God (including Mithriasm)


- all undergo a passion (struggle) patheon


- all obtain victory over death which they share with followers


- all have stories set on earth


- none actually existed


- Is Jesus the exception and based on a real Jewish teacher or is it all made up?

21:00


Pagan /Jewish element, Judea-Pagan Syncretism


Pagan - Savior son of God


Jewish - Messianic resurrection cult


Pagan - Undergoes ordeal by which he obtains victory over death


Jewish - based on blood atonement theology (substitutionary sacrifice)


Pagan - which he shares with those initiated into his cult for individual salvation


Jewish - adapting Passover and Yom Kippur


Pagan - in a universal brotherhood


Jewish - first by circumsision, then without


Pagan - through a baptismal invitation and communal meal


Jewish - through a baptismal invitation and communal meal

23:36 was difficult to convert to Judaism, Paul made innovations to make it easier. Original Torah observant sect of Christianity became smaller and smaller and disappears around 5th century. Islam may be re-emergence of a lost version of this original Christian sect. Halal is basically Kosher.

25:54 “But Christianity is different”, that is how syncretism works.


27:00 mysteries


Elusinian Mysteries = Mycenaean + Hellenistic


Bacchic Mysteries = Phoenician + Hellenistic


Mysteries of Attis and Cybele = Phrygian + Hellenistic


Mysteries of Baal = Anatolian + Hellenistic


Mysteries of Mithras = Persian + Hellenistic


Mysteries of Isis and Osiris = Egyptian + Hellenistic


Christian Mysteries = Jewish + Hellenistic

28:00 Christian Pesher (combining disparate passages in scripture that reveals “hidden messages”)


29:15 examples of Pesher logic taken from Old Testament and used for Jesus


32:00 Baptism, Christian version is different from Jewish/John the Baptist version of baptism. Differences are the same in all mystery religions.


- symbolic sharing of saviors ordeal


- to be born again (Osiris cult)


- united into brotherhood


- to be saved in afterlife


- cleaned of sin (Bacchus, Osiris, Mithras)


- baptism for dead (Paul mentions this 1 Cor, 15: 29)

37:05 Eucharist in Mystery religions


- become one with savior


- to be united in brotherhood


- saved in afterlife


- Lords Supper


- Rememberence, flesh/blood/death, 1 Cor 11:24-26


Christian Lords Supper is distinct in Jewish ways


Yes I guess I do keep ignoring these specific examples. I hope you don't expect me to answer them all individually.
You just did. You just hand waved all of it, as a fundamentalist would. But you come off like you are interested in actual discussion. I see that is just a ruse.


I just have to answer the same sort of stuff in the same way, as if I am programmed to say the same things over and over.
But I don't need to explain why any of it is true and I do say what I think about the evidence in general terms.
Which is called hand waving. You are free to pick one thing and show which fact isn't consensus in the historicity field. This isn't Dr Carriers work, he's just assembling books and journal research for a presentation.


As far as I can see the OT was written at the general time that is suggested in the OT and has examples of the sorts of things that you deny exist in them.
Give an example. Jewish scholars deny the Psalms reference to a crucifixion. All historians know the Hellenistic elements come in the NT.




As far as I can see only something like the flood story was written before the OT version and that just shows that the story is true.
That was taken from Mesopotamian myths.


As far as I can see the OT has most things before or as a similar time to when other religions are supposed to have had them iows they could have copied from the Hebrew ideas.
The Mesopotamian myths are almost 1 thousand years older. That isn't debated.


Even Zoroaster's time of beginning is unknown and probably was after those the Hebrews had it's ideas.
No it's well known. When they occupied Israel it was 600 B.C. and a few centuries later we see Persian influence in the late OT.
As I said, there are Yale Divinity lectures on this.

From Mary Boyce's work - "

The language of the Gathas is archaic, and close to that of the Rigveda (whose composition has been assigned to about 1 700 B. c. onwards); and the picture of the world to be gained from them is correspon,dingly ancient, that of a Stone Age society. "

BUT even if various religions had common themes that does not have to mean plagiarising.

No, it's called syncretism
Even if people/demigods died and sort of came back to life in various ways most as so vague that it means nothing in relation to Jesus and the gospel and the ideas certainly existed in the Hebrew writings before the Greeks or Persians turned up on the scene.
BUT all this does come from a view of the OT that is different to your view of it.
Sounds like you are telling yourself a bit of a tall tale.


  • They are personal salvation cults (often evolved from prior agricultural cults).
  • They guarantee the individual a good place in the afterlife (a concern not present in most prior forms of religion).
  • They are cults you join membership with (as opposed to just being open communal religions).
  • They enact a fictive kin group (members are now all brothers and sisters).
  • They are joined through baptism (the use of water-contact rituals to effect an initiation).
  • They are maintained through communion (regular sacred meals enacting the presence of the god).
  • They involved secret teachings reserved only to members (and some only to members of certain rank).
  • They used a common vocabulary to identify all these concepts and their role.
  • They are syncretistic (they modify this common package of ideas with concepts distinctive of the adopting culture).
  • They are mono- or henotheistic (they preach a supreme god by whom and to whom all other divinities are created and subordinate).
  • They are individualistic (they relate primarily to salvation of the individual, not the community).
  • And they are cosmopolitan (they intentionally cross social borders of race, culture, nation, wealth, or even gender)
  • They are all “savior gods” (literally so-named and so-called).
  • They are usually the “son” of a supreme God (or occasionally “daughter”).
  • They all undergo a “passion” (a “suffering” or “struggle,” literally the same word in Greek, patheôn).
  • That passion is often, but not always, a death (followed by a resurrection and triumph).
  • By which “passion” (of whatever kind) they obtain victory over death.
  • Which victory they then share with their followers (typically through baptism and communion).
  • They also all have stories about them set in human history on earth.
  • Yet so far as we can tell, none of them ever actually existed.
 
Last edited:

joelr

Well-Known Member
You can get into that more deeply, but why do that when I believe the Hebrew scriptures, with reference to angels and heaven and after life etc were there before the Persian period.
It changes during the Persian period. The angels also changed to match the Persian angels. There was no Heaven for people. Show me where after death people went to heaven before the Persian period.
Show me the Revelation myth and expectation of a coming savior.

Regarding angels and Persian belief:
Yale Bible Study, Daniel: The Apocalyptic Genre


Professors Joel Baden and John Collins

4:48 prophecy vs apocalyptic literature

Crucial difference is judgment of the dead

New angelology, angels have names, character traits,
No doubt you care about what is true but there are plenty of scholars who disagree with Carrier.

I'm not arguing mythicism. All historians believe the Gospels are a myth and Jesus was a Jewish Rabbi. I'm fine with that notion.
To me the idea that Jesus did not exist is ridiculous, and Carrier's work seems to be based on the presumption that Jesus did not exist and wanting to see other things in history that point to that idea.
That is wrong right out of the gate. I know you know nothing about Carrier. He doesn't even argue Jesus didn't exist. You don't know his basic premise.
But tell me, what exactly is ridiculous about Jesus not existing?



Apocalypical writing as a style seems to have begun in the Persian period and was used by the Jews in and after the Exile.
Zoroaster seems to have been an example of apocalyptic writing even if the religious ideas he used had been written before him by Jewish prophets and in other Jewish writings.
NO the apocalyptic writing appears after the Persian invasion. The 2nd video has the introduction of souls going to heaven for the first time as part of the theology. It's during the Persian period and they were incorporating most of the Persian apocalyptic ideas that were only in Persian myth and now showing up in late scripture.

The Apocalyptic Imagination - An Introduction To Jewish Apocalyptic Literature by Dr John J. Collins




John J. Collins is Holmes Professor of Old Testament Criticism and Interpretation at Yale Divinity School


apocalypse is a mediated revelation usually from an angel (vision or actual) or transportation to heaven or hell mediated by angel. Uses symbolic language as well.


40:43 Persian influence - Dr Collins finds example in Dead Sea Scrolls


1:01:02 one origin of afterlife in Judaism. Big uptake in belief of afterlife after the persecution of the Jews by Antiochus Epiphanes. In the Hebrew Bible you were told if you keep the law you will live long in the land and see your children and your grandchildren. Now a situation arose where if you keep the law you are killed. One solution to this was there must be another life. 4th Ezra, God made not one world but two.


Old Testament Interpretation


Professor John J. Collins




12:10 a possible inspiration for Ezekiel treatment of dead (valley of bones) was Persian myth


14:20 resurrection of dead in Ezekiel, incidentally resurrection of the dead is also attested in Zoroastrianism, the Persians had it before the Israelites. There was no precent for bodily resurrection in Israel before this time. No tradition of bodies getting up from the grave. The idea of borrowing can be suggested.


In Ezekiel this is metaphorical.


The only book that clearly refers to bodily resurrection is Daniel.


17:30 resurrection of individual and judgment in Daniel, 164 BC. Prior to this the afterlife was Sheol, now heaven/hell is introduced. Persian period. Resurrection and hell existed in the Persian religion.


Resurrection of spirit. Some people are raised up to heaven, some to hell.

I have not time to go thru the authenticity of Daniel, only to say that various people seem to have had a variety of names and it is easy to mix people up.
So you don't care if it's a forgery then, why did you say it wasn't as if you knew?
 
Last edited:

joelr

Well-Known Member
Actually, that is what I was thinking about your position.
Yes that makes sense because you don't seem to even understand the basics about evidence and rational discourse.

I am interested in what is true and actually listen to what experts have to say in each specialty. Your last comment was that you think Jewish translators of the Septuagint (they may have been Greek) were more accurate than modern scholars.
Except you are demonstrably incorrect. How? Well, it's known and can be demonstrated there are numerous errors in the Septuagint.
So you ad-hoc uneducated guess is wrong. Therefore it is also not true.
Do you know of historical scholarship that is making a claim that the Septuagint is without error and a perfect copy of scripture?

OR, are you just saying "I know you are but what am I"?

What about this below is incorrect? I would like to know true things. It seems Jewish Hebrew scholars are in consensus that Psalms is related to a story about David and the Septuagint is not without error.
Your entire thesis in this line of discussion was - who wrote the Septuagint and the authors are perfect, right?

Uh, doesn't seem that way,
Errors in the Septuagint and the Vulgate from Which Illustrations and Sculptures Derived Their Origin

Isaiah 28:16 -- Another Septuagint Mistranslation​

148 errors in Genesis and Exodus -​



Your Link - the legend about the Septuagint being perfect look to be false
"Later generations embellished the story. Philo of Alexandria, writing in the first century AD, says that each of the seventy-two translators were shut in a separate cell, and miraculously all the texts were said to agree exactly with one another, thus proving that their version was directly inspired by God."

"It is difficult to know how much credence to give to these accounts. There are several known historical inaccuracies in the Letter of Aristeas. "

Like I said. the original stories about authorship are known to be wrong because there are many errors.


"The original Septuagint translation of Daniel was thought to be too much of a paraphrase. It was replaced by another translation whose origins would seem to lie in Asia Minor, that ascribed to Theodotion at the end of the second century AD. Indeed, only one manuscript of the Septuagint of Daniel has survived - a tenth-century manuscript from the Chigi collection in the Vatican."




There is reason to believe the text they were using had errors:

Hebrew

There are a number of words which are used in Hebrew for piercing the body: ratz‘a, to pierce, to bore with an awl (Exodus 21:6); dakar, to pierce (Zechariah 12:10, Isaiah 13:15); nakar, to pierce, to bore, to perforate (2 Kings 18:21). This last word is used in a very significant sense in the last verse cited: “It [the reed] will go into his hand and pierce it.” Any of these words would be far better suited for use in this passage than one that is generally used to denote digging the soil. In New Testament references to the crucifixion, we find: “They will look upon him whom they pierced [ekekentesan]” (John 19:37) and “those who pierced [ekekentesan] him” (Revelation 1:7). In both examples, the Greek verb is ekkenteo, “to pierce” and not the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew krh, orusso, “to dig” as for example in “dug in [oruxen] the ground” (Matthew 25:18).

The translator into the Septuagint Greek most likely had a defective Hebrew text before him that had dropped the ’aleph and had an extended yod which appeared to be a vav and so he read the text as krv. We can assume this because it is more likely that a scribe for some reason left out the letter ’aleph than that he inadvertently inserted one. In addition, confusion over whether a letter is a yod or vav is common. The Septuagint renders the controversial word into the Greek as oruxan, “they dug.” Indeed, the Septuagint consistently translated karu as oruxan wherever it was mentioned in that work. Only in Psalm 22 did Christian versions of the Bible render oruxan as “they pierced.” In all 5 citations of this word it was rendered “to dig.” Perhaps the translator of the Septuagint conflated this word at Psalm 22 with the thought “they dug their nails (claws) into me,” “they dug into my flesh,” or simply translated the text before him without b5ing to analyze it. In either case, neither the Hebrew nor the Greek words mean or justify the later Christian interpretative rendering, “they pierced.”

We must also consider that while there are some Hebrew verbs that have an ’aleph intrusion in some forms of the verb, there is no example of this occurring in the verb krh.4 Advocates of the Christian reading have no example of ’aleph intrusion into krh and can only point to verse 17b in trying to establish their case. This leaves their argument as mere speculation with absolutely no proof to support their allegation. The presence of the ’aleph in those verb forms where it appears may simply be orthographic variations reflecting variant dialect pronunciation in the Hebrew spoken in different parts of ’Eretz Yisrael that made their way into the biblical text but which are no longer discernible in Hebrew speech. In any case, the presence of the ’aleph makes the Christian position all the more dubious.





Where this turns into,...... I hate finding true things, is a bit hazy, maybe you could clarify how you arrive there?
 
Top