Is The Da Vinci Code part of a Plot in Holywood & the Media against Catholicism & the Latin Culture?

reply to post by Matrix1111


Sorry this is off topic, but why did the authors of that post show President Clinton taking Communion? All denominations can partake in Communion as long as they understand it (including Baptists). I know many people hate Clinton, but to show this with the other pictures is tasteless.
It is true many higher up Catholics did nothing to condemn the Nazis and the current pope was in the Nazi youth, but at least they have apologized and make no attempt to hide it now. The Church has even opened up the Inquisition records and there was a good special on PBS about them.
Give the Church some credit for righting past wrongs and not keep sweeping things under the rug.

Edited for content

[edit on 7/14/2008 by kidflash2008]

reply to post by kidflash2008



The Clinton picture was indeed out of place. I didn't notice it. I was concerned with the top two pictures.

Catholicism = feudalism
Protestantism = democracy

That's how I see. Yes, I'm prejudice. The whole history of the Catholic Church upsets my sense of righteousness. Jesus had the same problem with the Pharisees.


Mark 7:6-9
He replied, "Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:
" 'These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain;
their teachings are but rules taught by men.' You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men."

And he said to them: "You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!

The whole history of the Catholic councils is nothing but a history of man making doctrine based on certain manuscripes at the exclusin of others that didn't fit the mold. That's not truth. That's doctoring the books.

reply to post by Matrix1111


I was raised Catholic (I am not now) and agree with you that its past is full of lies and deceit. Its treatment of other beliefs and the whole slaughter of people (the Cathars and others) is unfathomable. They wanted to hold on to power (and to a degree still do). I at least am glad they are slowly dealing with their violent past.
It is interesting they did pay that priest in Rennes-le-Chateau over 6 million gold francs to keep some big secret.

reply to post by kidflash2008


Well Kidflash let me respond to your questions:

- The Catholic church is an institution that clearly was founded by Christ when he assign Peter the role or Leader of his faith community.

- It is true that in the History of the Church there were many mistakes done in defense of the faith, but those errors never were done against the Christian principles, I mean by defect, but by excess, that means that sometimes the reaction of the Herarchy was excessive to control some possible or suspicious heretic event.

- In that last Category we can put the case the judges of Giordano Bruno and Galileo Galilei. However it is also fair to recognize that the Church when it commited any error finally it always admited it and request publically pardon for it. Pope John Paul II publically apologized for any crime or abuse comited in the past against Muslims, Jews or even Orthodoxes.

- Nevertheless sometimes the History is a little unfair to recall only the negative side but not the possitive one, specially when previously to take a radical decission there were attempts to dialog and look for a peaceful one before. That was the case of the Cathars, the Catholic Church regarded the sect as dangerously heretical; faced with the rapid spread of the movement across the Languedoc region and the failure of peaceful attempts at conversion, which had been undertaken by Dominicans, it was launched the Albigensian Crusade to crush the movement.


- Other different situation is when some Politicians that consider themselves as good Catholics do something wrong, even a state crime or abuse of authority, that is an issue in which the reponsibility of the Church is minimal, that is the case of the prosecution against Templers , a terrible crime of a king of France, or even many of the Inquisition crimes, since that tribunal was not only eclesial but also secular, in other words a state authority.

- Pope Benedict XVI was in his adolescence part of the Nazi youth but it was when he was not really an adult and under the pressure of the totalitarism in his country. The alternative to don't be part of such groups was to be declared discident and sent to a concentration field. However, that organization was not very distinct that the boys scouts in other countries, it was not any strongly militant corp.

- About Clintons' communion in Africa, well I don't want to be the judge of any person but I think there were two possitilibities: they didn't know how grave that was act, since they are not Catholic(As far as I know, if you are commenting the incident in Africa, both Clintons took the comunion) , or well their morality is so flexible in some aspects, how can we request a so strict ethic to a married person that being the President of a country had an affair with a lady that was almost the age of his daughter and dating her in his own home?

- However to say that this is the worst lack of Respect that some President of USA commited against Catholicism could be wrong. Although President Bush gave to SS. Benedict XVI a nice welcome, something that anyway was mandatory being not only a religious Leader but a State head, Bush also has something in his past that was not very Catholic we can say.

- In 2002 when George Bush decided to start the war on Iraq, he was critized with severity by the Pope SS John Paul II who said that this war didnt have any moral reasons. The next week to the Pope speech Bush was interviewed by Newsweek Magazine and he said on that occasion that it was God himself the one that gave to him the order to invade Iraq, and when the journalist requested more information he told that Iraq had Massive Destruction Weapons and that was the motif. Next week the Pope anounced excomunication for any Catholic that publically gave support to such a war.

So in resume we have a two interesting cases of confrontation with Catholicism:

The President that took the comunion not being member of the church and without previous confession, so necessary in his case since he comitted adultery publically and lied to hide his fault too,

or

a President that claimed falsy to be guided by God in a war that was started with lies and that caused the death of thousands of Americans and foreginers and the destruction of a country plus the rising of the Oil prizes that many americans are now paying.

Which one was a worst fault? It is quite difficult to say, but anyway that is part of the moral crisis that I has been denounced America has, since several years ago, and that if does not ends quickly can be waste the patience of God that is so big but not infinite.

thanks for your participation in the thread,

your friend,

The Angel of lightness




[edit on 7/14/2008 by The angel of light]

Originally posted by kidflash2008
reply to post by Matrix1111

 

I was raised Catholic (I am not now) and agree with you that its past is full of lies and deceit. Its treatment of other beliefs and the whole slaughter of people (the Cathars and others) is unfathomable. They wanted to hold on to power (and to a degree still do). I at least am glad they are slowly dealing with their violent past.
It is interesting they did pay that priest in Rennes-le-Chateau over 6 million gold francs to keep some big secret.

It's been revealed how much was paid to the priest?

I agree about the Cathars. Unfathomable!

reply to post by Matrix1111


There are several books that state he was paid at least that amount. The known fact is he did build a large estate and left his housekeeper with an extreme amount of money.
I do not place any blame on the current pope's joining the Nazi youth group as it was compulsory for boys to join such groups. I should not have implied it meant he agreed with the policies going on at the time.

reply to post by The angel of light


- The Catholic church is an institution that clearly was founded by Christ when he assign Peter the role or Leader of his faith community?

This is debatable. There is evidence throughout Paul's epistles that James (Jesus brother) was in charge and the lineage of power had passed to him from Jesus. Peter and Paul both had their own ideas about theology and lineage of power. Peter visiting Rome and Paul setting up a bishop there doesn't give authentication to the idea that the Catholic church is the true church.

The history of the Ebonites (supporters of James) could clear this matter up. Unfortunately it was burned.

From www.jesuswordsonly.com... ...

We do not know the Ebionites’ true views because we
cannot find the Ebionite works preserved in any library anywhere.
Imperial Rome beginning with Theodosius’ reign
(379-395) outlawed any religion but that of the “bishops of
Rome” (Codex Theod. XVI, I, 2). This was enforced by the
destruction of both public and private libraries in Roman territories.
If any heretical material was found, the owner suffered
the death penalty. This suppression of historical works
was interpreted broadly. For example, in 371, Emperor
Valens ordered troops to remove from private homes at Antioch
(Syria) works on liberal arts and the law, not just heretical
works. “Discouraged and terrorized people all over the eastern
provinces of the Empire, wishing to avoid any possible
suspicion, began to burn their own libraries.”3 This grew worse under Theodosius. Then in 435 and 438, the emperors
of Rome again commanded the public burning of unorthodox
books throughout the empire.

So effective were these decrees, that there is not one
single record written by an Ebionite that we can find preserved
anywhere in any library. We know them only through
the interpretation of their enemies.

Ebonites beliefs:
hardquestions.wordpress.com...

The history course of the Catholic church was very much driven by political expediency. It really has no validity other than it killed off it's theological rivals.

[edit on 14-7-2008 by Matrix1111]

[edit on 14-7-2008 by Matrix1111]

reply to post by Matrix1111


Well dear Matrix1111,

The gospel is so clear with respect to the Patriarchship of St. Peter over not only the church of Jerusalem but the world's one at his time. This is recorded in all the four sipnotic gospels, so it is clear that this is not an autodeclaration of St. Peter, but something well accepted with all the apostles and disciples of Jesus.

Probably the best version of the moment in which Peter receives this authority is the following:

Jesus replied,

"Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.

I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." Then he warned his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Christ.

(St. Matthew 16:17-20)

So with this type of declaration of Christ there is no doubt at all about who was the boss of the Church in his abscence, and what his attributes and powers, this is is a so important part of the testament of Jesus to assure the continuation of the church after his departure.

I think one way to explain the situation that you are pointed to, is that when St. Peter decided to travel to Rome to spread the Gospel in the Heart of the Empire, a so important mission since that would assure the paulatine conversion of the maximal political power of that epoch, somebody must remain in charged of Jerusalem and that could be St James.

However, let me tell to you that there is no agreement between the historians about the relationship between St James and Jesus, it could be not his brother, as you stated, but probably his cousin and in that way in the same position of St Jude. Among the Hebrews, even in our time, the word brother it is also used with cousins in first grade, in other words with the sons of brothers.

Besides that important explanation we also must take in account that JesusChrist didn't have brothers but just only halfbrothers since there is a so old tradition, even supported by the minor gospels of the infance, that St Joseph was widow when he married St Mary.

Moreover, to assure the contrary is to equivalent to contradict the Virginity of the mother of God, that is well stablished as a dogma of faith in all the eldest Christian Churces and not only in the Latin one, as the Orthodoxes, Coptics, Armenians, and others of the eastern rites, as well as the Episcopalian-Anglican branch.

The Primogeniture of St Peter over all the other apostles was registered in many parts of the books of Acts, he was always present in any meeting as head of the primitive church and always presiding them.

I have listened in my life the most crazy theories, specially from the most radical side of Protestantism, that it is historical that it started from a subversion of the institutional order of the western Church, trying to discredit the authority not only of the Popes but even of St Peter in Rome, at the extreme to say that they were pagans and not trully Christians.

Actually it is difficult to find a church in the history of Christianism that has more martyrs in defense of the faith that the Roman one, starting by his first Pope St Peter.

The Roman Church was prosecuted by many Emperors during four centuries until Constantin converted to Christianism, and that was the consequence of a miracle done by God to him. He won a so important battle against the Barbarians using the Christian Cross in his shields and flags, according with the promise given in a vission.

Anybody that can visit Rome could confirm with his own eyes that the catacombs in the underground of the downtown of the city are solid evidence of the existence of a flourish Christian community in Rome that was leading since its begining by Simon Peter the Apostle of Christ.

The truth is that Christ sent to Rome two of his more powerful messengers that were St Peter & St Paul and both died in their mission, no body would offer his life for a false assignment,to assure the contrary could be considered as blasphemy, even to the Holy Ghost that was the one acting through the two Apostles.

Moreover to suggest that the Christian community of Rome was not the one that the History registers, is equivalent to claim that St Peter and St Paul died for nothing and that when St Paul wrote his letter to Romans he was suffering of some type of delusion. Notice that there is no part of that letter where it is registered the name of the heretic group that you mentioned.

St. Peter and his successors the Popes are recognized not only as Bishops of Rome but as the legitimic Patriarchs of the West for all the east rites denominations, including the powerful Russian Orthodox church, The Armenian one, the Orthodox of Jerusalem and also the Orthodox of Istambul and Athenas.

Thanks for your participation in the thread but I think it is really so difficult to give credit to some Heretic movement of the past as the trully Roman church.

your friend,

The Angel of lightness



[edit on 7/16/2008 by The angel of light]

Originally posted by The angel of light
reply to post by Matrix1111

 

The gospel is so clear with respect to the Patriarchship of St. Peter over not only the church of Jerusalem but the world's one at his time. This is recorded in all the four sipnotic gospels, so it is clear that this is not an autodeclaration of St. Peter, but something well accepted with all the apostles and disciples of Jesus.

How do we know what the apostles thought on the matter of Rome? Rome made sure that only the writings that supported the bishops of Rome survived. Starting in Theodosius' reign (379-395), Imperial Rome outlawed any religion that conflicted with the bishops of Rome. Thus all public and private libraries in Roman territories were destroyed. This is also the time of the canonizing of the books of the bible. So, of course the synoptic gospels support the Catholic view of Christianity. Nothing else remains to counter that view.... until the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Professor Robert Eisenman and other historical Jesus scholars believe the Dead Sea Scrolls contain writings of the Ebionites, ie., The Poor, exactly the term that was applied to early Christians in Jerusalem before its destruction. Eisenman's James: The Brother of Jesus makes the claim that it was James that was the true leader of the chruch -- not Peter and especially not Paul. (It was Paul who designated the first bishop of Rome and it was Paul's teachings that became the version of Christianity propagated from that point on.)

It's a good argument of Eisenman. It raises a good question. What happened to James and Jesus' other siblings and mother? Did they not have any say in the development of the early church? Eisenman makes the following case:

"His working hypothesis is that the confusions, alterations, and obfuscations stem from an interest in covering over the importance, and therefore the identity, of the desposyni, the Heirs of Jesus, who had apparently functioned at least for Palestinian Christianity as a dynastic Caliphate similar to the Alid succession of Shi'ite Islam or the succession of Hasmonean brothers. It is a commonplace that the gospel texts treating Jesus' mother, brothers and sisters either severely (Mark and John) or delicately (Luke, cf., the Gospel according to the Hebrews) are functions of ecclesiastical polemics over their leadership claims as opposed to Peter and the Twelve (analogous to the Companions of the Prophet in Sunni Islam) or to outsiders like Paul. It is equally well known that the Synoptic apostle lists differ between themselves and between manuscripts of each gospel. Why? Eisenman connects these phenomena with another, the confusion arising among early theologians over the siblings of Jesus as the doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity became widespread. They had to be harmonized with the dogma, so brothers and sisters became cousins, step-siblings, etc. And characters became sundered. Mary suddenly had a sister named Mary because the mother of James, Joses, Simon, and Judas could no longer also be the mother of Jesus. And so on." (Source: depts.drew.edu...)

Considering this background it doesn't surprise me that you are trying to spin a conspiracy around such scholarship. This new scholarship is proving that Christianity -- not just Catholism -- is of suspect authenticity. No wonder the Vatican tried to keep the Dead Sea Scrolls away from the public.

[edit on 16-7-2008 by Matrix1111]

reply to post by Matrix1111

Excuse me Matrix 1111,

I dont know what is the opinion of other readers here in ATS, but if you are expecting that a radical defendor of the traditional Jew values, a fanatic suporter of the zionism, and also an expert rethoric in how to hide all the crimes commited by the Jew authorities, Herod the great and the sanedrin among them, against the early christians, is going to give us the light in this or any other business related with the Gospel you are really very wrong, and I will not bet 1 dollar for any "Biblical Truth" about Christ, that this personsage can express or publish.

Here there are some interesting links of Dr Robert Eisenman giving University talks about Zionism and also Judaism:

technorati.com...

youtube.com...

video.aol.com...

www.youtube.com...

So it is clear that Robert Eisenman is not only a Jew but a fanatic of the most radical orthodox line of Judaism and a person that of course does not have any personal interest in defense of Christianism, but probably to weak it with this type of concepts that you mentioned and that are part of the very long traditional rethoric of orthodox Judaism trying to discredit the Church with the only objective to create more schisms on it, in the same way that 2000 years ago they prosecute and request the execution of Christ.

Thanks to bring the so crazy thesis of this Dr Eisenman but for me is really so difficult to take the communion with a mill wheel.

your friend,

The Angel of Lightness



[edit on 7/17/2008 by The angel of light]

Do I detect some anti-Jewishness on your part? Ironic, considering your conspiratorial dislike of anti-Catholic viewpoints. Or should I say hypocritical?

Okay, so you're saying Jews are incapable of giving us light? But wasn't Jesus Jewish? Isn't the Old Testament Jewish?

So you're willing to let your prejudice keep you from seeing the value of the latest theological Historical Jesus theories? It's not just the Eisenman that supports such analysis. There are many more Historical Jesus scholars that are not Jewish.

www.earlychristianwritings.com...

reply to post by The angel of light


There are two different Jesus: the man and the myth.
The church decided to make Jesus a virgin birth and make him divine. He may have actually had faith healing and other powers. He was descended from David on Joseph's side, which made him able to actually claim he was the King of the Jews. These are all facts that have been changed to keep people in power.
The Gnostic Christians lost out on the debate because they stated Jesus was not divine (literal son of God), but a human being. Had they won out, Christianity would be a little different.

reply to post by Matrix1111, Do I detect some anti-Jewishness on your part? Ironic, considering your conspiratorial dislike of anti-Catholic viewpoints. Or should I say hypocritical?


Well Matrix1111,

The fact, and this not speculation, is that S.S John Paul II publically gave the official excuses of the Catholic church to the Jewish people for any possible crime or unfair prosecution performed by the church along the history against them.

Now let me ask you this:

When the Orthodox Jew leaders have done the same with respect to the death of Jesus or many of his followers in the first three centuries of our Era thanks to their intolerance?

Have they publically apologized to have prosecuted with false charges a person that probably was the most important figure ever born from their nation?

Is Jesus accepted in our days by them as a Savior, Messiah or even as a prophet?

So who is the hypocrite in all this game???

If you never have read all the calumnies that these people has raised along the centuries against Christ, his mother, and discrediting him and his disciples as part of a great fraudulent plot, that they stole his body and were lying all the time about his resurrection, telling that all his miracles were part of his well known hypnotic skills, I would suggest you to update your information and start to read the other version of the History.

I know that there is a very close connection between Zionism and evangelic fundamentalism in our days, that even those churches are supporting economicaly many zionist projects, like to move millions of people from former Soviet Union or Ethiopia to Israel, or even worst to involve christian students in our Universities to harrass muslim foreign students or facultians in defense of the Jewish ones. All these actions only to create more tension between USA and arab countries that justify the culture of the preventive wars.

However let me say that all this appearant good relationship between the so called "Christian leaders", like John Hague for instance, and the powerful Zionist circles cannot hide the fact that Christ, it does matter that he was a Jew, is still rejected by his own people in the begining of the third millenium after he came.

Thanks for your attention,

The Angel of Lightness




[edit on 7/17/2008 by The angel of light]

Originally posted by kidflash2008
reply to post by The angel of light

 

There are two different Jesus: the man and the myth.
The church decided to make Jesus a virgin birth and make him divine. He may have actually had faith healing and other powers. He was descended from David on Joseph's side, which made him able to actually claim he was the King of the Jews. These are all facts that have been changed to keep people in power.
The Gnostic Christians lost out on the debate because they stated Jesus was not divine (literal son of God), but a human being. Had they won out, Christianity would be a little different.

The Dan Brown backlash is Catholicism's delayed karma coming back to bite it. ;-) The truth is as you say. Muslims understand it. The Coptics understand it. Now the world is beginning to understand it. It doesn't invalidate Jesus. It just makes our responsibility of becoming like Jesus in our mind and deeds more paramount.

reply to post by Matrix1111 and kidflash2008



Be careful Matrix1111 and kidflash2008:

The virginal conception of Jesus was announced 8 centuries before it happend by One of the Great prophets of Israel in reference to the coming of the Messiah. By the way you that looks to like a lot the archaelogical research, let me say to you that the discovering of the Death Sea scrolls in 1947 confirmed the authenticy of the existence of this prediction at least 1 or 2 centuries before Christ.

Here is the prophecy of the Old testament about the conception and birth of the Messiah:

Isaiah 7:14-15, The New International version

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: the virgin will be with child and will give birth to a Son, and will call him Immanuel. He will eat curds and honey when he knows enough to reject the the wrong and choose the right.

and here the accomplishment of that prophecy according not with any Catholic Theologian but by St. Matthew in person, one of the 4 evangelists:

St Mathew 1:22-23, The king James version

22 Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying,
23 Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.

Why is so important this point? because to contradict the Virginal birth of Christ is Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, the divine agent that is responsible of that virginal conception, and that is the only sin that never would be forbidden neither in this world or in the great bejond, that was clearly stated by Jesus Christ:

St Mathew 12, 31-32 King James version
31 Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men.
32 And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.

This is a truth that any actual Christian must know deeply, since there is a huge danger to ignore it. So be careful with such ideas, since to support them is to sell your souls to the Evil.

thanks for your atention,

The Angel of Lightness



[edit on 7/17/2008 by The angel of light]

reply to post by The angel of light


There is arrogance on both sides of the matter. It's the "my-religious-viewpoint-is-better-than-yours" syndrome. Ironic, isn't it?

The Jews had a right to reject Jesus. From the Jews' viewpoint, Jesus didn't match up to the criteria that determines who is the Messiah. A big problem (among many that faced Jesus) was that John the Baptist was confused about whether his step-brother (?), Jesus, was the Messiah or not. At the Jordan River, he supposedly recognized Jesus as the Messiah. Later, while in prison, he sends messengers to ask if Jesus is the Messiah or "should he look for another." This confusion caused the Jewish leaders not to accept Jesus.

In Jonn 1:21 we see that John the Baptist was asked if he was the return of Elijah. All the Jews of Israel thought so. But he denied it. This is important because without the return of Elijah, there cannot be a Messiah. Jesus explains the matters to his discples even:

"And they asked him, 'Why do the teachers of the law say that Elijah must come first?'"

"Jesus replied, 'To be sure, Elijah does come first, and restores all things. Why then is it written that the Son of Man must suffer much and be rejected? But I tell you, Elijah has come, and they have done to him everything they wished, just as it is written about him." (Mark 9:11-13)

And if you are willing to accept it, he (John the Baptist) is the Elijah who was to come." (Matt. 11:14)

Without Elijah, the Jews couldn't accept Jesus as their Messiah. So if anyone is to be blamed for the death of Jesus then, it should be John the Baptist. The Jews were just remaining loyal to their bible, much like Christians have been doing themselves for the last 1,600 years.

reply to post by The angel of light


So to believe Jesus was a man makes one evil? The Church VOTED on Jesus' divinity, and it won out because a bishop hit a Gnostic Christian! The vote was made because Mithras and Isis were still very popular. Isis was known having a virgin birth so she was incorporated into the Virgin Mary.
Some how the message of Jesus gets lost in all the changes.

reply to post by The angel of light


From www.geocities.com...

Matthew is quoting the book of Isaiah (7:14) from the Septuagint. The word for virgin is rendered in the Greek Bible as parthenos. This word carries the explicit meaning of virgin. However, if we are to look at the Bible in its original Hebrew, from the massoretic text, the word used there is almah. Now the nearest English translation for almah is a young woman and does not carry with it any strong connotation of virginity...

In fact the earliest sources on Jesus are silent on the issue of the virgin birth; we see nothing in Paul's letters (AD51-64) and Mark's gospel (cAD70) about Jesus' miraculous conception. This silence is actually strong testimony against the historicity of the virgin birth. For both Mark and Paul were convinced believers and had it occurred or had they heard about it, they would surely have written something about it...

Our next early source is from the Jewish Christians, or the Nazarenes, who were (very probably) the followers of Peter and James (the brother of Jesus). The Nazarenes never accepted the story of the virgin birth. We know this through references of their beliefs by the early church fathers such as Justin Martyr, Jerome, Ireneaus and Origen. It is these group of Christians, more than any other group, that can have claim to direct eyewitnesses to the events in Jesus' life.

reply to post by Matrix1111


I think there is a huge misunderstanding in this discussion, the first one comes from the fact that I am always using to show the point I think is the correct, the well accepted sacred scriptures and not other so dubious sources as the writings of groups that are at least so suspicious to be heretics.

Of course my point is based also in the assumption that the Church, besides all its human limitations and mistakes is always guided by the Holy Ghost and therefore in permanent communion with God.

The second part of this misunderstanding is that I don’t have a chirurgic criteria to select certain so small fragments of the Bible and try to find hidden meanings underlying on them and isolating them of the rest of their context. That approach is risky and can drive to so grave errors.

My focusing is integral, is to see clearly that there is a clear line of thinking that appear continuously along the entire bible. I think this last approach is more valid than any other, since the bible is a collection of books that were written along thousands of years, and does not contain only prophetic visions or the message of God to the people but also traditions, history, politics, social chronicles, the life of the Israel kings, and even statistics of the Jew people in Numbers.

I mention this since St Mathew is a good source, is an evangelist that is not only accepted by all the Christian denominations but also he was a cultivate person, one of the few with that educational level among the apostles of Jesus, probably an attorney.

So Matthew or Levi is a so rigorous person to show that in Christ all the prophecies of the Messiah were accomplished. If he is using a text of Isaiah to prove that the virginal birth of Jesus was indeed predicted is because he was completely sure about the existence of that prophecy.

The virginal conception of St. Mary is not a Myth and not a plot of any church but a fundamental of the Christian faith and moreover of the Muslim one, in which Christ is a great Prophet, and of the Jew one in which that is a requisite for the Messiah.

Thanks for your attention,

The Angel of Lightness




[edit on 7/17/2008 by The angel of light]

reply to post by The angel of light


Yes, this is the problem. You continue to reject modern scholarship that is proving that what traditional Christians believe is founded on "doctored books" -- at least in the since that all opposing views of the Catholic church were censored and stamped out physically in the forth century.

This history is important. The Council of Nicea rejected the view that Jesus was human and any writing or sect that continued to hold those views were considered heretics. The virgin birth slant on Christianity was promoted in order to match up to current religious views of the day. It's not just fringe people who are "picking and choosing" saying this. There's a whole theological movement behind what I'm talking about. (Ask any theologian the validity of what I'm saying.)

We've come full circle back to the debate that took place at the Council of Nicea. This time the might and political expediancy of a pagan ruler (Constantine) is not around to decide the outcome. The Dead Sea Scroll have allowed books to surface that challenge the "orthodoxy" of Catholicism as well and Protestant Paulianism. The debate continues within the seminaries and universities. I'm not alone in this viewpoint.