Does the Bahai' religion...

dfw69 said:

Is not a bronze snake and idol?

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Only if an ark with cherubs on top of it also would be an idol.

LoAmmi said:

Only if an ark with cherubs on top of it also would be an idol.

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Good point

LoAmmi said:

Joseph isn't his biological father so that genealogy means nothing and Mary is a woman so she cannot give male line descent.

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If you believe the biblical account that Joseph is not Jesus's biological father, then why not the testimony of those same witnesses that there was a new star, wise men from the east, angels heralding his birth, and Jesus eating with and inviting living witnesses to touch his pierced hands and feet after he rose from the dead, then ascending into the clouds before their eyes?

If Joseph is not the biological father, you have to come up with a more realistic answer than the obvious one you would give if it were about my father or yours.

jackcv said:

If you believe the biblical account that Joseph is not Jesus's biological father, then why not the testimony of those same witnesses that there was a new star, wise men from the east, angels heralding his birth, and Jesus eating with and inviting living witnesses to touch his pierced hands and feet after he rose from the dead, then ascending into the clouds before their eyes?

If Joseph is not the biological father, you have to come up with a more realistic answer than the obvious one you would give if it were about my father or yours.

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So which one belongs to Joseph? Which line?

Also worth noting that a man not being the biological father of his wife's child doesn't require a miracle.

smaneck said:

How many Christians here claim their own interpretations are right because they are guided by the Holy Spirit? Yet the Holy Spirit seems to be guiding them in different directions!

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This last question and comment finally draw the reader to the right question. How does one learn to reliably recognize the voice of God? You and I agree that God does not change, but his counsels to one generation will vary from those given to another generation. Building an ark in the back 40 would probably be the dumbest thing you or I could ever do, but it was a prudent and profitable 100 year investment for Noah. Walking one's followers into the Red Sea is not Battle Play #12 in the General's Handbook - but it worked out pretty well for Moses and the Children of Israel.

LoAmmi said:

Also worth noting that a man not being the biological father of his wife's child doesn't require a miracle.

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That might serve if we were discussing your father or mine. But there are too many eye witnesses to the contrary in the case of the Lord Jesus Christ.

LoAmmi said:

So which one belongs to Joseph? Which line?

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Since God is his (HaShem's) father, Jewish genealogical lines are trumped.

jackcv said:

That might serve if we were discussing your father or mine. But there are too many eye witnesses to the contrary in the case of the Lord Jesus Christ.

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Really? How many eye witnesses were there when Mary was impregnated?

jackcv said:

Since God is his (HaShem's) father, Jewish genealogical lines are trumped.

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Then why does the New Testament trumpet two of them?

LoAmmi said:

Really? How many eye witnesses were there when Mary was impregnated?

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There were hundreds, indeed thousands of witnesses that there was a new star, wise men from the east, angels heralding his birth, and Jesus eating with and inviting living witnesses to touch his pierced hands and feet after he rose from the dead, then ascending into the clouds before their eyes, healing the sick, raising the dead. There are clear records from two continents.

Or maybe the whole NT is just a great conspiracy? ...done on purpose, as you perhaps meant earlier in this thread? Like the "fable" of astronauts landing on the moon, or the "myth" of the holocaust? There are people who still believe the earth is flat, too. Your cheap shot about Christ being illegitimate is beneath you.

LoAmmi said:

Then why does the New Testament trumpet two of them?

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That's a good question. The Dead Sea Scrolls illustrate conclusively that Jewish rules governing scribal license changed very dramatically before and after 70 AD. The strict controls of copying the Torah and Tanack that we now see were imposed by the rabbinical Judaism after Jerusalem was destroyed. How about Jewish adoption/lineage rules? Were they always what you now describe?

I suspect that you have a couple of possibilities in the back of your mind for why the NT trumpets two lineages for Jesus, or you could have within seconds of asking HaShem about it.

I have noted in my own experience how easy it is to pigeonhole pieces of information in different compartments of my mind for years, not recognizing their correlation. The scholars here, unfortunately, share that defect with me. They explain away whole books of scripture based on convoluted, questionable conjecture about writers' perceived styles, then demand an eye witness to the impregnation of Mary. They demand that Peter not just mention the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, but say, "I saw him on the cross, taken down, dead, anointed and entombed; I saw him resurrected, watched him eat, felt his breath on my face, and wept as he ascended into heaven before our eyes."

I would say this is not characteristic of truth seekers - I would say that, except for the recognition that I do the same thing. We live and learn.

jackcv said:

That's a good question. The Dead Sea Scrolls illustrate conclusively that Jewish rules governing scribal license changed very dramatically before and after 70 AD. The strict controls of copying the Torah and Tanack that we now see were imposed by the rabbinical Judaism after Jerusalem was destroyed. How about Jewish adoption/lineage rules? Were they always what you now describe?

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Could you show me evidence of this?

jackcv said:

There were hundreds, indeed thousands of witnesses that there was a new star, wise men from the east, angels heralding his birth, and Jesus eating with and inviting living witnesses to touch his pierced hands and feet after he rose from the dead, then ascending into the clouds before their eyes, healing the sick, raising the dead. There are clear records from two continents.

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We have stories of this. We don't have any records outside of the New Testament about this stuff and I don't believe the BoM to be accurate at all.

Or maybe the whole NT is just a great conspiracy? ...done on purpose, as you perhaps meant earlier in this thread? Like the "fable" of astronauts landing on the moon, or the "myth" of the holocaust? There are people who still believe the earth is flat, too. Your cheap shot about Christ being illegitimate is beneath you.

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What cheap shot? I take offense that you are equating denying things with clear evidence to something that lacks that clear evidence.

LoAmmi said:

Joseph isn't his biological father so that genealogy means nothing and Mary is a woman so she cannot give male line descent.

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A biological father is not required to continue his own line:

Deuteronomy 25:5 If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no child, the wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger: her husband's brother shall go in unto her, and take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of an husband's brother unto her.
6 And it shall be, that the firstborn which she beareth shall succeed in the name of his brother which is dead, that his name be not put out of Israel.

Regarding this thread "Does the Baha'i religion..." it was begun in January 2015 by "simplegifts" and "revived" by jackcv on November 18th... In terms of how the latest discussion relates to the Baha'i Faith I felt moved to post here that Baha'is do accept the birth of Jesus as miraculous... and other than the statements of the Bible and the Qur'an on the matter we have nothing more to add. As to the Bible we generally accept that it contains spiritual truth. Rather than a literal word to word perspective we accept that much of it is allegorical and symbolic. I hope this clarifies where Baha'is stand on some of the points discussed more recently on this thread.

dcalling said:

A biological father is not required to continue his own line:

Deuteronomy 25:5 If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no child, the wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger: her husband's brother shall go in unto her, and take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of an husband's brother unto her.
6 And it shall be, that the firstborn which she beareth shall succeed in the name of his brother which is dead, that his name be not put out of Israel.

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You picked a very special circumstance. Is that what happened with Joseph? Was Joseph the brother of Jesus's father who died before Mary had a child? Brothers would be of the same tribe and lineage as well. This was, as I said, special.

LoAmmi said:

Could you show me evidence of this?

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The Dead Sea Scrolls In English, Vermes, 4th edition, 1995, pg xxxiii

LoAmmi said:

You picked a very special circumstance. Is that what happened with Joseph? Was Joseph the brother of Jesus's father who died before Mary had a child? Brothers would be of the same tribe and lineage as well. This was, as I said, special.

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You are certainly right: This Was Special.