What kind of man is God...?

Thanks for the lesson on linguistics. That is important, translating words correctly, in context. There are some 5800 Greek manuscripts and many more Latin as well. Textual critism is the process of comparing these manuscripts with each other and sorting out the similarities, differences, errors, etc. It has been agreed that 99.9 % of these manuscripts are the same. Variations may seem numerous, but usually its spelling, flip flop phrases or just a missing word. After all the critical work examining these texts, it is also said that we are left with 400 variations in the NT and those variations do not effect doctrines. However, it is also stated that the Majority Texts/ Byzantine are more reliable and accurate than the Alexandrain Texts, which Westcott and Hort used. Another important consideration is to question if their unorthodox beliefs influence their work? I believe it did. I wouldn't rely on their work. As I said, scripture is spiritually discerned and those who translate the word must be true believers. If they are unbelievers, but expert in linguistics and Koine Greek, how truthful will their translation be? I think they were heretics on the scale of those in the Jesus Seminar, who would attempt to distort the historical Jesus or like those on the Discovery Channel or Newsweek.
I feel sorry for you for following the path you have in attacking the Church Body. You are in the minority, who pontificate your views, like the Jehovah Witnesses and Mormons, who point their fingers at 99 % of Christianity and say we are all wrong. If God is Sovereign, He would not guide Christianity throughout history, believing in the Trinity if it were not true. He would have corrected it a long time ago, for it is His will that we know the truth. The Protestant Reformation brought corrections and division as well, but both sides agree with the Trinity.
You are not in unity with God's purpose and truth in scripture, you are against historical Christianity.

he-man said:

Sorry for you because Matthew 13:49-51
49 So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come forth, separate the wicked from among the just, 50 and cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.” 51 Jesus said to them, “Have you understood all these things?”
They said to Him, “Yes, Lord.”
The rapid growth of a wide variety of translations of the Bible into English reveals a simple fact: translation is not an exact science. If translation were simply a matter of finding a one-to-one correspondence between words in one language and an equivalent word in another language, translation would be straightforward with very little difference between various translations. But that is not how languages work. Even beyond the mechanics of word use, grammar, and semantics, as well a manuscript variations (see Textual Criticism) as complicating factors in translation, translators know that words do not have an single absolute and fixed meaning even at a single point in history. Words have meaning only as they are used in a context. And that context is influenced not only by the immediate situation of the speaker or writer, but by the larger historical and cultural milieu that shapes and informs who is communicating, what is being communicated, as well as to whom it is being communicated. To assume that Israelites, later Jews, and still later Christians were unaffected by any of these cultures in terms of how they spoke, thought, or wrote would be incredibly naive. This suggests at the very least that how we understand and translate words in terms of meaningful communication is as much a historical and cultural task as it is a purely linguistic one. Without moving into philosophical linguistic theory, we can note that ideas are not absolute universals that can be reduced to single terms in one language that can then be translated into another language to communicate the exact same idea. We now realize that, for example, understanding how a Greek word is formed and the meaning of its various components does not necessarily give us any insight into how that word is actually used in a particular text. For instance: in Hebrew the “messenger of God” can as easily be, and probably more often is, a human being. While the word “angel” comes into English through the Greek word anngelos, which itself originally meant “messenger,” the English term no longer means that. This creates the potential for misunderstanding the communication of the text, and the potential for creating bad theology, simply because the biblical terms are not understood in their own context. The goal in this section is not to provide exhaustive historical and linguistic word studies. This paucity of biblical witness in answering some of the questions that the early church was asking is one of the reasons that it took nearly 300 years to come up with an "orthodox" Trinitarian Christology. That suggests that the New Testament witness is not directly addressing the issue of the preexistence of the Son in a developed Trinitarian theology. That would come much later in the church. Rather, it is drawing on traditional biblical images to bear witness to Jesus as the Son of God, to interpret the historical incarnation in first century terms for first century people. The New Testament does that on many different levels in both the Gospels and the Epistles, without ever building a developed Trinitarian Christology. But it is not a matter of specific biblical witness since Scripture does not directly address that particular question apart from a more developed third century AD Trinitarian Christology. "Copyright © 2016 CRI/Voice, Institute"

Click to expand...

Ronald said:

Thanks for the lesson on linguistics. That is important, translating words correctly, in context. There are some 5800 Greek manuscripts and many more Latin as well. Textual critism is the process of comparing these manuscripts with each other and sorting out the similarities, differences, errors, etc. It has been agreed that 99.9 % of these manuscripts are the same. Variations may seem numerous, but usually its spelling, flip flop phrases or just a missing word. After all the critical work examining these texts, it is also said that we are left with 400 variations in the NT and those variations do not effect doctrines. However, it is also stated that the Majority Texts/ Byzantine are more reliable and accurate than the Alexandrain Texts, which Westcott and Hort used. Another important consideration is to question if their unorthodox beliefs influence their work? I believe it did. I wouldn't rely on their work. As I said, scripture is spiritually discerned and those who translate the word must be true believers. You are not in unity with God's purpose and truth in scripture, you are against historical Christianity.

Click to expand...

Some church traditions like Trinitarians, want to maintain that the Bible is without any error of any kind without qualification (see The Modern Inerrancy Debate). Yet, it does not take too much work in the Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek texts in which the biblical traditions were originally preserved to understand that at the very least there are errors of copying, spelling, and grammar throughout the Bible in both Testaments. There are also verses in the Hebrew of the Old Testament that defy translation simply because they do not make any sense as they are written. This incongruity between what some want to maintain about the Bible and what can actually be demonstrated from the biblical texts themselves has been the source of much and sometimes bitter acrimony in the church in the past three or four decades.
Like many ancient and Eastern languages Hebrew reads from right to left on the page rather than left to right as most Western languages. In early written forms there were no spaces between words, no punctuation, and no capital letters.
And perhaps most importantly, for the purposes of textual criticism, Hebrew is a consonantal language. That is, all of the letters in Hebrew are consonants. A few letters sometimes serve as “vowel carriers” to aid in pronunciation, but the text is basically only consonants with no vowels. That is something like a sentence in English reading: nthbgnnnggdcrtdthhvnsndthrth
Of course, if we know what we are looking at and are familiar enough with the language, we might be able to figure out that this is the first line of Genesis 1:1. So we can supply the vowels:
inthebeginninggodcreatedtheheavensandtheearth. There were actually two systems in use for centuries, but one eventually dominated and is the system used in most modern Hebrew texts. These marks, called vowel points, consist of dots or lines above, below, and inside the consonantal text:
Because the consonants of the biblical text are much older, most scholars consider them to be much more stable and reliable than the vowel points.
We should not confuse those marginal notes with the text, something that the Masoretes took care to avoid. But it did happen, since there are extant manuscripts in which marginal notations have been incorporated into the biblical text itself (these are called “glosses”). But this was not a normal occurrence. Far more common in the medieval period was the decline of knowledge of Hebrew and Aramaic so that the meaning of the marginal notations began to be lost. There also exist late medieval manuscripts in which the Masora parva was copied as decorative scrollwork on the manuscript!
This led to some interesting anomalies for those not familiar with the Hebrew text. By the time the Masoretes were active, the proper name of God (YHVH) was considered too sacred to be pronounced aloud. So, there had developed the tradition of saying the word ‘adonay (“lord”) whenever the name of God was encountered in the text. To preserve this oral tradition, early MT manuscripts marked these with a kethib-qere, using the consonants of the proper name YHVH with the vowels of what they should “read” instead. But since this “correction” to the written text occurs so many times in the Old Testament (3,001) it became what is called a qere perpeteum, an “automatic correction” of the text. The vowels of the qere were written in the actual text rather than in the margins, with no mark indicating the correction.
Renaissance and Reformation linguists translating the Bible into European languages, primarily German, had by that time lost much of the Hebrew language tradition (it was largely preserved in the Arab world of the medieval era). They were unfamiliar with the Masoretic tradition, and assumed that the conflated word in the text was the actual proper name of God. So, they ended up adding the consonants of YHVH (only in German it came out as JHVH) to the vowels of ‘adonay and came up with the word Jehovah as the proper name of God (the “e” of “Jehovah” is actually a short “a” vowel, as it is in ‘adonay).
The only problem is that this is a totally artificial word that never appears in the Bible as a name of God. What the Masoretes had done to try to clarify the text actually led moderns to make a significant error in reading and translating the text because they did not understand the Hebrew tradition well enough. It is that human dimension that gives textual critics something to do. A simple modern example of the potential for mistakes in the biblical text occurs in the United Bible Society’s The Greek New Testament, 3rd edition, 1975. This edition was based on the well respected Nestle-Aland texts, and was commonly used by religion and seminary students for years. Yet, there is an interesting and glaring mistake on p. 17 at Matthew 5:47-48.
This is how the actual text reads in the manuscripts with no hyphen.
47 καὶ ἐὰν ἀσπάσησθε τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς ὑμῶν μόνον, τί περισσὸν ποιεῖτε; οὐχὶ καὶ οἱ ἐθνικοὶ τὸ αὐτὸ ποιοῦσιν; 48 ἔσεσθε οὖν ὑμεῖς τέλειοι ὡς ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν ὁ οὐράνιος τέλειός ἐστιν.
1:18 And she said, "Let your servant find favor in your sight." Then the woman went to her quarters, ate and drank with her husband, and her countenance was sad no longer. Not just "went on her way".
The final phrase is marked in the RSV with the note “GK: Meaning of Hebrew uncertain.” This indicates that the English reading is based on the Greek translation (Septuagint) rather than the Hebrew text because the Hebrew does not make good sense here. In Hebrew the text reads as a series of four words that have little meaning: ; (not-was-her-again). However, the Greek translation reads: which can be translated as “her face no longer fell,” an idiomatic Hebraic way of saying, “her countenance was no longer sad.”
Isa 33:8 The highways are deserted, travelers have quit the road. The treaty is broken, its cities [oaths] are despised, its obligation is disregarded. 1 Sam 17:7 The arrow [shaft] of his spear was like a weaver's beam, ; Psa 100:3 Know that the LORD is God. It is he who made us, and we are not [his]; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
Psa 49:11 Their inward thoughts [their graves] are their homes forever; Amos 6:12 Do horses run on rocks? Does one plow with oxen [the sea with an ox]?; There are places in the manuscripts were words were accidentally omitted. 1 Sam 13:1 Saul was...years old when he began to reign; and he reigned...and two years over Israel (NRSV).; 1 Sam 2:20 Then Eli blessed Elkanah and his wife, and he said, "May the LORD give [repay] you children by this woman for the gift that she made to the LORD" Instead of (give) read (repay).
1 Sam 13:15 And Samuel left and went on his way from Gilgal to Gibeah of Benjamin. The rest of the people followed Saul to join the army; they went up from Gilgal to Gibeah of Benjamin. Saul counted the people who were present with him, about six hundred men. Here the repeated phrase, Gibeah of Benjamin led to the omission of the intervening text. The Greek translation (Septuagint) preserves the omitted text. Because of the repeated letters, the phrase was omitted. It was marked as an error by the Masoretic scribes. Jud 20:13 Now then, hand over those scoundrels in Gibeah, so that we may put them to death, and purge the evil from Israel." But Benjamin [the sons of Benjamin or Benjaminites] would not listen to their kinsfolk, the Israelites. This is called haplography.; This is called dittography (writing twice), 2 King 7:13 One of his servants said, “Let some men take five of the remaining horses, since those left here will suffer the fate of the whole multitude multitude of Israel that have perished already.” Instead of (the multitude multitude) eliminate the repeated word and read (multitude). Then there are Doublets: 1 Sam 4:21 She named the child Ichabod, saying, "The glory has departed from Israel," because the ark of God had been captured and because of her father-in-law and her husband. 4:22 She said, "The glory has departed from Israel, for the ark of God has been captured." Then Handwriting: Josh 5:1 When all the kings of the Amorites beyond the Jordan to the west, and all the kings of the Canaanites by the sea, heard that the LORD had dried up the waters of the Jordan for the Israelites until we [they] had crossed over, their hearts melted
Instead of (we crossed over”) read ( (“they crossed over”). The letter which marks a third person plural verb (“they”), was mistakenly read as if it were We, which marks a first person plural verb (“we”). the scribes also made some corrections within the actual text. This is an example of an added letter. Jud 18:30 Then the Danites set up the idol for themselves. Jonathan son of Gershom, son of Moses [Manasseh], and his sons were priests to the tribe of the Danites until the time the land went into captivity.
The scribes corrected the original (Moses) to (Manasseh) by adding the omitted letter slightly above the original text.
Then scribes deleted words:Gen 33:4 But Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept.
Want more? They also were transcribers of false believers in the Trinity, like you.

I do believe as a whole the Bible is reliable and has been passed down through the generations with it's story, concepts, laws, prophecies in tact. Even the Old Testament has been found accurate. The oldest complete texts were from the tenth century, yet when they discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating back to the 1st century BC, the complete book of Isaiah was found accurate - word for word. Scribes took great care, honor in their serious, mituculous, religious methods including fasting, bathing, wearing clean clothing, praying, etc. They could not be interrupted, disturbed in any way during this task. Even counting the letters to the exact center letter of the script ... if it was off, they were scrap it and start over. Wow. That's the difference, a believer, who values the Book, a sacred task they considered as if God watched their every stroke, yot and tittle. He was and this is why we can trust it - otherwise, why bother with human history and the gospel message if our Sovereign God in all His power could not carry His message throughout the generations accurately.

he-man said:

Some church traditions like Trinitarians, want to maintain that the Bible is without any error of any kind without qualification (see The Modern Inerrancy Debate). Yet, it does not take too much work in the Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek texts in which the biblical traditions were originally preserved to understand that at the very least there are errors of copying, spelling, and grammar throughout the Bible in both Testaments. There are also verses in the Hebrew of the Old Testament that defy translation simply because they do not make any sense as they are written. This incongruity between what some want to maintain about the Bible and what can actually be demonstrated from the biblical texts themselves has been the source of much and sometimes bitter acrimony in the church in the past three or four decades.
Like many ancient and Eastern languages Hebrew reads from right to left on the page rather than left to right as most Western languages. In early written forms there were no spaces between words, no punctuation, and no capital letters.
And perhaps most importantly, for the purposes of textual criticism, Hebrew is a consonantal language. That is, all of the letters in Hebrew are consonants. A few letters sometimes serve as “vowel carriers” to aid in pronunciation, but the text is basically only consonants with no vowels. That is something like a sentence in English reading: nthbgnnnggdcrtdthhvnsndthrth
Of course, if we know what we are looking at and are familiar enough with the language, we might be able to figure out that this is the first line of Genesis 1:1. So we can supply the vowels:
inthebeginninggodcreatedtheheavensandtheearth. There were actually two systems in use for centuries, but one eventually dominated and is the system used in most modern Hebrew texts. These marks, called vowel points, consist of dots or lines above, below, and inside the consonantal text:
Because the consonants of the biblical text are much older, most scholars consider them to be much more stable and reliable than the vowel points.
We should not confuse those marginal notes with the text, something that the Masoretes took care to avoid. But it did happen, since there are extant manuscripts in which marginal notations have been incorporated into the biblical text itself (these are called “glosses”). But this was not a normal occurrence. Far more common in the medieval period was the decline of knowledge of Hebrew and Aramaic so that the meaning of the marginal notations began to be lost. There also exist late medieval manuscripts in which the Masora parva was copied as decorative scrollwork on the manuscript!
This led to some interesting anomalies for those not familiar with the Hebrew text. By the time the Masoretes were active, the proper name of God (YHVH) was considered too sacred to be pronounced aloud. So, there had developed the tradition of saying the word ‘adonay (“lord”) whenever the name of God was encountered in the text. To preserve this oral tradition, early MT manuscripts marked these with a kethib-qere, using the consonants of the proper name YHVH with the vowels of what they should “read” instead. But since this “correction” to the written text occurs so many times in the Old Testament (3,001) it became what is called a qere perpeteum, an “automatic correction” of the text. The vowels of the qere were written in the actual text rather than in the margins, with no mark indicating the correction.
Renaissance and Reformation linguists translating the Bible into European languages, primarily German, had by that time lost much of the Hebrew language tradition (it was largely preserved in the Arab world of the medieval era). They were unfamiliar with the Masoretic tradition, and assumed that the conflated word in the text was the actual proper name of God. So, they ended up adding the consonants of YHVH (only in German it came out as JHVH) to the vowels of ‘adonay and came up with the word Jehovah as the proper name of God (the “e” of “Jehovah” is actually a short “a” vowel, as it is in ‘adonay).
The only problem is that this is a totally artificial word that never appears in the Bible as a name of God. What the Masoretes had done to try to clarify the text actually led moderns to make a significant error in reading and translating the text because they did not understand the Hebrew tradition well enough. It is that human dimension that gives textual critics something to do. A simple modern example of the potential for mistakes in the biblical text occurs in the United Bible Society’s The Greek New Testament, 3rd edition, 1975. This edition was based on the well respected Nestle-Aland texts, and was commonly used by religion and seminary students for years. Yet, there is an interesting and glaring mistake on p. 17 at Matthew 5:47-48.
This is how the actual text reads in the manuscripts with no hyphen.
47 καὶ ἐὰν ἀσπάσησθε τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς ὑμῶν μόνον, τί περισσὸν ποιεῖτε; οὐχὶ καὶ οἱ ἐθνικοὶ τὸ αὐτὸ ποιοῦσιν; 48 ἔσεσθε οὖν ὑμεῖς τέλειοι ὡς ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν ὁ οὐράνιος τέλειός ἐστιν.
1:18 And she said, "Let your servant find favor in your sight." Then the woman went to her quarters, ate and drank with her husband, and her countenance was sad no longer. Not just "went on her way".
The final phrase is marked in the RSV with the note “GK: Meaning of Hebrew uncertain.” This indicates that the English reading is based on the Greek translation (Septuagint) rather than the Hebrew text because the Hebrew does not make good sense here. In Hebrew the text reads as a series of four words that have little meaning: ; (not-was-her-again). However, the Greek translation reads: which can be translated as “her face no longer fell,” an idiomatic Hebraic way of saying, “her countenance was no longer sad.”
Isa 33:8 The highways are deserted, travelers have quit the road. The treaty is broken, its cities [oaths] are despised, its obligation is disregarded. 1 Sam 17:7 The arrow [shaft] of his spear was like a weaver's beam, ; Psa 100:3 Know that the LORD is God. It is he who made us, and we are not [his]; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
Psa 49:11 Their inward thoughts [their graves] are their homes forever; Amos 6:12 Do horses run on rocks? Does one plow with oxen [the sea with an ox]?; There are places in the manuscripts were words were accidentally omitted. 1 Sam 13:1 Saul was...years old when he began to reign; and he reigned...and two years over Israel (NRSV).; 1 Sam 2:20 Then Eli blessed Elkanah and his wife, and he said, "May the LORD give [repay] you children by this woman for the gift that she made to the LORD" Instead of (give) read (repay).
1 Sam 13:15 And Samuel left and went on his way from Gilgal to Gibeah of Benjamin. The rest of the people followed Saul to join the army; they went up from Gilgal to Gibeah of Benjamin. Saul counted the people who were present with him, about six hundred men. Here the repeated phrase, Gibeah of Benjamin led to the omission of the intervening text. The Greek translation (Septuagint) preserves the omitted text. Because of the repeated letters, the phrase was omitted. It was marked as an error by the Masoretic scribes. Jud 20:13 Now then, hand over those scoundrels in Gibeah, so that we may put them to death, and purge the evil from Israel." But Benjamin [the sons of Benjamin or Benjaminites] would not listen to their kinsfolk, the Israelites. This is called haplography.; This is called dittography (writing twice), 2 King 7:13 One of his servants said, “Let some men take five of the remaining horses, since those left here will suffer the fate of the whole multitude multitude of Israel that have perished already.” Instead of (the multitude multitude) eliminate the repeated word and read (multitude). Then there are Doublets: 1 Sam 4:21 She named the child Ichabod, saying, "The glory has departed from Israel," because the ark of God had been captured and because of her father-in-law and her husband. 4:22 She said, "The glory has departed from Israel, for the ark of God has been captured." Then Handwriting: Josh 5:1 When all the kings of the Amorites beyond the Jordan to the west, and all the kings of the Canaanites by the sea, heard that the LORD had dried up the waters of the Jordan for the Israelites until we [they] had crossed over, their hearts melted
Instead of (we crossed over”) read ( (“they crossed over”). The letter which marks a third person plural verb (“they”), was mistakenly read as if it were We, which marks a first person plural verb (“we”). the scribes also made some corrections within the actual text. This is an example of an added letter. Jud 18:30 Then the Danites set up the idol for themselves. Jonathan son of Gershom, son of Moses [Manasseh], and his sons were priests to the tribe of the Danites until the time the land went into captivity.
The scribes corrected the original (Moses) to (Manasseh) by adding the omitted letter slightly above the original text.
Then scribes deleted words:Gen 33:4 But Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept.
Want more? They also were transcribers of false believers in the Trinity, like you.

Click to expand...

Neogaia777 said:

Have we answered the OP...?

If so, can you show me where...?

If not, can we get back to it please...?

God Bless!

Click to expand...

We must check out and argue over the original Hebrew and Greek texts of the entire Bible first -- have a little patience.

Neogaia777 said:

I'd like to ask "What kind of man, or person, is God...?"

Comments...?

Click to expand...

'The Lord is a man of War' (Exodus 15:3)

Ronald said:

I do believe as a whole the Bible is reliable and has been passed down through the generations with it's story, concepts, laws, prophecies in tact. Even the Old Testament has been found accurate. The oldest complete texts were from the tenth century, yet when they discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating back to the 1st century BC, the complete book of Isaiah was found accurate - word for word.

Click to expand...

Huh? I do not believe you have even read it, have you? The Isaiah Scroll, designated 1Qlsaa ,and also known as the Great Isaiah Scroll, is one of the seven Dead Sea Scrolls that were first recovered by Bedouin shepherds in 1947 from Qumran Cave 1 The scroll is written in Hebrew and contains the entire Book of Isaiah from beginning to end, apart from a few small damaged portions. It is the oldest complete copy of the Book of Isaiah, being approximately 1000 years older than the oldest Hebrew manuscripts known before the scrolls' discovery. QIsaa is also notable in being the only scroll from the Qumran Caves to be preserved almost in its entirety.
Great Isaiah Scroll Version The text of the Great Isaiah Scroll generally conforms to the Masoretic or traditional version codified in medieval codices (all 66 chapters of the Hebrew version, in the same conventional order). At the same time, however, the two thousand year old scroll contains alternative spellings, scribal errors, corrections, and most fundamentally, many variant readings. Strictly speaking, the number of textual variants is well over 2,600, ranging from a single letter, sometimes one or more words, to complete variant verse or verses.
For example, the second half of Verse 9 and all of Verse 10 in the present Masoretic version of Chapter 2 are absent from the Great Isaiah Scroll in the Israel Museum's full manuscript. The same verses, however, have been included in other versions of the Book of Isaiah in the scrolls found near the Dead Sea (4QIsaa, 4QIsab), and the Hebrew text from which the ancient Greek version or Septuagint (3rd-1st century BCE) was translated. This confirms that these verses, although early enough, were a late addition to the ancient and more original version reflected in the Great Isaiah Scroll.
If you are a Hebrew reader, choose any passage of the Great Isaiah Scroll, and compare it to the Masoretic version of the same passage in the Aleppo Codex (The Aleppo Codex Online homepage).
Thus you will be able to evaluate on your own the intricate issue of variant readings, which have obvious literary, historical and theological implications for the correct understanding of Isaiah's original words. The exact authors of 1QIsaa are unknown, as is the exact date of writing. Pieces of the scroll have dated using both radiocarbon dating and palaeographic/scribal dating giving calibrated date ranges between 356-103 BCE and 150-100 BCE respectively. This seemingly fits with the theory that the scroll(s) was a product of the Essenes, a Jewish sect, first mentioned by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History, and later by Josephus and Philo Judaeus.
This theory is the most accepted in scholarly discourse. Further evidence that 1QIsaa was used by the sectarian community at Qumran is that scholars Abegg, Flint, and Ulrich argue that the same scribe who copied the sectarian scroll Rule of the Community (1QS) also made a correction to 1QIsaa. The reason for the placement of 1QIsaa in Qumran Cave 1 is still unknown, though it has been speculated that it was placed, along with the other scrolls, by Jews (Essene or not) fleeing the Roman forces during the First Jewish–Roman War (c.66-73 CE). Of the intact jars, edh-Dhib found all but two empty; one was filled with reddish earth, and the other with a leather scroll and two oblong items covered in a black wax or pitch, (later found to be the Great Isaiah Scroll, Habakkuk Commentary (1QpHab), and the Community Rule (1QS) respectively).The digitized scroll provides an English translation alongside the original text,
Isaiah is known for his prophecies of judgment and consolation, and his visions of the End of Days and the coming of the Kingdom of God.
Modern scholarship considers the Book of Isaiah to be an anthology, the two principal compositions of which are the Book of Isaiah proper (chapters 1-39, with some exceptions), containing the words of the prophet Isaiah himself, dating from the time of the First Temple, around 700 BCE, and Second Isaiah (Deutero-Isaiah, chapters 40-66), comprising the words of an anonymous prophet, who lived some one hundred and fifty years later, around the time of the Babylonian exile and the restoration of the Temple in the Persian Period. By the time our Isaiah Scroll was copied (the last third of the second century BCE), the book was already regarded as a single composition.
"And they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks: Nation shall not take up sword against nation; they shall never again know war" (2:4). Here is another example from Isaiah 9:6-7 so shame on you for perverting the words of God! Ihave 2600 other erros if you would care to see them.

he-man said:

Huh? I do not believe you have even read it, have you? The Isaiah Scroll, designated 1Qlsaa ,and also known as the Great Isaiah Scroll, is one of the seven Dead Sea Scrolls that were first recovered by Bedouin shepherds in 1947 from Qumran Cave 1 The scroll is written in Hebrew and contains the entire Book of Isaiah from beginning to end, apart from a few small damaged portions. It is the oldest complete copy of the Book of Isaiah, being approximately 1000 years older than the oldest Hebrew manuscripts known before the scrolls' discovery. QIsaa is also notable in being the only scroll from the Qumran Caves to be preserved almost in its entirety.
Great Isaiah Scroll Version The text of the Great Isaiah Scroll generally conforms to the Masoretic or traditional version codified in medieval codices (all 66 chapters of the Hebrew version, in the same conventional order). At the same time, however, the two thousand year old scroll contains alternative spellings, scribal errors, corrections, and most fundamentally, many variant readings. Strictly speaking, the number of textual variants is well over 2,600, ranging from a single letter, sometimes one or more words, to complete variant verse or verses.
For example, the second half of Verse 9 and all of Verse 10 in the present Masoretic version of Chapter 2 are absent from the Great Isaiah Scroll in the Israel Museum's full manuscript. The same verses, however, have been included in other versions of the Book of Isaiah in the scrolls found near the Dead Sea (4QIsaa, 4QIsab), and the Hebrew text from which the ancient Greek version or Septuagint (3rd-1st century BCE) was translated. This confirms that these verses, although early enough, were a late addition to the ancient and more original version reflected in the Great Isaiah Scroll.
If you are a Hebrew reader, choose any passage of the Great Isaiah Scroll, and compare it to the Masoretic version of the same passage in the Aleppo Codex (The Aleppo Codex Online homepage).
Thus you will be able to evaluate on your own the intricate issue of variant readings, which have obvious literary, historical and theological implications for the correct understanding of Isaiah's original words. The exact authors of 1QIsaa are unknown, as is the exact date of writing. Pieces of the scroll have dated using both radiocarbon dating and palaeographic/scribal dating giving calibrated date ranges between 356-103 BCE and 150-100 BCE respectively. This seemingly fits with the theory that the scroll(s) was a product of the Essenes, a Jewish sect, first mentioned by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History, and later by Josephus and Philo Judaeus.
This theory is the most accepted in scholarly discourse. Further evidence that 1QIsaa was used by the sectarian community at Qumran is that scholars Abegg, Flint, and Ulrich argue that the same scribe who copied the sectarian scroll Rule of the Community (1QS) also made a correction to 1QIsaa. The reason for the placement of 1QIsaa in Qumran Cave 1 is still unknown, though it has been speculated that it was placed, along with the other scrolls, by Jews (Essene or not) fleeing the Roman forces during the First Jewish–Roman War (c.66-73 CE). Of the intact jars, edh-Dhib found all but two empty; one was filled with reddish earth, and the other with a leather scroll and two oblong items covered in a black wax or pitch, (later found to be the Great Isaiah Scroll, Habakkuk Commentary (1QpHab), and the Community Rule (1QS) respectively).The digitized scroll provides an English translation alongside the original text,
Isaiah is known for his prophecies of judgment and consolation, and his visions of the End of Days and the coming of the Kingdom of God.
Modern scholarship considers the Book of Isaiah to be an anthology, the two principal compositions of which are the Book of Isaiah proper (chapters 1-39, with some exceptions), containing the words of the prophet Isaiah himself, dating from the time of the First Temple, around 700 BCE, and Second Isaiah (Deutero-Isaiah, chapters 40-66), comprising the words of an anonymous prophet, who lived some one hundred and fifty years later, around the time of the Babylonian exile and the restoration of the Temple in the Persian Period. By the time our Isaiah Scroll was copied (the last third of the second century BCE), the book was already regarded as a single composition.
"And they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks: Nation shall not take up sword against nation; they shall never again know war" (2:4). Here is another example from Isaiah 9:6-7 so shame on you for perverting the words of God! Ihave 2600 other erros if you would care to see them.View attachment 219235

Click to expand...

Haven't read them, just about them.
Http:www.ancient-Hebrew.org/bible_isaiahscroll.html

Btw, you never stated your church/ religion? You should be proud of it, shouldn't you?
One thing I've noticed about Christian denominations, and specific individual churches is their growth. If they are not growing, usually its because of sin within and/or false doctrines taught. Some branches of Christianity clearly have suffered lack of growth because God is not growing these churches.
In 1900, there were 500 million Christians ( all denominations included) and now there are 2.3+ billion. That's growth and that is the work of the Holy Spirit.
How's the growth in the history of your church doing?
"By their fruit you will know them"

Ronald said:

Haven't read them, just about them.
Http:www.ancient-Hebrew.org/bible_isaiahscroll.html
Btw, you never stated your church/ religion? You should be proud of it, shouldn't you?
One thing I've noticed about Christian denominations, and specific individual churches is their growth. If they are not growing, usually its because of sin within and/or false doctrines taught. How's the growth in the history of your church doing?
"By their fruit you will know them"

Click to expand...

My Ecclessia as I stated before but I guess you missed is: αγγλοελληνικο λεξικο. Got it? By their fruit ye shall know them. Keeping in mind that "Many are called but few are chosen". A growing church must then mean they are not teaching the whole truth. Jesus only had at the most 500 followers. If they had more that would mean they were following the precepts of men and not following God. Instead churches in their growth, they teach a false doctrine of a "Trinity". P.S. You forgot to respond to Isaiah 9:6-7

he-man said:

View attachment 219263 My Ecclessia as I stated before but I guess you missed is: αγγλοελληνικο λεξικο. Got it? By their fruit ye shall know them. Keeping in mind that "Many are called but few are chosen". A growing church must then mean they are not teaching the whole truth. Jesus only had at the most 500 followers. If they had more that would mean they were following the precepts of men and not following God. Instead churches in their growth, they teach a false doctrine of a "Trinity". P.S. You forgot to respond to Isaiah 9:6-7

Click to expand...

The English>Greek Dictionary ... Oh I heard of that church. Were you baptized by the Holy Spirit in that church?

Ronald said:

The English>Greek Dictionary ... Oh I heard of that church. Were you baptized by the Holy Spirit in that church?

Click to expand...

Absolutly! If you had a Greek dictionary you would know that means non-denominational, you could also look at my Avatar. What is your problem, can't you read Greek? But if churches had more members that would mean they were following the precepts of men and not following God. Instead churches in their growth, they teach a false doctrine of a "Trinity". P.S. You forgot to respond to Isaiah 9:6-7 and according to this your membership is declining, not growing.

he-man said:

Absolutly! If you had a Greek dictionary you would know that means non-denominational, you could also look at my Avatar. What is your problem, can't you read Greek? But if churches had more members that would mean they were following the precepts of men and not following God. Instead churches in their growth, they teach a false doctrine of a "Trinity". P.S. You forgot to respond to Isaiah 9:6-7 and according to this your membership is declining, not growing.

View attachment 219329
View attachment 219330

Click to expand...

You are being evasive. You gave me Greek words when translated mean English-Greek dictionary - that's not a church. You claim non-denominational, but that falls under Protestant/ Trinitarian churches. When people read "non-denominational", they assume you are Trinitarian, like the majority of Christians. Between Catholic and Protestant Trinitarian, the combined totals amount to 96% of 2.42 billion Christians.
Non-Trinitarian churches have specific names like LDS, Jehovah Witness, Unitarian, Oneness Pentecostal, Christian Science, etc.
Which non-Trinitarian church have you or are you attending in the shirt list of Non-Trinitarian churches? Or do you just choose to be evasive?

I am familiar with about 30 translations of Isaiah 9:6, 7 and they basically translate the same way. You bring up obscure translations or point out missing verses or misspelled words, in certain manuscripts and there are .- so what. When thousands are alike, why worry about the few that aren't.
You believe God is on the side of 4% of Christianity and that 4 % is also divided into churches that have major differences between them as well, like the JW, LDS, Unitarian, Oneness Penetcostal, and CHristian Scientists. These comprise the majority of non-Trinitarian churches. There is not unity between them. So wherever you are in that group, if you think that was God's purpose, to guide His flock through an obscure narrow gate which only less than 1.3 % of the population of the planet are saved, and forget about Christians throughout the Church Age who believed in the trinity ( I guess they blew it too), and you can be at peace with that, you go your way, Ill take the road more traveled. And btw, your new age religion just popped up in the last hundred years or so. I'm done here, you can answer or not. Peace.

Ronald said:

You are being evasive. You gave me Greek words when translated mean English-Greek dictionary - that's not a church. You claim non-denominational, but that falls under Protestant/ Trinitarian churches. When people read "non-denominational", they assume you are Trinitarian, like the majority of Christians. Between Catholic and Protestant Trinitarian, the combined totals amount to 96% of 2.42 billion Christians. Which non-Trinitarian church have you or are you attending in the shirt list of Non-Trinitarian churches? Or do you just choose to be evasive?
I am familiar with about 30 translations of Isaiah 9:6, 7 and they basically translate the same way. You bring up obscure translations or point out missing verses or misspelled words, in certain manuscripts and there are .- so what.

Click to expand...

I gave you the dictionary term and it means επισης why? Non-denominational means I can choose whatever church I wish and not necessarily the same one every time. What is your reason for asking, anyway, are you trying to prove some point? For your information, you were the one who brought up the Dead Sea Scrolls, not me. You said they were without error, but that is where I got the Is. 9:6-7 translation and that is also how I would translate it. So what do you think you look like now if you are not distorting the truth?
Isaiah Chapter 9
The Future Reign of the Righteous King KJV:
1 I For one who was in anguish there will be no gloom. In the former time he treated the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali with contempt, but in the latter time he will make it glorious, by the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.
2 The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. On those who lined in the land of deep shadows, light has shined.
3 You have expanded the nation, you have increased its joy. They rejoice in your presence, as with the joy at harvest, as people cheer when they divide spoil.
4 For the yoke of their burden and the pole on their shoulder, the rod of their oppressors, end you have broken, as in the day of Midiam.
5 For every boot tramping in the tumult and the garments rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for fire.
6 For a child is born to us, a son is given to us. The government will be on his shoulders. He is called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.
7 His government will expand, and peace will be endless for the throne of David and his kingdom, to establish it and to sustain it with justice and righteousness from now on and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.
Dead Sea Scroll: 1 The people that walked in darkness Have seen a brilliant light; On the: who dwelt in a land of gloom Light has dawned.
2 You have magnified that nation, Have given it great joy; They have rejo before You As they rejoice at reaping time, As they exult When dividing
3 For the yoke that they bore And the stick on their back— The rod of t(he) taskmaster— You have broken as on the day of Midian.
4 Truly, all the boots put on to stamp with And all the garments donned infamy Have been fed to the flames, Devoured by fire.
5 For a child has been born to us, A son has been given us. And author(ity) has settled on his shoulders. He has been named The Mighty God is planning grace; The Eternal Father, a peaceable ruler—
6 In token of abundant authority And of peace without limit Upon David's throne and kingdom, That it may be firmly established In justice and in r(ighteousness Now and evermore. The zeal of the LORD of Hosts Shall bring this to pa(ss)
7 My Lord Let loose a word against Jacob And it fell upon Israel.
(The Aleppo Codex Online homepage). Digital Dead Sea Scrolls

Neogaia777 said:

I'd like to ask "What kind of man, or person, is God...?"

How is he like one of us, and what might one of us truly like him, look, be, and act like...?

I'm talking about the Father God, here also...

Comments...?

God Bless!

Click to expand...

Jesus is God, the exact radiance and glory of God in the full. He is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent, and demonstrates this by having been given all authority on earth and in heaven, a task that requires nothing short of these abilities. If we want to know God, we look at Jesus. If we want forgiveness, we ask Him and believe. His sacrifice satisfied the requirements of the Law for us and takes away the sins of the world, only God can do that. Keep your faith in Jesus, our LORD AND SAVIOR ETERNALLY. AMEN

Ronald said:

Jesus is God, the exact radiance and glory of God in the full. He is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent, and demonstrates this by having been given all authority on earth and in heaven, a task that requires nothing short of these abilities. If we want to know God, we look at Jesus. If we want forgiveness, we ask Him and believe. His sacrifice satisfied the requirements of the Law for us and takes away the sins of the world, only God can do that. Keep your faith in Jesus, our LORD AND SAVIOR ETERNALLY. AMEN

Click to expand...

Huh?

he-man said:

I gave you the dictionary term and it means επισης why? Non-denominational means I can choose whatever church I wish and not necessarily the same one every time. What is your reason for asking, anyway, are you trying to prove some point? For your information, you were the one who brought up the Dead Sea Scrolls, not me. You said they were without error, but that is where I got the Is. 9:6-7 translation and that is also how I would translate it. So what do you think you look like now if you are not distorting the truth?
Isaiah Chapter 9
The Future Reign of the Righteous King KJV:
1 I For one who was in anguish there will be no gloom. In the former time he treated the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali with contempt, but in the latter time he will make it glorious, by the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.
2 The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. On those who lined in the land of deep shadows, light has shined.
3 You have expanded the nation, you have increased its joy. They rejoice in your presence, as with the joy at harvest, as people cheer when they divide spoil.
4 For the yoke of their burden and the pole on their shoulder, the rod of their oppressors, end you have broken, as in the day of Midiam.
5 For every boot tramping in the tumult and the garments rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for fire.
6 For a child is born to us, a son is given to us. The government will be on his shoulders. He is called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.
7 His government will expand, and peace will be endless for the throne of David and his kingdom, to establish it and to sustain it with justice and righteousness from now on and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.
Dead Sea Scroll: 1 The people that walked in darkness Have seen a brilliant light; On the: who dwelt in a land of gloom Light has dawned.
2 You have magnified that nation, Have given it great joy; They have rejo before You As they rejoice at reaping time, As they exult When dividing
3 For the yoke that they bore And the stick on their back— The rod of t(he) taskmaster— You have broken as on the day of Midian.
4 Truly, all the boots put on to stamp with And all the garments donned infamy Have been fed to the flames, Devoured by fire.
5 For a child has been born to us, A son has been given us. And author(ity) has settled on his shoulders. He has been named The Mighty God is planning grace; The Eternal Father, a peaceable ruler—
6 In token of abundant authority And of peace without limit Upon David's throne and kingdom, That it may be firmly established In justice and in r(ighteousness Now and evermore. The zeal of the LORD of Hosts Shall bring this to pa(ss)
7 My Lord Let loose a word against Jacob And it fell upon Israel.
(The Aleppo Codex Online homepage). Digital Dead Sea Scrolls

View attachment 219339

Click to expand...

he-man said:

Huh?

Click to expand...

It mean's He man and He God. Got it?

Ronald said:

It mean's He man and He God. Got it?

Click to expand...

No, it means

Got it?

he-man said:

No, it means
View attachment 219420
Got it?

Click to expand...

The nature of God is not based on one scripture. The deity of Jesus is based on many scriptures and concepts that you evidently don't get. Unfortunately you won't realize these concepts and understand these scriptures without the Holy Spirit, whom you don't think exists. You present all your findings as if knowing God is an intellectual pursuit, a matter of linguistics, correct translations, etc. That's important to start with but understanding what you read is beyond human ability without God. All scripture is spiritually discerned. Discernment is something you obviously lack. And increasing the size of the font doesn't help your argument.