nwtk2007 wrote:
Can you disprove the lack of evidence for that?
What a perfectly quaint phrase on your part, original, no doubt?
I have no need to "disprove anything."
Hebrews 11:6 "But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that comes to God must believe that he exists, and that He rewards those who diligently seek Him."
You know very well within your own soul that God exists, and that you will someday give an accounting before Him.
Not one among the 1,000 women in his haram did he find righteous, which is perfectly understandable,as that was not what he sought in selecting them.
"He (Solomon) came to have seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines, and his wives gradually inclined his heart to worship false gods." (1 Kings 11:1-4)
He is clear about there not being any righteous man upon the earth.
Ecclesiastes 7:20 "Surely there is no righteous man on earth who does good and never sins."
By "one of a thousand men," is meant the, Messiah, the Wisdom of God, for whom he sought, (Ecclesiastes 7:25) ; and now says he found; to whom he looked for peace, pardon, and atonement, under a sense of his sins.
The Targum says,
"there is another thing which yet my soul seeketh, and I have not found; a man perfect and innocent, without corruption, from the days of Adam, till Abraham the righteous was born; who was found faithful and just among the thousand kings who were gathered together to build the tower of Babel; and a woman among all the wives of those kings, as Sarah, I found not.''
The targumim were spoken paraphrases, explanations and expansions of the Jewish scriptures that a rabbi would give in the common language of the listeners, which was then often Aramaic. That had become necessary near the end of the 1st century BCE, as the common language was in transition and Hebrew was used for little more than schooling and worship. The noun "Targum" is derived from the early semitic quadriliteral root trgm, and the Akkadian term targummanu refers to "translator, interpreter".
God didn't perform "magic." Magic is of the occult, i.e., an alternate spirituality not associated with the God of the Bible.
When you ridicule the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, you are mocking God.
Jeremiah 32:27 "Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh. Is anything too difficult for Me?
Genesis 18:14
Is anything too difficult for the LORD? At the appointed time I will return to you - in about a year - and Sarah will have a son."
There is both literary and archaeological evidence that Bethlehem of Judea was the birthplace of Jesus.
The literary evidence begins with the Gospel records of Matthew and Luke.
Matthew 2:1 records,
”Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem…”
Luke 2:1-7 records,
”And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem (because he was of the house and lineage of David) to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.”
Both Gospel accounts state clearly that Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea.
Matthew further records that this was exactly what God had foretold. In Matthew 2:1-6 when Herod calls the Jewish leaders together to find out where the messiah was to be born, the Jewish leaders responded that it was in Bethlehem of Judea as the prophecy of Micah 5:2 reveals.
This is the testimony of the apostles that Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea according to the OT prophecy.
The reason that the apostles and the early disciples believed that Jesus was the messiah, the Son of God, is that he fulfilled these prophecies of the messiah. There was no need to change anything. The apostles handed down the truth about the life of Christ through the Gospels and the early church accepted them based on their apostleship and all the other evidence circulated by various eye-witnesses at that time who could easily deny any false claims such as the birthplace of Jesus.
nwtk2007 wrote:
I see you like Ecclesiastes. "I have searched the earth for a righteous person; of a thousand men,I found one, of a thousand women, I found none."
I know the mind of God as good as the next person. You seem to think you do, I see.
Do you have evidence for Biblical magic outside of Biblical writings? Just because there actually is a town called Bethlehem, doesn't mean the Son of God was born there. And how about that virgin birth. Was an in vitro conception used there?
Can you disprove the lack of evidence for that?
I see you like Ecclesiastes. "I have searche... (
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