Comments on: Christ, Cross Experiments

By: Tai

Tai — Sat, 06 Aug 2005 15:34:32 +0000

RE: the matter of stake, check out http://www.frontline-apologetics.com/symbol_cross.htm

to see that “stake” is only half the truth.

By: rich

rich — Sun, 27 Mar 2005 19:14:13 +0000

Here’s another little fun tidbit - historians believe that the long haired/bearded image of Jesus is completely wrong. Like you said, they used previous images to fit Him in with them. Being a carpenter, it is unlikely he had long hair anyway, because of the tools and the work involved. But hey, it DOES look good on the medieval paintings…

By: mel

mel — Sun, 27 Mar 2005 17:10:56 +0000

Yes it sure does. Here’s another one for you. What about his name? Why was the spelling and pronunciation changed from Yeshua to Jesus? I mean think about it, aren’t the other names in the bible still pretty much the same? Moses, Mary, Noah and all the others? Here’s an excerpt from an article I read:

“Yeshua, a variant of Joshua, is the Hebrew name for Jesus, and is the true way his name was spoken. “Jesus” is the warped English pronunciation of the Greek word “Iesous.” And “Jesus Christ,” is a Greek phrase, coined by Paul. To say Yeshua’s name the way his friends, family and students would have spoken it, would be “Yeshua haMoshiach.” Pronounced Ye-SHU-ah ha Mah-SHEE-ock. It means Yeshua the Messiah, or the literal translation: Yeshua the Anointed One. But since he didn’t go about bragging that he was the Messiah, he might have gone by Yeshua the Teacher or Master Yeshua (Rabbi or Rabboni).

In Greek, the name for Jesus– Iesous –is very similar to the name Zeus. When Emperor Constantine decided to make Christianity the official state religion of the Roman Empire back in the 300’s A.D., the people didn’t want to give up Zeus and other pagan gods. Constantine couldn’t bear to tear down the famous statues of Zeus in the Temples in Rome and Athens. So he instructed his new Christian priests to simply rename them as Jesus. All statues of Zeus were turned into Jesus! Early images of what Jesus looked like were heavily influenced by the traditional bearded appearance of Zeus.”

By: rich

rich — Sat, 26 Mar 2005 19:18:50 +0000

So it would be fitting a rope through the eye of a needle? That makes more sense, that’s for sure!

They are showing something on the Discovery channel right now, fascinating stuff, about the early life of Jesus, what Caesarea looked like and so on. The original greek for manger was “lower room”, not “inn”, so they think that Jesus’ family went to stay with relatives, and there was no room in the upper room, so they stayed in the lower room… that also makes a lot more sense.

By: mel

mel — Sat, 26 Mar 2005 17:27:21 +0000

For instance…. In the bible where it says that it would be easier to fit a camel into the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven (something like that)… this was translated from hebrew in the old testament… the hebrew word for camel is indeed GAMAL, but the hebrew word for ROPE is also GAMAL with an apostrophe somewhere in there, i can’t remember exactly where but which makes more sense? Camel or Rope? hehe

By: rich

rich — Sat, 26 Mar 2005 12:29:52 +0000

Greek was used predominantly in the Eastern Roman Empire, and particularly in the Byzantine Empire. The Emperor Constantine, who was the first Emperor to convert to Christianity was a big pilgrim, travelling to the Holy Lands and erecting numerous basilicae and edifices to Christ. If anything the early bibles of the day would be in Greek, then translated later on into Latin as the _Roman_ Empire converted.

If you take a look at the MSNBC article you will find a link to the “graffito” found in Rome from the 1st century AD, showing a T-bar “cross”. So I think, that if that is the case, that the early Greek transcribers simply used a word (like you said) to describe any kind of wood, or stake, or beam, or pole etc., Also, to be fair, the people back then weren’t exactly precise when it came to grammar, and Greek was still evolving a little (take a look at the word “sebete” from that graffito for example).

But, something interesting cropped up a few months back which I should mention. It was about the King James’ Bible. When it was originally written it had been translated from an earlier version, either Greek or Latin. What the scholar who had written the article had found was that the translator “missed” words out because he didn’t think they were “necessary”. In particular, he omitted several “The” words because of inconsistency with his current view of that Christian world at that time (which should be noted was the early Protestant view, trying to separate themselves from the Catholic view). So yes, translators take liberties because of what THEY think things should be

By: mel

mel — Sat, 26 Mar 2005 01:45:23 +0000

Well gosh Rich if you’re going to be doing that much thinking about jesus, then let me give you another factor to add into it and think about…
The literal translation from the greek word STAUROS (new testament) wasn’t “CROSS” at all… it was “STAKE”… which was used to describe all kinds of shapes of pieces of wood. Someone changed the translation to cross, whoever translated it… martin luther? Anyway, that’s just one mistranslation of many from the bible. Put that in yer hat and give it a whirl, lol.