The problems with Greek translation.

[lpetrich]

But if such a text is presented as being absolute, final truth for all of humanity over all of time, then it's another story.

Perhaps we shouldn't do that, then. The text itself has some very firm words against idolatry.

Idolatry = worship of pictures and statues. This sort of labeling is what nobody likes when it's directed against their beliefs and practices.

It would be easier to implant such a supposed revelation in everybody's brains and be done with it.

Are "easy" and "good" synonyms?

I don't see why that would be a bad thing to do.

What a stupid argument. I try not to write impossibly cryptic messages and then complain about people not deciphering them. Let alone treat such messages as a gotcha, by making them easy to misunderstand and then saying "Gotcha!" when anyone misunderstands them.

Has God said "gotcha" to you lately?

That entity's self-appointed interpreters often seem like they are doing that. Like implicitly saying "Gotcha! That part of the Bible is allegorical -- it doesn't mean what it says."

Politesse, I am not sure what you are claiming. Are you claiming that the Xian God is not omnipotent? Not omniscient? Not omnibenevolent? Any combination of these departures from being tri-omni?

I don't think those terms are even logically coherent. How could you apply them to anything?

Tri-omni is what the Xian God is often advertised as being.

That's a reason that I like Greta Christina's Blog: All-Knowing, All-Powerful, All-Good: Pick Two, or, How Christian Theology Shoots Itself In the Foot In her woo-believing days, GC believed in a World-Soul "God" that was neither omnipotent nor omniscient nor omnibenevolent.

Mathematicians understand infinities just fine, even though their minds are as finite as everybody else's minds.

No, they use abstractions and symbols to stand in for concepts their minds cannot actually comprehend. ...

That can be said about just about *anything*.

 

[DBT]

Universal Salvation may have began with Origen, it seems:

Origen, Bardaiṣan, and the Origin of Universal Salvation*

''Is Origen of Alexandria the inventor of the eschatological doctrine of apokatastasis— of the eventual return of all creatures to the Good, that is, God, and thus universal salvation? Certainly, he is one of its chief supporters in all of history, and he is, as far as we know, the first to have maintained it in a complete and coherent way, so that all of his philosophy of history, protology, and anthropology is oriented toward this telos.1 There are, however, significant antecedents to his mature and articulate theorization, at least some of which he surely knew very well, and there is even a possible parallel. For this conception did not appear ex nihilo, but in a cultural context rich in suggestions and premises, and in a philosophical framework of lively discussions concerning fate, free will, theodicy, and the eternal destiny of rational creatures.''

It should be quite "logical" to automatically expect believers to believe that ANY gods or maybe demi-gods would possess godly powers to raise up the dead.

It's normal for variable types of believers, I suspect. Plagarisn is not the requirement for a salvation belief , IOWs.

The issue here is the question of whether or not Universalists are interpreting word and verse correctly.

 

[HaRaAYaH]

the problem is the colloquial meanings of words going back to ancient Hebrew. Imagine 200 years from now trying to derive meanings from a Jay Leno monologue in a translation to a future language with only literal meanings of Englis

Someone who identifies as a Jew in the past said 40 meant a while. It rained for 40 days and nights. Jesus went walking in the desert for 40 days.

Look at how Mary Magdalene in the gospels transformed imto a prostitute in Christian tradition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Magdalene

During the Middle Ages, Mary Magdalene was conflated in western tradition with Mary of Bethany and the unnamed "sinful woman" who anoints Jesus's feet in Luke 7:36–50, resulting in a widespread but inaccurate belief that she was a repentant prostitute or promiscuous woman

This is the key point I was trying to make. It's especially true when you realize this was an oral tradition for many generations before being committed to parchment. If you have to memorize the whole thing it's going to be short on details.

 

[steve_bank]

the problem is the colloquial meanings of words going back to ancient Hebrew. Imagine 200 years from now trying to derive meanings from a Jay Leno monologue in a translation to a future language with only literal meanings of Englis

Someone who identifies as a Jew in the past said 40 meant a while. It rained for 40 days and nights. Jesus went walking in the desert for 40 days.

Look at how Mary Magdalene in the gospels transformed imto a prostitute in Christian tradition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Magdalene

During the Middle Ages, Mary Magdalene was conflated in western tradition with Mary of Bethany and the unnamed "sinful woman" who anoints Jesus's feet in Luke 7:36–50, resulting in a widespread but inaccurate belief that she was a repentant prostitute or promiscuous woman

This is the key point I was trying to make. It's especially true when you realize this was an oral tradition for many generations before being committed to parchment. If you have to memorize the whole thing it's going to be short on details.

When I first read the biblical who begat who genealogy it seemed obvious that someone was filling in the time durations to an oral tradition.