Hmm, lets not turn this into a battle of semantics. I hate those and no one ever really wins.

I'll just add though, thanks for that insight into why Jesus cannot be the Messiah. I found it really interesting.

Also, if G-d were to put Itself into a human body, why would it be Male? Its common practice in polythiestic cultures for a god to take human shape. Because there a god often looks like the people who it is watching over. Notice how the Hebrew word for god when he is resting in a place and has constricted himself, the word used is a Female form of the word. Thus in all constrictions G-d is refered to as a She.

I'm happy to be of some use.


edit: I havn't slept in 36 hours, (doing a performance project for school) so I'm sorry for some of those non sequitors and such.

There is no polytheism here, in fact its this very reason why i believe most Jews aren't very aware of the Holy Triunity. Yes many christian theologians can argue about the various semantics of the Triunity, but the Triunity stands in the fact that God is The Son, The Father, and The Holy Spirit.

Also your argument fails as God in the Bible is not described as being infinite. Here is an argument one Atheist used to "disprove God":

"God is defined to be infinite, in which case it is not possible for there to be anything other than God because "infinite" is all-inclusive. But if there is nothing other than God then either God cannot be said to exist for the reason just explained, or God is the known world, in which case, by definition, God is not a God."

The only characteristic of God described as infinite is His knowledge or understanding. So saying God is infinite isn't backed by Scripture.

Also if you wanna see how the Old Testament literall predicts everything about Jesus and how the oneness of God is actually plural even in the Shema, well then I would tell you too check out this link:

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/triunity.html

I don't mean to use outside sources like this but the author of the site does a very good job of explaining this.

The Old Testament also talks about the coming of a new covenant that will fulfill the old covenant, so i don't see a problem regarding the Covenant with Christ.

It's also common for gods to take animal, plant and object shape in many polytheistic cultures. I can think of an example of YHVH taking a plant as representation, but not animal or object (unless you agree that Jesus was begotten of God, therefore the bread and wine of Holy Communion must be considered to be part of his actual form).

I'm just babbling, going along with the polytheistic train of thought. Not saying that I agree, just babbling.

By the way Daganev your claim about being divisible refuting something being one is false. For example of you chop me up into 3 pieces, you don't have 3 vvart's you have ONE vvart in 3 pieces.

No, you have 3 non-vvarts that no longer resemble vvart.

Yeees. It's not as though you can just put them together again and they'll make a vvart. Once divided, they are seperate, and their own beings as they experience different things from then on. They can never truly be put back together again.

Oh, one other thing I wanted to point out was brought up quite early in the thread, and that is purpose. That one finds a purpose to one's life by way of religion. I find that train of thought quite different to how I think about things. I believe that all life has an intrinsic value of its own, it doesn't need to be a cog in some larger machine to be of any importance. In some ways, I think that is a very industrial mindset, that we must find a purpose or be considered failures and of no use to society.

A bit delayed, I know, but I would prefer to stay philosophical rather than debating the semantics of the Jewish/Christian traditions.

That is not how polytheism works

True polytheism is not a plethora of gods who essentially hark back to the same being, whether they are equal 3rds or whatever you want to say. That is something different which I will look up the name for when I get a chance.

Quidgyboo neither is that the Triunity of God so what's the relevance?...

I was just trying to show that division doesn't make 3 distinct units and i'll demonstrate with a better example which is water, I can separate 1 bucket of water into 3 buckets, but its still water.

I was addressing the people who were making out like dividing a god in three = polytheism, which is incorrect.

Yes exactly! not to mention this take on YHWH is backed up by the Old Testament extensively.

But there'd be no means of distinguishing the buckets of water. You couldn't say 1 gallon of water is any different than another bucket of water, thus the trinity is still failing.

Dude didn't i make myself clear, my examples weren't to show how the Trinity works they were merely to show that 1 divided into 3 can still be that same 1 substance. IF you want to learn about the Trinity i already put a link up that can explain it much better then I can. The Trinity works because God is an extra dimensional being, in no way did you show the Trinity to be failing as i doubt you are very well traversed in Scripture and how it describes God. Sorry if i seem to be getting a little angry, Theology is important to me is all.

That's a possibility - that God, if it exists, is extradimensional.

Read 'Flatland' .

I do like the possibility that our universe was started by 13th dimensional bubbles colliding.

Just thought I'd throw this in because some people get this confused and it erks me.

Evolution is by definition in the scientific world: Change in the genetic composition of a population during successive generations. Thus, if you reproduce and your offspring are different than both you and your mate... that is a form of evolution. Is what you are objecting to because if so, I want to see your clone.

Most people who claim to be "against" evolution are actually against natural selection instead (forces acting on the genetic variation among individuals, and resulting in the development of new species). It isn't the same thing!

This annoys me as much as people saying that sushi is raw meat! Sushi can have raw meat in it but most types do not... sashimi, however, is raw. Get your facts straight.

We've stated many times that this is about macro evolution, a dog making a bird.

That quote you showed is 100% The only problem is the conclusion it makes.

King David wrote in Psalms "And the whole world is Filled with him"
There is no question that G-d is outside of our dimensions. However, He is also inside our dimentions.

This is the very pardox that Kabbalah deals with. There is a reason tradition suggests you do not bother trying to learn it until you are 40. G-d is all inclusive. This goes back to the argument about opposites. What that athiest fails to point out in his argument, is that G-d can be the known world, but then G-d is also what is outside the known world. Those theoritical stories of what if we are all just inside someone's head isn't as far off and crazy as some people think.

As I said again, anything that you can show that will show god as 3, I will show you that it shows god as 26. There are plenty of lines in scripture that point to G-d being infinite, and singular.

Based on the website Jews for Judaism. There are generally three reasons why you are wrong. 1) that verse does not exist in the Jewish version of the book. (christians are notorious for having many versions of the same book) 2) The verse is mistranslated. 3) the verse is out of context, and if you read the before and after versus you would find it is in refrence to something very specific. Such as the "virgin" which is actually translated as "young woman" and is in refrence to the Torah that the Jewish people marry.


As for the polythiesm aspect, I'm not an expert in polythiesm. However the polythiestic religions I do know about often have a head god who later has children who become other gods. The notion that I can throw all my gold into the fire, have it come out and be a golden calf all on its own, and to say that that is a represnetive of god is inherintly wrong.

Besides, if Jesus is god your breaking the second commandment.

Ok just went to your website and had myself a good laugh. Yachid, is the personal version of Achad. I'm not a grammer buff, but its common in many languages. Instead of saying MY ONE goat. I would say Achidi or ONEMY goat. Yachid is the same as saying Achad Shelach or YOUR ONE.

As you stated eaerlier about the word YOM, one Word can have various meanings. Achad is normally only used to mean the Numerical number 1.

Now as for the translation of the word US. One of the Hebrew words for G-ds name is POWERS or ELOHIM. Just like the word SHEKINAH which is the female grammatical form, ELOHIM is the plural grammatical form. Its is the name of G-d that represents his JUSTICE attributes. That is why rulers of countries are also called ELOHIM. It may be noted however, that the other verbs in those verses are written in Singular gramtical from. Which either means the writer of the bible didn't know Hebrew grammer or ELOHIM is actually refering to a single Object or subject (like I said I don't know grammer) in the sentence.

I would just like to make it clear, I do not think your website is lieing to you. I've seen the same arguments made on Sunday Morning Television.

They just happen to be wrong from a Jewish perspective. The torah was written in Hebrew. It was not translated untill the greeks forced 70 rabbis to translate the Torah. That date, is a national fast day.(The 11th of AV) The Talmud writes that a great miracled happend that day, and the 70 rabbis all made the same translation "mistakes" One of the most famous "mistakes" is the first verse , "Let us make man in our image" was translated to "I will make man in my image" I'm sure your pastors and priests know of that story by now, and so I'm sure they assumed the reason it was mistranslated was to "hide the trinity." The reason it was mistranslated is because Greece was a Polythiestic culture, and they did not want the greeks thinking Judaism was Polythiestic as well, since the whole rebellion was over putting up statues of Zues in the Temple.

Now as to the proper meaning of that verse. As usual there are three opinions. (probabbly more, but I only know of three of them, since I only read three authors on that line.) The one I find most interesting is that G-d was speaking to the angles of Mercy, Justice, and Truth. Mercy said man should be created as we can be kind to people. Justice said man should be created for who else would be able to listen and choose to do the word of G-d. Truth said man should not be created as we are liars and subjective and can never really see the Truth. For This, G-d "threw Truth to the ground" and turned to Mercy and Justice and said "Now, let us make Man in our image."

Edit: On the website you mentioned it translates the shema as "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD" The Normal translation is "Hear O Israel, The Lord is our G-d, the Lord is One."
As for that REALLY BAD Translation of Isiah, I refer you to This Link