Stephen E. Jones wrote:
>But if I ignore their posts it could look like I am discourteous
>or even unable to answer them.
Threads can't go on forever. You can't always have the last word.
It's not discourteous to just drop out rather than repeating an
argument.
>But Jesus did in fact explicitly claim to be the Son of God and in Jewish
>eyes this was the same as claiming that He was God:
>"[Jesus said] `I and the Father are one.' Again the Jews picked up stones to
>stone him, but Jesus said to them, `I have shown you many great miracles
>from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?' "We are not stoning
>you for any of these,' replied the Jews, `but for blasphemy, because you, a
>mere man, claim to be God.' Jesus answered them ... Why then do you accuse
>me of blasphemy because I said, 'I am God's Son'?" (Jn 10:30-36).
The either/or question seems to me somewhat softened in the original
Greek, where the genitive case is broadly used to refer to many things.
'A is of B' can mean 'A is the son of B', or can mean 'A is from B', or simply
'A partakes of the substance of B'. The priests were basically annoyed that
a radical competitor was intruding into their domain, and seized on any
twist of language to counter him. Jesus answered that their own scriptures
said 'you are gods'; doesn't that belie the claim that Jesus was more a
god than anyone else?
May I ask BTW which translation you use and why you prefer it to the
King James?
>In fact it was for this claim that He was the Son of God that Jesus was
>executed on a charge of blasphemy:
Here you are citing the actions of the Sanhedrin as proof of divinity,
reminiscent of how you quote evolutionists to disprove evolution.
>"But Jesus remained silent and gave no answer. Again the high priest asked
>him, "Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?" "I am," said Jesus
>...The high priest tore his clothes. "Why do we need any more witnesses?"
>he asked. "You have heard the blasphemy. What do you think?" They all
>condemned him as worthy of death." (Mk 14:61-64).
This should not be confused with the incident cited from John above. The
latter quotation refers to the actual binding over for trial. The previous
quote
from John refers to an occasion when Jesus barged into the temple and was
razzed, presumably including having pebbles tossed at him, after which he
left under his own power.
--Cliff Lundberg ~ San Francisco ~ cliff@cab.com
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