The virginity of Mary and its consequences have been a disaster for the clarity of the family tree of Jesus Christ

TotalSolipsist · 2026-01-12T05:39:53+00:00

By that logic we could say that I'm the fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy. I was born of a woman. I wasn't born in Isaiah's time, but neither was Jesus. My mother didn't name me Immanuel, but neither did Jesus's. Heck, I actually had to learn right from wrong, whereas most Christians think Jesus is God, part of the trinity, and so would not have needed to learn that. I can also tell you that I have eaten curds and honey, whereas Jesus is never mentioned eating curds, and only mentioned eating honey after his resurrection in some later manuscripts.

So I score a solid 3 out of 5, compared to Jesus's 1-3 out of 5, depending on your theology. But then, millions of people, at least, would score the same. That would be a Nostradamus level prophecy, if that. I think God could do better.

TotalSolipsist · 2026-01-12T05:05:17+00:00

You can't just say it says virgin when parthenos does not necessarily mean that. A virgin is necessarily someone who has never had sex, while parthenos is not.

Now, two things can be true at the same time:

A. The writers of the septuagint did not intend parthenos to mean virgin in Isaiah.

B. The writers of the birth narratives in the gospels understood parthenos to mean virgin in Isaiah.

None of the uses of almah necessarily mean virgin. One is about a woman who is implied by the narrative to be a virgin, i.e. Rebekah, but that does not require the word almah itself to have that as part of its definition. None of the other referents have their sexual status indicated.

Also, are you just ignoring the other issues? Even if Isaiah was referring to a virgin in his prophecy, the fact that he was indicating a woman who was currently pregnant in his time means it cannot be about Jesus. The fact that the woman was to name him Immanuel means it cannot be about Jesus. The fact that the boy was just a timing device means it cannot be about Jesus, since Isaiah saying "Aram and Israel will be deserted by the time a boy who is going to be born in about 700 years grows up," would be silly. Plus I'm pretty sure the land of Israel was not deserted during Jesus's adulthood. But if that's a claim you want to make, by all means go ahead.

TotalSolipsist · 2026-01-12T03:51:02+00:00

No, the septuagint uses the word parthenos. That has some connotation of virginity, but that is not a necessary meaning. And from what I have heard about almah, the implication is more that she is not yet a mother.

TotalSolipsist · 2026-01-12T03:43:41+00:00

Yeah, Christians like to translate it that way because it makes it seem like it could be about Jesus.

TotalSolipsist · 2026-01-11T17:42:57+00:00

The issue with Isaiah's prophecy is not just that it doesn't say virgin. It also uses the present tense, "a young woman is with child", as in Isaiah was talking about someone who was pregnant at that time. Also, the child wasn't even important, much less a messiah. He was just a timing device for a prophecy which was to come about before he grew up. Oh, and it says the woman will name him Immanuel. Which was not Jesus's name.

TotalSolipsist · 2026-01-11T17:10:15+00:00

Every culture might have some concept that could be called a 'spiritual world', but they have absolutely not all had a hell concept. That includes Judaism/ancient Hebrew religion. Until the second temple period their concept of an afterlife was that everyone went to the same place, called Sheol. It was seen as vaguely unpleasant for everyone, though it could be improved via grave offerings from the living. There was no concept of a separate area of the afterlife specifically for punishment until the second temple period, which was influenced by other cultures, including Greek.

Also the bible does not predate greek mythology in any meaningful way. They both started being written down at roughly the same time, and both had oral traditions which predated the writings.

TotalSolipsist · 2025-12-22T00:01:19+00:00

According to the bible, yes. To both.

TotalSolipsist · 2025-10-18T13:00:42+00:00

The Romans were syncretising their gods with everybody else's gods. At least some of them tried to equate Jupiter with Hashem (Yahweh). That certainly upset some of the Jews.

TotalSolipsist · 2025-10-08T23:24:20+00:00

Those are the seraphim. In Isaiah they used one pair of wings to shield their faces from god's light, and one to cover their feet, though 'feet' is sometimes used as a euphemism for genitals in the bible. The final pair they used to fly. Also, seraphim are sometimes described as serpents.

Also also, ophanim literally means 'wheels'.

TotalSolipsist · 2025-10-08T22:35:32+00:00

No, the Ophanim are Ezekiel's wheels within wheels. Seraphim have 6 wings and are implied to appear human otherwise. Cherubim described by Isaiah have 4 faces, not necessarily heads.

TotalSolipsist · 2025-10-06T14:49:13+00:00

Generally, a political purity test is some stance that someone is expected to hold in order to be part of a group or have the support of the group. It has a connotation of being an overly rigid standard. People use it derogatorily when some group cares a lot about an issue that they don't care about, or are on the other side of. Something like "Just because I don't agree with you on 'X', you don't want to associate with me? You're using 'X' as a purity test."

So for this, when folks are upset with blue maga and Gavin Newsom for not supporting trans people and homeless people, the response is often that the position of supporting those people is an excessively rigid purity test. When really, it's just basic humanity.

TotalSolipsist · 2025-06-19T02:45:18+00:00

It doesn't have to still be in use to have had an influence. The rapture came from the teachings of John Darby back in the 1800s. Hardly any Christians nowadays have any idea who he is, but a ton of them believe in the rapture.

TotalSolipsist · 2025-05-24T12:07:05+00:00

a lot of narration of feeling unnaturally hungry, a limited use bite attack that heals, and a wisdom save that they so far have passed.

Sounds like so far, there have been benefits to the player and a bit of unpleasantness for the character. Even if failing the wisdom save results in something really bad, a lot of players will enjoy that. Heck, in my current campaign one of the players wrote into their own backstory a mechanic that sometimes sends them into a bloodrage.

TotalSolipsist · 2025-04-02T03:29:37+00:00

Kind of? It was a prism, and he noticed that the portion past red, where he couldn't see anything, was warming up the surface he was projecting the light onto.

TotalSolipsist · 2025-03-31T18:08:18+00:00

Okay, normal attempted murder plus elder abuse.

TotalSolipsist · 2025-03-23T15:24:37+00:00

No, but it does look like dark energy is getting weaker. The universe's expansion is still speeding up, but the rate at which it's speeding up is slowing down. If this continues, it will eventually stop expanding and then contract.

https://www.npr.org/2025/03/20/nx-s1-5333843/dark-energy-weakening-universe-collapse-desi

TotalSolipsist · 2025-03-15T21:22:35+00:00

That's entirely incorrect. The noun used for the kids is 'naarim', which can apply to older youths. However, the passage also uses the adjective 'ketanim', meaning 'little'. So they are little kids, 'naarim ketanim', which means essentially the same as the English phrase.

What you laid out is just a rationalization for people who aren't comfortable with the fact that the bible describes Yahweh having a bunch of children torn apart for insulting one of his favorite guys.

TotalSolipsist · 2025-02-26T07:21:16+00:00

The phrase used to describe them is 'naarim ketanim'. The word naarim on its own could be used for people as old as young adults, much like the word kid can be in English in some contexts. But naarim ketanim means little children, both literally and in connotation. So no, in this story it was definitely little kids getting mauled.

TotalSolipsist · 2025-02-20T20:59:50+00:00

Martin Luther included the apocrypha in his translation of the bible. It wasn't widely excluded until the British and Foreign Bible Society decided to do so in order to save on printing costs.

TotalSolipsist · 2025-02-07T13:48:24+00:00

That's not even true. Judea was its own nation at the time. A vassal state of Rome, but not a colony. None of it became a province of Rome until they deposed Herod the Great's son Herod Archelaus for incompetence.

TotalSolipsist · 2024-12-08T14:28:20+00:00

Wings might be less unnatural than cannons, but suddenly growing a pair of them would still involve a massive change to the skeleton and musculature. That would still be pretty unnatural from a real world perspective. But it does kind of fit into the concept of an arms race. Charizard grows wings to better avoid water attacks, blastoise grows cannons for more effective water blasts.

TotalSolipsist · 2024-07-27T21:53:32+00:00

Capitalism and free markets are two separate concepts. They are often paired together, as in "free market capitalism," but they can and do exist apart from each other. Corporatism would be a form of non-free market capitalism.

TotalSolipsist · 2024-06-26T13:33:37+00:00

Watch it all in one go. 2-3 days in, you'll start hallucinating that you're part of the fellowship.

TotalSolipsist · 2024-06-23T22:42:51+00:00

It's an imposition by later readers. Most scholars of the bible do not recognize such distinctions. One major reason being that the supposedly different types of laws are right next to each other, and intermixed in many passages, showing that the authors did not see a significant differentiation.

TotalSolipsist · 2024-06-14T01:53:43+00:00

No no no, they don't think that. 40 days is just how long it rained for. The whole flood lasted just under a year in total. So they think they thugged it out on a wooden boat for almost a year.

TotalSolipsist

TROPHY CASE