Can you imagine the gigantic ego Jesus had to have for him to not only claim to be the child of god, but to claim that he was god itself? And people listened to him, followed him and created a huge cult around him. Simply incredible.

>>25353883
Assuming he existed

>>25353883
1. He didn't exist
2. In the gospels he doesn't ever truly unambiguously claim to be God, which is why unitarians still exist in small numbers and why early Christian opinion of his metaphysical status was all over the place.
3. Although he very openly claims to be Son of God in the gospel of John, it's a status he shares with his followers, and in my opinion there are indications that, in an earlier version of the gospel, a subset of his followers may have been understood as already being children of God like him, lost sheep originally from heaven which he had come to collect, though the passages reflecting that idea have also been read as supporting predestination. See for example John 11:51-52
>He did not say this on his own, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the dispersed children of God.

>>25353883
People having delusions of grandeur is not a modern phenomenon.
One must assumes there were folks in ancient times or even prehistoric times who suffered from it.

>>25353874
we only have access to three spatial dimensions, so we don't know how far seeds extend in other dimensions. seeds that look small in 3d space could well be massive in n-dimensional space. jesus would have been aware of this.

maybe you should thinking for literally one second before you try to nitpick the word of god?

>>25353874
Same reason the Earth isn't 6000 years old and humans are created out of nowhere but evolved from monkeys. The bible is a human creation and therefore prone to error, especially when it's from a time where science was only at its beginnings

>>25353874
This is why you don't read modern translations full of mistakes. The mustard seed is not the smallest seed, but the least of seeds (KJV). It's about significance and status, not size and dimensions. See Ephesians 3:8:
>Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ;
Paul is not talking about being physically smaller than other saints; he's assuming a position of inferiority, servitude and humility vis a vis the others.

>>25353925
maybe He wasnt saying that mustard seeds are smaller than cumin seeds and mustard shrubs are larger than cedar trees. also feeding honey and butter to a baby isnt actually good for the baby

>Isn't the bible meant to be the inerrant word of god?
No. Nobody believes this except for lunatic fundamentalists. The Bible is divinely inspired but its authors were not infallible. Biblical nonliteralism has been standard practice since at least the days of St Augustine, probably long before.

>>25353874
>uhm ackshually...

kill yourself. just do it right fucking now.

>>25353962
>The Bible is divinely inspired but its authors were not infallible
What does that even mean? It's either God-inspired or not. There's no in-between. If the authors are fallible, there's absolutely no reason to trust any portion of it.

>>25353970
Divine inspiration does not result in infallibility. God prompts a person towards certain ideas or sentiments, but He doesn't simply reveal the truth or dominate a person's thoughts. Again, none of this is a new or modern understamding. This has been the explicit doctrine of the Church for more than 1600 years.
>If the authors are fallible, there's absolutely no reason to trust any portion of it.
Are you an epistemic nihilist? Because everything you think you know comes from fallible sources.

>>25353976
>everything you think you know comes from fallible sources
Is the Church fallible?

>>25353874
I will put my seed in OP.

>>25353983
Church tradition says no, although I'm not convinced of that.

>>25353883
> but to claim that he was god itself?

“No one knows the time (of events of revelation) except the father in Heaven, not even the son.”

>>25353976
>Having this poor of catechesis and then acting like you understand it.
To say the divine word of God is possibly fallible, and that this is a long held teaching is ridiculous.

>>25353999
It's only on matters of faith and morals.

>>25353874
Now imagine if Jesus had actually cared about details of botany instead of making a brilliant parable that was understandable to his disciples
>"the kingdom of heaven is like an orchid seed..."
>"what's that"
>"it's a flower. its seed is the smallest of all seeds. the flower itself is not particularly large though so the rest of the parable I had in mind doesn't really work"
In any case the parable of the mustard seed is the master parable since it describes the structure of all parables themselves. This getting hung up on the tiny particulars of botany is such philistinism it's unbelievable

>>25353883
I guess it does get a little easier when you're the actual child of God and can perform miracles

>>25353874
>what is hyperbole

>>25353925
That is the mother of all copes

>>25353955
It isn't a mistake for one thing.
Don't quote the fucking KJV if you're going to pretend to care about the accuracy of translation, for another

The most accurate translation is smallest.

>>25354492
>Now imagine if Jesus had actually cared about details of botany instead of making a brilliant parable that was understandable to his disciples
He could just have not called it the smallest of all seeds, have you considered that? He didn't need to name the literal smallest seed on the planet, he could just have said it was unassuming. That's how this guy >>25353955 has chosen to interpret the inaccurate KJV version anyway

>>25354965
>He could just have not called it the smallest of all seeds, have you considered that?
Of course I have considered it, but before I say what I think of it, let's first read what scholar and convert Alfred Edersheim had to say on mustard seeds on his book "Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah"

>Those addressed were not to weigh every detail, either logically or scientifically, but at once to recognise the aptness of the illustration as presented to the popular mind. Thus, as regards the first of these two Parables, the seed of the mustard-plant passed in popular parlance as the smallest of seeds. [2853] In fact, the expression, "small as a mustard-seed", had become proverbial, and was used, not only by our Lord, [2854] but frequently by the Rabbis, to indicate the smallest amount, such as the least drop of blood, [2855] the least defilement, [2856] or the smallest remnant of sun-glow in the sky. [2857]

So it seems that taking the mustard seed as something of an atom for literary purposes was already in vogue by the time Jesus began preaching. Thus for this parable he had two choices
1. Engage with the popular imagery of the time, which is immediately understandable by his audience, echoes the tradition he was dialoguing with and is quite powerful, literarily speaking, in how it contrasts two states of the same being, the smallest seed and the largest of the garden plants (which also, curiously, seemed to also hint at the future development of the church itself);
2. Do away with all this, rendering his parable weaker, for... what benefit again? Pleasing a few smartass reddit types a few centuries in the future, which He in His infinite knowledge knew would just nitpick some other verse?
You're on a literature board. Would (You) purposefully contaminate your writing with autistic literalism just to placate this kind of adolescent pettiness? It's fine if you're an non believer, but you're an adult, so act like it, make so that your qualms with christianity are less embarrassing

>>25353925
This but unironically

>>25355029
>erm he said something untrue but it's okay because his audience is retarded
You don't even know how true this is.

>>25355029
It's hilarious to me that the all-powerful creator of the entire world has to have his messiah dumb down his stories so that illiterate jews can understand child-level observations...and that millennia later, people still defend it lol.

>>25355038
Christianity was the world's most successful psyop. Jews believe that worshipping a prophet as divine is one of the only things that can prevent you from going to the afterlife, so basically billions of people have been conned into adopting Jewish morality, Jewish texts, and worshipping the origin of the Jewish people as divine, all without the possibility of going to the afterlife Jews believe in.
And the funniest thing is, the anti-semetic ones genuinely believe that being a christcuck is owning the Jews because a few centuries after the religion took hold, they persecuted Jews for not worshipping the prophet like they do.

>>25355034
>>25355038
You know you don't have to reply when you're unconvinced but still have nothing substantial to say
It'd have been a lot more dignified if the lot of you simply hadn't responded instead of stomping your feet

>>25355052
>please stop rubbing it in

>>25355052
You posted cope that your Lord and Saviour, the only man without sin, in fact said something demonstrably untrue but it's okay because his audience was too stupid to know any better.

You would be so much better off just saying:
>well this was a human recording of what he said written somewhere between 90-110 years after he said it, so the writer is probably just incorrect
But you can't because if the book isn't magic there's no reason to believe in any of it

You'll get there one day buddy

>>25355047
Christianity was a response to roman barbarity.

>>25353874
'guys... i think bible wrong'
yea man this isnt new

if you actually want some silly religious stuff look no further than islam and mormons.

>>25355065
>in fact said something demonstrably untrue but it's okay because his audience was too stupid to know any better
That's a distortion right there
Maybe it would have been the case if a parable had the same objectives as treaty on botanical taxonomy, but it doesn't. Earlier on I pointed out that Jesus might not have been worried about details of botany instead of strengthening the parable as seen in this post >>25354492, but elaborating on that, the parable belongs to a completely different mode of discourse than the treaty or journal or whatever and thus has different expectations when it comes to truthfulness, and a different set of adequate criteria for criticism
If you have any familiarity with Aristotle, I can illustrate it by pointing out that the parable lives in poetics and rhetoric, thus operating with what is truthful symbolically or phenomenologically, so to say; it operates within what is credible and accepted as truthful to an audience (endoxa), whereas the treaty would belong to analytics. Criticizing any of the modes of discourse in the light of any other is madness, it's like criticizing music through the lenses of architecture. Put simply you're doing a category error, but while we're at it, here's a challenge for you: demonstrate why a parable needs to be truthful in the realm of all the sciences rather than truthful symbolically, in the realm of endoxa. Try it. You can't. Any atheist that can actually engage with text (think Terry Eagleton) would never criticize scripture this shallowly by making such an elementary mistake, but here we are on literature forum and somehow we have people still struggling with what usages of language are appropriate to each mode of discourse

>>25355179
What's interesting is that even if you somehow concede that a parable must be also analytic, that every single word in a parable must be literally true at the same time it is symbolically true, and that Jesus was thus making a regular, human mistake in describing the mustard seed as the smallest, there are still theological angles from which you can defend this.
C. S. Lewis, for instance, would have no problem with it, since he saw the incarnation of Christ as a true incarnation in all senses, that is, once Christ became truly human rather than something else with the appearance of a human, he assumed human limitations, including partial knowledge of the world. We know for a fact that he felt pain and hunger and thirst.

Here's Lewis in "The World's Last Night":
>It would be difficult, and, to me, repellent, to suppose that Jesus never asked a genuine question, that is, a question to which he did not know the answer. That would make of his humanity something so unlike ours as scarcely to deserve the name. I find it easier to believe that when he said "Who touched me?" (Luke 7:45) he really wanted to know.

I don't personally believe this angle, but of course I can toy with the idea in my head and work out its consequences without personally believing in it, and of course it does double duty as a possible answer for OP's query.

>>25355179
>Maybe it would have been the case if a parable had the same objectives as treaty on botanical taxonomy
Nigga you don't get it
IF YOU DON'T MEAN TO SAY THAT MUSTARD SEEDS ARE THE SMALLEST SEEDS, DON'T SAY THAT THEY ARE
It's that fucking easy. Choose a different seed, just don't say they're the smallest when they're not- any of these would be fine
Better yet, accept that the bible is not infallible and that it could be a misquote, if you still want to cling to Rabbi Yeshua being God on Earth

It's unreal the fucking knots you will tie yourself into to justify a small mistake in your special book.

>>25355199
>there are still theological angles from which you can defend this.
There always will be when you are blinded by faith.

>>25355213
>>25355216
>IF YOU DON'T MEAN TO SAY THAT MUSTARD SEEDS ARE THE SMALLEST SEEDS, DON'T SAY THAT THEY ARE
Why not? Why do you think I specifically asked you to "demonstrate why a parable needs to be truthful in the realm of all the sciences rather than truthful symbolically, in the realm of endoxa"? Again, that's just a demand (You) make as a modern reader living in an age in which the analytic mode is taken as more prestigious than any other. And you also have to be autistic
In any case, no educated reader treating the text with any modicum of good faith can make fall into this kind of mistake. Moving on...
>Better yet, accept that the bible is not infallible and that it could be a misquote, if you still want to cling to Rabbi Yeshua being God on Earth
I have no opinion on whether the Bible is infallible or not. In fact I have my qualms with some of the historicity of the old testament if you must know, but this whole discussion is about the parable of the mustard seeds in particular, not about the infallibility of scripture in general
>It's unreal the fucking knots you will tie yourself into to justify a small mistake in your special book.
It's not that complicated, all that yapping about Aristotle's mode of discourses is just development of the rather simple idea that you made a category error by criticizing an example one genre with an unfit criteria
>There always will be when you are blinded by faith.
You can do better than that. I'd rather you addressed C.S. Lewis' point instead of throwing out this cliché of an one liner

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>>25353874
How do you know they weren't the smallest at the time?

>>25355229
>Why not?
Because it's not true you fucking dent
>demonstrate why a parable needs to be truthful
>IT'S A STORY SO IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE TRUUUUUUE!!!!!1
There doesn't really need to be a fucking mustard seed for the story to work as a parable, but saying the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds is not a fucking artistic liberty, it's just incorrect.
It would be like if in the story of the scorpion and the frog you said that the scorpion flapped its wings and flew away. If you wanted it to fly away you'd pick a fucking flying animal and not a scorpion.
Same problem.

You have to deprogram your reddit debate bullshit, or just fucking die, I don't care which

>>25355252
You are in no position to accuse others of being redditors kek

>>25355256
>gave up even trying to fight his corner
Oof

>>25353883
His cult arose after the rumors he rose from the dead, he had very few (but faithfully devoted) followers as an alive spirit healer megalomaniac.

People were enchanted by the possibility of human immortality, not the presence of the “son of god”.

>>25355252
Pathetic show mate

>>25355252
>There doesn't really need to be a fucking mustard seed for the story to work as a parable
Again it's not a matter of necessity but of appropriateness, read >>25355029 again
If you think you can criticize the appropriateness of the imagery employed in a parable that has remained rich for a few thousand years, go ahead... if you were a good writer who could pick the perfect words for illustrating fleeting truths, we'd all have noticed by now.
>but saying the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds is not a fucking artistic liberty, it's just incorrect
I never said it was an artistic liberty you absolute cretin, what I said is that a statement being incorrect in the realm of analytics matters little when you're dealing with a text outside that realm. The different modes of discourse target different realities, or rather, truth from different angles. You have done absolutely no progress in demonstrating why a parable should choose to refer to factual, scientific reality rather than the shared reality and "horizon of plausibility", so to say, held by the audience. That's exactly the domain in which the symbol of the mustard seed as the smallest seed lives. It doesn't need to be true as scientific statement which warrants refutation, that was never the intention: it was true as symbol, and the parable employed this "truth as symbol" to illustrate some other truth, to illuminate the audience, and this is how you treat texts that are not confined to analytics. I don't know how many times I'll have to spell this out in different ways until hopefully it clicks for you, but what you call "not true" is just the application of one criteria meant for a certain form of discourse (analytic) to a different one, hence why I called it a category error. The cutest thing is that, even if somehow it were a problem that Jesus was mistaken about the mustard seed or whatever, which again I don't care for, I don't really care about botany minutiae in a parable, you'd still have to wrestle with this >>25355199

>It would be like if in the story of the scorpion and the frog you said that the scorpion flapped its wings and flew away.
This is an awful comparison, because the scorpion flying away with wings does not exist as a possibility in the factual world (analytics) and also does not exist as a possibility in the shared horizon of plausibility for the audience, which is where texts of the poetic or rhetoric mode operate and parables live, while the mustard seed being the smallest seed is incorrect from the point of analytics but perfectly acceptable from the point of rhetoric or poetics.

>>25355374
You are the biggest pseudo-intellectual on the planet and I guarantee you think you're always right because you don't realize that you just spew so much fucking bullshit and sling words you think sound complex that no one can be bothered to keep arguing with you

>>25355418
This is /lit/. You don't have to tell me I'm a pseud, it's a rule of the game
In any case, I'm not the one with the immense arrogance of thinking I've found a glaring, deal-breaking flaw in the most studied body of text in history.

>>25355287
That was my first post itt

>>25355462
>I'm not the one with the immense arrogance of thinking I've found a glaring, deal-breaking flaw in the most studied body of text in history.
There are literally thousands of those. Would you like to talk about inconsistencies between the gospels buddy?
>Matthew and Luke give different genealogies of Jesus (both include Joseph, so none of this "one is for his mother and one is his father!" bullshit)
>Matthew has M&J already in Bethlehem from the start with no mention of a census, Luke has them travel from Nazareth for a census
>consequently Matthew says magi entered a house to visit Jesus, whereas Luke says Jesus was born in a manger (so could be stable or cave for housing animals) and visited by shepherds
>Matthew says it was during the reign of Herod, Luke says it was Quirinius, who we know to have been governor of Syria 10 years AFTER Herod and his son were ousted
>Matthew says there was a massacre of infants, Luke fails to mention this which seems important
>Matthew says the family fled to Egypt the night Jesus was born to avoid said massacre and didn't return to Judea until Herod died, Luke says Jesus was presented at the temple in Judea 40 days after he was born (in accordance with Leviticus)

We don't even need to go into the fact that historically there is no record of a massacre of infants under Herod nor a census under Quirinius. Just attempt to reconcile the fact that the gospels tell 2 different stories that cannot align. I'd particularly like you to reconcile Herod and Quirinius. Herod died 4BCE and Quirinius became governor 6CE

>>25355532
I don't think you understand what inconsistency means

>>25355535
>2 versions of the same event in my magic book say it either happened before 4BCE or at least 10 years after that date
>who was in charge at the time has drastic implications for what happens in the story and where Jesus and his family are
>this is not an inconsistency
Subhuman IQ

>>25353915
He said I AM THAT I AM, which is jewspeak for I'm god

>>25355532
You're derailing from the thread topic but you're gonna get one last reply
>There are literally thousands of those.
There really aren't, not in the sense I meant by "deal-breaker", which went over your head because don't think about what you're reading
See, there has been quite an enormous amount of scholars, both non-believers and believers, who have dedicated their lives to studying the thing, many of which were brilliant... I'm thinking Stanley Jaki, Girard, Lemaitre off the top of my head. To believe that in poring over the scriptures (or some secondary literature) you somehow managed to find something that they haven't seen, some argument that is such an ample proof that it should always produce unbelief (in case you're a non-believer) or belief (in case you're a christian apologist) is of unbelievable arrogance. It is lunacy to suggest that the people I mentioned are completely unfamiliar with, for instance, the fuckton of old testament claims that are unreasonable and not historically attestable. Of course these may lead some people to unbelief, but the fact is that the ones I mentioned remained believers despite those qualms, which might suggest that those aren't quite the deal-breakers you believe them to be... unless you presume that, actually, all of these people are not really brilliant, or maybe they're just too stubborn to concede, and that you and your new-atheist peers hold some ultimate truth, the silver bullet against faith. Do you see how arrogant this is?
The broader issue is that, when you run across a piece of information that convinces you, whether towards belief or unbelief, there's always the temptation of believing you've extracted some quality that is inherent to the text, such that anyone else not recognizant of it is either stupid or self-deceiving, rather than (You) in particular being quite impressed with a piece of text and having the pretension your impression be made universal. Put shortly, to think you're talking about the inherent quality of a piece of text itself that when really you're talking about yourself and the impression it made on you, demanding others be as impressed.
But I don't have this pretension. I don't expect my defense of the parable to make anyone believe in the broader gospels. What I cared for was that my defense of that verse, and only of that verse, had been correct. I hope you're some guy who didn't follow the discussion until now, instead of the same guy attempting to save face after being pwned earlier on by pivoting into historicity, but I don't really know why you're running with that line of argumentation as if you were pulling the rug under my feet or something since on some previous post I said I don't really subscribe to bible infallibility (see >>25355229). Even if I did, come on now, I don't owe you endless apologetics on all subjects, fuck off... I joined the thread to discuss a parable, remember when this was about mustard seeds?

>>25355624
>There are literally thousands of those.
There really aren't, not in the sense I meant by "deal-breaker"
If you don't think the fact that the origin of the savior's birth has 2 different versions in the same book is a dealbreaker- I genuinely don't know what to say, that's just wilful ignorance at that point.

Matthew and Luke tell 2 completely different stories and they can't both be true
Either
>Mary and Joseph lived in Bethlehem under Herod 1 (i.e. before 4BCE), there was a massacre of infants, and they fled to Egypt and did not return until they received news that Herod was dead
Or
>Mary and Joseph lived in Nazareth and travelled to Bethlehem for a census taken under Qurinius (i.e 6CE onwards), where they had no reason to flee from anything and presented Jesus at the temple in Judea the customary 40 days after he was born

Write as many walls of text as you want to excuse yourself from having to confront this problem, it won't be persuasive.

>>25353874
Because even the all-powerful, all-knowing God could not imagine someone so stupid and autistic as to take that statement hyperliterally and not as a figure of speech for mustard seeds being really small.

>>25355642
>le bible is the holy inerrant word of God...except when it's demonstrably wrong, then you're not supposed to take it literally
An absolute 00s apologetics classic

>>25355644
You are never supposed to take anything in the English language, including the Bible, as literally as OP did.
That's not fallibility. That's just having actual autism.

>>25355646
I would love for you to explain in what way you are supposed to interpret the phrase "...a mustard seed ...Though it is the smallest of all seeds..." in any other way than "this speaker is saying the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds"
If you're here to just give us another verse of "it's okay if he said something inaccurate because it doesn't change the meaning of the parable" like >>25355179 then kindly don't

>>25353874
Jesus wasn't a pedantic autist like you are. He was just trying to make a point.

/lit/ needs to be nuked, genuinely. This may be one of the lowest IQ boards at this point.

>>25355659
I don't know, I find it almost impressive the bullshit people will come up with to avoid admitting that either God on Earth doesn't know what the smallest seed is or that the writers of the bible didn't know

>>25355655
You realize your entire argument here is predicated on you going
>well ACKSHUALLY
Like come on now I can smell your b.o. from here

>>25355661
I legit think you should kill yourself dawg, how about that? quit shitting up the board with your asinine threads.

>>25355655
Is it at least the smallest seed of those found in Jesus life, place, and time? If not then there's no wiggle room at all imo

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>>25355540
No he didn't. He said ego eimi a few times, which is more grammatically normal in the Greek than some English translations make it out to be. A deeper meaning is definitely implied in a couple cases, but the deeper meaning doesn't have to be referring to the Exodus story.

And even if you insist it is referring back to the Exodus story, that by itself still isn't necessarily him claiming to be God in the full sense, because it can also be understood as him intimating his possession of the divine name, which he mentions having been given in John 17. If someone had to be given God's name, the plain implication is that it wasn't always theirs. They either earned it, as in Phillipians 2 (there's an argument that Paul thought of Jesus as an exalted angel) or they inherited it, as in Hebrews 1 (the author of Hebrews argues against the belief that Jesus is an angel, but he doesn't substitute him being an angel with him being God. Instead he leaves Jesus in a unique intermediary position.) See also picrel.

Admittedly, Jesus implying that he's second only to God isn't much of an improvement on the egotism front. But that's John's Jesus. If you think Jesus was a historical person, you should probably look to the earlier Mark, where Jesus is better about keeping his power level under wraps, and he might be understood as not even the Son of God in the full sense, but as an ordinary human who became half-possessed by the spirit of the Son of God. That fits better with his family calling him crazy and him shouting about being forsaken on the cross.

>>25355669
See you want to be angry at me but in reality you're angry at your own religion and you're lashing out at me for making you feel that way.

You're stuck. Your magic book says something blatantly untrue and there is no way out because it came from the supposed embodiment of the creator of the whole universe himself.
Now you have two choices, you can make a concession and decide that even though your book says something laughably untrue, it was written by fallible human authors who simply made a mistake, or you can kick and scream until your dying day that you know for a fact God himself just didn't think it mattered.

>>25355687
Well, poppies for one. And oregano. Both native to the Med and the near east. But I'd go with poppies because their seeds have been used in food and medicine for literal millennia, going back about 4000BCE in the region.
Poppy seeds are about half the size of mustard seeds

>>25355701
I am angry that you are shitting up the board with your autism

Take your euphoria and your fedora elsewhere

>>25355703
I'll go as soon as you explain how God on Earth did not know that poppy seeds are smaller than mustard seeds

>>25354965
>The most accurate translation is smallest.
No, it's not. It's inaccurate and is a mistake. The Greek is μικρότερον which is the same word used in Luke 7:48:
>For I say unto you, Among those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist: but he that is LEAST in the kingdom of God is greater than he.
It's not talking about the physical size of John the Baptist. Same goes for the mustard seed.

>Don't quote the fucking KJV if you're going to pretend to care about the accuracy of translation, for another
Name one inaccuracy in the KJV.

>>25355760
>the meaning of a word changes depending on whether it is referring to a person or an object? I'M GOING INSANE AIIIIIIIEEEEEEE
You right now

>>25355760
matthew:
>ὃ μικρότερον μέν ἐστιν πάντων τῶν σπερμάτων
>"which is smaller than all the seeds"
mark:
>μικρότερον ὂν πάντων τῶν σπερμάτων τῶν ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς
>"being smaller than all the seeds upon the earth"

Did you think no one would check?

>>25355774
Did you not get my point? I'm saying that translation is inaccurate. Here is the correct translation of Matthew 13:31:
>Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.
Do you not understand the Biblical significance of being least/greatest?

>>25355771
Biblically illiterate, just as expected.

Thought this was bait but OP seems to be responding seriously to objections. OP, have you considered that Jesus' preaching is a rhetorical oratory style intended to teach moral and not scientific lessons? Are you 14?

>>25355775
>NOOOO TRUST MY TRANSLATION! MINE MINE MINE MINE!
Lol why would I trust your translation when the evidence says you're wrong?
>>25355778
Samefag

>>25355794
You have been addressed >>25355213

>>25355815
Why should we trust your translation when you've just given us evidence that it has a mistake? Obviously we can't trust the translation that you have provided. Now, give me the evidence for why my translation is wrong and explain why it is wrong.

>>25355823
I acknowledged that it can mean "lesser" but that is context dependent. It would not make sense in this context because there is nothing about the quality of mustard seeds that makes them lesser. Jesus is not suggesting that they are inferior or in some way overlooked, he is in fact making a comparison of size when his entire point is that a small seed grows into a large tree.
>Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree
You have now repeatedly said the word does not mean smaller when it's literally the root word of the prefix "micro"

TL;DR you're a fucking retard.

>>25355829
It IS context dependent. What is going on in the entire chapter of Matthew 13? Parables, you magnificent retard. I'm betting you have zero clue what that particular parable is even talking about in the first place. As a matter of fact, tell me what that parable is about, so I know what I'm dealing with here. I will be looking forward to your answer.

The supreme irony here is that you belong in the group of Matthew 13:10-15.

>>25355845
>durrrrrr is a parable so none of it real therefore it mean lesser even though he's literally word for work making an example about size
I give up, kill yourself and spare the world your retardation holy fucking shit

I'm not even a christcuck but this type of reddit autism is just stupid. The point is that something that starts out small can grow into something much larger, even a 5 year old can understand the metaphor.
>but it's not literally the smallest seed!
This genuinely how autistic people think and they're retarded for it. There's much better critiques of Christianity than this.

>>25355856
>The point is that something that starts out small can grow into something much larger, even a 5 year old can understand the metaphor.
That would be fine if it weren't the literal manifestation of god on earth you fucking moron. I'm well fucking aware it means "small thing grow big!!!!!" there was no fucking reason to therefore say smallEST thing grow big when supposedly you're the fucking creator of the entire universe and would know it's not the smallest seed.
IT'S ALMOST AS IF IT WAS SPOKEN/WRITTEN BY GOD OR SOMETHING
If you don't get that the point here is that it was written by someone who did not know that the mustard seed is not the smallest of all seeds, it's actually you that is autistic

>>25355853
>I give up
I accept your concession of defeat. Have a nice day.

>>25355865
Beg me to let you have the last word redditfag

>>25355863
kys screeching autist.

>>25355818
How is that addressing it? You're just repeating yourself

If I wrote a poem saying the sea was the deepest blue and you came up and said no you see its scientifically impossible because our theory of colours dictates that the deepest blue is deeper than any water could be and I said well listen it's a poem it's true in a different way than a scientific theory and you're judging it unfairly but then you retorted well you could've just not said it was the deepest blue if it wasn't that wouldn't be "addressing" it

>>25355658
Like 90% of all slander against the Bible is just insane pedantry like this. OP's whole premise is that God wouldn't talk like a normal person for some reason even though He was speaking to a specific race of people localised in a rather small country and not a global audience. All you can really do when faced with such rank stupidity is thank Jesus for making His enemies so dumb.

>>25355856
>There's much better critiques of Christianity than this
Unfortunately for you that is not the case. I've heard them all, and OP's deranged statement is as brilliant as the best of them.

>>25355888
>be me
>God
>incarnated in 1st Century Palestine
>chuds everywhere
>mfw these people don't even know about mechanised agriculture or women's rights
>head to the synagogue
>ignorant rabbi preaching about leprosy
>claims it's incurable
>"ermmm, sorry to burst your bubble chud, but according to (Wang et. al, 2014), leprosy is easily cured by an application of synthetically derived immunoglobulin"
>baffled.png
>push him aside
>proceed to give lecture on alternating currents in motors and transformers
>invent new jargon that doesn't exist yet
>refuse to elaborate
>leave

>>25355856
He’s not confused, he’s here to waste your time

>>25353916
Might have been more prevalent in ancient times, with pharaohs and emperors being called gods.

>>25355877
>You're just repeating yourself
Yeah that's what happens when your retarded bullshit has been deboonked
>i-i-it's just poetry
You autists are fucking obsessed with this shit. If God on Earth said the sea was fucking piss yellow in a story where the color of the sea is irrelevant, he would be wrong. Poetry, metaphor, parable, none of that excuse a mistake because the mistake isn't pertinent to the fucking message. God cannot be wrong, so that's a fucking problem.
Again, all he had to do was NOT say something verifiably untrue. He could tell the exact same fucking story with the exact same fucking meaning and just say that mustard seeds are small instead of saying they are the smallest of all seeds.

Either God is wrong or the people who wrote your magic book are wrong, deal with it.

>>25355888
>>25355895
Go ahead and reconcile the inconsistencies of the gospel if you want a challenge >>25355532

>>25355909
>alternating currents in motors and transformers
we could make a religion out of this!

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>/lit/ - Literature
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literature: Literature is any collection of written work. The term is also used more narrowly for writings considered an art form, especially novels, plays, and poems. It includes both print and digital writing In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include oral literature, much of which has been transcribed. Literature is a method of recording, preserving, and transmitting knowledge and entertainment. It can also have a social, psychological, spiritual, or political role.
>OP: Ah, I see, the point of the literature board is to host autistic religious slapfighting

>>25354010
>It's only on matters of faith and morals
What about all the times the church changed its mind?

>>25356888
>noooooo you're not allowed to talk about the meaning of the most published book on the entire planet on /lit/!!!!! this board is for me to jerk off GRRM!!!!

>>25356917
Go back >>>/his/

>>25353886
>>25353915
Retarded jew lol
>>25355324
>People were enchanted by the possibility of human immortality, not the presence of the “son of god”.
Source: Your tranny asshole.

>>25353931
>It's all human stories!
>But not evolution, definitely.
Kek, how do atheists even cope with the cognitive dissonance?

>>25357085
What worthless bait

>>25357164
The amount of evidence for consciousness emerging out of dead, inanimate matter: Zero.

>>25357171
The evidence is that it happened. Not to you, apparently, but for the rest of us.

>>25357176
You literally believe in creation ex nihilo LMAO

>>25357179
>erm there is no evidence for consciousness translating into dead matter, therefore the grim reaper is real

>>25357183
Babble

>>25357191
>0 argument
Concession accepted

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>>25357176
It happened because God planted countless infinitesimal seeds of consciousness in matter, and the seeds use biological organisms as temporary vessels for maturing into their adult forms as immortal angelic beings.

>>25357253
Oh cool, your evidence for that?

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>>25357259
I considered the possibility and then instantly believed it. If you remain unpersuaded after considering it yourself, then I'm sorry for your loss.

>>25357266
Personally I'm pretty sure that actually we were made from the tears of the god Atum who wept when reunited with his children, but if you wanna believe in your Jew god and shit that's cool

>>25357283
Enjoy Aaru.

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>>25355888
>>25355909
I mean, that's great and all but poppies are also native to the Mediterranean and Near East, have been used in food and medicine since at least 4000BC and have seeds half the size of mustard seeds
So it's not like Jesus was dumbing himself down for an audience that wouldn't know what he was talking about, he just said mustard seeds are the smallest of all seeds in a region where people would constantly see and consume seeds that are half that size

Wow christcucks really took an L in this thread huh?

>>25353874
how is this related to /lit/?

>>25358045
>how is the most published book in human history related to /lit/?
Why don’t you take as long as you need to think about it?

>>25355532
>Luke says it was Quirinius
wasnt he assigned to do the census and later promoted to governor ?

>>25356883
>>i-i-it's just poetry
It's not poetry, it's a parable, a different literary/rhetorical genre, but both genres are similarly indifferent to scientific exactitude.

>>25354010
The meaning/Logos is infallible but it's mediated through fallible humans and their tools like human words.

How about instead of talking about what allegories Jesus used, you instead focus on all the descriptions of physical reality that the Bible gets wrong that aren't allegorical, like saying that the earth was encased in the firmament (something copied from mesopotamian mythology), calling the Moon a source of light, ect. Or is every factual inaccuracy in the Bible an allegory?

>>25358373
The moon is a source of light and the structure of the firmament is a product of gravity. An observation isn't false just because it's missing information. Just like Newton presented divinely inspired truth even though his model was incomplete.

It sucks that atheism is taking off again after a brief Christian fad. It’s so much less comfy and everyone is so hostile and bitter. Can’t we just say god exists? I’d rather live in that world. And I’m not interested in your snooty dissertation about delusions and how clever you are

>>25358303
No because there is no record of any census at the time in the first place
It specifically says it was during the REIGN of Quirinius
And if you could reconcile this somehow (which you can’t) the fictitious massacre under Herod is key to the story as it caused Jesus’s family to flee to Egypt which doesnt come up at all in the other version

>biblical literalism
>Mythical Jesus conspiracies
Thought I was on /his/ for a second

>>25359020
>interpreting “mustard seeds are the smallest of all seeds” to mean “mustard seeds are the smallest of all seeds” is biblical literalism now
Oh shit man, I guess we’re going to have to start from 0. That passage where it says Jesus and his disciples ate the last supper? I guess it wasn’t actually their last supper together, maybe they didn’t even eat, it was all a metaphor, fuuuuuck

>>25359029
It was the last supper of his Earthly ministry, yeah. If they sup in the Kingdom to come, it won't make that statement untrue. Statements usually relate to the situations they're set in. It is legitimately a sign of autism to expect a sentence to have universal validity regardless of the context. Though you're right that this is beyond literalism, this is just poor reading comprehension altogether.

>>25359046
Go ahead and explain how mustard seeds are the smallest of all seeds then. Youre bullshit “it was symbolic!!!” Has already been addressed here: >>25357305

>>25353874
As far back as I remember, even as a little kid, I always read the parable as having an implied "among." That is:
>The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is [among] the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is [among] the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”
I imagined it was left out because it was more poetic that way and it was sufficiently obvious to anyone hearing that technically there were smaller seeds, as >>25355701 indicates with regard to poppy seeds and oregano.

I'm not a Christian anymore, but I think Christians and non-Christians alike have to accept that the Bible isn't and for the most part was never intended to be a science and math textbook. IIRC there's a place where it implies that pi is 3, or at least that 3 is a good enough approximation in some context. But whether the Bible being technically wrong about lots of things makes it too worthless to sustain a worthwhile religion and spiritual worldview is up to you.

>>25359053
It was symbolic. For a tiny singular item growing into a massive stable axis.
>poppies
Ah yes, tiny things growing into small things. Not quite on the money lol
>but poppy "seeds"
The parable is about field work, which Matthew actually points out. Mishnah treat mustard seeds as agricultural whereas poppy, sesame and other seeds as a separate category altogether and not necessarily fit for the farmer context Jesus selected.

Now I would love it if you compared the product of your inquiry to what you hoped to learn. What was actually the best case scenario, the sought-after insight that you hoped to get by challenging botanical ranking of mustard seeds?

One thing I always remember from my religious studies is how the teacher said that this is not about the small growing into something big, but the small already containing the big.

>>25359130
Congrats you made the same mistake every retard christcuck has made
>erm it's just a metaphor!

Yah, and the metaphor still works when you say a mustard seed is small and grows into something big. It does not require you to say a mustard seed is the smallEST of all seeds
Do you see the problem you genuine retard?

>Mishnah treat mustard seeds as agricultural whereas poppy, sesame and other seeds as a separate category altogether
Citation? Needed
Relevance? Zero

>>25359162
I didn't justify the quantification with a metaphor. I justified it with agricultural context in Jewish terms. Which is the context of the verse.
That it's symbolic (and perhaps metaphorical) was to show how unfitting poppy seeds are.

>>25359188
>erm Jesus meant the smallest of AGRICULTURAL seeds and poppies don't count!!!!
Poppies were cultivated for agriculture. Your argument collapses, so sad :(

>>25359236
My argument didn't rely on poppies being foreign to agriculture in general.

You will get it on your third attempt, don't give up :)

>>25359251
Kek you are SEETHING, thinking you can just dance around and as long as I don't tag you, you win
You're not cut out for this site lmao fuck off back to r*ddit

>>25359254
Fourth time is the charm. The argument was >>25359130

>>25353874
>the mustard seed was proverbially the smallest seed used in agriculture in the area
Word used was "mikroteron" which does not mean absolute smallest but comparatively smaller, as in one of the smaller of all seeds.
Irrelevant to the meaning so a reader focusing on this ambiguity in English translations is revealing he has no interest in discerning meaning from the text, just being a retarded shithead.

>>25359261
>okay you already debunked my bullshit but if i just keep insisting you didn't and acting smug, then I can tell myself I won!
lol pigeon on a chessboard

>>25359290
>Word used was "mikroteron" which does not mean absolute smallest but comparatively smaller, as in one of the smaller of all seeds.
Yeah nah we've had this one debunked already

>>25359302
I'll leave the counter at 4 since you have not addressed my argument in your last post.
>he thought context is a chess match lmaooo

>>25359308
It isn't and I explained how you're retarded on three different layers, the most important one being the layer where you don't care what anything actually means. You're actively trying to avoid being literate.

>>25359319
Make the counter 10,000 if it helps you cope

>>25359324
Nah. It means smallest, it's translated as smallest. One faggot tried to argue in this context it means "least" which is retarded because he's directly speaking about how big the tree it makes is rather than the quality of the seed. But saying it means "ONE OF the smallest" is new levels of cope.
We're just wading into "language can mean anything I want!!!!" territory where you personally claim to have a more accurate translation of a word than every linguist who has ever studied ancient greek in any capacity.

I'll leave you with a quote that might resonate with you
>"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less."
>"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

>>25359340
Weird but ok... you tried to address a clarification 10,000 times.

Anway, thanks for the interaction, Anon. You know in your heart how this went ;)

>>25359369
>pppppllllllrrrrrrrrffff plop
Thanks for the contribution lil buddy