Mormonism is not "Christianity"

[_Milesius]

On a corporeal deity, I would point to the following:

Let's be clear: Some Christians (Tertullian, for example) believed God was corporeal because they believed souls were corporeal. That is a far cry from Mormonism's "Exalted Man," with " a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's," living in the vicinity of the starbase Kolob.

[_Milesius]

Ehrman is a perfectly good source.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, as this poster routinely demonstrates.

[_Milesius]

My comment was meant to point out that any definition of "Christian" that relies on the creeds as foundational criteria unilaterally excludes the earliest Christians.

Using the creeds as foundational criteria unilaterally excludes the authors of New Testament?

(I don't rely on the creeds as foundational criteria, myself, but what you've written, mak, just is what begging the question looks like in practice.)

Maklelan does not have a firm grasp of what begging the question actually entails.

[_Milesius]

You are full of it. Take the Apostles' Creed and append to it the following anathema:

But those who say God the Father has one or more wives, is "a man like one of you," that He "dwelt on an earth the same as Jesus Christ himself did," "work[ed] out his kingdom with fear and trembling," or that "the mind of man is as immortal as God himself," let him be anathema.

The Apostle's Creed doesn't address any of this.

Hence the word append. The point is that it is not difficult to produce a legitimate definition or creed of Christianity that excludes Mormonism but includes Early Christians.

[_maklelan]

OK.
You may be true, You should be true, You are true - from Your English-speaking and English-thinking viewpoint.

I don't think this kind of pigeonholing is merited. I've taught the Bible on three different continents, in five different countries, and in three different languages. I have studied it in another three and I can read and/or speak an additional three. I'm well aware of America's ethnocentrism.

- pre-critical translation?
The Hungarian Károli Bible or Vizsoly Bible is 21 years more pre-critical (1590 vs 1611) and I know most of the significant differences of Karoli and King James.

I don't see how this bears on my statements at all. I was appealing to an early translation I knew the other person would be familiar with and would respect.

(As one of my grandfathers was of German origin, I know that language a little, so I know the Luther one, 56 years more older...)

I also have and have read the Lutherbibel. My wife served her mission in Germany, Munich/Austria, so she knows it as well, although I believe the LDS Church now uses the Emser Bibel.

Does textual criticism produce less precise result? Worse ones?

Less precise results than what? I don't understand what you're getting at.

- traditional?
I don't like this word. It can mean anything.

No, it can't mean "anything." It can mean multiple things, but here I am using it to mean that an number of Protestant groups are firmly rooted in the KJV tradition.

Traditionally, most of North-America was British colony.
Traditionally, Hungary was part of Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy.
I don't know Your opinion about the former, but - according to economic crisis - we would be in better position as member of the monarchy, with less independence...

I don't know how this bears on the discussion.

- skeptical and liberal?
I can't decode this. For You these words have negative connotation. I have the opposite.

No, they don't have negative connotations for me. I am both skeptical and liberal and believe those are good things. I was aping the rhetoric I was criticizing.

[_maklelan]

Keep it up. ludwigm.

One of the reason why many well-meaning and basically nice people from the US (that's only 5% of the world's population) irritate other people without meaning to is that they find it very very hard to see that their points of view are often heavily conditioned by unexamined cultural assumptions and English linguistic bias.

Someone from Hungary (or some other small nation whose language and culture stop at its historically changeable land frontiers) is much more likely to be sensitive to such things. We need more people like that on this board.

I'm quite sensitive to cultural assumptions and linguistic bias. I don't see that either has been pointed out in my post. If you disagree, please feel free to point to the specific comments that evince it.

[_maklelan]

Nonsense. They are made to do obeisance.

The verb is proskuneo, which is used more in Revelation than any other book, and means religious worship in absolutely every occurrence. The author of Revelation never uses the word in the secular sense, and you cannot assert such is the case here without circular reasoning. There's no other reading that's justified here. This is further supported by the Aramaic 4Q246, which has a similar eschatological bent and states that the nations will worship the people of God.

The Son of Man receives worship, but not the worship proper to God alone.

In the New Testament the only word for worship that is used for God and never for the Son of Man is latreuo, which is the word that appears in the Old Greek of Dan 7:14. Did you have an additional kind of worship mentioned as appropriate only for God and not for the Son of Man?

Josephus, Jewish War 1.128

As soon, therefore, as he was come into the country, there came ambassadors from both the brothers, each of them desiring his assistance; but Aristobulus's three hundred talents had more weight with him than the justice of the cause; which sum, when Scaurus had received, he sent a herald to Hyrcanus and the Arabians, and threatened them with the resentment of the Romans and of Pompey, unless they would raise the siege. So Aretas was terrified, and retired out of Judea to Philadelphia, as did Scaurus return to Damascus again; nor was Aristobulus satisfied with escaping [out of his brother's hands,] but gathered all his forces together, and pursued his enemies, and fought them at a place called Papyron, and slew about six thousand of them, and, together with them Antipater's brother Phalion.

http://perseus.uchicago.edu/perseus-cgi ... BJ%201.128

Yeah, that really helps your case.

That was my mistake. It's War 2.128. Here's the Greek (Whiston's translation is quite problematic):

πρὶν γὰρ ἀνασχεῖν τὸν ἥλιον οὐδὲν φθέγγονται τῶν βεβήλων, πατρίους δέ τινας εἰς αὐτὸν εὐχὰς ὥσπερ ἱκετεύοντες ἀνατεῖλαι.

Here's a more recent translation that pays attention to the αὐτὸν:

Before the sun rises, they utter nothing of the mundane things, but only certain ancestral prayers to him, as if begging him to come up.

Pure flatulence. They were effusively honored and praised, but not worshiped.

The language here is used elsewhere in contexts of worship. This one is on the cusp, but an argument can be made for it being worship.

[_maklelan]

Let's be clear: Some Christians (Tertullian, for example) believed God was corporeal because they believed souls were corporeal.

Way off base. You obviously haven't bothered to read any of the scholarship I cited.

That is a far cry from Mormonism's "Exalted Man," with " a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's," living in the vicinity of the starbase Kolob.

My point was never to say the first century Christians were proto-Mormons. My point was to show that the ideologies of the first century CE were quite drastically different from those of the second century on.

[_maklelan]

Maklelan does not have a firm grasp of what begging the question actually entails.

Then you can explain exactly what about my comment was begging the question, can't you? I wait with bated breath.

[_maklelan]

Hence the word append. The point is that it is not difficult to produce a legitimate definition or creed of Christianity that excludes Mormonism but includes Early Christians.

You'll have to forgive me. I had assumed you paid attention to what I wrote and so did not think you actually intended to say that one just had to append an additional criterion that is ostensibly aimed directly at excluding Mormonism. Y'see, my comment was that no definition could be produced that did not exclude early Christians, beg the question, or both. When your definition requires the addition of a specific anathema on ostensibly Mormon doctrines, you are begging the question in about the most flagrant manner I can imagine. I will not again make the mistake of assuming you could not possibly be so myopic.