General Yahushua Questions

[TWTY-Admin]

Well, I personally have no idea what a "Shaliach" is.

I also couldn't find the word listed in Scripture either.

Give us a hand with this one, Miles

[SeekingYah]

I do not mean that it is the only understanding, just that it is the only understanding that I can draw based on the Scriptures cited, a shaliach does not seem to fit the Isiah description, or many of the other descriptions.

I just did a quick search and found that there is no mention of shaliach anywhere in the Tanakh, I could be missing something. Combining that with it's use in the Talmud and Jewish religious traditions I am very leery to apply that term to Yahowsha. When he is refereed to as Mighty God, or with us is God, the shaliach understanding doesn't fit.

[Miles]

I know I'm dealing with smart people on this website, not only smart but dedicated to the truth (and people I respect a great deal). What I'm proposing is to think "outside the box" of Greek. That will be the hardest thing that all of us (me too) have to deal with... No one here is going to even entertain what I'm proposing without giving some value to thinking in ways we have not before, in ways foreign to how we have been trained.

[SeekingYah]

I don't see this at all as thinking inside of a Greek box. Greek thought would say that Yah literally came down to earth and had sex with a woman and Yahowsha would be a demigod, very different than what I have described. What I am describing is based more on my understanding of Hebrew than Greek. I have studied virtually no Greek, but have invested a few years now studying Hebrew, amateur I am by no means an expert.

Show me an example in Greek mythology where a God places a part in a human. As far as I know it doesn't exist. Probably because unlike Yah, who is incorporeal, the Greek Gods had form and bodies of their own. They were superior bodies, and they could change their form, but they were very much corporeal beings living on Olympus.

I think this is where you are loosing me. I fail to see how this is a Greek concept.

Furthermore, even if it were the Scriptural evidence still seems to support it.

[TWTY-Admin]

SeekingYah's (welcome, btw! ) last statement pretty much nailed it on the head: "Furthermore, even if it were, the Scriptural evidence still seems to support it" - this, I think, being the main thing that we should be seeking to understand: what does Scripture (and therefore Yahuweh Himself) say?

This shouldn't be a case of "Greek vs Hebrew" (which I know a lot of Messianic Jewish congregations like to boil it down to, even though they themselves usually don't know what exactly constitutes "Greek"), but a case of "What does Yahuweh say?"

I mean, how exactly do we determine what "Hebraic thought" is? The "Hebraic thought" at the time of Yahushua was quite divided - Sadducees didn't believe in the resurrection of the dead; the Essenes believed several other things we don't actually know; the Pharisees held onto their "Oral Torah" and subjugated the Hebrew populace to follow them; and the community that produced the Dead Sea Scrolls believed they had to segregate themselves from the world, and that there were two Messiah's on the way.

I've noticed over the years, that when people usually say "what's the Hebraic thought on this", what they actually mean is "What did the Rabbi's say on this?" So as SeekingYah has confirmed, whatever this "Shaliach" thing is (again, I personally have no idea what's being talked about with that one), it is a purely Rabbinical term, and one that didn't exist (or at least was never used) when Yahuweh was sending out His Prophets; nor is it a term that Yahuweh Himself employs to talk about the Messiah.

Nevertheless, I'm very open to new ideas and discussions on things - but we need to keep it mainly to what Scripture says, rather than what we've read someone else saying about it all

[Rob]

To be honest I wasn't sure I was even thinking in the Greek box - but I suppose that's probably because I am unaware of my social inheritance/conditioning. I suppose I see a trinity more as a greek/roman ideal - being more than one god - in this case working together under the God Corp brand. But I have to agree with SeekingYah and TWTY-Admin at the moment and say, I see more evidence for Yahushua being part of Yahweh than not.

I am interested in this word "Shaliach" though - and where it comes from.

More info please

[sestir]

It seems 'God' is referred to frequently in bibles as a translation of elohim, ha elohim, el, theos and ho theos. What is actually meant by "God" with upper-case G? Is it the world's sole creator?

Is it the task of a bible translator to determine when elohim or theos means Yahuwah, a divine (in general) or a god, or would it be better to make a concordance and follow it strictly?

What about starting from this basic concordance?
el <--> god (someone who is worshipped), a divine
elohim <--> divinity, divine ones (including Yahuwah, Yahushua and angels), judges
ha elohim <--> the divine

In this case Immanuel would mean "With us [is a] god".

[Rob]

God/god/el etc are just titles Yahuweh is His personal name. Like I am a man, husband to my wife, father to my kids - but my name is Rob. So "god" doesn't mean Yahuweh, it just means god. It is my opinion that Yahuweh is the only god as there are no others - and by god I mean divine/almighty/spiritual ruler.

It's the task of a bible translator to convey the words from one language into another to the best of their ability, and with as much information so the message is clear. The words God and Yahuweh (for example) are different and can be translated as they should be.

On Immanuel - you need to take a lot more into it than just concordance word for word translations, and this is the problem with just relying on a concordance with no background understanding of grammar, gender, tense and context etc etc - which is unfortunately removed with a concordance. TWTY-Admin can talk more about this though in much greater detail than I can

[sestir]

I see, god with lowercase g is a bit uncommon in English as many understand it to have the same meaning as God with upper-case G. When I searched for 'god' on Wikipedia, I was surprised of being redirected to 'God'. The North-germanic language I target with my translation does not seem to have a word that would correspond to English 'divine', so a lower-case cognate of 'god' has been used about divine beings such as idols and angels.

Getting a trinitarian perspective on the concordance at an early stage is valuable to make a translation useful for a wide range of Christian denominations. My communities are mostly semi-Arian.

Yes, I will transcribe YHVH to something like Yahuweh since it is a name.

[Rob]

God with a capital G is more a term of respect. Like capitalising H for Him when referring to Yah. Don't read to much into it, remember capitalisation in English means nothing to the original text.

I think we probably don't see "god" to much in English because our base religion in England is monotheistic, so there is only one "God" so the reference is always going to be to "Him", hence automatic capitalisation.