yiri@ucf-cs.UUCP (Yirmiyahu BenDavid) (11/18/84)
******************** Yiri asks: When was Bickford appointed king umpire? ******************** The game's over, Yiri, and you have lost. Wingate, Gillette and I have asked DIRECT questions of you that you have NOT answered in any of your articles. You have made statements and then chickened out under cross- examination. You continue to be evasive so I can only conclude that your points have no substantiation. ******************* Yiri responds: (snicker, snicker, getting desparate?) You are not the arbiter of who has won. Judging from the mail and other articles, I have won. Your questions are not to the point of the original issues and deserve no response and that's just what they will continue to get until I see that other readers have similar questions AND have read Parkes, Bagatti and the entry from the Interpreter's Dictionary. In point of fact, even the articles written by you three have changed position markedly from when I first began writing. Readers only need go back and read your initial positions versus your present positions. As far as cross-examination, what gives you the arrogant audacity to think you have any right to cross-examine me? You have not. I will not permit the issues to be diverted into new areas. The issues stay as they were - and you have not answered them seriously nor disproved them in any manner. What you have attempted to do is to repaint them as something you could attack more effectively. Again, readers only have to go back and check. Indicentally, having less and less time due to other constraints, I am devoting myself increasingly to answering the more serious inquiries - which come in the mail. There has been some problem with return paths, so if you have mailed to me and not received a reply it is not because I'm ignoring you. I can't get the mail to you. Please be sure the path is correct. *********************** The issues are not peripheral, as Yiri claims. They are central. Gillette has presented evidence that Parkes, et al. do not support Yiri's claims. Wingate has challenged Yiri directly on the Interpreter's Dictionary. And I have challenged him in at least two areas: *********************** Yiri responds: Gillette has not in any way presented any such evidence. What Gillette stated is that he read Parkes and it didn't prove everything I have been asserting... but I told him that before he read it. What Parkes CAN bring out to an objective reader is the integral nature of antinomianism in the basic founding of the christian church - and that is antisemitism. Further, you can begin to see how it is a recurring theme of christianity, not merely an isolated instance. Wingate took the same tact on the Interpreter's Dictionary - that it didn't prove everything I've been asserting. Again, I stated that from the beginning - but it DOES show that the 'New Testament' was delinerately redacted and changed to be in harmony with the 'true' doctrines of christianity - which Parkes shows was antinomian/antisemitic. NOW we hear things like 'Well, the New Testament really ISN'T inerrant after all'. And one thing your assertions are NOT is a challenge. There is no need for me to show the 'New Testament' is a gentile redaction - the Interpreter's Dictionary does that for me and it was quoted in one of my first articles - which again has never been answered. I have presented the evidence and reasonable conclusions from the evidence. The only thing you three stooges have done is ignore it, hope readers forget, try to bait me into changing to a peripheral subject, and the challenge me to prove something I never had to prove in the first place. You claim to have come from 'Jesus' and the historical evidence already presented suggests that the claim is false and fraudulent and that christianity is a counterfeit. It is foolish to ask me to accept this probable fraud and then expect me to prove it is a fraud. You prove you have that the 1st century or later N'tzarim did not keep Torah. You prove that christians did not persecute and kill the N'tzarim as Bagatti says. You prove that the 'New Testament' was not redacted by gentiles as the Interpreter's Dictionary states. You prove that there is a legitimate chain between these Torah-observant N'tzarim you claim to follow and the christians who killed them for being Torah-observant and that you do indeed follow. Until then, don't talk to me about anything else because until you deal with that you are a counterfeit and there is no point in arguing with a counterfeit about what is legitimate. ************************** Yiri has called Hebrew Christians apostate imbeciles, knowing nothing of either Christianity or Judaism. I asked for credentials which Yiri would consider acceptable to qualify one as correctly understanding either Judaism or Christianity. Yiri has not produced any, knowing there are indeed Hebrew Christians with good understanding of both. *************************** Yiri responds: Orthodox rabbis understand Judaism. Find one who will attest that even one of these semitic christians understand Judaism. Tell you what, why don't you even find me a Charlesworth or someone at a comparable level to attest to their scholarship in Christianity? Show some examples of their scholarly ability. You seem to have the notion that what you say should be accepted as true unless disproven. Wrong again. Show us. ************************** Yiri has claimed that the Greek New Testament is a "Gentile redaction" of N'tzarim writings. I asked for the N'tzarim writings, so that we can see if his challenges are true, and to provide an agreed source text for study. Yiri won't produce them. That way, anything I base on the Greek New Testament, he can shiftily reply "it's a Christian redaction." **************************** Yiri responds: The only agreed source of study can be the sinaiticus with citations from the vaticanus and earlier papyrii when there is question and noting the Peshitta reading just for general reference but not with the authority of the sinaiticus and earlier papyrii. If an earlier mss. should be dug up, the earlier automatically takes precedence. No translations are acceptable, you'll have to translate as you go and we'll examine each passage as it's used. Otherwise you are merely relying on christians' interpretations and they have an axe to grind. You'll just have to give the greek transliteration and we'll see how your interpretations/translations hold/don't hold up. But first, you have to disprove the evidence mentioned above... and we should not hold our breath. You have no option but to try to go to peripheral issues, etc. because those things just happen to be true and documented even by christians and you have no defense for them. *************************** *************************** Yiri comments: One idea I might ask rhetorically. Perhaps there are some who have thought of themselves as christians who might find themselves more accurately described as N'tzarim? (Of course, that means an alignment with Torah and Judaism AND abandonment of the counterfeit: christianity and Jesus. ***************************