posted
Summing up the chapters I referred to on the first page. Things get interesting in verse 15 (I'm going to condense it quite a bit) On the coming of Christ (and this is a few years B. C. but the people in the Book of Mormon have had specific prophecies about Jesus since they got to the Americas) "is not a soul at this time as precious unto God as a soul will be at the time of his coming?" I don't know if this seems as relevant to your question as it does to me.
Moving on to the next chapter: resurrection does not occur until after the coming of Christ. This next part is interesting- the prophet/father asked God about the resurrection because of his son's questions (even after the brow beating he gave him at the start of chapter 39) and apparently recieved new knowledge as a result, in part through his son's sinfulness. What happens between death and resurrection?
The Righteous are receieved into a state of happiness, rest and peace. The spirits who were captive of the will of the devil go to outer darkness with weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth. Fire is used as a metaphor here for their fear of God's wrath.
quote:Originally posted by beverly: KoM, Abraham was an arbitrary "start of monotheism" if I were to wear my "atheist hat". I imagine that Noah and Adam would be based on actual people as well, but not necessarily think them monotheistic with my "atheist hat" on. Again, it was the phrase "God of Abraham" that seems to be so stressed.
Just like 'in God we trust', which it seems many Americans believe was part of the pledge from the word go. Once someone finds a phrase that's good propaganda, it tends to work its way into the psyche.
quote:Your point about Pharoah's monotheism not winning out seems to fly in the face of your "monotheism sticks" theory. You seemed to be saying that monotheism is inherently more likely to win out. Did I misunderstand?
Possibly; I seem to have expressed myself a bit badly. I meant that once the Jewish people had accepted monotheism, they stuck with it come hell or high water. I didn't mean to imply that monotheism in general would stick everywhere as soon as it had been introduced.
quote:And yeah, I don't get this "Jew were a converting people" bit. I think it's more likely that whoever is most powerful, people are most likely to mimick their religion. And if the Jews were the ONLY monotheistic people, there would be a lot of pressure working against them to explain easily the consistent "backsliding".
I have to disagree. People just didn't travel very much in those days, nor did they send missionaries to extol the virtues of their pantheon. Also, you should note that the first reforming King is apparently Josiah, who ruled at a time when the Great Powers were down for the count, with Assyria smashed, Babylon not yet powerful, and Egypt recovering from throwing off Assyrian overlordship. Judah may well have been the most powerful political entity around, at laest in its immediate neighbourhood. Josiah regained parts of the old territories that had belonged to the Kingdom of Israel. But it is at this time that Josiah has Baal and Ashterah removed from the kingdom. (Chronicles 2, 34). Why should the people of Israel be influenced by outsiders with less power than they had themselves? If anything, it should go the other way. Which, incidentally, there's no sign of when Israel is at the height of its power; how do you explain this, in your theory of power-imitation? Surely the Jews would tell us if anybody converted, even by accident?
quote:It seems that sense of "we are the only ones like this" won out for the Jewish people. The sense of identity was instilled so deeply and so powerfully, strenghtened by scripture and tradition, and intensified by persecution. The Dune series has an interesting concept of them remaining as a group, in secret, not just thousands of years after the earth passed away, but millions. Interesting idea.
Well, yes, except that over that kind of timespan, species change, never mind religions.
posted
Just a blanket statement to the people at the beginning of the thread that chastised me pretty hard core for my post:
I haven't been to church (except for weddings and funerals) in a decade. Thus, I don't really believe one thing or the other. You don't have to lay the smack down quite so hard. I was just giving a gut reaction to what he said, not professing my personal beliefs on religion, God and Christ.
So. There. Ignore this post or chop it to pieces, your choice.
But you don't have to be so mean. Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Lyrhawn: I didn't see anyone coming down hard on you. Karl was a little extravagant in his critiscism of your viewpoint, but I don't see what he posted as mean.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
KoM, I wasn't REALLY wondering if you had written them...I think...but it is fairly obvious that it IS under dispute, and not just by believers. It is a possibility, I suppose, but so are a ton of other things that we have not even considered.
I just really liked the irony of the situation, that's all.
I find discussions on the Bible to be far less interesting when people try to "prove or disprove" the historical validity of it. A lot of things thought to be literal in the bible don't seem to add up, but a lot of other things that were once assumed to have been myths in it have been proved beyond much doubt. Entire cities have been discovered using clues found in the bible, where people insisted there couldn't possibly be a city.
Just keep in mind that no matter how much a theory of yours seems to fit, at least to yourself, most of it has been fairly unsubstantiated as far as I can tell. Just because something makes plausible sense doesn't mean it is true, which is why Occam's Razor cuts both ways.
To be honest, OR is one of the least accurate ways of judging the validity of an argument. It was used to maintain that the world was flat, the Earth was the center of the universe, and the racial inequality was due to inherent weakness in inherited "lesser" races.
All of which fit the criteria of OR at the time, but none of which turns out to be true. OR is better used to show how people can be intellectually lazy as a group rather than as a tool to judge the validity of any specific information.
quote:Originally posted by rivka: The main notion in Jewish thought boils down to: our concerns should be focused on doing our tasks in this world; the World to Come will take care of itself. This is why there are very few references to the afterlife in the Written Torah (no overt ones in the Five Books). However, there are discussions in the Gemara, and much speculation in the 2000 years since.
I know I have linked to this before; it's a fairly good presentation (if highly allegorical) of some of the more common Jewish beliefs about the afterlife.
don't think that's the belief of all Jews. Just like christianty we have our own divisions, of orthadox, conservitive, reform and reconstructionist jews.
being a reform jew i was taught our thoughts on the afterlife are sketchy at best. like stated before, we should do good deeds and fufill our covenant rather then worry about being dead.
Posts: 17 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
Okay i'm going to go over things discussed here based on what I've been taught and discussed.
First, the Torah, please note that the Torah and the Christian Old Testament are infact different and are not the same. I'm going to use the Torah for this since I've read that more
Now as to why the the Jews worshiped the golden calf. First off the people in the Torah are not perfect. Infact even by old standards what some of them did was stupid or wrong. The Torah is there to teach. Back to the calf.
The Jews are a race and religion. We are a people, we were forced to split up during the Diaspera but that's another story. I can get into that later with the question of Jews converting but again another story. I mention this because while Abraham is the first Jew they do not have much of a religion at the time of the wandering. Yes they believe in one G-d, but its not orginized.
So we've been travling for some time and we stop at Mt Sinia. Moses goes up the mountain, while the Jews make camp. Moses goes up for 40 days and then comes back down to find the calf. First off not everyone in the camp is worshiping the idol. In fact not many at all, however its enough to piss off Moses and G-d. Moses breaks our first set of commandments and some of the worshippers and excuted.
Anyways the Jewish people in this story are human, if they can't see it, if its not performing miricles 24/7 it doesn't exist.
When you think about it most of the Torah, except the laws and rituals, is people screwing up and G-d telling them their stupid.
Posts: 17 | Registered: May 2005
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