quote:Originally posted by Gansura: Is there no way to send private messages on this board? Must I sign on to aim or even send an email to speak privately with someone?
I suppose so.
And welcome! I see from your profile that you, too, are from New Jersey (sometimes). Me too.
posted
Ah, so MA is school? Too many choices, so I won't try to guess which one.
Logged into AIM looking for you, but you seem not to be on. No email either. And yeah, UBB does not provide PM capability, sadly. (Of course, could be you were trying to talk to someone else. )
quote:Originally posted by Taalcon: But can't one have the Pure Transmission view without viewing any other view as being conceptually ludicrous?
Of course not. I do happen to think the documentary hypothesis (and this seems to be based on that, neh?) is pretty clearly dependent on some assumptions I think are nonsense and on various translation issues.
quote:Saying, "That's a very interesting idea. I see how one could think this based on the information provided, yet I still would have to disagree." will, for the most part, gain a lot more respect from me than, "I haven't looked into it, but I think that its silly nonsense that I'm going to proceed to make fun of."
Interesting. Because I've seen you do both, on occasion. And I don't necessarily feel the need to spend large amounts of time and energy on things I consider to be pointless nonsense.
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quote:Originally posted by Taalcon: But can't one have the Pure Transmission view without viewing any other view as being conceptually ludicrous?
Well... okay, you understand that I reject Christianity, right? That I think it failed any burden of proof and has no validity in terms of the religion it grew from.
But I don't see it as being conceptually ludicrous. It has a starting point that isn't totally off the wall.
This multiple deity thing, though, is conceptually ludicrous. Totally off the wall. So riddled with internal contradictions that it's as worth discussing as flat earth theories. Almost.
quote:Originally posted by Taalcon: This is one of the major things I've been trying to accomplish as a writer - the ability to view and to understand and respect many points of view without necessarily agreeing with them.
All points of view, or just many? If there are points of view that you view as complete non-starters, then you should understand how this could be as well.
quote:Originally posted by Taalcon: I feel it is important to understand and to research other points of view. When incredible sounding claims are made, I may gawk initially, but then I'll usually look into them.
But this is just like that guy I described earlier in this thread who was so intent on claiming that holy = whole, and that Jews were commanded to be holy, which meant unified. What made his argument so silly was that he lacked knowledge that would have prevented him from even getting started down that road. His premises were wrong, so his conclusions weren't even worth debating. All that could be done was to tell him that he's wrong, and hope that eventually, he'll pull his head out far enough to realize it.
Taalcon, I remember seeing a book that claimed JC was a woman. I've seen books that claim there are alien lizard people living among us in disguise. I've seen books that claim the pyramids are starships.
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posted
That guy who drives me crazy telling me never to say "el" argues with me all the time. I disagree with him on almost everything, and argue with Him almost to the level of the Gemarrah arguments (I killed you, you were right, I realised that and ask you to come back to my Beit Midrash, and after I ressurect you, you agree only if I never kill you again - Baba Kama 117a).
But we acknowledge each other's opinions, and respect them. Even if we think they're ridiculous. And I don't preach to him, only try to show him why my opinion's better.
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quote:But can't one have the Pure Transmission view without viewing any other view as being conceptually ludicrous?
Of course not. I do happen to think the documentary hypothesis (and this seems to be based on that, neh?) is pretty clearly dependent on some assumptions I think are nonsense and on various translation issues.
Actually, Margaret Barker isn't all that much a fan of the traditional Documentary Hypothesis herself, and doesn't like to hold any previously developed hypothesis up on any pedestals. She discusses that any conclusions and theories one can make, and had made, are just that: theories.
"John van Seters has challenged many of the fundamentals of Pentateuchal scholarship, and, even if he is not correct in all details, he has performed a valuable service in reminding scholars that there are no 'facts' in this field. The most popular hypotheses have, by frequent repetition, been transformed into facts, and this they are not. There is not proof, he says, that J and E, the great bases of the documentary hypothesis, ever existed, let alone that they were a reflection of national pride in the golden age of Solomon. One or two influential scholars, through their own writings and those of their pupils, have constructed hypotheses which, though interesting, are only hypotheses and dependent works seem to have lost sight of this."
Her work, while in some cases plays with and draws from some lines of thought that have been previously stated, she doesn't accept any wholesale, prefering to come to her own conclusions.
The book I'm reading is, actually, the third in a series of sorts. She claims in the introduction to The Great Angel that the previous two books, The Older Testament and The Great High Priest are, for all intents and purposes, an extremely extended introduction to this third work as she worked through the evidence she say, and came to conclusions based on her findings.
The main question she sets out to ask is where and how did the ideas that were so suddenly embraced by Christianity come from? Did they spring out of nothing, or was there previous traditions that helped them more easily accept such ideas?
"What has become clear to me time and time again is that even over so wide an area, the evidence points consistently in one direction and indicates that pre-Christian Judaism was not monotheistic in the sense that we use the word. The roots of Christian trinitarian theology lie in pre-Christian Palestinian beliefs about the angels. There were many in first-century Palestine who still retained a world-view derived from the more ancient religion of Israel [that of the First Temple] in which there was a High God and several Sons of God, one of whom was Yahweh, the Holy One of Israel. Yahweh, the Lord, could be manifested on earth in human form, as an angel or in the Davidic king. It was as a manifestation of Yahweh, the Son of God, that Jesus was acknowledged as Son of God, Messiah and Lord."
Some of the notes of distinction she notes and finds as clues that have launched other areas of her research are particularly interesting.
"All the texts in the Hebrew Bible distinguish clearly between the divine sons of Elohim/Elyon and those human beings who are called sons of Yahweh. This must be significant. It must mean that the terms originated at a time when Yahweh was distinguished from whatever was meant by El/Elohim/Elyon. A large number of texts continued to distinguish between El Elyon and Yahweh, Father and Son, and to express this distinction in similar ways with the symbolism of the temple and the royal cult. By tracing these patterns through a great variety of material and over several centuries, Israel's second God can be recovered."
Statements such as these were indeed very inticing and fascinating to me. The Biblical references she has presented did, in fact, make me re-read passages in an entirely new light. And...to me, it makes perfect sense.
quote:
quote:Saying, "That's a very interesting idea. I see how one could think this based on the information provided, yet I still would have to disagree." will, for the most part, gain a lot more respect from me than, "I haven't looked into it, but I think that its silly nonsense that I'm going to proceed to make fun of."
Interesting. Because I've seen you do both, on occasion. And I don't necessarily feel the need to spend large amounts of time and energy on things I consider to be pointless nonsense.
If I have recently, then I apologize. As I said, I'm working on it.
I know for certain that about three years ago, I was on these boards arguing against the LDS Church, and making claims of how 'ludicrous' I found some of the statements. I almost wish some of those posts were still archived. Sure, they would be extremely embarassing, (and reminescent of many statements that people make that now personally make me groan), but it would be an interesting artifact for the History of Me, and my personal growth and development.
My point is that if I'd just kept the mindset I had previously, my life would be ridiculously different than it is right now. Attemping to take seriously something I personally originally believed was ludicrous has literally changed my life for the better in numerous ways.
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quote: Attemping to take seriously something I personally originally believed was ludicrous has literally changed my life for the better in numerous ways.
Does that mean they're not actually ludicrous and therefore of transformative value, or does the attempt itself have value?
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quote:Well... okay, you understand that I reject Christianity, right?
You don't say
quote: That I think it failed any burden of proof
Once again, there are many, many, many, many extremely intelligent individuals who will vehemently disagree with you on this point.
quote: and has no validity in terms of the religion it grew from.
Actually, part of this question was exactly the question Barker asked. To her, it didn't make sense how something with some ideas that appeared to depart so radically from what we knew of traditional Judaism at that point could have proved to be so influential over so many well learned Jews in the first century. She felt there must have been some sort of link, but she didn't know what it was. Her studies have brought her to discover plausible evidence as to what that link was, as I quoted from her above.
quote: But I don't see it as being conceptually ludicrous. It has a starting point that isn't totally off the wall.
This multiple deity thing, though, is conceptually ludicrous. Totally off the wall.
Actually, the multiple deity thing actually makes the emergence and acceptance of Christianity make quite a bit more sense.
quote: So riddled with internal contradictions that it's as worth discussing as flat earth theories. Almost.
I wasn't aware you'd read the actual theories enough to be able to see any of the contradictions. I was only aware that the extent of your knowledge was from what I've said, and a capsule review from Amazon.com
quote:
quote:I feel it is important to understand and to research other points of view. When incredible sounding claims are made, I may gawk initially, but then I'll usually look into them.
But this is just like that guy I described earlier in this thread who was so intent on claiming that holy = whole, and that Jews were commanded to be holy, which meant unified. What made his argument so silly was that he lacked knowledge that would have prevented him from even getting started down that road. His premises were wrong, so his conclusions weren't even worth debating. All that could be done was to tell him that he's wrong, and hope that eventually, he'll pull his head out far enough to realize it.
The point is that there had been a valid question asked to which no valid answer had been provided. Research was done to look for clues, clues were found, which went on to greatly expand the hypothesis into something which is not at all ludicrous.
I actually think that the very fact that you flat out reject Christianity and see no valid connections with your own theology is evidence in and of itself that something is missing that bridged the gap so easily for the 1st Century Palestinian Jews.
quote:Taalcon, I remember seeing a book that claimed JC was a woman.
I'd certanly be interested in seeing the evidence the author pulled up for that one, seeing as, as far as I know, the only texts we have that account for the Existence of Jeshua of Nazareth firmly state that he was, in fact, a fella.
quote:I've seen books that claim there are alien lizard people living among us in disguise.
Well, Slash the Berzerker is well known around these parts...
quote:I've seen books that claim the pyramids are starships.
And we've had a great many archaeologists explore and excavate the pyramids, and, as far as I know, no Hyperdrive Motivators have been found. Or Tang.
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quote: Attemping to take seriously something I personally originally believed was ludicrous has literally changed my life for the better in numerous ways.
Does that mean they're not actually ludicrous and therefore of transformative value, or does the attempt itself have value?
I don't think the two need be mutually exclusive.
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Taal, I would posit that precisely the same reasons that you find this book so easy to believe -- it meshes well with your current beliefs, and makes logical jumps that are parallel to those you make -- is precisely why Lisa and I have problems with it.
What you don't seem to see is that it makes your agreement with and acceptance of these claims every bit as biased and tilted as our refusal to see them as anything other than ludicrous. The fact that you have in the past accepted and investigated challenges to your beliefs is irrelevant; this book reinforces your beliefs.
I'm not accusing you of a lack of intellectual rigor, or of anything really -- except perfectly normal human bias.
Now that you have clarified what she said, it sounds familiar. I have heard claims of this sort previously. I consider them to be based primarily in the fact that most of these scholars are dealing in a language not their own (or with translations). I have yet to hear of a native Hebrew speaker who makes such claims, for instance.
In any case, I think we have an impasse, neh?
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quote:Originally posted by Taalcon: The main question she sets out to ask is where and how did the ideas that were so suddenly embraced by Christianity come from? Did they spring out of nothing, or was there previous traditions that helped them more easily accept such ideas?
Sounds to me as though she's just trying to find some way to attribute the radically different beliefs embraced by Christianity to something -- anything -- having to do with Israel. Rather than accepting that most of the radically different stuff came from elsewhere, like mystery cults and Mithraism.
I understand such a desire, and I sympathize with her, if that's what she's trying to do.
quote:Originally posted by Taalcon: "What has become clear to me time and time again is that even over so wide an area, the evidence points consistently in one direction and indicates that pre-Christian Judaism was not monotheistic in the sense that we use the word. The roots of Christian trinitarian theology lie in pre-Christian Palestinian beliefs about the angels. There were many in first-century Palestine who still retained a world-view derived from the more ancient religion of Israel [that of the First Temple] in which there was a High God and several Sons of God, one of whom was Yahweh, the Holy One of Israel. Yahweh, the Lord, could be manifested on earth in human form, as an angel or in the Davidic king.
Okay, here we are. The Samaritan tribes who were brought into Israelite lands by the Assyrians did indeed worship other deities along with Hashem. Says so in the Bible. And in the Jewish military colony at Elephantine, that practice had taken hold as well.
But there's nothing new in the fact that there were idolators among the Israelites. No one has ever doubted such a thing.
But there is no evidence anywhere of a god-king thing in Israel. Even under the worst of the kings.
quote:Originally posted by Taalcon: It was as a manifestation of Yahweh, the Son of God, that Jesus was acknowledged as Son of God, Messiah and Lord."
Even if JC existed, there's no evidence that he was ever viewed as a deity until Christianity had become throroughly Romanized. Certainly we had a ton of false messiahs around that time, but none of them ever claimed deity.
And again, the Tetragrammaton is never, in any Israelite source, referred to as the son of anyone.
In Mesopotamian sources, there's a trinity of deities on the high god council. There's Anu, god of the heavens, Enlil, god of the sky, and Ea, god of the water, also later called Enki, god of the land.
Both Anu and Enlil have been seen by Assyriologists as possible cognates to the name El. Enlil in particular matches up with the Hebrew elil, which is a word used for false gods in the Bible.
Ea, on the other hand, if it's indeed pronounced Ea and not Ae (a matter of debate), sounds very much like Y-ah.
Some myths suggest that Anu was the first of these three, and that Ea and possibly Enlil were his sons. That might be the source of the stuff she's talking about. But it has no Israelite source. She's merely getting Samaritans and Israelites mixed up.
That wouldn't be the first time in Christian history that this was done. In fact, the name the Samaritans used for themselves was "Israel", and they intended it as a means of claiming that they were descended from the northern tribes.
Even the Christian scriptures seem to have made this mistake. The story of the Good Samaritan... well, the division of Jews into Kohen-Priest, Levite, and Israelite is a very old one. And a common one. One that is recognized even today among Jews.
So when you read a story that has a Kohen being obnoxious and a Levite being obnoxious and then a mere Israelite being good, that makes a lot of sense in terms of the culture of the time.
And then when someone who isn't Jewish translates the text into Greek, or whatever, and maybe isn't aware of this element of Jewish culture, and knows that the Samaritans call themselves Israelites, maybe you translate "Israelite" in that case as "Samaritan".
It's just a theory that I recall reading an article about when I was in a masters program in Assyriology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
quote:Originally posted by Taalcon: Some of the notes of distinction she notes and finds as clues that have launched other areas of her research are particularly interesting.
"All the texts in the Hebrew Bible distinguish clearly between the divine sons of Elohim/Elyon and those human beings who are called sons of Yahweh.
Dude, there's one place in the entire Bible where such phrasing is used. Those sons aren't called divine; they are called mighty men and giants.
So when she says "All the texts in the Hebrew Bible", she's being at the very least a little disingenuous. I tend to think it's a bit deceptive as well. And I'll ask you: how can you trust the scholarship of someone who makes that kind of misstatement on such a basic point?
quote:Genesis 6:
And Man began to multiply on the face of the Earth, and daughters were born unto them. And the sons of God saw that the daughters of Man were good, and they took them as wives, according to their choice. And the Lord said: "My spirit will not judge Man forever, since he is only flesh, and his days will be 120 years."
The Nefilim were in the land in those days and afterwards, who the sons of God came unto the daughters of Man and bore them. They are the mighty men of old, men of renown.
That's the text she's talking about. So, no mention of these sons of God being divine. No mention anywhere of sons of the Lord. Ezekiel gets called Son of Man without any intimation that he's divine.
These Nefilim, or mighty men, seem to have been born from crossings between the line of Seth and the line of Cain. Bear in mind that the word "elohim" doesn't always refer to God. Sometimes it's plural, which you can tell by it taking plural verbs and adjectives. Sometimes it refers to judges.
I mean, God tells Moses that he'll be an elohim to Aaron. That doesn't mean Moses was ever considered divine.
quote:Originally posted by Taalcon: This must be significant. It must mean that the terms originated at a time when Yahweh was distinguished from whatever was meant by El/Elohim/Elyon.
This is another issue that bugs me. Why Elyon? I mean, sure, in English, Elyon looks like it starts with El. I get that. But anyone even remotely conversant with the actual text, which is in Hebrew, knows that the only things they have in common are the "l" sound. El starts with the letter alef, which is pronounced as a glottal stop. Elyon starts with the letter `ayin, which is a gutteral sound that doesn't exist in English. They aren't even close.
This is the level of scholarship you find impressive?
quote:Originally posted by Taalcon: [/i]A large number of texts continued to distinguish between El Elyon and Yahweh, Father and Son, and to express this distinction in similar ways with the symbolism of the temple and the royal cult.[/i]
Find some mentions of the name Elyon outside of the one mention in Genesis 14. Maybe there's one or two elsewhere. But "a large number of texts"? Pull the other one.
quote:Originally posted by Taalcon: By tracing these patterns through a great variety of material and over several centuries, Israel's second God can be recovered."
Statements such as these were indeed very inticing and fascinating to me.
I imagine. And since you may not have a background in the field, that's understandable.
My father won't watch the show House. The title character is someone I would have bet my father would enjoy watching. There are so many things I'm sure he never says to his patients that he probably wishes he could, and I figured House would be a kind of wish fulfillment for him.
But he won't watch it. Why? Because he's a doctor, and knows more about it than I do, and he thinks it's utterly unrealistic. Fair enough. I have friends who've been in the service who can't stand watching military shows or movies, because the butchery of the material upsets them too much.
When I see Jews of any observance on TV, I cringe before they even get started, because I know they're going to mash and mangle things. Grace Polk's father on Joan of Arcadia. Ostensibly a rabbi. Ostensibly very strict about observance and always covers his head. Yet he refers to a synagogue as a "temple", and has his daughter reading from the Torah or haftara or what have you for her Bat Mitzvah.
Any Jew with any kind of knowledge of our tradition knows how lame that is. But it doesn't give other people any cause for notice at all.
So you're impressed. Okay. And based on my grad school experience and the fact that I've been studying the extrabiblical material on ancient Israel for decades now, I'm extremely unimpressed with the little you've cited from her.
Immanuel Velikovsky is a man who came up with a lot of cool questions. He got people thinking. He was demonstratably wrong about 97% of his answers. But the bad scholarship par excellance in his books is in Ages in Chaos, where he's dealing with the Amarna period.
He notes that the king of Jerusalem in the Amarna letters refers to problems he's having with Shuwardata. He notes that some scholars think Shuwardata was kind of Qiltu. He points out the obvious fact that Qiltu is cognate to Qelt, the name of a wadi, or seasonal river, in Israel, that is near the Dead Sea. And that the cities of Sodom and Gemorrah are believed to have been located near the Dead Sea.
Got all that? He uses that whole chain to make a case for Shuwardata having been king near the location of Sodom.
Then he points to the biblical account of King Jehoshaphat of Judah expelling the "sodomites" from the land. And this, he uses as support for his claim that the king of Jerusalem in the Amarna letters was Jehoshaphat.
Thousands of English speaking readers went past this argument without blinking. Tens of thousands. Probably more in the 65 years since the book came out.
The problem is, the word "sodomites" in the biblical text there is the Hebrew kedeishim, or sacred prostitutes. The word is in the masculine, so it's assumed they did homosexual acts. Hence "sodomites". But there's no geographical connection to the city of Sodom. That's just the term for homosexual prostitutes that was used by King James and Co.
Bad scholarship, but then, Velikovsky was using an English Bible when he wrote that. The conflation of El and Elyon in this book is really no different.
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quote:Originally posted by Taalcon: But this is just like that guy I described earlier in this thread who was so intent on claiming that holy = whole, and that Jews were commanded to be holy, which meant unified. What made his argument so silly was that he lacked knowledge that would have prevented him from even getting started down that road. His premises were wrong, so his conclusions weren't even worth debating. All that could be done was to tell him that he's wrong, and hope that eventually, he'll pull his head out far enough to realize it.
The point is that there had been a valid question asked to which no valid answer had been provided. Research was done to look for clues, clues were found, which went on to greatly expand the hypothesis into something which is not at all ludicrous.
I actually think that the very fact that you flat out reject Christianity and see no valid connections with your own theology is evidence in and of itself that something is missing that bridged the gap so easily for the 1st Century Palestinian Jews.
I said that I've never seen any evidence that 1st Century Palestinian Jews ever believed in the idea of messiah = deity. And I've been looking for quite a while. That came later, after Christianity had become more Roman than Jewish.
And that, right there, is an explanation. The cross wasn't a Jewish symbol, but it was the symbol of the sun god Mithra. Saturday was the holy Sabbath day until Christianity adopted the sun's day as their new holy day.
I won't go into all of the connections there, but there are many. And they are far more plausable than deconstructing the biblical account so far that it has no weight whatsoever.
quote:Originally posted by Taalcon:
quote:Taalcon, I remember seeing a book that claimed JC was a woman.
I'd certanly be interested in seeing the evidence the author pulled up for that one, seeing as, as far as I know, the only texts we have that account for the Existence of Jeshua of Nazareth firmly state that he was, in fact, a fella.
Well, hey. How about that. And the only texts we have that account for Hashem say that Hashem and Elokim are two names for the same God.
posted
cross = roman instrument of torture = what Jesus was crucified on.
What historian denies that Jesus was actually crucified even if they might dispute the death and resurection bit?
You could make a case for Astara and Easter, but wtf with the Sun-God baloney and the cross?!
AJ
clarification: I'm ok with considering a cross to be a stake. So if you are only disputing the shape of the symbolic figure, fine. Decoraitive swastikas were used in Hinduism, and synagouges long before the Nazis. If you are disputing that Jesus was crucified, then I have a problem.
quote:Originally posted by BannaOj: cross = roman instrument of torture = what Jesus was crucified on.
The early Christians didn't use the cross as a symbol. Just the fish. The cross didn't come into use until Roman Christian times.
quote:Originally posted by BannaOj: What historian denies that Jesus was actually crucified even if they might dispute the death and resurection bit?
<raises hand> And others as well. There isn't any evidence, after all, that he even existed. I mean, we have records of a lot of messianic figures around that time. There was even one named Yeshua HaNotzri. But he lived about a hundred years before JC was supposedly born. And while some of his five disciples had names similar to the twelve in Christian scriptures... well, I think you get the point.
I don't object to your believing it, obviously. I'm just saying that you should realize that it's not as universally accepted as you think.
quote:Originally posted by BannaOj: You could make a case for Astara and Easter, but wtf with the Sun-God baloney and the cross?!
quote:Originally posted by starLisa: True story. I was in college, at some Hillel House event. There were people from the St. Louis community there as well. This one guy started telling me that he thinks there's a connection between "holy" and "whole", and that since the Torah says we are supposed to be a "holy nation", it's really talking about Jewish unity.
So first I tried to explain to him that those two words have no connection in English. He refused to accept that. Heck, they sound similar, right?
Wrong. Try again. The English words are indeed related. The w in whole was mistakenly added later. This is where all those old manuscripts and letters after your name comes in handy.
Of course, just because those two words have a common origin in English doesn't mean that they're related in Hebrew. And anyway, holy was never used to mean "united" in English, at least not in the last twelve hundred years of recorded history.
So yes, his argument that the Jews should be a united nation is baseless. His etymology was spot-on, though.
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posted
I'm trying to figure out your historic credentials, compared to Josephus. I'm referring to Josephus, Antiquities 20.9.1, not the more disputed passage.
quote:Originally posted by starLisa: True story. I was in college, at some Hillel House event. There were people from the St. Louis community there as well. This one guy started telling me that he thinks there's a connection between "holy" and "whole", and that since the Torah says we are supposed to be a "holy nation", it's really talking about Jewish unity.
So first I tried to explain to him that those two words have no connection in English. He refused to accept that. Heck, they sound similar, right?
Wrong. Try again. The English words are indeed related. The w in whole was mistakenly added later. This is where all those old manuscripts and letters after your name comes in handy.
Or not. The Online Etymological Dictionary says that they may have once been related, long before English was a language, but even they aren't sure about it.
You just like to argue.
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quote:Originally posted by starLisa: Or not. The Online Etymological Dictionary says that they may have once been related, long before English was a language, but even they aren't sure about it.
Nowhere in there does it say "before English was a language." And actually, all it says they aren't sure about is the exact original meaning of holy—that is, how exactly it split off from its cousins whole and hale. You're misreading that entry. They clearly say that it's "connected with O.E. hal." This word is also connected with the words hale, heal, and whole. I meant what I said about this being a place where an education in this sort of thing would be helpful.
quote:You just like to argue.
This is the funniest thing I've read all day. Thank you.
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posted
Also, I don't particularly believe Jesus was born on December 25th, which your link spends a lot more time on. I'm aware of the pagan ressurection myths. However given the amount of crucifying the Romans did and Josephus. I see no reason to think that he *wasn't* a historic figure, or that he *wasn't* crucified.
And, given that the name "Jesus" was actually a pretty darn common variant of Joshua, and considering how many other Jewish people were crucified by the Romans during the same time period, I'm betting someone named Jesus existed and was crucified by the Romans. Unless you think there isn't a John Smith in jail.
posted
the passage which I referred to, is not normally disputed:
quote:Since Ananus was that kind of person, and because he perceived an opportunity with Festus having died and Albinus not yet arrived, he called a meeting of the Sanhedrin and brought James, the brother of Jesus (who is called 'Messiah') along with some others. He accused them of transgressing the law, and handed them over for stoning.
posted
The OED (I love the OED ) seems to back up the holy/whole claim...
Holy:
quote::- OTeut. type *hailag-oz, the sense of which is expressed in the Gothic of Ulfilas by weihs (but hailag, app. ‘consecrated, dedicated’, is read on a Runic inscription generally held to be Gothic). A deriv. of the adj. *hailo-, OE. hál, free from injury, whole, hale, or of the deriv. n. *hailoz-, *hailiz-, in OHG. heil, ON. heill health, happiness, good luck, in ON. also omen, auspice
It certainly seems likely!
ALSO: Being an atheist, I can easily see what of the story of Jesus and the new testament was borrowed from existing beliefs, myths and legends. However, based on my beliefs, I can also see just as easily how the creation and all that followed and is recorded in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic religions is also just as based on pre-existing, but of course much earlier, "pagan" (I hate that word, I use it only for the benefit of understanding) beliefs, myths and legends.
You mnust already know that The Akkadian (and "pagan") "Enuma Elish" (Link)records a creation that is reflected very strongly in the Biblical (or all the other "Book" words) tales.
Every tale of from chaos coming order exists as as something borrowed from a previous tale until we head back into the mists of time when our ancestors first conceived the concepts of time and chaos and order. These new creation stories can fit the existing framework and so new religions evolve and change.
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Y'know I'm not trying to say that Jesus was the Messiah here. But I think someone by the name existed and was killed by the Romans. Even if Chrisianity is all a crock built on older myths, someone (probably many) there about that time had to have the name. The fact it was a relatively common name, would make the myth aspects more believable.
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Ok, I read his whole defense of Judaism section when I was pretty young, (<10)it gave me the impression he was orthodox, cause he seemed to be defending the rules and regulations.
quote:Originally posted by BannaOj: Ok, I read his whole defense of Judaism section when I was pretty young, (<10)it gave me the impression he was orthodox, cause he seemed to be defending the rules and regulations.
He probably was [addit: defending them]. The evidence points toward the likelihood that his parents (or possibly his grandparents) were religiously observant. However, it is fairly clear that (at least as an adult) he was not.
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Actually, I really hate arguing like this. It makes me all nervous and shaky. But I hate it even more when people abuse the truth.
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quote: Whoops, I thought according to starLisa all Jews had been observant for thousands of years until the apostate Reformed movement happened.
Oh, that much is essentially true. But in Josephus' time you were either observant, or you weren't. There was no "Orthodoxy."
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quote:Dude, there's one place in the entire Bible where such phrasing is used. Those sons aren't called divine; they are called mighty men and giants.
So when she says "All the texts in the Hebrew Bible", she's being at the very least a little disingenuous. I tend to think it's a bit deceptive as well. And I'll ask you: how can you trust the scholarship of someone who makes that kind of misstatement on such a basic point?
"The second sons of God text is Deuteronomy 32.8, one on which a great deal has been written:
When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of men, he fixed the bounds of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God
The problem lies in the difference between the Hebrew and the Greek versions. The MT does not mention sons of God, but has sons of Israel instead. The Qumran Hebrew has sons of God (sons of 'el) and the Greek has angels of God. This text shows two things: that there was some reason for altering sons of God to sons of Israel, or vice versa (the Qumran suggests reading suggests that the earlier Hebrew had read 'sons of God'); and that the sons of God were the patron deities of the various nations. Elyon, the High God had allocated the nations to the various sons of God; oneof these sons was Yahweh to whom Israel had been allocated (Deut. 32.9). This fossil incorporated into Deuteronomy is thought to be one of its oldest components; how such a 'polytheistic' piece came to be included in Deuteronomy, with its emphasis on monotheism, is a question we cannot answer, although it is possible that to guess why the 'polytheism' was removed from the later Hebrew text, as we shall see. The angels of the nations are probably the same as the 'messengers' (it is the same word in Hebrew) of the nations who appear in Isa. 14:32 and who are warned that Yahweh's people are protected by Zion which he has founded. The angels of the nations appear in a later form in Daniel, where they are the princes of PErsia and Greece, attacking the unnamed angel who fights for Israel with the help of the archangel Michael (Dan. 10:13-14)."
I'm not going to quote the whole book, mainly for copyright reasons, but also because it's not practical for me to do so *grin*.
The next discussion she has is in Job, which the prologue features the sons of God (sons of the 'elohim), one of whom was the satan, coming to Yahweh to challenge him to test the loyalty of Job.
Sons of 'elim appear in Ps. 29.1, where they are told to acknowledge the glory and strength of Yahweh. There are quite a few references in the psalms, actually, including in Ps. 89.6, where none among the sons of 'elim is like Yahweh who is a god feared in the council of the Holy Ones.
Daniel 3.25's reference to 'one like a son of the gods' (a son of elahin) appears in Human form.
There are quite a few more. She devotes an entire chapter to discussing and comparing the concepts of Sons of El/Sons of Yahweh.
quote:Oh, that much is essentially true. But in Josephus' time you were either observant, or you weren't. There was no "Orthodoxy."
And since Josephus apparently lived among Romans in a very Roman manner, he was not, am I right?
Didn't Josephus spend a lot of time with each of the main sects of the day (Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, etc) in order to study them, and decide which one appeared to be closest to the truth? I began reading Josephus' history, but got distracted ;O) - If I remember correctly, didn't he later become what was considered to be a 'hellenized Jew'?
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Taal, yes and no. He does indeed claim to have attended schools of each of those groups -- and may even have done so. But even by his own report, he did so as a teenager. I wonder how much it was "trying to find the truth" and how much it was living different places and/or trying to find the school with the cheapest tuition.
And yes, he did become a mityaven -- a Hellenist.
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Yeah, I just looked in my copy. Here's the relevent text:
Now, my father Matthias was not only eminent on account of is nobility, but had a higher commendation on account of his righteousness, and was in great reputation in Jerusalem, the greatest city we have.
I was myself brought up with my brother, whose name was Matthias, for he was my own brother, by both father and mother; and I made mighty proficiency in the improvements of my learning, and appeared to have both a great memory and understanding.
Moreover, when I was a child, and about fourteen years of age, I was commended by all for the love I had to learning; on which account the high priests and principal men of the city came then frequently to me together, in order to know my opinion about the accurate understanding of points of the law.
And when I was about sixteen years old, I had a mind to make trim of the several sects that were among us. These sects are three:—The first is that of the Pharisees, the second that Sadducees, and the third that of the Essens, as we have frequently told you; for I thought that by this means I might choose the best, if I were once acquainted with them all; so I contented myself with hard fare, and underwent great difficulties, and went through them all.
Nor did I content myself with these trials only; but when I was informed that one, whose name was Banus, lived in the desert, and used no other clothing than grew upon trees, and had no other food than what grew of its own accord, and bathed himself in cold water frequently, both by night and by day, in order to preserve his chastity, I imitated him in those things, and continued with him three years.
So when I had accomplished my desires, I returned back to the city, being now nineteen years old, and began to conduct myself according to the rules of the sect of the Pharisees, which is of kin to the sect of the Stoics, as the Greeks call them.
It then goes on to discuss his journeys to Rome.
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quote: Whoops, I thought according to starLisa all Jews had been observant for thousands of years until the apostate Reformed movement happened.
All of the different clans, the Tzdokis, Prushis and Issiyis (sp?), the peasantry and aristocracy (not always Tzdokis and Prushis), and the different political organisations were not, by any means, making the classification of who's observant and who's not into a simple - or clear - matter.
quote:Originally posted by BannaOj: Don't know. Wasn't Josephus an observant Jew?
Probably. For the most part. But he was also a vile traitor. Still and all, that little blurb that's been inserted in some versions of his work has very little validity. And there's nothing else. Nada.
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quote:Originally posted by BannaOj: Whoops, I thought according to starLisa all Jews had been observant for thousands of years until the apostate Reformed movement happened.
Well, first, they call themselves the Reform Movement. Reformed is something in Christianity.
Second, there've always been some individuals who go off the path (as we say). Benedict Spinoza. Benjamin D'Israeli. Torquemada. A whole slew of Jews converted under duress during the Inquisition. That didn't mean that Judaism embraced Catholicism; just that some Jews did, rather than be killed or expelled.
We've always had our apostates. We had Baal worshippers in biblical times. We've had Sadducess, Karaites, Sabbateans, Frankists, Essenes, Christians... but our core remains, and always will.
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He's arguably a traitor of the Jewish people. On the one hand, he did go with the Romans; on the other hand, who's to say you wouldn't if you were offered a good life after the Romans detected your hiding location? Who's to say that's what he really believed in and that he didn't do it "be`al corcho"?
I reckon that he's self-promoting, and trying to play the political game of being on both sides. I don't know if he believed that the rebellion will be successful before the fall of Yodfat, but one thing's for sure, and that is that he did prepare the Galilee for the Roman invasoion.
So he went and wrote books for the Romans. It happens! Maybe h thought that he'd be better off alive, and he should chos the winning side if he wanted to live. You might've done the same.
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quote:Dude, there's one place in the entire Bible where such phrasing is used. Those sons aren't called divine; they are called mighty men and giants.
So when she says "All the texts in the Hebrew Bible", she's being at the very least a little disingenuous. I tend to think it's a bit deceptive as well. And I'll ask you: how can you trust the scholarship of someone who makes that kind of misstatement on such a basic point?
"The second sons of God text is Deuteronomy 32.8, one on which a great deal has been written:
When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of men, he fixed the bounds of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God
The problem lies in the difference between the Hebrew and the Greek versions. The MT does not mention sons of God, but has sons of Israel instead. The Qumran Hebrew has sons of God (sons of 'el) and the Greek has angels of God.
There's a "synagogue" in Deerfield, Illinois, called Beth Or. They are part of what is called the Humanist Movement. This was founded by Reform rabbis who decided one day that since they really didn't believe in God, it was silly to continue using the word. So they created an explicitly atheist "Jewish" movement.
So one year, when I was at college, there was this guy on my floor whose family belonged to Beth Or. They sent him a care package just before Passover. Don't get me started on atheists celebrating Passover.
He showed me all the stuff they sent. Some of it was even kosher, though not kosher for Passover, of course. And there was a Haggada in the package.
Well, I had to look at that. What could an atheist Haggada possibly say. There was some tripe about Passover being a festival of freedom for everyone, and yadda, yadda, but then...
There's a passage in the Jewish prayer book that says: "Blessed is Hashem by day, blessed is Hashem by night. Blessed is Hashem when we rise up, and blessed is Hashem when we lay down."
This Haggada included that. Except that they replaced "Hashem" with "Man".
There was a photocopy of a piece of text from Jeremiah in this Haggadah. It begins "Thus says the Lord, a nation which has survived the sword has found grace in the desert." They'd photocopied this from a standard Hebrew/English Bible, and had used white-out to cover "the Lord" and wrote "a prophet" over it.
The quote she gives is much like that atheist Haggadah. The Bible says "the sons of Israel". Not "the sons of God".
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quote:The Bible says "the sons of Israel". Not "the sons of God".
The MT says sons of Israel. Who's to say that that text as we have of the MT today is the original, most accurate?
If anything, in accordance with your scenario, it seems like the MT may have been the one with the white out - two other versions (both significantly older than the MT manuscripts we have) match much more closely to each other than to the MT.
Can you definitively say the MT isn't the whited-out version? This is what it being claimed, that the Deuteronomists (or other reformers) didn't like the polythestic implications, so they 'tweaked' it for 'clarification', for the 'greater good'.
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