Divine Intervention v. Divine Inspiration

[Bhaktajan II]

You know the answer to stopping someone from harming is to put them somewhere to get good counceling. The opposite of what they are doing. So I believe the act of kindness re evolution is good. Where are all the heros? Remember in the end its always a prince who rescues a princess.

There are those that say, "Leave me alone, I'm not sick".

Those that knowingly accept charity as a blessing are worthy to council ---they have been waiting for that council to arrive.

sacrifice, charity and penance [excerpts from the Bhagavad-Gita]:

Some learned men declare that all kinds of fruitive activities should be given up as faulty, yet other sages maintain that acts of sacrifice, charity and penance should never be abandoned.

Without desiring fruitive results, one should perform various kinds of sacrifice, penance and charity.

Anything done as sacrifice, charity or penance without faith in the Supreme, O son of Prtha, is impermanent. It is called asat and is useless both in this life and the next.


Acts of sacrifice, charity and penance are not to be given up; they must be performed. Indeed, sacrifice, charity and penance purify even the great souls. All these activities should be performed without attachment or any expectation of result. They should be performed as a matter of duty, O son of Prtha. That is My final opinion.

Now for an esoteric graphic analysis of several Gita statement:

Factors of "Action" from the Gita:

http://www.interfaith.org/forum/one-word-13204-4.html

 

[taijasi]

Where's the good in Auschwitz?

That you may ask it, and every man with a heart understand [and proclaim]: God was with every person in that camp. And I mean every person.

It's called 'truth' ... apparently you have no appetite for it.

Ouch. So scathing. Seems to me if you (and I) faced half the truths we're given an opportunity to, daily, the Universe would already be quite a different place, likely for the better. And Gee, didn't I mean that?

But you're not discussing, are you ... you're avoiding the issue, you're in 'eyes wide shut' mode, simply repeating a mantra over and over again, the message carved in stone you learned from the old dead guys who founded [the empire we call Vatican/Roman Catholicism].

Empires unfounded on Truth and that which is Unassailable [Unity indeed, the SPIRIT for which it stands] FALL. Sol Invictus!!!

Across the sea of your own fantasia?

Look out for the rocks of the real, my friend.

If a man can cross the sea you cite, then indeed, he has no worries for the stumbling bl/rocks you have placed there, or directed him to ... once he is Moored safe in [My] harbor ~ says One Whom you ought to know.

You may hitch your vessel to any Star, but know the signicance of Rev 22:16, O' *Man of [the] Mysteries*.

Study on, meditate, PROVE that it is more than [an] exercise. I am sure a little Karma Yoga isn't bad for any of us.

 

[Thomas]

That you may ask it ...

You've missed the point — the question was one of theodicy.

God bless,

Thomas

 

[wil]

How many millions have been affected by reading the story of Viktor Frankl?

 

[donnann]

There are those that say, "Leave me alone, I'm not sick".

Those that knowingly accept charity as a blessing are worthy to council ---they have been waiting for that council to arrive.

sacrifice, charity and penance [excerpts from the Bhagavad-Gita]:

Some learned men declare that all kinds of fruitive activities should be given up as faulty, yet other sages maintain that acts of sacrifice, charity and penance should never be abandoned.

Without desiring fruitive results, one should perform various kinds of sacrifice, penance and charity.

Anything done as sacrifice, charity or penance without faith in the Supreme, O son of Prtha, is impermanent. It is called asat and is useless both in this life and the next.


Acts of sacrifice, charity and penance are not to be given up; they must be performed. Indeed, sacrifice, charity and penance purify even the great souls. All these activities should be performed without attachment or any expectation of result. They should be performed as a matter of duty, O son of Prtha. That is My final opinion.

Now for an esoteric graphic analysis of several Gita statement:

Factors of "Action" from the Gita:

http://www.interfaith.org/forum/one-word-13204-4.html

Good formula. Soul formulas that are associated with the soul powered by the spirit , done with the body.

 

[bob x]

On the basis that weighing up the evidence, listening to the arguments, taking the pro's and the con's, allowing for redaction, and knowing that there is, as yet, no definitive answer, I choose yes — along with a number of other scholars — and a number of other writers, who point out numerous 'eye witness' characteristics of his style.

I see much more of the argument-from-authority than the argument-from-evidence in you. My approach, when making such a point as, say, "the early tradition does not confirm the provenance", is to cite the primary sources (Papias, Polycarp, Muratori) and discuss what the content of those sources mean; I never bother to name scholars who agree with me (my attitude is that every assertion has to stand or fall on its own merits, regardless of source; a false statement does not become any truer if Einstein or Confucius said it, nor a true statement any falser even if it came from Qadhafi or George W. Bush), although I do note when I am reaching a conclusion that is not widely agreed with.

You, on the other hand, are content with secondary sources, sometimes just saying "a number of scholars" agree on such-and-such, but sometimes at least giving the names of these scholars. However, you don't give the arguments those scholars made, or cite to the primary evidence they adduced for them. I don't really know what "numerous 'eye witness' characteristics of [John's] style" you are referring to, for example, because you don't cite what they are; I'm sure I can find examples of people arguing this case, but my point is that you are content that reputable people have made the argument, without feeling any need to delve in to the substance of the argument. I would bet, even before looking, that the eye-witness characteristics are found in the Passion Narrative material, which I accept as old and well-preserved; I have already argued why this has little bearing on the reliability of the Signs or Discourses material. The question is often framed as "who wrote it?" without even thinking about the possibility that the whole book does not have a single author or date of composition.

We were told, for example, that Luke was unreliable because he got so many facts wrong, then one by one archaeologists discovered he had his facts right. So, for example, I am obliged to accept that there is no evidence of a census or a slaughter of the innocents, but then the absence of evidence doesn't mean it didn't happen ... and there is some view that there could well have been a census, looking at the political shennanigans at the time.

Here, you are very unclear about the old arguments concerning the discrepancies in the Matthew and Luke nativity stories. It used to be thought that Matthew is "older" and therefore more to be trusted; if Matthew said the birth of Jesus was in the reign of Herod, and Luke said it was later, then Luke must be the one who had it garbled. This arises from the "single date of composition" fallacy: let me repeat myself concerning my picture of the composition of those gospels, Matthew mixes the very old "Quotations" material ("Q" actually stands for German Quelle "source" but I find "Quotations" a suitable English name) which was translated from a source in Aramaic sprinkled with Hebrew (as was concluded on independent grounds, even before the recognition that Papias is describing precisely this) with "Altered Mark" (the material, nearly as old, from Mark, with slight edits) and two types of "special Matthew" materials, since I distinguish the "Fulfillments" (OT material strictly from the Septuagint, without any understanding of the underlying Hebrew, with stories that "fulfill" them) from the "Peter" material (which still seems to have been absent in Justin Martyr's text c. 150). Luke/Acts starts with the "We" document (second half of Acts, with strong and unmistakeable-- IMO-- "eye-witness characteristics") and the "Evangelion" published by Marcion (not ascribed to any particular author) which mixed "Quotations" and "Altered Mark" with a different set of "special material" including the "W" source ("wonders and women"; the emphasis on healing stories lends some substance to the view that this, like "We", is actually by Luke the Physician, though the emphasis on women has suggested a female author to some) and some other quotations from a source like "Thomas"; the first half of Acts was written as a "bridge" (and shows signs of a later editor rearranging some chapters, wrecking the chiasma structure and the chronology), and the introductions (the cover letters to Theophilus, a mid-2nd-century patriarch of Antioch; the nativities of the Baptist and Jesus; and the temptation in the desert) are near-final touches (some manuscripts have extra additions, generally not making it to the canonical text) by someone who has seen "Matthew", which the author of "Evangelion" (not Marcion himself, I don't think, nor anyone of his theological bent) had not.

The point here is that neither of the nativity stories belong to the older strata. The relative reliability of "Fred" (the "F-redactor", who inserted the Fulfillments and Quotations into the Altered Mark to create the nearly-final "Matthew") and "Theo" (the friend of Theophilus, who dislikes Marcion's theology but likes the assembled gospel he has circulated, and wants it completed in an acceptable edition) is rather a different issue from the relative reliability of "the disciple Matthew" (assuming he is the real author of "Quotations"; I see little reason to doubt this) or "Luke the physician" (clearly the author of the second half of Acts, and plausibly of much of the "special material" in the gospel now ascribed to him as a whole). "Fred" I see as, not to put too fine a point on it, a total confabulator: I do not believe he has a single shred of genuine source-material; he is looking at OT passages which can be stretched (if you ignore their contexts and what the Hebrew actually said) into prophecies, and making up stories to fit. "Theo" on the other hand is well-educated and, for things like the list of local rulers in the year "14th Tiberius", has obviously looked at honest-to-God historical records.

Your statement that "there is no evidence of a census" is 180 degrees off. The census mentioned in the third gospel was well-recorded and indeed utterly notorious. Imposing a "census" meant: imposing central taxation (the purpose of the enumeration was to allocate the tax burden among regions and cities), abolishing Judea's quasi-independent status as a "tributary kingdom" and reducing it to a province. This had enormous religious implications: many (probably most, in fact) Jews thought that Caesar's divine pretensions made payment of any kind of tribute to him a sin; as long as it was Herod (or his sons, in the successor kingdoms) doing it, that made the king a sinner, but it was still a duty to pay taxes to the king, even if he himself was not righteous and used the money wrongly-- or so they could rationalize until 6 AD. The abolition of independent "kingdom" status for Judea proper (Galilee and Transjordan were still under Antipas) sparked an enormous revolt (with Galilee used as a base until it lost "safe haven" status). The problem is that this is over a decade away from the date Matthew gives for the birth; the people who used to say "Luke got his facts wrong" were assuming "Luke" was claiming that a central Roman census took place during Herod's reign (which is nonsense: the imposition of the census MEANT, precisely, the ABOLITION of the "kingdom"), missing the point that "Luke" is flatly disagreeing with "Matthew" (presumably because of the info that Jesus was "turning thirty" when he was baptized, sometimes after John "began baptizing" in 14th Tiberius).

I agree that the dispute with the gnostics came later

Then, if you are also agreeing that the Discourses material (the theological stuff) is part of that dispute with the gnostics, then you are agreeing it was not written during the lifetime of the disciples. In John's day, the issues were elsewhere: how much of the old Jewish law still applied to Christians? Paul said, none of it. Cerinthus said, all of it. John insisted on the compromise position that Gentile converts must at least refrain from any endorsement of idolatry (which is what brought them into conflict with the Roman state).

those schemas — fundamentally dualist systems of all sorts — were there before Christ

No, we are talking about 2nd-century developments.

we hold that tradition produces the text, not the other way round — nor do we declare Scripture inerrant.

The point is, you had to be dragged kicking and screaming to that position. The insistence that denying the inerrancy of anything in Scripture was a mortal sin was in Bellarmine's Catechism all the way into the 1890's ("One who denies that Abraham had two sons is blaspheming the Holy Spirit every bit as much as one who denies that Jesus was born of a virgin, for the same Holy Spirit asserts both" -- Cardinal Bellarmine). Denying geocentrism was "infallibly" proclaimed a sin; and this position became increasingly embarrassing. In the 1820's it was finally allowed to teach Catholic students astronomy from texts which said "Modern scientists believe..." (that is, you still couldn't say heliocentrism was true, only that it was widely believed). Pope Leo XIII re-opened an observatory at the Vatican to indicate his willingness to make peace with astronomy, and phased out Bellarmine (the "Baltimore Catechism" in the US was written at this time); this caused such an uproar among the conservatives that Pope Pius X declared Bellarmine a "Doctor of the Church"-- but didn't bring back the geocentric catechism.

We accept redaction took place ... but we do not accept that John was not an eye witness, nor that he did not write his gospel, because there is no compelling evidence obliging us to do so.

Exactly. You are going to fight a stubborn rear-guard battle to maintain every bit of the beliefs that haven't yet been convicted of falsehood "beyond a reasonable doubt"; but, to those with no attachment to your tradition, there is no presumption-of-truth for anything in your old books, any more than for any other old books. It is the way you assign the burden of proof which is a sound reason for distrusting your tradition, for anyone who is not of it.

OK. But the term is contextualised in Scripture, and was well understood. Word (En) / Verbum (Lt) / Logos (Gk) / Memra (Hb) all have a specific context in the discussion of Revelation and there was no confusion there.

It's an abstract entity, and it makes no more sense of talk of an abstraction turning into "flesh" than to talk about a number turning into wood.

But who's grammar and who's habit of thought are we talking about?

Humans'.

The John who appears in the Gospel, the Beloved Disciple, we now hold, from modern scholarship, was most probably not simply a poor fisherman of the historical Biblical image, but a well-to-do young man, of some wealth and some standing, who could move easily in the upper echelons of Jewish society.

The author of Revelations IS a poor fisherman from Galilee, with little grasp of the Greek language and a towering rage against the Roman state; THAT is the voice of the "son of thunder". The author of the gospel is somebody else entirely; on that we can agree.

 

[Thomas]

Hi Bob x

I see much more of the argument-from-authority than the argument-from-evidence in you.

Bob — we accept the evidence that we don't know who the authors of Scripture are, we accept that we don't know how many there were, we accept that the texts were edited and redacted ... because that's what the evidence indicates.

Your claims for what those indicators say however, rests on your own authority. If I was to say 'OK', it would be to accept your authority on the matter, not the irrefutable argument of the evidence.

The question is often framed as "who wrote it?" without even thinking about the possibility that the whole book does not have a single author or date of composition.

But we do ... so no problem there.

Meanwhile, there's Q, and proto-Mark, and Alt-this, and F-that ... and I think, there's not a single scrap of evidence for these sources, other than a creative solution to a problem, and the equally-creative hypotheses for the origins of the materials we do have.

I believe what my tradition says because it doesn't go into speculation. Meanwhile, all these hypothetical sources seem a bit 'self-serving' to me.

I think your problem is oral tradition. There's not a point when oral stops, and then the written begins, there's an interface, but oral tradition really tosses a fairly hefty spanner into the works.

Here, you are very unclear about the old arguments concerning the discrepancies in the Matthew and Luke nativity stories.

No I'm not.

The point I was making is that Luke had long been regarded as unreliable, for a number of supposed 'inaccuracies' which subsequently were discovered to be quite accurate, and the ill-informed speculations of scholars is actually unreliable.

Your statement that "there is no evidence of a census" is 180 degrees off.

No, I'm talking about another census ... as you point out, the ones we know don't fit the timeline ... so I'm saying there may well have been another, that does.

Then, if you are also agreeing that the Discourses material (the theological stuff) is part of that dispute with the gnostics, then you are agreeing it was not written during the lifetime of the disciples.

No. The opposition of heaven/earth, body/soul was there long before.

I'm saying there are disputes evident in the texts which would turn up later in gnosticism in the 2nd century, and again with Arius in the 4th, and which continue to surface periodically. I'm amazed at how much 'New Age Christianity' is the same stuff all over again ...

The point is, you had to be dragged kicking and screaming to that position...

Well none of us is perfect.

You are going to fight a stubborn rear-guard battle to maintain every bit of the beliefs that haven't yet been convicted of falsehood "beyond a reasonable doubt"

And rightly so, because I'd look a bit silly abandoning my faith on the strength of a claim by a scholar that was later shown to be an erroneous interpretation of the data.

And what is 'beyond a reasonable doubt' is that history is a continual process of correcting itself.

... but, to those with no attachment to your tradition, there is no presumption-of-truth for anything in your old books, any more than for any other old books.

No.

It is the way you assign the burden of proof which is a sound reason for distrusting your tradition, for anyone who is not of it.

That's the way the world works. But really, you're talking tosh. We're not just sitting on our arses. Some of the leading lights in text and Scripture criticism are believing Christians.

It's an abstract entity, and it makes no more sense of talk of an abstraction turning into "flesh" than to talk about a number turning into wood.

Oh rubbish, Bob — it's an abstract idea that stands on empirical data — applied in a particular circumstance.

There's sufficient evidence in scientific debate to suggest that, even though it escapes you, it makes sense to a lot of people.

The author of Revelations IS a poor fisherman from Galilee, with little grasp of the Greek language and a towering rage against the Roman state; THAT is the voice of the "son of thunder". The author of the gospel is somebody else entirely; on that we can agree.

Yes, the author of the gospel was a Galilean, educated and quite well off, a mover in many circles, the one whom Christ loved ...

God bless,

Thomas

 

[wil]

Meanwhile, there's Q, and proto-Mark, and Alt-this, and F-that ... and I think, there's not a single scrap of evidence for these sources, other than a creative solution to a problem, and the equally-creative hypotheses for the origins of the materials we do have.

....

No, I'm talking about another census ... as you point out, the ones we know don't fit the timeline ... so I'm saying there may well have been another, that does.


No. The opposition of heaven/earth, body/soul was there long before.

And rightly so, because I'd look a bit silly abandoning my faith on the strength of a claim by a scholar that was later shown to be an erroneous interpretation of the data.

And what is 'beyond a reasonable doubt' is that history is a continual process of correcting itself.

Plenty of good stuff here Thomas...

But I always wonder why you think the exploration and exposing of falsehoods requires 'abandoning faith'

It is like Bart Ehrman v. Jack Spong....both devout in their beliefs, one Evangelical, the other Episcopalian....when they came across the information discussed....one lost his faith, the rug pulled out from under him the house of cards created in his mind collapsed.... the other didn't lose faith, embraced it, realized that there were errors in belief, errors in what man wrote, errors in what man thought...

That power and corruption occurred everywhere...but there was no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater...

It is incredible what the bible contains.... but knowing what it doesn't contain, and what has been discovered to be false or questionable it worthwhile....and then the contemplation of why was that inserted...or omitted...what was the motive...its all good.

Inspiring even.

 

[radarmark]

Bob x and Thomas. At my meeting (Quaker Service) I like to sit next to a retired Greek and Aramic teacher who discusses the NT if I get him going. You guys certainly are impressive, I am busy looking up and verifying the points you make (this is a major reason I am here).

Keep it going!

 

[wil]

Bob x and Thomas. At my meeting (Quaker Service) I like to sit next to a retired Greek and Aramic teacher who discusses the NT if I get him going.

While in Arizona recently my cabbie was an Iraqi, from an Aramaic Christian Denomination. He grew up speaking Aramaic as his native tongue... it was great having him recite the beatitudes, Lord's Prayer, and some parables in Aramaic. He wrote out my daughter's and my name in Aramaic and Arabic...

You guys certainly are impressive, I am busy looking up and verifying the points you make (this is a major reason I am here).

Keep it going!

mee too.

 

[bob x]

we accept the evidence that we don't know who the authors of Scripture are, we accept that we don't know how many there were, we accept that the texts were edited and redacted ... because that's what the evidence indicates.

Your claims for what those indicators say however, rests on your own authority. If I was to say 'OK', it would be to accept your authority on the matter, not the irrefutable argument of the evidence.

Uh, Thomas, you haven't cited any evidence at all. Your statement about "what the evidence indicates" actually means "Other people have made arguments about the evidence, which I don't bother to reproduce here for anyone's examination, because I take their word for it."

It is a total lie to say that I have ever claimed anything "on [my] own authority." Not once have I said "Believe this because I say so" or anything remotely like that. I say things like: HERE is a primary source, which says "THIS", and in my opinion THIS implies THAT, and the reason I think so is BECAUSE... And you don't grapple with the primary evidence or any reasoned arguments about it, because you feel that there are professionals to do that, and in case of disagreements among them, you accept those from the Catholic(TM) Tradition because that is a brand-name you trust (which carries zero weight, of course, with those who do not share your trust). The argument-from-authority style is so ingrained in you that you have trouble even understanding that other people don't argue in that way: you think that I "must" be claiming to be an authority, otherwise how would I dare to express an opinion?

But we do [grapple with multiple dates of composition] ... so no problem there.

No, you really don't; and by "you" I mean Christian scholars in general. It is common to make inferences about date, derived from one particular passage-- and then to extrapolate this to the entire book. That leap of logic is so common that it has become quite a pet peeve of mine.

Meanwhile, there's Q, and proto-Mark, and Alt-this, and F-that ... and I think, there's not a single scrap of evidence for these sources

Then you think wrongly. I have cited for you the primary evidence for "Q", for example: Papias gives our earliest description of the gospels, and what he calls "Matthew" sounds very much like "Q", and very little like the book now found in the canon; this was noted after "Q" had been hypothesized on quite independent internal-textual grounds, which is a phenomenon called "consilience" of evidence, considered in all branches of science to be a strong confirmation of the soundness of a hypothesis; back-translation of "Q" indicates word-play in an underlying Aramaic-mixed-with-Hebrew, again matching what Papias and other sources say about Matthew being written in Hebrew first; the existence of "Thomas" confirms that standalone "sayings" gospels was indeed an existing genre. The "Acts of Barnabas" mentions "the two" books of Matthew circulated on Cyprus, so I have suggested before, and mention here again in case someone with power to follow through is reading, that Cyprus is a good place to search for a manuscript of standalone "Q", which I suppose is the only thing you would ever accept as a "scrap" of evidence in this case (I doubt you would take that tack in other cases: there are numerous ancient books which we do not have, but which we hear about and got some scattered quotes and info from later authors-- are you the type to deny their existence until you see them?)

I believe what my tradition says because it doesn't go into speculation.

LOL!

I think your problem is oral tradition. There's not a point when oral stops, and then the written begins, there's an interface, but oral tradition really tosses a fairly hefty spanner into the works.

??? I don't have a problem with that. I have talked about this before: for example, that the "Logos" hymn at the opening of "John" was still oral, not written, c. 150 but nonetheless is likely to be well-preserved from earlier (it is not implausible that it is verbatim the hymn referred to by Pliny; liturgical pieces are quite conservatively passed down). But a lot of Christian scholars want to use it as a cure-all: the "F" material in Matthew is not written down from an earlier oral source; it was invented from scratch, and if you want to go through my primary evidentiary reasons for claiming that, we can do so.

The point I was making is that Luke had long been regarded as unreliable, for a number of supposed 'inaccuracies' which subsequently were discovered to be quite accurate

You don't tell me what you are talking about. You referred to the dispute over the nativity accounts (whether "Luke" was worse than or better than "Matthew" for the date) but you don't give any other examples of accusations against Luke's accuracy: are you dredging up some old 19th-century arch-skeptic of the "Troy never existed" stripe?

The only actual proven inaccuracy in "Luke" that I know of is the title "procurator" of Judea for Pontius Pilate, whose actual title was "prefect" of Judea as the Caesarea dedicatory inscription tells us: a "prefect" was generally like a "mayor and police chief" of a large city and surrounding country, like the prefect of Damascus and prefect of Antioch, answerable to a provincial governor (governor of Syria in all these cases) and through him to the Senate, or directly to the Senate, as the prefect of Rome; the title was changed under Caligula, a "procurator" reporting directly to the Emperor in person. This indicates that the author of "Luke" did not live in Judea in the 20's and 30's, but we already knew that; as "errors" go, it is small potatoes.

and the ill-informed speculations of scholars is actually unreliable.

The fallibility of recent humans is not exactly a good argument in favor of the reliability of ancient humans. The ancients were worse, you know (and if you don't know that, I can go through some primary evidentiary bases for that claim).

No, I'm talking about another census ... as you point out, the ones we know don't fit the timeline ... so I'm saying there may well have been another, that does.

You think the Romans OVERTHREW HEROD'S KINGDOM, and nobody who chronicles the career of Herod bothers to mention such an event?

Come on. The census was a big deal. In the Acts of Augustus, which we have good reason to believe was written by Augustus himself (some of the copies are almost certainly "autographs" at least in part: that is, it would be customary for the Emperor to symbolically chisel a first-stroke or two, before the professionals took over the carving; similarly a chisel-stroke or two in the Caesarea inscription is surely from the hand of Pilate himself), the repeated successful completion of a comprehensive census is described in loving detail as one of the administrative feats of which the Emperor was most proud. The last two were in 9-8 BC and 6-7 AD, for which reason a 14-year cycle became customary (although the prior censuses under Augustus had not been at that interval). It is entirely clear that the census was of the provinces, not of tributary kingdoms: internal fiscal and administrative autonomy was what "kingship" meant; any claim that the Romans invaded Herod's territory with a swarm of troops and bureaucrats in 9-8 BC to take over all his taxation revenue is a claim that Herod was removed as king in that year, which we know is not true. And even if we hypothesize such an event, it is obviously not the event "Luke" is talking about: governor Kurenios of Syria is obviously Quirinus, the governor during the FAMOUS census of 6-7 AD (when Judea's independence was definitively overthrown, in the teeth of a massive revolt); in 9-8 BC, the governor of Syria was Varus (later famous for losing legions, and any hope of conquering Germany, in the Battle of Teutoberg Forest) while Quirinus was serving as prefect of Antioch.

I have seen this special pleading before: and if you'll pardon me saying so, it is really silly. Josh McDowell's "Evidence that Demands a Verdict" goes on to say that maybe, by referring to Quirinus as "governor of Syria", Luke is really meaning that the prefect of Antioch was so important in Syria that he was practically like the governor; well, that's seriously missing the point. Ancient authors date a story by mentioning the ruler of the place where the story takes place: a story set in the US in 1969 might start out "Early in the Nixon Administration..." but wouldn't start out by saying "This was when Trudeau was Prime Minister of Canada..." if there isn't a single Canadian character in the story and Canada never comes up again, and certainly wouldn't name the mayor of Toronto, however important in Canadian politics, if Canadians have nothing to do with it; Luke is mentioning the governor of Syria because the place where the story is taking place was being subjected to the province of Syria at the time, otherwise he would have no reason to bring Syria into it. It's like this: "Matthew" says Jesus was born during World War One, during the rule of Kaiser Wilhelm; "Luke" says he was born in the death-camp at Auschwitz, during the rule of Hitler. You are pleading: that doesn't mean the two contradict; maybe there was ANOTHER Holocaust thirty years earlier, that just didn't get recorded (and McDowell is saying, well, Hitler was after all a soldier in the German Army during WW I).

No. The opposition of heaven/earth, body/soul was there long before.

Which is not at all the "dualism" of an evil fake "creator" vs. the Most High God that is the subject of the controversy here.

I'm saying there are disputes evident in the texts which would turn up later in gnosticism in the 2nd century

I am saying this particular text, which is the only one where this particular dispute comes up, is obviously later than the origin of the dispute itself, which was just not where the 1st-century lines of argument were.

I'd look a bit silly abandoning my faith on the strength of a claim by a scholar that was later shown to be an erroneous interpretation of the data.

How silly would you look basing your faith on a similar basis?

We're not just sitting on our arses. Some of the leading lights in text and Scripture criticism are believing Christians.

Most people who are not inclined to Christianity are not inclined to spend a lot of time looking at those books; it is not surprising that Christians are over-represented among the students of the subject. How much bias this introduces into their interpretations is highly variable; my approach is to not care, even slightly who the source is for a particular interpretation, but to look at the evidence itself, and see whether the interpretation looks like special pleading. The "census" business above is a classic example of the kind of interpretation which is found very widely in the literature, which I give zero respect to because it is so obviously in the teeth of the facts; the "two genealogies" is another topic where interpretations that are just downright silly are widespread.

Oh rubbish, Bob — it's an abstract idea that stands on empirical data

So is the law of gravity: but to say that the "law of gravity" became an apple is just silly.

Yes, the author of the gospel was a Galilean

I know of no evidence whatsoever favoring a Galilean origin for any of the hands involved in the authorship of that gospel. The firsthand source for the Passion Narrative appears to be a native of Jerusalem. The redactor of that Narrative and the author of the Discourses material is from Asia Minor. The "Signs" is a grab-bag, that has probably come down to us through the medium of a lot hands; if the Galilean fisherman has anything to do with any of the book, that is the piece of it where I would look-- but I haven't seen anything making a positive case for that.

 

[Saltmeister]

In my old Southern Baptist church we would sing (or lip sync ) 30 minutes of hymns each Sunday. It was framed as "praising" the Lord.

Old habits die hard......... I think people do it because their parents did it. If they were to suddenly change things, there'd be a rude shock. It would seem like abandoning the faith. Imagine the dialogue.......

"Darn!!! Why did you stop singing hymns, you know it's the way we worship the Lord."

'No!!! That's the way you worshipped the Lord. We're different."

"Your lack of faith disappoints me."

"Your lack of faith disappoints me too!!!!"

I personally think it goes back to the idea of an anthropomorphic "jealous" God that wants us to worship/praise him.

For a long time, I've thought of the "jealous God" thing as the Israelite God expressing a sense of humour.

And anyway it's more fun and a lot easier to sing "feel-good" hymns dressed in your Sunday Best than get your hands dirty with REAL service projects...

Yeah...... real service. Those regular Sunday services can be pretty fake and superficial.

 

[radarmark]

It is precisely the opposite in my Meeting. Most of the members are hard-core "liberal Friends" and did not grow up with singing and in some cases even speaking in services. (NOTE: this is what the 19th century did to Friends, got rid of any vestages of externality as a reaction to the "evangelical" and "programmed" Meetings--those who read scriptures literally and had a preacher of sorts).

Howver, Most of these Friends are well-educated and artistic and sing in various groups. So we sing for the hour before Meeting for Worship (or have outside presentations or have elder Friends speak of where they came). Oddly enough it has been only those of us who came to the Religious Society of Friends from an Eastern viewpoint (say Buddhist or Taoist) who wait out the singing in a separate room and only enter the Meeting room after singin is done.

I do not believe that the singing (for the most part) is seen as a hold on the past, it falls into "moving forward" like our Meeting's endorsement of same sex pairings. So in our case (and this is just one 50 member Meeting) the singing is not praising the Divine, but a social "trick" to get everyone focused on the Divine and relaxed.

Interesting parallel (or maybe perpendicular).

 

[wil]

Due to Irene power was out at our church...me...I said, have service...churhes got away without power for 1800 years quite well.

I went to my first Quaker service....they had power but cancelled their service...I didn't know that, neither did those that attended....it was quite nice.

I don't know if what most folks got up and said was Divine Inspiration or man's intervention in the silence. But I enjoyed it none the less.

What I would have enjoyed is the hour of meditation and inspriation, and then a discussion afterword....but I always like discussion afterword.

 

[donnann]

Due to Irene power was out at our church...me...I said, have service...churhes got away without power for 1800 years quite well.

I went to my first Quaker service....they had power but cancelled their service...I didn't know that, neither did those that attended....it was quite nice.

I don't know if what most folks got up and said was Divine Inspiration or man's intervention in the silence. But I enjoyed it none the less.

What I would have enjoyed is the hour of meditation and inspriation, and then a discussion afterword....but I always like discussion afterword.

What would you think of my father in a room with amputated legs and nothing but a mean nurse to come in with no one to really talk to sound very christian like to you. I tried to get him some good help but some doctor who chopped off his legs apparently is a bad doctor. Isnt that horrible. Wheres the humanity!!!!! Think about that one.

 

[wil]

What would you think of my father in a room with amputated legs and nothing but a mean nurse to come in with no one to really talk to sound very christian like to you. I tried to get him some good help but some doctor who chopped off his legs apparently is a bad doctor. Isnt that horrible. Wheres the humanity!!!!! Think about that one.

The humanit is us. We are responsible for it. That being said, your post is missing the information required for commuication to be complete.

From what I read here and in other posts it seems both you and your father need asssitance, I hope you are seeking it.

 

[donnann]

The humanit is us. We are responsible for it. That being said, your post is missing the information required for commuication to be complete.

From what I read here and in other posts it seems both you and your father need asssitance, I hope you are seeking it.

So I went to the mp station here on post , my daughter was reacting to being picked on by my spouse who had my other kids doing it as well. She broke a table which was my table which according to the system its up to me to press charges and I wont do that but they gave her a citation anyway. They wouldnt even let me talk they did what my spouse wanted regardless of whether it was right or not.

 

[wil]

So I went to the mp station here on post , my daughter was reacting to being picked on by my spouse who had my other kids doing it as well. She broke a table which was my table which according to the system its up to me to press charges and I wont do that but they gave her a citation anyway. They wouldnt even let me talk they did what my spouse wanted regardless of whether it was right or not.

Go up the chain of command, it is upto you to insure the safety of your children and yourself. You are not on an island, if you don't get satisfaction amongst the military police take it to the city or country police nearby....don't stop until you feel safe. There is nothing we on an anonymous discussion board can do.

 

[donnann]

The humanit is us. We are responsible for it. That being said, your post is missing the information required for commuication to be complete.

From what I read here and in other posts it seems both you and your father need asssitance, I hope you are seeking it.

It seems that everyone has a responsablity to set things right, in my situation well this song says it all when I say I just want what is mine.

Faith Hill - Cry (Video) - YouTube

 

[donnann]

It seems that everyone has a responsablity to set things right, in my situation well this song says it all when I say I just want what is mine.

Faith Hill - Cry (Video) - YouTube

Notice there are children in the video as well I am not so its about correct places and crying for the children too. Everyone has only one opposite and things do not fall into proper place until your with the right person who is center for an individual.