I'm interested to know what you mean by that
Scientist. Ordained minister. š³ļøāšš³ļøāā§ļøā¤ļø. Everyone is welcome. Especially š.
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I'm interested to know what you mean by that
I think thatās true if you view the Bible as presenting a unified ethical framework. But if you read it as a narrative of the development of an ethical framework, it plots a (winding!) path from that perspective towards an ethic based on grace and restoration/reconciliation.
Friends aren't something we deserve. Friends are grace. Anyway, I bet you deserve them anyway.
I find it kind of depressing that this even needs to be said... How much more interesting, impressive, and beautiful to create something that can become, not just be.
Sweet of you to say so
It was three days from me posting the question to you replying, but Iām expected to reply within hours? In a different time zone? To questions which actually need a detailed response? And you accuse me of whining? Yeah, not interested.
Sorry, I literally never watch videos for information - Iām neuroatypical, and cannot take in information in that format. But feel free to assume itās because Iām self important.
Does sound a whole lot like ADHD. I ought to do it. I know how to do it. I will enjoy doing it. I've decided to do it. ... I still haven't started. You might want to explore that with a medical professional. For some (like me) the medication is an absolute life changer.
Thx
When does Genesis Rabbah date from? Because the Goldilocks Enigma is a very real issue in cosmologyā¦
Donāt suppose you sell a pdf version? I could print locally.
Appointment of judges. Which seems really important right now!
Yes, them just making shit up to suit their agenda is certainly plausible.
Australia š® so Iām used to it!
Please provide any shred of evidence that I believe Nazi lies, or agree with Nazis, or spread Nazi propaganda. And no, saying that Stalin and Mao (Zedong) were responsible for mass death and abuse is not Nazi. It's the mainstream historical view of their revolutions. If anything, I'm a Marxist.
Are you saying that considering Stalin and Mao to be bad things is Nazi? From wikipedia: Joseph_Stalin - executed hundreds of thousands, 18 million to forced labor camps, famine killing millions. Mao_Zedong - tens of millions of victims: famine, political persecution, prison labour and executions
Did he? I'm not aware of anywhere where Jesus promised eternal torture to anyone. Matthew 10:28 is probably the only thing anywhere close. I'm also interested in where you think he claimed to be God. People have definitely made those claims in his name. But I'm talking about what he actually said
Short text only conversations can easily be misunderstood. Iād rather assume the best of others and apologise. But I appreciate your comment š
Yes, those are all better explanations than assuming the authors were incompetent.
Wow. Iāve literally never been called a Nazi before. Iām a left-voting, LGBTIQA+ right supporting, green, neurodiverse, scientist. But Iām a Nazi because? Because Iām also a person of faith? Who is the bigot in this conversation?
looks great... but $43 shipping... :(
So according to Wikipedia it was āReconquistaā, which was indeed a religious war.
You wrote āReligion is the cause of the longest running war known to humankindā and I replied āWhich one?ā I see more that was ambiguous. I meant āwhich war is that?ā Not āwhich religion?ā
Not sure how Iāve offended you, so my apologies. I was asking, as a matter of genuine interest, what the longest running war was, since you mentioned it. Not trying to make a point or anything, just asking a simple question.
I was asking what the longest running war isā¦
Adding Frahm to my long listā¦
You wonāt always be able to just even. Thatās what your ADHD meds are for. š
An excellent OT scholar I heard once talked about the known history of that area as being āinvaded over and over again by great empires on their way to somewhere elseā
Right. More than a creation myth, itās a national origin myth. They are much more dangerous. Especially for any indigenous people who happen to get in the way.
šÆ that is the problem in a nutshell.
Definitely not what I was trying to communicate, so my apologies.
And recognising that opens so many doors that remain closed if you spend your energy fighting to reconcile them!
Huh? I donāt think Iāve ever been a victim. š¤·
Gotcha. Yes, it definitely is. But I have a doctorate in quantum mechanics, so I absolutely delight in seemingly irreconcilable accounts of reality.
Oh, I donāt think the gospels need to be consistent! OMG no! The tensions between the accounts is where the life is. My argument was much closer to what I think you said - if the gospel writers got things āwrongā (from the perspective of their tradition) it was for a reason (an agenda).
Very much agree. I think itās an aspect of ancient and modern Judaism that the Christian traditions could really benefit from emulating! Iām rather glad that Iām part of a denomination which has several formal statements that start along the lines of āwe do not have a single mind on thisā
šÆ. We see some of that in the various documentary hypotheses (JEPD etc)
Not sure what modern reading Iām superimposing - but I think I agree with everything else you just said š
Yeah, that really is the question. If you think it pisses of those of you who donāt believeā¦ you have no idea how much it pisses off those of us who actually try to take the words of Jesus seriouslyā¦
Completely agree. Thatās what I meant about casting the definition of religion wide! A willingness to be drawn into blind worship seems to be an almost universal human failing. That, it seems to me, is the problem we should all be focused on.
Yes, religion used to dehumanise the other, (even when the other was of the sane religion!) is a common theme. So if your claim is āreligion is a factor in more deathsā¦ā Iād have to agree. I just think it tends to be an excuse rather than the root cause.
I havenāt read Rashi, but I have read others. The thing that struck me was that the Jewish scholarly community was more open to debating meaning than most Christiansā¦ a good thing! But of course, there are clear dominant readings of many texts. Iām not denying that - as explained in my long š§µ
Iāve responded in another thread.
My argument is when they interact with the Hebrew Scriptures in ways that are obviously wrong, the wrongness would have been at least as clear to them and their readers. So we might assume they were doing it deliberately, and itās more helpful to wonder why than to treat them as idiots. š§µendsšŖ”
They claimed a totally different reading of the idea of Messiah, by leaning into the symbols of the suffering servant, which obviously wasnāt original about Jesus. They rejected biological descent when they accepted gentiles. š§µ
This deviation from the accepted readings was blatant, obvious, undisguised. They didnāt do that out of ignorance; they were deliberately claiming there was a different way to read the Hebrew Scriptures than the way everyone had been taught. š§µ
So they described Jesus as Messiah even though he didnāt meet the criteria everyone had previously accepted. They claimed his descent from David while asserting he was not actual Josephās son. And they claimed Jesusās acts to be āfulfillmentā of prophecies that were clearly about other things. š§µ
I feel like weāre talking at cross purposes. I 100% agree: you are describing the dominant understanding at the time. My point is that the gospel writers knew that, and yet they wrote as if a different understanding made sense for them. š§µ
Definitely true. My point was just that there are plenty of major wars and atrocities that were not primarily about religion. Humanity is capable of incredible inhumanity with or without religious justifications.
Maybe. My preference is to seek to use whatever levers might work to change behaviour. So if people profess to be Christians, I will use the teachings of Jesus to seek to change them. Iāve had quite a lot of success in the š³ļøāšš³ļøāā§ļø rights areaā¦
Copilot -> The deepest pits of hell, where clippy resides
Exactly! The Christian authors (who knew what you just said) reinterpreted what messiah meant. Now Jews of course have every right to say they got it wrong. But you canāt understand the gospel writers without understanding that they believed that things āeveryone knewā had to be rethought.
Oh and "It's symbolic" and "This is the only thing it can be understood to mean" are not ideas generally considered compatible.
Please justify the assertion "Everyone knows" that "I will raise up for David a righteous Branch" can only possibly mean not just a legal descendant (which Jesus *was*) but a biological descendant. It's not lying to disagree with you, or to suggest that things are as simplistic as you think.
Jeremiah 23:5 doesnāt talk about line of descent Isaiah 11:1 āa shoot from the stock ofā - are you certain that must refer to biological descent? 2 Sam 7:12 might well refer to Davidā son Solomon, not Jesus. The Hebrew Scriptures arenāt simple. Wise not to assume we know them better than they.
To suggest that the authors didnāt notice a problem which we modern people can spot in an instant is arrogant, and poor literary analysis. It makes more sense to assume they had good reason. Maybe their understanding of ādescentā differed from ours? Or another factor?
Where does any Christian Bible assert that Moses wrote anything down? It's a tradition (in Judaism and Christianity) to name Moses as author of the first five books of the Bible, but the Bible itself makes no such claim.
Interestingly, much of the creation story in Genesis, when placed alongside Enuma Elish, Atrahasis, and Gilgamesh, reads like it was written to create a contrast with those stories. Pete Enns has written some good stuff on this.
Most OT scholars would say it didn't get written down until long, long after Moses (500BCE or so). And by that time, there were multiple traditions that got woven in the text. So the hairs were not just finely split, but split in multiple ways! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documen... is good on this.
I just remember the one in the UK that read "But God scores on the rebound"
The authors believed that Jesus was not related to Joseph, and yet thought the genealogies were important, as did those who preserved the text. All Herring proves is that *he* doesn't know why. Modern arrogance to say we understand an ancient culture better than the writers who lived in it.
So people who search for the S50 on Amazon... also buy paper towels?
Ok, but tell us what *you* think š
Which one is that?
In fact, just as Jesus said. āBy their fruit you shall know themā
Could you cite a reference for Jesus Promising to order genocide? or Condoning slavery? (not Paul, not the OT, but Jesus in the gospels, since that is what you said)
I mean, depends what you include in religion. Stalin? Mao? Hitler? World War I? None of those really had religious roots unless you cast the net really wideā¦
So do I - though of course they will simply find a different excuse.
š¶š¶Do you hear the people singā¦š¶š¶
Worse - itās āā¦something that reads like it might be a summary ofā¦ā
Just ordered three copies š
Smart kid from nowhere ends up king (because his role as court musician and/or a relationship with the kingās son). A story builds up around a role he played in the war, sycophants turn him into a war hero, story gets set in the popular imagination. See all of Shakespeareās histories for details.
Sure. Simplest is a slippery concept, though, which is what Occam was struggling with codifying. I tend to a more narrative approach; maybe āa narrative should be treated with a seriousness proportional to its explanatory powerā which allows for multiple ways of talking about the same set of facts
I havenāt, but I enjoy Carl Sagan, so I will, thanks! I donāt generally talk about much of the OT as ātrueā; I often use phrases like āthe story as it is toldā, āthe nationās origin mythā, āthe events as understood by those who retold themā, āthe creation poemāā¦ But I am internet rando š
Not an unreasonable position š (strictly Occamās Razor doesnāt apply, since it refers to the number of assumptions, not their likelihoodā¦ as the probability that a proposition is true isnāt well defined without a Bayesian priorā¦ but thatās me going back to my quantum mechanics daysā¦)
On other platforms I've often found myself debating with fundamentalist Christians. On Bluesky I often find myself debating with atheists. Turns out that's much more interesting.
Also why the idea of him having come into contact with Buddhist thought is interesting, since he had to learn - not so much what was right, but how to express what was right. Insights from Buddhism that aligned with his morality could easily have entered his teaching (perhaps in Hebrew clothing!)
Also implies that he didn't know what would happen (although may well have had insights into what was likely based upon his knowledge of human nature)
TL;DR - Christian Theology would say that in becoming human, Jesus accepted human limitations (the term used is kenosis, or 'self-emptying') in all respects except moral capacity. So Jesus he knew no more about germ theory (or my field, QM) than anyone of his day.
Are you actually interested in the response, or just playing gotchas? Iām really happy to engage if the former (though āitās Bluesky, of course itās oversimplifiedā makes it hard) But Iāve previously wasted too much time responding to (others) who were just wanting to score points.
No, that never happened in my training. But Iām in a non-US, very much non-fundamentalist, denomination. I frequently speak with my congregation about difficulties in and around the text and with traditional interpretations of it, and that is required by the code of ethics I operate within.
For much of it, I agree. OTOH, as you might expect of a Christian minister, I believe part of it is worth preserving. But I donāt expect you to agree, nor do I imagine Iāll convince you š. I appreciate the pointers on the Buddhist link! Not that Buddhism has been free of its violent insanityā¦
Thatās an area I know quite a lot about. Non-Hebrew influences on his reading of Hebrew sources, however, is a rich area to explore. Similar, Greek influences are clear on post-Jesus Christian writing (esp. Paul)
I think this oversimplifies the extent to which there was considerable division within First century Judaism - between those who compromised with Rome and those who refused to, between temple and synagogue, between city and rural, etc.. Much of Jesusās teaching was popular with some but not others.
Much of what Jesus taught can be found in a *selective* reading of the Hebrew Bible (and he clearly framed it in that way for his Jewish audience). Iām interested in the idea that Buddhist thought informed his reading of his ānativeā scriptures.
Jesus being influenced by Buddhist ideas seems a lot more plausible at first glance.
Thanks! Unfortunately free access is limited, but the abstract at least is interesting
Interesting. Are there some examples of words attributed to Jesus which are also found in contemporaneous Buddhist texts? (Also, by missing years, do you mean the time before his public ministry?)
Love to know what you mean about the red letter verses being Buddhism? Do you mean they are actually derived from Buddhist texts (in which case, is there a credible textual pathway for that to occur)? Or that they reflect Buddhist teaching? Examples might help. (Not snark, genuine interest)
Exceptā¦ youāll find very little āthreat of eternal tormentā in it. Lots of threat of violent death. Very little about eternal fate until quite near the end.
Every organisation needs outsiders to critique it; every institution needs to be open to that critique. The church is at its worst when it thinks it is exempt from that.
I think classic Catholic doctrine has Mary sinless only prior to the birth of Jesusā¦
The Earthsea Trilogy?
And thatās without even mentioning what he taught parents about beating their kidsā¦
The perfect hat trick, too - right foot, left foot, and head...
So sorry that happened to you, Gwynn.
So sorry. And now he's dead, and you are still alive.
Now thatās a premise I could get behindā¦
Yup. I canāt think of many places where Jesus condemned someone for being too willing to include someone different.
