tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37698722139154159472024-03-16T10:55:40.079-07:00somewhere elseA good rule on any of my blogs: look at comments.<br><br>Conditions for use of <i>my own</i> material on <a href="http://shrt.st/ujx">this link</a> or <a href="http://hglsfbwritings.blogspot.com/2011/09/be-my-unwin-or-hooper-if-you-like.html">this one</a>.Hans Georg Lundahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01055583255516264955noreply@blogger.comBlogger178125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769872213915415947.post-15527729890382021792023-11-16T11:54:00.000-08:002023-11-16T12:29:22.368-08:00Xtra 3 Have You Seen a Resurrection Lately?<br />
<b>Index post :</b> <a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2023/10/rebecca-mclaughlin-wrote-book.html">Rebecca McLaughlin Wrote a Book</a>
<br /><br />
No. I also have not seen a peace treaty observed lately, either between Russia and Ukraine or between Israel and Gaza.
<br /><br />
I still believe there was an armistice on St. Martin's Day in 1918.
<br /><br />
I also haven't seen the area from Flanders to mid-France covered in water. Shall I conclude the fossil shell fish found in the Paris basin came there because of the French habit of eating shell fish? When no shell fish eating tool has been found along these fossil shell fish?
<br /><br />
No, Uniformitarian Geologists and Flood Geologists agree on a thing. This area actually was covered with water. And that's where the fossil shell fish came from, when they were then covered in mud.
<br /><br />
Similarily, I give a rough and ready belief to the stories that the participants and their communities took as historic, and exclude exotic interpretations of what they experienced because they don't work. The disciples claimed to have seen their master risen, that's as sure as an armistice in 1918. It was on the third day from a crucifixion in mid-Nisan, that's as sure as it was on 11.XI. And it was not an illusion, that's as sure as French gastronomy not bringing the fossil shell fish into the Paris basin./HGLHans Georg Lundahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01055583255516264955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769872213915415947.post-60074213756246814392023-11-16T11:44:00.000-08:002023-11-16T11:45:17.961-08:00Xtra 2 Was Jesus a Schizophrenic?<br />
<b>Index post :</b> <a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2023/10/rebecca-mclaughlin-wrote-book.html">Rebecca McLaughlin Wrote a Book</a>
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The idea being, "if he thought he was God, he was mad" ...
<br /><br />
That's a bit short for "if He thought He was God, He either was God, or he was mad" ... you'd have to dismiss all signs He gave of being divine, including the Resurrection.
<br /><br />
And by the way, no, a Schizophrenic madman would not have been very good at either hypnotising people to get triggered to see him as resurrected or participate in an intrigue to replace the "crucified twin" and even less at getting complicities from Roman soldiers or people acting under their supervision, into a purely faked crucifixion.
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And would not have been any thing like capable of securing loyal followers which He organised beautifully.
<br /><br />
And would not have been able to convince anyone He was doing miracles. He would neither have done any, nor been competent at faking them.
<br /><br />
So, no./HGLHans Georg Lundahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01055583255516264955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769872213915415947.post-16528290757981993962023-11-16T11:25:00.000-08:002023-11-16T11:27:26.414-08:00Xtra 1 Was the Resurrection Real or an Illusion?<br />
<b>Index post :</b> <a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2023/10/rebecca-mclaughlin-wrote-book.html">Rebecca McLaughlin Wrote a Book</a>
<br /><br />
Cliffe Knechtle just got asked that on a video, I stopped it, so I haven't heard his answer.
<br /><br />
Illusions <i>usually</i> do not involve the <i>false</i> identification of a person. If a girl is seen as sawn into two, she is correctly identified as the same girl when identified as alive. It's the sawing into two which is an illusion.
<br /><br />
So, the "Copperfield" theory would not involve a false identification of the Resurrection appearances, but rather an illusory crucifixion.
<br /><br />
To be fair to Romans, it would <i>not</i> have been easy to fake getting crucified while they or Jews acting as their delegates were doing crucifixions.
<br /><br />
I'm not sure either Copperfield or Houdini could come up with a solution, and if they could it would probably involve modern technology, but even more probably, complicity of those doing the crucifixion, something definitely not to be counted on. So ... no, the Crucifixion was not an illusion.
<br /><br />
Two versions <i>more</i> could make the resurrection <i>or crucifixion</i> <b>of Jesus</b> an illusion.
<br /><br />
a) There was a homozygotic twin, and either the unknown twin got crucified, or the unknown twin did the appearances.
<br /><br />
Dude! Homozygotic twins feel for each other. If your homozygotic twin had just a few days ago died on a cross after <i>hours</i> of agony, would you be in a mood to pretend to be he (if Jesus was the one crucified) or to pretend to have been crucified (if the twin was the one crucified)? Na, me neither.
<br /><br />
b) While group hallucinations are usually impossible, one precise setting would make them possible, namely hypnosis, a group trance.
<br /><br />
Sure, but who was the hypnotist?
<br /><br />
If you were a hypnotist, could you hypnotise your subjects (and disciples) so that they would all be triggered by the crucifixion to experience your resurrection as if it were real, and why would you do that?
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Or if the hypnotist was still alive during these "sessions" ... who could be that without being the new visible leader, i e Peter?
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But why would you first hypnotise people into believing what you knew to be a lie, and then yourself die for that lie (at least by staying in office long enough to get targetted more than once and then some more until you were actually executed)?
<br /><br />
Me neither. Corrolary, the Resurrection was real./HGLHans Georg Lundahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01055583255516264955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769872213915415947.post-2393794814256053972023-10-10T08:45:00.018-07:002023-11-16T11:54:56.412-08:00Rebecca McLaughlin Wrote a Book<br />
Since it involves a kind of questionnaire, or a challenge with arguments given by others, before she answers each, I feel an itch to answer them independently of her first, before even reading a sample.
<br /><br />
Meanwhile, here are the 12 questions:
<br /><br />
<a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2023/10/1-arent-we-better-off-without-religion.html">1 Aren't We Better Off without Religion?</a>
<br /><a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2023/10/2-doesnt-christianity-crush-diversity.html">2 Doesn't Christianity Crush Diversity?</a>
<br /><a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2023/10/3-how-can-you-say-theres-only-one-true.html">3 How Can You Say There's Only One True Faith?</a>
<br /><a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2023/10/4-doesnt-religion-hinder-morality.html">4 Doesn't Religion Hinder Morality?</a>
<br /><a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2023/10/5-doesnt-religion-cause-violence.html">5 Doesn't Religion Cause Violence?</a>
<br /><a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2023/10/6-how-can-you-take-bible-literally.html">6 How Can You Take the Bible Literally?</a>
<br />[follow up: <a href="https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2023/10/contra-craig.html">Contra Craig</a>]
<br /><a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2023/10/7-hasnt-science-disproved-christianity.html">7 Hasn't Science Disproved Christianity?</a>
<br /><a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2023/10/8-doesnt-christianity-denigrate-women.html">8 Doesn't Christianity Denigrate Women?</a>
<br /><a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2023/10/9-isnt-christianity-homophobic.html">9 Isn't Christianity Homophobic?</a>
<br /><a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2023/10/10-doesnt-bible-condone-slavery.html">10 Doesn't the Bible Condone Slavery?</a>
<br /><a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2023/10/11-how-could-loving-god-allow-so-much.html">11 How Could a Loving God Allow So Much Suffering?</a>
<br /><a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2023/10/12-how-could-loving-god-send-people-to.html">12 How Could a Loving God Send People to Hell?</a>
<br /><br />
Here is her book:
<br /><br />
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Confronting-Christianity-Questions-Largest-Religion/dp/1433564238/">Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World's Largest Religion
<br /><i>Rebecca McLaughlin</i>
<br />https://www.amazon.com/Confronting-Christianity-Questions-Largest-Religion/dp/1433564238/</a>
<br /><br />
Here are some Xtras not found in that list of 12 QQ.
<br /><br />
<a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2023/11/xtra-1-was-resurrection-real-or-illusion.html">Xtra 1 Was the Resurrection Real or an Illusion?</a>
<br /><a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2023/11/xtra-2-was-jesus-schizophrenic.html">Xtra 2 Was Jesus a Schizophrenic?</a>
<br /><a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2023/11/xtra-3-have-you-seen-resurrection-lately.html">Xtra 3 Have You Seen a Resurrection Lately?</a>Hans Georg Lundahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01055583255516264955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769872213915415947.post-47942488979314923082023-10-10T08:40:00.006-07:002023-10-10T08:52:50.298-07:001 Aren't We Better Off without Religion?<br />
<b>Index post :</b> <a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2023/10/rebecca-mclaughlin-wrote-book.html">Rebecca McLaughlin Wrote a Book</a>
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In the Middle Ages a certain geographic fairly large area known as Christendom:
<br /><br />
<ul><li> allowed people to marry young
<li> forced no one to stay in school even if parents wanted to take them out
<li> drove no one to mass shootings like those of Columbine High School in 1998</ul>
<br /><br />
In a secularised time, in 1998, the US:
<br /><br />
<ul><li> made pretty sure Klebold and Harris could not marry nor study without being with girls
<li> made sure they could not cease studying
<li> which certainly contributed to their deed in 1998
<li> as did the fact they had been encouraged to think of human life as a byproduct of evolution.</ul>Hans Georg Lundahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01055583255516264955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769872213915415947.post-9241927573905362762023-10-10T08:36:00.001-07:002023-10-10T08:53:00.315-07:002 Doesn't Christianity Crush Diversity?<br />
<b>Index post :</b> <a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2023/10/rebecca-mclaughlin-wrote-book.html">Rebecca McLaughlin Wrote a Book</a>
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Catholic Christianity most certainly doesn't.
<br /><br />
Calvinism isn't Christianity anyway.
<br /><br />
In Catholicism, you are free to marry or not. You are only obliged to stick to choices you have hallowed with a promise. Note, marrying without a marriage promise is not possible.
<br /><br />
Homosexual acts are forbidden, not from a will to make all men extreme machos (btw, we make no exceptions in favour of ultra-macho homos), nor from a will to make all women extremely feminine (a lolita dyke doesn't get a free pass for being kawaii). Homosexual acts are forbidden, like all other contraceptive behaviour (i e simultaneous choice of physical infertility and sex), because they mean fewer babies.
<br /><br />
Part of the problem with fewer babies is an aging society, but another part is less diversity.
<br /><br />
Latin America has been far better in preserving a diversity both culturally and ethnically between descendants of Spaniards and indigenous peoples, than the former English colonies in US or Canada have been.
<br /><br />
<table><tr><td colspan="3"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algonquian_languages">Algonquian languages
<br />https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algonquian_languages</a></tr>
<tr><td> </tr>
<tr valign="top"><td>Cree language Native speakers 96,000, 27% of ethnic population (2016 census)
<br />Ojibwe language Native speakers (50,000 cited 1990–2016 censuses)
<br />Mi'kmaq language Native speakers 7,140, 4% of ethnic population (2016 census)
<br />Blackfoot language Native speakers 2,900 (2016)
<br />Arapaho language Native speakers 1,100 (2015)
<br />Fox language Native speakers 700: 250 Sauk and Fox and 400 Kickapoo in the US (2007–2015) 60 Kickapoo in Mexico (2020 census)
<br />Maliseet-Passamaquoddy language Native speakers 355 in Canada (2016 census) 100 in the United States (2007)<td> <td>Cheyenne language Native speakers 380 (2020)
<br />Shawnee language Native speakers 260 and decreasing (2015)
<br />Menominee language Native speakers 35 (2007) + 25 L2 speakers (no date)
<br />Massachusett language evival Revitalization from 1993. As of 2014, 5 children are native speakers, 15 are proficient second-language speakers and 500 are adult second-language learners.
<br />Abenaki language Native speakers 14 Western Abenaki (2007–2012) Last fluent speaker of Eastern Abenaki died in 1993.
<br />Munsee language Native speakers 2 (2018)</tr>
<tr><td> </tr>
<tr><td colspan="3">Some languages of the Latin Americas</tr>
<tr><td> </tr>
<tr valign="top"><td>Quechuan languages Native speakers 7.2 million
<br />Guarani language Native speakers 6.5 million (2020)
<br />Aymara language Native speakers 1.7 million (2007–2014)<td> <td>Nahuatl Native speakers 1.7 million in Mexico (2020 census)
<br />Kʼicheʼ language Native speakers 1.1 million (2019 census)
<br />Yaqui language Native speakers 20,000 in Mexico (2020 census) 640 in the USA (2015 census)</tr></table>
<br /><br />
And within a single people and a single language, Catholicism keeps diversity of times into the present. Late Antiquity Benedictines and Latin Liturgy. Somewhat earlier liturgy in Byzantine rite. Crusader era Cistercians. Late Crusader era Franciscans and Dominicans. Renaissance Jesuits. All present into the present time, and their clothing provokes some Calvinist scoffers to speak of "cross dressing" not because they acctually dress in female clothes, but because their male garments are not those of the present day.Hans Georg Lundahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01055583255516264955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769872213915415947.post-13317138838955856702023-10-10T08:33:00.001-07:002023-10-10T08:53:10.212-07:003 How Can You Say There's Only One True Faith?<br />
<b>Index post :</b> <a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2023/10/rebecca-mclaughlin-wrote-book.html">Rebecca McLaughlin Wrote a Book</a>
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Because religions really and truly contradict.
<br /><br />
In some cases it is obvious because of splits.
<br /><br />
Samaritans, Jews and Christians represent two splits in the times after those of Solomon and of Jesus Christ.
<br /><br />
Catholics, Non-Chalcedonians, Orthodox, Protestants, this represents splits around Third and Fourth Ecumenical council, two splits, and in the 11th C leading up to the councils of Pisa and Florence, and in the 16th C. (mainly) leading up to the Council of Trent, on the Catholic side.
<br /><br />
If both sides of a split cannot be right, then these people cannot all be right.
<br /><br />
One could argue they are all wrong, but the question was, about why one could say there is ONLY one true faith, not why there is even as many as one.
<br /><br />
And note, the main alternative over the last 200 years in the Western World, namely Secularism (sometimes in the guise of Freemasonry) is also another split, if not in all its doctrines, at least in its main culture.
<br /><br />
If you want to confer with Japan, it is true some people there manage to be both Shinto and Buddhist — but this is in a compromise where the two religions take part of different aspects of life. You marry Shinto, you usually get buried Buddhist. It could be because of kind of a make-believe : you take the religion which is most optimistic for the occasion. When it comes to a third belief system in Japan, Scientism, one of the aspects of secularism over here, Michio Kaku has shown he takes it more seriously, but that might be because he is living in the US, not in Japan.
<br /><br />
Catholicism, as well as its alternatives, like Fundie Calvinism or Orthodox Lutheranism, have a very obvious knack of combining the areas of life which a Japanese would outsource between different religions. Marriage? We have the Catholic sacrament of matrimony. Funerals? We have Masses for the dead, and for some very good people, masses for gratitude for God granting them holy lives. Science? We have scholasticism.
<br /><br />
The alternative to Catholicism being true would be some other combination on all areas being true — even if it were outsourcing the areas to different origins, like the Japanese tend to do. But if Catholicism is true, this means Christ rose from the dead and founded the Catholic Church. Therefore Catholicism <i>+ some other</i> is not a real option. That includes Catholicism + Santería and also Catholicism + Deep Time + Deep Space + Big Bang + Evolution. Not real options.Hans Georg Lundahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01055583255516264955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769872213915415947.post-63038737910716158542023-10-10T08:30:00.001-07:002023-10-10T08:53:22.012-07:004 Doesn't Religion Hinder Morality?<br />
<b>Index post :</b> <a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2023/10/rebecca-mclaughlin-wrote-book.html">Rebecca McLaughlin Wrote a Book</a>
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I can only think of two kinds of morality that the Catholic religion hinders.
<br /><br />
<ul><li> Kantian morality says you should do what is right without thinking of any reward, it becomes wrong if you want a reward;
<li> Woke morality says you should fight all situations, not just of oppression, but also which lead to oppression.</ul>
<br /><br />
How does the Catholic religion hinder that?
<br /><br />
<ul><li> It hinders Kantian morality by:
<br /><br />
<ul><li> offering an ultimate reward, in Heaven;
<li> offering an emotional reward in pleasant prayers.</ul>
<br /><br />
<li> It hinders woke morality by:
<br /><br />
<ul><li> refusing to stamp certain situations as oppression (being stuck in your body, the sex it is, or not being allowed to abort, that's not oppression);
<li> refusing certain ways out of situations that could lead to oppression, like pregnancy with a not very good man might lead to oppression from his side or to sharing oppression he undergoes, and Catholicism refuses to end the pregnancy by abortion.</ul></ul>
<br /><br />
Well, so much the worse for Kantian and woke moralities!
<br /><br />
I am glad Catholic morality is fighting them. Apart from being very glad for the things in Catholicism I just said, I also hate these two non-Catholic moralities, because:
<br /><br />
<ul><li> Kantian morality which sees an even emotional reward for one's choices as suspect makes obedience not just a virtue, but the virtue, since obedience is so much more "objective" to Kant than going by one's conscience (which could be tainted), and therefore leads to overobedience to the state or similar authorities;
<li> woke morality makes normal happiness suspect, and basically makes disobedience to certain established moral themes the paramount virtue which Kantianism makes of obedience to the state.</ul>
<br /><br />
This is the kind of thing that the Romeike's were forced to flee from 15 years ago. A wokeness which considers homeschooling an oppression on the part of the parents, and a Kantianism which refuses to see the oppression against parents and children in state schools, if going there is <i>obeying</i> the laws.
<br /><br />
The kind of morality that the Catholic religion hinders is the kind of morality which makes for new types of slave hunt, new types of slavery and oppression.Hans Georg Lundahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01055583255516264955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769872213915415947.post-56401857312840122472023-10-10T08:25:00.001-07:002023-10-10T08:53:30.975-07:005 Doesn't Religion Cause Violence?<br />
<b>Index post :</b> <a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2023/10/rebecca-mclaughlin-wrote-book.html">Rebecca McLaughlin Wrote a Book</a>
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Yes. So does irreligion.
<br /><br />
The Thirty Years' War was started over Catholic and Lutheran and Calvinist religions disagreeing on what services should be held in churches from the Middle Ages, when they were built by the Catholic religion. Note, Luther in Wittenberg and Bucer in Strassburg (which back then was Holy Roman Empire) weren't content to say "we no longer agree with that stuff, let's build our own church" they insisted on doing things in Catholic churches that a Catholic sees as sacrilegious over and above the sacrilege of a false pseudo-mass.
<br /><br />
Sacrilege against holy chrism, sacrilege against relics, sacrilege against icons, sacrilege against holy water, and when it comes to sacrilege against persons consecrated to celibacy, the reformers were not just for allowing them to make that choice, but also for foisting it on souls which would be reluctant to forego the choice they had made when consecrating themselves.
<br /><br />
The war between Hitler and Stalin was between a man wanting to replace loyalty to God with loyalty to the Germanic meta-nation and races, with an occasional nod to the proletariat as being more race typic and noble than certain types of bourgeoisie, and a man who wanted to replace loyalty to God usually with loyalty to the proletariat, and the revolution, as more evolved and noble than certain types of bourgeoisie, with an occasional nod to Holy Russia.
<br /><br />
<i>"But there are lots of atheists who are neither Communists nor Nazis and who didn't fought in World War II!"</i>
<br /><br />
Yeah, sure.
<br /><br />
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clemens_August_Graf_von_Galen">Clemens August Graf von Galen</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_Bonhoeffer">Dietrich Bonhoeffer</a> are two Germans who didn't fight in the Thirty Years War, one a Catholic, the other a Calvinist.
<br /><br />
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien">J. R. R. Tolkien</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Lewis">C. S. Lewis</a> are a Catholic and an Anglican, an Englishman and an Irish born (if not purely Irish) who didn't fought the Anglo-Irish and Stuart-Whig wars of religion.
<br /><br />
The Middle Ages may have had as many wars as the Bronze age, but not as bloody, and not as ruthless to the losers. And for that reason, not as long. That's thanks to Christianity.
<br /><br />
If your point was simply that religion allows violence in some cases, yes. Why shouldn't it? Do you want a monopoly on violence for only secularised and irreligious uses? That's likely to lead to new circles of violence!Hans Georg Lundahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01055583255516264955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769872213915415947.post-54530655131270076942023-10-10T08:20:00.001-07:002023-10-10T08:53:41.393-07:006 How Can You Take the Bible Literally? Adress to William Lane Craig<br />
<b>Index post :</b> <a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2023/10/rebecca-mclaughlin-wrote-book.html">Rebecca McLaughlin Wrote a Book</a>
<br /><br />
It's a funny question really.
<br /><br />
We take both fact and fiction literally. Obviously, we do not take fiction as literally true, but we tend, while enjoying it, to take it literally, not to dissect it into elaborate schemes of what it is metaphoric of. With fact, we usually do not take into account a real fact would be able to also be a real metaphor about some other real fact.
<br /><br />
The non-literal taking of a thing means the metaphorical or otherwise figurative taking of it. And the Bible does not come in its entirety with markers for non-literality comparable to <i>"are you pulling my leg?"</i>
<br /><br />
The proper question is "how can you take the Bible as literally true?" ...
<br /><br />
Before I can answer that, I'd like to ask in return "about what respect?"
<br /><br />
A) How can I take the laws of the Old Covenant as literally just laws?
<br /><br />
When it comes to slavery, I already observed, though the question has a later number, no motive for slavery is mere power greed given free reins, and it is always less bad than the slavery of other people. Enslaving Canaaneans who had worshipped evil false gods and committed evil sexual acts is not comparable to enslaving Thracians because they speak another language, build another architecture, and are useful when extracting silver. Allowing an owner to go unpunished if the beaten slave survives the third day is not comparable to allowing an owner to be unpunished for feeding a slave to murenas. Allowing an indebted Israelite seven years of servitude (probably means <i>maximally</i> seven years, as it would be interrupted by the Sabbatical year) is not comparable to allowing an indebted Roman permanent enslavement for the rest of his life and for the life of descendants. Allowing an indented servant to chose to stay if marrying is not comparable to allowing all slaves promiscuity, requiring their promiscuity when master asks, and requiring them to stay whether promiscuous or not, but certainly allowing them no marriage. Finally, it is Christianity which in wide swathes of the world abolishes the most typical features of slavery.
<br /><br />
When it comes to Old Testament heavy penalties for breaking certain kashrut, I can that because I think the kashrut were metaphorical about Christian justice. Obviously I don't consider the ban on sodomy as one of the kashrut.
<br /><br />
When it comes to laws for menstruation — these were kind of a health insurance, since one of the things that has improved since not just antiquity but even the Middle Ages seems to be intimate hygiene for women.
<br /><br />
B) How can I take the stories with miracles as literally true and factual?
<br /><br />
Because I do not share an antimiraculous bias.
<br /><br />
C) How can I take the claims about God as literally true, rather than as an elaborate metaphor for an esoteric message claimed to be behind "all religions" about us being sparks of God, or God being many of us reunited in the original unity or similar?
<br /><br />
Because, when some have worked miracles like rasing the dead or parting the Red Sea, I would rather take their words about God than the words of some wannabe freemason with a wannabe position of my future mentor (a situation that is not upcoming).
<br /><br />
D) How can I take prophecy literally as foreknowledge?
<br /><br />
Partly by not taking all in prophetic utterances literally. Some things are coded. For instance, I would consider the four beasts as having both an Old Testament realisation, and an end times realisation, which nationally speaking is different.
<br /><br />
Some things are telescoped between two planes of fulfilment. Matthew 24 is a discourse both foretelling the fall of Jerusalem and the end of times.
<br /><br />
Some words are also used in non-obvious ways, or rather ways that are non-obvious outside a certain context. "This generation" refers to some cohorts living both at the prophecy and when the fulfilment came in year 70 — but also to the Church being "one generation" ... still extant in the end times.
<br /><br />
E) And what about the men who say they are Christians and you shouldn't?
<br /><br />
Quoting William Lane Craig from CMI:
<br /><br />
<blockquote>“My greatest fear is that the young-earth creationist might be right in his hermeneutical claim that Genesis does teach those things that I described earlier. And I say that would be a nightmare because if that’s what the Bible teaches, it puts the Bible into massive, I think, irredeemable conflict with modern science, history, and linguistics, and I don’t want that to happen.”
<br /><br />
<blockquote><a href="https://creation.com/conundrum-of-compromise">The Conundrum of Compromise (And the damage of not taking the Scriptures at face value)
<br /><i>by Joel Tay, First published in CMI-USA Prayer News, July 2022.</i>
<br />https://creation.com/conundrum-of-compromise</a>
<br />fotnoting to:
<br />A Quest for the Historical Adam: A Conversation with William Lane Craig, youtu.be/8TQ8w_9qN4Q .</blockquote></blockquote>
<br /><br />
a) <i>"I don't want this to happen"</i>
<br /><br />
This is one reason why Jesus founded a Church with a magisterium. This way, we are not bogged down with what someone wants or doesn't want to happen and how he wants to interpret the Bible accordingly : since it already has obliging interpretations, what we want for the present situation is totally irrelevant.
<br /><br />
b) <i>irredeemable conflict with modern science,</i>
<br /><br />
Answered in 7 Hasn't Science Disproved Christianity?
<br /><br />
c) <i>irredeemable conflict with ... history,</i>
<br /><br />
I suppose William Lane Craig considers it history that the city-state of Ur began in 4000 BC, or that Egypt was unified in 3000 BC. If that were the case, yes, it would irremediably be in conflict with the Flood in 2400 BC and Tower of Babel at the earliest in 2299 BC, as some interpretations of the Masoretic timeline go. It would also be in irremediable conflict with the Flood in 2958 BC and Tower of Babel ending in 2556 BC, timeline of the Roman Martyrology. It would also be in conflict with the Flood in 3258 or 3266 BC and Peleg born 2729 BC. In fact, any version of Biblical chronology that did not add swathes of time would be in conflict with the city-state of Ur beginning in 4000 BC, or that Egypt being unified in 3000 BC.
<br /><br />
The good news is, first, it's <i>not</i> history, it's arcaheology, and second, my carbon 14 Biblical recalibration takes care of it.
<br /><br />
We do not have any "annals ab Ur condita" which state Alexander died as King of Babylon in (4000 - 323 =) 3677 after the founding of Ur. Or that Nebuchadnezzar II became king of Babylon (4000 - 605 =) 3395 after the founding of Ur. The "4000 BC" date is not historically derived, it's archaeologically derived, by carbon dating objects from back the early layers of Ur (which by the way have been redated to 3800 BC). This brings us to my next point.
<br /><br />
Second, take my newest version:
<br /><br />
<a href="https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2023/04/what-project.html"><i>Creation vs. Evolution : What Project?</i>
<br />https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2023/04/what-project.html</a>
<br /><br />
Now, if you go to <a href="http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2020/08/new-tables.html">New Tables</a> you will find that ...
<br /><br />
<dl><dt>2019 B. Chr.
<dd>0.778962 pmC/100, so dated as 4069 B. Chr.</dl>
<br /><br />
4069 BC in carbon dates equals 2019 BC in real dates.
<br /><br />
The real problem would actually be having a pharao of all Egypt available for Abraham in what's carbon dated to 3500 BC. The fact of the matter is, the pharao probably lived a few decades more, which is why the archaeology of royal tombs start with 3100 rather than 3500 BC.
<br /><br />
d) <i>irredeemable conflict with ... linguistics</i>
<br /><br />
I suppose that Mr Craig refers to the idea that the Tower of Babel event immediately resulted in all languages now spoken, or that languages diverge only miraculously, not by the known processes which made Italian and French two different languages, after Latin of the Paris region and Latin of the Florence region had been the same one (if we went to other regions of France or Italy, we would not be dealing with standard varieties of French and Italian). No. For the Genesis 3 story to be accurately transmitted from Adam to Abraham, we do not need the language to have stayed absolutely the same, nor do we need that between Abraham and Moses, when the Genesis account was formulated into one book, nor do we even need that after Moses. Orally transmitted history can adapt to changes in language pretty fluidly. The 19th C. or early 20th C. collectors of a story from Dürnstein region, about Richard the Lion-Heart having been held captive there did not find the story in the Mittelhochdeutsch spoken at the time of Richard the Lion-Heart — or of his captors, the duke Leopold V of Austria and his squire. And written texts can be updated linguistically also, this is indeed how I explain some of the terminology in the book of Exodus, which Moses wrote <i>before</i> the Ramesside pharaos.
<br /><br />
The point is not that there could have been <i>no</i> language differences in Abraham's time without the Tower of Babel, but that Old Egyptian and Sumerian would have been no more different 1000 years after the Flood (a date reached when Abraham was 58, before his calling) than for instance Icelandic and Swedish, or perhaps Scottish and Irish Gaelic. This is not the case. There is no way of getting Sumerian and Old Egyptian from a common parent language in 1000 years. Perhaps in 20 000 or 40 000 years, but definitely not in 1000 years. Which brings me to the next point ....
<br /><br />
e) Are you aware of what <i>you</i> want to happen, Mr. Craig?
<br /><br />
I place Adam as created in 5200 BC, and consequently dead in 4270 BC. Suppose one agrees with Fuz Rana, who considers Adam lived 150 000 years ago. This would mean, there is no way that the content of Genesis 3 could have been accurately transmitted to the time of Moses. Here is Father George Leo Haydock, 1859, a facing comments Bible way before Scofield, just not a Protestant one:
<br /><br />
<blockquote>Concerning the transactions of these early times, parents would no doubt be careful to instruct their children, by word of mouth, before any of the Scriptures were written; and Moses might derive much information from the same source, as a very few persons formed the chain of tradition, when they lived so many hundred years. Adam would converse with Mathusalem, who knew Sem, as the latter lived in the days of Abram. Isaac, Joseph, and Amram, the father of Moses, were contemporaries: so that seven persons might keep up the memory of things which had happened 2500 years before. But to entitle these accounts to absolute authority, the inspiration of God intervenes; and thus we are convinced, that no word of sacred writers can be questioned. (Haydock)</blockquote>
<br /><br />
I differ in detail, partly by taking a somewhat longer chronology than Ussher's (which Father Haydock was OK with), and on the other hand to compensate that, considering a written transmission could have taken on in the days of Abraham. But the principle remains the same. If Adam lived 146 000 years before Abraham, obviously this becomes impossible, inachievable. If you disagree with Fuz Rana, sorry, your interview with Josh Dowell is long, and it was quicker to jump to his interview with Rana and Swamidass. His 150 000 BP date is obtained from dating methods even worse than carbon 14, like K-Ar.
<br /><br />
It seems Swamidass is coauthoring a book with you. He believes the bottleneck was "20 to 30 people" ... but this would clash with Romans 5, <i>and</i> the idea of God punishing justly. A collective sin <i>qua</i> collective is not free-willed, since collectives unlike individuals are not endowed with free-will. On the other hand, if two of the 20 — 30 were sinning, and then immediately punished, why would not the other 18 to 28 take heed and refrain from becoming accomplices? Or if they started out innocent and immortal, what made them mate with fallen mankind?
<br /><br />
<blockquote>“I myself don’t hold to that classical doctrine of original sin … What was that first sin? I don’t think we have any idea. I certainly don’t think that it was eating a piece of fruit on a tree. I think that would have been a figurative and metaphorical way of telling the story of man’s fall.”</blockquote>
<br /><br />
Yeah, total dark ignorance becomes the consequence of rejecting the light of truth ...
<br /><br />
That's one problem. But another one is, accepting carbon dates, you don't just have to take the chapters 1 - 11 as "mytho-history" (a very ill-defined concept, I would say, and I say that precisely because I am aware that much of Greek "mythology" involves what was taken — and what I take — as history). No. Genesis 14 involves Mesopotamians attacking the Amorrhaeans in Asason-Tamar. This can be tied in very precisely with archaeology, as, according to uniformitarian dates, happening in 3500 BC. See the evacuation of a temple treasure from Chalcolithic En-Geddi (which we know is Asason-Tamar), with reed mats carbon dated. But if you wanted to argue Abraham actually lived 3500 BC, apart from the problems this would cause in genealogies and other history, unaccounted for time gaps, this would put Abraham before there was an Egypt, before there was a pharao, since archaeologists date 1st Dynasty as c. 3100 BC — c. 2900 BC, meaning there was no pharao for Abraham to visit in 3500 BC.
<br /><br />
On the other hand, if 1935 BC is carbon dated to 3500 BC, and carbon 14 is rising, it makes sense the carbon date 3100 BC would be 1801 BC, or 3200 BC would be between 1845 and 1823 as per my tables (a reason why Abraham's pharao would be the Narmer not found in the first dynasty tombs).
<br /><br />
And if you mythologise Abraham too, why believe God's promises to Abraham (Genesis 12) any more than the Proto-Gospel of Genesis 3:15?
<br /><br />
Those are just some of the nightmareish problems YOU run into, by your preference for rather learning from fallible scientists than from Moses.
<br /><br />
PS, started taking the video with yourself and Sean McDowell, fortunately it didn't take all of it, just to 2:34 to get your timeline, and kudos for allowing Neanderthals, Denisovans, Heidelbergians to descend from Adam, that is a good move. However 750 000 years = transmission problem for Genesis 3. PLUS 100's of 1000's of years in which people were apparently getting saved without Jesus just fine, alternatively were all lost. The traditional view is, people in Peleg's or Abraham's time were saved insofar as they believed God's promise of the upcoming Messiah. And on the traditional view, Peleg was born maximally 2771 years after Adam sinned, the story was perfectly transmittable, especially as the lifespans allowed generations to overlap several ones into the posterity or ancestry beyond what's now possible.
<br /><br />
PPS - what the Bible considers as confusion may not be what you consider as such, it doesn't mean agrammatical linguistics in any individual, it simply means social confusion due to the unexpected phenomenon of major language differences. Also, I have no use for casting Babylonian Ziggurat's as the project in Genesis 11, first pericope. Göbekli Tepe, which really is reached by going from the landing place from the East, which is really adjacent to a plain inside the two-river area, rather than in the middle of one surrounding it, and "a tower, the top whereof may reach to heaven" not referring to an architectonic structure, but to what was way later seen at Cape Canaveral, when Armstrong went to the Moon.
<br /><br />
PPPS - at 14:41 in the video, Sean McDowell confirms you mean "mytho-history" only about chapters 1 to 11. In other words, to you, chapter 12, 13, 14 should already be history. But this is impossible with uniformitarian use of carbon dates.Hans Georg Lundahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01055583255516264955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769872213915415947.post-42628547671076595412023-10-10T08:15:00.002-07:002023-10-10T08:54:02.666-07:007 Hasn't Science Disproved Christianity?<br />
<b>Index post :</b> <a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2023/10/rebecca-mclaughlin-wrote-book.html">Rebecca McLaughlin Wrote a Book</a>
<br /><br />
No.
<br /><br />
End of the story, now you can go home ...
<br /><br />
... you can go home, I said ...
<br /><br />
... wait, you want the <i>details?</i>
<br /><br />
OK, this will take a little more time. This sounds like one question, but is in fact several questions.
<br /><br />
Hasn't archaeology and palaeontology proven the earth and universe are lots older than the Bible and therefore Christianity teaches?
<br />Hasn't evolution proven life, its diversity, and man, owe nothing to God?
<br />Hasn't science proven there are laws of nature so miracles are impossible?
<br />Hasn't Biblical criticism proven the Gospels are unreliable, since too late?
<br />Hasn't Assyriology proven that the stories in Genesis, from Creation to Flood, are polemically tainted plagiarisms?
<br />Hasn't comparative religion proven Jesus is a copy-cat of pagan deities?
<br />Hasn't science shown there is no God?
<br /><br />
Let's take them one by one.
<br /><br />
<i>Hasn't archaeology and palaeontology proven the earth and universe are lots older than the Bible and therefore Christianity teaches?</i>
<br /><br />
Or astronomy? Some stars the light of which we see are supposed to be 13 billion light years away. If they and we are just 7222 years old, their light shouldn't be reaching earth yet.
<br /><br />
Well, you have to prove they are 13 billion light years away first. And to do that, you have to prove Heliocentrism first.
<br /><br />
And to do that, you have to exclude God — while the existence of God leaves room for Heliocentrism, only the non-existence of God and angels leaves no room for anything other than Heliocentrism.
<br /><br />
<i>Palaeontology, then?</i>
<br /><br />
Uranium Lead dates are moot because of the uncertainty on how much lead there was in the sample to begin with. Stratigraphy of "Geologic column" is often presented as if one Permian layer were lying blow one Triassic layer and above a Carboniferous one, but in land vertebrates at least, it's more like different faunal types lying side by side in geographic or localised zones in whatever the layer is that's exposed on top. For sea creatures, there is the possibility of several layers having coexisted in the waters before the Flood.
<br /><br />
<i>OK, but archaeology?</i>
<br /><br />
Not really. The main go to is carbon-14, where a buildup in the atmosphere would skew the dating results more and more the further back to and beyond the Flood you came.
<br /><br />
<a href="https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2023/04/what-project.html"><i>Creation vs. Evolution : What Project?</i>
https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2023/04/what-project.html</a>
<br /><br />
<i>Hasn't evolution proven life, its diversity, and man, owe nothing to God?</i>
<br /><br />
No. Abiogenesis, the development of new cell types, the development of the human language, are all of them major hurdles to this theory.
<br /><br />
<i>Hasn't science proven there are laws of nature so miracles are impossible?</i>
<br /><br />
Laws of nature do not prove miracles impossible.
<br /><br />
Laws of nature describe the working of certain material cause types. For instance, the cause of free fall will not propel the body towards the centre of a much heavier body like the earth<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_acceleration"> other than as accelerating in distance by the square of the time, or in other words, in speed by time.</a> On Earth, this is the value, for the metric system, of ...
<br /><br />
<blockquote>At different points on Earth's surface, the free fall acceleration ranges from 9.764 to 9.834 m/s2 (32.03 to 32.26 ft/s2), depending on altitude, latitude, and longitude.</blockquote>
<br /><br />
However, this says nothing of other factors than the free fall acceleration.
<br /><br />
If a body intervened and stopped the fall, this would not falsify the natural law, it would just mean the situation had changed due to another factor.
<br /><br />
If an angel intervened and stopped the fall and saved a life, it would also mean the situation had changed due to another factor.
<br /><br />
<i>Hasn't Biblical criticism proven the Gospels are unreliable, since too late?</i>
<br /><br />
No. Biblical criticism, as in Higher Criticism, is itself unreliable, and lots of historic sources we usually trust are even later than Higher Criticism pretends of the Gospels, in relation to the events.
<br /><br />
<i>Hasn't Assyriology proven that the stories in Genesis, from Creation to Flood, are polemically tainted plagiarisms?</i>
<br /><br />
Once upon a time, a certain Hislop, who was not an Assyriologist, but who wagered on the then budding discipline to prove his hunches right, considered Easter Eggs and the Eucharist as plagiarisms of the Babylonian religion. Well, Assyriologists have so far not even bothered very much about him, that's how wrong he is. Eating eggs is a fairly popular hobby even outside Easter, except we Catholics have tended to forbid it during Lent. And nothing known in any Assyriological find, pictorial or textual, approaches the Eucharist. So, Assyriologists either don't know about him, or don't give him much credit.
<br /><br />
However, they are a bit more prone to come up with this other plagiarism charge, but they are not much better than Hislop when doing so. The problem is, they are precluding from the outset the possibility that neither side borrowed from the other, but both sides, both Hebrews and Babylonians, were heirs to those who had lived the events.
<br /><br />
<i>Hasn't comparative religion proven Jesus is a copy-cat of pagan deities?</i>
<br /><br />
If so, He's a copy-cat of <i>too many</i> of them. And each role fits His own a bit too well to be just tacked on.
<br /><br />
<i>Hasn't science shown there is no God?</i>
<br /><br />
No. A certain type of science education has been hijacked into an education into Atheism. That's something else.
<br /><br />
<i>But what about science? Just plain science? Hasn't that disproven God?</i>
<br /><br />
No, and that's precisely what I mean with a certain type of science education.
<br /><br />
The good points in favour of scientific methods apply to at least some of the scientific fields. It's misapplied in the case of Heliocentrism or Deep Time. But it has no bearing on whether there is a God, no bearing on whether the miraculous can occur, since the miraculous is precisely a different result than calculations from material factors by natural laws would account for, and accounting for that by God.
<br /><br />
I mean of course the scientific methods used in scientific fields. Because philosophy, which deals with God is another field, and it has its method.
<br /><br />
Electric calculations may tell you the max speed of a train using that electricity, but it won't tell you whether the train slows down for a station, or whether the train changes tracks to another line. Those things depend on the train driver. And the question about God is pretty much like the question whether the train we are on has a locomotive and a train driver or not. The kind of questions that are so typical for so many sciences and which do not take God into account are like questions about the electric tension in the line from Münster to Bremen. Which does not answer whether the driver will stop between or whether he will continue beyond, like to Hamburg.
<br /><br />
<i>Yeah, but natural laws are about ultimate possibility!</i>
<br /><br />
Well, natural laws are about potentials of the material factors. Any other possibilities depend on whether anything else than material factors have potential. If a non-material God created material things and allotted them the potentials, He certainly has more potentials than they have.
<br /><br />
You couldn't identify the potentials of material (or quasimaterial) factors with "ultimate possibility" if you weren't (without evidence, and against quite a lot of evidence) assuming that they were the only factors in existence.
<br /><br />
<i>But haven't the natural laws determined the possible outcomes so that any miracle would be a breach of them?</i>
<br /><br />
Precisely not, as I have argued in this series:
<br /><br />
<b>Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere:</b> <a href="https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2023/08/sabine-hossenfelder-studied-in-mainly.html">Sabine Hossenfelder Studied in Mainly Non-Catholic Schwalbach am Taunus</a> · <b>somewhere else:</b> <a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2023/08/do-determinisms-in-material-processes.html">Do Determinisms in Material Processes Leave Room for Free Decisions by Souls or God Over Matter?</a> · <b>New blog on the kid:</b> <a href="https://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2023/09/angels-chosing-orbits-no-violation-of.html">Angels chosing orbits = no violation of laws of physics ?</a>Hans Georg Lundahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01055583255516264955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769872213915415947.post-90374116565945305082023-10-10T08:10:00.001-07:002023-10-10T08:54:12.830-07:008 Doesn't Christianity Denigrate Women?<br />
<b>Index post :</b> <a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2023/10/rebecca-mclaughlin-wrote-book.html">Rebecca McLaughlin Wrote a Book</a>
<br /><br />
Mulier salvavit quae damnavit.
<br /><br />
<i>"Woman, same as which damned, saved"</i>
<br /><br />
What Eve destroyed by hearing the serpent, Mary repaired.
<br /><br />
What Eve destroyed by disobeying God's ban, Mary repaired by perfectly obeying God.
<br /><br />
Jesus, Our Saviour, repaired for Adam's sin, by His perfect obedience unto the Cross.
<br /><br />
He had this perfect obedience partly from being God, but humanly speaking He also learned it. From Mary, from the new Eve.Hans Georg Lundahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01055583255516264955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769872213915415947.post-22024495094312931422023-10-10T08:05:00.001-07:002023-10-10T08:54:22.407-07:009 Isn't Christianity Homophobic?<br />
<b>Index post :</b> <a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2023/10/rebecca-mclaughlin-wrote-book.html">Rebecca McLaughlin Wrote a Book</a>
<br /><br />
Christianity says homosexual acts like sodomy are wrong.
<br /><br />
Christianity also says, this remains so when infertile — and deliberately infertile — sexual acts are committed between man and woman, even between husband and wife.
<br /><br />
Sure, the Lambeth Conference of 1930 has said otherwise, but that is a concern of Anglican heretics. Precisely as putting out "Information for same sex couples" which doesn't tell them to find a same sex couple of the opposite sex and do a partner swap. It's a concern for Anglicans and Lutherans, but the Catholic Church has not participated.
<br /><br />
Now, you might wonder "what's wrong with infertile sex anyway?"
<br /><br />
Answer:
<ul><li> God says it's wrong (Romans 1:26-27; Genesis 38:8-10);
<li> pension reforms and unrests about them show it's disastrous./HGL</ul>Hans Georg Lundahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01055583255516264955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769872213915415947.post-76171127388280803402023-10-10T08:00:00.001-07:002023-10-10T08:54:31.961-07:0010 Doesn't the Bible Condone Slavery?<br />
<b>Index post :</b> <a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2023/10/rebecca-mclaughlin-wrote-book.html">Rebecca McLaughlin Wrote a Book</a>
<br /><br />
Most moderns would condone some form of slavery. What do you think prison is? It is a kind of slavery, but one earned by some ill deed, usually.
<br /><br />
Many condone very much less well deserved forms of slavery than prison. Mental hospitals. Child protective services. Enforced desintoxication visits. Pushing homeless into centres where they are isolated among themselves and "off the streets" but not in independent living accomodations.
<br /><br />
People who condone such types of slave hunt are hypocrites if they criticise the Bible for "condoning slavery" ...
<br /><br />
But this does not dispense from explaining the Bible.
<br /><br />
I would say, there are some kind of motives that rationally motivate servitude or at least can do so among non-Christians:
<br /><br />
<ul><li> crime — at least those deserving death penalty, and some do, would be considered as worthy of slavery, of perpetual servitude, too, as a kind of clemency;
<li> this would involve some war crimes and some crimes leading to wars (Joshua's wars were God's punitive action);
<li> those born in slavery when treated well do not always and everywhere look for freedom instead — if many a Black man of the Antebellum South was in for running away, it was because of harsh treatment (against the Bible) and also because of a comparison with Europeans elsewhere who neither were nor had slaves (due to Christianity);
<li> some cultures have held it just to keep debtors in slavery as payment for their debts (common ground to both Rome and Greece before Christian times, and to Jews too, but in that case only for seven years — because the Bible told them so).</ul>
<br /><br />
Above all, what the New Testament had to say about slavery was indeed not a blank condemnation (as some would have wanted, when all they think of in the context of Biblical slavery is the Black Antebellum), but held such qualifications, involving the equality of men, irrespective of class, irrespective of free or bond, that slavery became an irksome thing, and even less likely to be abused.
<br /><br />
Think of it as the reverse of racism. In the Antebellum South, slavery was becoming worse in attitudes from the owners and their abettors, and in humiliations suffered by Blacks, because racism was spreading.
<br /><br />
The NT words about slavery are the reverse of that. In the Christian empire, slavery was becoming better in attitudes from owners, and less hard, involving fewer humiliations, because Christianity was spreading. In place after place, in the Latin West, slavery was even abolished totally.
<br /><br />
Even in the Old Testament, slavery was more lenient than among other people. Moses and Caesar Augustus forbade the killing of a slave. Yes, I know there is a passage in Leviticus which states when it does not count as killing, but the fact that an earlier death than that would involve penalties was a deterrent. In Rome, people could throw slaves to murenas (a fish pretty like pirayas) just for fun with no punishment, until Caesar Augustus, c. 1500 years later (around the time when Christ was born) put an end to that disregard for the life of a slave./HGL
<br /><br />
PS - confer slaveries of new types, like school compulsion, marriage delay, child welfare, psychiatry, which seem to be getting more power the more a society is secularised.Hans Georg Lundahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01055583255516264955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769872213915415947.post-87089112520415472502023-10-10T07:30:00.001-07:002023-10-10T08:54:42.058-07:0011 How Could a Loving God Allow So Much Suffering?<br />
<b>Index post :</b> <a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2023/10/rebecca-mclaughlin-wrote-book.html">Rebecca McLaughlin Wrote a Book</a>
<br /><br />
Giving men freewill involves giving them the possibility to chose wrong, not just within themselves, not just in relation to God, but also in relation to the neighbour.
<br /><br />
As C. S. Lewis pointed out in <i>The Problem of Pain,</i> it would be pointless to allow people the freedom to chose doing ill to the neighbour if all the effects of such choices were annulled, and the neighbour never really suffered anything as a result of such a choice.
<br /><br />
People are diverse in the power they wield over others.
<br /><br />
Parents wield more power than other people, and yet, when people try to save children from bad parents, the results are even worse childhoods.
<br /><br />
The extreme example of parental power was Adam's choice.
<br /><br />
If he had overcome the temptation, whatever would have happened to Eve, somehow mankind would have been well as a whole. We would have been born good (in fact we aren't, it's just that when we are born we have very little means to make our bad inclinations effective on others). We would have been born into a good world, not just the basic goodness of promoting life, but a perfect goodness of promoting no suffering. When we were born with nothing wrong with us, we would need nothing wrong in our situation as a warning signal.
<br /><br />
He did not overcome, he shared Eve's death penalty, we are not born good, we are born in a half good and half bad world, the basic goodness of promoting life yes, but the perfect goodness of promoting no suffering, no, that's lacking. As we are born with something wrong with us, we need something wrong in our situation as a warning signal./HGLHans Georg Lundahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01055583255516264955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769872213915415947.post-34535028428692302302023-10-10T07:00:00.001-07:002023-10-10T08:54:52.532-07:0012 How Could a Loving God Send People to Hell?<br />
<b>Index post :</b> <a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2023/10/rebecca-mclaughlin-wrote-book.html">Rebecca McLaughlin Wrote a Book</a>
<br /><br />
How can a loving God reward someone so that he can never fall away from God, so that his salvation is eternally secure?
<br /><br />
By making sure that at a certain time, the freedom to change one's mind runs out.
<br /><br />
Well, it also runs out for the people who are stubbornly fallen from God, so they can never turn back.
<br /><br />
If someone spends the last of his earthly life to spite God, his eternity will be without God to the last, and therefore miserable.
<br /><br />
In a certain sense, it is possible that the physical torments of Hell are even a welcome distraction to the damned, compared to that bleakness, that emptiness, that total dysfunction of what should have worked (and in the saved ones does work) for their happiness./HGLHans Georg Lundahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01055583255516264955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769872213915415947.post-59054373558076038242023-08-17T09:46:00.004-07:002023-09-18T10:19:01.285-07:00Do Determinisms in Material Processes Leave Room for Free Decisions by Souls or God Over Matter?<br />
<b>Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere:</b> <a href="https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2023/08/sabine-hossenfelder-studied-in-mainly.html">Sabine Hossenfelder Studied in Mainly Non-Catholic Schwalbach am Taunus</a> · <b>somewhere else:</b> <a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2023/08/do-determinisms-in-material-processes.html">Do Determinisms in Material Processes Leave Room for Free Decisions by Souls or God Over Matter?</a> · <b>New blog on the kid:</b> <a href="https://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2023/09/angels-chosing-orbits-no-violation-of.html">Angels chosing orbits = no violation of laws of physics ?</a>
<br /><br />
Accessorily, I may also be answering the idea of Eternalism, by which Joe Schmid / Majesty of Reason criticises via prima. He claims that all times are eternally actual, so there never was an actualisation of a potential. That's a very strong claim for determinism.
<br /><br />
But anyway, atoms clash or attract and in doing so, they react according to certain laws. Same thing can be said for larger than chemistry assmeblies of atoms known as bodies and for smaller than atoms particles dealt with by particule physics (which is by the way not <i>directly</i> empiric - in a water molecule an electronic microscopy allows you to see the molecule as two smaller balls attached to a larger ball, nothing smaller than that is directly observed in itself).
<br /><br />
Sudokus also follow deterministic laws. I know, nothing in gravitation or electromagnetics forces me to fill in a sudoku according to the rules rather than simply filling in a string of unrelated letters or numbers whatever flows through my head, but once I have started a sudoku (which already has a solution) or even when I am constructing one (i e constructing a solution) I use rules that kind of mimic deterministic laws a bit.
<br /><br />
It's a fact that despite very deterministic rules, a sudoku can be left "underdetermined."
<br /><br />
<a href="https://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2015/07/sudoku.html">Sudoku Tuesday, 21 July 2015</a> has <a href="http://writingthisinbasicenglish.blogspot.com/2015/07/sudoku.html">a solution that is fully determined,</a> while <a href="https://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2016/03/sudoku.html">sudoku Wednesday, 30 March 2016</a> has a solution <a href="http://writingthisinbasicenglish.blogspot.com/2016/03/solution-deof-sudoku.html">underdetermined at four cells,</a> and <a href="https://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2020/01/sudoku.html">sudoku Monday, 20 January 2020</a> has <a href="https://writingthisinbasicenglish.blogspot.com/2020/01/sudoku.html">a solution underdetermined at eight cells.</a>
<br /><br />
This is because the actual impulses given from the beginning would leave out certain areas while being worked out. Sure, it helps that the sudoku as such is undetermined to begin with, until a solution has been worked out (after which a grid can be made so that solutions can be worked out again from the grid by the one solving it as a puzzle). But even so, all of the working out except the choices follows, and even the choices take heed of, the deterministic rules of sudoku.
<br /><br />
A sudoku fully filled in, i e not grid puzzle but solution, is certainly fully determined. But this means that the second of these two sudokus has two equivalent solutions and the third of them four equivalent solutions, from which the one solving can freely chose.
<br /><br />
So, similarily, all it takes for God, angels, human souls to control material bodies / in the case of souls their bodies with freedom, without violating any laws of nature governing the laws of physics, is that the laws of physics underdetermined, while only the choice of a human will, an angel or God, defines the full determination of what movement happens.
<br /><br />
The deterministic philosophers have not taken this into account.
<br /><br />
Why? Because in order for any event to actually happen, the causality needs to be fully determined for it. And their philosophy of denying substantiality to mind, therefore of denying souls and angels and God are substances, forbids them to credit this full determinism to a non-material agency working with the underdetermination of materially determined factors at their disposal. They need to credit full determination to non-choice, to the deterministically acting particles, because on their view, that is all that exists. If it <i>isn't</i> all that exists, this means that things can be genuinely underdetermined from the material point of view and fully determined only by the extra actions involving free choice.
<br /><br />
Hans Georg Lundahl
<br />Paris
<br />Octave of St. Lawrence
<br />17.VIII.2023Hans Georg Lundahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01055583255516264955noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769872213915415947.post-4682578292939568372023-05-03T12:39:00.006-07:002023-05-03T12:39:59.440-07:00Why the Messiah Already Came - Babylonian Argument<br />
To any Jewish readers.
<br /><br />
All of the time when the Tanakh was written, including the books you reject, like II Maccabees, Babylon existed. Sumerian and Akkadian were known at least as dead or classic languages.
<br /><br />
What was the principal enemy of Israel? Babylon.
<br /><br />
Can the defeat of Babylon be seen as a sign that the Messiah came? I think so.
<br /><br />
Here* is a fairly significant passage from the French wiki article on Babylon:
<br /><br />
<table><tr valign="top"><td>La période parthe voit Babylone décliner et se dépeupler progressivement, les grands centres du pouvoir s'étant définitivement déplacés plus au nord sur le Tigre (Séleucie, Ctesiphon, et bien plus tard Bagdad).<td> <td>The Parthian period sees Babylon progressively decline and get depopulated, the great centres of power having been definitely relocated more to the North on the Tigris (Seleucia, Ctesiphon, and, much later, Baghdad).</tr>
<tr><td> </tr>
<tr valign="top"><td>Mais ses monuments principaux sont encore en activité : Pline l'Ancien écrit au début du ier siècle de notre ère que le temple continue à être actif, bien que la cité soit en ruines62 et une inscription en grec datable du iie siècle ap. J.-C. indique que le théâtre est encore restauré63.<td> <td>But its principal monuments are still active: Pliny the Elder writes at the beginning of the 1st C. of our era that the temple continues to be active, even if the city be in ruins, and an inscription in Greek datable to the 2nd C AD indicates that the theatre is still being restored.</tr>
<tr><td> </tr>
<tr valign="top"><td>Elle reste une ville commerciale active, où on trouve des communautés de divers horizons en plus des communautés babylonienne et grecque (qui se sont sans doute liées depuis longtemps), notamment des marchands de Palmyre, tandis que les premières communautés chrétiennes s'installent dans la région64.
<td> <td>She remains an active commercial city, where one finds communities from diverse horizons, on top of the Babylonian and Greek communities (which had, no doubt, been linked since long before), notably merchants from Palmyra, while the first Christian communities settle in the region.</tr>
<tr><td> </tr>
<tr valign="top"><td>Les mentions de cette ville comme un champ de ruines dans les textes gréco-romains, ainsi Dion Cassius quand il rapporte la venue sur place de l'empereur Trajan lors de sa campagne de 115 ap. J.-C., illustrent néanmoins le fait que son déclin a été important et a marqué les visiteurs imprégnés des récits relatifs à sa splendeur passée65.<td> <td>The mentions of this city as a ruin field in Greco-Roman texts, like Dio Cassius, when he reports the arrival on spot by Emperor Trajan, during the campaign of 115 AD, nevertheless illustrate the fact that her decline has been important, and marked visitors who had imbibed the stories of her past splendour.</tr></table>
<br /><br />
So, one second C. narration is about Trajan finding a field of ruins. Another one is a Greek inscription - not a cuneiform one - of the theatre (a Greek culture thing) being restored.
<br /><br />
The article goes on to say, the Babylonian temple was still functioning at the beginning of the 3rd C. AD. But ...
<br /><br />
<blockquote>Attested from c. 2900 BC. Effectively extinct from about 2000–1800 BC; used as a classical language until about 100 AD.</blockquote>
<br /><br />
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_language">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_language</a>
<br /><br />
<blockquote>c. 2500 – 500 BC; academic or liturgical use until AD 100</blockquote>
<br /><br />
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akkadian_language">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akkadian_language</a>
<br /><br />
When St. John came to Heaven, he seems to have obtained the eradication of the Sumerian and Akkadian languages. From "dead" as in Classic languages, they became really dead, what is also called <i>extinct</i> languages. The Babylonian temple would have changed language before it ceased some time in the 3rd C. AD.
<br /><br />
Hans Georg Lundahl
<br />Paris
<br />Invention of the Holy Cross
<br />3.V.2023
<br /><br />
<i>Hierosolymis Inventio sacrosanctae Crucis Dominicae, sub Constantino Imperatore.</i>
<br /><br />
* <a href="https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylone#La_fin_de_la_Babylone_antique">https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylone#La_fin_de_la_Babylone_antique</a>
<br /><br />
Footnotes 62 to 65, as given in the text:
<br />62) Pline l'Ancien, L'Histoire naturelle, VI, 30
<br />63) <a href="http://www.livius.org/ba-bd/babylon/theater_inscription.html">« B. Van der Spek, « The “theater inscription” », Livius.org, non daté (consulté le 15 mars 2011) »</a> [archive]
<br />64) J. Teixidor, « La Babylonie au tournant de notre ère », dans Babylone 2008, i e Béatrice André-Salvini (dir.), Babylone, Paris, Hazan - Musée du Louvre éditions, 2008. p. 380
<br />65) Radner 2020, i e Karen Radner, <i>A Short History of Babylon,</i> Londres et New York, Bloomsbury Academic, 2020, p. 16-18.Hans Georg Lundahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01055583255516264955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769872213915415947.post-28624718615631734012023-04-11T02:01:00.003-07:002023-04-15T00:18:17.279-07:00Not Hallucinations - Argument II<br />
<b>Great Bishop of Geneva!:</b> <a href="http://greatbishopofgeneva.blogspot.com/2023/04/does-bible-say-how-many-books-it-has.html">Does the Bible Say How Many Books It Has?</a> · <b>somewhere else:</b> <a href="http://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2023/04/not-hallucinations-argument-ii.html">Not Hallucinations - Argument II</a> · <b>Creation vs. Evolution</b> <a href="https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2023/04/do-flood-stories-around-world-prove.html">Do Flood Stories Around the World Prove Oral Transmission Inaccurate?</a>
<br /><br />
I suppose everyone has heard of Argument I for the Resurrection Experiences not being hallucinations.
<br /><br />
Will Durant has:
<br /><br />
<blockquote>"Although at least a few if not all of Jesus’ disciples may have been in an emotional state that rendered them candidates for a hallucination, the nature of some of the experiences of the risen Jesus, specifically those that occurred in group settings and to Jesus’ enemy Paul, and the empty tomb strongly suggest that these experiences were not hallucinations.”
<br /><br />
- Will Durant, an American writer, philosopher, and historian. Best known for his 11-volume "The Story of Civilization".</blockquote>
<br /><br />
Cited from:
<br /><a href="https://isjesusalive.com/hallucination/">Is Jesus Alive?
<br />HALLUCINATION, WERE THE DISCIPLES "SEEING THINGS?"
<br />https://isjesusalive.com/hallucination/</a>
<br /><br />
So, credits to Erik Manning for this quote from Will Durant, I find his youtube channel Testify one of the more enjoyable ones.
<br /><br />
But what about Argument II against the hallucination explanation? No, I did not mean "Paul would not have hallucinated" though that might be true too. I mean things like <a href="https://drbo.org/chapter/49024.htm">Luke 24:</a>
<br /><br />
<b>25 Then he said to them: O foolish, and slow of heart to believe in all things which the prophets have spoken. 26 Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and so to enter into his glory? 27 And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the scriptures, the things that were concerning him. 28 And they drew nigh to the town, whither they were going: and he made as though he would go farther.</b>
<br /><br />
You can hallucinate (under the right, <i>or rather wrong,</i> conditions) a lecturer. But you cannot hallucinate him giving a long and coherent lecture. Both the walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus (probably 160 stades = 32 km) and the talk would have taken hours. An undramatic hallucination lasting for hours while one succeeds in doing actual walking, leading to the correct destination? Nah.
<br /><br />
<a href="https://drbo.org/chapter/51001.htm">Acts 1:</a>
<br /><br />
<b>3 To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion, by many proofs, for forty days appearing to them, and speaking of the kingdom of God.</b>
<br /><br />
So, a forty day series of interactions involving <i>multiple</i> lectures. Back to Luke 24:
<br /><br />
<b>43 And when he had eaten before them, taking the remains, he gave to them. 44 And he said to them: These are the words which I spoke to you, while I was yet with you, that all things must needs be fulfilled, which are written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me. 45 Then he opened their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures. 46 And he said to them: Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise again from the dead, the third day: 47 And that penance and remission of sins should be preached in his name, unto all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. 48 And you are witnesses of these things. 49 And I send the promise of my Father upon you: but stay you in the city till you be endued with power from on high. 50 And he led them out as far as Bethania: and lifting up his hands, he blessed them.</b>
<br /><br />
This could be theoretically a short speech, simply the words:
<br /><br />
<b>These are the words which I spoke to you, while I was yet with you, that all things must needs be fulfilled, which are written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me. Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise again from the dead, the third day: And that penance and remission of sins should be preached in his name, unto all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And you are witnesses of these things. And I send the promise of my Father upon you: but stay you in the city till you be endued with power from on high.</b>
<br /><br />
In that case, <b>[t]hen he opened their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures,</b> is a resumé of the result. I would say, even that short speech is too long and structured for a hallucination.
<br /><br />
But <b>[t]hen he opened their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures,</b> could also refer to a longer speech, or to a series fo speeches. I find the latter most probable. A lecture series on the Old Testament. Not the first one He had given, but another one.
<br /><br />
So, this is a <i>huge</i> problem for those who would argue the resurrection accounts were hallucinations.
<br /><br />
But it is also a huge problem for those who would argue Protestantism is true Christianity. Why so? Well one claim of Classic Protestantism is, what Jesus taught is available to us through the New Testament books alone, and no Apostolic Tradition beside that. But the lecturing on Moses and the prophets, at least to the disciples of Emmaus, and probably to all disciples, comprises all of the Old Testament. Yet the New Testament books do not contain a whole list of Christ-referring meanings of all Old Testament passages. Therefore, these lectures by Christ involved information <i>not</i> contained in the New Testament books. This in turn gives us a choice - either it is not accurately accessible to us, or it is accessible to us in a fully reliable source, newer than the Old Testament books, and not being texts in the New Testament books - what we call Apostolic Tradition.
<br /><br />
But we can refute that it is no longer accessible to us, Matthew 28:20 containing:
<br /><br />
<b>Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you:</b>
<br /><br />
And <a href="https://drbo.org/chapter/50014.htm">John 14</a> gives a parallel promise, not from the post-Resurrection, but from the last supper:
<br /><br />
<b>16 And I will ask the Father, and he shall give you another Paraclete, that he may abide with you for ever. ... 26 But the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you.</b>
<br /><br />
This means, the idea that the OT exegesis offered by Our Lord (to people who were used to learning from Him as from a rabbi), the Post-Resurrection lectures, are still accessible, or He would have been a liar. And Apostolic Tradition on OT exegesis is in fact a reason for a lot of things that the Protestants consider disputable in our New Testament exegesis. For instance, that the "woman" in Genesis 3:15 is Mary.
<br /><br />
Hans Georg Lundahl
<br />Paris
<br />Easter Tuesday
<br />11.IV.2023Hans Georg Lundahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01055583255516264955noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769872213915415947.post-88300706064376250792023-03-02T13:00:00.001-08:002023-03-02T13:00:02.982-08:00Notes on the Disputation of Barcelona - very preliminary<br />
I have not had occasion to read a transscript (either Hebrew or Latin) translated into English.
<br /><br />
I have gone to wikipedia:
<br /><br />
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disputation_of_Barcelona">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disputation_of_Barcelona</a>
<br /><br />
I find a very ... ironic, in context ... quote atttributed to Moses Nachmanides:
<br /><br />
<blockquote>"[... it seems most strange that... ] the Creator of Heaven and Earth resorted to the womb of a certain Jewish lady, grew there for nine months and was born as an infant, and afterwards grew up and was betrayed into the hands of his enemies who sentenced him to death and executed him, and that afterwards... he came to life and returned to his original place. The mind of a Jew, or any other person, simply cannot tolerate these assertions. If you have listened all your life to the priests who have filled your brain and the marrow of your bones with this doctrine, and it has settled into you because of that accustomed habit. [I would argue that if you were hearing these ideas for the first time, now, as a grown adult], you would never have accepted them."</blockquote>
<br /><br />
So, the Cross is folly to the Jews, I think St. Paul mentioned that ... oh, not quite* exact:
<br /><br />
<b>But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews indeed a stumblingblock, and unto the Gentiles foolishness:</b>
<br />[1 Corinthians 1:23]
<br /><br />
But, how exactly is Moses Nachmanides dealing with it?
<br /><br />
He's suggesting that Friar Paul Christiani had been indoctrinated since childhood. The fact is, Friar Paul Christiani was an adult convert, and that's why he tried to use the Talmud in Christian apologetics - he was familiar with it, and it may have contributed to his own conversion.
<br /><br />
So, let's go back a bit ...
<br /><br />
<blockquote>Based upon several aggadic passages, Christiani argued that Pharisaic sages believed that the Messiah had lived during the Talmudic period, and that they must therefore have believed that the Messiah was Jesus.
<br /><br />
Nachmanides countered that Christiani's interpretations of Talmudic passages were per-se distortions; the rabbis would not hint that Jesus was the Messiah while, at the same time, explicitly opposing him as such:
<br /><br />
<blockquote>"Does he mean to say that the sages of the Talmud believed in Jesus as the messiah and believed that he is both human and divine, as held by the Christians? However, it is well known that the incident of Jesus took place during the period of the Second Temple. He was born and killed prior to the destruction of the Temple, while the sages of the Talmud, like R. Akiba and his associates, followed this destruction. Those who compiled the Mishnah, Rabbi and R. Nathan, lived many years after the destruction. All the more so R. Ashi who compiled the Talmud, who lived about four hundred years after the destruction. If these sages believed that Jesus was the messiah and that his faith and religion were true and if they wrote these things from which Friar Paul intends to prove this, then how did they remain in the Jewish faith and in their former practice? For they were Jews, remained in the Jewish faith all their lives, and died Jews - they and their children and their students who heard their teachings. Why did they not convert and turn to the faith of Jesus, as Friar Paul did? ... If these sages believed in Jesus and in his faith, how is it that they did not do as Friar Paul, who understands their teachings better than they themselves do?"[7]</blockquote></blockquote>
<br /><br />
Let's be precise.
<br /><br />
The Talmud has two parts, Mishna and Gemara. The earlier part, Mishna, does not only involve sages that rejected Jesus from Nazareth.
<br /><br />
It could very well be that Gamaliel (whose disciples Paul and Barnabas converted, and who according to some converted before he died) had said sth about the Messiah having to appear while the Second Temple lasted. It could be that earlier sages, none of whom had rejected Jesus, had said so. It could even be that Akiba repeated some without understanding how it applied to Jesus. It could certainly be the case that Nathan, compiling the Mishnah, and Ashi, compiling the Talmud, read a text, didn't quite get how it applied to Jesus, and included it, despite their obvious intention to not confess Jesus.
<br /><br />
Nachmanides' case here is pretty much that of Jews on the OT - it boils down to <i>"do you believe you know our earlier authors better than we do - of course we know them better, since they are ours, it's we who know them!"</i>
<br /><br />
And the Christian answer here would be <i>"do you?"</i>
<br /><br />
I'll contact ONE FOR ISRAEL about the possibility of early Mishna tractates stating the Messiah came before the Second Temple was destroyed.
<br /><br />
Hans Georg Lundahl
<br />Paris
<br />Holy Martyrs of Campania**
<br />2.III.2023
<br /><br />
* But Gentiles schmentiles, Jews schmews, not too far off either.
<br />** Catholics who were slaughtered for refusing to worship a goat head set up by the invading, not yet Christian Lombards ...Hans Georg Lundahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01055583255516264955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769872213915415947.post-56048502605549214932023-01-29T05:09:00.004-08:002023-01-30T11:39:32.893-08:00Is Selfishness Condemned in the Bible?<br />
<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?quicksearch=selfish&version=NIV">In the NIV, it is:</a>
<br /><br />
<blockquote>Psalm 119:36
<br /><i>Turn my heart toward your statutes and not toward selfish gain.</i>
<br /><br />
Proverbs 18:1
<br /><i>An unfriendly person pursues selfish ends and against all sound judgment starts quarrels.</i>
<br /><br />
2 Corinthians 12:20
<br /><i>For I am afraid that when I come I may not find you as I want you to be, and you may not find me as you want me to be. I fear that there may be discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, slander, gossip, arrogance and disorder.</i>
<br /><br />
Galatians 5:20
<br /><i>idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions</i>
<br /><br />
Philippians 1:17
<br /><i>The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains.</i>
<br /><br />
Philippians 2:3
<br /><i>Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves,</i>
<br /><br />
James 3:14
<br /><i>But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth.</i>
<br /><br />
James 3:16
<br /><i>For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.</i></blockquote>
<br /><br />
<a href="https://drbo.org/cgi-bin/s?q=selfish&b=drb">What does Douay Rheims say?</a>
<br /><br />
<blockquote>Psalm 118:36*
<br /><b>Incline my heart into thy testimonies and not to covetousness.</b>
<br /><br />
Proverbs 18:1
<br /><b>He that hath a mind to depart from a friend seeketh occasions: he shall ever be subject to reproach.</b>
<br /><br />
2 Corinthians 12:20
<br /><b>For I fear lest perhaps when I come I shall not find you such as I would, and that I shall be found by you such as you would not. Lest perhaps contentions, envyings, animosities, dissensions, detractions, whisperings, swellings, seditions, be among you.</b>
<br /><br />
Galatians 5:20
<br /><b>Idolatry, witchcrafts, enmities, contentions, emulations, wraths, quarrels, dissensions, sects,</b>
<br /><br />
Philippians 1:17
<br /><b>And some out of contention preach Christ not sincerely: supposing that they raise affliction to my bands.</b>
<br /><br />
Philippians 2:3
<br /><b>Let nothing be done through contention, neither by vain glory: but in humility, let each esteem others better than themselves:</b>
<br /><br />
James 3:14
<br /> <b>But if you have bitter zeal, and there be contentions in your hearts; glory not, and be not liars against the truth.</b>
<br /><br />
James 3:16
<br /><b>For where envying and contention is, there is inconstancy, and every evil work.</b></blockquote>
<br /><br />
What are the differences?
<br /><br />
First, "selfish" translates "egoist" which is opposed to "altruist" by a certain Immanuel Kant. Making "altruist rather than egoist" the basis of morality was kind of his invention. I think you will find it in Critik der practischen Vernunft - a book I admit I have <i>not</i> read. Many of the older Protestant confessions which were around when he wrote (Lutherans, Anglicans, Calvinists) tended to adopt his philosophy which is one of the reasons for both Modernism and for an ethic involving the opposition "selfish" vs "unselfish" - and many later divisions of Protestantism accepted the ethics, while disagreeing about the doctrine.
<br /><br />
Now, one of the words that the Douay Rheims uses is "contention" or "contentions" - which refers to "condent" - it is sometimes used in a good way:
<br /><br />
Jude 1:3
<br /><b>Dearly beloved, taking all care to write unto you concerning your common salvation, I was under a necessity to write unto you: to beseech you to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints.</b>
<br /><br />
What does the word mean, in everyday language? It means for "contend" to quarrel or dispute, and for contentions "quarrels" or for contention "being quarrelsome" - so the verdict of those verses is, not about selfishness, but about quarrelsomeness. While we sometimes do need to quarrel for a good cause (Jude 1:3, or David taking up a quarrel with Goliath), we are forbidden to be quarrelsome, to be eager to find something to quarrel about.
<br /><br />
Another word is "covetuousness" - it means one thing classified as "selfish" by those using the word, but not everything else so classified. It means specifically being greedy.
<br /><br />
But isn't quarrels excluded by Galatians 5:20? Because there, quarrels come after contentions are already mentioned? I think in that verse the words are distinguished by "contentions" meaning the refusal to find an agreement and "quarrels" the verbal dispute that arises. The verbal abuse. And perhaps this is where I should start looking at the Greek ...
<br /><br />
<blockquote>Galatians 5:20
<br />εἰδωλολατρία, φαρμακεία, ἔχθραι, ἔρις, ζῆλος, θυμοί, ἐριθεῖαι, διχοστασίαι, αἱρέσεις,</blockquote>
<br /><br />
For this word list, some words I already knew, most I had to look up. It's in 1993 that I had my best knowledge of Greek, which I have not really kept up since.
<br /><br />
εἰδωλολατρία, idolatry
<br />φαρμακεία, (often translated) witchcraft (but can also mean making of medical drugs)
<br />ἔχθραι, enmities
<br />ἔρις, disunion
<br />ζῆλος, being eager
<br />θυμοί, getting excited
<br />ἐριθεῖαι, quarrelsomeness
<br />διχοστασίαι, standings apart, dissensions
<br />αἱρέσεις, heresies (personal choices, personal preferences pitted against the common good of the faith once given)
<br /><br />
None of these are the exact concept of "selfishness" even if more than one could be described as selfish by those using the word.
<br /><br />
Proverbs 18:1 also stands out verbally. I think it means quarrelsomeness, but will try to see Hebrew interlinear. I didn't learn the language.**
<br /><br />
<a href="https://biblehub.com/interlinear/proverbs/18.htm">Proverbs 18
<br />https://biblehub.com/interlinear/proverbs/18.htm</a>
<br /><br />
<blockquote>8378 [e] lə·ṯa·’ă·wāh<br />
לְֽ֭תַאֲוָה 1
<br />Desire Prep‑l | N‑fs
<br /><br />
1245 [e] yə·ḇaq·qêš<br />
יְבַקֵּ֣שׁ
<br />seeks his own V‑Piel‑Imperf‑3ms
<br /><br />
6504 [e] nip̄·rāḏ;<br />
נִפְרָ֑ד
<br />a man who isolates himself V‑Nifal‑Prtcpl‑ms
<br /><br />
3605 [e] bə·ḵāl<br />
בְּכָל־
<br />against all Prep‑b | N‑msc
<br /><br />
8454 [e] tū·šî·yāh,<br />
תּ֝וּשִׁיָּ֗ה
<br />wise judgment N‑fs
<br /><br />
1566 [e] yiṯ·gal·lā‘.<br />
יִתְגַּלָּֽע׃
<br />He rages V‑Hitpael‑Imperf‑3ms</blockquote>
<br /><br />
What about yə·ḇaq·qêš? 1245. baqash - seek, pursue a goal. However, piel is generally not reflexive, it is intensive.
<br /><br />
<a href="https://rdrdbiblestudy.com/the-hebrew-piel-verbal-stem-intensifying-the-idea/">RDRD Bible Study : The Hebrew Piel Verbal Stem: Intensifying The Idea
<br /><i>Posted by T Whitfield | Sep 1, 2018 | Hebrew, Original Languages</i>
<br />https://rdrdbiblestudy.com/the-hebrew-piel-verbal-stem-intensifying-the-idea/</a>
<br /><br />
Or nip̄·rāḏ? 6504. parad to divide, and is Nifal perhaps reflexive?
<br /><br />
<a href="https://biblicalhebrew.org/niphal.aspx">Niphal (Niph˓al)
<br />https://biblicalhebrew.org/niphal.aspx</a>
<br /><br />
<blockquote>(a) primarily reflexive of Qal, e.g. נִלְחַץ to thrust oneself (against), נִשְׁמַר to take heed to oneself, φυλάσσεσθαι, נִסְתַּר to hide oneself, נִגְאַל to redeem oneself; cf. also נַֽעֲנֶה to answer for oneself. ...
<br /><br />
(b) It expresses reciprocal or mutual action, e.g. דִּבֶּר to speak, Niph. to speak to one another; שָׁפַט to judge, Niph. to go to law with one another; יָעַץ to counsel, Niph. to take counsel, cf. the middle and deponent verbs βουλεύεσθαι (נוֹעַץ), μάξεσθαι (נְלְחַם), altercari, luctari (נִצָּה to strive with one another) proeliari. ...
<br /><br />
(c) It has also, like Hithpa˓ēl and the Greek middle, the meaning of the active, with the addition of to oneself (sibi), for oneself, e.g. נִשְׁאַל to ask (something) for oneself (1 S 20:6,20:28, Neh 13:6), cf. αἰτοῦμαί σε τοῦτο, ἐδύσασθαι χιτωσνα to put out on (oneself) a tunic. ...
<br /><br />
(d) In consequence of a looseness of thought at an early period of the language, Niph˓al comes finally in many cases to represent the passive of Qal, e.g. יָלַד to bear, Niph. to be born; קָכַר to bury, Niph. to be buried. In cases where Qal is intransitive in meaning, or is not used, Niph˓al appears also as the passive of Pi˓ēl and Hiph˓îl, e.g. כָּבֵד to be in honour, Pi˓ēl to honour, Niph. to be honoured (as well as Pu˓al כֻּבַּד); כָּחַד Pi˓ēl to conceal, Hiph. to destroy, Niph. passive of either. In such cases Niph˓al may again coincide in meaning with Qal (הָלָה Qal and Niph. to be ill) and even take an accusative ...</blockquote>
<br /><br />
So, a nip̄·rāḏ is one who divides himself, who divides for himself or (pl) people who divide from each other, or (back to singular) one likely to get involved ... could be selfish, but seems to be equally likely to be quarrelsome.
<br /><br />
Or bə·ḵāl tū·šî·yāh? Seems to mean foolishly rather than selfishly. Only two words remain:
<br /><br />
A) lə·ṯa·’ă·wāh? 8378. taavah - dainty, desire, exceedingly, greedily, lusting, pleasant.
<br />B) yiṯ·gal·lā‘? 1566. gala - disclose. THere is a special entry about Hitpael, which is the identified stem form.
<br /><br />
<blockquote>Hithpa`el Perfect הִתְגַּלַּע Proverbs 17:14; Imperfect יִתְגַּלָּ֑ע Proverbs 18:1; Proverbs 20:3; — disclose oneself, break out, Proverbs 17:14 subject רִיב; break or burst out in contention, strife Proverbs 20:3 subject כָּלאֱֿוִיל; similarly Proverbs 18:1 (followed by בְּ against; Grl.c. proposes יִלְעַג or יַלְעִיג).</blockquote>
<br /><br />
So, again, we cannot totally live without desires, but being covetuous about them and quarrelsome is forbidden. Chosing something more likely to benefit oneself rather than someone else isn't, <i>if</i> done with moderation and consideration for the other's rights.
<br /><br />
Hans Georg Lundahl
<br />Paris
<br />IV Lord's Day after Epiphany
<br />29.I.2023
<br /><br />
PS - by fatigue, I posted this on the wrong blog, it should have been on <a href="http://greatbishopofgeneva.blogspot.com/">Great Bishop of Geneva!</a>/HGL
<br /><br />
* Douay Rheims, like the Vulgate, has the LXX numbering of the Psalms.
<br /><br />
** So, don't ask me to pronounce the Hebrew text, except the transliterations in the interlinear version ...Hans Georg Lundahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01055583255516264955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769872213915415947.post-73144951141713792242022-11-28T15:10:00.010-08:002022-11-28T15:13:48.209-08:00Answer on Acts (to Dick Harfield)<br />
<b>Factuality of the Bible:</b> <a href="https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2022/11/factuality-of-bible-answering-earnest.html">answering Earnest Farr</a> · <a href="https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2022/11/factuality-of-bible-guestpost.html">Guestpost</a> · <a href="https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2022/11/factuality-of-bible-dick-harfield.html">answering Dick Harfield</a> · <a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2022/11/answer-on-acts-to-dick-harfield.html">Answer on Acts (to Dick Harfield)</a>
<br /><br />
On Quora, I posed a question, which was answered by Dick Harfield. This answer is quote <a href="https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2022/11/factuality-of-bible-dick-harfield.html">on the previous post.</a> However, here I will requote parts in answer. Why here, why not commenting on quora below his answer? Because he stopped further comments, after I had already given answers on the Pentateuch, the books of Ruth, Esther and Daniel. Separately, instead of making just one reply to the answer by Harfield. So, he stopped me, who had posed the question, to comment under his answer to it. Hence, I was unable to add the answer on Acts there, and I add it here instead.
<br /><br />
<b>Acts</b>
<br /><br />
<blockquote>Acts of the Apostles used to be regarded as an accurate and reliable history of the early church, At the beginning of the twentieth century, Sir William Ramsay stated:
<br /><br />
<blockquote>Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy...this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians.</blockquote></blockquote>
<br /><br />
Which would not preclude that he was a historian after the ideal of historians in his day.
<br /><br />
<blockquote>New Testament scholars have reviewed the evidence and no longer hold that to be the case, generally regarding the book as propaganda rather than actual history.</blockquote>
<br /><br />
For such, he cites Bart D. Ehrman and Richard Carrier, known (to others as to me) to be biassed against Christianity.
<br />He also cites Uta Ranke-Heinemann and Thomas Kazen, whom I did not know prior to this and cannot pretend to know how they are perceived by others.
<br /><br />
<blockquote>Acts contains some errors that can be demonstrated to be inaccurate.</blockquote>
<br /><br />
O ... K ... this is a very far cry from non-historic, fictional.
<br /><br />
As my claims is not just historicity, but inerrancy, I still need to adress the allegations, but not in order to defend the verdict of Sir William Ramsay.
<br /><br />
<blockquote>A well known historical error has Gamaliel speak of the rebel Theudas, whom the first-century Jewish historian Josephus assigns to the time of the procurator Cuspius Fadus (44-46 CE) several years after the death of Gamaliel. Acts of the Apostles also places Theudas before Judas the Galilean, who “arose in the days of the census” which had occurred decades earlier.</blockquote>
<br /><br />
A <i>minimalist</i> could answer, Gamaliel actually named Judas the Galilaean, but the awareness of the more recent and prominent Theudas prompted St. Luke to misquote Gamaliel. Not that exact wording of quotes was not held as a part of historical accuracy, the actual words (as long as the gist was not twisted) were fashioned by the rhetoric art of the historian to the taste or presumed such of his audience. This is why Caesar asks "you too, Brutus?" or "you too, son?" and asks it in Latin or in Greek depending on what historian reports. However, even so, it would on this minimalist view have been a blunder.
<br /><br />
But I am <i>not a minimalist.</i> I consider it quite possible that one devious move against Christianity by the Jews (and completing it in Josephus' time) was historic revisionism to "prove" Christianity historically wrong.
<br /><br />
For instance, St. Paul had spoken of Melchisedec as "a king of gentiles", some text versions may have had (I think this is how I recall it) "a gentile" even.
<br /><br />
Subverted if Melchisedec was Shem, right? But according to the chronology for Genesis 11 that Josephus had learned as a child, close to LXX chronology, he couldn't be.
<br /><br />
However, with the new chronology he learned as an adult, Shem could be that and Jews could claim that Melchisedec was Shem and St. Paul was wrong.
<br /><br />
<blockquote>the father of Abraham, who accordingly was the tenth from Noah, and was born in the two hundred and ninety-second year after the deluge;</blockquote>
<br /><br />
Josephus is giving LXX chronology in the sum. 292 years from Deluge to birth of Abraham. But look at his motivation:
<br /><br />
<blockquote>for Terah begat Abram in his seventieth year. (70)
<br />Nahor begat Haran when he was one hundred and twenty years old; (120)
<br />Nahor was born to Serug in his hundred and thirty-second year; (132)
<br />Ragau had Serug at one hundred and thirty; (130)
<br />at the same age also Phaleg had Ragau; (130)
<br />Heber begat Phaleg in his hundred and thirty-fourth year; (134)
<br />he himself being begotten by Sala when he was a hundred and thirty years old, (130)
<br />whom Arphaxad had for his son at the hundred and thirty-fifth year of his age. (135)
<br />Arphaxad was the son of Shem, and born twelve years after the deluge. (12)</blockquote>
<br /><br />
Now, does this actually add up to 292?
<br /><br />
70 + 120 + 132 + 130 + 130 + 134 + 130 + 135 + 12 = 993
<br /><br />
Now, 993 years is very different from 292 - couldn't Josephus count?
<br /><br />
Probably forgot to check - or deliberately made a gaffe to give a hint about the earlier text tradition.
<br /><br />
His detailed genealogy is given with the ages he recalled from childhood, when he had learned the Scriptures. His sum is the one Jews had agreed on.
<br /><br />
So, it is possible that Josephus was also giving a wrong chronology on this issue, for similar reasons - someone (not necessarily himself, could well be a synagogue he felt he had to obey) wanted to prove St. Luke wrong. But hear me out, it is also possible that ... something else totally than fraud involving Josephus ... exonerates St. Luke from even minor error.
<br /><br />
<blockquote>Internal evidence demonstrates that the author of Acts relied on Josephus’ account in Antiquities of the Jews, but misreported the chronology because of the roundabout prose in Antiquities.</blockquote>
<br /><br />
St. Luke was a Greek and a physician. No one ever dreamed of disputing this claim by pretending his mastery of Greek was faulty. So, was the prose of Antiquities too roundabout even for St. Luke? Perhaps it's rather the modern commenter who bungles Josephus. Some late 20th / early 21st C. opponents of mine bungle my prose.
<br /><br />
<blockquote>Acts can also be checked for accuracy by comparing its account with Paul’s epistles. Bart D. Ehrman writes, in <i>The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings:</i>
<br /><br />
<blockquote>In virtually every instance in which the book of Acts can be compared with Paul's letters in terms of biographical detail, differences emerge.</blockquote></blockquote>
<br /><br />
I am given no concrete instance, but in case others would give you such, I turn with confidence to Testify for sorting that kind of "contradiction claims" out. That team may bungle ecclesiology, bungle some parts of Christian morality (notably the ban on all contraceptive practises), but they (including the youtuber behind Testify) are fairly used to dealing with the type of claim Bart Ehrman makes in better detail than I could.
<br /><br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/@TestifyApologetics">https://www.youtube.com/@TestifyApologetics</a>
<br /><br />
<blockquote>Richard Carrier says, in <i>On the Historicity of Jesus,</i> that the author of Acts
<br /><br />
<blockquote>rewrites Homer several other times.</blockquote></blockquote>
<br /><br />
I am breaking off the quote, because I intend to actually take each item on, to the best of my understanding of what they mean.
<br /><br />
<blockquote>Paul's resurrection of the fallen Eutychus is based on the fallen Elpenor.5</blockquote>
<br /><br />
Since to the best of my memory of Homer, Elpenor was not resurrected, I fail to see the connection.
<br /><br />
A quick look at wiki tells me <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elpenor">Elpenor</a> just fell to his death.
<br /><br />
Tell a mortician <i>all</i> about how every death attestation involving a broken neck after a fall is fake, because it plagiarises Elpenor!
<br /><br />
<blockquote>The visions of Cornelius and Peter are constructed frorn a similar narrative about Agamemnon.6</blockquote>
<br /><br />
A quick look at wiki tells me:
<br /><br />
<blockquote>Agamemnon then received a dream from Zeus telling him to rally his forces and attack the Trojans in book 2.</blockquote>
<br /><br />
Book (or Song) two:
<br /><br />
Stanley Lombardo's preview doesn't involve book II ... Alexander Pope, then. Even the summary at the top of book II, before translated verses, would explain why this didn't come to my mind as a comparison:
<br /><br />
<blockquote>Jupiter, in pursuance of the request of Thetis, sends a deceitful vision to Agamemnon, persuading him to lead the army to battle, in order to make the Greeks sensible of their want of Achilles.</blockquote>
<br /><br />
Neither Peter nor Cornelius was deceived by his vision. But is there a detail that can give some kind of understanding to what Carrier is claiming?
<br /><br />
<blockquote>“Canst thou, with all a monarch’s cares oppress’d,
<br />O Atreus’ son! canst thou indulge thy rest?[78]
<br />Ill fits a chief who mighty nations guides,
<br />Directs in council, and in war presides,
<br />To whom its safety a whole people owes,
<br />To waste long nights in indolent repose.[79]
<br />Monarch, awake! ’tis Jove’s command I bear;
<br />Thou, and thy glory, claim his heavenly care.
<br />In just array draw forth the embattled train,
<br />Lead all thy Grecians to the dusty plain;
<br />E’en now, O king! ’tis given thee to destroy
<br />The lofty towers of wide-extended Troy.
<br />For now no more the gods with fate contend,
<br />At Juno’s suit the heavenly factions end.
<br />Destruction hangs o’er yon devoted wall,
<br />And nodding Ilion waits the impending fall.
<br />Awake, but waking this advice approve,
<br />And trust the vision that descends from Jove.”</blockquote>
<br /><br />
I think even <i>I</i> have had dreams which prompted me to act quickly or to wake up. Is this claim <i>also</i> a plagiarism of the Iliad?
<br /><br />
<blockquote>Paul's farewell at Miletus is constructed from Hector's farewell to Andromache.7</blockquote>
<br /><br />
The farewell at Miletus is in Acts 20:18 - 38.
<br />The farewell of Hector is in Book VI.
<br /><br />
The common theme is, "I will die, take care when I'm gone" so, I suppose no soldier who went to war ever and first took farewell of a loved one or a group of loved friends was ever real, since all of them are plagiarising Homer, according to Carrier.
<br /><br />
Are there commonalities beyond the theme? I couldn't actually look that far, right now. Possible. And if St. Luke actually did make St. Paul's words a bit closer to Hector's than they actually were, see above, about <i>"tu quoque fili?"</i> vs <i>"kai su Broute?"</i> - historiography regarded speeches as a somewhat freely decorable art.
<br /><br />
<blockquote>The lottery of Matthias is constructed from the lottery of Ajax.8</blockquote>
<br /><br />
The lottery of Matthias goes back to the Urim and Thummim that God provided Aaron with, back in the Bronze Age.
<br /><br />
And the lottery of Ajax is also took place (at least according to Homer, but why doubt it?) in the ... tada! ... Bronze Age.
<br /><br />
A story of a lottery being a plagiarism of a story about a lottery when there is a Bronze Age connection to both, that's like a story of a phone call is a plagiarism of a story of a phone call. Carrier carries a certain lack of common sense with panache.
<br /><br />
<blockquote>Peter's escape from prison is constructed from Priam's escape from Achilles. 9 And so on.</blockquote>
<br /><br />
Priam excaped from Achilles by pleading. Peter doesn't.
<br /><br />
<blockquote>Uta Ranke-Heinemann, in <i>Putting Away Childish Things,</i> also finds parallels to Greek mythology:
<br /><br />
<blockquote>In the third of the legendary accounts in Acts, Jesus is supposed to have remarked to Paul as he lay on the ground, “It hurts you to kick against the goad” (25:14).
<br /><br />
This is a quotation from the Bacchae by Euripides (d. 406 BCE). The only peculiar thing is that Jesus should quote a Greek proverb to Paul while speaking Aramaic ("in the Hebrew language").</blockquote></blockquote>
<br /><br />
St. Luke was arguably familiar with Bacchae.
<br /><br />
The Aramaic proverb Our Lord actually used being exchanged (if so) for a Greek proverb is not even a problem for inerrancy, as long as they both mean the same thing. Then, there is a question whether it was really back then a proverb, or if it was back then just a quote.
<br /><br />
However, let's see a bit more of lady Uta's astonishment.
<br /><br />
<blockquote>The really strange thing is that with both Jesus and Euripides we have the same “familiar quotation” and the same situation. In both cases we have a conversation between a persecuted god and his persecutor. In The Bacchae the persecuted god is Dionysus and his persecutor is Pentheus, king of Thebes. Just like Jesus, Dionysus calls his persecutor to account, “You disregard my words of warning . . . and kick against necessity [literally 'against the goads'] a man defying god.” Jesus even uses the same plural form of the noun (kentra) that Euripides needs for the metre of his line.</blockquote>
<br /><br />
The plural form kentra can obviously be put down to St. Luke being familiar with Bacchae.
<br /><br />
But the closer parallel can also have been willed by God, as a further proof, that unlike other deities in Greek tragedies, Dionysus does not represent demonic activity.
<br /><br />
Moses was demonised by Egyptians, they had to cease that and divinised him, then removed the story to another country, where Pentheus replaces Pharao.
<br /><br />
Let's now take farewell (somewhat less drastically than Hector and St. Paul), from Uta.
<br /><br />
<blockquote>Thomas Kazen says, in <i>‘The Christology of Early Christian Practice’,</i> originally published in Journal of Biblical Literature, 2008:
<br /><br />
<blockquote>When dealing with Luke’s descriptions of practice in the early Jesus movement in the first chapters of Acts, we find ourselves both earlier and later in time than with Paul. Earlier, because the narrative concerns the earliest post-Easter followers of Jesus in Jerusalem; later, because the narrative is shaped [written] toward the end of the first century.</blockquote></blockquote>
<br /><br />
St. Luke was obviously able to access narratives from early post-Ascension events from sources that had given him Gospel events.
<br /><br />
<blockquote>While it would be naïve to take Acts as a historical report of early Christ-believers in Jerusalem, it would be equally simplistic to read Luke’s narratives as representing general Christian practice and belief in his own time and environment.</blockquote>
<br /><br />
Yeah, right ... taking a thing at face value is not the default, to be argued against in case one disagrees, but "naïve" - Candace Owens had a remark about people with PhD's "believing their own magic" ...
<br /><br />
<blockquote>Rather, we should regard these descriptions as revealing what some late-first-century Christians, such as the author of Acts, thought about practice and belief in the earliest Jerusalem community of Christ-believers during the thirties.</blockquote>
<br /><br />
Thomas Kazen does not try to argue why St. Luke is supposed to write this "late first century" - except that he thinks his own guess of what went on in the thirties is better than St. Luke's account, which must therefore also be a guess, and obviously, as St. Luke didn't have his degrees, a worse one!
<br /><br />
When I taunt people like Dick Harfield with having "Science" as their religion, I mean, among other things, that as I treat Catholicism and the Bible as a whole, where I can't cherrypick away things I doubt, Dick Harfield (and similar minded men) are treating "Science" - hence they will put Thomas Kazen's pretty obvious guesswork and Richard Carrier's obvious nonsense on par with the Periodic Table of Mendeleyev.
<br /><br />
Hans Georg Lundahl
<br />Paris
<br />Vigil of St. Andrew
<br />29.XI.2022
<br /><br />
<i>Vigilia sancti Andreae Apostoli.</i>Hans Georg Lundahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01055583255516264955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769872213915415947.post-73950846281596848492022-09-24T08:36:00.012-07:002023-02-13T13:37:44.624-08:00"and all Jerusalem with him"<br />
<a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2022/07/nativity-narrative-revisited.html">Nativity Narrative Revisited</a> · <a href="https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2022/09/and-all-jerusalem-with-him.html">"and all Jerusalem with him"</a>
<br /><br />
Matthew 2: [1-3] <b>When Jesus therefore was born in Bethlehem of Juda, in the days of king Herod, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem. Saying, Where is he that is born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east, and are come to adore him. And king Herod hearing this, was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.</b>
<br /><br />
<a href="https://www.amazon.fr/Jesus-Nazareth-Pope-Benedict-XVI/dp/0385346409">In a book* from 2012,</a> a man known then to such Catholics as I would consider "displaced souls" as "Pope Benedict XVI" seems to have hinted against the historicity of Matthew 2:3.
<br /><br />
I say "seems to" - namely if there is nothing upcoming on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jCHEL6CSCc">the video by Bro. Peter Dimond after 11:54</a> and also nothing beyond this paragraph on p. 102 by his book.
<br /><br />
Now, there are three levels of problems which a non-believer could try to find with this verse, and I propose to deal with them to show that they do not invalidate the historicity of the Gospel.
<br /><br />
First, the one hinted at on that paragraph from p. 102, and shown at this time signature of the video**
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfR9yTqZQ6qgqYBr4Fe6y5ifqP6MgktEUVflW-B0jMuwHir884DcZK_6Y2Vz_gUjSpOS5bVYE-Sex96eO8ayZoko1IYf0e9eM7XQYKQoRWq5HYeRXEDx1_z5Q2dQQ-2G9TdbkQoyfv99nkhZilR94TvouobZIXYj2K_0sfJUyY2J-dCt1epGEdAgJqoA/s778/her2.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="560" data-original-width="778" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfR9yTqZQ6qgqYBr4Fe6y5ifqP6MgktEUVflW-B0jMuwHir884DcZK_6Y2Vz_gUjSpOS5bVYE-Sex96eO8ayZoko1IYf0e9eM7XQYKQoRWq5HYeRXEDx1_z5Q2dQQ-2G9TdbkQoyfv99nkhZilR94TvouobZIXYj2K_0sfJUyY2J-dCt1epGEdAgJqoA/s320/her2.jpg"/></a></div>
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The first "difficulty" evoked by Ratzinger was about why the Magi spoke of "king of the Jews" when Jews would have spoken of "king of Israel" - the solution is common with the Titulus on the Cross, the Magi, like Pilate, were Gentiles and they were speaking empirically about the de facto stretch of the realm. Or, they were speaking of "king of Judah" and underlining the Davidic nature of Christ's Kingship, lacking to Herod. Anyway, the phrase "king of the Jews" clearly made sense on both occasions involving a Gentile or more, so poses no problem for historicity of either passage.
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But the idea of a parallel between the passages is pushed to a dangerous point where the mention of "all Jerusalem" being unquiet was given as having no sense if this was real history, so, my first task is to establish it has, from the Bible comment by Haydock and the commenter A.
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<blockquote>Ver. 3. Through fear of losing his kingdom, he being a foreigner, and had obtained the sovereignty by violence. But why was all Jerusalem to be alarmed at the news of a king so long and so ardently expected? 1. Because the people, well acquainted with the cruelty of Herod, feared a more galling slavery. 2. Through apprehension of riots, and of a revolution, which could not be effected without bloodshed, as the Romans had such strong hold. They had also been so worn down with perpetual wars, that the most miserable servitude, with peace, was to the Jews an object rather of envy than deprecation. A.</blockquote>
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The next questions are, what does "all Jerusalem" mean, how did "all Jerusalem" know, and why do the Jews not report this in their histories? Because here, Haydock and commenter A. are silent.
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St. Matthew was a Levite, was therefore educated as a scribe, and to him, if all religious and political notables of Jerusalem were troubled, that could be resumed as "all Jerusalem" being so. It's like speaking of "all New York" if you mean all of the posh areas, and leave out individual exceptions, but also Bronx.
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Anna and Symeon, these Old Testament Saints, were obviously <i>not</i> troubled. But they were not very typical of Jerusalem.
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Luke 2: [25] <b>And behold there was a man in Jerusalem named Simeon, and this man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel; and the Holy Ghost was in him.</b> ... [36-37] <b>And there was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Aser; she was far advanced in years, and had lived with her husband seven years from her virginity. And she was a widow until fourscore and four years; who departed not from the temple, by fastings and prayers serving night and day.</b>
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In other words, for the reasons stated in the Haydock comment to Matthew 2:3, <i>most</i> people were unlike these two, <i>most</i> people were more apprehensive than hopeful about the eventuality of the promised Messiah arriving. And these most people of Jerusalem are what St. Matthew summarily calls "all Jerusalem" - a very often used turn of phrase and so far not yet out of fashion.
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How did "all Jerusalem" know? Given we deal with important people, the obvious answer is networking. It was not immediately when Herod started to worry that all worried with him, but with the delay it took them to hear the news and sympathise with the "legitimate concerns" of their leader. It is very probable that this atmosphere was what made the childkilling in Bethlehem possible.
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Political experts are saying that such and such a religious fanaticism is a legitimate hasard for the peace or wellbeing of the world - well, <i>most</i> people will agree with them, I'd say from my experience as such a "religious fanatic" as they would no doubt stamp me if I were better known and if they realised it is no good to try to change my mind, I'm not planning to bond with father figures offered me, and review positions of mine along with such "wiser men" than myself ...
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This hysteria made the child killing politically, as one would say earlier on "morally" possible. Not that it was a moral, that is a morally good act, but that the act resonated with a hysteric morality that had been shaped by Herod's worries.
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And final question - why do the Jews not speak of this in their stories?
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Well, they have blotted out most of the memory of Our Lord Jesus the Christ from their collective memory, and attached remainders to the memory of another man, Yeshu, disciple of Joshua ben Pekhariah, and this composite memory is of course a blasphemy against Our Lord, but the details concerning only that disciple need not be, if such another man existed. I think he did and that his historically best known identity would be Odin.
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Hans Georg Lundahl
<br />Paris
<br />Our Lady of Mercy
<br />24.IX.2022
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* <a href="https://www.amazon.fr/Jesus-Nazareth-Pope-Benedict-XVI/dp/0385346409">Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives Relié – 21 novembre 2012
<br /><i>Édition en Anglais | de Pope Benedict XVI (Auteur)</i>
<br />https://www.amazon.fr/Jesus-Nazareth-Pope-Benedict-XVI/dp/0385346409</a>
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** <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jCHEL6CSCc">The Secret Intentions of Benedict XVI's new book: "The Infancy Narratives"
<br /><i>5th Dec. 2012 | vaticancatholic.com</i>
<br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jCHEL6CSCc</a>Hans Georg Lundahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01055583255516264955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769872213915415947.post-29275291072161106612022-09-13T13:31:00.004-07:002022-09-13T13:31:30.940-07:00"Pillars of the Earth"<br />
Stef Heerema made a video, shortening a webinar on salt in diverse shapes.
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4flwhCEUag">Destruction of Sodom, Magmatic Origin Salt Giants and the Castile demolishes need for deep time
<br /><i>26th of Aug. 2022 | Stef Heerema</i>
<br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4flwhCEUag</a>
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This picture is from a screenshot at time signature 10:04 of the video, and these salt pillars are actually part of the Netherlands, it's just that they are covered by something else that makes the Netherlands much flatter:
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbB1GZ_ZeZoq5UaMoxgtX8bktrESWaefh9JYjFLIoPbvZ-gZjJgKGAHZlwxI-JSIEEQXPVm0ihxGWgbZQpE246-STKF17jHankFNyQzXQm8lEC4mbUliC20Ih4s2889WsulMn9necNZEDer06qDzogm_CWrh0VbCyotP4FRvEC5j8p0ZRZuG-YPBcI8A/s643/pillars.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="363" data-original-width="643" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbB1GZ_ZeZoq5UaMoxgtX8bktrESWaefh9JYjFLIoPbvZ-gZjJgKGAHZlwxI-JSIEEQXPVm0ihxGWgbZQpE246-STKF17jHankFNyQzXQm8lEC4mbUliC20Ih4s2889WsulMn9necNZEDer06qDzogm_CWrh0VbCyotP4FRvEC5j8p0ZRZuG-YPBcI8A/s320/pillars.jpg"/></a></div>
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The picture is not made up by Stef Heerema or any other Fundamentalist, it is sourced from TNO - Geological Survey of the Netherlands. A standard Scientific source.
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Who was it who said that "pillars of the earth" in the Bible proved a false world view in the hagiographer? Not me, and still less after this one!/HGLHans Georg Lundahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01055583255516264955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769872213915415947.post-81196522787890959502022-09-13T12:46:00.006-07:002022-09-13T12:46:45.364-07:00Did The LORD "originally have a wife called Ashera"?<br />
IV Kings 21:7 <b>He set also an idol of the grove, which he had made, in the temple of the Lord: concerning which the Lord said to David, and to Solomon his son: In this temple, and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put my name for ever.</b>
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So, yes, unlike what some on a livestream were saying to a random objector to Catholicism - there actually was an Asherah idol in the temple.
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But the thing is, the culprit was not Solomon but Manasses.
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Check out verses 1 to 3 in the same chapter:
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<b>Manasses was twelve years old when he began to reign, and he reigned five and fifty years in Jerusalem: the name of his mother was Haphsiba. And he did evil in the sight of the Lord, according to the idols of the nations, which the Lord destroyed from before the face of the children of Israel. And he turned, and built up the high places which Ezechias his father had destroyed: and he set up altars to Baal, and made groves, as Achab the king of Israel had done: and he adored all the host of heaven, and served them.</b>
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Now, I think Ezechias was around the time of Romulus - but King David was in times between the Fall of Troy and the founding of Rome.
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The documents we have in the four books of kings (or two books, one of Samuel, one of Kings, or four books again, two of Samuel, two of Kings) do not say that the Asherah idol originally was part of the temple, but that this came as an intrusion, just as it would be totally erroneous to pretend St. Peter was venerating Pachamama back before Nero had him crucified, just because an intruder was doing so very recently, and arguably fairly close to the dark chapters of the Apocalypse.
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But some people like to cherry pick some line of a document and ignore the rest.
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I told the person he (or she?) was preferring fantasy novels on religious history over the actual documents. But it is true that this particular false goddess actually at one point was idolised in the Temple of the true God.
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Hans Georg Lundahl
<br />Paris
<br />Eve of Holy Cross
<br />13.IX.2022Hans Georg Lundahlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01055583255516264955noreply@blogger.com0