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Hello Bloggers... come in... sit down... make yourself comfortable... Please enjoy your visit to The Chat Room. * Extends right arm and welcomes you through the door * 12:28 PM - Wed 3 Aug 2016Amy-Jill Levine - "From Jewish Sect To Gentile Church"from Amy-Jill Levine "The Misunderstood Jew: The church and the scandal ofthe Jewish Jesus" (HarperCollins:2007). Amy-Jill Levine is a Jewess and E.Rhodes & Leona B Carpenter Professor of New Testament Studies at Vanderbuilt Divinity School, Nasville, Tennessee. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Despite Paul's insistence that Jesus "was buried and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures" (1 Cor. 15:4), no Jewish source, outside those associated with the followers of Jesus, shows any expectation that the messiah would be killed and after three days rise. The closest possible reference is Hosea 6:1-2 ... The reference is not to a single individual; but to the people of Israel. p. 56 Peter, Paul and James ... transformed the Jewish sect onto a gentile phenomenon. p. 62 ... they started a process that would translate the Jewish Jesus into a gentile Savior. p. 66 Most Jews would not have accepted Paul's claims any more than they would have expected a messiah without a messianic age. They already had the belief in the resurrectiopn of the dead, and they believed in a just God who forgave sin. Thuis, this new galilean savior would be for them a redundancy - there was nothing broken or missing in their system that his death and resurrection could fix or fill. .... As Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 1:23. "We proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block [skandalon] to Jews and foolishness [morian, i.e., moronic] to gentiles." ... Thi business about dying to sin and rising to Christ and immersion in water as an initiation rite representing rebirth smacked of something the followers of Isis, Dionysius, or Attis or those folks whom participated in the Eleusian mysteries would do. Off-putting as well was the idea of a human sacrifice who establishes a "new covenant in his blood" (1 Cor. 11:25). p.67 Stynagogue gatherings - "synagogue" is from a Greek term that literally means "gathering together" - were attended not only by Jews but also gentiles. Called "God-fearers," these gentiles admired judaism's ethos and antiquity, its rituals and its ethics, but they did not make full conversion. ... According to Zechariah 8:22-23: "Many peoples and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem, and to entreat the favour of the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts: In those days, ten men from nations of every language shall take hold of a Jew, grasping his garment and saying, 'Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.'" They do say, however, "circumcise us when we get there." They would worship the God of Israel as Gentiles. ... To put this in Christian parlance, one did not have to be Jewish in order to be saved. p.68 ... for Paul, the Gentiles would come into the messianic realm as Gentiles, they did not have to be Jews in order to be in a right relationship with God. The Babylonian Talmud, that compendium of Jewish Law, agrees with him: "Righteous people of all nations have a share in the world to come" (Sanhedrin 105a). p.69 To speak of the "son of God" or "god from god" or "savior" and to mean Jesus rather than Caesar (for those were titles gtiven to the Roman emperor) was to suggest disloyalty to the state. p.70 Circumcision and following the dietary regulations mandated in Torah would mark the church as a Jewish movement; lack of circumcision and the proclamation that all foods are clean distinguish the church from its Jewish origins. p.72 For Peter and James, there was a two-track system. Gentiles and Jews, although marked by separate practices, were both full members of the church. For Paul, there was only one track, and it was his. p.76 James offers his compromise. he "reached the decision that we should not trouble the Gentiles who are turning to God, but we should write to them to abstain only from things polluted by idols [i.e. meat offered in pagan temples], and from fornication [sexual indecency; the Greek term is porneia, whence "pornography"], and from whatever has been strangled, and from blood" (15:19-20). the injunctions show some connection to leviticus 17-18 and the rules for the ger toshav, or "resident alien." They also bear some conformity with the Noachian commandments, seven rules that according to the rabbis were part of the covenant that God established with Noah and, so, requisite for all humanity: injunctions against murder (shefichat damin; literally, "spilling blood"), stealing (or kidnapping; gezel), idolatry (avodah zarah), sexual imorality (giliu arayot), eating the flesh from a live animal (ever min ha-chai), and blasphemy against the God of Israel ("Blessing the name," birhat ha-Shem) and the insitance on homnest courts (dinim). in this configuration, the Gentiles have only seven commandments; the Jews have not just the Ten Commandments, but the 613 given to Moses. Acts brings the number for the Gentiles down to four. pp. 77-78 The common ground the church accepted was the common ground of its gentile members. The gospel it proclaimed was that of Paul, not that of James or Peter. Paul's letters never mention the Jerusalem Council, and no reference is made to Jame's Letter by any other New Testamemnt document. p.78 By the end of the first century and certainly before the New testament canon was fixed, the church had become predominantly gentile. Paul's Law-free gospel triumphed over Matthew's insistance that "not one iota, not one stoke of the letter, will pass from the Law" (5:18). mark's insistence that Jesus "declared all foods clean" (7:19b) triumphed over James's insitence on minimum requirements for Christian Gentiles (Acts 15) .... The very practices that preserved the Jewish identity of Jesus's earliest followers, those practices that Peter and james had cherished, would become eccentricities; eventually they would become heresies. p. 84 Peter and Paul and James ... these three Jews preserved the message of Jesus. Jesus did not engage in a mission to the Gentiles. p.85 7:38 PM - 15/11/2008 - comments {0} - post commentSwap orthodoxy for orthopraxisIt is probably time to substitute right behaviour - orthopraxis - forright doctrine - orthodoxy. The mark of a Christian ought to be not what one believes but how one acts. from Robert W. Funk "Honest To Jesus: Jesus for a New Millennium" (Hodder & Stoughton: 1996) p.312 1:22 PM - 15/11/2008 - comments {0} - post commentJesus himself is not the proper object of faithJesus himself is not the proper object of faith.... Jesus called on his followers to trust the Father, to believe in God's domain or reign. The proper object of faith inspired by Jesus is to trust what Jesus trusted. For that reasonm, I am not primarily interested in affirmations about Jesus but in the truths that inspired and informed Jesus. To call for faith in Jesus is to subsititute the agent for the reality, the proclaimer for the proclaimed. ... Jesus pointed to God's domain, something he did not create, something he did not control. I want to discover what Jesus saw, or heard, or sensed that was so enchanting, so mezmerizing, so challenging that it held Jesus in its spell. And I do not want to bhe misled by what his followers did: instead of looking to see what he saw, his devoted disciples tended to stare at the pointing finger. Jesus himself should notbe, must not be, the object of faith. That would be to repeat the idolatry of the first believers. From Robert W. Funk "Honest To Jesus: Jesus for a New Millenium" (Hodder & Stoughton: 1996) pp. 304-305 1:21 PM - 15/11/2008 - comments {0} - post commentDefinitive Proof Of God's Non-ExistencePROOF OF GOD'S NON-EXISTENCE1. SHORT VERSION ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SARTRE: I tried to show that God would have to be the "in-itself for itself," that is, an infinite in-itself inhabitated by an infinite for-itself, and that this notion of "in-itself for itself" was in itself contradictory and could not constitute a proof of God's existence. DE BEAVOIR: It was, on the contrary, a proof of God's nonexistence. SARTRE: It did provide a proof of God's nonexistence. from Simone de Beauvoir "Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre (Interviews with Jean-Paul Sartre)" (Penguin: 1981) p. 437 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 2. FULL VERSION Jean-Paul Sartre's "Being And Nothingness: A phenomenological essay on ontology" (Pocket Books: 1956). Understanding Sartre's terminolgy is critical. Sartre wrote in French and it is the French meaning that is important. These concepts are sometimes difficult to translate into English. French word in (...) .... ############################################### Sartre's Terminology Being (etre). "Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what is is." Being includes both Being-in-itself and Being-for-itself, but the latter is the nihilation of the former. As contrasted with existence, Being is all-embracing and objective rather than individual and subjective. Being-for-itself (etre-pour-soi). The nihilation of Being-in-itself; consciousness conceived as a lack of Being, a desire for Being, a relation to Being. By bringing Nothingness into the world the For-itself can stand out from Being and judge other beings by knowing what it is not. Each For-itself is the nhilation of a particular being. Being-in-itself (etre-en-soi). Nonconscious Being. It is the Being of the phenomenon and overflows the knowledge which we have of it. It is plenitude, and strictly speaking we can say of it only that it is. Existence. Concrete, individual being here and now. Sartre says tgat for all existentialists existence precedes essence. Existence has for them also always a subjecrtive quaklity when applied to human reality. Human-reality. Sartre's term for the human being or For-itself. Used both generally (like "mankind") and for the individual man. Nihilate (neantir). A word coined by sartre. Consciousness exists as a consciousness by making a nothingness arise between it and the object of which it is consciousness. Thus nihilation is that by which consciousness exists. To nihilate is to encase in a shell of non-being. Nothingness (neant). Nothingness does not itself have Being, yet it is supported by Being. It comes into the world by the For-itself and is the recoil from fullness of self-contained Being which allows consciousness to exist as such. adapted from Jean-Paul Sartre's "Being And Nothingness" (Pocket Books: 1956) pp. 799-807 #################################################### 1:20 PM - 15/11/2008 - comments {0} - post commentC S LEWIS'S "LIAR, LUNATIC, LORD" NONSENSE REFUTED1. CONFUSION OF LORDSThis is built upon confusing the Old Testament "LORD / YAHWEH" with the New Testament "boss / lord" as applied to Jesus. The two are NOT the same. "He was Lord. Every single word that came out of His mouth was truth." The conclusion does not flow from the premise! Premise: He was boss / lord THEREFORE Conclusion:"every single word that came out of His mouth was truth" The premise is incorrect. Lord does not mean God. Lord means master / boss. 1) property owners are called Lord (Matt. 20:8, kurios is "owner" - NIV) 2) heads of households were called Lord (Mk 13:35, owner=kurios). 3) slave owners were called Lord (Matt. 10:24, master=kurios). 4) husbands were called Lord (1 Pet. 3:6, master=kurios). 5) a son called his father Lord (Matt. 21:30, sir=kurios). 6) the Roman Emperor was called Lord (Acts 25:26, His Majesty=kurios). 7) Roman authorities were called Lord (Matt. 27:63, sir=kurios). CAN 1) property owners 2) heads of households 3) slave owners 4) husbands 5) fathers 6) the Roman Emperor 7) Roman authorities EVER BE WRONG????? YES! Jesus was made "boss" " Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that GOD [YAHWEH] has MADE him both Lord (BOSS) and Christ, this JESUS whom you crucified." (Act 2:36) Note that "GOD" is NOT THE SAME as "lord". Matthew 7:21-23 states "Not everyone who says to me, `Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father [YAHWEH NOT YAHWEH'S HUMAN MESSIAH] who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, `Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, `I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'" ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 2. OTHER POSSIBILITIES. C S Lewis gave three alliterations as the ONLY possibilities: - Liar - Lunatic - Lord There are MANY more possibilities including (but not limited to) .... - Midrashic (A Jesus built upon a midrashic retelling of the Old Testament) - Mythic (A Jesus built upon other myths such as Zeus) - Much over-exalted ( A Jesus rewritten to ensure that he was greater than all the prophets and Caesar) - Moronic mistaken (A Jesus built upon the "Confusion of Lords" - moronically mistaking the "boss / lord" of the New Testament for "Yahweh / LORD / GOD" of the Old Testament) - Mangled by Fundamentalists (A Jesus as rewritten by Fundamentalists following a literal understanding of the bible) - Man (Jesus as a FINITE HUMAN JEW from Nazareth.) - Messiah ( A Jesus as the HUMAN anointed BY God for God's purpose.) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ from http://debunkingcrap.blogspot.com/2008/01/cs-lewis-was-idiot_03.html C.S. Lewis has had an enormous impact on the evangelical mind. His books still top the charts in bookstores. But what about the substance of his arguments? Once critically examined, it becomes apparent that this great apologist extraordinaire wasn't as smart as everyone thought. .... Lewis' Liar, Lunatic, Lord Dilemma/Trilemma is one of the most widely used arguments among popular apologists, in variations, where since Jesus claimed he was God, the only other options are that he was either a liar or a lunatic, or both, which Lewis argues isn't reasonable. Therefore Jesus is God, who he claimed he was. Even William Lane Craig (whom I studied under!) defends it in his book Reasonable Faith. But it is widely heralded as Lewis' weakest argument as he defended it, and fundamentally flawed. Beversluis subjects Lewis' defense of it and his defenders to a barrage of rigorous intellectual attacks. There is the problem of knowing what Jesus claimed, which by itself "is sufficient to rebut the Trilemma." (p. 115). What Lewis' stupid ass didn't realize was that the Biblical claims of Jesus are ambigious (Jesus is never reported having said "I am the revealed Son of God, the Messiah, God incarnate" for example). Even if Jesus claimed he was God he could simply be mistaken, not a lunatic, for lunatics can be very reasonable in everyday life and still have delusions of grandeur. And it's quite possible for someone to be a good moral teacher and yet be wrong about whether he was God. It's not radical to suggest that Christianity flourished from false beliefs despite the fact that Jesus most likely never returned from the dead. Furthermore, the New Testament itself indicates many people around him including his own family thought he was crazy. Clearly C.S. Lewis did not understand the implications of his own argument and was just Biblically illiterate. Then again it is something you would expect from a moronic atheist-converted Christian. That imbecile. ... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 1:19 PM - 15/11/2008 - comments {0} - post commentBernard Boas "It's Time To Rewrite the Bible"from Bernard Boas "It's Time To Rewrite the Bible" (Hudson:1994) I find much of value in the moral and ethical principles which the 1:18 PM - 15/11/2008 - comments {0} - post commentEAT YOUR TITHEDeuteronomy - Chapter 1422 'Every year, you must take a tithe of what your fields produce from what you have sown 23 and, in the presence of Yahweh your God, in the place where he chooses to give his name a home, you must EAT THE TITHE of your wheat, of your new wine and of your oil, and the first-born of your herd and flock; and by so doing, you will learn always to fear the Lord Your God always. 24 'If the road is too long for you, if you cannot bring your tithe because the place in which Yahweh chooses to make a home for his name is too far away, when Yahweh your God has blessed you, 25 you must convert it into money and, with the money clasped in your hand, you must go to the place chosen by Yahweh your God; 26 there you may spend the money on whatever you like, oxen, sheep, wine, fermented liquor, anything you please. There YOU MUST EAT in the presence of Yahweh your God and REJOICE, you and your household. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is NOT like: - a thimble of grape juice and a dry cracker / stale crumb of bread (Communion / Eucharist / Lord's Supper / The Lord's Table) - a cup of coffee / tea and a biscuit / cookie ("fellowship") This is a PARTY! 1:16 PM - 15/11/2008 - comments {0} - post commentBook & text OR person and life?Christ does not read the Bible, the New Testament, or the Gospel. He is thenorm of the Bible, the criterion of the New Testament, the incarnation of the Gospel. ... The person, not the book, and the life, not the text, are decisive and constitutive for us. John Dominic Crossan "God & Emprire: Jesus against Rome, then and now," (HarperOne:2007) p. 95 1:16 PM - 15/11/2008 - comments {0} - post commentJohn Dominic Crossan "God & Emprire: Jesus against Rome, then and now"from John Dominic Crossan's "God & Emprire: Jesus against Rome, then andnow," (HarperOne:2007) Julius Caesar, who was, after all, a divi filius, or "son of god" by birth ... Octavian was Princeps, first among equals with all the equals dead, and soon he would be the "One-To-Be-Worshiped" (Sebastos in Greek), or the Divine One (Augustus in Latin). p. 10 Horace ... in his Epistles: ... Upon you [Augustus], however, while still among us, we already bestow homnors, set up altars to swear by in your name, and confess that nothing like you will arise after you or has arisen before you. (2.1) ... Caesar Augustus was unique in having achieved divine status while still alive. p. 19 Ovid ... explains the meaning of the title "Augustus" in the Fasti ... [Augustus's] name is shared by Jupiter the Supreme. The Fathers call holy things "august", they call temples "august", duly ordained by priestly hands. "Augry," too derives from the word's root, and all that Jupiter "augments" with his power. (1.608-612). ... in a later chapter ... Holy Father of the fatherland ... You have long been Father of the World. Jupiter's name in high heaven is your name on earth: You the father of men, he of the gods ... [Caesar August's] leadership has Romanized the sun ....All beneath high Jupiter is Caesar's. (2.127-38) p.20 ... a living human person being at the same time a living divine being. Their logic was flawlessly simple. Gods run the world. Caesar runs the world. Therefore, Caesar is a god. p. 20 IMPERATOR CAESAR, SON OF GOD ... a succint summary of Roman imperial theology. It indicates the practice of religion, worshiping the appropriate gods, to secure a blessing for a war that resulted in victory and secured peace on land and sea. ... Rome's imperial theology: religion, war, victory, peace - or more briefly, peace through victory. p.23 Res Gestae Divi Augustus (The Acts Of The Divine Augustus) "by which he brought the whole earth under the empire [imperium] of the Roman people." p. 24 The emperor's divinity was the incarnate heart of Roman imperial theology and stayed as such long after Augustus was dead. p.25 There was a human being in the first century who was called "Divine," "Son of God," "God," and "God from God," whose titles were "Lord," "Redeemer," "Liberator," and "Savior of the World." ... before Jesus ever existed, all those terms belonged to Caesar Augustus. To proclaim them of Jesus the Christ was thereby to deny them of Caesar Augustus. .... They were taking the identity of the Roman emperor and giving it to a Jewish peasant. Either that was a peculiar joke and a very low lampoon, or it was what the Romans called majestas and we call high treason. p.28 Dio Cassius, repeated the story in his Roman History ... in adopting Octavian, Julius Caesar "was influenced by Attia's emphatic declaration that the youth had been engendered by Apollo" (45.1). Only Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2 work within that same tradition of a divinely conceived and prophetically predestined child in creating an overture of Jesus's public life. ... To say ... that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the city of King David, is to proclaim him as the awaited Davidic Messiah - just as a politician born in a log cabin could mean a new Lincoln for modern Americans. From that basis, therefore, the twin stories in Matthew 1-2 and luke 1-2 not only exult Jesus within his own Jewish tradition but place his birth and destiny in deliberate contradiction to Roman imperial theology's story of Augustus's birth and destiny. ... A new and therefore replacement King of the Jews has been appointed by God and not by Rome. Moreover, and new and therefore replacement star has appeared in the sky ... Matthew's first century counter-story is high treason. pp. 106-107 "Savior" and "Lord" were titles of Caesar because he had brought "peace" to this earth. pp.108-109 The logic of Jesus's Kingdom program is a mutuality of healing (the basic spiritual power) and eating (the basic physical power) shared freely and openly. The program built a share-community from the bottom up as a positive alternative to Antipas's Roman greed-community established from the top down. p. 118 1:13 PM - 15/11/2008 - comments {0} - post comment
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