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Title: Rebuilding a Conservative Movement I
Source:
Sultan Knish blog
URL Source: http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/201 ... s+The+Stories+Behind+the+News%
Published: Sep 25, 2015
Author: Daniel Greenfield
Post Date: 2015-09-27 19:03:36 by Rufus T Firefly
Keywords: None
Views: 41256
Comments: 199
The trouble with the donor class, by and large, is that it is resistant to change because it doesn't want to change. The Democratic and Republican donor classes donate for their business interests, but the Democratic donor class has a radical edge. Groups like the Democracy Alliance want a fundamental transformation of the country. And they understand how they can make money off that. There are too many Republican single issue donors who are fairly liberal on everything outside that issue. And there are too many big business interests and financial folks who live in major cities and only differ from liberals in their economic policy. The trouble with fiscally conservative and socially liberal is that the left is not a buffet. You don't get to pick a combo identity. Fiscally liberal follows socially liberal as day follows night. All those single people, their babies need assorted government benefits. No amount of lectures on "liberty" will change that. Austrian economics is never going to displace food stamps for the socially insecure. A lot of the Republican donor class would like to have its cake and eat it too. It wants the fun of a liberal society without having to pay the bill. It wants cheap Third World labor without wanting to cover their health care, the school taxes and all the other social welfare goodies. But it doesn't work that way. There's no free ride. Yes, they can move to a township where the property taxes are killer, and dump their pool guy and tree trimmer and maid in some city to live in housing projects at the expense of that city's shrinking middle class and working class. And it can work for a while, until all those cheap laborers get community organized and the organizers take over the city. And then the state. And then there are housing projects in the township, everyone is plugged into the same statewide school tax scheme and the left runs everything and taxes everything. The wealthier members of the donor class can outrun this process longer. Or just live with it while funding groups that promote "Liberty", the way the Koch Brothers do, but the bill always comes due. You can't outrun the political implications of poverty in a democracy. And you can't stop those political trends without addressing the social failures that cause them. A socially liberal society will become politically and economically liberal. Importing Third World labor also imports Third World politics, which veer between Marxism and Fascism all the way to the Islamic Jihad. Everything is connected. You can't choose one without the other. We're not going to have some libertarian utopia in which everyone gets high and lives in communes, but doesn't bother with regulations and taxes. The closest thing you can find to that is Africa. Nor are we going to be able to import tens of millions of people from countries where working class politics is Marxist without mainstreaming Marxism as a political solution in major cities across America. People are not divisible that way. Human society is not a machine you can break down. The left has fundamentally changed America. Much of the donor class hesitates to recognize this or prefers to believe that it can isolate the bad changes from the good changes. It doesn't work that way. Getting the kind of fiscal conservatism that a lot of the donor class wants requires making fundamental changes to the country. You can't just tinker with economic regulations in a country where schoolchildren are taught to demand taxes on plastic bags to save the planet or where a sizable portion of the population is dependent on the government. Those tactics can rack up ALEC victories while losing the war. Fiscal conservatism requires a self-reliant population that believes in the value of honesty and hard work. Those are not compatible with social liberalism or casual Marxism. Individually, yes. It's possible to make money while being a leftist. But spread across a large population with different classes and races, those individual quirks will not be replicated. And you can't create that population with slogans. You have to be able to shape national values, not just economic policy. That's the hard truth. There are no single issue solutions. At best there are single issue stopgaps. But the left is not a single issue organization. It has narrowed down most of its disagreements and combined its deck of agendas. Its coalition supports a large range of programs from across the deck. It's still possible to be a pro-abortion Republican, but the political representation of pro-life Democrats is disappearing. You can be a Republican who supports the Muslim Brotherhood, but a Democrat who says anything too critical about Islam has a limited future in his party at any national level. The same is true across the spectrum. Kim Davis is a Democrat. How much of a future do Democrats opposed to gay marriage have? Meanwhile it's possible to be a pro-gay marriage Republican. The Republican "big tent" is more a symptom of ideological disarray, as we've seen in this primary season, by a party that doesn't really know what it believes, than of tolerance. But the left has taken over the Democratic Party and made its agendas into the only acceptable ones. There are still some national Democrats hedging weakly on gun control and environmentalism, but they're going to be purged. Their party will abandon them and Republicans will squeeze them out. A lot of the donor class is really seeking an accommodation with the left. The election was warped when the Koch brothers decided to find common ground with the ACLU on freeing drug dealers. They dragged some good candidates in with them and down with them destroying their credibility on key issues. You can't have an accommodation with the left. The left isn't seeking a compromise. It wants it all. The left has to be fought all the way or surrendered to all the way. There's no middle ground here regardless of what philosophical objections are introduced, because that is what the left is doing. It's easily observable just in Obama's two terms. The left has defined the terms of battle. And its terms are total control over everything. You can't be pro-life and pro-Obama. You can't be pro-business and pro-Obama. You can't be pro-Israel and pro-Obama. You can't be fiscally conservative and pro-Obama. You can't be socially conservative and pro-Obama. You can't be anything less than full leftist and pro-Obama. The left has to be fought totally or not at all. Single issues can be important and it's good for people to pick one or two things to focus on, but that has to come with the understanding that there can be no accommodation with it in any other area. An organization fighting gun control is doing important work, but its backers should never fall under the illusion that the 2nd amendment can be maintained if the left wins on all the other fronts. As Benjamin Franklin said, "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately". The quote is true today in all its implications as it was then. We must have a conservative movement that is united in a common front or we will be dragged down one by one. There will be no conservative issue islands left to stand on if the red tide comes in. The final point is that it is not enough to resist. That's just delaying the inevitable. Even the strongest resistance can be worn away with time. If the left can't win directly, it focuses on the next generation. If cultural barriers are in the way, it goes for population resettlement, as it's doing in parts of this country and Europe. There is no such thing as an impregnable issue island. Winning means pushing forward. Winning means advocating for change, not just fighting to keep what we have. Winning means thinking about the sort of free society that we want. Winning means having a vision to build, not just resist. Winning means advancing forward. To do that, we have to accept that fundamental change is necessary. Right now we're fighting a losing battle. We're trying to keep the tide out, when we must become the tide. Poster Comment: Money quote: You can't be pro-life and pro-Obama. You can't be pro-business and pro-Obama. You can't be pro-Israel and pro-Obama. You can't be fiscally conservative and pro-Obama. You can't be socially conservative and pro-Obama. You can't be anything less than full leftist and pro-Obama. The left has to be fought totally or not at all.
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#93. To: A Pole (#90)
If the Greek word means "babies come out" then sure. If the Greek word means the same thing as English "miscarriage" means today, then no, it is not.
You've sunk your teeth into this one. LOL
I actually agree with A Pole insofar as the designation as "canon" is a vague sort of line. I agree with him that the writings of the early saints, such as the Didache, or Clement's letters are every bit as authoritative as the writings of Paul or Jude. And happily, the Ethiopian Orthodox agree, for those documents are also part of the Tewahedo canon.
Filioque is right or wrong, depending on what you understand by saying it. Spirit is breath. Holy Spirit is the breath of God, the animating power of life and creation. Both the Holy Spirit and the Son ultimately originate, at their first beginnings, in the Father. If we look at the Son as an aspect of God that was WITHIN the Father until begotten and placed outside of the Father in a second person then he was indeed with the Father always, and certainly was beside the Father before the beginning of time. And yet the Father is the Father, and superior to the Son, not in divinity, but in primacy. God's divine breath creates. The First Breath, the Holy Breath, the Holy Spirit, began with the Father. And yet the Son also breathes, and the Son is divine, and the breath that proceeds out of the Son is divine - of one divine essence with the Father. Jesus breathed the spirit into the Apostles, remember. So the question of the procession of the Holy Spirit reposes on the question of WHEN. If speaking of the very beginning of beforetime, there was the Father, and the Father begat the Son and breathed out the Spirit. So at the first, before all time, The Holy Spirit AND the Son both originally proceeded out of the Father, certainly. But NOW, with Jesus enthroned at the right hand of the Father awaiting enthronement on the Earth, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the divine, and Father and Son are both divine, and both breath out the Spirit. Jesus breathed it into the Apostles and the Church. Nicaea and Toledo are both right. And the Catholics and Eastern Orthodox are both right also, just in different contexts. Or, and the miaphytism of the Oriental Orthodox - that's just exactly the right way to look at it too.
Uh-oh. You're treading on the thin ice of "eternally begotten Son". : )
We might make this claim. But when the canon was established, those books were rejected as they did not provide a reliable testimony or teach vital doctrine or they contained passages that contradicted other fundamental texts. Frankly, I've never understood exactly how Jude passed muster in those deliberations. We also have to recognize that for most of the books of the canon, they confirmed those that were widely in circulation. A few others, like Clement's epistles, were in circulation and were considered of great interest to readers but that they did not contain direct testimony or vital doctrine from the time of Jesus and the earliest churches. There was a certain minimalism used to screen unsuitable or dubious books out of the canon.
He kinda wanted to remove the ones that he thought ruined his systematic theology so he did disparage them. But he only moved them to the back of bible, much as the Apocrypha got moved to the back of many bibles. Demoting a book from its place in the ancient canon is not the same as removing it completely. Wiki: Luther's canon
A bit more from the Wiki on the Antilegomena. Among the disputed writings, which are nevertheless recognized by many, are extant the so-called epistle of James and that of Jude, also the second epistle of Peter, and those that are called the second and third of John, whether they belong to the evangelist or to another person of the same name. Among the rejected writings must be reckoned also the Acts of Paul, and the so-called Shepherd, and the Apocalypse of Peter, and in addition to these the extant epistle of Barnabas, and the so-called Teachings of the Apostles; and besides, as I said, the Apocalypse of John, if it seem proper, which some, as I said, reject, but which others class with the accepted books. And among these some have placed also the Gospel according to the Hebrews, with which those of the Hebrews that have accepted Christ are especially delighted. And all these may be reckoned among the disputed books. The Epistle to the Hebrews is also listed earlier: It is not indeed right to overlook the fact that some have rejected the Epistle to the Hebrews, saying that it is disputed by the church of Rome, on the ground that it was not written by Paul. Codex Sinaiticus, a 4th-century text and possibly one of the Fifty Bibles of Constantine, includes the Shepherd of Hermas and the Epistle of Barnabas. The original Peshitta (NT portion is c. 5th century) excluded 2 and 3 John, 2 Peter, Jude, and Revelation. Some modern editions, such as the Lee Peshitta of 1823, include them. Given that Eusebius was a near-contemporary of those who canonized the NT and had access to a many materials we lack, we can't simply dismiss him entirely on this matter. I'm not saying he was right (because I don't know) but his education, his scholarship, his source materials, his connections in the early churches can't simply be ignored.
Not a bit. "Eternal" refers to TIME. Endless time. Time begins with creation. And the Father and the Son and Holy Spirit have been there from the beginning of time, and for all time. But BEFORE time, before anything that we would call existence, BEFORE the beginning, there was the Father, El, and El begat YHSWH and breathed out the Holy Wind. And THEN the beginning began. All of this is actually WITHIN the first word of Genesis, B'reshiyt, which we translate as "In the beginning", but the translation is shaky because it's really "in head" And the pictographic sentence WITHIN that word, WITHIN the beginning of "the beginning" are Within Head El division-into-two arm pointing to the Cross. That is what the pictographs of B'reshiyt SAY, when read as a sentence themselves. Then next comes "bara" BRA - a repetition within head God - then the word Elohiym, which is the PLURAL of El - the first PLURAL use of El, the name of the Father, since the beginning - now that El has divided into two pointing to the Cross and in the head of God - Elohiym. And Elohiym is God - Sheperd staff (the Lord is my shepherd) breath/spirit arm upon the chaos/waters, followed by the unstranlsated word AT - which is Alpha-Omega in Greek - from El to the Cross. The transition from El to Elohiym before the beginning of the world but IN the beginning of the beginning - literally WITHIN it - is actually toid out loud, in a series of sentences. We read the Hebrew words these letters form, and that's fine. But if we read the hieroglyphic sentences that form these words, we see the begetting of the son, the fore indication of the Cross from the beginning, and the breathing out out of the Spirit - and then the hand upon the chaotic waters...which the surface words will go on to tell in the first two verses. Genesis is a fractal, and it's all right there...in the Hebrew pictographs, which is why the LXX is wonderful for being able to match NT Greek words to OT Greek words, so that meaning is conveyed across the language change, but why preserving the Hebrew of the Torah is so vital: the pictographs themselves are full of fractal meaning that can be read as sentences. Were I to be free one day of the obligation to work. I would write out the Bible pictographic sentences in English, at least for the first chapters of Genesis. After that, when it comes to the story of Abraham and onward, the surface words convey the story. But in the very dense creation story, where God had to dictate everything, and where the meanings of words themselves have not yet been defined, the fractal density is...well...it's supernatural. And when you see it, you realize that you are peering into the mind of God.
I was a little tongue-in-cheek. The "eternally begotten" phrase seems to beg the question instead of answering it.
No, those books were NOT rejected. They were always accepted by the Orthodox Church. In Ethiopia. I see no reason to privilege the Greeks or Aramaens, or the Latins, over the ancient Ethiopians. For one thing, the Easterners lost their faith, en masse with the arrival of Islam. Part of the West was overrun by Islam also, and only slowly driven back, but the West and the East fought Christianity hard for centuries, and the Catholic West was still very barbaric well into the Middle Ages. By contrast, Ethiopia went over eagerly to Christ very early, without all of the trauma and drama. And the Ethiopian faith was like the rock of Gibraltar when Islam descended on all sides - by sea, down the coast, and down the river. It is difficult to evaluate the Ark of the Covenant at Elephantine claim, as nobody is allowed to see it anymore, but it is plausible that it IS the Ark. And the Ethiopians had the full canon from the beginning, and didn't accept the niggling and haggling of the Roman imperials. The Ethiopian faith was, and is, strong, and was free of all of the polluting and corrupting influence of imperial politics. My bet is that the Ethiopian canon is the best and most complete. So, the fact that squabbling imperials who were not behaving in a very Christian manner to one another rejected books of the proper canon doesn't mean that those books were rejected, it means that Rome and Constantinople were simply committing one more of the numerous errors that ultimately laid them low. After all, the East could not stand against Islam. And the West...well, they were selling indulgences until Martin Luther, and then burning people (on both sides). The Roman versions of Christianity, East and West, are quite tainted by imperial politics and violence. Ethiopia stood up to the Muslims and turned them aside. God preserved them. Seems to me that they got it right, as far as including all of the inspired Scriptures go, and the Catholics and Eastern Orthodox produced abridged versions which, while holy, are not complete. Luther continued that paring down business in the West. Given Ethiopia's success against Islam and barbarism and Rome's and Constantinople's failures and weaknesses, I'd say that God has indicated which of the Churches of that era best preserved his full message unadulterated by petty imperial politics.
We have the Amharic, preserved by the Ethiopian Christians. And that's all we have. Let's explore this a bit. Maybe on another thread. In Enoch I do see language showing their is direct conversation with God and Enoch. So it does meet at least on first examination to meet the "thus saith the Lord" criteria. Genuine authorship should be addressed as well. We would probably need something after or during Noah's timeframe to indicate preservation of the text. If so, then the question is when YHWH gives the Torah historical books to Moses why not the details of Enoch? One could chalk that up to Moses getting what YHWH deemed most important to communicate to the Hebrew people. So we would have to chalk up Enoch to historical oral tradition. If not who is the Holy Spirit inspired scribe writing it down later. We don't know. So this criteria, authorship is what probably put the early Christian fathers in some doubt. The other criteria would be did the Second Temple scribes attribute the book as part of the TaNaKh. Apparently they did not as St Jerome did much research on that. The criteria the Ethiopians most likely grasped on to was apostolic authority. Jude mentions specifically text from Enoch so that satisfies the apostolic authority of those commissioned directly by Christ. One might argue the apostle was clearly inspired (Jude) but that does not make all of Enoch considered inspired. I know sounds odd and why early theologians perhaps grappled with Enoch. I think the last criteria to be examined is the manuscript evidence. Why I asked about any Hebrew fragments of manuscripts are known. Or what opinions of Enoch came out of the post Babylon exile. What's interesting also is the various prophecies in Enoch do not contradict any of the end times prophecies in the TaNaKh. So I don't see contradictory issues. So yes this is interesting to investigate. Especially when the data in Enoch takes us to super antiquity yet we do not see written copies until the post Second Temple era. My best estimation is that is the most prevalent factor in why the Second Temple scribes did not have it added to TaNaKh. "For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly."---Romans 5:6
Nobody was present at creation, and yet we have Genesis. Divine inspiration provides the chain of custody.
Always thought Clement was a the third bishop of Rome and considered post apostolic. So given the apostolic criteria I can see why his works were not included in the NT canon. Only exceptions would be Mark and Luke. Mark writing Peter's gospel account and Luke the close companion and fellow traveler with Paul.
"For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly."---Romans 5:6
Yes, no human was present. Not until created of course:) But we know YHWH gave Torah to Moses and those accounts were recorded. Why I mentioned it was probably important to the second temple era and beyond on "who" provided the Divine custody of Enoch. There was a huge flood and a whole lot of human history between the events of Enoch and when we first see it in writing. Jude thought it important enough to quote a bit from Enoch. A mystery we may never uncover. "For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly."---Romans 5:6
Which quotes of Christ? I'm curious if such cannot be found also in TaNakh. "For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly."---Romans 5:6
I am a classicist. The aristocracy gave power to the Athenian citizenship not so much because they feared a revolution (and they did) but because the old way of fighting wars, where the aristocrats did the fighting in the form of duels while the peasants fought around them willy nilly had ended and the age of armed formations of disciplined soldiers took over. The aristocrats realized an army of peasants heavily armed would not fight for free or take orders from aristocrats if they did not want to. We kind of saw that after WW2. The Americans passed the GI Bill - which was purely a wealth transfer from the rich to the poor (on a basis of merit) because they did not want an angry population of millions of combat hardened veterans returning to the slums of American cities (where most of the Irish, Italians and non WASP whites lived) and to poverty. And it worked. This wealth transfer benefited the republic immensely. All those non WASP whites who benefited from the GI Bill would before the war never have even finished high school in many cases pre WW2 and were now being payed to go to trade schools or higher education. These days, our leaders don't really need the rest of the population? As automation and outsourcing take over and fewer Americans serve there will be a feeling that they can use a private army to keep the discontent bottled in a nation with a 2nd amend?
Which are arbitrary and not accepted by the entire Church. There is no reason to privilege that Latin Church's decision, or the Greek Church's decision, over the Ethiopian Church's. The Ethiopian Church is older than the Latin Church, and as old as the Greek Church. They always used the holiest apostolic writings, and some of the writings of the Church fathers. Who gave the Greeks or the Italians the power to decide that ONLY THESE BOOKS are inspired by God? Nobody did. And given that the Ethiopian Church's actual BEHAVIOR was exemplary, when compared to the Latins and the Greeks, and also given the fact that God stripped the Greeks and the Latins of many faithful, but Ethiopia stood as a rock in a flood of Islam all around, the fact of victory demonstrates a divine favor that has an authority that exceeds that of Churches that were defeated by hostile religions and lost 90% of their adherents, forever. Should, therefore, the Latin Church or Greek or Russian Church of today "change their canon"? Why bother. The Ethiopians preserved certain parts of Scripture, and we can get it from them, and if the Greeks and Latins and Russians don't want to admit that those writings were inspired by God, and therefore have authority, well, they're no different from the Baptists then, are they? One reads more of God's inspiration in a Catholic Bible than a Protestant, because there are more inspired books in it, and more still in a Greek Orthodox Bible than a Catholic one. There's an additional book in the Russian Bible that the Greeks don't have. And finally the Ethiopians, who have the Old Testament books that are referred to in the Old Testament, but that the other Christians don't have (the Book of Jubilees, the Book of Jasher), and of course Enoch, the Didache, the Letters of Clement, etc. There is a reason to privilege the Ethiopian canon: it's the most complete. And there is a reason to dismiss the superiority of wisdom in the choices made by the Greek Orthodox and the Latin Catholics - the Greeks lost to Islam; the Russians lost to the Mongols. And the Latins? Well, look at how corrupt and barbaric they became. The Ethiopians had the favor of God: they did not succumb to Islam. They didn't have to have a Reformation. And they were founded IN ISRAEL by an Apostle speaking to a high official - meaning that whereas Greek and Roman officials rejected Christianity and tormented it, but the Ethiopians understood all the way to the top, from the start. And they preserved everything to now. Which means that the moral claim to superior wisdom clearly rests with Ethiopia, and their choice of the fullest canon is the most logically sustainable. If one wants to stick to the Catholic argument: "Only apostolic writing in the Scripture", that is fine as a limiter, unless one also adds to that an arbitrary "Only Scripture" tradition on top of that which treats something like the Didache as less authoritative than, say, a letter of Paul. There is no basis other than stubborn traditional prejudice for that. Enoch is Scripture. The Didache is Scripture. Clementine Letters are Scripture. So are Jubilees and Jasher. Why would they not be? Why are the opinions of corrupt, fighting, ultimately weakened and failed Greeks or ultimately violent and barbaric Latins better witnesses than a church older than either that neither fell nor failed nor went barbaric? Cultural prejudice? An error, then. It's Scripture.
YHWH gave the Law to Moses. The Torah we have includes the Law, and a bunch of other historical and wisdom writing added on for context. It's all called "Torah", but God didn't write all of that on two stone tablets.
You're wrong and dopey to the nth degree. A "parasite" is an un-invited thief of another's life; A pre-born child is not only invited, it is created and nourished in love and develops its own working system at the cellular level. And YES, pre-born babies DO indeed breathe while in the womb, Sherlock. That while oxygen circulates throughout its body -- including its brain. This IS a living, breathing human being. IDIOT.
HorseHillary. The economy was booming due to all of Europe's manufacturing being bombed to dust,and a booming American economy needed new skilled blue collar as well as white collar workers. Who better to subsidize for this new work force than the veterans who had proven they had ambition enough to stick with it and succeed? Plus it allowed the politicians to score major political points. Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)
You're wrong and dopey to the nth degree. If that is true and the fetus can live without the mother,you should have no objection to abortion at any stage. After all,the fetus doesn't need the mother to live,right? And YES, pre-born babies DO indeed breathe while in the womb, Sherlock. That while oxygen circulates throughout its body -- including its brain. This IS a living, breathing human being. IDIOT. You don't know the definition of a parasite,you believe in magic,miracles,and Holy Spooks,and you call ME a idiot? Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)
Human language has limits. "Breath" is a word like "Father" or like "Son". Father stands for the Source and Essence/Godhead, Son is Creator, Ruler of all, Savior and Judge, True God from True God. Holy Spirit is God Himself too. True God from True God as well, eternally (before all ages/eons/worlds/time etc ...) proceeding/outpouring from The Father - consubstantial and inseparable hypostasis/subsistence, Heavenly King, Comforter, Spirit of Truth, everywhere-present and filling all things, Treasury of Goods, Giver and Sustainer of Life, the Purifier of souls and bodies.
Newborn babies also need mother to live. Are they parasites? To eat they suck mother breasts like mosquitoes suck your blood. You can remove 6 months old fetus, put in the incubator and he will live. You can do it even earlier, but with difficulties.
You mean that they had luck and stamina to survive? Not all of them were volunteers, they were drafted. BTW, Big part of them was sent to Europe AFTER the main fighting ended, to crowd out Soviets. BTW, without GI Bill, would America be better off?
No,they don't. There are plenty of babies who lived to become adults whose mothers died giving birth,or shortly after birth. That doesn't mean it isn't easier or better for the infant if the mother is around to nurse and care for the baby,but the baby really becomes a separate human being at birth. Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)
You mean that they had luck and stamina to survive? Wahhhhh! Wahhhhhh! No,I meant the dead ones. After all,who has more stamina and luck than the dead ones? (sarcasm) Not all of them were volunteers, they were drafted. Yes,but not as many as were drafted in your beloved workers paradise,comrade. Not that you would really notice because you were all serfs of your Soviet masters to start with. BTW, Big part of them was sent to Europe AFTER the main fighting ended, to crowd out Soviets. BTW,you are full of Obomber. The majority of the ones that defeated the Nazi's and stopped the Red Army at Berlin were still in Germany and Europe for months after the war ended,and many were still there a year or more later while the military was being downsized,with those who had been at war the longest being the first to be allowed to go home and get discharged. Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)
At Berlin?!
Enoch is Scripture. The Didache is Scripture. Clementine Letters are Scripture. So are Jubilees and Jasher. You are on quite a roll with this. : ) It isn't a bad argument to make. Why, indeed, Jude and not the Didache? Or Enoch? One good answer for the inclusion of so many Pauline epistles is that the ancient churches faced the challenge of the Marcionites, who had introduced their own canon composed of the Gospels and the epistles of Paul. To them, Paul was the primary apostle of Jesus. So when the ancient fathers of the church recognized that they had better establish a canon themselves before the energetic Marcion did it for them and they found themselves presented with a fait accompli, they included the Pauline epistles rather prominently in the canon which undercut some of the appeal of Marcionism. Given how annoying you find Paul's and Augustine's more modern followers, I can only imagine how angry you are with Marcion's gang who are probably responsible for the prominence of so many Pauline epistles in the canon. It does open up an examination of the canon, how we got the canon we have, the standards used to establish the canon, the books which circulated widely in ancient times but did not make the canonical list. And it is a reminder that the canon we have also represents certain political compromises (the Revelation and Hebrews) as well as the need to exclude heresy like semi-gnostic Marcionites. We have inherited the canon but we should recognize its internal biases and the larger theological dimensions - and conflicts - among the doctrinal leaders of the far-flung churches of the early centuries.
References to Enoch are found in various books. No direct quotes outside of Jude. There are other portions of the New Testament that many argue are largely derived from the book of Enoch. The book of Enoch was widely read among Jews from the 3rd century BCE and was known and preserved by the Essenes in the Dead Sea Scrolls. In the same way that we can observe that Jesus and the disciples knew and used Greek and Aramaic and Hebrew and Roman terms and had familiarity with common texts, at least some of the group of Jesus and his disciples were quite familiar with the book of Enoch. After all, Jude didn't toss off that quick quote of Enoch just hoping that his reader(s) might recognize it. Given the rarity and expense and effort of sending epistles in ancient times, Jude knew his reader would recognize the thrust of his brief Enoch quote in verses 14-15. 15 To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him. 38 Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.
I understand your approach on this and have to say you are consistent. However, I do not dismiss the scholarship of the time in which the canon was debated. I read a lot of Enoch last night. I came back with the same impression of it as I did when looking at texts such as the Qur'an and BOM. Most portions are choppy, thoughts not completed (maybe due to missing parts?), some even incoherent. When compared to what we do have in the OT and NT canon there is clarity, fullness, coherence, uniformity, well ordered. Much of which is absent or lacking in Enoch, and quite a few other religious texts of antiquity. However, I believe the largest factor the church fathers considered was authorship. No one knows if Enoch actually wrote Enoch and no one knows the original scribe. "For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly."---Romans 5:6
Who was the author of the Didache? Was the author of the Didache directly commissioned by Jesus Christ? I think both answers are 'we don't know' or 'no.' Paul was an apostle of Jesus Christ. He received a direct commission from Him and direct revelation. "For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly."---Romans 5:6
I always recall that Enoch appeared around the same time (~300BCE) as the Septuagint. This was an age of a great expansion of Jewish literature, not so dissimilar to the explosion of Christian literature in various centuries down to modern times. We can't precisely quantify the extent of the influence of various earlier texts like Septuagint and Enoch I on the religious language and discussion by Jesus and His disciples but we can have little doubt that they knew these writings and considered them to have a place in religious debate and theology, at least as familiar Jewish touchstones for other doctrinal matters that the early church encountered.
Yes,at Berlin. Patton had to have his fuel cut off to keep him from taking Berlin before your commie heroes could get there,and even after we handed it to them on a platter it took them a while to take it,and our troops in place outside of Berlin is all that stopped them from going further. What we SHOULD have done was taken out the Red Army and Stalin while we had the men and equipment in place to do it,but the communist sympathizers in the Dim Party kept that from happening. Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)
I noticed there is a rumored Aramaic Enoch scroll from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Unpublished, privately owned. At least one manuscript expert says he was shown a complete copy of Enoch in Aramaic on microfilm. He was never able to muster a group of buyers to purchase it. The Parables is a part of the Ethiopian translation of the Book of Enoch. It is disputed how old it is and if it was originally a part of Enoch (although today most scholars believe it to be pre-Christian[5]). If it was proven to have been a part of the original Aramaic book, it would mean that all of its prophecies concerning the coming Son of Man, which some argue refers to Jesus, would have been written before Jesus was born.
You're wrong and dopey to the nth degree. If that is true and the fetus can live without the mother,you should have no objection to abortion at any stage. After all,the fetus doesn't need the mother to live,right? I don't know what tangent you've now taken to worm your way out of this box of rocks, but it ain't working. You asserted that a baby in the womb is a parasite; I've explained why you're monumentally wrong by definition, by science, and in human terms. ou don't know the definition of a parasite,you believe in magic,miracles,and Holy Spooks,and you call ME a idiot? No, not just an "idiot"; a MONUMENTAL idiot. You haven't the foggiest as to was a "parasite" is. By *your* definition it's anyone who can't feed, clothe, or shelter itself independently. Care to tell the REST of us how many tens or even hundreds of millions that might be, Colonel Klink?
What you read, of course, was an English translation of a Geez/Amharic text. There are not many bilingual scholars of these things. When I read Proverbs, I do not find it to be choppy, but I do find many of the attitudes in several of the parables to be inconsistent with the messages of God that preceded it and of Jesus that came afterwards. Some of it sounds like God, and a lot of it sounds like men writing their own practical, but somewhat ungodly, traditions in there. With several parts of Scripture, I come to places where what is being said doesn't feel like God at all. It feels like men asserting what they think. I find, throughout the corpus of Scripture, that it is very inconsistent point to point, with lots of conflict in it. This is why I narrow my view to the parts that say "God said..." or "Jesus said..." It is not that I reject everything else. Rather, it's a winnowing process that uses the simply logic of the Scripture itself. I think the reason for all of the anxiety about the canon of Scripture comes from the logic of Sola Scriptura, which, of course, I do not accept as a valid way to look at God. But I do accept that it is a good way to impose discipline on theological discussions.
IMO, an astute assessment. From referencing Gill's collection, he indicates in many places Jesus used parables familiar to the masses and the various 'factions' of Pharisees,Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots etc. This was not a homogeneous timeframe for Judaism. So Jesus taking the context of different, of the time, traditions to preach His Truth would not be surprising. It is the way we all communicate today as well. "For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly."---Romans 5:6
They had a point system back then and the ones with enough points went home and others stayed until they had enough to rotate back home and some got shipped to the Pacific... Interesting. Having a complete text in the Aramaic would be quite a splash. If dated before Christ then those portions of Enoch then fill the Messianic prophecies criteria. "For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly."---Romans 5:6
Could be for many, long after the first three to four centuries. Can't believe I am making a case for Latins and Greeks in this discussion:) Funnier things have happened here on LF in the past:) However, I don't get that 'choppy' feel when reading the TaNaKh and NT. I do with Enoch and as you explained it could be translation related. Proverbs? Good advice in there. It is not a doctrinal text. Nor is Ecclesiastes. As a matter of fact when I first read Ecclesiates I mentioned to a Bible study lead that Solomon was probably in his backsliding years when composing them. It is a very glum and depressing book. "For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly."---Romans 5:6
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Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/LatestBefore you leave, admit that LXX passage is correct one.
#94. To: Vicomte13 (#85)
In any case, Jesus quotes Enoch extensively, so it should be in the canon.
#95. To: TooConservative (#94)
#96. To: TooConservative (#92)
#97. To: Vicomte13 (#96)
If speaking of the very beginning of beforetime, there was the Father, and the Father begat the Son and breathed out the Spirit.
#98. To: Vicomte13 (#95)
I actually agree with A Pole insofar as the designation as "canon" is a vague sort of line. I agree with him that the writings of the early saints, such as the Didache, or Clement's letters are every bit as authoritative as the writings of Paul or Jude.
#99. To: A Pole (#86)
It is sufficient in traditional form (before Luther removed some books)
#100. To: A Pole, Vicomte13, redleghunter, GarySpFc (#86)
Let's not pretend that Luther is the only one with alternate views of the canon. Others are those like Eusebius and Jerome and many others. If you're going to throw rocks at Luther, save some stones for Eusebius. The first major church historian, Eusebius, who wrote his Church History c. AD 325, applied the Greek term "antilegomena" to the disputed writings of the Early Church:
#101. To: TooConservative (#97)
#102. To: Vicomte13 (#101)
#103. To: TooConservative (#98)
#104. To: Vicomte13 (#84)
None of which I am aware.
#105. To: redleghunter (#104)
#106. To: TooConservative, Vicomte13 (#98)
#107. To: Vicomte13 (#105)
Nobody was present at creation, and yet we have Genesis. Divine inspiration provides the chain of custody.
#108. To: Vicomte13 (#85)
In any case, Jesus quotes Enoch extensively, so it should be in the canon.
#109. To: A Pole, Rufus T Firefly, Willie Green, Vicomte13, TooConservative, sneakypete, tpaine (#5)
t boils down to the share in economic pie, the rich over the centuries wanted others to do work for them for free. Then oops, democracy and socialism came. Horrible! Now the question is how to disempower unwashed masses, to terrorize them with police state or to brainwash them into zombie state? Probably you need both.
#110. To: redleghunter (#106)
So given the apostolic criteria
#111. To: redleghunter (#107)
But we know YHWH gave Torah to Moses and those accounts were recorded.
#112. To: sneakypete (#51)
Life begins when a child takes it's first breath. Prior to that it is a parasite and only a potential life.
#113. To: Pericles (#109)
We kind of saw that after WW2. The Americans passed the GI Bill - which was purely a wealth transfer from the rich to the poor (on a basis of merit) because they did not want an angry population of millions of combat hardened veterans returning to the slums of American cities (where most of the Irish, Italians and non WASP whites lived) and to poverty.
#114. To: Liberator (#112)
(Edited)
Life begins when a child takes it's first breath. Prior to that it is a parasite and only a potential life.
#115. To: Vicomte13 (#96)
Spirit is breath. Holy Spirit is the breath of God, the animating power of life and creation.
#116. To: sneakypete (#114)
(Edited)
If that is true and the fetus can live without the mother,you should have no objection to abortion at any stage. After all,the fetus doesn't need the mother to live,right?
#117. To: sneakypete (#113)
Who better to subsidize for this new work force than the veterans who had proven they had ambition enough to stick with it and succeed?
#118. To: A Pole (#116)
Newborn babies also need mother to live.
#119. To: A Pole (#117)
Who better to subsidize for this new work force than the veterans who had proven they had ambition enough to stick with it and succeed?
#120. To: sneakypete (#119)
The majority of the ones that defeated the Nazi's and stopped the Red Army at Berlin were still in Germany and Europe for months after the war ended
#121. To: Vicomte13, redleghunter, GarySpFc (#110)
If one wants to stick to the Catholic argument: "Only apostolic writing in the Scripture", that is fine as a limiter, unless one also adds to that an arbitrary "Only Scripture" tradition on top of that which treats something like the Didache as less authoritative than, say, a letter of Paul. There is no basis other than stubborn traditional prejudice for that.
Why would they not be? Why are the opinions of corrupt, fighting, ultimately weakened and failed Greeks or ultimately violent and barbaric Latins better witnesses than a church older than either that neither fell nor failed nor went barbaric? Cultural prejudice? An error, then.
This is certainly a topic you warm up to. I don't favor expanding the canon but I think it is worthwhile to know the history of the canon(s) and the churches who use(d) them. And it opens up the idea of knowing ancient books outside the Latin canon. The Didache is a good example of a book you must know something about if you expect to understand anything about the earliest churches, especially in the first century. You really should know something about the ancient churches and their location and prominence and influence, the formulation of the canon and the books in wide circulation prior to the official canon, the ancient heresies like the Marcionites (and other gnostics) and the Arians, the major ancient church fathers like Tertullian and Athanasius, the ancient historians like Eusebius and translators like Jerome. None of them was perfectly neutral in their approach to religion.
#122. To: redleghunter, Vicomte13 (#108)
(Edited)
Jude 14 And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints,
Luke 3 37 Which was the son of Mathusala, which was the son of Enoch, which was the son of Jared, which was the son of Maleleel, which was the son of Cainan,
Hebrews 11 5 By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God.
#123. To: Vicomte13, TooConservative, GarySpFc (#110)
Who gave the Greeks or the Italians the power to decide that ONLY THESE BOOKS are inspired by God? Nobody did.
#124. To: Vicomte13 (#110)
If one wants to stick to the Catholic argument: "Only apostolic writing in the Scripture", that is fine as a limiter, unless one also adds to that an arbitrary "Only Scripture" tradition on top of that which treats something like the Didache as less authoritative than, say, a letter of Paul. There is no basis other than stubborn traditional prejudice for that.
#125. To: redleghunter (#123)
However, I believe the largest factor the church fathers considered was authorship. No one knows if Enoch actually wrote Enoch and no one knows the original scribe.
#126. To: A Pole (#120)
Not all of them were volunteers, they were drafted. BTW, Big part of them was sent to Europe AFTER the main fighting ended, to crowd out Soviets.
#127. To: redleghunter, Vicomte13 (#123)
No one knows if Enoch actually wrote Enoch and no one knows the original scribe.
Such a manuscript could appear in our own lifetimes. You never know when it might be released or sold to a museum or to scholars.
The importance of a complete Aramaic manuscript of the Book of Enoch could be immense. Michael Wise, a DSS scholar, writes: "No trace of the Parables of Enoch has been discovered at Qumran, and it is widely considered today to be a composition of the later first century C.E. If a pre-Christian copy of the Parables were ever discovered, it would create a sensation"[4]
#128. To: sneakypete (#114)
(Edited)
Life begins when a child takes it's first breath. Prior to that it is a parasite and only a potential life.
#129. To: redleghunter (#123)
I read a lot of Enoch last night. I came back with the same impression of it as I did when looking at texts such as the Qur'an and BOM. Most portions are choppy, thoughts not completed (maybe due to missing parts?), some even incoherent. When compared to what we do have in the OT and NT canon there is clarity, fullness, coherence, uniformity, well ordered. Much of which is absent or lacking in Enoch, and quite a few other religious texts of antiquity.
#130. To: TooConservative (#122)
References to Enoch are found in various books. No direct quotes outside of Jude. There are other portions of the New Testament that many argue are largely derived from the book of Enoch. The book of Enoch was widely read among Jews from the 3rd century BCE and was known and preserved by the Essenes in the Dead Sea Scrolls. In the same way that we can observe that Jesus and the disciples knew and used Greek and Aramaic and Hebrew and Roman terms and had familiarity with common texts, at least some of the group of Jesus and his disciples were quite familiar with the book of Enoch. After all, Jude didn't toss off that quick quote of Enoch just hoping that his reader(s) might recognize it. Given the rarity and expense and effort of sending epistles in ancient times, Jude knew his reader would recognize the thrust of his brief Enoch quote in verses 14-15.
#131. To: sneakypete (#119)
The majority of the ones that defeated the Nazi's and stopped the Red Army at Berlin were still in Germany and Europe for months after the war ended,and many were still there a year or more later while the military was being downsized,with those who had been at war the longest being the first to be allowed to go home and get discharged.
#132. To: TooConservative, Vicomte13 (#127)
Such a manuscript could appear in our own lifetimes. You never know when it might be released or sold to a museum or to scholars.
#133. To: Vicomte13, TooConservative (#129)
I think the reason for all of the anxiety about the canon of Scripture comes from the logic of Sola Scriptura,
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