Title: College QB arrested, suspended after claiming ‘cocaine’ on his car was bird poop. It was bird poop. Source:
Saturday Down South URL Source:https://www.saturdaydownsouth.com/s ... on-car-was-actually-bird-poop/ Published:Aug 3, 2019 Author:SDS Staff Post Date:2019-08-11 09:33:59 by Deckard Keywords:None Views:27524 Comments:348
Georgia Southern QB Shai Werts has been suspended following an arrest earlier in the week.
Werts was arrested following a traffic stop on Wednesday night in Saluda, South Carolina. According to reports, Werts was originally pulled over for speeding. When the officer attempted to pull him over, however, he kept going and reportedly called 911 to explain that he wasn’t pulling over in a dark area. After reaching town, Werts then pulled over and was arrested for speeding.
The QB was then asked about the white powder on the hood of his car, and he claimed it was bird poop that he tried to clean off at the car wash. The officer tested the powder, and it tested positive for cocaine with two different kits and in two different places on the hood of the car.
“Everything about him and inside his vehicle made him appear as a clean person but the hood of his car was out of place,” the police report states.
Werts denied any knowledge of the origin of the cocaine. The officer wrote that the powder appeared to have been “thrown on the vehicle and had been attempted to be washed off by the windshield wipers, and wiper fluid as there was white powder substance around the areas of the wiper fluid dispensary.”
In addition to speeding, he was charged with a misdemeanor possession of cocaine.
This is all really bad news because Georgia Southern plays LSU Week 1.
Al Eargle, the Deputy Solicitor for the 11th Judicial Circuit which includes Saluda County, told Werts’ attorney, Townes Jones IV, that these kinds of charges would not be pressed on “his watch,” Jones said.
South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) tests were conducted on the substance samples collected from the hood of Werts’ 2016 Dodge Charger, but the results confirmed that no controlled substance was present in the samples.
“I have not seen (the SLED results) yet,” Eargle said on a phone call Thursday night. “But I was informed that the test did come back and that there was no controlled substance found.”
This produces a translation that is hard to read, but you make no apologies for it. The world is full of easy to read translations. What THIS translation does is allow you to instantly see the parallels - every time that word is used. And that shuts down a great deal of translation-based theology (of the kind that I abhor).
I think I prefer a non-literal translation.
Keep in mind some of the awkward phrasing in certain verses in the NT, very much a reflection of the daily vernacular of the time. For example, scan the KJV versions which offer words in italics to indicate which words were interpolated by the KJV translators so the verses are more comprehensible to the modern reader. The KJV guys gave as direct a translation as possible but they included bridging phrases so it would make sense (and good English prose). Try reading those KJV verses without words in italics and see how it sounds to your ear. Does it make the meaning clearer? No. Does it memorize more easily? Nope.
Anyway, the literal word-for-word translation is an old idea and it's almost never the best choice of a translation. And even with advancements in AI and machine translation, it probably never will be.
I don't expect perfect consistency. But it GREATLY troubles those for whom the Bible must be a perfect idol, lest they lose their faith.
Vic, are you saying that the Bible is not consistent, and that this inconsistency amounts to error that would destroy our faith? And that 2000 years of scholarly research would be undone...by discoveries you've made in your own translation work? That's what it seems like your are saying.
But it's not mechanically translated, and that's the KEY to exegesis, from my perspective.
Finally, I'd have the Torah read hieroglyphically.
A bit difficult unless you program your lexicon to pick meanings to words in phrases as the actual authors intended to use them. That’s a huge principle of exegesis.
I’ve seen folks over at CF go on and on changing meanings to words in the NT to fit their pet theologies. The Universalists employ the root word fallacy to get around eternal in Matthew 25. The SDA use the root word fallacy to dismiss we have immortal souls.
I’ve seen Orthodox tell me sin is just “missing the mark.” That may be the case in the original form, but not how the Apostles define it. John tells us sin is transgression against the Law.
I wish you well in your pursuit but don’t know how you would handle how the authors handled the text.
I’ve seen folks over at CF go on and on changing meanings to words in the NT to fit their pet theologies. The Universalists employ the root word fallacy to get around eternal in Matthew 25. The SDA use the root word fallacy to dismiss we have immortal souls.
Ever see the hyper-Calvinists explain how "world does not mean world" in John 3:16? There's some real textual acrobatics.
Ever see the hyper-Calvinists explain how "world does not mean world" in John 3:16? There's some real textual acrobatics.
Universalists use the other extreme in that verse.
Why knowing that Jesus was speaking to a Pharisee and not us in general. World would mean all across the earth and just not Israel. So once again Jesus was controversial showing Nicodemus the Scriptures the Jews ignored. Redeeming the Gentiles was always part of the plan.
Redeeming the Gentiles was always part of the plan.
Despite the quote of Jesus in Matthew 15:24, clearly stating that "But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
Those "lost sheep" became, after His death and resurrection, the leaders and missionaries of the first Christian churches.
A nice example for Vic to mull over, given his great preference for the words of Jesus.
Dang, you're up late. I hope you have a good excuse. I sure don't.
I think it's bedtime. Well, maybe I'll indulge and eat a small late-night snack. Like some Kaleslaw salad from Wallyworld. Kale, red cabbage, broccoli, raddichio, carrots, sprinkled with some dried fruit raisins (cranberries, cherries, white raisins also from Wallyworld). And sweet tart dressing, Kraft Catalina. Easy to chew and swallow, a nice combination of flavors. And it's a cheap salad to eat at that. I even caught myself one night taking a bowl of it to bed with me which I never do.
Well, you shouldn't eat so late at night but it is a light snack and not too fattening.
At least I finally found a kale salad that I enjoy.
Okay, I had the kaleslaw salad and it was delish. I really enjoy the flavor combo. I'm going to resist raiding my stash of black grapes and hit the sack for a few hours.
Vic, are you saying that the Bible is not consistent, and that this inconsistency amounts to error that would destroy our faith? And that 2000 years of scholarly research would be undone...by discoveries you've made in your own translation work? That's what it seems like your are saying.
No, I'm not saying that at all.
I am saying that there are inconsistencies in the Bible, and gave the obvious example of the time that Jesus was in the tomb.
I've also said that these inconsistencies don't matter, because the Bible is a traditional collection of scrolls assembled by men, and anything men write - whether inspired by God or not - is going to have little errors in it, little inconsistencies, such as the "three days and three nights" business - but that this only matters if one has made an idol out of the Bible and expects to find in a human work the perfection of God.
I suppose I am saying that one SHOULD NOT make the perfection of the Bible an article of faith, because then one has to start doing a fan dance over the inconsistencies that are there, when no such dance is needed.
The inconsistency should NOT destroy faith, unless the faith has been placed on the wrong thing. God and his Son are the right things on which to place one's faith. The perfection of a human work is not.
2000 years of scholarship is all over the map as to results, precisely BECAUSE the text is inconsistent, and therefore pulls scholars in different directions. I note that the Church has been pulled apart into many different factions on account of that very thing. And I note that Jesus called for unity without domination. So I note that if we were to be consistent with what Jesus expressed, we would NOT divide the Church over these very different interpretations. We would be truthful, say we really don't know, shrug our shoulders and hang together anyway.
But we certainly don't do that.
And I am saying that the Church is fading everywhere because we don't.
I have not said at any point "Because of my scholarship the Church is completely wrong." What I have observed is a fact: the Church IS dying out, and I have diagnosed WHY: Christians treat each other like ship and talk to each other in the most condescending, angry and sneering tones. And they have KILLED each other, historically, over petty differences of opinion and rage and power. And the overhang of THAT is what has killed the Church, not me.
I am calling for reform, for all of the Churches - including mine - the biggest one - to look back and focus, for a change, on what JESUS said, and DO THAT, that if he jettisoned the extra baggage and focused on him we would be less contradictory, less hypocritical, and could start to right the ship and pump out the water.
But I see no desire to do that. At all. So I don't see the church recovering. I see a whole fleet of Churches furiously remaining on their present courses, into the rocks, into the shoals, and foundering. I think that's too bad, because it isn't necessary. But if people will not reform, it's inevitable.
Nobody knows what the authors "intended". That is the great big hole into which the translator pours his own theology.
Yes, John said that sin is transgression against the Law. And for Jews, that was true. Not for Gentiles. Gentiles were never given the Law and did not have it. They had a few laws of God given before The Law - the laws about murder and food given to Noah and his children after the Flood (and the laws given to Noah about food are contradicted by the Laws given at Sinai to the Hebrews).
So, to be clear, a Gentile from the Flood until today NEVER transgressed the law of God by eating pork, but a Jew in Israel after Sinai did. And although Jesus "Made all foods clean", he also said "Not a letter nor the stroke of a letter shall pass from The Law until the end of the world."
So, then, did Jesus making all foods clean mean that JEWS could eat pork? (And did Jesus actually make all foods clean at all, or was that an improper edit inserted by Mark, HIS understanding of it?) Was pork EVER unclean for Gentiles? Did it BECOME unclean once Gentiles became Christians?
I have already answered the question: NO, because God's law gave the animals, including pigs, to men to eat after the Flood, and what he did at Sinai to the Hebrews is on its very face a Law JUST for Hebrews, that can't be changed to ADD Gentiles to it.
So, when John says that sin is a translation against The Law (which the Torah, of Sinai), what he is saying is not true and never was, for you or for me. It was true for Jews, vis a vis Israel, and that mattered when the Temple was still up. But God ended the Temple, and with it, any promised effect of The Law which cannot be kept.
There is a law of JESUS, but that is not what John means by "The Law".
In short, John was wrong. At best, John is confused, and heavily caught up in hisJudaism, like Paul was - what John (and Paul) wrote with reference to Judaism has no applicability to Gentile Christians. No, when we break the Saturday Sabbath, and when we eat pork, and when we do not tithe, we do not sin. We're not Hebrews, and The Law never has applied to us.
Ies, Jesus said that, but the very first mass conversion recorded in Jesus' ministry was the mass conversion of the town of Jacob's Well, at the behest of the Samaritan woman who told her town all about Jesus.
Jesus was sent to bring the Jews, his kin, and the people entrusted with Torah, God's special boy, the New Covenant first, and he did. And the early leaders of the new Church were Jews. But the bulk of the Jews preferred their old wine from the old bottle and would not drink the new.
Luke tells us that Caesar Augustus called for a census of the whole kosmos - the whole world.
So, then, did the census takers go to India and China? Did they go to Ultima Thule? Did they go to Sarmatia? No. They went to the Roman world - the Roman kosmos.
"World" does not mean planet earth. There is no word for planet earth in ancient Hebrew. The word THERE is simply "Land". And the word used in Greek, kosmos, does not mean planet earth either. Planet earth is not a concept in the Bible.
I suppose I am saying that one SHOULD NOT make the perfection of the Bible an article of faith, because then one has to start doing a fan dance over the inconsistencies that are there, when no such dance is needed.
We have the doctrine of inerrancy of Scripture for good reason. This doctrine had been hammered out and tested by great men, and by the Bible's worst enemies.
We say the Bible is inerrant in the 'original autographs' (which God destroyed for good reason!)
We claim inerrancy because it is consistent with our God, Who is inerrant, and, we believe He would NOT give us His Word, yet containing errors, to confuse us and make us doubt that very Word.
We believe that the same God, Who spoke innerantly through the the original writers, has also superintended through Godly men a document that is reliable and trustworthy for us today.
This doctrine is one of the most important! People who are lost and confused and despairing of life just do not have the ability to analyize ancient expressions in a foreign language, just to see if they can find some hope to carry on.
So when a Christian tells you that it is their tradition to believe the Bible is without error, it's because they just don't have time to sit and debate every shade of meaning with you. Push them enough and they'll fight you!
And, no, the Church isn't dying, even though it may look like it! The Church cannot die! We have Christ as our Head and Christ in our heart! We are the reason, the only reason, that the world staggers on.
Vic, why don't you set aside your arguments and join with us. Are you any better than the most imperfect of Christians?
it's because they just don't have time to sit and debate every shade of meaning with you. Push them enough and they'll fight you!
And, no, the Church isn't dying, even though it may look like it! The Church cannot die!
Vic, why don't you set aside your arguments and join with us. Are you any better than the most imperfect of Christians?
Join you? I didn't know that I was apart from you. We don't believe the same things on various points, but we think that Jesus was the Son of God, and that what he said to do, we ought to do.
Vic, why don't you set aside your arguments and join with us.
Seriously, what does "join with us" MEAN, concretely?
I think that Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God, so when he said that if I kill people, lie, commit sexual immorality, peddle drugs, am a "dog", reject belief in God or worship idols, I am committing crimes against God that, if not forgiven by God, will land me in the Lake of Fire for the second death after the resurrection.
So therefore I listen to Jesus and avoid those things, to the extent I can, and seek atonement and forgiveness where I cross the line.
That's what is required of people who want to live with God after death.
I don't see that any MORE is required than that. Certainly none of THOSE things can be ignored.
That, to me, is the foundation of Christianity. That's what I believe, and that is what I do. Am I not, then already with you, and you with me? Or do you require MORE than that.
Jesus was sent to bring the Jews, his kin, and the people entrusted with Torah, God's special boy, the New Covenant first, and he did. And the early leaders of the new Church were Jews. But the bulk of the Jews preferred their old wine from the old bottle and would not drink the new.
But Jesus did succeed. Just not in the exact way that was expected even by his own disciples.
But Jesus did succeed. Just not in the exact way that was expected even by his own disciples.
Of course he did. But the new wine burst the old bottle.
That's a key point. Christianity is NOT universalized Judaism. Christians are NOT under the Jewish law. Nor were they RELEASED from the Jewish Law (unless they were Jews). Never under it in the first place, they are not BROUGHT under it when they become Christians. Each covenant stands separate and complete, and deals with different people, and offers different rewards.
The Sinai Covenant was, forever till the end of time, between YHWH and a single tribe, the Hebrews assembled at Sinai, and their heirs, living in Israel (not everywhere in the world). The only individual promise is of a farm in a secure Israel. There is nothing in the Sinai Covenant about life after death, Paradise, eternal life. Obeying the Jewish Law never obtained that as a reward.
The New Convenant, with Jesus, is forever till the end of time. It is a promise between God and INDIVIDUAL people only, no tribe, no collectivity, that their INDIVIDUAL spirits/souls will go on after death, and be rewarded, if they remain clear of certain sins in life, or are forgiven them, and if they otherwise comport themselves in a certain way. It applies anywhere on earth.
It's not an EXTENSION of Sinai, which was not about life after death, eternal life, final judgment or individuals.
It's new wine in a new bottle. Try to put it in the old bottle, and you burst the Old Covenant. You can't put the Sinai Covenant into the Last Supper either - they're different contracts with different objectives.
This is why "Judaizing" is such a pointless thing. Sabbath keeping, not eating shrimp - it completely misses the point! But I don't really care if other people stubbornly miss the point. Just means more oysters for me.
This is why "Judaizing" is such a pointless thing. Sabbath keeping, not eating shrimp - it completely misses the point! But I don't really care if other people stubbornly miss the point. Just means more oysters for me.
Well, I think we should not allow others to go unchallenged when they try to incorporate Old Testament teachings into Christian doctrine. This is very common among Prots and evangelical types and they should be called out on it.
BTW, if there is no afterlife in OT Judaism, where is Elijah? And there are a half-dozen other Jewish figures who ascended to heaven too. And why did Jesus tell the parable of Lazarus And The Rich Man which suggests that Lazarus ended up in heaven with Abraham? It certainly sounds like there is some notion of an afterlife in Judaism whether you find it plainly stated or not. But then, the concept of the Trinity is not clearly and directly expressed in the NT text either.
Modern Jews do generally deny hell and they mostly deny heaven. But the narratives of the Bible tell us directly that there were different ideas about this and ancient Judaism was rife with all sorts of fantastic claims.
My question was WHY you think that. I can’t read your mind, so I have no idea. But it isn’t really important, why you think that, so I’ll just drop the line of questioning and steady on.
Elijah did not die in the text. He was taken away bodily in a chariot of fire. Similarly, Enoch was “translated”. There is no indication that either died at all. There is no Old Testament reference to life after death or judgment until Hellenic times. It was then, heavily influenced by the Greeks, that the Jews began to intuit life after death and judgment, and God began to give them revelation in that regards. 1 Maccabees contains a clear reference to offerings and prayers for the dead in consideration of the resurrection. So, by that time, inchoate notions of life after death and judgment began to enter into Jewish theology, but unstructured, and without direct revelation as to the mechanism. The Sadduccees rejected these ideas as Greek imports and fables. The Pharisees believed them. It wasn’t until the Revelation to John that God fully revealed the apparatus and the structure of it all. Jesus revealed that it was, and the ways to please God to have a good outcome, but only in Revelation did Jesus really spell it out.
There is no Old Testament reference to life after death or judgment
Daniel 12 King James Version (KJV) 12 And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.
2 And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
3 And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.
4 But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.
Despite the quote of Jesus in Matthew 15:24, clearly stating that "But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
Those "lost sheep" became, after His death and resurrection, the leaders and missionaries of the first Christian churches.
A nice example for Vic to mull over, given his great preference for the words of Jesus.
The famous Good Shepherd discourse, Jesus indicates He has other sheep that will be brought into the fold:
John 10: NASB
11“I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. 12“He who is a hired hand, and not a shepherd, who is not the owner of the sheep, sees the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. 13“He flees because he is a hired hand and is not concerned about the sheep.
14“I am the good shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me, 15even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep.
16“I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd. 17“For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it again. 18“No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father.”
Nobody knows what the authors "intended". That is the great big hole into which the translator pours his own theology.
For words and phrases you can when you have thousands of manuscripts of the NT. Not to mention manuscripts of other texts of the era.
Part of your software for the mechanical translation will have to include this scholarship over almost 2000 years. If not we will be reading into the text 21st century thoughts.
I have to ask. If you have a mechanical Bible translation program created which Lexicons, multilingual, and interlinear will you use? Or is it your intent to provide your own translation from the original manuscripts. If the latter, I’d recommend looking at the detailed works of Robert Young, compiler of Young's Analytical Concordance to the Bible and Concise Critical Comments on the New Testament.
Yes, John said that sin is transgression against the Law. And for Jews, that was true. Not for Gentiles. Gentiles were never given the Law and did not have it. They had a few laws of God given before The Law - the laws about murder and food given to Noah and his children after the Flood (and the laws given to Noah about food are contradicted by the Laws given at Sinai to the Hebrews).
I don’t think John was considering Mosaic ordnances but the moral law of the Decalogue which was in effect written on the hearts of mankind before Sinai.
We know at least murder, adultery, idolatry, bearing false witness and probably theft were all punishable prior to Sinai. Not to mention John in his gospel and epistles spends some ink on the laws Christ commanded. .
Luke tells us that Caesar Augustus called for a census of the whole kosmos - the whole world.
So, then, did the census takers go to India and China? Did they go to Ultima Thule? Did they go to Sarmatia? No. They went to the Roman world - the Roman kosmos.
"World" does not mean planet earth. There is no word for planet earth in ancient Hebrew. The word THERE is simply "Land". And the word used in Greek, kosmos, does not mean planet earth either. Planet earth is not a concept in the Bible.
I agree. It means in the context of John 3 all peoples. Because in John 10 Jesus speaking to Jews said He had other sheep that needed to be brought into the fold.
BTW, if there is no afterlife in OT Judaism, where is Elijah? And there are a half-dozen other Jewish figures who ascended to heaven too. And why did Jesus tell the parable of Lazarus And The Rich Man which suggests that Lazarus ended up in heaven with Abraham? It certainly sounds like there is some notion of an afterlife in Judaism whether you find it plainly stated or not. But then, the concept of the Trinity is not clearly and directly expressed in the NT text either.
Plenty of breadcrumbs in the OT. Several of Job’s dissertations mention the afterlife and resurrection.
Explicit. We see in Daniel chapter 12.
Not to mention the author of Hebrews in chapter 11 sure did make the point the OT saints were looking for a better city and held out Hope for Messiah.
Yes, from the Babylonian Aramaic and Greek period.
Not from the Torah, the Law.
The Jews place Daniel among the Writings, not the Prophets, precisely because of its late provenance.
Life after death and resurrection are not part of the Law. The ideas came into the religion after contact with foreigners who already had an inkling about it,
You have little faith. That is your problem. Little tiny bits of faith. You are wise in your own mind. You think God is to weak to give his word to his people. That he is to weak to preserve it. That he lied when he said it would spread through the whole world.
#329. To: redleghunter, Vicomte13, watchman (#326)
Plenty of breadcrumbs in the OT. Several of Job’s dissertations mention the afterlife and resurrection.
Certainly, the concept of an afterlife did exist at least as a popular notion among the people of the OT. Whether the priests ever gave any sympathy to such views or the dominant social and religious leaders is another question. Just because the priests didn't favor the notion doesn't mean it didn't exist.
Not to mention the author of Hebrews in chapter 11 sure did make the point the OT saints were looking for a better city and held out Hope for Messiah.
Another passage that points up there was at least some expectation of an afterlife by some Jews. So we can conclude the idea of an afterlife was part of Jewish spirituality and not some alien concept from another extant culture of the era.
I see what Vic is driving at though. Official Jewish doctrine in the modern era does attempt to represent that in Judaism, there is no heaven or hell and further that there never was any concept of a Jewish afterlife which is clearly not true. I've often wondered whether that is merely reactionary, a rejection of anything that those darned Christians believe. And I do think they are a little willing to go so far in contrarianism to spite us. And maybe we shouldn't blame them for that, given how Europe treated them over the centuries. They can't help but have a very hardnosed attitude, given their knowledge of history and of persecution of their race/religion/culture.
I think Vic is a little like Martin Luther, re-arranging the books of the NT canon to try to demote certain books which ruined Luther's notion of a perfect Christian systematic theology. Vic also enjoys a certain amount of intellectual derring-do and he is obviously qualified to do so and has considerable family history to apply. And he is a lawyer, which means certain things. Jean Chauvin was also a lawyer and he did like to present his theological constructs as well.
I think Vic is denying any notion of Jewish afterlife simply because it conforms to his own systematic theology. He is aided in this by Jewish religious figures who also deny a Jewish afterlife for their own reasons. I have to admit, he argues his case well and at considerable length, indicating his sincerity. But I'm afraid he wouldn't want me on his jury because, while his argument sounds so good and he does have a certain amount of evidence to present, it is perhaps...too clever by half. [What a stupid phrase, I keep using it lately for some reason.]
I do admire Vic's tenacity in presenting his argument even if I can't quite agree with his conclusion. I expect that you do too.
You have little faith. That is your problem. Little tiny bits of faith. You are wise in your own mind. You think God is to weak to give his word to his people. That he is to weak to preserve it. That he lied when he said it would spread through the whole world.
None of those things are true. I simply see things differently from the way you do.
Certainly, the concept of an afterlife did exist at least as a popular notion among the people of the OT.
At some point, certainly. But the important thing is WHEN.
NOT at Sinai or in the Desert or during the entrance into Canaan, or in the time of the Judges. There's not a word of it. It's important, because man lives on every word that proceeds forth out of the mouth of God, and the Torah is chock full of those words, what God said, directly out loud, to Moses and to the Hebrews. He never said a thing to them about the afterlife, or final judgment, and The Law does not refer to it and isn't ABOUT that. The Covenant of Sinai is not about going to Heaven. That's not in the contract. It's "You do this, and I give you farm in a stable Israel in THIS life." That's the promise. It's not for everybody, it's specifically for the Hebrews at Sinai - the former slaves of Egypt (which included the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but also included many more people who had been slaves alongside of Jacob's descendants) - who follow the law and are circumcised and living in a covenant-keeping Israel. God's promise of Israel to them is conditional: IF you do this, I will give you that, but IF you DON'T, I will take it away and hammer you.
Now, the Jews themselves, later, in the writings, turned a conditional promise into "God will never take Israel away". That's in the Bible, but those words don't proceed forth out of the mouth of God, but out of the mouths of people. They are a prayer, not a promise. God didn't promise what the Jews insisted he promised. We have the record of what he said.
The afterlife concepts don't start cropping up until the Jews have already been hammered and broken, lost the Northern Kingdom, been carted off to Babylon to live under different kings and gods, returned, and then had the whole place overrun by Greeks with their Hades, Elysian Fields, afterlife, judgment, etc. After the Hellenic invasion, you start to see the more direct references to the afterlife, judgment, resurrection, etc., notably in 1 Maccabbees (which recounts the Jewish revolt against the rulers of the Seleucid successor state.
Official Jewish doctrine in the modern era does attempt to represent that in Judaism, there is no heaven or hell and further that there never was any concept of a Jewish afterlife which is clearly not true. I've often wondered whether that is merely reactionary, a rejection of anything that those darned Christians believe. And I do think they are a little willing to go so far in contrarianism to spite us.
The Sadduccees were the priests - the keepers of Torah - written AND Oral - and final judges. THEY did not believe in an afterlife.
The Pharisees were the scholarly lay men. the legalists. They DID believe in an afterlife. Paul was a a Pharisee.
At some point, certainly. But the important thing is WHEN.
NOT at Sinai or in the Desert or during the entrance into Canaan, or in the time of the Judges. There's not a word of it.
I think it is a mistake to expect the popular notions extant today to make us believe that these ancient accounts include every minor nuance of everyday life. Maybe the formal theology was never to emphasize the afterlife but it was tolerated for the common folk to believe it. No doubt, there was more variety of belief on the part of individual Jews of the era than what is reflected in the text. So many OT accounts contain quite brief summaries of historical events with a vast sweep and it does so abruptly. Some of these accounts do not capture the everyday life of the people, their cultural habits and views, other elements of popular culture, etc.
Given the flimsiness of our knowledge about the lives of ordinary people in the region during the era, we can be more confident about what we knew was being taught by the circulation of OT books.
The OT books are interesting in terms of history, told from a certain viewpoint. However, there must have been a lot more going on in so many of the major events described in the books of the OT. The OT has such a long historical scope.
Anyway, I just think there were more factors involved in the major events of the OT that are not something that we know or understand fully. The descriptions in the text and the narrative just don't tell us enough because they are often so brief. The ancient peoples were different from us in more ways than we can readily imagine. And scripture is written from the viewpoint of ancient peoples. We don't catch the nuances or grasp all the elements of everyday life in the era just from reading the text. And so much about daily life in the ancient world is simply unknowable to us, even among the Jews who have some of the most extensive and well-preserved ancient traditions and writings.
The Sadduccees were the priests - the keepers of Torah - written AND Oral - and final judges. THEY did not believe in an afterlife.
Well, as a simple matter of fact, the nation of Israel was punished many times by God for being disobedient and the text mentions this in many major events. Much of the OT is about why God is punishing mankind for sins.
So even if the priests were pious and maintained official doctrine consistently, that doesn't mean that lay people among the Jews all exhibited exactly those same prescribed values and behaviors that the priests demanded. Often in the Bible, only a small minority is behaving righteously and the majority gets punished harshly by God. Anyway, that's a consistent theme of the Old Testament books.
I think Vic is a little like Martin Luther, re-arranging the books of the NT canon to try to demote certain books which ruined Luther's notion of a perfect Christian systematic theology. Vic also enjoys a certain amount of intellectual derring-do and he is obviously qualified to do so and has considerable family history to apply. And he is a lawyer, which means certain things. Jean Chauvin was also a lawyer and he did like to present his theological constructs as well.
I think Vic is denying any notion of Jewish afterlife
I try not to make these posts about myself. I try to talk around that. But this time I think it will be more straightforward to explain exactly where I am coming from, instead of taking each of many points and explaining why I'm not coming from there.
The first thing is: I do not come from a religious tradition. Yes, I was baptized as a baby, but I was not brought up in the Church, not catechized. I had a rudimentary understanding of Christianity based on the holidays and their decorations, but did not grow up with a traditional set of beliefs. So, I'm not operating from any childhood programming.
When I was 11, I dove into a lake alone, broke my neck, and was saved from death by God in a major miracle. After that, I understood that there IS God, but there was no theological content to God. I was a student, particularly enamored of science and history, and God, to me, was the mind behind the physics. Christianity was a pleasant myth. I had no passion for, or interest in, myths. To study God, I studied the physics, chemistry, biology. Religious people, when I heard them at all, were complaining about things like sex (fussbudgets) or evolution (backwards thinkers).
I spent my teenage years and twenties as a "religious" person, in the sense that I thought about God a great deal (as you might imagine, given what had happened to me), but the theological synthesis I was doing was stitching together the fact of the physics and evolutionary biology with the mind and myth. My belief about God would be described today as "pantheism".
The only moral thing I was PASSIONATE about was not killing people and not oppressing them. So the "don't dance, don't drink, don't smoke, don't eat shrimp, don't eat bacon, don't have sex (!), don't gamble, go to Church and pay your tithe sort of religion" and religious person was annoying to me (WHY would people believe that nonsense?), but that annoyance was easily avoided by the fact that I didn't hang around such people.
But when it came to KILLING people, and oppressing them - there I had a very clear, sharp moral view, and filled up with righteous wrath against killers and oppressors.
My religious focus was on World War II - the necessity to crush the Nazi and Japanese fanatics who killed so many, the Cold War - to crush the Communist oppressors who killed over their politics. My intolerance for slavery and slavers, abortion and abortionists.
THAT was the religious passion that drove me into the Navy at 18 as a Cold Warrior, with the determination to make a career of it (ergo, the decision to go through Annapolis instead of ROTC). The Pax Americana that I advocate with such religious zeal is NOT about the glory or wealth of the United States, it is about breaking oppression, making people free and safe, "filling full the mouth of famine, and bidding the sickness cease".
So, then, you can understand my disgust at the traditional religions, and at the belief that some mere religious doctrines - the imaginings of vainglorious minds - justified KILLING people over "God" - the depths of my antipathy for that cannot be plumbed - it is a bottomless abyss of blackness. To me, all killing in the name of religion is murder in service of a fairy tale, and it raises a righteous wrath in me - for justice - and to DESTROY the fanaticism that can believe such nonsense at its very root.
You understand, then, the adamancy with which I go after all religions that have killed people in the name of their beliefs. To do that is to self- evidently be a "servant of Satan", a declared enemy with whom I will never have peace.
ALL of the old religions of the past were murderous. All of the Christian sects of any size - the Catholics, the Orthodox, the Lutherans and Anglicans, Presbyterians, Baptists, etc. They all have blood and oppression all over their hands, as do the Jews (Exhibit A: the Book of Joshua; Exhibit B: the State of Israel), and the Muslims. I never cared about the religions of the far East (Hinduism - because it's obviously just the old gods polytheism nonsense; Bhuddism, because there's no THERE there, it's just a philosophy; Shintoism, because emperor-worship is ridiculous - I am impressed with the Jains: they don't kill animals, and I appreciate Hindu vegetarianism because they take care to not kill animals - I wish that our own tradition had more concern for the lives and suffering of animals).
Catholicism as a tradition, namely, a place where I could sing in a choir, at Mass - that was tolerable, but I was there to sing, not to actually spend time on the theology. The history is notoriously bad, and the badness extends into the present, with the incessant rape of boys flowing, as surely as night follows day, from an arbitrary rule of celibacy. The Catholic Church is repentant for the bloody past, but it won't admit THEOLOGICAL ERROR.
And for me, that's a deadly sin. If you're killing people over doctrine - I don't care what the doctrine is - you are committing an unforgivable THEOLOGICAL ERROR. If you're too stupid or too stubborn to see that killing people is different, and crosses a line that cannot be waved away with words, then you're too stupid and too stubborn for me to learn anything from you - you are a brute beast who should be silent and learn from me - you have nothing to say that I want to hear. Repenting of the murder and rape is good, but not good ENOUGH, because there was THEOLOGY that justified all of that, and that was USED to justify all of that, and I'm a historian, and I've READ all of that inflammatory crap expounded by the high theologians of the past. If you want ME to contribute any money to your organization, or for me to take your theology SERIOUSLY (I'm always happy to sit in the choir loft and SING, because I ENJOY that), then you have to face the theological errors of your past and ADMIT THEM. Not all of them - the ones I care about are the ones that were so bad that you were able to maneuver your way around God's prohibition - and my own natural abhorrence - of KILLING PEOPLE, or ENSLAVING them.
If you want to talk to me about your religion, you MUST CONFESS THE THEOLOGICAL ERROR That let your organization believe that it had the right to kill and to enslave. If you're too stubborn or too stupid to understand that killers are servants of Satan, not God, then you have nothing to teach me that I want to learn.
To me, if you can't admit that the doctrines that justified murder in the name of God were THEOLOGICAL ERRORS, then you have no standing to speak about theology in my court AT ALL. I just don't listen, don't care. You're AUTOMATICALLY REJECTED, and I don't think about what you have to say.
That's the problem with Catholicism, traditional Protestantism (which is most of it), Orthodoxy: the past. History.
That history didn't just happen. It was committed by people as adamant about religion as people are today, but THEY managed to take that book and their beliefs and turn them into a THEOLOGICAL JUSTIFICATION for their "Church militant" to go kill people and enslave them, not a few people, tens of millions of people.
And that is unacceptable to God and to me.
So, you see, that is where I'm coming from. I know history. I know the past. And I judge the tree by its fruit.
I adhere closely to what Jesus said: I judge the tree by its fruit, and I look to repent and forgive my sins, and I look for the same in sinners. I do not just the sinners of the past, the killers, as worthy of Hell, etc. - that judgment is up to God. But I DO judge the rotten fruit, unrepented by the present day admission of THEOLOGICAL ERROR on that account by that Church, as being rot in the fruit that renders the tree an unreliable source of any knowledge.
I will not learn from teachers who are obviously not as attuned to the basic commandment not to kill as I am. The problem is that if the THEOLOGICAL ERROR is not admitted, then there is no honesty. There is pride, defending the indefensible. And once again, it causes me to reject that tree for its fruit.
Now, when I pick up the Bible, I do not come at it with the near-worshipful status of this book as "The Word of God". Men say that - because their Churches teach it - but those Churches murdered people, so why should I trust them on this?
A Physics book - THAT actually teaches about how God is. The Bible MIGHT, but God railing on eating oysters? And not lighting a fire on Saturday? That would have never worked for MY people where they came from. Man evolved from primates on a very old earth, probably, so if that fact causes a religion to shatter, there wasn't anything there of use to me in that religion, was there?
God grabbed me and started to talk to me out loud when I was 38. That converted my pantheism to theism. But when God and I have talked, we talk about what is of concern to me - things are cast in terms of the physics, life, death, etc. I've never discussed theology with him.
When I read through the Bible, what Jesus said comports to what I feel in my bones to be true, and I find that all of the unacceptable crap in the Bible and in the religions all calves away when I focus on Jesus. So I focus on him. Then I don't have to deal with shrimp and oysters, tithes and genocides, and I do have to concern myself with the suffering of others, to focus on charity and peace - which is what I want to do anyway.
That singular focus on Jesus, as the only character in that Bible whose words I TRUST fully, seems to really, REALLY annoy the religious of various denominations. Seems to me that it SHOULDN'T annoy them as much as it does, if they really claim he was God, but it DOES.
I get judgmental words thrown at me, and - interestingly - I frequently read "what I think" told back to me in terms that I do not recognize, because that's NOT what I ACTUALLY think, but a hobbyhorse that my interlocutor wants to ride.
What I ACTUALLY think is that if your denomination is one that ever killed people or supported their enslavement, in support of its theology, then your denomination was SHIT, and a rotten tree.
Did the tree heal? (They can.) Well, do you - as the modern day representative of your denomination - admit that your church was THEOLOGICALLY WRONG in its justifications of murder and slavery. If you don't, or won't, then YOUR theology is shit, and your church is still shit, and you really have nothing to teach me at all about God, but should shut up and learn from me.
If you WILL fully acknowledge the THEOLOGICAL ERRORS of your church that justified killing and slavery, THEN we can talk, because you see the truth and acknowledge it. In doing so, you are admitting that your Church and its theology, however firmly believed, CAN be wrong, because it WAS DEFINITELY WRONG before. That is the price of being able to try to teach me.
The Quakers and the Jains are the only two religions who pass that bar, and only one of them is Christian.
So talking denominationally to me doesn't work. You can teach me with Jesus. Him, I will listen to. I see the errors in the Churches. I see the errors in Paul, James and John, and given that I have Jesus, why should I dilute him with people who are wrong?
THAT is exactly where I am coming from. I don't deny that the Jews believe, or don't believe, in an afterlife - I don't CARE. Theologically, they don't have Jesus, and the only one I am going to listen to is Jesus. Obviously I don't think highly of theology that grants some mythical RIGHT of Jews to go carve out a colony in the Middle East at the cost of great bloodshed. But nor do I think highly of a theology that grants some mythical right of Muslims to kill Jews forever just because they are THERE. Both of these beliefs are crazy, and they're not what Jesus believes. So I'm opposed.
In terms of the Christian stuff...well, if we want to talk specific denominations, let's get past the hurdle of murder, rape, slavery in the past and the THEOLOGICAL ERRORS that justified it. Then we can talk.
If you expect me to DEFEND the Catholic Church for its past and present evils, you haven't been paying attention.
There, that answers a great number of things. So, now you understand why I always ask the question: To what denomination do you belong? Because if you want to talk to me about religion - if you want to PREACH at me about your religion - I'm going to hold you accountable for your religion's bad fruit, and you're going to have to show me that your church's rotten tree has healed from its THEOLOGICAL ERRORS of the past. (Which means you will be conceding, that, because your church was CLEARLY wrong theologically in the past, it MAY be today also.)
I believe that a very fruitful conversation about God can be had by focusing on Jesus. But Christians don't seem to want to do that. So we can talk about your religion, if that's what you have to do. But if we do that, we have to start with its bloody sins and its errors. Otherwise, there's no point in the discussion at all.
