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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: 27550
Comments: 348
Chalk another one up to faulty drug field tests: 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.”
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#1. To: Deckard (#0)
The officer tested the powder, and it tested positive for cocaine with two different kits … Damn … You libertarian drug promoters even birds doing cocaine now. What is this frickin world coming to …
Which is essentially your admission that drug tests conducted by police departments are either completely corrupt or completely incompetent. I can't quite imagine how big a dumbass any cop would have to be to be so unaware of the properties of crystal cocaine and how it looks if exposed to moisture. What, did the cop think that the QB had, in the process of being pulled over, thrown his coke stash forward (into the wind) onto his windshield and then tried to wash it away with wiper fluid? There is no other way to read this. Corrupt lab and/or corrupt cops. Probably both. Oh, look. It's a black QB. Let's just frame his black ass with phony drug tests that make any pile of poop test positive for cocaine. Thanks for playing. If you were a decent human being, you'd be ashamed of what you've posted here. It does matter to have a black man falsely accused of narcotics and to have such an arrest on his record. Like you even care about this victim of false arrest. I hope he can sue their asses off for defamation of character. He should never have been charged with cocaine possession without a full lab test.
It could have been wet/damp powdered cocaine. "What, did the cop think that the QB had, in the process of being pulled over, thrown his coke stash forward (into the wind) onto his windshield and then tried to wash it away with wiper fluid?" I think that was the theory, actually.
You know as little as the cop did. He was trained. He has no excuse for being so ignorant.
What's he supposed to do when the substance tests positive -- twice? Let the guy go because he's black?
Should the police department keep using these field tests since they have been proven to give inaccurate results? If they use them again should they be held accountable and sued? Does the real victim the quarterback have a case against the police department for not using a reliable drug test? Why didn't the police know the drug test was inaccurate, don't they test them? If the police knew it gives false readings and it did int he past should the be sued for even more money? Do you go down on cops?
I heard he does suck a few nightsticks. Not wanting to intrude here but I thought I'd pass along this ugly rumor. After all, if it's a false accusation, whitey shouldn't mind at all that he's being falsely accused. whitey loves to defend cops making false charges in unlawful arrests, even corrupt cops. I also heard he once went down on a state trooper for a gallon of gas but that could just be an ugly rumor someone here at LP made up.
So you don't know that it's true, you did not ensure that it's true, yet you published it anyways. And, based on your previous posts about me, you published that with actual malice. This means it must have been made with disregard for the truth, and with the intention of doing harm to my reputation on this forum. I'd say I have an airtight defamation lawsuit. Or at least enough to get you kicked off this forum.
A K A Stone to misterwhite: After all, if it's a false accusation, whitey shouldn't mind at all that he's being falsely accused. whitey loves to defend cops making false charges in unlawful arrests, even corrupt cops. I also heard he once went down on a state trooper for a gallon of gas but that could just be an ugly rumor someone here at LP made up. So you don't know that it's true, you did not ensure that it's true, yet you published it anyways. And, based on your previous posts about me, you published that with actual malice. This means it must have been made with disregard for the truth, and with the intention of doing harm to my reputation on this forum. I'd say I have an airtight defamation lawsuit. Or at least enough to get you kicked off this forum. I say that you are wrong about ever getting Stone to kick TC off this forum. He will never do it, albeit the right thing to do with the malicious and vulgar defamation of character displayed by TC. I predict Stone will not do shit about it. We shall see …
misterwhite v AKA Stone, Tooconservative et al? Yeah good luck with that Parsons.
I know, this seems petty, but hear me out. “Good luck” is not a religious or emotional statement in any way. It’s something we say to each other to communicate ‘I want the best for you (in this matter).’ But “good luck” is a terrible way to say this. Despite being a common phrase, it’s got a couple of significant problems. First, “good luck” is a pessimistic phrase. It encourages, as the psychologists say, an external locus of control. In non-psychology-speak, this means the phrase “good luck” encourages us to see events as outside of our control (as opposed to within our control). When we perceive outcomes as outside our control, we don’t work to affect them, leaving us in the passenger seat of our lives. Second, “good luck” implies, to the person you’re saying it to, that they need luck to succeed. Instead of encouraging or helping them, you’re wishing for the world to conspire in their favor. If you had a friend who was about to compete in a contest, you wouldn’t tell them “I hope the judge is feeling lenient today,” but to say “good luck” is to say the same thing. Last, “good luck” is a terrible phrase no matter what your religious orientation. If you are a theist, and believe in god, it’s bordering on blasphemous. Why are you appealing to a nonexistent ‘luck’ when it is God who directs the events of the world? If you are an atheist, it’s a meaningless statement because it acknowledges there is no way for you to affect this luck. Either way, you’re out of luck (get it?) Some obvious religious alternatives to “good luck” include “blessings” and “thoughts and prayers.” But there are some great secular options as well.
Eccl. 9:11 I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. I sometimes find myself saying "good luck" to the unbeliever...because that's about all they have...time and chance.
Isn't that just some variety of "Good luck on your little path to hell"? It's not surprising the country is turning atheist. The organized churches seem like smug self-interested morality clubs, often using their tax status to provide entertainment/services to their members at discount, that do very little for anyone but their own. And possibly the larger influence is with the charismatics and healers and other flim-flam people you can see on those awful cable channels. And it is difficult to discern anything that resembles a serious doctrinal view in modern churches. I look at local churches and people I know in them and they all seem to believe most anything they want, even if it opposes the church's offical doctrine. Preachers won't even get close to doctrinal preaching. So, if you're talking to me, I'd rather not hear any smug "Good luck in hell" talk. It got old a long time ago. Little wonder that people want nothing to do with religion any more. It's more a rejection of the sales force than Christianity itself.
It's not surprising the country is turning atheist. The organized churches seem like smug self-interested morality clubs... When I say "good luck" to a person it is said with a most heavy heart. Your assessment of the church...is true. With one exception: there IS doctrinal preaching in many churches but it is obviously not helping. Now, you've told me the symptoms, but can you pinpoint the exact cause? (I can) And, your feelings about the church's condition...is it anguish for something you love?
I can tell you why the Church has mostly died in Europe, and is rapidly fading in North America, and starting its descent in Latin America too. But being that I'm Catholic, all past experience has taught me that we have to re-fight the Reformation to even get to the beginning of the conversation, and that all such re-fights (which happen a million times a year all over the world) never result in getting to the beginning of the conversation. (Which is one of the reasons why the Church continues to die at an accelerating clip.) Truth is, Christians would rather that the Church die and not exist in two or three generations, then compromise on anything, let alone admit they are wrong. Therefore, the Church is almost dead in Europe, is dying in North America, and has begun to die in Latin America. My only reason for writing this at all is that I guess I still hold a small spark of hope that Christians can behave like the Germans and French have managed to do. But I really just expect the Church to die, because I don't think the good will truly exists to save it.
Agreed. Sometimes the best way to move forward and actually agree amicably is not to debate at all. Just try to draw closer, recognize common interests. It's a disgrace how the ancient Christian churches in the Mideast have met such horrible persecution as we have meddled there and invaded. I can't understand why people are so indifferent to them. Your remark brings to mind something I thought about recently about Judaism. As we all know, Jews have been saying "Next year in Jerusalem", especially in the Diaspora outside Israel itself. So they've dreamed of Jerusalem all these years but they don't move there and many of them won't even visit Israel or just prefer other destinations. So they've had 70 years to get with the program and just move to Jerusalem. Yet every year, they keep repeating "Next year in Jerusalem". I know you can see the humor. So I considered what might happen if, say, a bolt of lighting came out of the sky and obliterated the mosque on Temple Mount and scare the Muslims so much that they didn't even want to rebuild it. And Israel could then build the Third Temple. What I wondered was how many Jews would leave Judaism is they actually had to practice the animal sacrifices demanded in the Old Testament. Would they summon the priestly family, prepare the purification rituals, slaughter the animals, then sell the carcasses in the local market afterward? Or would modern Jews just be so horrified at the thought of handing an animal to a priest to slaughter it to expiate their sins in a blood sacrifice? I think many of the two most liberal Jewish denominations would just quit Judaism completely. These people are already intermarrying their temples out of existence, no matter what the rabbis do. I think many modern Orthodox Jews, like Ben Shapiro, would also try to find some way not to observe animal sacrifice in a Third Temple. I think some Orthodox Jews might support the Temple sacrifices. But not all. And some Orthodox Jews don't think that the Israel established in 1947 is the real Israel of which scripture speaks, that it is a fake. I do wonder just how many Jews in the modern era really want to expiate their sins by handing an unblemished lamb to a priest to have its throat cut at the Third Temple. That's a lot more graphic than just reciting Next Year In Jerusalem every year. If they did build the Third Temple and started sacrificing, can you even picture the heads exploding over at PETA HQ? You could sell tickets on PPV for a confrontation like that. Anyway, Jews do give lip service to rebuilding the Temple. And certainly lots of Christian prophecy books describe it as coinciding with the False Prophet, the forerunner of the Antichrist. And the Antichrist will then commit the abomination of desolation (idolatry) in that new Temple. But when you get right down to it, do Jews or even Christians want to see animal sacrifice on altars in the Mideast? I think most of them would hate the idea.
The truth about rebuilding the Temple is that it will end up just being the sin of I of Israel if they do it. You may remember that when Je of I of Israel if they do it. You may remember that when Jeroboam split off the North Kingdom (Israel) from Ju Judah during the reign of Rehoboam (son of Solomon), that he immediately began to to worry that the fact that the Temple and altar was in Jeru to to worry that the fact that the Temple and altar was in Jerusalem would in inevitably drag Israel back into unity with Judah because of the religious ti tie. Every year, the inhabitants of Israel would have to make three pi pilgrimages into Judah. So Jeroboam built altars in the North and commissioned a a priesthood to perform the sacrifices on those altars ( a a priesthood to perform the sacrifices on those altars (frequently translated as as "high places" in the English). And you may recall that God sent prophet after prophet to Israel, warning them that the "High Places" were an abomination, because God had ordained ONE altar for Israel, and the ONLY priests who could sacrifice upon it were those directly descended from Aaron. That bloodline, and that bloodline ONLY, was authorized to perform the sacrifices. Anybody else who did was was in fact performi performing a blasphemous act. Thus, the " performi performing a blasphemous act. Thus, the "priests" of the North were an abominat abomination, even though they were following the same rites and rituals. Now recall two things that Jesus said: First, that not a letter of the law could could change until the end of the world. could could change until the end of the world. The Law was for the Israelites at Sinai Sinai and their lineal descendants in I Sinai Sinai and their lineal descendants in Israel, and nobody else. People have tried tried to write the Christians into tha tried tried to write the Christians into that law, but that defies Jesus who said NO change changes until the end of the world. change changes until the end of the world. Second, recall that Jesus said that the Temple would be destroyed in that gene generation, and it WAS, in 69 AD, by Titus and the Roman Army. Reading Josephus, we discover the dramatic scene during the conquest of Je Jerusalem in which the priests, barricaded into the Temple, sought to surrender to to the Romans, but Titus refused t to to the Romans, but Titus refused their surrender, stating that THEY had been th the source of the rebellion and all of the bloodshed, and ordering that they be ex executed to a man. When God sen ex executed to a man. When God sent the Roman Army to destroy the Temple, the pr priesthood was destroyed with it. So, if you built a new Temple, you will have erected an altar, a high place, but where are you going to get the Aaronic priests? They all died in 69 AD. It is IMPOSSIBLE to find anybody who is their descendant. Oh sure, there are LEGENDS of this and that, but that's all they are, popular legends. Note again that ONLY the Aaronic priest can perform the sacrifices, that for anybody ELSE to do it - even meaning well (as the priests of Israel did) - is an abomination befo before God. Note tha befo before God. Note that God left no wiggle room: the law cannot be changed even by a by a letter until th by a by a letter until the end of the world. God intended exactly this result. Sure, you can build an altar where the Te Temple used to be, but if you revive the sacrifices, you're doing no different th than the Northern th than the Northern Kingdom did: you are creating a false priesthood to perform ab abominations on a high place. There is absolutely no way to determine whether AN ANY Aaronic prie AN ANY Aaronic priests survived the fall of Rome, and no possible way to choose pr priests that descended from Aaron. Oh, sure, the Jews who spent the money and effort to rebuild the Temple would CLAIM that the Cohanite genetic marker is "proof" of Aaronic descent, but th that's just wishful thinking. Truth is, Jesus said that the Law could not change and gave a New Covenant for individuals only, different, new wine in a new bottle. He also predicted the destruction of the Temple. And God made that happen, shattering the old wine in the old bottle and removing from the earth the possibility of fulfilling the terms of the Hebrew Covenant. Because it can't be changed, it CAN'T be revived, even if you rebuild the temple. At best, all you can do is recreate the sin of the Northern Kingdom, carrying out sacrifices on an altar with politically-selected non-priestly hands, and that never has and never will ple please the God of Israel. So nope, the old rites can never be restarted, not unless God himself reveals a an Aaronic heir.
...that never has and never will ple please the God of Israel. So nope, the old rites can never be restarted, not unless God himself reveals a an Aaronic heir. According to the Bible, Israel will revive the sacrifices. That it doesn't please God, well, they just can't see that right now.
That it doesn't please God, well, they just can't see that right now. According to the Bible, Israel CANNOT revive the sacrifices unless they have an Aaronic priesthood, which they CANNOT reconstitute, so absent a revelation from God of a new Aaronic priesthood, the sacrifices cannot ever be rightly resumed.
There's the key word..."rightly" resumed Israel rejected their Messiah. That sent the whole thing off the rails. After rejecting Christ, what does "rightly" have to do with anything. They just pressed on, making stuff up if they had to. If they can't determine the Aaronic priesthood, they'll come up with something that works for them.
Problem solved... Sanhedrin Appoints High Priest in Preparation for Third Temple https://www.breakingisraelnews.com/74772/sanhedrin-appoints-high-priest-preparation-third-temple/
Sanhedrin have no more power to make new priests than Jeroboam, king of Israel, did.
Israel has some of the most extensive DNA tracing research programs around. They might be able to find an Aaronic family unless you assume that no ancient priest ever slept around when they got a chance. Or they could do enough to insist that they had located such a priestly descendant. Even if there were detractors, any scandal would die down in 20 years or less once the Temple was there. You might still be disputing whether he was a real Aaronic priest but they wouldn't care a bit what some Gentile thought.
I have no doubt whatever that what you have said, DNA-wise, is exactly what those who are hellbent on setting up a new temple will do. I also know, that we have no way of knowing who is a descendant of Aaron. You're right, nobody cares what a Gentile thinks. What matters is what God thinks. If they push ahead and get it wrong, God will smite them - and they still won't get it. Religious nuts never seem to. For my part, it's perfectly clear that there is nothing in the Old Testament for me after the laws given by God to Noah and his family after the Flood. After that, it's all the story of Abraham and his descendants, which I am not. I know that the early Christian Jews - notably James, John and Paul - were very much into their "Jewishness" and worked very hard to synthesize the two convenants, because they just couldn't believe that the Old had nothing to do with life after death - they were very impressed with their Jewishness. But they end up contradicting Jesus on several points, so they can't be taken seriously in those places where they depart from what the Son of God said.
I can't imagine how you can seriously say that Paul was very much into his Jewishness. Exactly the opposite according to the New Testament and his writings.
Here's how. (Before I write this, I already know that you are really not going to like it.) Paul goes on and on about how Jesus is the perfect unblemished lamb of sacrifice, to save "us" from our sins. The "us" here is not us Gentiles. There was no animal sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins of Gentiles. God did not give law like that to Gentiles, and Jesus never preached anything like that. For Gentiles (and Jews as individuals) to be forgiven our personal sins by God, such that we do not have to pay for them in the afterlife (through Gehenna), we must do what Jesus said we had to do, and sacrifice had nothing to do with it. Jesus said that to be forgiven our sins by God, we must forgive those who sin against us. We will be forgiven by God only to the extent we forgive others. Because this is a completely new thing to the Jews to whom he preached, he told them they had to trust (believe in) him on this matter, and that if they did not believe in him, such that they did not do what he said - in this case forgive others - that they would not be forgiven their sins. Animal sacrifices forgave ISRAEL the sins of its people, so that the sins of the individuals would not be visited upon Israel. But the Old Covenant has NOTGING TO DO WITH life after death, or eternal life. The Jews of the First Century NEVER accepted that, they were NEVER able to accept, intellectually, that their Law was about what it says it is about. Ancient Judaism has no real concept of life after death, paradise, etc. That only appears with the Hellenic conquest in the mid-300s BCs. The Greeks came with a highly developed theology of the afterlife, of Hades, of sin and punishment. The Jews found their own religion lacking in discussion of this, so they syncretically added on the idea of Gehenna (which is Jewish Purgatory). That never appears in the Old Testament, however. It's a pure Jewish tradition, based on Greek religion. Jesus affirmed it with his own references to Gehenna in the Gospels, and the prison to which the unforgiving will be sent by God to pay their sins "until the last penny is paid". The animal sacrifices of Israel were not about life after death. They were about covering the sins of individual Israelites SO THAT Israel would remain safe under the covenant. Paul did not really accept this. Rather than accept Jesus' formula for forgiveness of sins: which was exclusively that one must forgive others their sins for God to forgive them, and that one would be judged by God using the standards by which one judged other men: the merciful with mercy, and the merciless without mercy. "You shall be measured by the measure by which you measured." There is absolutely none of this in Paul. Paul either discarded Jesus, or never knew that Jesus taught that (the Gospels having not been written), and instead extended the Jewish Law of sacrifice to make Jesus "the perfect sacrifice" for all the sins of his followers, such that, according to Paul, the blood of Jesus washes away all sins of all followers of Jesus, and the consequences of sin. Paul's theology annuls Jesus's teaching about the forgiveness of sins, and substitutes the Torah blood sacrifice of animals - in this case Jesus - for the forgiveness of sins of individuals with regards to the afterlife. Jesus never taught anything like that. It is an example of Paul straining really hard to synthesize a Judaism that his Pharisaic heart loved with Jesus and the New Covenant. But Paul was wrong about that, dead wrong. It's a lovely story, but it was neither true for the Jews nor for the Gentiles. Animal (and human) sacrifice never forgave Gentile sins, and while Jesus - the perfect lamb of God - his sacrifice DID cover the sins of Israel theretofore, and DID serve to allow Israel to proceed forward blamelessly under the Torah - but Israel pitched headlong into the sin of its high priesthood having killed him - an innocent man - to get there, and then having rejected Jesus' message along with him. Paul the Pharisee was proud of his Judaism, and desperately sought to give a significance to it under the New Covenant. Jesus' bloody sacrifice was the true type of sacrifice under the old covenant, but it was also the last such sacrifice. It having been done as it was done, with the rejection of him, meant that there was no going back for the Temple and it leaders. Unfortunately, Paul's focus on the Jewish sacrifice aspect of it has befuddled Christian minds ever since. So, how are we forgiven sins, by forgiving others, as JESUS said, or because of some Old Testament blood sacrifice ritual that never pertained to us in the first place, and that never had anything to do with life after death? The former. Paul did good service by noting the signficance of Jesus' sacrifice UNDER the Hebrew Covenant, a true fact. But Paul's erroneous emphasis on that as the means by which the liability for personal, individual sin is relieved before God is an error that has caused dramatic divisions in the Church ever since. It is, I'm sure, going to be at the very heart of the division between you and me. And it ultimately comes down to a matter of authority: Jesus or Paul, or some blend of the two. I say Jesus alone, for he alone was the Son of God, with divine knowledge, and of him alone God said from the sky for the crowds to hear: "This is my beloved Son, listen to HOM." And Jesus repetitively gave but one way to be forgiven sin. Now, he did say that his blood would be shed for the forgiveness of sin, and he said to drink the cup of it, so yes, the EUCHARIST is important, but Jesus' actual death on the cross itself completed aspects of the OLD TESTAMENT COVENANT OF THE JEWS, but, contrary to Paul, does NOT absolve you of yuor personal sins before God Only the forgiveness of other people and merciful treatment of them does that. Had Jesus NOT died on the Cross, had he been accepted, the same rule would apply: to be forgiven, you must forgive. Blood doesn't cover it. His crucifixion doesn't cover it. Works under the Law of Moses doesn't cover it. YOU have to FORGIVE other people. If you will not, then you will not be forgiven your sins by God. Period. Jesus said so. Paul says differently, because Paul is a Jew, and cannot let go of the idea of animal sacrifice for the forgiveness of PERSONAL sin, vis a vis the afterlife. He's simply wrong, and he's wrong because his Jewishness won't let him simply segregate the Old Covenant and the New. The Reformation itself was in large part fought over this very issue.
The "us" here is not us Gentiles. There was no animal sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins of Gentiles. I see your point. My first impulse would be to argue that when God decided to enlarge His plan of salvation from His Chosen People to all mankind but He had to keep faith with His former requirement for expiation of sin by blood sacrifice. So to include all of the non-Chosen People (Gentiles) while abolishing the Temple system, He had to replace it with a one-time all-encompassing sacrifice, a perfect sacrifice, the same sacrifice He had demanded of Abraham in the sacrifice of Isaac: the sacrifice of his only begotten son as a blood sacrifice for sin. God stopped Abraham since such sacrifice would have frustrated God's plan for Israel but it foreshadowed the eventual sacrifice of Jesus as the one-time perfect sacrifice to suffice to expiate the sins of all mankind under the New Covenant. And it ultimately was justification of His pardon of the sins of faithful Jews prior to the time of Christ who had never known or believed in Christ Himself but only in the popularly promoted idea of the Jewish messiah to come. I do agree with Paul but then that's pretty convenient, eh? No great leap for a Prot type. You know us Prot types pretty well but you also know we would not express it in those terms. Tell me, when Jesus died on the cross after He said, "It is done.", was the 'it' just his own life? Or was 'It' the end of the old covenant so the new covenant could begin, the end of the Temple veil as a dire warning to Israel and the priests, the end of the ability to use animal sacrifice to expiate sins, the end of exclusion of Gentiles from joining the covenant with God? I could go on but you get my point. I think that Jesus was not talking about the smaller matter of His own imminent death but about much larger matters. So I think you are accusing Paul a bit much on a thin basis. I don't think he missed the mark by that much. But then, I once got into a dispute back at FR on those endless Calvinism threads where we debated Hebrews 10:1-13 and especially verse 14, the center of the dispute. You understand that we debated things like the placement of a comma or semicolon in the vernacular translations. We got far down into the weeds, what should be properly termed as "unprofitable disputes". Hebrews 10:14:For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. I felt I lost close friends in that debate and thought they were being unreasonable when they tried to insist that verse 14 contained six different doctrines in it. I had gotten a little antsy over this insistence that bible verses were intended to teach 4-6 different doctrines at once. When people write letters or speak to others, they don't ever seem to have more than a double meaning at most. I spent some time and effort and concluded it is possible to get to 3 or even 4 meanings in a joke (I do well at tortured humorous wordplay and punning). So, while constructing such phrases with multiple meanings, yes, it can be done through clever wordplay (a waste of time). However, I can never believe that any of the writers of the New Testament had any such intentions. I'll concede a little humor and a few double-entendres in the New Testament but I otherwise believe that New Testament writing is straightforward accounts of history (the Gospels) and doctrinal books and epistles that strived for clarity, not subtle wordplay or trying to pack six entirely different theological doctrines into one verse just so a few thousand years later someone can "discover" all the hidden meanings. And I didn't think you should condemn someone like me who just thought such claims were overblown and ridiculous and led toward a view that one could "discover" a half a dozen doctrines in any verse of the Bible. But that's just me. So you picked an example of Pauline theology that you probably can never sell me on, based on my experiences with That Verse back at FR. Perhaps I mentioned this incident to you before. Can you cite any Catholic doctrinal source that says the same things you are saying here? You are saying that scripture has no divine inspiration or mediation if you allege that Paul could foist his own false doctrine on the church and it would still be included in the canon and then promulgated for the next 2,000 years. So, scripture is infallibly inspired or not? Please answer yes or no. Are you with Luther in attitude toward some books of the canon and perhaps want to move all the Pauline writings to the back of the canon to make them quasi-apocryphal writings? So it would make your own theology more consistent? I would say that Paul took considerable risks as the major leader who advocated for inclusion of Gentiles in the New Covenant and resisting requirements of Old Covenant law such as requiring circumcision of converts (since all the apostles and leaders of the early church(s) were Jewish and circumcised). This was a bit of an issue even before the time of Jesus. Circumcision and uncircumcision were both fiercely debated over the centuries. You go almost to the point of the secular scholars who claim that Christianity's distinct doctrines are entirely due to Paul, not to Jesus or the other disciples. I don't agree. But the Bible was created by Roman bishops and certified by the popes over the centuries. If you have an argument with the infallibility of scripture, you have a much bigger problem with Rome than with me. I'm still not confident that Catholic theologians would agree with you. I think they would go as far as asserting that Prot types have misused Paul's inspired writings as a basis for Prot theology, starting with Luther. I'm not going to debate alternative histories of Christianity and Judaism. What happened, happened. It is unprofitable to debate what would have happened if Jesus hadn't been crucified and had just died of old age or disease and therefore was not the savior of mankind. I really do think you are robbing Jesus of his role as savior to a certain extent with this line of argument. It strikes me how many times, almost a senseless number of times, the Bible speaks of the glory of God, of God glorifying Himself before men, His desire to be glorified by men with all their hearts. So please don't suggest that Jesus was only supposed to save Jews in ancient Israel and it's all Paul's fault that us nasty rebellious Prots split off from the corrupt popes whose shameful legacy you are willing to accept as the conduct of the head of the church on earth. Vicars of Christ? Mostly, corrupt men who gave no evidence that they were anything but corrupt, murderous, luxury lovers and manipulative atheists who enjoyed displaying fancy art to impress each other and the rubes who came to Rome on pilgrimage to much local profit for the church and the local business community. The Roman Chamber Of Commerce loved all that stuff but I don't think Jesus died on a cross so some corrupt pope could have the power to marry his daughter off repeatedly, stage orgies in the Vatican, and take advantage of gullible pilgrims from the sticks who came to gawk at a pile of phony relics and tasteful art created by some very un-Christian homos. I think Paul believed Jesus' place as the savior of mankind could never be questioned or limited in any way. I don't think you can argue otherwise. What meaning can you assign to these quotes in John? That Jesus was "the Lamb of God" but that really meant instead that He was "the Lamb of Israel only until those bastard priests killed him"? Are you going to join the Calvinists to try to twist the word 'world' in John 3:16? "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son..." As you've heard asked before, perhaps from others, does "world" mean "world" or does it mean, as you are suggesting that "world" means "Israel" and that dumb Paul decided to use his writings to impose false doctrines on the church for all time and the bishops of the Council of Hippo decided they would just include all of Paul's writings and false doctrine anyway, just for the fun of it? You know, people were dying for these writings at the time, not just chit-chatting on some anonymous internet forum. This was not a casual and consequence-free debate for them. It certainly was though there were other crucial factors as well. Corruption and greed and worldliness of the hierarchy. Cruel and wanton persecution against any dissenters. Opposition to vernacular translations of scripture and being held in private hands.
Your "Therefore" is wrong. Jesus' death didn't make him the savior of mankind. It was the fact that he was the Son of God and taught man what man had to do to be forgiven his sins and be acceptable to God - THAT is why Jesus was the savior of mankind, not because arrogant bastards killed him. Had Jesus lived, and been acclaimed the Messiah, he would have been no more, nor less, the Savior of mankind. He saved us from our sins not by dying (that expiated the sins of Israel...which hardly matters because Israel was destroyed 36 years later BECAUSE it killed him), but by teaching us what we have to DO to be acceptable to God. It's not about magic blood or superstition, it's about listening to Jesus and doing what he said to do. "What good does it do you to say you follow me if you do not keep my commandments?" - Jesus.
Try telling that to your parish priest when he administers the Eucharist. Your entire Mass is focused on the Eucharist and 'bloodless' re-enactment of the Sacrifice of Christ. Jesus did say: Luke 22: NASB 14When the hour had come, He reclined at the table, and the apostles with Him. 15And He said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; 16for I say to you, I shall never again eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” 17And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He said, “Take this and share it among yourselves; 18for I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine from now on until the kingdom of God comes.” 19And when He had taken some bread and given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” 20And in the same way He took the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood.
Luke 22: NASB 14When the hour had come, He reclined at the table, and the apostles with Him. 15And He said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; 16for I say to you, I shall never again eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” 17And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He said, “Take this and share it among yourselves; 18for I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine from now on until the kingdom of God comes.” 19And when He had taken some bread and given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” 20And in the same way He took the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood. Yes, Jesus did say that. And there it is, the cup - drink it, it's the new covenant. He did indeed shed his blood for everyone. He didn't retreat, run away. He died bloody, and very publicly - and then rose from the grave two days later. THAT was the event that made him stupendous: the conquest of death. His covenant was about the afterlife - by dying bloody it was clear to all: he was REALLY DEAD. By rising from the dead he did the apparently impossible, and demonstrated he was master even of death. Only then did his cult explode upon the world. The Resurrection is the key, the visible symbol: death is not the end. For him to resurrect, he had to die.
3 spinner.
Died Friday.3 PM. Still in the grave 24 hours later, 3 PM Saturday. Rose somewhere before dawn Sunday, say 4 AM, 13 hours later. Total time dead: 37 hours - a day and a half by the Greco-Roman accounting. Died Friday before Sunset, part of one Jewish day (counted sunset to sunset). Was in the grave sunset to sunset Saturday, one Jewish day. Rose before sunrise Sunday morning. In the grave part of three Jewish days, but not “three days and nights by any accounting. One full day, one full night and most of a second, 3 hours and 10 hours, respectively, of two other days. . It is Saturday noon. By Jesus’ death count, three days and nights from now is Monday morning at 1 AM. Monday morning 1 AM is not “three days and nights” from now in any language except the weird semantic math of Jesus’ resurrection, to try to avoid a discrepancy.
Died Friday before Sunset, part of one Jewish day (counted sunset to sunset). Was in the grave sunset to sunset Saturday, one Jewish day. Rose before sunrise Sunday morning. In the grave part of three Jewish days, but not “three days and nights by any accounting. One full day, one full night and most of a second, 3 hours and 10 hours, respectively, of two other days. . It is Saturday noon. By Jesus’ death count, three days and nights from now is Monday morning at 1 AM. Monday morning 1 AM is not “three days and nights” from now in any language except the weird semantic math of Jesus’ resurrection, to try to avoid a discrepancy. Nope. Just because you make up some bullshit doesn't make it so. That bump might have damaged your brain permanently.
What did I "make up"? Jesus died "in the ninth hour" during daylight, on Good Friday. That's Friday at 3 PM. He had to be in the grave before sunset (about 6 PM), because the body had to be put away and people stop working by sunset. The Jewish day begins at sunset, and sunset Friday means Saturday, the Sabbath begins at about 6 PM. Jesus was in the tomb all day Saturday, from about 6 PM Friday night - by our calendar, which is the beginning of Saturday by the Jewish reckoning. "Saturday night" by Jewish reckoning, was the night between Friday sunset and Saturday sunrise. When the sun set on Saturday, Sunday night began, circa 6 PM Saturday. It was during Sunday night, before dawn on Sunday morning (circa 6 AM), that Jesus rose from the dead, before the light. So, by the Jewish calendar, Jesus was dead for three hours on Friday, all day Satruday, from sunset Friday until sunset Saturday, and he rose from the dead Sunday night, about 4 AM, before the sunrise on Sunday morning. By the Roman, or our Calendar, Jesus was dead on Friday afternoon at 3 PM, in the tomb before sunset, and still in the tomb at midnight Friday night. That's 9 hours. He was in the tomb all day Saturday, that's 24 hours, and he rose from the dead about 4 or 5 AM Sunday, another 4 or 5 hours, for a total time of 37 or 38 hours, not even two full days (that's 48 hours). By the Jewish calendar he was in the tomb for part of two days - Friday (3 hours), and all day Saturday. He was in the tomb for slightly less than two nights: Sunset Friday until sunrise Saturday, and sunset Saturday until before sunrise Sunday morning. That's 1 and a quarter days, and 1 and 3/4 nights. Jesus was not in the grave three days and three nights by either the Hebrew or Roman recknoning. I'm not making this up. It's just basic math.
Jesus died "in the ninth hour" during daylight, on Good Friday. That's Friday at 3 PM. He had to be in the grave before sunset (about 6 PM), because the body had to be put away and people stop working by sunset. The Jewish day begins at sunset, and sunset Friday means Saturday, the Sabbath begins at about 6 PM. Jesus was in the tomb all day Saturday, from about 6 PM Friday night - by our calendar, which is the beginning of Saturday by the Jewish reckoning. "Saturday night" by Jewish reckoning, was the night between Friday sunset and Saturday sunrise. When the sun set on Saturday, Sunday night began, circa 6 PM Saturday. It was during Sunday night, before dawn on Sunday morning (circa 6 AM), that Jesus rose from the dead, before the light. So, by the Jewish calendar, Jesus was dead for three hours on Friday, all day Satruday, from sunset Friday until sunset Saturday, and he rose from the dead Sunday night, about 4 AM, before the sunrise on Sunday morning. By the Roman, or our Calendar, Jesus was dead on Friday afternoon at 3 PM, in the tomb before sunset, and still in the tomb at midnight Friday night. That's 9 hours. He was in the tomb all day Saturday, that's 24 hours, and he rose from the dead about 4 or 5 AM Sunday, another 4 or 5 hours, for a total time of 37 or 38 hours, not even two full days (that's 48 hours). By the Jewish calendar he was in the tomb for part of two days - Friday (3 hours), and all day Saturday. He was in the tomb for slightly less than two nights: Sunset Friday until sunrise Saturday, and sunset Saturday until before sunrise Sunday morning. That's 1 and a quarter days, and 1 and 3/4 nights. Jesus was not in the grave three days and three nights by either the Hebrew or Roman recknoning. I'm not making this up. It's just basic math. Enter Screen Names of recipients separated by commas or semicolons. There are other possibilities to explore examining the pertinent Scriptures. I think the gymnastics used today is try to fit post apostolic "feast days" and calendars in to a 7 day Roman calendar. Jesus said in Matthew 12:40, “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” Those who argue for a Friday crucifixion say that there is still a valid way in which He could have been considered in the grave for three days. In the Jewish mind of the first century, a part of day was considered as a full day. Since Jesus was in the grave for part of Friday, all of Saturday, and part of Sunday—He could be considered to have been in the grave for three days. One of the principal arguments for Friday is found in Mark 15:42, which notes that Jesus was crucified “the day before the Sabbath.” If that was the weekly Sabbath, i.e. Saturday, then that fact leads to a Friday crucifixion. Another argument for Friday says that verses such as Matthew 16:21 and Luke 9:22 teach that Jesus would rise on the third day; therefore, He would not need to be in the grave a full three days and nights. But while some translations use “on the third day” for these verses, not all do, and not everyone agrees that “on the third day” is the best way to translate these verses. Furthermore, Mark 8:31 says that Jesus will be raised “after” three days. The Thursday argument expands on the Friday view and argues mainly that there are too many events (some count as many as twenty) happening between Christ's burial and Sunday morning to occur from Friday evening to Sunday morning. Proponents of the Thursday view point out that this is especially a problem when the only full day between Friday and Sunday was Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. An extra day or two eliminates that problem. The Thursday advocates could reason thus: suppose you haven't seen a friend since Monday evening. The next time you see him it is Thursday morning and you say, “I haven’t seen you in three days” even though it had technically only been 60 hours (2.5 days). If Jesus was crucified on Thursday, this example shows how it could be considered three days. The Wednesday opinion states that there were two Sabbaths that week. After the first one (the one that occurred on the evening of the crucifixion [Mark 15:42; Luke 23:52-54]), the women purchased spices—note that they made their purchase after the Sabbath (Mark 16:1). The Wednesday view holds that this “Sabbath” was the Passover (see Leviticus 16:29-31, 23:24-32, 39, where high holy days that are not necessarily the seventh day of the week are referred to as the Sabbath). The second Sabbath that week was the normal weekly Sabbath. Note that in Luke 23:56 the women who had purchased spices after the first Sabbath returned and prepared the spices, then “rested on the Sabbath.” The argument states that they could not purchase the spices after the Sabbath, yet prepare those spices before the Sabbath—unless there were two Sabbaths. With the two-Sabbath view, if Christ was crucified on Thursday, then the high holy Sabbath (the Passover) would have begun Thursday at sundown and ended at Friday sundown—at the beginning of the weekly Sabbath or Saturday. Purchasing the spices after the first Sabbath (Passover) would have meant they purchased them on Saturday and were breaking the Sabbath. Therefore, according to the Wednesday viewpoint, the only explanation that does not violate the biblical account of the women and the spices and holds to a literal understanding of Matthew 12:40 is that Christ was crucified on Wednesday. The Sabbath that was a high holy day (Passover) occurred on Thursday, the women purchased spices (after that) on Friday and returned and prepared the spices on the same day, they rested on Saturday which was the weekly Sabbath, then brought the spices to the tomb early Sunday. Jesus was buried near sundown on Wednesday, which began Thursday in the Jewish calendar. Using a Jewish calendar, you have Thursday night (night one), Thursday day (day one), Friday night (night two), Friday day (day two), Saturday night (night three), Saturday day (day three). We do not know exactly what time He rose, but we do know that it was before sunrise on Sunday. He could have risen as early as just after sunset Saturday evening, which began the first day of the week to the Jews. The discovery of the empty tomb was made just at sunrise (Mark 16:2), before it was fully light (John 20:1). A possible problem with the Wednesday view is that the disciples who walked with Jesus on the road to Emmaus did so on “the same day” of His resurrection (Luke 24:13). The disciples, who do not recognize Jesus, tell Him of Jesus' crucifixion (24:21) and say that “today is the third day since these things happened” (24:22). Wednesday to Sunday is four days. A possible explanation is that they may have been counting since Wednesday evening at Christ's burial, which begins the Jewish Thursday, and Thursday to Sunday could be counted as three days.
And I will return to my own view of all of this. I am TOTALLY INDIFFERENT to the day on which he was crucified, or rose from the dead. It makes NO DIFFERENCE WHATEVER to me, because I'm not superstitious or idolatrous. That something happened on a certain day does not make that day "more extra special", such that it matters before God. IF I were a circumcised Hebrew living in Israel when the Temple was still up and the daily offerings were still being made by the Aaronic priesthood, then the Saturday Sabbath would matter, as would the dates of various moons and seasons. But I'm none of those things, so they are completely, utterly, totally irrelevant, in every single respect, to my spiritual OR physical voyage through this world. They're the badges of a defunct religion that neither I nor anybody in my ancestry back to "Adam and Eve" were part of. I understand very clearly WHY there is such sturm und drang, and effort expended on this very subject: it's a contradiction in the Bible. But I don't expect a collection of copied human scrolls to be perfect, so such contradictions and imperfections are of no concern to ME either. They ARE of concern, very great concern, to those people for whom the Bible MUST be word-and-letter perfect, lest their faith be shaken. I am not such a person - I consider such people to be superstitious at best, and vaguely idolatrous about the Bible, at worst - but their concerns are no skin off my nose, and I'm well content to just let them be - if they let me be also. When they don't, then I bring up obvious issues like this one to repay them for not letting me be by letting them deal with the distress of the obvious imperfections in their book. Perfectionism is not my circus, not my monkey. I do maintain that the Church is fading all around the world IN PART because of piddling little nits like this. We've got Christians being killed for their faith in the Middle East, China and Africa, and 2 million babies a year being killed for convenience in the USA, and we've got staggering poverty and abuse...and THIS is the sort of trivial shit that Christians fight about? It's also fading because of more serious issues, such as unchecked abuse, mistreatment of people, bigotry, attitudes about wealth and power, etc. It's not selling well anymore, at all. My simple, sincere, direct suggestion is: if you want to save the Church, you had better get back to what Jesus himself said, and then insist on DOING THAT. That requires a revamped view of violence, of money, of foreigners, of...everything. It's demanding but consistent. I don't personally believe that the churches are going to be able to survive if they don't do that. And I'm ok with that. All of the dross falls away, and what is left is Jesus - Just Jesus. That's an improvement, to my eyes. It's sincere, clean and uncomplicated. It's real.
Well as a Catholic and me Reformed we are creedal. The Creed does not specify days of the week but Jesus was Crucified, died, was buried and on the third day He rose again the third day in fulfillment of the Scriptures.
I've come up with a new way to increase Bible literacy and make a tidy sum as well. Publish...the Twitter Bible! Rewrite the entire canon, especially the Gospels, as tweets. Reconstruct the whole thing as a bunch of Twitter timelines. No more dusty chapters and verses to quote, just tweets and DMs. I'd give it a couple of years before someone actually publishes something like that and actually makes money off it.
Publish...the Twitter Bible! My Bible rewrite is this: First, acknowledge right up from that there are multiple canons of the Bible, and that, while there is much overlap, there is divergence on the fringes. Choose the LARGEST canon: the Ethiopian Orthodox longer canon, which includes everything in any other canon, plus additional books. THAT will be the canon. All of those books will be translated and bound together. The order of the presentation of the books will be in accordance with the largest denomination - the Catholics - but where there are additional books or parts of books from various Orthodox canons, those will be inserted at the appropriate places in the Orthodox canons. Each book will note on its opening page for which denominations it is canonical. This convention will allow everybody to see all of the books of all canons, and allow people to simply skip over the books they do not want to read (because it's not "canon"), without moving books around in a way that positively denigrates those books. NOBODY's tradition will be completely respected, because non-canonical books will be here for all, but canonicity will be noted. Next, we must ADDRESS WHAT, exactly, is translated, and from what language. The age of computers allows us to do something brilliant. Different religions insist that different manuscripts and languages are THE correct ones to use. Others do not, but want things "scholarly". A key question is whether you translate ONE manuscript, or you translate a scholarly recension of manuscripts. There are pros and cons of each. In the age of the computer, you don't have to finally decide. You can, rather, translate each source and then overlay the texts, in the original languages and in English, to demonstrate the differences. Some logical bases: the oldest complete Bible (Codex Vaticanus) in Greek. Also Codices Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus, side by side. The oldest complete version of the Vulgate. The oldest complete Peshitta. And...and...and...who cares? TL; DR Only a billionaire could commission it done right, and no matter what you do people will squabble anyway. It's a pit of quicksand.
Different religions insist that different manuscripts and languages are THE correct ones to use. Others do not, but want things "scholarly". A key question is whether you translate ONE manuscript, or you translate a scholarly recension of manuscripts. There are pros and cons of each. In the age of the computer, you don't have to finally decide. You can, rather, translate each source and then overlay the texts, in the original languages and in English, to demonstrate the differences. It is a key advantage of using computers to tackle the sheer drudgery of manuscript comparisons. You are right to point out that we live in an era where we can bring to bear the entirety of these textual exemplars and analyze them differentially using computers instead of waiting or hoping that some scholars will engage in such mind-numbing work for our benefit.
I know there are probably hundreds of "pay for" Bible study software and LOGOS probably has a monopoly on those who are pursuing degrees in Divinity and Theology. Hey Vic they even have Catholic and Orthodox modules for LOGOS now! :) For the 'poor layman' I know there there is eSword and a host of others for a lot less than LOGOS and just about anything can be found on the web or at some not for cost academic sites. But I have grown fond of Biblehub.com. It gives you a lot of the functions of eSword along with the Strongs lexicon, numerous commentaries, geography, and if you can read it the various Hebrew and Greek manuscripts used even the translation. Not to mention most of the more popular Protestant and Catholic Bible versions even side by side verse comparison. So Vic a lot of what you may want to do, may already be at your finger tips as a start.
But it's not mechanically translated, and that's the KEY to exegesis, from my perspective. Finally, I'd have the Torah read hieroglyphically.
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.
Ever see the hyper-Calvinists explain how "world does not mean world" in John 3:16? There's some real textual acrobatics. The list of examples could drag on and on.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. 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.
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.
Ah, well, it's interesting to see how you arrive at your overall spiritual conclusions. But to relate to the matter at hand, the point is that you seem to be placing a certain emphasis on the lack of an official doctrinal belief in an afterlife. And the OT text does indicate there were a sizable number of ancient Jews who were aware of the idea of an afterlife and may have believed in it, no matter what the priests off in Jerusalem insisted. You also have contemporary sources, like Ben Shapiro who describes himself as a modern Orthodox Jew - which he probably is - and he says that there is no heaven/hell in Judaism. Yet I don't believe that Ben Shapiro is the Jewish pope and entitled to speak for all Jews. And, of course, among contemporary Jewish young people, there is a pretty strong tide toward secularism and intermarriage with Gentiles, not so different than seeing cradle Catholics marrying Protestant types. Since the OT text indicates a Jewish belief in an afterlife, then we can understand certain Jewish traditions better: It is probably fairer to say that Judaism has no dogma of a heaven and hell (as Christianity does) but it does insist that men have an eternal soul that transcends death. But how many contemporary people who identify as Jewish hold any particular set of ideas about an afterlife or about heaven and hell, well, who knows?
That sounds about right for Jews. Now, add in this fact: the place of purification the Jews call "Gehenna". Gehenna is a parched place of fire - Hell, if you will. Jesus spoke of Gehenna, without defining it (he didn't need to: the Jews already knew what it was). In the parable of the unforgiving servant, the king throws the unforgiving servant into prison to be tormented "until the last penny is paid". Jesus promises that your heavenly Father will do the same to do unless you forgive others. This prison where one is tormented "until the last penny is paid", is Gehenna. That's where sins that are not forgiven are paid. Jewish tradition limits the time there to one year. More logically, the maximum time there would be 6 years, or perhaps 49 - given the forgiveness of debt in the 7th year, and the Jubilee of the 50th year. Some theologize that the King would keep the unforgiving servant there FOREVER and torment him FOREVER and create a doctrine of an eternal hell from that, but that ignores that God's law cut off all debt in the 6th year, and even cut off foreign slavery in the 50th year. So, Gehenna is Purgatory, and it's not forever. The Catholic theologians resist this, saying that Purgatory "is not in the Bible directly" (yes, it is: it is called Gehenna), that Purgatory is arrived at through reason (no, Jesus revealed it directly), and that Purgatory is only for believing Catholics, and only for the purification of venial sins (two things made up out of wholecloth that not only have nothing to do with anything Jesus said, but rather contradict it - and therefore are to be discarded as erroneous without further discussion). Other Christians say there is no Purgatory, or Hell, and it's eternal. This contradicts Jesus and is therefore to be discarded as erroneous without further discussion.
This notion is something that Jews say that early Christians and contemporary Christians misunderstand about Judaism. It certainly does have parallels to the ideas of the Roman empire's state church and how it promoted ideas about a doctrine of Purgatory. I think it is likely mistaken to insist that all Jews of the ancient era believed with absolute uniformity in certain of these doctrines in the same way that they believed in and uniformly practiced circumcision or key dietary restrictions like consuming delicious bacon or shellfish or cleanliness rituals. For those, there was no deviation for anyone who called themselves a Jew. I think there was a lot more variety on matters of lesser doctrine like the particulars of the afterlife or what kind of heaven (or hell or purgatory) might be expected after death. There are serious and fundamental doctrines that no religion allows any real challenge to. So Jews might hold some considerable differences in their beliefs about the particulars of the afterlife, unlike their insistence on certain basic doctrines on the required religious practices of all Jews since ancient times like the avoidance of pork or the use of circumcision to bring infants into the Abrahamic covenant with God.
I don't dispute what you wrote. There are different views on Gehenna/Purgatory in the Talmud - how long does one stay there, etc. The key point that I was trying to make was that in Jesus' time, Gehenna was so popularly understood among Jews that he could use it in his teaching, without having to explain anything about it, without having to define the word. So, while certainly all Jews didn't believe it existed, the whole crowd knew what it WAS (whether they believed in it or not) and understood what he was talking about. That's why he could just use the word referring to the place without definition, without explaining himself. When he spoke of Gehenna, he was not revealing something new to the crowd - that was not his point. Gehenna was the backdrop for the moral lessons he was teaching. Sort of like "confession" when speaking to a non-Catholic Christian. You may not actually HAVE the practice in your denomination, or believe that it's good or wholesome, but EVERYBODY knows what Catholic confession IS, more or less - it's part of the popular culture, in the movies, etc. Nobody has to define what he means by saying "going to Confession", because the society knows what that is. In a similar vein, Jesus could just use Gehenna as a literary device for audiences of peasants and fishermen all over Palestine, because the average person know what that was. That's what I meant. By saying that Jesus "revealed Gehenna", I am pointing to the fact that Jesus is the Son of God, and before him, while there are hints at life after death and the possibility of punishment, when he speaks and simply uses the term, it's the first time that the Mouth of God RATIFIES the concept, revealing it as a real waystation on the road of life and afterlife. Before Jesus, there were the popular beliefs in life after death, etc., but with Jesus explicitly teaching on that basis, folk religion moves up to being direct divine revelation from the very mouth of God - which is an entirely different and surer thing that it was before. The Gospels present a divided Jewish community, with the priestly Sadducees not believing in resurrection, and the Pharisees believing in it. For all of the "clarity" supposedly in the old testament about resurrection, the priestly class did not see it...meaning that assertions of clarity or very much overblown. The family hand-picked by God to serve in the role of oracle and keeper of the sacred, to minister at the altar - they somehow missed the "clear" references to the resurrection in the OT (because it's not there clearly, my point yesterday). The Pharisees clearly saw the whispers and shadows of it there in the OT, and believed in it. But God did not reveal it directly until Jesus, who answered the question: Yes, there's an afterlife, Purgatory, Paradise, a resurrection a final judgment, the City of God and the Lake of Fire - precise revelations of what, where, when, how and who. Nothing like that existed before. THAT was revealed by God, directly, in personam Christi. The Jews did not have that information directly revealed by God. THAT is a feature of the New Covenant - that it is about the Afterlife, primarily, not this life (though what one does in this life determines the disposition of things then later.)
#342. To: Vicomte13, redleghunter, watchman, A Pole, A K A Stone (#341)
I can't deny your point. It's the same one that redleghunter and I were using to try to establish that ancient Jews were familiar with some notion of heaven/hell, whether the priesthood in Jerusalem agreed or not. Turns out those priests were #FakeJews, to use a Trumpian turn of phrase. Just don't turn me in to the SPLC. LOL The Pharisees clearly saw the whispers and shadows of it there in the OT, and believed in it. For all the descriptions of Pharisees and Sadducees in the NT, I have never felt very confident that I grasp their most passionately held religious doctrines. It's that thing I mentioned a few posts back about how different we are from the ancient peoples, even from those for whom we have considerable textual description, like the Pharisees in the NT. We know what we are told in the NT but I always suspect there has to be The Rest Of The Story. I think it was you who mentioned some posts back that the Sadducees were the real and most dangerous enemies of Jesus, not the Pharisees. Yet it was the Pharisees who tried to catch Jesus in tricky arguments or violating Jewish practice, to the point where He cursed them all as vipers, making any who followed them twice as fit for hell as they were themselves. Matthew 23:15 KJV [Yep, the KJV translators used 'hell' but other versions use 'gehenna'.]
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#4. To: Gatlin, misterwhite (#1)
The officer tested the powder, and it tested positive for cocaine with two different kits …
#6. To: Tooconservative (#4)
to be so unaware of the properties of crystal cocaine and how it looks if exposed to moisture.
#8. To: misterwhite (#6)
It could have been wet/damp powdered cocaine.
#13. To: Tooconservative (#8)
He was trained. He has no excuse for being so ignorant.
#19. To: misterwhite (#13)
(Edited)
What's he supposed to do when the substance tests positive -- twice? Let the guy go because he's black?
#30. To: A K A Stone, misterwhite (#19)
AKA to whitey: Do you go down on cops?
#33. To: Tooconservative, A K A Stone (#30)
Not wanting to intrude here but I thought I'd pass along this ugly rumor.
#34. To: misterwhite, Tooconservative, A K A Stone (#33)
(Edited)
Do you go down on cops?
Tooconservative to A K A Stone: I heard he does suck a few nightsticks. Not wanting to intrude here but I thought I'd pass along this ugly rumor.
Misterwhite to Tooconservative, A K A Stone
I say that you are absolutely correct on the defamation lawsuit if you cared to file one.
#35. To: Gatlin, A K A Stone, Tooconservative (#34)
I say that you are absolutely correct on the defamation lawsuit if you cared to file one.
#39. To: Deckard (#35)
(Edited)
Yeah good luck with that Parsons.
#41. To: Gatlin (#39)
Why are you appealing to a nonexistent ‘luck’ when it is God who directs the events of the world?
#43. To: watchman (#41)
I sometimes find myself saying "good luck" to the unbeliever...because that's about all they have...time and chance.
#44. To: Tooconservative (#43)
Isn't that just some variety of "Good luck on your little path to hell"?
#70. To: watchman, Too Conservative (#44)
Now, you've told me the symptoms, but can you pinpoint the exact cause? (I can)
#97. To: Vicomte13 (#70)
But being that I'm Catholic, all past experience has taught me that we have to re-fight the Reformation to even get to the beginning of the conversation, and that all such re-fights (which happen a million times a year all over the world) never result in getting to the beginning of the conversation. (Which is one of the reasons why the Church continues to die at an accelerating clip.)
Truth is, Christians would rather that the Church die and not exist in two or three generations, then compromise on anything, let alone admit they are wrong. Therefore, the Church is almost dead in Europe, is dying in North America, and has begun to die in Latin America.
#100. To: Tooconservative (#97)
#105. To: Vicomte13 (#100)
The truth about rebuilding the Temple is that it will end up just being the sin of I of Israel if they do it.
#107. To: watchman (#105)
According to the Bible, Israel will revive the sacrifices.
#124. To: Vicomte13 (#107)
the sacrifices cannot ever be rightly resumed
#127. To: Vicomte13 (#124)
If they can't determine the Aaronic priesthood, they'll come up with something that works for them.
#131. To: watchman (#127)
#136. To: Vicomte13, watchman (#131)
Sanhedrin have no more power to make new priests than Jeroboam, king of Israel, did.
#138. To: Tooconservative (#136)
#141. To: Vicomte13 (#138)
I know that the early Christian Jews - notably James, John and Paul - were very much into their "Jewishness" and worked very hard to synthesize the two convenants, because they just couldn't believe that the Old had nothing to do with life after death - they were very impressed with their Jewishness.
#144. To: Tooconservative (#141)
I can't imagine how you can seriously say that Paul was very much into his Jewishness. Exactly the opposite according to the New Testament and his writings.
#153. To: Vicomte13, redleghunter, watchman, A Pole (#144)
Paul goes on and on about how Jesus is the perfect unblemished lamb of sacrifice, to save "us" from our sins.
Paul did not really accept this. Rather than accept Jesus' formula for forgiveness of sins: which was exclusively that one must forgive others their sins for God to forgive them, and that one would be judged by God using the standards by which one judged other men: the merciful with mercy, and the merciless without mercy. "You shall be measured by the measure by which you measured." ... There is absolutely none of this in Paul. Paul either discarded Jesus, or never knew that Jesus taught that (the Gospels having not been written), and instead extended the Jewish Law of sacrifice to make Jesus "the perfect sacrifice" for all the sins of his followers, such that, according to Paul, the blood of Jesus washes away all sins of all followers of Jesus, and the consequences of sin.
Paul's theology annuls Jesus's teaching about the forgiveness of sins, and substitutes the Torah blood sacrifice of animals - in this case Jesus - for the forgiveness of sins of individuals with regards to the afterlife.
But Paul was wrong about that, dead wrong. It's a lovely story, but it was neither true for the Jews nor for the Gentiles. Animal (and human) sacrifice never forgave Gentile sins, and while Jesus - the perfect lamb of God - his sacrifice DID cover the sins of Israel theretofore, and DID serve to allow Israel to proceed forward blamelessly under the Torah - but Israel pitched headlong into the sin of its high priesthood having killed him - an innocent man - to get there, and then having rejected Jesus' message along with him.
Paul the Pharisee was proud of his Judaism, and desperately sought to give a significance to it under the New Covenant.
It is, I'm sure, going to be at the very heart of the division between you and me. And it ultimately comes down to a matter of authority: Jesus or Paul, or some blend of the two.
Had Jesus NOT died on the Cross, had he been accepted, the same rule would apply:
Paul says differently, because Paul is a Jew, and cannot let go of the idea of animal sacrifice for the forgiveness of PERSONAL sin, vis a vis the afterlife. He's simply wrong, and he's wrong because his Jewishness won't let him simply segregate the Old Covenant and the New.
John 1:29: The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
John 1:36 And looking upon Jesus as he walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God! The Reformation itself was in large part fought over this very issue.
#185. To: Tooconservative (#153)
if Jesus hadn't been crucified and had just died of old age or disease and therefore was not the savior of mankind
#197. To: Vicomte13 (#185)
Your "Therefore" is wrong. Jesus' death didn't make him the savior of mankind.
#199. To: redleghunter (#197)
Jesus did say:
#222. To: Vicomte13 (#199)
grave two days later.
#227. To: A K A Stone (#222)
#238. To: Vicomte13 (#227)
Died Friday.3 PM. Still in the grave 24 hours later, 3 PM Saturday. Rose somewhere before dawn Sunday, say 4 AM, 13 hours later. Total time dead: 37 hours - a day and a half by the Greco-Roman accounting.
#242. To: A K A Stone (#238)
(Edited)
#256. To: Vicomte13, A K A Stone, TooConservative (#242)
What did I "make up"?
#258. To: redleghunter (#256)
#260. To: Vicomte13 (#258)
And I will return to my own view of all of this. I am TOTALLY INDIFFERENT to the day on which he was crucified, or rose from the dead. It makes NO DIFFERENCE WHATEVER to me, because I'm not superstitious or idolatrous. That something happened on a certain day does not make that day "more extra special", such that it matters before God.
#265. To: redleghunter, Vicomte13 (#260)
#273. To: Tooconservative (#265)
I've come up with a new way to increase Bible literacy and make a tidy sum as well.
#275. To: Vicomte13 (#273)
The age of computers allows us to do something brilliant.
#283. To: Tooconservative, Vicomte13 (#275)
It is a key advantage of using computers to tackle the sheer drudgery of manuscript comparisons. You are right to point out that we live in an era where we can bring to bear the entirety of these textual exemplars and analyze them differentially using computers instead of waiting or hoping that some scholars will engage in such mind-numbing work for our benefit.
#291. To: redleghunter (#283)
So Vic a lot of what you may want to do, may already be at your finger tips as a start.
#299. To: Vicomte13 (#291)
But it's not mechanically translated, and that's the KEY to exegesis, from my perspective.
#300. To: redleghunter, Vicomte13 (#299)
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.
#301. To: Tooconservative (#300)
Ever see the hyper-Calvinists explain how "world does not mean world" in John 3:16? There's some real textual acrobatics.
#302. To: redleghunter, Vicomte13 (#301)
Redeeming the Gentiles was always part of the plan.
#307. To: Tooconservative (#302)
#314. To: Vicomte13 (#307)
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.
#316. To: Tooconservative (#314)
But Jesus did succeed. Just not in the exact way that was expected even by his own disciples.
#317. To: Vicomte13 (#316)
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.
#326. To: Tooconservative (#317)
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.
#329. To: redleghunter, Vicomte13, watchman (#326)
Plenty of breadcrumbs in the OT. Several of Job’s dissertations mention the afterlife and resurrection.
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.
#335. To: Tooconservative (#329)
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.
#336. To: Vicomte13 (#335)
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.
According to Jewish tradition, the soul must spend some time purifying itself before it can enter the World to Come. The maximum time required for purification is 12 months, for the most evil person. To recite Kaddish for 12 months would imply that the parent was the type who needed 12 months of purification! To avoid this implication, the Sages decreed that a son should recite Kaddish for only eleven months.
#337. To: Tooconservative (#336)
#340. To: Vicomte13, redleghunter (#337)
Now, add in this fact: the place of purification the Jews call "Gehenna". Gehenna is a parched place of fire - Hell, if you will. Jesus spoke of Gehenna, without defining it (he didn't need to: the Jews already knew what it was).
#341. To: Tooconservative (#340)
Replies to Comment # 341. The key point that I was trying to make was that in Jesus' time, Gehenna was so popularly understood among Jews that he could use it in his teaching, without having to explain anything about it, without having to define the word. So, while certainly all Jews didn't believe it existed, the whole crowd knew what it WAS (whether they believed in it or not) and understood what he was talking about. That's why he could just use the word referring to the place without definition, without explaining himself. When he spoke of Gehenna, he was not revealing something new to the crowd - that was not his point. Gehenna was the backdrop for the moral lessons he was teaching.
The Gospels present a divided Jewish community, with the priestly Sadducees not believing in resurrection, and the Pharisees believing in it. For all of the "clarity" supposedly in the old testament about resurrection, the priestly class did not see it...meaning that assertions of clarity or very much overblown. The family hand-picked by God to serve in the role of oracle and keeper of the sacred, to minister at the altar - they somehow missed the "clear" references to the resurrection in the OT (because it's not there clearly, my point yesterday).
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.
End Trace Mode for Comment # 341.
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