A keeper for sure.If the true God don't like it he can show himself.-Danny
BODY...SOUL...SPIRIT.....THE MESSIANIC HOPE............the source
by Terry 31 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Terry
The above topic Subject line: BODY...SOUL...SPIRIT...THE MESSIANIC HOPE...the source was part of a much longer post that I had almost finishedwhen the pinky of my right hand slipped and hit the Del key from over on the number pad. It had the unexpected effect of shutting down my browser window and wiping out my entire post!!
After brooding awhile I wrote the whole dadgum thing again somewhat differently.
Anyway...
All that to say I had originally wanted to tie the language of the Jesus Messiah to the Trinity view of Paul by focusing on the use of those particular words. Somehow in the re-write that fell away. No great loss I suppose.
It is my view that Judaism was never the monolithic body we have been led to believe it was historically by the Watchtower Society.
Roughly, the family heads in tribal life seem to have run a primitive society with all the usual claptrap about local gods just like most other ethnic groups until they encountered much larger societies and suddenly started having the epiphany that some changes were necessary.
I think Judaism was in flux almost constantly when necessity brought them face to face with more polished governance and religio-ritualistic philosophies.
The idea of having their very own king is a bit of a clue to that. We are fed the silly idea that God (with his feelings hurt) begrudgingly goes along with the tribes idea of mimicking other nations. So, god gets to play bridesmaid on that one. The ritual of ANOINTING is more or less officially invented.
It seems highly suspect to me that YHWH had planned all along to use the anointing of a King to lead Israel when he was so pouty about the idea at its beginning. Very suspicious, indeed! All Israel needed to do was wait for the PROPER?? King??
Israel was no different than any other human-led organization; it changed when it was forced to change to give people at the top more control and public policy put the best possible face on it.
The three most intrusive changes historically seem to have been
1. Egyptian encounter because of famine which led to (possibly) the invention of monotheism
under Akhenaton.
2.Babylonian captivity with the enlarging of the theological foundation to include the personhood of Evil (i.e. Satan)
3.Greek domination after Alexander's conquests.
What we view as history is largely a function of the writings that remain+ how the pieces seem to fit with archeological findings.
There can be little doubt, however, that each of the above 3 encounters with alien civilizations left a huge footprint on Semitic thinking and mythos.
1.Leaving Egypt became a celebration of selection by the ONE TRUE GOD and the foundation of the nation under his WRITTEN LAW.
2.Two theologies merged when the diaspora fused with those left behind and the cut and paste SCRIPTURES which resulted (redaction/"discovery") supported a view of Israel as a people of a larger DESTINY.
3.Greek logic, intelligence and methodology captivated the dazzling minds of genius to put flesh on the idea that theocracy must be accomplished by human means under the flag of being God's chosen.
All of the above informs me that Israel was NOT a people of destiny. They were sock puppets of mere historical happenstance. They were often in the way of larger forces and got manhandled now and then. How they reacted was always REINTERPRETED in terms of a manifest destiny.
The Ritual Law system didn't work for the Jews at all! It was the cause of their eventual downfall. It was necessary to shed this law in order to compete with the nations around them.
Note: How was Pompey able to defeat Jerusalem? He observed the Jews would not fight on their Sabbath! He timed his attack to co-incide with their ritual observance of the law!! How neglectful and naughty of Jehovah to fail to rush to their rescue since they were observing his law!
At any rate, one of the reasons the Bible has fascinated people over so many centuries is that its density and complexity tend to lead anybody anywhere on whatever merry chase for "truth" they wish to pursue.
My thesis is that God did not shape Israel or its theology. It was the impact of more sophisticated nations clashing with tribal ethnicity who were really full of themselves who turned around and put the best possible explanation on this constant buffeting by adapting to their fate through a theology of anointing and selection.
THE WATCHTOWER SOCIETY DID A SIMILAR THING FROM 1918 ONWARD WHEN THEY ___EXPLAINED__THEIR TROUBLES IN "TERMS OF" DIVINE SELECTION AND ANOINTING.
A more commonplace example would be the rule of thumb that says: when I am persecuted it proves I am doing God's will. Simplistic? Certainly, but, it turns personal failure into a badge of divine approval.
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Sunnygal41
Terry, you write as though you are trying to quell those inner voices that we all have, telling us that we are resisting something that is our innate weakness and don't want to own..........
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Narkissos
Terry...
Your point # 1 is debatable imo (the famine story belongs to the very late novel of Joseph; the whole Egypt-Exodus-Conquest is a foundational legend; with the noteworthy exception of Psalm 104, I doubt Akhenaton's Atum-monolatry had much influence on Israelite beliefs; monotheism really emerged under Persian influence in the 6th century BC).
Anyway your overall argument was powerfully developed by Nietzsche (The Antichrist, 25):
The history of Israel is invaluable as a typical history of an attempt to denaturize all natural values: I point to five facts which bear this out. Originally, and above all in the time of the monarchy, Israel maintained the right attitude of things, which is to say, the natural attitude. Its Jahveh was an expression of its consciousness of power, its joy in itself, its hopes for itself: to him the Jews looked for victory and salvation and through him they expected nature to give them whatever was necessary to their existence--above all, rain. Jahveh is the god of Israel, and consequently the god of justice: this is the logic of every race that has power in its hands and a good conscience in the use of it. In the religious ceremonial of the Jews both aspects of this self-approval stand revealed. The nation is grateful for the high destiny that has enabled it to obtain dominion; it is grateful for the benign procession of the seasons, and for the good fortune attending its herds and its crops.--This view of things remained an ideal for a long while, even after it had been robbed of validity by tragic blows: anarchy within and the Assyrian without. But the people still retained, as a projection of their highest yearnings, that vision of a king who was at once a gallant warrior and an upright judge--a vision best visualized in the typical prophet (i.e., critic and satirist of the moment), Isaiah. --But every hope remained unfulfilled. The old god no longer could do what he used to do. He ought to have been abandoned. But what actually happened? simply this: the conception of him was changed--the conception of him was denaturized; this was the price that had to be paid for keeping him.--Jahveh, the god of "justice"--he is in accord with Israel no more, he no longer visualizes the national egoism; he is now a god only conditionally. . . The public notion of this god now becomes merely a weapon in the hands of clerical agitators, who interpret all happiness as a reward and all unhappiness as a punishment for obedience or disobedience to him, for "sin": that most fraudulent of all imaginable interpretations, whereby a "moral order of the world" is set up, and the fundamental concepts, "cause" and "effect," are stood on their heads. Once natural causation has been swept out of the world by doctrines of reward and punishment some sort of unnatural causation becomes necessary: and all other varieties of the denial of nature follow it. A god who demands--in place of a god who helps, who gives counsel, who is at bottom merely a name for every happy inspiration of courage and self-reliance. . . Morality is no longer a reflection of the conditions which make for the sound life and development of the people; it is no longer the primary life-instinct; instead it has become abstract and in opposition to life--a fundamental perversion of the fancy, an "evil eye" on all things. What is Jewish, what is Christian morality? Chance robbed of its innocence; unhappiness polluted with the idea of "sin"; well-being represented as a danger, as a "temptation"; a physiological disorder produced by the canker worm of conscience...
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Terry
Nietzsche
That pesky Nietzsche!
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Pole
Actually, I have never been able to believe that we're all fatally influenced by something one ancient philosopher or another pulled out of his ass a few thousands years ago. I mean this may well be part of the story, but to depend on it is like trying to explain the world view of every peasant (And I apologize all the peasants reading this post ;-) in terms of some purely behaviourist mechanism - even if it works indirectly. And that smacks of those etymological anegdotes which always trace the origin of certain words to certain individuals.
How about a moderate theory of innateness for a change? Plato and a 15th century peasant thought alike because they were both humans and not because the peasant had read all of Plato's available works (or whoever wrote them)? Couldn't it be the other side of the same coin?
In short I think we should't forget about what Sunnygal41 wrote...
Otherwise I see your point, Terry.
Pole -
Sunnygal41
Pole, 'tis all too common a failing of our humanness, no great stretch of understanding needed.
I think Terry is a brilliant man, and quite passionately against religion..........I would say: Terry, don't get stuck in bitterness against the WTS. Don't let them divert anymore of your great intellect or energy from your real life course. Either that or he's a deeply frustrated orator!
Terri
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Leolaia
It is my view that Judaism was never the monolithic body we have been led to believe it was historically by the Watchtower Society.
Absolutely correct, and neither was Christianity (which drew from the different streams of Judaism). Of course, the NT does name different Jewish groups (i.e. Zealots, Sadducees, Pharisees, scribes, etc.), and more are known from Josephus and other sources (including the Essenes, the 'am ha-'arets majority, etc.) as well. Also important is to recognize (along with recent scholarship) that no group was considered "normative" Judaism; the Pharisees were more of one sect of out many than viewed by the majority as the center of Judaism (this status was post-AD 70 at the expense of the Sadducees). Unfortunately, there is still a bias among many to look to a single "normative" Christianity when in reality the "Jesus movement" was diverse from the beginning, as the NT itself indicates.
Roughly, the family heads in tribal life seem to have run a primitive society with all the usual claptrap about local gods just like most other ethnic groups until they encountered much larger societies and suddenly started having the epiphany that some changes were necessary.
In fact, when you read the Deuteronomistic History (i.e. from Judges to 2 Kings) or the work of the Chronicler, it only presents a few "good kings" who worshipped Yahweh and a whole slew of "bad kings" who worshipped other gods, and the ideology presents the Israelites and Judeans in general as unfaithful to Yahweh in general (hence explaining why Yahweh did not protect the nation from Assyrian and Babylonian attack). Although there is tremendous spin put on the history, it is quite apparent from a straightforward reading of these books that henotheistic Yahwism in pre-exilic Israel was a minority religion. And archaeological research has confirmed this.
The idea of having their very own king is a bit of a clue to that. We are fed the silly idea that God (with his feelings hurt) begrudgingly goes along with the tribes idea of mimicking other nations. So, god gets to play bridesmaid on that one. The ritual of ANOINTING is more or less officially invented.
All of this is native Canaanite royal mythology, which holds that each nation or political entity is ruled by a heavenly "son of El" and the king is divinized as either the incarnation of this god or adopted as a "son of El" as well....so that there is a joint rulership of the state by the king and the god. In ancient Ugarit, the king was regarded as a god and the kingdom was believed to be ruled from heaven by Baal. In the case of Israel, the king was described as adopted by Yahweh as his son ("anointed" by him), while Yahweh was the heavenly ruler of the kingdom. The older idea (found in Deuternomy 32:8-9) is that Yahweh was one of many gods of the nations (i.e. the 70 sons of El corresponding to the 70 nations), and wars between the nations reflect battles between the gods in heaven (such as Yahweh fighting against Chemosh of Moab, compare Judges 11:23-24 with the inscription in the King Mesha stele, discussed here). When monotheism arose in Judaism after the exile, Michael the archangel took Yahweh's place as the patron "prince" of Israel, fighting against the "princes" of the other nations (here there is a demotion of divinity in accordance with monotheism, "gods" become angelic "princes"), such as we find conflicts between Michael and the "prince of Persia" or the "prince of Greece" in Hebrew Daniel.
It seems highly suspect to me that YHWH had planned all along to use the anointing of a King to lead Israel when he was so pouty about the idea at its beginning. Very suspicious, indeed! All Israel needed to do was wait for the PROPER?? King??
It's all about realizing the prophecies about the restitution of Israel from Jeremiah, Deutero-Isaiah and Trito-Isaiah, Ezekiel, Zechariah, etc. etc. All those prophecies remained unfulfilled until the second century BC (hence the expectations in Daniel), and unfulfilled in the first century AD. Some streams of Christianity offered the idea that the prophecies have been fulfilled by the person of Christ, while more apocalyptic streams still waited for a future fulfillment of some parts of these older prophecies (most clearly seen in Revelation). And to this day, some (such as the JWs) are still waiting for the literal fulfillment of these expectations from bygone days.
1. Egyptian encounter because of famine which led to (possibly) the invention of monotheism under Akhenaton.
This is a widely repeated misnomer....Akhenaton was not a monotheist, he was a henotheist. And pre-exilic Israelite religion was not monotheistic either, but at most monolatrous. Full-blown monotheism appears in Deutero-Isaiah after the exile, under Persian influence, at odds in fact with earlier or contemporaneous characterizations (most strikingly by comparing Deutero-Isaiah with the Priestly writer of the Pentateuch).
Babylonian captivity with the enlarging of the theological foundation to include the personhood of Evil (i.e. Satan)
True to some extent, but even after the exile Satan does not yet have the character he has in Christianity...he still has the traditional legal role of accuser within the traditional polytheistic/ henotheistic "divine council" paradigm (cf. Job and Zechariah, written in the Persian period). It is not until the Hellenistic period in which we find him close to the Christian model (i.e. Mastema in second-century Jubilees is half-way there, while the "angel of darkness"/Belial of Qumran and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs fully adopt a dualist parallelism between Satan and God). Just like God, it takes a few centuries for Satan to evolve.
3.Greek logic, intelligence and methodology captivated the dazzling minds of genius to put flesh on the idea that theocracy must be accomplished by human means under the flag of being God's chosen.
I'm not sure about this....militarism was an old feature of henotheistic Yahwism going back to pre-exilic times, i.e. skirmishes over Israel's or Judah's borders as involving disputes between gods (and humiliation of the opponent's god). In the Persian and early Hellenistic period, the focus was more on conversion of pagans to Judaism (cf. Zechariah 8:20-22, Jonah, Tobit 4:6-7, Daniel 4-6 LXX), i.e. Jews in the diaspora play a key role in restoring Israel through peaceful spread of the religion. It is not until the dawn of the second century BC where we finally find Jewish militarism against Gentile powers, and for some (i.e. the Jews fighting against Scopas) this was motivated by apocalyptic expectations, while for others (i.e. the Maccabees) this was motivated by an actual ongoing persecution (with religious aims of restoring the priesthood and Temple) and civil war conflict with Jews of different political allegiances. I suspect the militarism and use of "human means" to accomplish apocalyptic goals (i.e. "to fulfill the vision", Daniel 11:14) had more to do with impatience of waiting for God to stop the things the things happening to them than philosophical ideas from the Greeks. But I do agree that Greek royal theology was an influence in its divinization of kings (i.e. Antiochus I Soter, Antiochus II Theos, Antiochus IV Epiphanes), which was repugnant to the author(s) of Daniel who also construed a heavenly deliverer (i.e. "one like a son of man," the stone unmade by human hands, Michael the great prince). But the Greco-Roman divinization construct was definitely lurking behind the Jesus traditions, especially in the use of the term parousia to describe his advent, the title "son of God" (employed by the emperors), and the relationship between divinization tales about the Emperors and the adoptionist christology of Jesus in Mark.
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Star Moore
Hi Terry, I liked these definitions, I would add that breath and life must be added the soul and spirit definitions
BODY: what we use to become conscious of the the world around us.
SOUL: what we use to become conscious of our SELF as an identity, ego and will.
SPIRIT: what we use to become conscious of the divine: God.
The above largely comes to us by way of Greek philosophy.
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Terry
Actually, I have never been able to believe that we're all fatally influenced by something one ancient philosopher or another pulled out of his ass a few thousands years ago. I mean this may well be part of the story, but to depend on it is like trying to explain the world view of every peasant (And I apologize all the peasants reading this post ;-) in terms of some purely behaviourist mechanism - even if it works indirectly. And that smacks of those etymological anegdotes which always trace the origin of certain words to certain individuals.
How about a moderate theory of innateness for a change? Plato and a 15th century peasant thought alike because they were both humans and not because the peasant had read all of Plato's available works (or whoever wrote them)? Couldn't it be the other side of the same coin?
In short I think we should't forget about what Sunnygal41 wrote...
Otherwise I see your point, Terry.
PoleHee hee hee, you is funny, Pole
Here is how I see this whole influence business working.
Imagine this scenario.......(harp glissando.......)
You are born pre-18th century into a world without electricity or technology. No radio, telephone, news broadcasts, internet or easy access libraries.
Where do you get your world view? Your ideas of how everything works? Where and how do you form concepts of how humanity fits in to the Big Picture?
Why from your family and community; that's where!
The farther we go back in time; the more radically uninformed people were and the greater the exposure to non-fact, non-science, and nonsense.
What caused disease? (Germ theory is really a shockingly recent discovery) Some thought it was "bad air". Others thought God was punishing them or that devils were inhabiting them. Or, maybe a witch had placed a curse on you.
Where did these silly and feckless ideas come from? Superstitions abounded because of the rampant imaginations of the uninformed. But, mostly, crazy crackpot "explanations" were the results of respected and respectable people ACTING AS THOUGH THEY KNEW THEY WERE TRUE.
Opinion from a respectable person has strong influence.
AUTHORITY we call it.
If so and so says it; it must be true and who are YOU to say otherwise?!
Well, those Greek fellows Socrates, Plato and Aristotle held the civilised world in thrall for many centuries (and beyond).
They influenced the thinking of people because they not only offered answers to questions that puzzled intelligent folks, but, they gave the individual a way to figure things out independantly just using the brain as a tool of thought! Radical!
The Greeks had much leisure time (thanks to their slaves) to spend arguing about such matters, you see. And there was this narrow window of opportunity for them to work things out using genius and ingenuity and methodology. All this between wars, mind you. You might say they were blessed by a proliferation of great minds in a particularly fertile time period.
But, back to your observation, Pole.
I have never been able to believe that we're all fatally influenced by something one ancient philosopher or another pulled out of his ass
We've had some very very influential thinkers and writers in the last two centuries who made such a HUGE impact on human thinking that the effect of their ideas was like tossing a boulder in a pond; the ripples reached every shore.
1.Karl Marx
2.Sigmund Freud
That should suffice for the moment.
How could these two men have such overwhelming power to change human thought? Simple: they each dealt with men's lives in a very deeply personal way by addressing the SOURCE of their WOES while seemingly offering a SOLUTION.
Karl Marx single-handedly changed the entire shape of the previous century by moving men and nations into conflict over the praxis of his ideas resulting in millions of deaths, the proliferation of weapons, upheaval of fortunes and the reach of technology was given impetus in the wake.
Freud gave us so many ideas, concepts and explanations that language itself will take years to belch up and spit out the colorations which ensued. The way people thought about themselves, others, society, sex and the very essence of what humanity is continues to be body-slammed by Freud's influence.
Both of these examples took place in sophisticated times and the ideas caught the fancy of well-educated people.
How much more so do you think the influence of such men as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle permeated the thoughts and philosophies of men in their day?
Wherever the Greeks went they took their philosophy, their vocabulary and their peculiar logic.
In Egypt they built the library at Alexandria. Why? Why did they want all the existing learning known to the world at large accessible to one and all? It was the Greek fetish for acumen that compelled their appetite for information and understanding.
The Greeks offered contagious thinking that was useful.
It wasn't until the end of the Middle Ages that Aristotle lost influence as the greatest mind that had ever existed. And, it was through experimentation that his dictums about falling bodies was demonstrably in error. (Thanks, Galileo).
The Muslim world went gah-gah over the discovery of Greek manuscripts and the logic and scientific genius of Aristotle and his forebears. At the end of the Dark Ages the birth of learning in the Renaisance can partly (if not entirely) be attributed to the re-emergence of Aristotle through the Muslim penchant for making his works available. (The progress the Arabs made in algebra gave us a set of symbols that as vastly influenced our ability to create mathematics on an entirely new plane of conception in a parallel manner of influence.)
The Greek, Euclid, gave the world what it hungered for in the form of PROOFS in his Geometry primer. That formed the basis for thinking, reasoning and DEMONSTRATING how something could be true.
Was all of this pulled out of the Greek's collective ass???
If it was, the sweet smell of success was everywhere inhaled.
Our language, our manner of thinking, our approach to heuristics, our technology all stem from the fertile Greek minds and have been enlarged upon by those who stood on the shoulders of these giants.