by IslandWoman 23 Replies latest watchtower bible
In my religious and cultural heritage, human sacrifice has always been abhored. Yet, that is what the Christ was; a human sacrifice.
The Jewish writings condemned human sacrifice, but the Christians reveled in the notion that a man died in their place.
Human sacrifice is the foundation of the Christian faith. They are no better than the Mayans!
IW
Hey IW,
What's wrong with the Mayans? Neat folks, they be! Seriously, this whole literalization of the bible has created more confusion and division in Christianity than any other issue, except perhaps simple egotism of the clergy..
carmel
Island, there's a little thing called cultural relativism you might want to consider. The Mayans used human sacrifice for quite some time in thier early history, but at the peak of the Mayan civilisation, there was very little. Most of the sacrifice was that of prisoners taken from warring tribes, which isn't too different than Jehovah's earthly forces slaying godless tribes people in the Old Testament. Not only did it give credence to the power and authority to the reigning King/Queen, but also to the Mayan dieties. The Mayans much preferred auto sacrifice..i.e. piercing ones body parts, blood letting for hallucinatory effect, beer/mushrrom/caffiene enemas, fasting, etc.....Its hard not to mix and compare cultures, but I urge you to do a little research before lumping the chrisites with a society and its religious practices that existed long before christianity, no to was mention separate and quite prosperous until the Spanish arrived.
On Auto Sacrifice:
http://www.halfmoon.org/vision.html
On Texas Maya Meetings: Best Place to Learn
http://www.mayavase.com/mayameet.html
Sincerely,
District Overbeer
Carmel,
What's wrong with the Mayans? Neat folks, they be! Seriously, this whole literalization of the bible has created more confusion and division in Christianity than any other issue, except perhaps simple egotism of the clergy..I agree!
Valis,
The Mayans, Incas and Aztecs practiced human sacrifice. This was their way, it is not a condemnation of these peoples it was the way they and many others attempted to please their gods. Not too different from the Christians' attempt to please their god.
IW
That's a very good perspective, IW.
Pat
As was acknowledged,religions which required blood pouring predated chritianity,Judaism as well.An honest comparison of very ancient "pagan" religious customs with those in the Bible is very enlightening.Nearly every feature of Isrealite worship was borrowed from cultures they had contact with.Animal sacrifice,priesthood,seasonal festivals,winged cherubs,even the vary design of it's 3 chambered temple, are found by archeologists to have predated the Jews.Christianity carried on this heritage of assimilating foreign religious customs.With the very well worn story of a son of a God dying for the sins of people.As I mentioned in another thread,the story of Virgin birth,miracles,death by impalement,ressurection,ascension,etc,all are from Persian,Greek,or Hittite sources.Every thing makes sense now doesn't it.
Caffeine enemas???
Don't tell my coffee-addicted friends about this...
Tom
What has always been interesting to me is that South American and Central American cultures developed separately, although having many simmilarities with the Western Christian experience. I'll give a few examples from the Mayan experience.
The Mayans believed in resurrection, as many of thier stories involve the continuous return of thier dieties in the form of stars, the ever returning maize, and the belief in an afterlife. The afterlife being a place where your ancestors could still have control over your existence, especially if you were nice to them. Sounds like demons to me...heehee, which they believed in along with an underworld of dead folks...
The Great White Way...or what we call the Milky way, was almost always represented by a corn stalk that also resembles a cross. This was quite a shock to the Spanish for more than one reason. See pic below..more resurrection business as it moves across the sky and disappears....and then reappears.
Immaculate conception was also a central part of thier mythology, which made the concept behind Chirstianity easy for the Mayans to assimilate into Maya. Many of thier demigods, half human/god lived on earth, which consist of many tales involving ordinary Mayan life..especially that of boy/heroes/saviours...Sound familiar? As we all know, someone forgot to mention that the Mayans wanted to keep thier own religion as well....definitely trouble in paradise. Just another fine example of bossy christians having thier way.....Oh I almost forgot..the Mayans had 4 floods, not one. Lucky bastards! Where's my straight jacket? Orderly!!!
Sincerely,
District Overbeer
IW,
According to anthropologist and Stanford University Professor of Civilization Rene Girard, the sacrificial interpretation of Jesus' death is in fact the product of a medieval literalization of N.T. metaphor. He has written extensively on this, both in Violence and the Sacred and Things Hidden Since the Founding of the World. His arguments are compelling, though technically lengthy. I could not do them justice in a single response here. I will provide a quote, however:
The Gospels only speak of sacrifices in order to reject them and deny them any validity. Jesus counters the ritualism of the Pharisees with an anti--sacrificial quotation from Hosea: "Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice'" (Matthew 9, 13)....His research led Girard to adopt Christianity.There is nothing in the Gospels to suggest that the death of Jesus is a sacrifice, whatever definition (expiation, substitution, etc.) we may give for that sacrifice. At no point in the Gospels is the death of Jesus defined as a sacrifice. The passages that are invoked to justify a sacrificial conception of the Passion both can and should be interpreted with no reference to sacrifice in any of the accepted meanings.
Certainly the Passion is presented to us in the Gospels as an act that brings salvation to humanity. But it is in no way presented as a sacrifice.
If you have really followed my argument up to this point, you will already realize that from our particular perspective the sacrificial interpretation of the Passion must be criticized and exposed as a most enormous and paradoxical misunderstanding--and at the same time as something necessary--and as the most revealing indication of mankind’s radical incapacity to understand its own violence, even when that violence is conveyed in the most explicit fashion.
....
One should ask whether these Old Testament texts have not been taken up in a spirit appropriate to the Gospels, one that completely desacralizes them. Modern readers are not interested in this possibility. Whether they call themselves believers or unbelievers, they still remain faithful to the medieval reading. Some of them do so because they want to keep the conception of a sinful humanity punished by a vengeful God; others because they are interested only in denouncing the first conception rather than in subjecting the texts to a genuine criticism. It never occurs to them that these texts, which are either fetishized or held up to ridicule, never really deciphered, could be rooted in a spirit that is quite different from the spirit of sacrificial religion.
....
First of all, it is important to insist that Christ’s death was not a sacrificial one. To say that Jesus dies, not as a sacrifice, but in order that there may be no more sacrifices, is to recognize in him the Word of God: "I wish for mercy and not sacrifices". Where that word is not obeyed, Jesus can remain. There is nothing gratuitous about the utterance of that word and where it is not followed by any effect, where violence remains master, Jesus must die. Rather than become the slave of violence, as our own word necessarily does, the Word of God says no to violence.
If you would like some information about Girard's theory or other non-violent interpretations of Jesus' death from theologians such as Lesslie Newbigin or Raymund Schwager, feel free to email me at [email protected].
Best wishes,
Rational
Valis,
The picture you sent is seen by many as an astronaut. It was also featured in the book "Chariots of the Gods".
By the time the Spanish came to America, the Maya civilization had already declined, but they had contact with other tribes.
The reason that Hernan Cortes was able to talk to Moctezuma, king of the Mexica-Aztecs, is that on their trip of exploration along the Grijalba River they had a bloody battle with the Mayas. To their surprise they found that one of their lieutenants was a Spaniard who had fallen in love with a Maya girl and fought against the Spanish. They also rescued a Catholic priest who together with the Maya/Spanish Lieutenant had been taken prisoners in an earlier battle.
The Priest accompanied Cortes, and by this time this priest spoke the Maya language. The Maya chieftain gave as tribute to Cortez a girl who spoke not only Maya but also Nahuatl, which was the language Mexica-Aztecs spoke. Her name was Malintzin. The ending "-tzin" indicates that she was of noble ancestry. To make a story short, When Cortez arrived in Veracruz, Moctezuma's emisaries were there in a couple of days. When they wanted to talk to Cortez, Malitzin would translate from Nahuatl to Maya to the Spanish priest, and the Spanish priest would translate from Maya to Spanish to Cortez, which by the way was cousin to Francisco Pizarro, the conqueror of the Inca empire.
The Incas had sporadic human sacrifices, but the Aztecs periodically sacrificed tens of thousands of their Tlaxcaltecan neighbors in their "Flowery" wars, which only purpose was to obtain sacrificial victims to their war god Huitzilopochtli to give him their hearts. The rest of the body was consumed by the people in a ceremonial banquet on which the only person who was forbidden to eat from the sacrificial victim was the warrior who had captured him. This was because he was considered to be like the father of the victim.
JRP
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
Nietzsche
