by James Mixon 11 Replies latest watchtower bible
Special Olympics today here in Los Angeles, the smiles on those kids faces.
I wonder how were they viewed in Jesus day, demon possessed.
It's strange how the bible omit some issues, like slavery and mentally challenged
folks. Thank God for humanitarian.
Matthew 4;24..they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and
pain those oppressed by demons, epileptics and paralytics.
OK, so what was the real problem of those oppressed by demons????
it says nothing, any one with an ailment in my opinion, from the viewpoint of ancient scripture was considered demonized.or sinful. id guess that was their explanation of a misunderstood illness. there seemed to be an awful lot of 'demon possessed' people back then. hmmm why not now?
[I wonder what bug bite or bacteria from contaminated water might have causes so many people to act crazy. maybe rabies?]
I have always strongly felt that mentally challenged persons should have never been required , expected or recommended to go door to door.
along with the frail mentally declining elderly and children
they cannot teach.
after all, the bible does say, not all of you will be teachers.
[ The last thing that would get me to follow a religion would be people with handicaps peddling magazines.]
sowhatnow "there seemed to be an awful lot of 'demon possessed' people back then.
Maybe because a lot of people had goats for pets, and maybe goats were
influenced by demons.
Actually the Hebrew Scriptures do not attribute disabilities to sin as Jews never had a concept of original sin. It is first in the New Testament that you read of a connection between illness and sin and sometimes described as demon possession. This Christian connection remains alive today, but it is not part of Judaism.
In the Tanakh physical imperfections were seen as being far from the ideal reflection of G-d, and this at first caused a lot of injustice for those who were challenged in ancient times. Only perfect male specimens could act as priests, and certain types of challenges were once barriers to disabled foreigners who wished to become a part of Israel.
But by the time of the Second Temple era this began to change. The Judaic ideal transformed from bodily integrity to one of intellectual capacity, and with this change came the reasoning that physical and mental disabilities were not obstacles in measuring one's relation to the perfection reflected from G-d as previously believed.
The Temple cult with its demands on perfect animal sacrifices however only held back progress in this area, so it was not until the Second Temple fell that these changes began progressive moves toward just treatment of the challenged and became permanent features of Tikkun Olam.
Wanted to chime in on the last post, I have to say this isn't accurate. Judaism today or the media promoted one isn't accurate to the true one, you have deffinitely confirmed this in your comment, this seems also add evidence to the modern day jewish people not being actual decendants, a hot topic of today.
I know the book of Sirach which was also found in the dead sea scrolls speaks of incest and the revelation of the sin being revealed in defected children.
Had to look it up but Sirach 23: 16 and 24-26.
There is a lie also that the Torah and Tanak are the only scriptures the hebrews accepted, along with another lie that Josephus did not consider any of the other books. Reading from his texts he does not give his opinion but merely says that the Torah and Tanak were held as the authority and that the other books had various opinions to who actually wrote them.
Demon posession was still part of Judean spiritual concepts. This continues even up into the mid-late 1800s as recorded in a dairy by a man known as Borrows in his journal The Bible in Spain. He met a leftover hebrew there who hid in Spain after the deport by pretending he was poor and stayed in the villages and country side. He spoke to him about a ruah (spirit) possession that tormented a certain catholic priest and would visit to get help.
To be honest its sounds like a lot of the protestant reformers had demons in them. I recall reading something regarding Martin Luther claiming to have had a battle yelling at demons, throwing fecal matter at demons. That's... not normal.
"It's strange how the bible omit some issues, like slavery and mentally challenged folks."
James, The Bible definitely speaks out on the issue of slavery.
Village Idiot. Yes I need to clarify my statement, Is strange how the bible don't
speak out against slavery but speaks about not to be envious of your neighbor.
If my neighbor was a free man and I a slave, hell yes I would covet my neighbor's
house.
