Posts by Mephis

47

Did Jesus actually start a church to himself?

by TTWSYF in

with some 30,000 different christian denominations, how would one know which one was for real?

some folks think jesus did start a church, others think no.

Mephis

So Jesus is a literary character who DIDN"T start a church to himself, but 2000 years later a church in his honor has stood the test of time and claims it can trace it's existence back to the apostles. Plenty of countries and cultures tried to quell, but couldn't....interesting.

There's no evidence even from our earliest writings about him which suggests he established a church in his own lifetime. The first reference to an organised event for believers is after his death, and that's in celebration of a Jewish festival (Pentecost = Shavuot). Even Acts 1 has the apostles asking him whether now's the time he's going to do the Jewish Messiah thing rather than establish a church. It's all about the oral tradition and a personal salvation initially, whilst expecting his imminent re-return to do the smiting, not a church. What later happened is what later happened, but right from its beginnings there is huge variations in beliefs. Even who/what Jesus was is up for debate for centuries. You'd think that would be one of the first things to be resolved by any organised church. There's a vague common theme to it all, but there's lots of riffing on that.
How could it be otherwise when someone could stand up and claim a divine revelation which changes things? Or a new supposed saying from Jesus is passed around some communities but not others? One does get the impression that one could always corral four christians in a room and end up getting five different versions of what Christianity is meant to be.
One of my favorite quotes on the historicity/mythicist debate is "if there were a historical Jesus, there certainly isn't now". Seems to be where I'm at with things. A kernel of truth in there, but what is built upon that is something most different to what it was when it began,

152

If YOU had to make the decision, would you respect a JW relatives wish to refuse a blood transfusion?

by nicolaou in

a few years after i quit the meetings my mum needed her medical directive signed and witnessed and she asked if i'd do it.

i was surprised to say the least!.

i think she was just angling to include me and maybe find some lever to get me involved again.

Mephis

They're meant to be christians, so I'm sure they'd forgive me for paying more attention to a doctor than supposed commands from a god I don't believe exists. The reversal of that is a bit more problematic as, if I'm dead, I'm hardly going to be in a position to do much of anything even if their beliefs prove correct.

47

Did Jesus actually start a church to himself?

by TTWSYF in

with some 30,000 different christian denominations, how would one know which one was for real?

some folks think jesus did start a church, others think no.

Mephis

Personal opinion on the Peter/church thing, I'd suggest that Matthew is a gospel written for a Greek speaking Jewish community. It seems like an appeal to a more Jewish form of Christianity, and, if it was written late in the first century, then one has the obvious resistance in some branches of Christianity towards moving away from that. So an appeal to Peter as the authority on church matters may have been more in line with a unifying (on this issue) branch of christianity which still retained essential elements of Judaism. eg. see The Diadache of a little later for how Christian beliefs were superimposed on Jewish rites in a way to allow for Gentiles.

On the Mithras ideas, I'll defer to Clauss (The Roman Cult of Mithras). So much isn't known and so much of what was once 'known' seems to merely be clumsy nineteenth and early twentieth century supposition based on not a lot. I do know that Praetextatus was clearly not a christian - Jerome makes that point inescapably obvious in letter XXIII by contrasting his hopes for an afterlife with those of a good christian woman who'd died.

47

Did Jesus actually start a church to himself?

by TTWSYF in

with some 30,000 different christian denominations, how would one know which one was for real?

some folks think jesus did start a church, others think no.

Mephis

The point is it's not built while he's alive. And there's no mention of him establishing one when he returns after death. His disciples had all vanished off to do what they'd been doing before following him.

There's certainly little in the way of formal doctrine established in the early Christian writings - it's all based on interpretation either of writings about Jesus, writings about what he said, or the teachings of those who knew him or who claimed to have had personal divine revelation from him. It's a cacophony of beliefs rather than a fixed catechism held in common. There are some beliefs which seem to have been beyond the pale, but 'orthodoxy', such as it was, wasn't really coming from one recognised authority. Were the Christians of Alexandria more correct than those in Antioch? Or Jerusalem? Or Rome? There's different branches, different slants, different influences at work even in the early days of Christianity. And you catch glimpses of that even in what eventually formed the canon of the New Testament.

47

Did Jesus actually start a church to himself?

by TTWSYF in

with some 30,000 different christian denominations, how would one know which one was for real?

some folks think jesus did start a church, others think no.

Mephis

I always thought that Jesus started HIS church on Peter and the apostles

Even accepting they are Jesus' own words, it's "will build" not "have built" or "am building", no?

7

bible author and dates

by Nihilistic Journey in

i seem to recall in either the green bible or the black/red leather bible a list of bible books with the supposed writer and approximate date of writing.

could anyone share that with me if you have that available?

thank you.

Mephis

1984 edition. p.1548/9 is the list. Not sure if that's changed from what's on website currently.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6Yoi3LAtDtBcmVQclZvamd6bVE/view?usp=sharing

138

How many of you actually KNOW the bible OR God???

by Mark Zyche in

since jws are sooooooo terrible and full of lies.

what the heck do you think about fat santa, and and days later the celebration of janus?.

since you seem to be so good at looking at the "lies of the watchtower" what do you people think of your lives now, religiously speaking?

Mephis

WHAT DO ANY OF YOU APES KNOW ABOUT THE BIBLE.

More than any JW who still believes what is peddled in the WT. Thanks for asking. As you're obviously speaking from a position of authority on the subject, a question to you if I may. As Jude liberally quotes from the Book of Enoch, why do you think it was so problematic for it to be accepted into the canon? If we all pretended it was written by one of the named 'prophets' and pretended it was older than its attested dates to fit in with that, would that problem go away as it did with Revelation?

47

Did Jesus actually start a church to himself?

by TTWSYF in

with some 30,000 different christian denominations, how would one know which one was for real?

some folks think jesus did start a church, others think no.

Mephis

I'm personally of the view that Jesus started what would otherwise be called a Jewish apocalyptic cult apart from the fact that he decided he was divine rather than just a run of the mill Jewish messiah. Initially less a church and more a mendicant personality cult.

168

Where to draw the line: how Platonism haunts our discourse and the search for exorcism

by slimboyfat in

jw
friends

in the discussion about race i adopted a position i am not entirely comfortable with.

i think there is a sense in which it is useful to distinguish categories of description that can be fruitfully defended (apples and bananas) and those that cannot (caucasian or other racial descriptions for example).

but there is a more fundamental sense in which i believe that everything is socially constructed, every single line you can think of.

Mephis

Blame the Anglo-Saxons and the parts of the country which remembered the 'wey' post conquest. ;)

168

Where to draw the line: how Platonism haunts our discourse and the search for exorcism

by slimboyfat in

jw
friends

in the discussion about race i adopted a position i am not entirely comfortable with.

i think there is a sense in which it is useful to distinguish categories of description that can be fruitfully defended (apples and bananas) and those that cannot (caucasian or other racial descriptions for example).

but there is a more fundamental sense in which i believe that everything is socially constructed, every single line you can think of.

Mephis

But to the basic question: how do we know mankind is equipped to ask and answer questions about the world in a way that relates to the world in itself rather than simply our perspective? Since all sorts of creatures have variously developed senses of their surroundings, to accept that the perspective of the rational human represents objective reality, is to prioritise its perspective as being above all those other creatures. The human brain is therefore said to be the only known mind device in the universe capable of understanding the universe. But how can we be sure we are not misunderstanding the nature of the world in itself at such a basic level we can never see it?

The human brain isn't equipped for some questions for some pretty basic reasons. Captain Caveman has a habit of stopping and pondering the meaning of black and orange stripes and their relationship to the greater cosmos, Captain is now an ex-Caveman and that genetic line is extinct.
But... that still doesn't quite justify going all solipsistic on this for me. Because we can formulate the difficult questions. We can ask whether a rock is pulled towards the earth or whether the earth is rushing up to meet it. The finite human brain seems very ill-equipped to deal with infinity, but we play around the edges and find out interesting things. We pose questions in maths and get back answers which lead to new questions and new frames of reference. Science is beginning to hit the point where we need to take stock again of what the meaning of 'truth' is because we are outrunning our capability to measure and verify theory, yet that's not a locked in condition. There may be ways round that, just as there were ways to prove the existence of wee bugs which caused disease rather than them being the result of a grumpy divine being having a morality strop.
And returning to my initial point, in a society/culture/environment shaped to encourage Captain Caveman's speculation those recessive genes and odd outputs of the grand genetic lottery which were once dead-ends stop being so. We're not immutably fixed as a species into how we are now, nor in how we perceive things as we do now. There's always room for progress :)