Thank you Leolaia for this very interesting post. It led me to the following paper by Thomas Römer, which also deals with other issues raised in this thread (e.g. Moses' "wives") and leads to a provocative take on the relationship between "Biblical" and "non-Biblical" stories in the Persian and Greek periods: http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/JHS/Articles/article_92.pdf
Narkissos
JoinedPosts by Narkissos
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Moses was an Israelite Egyptian Military leader who rebeled! Any thoughts or info?
by Witness 007 injosephus and other non bible sources say moses was an excellent egyptian military commander who defeated the ethiopians.
now while i'm re-reading these bible accounts i get the feeling that moses was a brutal and smart military man.
as the "meekest man" on earth he invaded many nations killing all the inhabitants, taking their land {promised by jehovah} spoils and virgins.
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Evidence Hitler and Mussolini Despised Unions
by bluesapphire ini've heard it said and i've searched the internet and found comments to this effect.
but i cannot find any quotes from hitler or mussolini themselves.
does anyone have any evidence to this?
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Narkissos
They had their own versions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_syndicalism
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Symbolisms in Revelation
by snowbird inrevelation 7:-8 i heard the count of those who were sealed: 144,000!.
they were sealed out of every tribe of israel:.
12,000 sealed from judah,.
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Narkissos
"Happy" is an untraditional but semantically correct translation of makarios, although "blessed" may better suit the function of the word in the stereotyped formal structure of pronouncement "makarios (is/be) somebody" (only NT exception, hègemai emauton makarion, I count myself fortunate in Acts 26:2). One reason for formal translations to avoid "blessed" is the possible confusion with the distinct verb which actually denotes the action of blessing (but is more rarely included in the blessing itself), eulogeô (Matthew 14:19 etc.).
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The scientific approach to "holy books"
by behemot in"remember, always, young man, that science which has become a great power in the last century, has analyzed everything divine handed down to us in the holy books.
after this cruel analysis the learned of this world have nothing left of all that was sacred.
but they have only analyzed the parts and overlooked the whole, and indeed their blindness is marvelous.
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Narkissos
PP: Neither is Judaism without (outside, out of) Christianity, Christianity without Islam, etc.
What I meant is that each new religion, as far as it is concerned, emerges from a de(con)struction of (a) former one(s) and the reconstruction of its "material" into new structures; and its fresh constructive enthusiasm is unseparable from that destructive zeal against the old; the new sacred fire is fueled by sacrilege; this doesn't mean that the old religion ceases to exist (think "old" and "new" wineskins in the Synoptic Gospels).
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Moses was an Israelite Egyptian Military leader who rebeled! Any thoughts or info?
by Witness 007 injosephus and other non bible sources say moses was an excellent egyptian military commander who defeated the ethiopians.
now while i'm re-reading these bible accounts i get the feeling that moses was a brutal and smart military man.
as the "meekest man" on earth he invaded many nations killing all the inhabitants, taking their land {promised by jehovah} spoils and virgins.
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Narkissos
An interesting discussion of proposed Egyptian elements as the background for some of the Moses stories can be read here:
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Symbolisms in Revelation
by snowbird inrevelation 7:-8 i heard the count of those who were sealed: 144,000!.
they were sealed out of every tribe of israel:.
12,000 sealed from judah,.
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Narkissos
Addition to my previous post: as an example of the negative role of Dan in end-time scenarii, read the Testament of Dan, especially chapter 5: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf08.iii.ix.html. Such ideas were carried over into early Christianity since both Irenaeus (Adversus Haereses, V,30,2) and Hippolytus (De Antichristo, 14) echo the tradition that the Antichrist would come from the tribe of Dan.
Btw, the Testament of Dan may offer another possible clue to the inclusion of Joseph -- along with (his son) Manasseh instead of (his other son) Ephraim -- in the Revelation list, in addition to the frequent criticism of Ephraim in the "prophetic" books (which in Jewish tradition includes what we term "historical" books like Judges and Samuel-Kings): Dan's "sin" is mostly against Joseph (midrashic development on Genesis 37ff); Joseph is vindicated and glorified while Dan is condemned.
A more general reflection on snowbird's remark:
According to the angel who presented it to John, we are supposed to be happy about reading it!
This imo illustrates the basic problem with Revelation (as well as with most Bible texts, but much more clearly with Revelation). It was not written to us, or for us. The original audience could understand its "symbols" quite easily because they were part of their political, religious and cultural environment. They were not "scholars," they didn't need any special knowledge to "uncipher the code," but average Christian communities of Asia Minor, as the reading instruction you refer to suggests (1:3) : as was usual back then, in a context of limited literacy, one person reads the book aloud for others to hear. This target audience has disappeared long ago, but the book remained and was eventually (and painfully) canonised. Nowwe need to delve into several specialised fields of scholarship (late Judaism, early Christianity, ancient history of the Eastern Roman empire) to understand in part what it was about. But the temptation is strong for every generation of Bible readers to shortcut such scholarship and simply assume that the book must be directly meaningful to them. For a 16th-century Protestant reader it was naturally about Reformation and Papacy; to a 21st-century American reader, it has to relate with 21st-century America.
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Symbolisms in Revelation
by snowbird inrevelation 7:-8 i heard the count of those who were sealed: 144,000!.
they were sealed out of every tribe of israel:.
12,000 sealed from judah,.
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Narkissos
The tribe of Dan was often perceived negatively in late Judaism, due to the serpent image in Genesis 49 and connection with idolatry (same for Ephraim to an extent). Such considerations did not necessarily matter much for the Christian writer(s) of Revelation but maybe more for their Jewish sources he may have used.
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paul makes no sense???
by highdose inis it just me, but when i read my bible (nwt) i found whole pages of pauls writing that i didn't understand and couldn't make head nor tail of.
i also noticed that the borg tended to only quote certain scriptures that they thought they could make sense of pauls writings, and these were quoted over and over again.
but surely the whole bible is supposed to be inspired and benifical ... bla bla bla etc?.
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Narkissos
I don't know if it is worth repeating, since so many people obviously want to keep their "hero" and "villain" figures intact at all costs, but a lot of what they hate in Paul is probably not from Paul (e.g. the anti-feminist rhetorics of the Pastorals or the addition to 1 Corinthians 14, v. 33f), and what they love in the Gospels "Jesus" and oppose to Paul (e.g. freedom from the Law) probably echoes Pauline theology more than the teaching of some early 1st century rabbi in Palestine... to me it mostly shows that the narrative genre of the Gospels is infinitely more effective than the rhetorical genre of the epistles, which requires more intellectual effort.
Paul is first of all a thinker. And a fairly original one at that. You may disagree with what he thinks and dislike how he thinks, but you have to think along with him to be able to assess and criticise his thinking in a meaningful way. I would advise not to dwell too much on the "parenetic" or "practical" sections of his work (from which most "regulations" are drawn, and are actually the least characteristic part of his work when compared to comporaneous literature) and focus on the "doctrinal" parts (even if you are not particularly interested in religious doctrine). Romans 1--11 for instance. Paul's way of thinking is remarkably new and quite an event in the history of ideas, beyond religion proper, as a number of non-religious thinkers recognise (e.g. http://www.amazon.com/Saint-Paul-Foundation-Universalism-Cultural/dp/0804744718)
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The name of the Father is "Jesus".
by Chalam ini am sure the title of this thread will be a little contentious with some, certainly any active jws but here goes, read the biblical text for yourself.. .
john 17:11-12 (new international version)11i will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and i am coming to you.
holy father, protect them by the power of your namethe name you gave meso that they may be one as we are one.
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Narkissos
Not to change the topic, but your examples from John 1:18 nicely illustrate how a textual problem combines with an interpretive problem in translation.
The difference between "Son" and "God" is textual: some mss read theos and others read huios (or nothing).
The difference between "only" and "only-begotten" is interpretive: the mss agree on monogenès but the exegetes/translators differ on the exact meaning of the word.
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The name of the Father is "Jesus".
by Chalam ini am sure the title of this thread will be a little contentious with some, certainly any active jws but here goes, read the biblical text for yourself.. .
john 17:11-12 (new international version)11i will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and i am coming to you.
holy father, protect them by the power of your namethe name you gave meso that they may be one as we are one.
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Narkissos
PS: exactly; see my second post on page 1.
(I have no idea what "NU" and "M" stand for in the Bible you are using; you must have a list of abbreviations somewhere).