Narkissos

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Posts by Narkissos

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  85

  What's the greatest movie ever?

  by fearnotruth22 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i saw the photodrama of creation in bethel in color.

  i didnt care for it.

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  Narkissos

  Ever heard of Keaton, Chaplin, Lubitsch, Wilder, Huston, Losey, Pabst, Murnau, Lang, Dreyer, Bergman, Tarkovsky, Mikhalkov, Polanski, De Sica, Fellini, Pasolini, Clair, Renoir, Carné, Duvivier, Truffaut, Bunuel? Man there were movies before the 80's...
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  12

  The Rainbow and the Flood?

  by Blueblades in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  there is evidence that the flood of noah's day was local.why then does the account mention that the rainbow is a visible sign from jehovah,a covenant promise that no more would "all flesh" be cut off by waters of a deluge,and no more would there occur a deluge to bring the earth ( land ) to ruin.

  ( genesis 9:11 - 16 ).. some commentators say that the rainbow had been seen before this and that the flood was only local.that being the case and from all the evidence presented here and on the internet,i believe that it was a local flood.

  .why then this rainbow covenant,that never again would man be cut off and the earth, ( land ) be brought to ruin,when we see so much local flooding around the world and man being cut off and the land being ruined today?.

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  Narkissos

  To me "the flood of Noah's day" was not local, but fictional. In this story (and the Atrahasis-Gilgamesh Epics behind), the flood is universal (whatever the vision of the universe involved). The whole Universal Flood epic tradition may have been inspired by real local floods, but this has hardly any bearing on narrative analysis of the Bible text.
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  20

  Jeremiah 29:10

  by TheOldHippie in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  the new danish and swedish revisions of the nwt have "lifted up" the nwt-with references footnote alternative rendering of jeremiah 29:10 into being the preferred one, so that it no longer says "in babylon" but "for babylon".

  has there been any change or revision in the english issue?

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  Narkissos

  Faraon, just a brief comment on your review of English translations: notice that only the KJV tradition uses "at Babylon" (YLT uses a very different formula which does not relate the preposition "at" to the place name). Incidentally, this obviously mistaken translation (from the standpoint of Hebrew syntax) is the one C.T. Russell mainly referred to. The version I have quoted earlier in this thread is the Revised Standard Version.
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  41

  Simon, Cephas, Peter, Judas, Thomas, Didymus

  by Leolaia in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  this post is in response to peacefulpete's interesting post from my king david thread, which i quote below: .

  leolaia...if you look again at 1cor you'll see peter is not there only an ebionite named cephas is.

  the only reference to "peter" in any of "pauline" works is gal 2:7 and it is an interpolation made for the very reasons being discussed.

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  Narkissos

  On Matthew 26:50 nearly everything has been said. Leolaia's suggestion of (stern) irony is interesting (something like "Sooo here you are" or "Look who's here!"). However the vocative hetaire ("friend" or "fellow") might suggest some reaction to the kiss (something like "to the point now").

  About the OT reminiscences, IMO one must not imagine a conscious, scholarly process over every detail. If you want to tell a good story, you will very naturally bring into it topoi, motives, expressions from the stories you have read or heard. This is especially true in a mainly oral culture, and applies to every stage of the making, so this is hardly evidence of early or late "material".
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  20

  Jeremiah 29:10

  by TheOldHippie in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  the new danish and swedish revisions of the nwt have "lifted up" the nwt-with references footnote alternative rendering of jeremiah 29:10 into being the preferred one, so that it no longer says "in babylon" but "for babylon".

  has there been any change or revision in the english issue?

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  Narkissos

  A few remarks:

  On syntax: the preposition le would only imply location with a verb (or context) of movement (meaning "to", not "in" or "at"). As the subject is the whole 70-years period, it is impossible.

  I'm surprised "scholar" doesn't bring other Biblical references into the picture: such as Isaiah 23:15ff which show the "seventy years" to be a topos of doom prophecy, or Zechariah 1:12; 7:5 clearly showing that 70 years after the destruction the exilees were already back (for years). Even Daniel 9 is clearly an attempt at reinterpretation of the 70 years (v. 2), which was possible because the "prophecy" was not seen as totally fulfilled.

  Last but not least, historically there was no such thing as "desolation". The "desolation" motive is above all a literary creation of the returnees in Jerusalem, whose interest was to picture the vast majority of Israelites (including Judeans) who remained in Palestine (see the probably original figures of the exile in Jeremiah 52:30) as "people of the land", i.e. pagans. This is the real beginning of the (slanderous) Judean version of the "Samaritan" history, retrojected into Assyrian time by 2 Kings 17.
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  26

  The ascension of King David to heaven

  by Leolaia in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  there is a rather obscure statement in acts 2:34 that specifies that "david himself never ascended to heaven".

  the obvious question that arises from this remark is -- who ever believed that david ascended to heaven?

  to answer this, we need to look where else but to the pseudepigrapha.

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  Narkissos

  Leolaia,

  Sorry I misread your references to the Apocryphon of James (NH 1/1) into the Apocalypses (NH 5/3-4). My objections remain basically unchanged though: the Apocryphon of James may correct the Johannine tradition from the viewpoint of later Gnosis as well.

  I cannot help thinking, however, that you too are construing a historical Jesus according to your heart (who doesn't?)... Apocalypticism, in the first century, pervaded all Jewish schools with the possible (and relative) exception of the Sadducees: it was associated with the ritual thinking of Qumran as with the ethics of the Pharisees. How could Jesus escape this? His preaching may have had eschatological and political overtones, which would better explain his fate than "misunderstandings" (such as are suggested in the Gospels, especially Luke, with the obvious intention to make the Jesus' movement more acceptable to the Romans). The fact that James was seen as the natural heir of the Jesus' movement at least proves that it remained within the borders of identitarian Judaism, as could be accepted by the Pharisees on one side and the Essenes on the other side (even if one doesn't accept altogether Eisenman's peremptory assertion, "what James was Jesus was"). The fact neither the Pharisees nor the Essenes appear in the early Passion narratives seems to confirm that. Your point on the "Son of Man" sayings may be strong, but I'm not so much convinced as to the attribution of a "non-eschatological, inward Kingdom of God" concept to the historical Jesus. This sounds rather to me as later spiritualisation, perhaps not free from political interests.
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  41

  Simon, Cephas, Peter, Judas, Thomas, Didymus

  by Leolaia in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  this post is in response to peacefulpete's interesting post from my king david thread, which i quote below: .

  leolaia...if you look again at 1cor you'll see peter is not there only an ebionite named cephas is.

  the only reference to "peter" in any of "pauline" works is gal 2:7 and it is an interpolation made for the very reasons being discussed.

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  Narkissos

  Thanks for this fascinating thread. Although PP's substitution theory (interestingly bringing some "light comedy" into the usually tragic Gospel picture) was somewhat over my head at first sight, I enjoyed the debate very much.

  I'm pretty convinced now that the concurrence of Cephas and Peter in Galatians is better explained by interpolation (which, in turn, sheds some light on the complex history of the Pauline corpus I am just beginning to consider) than by two existing characters in the first century (as still hold by Bart D. Ehrman, Cephas and Peter, in Journal of Biblical Literature 109/3 [1990] p. 463-74) . What remains, IMO, is the following: when the Peter character eventually appeared in Mark (either because Cephas came to be called Peter, or by independent literary creation which later absorbed the Cephas tradition), it appeared as a remarkably empty shell which could be filled by all kinds of Christian material: postpauline in 1 Peter, protocatholic in 2 Peter, judeo-christian or gnostic in extra-canonical writings.
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  33

  What is "Faith"?

  by LittleToe in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  so many times the word "faith" is touted around, especially in debates concerning "blind faith" (and usually levelled at "believers"), but what is it really?.

  heb 11:1 defines it as follows:"now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

  " kjv.

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  Narkissos

  LT: To answer your personal question, the Pauline and Johannine texts are certainly my favorite in the NT, although the two lines of thought are clearly diverging from each other. Both were decisive to me when I left the JWs. Though I came to a critical approach of both, I still love reading them.

  I was never very attracted to the "charismatic" or "hysterical" type of faith. What appeals more to me in the Gospels is the wisdom teaching associated with the "Q-source" (or the "Sermon on the Mount" in Matthew), which does not emphasize "faith" at all. Or the kind of "anomian" or "anarchist" Jesus which stems from Mark's use of Hellenistic material, including the controversies about the Law, which are probably alien to the historical Jesus and also don't imply faith.

  As to the Pauline sort of faith (and its Lutheran avatar), I became aware that it especially appealed to my own (somewhat "obsessional" rather than "hysterical") frame of mind, including some "death urge" (to speak Freudian). It's what I tried to approach on another thread of mine entitled "Amor mortis". I am still sensitive to it (and probably will always be), but becoming conscious of that I also became cautious about it because it can result in a very "perverted" (still in the psychoanalytical sense) approach of life.

  I find the Johannine approach definitely less death-oriented, and it is probably the one I still enjoy most unreservedly. However, as I said, in it the specific concept of faith is partly lost. "Faith" in John is in fact roughly equivalent to "knowledge" (in the "Gnostic" way we have discussed at length on other threads). It implies "sight" (in the mystical sense), whereas Paul radically opposes "faith" and "sight" (2 Cor 5:7). So it is more rooted in "imagination". My relationship to the Johannine imaginary universe is probably not anymore that of a "believer", rather that of a relatively independent reader who can step in and out of all kinds of stories, myths and legends. I like to read this into John 10:9: I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.
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  20

  Is the idea of immortality in any way possible?

  by logansrun in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the traditional christian view of immortality hinges on some form of dualism -- the notion that your consciousness is not dependent on the brain and can survive the dissolution of the body.

  modern science has not found any evidence for this whatsoever.

  it seems rather likely that our consciousness and mental abilities are bound to our brains and their neuronal firings.

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  Narkissos

  Frankly, do we want immortality?

  There may be some comfort in knowing, or believing, that something of ourselves will survive (and already does) in people we met and loved: expressions, smiles, ideas, attitudes... as "we" also are made of a number of lost people. Feeling that we are more than Leibnizian monads trapped in ourselves. Who really asks for more?
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  33

  What is "Faith"?

  by LittleToe in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  so many times the word "faith" is touted around, especially in debates concerning "blind faith" (and usually levelled at "believers"), but what is it really?.

  heb 11:1 defines it as follows:"now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

  " kjv.

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  Narkissos

  It reminds me of my first thread on this board: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/16/59704/1.ashx

  It's interesting how faith which does not even stand out as an independent concept in the OT (there is no substantive in Biblical Hebrew meaning "faith") becomes a central issue in Christianity. Here the Intertestamental literature seems to be of little help.

  However, in the NT the same word, faith, seems to cover a wide range of experiences. Basic to them are the two following (I willfully use psychological terms):

  1) the "hysterical" or charismatic type of "faith". Here "faith" is the power which enables one whose desire has trapped him/her into sickness, or helplessness, to step out and let life go on. Check the references to "faith" or "believe" in Mark. Jesus is not the cause of salvation, just a sort of catalyst of faith whose role seems just to let it happen and then name it: "Your faith has saved you." They culminate in the fig-tree episode in chapter 11, which introduces the strange comment of Jesus (literally translated):

  "Have the faith of God. Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, 'Be taken up and thrown into the sea,' and if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, this will be for you."

  The omnipotence of faith in this sense results in a sort of crisis, where one has either to withdraw in a subjective and rather schizophrenic kind of faith (this IS for me, no matter what happens outside in so-called "reality") or reassess his/her desire (if what I believe WILL happen, what do I REALLY want to happen?). Recalls the previous mention of faith to Bartimaeus, beginning by the very strange question to a blind man: "What do you want?"

  2) The "obsessional", Pauline view of "faith alone", which doesn't save in the sense of healing, but "justifying" -- conferring a basic "right to be" that has to be paid at the outrageous price of the death (crucifixion) of one's desire. Summed up in Galatians:

  I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

  From those two basic concepts of faith one can trace many other shades of meaning. The Matthaean and Lukan, which imply "degrees" of faith; the Pastorals', which cristallize Paul's view of subjective faith into objective faith (= belief or doctrine). Hebrews or John seem independent, but there "faith" is not so much distinct from knowledge: it's a kind of perception of the invisible or upper world.