Bebu: as much as I don't agree with your philosophy of "good" and "evil" (both seem to me as accounting for only a small part of reality, just as absolute black and white are rather rare colours in nature), I really treasure the (Q) saying you quoted relating "right/clear vision" with the "good/simple eye" (which, in Semitic languages, implies generosity, cf. Dt 15:9; Pr 22:9; 23:6; Mt 20:15; Mk 7:22) -- and also with "not judging" (Matthew 7:1ff // Luke 6:37f).
Narkissos
JoinedPosts by Narkissos
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43
God hates mankind
by shotgun inwhat other explanation can there be?
look at how he treats us.. 1. his angel deceives eve who was still childlike( she couldn't even cloth herself properly,god provided clothing for them ) so he punishes them instead of this angel who he names satan.
2. his angellic sons come down to earth and turn the whole place into a drunken brawl so he destroyes all mankind with a flood but not the angels.
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I Am a Published Novelist !!
by SanFranciscoJim inas many of you know, last year i wrote a science fiction novel.
this past weekend, the fulfillment of a dream i've had for many years came to be a reality.
my novel has been released!
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Narkissos
Congrats SF Jim (SF can stand for Science Fiction now)!
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If you had to choose between Truth or Happiness
by dh inif suddenly you were confronted by someone who could grant it, and offered these two choices, which would you choose (if either).. 1.
(truth) you can have the answers to all of your questions, know and understand the absolute truth about all things, who we are, where we came from and how it all happened, and most importantly, you will be able to comprehend why.
the price of this insight is not cheap... you must leave behind everything you know; family, friends, pets, property, all things you value, you do not get to say goodbye and you will never see any of them again.. or.. 2.
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Narkissos
If I replace truth and happiness with knowledge and life respectively, I find the story of Genesis 2--3, with its Near Eastern (and perhaps universal) background. The tragedy of man -- my tragedy also -- is that we will always, ultimately, choose knowledge against life. As Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes) 1:18 has it, "In much wisdom is much vexation, and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow". The desire of knowledge is basically linked with death urge, but we just cannot get rid of it.
Curiously enough I was thinking about something similar yesterday: I cannot say I am happier than before (when I was a JW for instance), still I can't regret any of the steps I made because it was always grounded with increased knowledge.
Culturally we mostly associate the desire of knowing in spite of death with man (Adam), and the desire of living in spite of knowledge with woman (Eve) -- but in fact both are part of every individual, man or woman (as the very interesting answers to this thread clearly show).
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Resurrection Appearance to James the Just
by Leolaia inapostle paul provides an early list of jesus' resurrection appearances in 1 corinthians 15. it is important because this list was written before our canonical gospels were written and thus serves as an independent source of information.
paul writes:"christ died for our since, in accordance with the scriptures; that he was buried and that he was raised to life on the third day, in accordance with the scriptures; that he appeared first to cephas and secondly to the twelve.
next he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died; then he appeared to james, and then to all the apostles; and last of all he appeared to me too; it was as though i was born when no one expected it.
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Narkissos
About Wisdom: the motif is especially apparent in Luke, who has no Logos or Son of God preexistence:
2:40: The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon him (also 52).
7:35: Wisdom was vindicated by all her children.
11:31: The queen of the South will rise at the judgment with the people of this generation and condemn them, because she came from the ends of the earth to listen to the wisdom of Solomon, and see, something greater than Solomon is here!
11:49: Therefore also the Wisdom of God said, 'I will send them prophets and apostles... (Cf. Origen's reading, "the Wisdom will send her children").
21:15 for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.
Interestingly, in Acts the wisdom theme, linked with "grace" or "spirit" too, is concentrated in chapters 6--7 (6:3,10; 7:10,22), which focus on the "Hellenistic" tradition (the Seven, Stephen). The last reference being "the wisdom of the Egyptians", which may well point to Alexandria...
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Resurrection Appearance to James the Just
by Leolaia inapostle paul provides an early list of jesus' resurrection appearances in 1 corinthians 15. it is important because this list was written before our canonical gospels were written and thus serves as an independent source of information.
paul writes:"christ died for our since, in accordance with the scriptures; that he was buried and that he was raised to life on the third day, in accordance with the scriptures; that he appeared first to cephas and secondly to the twelve.
next he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died; then he appeared to james, and then to all the apostles; and last of all he appeared to me too; it was as though i was born when no one expected it.
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Narkissos
What do you think of the idea that a executed miracle-worker/magician figure, who emphasized the power of the Holy Spirit and its gifts, was the Jesus known to Paul and only later, especially in the Gospel of Mark, was this person conflated with the didactic moral philosopher of the Nazorean tradition. I believe this is the opinion of Wells. The main problem with this, as I see it, is again the familiarity Paul shows with the Q tradition.
This reconstruction seems quite plausible. I would perhaps add a pinch of politics into it, just to explain the Sadducean/Roman crucifixion...
About "the familiarity Paul shows with the Q tradition", I think it must not be exaggerated. I just quickly checked the references you gave earlier on this thread:
Nonliteral correspondences with Mark// (not Q):
1 Corinthians 7:10-11,25
Romans 12:18, 13:7,8-10; 14:13,14
1 Thessalonians 5:13,15
Nonliteral correspondences with GThomas:
1 Corinthians 4:8; 10:27 (also Q) ; 13 :2 (also Mark)
Galatians 3 :28 (also Q)
Nonliteral correspondence with Q:
1 Corinthians 9:14 Romans 12:17; 14:10, 1 Thessalonians 5:2Literal correspondence with GThomas (which way?):
1 Corinthians 2:9
Literal correspondence with Q (though not as a saying of the Lord):
Romans 12:14
(Btw, I didn't find Philippians 3:3 // GTh 54 = Lk 6:20)
So in fact there is not so much left, especially since the textual histories of Q, GTh, AND the Pauline corpus from the 50's to 140 remain an open question...
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God hates mankind
by shotgun inwhat other explanation can there be?
look at how he treats us.. 1. his angel deceives eve who was still childlike( she couldn't even cloth herself properly,god provided clothing for them ) so he punishes them instead of this angel who he names satan.
2. his angellic sons come down to earth and turn the whole place into a drunken brawl so he destroyes all mankind with a flood but not the angels.
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Narkissos
Hope, faith and love. Which is the greatest?
Laughter.
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When a JW parent dies
by Lady Lee inafter almost 5 years i spoke with my mother yesterday.
i wanted to know if she wanted a copy of the picture i recieved the other day.. she was nice and polite and even asked how i was (a big surprise when she asked).. but it seems she has some heart and respiratory problems.
and that got me to thinking.. not one of her five kids is still a jw.
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Narkissos
My father died a few days ago. I had not seen him for years. He even didn't want to see my daughter who was his only grandchild. Although he mentioned several times the WT instructions about apostates to rationalize his attitude to me, I know the JWs were just a part of the problem.
I went to the funeral in the cemetery -- hundreds of miles from my home. I know from my halfsister (who never was a dub) they had a service in the KH the day before (I was not invited). One positive thing about it is that they made a collection and gave her the money to flower his tomb (things seem to have changed a bit on that matter). In the cemetery an elder (who is a relative) gave a very short and neutral talk, without any religious reference. And so it was.
I had a rather long conversation with my halfsister, then I came back to the graveyard alone when everybody was gone. Although I didn't think of such a thing before, I felt like performing my own "ritual". I looked for and found my paternal grandmother's grave in the opposite side of the cemetery, brought some stones from her grave to his and from his to her. Had a few words with both. Then I went away.
In fact I knew for many years I had already "lost" my father, and lived with the memory of the daddy he was when I was a little boy, this time it was the end of whatever "hope" remained in my heart, and I too needed some kind of "closure".
As for wills and the like, we know nothing yet, except his model JW wife having a firm hold on most of his belongings (she was very busy after that the very day of his death)... In the meantime we found he had (at least) another "secret" child he never told us about. What will come up next, we'll just have to wait and see...
That was the pretty silly end for a pretty silly story...
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Resurrection Appearance to James the Just
by Leolaia inapostle paul provides an early list of jesus' resurrection appearances in 1 corinthians 15. it is important because this list was written before our canonical gospels were written and thus serves as an independent source of information.
paul writes:"christ died for our since, in accordance with the scriptures; that he was buried and that he was raised to life on the third day, in accordance with the scriptures; that he appeared first to cephas and secondly to the twelve.
next he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died; then he appeared to james, and then to all the apostles; and last of all he appeared to me too; it was as though i was born when no one expected it.
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Narkissos
PP: earlier in this thread I wrote about every river having many sources. People can discuss endlessly about which is the main course and which are the affluents, taking into account criteria such as length of course, rate of flow and so forth. But in the end the distinction is artificial.
To me (as Leolaia pointed, I follow Derrida on that) the ultimate source of religions and philosophies are not people, but texts (even in an oral form). No so-called "founder" creates everything ex nihilo, he has behind him a lot of traditions which merge into his mind in a relatively "original" way. That's all. Moreover, the rivers we're speaking about merge and separate again at several points. The only "myth" (in the negative sense) is "pure origin". This simply never exists in culture.
If you focus on a man (say, Jesus or Paul) as the main character of your story, you will find he was always preceded by many tradition threads: those in the OT, those in the extracanonical Jewish writings, and probably lots of others. If you focus on traditions, you will find they happen to cristallize in historical people, later on turning them into mythical characters. No man (even Jesus) is an absolute beginning, or an absolute end either.
I think Jesus as a miracle-worker (or magician) has some historical consistency, which does not rule out his being also a wisdom teacher and apocalyptic activist. Of course further miracles, wisdom and apocalypticism were later added to his story, as well as deification in a fairly "pagan" way. The later adjunctions, however, do not rule out some of this very material being already in Jesus' mind, words and acts (in fact, as a man of his time and place, he just could not escape it). To me the total fabrication of Jesus is highly improbable historically. But the historical Jesus' praedicans mind, whoever he was, was partly a mythical fabrication (as our own minds are) -- and of course the mythical Jesus praedicatus was even more so. It is not either the myth or the man (tertium non datur). It is necessarily both.
This is not to say that tradition history is not interesting. Quite to the contrary. It's fascinating indeed, especially if you get rid of the "either-or" frame of mind -- which is itself a tradition running at least from Aristotle to scholasticism and scientism...
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43
God hates mankind
by shotgun inwhat other explanation can there be?
look at how he treats us.. 1. his angel deceives eve who was still childlike( she couldn't even cloth herself properly,god provided clothing for them ) so he punishes them instead of this angel who he names satan.
2. his angellic sons come down to earth and turn the whole place into a drunken brawl so he destroyes all mankind with a flood but not the angels.
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Narkissos
Long before there was a "God", people projected into the imaginary concept of "gods" all their mixed feelings about life and the universe: love, care, hate, jealousy, fear, guilt and so on. All those feelings are still present in the Bible (including the NT) concept of "God". A "God" that is just "love" is simply not God anymore...
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Hillary and God
by CountryGuy inbill clinton, hillary clinton, and al gore were in an airplane that crashed.
they're up in heaven, and god's sitting on the great white throne.
god addresses al first.
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Narkissos
LOL!