behemot
JoinedPosts by behemot
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Pakistani Christian burned alive for refusal to convert to Islam
by behemot inhttp://pakistanchristian.tv/news/2010-03-23_pakistani_christian_arshad_masih_burned_alive_dies_christian_community_call.cfm.
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First police raids on JWs homes in post-Soviet Russia
by behemot inhttp://www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=1424.
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Swansea paedophile in 17-year barrage of child abuse
by behemot inswansea paedophile in 17-year barrage of child abusesunday, march 21, 2010, 12:00a pensioner branded a "filthy paedophile" after being convicted of a barrage of sustained child abuse, which started over 43 years ago, has been jailed for 19 years.. gordon brian redmond was convicted at lewes crown court of 18 indecent assaults against children including six charges of rape and one charge of actual bodily harm.. the 72-year-old had already pleaded guilty to two charges of indecent assault against children.. the sexual offences took place while redmond, now of excelsior house, princess way, swansea, was living in brighton from 1967 to 1984. seventeen of the charges were sample counts examples of ongoing behaviour and offences.. the jury was unable to reach a verdict on a seventh charge of rape, and judge michael lawson qc ordered the charge to lie on file.. sentencing redmond, judge lawson said no sentence could truly reflect his actions.. "there is no mathematical calculation i can do that can match the harm that you have done with a certain number of years in custody," he said.. "nor can i undo the damage that has been done or bring peace and comfort to those who have suffered as a result of your selfish behaviour.".
redmond's sentence had to be determined according to the guidelines applicable at the time of the offences guidelines that judge lawson said reflected "an outdated view of serious offences".. redmond became a strict jehovah's witness in the 1970s and moved to a farm in pontyberem in 1984.. the offence of actual bodily harm took place in november 2006.. judge lawson paid tribute to the prosecution witnesses for their courage throughout the trial, particularly redmond's first victim.. "she has displayed a generosity of spirit throughout this trial that you do not deserve and which you never showed to your victims," he said.. prior to sentencing, defence barrister bernard richmond qc said his client was already enduring terrible punishment for his crimes.. "this rather proud, arrogant, cocky, difficult, bolshy, very full of himself, scary man, who everyone was supposed to look up to and admire, now stands in the dock as someone of very little money, no future, and with a reputation as a filthy paedophile," he said.. "he has been shunned by the jehovah's witnesses.
his wife, christine, has been forced to choose between her faith and her husband, and has chosen her faith.".
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behemot
Swansea paedophile in 17-year barrage of child abuse
Sunday, March 21, 2010, 12:00
A PENSIONER branded a "filthy paedophile" after being convicted of a barrage of sustained child abuse, which started over 43 years ago, has been jailed for 19 years.
Gordon Brian Redmond was convicted at Lewes Crown Court of 18 indecent assaults against children — including six charges of rape — and one charge of actual bodily harm.
The 72-year-old had already pleaded guilty to two charges of indecent assault against children.
The sexual offences took place while Redmond, now of Excelsior House, Princess Way, Swansea, was living in Brighton from 1967 to 1984. Seventeen of the charges were sample counts — examples of ongoing behaviour and offences.
The jury was unable to reach a verdict on a seventh charge of rape, and Judge Michael Lawson QC ordered the charge to lie on file.
Sentencing Redmond, Judge Lawson said no sentence could truly reflect his actions.
"There is no mathematical calculation I can do that can match the harm that you have done with a certain number of years in custody," he said.
"Nor can I undo the damage that has been done or bring peace and comfort to those who have suffered as a result of your selfish behaviour."
Redmond's sentence had to be determined according to the guidelines applicable at the time of the offences — guidelines that Judge Lawson said reflected "an outdated view of serious offences".
Redmond became a strict Jehovah's Witness in the 1970s and moved to a farm in Pontyberem in 1984.
The offence of actual bodily harm took place in November 2006.
Judge Lawson paid tribute to the prosecution witnesses for their courage throughout the trial, particularly Redmond's first victim.
"She has displayed a generosity of spirit throughout this trial that you do not deserve and which you never showed to your victims," he said.
Prior to sentencing, defence barrister Bernard Richmond QC said his client was already enduring terrible punishment for his crimes.
"This rather proud, arrogant, cocky, difficult, bolshy, very full of himself, scary man, who everyone was supposed to look up to and admire, now stands in the dock as someone of very little money, no future, and with a reputation as a filthy paedophile," he said.
"He has been shunned by the Jehovah's Witnesses. His wife, Christine, has been forced to choose between her faith and her husband, and has chosen her faith."
Before the verdicts were returned, Judge Lawson had addressed the public gallery, where some of Redmond's victims sat with their families alongside members of Redmond's family.
"You are about to hear verdicts that you have anticipated — or dreaded — for quite some time. Since there are no winners in this case, I would be grateful if you would behave with the same dignity and composure that you have during the course of this trial," he said.
Redmond remained impassive as the verdicts were read out.
Sussex Police began investigating Redmond in January 2007 after being approached by one of his victims. They were immediately aware of four potential victims and further investigations into his past uncovered a fifth.
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Dissident theologian Hans Kung calls on Pope to issue "mea culpa" for sex abuse
by behemot inhttp://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7067069.ece.
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Religious weirdness
by behemot inhttp://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/lucknow/12-yr-old-kills-4-year-old-to-please-deity/articleshow/5678028.cms.
http://www.timeslive.co.za/africa/article332775.ece.
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question for Leolaia - when were the oral traditions that comprise the pentateuch committed to written form
by quietlyleaving ini'm quite interested in this subject at the moment.
i was reading that in some cultures when the stories, myths and traditions began to be written down the stories etc underwent transformations as they were now accessible for critique and for moral judgements to be added.. i'd like to hear your thoughts leo and anyone else who has anything to share/discuss.
ql.
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behemot
There's no such a thing as a "unified truth" in the Bible, since its parts were written over time for different purposes and with different (religious, political, ideological) agendas.
To have an idea of their diversity just look at Genesis, whose different sources (J, E, D, P according to the "documentary hypothesis") don't even agree on the most important theological idea: the nature of God (see E. S. Gerstenberger, Theologies in the Old Testament, Minneapolis, Fortress Press 2002).
For instance, J, E and D describe a very personal Yahweh: he walks on earth, takes visible forms, debates with men. In J's creation and flood account, God walks in the garden, makes garments for men, is afraid that they may eat the fruit of the tree of life, personally closes the ark's door, smells Noah's sacrifice and is worried about men's potential after they build Babel's tower. Instead, P's God is more "cosmic" and transcendent. In P's accounts of creation and flood, Yahweh is always detached, commanding and controlling men from on high. For instance, in the mount Sinai account, Yahweh himself descends in the fire and talks face to face with Moses according to J (Exodus 19:18), but not according to P. According to sources J and E, Yahweh is seen by Moses (Exodus chp. 33, 34), while in P is impossible to see him.
In source J, Abraham can discuss with Yahweh about Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18:23-33) and also Moses can discuss with God the fate of the people (Numbers 14:13-20). Also in source E, Moses argues about the people's destiny in the story of the golden cow (Exodus 32:11-13) and debates with Yahweh "face to face, just as a man would speak to his fellow" (Exodus 33:11). He can even dare holding against God his unfairness:
Then Moses said to Jehovah: “Why have you caused evil to your servant, and why have I not found favor in your eyes, in placing the load of all this people upon me? (...) So if this is the way you are doing to me, please kill me off altogether, if I have found favor in your eyes, and let me not look upon my calamity.”
In source D Moses can plead Yahweh, though without success, to let him get to the Promise Land (Deuteronomy 3:23-28). In source P, Yahweh and men never talk to each other with such nearness and intimacy: God is closed in his distant transcendence, whence he impart commands and orders that his will be made (Genesis 1:3,9; 6:22; Exodus 7:6; 39:32) and the only way to get in touch with him is the sacrificial rite, whose only authorized ministers are the aaronite priests, performing in the institutional cultual site.
Source P's God is a legalist, distant judge, with a strict ethic of retribution, rewarding obedience and punishing transgression, subordinating forgiveness to strict observance of precise rules and procedures and in his vocabulary words as "mercy" and "repentance" are unknown. On the other hand, sources J and E stress God's mercy and the idea that sin can be forgiven through repentance (Exodus 34:6, 7). In sources J, E and D Yahweh himself often repents of his intentions to destroy his people (Exodus 32:7-14; Numbers 14:13-20), in source P, instead, Yahweh decides the people's fate, without appeal (Numers 14:26-39).
The God that emerges from the different sources differs also in the way he views the various characters of the stories: while the Yahweh of J and E seems to prefer Moses to Aaron, the Yahweh describe by P prefers Aaron to Moses (see R. E. Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible?, pp. 168-174).
The final combination by the Redactor(s) of the J, E, D and P sources (each of whom apparently considered non orthodox the theology of the other sources) caused the surfacing of a "hybrid" Yahweh, that J, E, D and P themselves would have considered unreal. By melting the sources, the redactor(s) ended up combining different and often incompatible concepts of Yahweh, obtaining a new, and psychologically more complex, God, a God who could at the same time be metaphysical and distant but also "human" and personal, just and yet merciful, irate and compassionate, strict and yet inclined to forgiveness. This outcome was not planned by J, E, D and P, but was somehow "accidental" and unforeseen, although artistically "dramatic" and theologically fertile, in that it multiplies the range of possible interpretations.
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More than 50 Jehovahs Witnesses arrested in Russia for taking part in a public protest
by behemot inhttp://www.asianews.it/news-en/more-than-50-jehovah%e2%80%99s-witnesses-arrested-in-russia-for-taking-part-in-a-public-protest-17853.html.
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question for Leolaia - when were the oral traditions that comprise the pentateuch committed to written form
by quietlyleaving ini'm quite interested in this subject at the moment.
i was reading that in some cultures when the stories, myths and traditions began to be written down the stories etc underwent transformations as they were now accessible for critique and for moral judgements to be added.. i'd like to hear your thoughts leo and anyone else who has anything to share/discuss.
ql.
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behemot
I do remember Leo saying something about Hebrew being associated with Ugaritic (sp) but I may have got this wrong
You didn't get it wrong. The Bible itself calls the Hebrew language a "language of Canaan": "In that day there will prove to be five cities in the land of Egypt speaking the language of Ca'naan and swearing to Jehovah of Armies ..." (Isaiah 19:18)
According to scholars, Cananites and Hebrews are, linguistically and for their material culture, undistinguishable during early Iron Age - roughly the "Judges" period, 1200-1000 b.C.E. - (see Amihai Mazar, The Iron Age I, in Amnon Ben-Tor, The Archaeology of Ancient Israel, New Haven/London, Yale University Press/The Open University of Israel 1992, pp. 258-301; Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God. Jahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans 2002, p. 27).
Despite the huge redaction work the Bible texts have undergone, some fragments are thought by the scholars to be nearer (linguistically and conceptually) to their "canaanite" roots. Among them, Genesis 32 and 49; Exodus 15, Deuteronomy 32, 33; Judges 5; Abacuc 3, Psalms 18 and 68.
On the huge impact of the Ras Shamra (Ugarit) discoveries on OT studies you can see Mark S. Smith, Untold Stories. The Bible and Ugaritic Studies in the Twentieth Century, Peabody, Hendrickson 2001; Waine T. Pitard, Voices from the Dust: The Tablets from Ugarit and the Bible, in Mark W. Chavalas, K. Lawson Younger Jr (ed.), Mesopotamia and the Bible. Comparative Explorations, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 341, Grand Rapids, Baker 2002, pp. 251-275.
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question for Leolaia - when were the oral traditions that comprise the pentateuch committed to written form
by quietlyleaving ini'm quite interested in this subject at the moment.
i was reading that in some cultures when the stories, myths and traditions began to be written down the stories etc underwent transformations as they were now accessible for critique and for moral judgements to be added.. i'd like to hear your thoughts leo and anyone else who has anything to share/discuss.
ql.
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behemot
quietlyleaving, here some good readings on this complex topic:
Martin Noth, The Deuteronomistic History, Sheffield, JSOT Press 1981
Roger N. Whybray, The Making of the Pentateuch: A Methodological Study, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 53, Sheffield, Sheffield Academic Press 1987
Herbert Wolf, An Introduction to the Old Testament Pentateuch, Chicago, Moody Press 1991
Antony F. Campbell, Mark A. O'Brien, Sources of the Pentateuch. Texts, Introductions, Annotations, Minneapolis, Fortress Press 1993
Ernest Nicholson, The Pentateuch in the Twentieth Century: The Legacy of Julius Wellhausen, Oxford, Clarendon Press 1998
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Court hears allegation of abuse from age of eleven
by behemot inhttp://www.wexfordpeople.ie/news/court-hears-allegation-of-abuse-from-age-of-eleven-2094647.html.
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