Narkissos! Thank you for that marvelous essay. I have saved it to my favorites. I'm going to print it out and present it to Father Theo when next we meet.
This was a grand reminder of why I returned to the Biblical mythos. Layer upon layer, facet upon facet, level upon level. 
Namaste,
Nate
Nate Merit
JoinedPosts by Nate Merit
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Bread for tomorrow
by peacefulpete inthis topic deserves more space than i am able to make time for but here is an interesting take on the lord's prayer (lp).
a number of prominent scholars over the past 80 years have understood the lp as eschatological, that is referring to end times and judgment rather than concerning daily life and needs of christians as it is popularly understood.
further many have recognized the intertexuality of matthew with exodus.
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Nate Merit
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8
Bread for tomorrow
by peacefulpete inthis topic deserves more space than i am able to make time for but here is an interesting take on the lord's prayer (lp).
a number of prominent scholars over the past 80 years have understood the lp as eschatological, that is referring to end times and judgment rather than concerning daily life and needs of christians as it is popularly understood.
further many have recognized the intertexuality of matthew with exodus.
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8
Bread for tomorrow
by peacefulpete inthis topic deserves more space than i am able to make time for but here is an interesting take on the lord's prayer (lp).
a number of prominent scholars over the past 80 years have understood the lp as eschatological, that is referring to end times and judgment rather than concerning daily life and needs of christians as it is popularly understood.
further many have recognized the intertexuality of matthew with exodus.
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Nate Merit
Greetings Leolaia
What a marvelous post. I hope you are able to post more in depth on this topic in future.
The most interesting aspect of the LP for myself is touched upon here in your post:
"The next line is most interesting, "give us this day our daily bread". This line has spawned many debates. Is it a prayer for god's provision of life's necessities or is it more allusion to the day of judgement? Many debates revolve around the word here translated "daily". Some translations have "necessary" or "tomorrow's". Some translations have the Greek word, epiousion, translated one way in Matt and another in Luke. Problem is the word appears to have been coined by the author of Matt (assuming Luke's use of Matt) leaving scholars both ancient (Origen, Tertullian) and modern divided as to the etymology and meaning of the word. There are many suggestions offered, each deriving the word from different roots hence leading to differing meanings. Interestingly Jerome quoting a now lost Gospel of the Nazarenes uses the Aramaic mahar meaning 'tomorrow' in the LP. If however the Greek author of Matt intended simply to say 'tomorrow' why did he not use the ususal word aurion meaning tomorrow? Perhaps he was intentionally using an obscure word or coining his own Greek to carry the thought of 'day to come' from Hebrew eschatological literature and usage. All this has led to wonder if this is not yet another allusion to Exodus, in this case the manna story. Remember the story had the Israelites gathering the 'bread from heaven' each day for the present day until the 6th when they were to gather bread for the 7th day, the 'next day'. Note that the wording is urgent, give us THIS DAY (ie now) this manna for tomorow (day to come). If this is correct and the bread for tomorrow was an allusion to the 6th and last day of the week in Exodus then what we have may simply be another prayer for the 'Kingdom to come' rather than simply a petition for foodstuffs. Intertestamental reference to manna as being provided upon the establishment of God's Kingdom seems to support this conclusion. For example 2 Baruch 29:8...."the treasury of manna will come down from on high and they will eat of it in those days because they are the ones who have arrived at the consummation of the time." Understood in this way the words could be read, "Give us today the blessings of the day to come" implying either the desire to see the Kingdom come immediately or receive a taste of the blessings reserved for the future."
There is another possibility which you will most likely address in a future post. I speak of the Sacramental understanding of epiousion. Literally this word is above-essence (I am not typing this for you Leolaia, but for others reading this), or super-essence. Perhaps even super-essential. I have read some marevlously entertaining essays epiousion in Orthodox Catholic journals. (My wife is Greek Orthodox and I at one time was studying under Father Theophilus for the priesthood. I gave it up)
I rather like a Sacramental understanding better than an eschatological understanding. I agree it is an allusion to the heavenly manna, and it does indeed carry a note of urgency. This all fits in rather nicely with a Sacramental understanding. It flows very well with Saint Ignatius, though I am well aware of the problems with the available manuscripts of his epistles. I have wondered if one could make a case that epiousion is merely a primitive error resulting from a scribal gloss. I haven't pursued this line of thought in a serious way, so I'm merely thinking aloud. Though I do it looking forward to your input.
Thank you for yet another thought-provoking post.
Nate -
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For 'Carmel' Genesis 1 and John 1
by Nate Merit inthe beginning
1 in the beginning the flying spaghetti monster created the heavens and the earth.
4 the flying spaghetti monster saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.
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Nate Merit
Shakita! I love it!
I'm sending it off to Mark Smith at JCnot4me.com He really enjoyed the Flying Spaghetti Monster idea from Carmel, so I'm sure he will include this bit of whimsy as well.
Nate -
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How to destroy the Watchtower Organization
by saved in.
destroyed like bankrupt, unable to function as an organized religion, or whatever that will make all jws really wake up and think that this organization isn't what they think it is.. ideas?
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Nate Merit
No ideas. I eagerly jumped onto this post ready to join your movement with all vigor. I thought you had a Plan. *sigh*
Oh well.
Just give it time. It may take fifty or one hundred years, but it will eventually become one more church in christendom.
Stiff upper lip!
Nate -
47
If 'Intelligent Design" Is True, Why So Many Lies?
by Nate Merit inif true why so many lies ?
the following is a snippet from a new york times article on the closing arguments in the intelligent design trial.
closing arguments made in trial on intelligent design .
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Nate Merit
My my Q !
You wrote:
"It strikes me Nate that you set yourself up as a teacher, plug your book, back yourself up with your own knowledge and yet you seem happy to be nasty to your 'audience'. I see right through you."
The rabid hamster Q isn't happy with the corner he has backed himself into? You sir, are the one who responded of your own free will to my post. No one forced you. You responded by revealing that you prefer fantasy to reality. I did not wring that bizarre confession out of you.
What were you expecting me to do when you post in such a provocative manner, even INVITING me to call you a moron and stupid? Tell me Q, please, exactly what sort of a reply were you hoping such a post would elicit? Surely you aren't going to tell me you expected me to pat you on the back and say "Well done!" were you? Of course not. So, there is more than a wee bit of theater in your latest response in which you portray me as a villain and yourself as a martyr.
Put a sock in it Q. You aren't a martyr, merely a bit foolish. If you do not wish me to be nasty, kindly refrain from revealing to me the intimate details of mental mechanics.' However, if you bother to actually read my response to you, you will see that I refrained from accepting your open invitation to call you a moron. Rather, I made it plain that I realize you are quite intelligent and educated, and your problem was a matter of your Will. So, your insults to me in this latest post are simply more proof you walked into this hoping to be 'martyred.'
I refuse to play your assinine game Q. You're an intelligent educated adult so get your **** together.
I have not set myself up as a teacher. Kindly cut and paste the post I made setting myself up as a teacher. I have not. Your charge is empty.
I back myself up with my own knowledge? That's bad? Q, you need help in finally breaking free of the JW mindset wherein you were taught to defer to authority figures who will think for you.
In my post I did not dot appeal to my own authority, but to your own intelligence. Look at it again, Q. Both you and Rex accuse me, in a knee-jerk fashion, of appealing to my own authority when in fact I appeal to my readers to use their own intelligence.
I see right through you, Q. You are passive aggressive with a martyr complex. No, a martyr wish. When I am aggressive I am openly so.
Grow up little one.
Nate -
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If 'Intelligent Design" Is True, Why So Many Lies?
by Nate Merit inif true why so many lies ?
the following is a snippet from a new york times article on the closing arguments in the intelligent design trial.
closing arguments made in trial on intelligent design .
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Nate Merit
Hello Qcmbr
That was certainly an odd statement. I did not subtly insult you. I insulted you quite openly, in response to your having publically proclaimed yourself closed to facts and logic and evidence, preferring a comforting fantasy to reality.
No, it is you that lives in a domed world Q. I prefer the real one with no limits.
Yours not in fundy fantasy,
Nate -
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How Did Watching Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" Make You Feel?
by Ianone inalthough i am not a catholic i found this movie to be the most powerful and uplifting thing i have ever watched.
for those of you who watched it, how did it make you feel?
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Nate Merit
Hello Ianone
You wrote:
"Although I am not a Catholic I found this movie to be the most powerful and uplifting thing I have ever watched. For those of you who watched it, how did it make you feel?"
This statement made me stop and wonder. Here is my answer.Chapter Thirteen- THE MATRIX IS REAL
How can anyone of a sound mind not see the Brobdingnagian difference between the Heavenly Father (the God of Love), and the grotesque demons worshipped under the collective name Jehovah? Apparently, only those not filled with the disturbed spirit of those malicious gods can see that ‘Jehovah’ is Satan. It is to be hoped that the scales have fallen from your eyes, and ‘Jehovah’ stands naked before you, revealed for who and what he really is: Satan the Devil, The God of this Age, the Liar and the Father of lies.
Satan has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams in getting over one and a half billion people to believe The Lie that he is the true God, the Heavenly Father! That's why Catholics kill Protestants in Ireland, and Jews murder Palestinians. That's why Christians bomb abortion clinics. That's why conservative and fundamentalist Christians are such bloodthirsty saber-rattlers, ready to go to war at the drop of a Bible. They are filled with the violent spirit of their Demonic Father who is "a murderer from the beginning." (John 8:44) That's why the Catholic church founded the Inquisition and fiendishly tortured "heretics", and why it nearly annihilated such "heretics" as the Bogomils and the Cathars in medieval times, both of which were Gnostic Christian churches.
Conservative mainstream Christians are not sane. They are willing to kill living breathing people to protect a fetus, but when the fetus is born and grows to the age of eighteen, they are eager to send the child off to war to be crippled or killed. Violence and gore on television and movies is acceptable to these nutjobs, but not nudity or the act of lovemaking. "Make war, not love!" is their demented mantra. They are filled with Satan.
The most gruesome blood-spattered scenes of violence are acceptable to mainstream Christians, and they think nothing of filling their minds (and the minds of their children) with such ugliness. But let a breast or a ass or genitalia be exposed on television and the twisted fundy minds go ballistic. As an example, Melvin Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ was essentially a gory big budget snuff film. If the subject of the movie had been anyone else but Jesus, the film would have been rated R or even X.
Melvin’s movie was a huge success, with over $500 million in profits just for Melvin alone. (Getting rich off their god is an established Christian Tradition) Multitudes of impressionable children and teens were exposed to its bloody horrors. Yet when Janet Jackson exposed her breast briefly on television at the 2004 Superbowl, the uproar from fundamentalists was immediate and loud. Fundamentalists and other conservatives have their priorities completely ass-backward. For the record, the New Testament (to its credit) does not graphically describe the crucifixion and suffering of Jesus. Its descriptions are terse and lacking in the gruesome detail found in Melvin’s movie. The minds of mainstream Christians however (especially fundamentalists), thrive on violence. They’re sick and demented. Violence and gore are okay with them, but they think images of nudity or lovemaking will warp their children’s minds!
So, it is normal for a god-fearing born-again Bible-thumping mainstream Christian to have been raised in a home where they witnessed countless bloody stabbings, beatings, shootings, stranglings, rapes, horrific war footage, and all manner and methods of murder and mayhem on TV, in movies, and in video-games. Yet, the god-fearing parents of these same people will have been very careful their child was not exposed to any nudity or scenes of lovemaking for fear of making a "pervert" out of their child! These twisted people gladly "Seig Heil!" and send their kids off as good little goose-stepping patriots to maim and kill their fellow humans in pointless stupid wars. They are proud their child is a trained killer for Uncle Sam, and relieved their grown child is not some sort of deranged dangerous "pervert" that actually dares to view erotic photography or videos, or "Heaven Forbid!" actually engage in sexual activity! The "family values" espoused by mainstream Christians are an abomination to the True God, but are the very lifeblood of the bloodthirsty warmongering Jehovah elohim and his lickspittle hordes
That's why Christians burned "witches" for centuries. That's why French Catholics, under order of the Pope, murdered up to 100,000 French Protestants in the middle of the night on August 24, 1572! That's why Christians simply cannot get along, and have separated into 30,000 warring sects registered with the Internal Revenue Service. That's why the history of the mainstream Christian churches (and Christian nations) is the history of evil, wickedness, cruelty, savagery, persecution, oppression, greed, torture, and murder!The Roman Catholic Emperor Constantine, the first Christian Emperor, ordered over 3000 Christians to be slaughtered in the fourth century. Why? Over one word in the Nicene creed! More Christians were slaughtered by their own Christian Emperor in the fourth century than died from being fed to the lions by "pagans". (See William Manchester's "A World Lit Only by Fire; The Medieval Mind and The Renaissance," published by Little, Brown & Company, 1992)
Queen Isabella, a devout Catholic, who commissioned Columbus to sail to the "New World" in 1492, is also the person who instituted the Spanish Inquisition. That was the unspeakably evil torture and murder of thousands upon thousand of Spanish Muslims, Jews, gays, lesbians, and "heretics." Even people whose only crime was the fact they could read and write, or women with viewpoints we today would call feminist. Or anyone else the Queen decided was somehow unacceptable for any reason whatsoever. Isabella was a staunch upholder of the Catholic church and its dogmas, and thought of herself as practically a Saint as her victims were barbecued, ripped apart, or died by other fiendish sick methods inspired by the Jehovah gods/Satan. Obtain and read "The Dark Side of Christian History" by Helen Ellerbe, published by Morningstar and Lark, for a short and easily readable account about the gory unvarnished facts of Christian history. You can also go online to Victims of the Christian Faith:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/5195/victims.html
for an excellent timeline of many hundreds of Christian atrocities, which continue to this very day!. The fact that mainstream Christians and Jews are unwittingly worshipping Satan, and are therefore filled with Satan, is the reason that the majority of them are plagued with inner demons. Inner demons of guilt, inadequacy, repression, feelings of uncleanness and unacceptability, of never measuring up or being "good enough." It is why so many of them battle depression, and wind up in mental or penal institutions. It's why many of them hear "the voice of God" in their heads commanding them to assault or murder someone for supposed sinfulness. It’s why so many Christians use their Bibles as weapons to lash out at "sinners", rather than turn the Light onto their own minds and hearts to illuminate and eliminate their own darkness.Just as "you are what you eat" so too "you are what you worship." Ideas have consequences. Ideas have psychological consequences, societal consequences, and spiritual consequences. If the god you and your sect worship is a petty, angry, egotistical, mercurial, raging, murdering, irrational despot that is what you and the members of your sect will eventually become. If the god you worship indulges in murderous fits of rage, so will you and the members of your sect. If the god you worship shifts the blame for the woeful condition of the cosmos it fashioned onto your narrow shoulders, and tells you that you are born sinful, wicked, and fit only for hellfire and damnation, your inner self will be fragmented and burdened with terrible guilt and self-loathing. Psychoanalysis (modern psychiatry) was born in the midst of the Christian civilization for this very reason. Let me also point out that Europe, mainly Christian, produced wonderful folks such as Lenin, Stalin, Franco, Hitler, and Mussolini in the twentieth century.
Of course, when faced with the gross misdeeds of their fellow Christians throughout history, most Christians respond by saying, "They weren't realChristians." What a convenient psychological device to keep one’s fantasy image of one’s religion intact! If followed to its logical conclusion, then no one is a "real" Christian because all Christians perform misdeeds; therefore they are not "real" Christians. Using this convoluted ‘logic’ the apostle Peter was not a "real" Christian when he denied Christ. Of course all these people were "real Christians," real worshippers of the Jehovah gods, the evil elohim, including the apostle Peter.
(I have no idea what you found "empowering" or "uplifting" about a gory sick movie. Don't feel too badly. This mental illness, this sickness, runs deep in western culture. Do seek to understand the root of this illness, and see it as illness) -
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For 'Carmel' Genesis 1 and John 1
by Nate Merit inthe beginning
1 in the beginning the flying spaghetti monster created the heavens and the earth.
4 the flying spaghetti monster saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.
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Nate Merit
Hello Leolaia, thou of the cute and adorable icon!
That Barney version is rather more cute than the flying spaghetti monster.
However...
I LIKE SPAGHETTI BETTER THAN I LIKE BARNEY!
Nate -
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For 'Carmel' Genesis 1 and John 1
by Nate Merit inthe beginning
1 in the beginning the flying spaghetti monster created the heavens and the earth.
4 the flying spaghetti monster saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.
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