Posts by Doug Mason

32

Books about early Christianity

by EdenOne in

i've just finished reading two (imo) great books:.

"a history of christianity - the first three thousand years", by diarmaid macculloch.

"misquoting jesus", by bart ehrman.

Doug Mason

Magnum,

I have no problem if a person needs to have a supernatural being to make sense of the world and to cope with it, or if they need to gain strength through physical association with like-minded people. Each person must make up their own mind for what genuinely helps them.

I perceive religion as a means for a small group of people to control the minds and lives of many. Of those who control, one can ascribe motives such as the sense of power or yet again the sense of helping. Institutions need to ensure obedience by the masses, to protect the organisation, to make sure that the boat is not rocked, regardless of what is truth. The leaders need to protect their position of authority. Read the OT in this light.

For me, whether there is a God or not is God's probem, not mine. It is up to the gods to be concerned whether they exist. If you want to pigeon-hole me, call me an agnostic who does not trust the "God told me" assertions that people hide behind.

What is up to me is to live each day, having made a contribution, making life better for someone, regardless of their creed or colour; to behave towards them in the way I would like to be treated.

Doug

32

Books about early Christianity

by EdenOne in

i've just finished reading two (imo) great books:.

"a history of christianity - the first three thousand years", by diarmaid macculloch.

"misquoting jesus", by bart ehrman.

Doug Mason

EdenOne,

Geza Vermes was one of the great modern scholars, who died only recently. If you want recommendations from the list I provided, I suggest the books by Allert (start at page 37), Gamble, Goulder, Freeman and Jenkins.

Of course, it is impossible to overestate the significance of Kurt Aland, as any "Google" search shows, and of Geza Vermes.

Doug

30

The Mosaic Law (Is it still Valid)

by objectivetruth in

i'm interested to know of some of your view points out this.. is the mosaic law still valid, and should it be followed.

or as many claim was it done away with?.

from my examination of scripture, i feel that it is still valid, and christ did not do away with it.. briefly here are the primary reasons i feel this way :.

Doug Mason

The Matthew Gospel, which you refer to at point#1, was written by Jewish Christians. These were aligned with Jerusalem (James, Peter, John). They were very much in support of imposing the Jewish laws on to the Gentile Christians.

Paul, however, who was based at Antioch and had very little to do with Jerusalem, said that his Gentile converts had no need to obey the Jewish laws. Consider Galatians chapters 1 and 2 as well as 1 Corinthians, where they were told not to ask where the meat came from. The Jewish Christians did not know Paul by face, only by reputation.

The book of Acts, written by a person/group aligned with Peter (and hence Jerusalem) wished to make it appear that harmony existed between the two camps, papering over the chasm between Antioch and Jerusalem. The Book of Acts is religious reconstructed history and is not relied on by Bible scholars as being a reliable account.

FYI: 1 Peter and 2 Peter are accepted as having been written by an adherent of Paul's; the latter having been written about 150 CE, about 90 years after the deaths of Paul and Peter.

"A text without a context is a pretext for a proof text", and the context is not only grammatical but also that of contemporary culture, idioms, politics (religious and secular) and so on. The other matter is to understand how the bible came to be assembled, by whom, and when.

I suggest that at Matthew 22:29, the writers were putting words into Jesus' mouth against their Gentile brethren.

Doug

32

Books about early Christianity

by EdenOne in

i've just finished reading two (imo) great books:.

"a history of christianity - the first three thousand years", by diarmaid macculloch.

"misquoting jesus", by bart ehrman.

Doug Mason

While the cover of the book is given as "The New Testament Apocrypha" and as being edited and introduced by M.R. James, the internal title page states: "The Apocryphal New Testament: being the apocryphal gospels, acts, epistles and apocalypses, with other narratives and fragments translated by Montague Rhodes James". It was first published in 1924 by Clarendon Press; the Acrophyle Press Edition was published in 2004. It runs for almost 600 pages.

Doug

14

This should be an interesting book to read

by Doug Mason in

i have not yet read this book, but it should be interesting:.

"the better angels of our nature: why violence has declined", steven pinker.. the publicity blurb states:.

"believe it or not, today we may be living in the most peaceful moment in our species' existence.

Doug Mason

I have not yet read this book, but it should be interesting:

"The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined", Steven Pinker.

The publicity blurb states:

"Believe it or not, today we may be living in the most peaceful moment in our species' existence. In his gripping and controversial new work, New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows that despite the ceaseless news about war, crime, and terrorism, violence has actually been in decline over long stretches of history. Exploding myths about humankind's inherent violence and the curse of modernity, this ambitious book continues Pinker's exploration of the essence of human nature, mixing psychology and history to provide a remarkable picture of an increasingly enlightened world."

Doug

32

Books about early Christianity

by EdenOne in

i've just finished reading two (imo) great books:.

"a history of christianity - the first three thousand years", by diarmaid macculloch.

"misquoting jesus", by bart ehrman.

Doug Mason

jehovahsheep,

Are you yet able to extend your conclusion to all religion?

Doug

32

Books about early Christianity

by EdenOne in

i've just finished reading two (imo) great books:.

"a history of christianity - the first three thousand years", by diarmaid macculloch.

"misquoting jesus", by bart ehrman.

Doug Mason

“St. Paul versus St. Peter: A Tale of Two Missions”, Michael Goulder

“The Rise of Christianity”, W.H.C. Frend

“Christian Beginnings: From Nazareth to Nicaea, AD 30-325”, Geza Vermes

“A New History of Early Christianity”, Charles Freeman

“Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 Years”, Philip Jenkins

“Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew”, Bart Ehrman

“AD 381: Heretics, Pagans and the Christian State”, Charles Freeman

“When our world became Christian 312-394”, Paul Veyne

The Bible was created by the Church. The Bible did not fall out of the sky, therefore read on their canonisation processes.

“Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament”, Bart Ehrman

“The New Testament Apocrypha”, M.R. James

“The Apocryphal New Testament”, J.K. Elliott (based on the book by M.R. James)

“The New Testament Canon: Its Making and Meaning”, Harry Y. Gamble

“The Problem of the New Testament Canon”, Kurt Aland

“The Formation of the New Testament”, Robert M. Grant

“A High View of Scripture?”, Craig D. Allert

Doug

5

666, Revelation, and preterism

by Richard_I in

on reddit, there's a post about how 666 is mistranslated as 616 in revelation (thread).

666 and 616 are both correct.

if you read into revelations, very little is presented as actual prophecy- it's an analogous tale to describe the roman empire during their persecution of christianity.. 666 and 616 come from the hebrew tradition of converting words into numerical values.

Doug Mason

The Hebrews did not "convert" letters into numbers. Each of the 22 letters of the alphabet is assigned a number, so that a number is a sequence of letters, regardless of the order they are placed. This makes calculation impossible, as with Roman the numeral system.

It took until the recent Middle Ages before the current numbering system and consequent mathematics was introduced into Europe from North Africa (name of the guy responsible is on the tip of my brain but refuses to emerge from the depths). European science (especially astronomical calculations and observations) was dragged from mythology into genuine enquiry through its contact with the scientists and mathematicians of the Islamic world.

But getting back to the Hebrews and their fascination between numbers and words - search for: Gematria.

Many Jews were/are similarly interested in the esoteric. Search for Kabbalah and Kabbalistic.

Doug

5

Studies in the Scriptures

by lambsbottom in

i know some of you are going to roll your eyes, but i have been reading the divine plan of ages.

here is my question:.

will someone please give me a timeline of what russell (bible students) thought would happen, when it would happen?.

Doug Mason

Does this help a little:

http://www.jwstudies.com/Changed_MD_and_SS_words.pdf

Also, the diagrams showing the "Dispensations" and of the Great Pyramid in the Millennial Dawn/Studies books provide additional clues. He called the series Millennial Dawn because he considered that it had already commenced. Imagine what the current WTS would do to him if he was preaching his message today!

The 1874 Parousia (discovered courtesy of Barbour) was still being taught as late as 1930. The date of 1914 was the end-point of the unprecedented Time of Trouble, which would see the outbreak of world-wide peace under the auspices of Zionism. 1874 and 1914 this provide the meaning to his magazine title: "Zion's Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence" - one part related to Zionism's future and the other part related to the fact that Christ's Parousia had already taken place.

Doug

5

"Make Disciples of All Nations"

by Tiresias in

"meaning, of course israelites living among all nations" (social science commentary on the letters of paul, p.17) (italics mine).. .

the above authors suggest that paul was an "apostle to israelite minorities living among non-israelite majority populations" (p.7).

for me, such understanding clarified a number of things that were, in effect, hiding in plain sight.

Doug Mason

Paul was a member of the Jewish Diaspora, and the people of Jerusalem knew him only by reputation, not by face.

Paul and the leadership at Jerusalem (James, Cephas and John) were at loggerheads with one another. That is the reason they fought him; Paul had a "no-Law" Gospel but the Jewish Christians from Jerusalem demanded full obedience to Mosaic traditions and laws, signified through male circumcision.

When they spoke about "all nations", they knew of the nations around the Mediterranean (meaning "middle of the earth") plus those nations involved with trade (India, etc). And Paul wrote that the Gospel (his version of it, anyway) had reached all nations. He and the rest fully expected the "end" (Coming) to take place within their own lifetime.

There is absolutely no way that one can relate the nations that we know with the nations which existed in their times. Even modern nations such as Italy, Germany, and Iraq are very recent federations of disparate states. And to think that Paul (or Daniel or the Revelator) knew anything about USA, Russia and so on is beyond belief.

Doug