Colossians and The Gospel of Thomas - a work in progress

by Doug Mason in

as i prepare the pre-draft stage of my study into the evolutions of salvation, i have drafted a chapter on colossians and on the gospel of thomas.

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

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

fulltimestudent

Doug Mason: "...for your corrections, advice, and criticisms."

I have no time currently, to think about such esoteric stuff. Most of my spare time goes toward posting material of interest to Asian scholarship* on a FB page, I edit

But I did consider, if I was embarking on such a project, in what unusual area could I look for something interesting about your Thomas? And out of the wilder areas of my mind comes the idea, why India, of course! Because in Indian Christian mythology, St Thomas is considered to be the founder of that church.

Most modern scholarship does not believe that Thomas did found the Indian church, though, of course, it is clear that this particular branch of Christianity is quite old and certainly connected to Syriac Christianity which can be thought of as older than any other branch. Today only a few Christian groups have survived the ravages of time to remind us that once there were more Christians in Asia than anywhere else. While it may not have suited British Christians (of the time of British rule of India) to think that Christianity reached India before it reached Britain, it can only be said that it was possible. Jewish traders were surely trading in India at the time we are thinking about, and the first Christian missionaries (outside of the few mentioned in the NT) usually seemed to travel from Jewish group to Jewish group. So someone got to India in those early formative years.

What use is all that? Only this - that it may be useful to compare the 114 'secret teachings' of Jesus listed in the Gospel of Thomas to ideas that may still be current in the Indian church. Just possibly one could find an overlooked notion that will set the mind on fire (smile) or possibly upset all those smug western Christians who ignore the fact that early Christianity is far more intellectually varied than modern (European) Christians want to admit

* yeah! I know my statement is inconsistent - clearly your topic is Asian in origin and can only be seen through an Asian scholarship lens - but the vast field of Asian studies forces a focus on one section or the other and I choose East Asian studies.

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Tharisapalli Copper plate grant (9th century) - One of the reliable documentary evidences of the privileges and influence that Saint Thomas Christians enjoyed in early Malabar.[39] The document contains signatures of the witnesses in Pahlavi, Kufic and Hebrew scripts.[40] It is the oldest documentary evidence available to attest the presence of a Persian Christian community in South India.

And the above copper plates are one reason why few scholars place any value on the Indian Thomas stories, but it does not necessarily mean that the story is a myth.

43

Atheism would not appeared if …

by venus in

· if religions were immune to division.

· if scriptures were immune to scientific errors.

· if religious leaders were immune to hypocrisy.

fulltimestudent

David_ Jay posted: I'm glad you brought it up and that no one is challenging you on it. I am not sure why when I bring it up I get told that the study is wrong.

Don't worry about it David - we likely all behaved like morons when we were slaves to the YHWH/Jesus mob.

We are unable to read the minds of all who may post here. So the only sane way to participate is to say what we have concluded, based on the evidence we have noted and not worry too much about those who want to argue without a evidence based foundation to their conclusions.

43

Atheism would not appeared if …

by venus in

· if religions were immune to division.

· if scriptures were immune to scientific errors.

· if religious leaders were immune to hypocrisy.

fulltimestudent

And, somewhat off topic, but I cant help posting a Stephen Fry response to theism:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5RtDpva7nE

43

Atheism would not appeared if …

by venus in

· if religions were immune to division.

· if scriptures were immune to scientific errors.

· if religious leaders were immune to hypocrisy.

fulltimestudent

Attributing the existence of things to a creator is a lazy intellectual exercise. But in past ages, as my previous post drawing attention to a Cambridge University blog post indicated, some humans in the past have been prepared to try to think in a different direction. For centuries, western thought was controlled by the church, and thinking outside the strictly controlled religious box could get you into trouble. But outside of Europe and its later developments, some were free to think of a universe without divinities.

This is how Guo Xiang (born 252 CE-died 312 CE) devoted thought to the existence of things and in his Zhuangzi (which, along with the Tao Te Ching forms the basis if Daoist thought) argued that 'things' are self-transformed,

"If we insist on the conditions under which things develop and search for the causes thereof, such search and insistence will never end, until we come to something that is unconditioned, and then the principles of self-transformation will become clear ... there are people who say the shade is conditioned by the shadow, the shadow by the body, and the body by the creator. But let us mask whether there is a creator or not. If not, how can he create things? ... Therefor before we can talk about creation, we must understand the fact that all forms materialise by themselves ... Hence everything creates itself without the direction of any creator. Since things createthemselves, they are unconditioned. This is the norm of the universe." (ch.2 NHCC, 1:46a-47b) -Quoted from Wing-Tsit Chan's, A source book in Chinese Philosophy, Princeton University Press, 1969). Chan is the translator as well as the editor.

In early Indian thought, thoughtful thinkers arrived at similar conclusions, You can find at least some of the strands of thought in the Wikipedia entry, entitled Atheism in Hinduism.

(Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism_in_Hinduism

43

Atheism would not appeared if …

by venus in

· if religions were immune to division.

· if scriptures were immune to scientific errors.

· if religious leaders were immune to hypocrisy.

fulltimestudent

On this topic, a news release (in 2016) from Cambridge University (UK) suggests that atheism is as natural to humans as is the supernatural.

https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/disbelieve-it-or-not-ancient-history-suggests-that-atheism-is-as-natural-to-humans-as-religion

233

Number of Muslims protesting London terrorist attack = ZERO. Number of Muslims protesting forced Mosque closure in France = HUNDREDS

by kpop in

so it is now two days after another islamic terrorist attack.

how many muslims are in the streets protesting and condemning this evil?

how many are marching in all the big cities condemning this in mass protests?.

fulltimestudent

Oh, boy! Have not got time to read 140 posts, so apologies if my comments duplicate anyone else's arguments.

I'd better say one thing before starting, I don't like Islam anymore than I like Judeao-Christianity, so I'm not presenting my arguments to convince someone that Islam is 'good.' I'm just trying to see the other side of this issue.

First, we've all had a bit of experience in attempting to convince someone that dying for YHWH/JESUS is an OK thing to do.

So, have you ever thought that if you were trying to convince some young (or older) guy that it would be an OK thing to die for Allah (who is more or less the same YHWH that we once thought it a good thing to die for), what would you say?

For my part, I think I'd raise the point that the west scream their heads off when a few people get killed, but usually do not get upset when anyone in a Muslim nation gets killed. That bastion of freedom and justice, the USA can kill a few kids with a drone strike aimed at some insurgent leader and non-one cares.

I could explore that a bit and ask them to check some history, and make sure that the first time bombs were dropped from a plane onto civilians was during the Christian Italian invasion (and takeover) of Libya (circa 1911). And, that the first time civilians were machine-gunned by an aircraft was during the British take-over of Iraq following WW1, when a champion of freedom and justice named Winston Churchill authorised the RAF to machine gun dissenting villagers who resisted the British occupation of their land (Same old story, the Brits need the Iraqi's oil to power their battleships - newly converted from coal fired to oil burners). I guess a few people protested in the streets of London, but apparently not enough to deter Churchill.

I could go on and on with stories like that - eg. The French army torturing Algerians during the Algerian resistance to the French. And onto the very flawed decision in recent years to invade Afghanistan and Iraq - but even before the 2001 invasion, the USA was interfering in Afghanistan as part of the CIA's cold war operations. When Russia invaded a guy called Charlie Wilson persauded the US government to begin arming the Mujahideen - and you could say that was the start of the huge growth of supplying modern weapons to Islamic forces.

So I'd be telling these young guys, that the only people that seem to be getting hurt are Muslims, is that fiar? Is that Just, Do you love Allah? What are you going to do about it, and some kids/adults fall for it.

As reasoning adults - we need to ask, does all the blame lay on one side?

Don't think I'll go on further, just inviting people to think about it. Don't forget also that other Muslims (probably more so than westerners) are often the victims of Muslim terrorism.

And, one final point, the UK Guardian has recently published this refutation that all Muslims support terrorist tactics.

Link: https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2017/mar/26/muslims-condemn-terrorism-stats?CMP=soc_567

The 712-page Google doc that proves Muslims do condemn terrorism

When a classmate told 19-year-old Heraa Hashmi that “all terrorists are Muslims” she began to compile a dossier of all instances of Muslims condemning terror attacks

48

Aren't you a bit amazed that the WTS/JWS is still around ?

by Finkelstein in

i know i am, to me its a bit of a peculiar anomaly that the wts is still around and functioning in reflection of its decades and now complete century that the wts has been bullshitting to people .

organizations like the church of god have shrunk dramatically from its heyday of the 1980's, this too was another organization that spread and grew by publishing its own magazine proclaiming a armageddon soon doctrine and its main publication was called " the truth " .

i'm guessing some of this has to do with the fact that people who get lured into this cult aren't aware of its past, its doctrines, the people who started it and so forth.

fulltimestudent

Aren't you a bit amazed that the WTS/JWS is still around ?

Nope! There are all kinds of ratbag religions that persist, sometimes for centuries. The Radio Church of God (aka, the Worldwide Church of God) my have continued as a minor example of Christian ratbaggery, but for the radical changes introduced by the 2nd generation leadership. If they had adopted a gradualist approach like our once dear brothers of the fourth generation leadership of witnesses, they may not have lost so many members.

And can you find a better example of persistence aalong with gradual change than the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox branches of Christianity

20

Feeling the Guilt

by Saethydd in

i'm currently disfellowshipped and living at home with my parents, but because they are both still devout jws i have to keep going to the meetings and crap because i don't want to risk getting thrown out until i finish college or find a job that will let me support myself and go to college.. yesterday, my mother rode with me to the meeting and told me how much my best friend and my oldest sister are missing me, and it just tears me apart because during the meeting i was practically counting the minutes till it was over.

it didn't help matters that i had to sit with my family because the library was closed off, thus forcing me to follow along with the meeting on my tablet instead of reading something useful or interesting like i normally do.. when i got home i just cried out in frustration because it feels like no matter what i do, i am making the wrong choice.

either i have to keep pretending to support an organization that has caused so much pain to so many people, or i have to abandon my family and friends to it so i can save myself.

fulltimestudent

Saethydd : Thanks, I appreciate having some support through all of this, and I'm just sorry that the average JW will probably never know what kind of people you really are. Instead, they will forever think of you as "wicked apostates" that want to mislead them.

So ...?

What it our former friends want to see us as "wicked." There are some 8 million JWs in the world, (a tiny fraction of humankind) who will one day either change or fade out of existence. They may have been important to us in the past, but do not belong in our future. Disregard them - they no longer matter, as their 'truth. has been proven to be 'false.'

Gradually make new friends, as you identify worthwhile people who may become friends for life.

74

Why is Trump so effective???

by Coded Logic in

i think trump is an absolute idiot.

his tactics, however, are undeniably effective.

thought i'd just put together a short list of some of the things he does.

fulltimestudent

S K Ditta: It's a link to a nice video. Trump, Marine LePen, Nigel Farage and similar opportunistic leaders expose weaknesses in an inherently flawed system.

Thnx for the link. Of course, Socrates was not the only ancient Greek philosopher to express doubts about 'democracy'.

Aristotle in his "The Politics"analyses the main constitutions of his time and points out their problems. Plato also saw flaws in 'democracy.'

Its relatively easy (as your posted video points out) to see why democracy is flawed. To a greater or lesser extent, voters today (in western style democracies) are manipulated by the party that forms government. Most voters cannot critically analyse government policies, indeed if half (?) of voters are below average intelligence, we could wonder it they could even contemplate what it means to critique a policy. And when the democratic representative is also drawn from among those who are below 'average intelligence' we can see the possibilities for disaster.

Plato also discarded 'democracy." Plato opted for a form of aristocracy, with a "philosopher king" who would be grounded in wisdom and reason. That leader would rule through a trained governing organisation he called 'guardians.'

While there exists a possibility that the American constitution sought to have (at the top of the governmental tree) an "elected king," the developed government based on party politics has spoiled this ideal. Why? Because political parties are usually oligarchies and not democracies, with (of course) the faults and weaknesses of both.

One of the most fascinating political experiments in the contemporary world is occurring in China, where in the less than 70 years in which the PRC has existed, the ruling Party has undergone many transformations and in its current iteration, has a leader that has had to prove his potential by governing (at least) two large (with populations over 100,000,000) provinces on his way to the point where the CPC will consider that person for National leadership. The selected proven leader is assisted in government by highly trained cadres - an arrangement that bears a strong resemblance to Plato's state "guardians." Up to this point, an honest observer has to admit to the practical success of this Chinese experiment, No other contemporary government has brought a third world nation into near-first world status.

74

Why is Trump so effective???

by Coded Logic in

i think trump is an absolute idiot.

his tactics, however, are undeniably effective.

thought i'd just put together a short list of some of the things he does.

fulltimestudent

Don't attempt to analyse Trump alone in seeking answers to this phenomenon. Look at how the techniques of communicating have changed in the last quarter century, AND (above all) take a good hard look at his followers. What sort of thinkers are they?

In good old Aussie, we also have this so called populist change. One segment of this populist change follows a woman called Pauline Hanson.

A cartoon in a Jesuit web-site explains a lot:

In the WA (Western Australia) state election, her share of the vote was down (probably due to a strategic mistake.

fulltimestudent

Posts by fulltimestudent

The 712-page Google doc that proves Muslims do condemn terrorism