Posts by KalebOutWest

299

Who told the first lie?

by nicolaou in

this is a continuation of the discussion which sprang from an unrelated topic.. so according to genesis, who told the first lie?

god told eve that if she ate from the tree of knowledge she would die that very same day.

in response to that statement the devil told her she would not die.. eve ate from the tree and did not die.

KalebOutWest

MeanMrMustard

Doesn't matter. Pick one.

nicolaou

Stop being such a smug drama queen.

The truth is you folks are still acting the same way the Jehovah's Witnesses do. You demand I think like you and when I don't you demonize me.

You haven't moved past the Watchtower religion's practices that you criticize. You only do that when it's convenient.

I don't have to choose or think like you or do anything you want.

You are not satisfied with anything. If I say you're right, according to you "I'm a drama queen." If I give an intellectual answer "I'm showing off." If you ask how I know something and demand that I explain myself, and I tell you I am an academic, you claim I am only mentioning going to college so I can "elevate myself above others and make myself sound important."

Except Jeffro, who just checks on mistakes, and we've had a rocky history--it seems others just want me to choose. Jeffro has turned out to be the most sensible on here.

The rest of you--screw you. I don't follow you. You all are nuts.

And wrong.

299

Who told the first lie?

by nicolaou in

this is a continuation of the discussion which sprang from an unrelated topic.. so according to genesis, who told the first lie?

god told eve that if she ate from the tree of knowledge she would die that very same day.

in response to that statement the devil told her she would not die.. eve ate from the tree and did not die.

KalebOutWest

nicolaou:

If some thug threatens you with death you aren't going to assume they're referring to your old age demise.

But if you "threaten me" it's okay, right?

Equally if someone says you won't die you aren't going to assume they mean you'll never die, that's just ridiculous.

This is a myth. I think it's ridiculous to assume that what anybody says in a myth will ever happen at all.

Sophisticated theology can be fascinating but if it's arguing that black is white it's worthless.

That's meaningless. Who's arguing that?

ExJWs, taught by "reading two years of Awake!...It's like going to college" and believing crap like that.

This is why I hate this place.

I hope I get "removed" from here. I hate you all. You remind me of Jehovah's Witnesses! Arrggh!

I give up. I give up. I give up. I give up.

Yes, I am wrong. I am evil. I told the lie.

You are are right. I am wrong. I give up. J wrote P, I believe you all. God lied. The snake is true. Whatever. I don't care. I believe whatever you all say.

299

Who told the first lie?

by nicolaou in

this is a continuation of the discussion which sprang from an unrelated topic.. so according to genesis, who told the first lie?

god told eve that if she ate from the tree of knowledge she would die that very same day.

in response to that statement the devil told her she would not die.. eve ate from the tree and did not die.

KalebOutWest

peacefulpete:

Kaleb are you then suggesting the two introductory stories were,by design, supplementary and the work of the same hand?
Or simply that source critical approaches are uninteresting (and and perhaps futile) therefore assessing the final product is preferable.

Neither.

I just wasn't talking about the source/authorship in my explanation. I also wasn't saying that the critical approaches were uninteresting.

Consider the recent book that also talks about the meaning of the creation myth of Genesis. Entitled Feh (which is a Yiddish expression a Jew uses for something that they find contemptible), it is basically a humorous commentary "origin story" written by Shalom Auslander, reflecting on his recent brush with death after taking one of those so-called weight-reducing drugs that so many of the rich and famous have been taking.

Having been friends with the late actor Philip Seymour Hoffman who died of a drug overdose in 2014, his own recent brush with the Grim Reaper by means of a pharmaceutical that Auslander sought out as a fat-reducing and life-changing panacea was not lost on him.

But what Auslander focuses on is neither whose hands were involved in writing the myth of Genesis to begin with or even God and his instruction regarding the forbidden fruit. The problem is that not only "God" but philosphers and scientists themselves all seem to want to tell Auslander and the rest of us that we come from dirt.

Dirt.

We were made from dirt.

God and men who supposedly know better than the rest of us have come to agreement without our permission or consensus that you and I are no better than dirt--feh.

You don't even have to join a religion to self-loath yourself and want to die. You just have to be fat like Auslander was and take a prescription drug that didn't agree with you to look like some guy on the Internet because you genetically cannot possibly look like someone who spends 72 hours a day in a gym and who eats nothing but chicken breasts and raw egg yokes and is made of marble and has a 12 inch penis and dates models and drives a sports car...and die, because this drug can kill you.

Who gives a f*ck about who lied and and ate what fruit because a snake had legs? God, philosophers, and 9 our of 10 scientists agree you are made out of dirt. That is why you hate yourself. You don't even have to be a Jehovah's Witnesses. You will never be pretty. You are dirt. Don't you want to die too? It's more than religion. It's science.

Of course, the above is just a somewhat morbidly/humorous take/interpretation on the Genesis story by another Jewish writer. The point is that there is no room in Auslander's take for which redactors wrote what part of the story in Feh. His commentary is meant to reflect on how society is self-destructive in its behavior, no better than dirt, treating other people like dirt, and that perhaps there is an essential "truth" in this mythology (unfortunately).

My commentary was similar. You don't always lean on "who wrote what" to make your point.

299

Who told the first lie?

by nicolaou in

this is a continuation of the discussion which sprang from an unrelated topic.. so according to genesis, who told the first lie?

god told eve that if she ate from the tree of knowledge she would die that very same day.

in response to that statement the devil told her she would not die.. eve ate from the tree and did not die.

KalebOutWest

MMM

In conclusion, even if the story is borrowed... err... stolen.... err... culturally appropriated, it's still God lying about the fruit.....

That depends on your point of view and how you interpret the story.

As Maimonides taught, God doesn't really speak or walk or talk or get jealous.

God doesn't lie any more than God tells the truth. To do claim such things is to make God in the image of humans. To do that is to make an idol out of God. Remember these are just stories.

In the story is God lying? Do Eve and Adam die?

Remember, the Hebrew does NOT read: "In that day you will die." That is just JWs being used to the NWT and a few English translations that used literal word-for-word King James English. In more modern versions, like the NRSVue and similar translations it just reads "you will surely die." No mention of a "day."

So where is the lie? They did die, right?

Or did Adam and Eve ever exist? Does God exist?

If none of them exist, did anyone lie?

Or if God does exist and like Maimonides teaches, God is not anthropomorphic, God is not a person and neither lies or tells the truth, what then?

Thus it depends. It's just a myth there to teach. You can say God lied and you can say God did not. But in reality both are true at the same time.

299

Who told the first lie?

by nicolaou in

this is a continuation of the discussion which sprang from an unrelated topic.. so according to genesis, who told the first lie?

god told eve that if she ate from the tree of knowledge she would die that very same day.

in response to that statement the devil told her she would not die.. eve ate from the tree and did not die.

KalebOutWest

TonusOH;

I can keep up with discussions to some degree only because that version isn't too different from mainstream Christianity, at least as it developed in the west.

I understand what you are trying to say, but technically someone with a theological bat might swat you for this statement. But there are some similarities, especially with the latest changes.

Actually Jehovah's Witnesses are closer to what is called "Adventist" Christianity. It also shares some views with "Unitarian" Christianity due to its rejection of the Trinity.

The mainstream churches are traditionally the Baptists, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, the Disciples or Churches of Christ and Reformed Churches.

The Witnesses are also known as Restorationists, a group of Christians that sprung from the Second Great Awakening claiming to be chosen by God to "restore" the Church with Apostolic purity, centering around Millerite calculations which are believe that the book of Daniel can be used to calculate the Return of Christ.

Of these, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) has proven to be probably the most successful by creating its own book of holy writ.

The Mormon "God" is one of the most similar inventions to "Jehovah" I have ever seen, even though this one has sex with a divine wife. Most Witnesses are unaware that officially, according to Watchtower theology, even though it is made of spirit, "Jehovah" has a body too and literally lives in a place and is subject to time and space exactly like the "God" of Mormonism.

299

Who told the first lie?

by nicolaou in

this is a continuation of the discussion which sprang from an unrelated topic.. so according to genesis, who told the first lie?

god told eve that if she ate from the tree of knowledge she would die that very same day.

in response to that statement the devil told her she would not die.. eve ate from the tree and did not die.

KalebOutWest

peacefulpete:

Perhaps I am reading too much into it.

I am not too sure what you are talking about and why. I am sure you have your reasons and that they are all good.

I was merely mentioning how the two stories are presented in Torah (chapters 1 and then 2-3) as a foreword or introduction to the Torah--like when you go to a musical and you sit down and before the curtain rises you hear the orchestra play a bunch of the tunes of the songs that are going to play throughout the show jumbled together in a fancy introduction called the "Overture."

That is how it is presented when it is taught in Hebrew School from a theological perspective: i.e., Why does the Book of Jewish Law begin with Stories instead of Laws? Answer: It is a demonstration and an explanation all-in-one on the importance of obeying the Law and why we often do not .

As Jeffro and I cleared up among one another, I was not talking about where the story actually came from. I was talking about what the story was about.

I don't comment with others regarding the Document Hypothesis because most people here use the older form that Wellhausen invented.

Because I use the updated form, I only use R (Redactor) and D (Deuteronomist) and sometimes J (which now stands for Judean and not Jawist). *

I know this is not what you mean when you write things such as:

The J story, whether you accept Freidman's belief that it was the backbone of the Pentateuch or not, betrays a nuanced talent...

So I avoid it as we are not talking about the same "J" here.

I adopted the updated form to keep up with the standards my school and synagogue required several years ago.

___

*--Jawist had been combined with Elohist as it is now believed to be the same redactor and has been given the tag JE.

299

Who told the first lie?

by nicolaou in

this is a continuation of the discussion which sprang from an unrelated topic.. so according to genesis, who told the first lie?

god told eve that if she ate from the tree of knowledge she would die that very same day.

in response to that statement the devil told her she would not die.. eve ate from the tree and did not die.

KalebOutWest

And I mean, we don't always know whose myth really came first.

Writing doesn't prove a culture always came up with it or didn't lift it from its conquered people when we are talking about shared mythology using tropes common among civilizations before the Bronze Age Collapse.

I know the Jews didn't invent the Flood, but who did? We cannot say. It is fuzzy.

299

Who told the first lie?

by nicolaou in

this is a continuation of the discussion which sprang from an unrelated topic.. so according to genesis, who told the first lie?

god told eve that if she ate from the tree of knowledge she would die that very same day.

in response to that statement the devil told her she would not die.. eve ate from the tree and did not die.

KalebOutWest

Jeffro:

There are obvious and broadly accepted connections between the biblical ‘J’ stories (where ‘J’ is simply shorthand for those stories that we all know I’m referring to) and Mesopotamian stories, particularly the epic of Gilgamesh. It isn’t the case that there is no way to know that, and it isn’t remotely surprising or controversial that Jewish culture was influenced by Babylon.

My comments were about the origins of all mythology from the Bronze Age that shared common elements, not about where the Hebrews based the narratives found in their mythology.

We have no real historical records whatsoever for any civilization due to the Great Bronze Age Collapse, and that was what I was commenting on. Stories like the Trojan Horse tale might have been such a tale, but the Collapse makes it hard to tell. This is an example.

The mythology in the Torah fit within this model, but I was only speaking of their stories in light of the Collapse. We know they have connections to other Bronze Age stories, but none can claim which came first since many civilizations have similar stories and heroes in several cases, though not always.

The Jews do make reference to purposefully adapting Babylonian tales, often to mock them, and later scholars learned they were often lifting from the Epic.

But this is true about all our practices and celebrations. They come from various different sources and cultures, like Purim--totally grabbed from others.

Only Hanukkah comes from a historical event, but that was altered by rabbis with a "miracle" story since the Hasmonean dynasty ended in failure.

299

Who told the first lie?

by nicolaou in

this is a continuation of the discussion which sprang from an unrelated topic.. so according to genesis, who told the first lie?

god told eve that if she ate from the tree of knowledge she would die that very same day.

in response to that statement the devil told her she would not die.. eve ate from the tree and did not die.

KalebOutWest

Forgive the badly composed post I last submitted. I dictated it via voice while traveling.

Getting the latest news affecting the political scene and trying to do paperwork at the same time did not make this very accurate.

I usually write at a computer with an editor, but have not done so for the past 8 months.

299

Who told the first lie?

by nicolaou in

this is a continuation of the discussion which sprang from an unrelated topic.. so according to genesis, who told the first lie?

god told eve that if she ate from the tree of knowledge she would die that very same day.

in response to that statement the devil told her she would not die.. eve ate from the tree and did not die.

KalebOutWest

Peacefulpete:

The story has a Greek flavor, meaning nearly satirical...I can't help noticing your comments blend the 2 stories together. The P story features Torah and has none of the philosophical feel.

"Greek Macedonian" is what I believe is the more precise term my professors used and would correct me every time I would say "Greek" in reference to influences to mythology or legends employed in the Torah. While the Greeks did come forth from the Macedonians due to the rise of Alexander, the elements you may be seeing cannot be precisely untangled and have been likely been mixed in as there are due to the Great Bronze Age Collapse (for instance, this is why so many societies from before the Collapse share the Flood myth and why Moses and the Levites "come from Egypt" where it appears monotheism was invented--and why likely the names Moses, Aaron and Levite are probably Egytian and not Hebrew).

As I have often mentioned before, I do not offer my own personal views or my own personal convictions on anything. I am taking what I write from sources I teach from either at present or from over the years (if they have not be altered by the latest findings).

My comments rarely reflect the older Graf-Wellhausen Hypothesis from the 1800s or its revision in the last part of the 20th century. I have told you this before, in fact on more than one occasion, that it is no longer taught in academia as a standard hypothetical model.

By the time the 21st century came about it was learned that if one were to use that methodology it was possible to determine a multitude of far more hands involved than merely J, E, P & D. At the same time the data present from the findings from Qumran could finally be analyzed to develop a far better understanding along with archeological digs over the past century that altered the hypothesis greatly, suggesting it was in need of revision or replacement altogether.

Thus my comments do not employ the older hypothetic model.

The narrative likely contains elements from various civilizations, Greek--oops, there I go again, Macedonian, Egyptian, and more than we might be able to unscramble or know about, prior to the Bronze Age Collapse. That is the problem with everything before then and why all this is mythical. It might be based on things various peoples recall through folklore, but there is no way to know because of this widespread fall of society past.

I know people offer exactly what they believe here.

I do not.

While I am of Jewish stock and once lived among Jehovah's Witnesses and formally educated and currently teach religion, I am not a practicing Jew. I am considered a Jew and and have formal membership and work among them, etc., teaching and instructing them, but I am of a completely different denomination religiously speaking.

I keep my personal convictions and opinions to myself.