Leolaia

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Posts by Leolaia

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  35

  Watchtower Captions

  by Stephanus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  a typical 'tower cover depicting a before and after shot of "da good life", watchtower style:.

  with the text (rather sloppily, i'm afraid) editted out:.

  and some contributions by me (towards the worldwide work, natch!):.

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  Leolaia

  
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  61

  Poll-----Who Will Be The Next President Of the United States?

  by minimus in

  1. social
  2. current

  i say george w.

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  Leolaia

  Englishman.....On CSPAN here in the states they show the House of Commons meetings where Tony Blair has to defend one issue or another to his critics, and I like watching that. It makes me wish so much there was a similar system here in the states where Bush would have to go to Congress and defend his policies and it would be televised every now and then. That would be great! I admire you British for requiring the PM to at least think on his feet and not rely on scripted speeches and soundbites.
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  20

  What did the Watchtower say following 9/11

  by kgfreeperson in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  there have been some references from time to time about how jws felt about 9/11 and how the watchtower responded, but i'm interested in what, if anything, the watchtower said specifically.

  i don't have access to any of the publications, though.

  can anybody enlighten me?

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  Leolaia

  The WTS makes a big deal about how the prophecies of Revelation find fulfillment in their organization (like the mighty trumpet blasts referring to antiquated, obscure proclamations that no one probably cared about at the time), and here this big cataclysm happens on their doorstep and they haven't tried to see if it fulfills any prophecy? I wonder why. It's like everything the Society says was fulfilled in their organization happened in 1918, 1919, and the 20s -- as if nothing at all has happened to them since. They're stuck with an old system that they inherited from their predecessors. They've been waiting for Armageddon too long.
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  77

  Resurrection Appearance to James the Just

  by Leolaia in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  apostle paul provides an early list of jesus' resurrection appearances in 1 corinthians 15. it is important because this list was written before our canonical gospels were written and thus serves as an independent source of information.

  paul writes:"christ died for our since, in accordance with the scriptures; that he was buried and that he was raised to life on the third day, in accordance with the scriptures; that he appeared first to cephas and secondly to the twelve.

  next he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died; then he appeared to james, and then to all the apostles; and last of all he appeared to me too; it was as though i was born when no one expected it.

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  Leolaia

  Gumby....you are sooo right. And where is peacefulpete anyway? I wrote that huge humongous long post days ago in response to his question on Jesus being drawn entirely from mystery religions.

  On edit: Of course, I too sometimes need to do other things than post on internet boards too. ;)
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  77

  Resurrection Appearance to James the Just

  by Leolaia in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  apostle paul provides an early list of jesus' resurrection appearances in 1 corinthians 15. it is important because this list was written before our canonical gospels were written and thus serves as an independent source of information.

  paul writes:"christ died for our since, in accordance with the scriptures; that he was buried and that he was raised to life on the third day, in accordance with the scriptures; that he appeared first to cephas and secondly to the twelve.

  next he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died; then he appeared to james, and then to all the apostles; and last of all he appeared to me too; it was as though i was born when no one expected it.

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  Leolaia

  Narkissos.....Roman custom was to leave the body on the cross for an extended period of time, letting it rot away. I'm not sure how widely this was practiced in Judea, even in the execution of criminals since it is clear from Josephus, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Acts, and Galatians that Jews and early Christians understood crucifixion in terms of the law in Deuteronomy 21:22-23. If Jesus' body was left on the cross, Jewish tradition would view him as cursed and his body as a defilement. The claim that Jesus has arisen and saved from death by God would presumably not be very compatible with him being cursed in the minds of would-be Jewish neophytes. Let's say for the sake of argument that the Romans did respect this native law and hastily buried Jesus in a mass grave for execution victims. But this meant that his followers would not have a chance to annoint and properly treat the body for burial. The next day, after the sun had set on the crucified Jesus in a grave (thereby respecting the law in Deuteronomy), his followers then dug up the body and brought it to a sepulchre to annoint the body and treat it with oils and perfumes. That would seem to be a perfectly natural thing for the followers to do, and this would neatly account for the "rumor" mentioned in the gospels that Jesus' followers stole his body because the rumor was in fact true. The Joseph of Arimathea story was then invented to refute the rumor by indicating that the followers had official Roman authority to take the body. The act of taking the body also had to have been moved from Saturday to the very day Jesus died because if the followers took the body on Saturday, they would be breaking the sabbath (Luke 23:54; Gospel of Peter 2:5). This later version of the story would then have the disciples taking the body very shortly after death, which motivates Pilate's question in Mark 15:46 on "whether he was already dead." That there is something fishy with this question is suggested by the fact that Western manuscripts add the following words "for some time". Something with this verse did not sit right with scribes of the textual tradition; I'm not sure what. But this fascinating possibility has just occurred to me: What if the original "tomb" story was that Jesus was hastily buried by the Romans the same day as his death (whether this is historical is another matter), then a day passes, the Sabbath which is symbolic of Jesus being at rest. Because of the sabbath, the disciples decided to wait until Sunday to take the body. The tradition was that Mary and Salome were at the cross and so they would have known where Jesus was buried. The disciples took Jesus' body to the tomb, while Mary and Salome brought spices and oils to annoint the body. But then when they got to the tomb, they were encountered by an angel who told them that Jesus has risen and no longer was among the dead. After perfuming the body and sealing it in the tomb for burial, they go their own ways and then have visions of the risen Jesus -- which proves to them that what the angel said was true. Pure speculation, but it seems to account for a number of things. If such a stage in the story existed, it would have been long before the burial and epiphany stories were written down.
  

  About the Eucharist, there were a number of different strands, but I'm pretty convinced from the evidence that I cited that the transubstantiationary theme came later than the sapiental theme. I think the Eucharistic motif of the bread and wine was independently motivated by several paralleled motifs in the OT. Jews who saw in Jesus the figure of the ancient priest Melchizedek (cf. Epistle of Hebrews), would have taken note of the statement in Genesis 14:18 which says that "Melchizedek brought out bread and wine. He was priest of the God the Most High, and he blessed Abram." Then there was the application of the anointing story of Saul in 1 Samuel 10:1-8 which furnished several other plot elements to the Jerusalem narrative in Mark. Thus Samuel takes a phial of oil and pours it on Saul's head, thereby anointing him (1 Samuel 10:1; cf. Mark 14:3). Then Samuel tells him: "When you leave me now, you will meet two men near the tomb of Rachel, on the frontiers of Benjamin ..." (1 Samuel 10:2). This direction dovetails Jesus' instructions in Mark 14:13: "Go into the city, and a man will meet you carrying a pitcher of water, follow him." When there, Saul acquires the donkeys that his father had lost interest in, which recalls the story of Jesus taking the donkey for his triumphant entrance into Jerusalem (1 Samuel 10:2; Mark 11:1-7). Then Samuel's instructions continue: "Going further from there you will come to the Oak of Tabor where three men will meet you, going up to the God at Bethel; one will be carrying three kids, one three loaves of bread and the third a skin of wine" (1 Samuel 10:3). This directly resembles Jesus' instructions for the preparations for the Passover supper, involving both bread and wine.

  As for the wine originally having a non-transubstantiationary meaning, this is also apparent from the evidence. In the Parable of the Vineyard Laborers, the laborers who tend the vineyard are paid not according to the amount of work they do but by the generosity of the landowner; this is likened to the Kingdom of God so that those who later come into the Kingdom (i.e. the vineyard) to work have just as much right to life as those who toiled in it for a long time (Matthew 20:1-16). The Kingdom of God is again likened to a vineyard in Matthew 21:28-32 in which those who "go and work in the vineyard" are compared to the "tax collectors and harlots who go into the Kingdom of God." A third parable is even more explicit, the Parable of the Wicked Tenants (Mark 12:1-12; Matthew 21:33-46; Luke 20:9-19; Gospel of Thomas 65). This parable refers to Jesus' followers as being the "heir to the vineyard". The parable very explicitly quotes the similitude in Isaiah 5:1-7 which designates "Israel" as the vineyard. The implication, then, is that Jesus' followers, the new "church," have inherited the blessing that formerly lay with the nation of Israel. Psalm 80:8-18 refers to Israel as "the vine he brought out from Egypt," Jeremiah 2:21 refers to Israel as "the true vine that he planted," and John 15:1-5 likens Jesus with the "true vine," the Father as the gardener, and the disciples as the branches. The original Eucharistic metaphor of the wine could have then referred to making disciples as the same as tending the vineyard of the Kingdom. Didache 9:2 refers to the Eucharistic wine as "the holy vine of David" (hagias ampelou David), a phrase that like John 15:1-5 seems influenced by the Jeremiah 2:21's reference to Israel as a "vine of ... true and reliable stock" (ampelon karpophoron pasan alethinon...). The original interpretation of the wine as the life that Kingdom brings has a direct antecedent in Psalm 116:8-17:
  

  "For you, Yahweh, have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from my tears, my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before Yahweh in the land of the living.... How can I repay Yahweh for all his goodness to me? I will lift up my cup of salvation and call on the name of Yahweh.... Oh Yahweh, I am truly your servant, I am your servant, the son of your maidservant, you have freed me from my chains. I will sacrifice a thank offering to you, and call on your name." (Psalm 116:8-17)

  The scene of the Last Supper could have thus been one that converted the traditional Jewish benedictions of the bread and wine (i.e. "Blessed be you who has created the fruit of the vine") into one that thanked God for the bread of the wisdom and life that he is entrusting with his followers, and the vine of the Kingdom which (as in the parable) is given to his disciples as their inheritance. That seems to make a lot of sense. One other thing I forgot to mention in my earlier post was the prayer in the Didache that was said over the whole meal, which repeated these notions:
  

  "We give you thanks, Holy Father, for your holy name which you have caused to dwell in our hearts, and for the knowledge and faith and immortality which you have made known to us through Jesus your servant; to you be the glory forever. You, Almighty Master, created all things for your name's sake, and gave good and drink to men to enjoy, that they might give you thanks; but to us you have graciously given spiritual food and drink, and eternal life through your servant.....Remember your church, Lord, to deliver it from evil and to make it perfect in your love; and gather it, the one that has been sanctified, from the four winds into your Kingdom, which you have prepared for it." (Didache 10:2-5)

  The likening of the bread and the wine, the "spiritual food and drink," with the salvation that knowledge and faith brings, as through "your servant," seems connected with the thought in Psalm 116. In any case, any transubstantiationary motif is absent here.

  Leolaia
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  23

  Jesus and the Fig Tree

  by Leolaia in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  luke 16:19-31).

  matthew 13:3-9; mark 4:2-9; luke 8:4-8; gospel of thomas 9:1).

  " (luke 8:4-8).

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  Leolaia

  slenderdog.....here is an overview:

  http://gbgm-umc.org/umw/bible/outside2.stm

  And for specific information on individual works, this is the best site on the internet:

  http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/
  http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/

  Leolaia
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  23

  Jesus and the Fig Tree

  by Leolaia in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  luke 16:19-31).

  matthew 13:3-9; mark 4:2-9; luke 8:4-8; gospel of thomas 9:1).

  " (luke 8:4-8).

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  Leolaia

  These are some of the books I use:
  

  *****The New Jerusalem Bible (which had the Apocrypha)
  *****The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, edited by James H. Charlesworth (2 volumes; this has 1 Enoch, 2 Enoch, 2 Baruch, 4 Ezra, Jubilees, Testament of Abraham, etc.)
  *****The Apostolic Fathers, edited by Michael W. Holmes (which has 1 Clement, 2 Clement, Didache, Barnabas, Ignatius, Polycarp, Hermas, Papias, etc.)
  *****The Complete Gospels, edited by Robert J. Miller (which has Gospels of Thomas, Peter, Secret Mark, Gospel of Mary, Egerton Gospel, etc.)
  *****New Gospel Parallels, edited by Robert W. Funk (which places all the gospels side by side by passage)
  *****The Nag Hammadi Library, edited by James M. Robinson (which has the entire collection of gnostic texts in one place)
  *****The Dead Sea Scrolls, edited by Geez Vermes (which has Essene sectarian writings)
  *****The Ante-Nicene Fathers (which has Irenaeus, Tertullian, Athenagorus, Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Theophilus, Melito of Sardis, etc.)
  *****The Ugaritic Baal Cycle, edited by Mark S. Smith (look for other Ugartic literature from Ras Shamra)

  I especially love New Gospel Parallels -- it's one of the most useful references I have ever had on the subject.
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  22

  Captain Kangaroo dead at age 76- farewell

  by wednesday in

  1. social
  2. entertainment

  'captain kangaroo' bob keeshan dies at 76 by

  ap file ''captain kangaroo'' entertained and educated children for 36 years.

  keeshan died of a long illness, his family said in a statement.. .

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  Leolaia

  Oh the ping pong showers! Yes, I remember now....I can recall being 5 sitting in front of the TV eating instant oatmeal for breakfast watching the Captain and the moose.
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  77

  Resurrection Appearance to James the Just

  by Leolaia in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  apostle paul provides an early list of jesus' resurrection appearances in 1 corinthians 15. it is important because this list was written before our canonical gospels were written and thus serves as an independent source of information.

  paul writes:"christ died for our since, in accordance with the scriptures; that he was buried and that he was raised to life on the third day, in accordance with the scriptures; that he appeared first to cephas and secondly to the twelve.

  next he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died; then he appeared to james, and then to all the apostles; and last of all he appeared to me too; it was as though i was born when no one expected it.

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  Leolaia

  Well, I'm pretty pissed off right now. I just wrote a very long, nice response for the last 5 hours or so and then my computer froze and I lost the whole thing, except for what I could take a picture of with my digital camera. So all the great examples and quotes I was going to use are gone. Oh well. Maybe that's telling me I spend far too much time posting to his board.
  

  I wanted to thank you for pointing out my error which could have been avoided if I read up a bit more on the nuances of egeiro "to awaken, rouse" but it actually fits very well with the rabbinical and traditional Jewish view of death, which views it as like sleep and the dead being in a dreamlike state. The Testament of Abraham also describes the same thing, of Death taking Abraham as like in a dream. The use of egeiro in the sense of "awakening from death" is especially overt in the liturgical fragment in Ephesians. I then speculated about the use of the verb "making alive" in 1 Peter and statement in Acts of Jesus simply being "alive" as relating to this original sense. There is indeed nothing specific of resurrection that is entailed by egeiro. I also wondered if the hymn in Ephesians could perhaps suggest that the original sense of anastenai is not resurrection but "standing up" from among the dead and being "made alive" as a spirit. There is a statement in the Testament of Abraham which I quoted, wherein when Abraham died he was "cleaved to Death" but Michael the Archangel came immediately to free him loose and prepared for him to ascend to heaven three days later. The "freeing" of Abraham from Death struck me as similar to Jesus being made alive.

  I am now looking at the words used in the gospels to refer to what happened to Jesus as he died on the cross. Matthew 27:50 says that Jesus "released his spirit" (apheken to pneuma). This same word occurs in Matthew 18:27 to refer to a release from debt and seems to simply refer to a spiritual release that occurs at death. But John 19:30 has the verb paradoken "deliver up" which implies that Jesus was handed over to someone, and Luke 23:46 explicitly has Jesus entrusting or depositing (paratithemai) his soul into the hands of the Father. This latter phrase is most consistent with Jesus' soul being taken from the cross into the Father's domain, but not in a manner that overtly describes a spatial ascension. The phrase in the Gospel of Peter is more explicit: that Jesus was "taken up" (analephthe) on the cross. This same phrase is used to refer to Jesus' ascension in Ps.-Mark 16:19 ("he was taken into heaven," anelephthe eis ton ouranon), Acts 1:2, 11 ("taken up from you into heaven," anelephtheis aph' humon eis ton ouranon), and probably in 1 Timothy 3:16 ("taken up in glory," anelphthe en doxe), but most significantly it is used to describe Elijah's ascension to heaven in 2 Kings 2:11 (LXX) which says that Elijah was "taken up to heaven" (anelphthe ... eis ton ouranon). A similar word is used in John 14:3 to refer to Jesus "taking" (paralepsomai) his disciples with him into his "Father's house". Another reminiscent text is 2 Corinthians 12:2-3 which refers to being "caught up" (harpagenta), possibly "out of body" (ektos tou somatos), into Paradise in "third heaven", which also relates to 1 Thessalonians 4:17 which foresees the faithful as being "caught up (harpagesometha) together ... in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air (eis aera)." Paul's statement about being caught up to heaven "out of body" is strikingly similar to the Ascension of Isaiah, wherein Isaiah's soul leaves his body and visits the various levels of heaven. As for the belief that Jesus ascended right at his death, Irenaeus (A. H. 5.31.1) refers to those who believed that Jesus "did not rise again on the third day but immediately upon his expiring on the cross, undoubtedly departed on high, leaving his body to the earth," and Justin Martyr alludes to the same belief (Dial. 80.4).

  I was also thinking more about the Empty Tomb story. One other detail I just found is that the Christian interpolation in Ascension of Isaiah names Gabriel and Michael as the two angels that open Jesus' tomb (3:16). Now consider that these same two angels are mentioned in the Testament of Jacob where is says that the angels Michael and Gabriel came down "to bear Jacob's soul to heaven" while "Joseph orders his father's body to be embalmed in the Egyptian manner" (5:13-14). Is this a coincidence? The Testament of Abraham 20:11 names "Michael the archangel" as the one who led the angels in taking Abraham to heaven after his body, which had been tended "with divine ointments and perfumes until the third day of his death," was buried by the oak of Mamre. Michael the Archangel also pops up in the Epistle of Jude as having responsibility of Moses' corpse, a story borrowed from the Assumption of Moses. The links between these assumption stories and the conception of Jesus' burial and ascension are quite interesting. The material in the gospels about the Transfiguration and the Rich Man and Lazarus parable, the promise made on the cross to the robber, the claim of Jesus' spirit being entrusted to the Father at death, and Luke's explicit and elaborate argument against this position in Acts, convinces me that there is a deep layer of tradition that conceived Jesus' rescue from death as quite similar to that of ascensions and assumptions of the other "ancient worthies".

  What do you think of what I wrote about the Eucharist?
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  52

  Why does anything exist at all?

  by logansrun in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  god or no god, why is there something rather than nothing?

  why do elements have properties?

  why does consciousness exist?

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  Leolaia

  logansrun, here is a quote from Stephen Hawking:

  There are something like ten million million million million million million million million million million million million million million (1 with eighty [five] zeroes after it) particles in the region of the universe that we can observe. Where did they all come from? The answer is that, in quantum theory, particles can be created out of energy in the form of particle/antiparticle pairs. But that just raises the question of where the energy came from. The answer is that the total energy of the universe is exactly zero. The matter in the universe is made out of positive energy. However, the matter is all attracting itself by gravity. Two pieces of matter that are close to each other have less energy than the same two pieces a long way apart, because you have to expend energy to separate them against the gravitational force that is pulling them together. Thus, in a sense, the gravitational field has negative energy. In the case of a universe that is approximately uniform in space, one can show that this negative gravitational energy exactly cancels the positive energy represented by the matter. So the total energy of the universe is zero. (Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time [1988])

  For more information, read there two webpages. It's a start:

  http://home.flash.net/~csmith0/bigbang.htm
  http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mark_vuletic/vacuum.html

  Leolaia