h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

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I don't get why
you find his good fortune so extraordinary? He had a problem restraining his temper, yes, but he was a sincere man, who meant what he said about grace, and about his identification with the Jews. It seems to me, his main problem was law vs grace - and it doesn't seem to me that he contradicted Jesus at all! Everyone talks about it, no one demonstrates it.
Sure Jesus didn't say much about marriage,homosexuality, family relations or the like, and Paul did - but Paul's concern was teaching and guiding the churches and communities he had helped establish. Jesus concern was drawing and inviting people, Paul, James, Peter and others were concerned with establishing a way of life for those who responded to the invitation!

Paul

Contradiction

Jesus: not one jot nor tittle of the law will pass away

Paul: You dont need to be circumsised (i.e. you dont need to keep the covenant: be a nazorean: bother with a central tennet of the law)

A fairly big one in the context of First century Judea

And that is if you accept the Canon as described which personaly I don't.

I have my reservations about the gospels.

Firstly Two of them have Paul sticky fingers all over them, Luke who it is pretty much accepted was Pauls Student, and Mark who whilst by all accounts Peters adopted son seems to have spent a good deal of his time travelling with Paul, possibly ending up with him in 'his own house' in Rome. The words of Jesus therein are then very likely to have been in line with Pauls own thinking.

Matthew, I was more concilliatory towards Matthew as a reliable source untill I learned that there is vertually no evidence that it was actually written by him. I am becoming disposed based on my reading of the early church fathers to believe that it may well have been written or at least codified from verbal tradition to refute the 'gospel of the Hebrews' to which they took great exception and which may also have been known as the 'gospel of the Nazorean's'

Johns Gospel has also become an interesting feature of this as I recently discovered a proposition that this may represent a Masculinised 'Gospel of Mary'. certainly changing John to Mary in the Text makes a good deal of it make a lot more sense. (i.e. the scene at the foot of the cross) An additional hypothysis that grew out of this that the son refered to may have been Jesus's own son i.e. a babe in Mary's arms raises interesting questions and prehaps answers why the gospel became 'John's' gospel. Certainly within Gnostic Christianity the Role of Mary Magdalane was far more prominent and there is strong intimation that Mary was closer to jesus than anyone and 'used to kiss her on the lips often' This links to an equaly strong tradition that Christ's message included an agenda to make women equal to men. Something that Paul is non to keen on. (Though the same could be said for other disciples)

My evidence for Pauls 'dissagreement' with Christ is not particularly based on the new tesstament itself, I suspect that even if the original texts were relatively faithful, that they were 'tweaked' in the last half of the first century and the first half of the second to meet what was required of them. If they wern't tweaked then they would almost certainly have been in the first part of the Fourth century when Constantine was trying to centralise power in the empire by establishing Christianity as the state religion. T

he existance of texts which agree from the second and third centuries with later ones such as the sinaticus codex provides me with no reassurance as power struggles such as the one constantine was engaged with are often accompanied by pogroms, with the associated burning of heretical texts. (The Nag Hammadi Scrolls burried in the Egyptian Desert support this as they were clearly buried to preserve them in the face of persecution.)

I do not believe that the gospels now regarded as cannonical give us anything but a romanised view of a first century Jewish movement, and that the language of James's letter hints that the real Christianity in Judea was much more like the Judeasm of the dead sea scrolls than it was like the Centralised power hungry establishement that grew up in rome over the next 300 years.

Mostly down to Paul's original subversion of the message ...... in my opinion.

Sincerity

This is one thing I dont get from Paul,

N.B what follows is opinion nothing else.

Reading Paul I get the impression he was a rather sickly sweet man who's discourse left the listener conviced by his logic but somehow not quite sure why.

He spends far too much time defending himself from the accusation that he is lying, why? (See the habakukk commentary discovered at Qumran, which probably originated from Jerusalem circa 70 ad, curtousy of Josephus, and which I personaly believe represents a more universaly accepted text than some scolars seem prepared to accept.)

His writing sounds far too much like the speech shakespear gives to Mark Anthony, they are honourable men ..... BUT.......

Even Peter damns him with faint praise saying that what he says is complicated.

Back Later

SD, I'll probably answer some of your points more fully later (it's 0210 here right now, and I have got to go!) But I am getting the impression that it'd be pretty difficult for me to say anything you'd accept! (Other than agreement, that is.)I say this because you don't accept the epistles, you don't like the Gospels because Paul (may have) influenced them, you prefer non-Canonical writings such as the (possibly) Gnostic gospels...
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Note Galatians 3:28.
Plus there is evidence that he had women friends, and that the leaders of many of the churches he founded were women. IMO, many of the *current* views of Protestantism go back no further than 18th and 19th century America.

Simulpost!
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So, which is he? Hostile and angry and bitter, and a possible Roman spy, or sickly sweet and insincere?
I have a book about the sayings of paul which I must get out and have a look at in order to continue this discussion (if you want to do so.)

Sickly sweet and insincerity would seem to be a suitible front for a hostile angry and bitter man, whether he was a Roman spy or not.

This is based on my experience of Sickly sweet insincere hostile angry and bitter people.

Pauls conversion in the Desert on the way to Damascus (Where the high priests writ would not have run by the way so he wouldn't hae had any authority anyway) reads to me like a man who just had a bright idea about how to really get inside this troublesome popularist Nazarene movement, BECOME ONE OF THEM. Until it suited him not to be. I personally believe he was admirably successful at this and was probably involved in the death of James, since the coincidence of Anannias as Pauls contact in Damascus and Anannias the later high priest seems just another piece of evidence that makes sense looked at one way and doesn't looked at another.

Incidentaly why does Luke refer to him as 'a certain man named Annanias.' that seems suspect to me as well.

yes all the damscus experience changed about saul/paul was that he went from a christian hating jew to be a jew hating christian(if you aint on the list you aint getting in)

Other way around surely?

is it?

No, I don't know how I managed that.

One thing that occured to me concerning Paul is that the image we have of him presents a picture of a man who would not be out of place as the leader of a modern day cult, he says a lot of things that would be guaranteed to draw in large numbers of dissenfranchised and disenchanted people, something that was in abundant supply in the empire of the first century AD.

So the possibility occurs to me that once he had established himself as a prominent figure in what he might have originally thought of as a dissident group he then became enamoured of the power and adoration it may well have provided him with.

Something a Sickly sweet insincere hostile angry and bitter person would have lapped up like Honey. Two modern day examples of this would be Jim Jones (Jonestown Massacre) David Khorez (Wako Texas) both of whom were hostile and angry, but provided their followers with a sickly sweet message about brotherly love and community, whilst appearing thouroughly insincere to those outside the cult.

Of course Jones and Khorez did not have Pauls other advantages i.e. A Roman Emperor using religion to consolidate his power base, (Backed by the church fathers earlier concentration of power into the hands of the Bishops) Constantines leafleting campaign (there are a very large number of texts of the canon from the 4th century often used by textual scholars to show that we have a reliable modern text) and no doubt the destruction of any contrary texts helped too.

This makes me wonder about Pauls Notebooks, traditionally his concern for them is seen as a pious mans wish to preserve his writings, egoism could be suggested as a possibility. Personaly I don't have a problem with this per-se, but find myself wondering if he was prehaps worried that writing he would not want publicised would get out?

This also makes me think about the standard argument that the Texts we have today closely correspond to the originals, e.g. the Rylands Fragment sinaticus ect, ect, There is a very close correspondence, much greater than for almost any other old document. This is usualy presented as 'proof' of the validity of the text for myself it feels more like proof that any documents that disagreed in any but the smallest detail were erradicated, which I believe undermines the possible validity rather than supports it.

There are also other oddities in the cannon as we have it for example, in more than one place it is possible to read, 'Jesus Christ Messiah' which implies that there was huge opportunity for things to get lost in translation from the Hebrew or Aramaic into Greek: Nazorean and Nazarean would also seem a good example.

As I understand it the Greek word Christ is the translation of the word Messiah, I hardly dare think about how this was written in the original greek text and the more literal translation would be: 'Jesus the annointed one, the annointed one' 'Keeper of the Covenant' becomes 'From a town called Nazareth' if such fundamental problems exist the remainder of the texts must also be viewed not just with caution but also with some level of sceptisism, Not that this shouldn't also be applied to the other texts, e.g. the Gospel of Thomas.

It should also be held in mind that the texts almost certainly make cultural references valid at the time they were written, but which are not just invalid now but also potentialy invisible to us, things we could not possibly have the first inkling about because we did not live it, and will never know either.

O.K. enough for now

hi SD,

Do you really think all this Bible stuff truly has much to say about the concept of god(s)? Surely it has more to say about what people felt a need to believe in at that particular time. And specifically about Christians.

I still don't understand what 'being a Christian' means in today's parlance as it seems just about anyone can say they are a Christian and do pick & mix when it comes to the bible - their supposed Holy Book, Word of God. Apparenty it all depends on how one interprets the Holy Bible. Quite convenient, wouldn't you say?

az

Strontium Dog, I wonder whether you are joking when you write:

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Er, are you sure about that? If you can argue that a text like the Rylands Fragment actually undermines the validity of the Bible, what do you think might support it?

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Might they not be different people? I mean, was that a common name? (Just asking - but mightily puzzled by all your conspiracy theories, SD...)

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SD, do you have any evidence for such destruction? You mention it later on in this same posting, but where did you get the idea that such ever took place? The problem is, that you've already stated that you don't accept *any* of the Bible, so there's therefore no basis for discussion, is there? In the absence of a handy Tardis, that is...
BTW, I checked out Peter's words, and will post the exact wording when I get home, or maybe tomorrow - but Peter went on to say something about some people twisting them to their onw destruction (Paul's words) which doesn't sound like massive disgreement on Peter's part to me...

Hi SD and Della,

Fascinating stuff this dogma ain't it?

The real question though is what relevance the scribblings of a few hebrews and greeks have for us today? As they were effectively locked down by the order of a Roman Emperor in the 4th century CE, and have barely changed since, how can they now serve us?

Sure there are a few universal principals in there, but these are common to most religions and positive philosphies. For example do not murder or steal.

The rest though is dressed up in the particular prejudices of the time and is now increasingly irrelevant(?).

Blessings,
Matholwch /|\.

I see we are back to discussing monotheistic theology rather than the existence of the gods.

Ah well.

Back to lurking until they get it out of their systems.

The whole concept of a benevolent triple-O god (singular) is so weird that when you actually look at the contradictions it raises that I can't see how anyone can seriously accept it.

And there was such a promising digression into the role of music in spiritual experience...

This weekend I shall be singing galdor for a seidr ritual. During it someone, maybe several people, will journey beyond the normal confines of Midgard and speak with the wights in other parts of the Nine Worlds.

And it will be facilitated by singing. Nothing more.

There, the gods are close enough to touch...

Jez

Morning Math.

You wanna sing some songs to the gods?

Or the trees ?

Jez
---
Hertha Praise Poem

Used at the moon before equinox.

First used 2003.

--- --- ---

Outwith the earth hall/sing the death song
Passing spells/for birth warriors

Poured with weeping/sorrowful sprinkling
Within the grave hill/fires and feasting

Edge guardian/walker of the wind
Storm-strong champion/of the wildest winter

Leaf-stripper hails you/branch-breaker bows to you
Ice-burden bends/the sturdiest oak


Storm-strong, ice-hard, bone-white, blood-red
Hall-laughter, winter companion
Kin-gatherer, hearth-guests welcome
The house is full when you are queen

Mantle lifted, buds awaken
All things burst from their winter refuge
Oak-runner shakes, spine-apple shivers,
The moor-walkers raise empty heads to you

Praise to Thee my Lady, Praise to Thee…


©Jez (on the first day of Hertha's month) 2003 CE

Re Rylands and Sinaticus.

Someone mentions that without a Tardis we cannot resolve the argument: which is true, but a different kind of fun to debating the issue.

Specific evidence that texts were destroyed during constantines reign I would have to look for, I suspect it would not be that hard to find. That dictatorships destroy literary works they dont like is pretty much the norm, and certanly the Later Roman Catholic Church did destroy a fair bit of what it didn't like, even excommunicating people for the heanous crime of translating the canon into French and German.

The close correspondence of the texts also seems like the policemans complaint, when witnesses are interviewed and give closely similar stories it usualy means they have agreed the story, when there are broad similarities but with individual differences this suggests that the what is being described is their own version of events.

It is true that I am very sceptical about the validity of the canon, the relevance to the modern world relates to the suggestions from the body of 'heretical' texts which have survived, particularly the ones that can be described as Gnostic. These texts seem to me to be presenting a far more potent message than the canon, related to individual rsponsibility and the capacity to discover the divine within oneself.

The canon as an established 'truth' I believe disrupted the development of creative thinking about the central tennets of spirituality, this was challenged through the centuries, e.g. st Francis, but even he was limited to working within the canon as it stood

More later