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

You guys just missed out on a great rant.
I was just finnishing a philosophical masterpiece in response to what I had read here when the whole tyrade dissapeared!
Now I don't have time to rewrite it.
You would have been sooo impressed

YB

Must have been the work of the great god Sod, YOGABIKER. Anyway, welcome to the thread.


Alji

Andrew S

I do hope we are agreeing to differ, I rather enjoy a good debate, but wouldnt want anyone to feel I was not interested in their point of view wether I agree with it or not.

My position on Qumran would be that very few of the texts found there belong to any one sect, I am increasingly of the opinion that they probably represent a reasonable cross section of writing to be found in Jerusalem circa 70 ce. Some must inevitably represent texts from particular sects or movements, but I think it likely that they would not be the majority.

One exception may well be the Habakukk comentary which is the principal source of the 'Liar' narrative in the texts found at Qumran, though not the only one. There is also important evidence which may relate to Pauls Time as a student in the Damascus Document, which may explain why Paul thinks The high priests writ may run in Damascus, i.e. its not the City (In a different roman province to Judea) but something else entirely, a desert camp prehaps.

You say

"there is no need to suppose that Jude or Peter were connected with them, or that they would a) be hinting at it, and b) referring it to Paul."

The belief that both Peter and Jude are refering to Enoch is an established one in Catholic interpretation. I dont have a bible to hand but I think that it is even mentioned in one or other of the letters. I think that Any Jew in Israel in the First century CE, would almost certainly been aware of Enoch and most of the other texts found at Qumran, to a greater or lesser degree.

Reading Josephus leads me to think that Jewish Religion was almost entirely the focus of resistance to Roman occupation, Challenge of the Mosaic Law by the occupiers was a source of frustration, Land disputes abounded because of it, Caligula's death was all that prevented an earlier rebellion (He had tried to personify Jehova with a statue of himself placed in the Holy of Holies) The Zealots and Sicari were clearly on a, holy war, a Crusade or Jehad or whatever your prefered Term.

The Justifications for almost everything in Judean life Leading up to the Rebellion in 70ce was based on Religion and seems to be centered on keeping the law or not, even if Paul is Just a guy trying to teach a positive way of living, he is clearly on a different side to to Jews in Jerusalem who are angry and out to give the Romans a bloody nose. James focus on the Law does not fill me with confidence that he is not a part of the revolutionary struggle which will later result in the vertual oblitteration of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple.


More difficult for me is the internal evidence of the epistles.

Firstly I must say that the following argument excludes timothy I II and III, as there is some doubt over their authorship partly due to the very different use of language to Pauls other Epistles.

There are very distinct preoccupations for James, John, Jude and to some extent Peter with both False teachings and False teachers. James particularly uses phrases which would have been familiar to readers of the Dead sea scrolls, particularly the congregation of the poor as is his focus on keping to the law (Not that he dismisses Faith).

Paul is much more concerned with saying he is telling the truth and that he is not a liar, allongside some teachings which to me seem inconsistant. e.g. blurting out a bunch of Judgemental statements then telling his reader not to judge others (Romans)

Paul also seems somewhat preoccupied with money, exhorting his readers to 'be productive' and asking that they have funds ready for him when he gets there, when he doesnt arrive on time, he reminds them he will still want it when he does.

The Fly in my ointment so to speak would be the Epistles to Timothy, if these were written by the apostle Paul then these are clearly preoccupied with False Teachings and False Teachers, however as their provenance is in doubt and I have not been able to resolve this to my satisfaction yet and am wary lest I dismiss them too easily, just because the disagree with my currrent position.

The other exception is of course Hebrews, the athorship of which is not entirely clear but again given the tome implies to me that it belongs to Paul also, the reference to Timothy suggests this. BUT this is only suggestive of authorship and again I could easily wish it to be to assert my case. Hebrews of course evangelises on the significance and importance of faith, and if written by Paul feels to me like a reply to James.

In any event quoting Ghandi, 'we have different opinions but I hope it will not come between us as men'(or man and woman or any other possible combination)

YOGABIKER

Greetings, Falicitations, Welcome ect ect


"The original question -God, fact or fiction- is so obvious I can't understand how grown-ups can miss it.
Of Course We Made It Up"

AH BUT...

Is the concept of God an admission that we ourselves are not omniscient, omnipotent beings and that therefore there are forces in the 'universe/multiverse' beyond our control and/or comprehension.

Personaly I feel these Forces are indifferent to our lowly existence, and I don't feel that I am in a position to Judge (Conclusively) whether such forces have consciousness/awareness.

If the forces concerned do and are, and in addition happened to be called Jehova I am in deep do do......

Hi SD, and thanks for the post! I agree with you entirely about agreeing to differ . I am interested in your views, and many things that I write are more tentative than they might appear.

On Peter, Jude and Enoch, I didn't quite make myself clear. Jude's letter quotes Enoch at one point and refers to it at another. However, the text of Enoch was well known before Qumran.

So what I meant to say was that (ahem!) there is no reason to suppose that either Jude or Peter were referring specifically to whatever Qumran (just because they quote Enoch) or referring to Paul in the section they have in common (just because the style in that section is somewhat apocalyptic).

Of course, Peter does refer to Paul specifically later in his letter, but it looks to me more like a recommendation than a criticism. In fact Peter seems to be giving Paul's writing a status equal to the books of the Old Testament.

Incidentally, the opening of 2 Peter 3:15 (the verse we have been talking about) appears to be a reference to 1 Timothy 1:16. Of course the internal evidence is bound to be harder to trace if the authorship of one or both works is also in question. So all I can do is wish you the best of luck in your efforts!

Andrew S

To a great extent this is where I come directly into conflict with those who believe in the literal truth of what the New Testament as a whole represents. (Not that I have a concrete reason for believing that is your position, and it may not be.)

I find it quite hard to read any text, (Even my own) without speculating on the motives for why it was written. In the context under discussion the only clues which exist to give that speculation any substance and structure lie in the text itself and developing an understanding of the social, political, economic and psychological ect ect context of the time they were written.

There are a couple of distinct threads in the evidence I draw on to support the position I am promoting.

First Qumran,

There are distinct schools of thought about the origins of the Dead sea scrolls,

1) Obscure monestary of asthetic Essenes writes and then buries the scrolls between 150bce and 150ce This has nothing to do with the development of Christianity at all in fact has little to do with Judaism then or now.

2)Obscure monestary of asthetic Essenes writes and then buries the scrolls between 150bce and 70ce this community is the fore runner of the christian Church, James is the Teacher, Paul is the Liar, Annanias is the wicked priest.

3) The Scrolls are what remains of all the written material in Jerusalem Rescued by various people prior to it's destruction by the Romans. As such it is a collection of different recensions of similar texts drawn up by different sects of Judaism for different purposes.

(There are different variations on all three themes but these seem the most justifiable)

Personaly I feel that the diversity of the papers discovered precludes the first two possibilities I have read various estimates that the scripts of more than 300 scribes have been detected in the scrolls, if this was a monastic community that implies an unheard of level of literacy, even for a monastic community.

It also suggests that almost every person who wrote in that community has their handwriting represented in the corpus (This seems to me unlikely). In the grave Yard next to the community I am fairly certain that there were not anywhere near that number of individuals found.

Even in Judea which was a very literate part of the empire the handwriting of 300 scribes over a 300 year period (A scribe for each year) suggests the writings of a large town at least. Larger if (as seems likely to me) the texts represent only some of those who were writing and transcribing documents, the rest having been lost or destroyed, either deliberately or accidentally. Oh and the most literate period was probably 1 to 100ce. and even then even Paul appears to prefer to use a scribe.

Another piece of evidence supports the Jerusalem origin of the texts, ie the documents from cave 4 which range from scraps with recipts written on them, to short and distinctly personal prayers to longer sectarian documents all apparently dumped in a heap in the cave. Distinctly give the impression that the people who put them there had grabbed in a hurry armfulls of whatever seemed as though it might have been significant.

My argument therefore is not that any of the epistles refer in any way to Qumran, but that the Dead sea corpus of documents represents a snapshot of the kind of writing which existed in Judea at the time the Apostles were teaching.

My argument re James Jude John and Peter is that their writing is not dissimilar to the Dead Sea texts and that it would be more supprising if they were.

Even Pauls writing bares some similarity, which in part gives rise to the theory of the Essene origin of Christianity which I think is bunk for the reasons outlined above.

I wonder about 'Apocalyptic tone' I suspect you are using this to mean 'end of days and wrath of god' but wonder if the 1st and 2nd century meaning of 'visionary' might also be worth thinking about.

Given that both Christian view points use what have been called Qumranisms, the context is raised in importance. First century Judaism as represented by the DDS (Dead sea scrolls) is hugely focused on the interpretation and the keeping of the Law, The addition of 'the JUST' to James's name implies he is concerned with the Law, and his epistle poors scorn on faith without 'works'.

Similarly as you point out a reference to Enoch is not sufficient to establish a link, nor would any OT text, but the rest of the language used in the epistles provides support for this. My reference was intended to establish the Link between the language and ideom of First century Judea and the epistles, rather than a specific document.

It seems to be generaly acknowledged that there is a battle going on with False Teachers in many of the epistles, and much of 2 Peter is concerned with this battle. The language fits in with the Jerusalem context I have attempted to outline. There is enough in the narrative of acts to support the assertion that Peter played peacekeeper between James and Paul, in 2 Peter this seems to be happening again.

Certainly Peter got his fingers burned trying to maintain hs balancing act on more than one occasion, an Ungenerous person might accuse him of blowing whichever way the wind blew, sidling up to Paul on one occasion, dining with the gentiles ect but quickly switching sides when Jews zealous for the law turned up. (Tradition holds that this took place in Corinth I think.)

2 Peter is almost totaly concerned with battling False Teachers and False teachings: You say

"Peter does refer to Paul specifically later in his letter, but it looks to me more like a recommendation than a criticism."

However it seems to me like Damning with Faint Praise and can be reinterpreted as follows: e.g

'Paul who we Love like a brother' | 'I will be Charitable to him'
|
'Some of the things Paul Writes are | 'Only the elect and the wise
Difficult to understand' | should discuss what Paul
| Writes'
|
'He wrote about them because God | 'They are interesting ideas
caused him to understand them' | but not found in scripture.'
|
'people who do not know much about | 'Paul Shouldnt talk about these
God explain these things wrongly.' | Things with people who don't
| know enough to argue with him'


Peter's difficulty seems to be that he is genuinely trying to be charitable but is also bothered by the fact that Pauls ideas are difficult to understand and that Paul is not the only one teaching them. From a modern viewpoint Peter could be regarded as putting negative spin onto Pauls ideas, they are complicated, difficult to understand, other people explain them badly.

Peter is managing the message.

And the message is 'think very carefully about what Paul has got to say, because it might not be what you think' and seems to me to be a distinct effort to limit the number of people who make an effort to understand what Paul writes.

OK that didn't work

I tried to split comments onto either side of the screen with spaces and vertical Marks but it has come out in all a jumble that will teach me.

The following should be easier to follow: What Peter says first, followed by what I think it means.


1)'Paul who we Love like a brother'

=

'I will be Charitable to him'


2)'Some of the things Paul Writes are Difficult to understand'

=

'Only the elect and the wise should discuss what Paul Writes'


3)'He wrote about them because God caused him to understand them'

=

'They are interesting ideas but not found in scripture.'


4)'people who do not know much about God explain these things wrongly.'

=

'Paul Shouldnt talk about these things with people who don't
know enough to argue with him'


I hope that appears easier to follow

catching up on backlog, slowly slowly , wont comment on hard to read posts other than whacking great big grin, Az do you think the bats are attracted by Lua pheremonal output? ,as it must have some attraction for them , normaly they have set flight paths ,

maybe the extra bandwidth being used by mobile phones ect is sendind them of track, been lucky enough to see and handle a few close up you can get special roosting boxex for them about the size of birdbox but with a letterbox slit in the top.

must get on

Hi SD... That posting was interesting - and easy to follow!

My version of the Bible (RSVCE, as I am a Catholic) supports a different interpretation of 2 Peter 3:15-16. The verses are (not that Peter actually wrote in verses):

'And count on the forbearance of Our Lord as salvation (this is the reference to 1 Timothy 1:16). So also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, speaking of this as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures.'

The last phrase takes a big step, as it grants Paul's writings the status of sacred scripture. Furthermore, it is a reminder of an earlier part of the very same letter, which is notable as there are not that many texts about sacred scripture per se in the New Testament. But this one short letter has two of them. The earlier text (2 Peter 1:20-21) runs:

'First you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.'

If Peter had meant to damn Paul with faint praise, I do not think he would have placed his letters among the sacred scripture of which he had just written (or dictated) that men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. Neither would he have begun the passage by referring to one of them (1 Timothy, or it could be Romans).

I would not call myself a literalist. The authorship of sacred texts, interpolations, editing, etc., are valid topics for investigation, as are questions of motive. For instance, the question of the authorship of the letter to the Hebrews has been debated since the times of Origen, and both Jerome and Augustine wrote about it. But as regards each book of the Canon I hold the final result to be inerrant, at least with respect to the religious message it is putting across.

As it happens, 2 Peter is perhaps (after Hebrews) the letter in the New Testament whose authorship is most disputed. If it was not St Peter himself who wrote it, then the basis for using it as evidence that he had a particular opinion of Paul is presumably weaker. But my own opinion, since we must hold them, is that 2 Peter was dictated by St Peter, and like you I take my stand on that as above.

On Qumran, I can't compete at the moment! I'll have to return later to the topic. I was of the impression that the Dead Sea Scrolls were left by the Essenes. But I have never considered any alternative, and your points are interesting.

Hi SD

Haven't managed to catch up on the whole backlog following a 3 week break, so apologies if this is off the points of your conversation with Andrew:

"Paul also seems somewhat preoccupied with money, exhorting his readers to 'be productive' and asking that they have funds ready for him when he gets there, when he doesnt arrive on time, he reminds them he will still want it when he does."

I think you have to take into account the context of these comments. It appears as though the early communism of the Jerusalem church attested by the attitude to e.g. Ananias and Sapphira may have resulted in their being reduced to paupery when the famine arrived, and Paul makes it his business to collect funds to help them during that problematic time. But I would have to go over the references to check relevant dates and, having long since sold my Christian reference books, concordances etc after I stopped being Christian, I do not have the means to check any longer.

"The other exception is of course Hebrews, the athorship of which is not entirely clear but again given the tome implies to me that it belongs to Paul also, the reference to Timothy suggests this."

One theory I once came across was that Timothy might have been the author of Hebrews.

Oh... the best of luck with the laser treatment, Astrospacecadet.

Hello, Andrew, I don't know whether I have greeted you before... It's good to have someone with extensive Biblical knowledge here! Good to hear from you.

Hello Adelaide, and thanks for the compliment! I don't think we've met before... you know, you get quite familiar with the New Testament just by hearing readings from it (e.g. at Mass) over time.

Are you actually a priest, i.e., at a parish, or are you a researcher or such like?
I am a Protestant, but with Anglo-Catholic tendencies.

I'm a layman and not a priest. But I am a committed Catholic, and a member of Opus Dei. I'm no researcher, but I have studied some theology, and parts of the bible naturally get examined as part of that.

Mind you, I think what SD has been saying about Peter and Paul is quite correct. What I mean is, I might disagree with quite a lot of it, but I expect the basic thesis would be defended by certain biblical scholars (I mean, real ones, probably German ) with vastly more expertise than me. Anyway, it's good to talk about these things on a thread like this!

Yes, it's excellent, isn't it. A lot of people seem to have a distrust of Paul, even in some cases, quite an animus against him... but I like him, myself. I don't accept that he changed Christianity for the worse at all.

"I don't accept that he changed Christianity for the worse at all."

I agree. How could it be worse?

Blessings,
Matholwch /|\.

Good point.

What is more and more apparent from following this thread is that not a single part of it has remained unrevised or editied from what it once may have been.

Even if it ever was a true account of people and events the bibles chronology and account of how certain events took place are so fantastical compared to modern scholarship and ancient contemporary texts that it ends up with all the gravity of a fictional historical saga.

one love

From http://www.odan.org/corporal_mortification.htm

Quotes from the writings of Opus Dei Founder, Josemaria Escriva

"Blessed be pain. Loved be pain. Sanctified be pain. . . Glorified be pain!" (The Way, 208)

"No ideal becomes a reality without sacrifice. Deny yourself. It is so beautiful to be a victim!" (The Way, 175)

"Obey with your lips, your heart and your mind. It is not a man who is being obeyed, but God." (Furrow, maxim 374)

"And be watchful, for a spark is much easier to extinguish than a fire. Take flight, for in this it is low cowardice to be "brave"; a roving eye does not mean a lively spirit, but turns out to be a snare of satan. Yet human diligence, with mortification, the cilice, disciplines and fasting are all worthless without you, my God." (Furrow, 834)

"They [Opus Dei numeraries] shall maintain the pious custom, for the purpose of chastising the body and reducing it to servitude, of wearing a small cilice for at least two hours daily; once a week they shall take the disciplines as well as sleeping on the floor, providing that health is not affected." (Opus Dei Constituciones, article 147)

"To defend his purity, St. Francis of Assisi rolled in the snow, St. Benedict threw himself into a thornbush, St. Bernard plunged into an icy pond... You... what have you done?" (The Way, 143)

"What has been lost through the flesh, the flesh should pay back: be generous in your penance." (The Forge, 207)

"If you realize that your body is your enemy, and an enemy of God's glory since it is an enemy of your sanctification, why do you treat it so softly?" (The Way, 227)

"Your worst enemy is yourself." (The Way, 225)

"You have come to the apostolate to submit, to annihilate yourself, not to impose your own personal viewpoints." (The Way, 936)

Alji

Thank you Alji for that cut-and-paste. I did not see that in my horoscope. However...

The quotes in the original site have been taken out of context and thrown together misleadingly. The three books (the Way, the Furrow and the Forge) contain over 3,000 meditation points in total, so the author of that list had a lot of material available, and presumably got a kick out of editing it.

You can find the unedited contents of the three books here: http://www.escrivaworks.org
Or you could find them in a Catholic bookshop. The author, St Josemaria Escriva, was the founder of Opus Dei.

And the central paragraph in the pasted list is from an obsolete source: the Constitutiones. The Constitutions were completely replaced by the Statutes in 1982. I note that the Statutes have been published on the same website, so they should be aware that they are using an out-of-date document. Perhaps they don't care.