TromboneChat

Quote from: MoominDave on Apr 06, 2016, 02:58PMPart I - The Tetrateuch
Genesis

• [li]Big picture stuff
  • [li]Creation; Adam & Eve[/li][li]Humans, take 1; Cain & Abel, Noah[/li][li]The Flood; Wash everything away, start again[/li][li]Humans, take 2[/li]
  [/li][li]Abraham; extensive travels, original covenant, Lot, not sacrificing Isaac[/li][li]Jacob; conflict with twin Esau, banishment, wives, 12 sons[/li][li]Joseph; betrayal to Egypt, rise, saving of family, supposed origins of 12 tribes[/li]

Exodus

• [li]New scene, three generations on - Israelites now of low status in Egypt[/li][li]Moses grows up, fights battle of wills with Pharoah over plagues, leads Israelites to depart[/li][li]Wandering, take 1; through the desert to Mt. Sinai, where they make a long camp and...[/li]

Leviticus

• [li]...many laws are given[/li]

Numbers

• [li]Wandering, take 2; they reach their destination, but are too weak to attempt the task, and so...[/li][li]Wandering, take 3; more pootling around, building up military prowess over the years in the preparation for invasion; new leaders emerge, and they finish on the brink of their destination again[/li]

Quote from: MoominDave on Jul 16, 2016, 04:49AMPart II - The Deuteronomistic History
Deuteronomy

• [li]Moses orates; recap of terms and conditions, forward planning[/li][li]Moses dies[/li]

Joshua

• [li]Conquest of Canaan under Joshua[/li][li]Division of conquered land between the tribes, East and West banks of the Jordan[/li]

Judges

• [li]Prologue: Messy details of attempted not-always-successful conquest, compare with previous book[/li][li]An intermittent sequence of Judges leads: Othniel, Ehud, Shamgar, Deborah, Gideon, Tola, Jair, Jephthah, Ibzan, Elon, Abdon, Samson[/li][li]The Dan tribe take territory in the North and the Benjamin tribe are defeated by the other tribes[/li]

Ruth

• [li]Intermezzo: Heartwarming tale of a family coming through hard times in the era of the Judges[/li]

1 Samuel

• [li]Samuel is a priestly leader in a time of Philistine conflicts who needs a worthy successor[/li][li]Saul is appointed to the new role of king and with his son Jonathan defeats the Ammonites, Philistines, Amalekites, but he falls out with Samuel, who anoints David as a replacement king secretly[/li][li]David (a military hero) and Saul vie for superiority over a long period, eventually brought to an end when the Philistines kill Saul in battle[/li]

2 Samuel

• [li]The kingdom nearly splits, but David unites it, doing many heroic deeds[/li][li]But in time he becomes morally suspect and manipulated by schemers[/li]

1 Kings

• [li]David dies, succeeded by Solomon, who consolidates his power base brutally but gains great wealth and a reputation for great wisdom, building the "first temple" and a palace; however, like David he becomes morally suspect in time[/li][li]After he dies, the kingdom is split into Israel (larger Northern portion) and Judah (smaller Southern portion), and the continual inference is that Judah is the legitimate one of the two[/li][li]Kings succeed in both Israel and Judah; Elijah gains prominence as a prophet[/li]

2 Kings

• [li]Long successions of kings of both Israel and Judah are described, and the prophet Elisha comes to prominence[/li][li]Most kings do not prioritise Yahweh-worship - none in Israel, but some in Judah.
  [/li][li]First Israel then Judah are unable to tread the difficult path of negotiation between stronger powers on either side, with both populations destroyed and exiled by 586 BC[/li]

Quote from: MoominDave on Oct 28, 2016, 07:11AMPart III - The Chronicler's History (including miscellanea)
1 Chronicles

• [li]Recap of genealogy to the beginning; return of some exiles to Judah[/li][li]Recap of Samuel written to favour David more highly[/li]

2 Chronicles

• [li]Recap of Kings with only the Judah parts and a focus on relations with Yahweh[/li][li]End of exile when Babylon falls[/li]

Ezra

• [li]Cyrus of Persia commands Judah to return home and rebuild their temple; decades later Artaxerxes of Persia commands Ezra to lead a second wave of returnees[/li]

Nehemiah

• [li]Nehemiah, a Judahite official of Artaxerxes of Persia, is appointed governor of Judah, rebuilding Jerusalem's wall; he and Ezra organise Judah, mixing enlightened social reform with brutally dogmatic interpretations of Mosaic law[/li]

Tobit Catholic/Orthodox

• [li]Tobit and his son Tobias are exiled in Nineveh when Israel falls, while Sarah lives in Media; a demon has killed seven of her husbands. With an angel's help, Tobias rescues her, and everyone lives happily ever after[/li]

Judith Catholic/Orthodox

• [li]Nebuchadnezzar is enraged by the Israelites' failure to answer a military summons, and despatches his general Holofernes with his army to suppress them; Judith, a beautiful Israelite widow, uses feminine wiles to distract Holofernes, killing him[/li]

Esther

• [li]Jewish exile in Susa Esther wins a beauty contest to become queen of Persia; factions vie to destroy the Jews in Persia, but the influence of her and her uncle Mordecai carries the day[/li]

1 Maccabees Catholic/Orthodox

• [li]In the 160s BC the Greek rulers attempt a religious crackdown in Judaea, against which Judas Maccabeus leads a rebellion[/li][li]Various competing empires trade blows, and all the while the rebellion becomes more secure; Jonathan Apphus and then Simon Thassi succeed Judas and establish a medium-term peace, along with Simon's dynasty, the Hasmonaeans[/li]

2 Maccabees  Catholic/Orthodox

• [li]Prior to the Maccabean revolt, unedifying political struggles within the priesthood result in turmoil, resulting in the crackdown of 1 Maccabees; Judas leads the first portion of his revolt, in less detail this time[/li]

Quote from: MoominDave on Apr 19, 2017, 02:30AMPart IV - Wisdom Literature
Job

• [li]Job is a wealthy and good man, devoted to Yahweh[/li][li]Satan talks Yahweh into letting him test Job's faith, which he does by destroying his fortune, family, and health[/li][li]Job and his friends talk it over at length; Job is convinced of his innocence, his friends of his guilt[/li][li]Yahweh eventually turns up and ticks them all off for not respecting him enough; he restores Job's fortunes twice over[/li]

Psalms

• [li]Large collection of devotional songs/poems, whose themes include
  • [li]Overarching powerfulness of Yahweh[/li][li]Need to praise and thank Yahweh[/li][li]How bad it feels when Yahweh feels absent, and how good it feels when he feels present[/li]
  [/li]

Prayer of Manasseh Orthodox

• [li]An extra psalm[/li]

Proverbs

• [li]Large collection of wise sayings, many attributed to King Solomon. Major themes include:
  • [li]Industriousness, Humility, Fair dealing, Marital faithfulness, Religious devotion, Political savvy[/li]
  [/li]

Ecclesiastes

• [li]A harshly pragmatic sermon, attributed to Solomon, with the moral: All that one achieves will perish; the only true joy is to be taken in doing the tasks in front of you[/li]

Song of Solomon

• [li]A borderline erotic exaltation of the joys of love, possibly between Solomon and his bride, possibly between his bride and her lover[/li]

Wisdom  Catholic/Orthodox

• [li]The point of wisdom is to achieve salvation through Yahweh; those that reject this are accursed[/li]

Sirach  Catholic/Orthodox

• [li]The collected wisdom of Joshua ben Sira (c.200 BC), a large and rambling miscellany of precepts; major themes include
  • [li]Death, Friendship, Happiness, Shame, Money, Sin, Social Justice, Etiquette, Women, History[/li]
  [/li]

Part V - Major Prophets
Isaiah

• [li]Oracles of Isaiah ben Amoz, who lived in Judah up to the time of King Hezekiah (c.700 BC)
  • [li]Yahweh's judgement is coming - only the faithful will pass the test, and Isaiah is worried that Judah is not faithful enough[/li][li]Various other nations will come to grief, but a servant of Yahweh will arise, leading the faithful to salvation in a recast Jerusalem[/li][li]Current events - Hezekiah's escape from crushing by Sennacherib[/li]
  [/li][li]Later additions to Isaiah's book
  • [li]Cyrus of Persia acts as an instrument of Yahweh, ending the exile, and the once-supreme Babylon is crushed[/li][li]The servant will show the way to salvation under the judgement of Yahweh[/li]
  [/li]

Quote from: MoominDave on May 19, 2017, 05:42AM"El" is also used in the bible as a specific name for the Abrahamic god. For example, in the name "Isra-el".
Didn't some worship Ba-el?  And there's an angel/demon, Azara-el?

Micha-el, Gabri-el, Rapha-el, there's a whole horde of them...

Quote from: MoominDave on May 19, 2017, 06:45AMMicha-el, Gabri-el, Rapha-el, there's a whole horde of them...
I guess Noah must be worshipped too, because he is really Noel.

Don't forget Kal-el ... clearly a messianic figure in a familiar if revised mold.

Jeremiah 1 text

Highlights

 - Introducing Jeremiah

Summary

 - This book contains the words of Jeremiah, in the reigns of the final kings of Judah before the exile
 - Jeremiah declares himself a prophet of Yahweh, stating that he put his over-youthfulness to Yahweh as a counter, but Yahweh insisted
 - He forecasts that disaster will come from the North, and that the tribes of the Israelite North will come to Jerusalem in supplication
 - He forecasts that his words will not be popular, but that Yahweh will lend him the resilience necessary to make them heard

Questions and Observations

1) On to the next "major prophet". Jeremiah is the "son of Hilkiah", presumably (or perhaps) the same Hilkiah that "found the Book of the Law" in 2 Kings 22.
2) His career as an oracle began in the reign of Josiah (640-609 BC), and (skipping over the brief reign of Jehoahaz and Jeconiah) continued in the reigns of Jehoiakim (609-598 BC) and Zedekiah (597-586 BC). We are told that his writings occurred in the 13th year of Josiah - 628 BC - and then that they resumed under the later two kings, continuing until 5 months after the fall of Jerusalem in the summer of 586 BC. He is described (v6) as "only a youth" when he began his career - so perhaps we may assume that he was born c.645 BC. As with all such chronology numbers, there's a year or two uncertainty on them.
3) Anathoth, Jeremiah's workplace, was near Jerusalem.
4) Isaiah spoke to us from the period of the Assyrian exile and afterwards; Jeremiah now speaks to us from the period up to the Babylonian exile - perhaps 3 generations separate the two. Disaster coming out of the North sounds like a prediction of what had already happened, when the Assyrians depeopled Israel; the Babylonians would have come from the East. But then, maybe they would have gone around that way - easier terrain.

Isaiah: Themes and Questions

I thought some of the significant themes in Isaiah were:

- Sin:
   - is the cause of the suffering and retribution in Isaiah. God punishes Judah and the nations for their sins.
   - what is sin: in Isaiah it pretty much always involves forgetting God, forgetting the origin and the creator of humankind
       - so Judah are punished for worshipping other gos
       - so Sennacherib is punished for thinking that he is greater than God and not his tool

- Suffering
   - for Isaiah suffering is a result of sin, both as a divine punishment but also a natural consequence.

- Justice and judgment
  - probably the biggest theme in Isaiah. God continually visits his wrathful judgment on everyone.
  - Isaiah basically exists, as a person, to warn about God's impending judgments and to urge people to change their ways before it's too late (ch6)
  - But God, in Isaiah, isn't mainly concerned with whether people are following all the rites and rituals. He wants to see them put their hearts into their actions, and behave with devotion and sincerity. He isn't punishing people for failing to offer him sacrifices. He's punishing them for only offering him lip-service, and for failing to treat the less fortunate (particularly, widows and orphans) with compassion

- Power
  - Isaiah compares human and divine power
  - People do what god wants

- Hope, Promise
  - much of the book is about judgement, annihilation and war, but to me, the most interesting and animated parts is that of hope:  the babies,  the servant, peace and comfort.

Compassion and Forgiveness ie Mercy
 - this seems to be the climax of the book: the moment of relief following all the constant conflict and violence. 
 - Isaiah says the God's mercy is based on his love for his people.
 - Isaiah ends with a reign of endless, universal love despite the preceding conflict and violence.
 - So Yahweh and Isaiah are more like hippies than socialists or conservatives.

Questions

I thought there were lots of questions raised by Isaiah.

Is suffering ultimately meaningful? Or is the kind of pain depicted here ultimately without any "gain" balancing it out at the end?
Do only guilty people suffer in Isaiah? Or do the innocent suffer along with the guilty?
How do people react to their suffering? Are their people who learn no lessons from it (if there are always lessons to be learned from it)?
Does suffering actually help improve Judah? Is it laying the groundwork for a better order, a better time?

Does Isaiah portray God as more just than merciful or the other way?
Is God truly just?
Does God's justice get people to behave better? or is it just about retribution and vengeance?
What is the purpose of all the destruction and killing?  Is their a purpose.
Is God fair?  eg he uses Sennacherib's egotism and destructive tendencies to punish Judah and then punishes him for being too egotistical.

What is God using his power for?

Why does God create a new heaven and a new earth? 
What does this say about the old ones?
Why does he create a new earth if eternal life was going to be in heaven?

Do the people of Israel and Judah need to be worthy of God's mercy in order to receive it? Or is mercy given without worrying about those kinds of things (because wouldn't it just be justice if you deserved it)?

How exactly does God love his people? Is it like a father loves a daughter, or how a husband loves a wife? What metaphors fit?
Are their some sins that are unforgivable? Who doesn't, in the end, get forgiven and why?

Ending

I think that Isaiah has been the most weighty book we've covered so far.  Its raised lots of questions about God's justice, purposes, mercy and plans for the world and people.

And I still have to think carefully when I type "Isaiah"

Jeremiah 2 text

Highlights

 - Israel betrays The Lord and goes off after foreigners and their gods
 - The Lord is not happy

Summary

 - Jeremiah says that the word of God came to him and told him to speak to Jerusalem.
 - Israel is likened to a bride who used to be devoted to her groom when they were together in the wilderness (headed out of Egypt). So romantic!
 - But now Israel's become like a field where the fruits were eaten by robbers, who were put to death for trespassing on the harvest. Or like a runaway bride.
 - God asks why they've all forgotten him and why they never mention that he led them out of Egypt and into their own land.
 - The rulers and prophets forgot their sacred covenant with God and started worshipping Baal and doing other unholy stuff.
 - God accuses the people and their descendants of abandoning him. He asks them to look at other nations to see if they've ever abandoned their gods.
 - The heavens themselves should be shocked and disgusted at this: the people have abandoned the living fountain that's God, and built cisterns for themselves that are cracked and can't hold water (meaning the new religious practices they've adopted won't work).

 - Even though Israel isn't supposed to be a slave or a servant to other nations, it's become those things.
 - Foreign powers like the Egyptian cities of Memphis and Tahphanhes have had a bad influence on Israel.
 - Rather than return to God, the Israelites continue to pay more attention to fancy foreign empires like Egypt and Assyria.
 - Obviously, the people are going to get punished for their wicked and traitorous ways. They've forgotten to fear or revere God.
 - Israel broke the yoke binding it to God, and started prostituting itself to other gods, participating in pagan rituals involving worshipping trees and hills.
 - Israel's like a domesticated vine, planted by God, that somehow went wild. Or like an restless, camel or wild-ass, who wanders around in heat, waiting for potential mating partners to find her. She'll do it with anybody.
 - The people are stained with guilt they can't wash off, and have turned their backs on God and turned their faces towards trees and stones, which they now worship as father and mother.

 - When the people call on God to save them, he'll tell them to go ask their new gods for help.
 - The people killed their own prophets, and obviously didn't learn a thing from the punishment God already directed at them.
 - God asks if he's been like a wilderness of darkness to them, strongly implying that he has been free and available the whole time.
 - God says that the people have played around with wicked women and killed the innocent poor. They imagine that God will still have mercy on them, but he won't. It's vengeance time.
 - They won't prosper by trusting in Egypt or Assyria.

Questions and Observations

1) 3 generations after Isaiah and Judah is getting told off again.  Will they ever learn?

Quote from: drizabone on May 21, 2017, 05:48PMIsaiah: Themes and Questions
Nice post this, Martin. It's striking to see how belief in this stuff leads you to see more questions raised by it than for me; what's an anthropological interest for me is personal and immediate for you.

Quote from: drizabone on May 21, 2017, 05:48PMI thought some of the significant themes in Isaiah were:

<snip>
I basically agree with your thoughts on all of these. We are also in accordance in seeing the suggested foretelling that people get all knotted up about as basically of no importance - certainly not reliable evidence for circumventing cause and effect.

Quote from: drizabone on May 21, 2017, 05:48PMQuestions

I thought there were lots of questions raised by Isaiah.
You pose large numbers of deep questions! I'll offer a little commentary interspersed, but won't be able to offer any of them the depth they deserve - there's fodder for several long spin-off religion threads here.

Quote from: drizabone on May 21, 2017, 05:48PMIs suffering ultimately meaningful? Or is the kind of pain depicted here ultimately without any "gain" balancing it out at the end?
Suffering is in many places in these books acknowledged to be decoupled from virtue. The good suffer. The bad suffer. The good thrive. The bad thrive. It seems to be merely a context against which the idea of it feeling worthwhile to be good gets a serious challenge. In general, it is meaningful - in that the overcoming of it results in a perspective gain that tends to make one more resolved to act fairly to others - but in the specific biblical context? I can't think where that exact lesson is emphasised anywhere we've yet read. Have I missed somewhere? That to me is the meaning that one can extract from suffering - but these books just treat it as a given that must be stoically endured, rather than as an opportunity to learn about oneself. I've probably forgotten some critical stuff here - it strikes me that books such as Proverbs and Sirach must have talked about gaining through suffering... Do you recall better?

Quote from: drizabone on May 21, 2017, 05:48PMDo only guilty people suffer in Isaiah? Or do the innocent suffer along with the guilty?
In the near term, everyone suffers. Isaiah's offer is to in the (very) long term separate guilty from innocent sufferingwise. The concept is that there is no reliable justice in this life, so he'll promise you a second life, set up more fairly. Kind of obvious stuff, this particular answer.

Quote from: drizabone on May 21, 2017, 05:48PMHow do people react to their suffering? Are their people who learn no lessons from it (if there are always lessons to be learned from it)?
As I mentioned above, I cannot recall anyone taking particular lessons from their suffering in these books, other than to work to avoid future suffering. There are general precepts dealing with shared social responsibility, but we don't see people changing character to becoming more giving in response to it. Job might have done so, making quite a fitting conclusion to his book, but he just went back to his old life happily.

Quote from: drizabone on May 21, 2017, 05:48PMDoes suffering actually help improve Judah? Is it laying the groundwork for a better order, a better time?
Same answer as regarding the individual; the country must surmount it, but the promised better time is after the death of the individual. After the death of the country too, given that Judah historically disappeared and never came back - I have a hard time seeing modern Israel as continuing meaningfully from it, given the extreme time that elapsed in between. Others feel differently.

Quote from: drizabone on May 21, 2017, 05:48PMDoes Isaiah portray God as more just than merciful or the other way?
The idea is that everything is evened out by him in the end. It's a distant prospect of justice. Mercy relates to suffering and the cessation of it, which ebbs and flows, and probably sums to zero after a while. So even the most distant and intangible promise of future justice probably beats that. But averaged over time we are comparing small numbers.

Quote from: drizabone on May 21, 2017, 05:48PMIs God truly just?
We are promised so... But it isn't ever really quantified.

Quote from: drizabone on May 21, 2017, 05:48PMDoes God's justice get people to behave better? or is it just about retribution and vengeance?
If I might slip back into my secular skin here... Religion is a social tool, one whose primary purpose is to get numbers of people lined up and pointing in the same direction. Like any tool, it's as good as the purpose to which it is put. All religions of any sufficient age and/or geographical spread have been both used and abused by those placed in charge of them. Was Ezra's ethnic cleansing a good use of Yahweh-worship? Or the Crusades? Or the Inquisition? Less so than Jesus's exhortations to help the needy, in my view. Or the many simple small-scale local social helps that are delivered by right-thinking churches.

Not sure how to answer this question without a secular head on... It seems to demand a step outside the paradigm in order to judge it. One thing that's clear is that religion is an extremely powerful tool of the human mind. So powerful that it can be tempting to think that the world would be better if it didn't exist, despite the good things that happen under its umbrella.

Quote from: drizabone on May 21, 2017, 05:48PMWhat is the purpose of all the destruction and killing?  Is their a purpose.
It isn't obvious to me. Perhaps he's just passing a bored Sunday afternoon in front of his computer running a game of Civilisation...

Quote from: drizabone on May 21, 2017, 05:48PMIs God fair?  eg he uses Sennacherib's egotism and destructive tendencies to punish Judah and then punishes him for being too egotistical.
I guess it depends on what scale he cares to deploy his powers. He certainly isn't inclined to tip the scales to make individual lives come out fairly. Or to work consistently on any larger human scale as described in these books. I think we end up zoomed all the way out again, noting that if this afterlife stuff is true, then net fairness happens. It's a powerful concept, one designed to comfort the human mind.

Quote from: drizabone on May 21, 2017, 05:48PMWhat is God using his power for?
The writers of these books don't seem to have an answer, do they?

Quote from: drizabone on May 21, 2017, 05:48PMWhy does God create a new heaven and a new earth?
You go on this one... I guess because he isn't happy with the old one.

Quote from: drizabone on May 21, 2017, 05:48PMWhat does this say about the old ones?
That he messed them up?

Quote from: drizabone on May 21, 2017, 05:48PMWhy does he create a new earth if eternal life was going to be in heaven?
Was it at this period though? We aren't at a time where Christian theology was formed - not really even at a time where Judaic theology had contemplated this idea.

Quote from: drizabone on May 21, 2017, 05:48PMDo the people of Israel and Judah need to be worthy of God's mercy in order to receive it? Or is mercy given without worrying about those kinds of things (because wouldn't it just be justice if you deserved it)?
It seems pretty random in the short term, doesn't it?

Quote from: drizabone on May 21, 2017, 05:48PMHow exactly does God love his people? Is it like a father loves a daughter, or how a husband loves a wife? What metaphors fit?
The picture drawn is of a general or a politician trying to inspire the devotion of the people under their command.

Quote from: drizabone on May 21, 2017, 05:48PMAre their some sins that are unforgivable? Who doesn't, in the end, get forgiven and why?
Yes? And they are listed explicitly in the various law codes?

Quote from: drizabone on May 21, 2017, 05:48PMEnding

I think that Isaiah has been the most weighty book we've covered so far.  Its raised lots of questions about God's justice, purposes, mercy and plans for the world and people.

And I still have to think carefully when I type "Isaiah"

Me too!

Quote from: drizabone on May 21, 2017, 08:13PMJeremiah 2 text

1) 3 generations after Isaiah and Judah is getting told off again.  Will they ever learn?
It is rather an eternal refrain isn't it? The go-to stick for the priests of this era to beat their flock with - "Try harder! You aren't doing this right!". I rather suspect that this lament was consistent throughout this period of history, but subsequent events will make Jeremiah's words seem prescient.

Jeremiah 3 text

Highlights

 - 'The people are like a loving wife who left her husband to become a prostitute'

Summary

 - Jeremiah compares Israel to a wife who left her husband for other men then seeks to return
 - He asserts that a lack of rain is caused by this
 - Israel led the way in moving away from Yahweh-worship, then Judah followed. Jeremiah isn't happy about this.
 - For some reason Israel is now held less culpable than Judah. All are welcome to repent though.
 - When repenting happens, Yahweh will lead the repenters to Mount Zion
 - Repentance will be performed in the most abject of terms
 - Judah and Israel are like prostitutes. The flavour is that Jeremiah really hates prostitutes.

Questions and Observations

1) Casual racism in v2 - "By the waysides you have sat awaiting lovers like an Arab in the wilderness."
2) What does the forehead of a whore look like? (v3)
3) Jeremiah seems extremely antagonistic to the oldest profession here... Men professionally dedicated to faith can sometimes prove so.
4) I am getting something of a frothing-at-the-mouth vibe from Jeremiah at the moment... He's ranty and shouty, with bigoted opinions allied to a skill in turning a phrase. Which has a certain readability this far away, but was probably less charming 2,500 years closer to. It's very characteristic writing, which is probably why "Jeremiad" is a literary term, meaning "a long literary work in which the author bitterly laments the state of society and its morals in a serious tone of sustained invective, which contains a prophecy of society's imminent downfall".
5) The AotC is tacitly acknowledged lost in this chapter (v16)
6) The complaints of Jeremiah are similar to the complaints of Isaiah, but are expressed in tones of greater drama. Isaiah was a damning condemnation too, but there's something histrionic about Jeremiah thus far that Isaiah wholly managed to avoid.

Quote from: MoominDave on May 22, 2017, 04:08AMNice post this, Martin. It's striking to see how belief in this stuff leads you to see more questions raised by it than for me; what's an anthropological interest for me is personal and immediate for you.

Don't tell anyone, there's supposed to be an inverse correlation between christian-ness and asking questions 

QuoteI basically agree with your thoughts on all of these. We are also in accordance in seeing the suggested foretelling that people get all knotted up about as basically of no importance - certainly not reliable evidence for circumventing cause and effect.

Well actually, I think the foretelling is significant, but not necessarily for proof texting, at least in this context.

QuoteYou pose large numbers of deep questions! I'll offer a little commentary interspersed, but won't be able to offer any of them the depth they deserve - there's fodder for several long spin-off religion threads here.

I was aware we weren't likely to do much with them here.  My purpose was more to write them down to get me thinking about them.

Quote from: MoominDave on May 22, 2017, 06:10AMJeremiah 3 text

...

2) What does the forehead of a whore look like? (v3)

I think that the point is that it is uncovered when it should not have been.

Quote3) Jeremiah seems extremely antagonistic to the oldest profession here... Men professionally dedicated to faith can sometimes prove so.

I think you've missed the point of Jeremiah's metaphor.  My understanding is that Jeremiah is criticising Judah's unfaithfulness to God by using the metaphor of an unfaithful wife who has left her husband and is going after other men as though she was a prostitute.  The focus is on the Judah's (the wife's) behaviour. He's basing the metaphor on the understanding that its really bad for a wife to behave like a prostitute because a wife should be loyal to her husband.

(feel free to comment on Jeremiah's sexism though)

Quote4) I am getting something of a frothing-at-the-mouth vibe from Jeremiah at the moment... He's ranty and shouty, with bigoted opinions allied to a skill in turning a phrase. Which has a certain readability this far away, but was probably less charming 2,500 years closer to. It's very characteristic writing, which is probably why "Jeremiad" is a literary term, meaning "a long literary work in which the author bitterly laments the state of society and its morals in a serious tone of sustained invective, which contains a prophecy of society's imminent downfall".

I think characterising this 'frothing at the mouth' and 'bigoted opinions' is a bit overwrought but I do think Judah's continued betrayal and unfaithfulness warrant something a lot more serious than a charming entreaty.  Their imminent downfall, egregious behaviour and the state of their society deserved a serious sustained invective.  They'd had a more reasoned and less Jeremiah-like warning from Isaiah and hadn't learnt so bring on the Jeremiad.

Quote from: drizabone on May 22, 2017, 04:51PMQuote from: MoominDave on May 22, 2017, 04:08AMNice post this, Martin. It's striking to see how belief in this stuff leads you to see more questions raised by it than for me; what's an anthropological interest for me is personal and immediate for you.Don't tell anyone, there's supposed to be an inverse correlation between christian-ness and asking questions  I trust you do realize that doesn't mean there are no exceptions, or even that there aren't a lot though.
 
Eh?
 
Actually I do trust you realize that, just to be clear. Just keeping that in the foreground, because I think it's pretty important to do so.
 
Quote from: drizabone on May 22, 2017, 04:51PMQuote from: MoominDave on May 22, 2017, 04:08AMI basically agree with your thoughts on all of these. We are also in accordance in seeing the suggested foretelling that people get all knotted up about as basically of no importance - certainly not reliable evidence for circumventing cause and effect.Well actually, I think the foretelling is significant, but not necessarily for proof texting, at least in this context.It seems the kind of importance Dave's talking about profoundly trivializes what religious practice is or at least can be all about--makes it comically provincial and petty. Whereas I suspect the significance Driz is talking about jettisons all that nonsense and shifts the focus to far more worthy investments.
 
Quote from: drizabone on May 22, 2017, 04:51PMQuote from: MoominDave on May 22, 2017, 04:08AMYou pose large numbers of deep questions! I'll offer a little commentary interspersed, but won't be able to offer any of them the depth they deserve - there's fodder for several long spin-off religion threads here.I was aware we weren't likely to do much with them here.  My purpose was more to write them down to get me thinking about them.Fire up those other threads! It's the deeper stuff that interest many of us rather than the most popular proxy texts anachronistically imbued with it, at least in the perceptions of many.

Quote from: Baron von Bone on May 22, 2017, 05:46PMDon't tell anyone, there's supposed to be an inverse correlation between christian-ness and asking questions 

I trust you do realize that doesn't mean there are no exceptions, or even that there aren't a lot though.

I know, and I know that you know.  It was a Dad joke.

QuoteFire up those other threads! It's the deeper stuff that interest many of us rather than the most popular proxy texts anachronistically imbued with it, at least in the perceptions of many.

I'm reluctant to start more discussions even on deeper stuff.  I've got enough happening with the main thread.  But I'll definitely contribute if someone else starts one if they are interested.

I think the "foretellings" are used to explain how the gospel writers understood what they were writing about so I plan on revisiting them then.

Jeremiah 4 text

Highlights

 - The Jeremiad continues

Summary

 - If Israel returns to God, both in their hearts and in their actions, he'll forgive them and the nations will be blessed.
 - God says that they need to circumcise their hearts—have inner purity—or else look out.
 - The people should flee to their fortified cities, and get ready for the invasion that's coming from the north like an angry lion.
 - God says that the king, the priests, and the prophets will all be appalled and astounded.
 - Jeremiah observes that God has deceived Jerusalem by telling them that all would be well when it's going to be bad.
 - God's wrath will come like a hot desert wind. He'll bear down on Israel with a chariot like a whirlwind.
 - Repent for trouble is coming.
 - Jeremiah cries out in anguish: everything is laid waste, the people are foolish, all is empty and waste.
 - God says that he's going to wreak great desolation, but won't make a full end to the Israelites.
 - The heaven and earth will mourn all this destruction, and the people will hide from the invaders, leaving all the towns empty.
 - Although Judah continues to act like a prostitute, but she is attacked by the same pagan forces that she'd taken as lovers, fainting and crying out like a woman in labor.

Questions and Observations

1) Jeremiah is getting quite worked up and overwrought isn't he

2) v9,10 seem to suggest that there were other prophets there who were not expecting the calamity and had been prophesying good times for all. 
   - Jeremiah's jeremiad would not have been popular would it.  I'd expect that Jeremiah would have been stressed out having to be the bringer of bad tidings.
   - There are other examples in the OT where God had given false information to the false prophets so that they would mislead the bad leaders.
   - Putting a secular hat on I might translate this in terms of spies being fed misinformation.

Regarding launching new threads, I feel similarly to Martin. Enough to do without multiplying jobs. Write the questions down and set up profitable new threads when times are quiet or have once again turned to tedious sniping.

Quote from: drizabone on May 22, 2017, 08:17PMJeremiah 4 text

1) Jeremiah is getting quite worked up and overwrought isn't he
It would definitely do his blood pressure good to have a nice relaxed sit-down with a cup of tea and a biscuit.

But on the other hand, he's right to be worried - he'll live to narrate the fall of Judah at the hands of Babylon, vindicated in his prescience but appalled at the situation. Would the situation have seemed more dire in the reign of Josiah than of Hezekiah though? In Hezekiah's time the fall of Israel was recent history, and Assyria's siege of Jerusalem threatened to end the Israelite story there and then. Isaiah clearly also lived in highly stressful times. It's interesting to get a flavour of the comparative personalities of these two major figures.

Sometimes I like to idle on "What if?"... What if Sennacherib's Assyrian army besieging Jerusalem in 701 BC had not been stricken by disease, and had instead overrun the city, removing Hezekiah and deporting the population as they did in Israel? The nation of Judah might have ceased to exist as the nation of Israel did, assimilated into Assyrian cities as an ethnic minority. Israel never returned - perhaps Judah wouldn't have either. By the time Cyrus decreed the return of exiled populations in 539 BC, 162 more years had passed, and people would likely not have been defined by their 4-great-grandparents' exilehood any more (though also compare the later Jewish diaspora for a counter to that). And so the region would have remained slumped in influence, with the religion of its dispersed former people a footnote in Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian history. No Judaism, no Christianity. The world would look very different. Perhaps Roman styles of worship would have come to dominate. Perhaps Islam would still have arisen - or perhaps some other new Abrahamic offshoot might have come to play a major part. It intrigues me how Abraham and various older biblical figures are also venerated in Islam, which does not have the clear relationship to Judaism that Christianity does - presumably these figures were widespread in legend all across this region, so much so that competing faiths spread across a wide area could both feel natural holding them as ancestral figures.

Quote from: MoominDave on May 23, 2017, 02:20AMIt intrigues me how Abraham and various older biblical figures are also venerated in Islam, which does not have the clear relationship to Judaism that Christianity does - presumably these figures were widespread in legend all across this region, so much so that competing faiths spread across a wide area could both feel natural holding them as ancestral figures.

In Islam the Arabs understand that they were descended from Abraham's son Ishmael and that God's promises to Abraham for a son and blessings through that son were to the Arabs through Ishmael rather than to the Jews through Isaac.

Quote from: drizabone on May 23, 2017, 02:24PMIn Islam the Arabs understand that they were descended from Abraham's son Ishmael and that God's promises to Abraham for a son and blessings through that son were to the Arabs through Ishmael rather than to the Jews through Isaac.

But the Bible says otherwise, doesn't it?

yep.  And that's what I think counts, but the Koran has Ishmael as the son of promise.  Hence a couple of millenia of conflict over the promised land

Jeremiah 5 text

Highlights

 - more anguish

Summary

 - God tells Jeremiah to run around Jerusalem and try to find one faithful person who acts justly and searches for the truth, so that God can pardon Jerusalem as a whole.
 - He can't find a single person.
 - But Jeremiah realizes that the people he's been looking at are poor and ignorant about the laws of God. He decides to look at the rich and see if they're any better.
 - Turns out that the rich aren't any better; they broke their covenant with God, too.
 - Lions, wolves, and leopards (a metaphor for the invading army) are all gathered outside the cities just waiting to kill these faithless people.
 - God says it's impossible to pardon these people because they've followed other gods and coveted their neighbor's wives.
 - God orders Israel destroyed like a bad vineyard. The people and their false prophets have been comforting themselves by predicting they'll avoid punishment, but that's just wishful thinking.
 - The so-called prophets are now an empty wind without God's word in them.
 - The word that God's put in Jeremiah's mouth is a fire that will devour the people like they're made out of wood.
 - God's sending the Babylonians to destroy Israel, and the Babylonians are an ancient and different people. The Israelites are unfamiliar with them and don't know their language.
 - The invaders will demolish everything, destroying all the produce, killing everyone's sons and daughters, and pulverizing cities.
 - God won't destroy Israel utterly, but they'll pay for serving foreign gods by being led into exile and being forced to serve a foreign people.
 - God asks the people if they tremble before him and tells those who have eyes and ears but can't see or hear to listen up and pay attention.
 - God says that he's the one who prevents the chaotic sea from overwhelming the land, but people still don't appreciate him.
 - In their hearts, they're forgetful and disobedient, and don't remember God who controls the changing seasons and guides the growth of their crops and harvest.
 - The wicked men among the people are like hunters who trap humans, tricking them into doing evil things.
 - They've all gotten rich at the expense of the orphans and other needy people.
 - God rhetorically asks if he's going to punish them
 - The people love their false prophets and priests, but when the end comes, they'll definitely regret it.

Questions and Observations

1)  v21 is Judah in Isaiah 6:9,10

2) I was thinking about our ideas about Isaiah being right wing and Jesus on the left
   - how you would classify Jerimiah?
   - I think that the right/left wing today really has multiple dimensions: political, social, moral, economic.  But we often just mash them all up together.
     - the stereotypical Right winger is democratic, has conservative morals, but thinks people are free to act socially for their own benefit except for gay marriage.
     - the stereotypical Left winger is socialist thinks moral decisions are up to the individual (except for pedophilia) but thnk people should care for society and the environment.
   - I think Isaiah would have had conservative morals and have believed in social obligations.  Jesus and Jeremiah too
   - I am aware that this is me in the early stages of thinking about this, so reserve the right to make adjustments and I don't imagine that I'm the first to realise this.

Jeremiah 6 text

Highlights

 - The People are corrupt and the Babylonians are coming

Summary

The Lord says, through Jerimiah
 - Benjamin (the people of Judah) are to flee Jerusalem because the invasion's imminent.
 - the invaders are to attack and lay siege to Jerusalem and to scour Judah as thoroughly as a grape gatherer picking grapes from a vine.
 - the people aren't listening, but I'm filled with the wrath of God and is tired of holding it in.
 - it will be poured out on children, young people, husbands and wives, and the elderly. Their houses will be inherited and lived in by others.
 - Everyone is greedy and even the prophets and priests are corrupt.
 - People should return to the ancient godly way they used to follow, but they don't, so their offerings aren't accepted

 - Judah will be invaded by the merciless Babylonians from the north, who sound like a raging sea when they march into battle.
 - The people are terrified and anguished, scared to go out onto the roads alone lest they be killed by the invaders.
 - Jeremiah urges everyone to wear sackcloth and repent.
 - Jeremiah is is to test the people like a refiner, but they are still rebellious and are rejected because of their impurities.

Questions and Observations

1) Nothing now

Quote from: drizabone on May 23, 2017, 02:24PMIn Islam the Arabs understand that they were descended from Abraham's son Ishmael and that God's promises to Abraham for a son and blessings through that son were to the Arabs through Ishmael rather than to the Jews through Isaac.

Quote from: ddickerson on May 23, 2017, 02:39PMBut the Bible says otherwise, doesn't it?

And DNA testing says something different again - that Jews and Arabs are genetically intermingled. If you think about it, the idea that you could have two brothers living in the same region, leaving thousands of years of spreading descendants alongside each other - and then 4,000 years later declare that "Jews descend from Isaac, Arabs from Ishmael"... It can't work, on simple grounds of human practicality; sparse populations breed with whoever is available, regardless of ethnicity. And indeed one of the genetic conclusions is that it doesn't work.

There's a saying about how those most alike will fight the most. When Serbians fought Croatians on ethnic lines in the 1990s Yugoslavian war, the world looked on baffled, wondering how two groups that appeared to be almost exactly the same could fall out so badly over such a small difference. A similar flavour of disbelief attaches to any Jewish-Arab rivalry.

The evidence for a historical Abraham (or Isaac or Ishmael) is non-existent. All there are are these legendary stories, that have reached us in the holy books of two major religions - but certainly didn't start in those books.

Quote from: MoominDave on May 24, 2017, 02:42AMIf you think about it, the idea that you could have two brothers living in the same region, leaving thousands of years of spreading descendants alongside each other - and then 4,000 years later declare that "Jews descend from Isaac, Arabs from Ishmael"... It can't work, on simple grounds of human practicality; sparse populations breed with whoever is available, regardless of ethnicity. And indeed one of the genetic conclusions is that it doesn't work.

I don't think we waited for 4,000 years to make that declaration. Moses recorded that in writing a few years back. 

Abraham lived about 700 to 1000 years before Moses, and Moses lived approx. 1,200 B.C. So, the first written declaration was made around 3,000 years ago. (approximation)

Quote from: drizabone on May 23, 2017, 05:21PMJeremiah 5 text

 - God tells Jeremiah to run around Jerusalem and try to find one faithful person who acts justly and searches for the truth, so that God can pardon Jerusalem as a whole.
Echoes of the story of Lot trying to save Sodom.

Quote from: drizabone on May 23, 2017, 05:21PM2) I was thinking about our ideas about Isaiah being right wing and Jesus on the left
   - how you would classify Jerimiah?
   - I think that the right/left wing today really has multiple dimensions: political, social, moral, economic.  But we often just mash them all up together.
You're very right to point out using the terms "right" and "left" is a fraught business that carries many connotations, which no example will characterise fully. I usually try not to use them, but they can be illuminating at times - I hope my previous use of them helped rather than hindered.
In 20th century terms, the divide was primarily seen as an economic one - unrestrained free markets vs curbing their excesses in order to provide better lives to those at the bottom of the pile. But in recent decades the use of the terms has become particularly laden with baggage, as a large group of people have been polarised (I might in a spirit of mischief - but a serious-minded one - say "radicalised") into thinking of being 'on the right' as some kind of sports team thing, where they must cheer for anything labelled "right wing" and boo anything labelled "left wing". The ridiculousness of this mode of thinking is shown e.g. in comparison of the UK Labour party 2015 election manifesto and the UK Conservative party 2017 election manifesto; the shouty right-wing papers (Daily Mail, Sun, Express, Telegraph) ran things ragged in 2015 declaring the measures as the most unrestrained and out-of-control socialism, but now they are being proposed by their pet party, they've suddenly become pragmatic pillars of traditional values. Politics is too important to treat as sport, but so many people do it...

This to my eyes is very clearly not a symmetric divide at current. Self-identifying "right-wingers" love to declare that everything that they do is mirrored on "the left", but it is the big financial interests of the right that have devoted billions of dollars to growing a propaganda industry that biases our discourse every day. Fox News et al have spent so long feeding paranoid fantasies to those who are susceptible to them, who tend to vote 'rightwards' that there are whole generations of their voters (#notall, obviously) that respond in sports-team-support-like cohort to back them up unthinkingly, no matter how off-beam the assertion.

It is only with the advent of such madnesses as Brexit and Trump that those on the left are waking up to what a coup it's been. Our democracies are very sick, and the large unthinking parts of the right wing are those that have been poisoned. [NB There are also large unthinking blocs of people elsewhere politically, but these on the right are the people that have been targeted] I have sympathy with a worldview that sees caution as its watchword, maintaining respect for how things have been - but I do not have sympathy with one that opposes ideas just because they are associated with the 'wrong team', one that reacts with aggressive and reflexive reactionism in any situation.

In dividing Isaiah and Jesus I was focussing on what seemed to me their primary messages, which actually do not exist on the same axis - Isaiah's cares about maintaining social continuity and the power of the nation state allied to his religion; Jesus's cares about helping the needy. These attributes do tend to split right-left, but one is about authoritarianism while the other is about social justice. These are not necessarily in opposition, though they are often associated with individual philosophies that are.
Jeremiah? He just seems to be (justifiably) crapping his pants non-stop in worry... Which is more of a right-wing than left-wing attribute, but I'd hesitate to attribute a political positioning to him on the basis of what we've read so far - he's got urgent matters on his mind that crowd out subtleties.

Quote from: drizabone on May 23, 2017, 05:21PM     - the stereotypical Right winger is democratic, has conservative morals, but thinks people are free to act socially for their own benefit except for gay marriage.
     - the stereotypical Left winger is socialist thinks moral decisions are up to the individual (except for pedophilia) but thnk people should care for society and the environment.
   - I think Isaiah would have had conservative morals and have believed in social obligations.  Jesus and Jeremiah too
   - I am aware that this is me in the early stages of thinking about this, so reserve the right to make adjustments and I don't imagine that I'm the first to realise this.
Can we think of Jesus as a traditionalist when he launched a new religious offshoot? True, deeply conservative individuals can find the results of their thinking leading them to break with established institutions, but he was a young man through his life, one that took public issue with religious traditionalists. I don't say that it's impossible to think of him that way, but it requires some more justification to do so.

Quote from: ddickerson on May 24, 2017, 05:42AMI don't think we waited for 4,000 years to make that declaration. Moses recorded that in writing a few years back. 

It wasn't genetically true at the supposed time that Moses lived (~600 years after the supposed time of Abraham).
It wasn't genetically true at the time when scholarship suggests the Moses stories were written down in these books (>1000 years after the supposed time of Abraham).
It wasn't genetically true when Jesus founded Christianity (~2,000 years after the supposed time of Abraham).
It wasn't genetically true when Mohamed founded Islam (~2,600 years after the supposed time of Abraham).
It isn't true now.

Quote from: MoominDave on May 24, 2017, 05:47AM
Can we think of Jesus as a traditionalist when he launched a new religious offshoot?
Careful, here.

Jesus very clearly was trying to teach people how to be better Jews, rather than founding something new.  (assuming the gospel accounts are somewhere near accurate, anyway)  So in that sense he was traditionalist, I guess. 

He was also opposed to greed, which is the fundamental principle of capitalism. 

It's interesting to consider how a label like 'traditionalist' might be pinned on a religious founder. As you say, their purpose is to guide people into better behaviours, something that gels well with a mind fond of traditional ways. Some new religions strike out radically (e.g. Scientology). Others vary an existing theme (e.g. Christianity). I think it is possible to be a character drawn to traditionalism that still creates a new religion - it becomes its own new tradition, after all.

Quote from: MoominDave on May 24, 2017, 05:47AMCan we think of Jesus as a traditionalist when he launched a new religious offshoot?

Clarification:

Jesus didn't come to establish a religion. He came for all!

Quote from: ddickerson on May 24, 2017, 07:09AMClarification:

Jesus didn't come to establish a religion. He came for all!

Nope.

QuoteMatthew 10:5,6:  These twelve Jesus sent out, instructing them, "Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
Paul expanded that later, but Jesus targeted Judaism. 

Quote from: ddickerson on May 24, 2017, 07:09AMClarification:
 
Jesus didn't come to establish a religion. He came for all!
I suspect what you likely mean by "came for all" is that Jesus came to speak to and teach and die for all people, but someone may try to "come for all" in that way by establishing a religion, so that doesn't really clarify anything. Maybe that was actually an exhortation or an addition ... ?
 
Probably not a major issue, but for discussion purposes it speaks to whether you're opposing a point, neutral, or agreeing but with some reservation. It calls for followup from those interested in understanding what you mean, which tends to get problematic pretty immediately.

Quote from: Baron von Bone on May 24, 2017, 08:03AM
I suspect what you likely mean by "came for all" is that Jesus came to speak to and teach and die for all people, but someone may try to "come for all" in that way by establishing a religion, so that doesn't really clarify anything. Maybe that was actually an exhortation or an addition ... ?
 
Probably not a major issue, but for discussion purposes it speaks to whether you're opposing a point, neutral, or agreeing but with some reservation. It calls for followup from those interested in understanding what you mean, which tends to get problematic pretty immediately.

MyBad. He came FOR all. He didn't come to setup a new religion.

Re: Tim's post from Matthew 10:5,6 from Matthew Henry's Commentary:

"10:5-15 The Gentiles must not have the gospel brought them, till the Jews have refused it. This restraint on the apostles was only in their first mission. Wherever they went they must proclaim, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. They preached, to establish the faith; the kingdom, to animate the hope; of heaven, to inspire the love of heavenly things, and the contempt of earthly; which is at hand, that men may prepare for it without delay. Christ gave power to work miracles for the confirming of their doctrine. This is not necessary now that the kingdom of God is come. It showed that the intent of the doctrine they preached, was to heal sick souls, and to raise those that were dead in sin. In proclaiming the gospel of free grace for the healing and saving of men's souls, we must above all avoid the appearance of the spirit of an hireling. They are directed what to do in strange towns and cities. The servant of Christ is the ambassador of peace to whatever place he is sent. His message is even to the vilest sinners, yet it behoves him to find out the best persons in every place. It becomes us to pray heartily for all, and to conduct ourselves courteously to all. They are directed how to act as to those that refused them. The whole counsel of God must be declared, and those who will not attend to the gracious message, must be shown that their state is dangerous. This should be seriously laid to heart by all that hear the gospel, lest their privileges only serve to increase their condemnation."

Quote from: ddickerson on May 24, 2017, 08:12AMMyBad. He came FOR all. He didn't come to setup a new religion.

Re: Tim's post from Matthew 10:5,6 from Matthew Henry's Commentary:


Can you read Matthew 10: 5 - 15, and get anything like that out of it?  I can't.  The Bible very clearly says one thing, and the commentary just as clearly says it means something totally different - opposite, in fact. 

We all know I'm not a Bible literalist, but that kind of twisting the meaning seems offensively dishonest to me. 

I looked for some reference to Jesus targeting anyone but Jews with his ministry, and couldn't find it. 

Quote from: timothy42b on May 24, 2017, 08:19AM
I looked for some reference to Jesus targeting anyone but Jews with his ministry, and couldn't find it. 

Two questions:

1 - Are you a Jew?
2 - If you aren't a Jew, then why do you claim to be a Christian?

I don't see the two as being as different as you do. 

Jeremiah 7 text

Highlights

 - Jeremiah speaks for Yahweh. Surprise - he is angry.

Summary

 - Yahweh orders Jeremiah to proclaim this stuff in the temple gateway
 - To say that repentance will create ability to stay in their land
 - Observe Shiloh, destroyed for non-repentance
 - Yahweh is angry that other gods are worshipped
 - And that his worship is neglected
 - The people of Judah will die for their lack of Yahweh-dedication

Questions and Observations

1) Who is the "queen of heaven"? (v18) Is Asherah meant? This is an explicit acknowledgement of more deities than Yahweh, from the period immediately before the exile. By the time the exile was ended, such ideas had become rather taboo.
2) I'm pondering how Yahweh-worship was regarded in this society... It seems to have been vying with other concepts to be the state-approved religion over a long period, but without overall success until after the exile. The consistent lament of these figures is that it wasn't winning out, that they had to fight to establish it. The picture I get is of a society with a notable plurality of religions coexisting with each other, but some with ambitions to drive out the others.

Quote from: MoominDave on May 24, 2017, 02:42AMAnd DNA testing says something different again - that Jews and Arabs are genetically intermingled. If you think about it, the idea that you could have two brothers living in the same region, leaving thousands of years of spreading descendants alongside each other - and then 4,000 years later declare that "Jews descend from Isaac, Arabs from Ishmael"... It can't work, on simple grounds of human practicality; sparse populations breed with whoever is available, regardless of ethnicity. And indeed one of the genetic conclusions is that it doesn't work.

it can work really really easily if you allocate the tribe based on a low tech method like what tribe your parents were in.  Nobody cares about your genes when both tribes look alike.

But this is a bit of a tangent from the current text so I'll get back to that.

Quote from: MoominDave on May 24, 2017, 01:25PMJeremiah 7 text

...

1) Who is the "queen of heaven"? (v18) Is Asherah meant? This is an explicit acknowledgement of more deities than Yahweh, from the period immediately before the exile. By the time the exile was ended, such ideas had become rather taboo.

Asherah sounds likely.

Sure, we noticed that they have been worshipping other gods and idols since Genesis.

But that doesn't mean that they were real.  Unlike The Lord. 

Quote2) I'm pondering how Yahweh-worship was regarded in this society... It seems to have been vying with other concepts to be the state-approved religion over a long period, but without overall success until after the exile. The consistent lament of these figures is that it wasn't winning out, that they had to fight to establish it. The picture I get is of a society with a notable plurality of religions coexisting with each other, but some with ambitions to drive out the others.

I can see how that would work if you thought that all the competing religions were all anthropological creations.

On another note: I was wondering if these other religions of this age kept documents to the same extent as the Jew's. Do you know if out of these competing religions, why only the Hebrew scriptures still exist?  I know the Christians can claim some responsible for that, but there are other sources too: the Jews kept them, and there are pre-christian archeological sources too.

Quote from: timothy42b on May 24, 2017, 01:11PMQuote from: ddickerson on May 24, 2017, 12:15PMQuote from: timothy42b on May 24, 2017, 08:19AMI looked for some reference to Jesus targeting anyone but Jews with his ministry, and couldn't find it.Two questions:
 
1 - Are you a Jew?
2 - If you aren't a Jew, then why do you claim to be a Christian?I don't see the two as being as different as you do.
Well, there is the argument that Christ ianity should instead be called Paul ianity.

Quote from: Baron von Bone on May 24, 2017, 05:16PMTwo questions:
 
1 - Are you a Jew?
2 - If you aren't a Jew, then why do you claim to be a Christian?I don't see the two as being as different as you do.
Well, there is the argument that Christ ianity should instead be called Paul ianity.

Yeah, in previous arguments I've been accused of being a red letter Christian.

The ironic thing here is that dd, who is very conservative, is accusing me of not being Christian because I am defending the text of Matthew, while he is quick to ignore the text and believe a rather far fetched modern interpretation from a commentary, rather than the actual words. 

What's the world coming too!

Jeremiah 8 text

Highlights

 - More bad news from Jeremiah

Summary

 - God proclaims that there will come a time when the bones of all the unrighteous dead — kings, priests, officials, prophets, and average citizens — will be dug up and spread around under the open sky.
 - This is because the people worshipped the host of heaven, like the sun and moon and the planets and stars.
 - Those who are still alive will wish they were dead.
 - God tells Jeremiah to ask the people why they won't pick themselves up again once they've fallen. They keep sliding backwards and never do anything constructive to better themselves.
 - None of the people get back on course, which even birds know how to do.
 - The so-called wise people aren't really wise, because they don't know what they're talking about.
 - The people have pretended that there is peace, when there is not.
 - Jeremiahurges the people to  retreat into the fortified cities. It's going to be a time of terror and wrath.
 - The land quakes at the noise of Babylonian stallions. God says he's sending serpents to bite his people.
 - Jeremiah is in anguish for the people of Judah. They don't understand why God is punishing them.  (well duh)
 - Jeremiah asks if there are any doctors and why the health of his people hasn't been restored.

Questions and Observations

1) I wonder why he mentioned the bones?

Since the Old Testament portion of this thread is rapidly winding down. I thought I'd mention a book that might be of interest when we enter the NT.

Richard Bauckham is professor emeritus of New Testament studies at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, senior scholar at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, and a fellow of both the British Acad-emy and the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

His book is a major and thorough work on the eyewitness nature of the New Testament gospels.

Here's the link:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0802874312?_encoding=UTF8&isInIframe=0&n=283155&portal-device-attributes=desktop&ref_=dp_proddesc_0&s=books&showDetailProductDesc=1#product-description_feature_div

Quote from: timothy42b on May 24, 2017, 06:22PMYeah, in previous arguments I've been accused of being a red letter Christian.

The ironic thing here is that dd, who is very conservative, is accusing me of not being Christian because I am defending the text of Matthew, while he is quick to ignore the text and believe a rather far fetched modern interpretation from a commentary, rather than the actual words. 

MyBad. Actually, you missed the entire point of my two questions.

Just for the record, Matthew Henry Commentary is a highly respected commentary, which is odd that you dismiss it so easily.

Quote from: drizabone on May 24, 2017, 04:15PMit can work really really easily if you allocate the tribe based on a low tech method like what tribe your parents were in.  Nobody cares about your genes when both tribes look alike.

But this is a bit of a tangent from the current text so I'll get back to that.

Three words for you: Romeo and Juliet.

Which I know is a fictional story. But it contains a basic truth about the human condition - love (or less romantically utility in a sparsely-populated area) doesn't care about tribal distinctions. We know that tribal pressures didn't hold in this case because we can inspect the DNA results, which tell us that there is more difference between those Jews that came from Europe and those Jews that stayed in the Middle East than between Jews and Arabs.

Quote from: drizabone on May 24, 2017, 04:53PMOn another note: I was wondering if these other religions of this age kept documents to the same extent as the Jew's. Do you know if out of these competing religions, why only the Hebrew scriptures still exist?  I know the Christians can claim some responsible for that, but there are other sources too: the Jews kept them, and there are pre-christian archeological sources too.
So I think there are two intertwined questions here:
1) Why did the Hebrew religion come to be relatively well documented?
2) Is there equivalent documentation for other religious positions of the location and era?

To answer these confidently and accurately requires the interested of a specialised historian... Given that none of us are that, I'll see what that modern memory-extension, the internet, can manage in terms of informing...

Regarding (1), I observe that we have seen that not many books can we say with likelihood were written by one author at one time; and that no significant chunks of text can with the same likelihood be placed earlier than the general period of Isaiah. The complex story of how a non-literate culture became one that placed reliance on the written word is summarised here in an article by a scholar for popular consumption. His contention is that, inspired by similar projects in Egypt and Mesopotamia, Judah began to compile its written history, traditions, and laws in the late 700s BC - exactly Isaiah's period. This jives well with the general arc of historical reliability in these books - the accounts of later kings are more filled-in than the accounts of earlier kings, and the accounts of Judah are more filled-in than the accounts of Israel, which had fallen a few years before this start date; later on, all these documents were officially collected into one place, when book-binding technology permitted it. This is a fairly convincing narration of how the Judaic 'official book' came into being, but it doesn't explain for us whether parallel books from other nearby traditions existed, or why this Judaic book persisted.

Regarding the latter, I think it a simple question of utility - the Judaic book persisted into Roman times through Jewish tradition, which by then valued literacy (as theorised on by William Schiedewind in the link above). And then, Paul had his bright idea - open up the franchise, take it to the gentiles. This succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, with some pushing from Constantine, and today we see the result - copies of ancient Jewish texts everywhere. So there is an evolutionary effect whereby we naturally perceive more of these texts than those texts that were competing with them 2,500 years ago - Christianity proved such an evolutionarily successful strategy that it outcompeted them all, leaving a trail of abandoned traditions in its wake.

Regarding (2), there is:
Egypt
Persia
Assyria
Babylon
And let us not forget that the Babylonian cults of Marduk and Ishtar found their way into the Christian bible, in the form of Mordecai and Esther, supposedly Jewish heroes... Of the older Canaanite pantheon, out of which Yahweh climbed, I can see listed no preserved texts - would be extremely interested to know if I've missed something.

None of these traditions have the preserving force attached of a subsequent worldwide worship explosion. What we have is more fragmentary, and often only preserved in the most decrepitly ancient of written vehicles. Zoroastrianism has the closest approach, in that it is still followed today, and indeed it is the easiest to find their books for.

Quote from: drizabone on May 24, 2017, 06:44PMJeremiah 8 text

1) I wonder why he mentioned the bones?

Am I imagining that Ezekiel comes back to this?

Quote from: Baron von Bone on May 24, 2017, 05:16PMTwo questions:
 
1 - Are you a Jew?
2 - If you aren't a Jew, then why do you claim to be a Christian?I don't see the two as being as different as you do.
Well, there is the argument that Christ ianity should instead be called Paul ianity.

Here's the best scholarly response to that claim by respected British New Testament scholar David Wenham.  He has both a full blown version and a condensed version.  His work should be consulted before the claim of "Paulianity" is too glibbly made.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0802801242?_encoding=UTF8&isInIframe=0&n=283155&portal-device-attributes=desktop&ref_=dp_proddesc_0&s=books&showDetailProductDesc=1#product-description_feature_div

https://www.amazon.com/Paul-Jesus-Story-David-Wenham/dp/0802839835/ref=pd_sim_14_1?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0802839835&pd_rd_r=BBHS66Q72B7F1M9ZQ84D&pd_rd_w=kwJKk&pd_rd_wg=owAkO&psc=1&refRID=BBHS66Q72B7F1M9ZQ84D

I hope there's a better scholarly response than Wenham's.

Read the Amazon reviews.  Even the most favorable ones are a bit skeptical of whether he made the case - and that's exactly what he's doing, trying to make a case.

He's an apologist, not a theologian.  These appear to be nonintersecting sets. 

Here's a lecture by David Wenham.

https://www.bethinking.org/is-christianity-true/was-paul-the-founder-of-christianity

I listened to the entire lecture.  I rarely do that, I prefer the speed of reading, but I'm home sick without a lot of energy.

If JTT is correct that this is the best defense for Paul being a faithful (in the sense of accurate) follower, then I have to change my own mind, which has been on the fence on this issue.  Wenham is not convincing, and if this is the best that can be done, I consider the opposite case to have been definitively made.