[John] Well Krimel, I do have a bumper sticker that says, "jesus was a commie" so yeah, you know I basically agree with your whole overall point here.
Certainly nothin' "tough to swallow", as you call it. Good eatin'! In fact. I won't go into a lot of dispute or discussion here, but I just wanna say you touched on one key issue for me right now, that I've been arguing with a good friend of mine, over the book of Job and whether Job was really a righteous man, upright and perfect in all his ways, as God brags about him to Satan, or if Job was secretly guilty of self-righteousness, as my friend claims. See, he was rich, but was he self-righteous? At the end, he repents of something, admits he abhors himself and repents in dust and ashes. But what exactly did he do wrong? [Krimel] Job is a complex both in its content and the history of its composition. Like many of the books of the Bible it is written in layers over time. Probably multiple authors and editors and all that. But just as is stands without the history... Job didn't do shit. His friends of "comforters" in sequence speculate on Jobs failing and he tells them they are full of crap. Finally God steps in and agrees that Job's buddy's are full of crap and Job is blameless. So Job say, well then why did you fuck with me. God's answer is pretty much because I am God and I can do whatever I please. What's it too you? For whatever reason That's cool with Job and he praises the Lord and he gets a new family and new riches as a consolation prize. [John] I say if God says he was perfect, then that's as close to perfect as counts. But Christians claim no person can be perfect apart from life in Christ. So don't they contradict this part of the bible? [Krimel] I don't think God does say stuff like that. I think people believe that and it informs their reading for scripture. The Bible is riddled with contradiction that can only be resolved through the most obvious of subterfuge. [John] And don't forget, they're sabbath school whitewashings with me. Not sunday school. [Krimel] Ok, I am not familiar with that sect. Are you guys alter callers? As I recall you started as a doomsday cult. A wiki qwiki say yes and throws in an old lady with psychic powers. Yeah, ok, any day of the week you guys want to meet is fine with me and thanks for the warning. [John] My favorite tweaking of the learned and righteous, is my personal take on the episode following the "render unto ceaser's what is ceaser's" dodge, where a guy later asks Peter if his master pays tribute, and Peter says "yeah", probably thinking about the whole ceaser thing, and Jesus rebukes him! Says, the kings of the earth don't extract tribute from their sons, so therefore "the sons" are free. And then, to "keep from giving offense", gives Peter a fishing tip whereby he pulls the magic trick of the coin outta the fishes mouth . [Krimel] I don't have much more than puzzlement on that tale either but here is a few tidbits that you might find interesting. The issue at hand is the coin and taxes. The Jews believed that the nation of Israel belonged to God and to God alone. They were not fans of foreign rulers or of making any compromises whatever the foreign dominion. They were almost unique in this as the Romans were pretty decent folk by imperialist standards. When Jews when to the temple to make their tithes and offering they were forbidden by Jewish practice to use the coins of the conquerors. That's why there were money changers in the temple. They exchanged Roman coinage for temple coins. So in one sense when Jesus says Caesar's face is on the coin so render it unto him, it is a put down on the illegitimate coinage of the empire. The story with Peter is a different story but it sounds like the same kind of deal. The sons are clearly the Jews and the strangers the Romans. This heat between the Romans and Jews ultimate went really badly and came to a head in 70 AD when the the Jews were pretty much wiped off or spread across the face of the earth leaving us with two of the world's great religions, modern rabbinic Judaism and the Hellenized version known as Christianity. [John] I use this one to argue that Christians are exempt from taxation. [Krimel] Well use it if you can make it work but none of the above has anything whatever to do with Christians. Jesus and his Jewish followers were in conflict with the Romans. There wouldn't be any Christians around at all for another 50 years or so. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
