http://pnews.org/ Progressive News & Views (since 1982)
During the late 19th and early 20th century new discoveries (e.g. that some of Genesis (and such ugly things as the lex talionis -- eye for an eye defense of capital punishment) was really borrowed from the human despising Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh as well as archeological investigations and a hard glance at the biblical texts made it clear that these were human writings -- often revised and recompiled from disparate sources, e.g. the Hebrew Bible seemed to be such a composite drawn from separate territories and broken down into 4 major sources -- J, E, D. P. -- separated off by their characteristic choices of words and styles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis The New Testament similarly consisted of compilations -- 4 different slants in the Gospels -- directed to different audiences and written down after several generations of oral transmission (and elaborations of stories, etc.). An effort was made to sort them out as to what was authentic representation of Jesus -- and number of "Life of Jesus" books. My grandfather, Charles Foster Kent, was a leading American scholar in this area: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Foster_Kent He died before I was born, but the heritage was communicated to me by a number of his students. The various epistles are a mixed bag with disputes about authenticity. Paul's had some pretty horrendous things to suggest. He did not know Jesus, started persecuting Christians as Saul, converted and became a major interpreter of someone he never knew. His epistles were put into writing about a generation after the death of Jesus and IMHO completely redirected the message of Jesus from social justice reforms to obeisance to Roman authority and all those authorities that followed in their train. He was a believer in the imminent return of Jesus and the destruction of the world thereupon -- which is the stance of many of the right wing fundamentalists today and what makes them so dangerous. Without Paul there would not have been two millennia of persecutions of Jews, gays, denigration of women, and subservience to brutal political authorities. Best, Ed [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > http://pnews.org/ > Progressive News & Views (since 1982) > > Ed, could I borrow from your theology background to clarify a point? I had > been brought up with the idea that the words of the Bible were golden and > were protected as authentic by the Holy Spirit. Later, I am told that there > were dozens of testimonials at the time the Bible was compiled and that the > prevailing church just collected the ones they liked, to include in the > Bible. Still later, the Dead Sea Scrolls were cited as verification that the > “Holy Truths” were accurate. Yet, the DSS contained the Book of Jubilees > which was supposed to be spurious and discarded by the early church compiling > the Bible. So, my question for you would be….Is the Bible the creation of > man or God? Do ALL religions claim their version is authenticated by God? > <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /> > On the matter of world peace….it has always evaded us because the forces that > control the world……religions, political parties, corporations, and criminals > fight over the world’s goods. Those that would have peace will never achieve > it by simply calling for it or “being the change they want to see in the > world”. They have to take hold of the machinery of policy-setting and apply > the supervision and controls that contribute to peace and the welfare of the > world. They have to be the adult that walks into the roomful of quarreling > kids. Otherwise, they will always be victimized and marginalized by those > with the money and the guns……..Anteater -- "A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli) -- Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AcademicFreedom http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PrivacyRights http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Israel_Palestine http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/ http://www.bloggernews.net |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| pnews-news - (NEWS) - Send "subscribe" or "unsub" in subject to pnews-news-request(at)inyourface.info pnews-views - (VIEWS) - Send "subscribe" or "unsubscribe" as subject to pnews-views-request(at)inyourface.info |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Everything begins at The Worm Hole: http://pnews.org/ ----- Something Really Nice for your Honey - http://blackhillsg0ld.com/ Something Really Sexy for Her for Holloween: http://tinyurl.com/q878y --------------------------------------------- NEVER pay for a podcast again: Check it out - http://tinyurl.com/mnr7r -----
