Elen1107

Don't want to get back into the conversation,... but just happened to run into this verse. - since we were discussing whether Jesus could read and write earlier, this verse at least states that he could read: Luke 4: 16 He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:... Just thought I'd mention and share it.

I myself hope to keep putting God, the HS & JC first, and people and myself second in line after these. I used to do things the other way around and it didn't work out well for me at all. If you call this "theism", that's fine. I rather like the word theism, myself. Where people like Spong and other PCs use the word theism or theistic, I tend to rather use the words deity or deists or deisms. To me it means something like a man in the sky in a robe with a long white beard. As much as I love one of the pictures on the Sistine Chapel, that depicts god like this, I really don't think that's God. It might be and 'indicator' of god or a small pointer to God, put it really doesn't amount to much more than god's fingernail or something like that. -------------------- I think it's just common sense to assume that all people or a certain group, whether Jews or Christians, are not apocalyptic in their thinking.

Read JS Spong's book, 'The Sins of the Scriptures". there's a whole book full of what can be considered "bile", and one could even add to it a bit. I'm not really interested in having this/these conversations, & don't really have the time. You believe that Jesus was an apocalyptic Jew and that he was wrong.... I don't. - - For one thing I think that apocalyptic thinking like this is kind of dumb. To think that one day God is going to blow down this whole wide world and then build it up again in a day or a year or whatever, ta-da, just like that, is just kind of stupid. I don't think that Jesus was or is that dumb. I also don't think that all 1st C. Jews or a whole lot of other people were that dumb either. Apparently some of them were or they wouldn't have be writing letters about it and putting words into JC's mouth that said that was what he thought. - - You believe that books and texts and writings are of primary importance. I believe faith and spirituality and being "in" Christ and God and "in" their love and insight is primary and most important, and experiencing God and Christ is real and open to everyone. This is what gives us the insight to know how to live and get through our days and to know what to do. We are different. Lets just agree to be different and move on.

Well, perhaps it's not ALL the same word. Perhaps some of it IS and some of it isn't. Perhaps some of it has been edited and insertions have been made, to reflect what ever these editors and inserters wanted to add or take away from Jesus's message. If people just accept the Spirit of Christ within them, they/we can better discern what is and are Jesus's true messages and wisdom. Perhaps if people just had that, or just went with that, or gave more credence and importance to just that, then we wouldn't be in the awful, confusing muddle we are in now about what is and what isn't the real and true word and ways of God.

Apparently a number of people who wrote about Jesus were apocalyptic or at least partially apocalyptic in their thinking. This does not mean that Jesus was. It just means that the people who wrote about him after his ministry were. People with true faith and belief in Christ. Or, it could have been just based in their faith in Christ

What we are focusing on is was Jesus apocalyptic and was this the way and the only way that he and the Jews of the 1st C. saw and understood the coming of the Kingdom. I'm saying that it is quite possible that Jesus was not apocalyptic. I'm also saying that it is quite possible that there were Jews and Gentiles who were not apocalyptic, and that they saw the coming of the Kingdom in a different way and form, rather than the apocalyptic one.

The problem with these books is that they are a mixture of truth and fiction and outright bile. Some parts a truth and worth quoting and are good messages. Other parts are vile and mean and even down right evil. The fact that they are mixed and presented as "the word of God" creates a kind of mindbender that really can mess people up and can even create a kind of psychological illness. Those who are into hierarchical thinking and hierarchical ways of living. Those with control trips and who are into controlling others. Governments, religious leaderships, parents, gender dominance, people who are bent on the leader-follower mentality, instead of recognizing and getting along with other people as equals.

No, people first knew about him from his presence and the spoken words that he gave his first followers. Then people knew about him from the spoken words and presence of these followers. Today we can know about him by his spiritual presence in our lives, and the few words that are spoken about him that tell us where and when he walked this earth. The few words, "Jesus is (the) Christ", though they are written down and canonized with a lot of other stuff, can just as well be passed down orally and verbally. That's the way it was in the beginning. Is there any reason why it shouldn't still matter and pertain down to and into this present day?

I thought we were talking about whether Jesus was an apocalyptic Jew or not. If you, and these scholars believe that Jesus was an apocalyptic Jew, because Paul and other Jews were apocalyptic in their thinking,... I don't see how one statement necessarily leads to and concludes the other. On their own simple and inspired faith and the inspired faith of others being passed along orally and spiritually through time and through the ages.

I just found this on this subject: Jewish Sects of the 1st Century (1) Harvard’s renowned late scholar Jacob Neusner wrote in Judaism When Christianity Began, p.5, 50: “Judaism divides into Judaisms….Judaisms that flourished in Second Temple times, before 70 CE, when the Temple was destroyed.” There were several “Judaisms” in the Holy Land. This two-part topic identifies seven main Jewish religious sects or groups extant in the Land in the 1st century. The time when Jesus lived as a Jew and the temple still existed. Part 1 discusses the Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees. Part 2 discusses the Herodians, Zealots, Essenes, Nazarenes. https://bibletopicexpo.wordpress.com/2018/05/26/jewish-sects-of-the-1st-century-1/ --------------------------------- I also found a thing that said there were these sects/branches, but also there were all the other regular people. It seems that the "regular people" out numbered these different groups/sects. I'm thinking that Jesus might have been talking mostly to the regular people. Paul however was a Pharisee.

Wow, I wish every state had those kinds of plans. People should be aware that these things can and do happen, so people can do things differently and so they don't keep happening over and over again. So many people get hurt because they are told one thing, and then get another.

I don't know if everyone would call Rohr a "scholar" or not. He did receive his masters degree in theology from the University of Dayton in 1970. Regardless, he's a pretty bright and enlightened guy. --------------------------- The Jews passed down their oral traditions for thousands of years before they were written down. The native Americans in this country have been passing down "sacred" stories for thousands of years, and they have just become written down in this past century or two. I know people who believe that we would still know about Jesus even if the books hadn't been preserved and canonized. Mostly we know Jesus through our faith and through his spirit given to us. All people really need is just a few words about him, just the "good news" and faith and spirit can really take us from there. When people heard the "good news" in the 1st C that was a lot of all they had, and it was something real and enough. If you don't think he has a living spirit that can reach us, then what do you believe in and what is the basis of your faith? ---------------------------- Did 1st C Gentile Christians have OT texts? My understanding is that they were kept in the synagogues on scrolls and were taken out only for readings during services. They weren't in book form and copying them was a long and painstaking process. I believe the Jewish people call them branches. Do Hurtado and Hengel state that all 1st C Jews thought alike in these matters? We are not talking about God's kingdom here, but an apocalyptic view on how this is supposed to happen. I know that today there are many branches, at least that's what I've heard Jewish people say. How many there were back then, I don't know. Regardless, I tend to think that Jesus was able to think independently. --------------------------- Yeah, all this preaching and teaching lead to the books. The question is, how good were/are the books? Maybe the book writers and people behind them were trying to get a handle on and control of Christianity before all people really started believing they were all equal, so they dumped and wrapped all this hierarchical stuff on and into the books and onto Christianity.

My mother was married for over 50 years too. She is out living him by like twenty years or more. Their house was paid for and they thought she could live as long as she wanted after he passed. They needed to use a good amount of their savings to take care of my father in his last years. When he passed she lost part of his pension and part of his social security, and the taxes on the house kept going up and up and up. My sister supported my brother in-law while he got his PHD and wrote his dissertation. Then she gave up her career and followed him around the country till he got tenure teaching in a collage. This took many years and several moves. Then he takes off with a younger woman, and a great career, and my sister got a minimum wage job with no insurance and no security. Luckily my sister and mother were able to team up and between the two of them they were able to keep my sister's house while renting out the basement. They are both ok, but it was with no thanks to their husbands or the "society" that pushed them and kept them in these situations. I see so much of this. Women who are left with next to nothing while their husbands are off with 2 houses and 5 cars and who knows what else. It's wrong and it's not fair. Men are not supposed to make women's lives less safe and less secure. That's not being real men, and if they think it is their perceptions are upside down and the opposite of what is true and what is really real. The people I've met say that their standard of living is better than ours and that they have more security and safety and that they wouldn't give it up for nothing. People also need to learn to be incentivized by something besides just money. It counts up to a point, but a lot of people would be doing a lot what they do anyways. To them it's not just a job it's a vocation. In fact, if they had some real security, that they didn't need to worry about, they would be doing a lot more of it.

I can only remember the name of one scholar, it was Young. In the late 70's early 80's I did some studying at big city libraries and ecclesiastical libraries. Some of the crap I read really made me cringe. This was before people like Spong and Ehrman and before the internet. Just recently I read someone who was claiming to be a "scholar" who said that all the books of the NT had been written before like 55 CE and that he was sure of it and all this stuff. I didn't save his name or the link, I just closed the page and moved on. I guess that people can find "scholars" to tell them what ever they want to hear no matter what it is. There are experts of all kinds, as I mentioned above. I kind of like Richard Rohr's idea of the "tricycle". He states that experience of God and JC and the HS are the front wheel, and to him, and myself, the more important wheel, and tradition and texts are the rear wheels. Myself, seeing that most if not all of the early Christians just got the faith, and the inspiration and the "experience" of God & & through JC, with no texts what so ever (non-Jewish people had no texts not even the OT), to myself this is of real importance and meaning. Could Jesus read and write? He's only depicted once as writing anything. This is in the sand, with the woman caught in adulatory, (just the woman, no man was brought forth with her). If a person can write, they can read. Stories in Luke tell of him being a very wise youth and talking and arguing with the elders in the temple at age twelve. Does this mean he could read and write? I don't know. Did he need to be able to read and write, and how important is it / was it, is another good question. Same for his followers, both in those days and at any time in terms of getting the faith and the spirit and the experience of God. Children seem to know and experience this best, and they can't really read and write that well or that often. There are NT and Gospel of Thomas verses that pretty much say that children are the "experts". My understanding of Judaism is that they don't have denominations, they have "branches". They are all Jewish, and it's not as separate as the way we understand denominations, but they do have groups, perhaps one could call them sects, that do think differently. This is true today, I can't remember the names of them, but there is a good number of them. I believe this was true back in the 1st C too. Was Paul an apocalyptic Jew? Did he paint his ideas of apocalyptic Judaism on top of Jesus? Is that where we get that from instead of Jesus himself? Like we've mentioned, we don't even know if Jesus could read and write, we have to turn to his spirit inside us as best we can to find out. Perhaps we will never know for sure. Perhaps it is something we can only speculate on and the rest is left up to God/the Higher Spirit. The person and his spirit would still exist, be real, and be true,... even without a book behind or on top of him . 🙂 . I myself would rather use the term 'in-tune' with God . . . but each to their own What do you think is the "big stuff" that is important in friendship?

I can only remember the name of one scholar, it was Young. In the late 70's early 80's I did some studying at big city libraries and ecclesiastical libraries. Some of the crap I read really made me cringe. This was before people like Spong and Ehrman and before the internet. Just recently I read someone who was claiming to be a "scholar" who said that all the books of the NT had been written before like 55 CE and that he was sure of it and all this stuff. I didn't save his name or the link, I just closed the page and moved on. I guess that people can find "scholars" to tell them what ever they want to hear no matter what it is. There are experts of all kinds, as I mentioned above. I kind of like Richard Rohr's idea of the "tricycle". He states that experience of God and JC and the HS are the front wheel, and to him, and myself, the more important wheel, and tradition and texts are the rear wheels. Myself, seeing that most if not all of the early Christians just got the faith, and the inspiration and the "experience" of God & & through JC, with no texts what so ever (non-Jewish people had no texts not even the OT), to myself this is of real importance and meaning. Could Jesus read and write? He's only depicted once as writing anything. This is in the sand, with the woman caught in adulatory, (just the woman, no man was brought forth with her). If a person can write, they can read. Stories in Luke tell of him being a very wise youth and talking and arguing with the elders in the temple at age twelve. Does this mean he could read and write? I don't know. Did he need to be able to read and write, and how important is it / was it, is another good question. Same for his followers, both in those days and at any time in terms of getting the faith and the spirit and the experience of God. Children seem to know and experience this best, and they can't really read and write that well or that often. My understanding of Judaism is that they don't have denominations, they have "branches". They are all Jewish, and it's not as separate as the way we understand denominations, but they do have groups, perhaps one could call them sects, that do think differently. This is true today, I can't remember the names of them, but there is a good number of them. I believe this was true back in the 1st C too. The person and his spirit would still exist, be real, and be true,... even without a book behind or on top of him . 🙂 . I myself would rather use the term 'in-tune' with God . . . but each to their own What do you think is the "big stuff" that is important in friendship?