romansh

6 minutes ago, PaulS said:

Yeah, content not available.  Maybe that post was only shared with people who 'Follow' Gus? I can get to his overall FB page, but not that particular post it seems.

It's there a few posts down  ... It starts with John1:12-13.

Campbell ... where West meets East ...

On 7/24/2022 at 9:23 AM, romansh said:

But the ultimate mystical goal is to be united with one's god. With that, duality is transcended and forms disappear. There is nobody there, no god, no you. Your mind, going past all concepts, has dissolved in identification with the ground of your own being, because that to which the metaphorical image of your god refers to the ultimate mystery of your own being, which is the mystery of the being of the world as well.

Does this work?

Gus Lott | Facebook

Content not available?

The link works for me?

I think Gus has interesting interpretations. 

Gus Lott - John 1:12-13, "But to all who received him, who... | Facebook

If we go to my Rex Weyler link, where Weyler used his journalistic skills and quoted everything that could be reasonably (in his opinion) ascribed to Jesus, then there is nothing apocalyptic in those 27 lines or so.

If he accepted that there was evil then why are told not to judge? Divvying things into good and evil is judging.

Filched from Ogdin's facebook page

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This is called "Realized Eschatology," coined by C.H. Dodd in 1935 to describe these peculiar and early teachings in the text which speak that the kingdom is already present.

This is innovated on top of the Jewish Essene Determinism which attributed all to God but, in the first century, still held that the world was not right and was awaiting a resurrection to fix all the errors. Jesus merely noted that this was inconsistent and, if God held total and constant dominion over the cosmos, everything was ALREADY and ALWAYS precisely as God wanted it.

Yes, the apocalypse does seem in contradiction with the "kingdom is already present".

2 hours ago, PaulS said:

Maybe Jesus' message was later transformed by writers?  Maybe Jesus was a 'different' type of Essene?

And this brings me back to my mantra. What reasons do we have to try and decipher the interpretations of scribes years after the death of a mystic Jew, where these scribes may or may not have had a good handle on where Jesus was going with all this? 

This brings me also to the work of Weyler who used his journalistic talents to ascertain what Jesus might have said. Here are a few lines grouped by topic:

Otherwise, avoid rules and follow the truth you discover yourself.
Act from awareness, not habit or convention.
Don’t blindly repeat rituals.
Don’t trust those with spiritual pretensions.
Question those who presume to speak for God.

Discover the truth for yourself! Look around and try and work out how the universe ticks.

On 4/21/2023 at 3:06 PM, PaulS said:

Yes, Essenes lived in places other than Qumran.  Lots of scholars think Qumran was an Essene community (contrary to your friends uncertainty as to why).

@Ogdin did not say Qumran was not an Essene community. To me says the opposite.

On 9/13/2022 at 5:57 AM, Ogdin said:

... relating to the Essenes as described by Josephus and as relating to the total determinist community that is witnessed in the dead sea scrolls from the Qumran jewish sect.

We are 'here' because:

1.  It has been postulated that Jesus was a determinist like the Essenes.
2. Jesus's teachings are at odds with Pharisaic and Sadducaical teachings.
3. Some scholars think John the Baptist was an Essene.
4. If Jesus did not believe in 'free will' then that puts a different light on much that goes on in the texts.

Just as an aside here is a bit from ChatGPT ...

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There are several scholars who have suggested that John the Baptist may have been an Essene or influenced by Essene teachings. One of the earliest proponents of this theory was the 19th-century biblical scholar Ernest Renan. In his book "The Life of Jesus," Renan argued that John the Baptist was an Essene who had a significant impact on Jesus' teachings and ministry.

Other scholars who have supported this theory include Edmond Bordeaux Szekely, an early 20th-century scholar who claimed to have discovered an ancient Essene gospel called the "Essene Gospel of Peace," and John Allegro, a British scholar who was part of the team that translated the Dead Sea Scrolls. Allegro argued that John the Baptist and Jesus were both influenced by Essene teachings and that the Qumran community, which produced the Dead Sea Scrolls, was an Essene community.

However, not all scholars agree with this theory. Some argue that the similarities between John the Baptist and the Essenes can be explained by their shared focus on ritual purity and asceticism, which were common themes in Jewish thought at the time. Others point out that the New Testament does not explicitly mention John the Baptist's connection to the Essenes.

In conclusion, while there is some debate among scholars about whether John the Baptist was an Essene or influenced by Essene teachings, it remains a topic of ongoing research and discussion.

 

These other scholars tend not to be modern per se.

[124] They have no one certain city, but many of them dwell in every city; and if any of their sect come from other places, what they have lies open for them, just as if it were their own; and they go in to such as they never knew before, as if they had been ever so long acquainted with them. For which reason they carry nothing at all with them when they travel into remote parts, though still they take their weapons with them, for fear of thieves. Accordingly, there is, in every city where they live, one appointed particularly to take care of strangers, and to provide garments and other necessaries for them. But the habit and management of their bodies is such as children use who are in fear of their masters. Nor do they allow of the change of or of shoes till be first torn to pieces, or worn out by time. Nor do they either buy or sell any thing to one another; but every one of them gives what he hath to him that wanteth it, and receives from him again in lieu of it what may be convenient for himself; and although there be no requital made, they are fully allowed to take what they want of whomsoever they please.

Flavius Josephus. The Works of Flavius Josephus. Translated by. William Whiston, A.M. Auburn and Buffalo. John E. Beardsley. 1895.

Tufts University provided support for entering this text.

a link here

On 4/9/2023 at 8:53 PM, PaulS said:

One of the reasons scholars occasionally associated Jesus with the Essenes is that he, like them, preached a thoroughly apocalyptic message.  The present age, in both their views, was controlled by forces of evil; but God was soon to intervene to destroy the forces of evil and bring in a good kingdom on earth to be run by his messiah (or messiahs).   There was soon to be a mass destruction of all that was opposed to God and the people and kingdoms that aligned themselves with these alien forces.  And included among those to be wiped out were the leaders of Israel.

Since this message, in rough outline, was found in both Jesus and the DSS, doesn’t that make it plausible that Jesus was a member of the community where the scrolls were found, in a place called Qumran in the Judean dessert?

There are in fact very solid reasons for thinking Jesus was not a member of the Qumran community or any other group of Essenes.   For starters, our only sources for Jesus (however many you count) never say anything about him belonging to a group of apocalyptically minded Jews before his ministry, and in fact never mention the Essenes, at all.  They are the only major group of Jews from the time not mentioned in the NT (contrast Pharisees, Sadducees, chief priests, zealots, etc….).

That in itself is not particularly decisive of course.  But it should give one pause.  More important is this.  We know from the DSS that the reason this community was located in isolation in Qumran, out away from civilization, was because of the particular religious views of the community.  These Essenes believed that since the world around them had grown so corrupt, they needed to separate themselves from it.  Even the Jewish leaders – those running the Temple in Jerusalem, for example – were lost in the eyes of God; and the mass of Jewish people were a polluted race.   These Essenes believed that it was important for them to preserve their own purity in the face of the impure world around them, and they located to the desert precisely so they would not be contaminated by the sinners of the rest of the world.

This is precisely the opposite approach of Jesus.  He too thought the end was coming soon.  But he was not interested in preserving his own ritual and moral purity in the face of widespread corruption.  He shows very little concern at all for Jewish purity regulations (either of the Essenes or the Pharisees, whom, by the way, the Essenes considered to be lightweights).  And rather than remove himself from the sinners of the world, Jesus mixed and mingled with them.  So much did he do so that he was roundly accused and slandered for being friends with the lowlifes, the tax collectors (notorious sinners) and prostitutes.   Morever, Jesus thought these were the ones who were going to inherit the kingdom, not the highly religious and morally and ritually pure.   This was a very, very different kind of apocalyptic thinking from that reflected in the DSS.

John the Baptist too believed in taking his message to the sinners.  He and Jesus agreed with the Essenes that the end was coming soon and people needed to prepare.  But there idea about what it took to prepare was quite at odds.   They would have seen each other as getting the message precisely wrong.  Jesus did not learn his views at Qumran (neither did John).  On the contrary, he would have seen the Qumran community as completely missing the boat.

I pointed this passage out. The reply:

 I don’t know why some scholars equate essenes with the dead sea community. Josephus talks about them being in every city, not isolated in the desert. He talks about their communal living in wats that are very similar to the stuff in various parts of the New Testament.

While dualism may well have been typical of the time, was Jesus typical of Jewish tradition? He may well have been apocalyptic, but that does not rule out other flavours as well.

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Josephus (in 93AD) describes this division among the Jews in Antiquities 13:171 saying:

"Now for the Pharisees, they say that some actions, but not all, are the work of fate, and some of them are in our own power, and that they are liable to fate, but are not caused by fate. But the sect of the Essenes affirm, that fate governs all things, and that nothing befalls men but what is according to its determination. And for the Sadducees, they take away fate, and say there is no such thing, and that the events of human affairs are not at its disposal; but they suppose that all our actions are in our own power, so that we are ourselves the causes of what is good, and receive what is evil from our own folly."

There is good reason to believe that this is the basic teaching of Jesus that was later distorted. Many scholars see parallels with him and Essene thinking, and certainly the other two categories are explicit opponents of Jesus in the NT.

The above is a quote from Dr Lott that I filched from Facebook. Who happens to have posted on this site that the Admin and mods have somehow neglected to welcome.

What does Bart say about Jesus and Essene?

Paul ... your reply seems to indicate that Jesus somehow believed we had free will and that god will take control at some point. Who or what did Jesus think was in control during his time?

While what Jesus thought what we need saving from is an interesting question, what we think we need saving from would be far more interesting.

There is some evidence that Jesus was an Essene, a Jewish sect who were determinists ... and by implication that did not believe in free will. This apparently was why Jesus kept butting heads with Pharisees, a sect that did believe in free will.

So if, Jesus thought we did not have free will, it makes being saved an interesting concept.

If anyone needs more info on this, PM @Ogdin or take a look at Dr Lott's youtube in the free will thread.

And the third in this particular series

Christianity 101: Does Jesus Save Us? | PlainSpeech with Philip Gulley

And his salient point:

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The salvation of man is through love and in love

This is my take on it:

The salvation of man is through understanding and in understanding

I'm not sure salvation is the right word either. What is there to be saved?

It would seem our Phil does not think Jesus was born God incarnate. Presumably, he thinks he did not rise from the dead either. I realize that this is perfectly in tune with Progressive Christianity, but it would seem an anathema to the bulk of Christianity. Phil is on his way to joining the likes of Gretta Vosper and John Shelby Spong.

On 3/18/2023 at 12:58 AM, PaulS said:

More from Phil:

When I was a kid, we had two dogs and a cat claimed by my siblings. I kept telling my mother I wanted a pet of my very own, and she kept resisting, not wanting another to tend another pet. But then I contracted a serious illness that our family doctor, Doctor Kirtley, couldn’t diagnose, finally speculating it was some exotic, mysterious disease that had never been seen in Danville, brought to our town by a carnival worker. The carnival set up on the town square every summer and anything bad that happened while they were in town was laid at their feet—thefts, disturbances of every sort, fires, disease. One time a woman in town ran off with a carnival worker, then returned to Danville in a family way, and gave birth to a little carnie baby, who emerged from the womb sporting a tattoo and smoking a Marlboro.

So there I was, near-death, my mother hovering over me, and she asked, “What can I get you?” and I said, “A pet.” She got her purse, climbed in her pea-green 1969 Plymouth Valiant, and drove to Danner’s Five and Dime on the town square, returning home with a cage and two gerbils, which she named Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of Rome. I had never heard those names, not being a student of Roman mythology, but we had a set of World Book Encyclopedias, so I looked up Romulus and Remus and was shocked to discover they were considered gods.

 What in the world was my Catholic mother thinking, naming our gerbils after pagan gods? Had she lost her mind? I kept reading the World Book Encyclopedia and discovered there were other historical figures thought to be divine—Egyptian Pharaohs, Chinese and Japanese Emperors, Julius Caesar, Homer, Alexander the Great, and Mary, Mother of Jesus, just to name a few. I read their names aloud to my parents and my father said, “Don’t forget Babe Ruth,” so him, too.

Up until then, I thought Jesus had the divine market all to himself. I’d had no idea that humankind had been in the god-making business since our earliest days, all the way back to Ishtar of Mesopotamia, the goddess of love and war, the first deity for whom we have written evidence. Isn’t theology fascinating?

We’ve been talking about the importance of good theology, that the antidote to bad theology is good theology. We remember the words of Bishop John Spong who said there is not conservative theology or liberal theology, there is only bad theology and good theology. Bad theology gives birth to many cultural disorders, including Christian Nationalism, this toxic mix of partisan politics, white supremacy, and evangelical Christianity, a movement many in our nation seem eager to embrace.

We’ve spent the past two weeks reflecting on the nature of God, so today I invite us to consider Jesus and, more specifically, to consider how Jesus became God and why. When I say Jesus became God, what I mean to say is that the divinity of Jesus was a human invention, that as a first-century monotheistic Jew, Jesus would have likely rejected any claim to divinity. We see hints of this in the Bible, one in Luke’s gospel, when a religious leader called Jesus “good teacher,” and Jesus said, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” Time and again, we see in his humility and humanity an unwillingness to elevate himself. Jesus was not a narcissist demanding worship, he was a servant inviting others to serve with him.

But because humans are exceptionally good god-makers, we promoted Jesus from teacher to God in the centuries following his death, until formally defining his nature at the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D., oddly enough by voting on it. It was almost inevitable this would happen, given our propensity for elevating our heroes. In Jesus’s lifetime, and in the centuries following, the Roman Empire and their divine “emperor” had a powerful grip on Israel and the surrounding nations. The early Church refuted that claim, chiefly by elevating Jesus. It was an early example of “sticking it to the man.” As you can imagine, this was not warmly received by Rome, and Christians were persecuted until gaining political favor under the Emperor Constantine, who made Christianity the state religion, an event we welcomed, but now must surely regret, not realizing it would one day lead to televangelists and Ted Cruz.

We are exceptionally good God-makers. We want to pay homage to those persons whose lives have been meaningful to us, so we grant them divine status. It’s our way of saying someone embodies the finest virtues we can imagine. When the early Church claimed Jesus was divine, they were saying the priorities and values of Jesus exemplified divine priorities and values. For the early Church, it was not enough to say Jesus was a good person. They wanted him to be a good god. While I understand that, I regret that it has devalued the intrinsic value of what it means to be human. So now we have this lopsided equation where humanity resides on a lower plane than divinity. But I believe Jesus had a high regard for humanity and is not honored by our diminishment. For Jesus to be good, it does not follow that we must be bad.

I think there’s another reason we create gods. Just as soon as we elevate someone to divine status, we give ourselves an excuse not to be like them. Oh, I could never be like Jesus, he’s God, after all. Even though Jesus seemed to clearly expect his followers to do what he did and live like he lived. Indeed, he told them they would do even greater things than he had done. That doesn’t sound like a god to me. That sounds like a man with a high regard for human potential.

We don’t honor Jesus by making him God, by crowning him King and installing him as the head of the state religion, thereby investing his followers with worldly power, and forcing him, and ourselves, upon others.

We honor Jesus when we live as he lived, when we heal, when we have good news for the poor, when we love the outsider, when we lift up the oppressed, when we embrace our enemies, and set the prisoners free. Jesus is not elevated by our words, but by our actions, by our steadfast determination to do what he did with glad and joyful hearts.

Heresy ... I like it. One step closer to implicit atheism.

13 hours ago, PaulS said:

I liked it, but it still doesn't resolve the unresolvable.

I would remind everyone of the French philosopher, Auguste Comte, who predicted in the 1800s, we will never know the composition of the stars. Little did he know the science for determining such things had been developed a few years earlier. We are always learning, or at least I hope that will be the case.

14 hours ago, PaulS said:

nature, nurture and experience

All are products of the universe and not separate from it.

22 hours ago, PaulS said:

We all do what we do for one reason or another, presumably totally out of our control

👍👍 👍👍 👍👍 👍👍

22 hours ago, PaulS said:

so who am I too judge why people care for one another.

 👍   Remember this applies to people who don't care for one another too.

21 hours ago, PaulS said:

I wonder how much time the 'science' of theology dedicates to studying Ra, or Thor, or Zeus, or Krishna etc.  To me the biggest discredit to this alleged study of 'God', is that the only 'God' studies is of course Christian God (with maybe a loose connection to the God of Judaism and God of Islam).

This is sort of why I like Joseph Campbell he tried to divine the meaning of the various myths we have floating around. Not sure he succeeded, but he tried.

21 hours ago, PaulS said:

Yes, a pretty common Christian understanding.  I suspect that because science cannot validate God's existence, this fallback is what is relied upon to defend one's personal beliefs and understanding of their experiences.  Also a bit ironic because theology is considered the 'science' of studying God (albeit only the Christian God - see my comment above).

Again ... what are the properties of this "god" we are supposed to be (in)validating? If we get close then we will get the chapter ... we cannot truly know God. As an agnostic, I have some sympathy for this position. But tell me, what can we truly know? And having said that, with a few assumed axioms I can be fairly certain that the Earth is an oblate spheroid. And that it revolves around the Sun in an ellipse. 

I am fairly sure your science of god being Christian is pretty much a Western point of view. Islam and Subcontinental religions will likely have their own god science departments.

22 hours ago, PaulS said:

Thanks for the share.  Available at my local library albeit currently on loan - have placed a hold on it to check it out.  But this is a fairly deeply ingrained Christian approach to 'good' - that somehow we're incapable of it (doing it, experiencing it) unless we have 'God'.  That said, Phil's church is a lot more progressive than that.

Behave is a tough book ... (remember the last four pages ... if you feel the need to give up.) 

22 hours ago, PaulS said:

How we are nurtured, how we experience the universe, plus nature's contribution, is what results we see later in life. 

Yeah ... I keep pounding away at this. Nature versus nurture debate. There is no dichotomy here ... there is no separation between us and the environment (universe). The separation ... is an illusion.

We need God to be caring to one another? 

Sorry, could not resist:

• Theology ... a subject without an object.
• Overall I thought it was a good sermon for people who are entrapped in a doctrinally dogmatic Christian sect. I suspect there aren't many in his flock, but his blog will have some outreach, I suppose.
• His comment on "God" not being the province of science, I thought was particularly wrong and misleading. If there is a cause and effect then science, if we put our minds to it, can have its say. Unless we think "God" has no effect and did not do anything, then God may as well not exist.
• Experiences of profound and deep clarity, joy, forgiveness, reconciliation, compassion, understanding, etc is God really? I call them experiences. I recommend to Phil he should read Robert Sapolsky's Behave: The Biology of Humans at Their Best and Worst. It's a dense read ... Alternatively ... in a library or bookshop read the last four summary pages.
• In a Spirit rooted within us? ... Needs more clarification and supporting evidence.

Ultimately I see this as a step towards standing on our own two feet and going about the world understanding our connection (inseparableness) with it. 

What happens to 'you' when one has a well-administered anesthetic?

The second law of thermodynamics makes me very skeptical about life after death. Life appears to behave as a 'catalyst' for increasing entropy.

And edit ... welcome David

This could have gone in many threads.  Here Gus talks about how the Bible might be interpreted as being a determinist document at least in places.

Funnily enough, I see this related to free will. No surprise.

I posted this before ... Will – rom's corner (home.blog)

Desire is an aspect of our will. Just be aware that we have them and try and get a sense of where our desires come from ... similar to our 'aversions'. Letting go of our desires is a little bit like letting go of our egos.  Somehow we want "better" and not being content with where we are now.

A desire to rid ourselves of desire.