Ekklesia
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Mmm.. no. They are ignoring the history of the Bible. The thing was written in like 100 ad. Back then there really was just one church, and even it barely existed.
This is the problem with literalism. It has the same problem as classic pharacitical logic: break everything down into smaller and smaller parts till you’re overwhelmed and can’t see the outside, then find a tiny reference that supports your argument and snap the whole thing back together again thereby hiding the shape of the whole. A way to get any arbitrary pronouncement you want out of the Bible.
This is why, I think they start the thing with a bunch of loaded language about the “whole bible”. They know it’s broken too but they’re bulling ahead anyway.
The 12 gates is the old covanent. Christianity is the new covanent.
This is the problem with literalism. It has the same problem as classic pharacitical logic: break everything down into smaller and smaller parts till you’re overwhelmed and can’t see the outside, then find a tiny reference that supports your argument and snap the whole thing back together again thereby hiding the shape of the whole. A way to get any arbitrary pronouncement you want out of the Bible.
This is why, I think they start the thing with a bunch of loaded language about the “whole bible”. They know it’s broken too but they’re bulling ahead anyway.
The 12 gates is the old covanent. Christianity is the new covanent.
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Hello BB - hello, glad you took an interest in mine post.
The reason for posting the video was to give clarity on where the word church comes from and it's original wording of Ekklesia meaning assembly in today's times IMO it doesn't hold the same understanding. The rest of the video is simply someones' interpretation, no different than any translated interpretation of any Bible. The Bible itself is an interpretation of earlier writings.
We actually have writing today going back to King David's reign.
The earliest Hebrew scripture writings are the Khirbet Qeiyafa Inscription (11th–10th century BCE. Where Jesus and the apostles quoted from in its original tongue. What we have in the form of today's Bibles are translations in various languages.
A breakthrough in the research of the Hebrew scriptures has shed new light on the period in which the Bible was written. Professor Gershon Galil of the Department of Biblical Studies at the University of Haifa has deciphered an inscription on a pottery shard discovered in the Elah valley dating from the 10th century BCE (the period of King David's reign), and has shown that this is a Hebrew inscription. The discovery makes this the earliest known Hebrew writing. The significance of this breakthrough relates to the fact that at least some of the biblical scriptures were composed hundreds of years before the dates presented today in research and that the Kingdom of Israel already existed at that time. Credit: Courtesy of the University of Haifa
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2010-01-ancient-hebrew-biblical-inscription-deciphered.html#jCp
It is. The Old Testament more than the new, but both suffer from both reinterpretation and hand copy errors. The former mostly just because it’s older.
Are you referring to the Dead Sea scrolls?
..and translation of translations. Plus there’s the nicene convention of 400ad who’s politics deeply affected christian thought through today. That Christianity and Islam for that matter are products of classic Judaism is beyond doubt. Both appear to be based on the beliefs of their founders that Judaism had diverged from a path of righteousness over time. Christianity seems to take a big picture approach to repair, dispensing with many legalistic structures, while Islam maintains but attempts to reinterpret the structure of that law. Christianity in particular is hampered by limited and partial documentation. As a result attempts to follow its teachings in a literalistic manner are particularly prone to pitfalls. It is imho a particularly poor choice for attempts to build a literalistic belief system. It’s strength remains the big picture approach. Attempting to bolster literalistic Christian belief with Judaic writings can help a bit, but also hampers Christianity in its primary mission of attempting to achieve a wholistic view. Are Judaism, Islam, and Christianity at their heart all basically the same religion? Imho yes. Islam even refers to the three collectively as “the people of the book”. Viewing each in the terms of the others I feel does help in catching the errors that all the belief systems seem to have accrued, while ignoring them and treating one of the others as inherently false while delving exclusively and closely into just one simply creates more problems. They’re all partially broken in their own way. Part and parcel of attempting to teach chimps such as ourselves things we just aren’t well equipped to understand however much we need to.
Seems to me your trying to break down a belief system. In some ways, you might be right.
Though I'm a firm believer in the Bible as the Word of G-D. In those writings, it has been proven to me many times the "teacher is the Holy Spirit" not man. Though man can be a vessel used by G-D.
As far as Islam goes I know little about it and have no interest in it. Though from my understanding Islam is clear in that it separates itself from Judaism at the birth of Abrahams two sons and the establishment of the Abrahamic covenant. Where Judaism really gets its strenght from is the oral law and written five books of the law of Mosses.
Christianity is not limited by documentation as you are saying. It has the same roots as judaism, oral and written law which are quoted in the New Testament by Jesus Himself and every one of the books in the NT. Like I pointed to in my last post we now have writtings from the 10th century BCE (the period of King David's reign). It is just as much about Judaism as it is about Christianity.
If your looking to take apart Christianity this forum is not for you! I hope that is not your intentions.
Whether a person who calls themself Christian and has a holistic view is an individual choice, who will have to give account of themselve's on the day of judgement until then we are free to choose are own paths whether it is materialism or of the Spirit..
I can only speak of myself - though I live in this world I am not of this world. I try not to be concerned with material things though I admit its a challenge. If it wasn't so I wouldn't have a goal of being Christlike - Christian though prefer to call myself a follower of the way.
Depends on what you mean by “break down”.
I could be considered to be deconstructing parts and looking at the individual pieces. I am not attempting to destroy anything though.
Agreed.
my information is that Muhammad initially attempted to join Judaism along with his followers but was rejected for what looked to me like primarily political concerns on the part of the Jewish leadership at that time. The primary one being that his group at the time was relatively large compared to the size of the whole of Judaism at that time. He then later became critical of Judaism and forged a different path. I am not a good student of the books of Islam either, and cannot speak to the specifics of how his dissent was worded. I am given to understand though that the Koran is not the only book from which Islamic theosophy is derived. It is merely considered the most accurate one. There are something like 8 other documents as well.
Like I said, law. The Books of Moses also have their own historical context to be considered.
I disagree about the documentation limitation. For one I said that it was the most limited. ALL the systems are. Judaism is limited by the mechanics of oral tradition and hand copying of documents, though Jewish scholars over the ages have done a masterful job of limiting that as much as possible.
Did Jesus quote the Torah? Of course he did. He was Jewish. He was even a scholar of the Torah. Christianity is fundamentally based in Judaism. He did spend a great deal of time disagreeing with the interpretations of the meaning of those words with the establishment of the time though. They didn’t like it much if you recall.
Christianity has a good period of 150-400 years of flat out blank space between the occurrences documented in the testaments of the prophets and their actually being written down. It is also the only group who’s works can be hampered by translation errors. Very large parts of the Bible do not have this problem. Basically all of the letters for instance.
Islam is actually the group with the least problems in this area. Their period of blank space is a mere 10-13 years, though admittedly one constituted entirely of all out war. Their works also are written entirely in a more or less modern language which remains in its origional form.
Ancient Hebrew and Aramaic are both maddeningly vague languages. Their vocabularies are both extremely small, and their number systems are quite limited. By modern standards, especially English speaking modern standards, these words often have many different various meanings.
This is true. There is A writing, consisting of a pot shard, that verifies the existence of Judaism to that time. I believe it is also just as important to Christians as it is to Jews.
Iirc this forum is about vaping. This thread is about Christians who vape. I am one such Christian. An Episcopalian specifically. I just, like most Christians of the non literalist evangelical sects (well, all of them afaik) feel that the Bible should be viewed as a historical document. The concept that a particular group, while non the less guided by the Holy Spirit, has therefore created a perfect and error free version is therefore rejected. I do not believe they are valueless and/or that any of the “big three” are fundamentally wrongheaded. The errors that have been discovered so far are generally extremely small. Astonishingly so, really.
I believe the general message and intent of the various works shines through.
I do believe that due to the limitations of mankind it is impossible for any of them to remain totally uncorrupted or incorruptible down to their exact wording. They’re not perfect, they’re just the best we got.
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Agreed, mostly. This is generally less true of the other “people of the book” and wasn’t true at all until the end of the 100 years war that so bloodied Europe.
Huh? Are you referring to that as a continuum or a binary choice?
More huh? That sounds like specialized language specific to your sect. I’m not at all sure what you mean by it. It is a biblical quote, but the way you drop it down on its lonesome and the general vagueness of the meaning suggests you have a meaning more specific than the words.
This may be your definition of the above phrase. Hard to tell if one defines the other though. Maybe just my reading of it.
Like “The Way” the way? The Way International - Wikipedia
There is also
Two by Twos - Wikipedia
They’re fairly similar theosophically, though one seems to collect a lot more money than the other.
If this is not the case you may want to choose another term to avoid confusion.
Both are widely considered to be controlling and abusive groups. The word “cult” is out of fashion now, but both were considered such before the term went out of fashion.
Wow that thing is long. That’s the problem with answers.com. It’s not just one answer, it’s every answer. Ever. By anyone. What I’m getting from the link is that the most popular belief is it was the first term used to describe what became Christians when the religion was in its infancy. Though it seems to lop off nearly the entirety of Christian thought for nearly 2000 years, including the better part of the New Testament. It’s practically pre-Christian, rather than Christian.
To me, it's about G-D and what the Son of G-D's was willing to do. He is my example. Christlike is exactly what it implies to me the English translation is Christian it's an individual identification that hasn't lost its meaning to me. Actually, the religion of Jesus and the 12 was Judaism. It wasn't until years later when Paul corrected Peter in physical circumcision was not needed or should not be forced onto those who converted - conversion into the faith. That alone tells me the religion of the day was Judaism though we enter into the assembly/ekklesia by faith, its not a religion. Nothing has changed IMO in 2000 years but what man has put onto other men.
I agree there. That Judaism was the religion of Jesus is not in question. At least to me. Or I suspect just about anyone else, though though hairs may be picked. They certainly didn’t agree with the customary official line of the Jewish establishment at the time.
Most confusing sentence yet. Ekklesia appears to have a whole pile of different meanings both religious and non religious.
Ecclesia - Wikipedia
This I guess may be an example of that whole vocabulary issue I was talking about earlier. Deciding on a specific single modern meaning for a biblical phrase can be a grave error of understanding.
Nothing is a big word. In those centuries a lot happened to human understanding of themselves, society, the way the world works, and even finding that potshard you mentioned. These in turn have each in its way changed humanity’s approach to God. History may not change a concept but it does change our understanding of that concept. Like it or not we are both a product of history. That understanding goes both up and down. That we now know more about how the world works for example fundamentally changed our understanding of genesis. Everyone thought that “day” meant “24 hour time period” an assumption about the vagaries of ancient languages. This made genesis suddenly “false” and the world went nuts. If a “day” in genesis is viewed as the modern word “age” suddenly everything makes sense again. Now, once we went looking, it turns out that the very oldest versions of the Torah use a word that can mean both day and age. Did God’s word change? No. But our understanding of those words did. Back and forth.
(Not going to use that G-d thing myself. Yes ancient Hebrew didn’t have any vowels. For a Christian It’s a bit like insisting that “women” be spelled “womyn” because that way the word doesn’t contain “men” it’s still the same entity or concept etc..)
It wasn't IMO that Jesus didn't agree He certainly did, after all, He said to do as they say but don't do as they do and they all including Jesus kept the Jewish feast days and Sabbath Holy. You can't get more establishment than that.
The council of pharacies did a whole lot more than that though. This was the point which Jesus was making. He didn’t defy the entirety of Judaism. The Jewish practice of the time wasn’t corrupt. It was corruptED. There’s the whole whipping the money lenders out of the temple for one. It’s one of the more famous and pyrotechnic, but by far the only one. Practically everything Jesus did annoyed the current establishment. They kept sending shills to try to trip him up so they could arrest him, but there was very narrow avoidance after very narrow avoidance. They finally had to smear him with something he didn’t actually say, and pay off one of his compatriots to give him up. This story is mostly what the Gospels are about. All four of them.
You do realize the people of those time were living by the law and the reason Jesus came into the world was to free man kind from the law. There was none rightuios.
Eek! Someone else besides the two of us is reading this? My condolences and apologies. Theosophy is my shinyitis.
By all means. Vaping is a much more appropriate subject for a vaping forum.
Yeah, it did seem like a private conversation. I kinda felt like I was eavesdropping...but I enjoyed it and read every word!
Oh, and hey - how could anyone criticize? No one was off topic!
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