Clivedurdle

The Assemblies of God chapel I was brought up in always had Matzos with Ribena for Communion!

I thought it was accepted across the whole of xianity that it was unleavened bread because it happened at passover and...

So why has a whole chunk of xianity ignored the Exodus story? (I am a Marcionite!)

sotto voce

One heretic citing another, writing about yet another. Not the most auspicious signs of cracking anything worth knowing. But who knows?

Unsurprisingly.

Clivedurdle

I know someone - greek Orthodox, who thinks his branch of Orthodoxy is the only true one, that most Orthodox Xians are therefore off the plot, Catholics are definitely Heretical, Protestants are Heretics of Heretics, but Anglicans may be OK because they were Orthodox before Whitby, and people like me, from a funny sect but now a non believer are definitely beyond the pale. Fascinating clade diagrams become possible!

sotto voce

What does this have to do with the OP, if anything? Apart from demonstrating your poor English?

Bingo the Clown-O

What about pets?

Do you own any pets?

stephan huller

A bichon frise who I brought back to the groomers today

Bingo the Clown-O

Cool.

I have one of those too.

No kidding.

She’s in my avatar!

stephan huller

you see. I can't be all bad. mine is named lucy and she is better than human. a real character.

stephan huller

For those who are still interested in this thread here is the elusive Marcion:

http://www.hebrewbooks.org/pagefeed/..._38237_164.pdf

מךקרע I f.,pl. מךקיוען •; cmp.רקיק) thin cakes, wafers. Y.Taan. IV,'69 a טור שמעון הוה מ פ י ק . . וכ׳ כל ללקיטייא דמ׳ גריבין . . the town of Tur Simon used to distribute three hundred griva (of flour in) wafers among the poor on every Sabbath eve (v. לקיט1); Lam. .Ar. Compi . . . גרבי דמי בכל ערובה לאילין קיטיא B. to 11,2 ed. Koh. (defective in eds.).

These wafers were associated with the poor in early Judaism which is also interesting because the Ebionites are associated with a similar bread (see above).

stephan huller

Here's one of the references more fully. It references something which happened in the first half of the second century:

PT Taanit IV, 69a states that Tur Shimeon, a settlement which used to give large weekly amounts of wafers to the poor, was destroyed, apparently in the Bar-Kochba War period, "some say because of prostitution and some say because they used to play ball."

The relevant passage in the Talmud Yerushalmi arises in the midst of a discussion of the fall of Betar, to which the mishna had referred as one of the events commemorated on Tisha B’Av. The Talmud Yerushalmi provides us with no further clarification on this matter. What was the nature of the sin of playing ball? The simplest solution to all of these problems would be to suggest that the wrongfulness of ball playing had to do with the idolatrous context of Hellenistic athletic activities. The game probably took place either in the nude, and or within the context of worship of some foreign deity.

However, the second version of this aggadah, found in Midrash Rabbah to the Book of Lamentations, seems to propound an alternative solution to the disparity between the crime and the punishment. The account has other interesting variants and is therefore worth looking at in its entirety.

Mount Simeon used to distribute three hundred barrels [of thin cakes among the poor every Friday]. Why were these places destroyed? If you answer that it was on account of the harlots, is it not a fact that there was only one girl there [who was a harlot] and they expelled her? R. Huna said: The reason was because they used to play a game with ball on the sabbath.

This reworking of the aggadah contains two prominent elements. Firstly, the sexual integrity of the town is defended by the fascinating proposal that there had only been one prostitute to begin with and that she had been driven out. This sustains the credibility of the original accusation, but credits the town with having dealt with the problem in an appropriate fashion. Which however, leaves only a single explanation for the destruction, and the weaker one at that. The second element of the reworking, in the name of Rav Huna, then proposed that the sin of playing ball had to do with the activity taking place on the sabbath.

The midrash offers no further explanation as to the nature of the sabbath violation that was involved. However, the reference to sabbath violation in and of itself was sufficient, since in the rabbinic mind there was already a powerful awareness of the connection between violation of shabbat and destruction. The Talmud had already asserted that "Jerusalem was destroyed because of the violation of the shabbat."

Is there something here which might suggest something proto-Christian - the wafers, the Hellenism, the Sabbath violation? Hard to say.

The actual location of Tur Simon has been found http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=16122716