Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Clara Listensprechen · 04-09-2003, 09:17 PM

Lessee....I left off with the last Ec Council under Constantine, which was disputed due to some question over his death certificate. What's listed above and what follows is not meant to be a complete list of all the Councils, as there's been debate about which ones were valid, over the years. For instance, only four of the series are recognized by all Christian churches, and that would be the ones designated as General Councils 1 thru 4: 325 A.D., 381 A.D., 431 A.D., and 451 A.D., the last of which were presided over by Emperor and Empress Marcian, whose name also adorns a Christian cult of the era.

Then comes the Saxon-rule era of the Roman Empire, which morphed into the Germanic/Lombard era of the Roman Empire. Simony was in full vigorous swing in both, and in the former, history sees Theodotus seeing the need to call a Council in order to affirm the authority of the preceeding 6 Councils. Not always making the list (unless you're a Catholic) is the Council of 1096 A.D.

The following Council in 1122 A.D. is particularly important because it involves a treaty, regarding simony, which engendered the practice called "right of investitures". At this Council, there was a treaty agreed upon between Pope Calixius and Emperor Henry V...though this practice predates Emperor Henry V by a couple generations, and while Rome was under Lombard emperorship and was known, in full, as "The Holy Roman Empire Of The German Nation". This Council was known both as the 9th General Council and as the First Lateran.

By the time the Council of 1139 rolled around, The Great Schism was imminent and though this Council was primarily concerned with Pope Innocent II's concern over the "preservation of the temporal of ecclesiastics", the birth of what was to become Greek Orthodoxy was waiting in the wings; this was a religopolitical crisis, not helped by the fact that there were a number of competing popes out and about. The Great Schism participants were addressed in the subsequent Council in 1179. HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT: SEE ALSO the term iconoclast.

{to be continued}

Volker.Doormann · 04-10-2003, 12:29 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Clara Listensprechen
Volker, oh ye of misplaced faith in the political entity that created a book called The Bible out of a collection of books and letters. There was no Bible prior to Constantine...just a loose collection of books and letters. Oh ye that has so much faith in what Constantine saw fit to assemble into the anthology called The Bible, consider all that you might have had faith in amongst the truckload of scriptures he left OUT of The Bible.

Fast forward to King James I of England, known for his drunken insanities to the point where his subjects compelled his successor to agree to their Petition Of Right, the model upon which our own Bill Of Rights is founded. His KJV left a second truckloadful out of his Bible, and his agenda was to presbyterize Scotland, as his reign was the first where both Scotland and England were under the same crown--his.

Fast forward to Cromwell and the mess he made of Ireland. He didn't write his own Bible but on the bases of the KJV he and his Fifth Monarchy Men were religiously convinced that during his reign over the Commonwealth, Jesus would come back to Earth to preside in the prescribed 1000 years...and as a KJV adherent, treated Irish Catholics like Saddam treated Shiites.

Clara,

sorry, but if one would like to start the world war III and he says, that he has this commission from a book from Walt Disney, then I would assume, that he do not could blame Walt Disney for the trillions of death creatures in that possible war.

I see no difference in that plot, if you exchange the books, and do argue, that he has the commission from a Hebrew book called Tenach, containing:

The Torah (The Law of Moses)
Genesis (B'Reyshith, Beginnings)
Exodus (Shemoth, The Words)
Leviticus (WaYiqra, And He Said)
Numbers (BaMidbar, In the Wilderness)
Deuteronomy (Devarim, Rep. of the Covenant)
The Nevi'im (Prophets)
Yeshayahu (Isaiah)
Yirmyahu (Jeremiah)
Lamentations of Yirmyahu (Eychah)
Book of the Prophet Yechezqel (Ezekiel)
Book of the Prophet Daniel,
Book of the Prophet Hoshea (Hosea)
Book of the Prophet Yoel (Joel)
Book of the Prophet Amos
Book of the Prophet Ovadyah (Obadiah)
Book of the Prophet Yonah (Jonah)
Book of the Prophet Micha (Micah)
Book of the Prophet Nachum (Nahum)
Book of the Prophet Havaqquq (Habakkuk) .
Book of the Prophet Tsefanyah (Zephaniah)
Book of the Prophet Haggay (Haggai)
Book of the Prophet Zecharyah (Zechariah)
Book of the Prophet Malachi,
The Ketuvim (Writings)
Yehoshua (Joshua)
Judges (Shoftim)
Ruth
Books of the Prophet Shmu'el (I & II Samuel)
Books of the Kings (Melachim)
Chronicles of Israel/Yehudah (Dibri HaYamim)
Book of the Prophet Ezra
Book of Nechemyah (Nehemiah)
The Magillah of Hadassah (Esther)
The Story of Iyov (Job)
The Psalms (Tehillim)
Proverbs of Solomon (Mashley Shlomo)
Qoheleth Ecclesiastes (The Preacher) Qoh.
Song of Songs (Shir HaShirim).

AFAIK this books are of Jewish authorship and written in Hebrew. No one - and also Constantine or King James - can not divert his own caused crime to a Hebrew book or a collection of Hebrew books. If this practice would be an ethical right, to divert each crime to an ancient book, then everyone, who is acting a crime and plead on a book, an internet page, or a colored wooden sculpture, that speaks, if one is listen stoned, would be not guilty in our society. (?)

I think it must be shown by prove, that the collection of Hebrew books itself are acting in any political manner creating effects, without Kings or individuals.

Volker

Celsus · 04-10-2003, 04:09 AM

Volker,

Since you're talking about the OT, and Clara is talking about the NT, then we're referring to different subjects. So the question should be, what political uses did the Old Testament have for the ancient Israelites/Judahites?

Quote:

I have stated, that all myths in the Pentateuch can be well understood as of a spiritual meaning. Each one, who is reading this myths and adjust them with reason, can recognize, that this stories are not of any reality of this world. To trace from this nonsense a serious historic claim, is a joke.

And the answer is plenty. It gave them a "God-given" right to a land that they were trying to secure (see Judges, Samuel, etc.). It gives legendary accounts of how places and people came to be known as they were. It unites the Hebrew tribes under an all-conquering god, and quite likely harmonises differing traditions of various myths. And if that weren't all, Josiah (probably) used/wrote Deuteronomy to centralise cultic worship in Judah, and through centralisation came greater control over a rather disparate nation. There are political motives (or to be precise, etiological uses) to be found in all the myths of the pentateuch. There may or may not be an underlying history to the stories, but the fact is, at the time they approximated their present form, there were plenty of agendas that were neatly solved by the formation of the Pentateuch, and probably plenty more reasons for the original myths which are now lost to us.

Joel

Volker.Doormann · 04-10-2003, 07:48 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Celsus
Volker,

Since you're talking about the OT, and Clara is talking about the NT, then we're referring to different subjects.

No, Joel. Clara has stated: �There's nothing non-political about any of the Abrahamic religions, either.� The origin Hebrew Torah also known as the OT of the bible of Christs I do count to the Abrahamic religions.

Quote:

So the question should be, what political uses did the Old Testament have for the ancient Israelites/Judahites?

What do you think?

Quote:

It gave them a "God-given" right to a land that they were trying to secure (see Judges, Samuel, etc.). It gives legendary accounts of how places and people came to be known as they were. It unites the Hebrew tribes under an all-conquering god, and quite likely harmonises differing traditions of various myths. And if that weren't all, Josiah (probably) used/wrote Deuteronomy to centralise cultic worship in Judah, and through centralisation came greater control over a rather disparate nation. There are political motives (or to be precise, etiological uses) to be found in all the myths of the pentateuch. There may or may not be an underlying history to the stories, but the fact is, at the time they approximated their present form, there were plenty of agendas that were neatly solved by the formation of the Pentateuch, and probably plenty more reasons for the original myths which are now lost to us.

Joel

BTW. Deuteronomy is not part of Pentateuch.

I think not in that way. Each individual and also each one who claims �rights� alone is the personal and individual creator of effects and is responsible to this effects; never a stone table or an ancient book. This holds ever for any ethical acting of everybody in any time in this world. It�s an eternal principle, known as causality or Karma. Jesus has given some hints to that causality.

The fact that some acting creatures have �maintain� the Hebrew Scriptures with secular social claims did not affects the spiritual meaning of those myths in origin. Maybe you have read my arguing about the crime to claim the twelve spiritual astrological �houses� as twelve physical secular tribes as a genealogy. This claim did not affect the truth about the origin about that. If one claims - like you (I do not know why) - that the myths of the Pentateuch claim political motives, then this is now your (private but nevertheless political) claim and affects not the spiritual meaning of the Pentateuch myths. I have given hints here to solve that myths as parables, but there is absolute no prove that any of that Pentateuch myths have a serious historic reality. It is up to each one who argues against the �bible� to distinguish precise each truth from an untruth. Avoiding this means to generalize the real nature of that Pentateuch and that is politic, which is of no worth helping to understand myths and its symbols.

I do not think that there is anything really lost. The scope of the ancient people is not different from the scope of the people of today. Sexuality, power, sorrow, imperfection, dreams, crime, human character of man and woman�s, does not change by time. All people to all times have asked for the reason of their being here and have talked about that in imperfection of the true reason. Same was done by the people in Mesopotamia or Akkad before 2200 B.C.E.

It is a known as fact that some stories from the OT are taken as scripts from Sumerian myths (Genesis 2 / Noah) and Indian myths (YHWH/Shiva - A�Brahm/Sara - Passover/moon), as parables to talk about these reasons. If one is beating on Jewish writers of the OT, he can beat also the Sumerian and ancient Indian scribes.

There was in the beginning of Christianity a discrediting of Gnosis. Knowledge - this term is related to that word - was assigned as enemy of Christian belief. Gnosis means knowledge. I think knowledge is need to perceive the truth as truth and the untruth as untruth. This is not to do without knowledge and not to do by skepticism. To discredit dead unknown Jewish scholars from B.C.E. or their books in whole is easy, but of no use.

Volker

Baidarka · 04-10-2003, 02:29 PM

Volker
�The fact that some acting creatures have �maintain� the Hebrew Scriptures with secular social claims did not affects the spiritual meaning of those myths in origin. Maybe you have read my arguing about the crime to claim the twelve spiritual astrological �houses� as twelve physical secular tribes as a genealogy.�

I really don�t understand what you are trying to say here. Are you saying that astrology is of such vital importance that it is a crime for the writer to hide this from a needy world? Are you saying that astrology is such ridiculous, worthless hockum that it is a crime that people are being encouraged to waste their time with it? Please try to state your mind in an unambiguous manner.
I followed your link to your web site (I liked the pictures) and I still don�t have the slightest idea about what your basic thesis is. Perhaps you think that there are deep astrological secrets that the ancients had which are now lost forever. Who was that strange woman in the old photograph (she looks like Madam Blavatsky)?
Perhaps you are trying to be enigmatic or perhaps your Biblical/Spiritual musings are a form of Conceptual Art. Please give us a hint.

1) Gen 9.25 Noah curses Ham�s son Canaan. The NEB foot note says that this is an attack on the Canaanites since Canaan is supposed to be their Ancestor.
2) Noah blesses Shem father of the Semites.
3) Gen 15.18 God promises Abraham that he will grant land to his progeny.
This is the ultimate important political document, a land grant from God!
4) Deut 4 Starts a long list of laws to be followed by the citizens of the land. Laws are political.
5) In Samuel 1 & 2 we are told that David was not responsible for the deaths of Saul and Jonathan. This seems like it might be an apologetic to remove the taint of regicide from the House of David.
6) Gen 19.37 Lot�s drunken incestuous union with his 2 daughters produces the Mobites and the Ammonites. This is meant as an insult to these peoples (rivals of Israel).
7) The first century CE was a time of violence and revolution between Israel and Rome yet some how the NT hardly ever hints at this. Why?
8) Pontius Pilate was an extremely violent Tyrant. Why is he white washed in the NT?

We have all been watching this war in Iraq and we have been witnessing the way different parties with different interests have been twisting, or changing the facts to suit their own interests.
Let us imagine that there is a type of fundie who believes in artistic inspiration from the Holy Ghost that makes the paintings of Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci true representations of the Bible.
How would we explain to this fundie that in the Last Supper da Vinci put everyone on one side of the table because it was easier to represent all the action this way (with all the characters facing the viewers)? How would we explain that Michael Angelo used young men as models for his women and that he just placed round fruits on their chests to make them out to be women?
My point is not to mock these great artists, but it would be ridiculous to pretend that their Biblical representations were not creative works out of their own minds and spirits. To pretend that somehow the holy spirit inspired them to create perfect representations of Bible reality or the true spiritual realm. It would be a mistake to make these artistic representations out to be Holy works of God or mystical mysteries that can be plumbed to solve the riddle of existence.

Volker.Doormann · 04-10-2003, 03:51 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Baidarka
Volker
�The fact that some acting creatures have �maintain� the Hebrew Scriptures with secular social claims did not affects the spiritual meaning of those myths in origin. Maybe you have read my arguing about the crime to claim the twelve spiritual astrological �houses� as twelve physical secular tribes as a genealogy.�

I really don�t understand what you are trying to say here. Are you saying that astrology is of such vital importance that it is a crime for the writer to hide this from a needy world?

Yes. If you have taken notice about that what i have argued, you are knowing, that astrologers were more aware about the spiritual laws as Jewish scholars about ~1000 BCE.

Quote:

Are you saying that astrology is such ridiculous, worthless hockum that it is a crime that people are being encouraged to waste their time with it? Please try to state your mind in an unambiguous manner.

Astrology is an art and a science and gives knowledge to spiritual laws. This spiritual laws were known by some special ancient magicians, but not by the secular and social acting Jewish scholars. Knowing the meaning of the twelve astrological houses is that, what is equal to that, what is to be found as fragments as the twelve houses of Israel in the bible. It is meant, that if one is free of this causality, he is free from any bondage in this social world. Jews often have stated, that 'Israel is free from the zodiac, but if Israel is falling back from the spiritual, Israel will underlying these forces again.'

Quote:

I followed your link to your web site (I liked the pictures) and I still don�t have the slightest idea about what your basic thesis is. Perhaps you think that there are deep astrological secrets that the ancients had which are now lost forever. Who was that strange woman in the old photograph (she looks like Madam Blavatsky)?
Perhaps you are trying to be enigmatic or perhaps your Biblical/Spiritual musings are a form of Conceptual Art. Please give us a hint.

I have no thesis. I think truth is only to be found, not to be lectured. I think a basis is the reality of a physical world and a spiritual world. All that, what is argued by YHWH is the physical part of life. But he, who is aware about himself could not gives proofs of his existence, as a questioner or a seeker of truth. He could not proof his ethic, nor anything beyond the physical. I think simply, that it is honest, to accept the own existence as the spiritual existence as an reality, which can not proved, but can be recognized. The individual must prove truth himself. In the spiritual the own reality is the only reality, we have. No one other, no god, no church, no holy book, no religion, no authority can do this process of recognizing for the own self.

Each one who claims he can give a proof of his own existence is a lier. I know, that very each atom of his body has exist prior to him and will exist ever, if he is gone. There is nothing to prove. Nothing.

All what is claimed as religion in this world is of no worth. But beyond that myths and 'gods' are structures to discover, which do show the order of the spiritual in a same way as one can find the order of nature in the physical world.

Quote:

1) Gen 9.25 Noah curses Ham�s son Canaan. The NEB foot note says that this is an attack on the Canaanites since Canaan is supposed to be their Ancestor.
2) Noah blesses Shem father of the Semites.
3) Gen 15.18 God promises Abraham that he will grant land to his progeny.
This is ultimate important political document, a land grant from God!
4) Deut 4 Starts a long list of laws to be followed by the citizens of the land. Laws are political.
5) In Samuel 1 & 2 we are told that David was not responsible for the deaths of Saul and Jonathan. This seems like it might be an apologetic to remove the taint of regicide from the House of David.
6) Gen 19.37 Lot�s drunken incestuous union with his 2 daughters produces the Mobites and the Ammonites. This is meant as an insult to these peoples rivals of Israel.
7) The first century CE was a time of violence and revolution between Israel and Rome yet some how the NT hardly ever hints at this. Why?
8) Pontius Pilate was an extremely violent Tyrant. Why is he white washed in the NT?

I see that you do not reply on any of my arguments in any way third time.

Thank you for conversation.

Volker.

Clara Listensprechen · 04-10-2003, 04:17 PM

Don't be surprised at that, Volker. I'm similarly disinclined to reply to your postings because I've quickly discovered that you and Yuri have this in common: you both fixate on your own ideas of what's what without actually staying on the topic at hand. Those of us who wish to discuss the topic at hand are going to do so without going as far out in left field as the both of you tend to do.

Clara Listensprechen · 04-10-2003, 04:27 PM

As to the topic Clara's been talking about, some Clarafication appears to be in order, to be sure. Clara was talking about heads of state taking liberties with holy books and thus coming up with different versions thereof as direct result of their meddling. Whatever is said about whatever commission to translate from whatever's claimed to be Original Texts (and even these differ in version), not even Volker can legitimately claim that Constantine's version is the verbatim identical twin of the KJV.

I refer to both new and old testaments, and what I'm focused on is WHAT THESE HEADS OF STATE LEFT OUT. Constantine saw fit to not include much of Peter's writings, and there was a lot more stuff that Peter wrote than Constantine included in his version...and this in favor of including all kinds of letters from the Paul camp, good Roman cop that he was despite starting out as a Pharisee.

King James I of England and V of Scotland's commission for "translation" confined himself to only such books as he saw fit to include in the OT, the remainder be damned as he left those books totally out altogether. The NT "translation" was based on Renaisance-era texts that were several generations removed from the originals, and were of themselves full of errors. All Bibles generated during that time, including the then-more-popular Puritan version of the Bible with which the KJV had to compete and eventually edged out because of the royally tilted playing field, claimed to be "translated from the original tongues". The question that needs to be asked is: "original toungues of which generation of documents?" The KJV and its preceeding Puritan Bible both fail miserably here.

Clara Listensprechen · 04-10-2003, 04:38 PM

PROBLEM WITH TIMEKEEPING SYSTEMS: Volker, this is another problem I have with your postings and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in not being able to translate which C.E./B.C.E system you're using. There are more than one of those systems, no two of which are alike, and those of us who prefer the B.C./A.D.system for no other reason than its reliable consistance and understandability are at a loss to respond to whatever you're citing in your unspecified C.E./B.C.E. system.

Some are lunar based, one is a simple re-notation of the A.D./B.C. system solely for the purpose of avoiding the religious flavor of A.D./B.C. notation...and not all lunar-based systems are equal either; some even count "leap months" during certain years.

For the sake of clarity and for the sake of conveying what you're talking about, you'd make considerable progress going to the A.D./B.C. notation even if you have to swallow your choking on the religious flavor it has. It's at least a system most English speakers understand.

As to astrology, that was developed on the level of astronomy known at the time it was developed, and that was alongside the development of alchemy which is as equally related to chemestry as astrology is to astronomy. Besides the numeral notation we have adopted (Arabic numerals), astrology is among the few legitimately claimed contributions that the Arabian region contributed to Western culture. It must be noted as well that even popes were fooling around with alchemy, as all these Abrahamists fully believed that God was at the basis of all these phenomenon and it was the devil that caused experiments to fail...as they invariably did when these True Believers tried to make gold out of commoner substances.

I'm pleased to report, though, that you and I do agree about how stuff gets legitimized by being claimed that the stuff is God-Given. That was Abraham's claim to Canaan, it's Israel's claim to its lil patch of Palestine, put to more recent governmental words within the Balfour Declaration circa WWI...but...as Islam is also an Abrahamic religion, it has an identical claim, and that's why the Middle East is the major mess that it is. Since God ain't doing much to back up any of these claims with his copy of this deed, it's ludicrous for any government or world organization to recognize one nation's God-Deed to any piece of property in preference to anyone else's claim to a God-Deed to that same piece of property.

Clara Listensprechen · 04-10-2003, 05:25 PM

Some interesting points by Baidarka that I want to comment further on...

Quote:

Originally posted by Baidarka

1) Gen 9.25 Noah curses Ham�s son Canaan. The NEB foot note says that this is an attack on the Canaanites since Canaan is supposed to be their Ancestor.
2) Noah blesses Shem father of the Semites.
3) Gen 15.18 God promises Abraham that he will grant land to his progeny.
This is the ultimate important political document, a land grant from God!
4) Deut 4 Starts a long list of laws to be followed by the citizens of the land. Laws are political.
5) In Samuel 1 & 2 we are told that David was not responsible for the deaths of Saul and Jonathan. This seems like it might be an apologetic to remove the taint of regicide from the House of David.
6) Gen 19.37 Lot�s drunken incestuous union with his 2 daughters produces the Mobites and the Ammonites. This is meant as an insult to these peoples (rivals of Israel).
7) The first century CE was a time of violence and revolution between Israel and Rome yet some how the NT hardly ever hints at this. Why?
8) Pontius Pilate was an extremely violent Tyrant. Why is he white washed in the NT?

We have all been watching this war in Iraq and we have been witnessing the way different parties with different interests have been twisting, or changing the facts to suit their own interests.
Let us imagine that there is a type of fundie who believes in artistic inspiration from the Holy Ghost that makes the paintings of Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci true representations of the Bible.
How would we explain to this fundie that in the Last Supper da Vinci put everyone on one side of the table because it was easier to represent all the action this way (with all the characters facing the viewers? [/B]

Very, very good points here. Ok, first...

1) Nothing new about intramural tribal fighting where even though they're all Abraham's progeny, God seems to favor certain tribes over others despite leading Abraham to believe all his progeny is favored and will be as many as the grains of sand or whatever that quote was. Among nearly all religions, you'll find a bunch of 'em claiming to be more true than others. See also the Taliban which has made its mark claiming that Muslims aren't Islamic enough, as if God died and left them in charge of sitting in judgement. Anyway, claiming to be a truer believer than your relatives is nothing new, especially when you can claim that God told you this with a straight face AND expect to be believed.

2) Shem, father of the Semites, which Zionist Jews proclaim is a term that refers only to the Jews when in fact it also is the ethnic description of non-Jew Arabs regardless of their religion. A lot of people have great difficulty to the point of denial that Judaism is a religion and Semitism is in reference to an ethnicity. Two separate things. YES I am painfully aware of a certain erroneous definition of the term that is found in Western dictionaries. The error remains, nonetheless.

3) I advise that everybody withhold a decision on legitimizing any God-claimed land grant until God shows us his copy of this deed contract.

4) That book is the Ultimate Megalomaniac's Manual, dictating when thou shalt pee and under what conditions. Even the NT considered taxation a divine topic of discussion. It's also noteworthy that at the time Jesus was walking around, there were a good number of Jewish belief subdivisions which included Essenes, Therapeutae, and Hemeraobaptists, the most concerned with what was purely divine, yet don't get any sort of mention whatsoever in the NT. The Jewish sects that DO get mentioned, and at great extent at that, were just the ones that were the major political players under Rome: Pharisees, Sadducees, and Zealots. Go figure.

5) Nothing new here, re: David. A king. Gets the same sort of legitimizing treatment from his church as Henry the VIII got from his...not to mention the latter day situation with Prince Charles. Note ye well that although the Quran prescribes no more than 3 wives for any man, so long as he's able to provide for all of them properly, The Prophet himself had a double-digit number of them (exact number is disputed depending on whether or not you count concubines as wives). A lot of the OT kings had concubines as well, let's not forget.

7) Oh, this is a good 'un and I can tell you why. Already have hinted at it indirectly insofar as all those scribblings of Paul the Roman Constable What Was A Pharisee found so much favor in the first compilation called The Bible. However, the NT hints at it a good number of times, and rather blatantly when Jesus is accounted in his encounter with Simon The Zealot. Also during the trial, the charges of heading a rival kingdom to that of Rome. Many, many others...the Freedman Synagogue mentioned in Acts ("freedmen" were Roman slaves that were later freed by the Romans but still considered lower class citizens. That one in the Palestine area was built by a Venitian, per earliear archaeology). No preacher is gonna clue you or anybody in to the political significance of a lot of the terms and references in the NT, so you have to do your own reading about the details.

8) Why was Pilate whitewashed? He was a Roman. Duh.

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04-09-2003, 09:17 PM	#11
Clara Listensprechen Junior Member Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Enid OK Posts: 91	Lessee....I left off with the last Ec Council under Constantine, which was disputed due to some question over his death certificate. What's listed above and what follows is not meant to be a complete list of all the Councils, as there's been debate about which ones were valid, over the years. For instance, only four of the series are recognized by all Christian churches, and that would be the ones designated as General Councils 1 thru 4: 325 A.D., 381 A.D., 431 A.D., and 451 A.D., the last of which were presided over by Emperor and Empress Marcian, whose name also adorns a Christian cult of the era. Then comes the Saxon-rule era of the Roman Empire, which morphed into the Germanic/Lombard era of the Roman Empire. Simony was in full vigorous swing in both, and in the former, history sees Theodotus seeing the need to call a Council in order to affirm the authority of the preceeding 6 Councils. Not always making the list (unless you're a Catholic) is the Council of 1096 A.D. The following Council in 1122 A.D. is particularly important because it involves a treaty, regarding simony, which engendered the practice called "right of investitures". At this Council, there was a treaty agreed upon between Pope Calixius and Emperor Henry V...though this practice predates Emperor Henry V by a couple generations, and while Rome was under Lombard emperorship and was known, in full, as "The Holy Roman Empire Of The German Nation". This Council was known both as the 9th General Council and as the First Lateran. By the time the Council of 1139 rolled around, The Great Schism was imminent and though this Council was primarily concerned with Pope Innocent II's concern over the "preservation of the temporal of ecclesiastics", the birth of what was to become Greek Orthodoxy was waiting in the wings; this was a religopolitical crisis, not helped by the fact that there were a number of competing popes out and about. The Great Schism participants were addressed in the subsequent Council in 1179. HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT: SEE ALSO the term iconoclast. {to be continued}

04-10-2003, 02:29 PM	#15
Baidarka Senior Member Join Date: May 2002 Location: NYC Posts: 590	Volker �The fact that some acting creatures have �maintain� the Hebrew Scriptures with secular social claims did not affects the spiritual meaning of those myths in origin. Maybe you have read my arguing about the crime to claim the twelve spiritual astrological �houses� as twelve physical secular tribes as a genealogy.� I really don�t understand what you are trying to say here. Are you saying that astrology is of such vital importance that it is a crime for the writer to hide this from a needy world? Are you saying that astrology is such ridiculous, worthless hockum that it is a crime that people are being encouraged to waste their time with it? Please try to state your mind in an unambiguous manner. I followed your link to your web site (I liked the pictures) and I still don�t have the slightest idea about what your basic thesis is. Perhaps you think that there are deep astrological secrets that the ancients had which are now lost forever. Who was that strange woman in the old photograph (she looks like Madam Blavatsky)? Perhaps you are trying to be enigmatic or perhaps your Biblical/Spiritual musings are a form of Conceptual Art. Please give us a hint. 1) Gen 9.25 Noah curses Ham�s son Canaan. The NEB foot note says that this is an attack on the Canaanites since Canaan is supposed to be their Ancestor. 2) Noah blesses Shem father of the Semites. 3) Gen 15.18 God promises Abraham that he will grant land to his progeny. This is the ultimate important political document, a land grant from God! 4) Deut 4 Starts a long list of laws to be followed by the citizens of the land. Laws are political. 5) In Samuel 1 & 2 we are told that David was not responsible for the deaths of Saul and Jonathan. This seems like it might be an apologetic to remove the taint of regicide from the House of David. 6) Gen 19.37 Lot�s drunken incestuous union with his 2 daughters produces the Mobites and the Ammonites. This is meant as an insult to these peoples (rivals of Israel). 7) The first century CE was a time of violence and revolution between Israel and Rome yet some how the NT hardly ever hints at this. Why? 8) Pontius Pilate was an extremely violent Tyrant. Why is he white washed in the NT? We have all been watching this war in Iraq and we have been witnessing the way different parties with different interests have been twisting, or changing the facts to suit their own interests. Let us imagine that there is a type of fundie who believes in artistic inspiration from the Holy Ghost that makes the paintings of Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci true representations of the Bible. How would we explain to this fundie that in the Last Supper da Vinci put everyone on one side of the table because it was easier to represent all the action this way (with all the characters facing the viewers)? How would we explain that Michael Angelo used young men as models for his women and that he just placed round fruits on their chests to make them out to be women? My point is not to mock these great artists, but it would be ridiculous to pretend that their Biblical representations were not creative works out of their own minds and spirits. To pretend that somehow the holy spirit inspired them to create perfect representations of Bible reality or the true spiritual realm. It would be a mistake to make these artistic representations out to be Holy works of God or mystical mysteries that can be plumbed to solve the riddle of existence.

04-10-2003, 04:17 PM	#17
Clara Listensprechen Junior Member Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Enid OK Posts: 91	Don't be surprised at that, Volker. I'm similarly disinclined to reply to your postings because I've quickly discovered that you and Yuri have this in common: you both fixate on your own ideas of what's what without actually staying on the topic at hand. Those of us who wish to discuss the topic at hand are going to do so without going as far out in left field as the both of you tend to do.

04-10-2003, 04:27 PM	#18
Clara Listensprechen Junior Member Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Enid OK Posts: 91	As to the topic Clara's been talking about, some Clarafication appears to be in order, to be sure. Clara was talking about heads of state taking liberties with holy books and thus coming up with different versions thereof as direct result of their meddling. Whatever is said about whatever commission to translate from whatever's claimed to be Original Texts (and even these differ in version), not even Volker can legitimately claim that Constantine's version is the verbatim identical twin of the KJV. I refer to both new and old testaments, and what I'm focused on is *WHAT THESE HEADS OF STATE LEFT OUT*. Constantine saw fit to not include much of Peter's writings, and there was a lot more stuff that Peter wrote than Constantine included in his version...and this in favor of including all kinds of letters from the Paul camp, good Roman cop that he was despite starting out as a Pharisee. King James I of England and V of Scotland's commission for "translation" confined himself to only such books as he saw fit to include in the OT, the remainder be damned as he left those books totally out altogether. The NT "translation" was based on Renaisance-era texts that were several generations removed from the originals, and were of themselves full of errors. All Bibles generated during that time, including the then-more-popular Puritan version of the Bible with which the KJV had to compete and eventually edged out because of the royally tilted playing field, claimed to be "translated from the original tongues". The question that needs to be asked is: "original toungues of which generation of documents?" The KJV and its preceeding Puritan Bible both fail miserably here.

04-10-2003, 04:38 PM	#19
Clara Listensprechen Junior Member Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Enid OK Posts: 91	PROBLEM WITH TIMEKEEPING SYSTEMS: Volker, this is another problem I have with your postings and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in not being able to translate which C.E./B.C.E system you're using. There are more than one of those systems, no two of which are alike, and those of us who prefer the B.C./A.D.system for no other reason than its reliable consistance and understandability are at a loss to respond to whatever you're citing in your unspecified C.E./B.C.E. system. Some are lunar based, one is a simple re-notation of the A.D./B.C. system solely for the purpose of avoiding the religious flavor of A.D./B.C. notation...and not all lunar-based systems are equal either; some even count "leap months" during certain years. For the sake of clarity and for the sake of conveying what you're talking about, you'd make considerable progress going to the A.D./B.C. notation even if you have to swallow your choking on the religious flavor it has. It's at least a system most English speakers understand. As to astrology, that was developed on the level of astronomy known at the time it was developed, and that was alongside the development of alchemy which is as equally related to chemestry as astrology is to astronomy. Besides the numeral notation we have adopted (Arabic numerals), astrology is among the few legitimately claimed contributions that the Arabian region contributed to Western culture. It must be noted as well that even popes were fooling around with alchemy, as all these Abrahamists fully believed that God was at the basis of all these phenomenon and it was the devil that caused experiments to fail...as they invariably did when these True Believers tried to make gold out of commoner substances. I'm pleased to report, though, that you and I do agree about how stuff gets legitimized by being claimed that the stuff is God-Given. That was Abraham's claim to Canaan, it's Israel's claim to its lil patch of Palestine, put to more recent governmental words within the Balfour Declaration circa WWI...but...as Islam is also an Abrahamic religion, it has an identical claim, and that's why the Middle East is the major mess that it is. Since God ain't doing much to back up any of these claims with his copy of this deed, it's ludicrous for any government or world organization to recognize one nation's God-Deed to any piece of property in preference to anyone else's claim to a God-Deed to that same piece of property.

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