stephan huller

Honestly, please stop it with the DM Murdock references. I don't mean to attack your sacred cows (if she's fat I apologize for the unintended double entendre) but the opinion of Runia and real scholarship trumps that of the lady selling samosas.

stephan huller

It is scary to think that this is the effect of the internet. That 'we want it to be true' therefore 'it is.' I have been following all the arguments of the terminally -----ed here. The argument goes something like this:

1) Philo never explicitly identifies the group as 'Jewish' (i.e. the word 'Jew' or 'Jewish' is never used in the narrative)
2) Eusebius floats the idea that the group is Christian
3) the name 'therapeutai' was used to describe 'attendants' or 'worshipers' of other (pagan) gods

THEREFORE

x) we have the proper foundation for jettisoning the Jewish identification of the group in favor of a pagan one.

But this is absurd. Scholarship is hung up on the question of whether we can go from (1) to (2) as Eusebius insists. But nowhere does anyone doubt (1). Nowhere. No one. Even when Eusebius says they are proto-Christians he insists they are Hebrews 'like the apostles.' Read the account again and you'll see it (as if y'all read the account even once from beginning to end).

But this is what astounding. That ment-- -ases can take a debate about whether (1) and (2) are true (it is never an 'either or' here but again a question of saying that they are Jewish and Christian) and turn it as an opportunity to inject some self-serving postulation (X) - i.e. that these therapeutai are pagans. That's absolutely reckless and I'd love to hear something from the account of Philo which would lend us to make the massive leap into this twilight zone of scholarship.

And please again don't cite your idiotic guru. Be a man and make the argument yourself. What about the account makes you think - or should lend any reasonable person to suppose - that these are pagans.

Robert Tulip

You might care to stop with the buffoonish ad homs.

stephan huller

I am not insulting a poster at this forum. You on the other hand are walking all over the truth with a completely self-serving agenda. If you are holding yourself up as virtue then I am quite content to absorb your insult. The wicked would see virtue as wickedness and vice versa.

stephan huller

You still haven't offered up any evidence for why Philo's description should lend a reasonable person to assume that we are dealing with pagans rather than Jews. Holding that idiotic book and that know-nothing guru of yours against authorities like Runia who have made it their life's work to study Philo. It's like fighting an M1 tank with a flower. And its not just Runia, you're going up against generations of Philo scholars without even having read a single work by the author. It's pathetic. Don't you have anything better to do with your time?

stephan huller

And why do you have to bring up this author all the time at this forum. It's like your only purpose for coming here is to proselytize your New Age faith. Why not just shave your head and hang around the airport playing music? You like the guitar, right? You could kill two birds with one stone. In case you haven't noticed this is an atheist forum principally. Many people will applaud your trashing of the evidence. But they aren't going to give their money nor are the likely to sign up for 'courses' or 'self-realization' workshops. So what's the point of coming here?

tanya

Sounds like new age crap to me....

"Note the content of the prayers?" WHAT????

WHAT??? What is this guy writing? Why is huller shouting his name from the rooftops? Guy looks like a complete jerk.

No, Dr. Runia, you note the content of the prayers. I am paying no further attention to your drivel. Philo writes NOTHING, ZERO, nada, about the CONTENT of their prayers. What he does write, is his own interpretation, nonsensical gibberish, he may as well have been writing about the cheese on the lunar surface. What in the world is Runia ruminating about?

Again, once more unto the breach (Henry V) I ask the great master, and his Tonto, DID THE JEWS PRAY TWICE A DAY, at SUNRISE, and SUNSET, as formulated by the ancient masters, including Apastamba, writing 500 years before Philo? Did the ancient jews maintain a sacred shrine in their homes? Which text in the "old testament" defines or delimits the capability or capacity of this shrine? Does this shrine include YHWH's admonition to create no false idols?

What poppycock. What junk....

:constern01:

stephan huller

But it is ancient 'new age' crap so it would be more correct to identify it as 'ancient age' crap.

stephan huller

Honestly tanya. I don't get how you think. It never seems to be accomplished in what could be described as 'in a straight line.' Why does the fact that Jewish practices vary from place to place disprove the underlying Jewishness of revering the sacred writings, the festive days and the like? Even today the variation among Jewish communities is quite staggering. But why am I wasting my efforts? It seems you use these discussions as a 'creative license' to decide 'what things should be true,' 'what is possible' and 'what is counterfeit.' None of this seems to be accomplished by means of arranging the evidence n terms of what is the strongest, what is the more likely versus what is weaker and less likely. Instead you favor one underlying metathesis or idea and arrange the evidence to suit 'making that idea seem plausible.' Like a kid playing with toys in his room alone.

stephan huller

You also seem incapable of separating 'liking' or 'disliking' the evidence - like your rant above against whether what Philo is saying is bullshit - and arranging and interpreting evidence which might be bullshit but still happens to be bullshit that tells us about the bullshit which was current in antiquity. The fact that I and others don't want to alter Philo's statements or put them in an inappropriate context doesn't mean that we 'agree' with Philo. It's just that the only way that we can see the manner in which an idea or the 'idea' of Christianity specifically developed - is by not moving the boundary markers, to not alter the context of the statements of Philo or the statements themselves.

It's like the police changing the evidence at a crime scene. How are they going to figure out who the killer is? Sure if we want Eusebius or some other straw man to be 'guilty' of a crime we don't even know was committed we can feel some justification in helping 'frame' him or someone else. But there are some of us who don't want to tamper with the evidence, some of us who aren't determined to arrange things to suit a 'truth' that is preordained.