evultrole

I do believe I made the original post, which would make me quite aware of the original points in the post. I would wager to suggest that I, in fact, understand the argument put forth better than you, given that I made it. I wasn't aware that I needed to draw the argument out in excruciating detail to let people pick up on it. I was hoping that some people might be smart enough to understand what I was getting at without me having to resort of actually being serious about any of this.

I'm sorry that you are unable to recognize the relevance of the previous posts to my original post. Perhaps that is a failing on my part.

My points are (and were) the following:
1) Taking off a robe to wash someone's feet is unnecessary.
2) He made a big deal about how they wouldn't understand what he was doing, as if somehow he was the first host ever to wash a person's feet himself. I believe it happened in the story of David at some point as well, which would make it not so much an oddity as an extreme sign of respect. If they spent three years with this guy, they shouldn't have been terribly surprised
3) Taken as a whole, the bible can be, 100%, taken out of context. I shouldn't have to write that out for you. The absurdity of my comparison should be self apparent. Anytime someone uses one bible book to put another into context they will be guilty of exactly the same offense that I am with my comparison.

What I was doing with my continued arguing of a non-issue was the same thing any other person does in defending their interpretation. It's the same thing a person will do when they tell you "The bible doesn't say the world is flat!" You'll get one non-argument after another which, while based in reality, have little to do with actual scripture.

Forgive my attempts at using humor to illustrate a point.

As a sub-note, Jesus was not a rabbi. Jesus misquotes scripture in several places, and a rabbi would not do that.

Mageth

Sorry, but I don't really understand the above either. "I was hoping that some people might be smart enough to understand what I was getting at without me having to resort of actually being serious about any of this" ???

Perhaps you're right. But I'm unable to recognize any relevance at all in Jesus taking off his garments and girding himself in a towel. So what?

So what? It's not, well, weird either. I see nothing unusual or extraordinary in him taking off his garments and girding himself with a towel.

They shouldn't have been what? Surprised?

Again, it appears to me that Peter's reluctance was due to him not wanting Jesus to humble himself by washing Peter's feet, as Peter apparently considered Jesus his superior.

??? The sentence doesn't really parse. I assume you mean that any passage in the Bible can be taken out of context. That's pretty much true of any writing.

You don't have to write that out for me.

Yes, the absurdity of your comparison of Ruth to the Jesus story was quite apparent. I indicated that in my first post.

The above is not necessarily true. They may be guilty of the same offense as you (making a silly comparison), but then again they may not.

As a sub-note to your sub-note, I did not say Jesus was a rabbi.

Mageth

Welcome to the board, BTW.

I'd recommend that, in the future, if you have a point to make in a thread, just disclose the point in the OP.

Clivedurdle

Cue Jesus and mo and Landmark Baptist!

It is a wicked Roman parody!

Toto

For Jesus to take of his garments, in context, probably was another aspect of humbling himself - like taking off your fancy clothes. And since he would have washed the disciples feet on the floor, he didn't want to get his own clothes dirty.

evultrole

Thanks for the welcome. Again I must repeat, however, that my point was the absurdity itself. There is no better way to point out that doing something is absurd than to do it.

You really don't understand that? You don't understand "I was attempting to argue something through an absurd example?" Really? I'll try to stay away from compound sentences in the future. It may help. I have a bad habit of cramming too many ideas into one phrase, and it jumbles them to the point of unreadability.

The relevance is: If my interpretation is that Jesus was doing dirty things to his apostles, his being nearly naked and rubbing them down using his loin cloth becomes paramount to the interpretation. How do you not understand that?

Jesus' words imply that it would be a foreign idea to them. That was my point. You seem to be stuck in this "But I don't get why you aren't agreeing with me!" phase.

You are completely missing the fact that what I stated (or hinted at, if you prefer) has just as much scriptural support as any the anit-abortion and anti-homosexuality claims.

What you think the passage states is entirely, unarguably, irrelevant. It really is. You keep making these arguments about what you think the quoted verse actually means, as if it has any bearing at all on the argument. It doesn't. You can't talk me out of something that I don't actually believe in.

You wouldn't hang yourself up on arguing with me that unicorns aren't real if I had used "a pink unicorn in my trunk" as an example, would you?

No, I meant that the bible, as a whole, cannot have context without a deep cultural understanding of a civilization that's been dead for 2000 years. Any context that is given through comparing parts of it to itself would be the same as my quoting Shakespeare to try to explain the meaning of a paragraph out of Catch-22.

And yet I had to?

Yet you missed the reasoning behind it, and you continue to do so. You are attempting to argue that my point is irrational, while I have been arguing all along that my point was irrational. Do you see a problem with this?


I was not guilty of making a silly comparison, I was guilty of using text written by two people 500 years apart, about completely different topics, in an attempt to make the latter text fit into my desired meaning. I didn't look for a context, I wrote one in using another book of the bible. This is what people do anytime they use old testament-new testament comparisons. There is no "they may not be" about it.

Jesus' example was that of Master and Servant, not Rabbi and listener. You are the one who brought up Jesus being a rabbi, not the text that I quoted. Hence my correction of you calling him a rabbi. I'm pretty sure that if I said "they felt that it was improper to have their feet washed by a 'duck'" you would say that I called the person a duck (given that they used no such label).

Mageth

Yes there is. Simply and explicitly make the point in the OP. And then, if you wish, give the Ruth/Jesus thing as an example.

In doing so, the thread would not have become the mess it's become, and you would not have to jump through hoops trying to explain yourself.

evultrode, with all due respect, you've completely botched this thread. Any point you may have been trying to make (and I'm having a hard time seeing one of any significance) is totally lost in the bizarre approach you took to it, and in your strained attempts at defending yourself.

What would help is, if you have a point to make, just say it.

Do you really expect someone to read just your OP and, just from that, get all the "points" you say you intended to make just from that post?

Well then, why the fuck did you not just say that instead of "Taken as a whole, the bible can be, 100%, taken out of context", which makes not much sense, and certainly doesn't say what you say you meant it to say.

Again, I DID NOT CALL JESUS A RABBI. Sheesh. Again, your efforts at defending yourself just serve to highlight the trainwreck of a thread you've made.

2-J

evuletrole? Evil... troll?

arnoldo

Amen

evultrole

I would not have had to jump through hoops if you stopped trying to correct a "mistake" that I didn't actually make. This whole thread has become dedicated to me replying to your inane, stupid, thoughtless statements.
Not to be rude, but I have been very clear multiple times. You appear to have trouble with reading comprehension. You've decided that I made no point of significance because it's easier than admitting that you missed my point to begin with.

And again, I should point out that I haven't been defending anything. There isn't anything to defend. In point of fact, I'm not even defending myself now. I am pointing out that you keep erroneously believing you've somehow poked a hole in my raft. You completely miss the point, once again, that nothing I've said has had any real substance to begin with. The entire purpose of this thread was to make an absurd statement, and one that was intended to be humorous at that.

You've been wasting your time making arguments against something that nobody has said. You were of the opinion that I honestly believed Jesus gave the apostles hand jobs. You refuse to grasp the fact that I never believed that, and now you're butt sore about it. That's not my problem.

Or I could go about making points however I see fit and not going out of my way to pander to your needs. If you are incapable of understanding what I said, it is not my problem. I lost nothing from it. I only humored you by trying to explain it because I have nothing urgent to do at the moment.

My posts do not revolve around you, regardless of how important you are to yourself.

You seem to have lost track of the fact that I started this thread. It doesn't have to run by your rules. If you want a topic that runs exactly the way you want, go start your own. I started this exactly the way I wanted to.

Yes. I expect a person to be capable of seeing something ridiculous, thinking about it introspectively, and coming to a conclusion about the message. I don't believe a normal person would have tried to argue with me about any of this. I really don't. Did you notice how one person simply started laughing? That person obviously understood it. You still have not.

Rather than attempting to understand, you are stuck in "But I want you to understand what I'm saying!" I understood what you were saying to begin with. I also understood it had no relevance at all to anything I said.

You didn't read it the way I intended. That doesn't take away from the fact that it did in fact say what I wanted it to. I say exactly what I mean and only what I mean. I don't have to draw ideas out to extremes just because you aren't capable of thinking about the statement. I will not change my writing style just because you lack the ability to follow a compound idea through to the end without getting confused and angry about it.

I am getting the feeling that you just see what you want in any statement and go from there, rather than spending the 1/16th of a second it would take to put the statement into perspective. That's the only way I can think of that you would miss the "him being all but naked is important to the point" bit.

See, the problem is that you view the bible as a book, and not a collection of disjointed works with no real connection of any sort. No connection outside of the fact that an arbitrary group of men chose arbitrary books to make a collection that seemed to fit the message they they had at the time, that is; a message that has been lost in the past 1600 years.

In that context, saying "taken as a whole, all of it can be taken out of context" makes sense, given that "all of it" is a collection of separate stories and books. I'll go ahead and humor you by drawing this out a little more.

Here's how it works: A book has a meaning. In this case, the book's meaning is given in relation to the time and culture in which it was written.

In the case of the books of the bible, the book of Genesis and the book of Malachi have completely different cultural bases. You cannot use the same historical perspective in both books, because they were not written by the same people.

Taken as a whole (the collection as a single book), the bible (the total work) can be, 100% (always), taken out of context (There is no unified perspective to put all the books into, and any attempt at doing so will end with misunderstanding).

See how easy that is when you pay attention to the key words?

Also, I think it's funny to argue with idiots who can't read. I'll go ahead and let that slip out since you've resorted to profanity in your frustrated state. That wasn't the purpose of my posting, but it is the reason I keep leaving vague statements in all my replies. You can decide to reply again and keep me busy making fun of you for the next hour, or you can just shut the hell up and accept that you missed the point of what I said.

Did you miss the part where I quoted you referring to him as a "rabbi"? Cause I thought that was pretty clear. Again I should emphasize this: you were the only one to call him a rabbi. In this instance, the apostles did not. You did. I fail to see how you don't understand that. The fact that you were putting words into Peter's mouth does not change the fact that the words are, in fact, yours.

What is interesting in all this is that, to start with, I never even stated that you said he was a rabbi. I stated that he was not one. You started the defensive statements at that point, so I've been toying with you since then. Interesting that you keep talking about how I'm trying to defend myself with little things like that sneaking out of you... as if I somehow came into your house and started assaulting you with horrible ideas that you can't handle, and you need to drive me off.

Seriously though, if you can't take a humorous comment lightly without trying to get into some deep discussion about why the joke is flawed (which is sort of the whole reason that a joke is funny to begin with) then stay away from such topics.