Steven Avery

Hi Folks,

More specifically, I wondered if there is any Jewish tradition that looks upon the yetzar hara as transmitted through the male.

Again, like your earlier comment, this is simply in another league than what I am sharing on the thread. The dozen skeptic and liberal and mythicist views are fine to study, however my sharing is about what I know to be the three major views of the virgin birth among Bible believers. There may well be another one or two, and there may be other nuances .. and it seems that to many the issue is simply unaddressed once they reject the rcc marian doctrine. These are the three that I have seen, and to me one rings very true.

Beyond this I am aware of a couple of interesting articles that discuss DNA and chromosomes, however I think that would be a diversion from the fundamental question of sinlessness and the virgin birth and how Jesus was without sin.

Yet I grant that this may be considered a diversions from "How was Mary chosen" .. a question that can take a simple answer such as "she was a women of grace and love of God perfectly readied in heart and time and place for the prophesied Messiah".

Shalom,
Steven Avery

lpetrich

It was "discovered" some decades before that, but that "discovery" turned out to be the ovarian follicle, a little ball that contains the egg cell.

A common early-modern theory of embryonic development was preformationism, that a gamete contains a ready-to-grow organisms with all the parts in place. But preformationists were split into ovists and spermists about which gamete carries the preformed organism. That now looks almost hopelessly silly, but the did not know anything about genes back then.

Susan2, what do you think that Plato really believed and why?

I think that if there is a Socrates afterlife, then Plato would be very startled at the discoveries of biologists in recent centuries. And perhaps the ovists and spermists will agree that they had both been barking up the wrong tree.

Word etymology can sometimes give clues as to what coiners of words thought. The words "semen" and "sperm" are derived from Latin and Greek words for "seed"; the earlier users of those words for male reproductive fluid had thought of that fluid as a sort of seed juice.

You can find that in the Bible, where Onan refuses to try to make his late brother's wife pregnant (Genesis 38:8-10). He is described as spilling his "seed" (zera`). So the writers of the Old Testament had also thought of male reproductive fluid as seed juice.

They can discover the structures, yes, but could they determine their functions? Susan2, what's self-evident to us will not be self-evident to others.

Premodern people sometimes had off-the-wall notions, like Aristotle believing that the function of the brain is to cool the blood.

Susan2

I am sure that when a religion is formed without an ounce of respect for women, or for those it considers less, many such abuses as you hint at above and worse are not only possible, but logically probable. Our history certainly bears that out.

Obviously, you are unhesitantly aware of that.

I was going to say, logically ****** possible, but decided to let my brain cool my blood.

As to premodern, you've got to be kidding correct? How about modern? Mares urine as a form of hormone therapy for women in spite of mounting evidence of it's detrimental effects, comes to mind. Electrical shock treatments of men and women. Freud.


I am sure there are many thousands of example I could come up with if I took the time to do the research. In fact, I was in Barnes & Noble a few weeks ago, and sure enough there is an author who wrote a book on just such barbarism against men and women in modern medicine.

As to the Egyptians, or the ancients, it is unreasonable, imo, to think that they were unaware of the fact that women contributed something physical to the formation/creation of children.

Perhaps you have another agenda, of which I am not interested.

John Kesler

Mary seems unaware that she was the "mother of God" in Mark's gospel:

lpetrich

Are you saying that they knew that the female-as-incubator theory was just plain wrong but that they continued to believe it anyway because they wanted to be sexist?

Yes, there's plenty of bullshit from recent centuries, but so what about that?

But we've gotten great success in a lot of things, success which I think is difficult to ignore.

Susan2

Yes, I understand that secularism contains the same virus as theism. I would presume that is because atheism arrives out of theism, or maybe it was thism that arrived out of atheism. I am not sure which came first.

Atheists call that 'make the baby Jesus cry', a particularly agressive and telling motto I would think. I guess they get points for honesty?

hinduwoman

Look the Bible is there to be revered, not actually to be read and analyzed. Only members of Evil Atheist Conspiracy and evilutionists read the book to find out contradictions. :strawman:

Susan2

Yes, but for what purpose?

Susan2

He promptly casts his mother out, unforgiven, eternally. Murderers, theives, and people of the most gruesome crimes will be forgiven, but his own mother and brothers, and sisters will not.


Jesus then sends his mother to hell for eternity perhaps a pun that she is the Mother of Evil/Satan? Is Mary then Queen of Hell for daring to have a voice, an opinion?

Somehow I suspect that this goes to the Mariology of Iranaeus. Eve's disobedience brought death and sin into the world (she gained knowledge, a voice, thoughts opinions), whereas Mary's obedience (silence, submission) is supposed to bring salvation.

Is then the Perpetual Virginity of Mary that she never spoke (offspring) again?

Did Jesus kill his mother, his own flesh and blood mother? She is not heard from again in this gospel, nor is she mentioned. And was her death symbolic of the death of women, and men knowledge, education, growth and development for the next 2,000 years?

When religion destroys the image of a woman in the mind of a man, it destroys both the woman and the man, and their offspring. Four birds, one stone.

Notice that Joseph isn't there. I guess he was the first destroyed.

Just some thoughts.

bacht

Jesus has no family in the epistles, unless you count James or Jude as "brothers" of the Lord. There's no Mary or Joseph, only hints of descent from David, which was part of the messianic package of expectations.

The cult of Mary is an analog of ancient gentile cults honoring Ishtar, Isis, Demeter et al (the Great Mother or Queen of Heaven). The Jews denounced all these. The only thing close they had was Wisdom (cf Athena/Minerva), the female partner of God.