Sheshbazzar

Having difficulty understanding even plain English spin? Seems that you are the one missing the point here.
"As it happens we do have both DEAF-MUTES and also blind members within our congregations"
Ironic, indeed; that these are able get it, but you don't.
Perhaps if you were deaf, mute, and blind, you then would be able to hear, able to see, and also give witness, and praise, as do these. pity.
Context spin, context.
I have a little knowledge about where I have been, and about what I have seen, and and about the conversations I have had, and speeches I have heard, and been privy too, and I do know that you were NOT present when I was conferring with the DEAF and the MUTE brethren, and that therefore of the manner and contents of these conversations, you were not privy too, and have no firsthand experience nor knowledge of.
(that is unless you care to claim being present as the embodyment of The Adversary, skulking amongst the brethren? or perhaps you -were- that fly on the wall?)
If you wish to claim to be party to that experience and knowledge, then by all means, feel free to reveal all here, on what occasion, and at what location that you were present within our Assembly, and provide us with the names of those DEAF-MUTES present who will substantiate your claim.

As for the rest, you know that we do not see eye to eye.

Johnny Skeptic

Regarding "indeed, to be a believer, it is necessary that the subject that is being examined is found to be believable by the believer, and therefore is believed," do you mind translating that into understandable English? Please pretend that you are addressing a class of sixth-graders. If the Bible is true, it ought to be able to be understood by a sixth grader.

Sheshbazzar

Think it through, step by step.

spin

Plainly, you are. You are trying to make some case for the exact name to be used. You even complained about Greek forms being used as though that mattered to you. I indicated that deaf people don't have the opportunity to know what the exact name is, you obfuscate, saying: "I have sat with them and they have clearly and unambiguously communicated to me their faith in that very same Name that I bear witness of." This is supposed to nullify the fact that they cannot know the exact name, while ignoring their inability to know it.

Either you have no basis for your complaint about exact names or you accept that your quibbling on the matter is irrelevant. It is that simple. Either the name as it should be in your eyes is important or it is the thing itself.

That you suffer from some communication disorder.

This is cute irresponsibility on your part, Sheshbazzar. Shifting focus so as to curry sympathy and attempt scorn. You are not being honest, are you?

If you knew even a modicum about linguistics, you'd know that this obfuscation of yours is functionally meaningless. What do you know about the perceptions of deaf people? While numerous linguistic studies have dealt a lot with deaf people, as they provide important indications in various areas of linguistic research and their linguistic perceptions are highly interesting, I doubt if you've ever deigned to open a book on the subject, so I doubt you can know very much about deaf people's perceptions whatsoever. You can have informal communications with deaf people (when you "confer" with them), but how much below the surface can your scratchings possibly get you?

Let me repeat your quandary. Either the exactness of the name is important and you accept that deaf people are excluded from that exactness, or that exactness is really only approximate and deaf people are not excluded, with the implication that your complaints over name substitutions is simply vain.

Remember Shakespeare:

That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet

It is the reality, not the name for it, which has the value. The name itself is merely a handle. Anything beside that is old-time magical "words have power".

I could recommend some good eye drops.


spin

spin

To this:
Sheshbazzar responded:
Actually, I wish you would. The statement Johnny Skeptic examined is license for designer religion. "Oh, I don't like this bit, I won't -- I mean, I don't -- believe it." One can, for example, happily discard the bits about slavery, while maintaining the inherently sexist materials in the religion -- it's in the book isn't it; besides no-one's interested in slavery. And I'm not saying that this reflects you, Sheshbazzar, but that your stated position condones it. You know, true fundamentalism is quite coherent, religiously speaking.


spin

Sheshbazzar

They disagree with your conclusion.
You are the only one here thus far, placing any empathises on some imaginary "exact" pronunciation of names, we do not request or require this.
Yes we believe His Name is important, and inseparable from all of the promises, and that He was not named that popular Greek name.
Again you willfully choose to ignore the context of that statement, which was and is only that you were NOT present at those meetings, and thus are not knowledgeable of how and what was communicated to me.
Thus it is you who is suffering from your communication disorder, perhaps if you would stop selectively chopping paragraphs apart, and removing sentences out of their context, you might comprehend what is actually being stated.

Your reading obviously caused you to initially skip right over my mention of the DEAF-MUTES as indicated by your reply to this;
with this; Why not just admit that you shifted the empathises to "blind" people, while either missing, or willfully ignoring the fact that my statement primarily dealt with my communications with deaf-mutes.
Quite a bit more than you are aware of.
Depends upon how you define "exactness", You are the only one here thus far, placing any empathises on some imaginary "exact" pronunciation of names, we do not request or require this.
again, You are the only one here thus far, placing any empathises on some imaginary "exact" pronunciation of names, we do not request or require this.
There is a difference between accepting variations in the precise pronunciation of a particular name, and completely replacing that particular name with an entirely different substitute name drawn from another source.
Even the deaf are able to comprehend this difference.
Ah, but we are not discussing common flowers here now are we?
but rather "a Name which is above every name which is named, That at the name of -.....- every knee should bow."
So you say, The Scriptures however, have much more to say about His Name, and what He will do with respect to it.
The Scriptures disagree with that assessment.
"For by thy words you shall be justified, and by your words you shall be condemned." Yes, according to the text, "words have power" not by magic, but as in the day of the word "Shibboleth", "Death and life [are] in the power of the tongue:"
Do we therefore say; Then there is no hope for the deaf and the mute?
By no means, for we believe and trust that our Elohim knows the thoughts, intents, and secrets of every heart.
And our Redeemer speaks for His own, and His word suffices for all of these whom through no fault of their own, are unable to hear a sound, nor speak the "Shibboleth" of safety.
But woe to them who can hear, but in rebelling, prefer, and choose to speak a different word.
Though forty and one thousand lay dead, yet they repented not of their rebellious lips, nor obeyed the instruction, until the full number of forty and two thousand perished, thus it was in that day.
But in the day to come it shall be forty and two thousand of those who refuse to frame to pronounce it right shall perish for each one that remains and orders his lips aright, and keeps and speaks the Word of life.

Sheshbazzar

Enough of all this off topic wrangling, I am certain spin will not be persuaded by me, and am even more certain that I will not soon be accepting of, or acquiescing to his conclusions.

Regarding the OP in this thread, in post #5, I pointed out one deficiency in dog-on's rendering, anyone care to contest that observation, or take up further discussion of other aspects of his revision of the NT text?

spin

They have an incentive which doesn't require rationality.

"Or that when the Hebrew maiden Miriam took her newborn son up to the Temple in accord with all of the customs and traditions of the Jewish nation, that she bestowed upon him the name of a Greek?"

You may believe that. You have no evidence for your belief. You merely hope through perhaps misapplied uniformity that it should be the name you want.

"indeed, to be a believer, it is necessary that the subject that is being examined is found to be believable by the believer, and therefore is believed,"

Can you not understand that you have no way of knowing how something is perceived by someone who doesn't have your faculty of hearing?

You may bleed at the ears about your knowledge, but you will not change your inability to get beyond the communication problem, which you continue to demonstrate.

(And I do appreciate your fanciful sniping about taking things out of context -- as an evasion on your part.)

I haven't stopped talking about deaf people -- and mute people who suffer from different but related problems. (Deaf people who are mute are mute because they cannot hear to reproduce by imitation, though deaf people have been taught to speak.) All you seem to want to do with this is obfuscate your earlier obfuscation.

Thrill us with how you can know about the actual physical perceptions of deaf people.

What's wrong with "Jesus" (pronounced /dži:zəs/) according to you??

You are the one giving magical importance to names.

I'll wait for you to tell me what's wrong with "Jesus" (pronounced /dži:zəs/).

(Why make your outlook seem so trivial and trivializing?)

See: magic. Not the text, but your abuse of it. You show a Pavlovian disregard for understanding texts. And Paul had no problem naming Jesus. Why do you?

I don't think so. It is your magic-seeking imbuing of names that disagrees with the assessment. You are stuck in the confusion of names being power and unable to openly declare your belief in the magic it implies, because magic is naughty.

This is more hilarious literalism. One's words reflect one's views. "Anything you say can be taken down and used against you." It is not the words themselves. My, my. I would have hoped for a little more depth from you.

It would be good if you could show you understood what you are citing. They weren't linguists in those days, but they knew how to tell one accent from another. One could tell Ephraimistes from Gileadites.

We say that either your complaints about the forms of names is irrelevant or it is not.

Yep, you've turned shibbolet into a magic word, apparently disregarding what the passage was about.

Different from what? Is this yet another text that you are mangling? Must you pervert clear meaning because of your "magic" mentality? The context makes the significance obvious, but you ignore the context.

"indeed, to be a believer, it is necessary that the subject that is being examined is found to be believable by the believer, and therefore is believed,"

Ship adrift in the sea of confusion -- without a rudder.

I'm pleased that you can string together this stuff, but, at the same time, it shows how you are so unwilling to read the text for its intended meaning. You don't like the word "magic", but you sell the magic use of words. You ignore the content of the words and trip over ancient literary means of communication, grasping at the names and not the substance. For you and you've displayed this notion often enough, the words themselves are imbued with power and you heap up your citations to the point and you get all equivocal about what you are doing because it is recognized as a form of magic, because christians aren't allowed to get involved with magic.


spin

Sheshbazzar

Enough of all this off topic wrangling, I am certain spin will not be persuaded by me, and am even more certain that I will not soon be accepting of, or acquiescing to his conclusions.

Regarding the OP in this thread, in post #5, I pointed out one deficiency in dog-on's rendering, anyone care to contest that observation, or take up further discussion of other aspects of his revision of the NT text?

The composition loosely follows the recieved text of Galatians 1 up to the point where Paul records his first visit to Jerusalem in Galatians 1:17-19
Two points here, First the composition omits any reference to the first visit that is recorded to have taken place "after THREE YEARS" substituting instead the section from Galatians 2:1 which records Paul's second visit to Jerusalem.
Secondly, Paul clearly specifies that on his first visit;
Whereas in his second visit recorded in Galatians 2:1-10
by the events related in Gal. 2:1-10 it is evident that this was his second visit; "I went up AGAIN to Jerusalem."

Anyone here accept that dog-on's revision is really "a more coherent reading"?
Any comments on the contents of the original post?

dog-on

The idea of sin has been interpolated into this letter, it was not part of the theology of the writer. Christ did not deliver us from sin, he served as a ransom to the demiurge.

The writer has made that fairly clear, imo...

I have identified a few other areas I need to take the sponge to, but am not in a position to do it as of yet. Perhaps sometime in the next few days.

BTW, next is 1Cor...