spin

You make mistakes like this when you make a language argument based not on the original language, but on the translation. Naughty boy. If the translator had used "beguiled" you wouldn't now be talking about witches. :sadyes:


spin

Chili

Not if you only call that which is a witch a witch in the same way as we call that which is rose a rose. My NAB writes "who has cast a spell over you" that you are beguiled, which is more than just being deceived to believe but are actually convicted by that belief, such as those 'holy ones' in Rev. 15:12 who are sustained by keeping the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus = saved-sinner paradox.

A sure sign of this conviction is to be obedient to the law while having gainfully obtained freedom from the law as Christian along Paul's train of thougth, unless one is beguiled into the false assurance of being a Christian while still in obedience to the law that is supposed to have set them free as Christian.

I know of no other depiction of witches other than presented in our religious past where they have been identified as brewing up salvation recipes, then bundling these passages into an image that gives them the assurance of salvation on which they soar through midheaven (not midst of heaven), until they crash at the foot of the cross and there just oxidize [while singing pateint endurance songs] until they die nonetheless.

Toto

Oh man . . . there's not much you can say after that . . .

gurugeorge

Indeed. But it's so worth having Chili around, because he's precisely a specimen (I don't mean that in a derogatory way) of a religious thinker.

IOW, if you're thinking about early Christians, you're thinking about people who would look into things with deep, idiosyncratic double-meanings, like Chili does. Not necessarily with his meanings, but with their own, equally idiosyncractic (!) and deeply-believed meanings.

Do you doubt that someone like Chili (with his passion and quirky take on things) could easily have thought they had found evidence in Scripture (that nobody else could have made head nor tail of) of the notion that the Messiah had already been and gone?

I love our happy little family here at BC&H

Chili

Ty George, and I too believe that Truth is born out of the confrontation. For me it is all philosophy which is my first love in life these days, so trying to make my late summer wine that Jesus made better by each day.

I also know that I am not a bible student as many of you are but I like the 'scraps' I find here that I am trying to purify and so make worth to hold their own.

Yes I like it here and certainly mean no harm or insult to anyone. I only wish I had more time as I think you guys are great and this particular forum ploughs new ground each day and has the wisdom to defend it.

Sheshbazzar

How do you think the writing of the christian gospels *began*?
I view them as compilations and compositions arising out of the evolvment and growth of cultural religious themes created in reaction to cultural and social situations.
Evolving and taking on form and significances within the hopes and aspirations of those so persuaded.
A 'world-view' of a nonexistent world as was (and still is) seen 'through a glass darkly' by the eyes of wishful thinking. Rose tinted towards believers, while at their blackest and darkest towards 'strangers', 'others', the unconverted 'outsiders' and their 'profane' ideas and lifestyles.

Not only how such *began*, but how it still continues, a defensive and ego boosting 'Victory' and 'Salvation' for the 'converted' insiders, with defeat and damnation for any and all opposition and 'outsiders'.

'Gospel "truth" is not truth in any normal sense of what the word 'truth' signifies.
Its 'truths' only exist in relationship to its peculiar internal premises, whereby a lie is proclaimed by faith to be a essential 'truth', and additional religious claims and explanations become the 'Gospel Truth' by association.

In law enforcement, if a suspect claims to be telling the "Gospel Truth" it is almost always an indication that a self-contradictory and obviously contrived false testimony will be presented, in hope that obfuscation and pure bull-shit will confuse and prevail.

aa5874

And perhaps if the translators did not write the Greek word for "virgin" instead of "woman" in Isaiah" 7.14 we would NOT now be talking about how the gospels began.

mountainman

Is it obvious whether the persuasion was by the book or by the sword?

This sounds remarkably like Lightfoot Shesh.

The little light which glimmered over the earliest
history of Christianity in medieval times
came ultimately from Eusebius alone,
coloured and distorted in its passage
through various media.


-- J.B. Lightfoot, Eusebius of Caesarea, (article. pp. 324-5),
Dictionary of Christian Biography: Literature, Sects and Doctrines,
ed. by William Smith and Henry Wace, Vol II.

WB man

Sheshbazzar

Well the question was as to how they *BEGAN*
The popular chronological progression would seem to be from initial concept to rumor, from rumor to tale, from tale with embelishments to composition (books), and from books to sword.

But I can appriciate the possibility that the actuality may have been; from concept to rumor, from rumor to tale, from tale to sword, from sword to the composition with embelishments, of books.

No matter really, as the 'Gospel "Truth" is a composition of lies and of damn lies.

Clivedurdle

Do we not need to define which gospels?

http://www.secularcafe.org/showthread.php?t=8618