Gamera

Thanks for the backhanded compliment, Ethn!

But the manuscripts are post-Jesus by about 1000 years. A whole bloody millennia. That raises profound doubts about the pre-Christian content of the Vedas that no rational person, like you and me, can ignore.

Gamera

Sure.

In Genesis 18 (one of the great scenes of the Hebrew Scripture), God parenthetically tells Abraham that he's had enough of Sodom and going to destroy the whole city, lock stock and barrel (we later learn in Ezekiel that the reason is the greed and selfishness of the Sodomites, not their sexual practices, but that's another story).

Abraham knows that's wrong. He argues with God explicitly aserting that God is making a moral mistake."

Wilt thou indeed destroy the righteous with the wicked? 24 Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; wilt thou then destroy the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it? 25 Far be it from thee to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from thee! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" 26

Does God strike him down? Nope, he listens, and agrees with him. There can be only one conclusion to this: God wanted Abraham to argue with him and point out the moral flaw of killing the good Sodomites with the bad.

Genesis 18 is a set up for Genesis 22, perhaps the most important event in the Hebrew Scriptures, the binding of Isaac. It has a similar structure as Gen 18. God informs Abraham of an immoral plan: the sacrifice of Isaac. Worse yet, he commands Abraham to do it. Unlike the Sodomites, this doesn't involve strangers, but his own son. So the right thing for Abraham to do is to do what he did in Gen 18. But he doesn't. Putting faith above love (or more precisely putting his hope of becoming great above his own son), Abraham doesn't say a word and complies. It's appalling. God give him every opportunity to speak up and protest. He points out that Abraham loves his son. He sends him a three-day trip to Moriah to make the sacrifice, so he can mull it over. He has Isaac make poignant comments about, "Hey, dad, where's the lamb you plan on sacrificing." But Abraham fails, too caught up in the notion of faith and the concept of being the father of nations to do the right thing and say "no."

So God, disappointed, stops him and makes one of the oddest speeches in the bible:

. "By myself I have sworn, says the LORD, because you have done this, and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 I will indeed bless you, and I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore. And your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies, 18 and by your descendants shall all the nations of the earth bless themselves, because you have obeyed my voice." 19

This speech makes no sense on its face since God has already promised to multiply Abraham's descendents in Genesis 17. So the "because" can't be right if it means he was a success. It only makes sense if Abraham was a failure and so God is making a concession, like this:

. ". . . because you have done this [failed the test by not protesting], and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 I will indeed bless you [because you need it, and if you need it, being a righteous man, the best man I could find and a person I'm communicating with directly, so does everybody else],. . .because you have obeyed my voice [rather than doing the right thing and disagreeing with me like you did when I said I was going to destroy Sodom]

What Abraham has set in motion here, by failing the test, is the need for an historical Israel and the law, as a way to ultimately teach the preeminence of God's love, which Abraham, despite being in direct communication with God and being led to the drinking trough, didn't get. Like Moses, Solomon, David, and all the other OT patriarch, Abraham was an utter failure.

Gamera

No, I'm saying check the mss dates. They're very young. Post-Christian. So while there is no doubt that Vedas originate sometime before the CE, we have no idea what exact form they took, and they were susceptible to the inclusion of all kinds of historical influences, especially the influence of successful movements, like Christianity.

Nobody's claiming there's a conspiracy (unlike the critics of the NT texts often do), just your ordinary run-of-the-mill inclusion of influences.

Check the dates of the mss and get back with me. You'll see. As I recollect all the major texts you mention (there are some earlier fragments of bhuddist texts, as I recall) are post 800 CE - 1500 CE, allowing for all kinds of interpolations.

Gamera

Well, it's not a fallacy to disagree about a definition. Apparently we define what it means to be a Christian differently. I base mine on the texts and historical Christianity and stand by my defintion as a rationale way to talk about this body of religious ideas. That's subject to evidence (you can actually confirm what the texts say and what positions historical Christianity took).

Gamera

Abraham did, and God agreed Abraham was right. Gen 18.

Gamera

The reasoning isn't circular. You just disagree with the definition. I stand by it. The distinguishing quality of human existence is the state of having free will. This is a somewhat testable definition. So I'm happy to test it.

For instance, we could make a clone but tamper with its brain so it only did what it was told. Human or nohuman? Seems to me obvious, but be my guest and disagree.

Gamera

I sure hope they do. It means I'm on the right track.

Gamera

This is a perplexing argument. Consciousness (self-awareness) is a basis for suffering to be experienced as suffering. Suffering without the awareness of suffering isn't suffering, in the operative sense of the word, just a biological reaction.

EthnAlln

There are other sources of information about the Vedas. There are commentaries, grammars, stylistic matters, and so on. Scholars really do reliably know the dates of these works. Interpolations are likely, but that is not a reason for rejecting every single verse. If you want to question a particular verse, you need to show that it doesn't fit its context.

I have some familiarity with this process in the reconstruction of the manuscripts of Euclid and Archimedes, which are mostly medieval. The people who copied them were not concerned with passing on a pristine manuscript. They regarded the document as a living treatise and "improved" it in ways that we can now detect. And that's my point. We don't reject something unless it doesn't fit. The Vedas are works of great humanity and inspiration; there is no sense in which the verses cited by TomboyMom "don't fit."

Also, interpolations are more than possible, they are overwhelmingly likely in a great deal of the Gospels. So if you want to insist on doubt, I'll go along, and carry the doubt to the Gospels as well. They are no more immune than anything else to interpolation over the eight centuries that elapsed from the death of Jesus to the earliest manuscripts still extant.

Gamera

I think a case can be made that the teaching aobut loving one's enemy doesn't fit the Vedas. But we'll never know, since the mss transmission is so grievous. Nobody doubts that the Vedas were around for a long time. The problem is, in what form and what was later interpolated. Given the mss dates, it's impossible to say.