gstafleu

The following is posted in order to encourage cross-forum communications .

According to this thread in the science forum sheep are pretty stupid. That can't be a new observation. Nevertheless, the bible (NT mostly, I think) compares Jesus to a lamb and believers to sheep. Now what does that say about the self image of the authors of the bible, or at least about their opinion of their audience?

WishboneDawn

The comparison of Jesus with a lamb can't really be, um, I know there's some word for this but mixed in with the sheep idea. A lamb in reference to Jesus is a reference to a sacrifice I think. When talking about people as sheep I think it's an acknowledgement that people tend to do stupid things and need some direction, a shepard. Without that guidence they tend to get lost.

Read into it that it implies the audience is stupid if you want buts it seems like a pretty general idea that without some form of direction, people get stupid, whether that direction is provided by religion, community, government or whatever.

Toto

Did the Biblical writers think of sheep as especially stupid? Or just as dependent creatures who needed a shepherd?

Is it possible that sheep were smarter back in the ancient world?

WishboneDawn

That's actually worth thinking about. How long have sheep been domesticated? They're pretty much as stupid as shit these days but I think a good portion of the blame for that could be selective breeding.

mountainman

According to Julian (362 CE) the fabrication of the Galilaeans
is a fiction of men composed by wickedness. Earlier (361 CE),
in his letter to the senate had

"abused the memory of Constantine
as an innovator and a disturber of the ancient laws
and of customs received of old."

Constantine was the son of
"the son of a goat herder
from the Danube lands",
and knew how to separate the sheep from the goats,
which he did with an absolute power such as is invested
in an intelligent supreme imperial mafia thug, as he was,
with effect from the Council of Nicaea.

The OT was grabbed by the new technology of expensive book binding
as an alternative antiquity to the Graeco-Egyptian antiquity. Your above
reference ... "(NT mostly, I think)"... highlights the need to firstly
separate out OT and NT issues, first BOUND TOGETHER under Constantine.

IMO the OT is simply the Judaic literature, reasonably attributable to
Hebrew sages. It was separately translated to the Greek and had been
around the ROman empire for centuries. Julian refers to the NT (and its
association/binding with the OT) as "the fabrication of the Galilaeans".

There is no novelty of spiritual knowledge evidenced by the authors
of the NT, because all of it was taken from literature that was extant,
such as Philo of Alexandria, or simply re-packaged from the OT.

More problematic is a pathetic list of doctrinal claims, counter-claims,
calumnies interwoven into a theological romance covering three
centuries and a mass of fictional literary characters, scattered with
select fraudulent interpolations into extant historians. This history,
which was written (and most likely probably sponsored) under Constantine
by Eusebius, representing the only known purported history of this new
and strange religion (as decribed by its historian Eusebius), from a point
in history, leading up to just prior to Nicaea, at which time the
THRICE-BLESSED (cf: Hermes) Constantine, described like an
apostle, or indeed, an ancient Hebrew sage, re-unites the loving flock.

Like a true shepherd, Constantine builds basilicas for the new Roman
religion, and implements a novel poll-tax (ie: for every citizen of the
Roman empire) so that he can count the value of his flock literally.

The initiative of such a program survived as the Byzantine empire
for a thousand years, preserving the "Bible of Constantine" out of
which source, the Codexes A, Aleph, B, C and all others were
(very poorly) copied, each according to their traditions.

He was the shepherd of the shepherds,
the bishop of the bishops.

“History is past politics.”
-- Lord Acton.

"There was a time when he was not"
"He was made from nothing existing"
-- Arius



Pete Brown
Authors of Antiquity
http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/article_029.htm

gstafleu

If sheep are as dumb as the thread in S&S implies, it is hard to see how they could have missed it. But...

Could be. Normally 2K years isn't all that long for evolutinary changes. But if there was an active "program" to breed for more wool/meat/milk and less intelligence... But why would you breed for less intelligence, to prevent the formation of a sheep union? I think that, evidence to the contrary lacking, we have to assume that IQsheep[now]=IQsheep[then].

And somehow :devil3: I wouldn't be all that surprised if some of the religious leaders thought their flock pretty dumb. Televangelists anyone?

WishboneDawn

Sure, but it's fun to speculate. If you want animals it's easy to herd then maybe fear-based sheep that don't have much upstairs in terms of individual thought is a bonus and I don't think it would take long to get that by selective breeding at all. Take a look at different dog breeds. Some working dogs that have specific personality traits have only been around for a few hundred years.

I wonder how long herding dogs have been around or how much the roles of a sheperd may have changed from then to now.

I'm also wondering why in the hell I'm wondering about this.

Anat

Toto, both Moses and David had been shepherds prior to embarking on their public careers. There is a midrash about Moses being lead to the site of the burning bush by a lost lamb. Shepherds supposedly make good leaders. And if one follows through with the metaphor, the public being lead must be a herd of sheep. Also see the imagery of Psalms 23 - a shepherd using his staff to lead his sheep to plentiful pastures - thus both the good and bad in life is from God, who uses them to direct believers towards rightousness.

miss anthrope

Excuse my ignorance, but the idea of separating goats from sheep (metaphorically) caught my eye. What are the explanations for comparing believers to sheep instead of goats, another herd animal that seems to be smarter? Are goats more independent than sheep and thus seen as a symbol of stubborness?

Clivedurdle

On holiday i had what can only possibly called a religious experience!

We were sailing through the canals of Holland and came to this lock..By the side of the lock were huge steel lock gates - waiting to be replace the existing ones. Around them were grazing sheep.

It was the sort of image that definitely is biblical! The sun might have just come out of the clouds, oh and there was a rainbow.....



But what was separating sheep and goats about - were they quite similar?

And to prevent this going elsewhere, see how easy it is to create myths! Jesus and the Lockgates!