spin

Umm, culture basically went from Greeks to Romans as the Romans conquered the Greeks and gained direct access to the wealth of the culture, especially through well-educated slaves. The thought that "xristos" came via Latin from anything is somewhat incredible.

When do you claim that "chrestus" (as it appears in Latin) was first used for Jesus?

xristos is derived directly from the Greek verb xriw, meaning "to anoint" or "to daub" and seems an extremely logical choice for the translation of the Hebrew verb M$X "to anoint", from which "messiah" is derived -- though the derivations from the Greek verb went in other directions.

Also, one shouldn't take the legend from the letter of Aristaeus regarding the translation of the LXX as being historical. There are historical problems in the story and one doesn't know exactly what (Pseudo-)Aristaeus was referring to when talking about the Hebrew writings, especially when the canon wasn't finalised until the 2nd century CE. The text, if I remember correctly, only talks of the writings of the law, which could easily be the pentateuch or a subset thereof.


spin

spin

I can't find any specific examples. Can you point me to a few?


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Ummm, "no true xian would believe that Jesus was not divine." Do you now get what your correspondant was talking about, nom??

Sigh.


spin

Mageth

Originally posted by Gawen
Ok. So one may pick and choose certain tenants to fit their worldview and yet they may not be delusional? Perhaps.

I don't see why doing so would make someone "delusional".

Assume that the Golden rule was first seen in the OT. That's a pretty good rule really. And let's pick a couple sayings from Budda...and Mao...and Marx...and Freud...and Lincoln...and the Magna Carta...and a few little sayings from some obscure witch doctor from the Phillipines. And throw out all the stuff we each think is bad or not right for us. We have not made a religion, nor even a poilitcal world view; we've adopted a whole bunch of stuff to devise our world view.

OK; what we're getting to here is a personal belief system, one discovered from within rather than one dictated from without. Sounds pretty good to me. A problem would arise, however, if such a person were to then take that personal belief system and try to project it onto others as the "truth".

I can see your point Mageth. Yet, if a Christian claims to be a Christian, he/she must adhere to the whole thing.

Why "must" they? This is allowing the belief of individuals to be dictated from without rather than discovered from within. If such a person wants to self-identify as a "Christian", why should you, I or the Christian "Church" impose on them that they cannot so self-identify?

Those that pick and choose bits and pieces of their entire religion, to me, seem self-deluded.

I still fail to make the connection between someone determining what beliefs are right for them and being self-deluded. If anything, it seems the antithesis of delusion.

If I decided to adopt certain things from many others and made my own cult, and this cult is not warlike or contrary to most other peoples norms of society, but is maintained that it is the TRUE religion, would you still respect me?...

You're going from a personal belief system (which is what I'm encouraging) to a "cult" claiming to be the "true religion" and imposing its beliefs from without on others. You've come full circle. You're back to "fundamentalism", IOW. Always a danger with religion, obviously, but one we should all try to avoid.

And I'd still respect you and your beliefs, but disagree that you have a valid claim to being the "true religion".

But I must say that all religion is not a bad thing. I really don't care what people believe. It's when they try to make me believe it, that's what irritates me...

True; that's why we should encourage people to realize that religion/belief is personal and should never be simply accepted as a set of beliefs imposed on you or anyone else from without. And also to encourage people to recognize the "good stuff" that is common among religions and to concentrate on that rather than all that "bad stuff" (for example, intolerance of other beliefs that springs from thinking your beliefs represent the "true" or "revealed" religion). If I or someone else wants to discuss our particular beliefs or lack thereof, great. But once someone claims to hold the truth and thinks others should either accept their beliefs or be damned, then the shit hits the fan, as the last 2000 years or so have clearly illustrated.

capnkirk

Gawen,

You were doing fine until you got to "maintained that it is the TRUE religion". That is the delusion. Since religions tend to seek (and claim to find) ultimate truths, true believers get seduced into thinking that since you don't believe my ultimate truth, you MUST be wrong. This is part and parcel of the baggage that every religion, by its very nature carries. That is the part that the atheist throws away...the claim that his is the ultimate truth.

Nom

Awww, c'mon, where's the fun in that? Just to be clear up front, I'm not arguing with you, just shooting the breeze.
I not only think it's possible for "someone to call themselves a Christian and not believe in the divinity of Jesus," I think it happened -- except for the calling themselves Christian part. (This was a point on which the good capnkirk educated me on another thread concerning Bart Ehrman's book Lost Christianities.) But somewhere around the 4th century AD the branch of Christianity based in Rome won the doctrinal wars and set down basics such as the scriptural canon and Nicean Creed, which would form the basis of all the modern Christianities we know and love today. And at a bare minimum, these doctrines demand a Christian believe in Jesus's divinity, that he (or rather, He) died for our sins, rose again on the third day, ascended into Heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father and will come again to judge the living and the dead and all that other Apostolic Creed crap that is still branded on my f--king brainstem from 13 years of Catholic school OUT! OUT! OUT! GET OUT! oh, ahem, sorry...where was I?...oh, yes: in sum, that all that stuff really happened, in fact, in reality, on this planet, etc. It's the bedrock of what it means to be Christian, at least for the last 16-17 centuries. To walk away from that, to abandon the mythical Christ as a reality and embrace a human, historic Jesus is to place oneself back in those first few centuries AD. In short, from a post-4th-century Christian perspective, it is to become a heretic.
Since I've lived in NJ for the last 15 years I'm familiar with Spong, and like you respect what he's trying to do. But IMHO he's fooling himself -- or at least being intellectually dishonest -- by calling himself a Christian. IMHO, his book shouldn't have been Why Christianity Must Change or Die, but rather Why Christanity Must Change AND Die. There's no way to reform Christianity along HJ lines; you can't un-deify Jesus without completely dynamiting the intellectual and philosophical infrastructue the religion has built up in the last 1,700 years -- and once you do that you don't have anything recognizably Christian any longer. I think you end up back at something Gnostic, where everything is metaphor and allegory, and myth, designed to communicate truth. I'm good with that, but Christianity rejected that road a long time ago.

Nom

I'm not talking about the survival of religion, I'm talking about doctrine. Didn't we have a similar discussion over the Ebionites? Remember? Can you call a group Christians if they don't share basic Christian beliefs, such as Jesus' role as a sacrifice for sin? If you went and told the Roman Catholic pope you didn't believe in the divinity of Christ, do you think he'd still consider you a Christian?

Nom

Repeat sigh. So your position is that belief in the divinity of Christ is not a prerequisite for Christianity? I'd be fascinated to hear what you do consider a bare-bones definition of "Christian."

NOGO

What if Mark simply transvalued this feature from the Odeyssey as is claimed in the book the Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark.

You may see hostility where none exist and your argument crumbles.

spin

Noooooooo. Read the full context (will ya?), before shooting off.

It's plain that you don't understand the notion of the "no true Scotsman" fallacy, cited to you by Mageth and you have made no effort to understand what he meant. Hence, I repackaged it for you, in an effort for you to understand what was being talked about and you have obliviously shown your acumen for missing what is said.

Your answer to my question: Do you now get what your correspondant was talking about, nom?? is a clear and resounding "no". Did I give an opinion on the subject? Again, "no".


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