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Eusebuis, as a side note to the discussion this sentence seems to explain a lot about your approach. Here, after being explicitly told by Daniel that, while he is Mormon, he chooses to lay aside his personal belief when engaging in his profession and approach the text in an unbiased manner, you essentially accuse him of being a liar who's professional endeavors are only a coverup for fanatical doctrinal dogmatism. You appear to be insinuating that no one can out aside their personal beliefs and evaluate evidence solely on its merits.
If this is how you truly approach the world, it is no wonder that you refuse to honestly evaluate scholarly works, in Biblical literature as well as all branches of science. You appear to view all knowledge as simply propaganda for a viewpoint, to be shouted down by ones own propaganda in order to sway the masses. Please understand that just because you will not or cannot put aside your own beliefs and prejudices in order to evaluate evidence objectively, this does not imply that others suffer from the same inability.
-NoCapo
VERY well said!
Eusebius, you kick hard against the pricks (to borrow a biblical phrase).
Eusebuis, as a side note to the discussion this sentence seems to explain a lot about your approach. Here, after being explicitly told by Daniel that, while he is Mormon, he chooses to lay aside his personal belief when engaging in his profession and approach the text in an unbiased manner, you essentially accuse him of being a liar who's professional endeavors are only a coverup for fanatical doctrinal dogmatism. You appear to be insinuating that no one can out aside their personal beliefs and evaluate evidence solely on its merits.
If this is how you truly approach the world, it is no wonder that you refuse to honestly evaluate scholarly works, in Biblical literature as well as all branches of science. You appear to view all knowledge as simply propaganda for a viewpoint, to be shouted down by ones own propaganda in order to sway the masses. Please understand that just because you will not or cannot put aside your own beliefs and prejudices in order to evaluate evidence objectively, this does not imply that others suffer from the same inability.
-NoCapo
NoCapo, what I posted about Daniel's idea of his Mormon roots is very small in relation to all that I wrote. You take a magnifying glass and blowing up just one small thing I wrote while neglecting the weightier matters of my post.
Again you lied about me. I believe in evaluating scholarly works in Biblical literature as well as other branches of science, so you are accusing me of doing something I don't do just as you are accusing me of accusing Daniel something he supposedly doesn't do. You are playing the hypocrite.
You accuse me of calling Daniel a liar. You accuse me of something I never did.
So you are saying he went to a Mormon college and he is just going to throw out all that learning? I don't believe it one bit. Just the fact he went to a Mormon run school shows he went with a program begun by someone called Joseph Smith who was probably on psychedelic mushrooms or had incredible hallucinations due to being schizoid. I don't say that to put Smith down. It is just what I think. Too bad J. Smith didn't get help. It does speak volumes of people who follow a mental case like J. Smith.
After I accepted I was wrong about "El," you guys put down Concordant Publishing. I am just sick and tired of your trash talk. You guys are filled with bitterness, hate and vileness. When I was giving my views on Noah's ark you guys did a lot of trash talk and demeaning me and my views.
No Bible is perfect. They all have some problems. Every Bible publisher always try to make them better. I accepted I was wrong on El, and what do I get from you guys? Put downs. Vile Put downs.
Psalm 82 has nothing to do with Qingu. Qingu was a mythological god. Daniel is going to non-biblical sources to try to bolster his view that Psalm 82 is about spirit beings. It isn't.
Jesus was not a spirit being but flesh, bones and blood. Baal was a human. I am talking about SPIRITS. SPIRITS are not mortal.
.
Correction. Baal was an idol, originally the sun god. In times of drought people would face the sun (as if it were really a god) and pray to it. http://www.conservapedia.com/Baal
No, it doesn't. The contrast in the nature of the accused and their condemnation to mortality absolutely precludes their being mortals. Additionally, they are unilaterally called "gods" and there is simply no justification whatsoever for insisting that means anything other than "gods."
NoCapo, what I posted about Daniel's idea of his Mormon roots is very small in relation to all that I wrote. You take a magnifying glass and blowing up just one small thing I wrote while neglecting the weightier matters of my post.
Again you lied about me. I believe in evaluating scholarly works in Biblical literature as well as other branches of science, so you are accusing me of doing something I don't do just as you are accusing me of accusing Daniel something he supposedly doesn't do. You are playing the hypocrite.
You accuse me of calling Daniel a liar. You accuse me of something I never did.
So you are saying he went to a Mormon college and he is just going to throw out all that learning? I don't believe it one bit.
I studied ancient Near Eastern studies at BYU. I've since completed two masters at Oxford and an Evangelical university in Canada, respectively. I've not had to throw out any learning whatsoever at any point. My training at BYU was secular and was focused on the standards of the academy. I set aside my faith when I engage in biblical studies, and the clearest indicator of that is that the vast majority of my scholarship conflicts with LDS ideology.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eusebius
Just the fact he went to a Mormon run school shows he went with a program begun by someone called Joseph Smith who was probably on psychedelic mushrooms or had incredible hallucinations due to being schizoid.
So you're psychoanalyzing someone from almost two centuries ago based only on your uninformed and passive awareness of his life?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eusebius
I don't say that to put Smith down. It is just what I think. Too bad J. Smith didn't get help. It does speak volumes of people who follow a mental case like J. Smith.
And what aspects of Smith's life, specifically, indicate an actual clinical condition? Please be specific.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eusebius
After I accepted I was wrong about "El," you guys put down Concordant Publishing. I am just sick and tired of your trash talk. You guys are filled with bitterness, hate and vileness. When I was giving my views on Noah's ark you guys did a lot of trash talk and demeaning me and my views.
No Bible is perfect. They all have some problems. Every Bible publisher always try to make them better. I accepted I was wrong on El, and what do I get from you guys? Put downs. Vile Put downs.
Psalm 82 has nothing to do with Qingu. Qingu was a mythological god. Daniel is going to non-biblical sources to try to bolster his view that Psalm 82 is about spirit beings. It isn't.
I'm just showing the wider literary context. The Bible explicitly and repeatedly makes allusion and direct reference to Egyptian, Canaanite, and Assyro-Babylonian literature. It even appropriates many of the motifs prominent in that other literature. To suggest that you're not allowed to incorporate non-biblical literature into an academic contextualization of the Bible is to flatly preclude an adequate hermeneutic.
Correction. Baal was an idol, originally the sun god. In times of drought people would face the sun (as if it were really a god) and pray to it. Baal - Conservapedia
Psalm 82 is not about idols.
Not a very careful or informed article. Bel-Merodach was Marduk, not Baal. The first element of the name is just the appellative term "lord." It just goes downhill from there. Sanchuniathon only exists in a text quoted by a writer quoted by Eusebius, and his account is heavily, heavily colored by Greek literary motifs.
No, I'm not, and I'll thank you not to accuse me of dishonesty.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eusebius
Jesus was not a spirit being but flesh, bones and blood. Baal was a human. I am talking about SPIRITS. SPIRITS are not mortal.
The word "spirit" has nothing at all to do with Psalm 82.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eusebius
They were human judges in Israel.
No, they absolutely were not. Israelite judges were never called אלהים. Vv. 6–7 are meaningless if we understand the elohim as humans. The divine council motif is also unmistakable in the text, and that absolutely never involves human judges. The closest you get is prophets getting to watch or listen in on the council. The references to the gods as rulers over the nations that Yhwh will inherit is also a direct reference to Deut 32:8–9, which explicitly has gods set up over the nations. This tradition is found throughout Greco-Roman period literature, although by that time period they were considered angels.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eusebius
You are espousing a fallacy of argumentum ad populum which proves nothing.
You need to pay better attention. I am not appealing to the consensus view in an effort to strengthen the argument. The argument is strong enough on its own, and your refusal to actually engage it is evidence enough of that. I appealed to the consensus in order to show that my conclusions have nothing to do with Mormonism, but with a secular academic approach. Pay better attention.
The goal should be to understand the words of the ancestors, and to achieve this goal one has no need of comprehending the theological mind of the various epochs but their sources: the legends. Theologians and philosophers derived their ideas from oral traditions but the scholars, as I see, occupy themselves solely with what poets, philosophers and theologians produced in writting.
In another thread, I pointed you to the work of Hermann Gunkel - not as an end to a means, but to show you that he ushered in scholarly investigation into oral traditions that are still continuing today. Do you even keep up with folklore or oral tradition studies? Wait - don't answer that: you don't. Or you would not have said that. To show just one recent example of a scholarly work that surveyed the work of Biblical Scholars to examine oral tradition and folklore (going even beyond Gunkel), see Patricia G. Kirkpatrick's The Old Testament and Folklore Studies (JSOTS 62, 1988). If you want a digital copy, I'll gladly send it your way - but you've got to get rid of that idea of yours that "the scholars...occupy themselves solely with what poets, philosophers and theologians produced in writing", instead of recognizing that these writers "derived their ideas from oral traditions". By your own admission, you don't even bother with keeping up with modern scholarship, so you have no real basis to make your claim. I pointed you in a direction, previously, to see that the oral traditions behind the text ARE important to scholars, but I guess you just missed that - or are wilfully forgetting that fact.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dtango
Hesiod, Catalogue of Women or Eoiai, fragment 55 (204)
…δή γαρ τότε μήδετο θέσκελα έργα Ζεύς υψιβρεμέτης, με3ίξαι κατ’ απείρονα γαίαν τυρβάξας, ήδη δε γένος μερόπων ανθρώπων πολλόν αϊστώσαι σπεύδε πρ[‘ο]φασιν μεν ολέσθαι ψυχάς ημιθέων [ν… … .]οισι βροτοίσι τέκνα θεών μι[…]. […]ο. [οφ]θαλμοίσιν ορώντα…
…because at that time Zeus was planning divine deeds; to bring confusion to earth as he was in a hurry to exterminate the mankind, in order to destroy the souls of the demigods, so that the wretched humans will not merge with the children of the gods by seen death with their own eyes.
Genesis
6:2 That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and they took them wives of all which they chose, 6:3 And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty years.
Both Yahweh and Zeus were in a hurry to exterminate those of no pure blood. The sons of the gods who were made of… pure spirit, came into the fleshy girls and produced offspring who was also flesh.
That's a very interesting correlation you offer. But several things:
1- Genesis 6:3's "spirit" is not comparable to your idea of "pure spirit". You're basing your comparison on a later, Christian idea of what the Hebrew word meant. In addition to that - the verse is not clear as to it's meaning: does it mean that there is a 120 year reprive before the Deluge? Does it now limit the natural lifespan of man to 120 years (a silly idea if one is intending to wipe them all out)? What is the correct way to translate the verb given as "strive" in the translation you picked?
2- If we follow the Yahwist (the one who recorded Genesis 6:1-4) further into Genesis, we find that the "sons of God" and the "Messengers of God" were not pure spirit, and actually partook (along with Yahweh) of human food, as a human would. The Yahwist's conception of deity was a very anthropomorphized one - "pure spirit" would have to wait until later writers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dtango
Your disregard towards oral tradition and popular culture is criminal. Nobody “wrote down stories.”
See my first reply. You're starting to make even more absurd claims, Dtango... Somebody wrote down the stories, or we wouldn't even have the stories.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dtango
Oh, dear Whoppers, it looks like we are one step away from worshiping Santa Scholarship.
Whatever THAT means...
Quote:
Originally Posted by dtango
How about the 6th grader having solved a problem by using common sense while the 12th grader is trying to solve it by utilizing his knowledge of Calculus?
The 6th grader may very well be smarter than the 12th grader.
Accumulation of knowledge is not proof of intelligence.
Yeh - I'm not talking about solving a problem that doesn't involved Calculus, I was making an analogy in which a certain technical knowledge (Calculus) is required. Better reread my post - I wasn't alluding to intelligence at all, but to a specific situation.
You're only putting forth your argument because of your well-known aversion to those who have actually trained in certain fields. How about that non-surgeon who saw some videos online, tried his technique out in an operating room and produced a brain-dead patient when he was done? Luckily, that's why they don't let people like that engage in such practices.
I never claimed knowledge was proof of intelligence (and I agree with you), but that's beside the point I was making, and therefore irrelevant.
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