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Title: Rebuilding a Conservative Movement I
Source:
Sultan Knish blog
URL Source: http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/201 ... s+The+Stories+Behind+the+News%
Published: Sep 25, 2015
Author: Daniel Greenfield
Post Date: 2015-09-27 19:03:36 by Rufus T Firefly
Keywords: None
Views: 50199
Comments: 199
The trouble with the donor class, by and large, is that it is resistant to change because it doesn't want to change. The Democratic and Republican donor classes donate for their business interests, but the Democratic donor class has a radical edge. Groups like the Democracy Alliance want a fundamental transformation of the country. And they understand how they can make money off that. There are too many Republican single issue donors who are fairly liberal on everything outside that issue. And there are too many big business interests and financial folks who live in major cities and only differ from liberals in their economic policy. The trouble with fiscally conservative and socially liberal is that the left is not a buffet. You don't get to pick a combo identity. Fiscally liberal follows socially liberal as day follows night. All those single people, their babies need assorted government benefits. No amount of lectures on "liberty" will change that. Austrian economics is never going to displace food stamps for the socially insecure. A lot of the Republican donor class would like to have its cake and eat it too. It wants the fun of a liberal society without having to pay the bill. It wants cheap Third World labor without wanting to cover their health care, the school taxes and all the other social welfare goodies. But it doesn't work that way. There's no free ride. Yes, they can move to a township where the property taxes are killer, and dump their pool guy and tree trimmer and maid in some city to live in housing projects at the expense of that city's shrinking middle class and working class. And it can work for a while, until all those cheap laborers get community organized and the organizers take over the city. And then the state. And then there are housing projects in the township, everyone is plugged into the same statewide school tax scheme and the left runs everything and taxes everything. The wealthier members of the donor class can outrun this process longer. Or just live with it while funding groups that promote "Liberty", the way the Koch Brothers do, but the bill always comes due. You can't outrun the political implications of poverty in a democracy. And you can't stop those political trends without addressing the social failures that cause them. A socially liberal society will become politically and economically liberal. Importing Third World labor also imports Third World politics, which veer between Marxism and Fascism all the way to the Islamic Jihad. Everything is connected. You can't choose one without the other. We're not going to have some libertarian utopia in which everyone gets high and lives in communes, but doesn't bother with regulations and taxes. The closest thing you can find to that is Africa. Nor are we going to be able to import tens of millions of people from countries where working class politics is Marxist without mainstreaming Marxism as a political solution in major cities across America. People are not divisible that way. Human society is not a machine you can break down. The left has fundamentally changed America. Much of the donor class hesitates to recognize this or prefers to believe that it can isolate the bad changes from the good changes. It doesn't work that way. Getting the kind of fiscal conservatism that a lot of the donor class wants requires making fundamental changes to the country. You can't just tinker with economic regulations in a country where schoolchildren are taught to demand taxes on plastic bags to save the planet or where a sizable portion of the population is dependent on the government. Those tactics can rack up ALEC victories while losing the war. Fiscal conservatism requires a self-reliant population that believes in the value of honesty and hard work. Those are not compatible with social liberalism or casual Marxism. Individually, yes. It's possible to make money while being a leftist. But spread across a large population with different classes and races, those individual quirks will not be replicated. And you can't create that population with slogans. You have to be able to shape national values, not just economic policy. That's the hard truth. There are no single issue solutions. At best there are single issue stopgaps. But the left is not a single issue organization. It has narrowed down most of its disagreements and combined its deck of agendas. Its coalition supports a large range of programs from across the deck. It's still possible to be a pro-abortion Republican, but the political representation of pro-life Democrats is disappearing. You can be a Republican who supports the Muslim Brotherhood, but a Democrat who says anything too critical about Islam has a limited future in his party at any national level. The same is true across the spectrum. Kim Davis is a Democrat. How much of a future do Democrats opposed to gay marriage have? Meanwhile it's possible to be a pro-gay marriage Republican. The Republican "big tent" is more a symptom of ideological disarray, as we've seen in this primary season, by a party that doesn't really know what it believes, than of tolerance. But the left has taken over the Democratic Party and made its agendas into the only acceptable ones. There are still some national Democrats hedging weakly on gun control and environmentalism, but they're going to be purged. Their party will abandon them and Republicans will squeeze them out. A lot of the donor class is really seeking an accommodation with the left. The election was warped when the Koch brothers decided to find common ground with the ACLU on freeing drug dealers. They dragged some good candidates in with them and down with them destroying their credibility on key issues. You can't have an accommodation with the left. The left isn't seeking a compromise. It wants it all. The left has to be fought all the way or surrendered to all the way. There's no middle ground here regardless of what philosophical objections are introduced, because that is what the left is doing. It's easily observable just in Obama's two terms. The left has defined the terms of battle. And its terms are total control over everything. You can't be pro-life and pro-Obama. You can't be pro-business and pro-Obama. You can't be pro-Israel and pro-Obama. You can't be fiscally conservative and pro-Obama. You can't be socially conservative and pro-Obama. You can't be anything less than full leftist and pro-Obama. The left has to be fought totally or not at all. Single issues can be important and it's good for people to pick one or two things to focus on, but that has to come with the understanding that there can be no accommodation with it in any other area. An organization fighting gun control is doing important work, but its backers should never fall under the illusion that the 2nd amendment can be maintained if the left wins on all the other fronts. As Benjamin Franklin said, "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately". The quote is true today in all its implications as it was then. We must have a conservative movement that is united in a common front or we will be dragged down one by one. There will be no conservative issue islands left to stand on if the red tide comes in. The final point is that it is not enough to resist. That's just delaying the inevitable. Even the strongest resistance can be worn away with time. If the left can't win directly, it focuses on the next generation. If cultural barriers are in the way, it goes for population resettlement, as it's doing in parts of this country and Europe. There is no such thing as an impregnable issue island. Winning means pushing forward. Winning means advocating for change, not just fighting to keep what we have. Winning means thinking about the sort of free society that we want. Winning means having a vision to build, not just resist. Winning means advancing forward. To do that, we have to accept that fundamental change is necessary. Right now we're fighting a losing battle. We're trying to keep the tide out, when we must become the tide. Poster Comment: Money quote: You can't be pro-life and pro-Obama. You can't be pro-business and pro-Obama. You can't be pro-Israel and pro-Obama. You can't be fiscally conservative and pro-Obama. You can't be socially conservative and pro-Obama. You can't be anything less than full leftist and pro-Obama. The left has to be fought totally or not at all.
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#109. To: A Pole, Rufus T Firefly, Willie Green, Vicomte13, TooConservative, sneakypete, tpaine (#5)
I am a classicist. The aristocracy gave power to the Athenian citizenship not so much because they feared a revolution (and they did) but because the old way of fighting wars, where the aristocrats did the fighting in the form of duels while the peasants fought around them willy nilly had ended and the age of armed formations of disciplined soldiers took over. The aristocrats realized an army of peasants heavily armed would not fight for free or take orders from aristocrats if they did not want to. We kind of saw that after WW2. The Americans passed the GI Bill - which was purely a wealth transfer from the rich to the poor (on a basis of merit) because they did not want an angry population of millions of combat hardened veterans returning to the slums of American cities (where most of the Irish, Italians and non WASP whites lived) and to poverty. And it worked. This wealth transfer benefited the republic immensely. All those non WASP whites who benefited from the GI Bill would before the war never have even finished high school in many cases pre WW2 and were now being payed to go to trade schools or higher education. These days, our leaders don't really need the rest of the population? As automation and outsourcing take over and fewer Americans serve there will be a feeling that they can use a private army to keep the discontent bottled in a nation with a 2nd amend?
Which are arbitrary and not accepted by the entire Church. There is no reason to privilege that Latin Church's decision, or the Greek Church's decision, over the Ethiopian Church's. The Ethiopian Church is older than the Latin Church, and as old as the Greek Church. They always used the holiest apostolic writings, and some of the writings of the Church fathers. Who gave the Greeks or the Italians the power to decide that ONLY THESE BOOKS are inspired by God? Nobody did. And given that the Ethiopian Church's actual BEHAVIOR was exemplary, when compared to the Latins and the Greeks, and also given the fact that God stripped the Greeks and the Latins of many faithful, but Ethiopia stood as a rock in a flood of Islam all around, the fact of victory demonstrates a divine favor that has an authority that exceeds that of Churches that were defeated by hostile religions and lost 90% of their adherents, forever. Should, therefore, the Latin Church or Greek or Russian Church of today "change their canon"? Why bother. The Ethiopians preserved certain parts of Scripture, and we can get it from them, and if the Greeks and Latins and Russians don't want to admit that those writings were inspired by God, and therefore have authority, well, they're no different from the Baptists then, are they? One reads more of God's inspiration in a Catholic Bible than a Protestant, because there are more inspired books in it, and more still in a Greek Orthodox Bible than a Catholic one. There's an additional book in the Russian Bible that the Greeks don't have. And finally the Ethiopians, who have the Old Testament books that are referred to in the Old Testament, but that the other Christians don't have (the Book of Jubilees, the Book of Jasher), and of course Enoch, the Didache, the Letters of Clement, etc. There is a reason to privilege the Ethiopian canon: it's the most complete. And there is a reason to dismiss the superiority of wisdom in the choices made by the Greek Orthodox and the Latin Catholics - the Greeks lost to Islam; the Russians lost to the Mongols. And the Latins? Well, look at how corrupt and barbaric they became. The Ethiopians had the favor of God: they did not succumb to Islam. They didn't have to have a Reformation. And they were founded IN ISRAEL by an Apostle speaking to a high official - meaning that whereas Greek and Roman officials rejected Christianity and tormented it, but the Ethiopians understood all the way to the top, from the start. And they preserved everything to now. Which means that the moral claim to superior wisdom clearly rests with Ethiopia, and their choice of the fullest canon is the most logically sustainable. If one wants to stick to the Catholic argument: "Only apostolic writing in the Scripture", that is fine as a limiter, unless one also adds to that an arbitrary "Only Scripture" tradition on top of that which treats something like the Didache as less authoritative than, say, a letter of Paul. There is no basis other than stubborn traditional prejudice for that. Enoch is Scripture. The Didache is Scripture. Clementine Letters are Scripture. So are Jubilees and Jasher. Why would they not be? Why are the opinions of corrupt, fighting, ultimately weakened and failed Greeks or ultimately violent and barbaric Latins better witnesses than a church older than either that neither fell nor failed nor went barbaric? Cultural prejudice? An error, then. It's Scripture.
YHWH gave the Law to Moses. The Torah we have includes the Law, and a bunch of other historical and wisdom writing added on for context. It's all called "Torah", but God didn't write all of that on two stone tablets.
You're wrong and dopey to the nth degree. A "parasite" is an un-invited thief of another's life; A pre-born child is not only invited, it is created and nourished in love and develops its own working system at the cellular level. And YES, pre-born babies DO indeed breathe while in the womb, Sherlock. That while oxygen circulates throughout its body -- including its brain. This IS a living, breathing human being. IDIOT.
HorseHillary. The economy was booming due to all of Europe's manufacturing being bombed to dust,and a booming American economy needed new skilled blue collar as well as white collar workers. Who better to subsidize for this new work force than the veterans who had proven they had ambition enough to stick with it and succeed? Plus it allowed the politicians to score major political points. Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)
You're wrong and dopey to the nth degree. If that is true and the fetus can live without the mother,you should have no objection to abortion at any stage. After all,the fetus doesn't need the mother to live,right? And YES, pre-born babies DO indeed breathe while in the womb, Sherlock. That while oxygen circulates throughout its body -- including its brain. This IS a living, breathing human being. IDIOT. You don't know the definition of a parasite,you believe in magic,miracles,and Holy Spooks,and you call ME a idiot? Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)
Human language has limits. "Breath" is a word like "Father" or like "Son". Father stands for the Source and Essence/Godhead, Son is Creator, Ruler of all, Savior and Judge, True God from True God. Holy Spirit is God Himself too. True God from True God as well, eternally (before all ages/eons/worlds/time etc ...) proceeding/outpouring from The Father - consubstantial and inseparable hypostasis/subsistence, Heavenly King, Comforter, Spirit of Truth, everywhere-present and filling all things, Treasury of Goods, Giver and Sustainer of Life, the Purifier of souls and bodies.
Newborn babies also need mother to live. Are they parasites? To eat they suck mother breasts like mosquitoes suck your blood. You can remove 6 months old fetus, put in the incubator and he will live. You can do it even earlier, but with difficulties.
You mean that they had luck and stamina to survive? Not all of them were volunteers, they were drafted. BTW, Big part of them was sent to Europe AFTER the main fighting ended, to crowd out Soviets. BTW, without GI Bill, would America be better off?
No,they don't. There are plenty of babies who lived to become adults whose mothers died giving birth,or shortly after birth. That doesn't mean it isn't easier or better for the infant if the mother is around to nurse and care for the baby,but the baby really becomes a separate human being at birth. Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)
You mean that they had luck and stamina to survive? Wahhhhh! Wahhhhhh! No,I meant the dead ones. After all,who has more stamina and luck than the dead ones? (sarcasm) Not all of them were volunteers, they were drafted. Yes,but not as many as were drafted in your beloved workers paradise,comrade. Not that you would really notice because you were all serfs of your Soviet masters to start with. BTW, Big part of them was sent to Europe AFTER the main fighting ended, to crowd out Soviets. BTW,you are full of Obomber. The majority of the ones that defeated the Nazi's and stopped the Red Army at Berlin were still in Germany and Europe for months after the war ended,and many were still there a year or more later while the military was being downsized,with those who had been at war the longest being the first to be allowed to go home and get discharged. Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)
At Berlin?!
Enoch is Scripture. The Didache is Scripture. Clementine Letters are Scripture. So are Jubilees and Jasher. You are on quite a roll with this. : ) It isn't a bad argument to make. Why, indeed, Jude and not the Didache? Or Enoch? One good answer for the inclusion of so many Pauline epistles is that the ancient churches faced the challenge of the Marcionites, who had introduced their own canon composed of the Gospels and the epistles of Paul. To them, Paul was the primary apostle of Jesus. So when the ancient fathers of the church recognized that they had better establish a canon themselves before the energetic Marcion did it for them and they found themselves presented with a fait accompli, they included the Pauline epistles rather prominently in the canon which undercut some of the appeal of Marcionism. Given how annoying you find Paul's and Augustine's more modern followers, I can only imagine how angry you are with Marcion's gang who are probably responsible for the prominence of so many Pauline epistles in the canon. It does open up an examination of the canon, how we got the canon we have, the standards used to establish the canon, the books which circulated widely in ancient times but did not make the canonical list. And it is a reminder that the canon we have also represents certain political compromises (the Revelation and Hebrews) as well as the need to exclude heresy like semi-gnostic Marcionites. We have inherited the canon but we should recognize its internal biases and the larger theological dimensions - and conflicts - among the doctrinal leaders of the far-flung churches of the early centuries.
References to Enoch are found in various books. No direct quotes outside of Jude. There are other portions of the New Testament that many argue are largely derived from the book of Enoch. The book of Enoch was widely read among Jews from the 3rd century BCE and was known and preserved by the Essenes in the Dead Sea Scrolls. In the same way that we can observe that Jesus and the disciples knew and used Greek and Aramaic and Hebrew and Roman terms and had familiarity with common texts, at least some of the group of Jesus and his disciples were quite familiar with the book of Enoch. After all, Jude didn't toss off that quick quote of Enoch just hoping that his reader(s) might recognize it. Given the rarity and expense and effort of sending epistles in ancient times, Jude knew his reader would recognize the thrust of his brief Enoch quote in verses 14-15. 15 To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him. 38 Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.
I understand your approach on this and have to say you are consistent. However, I do not dismiss the scholarship of the time in which the canon was debated. I read a lot of Enoch last night. I came back with the same impression of it as I did when looking at texts such as the Qur'an and BOM. Most portions are choppy, thoughts not completed (maybe due to missing parts?), some even incoherent. When compared to what we do have in the OT and NT canon there is clarity, fullness, coherence, uniformity, well ordered. Much of which is absent or lacking in Enoch, and quite a few other religious texts of antiquity. However, I believe the largest factor the church fathers considered was authorship. No one knows if Enoch actually wrote Enoch and no one knows the original scribe. "For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly."---Romans 5:6
Who was the author of the Didache? Was the author of the Didache directly commissioned by Jesus Christ? I think both answers are 'we don't know' or 'no.' Paul was an apostle of Jesus Christ. He received a direct commission from Him and direct revelation. "For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly."---Romans 5:6
I always recall that Enoch appeared around the same time (~300BCE) as the Septuagint. This was an age of a great expansion of Jewish literature, not so dissimilar to the explosion of Christian literature in various centuries down to modern times. We can't precisely quantify the extent of the influence of various earlier texts like Septuagint and Enoch I on the religious language and discussion by Jesus and His disciples but we can have little doubt that they knew these writings and considered them to have a place in religious debate and theology, at least as familiar Jewish touchstones for other doctrinal matters that the early church encountered.
Yes,at Berlin. Patton had to have his fuel cut off to keep him from taking Berlin before your commie heroes could get there,and even after we handed it to them on a platter it took them a while to take it,and our troops in place outside of Berlin is all that stopped them from going further. What we SHOULD have done was taken out the Red Army and Stalin while we had the men and equipment in place to do it,but the communist sympathizers in the Dim Party kept that from happening. Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)
I noticed there is a rumored Aramaic Enoch scroll from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Unpublished, privately owned. At least one manuscript expert says he was shown a complete copy of Enoch in Aramaic on microfilm. He was never able to muster a group of buyers to purchase it. The Parables is a part of the Ethiopian translation of the Book of Enoch. It is disputed how old it is and if it was originally a part of Enoch (although today most scholars believe it to be pre-Christian[5]). If it was proven to have been a part of the original Aramaic book, it would mean that all of its prophecies concerning the coming Son of Man, which some argue refers to Jesus, would have been written before Jesus was born.
You're wrong and dopey to the nth degree. If that is true and the fetus can live without the mother,you should have no objection to abortion at any stage. After all,the fetus doesn't need the mother to live,right? I don't know what tangent you've now taken to worm your way out of this box of rocks, but it ain't working. You asserted that a baby in the womb is a parasite; I've explained why you're monumentally wrong by definition, by science, and in human terms. ou don't know the definition of a parasite,you believe in magic,miracles,and Holy Spooks,and you call ME a idiot? No, not just an "idiot"; a MONUMENTAL idiot. You haven't the foggiest as to was a "parasite" is. By *your* definition it's anyone who can't feed, clothe, or shelter itself independently. Care to tell the REST of us how many tens or even hundreds of millions that might be, Colonel Klink?
What you read, of course, was an English translation of a Geez/Amharic text. There are not many bilingual scholars of these things. When I read Proverbs, I do not find it to be choppy, but I do find many of the attitudes in several of the parables to be inconsistent with the messages of God that preceded it and of Jesus that came afterwards. Some of it sounds like God, and a lot of it sounds like men writing their own practical, but somewhat ungodly, traditions in there. With several parts of Scripture, I come to places where what is being said doesn't feel like God at all. It feels like men asserting what they think. I find, throughout the corpus of Scripture, that it is very inconsistent point to point, with lots of conflict in it. This is why I narrow my view to the parts that say "God said..." or "Jesus said..." It is not that I reject everything else. Rather, it's a winnowing process that uses the simply logic of the Scripture itself. I think the reason for all of the anxiety about the canon of Scripture comes from the logic of Sola Scriptura, which, of course, I do not accept as a valid way to look at God. But I do accept that it is a good way to impose discipline on theological discussions.
IMO, an astute assessment. From referencing Gill's collection, he indicates in many places Jesus used parables familiar to the masses and the various 'factions' of Pharisees,Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots etc. This was not a homogeneous timeframe for Judaism. So Jesus taking the context of different, of the time, traditions to preach His Truth would not be surprising. It is the way we all communicate today as well. "For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly."---Romans 5:6
They had a point system back then and the ones with enough points went home and others stayed until they had enough to rotate back home and some got shipped to the Pacific... Interesting. Having a complete text in the Aramaic would be quite a splash. If dated before Christ then those portions of Enoch then fill the Messianic prophecies criteria. "For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly."---Romans 5:6
Could be for many, long after the first three to four centuries. Can't believe I am making a case for Latins and Greeks in this discussion:) Funnier things have happened here on LF in the past:) However, I don't get that 'choppy' feel when reading the TaNaKh and NT. I do with Enoch and as you explained it could be translation related. Proverbs? Good advice in there. It is not a doctrinal text. Nor is Ecclesiastes. As a matter of fact when I first read Ecclesiates I mentioned to a Bible study lead that Solomon was probably in his backsliding years when composing them. It is a very glum and depressing book. "For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly."---Romans 5:6
Getting a little emotional there ain't ya,Becky? You haven't the foggiest as to was a "parasite" is. Unlike you,I actually do. A parasite is anything that is dependent on a host for survival,and gets what it needs to survive from that host. Just because YOU happen to think it is a negative instead of an factual and accurate description changes nothing. It is neither negative nor positive,merely factual. Then again,you don't care much for facts,do you? Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)
Jesus and some of the disciples and, especially, Paul demonstrated that they knew their audiences and were sophisticated thinkers who knew the cultures, religions and prevailing philosophies of their era.
Yup. Also,it wasn't mentioned for PR reasons (the war is over and the fighting and dying has ende,yaaaah!) ,but Ike and the rest of the military commanders weren't about to let their experienced combat soldiers return to Conus until they were certain beyond all doubt that they had wiped out all of the Nazi resisters,and that King Roosevelt's "kindly uncle Joe" wasn't going to send the Soviet hordes rushing to the coast. Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)
I think any extended examination of the canon and the process and the history of some of the near-misses tends to soften you up. Or reinforce a determination to read the Latin canon only. I'm not sure I want to read the apocryphal books but I think knowing about them isn't a bad bible study. It at least keeps you from laying awake nights worrying about blood moons. Even in astronomy, Enoch does offer its own solar calendar: This book contains descriptions of the movement of heavenly bodies and of the firmament, as a knowledge revealed to Enoch in his trips to Heaven guided by Uriel, and it describes a Solar calendar that was later described also in the Book of Jubilees which was used by the Dead Sea sect. The use of this calendar made it impossible to celebrate the festivals simultaneously with the Temple of Jerusalem.
You really think I was laying awake worrying about blood moons? LOL. However, if we take a 'script' from Tobit we can fashion a fish gut paste which wards off demons. Add a dash of Enoch and a few apocrypha and off to a New Age convention we go!/s "For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly."---Romans 5:6
Solar calendar? Wow. Wonder how that measured up with the Temple dudes. No wonder the books of Enoch got a bad rap...solar. "For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly."---Romans 5:6
Well, now, this is interesting, because it gets to the marrow of what different people see in Scripture. I find some of the advice in Proverbs to be profound, and some of it to be glib. Ecclesiastes, by contrast, I find to be the deepest work of the Bible, because it is completely human in its outlook - there are no commandments there - a mind moving through all of the different streets and alleyways, and examining every human diversion and philosophy, and discovering that it all, all of it, is in vain and doomed to decay. All that's left at the end is God. Every material angle and every human artifice is dust in the wind. And all that's left is God. Other books have striving and failing, commandment and consequence, but there is no THREAT in Ecclesiastes, no "do this or else". There is, rather, a man who has the real choices that real men face: we are astonishingly free. And because he is rich and powerful, he has ALL of the choices that any man of his era could make. We can dream of making laws, but he did make them. We can dream of having whatever sensuous pleasure we would like, but he had the money and power to do them. We can dream of having the freedom to be abstemious, but he had the freedom to do it. And every path of endeavor, whatever achieved, ultimately ended in dust and ashes. Every single solitary thing that every man does is utterly worthless. It is perishable, like him. And it, like him, DOES perish, and disappears, leaving a memory, for awhile. And then even that fades. The most prominent of all men leave a name that only the educated know, and maybe a sentence. And nothing more. Qoholeth is right: it is all vanity. Utter vanity. We build nothing, and if we think we do, we are deceived. By doing all, and trying all, Qoholeth came to realize that everything is vanity. The parallel figure in history was Siddhartha Gautama - the Buddha. They each came to a profound spiritual conclusion, albeit a different one, based on their pre-programmed faith. The Buddha sought the final end of unprofitable recycling through the ages by finding Nirvana - the nonexistence of the soul, finally escaping the circles of the world through nonexistence. Qoholeth realized that there is nothing worth holding onto as a perishable man in a perishable and perishing world. Only God. You find it glum and depressing. But I find it the most enlightening and true revealed by human reason in all of Scripture. Now, as to the "not a doctrinal text" comment. What is a "doctrinal text", and who says? I will tell you truthfully: the only person who can decide which text is doctrinal and which is not, is you yourself. God never gave any man, or collection of men, the power or indeed the ABILITY to decide that, for exactly the reason that precedes this part of this message. The texts are collected and preserved, and what is most important varies from mind to mind. And nobody is appointed either cop or judge to determine what is and is not "doctrinal" for anybody else. Men think they have that power, and they divide the Church by trying to assert it. They don't. And they should stop trying. We each come at God differently, through the light God gives us - if it finally comes down to a test of whose viewpoint is authoritative, I already know the answer to that: MINE. And whoever says differently is self-evidently wrong, and would be better to stop digging himself in deeper. And so it is with every mind. Jesus did not grant anybody the power to dominate anybody else's relationship to him and to the Father. We can encourage each other, and enlighten each other, and remind each other of dangers and traps, but when we seek to compel each other under pain of this or that, then by doing so we are wrong by definition. Enoch and the Didache are canon, because the Ethiopian Orthodox say they are. The Ethiopian Orthodox have the same authority as the Catholics and the Greeks in terms of age: they date from the Apostles. They have more authority than the Greeks because they resisted Islam while 90% of the East fell to Islam. They have more authority than the Catholics because the Catholics burnt people alive, including a messenger sent from God, and the Ethiopian Orthodox didn't. You know them by their fruit, and the Ethiopian Orthodox have 2000 years of sweet fruit, without mass apostasy, and without mass murder. Therefore the superiority of their wisdom is proven by the superiorty of their works and acts over the long haul. Which means that their judgments regarding what is Scripture are also better. Obviously. You know them by their fruit. Best fruit, best canon. Period. To me, that really is the FINAL answer, and everything else is just desperate, pathetic pleading of more morally compromised and more defeated variants. This doesn't mean that every tradition of the Ethiopian Orthodox is the best. It DOES mean that God has favored them exceptionally, as evidenced by their superior persistence, the centuries of good fruit, and the relative absence of rotten fruit. So, you can doubt the canonicity of the Didache if you wish, but I don't. To be clear, it matters, because Paul said "All Scripture is God breathed...", so saying that something is Scripture matters. And what the Ethiopians say is Scripture, is Scripture, because their fruit over 2000 years has been the less rotten, their faith the more persistent, and their challenges (surrounded by raging Islam) the most continuous and dire, yet lightly borne. Maybe that's why God gave them the Ark of the Covenant for safekeeping, and not the Greeks or the Romans.
Well I guess that settles it:) Move the Vatican to Ethiopia now! "For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly."---Romans 5:6
Patton had to have his fuel cut off to keep him from taking Berlin before your commie heroes could get there,and even after we handed it to them on a platter Yeah, sure. And Obama's great-uncle, Charlie Payne, was among the U.S. troops who liberated the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz. We all know it.
As you know, the temple followed a complex lunar calendar. So Enoch's calendar was not compatible with celebrating Jewish holy days as Jerusalem did. It is an interesting feature of the book for both Enoch fanbois and Enoch scoffers. : )
Historical FACTS,Bubbarade. And Obama's great-uncle, Charlie Payne, was among the U.S. troops who liberated the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz. He was a REMF who never liberated anything other than the stuff he stole. He gets to claim "he" was a PART of the forces that liberated the camps because he was one of tens of thousands attached to that army Corps. It was always the front line combat assault troops,Soviet,US,or Brits that liberated the camps. BTW,since I remembered Obomber claiming at one speech it was his grandfather that liberated a Nazi concentration camp,I looked up Charles Payne,and was his grandfather's brother,not his grandfather. Nobody is ever sure he was the PFC Charles T.Payne listed in the 89th Infantry Division rolls or not since he wasn't a PFC and has used a different middle initial. The 89th morning report the name came from just listed first and middle name initials and rank. It also says he enlisted. In another bio it says he only served from 1943 to 1945 and got out as a Private. If you was the same rank when he got out as 2 years later while serving in a infantry division during WW-2 he was a major screw up and he definitely did NOT serve as an infantryman. Due to deaths in infantry units,survivors got promoted to Corporal or Sgt as the unit fought in battles. Also,only draftees served 2 years. People that enlisted served a minimum of 3 years,and some served longer as did draftees in 1941. Their terms of service was "for the duration of the war." As with everything else related to Obomber,there is an awful lot of disinformation. We all know it. You don't know squat beyond commie dogma. Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)
I don't see the word pope in Matthew 16 or anywhere else. Here are the facts. The Bible says to call no one father except for God This piece of shit pope insists on being called holy father. These Catholics pervert the Bible. They have changed the 10 commandments and they pray to a dead person Mary. Catholocism isn't what Jesus taught. It is what he warned about. My spit is more holy then any water that pope "blessed".
Scoffers!? Well there are some. I found this from the Chick.com questions and answers site. It just would not be a theological discussion without finding out what Jack's staff is thinking: Answer: I have a fundamental faith regarding the scriptures: God 'superintended' the texts, so that what God wanted in there is in there, and what God didn't want in there isn't. That means that if God through Paul quotes Epimenides in Titus 1:12, and summarizes the writing of Aratus and Cleanthes in Acts 17:28, it's only there because the quote itself states what the Biblical author wanted to say. It does not validate the entire writings of non-inspired authors. The same is true with the apocryphal (kept out of the Canon by God) Assumption of Moses and 2 Enoch. Those words say what the Bible author wanted to say. It does not say that the entire writings are therefore God's words. May God bless you as you read His preserved words in English, the King James Bible, exactly what God wanted to say. "For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly."---Romans 5:6
There were small pockets/units of resistance until 1947 or so, IIRC they were called Werewolves. A lot of them were young kids who popped up periodically to kill a few military and civilians but didn't accomplish anything. Some of them were turned in by the locals so they never really had a chance to get organized as it was feared they would... So it was 89th Infantry Division that liberated Auschwitz?
On April 4, 1945, the 89th overran Ohrdruf, a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp. Ohrdruf was the first Nazi concentration camp liberated by US troops in Germany. A week later, on April 12, Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower, George S. Patton, and Omar Bradley visited Ohrdruf to see, firsthand, evidence of Nazi atrocities against concentration camp prisoners. No the Russians did and only found about 5-10,000 inmates, the rest were force marched/transported by train to the west. Quite a few of them ended up in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp...
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Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latestt boils down to the share in economic pie, the rich over the centuries wanted others to do work for them for free. Then oops, democracy and socialism came. Horrible! Now the question is how to disempower unwashed masses, to terrorize them with police state or to brainwash them into zombie state? Probably you need both.
#110. To: redleghunter (#106)
So given the apostolic criteria
#111. To: redleghunter (#107)
But we know YHWH gave Torah to Moses and those accounts were recorded.
#112. To: sneakypete (#51)
Life begins when a child takes it's first breath. Prior to that it is a parasite and only a potential life.
#113. To: Pericles (#109)
We kind of saw that after WW2. The Americans passed the GI Bill - which was purely a wealth transfer from the rich to the poor (on a basis of merit) because they did not want an angry population of millions of combat hardened veterans returning to the slums of American cities (where most of the Irish, Italians and non WASP whites lived) and to poverty.
#114. To: Liberator (#112)
(Edited)
Life begins when a child takes it's first breath. Prior to that it is a parasite and only a potential life.
#115. To: Vicomte13 (#96)
Spirit is breath. Holy Spirit is the breath of God, the animating power of life and creation.
#116. To: sneakypete (#114)
(Edited)
If that is true and the fetus can live without the mother,you should have no objection to abortion at any stage. After all,the fetus doesn't need the mother to live,right?
#117. To: sneakypete (#113)
Who better to subsidize for this new work force than the veterans who had proven they had ambition enough to stick with it and succeed?
#118. To: A Pole (#116)
Newborn babies also need mother to live.
#119. To: A Pole (#117)
Who better to subsidize for this new work force than the veterans who had proven they had ambition enough to stick with it and succeed?
#120. To: sneakypete (#119)
The majority of the ones that defeated the Nazi's and stopped the Red Army at Berlin were still in Germany and Europe for months after the war ended
#121. To: Vicomte13, redleghunter, GarySpFc (#110)
If one wants to stick to the Catholic argument: "Only apostolic writing in the Scripture", that is fine as a limiter, unless one also adds to that an arbitrary "Only Scripture" tradition on top of that which treats something like the Didache as less authoritative than, say, a letter of Paul. There is no basis other than stubborn traditional prejudice for that.
Why would they not be? Why are the opinions of corrupt, fighting, ultimately weakened and failed Greeks or ultimately violent and barbaric Latins better witnesses than a church older than either that neither fell nor failed nor went barbaric? Cultural prejudice? An error, then.
This is certainly a topic you warm up to. I don't favor expanding the canon but I think it is worthwhile to know the history of the canon(s) and the churches who use(d) them. And it opens up the idea of knowing ancient books outside the Latin canon. The Didache is a good example of a book you must know something about if you expect to understand anything about the earliest churches, especially in the first century. You really should know something about the ancient churches and their location and prominence and influence, the formulation of the canon and the books in wide circulation prior to the official canon, the ancient heresies like the Marcionites (and other gnostics) and the Arians, the major ancient church fathers like Tertullian and Athanasius, the ancient historians like Eusebius and translators like Jerome. None of them was perfectly neutral in their approach to religion.
#122. To: redleghunter, Vicomte13 (#108)
(Edited)
Jude 14 And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints,
Luke 3 37 Which was the son of Mathusala, which was the son of Enoch, which was the son of Jared, which was the son of Maleleel, which was the son of Cainan,
Hebrews 11 5 By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God.
#123. To: Vicomte13, TooConservative, GarySpFc (#110)
Who gave the Greeks or the Italians the power to decide that ONLY THESE BOOKS are inspired by God? Nobody did.
#124. To: Vicomte13 (#110)
If one wants to stick to the Catholic argument: "Only apostolic writing in the Scripture", that is fine as a limiter, unless one also adds to that an arbitrary "Only Scripture" tradition on top of that which treats something like the Didache as less authoritative than, say, a letter of Paul. There is no basis other than stubborn traditional prejudice for that.
#125. To: redleghunter (#123)
However, I believe the largest factor the church fathers considered was authorship. No one knows if Enoch actually wrote Enoch and no one knows the original scribe.
#126. To: A Pole (#120)
Not all of them were volunteers, they were drafted. BTW, Big part of them was sent to Europe AFTER the main fighting ended, to crowd out Soviets.
#127. To: redleghunter, Vicomte13 (#123)
No one knows if Enoch actually wrote Enoch and no one knows the original scribe.
Such a manuscript could appear in our own lifetimes. You never know when it might be released or sold to a museum or to scholars.
The importance of a complete Aramaic manuscript of the Book of Enoch could be immense. Michael Wise, a DSS scholar, writes: "No trace of the Parables of Enoch has been discovered at Qumran, and it is widely considered today to be a composition of the later first century C.E. If a pre-Christian copy of the Parables were ever discovered, it would create a sensation"[4]
#128. To: sneakypete (#114)
(Edited)
Life begins when a child takes it's first breath. Prior to that it is a parasite and only a potential life.
#129. To: redleghunter (#123)
I read a lot of Enoch last night. I came back with the same impression of it as I did when looking at texts such as the Qur'an and BOM. Most portions are choppy, thoughts not completed (maybe due to missing parts?), some even incoherent. When compared to what we do have in the OT and NT canon there is clarity, fullness, coherence, uniformity, well ordered. Much of which is absent or lacking in Enoch, and quite a few other religious texts of antiquity.
#130. To: TooConservative (#122)
References to Enoch are found in various books. No direct quotes outside of Jude. There are other portions of the New Testament that many argue are largely derived from the book of Enoch. The book of Enoch was widely read among Jews from the 3rd century BCE and was known and preserved by the Essenes in the Dead Sea Scrolls. In the same way that we can observe that Jesus and the disciples knew and used Greek and Aramaic and Hebrew and Roman terms and had familiarity with common texts, at least some of the group of Jesus and his disciples were quite familiar with the book of Enoch. After all, Jude didn't toss off that quick quote of Enoch just hoping that his reader(s) might recognize it. Given the rarity and expense and effort of sending epistles in ancient times, Jude knew his reader would recognize the thrust of his brief Enoch quote in verses 14-15.
#131. To: sneakypete (#119)
The majority of the ones that defeated the Nazi's and stopped the Red Army at Berlin were still in Germany and Europe for months after the war ended,and many were still there a year or more later while the military was being downsized,with those who had been at war the longest being the first to be allowed to go home and get discharged.
#132. To: TooConservative, Vicomte13 (#127)
Such a manuscript could appear in our own lifetimes. You never know when it might be released or sold to a museum or to scholars.
#133. To: Vicomte13, TooConservative (#129)
I think the reason for all of the anxiety about the canon of Scripture comes from the logic of Sola Scriptura,
#134. To: Liberator (#128)
(Edited)
I don't know what tangent you've now taken to worm your way out of this box of rocks, but it ain't working.
#135. To: redleghunter (#130)
(Edited)
So Jesus taking the context of different, of the time, traditions to preach His Truth would not be surprising. It is the way we all communicate today as well.
#136. To: CZ82 (#131)
They had a point system back then and the ones with enough points went home and others stayed until they had enough to rotate back home and some got shipped to the Pacific...
#137. To: redleghunter, Vicomte13 (#133)
Could be for many, long after the first three to four centuries. Can't believe I am making a case for Latins and Greeks in this discussion:)
Four fragmentary editions of the Astronomical Book were found at Qumran, 4Q208-211.[82] 4Q208 and 4Q209 have been dated to the beginning of the 2nd century BC, providing a terminus ante quem for the Astronomical Book of the 3rd century BC.[83] The fragments found in Qumran also include material not contained in the later versions of the Book of Enoch.[81][83][84]
#138. To: TooConservative (#137)
I'm not sure I want to read the apocryphal books but I think knowing about them isn't a bad bible study. It at least keeps you from laying awake nights worrying about blood moons.
#139. To: TooConservative (#137)
Even in astronomy, Enoch does offer its own solar calendar:
#140. To: redleghunter, Too Conservative (#133)
Proverbs? Good advice in there. It is not a doctrinal text. Nor is Ecclesiastes. As a matter of fact when I first read Ecclesiates I mentioned to a Bible study lead that Solomon was probably in his backsliding years when composing them. It is a very glum and depressing book.
#141. To: Vicomte13 (#140)
Enoch and the Didache are canon, because the Ethiopian Orthodox say they are.
#142. To: sneakypete (#126)
Yes,at Berlin.
#143. To: redleghunter, Vicomte13 (#139)
Wonder how that measured up with the Temple dudes.
#144. To: A Pole (#142)
Yeah, sure.
#145. To: Willie Green (#45)
(Edited)
Also there is no pope in the Bible. He is a false leader. A piece of shit. Not true... the papacy began with the Apostle Peter, the first Bishop of Rome. (Matthew 16:16~19)
#146. To: TooConservative (#143)
It is an interesting feature of the book for both Enoch fanbois and Enoch scoffers. : )
Question: I have been reading lately about how the Bible contains quotes from extracanonical texts as in Acts 17:28. Even the Old Testament quotes from rabbinical texts, right? Do you feel that these texts should have been omitted from the canon? Why would Jude quote from "The Assumption of Moses" in Jude 9 and then "The Book of Enoch" in Jude 14 if they are now considered 'apocryphal'?
#147. To: sneakypete (#136)
but Ike and the rest of the military commanders weren't about to let their experienced combat soldiers return to Conus until they were certain beyond all doubt that they had wiped out all of the Nazi resisters
#148. To: sneakypete (#144)
Nobody is ever sure he was the PFC Charles T.Payne listed in the 89th Infantry Division rolls or not since he wasn't a PFC and has used a different middle initial.
#149. To: A Pole (#148)
So it was 89th Infantry Division that liberated Auschwitz?
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