Title: If A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words, Then What Do These Memes Say? (Parts VIII & I) Source:
The Potters Clay URL Source:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa6ulv9aQno Published:Oct 10, 2018 Author:The Potters Clay Post Date:2019-10-07 12:02:10 by Liberator Keywords:Truth, Memes, Hmmm Views:46120 Comments:340
A little Meme action... If you haven't seen them, checkout the rest!
Get bored easily? No time to watch long videos? MEMES TO THE RESCUE! Short & Sweet.
These are found at a Christian You Tube called, 'The Potters Clay'...
These are REALLY good. Fun stuff. I promise. Spectacular AND clever. It doesn't matter what your core belief is; you will come upon several memes that will stop you dead in your tracks and challenge you.
(STRONG SUGGESTION: To adjust and slow these memes down, go to your YouTube 'Settings', then adjust 'Playback Speed to .75. It will give you more time to contemplate the meme, since they move along pretty fast.)
When you have the time, please give them all a look; I consider them a crash-course in Earth-Science Truth, Logic, and Reason.
I think you should have someone able to call lightning out of the sky to smite the unbelievers. Fire would work just as well. Or maybe alternate the tools of smiting for variety and to keep your TV ratings up.
Just the healing power, including the power to raise the dead (even the long-dead - bring their spirits back from Paradise (or Gehenna, or wherever- the-hell else...Valhalla!) and put them in regenerated bodies, and of course the inverse of these things - if you can heal a heart attack and a stroke, you can break blood vessels too.
Note that concomitant with these abilities is the ability to live without food, water or air, or even a corporeal body, since the starving would be healed...without replenishing their food - simply converting air and space and energy into healthy tissue.
This is quite important, because obviously our prophet would be an INSTANT threat to the world order, the economic order - everything - and it would be easiest for the authorities to remove that threat by killing it. But we can't have another Jesus situation. There was one Jesus. If God is going to put this prophet here to remake the world through persuasion to follow the law of God, this prophet is going to have to resilient - can't poison him, can't starve him, can't kill him - and he needs to be able to raise back up all of the "enemies of the state" that the state kills...and the ability to strike dead the TOP of the chain of command, such that the TOPS of the chain of command everywhere forbid their juniors from attempting anything, since in a war with HIM, it's the generals and kings who all die first, and the draftee foot soldiers get resurrected.
The healing becomes the vehicle for "voluntary" wealth redistribution - on a Toranic model. You have hardened arteries and cancer, poor old street woman? Well, now you have a young clean body again. Come along and help me. You have terminal cancer, Mr. Rockefeller? You can have the same vigor and youth as this poor woman, but it will require the redistribution of all of your wealth above the amount we calculate necessary to maintain your family life in dignity, and to maintain the employment of your businesses. You don't need to accumulate more, however, and your purpose now, in operating your businesses, will be to no longer accumulate profits in your own accounts (for you will never rule the world through wealth, so stop trying), but to actually get everybody into a by-right living space (everybody as in, everybody in the world, not just everybody in Detroit), with food, etc.
Oh, and you're all going to garden some. Yes, you're all going to grow food. The price now is hundreds of thousands to insurance companies and doctors for hit-or miss care. The price now is healing is free, but you have to behave in the ways that God intended - and that means tending your own garden - which makes the world green and lovely and fed and healthy.
No, you don't HAVE to do it. You can choose to simply die of cancer if you want. No, you don't HAVE to get your kid killed in an accident back, but if you do, this is coming from God, and the price is that you're going to admit God exists, admit these are God's laws, and pay with change of behavior. If you're good, you'll keep living happy. If you're not, well, that cancer can come back you know (not that the prophet is going to give it to you).
Etc. It's a nice story. But it's not going to happen so why waste the ink. Having "What God Said" right there on the table, with the full synthesis from the actual words, but rejecting ALL outside authority diverting the words...people will just fight like hell over this stuff - look how many millions have already been killed in the name of the "Prince of Peace". Nobody would get killed over my book - the fangs have already been pulled out of Christianity. The only people who fight now are the margin in the dwindling Churches.
Just the healing power, including the power to raise the dead (even the long-dead - bring their spirits back from Paradise (or Gehenna, or wherever- the-hell else...Valhalla!) and put them in regenerated bodies, and of course the inverse of these things - if you can heal a heart attack and a stroke, you can break blood vessels too.
Ah, so your prophet could quietly say, "Death to thee" and smite them.
Then he could bring them back to life. If they still don't obey, he could kill them and resurrect them over and over again until they finally obey!
Kind of like an instant reincarnation cycle. No waiting to live/die/reincarnate. Instant action! Film at 11! Neil should like that. Well, at least a little more than getting bible-bashed here at LF which isn't all that much fun as hobbies go. : )
The healing becomes the vehicle for "voluntary" wealth redistribution - on a Toranic model. You have hardened arteries and cancer, poor old street woman? Well, now you have a young clean body again. Come along and help me. You have terminal cancer, Mr. Rockefeller? You can have the same vigor and youth as this poor woman, but it will require the redistribution of all of your wealth above the amount we calculate necessary to maintain your family life in dignity, and to maintain the employment of your businesses. You don't need to accumulate more, however, and your purpose now, in operating your businesses, will be to no longer accumulate profits in your own accounts (for you will never rule the world through wealth, so stop trying), but to actually get everybody into a by-right living space (everybody as in, everybody in the world, not just everybody in Detroit), with food, etc.
You go on about wealth redistribution a lot. Why don't you ever consider the abolition of money itself? Try to get outside that box we all have lived in our entire lives.
Jesus certainly didn't care much for money. And he did scourge the moneychangers rather memorably. Maybe that should be more your goal. Don't try to get a bigger welfare state by redistribution of money by denomination: just abolish the entire notion of wealth as measured by money. Death to Adam Smith! Pope Victor III could order his books burned, his body disinterred and burned at the stake. Tune in next week!
Oh, and you're all going to garden some. Yes, you're all going to grow food. The price now is hundreds of thousands to insurance companies and doctors for hit-or miss care. The price now is healing is free, but you have to behave in the ways that God intended - and that means tending your own garden - which makes the world green and lovely and fed and healthy.
Again, the medical establishment has its own price. Abolish the price entirely. The obscene profits are driven by greed as are many of the bad drugs. The profit incentive is the flaw, not the products themselves.
C'mon, just try to think far more radically about the abolition of wealth. After all, the bible tells us that a rich man is less likely to get to heaven than a camel to go through the eye of a needle. Of course, you are aware of all the disputes over the proper translation of this particular phrase. Camel? Elephant? Rope/Cable? Passing through the eye of a needle or through a small gate used at night to enter Jerusalem, etc.
Hey, the family's away so you don't have many social obligations at present...
Family's away, but the old homeless guy I have taken in to use the space left open in their absence is very talkative, and has a lot of pain in his heart that he needs to express to somebody, so I find myself going to bed fairly late after listening. Also, I think it's rude to just leave somebody upstairs alone and go sit at the computer.
Mechanical translation is NECESSARY to remove translator's bias. Wherever an Aramaic, or Hebrew, or Greek word appears, that word must be carefully defined and world-listed, and then THAT ENGLISH WORD be used used EVERY SINGLE TIME that the foreign word appears. Of course you conjugate the nouns and decline the verbs. but you must be absolutely consistent - MECHANICALLY consistent, like a computer, so that all of those places where the theological bias of the translator creeps in. For example, either the word "skies" or the word "heavens" will appear in the translation, but not both words, and the word "breath", or "wind" or "spirit", but the translator does not get to pick when a word "means" "skies", or "means" "Heaven", or "means" breath, or "means" wind or spirit. The simplicity of the vocabulary used will remove the layer of distinction that isn't in the original text.
Because the word lists are clear, somebody can always simply mass replace one word with another, but the point is that the words are the words, and the translator doesn't get any choices - to make something theological.
"In origin was the word and the word was with the divine and divine was the word."
The root of "theos" is "heaven" or "bright sky", across many languages - thus, the association of "the divine" with the sky itself (which in the greek is "ouranos" - uranus - which of course was also the name of the original sky god who, with gaae (the earth mother) fathered the original gods.
The Hebrew words for God move around "el" (or "al", depending on pronunciation), which is "mighty one" and is drawn (and called) as a bull's head (the letter "Aleph").
Christians place too much weight on that word "God", because it's not a defined term in either testament, but comes from words in the underlying language that refer to something.
In Hebrew, the word simply means "power", in Greek root, it derives from "bright sky", and means "divine".
Now, a non-mechanical reader with a theological agenda will positively scream that I am "twisting the Scripture", but actually, I am saying what the word really IS, what the words really ARE - if "the heaven" inspired them (the mandate of the sky, so to speak) - perhaps the heaven was revealing its nature in that choice of word. But that's not what theological Jews or Christians want - no, they're quite sure of what "God" is, even though nobody told them but their tradition.
I'm not revising anything. I'm writing the words in their actual meaning. That those words really make firm theological beliefs fuzzy is a weakness of the theological beliefs - the words just are what they are.
"But, but, you're DELIBERATELY making fuzzy what is clear!"
No, I'm deliberately using the clear words to demonstrate that the theology you and your people have believed for thousands of years is ITSELF fuzzy and inexact, and all of the logical exactitude you've built up over the years is built on a fuzzy foundation of states.
"God" is the bright sky - the mandate of heaven, as the Chinese would put it. "God" is the POWER that just exists, it just is. And it's plural in Hebrew.
In the beginning "THE POWERS THAT BE" made the land and the sky.
The Christians go ballistic. But they can't kill any longer, because back in the day, they DID kill, and fatally wounded their own religion such that people pulled its fangs out and deprived it of POWER, so now it can just bark while the caravan passes.
People don't like mechanical things, and they don't like roots, because it puts a torpedo under the keel of firm beliefs and makes you realize that the ancients were dealing with concepts, not simple-minded things.
And yet, the bright sky TALKS. It did to ME. Nobody cares about THAT, but THAT is what makes what I have to say more interesting, to the discerning person.
Why the hell do I care what Pope Sixtus the Seventh said? Did God talk to him? He never said so. Why, then, does HE matter, what does HE know? On the other hand, Jesus spoke to God, and as God, and Amos quoted God whom others could not see (and they hated both of them for it too).
I'm interested in what God had to say, not what men had to say. And anyway, "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with the god and the word was divine" is not actually spoken by Jesus or God anyway, that's John. So that whole statement, in both testaments, would not be in my set of scriptures to examine in the first place. Those are theological conclusions of the writer. I'm interested in what GOD said. I'll decide what that means.
Moses and John, respectively, are credited with writing some memorable prefaces, but they are, after all, prefaces by Moses and John, or somebody. They don't say "God said" - what God, or Jesus, SAID is always indicted by "God said..." or "Jesus said..." And that's what I'M interested in.
But I've already read that stuff and thought about it. Others, when I mention it, spend so much time objecting to my method that they don't ever get to the words, so why should I devote my own precious time to carefully (and it all has to be SO CAREFUL) put down words they're going to disregard anyway?
Why FIGHT with the Whigs in 1870, or the American Communist Party today? They're moribund.
Because most of the Torah, and most what Jesus said, focuses squarely on the issue of human poverty and its relief. The Torah gives a comprehensive system to eliminate poverty: birthright to inalienable land, returned in the Jubilee NO MATTER WHAT, cancellation of debt in the seventh year, no interest on loans to believers, no slavery for believers at all.
Every Christian who bays away about some issue like the gays, mentioned in about two sentences of the Torah, or about the SAbbath and sabbath keeping - a rest from work, which INCLUDED a sabbath from planting crops in the seventh year - but who won't engage in the economic logic of God - given how MUCH of the Torah God spent on the matter, and how forceful the prophets (e.g.: Amos) were on the matter, and how Jesus spent his time and so much of his ministry on issues of the poor -
Basically, Christians want to talk about the mind. God talked about economics, since God is interested in making sure that his followers were stewards who alleviated human suffering in a fallen world.
American Christians have incorporated modern Western economic ideas, including things like slavery, debt interest, etc., into their Christianity. And when I just start quoting God they call me an enemy of God because they're enemies of God and don't like to hear it.
God's law of money is like garlic and crosses to vampires. I bring it up because American "Christians" are reliably vampiric, and I like to make vampires snarl and cringe at God. It satisfies my desire to make them rage against the light, since I know that none of them is ever going to reform an inch.
I've GIVEN UP on the Christian religions, because they are so awful. I stick with God and his Jesus, because they're real.
My temporary roommate is deeply Catholic. I want to talk about poverty relief with him. He wants to worry about certain ritualistic things. That I say are unimportant. And so we go.
I'm "marginal", and I'm "arrogant" according to him. I point out that I never burnt people alive for disagreeing with me, but that our church does that.
Also, I never raped any little boys (or girls), but that the Church has paid out over $4 billion in sex abuse settlements in just the US alone. So, is that money going into the coffers to keep up the pretty buildings, pay the clergy, and feed and house and clothe the poor? The first two, then it goes to pay the settlements from all of the boys the priests have raped, all of the coverup. And the poor? Well, if you're just a Catholic guy out of a job or who has lost your home, will the Church help YOU?
No.
Christians like to turn the criticism back on the critic. I simply won't have it.
Christians are headstrong and know better than Jesus. Which is why their churches are all dying.
Can a new Church of Jesus be made that puts it all back together again? Not without miracles that overthrow the iron grip of deterministic science on the bulk of minds, no.
Existing Christianity will fight the same dull, pointless fights until the last two geriatrics in the pews of the last church die with their backs turned to each other...
Actual Christians certainly do readily acknowledge NOT knowing anything more or "better" than Jesus. And ARE "Christian" Churches actually "dying"? Is that your observation or experience? Might be time to change gears, Vic. (Or are these last days simply a case of the wheat being divided from the tares?)
I don't know if it is a case of today's Christians "fighting fight the same dull, pointless fights until the last two geriatrics in the pews of the last church die"; I'm witnessing a lot of passion, fellowship, growth, and commitment by Believers. We're now at the point where we're all personally accountable. And if anyone truly hungers for the Truth and the Word instead of the politics, they'll focus on THAT.
...Without miracles there's no reason to think that God exists, or that even if God exists, he cares what people think.
"Miracles" happen every day in the respective hearts of the broken, the fallen and the disbelieving when they pray to Jesus for His Presence and Belief & Faith in Him. The account of Saul/Paul also testifies to God's existence, hands-on involvement and of personal miracles. And anyway, God's/Jesus' "miracles" are already documented in Scripture (unless you now disbelieve Scripture.)
The existing miracles don't do it. It would take a new prophetic figure doing miracles - preferably great healing miracles.
If that's all it takes, the anti-Christ or counterfeit Savior might fit that bill.
"Narrow is the way." If people demand NT-type "miracles" in order to believe these days, than they are sadly watching too many "Super-Hero" flick and are simply making lazy choices on their respective eternal fate and Salvation.
Basically, Christians want to talk about the mind.
God talked about economics, since God is interested in making sure that his followers were stewards who alleviated human suffering in a fallen world.
God discussed plenty -- including, yes, stewardship of one's brother (materially/spiritually) , the animal kingdom, and planet. But also reaping what one sows -- as well as helping those to help themselves (i.e. teaching a man to fish)...
The Lord was also interested in making sure there was such a virtue as personal responsibility and accountability. He also advocated for charity (for widows, family, and the sick & maimed.)
What God was NOT interested in and certainly did NOT advocate for was/is... Socialism OR Communism.
P.S. -- The alleviation of suffering is inevitable and largely not preventable as a result of (as you mentioned) our "Fallen World."
I'm witnessing a lot of passion, fellowship, growth, and commitment by Believers.
I'm not seeing this, Liberator. But I'm not seeing the church "dying", as Vic would describe it.
What I see is this:
You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. Rev. 3:17
In the case of the Laodicean Church, it's members were actually delusional. Imagine a starving, naked, blind man staggering toward you on the street. Then he starts telling you he's a wealthy man! You offer to assist him and he informs you he needs nothing. What else could you think...the guy is delusional.
The Church is in this condition today...(I wish I were wrong, but I don't think I am)
ACTUAL miracles of healing, the REAL thing. They do not happen, but by the po power of God.
Can Satan heal the blind? The cripple? The paralytic? Regnerate limbs? Raise the dea th the dea the dead?
No.
Jesus asked the same question: "Can Satan cast out Satan?"
Some Churches may be growing at the margins, while Christianity as a whole s s shrinks. BUT does that even matter? A few more people here or there believe in s s something. Is the poverty being attacked and reduced? Is the distress w w weakening?
If Satan COULD do those things, he would already rule the world, if he even wanted to. Regenerate a cripple's limb, give a paralytic back his legs, remove a stricken man's cancer, sweep out Alzheimer's, cleanse a child of Muscular Dystrophy, walk into a school of the blind, raise your hands, and give sight to 1000 people in an instant - those people will follow you to the ends of the earth. They will believe in your God if you asked them to, because YOUR God delivers the goods that other gods cannot (or will not). Heal the multitudes and declare YOURSELF God, and people will worship you, especially when it becomes clear that YOUR worshippers are all healthy and well and never die, whil while everybody else's do die.
If Satan could heal, he already would be worshipped as God, because he would ha have healed a sufficient number of people that the world would pursue him cr crying "Lord! Lord!" That's precisely what the ancient Jews though Jesus was: Sa Satan co Sa Satan coming to steal the children of Israel by performing healing miracles.
Jesus said, implicitly that Satan cannot do such things, because if the answer to Jesus' question is "Sure, Satan can cast out Satan - as a ruse", then Jesus' an answ an answer to the Jews was not an answer, and maybe he WAS doing what he did th through the power of Satan.
But the world is not black and evil enough for that to be true.
No, Satan cannot perform great healing miracles. If he could, we'd already be worshipping him as God.
That's fine, but it doesn't mean Christianity should get a free pass from scrutiny. If Christianity is true, then it will stand up to any kind of scrutiny.
You are correct. Thanks you're certainly an honorable man. Sorry to give you a hard time from time to time lately. I just disagree.
I know it doesn't bother you that much when you said if a christian wins the nomination you would vote for mass baby killer Hillary.
You also said in the past that the way to have a better world would be for you to murder all right wingers.
By their fruit ye shall know them.
And I know that your own profanity-laced tirades against those whom you perceive as political opponents does not trouble you in the slightest. You barely remember them, and where you do, you consider them to have been justified because of the strength of your political beliefs.
Example: you point at Hillary Clinton, as though she is the only politician who supports abortion rights. Truth is, the Republicans have controlled the Supreme Court since 1969, and have controlled the White House and the Senate - necessary to appoint federal judges - for 12 years during the total 22 years of terms of the last 4 Republican Presidents - more than half of that time. Republican Presidents have appointed 11 out of 15 total Supreme Court appointments in the last 40 years since Roe. The Democrats have only appointed four.
And yet, despite having completely replaced the Supreme Court and then some, since then, and dominating the federal judiciary, and controlling all of government for 4 years, the Republicans were "unable" to reverse Roe.
You fall for rope-a-dope, which is your privilege, of course, but then you rage with distemper at people like me, who don't, And you really believe yourself to be virtuous.
You do not come across to me as virtuous, or Christian, just angry and spiteful, equating the Republican Party with Christ, and the Democrat Party with anti-Christ. You really believe it, and you rail at even non-Democrats, like me, who are neutral about the parties, as though we were in league with the Devil.
You believe this to be pious and Christian and good. To me, this is the purple, angry, unreasoning, blind and willfully ignorant face of Christianity. You've been duped by the people who say their your allies, and you rail against those point it out.
I recall saying something about Hillary Clinton - something hyperbolic (I loathe her) - about some particularly loathsome Republican at one point, that if that loathsome stain were the nominee, I'd vote for Hillary or just not vote. Would I have really? I don't know: the situation to against which I was railing never occurred, so it's moot.
That was many years ago, not in the Trump era. You remember it, and you beat it like a drum. Of course, you supported Ronald Reagan (as did () but you pretend that a man who signed the abortion act in California and who appointed two pro-abortion justices to the Supreme Court was "pro-life" - you don't even see that he was not. And you don't care. And then H.W. Bush, whose appointed a pro-Roe justice to the court and tried to appoint a second one (but he was blocked). And then W, who appointed the current Chief Justice (who went soft on Obamacare with its abortion provisions), and who tried to appoint the pro-abortion Harriet Miers to the court. Trump is the first one to have held to a litmus test on abortion, and guess what - these Republicans whom you extol, whom you permit yourself to vomit bile on everybody who criticises them - these Republicans HATE Trump, whereas I have been in his camp all along.
So yep, you sure get in high moral dudgeon - the purple-faced angry Christian who never forgets anything and never learns from experience either. And you bring up some past scrape from long ago as though it justifies being a blind and belligerent ass in every age.
You do you - nobody is going to stop you. But, you know, there is a REASON that the world gradually drifts in my direction on so many things, while the water drains out of the tub of the things you care about. And the reason is that you don't realise who your friends are, you can't keep allies like the old Bourbon kings, who never forgot anything and never learned anything.
You've just gotta take a pop at me every now and again, over Hillary Clinton! I'd like to see the woman indicted. But at the time, whoever she was running against was such a transparently pro-rich, pro-abortion Republican that yeah, it would have been better to vote for Hillary and not let the Republican Party get away with baldfaced lies, than to let them hold power, do what they wanted to do, and continue to dupe the likes of you into digging us deeper and deeper into a situation from which their very dishonesty made it harder for us to dig out.
With Trump, we finally have a Republican who means what he says, and who actually DOES it, or tries.
You also said in the past that the way to have a better world would be for you to murder all right wingers.
After Vic has disposed of all those mean old white Christian right wingers, he'll be left alone with all his leftist, communist, atheist pals...and they will do what they always do...they will immediately kill him.
I don't fall for shit. I am aware that there are a lot of fake Republicans who support abortion. Thing is all your prescious progressive pieces of shit you support because they steal from the working people and give to deadbeats all support murderinc children.
I am aware that you support abortion too. You said you would vote for one of them.
The democrats gave us Roe vs wade. The democrats are 98 percent pro murder and you would vote for them if a real christian like Ted Cruz won the nomination because he isn't a thief like you are. Well you vote for people to steal because you don't have faith in God to deliver on his word. You have faith in Vic. You are flawed.
I know we are all flawed and you have other good characteristics. But on this issue you are just a weirdo flapping his gums. Go brag some more.
That was many years ago, not in the Trump era. You remember it, and you beat it like a drum. Of course, you supported Ronald Reagan (as did () but you pretend that a man who signed the abortion act in California and who appointed two pro-abortion justices to the Supreme Court was "pro- life" - you don't even see that he was not.
People can change. Reagan appointed pro life people.
I didn't vote for Reagan ever. I wasn't old enough. If you want to bash me on this issue do it for voting for Perot.
there is a REASON that the world gradually drifts in my direction on so many things,
It isn't moving in your direction as much as it is moving in my direction.
You support Trump and I agree with you.
There is stuff you said Trump would never do. Like welfare stuff. Well Trump agrees with my position more that your s on leeches stealing from the system. Welfare. So if Trump is the model he is more like me that you. So by your logic the country is moving more in my direction that yours.
You've just gotta take a pop at me every now and again, over Hillary Clinton! I'd like to see the woman indicted.
Yep. I take shots at things that bug me. Everyone including people I like on other issues. And I like you Vic I just expect more from someone like you. So I hold you to a higher standard. Yes Vic I do like you despite our disagreements.
And then H.W. Bush, whose appointed a pro-Roe justice to the court and tried to appoint a second one (but he was blocked).
Clarence Thomas is the best judge on the Supreme court. Pro life appointed by Bush.
Souter was a disappointment.
When you appoint someone you can't completely know their heart. Vic some people who call themselves Republicans are real pieces of shit. Like about half of the elected ones.
these Republicans whom you extol, whom you permit yourself to vomit bile on everybody who criticises them - these Republicans HATE Trump, whereas I have been in his camp all along.
That isn't true. I praise Republicans like Rand Paul. Like Jim Jordan and the Meadows fellow. Even Mitch is doing good things.
Not the Romneys whom I never liked. Not the Mccains. Not the Susan Collins. You know not the more progressive ones.
Because the word lists are clear, somebody can always simply mass replace one word with another, but the point is that the words are the words, and the translator doesn't get any choices - to make something theological.
"In origin was the word and the word was with the divine and divine was the word."
The root of "theos" is "heaven" or "bright sky", across many languages - thus, the association of "the divine" with the sky itself (which in the greek is "ouranos" - uranus - which of course was also the name of the original sky god who, with gaae (the earth mother) fathered the original gods.
The Hebrew words for God move around "el" (or "al", depending on pronunciation), which is "mighty one" and is drawn (and called) as a bull's head (the letter "Aleph").
Christians place too much weight on that word "God", because it's not a defined term in either testament, but comes from words in the underlying language that refer to something.
In Hebrew, the word simply means "power", in Greek root, it derives from "bright sky", and means "divine".
Now, a non-mechanical reader with a theological agenda will positively scream that I am "twisting the Scripture", but actually, I am saying what the word really IS, what the words really ARE - if "the heaven" inspired them (the mandate of the sky, so to speak) - perhaps the heaven was revealing its nature in that choice of word. But that's not what theological Jews or Christians want - no, they're quite sure of what "God" is, even though nobody told them but their tradition.
I'm not revising anything. I'm writing the words in their actual meaning. That those words really make firm theological beliefs fuzzy is a weakness of the theological beliefs - the words just are what they are.
Hmmm...inasmuch as I grasp your point, perhaps we could use a simple passage as an example.
As you know, translators have grappled with the proper translation of the names rendered as "Lord" and "God" for centuries. The primary names in Hebrew are: Jehovah (the tetragramatron YHVH, used 6,521 times, usually translated as LORD), Adonai (used 335 times, ), and Elohim (used 2,601 times, usually rendered as gods or god or God) and their singular/plural word forms.
The name of God most often used in the Hebrew Bible is the Tetragrammaton (YHWH). Owing to the Jewish tradition viewing the divine name as too sacred to be uttered it was replaced vocally in the synagogue ritual by the Hebrew word Adonai ("My Lord"), which was translated as Kyrios ("Lord") in the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures. It is frequently anglicized as Yahweh or Jehovah and written in most English editions of the Bible as "the LORD".
Rabbinic Judaism describes seven names which are so holy that, once written, should not be erased: YHWH and six others which can be categorized as titles are El ("God"), Eloah ("God"), Elohim ("Gods"), Shaddai (“Almighty"), Ehyeh ("I Will Be"), and Tzevaot ("[of] Hosts").
I suggest you review that Wiki page for these 7 unerasable names of God as well as the other names used for God in Hebrew scripture, the leading one of this secondary rank of names for God being Adon/Adonai (as I understand it).
But enough all the different names for God in the OT and about translation principles like formal equivalence (the name for the translation method you would like to use with word-for-word translation). Let's proceed to a well-known concrete example, just one single verse we can translate.
Let's use Deuteronomy 10:17. It's very familiar and contains a number of these names used in ancient Israel which we translate as LORD, or Lord, or God, or The Almighty, etc. Since these names are all found in a single verse, we don't have to worry that the meanings or usage drifted over the centuries. If they're all in one verse, they had to make sense to any literate Jews back when they were written, published on scrolls, and recited in synagogue.
Here is a list of various translations of the verse that I got from e-Sword, including a few Catholic versions like Vulgate and Jubilee bible along with the Bishop's, Geneva, KJV-1611, KJV (1769), KJV with Strong's numbers, and a few modern literal translations like LITV and MKJV.
Notice that if you hover your mouse over the Strong's numbers, a tooltip will appear to tell you which Hebrew word is being used when the word "God" or "LORD" or "Lord" (YHVH, Elohim, EL). You can verify the Strong's numbers at any bible website; I included them here for convenience.
Deuteronomy 10:17
Bishops
For the Lorde your God, is God of Gods, and Lorde of Lordes, a great God, a mightie and a terrible, whiche regardeth no mans person, nor taketh rewarde.
Geneva
For the Lord your God is God of gods, and Lord of lordes, a great God, mightie and terrible, which accepteth no persons nor taketh reward:
KJV-1611
For the Lord your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward.
KJV
For the LORD your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward:
For Jehovah your God, He is the God of gods, and the Lord of lords; the great, the mighty, the fearful God who does not lift up faces, nor take a bribe.
MKJV
For Jehovah your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, the mighty, and a terrible God, who does not respect persons nor take a bribe.
JUB
For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, a great God, mighty, and terrible, who makes no exception of persons, nor takes a bribe;
Latin
quia Dominus Deus vester ipse est Deus deorum et Dominus dominantium Deus magnus et potens et terribilis qui personam non accipit nec munera
CEV
The LORD your God is more powerful than all other gods and lords, and his tremendous power is to be feared. His decisions are always fair, and you cannot bribe him to change his mind.
ESV
For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe.
OJB
17 For Hashem Eloheichem is Elohei HaElohim, and Adonei HaAdonim, HaEl HaGadol, HaGibbor v’HaNorah, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh shochad (bribe):
So how would you translate these various names of God from Hebrew, using word pictures like bright sky god in this one well-known verse, word for word, with or without capitals, with or without modern punctuation? How would you improve these various English translations? BTW, I included the Jubilee bible just for fun. And I added the Orthodox Jewish Bible translation at the very end, almost certainly more accurate than any of the others and pretty revealing of the underlying Hebrew language structure but...who would really want to read that as daily scripture readings? Not many people, I think.
If you really like translations that strive for accuracy and consistency in names and terms across the entire bible, LITV and Jubilee have that as their goal. They try to make the words self-defining by context. The results are mixed IMO. I included the CEV just for humor because it's so stupid, as are all the paraphrase bibles.
Given that He Exists (or He Lives), he is powers of powers, leader of leaders, the power, the great, the courageous and the feared one, he will not lift up face and he will not take bribe.
That's how I would view that, from the Hebrew.
YHWH = He Exists or He Lives or He Is - to exist, to be, and to live are one single verb in Hebrew - take your pick.
Elohiym = Powers El = Power
Adonai = "lord", which is just the archaic form of "leader".
The name of God missing in this is El Elyon - the Power of Powers - the Most High of Powers, the Highest Power.
El Elyon - the Most High - is Jesus' God and Father.
So, you see, the critters in the religious zoo, to me, are El Elyon and YHSWH - The Highest God, who is the father and god of Yahshua - Jesus - his only begotten son.
The first "word" of Genesis, before creation (so before time) is a pictographic sentence showing the begetting of the son from the father:
b'reshiyt = B R A Sh Y T
House Head El divide-into point-at Cross.
God is El Elyon - he is our most high God, and he was (and is) Jesus' God also. Jesus prayed to God - his Father - and that God was (and is) El Elyon.
The only son God ever fathered biologically through a woman's uterus was Jesus (and his very name puts the "bite in two" letter "Shin" into the middle of YHWH). God fathered EVERY human, by breathing out our spirit (spirit is breath, divine spirit is the breath of God - the "Holy Spirit" is that which is breathed out by the divine - which is El Elyon, and also the Son), but God only IMPREGNATED one woman to create one son BIOLOGICALLY. That is why Jesus and we have the same father, but Jesus' relationship to that father is "only-begotten" - begotten means "fathered" - El Elyon breathed his spirit into all of us, giving us life. But El Elyon biologically fathered Jesus through a woman's egg - the only time he ever did that - which is why Jesus is our brother of the same Father, but he's the only BEGOTTEN son.
Is Jesus divine? Of course. Are WE divine? In a sense - we live because of the breath of God that animates us, the individual spirit that God breathed out that makes us what we are. Of course, WE breathe out spirit also, and our spirits can indeed affect others, inspiring them, blighting them, etc. We can't CREATE material and biological things by our spirit, but we certainly subcreate by our words and expressions.
Indeed, we make in the image by which we are made.
But we can indeed be "fathered", metaphorically speaking, by evil spirits too. "Satan" - the adversarial principle, that which opposed to God, it can be breathed into us and animate us (not originally giving us life, only God originally animates us), but the "spirit of Satan" can come to be what we live and breathe pretty quickly (not in the womb, and not when we are very little - that is why Jesus said to suffer the little ones to come to him and don't block them, for unless one became as a little child (again), without the spirit of satan in him, one could not enter the kingdom of God.
This is why Jesus said to Nicodemas the spirit (wind) blows where it may, and one doesn't know whence it comes or whither it goes, but that unless you are fathered (not born - begotten) again (by the Father, with a new spirit - a new breath) with water and the word, you can't come to God.
That's why "your father is Satan" - because the spirit of the adversary fills the blood of your veins and your minds, once you are polluted with it, and only the spirit/breath...oxygen!...of God can overbear that.
The breath/spirit is the crossover of everything - it is both intangible and physical, it animates life. The physical component of spirit - air - is WHY the blood is the life - because the blood literally carries the wind (spirit/oxygen) to the body to each cell to let it live.
God is not SIMPLY an idea, but also manifests physically. This is why the eucharist is a mystery - this IS my body, this IS my blood - breath IS God's spirit, not simply metaphorically, but not JUST physically.
The philosophical desire to render God utterly non-physical and outside of the physical is the downfall of many millions who cannot accept that God is both ethereal AND physical. It's what, for example, makes Jesus' own divinity so hard to accept (for some), and why the endless wrangling over the "nature" of the eucharist. Spirit/breath is the transition, the crossover, and when one understands that the physical winds of earth are literally the willed breaths of God, that that is exactly how the Hebrews understood it, one understands how much CLOSER God was to them in their minds, and how much closer he actually IS.
Psalm 104 When you hide your face, they are dismayed; when you take away their breath [spirit], they die and return to their dust. When you send forth your spirit [breath] they are created, and you renew the face of the ground.
It's not really hard to understand. For some reason it's hard for some to accept.
When you appoint someone you can't completely know their heart.
Yes you can.
Or at least Democrats can. After all, they've appointed four in the past 40 years, and a lot more to the appellate benches and district courts, and they NEVER break ranks on abortion - NOT EVER.
Democrats apply a litmus test, and they drive the point home in direct questioning, demanding ideological purity and absolute orthodoxy on the matter in their questioning BEFORE they will offer up the nomination.
Republicans don't do that, pretending it's "inappropriate". it's NOT inappropriate AT ALL. Republicans DO THAT because the rich who control the GOP - including folks like the Romneys and the Bushes, but also Wall Street backers, etc., are pro-choice, but the party runs as pro-life. On things that matter to the rich - regulatory matters, contract rights - the Republican judges NEVER break ranks, because there IS a litmus test applied to Republican judges. Abortion is simply not one of the tests, because the Republican Party owners and top leaders and donors are PRO-CHOICE.
They need the pro-life votes, but they have NO INTENTION OF EVER allowing a pro-life majority to get on that court, which is why Reagan appointed O'Connor and Kennedy - both pro-choice, and why Bush 41 appointed Souter (and tried to appoint Ginsburg): both pro-choice, and why W appointed the Chief Justice (who is treacherous) and tried to appoint Harriet Miers.
Democrat Presidents appoint justices and judges they know damned well are pro-Roe absolutists, and Democrats re NEVER disappointed by their judges. You never see the Democrats SURPRISED by a Kelo, or by a ruling on anything important to Democrats, because Democrat Presidents and their judicial appointment officials exhaustively examine and test the ideological purity of their judges.
Republicans do too, and overturning Roe is NOT part of the Republican litmus test. It CoULD be. I think with Trump it actually IS, which is yet one more reason why the owners of the GOP - the country club set - the Rockefellers and Bushes and Romneys, etc., really detest Trump.
This is why I get on Republicans so hard: the party is not HONEST in what it campaigns on. If it were, they could have VERY EASILY tested potential judicial nominees as harshly on matters of abortion as they do on matters of private contract and regulatory powers, and Republican judges could be just as reliable on matters of Roe as Democrat judges are. But Republicans don't, because the leaders of the Republican party are pro-choice, and don't WANT an ACTUAL pro-life majority on the Supreme Court. They want to get the votes from the Christians by always dangling the carrot, but they have no intention of EVER putting the crucial 5th vote up there, and they want guys up there like John Roberts who, in a pinch, will change sides to preserve the policy they want to keep.
Obamacare is an example of a policy that the Republican Party wanted to campaign against to get votes, but did not really want to kill. All of that mandatory purchasing channeled billions of private money into financial institutions under their control. And so, when it came before the Supreme Court, John Roberts changed sides. And when it came before the Congress, dying Senator McCain took the bullet and prevented it from being struck down.
The Republican pattern is so utterly consistent that, as the years go on, people should be able to see it, especially when contrasted to the Democrats, who ALWAYS stick to their guns and who NEVER betray their principles on core matters.
There is stuff you said Trump would never do. Like welfare stuff. Well Trump agrees with my position more that your s on leeches stealing from the system. Welfare. So if Trump is the model he is more like me that you. So by your logic the country is moving more in my direction that yours.
That's true.
But the most important thing, to me, about Trump has always been peace and friendship with Russia, tariffs on China, and controlling the Mexican Border.
China has to be stopped from walking into the position of world hegemon through economic denomination, because the whole world is greedy and afraid to face them alone. The US had to lead that charge, it had to be with tariffs, and Trump had done that.
Trump made Mexico put the detention camps there and pay for them, lest they lost NAFTA. And the Wall is going up.
Most importantly, Trump is working with Russia, as we see in Syria, and will see in the course of time with Iran. Good relations with Russia and economic measures that stop the rise of China mean that we don't need the huge military we have, over time we can significantly reduce it, which means a balanced budget then a budget surplus, which means economic stability and improvement in the USA in the long run.
So, these foreign affairs issues are ultimate the most important things for the long term future of the country. And Trump has all of these issues right.
Domestically, he has applied a litmus test on abortion (or appears to have).
I'm pleased as punch with Trump for all of those reasons.
I didn't vote for Reagan ever. I wasn't old enough. If you want to bash me on this issue do it for voting for Perot.
I voted for Reagan, always denouncing his voodoo economics and free trade as debt-producing, industry-destroying stupidity. I now know it was not stupidly. Reagan, like all Republicans, actively dismantled the American broad middle class economy in order to concentrate wealth in the hands of the top Republican business class. At the time, I thought he was a boob. Now I realize that he was an asshole on those matters, as are all Republicans except Trump. That's why Trump has launched a trade war with China, and punishes companies who try to move manufacturing outside of America.
Despite Reaganomics, I voted for Reagan because foreign policy is more important than the domestic economy. Reagan was fighting the Cold War, and the Democrats were spineless wimps, cringing in the face of Vietnam a few years earlier, cringing in the face of Cuban aggression, Russians in Afghanistan, Iranian students.
Reagan kicked their asses and built a strong military to hem in and ultimately destroy the Soviet Union, and when he had them on the ropes, he made peace with them too. He was a great grand strategist, and that earned my vote.
Bush lost my vote because he lied about taxes - even though I thought the tax hikes were actually necessary to prevent the debt from burgeoning. It isn't enough that you do what is necessary. If you lie to my face to get power, you're shit on my boots and I'm going to scrape you off. Bush lied to our faces, and thought that because he was President, he had the discretion to do whatever he wanted. Well, we could not stop him, but we DID throw him out of office on his ass - a one termer - the hallmark of a failed Presdidency.
I PROUDLY voted for Perot, because Bush was a skunk who raised taxes, but also because Perot was DEAD RIGHT about "free" trade and immigration. We finally got Perot with Trump.
With 20-20 hindsight, I recognize that voting for Perot meant Clinton won, and I am fine with that. Clinton was a crappy human, but he wasn't a terrible President - we did balance the budget.
I voted for Dole.
I voted for McCain against W in the primaries, but held my nose and voted for W in the first election, happily in the second because I support the War on Terror and am please to see how we've largely won it. Trump has even managed to enlist Russian support in keeping Syria peaceful and ending its terrorist tendences.
Obama wasn't a disaster in my eyes, those I voted against him both times.
The thing I appreciate about Democrats is that their taxation and economics are much better for the common man than Republican plutocracy. But their foreign policy and immigration policy are shite, so I vote for Republicans.
But when you get a Republican like Romney, who incorporates everything that is terrible about Republican economics, with everything that is terrible about Democrat foreign policy AND who is obviously pro-choice but says he's not - another H.W. Bush. He can stuff it.
Give us four more years of Trump, and let Trump start working on health care: we'll be in good shape.
After Vic has disposed of all those mean old white Christian right wingers, he'll be left alone with all his leftist, communist, atheist pals...and they will do what they always do...they will immediately kill him.
Actually, I'll be left with the Independent Centrists, like me. There are more of us than there are Republicans OR Democrats.
Catholics will be more heavily represented - though all of Christianity is in trouble.
I'm not "disposing" of anybody. The Christian Churches aren't dying because of ME. They're dying because the new generation doesn't believe in God, and the older generations don't trust them. Of note, the Catholic Church has broken itself with the mass rape of little boys and cover up, and the refusal to get rid of a rule that doesn't work anymore.
I wanted Border control, and if Trump holds out, we'll finally get it. But the damage done before it, and the birth rates, mean that Hispanic Catholics will grow in numbers. So no, the atheists will not be storming the ramparts. In truth, people are not all that atheist. They are discouraged and disgusted with their traditional organized Churches for very good reasons. Doesn't mean they're giving up on God.
I don't consider people who support Social Security, public schooling and Medicare to be leftists. I consider people who think they are to be right- wing nutjobs...usually who are THEMSELVES dependent on these programs they hate. They can't be silenced, so you just have to turn out to vote down their stubborn, stupid ideas as always. This is the same wing of American politics they tried to keep America out of World War II. Dumb.
But I recognize that there are 1.5 million poor babies aborted every year. Outlaw abortion, as I would do, and you must simultaneously be prepared to MASSIVELY expand welfare rolls by about 1.5 million a year, year after year. Because if you don't have abortion, you're going to have all of those poor babies. And we cannot (and will not) let them starve.
Because I recognize that expanded social welfare is joined at the hip with the abortion issue, and that the two cannot be separated, I speak of them together. They are cars on the same cable.
And I notice that conservative Republicans are never mature enough or rational enough to see the obvious truth of that, and to bite the bullet. They want to outlaw abortion AND cut social welfare, which is wildly unrealistic nonsense that sensible people will never let happen, because it will obviously lead to mass starvation.
I already don't see Republicans as really being pro-life, for the reasons I've stated before, but even the pro-life right I don't see as REALISTICALLY being pro-life, because they live in a fantasy world in which outlawing abortion doesn't mean an explosion of the numbers of poor. Of course it does!
And the unwillingness to acknowledge that the poor have to be fed, housed, clothed, educated and medically treated is simply unrealism, and un- Christian, as far as I am concerned.
Given that He Exists (or He Lives), he is powers of powers, leader of leaders, the power, the great, the courageous and the feared one, he will not lift up face and he will not take bribe.
I'm not sure the Vicomte bible will be a big seller. Kind of lacks literary style, not punchy enough. And no poetic meter or vivid imagery.
I'm not trying to be overly critical. It's just a bit flat in reading it. Some capitalization would help. I would probably have used Almighty for EL but that is kinda nitpicking.
I'm doubt that's the worst translation around - for that look at the paraphrase bibles - but it isn't memorable or especially accurate, at least in my understanding.
A great translation teaches something and says it in a memorable way. I think that is a prime measure of the merits of a translation of scripture. I'm sure you see my point.
Returning to where this began, I'm not sure you could use this ensample (example in modern terms) of names of God to translate word-for-word the entire Old Testament. Other passages would get very very ragged, I think.
That's the problem with formal equivalence translations. Especially when dealing with a collection of OT books written in multiple languages (Hebrew, Koine Greek) spanning 500 years or more.
I'm not complaining, I could do no better. And, of course, we haven't even begun to deal with all the other names for God, gods of foreign nations, etc.
If a translation method cannot deal with all the names given for God in a book of various scriptures, that translation method doesn't have a lot of merit IMO.
I thought you might enjoy observing the development of English translations over time. Too bad I don't have a ready source for Tyndale's bible, the real granddaddy of English vernaculars. But the Bishop's is close enough. The Geneva uses most of the same renderings which were familiar to English readers from the Bishop's and the Tyndale. And the KJV borrowed many of the same readings, often infusing them with more literary style as well as some poetic meter which aided memorization greatly. There's a reason that no one memorizes and quotes bible verses from the modern bibles. They have no meter unless they're just stealing readings from the older Tyndale-based bibles. So they can fuss all they want over basing modern translations on the supposedly superior Nestle-Aland Greek text (based on Vaticanus/Sinaiticus) instead of the Textus Receptus. But if they just steal the old familiar readings from the KJV, then what good are their supposed superior underlying Greek manuscripts? It's just a scam to sell new copyrighted bibles like NIV. Don't get me started on just how scammy these modern bible companies are and how greedy. It's a truly dismal story.
I did like seeing the Orthodox Jewish Bible though. I might have to examine it more fully in other passages. It might be considerably more accurate and give a better sense of the original text to English readers. In translation, some things just can't be properly translated and you have to see a near-representation to read it. And the OJB is a bit punchy in style and might even be suitable to memorize. It has a certain punchiness to it. Believe it or not but punchiness, style and meter are vital attributes in scripture translations. : )
BTW, if you were serious about machine translation, the public-domain software for the Babylon dictionary/translation project has been crafted into a proprietary software called Babylon. About $130, Mac or PC. That is the kind of software that could do the sort of translation you have been talking about.
Using BibleGateway's Leningrad Codex, I fed Deuteronomy 10:17 to the online version of Babylon and got this:
That the LORD your God is the God of God, and the lords of God increase increase and terrible that no-bear and not take bribes.
Well, it's about what you expect from such translation software. I think you could impose more rules on the $130 version and really make it work much better but I haven't actually used Babylon in some years so I may be overestimating it a little. But just for using the free generic online version, that rendering isn't that bad. I think the Hebrew they're using as their dictionary is modern Israeli Masoretic, not a dictionary of ancient Hebrew. So you could probably do a lot better with the retail Babylon.
I'm not seeing this, Liberator. But I'm not seeing the church "dying", as Vic would describe it.
All three of us can be right; It's our respective observation and sense. Then also a matter of our expectation and on what metric we assess the current State of The Church.
By "Church," I would say, those who believe simply in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Vic maybe making his assessment based on his local or international RCC.
It's reasonable to expect our experience to be different.
What I see is this:
You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. Rev. 3:17
The Church is in this condition today...(I wish I were wrong, but I don't think I am)
I can concur with this assessment as an overall State of the Church and Jesus' own observation. But then again, hadn't Jesus warned of a flabby, "lukewarm" faith and Church? We are seeing that -- especially of "mega" and "show-biz" churches.
Faith and Salvation is going to come down to a "Mano-a-Mano" personal relationship with the Lord and growing the way we need to. That may mean leaving a particular church behind.
ACTUAL miracles of healing, the REAL thing. They do not happen, but by the power of God.
People will see what they want to see and perceive ANY supernatural act as "an act of God." That's the problem.
Jesus asked the same question: "Can Satan cast out Satan?"
Good point. But then again as watchman has noted and inferred -- there are weak churches, with those of weak faith, who think they are amply "armed." They can and will easily be duped by anti-Christ or false messiah who will wield demonic power, capable of great deception.
Some Churches may be growing at the margins, while Christianity as a whole shrinks. BUT does that even matter?
YES. EVERY saved soul always matters, doesn't it? THAT person may save other souls. And so forth.
A few more people here or there believe in something. Is the poverty being attacked and reduced? Is the distress weakening?
Whom do you think has been preventing this evil world from caving in upon itself? The moral, the wise, the Godly. Moreover, this fallen mortal realm was never intended to be Heaven, Vic. You're giving way too much weight to "poverty" as the primary dilemma for man -- Salvation is. Scripture itself tells us the poor will ALWAYS be with us.
If anybody has actually been helping the poor, it's been Christian charity. That said, it is NOT up to government to confiscate wealth and re-distribute it. That my friend is called, THEFT.
"Distress" you say? NEVER in history has there been less "distress" among poor people. Who do you think in helping Africa fro starving to death?
It is accurate. That's the point. It precisely says what the words mean. And it does so consistently. It's flat and uninteresting, but there are no games played with "LORD" versus YHWH - two different words that mean different things.
Where the precision matters is only in certain places, such as where God explicitly tells Isaiah that he creates evil. This matches, of course, God's threats in other places, such as throughout his warnings given to Amos, and it matches the "Tree of knowledge of good and evil" - that word - Ra - but it contradicts a psalm that says God does not do evil.
Similarly that word "Kill", as in "You shall not kill". The efforts to turn that word into "murder", thereby allowing killing by authorities to do things people like - or killing in war. Translators decide that in most places "ratsaq" is "kill", but in others, it's murder.
Nope. One word. God creates evil, that is very clear. God made everything. And God commanded men not to kill, and only generally authorized men to shed men's blood in payment for the shedding of blood.
Then, in Israel (only) God imposed the death penalty for various offenses, including Sabbath breaking, but these are not laws for the whole world, just for Israel under the covenant of Sinai.
Those precisions are very precious when it comes to combatting theologies that have been devised to change the words to allow men to do what men want to do. Nowhere is it more important than in the notion that men can decide on laws, and then appoint some men to kill other men if they will not obey their laws. All of that killing done to enforce authority violates God's commandment against killing. There is no "law enforcement exception".
Paradoxically, then, charity is actually MANDATORY, but compliance with human law is what is voluntary. Men sin if they DON'T give to the poor - and they sin in a way that offends God to the point of sending those who don't into outer darkness - but men sin if they kill in enforcement of law, or in war to seize territory - there is no "government exception" to the law against killing - organized war is mass murder on an organized scale, and those who obey orders and kill are candidates for the lake of fire.
These two facts from the text, when translated mechanically and without changing the words around, are directly opposite what Christians teach themselves, and explain most of the evil that befalls the Christian world. We do not understand that we are COMMANDED to give or lend (at zero interest) our excess money to relieve poverty, but that we are FORBIDDEN from enforcing our civil laws with deadly force. That "charity" is compelled but that obedience to human law is voluntary is what God actually says - or the implication of it - and it is the diametric opposite of what humans want.
That is why, in Israel, they appointed a King - so they could wage war and the stronger could dominate the weak - and so they would not be dependent on God for defense and harvests.
Given just how offensive God's way really is to the Christian mind, of course any exacting translation will evoke rejection.
The Quakers - with their nonviolence and their insistence on unanimity before imposing any rule - are actually the only religion on earth that obeys God.
And that's why they're also the one that hasn't killed anybody - despite having existed in the 1600s, and the one that led to the abolition of slavery, equal rights for women, conscientious objection, the single price theory. BECAUSE they are God's people, in the sense that they're the only ones who ACTUALLY OBEY HIM on the most fundamental rule: NOBODY (including the King and the Army) is permitted by God to kill ANYBODY, except in direct self-defense against immediate violence.
I suppose the Jains of India are in the same place.
Anyway, the reason I don't bother to try to do anything comprehensive is that it would be oceans of work, to be ignored in general, and the fact the people ignore direct words of God carefully placed before them enrages me and makes me go nonlinear. And what good is that to me? Oceans of time wasted to be ignored or endlessly contradicted by ignoramuses who "like the old wine better"?
I have better things to do with my time. Judaeo-Christian religion is dying IN GENERAL. (The REASON it is dying is because it dwells endlessly on what individuals feel and want and social structures and rituals, and does not address the cardinal problems of humanity: poverty and violence - and that is because Christians have chosen to believe in a God who lets them do the POLAR OPPOSITE with regards to violence and charity from what the REAL God said to do. OF COURSE, therefore, Christianity will wilt and die: it's not real. It's not true.
Jesus is the Son of God, and he said to do certain things. God has a rule of violence that Christians ignore. God set up the world as an economic entity without scarcity, but the fall imposed scarcity, and that imposes HEAVY burdens on humanity. God set up his laws for Israel explicitly to ELIMINATE human suffering from want - but it comes at the heavy price (to men's egos) of there being NO king, NO legislature, and NO human authority at all in the formation of laws - just the execution of judicial judgment on those who break God's laws...without, even, discretion in the judges: God gave them the prescription judgments they must deliver. And God even gave the Urim and Thummim to consult him in those cases where the facts could not be determined.
Thus, in Israel there would be no scarcity, because all land and all produce and all people were accounted for under the laws of God, including who must be given to by whom in the event of misfortune. And there would be no abuse of law because men were completely stripped of their ability to make any law whatever. They could only execute the laws God set, without changing them. No place was left to human opinion, and there was, effectively, no source of human voluntary power in the system. Thus did God create a system that would lake poverty or abuse, by eliminating the human ego from the governance of men.
For once, Christians who want to use God's ISRAELITE law to go after, say, the gays, will be happy to proclaim "WE'RE NOT ISRAELITES!" and thus we CAN determine our laws, and enforce them as we place. Yes, except that the law against shedding blood was given to NOAH and his sons after the Flood, so that denial of the right to kill/inflict violence (except in defense or punishment of a violent attacker) is NOT the law of YHWH for Israel, but of Elohiym for the entire world. Sorry, Christians, you were ALWAYS WRONG when you executed anybody for heresy, homosexuality, apostasy, witchcraft or anything BUT killing.
I do the mechanical translation for the insights it gives me, and to have things to converse with God about, so that he can show me insights into how he has done things. When the hieroglyphs in which Genesis was originally carved are read, the revelation is mind blowing. Something simple like the word "El" - the first appearance of "God" - is an ox head picture, and the sound of it "EL" is the same picture (Eh, or Ah), and L - lamed - a shepherd's crook picture. So, the word "powers" or "mighty one" - the first "name" of God, is, phonetically spelled: Lord Shepherd.
The Lord is MY shepherd indeed!
People like what they like. I'm not going to change them. They're contentious. I've given up on trying to teach anybody anything from the Bible. If God wants to do that, he can. I delve into the words so I can talk to him about what he meant, what he wants of me.
Sharing these things with the world just gets me bruised, angry and sullen. So what's the point?
it is NOT up to government to confiscate wealth and re-distribute it. That my friend is called, THEFT.
God commanded that the people of the state he set up give 10% of their production, plus their first fruits harvest, plus their head toll (in total around 24% of their annual income) to the state he set up.
He commanded the state he set up to receive those imposts, and to use some of them to support the judges and administrators, and most of it to support the classes of the poor within the land.
And he commanded the judges of the state he set up to prosecute and punish those who did not pay their taxes.
He commanded every individual to pay what was owed over to his state, and also to lend their excess to their poor neighbors, if asked, without interest, and to drop any portion of that debt that was not repaid after seven years.
There was nothing voluntary about any of it, and it was entirely involuntary.
Jesus said that killers were consigned to the Lake of Fire at final judgment.
Who has to worry about that? Do murderers? What about people who order murder but don't commit it themselves? What about those who aid and abet murder? Does Paul have anything to worry about?
What about soldiers who kill? What about cops? What about people who kill an innocent by accident?
Yes. God delegates His authority to governments to put to death those guilty of crimes against the state.
Which thing I also did in Jerusalem: and many of the saints did I shut up in prison, having received authority from the chief priests; and when they were put to death, I gave my voice against them. Acts 26:10
Acts 26:10 is an example of Paul/Saul acting under authority to execute criminals.
Jesus said that killers were consigned to the Lake of Fire at final judgment.
The only people consigned to the Lake of Fire are those who reject Jesus Christ.
Who has to worry about that? Do murderers? What about people who order murder but don't commit it themselves? What about those who aid and abet murder? Does Paul have anything to worry about?
Murderers are to be tried by courts of the government and meet with whatever punishment set by that government. Same applies to aiding and abetting. The murderer can accept Christ while in route to execution and will receive eternal life in heaven.
What about soldiers who kill? What about cops? What about people who kill an innocent by accident?
Military and cops fall under the rules of the government. If their killing is justified they are merely instruments of the state upholding the law. If they kill unjustly, as we often read about here on the forum, then courts must decide their fates/punishment, etc.
Those who kill accidentally must also face certain judgments and make restitution as set forth by the government.
What about people who kill in self defense?
Allowed. If the delegated authority (government) allows it.
These two facts from the text, when translated mechanically and without changing the words around, are directly opposite what Christians teach themselves, and explain most of the evil that befalls the Christian world. We do not understand that we are COMMANDED to give or lend (at zero interest) our excess money to relieve poverty, but that we are FORBIDDEN from enforcing our civil laws with deadly force. That "charity" is compelled but that obedience to human law is voluntary is what God actually says - or the implication of it - and it is the diametric opposite of what humans want.
I think you take this farther than scripture. The bible is full of kings and magistrates using force. Because that is what it takes to stop bandits, scofflaws, and criminal elements.
It's very hard to believe that ancient Israel just suggested that people should follow their laws. They used force to keep the criminal element down. Look at how they dealt with their enemies, over and over. They were not shy about using violence to enforce the civil order, conquer the land, etc.
And Israel under Rome in the time of Jesus certainly did not lack enforcement by Roman troops nor did the governor or the Sanhedrin shy away from using them at will.
You prefer this as policy. That doesn't mean there was no law enforcement.
Without armed enforcement, there is no rule of law. Because people don't obey the laws otherwise. The Jews in particular had to fear lawlessness as a serious threat to them historically. Major cities had thousands of crucified criminals along the roads leading to them, generally with the cooperation of the Sanhedrin and Jewish civilians.
Thus, in Israel there would be no scarcity, because all land and all produce and all people were accounted for under the laws of God, including who must be given to by whom in the event of misfortune. And there would be no abuse of law because men were completely stripped of their ability to make any law whatever. They could only execute the laws God set, without changing them. No place was left to human opinion, and there was, effectively, no source of human voluntary power in the system. Thus did God create a system that would lake poverty or abuse, by eliminating the human ego from the governance of men.
The poor in modern Western countries have more opportunity and more actual wealth than most ancient kings. The bible does not give much sympathy to those who refuse to help themselves or who refuse to work at all and prefer to spend their days drinking and doing drugs and leading immoral lives.
So before you tell us all to sell all that we have to give to the poor, can you tell us finally just what "poor" means? What income level does that mean? Do we have to give them all houses and cars? Because we do do that with most of them. We scour the world and bring millions more poor people here and give them a lot of stuff too.
If we can be faulted, it is that we neglect the native citizens in favor of constantly importing hordes of foreigners, something the Bible never commanded Israel to do.
