Religion
Related: About this forumI find the nativity stories interesting and informative
It does not, of course, appear in the youngest gospel, called John. John, rather interestingly, disposes of the entire origins question briefly -- In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was G-d ... The Light shines on the darkness, and the darkness has never understood it -- but in a manner that clearly references the opening of the Tanahk: The earth was tohu vavohu ... And Elohim said, Let there be light: and there was light
Nor does it appear in the oldest gospel, often called Mark, though the actual title of the text is The Beginning of the Good News. Mark's untutored writing distressed the ancient teacher of rhetoric, Augustine of Hippo, and this text starts As written in the prophet Isaiah, See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight -- which is, in fact, not really a text from Isaiah, suggesting that the author is either not much of a scholar or is not eager to portray himself as one. The original Marcan text, moreover, seems not to include the resurrection story either but ends with the women fleeing the empty tomb in terror. So Mark would lead us from a discomforting voice from untamed regions to a discomforting case of a missing body -- as a description of the beginning
The book called Matthew, on the other hand, begins with a strange genealogy, which traces Joseph's line through Tamar (who disguised herself as a prostitute to have sex with Judah), Rahab (who was apparently a prostitute), Ruth (a foreigner) and the wife of Uriah (sent by David to die in battle so David might take his wife), before telling us that Joseph learned his fiancee was pregnant without his help, a difficulty resolved for Joseph by a dream. After the birth of the child, stargazers pass through the King's court, looking for a newborn king, and when the King does not see them on their return, he flies into a rage and orders a massacre, from which the child and parents flee for their lives
In Luke, the genealogy is postponed, and the handful of women mentioned in Matthew are omitted. Luke begins instead with the conception of John (later called the Baptist) by Mary's cousin Elizabeth, followed by the conception of Jesus, at which point Mary visits Elizabeth. Luke says Mary was engaged to Joseph and was pregnant: she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. Celestial messengers appear to shepherds in the hills, who are initially terrified but then visit the newborn
These stories do not celebrate the established and the respectable. King David's line is riddled with prostitutes and adultery. The priest Zechariah is not portrayed as a hero. The star-gazers are simply idiotic about the behavior of kings. Anxiety and outcasts run throughout these stories of beginnings. Early in John, the Baptist discomforts the Pharisees, and then Jesus discomforts the disciples of John; in Mark, John discomforts the whole of Judaea; in Matthew, Mary's pregnancy discomforts Joseph, the stargazers discomfort Herod, Herod discomforts the entire region, and the parents and child become refugees; in Luke, Elizabeth's pregnancy discomforts Zechariah, Mary's own pregnancy discomforts Mary, when she is forced to give birth in a stable, and the celestial messengers discomfort the shepherds. The Baptist is a strangely dressed man who eats insects; Mary, a woman pregnant out of wedlock; Joseph, a man who must naturally suspect he has been cuckolded; Elizabeth, a woman shamed for never giving birth; the star-gazers, foreigners; and the shepherds, simple people of no account
rug
(82,333 posts)Very interesting.
Yorktown
(2,884 posts)Baby Jesus had no dad, but the Bible insists on a family tree through Joseph.
The lulz..
rug
(82,333 posts)Real or not, what was the purpose of unsavory ancestors?
Oh, I know why you won't stop rolling on the floor. You're not here to discuss religion at all.
Yorktown
(2,884 posts)You refuse to address the key issues, you just obfuscate about the way things are said.
Was Moses' pharaoh Ramses II?
How can Jesus have the family tree of Joseph who was not his father?
When did Abraham live? 2000BCE? First mention of an Israel in 1200BCE. 800 lost years?
Muslims are more 'serious': they try to give dates:
struggle4progress
(118,338 posts)while Luke says "Jesus ... was the son (as was thought) of Joseph"
Both indicate Jesus was not Joseph's biological son
The question is then, Why the expositions of Joseph's ancestry?
edhopper
(33,615 posts)After all it was only the father's line that counted, and Jesus had to descend from David, so...
Far from the only contradictions in the Bible.
struggle4progress
(118,338 posts)Perhaps the biggest issue would have been whether the child was legitimate or not -- and yet the stories invite speculation on exactly that question
edhopper
(33,615 posts)the prophecy that the Messiah would be from David's line is important.
Hence the screwy lineage.
Yorktown
(2,884 posts)Modern scholarship tends to see the genealogies of Jesus as theological constructs rather than factual history
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genealogy_of_Jesus#Explanations_for_divergence
struggle4progress
(118,338 posts)Yorktown
(2,884 posts)What else?
struggle4progress
(118,338 posts)Presumably the authors have some motives for the statements they include
Yorktown
(2,884 posts)Not anything of much importance to us today.
struggle4progress
(118,338 posts)about religion in general or (say) Christianity in particular. Marx and Engels, Kautsky, and Ernst Bloch all made interesting comments IMO; so did the atheist theologian Alhiser. On the other hand, if really you aren't very interested, why not spend your time on something that DOES interest you?
Yorktown
(2,884 posts)So it interests me to try to see what are the believers' lines of defense of religion.
I enjoyed seeing how the few who tried here defended Moses:
- hrmjustin would just say he 'took it on faith' wholesale.
- today, rug says Moses must have been a Hebrew chieftain (likely),
but not making any effort to justify Hebrews enslaved in Egypt (no exodus)
Your present focus on the lineage of Joseph is intriguing:
- the names 1 to 11 are mythological
- 12 to 30 somewhat historical
- 31 to 40 a made-up patchwork to fit to 30?
What does it teach us of interest
(beyond some record of the names 12 to 30?)
1-5 Abraham Isaac Jacob Judah & Tamar Perez
6-10 Hezron Ram Amminadab Nahshon Salmon & Rahab
11-15 Boaz & Ruth Obed Jesse David & Bathsheba Solomon & Naamah
16-20 Rehoboam Abijam Asa Jehosaphat Jehoram
21-25 Uzziah Jotham Ahaz Hezekiah Manasseh
26-30 Amon Josiah Jeconiah Shealtiel Zerubbabel
31-35 Abiud Eliakim Azor Zadok Achim
36-40 Eliud Eleazar Matthan Jacob Joseph & Mary *
Jesus
Igel
(35,356 posts)An old chronology was more common in the 1800s.
A more recent chronology is the one you allude to, with David around 1000 BC.
Neither were monolithic; the old chronology had some variation by theological or Bible historian, as does the younger chronology.
Yorktown
(2,884 posts)All I'm asking is an agreement of believers on dates.
struggle4progress
(118,338 posts)I will point to a baby born in a stable and a young family fleeing for their lives, to the teaching that humans are made in the divine image and that we should love our neighbors as we love ourselves, and to a man crucified by the powers-that-be for teaching that. If you then say, But you can't even agree on the dates! perhaps I will simply conclude that we are talking past one another
Yorktown
(2,884 posts) a young family fleeing for their lives: made-up story, can you seriously imagine a governor asking for all baby boys to be killed? The general insurrection, the riots? Nonsense.
a baby born in a stable: unlikely, but anyway, what's the message?
the teaching that humans are made in the divine image: that's magic belief of ancient populations: a universal desire to find reassurance in a xausality to unexplained things.
and that we should love our neighbors as we love ourselves: the golden rule, put forth earlier in ancient Greece, Egypt, India, China. In China, without a god (Confucius).
and to a man crucified by the powers-that-be for teaching that. No. And you know it. IF we accept the NT account as remotely accurate (a big if), then Jesus was crucified for endangering the power of the Jewish priests. Politics, power and money far more than philosophy.
All in all, tell me why you believe,
because the reasons above wouldn't in and of themselves convince anyone.
Then I can help you see the light.
Come to the atheist dark side of the Force, s4p, we have cookies.
struggle4progress
(118,338 posts)Updated May 23, 201211:36 AM ET
Published July 30, 20119:00 AM ET
COBURN DUKEHART
Toni Greaves: Women in rural Nepal typically give birth in the family cow shed ... Maheshwori gave birth to her first child, at age 16, in the family cow shed. The birth took three days, as the baby was breech, and she almost died ...
Yorktown
(2,884 posts)I wrote 'unlikely', not 'impossible'.
But it followed my inital statement of doubt on the whole story:
which political power would ask for the death of all newborns and not see a mass insurrection?
struggle4progress
(118,338 posts)by KEIR SIMMONS, YUKA TACHIBANA and AMMAR CHEIKH OMAR
DEC 30 2014, 5:19 PM ET
Nine-year-old Hussein was playing outside his home in Aleppo six weeks ago when an incoming shell struck a neighboring home ... Hassan, his father, desperately wants to move the family to the safety of neighboring Turkey ...
Yorktown
(2,884 posts)Not even ISIS would kill all newborns, they'd sell them as slaves.
Cite me a ruler in history targeting the newborns and the newborns only.
Impossible: the population would riot.
struggle4progress
(118,338 posts)By NED BLACKHAWK
NOV. 27, 2014
On Nov. 29, 1864 ... Col. John Chivington led some 700 cavalry troops in an unprovoked attack on peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho villagers at Sand Creek in Colorado. They murdered nearly 200 women, children and older men ... Pregnant women were murdered and scalped, genitalia were paraded as trophies, and scores of wanton acts of violence characterize the accounts of the few Army officers who dared to report them ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/28/opinion/remember-the-sand-creek-massacre.html?_r=0
Yorktown
(2,884 posts)The story of the NT about the killing of the innocents is stupid because it is impossible.
Never has there been a statewide mass massacre of newborns. Never.
That's one of the most obvious idiocies of the NT.
struggle4progress
(118,338 posts)The Germans and their collaborators killed as many as 1.5 million children. This number included over a million Jewish children and tens of thousands of Romani (Gypsy) children, German children with physical and mental disabilities living in institutions, Polish children, and children residing in the occupied Soviet Union. Some Jewish and some non-Jewish adolescents (13-18 years old) had a greater chance of survival, as they could be used for forced labor ...
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005142
Yorktown
(2,884 posts)and expected the parents and relatives not to riot?
struggle4progress
(118,338 posts)BY BEENISH AHMED
OCT 14, 2015 3:51 PM
Ali Mohammad al-Nimr was 17 years old when he was arrested by Saudi Arabian authorities for his participation in Arab Spring protests led by the kingdoms Shia minority in 2011. Three years into his imprisonment, courts have sentenced him to be beheaded and have his corpse publicly displayed ... I feel that ones very being is repelled at such a ruling, al-Nimrs mother, Nusra al-Ahmed, told the Guardian. Its backwards in the extreme. No sane and normal human being would rule against a child of 17 years old using such a sentence. And why? He didnt shed any blood, he didnt steal any property. Where did they get it <this sentence>? From the dark ages? She believes that Saudi courts sentenced her son to death due to her familys faith and activism. Al-Nimrs uncle, a prominent Shia cleric and political dissident, was sentenced to death by courts in the Sunni-majority state last October ...
Yorktown
(2,884 posts)AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)Yay, bronze age misogynistic patriarchal superstitious bullshit.
The 'virgin birth' is supposed to circumvent original sin being passed down. Go figure the stupid shit these people came up with.
JackInGreen
(2,975 posts)Interesting that the three pagans who showed are always so underplayed.
struggle4progress
(118,338 posts)being later innovations. It is clear from the story that they are what we might today call astrologers
And what is their role in the story? Despite their star-knowledge, they know nothing about the local politics but go straight to Herod and unwittingly alert him. Perhaps they are not so wise, after all
The ancient Tertullian, however, has a different reading and wants to understand the story as follows: The interpreters of the stars, then, were the first to announce Christs birth, the first to present Him gifts ... But, however, that science has been allowed until the Gospel, in order that after Christs birth no one should thenceforward interpret any ones nativity by the heaven ... What, then? The dream .. suggested to the same Magi, namely, that they should go home, but by another way, not that by which they came. It means this: that they should not walk in their ancient path. Thus it is the view of Tertullian that the story teaches at least the abandonment of astrology; and perhaps he means much more than simply astrology