Christians: Do you think it's appropiate to teach...

What do you think about the world?
Rekaar.
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Post by Rekaar. »

We can verify things that exist in this world and can't verify things that don't. Apples and oranges. I think he's explaining the translation. Makes sense.

Personally I take the Bible as inspired stories and metphors to explain the human condition. Literal or not, it is the best self-help guide on the market.
Time makes more converts than reason. - Thomas Paine
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Adex_Xeda
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Post by Adex_Xeda »

As far as your dragon mentionings. Yet again the KJV Scribes choose an english word that means something else today than it did when they wrote it.

The Old Testement uses the hebrew root word "tanin" which is found in the following spots.

Deut. 32:33
Neh. 2:13
Job 30:29
Ps. 44:19; 74:13; 91:13; 148:7
Is.13:22; 27:1; 34:13; 35:7; 43:20; 51:9
Jer.9:11; 10:22; 14:6; 49:33; 51:34; 51:37
Ezek.29:3
Mic.1:8
Mal.1:3

The word dragon was a much more general term in the past than it is today. A dragon could be a squid, a whale, a shark, an iguanna, large snake, or scavenging animals like a jackal.

Here's some verses using that same hebrew root:

Deuteronomy 32
33 Their wine is the venom of serpents,
the deadly poison of cobras.

Nehemiah 2
13 By night I went out through the Valley Gate toward the Serpent Well and the Dung Gate, examining the walls of Jerusalem, which had been broken down, and its gates, which had been destroyed by fire.

Job 30
29 I have become a brother of jackals,
a companion of owls.

Here the root is used as a description of a Egyptian king:

Ezekiel 29
3 Speak to him and say: 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says:
" 'I am against you, Pharaoh king of Egypt,
you great monster lying among your streams.
You say, "The Nile is mine;
I made it for myself."

Again, dragon today has a tighter definition than it did in the past. The KJV guys were assuming a much broader meaning than we do today.


There are references to a dragon (Greek "drakon") in the New Testament, but it's a direct labeling of Satan rather than some monster running around.

Rev.12:3,4,7,9,13,16,17; Rev.13:2,4,11; Rev.16:13; Rev.20:2



Every time something seems a little wacky in the bible, some digging into the root words and consideration of the language transitions always reveals a practical explanation.
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Post by Adex_Xeda »

Aaeamdar wrote:Two funny things.

1. Homosexual (a very modern word relative to the Bible) means homosexual, no matter what the word from which it was translated actually means. But as for all these funny creatures, we'll go back and check what the original word might have meant instead. So the "word of God" is up for interpretation as to mythical creatures, but not as to "homosexual." Got it.

2. Christians find the idea of an all-powerful all-knowing invisible man in the sky perfectly reasonable; they also find demons and devils that exist in a fiery netherrealm perfectly reasonable. But find unicorns, cockatri, dragons, satyrs and possible other creatures of mythology implausible and will take the time and effort to explain away references to such creatures in their holy book.
Aaeamdar we sadly live in a world with a variety of languages. When you start moving content back forth between languages you obviously are going to come into translation issues.

I think it is perfectly fair game to look up the root hebrew and greek words that were translated as homosexual. Look at the base languages and see if they are consistant with the english translations. The bible is a solid work. A little research only ends up enlightening the reader.

To your second point I must say that christains experience personal contact with God. That clearly separates God from the world of fantasy. God is not real because he's talked about in a book. He's real because he steps in our life and takes a loving, communicative and active role. Satan on the other hand actively avoids direct showings of himself. He's staked everything he's got into convincing us that he doesn't exist. If ever he were to directy manifest himself, he'd destroy his most poweful construction, doubt of God's existance.
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archeiron
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Post by archeiron »

Adex_Xeda wrote:Every time something seems a little wacky in the bible, some digging into the root words and consideration of the language transitions always reveals a practical explanation.
Thank you, Adex. Now, let me quote the last paragraph of my last message.
Archeiron wrote:Before you tell me that these are all metaphors, I would caution you that I used these references originally as a retort to the comments about taking the Bible literally. These are not a comprehensive list of references, but all I was willing to find for you tonight. I am sure that it would be easy to dig up this same number again, at the very least. Once again, refer to my first comment that this is in response to people taking the Bible literally, so any arguments that these are all metaphors is not valid.
As an academic excercise, I enjoy the possibility that the original words actually refered to real animals and have been translated badly. The very notion that the Bible is a poorly translated version of a poor translated version of a two thousand year old text is seemingly beyond the people that interpret the Bible literally.

I would caution you that while I can see the plausible intrepretations of certain words that you should acknowledge that people in 0 A.D. were incredibly superstitiuous and ignorant by anything remotely resembling modern standards. It is not unreasonable to assume that even the authors of New Testament text would have believed in vast amounts of absolute nonsense while at the same time having next to zero understanding of the natural world, mathematics (pre-Algerbra even), etc.
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Adex_Xeda
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Post by Adex_Xeda »

Yea, I'll agree that if Mr. 60AD saw a blue whale breach while he was fishing he might write in his journal that he saw a dragon.
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Post by Rivera Bladestrike »

Adex_Xeda wrote:To your second point I must say that christains experience personal contact with God. That clearly separates God from the world of fantasy. God is not real because he's talked about in a book. He's real because he steps in our life and takes a loving, communicative and active role. Satan on the other hand actively avoids direct showings of himself. He's staked everything he's got into convincing us that he doesn't exist. If ever he were to directy manifest himself, he'd destroy his most poweful construction, doubt of God's existance.
The bible writers were smart enough to put a paradox to bullshit people into not daring to lose faith. Feeling contact with god is nothing more than having been conditioned through life to believe in God and surrounded by people who are conditioned to believe in God. Every person prays and every person mentions how they do the christian way. Conditioned to the point where the thought of not going to church or not having a child baptized is unbelievable. Its called propaganda, teach something often enough and strong enough and no matter how unbelievable it is, people will eventually believe it... Christianity has had 2000 years of experience and has perfected it.

To someone who was never conditioned, or poorly condition, when they hit the age of reason they quickly turned around and said, "wow, what a waste of time, this religion is completely illogical and just a drain on time and money." Its just an elaborate 2000 year old trick thats worked the best of all time and has made more money than any other trick, and killed more people than any other trick.

The only reason the Christian religion came to be is because they had the right target audience -- poor people. Poor people with no hope, slaves, goat herders, etc. They told them not to worry about the terrible existance they had, if they were good, they'd get to go to a great place and be with a loving god. Other religions in the Roman Empire gave little hope and this is what really came to for Christians. With greater technology of travel and larger populations springing up throughout Europe and the middle east, the spread of Christianity was inevitable. Next, the "mob" feel forced everyone to join, in order to be apart of the group. Then of course the Pope emerges as a leader, and so on.

I wonder if they said that God had a daughter if anyone in that time would believe it...
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Post by Adex_Xeda »

Is it a possiblity that I'm suffering from a mind trick? Yes it is a possiblity.

It is also possible that what I say is true. If you were able to weigh the personal experiences of my life. I'm sure you'd come see how the latter possiblity shines brightly with assurance.

When God decides to stir your heart, he hits you like a ton of bricks. It is at that moment that you experience the undeniable.
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Post by Sylvos »

You should really refer to the devil as Lucifer since that is his proper name, Satan, Beezelbub, Yurikaezaema, Bael, Mordath, Bazalmon, etc....are all monikers attached to his original name to give him a more frightful image in peoples mind because that referred to him as an ancient evil of other cultures' beliefs. Christian history is trixy that way, like hobbits.
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Post by Rivera Bladestrike »

Its like Aliens, Loch Ness, Big Foot... all are obviously not real, but guess what, theres a ton of people who believe in them, because they WANT to believe in them, regardless of any evidence that points otherwise. They constantly put out new questions to prove to themselves that they aren't wrong. But don't think I'm only attacking Christianity here, its every religion thats equally ridiculous.
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Jice Virago
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Post by Jice Virago »

Sylvos wrote:You should really refer to the devil as Lucifer since that is his proper name, Satan, Beezelbub, Yurikaezaema, Bael, Mordath, Bazalmon, etc....are all monikers attached to his original name to give him a more frightful image in peoples mind because that referred to him as an ancient evil of other cultures' beliefs. Christian history is trixy that way, like hobbits.
There is actually a whole section of the bible that got chopped out that had lots of details on the conflict in heaven that predated creation. I think it was the Catholics that axed it, but others followed suit. The information has kind of crept back out there, but its not in the bible. A lot of this section was the inspiration for Dante's works. If I remember correctly, the prevailing belief at the time was that knowing the names of the fallen angels and demons (and there is a distinction between the two) would endanger the souls of common folk. But, I could be off on that as I am typing from work and can't recall it exactly.

Anyhow, the "devil's" propper name was Lucifer Morningstar. The serpent in the Garden of Eden was also, contrary to popular misconception, not the devil, but rather a demon in service to him. This work has a lot of interesting stuff, like how it was not really God who tossed Lucifer out but rather the combined might of the other Archanges who booted him and his followers out. The whole Lilith myth is in there too. It is an interesting read, if anyone is really curious enough to go looking for that information.

Also it is interesting to note that there is an entire satanic sort of church/faith called the Church of the Lightbringer (Lucifer is sometimes as referred to as The Lightbringer) who reguard Lucifer as sort of a biblical Prometheus. In their perception, he was an enemy of God because of his efforts to have all beings regarded as equals and enlightening mankind (via the tree of knowledge), which were contrary to God's wishes of having obediant sheep as followers. This just goes to show you that these things can be interpreted just about any way you want.
Last edited by Jice Virago on October 28, 2004, 1:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Short of changing human nature, therefore, the only way to achieve a practical, livable peace in a world of competing nations is to take the profit out of war.
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Akaran_D
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Post by Akaran_D »

Jice: can you site any sources to find that information?
That has been one of the things I've longed to know about and I am very, very intrested in reading if it's more than purposed theory.

(keep in mind that I beleive in that the Bible is fact, or a 'close accounting' of the Truth when you read my 'purposed theory' comment)
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Post by Jice Virago »

A lot of it is in old Hebrew texts, but I think you could just do a few searches on the names of the various Archangels and/or the expulsion from paradise to get some information. A lot of it was covered in a couple books I read when I was young, but I can't for the life of me remember the title's of those books. Maybe when I get home I can find some relavent links. The pre-Genesis section of the bible is not the only part that got chopped out of it either, incidentally, it just happens to be my favorite part (and the most interesting).
War is an option whose time has passed. Peace is the only option for the future. At present we occupy a treacherous no-man's-land between peace and war, a time of growing fear that our military might has expanded beyond our capacity to control it and our political differences widened beyond our ability to bridge them. . . .

Short of changing human nature, therefore, the only way to achieve a practical, livable peace in a world of competing nations is to take the profit out of war.
--RICHARD M. NIXON, "REAL PEACE" (1983)

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, represents, in the final analysis, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."

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Post by Marbus »

Akaran, I have copies of many of these at home but it's been a few years since I have read them. I'll try to find them tonight and get you the information.

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Post by Akaran_D »

Revelations has always been my favorite book.

Thanks guys. :)
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