The Faith & Religion mega Thread

Originally Posted by business_kid I suppose I am, and I apologise if I sound bad. I can't speak plainly on a public forum without offending some folks more than I already have, so I'll reply by PM.

Just FTR and speaking for myself, I don't have a problem with being shocked or offended. That's often a good sign (tends to keep us from mental ossification) as long as that wasn't the entire intent and it certainly wasn't mine to you.

Originally Posted by business_kid ... Roman Empire wasn't Christianized (except in name), but Christianity was paganized. .....

I am always amazed at how many Christians do not understand that simple fact. The ceremonies taking place in the pagan temples as the emperor becoming Zeus (pontifex maximus, "maximum father") standing in place of God were/are essentially identical to the old Latin Mass. The vestal virgins became nuns. The 250 or so "demigods" were replaced with cannonized "saints". The staff, crown and keys of Janus. The smoking incense pots. The "head" was killed but came back to life.

I took two years of Koine Greek in college to better understand the New Testament. I came away with the sense that it is a collection of love letters, not a book of laws. 2 Tim 3:16 is a classic example of how easily people can wonder into the weeds. "All scripture is given by inspiration .." is how one camp interprets the Greek. "All scripture given by inspiration is..." is how the other camp interprets it. When I was in college one side had the support of Harvard's divinity school and the other had Yale's support. In the Greek both interpretations are valid, but both have completely opposite meanings. Sadly, each side accuses the other of heresy or apostasy. Or did. I haven't reviewed this matter in 40 years.

The practice for centuries in the Catholic church, and many protestant churches is to use sprinkling instead of immersion for baptism even though "baptidzo" was transliterated to "baptise", instead of its true meaning, to dip or immerse completely. It isn't good for dogma to have your source of authority say immersion when you've been practicing sprinkling. And, immersing newborns isn't a good idea, even if they could verbally repent, confess Jesus at their Lord and Master, and agree to be immersed.

IMO, most Christianity today is more of a social organization than a spiritual one.

Yes, you went further than I was prepared to because I didn't want to gore somebody's sacred cow. It's counter-productive doing that.

As for the Greek being love letters, no. In the main it's mini-biographies of the Messiah; Letters from Apostles to various congregations or individuals; and Revelation, which is a series of prophetic visions. Whereas there is a lot of love expressed, there is also very firm counsel, scriptural precedent, and prophecy.

People think that there's more in the original languages. There isn't really. There's more in having the Bible in your own language, Because when you hear or read the Bible in a foreign tongue, a mental exercise results as you translate it. If it's in the language of your heart, you can react emotionally.I think the Ethopian eunuch had it right Acts 8:30-31

As to the Greek, the little quote you gave is too short a piece of Greek to be definitive on. older languages had to be read in context. I have a knowledge of Latin, but each word has half a dozen meanings. An interesting case of this was the handwriting on the wall, which was probably Aramaic. Notice Daniel 5:7 where Belshazzar says: "Whoever reads this writing and…" . Reading the writing was a big issue.

One much more likely rendition of the Aramaic consonants for " Mene mene tekel parsin" was "Mina mina shekel half-shekel" because Aramaic was like Hebrew - only the consonants were written. Mina & shekel are money values. The king of Babylon hardly had money worries. But Daniel laid his faults bare.

What's the difference between theist and a firm belliever?

Welcome to LQ, mark707.

To your question: I would think Conviction. A firm believer might live it more, but theism can be very abstract. That survey is very abstract - I cannot spot the difference between Deist & Theist, for instance.

If you're voting (Not compulsory) put down whatever you're happy describing your beliefs as.

Thank you for your welcome, business_kid.

Indeed the presence of theist is what prompted me to ask. Since I regard my self as a deist but a bit spiritual at the same time.
Deciding on an appropriate label can be very tricky haha.

Somethings are open to interpretations^v<

Who says that the "Poet in Residence" at the local University could not come up with a very interesting computer project for me to be a part of? (Yes, I got a citation in the subsequently published paper ... woo hoo!)

The project concerned spelling variations in the published texts of Shakespearean sonnets. In the days before Webster, people spelled what they heard ... thus creating a permanent record of what they heard. If you knew where the book's printer was located, you knew how they talked ... there.

No, I wasn't the poor schlep graduate-student who had to type in all of those texts, but I did create software (in BASIC) to help do the analysis. And to this day I still have an unexpected "thank you" letter from the poet.

When we look at very old copies of these ancient texts, we also encounter examples of regional variations – not merely linguistic ones as in this case, but actual variations of content. When people began to "write down" the hitherto-oral-only traditions, we see that what they captured was not exactly the same.

Then, when scholars began to undertake to translate these texts – not only in the monumental King James project but both before and since – they were confronted with these variations and they had to choose. The various teams also wrote about their projects at the time, discussing the nature of the decisions that they had to make, and the decisions that they finally made.

And issues like these were confronted by scholars in every major religion, as well as those who were simply trying to create an early-history of a country or a people. Anytime you try to do something like this, you are very much flying in the darkness. To quote Mister Spock ... (sigh, Leonard Nimoy RIP) ... "Fascinating."

Originally Posted by business_kid ... As for the Greek being love letters, no. In the main it's mini-biographies of the Messiah; Letters from Apostles to various congregations or individuals; and Revelation, which is a series of prophetic visions. Whereas there is a lot of love expressed, there is also very firm counsel, scriptural precedent, and prophecy. People think that there's more in the original languages. There isn't really. ....

The language of the educated in the first century was Hellenistic Greek, also called Classical Greek. The NT was written in Koine Greek. For a long time biblical scholars used to believe that Koine Greek was "Holy Ghost" Greek because many of the words and idioms were not found in Classical Greek. Then archeologists dug up first century Egyptian graves containing lots of papyri on which were written business transactions, family letters, poems, and just about anything and everything common folks would write about. So, Koine Greek wasn't "Holy Ghost" Greek, it was Greek used by the common folks.

Greek itself is a very precise language and would be excellent for writing legal documents. Words have roots, stems, prefixes and suffixes. Many times they have more than one word to represent various kinds of similar meanings. Take our English word "love", for example. In Greek you can use Agape (spiritual love), Philia (brotherly love), Eros (sexual love), Storge (family love), Xenia (christmas gift love), and more. Add an "autia" suffix to philia and it becomes a word expressing self-love. But, the writers of the NT, inspired by the Spirit, did not choose to use legal constructs because being strictly obedient to a new set of laws does not conform to "my yoke is easy and my burden is light", and commandments like "love one another" (You can tell who my brothers are by their love one for another) are not there to be enforced by a cleric judiciary, as was done in the OT.
Indeed. Paul wrote "So don’t let anyone condemn you for what you eat or drink, or for not celebrating certain holy days or new moon ceremonies or Sabbaths."

The problem the Church has had for over 100 years is the insistence on using a translation written in a language which has been dead for 300+ years. The only time people have used "Thee, Thou, Thy, Thine, etc..." in the last 200 years is when they sang the lyrics to 18th century songs or while praying in church. Only the Mennonites use KJV language in everyday life because of the close ties their doctrines have with its version, but even they are beginning to move into the 21st century.

I keep several translations, including the Greek, on my smartphone in the form of a Parallel bible, aided with Strong's Hebrew-Greek Lexicon. I've been a Christian since Wed, March 8th, 1961 and am very familiar with both the OT and NT. The only time some interpretation surprises me is when a TV evangelist twists a scripture in some different way to squeeze more money out of the gullible. Jesus said to be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves, but a lot of people who profess to be Christians have that backward. More churches have been destroyed by internal squabbles than by attacks from the outside. You'd think that they never heard of Gal 5:22.

Your treatise on Greek didn't add to or inform anything I had said, unless I missed it.

On using old language, the introduction to the RSV listed several words still in use, but whose meaning had changed. The KJV u7ses 'let' in the sense of 'hinder,' 'allow' in the sense of 'approve,' prevent' in the sense of 'precede,' 'allow' in the sense of 'approve,' 'communicate' in the sense of 'share,' conversation' in the sense of 'conduct,' and many other examplesz are listed in the Preface as reasons to revise the KJV. The one thing it has on every translation is that, like Shakespeare's plays, people enjoy hearing it read. It doesn't matter what it says, as long as it's read well, which reminds me of the warning in 2 Tim 4:3-4

@sundialsvcs: The regional variations you speak of may have been because conventions were slow enough to form. Scribes were paid by the word, or in some cases the letter. I remember from my OCR days that there existed this crazy 's' in print, like the italic letter 'f' but without the cross piece. This was most regularly seen as the first of a pair, as in: "He pafsed from this life…"

Of course it completely threw the OCR, but that's another story.

Originally Posted by sundialsvcs …When we look at very old copies of these ancient texts, we also encounter examples of regional variations – not merely linguistic ones as in this case, but actual variations of content. When people began to "write down" the hitherto-oral-only traditions, we see that what they captured was not exactly the same. Then, when scholars began to undertake to translate these texts – not only in the monumental King James project but both before and since – they were confronted with these variations and they had to choose. The various teams also wrote about their projects at the time, discussing the nature of the decisions that they had to make, and the decisions that they finally made. And issues like these were confronted by scholars in every major religion, as well as those who were simply trying to create an early-history of a country or a people. Anytime you try to do something like this, you are very much flying in the darkness. To quote Mister Spock ... (sigh, Leonard Nimoy RIP) ... "Fascinating."

I'm taking issue with this. Right from the Law Covenant (Exodus and Deuteronomy) onwards, God told the ones having the revelation (Moses, then Joshua) to "write down" the information. Jeremiah, who apparently didn't write, used a secretary, Baruch. Even the small prophets wrote stuff (Habakkuk 2:2-3). How many times do you hear of 'the scribes and pharisees…'? Throughout, Jews could read aloud as Jesus did at the every synagogue, which all kept scrolls. Reading God's law was encouraged in Israel, and continued at Christian meetings. History was written later as you say, sure. Not scripture.

The first bits of the Koran were 60 years late, and 'Hadith' was never collected afaik; writings on Bhudda ≅400 years late. Oh, 'Hadith'the sayings of Muhammed and his close relatives, what he allowed, forbade or tacitly accepted without protest. That was never written at all, and forms most of the advice. Muhammed's daughter was viewed as a prophetess, and featured big in Hadith. Sharia Law is largely built on this (unwritten) hadith. What's worse, the versions of hadith held by Sunni & Shi'a Muslims have diverged.

Originally Posted by business_kid I remember from my OCR days that there existed this crazy 's' in print, like the italic letter 'f' but without the cross piece.

It's ſtill in Unicode, in caſe you can't reſiſt it!

The medial S is found in Chaucer's works, for example. I believe it distinguished between the 'sss' (ſ) sound and the 'zzz' (S) sound. Over the centuries the language has deteriorated drastically, so such subtleties were lost.

Seeing as we are on a tangent into English, I didn't want to know about, thank to David McCann. No keyboard had ít but I programmed it into my one. I'll experiment after restarting X.

Medial S, cynwulf? Whassat?

May I inform you guys, btw, that this is the 'Faith & Religion' (or lack thereof) thread. I'm despairing when I mention what I consider interesting spiritual points that might set cogs turning, and they are totally ignored. But people sieze on 'the interesting bits' of my post, and leap to their keyboards to talk about some loſt hiſtorical form of the letter S.

As to one being 's' and one being 'z', why does it happen that a double 's' was always as I wrote it, i.e. 'ſs'?

Originally Posted by business_kid @sundialsvcs: The regional variations you speak of may have been because conventions were slow enough to form. Scribes were paid by the word, or in some cases the letter. I remember from my OCR days that there existed this crazy 's' in print, like the italic letter 'f' but without the cross piece. This was most regularly seen as the first of a pair, as in: "He pafsed from this life…" Of course it completely threw the OCR, but that's another story.

The tangent seems be entirely your own doing.

Shall we move onto OCR next?

You referred to the medial S and got some responses.

I refer you to the "mote and the beam", in fact I always find myself referring Christians to that, in particular the smug evangelical, born again pulpit pounders (who also might like to use a technical forum as a platform). Of course they don't "see it"...

I also have to say that your leading paragraph in post 10090 displays oafish bad manners, in response to such a well thought out post from a new member. Very "unchristian" and uncharitable of you. You are not the conductor of this thread, nor is it your symphony.