The Dark Side Of Christian History, by Helen Ellerbe
Perhaps a better title for this book would be “The Selective And Biased Neo-Pagan And Gnostic History Of Christianity.” That way the reader would be warned that the author was a feminist and leftist whose own religious beliefs are somewhere between Gnostic and Neo-Paganism, with earth worship environmentalism, a devotion to the sacred feminine, and a total hostility to anything remotely approaching the belief or enforcement of biblical law. The author, a miserable excuse for anything remotely approaching a historian, takes what should be an easy softball of a question and manages a response that is so incoherent and self-contradictory that one wonders why anyone would think this book needs to be read by anyone.
It should not be difficult to write a book about the dark side of Christian history. The chapters on the Inquisition almost write themselves. However, despite the obviousness of writing a book against the problems of authoritarianism and mass murder, the book completely screws up by attempting to quote Gnostic gospels as Christian, showing an extremely selective use of sources to deny the manifest and obvious Christian influence on the United States (passing along secularist lies as if they were truth) and reveling in the paganism and nature worship of the heathen “Christians” of the Middle Ages. That the author apparently thinks of her work as important or useful is lamentable, the paper wasted on this book would have been spent better in coloring books or toilet paper.
Nonetheless, for the sake of completeness, the book itself is divided (with large amounts of paper spent on images and pictures) into chapters about the seeds of tyranny in biblical Christianity (which, apparently because they were hostile to anarchy and feminism, are unacceptable), the corrupt way in which false Christians made Christianity palatable to the Romans, the arbitrary way the false Christians of the Catholic Church made positions on sex, free will, reincarnation, and the use of force, the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, the Inquisition and Slavery (where the author misrepresents the position, the Reformation, the Witch Hunts, hostility to nature, and atheism.
The author appears hostile to any kind of order whatsoever, is enamored with nature worship, believes in a world where there is no control or domination or punishment at all, and does not appear to have the remotest clue about biblical punishments or biblical law. The hours it took for me to read this book are hours I want back. That’s a rare thing for me to say about a book–I was hoping for some insightful criticism against tyranny and ended up with a Wiccan Gnostic who is crying because Christianity doesn’t have a female deity and doesn’t celebrate the winter and summer solstices openly. Be forewarned: it’s not worth your time to read this book.
Edge Induced Cohesion 
To see where this goes I will take the side of Ellerbe to try and sort out a couple of matters. (The following comments and statement are not to be taken as my firm belief but rather seen as an argument in response.) First we have to make a point about the ignorance or immature status of the human mind as it is viewed in today’s world as still a concern in many areas of society. We must be able to agree that where there is superstition combined with fear (still prevelent in society today), a person (s) chances of making good decisions and choices are limited.
It is stated ,I believe in all judicial framworks that “ignorance of the law is not an excuse”.
This may be well for the litterate and the ones who have had ample opportunity to learn and understand the law completely. But for the many who have been in the past and even now in this world been oppressed, abused, confused, battered and beaten about without end, learning and understanding about the law would be a very difficult thing to accomplish wholey. Because of this abuse of the mind, body and the spirit of such people, of course there would exist a spirit of rebellion and contention stemming from feelings of tyrany from those in authority and lead to the intentional disrespect for authority but still leaving some to remain in fear and ignorant leading to superstition (which in itself superstition may be caused by a person trying to make up reasons for the behavior of those in authority and is ascociated with conspiracy theory). Conspiracy theory is warrned against in the Bible somewhere and I am sure that it says something like, ” never say conspiracy”.
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Ignorance of the law is no excuse. That is why writers (including historians as well as literary authors) as well as ministers, have the responsibility to be teachers of the law. That way one no is ignorant. And indeed, had the author made the argument about the difficulties of those being abused learning balance, that would have been an acceptable argument to make. I still would have found it lacking given her conclusions, but at least it would have been a genuine concern rather than a radical leftist agenda. And the solution would be–practice obedience, recognize that God is both a merciful and a just God who will punish abusers (see Matthew 18, for example) and avenge his people (see Psalm 10, 100, etc.). That would be the biblical answer; the author doesn’t appear to know the Bible. She just knows her own bogus left-wing ideology and heretical religious beliefs, choosing for herself which selective quotation she wants to make out of an esoteric and heretical gnostic text. That is not acceptable under any just biblical standard of historiography.
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Well, you certainly have passion I must say and this is a good thing as the world today suffers greatly from a generation without passion.
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That’s certainly the truth.
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I was thinking about your response to Ellerbe and many of your other personal takes on some things and have realized a very sad deal. A generation without passion such as many believe we are now involved in would fall for anything, as the saying goes, “if you don’t stand for something you will fall for everything”
This says to me that without passion, a person’s own identity fades into the mix and one distinct personality of the whole becomes prevelent. I would love to hear about your thoughts and impressions In the case of this modern day personality, the pitfalls and the perks if there are any perks to speak of. If you need a perspective, what would an alien visitor say about the people of this planet if it could be summed up under the present day conditions?
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A lot of the mood I get from looking around at others and conversing with them is that they are often fatalistic about the world, vaguely aware of some approaching doom, but apathetic in the sense of “let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die.” And so they debauch themselves every Friday night, get drunk and smoke and engage in promiscuous behavior, because they have no hope in anything lasting or enduring. I suppose if the aliens who saw us were wise they would say accurately that we are in an age of decadence, stumbling drunkenly towards our own destruction. I suppose they might wait to see what happens next, if they were the sort to have a sense of history.
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Some would argue that the world has always been in a state of decadence, and that there was never a time when the world was not in such a terrible state. They would argue also that people have been preaching impending doom and damnation since the beginning, and that with every age there is this same pattern. A nation rises up and falls, another nation rises up and falls, and on and on and on. Some would say that History has shown us one thing and that is that there “is” a recognizable pattern that could be explained as a collective nightmare. The “American dream” is just one present day example of how a collective dream can turn into a nightmare.
We must know by now (2011) that we cannot stop people from behaving the way some choose to regardless of how many laws we implement. There is only one law or rule. If the aliens had any “sense of history”, maybe they would look and say, ” the way they are is the way they were and is the way they will always be, lets go back home and have a BBQ. The emphisis when placed on the whole and not the individual parts will always look bad. When a visitor lands in a foriegn place he takes a look around, mixes and mingles with individual parts of the whole then goes back home and reports on the whole and says nothing or very little about the individual parts. Eveyone in this world should stop for a moment and take a look around at the individual parts of their immediate environment and decide to stay or to leave.
What would you do if you were God supreme for a day?
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I’m not qualified to be the Supreme God for a day (see Job 38-41). That’s not my job and do not have either the strength or wisdom to fill it, and so it’s vain to speculate about such matters that are too high for me.
We cannot force people to be virtuous. Nonetheless, it is a responsibility of communities and states to enforce God’s law within their borders. We can and should force people to be at least continent–their actions and behavior are entirely within the boundaries of civil and criminal law. Their hearts and minds are between themselves and God alone. And God is our judge.
Concerning parts and whole I’m not sure about you, but when I visit places I comment a lot on the individual parts, because that is what I know best. I tell stories about what I see and what I experience, the towns, the countryside, the roads, the people, the language, the culture. That which I see I speak of. I then make tentative judgments about the larger whole from those small individual parts I see and experience. Perhaps others don’t do that, but that is the way I do things, at least.
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Then it must be that there are enough people on this planet that are still pleasing God because He hasn’t destroyed humankind at this point. Is there a scripture that says something like we can pray or something to stave off judgement day?
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If we repent, God will relent His judgment. Jesus Christ promises to return before humanity is completely annihilated, though if you run the numbers from the Book of Revelation and assume they represent some sort of accurate reality it would mean that 90% of man’s population would be snuffed out in the Great Tribulation (if you are a futurist, like me) before His return. That’s not something I look forward to or want to see, if it can be helped.
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I have no idea what this Helen Ellerbe’s book is about but your own views seem shockingly confused for a Christian historian. What on earth is “biblical law”? Do you mean the law of Moses? Of what relevance to a Christian is that? Surely a Christian should be concerned only with Christ’s law. What are biblical punishments? Is the bible God? Are you God to know just what punishments God might choose to mete out? Christ makes a firm point that it is not for us to judge, and for what it is worth 1 Peter says we ought not even to revile others. God reserves that right for Himself.If you think the laws of the Jews still reproduced in the Old Testament are as important as the lessons delivered by the Christian incarnated God uttered from his own lips, then you should be a Jew not a Christian. Your whole emphasis on law and that of your correspondent is wrong. Christ teaches personal morality. When that is right, there is no need for law. So while you reference to this author being “so incoherent and self-contradictory”, you should be aware that you are no different.
Similarly, while it might be true that Gnostics were not Christians, there is much in the New Testament that is gnostic showing that early Christians took some ideas from the Gnostics, and in the confusion of the earliest Christian centuries there was much hybridizing between local churches and sects. In any case, Gnosticism and Judaism both had Persian roots, and Christianity itself incorporates many concepts of the Persian religion, including that of the Saviour (Persian, Saoshyant). You also seem to dislike Ellerbe’s alleged “left agenda”. What is it? What constituteds a “left agenda”? It is of some interest in the world right now, with protests everywhere in the world at the way the social contract has been torn up so that most people can be left destitute while a few have so much it would take a lifetime to give away. For that indeed was what Christ, your own God, told you to do, and inasmuch as that is an egalitarian measure, it counts as being left wing, doesn’t it? No Christian can leave most of the population of the world destitute while enjoying the life of Riley themselves. Certainly “obedience” is a quality that the rich value in the poor, but did the Good God grant us free will so that we have to be uncritically obedient to “our betters”? Indeed can it seriously be argued that a Good God will punish us for not obeying Him, even though he apparently gave us that very right?
Now you revile Ellerbe for “choosing for herself which selective quotation she wants to make”. Coming from a Christian, who pointedly cites several selected quotations, some from the Jewish scriptures, not the Christian ones, to suit his own interpretation, it looks like a spoof.
Christ taught morality and morals are those practices we adopt to make living together agreeable. That is the meaning of Christian love, the attention the Good Samaritan paid to the accosted Jew–concern, kindness, care, attention, help, benevolence, protection–and the meaning of his being a Samaritan is that he was considered an enemy by Jews. I expect that can be written off, by a Christian so-called, as left wing too.
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You appear like the kind of person who would enjoy Ellerbe’s work. I don’t consider that flattering. Since your knowledge of God’s law and biblical history appears shockingly weak, let me provide you some information of where you woefully fall short. For one, you assume that the Jewish scriptures and Christian scriptures are different, following after the Marcionite heresy. This is a mistaken assumption. As Paul stated in 2 Timothy 4:16-17, all scripture (what would be called both the Old Testament and the New Testament by most Christians) is suitable for doctrine, for reproof, and for correction. Therefore, a quotation from Mosaic law is fully applicable for Christians today (though to be interpreted through the lenses of Christianity to be sure). The fact that you do not recognize quotations from the Mosaic law as valid suggests (per Paul’s own preaching) that you are not a Christian, whatever your claims, regardless of your political worldview.
The left-wing agenda I am referring to is a hostility to authority, a feminist hatred of men (which I commented upon specifically and which you appear not to recognize), and a radical environmentalism and nature worship which is ungodly and unbiblical (again, which I commented upon specifically), and it would include the support of those revolutionaries against social order. I myself comment rather critically against both right-wing tyranny and left-wing anarchy. As the work I reviewed was a left-wing bias, I did not feel it necessary to discuss my own more nuanced beliefs in detail. You are at liberty to peruse my blogs myself, though you will find much reference to biblical law that troubles you as an antinomian, no doubt.
On some aspects of historical analysis you are quite honestly very mistaken. The concept of a savior or deliverer is not borrowed from Mithratic Persian religion as you falsely claim, but was present in biblical religion from the earliest times (see Genesis 3:16-17). Indeed, it is my personal contention that the presence of biblical concepts (in heretical form) in other beliefs is because of the satanic copying of Christianity rather than from Christianity (or biblical religion in general) copying from them. Genesis is a far older text than anything in the Persian or Gnostic religious traditions. Additionally, Christianity did not copy from Gnosticism, at least true Christianity did not do so. Rather, the fallen Christianity that became the Roman Catholic Church and its heathen offshoots copied the Gnostic Eighth Day after rejecting the biblical Sabbath. They copied the winter solstice festival from the heathen sun worshipers as well. Such practices are not to be found among genuine biblical Christians. I suggest you take some remedial biblical history to improve your own weak understanding.
Finally, it would appear that like most Gnostics, your virulent hatred of Judaism and biblical law leads you astray because it causes you to reject true apostolic Christianity. You claim that to respect the Hebrew scriptures on the same level as the Christian scriptures would make me a Jew in your eyes. As a part-Levite and part-Jew who was circumcised on the eighth day and who keeps the biblical sabbath laws, food laws, and other laws as part of my Christian beliefs, I have no qualms with being considered a one-house Messianic Jew, though I myself was raised in a Christian background. Nonetheless, if you wish to paint Christians who fully respected the Hebrew scriptures as valid as Jews, you must consider Christ a Jew rather than a Christian (for the two great commandments of personal morality you claim belief in, “Honor God with all your heart, all your mind, and all your spirit” and “love your neighbor as yourself,” spring directly from the Mosaic law, specifically Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Matthew, Acts, and the letters of the New Testament (especially Romans, Hebrews, James, and Revelation) are full of quotations and obvious references to Old Testament law being valid and applicable to Christians. Paul himself used an obscure Mosaic law about not muzzling oxen while they tread the field twice to justify Christians paying tithes and offerings to support the New Testament ministry. If you find fault with Paul for doing so, please take it up with him, but you demonstrate yourself not a Christian by rejecting the Christian approach to the whole Bible as remaining valid. Your content-free goodness springing from yourself with no relationship to biblical law, which reveals the unchanging and eternal nature of God Himself, springs directly from gnostic heresies. But when you meet your maker in judgment, you can at least say you were warned.
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Now this is getting exciting, this is what I signed up for. Keep it going, I am sure the readers of this blog and yours too Mike will tune into this arrangement of sorted and unsorted compiments and complaints to recieve a fair measure of polemic divinity.
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Grab some popcorn and enjoy the show.
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I have a feeling you won’t be hearing from Mike too soon, he appeared to be vert angry in an emotional way and it is sad really because he could provide this discussion with much argument for the readers to glean the truth frim. I never wanted to say this before but now I will and see where it goes with you. Just don’t take what I say and jam it back into my mouth with your usual slam dunk manner, lol. Just kidding you go right ahead and crush anything I might have to say and curl my belief into a knot so tight that I won’t know which way is up. But when I find the right way and loosen myself from that knot I will return and tie you up.
When Jesus said, “it is done”, what he meant was that his earthly mission was completed but his mission was more than to be the sacrifice, it was to begin a discussion, a debate, an argument even. His mission on earth consisted of many things I believe and another one of them was to MAKE people think for themselves and for them to not be afraid to stand alone with God at their side as individuals and not so much be a part of any earth system devised by man.
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Indeed our salvation does not come from being a part of an earthly system devised by man, but at the same time the Mosaic laws did not come from Moses, but from God and were an expression of His character. Likewise, we are not merely to be interested in debate and discussion about the truth without any firm conversion to God’s ways–this would make us no better than Felix, who delighted to hear Paul but was looking for a bribe and refused to release him, or Herod Antipas who delighted in hearing first John the Baptist and then Jesus but had no interest in repentance or conversion. God is interested in more than simply sparking discussion–He wishes us to freely choose His ways rather than assert our own autonomy and choosing right and wrong for ourselves. This is a hard thing to understand, and even harder to obey.
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Sorry to be prolix, but you did raise a lot of points.
“Your knowledge of God’s law and biblical history appears shockingly weak, let me provide you some information of where you woefully fall short.” You are spoofing us again, surely. You say you are a Christian and an historian, so your Christianity takes precedent over your history. That is the reason why there is no such thing as a “Christian scholar”. Christianity is antithetical to scholarship. What of history? You say my history falls woefully short, but yours is simply woeful. You write, “The concept of a savior or deliverer is not borrowed from Mithratic Persian religion as you falsely claim, but was present in biblical religion from the earliest times (see Genesis 3:16-17).” What is the relevance of this citation to the precedence of Persian or Jewish religions?
Second, do you, allegedly a historian think Genesis was written in “the earliest times”? “Genesis” is most unlikely to be even the oldest book in the bible? As an historian you go on evidence, don’t you? What is your evidence for believing Genesis was written in the earliest times? No one could write at all in the earliest times, and the earliest evidence for recording data comes from Mesopotamia, not Palestine. Some of the myths of Sumer and Babylon are recorded in Genesis, myths like “the Flood”, but no serious historian considers them historical. They are old myths, and they have been copied from the early civilizations of Mesopotamia which preceded the Jews and Judaism by at least a millennium. The bible itself reports the beginning of Judaism, considering it as a return from exile, actually a deportation of people from Mesopotamia, during the Persian period! The law was then read out to them by Ezra in a foreign tongue. So the bible was compiled after this event. Judaism is therefore later than, and dependent on, the concepts of Persian religion.
“You assume that the Jewish scriptures and Christian scriptures are different, following after the Marcionite heresy. This is a mistaken assumption.” It is not an assumption as anyone who can read can confirm for themselves. If they are the same, if not in fact, in meaning, then what was the point of Christ? Just a human sacrifice? Now you cite Paul (“2 Timothy 4:16-17”), but you mean to cite chapter 3. If Paul wrote the pastoral epistles, he plainly referred only to the scripture then extant, what Christians call the Old Testament, so his mention of “all scripture” seemed to allow for other scriptures that did not gain entry to the Jewish canon. As Paul was considerably influenced by the Gnostics that you despise so much, he might have even meant some of the Gnostic writings. He certainly could not have meant by it “what would be called both the Old Testament and the New Testament by most Christians”, at a time when the New Testament did not exist. If these espistles are post Pauline works, as seems more likely, they could have been written when some at least of the New Testament already existed, but then the Church was obviously plugging its New Testaments–the gospels in particular–in addition to those the Jews and the early Christians knew, mainly the Jewish scriptures written in Greek, the Septuagint, which are incidentally, the oldest Jewish scriptures known.
“Therefore, a quotation from Mosaic law is fully applicable for Christians today (though to be interpreted through the lenses of Christianity to be sure).” Your own failing as a Christian is emphasized here in what you add as an incidental comment. If God appeared on earth to do more than to be sacrificed as an atonement, then Christ’s teaching must have been meant to supersede or at least correct the previous law. Parts of the gospels suggest he did intend that, and many Christians throughout the history of Christendom have believed it. Christ himself, however, as a devout Jew, denied it. Yet he introduced an entirely new emphasis on love and poverty that are not obvious in the Jewish scriptures. If you as a Christian are to follow the line you are preaching, your passing parenthesis is crucially important to Christianity, for the whole point of love, to Christ, God to Christians, is that the Mosaic law has to be read with loving intent. If there is no such reading available, then love should prevail. No modern Christian, even sincere ones, would consider much of Leviticus as being even remotely applicable today, and have no qualms about ignoring it. Yet some of Christ’s own teachings are restatements of some Levitical laws. Christians, for example, have to be perfect like their father in heaven, but most of them consider it too hard even though Christ himself said it as a paraphrase of Leviticus. That, they ought to aim to do, as Christians, but do not, and murdering people whether witches of homosexuals or adulterers, and so on, are not at all loving and ought to be rejected by Christians with barely a thought about it. It is easier to believe what Christ himself plainly taught than to go back uncritically to the Mosaic laws. If you are a Jew, then fine, stick by Moses, but to be a Christian you ought to stick by Christ. In neither case would you stick by Paul, as almost all Christians do, even to the exclusion of God Himself, in the shape of Christ.
“The left-wing agenda I am referring to is a hostility to authority”. So Christ was not hostile to authority, even though he took a whip to people going about their lawful business in the temple court, tipping up their tables and scattering their animals and birds. Come on, historian. Take off the Christian blinkers. Christ was hanged as a man opposed to Roman authority. That very act of rampaging through the temple was a criminal act under Roman law. Indeed, it was the very act of defying authority, and that was a capital crime. “It would include the support of those revolutionaries against social order,” except in the case when God is doing it, eh? “You are at liberty to peruse my blogs myself, though you will find much reference to biblical law that troubles you as an antinomian.” Perhaps I shall, but you are spoofing agian, for you are, as I have noted just now, like all Christians, an antinomian when the nomos does not suit you.
You say I am very mistaken on some aspects of historical analysis yet you, as an historian, still use Justin Martyr’s absurd excuse (ca 150 AD) for Christian practice mimicking that of extant religions–it was all Satan’s doing. I take it that Satan is that terribly powerful wicked God that Christians believe is responsible for evil in the world. A bit like Ahriman, the evil Persian God. In fact, just like Ahriman! Yet Christians abhor the Persian religion as being dualist, unlike “monotheistic” Christianity. And what about the Jewish scriptures, which you tell us teaches the same as Christ did? There in Isaiah, the Good God admits he is responsible for evil. The truth is that both religions stem from the Persian one, but in the post Persian age of growing monotheism tried unsuccessfully to eliminate Satan. He is too valuable an excuse for criminality for Christians to let go of.
“Genesis is a far older text than anything in the Persian or Gnostic religious traditions.” I have disputed this, so offer me some proof. “I suggest you take some remedial biblical history to improve your own weak understanding.” Spoof, hilarious! Where do you get it all? You are the historian, and supposedly a Christian, but you need more than remedial work. Your root and branch comprehension is that of a bible thumping fundamentalist. One of the first things historians must do is question their sources. You cannot do it. The bible is your God, which is why you keep referring to biblical law.
“Like most Gnostics, your virulent hatred of Judaism and biblical law leads you astray because it causes you to reject true apostolic Christianity.” What persuades you that I am a Gnostic and hate Judaism? Your credentials as a historian are in tatters. You haven’t a clue what impartial means. You have your own conclusions ready before you begin. But then, that is typically Christian.
“As a part-Levite and part-Jew who was circumcised on the eighth day and who keeps the biblical sabbath laws, food laws, and other laws as part of my Christian beliefs, I have no qualms with being considered a one-house Messianic Jew, though I myself was raised in a Christian background.” Ah, so you are a Jew, and not a Christian at all. “You must consider Christ a Jew rather than a Christian (for the two great commandments of personal morality you claim belief in, ‘Honor God with all your heart, all your mind, and all your spirit’ and ‘love your neighbor as yourself,’ spring directly from the Mosaic law, specifically Leviticus and Deuteronomy.” Indeed, but what Jesus did that was novel and crucial was to link the two inseparably. He was asked for the greatest commandment and gave these two! It identifies every human being as meriting the love of God Himself. Christ was a man but was God too. The whole point of Christianity is that people must be treated as if they were God, for inasmuch as Christ is God, God could be any man and every man. Any Christian knows this, especially any Christian who has read his New Testament as far as Matthew 25:31-46. Apparently few have, or have have not understood what they read, in two millennia.
“Matthew, Acts, and the letters of the New Testament (especially Romans, Hebrews, James, and Revelation) are full of quotations and obvious references to Old Testament law being valid and applicable to Christians.” You are a historian but seem not to know, as I have already said, that there were no Christian scriptures until these people had written them, so all they could cite as scripture were the Jewish scriptures. Moreover, all the first Christians, not just Christ were Jews, so what else would they use other than the Jewish holy books. If Christianity was merely a form of Judaism, then why did the two religions ever split? Why did Jews reject Christ as the messiah, and still do? Christianity began as a Jewish heresy, and those Jews who tried to do as you seem to want to do, keep Jewish while being Christian, were rejected by the gentile Churches as Judaizers. The real Christians were the Ebionites. Perhaps you are trying to be one of these, but they rightly rejected Paul as a scoundrel out for himself. “Paul himself used an obscure Mosaic law about not muzzling oxen while they tread the field twice to justify Christians paying tithes and offerings to support the New Testament ministry.” Thank you. Paul was the first TV evangelist!
“When you meet your maker in judgment, you can at least say you were warned.” Warned by a tribe of crooks and perverts who have consistently in the history of Christendom, all bar a few exceptions who did try, practiced the opposite of Christian teaching. Come on! You claim to be a historian. Try reading a little of the vile history of Christianity instead of biblical mythology.
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You claim that Christianity is inimical to scholarship based on your own biases. Have you not read R.K. Harrison or the work of archeologists like Kitchen and Albright (no relation)? Apparently not. There is internal textual evidence that Genesis springs from very old times, including its reference to a river that dried up about 3500BC and its use of “and these are the generations” to divide its contents into cuneiform tablets kept generation after generation. In short, the evidence for Genesis’ considerable antiquity, as Abraham and his family were descended from Mesopotamian society (have you never read Genesis?). Apparently you have never read the Nuzi tablets either, or the Hittite treaties which show the Bible’s covenant formula in Exodus extends from the mid second century BC, the time of Moses. Again, I am a scholar, and you’re just a troll.
You are following the wrong scholars when you say that Judaism began after the exile. After all, the return from the exile merely restored the temple that had existed some time before. The former prophets from Joshua to Kings showed the importance of God’s law in the writing of history and God’s role in determining Israel’s history even as few people obeyed it. This is similar to our age. Your scholars (like you) seek to minimize the Bible, and minimalism is biased and automatically suspect in its approach, and incorrect in its conclusions. Since the Bible extends well into the second and third millennium BC, it is far before the Persian religion, which had its Satanic-inspired reformation in the seventh and sixth century BC (I recommend the two scholarly Christian works by Alan Knight to help you out with those matters, they are reviewed under the “Book Reviews” tab of my blog as well. If you wish to be a scholar, seek out scholarship.
You falsely claim that Paul was influenced by the Gnostics. Far from it. His words were twisted by the gnostics (yourself included) to be hostile to the law (see 2 Peter 3:15-16). Paul himself was a trained Pharisee (a religious scholar) who himself was converted to Christianity without leading him to disobey the law (see, for example, Acts 21:15-26, 24:10-21, and so on). You additionally claim that he believed in numerous nonbiblical scirptures. Again, you assert this without evidence. Jude himself quoted Gnostic works against the gnostics (specifically the Book of 1 Enoch and the Assumption of Moses). But the tripartite division of the Hebrew scriptures into law, prophets, and writings was extant during the time of Christ, and the Hebrew scriptures themselves (see Josephus, for example) were a fixed canon after about 440-420 AD (the time of Nehemiah, when Ezra, Nehemiah, and Malachi, the last of the OT books, were finished). Again, I’m sure your lack of belief in predictive prophecy lead you to reject historians like Joesephus and falsely claim that Daniel was written in the second century BC because it would have been otherwise impossible for your puny and corrupted mind to understand how the various Ptolemeic and Seleucid kings could be written of ahead of time.
You are incorrect that Christ introduced love and a focus on poverty that are not present in the Hebrew scriptures. As I have noted (and you appear dense), the commands to “love God with all your heart, all your mind, and all your being” come from the Shema in Deuteronomy 6, the very core of Judaism. Likewise, the command to love your neighbor as yourself (which also commands that we rebuke those who are in error, like you), springs from Leviticus. They are from the law of Judaism, a faith that had itself lapsed from true biblical religion by being ensnared in a false belief that obedience to the law is what justified believers (a problem that Paul had to deal with as well). Early Christianity had to fight off two heretical currents. One was a current that led to Orthodox Judaism that substituted ascetic man-made commandments and gave God’s law a purpose it never had, justification. God’s law exposes us all as sinners, making Christ’s sacrifice necessary and the gift of the Holy Spirit to help us believe essential for us to live righteously. This is done without doing away with the law, as the other ditch of antinomian Gnosticism (which you represent rather stridently) would falsely claim. The Hebrew scriptures (have you ever read Psalms? How about Psalm 113, 100, or 10?) are full of a God who justly avenges the poor. The law (again) has numerous commands that require treating the poor with equality and respect. Egalitarianism is a major aspect of God’s law, which you reject because of your own antinomian biases and your false belief that the rule of law automatically means the authoritarian rule of the wealthy and powerful. I am not a supporter of the Statutes of Omri (see Micah 6:16), which seek to enshrine the corrupt rule of the wealthy and powerful. And the Bible abhors such injustice as well. Too bad you only know the Bible through the propaganda of its enemies, and not through a personal acquaintance.
Your false accusations of my being a selective antinomian ignore the fact that God’s claims of ultimate authority mean that one must on occasion be hostile to human order. Our hostility to corrupt social orders cannot be for mere selfish benefit, as is the case of the Marxist #Occupy movement, but must be in obedience to a higher authority. This is, again, something that you cannot understand. By denying the validity of claims to a higher power you make all hostility to any order mere banditry. Since you don’t believe the Gospel accounts that place the blame for Christ’s death both on the Romans (namely on Pilate’s moral cowardice) and the Jewish leadership (for their clear recognition that He was a threat to their corrupt ways), or the Roman writers like Tacitus and Pliny the Younger that show only a passing and slight interest in Christianity but some knowledge that Christians were by and large law-abiding subjects and citizens who mostly kept to themselves and didn’t stir up needless trouble, you miss the larger point. Like usual.
Evil exists as a corruption of good. It is not dualist because evil does not have an independent existence except upon a corruption of the original order. Satan is not the equal of God. I have written elsewhere (again, you have not bothered to look it up) that God is responsible for evil, but is not evil Himself. The Persian religion falsely has an Ahura Mazda in a conflict with an equal evil god, an idea that is blasphemous in biblical religion, where Satan is a rebellious servant whose fate and end are already decided and merely await consummation. Again, your lack of understanding leads you astray.
We can only know things from a few sources. We can learn from our own experience, a type of learning that is painful and often unpleasant and deeply scarring. We can learn from what we consider the credible accounts of others. And we can learn from divine revelation. I am not a Muslim, so I do not worship the Word of God as a divine being. Nonetheless, I believe that the Bible is the very inspired Word of God, and the only credible source for learning about Him. Clearly you do not. The fact that you speak foolishly about what you do not understand pardons my speaking (as Paul did) as a fool to those who are foolish. But I will not cast my pearls before swine.
I have read of the history of Christianity–more than you have no doubt. And mine has been of a more varied material, rather than only reading about the negatives I have read about how Christianity was responsible, twice, for the end of the slavery in European culture, and how it stopped Hindu wives from immolating themselves, stopped child sacrifice in the Americas. If you wish to condemn Christianity for bad things you must also celebrate its good parts. You (like Ms. Ellerbe, it should be noted) have no sense of balance, and that makes you unfit to be a scholar or a gentleman. You call the Bible mythology and yet you are speaking on my blog. I should note that my blog (like the Bible) has moral rules that include no insulting of Christianity or blasphemy. You are therefore in violation of my laws on my realm. Take heed to yourself. If you wish to continue conversing on this blog you will obey my rules. Is that simple enough for you to understand?
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Nathan your frustration is showing, however you also make some very good points and they should be noted as such. What the two of you might consider is to take a look at what can be agreed upon by the two of you as always trying to out do the other and shame the other into oblivion, and begin again. We must remember that the argument is just a means to an end and the end should be a coming together in the name of God, and so with this in mind please for the sake of the innocent who might be watching this argument and who wish to embrace the one true God of heaven, remember to: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
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The issue is a fundamental worldview difference. I certainly pray for my enemies (that they will convert to the truth and leave behind their errors, and no longer be enemies). The issue is that he and I don’t have remotely similar conceptions of what God is. He is an active propagandist against the Bible, the same sort of people that John said in 1 John were never a part of us but are a part of the corrupt world, and of the sort that Paul said in 1 Timothy are a cancer with their heretical views. I have no tolerance of archeretics, especially those who come on my website to insult me. When he rejects the Bible or the possibility of genuinely Christian scholarship, there is no such common ground between us. For him, there is only the possibility of repentance or the fearful expectation of judgment.
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Mike, You drive a convincing argument and because I am no biblical scholar nor an historian, and could never compete with the two of you, I can only call on the spirit within me and this I personally believe is the collective five physical senses that God bestowed upon all humans to enable as you have said Nathan the ability for intuition. This “ability” to intuit, arrives as a first ability to infer. Again as I am not educated or as well read as the two of you (as most common people are not), I, we, can only infer what the intellectuals argue about with such fervor. We sit back and as you said Nathan we “eat popcorn” and watch and listen and hopefully learn something from the high ones (no pun). It is arguments such as this that I believe assist the lowley and the ignorant the ability to make up their own minds and arguments such as this is what I have said before was one of the intentions of Christ’s message here on earth. You guys argue and we learn, cool.
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Intuition is useless without someone else to follow along with the empirical support. Otherwise, it is mere flights of fancy. If we consider our own minds as the source of our reality, we have no grounding and no ability to be corrected by reality because we have shut ourselves to it. We are not our own ultimate authorities; that is the original sin, to take it upon ourselves to know good and evil for ourselves and to determine our own position.
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I said nothing about considering my own mind as the source of reality, I said “the spirit within me”, and that is the Holy Spirit of truth. You guys and people like you must realize that their are ignorant people in the world whom God calls the “poor in spirit” I believe.this not only means them that are weak in the spirit but also them that for one reason or another lack oppotunity to become well read and lered people. Critisize each other if you like but remember that people like myself are not at your level nor can we ever be at your level, we need to work for a living and support the children that God placed in our care. I await Mike’s response and see if he will belittle and crush me too. MGB.
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I was not referring to your point, but rather the thrust of my conversation with Mike the Gnostic, as stating that we are the source of our own authority and our own gods, if you will. If he were merely ignorant he could be taught and instructed, but given that he is arrogantly ignorant of God’s way, he is to be treated as an enemy of the faith. I tolerate a fair amount of ignorance in others, and tolerate more than a fair amount of speculation and whimsy, so long as it is not confused with fact, but I do not tolerate any personal disrespect, not one iota. Nor is it my intention on this blog to be remotely tolerant or accepting of antibiblical speculation, and I am only minimally tolerant of those who hold such views, and only to the extent that they do not remotely try to foist them on me.
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“I do not tolerate any personal disrespect, not one iota.”
[Edited: That’s right, and you can’t meet this standard because you have no biblical worldview.]
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Mike, this is my blog, and I get to determine who is fit to comment upon it. You are not, and I am not interested in feeding trolls, so farewell.
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Ellerbe, Christ blessed “the poor in spirit”, a mysterious phrase but one which is in no way derogatory, so it cannot mean say, depressed, as one might imagine, or imply, as you suggest, ignorance, or any other defect. Those whom God blessed were destined for heaven, just as Christ says, so it must have been meant as extremely worthy in some sense. Since the Dead Sea Scrolls were found and translated, we have discovered a second contemporaneous use of this expression by the Essenes, and it relates directly to the emphasis of the teachings of Christ in the gospels–the emphasis on the spiritual merits of poverty. So, “the poor in spirit” turns out to mean not those with a poor spirit, but those who spiritually value poverty. Throughout the gospels are a stark contrast of the rich and the poor, a fact that has not gone unnoticed by the LSX occupation outside St Paul’s Cathedral in London who have a large banner saying “What would Christ have done?” The poor are explicitly blessed and the rich are explicitly damned… by God if you are a Christian, for Christ is the Christian’s God. My reply to Nathan coming up…
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See his class-based view of virtue here? Here he dangerously mixes socialism with a genuine biblical truth that God is the protector of all, whether poor or rich, assuming that the wealthy are the enemies of God simply for being wealthy, when the Bible suggests that it is corruption and greed (all of which are present in large amounts in our present economic system), as well as envy (the love of money among the #Occupy a Job crowd and their desire to steal from others to imitate those they protest).
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In view of your curiously defensive attitude, I had better start at the end of your last reply to me, to give you a chance to delete my further comments before you read them. You write, “I should note that my blog (like the Bible) has moral rules that include no insulting of Christianity or blasphemy. You are therefore in violation of my laws on my realm. Take heed to yourself. If you wish to continue conversing on this blog you will obey my rules. Is that simple enough for you to understand?”
It seems to me that obeying your rules means agreeing with your own particular delusions. Anything critical immediately offends your delicate sensitivities. Well, as you say, this is your blog, and you did not even have to publish my initial comments, which you plainly found distasteful, from the tenor of your replies. I have understood throughout that you are the master here, and can delete whatever you do not like. It may be fine for your ego, but it is an admission that you cannot argue your corner. As a Christian apologist, you admit failure. Now is the chance for you to delete the rest of may reply, but, never fear, I shall not waste it.
[Editor: No, forbidding others to speak on a forum or editing/deleting their posts is not a sign that one cannot argue, only that one does not wish to cast pearls before swine, encourage internet trolls (such as you are), or to engage in pointless debate with fools. Nonetheless, since you accurately understood that you were offensive both in the tone and in the content of your messages, why did you not show some wisdom and moderate that tone if you wished to have a genuine discussion? I suppose you’ll have to answer that question for yourself.]
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Isn’t this much better? Perhaps you should stick to #OWS blogs where people like your nonsense.
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[Edit-I am a troll and unworthy to be online.]
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The standards of being a historian, thankfully, are still too high for you to be one.
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[Mr. Historian is a slow learner. Maybe he should stop thinking about fellatio and actually bother learning some history.]
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Mr. Historian looks like he’s in the running for our resident troll.
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[I am a mindless, sex-obsessed troll.]
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Indeed you are.
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