Christian Theological/Philosophical Book Club discussion

Any experts here on our Sabbath issue?

Personally I think the Sabbath is an amazing blessing that I wish I could enjoy more. But: was it worth killing over? God certainly thought so many years ago.

Did Jesus abolish the Sabbath? Eternally I do not think so...

For basic info.

Exodus 31:15
For six days work is to be done, but the seventh day is a day of sabbath rest, holy to the LORD. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day is to be put to death.

John 5:10
and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, "It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat."

It is interesting that some churches think the Sabbath is the key to salvation and righteousness. I have even heard some say "It is the utimate sin!". Ummh? Okay.

Remember Chariots of Fire (the movie). Did the athletes behavior really lead people to eternal salvation? Maybe?

I do look forward to fully enjoying this day off in Heaven - hopefully someone doesn't go and stick 10 hours of church activities into it.

This is interesting. I don't really know very much about current-day religious practices. In the early church, it was common for Jewish Christians to observe both the Sabbath and the Lord's Day--it wasn't an either/or thing--but Christianity quickly became a Gentile religion.

In heaven, I've heard, the weekend will be three days long!

Jake wrote: "In heaven, I've heard, the weekend will be three days long!"

Do we observe both sun-day and moon-day?

The names we have adopted to represent our current week day obviously are Norse/pagan in origin, but has no bearing on us using these as measures of how we reckon our calender and what day we rest, sabbath, etc. Just because, say, the Gentile Christians were under the Julian calendar doesn't mean they weren't aloud to Sabbath on Sunday

Is the DAY worth killing over - or just the event?

Lee wrote: "Do we observe both sun-day and moon-day?"

I don't think there is any way to make Mondays good. I'm thinking it will be a Friday, Saturday Sunday deal, and since it is heaven maybe we can skip Monday altogether, or at least replace it with something useful.

I agree: Monday should be outlawed for all eternity. (Let HELL have eternal mondays...you won't even need fire after that kind of torture.) But, I jest.

To give my thoughts on the actual topic, though, they say Jesus came to fulfill the Law. And lately I have been thinking of this in terms of how a flower fulfills a bud. The bud is not only no longer necessary, but with the appearance of the flower it is gone altogether.

He is our Sabbath; the bud is gone.

Please explain how Jesus is our Sabbath? That is interesting - Indeed He is Lord of the Sabbath.

From my book about John's Gospel: Each Sabbath, the priests blew a trumpet from the southwest corner of the Temple wall to announce its beginning and end. All work must cease during the Sabbath. Instead, hearty Jews met in the synagogues for prayer and readings. They recited Psalm 92 in its entirety, particularly for its futuristic aspect. It looked ahead to a messianic age of “all Sabbath and rest in the life everlasting.” In the Great Sabbath to come, there would be such perfect rest and harmony that today’s Sabbath celebration was a mere 1/60th of what it would be like in the messianic age. God would grant a “Holy Spirit” and the Messiah would bring a new Torah, superseding the old Sabbath and its law.

Enter the Christians. They insisted the Spirit had arrived, the Messiah had appeared, the new law delivered, the golden age begun, or was at least just around the corner.

Now to answer Rod's question: In John's Gospel, Jesus claims he IS the life. He is thus the new Sabbath.

Ha! Ha! I'm retired, I rest EVERY day. To me it's work just to sift through all these inane posts and answer in equally inane fashion.

Lee post:
" It looked ahead to a messianic age of “all Sabbath and rest in the life everlasting.”

I've never heard that before. Interesting.

Does all this mean God will abandon all references to the day of rest and work week?
Again: worth killing over?

Well it's fascinating you guys should bring up this topic, I've been thinking about it a bit lately since I was reading Isaiah 56.

The passage seems quite Messianic yet in the midst of the prophecies it talks about foreigners who join themselves to the LORD and speaks about them keeping the sabbath.

I know that Paul was very strong on not compelling Gentiles to keep the Torah or convert to Judaism, however I can't see any precedent for Gentiles to abandon the Sabbath, which is included in the ten commandments.

Jesus followers seemed to keep it (Luke 23:56) and as Lee writes the early Christians kept it. I'm not for the full Jewish version, but still can anyone show me where the scriptures teach the gentiles to ignore it?

This is the question that came up in the first Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15) - the question of whether Gentiles need to keep the Law of Moses. They are not told to ignore it, per se, but they are not told to keep it either. I mean, it was decided that Gentiles do not have to keep the Law of Moses, as far as I have always understood.

Yes quite true, there is indeed no requirement to keep the law of Moses and there is no precedent in scriptures for foreigners to keep the law of Moses, confirmed by the council.

However Isaiah seems to suggest a blessing for foreigners who join themselves to the LORD and keep the sabbath. It's a curiosity.

Oh and Polycarps writings seem to indicate observance of the sabbath.

Joshua fought the battle of Jericho over seven days - one of which was the Sabbath.

Abraham and his visitors ate cheeseburgers.

Deuteronomy has no requirement for physical circumcision.

Nowhere in the first four biblical books does it say that Theos or Kurios Theos loves anyone (KJV - other versions interestingly have certain words mean just whatever they choose them to mean). Not until we come to Deuteronomy is divine love mentioned.

I suspect someone has been leaving us messages regarding the old Laws of the Elohim, long before Jesus' time.

God had a habit of breaking His own laws. The priests would break the Sabbath all the time. It's not an error it's a lesson in listening to His voice.

Nowhere in the first four biblical books does it say that Theos or Kurios Theos loves anyone

You are quite right. If fact God got so upset with humanity he was grieved and wiped them out. This is part of the beauty of the biblical story, how God began to fall in love with people. Read Ezekiel 16

On the topic of the Sabbath, (perhaps your comments would be better on another thread Stuart ;p) Ignatius taught against keeping it if anyone's wondering

Joshua wrote: "God had a habit of breaking His own laws. The priests would break the Sabbath all the time. It's not an error it's a lesson in listening to His voice.

Nowhere in the first four biblical books does..."

Honestly, Joshua, that answer is surely an embarrassment to many people in this group: especially when they know someone like me is taking tentative interest in exploring dialogue.

I'll let them deal with you.

wow, you really know very little about scripture..

The priests would break the Sabbath all the time

is a quote from the bible.

Joshua wrote: "On the topic of the Sabbath, (perhaps your comments would be better on another thread Stuart ;p) Ignatius taught against keeping it if anyone's wondering"

My comment about the Sabbath was spot on the "What to do with that SABBATH law?" topic.

Cheeseburgers, circumcision of the heart (that's not literal either, Joshua) and divine love in Deuteronomy only are all related to the Sabbath law question.

It's not so much that God broke his own laws - or that he literally wiped out all the Aztec and Zulu kiddies who had never head of him, during the 5th Egyptian Dynasty, before starting to fall in love with them - it's possibly more the case that the priests of Yahweh re-wrote the laws.

Like the one about children being put to death for the sins of their father.

The concept of God for the Israelites changed during the course of their history. So to did their priest-written Laws of God.

This is useful:
http://www.ecclesia.org/truth/sabbath...

ok so allow me to point out a flaw in your reasoning here.

If the Zulu kiddies were in Africa at the time of the flood there wouldn't be any Zulu kiddies.

If the Zulu kiddies were decended from flood survivors you would expect their folklore to contain a memory of the deluge.

This is the case in folklore all over the globe, memories of the deluge.

So what are you saying about the sins of the fathers? Deuteronomy states children are not to be put to death for the sins of their father.

Joshua wrote: "ok so allow me to point out a flaw in your reasoning here.

If the Zulu kiddies were in Africa at the time of the flood there wouldn't be any Zulu kiddies.

If the Zulu kiddies were decended from f..."

This response is an embarrassment too.

I'm not going to respond to you any further ... you're way out of your intellectual depth.

Try reading beyond Sunday school level mythologised history. For God's sake.

I think Joshua has a point that various flood stories increase the likelihood of a devastating flood in our past (or several). Perhaps we should study these and decide which one appears the least mythicized?

The Gilgamesh and Hebrew versions share similarities that are so close that they can hardly be coincidence. They should probably be considered together, or at least the latter dependent upon the former.

If you had the intellectual superiority you claim you would answer me, yet you cannot.

So you say the flood biblically happened circa 2500 years ago. Is it not a wonder that civilisation suddenly appeared out the vague mists of time almost simultaneously in Mesopotamia and Egypt at this time? The first writings in Sanskrit come to India a few centuries later, and the first record of the Xia dynasty appears around this time too. Society appears in places like Ethopia, Korea, Japan, Europe much later. One of the greatest witnesses to our history is society itself. Our development, migration and population growth.

Don't feel the need to respond. I am writing for those interested in facts.

Sometimes it helps me if I can see the team names on the back of the jerseys. Joshua, are you suggesting that there was actually a worldwide flood some 2,500 years ago?

flood yes. Worldwide, perhaps not.

I don't think it to be the entire world necessarily since I don't seem to me the Hebrew demands it. However I certainly I do believe there was a flood event that impacted humanity. Folklore in every corner of the globe attests to it and it explains the sudden appearance of diverse civilisations in this time period.

The hyperdrive leap from millions of years of primitive man to writing suddenly appearing, almost simultaneously, in Mesopotamia, Egypt, India and China doesn't stack up too well.

In fact the almost simultaneous appearance of completely diverse languages across Asia agrees with the Babel account quite neatly which is a fascination to me.

The scientific community is doing considerable research into significant flooding in the northern hemisphere that happened at the end of the last ice age. I saw a doco once on the English channel that attributes strange formations to a massive northern European flood event.

I think there is too much evidence to ignore a flood event of some description.

oh and that would 4500 years ago.

Lee wrote: "I think Joshua has a point that various flood stories increase the likelihood of a devastating flood in our past (or several). Perhaps we should study these and decide which one appears the least m..."

Earliest Sumerian language flood myth text we can hold in our hands - c. 1600 BCE

Earliest Hebrew language flood myth text we can hold in our hands - c. 200 BCE

Texts - Sumerian and Hebrew - probably based on antecedents. 1.5 millennia between texts, somehow suggests to me that the Hebrew text is based on the Sumerian.

Sumerian myth possibly based on genuine local river flooding, at precisely the 2348 BCE Answers in Genesis gives us for the biblical flood.

Extra-biblical evidence for an Ararat-covering, 4.5 kilometre deep flood during the 5th Egyptian Dynasty - zero.

Evidence that Indian culture was drowned by Yahweh - zero.

Evidence that Chinese culture was washed away by Yahweh - zero.

Etc.

Plausibility that Asian languages "almost simultaneously appeared" post 2348 BCE biblical deluge ...? Evidence to back it up - zero.

http://news.discovery.com/history/150...

These people may wish to hear from Joshua as a matter of urgency:

http://www.todaytranslations.com/lang...

Plausibility that Jewish priests who wrote Hebrew texts of 200 BCE were using well-known myths as allegories for political events ...? That's what I'm trying to ask.

Stuart please just take a breath and try to comprehend what I am saying to you here.

Your article from today translations is great and it demonstrates my point. I quote

Most linguists classify all of the variations of spoken Chinese as part of the Sino-Tibetan family and believe that there was an original language, called Proto-Sino-Tibetan, similar to Proto Indo-European, from which the Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman languages descended.

and

Old Chinese, sometimes known as “Archaic Chinese”, was the common language during the early and middle Zhou Dynasty (11th to 7th centuries B.C.), whose texts include inscriptions on bronze artifacts

the ancient chinese writing appeared in the second millennia BC. In every society across the world you will find civilisation showing up after the time at which the scriptures record a flood. Before this time it all gets fuzzy and people just very quickly from 2,000 BC to 15,000 BC to 100,000 BC.

All the advancements of civilisation happened in the last few thousand years. And then apparently before that were millions of years of stupid people doing absolutely zip. Seriously.

Evidence that Indian culture was drowned by Yahweh - zero.

Evidence that Chinese culture was washed away by Yahweh - zero.

uh that's right. How do you not see that the only hard evidence for the beginning of these societies appears after the biblical flood? the flood story is a significant part of Indian culture.

Plausibility that Asian languages "almost simultaneously appeared" post 2348 BCE biblical deluge ...? Evidence to back it up - zero.

actually you just posted one more piece of evidence. Indian and Chinese language did appear after the biblical deluge (1100 BC for China in this article). There have been a number of links in this conversation pointing to that.

If the intention of the Jewish Priests was that their writings were to be understood as myth they would not have included the genealogies, but they did. Even if you continue to insist the stories are myth you must at least recognise the intention of the writer was that is was to be understood as history.

You can talk about Genesis 1, that's fine. It's all very mysterious, but please turn off the arrogance.

Earliest Sumerian language flood myth text we can hold in our hands - c. 1600 BCE

Earliest Hebrew language flood myth text we can hold in our hands - c. 200 BCE

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2nd_mill...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3rd_mill...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4th_mill...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5th_mill...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6th_mill...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7th_mill...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8th_mill...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9th_mill...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10th_mil...

https://answersingenesis.org/bible-ti...

The Bible teaches quite plainly that the early patriarchs often lived to be nearly 1,000 years old and even had children when they were several hundred years old!


“Methuseleh lived 900 years . . . but these stories you’re liable to read in the Bible, they ain’t necessarily so.”1

Along with American composer George Gershwin, many people find it difficult to believe that Methuselah lived to be 969 years old. Nevertheless, the Bible teaches quite plainly that the early patriarchs often lived to be nearly 1,000 years old and even had children when they were several hundred years old! Similar claims of long life spans are found in the secular literature of several ancient cultures (including the Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Indians, and Chinese). But even a life span of nearly 1,000 years is sadly abbreviated when we consider that God initially created us to live FOREVER.


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/sci...

“There must have been something else happening because the populations of early modern humans were expanding,” he said. “The last Neanderthal we know of lived about 40,000 years ago.”

Dr. Trinkaus studied fossil records of humans from across Eurasia and of Neanderthals from the western half of Eurasia to estimate adult mortality in the two groups. He found that there was approximately the same number of adults in the 20-to-40 age range and over-40 age range in both groups. About 25 percent of adult humans and Neanderthals survived past 40.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetec...

Anthropologist Rachel Caspari said that by examining Neanderthal dental records, her team established that 130,000 years ago, 'no-one survived past 30', which was the age at which they would have become grandparents.


The study, which involves fossil remains from 768 individuals, has been calculating the ratio of older to younger adults in ancient human societies down the millennia.


In the Neanderthal culture there were just four adults past the age of 30 for every 10 young adults. The average life expectancy was between 15 and 30.

http://creation.com/bible-precision-d...

That being said, we don’t think that the Bible allows for to-the-year accuracy regarding the date of creation. This is because the Bible tells us that Adam was 930 when he died, but depending on how age was reckoned, Adam’s precise age could been quite some months different from exactly ‘930 years’. E.g. today on official documents in Western countries, citizens are frequently required to indicate their age in years as being that achieved at their last birthday, even if it was 11 months ago. The same goes for all other ages and date measurements in Scripture. This does not allow for long gaps; notice that it is only months that are uncertain, not long periods of time. Whether the creation year was 4004 BC or 4050 BC does not really affect any of our arguments.

ok I get it, Wikipedia is your bible and evolutionary biologists are the light of truth.

Age of universe - 14.5 billion years; age of earth - 4.55 billion years; first living organism (single cell) 3.8 billion years ago; age of dinosaurs 150 million years ago to 50 million years ago; Adam and Eve - 5.75 million years ago; the flood - 3 million years ago; Abram - 4000 years ago.

lol

Thankyou Robert,

this is what I am talking about, 5.75 million years of history and everything happened in the last few thousand.

Humans are very resourceful creatures and our population grows exponentially as a long as the environment will support it.

Now remember the most heavily populated parts of our planet are not the civilised parts, the third world increases population, only limited by natural resources.

So therefore the population growth in those 5.75 million years would have theoretically reached planet saturation well under 100,000 years and there are millions of years of millions of people wandering around the planet.

It's just not what the planet presents to us. Prior to 2500 BC artifacts are scarce. There is certainly no evidence of trillions of ancestors scattered all over the globe. Instead we have a small group of Sumerians a few thousand years ago and scattered tribes all carrying a memory of a big flood and the time when God made men.

Stuart wrote: "Earliest Hebrew language flood myth text we can hold in our hands - c. 200 BCE"

Stuart, if you explained this dating somewhere, I missed it. Could you?

Assuming some version of the Documentary Hypothesis, I understand the flood story to be written by probably the Priestly source and the Yahwist, and spliced together.

Lee wrote: "Stuart, if you explained this dating somewhere, I missed it. Could you?"

I'm thinking by saying 'text we can hold in our hand' he means a physical copy, not necessarily the date of the original composition, which would be earlier.

dead sea scrolls.

however there has been a version of the story found in much earlier tablets in ancient Ebla

http://www.aramcoworld.com/issue/1978...

one of these tablets contains the creation story.

http://creation.com/archaeologist-con...

Something I want to look into further.

So confused by this conversation. A big regional flood in the Middle East – perhaps the one that created the Black Sea – would surely account for the plethora of Ancient Near Eastern flood stories, wouldn't it? Meanwhile, we have drilled cores consisting of hundreds of thousands of years of sediment deposits and ice-formation rings in Japan and Antarctica, respectively, with none of the disturbance one would expect from an enormous worldwide flood. Local/regional flood: Very likely. Worldwide flood: So unlikely as to be impossible, absent a divine miracle that included going back and erasing the evidence for it.

Regarding the Sabbath, I don't think it's the day that matters so much as the philosophy behind it – taking time to recenter on what really matters (God) is a good practice, and the ancient Hebrews understood that, codified it and handed it down.

So confused by this conversation. A big regional flood in the Middle East – perhaps the one that created the Black Sea – would surely account for the plethora of Ancient Near Eastern flood stories, wouldn't it? Meanwhile, we have drilled cores consisting of hundreds of thousands of years of sediment deposits and ice-formation rings in Japan and Antarctica, respectively, with none of the disturbance one would expect from an enormous worldwide flood. Local/regional


http://mashable.com/2014/09/04/argent...

Scientists are finding massive animals buried in sediment all the time, all over the world

Just to be clear floods transport sediment, to create deep enough sediment to bury these huge monsters requires a massive flood. And we are finding them all over the world.

Lee wrote: "Stuart wrote: "Earliest Hebrew language flood myth text we can hold in our hands - c. 200 BCE"

Stuart, if you explained this dating somewhere, I missed it. Could you?

Assuming some version of the..."

Yep, here 'tis:

http://www.deadseascrolls.org.il/feat...

And the Eridu Genesis - keeping mind the date of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the article below is an amazing example of shooting yourself in the foot:

http://www.noahs-ark.tv/noahs-ark-flo...

This guy is worth noting for the way he presents (or doesn't really present) the dates:

http://www.grisda.org/origins/11009.htm

For me it's common sense: a 1600 BCE tablet precedes a 200 BCE pamphlet.

Since we've drifted from the Sabbath into the fantastical world of global floods and floating zoos "So unlikely as to be impossible" (thank you Paul) mythology, I'm going blow my usual allegory trumpet here too.

If you take the biblical writings literally, these days you get into all sorts of trouble with facts. A few generations ago it didn't matter so much, but now, quite frankly, biblical literalism is becoming embarrassing.

My contention is - and I'm putting it out there for discussion - is that the Jewish priests who wrote what we now have in our hands (DSS) did not take them literally. They came from a culture that was accustomed to parable, to allegory, to cryptic language.

If I say to someone: "Ah, the prodigal has returned" it immediately sends numerous well-understood messages to people around me - except my non-theist Chinese friends. We (or some of us) don't take the Prodigal Son at absolute face value. The characters in the story may reference genuine people from one or more historical or contemporaneous periods (as may Humpty Dumpty, for example) but we can appreciate the allegory on several levels - none of which needs to be literal.

I offer that the same cultural concordances may be found in the earlier writings. You can claim that Yahweh created the first Homo sapiens from mud and a rib in 4004 BCE and that in a fit of ungodlike pique, he flooded this dome we live in under 4.5 kilometres of biblical water by opening the windows of the dome in 2348 BCE and end up in all sorts of embarrassing bunfights with the boffins, because you've only got a Jewish pamphlet from 200 BCE to back you up, and they've got real data these days, and lots of it.

Or you could admit that literalism is from when we didn't have the data we do today, and we could maybe avoid embarrassing ourselves in bunfights with boffins, and examine the Documentary, or, dare I mention it, the Reformation Hypothesis and see if the sorts of parables Jesus used to make his points to his people in 30 CE were in use with his people well before that.

Hmm ... got a bit enthusiastic there - yes Lee, mingling of (what did you call them?) yeah, spliced. Spliced is good - from two sources. But whereas the DH seems be saying the sources saw the same deity in different ways (broadly) the RH posits that the sources saw different deities in the same way (broadly).

We're on a roll here and dinner isn't ready, so:

Creation 1 and the Elohim create everything in 6 days with unspecified numbers of male and female humans created at the very last - as miniature replicas of the Elohim.

Creation 2 and Yahweh Elohim creates everything in 1 day and the very first thing the single male deity creates is a single male human (we've done the rib and mud thing to death today) called Adam. Significantly - and for me this is highly significant - Adam is NOT said to have been created in the image of Yahweh. maybe you could believe he was, and maybe you could believe he wasn't - but it would only be a belief, because nothing is written.

Flood 1 and the Elohim command 2 of every living creature, from every micro-climate under the dome to be brought into the ark.

Flood 2 and Yahweh enters the allegory and alters the ship's manifest - just as he had done with the earlier watery beginning of a cycle of human history - to call for 2 of every unclean and 7 of every clean creatures - or 7 pairs: it's one of the thousands of things that are not clear.

Using the names "Elohim" and "Yahweh" make the stories look more like everyone else's myths. The terms "God" and "Lord" can take your mind off the possibility you're are dealing with ethnic myth and legend - and is part of the purpose, I suggest. The Roman Catholic Christianity does not permit the use of the name Yahweh in it's services - ostensibly, I suspect, because it's too "holy". However, if when you read the Bibles (there's more than one) and where you see the word "God" you use the name "Elohim" and where you see the word "Lord" you use the name "Yahweh", things start to look (for me) a whole lot more mythological and legendary.

I'm not saying ethno-mythology as such is bad, I am saying I think we need a more objective approach towards Hebrew mythology.

(I'm not even going to proof this - dinner's ready.)

Oh no, I just noticed this above where I'm writing and I shall re-post it without comment:

"Just to be clear floods transport sediment, to create deep enough sediment to bury these huge monsters requires a massive flood. And we are finding them all over the world."

I got so carried away I forgot the allegory bit: it looks to me like a baptism.

A common enough understanding of the symbolism behind the literal global/ish event that drowned the dinosaurs and covered them with silt in 2348 BCE while forming the world's fossil fuels and leaving the Egyptian Pyramids, Stonehenge, Sumerian temples and more, strangely untouched.

This biblical baptism, in my view, looks to be an allegory for a number of repeating Middle East cycles of genuine human political and military history - none of which involved water.

Again, we don't get into such a bunfight with the boffins. Or with young Christians who just aren't buying it anymore and vote with their feet as soon as they're old enough.

Thank you for your efforts Joshua. Awesome!

Isn't it amazing how many Jesus lovers refuse to believe any Biblical account except maybe the resurrection bit? If I was them I wouldn't be so short sighted and believe that and not the others - maybe show some rational and logical common sense and CHUCK THE WHOLE THING! At least that would be scholastically consistent.

...and yet this is what's filling our churches. "Praise Jesus!" the idea of him anyway.

Stuart please explain why you are a Christian? And how exactly do you do any apologetics?

At this point I have NO REASON to assume you are a Jesus follower. Please convince me of WHAT your Jesus is? Based on your information I just assume he is only in your imagination.

I know EXACTLY who my Lord and SAvior is.

A common enough understanding of the symbolism behind the literal global/ish event that drowned the dinosaurs and covered them with silt in 2348 BCE while forming the world's fossil fuels and leaving the Egyptian Pyramids, Stonehenge, Sumerian temples and more, strangely untouched.

Apparently you don't understand what I am saying.