Ch. 1: Jealous and Proud of It
Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2016 10:01 pm
Please use this thread to discuss Ch. 1: Jealous and Proud of It.
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Hello Penelope, wonderful to hear from you, and hoping all is well in Chester.Penelope wrote:What does the word 'jealous' mean in this context? What other translations of the original are possible? The Old Testament does tend to attribute human emotions to the Almighty God imagery. The Bible, The Holy Bible as my spiritual mother used to insist.....is Jewish because the Jews wrote things down, albeit from their own cosmic consciousness...... Influencing three major and bolshy religions.
Yes, I think that is a really good point regarding objective analysis of divinity, in terms of the actual nature of an imagined God of the universe, Brahma is a deeper and more accurate depiction than Jehovah, since Jehovah is so corrupted by conflict, hierarch and war, due to the context of the fall from grace, driven by the rise of metal and agriculture and population and writing.Penelope wrote:God (Brahma) in Hindu based religious belief is much more inscrutable and difficult to understand but somehow more digestible.
In a book written by a God, one would expect to find eternal values, not ones that apply only to a particular age. So it is not necessarily a problem if modern values conflict with those written in ancient scripture.Mr. Tulip wrote:Barker’s agenda in this book is to indict God against modern values.
Since the weak are always destroyed by the strong, cruelty and conformity are required. Are these eternal human values or just biblical ones?It is unfair for Barker to indict ancient Israel for cruelty, since he does not really explore what the practical alternative to cruelty and conformity might be in a world where the weak are destroyed by the strong.
Hi Landroid, I find this a frustrating comment, not to criticise you, but just to note that a core idea of Christianity is that the New Testament describes a new covenant between God and humanity, with the core fact about this new covenant that the Mosaic law of eye for an eye (revenge as law) had been replaced by the law of forgiveness in Christ as explained in the Sermon on the Mount.LanDroid wrote:In a book written by a God, one would expect to find eternal values, not ones that apply only to a particular age.Mr. Tulip wrote:Barker’s agenda in this book is to indict God against modern values.
You may care to expand on that statement. It is a real problem that modern values conflict with the Bible, since traditional Christianity claims to accept the Bible as the basis of its values. Picking apart which modern value are good and which conflicting Biblical values are good is a very difficult problem. For example I think faith is good, but that clashes with dominant modern secular values.LanDroid wrote: So it is not necessarily a problem if modern values conflict with those written in ancient scripture.
Jehovah is jealous about hanky panky with sun gods, female gods, and assorted local nature spirits, according to the Bible. The question we should ask is if this jealousy makes ethical sense in its context. I think it does.LanDroid wrote: As I recall my own religious upbringing, jealousy was considered a major fault (pride being the # 1 fault). Mr. Tulip brings up some good points that a certain amount of jealousy is probably necessary to maintain cohesion within a couple - if both have zero jealousy, the relationship could deteriorate into hanki-pankiness...
The theory behind the Torah doctrine of God was that unless the Jews focussed on the creator of the universe as the sole object of veneration, they would inevitably lose their cultural identity and national security.LanDroid wrote: Dan Barker is not arguing against the amount of jealousy one might expect in a normal relationship. As we find in Chapter 1, he is railing against the neurotic and psychotic tendencies of a god who actually calls Himself by the name "Jealous."
That doctrine of political realism goes back to Thucydides and the famous Melian Dialogue in the Peloponnesian War where the Athenians tell the Melians that the strong take what they want and the weak concede what they must.LanDroid wrote:Since the weak are always destroyed by the strong, cruelty and conformity are required. Are these eternal human values or just biblical ones?It is unfair for Barker to indict ancient Israel for cruelty, since he does not really explore what the practical alternative to cruelty and conformity might be in a world where the weak are destroyed by the strong.