Shandean Postscripts to Politics, Philosophy, & Culture - Burying the Dead: Normalizing the Extreme in the Gospels: A Hypocrisy of Homilies

From: monacojerry Date: November 13th, 2006 01:25 am (UTC) (Link)

Yes. And perhaps here is a clue in what you say about why many people (whether they call themselves "fundamentalists" or "reformists") avoid the historical context of history around 2000 years ago. There is always the anxiety that what they discover in the sacred texts as they propound them today might be a misinterpretation of what was actually going on when people, real living people, wrote those texts. They wrote them for a reason and no matter what view you take of the "religious standing" of those texts, and their current relevance, their reasons for writing those texts, cannot in all respects be our reasons for reading, interpreting or using those texts. They simply have to be different or there is no such thing as historical change.

Now here is an irony. Many peoples of the modern religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam act as if, when it comes to their sacred texts, there is no such thing as history or change in relation to those texts. But the irony is that Judaism when combined with Christianity in the Greek portions of the Roman Empire gave us many of our modern views of "historical" change and difference. Any study of early Islam will show that Muslims took this view of history and expanded it. What now? Must they abandon all ideas of history which they bequeathed to us in order to maintain an ossified view of their own religion?

Jerry

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From: force_of_will Date: November 13th, 2006 05:17 am (UTC) (Link)

We could probably go on about this for hours. My formative study was Campbell's "Masks of God". Those hard guys, the hard livejournal philosophers think they might lead me to something...but there are a few paths to the same end.

I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at 35 years of age. This is a rare thing. Usually it will manifest by the teen years. It happened right after I had given up sugar for Lent. Heh. It seems reality isn't without a sense of irony. I must now consider every bite as it were that Lenten season...

These historical men, they kicked off from society, from the norms. From the political pressure and called it for what it was. They held courage and compassion. These, each must find and manifest alone...

And Mike Stipe sang, "Follow me, don't follow me. I've got my spine. I've got my orange crush."

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