Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

No

Only Judeism

Only Islam

Yes to both Judeism and Islam

[penguinofhonor]

So we're looking for excuses on how 200,000 deaths were covered up because we're assuming the people who said an angel helped them are right? There are too many levels of ridiculous here.

A huge army getting completely wiped out by supernatural means would have been talked about by more than Israel and Assyria. Do we have histories from other nearby people? Do they mention this battle?

[Orange Wizard]

I think Bay12 just likes the ridiculous.

...

There's no historical record of the angel other than the Hebrew one AFAIK. Clearly, the Assyrians are lying, and there is no reason to believe them.

[TD1]

Apparently there is also no historical evidence that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Quite the contrary....there was no Census at that time, and none of that scale.

[Orange Wizard]

I think we've already covered that the calendar is a few years off.

[TD1]

We did? Oh, okay.

[Frumple]

Mind you, the point about the census is still accurate, iirc. The scale bit, at the very least.

[Bohandas]

More accurately The Revelation To John. It's actually quite a controversial book, not just in interpretation (of which I know of at least 3 mutually exclusive interpretations), but whether or not it should be included in the Bible at all. It wasn't accepted into canon until the fifth century (despite being pretty well established to date to the late first century), many early Protestant sects rejected it, and some groups reject it entirely to this day.

My church basically says "it's a book that doesn't really make sense, read it if you want, just be careful not to jump to conclusions".

I've never heard a sermon preached on Revelation. Not that there's a lack of material, it's just too weird.

You know what other book doesn't get enough sermons preached on it? Ecclesiastes.

Interestingly, I think that the Book of Ecclesiastes is underused for precisely the opposite reason of why Revelation is. While Revelations is too weird, Ecclesiastes makes too much sense. The rest of the bible reads some kind of insane schizophrenic significance into every banal little thing that happens on earth -- battles are won and lost for reasons beyond the quality of the armies and the coincidental conditions of the terrain and weather; some guy will have a dream and not even a particularly interesting one and it's supposed to be momentous; humanity is assumed to be apart from nature and too impressive to exist by coincidence; we're assured that everything will work out in the end - and meanwhile, in Ecclesiastes, the Bible levels with us and tells us that everything is vain and meaningless, that man has no preeminence above the beasts, and there are some things that are crooked which cannot be made straight...and this makes the dupes who've bought into the other BS very uncomfortable; they can't handle it.

[freeformschooler]

More accurately The Revelation To John. It's actually quite a controversial book, not just in interpretation (of which I know of at least 3 mutually exclusive interpretations), but whether or not it should be included in the Bible at all. It wasn't accepted into canon until the fifth century (despite being pretty well established to date to the late first century), many early Protestant sects rejected it, and some groups reject it entirely to this day.

My church basically says "it's a book that doesn't really make sense, read it if you want, just be careful not to jump to conclusions".

I've never heard a sermon preached on Revelation. Not that there's a lack of material, it's just too weird.

You know what other book doesn't get enough sermons preached on it? Ecclesiastes.

Interestingly, I think that the Book of Ecclesiastes is underused for precisely the opposite reason of why Revelation is. While Revelations is too weird, Ecclesiastes makes too much sense. The rest of the bible reads some kind of insane schizophrenic significance into every banal little thing that happens on earth -- battles are won and lost for reasons beyond the quality of the armies and the coincidental conditions of the terrain and weather; some guy will have a dream and not even a particularly interesting one and it's supposed to be momentous; humanity is assumed to be apart from nature and too impressive to exist by coincidence; we're assured that everything will work out in the end - and meanwhile, in Ecclesiastes, the Bible levels with us and tells us that everything is vain and meaningless, that man has no preeminence above the beasts, and there are some things that are crooked which cannot be made straight...and this makes the dupes who've bought into the other BS very uncomfortable; they can't handle it.

Unless they're Unitarians, in which case they might like the spiritual tremors. (Orthodox Catholics prefer the jam.)

[Orange Wizard]

Ecclesiastes is actually about Solomon (I think, might be someone else) and his view of the world when he rejected God. Or rather, he rejected God, did all the Ecclesiastes nonsense, then came back and wrote the book.

[Cheeetar]

Is that the widely accepted view of Ecclesiastes, or something specific to your beliefs, Orange?

[Frumple]

The wikipedia page certainly seems to disagree, anyway. It's somewhat implied that the narrator is Solomon, but the text itself doesn't state one way or another -- both the writer and narrator are anonymous. Narrator says that they're the son of David, but... that's it. Seems to be no mention about rejecting God, either (mind you, for that, I'm checking summary rather than the text itself, so it's totes possible the actual thing says differently.).*

Chances of Solomon having actually written the text are... zero, though. It was written something like six hundred years after the critter was supposed to have keeled over, at the earliest.

*E: And actually reading a little bit, I'm not sure how you could get "rejected god" out of the passages, either... bits I've read over are pretty reverent. Definitely quick skimming, but still...

[Orange Wizard]

... huh. Okay. I'll have to look into that. I remember something along those lines, in any case. Been a while since I actually looked at the text in question.

[Bouchart]

Traditionally Ecclesiastes is attributed to Solomon. 

Anyway, if there's an obscure book of the Bible that preachers rarely preach sermons on, it's probably Habakkuk.

[Orange Wizard]

Song of Songs.

[Bohandas]

Ecclesiastes is actually about Solomon (I think, might be someone else) and his view of the world when he rejected God. Or rather, he rejected God, did all the Ecclesiastes nonsense, then came back and wrote the book.

I don't think I've encountered that explanation as such. Though I do recall reading that some people interpret the book as having two narrators of opposing opinions.