All-In [29856]

TigerPulse: 100%

Posts: 8836

Joined: 10/31/10

Religious Pron - Easter and Tradition 1

Apr 14, 2022, 5:01 PM

Religious Pron – Easter and Tradition 1

…..
A fragment of the True Cross, on which Jesus was traditionally crucified, in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem. John Calvin traveled Europe in the 1550’s and said “If all the pieces of the cross in the churches across Europe were put together, there would be enough wood to build a ship.”

x

…..

…..
A relic of the Cross in procession, 1600’s, St. Mark’s Square, Venice

…..

…..
A piece of the cross at Notre Dame in Paris

…..

…..
And at Ruti Abbey in Switzerland

…..

…..
And in Vienna

…..

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The last few weeks we took a look at some of the black sheep of early Christianity. The books of Enoch, and Jubilees, and Barnabas, and Mary Magdalene, and Philip. You just can’t go around saying angels raped our women and Jesus isn’t the son of God, and then expect to be invited to lead prayer or Mass on Sunday morning. So out they went.

…..

…..

This post was originally going to be on tradition in general, but by taking a detour for a few weeks it coincidentally fell close to Easter, which also includes a lot of tradition. So I’ll take advantage of this fortuitous moment to talk some about both. Let’s dive right in.

…..

…..

One of the big problems early Christianity had was simply getting everyone on the same page. The distances between early churches, geographically, and culturally, and politically, meant everyone was kind of doing their own thing. We’ll cover quite a bit of that when the time comes.

…..
Major centers of early Christianity

…..

But that changed a lot in 325 AD when the heads of all the churches got together at the Council of Nicea in Turkey, right outside of Constantinople. Among a lot of other critical business, they issued 2 mandates related to Easter. One: don’t tie it in any way to the Hebrew calendar, and two: we don’t care what date you pick for it just make it the same date for all churches.

…..
Any date will do, as long as it’s not a Jewish date

…..

It’s clear from this that the church wanted to distance itself at least some from its Hebrew roots, but the two are still inexorably tied to each other. Jesus was in Jerusalem in his last days FOR the Jewish Passover holiday, to observe the occasion as a Jew. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all talk about it. You might remember he had a famous supper while he was there.

……

…...

And you have probably heard the rest of the story somewhere along he way, too. Jesus got ratted out and the Roman authorities came looking for him. They gave him a summary hearing/trial for sedition/rebellious speech, and found him completely innocent. But the Jewish hierarchy demanded his punishment for “wrongspeech”, and Barabbas became the luckiest murderer in history, while Jesus got crucified. They made a famous movie about it.

…..
I guess it’s two R’s in Italian

…..

So Jewish Passover and Christian Easter, which for believers commemorates his resurrection, are tied at the hip. In fact, in Latin, Easter is still known as Pascha, from the word Passover, the event that commemorates the 10th and final plague, and the Exodus of the Jews, from Egypt.

…..

…..

But the name Easter itself is pagan. It’s tied to the Germanic goddess of spring and the Spring Equinox, Eostre. That’s why you think what you think, or at least, say what you say in this case. So if you celebrate Easter, and call it Easter, you are continuing in a long tradition of not only remembering Christ, but also a pagan goddess.

….
Eggs and bunnies don’t have much to do with Jesus, but a lot to do with Eostre and Germanic tribal mythology.

….

So just like with Christmas, there is an interwoven chain of pagan and Jewish history that leads us to where Christianity is today. We’ll take a much closer look at more of that in time.

But although the various denominations of Christianity are fairly refined today, there’s still an awful lot of gaps in the history. That’s where tradition comes in.

…..

…..

Tradition is sort of the hazy area between fact and faith. It’s not necessarily one or the other, but it fills the gap between the two. Which makes it quite important.

…..

…..

You might think of tradition as a sort of a modified Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal for religion.

…..

…..

In this case, the closer you move towards fact the less you need faith. And the more you move towards faith, the less need you have of fact. Tradition strikes a balance between the two.

…..

…..

It’s very hard to nail down a lot of early religious history. That’s because so many of the stories that are relied on to tell that history were written to be cautionary, and colorful, and memorable. Not just cold, sterile dates and numbers on a spreadsheet.

…..

…..

But that’s also a part of the fun of it all. Trying to find why they were written at all, what they mean now, and what they meant to the people who wrote them. And even more so, why have they survived through the centuries.

…..

…..

As a friend of mine once said, “Sure a cliché is a cliché, but it wouldn’t be a cliché if there wasn’t some kernel of truth behind it.” That’s tradition.

…..

…..

…..

That’s kernel, not colonel, Norm.
…..

Now, if cold hard facts is all you are interested in, there are things like Kings Lists. There are a lot of them around, and they often tell us King X ruled for 10 years, and after him King Y ruled for 20 years, and so on. Some of them say King Z invaded Egypt in his third year and blah blah blah. Useful, but boooooring.

…..
A Sumerian King List. Useful, but as exciting as reading the dictionary

…..

They’re great when you are trying to establish a chronology of events though. And what’s even better is when they corroborate each other.

Say you have an Assyrian tablet that says “Sennacherib invaded Israel in his third year,” and you also have a Hebrew tablet that says “Assyria invaded us in 721 BCE.”

Ho ho! Well, now you know Sennacherib’s third year was 721 BCE and both sides agree on both the date, and what happened. BINGO! And, you build on that. Ancient Middle East history is like a giant jigsaw puzzles of dates and events. And sometimes they fit together perfectly.

…..

…..

But of course each civilization is telling its own story from its own side, and an event that is important to one might not be important to another. So although you can match up some stories up pretty well a lot of the time, some things just don’t seem to fit well into the puzzle. And sometimes it feels like everything is working against you.

…..

…..

The Exodus is a great example. It’s a great story, with tons of details, and it answers a lot of questions on the how and why of the Hebrews and early Israel. But so far, it’s only found in the pages of the Bible and nowhere else. The Egyptians, who wrote down EVERYTHING, don’t even mention it. Once.

…..
Here the Egyptians even recorded special visitors from Canaan. Joseph wasn’t the only one with a coat of many colors. Look at those snazzy threads.

">
…..

…..
And here’s another. Stylin.

…..

So the Egyptians corroborate the existence of their neighbors up the coast, and even record emissary visits complete with animals and goods and hip threads. There’s even Egyptian records about Nile delta cities predominately occupied by Hebrews. But nothing at all about a mass exodus by them.

…..
Only in the Bible, paintings, and movies

…..

So if you believe in the Exodus, you are on the faith end of the spectrum, far away from provable fact. Because there is simply no tangible evidence to support that it ever happened. For an event that huge - 600,000 people leaving your country so quickly and in such dramatic fashion, it’s odd that the Egyptians don’t remark on at all.

…..
The Exodus AAA triptik

…..

To put it in a modern context, for 1/3 of the US population to all leave at one time would be like California, Texas, Florida, New York, and Pennsylvania all packing up one night and walking to Mexico. With no record of it being recorded anywhere in any US history.

…..

…..

There’s no mention in any tomb or on any obelisk or in any temple of a blood red Nile, or frogs, or plagues, or the mass slaughter of firstborn, or any parting of any sea – not even of people leaving peacefully of their own accord as opposed to being chased out by armies of chariots.

Nothing from the Egyptian side has ever been found in any Egyptian record anywhere.

…..

…..

That’s where you have to rely on faith, and tradition. But that’s not the end of the story by a long shot. Because as someone famous once said, “the absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence.” And the city of Troy was just a fable until it was dug up.

…..
Ancient Troy. Right where it was supposed to be.

…..

And this is where the mystery gets juicier. Because the places described in the Exodus ARE there. You can walk the same path today that the Hebrews supposedly walked 3200 years ago. From Goshen in Egypt, to Mt. Horeb in the Sinai, all the way to to the Dead Sea. And if you want, you can wade right across the Jordan River as later told in Joshua. All very real terra firma.

…..
Baptisms in the modern Jordan River

…..

And the detail of the story in the Bible is amazing. I mean, the writer(s) clearly knew the land like the back of their hand. Right down to stuff like “they walked by the well next to the big stone on the road to Gaza” type stuff.

Well, I made those specific details up, but you get the idea. The people who wrote the story obviously had walked the land themselves...so what gives?

…..

…..

When faced with a mystery like this, you have to ask, “What is this story?” “Why is it here?” Why is it even around for me to read?

It’s seemingly not provable history, though it has historical details, and it is tantalizingly close to reality, but still illusory.

…..

…..

Maybe it did happen and no one simply thought enough about it to write it down. No one wrote a word about Jesus himself till two full generations after he died...about 50 years or so. Or maybe we just haven’t found the physical evidence of the Exodus yet. But if it didn’t happen, why write about it all?

…..

…..

Where’s your sense of wonder, and boldly going forth in the face of mystery, Spock?

Clearly, if the Exodus didn’t happen, it couldn’t have been written about at the time it supposedly happened.
Because if it didn’t happen anyone living when the story was written would call bullshid on it.

I mean, I couldn’t very well write a sports article today about how Clemson recently beat Alabama 300-0. Anyone who was alive when I wrote it would say that didn’t happen.

…..

…..

BUT, I might be able to write a story saying “Clemson once beat Alabama 300-0 in a time before our forefathers, when we were both in the Southern Conference.” In that case no one living would be be able to say for a fact that it didn’t happen. Unless they had access to Tim Bourret’s notes.

…..

…..

So the story of the Exodus is a bit like someone in the future excavating Atlanta using only a copy of Gone with the Wind to go by.

…..

…..

Atlanta is there, just like in the book. That’s a fact. I can see the pee stains on the rubble of the Bobby Dodd stadium toilets.

Robert E Lee existed, just like in the book, because we found statues and books and streets named for him not only in Atlanta, but corroborating evidence up in Richmond and his very tomb with his name on it in the ruins of Washington and Lee University.

…..

…..

There was definitely a Civil War. That’s well documented by multiple sources. We dug up cannons and Confederate Museums and even found a car with a Confederate flag on it they must have used in Pickett’s Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg.

…..

…..

But where is Scarlet O’Hara buried? And where do I start digging to find this plantation called Tara? And though we found Charleston and the property records in tact, there’s no record of a Rhett Butler ever owning any land or blockade runners there. Or of him ever finding any peace and grace.

…..

…..

If Margret Mitchell didn’t write Gone With the Wind as an exact, historical accounting of the South at that time, why did she write it? And why make it so real, with such real details? That’s the problem of the Exodus. So close to provable, but not quite.

…..

…..

So we are left with faith, and tradition, and one of the best stories in the whole Bible, and the question of why it exists at all.

And that’s where we’ll continue. Because it was tradition, and Constantine the Great’s mother, Helena, that hand picked all the Holiest spots millions travel to now each year, during Easter, or any other time.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

…..
About the time the Council of Nicea was handling theological questions in 325 AD, Constantine sent his 80 year old mother Helena off on a mission to find the holiest spots of this new religion he had just converted to, Christianity. Here she is.

…..

…..
She picked this spot, with help from the few locals that remained in the area, to build the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in what had once been Jerusalem. Jerusalem was razed to the ground in 70AD and rebuilt by the Romans in 132AD and re-named Aelia Capitolina. Then they destroyed it again in the Bar Kokhba revolt. Hardly anyone lived there for a very long time afterwards, and it wouldn’t even be called Jerusalem again for 3-4 more centuries.

x

…..

…..
She picked this spot for the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where by tradition Jesus was born

…..

…..
And she picked this spot for the Church of Eleona, where by tradition Jesus ascended to Heaven 40 days after his resurrection.

…..

…..
And she picked this spot where by tradition Moses saw the burning bush. St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai.

…..

…..
So if you should ever be lucky enough to visit your favorite places in the Bible, thank tradition, and Constantine’s elderly mother, for showing you “exactly” where they are located at.

…..

flag link

military_tech

thumb_down

thumb_up

You guys are having such a great discussion I'm of a mind to just sit back and watch. Very compelling stuff. Since the term "Sons of Man" has Jewish origins, I dug back to get a perspective from them, which I found very enlightening.

To piggyback on 88's comments, you can see how this interpretation differs from Books like Jubilees and Enoch. But while those books may be "false testimony" to some Christians, they are fully accepted by Orthodox Ethiopian Church and even some Jews, despite their seemingly radically differing interpretations on angels. Even to this day, neither the Christian Church nor Judaism is unified on all thought. How many opinions do you want? How many people do you have? Lol.

Here's an Aish Rabbi with a nice alternate explanation on all of it:

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The start of Genesis 6 states that the sons of God took wives from the daughters of men and had giant children. Who are these sons of God – angels? Does this agree with the Christian notion of rebellious, fallen angels?

The Aish Rabbi Replies:
Thank you for your very important question. The term the Torah actually uses in Genesis 6 is B’nei Elohim. “Elohim” literally means “powerful ones.” It is often used in the Torah to refer to God, but it is also used in reference to powerful people or to judges, such as in Exodus 4:16, 7:1, 21:6, and 22:8. Likewise, when referring to God, the term emphasizes His power and justice.

Based on this, most of the commentators to the Torah actually understand the verses not to be referring to supernatural beings such as angels, but to the judges and noblemen, the people of power. Their “privileged” sons would forcibly take whomever they wanted as wives. (The “daughters of man” can be understood to mean the lower classes, see for example Psalms 49:3.)

Their wicked behavior was thus symptomatic of the ills of the antediluvian world. The very leaders who should have been upholding the law and setting an example for society became part of the problem – exercising their power to take advantage of the weak and the underprivileged. (See Bereishit Rabbah 26:8, Targum Onkelos, Targum Yonatan, Rashi 1st explanation, Ibn Ezra 1, Radak, Ramban, R. Bechaye, Chizkuni.)

In a similar vein, many of the commentators understand B’nei Elohim as referring to the descendants of Seth, or to the primary descendants of Seth. They were “sons of God” in that they more godly and spiritual than the descendants of Cain. (Compare to Deuteronomy 14:1 “You [Israel] are children to the Lord your God.”) Being more spiritual (at the start), they were also physically superior to the commoners and lived much longer. They thus begat a race of supermen. Thus, the intent of these verses is likewise that the supposedly more religious segment of society stooped to forcibly taking the women of their liking. (See Ibn Ezra 2, Ramban, R. S. R. Hirsch.)

At the same time, there is an opinion in the Midrash that the verses are referring to literal angels – who descended from Heaven, took mortal wives, and begot a race of giants (Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer 22 (p. 50b), alternate explanation in Rashi and Ramban. See also Talmud Yoma 67b.)

This raises an important question. Aren’t angels merely messengers of God? Can they actually rebel? Doesn’t this seem to lend credence to the Christian notion that Satan is a rebellious angel?

There is an important piece in the Midrash which sheds light on this issue (Midrash Aggadat Bereishit intro., brought in ArtScroll Bereishit I, p. 181, footnote 1). It states that when God decided to blot out man with the Flood, two angels, Uzza and Azael, emphatically agreed, saying “What is man that that You recall him, the son of man that You think of him” (Psalms 8:5). They in effect stated that there had been no point creating lowly man to begin with.

The Midrash continues that God responded to them (paraphrased), “If you lived on earth as they and saw the beauty of their women, you would be no better!”

To which they responded, “We will descend and not sin.” They took the challenge – and failed. In fact, the Midrash states that they immediately saw the test was too much for them and begged God to allow them to return to Heaven. But He refused, saying that they were already defiled and would now be banished forever.

Based on this, we can understand how this episode does not contradict Judaism’s understanding of the angels. Angels in Heaven are merely messengers of God; there is no possibility of their rebelling against Him. However, when they assume physical form they become human and prone to sin. In fact, in this case, they descended to earth specifically in order to become physical and to try their hands at human challenges.

As my teacher Rabbi Yaakov Weinberg OBM once pointed out, we do likewise occasionally find the Sages making reference to angels sinning or misstepping – and it is consistently when they assumed physical form – as they sometimes do to fulfill missions on earth. See e.g. Rashi to Genesis 19:22 regarding the angels sent to overturn Sodom. (Note that angels very rarely do assume physical form, even when fulfilling missions for God on earth.)

Thus once again, although the more generally accepted understanding of this episode is that it was describing the sins of mankind, there is a Midrashic opinion which takes the story more literally. Even so, the only implication is that angels in human form can come to sin, not the angels in Heaven.

Religious Pron - Easter and Tradition 1

Re: Religious Pron - Easter and Tradition 1

Interesting, as always. I enjoy the process of separating

Amen.

Re: Amen.

Re: Interesting, as always. I enjoy the process of separating

As you said, 'Faith doesn't require proof.'

There are different ways of looking at faith, no question.

Re: There are different ways of looking at faith, no question.

Each of us is given a measure of faith.

Re: Each of us is given a measure of faith.

Re: As you said, 'Faith doesn't require proof.'

You should understand I am on the verge of considering...

Re: You should understand I am on the verge of considering...

Re: You should understand I am on the verge of considering...

Re: You should understand I am on the verge of considering...

Re: You should understand I am on the verge of considering...

Re: You should understand I am on the verge of considering...

Re: Interesting, as always. Exodus comments & ???s

Re: Interesting, as always. Exodus comments & ???s

Re: Interesting, as always. Exodus comments & ???s

Re: Interesting, as always. Exodus comments & ???s

Re: Interesting, as always. Exodus comments & ???s

Re: Interesting, as always. I enjoy the process of separating

I will not argue with anything in your comment, but will say

Re: I will not argue with anything in your comment, but will say

Re: I will not argue with anything in your comment, but will say

Re: Interesting, as always. I enjoy the process of separating

Re: Religious Pron - Easter and Tradition 1

This expose' is too large and covers too much to...

On the same note:

Re: On the same note:

Re: On the same note:

Re: On the same note:

I'm glad to answer any question I can...

Re: This expose' is too large and covers too much to...

Re: This expose' is too large and covers too much to...

Re: This expose' is too large and covers too much to...

Re: Religious Pron - Easter and Tradition 1

Re: Religious Pron - Easter and Tradition 1

TigerBoard POTD