Not sure (appropriate user name, BTW) that we have the same interpretation of the word “banality”. I’ll not argue semantics.
I do know that the aid activities you mention can be, and often are, conducted outside the auspices of faith. I‘d hardly consider these services to the needy to be banalities though, no matter who provided them,
This post was edited by Don Barzini at December 12, 2018 8:28 PM MST
About 500 years before the birth of Jesus, God sent Daniel to Babylon to found a church. That church collected gifts for 500 years and then gave them all to Joseph and Mary so they could flee to Egypt and survive the high cost of living there.
That is a bit of revisionist historical presumption isn’t it.
The Bible tale accounts that Daniel was TAKEN to Babylon, not that he travelled there of his own accord, as one of a thousand young captives of King Nebuchadnezzar, who had conquered Jerusalem. Have you read the Book of Daniel?
According to Matthew (the only source of this entire story, BTW), Mary and Joseph fled in the middle of the night, after a prescient dream by Joseph, and whatever gifts were given them by the “Magi” (assuming any of this is true) would have made their journey tenable.
Can you cite the verse(s) specifying 500 years (or any amount of any) church collections going directly to M&J for their flight?
I find your knowledge of the Bible is suspect.
This post was edited by Don Barzini at December 16, 2018 8:55 AM MST
She did consent. Luke 1:38. And not by having sex either, she remained inviolate until she had given birth to her Son. Jesus was an implanted clone.
However, the Catholic "ever virgin" stuff is equally nonsense, He had siblings - his brother James (well, half-brother) was an Apostle. Only a celibate could possibly think otherwise. Look at it from Joseph's point of view. He's just seen the woman he loves give birth to a kid he KNOWS isn't his - so as soon as she's recovered (a few months postpartum), he's obviously going to do his damnedest to knock her up himself, to prove his masculinity and virility if nothing else. Married couples do have sex - and there was no TV back then.
Q "Is god a sexual predator for impregnating the virgin Mary without her consent?" ==========================================================
1. Curiously enough, although it’s the Gospel according to John which lends most support to the divinity of Jesus, with the synoptics being a little less forthright, it is the Gospel according to Luke which seeks to leave no doubt in the reader’s mind that Jesus was son of God because there was sexual intercourse between God and Mary. Luke 1:27 tells us that “She [Mary] was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of King David.” Why it bothers to mention that Joseph was a descendant of King David if Jesus was not his son anyway is a bit strange. If we pick up the narration from Luke 1:31 where the angel Gabriel is speaking to Mary, and quote the relevant parts the we get the following:
2. “You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. 33And he will reign over Israel forever; his Kingdom will never end!” How can this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin? The angel replied, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby to be born will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God.” ….. 38“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May it happen to me according to your word.” Then the angel left her.……. [Luke 2:5] He took with him Mary, his fiancée, who was now obviously pregnant.”
3. If the main point is that the alluded sexual intercourse with Mary was “without her consent” then we can see from the narration that the consent was in Mary’s answer, “May it happen to me according to your word.”
4. Mind you, if it’s God then the idea of God seeking consent, seeking approval, seems a bit incongruent. But then the idea of God having sexual intercourse is itself quite inappropriate anyway.
I recall a Jewish scholar on the radio pointing out that irrespective of God's intervention, the "Virgin" idea probably arose from early translators misunderstanding or mis-translating a slightly ambiguous Hebrew word that simply means "young woman" - though perhaps implies virginity to those who want that interpretation.
That is entirely credible. The assorted books of the Bible are by little-known or unknown authors in an originally-tribal society dating from its region's Late Bronze Age; and have little or no with no independent corroboration. They were translated and translated on again by many people with very limited education and world knowledge, over a very long time; and once these translations became early Christian Church (Orthodox and Catholic) dogma no-one would have dared question them until historically very recently.
For centuries, the Vatican even kept the Bible and liturgy in Latin to prevent the uneducated populace reading it themselves. Although that defence had already been breached, the 17C King James Authorised was the first attempt to go back to sources as early as possible and translate them as accurately as possible, into the best Standard English of its day - but it still conveys the original stories that had become dogma.
Even now, even in educated Western societies, there are people terrified to question it, and terrified of others doing so.
The tragedy is the effect of this story on Christian-led, male-dominated society over the ensuing couple of millennia.
'
There have never been any credibly-supported instances of human parthenogenesis, which was this story unknowingly describes. One or two supposed parallels from Mediaeval Europe, were probably cases of a very rare type of cancer; recognised now, but not centuries ago when anyway it would have killed the sufferer - so obviously and thankfully this did not happen to Mary.
We can never know what really inspired the story but I've sometimes thought it a shame that instead and rather more credibly, it had not gone something like "And God did say unto Joseph, 'Of your seed there shall be one that is of my begotten Son... ' ". They knew the Facts of Life in those days, to a point, but not the real nature of the "seed", and probably not even the existence of the ovum. (Menstruation was an utter mystery, and to men, also utterly frightening and disgusting.)
It is interesting to ask why it puts Joseph out of the running. Hebrew society was patriarchal - that's why the God it invented or took from earlier beliefs is "male" - but could this have been an early attempt even though by male writers, to try to redress the balance a little? Similarly perhaps with the stories about Jesus' teaching? It's years since I have read a Bible and the only church services I attend now are funerals, but I recall he actually liked and respected women - perhaps another, though unstated, reason he so terrified the Temple Elders that they wanted him dead.
For other examples of original or translators' errors (distinct from obvious fable or propaganda):
- The fleeing Hebrews could have exploited unusually dry but temporary weather conditions - or local help - to cross the REED Sea (an area of marshes), but certainly not the very deep RED Sea. I don't know Middle Eastern geography very well, so wonder if it means the marshes between the Tigris and Euphrates, which Saddam Hussein tried to drain to expel the long-resident Marsh Arabs*. If so, and if those Marsh Arabs' ancestors were there at the time, it's feasible they could have guided the Jews to safety while leaving the Egyptians literally to sink or swim; but received no Official Thanks because recording human intervention would have undermined the ungrateful priests' and scribes' religious intentions.
- I think we can credit King Soloman's gilders with better skill than the writer or translator who effectively equated Pi to 3.000000000. (Anyway they'd have done what you or I would with wall-paper: wrap the gold-leaf round and cut it on a small overlap!)
+++
" The Marsh Arabs: An account of their daily lives is the Scots writer Gavin Maxwell's A Reed Blown In The Wind, written after he visited the region with Wilfred Thesiger, who had become a friend of this isolated Arabic community. It's also there that Maxwell discovered the "new" species of otter later given his name taxonomically - recounted in his Ring of Bright Water.
"I know not any man" is unambiguous, even more so in Greek. The OLD Testament was written in Hebrew, the Immaculate Conception of the New is in a far more sophisticated language when ambiguity is only achievable on purpose.
Was it written mainly in Greek, then? I know Christianity as it became, spread via Greece, but I thought the local languages were Hebrew and Aramaic.
Be that as it may, the Bible still only reflects what its writers believed and wanted others to believe - but that's true of any religion's scriptures.
I think though they would have been horrified if they could have predicted the appalling effects throughout history since, of that "Immaculate Conception" story and the implication of the phrase, in the hands of power-hungry, misogynist church authorities.
Europe and far Western Asia in the first century was politically Roman but still culturally Greek, thanks to the conquests of Alexander the Great. Greek was the language of trade and commerce - in fact, the Hebrew scriptures had been translated into Greek (the Septuagint) a century or so eatlier as many Jewish folk after the Diaspora could no longer understand Hebrew.
Not Sure 