Solomon:
Good book suggestions man! I’ve read The Case For Christ. Wow, what a eye opener!
Brian Smith:
I like you dude, you remind me of how far behind I am in my studies.
Ok next explanation please, I dout it will impact me all that much but I do love to learn. So could you please once again tell me what, the Torquemada & Iraqi council are and why I should care or take into acount what happened or will happen at them. Also you said “I’m an ex-Unitarian” so I was wondering what you consider yourself now.
By the way thanks for the Vactican II info. Let me add on to what I previously said. We all have our own opions on right and wrong and we all make our own choices. What others declare for themselves is their own beliefs and I hope no matter what any one else does or says I will keep the faith.
All this talk about Jesus dying for the sins of mankind must be sweet for Christians to hear, but…also very insulting to many other people. Jews, for example, only have two options for attonement:
-
if the sin is against a fellow man (or woman), then you must seek forgiveness from those whom you’ve sinned against. God won’t forgive you for them.
-
if the sin is against God (i.e., breaking His law), then you must seek forgiveness during Yom Kippur by asking for it.
In other words, we already have a way of being cleansed of sin, as do all other faiths, so please stop the preaching about how one can only go to heaven through Jesus…that’s just plain obnoxious!
Besides, even according to that obnoxious theory, Jesus only died for the sins of those who accept him…so please stop saying that he died for all mankind when that clearly isn’t the case. He died for Christians, and his gift was for you…isn’t that enough?
For such an emotional subject, just about everyone on this thread has shared their point of view without verbally degrading everyone who disagrees with them. I’m amazed…
LittleJay - When did the Jews stop using animal sacrifice to atone for sin? Just curios, I have learned a lot from hearing the perspective of others.
Me Solomon Grundy
Solomon asked:
When the Beit Ha’Mikdash (Jerusalem Temple) was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE, the Temple sacrifices also ended. At this point, prayer started to fully replace the Temple rituals, although this practice had probably begun earlier as schisms over the role of the Priesthood had forced some Jews to turn away from the Temple as the center of Jewish religion. Within 2 centuries after the destruction of the Temple, the Judaism you now know became codified by the introduction of the Talmud.
Peace, out!
Solomon & LittleJay,
I think the prophet Isaiah says the Jews can/will substitute more prayers for daily animal sacrifices.
DarkAngel,
To my parent’s dismay the Unitarian viewpoint didn’t really stick, but it did introduce me to a lot of religions and I got into Tolstoy, who inspires many Unitarians. Now I’m just an atheist, or more like an agnostic. I identify mostly with Tolstoy’s non-divine-super-prophet Christ. However, I’m not sure whether this Jesus is historically accurate and I don’t have Tolstoy’s tremendous faith. I try to respect all religion in general for its power to affirm life and support human rights.
I don’t like so much when religions proselytize heavily and consign others to hell for a difference of opinion. And I have a special respect for Judaism’s reluctance to proselytize and consign non-Jews to hell.
Again, I direct your attention to the NT quotes I found which show how one can believe the New Testament TO THE LETTER and NOT BLAME ALL PHARISEES/JEWS who lived during Jesus’ time for calling for Jesus’s death.
I don’t consider myself anti-religious or anti-Christian. I can absolutely respect a “fundamentalist Christian,” but not very much if he insists against the evidence of his own Bible that the Jews/Pharisees who plotted against Jesus represent the actions or character of Jews, then or now.
Torquemada was one of the masters of the Inquisition, who decided whether one’s beliefs represented Christianity and if not, how that person should be tortured to death. One of the issues the Iraqi Council is now discussing is what rights the Constitution should give to Christians in Iraq. So I think, in order to be “truly religious” one has to find as much kindness in your religion as possible for those who believe differently.
God bless.
Solomon and DarkAngel: Just logged back in and got your latest. Nice place we have going here…where guys/gals like us can engage in what could very easily be an emotionally-charged discussion and do it in such a civil and enlightening manner.
I appreciate your input, and can assure you that I’ve spent quite a bit of my adult life questioning/reading/debating such spiritual things. That my search has led me down a different path than you probably doesn’t say much about any of us…I often believe it’s the search itself that leads us to enlightenment and trancendance.
I am content in my view of the metaphysical (despite its pathetic limitations), as I believe you are with yours. That all of us at least have reached some sort of “understanding” gives us a step-up on the many sheep who blindly go about their daily toils without ever looking up to the heavens.
Now if I could only improve my deadlift, I’d be truly amongst the enlightened…
Brian Smith,
Enough already!
Take a breather.
This topic ain’t going anywhere.
It’ll be hear in 4004.
Thank you,
Kyle
Wow, I’ve missed a lot…Thanks for the clarification on Mel’s desire to recreate the gospels, by the way (I can’t remember who said it, and I don’t want to use the “back” button and lose what I’m writing). I had never heard that and it totally threw me off when someone said it. I thought maybe there was a faction of Christians who were mad that he didn’t recreate the movie the way they see it (and I was wrong to make assumptions like that). I am also very impressed (as someone else said earlier) with the fact that this might be the FIRST time I have ever seen a discussion about religion on this forum without people throwing curses of damnation at one another for differences in belief and opinion. Brian Smith, you obviously know your stuff…interesting…
Brian Smith & LittleJay ? The reason I asked was to better understand how the concept of sin atonement from a Jewish perspective. Thank you both for your input. I will need to research it further.
Me Solomon Grundy
Hey guys,
With the talk about animal sacrifice, I thought it would be cool to mention hebrews 10 in the Bible. It basically states why it is no longer neccessary. Here is a little bit of it…
“For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins…but this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God… for by one offering He has perfected forever them that are sanctified.”
-Hebrews 10:4,12,14
Basically, all the animal sacrifices that the Hebrews did back in the day were a pointer to what was to come…the ultimate sacrifice of the Lamb of God.
Alright, time to go unleash the Samson in me! It is heavy bench day!
While he maintains that he used the Gospels as the primary source for the film, Mel Gibson clearly also used the account of Anne Catherine Emmerich, a 19th century Augustinian nun.
She claimed to have received detailed visions about Jesus, which she basically dictated to others while bedridden late in her life. These stories are published in various forms. The ones used by Mel Gibson are usually available under the title “The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ.” This is where Mel got many of the details he used in his story.
Some people believe that Anne Emmerich was the most important visionary / mystic / prophet in the history of the (Catholic) church. Other people believe that she was just some nutball.
K got make this short.
Brian: if I came off condeming to you or towards anyone else forgive me if you would.
And to the people on this forum in general I like this one and will have to write some more in a day or 2 when I have more time. Thanks for letting me speak my mind and thanks for your opions.
Respect ALL
DA
JayM,
I believe the Catholic Church thinks that Emmerich’s misrepresented events of her life as miraculous and her books may actually be written by a Protestant poet, but I digress. The direct inspiration for Gibson’s movie is two women who nurtured the vile falsehoods that LittleJay reminds us are still out there in Christendom:
“Gibson, who co-wrote the script for his film, has said he relied on three sources: the New Testament and two nuns. One of the nuns, Mary of Agreda, a 17th century Spanish aristocrat, wrote of the Jews involved in Christ’s death: “Although they did not die [they] were chastised with intense pains These disorders consequently upon shedding the blood of Christ descended to their posterity and even to this day continue to afflict this group with horrible impurities.” The other, Anne Catherine Emmerich, was an early 19th century German stigmatic who often described Jews as having hooked noses and who told of a vision she had in which she rescued from purgatory an old Jewish woman who confessed to her that Jews strangled Christian children and used their blood in the observance of their rituals. She claimed the woman in her vision told her that this practice was kept secret so it would not interfere with the Jews’ commercial intercourse with Gentiles.”
Have anyone read the book “Behold the man” by Michael Moorcook?
Interesting read about “Jesus” life. Probably goes dead against what many of you believe but has an interesting twist.
Moose:
What’s the man’s thoughts on Jesus?
STOP THIS THREAD
The Buddy Jesus! LMFAO every time I see it!
Thanks for that Jay.
Brian,
The Catholic church seems to view Anne Emmerich with some ambiguity. The beliefs run from her being this incredibly important visionary to her just being embarassing.
She supposedly dictated her visions to a poet named Klemens Brentano, who later published them. The story was that he came in because he spoke Westphalian, which was her native language, and could translate them into regular German. While he may have been an indifferent Catholic as a young man, he became devout later in his life. Just how much of the published works were hers and how much were his is impossible to know.
Personally, I fall into the “she’s just a nutball” camp. Mel Gibson obviously doesn’t feel this way. But the original point was that the details of Mel’s story didn’t just come from the Bible, but from other, more controversial sources. I don’t mean to imply that the Bible is not a controversial source, just that citing the Gospels as the source lends more authority to Mel Gibson’s account than citing other sources that don’t carry the same weight with the target audience. Most American Fundamentalists (nor even most Catholics) have never even heard of people like Anne Emmerich, who is not without her detractors even with the Catholic church.