27-02-2004 10:18									#241
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quote: Any more than historians or science will ever prove that Mohammad was handed the Koran already in written form by an angel sent down from heaven riding a horse

Agreed as well.

Do they have pot in the Middle East by any chance?

	27-02-2004 10:20									#242
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quote: Originally posted by Dr Strangelove You also have to take into account the expense and scarcity of paper, and the relative dearth of people able to write. Then again there is the fragility of ancient paper. The ancients didn;t know enough to impregante their paper with toxic chemicals so that the paper wouldn't break down for thousands of years. Stupid Ancients!

You also need to take into account that for the reasons mentioned above the ancients were much better than us at formulating, remembering and recounting stories and important information in order that it could be passed around by word of mouth and passed down to the next generation.

You can still see this kind of practice at work in traditional societies where elders memorise and recount sometimes extraordinarily long stories and geneologies. They can recount them perfectly word for word.

	27-02-2004 10:20									#243
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quote: Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui quote: Any more than historians or science will ever prove that Mohammad was handed the Koran already in written form by an angel sent down from heaven riding a horse Agreed as well. Do they have pot in the Middle East by any chance?

Something derived from poppies would have been more likely in this case...

jon.

	27-02-2004 10:22									#244
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Ah, yes that would work as well.

	27-02-2004 10:23									#245
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Divine sovereignty was around a while before, and a long time after, this event. Perhaps these revolutionaries figured out the trick: don't attack Rome, you'll never take them over by force... make a plan to take them over by subverting their belief in their gods, which they were essentially flexible about... after all... they did just borrow the Greek gods.

The ultimate confidence trick of all time?

	27-02-2004 12:41									#246
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Hmmm... Where are we... Tonight I saw it. Packed theater.

The movie was interesting. It won't make any sense for those who didn't hear the passion story every Easter. No background is given at all. It won't be a good tool for evangelization. More like good for renewal of faith already held.

Re the violence, I guess I'm desensitized to it. However, there was one scene that made me wince...

spoiler(highlight to read): When J was being beaten, the bludgeon was stuck in his flesh, and the soldier tore off part of J's flesh

I teared up when...

spoiler(highlight to read): The crucifiee on J's right made clear that he was going to hell, and that he knew he deserved both the crucifiction and perdition.

Overall, this is not your typical movie because nothing was explained and the plot was necessarily disjointed. It's like the film just started rolling on the stations of the cross, except this time for "real". It wasn't particularly enjoying, but I think it's going to go down as an important work.

	27-02-2004 12:46									#247
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And another thing, Satan in this movie is totally creepy. In a sense beautiful, but also totally perverse. I've never seen Satan personified, so I don't have any comparisons. But this was a highlight of the film.

	27-02-2004 12:58									#248
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satan is in it?

now I have to see it.

I love satan.

	27-02-2004 13:10									#249
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If any of you Christians could possibly travel back to the ancient world, I think you would find early Christianity not much to your taste.

	27-02-2004 13:12									#250
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Diss: Demon children are in it too! Though they don't get the screen time that good ol' Beelzebub gets.

	27-02-2004 13:14									#251
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Why do you say that Agathon?

	27-02-2004 13:26									#252
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Because the supernatural was a lot closer for ancient people than it is now. And I think the Jews of the time would have found Protestantism to be ridiculous and the sexual puritanism of later Christianity to be loony.

The claim that people are now practising the exact same religion as Jesus did is pretty unlikely.

	27-02-2004 13:34									#253
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Judaism changed that much?

(Well, excluding the reformed, etc.)

	27-02-2004 13:34									#254
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Agathon,
however the Jewish culture of that time was very puritanical and conservative. It is now compared as the other opposite end of the hedonistic and free (and more materialistic) Greek culture of that time.

In a way today we are all Jews. We have grown up inside their culture (of old).

	27-02-2004 13:35									#255
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Clarification: when I say "all" I mean those grown up in christian environments.

	27-02-2004 13:47									#256
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It's not all encompassing of course. What I am basically saying is that since Christian religion was born in Israel by Jews it inevitably absorbed plenty of their cultural values. With the spread of Christianity these values expanded by the "vehicle" of Christianity. For example in ancient Greece or Rome it would have been ridiculous and incomprehensible to be ashamed of your genitalia or to uphold the notion that pleasure is sin. Such ascetism was alien to these regions. Sparta was ascetic but in a different way.

For all purposes, I'd add that IMHO the Jewish God (or Christian if you prefer) is much more humane than the Dodecatheon, which was more human and thus more cruel. I'm talking about Christianity's core teachings of "love one another" not about the inherent Jewish conservative notions that inevitably were incoprorated into the religious dogma of Christianity.

	27-02-2004 16:02									#257
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quote: Sparta was ascetic but in a different way.

A very different way, as the Spartans sure had no qualms about engaging in homosexual sex.

	27-02-2004 16:09									#258
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I don't know about that. According to Plato homosexuals were executed in Sparta. You can read more about that in Symposium. Of course everyone is free to believe what pleases him.

	27-02-2004 16:11									#259
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Plato was gay himself. Might have just been the usual gay persecution complex that made him write about executions of gays in Sparta.

	27-02-2004 16:13									#260
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There are no written accounts of Plato being gay. There are however about him being married and having kids, which he neglected to philozophise.

	27-02-2004 16:16									#261
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And ascetic, with which I described Sparta, means hardened and voluntarily deprived of earthly comforts. Doesn't have anything to do with homosexuality AFAIK.

	27-02-2004 16:19									#262
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I'd consider homosexual sex to be an "earthly comfort". Maybe the Greek guys don't do it right, though; hell if I know.

And we all know Socrates was giving Plato the hot meat injections on a regular basis.

	27-02-2004 16:27									#263
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dp

Last edited by Bereta_Eder on 27-02-2004 at 16:53

	27-02-2004 16:27									#264
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As said you are free to believe whatever gives you an erection.

	28-02-2004 00:24									#265
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quote: Originally posted by Alexander's Horse Yes they were. But Jerusalem, where the records would have been kept, was destroyed a few years after the events. I refer you to my earlier post - science is tending to confirm the accuracy of oral traditions. In some cases, stories once thought of as myth are being found to based accurately on historical events. Certainly more than historians ever gave credit going off the written record. The most famous example was actually a century ago when Homer's Troy was found by a German archeologist. Hitherto Homer's stories had been considered myth and not been thought to be based on historical events.

AH is right.

The Viking's sagas were claimed to be at best myths and more likely drunken songs of braggarts. The notion that they discovered North America was repudiated with the utmost scorn by English historians.

In 1960, Helge Ingstad and Anne Stine Ingstad simply went to the area described in the sagas, asked a local fisherman if there were any old ruins around, and promptly found the site where the Vikings established a permanent settlement in North America a millenia ago.

On one hand, you can't really trust history.

On the other, oral traditions may actually be more trustworthy than the accounts of "historians" being paid by the authorities in power.

*

Jesus existed. This is a fact that no serious historians debate. He is generally considered a prophet by Judaism and Islam. Only Christians consider him divine.

He was a Jew, an activist, and he was put to death by the Romans, as he was a destabilizing political influence, who were aided by the Pharisees, whose established dogma Jesus threatened.

	28-02-2004 00:33									#266
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quote: Originally posted by The Mad Viking Jesus existed. This is a fact that no serious historians debate.

Yes, they DO debate it. While it might be convenient for you to just dismiss the scholarly research into the matter as not being "serious," it is a matter of serious debate by serious scholars, although now they aren't in the majority in their viewpoint.

	28-02-2004 00:36									#267
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quote: Originally posted by Drake Tungsten Plato was gay himself. Might have just been the usual gay persecution complex that made him write about executions of gays in Sparta.

I don't know if Plato was married. It's not unlikely, but it wouldn't stop him being bisexual - which was probably the norm.

He did not get the "meat injection" from Socrates because respectable Greek men did not allow buggery; it would make them too much like women. There's a passage in the Gorgias where Socrates wins an argument by pointing out to his interlocutor that the interlocutor's position commits him to the shameful claim that taking it up the ass is good.

But all this is academic. Plato thinks that all sex is degrading. That's why the Symposium ranks it below friendship. It's essentially the way that animals participate in a form of immortality, but since we humans are immortal there is really no need for it.

	28-02-2004 03:27									#268
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I've seen it. The photography was fine. The torture scene was very graphic. But I think Gibson went overboard. Frankly, I don't think someone could survive such a beating and remain conscious, let alone carry a cross on his back. That said, I found the movie incredibly boring. After one hour, I was saying to myself: get crucified and die already! die! die! die! It doesn't even come close to Zephireli's movie or, for that matter, Scorsese's.

	28-02-2004 05:53									#269
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quote: Originally posted by The Mad Viking Jesus existed. This is a fact that no serious historians debate. He is generally considered a prophet by Judaism and Islam. Only Christians consider him divine. He was a Jew, an activist, and he was put to death by the Romans, as he was a destabilizing political influence, who were aided by the Pharisees, whose established dogma Jesus threatened.

Backwards.

Pilate washed his hands of Jesus's guilt.

	28-02-2004 05:54									#270
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quote: Originally posted by Boris Godunov Yes, they DO debate it. While it might be convenient for you to just dismiss the scholarly research into the matter as not being "serious," it is a matter of serious debate by serious scholars, although now they aren't in the majority in their viewpoint.

Boris, one can never prove that Jesus did not exist.