Academic discipline- Okay, sorry I misunderstood your posts.
Linda, does it really surprise you that a website created by an academic NT scholar would draw the interest of folks who are interested in Jesus as a historical figure but not in any particular theological approach? Prof Ehrman’s entire methodology rests on the assumption that there is a difference to be found between the Christ(s) of faith and the historical Jesus.
Lionel Windsor, Anglican Minister/Diocese of Sydney and teaches New Testament at Moore College Sydney; Durham Univ. PhD
John’s first mention of the Son of Man occurs in 1:51, as the climax to a series of identifications of Jesus—Lamb of God (1:29, 36), Elect of God (1:34), Messiah (1:41), Son of Joseph (1:45), Son of God i.e. King of Israel (1:49). Jesus predicts ‘greater things than these’ (1:50) and then predicts in 1:51 that ‘you’ (plural, therefore generalised) will see ‘heaven opened’ and ‘the angels of God ascending and descending upon The Son of Man.’** you do not have permission to see this link ** This last part of the verse is a direct verbal parallel with Genesis 28:12, with cases and tenses changed only to transform the past narrative of Jacob’s dream at Bethel into a future vision.
** you do not have permission to see this link **
Welcome STEEFEN! I have to admit I’m a bit surprised to see you contribute to this thread. You have deliberately excluded me from your threads and I have responded to your request by voluntarily removing myself. I suppose I assumed you wished to have no more contact with me judging by your reaction when I attempted to respond to your threads with critique and analysis (and yes some humor).
I will not respond to you as you did to me. The entire point of this thread is to share a personal interest and encourage responses. My focus is historical/critical but overwhelmingly literary. The Enoch stories are fascinating, and cool! Full of weird persons and happenings. I simply assume that other folks might think so too and want to chime in. You will also note that this is not a lecture hall or a symposium. I assume the conversation will widen and expand occasionally to refer to this or that side issue. But all springing from the main focus of the thread.
Is this post an invitation for me to start responding to your threads again? Are you making nice and taking me back?
Do you wish to discuss the Book of Enoch? I am magnanimous and accepting. (Poor Colin will never understand why I gave him the boot.)
But, because of our past history I am going to hold you to a more stringent standard. So here’s the rules for you, Steefen.
DO NOT POST VIDEOS UNTIL YOU HAVE WATCHED THEM THROUGH ENTIRELY, THOUGHT THEM OVER, AND WISH TO DISCUSS THEM. This is not your notepad. I don’t care to be kept informed about your viewing schedule. If you aren’t attempting to communicate by posting then what’s the point? I want to know what YOU think. I want to discuss it with YOU.
POSTING INVITES CRITIQUE.
Shall I tell you what’s wrong with this video? It seriously oversimplifies both modern scientific views and ancient mythological views and attempts to assume some relationship between them that it never makes the slightest attempt to demonstrate. (It also makes several easily checkable false claims.) Did you notice how many times the qualifiers “What if-?”, “Could-?”, and “Maybe-?” were used? You know friend, there’s a much simpler explanation for those “windows in heaven” than that they’re interdimensional quantum portholes in space. But that simpler explanation requires some knowledge about ancient near eastern mythology and cosmic mythological geography. (Hint: they had a pre-scientific view of the cosmos not based on observation and experiment.)
Are you old enough to remember a book published in the 70s entitled ** you do not have permission to see this link **? It created quite a stir by attempting to imagine a parallel between then current scientific theories and ancient Buddhist concepts. (It successfully elided the objections of actual experts on Buddhism and astrophysics.) The first question to ask if you were not already a true believer was what happens when scientific theory, always expanding as the result of new findings, begins to NOT sound like ancient philosophical thought? Do we abandon the science or abandon the Buddhism? Or accept they never really had much of a relationship at all?
What interests me personally is the need to establish a relationship between ancient modes of thought and current science in the first place. Why can’t we accept the fact that there was no ancient wisdom? Just traditions, many of them quite beautiful, passed down from people who knew even less about how the world works than we do. Why can’t we just enjoy these stories for what they are? The dreams – and nightmares – of the human race.
Steefen, if you wish to discuss these issues, as they DIRECTLY RELATE TO THE BOOK OF ENOCH, then you are most welcome. If not then why waste your time here?
THIS IS YOUR ONE AND ONLY WARNING.
ps: For the rest of the folks reading this I appreciate your patience.
Why can’t we accept the fact that there was no ancient wisdom?
I’m going to grab this tangent and run with it:
I have gotten progressively more open to the idea of ancient wisdom.
Obviously I don’t look to the ancients for insights into the physical world (I have absolutely no reason to think they were closer to comprehending its mysteries than we are; indeed, I have every reason to think they were rather farther from unraveling the secrets of the cosmos than we are), but I do think the ancients, and the uneducated folk of every age, in their own way, often had already grasped the nub of a lot of peculiarly *human* problems. Things like, why get out of bed in the morning? Why not just do yourself in?
I think they–often–had already grasped the problem, and–sometimes–said as much about it as anyone can, far more plainly than any 20th century philosopher. These are basic problems that all men have wrestled with for millennia before civilization even began. It isn’t like the problem or the data we have to solve it have much changed since we first came out of the trees.
Just as Euclid was less some solitary genius who invented geometry and more a genius compiler who gathered and systematized the insights of those before him, so the classics distill the collective wisdom of tens of thousands of years of existential anguish, and were then received and preserved as uniquely insightful.
That is why I think the classics still need to be read.
Why can’t we accept the fact that there was no ancient wisdom?
Maybe I’m just not on the same page here, but to me the Bible is full of ancient wisdom. One of my doctors years ago wrote Search the Scriptures: A Physician Examines Medicine (Robert Greenblatt) illustrating the ancients’ wise methods and comparing them with today’s.
Porphyry wrote:
I think they–often–had already grasped the problem, and–sometimes–said as much about it as anyone can, far more plainly than any 20th century philosopher. These are basic problems that all men have wrestled with for millennia before civilization even began. It isn’t like the problem or the data we have to solve it have much changed since we first came out of the trees.
Indeed.
I’ve always loved this line from Zamyatin’s ** you do not have permission to see this link **
“I write this not for myself but for you unknown people whom I love and pity, for you who still lag centuries behind.”
It is crazy to see how easily YouTube creators can manipulate people to boost their metrics. It almost makes me wonder whether Jerek’s approach to early Christian texts isn’t on the right track.
People think they are getting gnosis when they are just stats to be monetized for a few cents.
Robert
Sure, do you have a particular thread in mind? Otherwise, I can look for a thread of yours that discusses similar content.
Steefen
Within the scope of my book, I use Enoch mainly for the story of him being the Son of Man becoming the judge of humans.
I do not use Enoch for physics in the first or second edition of my book.
Please remove Comment 103 from this thread.
Thank you.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
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