Yep, that's my grandpap!












Just kidding; I dunno if he's any relation. But wow.

I'd like to be encouraging about your project, and I hope it's very successful. As far as looking up, and commenting on, every use of the word "one" in scripture, I think it's good to remember that the Hebrews were ordinary humans, and "one" was an ordinary word to them. If you imagine what it would be like to look up every occurrence of "one" in Moby Dick, say, or War and Peace, I think you would conclude that it was a huge effort likely to bear only a very little fruit.

On your question, I know that Malachi never heard of the "Holy Trinity," had no conception of the Holy Spirit as a person, and had never in his life heard of "God the Son." So he couldn't possibly be arguing for or against any of those ideas. Just like the verse says, Malachi was saying, "We all have the same God, so we should all be true to each other and our religion."

"Social contract" morality--ugh. If the social contract authorizes gay sex and requires that Jews be handed over to the heimatsicherheitsdienst, would that make it moral?

Also, is it necessary to personally sign onto this "contract" in order to be bound by it? Or is it like a shrink-wrap license you "agree to" by being born and not expatriating?

I guess secular law sets us up to fail as well, seeing that most people break at least one piece of legislation at least once in their lives. It's not impossible to keep, but you'd hardly know that from our prison populations and the amount of money raked in by speeding fines.

Not the best example, since traffic law is tweaked to maximize fines. People actually are set up to fail: the law intentionally sets onerous limits not needed for safety, knowing people of good sense will break them. In some cases the law creates unsafe situations, in fact, where only a dangerous fool would comply.

What Fort said. Some evidence suggests that Goliath's kit was much more deluxe than the average Philistine's, and Samuel supports this: if he were dressed like any other Philistine, they wouldn't describe his armor in such detail. (A later writer would probably not have described the Greek kit in detail, BTW, since he would assume all Philistines dressed like that.)

But my remarks about the "Judean Lourdes" aren't about historical debates like that. My point is that those bits read like superstition in an otherwise not superstitious book. They don't fit. Even references like demons are not done superstitiously. No girls levitating over their beds and rotating their heads 360 degrees like the Exorcist. No description of horned beasties running away from the scene after being expelled. The parable of "seven other demons" hints at a popular superstition, but in a restrained way. And this idea of an angel offering periodic healings as a lark would, apart from that one verse, read like another popular superstition. It's plausible that a marginal note explaining the superstition crept into the text, where it suddenly reads like an endorsement and not just an explanation.

Agreed, Fort. Nor other "victimless crimes," either.

It's a different situation, but still apropos, to note that Solomon's first judicial act was to give justice to a prostitute. It doesn't say he seized and executed her; it says he awarded her custody of her child. Would a modern court do the same? These days "undesirables" are often denied justice, have their children seized, etc. And we personally are likely to deny others just treatment because of our prejudice against the victim. TV cop shows illustrate this with the trope of cops expressing indifference when "low lifes" murder each other.

It's my general feeling that we Christadelphians avoid talking about that particular passage. I'm not sure exactly what would happen if brethren argued a similar position about it within the ecclesia.

A much milder passage is John 5:4. It reads differently than the rest of the Bible generally. Do angels really amuse themselves by splashing in a pool, healing the first sick person to struggle into the water, and presumably having a bit of a laugh at the poor disappointed losers who didn't make it? We Christadelphians believe that Lourdes is a fraud--it's one of our distinctives. In this case I've casually accepted the theory that verse 4 is a scribal gloss that leaked from the margin into the text, and not felt motivated to argue about it. I think most brethren read it without anything like the dissonance that Matthew's passage causes--and so without avoiding it, but without particularly questioning it either.

(On a hermeneutical note, I can point to other places where the writers of scripture report others' beliefs without comment. Did the scribe believe that the witch at Endor really did raise Samuel? I don't think it's clear-cut; the scribe reports the scene as Saul perceived it, without affirming or denying its veracity. It's a prime example why we should really hesitate to make an inferential case for a doctrine. That incident supplies plenty of ammunition to argue by inference that ghosts and mediums are real.)

Sentience is relative. Although I'm sure our ability to reason and dialogue is important to our relationship to God, nevertheless I suspect that the pleasure we offer God is very like the pleasure my cat gives me. We are much too grotesquely stupid to discourse on anything like equal terms with God. So what He gets from us can't possibly be intellectual stimulation. I'm doubtful that an intelligence that superior would find us recognizably sentient. The difference between us and a Holstein (which clearly also doesn't want to die) must seem slight indeed.

The case is inferential, but it's not complete nonsense. Relevant passages are collected here. Notably:

Deuteronomy 4:
23 Take heed unto yourselves, lest ye forget the covenant of the LORD your God, which he made with you, and make you a graven image, or the likeness of any thing, which the LORD thy God hath forbidden thee.
24 For the LORD thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God.
25 When thou shalt beget children, and children's children, and ye shall have remained long in the land, and shall corrupt yourselves, and make a graven image, or the likeness of any thing, and shall do evil in the sight of the LORD thy God, to provoke him to anger:
26 I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that ye shall soon utterly perish from off the land whereunto ye go over Jordan to possess it; ye shall not prolong your days upon it, but shall utterly be destroyed.
27 And the LORD shall scatter you among the nations, and ye shall be left few in number among the heathen, whither the LORD shall lead you.
28 And there ye shall serve gods, the work of men's hands, wood and stone, which neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell.

In other words, "I am a jealous God. Worshiping other gods will provoke me into a jealous rage, and I will cause you to perish." It's perfectly true that the same words applied to a spouse would be considered horrific:

23 Take heed unto yourselves, lest ye forget the covenant [your husband], which he made with you, and [look at pictures of other men, which your husband has forbidden].
24 For [your husband] is a consuming fire, even a jealous [husband].
25 When thou shalt beget children, and children's children, and ye shall have remained long in [your husband's house], and shall corrupt yoursel[f], and [look at pictures of men], or the likeness of any [other men], and shall do evil in the sight of [your husband], to provoke him to anger:
26 I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that ye shall soon utterly perish from [your husband's house] whereunto ye go over [to live]; ye shall not prolong your days [in] it, but shall utterly be destroyed.
27 And [your husband] shall [send you out into the streets], and ye shall be... among the [homeless], whither [your husband] shall lead you.
28 And there ye shall [date other men]...

If my wife wants to see other men, it's a terrible thing, and I would indeed consider leaving her (or kicking her out) as described in (my paraphrased) verse 27. However, if I laid a finger on her, let alone caused her to "utterly perish," it would be considered a horrific crime in the eyes of men. The law of Moses ambiguously would give me the option of either having her stoned, or simply divorcing her, although Matthew does praise Joseph for choosing the latter instead of the former.

We could argue that the whole "utterly perish" thing is mitigated by the fact that the general thrust of the passage is about exile, rather than destruction. Alongside that, though, we would need to consider God's praise of Phinehas for killing the man of Israel and the Midianitish woman, "that I consumed not the children of Israel in my jealousy." We would also have to consider the provision of capital punishment for idolatry, which in effect says, "Worship only me, or these people of mine will stone you to death." Again, if I stoned my wife for adultery, it would be considered a horrible crime today--probably even by Christadelphians.

I don't have a perfect answer for this objection, although I have one that satisfies me (and not, I think, folks like Evangelion, who have heard it before). Namely, God is to humans as humans are to cattle. Just as we can slaughter cattle for no better reason than we're feeling peckish and want a hamburger, so God can slaughter human cattle for any reason that suits Him. There be those who object that slaughtering cattle to make snack foods is wrong; without any attempt at moral justification whatsoever, I reply that it is in fact oh, so right.

Viewed from my perspective, then, it IS a horrible crime for humans to kill each other over jealousy. It ISN'T a horrible crime for gods (of which there happens to be only one). Humans may object to this--sorry Ken!--but so what? If cattle could talk, they would no doubt object to cheeseburgers.

The biggest takeaway I see in this report is that even 2,000 years ago, people had an irresistible compulsion to throw coins in pools.