Thoughts and Prayers: The Religion Thread

I've been to Hill Cumorah for the pageant. Nothing surprises me.

The Bible as content, as screenplay, is as old filmed entertainment. A BRIEF CHRONOLOGICAL SURVEY OF SOME OF THE MAJOR MOVIES & TV PROGRAMS FEATURING JESUS

Selling Christ himself like a mouthwash or laundry detergent feels new to me.

 

Catholics "sell" the faith by telling people they should feel guilty, not feel any joy, or have any fun - basically tell people "they're not worthy" and they wonder why the church pews are empty.

 

I'm not sure how far into the weeds you want to get, but traditional Judaism believes that from the start, by design, the written Bible was given along with a companion oral tradition (that later became more or less the Talmud), and that it's impossible to properly understand one without the other.

 

Not quite, but OK. Most (but not all) of the oral tradition involves the law sections; not the stories. A given of the story part is a God who created nature, and controls the universe, usually through those rules of nature, but occasionally choosing to intervene in miraculous ways that upend those rules. If you find the idea of a God who can do that ridiculous, then, of course, the entire book - a memoir of His interaction with humanity- will seem equally ridiculous. I'm not looking to convince anyone here; you do you. Someone asked a question, so I answered it.

 

OK, I'm not the last person. I spend far more time and energy on the former, but scholarly debate on Harry Potter also sounds fun.
It is a gross oversimplification, and I get that it seems that way from the outside. I'd argue that there's good reason to believe otherwise. There are mountains of pages of scholarship about how much of the system is inherited tradition and how much is human initiative, with the rules of the game as the primary inherited / divine element. I can point you to some good summaries or discussions if you want, but again, I'm not particularly interested in winning hearts and minds, so I'm happy to leave it here.

 

Maimonides' greatest title:

Guide for the Perplexed

 

One nice thing about this ongoing discussion ... I mean, in addition to the lectures from the particularly enlightened among us ... is that it prompts me to occasionally take a look into something that turns out to be pretty fascinating. For example, there's some emerging (though admittedly controversial) scholarship re: the writing of Genesis that suggests it was a hashed-together compromise between the priestly set and the landowning set in Jerusalem after the Babylonian Conquest. The argument is the Persians were of the mind to grant Jerusalem a relatively large degree of autonomy so long as the locals could agree to something of a uniform code. Thus there are gathered in one book both "primeval history" (chapters 1-11) and "patriarchical history" (chapters 12-50). Interesting stuff.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2023/02/15/asbury-university-christian-revival/

On Feb. 8, students at Asbury University gathered for their biweekly chapel service in the 1,500-seat Hughes Auditorium.

They sang. They listened to a sermon. They prayed.


Nearly a week later, many of them are still there.