RE: OFF TOPIC: Apocrypha, Dead Sea Scrolls

May I suggest discontinuing such discussions on this Oracle related mail list. I for one, although am impressed with everyones use of vocabulary, am not interested in reading such material. Join an additional mail list to discuss such issues.

roy

>
>Hi Eric,
>
>While I am sympathetic with your idealist epistemology and can understand you
>construing it as a social project, the implicit consequential denial of
>absolutes in ontology and kalology is fallacious.
>
>No matter how the consciousness of humanity evolves in its perception of Jesus,
>all that changes is the degree to which that perception corresponds to reality.
>The truth about Jesus does not change.
>
>That postulates about Jesus cannot be logically coercive does not vitiate the
>reality. Such postulates can be false absolutely, and can be tested to some
>degree both logically and empirically. Such postulates can also be true
>absolutely, and may be held with a certitude that exceeds the certainty of
>reason and empiricism. That extra certitude derives from the logic that
attaches
>to the singular and personal. It is like the certitude I have that my wife
loves
>me. The lack of rational and empirical certainty does not undermine my
>confidence. Similarly, a person can legitimately read the four gospels and be
>convinced about Jesus (and absolutely right or wrong) without regard for the
>perceptions of others or epistemic process.
>
>@ Regards,
>@ Steve Adams
>@ http://www.ixora.com.au/
>@ http://www.christianity.net.au/
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>Sent: Wednesday, 10 January 2001 6:56
>To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
>
>
>Every faith tradition exists in the context of a spectrum
>of human conciousness ranging from "orthodox" (literalist,
>authoritarian, legalistic) to "mystic" (metaphoric, symbolic,
>anti-establishmentarian).
>
>Within any tradition, there have been large historial
>battles between ideologies and political factions over the
>"position" that will dominate. And superstition has played a
>major role in the corruption of thought within most
>traditions, obviously including the "orthodox" forms. What
>is perhaps less well known by westerners is the existence
>of considerable corruption (and superstition) within some
>of the mysticism paths of the traditions.
>
>Anyway, at this point (in history), the problem isn't
>"debate" *within* the traditions (which will basically
>continue until the end of time since neither "legaists"
>or "mystics" will ever "win" everything), it is the assult
>on the traditions from "outside" secularists/rationalists.
>
>As you can see from looking at Habermas, the post-
>modern relativist attack on "meaning" (as it arises
>within the faith traditions) is itself based on flawed
>"logic", so secularism/rationalism does NOTHING but
>ultimately take the "seeker" back to the source of
>mystery, which is to say their relationship with
>"the Sacred" (God).
>
>In other words, you can try to use "science" to clear
>out the underbrush of superstition in a faith tradition,
>(which is probably good, but not sufficient) but that
>still doesn't get at the main issue(s) - of spiritual
>relation.
>
>Right now, there are a number of thinkers doing important
>work attempting to establish "integrative" paradigms that
>allow for respect of traditions, and also recognise the
>validity of "scholarship" (scientific research) that
>doesn't seek to destroy ("colonize" in Habermas' terms)
>the essence of the traditions that are being studied.
>
>eg, Ken Wilber, Buddhist (? of Naropa Institute):
>
>http://directory.google.com/Top/Science/Social_Sciences/Psychology/Psychology_o
f
>_Religion/Transpersonal
>-
>http://wilber.shambhala.com
>-
>http://www.khandro.com/kenwilber/index.html
>-
>http://members.ams.chello.nl/f.visser3/wilber/frameeng.html
>-
>http://www.khandro.com/kenwilber/visser0197.html
>
>---
>[Wilber is critical of narcisism in "New Age" thought:]
>excerpt:
>
> "...As the hours go by it becomes crystal clear to me why he has
> always expressed in his writings so many reservations about most
> of the alternative and transpersonal world. As anyone familiar
> with his work will know, Wilber considers most, if not all,
> so-called New Age or New Science models of human development
> regressive or reductionistic, regardless of how much they present
> themselves as promising syntheses between science and
> spirituality. In his massive work Sex, Ecology, Spirituality he
> has openly expressed for the first time his sharp criticism of
> these dubious trends in contemporary 'spirituality' -- which has
> won him a few more enemies. In fact, at the conference the main
> point of many contributions was that he, as a spiritual authority,
> should know his responsibility and show more compassion and
> respect towards other views. Criticizing as he had done was
> considered to be unspiritual...
>
> Sharp
>
> When I confront him with this, he suddenly becomes sharp and very
> concentrated. In his opinion, the depth of the spiritual
> traditions is lost almost completely in the popular views of
> spirituality, from the Aquarian Conspiracy to the Celestine
> Prophecy. To point out in what way his view differs from all this,
> he explains these views often contain a highly dualistic worldview
> (contrary to their holistic pretentions). They talk of only two
> poles: ego and Self (Jung), ego and Ground (Washburn), ego and
> essence (Hameed Ali), ego and body (Lowen). (Interestingly, Wilber
> does the same in his first two books, Spectrum of Consciousness
> and No Boundary, where he writes about ego and Mind, FV.) ..."
>
>---
>
>
>
>http://www.naropa.edu/history.html
>-
>http://csf.colorado.edu/sine/faculty.html
>-
>http://www.noetic.org
>-
>
>
>Templeton Foundation: http://www.templeton.org
>-
>AAAS: http://www.aaas.org/spp/dspp/dbsr/default.htm
>( text only: http://www.aaas.org/spp/dspp/dbsr/text.htm )
>
>...and so forth.
>
>My personal (Wilber influenced) opinion is that the
>history of the traditions can be seen in
>"evolutionary" terms, and that human conciousness
>developes in stages, and that we are just beginning
>to see the possibilities of looking at the "science/
>religion" discussion in terms of a broader level of
>awareness of the importance of "transcendence" and
>"transformation" (love/healing) than has ever existed.
>
>Here is some additional info:
>
>http://www.ntgateway.com/Jesus
>-
>http://religion.rutgers.edu/jseminar
>-
>http://westarinstitute.org/JS/js.html
>-
>
>
>
>http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion
>-
>http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/jesus/tikkun.html
>-
>http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/symposium/historical.htm
l
>
>-----
>excerpt:
>
> "...we should also recognize that Bornkamm's initial
> point comes as a result of two centuries of research
> prior to Bornkamm, which increasingly showed (as his
> statement suggested) how anachronistic were the
> traditional portrayals of Jesus in the popular
> culture of each age. Here's how Bornkamm continues
> that opening statement:
>
> Why have these attempts (to write a life of
> Jesus) failed? Perhaps only because it became
> alarmingly and terrifyingly evident how
> inevitably each author brought the spirit of
> his (we would, I think, say now "or her") age
> into his (or her) presentation of the figure
> of Jesus. In point of fact, the changing
> pictures found in innumerable lives of Jesus
> are not very encouraging, confronting us as
> they do now with the enlightened teacher of
> God, virtue, and immortality, now with the
> religious genius of the romantics, now with
> the teacher of ethics in Kant's sense, and
> now the protagonist of social theory. These
> are the different pictures that emerge,
> depending on who's writing the story.
>
>
> And all these pictures, Bornkamm notices, are coming
> from the same set of sources: the gospels and the
> Christian tradition. How can all of these pictures
> be true? That's the basic question. That has always
> been the question that has plagued the discussion of
> the historical Jesus. And this is where we come to
> see the dilemma is still with us. One scholar has
> referred to it as the dilemma of finding
>[]
>[] the [***]Jesus of history[***]
>[]
>[] over against the [***]Christ of faith[***].
>[]
>[] And that's a classic definition of the problem that
> persists, I think, in most scholarly discussions:
> the recognition that it is possible to have a faith
> tradition about Jesus that is different from the
> actual figure. And in some respects, we have to
> think about keeping both of those things active and
> operative as we look at the process.
>
> Another writer, Henry Cadbury from Harvard, refers
> to it as 'the peril of modernizing Jesus'. And it
> has also been dealt with in a number of recent
> books. In fact, just a spate of new books have come
> out since the early nineties on various aspects of
> the study of the historical Jesus. One I'll mention
> is Jaroslav Pelikan's Jesus through the Centuries.
> Pelikan says that one of the best ways to get the
> spirit of any age is to watch how it depicts Jesus.
> This is true across the Christian centuries. What
> should you think, for example, when you see a
> Florentine painting of Madonna and Child, or Mary at
> the crucifixion scene, wearing a brocade Florentine
> gown, and the guards at the tomb are in the armor of
> the Swiss Guard? How does that tell the story? Jesus,
> Pelikan argues, becomes a mirror of each age, as
> each period reflects its concerns and its issues
> onto Jesus and reads from that Jesus a support for
> its concerns. ... "
>
>-----
>
>On 9 Jan 2001, at 9:00, Boivin, Patrice J wrote:
>
>Date sent: Tue, 09 Jan 2001 09:00:22 -0800
>To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
<ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com>
>
>> Yesterday someone gave a clean history of how the early Church fathers
>> decided what to put into the New Testament and what to leave out.
>>
>> Here is another version:
>> ... it was in 325CE that the Council of Nicaea met to debate which of many
>> books would be included in what was to become the New Testament. There is
>> no doubt that the men present at the Council brought to the task their own
>> prejudices and agendas, of which we are still reaping the sorry harvest.
>
>...
>
>
>--
>Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com
>--
>Author: Eric D. Pierce
> INET: PierceED_at_csus.edu
>
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>Author: Steve Adams
> INET: steve.adams_at_ixora.com.au
>
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Received on Tue Jan 09 2001 - 19:57:49 CST