Nathan_Jr

Well, he claims to be Mormon. Pretty easy to find out about that. i've never seen him expand on his personal theology. I think he intentionally avoids it, at least on IG and YT. He usually presents scholarly consensus and sometimes points to alternative perspectives outside the consensus. He seems to be a serious student of Hebrew, it's all very academic. I agree with Raf that he is fair and even-handed. I don't think what he presents is controversial or radical.

Last May I reference him once on Charity’s Deconconversiob thread. The comment got no traction then, but maybe you saw it and this is what you are now trying to remember.

I think it is possible to have this topic without getting political, but is it probable? The linked article is clearly political. I mean, at least Allan's recent political topic is so thickly veiled that it's plausibly deniable. So obscure is the allusion, the discussion naturally advanced in a different direction.

What was a regular sized class back in the day? I was in a class of two: me and the coordinator. Looking back, that seems like a huge number.

Read Mark in light of Paul. Who influenced whom? Paul preached Christ crucified. Some have argued Mark was written to fill the massive void left by the Pauline corpus: the life of Jesus.

Well, Mark didn’t make the same claim that Luke made about an accurate account. Ancient “historians” did history differently than historians do it today. I don’t think they were as concerned with accuracy the way we are. It’s anachronistic to apply modern expectations and standards to those ancient “historians.” I’m not even sure it’s fair to call Mark a historian. When I have a minute, I’ll pull some sources for you explaining this.

It’s almost like the late 2nd century writer of 2 Peter 2:12-15 was prophesying the coming of that charlatan victor paul wierwille. What an uncanny description!

I think another common Christian apologetic is the pericope teaches something about humility. The disparaged ethnic woman had to acknowledge herself as a dog I order to receive deliverance. Not sure how poor little victor "taught" it, but I can imagine him tailoring a glove out of this passage to force fit onto knowing what's available, how to get it, and what to do with it once you've got it.

Yep. To call another a dog in ANE was an insult. Cleanliness is like holiness. Dogs are filthy animals. But some read it less as an insult and more as a temporal distinction. To the Jews first, then to the ἔθνος. From Larry Hurtado's blog https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/dogs-doggies-and-exegesis/ "The term used here is κυναριον, not the more common term, κυων. To be sure, the latter term is often (typically?) used in sentences that give it a clear pejorative sense: to cite NT examples,Matt 7:6; Philip 3:2; Rev 22:15. But κυναριον (which is a diminutive form of the word, along with an alternate diminutive form, κυνιδιον) is never to my knowledge used in such a sentence. Instead, all uses are in sentences that rather clearly refer to household pets. (In other European languages as well, diminutives are used with a certain almost affectionate sense, e.g., “perrito” in Spanish). This particular term is not used in the LXX and appears in the NT only in this Markan passage and its Matthean parallel (Matt 15:21-28). A check of the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae shows further that in wider Greek usage it and the other diminutive form appear always and only in statements about family pets or household dogs: e.g., Philo, Spec.Leg. 4.91, referring to household dogs (κυνιδιων) hanging around banqueting tables looking for scraps dropped to them, and Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, Vol. 2,2 p. 78, line 19, referring to “Maltese lapdogs” (κυναρια Μελιταια), here also in a setting of dining. Collins asserts (p. 367) that the diminutive form “probably does not have a diminutive connotation in the colloquial language of Mark,” and so “probably refers to the scavenging dogs of the street.” The only references she provides (n. 39) in support of her assertion are a couple of texts in the Greek of Joseph and Asenath (10:14; 13:7), but neither text uses a diminutive form: In 10:14, the converted Asenath throws all her rich pagan food out the window “τοις κυσι βοραν” (“to the dogs” in the street), and in 13:7, Asenath refers back to this act of giving her roayl food “τοις κυσι”, both texts using plural forms of κυων. Moreover, the dated-but-valuable lexicon drawing precisely on colloquial usage illustrated in papyri and other non-literary souces, J. H. Mouton and George Milligan, Vocabulary of the Greek New Testament (1930), p. 364, translates several non-biblical uses of κυναριον and κυνιδιον as “lapdogs”. So, in point of fact, it looks like (contra Collins) Otto Michel’s little entry on κυναριον in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 3:1104, is correct after all in judging that the choice of κυναριον in the Markan passage pictures Jesus as referring to “little dogs which could be tolerated in the house,” not wild scavengers in the street. I repeat: A search of references to the diminutive forms in the TLG gives no instance of usage to refer to “wild” dogs or street “scavengers”. So, it looks like the use of the term in the Gospel scene was deliberate, a choice, of a “marked” term (in linguistics parlance), intended to connote household pets, not the “unmarked” term κυων. This sense of a domestic scene ought to be obvious simply in reading the passage. Jesus is pictured as responding to the woman’s request by saying, “Let the children be fed first, for it isn’t right to give the childrens’ food to the dogs.” The point of the statement is the temporal priority of the “children”, of course in this case, referring to Jesus directing his ministry to fellow Jews. The metaphor presumes a setting in which the household dogs are fed the leftovers after the family has eaten (not custom-produced dog-food). (I know the practice well, having grown up in a rural setting in which the household dogs ate what we ate, only after we had eaten.) The woman’s clever reply confirms this, respectfully pointing out that “the dogs under the table eat from the portions of the children.” “Wild” dogs and “scavenger dogs of the street” aren’t typically allowed “under the table” and around the children! And anyone with both children and household dogs will know how it goes at mealtime: If allowed, the dogs hang about the children’s chairs, knowing that children love to “drop” morsels to their pets. Finally, we also have to ask ourselves how likely it is that the authors of Mark (writing for a Christian readership at least largely made up of converted gentiles) would have inserted a scene in which supposedly Jesus insults a gentile woman in the harsh terms imputed by some modern readers. She is “put in her place” as a gentile, but it’s a temporal place. The scene functions to explain that, although Jesus’ own ministry was confined to his Jewish people (apparently, a tradition that Mark couldn’t deny/ignore), the subsequent mission to gentiles was (Mark wants to imply) on the agenda, only it had to wait its time, and Jesus is pictured as anticipating that gentile-mission in responding positively to the woman’s respectful but clever response. For a bit further discussion of the likely intended function of the passage, see L. W. Hurtado, Mark: New International Biblical Commentary (Hendrickson, 1989), 115-16." However, Joel Marcus says this in his commentary on Mark, "The regular term for “dog” is kuōn, and kynaria is technically a diminutive, but this does not necessarily mean that Jesus is referring affectionately to the woman or her daughter as “little dogs” or “pups” \[…\] In Koine Greek the diminutive is often indistinguishable in meaning from the regular form (e.g. paidas/paidia = “children,” ploion/ploiarion = “boat”), and the normal term for “little dog” is not kynarion but kynidion \[…\] Kynarion can be employed with no diminutive force at all (e.g. Plutarch Aratus 7:3; see BAGD, 457). As Rhoads acknowledges, the diminutive form may be used here simply to match that of the word for “daughter,” thygatrion, in 7:25, which is also diminutive." Then Matthew changes Mark's Syro-Phoenician to Canaanite. I try to read each gospel on its own terms to understand the perspective of that author(s) and his audience. When you stop trying to make it fit, it becomes a fascinating study of ancient texts and cultures. To force fit a glove is, well, stupider than stupid, to borrow a phrase. But the different treatment of the centurion is striking! Some scholars argue it's a later interpolation, or Matthew and Luke are using a source outside of Mark.

Yeah, I don’t think you were intentionally trying to deceive or entrap, but your tone could be seen as contentious and disingenuous. It’s the tone and style. Believers don’t want to engage with it, I suspect. The text I was referring to is the Bible, not your text. And that text, the Bible, unequivocally has mixed messages and contradictions and errors. The harder the line on harmony, the more the contradictions arise. I still have lots of questions about theology. Genuine, honest questions. I try to compose my questions as plainly as possible. Answers to these questions are limited only to the number of people who answer - theologies vary widely. Most of my questions are ignored, but I’m always grateful to those who answer as plainly and as honestly as I ask.

Red Apple cigarettes appear throughout the Tarantino universe: Pulp Fiction, Four Rooms, Kill Bill Vol. 1, The Hateful Eight, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Eights and twos (8:2) throughout Magnolia. Towards the end of the film frogs fall from the sky like rain - a reference to Exodus 8:2.

I understand Charity wants engagement with believers on apparent mixed messages within the text. However, the tone and language aren't inviting, rather, they are seemingly hostile. "In the Old Testament, God supposedly needed to call out a group to be His people known as the Israelites." Charity, though I think yours are legitimate questions, I don't think this is the correct forum. You could start over and rephrase, but you've already outed yourself, however unintentionally.

Thanks, Charlene. I was going to ask what not a real doctor said about the Jonestown Massacre, but did a quick search instead. WordWolf nicely compiled the memories of how victor handled it here:

When Bullinger, Lamsa (T6TMOG) and wierwille (T7TMOG) changed and twisted the text to solve an imagined problem, they created more problems by their so-called solution. More contradictions and errors necessarily arise when claiming inerrancy than when letting Mark be Mark, Matthew be Matthew, John be John...