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JESUS APPEARS IN GAZA: HUNDREDS OF MUSLIMS CONVERT | The Incredible Miracle
Christian Way | 24 Nov. 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izqgKIIT79I

Dan Barker on Premier Unbelievable (I have fewer if any objections to Dr Carolyn Weber) — part I

60 years after his death, are CS Lewis and his God still relevant? Dan Barker & Dr Carolyn Weber
Premier Unbelievable? | 24 Nov. 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaBc40z0nDQ

7:03 Noting he took no real look at Roman Catholicism at this point, whatever he did or didn't later.

7:29 Precisely my reaction when the "RC" Archdiocese of Paris allows an Assumptionist to pretend Adam and Eve were no real people. Even pretty publically in an Assumptionist owned weekly. Trent, Session V, the Decree on Original Sin, dogmatises that Adam lost justice immediately on sinning.

8:20 If he ceased to believe Adam and Eve were real people, I would not totally call it a process within Christianity.

I very much hope for CSL's sake that he changed his mind, if not totally repented (we are unfortunately sure he didn't do that, as he reedited Problem of Pain the year before he died), on his version of the fall.

He of all people ought to have sooner or later realised that a fall involving a collective cannot be justly punished as the sin of Adam was punished, since a collective, unlike an individual, has no freewill.

The idea amounts to Supralapsarian Calvinism, i e God predestining mankind to fall. At least by neglect, if combined with "open Theism" ...

9:03 I'd be happy to refute Dan Barker on each particular he'd care to forward.

9:39 Dan Barker is conflating a "good argument" (i e one that ought to sway an unbeliever) with an argument that actually carries weight with unbelievers (i e one that actually sways unbelievers).

Now, since back in that day, that supposed discovery, Dan Barker has had a pretty set stake in remaining an unbeliever.

His point here depends on conflating the unbeliever (in the sense of ex-believers like himself or children or grand-children of ex-believers, also some very secularised Jews) with "those outside" as in the objective intersection of everyone outside Christianity. Atheism as he is preaching it is not really outside Christianity. Atheism is a heresy within Protestantism, like Protestantism is a heresy within Christianity.

9:48 CSL's reply was pretty good, except for the flaw about the Fall.

Innocent individuals suffer as parts of a guilty humanity, which became guilty by the actual and real guilt of a real individual called Adam.

A girl I used to be in love with wondered why her hamster died in cancer, if there were a God, I answered, because Adam sinned.

Not because a certain tribe collectively drifted away from perfect obedience to God, which as said would be supralapsarianism, but because an individual who knew better, and who was in charge of our situation in a certain way even up to doomsday, and in a larger way up to Calvary, thus, i e knowing better, disobeyed a direct command from the God he knew had created him.

11:00 Dan Barker pretty much states that Atheism is basically (though not exclusively) a rich man's hobby.

"I go to my work, office is great, I go home, home is great, why bother about God?"

Highly a reminder of CSL's main point in The Problem of Pain.

11:39 12 000 members in a project for former members of the clergy?

I guess I owe Dan Barker some thanks for supporting them. That's the kind of guys who have boosted the numbers of "believers" who don't believe in Adam and Eve, the numbers of "believers" who accept gay marriage and so on ...

I'd have been glad to get McCarrick into that one, nearly, but I don't begrudge even him a residue of what might once have been real faith, if it's genuine.

Bad joke. Sorry. Not taking it back, but, that's pretty much where my feelings are on the matter.

13:46 actual harm ... How much actual harm is being done all over the West, to the elderly, by their own former choices of contraception?

In a Catholic society, if you want a life with grandchildren, there is room for that, you marry, you beget as many children as God sends, and at least some of them are likely to marry in their turn. Children and grand-children will support you, and the few exceptions are very easily and gently cared for by the majority.

Or, if you don't want small children, there is room for that too. You abstain from sex. You join others who do the same. When you get old, you are taken care of by younger vocations who admire your choice and who respect your wisdom, your experience in living a life for God.

Protestantism (outside Quiverfull) and Atheism are now over a century into overturning that, especially the parts concerning normal couples, the resources for the pensions once promised were depleted in Sweden decades ago, were depleted in Russia a bit before the Covid 19 outbreak (Navalny was saying the worse off pensions were corruption), were depleted in France, which is becoming rougher against the poor, will be depleted in the US c. 9 years from now, according to a forecast. Depleted not as in every penny finished, but as in starting an indebtment, which is averted or can be averted by making things worse for the old.

We Catholics are very proud to be both obeying the dictates of God, and able to analyse what harm happens when one doesn't, in the most rational terms.

15:16 "Catholics for choice" is an oxymoron.
I'd rather be a Jew for Hitler than that.

15:29 which is something measurable
It's measured by very different metrics.

At least as different as purported Christians differ from Catholic morality.

Our point as Catholics is not that God for some utterly mysterious reason forbade abortion, and we have to obey so we don't go to Hell, however little sense that makes, our point is, abortion is real harm in the real world, and one that's serious enough for God to have forbidden.

35:11 No misogyny in the Bible, except women were kind of "on probation" between Eve and Mary.

A k a in the OT, specifically the Mosaic law.

But Dan Barker is not adressing even the Catholic view of the Bible. It's primarily God's word to the Church. The Church is God's word to all nations (you can look that part up in Matthew 28:16-20).

The Bible was formulated at a time when some concepts were overlapping or not a bit differently in a different culture, or actually more than one.

This doesn't mean the true meaning is irretrievably lost, but it does mean it had a need of a parallel transmission, admitting reformulations, individuals having heard it in one way, facing an unexpected question, reformulating to clarify, a k a Apostolic Tradition.

This is also how the true meaning of Exodus was preserved between Moses and the Pharisees of Jesus' time. Text and tradition in tandem. Not a text on its own.

When St. Paul was studying as a Pharisee, he didn't exactly find his copy of the five books of Moses inside a hotel drawer placed there by the Gideons.

35:43 Jews not keeping God's covenant and not accepting God's Messiah are right now making Gaza a pretty bleak place. And lots of them were involved in making it a hopeless place, if not as harmful as now, for decades before that.

Covenant breakers have a knack of starting out as pretty decent people and ending up making things a hell for others, without even noticing it.

This being so, perhaps a bit of scare tactics on the part of the one who can foresee the exact consequences might be in order?

How much scare tactics are OK to Dan Barker in the context of psychiatry trying to stop a man from making his own life and that of a few close ones a living misery, on their fallible view?

Btw, if Dan Barker is supporting any Freedom from Psychiatry foundations, like CCHR, great. But if so, I somehow missed the memo.

Lots of Atheists are in fact supporting psychiatry, both as a help to self help for former Christians, but a bit more eerily also in order to stop Christians from doing what the Atheists believe is harmful.

I can assure you, that involves scare tactics. Just, it's a community doing scare tactics (by proxy, the psychiatrists are not on their own, but they and their personnel are the ones threatening lives lived without freedoms), and it's an individual, an odd man out, who's receiving them.

But if God uses scare tactics on a community, or is purported to, somehow that's immoral, even if the potential for harm is vastly greater.

40:18 C. S. Lewis was a literary scholar, OK.

He had read thousands of pages of works meant to instruct on what happened, by pre-modern writers, and thousands of pages of works meant to amuse or preach or both (like The Fairy Queen by Spencer, partly a fairly anti-Catholic work), and he knew the difference. He could spot it.

I spent less time reading and more debating, so did Dan Barker. But I spent sufficiently much time reading to perfectly see what CSL means by the Gospels being biographies, and biographies with much speech, like the one Boswell did of Dr. Johnson (except Boswell was very far from being a disciple, he was biassed against his older friend's positions).

The trilemma really doesn't rationally expand to a quadrilemma with "or myth" as a fourth position.

40:53 "it's reasonable according to this measure I picked"

Like Dan Barker picked science as preached by the modern scientific community, specially the ones least favourable to Christianity and specifically excluding to take Creation science into account?

We all pick a measure. We all measure reasonable by a measure we picked and not by a measure someone else has picked and criticises us for not picking. If there were no overlap between the measures, there would be no sense in debating. However, there is, and the problem is, Dan Barker is obfuscating that precise issue. He's pretending Christians are doing "reasonable" on the terms of an ad hoc picked rationality, and himself is, directly, not by partial participation, but directly, doing "reasonable" as it is. Once he dropped Christianity, of course.

CSL in Miracles (a better book on Theism than the Theist arguments of Mere Christianity, except for endorsing Evolution, which is a blunder) actually points out how this is incompatible with a strictly just naturalistic causality. Reasons are about sth. A vector, a mass, a physical constant, they are not about sth. They may apply to certain things, but they cannot be right or wrong statements about sth. So, they cannot produce any mechanism, make it as collective and multiply mutually self correcting as you like, for finding truth about anything.

As a linguist in some sense (I did not take any major courses in the subject linguistics, but I did take mostly courses related to it at some point, like Latin, Greek, German, Lithuanian, Polish), I'd make a similar case when it comes to language.

That's the overlap between Dan Barker's and CSL's position, plus how I draw that truth out into CSL territory. Or into my own and that of Dominique Tassot, a French Catholic and Young Earth Creationist.

41:03 I'm moderately convinced of Arjuna meeting Shiva.

I am actually less convinced of Faust doing a compact with the Devil than of Arjuna doing one. One candidate for the historic Faust may have been a charismatic healer, who was not in open conflict with Catholicism, but also not accepted as an actual saint and officially recognised as a miracle worker. While Catholicism as such didn't say "he's doing wonders with the devil's help" some Catholics did.

For Arjuna, I would say there is a real good case for him having made a deal with the Devil, a k a Shiva, and having become a wonderful soldier, but a lousy husband to poor Draupadi in the process. Bhagavadgita would be a later Hindu embroidery, not on his relation to Shiva, but on that of his relation to Krishna, who may have been a pre-Flood saint, was certainly more just than the Kauravas, and probably lived before the Flood, even if Hindu chronology puts the date of the Flood 10 000 years back to before his time (he died in 3102 BC, while the Flood was probably 2957 BC, so he died before Noah started building the Ark).

The general principle of a transcendent reality is not the problem in Hinduism. Polytheism, i e accepting as gods (i e worthy of worship) spirits whom we in Daniel 3:58 through 65 would accept as serving God, or even the kind of spirits which demonologically relevant texts of the Bible talk of.

41:13 I've never tried the Bhagavadgita.

But I did read an account of the Mahabharata, which an Indian Diplomat Daughter did as an assignment in Sanskrit, she retold the story in Hindi.

I also saw the Peter Brook thing, at least in parts available on the youtube.

Did you catch the part when narrator says that things became so evil that the deeds of the good (side) were no longer different from those on the bad one?

Sounds very Genesis 6 to me. And for some reason, if we take a Biblical chronology for LXX text choices, Biblical timing of the Flood into the past matches very well with what Hindus tell of Krishna's death, and how far we are into Kali Yuga.

Ark Related Question

Béa Tremblay Blocked Me After Responding · Ark Related Question

Q

Where did Noah's ark land after the floods?
https://www.quora.com/Where-did-Noahs-ark-land-after-the-floods/answer/Helge-K%C3%A5re-Fauskanger

Helge Kåre Fauskanger

Skeptic

5 years ago

The story of Noah and the flood is a myth and a physical impossibility in a whole string of ways. There is literally not enough water on the planet to cover the highest mountains; a wooden vessel of the size described is simply not practical and would fall apart; yet even it is far too small to contain breeding pairs of all species; if by some miracle one managed to cram them in after all, eight people could not possibly care for such an enormous zoo for a full year.

Irrespective of all that, what mountain does the imaginary story point to as the resting-place of the ark?

The story says “the mountains of Ararat” (Genesis 8:4). Many modern readers will take this as a “city of New York”-like construction, thinking that “the mountains of Ararat” are a group of mountains specifically called “Ararat”. The Ararat Mountains, if you like.

However, “Ararat” is understood to be a Hebrew pronunciation of Urartu, a vast region roughly corresponding to what we now know as Armenia. The Latin Vulgate translation does not use the word Ararat, but translates the whole phrase so that the ark came to rest in “the mountains of Armenia”. This is probably more in accord with the original intention of the text.

Elsewhere in the Bible, Ararat is shown to be a land or region. Isaiah 37:38 refers to “the land of Ararat”, not the mountain of Ararat.

So the Genesis writers likely just meant that the ark ended up somewhere in the vast, mountainous region of Armenia, with no attempt being made to identify any specific peak.

Of course, some would try to figure out the exact location, and perhaps inevitably, popular imagination went for the highest and most impressive mountain, the twin peaks of Massis. Eventually the name “Ararat”, no longer used of the entire region, came to be applied to Massis more specifically. But we have no good reason to think that the Genesis writers particularly had Massis in mind.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

3 years ago

“There is literally not enough water on the planet to cover the highest mountains;”

Modern mountain heights are post-Flood.

“a wooden vessel of the size described is simply not practical and would fall apart;”

Not if well built, proportions do for a long rolling period, great stability.

“yet even it is far too small to contain breeding pairs of all species;”

Who’s speaking of Linnean species?

27.XI.2023

Horst H. von Brand

The largest wooden ship ever built (by experienced shipbuilders, with 1900s materials and techniques, quite a bit smaller than the ark described in the bible) had to run pumps 24/7 as it leaked like a sieve, and broke apart and sunk in not-so-stormy weather. The weather during the flood would have been much worse than the worst hurricane recorded, ever.

A

Hans-Georg Lundahl

“broke apart and sunk in not-so-stormy weather.”

I take it, it was a) a ship, b) sailing, and therefore c) cutting across waves.

The Ark was a) a box, b) had no sails or oars, and therefore c) was not cutting across waves.

Furthermore the ship you speak of was made to have elasticity for ease of cutting waves and propelling through water. The Ark was built simply not to sink.

“The weather during the flood would have been much worse than the worst hurricane recorded, ever.”

To the coastlines below the mountain where the Ark was waiting for the water? Sure.

Once water is very deep, waves get very long wavelengths (I think the waves have a radius that is or can go down on the sea floor or sth), which means that waves, including even tsunami waves are not even noticed by those out on the Ocean — the exact description of what happened to the Ark between take-off and getting basically stranded on one of the mountains of Ararat (i e of Urartu / Armenia, not necessarily anything about “Greater Ararat” or “Lesser Ararat” which are however also in the Armenian mountain range.).

B

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I think you speak of the Wyoming:

Wyoming (schooner) - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming_(schooner)

// 1924 – 11 March. In order to ride out a nor'easter, it anchored off Chatham, Massachusetts, in the Nantucket Sound, together with the five-masted schooner Cora F. Cressey which had left Norfolk at the same time as Wyoming. Captain H. Publicover on the Cora F. Cressey weighed anchor at dusk and stood out to sea. Wyoming is believed to have foundered east of the Pollock Rip Lightship and the crew of 14 was lost //

In the Nantucket Sound …

The wiki gave no depth for it, but here is what I found elsewhere:

// Nantucket Sound is a typical "flow through" coastal system, openning to the Gulf of Maine (GoM) to the east, Vineyard Sound (VS) to the west, and the inner new England Shelf to the south. The water is very shallow in the Sound, with a mean depth of ~9 m. //

U Mass Research projects: Nantucket Sound
http://fvcom.smast.umassd.edu/research_projects/Nsound/

The conditions comparable to 9 m depth are c. 1 km of water above normal ground level? Don’t think so.

Commenting on Fr. JM and Kennedy Hall

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica: A German Antisemite Prayed for This · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: I think one should take a look at this, and hear carefully · Commenting on Fr. JM and Kennedy Hall

Same video ... but now my comments under it.

Two comments were taken down.

1) One about the Yanuka, who basically only repeats what Our Lord and probably also St. Tim did;
2) The other is, whatever you may fear of Lubavitchers, fear it of Putin too:

Putin fires top official who described Chabad as a supremacist cult
By TOI STAFF, 21 January 2023, 8:28 am
https://www.timesofisrael.com/putin-fires-top-official-who-describes-chabad-as-a-supremacist-cult/

6:45 Back when I was a parishioner at St. Nicolas du Chardonnet, I heard it announced from the chancel that one of the Lord's Days of Lent or some other Lenten conference, Rabbi Rivon Krygier was invited to preach in Notre Dame.

I thought, basically, what was the fuss about it, we were in a fasting season, Jews fast too, so he was arguably doing some stuff on how important fasting is, and arguably agreeing with Our Lord on the importance of doing works of mercy while fasting and so on ... that's what would very probably have happened if Church of Sweden (Lutheran heretics) had invited a Rabbi, except they are not all that big on fasting.

I read in Le Chardonnet about the young people from the parish who had interrupted him. "Fine people," I thought, "but over the top" ...

THEN I read what Rivon had himself been saying or intended to say.

He claimed that same thing. Specifically, that the Messianic prophecy of Isaias 11 had not been fulfilled.

I looked it up. It HAS been fulfilled 2000 years ago. The first Church was in Jerusalem, the second in Samaria. (Envy of Judah and Ephraim done away with, check). When fleeing to Pella from Roman eagles, the Church of Jerusalem also came as conquerors, after having conquered equally on Greek ships, notably with St. Paul (But they shall fly upon the shoulders of the Philistines by the sea, they together shall spoil the children of the east: Edom, and Moab shall be under the rule of their hand, and the children of Ammon shall be obedient. Check.). The final verses were a bit dark, but obviously would have been fulfilled when Egypt and Syria / Mesopotamia had Christian populations.

I have been saying this over and over again, ever since.

And in doing so, I have been targetted by people either thinking I were trying to become or were themselves trying to make me a false Jewish Messiah.

Note, I cannot guarantee this 100 %, nearly no one was risking going beyond plausible deniability, and those who were did so on very unobvious occasions, like when stepping out of a bus together, unobvious to others, that is.

6:56 "How can he not be a Jew"

The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, back in the time when Hitler contacted him, was claimed to be a descendant of King David. He was obviously a Muslim.

In the early Church, c. 100 years into Church history, some Desposynoi were trying to make a case for Easter on 14 of Nisan and for the keeping of the Sabbath -- by Christians. They were basically told to shut up, and were not heard of. Obviously, they were of Christian confession, and they were relatives of Our Lord, therefore of the house of King David.

7:13 He's also fulfilled it locally, by making the origin of the population now called Christian Palestinians. I e Jews, Samaritans, Galilaeans, of the area, 2000 years ago, who are Christians + their descendants. The Greater Israel so hoped for by Zionists and so dreaded by Christian Anti-Zionists already exists in the area.

Christians of Palestine or Jordan are it. And Jews and Muslims of the area are usually related to them, more closely than for instance Jews from Poland or Bielarus ....

7:48 Sorry, but this is wrong. He already brought a peace that lasted most of the time from 2000 years ago to near the present, to the region, and He already brought more peace than the world had seen since the days of Babel, mostly, to Christendom.

Chesterton describes the Middle Ages as a period when peace was always breaking out. Wars were generally petty, and the conflicts were often settled by mediation by the Church.

That was I think in the context of a Francesco Bernardone being POW during a conflict between Assisi and Perugia and him being free again very soon because the conflict was set aside quickly. Or perhaps in the context of a certain Lord Aquino sacking a Benedictine monastery, and then making up for it by sending yooung Thomas there, except Thomas wanted to be Dominican instead ....

11:10 I am not all that sure that kabbalistic readings into the Torah are Satanism, especially since Yitshaak Kaduri gave the end result about the name of the Messiah as Yeshua, and also some Pentecostals have looked into it and found Jesus in the Bible code of Genesis 1.

19:23 I just heard two Protestant prophecy scholars yesterday, seems Agag (in Numbers 24) means Gog (of the endtimes) ... but another takeaway was, Jesus will come from Egypt once again.

Could it be as restorer of driven away Gazawis?

I think one should take a look at this, and hear carefully

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica: A German Antisemite Prayed for This · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: I think one should take a look at this, and hear carefully · Commenting on Fr. JM and Kennedy Hall

Book banned (...for now). Heedless censorship is courting disaster. Conversation with Kennedy Hall.
Scripture and Tradition -- Fr JM | 24 Nov. 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omUUURsPuAs

Israeli children are singing of annihilating Israelites, descendants, mainly of Muslim, but partly also Christian confession of the Jews, Samaritans and Galilaeans from 2000 years ago.

Their president speaks of Israelites as Amalek./HGL

Keatsian Nightingale Defended Diversity of Johannine Corpus

Biased Bart Ehrman Hits Irony Overload (ft. Tim McGrew)
Testify, 15 Nov. 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfH0fO8Vzmg

Initial comment:

Is this mostly about the Gospel of St. John and how the narrator (but mostly not Jesus) uses the word "Jews"?

In 90, on Patmos, the Jewish heritage Christian community that heard St. John got a message from Christ that their enemies in the ethnic Jewish community (at least locally) had gone so far that in the eyes of The King of the Jews Himself, they were not Jews.

In c. 100, in the Gospel, he is himself telling them by his word choice, that for social purposes, they nevertheless had to call their enemies "Jews" ...

I suppose getting harrassed by people first protecting you against the now Roman persecution, then asking if you were serious about being Christian, then delivering you to the Romans to get persecuted and eaten by lions would tend to foster a somewhat orrery "outgroup bias" against those Jews who were doing that, and who since Jamnia were claiming the name "Jews" for themselves.

Dialogue:

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@hglundahl

11:32 The ones mocking Jesus, btw, I think the order is Matthew (30's / 40's), Mark and Luke (50's or 60's), John (c. 100), appear only in Matthew and Mark ...

I think the real point is, the audience is getting less Jewish, therefore less likely to pick up on the first words of Psalm 21 (22 in some Bibles).

Beserk Fan

@Bones18

I doubt John is that late.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

He is, @Bones18 , since his Gospel is post-Patmos.

Smidlee

@smidlee7747

@hglundahl There is some doubts since John didn't mention the destruction of the temple in his gospel. The gospel writers were quick to point out Jesus fulfilling prophecy yet didn't mention the destruction of the temple as one of them. We know the early church did indeed pointed this out as fulfilled exactly as Jesus said it would.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

OK, @smidlee7747 , there is a difference of Jesus fulfilling OT prophecy and prophecies of Jesus being fulfilled.

The destruction of the temple was obvious, didn't need pointing out in a Gospel. The OT fulfilments are on some level less obvious, since Jews go on missing them up to this day. That's why they were specifically pointed out, including rules about the paschal lamb being prophetic of the Redeemer and Eucharistic Bread (why His bones were not broken, specifically Gospel of John).

Keatsian Nightingale

@keatsiannightingale9256

@hglundahl The Patristic testimony is not clear on that point, I don’t think. By all accounts John survived Patmos and even did a little more preaching and ministering in the times of Nerva, but he probably died before Trajan took the throne.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

OK, but @keatsiannightingale9256 ... either way it seems he wrote the Gospel after Patmos.

I'm referring to the Acta Sancti Iohannis which were followed in Ælfric's sermon on him.

It makes sense logically that he first reassures Christians of Jewish origin, that in the views of the King of the Jews they are the real Jews, and only then trains them to use the word Jews about the sect usurping it at Jamnia, so, I'd go with the Acta, even if I don't trust its identification of the Gospeller with the Son of Zebedee, and even if other Fathers disagree.

Keatsian Nightingale

@hglundahl I’m not terribly persuaded John put the pen to paper for the gospel, but another associate. The gospel is still John’s just not by his hand. Or maybe he wrote Revelation himself and a scribe helped with the gospel. The original Greek of the two documents are incredibly different.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

The content is incredibly different.

The Apocalypse is :

• visions of heaven and hell
• visions of miseries and persecutions on earth

The Gospel is :

• miracles and speeches set in everyday situations
• some philosophy about what Jesus is at the start
• theology about how He fulfils OT prophecy (including kashrut, as those about not breaking the bones of the Paschal lamb)

Authors these days write incredibly different when writing on incredibly different topics, right?

Keatsian Nightingale

@hglundahl Not exactly. I am not troubled by the idea that the apostle on the island, having no company and no assistant, was made able to write the Apocalypse down. It bears worthy note that the style is very vulgar, the work of one likely not formally trained in Greek. This fits John son of Zebedee well. The gospel is my much more ornate in its Greek, as are the letters. I think the best explanation is that an associate of the apostle wrote the gospel and assisted with the letters based on the apostle’s real testimony to what he saw and wanted to say, but John the apostle actually penned the Apocalypse, as the early church unanimously assigns that text to his hand. If you ever get a chance to pick up or acquire a Greek NT to compare the language and overall writing style, I think you will see what I mean. You can probably find one version online even.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"not formally trained in Greek."

Sure of that? More like very formally trained in the tradition of Ezechiel and Daniel, I'd say?

"The gospel is my much more ornate in its Greek"

Or more Greek? Less Hebrew?

Would fit the agenda of acclimating an audience to not flaunting Hebrew origins all the time.

"John the apostle actually penned the Apocalypse, as the early church unanimously assigns that text to his hand."

Not really, since it was one of the books latest to get universal acceptance.

"a Greek NT to compare the language and overall writing style, I think you will see what I mean."

My Greek grammar is actually not brushed up enough to note things like more use of certain tenses ... though perhaps conditionals are less likely to appear in an Apocalyptic vision than in Jesus saying "if you believed Moses" ...

Would you, no doubt better versed as of lately in Greek than I, give two examples from each book, same type of idea expressed in a more Greek and a less Greek way?

Keatsian Nightingale

@hglundahl Why would we suppose either Ezekiel or Daniel knew Greek? I am not sure what you meant by that. Yes, I am sure John did not receive formal Greek training. While it is by no means improbable he could have acquired Greek orally and a little in writing, I doubt he ever would have been proficient in its written use.

In the time of Christ and the apostles it would have been Aramaic, not Hebrew, that was the primary tongue of Israel at the time. The preponderance of evidence shows Jesus spoke Aramaic throughout his life, not Hebrew or Greek. I don’t think flaunting his Semitic origins is something he cared about at all, not unlike Paul who mentions his heritage in no less than three of his epistles and multiple speeches in Acts.

Yes, Revelation was one of the last to gain universal acceptance (I can see why) but the earliest written testimonies we have all point to John the Apostle being the actual author (Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria).

I am just starting to formally learn Koine Greek myself at seminary, but I’ve done enough perusing of my Greek NT to see the noticeably different style and language of the gospel of John and the Apocalypse. It is as noticeably different a style as the gospels of Mark and Luke. Like Mark, the author of the Apocalypse uses “Kai” at the beginning of a great number of his sentences at a much greater proportion and frequency than in John. Because both writers are writing narratives, it would follow that their narration style would be reflected in both texts about the same. There is no distinctively Johannine element in Revelation, no reflection of any essential contents or themes reflected in the Gospel or epistles. If anything, the elements in the Apocalypseare decidedly synoptic, as the “whoever has ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” and the “I will confess his name before my Father and His angels”.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@keatsiannightingale9256 "Why would we suppose either Ezekiel or Daniel knew Greek?"

I'm not presuming that. I am presuming that the Hebrew syntax in these books has influenced St. John.

"Yes, I am sure John did not receive formal Greek training. While it is by no means improbable he could have acquired Greek orally and a little in writing, I doubt he ever would have been proficient in its written use."

Over decades living among Greek speakers? + doesn't work very well if he was a Cohen, who would have known Greek from his training (you know "know your enemy" + clashes in the Maccabaean times).

"In the time of Christ and the apostles it would have been Aramaic, not Hebrew, that was the primary tongue of Israel at the time. The preponderance of evidence shows Jesus spoke Aramaic throughout his life, not Hebrew or Greek."

Jesus knowing also Hebrew: he read a prophecy in a synaogue, and not one of the books written in Aramaic (though Daniel precisely is one such book).

Jesus knowing also either Greek or Latin or both: he grew up in Galilee (a k a Galilee of the Gentiles to some), and St. Joseph worked on a new building project near Nazareth / in Nazareth. And he communicated fluently with a Roman officer, who is not quite likely to have taken the trouble to learn Aramaic. Obviously the Centurion who hit His side with the lance, St. Longinus, was not making his remark in Aramaic, so the Apostle who heard him would have known Latin or more probably Greek (a Classic author, also called Longinos, wrote in Greek).

My point is, the exotic parts, to a native Greek ear, in the Apocalypse, are not ineptitude in Greek, but straight copying of the language of Daniel and Ezechiel.

I asked you to give two sentences of semantically parallel content between the Gospel and the Apocalypse to show where the Greek of the Gospel is more ornate. You didn't comply, you are simply asking me to rely on a set of experts without any other evidence than their authority.

"Like Mark, the author of the Apocalypse uses “Kai” at the beginning of a great number of his sentences at a much greater proportion and frequency than in John."

In Mark, that would illustrate St. Peter was using a very Semitic Greek, since Hebrew has lots of sentences in "ve" ... the same background in the Apocalypse would indicate St. John was consciously calquing Hebrew content, or perhaps he received the vision in Hebrew or Aramaic and then translated it to Greek, word for word.

"Because both writers are writing narratives, it would follow that their narration style would be reflected in both texts about the same."

Is describing a vision the same thing as writing a narrative set in 1st C AD fisherman and Jerusalem everyday Palestine?

"There is no distinctively Johannine element in Revelation, no reflection of any essential contents or themes reflected in the Gospel or epistles. If anything, the elements in the Apocalypseare decidedly synoptic"

Oh, thematic correspondences or lack of such are nearly no clue at all to common or diverse authorship. At best, a commonality of themes can confirm common authorship if otherwise known or suspected, but it can not on its own sufficiently point to such, and lack of it definitely cannot point to diversity of authorship.

If St. John had already covered lost of Synoptic themes in the Apocalypse, as you say, it could be a reason to leave them out in his Gospel, which is written later.

Keatsian Nightingale

@hglundahl If you are suggesting that Jesus knew Latin, there’s not much for me to work with. You are suggestible to many implausibilities if that’s the case. The whole story of St. Loginus is Medieval fiction and not rooted in history. If you put that on par with top-notch critical scholarship, you are bound to make many mistakes in your analysis. The evidence we have only has Jesus speaking Aramaic explicitly. Perhaps we could include some limited Greek. But even in the case of the Roman centurion of Matthew 8 and Luke 7, there’s no reason one of whom it was said “He loves our nation” would and could not have learned the local dialect. The idea that Jesus knew Latin is the stuff of factionalized versions of Jesus’ life from the 19th century. I’ve read enough critical notes of Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita to pick up at least this. So I ask: what actual evidence, if any, supports the notion that Jesus spoke any Latin or Greek?

I didn’t provide Greek text because it is simply not convenient to do so in this format, as you must obviously know. However, your contention that narrative in a vision versus in a true account must differ stylistically simply does not stack up. Obviously there’s nothing inherent in the language of Greek or Hebrew that would incline an author to just use the word “and” at the beginning of sentences in a vision narrative to a greater degree than in a normal narrative. The evidence of this is simply a basic comparison of the narrative language of Mark versus that of Matthew, another author of the NT who allegedly first wrote his gospel in Hebrew, although no definite evidence shows this is so. Additionally, is there any evidence that John is emulating the style of Greek Ezekiel or Greek Daniel?

And no, you are dead wrong about thematic and lingual correspondence. Even authors as recent as Shakespeare have recurring themes, ideas and word sequences throughout all their writings. This is very evident in Paul’s letters, especially the ones that are authentic in contradistinction to those that are questioned. Paul’s usage of words in a number of his letters is a great indication that if it used in an entirely different way in another text, it may indicate the same author is not behind both. Scholars have recognized this habit in the Pastorals for decades now.

As for Revelation, a lack of any direct theological, historical or thematic cohesion with the gospel and epistles is just as valid a way of doubting a common author as the presence of those things indicates a common author in the case of the gospel and epistles.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@keatsiannightingale9256 "If you are suggesting that Jesus knew Latin, there’s not much for me to work with. You are suggestible to many implausibilities if that’s the case."

How is it implausible that Jesus met Romans speaking Latin, as well as Romans speaking Greek in Galilee? Galil ha Goyim = Galilee of the Gentiles. Note, I said, "Latin, or Greek, or both" .... Greek might be the most plausible. But I am not excluding Latin too.

"The whole story of St. Loginus is Medieval fiction and not rooted in history."

a) Is Matthew 27:54 Medieval fiction too?
b) Is Queen Helen finding the Holy Cross Medieval fiction too? Stephan Borgehammar is a top notch critical scholar and has defended the thesis the story goes back to the time of the "purported" events.
c) Is "rooted in history" = rooted in modern critical scholarship?

"If you put that on par with top-notch critical scholarship, you are bound to make many mistakes in your analysis."

No, I don't put Medieval legends on par with top notch critical scholarship, I put them usually far above it.

"The evidence we have only has Jesus speaking Aramaic explicitly."

And implicit evidence, as for Hebrew in the synagogue doesn't count? I'll return to the centurion in a moment.

"But even in the case of the Roman centurion of Matthew 8 and Luke 7, there’s no reason one of whom it was said “He loves our nation” would and could not have learned the local dialect."

Similarily, there is no reason one who was astonished at Roman obedience would not and could not have learned one or both languages of the Romans, at least to some degree.

"what actual evidence, if any, supports the notion that Jesus spoke any Latin or Greek?"

The exact same evidence you have that the centurion spoke any Aramaic. Opportunity and probability of willingness. Especially as Jesus probably was in Alexandria during the stay in Egypt. That's specially in favour of Greek.

"it is simply not convenient to do so in this format, as you must obviously know."

Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.
Ἀποκάλυψις Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, ἣν ἔδωκεν αὐτῷ ὁ θεός, δεῖξαι τοῖς δούλοις αὐτοῦ ἃ δεῖ γενέσθαι ἐν τάχει, καὶ ἐσήμανεν ἀποστείλας διὰ τοῦ ἀγγέλου αὐτοῦ τῷ δούλῳ αὐτοῦ Ἰωάννῃ,

Calling your bluff.

"However, your contention that narrative in a vision versus in a true account must differ stylistically"

I did not contend anything about "vision" vs "true account" but "vision" vs "everyday situations".
I also did not contend anything about "must" I am fine with "reasonably could" -- which is enough to refute your pretended proof for diverse authorship.

I contend that in fact St. John the Gospeller knew Ezechiel and Daniel and drew on them when describing his visions, for reason of stylistic ... aemulatio autorum? (Like Virgil emulated Homer and Apollonius).
I contend that in fact St. John the Gospeller also had an everyday speech and drew on that when writing the Gospel.

"Obviously there’s nothing inherent in the language of Greek or Hebrew that would incline an author to just use the word “and” at the beginning of sentences in a vision narrative to a greater degree than in a normal narrative."

Another deliberate strawman of my position. There is something inherent in Hebrew which inclines an author making a calque on Hebrew to use "kai" where Hebrew has "ve" ... an imitatio autorum directed to Daniel and Ezechiel would obviously tend to make the Greek precisely that kind of calque. In the Gospel, he's basically part of inventing the genre, if anything his models are the synoptics.

"Additionally, is there any evidence that John is emulating the style of Greek Ezekiel or Greek Daniel?"

I don't know. The reason I asked you to provide evidence from Gospel and Apocalypse is, my Greek is too rusty to make that kind of comparison. In Latin I could definitely see the difference between Summa and Postilla in Libros Geneseos, I believe St. Thomas wrote the first in Roccasecca, and brushed up his Latin a lot when arriving among Dominicans. In Greek, I can't do that comparison.

My contention is that St. John (a Cohen according to the thesis of Jean Colson) knew Daniel and Ezechiel in Hebrew / Aramaic.

Before you mix the thesis of Colson with the idea of two authors (as the man introducing me to Colson did, it seems to be fashionable), and before you take St. Irenaeus as warrant for the Son of Zebedee being the author of the Apocalypse, let me note that Colson precisely attributes a mix-up to St. Irenaeus who left Asia Minor at age 16 (i e before having an opportunity to sort the two different John's out). You know, the top-notch critical scholarship of Colson ...

"Even authors as recent as Shakespeare have recurring themes, ideas and word sequences throughout all their writings."

Rape of Lucrece ~ A Twelfth Night. Theme "classic" does not count, as it is known to be common between both, in advance.
Silmarillion and The Hobbit (dragons doesn't count, as Smaug / Glaurung is known to have that reference in both works).

If you state "even ... as recent as" you are basically implying that stylistic variation between works is a clear option within human feasability. This makes the supposed universal up to Shakespear totally moot.

"This is very evident in Paul’s letters, especially the ones that are authentic in contradistinction to those that are questioned."

In other words, for one guesswork of different authorships, you are appealing to another such guesswork, and one that is apostatic in tendency. You are at least showing where your bias is, and I hold it to be a superstitious one as well as an apostatic one.

"Scholars have recognized this habit in the Pastorals for decades now."

You mean they are finally catching up on common things between Romans and Pastorals? They may do so between Gospel and Apoc.

Two Tolkien Related

Two Tolkien Related · Three Tolk-Lang Questions · More Tolkien · Even More Tolkien Related

Short version : no, Tolkien did not get his fantasy languages from commerce with demons, and he did not promote marijuana. Whatever Putinist propagandists may say to the contrary.

Q I

In Lord Of The Rings, why are most of the Wizards addicted something harmful, Gandalf to Old Toby (marijuana), Saruman to Tobacca and marijuana from The Shire and Radagast is stated to excessively consume Mushrooms which addled his brain and teeth?
https://www.quora.com/In-Lord-Of-The-Rings-why-are-most-of-the-Wizards-addicted-something-harmful-Gandalf-to-Old-Toby-marijuana-Saruman-to-Tobacca-and-marijuana-from-The-Shire-and-Radagast-is-stated-to-excessively-consume-Mushrooms-which/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Hans-Georg Lundahl

none/ apprx Masters in Latin (language) & Greek (language), Lund University

23.XI.2023

Old Toby is actually tobacco.

No one is addicted to any other mushrooms than those listed as edible in normal mushrom books.

I am obviously speaking of the books. I think the films show Radagast from some other point of view in one scene.

Q II

How did Tolkien create his Elvish languages? Are there other ways to create fantasy languages?
https://www.quora.com/How-did-Tolkien-create-his-Elvish-languages-Are-there-other-ways-to-create-fantasy-languages/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Hans-Georg Lundahl

none/ apprx Masters in Latin (language) & Greek (language), Lund University

23.XI.2023

How did Tolkien create his Elvish languages?

He took over from different languages or invented from scratch words that sounded like the sound shape he wanted. He also (as should anyone) fleshed out pretty detailed grammars for each language he really cared about.

He also reconstructed them back to a proto-language and into the other ones of the Elvish languages.

Are there other ways to create fantasy languages?

Sure. Edgar Rice Burroughs went for mainly monosyllables with a very different sound shape, with basically no consideration of grammar.

Hergé based Syldavian loosely on Marrolsch (they are not identical).

One could also take an accepted Proto-Language or known daughter languages, and find a niche between the extant ones (I tried a blend of Latin, Greek and Romanian once, the note book got stolen, presumably by freemasons).

My Noster Franzeis (easier to keep in mind without a notebook) involves taking Old French into the phonetics of Modern High German. On the French-Picard divide:

• ceci est un cheval (French)
• chechi est un keval (Picard)

I chose another one:

• zezie ist ün Kewal (Noster Franzeis)

It still does have the SH sound, but where German would have it:

• Schriwähn
• Spizerie
• falsch (same meaning and etymology as faux, both in German and in Noster Franzeis)

Hence the absence of this sound from both “ceci” and “keval” (taken respectively from French and Picard).

Future of Young Earth Creationism and perhaps of This Young Earth Creationist

What is the Future of Young Earth Creation?
Is Genesis History? | 22 Nov. 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxDZfLtILvs

C. 2:00 if you want to get going on what happened after the Flood, accept my carbon 14 table, either in detail (this involves a slightly non-standard LXX timeline for Genesis 5 and 11 -- LXX without the second Cainan), or at least in principle.

Get Neanderthals and Denisovans, unless half breeds with "Homo sapiens" / Cro Magnon race, into the pre-Flood era, get the carbon date of the Flood in 39 000 BP, as per Campi Flegrei, the only supervolcano where we have a carbon date, admit Göbekli Tepe was Babel, so whereever you put Babel has the carbon dates from 9600 to 8600 BC, and place Genesis 14, whereever it is in real years, on the carbon date 3500 BC, as per the reed mats on which temple treasures were evacuated from En Gedi (mentioned as Asason Tamar in the text), work out what carbon 14 level rise is reasonable between the date of Genesis 14 and the date of the Exodus. I think we get a pretty even one if we take Djoser as Joseph's pharao and Amenemhat IV as missing Moses, who got a cenotaph after striking the overseer to death. If you don't directly use my work, cite me as inspiration for your parallel work.

I'm trying to get a livelihood as Roman Catholic and Young Earth Creationist writer, OK. If you don't like to print me, or cite me in papers or videos as direct source, cite me as inspiration, stop trying to marginalise me and my work!

Like Matt Fradd and David Wood, I prefer Muslims over Mohammed, but St. Thomas Aquinas over both

I also prefer Mormons over Joseph Smith.

Muhammad Was a FALSE Prophet w/ David Wood | Pints with Aquinas Episode #214
Pints With Aquinas, 13 July 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEA5VQ-vBIw

6:00 Oh the cringe when I saw a Greek Orthodox parish sharing the type of things you are speaking of ...

13:55 I don't think the Saddam Hussein pictures are all that weird.

He was Baath party. That means Arabic or similar secularists.

Now, how it went in Iraq was, he was heavily supported by his own clan, he was heavily suppressing some other clans, among the Muslims, and he was a protector of Christians against Muslim persecutions.

In the Syrian war, French Catholics were somewhat divided on whether they should support the Rojava militia (Kurds, somewhat anarchist) or the Syrian government, Bashir al Assad, another Baath partist. BOTH were fighting ISIS / Daesh. Some conservative Catholics over here (basically all who were more pro-Putin then than now) were pretty cool with Bashir.

So, that Muslim was probably associating you with Saddam Hussein's protégés ... which is the status Christians de facto had before the Iraq war.

16:46 Satanism also teaches other true things, namely that virginity and the moment of death are highly important.

You know that Gaelic first millennium monk who wrote a kind of lorica type of prayer which is now a hymn highly popular among Evangelicals?

Be thou my vision.

Now one of the lines is :

High King of Heaven, my victory won,
May I reach Heaven's joys, O bright Heav’n's Sun!

"My victory" being in this case the victory I win in the hour of death (if I do so, the monk was obviously praying for the free gift of final perseverence, rather than presuming he already had it as an elect), and Satanists also believe the hour of death is an hour when you can win a high victory.

That's presumably more common among them than believing Satan exists, LaVeyans typically either don't believe that or at least don't admit to believing that.

Theistic Satanists, on the other hand, would primarily honour "the great goddess" and then consider "the horned god" as her plaything. BUT they would still look down on Wiccans as immature Fluff Bunnies. I left the site Helgon net over a believer in that stuff becoming the owner and over another member pronouncing a kind of hex "you won't marry and have children" ... sth which Catholics have been helping him out with since.

22:10 Was he even saying that himself?

I thought he was manipulating others to ask "can you make any similarily beautiful words?" and then gas on about the "beauty" of his rhymed prose (I think the form is ...) ...

If the ones taking up the challenge agreed in content, they were told, "you are a Muslim, now you have to join us" and if they didn't they were told "nah, you don't write that well" (like it seems some guys on the Trad spectrum are excusing themselves from not giving me a platform to champion young earth creationism, some pretending my French is too bad ...)

28:44 It's not just a kind of parody of Muhammed.

It's also a pretty directly accurate version of who Odin seems to have been.

Go to the parts of the Talmud that speak of the early parts of the biography of Yeshu. I think that man existed, obviously was NOT Jesus the Christ, and actually did found an idolatrous sect, where he presented himself as creator god pretending to have in his youth created the world with his two brothers from the carcass of a slain monster (in the last century BC, Sumerian still existed as a Classic language, and Akkadian survived a century longer into first c. AD, confer how Enlil slew Tiamat).

To them there are different versions of Paradise, depending on what kind of merit brought you there. Valhalla is the most famous. Each night a pig is slaughtered, eaten, bones thrown back into the pot, each morning the pig is alive again.

At day time they would fight, and their wounds would get healed at night. But there is a difference to the Muslim version : this fighting spirit is actually going to be used, when the gods fight their last battle. When the giants rebel, Odin will be killed and those who lived like this in paradise will be killed with him, hopefully killing lots of giants before going down.

The other two versions of paradise are for faithful couples (the hall of Freya), and the one couple that is going to repeople earth (under returned Baldr, copied from Osiris), once Einherjar and Giants, Gods and Giants, have killed each other.

Two points converge to why Odin would have been a Hebrew (like Yeshu) rather than a Druid.

• a) Odin like the disciple of Joshua Ben Pekharia are lechers, have a hard time looking away from pretty women
• b) lots of the Norse stuff is known, and it corresponds very perfectly to what's known from ancient Israel.
  • 1) apocalyptic literature in the land itself
  • 2) Babylonian gods and myths in the North and East
  • 3) Egyptian gods and myths in the South and West.

Accessory evidence to this:

• c) Odin's most famous poem Havamal is pretty much a rehash of Qoheleth, and the Old Norse most famous stanzas are retranslated to what's also metric in Proto-Norse (a different language!) which is what would have been spoken when Odin arrived
• d) Thor is called Iorthar Son -- in Norse it is "son of earth" but this can be a mistranslation of "son of the land" (since in Hebrew like Latin, "land" and "earth" are the same) -- which is a more reasonable explanation given that Norse myths don't seem to have any earth goddess (to be fair to the other side, Nerthus could have been one, when she was worshipped in the days of Tacitus).

33:07 Muhammed here is so close to at least what Catholic sources say about the Reformers Luther and Calvin.

Protestant sources include Calvin's excuse being cessationism, that's in his comment on the Markan Great Commission.

34:02 The Night Journey, a vision in his bed ...

Sounds like the Hindoo proof that Krishna was a god or basically even "God" -- a poet saw this in a dream after Krishna's corpse was devoured on a bon fire and four of his wives had killed themselves on that bonfire.

37:02 "Muslims set themselves up as judges in the contest" ... have we seen something similar lately, when Evolution believers tell Creationists "you write to peer reviewed papers", then control the papers, like Nature or National Geographic, then reject the Creationist contributions and then say that Creationist aren't good enough as scientists to get published in peer reviewed papers.

And when some Creationists make peer reviewed papers of their own they state "ah, no, that's just a creationist source motivated by religion more than by evidence ..."

49:06 I think the Irish have a far better and shorter take on that "chapter" or its basic idea, between Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants.

You worship God as you want, I'll worship Him as He wants.

50:22 An immediate question to this one, that Christian priest who became a follower of Mohammed, the one responsible for a lot of Islam Apocalyptic prophecy, when did he become a follower of Muhammed?

[In reference to St. Thomas Aq. saying no one trained in sacred things was along Mohammed before he became a robber.]

58:06 I'm reminded of how German Protestants (the majority, the guys who were saying "Lutheran / Calvinist, big deal, let's unite") were using the victories of Gustavus Adolphus and Swedish Protestants too, to prove God was blessing Protestantism and the Spanish American war probably some guys were telling the story that God was rebuking Spain for the Inquisition and more generally the "Popish Superstition" ... Chesterton had a comment on that one ...

1:08:58 Excuse me, but do you know Catholics who think all I have to do in this life is reaching out, and if Muslims or Protestants don't convert to Catholicism on reading me and speaking to me, my writings are no good?

I have an own soul to save too, you know.

1:10:57 I am a Swede.

Back when I was a child and teen, the Left was very much not yet ashamed of homophobia, it terrorised me in school by homosexual accusations against me.

So, that issue was back then not an issue. Muslim immigrants were far fewer, and more likely to abide by feminism than they are now.

• 1) Islam was Enlightened to them, because it doesn't mix "one God and creator" (even Voltaire would have said that) up with "shady stuff" like Trinity or Incarnation, or proof by Miracles or even any clear stance among any of them for Young Earth Creationism. Islam has a timeline in the Seera or Hadiths, that is incompatible, like Mohammed being 40th generation from Adam, it's even shorter than the Catholic YEC timeline of the Christmas Proclamation (trad version!), but nothing in the Coran itself, so their leaders would tone that down.
• 2) Islam is also more Virtuous in a Kantian and Puritan sense than Catholicism to them. I mean, it forbids wine. (Most immigrants don't have multiple wives, and they mostly adapt to Swedish regulations on marital age, which are too high).
• 3) On top of that, Islam is Egalitarian.

Jan Guillou is a Swedish journalist, he described our then PM, Gunnar Persson, as a Liberal Muslim. While the man was a member of the State Church, he didn't believe the Trinity and didn't believe Jesus was God.

Béa Tremblay Blocked Me After Responding

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Béa Tremblay Blocked Me After Responding · EN LENGUA ROMANCE EN ANTIMODERNISM Y DE MIS CAMINACIONES: Eso es fanatismo anticristiano, Béa ... · Béa Tremblay se calló, no era lo que pédí, y deja el debate incompleto ... · No puedo contestar a los respuestas de Béa Tremblay en Quora

Béa Tremblay Blocked Me After Responding · Ark Related Question

Béa gave a disparaging answer about the Ark of the Ark encounter. She pretended it could not work in a world wide Flood. Here are two comments under her answer. I could not add a third to open a debate with her:

In the first, I linked to

CMI : Safety investigation of Noah’s Ark in a seaway
by S.W. Hong, S.S. Na, B.S. Hyun, S.Y. Hong, D.S. Gong, K.J. Kang, S.H. Suh, K.H. Lee, and Y.G. Je | This article is from
Journal of Creation 8(1):26–36, April 1994
https://creation.com/safety-investigation-of-noahs-ark-in-a-seaway

In the second, she said:

Ah, yes, I knew that one, it's a well-known source of jokes. It's babble to impress the ignorant, paid by wealthy fundamentalists. We made a lot of fun about it in the Navy's school because it deliberately avoids so many core problems (like the lack of control for stability) that it's an exercise in carefully not touching any important subject while looking like you covered everything.

Among many things, they deliberately and maliciously avoid that to get those coefficients of stability, you need control to turn toward the waves. There's no other way to do it —well, unless you have computer-controlled electronic stability control with lateral engines. My naval engineering teachers would send them back to primary school —or would have them arrested and expelled from the Navy for being a bunch of manipulative liars. Like everyone in the ICR and CMI.

I do not know what she means by "lack of control for stability" given that the point of the Safety investigation was precisely to show it was stable enough.

I get a suspicion, which is not to the credit of her argument:

to get those coefficients of stability, you need control to turn toward the waves

Does she mean a rudder?

The point of lots of Creationist investigations, this one, a remark by Kent Hovind, myself, well it is that the critics (and Béa seems to be doing it again) are pretending it's a question of navigating. That would involve getting across waves.

The actual question is if the Ark could float inside the troughs of the very long waves.

När bildas brytande vågor?*
När vågorna närmar sig land/stranden trycks vågorna ihop så att våglängden minskar och våghöjden ökar, det bildas brytande vågor

When are breaking waves made?
When waves approach land/the coast, the waves are compressed so the wave length lessens and the wave height increases, breaking waves are formed.

Obviously, this would not the least be occurring on the top of a world wide ocean, which by definition was the only thing under the Ark (for c. 1 km at the most shallow) until it approached the Mountains of Armenia, when the water levels sank.

The one problem Kon Tiki had with breaking waves, was when they stranded on a coral reef between Raroia and Takuma.

To underline the above:

Varför är tsunamivågor inte så farliga långt ut på havet men förödande närmare land?*
Eftersom det är vid grundare vatten som vågorna trycks ihop och blir högre, och ute på djupt vatten märks de knappt av eftersom de inte trycks ihop än

Why are Tsunami waves not so dangerous far out on the sea, but devastating closer to land? Because it is at shallower waters that the waves are compressed and get higher, and out on the deep sea, they are hardly noticed, since they are not yet compressed.

I'll investigate further what she was saying:

Observándolo, queda inmediatamente claro a simple vista que el arca de Noé tal como se describe en la Biblia y construyó Ken Ham es totalmente incapaz de navegar o de controlar su estabilidad dinámica, e incluso aunque flotara inicialmente, se iría a pique con el primer contratiempo.

Maybe my Spanish is somewhat off, but I think I just confirmed what she was saying was precisely totally irrelevant.

Observing it, it is immediately clear from simple viewing, that the Ark of Noah as it is described in the Bible and as Ken Ham constructed it is totally incapable to navigate or to control its dynamic stability, and this to the point that, while it would initially float it would "se iría a pique" with the first "contratiempo" ... presumably sink at the first ... google translate offers "setback" and "mishap" but I think she means the more technical "contretemps" ... is it even technical?

Going to the technical stuff, the one that really is, she is giving a diagram, which I already saw back when I had a book on stability and trim a few years ago:

Stability and Trim for the Ship's Officer, Third Edition, based on original edition by John La Dage and Lee Van Gemert, Third Edition, ed. by William E. George Cornell Maritime Press, last copyright 1983.

The two articles that I wrote directly on the subject of stability were:

For Sea-Farers .... · Rolling Period of Ark?

They also include calculations on the empty weight and freighted weight of the ark (for empty weight, I take into account both different thickness of wood, different densities from densest rose wood to least dense pine, and the different lengths of cubit I had at my disposal, for freighted weight I take into account the density of water, Archimede's principle, and a water line that's halfway up the hight of the Ark, i e 15 cubits up), here:

Ark : empty weight and freighted weight, number of couples on the Ark. · Small Tidbits on Ark, Especially Mathematical

As I recall, any vessel is most stable if the water line is halfway up, and also, the longer the rolling period is, since the less likely to reach too low a level (or two big an angle from vertical) while the waves are pointing it one way.

So, unless I totally got the way of calculating radius of gyration wrong, the rolling period of the Ark, according to the formula given in wiki, would have been between 11.71 and 12.82 seconds. Recall that first sentence?

Now, another point. Béa Tremblay was saying:

• she has "naval engineering teachers"
• who have the power to "have them arrested and expelled from the Navy"

This means, when Béa Tremblay was answering me, and also blocking me from replying, she might have been acting under direct orders, and if not, at least under abnormal social pressure. Her not being a Civilian.

If the French or Spanish navy, or whatever other navy in the West she might be on is into bullying for Creationism, and if such military considerations interfere with my rights as a Civilian to pursue a civilian carreere as a writer, and my rights as a writer to freedom of expression, including for expressing Young Earth Creationism, this is bad news for the West. A military which fights God (and that's what you do if you fight God's truth, and persecute those holding it) is dooming itself to loss and disaster. Recall how Communism fell in 1990?

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Cecilia
22.XI.2023

Sanctae Caeciliae, Virginis et Martyris, quae ad caelestem Sponsum, proprio sanguine purpurata, transivit sextodecimo Kalendas Octobris. [16.IX says:] Romae item natalis sanctae Caeciliae, Virginis et Martyris, quae sponsum suum Valerianum et fratrem ejus Tiburtium ad credendum in Christum perduxit, et ad martyrium incitavit. Hanc Almachius, Urbis Praefectus, post eorum martyrium teneri, atque illustri passione, post ignem superatum, fecit gladio consummari, tempore Marci Aurelii Severi Alexandri Imperatoris. Ejus vero festum recolitur decimo Kalendas Decembris.

* The two quotes in Swedish are from:

https://quizlet.com/670854089/kust-och-vindprocesser-flash-cards/

On Correctness in Romance Languages

Q

Isn't it strange/funny that modern-day Romance languages have rigid usage rules considered somehow elitist yet they themselves grew in large part out of what was considered 'incorrect' Latin spoken mostly by the uneducated masses?
https://www.quora.com/Isnt-it-strange-funny-that-modern-day-Romance-languages-have-rigid-usage-rules-considered-somehow-elitist-yet-they-themselves-grew-in-large-part-out-of-what-was-considered-incorrect-Latin-spoken-mostly-by-the/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-2

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Studied Latin (language) at Lund University

20.XI.2023

Let's break this down a bit.

"Isn't it strange/funny that modern-day Romance languages have rigid usage rules"

Every language in the world, including your English, has rigid usage rules.

Sometimes the uneducated or half educated are most rigid about what they are or what they think they are.

When Tolkien wrote "Helms too they chose" some half educated man pretended this was too élitist against uneducated men to not rigidly follow their grammar. Probably same type of half educated man who pretends I scourch French grammar. In fact, some portions of the grammar I don't quite master (looking at you, passé simple: "je lus" with U, is it?) - but working my way round parts I am not familiar with is different from breaking parts I overestimated my familiarity with. To some, not speaking exactly as they equals "breaking the rules of grammar" ...

"considered somehow elitist"

Not by Italians themselves. See Giorgio Bellini's answer - perfectly correct, but doesn't begin to adress where you are coming from.

"yet they themselves grew in large part out of what was considered 'incorrect' Latin"

Every language change is a shift in what is considered correct, not a simple dissolution of the very concept of correctness.

Sometime between 1420 and 1470, English lost the infinitive ending -en (previously common with even modern German).

"spoken mostly by the uneducated masses?"

In fact not even true. The Middle Class outside formal rhetoric (like going to court) arguably contributed much more than the kind of people making the mistakes of Index Probi, some of which were later adopted by the Middle Class, some of which were on the other hand not adopted into the Romance languages.

Answering Lofton some on the Strickland Affair

New blog on the kid: Will Bergoglio Excommunicate and Degrade Karl-Heinz Wiesemann? · Is Strickland Removed for Criticism? · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Answering Lofton some on the Strickland Affair

Why Doesn't Pope Francis Just Excommunicate the German Bishops?
Reason & Theology, 19 nov. 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJvZIvJB2OE

1:19 You have missed out on at least one of the factors.

In Germany it is illegal to describe yourself even as a Catholic priest (let alone bishop) if you are not in communion with Rome.

This is because Germany has some kind of concordate and this is one of the stipulations. In 1934 after the one with Hitler (I imagine there is a new one now) a Mariavite from Poland in schism with Pius XI could be jailed if calling himself a "Catholic priest" ... and last year or the one before, a Sedevacantist who had his ordination from some kind of Old Catholics, but was in communion with Roman Catholic Sedevacantists (Pope Michael II might agree with you on putting "RC" in inverted commas here) was jailed for calling himself a Roman Catholic rather than an Old Catholic priest.

This means, if Karl Heinz Wiesemann were removed (and I don't think all of the episcopate went as far as he, but he directly proposed to bless gay unions), and tried to pretend "no, I am still the bishop of Speyer" he could face time in German jail.

2:16 You are basically saying that formal schism is worse than formal heresy.

And a parallel church that started out on blessing gay unions would hardly be a very big priority to heal, since they would hardly be Christians, if they continued like that 100 years from now. And if they didn't (likely enough, even apart from the world ending, which is very likely), if the passions of the woke movement ran out its course and came to a miserable end, that schism would be very close to healing.

So, no, we cannot pretend that Popes Popes St. Celestine I, St. Leo I, St. Leo IX, St. Pius V were only excommunicating Nestorians, Monophysites, Caerularians and Protestants in the hope that excommunication would quickly heal the disorders in all concerned, and would have balked from doing that if they had foreseen these communions being still around and separate from Catholics up to this day. And since we cannot pretend that, we cannot pretend Bergoglio shares their priorities either.

2:52 400 years from now, "Christians" starting out from a hope of blessing gay unions would be more than 300 years damned on Doomsday.

God will not be fooled. Luke 18:8. It doesn't directly say Doomsday will come very soon after such a heavy loss of faith, but taken together with Matthew 28:16—20 it kind of implies that.

3:09 1) The Protestant Reformation could survive, because apart from the Catholic roots on the Christian side of its thematics, it drew on Classic Antiquity, which had worked for some centuries. Karl Heinz Wiesemann is more like hankering to the 20 years of Sodom, between when Abraham saved it and when God destroyed it, which is a much less lasting even part foundation.
2) The Lutherans of Sweden are getting drained out of Christendom insofar as they become formal non-confessionals, either Atheists or New Agers or semi-Christian freethinkers. I was shocked to hear that, 23 years after the "Church of Sweden" ceased to be state Church, only 54 % of the Swedes are members of it. The same thing would happen to Karl Heinz Wiesemann's parallel Church even quicker.

4:02 You have duly dealt with "St Peter the Aleut" and "Pius XII wanted Serbs in Croatia killed" canards?

[This last bc Michael Lofton claims to answer the Orthodox arguments against Catholicism. Is he doing so only on matters of doctrine, or does he enter history and disputes about it as well?]

Did the Apostolic Nuncio Say There is No Deposit of Faith?
Reason & Theology, 19.XI.2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvowZCeyNcw

8:33 If the Deposit of Faith is probed in COUNTLESS ways, it means "the way you probe it" need not be the right or at this moment best one.
If it's the BASIS of sound development of doctrine, there can be a development of doctrine kind of hiding it, but don't complain about that, the magisterium will see to it, its a sound one ....

8:45 Sure someone could tell someone to "stop emphasising the deposit of faith" if that someone thinks there is A (single) RIGHT way to probe it, and thinks it doesn't NEED a development of doctrine added right now to get expressed.

In other words, if the person holds that the deposit of faith is a real DEPOSIT and not a kind of stream or seed or whatever, able to grow or to flow to unexpected places.

9:47 Yeah, sure, Christophe Pierre sees the value of the Deposit of Faith as long as he can treat it as a stream flowing on to unexpected riverscapes or a seed growing to unexpected shapes.

But this doesn't mean he sees the value of "emphasising it so much" especially in a way that makes it seem the deposit of faith is in fact a deposit. Which presumably is what Strickland had done.

12:50 Could the "Cardinal" have said sth like:

"stop acting as if you were the only one to believe / defend / etc the deposit of faith"

to Strickland?

It beats me why (if so) Strickland could remember that as inaccurately as "it's not what we need to emphasise" — especially if it was in the area of pastoral or reform, check out the following words by which the document you read from nearly directly allows for making the deposit of faith irrelevant to whether a pastoral reform can be accepted or not.

13:09 I think you are the one who is severely misunderstanding what you even read from, by overlooking the part Strickland would see as relevant to the case.

Stop Sharing This Fake Bishop's Material
Reason & Theology, 15 nov. 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6WZXnc8W3s

Why is a bishop of the Old Roman Catholic Church (which presumably has valid material Apostolic Succession, like the Orthodox) getting more popular than some of the Novus Ordo ones?

Perhaps because people of Strickland calibre are not silenced in it.

Looked into it. It seems to be a version of Sedevacantism.

15:16 They received orders from Utrecht before Utrecht came into communion with Old Catholics. THEN they broke with Utrecht.

15:53 Bishop Meikle is far closer to being in communion with the true Pope (i e Michael II) than any Orthodox bishop.

I recall in my years in a Novus Ordo parish, the "Archbishop's Prayer School" by Anthony Bloom was being shared, no one had qualms about sharing that even if Anthony Bloom had been in schism since 1054 (OK, not personally, but his schism is that old, far older than Bishop Edward Meikle's ... if even such).

15:53 bis Speaking of "Anthony Bloom" — would you or any other Novus Ordo you know call Anthony Bloom a "fake bishop" because he was not given his metropoly by anyone you consider as Pope?

Old Roman Catholic Church : See of Caer-Glow
https://caer-glow.rosarychurch.net/

Bishop Meikle's views on Other Catholic Groups
https://bishopmeikle.com/views-on-other-catholic-groups/

"WAKE UP WORLD! SNAP OUT OF THIS FILTHY HABIT!"

A few remarks on the video apart my comments. 1) It is mentioned that Assumption of Mary precedes "20th Sunday of ordinary time", meaning 15 Aug. was a Sunday. I just confirmed that this is a reprise of a video from 2021 when actually Aug 15th was a Sunday, 2) Roger Bannister is mentioned — I looked him up, he didn't stay just a sportsman, he became a neurologist. And, 3) the Pope I mention in a comment is ...

Pope Clement XIV (Latin: Clemens XIV; Italian: Clemente XIV; 31 October 1705 – 22 September 1774), born Giovanni Vincenzo Antonio Ganganelli, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 19 May 1769 to his death in September 1774.

WAKE UP WORLD! SNAP OUT OF THIS FILTHY HABIT!
Servants Of God, 14 Nov. 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Urn2NE_1djQ

7:06 Chastity has become less possible over the last 50 -- 100 years.

1) marriage before 18 has more and more been outlawed
2) quitting school before c. 18 has also been more and more outlawed
3) having boys and girls attend separate schools from when puberty sets on has also been more and more outlawed
4) add that school pupils are encouraged to get full nutrition and do full physical expertion, fasting is more and more, if not generally, at least for school pupils, outlawed too
5) add music stiles and other entertainment content, like how much of a married couple's life together is shown on TV or films (not meaning X-rated ones).

The sixth and possibly worst, but definitely not only level of it is, how certain outlets other than conjugal sex and fertility are being allowed, which, given the above 5 types of anti-chastity measures constitutes grooming. Abortion, gender reassignment, homosexual relations, contraception, destigmatising certain practises universally seen as shameful, previously. The consequence is of course an aging society and devaluation of pension pre-payments in what is the outcome.

7:32 "nobody waits until their marriage anymore"

In the Middle ages, ladies didn't have to wait to 18.

Certain upper class men who were not only called to be providers, but also even providers of a very upper class lifestyle, were very much not waiting, but went to prostitutes. But I think a shepherd or a fisherman and for farming people at least those who lived on other men's land (serfs) could marry earlier than some of these less than royal but more than just common men.

12:53 There is a seventh obstacle to marriage and waiting to then.

In the Catholic world 100 years ago, marriage was seen as the default, and unless you were pretty overtly homosexual, or had a genital disease, your sexual manners were not a disqualification.

A Pope of the 18th C. gained unexpected popularity in Lutheran Sweden. What had he done? Well, as a parish priest, he had dealt with a man whose "body count" on TikTok would already have been high. If there had been any TikTok back then. This priest, later Pope, told the young man "look, I refuse to absolve you as long as you don't get married and stop this nonsense."

Meanwhile, Catholics have taken an undue cue from holiness churches which devalorise celibacy, and for which trying to get married is kind of default, and getting married sooner or later is kind of default, but who tend to put this off and impose "spiritual growth" before someone is seen as ready to marry. In the sexual area, things like "break the porn addiction first" or "if you can't do good for the no fap ideal without being married, we don't think you can do it in marriage either" ... the matrimonium in remedium concupiscentiae is neglected.

When it came to people with homosexual tendencies, I am afraid, many Catholic machist national cultures were neglecting it even 100 years ago, you'd go back 200 years.

Footnoting Two Videos "Erik vs Bart"

Ehrman EXPOSED: A Deceptive Gospel "Contradiction"
Testify, 7 April 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc2Im2T7ha4

2:15 I think I would disagree on the assessment of those being the most reliable manuscripts.

Early and reliable do not always match up.

The early manuscipts we still have are the early ones that survived for some reason.

Some cases, the reason may well be that the Church laid a specific text aside as a faulty copy. This is how I read the discovery story of the Sinaiticus. The monks said "we don't know what this is" ... this was taken as crass ignorance, they had a very old Bible manuscript and didn't recognise it was that.

I take it as what the monks there had been saying since a few decades after the Sinaiticus was written, since it came to the Sinai monastery : "we don't know what it is" = whether it qualifies as a Bible or not.

If a Bible is not opened for 1400 years, it's probably in a better shape than Bibles that continued to be opened, most of which got torn or worn pretty quickly, within a century or two.

— · — · — · — · — · —

But if we assume there really was a broken off narrative - it's probably where Mark ceased to take dictation from Peter who was reading alternatively from Matthew and Luke and adding here and there a remark of his own ...

The thing St. Peter thought marvellous was that there was such a harmony between Matthew and Luke, and Mark taking down dictation without noticing he was reading from two scrolls was the byproduct of that - this is obviously not the Augustinian narrative about the Synoptics, but the Stromatistic one ...

IF this is the reason for such a break off, it is possible that an already extant essay about the resurrection was added to it and some did not feel it belonged to the Gospel proper. But that too would be from the pen of St. Mark and mouth of St. Peter.

— · — · — · — · — · —

Biased Bart Ehrman Hits Irony Overload (ft. Tim McGrew)
Testify, 15 Nov. 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfH0fO8Vzmg

Is this mostly about the Gospel of St. John and how the narrator (but mostly not Jesus) uses the word "Jews"?

In 90, on Patmos, the Jewish heritage Christian community that heard St. John got a message from Christ that their enemies in the ethnic Jewish community (at least locally) had gone so far that in the eyes of The King of the Jews Himself, they were not Jews.

In c. 100, in the Gospel, he is himself telling them by his word choice, that for social purposes, they nevertheless had to call their enemies "Jews" ...

I suppose getting harrassed by people first protecting you against the now Roman persecution, then asking if you were serious about being Christian, then delivering you to the Romans to get persecuted and eaten by lions would tend to foster a somewhat orrery "outgroup bias" against those Jews who were doing that, and who since Jamnia were claiming the name "Jews" for themselves.

— · — · — · — · — · —

11:32 The ones mocking Jesus, btw, I think the order is Matthew (30's / 40's), Mark and Luke (50's or 60's), John (c. 100), appear only in Matthew and Mark ...

I think the real point is, the audience is getting less Jewish, therefore less likely to pick up on the first words of Psalm 21 (22 in some Bibles).

Bible Books + Quora Moderator Abusing "Spam" Policy

Q

Why has no other books been added to the Bible since revelation?
https://www.quora.com/Why-has-no-other-books-been-added-to-the-Bible-since-revelation/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Hans-Georg Lundahl

none/ apprx Masters in Latin (language) & Greek (language), Lund University

12.XI.2023

Tradition says it was NOT the last.

St. John wrote Revelation on Patmos, his Gospel after Patmos.

If you mean addition to the corpus, irrespective of how wide it was canonised, or recognised as inspired and obligatory on the Church.

If you mean when it was finally canonised all over the Church, it was a few centuries later, because it was one of the books that were debated before the Councils of Rome[1] and Carthage.[2] So, it is perhaps a candidate for being the last book added firmly to the canon.

The Council of Laodicea[3] is the first CHRISTIAN canon including only the OT books Protestants have in common with Jews, at least on level of public decision as it is taken. It is however also a canon that omits the Apocalypse. Whether denial of canonicity is intended can be debated, as it is mentioned as books read in liturgy, but this is probably a technical term for canon anyway.

Footnotes

[1] Council of Rome - Wikipedia
[2] Councils of Carthage - Wikipedia
[3] Council of Laodicea - Wikipedia

So far, so good. I then looked up the Council of Laodicea, and found I had misassessed it.

It actually lists Baruch and Epistle of Jeremias as well. The wikipedian article pretended that "I and II Esdras" were also Deuterocanonical, this is a misunderstanding, it simply means Ezra and Nehemiah, but Baruch is a Deuterocanonical found in Catholic, but not Jewish or Protestant Bibles, and Epistle of Jeremiah is not even found in Catholic Bibles. So, I added a comment about this.

Here is what happened:

The most possibly relevant parts of the spam policy might be:

• Publier le même contenu de manière répétée ou envoyer les mêmes messages de manière répétée
• Faire l'une des actions suivantes dans le but d'attirer du trafic vers un site externe ou de gagner de l'argent :
  • Publier des réponses ou des commentaires non pertinents
  • Modifier vos questions pour y inclure des liens ou des informations non pertinentes

I did not publish the same content in a repeated manner, since I was precisely saying I had been wrong about a thing in the answer itself.

I did definitely not add an irrelevant comment, since it was highly relevant, the new info gave even less scope for Protestants to argue a Christian tradition behind the 66 book canon. Whoever had posed the question had hoped that I should pretend that the final words of the Apocalypse banned both adding new books and adding info outside the book texts about their meaning, so as to pretend to a "Biblical" ban on Deuterocanonicals and Tradition. The fact that I actually strengthened the NO to that idea by new info was too much, some moderator was obviously thinking "you already said no to Protestantism, don't add another layer of argument!"

So, someone spam reported my comment, after being dissatisfied with my answer, and Quora just had an algorithm for getting the comment deleted, without further check!