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Duke_Leto

Active Member
In my 'opinion', and that is all I have, Micah 6:8 He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

This is key in my opinion. Many interpret God as mean, scripture as confining, because they have been influenced to think God is mean, or are themselves mean. The ability to forgive others is important because God will practice the same forgiveness with us that we give to others. Perhaps the idea that religion must be complicated and demanding is a tool of the adversary?

I hope your supposition is correct. I used to spend a lot of time thinking about that verse. What do you think of the Jewish belief that the devil/adversary doesn't exist, and that "Satan" (which just means "adversary") is a title for an angel sent by God to test people?
 

Ellen Brown

Well-Known Member
I hope your supposition is correct. I used to spend a lot of time thinking about that verse. What do you think of the Jewish belief that the devil/adversary doesn't exist, and that "Satan" (which just means "adversary") is a title for an angel sent by God to test people?

It would be interesting to see the opinion of the Jews on the book of Job, where, loosely stated, satan says that Job is only loyal because God is his "sugar daddy".

I don't study the adversary because it feels like I should study God and how to please him. For me, the largest barriers to pleasing my Creator is what is going on inside ME, not what someone does to me.

I think about Jesus' admonishment to 'take up his burden, for it is light', and then later says the path to heaven is narrow. Is that a conflict?

Yesterday, I was confronted by a Muslim man that thought that he could bully me by saying I do not obey the Sharia. His approach was much less merciful than mine. In my view, the Muslim Isa PBUH and the Christian Jesus are the same. Where do these people come from?
 

Clear

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
POST ONE OF TWO

Are there passages from the Bible to corroborate the view that our spirits existed before creation?

Hi Kilk1


points to be made :

1) When you say "BIBLE", or verses “in the bible”, my first question as a historian of early texts has to be “which bible”?

“Bibles” differ both in different eras and in different geological places. For example, If you are speaking of the 4th century New Testament (C. Sinaiticus), then Barnabas, Hermas, etc. are in the bible. If you are speaking of Eastern Bibles (Ethiopian, their large canon has 81 books, as opposed to our 66), they still retain Jubilees, an Enoch, and other books.

Also, remember that when you are reading the bible, it is often quoting sacred texts outside of your current canon. For example, when New Testament Jude writes : “Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, To execute judgment upon all...,” (Jude 1:14-15)“ (first century a.d.?) he is merely quoting I enoch, the Jewish text (approx 350 b.c.?) which says ”“Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgment upon them...” (Old Testament I Enoch ch 2)
Thus, some of the quote I have used (e.g. 1 Enoch), were source texts for the writers of the western New Testament Text.

Multiple indexes (such as delamarters) can corelate biblical texts with early non-biblical texts which cover the same themes.


2) CONSIDER THAT BIBLICAL TEXTS CHANGE AS NEW HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE IS DISCOVERED

Though religionists tend to get their views from similar sacred texts, they often come away with different interpretations of what is meant, and thus, with different beliefs regarding what they read. This is why it is an advantage to know what the earliest christians believed and how they interpreted texts.

For example, consider how GENESIS 1:1-2 is changing to accommodate pre-existence of materials (similar to the concept of pre-existence of spirits).

Frank Cross (of DDS) concludes that it was the ex nihilo creation tradition of later Christianity which prompted the 1600's era translation of Gen. 1:1 found in the King James and similar versions. Thus in a tail-wagging-the-dog manner, it was the prior doctrine that caused the specific text and not the original text that caused the doctrine of ex-nihilo.

Other versions of the Bible have noticed the forcing within the translation and have NOT followed the wording of the King James. For example, according to The Interpreter's Bible, the Hebrew bere' **** would more properly be rendered "In the beginning OF creation" rather than simply "In the beginning."

Many other scholars agree in this. E.A. Speiser translates Gen 1:1 "When God set about to create heaven and earth, the world being then a formless waste. ." or, as Cross renders it "When God began to create the heaven and the earth, then God said, 'Let there be light.'" (the Jewish Chumash from stone also follows Cross' translation here). Thus the traditional translation of Gen. 1:1 as an independent statement, implying that God first created matter out of nothing, and then (verse 2.) proceeded to fashion the world from that raw material, is now widely questioned, and several recent translations have adopted the approach advocated by Speiser and Cross.

Spieser, who translated Gen 1:1 as above, then adds: “The question, however, is not the ultimate truth about cosmogony, but only the exact meaning of the Genesis passages which deal with the subject.. . . At all events, the text should be allowed to speak for itself.

Other modern versions which incorporate this usage include The New Jewish Version: "When God began to create the heaven and the earth, the earth being unformed and void. . . ."; similarly The Bible, An American Translation (1931); The Westminster Study Edition of the Holy Bible (1948); Moffat's translation (1935); and the Revised Standard Version (RSV), alternate reading
I am currently reading a compilation of midrashic comments from Stone’s Chumas and it also has the hebrew text corrected as “In the Beginning of Creation”. Thus, the other Jewish texts are changing as well.

The discovery that the text should indicate that materials existed prior to creation is a similar phenomenon to the indication that spirits existed prior to creation.


3) Rabbinic Judaism prohibited questions of and discussions about the pre-creation time period. (I will reference this later), Christians were not forbidden discussion about pre-creation time periods

The Talmud records the prohibition against Jews discussing pre-creation time periods thusly : “It is forbidden to inquire what existed before creation, as Moses distinctly tells us (Deut. iv. 32): "Ask now of the days that are past which were before thee, since the day God created man upon earth." Thus the scope of inquiry is limited to the time since the Creation.”

In early Jewish legends, God created multiple worlds before this one. The Gemara justifies a proscription against further study of pre-creation time periods by the metaphor of a king who built his palace on top of a garbage heap (prior creations). The king does not want people to discuss what was there (chaotic material or "garbage") before the palace was created in it's place.

MAHARSHA relates that the concept of something existing before this world would lesson Gods’ honor and cause disgrace to him (i.e. building on prior, disorganized materials). I think there are multiple other reasons why the Rabbinic Jews prohibited questions relating to and discussions of pre-creation time periods.

All Rabbinic Jews who obeyed such prohibitions would have lost the knowledge of Pre-Creation themes within a single generation. Still, the Jews of the New Testament occassionally make more than side references to this time period.

Thus, both doctrines and texts concerning this time period would not have had much representation by orthodox Jews in the post Babylonian period of time. (depending upon when one believes rabbinic Judaism forbade discussion of pre-creation time periods). And, importantly, the earliest Christians tended to be Jews.

POST TWO OF TWO FOLLOWS
 
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Clear

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
POST TWO OF TWO

4th Century New Testament (C. Sainaticus) speaks of the εκκλεσια / church (which is a gathering) as having existed long before the world. In his vision of the Church (referred to by a metaphor : “the old woman") in trying to teach Hermas about the eternal , cosmic nature of the invitation toward God and moral principles, Hermas asked the angel why is the church represented as an elderly Woman, “ “Because,” he said, “she was created before all things; therefore she is elderly, and for her sake the world was formed.” Hermas 8:1. Christians reading 4th Century Sinaiticus bible would have been exposed to these concepts. (Galileos Daughter, in 15th century refers to hermas' text, Christopher Columbus references Esdras in planning his voyage.... - these were popular texts)

Christians in the eastern world nowadays will, similarly, in 2019 be reading references to pre-creation time periods. For example, before Sarah has Isaac, angels reveal his name to her. “…we told her the name of her son Isaac – just as his name was ordained and written in the heavenly tablets – and (that) when we returned to her at a specific time she would have conceived a son. " Jubilees 16:3-4. The eastern Bible still has Jubilees in it.

Also, remember that the western New Testament often quotes from earlier source texts that are included in the bible. For example, Western New Testament (your bible) has the Book of Jude quoting from 1 Enoch (Jewish Enoch). 1 Enoch describes spirits in pre-creation heaven “… I saw a hundred thousand times a hundred thousand, ten million times ten million, an innumerable and uncountable (multitude) who stand before the glory of the Lord of the Spirits. 1st Enoch 40:1;

For example, Jesus, speaking of the pre-creation time period says “I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven”. Luke 10:18 he is referring both to his experience and to Jewish Pseudopgraphic texts that describe this historical occurrence. The concept that an individual existed before birth and was able to make choices underlies such questions as “Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? ” John 9:1. The assumption that the man could have sinned before being born, references a pre-birth existence, intelligence and choice.

God tells the Prophet Jeremiah “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations. Jer 1:5. (Foreknowledge and fore-ordination are not pre-destination). This is similar to Pauls statement that “….it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace" Gal 1:15-16; (Cf hx in abbaton)

When Paul says that God blessed us in heaven and “…hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world,” to be holy, our Adoption by Jesus was planned (not pre-destined) Eph 1:3-6. The concept that “…eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began.” Titus 1:2 the reference is to a specific promise and the promise was made to individuals (or individual) before the world began. And importantly, these histories are explained and described in the earlier texts such quotes refer to.

The concept that this mortal existence was planned even extends to the expectation that mankind would fall (God is omniscient and knew about it. “It was planned” since he is omnipotent and could have prevented it.) Thus, speaking of Christ, as “a lamb without blemish and without spot” and “Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you...” 1 Pet 1:18-21;


The early Islamic, AND Jewish AND Christian literature speaks in much greater detail about the evolution and fall of the Angel Lucifer and importantly, their literature is in distinct disagreement on the heavenly controversy which caused him to become an enemy to God. Revelations describes this “war in heaven” thusly : “ 7 And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, 8 And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. 9 And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. Rev 12:7-9. Thus is it that Lucifer/Satan finds himself both on the earth and in close proximity to Adam and Eve as they are placed in the Garden of Eden.


Kilk1, While the Jewish prohibition against discussion of pre-existent doctrines and themes would have affected the earliest Jewish literature, as the maturing Christian movement became more and more a religion of non-jews, the textual discussions of pre-creation existence became a much more common theme. The value of reviewing early Judeo-Christian literature is to know what early Christianity believed and HOW the earliest Jews and Christians would have interpreted such statements as John9:1, “Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? ” and the concept that the pre-birth existence has some effect on the post-birth existence.


The loss of this Doctrine among the Orthodox Judaism and among later Christian movements is very important since this early doctrine is superior and intuitive. Early Christian Church Fathers used this doctrine to explain and justify inequalities of life. It was used to restore fairness and remove arbitrariness to Gods’ Character. The early pre-existent Judeo-Christian theology compares well with the later “ex-nihilo” creation as it is more rational, more logical, and more coherent than the theologies of later Christian movements.

''As a child I was born to excellence, and a noble soul fell to my lot; or rather, I myself was noble, and I entered into an unblemished body. (Wis of Solomon 8:20-21)


Kilk1 While you certainly are under no obligation to believe in the same doctrines as the early Christians believed, I do believe that the early Christian doctrines and interpretations were better than the theories and doctrines developed by later Christian movements such as Calvinism.


In any case Kilk1, I wish you luck in coming to your own models of what God is doing in this life and why things are the way they are and what purposes are accomplished in this life.



Clear
δρειακω
 
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Clear

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
I JUST NOTICED A GLARING ERROR I MADE IN POST #24.

IN the 4th paragraph from the bottom I said : The early Islamic, AND Jewish AND Christian literature speaks in much greater detail about the evolution and fall of the Angel Lucifer and importantly, their literature is in distinct disagreement on the heavenly controversy which caused him to become an enemy to God. .

I should have said that ALL THREE MAJOR LITERATURE TYPES, JEWISH, CHRISTIAN, AND ISLAMIC Literature ARE IN DISTINCT A G R E E M E N T on the heavenly controversy between Lucifer/Satan/Iblis that caused him to become an enemy to God.

If anyone needs examples, let me know and I apologize for the mistake.

Clear
δρφιδρω
 

Ellen Brown

Well-Known Member
I JUST NOTICED A GLARING ERROR I MADE IN POST #24.

IN the 4th paragraph from the bottom I said : The early Islamic, AND Jewish AND Christian literature speaks in much greater detail about the evolution and fall of the Angel Lucifer and importantly, their literature is in distinct disagreement on the heavenly controversy which caused him to become an enemy to God. .

I should have said that ALL THREE MAJOR LITERATURE TYPES, JEWISH, CHRISTIAN, AND ISLAMIC Literature ARE IN DISTINCT A G R E E M E N T on the heavenly controversy between Lucifer/Satan/Iblis that caused him to become an enemy to God.

If anyone needs examples, let me know and I apologize for the mistake.

Clear
δρφιδρω

I'm old, and retired but enjoy reading about religious history, though usually only Abrahamic things. Sometimes, while reading about the Archeology of the peoples before that time, it seems that there is a war or some sort of conflict depicted in many of the engraved stone artifacts. It would be interesting to know the backstory to all that and how it eventually comes out. Perhaps?
 
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