rabbis arguing
Today at my kaleo group I was talking about the signposts commenters - were your ears burning? We were discussing our progress with our spiritual discipline of “Entering the biblical story” and I observed that my day to day engaging with the scriptures often comes through the comments threads of signposts as people use their different arguments out against each other. In fact, if I count the times that I have pulled down a bible just for the purposes of checking a bible reference or a translation, then often it is prompted by something that someone here has said.
So if this is going to be a major source of my engagement with scripture, then could you all try to be a little wiser? Thanks, much appreciated.
November 29th, 2006 at 4:15 pm
Umm .. Homer .. are you saying Hezekiah was a leopard?
(and should that be on the Winnie the Pooh thread? he could have been a heffalump as well!)
But Homer, the facts are in the BIBLE –Hezekiah wasn’t the spotty king, it was Uzziah who got leprosy!! (2 Chr 26:21)
November 29th, 2006 at 5:58 pm
I know that but it was the best I could come up with.
Same horse different jockey one might say
December 1st, 2006 at 8:17 am
Dan,
I have wisely selected a a scripture to engage you:
“I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent”. 1 Timothy 2:12.
So please stand aside, keep silent and let us men do the commenting…
December 1st, 2006 at 8:18 am
That goes for you to Bec.
December 1st, 2006 at 8:28 am
Lionfish, that doesn’t bother me. You see I just pick and choose the bits I believe out of the bible until it is consistent with my wordly relativist hedonistic ungodly lifestyle.
December 1st, 2006 at 8:36 am
Hi guys… I’ve just been to church at Hillsong… it was soooo cool!!!!! I got to go in the mosh pit!!!!!!! The guys in the band were sooooo cute!!!!!
When pastor Phil spoke God reminded me of some money I owed Him when I worked a school holiday job a couple of years back. I wasn’t a Christian then and so I didn’t tithe that money… but I thought … hey, maybe the reason I can’t get a full time job is I’ve been robbing God and blocking prosperity in my life. So I wrote a pledge for all that money… I don’t have it now, but I’m going to be real careful til I’ve paid God all that money I owe.
Cos you’re my special friends I’ll let you in on a secret for when properity is flowing into my life. I’ve always been self conscious about my flat chest so I’m gonna get a boob job when I can afford it. I just don’t think God would want me to feel so self conscious, and pastor Bobbie’s had a boob job so it must be OK. I told my mum once and she nearly had a fit, so it’s just our secret hey?
Love you all!!!!!!!!
December 1st, 2006 at 8:37 am
Was that the kind of biblical wisdom you were after Dan?
December 1st, 2006 at 11:36 am
.That was just such an awesome post Janet. Your faith is like so inspiring. I wish i could be like you and Bobbie, it’d be , like just so brill and everything. I was thinking the other day and God said to me not to and so now I don’t cause it’s just like me an God an like that’s all I need - I’ve gotta not worry about all the stuff, cause God’l get me that really good job, I know it cause it says in the word and stuff that he has a plan to prosper and not to harm me and things. I konw that if I just press in to the heart of God , other than getting all mucky and yucky from the periocardium that God will blesss me for my faithfulness. Praise God cuase he’s just so totally cool and most magnificently awesome
December 1st, 2006 at 12:50 pm
On a side issue, I find Hillsong laity are more disciplined in reading the Scriptures and having ‘quiet times’ than most other Christians I’ve worked with.
Maybe that ‘awesomeness’ helps for something…
December 1st, 2006 at 1:17 pm
Janet - after reading post 36 I think you could get a job as a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader -after the boob job of course.
December 1st, 2006 at 2:11 pm
see if you think you could fit in Janet
http://blackdcc.net/Quickstart/ImageLib/DCC_2001squad.jpg
December 1st, 2006 at 3:25 pm
Sorry akevin, that was actually my altar ego blonde 19 year old Hillsong attendee self speaking, not the 43 year old mum / student / church worker of real life.
December 1st, 2006 at 4:30 pm
“I was thinking the other day and God said to me not to”
You too!!!! Wowww!!!! Isn’t God cool!!!!!!! Great post bro… totally awesome!!!!!
December 1st, 2006 at 10:49 pm
Yet something dies in me when you make fun of beautiful, simple faith…
December 2nd, 2006 at 1:28 am
Like faith in Santa?
December 2nd, 2006 at 6:44 am
emblazoned, could it be that it is maybe not beautiful simple faith, but rather gullible, hyped up, emotionalism? or even worse, gullible, hyped up emotionalism as a front for a consumeristic lust for possesions and power?
I believe however that most of these people are deceived, and it is the deceivers that are worthy of the sternest correction. However, deceived will become deceivers if they are not warned and corrected.
rev
December 2nd, 2006 at 6:56 am
Are you gonna cuss em out, Rev?
December 2nd, 2006 at 8:02 am
I’m sorry Emblazoned… I see beauty in simple faith too. My post was intented to be a parody of the results of “way out” teaching on young Christians who could not be expected to critique it…. if you love God and have little or no Christian/bible background of course you’ll hungrily swallow whatever you’re fed. So putting yourself under financial strain under a sense of a legal contract with God over tithing…. or thinking that conforming to a “beautiful people” image on the outside is important (rather than knowing this is rubbish and that God is interested in inner beauty)…. are results of this.
I wasn’t intending to mock such people as stupid… I don’t think they are… I think they need good teaching and good shepherding. I personally cringe when a young lamb pops up on Signposts and gets a caning… wrath far better directed at those in positions of responsibility who are teaching this rubbish… as the Rev says, “the deceivers are worthy of the sternest correction”.
I was trying to be funny too I guess, but it was probably better left unsaid.
December 2nd, 2006 at 5:40 pm
Appreciate that Janet.
Hey Rev, may faith took a similar form before I ever attended a Hillsong service. It had nothing to do with reved up deceptive emotionalism, just a simple mental framework and a very basic way of interpreting an interaction with God. I hardly think we can persecute people for being young. I agree with Janet, we prolly shouldn’t be slagging the kids, but rather bringing pressure to bear on leaders who know better but perpetuate immaturity.
December 2nd, 2006 at 5:41 pm
Lionfish, why would you need faith in Santa? He’s quite real. He brings me pressies every Christmas…hard, tangible proof. Are you suggesting Santa isn’t real?
December 2nd, 2006 at 6:12 pm
My point embalzoned is that it is a hyped up emotionalism at hillsong and that was the context of the discussion.
rev
December 2nd, 2006 at 7:59 pm
Santa isn’t real? Santa isn’t real? Lionfish, you’ve gone too far with these unpardonable heresies, he’s mentioned hundreds of times in my Italian New Testament!
Now, I just phoned the pope and he’s says you’re getting fourteen million years in purgatory for this blasphemy but it’s your lucky day, I just happen to have in my possession the left big toenail and three nasal hairs of Simeon Stylites who waited atop a pole in the fourth century for a glimpse of santa and I’ll let you kiss them for a small fee… say… fifty bucks and a slab of cold ones, mates rates?
December 3rd, 2006 at 12:51 pm
I think you have all ready II Hezekia 4:13 incorrectly. It is actually in favor of Hillsong.
When you translate the original Hittite taking into account modern-liberal-historical-critical-literary-readerresponse-postmodern criticism it becomes obvious.
1) It is worth noting the parallelism in the ancient Hittite poetic form. See how the poet contrasts the tightness and security of the “sucked” with the looseness and instability of the “not held rigidly”; and the loftiness of the “hill” with the lowliness of the “shit” or “waste”.
2) The opening words “For it was, see” is an emphatic sentence of its own. It refers to all that follows. It does not function as a qualifier of the immediate next phrase. It serves a similar rhetorical purpose as the “Amen Amen” of the Greek.
3) It is well known that “sphincter clause” has long been disputed and like the NRSV (New Rev’s Special Version) I prefer to omit it. It could be explained as a gloss from early Hebrew translators who noted in the margin that the Hittite word for waste could also mean shit - an addition that may have been then traslated back into the original Hittite.
4) The use of “song” and “service” has a double meaning not easily represented in English. The same words were used of a worshiper in a temple setting as a witness in a legal court. A transaltion that suggests either is acceptable. One that can imply both is best.
Put this together and we have my preferred translation:
“See, it was:
The testimony of those in lofty places
held tight.
While those who thoughtlessly wasted money
were loose during the procedings.”
It affirms that those who are rich and powerful can be trusted with more money, while those with low finances are to be mistrusted and should not even keep their own money lest they loose that too by dishonesty or waste. It would be far better for the high and mighty to take it from them, since the rich obviously know what to do with it better than the poor.
December 3rd, 2006 at 3:33 pm
3) It is well known that “sphincter clause” –Is that Santa’s brother?
December 4th, 2006 at 2:24 pm
Can I just say Just_Nigel that that was hilarious!
December 4th, 2006 at 5:09 pm
That was an exceptional interpretation and I defer to the higher academai demonstrated i such brilliant learning
December 5th, 2006 at 12:50 am
academai - isn’t that an anagram of “macadamia”
December 5th, 2006 at 10:22 am
*giggling*
I just saw your comment Lionfish.
What Dan said.
December 5th, 2006 at 1:47 pm
you giggle like a girl bec