TheInvisibleDan

"Truly the Holy Spirit has moved the bowels of the Prophets. I attest these lost manuscripts of "St. Elmo to the Greasespottians", recently unearthed from the original, earlier strata of this thread and presented by Professor Satori to be unquestionably authentic! The wealth of information that these epistles provide for present day scholars attempting to reconstruct the mindset of ancient Wierwillism in the late 70s and 80s is certain to greatly expand our knowledge in this field."

Oh yeah. I joked to him on a mailing list that I still had only gotten halfway through his book since I picked it up a few years ago. He really is a top notch researcher, but an editor would do him wonders.

Shaz beat me to Aaron Copland. I recommend the chamber orch. 'original version' of "Appalachian Spring", particularly the recording conducted by Copland on CBS/Sony. It's a beautiful recording, more intimate & contemplative and not bombastic like the full blown symphony suite. Respighi, "Ancient Dances and Airs for Lute Suites 1, 2 & 3" ( Mercury, Antal Dorati). Rich, lively stuff. Any "greatest hits" compilation cd of Vaughan Williams' music (should include "The Lark Ascending"). If you're in a religious movie film kind of mood - Alan Hovhaness, "Mysterious Mountain". Music for cleaning the house: Gershwin, "Rhapsody in Blue"; Oscar Levant on the paino is still my favorite version.

What?! No one likes "Jesus the Friendly Phantom"? Why won't you be my friend? Everyone keeps running away...

I always like to add only this to such discussions - it is possible to believe Jesus Christ is God outside the context of the doctrine of the Trinity. If you still don't like the Trinity, and are bored with the Unitarian position as well - fret not, there is plenty of evidence that Jesus was believed among early Christians to be "the Christ-God". There are alternatives to the Johnny-come-lately Unitarian and Trinitarian formulations.

Standard, boring and dry higher-critical textbooks in colleges place the writing of Acts in the second century. Here's a link to a more recent work which explains why Acts is a product of the second century. Danny

Lol. No, I don't all this war business is doing anyone any good, outside of whoever's profiting from it all. It's crazy stuff. I want to get a bumper sticker made, "Are We an Advanced Civilization Yet?" But someone would most likely fill my gas tank with sugar (lol). C'mon! I thought yours was a fine usage of thread space. The cowboys and the ranchers can be friends!

The field of higher criticism is -like any field -not without its boondoggles, while its many significant contributions to exploring the Biblical literature are apparently not as well known to a general audience outside the more sensational theories that hit the news from time to time. I wouldn't, for example, consider James Cameron among the top ten. It was fascinating news for about 15 minutes (lol) and the whole thing went flat. This all on the heels of Dan Brown and "Judas" over the past couple of years. The "Gospel of Judas" was at least quite interesting. I suppose my "philosophical presupposition" in my "critical" appoach may be summed up simply as attempting to make distinction between the "wheat" and the "tares" that occupy the field of Biblical literature. We will never entirely root out all the tares, but I think we've certainly much to gain in trying, in considering scriptures from root to fruit, instead of assuming they all emerge from the same source. I even think the very character of Christ can all the more be guiding here. In fact, in my personal experience -such seems to far surpass the doctrinal hypnoticism cast by "All scripture is God -breathed..." and the limitations thereof. I haven't done a "google" on this yet, but are you aware of any websites featuring his writings? I'de like to revisit a chapter he did exploring the theory that Paul may have known Jesus prior to His crucifixion. Unfortunately I can't recall the title of that particular Ramsey book at the moment. It's been many years since I last read it. I intended to take on the premise of the writer - not you personally. Though I understand this might well be unavoidable, depending on how much one might identify with a certain writer. In any event, T-Bone, I regard you a fine person and poster, even if I disagree with "Bruce!" :) - or even should I disagree with you. Your posts are thoughtful, your spirit shines through. Danny

Perhaps. I sincerely wish that the teachings of Christ concerning fellow human beings treating one other with the utmost dignity and respect had come to occupy exclusively the realm of ethics, rather than being padded with oddball and hairbrain religious superstitions concerning gods and demons and heavens and hells, and the like. Brings my mind to the title to a neighboring thread started by Sunesis, "The Basics of Christianity". Lets get real- Christians will never reach a consensus on such "basics" as the state of the dead, or how many crucifed, of the infallibility of super holy books, or how many demons it takes to dance on the eyeball of a chalatan, or how many gods it takes to fit into your toaster, - in the grand scheme of things, it all seems such piddly nonsense. But what if we all agreed to disagree, and to live by "Love your neighbor as your own self", and even "love your enemies"? That's a helluva challenge to us all. The world might well indeed be transformed if all strived to emphasise the edicts of Christ on treating one another well as the "basic" of Christianity, relegating doctrines and myths and other assorted mumbo-jumbo to the back seat. Danny

T-Bone, Do you think it's possible that F.F. Bruce has it backwards, and is in fact speaking quite "philosophically" from his presumptions, indeed more so than "historically"? Example, from the outset of his rather "philosophical" discourse: Okay - sounds impressive - but where does he provide the actual historical evidence to support this particular claim? (not so much a snippet of an Ante-Nicene patristic citation?) - He gives none, really, outside of his sweet, eloquent assurances to his largely target Bible-worshipping audience that they have little to fear from those darn godless critical scholars. Bruce, like Wierwille, Bullinger, and countless others, doesn't like to question - at least *too much* - those "presuppositions" concerning the "integrity" of the Bible which he worshipped. He was unable to set aside his own philosophy to examine the obvious stylistic/grammatical/ historical issues which exist between the authentic Pauline material and the so-called Pastoral epistles. And contrary to what he wished to believe himself, the issues raised by higher critics have been anything but entirely unfounded or dismissed. In Bruce's case, - as with so many other fundamentalists- a great many things raised by critical scholars were and are simply ignored . But alas - they're not. We're not talking about Homer's "Illiad" or Aschylus' "Promethius Bound" - religious literature is a whole different animal, subject to a whole different set of historical circumstances and situations, often involving power struggles and rivalries between various movements within the same religion. Out of this emerged the writings comprising the NT as well as many other sacred scriptures. Danny

T-Bone, This section in Galatians - "Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Peter and stayed with him fifteen days. I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord's brother, etc." - was missing from the earlier version of Galatians in Marcion's text, which may be reconstructed through citations against Marcion in the works of Tertullian, Epiphanius and Adamantius. IMHO, the process of harmonizing the Pauline epistles to the pseudepigraphic book of "Acts" (again, actually written circ. 150 AD) will ultimately prove something of a red herring. That there were efforts made by the editors of the orthodox canon to "harmonize" Paul with "Acts" is not doubted. To make matters worse for us centuries later, they added many interpolations throughout Paul's authentic letters. A monument to this practice are the bogus Pastoral epistles (1&2 Tim., Titus), as well as the existence of the longer and shorter versions of epistles attributed tp St. Ignatius. The point about "the man in Christ" referring to one already a convert: you may be correct, but if Paul claimed that he was "chosen" or "selected" from his "mother's womb", when was Paul not "in Christ"? Danny

Or might this - from what we may gather from Paul's own words - allude to the event in 2 Cor. 12, of having been "caught away" to the "third heaven"? The Marcionite version of Galatians (2:1f) has Paul "going up to Jerusalem" for the first time "after fourteen years" - cf. with 2 Cor. 12:2 - "I knew a man in Christ fourteen years ago..." Of course it may be possible this section in Galatians refers to neither of the events presented in Acts or 2 Corinthians. There is a new book advertised on Amazon .com - "Marcion and Luke Acts: A Defining Struggle" by Joseph B. Tyson, which, though I have not yet picked up, appears to elaborate upon the position I've arrived at over the past 15 years concerning the reason behind the compilation of "Luke-Acts", namely, to battle Marcion. The "Book Description" is as follows: Danny

I think we indeed know very little about the real “Paul” through the depiction posed by the Pseudo “Acts of the Apostles “ (written somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 AD, for the purpose of rewriting the story of the chief Apostle of the rival Marcionite movement, repackaging the “Apostle of the heretics” in an “orthodox” light . Doesn’t anyone else here find it curious that Paul in those epistles directly attributed to him never so much alludes even once to this rather significant mind-blowing conversion experience played in Acts - no cgi fx withheld - on the “road to Damascus” ? There have been a number of works written on the irreconcilable differences between the Paul/Saul of “Acts” and the “Paul” of the epistles, especially Galatians. Most notable is “The First Christian” by A. Powell Davies, who devoted a couple chapters to the problems which exists among these narratives. If it wasn’t bad enough that Acts and Galatians are at odds with one another, the 3 conversion accounts throughout the same work of Acts do not even match up So who was this “Paul”? Most intriguing, the Mariconites in “The Dialogue of Adamantius” claimed that Paul was an actual witness to the crucifixion of Christ, and that he had even written “The Gospel” - namely, the Gospel circulated by Marcion (which formed the basis for “Luke” in the later orthodox version). I am of the preliminary opinion that Paul may have been one of “the seventy” called out by Jesus in Luke 10. Whether or not this was the case, I need to explore further. Indeed, who was this Jesus presented by Paul? The “Christ” of Paul is an angelic being, “the heavenly Lord” descended from above, not the baby born to a virgin in a manger (or a cave) in the orthodox gospels. Danny

Sure, send me a two way plane ticket scheduled for about the middle of July. I can do some sitar shopping while I'm there. Take up some yoga. It'll be fun.

Sorry I'm late. I happened to have in my cd archives a rare photograph of the event in question.

Victor's glass eye is dropped during a recent board meeting of the blind Graiae at twi hq. Perseus and the Graiae by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1892).

LOL! I don't know, I think Steve Segal could give Chuck a run for the money in any attempt to emote actual expression on their mugs, beyond squinting their eyes real hard. Their faces resemble those drawn in the 60s Dell "Tarzan" comics. Which faces simply had straight-drawn mouths and eye dashes.

Makes me question the creation.

Cool, Roy. I've been thinking about "the White Lodge" and "The Black Lodge" from that old series "Twin Peaks". I enjoy your "thinkin' out loud".

Take 3! Pan in closer on shimmering glass eye, with the reflection of flames playing upon its surface, the camera drawing ever closer and closer until the "flames" on the glass eye engulf the screen shot, morphing and blurring into an orange derbil spurt blob from "AOS". cut!! Roll credits! Roll track of Ted Farrell doing Disco Elvis ... Toss it in the can and call "USA" or "Lifetime"

Okay, we need to spice up that last scene, with the insertion of Satori's brilliant "Any body else smell sulpher?" and some cool cgi effects of flames shooting out from beneath the bed. Retaining the dramatic disco soundtrack of course.

If I was to direct a dramatic recreation of Victoronius' deathbed scene, his eyes would have fallen upon Is.3:14 - "It is you who ruined my vineyard; the plunder from the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by crushing my people and grinding the faces of the poor?" -before his last breath escaped him. A moment enhanced by the shrill, swelling strings of the Way Orch., with the accompaniment of a disco beat.

Heard he had his Bible upon his deathbed opened to Isaiah. Which chapter, I don't know...

"Bring out your dead! (ding!)...Bring out your dead...."

Every so often I resort to using tongues when working on music to which I have no lyrics yet. It can be quite useful in that regard.