Christian Discussion Thread V

[The Alexanderians]

How do you guys choose to interpret the encounter between the Witch of Endor and King Saul?

Endor...Like the moon?

[Errades]

How do you guys choose to interpret the encounter between the Witch of Endor and King Saul?

As Rashi.... hahaha.... but seriously what do you mean by your question?

The Witch of Endor supposedly summoned Samuel's spirit at King Saul's insistence. Some claim the “witch in question” was merely a “ventriloquist” of sorts, others believe the supposed spirit of Samuel to be a disguised demon. Nevertheless, the Church Fathers seemed to have discussed the theological implications of such an event; I just wanted to have a look at your opinions on the matter.
Drifting the discussion away from Victor Hugo and Disney to a more “Christian” topic also motivated me.

[Errades]

How do you guys choose to interpret the encounter between the Witch of Endor and King Saul?

Endor...Like the moon?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_of_Endor
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/artic ... e-witch-of
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/top ... h-of-Endor

[Lleu llaw Gyffes]

1) She really did summon the Spirit of Samuel who gave the true prophecy that Saul would lose the battle.
2) She summoned a demon dressed up as Samuel.
3) Witch had no magic Power at all. She knew Saul would lose the battle by Human Logic and dressed it up with magic dib-dobs.

[Menassa]

Endor...Like the moon?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_of_Endor
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/artic ... e-witch-of
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/top ... h-of-Endor

I'm going to go with the middle one for 600.

[The Alexanderians]

Endor...Like the moon?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_of_Endor
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/artic ... e-witch-of
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/top ... h-of-Endor

I know who she was I'm making a joke about the obvious

[Confederate Ramenia]

1) She really did summon the Spirit of Samuel who gave the true prophecy that Saul would lose the battle.
2) She summoned a demon dressed up as Samuel.
3) Witch had no magic Power at all. She knew Saul would lose the battle by Human Logic and dressed it up with magic dib-dobs.

All 3.

[Errades]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_of_Endor
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/artic ... e-witch-of
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/top ... h-of-Endor

I know who she was I'm making a joke about the obvious

My apologies; I'll have to ask for a new sarcasmo-metre.

[Lleu llaw Gyffes]

I know who she was I'm making a joke about the obvious

My apologies; I'll have to ask for a new sarcasmo-metre.

A sarcasm-ometer? That is SOOOO useful. BOOM!

[The Third Nova Terra of Scrin]

As Rashi.... hahaha.... but seriously what do you mean by your question?

The Witch of Endor supposedly summoned Samuel's spirit at King Saul's insistence. Some claim the “witch in question” was merely a “ventriloquist” of sorts, others believe the supposed spirit of Samuel to be a disguised demon. Nevertheless, the Church Fathers seemed to have discussed the theological implications of such an event; I just wanted to have a look at your opinions on the matter.
Drifting the discussion away from Victor Hugo and Disney to a more “Christian” topic also motivated me.

Sarcasm aside, it could be that a simpler explanation for the event would be divine intervention. Saul sought help from occult sources (which is of course, in OT is banned) and God let the ghost of Saul talk to him, and warn him of his defeat and death, as punishment for his wrongdoings. Basically, God punished Saul in a badass way of making the summoning work, and then slapping Saul straight to the face. Of note is that even the witch of Endor was genuinely surprised that the summoning even worked.

In a nutshell, a genuine summoning and a ghost was indeed summoned because God allowed it to occur as punishment for Saul. God can use even the most evil of things for His own good purpose. It doesn't condone the occult or necromancy in any way as it's clear that God punished Saul by this way.

[The United Neptumousian Empire]

Our Church has exorcists for a reason

And they are super cool. Like, horror movie cool.

Literally choked on my drink when i read this

Why?

[The Alexanderians]

Literally choked on my drink when i read this

Why?

funny, it was poor timing on my part to drink and chuckle at the same time

[The Third Nova Terra of Scrin]

Literally choked on my drink when i read this

Why?

Pope Francis will be amused in calling the Catholic Church "horror movie cool".

[Aeyariss]

so whats the current topic?

[Tarsonis Survivors]

That's interestig as it appears in my Phillips, NIV, NRSV, KJV, ESV, and my scans of the 1599 Geneva bible, as well as being included in the 28th edition of the NAG.

Editions are keen to note that it's a second century edition to Mark. However as I said, this obsession over the original as being the Authoritative, is entirely a modern concept, one early Christians would reject.

If let's say, someone added on a scriptural work. What kind of criterion do the Early Christians use to judge if that work is still valid?

And, if the Early Christians has no problem with someone adding some minor touches on a work, what would be their reaction be if someone also omitted minor parts of a scriptural work?

Well the first thing to remember is that to Early Christians, these works that would later become the NT weren't "Scripture." They were letters, lessons, and stories circulated by the Early Christians as being good, and coming directly from the Church Fathers. I.e. most scholars agree Mathew was a leader of the Church in Antioch, Mark was Peter's scribe, Luke was Paul's companion. The Johannine Works authorship have been debated for almost as long as Christianity has existed. Then there's the epistles of Paul, Peter, James, and Jude. The authority of any of these lessons, would be from Apostle who wrote it not because they were "scripture" (Kind of why Solae scriptura is a bust, it was never a part of Christianity before Luther. Authority has always been vested in the Church)

So now these tests for these works would be mostly three fold, because in 1st century AD it would be hard to track down a particular Apostle and ask him if he really wrote something. So they'd be something like this:

1. Who was supposed to have written it?
2. Does what's written keep the spirit of the supposed author? Is this something he would say, does it jive with other works or things that person has said?
3. Does this jive with the already established views of the community of faith, and does the community of faith accept it?


Quite often people would write in and Apostles name, whether to gain credibility or whatever. But do to lack of proofing mechanics, it would be taken at face value. And as long as tests 2 and 3 were good, test 1 was pretty lenient.



Now, as for adding, it wouldn't be much different.

1.Does the addition keep the spirit of the author and work?
2.Does the addition jive with the community of faith?

In particular Mark 16, this addition was most likely a result of the synoptic problem, and an attempt to make mark more like Mathew and Luke. It was probably taken from the Q, M, or L source. So while it wasn't original to the work, the community felt it passed those tests enough to be included.

As for omitting, the question would be why? Was that passage necessary? Wrong? Redundant? The problem determining this is that as we don't have the Originals we don't know where something was omitted or not. It's not, however, all that important, as these reductions would also have been accepted by the Community of Faith.

This trend does tend to continue a bit. We see this with modern cannon. The Catholic and Orthodox community accept the Canon as unalterable, as Canon is considered closed. However a different community of faith, Protestants, have agreed on the redaction of the Apocrypha. Regardless of which community of faith you belong to, you can accept that the current versions have been accepted by the Community of Faith.

[Aelex]

Victor Hugo's book is Notre Dame de Paris. Do you know what happens on page 42? The first mention of Quasimodo. Fucking Frenchman don't even know what the book is all about.

Disney movie is an awesome tear-jerker. BBC radio 4 play, is much closer to the book and also an awesome tear-jerker. But the book just goes on and on and on.

What's with that racism out of nowhere bro?
Still, if you think reading more than a comic book is too hard for you and can't stand more character development and backstory than "I'm the hero! I'm a good guy without any flaw whatsoever!" and "I'm the villain! I'm a bad guy who do bad things for no other reason than being evil!"; than I guess you could stay at watching poorly directed films and shitty radio reading.
Also, if you want to talk about such a classical book; you need to read it "dans le texte" firstly, because english isn't a good language to vehiculate meaning and emotions and thus, most of the book's soul is lost in the translation.

[Nordengrund]

What is everyone's view on the Darby Bible translation? A good translation or heretical?

It was written by John Nelson Darby who was a priest in the Church of Ireland (Anglican) and was displeased with the church's corruptions, so he decided to return to biblical Christianity and founded his own congregation. He strongly encouraged the use of the KJV, but wrote the Darby version as a very literal version used for study purposes. It is regarded as one of the most accurate bible translations, while some say Darby was a false teacher who detracted from the Word of God.

http://www.bible-researcher.com/darby.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darby_Bible

[Tarsonis Survivors]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 100250.htm

I think I brought this up 200 pages ago, but I finally found the evidence, that at least substantiates the idea of a Semitic presence in Ancient Egypt prior to the establishment of Israel.

[Tarsonis Survivors]

What is everyone's view on the Darby Bible translation? A good translation or heretical?

It was written by John Nelson Darby who was a priest in the Church of Ireland (Anglican) and was displeased with the church's corruptions, so he decided to return to biblical Christianity and founded his own congregation. He strongly encouraged the use of the KJV, but wrote the Darby version as a very literal version used for study purposes. It is regarded as one of the most accurate bible translations, while some say Darby was a false teacher who detracted from the Word of God.

http://www.bible-researcher.com/darby.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darby_Bible

Literal translations are by their nature, less than accurate.

[Menassa]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070129100250.htm

I think I brought this up 200 pages ago, but I finally found the evidence, that at least substantiates the idea of a Semitic presence in Ancient Egypt prior to the establishment of Israel.

http://www.aish.com/h/pes/mm/Passover-T ... xodus.html
http://www.aish.com/atr/Archaeology_and_the_Exodus.html
http://www.aish.com/ci/sam/48938472.html
http://www.aish.com/ci/sam/48969466.html?s=raw
http://www.angelfire.com/ill/hebrewisrael/ipuwer.html

[The Alexanderians]

What is everyone's view on the Darby Bible translation? A good translation or heretical?

It was written by John Nelson Darby who was a priest in the Church of Ireland (Anglican) and was displeased with the church's corruptions, so he decided to return to biblical Christianity and founded his own congregation. He strongly encouraged the use of the KJV, but wrote the Darby version as a very literal version used for study purposes. It is regarded as one of the most accurate bible translations, while some say Darby was a false teacher who detracted from the Word of God.

http://www.bible-researcher.com/darby.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darby_Bible

While I wouldn't go so far as declare a specific translation as heretical, I put very little faith (if you pardon the pun) in literal bible translations since that's what causes distortions and loss of the original meaning. While Darby (with a name like that I'm not surprised he's Irish) probably thought that translating literal would keep the wording right, certain phrases and quirks of languages don't carry over to unrelated languages and time erodes it even further (slang and dialects rise and fall). Take for instance the biblical euphemism "getting to know someone" meant getting to know them in a really specific way. Or even Song of Solomon, when he's talking about her "navel never lacking wine" he was likely referring to something a bit lower than the belly button. Imagine translating them literally without proper knowledge about what they actually meant, they lose proper meaning.

[Tarsonis Survivors]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070129100250.htm

I think I brought this up 200 pages ago, but I finally found the evidence, that at least substantiates the idea of a Semitic presence in Ancient Egypt prior to the establishment of Israel.

http://www.aish.com/h/pes/mm/Passover-T ... xodus.html
http://www.aish.com/atr/Archaeology_and_the_Exodus.html
http://www.aish.com/ci/sam/48938472.html
http://www.aish.com/ci/sam/48969466.html?s=raw
http://www.angelfire.com/ill/hebrewisrael/ipuwer.html

Much of this seems to be in contrast to prevailing Archaeological consensus, though I'm not an Archaeologist so my primary source is wikipedia.

[Nordengrund]

What is everyone's view on the Darby Bible translation? A good translation or heretical?

It was written by John Nelson Darby who was a priest in the Church of Ireland (Anglican) and was displeased with the church's corruptions, so he decided to return to biblical Christianity and founded his own congregation. He strongly encouraged the use of the KJV, but wrote the Darby version as a very literal version used for study purposes. It is regarded as one of the most accurate bible translations, while some say Darby was a false teacher who detracted from the Word of God.

http://www.bible-researcher.com/darby.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darby_Bible

While I wouldn't go so far as declare a specific translation as heretical, I put very little faith (if you pardon the pun) in literal bible translations since that's what causes distortions and loss of the original meaning. While Darby (with a name like that I'm not surprised he's Irish) probably thought that translating literal would keep the wording right, certain phrases and quirks of languages don't carry over to unrelated languages and time erodes it even further (slang and dialects rise and fall). Take for instance the biblical euphemism "getting to know someone" meant getting to know them in a really specific way. Or even Song of Solomon, when he's talking about her "navel never lacking wine" he was likely referring to something a bit lower than the belly button. Imagine translating them literally without proper knowledge about what they actually meant, they lose proper meaning.

I think Darby had good intentions, but and he did use some weird wording. In John 3:16 he use "Whoever believes on him" instead of "Whoever believes in him"

[Menassa]

http://www.aish.com/h/pes/mm/Passover-T ... xodus.html
http://www.aish.com/atr/Archaeology_and_the_Exodus.html
http://www.aish.com/ci/sam/48938472.html
http://www.aish.com/ci/sam/48969466.html?s=raw
http://www.angelfire.com/ill/hebrewisrael/ipuwer.html

Much of this seems to be in contrast to prevailing Archaeological consensus, though I'm not an Archaeologist so my primary source is wikipedia.

One of them sources their claims in history...

[Tarsonis Survivors]

Much of this seems to be in contrast to prevailing Archaeological consensus, though I'm not an Archaeologist so my primary source is wikipedia.

One of them sources their claims in history...

Right, it sources cities as being founded in 2500 BCE. However Wiki places those cities in 1500 BCE and less. Like I said, not an archaeological.