airclean33
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Do we learn because we want to know ? Or do we know because we learn?
Extrabiblical Evidence about Jesus in the First 2 Centuries
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Mendalla
Happy headbanging ape!!
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Bit of both, really. Sometimes we deliberately go looking for knowledge, as when we pick up a book on a subject. Sometimes, things happen to us that teach us something.
To clarify my post about the inadvertent Jewish witness to Mary's levirate marriage. You can read about this in Deuteronomy 25:5-10. If a husband died childless, then his brother, if available was obligated to marry the widow and bear a child by her, which would then be deemed the child of the deceased husband. The church father John Chrysostom was the bishop of Antioch which is near Aleppo. Aleppo is the last known site of Jewish Christians whose legacy is traceable from the Jerusalem church, then to Pella in the Transjordan, and finally to Aleppo. So John Chrysostom's witness to the tradition that Mary lived as if the wife of Joseph's brother Clopas may originate from these nearby Jewish Christians. Jewish Christian tradition also taught that Jesus' "brothers" were in fact his cousins. Well, if Mary had children by Clopas, then these children would legally be first Jesus' cousins and then legally His brothers. Levirate marriage seems the best way to explain his puzzling claim. Joseph figures in no st ory of the adult Jesus' life and is not available to live with Mary after Jesus' crucifixion. The scholarly consensus is that Joseph dies before Jesus' ministry begins. Clopas's marriage to Mary would be probibited if Joseph had natural children, but would be obligatory by Jewish Law if Joseph had no children. So if Clopas legally becomes Jesus' father, then Jesus was not the natural son of Joseph! If "Panthera" is not a proper name, but a noun, it means "husband' brother." So the rabbinic traidition that Jesus is really the son of Panthera might mean that Clopas, Jesus' uncle, became Mary's husband and Jesus' legal father. Just an interesting take on puzzling details that otherwise don't make much sense.
BetteTheRed
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These explanations, of course, fly in the face of the RCC's doctrine that Mary was a perpetual virgin, and that Jesus' siblings were half-siblings from an earlier marriage of Joseph's.
Yes, Bette, I stumbled onto this case, when I read some historian's claim: There are only 3 ways to understand Jesus' alleged siblings. Whenever you read generalizations like that, it is often useful to look for another early understanding. I was astounded when I read what John Chrysostom had to say about this subject.
Maybe they were space aliens from the planet Zvonco who took Jesus as a brother after crash landing in Galilee.
BetteTheRed
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Cleopas, however, was one of the two travellers on the very mythical "Road to Emmaus" story. His companion was unnamed, implying that it was a woman. However, were that woman/partner, Mary, the mother of Jesus, would that not have been stated? And I can imagine the sort of story that they're trying to tell when they say that the disciples didn't recognize Jesus until they had offered him hospitality, but I believe that a mother recognizes a child in a much deeper way. Strikes me as two real blows against that argument.
In what way does the companion being unmanned imply that it was a woman?
BetteTheRed
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Because that was the common naming convention of 1st century Palestinian writers (and other contemporaneous patriarchal cultures).
I don't even want to guess whether "un-manned" was a typo.
I don't even want to guess whether "un-manned" was a typo.
Okay, thanks, that makes sense.
BetteTheRed said:
Stupid Windows Phone spellchecker.
Yet there are those that religiously say "you shouldn't know that" even though the process of doing in a field that we know nothing about can cause great disturbances ... leaving you confused ... the way authority likes to keep their followers ... naïveté at its best when thoughts and observations are left out ... rapture?
How could I have a concern to say such things ... that's for me to know and you to dig ... as according to strictly religious rules I cannot without countering plagiarism and liable laws ... the way we confine free speech is awesome and opens the door to totally wild po' etics ... ask J'aimes Joies ... he was so inebriated on it he wasted into a pile of spent words ... without, or a' shadow 've doubt! Stinking isle iterations?
In the metaphor of un-manned we can add de breasted with a' tetre ... as those soldiers that are brute force to the state of no thought what-so-ever ... the gURL's in the background are all a titter in cyberspace ... or what the fascists though of angels drifing over the Vat heh kahn ... or some other gross translation of things not now known except by nut cases drawing from imagination.
These compare to crazies drawing from nothing ... which could be an inflated desire due to avarice ... and the pro fused need to control God as nothing that would interest the physically focussed and not caring about metaphysics as a field beyond their institutionalized desires ... things they've been told they should desperately want but don't need ... like a shadow to get out of such heat ... sometimes caused by a nature born oistyr?
These compare to crazies drawing from nothing ... which could be an inflated desire due to avarice ... and the pro fused need to control God as nothing that would interest the physically focussed and not caring about metaphysics as a field beyond their institutionalized desires ... things they've been told they should desperately want but don't need ... like a shadow to get out of such heat ... sometimes caused by a nature born oistyr?
It is a' maze in what some people will do over a situation driven in the light of nothing or something incomplete without sticking something intuit! This can and may create a flame ... out've nothing ... thus that blew streak in the silence!
O' vanity of vanities ... love as god standing alone ... naïveté personified? Is that stunning or what ...?
Thus the stunned sound of silence over: you wish to put what ... where? The pane of learning was opened ...
O' vanity of vanities ... love as god standing alone ... naïveté personified? Is that stunning or what ...?
Thus the stunned sound of silence over: you wish to put what ... where? The pane of learning was opened ...
Bette, I appreciate your engaging me on this issue. Jesus' female disciples are often mentioned by name in the Gospels. You are correct in this respect: Jesus' 4 brothers are named, but none of his sisters. We don't even know how many sisters Jesus had. It's interesting that you mention Cleopas. All the commentaries identify him as a different man than Joseph's brother Clopas. But I think "Cleopas" may be a variant spelling of "Clopas," motivated by the fact that Cleopas is a good Greco-Roman name, but not Clopas.
The church father, John Chrysostom, makes an interesting claim about Mary living as if a wife with Clopas. He quotes John 19:25 this way: "At the cross were His mother and His mother's sister, namely Mary the wife of Clopas and Mary Magdalene." Thus, he reads only 2 intended women, not the traditional 4. If he is right, then the Fourth Gospel is already identifying Jesus' mother as Mary the wife of Clopas and Mary Magdalene as His mother's sister (Jesus' auntie!).. Commentators reject this view on the grounds that 2 sisters would not share the same name. But two siblings can share the same name if it is a compound name, and Mary and Mary Magdalene are not the same name! Or the 4th Gospel may identify Mary Magdalene as Mary's sister-in-law. So John Chrysostom might be right.
By the way, based on funerary inscriptions, half of all Jewish women in the Palestine of late antiquity were named either "Mary" or "Salome." As one of my female students said, it's sort of like "It" #1 and "It" #2.
When I toured Greece and Turkey a few years ago, there was a delightful but skeptical female doctoral student from New Zealand in our group. So when the guide would take us into the cave on Patmos where John the seer lived and told us, "This is exactly where John laid his head," she would be grumbling, "Don't tell me exactly where he laid his head!" I know how she'd react to the guide's extravagant claims. She was doing her doctoral thesis on Jesus' female disciples--an interesting neglected topic. I'd like to read it.
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Woman were oppressed back then ... as they had no premonitions of Freudian Theory ... a hypothesis on some thing incarnate ... or appears as isn't ... like mine depression zone where thoughts are lost down the pipes and glens?
Dumb critters couldn't see the reaction to oppressive process the way RL Stevenson did with unknown points ... that's be Code X as an image or icon ... it is still numb-in-Nous today ... as glowing naïveté ... sometimes referred to as stunned authority (or corrupt, redacted, whatever)! Such things are obvious to the lesser powers ... that be thought as compared to as emotions to authorities on emo cons!
Eire things of construct as in Myers-Briggs?
Dumb critters couldn't see the reaction to oppressive process the way RL Stevenson did with unknown points ... that's be Code X as an image or icon ... it is still numb-in-Nous today ... as glowing naïveté ... sometimes referred to as stunned authority (or corrupt, redacted, whatever)! Such things are obvious to the lesser powers ... that be thought as compared to as emotions to authorities on emo cons!
Eire things of construct as in Myers-Briggs?