titan said:

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canadiaggie said:

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k2aggie07 said:

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Eastern Orthodoxy doesn't teach original sin either for what it's worth. It's a western construct.

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I actually did not know that. So at what point did this distinction occur?

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canadiaggie,

How would you phrase your understanding of the fall, given the remark about the apple and such? This is very interesting. And yes, its true that Orthodoxy takes a kind of different view.

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The orthodox Muslim understanding is that the fall was a mistake on the part of both Adam and Eve, but that God promptly forgave the pair and gave promises of guidance to them and their descendants so that they would not fall astray. The original sin was then forgiven and there was no sin to be inherited.

There are varying Sufi interpretations, among one is that Satan was actually obeying God by disobeying him when Adam was created - i.e. that he would not bow to anyone but God, and therefore out of love for God, disobeyed him.

The Ismaili interpretation is rather difficult to articulate. there were previous eras of Guidance or divine importance among creation, and that Adam being led out of the Garden by Satan (a renegade servant of the previous age) was the start of the last cycle before the apocalypse that will be heralded by the Mahdi Imam and Jesus the Messiah. For every Adamic prophet there is a Satan, or a Pharaoh - essentially an adversary, and the same is true for every Imam after Prophet Muhammad. This is highly allegorical and the struggle between the Imam and this Lesser Satan (believed to be an individual) is metaphorical of the struggle between the divine logos in every human and the Great Satan, the animal soul - not evil, in the stereotypical sense, but simply more base and lower than the intellect that separates mankind from other creation.

titan said:

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canadiaggie said:

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Also, for the record, can we get over this "Allah and God are different!" meme? It's tired and boring.


Say, "We believe in God and what has been sent down upon us, and in what was sent down upon Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes, and in what Moses, Jesus, and the prophets were given from their Lord. We make no distinction among any of them, and unto Him we submit." (3:84)

The Qur'an also affirms this over and over:

Say, "O People of the Book! You stand on naught till you observe the Torah and the Gospel, and that which has been sent down unto you from your Lord." Surely that which has been sent down unto thee from thy Lord will increase many of them in rebellion and disbelief. So grieve not for disbelieving people.Truly those who believe, and those who are Jews, and the Sabeans, and the Christianswhosoever believes in God and the Last Day and works righteousness, no fear shall come upon them, nor shall they grieve. (5:68-69).

All translations are from the Study Qur'an, compiled and contributed to by Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr. It contains a number of classical commentaries without the influence of poisonous modern commentaries by colonial era Wahhabi and Salafi "reformers".

https://www.amazon.com/Study-Quran-New-Translation-Commentary/dp/0061125873

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Just an update. Your description was enticing enough, and I have bought the book. Already reading very well.

Of interest so far:

That many Arabic sounds parallel the way you would tend to speak it in English. So that a phonetic `guess' will come pretty close in many cases.

That there are particular sacred revealed names for the Supreme Reality, God, Al-lah, by which Muslims are to call upon Him. The distinction between the Divine Essence - His Names, Qualities and Attributes as versus His Acts (creation, sustenance of all the worlds and creatures and constant operations of His Will in the human order where Love and Mercy and Justice and Judgement are ever present.

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Yep, this is among the reasons I love the Study Qur'an and the way the editors have compiled commentaries on the scripture. This stuff is absolutely beyond the scripture-for-dummies version of Islam taught by Wahhabism.

canadiaggie said:

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titan said:

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canadiaggie said:

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k2aggie07 said:

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Eastern Orthodoxy doesn't teach original sin either for what it's worth. It's a western construct.

---

I actually did not know that. So at what point did this distinction occur?

---

canadiaggie,

How would you phrase your understanding of the fall, given the remark about the apple and such? This is very interesting. And yes, its true that Orthodoxy takes a kind of different view.

---

The orthodox Muslim understanding is that the fall was a mistake on the part of both Adam and Eve, but that God promptly forgave the pair and gave promises of guidance to them and their descendants so that they would not fall astray. The original sin was then forgiven and there was no sin to be inherited.

There are varying Sufi interpretations, among one is that Satan was actually obeying God by disobeying him when Adam was created - i.e. that he would not bow to anyone but God, and therefore out of love for God, disobeyed him.

The Ismaili interpretation is rather difficult to articulate. there were previous eras of Guidance or divine importance among creation, and that Adam being led out of the Garden by Satan (a renegade servant of the previous age) was the start of the last cycle before the apocalypse that will be heralded by the Mahdi Imam and Jesus the Messiah. For every Adamic prophet there is a Satan, or a Pharaoh - essentially an adversary, and the same is true for every Imam after Prophet Muhammad. This is highly allegorical and the struggle between the Imam and this Lesser Satan (believed to be an individual) is metaphorical of the struggle between the divine logos in every human and the Great Satan, the animal soul - not evil, in the stereotypical sense, but simply more base and lower than the intellect that separates mankind from other creation.

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canadiaggie,

Just wanted to thank you and let you know as you did me earlier, that I had not forgotten and I have indeed read your reply here. It is very interesting. I hope to discuss further in a day or so. Right now my historian obligations and and job are in a busy moment.

The interpretation of Satan is interesting, in that it makes the maximum pride-devotion to God the very reason for the undoing. Even more striking was your explanation that Great Satan refers to an animal soul--I would call it the baser nature of mankind then -- rather than a particular entity. By this understanding, the attitude/spirit of Great Satan could hypothetically overcome any particular people or nation. Very intriguing.

94chem said:

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JJMt said:

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A lot of it may due to the dual and parallel influences of the Scofield Reference Bible and Dallas Seminary. During the first half of the 20th century, the Scofield Reference Bible was perhaps the most widely used Bible in Evangelical circles. Its footnotes had a profound impact on Evangelical Protestant attitudes, including not only dispensationalism but also the role of Israel in world history. Some scholars I know have suggested that it would be interesting to do a scholarly study of the impact of that Bible on American foreign policy.

Dallas Theological Seminary was also one of the key seminaries in conservative, evangelical circles. Virtually all Bible Church pastors were graduates of Dallas Seminary. The Seminary taught not only dispensationalism, but also echoed the teachings of the Scofield bible with regard to the role of Israel.

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Cool story, but remember that DTS and the Scofield Bible existed decades before there was an Israel.

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George Marsden wrote a book and first published in 1980 called, "Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of the 20th Century Evangelicalism 1870-1925". It was a combination of threads started in the 19th century, whether it was dispensationalism or anti-science or anti-social-justice beliefs, that culminated with early 20th century fundamentalism. Dispensationalism only explains a part of the thought, though likely a major structural frame for other beliefs to be grafted onto.

Is this a good thread to ask about the tweets supposedly coming out of Gaza right now and the violence Hamas is perpetrating on Palestinians? Didn't feel like starting a new one.

RA are these tweets with street fighting legit?

I don't follow Gaza nearly as much as I follow the goings on in the West Bank. They're two completely different issues. I looked at tweets and it wouldn't surprise me if true. Hamas is a horribly violent organization. You've got two violent and, as far as I'm concerned, evil organizations battling each other there, and that violence tends to spill over to noncombatants. That said, I noticed no Hamas presence in the West Bank when I was there, and I pray the organizations focused on nonviolence prevail in the West Bank.

Speaking of the West Bank, the IDF recently fired stun grenades at the Christian Peacemaker Teams delegation as they were on their apartment rooftop in the old city section of Hebron. I've been on that rooftop and can picture exactly where those shots came from.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2254870187909418&id=119528801443578

Well, the Christian Peacemaker Teams is a hardcore leftist, anti-Israel organization, who was there by their own admission studying the "apartheid." You may consider Hamas and Israel equally evil for some banal reason but most would not. I don't take the CPT reporting seriously, nor do I think they were refraining from photographing the adjacent IDF facility.

nortex97 said:

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Well, the Christian Peacemaker Teams is a hardcore leftist, anti-Israel organization, who was there by their own admission studying the "apartheid." You may consider Hamas and Israel equally evil for some banal reason but most would not. I don't take the CPT reporting seriously, nor do I think they were refraining from photographing the adjacent IDF facility.

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NGO Monitor says so, eh? well I guess that settles it?

Yes, it has a lot more credibility than your 'group' and any claims rooftop access is needed there or that the Israeli military abuses people regularly. Hamas, however....

Here's a link to one of the threads I started about my time over there. This one is focused on my time in the Jordan Valley. You should check it out.

https://texags.com/forums/15/topics/2812964/replies

Ok, sure. I see you are committed. I'm not gonna read thru that whole '16 thread but this exchange was illustrative, for me. Poster noted:

Quote:

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I work with the IDF and am passionate about the Jews right to exist. And the fact their neighbors have tried to kill every Jewish man, woman and child several times in the last few decades.

In Israel, those of Jordanian descent can live and work and own property. Hell, they can be elected to office. In Jordan, you cannot be a citizen, work, or own property if you are Jewish.

Seriously, there is no comparison of the human rights afforded by Israel vs. the other Middle Eastern countries. There are 1.7 MM "Palestinians" (to use your term) living in Israel. There are 0 Jews living in Jordan. There are 0 Jews living in Saudi Arabia. There are less than 50 Jews living in Syria.

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To which you (initially) responded:

Quote:

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I never once heard a Palestinian voice a desire to exterminate the Jewish people. I never once heard a single Palestinian put this conflict in religious terms. They were forced out of their homes in 1948, and they want their homes back. I only saw one side working to eliminate the other.

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You may not have witnessed it but it happens daily in their media/social world. I'd point out there aren't many folks alive from 1948, at this point. I'd also point out that

• the 'displaced palestinian refugees' have been used as a pawn, and
• been paid a fortune through the UN, since then, largely not to work/build but functionally to breed (there are now 7.2 million from the 700K original figure).
• And no Arab countries have offered to give them citizenship and take/move them, though many are eminently wealthy/able to do so (and often need/use slave labor from other parts of the world).

Some 700,000 Jews were expelled from Muslim countries when Israel was created, from where they had lived in many cases more than a thousand years before the advent of Islam, and most of them were absorbed into the new State of Israel with a territory the size of New Jersey; 700,000 or so Arabs left Israel's Jewish sector during the 1948 War of Independence, most at the behest of their leaders, but almost none were absorbed by the vast Muslim lands surrounding Israel.

Only about 20% of the arab/muslim countries in the middle east would ever support a peace settlement with Israel (old article but still accurate, net). Your experience shows at best a naivete toward the facts and at worst a deliberate equivocation/advocacy toward BDS as a punishment toward Israel for existing. You can go on and on about the inequity of water rights or poor people etc., of which there are many thanks to the UNWRA-P subsidies for population growth in the 'palestinian' refugee population, but the truth is that the parties are not seeking a resolution where they could live peacefully beside each other.

Back to the point of this thread, evangelicals, like most Christians, support Israel because, well, Jesus was a jew, and did so as well. Jews tend to be politically left, imho, but they also tend to build schools, support the arts, and freedom, throughout the world even today. There's a lot of reading out there, but I do see them still as God's chosen people.

Finally, here is a good piece you might enjoy on the positive economic, and demographic changes happening regionally and in Israel and the 'occupied territories' generally.