Demonetization or demonization?

(July 27, 2018 at 5:08 am)Jörmungandr Wrote: As noted previously, one has to take the bad with the good, and among Paul's other contributions regarding shame related to the body and natural instinct, one has to count his contribution to anti-homosexual prejudice among the negatives.  Little about any inherent dignity of human life in his condemnation of homosexuality.  As well, in considering his views on women, while there is implicit support for the idea that he had a positive view of women and their role in the church, it must be remembered that it was the misogynistic passages in his writing which stood out and formed the locus of anti-women attitudes throughout the middle ages and into our modern era.  Having an implicitly laudatory attitude is small consolation if the more explicit effects of one's writings are grossly oppressive.  (On a personal note, although I'm not making an explicit argument for it, Paul's concentration on faith versus works perpetuates a religious view which seems to encourage hypocrisy as well as perpetuating a religion that basically rests upon a supposed thought crime.  The enormous amount of devastation that Christianity has left in its wake, both in terms of death and oppression related to people being seen as "believing the wrong things" is enormous.)

How much responsibility does Paul have when he does not address an issue (like women, like slavery)? He was not writing for all time as he penned his words. You have to remember that he was writing to churches with particular problems he was addressing and in a specific culture. The problem (and I don't think it's Paul's problem) is differentiating doctrine (usually introduced with an argument of some type) with practical issues. There is a Wikipedia article on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_A..._and_women

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(July 27, 2018 at 3:35 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote:

(July 27, 2018 at 3:33 pm)SteveII Wrote: What specific Christian-originating strain of thought led to the extermination of six million Jews? Seems to me you would need there to be some pretty substantial ambiguity to make the connection to the Holocaust.

You mean besides anti-semitism in general?

It's hard to see how Paul was anti-semitic or that his writings could legitimately be claimed as the source for it.

Quote:It's hard to see how Paul was anti-semitic or that his writings could legitimately be claimed as the source for it.

Then like always your blind

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(July 27, 2018 at 3:47 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: Demonetization or demonization?

 demonization?

(July 27, 2018 at 3:59 pm)SteveII Wrote:

(July 27, 2018 at 3:35 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote: You mean besides anti-semitism in general?

It's hard to see how Paul was anti-semitic or that his writings could legitimately be claimed as the source for it.

I didn't claim either of those things, Steve.

Quote:1 Thessalonians 2:14-16 as follows:

Quote:For you, brothers and sisters, became imitators of God’s churches in Judea, which are in Christ Jesus: You suffered from your own people the same things those churches suffered from the Jews who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out. They displease God and are hostile to everyone in their effort to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. In this way they always heap up their sins to the limit. The wrath of God has come upon them at last.

Just a guess.  Feel better though.  There is a strong sense among some scholars that this is one of those later interpolations...which means that it was the fucking church which was anti-semitic not whatever clown wrote the original.

(July 27, 2018 at 3:33 pm)SteveII Wrote: What specific Christian-originating strain of thought led to the extermination of six million Jews? Seems to me you would need there to be some pretty substantial ambiguity to make the connection to the Holocaust.

The nazi ideology against jews in Europe was explicitly based off of catholic and protestant dogma in existence for more than a thousand years. There were many christian progroms of and massacres of jews down the ages, but it was only with the advent of the mid-20th century that the technical, techonological and logistical capacities were created to kill off the jews on a mass scale.

The holocaust was the culmination and final solution of one thousand years of christian policy and ideology.

Sure, New Testament is very anti Semitic but, from my observation, vast majority of Christians don't care what it says in the Bible, instead they care what some authoritative person told them what is in the Bible and throughout their lives they look for people that say similar things.

Now to the anti-antisemitism in the NT:
John 5:16 ("Therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to slay him, because he had done these things on the sabbath day"),

John 5:18 ("The Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal to God"),

John 7:1 ("After these things Jesus walked in Galilee: for he would not walk in Jewry; because the Jews sought to kill him").

These three verses alone are sufficient to create hatred of Jews in the minds of Christians. But they are only part of a larger picture. In John 8:52 the Jews directly accuse Jesus of "having" a devil and according to John 18:35 the Jews are responsible for delivering Jesus to Pilate to be executed. Lastly, John 19:1-23 indicates that, along with the Roman soldiers, some Jews were responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus.
The author looked upon Jews as the main enemy of Jesus and the primary force behind his demise.

In John 8:44 Jesus himself attacks the Jews by saying, "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do." Imagine saying that the Jews are "of your father the Devil"! If that is not made to order for the production of antisemitism and Nazi thought, nothing is!

Of course Paul adds to the hammering by saying in 1 Thessalonians 2:15 that the Jews killed both the Lord Jesus and their own prophets. According to Acts 9:23 and 13:50 the Jews are accused of persecuting Paul and his followers: "After many days were fulfilled, the Jews took counsel to kill him [Paul]" and "The Jews stirred up the devout and honorable women, and the chief men of the city, and raised persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and expelled them." Even Peter enters the anti-Semitic attack by accusing the Jews of crucifying Jesus (Acts 4:10 and 5:30).

I think, reviewing my comments that Steve was responding to, that he may have simply misread and came away thinking I was laying the blame for the holocaust at Paul's feet. That was not my intention, and whether greater Christianity can be blamed for the holocaust raises some questions that I'm not all that clear about. Steve seems to be waffling back and forth on whether we're simply considering the contributions of Paul to Western thought, or the combined impact of Paul and the theological movement which he helped shape, which we now know as Christianity. I had assumed the former, but given recent comments from Steve, especially concerning the so-called deutero-Pauline epistles, I'm not so sure, and hope he will clarify. Either way, I think that Steve was not explicitly denying the link between Christianity and antisemitism so much as objecting that it wasn't essentially a result of Paul's letters.

(July 27, 2018 at 4:30 pm)Minimalist Wrote:

Quote:1 Thessalonians 2:14-16 as follows:

Just a guess.  Feel better though.  There is a strong sense among some scholars that this is one of those later interpolations...which means that it was the fucking church which was anti-semitic not whatever clown wrote the original.

Even without sectarian squabbles between the different sects of Christianity, the bible clearly has Jews turning in the Jesus Character. Otherwise there is no reason for Christians to claim Jesus was a Jew. 

The point of the martyr story as a motif has nothing to do with the validity of the fantastic claims of the bible, and everything to do with creating a hero motif.

Every religion has this hero motif. Every religion has a good vs evil motif.