#exegesis

[plausible-fabulist]

One thing I love about the recent Mary the Tower revelation https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/mary-the-tower is potentially reading the Lazarus story not as "I'll just resurrect this one random guy to show I can" but as a very Marvel Comics "I must hide my powers...but it's MARY'S BROTHER!!" scenario.

#mary magdalene #mary the tower #as in you're the rock she's the tower don't fight ok #not that I read the Gospels much but I like a good superhero story #exegesis #MCU theology

[opencommunion]

"The Bible is not a book of history but a single, though lengthy, story. It is not interested in revealing 'what was then' but 'what it meant'—what history meant for the people of Palestine. The people of Palestine were good storytellers, which is why they have kept their story open ended. They want to share it and thereby invite the world to find meaning in the face of the empire. It is with these stories that our forefathers were able to face the empires in which they found themselves for a millennium. These stories generated so much power that they enabled the people of Palestine to survive against almost impossible odds and often to thrive in spite of those empires. When everything had fallen apart and when nothing seemed to have any meaning, our ancestors continued telling their singular story. While empires with their might dictated and wrote history by force, the people of Palestine were writing stories. Indeed, the only product that Palestine has been able to export successfully in its history is those stories. And, ironically, it was those tales emanating from Palestine that often made history.

Because the story is an open-ended one, the key lies in how to tell it and how to interpret it. As Philip Davies notes: 'Stories are never innocent of point of view, plot, ideology, or cultural values. We tell our stories of the past in a historical context, looking at the past from a particular point: the present. We cannot be objective, neutral observers. . . . Our views of the past are also affected by our geographical, political, and social location.'

This is why interpretation is critical. The one who interprets assumes power; the one who dominates the story makes it his-story, her-story, literally creating history." Mitri Raheb, Faith in the Face of Empire: The Bible Through Palestinian Eyes (2012)

#palestine #history #theology #exegesis #library

[man-4-allseasons]

In the beginning was the Word

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him: and without him was made nothing that was made. John 1:1-3 DRB

St. John transports us all the way back to the beginning of Genesis to bring the story of Adam to its long awaited closure in Christ. The seeds of our understanding of God's triune nature lay gently within the life-giving soil of these poetic words. Before creation and its countless dramas that would unfold was the Word (Λόγος, - Logos), which was distinct from God the Father, and yet was God.

By these words we are meant to know that Christ was before all else. His existence was not a reaction to deteriorating circumstances, but a necessary precondition for the liturgical procession of creation itself to commence. As God begins speaking things into being in the first chapter of Genesis, we know that Christ too was there.

While the Holy Trinity is indeed mysterious, what is made plain by these opening lines is that Christ was truly sent in the fullness of time (Gal. 4:4). This moment was one of God's choosing that truly could have been made at any point before this since Christ existed before all else.

Our lives are a series of moments, and in the ones that wound us it's hard to trust that this too is part of God's plan. Yet the revelation of Christ came at the exact moment of God's choosing, most intimately shared with only a handful of people, and despite thousands of years between that moment and now, you and countless others have come to hear about it, believe, and be saved by it. You too have come to exist in the fullness of time, so trust in the Lord in those moments "when all other lights go out."

#catholic #catholicism #christianity #gospel of john #lectio divina #exegesis #faith #theology #prayer #a blog for all seasons #christian blog

[anarcho-mom-unist]

Some thoughts on interpretation and the need to resist rescuing a text

(The following is not scholarship but getting some of my thoughts in one place)

The goal of interpreting a text is not to save it and make it free of anything harmful or any evidence of bias. The goal is understanding —and that includes understanding that comes from bringing a different perspective to a text that finds meaning and applicability regardless of the author’s intention.

Like as much as there is bad translation and misunderstanding of purpose or context involved in the clobber passages of the Bible (that is, the handful of verses cited by homophobes for why queer don’t deserve dignity and God backs them up on it) and intensity of the homophobia therein, you’re not going to miraculously expunge all homophobia from the Bible —Romans 1:26–27 is not beating the homophobia allegations however you translate it and Leviticus 20:13 is still quite awful if it’s not a proscription on all sex between men just the kind that follows the power relations of heterosexual sex (you’ve replaced blanket antipathy toward all sex between men for conditional acceptability of certain kinds of sex between men, how very progressive and in line with liberation-oriented Judaism or Christianity!)

When you encounter something that goes against human dignity in a text, you don’t have to rescue you it —especially in the case of religious texts. You can recognize that your nominal coreligionists of the past took the same name(s) and authority of their god or gods that they otherwise used to make statements about the necessity of caring for strangers, lifting up the lowly, showing mercy, etc. and also said “but these types of people don’t deserve that, according to that/those which we call holy and divine.” It is, in fact, imperative to say, “that sucks, we need to do things differently.”

This kind of interpretive posture is necessary whether it’s something as high stakes as religion or something as low stakes as a cartoon that you like.

#evie.txt #religion #exegesis #Christianity #<- because that’s my context #media interpretation

[franzias-cave]

an excerpt from Harrow the Ninth, the best book ever written

#this is the best book ever written #harrow the ninth #the locked tomb #exegesis #tlt

[pastorhogg]

Enlightened Vision

Exploring the Exegetical Idea of Matthew 6:22-23 Throughout the scriptures, the exegetical idea present in Matthew 6:22-23 resonates with   consistency, emphasizing the importance of spiritual perception and clarity in the life of faith. From the Old Testament to the New Testament, the motif of light and darkness serves as a recurring theme, symbolizing the contrast between truth and falsehood,…

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#exegesis #falsehood #light of the world #righteousness #spiritual

[theunicornsdotnet]

#happy valentines day alden heads #alden penner #interview #2014 #exegesis

[junebugwriter]

Galatians 3:28 is Transgender Affirming, Actually

An exegetical exploration of the text

I used to be a pastor. That occupation affords a position as a lot of things within the church, an opportunity to be “all things to all people” as Paul would say. 1 Perhaps the one that I was most well suited to and excelled at was being the neighborhood theologian in residence and academic in practice. Now that I am an academic full-time in my graduate studies, I am practically drowning in research, but remarkably, little of it is explicitly biblical in nature. This is something I quite miss, and so I began this blog partly to fill that missing piece of my former life, because I believe that as a Christian, drinking deep from the well of scripture is generally good practice and ideal to work towards.

So, call me surprised when a few weeks ago, I heard a murmur of a discourse on the site formerly known as Twitter, discourse revolving around Galatians 3, specifically Galatians 3: 28: “There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

Now, let me say this up front: this passage has meant a lot to me most of my life. It is a message that is designed to unify, to build community, to embolden us to set aside differences for the common good of the Christian community. But also, it has meant a lot to me personally, as it signaled to me that God simply does not regard my being transgender as something to be used against me, that in the end it does not matter to God, because God is beyond all of the binaries and dividing lines we might draw here on earth.

However, this is not exactly consensus. (Not that Twitter is at all an engine for consensus-building—in fact it was engineered to be the opposite!) For every person who argued that Galatians 3:28 was an affirming passage as regards people of the transgender experience, there were perhaps dozens more who said that interpreting it that was robs the passage of its context, and goes against the sacred word of Paul of Tarsus.2

This naturally got my pastor engine burning, because to me, it seems obvious, even with context, that Galatians 3 would be affirming for transgender people. Yet, most likely, there are many that would not see it so. Therefore, allow me to make my case for a queer, trans reading of Galatians 3.

(Note: though I am a trained pastor and theologian, I am NOT an expert in New Testament studies or biblical Greek. Additionally, though I am a queer theologian, Queer Theology as an area of

focus is not my exact specialty, not as much as disability or ethics is. This is my own exegesis and interpretation, make of that as you will.)

The Text in Context

Paul’s Letter to the Galatians is a text with a fraught history, which makes sense considering the letter was written to a problematic church. If Paul was going to write to a church, there was usually a significant enough problem at stake for the foundling churches of Asia. Moreover, if the letter was to be included within biblical canon, it meant that the issue was significant enough for the leaders of early church to have found it essential for the spiritual formation of the church itself. That issue was nothing less than a question of inclusion and discrimination within the church.

Paul was faced with the question: Who is to be included within the church? Who is to be given salvation? It’s a soteriological question with social implications, and to erase the second facet is to do a disservice to the first facet. Paul relates as much in his discussion in earlier chapters regarding his disagreement with Peter, Cephas, and James. To be a follower of Christ, did one need to be a Jew first? They had agreed, and sent Paul with their blessing, that the correct answer is no. One did not need to be a Jew in order to be saved through the redeeming work of Jesus Christ. One could be a Gentile or a Jew, and this pivotal decision set in motion the course of the church for the rest of history, one which would ultimately spell final division with our Jewish siblings.

But I digress. The point was, there was confusion among the church as to who was included in the family of God, and Paul emphatically declared in Galatians that this entire line of questioning was out of order. Paul was of course chiefly focused on the Jewish/Gentile divide, but he was not blind to the hierarchical realities of the society in which he lived. The statement he makes in 3:28 is a threefold formulation, one that approaches the chief dividing lines in society as he saw it: Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female.3 This entire letter was birthed by inequality and division occurring socially4, and Christian communities are reflections of their societies and communities. Jim Reiher puts it like this: “...human ‘horizontal’ relationships were not reflecting the ‘vertical’ equality we all have in Christ with God.”

Thus, in response to these divisions among the people of the church, Paul’s response is that it is in the waters of baptism in Jesus Christ that we are given common salvation. Jennifer Slater states that in a post-Christ paradigm, “both men and women share equally in Christ and so become equal members or participants of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ.”5 This is not in ignorance of the realities of division, nor a collapse of identity. People remain distinct, and so do identities within the church. To ignore such would

be to ignore reality. Rather, it’s instead not a dissolution of distinction, but rather a negation of difference as a basis for exclusion. 6

In Paul’s day, and in ours, it would be the height of foolishness to state that difference did not exist. Yet despite that, we as the church are called to not necessarily bless the structures that divide us in our society, but reflect a different reality in which those differences do not deny any of us citizenship in the Reign of God through Jesus Christ. Christ did away with those when he took on human flesh and was resurrected from the dead. When we undergo the waters of baptism, we are initiated into that reign, that new reality, and offered salvation through faith.

That Paul knew what he was doing here seems obvious. There was a very strict codification of gender binary within Roman society in that time, with a clear advantage given to men over women. Women had less social status than men, often could not hold property, and even were seen as property of men in every arena. To state “there is neither male nor female” is a direct contradiction of the social order as it stood, and different gender roles were proscribed by society. As such, this disregarding of gender as it affects life in the church is a radical statement indeed, and thus worthy of modern interrogation.

Queering the Text

This is, of course, where the fun begins. I needed to get through that background to get to the question at hand: how is Galatians 3:28 a trans affirming passage?

I am going to state here that queer theory and queer criticism is a relatively new field of criticism, doubly so for theology. Though the interrogation of the text as a gender-inclusive statement can be seen to go back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, queerness as a subcategory of theology can only go back a few decades. Therefore, the scholarship is scant on the matter of Galatians 3:28, but not impossible to find. For a more in-depth analysis, I’ll recommend an excellent paper by Jeremy Punt, full citation in the footnotes.7 His work is excellent, yet it is mostly focused on establishing a basis for a queer reading of Galatians 3, not as much the specific queerness that being transgender poses.

In claiming that in Christ there is “no male nor female,” there is an androgynizing effect to the passage that poses a danger to the male audience, much more than the female one.8 Men stood to lose much in the categorical collapse of gender: social status, privilege, and legal rights. In the bargain, women stood to gain much more than men would lose, and thus this was a radical proposal for 1st century church members. Yet, one could argue that this collapse was potentially less dangerous than the difference collapse between rich and poor, slave and free, and most especially for Paul’s interest, Jew and Gentile. The presence of salvation through the work of Jesus Christ was a radical proposition, and to separate social reality from soteriological would be folly, especially since the social aspect seemed to be the chief problem that was being posed to salvation.

This naturally leads to a significant question for the interpreter: what do we mean by salvation? Is salvation simply something that happens in the great by and by? Is it simply a reality relegated to existence after death? Or does salvation mean something in the present, the here and now? I would argue that for Paul, it absolutely matters. Salvation was a social issue, because the material reality with which the church was faced was affecting their theological prejudices and division. Thus, when Jesus saves, Jesus does not simply save us for later, but saves us right now. When he first speaks in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus says “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”9 That’s not a promise of the reign in the future, in some far away time or place that is immediate and urgent. Thus, salvation only makes sense if we frame it in the present, material reality of the listener.

Jeremy Punt wisely stated that “...queer theory is not so much about bestowing normalcy on queerness but rather queering of normalcy.”10 If one takes that task seriously, it is then a very queer thing indeed for Jesus to have proclaimed the arrival of the Reign of God. It very much queered the normalcy of the people he preached to, and Paul is very much queering the normalcy of the people of Galatia in this broad, unifying pronouncement. He is blurring the divisions between ethnic groups, economic groups, as well as gender groups, something that is usually believed to have been an unreconcilable divide. After all, did God not create the two genders in the Garden of Eden? ”Male and female, he created them?” Yet in Christ, we see that this division need not be maintained so strictly, because the things of heaven, the Reign of God, does not seem to care about these divisions all that much.

The case for gender inclusion in Galatians seems straightforward, then. Women ought not be barred from anything within the church itself. The social dimension directly affects this salvation issue, and God is freeing us from division within salvation and society. But this leads to the crucial question:

Does this include transgender people?

The T-shaped Hole in our Text

Our beliefs and understanding about gender, sex, and the social constructs around them have changed in the intervening millennia between our us and our text. There was no way for Paul to have talked about what we now understand as transgender people, because that category did not exist for him in that context.

That does not mean that we did not exist back then, mind you. The existence of transgender people in history is being uncovered on a daily basis. Our journals, our records, our stories exist, but on the margins of social consciousness. The truth of the matter is, we did not simply appear in the last few years, when people started making more of a fuss about us in the public sphere. We simply have learned more about how gender works, and that is a concept and topic that is expanding each day. So, while Paul did not consider transgender people in his writing, that does not mean that we did not exist in his day and age, and that does not mean that this text doesn’t have something to say about us.

If one had to boil down the entire text of Galatians to a single point, it would be that our divisions do not stop us from receiving the love of God through Jesus Christ. Quite the reverse. Jesus

Christ does not care about our divisions. God’s love does not end at an arbitrary dividing wall of our own creation. That love is shared among God’s children equally; how could you make a holy parent like God choose among their creation? Likewise, God does not contain within themselves division. God may be triune in nature, but that triune aspect of God only heightens the communal aspect of love, and the love that God shares within God’s selves is only stronger when it is shared with God’s creation.

When I was a child, I was baptized into the life of the church. There is not a day that goes by where I did not know God’s love for me. It has been a constant throughout my life, and I cherish the fact that I have always had assurance of God’s love for me. God does not suddenly stop loving someone like me when I learn more about myself, about my mind, my identity, and my manner of expression. If, as Paul says, “There is no longer male and female,” then why get hung up on whether or not God’s love is extended to transgender people? You can hop that binary divided at any point, and God’s love for you would not change. You can ride that line all day long if you want! You may say, forget the line! Because the line is only there because we say it’s there.

In the end, male and female are simply categories, and if God is any indicator, categories are meant to be defied. God does not have a gender, because God is beyond the binary. God is beyond every binary, in fact. This isn’t a controversial statement, it simply has been the understanding of the church going back to antiquity. That we call God Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and use predominantly masculine pronouns is because of how language works, and how God through Jesus Christ revealed themselves to us. That is the language they used, but any language we use is provably lacking when talking about the divine, because it is a construct of human making, and therefore flawed and fallible. Our understanding of biology is simply what we have so far observed and tested, backed up on documentation, and is liable to change as more information is gathered. Furthermore, gender is different from biological sex, and while both are important—fascinating, even!--they are also more malleable than we might imagine.

Christians are also a people of change. We believe that Jesus came to change the world from how it is to how it will be under the Reign of God. Jesus calls us to repentance, to change ourselves, and be transformed by the love that God has for us. You are changing every day in small, unnoticeable ways. Transgender people are just people who have observed an interior discrepancy in how we are perceived by the world, and work to change that in our lives to better reflect the person that we always were inside. That’s not dishonesty or delusion, it is simply how humans work! It's the height of honesty to be transgender, because the most intimate part of ourselves, our identity, is important, and God honors that. Because of that, God does not really care if we transition. Because God shows no partiality. Man, woman, something in between, something outside the binary completely—there is no longer any division, because all are one in Christ our Lord. If you belong to Christ, you belong to the promise that God will always love you, no matter what.

Conclusion

To me, a theologian and one deeply called to teaching the truths of our faith, are deep truths that cannot be denied. Paul does not want there to be any division among us, as division only sows injustice, infighting, and chaos. Jesus came to both men and women, slave and free, rich or poor, Jew and Gentile. This is a text that is designed to free us from our interior divisions, to work towards a reality in which those divisions do not matter anymore.

The context of the text recognizes the social reality of our world, and then subverts it. The message of Jesus Christ, then, is a revolutionary attitude of inclusion, love, and support. It goes beyond gender divisions, to the very cores of our being. God loves us, God includes us, God celebrates us. God wants us to live in truth and love with one another—and being transgender is a truth that should not be denied.

Look, I have tried to deny it for decades. I tried to be what I was assigned at birth, and have found so much freedom in acknowledging the truth of who I am inside. Ask any transgender person, and they will tell you the same. If it could be denied, we wouldn’t be honest with ourselves, or with God. God wants us to be free, loved, and honored in our communities, especially in the church.

So yes, Galatians 3:28 is a transgender affirming text, actually. It is a text that unbinds us to binaries and reveals a vision of a community that has progressed beyond division to true unity, solidarity, and love. Go therefore and act like God has freed you from your interior divisions. Live in truth, and the truth shall set you free.

______________________________________________

Footnotes:

1- 1 Cor. 9:22 (NRSV).

2 -I quite like Paul, by the way! But he was a human being, and as a human being, his words bear the stain of human frailty and fallibility. Therefore, it is more than acceptable to criticize and/or examine his work as such. He was an excellent writer and theologian, and demands that his work be taken seriously as an academic; I imagine he would want nothing less

3- Slater, Jennifer. “'Inclusiveness’ - An Authentic Biblical Truth That Negates Distinctions: A Hermeneutic of Gender Incorporation and Ontological Equality in Ancient Christian Thought.” Journal of Early Christian History 5, no. 1 (2015): 116–31. Pg. 118.

4- Reiher, Jim. “Galatians 3: 28 – Liberating for Women’s Ministry? Or of Limited Application?” The Expository Times 123, no. 6 (March 1, 2012): 272–77. https://doi.org/10.1177/0014524611431773. Pg. 275.

5- Slater. Pg. 119.

6- Ibid. Pg. 122.

7- Punt, Jeremy. “Power and Liminality, Sex and Gender, and Gal 3:28: A Postcolonial, Queer Reading of an Influential Text.” Neotestamentica 44, no. 1 (2010): 140–66.

8- Punt. Pg. 154.

9- Mark 1: 15, NRSV.

10- Punt. Pg. 156.

#transgender #theology #christianity #exegesis #bible #scripture #lgbtq+

[byzantine-nectarine]

The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. (Matthew 1:1)

What Matthew publishes in order of kingly succession, Luke has set forth in order of priestly origin. While accounting for each order, both indicate the relationship of the Lord to each ancestral lineage. The order of his lineage is thus duly presented, because the association of the priestly and royal tribes that was begun through David from marriage is now confirmed out of the descent from Shealtiel to Zerubbabel. And so, while Matthew recounts his paternal origin that began in Judah, Luke teaches that his ancestry was taken from the tribe of Levi. Each in his own way demonstrates the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is both the eternal king and priest, as seen even in the fleshly origin of both of his ancestries. It does not matter that the origin of Joseph instead of Mary is recounted, for indeed there is one and the same blood relationship for the whole tribe. Moreover, both Matthew and Luke provide precedents. They name fathers in order not so much by their lineage as by their clan, since the tribe began from one individual and continues under a family of one succession and origin. Indeed, Christ has to be shown as the son of David and Abraham, so Matthew began in this way: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” It does not matter who is placed in a given order as long as the whole family is understood to derive from a single source. Joseph and Mary belonged to the same kinship line. Joseph is shown to have sprung from the line of Abraham. It is revealed that Mary came from this line, too. This system is codified in law so that, if the oldest of a family should die without sons, the next oldest brother of the same family would take the dead man’s wife in marriage. He would consider his sons as received into the family of the one who had died, and thus the order of succession remains with the firstborn, since they are considered to be the fathers of those born after them in either name or birth.      - Saint Hilary of Poitiers

Matthew wrote for the Jews, and in Hebrew; to them it was unnecessary to explain the divinity which they recognized; but necessary to unfold the mystery of the Incarnation. John wrote in Greek for the Gentiles who knew nothing of a Son of God. They required therefore to be told first, that the Son of God was God, then that this Deity was incarnate. And do not consider this genealogy a small thing to hear: for truly it is a marvellous thing that God should descend to be born of a woman, and to have as His ancestors David and Abraham. But why would it not have been enough to name one of them, David alone, or Abraham alone? Because the promise had been made to both of Christ to be born of their seed. To Abraham, “And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” David was king and prophet, but not priest. Thus He is expressly called the son of both, that the threefold dignity of His forefathers might be recognized by hereditary right in Christ. Another reason is that royal dignity is above natural, though Abraham was first in time, yet David is honour.      - Saint John Chrysostom

Book of Kells. Folio 8r: Breves causae of Matthew I-III

#eastern orthodox #patristics #orthodoxy #eastern orthodoxy #book of kells #biblical exegesis #exegesis #longform christposting #christmas #nativity #catholic #christianity #there is beauty and meaning in every word

[onlyhurtforaminute]

TIME BOMB-HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE

#TIME BOMB #GRINDCORE #grind #MATHGRIND #MATHCORE #NOISE ROCK #HEAVY METAL; #METAL #EXEGESIS #2015 ALBUM

[zainab123]

Sultan Bahoo TV proudly presents the Part 25 of Sharah Abyat-e-Bahoo. Founder and Patron in Chief of Tehreek Dawat-e-Faqr and spiritual leader of Sarwari Qadri order Sultan-ul-Ashiqeen Sultan Mohammad Najib-ur-Rehman is delivering a series of special lectures on the interpretation of ‘‘Abyat-e-Bahoo’’ from his Urdu book "Abyat-e-Bahoo Kamil." In this session, Sultan-ul-Ashiqeen has beautifully explained the exegesis of stanza number 120 to 124. He has explained the true meanings of Sufism poetry of Sultan Bahoo as he is the superior spiritual successor of Sultan Bahoo and 31st spiritual leader of his Sarwari Qadri order.

#sultanulashiqeen #sultanbahoo #sharahabyatebahoo #abyatebahoo #exegesis #kalamebahoo #kalam #sufism #sufikalam #speech #manqabat #saints #murshid #poetry #gnosis #tasawuf #enlightment

[starspanner]

Rob Bricken, one of my faves over at Gizmodo, asked a bit disgustedly if this New Republic we're seeing in The Mandalorian episode "The Convert" is really what Luke Skywalker defeated the Empire for. We see the rich who "stayed out of politics" to preserve their own lives and wealth at the cost of so many others, and people who have suddenly come to power start to treat their former enemy the way they had been treated not so long ago.

And while it isn't happy, it's probably realistic.

The people of the New Republic are afraid. Afraid of the remnants of the Empire (and since we have a look at the future we know they should be), and afraid of those who once belonged to the Empire. Whole planets were ravaged and destroyed, even before the Death Star came online. I assume that the body count must be well into the billions. They dread that happening again, but they don't want to admit that's the place they're governing from. They use words like compassion and cooperation and order, but it's a mask over the fear. And since the Empire ruled through fear, they begin to mirror each other.

I think it's the more realistic take, even if it isn't idealistic or fun, and perhaps hard to watch. It's very human. Look at the world, and especially Europe, after WWII. Those raw, open wounds they were dealing with as they put their continent back together led to a whole new kind of injustice and suffering imposed on the guilty, the complicit, and sometimes the innocent (You can tell I've played My Child Lebensborn).

It took a long time to heal. There are still scars from it. And we really can't ever put it behind us completely because we have to make sure that sort of thing never happens ever again. Because it sure seems like it could sometimes. But we can't be afraid and overreach either, because then it's like fulfilling a prophesy by trying to stop it, and suddenly we are the thing that we were trying so hard to avoid.

We know from the books and movies that it never really gets better before the First Order shows up and Palpatine somehow returns. Perhaps the real take is that a government as massive as a Galactic Republic just cannot realistically exist without falling into corruption and despotism. I mean, Luke began to realize that the Jedi Order had to become something new and different, which we assume Rey will create. The political Galaxy probably has to begin something completely new as well. Something less EU and more UN, perhaps.

In any case I'm super enjoying The Mandalorian. Star Wars is home, and I love spending time there. Grogu continues to be the cutest thing ever and I love how we can see Bo Katan's mind working even under the helmet, trying to work out what to do about what she saw in the mines, and how she can perhaps use it to her advantage.

Good stuff.

#The Mandalorian #Star Wars #meta #I haven't meta'd for ages #exegesis #as the old folks say

[leewoof]

Did Swedenborg See Himself as a Prophet?

A recent question on Christianity StackExchange asked: Emanuel Swedenborg The Wikipedia article on Emanuel Swedenborg mentions his revelations, but doesn’t use the term “prophet” even once. Did Swedenborg not see himself as a prophet? What is a prophet, according to Swedenborg, other than someone receiving divine revelation and preaching it? What follows just below is a slightly edited version…

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#correspondences #doctrine #Emanuel Swedenborg #exegesis #inspiration #prophecy #prophets #the Bible

[anarcho-mom-unist]

can i ask where in the synoptic gospels Jesus has to be 'told off' for having absorbed prejudices of his society? /gen

Thanks for asking, anon! These are the pericopes commonly referred to as “The Syro-Phoenician Woman” (Mark 7:24–30) and “The Canaanite Woman” (from Matthew 15:21–28)

While interpretation may vary, Jesus response to this woman’s plea to heal her daughter in both tellings strikes me as quite indicative of prejudiced views he didn’t realize he had: “He said to her, ‘Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’” (Mk. 7:27, NRSVue) and “He replied to her, ‘It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.’” (Mt. 15:26, NRSVue)

The woman responds “‘Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.’” (Mk. 7:28b, NRSVue) and “‘Yes it is, Lord,’ she said. ‘Even the dogs eat the crumbs from the Master’s table.’” (Mt. 15:27, NRSVue) One may say that the woman isn’t necessarily making the most forceful response to a dehumanizing comment, but she is coming from a position profound disempowerment and she is being “as wise as [a] serpent” in her advocacy for herself and her daughter.

This gets through to Jesus who realizes that he acted quite heinously to someone in dire need, not recognizing the face of God in her’s, and tried to dismiss her concern and her humanity.

The passages are attached in full below!

Peace and Blessings!

#Anon #asks #Magatha.txt #Christianity #exegesis

[man-4-allseasons]

Then he came again to Cana in Galilee where he had changed the water into wine. Now there was a royal official whose son lay ill in Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. Then Jesus said to him, "Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe." The official said to him, "Sir, come down before my little boy dies." Jesus said to him, "Go; your son will live." John 4:46-50 NRSV This royal official (βασιλικὸς - basilikos) likely was a servant of Herod Antipas. 1, 2 This individual probably was someone of greater wealth and influence than the average resident in Galilee. Yet, his son is ill, and at the point of death. All his power and influence cannot save his "little boy". I grew up with the notion, like many of us do, that my success was what determined my value as a person. I believed that if I were able to have a successful career, earn more money, and gain more influence I would be happier. I would have more freedom, be able to sort out my own problems, and become the master of my own destiny! Nothing could be further from the truth, and in this passage we can see the error of this notion made strikingly clear. This royal official should be able to leverage his wealth and influence to get the very best of care for his son, but even this won't save his life. He's probably tried everything in his power, but has been unsuccessful. He needs Christ. I think many of us, myself included, envy the wealth and power of men like the royal official out of a desire for control. When we're faced with difficult circumstances it's easy to believe that having these earthly goods will help us resolve our problems. There is no denying that having money and power can give you access to, among other things, better quality health care, but ultimately our fate still rests firmly in the hands of God (Ecc 9:11-12). This passage reveals that wealth and power do not render us immune to suffering.

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