The Nehor

Too long. Putting the same on Young Men? Deacons of Faith, Teachers of Hope, and Priests of Light? Yuck. I thought leaving them nameless was a bad idea but make it succinct. Also Gleaners followed the harvesters and picked up the bits of grain the harvesters missed. In Israel it was something only the impoverished would do and was a form of welfare. Making young women gleaning the light from the remains of what the harvesters already got in abundance can make for some unflattering chauvinist symbolism. A kind of: You can laboriously collect and treasure the Light the harvesters (usually men) leave for you after they get the bulk of it. Not exactly a good bit to symbolism in that sense. Tender entreaties? What book were you reading? The only steamier Bible stories I can think of are the Song of Solomon/Songs and Esther. Ruth is a story of erotic seduction and two desperate women plotting said seduction. Ruth and Naomi are impoverished and come home during the harvest. Ruth goes out to glean and luckily ends up with Naomi’s close relative. Boaz shows some interest and tells the young men working his field to leave her alone (she was at serious risk of sexual assault) and that she can drink from their water instead of fetching her own. Ruth plays it coy and insists she is a stranger and doesn’t deserve this. Clever girl. Boaz says he knows her story and asks God to shelter her beneath his wings/robes. Ruth abases herself as a slave and praises Boaz for treating her so well even though she is not even his slave. Boaz then instructs the workers to subtly give her extra food. She brings back an impressive haul and has to thresh it. There is a euphemism in there but I won’t elaborate. Naomi sees this as a big chance for both of them and gets Ruth ready for the seduction in her best clothes and instructs him to wait for Boaz to get drunk and tired and pass out on the floor and to uncover his “feet”. The feet are a common euphemism in the Bible for genitalia. So Ruth waits till Boaz is done threshing out the harvest for the day and he drinks a lot and passes out on the floor. She sneaks in and “uncovers” him. Suddenly he wakes up afraid. Why afraid? What else was going on that would make him afraid? Fill in your own reason here. He looks at his “feet” and sees a beautiful woman there. Shocked he asks who she is and she coyly gives her name, calls herself his slave, reminds him of his relation to Naomi and that he has an obligation to marry her under levirate law and then teases him about his earlier comment asking God to cover her in his wings/robes now asking him to cover her in his skirt which very much has more than one meaning. I think you can draw your own picture here. ‘Come on big boy, you know you want to’. So it is an erotic enticement and a marriage proposal and a reminder of his duty to raise children in her deceased husband’s name. Ruth put herself in an incredibly vulnerable situation. She gave him every opportunity at this point to throw her to the social wolves and discredit her as a loose woman. Ruth (and Naomi) aren’t idiots. They are hoping he will do the right thing on one hand but they are also making this as erotic and sexy as possible. Vulnerability is incredibly erotic. She give him absolute control of her destiny and basically dares him to discredit her but with the caveat that if he does they won’t be together. Ruth is GOOD at this. Boaz then says everyone knows she is a virtuous woman. No, Ruth showed up at the beginning of the harvest and no one knows her but this is really a promise not to expose her. He says there is one kinsman closer that must forfeit his right before he can marry her but he will seek to remove this obstacle and swears an oath by Adonai that if the kinsman relents he will marry her. Then she spends the whole night at his “feet”. Maybe they talked. Maybe they discussed the harvest. Maybe they talked about the difficulties inherent in interracial marriage. Maybe they got an early start and got some extra threshing 😘done. Then she lets her sneak out to avoid a scandal and gives her a large supply of food. A gift? Payment? Kind of vague. Ruth goes back to Naomi with her prize and Naomi assures her Boaz will not be able to rest until he resolves this matter. Good girl Ruth. You got him desperate for more to the point he can’t do or think of anything or rest until he works this out. Ruth has game. Boaz then gets together a group of witnesses and meets with the nearer kinsman and asks him to redeem the property of Naomi. The guy jumps at this offer. FREE LAND!!!!! If Naomi and Ruth were there (probably) this would have been a bit of a downer but also might have been part of the plan. By forcing Boaz into action they were bound to end up with someone who could support them. They would probably prefer Boaz but the other guy was at least a meal ticket. Then Boaz pulls the rug out from under this guy and says that if he claims the land he also has to marry Ruth and give their relative children. This other guy then panics. When it was free land that was great. When it comes with a wife that would seriously complicate his inheritance. He probably already has sons and if Ruth bears him another one they have to split the land even more. Plus would his wife be happy if he brought home another wife. Also Ruth was a Moabite, a filthy foreigner born of that dirty incest story about Lot. That might lower his prestige. So he begs off and Boaz marries her. Then everyone rejoices and praises Ruth and compares her to Leah and Rachel bearing the children of Israel. And then, just in case you start wondering if you were just reading all this sexy stuff into what was actually an entirely prim and proper story they compare Ruth to Tamar. Yeah, that Tamar. Tamar the daughter-in-law of Judah who disguised herself as a prostitute and seduced her father-in-law and got pregnant with his child in order to manipulate him into giving her what she rightfully deserved. Yeah, the parallels are pretty obvious. It is women using forbidden seduction to get what they are entitled to but the men who are responsible for it are slow in delivering. Then Ruth has a son who becomes the grandfather of King David which means his great grandmother was a Moabite….oh no…… WAIT!!!!!! HOLD EVERYTHING!!!! THE LAW IS CLEAR!!!!! "No Ammonite or Moabite shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord. Even to the tenth generation, none of their descendants shall be admitted..." (Deuteronomy 23:3) Uh-oh, David is seven generations too early to be allowed to join the people of Israel. Oh wait, the sages have convened and decided that prohibition only to descendants of Moabite men. Moabite women and other women of prohibited ethnicities are now fine. The day is saved! HOORAY!!! And no, this reading of the Book of Ruth is not eccentric at all. Oh, and want to know the more modern queer reading of the Book of Ruth. Well, you see, Ruth liked Israel’s god but she was really into Naomi. They used her husband as a beard to hide their relationship. When he died Naomi begged her sapphic lover to return to her people but Ruth loved her too much to leave her. In some versions Orpah was part of their polycule too but she chose the route of safety rather than devotion to Sapphos…cough…I mean Adonai, definitely Adonai. Then they hatched a plan to get the younger half of the couple married to Boaz so they could survive and stay together so they could thresh grain together and ((((((((CENSORED))))))))))))) This reading of Ruth is eccentric. VERY eccentric. But it makes me laugh.

Like Bart Ehrman. And Jesus was expected to be a messiah. What happens when you put your life aside to follow a messiah and it doesn’t work out? A modern equivalent would be these people who come along every few years and give an exact date for the end of the world or Second Coming. When it fails some people leave but most stick around and start reframing things. The Jehovah’s Witnesses had important prophecy dates in 1874, 1878, 1914, 1918, 1925, and 1975. They reframed them each time. 1914 was originally the end of all earthly governments and was reframed as the beginning of the invisible reign of Christ while the generation living in 1914 was reframed as seeing Jesus’s glorious return. Later they had to reinterpret what a generation meant. The LDS Church has also stretched out what a generation means in order to save some D&C prophecies. The Christians of the ancient world expected Jesus to return very soon and within the lifetime of those living and Paul supported this belief. That didn’t work out either. Then those expectations were reinterpreted. When Sabbatai Zevi was expected to be the Jewish messiah and then died before he could fulfill the prophecies the belief sprang up that he would come back to life to make those prophecies be fulfilled. Jesus is similar except the teaching was that Jesus had come back to life and then there was a huge theological scramble to figure out what that meant.

144,000 appears to be a symbolic number in the Book of Revelation. 12 * 12 * 1,000 = 144,000. Most likely 12 apostles/disciples multiplied by the 12 tribes multiplied by a thousand probably representing completeness or a totality of people or something along those lines.

Yeah, but you can’t claim God is indifferent to death and yet wants it strictly regulated.

I have personal knowledge of an attempted trademark take down. A relative of a friend created a “Mormon” dating site and got hit by a threat of a lawsuit for using the term Mormon and possibly other trademark infringements. I am not certain of how good the Church’s case was. On the other hand the guy was very sleazy and ran a lot of scams targeting Church members so I suspect this site also was scummy as hell. From what I heard he sold the site before the case went anywhere so no idea if it went anywhere. The Church does target other sites but no idea how credible their claims usually are.

If it doesn’t matter to God whether people live or die why would he give commands not to murder except when God thought a bit of genocide would be cool and good? Saying God doesn’t care isn’t supported by the Bible in any way. God cares a lot and just wants control of it. Also if mortals fearing death is some kind of bug that is also God’s fault since God put it there. Whoopsie.

YIKES ON BIKES! I am so sorry you are going through this and no, that kind of abuse isn’t normal.

That would mean it really wouldn’t be much like the original artifact. Adding the entire Torah and the prophets would mean the original had a lot of spare room or it had to be massively expanded. Probably easier to copy it onto a new object or rebuild it. Jeremiah had just been cast into prison for his treasonous talk about capitulating to Babylon. So was it Pharoah or Laban that added them in this theory. The whole theory is very fiddly and seems to try to fit the record into a bunch of biblical events with no evidence. This is how you would do it if you were making it into a novel or a movie but is very unlikely.

State schools have government funding but they don’t need the government to write rules for them. In fact they would do better to fund state schools so they are more affordable. That is one of the reasons tuition has gotten so high. Instead universities being supportive of transgender students is being used as a wedge issue to further decrease funding because that is just where we are as a people right now.

*spit take* Say what? It is important to note that previous to transgender issues steaming to the forefront that there weren’t any laws about being in the wrong gendered bathroom. There were even reasons to ignore those rules like the men’s bathroom not having a changing table. There wasn’t a rash of perverts rushing into women’s bathrooms. Weirdos spinning tales of how they would have claimed they “felt like a woman” in High School in order to change in the girl’s locker room are just weirdos outing themselves. Transgender people rarely switch which restrooms they use until they are passable or androgynous at least and many actually plan around not having to use public restrooms out of fear. They just want to pee. They aren’t excited to use them or anything. Sports organizations are working on rules to govern this stuff. It is not an insurmountable problem and doesn’t need government intervention from mindless zealots wanting a say. The only decent studies I know of about the effects of hormone replacement therapy on sports performance have been done by transgender researchers. As a practical matter most transgender people on HRT have more estrogen or testosterone than a cis gendered person. In other words ironically the biggest unfairness might be AFAB transmen competing in men’s sports. All this varies of course on how long and how consistently you are on HRT. I can say anecdotally that having done wrestling with a lot of queer people that transwomen rapidly lose a lot of upper body strength. One transwoman friend is five inches taller than me, ten years younger than me, and was well muscled before hormone therapy. She is still big and looks swole but after two years of HRT I can wrestle her down. After six months on T a really twinky and small transguy I know just about matches my strength. This doesn’t need to be a controversy. It can be figured out and no one really needs to advocate while the pros figure out how to tackle this and amateur level stuff it just doesn’t matter that much. It is about participation so let them play.

How did we go from a discussion of laws mandating that mandatory reporters now be required to report all incidents of gender non-conforming behavior to parents worrying about spurious abuse and neglect charges. And worried about “Missiion creep” in that direction and not at how vague “gender non-conforming behaviour” is and the potential for a lot of “mission creep” there? Climate change denialism with a new coat of paint. Yes, and there is. A huge difference. It is also important to note that the vast majority of “gender affirming care” surgeries given to minors is gynecomastia (breast reduction surgery) for cisgendered boys who have large breasts because those breasts cause them emotional and psychological distress. This is also an irreversible procedure and poses significant health risks but the controversy never was and never will be about the actual surgery. It is about the person being transgender. If it were about cosmetic surgery on minors in general or even gender affirming surgery on minors most of those surgeries are on cis-gendered minors whose body appearance doesn’t match their preferred gender and it causes distress. There is no outcry about this or warnings about how it can’t be reversed and how minors aren’t ready to ‘choose’ this yet.

That is not how probability works. The odds of my being dealt a specific poker hand (including the exact value and suit of each individual card) in 5 card draw is astronomically low for every possible hand but I will be dealt one of those astronomically unlikely hands every time. Take those statistics you are using and find a statistically likely result. You can’t. In addition you are assuming that these choices are all made in a vacuum. If Joseph Smith was just making it up his writing/dictation style could easily shift as he went. He used one grammatical construction for a while and then changed it one time and carried on mostly or exclusively using the new structure. It may not even be a conscious choice. You tried it once and it just seemed to flow so you keep using it. You see this all the time with writers. Especially new writers where the way they write changes partway through a novel.

I am curious as to why the prophecies of Jeremiah would be in it. They were pretty pro-surrender to Babylon. Why would Pharoah want those around? All kinds of dating problems with that and why it would contain more modern things like Jeremiah. I would also argue that something that old and prestigious wouldn’t be something that Lehi’s wealth could realistically be traded for.

Being inconsistent in how you write is proof it is an authentic ancient text?

I have no idea. That is what I am trying to figure out. I admit that it is unsettling not to have solid answers to questions like this but not having something to fill a void in my understanding if I discard something doesn’t mean that what was there was accurate. It is unfortunate not to know it. The LDS faith posits that a long extinct belief was correct and had to come back. Virtually all Christian faiths accept a time before their faith arrived. Judaism wasn’t really proto-Christianity and Judaism as we understand it doesn’t really go back that far. So if some variant of the Christian faith is correct then it wasn’t around for a time and was openly ridiculed by the Greco-Roman world it appeared in for many reasons but one of the main reasons was how new it was. They saw antiquity as proof that their gods were strong. I don’t share their conviction that that is correct. I am not sure what I think God expects or whether God expects anything of us or if God exists at all. This goes back to Christianity not always being on the Earth. In the LDS faith I heard the idea that God wouldn’t let the truth lose was false since the Jews (to some degree) lost the truth why couldn’t Christianity? I am admittedly less convinced that Judaism had some ‘truth’ that Christianity recovered from Judaism but that is a common narrative. Oh, I definitely expect change over time. That is a given. One of the things my best history professor taught was that any time a culture claims that their practices (relgious, cultural, economic, etc) extend unchanged back to time immemorial get very very skeptical. We have lots of cultures that have made those claims and every time we can check it turns out not to be true. I have joked that the LDS Church should be approaching its Councils phase soon. Starts in a burst of revelation and miracles and goes on like that for a while and then slowly becomes more institutional and operating more and more out of practicality slowly changing in ways that many won’t notice. There have been three eras of different conceptions of sealing practices in the Church and I bet less than 5% of members know much of anything about the previous models. My understanding is that there was a time where the gnostics likely outnumbered the proto-orthodox and a gnostic version of Christianity was the first to attempt a systemic doctrinal structure. I don’t find it terribly convincing but it was clever and interesting. Also I have to admit I have a secret love for the shade that the gnostics and proto-orthodox were throwing at each other. Wow, those guys were good at character assassination.

That is not what I said but if you want to take offense at the imagined thing you think I said you do you. So was it a choice to believe that was what I said?

It is more that I am saying that I don’t trust the sublime times or the down times any more and decided to try to figure out God or the lack thereof by other means becuase, as you said, good times and bad times both come and go. The quantity of bad times presents problems for an especially benevolent God existing but by itself it isn’t that conclusive.

Ummmm…..no. I doubt because I deeply examined the evidence and saw a lot of reasons to doubt. If I thought objective reality could be amended to what I want it to be by beliefs then I would choose differently but that is not the Universe I live in.

Are they though? I don’t have the mental ability to convince myself of things that I am convinced are untrue or the ability to doubt things that have repeatedly been proven to be true. Maybe in some cases it is a choice I don’t think that is always or even usually the case.

Most of my friends think I am pretty optimistic. Also what is an “unending rupture of victim classes”? The idea that mortal experiences are awful and unjust is weird? Has your life truly been that great? Warning: Vulgar language around one of the most empathetic things I have heard directed at those who are tired of living and want to give up. I send this to people who are struggling with their life and it usually makes them feel seen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sh7QWBb2U2A And yeah, while my life is not particularly good I know a lot of people who have it much much worse and have endured things that probably would have broken me completely. So yeah, I question why God decided to give them these horrific scars that may never heal. It is called empathy. Then again I heard that got reclassified as sin in large parts of our culture. When Dante went down into hell his humanity led him to feel empathy and pity for those being tormented. Then he corrected himself when his guide Virgil told him that his pity and empathy were misplaced as showing empathy was sin because the damned deserved that punishment and wishing it was not this way was questioning the judgement of God. Really really messed up stuff and it is still amongst us and not just towards the dead. Also to the “unending rupture of victim classes” which I assume means…..victims?

Yes, and this is why a lot of people leave. It doesn’t seem to be working and they are told the problem is really with them. But really, I am not upset over my life and that is not why I am doubting. My life has never been that great. i am used to a degree of misery and frustration and having to fight my own brain chemistry and deal with feeling like an outsider looking in. I have become less convinced that the gospel is suddenly going to reverse that either before or after death or that this process was somehow “refining” me. I have felt a sublime connection to God in the past. I even have experiences where I feel that sublime euphoria and connection sometimes now. I am just not convinced it is from God and I have read up on enough mystical experiences from all kinds of cultures and faiths that sound similar that I have a hard time accepting that these are an indicator of some eternal objective truth.

I now have a mental image of an apostle speaking in General Conference and an angel with a flaming sword appearing in the congregation and pointing at his eyes and then pointing at the speaker. Now I can’t stop giggling.

There are other ways God could communicate with us. I have a hard time believing God went with this option because it was the best of a lot of bad choices. He could have an angel show up every General Conference to give us more direct communication. He could have an angel visit each of us individually a few times a year to update us on what we need to work on and what we need to do. There are plenty of other options. God chose not to use them so the message getting through clearly just doesn’t seem that important to God for whatever reason.

It doesn’t seem like whomever is running this show knows me very well. You can argue that God does know me super well and is playing some kind of long game but I like to think that an omniscient and omnipotent God that wanted to communicate that He knows me well would find a way to do it so that I would recognize since He, you know, knows me better than I do. If I don’t recognize it is that really some kind of defect in me?

The wrong Kennedy survived.