Random Scripture Questions

[Wondering Muse]

8 hours ago, bluebell said:

I was thinking about that.  I was wondering if it wasn't an example of "where much is given much is required".  They were greatly blessed to know more about the Messiah's coming than the people in the Old World, and they were, as a society, visited by the resurrected Savior Himself and taught by Him.

Maybe the difference between the two sides of the world had to do with the differences between having greater light and knowledge and having lesser.  The blessings were greater, but so were the consequences of rejecting the truth after having had it.

This is what I believe. It could be a precursor to the events in Revelation. The BOM people were more righteous, at least some of them, and it was a wheat and tares kind of thing. The tares were killed off before Christ's coming, and then a Zion kingdom was established. 

It is possible that could not have happened had the destruction not occurred. I think Joseph Smith was unable to establish Zion back in his time, because the tares were still mingled with the wheat. Zion will be established in the future when the wheat and tares are once again separated, and the tares will face destruction.

[bluebell]

16 hours ago, Wondering Muse said:

This is what I believe. It could be a precursor to the events in Revelation. The BOM people were more righteous, at least some of them, and it was a wheat and tares kind of thing. The tares were killed off before Christ's coming, and then a Zion kingdom was established. 

It is possible that could not have happened had the destruction not occurred. I think Joseph Smith was unable to establish Zion back in his time, because the tares were still mingled with the wheat. Zion will be established in the future when the wheat and tares are once again separated, and the tares will face destruction.

Yes, that's what i was thinking about too.

By the way, love your picture!  The Last Unicorn is one of my absolute favorites!

Edited January 7, 2017 by bluebell

[Calm]

Book was tons better than movie though.

[rodheadlee]

On 1/6/2017 at 7:36 AM, bluebell said:

Next question-

Why did the Jews only suffer thru 3 hours of darkness after Jesus died and the BOM people had 3 days of intense darkness, huge destruction, and huge loss of life?

I mean, the Jews had actually crucified Him.  Why did they get off so easy?

Because the BoM people had more light and knowledge, thus the greater punishment.

[cdowis]

On 1/4/2017 at 7:05 PM, bluebell said:

Next random question-

When Jesus refuses to answer Pilot.  Is He silent so that He doesn't cause Pilot to let Him go, making the Atonement as we know it impossible?

It was not a real question == it was a rhetorical question, he was just thinking aloud and not expecting an answer. 

[cdowis]

On 1/6/2017 at 10:24 AM, stemelbow said:

  I'm curious what you mean when you use quotations around things like, inaccuracies and unreliable?

A rhetorical device to indicate that the word is not mine ==>>> e.g. YOU call it an inaccuracy.

Clarifies the meaning of the sentence.

[bluebell]

What are everyone's thoughts on the prevalence of demon possession in the New Testament compared to the prevalence of demon possession in our day?

[HappyJackWagon]

12 hours ago, bluebell said:

What are everyone's thoughts on the prevalence of demon possession in the New Testament compared to the prevalence of demon possession in our day?

They didn't understand the many variations of mental illness so they explained behavior in the way they knew how...demons.

Even today I know people who believe that mental illnesses are caused by demons. No joke. I had a sweet lady in my ward who suffered from anxiety, depression, and an incredible fear of satan/demons. Her Father in law, also in my ward, cast demons out of her many many times, when really she was having a panic attack. I've known others who believe in various forms of energy healing. They believed that every physical ailment was linked to a specific kind of demon. If your shoulder hurt, Demon X was causing it, so they would hover hands over the body and cast out demons to heal the physical ailment. These were all "faithful" members of the ward. They described what they didn't understand with supernatural explanations and created rituals to fix the problem.

I think this was the kind of thing going on with demonic possessions in the NT.

[bluebell]

55 minutes ago, HappyJackWagon said:

They didn't understand the many variations of mental illness so they explained behavior in the way they knew how...demons.

Even today I know people who believe that mental illnesses are caused by demons. No joke. I had a sweet lady in my ward who suffered from anxiety, depression, and an incredible fear of satan/demons. Her Father in law, also in my ward, cast demons out of her many many times, when really she was having a panic attack. I've known others who believe in various forms of energy healing. They believed that every physical ailment was linked to a specific kind of demon. If your shoulder hurt, Demon X was causing it, so they would hover hands over the body and cast out demons to heal the physical ailment. These were all "faithful" members of the ward. They described what they didn't understand with supernatural explanations and created rituals to fix the problem.

I think this was the kind of thing going on with demonic possessions in the NT.

I think you are right to a large degree, and it likely explains some of the demonic possession spoken of.  It doesn't explain those instances where the devils actually spoke though.  There are quite a few of those experiences in the NT record.  Those are the ones that have me intrigued.  

[CV75]

14 hours ago, bluebell said:

What are everyone's thoughts on the prevalence of demon possession in the New Testament compared to the prevalence of demon possession in our day?

It is probably the same, but attribution of the symptoms has probably changed. Also, the NT is a very specific record of very specific events, so probably does not reflect the actual prevalence within the population at the time.

[HappyJackWagon]

53 minutes ago, bluebell said:

I think you are right to a large degree, and it likely explains some of the demonic possession spoken of.  It doesn't explain those instances where the devils actually spoke though.  There are quite a few of those experiences in the NT record.  Those are the ones that have me intrigued.  

Yes, but who is telling the story of demons speaking after being cast out? Is it a witness to the event? No. In most cases it's an anonymous writer who is writing down the oral history of the story 50-150 years later. But it seems to be a logical elaboration of the story that gives it just a little more oomph.

 

 

[Gray]

3 minutes ago, HappyJackWagon said:

Yes, but who is telling the story of demons speaking after being cast out? Is it a witness to the event? No. In most cases it's an anonymous writer who is writing down the oral history of the story 50-150 years later. But it seems to be a logical elaboration of the story that gives it just a little more oomph.

 

 

IIRC, only something like 35% of the miracles attributed to Jesus have any historicity. That doesn't mean we have historical evidence that He worked miracles, only that the general circumstances surrounding the miracles have some historical weight. Which means of most of the miracles attributed to Jesus are likely faith-promoting stories invented by the community of believers years later. 

[bluebell]

14 minutes ago, HappyJackWagon said:

Yes, but who is telling the story of demons speaking after being cast out? Is it a witness to the event? No. In most cases it's an anonymous writer who is writing down the oral history of the story 50-150 years later. But it seems to be a logical elaboration of the story that gives it just a little more oomph.

 

 

That's pretty much true of everything taught in the NT, isn't it?  

When do we come to the point where scripture has little worth because it can't be historically verified?  Or, how do we keep from getting to that point?

[bluebell]

10 minutes ago, Gray said:

IIRC, only something like 35% of the miracles attributed to Jesus have any historicity. That doesn't mean we have historical evidence that He worked miracles, only that the general circumstances surrounding the miracles have some historical weight. Which means of most of the miracles attributed to Jesus are likely faith-promoting stories invented by the community of believers years later. 

Which miracles have historical weight?

[Gray]

27 minutes ago, bluebell said:

Which miracles have historical weight?

I'm going off of memory listening to a Stanford recorded lecture series. As I recall, it was none of the nature miracles (walking on water and so forth), and some percentage of the healing miracles. As I recall, only one of the leper stories had any weight, and one or two of the exorcism stories. The source was book written by a Catholic scholar and clergyman, I wish I could remember the name.

[Gray]

35 minutes ago, bluebell said:

That's pretty much true of everything taught in the NT, isn't it?  

When do we come to the point where scripture has little worth because it can't be historically verified?  Or, how do we keep from getting to that point?

I think the history of scripture and the meaning of scripture are two very different things. Regardless of historicity, scripture is full of deep symbolic meaning. History might inform how you interpret scripture (or not), but history alone can't give you meaning. 

Edited January 10, 2017 by Gray

[Nevo]

1 hour ago, bluebell said:

I think you are right to a large degree, and it likely explains some of the demonic possession spoken of.  It doesn't explain those instances where the devils actually spoke though.  There are quite a few of those experiences in the NT record.  Those are the ones that have me intrigued.  

There is a recent Vanity Fair article by William Friedkin (director of The Exorcist) that you may find interesting. Friedkin attended an exorcism last May and filmed it (he describes it at length in the article). He later showed the video to various medical authorities. Their responses are worth reading:

Quote

 

I wanted to get credible scientific opinion about what I had witnessed. A skeptic’s explanation for the “possession phenomenon” is “unconscious fraud,” wherein a suggestible person is aware of the behavior that’s expected of him or her and performs it out of social compliance, as a child does when a parent shows approval.

I showed the video of Rosa’s exorcism to two of the world’s leading neurosurgeons and researchers in California and to a group of prominent psychiatrists in New York.

Dr. Neil Martin is chief of neurosurgery at the UCLA Medical Center. He has performed more than 5,000 brain surgeries and is regularly cited as in the top 1 percent of his specialty. On August 3, I showed him the video of Rosa’s exorcism. This is his response: “Absolutely amazing. There’s a major force at work within her somehow. I don’t know the underlying origin of it. She’s not separated from the environment. She’s not in a catatonic state. She’s responding to the priest and is aware of the context. The energy she shows is amazing. The priest on the right is struggling to control her. He’s holding her down, as are the others, and the sweat is dripping off his face at a time when she’s not sweating. This doesn’t seem to be hallucinations. She appears to be engaged in the process but resisting. You can see she has no ability to pull herself back.”

I asked Dr. Martin if this was some kind of brain disorder. “It doesn’t look like schizophrenia or epilepsy,” he said. “It could be delirium, an agitated disconnection from normal behavior. But the powerful verbalization we’re hearing, that’s not what you get with delirium. With delirium you see the struggling, maybe the yelling, but this guttural voice seems like it’s coming from someplace else. I’ve done thousands of surgeries, on brain tumors, traumatic brain injuries, ruptured brain aneurysms, infections affecting the brain, and I haven’t seen this kind of consequence from any of those disorders. This goes beyond anything I’ve ever experienced—that’s for certain.”

I also showed the video to Dr. Itzhak Fried, a neurosurgeon and clinical specialist in epilepsy surgery, seizure disorder, and the study of human memory. He is based at both UCLA and the Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center. This was his conclusion: “It looks like something authentic. She is like a caged animal. I don’t think there’s a loss of consciousness or contact, because she’s in contact with the people. She appears to respond to the people who talk to her. It’s a striking change in behavior. I believe everything originates in the brain. So which part of the brain could serve this type of behavior? The limbic system, which has to do with emotional processing of stimuli, and the temporal lobe. I don’t see this as epilepsy. It’s not necessarily a lesion. It’s a physiological state. It seems to be associated with religious things. In the temporal lobe there’s something called hyper-religiosity. You probably won’t have this in somebody who has no religious background. Can I characterize it? Maybe. Can I treat it? No.”

I asked Dr. Fried if he believed in God, and he took a long pause before answering: “I do believe there is a limit to human understanding. Beyond this limit, I’m willing to recognize an entity called God.”

The reaction of the neurosurgeons took me by surprise. I had expected they would quickly dismiss Rosa’s symptoms as madness or unintentional fraud or suggest that she might be cured by brain surgery. They did not.

They wouldn’t come out and say, “Of course this woman is possessed by Satan,” but they seemed baffled as to how to define her ailment, and both agreed it was not something they would attempt to cure with surgery.

I was eager to pursue another path, one devoted to the treatment and prevention of mental disorder. I took the video to a group of some of the leading psychiatrists in the country, all in residence at Columbia University: Jeffrey Lieberman, director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute; Michael B. First, professor of clinical psychiatry; Roberto Lewis-Fernández, president-elect of the World Association of Cultural Psychiatry; and Ryan Lawrence, M.D., assistant professor of clinical psychiatry.

After showing the Columbia psychiatrists the video on a 36-inch screen, they had an open discussion about it for an hour and a half. Here are some of the highlights synthesized from that discussion:

LIEBERMAN: To be perfectly blunt, this is unconvincing as to anything that could be supernatural or excused from the laws of nature as we know them.

ME: Do you think it’s fraud?

ALL: No, no, it’s something real.

FIRST: It fits recognized psychiatric syndromes that have been defined. It’s classic. I would say she fits into the pattern that we call Dissociative Trance and Possession Disorder. There is no obvious known psychopathology. Exorcism as a therapeutic technique could work.

LIEBERMAN: Given our scientific and medical backgrounds, do we countenance the possibility of there being something that’s spiritual or supernatural in nature that takes the form of disturbed behavior?

LEWIS-FERNÁNDEZ: The person is expressing a pathology that is understood as possession. Our field of psychiatry can understand it as possession just on the virtue of what she’s presenting, without having to take any kind of stance on whether there actually are demons, spirits. [Dr. Lewis-Fernández worked on adding the word “possession” to “Dissociative Identity Disorder” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, relied upon by clinicians, researchers, and the legal system.]

LAWRENCE: I have a patient now in my unit who’s similar to this in some ways. She says she’s possessed by the Devil. She speaks in a bizarre voice. She has a history of trauma. What we’re doing for her is we’re treating her with medication, giving her psychotherapy, creating a safe environment. She gets better. We don’t take a position of “Is this really Satan bothering you or are you just being bothered by your illness?”

LIEBERMAN: I’ve never believed in ghosts or that stuff, but I’ve had a couple of cases, one in particular that really just gave me pause. This was a young girl, in her 20s, from a Catholic family in Brooklyn, and she was referred to me with schizophrenia, and she definitely had bizarre and psychotic-like behavior, disorganized thinking, disturbed attention, hallucinations, but it wasn’t classic schizophrenic phenomenology. And she responded to nothing,” he added with emphasis. “Usually you get some response. But there was no response. We started to do family therapy. All of a sudden, some strange things started happening, accidents, hearing things. I wasn’t thinking anything of it, but this unfolded over months. One night, I went to see her and then conferred with a colleague, and afterwards I went home, and there was a kind of a blue light in the house, and all of a sudden I had this piercing pain in my head, and I called my colleague, and she had the same thing, and this was really weird. The girl’s family was prone to superstition, and they may have mentioned demon possession or something like that, but I obviously didn’t believe it, but when this happened I just got completely freaked out. It wasn’t a psychiatric disorder—you want to call it a spiritual possession, but somehow, like in The Exorcist, we were the enemy. This was basically a battle between the doctors and whatever it was that afflicted the individual.

ME: Do you completely disregard the idea of possession?

LIEBERMAN: No. There was no way I could explain what happened. Intellectually, I might have said it’s possible, but this was an example that added credence.

ME: If a patient doesn’t believe in psychiatry, has some resistance to it, is it likely to work?

LIEBERMAN: If you’re saying you need to believe in religious systems for something like exorcism to work, the answer is yes. In sum, this isn’t demon possession, but treating Rosa’s symptoms as demon possession may not be the worst thing.

FIRST: I think all of us would agree there are things we can’t explain.

I went to these doctors to try to get a rational, scientific explanation for what I had experienced. I thought they’d say, “This is some sort of psychosomatic disorder having nothing to do with possession.” That’s not what I came away with. Forty-five years after I directed The Exorcist, there’s more acceptance of the possibility of possession than there was when I made the film.

 

 

[HappyJackWagon]

51 minutes ago, bluebell said:

That's pretty much true of everything taught in the NT, isn't it?  

When do we come to the point where scripture has little worth because it can't be historically verified?  Or, how do we keep from getting to that point?

Yes. You're right.

That depends on the individual's need for things to be historical and literal to have value. Scripture isn't a history book. It's largely a story book that shares truths, not facts. Some things may be literal and factual but I don't think that should be the basis upon which value is derived.

[bluebell]

3 minutes ago, HappyJackWagon said:

Yes. You're right.

That depends on the individual's need for things to be historical and literal to have value. Scripture isn't a history book. It's largely a story book that shares truths, not facts. Some things may be literal and factual but I don't think that should be the basis upon which value is derived.

Do factual stories and something akin to aesop's fables have the same value?  

Your answer probably differs from mine.  But--thinking out loud--factual events hold something above and beyond fictional stories that teach true morals or doctrines for me.   Life is difficult and we are asked to do difficult things.  I don't have much use for a gospel taught 'in theory' but expected to be lived in actuality.  

 

[bluebell]

28 minutes ago, Gray said:

I think the history of scripture and the meaning of scripture are two very different things. Regardless of historicity, scripture is full of deep symbolic meaning. History might inform how you interpret scripture (or not), but history alone can't give you meaning. 

So are Aesop's fables though.  What's the difference between the two?

(And I agree that history does not give us meaning.  It was one of the first lessons we had to learn when i got my history degree.  It still annoys me.  )

[bluebell]

38 minutes ago, Nevo said:

There is a recent Vanity Fair article by William Friedkin (director of The Exorcist) that you may find interesting. Friedkin attended an exorcism last May and filmed it (he describes it at length in the article). He later showed the video to various medical authorities. Their responses are worth reading:

 

That is very interesting, thank you for sharing!

[Gray]

1 hour ago, bluebell said:

So are Aesop's fables though.  What's the difference between the two?

(And I agree that history does not give us meaning.  It was one of the first lessons we had to learn when i got my history degree.  It still annoys me.  )

I suppose from a blunt historical perspective, the difference is that the story of Jesus is partially historical. Of course parables fables are more like proverbs using animals as characters, and Jesus' parables, which everyone agrees are to be taken metaphorically, are not common wisdom (proverbs), but instead serve to upend the social order and the common wisdom. The aphorisms tend to serve the same purpose.

I think the stories in scripture, setting aside the literal content, lend themselves to a greater depth of interpretation. The moral of a fable is usually pretty blunt and obvious. You can interpret the resurrection, for instance, in myriad different ways, even if you also take it to be literal. And of course with fables you don't get the spiritual practices that so enrich life. 

Edited January 10, 2017 by Gray

[HappyJackWagon]

1 hour ago, bluebell said:

Do factual stories and something akin to aesop's fables have the same value?  

Your answer probably differs from mine.  But--thinking out loud--factual events hold something above and beyond fictional stories that teach true morals or doctrines for me.   Life is difficult and we are asked to do difficult things.  I don't have much use for a gospel taught 'in theory' but expected to be lived in actuality.  

 

You're welcome to that opinion but with few exceptions I see little increased value of historical/literal over metaphor/allegory/parable.

Would the prodigal son or Good Samaritan parables be more meaningful if they were based in historical fact?

Does Jonah and the whale, dividing the Red Sea, or Noah's flood require literal interpretation to have value? Is the book of Job only meaningful if Job was a real person? I think there is plenty of good meaning and value to derive from non-historical stories or "fiction".

Edited January 10, 2017 by HappyJackWagon

[bluebell]

5 minutes ago, Gray said:

I suppose from a blunt historical perspective, the difference is that the story of Jesus is partially historical. Of course parables are more like proverbs using animals as characters, and Jesus' parables, which everyone agrees are to be taken metaphorically, are not common wisdom (proverbs), but instead serve to upend the social order and the common wisdom. The aphorisms tend to serve the same purpose.

I think the stories in scripture, setting aside the literal content, lend themselves to a greater depth of interpretation. The moral of a fable is usually pretty blunt and obvious. You can interpret the resurrection, for instance, in myriad different ways, even if you also take it to be literal. And of course with fables you don't get the spiritual practices that so enrich life. 

I agree with all that, but I don't think it answers my question exactly.  I mean, are we comfortable with the idea that the only difference between fables and the scriptures is that the scriptures have more than one interpretation (many people believe fables teach spiritual practices as well)?

Is there no added value to something having actually happened?

[Gray]

21 hours ago, bluebell said:

I agree with all that, but I don't think it answers my question exactly.  I mean, are we comfortable with the idea that the only difference between fables and the scriptures is that the scriptures have more than one interpretation (many people believe fables teach spiritual practices as well)?

Is there no added value to something having actually happened?

Hmm, that's a good question. I suppose since, historical or not, these events didn't happen to us, the question could also be phrased, is there some value to believing that this stuff actually happened?

Value is of course entirely subjective. If you believe you get value from it, then you do. I do think there is a kind of security blanket in taking the literalistic approach. On the other hand, literalism is intellectually and spiritually constricting and keeps you from discovering certain spiritual insights. It also chains you to particular teachings tied to ancient cultures - teachings that have outlived their limited utility and instead have started to cause real harm.

I guess I would say that, like everything in life, there are costs and benefits to any position you might take. 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 11, 2017 by Gray