Last December, 12 million people defied the car bombers and the killers and the terrorists, and said, that, we want to live in liberty. Recently a unity government has formed in Iraq. They reached an agreement on their top leadership posts. This new government represents a turning point in Iraq, a new chapter in our engagement there, and an opportunity for progress. . . But I want you to understand that the new government is yet another blow to those who hate liberty. First, it will deny the terrorists their immediate aim of turning Iraq into a safe haven from which they can plot and plan attacks against the United States and our allies. And secondly, a democratic Iraq will be a major blow to the terrorists' hateful ideology, sending a powerful message across the region that the future of the Middle East belongs to freedom.
It's nice to get a gentle reminder of how successful he has creating a land of liberty and freedom in Iraq, a model of safety and order.
13 comments:
Weasie
We have established that we do not like each other . In respect for our host AC I will lay off the attacks provided you do the same.
I am glad that you have a few readers. If you decide to comment on my blog you will not be censored provided you use no racial or ethnic epithets and do not mention your pal Socrates.
Your friend Socrates has a lifetime ban for criminal behavior.
Posting under multiple aliases including yours and being a genuine pedophile warrant a ban.
Good luck and if you produce good material maybe you will find an audience.
Beaker,
You're right. I don't like you. Nevertheless, you're welcome to stay. Would be nice if you tried to say something sensible, but that doesn't seem likely. But regarding the Socrates-pedophile thing, I know it's complete bullshit. For the record, IT WAS WEAZL WHO MADE IT UP IN THE FIRST PLACE. Back when Soc and a group of his "friends" were attacking weazl (then weasel), threatening to kick his ass, and offering money for information regarding his identity, the gloves were completely off. And when Soc posted information about his two daughters, weazl siezed on it to attack Soc, saying that he didn't have the right state of mind to raise healthy daughters, and proceeded to then create a very entertaining, but quite fictional account of what might be taking place behind closed doors. Unfortunately, the other morons, such as yourself, grabbed hold of the chimera and acted as if it were the gospel truth.
And Soc has been involved, far as Weaz can tell, in no criminal activity. So don't come here slandering him. And posing under multiple aliases may be annoying, but is far from criminal. And in most cases, Soc did it with different variants of his own name.
But Soc as far as your historical accuracy goes, you wrote:
. . .the ancient catholics consolidated the ancient mediterranean "savior myths," roled them into a nonexistent character named "Jesus," and the BLAMED THE JEWS
I would change that to:
. . .the ancient Jews consolidated the ancient Mesopotamian "savior myths," an Anatolian named Paul rolled them into a post mortem interpretation of a recently died man named "Jesus" who'd been killed for his role in a revolutionary religious/secular uprising against the Romans. Paul's vision, however, was quite palatable to Roman hegemony, allowing the Romans to BLAME THE JEWS, crush the uprising and create a new religion that bore little to no resemblence to the strictly Jewish and rather orthodox doctine that Jesus and his brother James and John the Baptist had been advocating.
But the bottom line is the same: the religions are a bullshit, cobbled together patch of ancient stories that make no fucking sense. Woman made of a rib? Gimme a break. A man living in the belly of a whale? Get real. A GLOBAL flood whereby a man placed two species of every animal in a boat? Right.
And as far as Christianity goes, nobody among you can even explain what is the Holy Ghost, supposedly a third of your Trinity.
Get real.
Well, Soc, I do think that the gospels,though heavily edited, redacted, and revised, do have a shard of historical something, and are supported by the later discovered Gospel of Thomas and the Qumran or Dead Sea scrolls that have recently been discovered and translated. If you're interested, I would point your attention to the books, "James the Brother of Jesus," by Robert Eisenmann, and "The Dead Sea Scrolls Unconvered" by Eisenmann and Michael Wise.
As regards to the "ancient peoples" you are referring to, I'm assuming that you're referring to Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians. The Sun God was called Shamash in Akkadian and Ud in Sumerian. The Assyrians developed a cosmology of their entire pantheon of major gods that the Jews adopted during their Babylonian captivity that became the source for their Kabbalah worship. If you want to read more about this lifting and revising of Mesopotamian myths into modern day(and ancient) Judaism you may read Simo Parpola's "Tree of Life," perhaps one of the most brilliant thing weaz has ever read. A bit of an overview of the whole thing can be read here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_life_(Kabbalah)
It's a pretty complex field, Soc. Would take quite a while to really understand with sufficient detail. But you're right: most people completely ignore what is perhaps the foundation of a civilization that they claim as their own. But you're onto something.
Follow the weaz a bit, and some truly strange things may start to happen. ;-)
The actual site for Prof. Parpola's article is:
Parpola S. 1993. The Assyrian Tree of Life: Tracing the Origins of Jewish Monotheism and Greek Philosophy. Journal of Near Eastern Studies. 52(3) pp161-208
And by the way, Soc, I thought I'd share along what popped into my email as recently as today. And one mustn't forget the Judas papers that have recently been found. I think it's quite safe to say there was a Jesus, but he was not what people think he was, and preached not at all what people think he did. But here's the email:
`Greatest story NEVER told'
James Tabor, 60, chair of the religious studies department at UNC
Charlotte, is the author of "The Jesus Dynasty: The Hidden History
of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity" (Simon &
Schuster, $27). Based on early Christian documents and
archaeological discoveries, the new book has put Tabor in the
national spotlight for its controversial look at Jesus and
Christianity.
" `The Jesus Dynasty' presents the Jesus story in an entirely new
light," he writes in a preface. "It is history, not fiction. And
yet it differs considerably, sometimes radically, from the standard portrait of Jesus informed by theological dogma."
The content, he says, may be "the greatest story never told."
"It will thrill and excite many," he writes, "upset and anger
others, but also challenge its readers ... to honestly weigh
evidence and consider new possibilities."
Reading Life Editor Jeri Krentz recently talked to Tabor about his
work. Here's the interview, edited for length and clarity.
Q. How much time did you spend writing "The Jesus Dynasty?" My
teaching career spans about 35 years. In some ways, I started then.
This book is my "Jesus book." Many of us that work in the field of
Christian origins ... come to a point toward the end of our career
that we decide to look back and say, "OK, what about this man Jesus
that we study?"
It seemed that my research was at a point where I could present some things that were fairly resolved, in my mind at least.
Q. You told a reporter that you hoped to capitalize on the interest
in early Christianity sparked by Dan Brown's best-selling "The Da
Vinci Code."
I do want that market. That (book) has fanned such an interest in people. They have a desire to know and maybe they're
not satisfied with just what they've heard in theological
approaches to Christian faith.
Q. "Nightline" aired a story about your work on April 7. What was
that like? (Over UNCC's spring break), I was digging in Israel ...
and ("Nightline" co-anchor) Martin Bashir came over with his crew.
We did three days of intense interviews.
At one point he said, Dr. Tabor, I take it you don't really believe
that Jesus is God, that he was born of a virgin, that he was raised
from the dead, that he's in heaven. Are you trying to destroy
Christianity with your book?
I said to him: Martin, every one of those statements are
theological. People believe these things. They're welcome to
believe them. I don't want them not to believe them.
But the book is history. None of those kinds of statements can be
examined historically. I'm dealing with what can ... we really know
historically.
Q. Can you explain what you mean by the Jesus "dynasty"? The Jesus
dynasty is another way of saying Jesus' family -- not meaning his
own offspring, but his brothers, male heirs to the throne of King
David.
Q. You paint a picture of Jesus. You say, for example, that he probably was a stonemason, not a carpenter.
He was poor. Very poor. I think he was a peasant. But I don't think he was illiterate.
He's obviously bright, intelligent. He's of this lineage that's
actually quite impressive, but the indication is that the family
doesn't have much money. They're laborers, so he's doing manual
labor.
It's more likely that he's working in stone (rather than wood).
Many of us now are looking around at how buildings were made at
that time and realize wood is so minimal.
Q. And what about Mary and Joseph? Joseph is a puzzle. He's
mentioned at the birth stories and never mentioned again. There's a
tradition in the church that Joseph likely died. Maybe he was
older. We don't know for sure.
But Mary, as I take it -- and because of Roman Catholic dogma,
people disagree on this -- I believe that she had other children,
that she had six other children, four boys and two girls.
She's a Jewish mother with a full family living in a little
village. We have to imagine her doing all the things that women in
households would do. Struggling to make ends meet and raising her
children with all the hardships that come with that.
But again, we don't know.
Q. That's obviously a controversial part of your book. As a
historian I feel obligated, even though it's touchy, to say if that
he (Jesus), like all other human beings, had a father; is there
anything more we could say?
And, in fact, there is one name that comes up. He's referred to as a Roman soldier. So I explore what we know about that.
If somebody wants to say, "Look. I don't think he even had a father," then, fine. You can't investigate those kinds of things from 2,000 years ago.
But my assumption is that humans have mothers and fathers both, so
that's what I follow up on.
Q. And Jesus' relationship with John the Baptist? I try to
resurrect, to use a loaded term, two people, John and James. On one
side is John, who's a bit older than Jesus, and on the other side
is James, who's his younger brother.
I think they've both been forgotten. James is forgotten more than
John because John is mentioned fairly prominently. But John is
mentioned almost like one who comes on stage, points to Jesus,
walks off stage and you hardly hear from him again.
In his time, I don't think it was that way. I think he (John) is
Jesus' mentor, his teacher. I think they're a team.
I also introduce a notion that I think people just aren't familiar
with -- but scholars know it -- and that is that in Judaism during
that day, they were expecting two messiahs, not one. One was to be
a priest, which John was, and the other was to be of the Davidic
lineage, a king, which Jesus was.
I have a chapter called "The Two Messiahs," in which I talk about
how John and Jesus together are seen as a team ... with Jesus
baptizing in the south and John in the north.
Q. You make the point that Christianity today differs from the
message spread by Jesus' successors. What do you mean?
It all hasto do with theological beliefs: that he was preexistent, that he's divine, that he was born of a virgin without a father, that he died on the cross for our sins.
These are statements of Christian belief and dogma, mainly developed by Paul.
Jesus himself didn't talk about that, especially in the early
sources. He talked more about what is the right way to live.
Q. You write that your research "challenges many sacred dogmas of
Christian orthodoxy." Are you prepared for a backlash? I'm not out
to storm the citadel of Christian faith.
A crucial point in my book is what happened when Jesus died and was
buried and how did the tomb get empty. I present what I think is
possibly likely from a historical viewpoint: that maybe the family
took the body and reburied it.
But someone at that point could say, "I don't think that. I think
God raised him from the dead." There's nothing at that point I can
really say other than, "I don't think that."
Someone could say, well then, you're not a Christian. By somebody's definition, I might not be.
But Christians never seem to be able to agree on who's a Christian.
They've been fighting for 2,000 years as to who qualifies.
I didn't write the book with the intention of "Let's see how I can
shake everybody up." At each one of those crucial junctures,
someone is free to say, "My faith takes me further than that."
But my history doesn't.
There's somewhere in the book the statement that good history is
never the enemy of true faith. I guess that's more or less my
position.
Q. Do you want to say anything about the historical Jesus that you have come to know?
I've given my life to trying to understand this person, Jesus of Nazareth. I find him so moving ... the most fascinating and interesting and compelling character in Western history.
I try to present that in the book. Out of all the Jewish teachers of his time, he seems to just get so many things right. There are other rabbis I study. But with Jesus, it seems like every parable, every story, just has a perennial ring to it that grips you.
I find myself, at age 60, still just utterly taken with him.
ps. that obviously was James Tabor talking. Weaz isn't 60 years old. ;-)
Weasie
The administration of your own blog is your concern. Soc has a lifetime ban on my site. No doubt the other sites will decide for themself.
I am glad you have a few readers and above all the FPM stuff is in the past. There is no reason for our fight to cntinue on other blogs.
As Ducky has proved there is room in our community for dissent. The JB incedents are caused not by his content as by his profanity and Klansmen lines.
Good luck and likewise you are not banned t my site. However Socko remains banned forever.
Why on earth did you start the pedophile stuff ?
Beaker, do you simply cut and paste your responses again and again?
Why did I say things about Socrates? Ask him. Question more relevant is, why do you say things that you have no idea about?
Anyway, this site is not a gossip column so try to discuss something revelant to some topical issue, or go blowing smoke about others on the several other sites that you frequent.
Weazl,
this is totally out of context but I ask anyway:
Was Shamash the same Sun God Akhenaton worshipped?
When I was at school, I remember asking from my teacher that was the Aten-cult the first religious of it's kind (monothismic)and she answered: "Uhmm, I don't know really but propably not." Nice, educated answer :)
Maybe I haven't read the right books later on, but I'm still interested of what kind of connection there is.. if there is one?
-Pulina-
Well, I tend to think that the sun was worshipped for quite a while even before language was written. But Shamash or Utu (I mispelled earlier) was not the same god of Akhenaton, which was Aton-Ra, which was a variant of the Egyptian god Amun-Ra. The time of Akhenaton in the mid 14th century BCE was known as the Amarna period or the International period, which was time of great cultural exchanges with some of the great powers of that time, such as the Hittite empire in modern day Turkey, the Mittani, Babylonian and Assyrian kingdoms, and obviously Egypts, were marked by great exchanges of trade goods, shifting political and military alliances, marked by intermarriages between various groups to get allegiances. But most all of these regions were marked by polytheism. In that sense, Akhenaton was quite revolutionary. But one must always recognize the relationship between religion and power, and this claim of monotheism must be understand as also disenfrachising the priest class (which was truly revolutionary).
Yet perhaps one of the most bizarre things about this, and once again shows how cobbled together our Judeo-Christian religous cosmology is, is when the Semitic people who would later become Jews were kicked out of Egypt they actually had been steeped in the religous practices of the Egyptians. They would then keep some of these Egyptian traditions as they would later be swept up by the Babylonians and Assyrians. Yet some of the Egyptian influence clearly remains. For example, every Christian ends his prayer with the term, Amen, which is a legacy from the predecessor god Egyptian of Akhenaton, Amun-Ra. And for those who do not recognize the Egyptian influence in Judaism simply needs to look at the name of its land: Israel, a conflation of the Egyptian gods Isis, Ra and El. Judaism isn't nearly as monothestic and as unique as it is given credit for (neither is Christianity).
Long answer to your short question.
Sorry there Weasie but Donal and Morgaan independently verified the
charges from Socs divorce. I also saw several accounts in his own unique style of writting where he boasts of the crime and provided insider details.
What you do with uour own site is your concern.
Weazl,
Perhaps a long answer, but way more interesting than my teachers.
Although, I didn't expect anything less from you, thank you :)
-Pulina-
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