vendredi 26 novembre 2010

Defending Commons and feudalism against Locke on FB, and legal kingship against supposedly powerless one

I am here commenting on a note on someone else's profile: More on Locke and Catholicism: by Joe Hargrave

Well, give me Hooker, then!

"What fewer people may know is that Pope Clement VIII said of Hooker's book, the very same one that influenced Locke, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity: 'It has in it such seeds of eternity that it will abide until the last fire shall consume all learning.' This, of course, in spite of Hooker's status as a heretic."

Locke in Second Treatise Chapter V agrees with Pope Leo on ONE instance of elementary gain of property rights, but would have disagreed about the rights of dispossessed Connaught Papists to return to Ulster.

Some Anglicans - notably the Anglo-Catholics avant le mot - were less objected to by Catholics than other Prots.

Joe Hargrave:

The one instance means a whole lot.


Since both have it from Cicero, less than a Catholic credential for Locke.

But if your pragmatic or realistic purpose is simply defending the US Constitution, and your seeing attacks on Locke as indirect attacks on it, since Founding Fathers had read Locke more than say Rousseau or what's his name again [Hobbes, he is even, along with Calvin, honoured by comic strips nowadays] "Leviathan", the thing to do might just be, not to say that Locke has a complete Catholic philosophy of property, but to say that nothing really objectionable from Locke got via FF to the Constitution they wrote.

Joe Hargrave:

My purpose is to defend private property and free markets for Catholics against the prevailing social democratic agenda.


But Locke is more Social Democratic than Leo or St Thomas!

Rousseau is of course sufficiently Social Democrat to be Communist, but apart from that ...

Joe Hargrave:

Locke is not social democratic at all. I reject the attempts some make to wring a welfare-state out of his work.


He has one revolutionary principle though: that the property is meant for those who work on it and not those who quarrel about it - if you remember that quote from Treatise II Chapter V. It was of course meant against the Catholic inheritors in Connaught of properties in Ulster worked the last generation before him by either Protestants or their remaining poor Catholic tenants.

You see the same thing in "Responsible rich" who dissuaded Bush from abolishing inheritance duty by appealing to "it is not good to be born with a silver spoon in your mouth". Locke attacks non-laborious means of acquiring property, not because of fraudulence as with ususry, but because of non-laboriousness, as with inherited titles, as with gifts, as with immemorial custom, and so on.

He also has one capitalist thought that amounts to a capitalist fallacy - not in disfavour of wellfare state, that might not be a fallacy but - in favour of usury and unsound over-investment.

He claims that as soon as there is an exchange goods that does not rot for being kept - gold - hoarding ceases to be wasteful.

Now, there are cases of late when attempts at hoarding gold have become wasteful and very much so.

Lyndon LaRouche, if you know about that guy, claims that real physical production (except of condoms and pills and toys including sex toys) is being hampered by Wall Street speculation bubbles.

In the conflict between Fr. Tryphon and Starbucks (a company which fortunately bucked back) Locke might have been adduced to favour Starbucks approriating the label "Christmas Blend" - and suing Fr. Tryphon for having in his monastery another blend that the monastery called "Christmas Blend". Locke does not really allow for the Commons, where a strip of wood or a general description of merchandise such as "Christmas Blend" may stay even against people wanting to appropriate it. Swedish legislation of immemorial times has a legislation favouring the Commons.

You may own a piece of wood in the sense that you may have a right to cut down the trees there or build a house there. But even so you do NOT own the wild berries that grow there or the mushrooms that grow there. They are still anyone's property who deigns to pick them.

Hence you have no right to fence in all of your wood. You can fence in only such places where you want your cows to stay and not to stray (and owning the land means no other man may graze his cows there without your permission, as of everywhere). Did Locke sufficiently allow for difference between staking a piece of land and picking a res nullius to accept that the berries and mushrooms and tenting space (as long s not intruding in owners privacy) of my land may still be res nullius, anyone's for the picking?

By contrast, St Thomas does give a theory of private property meaning it does not absolutely have to be private property in the full juridical sense at all. But he was thinking of feudal property. In practise a feudal lord does about as he pleases on his land - but he cannot sell it, or else he must "sell" his title along with it. Since in feudal theory the real owner is the King or Emperor. Since you "own" its usufruct and tenures only insofar as the King or Emperor "owns" you for a purpose of military or judicial kind. Did Locke allow for such half-ownership - or was he not a bit anti-feudal?

Was Tolkien misrepresented here?

First Things; David B. Hart: Anarcho-Monarchism

My objection when discussing this link led to this:

when interpreting Tolkien, why this:

"But a king—***a king without any real power, that is***—is such an ennoblingly arbitrary, such a tender and organically human institution."

Or maybe he was not at all interpreting Tolkien?

JDB:Perhaps he is making a distinction between power and authority?
CWK: Or the distinction between compulsion and love.


While it is true that Kings had more authority than power in Middle Ages, they did have some real power too.

Magnus Ladulås ("barn's lock") has this surname because he initiated a legislation barring the peasants' barns from getting gate-broken by nobles roaming around. He also changed the hereditary custom of no female inheritors at all (they enjoyed whatever heritage their husbands had) to each sister inheriting the hald part of what each of her brothers inherited (it took yet a while before we had iheritance equality in Sweden).

Magnus Eriksson, who lived a bit later, made away with Westrogothian, Ostrogothian, Sweonic, et c laws and after him Sweden had only the Town Law and the Country Law up to when we got a unified law in the XVIII-th C.

Both were kings before the union with Denmark and Norway (Finland was our own colony).

It seems the legislation process was in equal shares between king and representation, as was again the case between 1809 and 1917.

In the Letter, Tolkien did advocate a King being able to fire his prime minister for disliking the colour of his neck-tie. Not really a question of advocating powerless royalty

CWK:The old Kings ruled by custom as much if not more so than by force of law.


I have heard that too, but I am not sure if it is quite true for the Mediaeval period.

I have heard about Roman Law. I have heard about Visigoth law in Spain and Westrogoth law in Sweden. And of course these newer Swedish legislations. And King Ina's law, that seems to be a simplification of Justinian's CIC, for England, and Salic Law that seems to be an overriding exception (mainly in the inheritance department) overriding relevant parts but nothing else of Justinian.

Of course these written codes incorporated from start as much custom as they did legislation. And in jurisprudence there was and is a thing called "prejudicate" - where law is imprecise a court may look back to court decision so and so, which amounts in a way to a kind of custom.

For later periods, Medieval real law has sometimes survived as custom where not kept up as written law.

Non a rege lex, sed a lege rex - was a Mediaeval saying.

A Deo Rex, a Rege Lex - was a Jacobite one - disputed, I think by St Robert Bellarmine.

mercredi 24 novembre 2010

A FB friend OF A FB friend (thus not my own) admired Guenon and Evola: I do not

Guenon a great thinker? R U serious?

If so much as Seraphim Rose followed Guenon, for a while, does it make Guenon holy? St Augustine followed Manicheans for a while, does that make Manicheans holy?

Seriously: I have NOTHING against Pagan mythology except the passages where it most clearly implies a Pagan "theology", like Theogony (which also is not tradition, but private revelation), but I do find still-pagan philosophies a bug. Platonists and Aristotelians had the good sense to convert to Christianity en masse, followers of the poor mortals Krisna and Siddharta Gautama so far have not.

Even followers of that other poor deluded or deliberately deluding dead man Odin/Wotan, have had the sense to get Christian. In the Yorkshire mission it was after all the Odinist priest who destroyed his own temple after hearing a Christian missionary.

And the first Norwegian dynasty includes the posterity of Odin. Some say the brother in law of Burgundian king Gunthari, variously known as Sigurd and Sigfrid, descended from that man. It does not mean some incubus raped someone and got credit for it under the name of Odin, like with Hercules and Zeus, or Romulus and Mars: in Northern tales the Gods who had posterity walked around. And since one of the "divine" titles of Odin was the "god of segd"=runic magic, I find it a pretty safe guess he was a magician.

As for Evola, I hold him co-responsible for the evil movement around Georgia Guidestones. God curse his memory.

Scripsi die vigesimo quarto mensis novembris
Anno Domini MMX in Bibliotheca Pompidoliana,
Hans-Georg Lundahl

dimanche 21 novembre 2010

note about hell + A note about Hilarion Alfeev


note about hell
by Hans G. Lundahl on Sunday, 21 November 2010 at 15:45

link and answers:

Fr Timothy Curtis posted this link:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-simpson/understanding-hell-as-the_b_705988.html

"The same fire, the love of God, that ignites in the hearts of the faithful transmutes in the experience of those who reject it into the fire of hell; it purifies the former, but burns the latter."

OK: God is a natural force without will or direction. He does not inflict punishment but is automatically punishment. Hmmm ... no, I do not think this makes God more mercyful than the view of St Augustine and St THomas Aquinas.

Or than that of Dante, obviously.

And it is not what St Isaac the Syrian says, either.

St Augustine says as much as St Isaac: God has so much love for the hardened sinners, he refuses to destroy them - and so much hatred for their unjustice, he refuses to make them happy.

AR:

If tormenting someone eternally is "love" give me hate.


Ch A G:

It's more to do with the fact that your decisions/actions in this life (if they are, for want of a better term "bad") mean that God's fire burns you instead of nourishing you, as is God's intention.


GC:

Since God has not made us automata, and we are free to think and feel as we wish, he does not force us, even in eternity, to accept His love. A crude analogy might be music: a classical music lover might find sitting through a pop concert a really unpleasnant experience, and vice versa. People who have spent murderous lives might find a Kingdom of Love very painful



[@ Ch:] Well, that is Eric Simpson's view, I think it wrong.

St Augustine says: God loves everything he has created, but the spiritual creation (angelic and human creatures) more than the irrational one, the blessed and elect more than the damned and foreknown, and most of all the Humanity of Christ whose members the elect are.

Fr Timothy Curtis:


Therein lies an important difference between Orthodox and western forms of Christianity


Not between St Augustine and St Isaac, as far as I can see.

Eric Simpson takes a summing up of two patristic quotes that do not add up to his conclusion. Even if St Isaac the Syrian is a saint and a Church Father.

To take this a bit further (risking to be thought of as a lover of diatribe), there is a certain connexion to hypercorrectness and to V ec. Council.

The emperor asked that council to condemn 15 Origenist theses. All bishops except the Pope did so.

Hypercorrectness: over-emphasising a difference. When learning Latin syntax, I once was told I was too much avoiding the Latin constructions that correspond exactly to Swedish ones. A risk I think Orthos are running in the West, when relearning their own confession after getting used to Western thought sometimes as if they were learning it for the first time, as I was learning Latin.

There is also a real diatribe against Christianity, some people talk about a vengeful God. Some Christians try to please them, as some try to please Evolutionists and Heliocentrics.

But that is brought out not only by eternal damnation, but also by Flood and destruction of Sodom, and by Egyptian army sunk in the Red Sea. And one early Church Father says that in the era of NT this is stricter, since punishment is no longer death but precisely damnation.

We are not automata - it is now that I am answering Gillian Crow, yesterday at 10:30 was @ Ch. - but neither is God. Someone who has lead a murderous or harrassing life might be considered bad company in Heaven by the ones God wants to have there. Such a one not getting to Heaven might in one way be his own free decision, but in another way God's decision according to His justice.

Thinking of God's love as an automaton, as a natural force without intention, as something that hurts without ever intending to hurt anyone, because the hurt ones are those that are not agile enough to get the right angle of contact, is debasing the divine majesty. That is why I am against Eric Simpson's "alternative Orthodox view". And will have no communion with people calling it Orthodox.

...


A note about Hilarion Alfeev
by Hans-Georg Lundahl on Friday, 19 November 2010 at 18:09

which I posted on blog Eirenikon:

My dear diane, I was very pro-Hilarion until I read his polemics against the Catholic view of marriage as the sensuality of sex being primarily compensated by the good of offspring. He argues (in the Catechism in his website) that if so one would only have sex once a year or so. Which is wrong.

The attitude “primarily for offspring” requires us not to use any means of preventing conception while a couple is enjoying sex. Not to limit sex to “the only coitus in which a child is conceived” since it cannot be foreseen in each case if a child will be conceived or not, not even if a child has been conceived until menstruation does not come as usual.

St Robert Bellarmine was sure no Pope would legislate for what was in itself wrong. Contraception clearly belongs as much to that as usury or even more, and it is notorious that Orthodox used to be more lax on usury and are more lax on contraception than Roman Catholics.

MY problem with orthodox Church is not whether their sacraments have grace or not, but whether I need and will get these graces from their Sacraments. If ecumenic faction requires me to accept contraception and anti-ecumenic faction requires me to regard any Papism, including counterreformation and St Robert Bellarmine, as vile heresy, even requiring me to misconstrue like what St Robert Bellarmine says and loathe his theology for what they think is and I know is not in it, obviously I am no-where near getting any Orthodox Sacraments.

Especially if both factions require me to regret as heavily sinful what I think was righteous in my past and is righteous in my present.*

This sunday I celebrated the Feast of Christ the King, last sunday before All Hallows day, instituted by Pope Pius XI in St Nicolas de Chardonnet. I have not been to an “Orthodox” liturgy since Pentecost, in the sermon of which it was probably Benedict XVI who was maligned as scandalously uncharitable, without the mention of a name, but with clear reference to recent media hubbub.

I know that being in communion with maligners will not get me to heaven.

Here.

*Since then I have had reasons to wonder whether that is not also the case with Romans.

liberty and ecology vs malthusianism

by Hans G. Lundahl on Sunday, 21 November 2010 at 16:04
Joe Hargrave is a friend of mine, but his terminology sometimes puts me off.

Joe Hargrave:

Eco-fascism = genocide. Just like the old fascism.


http://www.insidecatholic.com/feature/littering-love.html

[I did not read this comment or even the article at first, but answered only Joe's first presenting comment] The article deals with a degenerate academic scumbag who compared having children to littering. These people must be opposed and stopped. And you traditionalists reading this had better understand the value of liberty in opposing these people. These are the people who are in charge of the state. They won't be replaced with Christians.


My dear: growing less wheat over all or making less bread would equal genocide. Making less transports, letting bread eaters be in higher proportion wheat growers would not equal genocide. Making less electricty, i e making bread eaters be in less proportion TV watchers, radio listeners, cinema goers would not equal genocide.

As for saying the old fascism was genocide, I take exception at such a BIG slur against Mussolini. Or against smaller fascisms: Franco, Salazar, Dollfuss + Schuschnigg. If you mean that NAZISM was genocide, say so.

[Then I read above comment but still not article]

"The article deals with a degenerate academic scumbag who compared having children to littering. These people must be opposed and stopped."

I would not call that ecofascism, but malthusianism. It is an insult both to ecologists and to fascists to compare Georgia Guidestones cultists to either.

"And you traditionalists reading this had better understand the value of liberty in opposing these people."

I do.

"These are the people who are in charge of the state."

Too true.

"They won't be replaced with Christians."

If so it is about time for Our Lord to come back.

I also understand the use of liberty in getting more ecological. I mean: in France, parents are required by law - or so I was told in 2005 - to have electricity in their houses. If they have not, they are given the choice of installing electricity (if need be on public expenses) or losing their children.

Reading the article I am reminded why I hate the people who have so far succeeded in stopping me from marriage and from rearing children.

It goes to the heart to see what one is missing.

And yes, both Trad Cath anti-liberals and people like you have been collaborating with the Helen Fisher types of my Swedish background.

Both kinds have pretended what the Helen Fishers have pretended: to wit I were unfit to be a family man. Both types have pretended I am unfit to earn my living as a writer:

a) because as ecologically conscious, and against electric over-consumption, I have been made out as being an "ecofascist" not very far from Helen Fisher;

b) the antiliberals have thought me too libertarian about living off begging (while keeping writing without pay);

c) libertarians like you have bundled me along with the people who attack liberty. Because I attack some sorely abused and not so necessary economic liberties. Such as taking interest. Or merging companies.

I am not part of, at least I do not want to be part of a future unchristian anti-liberal government - but opposing it is to my moral consciousness not identical with attacking all and sundry anti-liberal politicians in human and historic memory.

I am not part of and at least do not want to be part of a libertarian-on-all-accounts establishement that erodes the state to nothing and puts all power in private big corporations. Or informal networks.

Dollfuss and Schuschnigg - worst thing that happened to Jews was getting into fistfights. Franco and Salazar - helped Jews escape from Hitlerian persecution, though Franco limited the offer to Shepharads.

Mussolini: start - 38, no anti-Jewish racism; 38 - 43, racial segregation in marriage laws; 43 to the end: Mussolini was captive of the Germans except a few days as captive of partisans.

The mayor of Assisi was a fascist, and helped saving Jews.

CC: "Sir, Mussolini never invaded Ethiopia? Never sided with Hitler?"

Ethiopia was genocidal? About as much as Afghanistan in my opinion.

The goal was not to eradicate Ethiopians but to teach them courtesy with women, more recently known as women's rights. The excuse was customs like a show of bride capture "forced marriages" - as well as, possibly, "female circumcision". I have somewhere heard the Muslims who do that learned it from Ethiopian Christians.

Sided with Hitler? Yes, but not about killing (or even making captives among) Jews.

No Jews were deported from Italy before a date in 1943 known as founding of the Saló Republic. And in that, Mussolini was no longer an ally but a captive puppet of Hitler's.

It may be added that in 1943 Pius XII dealt with Ethiopian cases of "forced marriage" and found evidence of force insufficient for annulment. (Acta Apostolicae Sedis)

mercredi 10 novembre 2010

Transmit a spirit? Which one of them, there are mainly two?

.by Hans-Georg Lundahl on Sunday, 07 November 2010 at 21:41.

Mgr Fellay, to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of FSSPX (founded on diocesan level in perfect communion with a conservative bishop faithful to Pope Paul VI) and thirtieth of Institut Universaitaire St Pie X celebrated todays pontifical Mass.

One thing he said me struck me: Mgr Lefèbvre, in the Cathedral of Dakar, was dreaming about apostasy and realised there was only ONE solution: transmitting the Sacraments and the Doctrine was not enough, one had to transmit a spirit as well.

OK.

A Christian spirit.

OK.

Because there were just so m ...

No, I must have got this one wrong. I seemed to remember something vaguely synonymous to: just so many who received the sacraments and believed the doctrine but carried so little fruit because they did so in the wrong spirit.

Or, wait again. Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is where we make our sacrifice. We must unite ourselves to Christ. If we do not do so while assisting mass - and this he said - we make God a liar.

Is that so? Is lack of devotion, of whole heartedness, of unreserved offering of self not just irreverent in Holy Mass, but actually a worse offense than not assisting mass at all? If so, why did Church exact of us assistance at Holy Mass each Sunday and each Holiday of obligation?

As far as I can see, his preaching today is very akin to the liturgy in Novus Ordo I try to avoid by going there.

When certain N[ovus]O[rdo] priests say we should confess [in abridged confiteor or remade kyrie] that we have not always lived up to the graces we have been given, I feel bypassed, what about those of us who have actully sinned, like punch someone in the face, who when rejecting red coins was maybe offering to save me the thirty cents I had no yellow coins for? Or who, even if it was not anything we could help - at least it felt so to me - acvtually wanted to punch a priest in the face, because he was praying for a conversion that is impossible, since conversion from sins I had not committed. Not meaning I had committed no sins at all, but meaning I had committed quite other ones.

Such a liturgy says what today's sermon says, or feels like saying, to a man like me: even if you believe all the dogmas, you do not belong here, since you are not as devout as we.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Beaubourg/Paris
7/XI/2010

Added comment: Re title: Holy Spirit is transmitted by sacraments, and that is a dogma. Not first and foremost by natural efforts to "transmit a spirit".

But I think Dom Gérard did just fine transmitting a spirit in that sense too - only in his case the ones receiving were close disciples, like monks et c.

Sunday at 21:43

mardi 2 novembre 2010

Critiques of Testimonium Flavianum

A What were the texts? 1) somewhere else : The Question of Contemporary Evidence, 2) No, true enough Acharya, Varro did not write about Jesus ..., 3) What a blooper, Dan Barker from Atheist League!, 4) 1st C Historians, Wikipedia Category, 5) HGL's F.B. writings : Critiques of Testimonium Flavianum, 6) Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : ... on "Contemporary Historians Not Mentioning Jesus" (Answering aekara1987), 7) Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Challenged Again on Testimonium Flavianum,

B How were they transmitted? 1) somewhere else : Laci Green likes strawmen?, 2) Variation on the Scriptoria Game,


For a possible hint of Jesus's historicity, Christian authorities relied heavily on a single brief paragraph in the works of the respected Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, who was born in 37 AD/CE, served as governor of Galilee and traveled extensively in the very same area where Jesus allegedly lived and taught. If anyone was in a position to report the wonder-workings of a local holy man in his own parents' generation, it was Josephus, a dedicated reporter of minute details. Yet in all his voluminous works, the single paragraph (Ant. 18.3.3)-called the "Testimonium Flavianum" or "TF"-says only that Jesus was

When we see it, it is not very only. It is a very succinct but not misleading testimony. I wish hippies were as correct and only correct about Jesus as this testimonium:

"a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day."

- teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure - a Socrates then?

- He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. - So, unusually cosmopolitan for a Jewish Socrates since Elishah, Daniel or Jonah? A prophet?

- He was [the] Christ - now that is even a bit more than a prophet.

- and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross - oops, a cross is a less confortable death than a cup of hemlock! And Socrates was only condemned on popular prejudice, Jesus on instigation of the aristocracy taking trouble to collaborate with a detested occupant to do the job. Did that discourage the movement?

- those that loved him at the first did not forsake him - Judas Ischariot is indeed not among the four first called disciples.

- for he appeared to them alive again the third day - resurrection.

- as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him - resurrexit, sicut scripsit then. [sic, vide comment]

- and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day - not unimportant as concerned with the prophecy of Gamaliel, as recorded in Acts: if it is from God, it will remain, if it is from man it will be destroyed.

This means - if the passage is genuine - that Josephus was either Christian or benevolent doubter, or wrote against his grain. As an open Christian, it is not probable he would have ruled Galilea - is it now? A "closet case Christian" a k a Nicodemus type (a phenomenon gay movement has more problems with than Christians) might have vented his conscience just once briefly. So could a doubter, one who had, up till that moment, decided to wait before deciding and who then did not decide. A man admitting inconvenient truth he hated might have used that tactique too.

The problems with this famous passage are many.

To the anti-Christian writer, there is ONE big problem, if he accepts the passage as genuine, he is forced to admit what he tries to deny, that Jesus was historic.

First of all, it is noticeably out of context with the surrounding material.

Which the writer conveniently enough does not quote.

Second, it evidently did not appear in the early copies of Josephus's works, nor in the second-century version quoted by Church father Origen, who would certainly have mentioned it if it had been there.

Absence from handwritten copies is an overrated argument. They neither had copy-paste send and print-out nor even printing press back then.

The TF does not appear in any known works until the beginning of the fourth century

As quoted, that is. In itself it is, if genuine, from Josephus' lifetime.

and is first quoted by Bishop Eusebius, the enthusiastic advocate of what he apparently called "holy lying" for the greater glory of the Church, known to have been responsible for many interpolations, revisions and blatant forgeries.

And therefore all later quotes are quoting Eusebius? Well, that takes the wind out of the sail of people using "reliable" Eusebius' silence about St Helen's discovery of Holy Cross, against that story. It is after all more convenient to be silent about truth than to lie against it.

Moreover, Josephus was a Jew and would hardly have referred to Jesus's ministry as "the truth" or "wonderful things"; nor would he have called Jesus "the Christ."

What kind of Jew? Not a Talmudic one as later known, of whom that description is true.

Neither could he have mentioned "the tribe of Christians," for there were no Christians in his day. Christianity did not get off the ground until the second century.

What the anti-Christian writer is trying to prove. Before proving it he cannot use this as a critique of Testimonium Flavianum.

Philo Judaeus (20 BCE-50 AD/CE) was born before the beginning of the Christian era and lived until long after Jesus's time. Philo knew Jerusalem well, and would have known of Herod's massacre of children, plus Jesus's miracles, well-attended preachings, triumphal entry parade and crucifixion, with its attendant earthquake, reanimated corpses and many other wonders. He would have heard about the resurrection before many witnesses.

Probably yes. But considering his role, would he have talked about it? First of all, he was an apologist for Old Testament Jewish religion - I will not say Judaism, since that religion began as known now after him, at Jamnia, after destruction of Jerusalem - and part of his arguments was playing down the bloody parts of Old Testament by claiming it was allegorical (after all the destruction of Pharao's army was a delicate subject in Alexandria, where last diadochian ruler, Cleopatra, had ruled Pharaonic style) and Herod's massacre did not quite fit into that programme. Furthermore such a thing is the kind of work authorities tend to hush up, Philo might have heard a rumor, but an obfuscated one. As was so much the case about Katyn massacre until very recently (recommend the film by Wajda, by the way). As for Resurrection, if he heard of it it was very probably by the men who came to Alexandria as converts and missionaries, and who constituted another community than his own or the one he grew up in. He might have thought them right, but left it up to them to speak up on it.

Neither Flavius Josephus nor Philo Judaeus were Jews as we know them now. Jamnia had not yet condemned Christianity as "minim and goyim". Philo used and Flavius had heard of Septuagint, which the Jews of Jamnia condemned. After the destruction of Jerusalem, that took place in year 70, the Jewish rabbis assembled in Jamnia from years 80 to 90 and took a lot of decisions, anti-Roman and anti-Christian. Only from then on is the word "Jew" incompatible with "Christian", as is also seen in the fact that the enemies of Jesus, in Gospels written before Jamnia (Matthew, Mark, Luke) are enumerated as such and such a theologic clan or sacred profession, but in St John, written after Apocalypse, and that Apocalypse written after Jamnia, as "Jews" - a word which in that connexion is not put in Our Lord's own mouth, until he talks to Pilate. But Philo and Flavius were pre-Jamnia.

Philo celebrated Septuaginta day, the day in which God inspired 70 men to make one and same translation of Torah independently of each other, but from Jamnia on Septuaginta day is a "dies nefastus", a "black day" like the "ides of march" to Romans. Flavius, in the beginning of his Antiquitates Judaeorum gives a genealogy from Adam to Noah agreeing with Gospel of St Luke and Septuaginta, whereas extant Masoretic text and Vulgate agree on a shorter one, omitting Cainaan from the descendants of Seth. Still, Flavius is thought as having used the Septuagint in places, but he claims to be translating himself from Hebrew.

The oldest collection of what is now known as Talmud, Mishna, was unknown to both Philo and Flavius, that is indeed from second century, published on order of "Judah the Prince".

Hans-Georg Lundahl
All Souls' Day 2010
Mairie du III Arr.,
Paris

lundi 1 novembre 2010

I once tried to write a novel about "Jack Denys" ...


by Hans-Georg Lundahl on Monday, 01 November at 16:34

... "Jack Denys" as in Iakkos Dionysius, and "tried to" as in one chapter or so with levitation inspired by Mary Poppins, adding some topsy-turvydom thought appropriate for someone personifying wine. By the way, why are so many Christians attacking Harry Potter but not Mary Poppins? P L Travers was a known adept of Gurdjieff:


She had studied the Gurdjieff System under Jane Heap and in March, with the help of Jessie Orage, she met the mystic Gurdjieff who would have a great effect on her, as well as on several other literary figures.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._L._Travers


Now, after such a "literary carreer" in childhood, I maybe should make up for a bit of a Pagan slant in it by countering real Pagan slander on that theme:

The sacrificed god Dionysus, another son of the Heavenly Father, first performed Jesus's miracle of turning water into wine at temples in Sidon and other places, representing the rain of heaven fructifying the vine. In Alexandria, the Dionysian/Christian miracle was demonstrated literally by means of an ingenious system of siphons invented by an engineer named Heron, to enhance the awe of the faithful....


http://stellarhousepublishing.com/jesusmyth.html


Without even looking it up, how do the siphons of the Alexandria, Heron version, add up to the sealed wine skins of the Cana, Jesus Christ version? Obviously they do not. If perfectly unknown servants seal off perfectly beforehand unseen wine skins, you are in no position to add an ingenious system of siphons even if it was invented by Heron. Probably Our Lord in Egypt heard about that Svengali trick and had an urge one day to make it better ... by a real miracle, which only he could have done. Or Dionysius, if ever he did create such an entity.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Beaubourg/G. Pompidou
1/XI/2010, All Saints &
Sts Cosmas and Damien

Anno Domini 1000 the Church Christ founded was present ...

... in Old and in New Rome. I hope dearly it did not ceasse to be the case 1054, as it was present in Rome and Écône 1970, and i hope it did not cease to be the case 1988, and that Sts Theresa and Petka are rejoicing together on this day of all saints, as on the byznatine one. WHO holds me as a heretic for this hope?