[MD] The SOM/MOQ discrepancy.

[Krimel]

>[Ron]
>The original christian movement was a Quality movement but it became 
>dominated by the universal good once again and once again western 
>civilazation became seperated.

Marsha
How do you know this?

[Ron]
Lots of reading Greek philosophy and tracing the historical origins
of the early christian church, reading the new testament after reading
greek philosophy  allows one to see the paralells. Because of how
it is worded (translations kept in mind) I question if an actual Jesus
did exist, It does say that he was the word made flesh. The universal
made particular.
But you are aware, that we "know" nothing, we derrive meaning from patterns.

[Krimel]
I see no reason to doubt the existence of a historical Jesus. Our evidence
for his existence is at least as compelling as our evidence for any other
historical figure from that time period or before including Socrates and
certainly any of the pre-Socratics.

It may be true that the early Christian church was influenced by the Greeks,
but for Jesus himself and for his earliest followers the influence was
almost entirely negative. Jesus was Jewish and his teachings are for and
about Jews. Many of the Jews of Jesus time had been Hellenized; Paul is a
good example of this. This point is well illustrated by the practice of
epispasm. This was an operation or a technique for reversing circumcision.
It was practiced because, "Hellenistic and Roman societies widely practiced
public nakedness. But they abhorred baring the tip of the penis, called the
glans. To expose the glans was considered vulgarly humorous, indecent or
both.” (http://www.cirp.org/library/restoration/hall1/) As a result, to
preserve their social status, some Hellenistic Jews sought to reverse the
process.

For conservative Jews this kind of appeasement to the conquerors both Greek
and Roman was blasphemy. The adoption of Hellenistic practices was to be
condemned. An illustration for this point can be found in Jesus' famous
saying, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the
things that are God's" While most today hear this as a call for obedience,
it is unlikely that the Jews of the day heard it that way. Jesus says this
after noting that the face of Caesar is on a coin. Those Roman coins were
bad news to the Jews. They could not be used as offerings in the Temple for
instance, which let to a brisk trade in money exchange where roman coins
were traded for Temple coinage to be used as sacrifice or tithes. The land
and the fruits of the land on the other hand belonged to God. Jesus was not
advocating accommodation to Roman occupation or Greek culture. Rather he was
saying quite the opposite. Furthermore, it was his violent encounter with
the "money changers" at the Temple that ultimately led to his execution for
sedition.

The early Christian church on the other hand was quite a different story.
The Church evolved out of the Gentile ministry of Paul. Here Paul was
seeking to convert non-Jews into the faith. To do so he had to appeal to the
Hellenistic understanding and to reject certain specifically Jewish
practices including Jewish dietary laws and especially circumcision. It is
clear in the New Testament that Paul was at odds with Jesus disciples in
this respect. In Galatians Paul basically cusses out James the Brother of
Jesus, John and Peter for their adherence to Jewish law. In Acts those same
disciples are the ones that threaten to execute Paul, forcing him to appeal
to the Roman authorities.

The real question for me has always been: what did those in the Hellenistic
world see in Judiasm/Christianity that drew them to it. Elaine Pagels makes
the case that it was the strict moral code of the Jews. In a time of
promiscuity and excess there was an attraction to faithfulness both
spiritual and sexual. I take this to indicate that while the Greeks had
applied reason to science, mathematics and a host of other areas, they like
later philosophers, including Pirsig, in my view, failed utterly to provide
a reasoned underpinning for morality.

The Jews on the other hand developed a serious and effective system of
morality without bothering to provide it with a rational basis. It worked
and it continues to work. Jewish morality works because it evolved over a
period of more than 1000 years before Christ and has continued as an organic
living and lived system in the 2000 years since. It requires no intellectual
underpinning.

This split between the orthodox Jewish followers of Jesus and what became
the Christian church can be seen in layers throughout the New Testament. The
notion of a God/Man for instance was not just absent from the Jewish
tradition it was regarded as blasphemy. In contrast the Greek gods were a
randy bunch, mating with human women every chance they could.

In short the relationship between Jewish and Hellenistic thought is very
complex.