marco wrote:
shnarkle wrote:
The keepers of the law are losing their status to this Johnny come lately who is grabbing all the attention. This isn't good for business. Notice that the author says "all" the people are listening to him.
Interesting extrapolation on the passage. The use of "all" is a mistaken piece of hyperbole. It cannot have any meaning.
It has meaning to the authors of the texts, as well as those reading it especially when it comes to the church's ability to sway people to their point of view. Setting your willful ignorance aside, history has shown that they were effective at converting "all" of Rome to Christianity as the official religion.
Of course those who sought Christ's view were disingenuous as were those who handed him the coin.
And yet they genuinely believed they had figured out a way to outsmart him. They sincerely believed this enough to risk making fools of themselves in the process.
The simple point is that Christ manoeuvres out of each situation by presenting a question that appears to make people think.
Yes, it's as if he is making the people around him more intelligent, isn't it? He is lifting them up from their thoughtless existence.
It is significant that Christ does not condemn stoning;
It isn't significant in the greater context of the gospels as a whole in that Jesus has no reservations about stoning those who dishonor their parents(Matt.15:4), and to sin is to dishonor one's parents. Yet another reason why this has nothing to do with whether or not Jesus would condone stoning. He clearly did. On the surface this was nothing more than the Jewish equivalent of a bar exam.
Sadly, stoning is still performed in the religiously barbaric places of our world. Bible and Koran have much to answer for.
This text is the answer to your misplaced metonymy. Those doing the stoning are the ones who have to answer for their self righteous judgement over others, not the document that points out they're unqualified to carry out the stoning in the first place.
As far as the bible goes, the laws are in place for a holy people who aren't going to be sinning in the first place. Those who do sin don't belong. Applying these laws to any society that isn't holy is preposterous to begin with. To say the law is at fault is to pretend adultery is a solemn covenant between two people for the purpose of raising children. In a world where human waste is treasured instead of flushed down the toilet, toilets are blamed and destroyed for a stench they didn't create.
Sadly, people who have no background or knowledge of the bible or Koran are just as likely to throw stones and kill people as those who do. The irony here is that the biblical texts point this out. It isn't the text that is the problem. The common denominator in all cases is humanity.
But the tale does illustrate that Christ could perform well against hoi polloi.
A mistaken piece of hyperbole. the hoi polloi cannot have any meaning. The scribes and Pharisees aren't the hoi polloi.
I don't believe he was tested against an Aristotle so his debating skills are hard to judge unless we give credence to his supposed childhood adventure in the Temple.
Take a gander at the Talmud sometime. You can even download it. These aren't the kind of minds to shrink from the skills of an Aristotle.
