On Jan 4, 12:59 pm, "S. A. Joyce"
SPAMatt.net> wrote:>
>
>>>> "S. A. Joyce"
SPAMatt.net> wrote in message
>>>>news:A8jdj.338160$kj1.232779@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
>>>> I don't doubt that you found it in a book that St. Jerome
>>>> is the first who associated "lucifer" with Satan, but it
>>>> seems to me that it is easy to deduce this, since the
>>>> passage speaking of him as being Lucifer so easily shows
>>>> that this is Satan that is being addressed.>
>>> If that's the case, you might want to explain it to all those historians,
>>> linguists, and theologians, who have thoroughly analyzed the text in
>>> Latin and compared it to the original Hebrew, who are familiar with the
>>> historical socio-political milieu of that place and time, and who have
>>> subsequently concluded that this instance of the "Lucifer" metaphor most
>>> likely refers to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon and oppressor of the
>>> Jews from 597 to 538 BCE.
>
>> It's really good to consider what great learned
>> people do have to say, but from your very words,
>> you have limited those scholars only to those that
>> say what you are saying. I'm afraid that does not
>> cover all the studies that are made, do you think?
>
> Of course. I'm not concerned with starry-eyed Sunday-school "studies" that
> don't look beneath the surface. I'm more inclined to take seriously people
> who have made in-depth stucy of scripture in the context of the historically
> understood socio-political context of the day, than I am those who assume
> that whatever is written in the KJV (or the Koran, or any other holy book)
> can be taken simply at face value. It's not that I question whether they're
> in earnest. I just question whether people with little knowledge of history
> are competent to assess the true meaning of literature with such a complex
> background, written by people with various axes to grind, selected and
> edited by other people with agendas to push, and translated by people who
> sometimes mangled metaphors.
>
> In other words, I'm no more likely to accept Pat Robinson's take on
> "biblical truth" than I am George W. Bush's take on Iraqi weapons of mass
> destruction. Once it becomes evident to me that some source, or some
> category of sources, is as notoriously unreliable as the word of a used-car
> salesman, then that source loses any trust I might have had in it, and it
> becomes automatically suspect in my estimation. And I simply don't have the
> time or patience to sift through tons of junk in the faint hope of
> discovering a grain or two of truth.
>
>> Here's the thing, though. The Lord specifies that
>> this one he is addressing in the passage, has done
>> things no man on earth has ever done. Especially
>> not Nebuchadnezzar. Would you actually take
>> the time to read what I've written below? It would
>> be helpful. You see, if all of the scholars are only
>> investigating the name Lucifer and not paying
>> attention to the actual text, then they will miss
>> that more than the king is being spoken to here.
>
> Of course good scholars pay attention to the whole text--and evaluate it in
> terms of what is known of the time and culture in question. They wouldn't
> be good scholars if they didn't.
>
> The only reasons I dwell on the Lucifer theme here are (1) that someone on
> the thread mentioned a passage "I [Jesus] am the root and the offspring of
> David, and the bright and morning star" (morning star = lucifer in Latin),
> and (2) that the introduction of Satan into Jewish religion is what
> eventually led to Christianity after a few centuries. So I find the topic
> important enough to be worth a little investigation, even though I'm not
> myself a biblical scholar. And some of what I've learned is not what most
> Christians have been routinely taught in Sunday school..
>
>> --
>> For example...
>> Nebuchadnezzar did NOT fall from Heaven.
>> Nebuchadnezzar could not possibly have set his
>> throne above God's throne.
>
> Not literally. Metaphorically only. But metaphor is often the stuff of
> prophecy--and with good reason. Prophecy is a hazardous profession in times
> of oppression. So when the prophet's own neck is on the line, he speaks in
> riddles that are decipherable to others of his own culture, but not readily
> understandable to the oppressor--or to anyone else, for that matter. It's
> not surprising, then, that millennia later people are inclined to interpret
> cryptic passages out of context in a variety of ways having nothing to do
> with the original intent, and thus to weave them into an intriguing web--not
> unlike the folks who like to search for "coded messages" in the phone book,
> and (to no one's surprise) "find" just what they're looking for.
>
>> Nebuchadnezzar is
>> not going to be going down into the pit.
>
> The pit. "Sheol" in Hebrew. Not "hell," but more akin to the Hades of the
> Greeks. That's another interesting bit about the evolution of thought about
> afterlife and such. But I've other things to do today, so I won't go into
> it.
>
>> The
>> Devil is. Then he will be loosed again after the
>> thousand years for a time. A real biblical scholar
>> would acknowledge the passage in the Revelation.
>> You will find yet another passage like this one.
>> One addresses the King of Babylon. Another
>> addresses the King of Tyre. Same conversation,
>> same way. The Lord carries on a running
>> conversation with Satan through certain ones in
>> the Bible if you put all the passages together.
>
>>>> This is in chapter
>>>> 14 of Isaiah, and it prophesies saying that this one, Lucifer,
>>>> has fallen from Heaven, which identifies him as being a
>>>> fallen angel. It says he endeavers to raise himself above
>>>> the throne of God, and that by him the whole earth was
>>>> made to tremble. It says that later people will look at him
>>>> narrowly, that means that they shall squint their eyes with
>>>> contempt in them towards what he's tried to do, I believe.
>>>> People reading this in the first century would have poured
>>>> over every word of it, discussing what was meant by
>>>> Isaiah and how this seems to be referring to none other
>>>> than Satan. The king that originally is addressed in the
>>>> passage did not do those things listed. The whole earth did
>>>> not tremble because of him. Nor was he fallen from Heaven.
>
>>> No, not literally. But this prophecy is metaphorical in nature. The
>>> Babylonian Empire "ruled the world" that was known to the Hebrews at the
>>> time. Metaphorically, Nebuchadnezzar had made the earth tremble in 597
>>> BCE when he crushed the Judean rebellion and exiled the Jews, and again
>>> in 586 when he destroyed the Temple at Jerusalem, and thereby "endeavored
>>> to rise above the throne of [the Hebrew] God." And he figuratively fell
>>> from the "heaven" of great rulers when he was deposed by the Persians in
>>> 538. How can we be sure that this reference is metaphorical? Because the
>>> planet Venus (Helel / Phosphoros / Lucifer) hasn't fallen from heaven;
>>> it's still up there, almost as bright as ever (discounting effects of
>>> smog).
>
>> But this Lucifer it says FELL from Heaven. God was
>> addressing the devil through the king, just as he does
>> through other kings. He is addressing the power
>> behind the throne. This Lucifer has the same thing said
>> to him by the people with the narrowing of their eyes
>> that the devil has in the Revelation. The Lord is addressing
>> Satan through the king.
>
>>> A first-century CE reader would never have come across the "Lucifer"
>>> reference, since that didn't appear until the Hebrew and Greek scriptures
>>> (in which "the morning star" is "helel" and "phosophoros" respectively)
>>> were translated intto Latin, in which the morning star is known as
>>> "lucifer" (the light-bearer). We know these are not references to the
>>> sun, because they are the names given by the ancients to the morning
>>> aspect of the planet we call Venus. If they'd been alluding to the sun,
>>> they'd have used "helios" (Greek) and "sol" (Latin). Jerome would thus
>>> have called Satan "Sol" instead of "Lucifer," and so on.
>
>>>> So Isaiah is prophesying what the Lord is telling him to say,
>>>> and the address is straight through the king, and to the one
>>>> who pulls the strings that makes the king be evil, which is
>>>> Satan who has made his power play trying to take over.
>
>>> Pretty neat trick for a prophet who'd never heard of Satan, since the
>>> Hebrews didn't adopt the Satan concept until more than a century and a
>>> half after Isaiah's death. Come to think of it, Isaiah's contemporaries
>>> wouldn't have heard of Satan either, so they wouldn't have understood
>>> such a prophecy if Isaiah had actually made it. Consequently, they
>>> likely would have stoned Isaiah as a blasphemer rather than esteemed him
>>> as a prophet. As it turns out, though, Isaiah died in 692 BCE, and the
>>> second and third prophecies attributed to him weren't made until more
>>> than a century and a half later. (Why? Well, there could be various
>>> reasons. But the most charitable one I can think of is that prophecy in
>>> times of oppressive tyranny can be extremely hazardous to one's health.
>>> Perhaps the actual anonymous prophet arranged to have it credited to the
>>> long-dead Isaiah as the source, in order to save his own skin.)
>
>> It is NOT the truth that no one heard of Satan.
>
> I don't think anyone made such a statement, let alone claimed it was true.
> By the time Jesus came on the scene, Satan was a pretty well developed
> concept (particularly in some activist Jewish sects, such as the Essenes).
> In fact, we can reasonably infer that the introduction of the Satan concept
> into Jewish religion following the Babylonian exile is what led to
> Christianity five centuries later. (People believe a powerful spirit drives
> them to sin. People fear they'll be condemned for yielding to sin. So
> people want to be saved from sin. So they need a savior. So someone comes
> along and offers to take all their sins away. So he becomes wildly popular.
> It clearly couldn't have happened if the Satan idea hadn't caught on first.)
>
> It's abundantly clear that the introduction of this Jewish remake of a
> Persian devil around 500 BCE, and its subsequent development and
> incorporation into Jewish demonology and eschatology, have had profound
> effects after that time. What we cannot credibly claim is that the concept
> of Satan was the subject of any prophecy made before that concept was
> conceived. No one is claiming that the idea of Satan hadn't been well
> developed during the five centuries before Jesus arrived on the scene. So
> the following bit seems rather pointless:
>
>> That's a
>> modern invention. In Jesus' day when Jesus spoke of
>> Satan, all those Jews that he spoke to had NO trouble
>> at all knowing who he was talking about. None! You
>> can see this in the Bible. And by the way you CAN
>> discern who Satan is in the Old Testament, he's
>> mentioned by name there. Especially in the book of
>> Job he returns and has an agenda of accusing the
>> brethren. But that doesn't matter because if someone
>> actually reads what it says is being said in Jesus' day,
>> everyone knew what he was saying. Satan is mentioned
>> by name 34 times in the New Testament and that is
>> written by Jewish writers, except for Luke who was not
>> Jewish. None of them had any concept of a Satan being
>> absent from their beliefs.
>
>>>> So, I just wanted to make the point that those that claim
>>>> that St. Jerome was the first to notice this is really a stretch.
>
>>> It's not that Jerome "noticed" it, because it didn't exist as such until
>>> he actually established such a connection. He took what previously--to
>>> all the biblical prophets, kings, and apostles--had been nothing more
>>> than a metaphorical allusion, and misinterpreted it as a literal name or
>>> identity of Satan. In itself it was a subtle change, but it had enormous
>>> implications. For it potentially altered--centuries after-the-fact--any
>>> prophecy or other biblical allusion to "the morning star," "the coming of
>>> day," "angel of light," or any other such expression that might translate
>>> into Latin as "lucifer," thereby creating a bogus channel for Lucifer
>>> (not Lucifer the morning star, but Lucifer-as-Satan) to be held
>>> responsible for all kinds of mischief all the way back to Genesis, 3,500
>>> years before he was even conceived. (Ironically, this suggests that
>>> Satan is more powerful than God, since the Bible makes no claim that God
>>> ever did anything without first being in existence himself.)
>
>>> What Jerome did in effect was to conflate lucifer--the Latin word for the
>>> morning star--with the Judaeo-Christian demon Satan, on the sole basis
>>> that they are sometimes referred to by the same term, even though they
>>> are completely different things. Such an erroneous conflation is called
>>> an "equivocation error," a logical fallacy. Great scholars and simple
>>> laymen alike have been unwittingly tripping over it ever since.
>
>>>> I think St. Jerome if he could say something about now
>>>> would agree with that. I would not want to take away from
>>>> his discovery, though, I certainly would credit him with
>>>> making that notation and himself prophesying with his
>>>> statements he must have made about this.
>
>>> Any changes in prophecy that resulted from Jerome's goof are not new
>>> prophecy, but simply distortions of the original. (Fundamentalists
>>> categorically condemn "liberal interpretation" of scripture, but
>>> apparently it's okay if it happens to suit their agenda.)
>
>> You have something mixed up. The word "Fundamentalist"
>> as you are using it is not the right word. What you are
>> describing is a person called a "Conservative." That's what
>> I am. A Liberal is a person who often insists that the Bible
>> is not literal, but metaphorical. A Conservative mostly will
>> be looking at what is literally said in the scriptures. But
>> an ultra-Liberal is a person who doesn't believe anything
>> in the Bible, only the things it teaches. For example, they
>> don't believe the Bible speaks of a literal flood of Noah.
>> They will say it's a metaphor. But that idea doesn't pan out,
>> since God gives great details of the dimensions of the ark.
>
> Which is still another problem, since a mating pair of each of the millions
> of non-marine species known today could not have fit into a three-decked
> wooden vessel of those dimensions, along with three or four months' supply
> of food for all. That's not to say there were no floods in Mesopotamia in
> those days--there's geological evidence that there were, not to mention
> parallel legends in Sumerian and other traditions. But that's another
> story.
>
>
>
>>>>>> Jesus IS the morning star.
>
>>>>> Okay, Ike, whatever you say:
>
>>>>> Jesus IS the morning star.
>>>>> The morning star IS the planet Venus.
>>>>> Therefore, Jesus IS the planet Venus.
>
>>>>> All in plain English. That's where it leads. Happy?
>
>>>> It leads to even more of a metaphor. When Jesus was
>>>> resurrected, he promised another like himself which
>>>> he called "the Comforter." That is the indwelling
>>>> presence (sealed to presence) of the Holy Spirit which
>>>> comes to live inside of a man who says he will now
>>>> follow Christ and put his trust in him and do what he
>>>> tells him to do with his life. The Comforter is himself
>>>> the Lord, but in his Spirit form. Because the Lord is
>>>> so wonderful, he can be in Heaven and at the same
>>>> time dwell in the hearts of men who turn to him, and
>>>> look to him for sustainance and salvation. This is that
>>>> "Daystar" that shall rise in one's heart every day when
>>>> he wakes up and pays attention to the agenda that the
>>>> Lord has mapped out for the person that day. This also,
>>>> is overlooked as being only the planet Venus. It is not
>>>> referring only to that planet, or maybe not at all, because
>>>> the most obvious morning star and or daystar is the sun,
>>>> which people forget is a star, itself.
>
>>> If the "sun" had been intended, it would have been called "Helios" in
>>> Greek and "Sol" in Latin. Phosphoros and Lucifer are the respective
>>> names of the morning aspect of the planet Venus.
>
>> Congratulations, you have a feasible sounding argument
>> until you see that this Lucifer fell from Heaven, which as
>> you observed earlier Venus has never done.
>
> I've already pointed out that reputable scholars interpret this "morning
> star" metaphor as applying to Nebuchadnezzar, and the evidence they offer in
> favor of that argument is passably, if less than absolutely, convincing. If
> you choose to believe something else, that's fine, but your beliefs are not
> my concern.
>
>
>
>>>> It rises every single
>>>> day from our perspective on the earth. The sun is our
>>>> daystar, and Jesus is the one that is the SON that is our
>>>> Daystar given by Almighy God to us.
>
>>> The "sun"-"son" connection exists only in English, which didn't emerge as
>>> a language (from Celtic and Scandinavian roots) until about the ninth
>>> century CE. There is no such connection in Hebrew, Greek, or Latin. Do
>>> you also suppose there's some mystical connection between SATAN and
>>> SANTA, or between GOD and DOG? You're welcome, of course, to base your
>>> notions on such accidents of language if you like. But if you do, I
>>> would caution you that you won't be taken seriously, except by small
>>> children, and perhaps by some adults who think like small children.
>
>> Yes the similarity of the words sun and son in English
>> are not in the Hebrew. But it's amazing to me that in
>> the fulness of time when English is spoken now all
>> over the world, that it's in the very time when son and
>> sun are similar. Also the street in Jerusalem called
>> "Straight." and also the Wilderness of SIN. By the way,
>> Jesus said that the way small children think is the way
>> in which adults should be in order to receive him and
>> also have access to Heaven.
>
> Yes, childlike gullibility is indeed helpful in indoctrinating anyone into
> any religion, not just Christianity. In the very young there is no barrier
> of critical reasoning skills, or prior knowledge of science, history, and
> philosophy, to overcome. On the other hand, we don't usually assign to our
> children the responsibility of making life-and-death decisions.
You mean by "we" you and your husband or wife or partner and your
kids?
> For it is
> this same lack of knowledge and thinking skills that leaves them unequipped
> to deal effectively with serious and complex issues, and susceptible to the
> wiles of unscrupulous villains.
