Clarification/Follow-up by ETWolverine on 04/07/06 2:29 pm:
>>>My question asked what YOU would do if you were in a Dump City (real places, real experiences!) situation.

Wait for your president to meet your needs? You have done that, and it is not happening! Now what do you do?<<<

First of all, I wouldn't wait for the government of Mexico or the USA to fix my problems. I would attempt to fix them myself.

If that didn't work, I'd move elsewhere. But I would do it legally, and I would follow the laws of wherever I was moving. In fact, my family did exactly that about 60 years ago. My grandparents spent years in DP Camps in Germany after the Holocaust under conditions that weren't much better than what they experienced in the Ghettos and Death Camps, while they waited for permission to come to the USA. My parents were born in those hovels. So please don't tell me it's not possible to follow the rules to come here. The argument is pure baloney. Millions of people immigrate annually LEGALLY. If they can do it, so can everyone else.

Fact is that the USA has the most generous legal immigration policy of any nation in the entire world. It's not that hard to come here legally. Time consuming, yes, but not hard. So there is no reason to do so illegally.

As for the dehumanization of the Jews under Hitler, you are correct. But again, nobody is dehumanizing the illegal Latino immigrants. Certainly not the LEGAL latino immigrants who to a man believe that the illegals should be deported. Please show me examples (other than the Aryan Brotherhood and other neo-Nazis, who hate everyone) of people who are calling for all Mexicans, both legal and illegal to be deported.

You are ascribing racism to something that isn't a racism issue. It's a border security, economic security and crime issue.

Elliot

Clarification/Follow-up by Erewhon on 04/07/06 2:36 pm:

Elliot,

Just a little food for thought:

[W]ithout consideration of "traditions" and prejudices, it [Germany] must find the courage to gather our people and their strength for an advance along the road that will lead this people from its present restricted living space to new land and soil, and hence also free it from the danger of vanishing from the earth or of serving others as a slave nation.
--- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

The geopolitical concept of Lebensraum ("living space") was proffered by others in Germany decades before Adolf Hitler came to power. In 1871, for example, Lebensraum was a popular political slogan during the establishment of a united Germany. At this time, Lebensraum usually meant finding additional "living space" by adding colonies, following the examples of the British and French empires.

In an era when the earth is gradually being divided up among states, some of which embrace almost entire continents, we cannot speak of a world power in connection with a formation whose political mother country is limited to the absurd area of five hundred thousand square kilometers.
--- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

Adding living space was believed to strengthen Germany by helping solve internal problems, make it militarily stronger, and help make Germany become economically self-sufficient by adding food an other raw material sources.

The concept of Lebensraum was discussed and developed during the following decades by scholars Karl Haushofer, Sir Halford Mackinder, and Friedrich Ratzel. In 1926, Hans Grimm's book Volk ohne Raum ("A People without Space") was published.

This book became a classic on Germany's need for space and the book's title soon became a popular National Socialist slogan.

Hitler changed the concept of Lebensraum. Rather than adding colonies to make Germany larger, Hitler wanted to enlarge Germany within Europe.

For it is not in colonial acquisitions that we must see the solution of this problem, but exclusively in the acquisition of a territory for settlement, which will enhance the area of the mother country, and hence not only keep the new settlers in the most intimate community with the land of their origin, but secure for the total area those advantages which lie in its unified magnitude.
--- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

Hitler looked east for Germany's expansion in Europe. It was in this view that Hitler added a racist element to Lebensraum. By stating that the Soviet Union was run by Jews, then Hitler concluded Germany had a right to take Russian land.

For centuries Russia drew nourishment from this Germanic nucleus of its upper leading strata. Today it can be regarded as almost totally exterminated and extinguished. It has been replaced by the Jew.

Impossible as it is for the Russian by himself to shake off the yoke of the Jew by his own resources, it is equally impossible for the Jew to maintain the mighty empire forever. He himself is no element of organization, but a ferment of decomposition.

The Persian empire in the east is ripe for collapse. And the end of Jewish rule in Russia will also be the end of Russia as a state.
--- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

Thus, in Nazi ideology, Lebensraum meant the expansion of Germany to the east in search of a unity between the German Volk and the land (the Nazi concept of Blood and Soil). The Nazi modified theory of Lebensraum became Germany's foreign policy during the Third Reich.
It also necessitated the destruction of Jews who were, he said, "[A] ferment of decomposition."

Clarification/Follow-up by ETWolverine on 04/07/06 3:23 pm:
Your post mixes two sepparate concepts. One was Lebestraum, German expansion. The other was the concept of the Ubermenchen, the Master Race concept. Destroying the Jews was necessary to purify the nation, and expansion was necessary to grow the nation in Hitler's mind. These two concepts worked together and necessitated the destruction of the Jews in any area that Germany conquered as well. But they were separate concepts, one social (the master race concept) the other political and economic (Lebenstraum).

Elliot

Clarification/Follow-up by ETWolverine on 04/07/06 3:27 pm:
Tom,

That's interesting... though I happen to believe that spoils of war belong to the victor unless and until the defeated party redeems it (at the perogative of the victor). Thus Patton was within his rights.

But if we are talking about old documents, the one that is really intersting me right now is the "Gospel of Judas" that is being talked about by National Geographic. The concept that Judas and Jesus might have been in cahoots and that Judas' betrayal of Jesus was on Jesus orders could have incredible reprecussions throughout the religious order of the world going forward. This makes the Da Vinci Code small fry by comparison. I'm interested in seeing how this new revelation (no pun intended) plays out.

I wish I had cable. I'd love to see the NG program on Sunday night.

Elliot

Clarification/Follow-up by tomder55 on 04/07/06 5:15 pm:
one wonders when Judas found the time to write this . According to scriptures he stretched his neck shortly after the betrayal.

I will hopefully dvd it and watch it later . The theories about Judas have been many. There is of course the one that he is a victim of predeterminism . But others like Taylor Caldwell in "I Judas" have suggested he was a disgruntled Zealot who became disillusioned when he realized that Christ would not lead them against the Romans .'Jesus Christ Superstar' on the other hand suggests that Judas got frightened at the power that Jesus was getting and he feared Roman reprisal.

The idea of Judas working in tandem with Christ satisfies the idea that Christ was aware of his pending execution as part of God's plan and that Judas above all the other diciples was trusted with the details . If that were so then why did Judas commit suicide immediately after the betrayal . I guess his sense of guilt could have been the same in either scenario .But if he was the most trusted them why did Christ bestow the future church to Peter and not to Judas ? I look forward to see PBS' take on that .

Clarification/Follow-up by ETWolverine on 04/07/06 7:43 pm:
Tom

>>>If that were so then why did Judas commit suicide immediately after the betrayal.<<<

There are a couple of possibilities that come to mind.

1) Judas was ordered to do so by Jesus in order to protect the secret with which he was entrusted... that he was ORDERED to betray Jesus by Jesus himself.

2) Fear, either of his fellow Christians or the Romans.

3) We really only have the word of the other Apostles that he committed suicide... and remember, as far as they were concerned, they had just witnessed their teacher/messiah/master betrayed by Judas. If Judas actually escaped and went into hiding or somesuch, the early, first generation Christians would have wanted to see Judas come to a bad end in order to perpetuate the idea of Jesus as a martyr, and Judas as the guy who got what he deserved.

4) Even though he was ordered to betray his friend/teacher/messiah/master, and did his duty, he may have felt the guilt of causing the death of his friend.

5) There are theories that more than one NT story was "adjusted" by the early church in order to make the scripture fit their dogma. The death of Judas may have been one of those items that were changed fo dogmatic reasons.

As for when he wrote it... who knows. Again, we only have the other apostles' word that he committed suicide. Not having seen Judas' story yet, there's no way to know for sure when it might have occured, or how long after Jesus' death he really lived.

I wonder whether the document will end up being accepted by the current Church, and if so, will it be cannonized as a late addition to the Christian Bible. Or will the Church try to dismiss it as a fake or just simply ignore it.

This is going to be interesting to see.

Elliot

Clarification/Follow-up by Erewhon on 04/07/06 9:14 pm:

Elliot,

My post does what you call 'mixes up' two concepts because they became intertwined in Hitler's mind.

The text provides the link for the mix-up.

You cannot merely take one definition of each word and deal with them as separate phenomena when they have become integral parts of someone's political programme, in this case Hitler's as I said.

Purism uin lnaguage is one thing, but reading the issues as they existed and came to be inter-related developed is another.

It is not English comprehension but history.

On Judas,

First, 'couple' means pair.

As to your numbered points:

1. That view has to be discounted as totally unrealistic, primarily because of what Jesus said to the officers who came to arrest him, but also because of many other things that Jesus said that show there was no Great Secret about his death-to-come. Besides which, the fact of suicide does not rest on his being 'ordered' to do it by Jesus. Why would it? Suicide was abohorerent to Jews. The cause of Judas' suicide - if it was suicide (there are two versions of his death, only one telling of felo de se) would have to be guilt or fear of revenge by his fellow apostles or Christians. Guilt I can accept, but if he feared revenge all he had to do was take the money and run. But, remember what he is said to have done with the money!

2. Why would he be afraid of the Romans? If Judas was responsible for the death of Jesus, and the indications are that he was not because Jesus was determined to die, then he assisted the Romans by removing a political nuisance from among them. The Conservative Romans couldn't stand the Liberal-minded Jesus, and all rulers, be they jkings, emperors, or procurator-governers get uneasy when a rabbl;e-rouser lifts his voice and calls himself 'melek!'

Judas told the priests and rabbis, "I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood." If Jesus had told him to betray him, Judas would not be guilty of the blood of Jesus.

3. We have the word of one apostle that Judas took his life, namely Matthew. The account in Acts is by Luke, a gentile physician, who was not an apostle.

4. See my argument against this position, above.

5. If the story of the death of Judas was 'adjusted,' as you suggest, then it should not escape our attention that two variants co-exist between which there is no correlation as to what actually happened. Had there been such an adjustment, then both stories would demonstrate the drawing together of the variations, but as they remain widely varied we have to rule out such an accommodation.

It is likely that the manner of the death of Judas was of little interest to the early Church, and is still so regarded by all except those who foolishly believe in Biblical inerrancy and thus have to wrest the scriptures to make two discrepant accounts match each other in some way. However, the two accounts do not lend themselves to such interpretation.

There are times when we have to merely accept that the same story is told in scripture in discrete ways, whether we like it or not. The Old Testament bears cogent testimony to many such cases.

There is no reason why the document should be accepted by modern-day Christians, because it is dated at least one hundred years after the death of Judas. It is pseudepigraphical, and is not the first such document by any means, and will not be the last.

It is true that both the Old Testament and the New have pseudepigraphical works in their canon, but custom has sanctified them and so they stay.

It is, of course, a fake, since Judas did not write it. But that does not mean that it has no value.

The pseudepigrapha as a whole serves an extremely useful purpose for the Christian or ecclesiastical historian, in that is demonstrates, as nothing else does, the currents in Christian thought at the times of their being written, and particularly what trends and teachings it was opposing and rejecting.

With the discovery of the DSS in 1948, the Judeo-Christian world turned a corner. Suddenly scriptures became "relevant." In the same year the oldest Jewish library and the oldest Christian library were discovered: both were threatened with destruction, both were challenged as hoaxes; both were viewed as the work of irresponsible and fanatic sectaries. Yet through the years there has been a growing respect for both the Nag Hammadi and the Qumran, both because of their impressive spiritual content and also the number of other pseudepigrapha that are being discovered or rediscovered to confirm their proximity to the authentic Judaism and Christianity that flourished in the days before the Jewish and Christian doctors of Alexandria changed everything.

"Pseudepigrapha" refers to writings falsely ascribed to some important or famous figure or to writings with a false title. Such writings are not considered genuine, at least in the sense of originating with the falsely ascribed name.

Jewish writings, purporting to be scripture but which never attained either canonical or apocryphal authenticity, because their authors are assumed to be unknown, are called, collectively, the pseudepigrapha.

Jude, in the brief twenty-five verses of his one-chapter New Testament book, speaks of Michael contending for the body of Moses (verse 9), which is an allusion to the pseudepigraphic book The Assumption of Moses. This book tells of Moses' translation and his ascent as a fiery angel into heaven. (see, R. H. Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English 2:407-24.)

This non-canonical work presents the doctrine that Moses was translated and taken up into heaven without tasting death. It appears to deal "with certain revelations made by Moses," and "with his disappearance in a cloud, so that his death was hid from human sight... Michael was commissioned to bury Moses. Satan opposed the burial on the ground

a) that he was the lord of matter and that accordingly the body should be rightfully handed over to him;

b) that Moses was a murderer, having slain the Egyptian.

Michael having rebutted Satan's accusations proceeded to charge Satan with having instigated the serpent to tempt Eve. Finally, all opposition having been overcome, the assumption took place in the presence of Joshua and Caleb."

Another "Hebrew Apocalypse tells of Moses' transformation into the form of a fiery angel and his ascent through the seven heavens."

Yet another deals "with the temporary translation of Moses before his death into heaven... When translated into heaven the heavenly Jerusalem and the Temple were revealed to him, and he was told these would descend to earth after God had gathered Israel a second time from the ends of the earth."

Included in these same works are a number of statements not found in the Bible of a pre-existence for all men and that "Moses was prepared from the foundation of the world to be the mediator of God's covenant with his people," and that "during his `life Moses was Israel's intercessor with God."

During the second century A.D., some Christian authors (for example, Irenaeus and Tertullian) began to use apocryphon (singular form) to designate a forged or false writing. Both authors, and those who followed them in this practice, were trying to discredit the secret and sacred writings of their opponents, whom they considered heretics. In time, therefore, many writings once kept hidden from the general public for reasons of their sacredness and holiness were rejected and branded as unreliable or false by church fathers who disliked them.

After Jerome translated the Bible into Latin (c. A.D. 400), the books known from the Greek version of the Old Testament but not contained in the Hebrew version became known as the Apocrypha, or writings of uncertain accuracy. This collection of writings was accepted as scripture by most Christians before the Council of Nicaea, but only by some following that council. In recent centuries, Catholics have generally accepted these books with the rest of the Old Testament, and Protestants have generally denied them scriptural status.

There is an apocryphal work entitled, "The Book of Enoch," which contains many remarkable and inspired teachings and also considerable nonsense. Among numerous statements about the Second Coming is this rather exceptional dissertation, in which is included a recitation of virtually the same presentation quoted by Jude:

"The Holy Great One will come forth from his dwelling, and the eternal God will tread upon the earth, even on Mount Sinai, and appear from his camp, and appear in the strength of his might from the heaven of heavens. And all shall be smitten with fear, and the watchers shall quake, and great fear and trembling shall seize them unto the ends of the earth. And the high mountains shall be shaken, and the high hills shall be made low, and shall melt like wax before the flame. And the earth shall be wholly rent in sunder, and all that is upon the earth shall perish, and there shall be a judgment upon all men. But with the righteous he will make peace, and will protect the elect, and mercy shall be upon them. And they shall all belong to God, and they shall be prospered, and they shall all be blessed. And he will help them all, and light shall appear unto them, and he will make peace with them. And behold! he cometh with ten thousands of his holy ones to execute judgment upon all, and to destroy all the ungodly: And to convict all flesh of all the works of their ungodliness which they have ungodly committed, and of all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him."
(R. H. Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, vol. 2, pp. 188-189.)

Early Christian and patristic writers accepted The Book of Enoch (not Eenick!) as authentic scripture down to the fourth century, when the great doctors of the church put it under the ban, and it disappeared completely.

Scotsman James Bruce brought to England from his famous expedition to the headwaters of the Nile in 1773 an Ethiopian text of the Book of Enoch. This can be checked against Greek fragments of Enoch, one of which, acquired by the Irishman Chester Beatty in 1930 is a thousand years older than the Ethiopian documents. And now the Hebrew sources of the Book of Enoch, centuries older than the Greek fragments, have finally turned up in Cave IV at Qumran.

Though "it comes from many writers and almost as many periods," its value lies in the fact that "some of its authors, and there were many, belonged to the true succession of the prophets. How would such men dare to prophesy in the name of Enoch?

They had to, according to R.H. Charles, because the doctors of the Jews gave them no alternative. The latter "could tolerate no fresh message from God, and so, when men were moved by the Spirit of God to make known their visions . . . they could not do so openly, but were forced to resort to pseudonymous publication."

The complexity of apocryphal works is thus by no means a sign of fraud. The fact that "certain considerable portions of the Book of Enoch belonged originally not to the Enoch literature at all, but to an earlier work, the Book of Noah, adds to its value rather than lessening it. Along with the Book of Enoch, known as 3 Enoch and written in Hebrew about 66 a.d., we have also an Epistle of Enoch, and a Book of the Secrets of Enoch, or 2 Enoch, written in Palestine before 70 a.d. and best known as the Slavic Book of Enoch.

We cannot dismiss these other works with a smile, because each book is a mixture of things, and they all overlap. One part of 3 Enoch, for example, sounds very Christian and had accordingly been given a title of its own, The Similitudes of Enoch.

Many scholars have held that the work has been interpolated by a Christian editor, and in particular they have found references to the Son of Man to be accretions, and have accordingly removed them. That is a good illustration of how the experts work, removing from the ancient texts whatever they think does not belong there. Third Enoch contains, for example, remarkable parallels to the teachings of Paul. Should these be removed? It is the Dead Sea Scrolls that have taken away the license of the learned to cut and slash as they pleased, for they have shown that many concepts formerly held to be uniquely Christian were familiar to Jews before the time of Christ.

Particularly close ties have been noted between 3 Enoch and a very old work called the Book of Jubilees, known in one version as the Lepto-Genesis or Little or Second Genesis, which scholars suggested years ago was the remnant of a lost book of Abraham from which the biblical Genesis accounts were taken.

Now among the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls to be discovered was one that now goes by the name of the Genesis Apocryphon, the largest part of which is labeled by its editors as the Book of Abraham, the other parts being books of Lamech and Noah.

These books are so close to Jubilees as to give "the impression of having possibly been a source on which the writer of Jubilees drew." Jubilees itself is so full of Christian stuff that it has been declared to be of all Jewish Apocrypha the one presenting Christian apocalyptic ideas "in their most complete form." The astonishing mixture and overlapping of Jewish and Christian elements in the Enoch writings would thus seem to be something far more fundamental than a mere Christian re-editing of the texts.

A type of apocryphal literature that has recently come to the fore, thanks to new documentary discoveries, is the testament form. Jubilees has been called the Testament of Moses, and we now have a Testament of Abraham (in Arabic and Ethiopian, originally written in the first or second century in Hebrew), a Testament of Isaac and Jacob (in Arabic and Ethiopian), a Testament of Job (written by a Jew in Greek in Egypt in the second century), a Testament of Solomon (in Hebrew), a recently discovered Hebrew Testament of Naphtali, a Testament of Isaac (the Coptic text first published in 1957), and the all-important Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs.

These writings are called testaments because in them a patriarch or prophet before his death addresses his children or his followers, giving them prophecies and blessings and foretelling what is to befall them individually and collectively. In every case there is an all-embracing revelation of the whole of human history, centering about a recent vision in which the old man was caught up to heaven and viewed the cosmos and the great plan of salvation in its fulness, including the council in heaven at the creation when it all began.

However they are viewed by Jews and Christians, they cannot be lightly swept aside as of no consequence, for in so doing we muight be throwing away the very Word of God Himself.

This is a subject about which I could wax lyrical for a very long time. Therefore, I truncate myself at this point so as not to wear out my fawning fans!

Clarification/Follow-up by Itsdb on 04/07/06 11:27 pm:
Ronnie, what 'evil tyrant' should I be wary of?

Clarification/Follow-up by Erewhon on 04/07/06 11:50 pm:



Steve,

Beware of ALL evil tyrants, especially those who say one thing, do another, and blame someone else for it.

Clarification/Follow-up by Itsdb on 04/08/06 2:03 pm:
Come on Ronnie, be more specific please.

Clarification/Follow-up by ETWolverine on 04/10/06 1:08 pm:
Ronnie,

I haven't read the Gospel of Judas codex, so I can't really argue any of your points on the subject. I don't know enough about it yet. I was just throwing out some ideas as to why Judas might have committed suicide even though he was ordered to betray Jesus. It is pure speculation on my part, with no evidence to back it up.

However, I was told that the Gospel of Judas tells a very different story about the death of Jesus, so what we have known until now about the motivations of the various characters in the story may be different in the "new" version. All I was doing is throwing out some possible different motivations that might reconcile the "new" story with the traditional one.

And back to the original topic...

>>>You cannot merely take one definition of each word and deal with them as separate phenomena when they have become integral parts of someone's political programme, in this case Hitler's as I said.<<<

Why not?

In economics we speak about the law of supply and demand. We also speak of the invisible hand theory. The two are both speaking about economics, both central to capitalist thinking, and both regulate market forces. But they are sepparate concepts, despite the fact that they both work together as part of a larger whole that we call capitalism. We analyze them sepparately from each other when studying economics, fully knowing that both work together.

Similarly, we understand that "lebenstraum" and "aryanism" worked together, but they were sepparate concepts that can and should be analyzed sepparately from each other, while still understanding how they work together in the Nazi party's goals and ambitions.

Elliot

Clarification/Follow-up by Erewhon on 04/10/06 6:03 pm:

Elliot,

The key is "when they have become integral parts of someone's political programme"

When two concepts are merged as in the case in point, they become indistinguishable as the new synthesis proceeds to acheive the goal.

Think of it in terms of synthesis.

Clarification/Follow-up by ETWolverine on 04/10/06 8:13 pm:
I think we'll just have to disagree on this relatively minor point. (It's not as if its the first time.) :)

Elliot