Rev. Erudite Redneck, B.S., B.S., M.A., M.Div.

Who today would be the "children of Abraham"?

Ah, Sofia a.k.a. Wisdom, often consolidated into Logos or in Egyptian as Maat.

Sofia existed before the World and stood by God as he created it.

Provebs 8:

"" 22. The LORD brought me forth as the first of his works, before his deeds of old;

23. I was appointed from eternity,
from the beginning, before the world began.

24. When there were no oceans, I was given birth,
when there were no springs abounding with water;

25. before the mountains were settled in place,
before the hills, I was given birth,

26. before he made the earth or its fields
or any of the dust of the world.

27. I was there when he set the heavens in place,
when he marked out the horizon on the face of the deep,

28. when he established the clouds above
and fixed securely the fountains of the deep,

29. when he gave the sea its boundary
so the waters would not overstep his command,
and when he marked out the foundations of the earth.

30. Then I was the craftsman at his side.
I was filled with delight day after day,
rejoicing always in his presence,

31. rejoicing in his whole world
and delighting in mankind."

The Scribes and Sadducees purged her name time and again from the text. But they did not purge all of her from the canon.

The Roman Church handled her worship by changing her into a Saint and subsuming her into their labyrinth along with her daughters Faith, Hope, and Love.

The writter of or perhaps the scribes re-writting or translating the Gospel of John used Logos to make her masculine.

Sophia as the Holy Spirit brings another dimension to the understanding of God.

And what was the grove she tended? What were the Seven Pillars of Wisdom?

ER you do open those worm cans don't you?
 

Worms on a plain, man. Worms on a plain -- the flat, two-dimensional glas through which we all see darkly!

I love God and so refuse to put him in a box. I love Scripture, but recognize it as a speck of a speck of a speck of reality and God's Godness.

As for the children of Abraham: I believe the Scripture says ALL will be blessed by Abraham. Therefore, every human bean is a child of Abraham.
 

Late night calculations:
ER said:
"Therefore, every human bean is a child of Abraham."

Well you may not be too far off on that theory even from a biological and scientific standpoint.

If you believe that there was an Abraham, which is rule one in this calculation, and accept that he live about 2000 B.C. ( I like to use round number when I do big math stuff), then it has been 4000 years divided by 25 years per generation or 160 generations since he lived. OK, now let us see how many decendents that would create using an very low average multiplier of 3 people per generation.
That would be 2,153,693,963,075,557,763,310,747 decendents in just 50 generations.
My calculator would do no higher than that. I can't even read that number. So how many people would he have contributed his genes to at 3 to the 160 power. Some math dude can do that. Yeah I know some lines would be cut off etc..
The point being there hasn't been that many humans alive, ever on the face of the earth, summed from the first human through right now even if you accept the older evolutionary dates for such.
We all be Abrahams children alright.
The "Holy Land" would be one crowded place if we all tried to stand there.
 

Being a Steve Earle fan and a fan of big math and an inclusionist and universalist and interested in all those places where people changed the bible to fit their own purposes...I can't not comment here. If this post or comments mentioned barbecue it would be the perfect post for me!

Anyway, Steve Earle is one of the few guys putting out liberal messages in our beloved country music. He has taken some serious heat in recent years over this and John Walker's Blues. If you get a chance, check out, "Home to Houston" . It is the best protest song I have heard about the war in Iraq. Direct from the heart of a guy dodging the bombs.

As far as the math, recently mathematicians showed (because of The Da Vinci Code) that in even the to 2000 years since Christ is enough for huge numbers to carry relation to him through his brothers and sisters. Abraham is no different.
 

That reminds me of the mathematics of the skin cells of jesus in the dust carried around the world. I left a post at Pechur's on that subject just the other day.

http://crushedleviathan.blogspot.com/
 

So what is your point? Honestly. Why do you bother to mention that wisdom is referred to in the feminine? Are you implying or suggesting that Jesus was not the Logos? That Sophia is really Jesus? What?

This is Curiosity asking... masculine for sure.
 

Who said anything about the Logos?

My point? That blind adherence to the notion that God has any gender at all, male or female, is wrong. That it matters that Jesus happened to be male is superfluous to the Gospel.

And Drlobojo has put in his 2 cents. I would add only that the New Testament writers borrowed the concepts of Logos and Theos and used them interchangably -- and yet fundies of our present age attacked the liberal branch of Presbyterianism earlier this sumer for daring to borrow and use other concepts of God -- mainly the female kind.

I saw where a Baptist church somewhere up north up and decided to tell a woman Sunday school teahcer that she couldn't teach any more -- after 50-plus years because the Bible says women are "to be silent" in the churches.

The Bible says that not because God "breathed" it! But because all men were saying the same kind of crap when the inspired person who wrote that letter wrote it.

Oh, and on a lighter note, it's Scriptural evidence that women are, well, smarter, or at least more thoughtful, than men, which any married man knows.
 

I assume this was caused by my statements.

ELA said, "So what is your point? Honestly. Why do you bother to mention that wisdom is referred to in the feminine?"

Mainly to start in the middle and work out towards understanding.

Half of Abraham's Children are women.

Because the Roman Church for 2000 years has supressed half of the spiritual population of the world, the women, thus making the Devil's work twice as easy. Because the Hebrew Religion has done the same for 3000 years or so. Because the priest have made religion an exclusive paternal masculine activity, and relate mans' power to the church, or society, or the family like a bull or stallion or stag to the herd. Because we have institutionalized the Territorial Imperative as something spiritual rather biological.

ER says: "My point? That blind adherence to the notion that God has any gender at all, male or female, is wrong. That it matters that Jesus happened to be male is superfluous to the Gospel."

Perhaps it should be, but it is not. If it were, we wouldn't have needed the scribal assistance give to masculine control of the Roman Church by fabricating I Timothy.

Because the common denominator for all religious fundamentalist of any ilk is that Men are in charge and that a women is at best equal to one half the value of a male. (Islamic Law for example) and as ELA made his point: "This is Curiosity asking... masculine for sure."

DRL said: "Ah, Sofia a.k.a. Wisdom, often consolidated into Logos or in Egyptian as Maat."

Point was that changing wisdom into logos changed it from a female to a male concept,even though in context it was the same, the writter used the right word to make the correct gender point.

It could also be Brahman or Wu Li, neither of which have a sexual conotation.


"For God so loved the world that He sent his only daughter...."
or
"For God so love the world that She sent her only daughter...."

"For God so loved the world that God sent his only avatar....

Not quite the same is it.

ER, this may be two bits worth. I owe you.