Get yer hammy hands off my Abraham......

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Miss_Faucie_Fishtits
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Get yer hammy hands off my Abraham......

Post by Miss_Faucie_Fishtits »

Damn you:
In Inheriting Abraham, Jon Levenson, the Albert A. List Professor of Bible at Harvard’s Divinity School, throws cold water on the mutual-understanding campfire. Misunderstanding is not what divides the image of Abraham in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the misnomered “Abrahamic religions”; on the contrary, the founders of the younger religions well understood Abraham’s role in Judaism. St. Paul’s transformation of Abraham into the father of all who believe, and the Quran’s recasting of Abraham as a Muslim prophet who prefigured Muhammed, both rejected the Jewish version by design, by inventing their own Abrahams to serve their own doctrinal purposes.
Our Abraham, Not Theirs
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Azrael
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Re: Get yer hammy hands off my Abraham......

Post by Azrael »

Considering that there is no evidence (outside of Genesis) that Abraham actually existed, Paul's metaphorical interpretation is probably an advance on the literal one.
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Ibrahim
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Re: Get yer hammy hands off my Abraham......

Post by Ibrahim »

That each religion understands Abraham in a different way is a given. This is true of Moses, Jesus, Adam, etc. etc. I'm sure Levenson's book describes the different interpretations of Abraham in some detail, but the simple that the three religions view him differently is obvious and redundant. Though its hard to know how much of the book actually makes the points Spengler claims, and how much of this is pretext for Spengler to get to this rehash:
Spengler wrote: Levenson implies here that jihad, including its manifestation in terrorism, is a mode of sacrifice in Islam—the spiritual heir of the binding of Isaac.
He's been beating this horse for years. Pure nonsense with nothing to support it. Islam rejects sacrifice, yet has sacrifice in the form of suicide and murder. Oh, and for Jews and (not all) Christians circumcision is a form of substitutionary sacrifice, but even thought Muslim practice circumcision it isn't a substitute sacrifice for them, terrorism is.


This is perfect Spengler qua Spengler. The whole thing is internally inconsistent even by its own false premises, then lapses into the same anti-Muslim propaganda he's been selling for ten years. Quote some Rosenzweig, call it a day. This stuff is for suckers, plain and simple.
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Miss_Faucie_Fishtits
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Re: Get yer hammy hands off my Abraham......

Post by Miss_Faucie_Fishtits »

There are a few valid things to take away from there.......

One, tolerance and education is not the heal-all salve for human ills. Sometimes we hate people because we do understand them and universal brotherhood and peace is a secular humanist project and not a religious one. No where near. Two, a seriously religious viewpoint is going to look strange and horrible to the post-christian modernist. No way around it. Levenson's and by extension Goldman's depictions of vicarious sacrifice is consistent and logical, but to modern sensibilities it is just so much....... eww. Human beings are ghosts that are not dead in thrall to a contract made to a thing that isn't even real?....... c'mon.....'>......
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Ibrahim
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Re: Get yer hammy hands off my Abraham......

Post by Ibrahim »

Miss_Faucie_Fishtits wrote:There are a few valid things to take away from there.......

One, tolerance and education is not the heal-all salve for human ills.
Not sure who was proposing this. I know the source is in Tablet, but I imagine this is a lesson that the Jewish community is already well-aware of.

Sometimes we hate people because we do understand them and universal brotherhood and peace is a secular humanist project and not a religious one.
Except that is the opposite of what Spengler has devoted the third act of his life to: to spreading disinformation and propaganda against groups that he hates in order to prevent people from having an accurate perception of them. If he really believed his own claims he would have gone the Eichmann route and he would be at Al Ahzar learning about Islam from some bearded professor with a scarred forehead, all the better to tear it down. Not rehashing Rosenzweig (who maybe met a Bosnian one time) or swimming in the muck with people like Mark Steyn.


Two, a seriously religious viewpoint is going to look strange and horrible to the post-christian modernist.
I'll give you that one. Caring about anything other than accumulating wealth and status is vaguely disgusting to modern late-stage capitalists.

Levenson's and by extension Goldman's depictions of vicarious sacrifice is consistent and logical
Except I don't think that they are. This is an obsession that Spengler and Rosenzweig (and I guess Levenson) seem to have that other people don't care about. I doubt most Jews even know what he's talking about, and no Muslims do.

To me the two religions are obviously very similar, and I think Spengler and a few others noticed this as well, hence these kinds of arguments. What is the average devout Muslim/Jews supposed to do? Obey the Law and the Prophets, worship the one and only God, and keep kother/halal. Well that's uncomfortably similar, better manufacture the dire need for a substitutional sacrifice that nobody felt in the first place.
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Heracleum Persicum
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Re: Get yer hammy hands off my Abraham......

Post by Heracleum Persicum »

Azrael wrote:.

Considering that there is no evidence (outside of Genesis) that Abraham actually existed, ..

.

Abraham and the other guys are all Zoroastrian mythos .. Rhubarb grabbed it making a business out of it, arguing, supposedly, somebody CHOSE him to deliver the apple pie .. as usual, money money money


.
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Alexis
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Re: Get yer hammy hands off my Abraham......

Post by Alexis »

Heracleum Persicum wrote:Abraham and the other guys are all Zoroastrian mythos ..
Are you a Zoroastrian, ALI?

(sorry for superfluous question if you stated your religious persuasions elsewhere, in which case I missed it)
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Typhoon
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Re: Get yer hammy hands off my Abraham......

Post by Typhoon »

Miss_Faucie_Fishtits wrote:Damn you:
In Inheriting Abraham, Jon Levenson, the Albert A. List Professor of Bible at Harvard’s Divinity School, throws cold water on the mutual-understanding campfire. Misunderstanding is not what divides the image of Abraham in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the misnomered “Abrahamic religions”; on the contrary, the founders of the younger religions well understood Abraham’s role in Judaism. St. Paul’s transformation of Abraham into the father of all who believe, and the Quran’s recasting of Abraham as a Muslim prophet who prefigured Muhammed, both rejected the Jewish version by design, by inventing their own Abrahams to serve their own doctrinal purposes.
Our Abraham, Not Theirs
So we can kiss trans-Abrahamic ecumenism goodbye?
May the gods preserve and defend me from self-righteous altruists; I can defend myself from my enemies and my friends.
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Miss_Faucie_Fishtits
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Re: Get yer hammy hands off my Abraham......

Post by Miss_Faucie_Fishtits »

yeah, you can write that off........

People aren't opting for ecumenism between religions, anyway. That's going the way of mega-churches and hounds-tooth sport coats with wide lapels. As you prob. know, it's religion vs. NO religion on either side of the axis........
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