I majored in Theology in Undergrad and Graduate School.
This is a common thing that comes up since most of these manuscripts were gathered by private "archaeologist." If not seen in the light of manuscripts we have for other ancient text it is easy to forget how significant these were/are. We don't have any ancient manuscripts with anything close to these.
I'm probably reading too much into this, but it looks like the story has been refined since these were written. The Leviticus claims could be proven false easily by a small tribe. Everyone does everything right, and you get a 2 year drought. Is this common, that the orriginal texts were refined to make them less flimsy?
Or was that the point of Nicene, to create a coherent narrative with that was a tad more believable at the time?
The Qumran scrolls have nothing whatsoever to do with Nicaea. The OT canon was well established before the Christian era.
As far as canonical issues, the council of Nicaea had nothing to do with establishing the canon of Scripture as accepted by the 4th century church. They did publish a list of those books which were already widely recognized in the church, however, no votes were taken as to what books were or were not to be counted as part of the NT canon. No decisions regarding the canon, whether of the Old or the New Testament were made. This is not speculation. We have the proceedings of the council.
Accounts of what? The Bible has "accounts" (and poetry, and other literary genres) of countless different events. Do you want to know who established the canon? Or who wrote and assembled the books in the first place? The latter is an entire field of scholarly inquiry.
There are not "hundreds of accounts" to deal with in the first place.
Regarding the OT: There are specific works, and not that many in all, that were universally recognized in Judaism as the works of recognized prophets. We have no records or evidence of any formal process of canonizing these books. By the time of the inter-testamental period, there was unanimity regarding the canonicity of these books. Likewise there was unanimity regarding the status of the Apocrypha: works that were useful for history or piety, but were not considered to be scripture.
Regarding the NT, the situation is pretty much the same. Works which could reliably be attributed to an apostle, or one of the close associates of the apostles, were widely recognized by the early church as scripture.
A few books that were "spoken against," meaning there was not unanimity regarding their apostolic provenance. These are known as the "antilegomena," and were placed into a separate category. They were subordinate to the other books, and were not used as the primary sources for any particular doctrine, but were still highly regarded. For the record, the antilegomena are: Hebrews, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, James, Jude, and Revelation.
There are several lists of NT books extant which are largely consistent with one another, but with some differences. See the Muratorian Fragment for one such example.
A third category of books were also recognized: books which did not have apostolic authority, and thus were not considered to be scripture, but were useful theological treatises and widely disseminated. The "Shepherd of Hermas" was one such work. The Didache is also often considered to be such a work.
Outside of this, there were many late works which were never considered to be part of the recognized canon. These are often, and inaccurately, referred to by modern authors as "lost books of the Bible." However, they were never "lost", and were known by the early church fathers to be works of late authorship, and thus lacked apostolic provenance. In other words, they recognized them as forgeries, and the church never took them seriously.
Regarding any "official" canonization of the books of the Bible, we have no extant official pronouncements until the Council of Trent in the late 1540s. Some suspect that the Synod of Hippo Regius made a determination regarding the canon, but as those proceedings have been lost, it is an open question. Regardless, all extant evidence demonstrates that the NT canon as we know it was settled by the mid 2nd century.
> Likewise there was unanimity regarding the status of the Apocrypha: works that were useful for history or piety, but were not considered to be scripture.
Was there? I thought this didn't really become a question in Christianity until Luther.
No, it's been an issue since at least Jerome (and certainly before, really), but it's an issue on which there is disagreement between the Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox traditions (and not one on which there were necessarily definitive authoritative positions, much less unanimity, as early as described upthread.)
To be clear: I was not referring to the manner in which the Christian church later regarded the apocrypha, but the manner in which the Jews in the inter-testamental period regarded it. The Jews then, as today, did not regard the apocrypha as scripture. However, I must limit what I wrote above to the Jews in Palestine and the establishment of the Tanakh. There were Jews in Egypt who considered the apocryphal books part of their canon.
Well, if nothing else, it certainly seemed anachronistic to have everybody agreeing on Martin Luther's theology that far back. Thanks for setting me straight.
There is a misconception at work here regarding Luther and the apocrypha. The question of the apocrypha's canonicity was not a significant point of discussion during the Reformation, likely because his position was a common one in the Roman church itself (Occam, for example, was of the same opinion as Luther on this point). Luther's German Bible included the apocrypha in a separate section between the Old and New Testaments, describing them as books that, while not Scripture, were profitable to read. This is very nearly a translation from the Glossa ordinaria in which Luther was schooled. In fact, Luther and his fellows regularly quoted from the apocrypha and even preached from it, without controversy. In this regard, Luther's understanding of the apocrypha represented the theological training he received prior to his period as a reformer.
It was not until the Council of Trent that any controversy arose regarding the apocrypha between the Lutherans and Rome, when Rome formally declared the apocrypha to be inspired and canonical. For more on this topic, see the Examination of the Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent by Martin Chemnitz.
"The apocrypha" has no universally accepted bounds. The works for which your description is approximately correct are those that the Catholic Church deemed deuterocanonical, not those it considered apocryphal if useful in the sense you discuss (e.g., the Clementine apocrypha); both sets of those are within the ambit of what those following Luther's position consider "apocrypha".
As to the relation to the Jewish canon of the intertestamental period, there is some ambiguity as to where some "apocrypha" works lie (in which the Dead Sea Scrolls themselves play a role.) The position you've put forward is common and goes back to at least Jerome, and holds that the works which were accepted as the Jewish canon, in the Hebrew form they were found in, at much later dates than the intertestamental period, accurately reflect the canon of the earlier period. Which isn't an implausible assumption, and for a long time there wasn't a concrete reason to suspect any particular variance though there was very little reason to assume no variance, either.
I am not arguing that the apocrypha has a universally accepted bounds. There is certainly variance regarding what was considered apocryphal, no question.
However, regarding whether the Tanakh in the inter-testamental period, namely those books that were "laid up" in the temple at Palestine: We have no evidence or reason to suspect that the canon preserved by the Masoretes, was in some part different from the Tanakh.
We know of the dispute between Jerome and Augustine, which appears to be due to ignorance on Augustine's part, who thought the Jews counted the apocryphal books as part of the Tanakh. He was obviously wrong.
Jerome's opinion was shared by Gregory the Great, and even, somewhat ironically, by Cardinal Cajetan in Luther's day. Luther simply followed the best scholarship of his day.
Several collections have been formed. Perhaps most pertinent to your inquiry is the Vulgate, a translation commissioned in the 4th century by the 37th Pope.
It's hard to tell what specifically you're referring to in either paragraph, but if you're talking about the Nicene Creed in the second, the point was to settle a bunch of theological arguments among early Christians. The Israelite people writing Leviticus were writing long before Jesus lived.
Israeli here, forget what they tell you about the so called "startup nation", the most amazing (and frankly, the only) thing about being Israeli is that I'm able to read the text in the images.
(And "thanks" to mandatory bible studies I could more-or-less place them without reading the english description)
What do you mean, what's unique about that? Lots of people can read 2000-year-old Latin and Greek inscriptions, too. Biblical Hebrew is probably more similar to modern Hebrew than late-classical Latin is to modern Italian, but it's not that similar. I don't know about Greek, but someone on Quora says that "a speaker of modern Greek can usually get the gist of an ancient text, although trying to translate may often lead to tragic misinterpretations".
I'm an Israeli too, and I'm pretty sure that if I hadn't taken those mandatory classes, and encountered Biblical Hebrew today for the first time, I wouldn't really understand it. Back in highschool, we had to use a commentary/thesaurus/teacher all the time.
What is so remarkable about that is the Israelites' language and culture remains in tact despite repeated conquering and the death of their state over 2500 years ago. Normally, when a state is conquered, they relinquish their gods and language for their conquerors' but this didn't happen to the Israelites. In fact, quite the opposite - their culture still thrives and remains the most influential by far of any other small, ancient near-Eastern tribe. (Very unfair comparison to a humongous military and financial empire like Rome or Greece.)
> Normally, when a state is conquered, they relinquish their gods and language for their conquerors /< There are more instance of this not happening than happening that I can name. I find it more impressive how much survived despite being repeatedly targeted and murdered for it over the following 2+ millennia.
"Greece" was never a "humongous military and financial empire". There were alliances between city-states of various sizes and what, from a distance, can look like a relatively homogenous culture -- which, in fact, was anything but.
There is so much Ancient Greek its hard to paint them all with the same brush. Koine (biblical) Greek is very simple and a modern speaker can get the gist, but polyphonic Greek in the flavor of Sappho or the Iliad would be very, very difficult for a modern speaker to understand. Meanwhile, the Torah is still taught in full, in (roughly) the original; it is not at all surprising someone can still read it fully with modern education.
I've studied modern Greek, and have visited many museums with native Greeks... and empirically I can say that reading ancient Greek (in the many variations) is very difficult to understand for most speakers of modern Greek.
They're important because we only have copies and scholars spend a lot of energy trying to work from multiple, fragmentary copies of the text and figuring out exactly what the original said. Any copies, but especially particularly old ones, are invaluable here, and the Dead Sea Scrolls are older than the (more complete, and oldest known before they were found) Masorectic text.
That said, when I say differences it's generally a matter of a few words, not huge, distinct plots or something.
Sometimes these finds can also include lost, non-canonical texts, but it looks like not in this case.
The Dead Sea scrolls have versions of Daniel that are significantly different and rearranged than the Masoretic text. Also there are some very interesting and pivotal discrepancies in some of the Kings texts.
Most of the textual differences are ironed out in the source language which are not especially accessible. English bibles are not translated directly from manuscripts but from one or more "critical texts" which are scholarly reconstructions of the underlying manuscripts. A common one is Nestle-Aland [0], you can read it online. The smaller text appearing there are variant readings that have some degree of manuscript support.
The vast majority of them are terribly boring, by way of example, the very first one on the page:
> All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: Behold, the virgin in the womb will conceive, and will bear a son, and [they will call the name of him Immanuel], which is translated, '[with us God]'
The [bracketed] parts are omitted in some manuscripts. These omissions may feel significant, but since this is a quotation of well-known saying, the shorter readings are probably some scribe trying to scrimp on paper who thinks you should go buy that book if you wanted to know what's in it. This can be annoying in cases where the book in question didn't make it out to modern scholarship, and all the scribes scrimped on paper that day, which does happen.
Less commonly (although not infrequently), a textual problem is significant enough to bleed all the way through to the end user. This typically happens when there is no agreement about how to resolve the conflicts or the possibilities are so strange as to be nonsensical. One amusing example is 1 sam 6:19 [1]. There is overwhelming manuscript support for a reading like this:
> But the Lord struck down some of the people of Beth Shemesh because they had looked into the ark of the Lord; he struck down 50,070 of the men. [NET]
However, in addition to there being a glaring grammar error in the manuscript, this reading presents a number of obvious problems: logistical (how exactly do you get 50,070 people to all look into a box?), numerical (this is a surprisingly exact figure to collect during wartime in enemy territory), internal (elsewhere in the same book Beth Shemesh is a tiny rural village), archeological (it really was a tiny rural village).
This problem has lead to various wildly different resolutions over the years, a small sampler:
> But God struck down some of the inhabitants of Beth Shemesh, putting seventy of them to death because they looked into the ark of the LORD. The people mourned because of the heavy blow the LORD had dealt them. [NIV]
> God struck down the men of Beth-shemesh because they looked inside the ark of the LORD. He struck down 70 men out of 50,000 men. The people mourned because the LORD struck them with a great slaughter. [HCSB]
> Then God smote those of Bethshemesh because they had looked at the ark of the LORD; he smote fifty thousand of the people and seventy principal men. And the people lamented because the LORD had smitten the people with such a great slaughter. [Jubilee]
> And He smiteth among the men of Beth-Shemesh, for they looked into the ark of Jehovah, yea, He smiteth among the people seventy men -- fifty chief men; and the people mourn, because Jehovah smote among the people -- a great smiting. [YLT]
> Perhaps the text should be understood to read the LORD killed 70 men and 50 oxen. [NKJ footnote]
There is a more glaring problem here: "παρθένος" here can be translated as either "young woman" or "virgin", with the former being the more common original meaning. The virginity of Mary can, in fact, very well be a striking mistranslation that's stuck over the centuries.
I can't edit this anymore but I'm able to elaborate this a bit more. Matthew repeatedly makes a point of quoting OT scripture to say that Jesus fulfilled it. One of the lines of scripture he quotes is Isaiah 7:14, the one we're talking about. In the Hebrew it says "maiden," but the Greek (septuagint) translation said "virgin." Matthew seems to take it as "virgin," given that in Matthew 1 he has the angel coming to Joseph and telling him not to divorce Mary because Jesus is born of the Holy Spirit, quoting Isaiah 7:14.
Well, OP is confused. There are of course some differences between the MT and the Dead Sea Scrolls in Daniel, but they are very minor [0], to the extent that in many cases the MT actually harmonizes better with the scrolls than they do with each other.
What OP may be referencing are the much more significant variations between the MT and the LXX. The LXX version of Daniel is quite a lot longer, uses very different details, and even includes additional stories [1] not present in the MT.
This has presented something of a problem, since although the LXX is a translation of a source text and so is inherently inferior to it (like any English translation would be), it is a translation so incredibly old that the later parts of the bible use it when they quote the earlier parts, and it was the standard version in the ancient world for quite some time. Meanwhile, the MT is an actual manuscript in the source language but arrives at least a thousand years later on. This creates a bit of a puzzler about which one to follow when they are quite different, and they are quite different in Daniel.
The DSS basically settled the issue with regards to Daniel in favor of the MT and against the LXX. There was not really anything "new" that we did not have in the MT, but there were some LXXisms that fell out of favor.
However, in other books it went the other way, sometimes favoring the LXX reading. This suggests that the LXX and the MT may reflect different underlying source texts, that are both quite old and both have some legitimate claim to being authoritative. The situation is complicated somewhat because most of these books are more compilations than they are a work by a single author, and deciding where the original work ends and the interpolations begin is pretty arbitrary.
Have you considered maybe a few people looked into the ark and the whole nation was punished as a result? or at least 50,070 of the nation? you are assuming everyone that was killed looked into the ark. Have you considered that maybe the fact that the ark symbolized the covenant between God and the Israelites meant that any disrespect or mistreatment of this ark by any Israeli would cause disaster on all of Israel?
The point of the grandparent wasn't to outline all possible things that may have happened (Hell, the whole thing could have been made up). The point is that original texts may have differed, omitting certain aspects for logistical or other reasons, that newer versions try to rectify.
50,000 people is the order of magnitude of the Israelites alive at this time. So if 50,070 people died, Israel would cease to exist as a geopolitical entity, whereas this text has them going on to win a war against Philistia merely 10 verses later.
But leaving that aside, a reading of 50,070 has a number of other problems. First, it does not explain how such an exact figure was calculated, which would have been a major statistical undertaking at this time. Compare to a similar situation in Numbers 1, where nearly 60 verses are devoted to explaining the procedure used to arrive at figures much less exact than these. (Those figures are difficult too, but not because of their exactness.)
But leaving that aside also, it doesn't account for the glaring error in the number itself: שִׁבְעִ֣ים אִ֔ישׁ חֲמִשִּׁ֥ים אֶ֖לֶף אִ֑ישׁ is a bizarre way to write a number. It's like saying my software has "70 lines 50KLOC". Everything is wrong: the place order (fifty-thousand seventy, not seventy fifty-thousand), the conjunction (fifty-thousand and seventy), the noun ("lines") is redundant and even interrupts the number. If somebody said "70 lines 50KLOC" you would not assume they meant 50,070, you would assume they made an error.
All lines of evidence point to some problem with the figure, but there is really no agreement as to how it is resolved. The modern style is to assume that "70 men" and "50,000 men" are two different figures, one of them is spurious, and choosing 70 is better than choosing 50,000. The style falling out of favor is to assume two figures for two distinct things, one of which is lost, which is how you wind up with the "70 men and 50 oxen" readings.
Finding a new manuscript could very well blow the lid off this debate, but it would have to be quite old, as both the problem and the debate around it are positively ancient. I believe we have the 50,070 reading all the way back to 50BCE, and we certainly have rabbinical sources arguing about it by c. 300. The book itself only dates to 550 BCE, so it is a very narrow window to stumble onto a manuscript.
There is an outside chance this particular section may be lifted from an older, lost work all the way back to the time of David, so this problem may even pre-date the book in which it appears. Unfortunately we have only tens of lines of manuscripts from that whole period, so recovering that work – if there even is an earlier work, which is not at all clear – is terribly unlikely.
To some extent, but we could say similar things about pretty many (most?) ancient works we still have, and Judaism had adapted a posture of reverence for scripture while the Bible was still being written.
"we could say similar things about pretty many (most?) ancient works we still have"
One would not say that the historicity for the old and new testament documents is comparable to "many" ancient works. On the contrary, the number of MSS for old and new testament documents is like a nuclear explosion in the timeline of ancient history. There are no ancient works which even come close.
"Judaism had adapted a posture of reverence for scripture"
That's a strange statement to make? It sounds more like modern-day form criticism creeping through than an objective understanding of events.
> One would not say that the historicity for the old and new testament documents is comparable to "many" ancient works. On the contrary, the number of MSS for old and new testament documents is like a nuclear explosion in the timeline of ancient history. There are no ancient works which even come close.
The parent says nothing about historicity (although is Kings really more historical than Livy or Plutarch or Herotodus?) but just marvels that through so many copies there were relatively few major changes. But any ancient work we have was preserved in precisely the same way -- scribes making copy after copy.
> That's a strange statement to make? It sounds more like modern-day form criticism creeping through than an objective understanding of events.
What's strange about it? The Bible was considered holy writ; if careful copying is done for stories without the benefit of that classification, surely it's all the more appropriate in that case.
So there are many sets out there and this few fragments, 13 in all, are actually going to be tested for authenticity. That is a very good outcome and one benefit of those who can and desire to collect such artifacts has, especially when they are willing to turn them over to groups that can properly discern authenticity.
As to some claiming its merely dealing in stolen artifacts, most of this concern only arises when profit is to be made or the group claiming ownership has a strong voice. When does it stop? We argue day in and day out here about the absurdity of copyright and patents yet rush to defend states declaring ownership over stuff they know not existed? (its even sillier with sunken treasures)
Isn't the argument against copyrights very similar, if not the same, to the argument for the state to own historic artifacts?
I'd argue that the state should own historic artifacts so that they can be held in common. That way no one individual can claim ownership, retain the right to destroy it if they wish, and prevent others from viewing/studying it.
Of course the state isn't going to let me or you handle it, but they'll obviously give access to research institutions and whatnot who will publish their findings.
Hobby Lobby dude might not do the same and as a private owner, he retains the right not to.
A state also might not do the same. You might live in a place where the government would be likely to be generous with its property and encourage intellectual pursuits, but that isn't inherently any more true of government officials than it is of "the Hobby Lobby dude."
Your argument is just they should be owned by X vs Y. You are not arguing that these should belong to a humanity, but rather a specific state. Thus, no they are not similar arguments.
Copyrights seem more akin to private ownership of artifacts than state ownership, and it's hard to talk about this issue in completely abstract terms given the shameless looting of Egyptian artifacts in the past.
Between 2009 and 2014, Steve Green, the owner of Hobby Lobby, a chain of arts and crafts stores, purchased 13 of the fragments, which he has donated, along with thousands of other artifacts, to the Museum of the Bible. Green is helping to fund construction of the museum, scheduled to open in Washington, D.C., next fall. (A fly-through of the museum can be seen on YouTube).
I'm more than slightly sure the Green family has total control over this, "museum", and this was less a donation, than a transfer of stolen artifacts from an individual, to a private company held by that individual.
Hobby Lobby, as you may recall, is the privately held company that disallowed its workers to use the Affordable Care Act to cover birth control, because of the religious beliefs of the owners.
"'m more than slightly sure the Green family has total control over this, "museum", and this was less a donation, than a transfer of stolen artifacts from an individual, to a private company held by that individual."
More than slightly sure? What you really should have said is: "I have no idea what I'm talking about"
"Hobby Lobby, as you may recall, is the privately held company that disallowed its workers to use the Affordable Care Act to cover birth control, because of the religious beliefs of the owners."
Ahhh, so you demonize them because they go against your personal beliefs.
One has nothing to do with the other. You just wanted to post your displeasure with Hobby Lobby.
The owner of Hobby Lobby does own that museum and they were under investigation over stolen artifacts. I never heard about the end result of that investigation though... I didn't spend a lot of time looking, but I didn't see anything new. Does anyone know what ended up happening with that case?
EDIT: perhaps "own" is the wrong word to use.
The owner of Hobby Lobby is the chairman of the board for the museum and the museum's collection was largely built from his personal collection.
> More than slightly sure? What you really should have said is: "I have no idea what I'm talking about"
While I normally side with Orwell's dislike of this kind of linguistic indirection, it does sound like you're over-reacting to justinator's verbiage.
> "Hobby Lobby, as you may recall, is the privately held company that disallowed its workers to use the Affordable Care Act to cover birth control, because of the religious beliefs of the owners."
>
> Ahhh, so you demonize them because they go against your personal beliefs.
Cute use of the word demonise there. :)
Is it legal in the USA (where I'm assuming you, and indeed this Hobby Lobby company are located) to discriminate for health benefits based on religious views? (Preemptive apologies - not all of us are based in the same place as other people assume we are, and I'm really not sure what the legislative arrangement there is.)
> Is it legal in the USA (where I'm assuming you, and indeed this Hobby Lobby company are located) to discriminate for health benefits based on religious views?
Yes, a privately held company can offer plans that do not meet ACA standards if the owners object on religious grounds to those options.
It is legal for a specific class of privately held companies, though the matter was sufficiently unclear to reach the supreme court and will probably be subject to follow-up cases which will clarify/expand/narrow the extent of the decision.
It's simple if you are not willing to provide health insurance either admit that and don't provide health insurance or don't employ people.
I also demonize serial killers, because they go against my personal beliefs. Because that's what personal beliefs mean. I also don't calibrate the lives destroyed from insanity, why should a tolerate the mass delusions from religion again?
In a wider context indoctrination of children. I feel that 'Sunday school' is child abuse. But, where we don't tolerate public beatings of children some topics are considered off limits.
PS: I accept many people will disagree with this. But, while many pat them on the head and move on I think it is important for everyone to understand their bubble is just that, and their assumptions are far from universal.
It's a tricky subject, because heavily regulating what kids must be exposed to by the state could easily be classified as propagandized brainwashing. If we support both the right of parents to express their beliefs to their children and the right of the children to make an informed decision when they are adults about their beliefs, the best thing may be have a mandatory "survey of beliefs" class for children at various points in their lives.
A class that covered the 4-5 most common world religious beliefs as well atheism in a way that did not promote any of them, much less one over the others (a tall order in some communities, I'm sure), would do a great deal to both inform individuals on various beliefs and how they interrelate, as well as foster understanding for others.
You are falling into the trap of assuming the state must accept religion. We where happy to indoctrinate Indians though forcible separation from their parents.
So, it's not actually about 'religion' or 'tolerance' it's about the short list of accepted religions.
PS: Some argue that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Child_Welfare_Act fixed this, but there are plenty of more recent cases disproving that idea. As of 2010, Alabama,[41] Indiana,[42] Kentucky,[43] Louisiana,[44] Missouri,[45] and Tennessee[46] still use the "existing Indian family" exception.
> You are falling into the trap of assuming the state must accept religion.
I prefer to think I'm "falling into the trap" of assuming that personal choice is important and we want to preserve it. Like most things, both extremes of the spectrum are unhealthy. Indoctrination by your parents about the "one true way" to think is dangerous, but so is indoctrination by the state.
The way to fight misinformation is not to restrict that information, it's to provide more information so people can make informed choices. It's a free market of ideas, and information (and light regulation) is key.
> We where happy to indoctrinate Indians though forcible separation from their parents.
We were happy to enslave people as well. That doesn't mean we should condone conduct such as that going forward.
> So, it's not actually about 'religion' it's about the short list of accepted religions.
No, it's about opening people up to the possibility of choice, and that there there may exist views different than they have been exposed to. I'm an atheist myself, but I can't imagine a world in which people are forced, coerced or steered to a particular belief as being better.
Adults also get personal choice as to which TV programs they watch, which beverages they drink, which candidates to vote for, whether to join the military. The option is not whether to constrain the choices available to children - it's a matter of who gets to decide. Remember, always turn things around: how would you feel if the religious right got to tell you that you couldn't raise your children as atheists or agnostics?
> how would you feel if the religious right got to tell you that you couldn't raise your children as atheists or agnostics?
This has been a common state of affair in many places for thousands of years. But here is the thing, you don't need to indoctrinate someone as an agnostic.
An interesting comparison is the effort to maintain belief in Santa Clause vs end it.
On a side note - you do know that Santa is real, right? He was a real bishop in Turkey in the 4th century, participated in the Council of Nicea, and was even reputed to have thrown a punch at Arius on the council floor.
I'm not actually sure how common it was for the government to intervene in families' home lives, even, say, at the height of the middle ages or the Byzantine empire. That said, to whatever extent it did happen, it was wrong, and the Catholic church acknowledges as much these days.
On the other hand, I think the history of humanity, which involves nearly universal belief in some flavor of divinity, is all-but-conclusive proof that your second point is incorrect. That doesn't mean the x-theists are right: just that religion is quite obviously the default state of humanity, and irreligion is the exception.
Religious thinking doesn't require divinity. various outspoken outrage groups qualify, as does anyone who has a belief system that is not evidence-based.
Promoting Religion has clear upsides and most humans for most of human history have not had their thoughts recorded. Further, religious people kept a lot of our history's. So we have no idea how common actual belief was.
I suspect in 10,000 years looking though limited and relatively random records Santa could be considered a widely warshiped god even if effectively zero adults believe in him today. Private journals are solid evidence, writing on temple walls is not. A coworkers Rabbi growing up was an atheist.
If we are going by popularity either Atheism or Agnostic beliefs are probably the single most common specific beliefs. Religions come and go, shifting through time so a modern Mormon has little in common with a 5th century Christian sects.
I don't view it as regulating what kids must be exposed to. What we should be doing and what I think the GP is suggesting is that we regulate was kids mustnot be exposed to.
There is no ethically sound justification for forcing a child to go to Church repeatedly during their development. Most religious people believe that children have innate innocence until a certain point. Until that point, they have no need for religion and should be given the opportunity to make up their own mind about it when they are old enough.
The US also only pays lip service to the enumerated powers.
Separation of church and state doesn't mean you're entitled to various federally funded benefits, regardless of your beliefs. At the state level - sure.
That still doesn't mean that sexually active people are a protected class. There are people who get pregnant without sex. There are people who have sex and cannot get pregnant.
For the record, I agree with both points you make. Preventing your employees from accessing certain birth control products because you are against birth not different from forbidding your employees from having homosexual relations because you are against homosexuality. It's wrong.
Also, indoctrination of children is an abhorrent crime. It's child abuse. It's brainwashing, fact, and there's no way to argue otherwise. Brainwashing is the word. It's instilling fear, implanting a worldview in a child while their brain is developing that will cripple and condition them for life. Sending your child every week to church and Sunday school to have dogmas drilled into their heads is tantamount to the "hypnopaedia" in Brave New World. Insidious and abhorrent, a crime against freedom and self-determination.
This is a nice rant, more emotional than well thought out. First off there is no such thing as neutrality in this context. Whatever worldview/moral system you approve of teaching children is not neutral. You are lying to yourself by pretending it's possible to raise a child in some kind of a void.
Indoctrination to you = any time somebody teaches a child something you don't approve of.
Who is the dangerous extremist enemy of freedom? Look in a mirror.
No, indoctrination to me is instilling dogmas in a small child who is developing their brain personality and cannot critically evaluate what they're being told. Instilling your morality based on a solid reasoning is not. Compare "Stealing your schoolmate's toy is wrong. Why daddy? Because it's his and he wants to play with it. If you steal it he can't play, and he will be sad. If you want to play, ask him first for permission, and offer one of your toys too so he can have something to play with." with "There's a man who preached in the middle eastern desert in the time of the Roman Empire that will make you live forever if you are good and go to church every Sunday. Why daddy? Because. And if you ever doubt, even in your mind, he will punish you forever!". These aren't the same.
Critical thought is a beautiful thing. Brainwashing a child into accepting an absurd dogma for no reason other than authority and fear is wrong.
Why are you instilling your child with such a reverence for private property? Taking the toy could be morally justified if the schoolmate is a child of the parasitical classes. Your 'solid reasoning' is severely lacking a grounding in material dialectics IMO, you're practically brainwashing them with capitalist absurdity.
He didn't say prohibiting, he said preventing. The distinction matters greatly. For lower paid people, the cost of access can to some mean a difference between eating or paying their bills and getting contraception.
Those are exactly the kind of situations where the societal cost of not ensuring access to contraceptives is vastly higher than the cost of contraceptives, so it's not just the employees that are harmed in this, but wider society as well.
Have you done research on the worldview or are you just brainwashed as the ones you claim are. If you can I want you to watch this video and try to explain how this is possible
I'm not likely to watch a >1h evangelist propaganda video, thanks. If you can give me a summary of the alleged points I'm supposed to consider, I'd be grateful.
Ok here is the point basically I think u don't believe in God....but I want you to consider on what basis you came to that conclusion was it because of what you saw or what you were told. So I am presenting to you a video which clearly shows the work of God working in this man through prophecy which you can check for yourself and decide whether to believe or not.
Everything you claim to be true to your children is indoctrination. It doesn't matter if its religious in nature or not. Everyone is therefore a child abuser according to you.
Do pitchforks need to come out every time a Christian or Christian topic is mentioned on HN? Everyone knows there are people who exercise their religious freedoms, do we need to keep trying to burn them in effigy here?
I agree with your general sentiment, but disagree with your wording. From what I understand HL, and many others, are not exercising their religious freedom but rather imposing their religion on others.
For example, if you are against an action like prevention on religious reasons you should of course be free to not use them yourself. Enforcing those standard on others, including your employees, is not exercising your own religious freedom.
He's not imposing any behavior on his employees or taking their freedoms way, he's just choosing not to pay for it himself on religious grounds. I suspect the real issue is that he's going agains the grain by not celebrating that form of birth control and that's enough to feel like oppression to some.
I totally agree that this would be the best way to handle it, but I also don't see the problem with being forced to pay for something you don't agree with. Isn't that basically what government does? Why aren't these people also outraged that their tax dollars are paying for missiles blowing up funerals and weddings in the Middle East?
Catholic theologians have spent a lot of time analyzing this problem. The short version is that there's a pretty big moral difference between giving money to somebody (even if you know they're going to do something evil with it), and arranging for the evil yourself. You may have a pretty good idea that your employee Bob is going to spend his paycheck at the local saloon and whorehouse, but that's rather different from personally opening up a tab for him there.
I have a difficult time seeing moral differences where there are no practical differences.
If the government says, "Give us $X so that we may use it to purchase a health plan that includes contraceptive coverage," the effect is exactly the same as if they said, "Spend $X purchasing a health plan that includes contraceptive coverage." I don't see how one could be moral and the other not.
I can see it at the point where it changes from spending money to taking actions. Actually dispensing or taking contraceptives would be qualitatively different from paying for a health plan. But if it's just your money going to an insurance company, I don't see why it matters if it passes through the government first.
Can't they both be immoral? Whole problem is catholicism is a state supporting religion that says "your government doing evil isn't your problem".
I pay my taxes, but I consider it the least moral thing I do, for my own morality.
I look at paying taxes the same way I view my drug addicted friend that just needs a fix so he can make it til tomorrow. I don't like it, I'm enabling his problem, but I don't want him to get into a worse situation or die.
Of course, they can both be immoral. If someone argued against both of them on the basis of morality, I'd probably disagree but I'd respect the argument. I just can't understand why people find it immoral to be forced to pay for contraceptives but not to be forced to pay for missiles and bullets.
Basically, all this boils down to is whether "ends justify the means" or "means justify the ends". In the Catholic case, it would seem to be the latter, but that's only because they're looking at distant ends (e.g. heaven as reward for good) rather than immediate results.
Thing is though, "ignorance is bliss", or so it's said. If you were aware that life insurance companies across the US were about to make a huge gamble that might put them out of business, would you stick with yours (supposing you had one) if they (a) told you they were going to make the gamble or (b) not told you? (I suppose we could have also referred to purchasing manufacturer warranties from unsteady businesses - same principle.)
Money going to the government via taxes doesn't necessarily end up paying for contraceptives. It's supposed to be for other things. We pay taxes knowing full well that people are siphoning off money for their own gain. We don't like it, sure, but we pay taxes because of what the money is intended for. "It's the thought that counts." :/
From your last paragraph, I think you've misunderstood my point. The problem with taxes isn't that it gets siphoned off for private gain. The problem is that it intentionally goes to do a bunch of horrible stuff that people disagree with. My tax money helped invade Iraq with all its horrible consequences. My tax money helps kill wedding and funeral attendees in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It pays to imprison people for non-violent drug crimes.
I'll fight to get the government to stop spending my money on these things, but on the basis that they shouldn't be doing it at all. I'd never argue that my own personal tax money should only go to things I agree with, because the whole point of taxes and government is to take collective decisions and collective action. I may not always agree with the results, but the basic concept is important and useful.
Why is it OK to send money to the US treasury when you know some small part of it will buy Hellfire missiles, but not OK to send money to Aetna when you know some small part of it will buy Plan B?
Rereading it, I see what you're saying. It's a fine line point. In a way, then, I agree with you, but - let's take an interesting stance - supposing we assume that missiles can be used for good (in some way). I seem to recall the pope justifying the war against Nazi Germany. Consequently, there is a positive use. Contraceptives, however, could only be used for something the church considers immoral.
I agree that separating them would help in this regard. We should; however, consider why it was done this way. I can only speculate on the matter, but tend to think it was bundled with payroll for simpler accounting (assuming tax deductible insurance premiums stay intact).
Initially, it was bundled with payroll because, during World War II, employers were restricted in their ability to give pay raises to employees. They started buying health insurance as a way of giving a raise without giving a raise, as it were.
It continued because "that's the way it was done" by the time WWII was over.
The money belongs to the employees? Only if you mean that the employer buys the health-insurance plan with money that would otherwise go to the employee as salary. (I presume that you are not saying that the company's money rightfully belongs to the employees. If you are saying that, I disagree, strongly.)
But it gets muddied because of taxes. Most people get to pay for their health insurance pre-tax, whereas if the company just gave them the money, they'd pay for it with post-tax dollars. Also, many employees contribute some of the cost themselves. So it's fair to say that part of the money belongs to the employees, but it's not fair to say that all of it does. The rest belongs either to the employer or the government.
What "contractually belongs to them" is exactly what they agreed to work for when they were hired. If that included health benefits exclusive of any particular medication, that used to be a consideration between them and their employer. You may think it better to live in a place where the terms of those contracts are stipulated by the government.
The reason for the U.S. having enumerated powers where states could pass such laws but the federal government couldn't was that if you disagreed with your state's world-view, you could leave that state for one more aligned with your beliefs.
Your premise is incorrect. If the employer were to replace the employees health insurance with a product costing 50% less, the employees would not necessarily receive the former cost of the insurance as new compensation.
There may be specific individuals contracted with Hobby Lobby, but the general "employee" doesn't have any such contract.
The morning-after pill has two methods of action, IIRC - preventing ovulation, and making the womb inhospitable for implantation. In the latter case conception occurs.
The primary mechanism of action of levonorgestrel as a progestogen-only emergency contraceptive pill is, according to International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO), to prevent fertilization by inhibition of ovulation and thickening of the mucosa of cervix. FIGO has stated that: "review of the evidence suggests that LNG [levonorgestreol] ECPs cannot prevent implantation of a fertilized egg.
I wonder whether the owners' religious beliefs influenced what scrolls were passed on to the museum... some of the scrolls are a bit left field. But then again, they would have needed to understand them first...
This is a common thing that comes up since most of these manuscripts were gathered by private "archaeologist." If not seen in the light of manuscripts we have for other ancient text it is easy to forget how significant these were/are. We don't have any ancient manuscripts with anything close to these.
its awesome just to see them online.
http://www.deadseascrolls.org.il?locale=en_US