mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) (11/08/84)
Yirmiyahu's latest attack on Jeff Gillette ought to have appeared in net.flame; it's almost totally devoid of rational argument, and is largely devoted to personal attacks on Jeff. As I understand it, Yirmiyahu is insisting that a group of pagans, who otherwise had no connections with the "n'tzarim", heard about this new jewish sect and decided to steal all their ideas. Now this may be great conspiracy theory, but all the evidence in the world is against it. The true evidence indicates that the members of the jewish sect actively recruited gentiles and brought them into their religion as full members, and that when the question of adherence to Mosaic law arose, the jewish members of this sect chose to abandon the old law. He demands that Jeff produce his first century text. Well, he cannot produce one of his own, and it wasn't that many years ago that theologians suspected that the Gospel of John was WRITTEN after 100! THe fact is that all the EXISTING texts follow the "Christian" formulation of the faith rather than the "N'tzarim" formulation, and that the only way to get to Yirmiyahu's formulation is to edit the existing texts according to his liking. The one thing I really want to know is what Yirmiyahu thinks these people really believed. In all his articles, there does not seem to be a shred of explanation of what the texts would say if they were "unaltered". All he ever says is that we could not understand, because we are not jews. Give us a chance; tell us what they say. We like to believe we are intelligent people. One thing is for certain; his current Judaocentric view of the matter is not going to promote understanding, much less good will. Charley Wingate umcp-cs!mangoe