daveh@cbmvax.cbm.UUCP (Dave Haynie) (09/25/86)
Obviously I'm going to say something about Ken's posting. This was an incredibly long thing, that said very little about the "Fig Tree" issue, but must have said SOMETHING intelligable. I admit, the cryptology department here hasn't finished with it yet, but I'd like to address the few points made, most of which suggest that Ken adheres to the old tenant of "If you can't blind them with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit" > Way to go Mike! What a gutsy guy. Rich Rosen is history! ... Wow! 23 lines of personal attacks, without an iota of real content. > You will recall I researched and explained the account of Jesus 'cursing' the > fig tree. Jesus finding no fruit on the tree even though Mark in his account > says it was not time for figs, 'curses' the tree and the next day it is dead. > The explanation being he was looking for the edible 'prefig' fruit which when > there was none meant there would also be no figs, etc. Has anyone considered that the reason there were no figs could have very well been that the tree was dying, and as such had ceased to produce fruit? Hey, anyone can curse something that's dying and probably see it dead in a day or two. But the act of cursing a dying tree, or a man full of gunshot wounds does not more to kill him than to heal him. Had Jesus wanted to demonstrate his abilities, he could have healed the tree and cause it to bear fruit. This is the same guy who myths claim fed the multitudes with a few loaves of bread and a couple fish, right? <more personal attacks, and stuff we haven't yet translated into english> > ..is that Mark and Matthew are either lying about what happened or couldn't > tell the difference between a tree fallen down and one standing up, etc. > I think your clear anti-miracle bias (unreasonable in a 20th C. science > educated man) is showing and showing that it has softened your brain. Both > accounts clearly state that the tree died because Jesus 'cursed' it. There's no reason to doubt that Mark and Matthew may have actually seen it this way (ignoring for the moment we're discussing history and legend here, not documented fact). Both accounts state that the tree died, and that Jesus 'cursed' it. The conclusion that Jesus' curse killed the tree is the problem. There's no reason to introduce the necessity of that curse when we already have established a tree that is sickly. Mark and Matthew believed that the curse killed the tree. It fit in with their belief systems; the same culture blaimed human diseases on "evil spirits". In the same way that the ancient Egyptians and Greeks believed that they could produce bees or mice with the proper recipe; they had a working explanation that cooperated with everything they understood about fig trees, tree disease, bees, or mice. <more DEA code deleted> > Egad, do we have to go on?? (there's more) Someone else spoke to your point > of conjecture that if the tree was barren one year it might bear the next > which demonstrates a "wanton destruction" of the tree you say - which by > the way misses the point that it didn't bear THEN when it was needed > and so was not as it 'should' have been and was worthy of 'cursing'. So obviously that tree had made a conscious decision to be barren, just to piss off Jesus and his companions, and as such, deserved to be destroyed? The lack of fruit is best explained by a disease of some kind, or possibly a nearly dead tree that hadn't shed it leaves yet. Unless this parable is supposed to imply that the tree is somehow an agent of Satan made barren for the express purpose of angering Jesus, how can you explain his cursing of it (even though that's not what killed it). <More meaningless personal attacks deleted> > Keep chargin' > > Ken Arndt > -- ============================================================================ Dave Haynie {caip,ihnp4,allegra,seismo}!cbmvax!daveh These opinions are my own, though if you try them out, and decide that you really like them, a small donation would be appreciated.