xerox@cs.vu.nl (J. A. Durieux) (06/05/90)
[Please excuse my bad English - it isn't my mother's tongue..]
(1) I think I can add something quite authoritative to the "Jesus driving
merchants out of the Temple" debate. Quite authoritative, since I got
it from God Himself. When I was at the point of becoming a Christian,
God has done some quite wonderful things with me, I won't go into that
now, but one of them was giving me a very direct message.
At that time I was reading the discussed passage, and I told God that I
couldn't really believe in a good God doing such things. He then
referred me to the Corintian letter where it says that our bodies are
temples of the Holy Spirit (I didn't know that passage, but He just
told me chapter and verse where to look), and went on to explain that
in the same way the Temple in Jerusalem was Jesus' body (remember
Jesus' remark about rebuilding the Temple in three days). The lesson
was, or at least *a* lesson was, that we should be meek and loving
towards the outer world, but be harsh towards the sin living within our
own body.
I cannot answer to the question about the child being killed, however,
with any authority. The above was all He told me.
(2) Bede's story about the sparrow is used by Schopenhauer
[I tell this on authority of Daniel Kiehl, who repeats the story in
Latin and Dutch in his book "Natuurlijke Historie van den Philistein"]
in order to attack Christianity: he accuses Christianity of not
having lived up to its promise, since while it gives a lot of
information about where the sparrow goes after it leaves the hall, it
has hardly anything to say about where it was before it entered.
Are souls created "on the spot" at conception? Does God hold a store
of them? That kind of questions.
(3) Joining in to the discussion about on-line Bible studying, does anyone
have Nave's topical Bible on-line? It would "only" take typing in the
reverse index at the end of the book, and subsequently replace all the
page+column-numbers with the key-words, but it still seems a horrible
task to do, to me (if it is allowed at all, given copyright laws).
On the other hand, I would really appreciate it, since finding texts
with the same meaning, even if with completely different phrasing, is
the difficult thing in doing Bible study. I have the paper version,
but lacking context makes it tedious to use.
Along the same line, does any have a good cross-reference collection
on-line? The collection in the New-World Translation (the Watchtower
Bible) is great (just like their translation) as long as it isn't about
the divinity of Jesus or other things they don't like.
Biep.gevans@oiscola.columbia.ncr.com (GKEvans) (06/07/90)
In article <Jun.5.00.10.39.1990.16904@athos.rutgers.edu> xerox@cs.vu.nl (J. A. Durieux) writes: > >(3) Joining in to the discussion about on-line Bible studying, does anyone > have Nave's topical Bible on-line? It would "only" take typing in the [ stuff deleted ] > > Along the same line, does any have a good cross-reference collection > on-line? The collection in the New-World Translation (the Watchtower > Bible) is great (just like their translation) as long as it isn't about > the divinity of Jesus or other things they don't like. > > Biep. You really caught my attention when you mentioned the New World Translation which is the "official" bible of the Watchtower Bible Society (a.k.a Jehovah's Witnesses). I understand your interest in their topical cross-reference in the back of this book, but I must disagree completely that the translation is great - it is mostly a corrupted version of the KJV, and is devoid of integrity with respect to the accepted Greek manuscripts. The Greek "scholarship" is just not there, so I admonish you to be very, very careful in using this translation as a vehicle for understanding what the Bible is saying. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gary K. Evans, Software type |"Come now, and let us reason together..." gevans@oiscola.columbia.ncr.com | (Isa. 1:18) These are my opinions, | and not my employer's. | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------