Posted on 11/22/2013 3:14:55 PM PST by NormsRevenge
But do they still think it’s okay to worship a rock that fell from the sky, and has nothing to do with what Mohammed taught?
There are a few more concepts in AngloSaxon and American law than the old and new testament.
New Testament concepts seem to demand penance and contrition from the offender. Old Testament has some notions of collective punishment, divine punishment, as well as judges who work by their own duty and law, rather than using process. The Old testament was essentially frozen a few hundred years BC.
Torah, is derived from old testament but achieved significant growth and advancement from old testament law.
Greco-roman law went from primitive judges to written law. Draco’s Draconian law was harsh, and later laws sought to make the punishment fit the crime. The Roman 12 tablets were one of the first attempts to proclaim the law publically so that all could follow it. Greeks and Romans had professional orators (aka lawyers) who could assure some degree of opposition to the government prosecutor. Romans introduced many of the modern rules of evidence.
Eventually the case law was written down, and codified as Jusinian’s code. That radically limited the judges sentencing discretion.
Norse traditions permit opposing testimony to be compared and weighed.
The English ‘Star Chamber’ was a unique forum for its day, because cases tried thee gave no precedence to nobility or ecclesiastical rank. The same rules of evidence were used for all. The nobles hated that!
These people are too stupid to pour p!ss out of a boot, if the directions were written on the heel.
Penance is a specifically Roman Catholic/Orthodox idea. It isn't a gospel idea. Contrition, depends on what you mean. The thing that counts is the will to accept the beckoning spirit of the Lord that will energize the person with the grace that the sin had been compromising, in the process also stopping the sin. Battles and suffering will generally entail the willing exercise of the grace, which have been formalized by legalistic sects of Christianity as "penances" -- payments -- when they are nothing of the sort.
I'm sure you're aware that the name "God" (capitalized, a proper noun referring to a deity), is a case of using a categorical descriptive noun as a name, much as many people use the names "Mother" and "Father" to refer to their parents. The parents usually have regular names too (Mary, Joe), but when their child refers to them as "Mother" and "Father", they refer to their identity as a parent as well.
My understanding is that the name "Allah" is simply Arabic for "God" (used as the name of a deity), and that Arab-speaking Christians use that name in reference to the god we (Christians, Jews, etc.) know as "God" whose name is Yahweh, Jehovah, The Tetragrammaton YHWH, etc.
The deity at the head of Islam, commonly referred to as "Allah", is in my opinion a different god altogether from Yahweh, the God of the Old and New Testaments, the Creator of the Universe, whose Son is Jesus Christ.
Nevertheless, I think strictly speaking from a linguistics point of view, "Allah" may correctly be used to refer not only to the god of Islam, but to any deity referenced by an Arab, including the God we know and love.
That said, I grant you that it took me aback the first time I heard a Christian Arab acquaintance use the name "Allah" in reference to the Christian God. It still makes me blink, all the above verbiage notwithstanding.
entail => be entailed in
That is a further fine point that deserves attention.
I had a Hindu friend that was perfectly comfortable with calling by the name “God” an imagined entity that I as a Christian considered falsely conceived. A pantheistic entity. This fellow kept calling me “Champ” and I never quite understood why... till it dawned on me one day. He was, mistakenly, worshiping ME! As a form of his God! I, in the meantime, was just trying to be as good a Christian as I could.
‘Allah’ is also how Arabic-speaking Jews refer to the kind of generic English word ‘God’.
‘Abd’ullah’ (Servant of Allah) was a popular name for Jews in Arabic-speaking lands. This is similar to English ‘Obadiah’.
Its relationship to Islam is simply that it was the name attached to the (one) god of that religion; the name did not originate with Islam, and it is used by many other non-Islamic religious groups in that part of the world to refer to their own God.
Oh dear!!
> I, in the meantime, was just trying to be as good a Christian as I could.
As well befits you. I read your comments here on FR with interest and appreciation of your spiritual outlook. God Bless You, my FRiend.
Fascinating, I didn't know that! FreeRepublic comes through again as a great place to learn from others.
Thank you, FRiend!
Do Penance is from the Douay translation.
“But Peter said to them: Do penance, and be baptized” (Acts 2:38, The Douay-Rheims Translation, emphasis mine).
“And God indeed having winked at the times of this ignorance, now declareth unto men, that all should every where do penance” (Acts 17:30, The Douay-Rheims Translation, emphasis mine).
“And in those days cometh John the Baptist preaching in the desert of Judea. And saying: Do penance: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 3:1-2, The Douay-Rheims Translation,
In all cases, the original Greek word translated “do penance” was metanoeo. The Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon defines metanoeo as follows:
3340 [metanoeo /met·an·o·eh·o/] v. From 3326 and 3539; TDNT 4:975; TDNTA 636; GK 3566; 34 occurrences; AV translates as “repent” 34 times.
to change one’s mind, i.e. to repent.
to change one’s mind for better, heartily to amend with abhorrence of one’s past sins.
penance, and repentance both have the same root word. Penance is a bit more active.
to sheep other sheep are different.
or to shepherds.
>> for spiritually rooted sins committed out of ignorant need
>> they think they can stem the problem through the scapegoating!
I’ll go out on a limb and suggest the perennial pining for acceptance leaves little to chance when one’s spruced personae is at risk. Getting off one’s laurels to lumber through the forest of spiritual need is truly a matter of branching out of the ordinary. Be the sequoia, not the beech that barks at it.
>> Be the sequoia,
A euphemism for standing tall in Christ’s name.
Now there’s no more oak oppression,
For they passed a noble law,
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe, and saw.
I hope we're not going to get all weepy about a tree...they've been cutting them down for a long time and Christ started as a carpenter's son/carpenter.
Good point.
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