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To: Cap'n Crunch
Oh, start praying your rosary and quit being a potty mouth.

Our Lord was a carpenter, and surrounded himself with professional fishermen. While I don't have any evidence either way, I wouldn't be surprised if the Aramaic word for "bullshit" didn't come up occasionally in His presence.

20 posted on 09/11/2003 6:19:15 PM PDT by TontoKowalski
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To: TontoKowalski
Wonder what the Aramaic word for "dickead" is?

I'm of the opinion that perhaps early on there may have been some profanity but I would bet that after being in the presence of Jesus for a day or two, and seeing how holy He was, the profanities ended real soon.

I think Mel, devout catholic, needs to work on that. The references to ripping out the guys intestines and killing his dog is a bit much also.

39 posted on 09/12/2003 5:57:36 AM PDT by Cap'n Crunch
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To: TontoKowalski; All
Our Lord was a carpenter, and surrounded himself with professional fishermen. While I don't have any evidence either way, I wouldn't be surprised if the Aramaic word for "bullshit" didn't come up occasionally in His presence.

I agree, and I think this point ought to be made more often. Because we love Him, and because we've all seen the same British movies, we Christians expect our Lord to speak in the quiet tones of genteel Home Counties English — as if He were a character from Milne or Tolkien. Becase He is our perfect God, it makes us uncomfortable to think of our Lord doing ordinary human things — having gas, for example, or visiting a latrine — but He did. He was 100% man as well as 100% God, and, like all men, He undoubtedly spoke in the vernacular of his class — the peasant class. And, as anyone who has spent time on a construction site can tell you, that vernacular is generally not something you'd hear in church.

And that's not necessarily sinful. Cussing and cursing are two different things. "Cuss words" — earthy, blunt, plain-language words, generally used to describe bodily functions — are not in and of themselves dirty. "Shit", for example, is just the plain English word for solid biological waste, nothing more. Words like "shit", "piss", and the Anglo-Saxon term for sexual intercourse are not curses; they may be considered rude, vulgar, or obscene depending upon circumstance, but intrinsically evil they ain't. (Each can be used in an evil way, however.) In fact, the word "piss" appears in the King James version of the Bible no less than eight times! (1 Samuel 25:22, 1 Samuel 25:34, 1 Kings 14:10, 1 Kings 16:11, 1 Kings 21:21, 2 Kings 9:8, 2 Kings 18:27, Isaiah 36:12, for the adolescently curious.)

On the other hand, cursing is a sin. Cursing consists of blasphemy, sacrelige, gross impiety, vain usage of the Lord's Name, and the actual act of cursing someone — in other words, expressing one's hope that they be damned to hell.

Jesus Christ is the King of the Universe, but He is also a Jewish peasant. It is my opinion that as such our Lord did on occasion use what might have been considered salty language. Just as our Lord resorted to physical violence on one occasion (the driving out of the moneychangers from the Temple), so, too, He used strong language when necessary. In Luke 3:2 et al. He called His hypocritical accusers "ye generation of vipers", for example, which must have sounded something like calling them s.o.bs to the ears of the crowd in His day. He also referred to the publicly pious as "whitewashed tombs" {Matt 23:27 et al.] — in other words, as being clean outside, full of filth inside — akin to calling them "full of shit"!

And let's not forget the fact that He was a carpenter. Somehow, I can't picture our Lord saying "Darn it!" or "oh, poop!" afrer smashing His finger with a hammer.

Our Lord is righteous, holy, and perfect, but He is neither effete nor "nice". He was God, but He also liked parties, wine, and hanging out with fishermen. We have had enough of the Nice Jesus, the Eton Jesus, the sanitized-for-your-protection Hollywood Jesus. Let's have the Real Jesus — fully God in His perfection, fully Man in his human nature.

Please keep in mind that I'm barely a Christian, much less a scholar or exegete. I could be totally wrong about this. If so, I humbly ask for your correction, and I apologize if I have offended or caused scandal by posting this message.

64 posted on 12/21/2003 5:25:29 PM PST by B-Chan (Catholic. Monarchist. Texan. Any questions?)
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