Archive for February, 2012
Sunday, February 26th, 2012
It is said that Enoch ‘walked with God, and then was no more; for God took him’ (Gen. v, 24.) At some stage it became accepted that after his assumption Enoch was transformed into an angel called Metatron. And this angel was also the result of several other amalgamations and ...
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Thursday, February 23rd, 2012
The theory of Seven Heavens is derived from astrological speculation on the 7 visible regularly moving celestial objects. In the 2nd C BCE the Greeks developed the “Chaldean” order for these objects: Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, which generally replaced the older Babylonian and Egyptian orderings. These ...
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Monday, February 20th, 2012
Peter Berger in The American Interest (February 15, 2012) asks: ‘Is Confucianism a Religion?’ It’s an old question and Berger himself goes through some of the issues involved – though he does not much consider the many ways that ‘Confucianism’ (ru jia) changed over time, some of which seemed to ...
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Tuesday, February 14th, 2012
Lists of early apocalyptic writings may be found in DS Russell (1964) Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic, London: SCM, pp 37f; C Rowland (1982) The Open Heaven, London: SPCK, p 15. Examples of the genre may be found in J. Charlesworth (ed.) (1983) OTP:1, 2. Of the works ...
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Monday, February 13th, 2012
We can discover the necessary elements of the Ascension story.
By comparison of the various particular texts in which the Ascension plotline occurs.
Take the following to be the primary documents[1]:
Dante, Commedia Divina: Paradiso;
Ibn Ishaq, Sirat rasul Allah; (ibn ...
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Sunday, February 12th, 2012
In the ascension stories of the developed religions we very often find that the progress of the protagonist and his guide is impeded at each heaven by spirits determined to test his worthiness. For example, in Bistami’s mi’raj at the First Heaven:
[H]e continued to show me dominion that would wear ...
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Sunday, February 5th, 2012
There’s always the assumption that mystical gnosis will result in an elevated ethical state on the part of the gnostic. Given that there’s plenty of controversy over the ethical stance of someone who is concerned above all with their own salvation, I find this lazy acceptance a little puzzling. It’s ...
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Saturday, February 4th, 2012
I’ve just read a brief article about Punxsutawney Phil by Stephanie Pappas at the LiveScience site. She mentions that:
relying on rodents as forecasters may date back to the early days of Christianity in Europe, when clear skies on Candlemas Day (Feb. 2) were said to herald cold weather ahead. ...
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Saturday, February 4th, 2012
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