Interpretation of Texts (General)

by dhw, Thursday, September 30, 2010, 17:15 (4976 days ago) @ dhw

PART TWO-As regards organized religion, you wrote: "Making it a law that the community must perform its own executions does not specify an organized religion as a necessity." No, but if the executions are carried out for purely religious reasons (I quoted Deut.'s section on executing anyone who tries to entice you away from the Jewish God), you can't separate religion from community, and by binding the community together under a law that proscribes religious freedom, you have created a religious organization. You write: "If you mean by organized religion that there should be only one religion, then sure it suggests that." Yes, that is precisely what I mean: Jewish society and Jewish religion were inseparable, and the leader was the man who took the decisions both social and religious, Moses being a prime example. As for the various instructions in the NT concerning assembly, the moment you have people gathering together sharing a common cause, you will almost inevitably have a leader or leaders, though that's not the main factor. The basic principle is to establish a "them and us" structure (= only one religion). I'm not talking about buildings or the absurd pomp and circumstance of hierarchies, but a structure all the same. If you want to gather together and pray, who says where and when, who decides what prayers are to be spoken, who relays the instructions of the Lord God or the teachings of Jesus? Those are the beginnings of organized religion. Evolution does the rest, until you end up with all the wealth, corruption and ... to use your phrase ... preconceived notions of, for instance, the Catholic Church.-*** You asked if I'd read the Gnostic Gospels. By a strange coincidence, my wife recently came across a selection of 13, translated by Alan Jacobs. They are sitting waiting patiently on the shelf, along with the other dozen or so books which at the moment I haven't got time to read! (Shapiro is also there.)