Jana,

I've been finding your posts informative, also good reading. I enjoy your sense of humor and also your ability to carry on a sustained diatribe for several paragraphs. I, also, experience humor in rage. I like the way you run the words busybusybusy together.

As to your post above "Exorcists Needed," (There are many rabbits in that field) you have a fellow traveler from the past, Marcion (b. approx 80 c.e. d. approx 160 c.e.).

However, I strongly disagree with your statements about YHWH, Jews (if that's who you mean by the 'chosen ones'), and what I think you percieve as a total disconnect between the YHWH and Jesus Christ (I believe they are one and the same).

Marcion was born probably around 80 c.e.(common era - politically correct term that enables me to key without shifting to caps) in Pontus, a city in North Asia Minor. His father was the Bishop of that city. Marcion shared many of your ideas about a percieved radical disconnect between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament.

"His brilliant mind and organizational skills were at the heart of a major controversy in the church in the period from 135 to 150. Central for Marcion was his understanding of Jesus as the messenger and agent of God's love and mercy toward humanity...in his careful study of of what at that time was the only authoritative body of scripture for the church...the OT-he found what he considered to be an unacceptable representation of God as causing evil and effecting punishment, of using evil men to achieve his purposes, and as binding his people to obey his laws or suffer dire consequences. He felt that the Christian efforts to avoid these conclusions about the God of the Jews were misguided...(Kee, Howard Clark. Mercer Dictionary of the Bible. p.547)"

I think God sometimes uses evil people to effect his purposes by way of using the devil's best tricks to bring about the devil's humiliation and the thwarting of the devil's purposes. Book of Job, etc.

Marcion also came up with the first canon-like compilation of scriptures concerning Jesus Christ and Christianity.

"Marcion took as central for faith the writings of Paul and the Gospel of Luke, although he felt that in their present form both had been altered to try to accomodate them to aspects of the Jewish scriptures. He formulated, therefore, an official list of Christian scriptures, which consisted of an expurgated version of Luke, and the letters of Paul, with some significant pasages omitted. The birth and childhood stories were taken out of Luke, because they tied Jesus in with the God of the OT. The middle section of Galatians was also dropped (Gal 3:16-4:6), because it associated the new covenant community with the OT figure, Abraham...(Mercer 547)."

Marcion organized ascetic Christian communities and/or churches that taught his system of theology. The Marcionite movement was opposed by Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and others. It is from the writings of his opponents that we know about Marcion. For that reason it would be most helpful in developing a thourough understanding of his thought and "where he was going with it" if one had actual Marcionite writings. I don't know if any are extant.

There is probably a good deal of information available on Marcion in a good theological bookstore (if you can find one). Possibly also on the Internet.

Down with the Baal of the Old Testament!

"Baal. A canaanite fertility god. The word baal comes from a semitic stem that means "lord,""master,""owner," or "husband," and was used in refernce both to people and to gods. The term especially denoted the ownership of a locality or territory...Its usage as a proper name is most clearly seen in the Canaanite god, Baal...One of the greatest surges of Baal worship came during the reign of Ahab. Prompted by his wife Jezebel, Ahab initiated a cultural reform movement, the focal point of which was the Tyrian Baal, the god of Jezebels's homeland (1Kgs 16:31)...in essence a missionary program...the importing of Baal missionaries, that is, the prophets of Baal and Asherah...(DeVries, Lamoine. Mercer 80)."

BTW, the Israelites had to learn in captivity and dispersion that YHWH is no mere local god. I think it's interesting to note that one never hears of Jewish inscriptions about the YHWH of this or that place they happen to inhabit at a given time. On the contrary one sees constantly the "Madonnas" of this that or the other place - a throwback to Akkadian/Sumerian/Babylonian/Canaanite/Etc. concepts of gods ruling a place through the king of that place although the god of the place is also called its king.

There are early OT writings about the patriarchs encountering God at a particular place - for instance, Jacob wrestling with the angel of the Lord at Bethel. (I think it was at Bethel) Later writings contain no such place specific associations with YHWH (except the glory of the Lord between the wings of the cherubim on the ark - said glory can be 'seen' departing in Ezekiel 9:3 - but the whole chapter is instructive as to the theological significance of the sounds humans make when they find themselves aware of vast, systemic evil)

Another Ezekiel chapter I think you'll like is chapter 34. No, I don't really think God created humans to be sheep or sheeplike. I think people tend to make herding animals out of themselves and each other. I think God gives an astonishing amount of free will, but humans seem to've all been bent a particular way by the historic fall in that garden place so that their exercise of free-will tends to result in predictable socio-political phenomena. I think God takes us as he finds us, meeting us where we are.

Back to the Baal material.

Richard B. Vinson in the serviceable Mercer Bible dictionary says:

"Baal-zebub/Baal-zebul...in 2 Kgs 1:1-4 as the name of the god of the Philistine city of Ekron...The word means "Lord of the flies." Some scholars have taken this seriously, arguing that the god may have been represented by a fly, or that it might, like some Greek divinities, have controlled the flies that hang around animal sacrifices. However, most believe that this is a derogatory term used by the writer of 2 Kings to ridicule the foreign god...Mark 3:22, Jesus was once accused of being possessed Beelzebul, who is identified as "prince of the demons"...In what is an undoubtedly historical datum from Jesus' life, the scribes advanced the charge of demon possession as a means of explaining Jesus' reputation as a miracle worker (Mercer 80)."

Nowhere in either the OT or the New is the concept of possession of humans by YHWH, God, Jesus, or the Holy Spirit advanced. Satan, demons, unclean spirits, other humans seem to be the ones interested in exerting hand-in-glove control of human beings.

Now to Dreamland.

Ciao

vM