May 9, 2009, 12:35 pm by dc-agape.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The Last Words of Joseph is a disappointingly fragmented Tractate.  Very little of it remains.  What does remain is the story of Jacob’s mourning, the price fetched for Joseph, and how magnanimous Joseph was.  These three concepts deliver us a little more info than the Book of Genesis.

We are told that Jacob mourned his son’s “death” for a year.  He also held a “mourning feast”.  The fragments then describe how eighty talents were paid for a slave.  Eighty talents were worth about 125 pounds troy weight of silver (or 46,655 grams of silver worth today, as of this posting, about $22,875.23).  This price is severely different than that of the Book of Genesis (Gen 37:28), where the brothers only received 20 shekels of silver (about 8oz of silver worth $111.19). The editors of my copy of the Dead Sea Scrolls use the Christian “Testament of Joseph” to interpret that this was the payment that the brothers received for selling Joseph.  But the way the fragments are organized it seems more likely to describe a member of the “Mourning feast” purchasing a slave from Jacob.  The Tractate closes with how Joseph chooses not to shame his brothers by announcing that he was a slave.  This last part, of course, does not occur in the Book of Genesis.  Joseph has no choice he is a slave and is sold into slavery to one of the most prominent man in Egypt: the captain of the prison guards, Potiphar.

Evolution of the story is evident here.  The Jewish sect, that wrote this Tractate, has attempted to increase Joseph’s stature by showing him to be even more magnanimous than the Torah.  And the Christians, using this Tractate, increase the value of Joseph as a slave.  These are small changes and they were obviously not included in the Word of God that we know today, but this evolution does tell us something.  Any story, oral or written, becomes larger and larger than life with the passing of time.  How much of the Torah was treated in the same manner?  How much of the New Testament was treated in the same manner?  And even more important, since we know this…how can we be certain that the Word of God is accurate and valid? 

To an Atheist, what can be seen here is more than enough evidence to put the entire Word of God into question.  It can be said that YHWH has protected the important parts, but which parts are the important parts?  Which parts have been modified by the Traditions of Men?  At this point, anything that may have been the “Truth” is questionable.  As a result, how can we trust any of what is written in a text that has had centuries (even millennia) to be manipulated. 

Related articles by Zemanta

• Women’s Vital Importance (barbarany_9.blogspot.com)

Posted in The Last Words..., Dead Sea Scroll, Traditions of Men, Joseph | Print | No Comments »

May 9, 2009, 11:18 am by dc-agape.

Image via Wikipedia

While part of the Oahu Church of Christ all night prayer sessions were not uncommon.  I’m serious we would stay up all night long and pray for specific things like: saving family member’s souls, protection from our worst sins, guidance in decision making, etc.  At that time we were also “evangelizing” campus, malls, and beaches.   This “evangelizing” was cold contact marketing of our church: just walk-up to a stranger and invite them to church.  This was also very much part of our daily prayers.  If you are an Atheist, you can probably already see where this post is going.  If you are a Christian or other Theist that believes in prayer, I have an interesting proposition for you.  Keep a pray diary, and see how many of your prayers are answered with a “yes”.

Over the two and a-half years that I belonged to the “Kingdom”, I did not keep a pray diary.  What I did notice was that most of my prayers went unanswered.  I was doing everything expected of me, I was going above and beyond the call of duty, yet my prayers were not answered with a “yes”.  For example, I was reading the Bible daily (in fact, I read the whole thing twice), I was giving more than 10% in tithing, and I was confessing my sins daily, and I was evangelizing up to 100 people per day.  But the only prayer that has been even closely answered was that I wanted to be like Paul.  Paul was single and a great influence with his writings to the churches.  I got half the pray answered!!  People that I begged YHWH to save were not saved.  My struggles with sexuality were not lightened.  Knowing what the Word of God says about prayer made these results quite suspicious to me. 

Knowing what the Word of God says about prayer only lead me to understand that prayers are not answered with “No”.  Two very important verses in the Bible clearly contradict this Tradition of Men.  First, let me show you about belief and prayer:

Mark 11:24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

This verse is very straight forward:  all you have to do is believe (have faith) and the prayer will be answered…no matter what you ask for!  To say the least I had faith, but the prayers were not answered.  And even more critical verse about prayer is this one:

Matt 18:19-20 “Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.  For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.”

You see, it is not even the weakness of one person that makes the prayer not answered.  When more than one person asks for the same thing…it is guaranteed to be done.  Well you can quickly imagine how this almost never worked.

I slowly began to see that whether I prayed or not, the result was the same.  Sometimes I got what I asked for and sometimes it just happened by circumstance.  It dawned on me that prayers were not answered by a supernatural being but by sheer coincidence.  Even worse, I realized that if you did the same thing enough times the odds favored a positive outcome on random occasions.  Worst of all, I started to realize that prayers got answered very similar to a phenomenon here in the US called the 100 year flood plain.  You see, statistically, prayers are just like the 100 year flood plain.  Instead of guaranteed results (as the Word of God promises), they happen only statistically on an average enough so that people believe that they have their prayers answered.  People, who believe in YHWH and prayer, have too low an expectation of YHWH.  A promise has been made that is not kept.  Why believe in a being that does not keep their promises?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Did you skip the National Day of (Conservative, Christian) Prayer? (dvorak.org)
• What does it take to be a Saint? (madharasan.blogspot.com)
• One Man One Woman? (tuibguy.com)
• American Religion and Torture (theotherjesus.com)
• Not even the enemy of his enemies (masbury.wordpress.com)
• Pope Benedict’s prayer intentions for February (americanpapist.com)
• Culture Of Corruption: The Need for Prayer (eagleviews.org)
• National day of prayer (levite.wordpress.com)
• Culture Of Corruption: The Need for Prayer (journeyacrossthesky.com)

Posted in My Beliefs, Traditions of Men, Word of God, State of Mind, Becoming an atheist | Print | 11 Comments »