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Re: orion Stephen Goranson & Josephus
At 07:40 23/07/97 -7000, dwashbur@nyx.net wrote:
>That's not what he said. He said "reasoned speculation." And any
>reasoning can still be merely opinion or speculation. One could
>reason that since the sun is yellow it must therefore be made of
>butter.
One can conjecture or speculate, but one cannot *reason,* 'that since the
sun is yellow it must therefore be made of butter.' That's non sequitur.
And such non sequiturs are a significant source of the barriers preventing
solutions. One cannot even reason that since the sun is yellow it is
*probably* made of butter. One could, at best, reason that since the sun is
yellow the possibility exists, given no other information, that it *could
possibly be* made of butter. Then it's off to gather information to test
the idea, not to formulate an assertion and blissfully go on to the next
problem. If you grasped the meaning of reasoning you wouldn't confuse it
with opinion or speculation. A courses in discrete mathematics would clear
up the difference between the discipline of reasoning as contrasted with the
freedom of conjecture and speculation for you. I've also noted over a
period of time that this problem appears widespread in this field. The
perversion of logic under the banner of 'Occam's razor' has already been
mentioned. If I may suggest, this field could especially benefit from
requiring future students to take at least one course in discrete math from
the computer science department.
>Perceived as such by Christians, of course.
No one's protesting what Christians perceive. But this is a scholarly
forum where logic and evidence, not Christian beliefs, are supposed to
reign. It's not church. DSS scholarship is not based on Christian perceptions.
>This is not so. The sine qua non of Christianity, and
>proto-Christianity if there was such a thing, is the resurrection of
>J~sus from the dead. The entire movement, from its very inception,
>was based on that event. Questions of Torah observance came later,
>and they had no real effect on whether or not the movement was
>legitimate because they were not its ultimate basis.
This bald assertion is not sufficient despite you're unwarranted presumption
that you apparently hold it to be axiomatic. That's not universally held.
In this forum it must be demonstrated by logic from the evidence.
Moreover, I've demonstrated in my books and elsewhere, *by logic from the
evidence,* that your argument is not valid. Just a couple of highlights, as
those seriously interested can read the book, MMT demonstrates that the
central question was observance, and was clearly the earlier. Not to
mention that the record clearly shows that Yehoshua and the Netzarim
remained in the Torah- observant Jewish community, defended by Gamliel in
the Beyt Din Ha- Gadol, while, by contrast, there is *no* evidence of any
selective-observant Christianity *ever* being accepted by the Beyt Din
Ha-Gadol, *plus* a clear record that the selective-observant Christians were
vehemently opposed to the Netzarim -- so much so that in 333 CE Christians
killed all remaining remnants of the Netzarim. We've been through this
before and it comes out the exact same way every time. Given the same
input, logic always does. Repetition isn't going to make it different. It
only makes it tedious. Even beyond all of that, you ignore all of the
evidence to claim that Essene- Christians were distinguished based on 'the
resurrection of J~sus from the dead' a century or so before the fact. In
the same breath, you acknowledge that you're not fully convinced there *is*
a difference.
While your welcome to your religious beliefs, this is not the forum for
preaching your religion. Nor are your religious doctrines axiomatic in this
forum, or the basis for founding assertions. Please restrict the discussion
to logic and evidence. Since Christianity is anachronistic to the Essenes,
I'm not sure I see the appropriateness of the discussion in the first place.
It's certainly not me who has insisted on connecting Christianity to the
Essenes.
To even suggest that 'there was no such thing' (a dilineating difference) is
not only ill-conceived, it invites endless, hopeless, and futile argument.
Yirmiyahu Ben-David
Paqid 16, Qehilat Ha-Netzarim (Nazarene Jews)
www.netzarim.co.il
Ra'anana, Israel