----- Original Message ----- From: "David Brin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, October 15, 2004 4:02 PM Subject: Re: brin: religious reformers
> > --- Alberto Monteiro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > What nonsense! Every Evangelical leader should place > > Muhammad > > among the precursors of the Reform, a minor > > reformism before > > Luther did the right thing! :-) > > Reform means many things. Muhammed was a reformer > from polytheism to structured monotheism, with the > addition of written transcription of the prophet's > exact words - The last I heard is that the scholaraly consensus is that the redaction of Muhammed's words was done years after his death. >a technological breakthrough un-utilized > by Moses, Jesus, Buddha, etc... but utilized first by > Paul of Tarsus in his Letters. I don't really see how that is true. Writing in the restored kingdom was not that rare and uncommon. Even poor people could either write or have someone write for them. I presonally read a translation from a recovered written work asking a judge to allow a worker to retrieve his cloak from his supervisor who took it because he said he wasn't working. There were written prophecies in the Dead Sea scrolls that predated Jesus. The time period between the development and the writing of those prophecies is not certain to be zero, but it has to be very short...shorter than the time between Jesus's death and the writing of Mark, for example. > > Paul's orthodoxy raised up a priesthood. Huh? If anything, Paul took Jesus's words one more radical step. >The Protestant Reformation satisfied the long frustrated > individualistic drive. But, Paul's book of Romans was Luther's inspiration for his part of the Reformation. Henry VIII had non-theological reasons, IMHO. The Catholic church relied heavily on Peter for authority. The Pope was the vicar of Peter before he became the vicar or Christ. The development of structure within the Christian church was fairly gradual. Part of it can be seen in the differences between the church of Paul and the church of deuteo-Paul. (Roughly half of the books attributed to Paul are deuteo-Paul). Structure continued to develop during the 2nd and 3rd century. The Nicean Council was the first attempt to have a single unified structure. Another complication is that the Christian church that we have today comes from one branch of Christianity. The Gnostic Christians lost out by the Nicean Council, but they may very well have been in the majority in the late 2nd and the 3rd centuries. I'm happy they lost out also. The Gospel of Thomas, the Secret Gospel of Mark are two Gnostic works. They placed a lot more emphasis on secret knowledge for salvation. Its only somewhat of an exaggeration to say that getting into heaven, for them, was dependant on knowing the secret handshake. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
