• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Search results

  1. John D. Brey

    The Religion of Politics.

    We saw a living example of the "right-ness" of the left in the Fox interview with Vice President Kamala Harris yesterday when Harris said, more than once, "You know what I mean," to Fox's Bret Baier. -----Baier responded, "No, actually I don't," evincing a slight grimace from Vice President...
  2. John D. Brey

    Cain's Sacrifice.

    It seems like perception and reality go hand in hand. For instance, at one time Newtonian physics seemed like the best expression of reality we had. But then quantum physics came along and showed that Newtonian physics wasn't as comprehensive as we thought. Who's to say in the near or far future...
  3. John D. Brey

    Cain's Sacrifice.

    I don't understand the meme? I'm slow that way. I went political, and then deleted the political statement (in order to not go political). I left (so to say) the ideological statement right (so to say) where it was. Yes, ideology (left vs. right) is quasi-political. But my experience in a...
  4. John D. Brey

    Cain's Sacrifice.

    Yes. Using our imagination, coupled with faith that the world we live in is contrived to a very substantial degree, we're in the process of transforming so-called reality. It took a lot of imagination, and the belief that so-called reality is malleable, in order to get this thing off the...
  5. John D. Brey

    Cain's Sacrifice.

    They're difficult to reconcile. So when I'm depressed and confused about it, I just read Psalms 73. John
  6. John D. Brey

    Cain's Sacrifice.

    No one has ever come outside of their sense perceptions to see if they, the sense perceptions, bear any semblance whatsoever, to what we sense. In fact, we know for a fact that all that exists outside our sense perceptions is a bloomin buzzin confusion. "Qualia" is the name for how sensory...
  7. John D. Brey

    Cain's Sacrifice.

    Why yes. Of course. Jesus of Nazareth was slain by a rather wicked abuse of the law by the interpreters and guardians of that law. The hymn says: "He could have called, ten-thousand angels, to destroy the world, and set him free; he could have called, ten-thousand angels; but he died alone, for...
  8. John D. Brey

    Cain's Sacrifice.

    I suspect that there's a persuasive way of justifying the statement you're responding to if I but knew what, more precisely, you're opposed to? There's a certain ethos, pathos, spirit, even a ghost, moving in and out, and around, the letters of the paragraph that make it capable of saying...
  9. John D. Brey

    Cain's Sacrifice.

    What follows, "And from the end of days," in the text of Genesis 4, is Cain practicing child-sacrifice prior to the impotence of that child-sacrifice eventuating in the "sin-offering" חתאת that's his adult brother Abel. Similarly, Abraham practices ritual child-sacrifice (brit milah) prior to...
  10. John D. Brey

    Cain's Sacrifice.

    Afterward they brought an offering, each from his own side, as is written: It came to pass at the end of days that Cain brought an offering to YHVH from the fruit of the soil. Ibid. Daniel Matt's commentary: 1473. ויהי מקץ ימים (Vayhi mi-gets yamim), It came to pass at the end of days. The...
  11. John D. Brey

    Did we fail God or did God fail us ?

    Isn't that a choice you've made? John
  12. John D. Brey

    Did we fail God or did God fail us ?

    I like @Jimmy's backward better. It's a kool koan. John
  13. John D. Brey

    Cain's Sacrifice.

    "Jesus is King and Mighty God." :) John
  14. John D. Brey

    Cain's Sacrifice.

    There's a real danger there since what I'm saying is definitely not for the faint of heart. I would rather my lingo be indecipherable to anyone who's faith and understanding of the scripture might be harmed rather than helped with where a study like this is heading. There are things in this...
  15. John D. Brey

    Cain's Sacrifice.

    The exegetical conundrum is exponentially worse if the truth that's mute for the exegete speaks a powerful word against the orthodoxy of the exegete. If, subconsciously, the exegete perceives the dilemma a true and literal interpretation of the text offers up, then often, not only will the...
  16. John D. Brey

    Cain's Sacrifice.

    "Cain brought from the fruit of the soil, as is said: from the fruit of the tree (Genesis 3:3). Pritzker Edition, The Zohar, Be-Re****, 1:54b. Using precisely the exegetical techniques spoken of earlier in the examination, the Zohar splices Genesis 3:3 together with Genesis 2:17, in order to...
  17. John D. Brey

    Cain's Sacrifice.

    Since the commonwealth of Israel is clearly a macro-image of the micro-iterations presented in Cain and Abraham, we must wonder, or exegete, our way to finding the Abel/Isaac, of the macrocosm presented in the reduced-size copy that is Cain and Abraham? In other words, just as Cain and Abraham...
  18. John D. Brey

    Cain's Sacrifice.

    In the same manner in which the scripture veils the origin of man's Fall, by means of the metaphor of eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge (throughout the Tanakh when a man has sex with a woman he's said to come to gain knowledge of her), so too, tilling the soil, or earth (adamah) is...
  19. John D. Brey

    Cain's Sacrifice.

    The larger fractal pattern for which the story of Cain's sacrifice is a smaller, self-similar motif, is the heathen cult-sacrifice of children (Isaiah 57:5) which acts as the lead up to the eventual sacrifice of a righteous adult as an apotropaic, totemic, offering to a tribal deity (Genesis...
  20. John D. Brey

    Cain's Sacrifice.

    Fractal patterns with various degrees of self-similarity have been rendered or studied in visual, physical, and aural media and found in nature, technology, art, and architecture. . . "A fractal is a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least...
Top