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Why the lie?

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Dunemeister

Dunemeister

Well-Known Member
Kcnorwood said:
You can use whatever words you want to try & justify early Christians placing their holidays near the Pagan holidays. If the Christians were SO sure of thier faith & God was the right & only way, then they should of paid more
Attention to what thier bible said. It is a traditional imperialist maxin that to conquer a nation you must first subvert or remove the people to which are more dangerous to you. In this case it was the Pagans.
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I'm not justifying it, I'm explaining the reason why they chose those particular dates (and why they chose to celebrate which aspects of Jesus' life). And there's a real sense in which the Christians were attempting to "conquer" the pagans. But they were doing it without violence. They were preaching, teaching, and holding festivals. And before anyone knew it, they had indeed converted most of Europe. If that's "Imperialist", it's a very strange sort of Imperialism.

Besides, how does any of this betray scripture? Does scripture prohibit the creation of festivals? Does it prohibit evangelism and conversion?
 
Ciarin

Ciarin

Pass the mead!
Exodus 22:18 is a mistranslation, sort of. When they translated the bible to KJV, they used the greek which had "pharmakos" as the word, it means "one who uses herbs, potions, drugs, etc"(it's also where we get words like pharmacist and pharmacology). The english had only one word for this type of person, and that would be witch/sorcerer.

If you translate it directly from the hebrew, "M'khashephah lo tichayyah", you get "You will not keep a woman who secretly uses spoken charms to harm others in life." Which could also be translated as witch or sorceress, since we have no other english word to describe such a person. The thing is you don't necessarily have to use spoken charms in secret to harm others in order to be a witch/sorceress, so perhaps it's better to be accurate than simplified.

So there ya go.
 
Ciarin

Ciarin

Pass the mead!
Dunemeister said:
I'm not justifying it, I'm explaining the reason why they chose those particular dates (and why they chose to celebrate which aspects of Jesus' life). And there's a real sense in which the Christians were attempting to "conquer" the pagans. But they were doing it without violence. They were preaching, teaching, and holding festivals. And before anyone knew it, they had indeed converted most of Europe. If that's "Imperialist", it's a very strange sort of Imperialism.

Besides, how does any of this betray scripture? Does scripture prohibit the creation of festivals? Does it prohibit evangelism and conversion?
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I guess Charlemagne did bubkis then?
 
Dunemeister

Dunemeister

Well-Known Member
Ciarin said:
I guess Charlemagne did bubkis then?
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Not at all. But the Christian festivals at issue were in place long before Charlemagne, and during the period of their invention, the church wasn't threatening death to those who wouldn't convert.

Note that I'm focusing on the specific supposed lies in the OP. If you have other lies in mind, perhaps you should clarify them.
 
Troublemane

Troublemane

Well-Known Member
Dunemeister said:
I'm not justifying it, I'm explaining the reason why they chose those particular dates (and why they chose to celebrate which aspects of Jesus' life). And there's a real sense in which the Christians were attempting to "conquer" the pagans. But they were doing it without violence.
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Thats an amazingly bold claim....

Inquisition - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Medieval Inquisition - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Spanish Inquisition - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Portuguese Inquisition - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Roman Inquisition - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tomás de Torquemada - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And this was nonviolent? Whew!
 
Kcnorwood

Kcnorwood

Well-Known Member
There are billions of Christians in the world today who believe that Christ was born on the 25th of dec, And that Easter was his rebirth. Then there are those who know that these days are truly Pagan holidays & try to tell others that they should stop celebrating them.

All Hallows Eve became All Saints day again was taken over by the Catholics

Same for Easter

Still my question still stands why if the christians were so sure that thier religion was the right one why didn't they let people come to God under thier own power?

I might of been wrong about the translation & thats fine with me, but the question still stands. Untill this day you hear preachers going off about how Witchcraft is a sin in the eyes of thier God, hence he is lieing to those people.
 
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Dunemeister

Dunemeister

Well-Known Member
Kcnorwood said:
There are billions of Christians in the world today who believe that Christ was born on the 25th of dec, And that Easter was his rebirth. Then there are those who know that these days are truly Pagan holidays & try to tell others that they should stop celebrating them.

All Hallows Eve became All Saints day again was taken over by the Catholics

Same for Easter
Click to expand...

Billions? Did someone take a poll while I was napping? Even so, where's the lie? It seems to me that the general history goes something like this. First, the church institutes a festival to subvert an existing pagan one. As a result, the pagan meaning of the festival is lost from popular culture and replaced with Christianized ones. The victory is so complete that laity (and much of the clergy) begin to associate the dates of the festivals (such as Christmas and Easter) with the actual events of Jesus life so that it becomes common belief that Jesus was born on December 25th, etc. It's more or less forgotten that these dates once had pagan influence.

This doesn't sound like a lie to me. It sounds like forgetting history. Lying implies that the church was teaching deliberate falsehood, and I just don't think we can charge the church with that in the case of the festivals mentioned in the OP (or even All Saints Day for that matter).
 
Dunemeister

Dunemeister

Well-Known Member
Kcnorwood said:
Still my question still stands why if the christians were so sure that thier religion was the right one why didn't they let people come to God under thier own power?

I might of been wrong about the translation & thats fine with me, but the question still stands. Untill this day you hear preachers going off about how Witchcraft is a sin in the eyes of thier God, hence he is lieing to those people.
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First, the church in the period we're discussing didn't force conversions. People came to the faith "under their own power." Subverting the festivals was a good evangelistic strategy -- one that should be admired for its audacity and effectiveness if not for its results (assuming you think it's a shame that the pagans converted in such great numbers). Besides, it was in keeping with the Christian notion that paganism didn't get everything wrong. So by subverting the pagan festivals, the Christians saw themselves as redeeming rather than destroying pagan practices that were worthy of being redeemed.

As for the preacher preaching about witchcraft, I don't think he's lying. He may be deceived about what the word translated "witchcraft" actually means. But then you have to ask whether the practices the preacher decries as witchcraft (using the term erroneously) are actually frowned upon by God. It seems to me that various forms of occult dealings ARE frowned upon by God, either explicitly or implicitly, so inveighing against them is the proper thing to do in the context of Christain discipleship.
 
Kcnorwood

Kcnorwood

Well-Known Member
Dunemeister said:
Billions? Did someone take a poll while I was napping? Even so, where's the lie? It seems to me that the general history goes something like this. First, the church institutes a festival to subvert an existing pagan one. As a result, the pagan meaning of the festival is lost from popular culture and replaced with Christianized ones. The victory is so complete that laity (and much of the clergy) begin to associate the dates of the festivals (such as Christmas and Easter) with the actual events of Jesus life so that it becomes common belief that Jesus was born on December 25th, etc. It's more or less forgotten that these dates once had pagan influence.

This doesn't sound like a lie to me. It sounds like forgetting history. Lying implies that the church was teaching deliberate falsehood, and I just don't think we can charge the church with that in the case of the festivals mentioned in the OP (or even All Saints Day for that matter).
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I guess this is where we'll always disagee & thats fine but who gave the Christians of the day the right to come & impose thier will on others? Might does not make right. :tsk:
 
Mister Emu

Mister Emu

Emu Extraordinaire
Staff member
Premium Member
Easter did incorporate many of the Pagan rituals associated with their Vernal Equinox celebrations.
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If you are talking about the modern commercialized version of Easter, I agree...

There's also St. Valentine's Day, possibly, which is sometimes linked to the Roman festival Lupercalia
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St. Valentine's Day did not have any romantic qualities until Chaucer in the 14th century, and there is no demonstrateable connection aside from Feb. 14th being the middle of Lupercalia(Feb. 13-15)...

Also, St. Brigid's Day seems to me to have its roots in Irish Celtic celebrations of the beginning of spring.
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You may be right, if I've heard of it before now, I can't remember ;)

then they should of paid more
Attention to what thier bible said.
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The Bible says that Jesus died, and was ressurected ~Passover...

There are billions of Christians in the world today who believe that Christ was born on the 25th of dec, And that Easter was his rebirth. Then there are those who know that these days are truly Pagan holidays & try to tell others that they should stop celebrating them
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And then there are those who know the date of Pascha has nothing to do with Pagan festivities, and is tied to Passover. And I suspect very few people actually believe Jesus was born on December 25th...

All Hallows Eve became All Saints day again was taken over by the Catholics
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All Saints' Day precedes its move to Nov. 1, and in the East is celebrated the first Sunday after Pentecost

Same for Easter
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See: Passover
 
Mister Emu

Mister Emu

Emu Extraordinaire
Staff member
Premium Member
JPS 1917:
Thou shalt not suffer a sorceress to live

Is something akin to what you were asking about? If not my apologies...
 
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