now more than ever...

Oy Veh! Looking at McCain's bedfellows, the warmongering Hagee and the Ohio Mall Church... they are...

In the thrall of myth.

The importance of going back to the original source. The early Christians were reading the Septuagint -- Greek, not Hebrew, their Bible. I wonder. How did the language change the meaning? How has translation changed it through all this time?
Most important, as we frame the human relation to deity (knowing these are psychological statements; that it's only the psychological perspective we can speak from), is looking at the language that speaks of man's dominion over the earth. The source, going back as far as you can go: what did this word 'dominion' mean? What responsibility did it imply?
The Mishna will look back at Abraham and see him as a metaphor for unquestioning devotion and love, and his son as the law. Law here in these earliest times was the important consideration. I'm thinking of regional gods, because so often religious writings were (and are) statements of identity.
When I hear people make statements that frame things such as 'the "Protestant" come closest to the original "Hebrew"..' Don't we understand we're spanning ages, peoples,tribes... that the perspective we speak from is specific -- e.g.,historical, psychological (and should always be careful to ask "whose?") Yet this understanding is exactly what has not been carried over to the broaderculture. And its critical to address in our time.
Psychology must do what Philosophy has failed to do. Without a sense of speaking symbolically, scripture has been taken literally and has become all important in our current world as all around us this end time myth is playing itself out.
It's a mass psychosis.
We must say so, understand and address it as such.
What part, we must all ask, do we each have in it?
What can we do to heal?

So Constantine sat down with his Hebrew / Aramaic scrolls when he and his committees began to formally cut and paste the Holy tome that has morphed down to us as the King James. Nonsense. (Even Philo, the Jewish mystic, was reading Greek; it's doubtful he read Hebrew at all.) But cut and paste and mold they did. A work of art.
Scripture is, has ever been, identity statement -- as it was for the tribes of Canaan, as it was for the early Christians, as it is for the tribes of Lynchburg, VA. Not based or meshing with any reality, with any true history.
And this has only become a problem in a literal world that doesn't understand this. That doesn't even know how to understand it.
Everyday we use tools we don't understand. We turn on the tube, send an e-mail. It might as well be magic for all we know; in the unconcious mind -- where we really think -- is IS a sort of magic. We trust its authority implicity... those who fix things, invent things. We live so far away from nature, we really don't know much firm reality. We don't need to, it touches us so little. Cause and effect? We climb in a car, buy food, buy a solution, with money made by pushing magic buttons. Who is this invisible god? Let the autorities tell you: IT IS WRITTEN THUS... We look in the instruction manual for the Magnivox, the WORDPERFECT, the toaster, the Cosmos. Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus.
In our literal world, the dinosaurs become tricksters and the voyage to the sacred river a tour bus: See where baby Jesus was born?
How is this different from "Would you like to buy a piece of the cross? A metatarsal of a saint? Time off in Purgatory?"
The high elect KNOW... well, it isn't gnowing, which is lowly, which is based in simple sympathy and compassion. Yet our Straussian groupies are firm believers in a high elect who shall run all things. The evangelicals are endtime Millenialists, just as the Nazis. All reason, abandoned. All but cunning.
And now this identity statement is running the most powerful arsenal (a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun) the world has ever imagined.
Between the philosophy that too often stays in tower, and (most of all) what passes in even the educated public as 'truth' re scripture and history, we need a course correction.
The US is drowning in what must be understood as a cult. Faith is one thing, but making faith 'fact' and the law of the land, is another. This is the cult's agenda, and we know where it leads.
We can theorize about reality until the cows come home, but recognizing a distortion of reality... well, this is the issue. It's happening, happening on a grand scale with major consequences for all.

It does not have to be like this.
We change it one by one by one.
Don't let your heart be broken. What beats your heart beats all hearts. What other truth do you need?


***

In History, Archaeology, there's been an explosion of work. A great deal of synthesis. And synthesis seems the task of our age. Re the historical ground, a good intro online:
Romans, Jews, and Greeks: The World of Jesus and the Disciples http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2004/2004-7.html
Sidnie White Crawford, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

-----------------------------------
related:

June 2005: Stations of the Cross : How evangelical Christians are creating an alternative universe of faith-based news

Where Biblical Activism and Rupert Murdoch media cross


excerpts:

"Many Christian broadcasters attribute the success of their news operations to the biblical perspective that underpins their reporting in a world made wobbly by terrorist threats and moral relativism. “We don’t just tell them what the news is,” explains Wright of the NRB. “We tell them what it means. And that’s appealing to people, especially in moments of cultural instability.”

[...]

"The CBN report echoes hundreds of others that have run on Christian radio and television networks. While Terri Schiavo’s name appeared in the mainstream national media only sporadically before this year, her case has been a top story on Christian news and talk programs for much of the last three years, as it combines two issues that are of critical importance to religious conservatives — the power of the courts and the “sanctity of life.” Much of the coverage on Christian networks has distorted Schiavo's condition by indicating she retained the ability to think, feel, and function. Some newscasts reported as fact her parents’ contested claim that she tried to utter the words “I want to live” before her feeding tube was pulled for the last time. Others, like Janet Folger, host of the radio and TV call-in show Faith2Action, described Schiavo as actually sitting up and talking. Evangelical pundits also demonized Schiavo’s husband, Michael, and the Florida judge George Greer, who presided over the case, referring to them as murderers and invoking holocaust rhetoric. Indeed, Christian broadcasters seemed to set the tone for the emotional language that would burst into the mainstream media and the halls of Congress during Schiavo’s final days.

Schiavo’s parents welcomed the Christian broadcasters’ attention. Months before they became the stuff of nightly news they were blazing a trail through the Christian talk show circuit. They also attended the NRB’s 2005 conference, held in mid-February, to help build momentum for a grass-roots campaign to keep their daughter alive. By then they had already seen proof of the Christian broadcasters’ power. D. James Kennedy — who, in addition to hosting several talk shows, heads a lobbying organization called the Center for Reclaiming America — boasted at one point that he was collecting 5,000 signatures an hour for a “Petition to Save Terri Schiavo.” Other leaders, including James Dobson, perhaps the most influential evangelical host, shut down phone lines within Governor Jeb Bush’s office by urging their millions of constituents to call."


[...]

"Christian news networks devote an enormous amount of airtime to Israel, and their interest has theological underpinnings. In addition to being the place where many biblical events unfolded, Israel plays a pivotal role in biblical prophecy. Most evangelicals emphasize that God granted Israel to the Jews through a covenant with Abraham. They believe that the Jews’ return to Israel was biblically foreordained, and that Jewish control over Israel will trigger a cascade of apocalyptic events that will culminate in Christ’s second coming. Israel’s strength is vital to their own redemption.

Such beliefs explain the unwavering support for Israel expressed by some evangelical talk show hosts. Among them is Kay Arthur, whose radio and TV program, Precepts For Life, offers audiences biblical solutions to everyday dilemmas such as divorce and addictions. She took to the stage at the Israeli Ministry of Tourism Breakfast, held in conjunction with the 2005 NRB conference, and told the hundreds of broadcasters in the audience, “If it came to a choice between Israel and America, I would stand with Israel.” Janet Parshall, host of a popular political program that also runs both on radio and TV, implored the Israelis in attendance, “Please, please, do not give up any more land.” Lest anyone think her alone in her zeal, she urged all those who believed “in the sovereignty of Israel” to stand. Virtually everyone in the room got up.

Some influential evangelical hosts — among them Arthur, Parshall, and Pat Robertson — sometimes broadcast live from Israel and urge listeners and viewers to visit the country. Their pleas have helped persuade thousands of American Christians to brave the bloody Intifada for a chance to savor the sights and smells of Christ’s homeland, while supporting Israel’s battered economy.

The Israeli government has responded with gratitude. Senior officials meet regularly with evangelical broadcasters. Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent Pat Robertson a taped message for his seventy-fifth birthday, thanking him for his stalwart support. In addition to staging lavish events in the broadcasters’ honor, the country’s tourism ministry rents one of the largest booths at each year’s NRB conference. This year’s event also featured a number of other Israel-focused exhibits, including the burned-out hull of a Jerusalem city bus that was struck by a suicide bomber in January 2004. Part of the roof had been ripped off and all that was left of the rear seats was a jumble of twisted steel and charred upholstery. Near the bumper hung a poster with images of bomb-laden Palestinian boys. It read: “When Palestinians love their children more than they hate Israel, then there will be peace in Palestine.”

The turmoil gripping the Middle East has proven to be a particularly appealing topic for shows like the International Intelligence Briefing and Prophecy in the News, which interpret world events — be it the rise of the European Union or the Asian tsunami — in light of biblical prophecy. This approach tends to cast events that flow from controversial human choices as the natural and inevitable march of destiny. Prophecy-focused shows suggest that the war in Iraq was foretold in the Bible, for instance.

Some political talk shows go even further out on the apocalyptic edge. Among them is the 700 Club, which airs on numerous mainstream stations and reaches about a million U.S. viewers each day. Its February 25 edition featured an interview with a man named Glenn Miller, touted on the 700 Club Web site as a “proven prophet.” A scholarly looking man, Miller sat nestled in an armchair, a faux-urban skyline glittering in the background, and explained why God had sent America to war with Iraq. “It has nothing to do with terrorism,” he told Pat Robertson’s son, Gordon. “It has nothing to do with oil. It has everything to do with that there’s 1.2 million Muslims that have been deceived by the false God Allah, and that the God of heaven, Jehovah, is now in the process of doing war if you will against that spirit to . . . break the power of deception so those people can be exposed to the gospel.” As Miller spoke, Robertson nodded in sympathy. At one point, Robertson chimed in with the tale of a CBN reporter who was embedded with one of the first infantry divisions to march into Baghdad: “He said there was a sense among the troops — and he had this personal sense as well — that this was a spiritual victory, that this was a movement in the heavenlies.”

[...]

"George W. Bush also attended NRB’s 2003 convention and gave a speech, much of it dedicated to promoting the looming war in Iraq. At the event, the NRB passed a resolution to “honor” the president. Though the NRB is a tax-exempt organization, and thus banned from backing a particular candidate, the document resembled an endorsement. The final line read, “We recognize in all of the above that God has appointed President George W. Bush to leadership at this critical period in our nation’s history, and give Him thanks.”