Re: [asa] Half Full re wrap-up

In a message dated 6/20/2006 10:18:18 PM Eastern Standard Time,
deborahjmann@insightbb.com writes:

I believe that there is a set of laws that was ahead of its time.
There are
dietary laws that indicate a knowledge of hygiene that was ahead of
its time.

What else do we get from a glass half full?

By the way, if the Bible is only the doctoral version of Aesops fairy
tales,
and it is entirely and utterly historical fiction, it is still the most
valuable piece of literature ever written.

Please consider reading:

Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, The Bible Unearthed,
Archeology's
New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts
(Touchstone,
New York, 2002)

Mario Liverani, Israel's History and the History of Israel (Equinox,
London,
2003)

The bible's chief thread is theological. It's history is sacrificed to
theology, but to understand how the (amazing) theology developed read
the tw=
o books
above.

I got the tip on these two books from Biblical "minimalists" on the
biblical=

studies group on yahoogroups. Philip Davies who translated Liverani's
book
from Italian is in the group.

After understanding what the archeologists and historians believe is
the tru=
e
nature of the bible, then read Kevin MacDonald's trilogy on Judaism
to look
at its effects on world history from an evolutionary perspective.

Also consider ordering:

Race and the American Prospect:
Essays on the Racial Realities of Our Nation and Our Time
Sam Francis, editor

Available June 28th

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?
r=3D1&isbn=3D097=7988201

My essay in this book was written after an elderly Carmelite monk
left a book
at my front door with a note in it. Here are the first few paragraphs:

"We'd had a conversation about religion and politics only a few days
before,
Brother Michael and I. This afternoon, he'd come by to deliver a
package but he'd
missed me by an hour and left the package at the door. I ripped open the
large manila envelope. There was a book inside, Michael S. Rose's
Goodbye, Good
Men: How Liberals Brought Corruption into the Catholic Church. There
was a
note inside the book. The note read:

Dear Richard,

This is from the Tome of Damasus.

Canon 289 - If anyone denies that the Son of God is true God, just
as the
Father is true God, having all power, knowing all things and equal to
the
Father: he is a heretic.

Canon 290 - If anyone says that He [The Son] made flesh was not in
heaven
with the father while He was on earth: he is a heretic.

I'm saying this because it is the basis of my faith and it is what
the people
in this book are trying to undermine with their know-nothing of
Christ that
builds their whole faith on the difficulties in the Bible, and
belittles the
miracles, claims of Jesus, beliefs of the apostles, beliefs of the
fathers of
the Church and the defined doctrine of the Church. I'm what the book
mentions as
rigid because I'm not willing to say I believe in this or that.

Yours,
Brother Michael

I sat silently, focused by what I had read. Canons 289 and 290 were
essential
truths of the Catholic Church accompanied by powerful and succinctly
expressed sentiments from the deft pen of the normally invisible
Brother Michael.
Reading the first few pages of Goodbye, Good Men I wondered how
difficult it might
be for an elderly monk who has lived most of his life in an austere
prayerful
environment to tolerate the kind of stress generated by the clashes
between
socially fluid networks of homosexual priests and traditionally celibate
priests in their bid to rule the priesthood of the American Roman
Catholic Church. I
did not know what to do for Brother Michael. I had to do something.

Turning the pages of Goodbye, Good Men I was exposed to a:

Deliberate infiltration of Catholic seminaries=E2=80=A6 by a clique
of homosexual
dilettantes, along with an underground of liberal faculty members
determined to
change the doctrines, disciplines, and mission of the Catholic Church
from
within. Through the seminaries, liberals had brought a moral meltdown
into the
Catholic priesthood.

Michael S. Rose's moral outrage over the infiltration of the
seminaries stood
in stark contrast to the rant of liberal pundits who brazenly
declared the
churches fanatically intolerant for their rejection of homosexuality.
The
fundamental disagreement over homosexuality in the liberal/
conservative divide would
have to be explored and understood. What were the origins of the
Church's
sexual prohibitions? How did homosexuality come to be prohibited in
the major
religions?"

I spent 8 years on a parish council under 3 liberal pastors in a
church in
midtown Manhattan.

If any of you are privileged to obtain books for ASA (Randy?), please
consider getting a copy for your library.

I am here for no other reason than to share this information with you
all.

Don't be put off because the book is about race. I was included
because I
discuss the tribal/racial nature of the OT. I have studied racism
since 1973. My
father was murdered by a black racist in 1972.

For those of you who are frightened at the mention of "race,"
consider that
my suffering at the hands of a racist sparked my motivation to study
racism,
not my own racism.

Sincerely,

richard faussette

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Received on Sun Jun 25 16:31:20 2006