Matters Arising, if Truth & the Bible ( the White Man's Burden) can sometimes be said to be stranger than fiction…
Cornelius Hamelberg
Matters Arising, if Truth & the Bible ( the White Man's Burden) can sometimes be said to be stranger than fiction…
Re - (a) ”The issue of what unoka “really” was might miss the point that this is a novel, not a biography or ethnography.” - or the voice of scripture, the uncorrupted, incorruptible, holy words of God. (b) Adichie moaning about the danger of the single story.
With regard to ( a), Question 1: Is the novel supposed to mirror reality?
The shortest answer to that one: The author is free to mirror or not to mirror whatever he wants or does not want.
About the prophetic word - also open to interpretation, the Stone Chumash introduction to Genesis, the first book of Moses reliably informs us that
If we are to apply the same kind of approach to the “ New Testament '' so-called ( as if God has changed His Mind) one Allan Cronshaw has been consistently making that point. If it's the veracity or accuracy of reported history/ storytelling that you are worried about, then Kenneth Humphreys is the man for you because he takes that thesis a little further, into utter and total negation: According to him “Jesus Never Existed “; a proposition that's bound to ruffle more than a few apostolic feathers, and should normally be very difficult for a rational believer to swallow, since that would make liars of Saul on the road to Damascus and John The Beloved Disciple who supposedly wrote John 8:31-32
With reference to Adichie lamenting the danger of the single story, that danger may either have been averted or made worse by the varying and disagreeing accounts of the life of Jesus of Nazareth according to the four different gospel accounts - and the conflicting accounts taken up by Humphreys in “The three most stupid verses in the Gospels”
Historically accurate or not, I should just like to observe that with the first two examples that Humphrey takes up, what I notice is that those gospel writers trying so hard to establish some verisimilitude resort to ( for lack of a better word) the use of a literary device better known as the pathetic fallacy.
One last little footnote on the notion of Almighty God changing / not changing His MIND, the first paragraph of that Stone Chumash Introduction to Genesis reads as follows:
“We begin the study of the Torah with the realisation that the Torah is not a history book, but the charter of Man’s mission in the universe. Thus, in his first comment, Rashi cites Rav Yitzchak who says that since the Torah is primarily a book of laws, it should have begun with the commandment of the new moon (Exodus 12.2), the first law that was addressed to all Jewry as a nation. He explains that the reason for the Torah’s narrative of Creation is to establish that God is the Sovereign of the universe: He declared to His people the power of His works in order to give them the heritage of the nations (Psalm 111.6). If the nations accuse Israel of banditry for seizing the lands of the seven nations of Canaan, Israel can respond, “The entire universe belongs to God. He created it and He granted it to whomever He deemed fit. It was His desire to give it to them and then it was His desire to take it from them and give it to us.”
Geraldo Pino & The Heartbeats - Maria Do Ya Lef For Waka
Cornelius Hamelberg
Book, books, and, buks!
There used to be someone among us, more than a half dozen PhDs and 100 published “works” in his portfolio in his trajectory to Heaven. It was said of him, “ e sabi too mus buk !” He still has not tried his hand at fiction.
Seriously, the second chapter of The Holy Quran begins:
1 Alif. Lam. Mim.
2 This is the Scripture whereof there is no doubt, a guidance unto those who ward off (evil).
3 Who believe in the Unseen, and establish worship, and spend of that We have bestowed upon them;
4 And who believe in that which is revealed unto thee (Muhammad) and that which was revealed before thee, and are certain of the Hereafter.
5 These depend on guidance from their Lord. These are the successful.
6 As for the Disbelievers, Whether thou warn them or thou warn them not it is all one for them; they believe not.
7 Allah hath sealed their hearing and their hearts, and on their eyes there is a covering. Theirs will be an awful doom.
N.B. The Quran does not talk about any Armageddon
Robert Graves's King Jesus is a work of fiction
He tries to reconstruct the life of Jesus in The Nazarene Gospel Restored
Idries Shah played a part in converting Robert Graves to Sufism sometime before Graves kicked the bucket in Mallorca….
I have yet to read Claude Kayat’s “ The Thirteenth Disciple” not to be conflated with Arthur Koestler’s The Thirteenth Tribe
Most gruesome, and I wonder why it hasn’t been translated into English ( or perhaps it has/ will be?) Jonas Gardell: Om Jesus ( About Jesus).
Like Zelensky, Jonas Gardell is a comedian. - of course, a much better comedian than Zelensky will ever be, assuming that Zelensky has the possibility of popping out of a macabre cloak and dagger role, directly into The Divine Comedy, another work of fiction, or directly from the frying pan into what the Quran has described as the fire/ posthumously speaking, the nuclear armageddon, whether he believes it or not. For now, he thinks that he is “winning”, dreaming that “ With a little help from my friends” he will be taking Moscow by Christmas 2025, and if Trump is not President by then he hopes to be wishing Joe Biden a ”Happy New Year”, as if he doesn’t know that God forbid, after losing another 300,000 lives - if he himself is still alive, he will have to go to the negotiating table to discuss the future of Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk. So why not do that now? Because - for the time being he believes what he is singing “ We gonna chase those crazy baldheads out of town” // Let me have all of it, not some of it, all, all, all of it
Jeez!
Unlike Zelensky - thank God - Jonas Gardell is not Jewish, and neither is his brother Mattias Gardell ( JG would have taken a lot of flak for "Om Jesus", if he were J-ish)
True: the proposition that “ Jesus never existed” is bound to ruffle more than a few apostolic feathers, and should normally be very difficult for a rational believer to swallow, since that would make liars of Saul/ Paul on the road to Damascus and JohnThe Beloved Disciple who supposedly wrote John 8:31-32 given that on some other rational grounds such as the quality of John’s Greek, Humphreys is confident about his final judgment: Biggest lie - the 4th Gospel (from Jeus never existed )
Quran is unequivocal about Jesus
And there you have the Quran at loggerheads with e.g. Jews For Judaism
And these items from The-613-Commandments-Mitzvot :
37. Not to love the missionary—Deuteronomy 13:9
38. Not to cease hating the missionary—Deuteronomy 13:9
39. Not to save the missionary—Deuteronomy 13:9
40. Not to say anything in his defense—Deuteronomy 13:9
41. Not to refrain from incriminating him—Deuteronomy 13:9
Cornelius Hamelberg
"It was His desire to give it to them and then it was His desire to take it from them and give it to us.”
Brother Cornelius, So according to Rashi and /or Rav, with reference to the above situation, God changed His mind?Regards,OU
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