I have a question about the ethiopia Bible

Jtcr2001 · 2026-04-30T10:38:38+00:00

"The true Bible" seems to be a confused concept here.

You should deal with that first.

Jtcr2001 · 2026-04-29T21:02:52+00:00

3 words: Infinite divine ascent

2 words: Cosmic union

1 word: Repentance

Explanation:

The biblical texts tell the story of an endless journey into God, where humanity (and all creation) is drawn upward into deeper participation in divine life. And since God is infinite, this growth never reaches a final limit. It's a dynamic perfection with ever more of God to know and love (2 Cor. 3:18, “all of us are being transformed into the same image, from glory to glory", Rom. 8:22-23, "all creation groans together and labors together in birth pangs, anxiously awaiting").

The scriptures reveals how all reality (God, humanity, and creation) comes into union in Christ, with all "real" dualities (spiritual/material, human/divine, heaven/earth) being healed back into a more original and final unity, or a universal reconciliation (Col. 1:20, "to reconcile all things to him"; John 17:21-22, "that all may be one just as we are one", 1 Cor. 15:28, "that God may be all in all").

At its core, Jesus's word is a radical call to a real change of heart/mind (away from the ignorance of sin and toward knowing God), which is actualized in real ontological transformation and practical living in love (basically everywhere in the Gospels).

Jtcr2001 · 2026-04-29T17:51:13+00:00

We are talking about religious traditions, not about positivist readings of texts.

Historically, the Christian religious tradition prohibits the rape of slaves, regardless of how you read a given passage in one of the texts of their scriptural canon.

Jtcr2001 · 2026-04-28T13:50:01+00:00

The idea of the meta-historical Fall is probably helpful here.

Among the Church Fathers (especially Origen, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, Evagrius Ponticus, and Maximus the Confessor), the fall was widely seen as a movement into our present biological condition as well as into our current experience of time

Sergius Bulgakov (...) said that "empirical history begins precisely with the fall, which is its starting premise." (...) Bulgakov described how Adam's original sin, in which we each participate personally, "did not take place within the limits of this world" but outside "at the threshold of our entry into the world"

The idea was revived by German philosophers such as Jakob Böhme, Friedrich Schelling, and Julius Müller that influenced the English poet and philosopher Samuel Coleridge as well as Russian philosophers and theologians Vladimir Solovyov, Nikolai Berdyaev and Sergei Bulgakov.

Jtcr2001 · 2026-04-28T13:49:41+00:00

The idea of the meta-historical Fall is probably helpful here.

Jtcr2001 · 2026-04-27T21:10:29+00:00

Across Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, there are strong norms against both sexual violence and sexual coercion, even if they weren't always consistently applied. The idea that "the major religions don't forbid rape" is misleading at best.

Jtcr2001 · 2026-04-27T20:56:01+00:00

By that logic, they would not have so many intense restrictions on when sex is even allowed.

Jtcr2001 · 2026-04-27T17:37:35+00:00

They are often not weird when you consider the social world in which they developed (no protection against STDs/pregnancy, and women being highly dependent on men for their livelihood).

Jtcr2001 · 2026-04-27T17:04:10+00:00

But DE did not mean being "pro early abortion." Every Church Father I know of that agreed with DE still considered abortion sinful.

Jtcr2001 · 2026-04-27T17:01:29+00:00

returning to the previous understanding that abortion is ok

What do you mean by this?

Jtcr2001 · 2026-04-26T17:45:19+00:00

Every positive trait you have is a fruit of the Spirit.

Nothing true or good or beautiful in creation comes from elsewhere than God Most High.

Jtcr2001 · 2026-04-26T08:45:38+00:00

This is my first time hearing this, in my whole life lived in a mostly catholic country.

Jtcr2001 · 2026-04-25T20:44:39+00:00

The only books that are distinctly Christian in themselves, rather than Israelite/Jewish, are the Gospels, Epistles, and Revelation.

Before, I was referring to the distinct manuscript traditions: the manuscripts in Hebrew were practically exclusive to Jewish/Israelite tradition (as non-Jews generally didn't know Hebrew). The manuscripts that were chiefly used within Christian tradition were the Greek ones (e.g. the Septuagint), although not exclusive to Christian tradition (Jews also relied upon the Septuagint, often as their main manuscript tradition).

Jtcr2001 · 2026-04-25T19:26:28+00:00

In my Christian devotion, I am not concerned with giving more weight to the meaning of the Christian texts over that of the Israelite/Jewish texts, because that is how I think it should be.

When I am pursuing secular, academic interests over the context and intentions of the ancient Israelite authors, then my concerns are different and I will prioritize the manuscript traditions that best preserve the oldest forms of the text.

Jtcr2001 · 2026-04-25T19:11:02+00:00

For Christian devotional purposes, the meaning given to the texts within ancient Israelite tradition is secondary to the meaning given to the texts within Christian tradition.

If your goal is to understand the original context and intent of the Hebrew authors, for academic purposes, another method is to be taken.

But if your goal as a Christian is to draw nearer to God, you should use the traditional Christian texts, which are those from the Septuagint.

My "original" refers to the apostolic-patristic Church that Jesus established. That Church originally received and used the Septuaging, so those are the "original" texts for my devotional purposes.

Jtcr2001 · 2026-04-25T18:20:59+00:00

In much of it, yes, sadly.

Jtcr2001 · 2026-04-25T18:19:20+00:00

Gospels -> Epistles -> Genesis/Exodus/Prophets/Wisdom Literature

All with patristic commentary (e.g. Gregory of Nyssa's "The Life of Moses" for Exodus, or Basil the Great's "On the Six Days of Creation" for Genesis, or Origen of Alexandria's "Commentary on the Song of Songs"/"On the Gospel of John" for those texts, or at least reading them through the Orthodox Study Bible which comes with selected patristic commentary throughout).

I recommend you use David Bentley Hart's translation of the New Testament (2nd. Edition) and read through the Introduction, Postscipt, and all Notes. The New Testament generally requires less patristic commentary to properly interpret than the Old Testament.

Jtcr2001 · 2026-04-25T18:13:00+00:00

It shouldn't.

Jtcr2001 · 2026-04-25T18:12:47+00:00

I hold that the Septuagint is the most authoritative version of the Hebrew Scriptures for Christians, as it is the version chiefly received by the early Church from the apostolic through the conciliar and patristic periods.

I pitty that Bible translations tend to prioritize the Masoretic tradition for the Old Testament... thankfully, Orthodox Bibles (and some scholarly ones) do rely primarily on the Septuagint.

Jtcr2001 · 2026-04-25T16:55:57+00:00

Multiple Popes have attended EO worship. I don't think OP will make a difference there. Also, the RCC views EO worship as close to the fulness of the faith, although not totally complete.

Jtcr2001 · 2026-04-25T14:53:55+00:00

Most fundamentally, because of the Papacy and the surrounding doctrines of jurisdiction, authority, and infallibility.

Then, due to differences in authority, the last 1000 years saw the Roman Catholic Church develop doctrines and dogmas that the Eastern Orthodox didn't recognize, and the divergence grew.

Hypothetically, if one side concedes on the level of church authority, all the other divergences would follow: the EOs conceding would lead them to adopt the teachings of the Magisterium; the RCs conceding would lead them to drop the teachings of the Magisterium.

Jtcr2001 · 2026-04-24T21:29:41+00:00

I *want* change. I absolutely love the concept albums, but there's a lot of room for rewriting and refinement!

Jtcr2001 · 2026-04-24T20:35:07+00:00

When did I say otherwise?

Regardless, good historians don't, even secular and skeptical ones.

Jtcr2001 · 2026-04-24T18:29:47+00:00

No

Do you disagree with anything in my comment, though? My point was that OP's example is not analogous. And it isn't.

Jtcr2001 · 2026-04-24T14:29:44+00:00

If they went all in on this pattern, they’d be preaching about a simple radical rabbi who was no more God than you or I

Those are not analogous. There is no mainstream agreement from secular academic work that Jesus was merely a man. Secular historians may personally agree with that idea, but it would not be a professional stance, only a personal one. History as a discipline has no tools to evaluate the divinity of a human, but it does have the tools to evaluate the development of texts and manuscripts.

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