XPost: alt.books.cs-lewis, rec.arts.books.tolkien   
   From: jwkenne@attglobal.net   
      
   Christopher Kreuzer wrote:   
   > John W. Kennedy wrote:   
   >> darylgene@aol.com wrote:   
   >   
   >    
   >   
   >>> please understand that I am not trying to pass   
   >>> judgment on anyone, God forbid, I am hardly in a position to do that!   
   >>> But if a person claims (whatever group they associate themselves   
   >>> with) to worship a cold, distant, scowling, aloof God, I just cannot   
   >>> imagine how it can be the same one I greet every morning.   
   >   
   > That sounds like a personal God to me. You won't get much truck talking like   
   > that to athiests or anyone else who doesn't wake up and greet God every   
   > morning. To them, what you say is no different to the 5-year-old who talks   
   > to an imaginary friend (no offence intended). Those who do greet a personal   
   > God will understand what you are talking about.   
   >   
   >> In other words, I was correct, and you do not have the faintest idea   
   >> of who the Pharisees were, beyond that they are supposed to be "the   
   >> bad guys".   
   >> After the disaster of A.D. 70, it was the Pharisees who put Judaism   
   >> back together again. Except, perhaps, for the tiny Karaite sect (as I   
   >> said before), all Jews today are the spiritual descendants of the   
   >> Pharisees, because the Pharisees were the only remaining sect with a   
   >> viable agenda. The Zealots, Herodians, and Sadducees had all become   
   >> irrelevant, and the Essenes had never been relevant to begin with.   
   >   
   > Thanks for the history lesson, John. I feel I've learnt a bit more about who   
   > the Pharisees were in the context of their times.   
   >   
   >> I suspect you have never attended a Simchas Torah or a Purim service.   
      
   > This is a bit cryptic though. Anyone care to explain?   
      
   Simchas Torah is the annual holiday when the reading of the Torah ends   
   and begins again. Purim is the annual holiday based on the Book of   
   Esther. On both these occasions, it is a religious obligation upon any   
   good Jew to be as silly as possible.   
      
   >>> I would simply say,   
   >>> again, that if the concept of God has any referent it must have   
   >>> boundries. Unless you think everyone worships the same God you have   
   >>> to make distinctions. If a person is a Christian, no matter what they   
   >>> believe, just because they say they are, the term is meaningless, no?   
   >> I quite agree that I would be happy if such devil worshipers as Pat   
   >> Robertson and George W. Bush would stop calling themselves   
   >> "Christian", but it remains the case that if you deny that Jews   
   >> worship the same God that Christians do, your /own/ Christianity is   
   >> put into serious doubt, "for Salvation is of the Jews".   
   >   
   > And that sounds like a direct quote. From?   
      
   John 4:22.   
      
   --   
   John W. Kennedy   
   "You can, if you wish, class all science-fiction together; but it is   
   about as perceptive as classing the works of Ballantyne, Conrad and W.   
   W. Jacobs together as the 'sea-story' and then criticizing _that_."   
      -- C. S. Lewis.  "An Experiment in Criticism"   
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