Interview. Analysis. Nick Rockefeller quotes are attributed, not direct; attribution to David Rockefeller is mistaken. Russo also quoted Nick Rockefeller to William Grigg: "[Rockefellers] created the women's movement, and we promote it. And it's not about equal opportunity. It's designed to get both parents out of the home and into the workforce, where they will pay taxes. And then we can decide how the children will be raised and educated."

19:05 I had a friend, Nick Rockefeller, who was one of the Rockefeller family and he, when I was running for governor in Nevada, he came to me, introduced himself to me through an attorney, and we became friends. We started talking about things and I learned an awful lot from Mr. Rockefeller, and one of the things that we used to talk about was the ultimate plan of the banking industry and what they wanted to accomplish and the goals of the banking industry, not just the Federal Reserve System but the private banks in Germany and England, all over Italy, all over the world.

21:00 There'll be no more cash, and this is given me straight from Rockefeller himself. This is what they want to accomplish, and all money will be in your chips and so, instead of having cash, anytime you have money in your chip, they can take out whatever they want to take out whenever they want to. If they say you owe us this much money in taxes they just deduct it out of your chip digitally.

22:05 I met Rockefeller through a female attorney I knew who called me up one day and said, one of the Rockefellers would like to meet you. I'd made a video called Mad as Hell and he'd seen the video and wanted to meet me and knew I was running for governor of Nevada. So sure I'd love to meet him and I met him and I liked him and he was a very very smart man and we used to talk and share ideas and thoughts, and he's the one who told me 11 months before 9/11 ever happened that there was going to be an event, never told me what the event was going to be, but there was going to be an event, and out of that event we would invade Afghanistan to run pipelines from the Caspian Sea. We're going to invade Iraq to take over the oil fields, establish a base in the Middle East, and make it all part of the New World Order, and we go after Chavez and Venezuela; and sure enough, later 9/11 happened and I remember he was telling me how you are going to see soldiers looking in caves for people in Afghanistan and Pakistan and all these places and there's going to be this war on terror of which there's no real enemy, and the whole thing is a giant hoax, but it's a way for the government to take over the American people.

23:40 There's going to be war on terror, and he's laughing, who are we fighting? I mean why do you think 9/11 happened and then nothing's happened since then? Do you think that our security is so great here that these people who pulled off 9/11 who are able to, can't knock down another plane? Come on, it's ridiculous. 9/11 was done by people in our own government and our own banking system to perpetuate the fear of the American people into subordinating themselves to anything the government wants them to do. That's what it's about, and to create this war, this endless war on terror, and that's why, and that was the first lie; and the next lie was going into Iraq to get Saddam Hussein out with his weapons of mass destruction.

25:00 You can't define a winner, there's no one who's going to be, so it goes on and on forever, and they can do whatever they want. They scared the hell out of the American public. Look, this whole war on terror is a fraud. It's a farce. It's very difficult to say it out loud because people are intimidated against saying it because if you say it they want to make you into a nutcase.

25:20 The truth has to come out. That's why I'm doing this interview. The fact of the matter happens to be that the whole war on terror is a fraud. It's a farce. Yeah, there's a war going on in Iraq because we invaded Iraq and people over there are fighting; but the war on terror, it's a joke, and until we discover what really happened on 9/11 and who was responsible for 9/11, because that's where the war on terror emanates from, that's where it comes from, it was 9/11 that allowed this war on terror to begin, and until we get to the bottom root of 9/11, the truth of 9/11, we'll never know about the war on terror.

26:45 I was definitely being recruited, but it's more subtle than that .... We were friends and we used to have l--, he used to come to my house a lot, we'd have dinner, we'd talk and he'd tell me about business investments, how you get involved in, or they would help me with this business investment or that business investment, and was I interested in joining the Council on Foreign Relations? I would have to get a letter to join them, but was I interested in that, and just stuff, leading you on, and I used to say to him that I never really did that because that wasn't where I was coming from. As much as I like you, Nick, your ways and my ways, we're on the opposite side of the fence. I don't believe in enslaving people.

27:50 It was like: What do you care about them? What do you care about those people? What difference does it make to you? Take care of your own life. Do the best you can for you and your family. What do the rest of the people mean to you? They don't mean anything to you. They're just serfs. They're just people. It was just a lack of caring, and that's just not who I was. It was just sort of like cold. I used to say to him, what's the point of all this? You have all the money in the world you need. You have all the power you need. What's the point? What's the end goal? And he said, the end goal is to get everybody chipped, to control the whole society, to have the bankers, the elite people, the bankers and some government, controlling the world. What, and I said, well, do all the people in the Council on Foreign Relations believe this way you do? He said, no, no, no, he said most of them believe they're doing the right thing. A lot of them believe it's better off being socialistic. You know we have to convince people that socialism is really capitalism, because America's becoming a socialist country. It's a communist country today.

29:05 One of the things they told me was that, he was at the house one night and we would talk, and he started laughing. He said, "Aaron, what do you think women's liberation was about?" And I said, I had pretty conventional thinking about it at that point, I said things about women having the right to work, getting equal pay with men just like they won the right to vote, and he started to laugh. He said, "You're an idiot," and I said, "Why am I an idiot?" He said, "You want, let me tell you what that was about. We the Rockefellers funded that. We funded women's lib, and we're the ones who got all over the newspapers and television, the Rockefeller Foundation," he says. "And you want to know why?" he said. "There were two primary reasons, and they were, one reason was, we couldn't tax half the population before women's lib, and the second reason was, now we get the kids in school at an early age, we can indoctrinate the kids how to think. That's what, it breaks up their family. The kids start looking at the state as the family, as the school, as the officials, as their family, not as the parents teaching them, and so those are the two primary reasons for women's lib," which I thought up to that point was a noble thing. When I saw their intentions behind it, where they were coming from when they created it, the thought of it, I saw the evil behind what I thought was a noble adventure .... The CIA funded Ms. magazine? ... No kidding. I never heard that. Well, Nick told me, I mean, I know it but not because I know the CIA was involved in it.

32:15 My friendship with Nick Rockefeller was one where we expressed ideas to each other and thoughts and philosophies, and he wanted me to become part of what they were doing and for me to become a member of the CFR, and offered various business opportunities for me to get involved in, and for me to not take up the fight or the battle that I've been taking up in the past, to drop that idea, because what was the point of my fighting for the people? I was a guy who was very successful in the movie business, and I saw the truth of what was happening. I tried to express it to the people, and rather than having me express it to the people they wanted me to join their side because I was a mover and a shaker, and, rather than me opposing them, to join them. It was real simple and he tried to recruit me into that situation and I didn't go for it.

33:15 I remember one time he said to me, you join it so you have an ID card, Aaron, you have a chip and your chip will say KMA on it, and I said, what does KMA mean? He said it means "kiss my ass", and anybody stops you, a cop or whatever and you show them your card or your chip, and they'll know to leave you alone because you're one of us, and why are you fighting for the people for? What is that about? The people are just, that they have to be ruled. They have to be, that the Constitution, what you're standing for, is only for a few people. It's only a few individuals that can live that way, and we believe that it's best for society to be ruled by an elite people who control everything, and I said, I don't believe that. I believe God put me on this Earth to be the best Chr--, person I could be, and put everybody in the earth to be the best they can be, not to be a slave and a sheep to you and these people, and I don't understand why you want to control everything. What is the need for that, and, I asked him, do all the people in the Council of Foreign Relations feel the same way you feel? He said, no, a lot of them think they're doing the right thing. They think that socialism is the best way to go. They think that they're doing the right thing, but the people at the top, they all know the truth of what's happening.

34:40 All the people that are in the CFR where there are two or three thousand people if you go to like Dan Rather, they don't know. They don't know what's going on. They just join the CFR because it's prestigious. They think it's good for business. They don't know what's really happening, the evil that comes out of it, that's emanating out of it, and, to me, the biggest evil is what's happening right now because what happened on 9/11 is a phony, and we've never learned the truth about 9/11.

35:25 I was actually in Tahiti when 9/11 happened, and I got a call from my son, and my son said, the Twin Towers, they were just attacked, and they were falling down or something. So what are you talk--? I was in Tahiti. I was asleep and he says, yeah, they were hit by a plane, yada yada, and so, where I lived in Ta--, where I was in Tahiti there was no television so I had to run around the other side of the island to a hotel where they had, and it was all on television, and that's when I first saw all the stuff on TV about it, and I didn't immediately equate it to Nick, but when I realized that we're going to go into Afghanistan, Iraq, and as that developed I realized what it was.

39:25 Nick and I discussed many things. One of the things we discussed, what he brought up in conversation was reducing world population, and he felt that there were too many people in the world. In a way I agree there are too many people in the world but I don't think I have the authority to say who's going to die and who's not going to die, but they felt that they wanted to reduce world population and he felt that it should be reduced by half. He even mentioned to me once, that they were having a real problem trying to solve the Israel J--, Palestinian problem, and he talked to me once about, they were playing with the idea of bringing Israel to Arizona, and taking all the people from Israel and giving everybody a million dollars and setting up Israel in the state of Arizona .... To end that problem, because that's a problem that they're not in charge of, in a sense. They're not controlling that problem.

45:35 I know about Rockefeller because I was friends with him, we had talked about it and I can tell you firsthand .... He said the New York Fed is the main controlling interest of the Federal Reserve System. They control the bulk of it, so the New York Fed is really the Federal Reserve System. Even though there's 12 different banks it's run by the New York Fed and the New York Fed is basically the Federal Reserve System so who's ever running the New York Fed is where, and the families that control it control the New York Fed and they're the main engine behind the Federal Reserve System .... The Bank of England and the Federal Reserve are partners, and the Bank of England is a private bank and so is the Bundesbank in Germany and all the banks of the G8 countries are world private banks. They're private central banks, and look what happened in Europe. Didn't Europe vote down the European Constitution? .... They're still doing it. Didn't they vote down the euro? They're still doing it. They don't care what the people vote. They do whatever they want to do. What we want doesn't matter anymore. It's their agenda, it's their plans that matter.

54:30 He told me that you're going to see men running around caves looking for Osama bin Laden. You're going to see men looking for these guys .... It's a phony. The whole thing is a fake. It's a fraud .... It was more laughing, cynical laughing. It's more like, how stupid everybody is, we can do whatever we want to do.

59:20 Nick said to me, it's about control and power. They have all the money they want. They can make all the money they want. They have a machine. They can make all the money. It's not about money. It's about control. It's about their vision of how they want to see the world in their eyes, and you and I believe in individuality and the person being the dominant thing, the individual being the dominant person. Today we live in a world where institutions are dominant not people, the American, where we the people by the people for the people, now it's we the institutions by the institutions for the institutions. People are secondary. It's all about corporations and institutions, and the Federal Reserve is the biggest institution in the world. If you ask somebody what's the biggest corporation in the world they'll say Google or Walmart or Exxon or something, but the biggest corporation in the world is the Federal Reserve System, and all the other corporations feed off the nipple of the Federal Reserve System.

Today I received and report to you a first systematization of the inherent mathematical dimensions of reality. This refers solely to coexisting mensurable spectra that have perpendicular relationships among themselves, not to any other use of "dimension". The method explains a natural order to each dimension that works similarly to the periodic table of the elements and extends indefinitely in theory even though only a small number are needed in practice. With the elements, a quantized atomic mass change causes all the variety in physical forms we observe; in the same way, dimensions are quantized and have different characters in any individual frame of reference, with an expanding set of groupings and categorizations as the dimensional index number increases. The dimensions inform and overlap with natural enumerations of essentials, with the symbols of numbers and letters, and with systems like the Egyptian Ogdoad, the Gnostic Aeons, and the Kabbalist Tree of Life, all of which have Edenic elements.

This enumeration should not be regarded as definitive or complete, merely as a stepping stone toward more discovery. In particular, I've had to change my previous understanding by promoting one dimension that I had previously as the 10th to recognize it as the 6th instead, and demoting others accordingly; so anything I've said in the past about the 6th through 10th should be renumbered to account for that. I add the traditional Hebrew, Greek, and English gematria even though they do not perfectly agree, because (as with the first three dimensions) some functions are slippable and loose while others are more tightly indicated. As typical in science, all phenomena (known and unknown, seen and unseen) occur in all dimensions even though our simplified models of fewer numbers of dimensions are substantially sufficient for many intents and purposes; so we already exist in all dimensions even as experience can be expressed in words using very few of them.

1. Alef, Alpha, A: Forward, the way you walk.

2. Beth, Beta, B: Upward, the way you climb.

3. Gimel, Gamma, C: Rightward, the way you sidle.

4. Daleth, Delta, D: Onward, the way you anticipate. This is the first temporal dimension, the prior ones being spatial, and it is distinguished from others because its accumulation of entropy causes it to be the direction in which the world is both remembered and anticipated. The mnemonic indicates we have correctly named the first FOUR.

5. Heh, Epsilon, E: Understanding, the way in which the brain folds its memory and the DNA folds its immune history. The name is cognate with both Yahweh, the self-existent as the source of consciousness, and with Heh, the lesser Egyptian analogue responsible for the first heaven.

6. Waw, Digamma, F: Knowledge, the way in which one moves right and wrong. Just as the archaic, now-lost Greek digamma recapitulates gamma, moral right recapitulates chiral right. I had this concept 10th instead of 6th, but moved it because its pairing with the 5th is essential to the pattern; it is also cognate with Yahweh. This refers to moral knowledge, and not epistemological knowledge, which is instead to be called understanding.

7. Zain, Zeta, G: Wisdom, the way in which one apprehends greater core reality.

8. Cheth, Eta, H: Counsel, the way in which one interrelates among sentiences.

9. Teth, Theta, I: Prudence, the way in which one negotiates nonsentient realities.

10. Yodh, Iota, J: Invention, the way in which imagination works. This is the second temporal dimension, perpendicular to the first, in which one explores alternate timelines with as much freedom as in spatial manifolds; it focuses on changeable concepts and not timeless realities (except as the concept contains the whole of the timeline). This is the last of the standard M-theory dimensions.

11. Kaf, Kappa, K: Strength, the additional space to allow value and mass to take form in the lower dimensions. This is also used in M-theory but only as a container without extension to keep various forms of the theory isomorphic.

12. Lamedh, Lambda, L: Intellect, a second additional space that is necessitated by the same system but that is not usually distinguished from the 11th. This is the reason that the numbers 10, 11, 12 are all considered isomorphic and the reason the kabbalistic tree can be pictured with 10, 11, or 12 nodes (corresponding to the number of standard vowels producible with the human mouth). The next 12 dimensions are analogues of the first 12 that partake of similar character but that have not had significant formal exploration before; they can be used to align future theory. For this reason the current English alphabet (like the earlier 23-letter English alphabet) doesn't continue to align with the earlier alphabets.

13. Mem, Mu, M: Forward-Related.

14. Nun, Nu, N: Upward-Related.

15. Samekh, Xi, O: Rightward-Related.

16. Ain, Omicron, P: Onward-Related. Temporal.

17. Peh, Pi, Q: Understanding-Related.

18. Zhadeh, San, R: Knowledge-Related.

19. Qof, Koppa, S: Wisdom-Related.

20. Resh, Rho, T: Counsel-Related.

21. Shin, Sigma, U: Prudence-Related.

22. Taw, Tau, V: Invention-Related. Temporal. When M-theory is expanded to 22 dimensions, these will all manifest together and stop there as a natural boundary. This corresponds to the 22 Hebrew consonants represented in kabbalah, which takes them from the 22 almond blossoms of the temple menorah.

23. Kaf-Sofith, Upsilon, W: Strength-Related. The first of two transitional dimensions allowing freedom of movement in the lower dimensions.

24. Mem-Sofith, Phi, X: Intellect-Related. The second transitional dimension at this level.

25. Nun-Sofith, Chi, Y: Depth, unknown entry into higher dimensions.

26. Peh-Sofith, Psi, Z: Heighth, unknown entry into higher dimensions.

27. Zhadeh-Sofith, Omega, &: Width, unknown entry into higher dimensions (presumably followed by temporal Length, &c.).

Reference: c/Anthroposophy/logs

Anthroposophy: Anthroposophy is a spiritual  new religious movement which was founded in the early 20th century by the esotericist Rudolf Steiner that postulates the existence of an objective, intellectually comprehensible spiritual world, accessible to human experience. Followers of anthroposophy aim to engage in spiritual discovery through a mode of thought independent of sensory experience ....

Steiner hoped to form a spiritual movement that would free the individual from any external authority. For Steiner, the human capacity for rational thought would allow individuals to comprehend spiritual research on their own and bypass the danger of dependency on an authority such as himself. Steiner contrasted the anthroposophical approach with both conventional mysticism, which he considered lacking the clarity necessary for exact knowledge, and natural science, which he considered arbitrarily limited to what can be seen, heard, or felt with the outward senses.

Nature of the human being

In Theosophy, Steiner suggested that human beings unite a physical body of substances gathered from and returning to the inorganic world; a life body (also called the etheric body), in common with all living creatures (including plants); a bearer of sentience or consciousness (also called the astral body), in common with all animals; and the ego, which anchors the faculty of self-awareness unique to human beings. Anthroposophy describes a broad evolution of human consciousness. Early stages of human evolution possess an intuitive perception of reality, including a clairvoyant perception of spiritual realities. Humanity has progressively evolved an increasing reliance on intellectual faculties and a corresponding loss of intuitive or clairvoyant experiences, which have become atavistic. The increasing intellectualization of consciousness, initially a progressive direction of evolution, has led to an excessive reliance on abstraction and a loss of contact with both natural and spiritual realities. However, to go further requires new capacities that combine the clarity of intellectual thought with the imagination and with consciously achieved inspiration and intuitive insights.

Anthroposophy speaks of the reincarnation of the human spirit: that the human being passes between stages of existence, incarnating into an earthly body, living on earth, leaving the body behind, and entering into the spiritual worlds before returning to be born again into a new life on earth. After the death of the physical body, the human spirit recapitulates the past life, perceiving its events as they were experienced by the objects of its actions. A complex transformation takes place between the review of the past life and the preparation for the next life. The individual's karmic condition eventually leads to a choice of parents, physical body, disposition, and capacities that provide the challenges and opportunities that further development requires, which includes karmically chosen tasks for the future life. Steiner described some conditions that determine the interdependence of a person's lives, or karma.

How would you like supportive questions to be framed?

I was asked to review this article, so I am posting my brief results publicly.

https://themillenniumreport.com/2019/03/even-most-jews-dont-know-the-hidden-truths-about-judaism/

The link starts out with and builds on a Luciferian quote attributed to Harold Wallace Rosenthal that only appeared 2 years after his 1976 death, written by Walter and Opal White, who also founded the anti-Semitic org Western Front. There's no evidence of its authenticity despite its claims of being a taped transcript, even though there is evidence of "Jewish" and "Christian" Luciferians generally. It seems self-evident that anti-Semites publishing a pamphlet against an individual whose death prevents him from suing for libel should not be the sole source for founding a theory. That should be added to my hoaxes article.

Factual and etymological errors: (1) Lucifer's name in the Bible is not "Hillel" (H1985) as stated but "Helel" H1966, same root, different grammar. Catholics say "Hallelujah" just fine without the root word being the problem. (2) I've disproven hexagram claims. (3) The word "chai" can mean beast but also means the four living beings of Revelation [zoa in Greek] so isn't significant. (4) "Hovah" can mean "falling out" as a special case of the word "being", but Yahweh is unrelated because not rightly pronounced Jehovah, which is not a Hebrew word because its deliberately wrong vowels wouldn't be pronounced with those consonants by any native Hebrew speaker. [Joining disparate applications of "to be" is as stupid as saying that, since "art" means artifice and lying, then "Our Father who art in heaven" means God lies.] (5) The fact that Yahweh and satan were both called baals or lords doesn't equate them. (6) There is no connection between Yiddish, a natural blend of Hebrew and German, with Enochian, a fictional language created in the 1500s by John Dee. (7) Adonai, Elohim, El-Shaddai, and Zeba'ot are titles of deity (Lord, God, Sufficient God, and Of-Hosts) and most bar mitzvah candidates know they mean exactly this; "diyenu" appears to be a pronunciation spelling of "dayenu", sufficient-for-us (not a title though related to Shaddai), from a very old root for sufficiency or manifoldness (dayay or dayah) that seems totally unrelated to PIE *diwyos for deity (root of Diana, Deus, Theos, etc.). (8) The fact that Masons corrupt Yah into Jahbulun doesn't defame Christian use of Yah (again, Hallelujah). (9) I've repeatedly debunked the idea that Talmud says "Christ is in Hell boiling in excrement and semen", the most frequently misquoted text on all of Scored.

The article concludes that God's true name is Ehyeh or Ahayah citing Ex. 3:14-15. The problem is that this text literally also gives the name Yahweh. It is threefold: when he is asked his name, it says with transliterations, "And God said unto Moses, [Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh] I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, [Ehyeh] I AM hath sent me unto you. And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, [Yahweh] The LORD ... hath sent me unto you." The most straightforward reading is that God is giving three different forms of his name. But it certainly cannot be read that God's name is Ehyeh and not Yahweh (without objecting to the text) because both are given the same predicate.

So what we get, in the name of "hidden truths about Judaism", is a bunch of mistaken or unproblematic obscurities, some of which have been debunked for centuries, cobbled together as if they prove a grand conspiracy. If we really wanted to write an article about hidden truths about Judaism, we'd take the very real objections that myriads of Messianic Jews have publicly raised about how Rabbinical Judaism has gone off its original rails. Here are a few examples.

(1) Not that Judaism has formally rejected Jesus (Yeshua) as Messiah, but that it is unwilling to rule on Jesus at all despite its many internal recognitions that a Messianic candidate might need to rise from the dead: its spirit of inquiry is drowning in fear. (2) Rabbinical Judaism substituted bloodless for bloody sacrifices without availing itself of Jesus's blood, which Messianics accepted, showing it knowingly clings to an inferior system destitute of Mosaic originality. (3) Rabbis elevated their own commands, like Sabbath and Hanukkah candles, and regulations, such as halakhic fences around kashruth and eruvim, to the level of Mosaic commands, and then persecuted Karaites for questioning these strictures. (4) Rabbis permitted many superstitious practices, such as Kol Nidre and Kapparoth on Yom Kippur, and mechitzah b'peh as opposed to tubal suction, and industrial yahrzeit prayers and lights, to arise despite the fact that they are easily abused and misinterpreted by folk Judaism and criticized by Gentiles. (We could argue that the Jewish suppression of the name Yahweh due to superstition was covered in the link, but its purpose is not to criticize it as superstitious but to argue that it proves Luciferianism.) (5) Jewish insularity and refusal to proselytize its own truths has led to declines and stagnations across Jewish denominations and accusations that Jews hide their documents instead of openly sharing and explaining them so as to boldly defend, and accept the consequences of, their views about idolaters.

I trust the reader can see the difference between calling all Judaism evil, and calling certain Jewish practices evil while emphasizing that there are better Jewish practices to accomplish the same things.

<Add: post has been edited due to mediation with Soul and TINAE and may be further edited or deleted in time>

u/ExpressionOfTheSoul writes me: "If you're interested in discussing the things you brought up to me in the Emotional Healing forum, I suggest making a post about it on an appropriate forum and pinging me to it. Perhaps you could post it on one of the forums you mod or at the Conspiracies forum (If you want to post anything about me over there, go ahead). The mod decisions regarding the bans are final. There is a new post in the Expose religious extremism forum and a couple in the Bible Oddities forum you might be interested in discussing elsewhere." So it appears appropriate [to me] to collect a few facts about this account in one place for proper understanding.

[....] Since I don't understand the account's behavior, I'm just documenting it. (1) Soul appeared at Conspiracies last week and began posting [...] and I interacted and sought understanding. (2) Soul deleted all content and created three new forums (now four five six) and posted welcome messages with guidelines but without sidebar rules [he states that rules were publicly available via reporting function]. (3) I posted some questions in two of these, and Soul interacted with one of my comments [including his questioning responsively]. (4) Soul permabanned me from both forums, I copied my unanswered questions [with preface] to his third forum, and he permabanned me from that forum as well. (5) Soul wrote the message above. Clearly Soul is interested in maintaining a positive persona in speech and also in permitting a number of aggressive actions in tools and logs, and in focusing on his new forums while accepting being pinged in other forums.

The ban reasons were "No proselytzing efforts." (SeekersOfTheWay), "Moderator discretion." (ExposeReligiousExtremism), and "No proselytizing, persuasion, or agenda pushing." (EmotionalHealing). I infer that Soul is not too interested in working out a consistent moderation policy but seeks to organize discussion in specific but often [relatively] unpublished ways.

Though there might be much I'd want to say as to the several posts Soul has made, supportive and supplemental [including upvotes], for now I should probably stick to the questions that went unanswered (looking forward to Soul's answers), and try again in the fourth forum if I have any observations there. Those questions are:

I hope you don't mind my having a few questions about belief so that I know how to interpret the forum's purpose.

1. I see you're talking about theosis or divinization, as described in the Gospel of Thomas passim, and called in 1 Peter 1:4 being "of the divine, fellowshippers, by nature" (literal). That would be the meaning of "becoming Christ" (Anointed), because there are both the many applications of instantiations of Christ and the one central application of participation in Christ. It is rightly taught under the marriage metaphor by which one is the bride of Christ, thus the body of Christ, thus one with Christ, thus in various aspects indistinguishable from Christ: the bride is both a partial instantiation of the household that is named Christ, and a holistic participation in everything that Christ is and means. It doesn't appear Yeshua taught us to do anything different than he did (he taught us to do greater than he did), so it seems that in every way in which we are Christ he is also Christ. Q: Is it fair to uphold Yeshua as the model of the bridegroom with the follower being the model of the bride: that is, how could we have any better model for our lives than his life?

2. In this sense I would take your concern about "belief in" and "worship of" Christ. In my review of theology there is no belief in or worship of Christ other than what directs itself to belief in and worship of the Most High, and any sense in which it is applied to Christ the Body it is to be applied equally to Jesus and to his follower, in that bridal household metaphor. When Scripture speaks of "worshipping of" mortals it is to be worship of the image of God in the mortal, and the idea of "trusting" a mortal would similarly be limited to trusting God to work through the mortal; and Jesus honors those limitations in his teaching. Inferring from your other forum, you're rejecting absolutism, which would here involve trust and worship that is not directed to the Most High alone (even as in our actions we accord trust and reverence to humans freely). Q: Is that the kind of belief and worship that you're deprecating here?

3. You also speak of evolution (i.e. change), and in actual practice the most important evolution is that over a single life, because there is nothing for us at any moment that growth and improvement are abandoned; the open mind is always experiencing newness and volution. I've been investigating concepts of the "many lifetimes" ("reincarnation") and so I'd presume you're looking for more Abrahamic concepts like gilgul rather than more Hindu concepts like transmigration. It's complicated of course, so I have questions. Q: Are you looking at a multilife view that accounts for the constant evolution (change) in population totals, such that the billions alive today obviously did not all have continuous existence coming from past millennia? Most reincarnation views don't handle that very well, but I think gilgul does. I don't see the answer in Thomas or I would've brought that in.

4. Q: Are you familiar with details of Oversouls that are evolving as various unique lives manifest? An Oversoul is an archetypal personality that connects lives in such way that we can speak of both continuity and individuality without running into the contradictions that often arise on the subject. The Oversoul manifests in many individuals, can appear in multiples at once (i.e. can increase in its number of representatives on earth), and is undergoing a communal learning process via the individual variations of the archetype. The Oversoul exists first in God's conception and variously in its manifestations. I trust that explanation is what you're going after.

That should suffice for now. I hope this gets discussion off on the right foot because practicing this life with reference to the past and to the next life includes ensuring we have the core absolutes agreed. As I noted separately, this is not done by dogma but by evolving hypotheses that model the mind of the Most High with ever-increasing accuracy and sufficiency.

Add: Fifth permaban from ExposingExtremism for posting a perfectly responsive news article with title "Exposing Extremism 25 Dec 23: Alleged members of extremist group indicted in suspected SoCal New Years Eve bombing plot. A federal grand jury indicted four people on Tuesday in connection with a suspected terror plot to bomb targets in Los Angeles and Orange counties on New Year's Eve." Stated reason, "Mod discretion-user has exhibited mod griefing behavior across multiple forums. Ban final. No appeals." Apparently Soul believes it's entirely rational to create lots of fora about religiously motivated extremism and gatekeeping, then to gatekeep answers to questions about his core methodology, and then to have essentially no rule because "moderator discretion" can always be used for permaban whenever no other rule applies. This is creating welcomes one by one and demolishing them one by one [....] I sought to be sensitive, but it appears to me this is just the same user as one or more previous incarnations who doesn't desire to question his own presuppositions with the assistance of others. I still believe in enough sensitivity to give him space to remove [curtail] his own extremism in protecting his beliefs against rational improvement, but remind everyone that there are always the two choices, contradiction or truth, and one had better either admit one is on the side of contradiction and nihilism or on the side of truth and self-awareness.

I was challenged here by the testimony of Richard Carrier that Josephus's two passages about Jesus are both forgeries, via some literary analysis by Paul Hopper. I conclude that Carrier is an extreme outlier who is handling the data with thorough bias. The process strengthens my belief that Josephus's passage is essentially authentic in all details.

First, Dr. Carrier has quite an interesting self-written bio:

Richard Carrier is the author of many books and numerous articles online and in print. His avid readers span the world from Hong Kong to Poland. With a Ph.D. in ancient history from Columbia University, he specializes in the modern philosophy of naturalism and humanism, and the origins of Christianity and the intellectual history of Greece and Rome, with particular expertise in ancient philosophy, science and technology. He is also a noted defender of scientific and moral realism, Bayesian reasoning, and historical methods.

From Hong Kong to Poland, just wow.

Further, he's a contributor to John Loftus, Christianity is Not Great, The End of Christianity, and The Christian Delusion. And author of Why I Am Not a Christian, Not the Impossible Faith: Why Christianity Didn't Need a Miracle to Succeed, On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt (Revised Edition), Sense & Goodness Without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism, The Obsolete Paradigm of a Historical Jesus, Jesus from Outer Space: What the Earliest Christians Really Believed about Christ, and Hitler Homer Bible Christ (he'd fit right in here).

He did the meme!

Hi, I'm Troy McClure. You may remember me from such films as ....

Oolon Colluphid is the author of the "trilogy of philosophical blockbusters" entitled Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes and Who is this God Person Anyway?. He later used the Babel Fish argument as the basis for a fourth book, entitled Well, That About Wraps It Up For God.

Methinks he has a bit of axe to grind and is a great segue from the concept I pointed out to u/ExpressionOfTheSoul about unnoticed bias toward atheistic higher critics.

Second, Carrier's evidence, the Hopper report, is an outlier in a steady stream of consensus that the Josephus passage is essentially authentic, either in its core or in all but 2-3 words. Carrier says that "You Can’t Cite Opinions Before 2014" (Hopper), which is a neat way of excluding all contrary evidence, but interestingly most all opinions after Hopper continue the same track of trusting Josephus even recognizing Hopper's opinion.

Here's the textual analysis. Textual evidences to favor Jewish outsider vs. Christian insider:

1. Passage exists in all Greek manuscripts.

2. Josephus is noted noted for any other interpolation (both he and Eusebius are conservative copyists).

3. "Wise man" is outsider language and used by Josephus (Luke 24:19 "prophet").

4. "If indeed one ought to call him a man" is a natural introduction to state merely that Jesus's wonders were unexplained without taking a position why.

5. "Wonder worker" is an outsider concept (albeit "worker"/poietes aka Oseh/Essene is an internal word taken from Luke 24:19 "mighty in deed").

6. "Teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly" is outsider language (Luke 24:19 "and word before ... all the people").

7. "Jews" and "Greeks" is outsider language, especially in that later insider language doesn't focus on Jewish followers but only Gentile (Luke 24:19 "all the people").

8. There was no polemic reason against reading "He was 'the Christ'" as an outsider quotation of others (i.e. most notable Christ to that point; Luke 24:26 "the Christ").

9. "He was 'the Christ'" is the more unexpected text, indicating "He was thought to be the Christ" is the later variant; editing in the opposite direction toward greater polemic is silly because Eusebius would be disposed to keep a text about Christ pure.

10. The "first men" "among us" is outsider language and used by Josephus for his personal contacts in the Sanhedrin and priesthood (Luke 24:20 "the chief priests and our rulers").

11. "Condemned him to a cross" adds detail to Luke 24:20 "condemned to death".

12. Those who loved him not ceasing is consistent with Luke 24:21 "we were hoping that it was He".

13. "Spending a third day restored to life" is consistent with Luke 24:21 "today is the third day"; this is described by Josephus more distantly as "appeared".

14. The prophets foretelling these and a thousand wonders is consistent with Luke 24:25 "all that the prophets have spoken" and 27 "all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself".

15. "Tribe" is outsider language and used by Josephus (Van Voorst).

16. Mention of "Christ" is further consistent with Josephus's desire to explain the origin and currency of the name "Christian".

17. The entire passage is consistent with paraphrase of Luke 24 (Goldberg), which would have been accessible to Josephus and paraphrased by him like many other sources.

18. Passage omits deicide or Jewish blame, indicating outsider status.

19. The dissimilarity of the passage with its context indicates reliance on a Lukan source and supports authenticity.

20. Josephus 20:9:1 "who was called Christ" presupposes he testified of Jesus earlier.

21. Origen (on Matthew 10.17 and Celsus 1.47) read Josephus and found his testimony not accepting Jesus as what Origen understood Christ fully to be, which is consistent with the paradigm of Josephus paraphrasing Luke 24 but remaining neutral about its conclusions (i.e. the interpretation that "the Christ" is a quotation of others), not consistent with complete forgery. Though Origen created ripples of doubt that extend to the present, the simplest resolution is that Josephus was rightly understood as passing on the testimony without agreeing with it.

22. Eusebius quotes accurately and total forgery would upend his entire purpose of scrupulous history.

23. Arabic version by Agapius, 10th century, is admitted by Whealey and Carrier to derive from Eusebius, because they think this supports Eusebian origin, but since it actually removes variants from the pre-Eusebian strain it strengthens Josephan originality and Eusebian trustworthiness.

24. James Dunn reviews "broad consensus" on John Meier's reconstruction.

25. Robert Van Voorst says most modern scholars agree.

26. Bart Ehrman and John Meier believe the original was neutrally toned, consistent with my proposal he is quoting Luke, with Ehrman saying Meier's version is the most accepted.

27. Geza Vermes reconstruction is consistent with Meier.

28. Garry Goldberg: Luke 24:19-21, 26-27 "more closely resembles the Testimonium in its phrase-by-phrase outline of content and order than any other known text of comparable age" (related in origin).

29. T. C. Schmidt 2025 finds the language is statistically Josephan; Andreas Kostenberger agrees more generally.

Arguments to reject the whole passage:

1. Silence in Jewish Wars (no parallel passage).

2. Silence about any broader scope of the single paragraph about Jesus compared to other Josephan sketches.

3. Silence in 12 mentions of Josephus prior to Eusebius that don't mention this paragraph.

4. Silence between Eusebius and Jerome.

5. Silence in selective contents of Josephus written ca. 500.

6. Silence in Photios's 9th-century broad review of Josephus.

7. Kenneth Olson finds similarity between the testimony and Eusebius in Demonstrations of the Gospels.

8. Louis Feldman argues, with challenged methods, that three clauses of the testimony appear only in Eusebius (but "wonders" and "tribe" are common enough in variation and "still to this day" is very generic).

9. Finally, Paul Hopper 2014 argues for creedal style rather than historiographic style. Carrier's blog indicates (1) aorist verbs feel different from other Josephus, which is explicable by Lukan source hypothesis; (2) obliquity of reference to Pilate feels different, which is consistent with Lukan source and with the historical fact that Pilate's known reticence about Jesus (cf. Talmud) is not his ordinary brash character as e.g. in the Golden Eagles incident; (3) event structure feels different, which is consistent with the data being only a Lukan source and a later extant "Christian" people; (4) absence of plot, again consistent with the idea that Josephus is avoiding Luke's greater plot while using the historical data from it; (5) dissimilarity to Josephus's purpose, except it's perfectly fitting for a brief gloss on Luke that indicates the historical artifact of Christians existing by reference to his knowledge of Pilate and the Sanhedrin. That is, all Hopper's points are well-explained by Goldberg's responsive Lukan hypothesis and Schmidt's statistical confirmation thereof. Carrier is so skeptical he introduces the novel theory that Josephus's other reference to James and Jesus is wholly forged too!

TLDR: I appreciate the challenge! Conclusion, Josephus paraphrased a version of Luke 24, accounting for all slight style differences, and he toned down the polemic to attempt neutral description that Jesus was "surprising", took the name "Christ", and "appeared" after death. Josephus's testimony then is entirely consistent with communicating (1) Christians exist, (2) Jesus founded them, (3) Jesus's narrative is unexplained and his meaning in history unknown, (4) Christians are distinct from primary Jewish sects and thus need no more special treatment than any other unexplained claims. It comes from his Pharisee and Sanhedrin sources and from a version of Luke 24, paraphrased like his other sources. The problem arises because, via later distance, people read his intent as more startling and less neutral than his context clearly intended, and people read Origen's distaste for him as more divisive than Origen indicated. If it's more startling to us, that's better evidence it's original and we just misunderstood it. "He was the Christ" was not an endorsement but a claim in process: later Christians read it as a make-or-break testimony, but Josephus intended it merely as journalistic reportage of others' testimony and his own permission that Christ did so many wonders he must have been specially "anointed" to do them. At that time acceptance of a Jewish Jesus as someone special was not regarded as a hardline boundary between peoples, because the character of Jacob the Healer in the Talmud is very similar: Jacob lived c. 100 and healed in Jesus's name but was accepted as a marginal Jew in relatively good standing, because nobody had yet made confession of Jesus a boundary on either side of the divide. The same is true of Josephus. All data for the passage being completely spurious amount to either argument from silence or speculation from cherry-picked similarities that don't account for the whole context.

To Soul, I say thank you for strengthening my faith in the Josephus testimony! Before this analysis, I had previously believed the original was the minimalist core of about half the text, but now I believe, because I have much more evidence, that this centrism was proposed as a feint and the original was so close to Eusebius's words as to be regarded as fully authentic (i.e. only with quibbles about two words that don't affect sense). I appreciate your allowing me the opportunity to add all this evidence to my understanding.

Evidence of Christianity for u/ExpressionOfTheSoul.

I assert that compelling, falsifiable evidence shows that Jesus claimed to have attributes identifying him as the Christian creator god (i.e., to have access to all the powers of the cosmos). Material (except (h)) is taken from Bill Craig with much personal counterpoint.

(a) He claimed to be the Christ (a translation of Messiah or Anointed). Josephus says simply he was the Christ, and Tacitus says Christians are named after him, both early testimonies while eyewitnesses of Jesus were alive, besides overwhelming NT assertions of the accepted title. Josephus adds that many others claimed to take the Messianic mantle, namely Judas of Galilee, Theudas, Simon of Peraea, and Athronges. Rabbi Gamaliel (famous in the Talmud, a Sanhedrin member who was also Paul's teacher) confirmed the parallel between Theudas, Judas of Galilee, and Jesus in his oral testimony to the Sanhedrin, preserved in the secondary source Acts 5:34-40 (supported by Josephus); so it is a historical fit for Jesus to have made the claim. John the Baptist, also mentioned by Josephus, was asked if he was the Christ and denied the claim. Examples of Jesus specifically making the claim are at Peter's confession (Matt. 16:18, Mark 8:27-30) and at John the Baptist's doubt (Matt. 11:2-6, Luke 7:19-23) where Jesus quotes Is. 61:1 specifically about the expected Messiah. It was also known that Daniel 9 indicated the 30s AD as the time when Messiah would be expected, as shown by Talmudic commentary on this passage as having failed for those who saw no Messiah before the temple fell. Jesus never downplayed or demurred from any prior claim made about the Messiah, and, when asked specifically about them in the Olivet Discourse (three gospels), he indicated that some Messianic events were near and some not necessarily so. Since he affirmed the historical context of this title, he was claiming all extraordinary attributes of Messiah as well. These include that the Messiah "will strike the earth with the word of his mouth forever" and will be "free from sin" (Psalms of Solomon 17:32-37); and that he existed with God "prior to the creation of the world and for eternity" (Enoch 48:6, 11, later echoed by John 1:1-5). So this compelling, falsifiable evidence shows that Jesus claimed to be Messiah knowing that it involved claims of preincarnate existence. It is not an extraordinary fact that he claimed this, but it would be extraordinary for his claim to be accurate and for preincarnate existence to be a true historically testable proposition.

(b) He claimed to be the Son of God. Josephus questioned whether it would be lawful to call Jesus a man, and Tacitus (hostile witness) says guardedly that Jesus caused a "most mischievous superstition" that arose again after his death. More specifically, Jesus compared himself to the son of God in the parable of the vineyard (Mark 12:1-9, Gospel of Thomas 65, with Semitisms indicating its authentic derivation from Is. 5:1-7). He said none knew the Father but the Son (Matt. 11:27, Luke 10:22), which suggests authenticity due to its multiple witness, its linguistically shown Aramaic origin, and its embarrassment to the later doctrine of knowing the Father being encouraged (Phil. 3:8-11). He spoke of the Son not knowing the day that the Father knows of (Mark 13:32, Matt. 24:36), which also has the criteria of multiple witness and embarrassment to later doctrine. Even liberal historians recognize that Jesus deliberately caused stirs in Jerusalem before his death, and one of these was his direct claim "I am the Son of God" (John 10:36) which was charged against him by multiple witnesses for his trial (Matt. 27:43). In this case Jesus quotes Asaph (Ps. 82) for the definition of "son of God" as specifically meaning what was understood as an angelic nature, i.e., again claiming preincarnate existence. Further the NT passages cited indicate that Jesus was making greater claims via this title, namely unique knowledge of the cosmic will and unique proximity to the cosmic Father. 4 Ezra 7:28-29 cites both titles: "My son the Messiah shall be revealed ... and those who remain shall rejoice four hundred years [the last four centuries BC]. And after these years my son the Messiah shall die"; this definition and identity of the two titles is also supported by the DSS, and the circulation of these books in Jesus's day indicates his awareness of the claims involved.

(c) He claimed to be the Son of Man. Jesus used this title in over 80 instances in the NT, even though it is not used in prior OT thought (except Daniel 7:13-14) or later Christian thought (except Acts 7:56). This supports the claim having been made, based on the criteria of independence and dissimilarity. However, the claim is consistent with then-circulating Essene sources about "the Son of Man", 1 Enoch 46:5, 48:3-6, 62:7, 69:29, and 4 Ezra 13 (including God's son at verse 37). The claim involves the power to judge (Matt. 10:32-33, Luke 12:8-12), including a claim of mastery over the afterlife, about which more shortly. The claim "Son of Man" is also present in the trial testimony, of which Matt. 26:64, Mark 14:60-64, Luke 22:69 are secondary sources, which confirm all three titles so far. Many of the NT instances, including these, refer to the appearance in Daniel's vision directly, such as coming on the clouds of heaven and receiving the dominion and glory of God. Again this speaks to a self-concept of cosmic preexistence. The potential fact of such preexistence itself is based on other evidence that I'm holding for later, but the fact that Jesus claimed preexistence is mundane and well-attested.

(d) He claimed to be the king in God's kingdom. Mara refers to Jesus as a wise king who was executed by the Jewish people, and Tacitus, Josephus, and the Talmud all indicate that he was judged guilty of a capital crime, i.e., claiming kingship independent from Tiberius Caesar's. Pilate wrote, "This is Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews" as his charge, and all four gospels abridge this inscription differently; there is even an anticipation of whether the inscription conflated whether Jesus was king or merely claimed to be, which indicates that the four gospels are reliable secondary sources of the written inscription. It was common for the executed to be displayed with signs of their crimes; thieves could be hung with moneybags as their symbol, and Jesus was given a crown of thorns and an inscription for the very purpose of creating a visual spectacle symbolizing his judged criminality as a royal pretender. Further, God's kingdom is attested by most historians as the most certain element in all of Jesus's teaching. His role in it as king of kings is illustrated by Matt. 19:28, Luke 22:28-30, which also meets the criterion of embarrassment because people would later ask if Judas was intended to have one of the 12 thrones (or whether Jesus anticipated Matthias). Here Jesus's claim of kingship extends beyond his death and so he is claiming an afterlife for himself and his disciples. As previously indicated, the scientific study of afterlife is largely focused on the general class of resuscitation events known as near-death experiences, which number in the tens of millions and about which I have much to say. Thus the claim to kingship has significant focus on yet-unknown physical possibilities; but the fact that Jesus claimed kingship is itself not an extraordinary fact and is indeed testified by almost all historians.

(e) He claimed to be the unique teacher (Rabbi) of Israel. The Talmud indicates that Jesus's generation was the first to include rabbis, and comparing usages linguistically suggests that Jesus may have been the first of all to adopt the title, which then became faddish among the Jews (meaning "my exalted one"). The generations prior had been called "zugoth" instead, sages yoked to each other, up until the final pair of Hillel and Shammai, whom Jesus would have met in the temple when he was 12 or so. Until 70, only a few rabbis were attested, but through 500 there were about two thousand rabbis named in the Talmud. So evidence indicates that there was a consciousness of giving new meaning to the exaltation of the teacher. In particular, Jesus's emphasis on "I say unto you" was a unique demonstration of teaching ability, stated dozens of times with either "You have heard it said, but," or "Truth, truth". Both the class of prior sages and the rabbis of the Gemara would insist on naming earlier teachers for their teachings rather than taking authority personally, so this meets the authenticity criterion of dissimilarity. The effect of his unique teaching style was astonishment at its difference from other teachers (Matt. 7:28, Mark 1:22, Luke 4:32, etc.), further supporting this general fact. But when pressed on difficulties in the Torah, Jesus affirmed it and then placed his own teaching (expanding on overlooked contrasting Torah data) as equal to the direct word of the Lord to Moses (Matt. 5:31-32, Mark 10:2-12). All historians agree that Jesus has a body of disciples to receive and perpetuate his teaching: the Talmud numbers them five, but uses some of the same names as the NT; Josephus explicitly calls him teacher of truth; Mara the Stoic calls him as wise as Socrates and Pythagoras and the giver of a new law (Torah); and Tacitus explains that his teaching was so effective that its "superstition" was continued by his disciples after his death, until a great body of Christians was present in Rome by 64 AD. Thus the claim of unique teacher is widely recognized as a real claim made, and includes at least an authority equal to the giver of the Torah and a component that testified of superstition (inexplicability).

(f) Jesus claimed to be the unique forgiver of sins against God. Here Craig writes, "Several of Jesus' parables [e.g. prodigal son and lost sheep, Matt. 18:10-14, Luke 15:1-32], which are acknowledged on all hands to have been uttered by the historical Jesus, show that He assumed the prerogative to forgive sins." Jesus once staged a demonstration (an apparent healing of a paralytic) for the express purpose of claiming authority to forgive sins against God (Matt. 9:2-8, Mark 2:1-12, Luke 5:17-26 ). The testimony of the religious leaders expressed in these passages is further supported by the circulation of the negative title against him "friend of sinners" (Matt. 11:19, Luke 7:34), indicating his claim was understood as he intended it. Even the proximate cause of his betrayal was Judas's disgust with Jesus's acceptance of a sinner (Mark 14:5, John 12:5). This claim might be regarded as not supernatural at all, in that the ability to forgive sins might well refer solely to the power to judge rightly and cause remediation on earth of injustices, personally and through his followers; but it involves at least a total attunement to the external objective standard of universal morality, not just an approximative lower tribunal.

(g) He claimed to work wonders (inexplicable events). While modern illusionists claim the same, the sheer number and variety of testimonies and their impromptu, wild settings has indicated to virtually all scholars that his reputation as a wonder-worker was unique and rapidly established in his lifetime. Jesus's statement that he casts out demons by the power of God (Matt. 12:28, Luke 11:20) is recognized by NT scholars as authentic and an illustration of his self-concept as a healer above the powers of the physicians and pharmacists of the day. It claims divine authority over phenomena understood as demonic, i.e., it claims access to physical laws of restoration of mental order that have been largely, but not completely, unparalleled in the powers of other healers in history. In his claim of Messiahship (Matt. 11:2-6, Luke 7:19-23) is specific reference to healing power, including raising the dead, about which several NT anecdotes circulate giving this power to him and his followers; again, the question of whether this happened is investigated under NDE study, while the question of whether this was claimed is easily settled by the supermajority testimony of historians that it was indeed claimed. John Meier, of the quest for the historical Jesus, affirms that the "miraculous" healing claim "has as much historical corroboration as almost any other statement we can make about the Jesus of history." The claim was repeatedly tied to Jesus's power as God's king, his unique authority as the exalted rabbi, and his moral healing power as forgiver of sins.

(h) He claimed 3-day turnaround as a personal sign (John 2:13-25, original; Matt. 12:40, unique; Luke 13:32, memetic; triply taught, Matt. 16:21, 17:23, 20:19, Mark 8:31, 9:31, 10:34, Luke 9:22, 18:33, 24 passim). Contemporary trial record, Matt. 26:61, and hostile testimony, Matt. 27:40, 63-64, Mark 14:58, 15:29, John 2:20, reflect then-extant documents. Cf. Hosea 6:2, etc. Historians agree 1 Cor. 15:3-4 and Acts 10:39-40 reflect creed formed by c. 38 AD. Josephus specifically echoes 3 days, and even Celsus c. 150 ridicules, "You will not, I suppose, say of him, that, after failing to gain over those who were in this world, he went to Hades to gain over those who were there", showing developed 3-day harrowing doctrine. Jesus's tying himself to a supernatural 3-day sign, before historical fulfillment was attributed to him, indicated divine self-concept.

Individual historians differ on which of the above facts are most sufficiently attested, but their preponderance is sufficient to indicate to the vast majority that Jesus had a self-concept that transcended currently known physical law. Either he was wrong, or he was aware of greater knowable physical laws that we have not yet fully discerned.

Accordingly, there is compelling, falsifiable evidence for the fact that the historical Jesus taught that he had unique powers that allegedly demonstrated then-unknown natural laws, such as possibilities of preexistence, approach to omniscience, afterlife, cosmic unity, and unparalleled healings of disease and death. It is not necessary to evaluate whether any supernatural events occurred in order to establish the facts that inexplicable powers were claimed as a central part of Jesus's teaching. In fact, the body of historians that recognizes these facts about what Jesus claimed include all the skeptics and liberals who doubt his divinity or the supernatural. Either these claims of cosmic attunement were false, or they represented then-unknown natural laws that modern science has yet to fully quantify. Whether the claims were true must be tested by the method of inference upon unrepeatable events and the criterion of the evidence needing to be as extraordinary as the claim, which is a separate study. But the fact that Jesus made a broad body of similar claims about his powers in the years 30-33 AD has been established by the evidence.

Who are the 13 families? Here are the first search results:

Time, 1940, citing SEC: "The 13 most potent family groups’ holdings were worth $2,700,000,000, comprised over 8% of the stock of the 200 corporations: Fords, $624,975,000; Du Fonts, $573,690,000; Rockefellers, $396,583,000; Mellons, $390,943,000; McCormicks (International Harvester), $111,102,000; Hartfords (A. & P.), $105,702,000; Harknesses (Standard Oil), $104,891,000; Dukes (tobacco, power), $89,459,000; Pews (Sun Oil), $75,628,000; Pitcairns (Pittsburgh Plate Glass), $65,576,000; Clarks (Singer), $57,215,000; Reynolds (tobacco), $54,766,000; Kresses (S. H. Kress), $50,044,000." It emphasizes that this cutoff of 13 lists the primary groupings that maintained power over the top 200 corporations. However, it's not a resource actually used even though the names are significant:

1. Ford family
2. du Pont family
3. Rockefeller family
4. Mellon family
5. McCormick family
6. George Huntington Hartford
7. Stephen V. Harkness
8. James Buchanan Duke
9. Joseph Newton Pew
10. John Pitcairn Jr.
11. Edward Cabot Clark
12. R. J. Reynolds
13. Samuel Henry Kress

CIA, 1995, quoting Fritz Springmeier, Bloodlines of Illuminati (ne Viktor Schoof; convicted of bank robbery and jailed 2003-2011, claiming he was framed). "Several people from different places have confirmed that there are 13 Illuminati bloodlines. Further, several ex-Illuminati people have confirmed my list of 13 families. It is possible that my list is off on a name or two, but if it might be off, it can not be off much, if any. I believe the facts speak for themselves." (Chapter titles begin "The Astor Family", etc., but four chapters are added after the 13th family and chapter has been named; this is a compilation of many articles from different periods.)

1. Astor family (John Jacob Astor)
2. "Bundy Bloodline" (Ted Bundy, McGeorge Bundy)
3. "Collins Bloodline" and Todd "branch" (Joan Collins, Mary Todd)
4. du Pont family (Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours)
5. "Freeman Bloodline" (Walter Jackson Freeman II, Roger A. Freeman (economist))
6. Kennedy family (P. J. Kennedy)
7. House of Li (Zhuanxu)
8. "Onassis Bloodline" (Aristotle Onassis, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis)
9. Rockefeller family (John D. Rockefeller)
10. Rothschild family (Mayer Amschel Rothschild)
11. "Russell Bloodline" (Charles Taze Russell, Richard Russell Jr.)
12. Vanderbilt family and "Van Duyn Bloodline" (Mona Van Duyn)
13. Merovingian dynasty (Clovis I)
14. Disney family (Walt Disney)
15. "Reynolds bloodline" (R. J. Reynolds, Richard S. Reynolds Jr.)
16. Clan Donald (Richard and Maurice McDonald)
17. Krupp family (Friedrich Krupp)

This music album gives the same names as Springmeier 1-13: Rothschild Rockefeller Kennedy Astor Bundy Collins du Pont Onassis Li Van Duyn Freeman Merovingian Russell. So does this blog and this tweet. Here a researcher changes Merovingian to Reynolds. And https://grokipedia.com/page/Fritz_Springmeier gives the original list of 13.

Before leaving Springmeier, I made one more try by checking out "List of banking families", which is of course arbitrary WP which I will make further arbitrary by listing only ones that I like: Barclay, Baring, Fugger, Goldman-Sachs, Hinduja, Lazard, Li, Medici, Mellon, Morgan, Rockefeller, Rothschild, Warburg. Wow, 13 without trying, I must be inspired.

So it appears all real claims of 13 families come from Springmeier 1995 and refer to the same people, not listed as a particular club, but instead offered as "if there is a club here's evidence this named group is a member". In particular the names I put in quotes above are not recognized as directly connected families but just very common surnames. So I'm disappointed because this isn't what I was directly looking for. An ordinary list of Davos participants any year would cast a wider net. The Time list happens to use the framing "13 families" but is merely the American rich list. If I were to say here are 17 likely families, even though they appear in different periods and have different connections and overlaps, well, I can use the list, but it's effectively useless to hold a claim that there is an organized list of 13 that all have the same status at the same time or that get substituted one for another at times from a larger group.

So once again, the cabal is disconnected, the rumors of organization on either our side or theirs are exaggerated. What I always say is that there are many many families, they shift and rearrange, merge and separate, and they don't make any real public list available; the rich list is a known farce that gives no indication of the true level-pullers. Therefore this is a very poor way of going about an international question.

One reason for my interest is Q's statement about focusing on three, Saud, Rothschild, and Soros. The context indicates that the Q operation wants us to focus on the first one (with Trump's connections) overpowering the other two. This leaves one to guess where all the rest of the wealth in the world is controlled, and I'm just not finding any useful list. And genealogists know that tracing a "single" family through its branches is very sketchy, let alone to trace actual movements of money and power as if these automatically follow names when they don't. I'm left with the conclusion that there's no real core network of any number, but rather my conclusion from Carroll Quigley that each circle thinks it is the real inner circle, and the hydra is not slain by counting its heads.

Add: Not really related, but if anyone wants to know the original Illuminati (Perfectibilists), there were thousands. A Masonic site yields a little detail on: founder, Adam Weishaupt (Spartacus); first four novices, Franz Anton von Massenhausen (Ajax), Franz Xaver von Bauhof(f) (Agathon), Max Edler von Merz (Tiberius), Andreas Sutor (Erasmus Roterodamus/Rotterdamus); Franz Xaver von Zwackh, Adolph Knigge, Charles of Hesse-Kassel, Charles Savalette de Langes, Alexandre Roettiers de Montaleau, Ernest II of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, Johann Joachim Christoph Bode, and (the) Johann von Goethe. Also on WP are many others such as Johann Friedrich Baring (I just named his family independently), Junius Frey (Frankist converso), Franz Georg Karl von Metternich (German diplomat), Donato Tommasi (Italian politician).

Is Jesus Christ the Lord and the God of yourself and of the universe?

Please answer YES with any testimony, or decline to answer. This is a question between action (YES vote) and inaction (no vote); a NO vote is the same as no vote and is technically unnecessary.

This poll methodology is recognized to be unscientific but is better than nothing. Thank you for your responses. I recognize that many distrust poll testimony and believe in other methods of individual or group activity. However, this is not a group action question but a question of individual experience, so it's not a matter of consensus but of collection of testimonies that need no consent or validation from anyone else.

Repost.

A circulating graphic is entitled "Titles of the Jews". However, proper exegesis shows exactly what the Bible (NKJV today) says about it, and it does not apply these to "the Jews" as a collective.

1. "The fig tree which You cursed" Mk11:12-25: application not stated.

2. "Serpents, brood of vipers" Mt23:33: only "the scribes and the Pharisees" 2.

3. Who "know neither Me nor My Father" Jn8:19: only "the Pharisees" 13; "Who denies the Father and the Son" 1J2:22: only "antichrist".

4. Who "do not receive Me" Jn5:43-47: "the Jews" 18, not all, but possibly as a group as by representatives. "He who denies that Jesus is the Christ" 1J2:22 (not "10:22"): only "a liar".

5. "Antichrist" 1J2:22 (not "John 10:22"): only "who denies the Father and the Son".

6. "A liar" 1J2:22 (not "John 10:22"): only "he who denies that Jesus is the Christ".

7. "Of your father the devil" Jn8:44: only "those Jews who believed Him ... And ... answered ... 'we ... have never been in bondage'" 31-32.

8. "The one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her" Mt23:37: only "Jerusalem". "Of the Just One ... the betrayers and murderers" Ac7:52: only "the council" 6:15.

9. "A synagogue of Satan" Rv2:9: only "those who say they are Jews and are not". "The synagogue of Satan" Rv3:9: only "those ... who say they are Jews and are not, but lie".

10. "Who killed both the Lord Jesus and their own prophets" 1Th2:14-16: "the Judeans" (same word as "the Jews") 14, not all nor as a group, because distinguished from other Jews (thus translated Judeans).

11. Who "said, 'His blood be on us and on our children'" Mt27:25: only "the multitude" 15.

12. "Who ... have persecuted us" 1Th2:14-16: "the Judeans" 14, as above.

13. "Who ... do not please God" 1Th2:14-16: "the Judeans" 14, as above.

14. "Who ... are contrary to all men" 1Th2:14-16: "the Judeans" 14, as above.

15. Who "bind heavy burdens ... on men's shoulders" Mt23:4: only "the scribes and the Pharisees" 2.

16. "They ... forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they may be saved" 1Th2:14-16: "the Judeans" 14, as above.

17. "They ... always to fill up the measure of their sins" 1Th2:14-16: "the Judeans" 14, as above.

18. Who "carried Sikkuth your king" Am5:26: the "house of Israel" 1-25, not all, but as a group as by representatives. Who "took up the tabernacle of Moloch" Ac7:43: only "the council" 6:15.

19. Who "carried ... Chiun, your idols, The star of your gods" Am5:26: the "house of Israel" 1-25, not all, but as a group as by representatives. Who "took up ... the star of your god Remphan" Ac7:43: only "the council" 6:15.

20. "Insubordinate" Ti1:10-11: only "Cretans" 12, "especially those of the circumcision" 10.

21. "Idle talkers" Ti1:10-11: only "Cretans" 12, "especially those of the circumcision" 10.

22. "Deceivers" Ti1:10-11: only "Cretans" 12, "especially those of the circumcision" 10.

23. "Who subvert whole households" Ti1:10-11: only "Cretans" 12, "especially those of the circumcision" 10.

24. "Teaching ... for the sake of dishonest gain" Ti1:10-11: only "Cretans" 12, "especially those of the circumcision" 10.

25. "Whose mouths must be stopped" Ti1:10-11: only "Cretans" 12, "especially those of the circumcision" 10.

26. "Giving heed to Jewish fables and commandments of men who turn from the truth" Ti1:14: (implied) only "Cretans" 12, "especially those of the circumcision" 10.

27. Whose "house is left to you desolate" Mt23:38 (not 37): only "Jerusalem" 37.

28. "Blinded ... this day ... in the reading of the Old Testament" 2Co3:13-16 (not 11:13-16): "the children of Israel" 13, not all, but possibly as a group as by representatives.

29. "Blind guides" Mt23:16-17: only "the scribes and the Pharisees" 2.

30. Upon whom "wrath has come ... to the uttermost" 1Th2:14-16: "the Judeans" 14, as above.

31. "Sodom and Egypt" Rv11:8: only "where also our Lord was crucified". "Egypt" Is19:3-10: only "Egyptians" 2-23, not "Judah" 17 or "Israel" 24-25. Upon whom "He will bring ... all the diseases of Egypt" Dt28:60: "all Israel" 27:9, as a group as by representatives.

32. "Stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears" Ac7:51: only "the council" 6:15.

33. Who "reject ... salvation" Ac13:46-47: only "Antioch ... synagogue" 14.

34. "Wise ... fools" Ro1:22 (not 5:22): "men" 18.

The conclusion given is "True Israel is the Church", citing Ro8:27-28 which does not contain that thought, and Ga6:16 which speaks of "the Israel of God", application not stated. There is no verse in many translations containing both "Israel" and "church".

I conclude then that there are only two verses here from which titles for 'the Jews' might be taken (John 5:18 and 1 Thess. 2:14); and 'the Jews' usually refers to a contextual subgroup of Jews and not to all Jews either individually or collectively as the phrase "Titles of the Jews" would imply.

If we were to use the data above to attempt a further conclusion accurately, we'd note there are several terms that can be taken to represent the national entity Judea and its predecessors, though it does not appear there is a simple term intended to mean every citizen of the nation without exception. These terms might be used to construct a more accurate list of national curses currently imputed to the Judean nation and its successor people. Of course, these curses are similar to Biblical curses on other nations, and have their compensating blessings too. But seeking to give full credit to the meme creator's intent it would seem the best that could be said is that the Bible does impose a few negative statements about the national-political entity once named Judea.

If the highly disorganized creator had desired to make a proper list of "titles of the Jews", exegetically he would have searched for Hebrew Yehudi, Aramaic Yehudai, and Greek Ioudaios. This would turn up:

Of whom "the eye of their God was upon the elders" Ezr5:5; for whom "relief and deliverance will arise" Es4:14; who "had light and gladness, joy and honor ..., a feast and a holiday" Es8:16-17; of whom "JESUS ... has been born King" Mt1:25-2:2; of whom "IS JESUS THE KING" Mt27:37; who "do not eat unless they wash their hands in a special way, holding the tradition of the elders" Mk7:3; of whom "the Passover ... was at hand" Jn2:13; of whom "was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler" Jn3:1; who "have no dealings with Samaritans" Jn4:9; of whom "salvation is" Jn4:22; of whom "the Passover ... was near" Jn6:4, 11:55; who "sought to kill him" Jn7:1; of whom "Feast of Tabernacles was at hand" Jn7:2; of whom "there was a division ... because of these sayings" Jn10:19; of whom "many ... believed in Jesus" Jn12:11; whose "officers ... arrested Jesus" Jn18:12; who "Caiaphas ... advised ... it was expedient that one man should die for the people" Jn18:14; who "in synagogues and in the temple ... always meet" Jn18:20; of whom "many ... read this title" Jn19:20; whose "custom ... is to bury" Jn19:40; "devout men, from every nation under heaven" Ac2:5; among whom "Cornelius ... has a good reputation" Ac10:22; for whom "unlawful it is ... to keep company with or go to one of another nation" Ac10:28; of whom "all things ... He did ... in the land" Ac10:39; of whom "they preached the word of God in the synagogues" Ac13:5; of whom "many ... followed Paul and Barnabas" Ac13:43; of whom "a great multitude ... believed" Ac14:1; of whom "many myriads ... believed, and they are all zealous for the law" Ac21:20; for whom "the gospel of Christ ... is the power of God to salvation ... first" Ro1:16; to whom "God ... will render ... tribulation and anguish, on every soul of man who does evil ... first ... but glory, honor, and peace to everyone who works what is good ... first" Ro2:5-10; "under sin" Ro3:9; of whom "is He the God" Ro3:29; who "request a sign" 1Co1:22; from whom "five times I received forty stripes minus one" 2Co11:24; who "knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ ... have believed in Christ Jesus" Ga2:15-16.

This is a quick pass for Scriptures that reasonably could apply to all "the Jews" as a nation with agents, rather than to a subgroup, besides John 5:18. With a single concordance review I found 35 real titles compared to the 34 fake titles presented. It appears good exegesis is easy, and yet some people seem to pretend it without making any attempt at it, indicating that good exegesis is not their true intent.

(The same methodology can be used to discuss how Jesus was a Jew, which can be proven separately.)

Repost apropos of Jefferson on banking.

I have thrown out these as loose heads of amendment, for consideration and correction; and their object is to secure self-government by the republicanism of our constitution, as well as by the spirit of the people; and to nourish and perpetuate that spirit. I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom. And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers. Our landholders, too, like theirs, retaining indeed the title and stewardship of estates called theirs, but held really in trust for the treasury, must wander, like theirs, in foreign countries, and be contented with penury, obscurity, exile, and the glory of the nation. This example reads to us the salutary lesson, that private fortunes are destroyed by public as well as by private extravagance. And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, and to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering. Then begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia, which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.

I add: The four horsemen of the American apocalypse are DEBT [oathbreaking], TAXATION [theft], WRETCHEDNESS [licentiousness] and OPPRESSION [abuse]. Ayn Rand described the same as "mooching and looting". These are minions of the bigger ones coming, conquest, war, famine and plague. We have this opportunity to repel them personally every day.

(Emphasis added.) The following is one interpretation of Talmud, from Daat Emet, a Jewish org that I am unfamiliar with and cannot vouch for the authority of; obviously there are contrary interpretations that I have already brought forward on other fora so it's appropriate to give this one as counterpoint. Note, they set themselves up as an outlier "liberal" organization pitted against a "fundamentalist" rabbinical dogma, in their page "About Daat Emet" where the alert reader will hear the echo of Magnus Hirschfeld: "DE has reached the conclusion that the amazingly rich classical Jewish legacy, which makes up the main body of Jewish culture, has been deliberately misinterpreted for a long period of time; as a result, it has become a political tool in the hands of self-interested fundamentalists who lay claim to having exclusive ownership of this legacy .... What is most astounding is that the triumph of rabbinical dictatorship continues to plague us to this day. The entire traditional sector of the Jewish collective body still lives in full conformity with the cultural rabbinical dogma; what is more, the Jewish liberals, having rejected the rabbinical interpretation, failed to create a new one. Essentially, the ancient monopoly continues to dominate Jewish culture .... In essence, DE created a new scientific and humanistic interpretation of the classical Jewish legacy, restoring it to its natural historical context. This interpretation solves two crucial objectives at once: it fosters Jewish culture and protects it from fundamentalist outrages, enabling its bearers to function successfully in the modern world." The founder's name is given as Yaron Yadan.

https://daatemet.org.il/en/question/pedophilia-in-halacha/

https://web.archive.org/web/20241208083928/https://daatemet.org.il/en/question/pedophilia-in-halacha/

Anonymous asked

Dear Daat Emet staff,

Do you know how Chazal viewed pedophilia?

Enigma

jsadmin Staff answered

Dear Enigma,

In answer to your question we must note two important things about Chazal’s approach to sexuality in general and to pedophilia (sexual attraction to minors of either sex) in particular:

1. Chazal were (as determiners of Halacha) looking at the Divine will and not man’s. Obedience to the text (the silent letters) was more important to them than harm done to some specific individual.

2. Chazal ignored (due to a lack of knowledge or a lack of desire to consider) the psychological and emotional aspects which stem from sexual activity. Their view of sex was as a purely legalistic act of acquisition, and the laws against certain forms of sexual relations are purely theological.

First we will bring the Halacha which treats pedophilia lightly:

According to Halacha, sexual relations have taken place when the participants are a male over the age of nine and a female above the age of three. Below these ages what has happened is not considered sexual intercourse (in neither the sense of acquisition nor the sense of forbidden sexual relations).

It is written in the Mishnah: “A girl of three years and a day is sanctified (as a woman is acquired) through intercourse…if one of those forbidden to have relations with her according to the Torah does have relations with her, he is killed because of her, and she is exempt. If she is less than that (less than three years and a day), it is as one who sticks a finger into an eye” (Niddah 5:4). The sages of the Talmud explain the Mishnah’s simile “as one who sticks a finger into an eye”: Just as an eye, if poked by a finger, gives off a tear and then once again gives off tears, so is it when a man puts his penis in a girl younger than three, her hymen tears and then heals over. This is why it is not called intercourse in matters of prohibition or of acquisition (Niddah 45a).

Thus did Maimonides rule (Laws of Forbidden Intercourse 1:13-14): One who has sexual relations with a girl younger than three is exempt from punishment, even if he did so with his own daughter, and one who has sexual relations with a boy of under nine is exempt from punishment, even if she did so with her own son, and homosexual relationships with a minor boy under the age of nine is exempt from the punishment written in the Torah: “If a man lies with a male as one lies with a woman, the two of them have done an abhorrent thing; they shall be put to death — their bloodguilt is upon them” (Leviticus 20:13).

From what we have brought above, you can learn that Chazal and the religious arbiters treated sexual relations with a minor as a meaningless act. They completely ignore the psychological and emotional impact upon a boy or a girl who have undergone an irreversible trauma which can warp their entire lives. Their only concern, the target of all their sophistry and discussions, was the legal/Halachic aspect. They treated intercourse as an act of acquisition and spill a great deal of ink and intellectual energy on embarrassing and shameful questions like whether an act is considered sexual intercourse if only the corona of the penis penetrates, or if there is any contact between the corona of the penis and the female genitals (what is called by Chazal “a kiss”), or is full penetration of the entire sexual organ required (Yevamot 55b)? There are many more such nonsensical questions.

To more precisely show Chazal’s emotional insensitivity, I will cite another Talmudic discussion which deals with sexual intercourse with a minor girl. Since they hold that a girl under the age of three is not “worth” intercourse, that one who has sex with a girl under the age of three is not punished, they wonder whether if one has sex with a girl under the age of three and her hymen is torn, does it heal, or was it never torn in the first place? The Halachic implications of the doubt is relevant in the case of a girl who again has sex after the age of three, and bleeds. Is this hymeneal blood or menstrual blood? Thus do Chazal sail away on virtual analysis which has nothing to do with a woman’s physical reality, while ignoring humanity.

Another thing to note is that the word “pedophilia” comes from the Greek (paed=child, philos=love) while there is no Hebrew word for sexual contact between an adult and a child. Halachic language completely ignored the existence of pedophilia. On the other hand, medicine treats pedophilia as a disorder caused by psychological and social issues, one which testifies to problems in sexual development. Treatment of this phenomenon is both medical and behavioral.

From all that has been said above, there is no doubt that were a comprehensive, in-depth anthropological study done within the contemporary Charedi community, we would find a high percentage of those who act upon their sexual attraction to little children, either because of Halacha’s turning a blind eye or because the act of pedophilia is treated lightly. In other words, the Orthodox community sees sexual activity between adults as more serious than having sex with a child.

Sincerely,

Daat Emet

jsadmin Staff answered

Dear Shabtay,

You are quite correct; the Torah permits marriage with an infant. This can be learned from the verse “I gave my daughter to this man.” The father has the right to marry his minor daughter off to whomever he pleases. The Talmud treats sexual relations with a little girl as something self-explanatory, and they say:

Three [categories of] women may use an absorbent [cotton to absorb sperm as a contraceptive]: a minor…What is the age of a minor? From the age of eleven and a day to the age of twelve and a day. Less than that or more than that must carry on her sexual relations in a normal manner (Ketubot 39a).

As you have written, sleeping with a young girl is permitted, as long as you marry her “according to the teachings of Moses and Israel.”

For more on this matter, see our answer The Halachic approach to having sex with minors (in Hebrew).

Sincerely,

Daat Emet

jsadmin Staff answered

According to Halachic definitions, an infant three years and above must be treated, when it comes to modesty, as a grown woman. Halachic treats a little girl as a sexual object. But how do Charedi and the religious in fact treat little girls? Do they treat them as sexual objects? This is an interesting question, one which should be explored in-depth. It is possible that there is a gap between written Halacha, which may not be changed, and the cultural changes which have taken place in the modern era.

If sexual attraction is dependent upon culture, it is possible that the Western culture has influenced the Orthodox public and sexual attraction to little girls will not exist (for normal men, with no deviances or disturbances). On the other hand, the textual discourse of the Orthodox public can be a very significant source of influence upon the viewpoint and lifestyle of the religious or the Charedi person, even creating a reality of legitimate sexual attraction even to children.

The very fact that a religious man treats Halachic rulings seriously (as the words of the living G-d) and because of practical Halacha treats little girls as sexual objects influences his mind.

There is a halacha which forbids being alone with a girl of three and above (Even HaEzer 22:1). A religious man may not be alone with an infant lest his urges overcome him and he sleep with her. The application of this halacha can have an effect on a man’s mind.

This is also the case for the rest of the practical halachot, such as the prohibition against reading words of Torah in front of a girl who is not dressed modestly (in the words of the halacha, “has more than a handspan uncovered”) and the prohibition against hearing the voice of girls singing, etc.

In short, it would seem we need to see if the Orthodox society has been examined when it comes to this topic, and if so, what the conclusions of the research were.

Sincerely,

Daat Emet

jsadmin Staff answered

Dear Oshri,

First of all, we appreciate the courage and intellectual honest it takes to clarify these issues to arrive at the truth.

Our answer to Pedophilia in Halacha which you printed and showed to your teacher was precise and accurate.

Note, please, two things:

1. Halacha permits having sexual relations, even with a minor under the age of 11, through sanctification and marriage. (This is pedophilia.)

2. Halacha exempts one from punishment incest with a girl under the age of 3. Though we say “exempts,” this does not mean that one may do so. For example: a father who has sexual intercourse with his daughter of more than 3 would be liable to death by burning (Maimonides, Laws of Forbidden Intercourse 1:5), but if the daughter is under 3 the father is exempt from punishment. (this is the halacha we cited from Maimonides; it is most odd that your teacher did not find it.)

To remove any doubt, we will cite Maimonides’ words in full:

Any woman is forbidden to them if she is age three and a day or above. A grown man who has sex with her is liable to death, karet, or lashes and she is exempt unless she is an adult. If she was younger than this, both are exempt for her intercourse is not intercourse. Similarly, a grown woman who has intercourse with a minor child of nine years and a day is liable to karet or death or lashes and he is exempt; if he were nine years old or younger both are exempt.

If a man has intercourse with a man or a man has intercourse with him and both are adult, they are stoned, for it is written “Do not have intercourse with men,” be he the penetrative partner or the penetrated. If he is a minor of nine years and a day or more, the man who has intercourse with him is stoned and the minor is exempt. If he is a male of nine years or less, both are exempt, though it is appropriate for the court to subject the adult to lashes for rebelliousness, for he had intercourse with a male, though he was under the age of nine. (Maimonides, Laws of Forbidden Intercourse 1:13-14).

We would be pleased to see your teacher’s response.

Sincerely,

Daat Emet

Should c/Conspiracies jointly petition admin for a single new moderator as opposed to a mod team or no mods?

Please answer YES or NO in separate main comments below, with any reasoning as desired (including proposals of individual mods, no mod, or multiple mods).

YES indicates our direction should be to get agreement on there being one mod approved first with details to be sorted out later, NO indicates we should take any other direction.

This poll methodology is recognized to be unscientific but is better than nothing. Thank you for your responses. The previous poll yielded 4 votes in favor of moderation, 1 vote against, and 1 vote conditionally in favor.

I recognize that many distrust voting and believe in other methods of consensus, and of individual or group activity; I merely point out that remaining silent on a position is generally treated as giving consent to others to make the decision.

Since this field gets little traction here, I anticipate very little interest in this challenge.

1. Two billion Christians are committed to a record (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9) indicating we are now in the 6,018th year of the cosmos (James Ussher: 6,029th).

2. Two billion other theists (mostly Muslims and Jews) are committed to the same record. Jews make this 5786 AM, recognizing that the Seder Olam Rabbah deliberately skipped about a dozen Persian kings, which I reckon as gaps totalling 232 years. Muslims, generally agreeing, also invented the kalam cosmology that teaches a finite beginning in historic times.

3. For the rest of mankind, all written history testifies the universe and earth are thousands of years old; even the Sumerian King List doesn't exaggerate beyond human lifespans of 43,200 years (Enmenluana), and the legendary Buddhists stop with lifespans of 100,000 years, still within the range of thousands and not billions. 200 creation traditions demonstrate the origin of the universe as designed and humanity as a rapid development, as a universal testimony.

4. All written science for 5,000 years [with the exception of a trend begun by Huxley, Darwin, and Wallace about 200 years ago] assumed a similar timeframe of thousands of years and an orderly creation by an external power.

5. Therefore the only exception to this testimony is a demonstrable cabal of antitheists that have invented and declared a "war" on theism and commandeered control of a scientific establishment that censors all other opinions and is sustained by leeched tax money (Stein, Expelled). These follow a pattern of other previous occasional pockets of people (not "scientists" like this time but always religionists) who claim vast age for the universe but who never could catch on due to their inconsistency and infighting (e.g. gnosticism).

6. This cabal relies on an ever-spinning series of cave shadows that are abandoned when they become useless, but during their lifetimes are upheld as "settled science" (finch beaks, Lamarckianism, Peking Man, steady state, hopeful monsters, panspermia, and nowadays dark matter, dark energy, anthropic principle, math universe hypothesis). They rely on parroting of pictographic narratives rather than on deliberative knowledge, such as the new "tree of life", Haeckel's embryos, Miller's tubes, the "march of progress" apes and men, etc. (Wells, Icons of Evolution).

7. One demonstration of the bankruptcy of this position is NASA's admission that neither of two theories, one dating the universe at 9 billion years rounded, and one dating it at 11-18 billion years, can be taken as settled science. If an official repository of old-earth evidence admits that all old-earth theories are suspect because they disagree and the error has not yet been discerned, then there is no proof of old earth.

Uniquity of triads.

To supplement the study on the trinity (trineness) of God, this study is a list of concepts that have arisen as basic triads, either directly from Scriptures or from logical extrapolation of Scriptural concepts. Often these triads are easily compared to the classic definition of trinity, but often there is deliberate ambiguity in mapping one triad to another. Sometimes all three aspects of one triad apply to all three aspects of another. However, it appears to me that even when two triads do not map easily one to another, they remain isomorphic descriptions of the plurality in unity of God, because the relationship between two triads can either be identity, distinction, or elements of both, which forms another triad! This suggests that distinctives do not prevent triads from each being valid expressions of God, because the distinctives also form a triad and constitute an expression of God.

The purpose of this compilation is to show that some aspects of God appear paradoxical when compared to others, but that when considered as independent structures they behave similarly. The paradoxical appearance only arises because it is assumed two concepts can be mapped precisely one onto another, but that would make the concepts redundant with each other. Instead, no human concept maps precisely onto another. This means that whenever one attempts to claim a paradox, it arises from failure to define terms precisely and to rightly compare and contrast the definitions.

In one of its simplest forms, paradox is cited because the following beliefs are held to be contradictory as a group: "The Father is God", "The Word is God", "The Father is not the Word". The resolution of the paradox involves recognizing that distinctions exist between Father, Word, and God, and so "is" does not mean precise identity, but establishes that essential attributes are identical but some distinction still exists. Any tension between these triads is resolvable the same way.

• Father [God], Son [Lord], Spirit [Holy]: The traditional triad of Matthew 28:19 and Eph. 4:4-6.

• Father [Begetter], Word [Flesh], Glory [Dwelling]: The traditional triad of John 1:14. The Word is the Logos (Verbum) and the Monogenes (One-of-a-Kind).

• From, To, Through: How all things relate respecting him, Rom. 11:36.

• Above, In, Through: How he relates respecting all things, Eph. 4:6.

• Of-None, Begotten, Proceeding: The Athanasian definitions of the distinctives of these triads.

• Of-Self, Of-Other, Of-Others: One way of reconciling the Athanasian terms for relations of personality. This also harmonizes with the next two.

• Seity [Self], Aseity [Of-Self], Deity [God]: Another way to summarize the same thing from a human perspective. A seity is a considered self; an aseity is a self considered in itself; a deity is then a perfect harmony of self and consideration of self. Here the Father is the considered self that originates the triad; the Son is "God with God", self of self, John 1:1-2; and the Spirit is the perfect relation between them, "God out of God", the love of 1 John 4:7-8.

• Deity [Simplicity], Seity [Complexity], Aseity [Profundity]: From a divine perspective, the Father is simple unconsidered deity; the Son is the Self the Father sees when considering "himself"; and the Spirit is the consideration of the Father for his Self, the Son. This shifts the application of the words because the perspective of consideration changes.

• Unity, Diversity, Triunity: Triunity is a special case of "university", meaning "unity in diversity".

• One, Two [And], Three [Many]: Even mathematical simplicity is an incomplete expression, Rom. 12:4-5, 1 Cor. 12:12-20.

• Singular, Dual, Plural: The same triad expressed in grammatical cases.

• Absolute, Relative, Both: A general harmonization of these harmonies.

• Incomprehensible, Almighty, Eternal: Three of the six Athanasian attributes that apply to all of the trinity.

• Omniscient [All-Comprehending], Omnipotent [All-Doing], Omnipresent [All-Spacetime]: A common logical application of the infinities of the prior triad. Omniscient implies Ineffable, Inexhaustible, Unshared, Incommunicable, infinite in thought. Omnipotent implies Omniefficient, All-Working, infinite in action (matter or word). Omnipresent comprises Immense (Immaterial, Total, Full) and Eternal (Agelong, Endless, Everlasting), infinite in relation. Thus:

• Thought, Action, Relation: Explicit forms of these infinities.

• Uncreated [Creator], Lord, God: The other three of the six Athanasian attributes.

• Being, Power, Glory: Another common creedal triad.

• Kingdom, Power, Glory: The Lord's Prayer that may indicate the source of the creedal statement, Matt. 6:13.

• Ehyeh [I Am], Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh [I Am What I Am], Yahweh [I Am I]: God's self-naming from Ex. 3:14-15.

• Self-Identity, Self-Existence, Self-Causality: I use these words to explain the three names. First, such perfect being that that being uniquely is identifiable as God; second, such perfect consideration of that being that the consideration is also really God; third, such perfect relation between being and consideration that "cause" and "effect" have no difference when applied to that relation, such that God is the uncaused first cause of all. (Thus these words apply similarly as the triad, deity, seity, aseity. "Self-causality" does not mean that one literally exists before one causes oneself to exist, but that one has no cause outside oneself.)

• Unimagined [Inscrutable], Unlimited [Illimitable], Undistinguished [Indivisible]: This is a similar explanation from a negative perspective: only God can fully imagine, limit, or distinguish his infinity.

• Ousia, Homoiousias, Homoousias: At the risk of simplifying several hard-fought disputes, the Father is an existence, the Son is a similar existence, and the Father and Son are both of the same existence, the Spirit.

• Transcendence, Personality, Immanence: God is both wholly other to creation and wholly within creation, and reconciles these in the personality of Jesus.

• Being, Seeking, Rewarding: The basic activity triad from Heb. 11:6.

• Existence, Equality, Possession: This triad as applied to God in himself.

• Being [Doing], Having [Inhabiting], Relating [Transcending]: Another way of expressing the thought of Hebrews 11 within God.

• Space, Matter [Energy], Time: The observed created triad hinted at by Gen. 1:1-3.

• Length, Width [Breadth], Height: The three observed physical dimensions within space.

• Water, Blood, Spirit: A physical triad of 1 John 4:7-8 that was compared to the trinity.

• Mind [Soul], Strength [Body], Heart [Spirit]: The human triad from Deut. 6:5.

• Thoughts, Emotions, Will: A triad often found within the mind, in its reflection upon itself, the body, and the spirit.

• Knowledge, Understanding, Wisdom: Another mental triad in its reflection upon God, Ex. 31:3, 35:31, Prov. 2:6, Is. 11:2.

• Head, Arm, Hand [Finger]: A bodily triad applicable to God. Head, 1 Cor. 11:3; arm, Is. 53:1, etc.; hand, 2 Kings 3:15, Ezek. 1:8; finger, Luke 11:20 with Matt. 12:28.

• Soul [Nephesh], Dust [Aphar], Breath [Neshamah]: The human triad from Gen. 2:7. Here the soul is the unity of body and spirit; at other times the body, or the spirit, is the unifying focus.

• Creature, Name, Call: The earthly naming triad from Gen. 2:19.

• Deity, Name [Attribute], Being [Nature]: Application of the naming principle to God.

• Unshared, Shared, Substantially-Shared: There are ways in which God does not communicate himself with us and ways in which he does, and these are harmonized in our receiving sufficient substance to have both the experience of the communicable and the intuition of the incommunicable.

• Sensing, Knowing, Revealing: The activities by which God's sharing progresses to us.

• Self [Autos], Law [Nomos], Autonomy: God is a "law unto himself" because he is the original self and the original law.

• Deity, Icon [Angel], Glory: 2 Cor. 4:4, Col. 1:15, 1 Cor. 11:7.

• Deity, Radiance, Glory: Heb. 1:3.

• Deity, Image [Character], Substance [Hypostasis]: Also Heb. 1:3. From this verse I can say that the Bible teaches there is (at least) one hypostasis, and I can avoid dogmatism about whether there are actually two or three (each way of phrasing can be harmonized with the others, because multiple definitions of hypostasis have been used).

• Justice, Mercy, Faith: Jesus's triad of weighty matters, Matt. 23:23, compared to the spice triad of mint, anise, and cummin (compare the unity of Ps. 85:10).

• Pure [Good], Right [Just], Great [Holy]: As we get into the outflow of God's attributes in creation later, we will see that he is good of himself, that he is just in accord with himself, and that he is holy in his relating to himself, informing our expressions of these principles in our lives. Further, simplicity and grace are aspects of purity, merit and mercy of righteousness, and glory and majesty of greatness.

• Irresistible Force, Immovable Object, What Happens: The answer to this humorous implied question is that there is perfect harmony if the force and the object are the same entity (the unmoved mover), because they never "meet" in opposition, a possibility the paradox-framer didn't consider.

• Yahweh, Yehoshua, Qadosh: If we seek personal names, even though all personal names work as attributes at this level, it's often considered that Yahweh (Self-Existence) refers more particularly to the Father, while Yehoshua (Jesus, Yahweh's Salvation) is the Hebrew name of the Son. If the Spirit has a personal name it may be the word Qadosh (Holy). However, the attributes of self-existence, salvation, and holiness belong to God in unity. The following may be more specific:

• Abba, Pili, Sheken: This may not even be a triad, but is my attempt to select unambiguous names. In particular, though Jesus instructs us to use the basic names of the Great Commission, father, holy, and spirit have some ambiguity within the Godhead, and son has different application before the incarnation than after. Abba (Daddy, Dada, Papa) uniquely refers to the Father of Jesus, Mark 14:36, Rom. 8:15, Gal. 4:6. Pili (Wonderful, Secret) is a name taken as unique by the Angel of the LORD, Judg. 13:18, Ps. 139:6. Sheken (Dwelling, extrabiblically Shekinah) uniquely applies to the Manifestation of Glory, Deut. 12:5, etc.

• Father, Son [Child], Mother: The earthly family, where in the Godhead the role of the mother is taken by the Spirit-filled church. Interestingly, unlike the third party being the harmonizer, in this view the second party (the Child) is the harmonizer.

• Voice, Word, Sound: This is an old triad hinted at in Scripture, in which the first party (the Voice) harmonizes two things (the message and the sounds it expresses).

• Leader, Follower, Spirit: A triad suggested by C. S. Lewis in which the third party takes the traditional place of harmonizing.

• God, God [Word], With: The Son (Word) is God, and God with God, where the Spirit is the relation between the two, John 1:1.

• God, Out Of, God [Love]: The Spirit (Love) is God, and God out of God, where the Son is the expression of the two, 1 John 4:7-8.

• Lover, Beloved, Love: A triad of action suggested by 1 John 4:7-8 and also Song of Songs; I also like to call it Lover, Loved, Loves.

• Abraham, Isaac, Jacob: As in Ex. 3:15, the patriarchs are often considered to be typological of the trinity of God.

• He-Created [Bara], God-Himself [Elohim], In-The-Beginning [Bereshith]: Gen. 1:1 combining singular verb and plural noun in unifying context.

Unity and diversity.

This study transitions from axiomatic understandings about God's identifying himself to us in unity and diversity into our coming to more structured study on the basics of the nature and attributes of God. I have found it important first to know what set of things we categorize as names or attributes so as to organize among them. I used to try to make one attribute or set more basic than others, but that seems futile. Rather, there are many attributes that flow together and organize themselves in predictable ways without any having automatic primacy. The only exception that allows us to reject attributes we observe in experience is if we reject everything: nihilism. Technically, one always has the option of believing that nothing exists: there is something or there is nothing. But nobody wants to be a full nihilist (desire betrays nihilism), and those few relatively consistent practical nihilists still hold onto enough concepts of existence as to remain inconsistent at core.

Though I began analysis with the concepts Absolute, Relative, Both, and Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis, what I have to add is no less foundational. I find the repeating trend that any one thing implies a Monad, a monad implies a Dyad, a dyad implies a Triad, and a triad often reconciles back as an expression of the one thing, in just the ways these other triads of words imply. God formed man (Genesis 2:7); man alone is not good, God made woman (2:18, 22); man and wife become one flesh (2:24); be fruitful and multiply, God appointed offspring (1:28, 4:25); people call upon the LORD, God named them Man (4:26, 5:2). The entire pattern is present in seed form. (Remember Three is a Magic Number?)

Hebrew nouns have a singular, a dual plural (used only for pairs), and a mass plural (usually implying at least three). How strange that in the Bible's first three words we have a mass plural ("Elohim", God as a mass noun), a singular verb ("bara", created), and a unifying context ("bereshith", in the beginning). Paul makes it a basic philosophical concept that the human body demonstrates a perfect reconciliation of unity and diversity without contradiction, in extended metaphors in Romans 12:3-8 and 1 Corinthians 12:4-27.

A Scripture that expresses this reconciliation of unity and diversity practically is Ecclesiastes 4:7-12, although it focuses more on dyads and makes application to triads only suddenly without transition: "Again, I saw vanity under the sun: one person who has no other, either son or brother, yet there is no end to all his toil, and his eyes are never satisfied with riches, so that he never asks, “For whom am I toiling and depriving myself of pleasure?” This also is vanity and an unhappy business. Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken." (One fighting against another is a he-said she-said impasse, but two witnesses establish a matter, Deut. 17:6. Compare John 8:16, 29, 12:24, 16:32.)

Therefore the patterns of One, Two, and Three among attributes are not imposed from outside but flow naturally from inside the attributes themselves whenever we experience or discuss them. A very basic Scripture of belief about God's attributes is Heb. 11:6: "Whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him." One God is sought, two complementary beliefs are enjoined, three concepts are included (Exist, Seek, Reward). Existing is an attribute of a monad; Seeking is an attribute of a dyad, from one to another; Rewarding is an attribute of a triad, from one to another in a third, the reward itself.

(I began by emphasizing God's self-expression in all kinds of numbers because we are so used to hearing trinitarianism as foundational Christianity, which it is; but we are not to understand this as if God's nature is dependent upon the particular numbers one and three, but as our understanding gravitating more often to these numbers rather than others in apprehending him. True trinitarianism also permits there being two that testify within God (and three that testify), and there being seven spirits within him (and indeed ten fingers within Christ's two hands). As already noted, God frequently associates himself with tetrads (though not usually in terms of identity), so often as to need separate analysis. The controversy of trinitarianism, however, is really a facet of the broader quest to understand how God reconciles contrasting attributes within himself, codified by the particulars One and Three. The study so far is intended to equip us to resolve these attributes like any other paradoxical tension: by realizing that God is the ultimate meaning of both unity and diversity, which never refer contradictorily within him to the same thing in the same way, but harmonize in the end.)

Thus within God, and applying his core rule to himself, we can consider him as existing; as seeking himself; or as rewarding himself with himself. Yet God does not seek or reward "as though he needed anything", Acts 17:25. Rather, "I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me" (John 5:30): the Son seeks not of himself but of the Father, and does so by making his will identical to that of the Father, without self-consciousness it could almost be said. "I do not seek my own glory; there is One who seeks it" (John 8:50): the Father seeks the glory he shares with the Son, which could even be considered as the Father seeking the Spirit. As seeking is generally a two-way transaction, rewarding is generally a three-way transaction: "For he whom God has sent utters the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure. The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand" (John 3:34-35). The Father gave the Son the Spirit. So I regard that Being by which he exists, that Identification by which he seeks himself, and that Relation by which he rewards himself with himself to be another fundamental triad (just as in math some of the first principles are Existence, Equality, and Possession).

These words also give us the power to reflect attributes upon themselves by recognizing that the attributes have attributes too. Since God possesses Existence, Existence also possesses Existence, and God also possesses Possession. But this can get overly technical and philosophical, and really only has application when discussing the practical meaning of these attributes, an important case of which is the distinction between being and equaling. The attribute is the attribute itself ("I AM WHO I AM", Ex. 3:14), but the attribute also has equality with other attributes than itself. But one name is not perfectly identical with another, even if identified or equal with it, unless they are the same name; there is always a distinction between one name and another. Therefore we have the common ambiguity in the word "is", sometimes meaning perfect identity, and sometimes meaning equality of essential attributes with distinctions evidenced by the distinct names.

Properly resolving this ambiguity is often essential for understanding. The statement "A is B" might mean "all A's attributes are B's and all B's attributes are A's" (bilateral, being), but it might only mean one half of that proposition (unilateral, equaling). Ordinary "children" are "offspring" and vice versa, but sometimes we need to make a distinction: "not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring" (Rom. 9:6-9). Paul shows that the attributes of spiritual children ("children of the promise") do not always flow to become attributes of physical offspring ("not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel"); it's not bilateral. The fact that textual markers indicate when to use "is" for equality rather than perfect identity of being will assist us greatly in resolving what some see as contradictions. Often the word "is" does not express the relation between attributes, but the word "of" almost always does in one way or another, leading to our saying "of" when "is" becomes more controversial.

The attribute of Unity or One also has two distinct cognates, "alone" and "unique". When we say "God is one" (Rom. 3:30, Gal. 3:20, James 2:19) we conceive of the One who is God as "alone". But when we say "there is ... one Spirit" (Eph. 4:4) we conceive of the One who is Spirit as "unique" rather than alone, in the same way the Only-Begotten ("monogenes") is unique. Again cautious explication resolves the ambiguity.

This all shows that attributes often group themselves naturally into such clusters as monads, dyads, triads, and tetrads, and that these attributes can also interact with each other and describe each other, as can the groups. When we come to discuss Deity (God) as a name or attribute, we will need to understand it to see its relation to other attributes. As noted, all names come from within our partial experience and thus are either shared with creation or unshared and negations of creation principles. "Deity" or "God", as elohim, is a name shared with created beings such as angels, who have the various attributes of elohim without being the Creator Elohim; but Paul informs us that we are seeking the nature not of elohim in general but of the only one who fully embodies the meaning of Elohim.

A difficulty commonly found in approaching him is to fixate on some name or cluster (God the Father, or Ein Sof the Infinite, or Yahweh the Self-Existent) as if it is both positive and unshared revelation of God's character. But he has not granted us this: either the name has meaning within our partial experience of creation (e.g. Father) or the name has meaning by negating all our shared experience of creation (e.g. Infinite). However, by assuming this ability to conceive of God ineffably, many have then looked at Jesus and proposed that he does not have the ineffable attribute perceived in God, because Jesus too is subject to the same limitations on our experience as describing him positively only in created terms. Instead, we should take such affirmations as "his Son [is] the exact imprint of his nature" (Heb. 1:2-3) at face value and say that God possesses a nature ("his") and the Son possesses that nature ("is of"), where the word for "nature" is "hypostasis". That directs our quest as to determining in what distinct ways the Father and Son possess the same nature.

In summary, whatever name can be used, including "God" itself, must be used within a universe of meaning that associates it with other attributes. A calling by name itself is a relation of unity (calling) and diversity (name to creature). How much more should we anticipate that our statements about God involve words with fluid ability to accompany multiple senses and yet solid certainty of the sameness of concept upholding each sense. While controversy can hardly be avoided, it is hoped that these remarks prepare us well for true and edifying consideration of attributes of Deity.

Meaning of names.

Prior study emphasized how God assigns himself names in many ways that can be analyzed with mathematical simplicity, some as unities and some as numerable clusters in relationships. We continue by considering relationships of relationships, namely, recurring patterns between groups of names. This will necessarily be more philosophical but I trust the Biblical examples (ESV today) will keep us grounded.

First, what is in a name? For example, "Whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field .... The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living" (Gen. 2:19-20, 3:20). A name is a call sign, a repeatable group of symbols such as sounds or written characters, that has a relationship with an object.

This means that we can begin with any creature (to create a monad), assign it a name (to create a dyad), and then institute a call, a relationship between creature and name (to create a triad) expressed in action, knowledge, and responsibility. The call or act of responsibility may include a recognition of salient focused meaning ("mother of life") alluded to by the symbols that make up the name ("Eve"). As Shakespeare alluded, names can become deceptive, but we start by focusing on their eternal meaning rather than any temporal corruption.

While it is possible to extend this theory to tetrads, it is expressed in this way here because we will see triads have a natural repetitive affinity to them that has unique applicability to the subject. In the prior study we learned that each number has its own character, and a character of threeness is its apparent descriptive strength compared to twos and fours.

What is meant by the group of all names or words or thoughts or concepts, and the group of all names that apply to God? We observe that namespace is mathematically infinite, although due to the granularity of the universe creatures only use a finite number of names at any time. God may consider an infinity of objects at once outside of spacetime, but we can only consider a broad but finite class of them at once. "Whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything" (1 John 3:20), implying that our self-condemnation is necessarily finite and superable. This echoes the general principle, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD" (Isaiah 55:8).

A powerful metaphor implies the infinity/finity gap (9-11): "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it." We can see that earth (man) has limits heaven (God) does not have; that all water (word, thought) comes from heaven and is destined for heaven; that water circulates to create fruit (meaning); and that it is efficacious (not corrupt) for that purpose. Because we can see the physical parallel we can infer the metaphoric parallel to God's thoughts and acts.

In the mathematic science this distinction is elaborately known, which I will simplify. Two boundaries of "conceivability" are recognized. One is that an infinity of complex infinities are "conceivable"; the other is that everything man has so far conceived is more limited and always corresponds simply to the same one infinity, not to an infinite regress of them. It's easier (more conceivable) to speak of the natural "three" than the irrational "pi"; going further, some numeric concepts (like Cantor diagonal numbers) might be "conceivable" by God in one sense and yet literally take infinite time to conceive and thus be "inconceivable" by creatures in another sense. It's been said of that word, "I do not think it means what you think it means", so let's be very cautious with our conception of inconceivability.

I earlier wrote, "Is there an unknowable to God? We cannot know!" I believe that, if something exists that no human will ever conceive, no conception would ever reach it, meaning that even the name "inconceivable" does not have a true referent (nor does the name Ein Sof, as if a concept could remain "ungrasped" by any conception). If such a word referred to a thing, it would immediately contradict itself, so it is actually a meaningless word. Often, incorrectly, it merely means "relatively unknowable", not absolutely; all Biblical metaphors speak of relative unknowability that will be revealed someday. "The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law" (Deut. 29:29). "Nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known" (Matt. 10:26). However, it also seems that every disclosure creates new questions, so we never know everything there is to know.

This shows that we don't know what "all" literally means. It can never mean more to us than "everything creatures will ever experience" because we can never know what lies beyond the collective experience of Creation. When we speak of God outside of timespace, that is a metaphor for his ability to influence anything whatsoever within timespace. He is "in the beginning". He is "before all things" in the sense of facing and upholding them all. This can mean "including himself" (the Father and Son stand before each other), or can mean "excluding himself" as well (yet we only experience him as he interacts with all things, not in any theoretical interaction he limits only to himself). Thus "all" has a natural limit of "everything creatures experience" and cannot mean "everything that exists whether we assign it meaning or not": nothing can have and not have meaning at the same time.

This gives rise to the notion that core attributes of God can only be conceived of as negatives, like "infinite". Every name of God is either positive, thus referring to some object of finite human experience and thus always partial and communicable, less than fully God; or negative, contrasting with experience and potentially excluded from all experience, infinite and incommunicable. Were it possible to experience God without any reference to Creation, there would be no words or logic to describe the experience, because words refer to objects of experience. Thus names are meaningless with reference to hypotheticals, and, to answer our question, the realm of "all names" is limited to the bounds of creaturely conception.

This allows me to repeat distinctions I stated earlier. (1) Where Creation contains realities and imaginations of negations of realities, Creator is the reality and not the negation ("God is light, and in him is no darkness at all", 1 John 1:5). (2) Where Creation contains spectra of dialectic realities, Creator synthesizes the reality ("Who dwells in unapproachable light", 1 Tim. 6:16, "He would dwell in thick darkness", 1 Kings 8:12, 2 Chr. 6:1; my use of the same reality as previous in a different way is intentional). (3) Where Creation contains body (matter) and spirit (energy) and their relationship (spacetime), Creator realizes body, spirit, and relationship ("In the beginning" "heavens and the earth", "Spirit" and "waters", Gen. 1:1-2; "But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built!", 1 Kings 8:27, cf. 2 Chr. 6:18).

The first distinction uses all light energy as an example of what we call an Absolute, a monad. The negation of an Absolute is not a thing, but an absence of a thing. The second distinction uses situations (dwellings) of more light or more darkness as examples of what we call Relatives in dyads. A relative cannot be fully negated but is on a spectrum where broad differences are separate things. The third distinction uses the relationship between members of a dyad as a "tertium quid" (literally, third thing), creating a triad typically called Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis. All three are real things. That means in naming things, we mix freely among referring to an Absolute Thesis; referring to a spectrum from that Absolute to a Relative Thesis and a Relative Antithesis; or referring to a harmony of these two in Synthesis. Many things, like light, are thus Both Absolute and Relative.

In God, all opposites synthesize, if they are true things (dwelling in light, dwelling in darkness); Paul illustrates this in himself didactically. "Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone .... To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) .... To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) .... I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some" (1 Cor. 9:19-22). By this relative use of all Paul describes himself as able to accommodate both sides of the spectrum: how much more is God able.

Yet, if a concept is not a true reality (like darkness, contradiction, or evil), God is the Absolute of that concept and not the negation: "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." This speaks of total light unmixed with any kind of darkness anywhere.

To summarize, the concepts Absolute, Relative, and Both, and Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis, describe other names but are themselves names. God is Absolute, but he is also both sides of Relative spectra, and so he is Both Absolute and Relative in one. In the same way he is a Thesis (Absolute), an Antithesis (Relative), and a Synthesis (Both). God can be revealed as a unity from any one name, or as a diversity from among a group of names, or as an all-in-one that comprises both (a "uni-versity").

This background is stated to allow readers to recognize that God accepts all kinds of names unto himself because he is the source of every named creation. It appears that the answer to our last question is that every concept whatsoever that has reality (excluding constructs like evil that refer to absences of real principles of creation) can be applied to God in some sense, though this is a tentative conclusion that needs more fleshing out from Scripture and experience in a later study. For now let us consider that by inhabiting all things God identifies with all things, yet without evil. Paul talks about this in two related Scriptures I close with, without immediate explication. Discussion is warmly invited.

"For 'God has put all things in subjection under his feet.' But when it says, 'all things are put in subjection,' it is plain that he is excepted who put all things in subjection under him. When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all" (1 Cor. 15:27-28).

"And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all" (Eph. 1:22-23).

Number study.

God knows himself as he is, unlimitedly, including what is hidden from us. We experience him always within limits and partially. We use names because lexical strings can be used easily to invoke something far greater or even indescribably great (the map is not the territory). This means that the unity of God as he experiences himself is mediated to us by a diversity of names and of simultaneous experiences.

Trinitarian creeds express a definitional core for this unity and diversity, and should be upheld fully; yet, because often charged with contradiction or incompleteness, they can be and are supplemented with unofficial helpful explanations. They are not insufficient, but we can amplify them by resorting to additional Scriptural background. When we seek this resolution we find that God uses numbers in many more ways than Trinitarians.

1> "The LORD our God, the LORD is one" (Deut. 6:4). Most have no problem with "Yahweh is our God is Yahweh is Unity". But he is no monad or concrete block; he displays diversity, and most unitarians recognize this backhandedly. We focus on diversity thoroughly, but must begin by affirming all is core unity.

2> "In your Law it is written that the testimony of two people is true. I am the one who bears witness about myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness about me" (John 8:17-18). Before we talk threeness we must admit the Lord uses the concept "two" about himself and not directly "three". The Son is himself the "One" (the Unity) in the same way the Father is Unity; but he is "not alone" because he does what the Father does. So here Scripture assigns names to the one (Yahweh) that are given the concept two (Unity and Father). Ancient of Days interacts with Son of Man, without always mentioning the Spirit that flows between them. However, logically, a duo always implies a relationship, and that relationship can be counted as a third; thus this picture gravitates back to trinitarianism without fully recognizing it.

Each number has special meaning that is both implicit and traditional; all creations of God reflect his nature. Expressions of twoness include male-female, right-left, heaven-earth, human-divine, but all show a complementary unity that reflects the unity of Father and Son.

3> "Every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses" (Matt. 18:16). As anti-Trinitarians note, God never uses the words "person", "trinity", or "three" with respect to himself, unless the indirect association of this verse with John 8 is admitted. There are many triads, starting with Matthew 28:19 (Father, Son, Spirit) and always answerable to that formulation, but the word "three" is missing. The conclusions are of course sound that Father is God, Son is God, Spirit is God, and these are distinct; but we do best to talk about God the way Scripture talks about him when our secondary formulations are challenged for insufficiency.

An important point in these Scriptures, and Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, is the "fuzzy math". "Two or three", like "six or seven", is an idiom for an inexactly counted number. Sometimes God wants an inexact metaphor so we recognize math is not complete either. As we go on, more reasons for fuzziness appear.

Here patterns include body-soul-spirit, past-present-future, length-breadth-height, sky-land-sea, father-mother-child, thesis-antithesis-synthesis: among some pairs there is a tertium quid that comes naturally. We observe philosophically that the mind naturally turns pairs to triads but does not so easily turn triads to quartets; why? I can only say it makes sense because the increased relationship of a fourth to all three priors (e.g. tetrahedron) is not so easily envisioned as pairing off all four more distantly (e.g. square). A Catholic illustration places the four words Father, Son, Spirit, God in a tetrahedron rather than a square, because the joins to the word "God" are intended to emphasize the relationship of "is", while the joins among the three vertices are intended to emphasize the relationship of "is not". While this is accurate in itself and reinforces the creeds and Scriptures, it invites the question of why "God" is not a fourth in the Trinity. The answer is that "God" is a title that is typically presented in unity, or (as "Elohim") in indefinite diversity, and is not often presented as only one in a plural transaction. When that does happen (as in the creedal "God of God, Very God of Very God"), all in the transaction share one Deity.

But God does associate himself with larger numbers as well; and it's possible to see his diversity in these ways as well, without losing anything else we have gleaned from Scripture or creed.

4> "A stormy wind came out of the north, and a great cloud, with brightness around it, and fire flashing forth continually, and in the midst of the fire, as it were gleaming metal. And from the midst of it came the likeness of four living creatures" (Ezekiel 1:4-5). The greatest description of the appearance of the enthroned, joined with several other testimonies, gives him four constant attendants that constantly exude fourness, even as they chant the threefold "Holy" (Is. 6).

Man loves God with heart, soul, and might (Deut. 6:5, Mark 12:30), corresponding to heart-soul-body; but this is sometimes shortened to two, heart-soul, and Luke thought it necessary to translate "soul" with two words meaning soul and mind (Luke 10:27), making man fourfold with heart, soul, strength, and mind. I don't think this teaches man has four discrete levels, but I do think that the soul level has observable subdivisions. Similarly, I don't think the four living beings are God himself, but I do not know that I can simply prove the contrary directly from Scripture. I note that the translation "creatures" is incorrect, because in both Hebrew and Greek the word means "living ones", "lives", and I note these beings are frequently referred to. As righteous sentient expressions they always speak for God rightly and are inseparable from him. The easiest fast conclusion is that they are like his robe or his throne, completely possessed by his will, but separable in the mind from the form that the person of the Ancient of Days takes. We would be wise to follow Ezekiel, who saw a vision that drove others mad, and multiply words for caution's sake, saying, "Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD." Glory has likeness, and likeness has its own appearance, all for the sake of revealing one God showing himself and communicating within himself.

There is enough material on fours in Scripture that all relate to these living ones that it could occupy an entire book, from the four Rivers of Eden to the four Horsemen of Apocalypse. Details are left for now as an exercise.

7> "Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness" (Rev. 1:4-5). Skipping over the more distant relationships of five and six, we come to this very explicit passage very often ignored. Some solid testimonies to it still appear, such as the original lyrics to Be Thou My Vision. We are not going the way of the false teaching "There's nine of them!" by calculating God as being 3x3 or 1+7+1, but we are going to explicate a passage that needs it in order to prevent others from doing so. This is still God expressing himself in the nominal triad of I Am, Spirit(s), and Jesus, but now, instead of focusing on the unity of the Father or the God-Man dual nature of the Son, we are given a heptad of Spirits. Isn't there one Spirit?

Yes, there is, like there is still one wind when seven hurricanes appear, and there are still "seven Seas" when we call them all "the Sea". Because the Spirit manifests as an uncountable (wind, water, fire), we can sometimes count occurrences of Him, as we will see below. What John saw was a heavenly menorah of seven branches that was the pattern for Moses's construction (and also for the seven lampstands of Revelation 1, a separate vision), and he intuited that the seven flames he saw were the one Spirit, but that he was to describe them as the seven Spirits (flames) to allow us to make that connection. The point for now is that the Christian God of the Scriptures and creeds does not deign to call himself directly three, but does repeat that his Spirit can be called seven. But like the ten fingers of Jesus, what we see always operates in unity.

Seven may be associated with perfection because of its unique place among the primes as a just-comprehensible but ever-ineffable collection of units. Its association with God throughout Scripture is well-known and needs no advertisement. I will emphasize one heptad that includes the Trinity yet shows God's greater diversity without admitting new "Persons" thereto. It is the seven unities of Eph. 4:4-6: Body, Spirit, Hope, Lord, Faith, Baptism, Father-God.

10> "He wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments" (Exodus 34:28). The one time God speaks from heaven to all men he gives (literally) "ten words", which can be pictured as the one Word dividing himself up into ten expressions. Being the count of fingers or toes (important in Daniel's and John's prophecies of the end), "ten" is often inexact in Scriptural colloquialism. It was used just as we use "dozen" roughly today, and in fact "ten or twelve" is often a range of fuzziness and a good paraphrase of Scriptures that mention e.g. "ten days", "ten times".

But here we have the ten words enumerated that are God's expression of himself (see our sidebar); five about "the LORD your God", and five about man, namely what "you shall not". Tens have several unappreciated tie-ins. God first expressed himself in a Creation account including the phrase "God said" ten times: he created Light, Space, Land, Plants, Lights, Swarms, Beasts, Man, Dominion, Gifts. This corresponds to M-theory in physics, in which the best mathematical description of the universe has ten dimensions (one time, three space, and six spatial but basically inaccessible due to size). Interestingly, just as some isomorphic versions of the theory use 11 dimensions for math purposes even though the 11th is unpopulated, so too does Genesis 1 contain an 11th instruction differently introduced, God's blessing on the animals. In creating the mouth, the Lord made it capable of ten to twelve different vowels (all languages are conformable to this structure): Hebrew uses nine vowel symbols but they have ten or eleven sounds depending on system. (I like to count the basic phonetic alphabet as 12 vowels and 30 consonants, but again due to fuzziness this can all be counted under tens.)

In 384 AD, Jerome passed on a tradition (Letter 25, to Marcella) that the Lord has ten basic Hebrew names. An accurate Latin transcription is: El, Eloim, Eloe, Sabaoth, Elion, Eser-Ieje, Adonai, Ia, Jod-He-Vav-He, Saddai. My modern transliteration would be: El, Elohim, Elohe, Zevaoth, Elyon, Ehyeh, Adonai, Yah, Yahweh, Shaddai; these can be translated: Deity, Godhead, God, Power, Greatest, Existent, Lord, Self, Self-Existent, Sufficient. This tradition is widely reported and the list varies; I've also seen Chai (Life), Daath (Judgment), Gibbor (Strength), and Melekh (King) as base names added to this tradition. One reliable source is Hebrew4Christians by John Parsons, who groups nine of these together and lists other names. Another tradition comes from Pseudo-Dionysius (6th century), who finds ten types of angels in Scripture: Seraph, Cherub, Throne, Dominion, Virtue, Power, Principality, Archangel, Angel, Guardian (the last two may be joined, leaving nine). In each of these cases, as with those of other numbers, believers are seeking to categorize God's revelation in new systematic ways, and to recognize God's rulership through various names, whether they refer to his direct revelation of himself or his general revelation through creatures. We take caution never to idolize a system or a referent, but always to seek the one God who reveals himself in the systems.

13> "[1] The LORD, [2] the LORD, [3] a God [4] merciful [5] and gracious, [6] slow to anger, [7] and abounding in steadfast love [8] and faithfulness, [9] keeping steadfast love for thousands, [10] forgiving iniquity [11] and transgression [12] and sin, [13] but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation" (Ex. 34:6-7). Like the Ten Words, the 13 Names were given on Mount Sinai. The count is traditional and follows Hebrew rules, even if counterintuitive to us. Each is a characteristic of God that interacts with the others, even the two occurrences of the same name Yahweh, and the extended description of his justice. We shouldn't neglect that Moses wrote this as the sublime revelation of God's name, and that later analysis is intended to stimulate our thought, not to analyze God to death, or to substitute some tight attribute set and worship our or another's understanding of it instead.

72> "[19] Then the angel of God who was going before the host of Israel moved and went behind them, and the pillar of cloud moved from before them and stood behind them, [20] coming between the host of Egypt and the host of Israel. And there was the cloud and the darkness. And it lit up the night without one coming near the other all night. [21] Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the LORD drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided" (Ex. 14:19-21). While mentioning diverse names of God, it's important to properly understand this passage's relationship too. As a student of wordplay I can explain that scribes noticed this climactic demonstration of the Angel of the Lord's power as being written in three verses of exactly 72 letters each, taken as forming a rectangular crossword. The 72 three-letter strings formed were taken as secret names (a few are real Hebrew words, but any Hebrew triliteral can be given meaning). This requires caution because it invents new words and risks missing the forest for the trees (existing revelation); but if we name the true God afresh with designations that reflect his own names and uphold revealed truth, that is not sin in itself.

120> "The company of persons was in all about 120 .... Divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one" (Acts 1:15, 2:3). Finally the One Spirit accommodates 120 or any number of believers. It is my hope that worshipping him, the Unity in all Diversity, can be heightened by recognizing the Scriptures, creeds, and traditions in their fullness.