Facebook Follies of Friends and Families

[The Minsky Moment]

Wait... God didn't chose Nehemiah... a foreign power chose Nehemiah.  He worked for the Iranian government.  He wasn't a builder, he was a flunky.

Yes but the wall did wonders stopping Roman invaders.

[Admiral Yi]

Like I said before, evangelicals are the most insane demographic in America.

[Razgovory]

Wait... God didn't chose Nehemiah... a foreign power chose Nehemiah.  He worked for the Iranian government.  He wasn't a builder, he was a flunky.

Yes but the wall did wonders stopping Roman invaders.

Also, Israel had sanctuary cities.

[The Minsky Moment]

The most logical reading of the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah is that the Torah as we know it today is an exilic creation - i.e. that it was a product of the Israeli elites forced into Babylonian exile, but then coming into contact with more literate religious traditions and adjusting their own national and religious mythology in response. That explains the action in Ezra and Nehemiah where learned exiles return to the ancestral homeland and encounter hostility and skepticism.  The biblical books describe this as ignorant backsliding and Ezra-Nehemiah as restorers of the old religion.  More likely, the natives were just practicing their old traditions where the putative national god Yahweh shares pride of place with other regional deities and traditions.  Ezra-Nehemiah aren't purging foreign ideas for Old Time Religion, they are purging the Old Time Religion for their new fangled and foreign-influenced ideas.  Thus explaining all the resistance.

[viper37]

Minsky, destroying Facebook memes since... ah, well, since before FB existed! 

[Eddie Teach]

Does one image make a meme?

[viper37]

Does one image make a meme?

isn't it how they're called, one image with text?

I guess I was wrong.

[Eddie Teach]

I just don't think that image will have legs. Metaphorically speaking.

[Razgovory]

The most logical reading of the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah is that the Torah as we know it today is an exilic creation - i.e. that it was a product of the Israeli elites forced into Babylonian exile, but then coming into contact with more literate religious traditions and adjusting their own national and religious mythology in response. That explains the action in Ezra and Nehemiah where learned exiles return to the ancestral homeland and encounter hostility and skepticism.  The biblical books describe this as ignorant backsliding and Ezra-Nehemiah as restorers of the old religion.  More likely, the natives were just practicing their old traditions where the putative national god Yahweh shares pride of place with other regional deities and traditions.  Ezra-Nehemiah aren't purging foreign ideas for Old Time Religion, they are purging the Old Time Religion for their new fangled and foreign-influenced ideas.  Thus explaining all the resistance.

I think you have a point here, though I don't know when the Judeans became entirely monotheistic.  The Samaritans did not go into Captivity and they are also monotheistic.  Still your broader point stands, it's likely that the Judeans who went to Babylon were fundamentally changed by the experience.  In a sense they came to Babylon as Judeans and returned as Jews.

[Tamas]

"In the Shadow of the Sword" is an excellent book about that very period.

[Oexmelin]

[Syt]

[Admiral Yi]

The grammar's surprisingly good.

[derspiess]

Thanks

[Valmy]

Thanks