Sam, don't worry about me disappearing. I find this thread fascinating, and have always visited occasionally as time permits. In fact, I made the sixth post on Ask God, when it was still a nice open-minded place to express divergent points of view.
I would say that not all women in conservative Christian or Messianic Jewish sects are abused, even though there is plenty of abuse of women cited from Biblical times.
Are you familiar with the Gospel of Thomas, incidentally? It is very Buddhist in concept, following my belief system that God is inside each of us, that the fables religion tells have meaning but are not literally true.
The Gospel of Thomas also suggests that Jesus is aware of, and criticizing
the views of the Kingdom of God as a time or a place that appear in the
other gospels. Here Jesus says, "If those who lead you say to you, 'look, the
Kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds will get there first. If they say 'it's in the
ocean,' then the fish will get there first. But the Kingdom of God is within you
and outside of you. Once you come to know yourselves, you will become
known. And you will know that it is you who are the children of the living
father."
67 Jesus said, "Those who know all, but are lacking in themselves, are
utterly lacking."
This is from the PBS Frontline series on Jesus. Did you watch it? Because of new archaeological finds and other source documents which have come to light in this century, scholars have more informatin to piece things together about Biblical times. Here is an essay about Jesus from it, but you can click around on the links at the bottom and discover many other topics pertaining to Jesus and the times in which he lived.
pbs.org |
