Please, stop making threads that have no point to them.
Hi ‘An Imaginary Man,’
Sorry, but you are wrong:
Shalom
Bob
Bob,
My reading of the passage is that Jesus is saying who proved to be neighbor to the man [his neighbor] who fell among the robbers? The original question posed to Jesus is one of duty. Who do you have a duty to? To whom must you show love? Jesus responds with a story of a Samaritan and tells everyone to do as he did. The Samaritan saw his duty as helping someone who he saw was in need. Thus, your duty is to help those in need. Thus, in answer to the question, who is your neighbor? I believe the answer is: everyone/anyone in need. I am certainly not denying that he who is neighborly is your neighbor, but I would think that Jesus would not exclude those who are not neighborly from being your neighbor, and thus being people to whom you have a duty (i think this further resonates with the historical realities of the jewish and samaritan attitudes towards eachother)
Hi ‘An Imaginary Man,’
I think the question was more like “… love your neighbour as yourself… who is that?” It is a question that is trying to be non-committal, avoiding the issue. Like Peter Ustinov said, “He doesn’t know my neighbour!” That is why Jesus tells a story with a Samaritan as the ‘hero’ and tells the ‘lawyer’ or scribe that it isn’t a case of who is my neighbour, but who I can be a neighbour to. The Samaritan was a neighbour to the man on the road.
Matthew
25 And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”
26 He said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read?”
27 And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”
28 And he said to him, “You have answered right; do this, and you will live.”
29 But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
30 Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead.
31 Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him he passed by on the other side.
32 So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.
33 But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was; and when he saw him, he had compassion,
34 and went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; then he set him on his own beast and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.
35 And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’
36 Which of these three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?”
37 He said, “The one who showed mercy on him.” And Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”
Shalom
Bob
To AIM: The Egyptian Book of the Dead is a good start. It’s thick, older than the Bible, and has a similar mythos of the concept of God[s].
You should really go search for egyptian mythology really. Put a search on AJ.com [the greatest search engine in the world].
Another good place is the three books of Barbara Theiring. She was a Professor of Theology in Melbourne when she started these books. She is no longer!
Jesus The Man contains her version of the life of Jesus prior to the crucifixion.
Jesus of the Apocalypse contains part of his life after; and
The Book Jesus Wrote details his writing of John’s Gospel
Among other things she confirms the distance and placing of various buildings in the New Testament as being those at Qumran and also explains the parables. Happy reading.
no, jesus says everyone is your neighbor. not just people like you. if you do some research on the background of the parable, the jews and the samaritans were like mortal enemies, both with a massive superiority complex to one another. so for a samaritan to help a wounded jew was quite a big deal in those days.
the bible is not retarted, but your interpretation of it is. i’ll give you that. and don’t assume that i agree with the part of your post i didn’t quote. i’m just lazy and those were the two that really jumped out at me. (aside, of course, from the gigantic “I AM BETTER THAN JESUS”; i just decided to be kind enough not to tear you apart for that)
Two points:
- Western sects and thinkers have been exposing the “kindness to others” rule for thousands of years before jesus and eastern thinkers/philosophers have been extolling the virtues of caring for each other for at least 2-3 thousand years before that.
As a matter of fact, Buddhism extends the compassion to encompass not only human beings but ALL living and non living creations as well. This alone is light years ahead of the primitive lessons jesus was to teach thousands of years later.
2, Our judeao-christian values have produced a society that is highly individualistic, competitive and litigious. It worships the survival of the fittest, winner takes all, WIIFM (Whats In It For Me) mentality. None of which is conducive to helping a neighbour.
So, if someone “somehow discovers” something, it could be inspite of our “judeao-christian values” (and the world these values have created) and not because of them. Secondly, the idea could have come fromm original sources going back thousands of years before jesus or thirdly, it could have evolved from a simple innate desire to imagine a world built on real values.