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There’s ‘sin’ again.

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virtue and vice

In reply to There’s ‘sin’ again.

Perhaps the concepts of virtue and vice are prior to civil (and for that matter church) law, rather as (as recognized by for instance the Constitution of the Irish Republic) marriage and the family are prior to the state.

Seems like they were grafted onto the religion at some point, too…

In reply to virtue and vice

The Greeks, famously, didn’t have sin or vice, only shame.
Shame made Oedipus put his own eyes out, not sin or guilt.
Somehow I also don’t see the ancient Israelites give much of a fluck about these “fineries”, otherwise the bible wouldn’t be so full of smitings, would it?

At some point during the middle ages these things became very important as parts of the massive mind control scheme of the catholic church… and yet, it was the protestants who took it out of context, and made piety a goal in and of itself.

If we look at the “indulgences” sold by the catholic church, it’s clear that sin was not so damning before it stopped being a means to an end. After the protestants took it over, the inverse of sinfulness, piety, became a “license to throw the first stone”, which was suddenly very sought after because the silly twits had denied themselves all harmless fun, and had to dig through their neighbors filth to feel alive.

So, yeah, sin ain’t what it used to be, and maybe it never was.

Still nebulous.

In reply to virtue and vice

Is gambling a vice? Is euthanasia a virtue? The concepts may predate codified laws, but the terms aren’t incorporated into the US legal system.

Different states officially recognize different definitions of ‘family’, and those definitions have changed over time. The US tax code hasn’t always had a ‘Head of Household’ filing status. Some governing bodies recognize ‘common law’ marriages, although with differing definitions. At one time mixed race marriages were illegal in some places; polygamy was legal in others. Definitions change, socially, linguistically, and legally. It’s time for government to return the word ‘marriage’ to religious institutions to each define as they choose, replace it legally with ‘civil union’ across the board, and expand that term to include same-sex couples.

Actually, Marriage was a civic use term well before the churches wanted to

In reply to Still nebulous.

get involved with sanctifying marriages. There were ancient laws about families and marriage with civil wedding ceremonies many centuries before any church created a religious wedding ceremony.

I do agree that we need to have a religious ceremony as a different one to the legal one – how and what we call them is another issue.

It would be nice if the civil one can keep it’s original name

In reply to Actually, Marriage was a civic use term well before the churches wanted to

Let the civil union be “Marriage”, then the churches can have “Blessing Events” and “Consecrated Unions” or whatever.

Actually, in the early days of church officiated weddings the priests

In reply to It would be nice if the civil one can keep it’s original name

blessed the event, and later changed that to consecrating the wedding.

Consecrating the wedding?

In reply to Actually, in the early days of church officiated weddings the priests

What church does that? The Xn churches seem generally to certify that the union is indeed a marriage and to bless it: the ministers of matrimony are the parties thereto. The church officer may sometimes seem to be the minister, but that is by accident.

Depending upon the church, they now either

In reply to Consecrating the wedding?

bless the wedding or consecrate it, depending upon the service used. Go back in history and you’ll find that all wedding used to be civil events only and some people would later ask their local religious leader (read priest for most of Europe) to bless them as a married couple. later, when the church started performing wedding ceremonies in the church the minister / priest blessed the couple at the end of the service. later still and they consecrated the wedding by including having the sacrament as part of the service. Not all the churches do that, most just have a blessing of the couple of the rings as part of the service. For many centuries the church wedding was not a recognised civil wedding but recognised as a wedding before God only. The recognised civil wedding was when the couple publicly announced they were married to others of their community or when they started living together in the one house as man and wife.

It’s only in the last couple of centuries that the two have been merged in some countries by having the religious ministers apply for and get approved as state representatives to conduct a marriage on behalf of the state. This is not true of all countries.

Sin is a purely religious concept and action that has NOTHING to do with

In reply to There’s ‘sin’ again.

civil law, except via legislators who bring their religious leanings into the legal process to create laws that enshrine their personal religious beliefs in the law.

The etymology of the word is Middle English with some suggesting it’s possibly from Old English which means it is NOT derived from an even older language and thus not a concept used prior to that. Old English is from the 8th to 12th centuries while Middle English is from the 12th to 15th centuries. Taking into account the historical perspectives, I think it’s late Old English

It’s most likely the concept of sin came about during the rise of power of the Holy Roman Empire and its spread of the power of the Pope and the Holy Catholic Church from the 9th century on. At that time the Popes and Cardinals introduced a lot of new ideas and concepts into the church to cement their power and authority over the general population and the nobility. This fits with the way the Catholic Church has treated those it condemned as sinners over the centuries.

The Christian Bible as we know it today has been continuously altered by the scholars and leaders of the Holy Catholic Church for over a millennium, it started with the Council of Nicea in the 325 AD and continued up to the late 1500s with the Council of Trent in 1546 being seen as the last major set of changes. When the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible was translated and approved in 1611 the Holy Bible as we see it today became a sort of ‘locked down’ set of scriptures and hasn’t changed much since then. Many concepts and ideas to arise in church theology and doctrine prior to the 16th century are mentioned in both the Old Testament and the New Testament are applied as such in the KJV. Many Bible scholars are fairly certain that some verses have had significant changes in meaning due to these types of alterations – however it’s very hard to prove due to the lack of confirmed translated into English versions of the scriptures from the first millennium and also due to the translation dictionaries of the original languages now including those later concepts and ideas as valid translations for the words used in the original.

KJV ‘lockdown’

In reply to Sin is a purely religious concept and action that has NOTHING to do with

I wonder how much of that is due to Gutenberg’s little toy. When the Christian Bible was only available in laboriously hand-written form, distribution was limited. The majority of believers never had access to a copy, nor the skills to read one. It may have been easier to make changes, whether for theological or political reasons, when there were fewer followers familiar with the complete content.

Cost of deployment went up, too…

In reply to KJV ‘lockdown’

Before Gutenberg let the cat out of the bag, Church IT only had to push the updates to a relatively limited number of managers.
Afterwards, a change wouldn’t take effect until a significant number of end users would have gotten around to relicensing their iThump, er… I mean bible.

There were relatively few copies of the Bible about for most of the period

In reply to Cost of deployment went up, too…

as they were hand made by the priest and monks etc. Although there were some changes to the wording, the great majority of changes were in what the current Greek or Latin words MEANT in English, i.e. they changed what the words translated into. The church hierarchy also made lots of changes in what the existing doctrine meant and how it was applied as well. The main reason for most changes was to increase the power, authority, and income of the Pope and the senior church leaders.

What else can be expected…

In reply to There were relatively few copies of the Bible about for most of the period

of the World Government?

Prior to the KJV the Holy Bible was in what they called Church Latin

In reply to KJV ‘lockdown’

except for a very few personally translated exceptions.

The Bibles were written by hand and usually by the priest or monk etc. who was going to use it by copying from an older copy at the church facility they were at at the time they did the copying.

Earnest, you have a thing about the Council of Trent…

In reply to Sin is a purely religious concept and action that has NOTHING to do with

earlier you accused it of making rules about marriage which it was really just restating from Mt 19 etc., and now you accuse it of changing the canon of the Bible when it merely restated the list of books given by the ecumenical Council of Florence in 1441, itself a restatement of the list sent in 405 by Pope Innocent I to Bishop Exuperius of Toulouse, itself not exactly original.

And what’s this about the KJV? It’s a translation, not a canon. The KJV as usually printed is based on the canon Carlostadius, one of Luther’s colleagues, put out in 1520 (Luther himself had a slightly shorter canon, but the majority of Lutherans go with Carlostadius, although they may not know it). The KJV locks nothing down except in the minds of some English-speaking Protestant Fundamentallists or near-Fundamentalists. Personally when reading the Bible in English I use the RSV, very rarely reaching for the KJV I inherited from the previous occupant of my house.

The KJV was not the first translation of the Bible into English, as one can see by looking at the title page: “with the former Translations diligently compared and revised…”: if you count Bede’s language as English, I suppose his version must be the earliest, and there were several others between that and the KJV (the Douai version, for instance, came out in 1610).

The Councils I mentioned are the ones where they gave a definite acceptance

In reply to Earnest, you have a thing about the Council of Trent…

of what people were suggesting before that. Many lower level members of the church had been making suggestions and giving ideas before hand, which is why matters came up for discussion in the various councils held. It’s only when the councils make a clear recommendation to the Pope and the matter is authorised by the senior church hierarchy that it comes into affect as being clear doctrine. In each case I mention the council where there is clear evidence of an idea being given full support and it’s shown as being included as doctrine etc. The two major ones affecting approved scriptures are the Council of Nicea and the Council of Trent mentioned earlier.

The councils are major church meeting, like all work meeting they discuss things that were being discussed in correspondence and dinner meetings for a long time before hand, but they do not get official approval and recognition until such time as they get formally discussed in the meeting (Council in this case) and are entered in the minutes as the approved official answer. In each case I stated the council where they appeared as the approved answer, not as part of the general discussion that was left unresolved.

As to marriage, it was first mentioned that the church should look at recognising such event in the fourth century, but it was not taken on board by the church as something they need to get involved in for many more centuries.

As to the KJV Bible, it’s the first duly authorised and approved version in English and the first that was made fairly universally available for people to read.

Anyway, we are getting into the gritty details of church politics, which is fun, but away from the main topics which were the church involvement in marriage well after it was an established civil activity, and the later church introduced topic of sin that was raised.

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