Now, I’m no theologian, but I’m fairly certain that neither Jesus nor his rabbinic forebears, when speaking of giving, meant some obligation to the state. You tithe the priest, not the tax man.This is interesting, because the common forms of the word Rabbi didn't appear until about 200 A.D., and what we now call Rabbinic Judaism didn't emerge as the dominant strain of Judaism until sometime around the 6th or 7th century, after the codification of the Talmud. Well, maybe Snarls knows some Karaites, although I'm not sure that Karaites have rabbis; in fact, I think they rather disapprove of them. But now, look, leaving aside the age-old question of what exactly J-Chrizzle meant with the whole Render unto Caesar rap (but he meant taxes), Judaism is in fact perfectly clear: with few exceptions, it is not only a legal obligation to pay taxes to secular authority, but a religious one: it is chillul Hashem to avoid 'em--literally, a desecration of the name of god, and you know how strongly Jews feel about that whole name of god business.
-Snarls Warhammer
Hashem knows, you'll rarely find me defending the Oh, Brother administration, least of all its Good-News justification of American social programs even as it bombs the hell out of all and sundry, just like Jesus would've, but the idea of the state as a redistributive agency would have been no more alien to a Davidian king than it currently is to a gopher in the tunnels of the Center for American Progress. And since the kohenim worked for the state, the whole argument becomes even nuttier. The temple treasury and the state treasury were indistinct--when they weren't dragooning the poor into forced labor projects, both the state and the temple, which were one and the same, helped the poor. Constitutional libertarianism or whatever was a lot more fucking weird, which is a polite way to say nonexistent, in the ancient world than the dole. Riddle me this, Krauthammer: in a society without class mobility, what else do you do with the poor but feed them from the granaries of the state?
34 comments:
I wish I was 15 or still played D&D, because Snarls Warhammer would totally be the name of my Dwarf fighter.
the Oh, Brother administration... bombs the hell out of all and sundry, just like Jesus would've
Brother Oh comes not to bring peace but to bring a sword.
As for Judaism, Krauthammer may be wrong (I have no idea), but it really is immaterial to his "argument", because Brother Oh purports to be a believing Christian, not a Jew. Traditional Christianity is clear about charity: it is performed individually, or via the church, not the state.
Of course, all that this really shows is that Obama is not a traditional Christian. Duh!! The God he believes in (if he believes in any God more than a few centimeters from his navel, which is doubtful) is the progressive God of niceness, who is all for political correctness, turning the other cheek, tax and spend, and the rule of scholars. And who is also not to shy about shutting down His traditional competitors. Separation of church and state, y'know.
i dont have a personal relationship with jeezus or anything (although, i have fantasized about it), but when he says render under to ceaser, i think he means, pay taxes cuz who fucking cares. money is joke and the question is stupid.
Do any of these over-paid hacks ever contact you after you have destroyed one of their articles?
Krauthammer 3000 years of beautiful tradition...
"Snarls Warhammer" is pretty good, but I prefer to think of "Krauthammer" as a blunt instrument one picks up while defending the right to indiscriminate slaughter.
Not as pithy as yours, but, I think, more mythic.
Some blogger or another, I think Doghouse Riley, only refers to him as "Merkwürdigliebe". I like that too.
Blessed Are The Greek
I kind of like the Sebelius thing that he quotes "Any exempt institution must be one that “primarily employs” and “primarily serves persons who share its religious tenets.”
Who knows if it's true, but you gotta love that the law would basically be forcing religious institutions to discriminate in their hiring practices.
. .. where and why is the powered by google wording gone from the search here ?
@242
thanx Anon. That helps.
The Dull Sycophant
@242
thanx Anon. That helps.
The Dull Sycophant
Navy names clitoral combat ship after Gabrielle Giffords
amen my dear ioz. afuckingmen.
"I'm no theologian, but I'm pretty sure Leviticus is just a series of friendly suggestions"
Well, the part before the coma is certainly true.
Traditional Christianity is clear about charity: it is performed individually, or via the church, not the state.
Could you please cite, well, anything at all in support of that?
I'm not saying you can't; I'm not a Christian, but I know the bible's a book complicated enough to build almost anything out of.
But what strikes me is, I've been seeing this argument online more and more, and the justification is always "I'm pretty sure Christianity has never tried to use force to coerce people into Christian behavior".
Given that this is contradicted by pretty much the entire fucking history of the religion, shouldn't you at least have to make an actual argument?
Again, not saying you can't, just that you didn't. And I've literally never seen anybody else try to either.
Hey Dude ...
Take a bad post
and make it beh-eh-eh-ter.
Just kidding - great stuff.
And a propos your remark about the granaries of the state, one can instructively consider what happened when the Roman nobility kicked the small farmers off their land to create their latifundia, as well as when the English nobility kicked the yeomen off their land via the Enclosure Act(s) ... in one case "bread and circuses" resulted and in the other, "the gin-drinking class" of Hogarth's etchings resulted ...
All of which kinda just goes to your point - I merely felt like pissing off Nutty and the various nonnies by flashing some erudishin ...
Lol, lord knows I disagree with you about lots of stuff, being part-pwoggy and all, but posts like these are why I keep comin' back.
He did say he he wasn't a theologian. Nor a historian. Pharaseeic Judaism was all about wealth extraction from what I understand. You paid for the offerings but first had to change secular, dirty denaris or whatever into shekels. The preist class got a cut of that too. Hence Jesus driving the money changers out of the temple. I am no theologian though. I do have a GED!
Yeah, 2:42, render unto seizure, cuz it's, like, a given.
This is a pretty thorough smashin' o' th' cabbage smasher. I rate it 'Slurlz'.
"The State" (that euphemism for a mysteriously-interdependent-yet-mutually-antagonistic web of pharaohs, Caesars, sun kings, mafia dons, Grand Wizards and their million minions) is busy enough *manufacturing* the poor... and the more poor they make, the harder it is to feed them all. Perhaps The State should only manufacture as many poor as it can support in a given century?
As it seems that only a few of us reading and commenting here are theologians, and/or have an intimate familiarity with the scriptures, it might be useful to have in front of us the following summary from Wikipedia of the "Render unto Caesar..." incident:
The synoptic gospels state that hostile questioners tried to trap Jesus into taking an explicit and dangerous stand on whether Jews should or should not pay taxes to the Roman authorities. The accounts in Matthew and Mark say that the questioners were Pharisees and Herodians, while Luke says only that they were "spies" sent by "teachers of the law and the chief priests".
They anticipated that Jesus would oppose the tax, as their purpose was "to hand him over to the power and authority of the governor" (Luke 20:20). The governor was Pilate, and he was the man responsible for the collecting of taxes in Roman Judea. At first the questioners flattered Jesus by praising his integrity, impartiality, and devotion to truth. Then they asked him whether or not it is right for Jews to pay the taxes demanded by Caesar. In the Gospel of Mark (12:15) the additional, provocative question is asked, "Should we pay or shouldn't we?" Jesus first called them hypocrites, and then asked one of them to produce a Roman coin that would be suitable for paying Caesar's tax. One of them showed him a Roman coin, and he asked them whose name and inscription were on it. They answered, "Caesar's," and he responded
"Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's"
The questioners were impressed (Matthew 22:22 states that they "marvelled", ἐθαύμασαν) and satisfied with the answer, they went away.
[end of quote from Wikipedia - the entire article is well worth reading]
The corresponding passage from the Gospel of Thomas is Logion 100:
They showed Jesus a gold piece and said to him: Caesar's men demand tribute from us. He said to them: What belongs to Caesar, give to Caesar; what belongs to God, give to God; and what is mine, give it to me. [Blatz translation]
Gerd Ludemann writes of this passage: "In contrast to the Synoptics, it is the disciples and not the opponents of Jesus who show Jesus a coin; this represents a further development. The whole logion has its climax in v. 4, which is without parallel in the Synoptics. Evidently 'Jesus' expects of his disciples their own offering, i.e. in the framework of the Gospel of Thomas, that they should be aware of their own sparks of light and thus become one with Jesus, the personification of light." (Jesus After 2000 Years, p. 638)
Jean-Yves Leloup says, "To render unto Yeshua what is his is to discover him as a bridge between humanity and divinity, between Caesar and God." (The Gospel of Thomas, 1986/2005, p. 203)
May the Creative Forces of the Universe stand beside us, and guide us, through the Night with the Light from Above (metaphorically speaking, of course).
The government makes decisions that will sometimes involve religious institutions. Which ones? The ones that do business with the government: funding, contracts, etc. Krauthammer is mightily indignant over what he conceives as secular meddling. "The contradiction is glaring, the hypocrisy breathtaking," he states.
Not as glaring or breathtaking, however, as the theocratically minded, ever busy to entangle their religion and the government, who complain when this results in a decision they don't happen to like. Perhaps Krauthammer should mention this to all the theocrats among his acquaintance; there are probably many. If you don't want to render unto Caesar, you might want to stop getting into his bed.
@MC PhD
What Anon242 said.
@Antonello
Amen, brother. But kicking it with Caesar feels so good.
The Dull Sycophant
davidly, lulzing the "render unto seizure" ... but is "slurlz" a good rating or a bad (or something in between or whatevers)?
I dank ye, twelve-o-two. Dat'd be "lulz at 'Snarls'".
Constitutional Libertarianism is definitely weird considering what the constitution has done. But then in the end Libertarians are patriots. In other words they are just as nuts as the other tribes.
Christ who gives a fuck about any of this shit
Tear apart Yggle's article wherein he compares Chipotle to Apple. "In many ways, the Chiptole burrito is very similar to the iPhone." "The burrito chain is revolutionizing food. Why doesn't it get more respect?"
DESTROY THAT MOTHERFUCKER
IOZ is right: thank god we have states to feed the poor!
When you have a dog eat dog society like the US who else is going to feed the poor? But just where did Ioz say thank god for the state, he didn’t say that.
"In many ways, the Chiptole burrito is very similar to the iPhone."
Oh my god he did not fucking say that.
Having read the article in question, the only conclusion I can come to is that Yglesias had literally never eaten a burrito in his entire life before he went to Chipotle.
I could be mistaken, but AFAIK Monsieur doesn't take kind to the Apple fanboy type of stoopid.
And yes ipod is like Chipotel, ersatz excellence courtesy of corporate Amerika.
(written from my -haptooey- iphone)
The Dull Sycophant
Man at lunch discovers essay hook in his pants packet.
Waiter! Waiter! There's a thin premise in my soup!
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