Patriarchy, Abuse, and the Bible: Responding to Calvary Chapel Pastor

[Rom 11:27] For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins.


This is the passion of the Christ.
 
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Holy Sonnets: Batter my heart, three-person'd God​

By John Donne
Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
 

Holy Sonnets: Show me dear Christ, thy spouse so bright and clear​

By John Donne
Show me dear Christ, thy spouse so bright and clear.
What! is it she which on the other shore
Goes richly painted? or which, robb'd and tore,
Laments and mourns in Germany and here?
Sleeps she a thousand, then peeps up one year?
Is she self-truth, and errs? now new, now outwore?
Doth she, and did she, and shall she evermore
On one, on seven, or on no hill appear?
Dwells she with us, or like adventuring knights
First travel we to seek, and then make love?
Betray, kind husband, thy spouse to our sights,
And let mine amorous soul court thy mild Dove,
Who is most true and pleasing to thee then
When she'is embrac'd and open to most men.
 
Ekklesian said:
And let mine amorous soul court thy mild Dove,
Click to expand...
Behold, in contrast, the visceral hatred of the Jews:

I conclude this chapter with yet another story from the Babylonian Talmud (again, only in the Bavli) that can be read as a parody of Jesus’ birth from a virgin. It is part of a long disputation between “the” notorious Roman emperor and R. Yehoshua b. Hananya, in the course of which R. Yehoshua travels to Athens to meet the Greek Sages. R. Yehoshua and the Athenians engage in a long discussion that aims at finding out who is cleverer, the Greek Sages or the rabbi. Asked to tell them some fiction stories, he comes up with the following tale: ​
​
There was this mule which gave birth, and [round its neck] was hanging a document upon which was written, “there is a claim against my father’s house of one hundred thousand Zuz. Zuz.” ​
​
They [the Athenian Sages] asked him: “Can a mule give birth”? ​
​
He [R. Yehoshua] answered them: “This is one of these fiction stories”. ​
​
[Again, the Athenian Sages asked:] “When salt becomes unsavory, wherewith is it salted”? ​
​
He replied: “With the afterbirth of a mule.”—​
​
“And is there an afterbirth of a mule”?—​
​
“And can salt become unsavory”? ​
​
These brief stories center around the well-known fact that mules, the offspring of a cross between a male donkey and a female horse, almost always are sterile. Both play with a double element of surprise: in the first case the allegation that a mule not only can give birth to a cub, but that a particular cub was even born with a debt document bound around its neck; and in the second case that salt not only can become unsavory, but that it can regain its flavor with the afterbirth of a mule.​
​
This, of course, has nothing to do with Jesus. But why the strange idea of a sterile mule giving birth, coupled with the not-less-strange idea of unsavory salt, that is, presumably salt that lost its taste? One could argue that what we have here are remnants of some kind of an early “scientific” discourse about the sterility of mules, and this is probably the easiest answer. ​
​
But still, the connection of the miraculous offspring of a sterile mule with the salt regaining its taste by the afterbirth of a mule is suspicious. With regard to the unsavory—most likely insipid—salt one immediately thinks of Jesus’ famous dictum in the Sermon on the Mount: You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled underfoot.​
​
Jesus addresses here his disciples as the salt of the earth, more precisely as the new salt of the earth because there is some other salt that has lost its saltiness and hence it taste. ​
​
This other salt, with no taste anymore, can easily be understood as the people of the old covenant which is “no longer good for anything,” “thrown out,” and “trampled under foot.” ​
​
If we take this saying of Jesus as the foil against which our Bavli story was construed, the brief tale turns into a pungent parody of the New Testament claim of Jesus’ followers as the new salt of the earth: these Christians, it argues, maintain that the salt of the old covenant has become insipid, and hence useless, and that its taste was restored by the people of the new covenant—through the afterbirth of a mule! ​
​
But we all know that there is no such thing as the afterbirth of a mule because the mule does not give birth, as much as we know that salt does not lose its taste. On this background, the miraculous offspring of the mule in the first story (and the afterbirth in the second one) gets an even more significant meaning. ​
​
It can well be understood as a parody of Jesus’ miraculous birth from a virgin: an offspring from a virgin is as likely as an offspring from a mule. ... Moreover, this is the punch line of the second story: Jesus’ followers, who claim to be the new salt of the earth, are nothing but the afterbirth of that imagined offspring of the mule....​
​
Schäfer, Peter. Jesus in the Talmud (pp. 43-45). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition. ​
 
Ekklesian said:
It can well be understood as a parody of Jesus’ miraculous birth from a virgin: an offspring from a virgin is as likely as an offspring from a mule. ... Moreover, this is the punch line of the second story: Jesus’ followers, who claim to be the new salt of the earth, are nothing but the afterbirth of that imagined offspring of the mule....
Click to expand...
The defiling issue of an unclean animal.
 
Ekklesian said:
Behold, in contrast, the visceral hatred of the Jews:

I conclude this chapter with yet another story from the Babylonian Talmud (again, only in the Bavli) that can be read as a parody of Jesus’ birth from a virgin. It is part of a long disputation between “the” notorious Roman emperor and R. Yehoshua b. Hananya, in the course of which R. Yehoshua travels to Athens to meet the Greek Sages. R. Yehoshua and the Athenians engage in a long discussion that aims at finding out who is cleverer, the Greek Sages or the rabbi. Asked to tell them some fiction stories, he comes up with the following tale: ​
​
There was this mule which gave birth, and [round its neck] was hanging a document upon which was written, “there is a claim against my father’s house of one hundred thousand Zuz. Zuz.” ​
​
They [the Athenian Sages] asked him: “Can a mule give birth”? ​
​
He [R. Yehoshua] answered them: “This is one of these fiction stories”. ​
​
[Again, the Athenian Sages asked:] “When salt becomes unsavory, wherewith is it salted”? ​
​
He replied: “With the afterbirth of a mule.”—​
​
“And is there an afterbirth of a mule”?—​
​
“And can salt become unsavory”? ​
​
These brief stories center around the well-known fact that mules, the offspring of a cross between a male donkey and a female horse, almost always are sterile. Both play with a double element of surprise: in the first case the allegation that a mule not only can give birth to a cub, but that a particular cub was even born with a debt document bound around its neck; and in the second case that salt not only can become unsavory, but that it can regain its flavor with the afterbirth of a mule.​
​
This, of course, has nothing to do with Jesus. But why the strange idea of a sterile mule giving birth, coupled with the not-less-strange idea of unsavory salt, that is, presumably salt that lost its taste? One could argue that what we have here are remnants of some kind of an early “scientific” discourse about the sterility of mules, and this is probably the easiest answer. ​
​
But still, the connection of the miraculous offspring of a sterile mule with the salt regaining its taste by the afterbirth of a mule is suspicious. With regard to the unsavory—most likely insipid—salt one immediately thinks of Jesus’ famous dictum in the Sermon on the Mount: You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled underfoot.​
​
Jesus addresses here his disciples as the salt of the earth, more precisely as the new salt of the earth because there is some other salt that has lost its saltiness and hence it taste. ​
​
This other salt, with no taste anymore, can easily be understood as the people of the old covenant which is “no longer good for anything,” “thrown out,” and “trampled under foot.” ​
​
If we take this saying of Jesus as the foil against which our Bavli story was construed, the brief tale turns into a pungent parody of the New Testament claim of Jesus’ followers as the new salt of the earth: these Christians, it argues, maintain that the salt of the old covenant has become insipid, and hence useless, and that its taste was restored by the people of the new covenant—through the afterbirth of a mule! ​
​
But we all know that there is no such thing as the afterbirth of a mule because the mule does not give birth, as much as we know that salt does not lose its taste. On this background, the miraculous offspring of the mule in the first story (and the afterbirth in the second one) gets an even more significant meaning. ​
​
It can well be understood as a parody of Jesus’ miraculous birth from a virgin: an offspring from a virgin is as likely as an offspring from a mule. ... Moreover, this is the punch line of the second story: Jesus’ followers, who claim to be the new salt of the earth, are nothing but the afterbirth of that imagined offspring of the mule....​
​
Schäfer, Peter. Jesus in the Talmud (pp. 43-45). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition. ​
Click to expand...
YOU really have to dispise those evilllll Jews, don’t you herr Ekk?
 
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