Malawi and MCP Cards?

[Many Miles]

5 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

...but no way is it an absurd speculation.

My buttered popcorn is good!

[Many Miles]

7 hours ago, JW Insider said:

But you asked about whether God changed his very character.

Of the notion that God would need to change His very character in relation to the substance of blood presumes God has always held blood as a sacred substance, what is the evidence of that?

In Eden, there was one thing and one thing only that God held sacred to Himself. The tree of knowledge. Mess with that tree and you die. Are we to presume Adam would have also died had he ate blood, and that God would have held that a secret without telling him until it was too late? God gave Adam dominion over animals just like He gave him dominion over vegetation and all the earth, and only of ONE of these did he carve out an exception.

Humans were given dominion of all animals, vegetation and the earth. The one thing not mentioned in the giving of dominion to humans was dominion over humankind. And, there was the one carve out regarding vegetation, which was the tree of knowledge.

After Eden we have Cain murdering Abel. So whoever said a human could exercise dominion over another human life? Of the record we have, no one. Though there was no existing prohibition on murder God took the moment to express His disapproval of what Cain had done. But this had nothing to do with the substance of blood. It had to do with taking innocent life of a human by a human. God didn't care if humans killed animal or botanical life. But humans had not been given dominion over humankind.

Later, to Noah, God made it clear that humans could take human life but it had to be justified based on murder. Though God  had removed human dominion over animal life temporarily through the flood, afterward he again gave humans dominion over animals (and vegetation) which meant humans could kill either for their needs. But as God did in Eden He did again after the flood. He carved out a single thing by telling humans they could not eat blood of animals alive under their dominion when they killed them as food, and they could not eat animal flesh without killing it first. But none of this required Noah to treat blood as a sacred substance. Of blood from animals Noah killed to eat their flesh, God left him totally free to use that blood for anything else.

It was only when Mosaic Law came along that the substance of blood was required to be treated as a sacred substance.

The whole notion that God has somehow always held blood as a sacred substance is nonsense. There is no evidence for such a broad claim.

[Pudgy]

19 minutes ago, Many Miles said:

The whole notion that God has somehow always held blood as a sacred substance is nonsense. There is no evidence for such a broad claim.

You are flat wrong.

This proves it.

 

 

[Pudgy]

It also proves that “eating blood” is viewed by God according to HIS way of putting sentences together!

[Pudgy]

That’s why Cain was terrified of being banished …. outside the Garden the whole world was filled with proto-people that were not direct creations from God … “the land of exiles”, where life was hard and dangerous, and NO ONE lived forever.

They would naturally want to kill Cain on sight, because his family would have lived forever in a protected Paradise …. and they did not.

A modern day example is “everybody” hates and wants to kill the Jews because they suspect they might REALLY be God’s chosen people, and suspect that they, themselves,  are not.

Grrrrrrrr ….

 

[JW Insider]

3 hours ago, Pudgy said:

Jehovah never accepted a sacrifice “as food”. He didn’t eat it AT ALL, for nourishment. Fat on the alter had to be prepared “as food” …. not incinerated like medical waste.

Maybe. Maybe not. The Jews of the Hebrew Bible did not necessarily consider Jehovah to be an invisible Spirit the way we do. They considered Jehovah to have a body that could see and hear and EAT and SMELL. (FWIW, ancient Jewish rabbis had no trouble agreeing that Jehovah was circumcised!!!) The idea that smoke from "incinerated" meat created a kind of smoky incense that ascended upwards toward heaven was likely an indication of this consumption by God, leaving only a few ashes. And this idea was spelled out even more clearly in other nearby cultures.

When the Jews would be scattered, they would have to serve gods that were not real and therefore could NOT eat and smell.

(Deuteronomy 4:27, 28) 27 Jehovah will scatter you among the peoples, and just a few of you will survive among the nations to which Jehovah will have driven you. ²⁸ There you will have to serve gods of wood and stone made by human hands, gods that cannot see or hear or eat or smell.

(Leviticus 26:31) . . .I will give your cities to the sword and make your sanctuaries desolate, and I will not smell the pleasing aromas of your sacrifices.
 

I agree that the intent of Leviticus 3 and similar passages was probably to identify ALL the major fatty places for sacrificed animals. It can also be read as: "Don't eat any of the fat, sacrifice all of it, and this INCLUDES the fatty pieces of the inner organs and intestines." That's why I quoted the passage about animala that died naturally or were killed by another animal. In that case, it was NOT about a sacrifice or a priest's portion. 

[Pudgy]

The “Neolithic Period” STARTED about 12,000 years ago.

Before that, people were living all over the Earth, before God directly created a NEW specis, in Eden, that had an opportunity to live forever.

Their blood was sacred to him, for the first time in history, and He considered these people, and their signature blood, his personal property.

Much like the Jews later became a “Special Possession”, and if you were not a Jew, you were SOL.

Pre-Neolithic, human societies were primarily characterized by a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. While they didn't develop complex civilizations, several notable cultures and groups existed during the Paleolithic and Mesolithic periods. Some examples include:

1. **Paleo-Indians:** Early human inhabitants of the Americas during the last stages of the Pleistocene epoch, known for nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyles.

2. **Upper Paleolithic Cultures:** Various cultures in Europe, Asia, and Africa known for sophisticated tools, art, and symbolic expression, such as the Aurignacian and Magdalenian cultures.

3. **Maglemosian Culture:** Inhabited parts of Northern Europe during the Mesolithic, known for microlithic tools and hunting.

4. **Natufian Culture:** In the Levant, a pre-agricultural society that practiced sedentary living and some early forms of cultivation around 12,000 BCE.

5. **Jomon Culture:** In ancient Japan, known for pottery and a hunter-gatherer lifestyle during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene.

6. **Hoabinhian:** A term used to describe various cultures in Southeast Asia during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene, characterized by tool technologies.

7. **Mesolithic Cultures in Europe:** Including the Azilian, Tardenoisian, and others, marked by continued hunter-gatherer lifestyles and regional variations.

While these groups did not form complex civilizations, they developed unique technologies, artistic expressions, and social structures that laid the groundwork for the transitions into more settled agricultural societies during the Neolithic period, which STARTED about 12,000 years ago.

[Pudgy]

43 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

Maybe. Maybe not. The Jews of the Hebrew Bible did not necessarily consider Jehovah to be an invisible Spirit the way we do. They considered Jehovah to have a body that could see and hear and EAT and SMELL. (FWIW, ancient Jewish rabbis had no trouble agreeing that Jehovah was circumcised!!!) The idea that smoke from "incinerated" meat created a kind of smoky incense that ascended upwards toward heaven was likely an indication of this consumption by God, leaving only a few ashes. And this idea was spelled out even more clearly in other nearby cultures.

I can confidently completely ignore what “some” influential Jews of any rank or ilk thought about the character or nature or substance of Jehovah.

Moses brother Aaron saw with his own eyes the column of smoke and the pillar of fire, and STILL made a golden calf and said  paraphrased “See, this is jehovah your god, who brought you out of the land of Egypt!”.

Sometimes … most of the times … almost all the time … “church” authorities are dumber than rocks.

It seems to be a job requirement.

[JW Insider]

2 hours ago, Many Miles said:

You didn't like that correction saying it was "a distinction without a necessary distinction." (Underlining added)

It's because I believe that if a non-Jewish person could eat an unbled animal that died naturally, then they could also trap or hunt or net an animal (mammal/fish/bird/etc) and eat it unbled. But even if it were only animals that died naturally, which might have been ideal, then it was still OK for people of the nations to eat unbled animals. Narrowing it down to distinguish which kinds were OK doesn't change that overall fact.

With the Jews, they had Moses read in their synagogues week after week so they would know the Mosaic Law. Did all the nations have Noah (Gen 6-9) read to them every week, so they would know the Noahide Law?

(Acts 15:20, 21) . . .but to write them to abstain from things polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from what is strangled, and from blood. ²¹  For from ancient times Moses has had those who preach him in city after city, because he is read aloud in the synagogues on every sabbath.”
 

Also, the lines can get blurred. If I create a grazing path for bison at a precarious edge of a cliff, is it NATURAL that one might slip and fall to its death now and then? If a dog is trained to bring back a duck that I didn't quite kill when I hit it with a slingshot, but the dog kills it by holding it by the neck, did it die naturally? What if the dog brings me one that it caught on its own? What about the chipmunk the cat brought to my doorstep that dies after several hours of torture by the cat? If I take an animal from the mouth of a lion that just killed it by chasing away the lion, did it die naturally? 

2 hours ago, Many Miles said:

On the other hand, an animal found dead of natural cause was not alive. It was just formed dust of the earth without breath of life. I don't particularly like the taboo that leads to, but there it is.

I don't know the taboo you mean, but the above could just as well mean that Noah could NOT eat carrion. He could not eat an animal found dead of natural causes. And he couldn't eat an animal that still had blood (or breath) flowing in it. So he could only eat meat he purposely killed. He just couldn't eat it with the blood.

Blood made it taboo, and therefore blood WAS considered a sacred substance by decree of God himself. 

[Many Miles]

2 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

It's because I believe that if a non-Jewish person could eat an unbled animal that died naturally, then they could also trap or hunt or net an animal (mammal/fish/bird/etc) and eat it unbled. But even if it were only animals that died naturally, which might have been ideal, then it was still OK for people of the nations to eat unbled animals. Narrowing it down to distinguish which kinds were OK doesn't change that overall fact.

I'm sure you know a belief is not a fact.

Speaking of facts, for a fact there is no mention in Gen 9 of flesh dead of natural cause.

If x then y

Not x then not y because of x

[Many Miles]

6 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

With the Jews, they had Moses read in their synagogues week after week so they would know the Mosaic Law. Did all the nations have Noah (Gen 6-9) read to them every week, so they would know the Noahide Law?

I wouldn't presume they did or didn't. According to the biblical presentation everyone after the flood was a descendant of one family, all of whom knew the story. It's fairly safe to say everything around that event was passed along one way or another. (Think: Melchizedek "priest of the Most High God")

Also, we have the testimony of God inside Mosaic Law. He had no reason to specifically stipulate the selling of carcasses dead of natural cause to descendants of Noah, but He did. This would suggest God had no particular aversion to the notion aside from what He demanded of Jews under Mosaic law. But people of the nations, though descendants of Noah, were not Jews under Mosaic Law. Did I read something earlier about God not departing from His character? How does that fit here?

[Many Miles]

14 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

...but the above could just as well mean that Noah could NOT eat carrion. He could not eat an animal found dead of natural causes.

Not sure how that follows.

There is NO mention in Gen 9 of flesh dead of natural cause.

If x then y

Not x then not y because of x

"Every moving animal that is alive" is the antecedent.