Re: Ramble ramble ramble

Wow! You think very much like me. Thanks for the long post, it was very interesting. I too have tried Atkins, and I thought it was all about red meat and cheese, oh and that suited me at the time!! Of course I have now seen x-rays of people's arteries, and realize now that I am lucky.

Once I get an appetite for researching things I can't stop, I'll go as far as I can. Much like you I suspect. Many years ago I tried to translate the bible from Greek, because some parts of it made sense and some parts didn't. This was before the Internet, so I had to buy a few books, and Ancient Greek / English dictionaries. I started off by reading different English versions, and found that some were good such as the New English Bible, and they made sense, but the King James version sounded like hell on earth!

Then you realize that the translations were tainted according to political views, it's all about manipulating people really. At the time, the earliest versions of the New Testament were Greek not Hebrew, so I had to work with those. I think the dead sea scrolls are out now though.

Some words I came across were not translated, they were "transliterated". Yes, they created a new word, probably because they were uncomfortable with the translation!! Take for example "Devil". If I remember correctly, that came from dia-bolos, which if you look at various meanings it could be "dia" (two) bolos (caught) and I think it described someone who was emotionally screwed up. Actually, perhaps very similar to what British Psychiatrist Ronald David Laing called a "double bind" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_David_Laing

So being "possessed by a devil" is really not so bad at all, when you know the truth. Man invented the devil it seems. Perhaps it was a little porky by one of King James' scribes in the 17th Century, who knows http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorized_King_James_Version. One thing that made perfect sense to me was the meaning of the word "sin". It came from a Greek word "hamartia" (ἁμαρτία) which meant in archery "to miss the target" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamartia and of course, the new word to "sin", created specially for modern bible readers, probably by one of King James' scribes. So thinking about what you said about learning from your mistakes, I think that is exactly what we are supposed to do in life, or in other words, learn to perfect your aim. Just like we fell down when we started walking as kids. Practice makes perfect, it's a process we go through. But to me life is one mighty big puzzle, that each and every one of us is supposed to work out, and it can be fun doing so, if you have the right attitude.

Anyway, I got to the stage where I began to trust my own judgment and as you say you have to "learn how to weed out the misinformation from the good", and so hopefully have I. I have now learned not to seek truth in ancient texts. The answers are in my head, not in a book. However I learned from doing that how text can be manipulated, and I can now sort of see the bigger picture, and reading books has made me learn that the answer is not in books, so that's one less place to look.

But I still have a long long way to go. I think as I get physically fit and healthy, I will see things in a different perspective. That's what's next on my agenda anyway.

I could see you were obviously analyzing things a lot, and yes, I do know exactly where you are coming from!

Peace to you also, and I hope your fast goes well

Steve

PS my blog is here //www.curezone.org/blogs/f.asp?f=1947
- it's just a personal ramble really.

(edit)
a slight correction, since I have learned not to look for truth in ancient texts and started to trust my own mind, I don't rely too much on the content of books. However there is ONE book I know that resembles the content of my inner mind so closely as to be a bit of a jaw dropper. That's the Shack, by William Paul Young. I have never read anything that closely resembles this book, ever. I don't agree with everything it says, and I don't necessarily agree with Christianity, but reading that book for the first time made me feel like Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) when he compared the mountain he had built in his living room with the images of "Devil’s Tower" on the TV screen. That's how close a match it was. I don't even need to read the book to know what's in it, but it's very comforting for me to know that another person out there has found the same thing in his head as I have found in mine, and written about it far more eloquently than I could. I am not even suggesting that people read it, each to their own, some people hate it, some Christians especially hate it, but it was good for me. I don't regard myself as a Christian anyway, I am just me. Tweet