Dr Oohay,
When you're as old as I am, talking about the present and especially about the past - in retrospect - no probing self-examination needed, you'll find that you have fallen into the habit of reminiscing, sometimes, with a tendency to digress - even ever so slightly, to recollect; perhaps not such a great sin after all since the habit embraces and coincides with Wordsworth's definition of poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility"
The kind of tranquillity we pray will soon return to the survivors, the men, women and children, and, of course, the hostages that are still alive and have not lost their lives as victims of the collateral damage caused by the IDF's relentless genocidal bombardment of Gaza…
Many thanks, Dr Oohay, you jogged my memory of some unpleasant days doing Chomsky's syntactic structures / transformational grammar when it was new and it was the craze (like the latest fashion) and we were struggling to get a hang of the whole thing with one Newman Smart, formerly a lecturer at the extramural department. At the time, I suspected that Smart himself was struggling to get a hang of the whole thing, hence his reading and dictating and copying from his copious notes, all culminating in some formulas which I half digested but memorised and regurgitated (or as we'd say in Nigeria, "vomited" ) in answer to the questions that were rightly expected - and so we all got through with flying colours.
A few years later, I experience even more problems with structuralism ,soon enough to be displaced by poststructuralism
There's no misunderstanding, not about Buddhism's " sunyata" ( I almost wrote "Sundiata" - a world of difference), not about "beginningless time", not about the idea - a fairy tale that once upon a time, there was nothing, let alone with the impossible, onerous job of disentangling the smooth/ confused/ discombobulated/ exalted/ straight-forward poetry that the Pentecostal pastors love to parrot as if they had been there, that "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God", through the Zoroastrian themes of darkness and light //darkness and light , right down to the epiphany of the virgin birth - according to John, supposedly an illiterate fisherman writing such good Greek :And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, the word made flesh, naturally heralding the circumcision of the Lord etc etc…
Fortunately, we don't have the same kind of colourism problem in Islam because, unlike Jesus of Nazareth who is more of a mythic figure, the Prophet of Islam, sallallahu alaihi wa salaam lived in the full glare of history and there was even a time when (it is alleged) the following decree was issued : "Anyone who says that the Prophet was black should be killed."
Before any rabid Islamophobe wants to rush to any unsound conclusion, he should first read and try to understand The Last Sermon of Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa salaam, in which he says,
"All mankind is from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a White has no superiority over a Black nor a Black has any superiority over a White except by piety and good action. Learn that every Muslim is a brother to every Muslim and that the Muslims constitute one brotherhood. Nothing shall be legitimate to a Muslim which belongs to a fellow Muslim unless it was given freely and willingly."
https://al-islam.org/media/last-sermon-prophet-muhammad-s-17th-dhul-hijjah-1438
About religion and Christianity in particular, if we should leave aside the philosophy, theology, semantics and the sceptics and their latest, and turn to the sociological, the rites of passage, from the cradle to the grave, I wonder, what impact do you think Black Jesus has or could have on e.g. Nigerian Pentecostals ? Wouldn't or shouldn't a Black Jesus give an added boost to their self-confidence that "Black is beautiful" when the Lord Himself is Black (like His Heavenly Father?) and the most beautiful/ beautyful ( "and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.")?
I also wonder about the impact a Black Jesus would have on e.g White American Christians and the future of race relations in the United States.
Was listening to our Clifford Brown earlier in the day….
Thanks (Cornelius) for your stimulating referential points.Note that Hinduism, the world's oldest ("recorded") religion quasi confronts the "color" issue through its nature as a polytheism. Though the early Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus) and the later Wittgenstein (Philosophical Investigations), which some "Analytical" philosophers tend to dismiss as "inferior" to Tractatus and thus incompatible with his earlier philosophical phase, I see these two works as great and compatible; in other words, PI supplements Tractatus and avoids certain logical implications or positivist ends of Tractatus. I regard Wittgenstein's ON CERTAINTY (probably his last work) as a favorite of mine. (Millionaire) Chomsky's 1957(?) SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES (a small but VERY SIGNIFICANT book) launched his academic career (which eventually produced his psycholinguistics (which I now identify as a psychologism). Chomsky has recently addressed the vital question of "impossible languages." I have yet to dig deep down into the question.Ultimately, the "languages" of spirituality seem indifferent to colorism. Colorism concepts tend to avoid religion's "beef." The colorism battle reminds me of the one-time dominant fast food ad: " Where is the beef?" — if anyone finds it, please contact me!OohayDr Oohay,
From the point of view of Professor Wittgenstein, that should effectively shut down any further discussion about religion and "spirituality", shouldn't it? The neo-theo-logicians should all just shut up with their psycho-babble, shouldn't they? A veritable tower of babel / Babylon
What a relief that Hindu-ism does not have a problem with Krishna is blue
If the colourless God or the God of all the colours, the transcendent God above, below and beyond colours or the immanent Jesus should be black or blue, I don't care, I don't think that it ought to be a problem for yours truly and We the people who are darker than blue
Sure, it took since the first day of creation - the big bang - for us to get where we are right now. Back in the day, the lynching, the trials and tribulations during that long meta-linguistic transition to the ultimate destination "African American" we had Richard Pryor joking,
"What do you mean black? Baby I'm colored"
But, seriously, we're talking about the man in the street, the run-of-the-mill, the riff-raff, ogogoro rag-tag Owerri motor park palm-wine and cassava bread holy eucharist Christian who has previously been worshiping a White Christ and the sudden impact - the psychological damage that could have inerrantly been inflicted on the tender, believing mind of such a soul to be told that it has been CONFIRMED that Jesus is BLACK and that he now now has to transfer his centuries old loyalty from White Jesus looking down from the cross, looking a little like Graham Greene's Father Mackie) to another colour, to Black Jesus, a spitting image of Dr Oohay because it's Black MESSIAH time and Black Jesus is setting all the the black and white captives FREE
Pages 166 -177 cover a very lucid Bryan Magee in Conversation with Ninian Smart : Philosophy and Religion
Father of Night by Bob DylanFather of night, Father of day
Father, who taketh the darkness away
Father, who teacheth the bird to fly
Builder of rainbows up in the sky
Father of loneliness and pain
Father of love and Father of rain
Father of day, Father of night
Father of black, Father of white
Father, who build the mountain so high
Who shapeth the cloud up in the sky
Father of time, Father of dreams
Father, who turneth the rivers and streams
Father of grain, Father of wheat
Father of cold and Father of heat
Father of air and Father of trees
Who dwells in our hearts and our memories
Father of minutes, Father of days
Father of whom we most solemnly praise
On Saturday, 18 January 2025 at 07:23:37 UTC+1 Dr. Oohay wrote:Much ado about NOthing. Neither computational semiotics (or linguistics) can handle "impossible languages" in the domain of spirituality.OohayThe hullabaloo about this latest revelation, Elon Musk Reveals First Ever Real Image Of Jesus Christ faintly suggests that in historical time, Musk is the first person to ever do so whilst the fact is that the Russians - Vladimir Putin in particular beat him to it more than nine months ago and here are the screaming headlines ( at the time I thought that it was all so heavily political ,with Russia making so much headway in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger - basically Muslim territory, it was now time for the charm offensive to influence the African Christians with the idea that unlike "the impies"( missionary imperialists) Russians are not racists 👍
Putin's official speech on BLACK Jesus and Ethiopia
And moreover , what about the shroud of Turin ?
Jesus was White - maybe Aryan , pray the White Aryan Supremacists who must love quoting John "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us", well pleased with the idea that God became a White Man in the person of Lord and Saviour Jesus and that we must worship him.
"Hollywood Has Always Known That Jesus Was Black"
Black Power is also delighted with the idea that Jesus was Black !
"Jesus was a BLACK MAN born of a BLACK WOMAN"
Why all this fuss about what colour was or is Jesus?
In The Last Temptation of Christ we have Willem Dafoe( a White Man) starring as Jesus
Jesus Christ Superstar has Carl Anderson ( a Black man) starring as Judas Iscariot
How do Nigerian Pentecostal Pastors feel about Jesus as more properly speaking, Soul Brother Number One?
BTW, I imagine that if the much anticipated Jewish Moshiach were to turn out to be the darkest looking dude that ever appeared on this planet since Hashem the Almighty first made Adam - then I suspect (only a suspicion) that some of the pale-looking Ashkenazi in particular could be reluctant to accept him, perhaps on the reasonable or unreasonable, racist or anti-Semitic grounds that the Moshiach should at least come from the same genetic pool, by which they would be meaning - with intentionality , that the Moshiach should at least look like e.g. the late Shimon Peres or Ariel Sharon of recent, blessed memory…
But back to business:
If God is indeed the Father of Jesus then Jesus could have been any colour.
And if Mother Mary is or was indeed the Black Madonna - and God is / was indeed the Heavenly Father of Jesus, again it's possible that when it comes to skin colour, Jesus could have been of a dark complexion, just like his mother.
When it comes to context Jonas Gardell's book about Jesus provides a lot of interesting evidence and plausible conjecture.
https://www.google.de/search?q=Jonas+Gardell+%3A+Jesus&
If the book is ever translated into English it would be an overnight bestseller.
https://signum.se/artikelarkiv/drom-och-verklighet-i-jonas-gardells-jesusbild/
Author :
About JesusSwedish
2009-03-18
Published by: Norstedts
Most skeletons found from the time Jesus lived show a lack of iron and protein. Skulls of forty-year-old people often have few or no teeth left. Life was hard and people died young. Only a minority lived to see their twenty-fifth birthday.
We like to imagine Jesus' gentle, loving smile.
Now add that the smile was probably toothless and we probably get a slightly fairer picture.
Can we imagine Jesus toothless? Can we imagine him uneducated? Very little of our ideas about Jesus Christ match the historical Jesus of Nazareth.
A Jesus Christ rises before us as a king to judge the living and the dead. At the same time, another figure flees into the shadows. A short, dark-skinned man who has aged prematurely from poverty and wandering. A simple craftsman from the Galilean countryside who the authorities had executed as a preventive measure. A man who spread the message of the kingdom of God.
Exciting? This is just the beginning! Join Jonas Gardell on a harrowing search for Jesus.
All royalties from this book go directly to the Jonas Gardell Foundation and Mark Levengood Children's Fund.
Read more
E-book (2009)
On Friday, 17 January 2025 at 11:52:50 UTC+1 Dr. Oohay wrote:Seriously and practically speaking, there AIN'T no necessary 1:1 relationship between SIGNIFIERS and SIGNFIEDS. In other words, "meaning" (of course) "exists" but it never exists "contextlessly": no context-free claim; every context has its own context(s). There AIN'T no a priori relationship between (for example) being "black" or "brown" or "white" AND having a "black" or "brown" or "white" voice (or identity). In short, "semantics" AIN'T inherent in "physics".OohayOn Thursday, January 16, 2025, 6:55 PM, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:
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