26 In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee,27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary.28The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”
29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be.30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God.31 You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus.32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David,33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.”
34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”
35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month.37 For nothing is impossible with God.”
38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May it be to me as you have said.” Then the angel left her.
Replace all instances of “God” and “the Holy Spirit” with “the lord”, and assume it refers to an actual local lord. Replace “angel” with “pimp”.
I think a more useful phrasing of that question might be “what is it about that comment that LW (net) doesn’t want more of?” I hadn’t previously downvoted it, but in the interests of getting to answer you in the definitive first person rather than the hypothetical third, I just went back and did so.
I read AlexMennen’s comment and ask myself: are they attempting to suggest that Luke 1:26-38 was originally intended as a mundane story about a local king taking one of his subjects as a mate, and is being misunderstood as a supernatural story due to some kind of translation error? That it was a mythical exaggeration of an earlier mundane story? That it is a supernatural story, but the God it describes is essentially a rapist and therefore morally repugnant? That it is a supernatural story and the rape it describes is endorsed by God and therefore OK? Something else? Some combination? I don’t know.
If I had to guess, I’d guess that AlexMennen doesn’t really know either; they just saw an opportunity to accumulate status by flinging metaphorical feces at a generally identified enemy of the tribe, or by making a vague gesture in the direction of an analysis without actually committing themselves to a refutable claim.
I don’t think this is a big deal, which is why I didn’t bother downvoting initially… like any other human forum, LW is full of this sort of posturing, and I mostly just ignore it. But I do think LW is improved by actual analysis and weakened by pure statusmongering.
It oughtn’t be necessary for me to say this, but in case it is: I am not and never have been a Christian, do not and never have believed that Jesus (or anyone else) was conceived through miraculous divine intervention, and do not believe that the Bible is any more supernatural in its origins (by any definition of supernatural that an actual English speaker is likely to endorse) than Finnegan’s Wake, though I did believe something like the latter as a child about the Old Testament. My ox is not being gored here.
Interesting analysis, thank you. My own reading was that AlexMennen showed that the canonical story with only minor changes matches the EY’s narrative pretty well, so I upvoted it.
FWIW, the original post annoyed me in many of the same ways, and would have done so far more if EY hadn’t at least made a nod towards articulating the point he was making.
Luke 1:26-38
Replace all instances of “God” and “the Holy Spirit” with “the lord”, and assume it refers to an actual local lord. Replace “angel” with “pimp”.
I wonder why AlexMennen’s comment was silently downvoted…
The answer most straightforwardly consistent with stated LW policy on downvotes is because at least 5 people don’t want more comments like that.
This is trivially true, but why don’t they?
I think a more useful phrasing of that question might be “what is it about that comment that LW (net) doesn’t want more of?” I hadn’t previously downvoted it, but in the interests of getting to answer you in the definitive first person rather than the hypothetical third, I just went back and did so.
I read AlexMennen’s comment and ask myself: are they attempting to suggest that Luke 1:26-38 was originally intended as a mundane story about a local king taking one of his subjects as a mate, and is being misunderstood as a supernatural story due to some kind of translation error? That it was a mythical exaggeration of an earlier mundane story? That it is a supernatural story, but the God it describes is essentially a rapist and therefore morally repugnant? That it is a supernatural story and the rape it describes is endorsed by God and therefore OK? Something else? Some combination? I don’t know.
If I had to guess, I’d guess that AlexMennen doesn’t really know either; they just saw an opportunity to accumulate status by flinging metaphorical feces at a generally identified enemy of the tribe, or by making a vague gesture in the direction of an analysis without actually committing themselves to a refutable claim.
I don’t think this is a big deal, which is why I didn’t bother downvoting initially… like any other human forum, LW is full of this sort of posturing, and I mostly just ignore it. But I do think LW is improved by actual analysis and weakened by pure statusmongering.
It oughtn’t be necessary for me to say this, but in case it is: I am not and never have been a Christian, do not and never have believed that Jesus (or anyone else) was conceived through miraculous divine intervention, and do not believe that the Bible is any more supernatural in its origins (by any definition of supernatural that an actual English speaker is likely to endorse) than Finnegan’s Wake, though I did believe something like the latter as a child about the Old Testament. My ox is not being gored here.
Interesting analysis, thank you. My own reading was that AlexMennen showed that the canonical story with only minor changes matches the EY’s narrative pretty well, so I upvoted it.
(nods) It certainly does.
FWIW, the original post annoyed me in many of the same ways, and would have done so far more if EY hadn’t at least made a nod towards articulating the point he was making.