Hello Dave
Thanks for you very in-depth reply to my previous fax. Reading that was like looking down into the intense darkness of the chasm between our 2 very differing ways of believing in God, it seems that the only purpose that our correspondence can achieve is to find out just how deep and wide that chasm really is at each point along its length, you from your side and me from mine, but I find it interesting nonetheless.
Regarding baptism, though partially for different reasons, I agree that the step must be taken as the wilful choice of a mature person and not just automatically that the birth of a newborn child should lead to it.
John 4:1 says that Jesus baptised and verse 2 that it was his disciples doing the baptising. Though as you say this wording could be viewed as ambiguous, it is actually quite common to attribute an action to the person who commanded it or planned it, like architects being attributed with having "built" a house. So added to the reasoning of verse 1, verse 2 simply goes into more precise detail (1. the architect builds houses, 2. it was actually subordinates that did the building work).
About Psalm 110:1, well you know what I believe on the subject (just to remind you, that YHWH or Jehovah is God's chosen name and that David's Lord or master refers to Jesus), you've also stated quite clearly your own thoughts, neither of us finds the other's arguments very convincing, so that quote from the Koran is very fitting "you to your religion and me to mine", this part of the divide has been measured.
I think I may be getting closer to understanding why you don't view Paul's letters as Scripture and perhaps understanding a bit more about your religious ideology into the bargain, please forgive me and correct me if I'm wrong about this. You say it is important to view Scripture as a continuous narrative with an overall unifying theme. I also view Scripture in this way. The big difference here is that the theme you have perceived is not displayed in every book of what other monotheists (Christians in this case) view as Scripture, so the parts that don't fit into your chosen pattern cannot be viewed as Scriptural. So it seems (from your point of view) that such "unscriptural" Bible books as Paul's letters have served God's purpose even though they do not add anything to your perceived Bible theme.
My own view is that the Bible's theme is the vindication of Jehovah God's sovereignty and the ultimate fulfilment of His Purpose for the earth, by means of His Kingdom under Christ, the promised Seed. (I can imagine how very deep and wide indeed you see this part of the chasm as being) As I implied in my previous letter, the assumption that my view of the Koran was similar to your view of Paul's letters was based on insufficient knowledge of what your view of Paul's letters is. I must say I respect the spirit of much of what I've read in and about the Koran, but I do not find it as efficacious as you would seemingly view Paul's letters. A similar thought is what is fuelling my will to keep up my correspondence with you, as apart from very much appreciating your work on Cerebus, I do respect the spirit with which you aim to serve the One True God, though very much disagreeing with most of the rest of your religious reasoning.
Onto your linguistic and Bible translation comments, well though who we view the adversary as being is very different, I agree that the adversary is trying to subvert the Truth and that this is likely to also be evident in the Bible translation process. I have to add though that your letter seems to over simplify things in making it sound like modern translations have simply used the 1611 KJV as their starting point and just made appalling translations of it, without doing any of their own real translation work from the original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek tongues. If I had even the most rudimentary comprehension of these languages I would choose to exclusively read the Bible from these texts. Like I did with reading the infinitely less important works of Geoffrey Chaucer, though Middle-English is not easy for modern-English speakers (especially pronouncing it correctly) as I found it possible to make sense out of it, I chose to rather read the original instead of some modernized version. On the other hand when I wished to read Beowulf in the original Anglo-Saxon or Old-English I was unable to make any progress because of how completely different the language is, so at first I attempted to teach myself Old-English and then I had to give up and read the poem in a couple of different modern translations and just compare them together and with the metre of the original to see if I could get a good idea of what the original is actually saying. Though no way near as old as either middle or old-English, I don't think I used the word "archaic" wrongly in describing some of the early-modern-English in use in the year 1611. Shakespearian language has very much been kept alive by his plays and sonnets and to some extent the English language has grown around this body of work and has been influenced and enriched by it. However many of the specific terms used in the 1611 KJV can in places cause some confusion, terms like : "sod pottage", "the burning ague", "bewrayeth it not", "the bittern", "besom of destruction", "sottish children" and "the shambles" I personally only understand these terms because I have compared them with the wording in what I view as reliable modern translations. Another example of how the language has changed in these last 400 years is the translation of 1Corinthians 10:24, the 1611 KJV to our modern ears seems to be encouraging envy and perhaps even theft, whereas the actual sense is that we should seek for the betterment or advantage of others. I have to insist then that though the 1611 KJV would have been ideal for people of that time who actually spoke in that way, the English language has changed sufficiently to render some parts of it quite confusing to those who are not informed bible or linguistic students.
Actually I have now borrowed that large KJV from my parents, the one I had mentioned to you in a previous letter, and I have noted that though it is quite old (1880's I believe) it doesn't specify if it has the 1611 text, comparing it to your quotes from the 1611KJV it would seem that it is a newer version, it has the same text as another KJV my parents have which dates from the 1830's. Anyway for now I have decided to carry on my daily Bible reading in this version, though it also does use an older linguistic style than I am accustomed to.
I think Cain would have had the concept of "door" made quite clear to him with the Cherubs and the flaming blade blocking entry to the garden of Eden. In fact in the translation that I normally use the word is rendered "entrance" rather than "door". Your interpretation of help meet also doesn't seem either correct or logical to me, in its context, the exclamation "help!" in the middle of a sentence like that just wouldn't work. Your letter did teach me something that I didn't know on the subject though; that help and meet do indeed translate 2 distinct Hebrew words, though their actual meanings do not seem to fit in with your interpretation.
About "Seed", as I said, the Bible usually uses Seed as meaning offspring, so I wouldn't agree with what you seem to be saying; that Biblical Seed is referring to literal seed or sperm which is of course generated by man not by woman, though I suppose technically speaking the woman does take possession of that seed when it enters her.
I do not claim that Adam sired Angels, the Angels are called sons of God, not of Adam. Also God's use of the term "son", has nothing to do with the way mankind sires children. God created beings and then chose to refer to them with the illustrative term "son". I believe that God's relationship with Jesus is like this also, that God created Jesus as the first of His Angelic creations and chose to call him son, though this has nothing to do with intercourse in any sense. No one is equal to God or related to God in any human sense of the word and Jesus never made such a claim. I do not believe in a triune God.
Hey, Dave, I didn't say that you are not actually middle-aged or perhaps even advanced-middle-aged, what I said was that from recent photos you seem to be in great shape (I could add "for an old man" Ha!).
I apologize if my previous mention of changing to an English speaking congregation wasn't put over very clearly. I can appreciate that to someone like you who is not used to worshipping as part of a group, it may have been a puzzling concept. Basically over the last couple of years the elders of the English congregation had called us so as to invite us to just attend the one-off meeting from time to time. But while present at these meetings it was clear enough to note that what they really wanted was for us to move there, I am actually the only English speaker by birth amongst Jehovah's Witnesses in this area. Therefore I can be of help to the English speaking Italians who though struggling with learning what is for them a new language, they have seen the need to do so, helping English speakers (mainly Nigerians) in the area to come to a better appreciation of God through His Word. Because of responsibilities both with the family and with my previous Italian language congregation, I have had to put this mve off until very recently. I think that actively helping others is required of God's servants, so I am now glad to be able to do this more fully in this new setting.
Regarding Jesus I had wrongly assumed that you believed in one Jesus, and that you viewed the Matthew/Mark/Luke version of the story as sufficiently different to be considered adversarial to John's version of the story, but that in reality it was originally only one story. I hadn't imagined that you might believe in the existence of 2 separate beings called Jesus, that did similar but not identical things. My own view is the common one that all 4 gospels tell the story of one single Jesus and where one gospel may omit parts and another omit other parts or even the few apparent contradictions can (in my view) be explained with the use of a lot less imagination than is needed to believe in 2 separate Jesus'.
I was thinking, while writing to the creator of Cerebus why not actually ask something more Cerebus related? So here goes: I've heard that you drew almost all of the 289/290 double issue yourself, what parts of that did Gerhard draw? Why did you depict Cerebus at different ages dreaming that whole sequence, when it seems that he actually dreamt it on the last night before his death? Who told Cerebus to hide the manuscript in that Ham Ernestway font? How does Oscar Wilde's grandson know about you, has he read Melmoth/Jaka's Story and if so what does he think of your work, how old is the guy? Why do you depict both Viktor and Dave separately in the story? Doesn't that bring up a duality Creator and pretender to creatorship theme? Perhaps a trinity theme with Victor Reid as "she" with Dave as "he" and Viktor as "it"? How does the "me" in latter days fit in with this? Now that the he/she/it theme is so evident, it would seem that you intended that the Ham/Jaka/Bear beckoning scene to be YHWH or YHWH representatives beckoning to Cerebus, would you consider specifically Bear as he, Jaka as she and Ham as it? Do you have any interest in having Cerebus translated into other languages? About the Marche region, were you aware of their existence before, have they anything to do with your Red Marches? I say that because the Marche was named exactly because they sat on the border of the papal states, which I believe is mirrored by the Red Marches. "Meglio un morto in casa che un marchigiano fuori della porta" meaning: "better to have a corpse in the house than a Marchigiano (someone from the Marche) at the door" is a saying that dates back to the days when men from the Marche collected taxes for the pope, another interesting coincidence, as I recall that one of Cerebus' earliest jobs was as a tax collector (presumably for the pope)?
As you say I hadn't named my children to you before, my 7 year old son is called Kevin and my 2 year old daughter is called Emily. Actually I have myself now turned 31 as I was born on May 24th of 1973.
Francesca and Kevin return your greetings, Emily has yet to learn the concept of correspondence so she doesn't.
Kind regards to you and say hi to Gerhard when you see him,
