SV: UNiversity and Church

[George Cronk]

The Bible rarely refers to Hebrew as a  language (although it refers to
"Hebrews" from time to time), and it never states that Hebrew was the
"original" language.  Quite the contrary, the "original" language is
depicted as lost, having been eclipsed by the many human languages inflicted
on the human race by God as a way of preventing the construction of the
Tower of Babel.

Further, there is certainly no mainstream (i.e., non-cultic) form of
Christianity that claims that Hebrew (or any other language) was the
"original" language.  I am not even aware of any Christian cults that make
this bizarre claim.  Christianity as such has no position whatever on the
question of what the "original" language was.  From a Christian point of
view, this is a completely irrelevant question, theologically speaking.

Re: American universities and American Christian churches:  No close
connection at all.  If anything, we have too much "separation of church and
state" in our educational system.

In my entire life (I am 52), I have not heard more than ten mentions of
Gandhi during Christian church services, and they have all been very
respectful (if anything, utterly uncritical).

What nonsense comes up on this "scholarly" list all too regularly!

Maybe this sort of thing should be shipped out to "Yahooooo!"

Dr. George Cronk
Chair, Dept. of Philosophy & Religion
Bergen Community College
Paramus, New Jersey


----- Original Message -----
From: "Lars Martin Fosse" <lmfosse at ONLINE.NO>
To: <INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK>
Sent: Friday, March 16, 2001 4:37 AM
Subject: SV: UNiversity and Church


> Narayan R.Joshi [SMTP:giravani at JUNO.COM] skrev 16. mars 2001 05:09:
> > Reference-Wendy on Geeta. What is the difference between An American
> > University and an American Christian Church? Churches routinely teach
> that
> > Hebroo was the mankind's first and original language
>
> This sounds like a very American phenomenon. I grew up in the Norwegian
> Bible belt, but no one ever claimed as far as I can remember that Hebrew
> was mankind's first language. (The Bible of course says so, but most
modern
> Christians realize that they are dealing with a myth and not with
history).
>
>  and address Mahatma
> > Gandhi in their sermons as Hindu Gandhi.In future, I expect more attacks
> on
> > Mahabharata and ShriKrishna. They are paid to do that.More than 20
> million
> > dollars are spent (conservative estimate) by the western world to study
> the
> > ancient pagan, heathen, Hindu India. Why? Thanks.
>
> Probably because India is an interesting country. Most of the people that
> study India today are agnostics (or more or less indifferent to personal
> religion), not fervent Christians, as far as I can see. Seen from a
> Christian point of view, Hinduism is of course "pagan", but seen from an
> atheist or agnostic point of view, there is no difference between
> Christianity and Hinduism when it comes to religious truth value. Most
> agnostics would analyze both religions from a sociological, historical or
> doctrinal point of view and not show much interest in whether one of these
> religions is truer than the other.
>
> No doubt, Christian theologians will attack Hinduism in the future -
you're
> competition - but I don't see many attacks coming from universities
(unless
> it is the sort of critique that university people hand out in all
> directions anyway).
>
> Lars Martin Fosse
>
> Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse
> Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114,
> 0674 Oslo
> Norway
> Phone: +47 22 32 12 19
> Mobile phone: +47 90 91 91 45
> Fax 1:  +47 22 32 12 19
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> Email: lmfosse at online.no