Comment on What's the deal the miracles jesus chose to do?
jerkface@lemmy.ca 10 months agoWhat’s it about when he curses that fig tree cuz I heard some stuff about the symbolism.
Figs are sweet, and in the old testament were a symbol for wisdom, especially wisdom from your teacher.
Jesus was condemning the corrupt religious mafia that was in cahoots with the Romans and Herod, and not doing its job in teaching and being a blessing to the people.
It‘s a tree that bears no fruit. Well-looking but not nourishing. It‘s traditioned literature for a reason. But reject the meaning and consume whatever you like, everyone
I’m going to claim brain fart. I’m horrified to find I had thought that it was about, like, modern Israel. Dumb.
OTOH, it sounds like you are suggesting taking interpretations like that; reading things into the text and adopting the symbols for our own purposes. Blindness wasn’t a metaphor for depression. You have to insert that as a modern reader. The text doesn’t fully support it and you have to creatively interpret at times. I don’t think that’s very satisfying.
You mean depression is not just a modern word but a modern concept (it did not exist before)?
When the original authors of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote their words in the original Greek, they were not imagining blindness to be a metaphor for clinical depression. Or even for feeling sad, if that is what you mean. Blindness is often used as a metaphor in the Bible, for example for ignorance, pride, deception, and unbelief. You can attempt to take it as a metaphor for the modern concept of depression (which of course they did not even possess) but to do so, you are clearly reading into the text.
I’m trying to understand if you are advocating doing that intentionally, but it’s not even clear if you’re aware and accept you’re doing that at all.
The fig tree is symbolic of the apple tree in the garden of Eden. Jesus cursing the tree to not bear fruit shows how he has come to stop original sin.
And if you buy that bullshit I just made up, you’ll really enjoy church.
Nah, Jesus ate a bunch of figs, shit his brains out, then used his god powers to curse the fig tree for making him shit his brains out.
It was a typo, he actually cursed gifs because he was sick of all the memes.
Yes, yes.
My contribution is just as valid, unless you’re looking to hear from people who read the original Aramaic.
Genuinely, that’s not how literary criticism works.
ivanafterall@lemmy.world 10 months ago
He was literally hangry. Immediately after he curses the out-of-season tree, he goes into the temple and has his famous hissy fit, overturning tables and shit. It’s basically the ultimate Snickers commercial. Read for yourself: