Job 1
Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them.And the LORD said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.
And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?
Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, Doth Job fear God for nought?
Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land.
But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face.
And the LORD said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the LORD.
Discuss.
Yeah, yeah, I know I’m a little late with this post. But on the seventh day Goldy rested. So I slept in.
Gotta say Goldie, you can sure pick em:
Job is a wonderful illustration of just has petty and pathetically cruel the “God” of the Old Testament is. On an offhand bet with Satan, he torments a faithful follower to near death, destroys his home and belongings, and kills his children.
I defy any Christian to reconcile this book with the “Loving and Personal God” they like to talk to their children about in Sunday School.
Who is “he” “uncle”?
I get it. Satan had the balls to question authority. That’s how he got a bad rep.
@4
No, Satan called him on the fact that he was working both sides of the fence. Telling Job one series of things to get him to go along, and then fucking him over behind his back on a bet with one of his kids.
So, god and satan are those old dudes in the Eddie Murphy/Dan Akroyd movie “Trading Places”.
So you must disagree with Jesus being a Loving Saviour when He said “I and my Father are One” – John 10:30
Sighhh ….
So some Jewish guy writes a book and the Christians decide it is My word? That is wierd. I am that I am, does not mean that believers ought to attribute everything written by the Jews to Me.
As God, my own taste runs to Nora Ephron and Woody Allen over Job. How is it that these fine writers are not in the Christian Bible?
This is why I did command you not to take my name in vain.
Here is another example …
I wrote all things, Lolita, Mein Kampf, and Job. You choose.
I am that I am.
Dear Puddy,
First John said that. I did not.
Second, aren’t you as much God as your friend James?
I am that I am.
SeattleJew you wrote nothing in the Bible so stop this charade.
Where do I say there is a Satan?
My word, such as it is, is the Torah. For Jews that is the ONLY revelation. If there were a Satan, how could I be Me?? The Christian prophet said he did not come to change the Torah ..
So is Satan a Christian? A fantasy like the belief in heaven (also not in the Torah)?
I am that I am and Satan is not.
Charade?
Is it a charade when you claim to speak for Me?
If you doubt my being God, that is good.
If you think you are God, then you are a fool.
I am that I am.
As usual, Puddy is pretty confused by all this. He just can’t quite follow the logic of all this illogic.
I thought Quality was Job 1.
So Puddy,
tell us all, WHO wrote the book of Job?
Who decided it was the word of God?
And, for your information .. no I did not write the bible. I am sure that is a relief to you. But who did?
No “Uncle” Witz there is no confusion on Puddy’s part, it was you who wrote “he”. Puddy knows from the Bible who did the evil deeds. Do you? So who is “he”?
Actually, Puddy reminds me of the man in the youtube in God’s post 7.
That fellow, like Job, also followed “God’s” word.
Or were Job, Puddy, and the fellow in the YouTube confusing their won fantasies with God’s word?
Puddy:
Eliza:
Why do you ask?
SeattleJew, who wrote Job?… There are many guesses to who wrote the book. Even in your traditionalist history different Jewish scholars disagree on the author.
Isn’t Eliza a robot?
Is Puddy a robot too?
The cats who wrote that shit inhaled too much frankinsense and myrrh.
So Witz assumes the idiom of the passage and uses the pronoun ‘he’ – clearly meaning the ‘god’ that is a character in the passage – and Pud of course thinks he has achieved some rhetorical triumph.
I think we’re going to be subjected to “So who is ‘he’?” all morning, inevitably followed by “HAHAHAHAHAHAHA” at some point.
Pud’s comments grow increasingly pathetic and lame, if that were possible. Oh and by the way, last week Pud criticized what I wrote but never explained to my how my paraphrase of the Christian mysteries was in any way inaccurate. I’m still waiting for you, Pud…
Puddy,
“Even in???” touch of antisemitism in there my friend?
So if you don’t know who wrote the book and Jews do not consider it G-d’s word, why do you consider it part of your bible?
Nope Liberal Scientist. Such a foolish TARD. The only He in the verses Goldy posted is Job.
“uncle” witz wrote “he”, but won’t admit to whom he is. Even WikiPedia admits to whom he is.
Puddy already whack that old crap outta here.
why I do not disparage anyone with religious beliefs, I do tend to take people less seriously when they offer up a quote from the bible as a retort to specific situations, specific exchanges of information. Like that guy last week, quoting the bible about the end of the world as if that had any relevance whatsoever to the issue of global warming.
When someone tries to tell me the Earth is only 6500 years old, or that Satan made them commit a crime, or that God promised to never destroy the world again, I know I am very likely dealing with someone who has no real imagination or any capability to think beyond what their parents and preachers told them as they were growing up. It is defined within the confines of a very narrow, and extremely limited educational background.
In other words, severely psychologically damaged people, whose minds were horribly abused and twisted as children. I know quite a few people who were abused this way.
Such people cannot be taken seriously. Such people cannot be trusted for their information or the sources of that information as filtered by their personal belief structure. They are mentally ill, and therefore untrustworthy.
Spuddy exemplifies that.
In Judaism
Hei is often used to represent the name of God, as He stands for Hashem, which means The Name and is a way of saying God without actually saying the name of God. In print, Hashem is usually written as Hei with a chupchik (apostrophe): ‘ה.
Puddy considers it GOD’s word. We’ll learn soon enough when Jesus returns and clarifies all these insipid leftist atheistic arguments.
Puddy on Job, SJ call “CHICKEN”
Who wrote Job and why is this in your “Bible?’
Pud:
You might be able to get away with pawning the persecution and torture of Job and his family off onto someone else if it weren’t for the countless other examples of sadistic cruelty by the “One True God” of the Old Testament, including he torture and crucifixion of Jesus.
Puddy
Oh? Are you My newest Prophet?
How does the Prophet Puddy determine what is My word?
I am that I am.
Nope SJ. What are you smoking today?
Uncle Wiki
But I am and I am guilty. I did cause the death of the baby in the YouTube Video.
I am God, but I am neither the Devil nor some beneficent old uncle. You need to seek the truth .. as your best have done.
I am that I am.
Oh poor “uncle” witz. Can’t deal with facts.
So who is “he”?
You say No to this”
No, you will not answer or No Job is not in Puddy’s canon?
Well, it is a beautiful day today, one of My best. The moon, always my favorite, is as big as Jonah’s whale.
I will be here, as I am everywhere, so please be nice to one another.
For now, I will watch in the moon light.
I am that I am.
@32
Did I not foretell this – and now it hath come to pass.
This immediately and hopelessly undermines any argument it was meant to buttress.
(BTW, as I asked on a prior thread, Pud, if Jesus is coming again, what is his refractory period?)
@34
Moon? what time zone are you in, God? Looks daylight and foggy out my window.
Though I suppose the moon is always full for you, and always new and velvety black…
Seems clear that ‘he’ in the second sentence refers back to ‘God’ in the first, which in turn refers to ‘LORD’ in the passage, the one palling around with ‘Satan’.
I made this very same wager with my brother Mortimer about one of our senior executives, a fellow named Winthorpe.
We enjoyed quite a laugh.
Gotta go to work…catch you cats later…
I would be fun at some point to discuss the passage as an example of a literary treatment of an existential crisis, and how the protagonist responds, something very common in literature in general. An added facet, as our amphibian friend has noted, is that God in the passage, at least by mortal human standards, is a total shit. Another interesting discussion point would be how the faithful Job loses everything – which kinda undermines Calvinism and the whole Properity Gospel(tm) dreck.
FAIL Liberal Scientist… Even WikiPedia identifies he as Satan.
Stupid is as stupid is. And Liberal Scientist is really stupid.
@5 “Telling Job one series of things to get him to go along, and then fucking him over behind his back on a bet with one of his kids.”
Sounds very Republican to me.
@9 And you got nothing from reading the Bible, because you can’t be a Christian and a Republican at the same time, no matter what the theocrats claim.
Hmmm. That describes VERY WELL a few who troll in these comment threads.
That’s easy. It was Ed Harris, climbing the walls naked in Just Cause, and declaiming about the patience of Job.
Democrat Dummies:
“Had it not been for the steady encroachment of the Federal government in the rights and duties reserved for the States, we perhaps would not have the present spectacle of the people rushing to Washington to set right whatever goes wrong … the consequence of government’s departure from its legitimate functions.” – Democrat Cactus Jack Garner re 1932, FDR’s VP in 1933
“We should stop talking about the Forgotten Man and about class distinctions … The Forgotten Man is a myth and the sooner he disapp0ears from the campaign the better.” – Democrat Al Smith about Democrat FDR in 1932. For Smith, wrote Schlesinger, “the formula for recovery was government retrenchment (and) income tax reduction.”
Democrat Governor Ritchie “declared that the Democratic(k) party could be relied on to stop federal encroachment on states rights, to end government competition with private enterprise, and to balance the budget.”
The “minions of [Herbert Hoover’s] Federal bureaucracy are given full sway to distribute huge sums of money picked from the pockets of the American people.” – Democrat Senator Carter Glass-Steagall Glass.
Hoover “follow(ed) the road to socialism at a rate never before equaled in time of peace by any of his predecessors.” – Democrat John W. Davis, former Democrat candidate for president.
@ Spuddy
Uh, one point that has to be made repeatedly with you, and your group of superstitious brethren, is the fact that that book is a collection of old myths and shamanistic beliefs filtered through a couple dozen centuries of dictators and charlatans, using fear to control their fellow tribesmen.
There is no “god”, there is no “satan”. there is no heaven or hell. There are no ghosts or demons or saviors or witches.
It doesn’t exist. None of it is truth, it is only a countless series of fictions and fireside fairytales told to small children over the centuries. Why anyone would take a 3000 year old book of myths over hard immediate facts is beyond me.
You folks are no different from Afghani hill people, or Bedouin tribesmen. You have not changed at all since your habitation of Salem in the 1690’s, or your efforts to rid the world of jews in the post-Renaissance period.
You are no different from any other primitive people, reading the spilled entrails of goats or dogs to foretell their future.
Why, in a supposedly modern, enlightened culture, your stone-age belief system persists is beyond me. Are you really that terrified of the universe? Are you really that terrified of being held responsible for your own crimes?
All I can see, is the fact that over the centuries, there is a rejection by some people of actual scholarship. A rejection of quantifiable, observable facts and the people that do that research, by people that would still be cutting their own babies throats because some mythical daddy-entity told them to, to keep their crops growing and their hunts bountiful or to protect their little kingdoms.
That still happens. It’s just psychotic behavior.
Froggy @46:
Sadly, despite nearly 400 years of enlightenment, we are still beholden to a group of political leaders who are either too lazy of intellect to actually examine the evidence, or too cowardly to stand up to those of the prior category. This latter group includes the current President of the United States.
This is a result of a general polity that suffers from the same shortcomings. Hence, we are ruled by folks who consider a confusing and contradictory jumble of folk tales recounting the petty squabbles of an irrelevant Iron Age tribe to be the revealed word of the creator of the universe.
When I was a lad, I was confident all this would be behind us. It is truly embarrassing to admit to my children that we have moved in the wrong direction over my own lifetime.
Wow which is why the Hoover Institute employs Thomas Sowell. Who’d a thunk it?
Actually, more stone and bronze age until about 1000 BCE, give or take.
The people who “wrote” the OT were primitive, superstitious daughterfuckers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Near_East
I think this story is as instructive as the one where a Heisman trophy winner is put on a contract with a professional team and spends the rest of his time cooling his heels and not getting any playtime until the coach is challenged by another coach to put this player in the game.
The coach rose to this challenge and put the Heisman winner in play, upon which the opposing team sent a 350 lb. lineman to ruin the plyers knee.
@49 Zotz …
getta new wiki.
The Torah was hardly written by “primitive, superstitious daughterfuckers” … unless you wish to include all the bronze age cultures thta gave rise the content of that book.
Beyond that, the Torah was not finally compiled until the time of Ezra .. well into the iron age and contemporaneous with the origins of Greek philosophy.
The other parts of what Christians demean as the “old” testament, were being written until about 200 years before the Romans invented Christ.
While you are at it,in the same ra we are talking about, elsewhere in the world, Buddha taught, Confuscious wrote, and .. as above the Greek gifts began to flow.
Methinks you are a but chauvinistic about OUR modern superiority.
@51: Actually we agree, varying on what “compiled” means.
I would have added “plagiarist” too, but I thought it was kind of gratuitous after calling them out as backward and incestuous. Not to mention genocidal murderers.
@51: And yes, the christians are worse.
@51: And the muslims are totally wacked out.
As a young man it used to strike me how God was one oppressive SOB, what with all the demands for love, obediance and servitude. And for what? A promise that after a lifetime of devotion to something other than self that there’d be something that might just possibly follow our deaths that makes it all worthwhile? Satan, on the other hand, wasn’t into that stuff and mostly talked a lot of sense. These days, I give little thought to the nature of either, prefering to spend my time surveying the latest in cosmological theory or maybe playing golf. I do this while still trying to learn from the teachings of Jesus. I find some meaning in that. As an amateur astronomer, I also find meaning in gazing at the stars in wonder. I find meaning in hitting a golf ball. It’s all real to me. As I’ve grown older, I find more and more that I don’t need it to be real for you. I still consider myself a Christian. It’s always been the context of my life and I still want to have that as a frame of orientation. However, I give little thought to God and Satan, and far less to Job. I believe that too often Christianity American-style manifests itself as a group psychosis. Eh, those kind folk probably don’t think I’m much of a Christian, if at all, but my church is within and has nothing to do with them. They’re out there somewhere. I acknowledge their reality but, if I can help it, I don’t want their’s having much to do with mine.
Fore!
@47, I too yearn for the time when society has matured. Alas, perhaps the reincarnationists will be proven correct, and even as a cockroach I’d be able to witness this renaissance.
@55, Steve…perhaps you’re onto something. Lee Travino said, “when caught on the course during a lightning storm, raise your one iron above you; not even God can hit a one iron.
I’m pretty sure Trevino understood that a hook will listen to neither God nor man.
But you can talk to a slice.
I’ve had all my prayers answered on the golf course. Unfortunately, I don’t like most of the answers.
@ 58
No, you can YELL AT a slice.
Yellin ain’t talkin.
Gotta figure out how to convince the Tealiban of that.
Bible in one hand, rifle in the other, and no ideas on the purpose of either.
Funny how the Book of Job calls into question authorship probably more than any other of the OT books.
This Hebrew text has been described as the most corrupted and disturbed of biblical documents. (Disturbed, as in abundant evidence of having been edited and re-edited so that as a work, it is a mish-mash.)
There is doubt that the original work was even in Hebrew. The author(s) avoid the more Hebrew divine names Yahweh and Elohim in favor of El, Eloah, and Shaddai. While possibly/probably Jewish, the original author of the poetry is heavily influenced by all of ancient civilization – albeit has enough knowledge of prophetic and wisdom literature of his day. But there is enough evidence that the original poem could have been Edomite, as the work contains a number of words borrowed from Egyptian, and part of chapter 31 is reminiscent of the ‘negative confession’ of the Egyptian Book of The Dead.
I mentioned authors, because although most of the book has a lovely poetic cadence to it, there are speeches by individuals that are not in the same poetic style and even directly contradict their own previously made speeches. Clearly, not the same mind at work. Especially the obvious insertion of speeches by Elihu that do not match any literary style of the speeches made by Job’s friends and therefore appear to be added later.
The worst of Job, however, is trying to reconcile the end to the rest of the book. It is like someone removed the original ending and pasted drivel in its place. The poetic flow that is much of the original text abruptly stops, and is replaced with a fairy tale like ending: “And Job saw that God was Truly Good. The End.”
I wouldn’t put too much into interpreting anything from the Book of Job. Of all of them, this book has so much evidence of re-editing that the moral of the story is overshadowed by the sloppiness of the work.
Interesting, jcricket. Thanks for that.
I might point out, though, that the portion brought to our attention is Job 1:6-12, nowhere close to that ridiculous “and they lived happily ever after” ending, and evidently the product of a single author. Given its position in the text, it’s probably the author of the base-text into which the other stuff was stuffed to produce the hodgepodge we call Job.
BTW, if God has “sons” in this book, who are their mothers? Did God sleep around?
@62
Thanks for your interest. I guess sticking to the shorter is always best.
I wouldn’t put too much into interpreting anything from the Book of Job. Of all of them, this book has so much evidence of re-editing that the moral of the story is overshadowed by the sloppiness of the work.
Even the original extant text is so cut up that it is worthless as anything other than an example of edited ancient text.
@61 jcricket
Interesting post. Fun to have a sane discussion that does not need the divine intervention of HA God!
It might be fun to get together as I share your interests in early origins of the Jews. You might take a look at my blog (SeattleJew.blofspot.com) .. I would enjoy discussing this sort of thing there.
I think you are wrong in one respect. I do not think you can separate the bronze age Edomites from the early hebrews. There is even a suggestion that the worship of Y, a relative unknown among the Canaani, began in Edom or some other place in the Arabian/Canaan border region. Similarly, I suspect the Samaritans were one of many Hebrews left behind when the elite of Jerusalem were taken to Babylon.
One funny part of all this is that by this time, ~ 500 BCE and onward, the “Phillistines” were long gone. ROME renamed the area Phillistia and that became todays term “Palestine.” The only possible indigenous ancestors of todays “Palestinians’ must have been Jews and likley spoke Hebrew.
I also think it is VERY important in discussing authors to distinguish between the Torah and the other writings Christians have (for weird reasons) lumped into their “old” testament. The Torah is largely pre exilic and is believed to have been largeley compiled before the conquest by Nebuchadnezzar, probably under King Josiah. The Torah, perhaps dimly, reflects the myhtic origins of the hill people who came together to form the first Hebrews.
Those people spoke a Canaanite language and actually wrote in that language. There obviously must have been many Canaani dialects, but the origi8s of the Torah are ahrd to ascribe to anyone else as the sotries are rather distinct to the later hebrews. So, I think you are as wrong to say that the Torah was not written in “Hebrew” as I would be to claim the Iliad was not written in Greek.
The rest of the writings is a melange, written or collected from the hebrews/jews from these early times on. Stories in those books may well, as you suggest, come from other languages … certainly from Aramaic during and after the exile.
Do you ever come to DL? It woujld be fun to meet.
Goldy @ 1
But on the seventh day Goldy rested.
Is the seventh day Satuday, Sunday or perhaps Friday?
Pope
The seventh day is what you call Saturday. However, a better question is when does it start?
I am omnipresent, you are not. So, in the seventh day I rested means GMT .. God’s Mean Time.
And I rested at the END of the sixth day .. my day, like yours, ended with sundown, not at midnight!
But which sundown? .. Again, you need to refer to GMT.
The Sabbath should begin at sundown where I rested, not were some poor human chooses to live.
Where did I rest?
I am that I am.
God @ 66
If you are omnipresent, how can the sun set on you? (It didn’t used to set on the British Empire either.)
And why do you always answer a question with a question?
Hi SJ – Thanks for your comment. Sorry it has taken this long to reply, but my brother was over and you know how it is with family.
While I agree wholeheartedly that The Torah is definitely of Hebrew origin, however, The book of Job is of of unknown authorship and therefore, the clues to who wrote it must be gleaned from the text itself.
As said earlier, the avoidance of the more common Hebrew designations for God and usage of El, Eloah and Shaddai are interesting. The civil and moral applications that are presented are not so much Hebrew in character as they are common to all civilization at the time. The text is so heavily influenced by Arabic that there is an argument over whether the original author was Jewish or Hebrew. For the sake of argument and getting down to brass tacks, however, if I had to make a declaration, it would be that I think he probably was. Also, very well traveled and well educated, as evidenced by his familiarity with prophetic and wisdom literature.
Interestingly enough, you mention ~500 BCE. As you know, there are no events of an historic nature in the book of Job to help date it, but since the book was known to Ben Sira it can be no later than about 250. It is possible – maybe even probable – that Job’s angst and travails were symbolic of, and giving voice to, the questioning and anxiety that followed the destruction of the Temple in 586. Humanly speaking, it is hard to imagine that a story would receive so much attention and re-editing by so many authors if there were no reason to do so. Shoring up the notion that ‘bad things happen to good people and in the end good will prevail’, seems to be the need that the various editors were trying to fill with Job’s story.
And thank you for asking about DL! I DID attend one time way back in….2006? I (more or less) donated my laminated map of the US to Nick Boudreau by bringing it to the meeting to go over election results with the group and then forgetting all about it. Funny! We had such a hard time finding parking and felt like we didn’t quite fit in, so we just never went back.
re 67:
Why not?
@67 Pope
Hmmmmm …
As I am everywhere, that of course I where the sunsets.
As to your other question, of course I answer questions. When Newton measured the effect of mass on acceleration, who answered his question? When MLK saw ahimsa as a way to freedom, where was he looking? Do you think Jeffersons’s Rights of Man was not of Me?
Here, in My revelations on HA, I regularly answer questions. Sadly, some who claim to believe in Me, never ask questions. The ignorant or ill willed can not learn because they can not or do not ask Me.
Perhaps you mean I do not give useful answers to questions like “Does she love me?” Will GM stock go up?, “How to create perpetual motion.” There are answers to give to all these but, in the limited world of the non eternal, the answers are as undecipherable as asking “what lay before the big bang?”
I am that I am. Not more, not less.
Steve @ 55
I’ve been in Portland this weekend, meeting up with some old college buds (“old” now means more than I’ve just known them awhile). The reunion was inspired by one who is an Econ prof at a university in New Zealand, but this weekend gave a talk in Denver about shit I wish I could grasp, so happened to be in North America. (He understands why Bush fucked us better than I do, and can explain it to Ph.D. students.) He bailed out of the States, for a bit, for a country that respects reason. Says the right wing in New Zealand is to the left of our Blue Dog Democrats. Smartest guy I know. Open, nonetheless to religion (as you know, intelligent people never close their minds).
We started talking about religion–what is happening in this country in the name of religion. I was the lonely believer, as always. I still stood up for Christianity, much as your post does. We all knew that was coming. The same old arguments presented themselves since beer-fueled dorm room talks of long ago. Still, when I said fuck all the miracles, the Old Testament condemnations, what do you think about the Sermon on the Mount? We all agreed what Christ said was good. Then, we had another wee dram of port.
Jimminy
Sure .. but to Jews the book of jobs is no more holy than the “Guide to the Perpelexed.” Actually it is is afar less holy as it has no provenance. It is story, a tale .. no different then the legend of the King of KHazars or the writings of Joseph Smith.
I have never understood why this collection of literature that ws au current for reaons we no longer know in 200 BCE, should be of other than historic interest today.
As for El, Shaddai, Ashera, Baal, Shekinah … these were all current deities .. I guess some of them are still around and feeling abut slighted.
As the early Hebrews coalesced, there was likley an amalgamation of deities explaining the traces still in the Torah. That is a pretty common pattern even today … have you read about the Cargo Cult?
I think the real mystery is this, why did the Hebrews coalesce around Y?
My theory is that Y is Aton. After the expulsion, the Hyksos became the people of the northern Sinai and s me of them brought Ation with them. Their religion, fused with local religions, was the seed for Y as a sole deity.
This theory explains a lot of facts that I find perplexing?
If the Hyksos were so powerful as to rule Norther Egypt, how mcould they completely disappear?
If they were driven out, are they the seed of the Joseph/Moses stories?
Why does the Torah, Judges and Kings rarely refer to Egypt as a military threat even though we know that for much of that period Egypt occupied Canaan and the Egyptians describe their raids into the area? One answer may be that to the Egyptians the Hebrews were Hyksos and along with other dissidents it was natural for them to flee from the forward troops into the local mountains.
Those hills are where the earliest traces of Hebrews can be found. renegades, including Hyksos.
Steve @71,
If one may add a day later (and a dollar short?) the biggest flaw with Christianity in America is that the followers ignore the teaching of Jesus in favor of Paul. Maybe this is also true of global Christianity, your Kiwi friend would have more insight to that.
If Christianists would help the poor, attend to the sick, and throw the bankers out of the Temple, we would all be better off. But, they seem to have no knowledge of Jesus’ teachings.
The MegaChurch mentality is into “Prosperity”, forgetting all about the camel and the eye of the needle.
It’s no wonder why more and more people are atheists or are exploring alternatives.
@73 UJcricket
”
The “bankers” in the CB, were the legal moneychangers. They functioned in the forecourt of the Temple because this was a regulated place. Throwing the “bankers” out of the temple in the sense of the CB means … the Jews are evil money hogs, we (the people?) should throw them put.
Leaving antisemitism aside, the tea baggers and the extreme left come together on this one. “Down with wall street” is as much a fascist paean as it is the call of communists. The Sunday Times had the same appeal in an editorial telling us how all would be well if we replaced dollars with real money, gold! Who wold “own” the gold? The state? The top 1% of really really wealthy folks? God?
In a gesture that would have appalled — but not surprised — [Louis] Brandeis, officials from Citigroup reviewed [Gramm-Leach-Bliley, the 1999 legislation that killed Glass-Steagall] in advance, and Clinton’s treasury secretary, Robert Rubin, brokered the deal leading to the passage of the law while he was in secret negotiations to head Citigroup.
– Jeffrey Rosen, Why Brandeis Matters, TNR, 22 July 2010
@75: You’ll have a hard time finding anyone here who is a defender of Rubin et al, or Bill Clinton for that matter.