Mary and Joseph

A few classes ago, we had a discussion about Mary and Joseph. Mary was filled with the Holy Spirit to give birth to Jesus, the son of God. She became pregnant as she was engaged to Joseph. Joseph, who at first had no way of understanding Mary's pregnancy, was about to leave her because, to him, the situation strongly resembled a case of adultery. He was going to quietly leave her, which I found to be very interesting. Obviously, he probably wasn't too happy that his wife-to-be was pregnant with (what he thought) was someone else's child. From what I understand, adultery was treated with very harshly in the Bible. In the 10 Commandments, God even says "Thou shalt not commit adultery" and multiple times throughout the Bible different people are put to death because they have committed this crime. My question is why would Joseph want to quietly leave Mary? After a bit of online research, it seems that this was to show how noble and kind a man he was. Although (most likely) hurt by the fact his fiancee cheated on him, he was still willing to leave her and not have her punished  publicly for her actions. Was Joseph really doing something good for the sake of Mary, by not putting her to death, or was he only trying to help himself? It's embarrassing to have a spouse cheat on you, so was he trying to save himself the shame he might receive from his neighbors and his community? In my opinion, it was a mixture of a) not wanting to have Mary killed even though she "cheated" and b) to save himself the embarrassment. Thoughts?  

New Testament V Old Testament

I was curious about the difference(s) between the NT and the OT. In the OT, God creates the universe, humans, and later on he helps the Jews out of Egypt. He also explains the 10 Commandments. In the NT, I feel that almost all the focus shifts from Yahweh to His son, Jesus. In a big way, I feel as if Jesus takes the place of God, at least for this part of the Bible. Since Jesus is a human while also being son of God, he can connect with both the spiritual world and human world. I believe that Jesus is a vital part of the story because without him, it would have been difficult to convert people to believe in God. Also, Jesus' preachings were vital to both the story and the religion itself. My question is if Jesus was necessary for the connection between the human race and Yahweh. Assuming that Jesus never existed, would people not believe in God as many strongly do today? Could God have converted these people on His own or did He need a physical being to spread the word of His existence?

Is The New Testament surprisingly Confucian or what?

Last class, we talked about how the system of laws conveyed by Paul in Romans 13 were similar to the strict hierarchical structure of Plato's republic. I agree with this, and interestingly enough, these laws also reminded me of some major themes in The Analects (I know this is from a while ago, sorry) such as respect and honor. If I didn't know that "respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due"(Romans 13:7)  was from the New Testament, I would probably guess that Confucius said it. In the Old Testament, the only people who are worthy of honor seem to be Yaweh and one's parents: "honor your father and mother…"(Exodus 20:12), while The New Testament applies the concept of honor to government. Could this be part of what differentiated Judaism from Christianity? Also, any other thoughts about connections between the New Testament and The Analects?

Importance of Letters

After reading parts of the New Testament I thought about the importance of writing letters and their purpose. We discussed that in the Old Testament a great deal of value was placed on the spoken word, and how in the Peloponnesian War speeches were important and necessary. However, in the New Testament Paul wrote letters to specific communities, one group being the Galatians. His letters had a purpose and they addressed problems in the regions he traveled to. It is interesting to see how letters were important during a time when long distance communication was difficult. The letters were meant to instruct faith on the people and were a means of communication. I wonder if there is any significance to the practice of writing letters and if it affected the religion of Christianity. Traditionally, information was passed down through the word of mouth, but why do we see letters becoming a large part of the New Testament?

11/5 event

Synchronicity and Other Mind-Matter Conjectures

Harald Atmanspacher, Joseph Cambray, Edgar Choueiri, Farzad Mahootian

Moderator: Beverley Zabriskie

How are mind and matter related? In the mid-20th century, the psychiatrist and analyst Carl Gustav Jung and the Nobel Laureate physicist Wolfgang Pauli formulated the concept of synchronicity. They sought a philosophical answer to this still unsolved question of how the mental and material, the physical and psychological are related in time. Pauli and Jung’s thesis suggests two types of mind-matter correlations for synchronistic experiences in which meaning is crucial.

In this second roundtable on "The Pauli-Jung Conjecture.”, the physicist Harald Atmanspacher and the Jungian Analyst Joseph Cambray will further the April 2014 discussion at the Helix Center (video at www.thehelixcenter.org ). Edgar Choueiri and Farzad Mahootian will argue its central thesis, that the mental and the material are two complementary and intersecting aspects of one underlying reality. (more here)

Wednesday, November 5th, 8 pm  Alumni Hall, NYU Langone Medical Center,  550 First Avenue between 30th and 32nd St. New York, New York

This program is free and open to the public.  Pre-registration (here) is required.

For more information, consult the JPA website www.nyjung.org or contact Allison Tuzo at JPA@nyjung.org

Duty in Plato's Republic and the Modern City

We never got to discuss this part of the power point, and it was absolutely crucial to understanding the city/soul analogy presented in Book IV. As we already saw, happiness in a city can be achieved if everyone is playing their part and doing the jobs that their nature entails them to do. This is loosely defined as the virtue of justice, although even then we don't have a very specific definition. "...one man should practice one thing only, the thing to which his nature was best adapted;- now justice is this principle or a part of it.” (Plato 123) In light of this, is it fair to assume that this applies in the modern day? It's a bit separatist in terms of class. At the moment, we live in a world that is becoming more and more about money, and we're all kind of caught in this race to get rich or die trying. New York City, in particular, has been put under scrutiny as a place that is no longer somewhere to look for opportunities, but rather a place to settle once one has acquired unfathomable wealth. What does this tell us about duty and our jobs? Cities are well-oiled machines because everyone is doing what they are meant to be doing, but how does nature decide what one is meant to be doing: does this refer to us following our passions to live happy lives (thus creating happy cities) or staying in our lanes and doing what we each need to do depending on our social status and what money we have at our disposal?

-Eduardo R.