Jesus was a born God (μονογενὴς θεὸς )

That's what it says in the original Greek of John 1:18.

θεὸν οὐδεὶς ἑώρακεν πώποτε· μονογενὴς θεὸς ὁ ὢν εἰς τὸν κόλπον τοῦ πατρὸς ἐκεῖνος ἐξηγήσατο.

(No man hath seen God at any time, the *only begotten Son*, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. KJV)

Mainstream Christianity embraces the Athanasian trinity doctrine that identifies Jesus as God. The doctrine is rather confusing but it clearly identifies Jesus as eternal. That has always seemed nuts to me. Jesus prayed to God he was not God himself.

So I have come across something that is great fun indeed: The usage of "monogenēs theos" in the original Greek of John 1:18. See above. A single-born god! Is that not clear enough that Jesus was created, despite having divine attributes?

The KJV (see above) translates "μονογενὴς θεὸς" as "only begotten son" in that passage. And the Griesbach recension of the Greek has that usage too "monogenes huios", begotten son. So I was unaware that both Westcott & Hort and Nestle recensions give "monogenēs theos". "theos" must be better attested than "huios" in the early MSS. Westcott & Hort above.

So in the light of the best modern recensions of the original Greek text, the translation "only begotten son" is absurd. The original text says "single-born GOD" -- μονογενὴς θεὸς. Jesus was a god but not THE god. That's what it says. He was in the bosom of THE god: In the bosom of τοῦ πατρὸς (THE father)

Huge fun however is the way most modern translations render "monogenēs theos". They either miss out "monogenes" entirely or say simply "only". And some stick with "son", despite that not being in the best renderings of the original Greek text. Though the NIV has the grace to put "son" in brackets! It is obviously a hugely embarrassing passage to them. Embarrassing enough for them to mistranslate it deliberately. They are just incapable of saying that Christ was both "genes", "born", "conceived" (perhaps "generated" in modern terms) but also a "theos", a god! "A born God". Let those words sink in.

I suppose trinitarians will waffle their way around that, as they usually do, but there is nothing unclear or mysterious in the original text. If the text had said a born son, it could have meant Christ's incarnation. But it does not. It was not a man that was born. It was a God.

Needless to say, the theologians and exegetes have gone wild trying to tell us that the text does not mean what it says. They say that μονογενὴς (monogenes) just refers to a particular person etc. And they then give a pile of excerpts from classical and Biblical Greek in support of that. They also quote Liddell & Scott's definitions in support of their claims. But all the examples they give are in fact of naturally born people and people identified by their particular birth. Putting it another way, Greeks would on occasions refer to people as "borns", for various reasons. But born still meant born.

But let's leave the μονο aside and just look at γενὴς. They won't like Liddell & Scott's first definition of "genea", which is "of the persons in a family". Not the mystical persons of the trinity but the individual persons of a normal family. And let us look at a word we all know: "Genesis". It's exactly the same word in Greek and English and it's a form of γενὴς. And we know what it refers to, don't we? A beginning. So Christ was a god who had a beginning, a birth.

I would have been burnt at the stake for saying that at times in the past. But it is not me speaking. It is John 1:18.

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Feminist movie bombs at the Oscars

By KENNEDY

Dirty blonde man meat Ryan Gosling, who played Ken in the summer blockbuster Barbie, is outraged that the Oscars have snubbed his co-star and director.

Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie weren't nominated for Best Director or Best Actress.

The horror!

What's more, the Academy tapped Gosling for best-supporting actor, which – in accordance with Barbie code of honor – compelled him to undergo ritual self-flagellation.

'There is no Ken without Barbie, and there is no Barbie movie without Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie…' he said in a breathless statement rushed out to the media.

Well, that's true of a lot of movies, Ryan. You also need cameramen and caterers! Do they deserve a golden statue?

It's difficult to imagine how Gosling's 'everyone gets a prize' standard would work in practice. But what else should we expect from a plastic man with no genitals?

You can almost hear the baby goose's insufferable blubbering, which is, of course, wholly disingenuous unless he withdraws his name from consideration.

You want to overthrow the patriarchy, boy? Keep yo' name out of Academy voters' mouths, hero!

But perhaps the juiciest, most satisfying irony of all of this is that the helpless, idiot boy doll got the award - while the proud, brave Barbie girls got nothing.

And I thought only The Handmaid's Tale was a true story.

The vicious global cabal of misogynist film critics has triumphed yet again!

Oh please, I can't stop laughing.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/usshowbiz/article-13002905/barbie-oscars-ryan-gosling-margot-robbie-kennedy.html

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No policy consequences are ‘unintended’

Whenever government intervention in the private sector is ineffective — and especially when it is counterproductive — commentators frequently express surprise and excuse the consequences as unintentional or unanticipated.

Do rent controls shrink the supply of apartments, degrade housing as landlords skimp on amenities and maintenance expenses and cause them to charge extra for keys and parking spaces?

Do minimum-wage laws lessen job openings for low-skilled workers, and prompt employers to reduce the number of paid hours, substitute machines for labor, reduce nonwage benefits and cut off the bottom rungs of career ladders, propping up union wage scales?

Did business lockdowns, stay-at-home orders and school closures during the protracted COVID-19 pandemic produce widespread economic hardship, inflict lifelong learning losses on K12 students and raise morbidity and mortality as people deferred routine health care screening and elective surgeries?

Do offering needle exchanges and subsidizing housing for the homeless unconditioned on behavioral changes encourage homelessness?

Don’t blame us for those unhappy outcomes, many politicians and policymakers say. Our intentions were good. Blame the “greedy” capitalists or the wreckers bent on undermining constructive social welfare goals.

Voters should be skeptical of such self-serving rhetoric. They should rely instead on the evidence of governmental failure before their own eyes.

In a 1975 “supplementary note” to his seminal and widely cited 1971 article on the theory of economic regulation, Nobel-laureate George Stigler challenged the conventional wisdom that the problematic effects of many public policies can be excused by policymakers’ ignorance, the time pressures under which they operate or inadequate budgets.

Relying on the evidence he assembled, sometimes with Claire Friedland, on many federal alphabet agencies, Stigler showed that regulations often benefited the regulated companies rather than their customers. Proposing what has since been called the “capture theory,” Stigler advised students of regulatory processes “to look, as precisely and carefully as [they] can, at who gains and who loses, and how much,” rather than accepting political posturing at face value.

More provocatively, in seeking to explain why a regulatory policy persists, especially in the face of evidence that its real effects are “unrelated or perversely related” to its announced goals, Stigler argued that “the truly intended effects should be deduced from the actual effects.”

Mistakes of course are possible, but for longstanding, widely adopted policies “it is fruitful to assume that the real effects were known and desired.”

“[A]n explanation of a policy in terms of error or confusion is no explanation at all — anything and everything is compatible with that ‘explanation,’” he continued.

Stigler’s plea for looking beyond politicians’ and policymakers’ attempts to justify interventions as byproducts of their good intentions (and to excuse their frequent policy failures) echoes Frédéric Bastiat’s distinction between “good” and “bad” economists.

In laying out his famous fallacy of the broken window, Bastiat (1801–1850) emphasized that bad economists grasp only the immediate effects of a public policy, or, “that which is seen,” whereas good economists anticipate the sometimes-fatal second- or third-order consequences, “that which is unseen.”

Because the “science” underpinning public policy always is provisional, and necessarily is filtered through and often deformed by political processes, ordinary people must be wary of governmental “experts” and perhaps those affiliated with elite institutions of higher education. Small numbers of good economists and public health professionals warned of the readily foreseen social costs of the harmful information propagated by government officials and the draconian policies they advised during the COVID-19 era.

As Stigler and Bastiat taught, the regulatory costs imposed on the rest of us were not mistaken; nor were they inadvertent. The problem those two good economists identified goes much deeper than the identities of the politicians and bureaucrats who oversee public policies. Institutional reforms are required to change the incentives officials face, to reduce their powers and to constrain their behaviors.

Admitting and apologizing for past policy “blunders” would be a good place to start. Demanding that Congress and the administrative state objectively review the rules and policies they adopt (now very rare) would be even better.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/4418230-no-policy-consequences-are-unintended/

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Stunning revolt underway in Australia against political, corporate garbage policies

Robert Gottliebsen

Something very different is happening in Australia, and it has caught many political and corporate leaders on the wrong foot. Two of the leaders caught by this change, Anthony Albanese and Woolworths chief executive Brad Banducci, may have woken up that they had missed the change.

This week we saw remarkable events emerging to underline the drama taking place below the surface as leaders grapple with the 2024 Australia which different to what they had expected.

In my arena I decided to collect 12 key policies of Donald Trump simply to explain to readers, including myself, what was happening below the public Trump bluster and court battles. I made a minimum of comments on those Trump polices which cover issues like migration, crime, gender, buying a house, tax cuts, tariffs, local manufacturing and of course lower energy costs as the carbon debate is turned on its head.

To my astonishment, it sparked a reader frenzy. While the drawbacks of Trump were clearly expressed, the majority of readers embraced his policies with enthusiasm and urged Peter Dutton to copy them. And, of course, none of the Trump policies involved Indigenous Australians or Australia Day. Some invited Trump to come to Australia. They wanted clear policies and leadership.

A special Roy Morgan opinion Poll, shows a majority of Australians (68.5 per cent) now say we should keep celebrating Australia Day – up 4.5 per cent from a year ago — and the date should remain at January 26 (58.5 per cent)

As the largest supermarket retailer, the Morgan poll conclusions represented Woolworths’ customers at a time when a large number of those customers are angry at supermarket prices. Clearly, Woolworths executives had lost touch with their customer base.

Wisely, Banducci took out full page advertisements that in my view represented: a “correction” and of course used all the other media channels to convey the same message.

It was classic damage control.

Then, in a most surprising decision, the Prime Minister announced that Kim Williams would be the new chair of the ABC.

Like Woolworths, the ABC had not realised the fundamental change taking place in its customer base.

I know and respect many ABC journalists, and I am not into ABC bashing. But rightly or wrongly, a big segment of its audience took the view that it was biased and they turned away. (The danger Woolworth faced).

Williams is one of the most forceful media executives in the land and when he says that he wants to restore the ABC reputation for unbiased credibility, and then he will do it. And if necessary, he will do it forcibly.

Albanese must have realised that appointing Williams as the ABC chair will mean that he and his ministers will face a lot more encounters, like the clash between the ABC’s Michael Rowland and the Prime Minister over the tax cut “promise”.

It is just possible the ABC will point out to its audience that the industrial relations bill before the Senate provides a smokescreen for an attack on mortgage and rent stressed people which, if passed, will offset the benefits they will receive via the tax cuts.

It's not an issue Albanese wants highlighted.

As my readers know Albanese by making employing casuals too complex with big fines for mistakes, he effectively stops casual employment which, if legislated, would deliver a 25 per cent cut in take home cash for those who desperately need it. And the smokescreen also extends to an unprecedented attack on the main employer of those under rent and mortgage stress, family business and greatly damages the gig economy which those under stress use to find second jobs to cover their payments.

Williams will demand that both sides of all events — not just the tax cuts and Aborigines – be fairly set out for the ABC customer base which, like the Woolworths customer base, represents the entire nation.

Commercial media needs to watch out because under Williams they face a very different ABC. But we must acknowledge that the Albanese made a decision to “rescue” the ABC in the full knowledge, but it could adversely impact portrayal of the government’s policy stances and will create unhappiness in some sectors of the ABC staff.

For Dutton issues like Australia Day and tax cuts are relatively straightforward but in watching my readers embrace Trump’s wider policy spectrum it became clear that the silent majority that turned their back on the ABC and expressed their views so clearly in the referendum and the Morgan poll have a much wider set of views which differ markedly from the views of sections of the government and large corporations.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/stunning-revolt-back-against-political-corporate-garbage/news-story/e5a6de05eb31e99c47f5a16c41cc9472

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

<> http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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