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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   7012 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 2, 2026

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Given Jews' own gloating about how good they are about "tricking God" and rules-lawyering their way out of following His laws, the latter actually does seem far more likely to me.

They follow their God well. There is an apocryphal story about the harrowing of Hades which IIRC was preached by Marcion -- When Jesus enters the Egyptians and other pagans run to him and are rescued; Moses and Abraham suspect a trick from Yahweh and remained until Jesus left. They remain there to this day.

"Salvation will be the attainment only of those souls which had learned his doctrine; while the body, as having been taken from the earth, is incapable of sharing in salvation. In addition to his blasphemy against God Himself, he advanced this also, truly speaking as with the mouth of the devil, and saying all things in direct opposition to the truth, — that Cain, and those like him, and the Sodomites, and the Egyptians, and others like them, and, in fine, all the nations who walked in all sorts of abomination, were saved by the Lord, on His descending into Hades, and on their running unto Him, and that they welcomed Him into their kingdom. But the serpent which was in Marcion declared that Abel, and Enoch, and Noah, and those other righteous men who sprang from the patriarch Abraham, with all the prophets, and those who were pleasing to God, did not partake in salvation. For since these men, he says, knew that their God was constantly tempting them, so now they suspected that He was tempting them, and did not run to Jesus, or believe His announcement: and for this reason he declared that their souls remained in Hades."

— Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.27.3 (ANF 1, trans. Roberts & Rambaut)

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