Madison Church of Christ Nashville: Background to Purpose Driven Church

By deliberately violating the mores, religious beliefs and worship practices of the rurals,

 

the urbans believed that they could hasten God. After all, didn't they say: "Let us sin that grace abound."

"The singing and dancing of the chorus of Bacchae, who stand for the Lydian women, is fundamentally an act of ritual, of worshipping the god.

 

This ritual of bacchic moderation is predicated on the myth of bacchic catastrophe.

 

Such a balance of moderation and catastrophe brings to life the theatre of Dionysos. See The Zoe Beast Image.

Those lusting for power over others says more about ourselves than we may want to be made public. We know of no ancient evidence which does not associate "musical or theatrical performance" as an ART to become attractive to the gods which is not performed by women or effeminate men. H. Bamford Parkes in Of God and Men notes:

'Certain members of a tribe, marked out either by unusual skills or by some emotional abnormality, ususally became particularly adept at these operations, and gradually assumed specialized functions.

Released from the duty of hunting,

and concentrating on the practice of magic, the shaman, sorcerer, or medicine man (priest) was the world's first professional." (Parkes, p. 29).

"The development both of religion and of the arts can be traced back in a continuous line to the hunting era. The group ritual of the primeval tribesmen were the origin not only of all religious ceremonial, but also of the drama and of poetry and music, while magic gave birth to the visual arts." (Parkes, p. 30).

"Awed by the mysteries of his own spirit no less than by those of nature, primitive man was likely to attribute to divine influence

 

any abnormal emotional state, whether above or below the usual level. Medicine men customarily went into states of trance in which they were believed to be in communication with the gods,

 

and many tribes supposed lunatics and sexual deviants to be divinely possessed.

Musical performance "as worship" has the universal testimony of history that the ancient Chaldean or Babylonian arts are being used to "call the gods into their temple" or to appease or even threaten the gods by a superior human talent. For the "audience" music has always been the most powerful drug-inducer to manipulate people into believing that the musicians have "helped move them into the presence of the gods."

The Encomiast--Sing The Core Literature

"The purpose underlying the core literature and its oral prototypes (songs) would seem to have been as much magical as aesthetic, or merely entertaining, in origin.

"In magic, words create and call into being what they state.

 

"The more vivid and expressive the words are, the more they are believed to be efficacious--so by its expressiveness literature forms a natural vehicle of such creativity.

 

"In ancient Mesopotamia its main purpose appears to have been the enhancement of what was seen as beneficial. With the sole exception of wisdom literature,

See the Praise Leader from Babylon.

See The Tulsa Workshop

"Awed by the mysteries of his own spirit no less than by those of nature, primitive man was likely to attribute to divine influence

any abnormal emotional state, whether above or below the usual level. Medicine men customarily went into states of trance in which they were believed to be in communication with the gods,

 

and many tribes supposed lunatics and sexual deviants to be divinely possessed.

 

In most early societies, moreover, men evolved techniques for deliberaly inducing the abnormal forms of consciousness in which they supposed themselves to achieve union with divine power, sometimes by the use of drugs and other physiological stimuli, sometimes by hypnotic dances and music.

 

The wild utterances to which they gave vent on such occasions were regarded as the words of a god and were interpreted as divine commands or predictions of future events." (Parkes, H. Bamford, Of God's and Men, p. 32-33).

While displaying one's body in public and performing music may seem, to our society, spiritual, in the Greek world males performing publically was viewed with contempt unless one was a seeker after their product. Among the more masculine part of the "audience" the high, elevated form of singing to replace quiet speaking is truly a will utterance which is vented only after self-love has allowed them to "mount" the podium. The emotional part of society will accept it as "worship." In the Words of Lucian of Samosata these are the "fat heads and simpletons" who can be suduced by a song and a flute.

"Among more sophisticated persons it was recognized that many of the prophets were merely lunatics and that their utterances were misleading; but the popular assumption of divine guidance was not readily abandoned." (Parkes, Henry Bamford, Gods and Men The Origins of Western Culture, p. 106, Knopf)

"Of particular interest is the way that early modern playwrights, music theorists, and theater apologists addressed this conflated language of the "enemy," by echoing the same connections between sexuality and playing found in the most virulent antitheatrical tracts.

"As this paper will demonstrate, by "playing" with the conflated language, these writers defended their art,

 

justifying their existence in a society that was both seduced and repulsed by them. By claiming the polemical antitheatrical language, these players escaped from the ideological margins to which their opponents had tried to relegate them.

 

Using the artifices of mimesis (imitation) and comedy they pointed out and

 

defused their opponents' anxieties about music, theater, and sexuality,

 creating a space for players in the cultural mainstream."

Thus, Lucifer (ZOE) is gender variant, was in the garden of Eden and as the kings/queens of Babylon and Tyre and the end-time worship (now) is called the "harp playing prostitute" wanting to be remembered as male but ENRAGING THE MALES because they know better.

Johannes Quasten. In Music and Worship in Pagan and Christian Antiquity, beginning on page 41:

"Philodemus considered it paradoxical that music should be regarded as veneration of the gods while musicians were paid for performing this so-called veneration. Again, Philodemus held as self deceptive the view that music mediated religious ecstasy.

He saw the entire condition induced by the noise of cymbals and tambourines as a disturbance of the spirit.

 

He found it significant that, on the whole, only women and effeminate men fell into this folly.

 

Accordingly, nothing of value could be attributed to music; it was no more than a slave of the sensation of pleasure, which satisfied much in the same way that food and drink did.

 

"Women and girls from the different ranks of society were proud to enter the service of the gods as singers and musicians. The understanding of this service was universal: these singers constituted the 'harem of the gods'." (End of Quasten)

When males fell into this it was not a sign of Seeker-Sucking power but of sexual deviation. Real or imagined, the males run for the hills because the "authority" Paul outlawed was "authentia" which is sexual authority "both erotic and murderous."

By attempting to "pipe and get Jesus to dance" and by hoping that John wore "soft clothing" there was a universal priestly lustful hope that Jesus might be Dionysus and would accomodate their effeminate lusts.

This is the meaning of the pictures above.