More on John 1:18 and the born god

The most recent recension of the Greek NT that I have is by Nestle. It adds an extensive critical apparatus to support its various readings.  So I got around to looking at the authorities given for "theos" in John 1:18. 

He gives only the available papyri plus the codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus.  He clearly regards any further readings  as superfluous.  And he is right.  Those two codices are generally regarded as the best authorities for the Greek NT that we have and the concurrence of the papyri is particularly impressive. They are the earliest texts we have.

So when the exegetes cavil about variant readings, they are not doing so on the best textual grounds but rather on  theological grounds.  There is no real doubt about what John actually wrote in verse 18: "Theos".

I should probably add here that I don't write to discourage Christian belief.  I write only to disparage acceptance of the absurd Trinity doctrine.  Up until the work of Athanasius in the 4th century, NO Christian believed in the Trinity doctrine.  It is a totally non-Biblical confection.  It was a useful theological compromise at the time it was adopted but it is nothing more

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Does John 1:1 contradict John 1:18?

ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.

(In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. KJV)

Oh boy! When you get into a discussion of the Gospel of John, you dive into complexities. John was clearly influenced by the mysterious style of the gnostic writers but at the same time made sure that what he said would not mislead a careful reader. He wrote very carefully and precisely.

So after my comments about verse 18, we inevitably get back to verse 1 (above). Does it not say there that Jesus was with God in the beginning and does it not say he is God? So how does that jibe with verse 18 where Jesus is said to be a born God? He was certainly born as a man but he was also born as a god, according to verse 18.

Both those claims about verse 1 turn, once again, on what the Greek actually says rather than conventional translations of it. The issue is anarthrous predicates -- i.e. what does it mean when the definite article is omitted? It is omitted both before "theos" and before "arche".

Omitting a definite article before a Greek noun is equivalent to our usage of the indefinite article. Greek does not have an indefinite article to indicate a class of things so where that is intended, "ho" (the) is simply omitted. An omitted definite article is significant.

The implication of that is that verse 1 should be translated to read "a beginning", not "the beginning" and "was God" should be rendered as "was a god". So verse 1 is in fact entirely consistent with verse 18. John was not confused. He was very precise. Jesus was NOT there in the beginning and he was NOT God

The exegetes know all that and try to wriggle out of it by saying it was a Greek custom to omit the definite artice where the noun is part of a predicate. That may be true of some writers but it clearly was not John's usage. No sooner than verse 4 of chapter 1 do we find John using a definite article in a predicate: τὸ φῶς

ἐν αὐτῶ ζωὴ ἦν, καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων·

The light was THE light of men. So the anarthrous predicate argument just will not wash. John really did say that Jesus was a god and that he existed in a beginning, which is perfectly consistent with him being a "born god"

Chapter 14 is another occasion where John's style of writing could mislead. He speaks there of Jesus being united with God. But in verse 28 he makes sure that he is not misunderstood. He emphasizes there that he is NOT God: "My father is greater than I"

My apologies to any mainstream Christians reading this. What I have said is inconsistent with your theology. But it is not me speaking. It is the apostle John

Update note: All 3 predicates mentioned are after the verb to be (een) so are entirely comparable

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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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How old was Adam and when did he live?

Tom Croucher has done a very scholarly analysis of the numbers used in Genesis. It is long and complex so I make no attempt to reproduce it here. I reproduce below just the Abstract and conclusion.

I have myself come to a similar but much less complex conclusion when I argued that the ages of Methuselah & co were a simple decimal mistake. I argued that the scribes of the original and much older text had misunderstood the numbers they saw and assumed that they were decimal when they were not. Decimal numbering has been around as long as people have had ten fingers so it was an understandable mistake. So if we move the decimal point one place we get more believable numbers. Methuselah lived only into his 90s. My article on that is below

http://jonjayray.com/methus.html

I am inclined to defer to Croucher on the matter but I note one difficulty in his account: He fails to consider the obvious different origins of Genesis chapter 1 and the rest of Genesis. Most of Genesis is consitent with the rest of the Torah in referring to God as Yahweh but Chapter 1 only refers to him as Elohim, a much later practice. So chapter 1 is an interpolation to the original text. Both chapter 1 and the other early chapters maybe of Sumerian origin but considering both as part of the same narrative is clearly fallacious. I do not doubt that chapter 1 is of Sumerian origin. Verses 6 and 7 clearly reflect Sumerian cosmology. I expand on that below:

https://ntwords.blogspot.com/2017/03/#8618250840934603253

I discuss WHY Chapter 1 was interpolated below:

http://jonjayray.com/why7.html

Finally, I think Croucher should simply delete from his account all mention of Chapter 1. That would not greatly harm his narrative


ABSTRACT
In the first two papers of this series, I developed the following propositions: Adam was not the first human, and he lived in Sumer, Southern Mesopotamia, in the period 3200 – 3000 BC. In this paper I use those conclusions to place the early chapters of Genesis in their Sumerian context and I propose that the original
written record of Adam was a Sumerian document where the ages that appear in Genesis 5 were recorded in a numbering system of that time, and this led to translation errors that result in the problematic ages of the patriarchs. I then propose a means of reverse-engineering the ages to the correct numbers when these
events were first recorded in Sumer. The conclusion is that Adam was 81 years old when he died.

CONCLUSION
The pre-Flood portion of the SKL uses simple statements to present a list of kings. While the list of names and places may be believed the lengths of the reigns are not believable.

However, the fact that every reign is a combination of multiples of 3,600 and 600, makes it easy to demonstrate how the misinterpretation may have occurred. When reverse-engineered the resulting reigns return to numbers consistent with human
lifespans.

From beginning to the end of the whole SKL there are three sections: the pre-Flood with lengthy number, the middle section showing a reduction in the numbers, and the final section showing reigns consistent with human lifespans.

The same thing happens in the Bible: the simple writing style of early Sumer in Genesis 1, 5, and 11; the pattern of reducing lifespans and longevity in Genesis 5 that can be reverse-engineered to produce normal human lifespans.

Therefore, I propose that Adam lived in the period 3200 – 3000 BC and that he probably lived to be 81 years old. This means that Adam lived at a time when the priests of Sumer were an elite class of people.Intelligent, well-educated, and highly trained, the priests developed both writing and mathematics — knowledge essential to manage their increasingly sophisticated society.

This knowledge helps establish the social, cultural and, most importantly, the religious context for Adam and leads to a different understanding of Genesis 1-5.

If this revised chronology does prove to be acceptable, then the propositions of the first two papers (that Adam was not the first human and that he lived 3200 – 3000 BC becomes a more certain proposition.

If the best explanation for the longevity in Genesis 5 is that they are the result of a misinterpretation of a numbering system from Shuruppak around 290 BC, then the record from Adam to Noah must be a Mesopotamian text written at that time. If that is the case, then the argument for the story being passed on as oral history is redundant. When a culture has a written record there is no need for oral history.

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5c3564ed9f877042a04d1883/t/65a25e0f9514521be20306d4/1705139728552/Q3+-+How+old+was+Adam.pdf

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Australia Day is a true celebration of the positive

And attacks on it are just Leftist poison. What it celebrates is to the benefit of ALL Australians, including Aborigines. Sad that the Left have stirred up a few Aborigines to protest about it. Leftists have a yen for destruction and destroying a holiday that was widely enjoyed is a triumph to them

Far from the beginning of oppression and slavery on an idyllic continent, the first Australia Day marked the arrival of things previously unknown but devoutly to be wished: the rule of law, liberal institutions, science, markets, and the sacred notion of individual equality in rights and dignity.

This is what makes it truly a day to be celebrated by all Australians, regardless of whether their citizenship ceremony was last night or whether their ancestry in this country stretches back tens of thousands of years.

January 26 is not the anniversary of Britain’s claim of possession over Australia nor of the actual arrival of the First Fleet. But it does commemorate the first flag raising on Sydney Harbour and thus appropriately marks the birth of modern Australia.

To all those arguing for a different date or angsting over whether we should feel pride or shame every January 26, I say name a date that’s more suitable; or better yet study the real history of our country before falling for the cultural Marxist claptrap that British settlement was a disaster, especially for Indigenous people.

Our continent was never going to remain forever the preserve of a few hundred clans of hunter-gatherers. That’s not to disrespect the achievement of the Aboriginal people who had survived, ingeniously, for hundreds of generations in an often harsh environment. But the instant modernity erupted into an ancient land, life was going to change, in the short term, sometimes for the worse, with new diseases and new conflicts; but soon, for the better, with new learning, new opportunities and new protections especially for women and children.

The best Indigenous leaders, such as Jacinta Price and Warren Mundine, recognise this. Looking at the harshness of local life at the time, and at the competing colonial records of France, Spain, Holland, Portugal and Belgium, it’s hard not to conclude that British settlement, for all its occasional blemishes, was more of a deliverance than a curse.

The British government instructed governor Arthur Phillip to “live in amity” with the native people. Phillip himself, when speared at Manly Cove, put it down to a misunderstanding rather than launch a punitive expedition. Under governor Lachlan Macquarie, schools were opened for Aboriginal people and some received land grants. Early land grants often specified that the rights of local people to hunt, fish and camp should be respected. In 1838, after the notorious Myall Creek massacre, white men were hanged for the murder of blacks. When in 1894 in South Australia the right both to vote and to stand for parliament was finally given to women, in what was a world first, that included Aboriginal women too. Hence this notion that the lives of Indigenous people were uniquely or even especially harsh in early colonial Australia is simply not borne out by the facts.

That’s why, as a nation, regardless of our individual ancestry, we really do need to get over the epidemic of breast-beating that every year marks the lead-up to Australia Day. This year, it wasn’t just ultra-woke Tennis Australia that planned a pride day, a disabilities day, and a so-called First Nations day at the Australian Open, but nothing to mark Australia Day; Cricket Australia (before backflipping) announced it would not acknowledge Australia Day as such, rather it would ­acknowledge on the day that January 26 meant “different things to different people”; and Woolworths announced that it would no longer stock Australia Day merchandise, even though it’s only too happy to celebrate other dates such as Ramadan and Diwali. Worthies such as cricket captain Pat Cummins (no stranger to left-wing causes) weighed in and criticised the date, even though there’s no consensus on a suitable alternative, history cannot be rewritten, and most of the change-the-date brigade don’t actually want the date changed, they actually want Australia Day abolished because of their fundamental objection with any non-Aboriginal settlers on this continent.

Of course, Aboriginal people have sometimes been treated harshly in this country: subjected to “protection” regimes, for instance; and denied a clear federal right to vote until 1962; but contemporary Australia has never been less racist and more colourblind (as our immigration intake plus the slight over-representation of Aboriginal people in the current parliament attests) and is certainly far less race-conscious than countries such as China and Japan. That’s why, when it’s not a noxious mixture of ignorance and virtue-signalling, the current disdain for Australia Day manifests an ideological dislike of our country and its people that should not be pandered to if we are to avoid something akin to a collective ­national identity crisis. If last year’s resounding defeat of the voice referendum meant anything, it was that Australians dislike being guilted about our history and reject being divided on the basis of ancestry. Yet instead of accepting that they’d grievously misread the national mood, pro-voice entities (such as Woolies, which gave the Yes campaign $1.5m of shareholder money, and Cricket Australia, which publicly advocated for a Yes vote) have doubled down on their politically correct virtue-signalling.

There’s no sign that, post-voice, the educational institutions encouraging pupils to write letters of contrition for Aboriginal dispossession or to apologise for their white privilege are rethinking the damage they’re doing to youth mental health or to our long-term national unity. Although Anthony Albanese has said that he accepted the people’s vote, his government is still pursuing separatist local and regional voices, treaties, and so-called “truth telling” to rewrite our history from an activist perspective. He says he supports Australia Day and will personally participate in Australia Day events but his government removed the previous insistence that local councils hold citizenship ceremonies on Australia Day, which some 81 green-left ones have now duly cancelled. While maybe not personally opposing Australia Day, he’s certainly eroding it; and while claiming to support it, he’s green-lit all those who don’t.

As well, he’s enshrined the practice of never appearing before an Australian flag without the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags alongside it (as if the flags of some of us are coequal with the flag of all of us); and he’s entrenched the practice of never beginning an official event or official speech without an acknowledgment of country (as if particular parts of Australia belong to some of us rather than to all of us).

There’s a real opening here for a political leader to commit to ending the angst over our national day by enshrining it in legislation that’s harder-than-usual to change or even to put it in the Constitution. And to promise to have just one flag for one people. This wouldn’t be engaging in culture wars; rather it would be ending them in a way that polls show the vast majority of Australians want. If Peter Dutton were to announce this, building on his decision to oppose the voice while it was still apparently popular, he would cement his position as the national leader the quiet Australians have long been seeking. A country where an angry mob shouts “gas the Jews”, while ­important institutions snub the national day, really has let itself down.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/australia-day-is-a-true-celebration-of-the-positive/news-story/03991f73b6bd95a725521d5155b9ba86

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Was Louis Scarcella a Robin Hood?

There have always been cases where people see some good in criminal behavour, with the case of Robin Hood being the classic of that. In modern times Chicago cop Jon Burge is perhaps the best example of that. I have written at some length about him previously. Chicago whites were a lot safer when Jon Burge was around.

https://dissectleft.blogspot.com/2018/12/jon-burge-gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz-and_27.html

The case below could also be an example of that. These days I interest myself in police misbehavior only when it occurs in Australia. Example below:

https://australian-politics.blogspot.com/2024/01/man-acquitted-of-murder-seeks-5.html

But in the 80s and 90s I looked more widely. I followed crooked convictions in the USA and UK too. Being now aged 80, however, I have to limit my ambitions a bit these days

And NYPD detective Louis Scarcella was one whose name kept popping up in my reading. And as I recollect it, Scarcella nearly always targeted blacks who had "form": They had prior criminal convictions, were gang-bangers or were drug dealers. When however they came to attention for something serious Scarcella would spring into action. If there was insufficient evidence to convict the presumed offender, Scarcella would make sure that evidence was provided, often in the form of forced confessions. The result was that a lot of dubious citizens got a long holiday in a government building

So was that good or bad? Mostly bad it seems to me but taking a lot of hoodlums off the street was surely a silver lining. They might or might not have not been guilty of what sent them to jail but they were rarely innocents either

Australia had a notorious crooked cop too: Roger Rogerson, who has just died. He too put a lot of bad guys away but eventually went too far. There is a memoir of him here:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12981943/roger-rogerson-aneurysm.html



A Brooklyn man who served 14 years behind bars for a murder he didn’t commit – in a case investigated by disgraced ex-NYPD Det. Louis Scarcella – had his conviction overturned Thursday, prosecutors said.

Steven Ruffin, 45, choked up in court as his 1996 manslaughter case was tossed by Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Matthew D’Emic following an investigation that found several serious errors — including that he was pressured into confessing to the crime after having denied it several times.

“I lost 14 years of my life for a crime I didn’t commit, and today will help me to move on from that chapter of my life, cleared of any wrongdoing,” Ruffin said in a statement.

In court, Ruffin thanked the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office and its Conviction Review Unit for the “incredible amount of work” it did in reviewing his decades-old case.

He paused to compose himself, overcome with emotion, as he thanked his parents, noting that his mother hadn’t lived to see her son’s exoneration.

Ruffin was just 18 when he was convicted of killing 16-year-old James Deligny, who was shot on Kingston Avenue in Crown Heights around 9:10 p.m. on Feb. 5, 1996 in a case of mistaken identity.

Deligny was apparently targeted after robbing Ruffin’s sister Diana, a college freshman, of her earrings, the DA’s Office said.

Ruffin’s sister told her family about the mugging and a manhunt was underway to find the robber. Several members of a group eventually encountered Deligny and his sister a few blocks from Ruffin’s home, where a fight ensued and Deligny was gunned down.

Scarcella interrogated Ruffin, then 17, twice where he denied being the shooter, prosecutors said.

Ruffin’s estranged dad, a cop, was brought to the precinct to convince his son to confess to the slaying, saying he shot Deligny four times, according to the Conviction Review Unit report.

He was released on parole in 2010.

It would take more than a decade after Ruffin was out of jail for prosecutors to reexamine the case and find several errors in the investigation.

“The fact that they actively looked into my case, took the application and the amount of resources that they put in to exonerate me, it, it—that is what staggers my mind,” Ruffin said. “If they would have never said a word about Scarcella, I would have never known because I live in Georgia.”

Deligny’s sister had testified that the shooter had a cracked tooth, like Ruffin.

According to the investigation, Ruffin’s defense attorney at the time, botched the case by failing to tell the jury that the boyfriend of Ruffin’s sister also had a cracked tooth.

The boyfriend confessed to multiple people that he was the one who killed Deligny, the investigation found.

“After a full investigation by my Conviction Review Unit, we can no longer stand by this old conviction and will move to give Mr. Ruffin his good name back,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said in a statement.

Ruffin’s exoneration marks the 18th case that has been overturned involving Scarcella, according to the Legal Aid Society.

“The fact that they actively looked into my case, took the application and the amount of resources that they put in to exonerate me, it, it—that is what staggers my mind,” Ruffin said. “If they would have never said a word about Scarcella, I would have never known because I live in Georgia.”

“We will continue to correct miscarriages of justice and to learn from the mistakes we uncover to ensure that they never happen again,” Gonzalez said.

https://nypost.com/2024/01/18/metro/brooklyn-man-exonerated-after-14-years-in-prison-in-another-cased-investigated-by-crooked-nypd-detective/

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The Greenland ice sheets are melting much, much more quickly than anticipated

Ho Hum!  As usual no mention of subsurface vulcanism. And the ice loss is mostly along the West coast, exactly where the subsurface  volcanoes are

The SIT, a most remarkable institution

Would you believe a fully accredited college situated at the end of the world that charges no fees, offers degrees up to doctoral level and is headquartered in a town of only 54,000 people? And it even has a respectable score in the world university rankings

Such is the Southern Instiutute of Technology, headquarterd in Invercargill, New Zealand. Invercargill is about as close as you can get to Antarctica and still live a normal life. As Invercargill is close to the sea, its temperatures are moderated somewhat, nothing like low Canadian extremes

I have family in town at the moment who live in Invercagill so that has sparked my interest in the SIT

The SIT has a number of campuses in addition to the one at Invercargill, notably one at Queenstown and a small tentacle at Christhurch. And all of them are "free" to NZ citizens. They also have around 2,000 overseas students who pay, but mostly not very much -- around $US15,000 per year. The overseas students come mainly from Indonesia and the Philippines, which are warm countries. Invercargil must be a shock

And the SIT has a rank of 400+ in the world university rankings. Not bad when you know that is out of about 11,000 colleges worldwide. The major NZ universities score around 200+ but none are up to the standard of its big neighbour. There are two Australian universities in the top 50 worldwide. I went to one.

The courses listed on the Invercargill campus offer a wide range of technical subjects plus some degree courses. You can become a degree-level nurse, teacher or accountant, for instance

You could certainly do worse than to take courses from SIT. They are fully recognized by the NZ accreditation authorities

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Muslim hate speech is ok

Under NSW hate speech law, Andrew Bolt was successfuly prosescuted for criticizing the claims of some people with white skin to be Aborigines. That was construed as "hate".

The speech below is virulent hate, not the simple comment that Bolt made. Yet it skates. How come? There appears to be special liberties for Muslims

NSW Police have dropped inquiries into a cleric who prayed to Allah to “kill them one by one” in reference to “Zionist Jews”, saying the comments did not breach state hate-speech protections.

On Tuesday, The Australian revealed that Sydney sheik Kamal Abu Mariam – who has ties with former All Black Sonny Bill Williams and former league star Anthony Mundine – gave a ­sermon at Roselands Mosque last year, in which he made the call during an Islamic prayer.

The Australian can also reveal, in that same sermon, the sheik described the virtues Allah would bestow on martyrs, and how those unable to fight in the Middle East could still “receive rewards”.

“Oh Allah … beat the (usurping) Zionist Jews,” the sheik said in Arabic, translated to English by The Australian.

“Oh Allah, we hope you count them and kill them one by one, and don’t keep any (one) of them … shake the ground under their feet … make an example of them.”

The sheik’s comments appeared to be referring to “Zionist Jews” in Israel, as opposed to those in Australia – although a well-placed legal source said that distinction “should be irrelevant”.

On Wednesday, a NSW Police spokeswoman said the force could not pursue the matter further. “As a part of the investigation, the content of the (sermon) video was reviewed and it was ascertained that it did not meet the threshold of any criminal offence,” she said.

Section 93Z of the NSW criminal code, which outlaws incitements of violence on the basis of race or religion, was recently strengthened by the government, which removed the requirement for police to seek approval before laying charges.

Williams and Mundine have said they helped donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to help fund a new mosque “spearheaded” by the sheik and, in 2018, the ­former All Black called the ­religious leader his “spiritual ­guider” in a post to Twitter, now called X.

During the sermon, in English, Sheik Abu Mariam also cited the Hadith and referenced what Allah bestowed upon martyrs.

“He (a martyr) will be forgiven with the first drop of blood that comes (from) him,” he said. “He will see his place in paradise … given a crown upon his head.”

The sheik warned the audience there were “consequences for those who laze around”. “He who does not fight for the cause of Allah, nor speaks within himself about fighting the cause … he dies on a branch of hypocrisy,” he said, acknowledging that those he was preaching to would struggle to fight to become a martyr.

“We might not be able to do the first (fight for Allah), due to the ­circumstances and where we live,” he said.

The sheik said Muslims who boycotted Israeli-linked products would still receive “rewards”.

Federal opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson said if the state government failed to act “it was time the federal government did”.

“There are anti-incitement provisions in the Commonwealth Criminal Code for this purpose,” the senator said, citing section 80.2A, which outlaws urging violence against a group on the basis of religion or race.

“If they are not used now it makes a mockery of the law and will only lead to more hateful ­conduct with devastating consequences.”

Visiting Australian National University constitutional law professor Matt Qvortrup, when provided with Sheik Abu Mariam’s comments, said that the rhetoric would be prosecuted in the UK. “I don’t see how it wouldn’t (breach British legislation),” he said. “Naming a group and (saying Allah) should kill them – that would have fallen foul of UK laws.”

Premier Chris Minns said he would change existing laws if they proved inoperable.

“We are not averse to changing the laws around hate speech if we don’t believe that they are capturing the kind of inflammatory and racist rhetoric that’s designed to pull people apart,” he said.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/nsw-police-drop-inquiries-into-kill-them-one-by-one-sydney-cleric/news-story/2fbbb341cb36980c577db544855f0ad1

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The collapse of conservatism

James Allan below writes well but takes insufficient notice of the fact that conservative policies have always undergone a lot of change. Consistency in answer to the question "What is a conservative?" will always be hard to find over the long run.  That is because ALL politicians have to react to changes in the world  about them and changes in reality will often require changing policies.