The Early Church agreed with me on Soul Sleep

1 Clement casually refers to the dead as Asleep just like the New Testament.  Polycarp’s Epistle to the Philippians makes no reference to any After Life, only the promise of Resurrection, same with the Rule of Faith and Old Roman Symbol.  

Justin Martyr in Dialogue with Trypho 80:9 says that those who teach you to go to Heaven when you Die and deny the Bodily Resurrection are not Christians.  Defenders of the Intermediate State insist the point of this is only the later and the former is only wrong when it’s paired with the later. But to me the point is that they innately go together.

There are two Justin Quotes they then cite as in support of the Intermediate State, both are also from Dialogue with Trypho, one in chapter 5 and the other in chapter 6.  In both cases it is the other person not Justin himself talking, but still someone who is almost right just getting his Soul/Spirit distinction terminology off.  The Spirit Returns to God when the Body dies, but the Soul or Psyche in Greek is where Conciseness lies and is only awake when Body and Spirit are united. 

I think chapter 5 is using the word “place” in an abstract sense.  The righteous may be sleeping soundly then the unrighteous but both are still asleep.  The title of chapter 5 is “the Soul is not in itself immortal”.

What Justin says in response critiques the Platonism of their perspective.

Then chapter 18 and 20 of the First Apology are quoted.  Chapter 18 is about him reminding the Pagans and Philosophers reading what they already believe.  And in Chapter 20 all he conceded Christian belief to have in common with that is the word “sensation”.  In neither of these is explaining the Christian view of the Afterlife the objective  Again my view is that the Soul is Asleep not Dead.

Tatian who was influenced by Justin but also became heavily Platonized still held to the Soul not being Immortal. In Address to the Greek Chapter XIII even the Souls of believers are Dissolved until the Resurrection.

Athenogaras in On The Resurrection Chapter XVI lays out a Soul Sleep view quite clearly.

Now I’ve seen Athenogaros quoted in support of Soul Sleep using A Plea for The Christians chapter 31.   On The Resurrection is what he wrote specifically to clarify what he saw as the Christians on these issues, this apology written to a Pagan Audience naturally runs a greater risk of being misunderstood.

Yet still he speaks only of living a better life after this one, and calls it Heavenly not located in Heaven.  He says we will be near God because that’s what New Jerusalem will be.  

Marcu Minucius Felix in a dialogue titled Octavius Chapter XXXIV  presents Soul Sleep as the presumed common opinion of all Christians.

The first version of an intermediate state to emerge among Christians wasn’t about anyone going to “Heaven” but about Abraham’s Bosom being part of or right next to Hades deep inside the Earth.  This is the more logical conclusion to draw about Abraham’s Bosom when you take the Luke 16 Parable literally.  

We see this in Irenaeus Against Heresies 5.31.2 and the Discourse to the Greek Concerning Hades often attributed to Hippolytus.  Tertullian mostly followed them but had only the Martyrs go right to Heaven when they died.  Even Origen, the first real enemy of Soul Sleep, had to admit that Biblically Paradise is located within the Universe not outside of it, even Garden being moved to the ‘Third Heaven”  traditions would have still originally mean within the Universe, Heaven just meant the Sky and Outer Space to the Ancients.

The people who kept believing in Soul Sleep while the Greek and Latin Churches started moving away from it were various Semitic Christians.  It was Arab Christians Origen went after.  And then Aramaic Christians continued to teach Soul Sleep into the 4th and 5th Centuries like Apharat, Ephrem and Narsai.

Baptists are the most Ironically named type of Christian

I often get the sense that Secular people who don’t fully get internal Christian disagreement assume those called Baptists must be the ones with the most extreme views on Baptism.  But actually the difference in how Baptism is practiced by Baptists and before them Anabaptists that caused others to call them by those names is directly a result of seeing Water Baptism as not metaphysically important.

To a large extent what they actually see as most important is the belief in Separation of Church and State and the autonomy of the Local Congregation.  Now those are values they nominally share with Congregationalists, but there is a perception that this was watered down in the Congregationalists when they started wielding actual state power during the English Revolution and in the New England colonies.

I’m not a Landmark Baptist in the strictest sense, I certainly don’t think there needs to be an unbroken continuity of Believers Baptisms or “True Churches” going back to the Apostles.  And I disagree with Novatianism and Donatism.  But I do believe people who informally practiced Low Church Congregational Polity worship in defiance of the mainstream Church and State Authorities have always existed to some extent, sometimes they were also correct on Baptism and sometimes they weren’t.

The first Church was the Jerusalem Church, Eusebius' list of supposed Monepiscpal Bishops of Jerusalem up to the Bar Kokhba revolt is 15, 15 is barely over 100 years and when the first two he definitely has spanned all of the First Century AD. He’s clearly trying to impose Episcopal Polity onto a Church that didn’t have. I think all of the last half of that list were people still alive when Hadrian banned Jews from the City. 

Epiphanius of Salamis conceded the Nazarenes of Aleppo and Bashan descended from that Jerusalem Church even though he was critical of their practices.  These Nazarenes were certainly Credo-Baptists given they continued the practice of Infant Circumcision.

Philadelphia has no traditional list of Bishops till Nicaea.  For Caesarea after attempting to identify a Biblical figure as its first Bishop Eusebius has no one till Theophilus in 189, and that’s when talking about his own Bishopric.

I talked about the origins of the Waldenses in the Smyrna post on my new Prophecy Blog

And I have a post on the evidence that some of the Brythonic Christians (particularly near Wessex) were Baptists. For possible continuity between them and 17th Century Congregationalists and Baptists in England and America look into this list of names. 

Lollardy

Walter Brute

John Clanvowe

John Badby

John Oldcastle

Hawise Mone

Thomas Harding

William Tyndale

Puritans

John Penry

William Wroth

William Thomas

Walter Cradock

Vavasor Powell

William Erbery

William Kiffin

Olchon

Howell Vaughn

Thomas Perry

John Reese Howell

William Vaughan among the first Baptists of Newport Rhode Island

Thomas Dungan a student of William Vaughan founded first Baptist Church in Pennsylvania

Elias Keach Baptized by Thomas Dungan

Midland Connections

Edward Wightman of Burton upon Trent near Shrewsbury

Ezekiel Holliman of Hertfordshire who Baptized Roger Williams

Daniel Wightman of the Second Baptist Church of Newport Rhode Island

George Wightman grandson of Edward immigrated to North Kingston Rhode Island in 1660

Stephen Mumford and his wife Anne of Tewkesbury immigrated to Newport Rhode Island in 1664 and founded the first Seventh Day Baptist Church in America

Valentine Wightman son of George first Pastor of a Baptist Church in Connecticut 

Wait Palmer baptized and ordained by Valentine Wightman

Shubal Stearns baptized and ordained in 1751 by Palmer in Connecticut

Quaker

Dorcas Erbery

Infant Baptism wasn't practiced by the Very Early Church.

The Didache is often considered the earliest Extra Biblical Writing.  Chapter 7 is its instructions for Baptism.

“Chapter 7. Concerning Baptism. And concerning baptism, baptize this way: Having first said all these things, baptize into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, in living water. But if you have no living water, baptize into other water; and if you cannot do so in cold water, do so in warm. But if you have neither, pour out water three times upon the head into the name of Father and Son and Holy Spirit. But before the baptism let the baptizer fast, and the baptized, and whoever else can; but you shall order the baptized to fast one or two days before.”

And we also see a description of how Baptism works in Justin Martyr’s First Apology chapter 61.

“I will also relate the manner in which we dedicated ourselves to God when we had been made new through Christ; lest, if we omit this, we seem to be unfair in the explanation we are making. As many as are persuaded and believe that what we teach and say is true, and undertake to be able to live accordingly, are instructed to pray and to entreat God with fasting, for the remission of their sins that are past, we praying and fasting with them. Then they are brought by us where there is water, and are regenerated in the same manner in which we were ourselves regenerated. For, in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, they then receive the washing with water. For Christ also said, Unless you be born again, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. John 3:5 Now, that it is impossible for those who have once been born to enter into their mothers' wombs, is manifest to all. And how those who have sinned and repent shall escape their sins, is declared by Esaias the prophet, as I wrote above; he thus speaks: Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from your souls; learn to do well; judge the fatherless, and plead for the widow: and come and let us reason together, says the Lord. And though your sins be as scarlet, I will make them white like wool; and though they be as crimson, I will make them white as snow. But if you refuse and rebel, the sword shall devour you: for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it. Isaiah 1:16-20

And for this [rite] we have learned from the apostles this reason. Since at our birth we were born without our own knowledge or choice, by our parents coming together, and were brought up in bad habits and wicked training; in order that we may not remain the children of necessity and of ignorance, but may become the children of choice and knowledge, and may obtain in the water the remission of sins formerly committed, there is pronounced over him who chooses to be born again, and has repented of his sins, the name of God the Father and Lord of the universe; he who leads to the laver the person that is to be washed calling him by this name alone. For no one can utter the name of the ineffable God; and if any one dare to say that there is a name, he raves with a hopeless madness. And this washing is called illumination, because they who learn these things are illuminated in their understandings. And in the name of Jesus Christ, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and in the name of the Holy Ghost, who through the prophets foretold all things about Jesus, he who is illuminated is washed.”

In both cases clearly only Baptism of Adults are being described.  If Infant Baptism already existed then some distinctions for how that would obviously work differently would need to be made.  But none of these instructions would need to be different for Adults raised in the Faith after reaching a certain rather than Converts.

Pedo-Baptists try to infer Infant Baptism in various things said by Irenaeus or the Martyrdom of Polycarp or the Shepherd of Hermas but they are all things with other explanations.  

Largely they are tied assumptions about Water Baptism that Credo-Baptists dispute, but I do think those eros actually came first and Infant Baptism is the symptom.  Treating every Biblical reference to Baptism as about Water Baptism when the most important are not about that.  And misunderstanding Colossians as saying Circumcision replaces Baptism when in fact Paul's point is that for both the physical ritual is merely a symbol.

The earliest provable unambiguous references to Infant Baptism are in the Third Century, Tertullian and Origen, then Cyprian the first to really stress it as obligatory.

I agree that the Novatians were Credo-Baptists even though I disagree with them on their defining doctrine, but not the Donatists.

At least some of the Britons were still Credo-Baptists as late as the early 7th Century.

Chie Oneesama, Personified Wisdom

The Book of Proverbs particularly Chapter 8, Matthew 11:19 and Luke 7:35 are the primary Biblical Basis for the concept of a Divine Personified Wisdom.  Both the Hebrew Chokmah and the Greek Sophia are grammatically Feminine hence personified Wisdom being often depicted as a Feminine Human.

Proverbs 7:4 tells us to call Wisdom our Sister.  The two Jesus quotes refer to Believers as children of Wisdom which some use to instead make Sophia a Mother figure.  But the word for Children used there is not the standard Greek word for Son or Daughter or the word for Offspring used in Acts 17, it’s much more vague about the actual familial relationship being implied and often doesn’t inherently imply one at al being just the basic Greek word for child, but it does here due to the possessive pronouns.  It would not be inappropriate in my view for referring to the younger siblings of an older sister.

Chie is a grammatically Feminine Japanese word for Wisdom and Oneesama is the most prestigious of words one would use to address an older sister.  In Anime it’s most often used in a Class S context, as in not a biological relative but a term of endearment for a Senpai you particularly admire.  Hence my Weebified title for this post.

The main internal debate within Christianity about Wisdom is if this title refers to The Holy Spirit or Jesus, Jesus eventually became the mainstream assumption hence bad Septuagint translations of certain Proverbs 8 verses being used to justify a Pre-Incarnate begetting of The Logos before the Creation of the Cosmos.  But one of the first Extra-Biblical expressions of The Trinity was Theophilus of Antioch defining it as The Father, The Logos and Sophia.  Also both Theophilus and Irenaeus seme to identify the Holy Spirit with Sophia in how they interpret Psalm 33:6.

Previously on this Blog I strongly favored The Holy Spirit view, but I don’t think it actually matters that much and Theophilus of Antioch is someone I have mixed opinions on.  So I want to look into it deeper.

First I want make clear that The Holy Spirit has a Feminine aspect whether they’re Wisdom or not The Hebrew word for Spirit is also Grammatically Feminine, the Greek word is technically Gender Neutral but by ending with an A sound it leans towards sounding Feminine especially to Semitic Language trained ears.

The Holy Spirit's Feminine references are so well known that some some think she's only ever Feminine but the title of Parakletos is Masculine.

Jesus also has a Feminine side whether He is Wisdom or not.  He is the Desire of Nations of Haggai 2:7 which is Feminine in the Hebrew.  The Sun of Righteousness of Malachi 4:2 is also a grammatically feminine title in The Hebrew.   And I have argued Shulamith is a type of Jesus not The Church in the Song of Songs.  Also Jesus is called The Image of God which Genesis 1:27 and 5:1-2 define as both Male and Female.  Also a prominent Hebrew word for Salvation is the Feminine form of the name Yeshua.  Luke 2:21 does clearly tell us Jesus’s Incarnate Body (Which He still has) was Assigned Male at Birth, but his Identity is both Male and Female.

The main argument against Jesus being Wisdom would be those quotes I mentioned at the start where He refers to Wisdom in the third person.  But there are other times where He refers to a Title or Aspect of Himself in the Third Person, like all the Son of Man verses.

The verses cited to prove Jesus is Wisdom are 1 Corinthians 1:24 and 30 and 1 Corinthians 2:7 (or the entirety of 1 Corinthians 1:17-2:13) and Colossians 2:3, from what I've found so far at least.  However I don’t get that sense that the Proverbs 8 Personified Wisdom is the point of any of those, in Context Paul is using the word Wisdom explicitly in relation to Greek Philosophy, which it may surprise you to elan didn’t really have a Divine Personified Wisdom concept yet, not in Platonism or Stoicism and certainly not Epicureanism, the Gnostics got that from their Judeo-Christian sources.

It’s also important to remember that the Incarnate Jesus was the Vessel of The Holy Spirit while he walked the Earth and is who sent the Comforter which Proceeds from The Father to us at Pentecost.  So aspects of The Holy Spirit can be said to come from Jesus or be manifested in Jesus.

A lot of my past argument for supporting the Holy Spirit view was verses from The Pentateuch and Isaiah 11:2 that speaks of there being a Spirit of Wisdom and making the Spirit of YHWH the source of Wisdom.  The Pentateuch verses are Exodus 28:3, 31:3, 35:31 and Deuteronomy 34:9. 

However it’s important to remember that God as a whole is Spirit (Spirit in the 1st Century did not mean Immaterial) as shown by John 4:24.  In fact Isaiah 11:2 can be interpreted as a Trinitarian Formula calling each person of The Trinity a Spirit of YHWH.  

But I do think the Spirit of YHWH with a Definite Article typically refers to the Third Person of the Trinity and Revelation 1:4 and 4:5 seem to imply The Holy Spirit has a further Sevenfold division only three of which were singled out in Isaiah.  And Isaiah 11:2 listed the Spirit of Wisdom and Understanding first rather than second or third.

So that leads me to still favoring the Holy Spirit view, but it is ultimately unclear. 

The Sign of The Son of Man

So I recently encountered a Full Preterist arguing that because Jesus called his Resurrection a Sign in Matthew 16:1-4 the General Resurrection isn’t materially the same because it’s not a Sign of something else.

This is one of those arguments I find kind of silly, but I want to respond to it anyway.

First of all I have argued that the “Sign of the Son of Man” in Matthew 24:30 is the General Resurrection of that Dead because of how Jesus used that language back in chapter 16 to refute Pre-Tibbers who argue Matthew 24’s Parousia can’t be the same event as “The Rapture” of 1 Thessalonians 4 and 1 Corinthians 15 because there appears to be no Resurrection there.

But more importantly Jesus does not call His Resurrection a Sign to define it as merely a Sign, the only Sign that generation received is Him doing exactly what He came to do, He’s not doing anything JUST to prove Himself.

I could also get semantical about how the Sign of the Prophet Jonah here is strictly speaking not the Resurrection itself but the time period between death and resurrection being three days.

The entire point of 1 Corinthians 15 is that Jesus' Resurrection is NOT a mere Sign but exactly what The Gospel is.  What makes it a true Evangelion, true Good News, is that it’s not just Jesus, as Jesus was risen so will all those who are Christ’s at his Parousia and ultimately absolutely everyone.

Corporate Body View of the Resurrection

This is a view I’ve seen held by Full Preterists as an alternative way to explain how the General Resurrection of The Dead promised by 1 Corinthians 15, Revelation 20 and other Passages is already Fulfilled.

Now it seems from those I’ve looked at so far to still functionally lead to the exact same Metaphysical conclusion, that our Individual promise of Immortality is as “Spirits” in “Heaven” not our current Fleshy Bodies being made Immortal.  However I could see the exact same Tactics being used by modern Sadducees to deny any kind of After Life at all.

The core argument is taking the Body of Christ Doctrine, particularly how it's expressed in 1 Corinthians 12 and insisting the “Body” discussed in 1 Corinthians 15 is only that Body not individual Bodies.

First of all it is a Lexical Fallacy to insist the word Body must still only refer to the same thing it did earlier, Paul is focusing on a different topic in Chapter 15.

But regardless of that what Paul means by all Believers being the Body of Christ is specifically our Physical Bodies, our Flesh.  That’s why his argument against Prostitution in 1 Corinthians 6:15-16 is that the Members of Christ should not be joined to a Harlot.  Each individual Body is a Member of the Body of Christ the same way our Limbs are Members of our individual bodies.  Romans 12:4-5 says the same thing.

The Body of Christ Doctrine is derived from the Bride of Christ Doctrine, we are One Flesh with Christ the same way Husband and Wife are One Flesh.

And it’s also tied to us being The Temple of God which Paul starts laying out in 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 and returns to in Chapter 6:19-20.  In John 2:21 the individual Incarnate Body of Jesus is called “the Temple of His Body”.  In Paul  both each Individual body is the Temple of God and all of our Bodies are Collectively The Temple of God.  2 Peter 1:13-14 also refers to each individual body as a Tabernacle as does Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:1-4.

So The Corporate Body of Christ can only be said to be risen if Each and Every Individual Body is Risen.

They also focus on the fact that the word Body is only ever used in a singular form in 1 Corinthians 15.  This is a misunderstanding of how Language works, Paul is keeping most of the language Singular so each individual can feel like they are being individually spoken to on some level.  It is a message for everyone which means each individual.

To simply read 1 Corinthians 15 and try to force it to only be using the word Body in some legal sense and not about carnal bodies being buried and then risen is absurd.  That is not the natural impression any of this Language gives no matter how Paul used the word Body earlier.

Flesh Will Inherit The Kingdom of Heaven Actually

I know many of you are thinking I just explicitly disagreed with 1 Corinthians 15:50.

"Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption."

But that's a verse that is commonly misunderstood because of people proof texting it out of context.  Starting with how they even drop the last part of that verse about Corruption and Incorruption.

The next verse talks about how we will be Changed at the General Resurrection, and the verse after that saying we'll be raised Incorruptible and Changed.

Verse 53-54 say.

"For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.  So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory."

So placing verse 50 in the context of all that, what is clearly meant is that bodies of MERE Flesh and Blood cannot inherit the Kingdom.  The difference between our future Resurrected Bodies and how our Bodies are now is entirely a matter of what will be added we currently lack not anything being taken away

This is also why II Corinthians 5:2-3 refers to us as currently Naked because we lack our true Spiritual bodies.  We are not Spirits trapped in Bodies but Bodies that lack Spirit.

People will also use selective quotations of verses 35-38 and 42-46 to say "the Body raised isn't the same Body that was buried", ignoring how Paul is saying all of this in the context of an allegory of planting a Seed or Grain in the Earth and then a much larger Plant growing out of it.  It is being called a different body because of how it's nature has changed, not because there is no material biological continuity.  The fact is if it's a completely new body being created from scratch there is no reason to use the word "raised".

Also Paul's use of "Celestial" in this Chapter means "Heavenly" as in the Sky and Outer Space, no one in Paul's times used the word "Heaven" to mean some non Material world of Forms, Pre-Christian Platonists called that a place beyond Heaven.  Same with Spirit, it did not mean "non Material" too any first Century Greek speakers.

Again a good visual metaphor for what I think our change at the Resurrection will be like is a Transformation sequence from a Magical Girl Anime.

Biblically Orange isn’t a real Color

The word “Orange” does not occur anywhere in the King James Bible or to my knowledge any other English Translations either.  The modern Hebrew word for the Color Orange is Katom but like a lot of modern Hebrew words it is a recent addition to the language.

Hebrew isn’t the only Language however where acknowledging Orange as a distinct color is a recent development.  Even English didn’t come up with the word Orange till like 500 years ago, the Color was named after the fruit not the other way around.  And the Japanese Language didn’t have any word for Orange till it’s modern Westernization started.

How we classify and think about Colors is to a large extent culturally constructed, that doesn’t mean different cultures are literally not seeing the same things we see.  But it does mean how we think about and classify them isn’t always the same.

Now a lot of people make a lot of mistakes when choosing Blue to be the color they focus on for talking about this, Blue is actually one of the oldest Colors to get a word it in most languages, and I’ve seen at least one person spreading this “Ancients didn’t see the color Blue” myth say Blue isn’t in The Bible even though anyone as Biblically literate at me knows that the Veil of the Temple basically has the color scheme of the Bisexual Flag.  The Hebrew word for Blue is Tekhelet, Red is Edom, Purple is Argaman, Greek is Yereq and Yellow is Tsahab.  

I really started thinking about the subjectiveness of the very existence of Orange as a distinct color when I was watching MandJTV’s video about Pokémon Colors.  Pokémon Home’s official Color designations for Pokémon can be subjectively disagreed with for many reasons.  But a big part of it is them not having the color Orange at all, every Pokémon you are likely thinking of as an Orange Pokémon is classified as either Red or Brown.

The thing about calling Nintendo Officially wrong on this however is that the list of “Orange” Pokémon officially classified as Red includes Charmander and Charizard, Charizard is Iconically the Box Art Mascot of Pokémon Red and FireRed in both Japan and the West and that is why they are often paired with the Human Character officially named Red.

As I thought about this I began to notice other ways in which Orange as a distinct color seems to be ignored in Japanese Media.  There has never been an Orange Power Ranger to my knowledge because there has never been an Orange Sentai, at least not one called Orange.  Now Purple Rangers are also rare but that’s because Japan associates Purple with Shadows and Darkness and so that color is often reserved for Villains or at least Antiheros.  There is an Anime literally called Orange, but I haven’t watched it yet so I have no idea what to expect, it could be named after the Fruit rather then Color given how there is an Anime called Citrus.

When I was first taught about Colors in School as a kid I was taught that Red, Blue and Yellow are the primary colors while Green, Purple and Orange are the secondary colors each made from combining two of the primary colors.  That’s based on how paints are made, in terms of how Light and our Eyes work it's actually a misleading system.

In our eyes the three Primary Colors are actually Green, Red and Blue with everything deriving from how they interact.  Yellow is in fact the product of combining Red and Green while Orange is an imperfect Yellow that is more Red.

Besides the Fruit which the Color is now synonymous with, everything else you can think of as being Orange is more anciently culturally associated with either Red, Brown or Yellow.  Fire, the Sun, sand and deserts, ect.  Meanwhile Brown is really just Dark Orange and has itself been anciently associated with Red (Biblically many think the Red associated with Esau and David was probably Brown).  Also think about how often people called Gingers (Red Haired) really have Orange hair.

I spent much of my life thinking I was mildly Color Blind where the Color Orange is concerned for struggling to distinguish that color from Yellow or Red. I didn’t even notice that Charmander and Charizard were technically not Red till I watched this video a few days ago.  But now I know that both God and Anime see that color the same way I do.

Napoleon Restored the Revolution of 1789

The notion that Napoleon’s 18 Brumaire Coup represented the complete undoing of everything the French Revolution fought for is the greatest misnomer in all Historical Discourse.

The radical even by modern standards political visions of the Girondins, Colliders, Jacobins and Enrages had already been dead for years but were themselves the product of the Revolution moving beyond its original goal.  After half a decade of rule by the Centrists devoid of any real political vision Napoleon was supported by multiple key leaders of the original Revolution.  

Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes was the original ideological leader of the Revolution, his “What is the Third Estate” was the Declaration of Independence of the Bourgeoisie.  He had faded into the background when the Revolution was radicalized and then became a vital backer of Napoleon’s Coup.

Of course he and a lot of the well known spokesmen of Bourgeoisie ideology were not strictly speaking of the Bourgeoisie themselves.  Someone who was would be Claude Perier who played an overlooked material role in starting the Revolution in 1789, was not fond of the Radicalism of 1792-94 and then was another vital backer of Napoleon and was among the founders of the Bank of France.

Even when Napoleon later became Emperor he was embodying the Pre-Revolution concept of the Enlightened Monarch.

This is the problem I have with Peter Coffin’s “Leftism is the Left Wing of Capitalism” nonsense.  The French Revolution started and ended as a Bourgeoisie Revolution because of its Right Wing.

The Enrages were Proto Marxist-Leninists the Conspiracy of the Equals were proto Libertarian Socialists.  The Girdondins may not have been Socialist enough to fit an official definition but they would have been enough for the CIA to overthrow them in a Coup during the Cold War.

Am I a Marxist?

Marxism is strictly speaking not a Socio-Economic or Political Ideology but a way of looking at History.  That can have implications on how one looks towards achieving their political goals, but you can in theory agree with a Marxist analysis of history while having politics that are the opposite of Marx’s.

At its broadest most basic sense Marxism is viewing history as primarily driven by Class Conflict and Material Conditions.  And in that I am essentially Marxist.  And my political goals are also the same, I am a Communist who desires a Moneyless, Classless Stateless Society.

However I view a lot of the specifics of how Marx and Engels framed their History of Class Conflict as gravely mistaken, which many contemporary Marxists and especially MLs still cling to dogmatically.  The division of eras simplistically into Primitive-Communism then “Slavery” then “Feudalism” then Capitalism being where we are now is very problematic in how biased towards a Western Perspective it is.  But even within that Western Perspective is still an oversimplification and tied to now outdated terminology.  The Socio-Economic Mode of Production of the Middle Ages is better defined as Manorialism not “Feudalism” for one example.

I have prior posts on this Blog already talking about aspects of all that.  But for further understanding of how wrong both the Marxist and common Liberal understanding of “Feudalism” and the Middle Ages is I recommend reading the book Those Terrible Middle Ages Debunking The Myths by Regine Pernoud and/or watching the YouTube videos on this Playlist I made.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4CWxmx4wepgNS9Ql6ZQfxjbA5XkJ4OSP

Marxism is an Apostate child of Hegelianism.  Hegelianism was all about viewing History as driven by Conflicts, New Atheists are very Hegleian in their devotion to the discredited Science vs Religion Conflict thesis.  But I say Apostate because while keeping a form Conflict in his view of History Marx also rejected the Idealism that Hegel inherited from Kant and Plato preferring to see things Materialistically like an Empiricist or Epicurean or Aristotelian or Stoic.  But Marx and Engels were not the first Materialist Worker focused Socialists, before them came Flora Tristan and Moses Hess.

TIK ignores the ways in which Marx Apostatized from Hegelianism in building his little Ideological Genealogy.  He recognized Aristotelianism as ultimately independent of Platonism in-spite of how Aristotle started as a student of Plato, well Marx is to Hegel as Aristotle was to Plato.

However the Marxists have brought this on themselves by not rejecting all the Hegelian terminology they should have.  “Dialectical Materialism” is an Oxymoron, Dialectics is definitionally an idealist concept having its roots in Pythagorean Dualism.  It no longer means what it originally meant in how Marx and Engels use the word, but modern Marxists fall right back into Hegelian Idealism for example in how Slavoj Zizek refuses to see a third option existing for anything including Gender.

Being a Communist and being a Zionist on the Internet are very similar.

I can explain how I'm a Communist because I believe in Collective Ownership of the means of production while working towards the goal of a Moneyless, Classless, Stateless Society.  Or that I’m a Zionist because I support the Israelis right to self determination in their Ancient Homeland.  And for every response that does attempt to engage with what I said I support there are far more than just go “look at the obviously evil things done by this Nation-State” which has nothing to do with those principals.

So let me make myself clear, I am no apologist for the actions of Israel especially not recently, or of Modern China or North Korea or the Soviet Union for most of its history.  Now Cuba, Vietnam and Laos I do think are reasonably successful Communist experiments, but they aren’t hills I’m willing to die on either.

Also as an American Citizen I firmly oppose the U.S. getting involved in any Middle East conflict on either side, in any way, either Military or Financially.

Even if a given Nation-State’s ruling ideology has no significant differences on paper from the specific form of Communism or Zionism I espouse, that would still not make every action that State took a reflection of the ideology.

However, that's not the case.  I’m a Labour-Zionist, and yes a lot of Israeli Prime Ministers were too, but their Labour party was diluted not unlike the British Labor Party.  Israel isn’t the only Capitalist State to ever have nominal Socialist Prime Ministers, even Japan had one briefly in the mid 90s.  But now Israel has for nearly 30 years been dominated by Likud, the Israeli equivalent of the LDP, an Authoritarian Socially Conservative and Economically Capitalist Party.

And with Communism every Communist State has been not just specifically Marxist but more specifically Leninist.  Lenin was actually already controversial within Marxism, both in Russia and outside of it, before even the 1905 Russian Revolution happened.  So no Bolshevism didn’t become what makes it distinct from other Marxisms as a result of being a ruling party.  Rosa Luxemburg predicted why Lenin’s Vanguardism would prove inherently corrupt and what happened vindicated her completely.  

One of her main points was the innate spontaneity of a true Popular Revolution, something Lenin refused to accept after the February Revolution spreading conspiracy theories that it was an Allied plot (his Revolutionary Defeatism” was always just an excuse for siding with the Central Powers, he was no true Pacifist).

Another of her main points was about Bureaucracy, which Lenin mocked people for being concerned about.  This is why Trotskyism, as sympathetic to Trotskyists as I sometimes am also fails, you can’t pretend you are rejecting only Stalin not Lenin when Lenin mocked you in advance.

I don’t claim to have all the answers to figure out how to do either Communism or Zionism correctly.  But I do know good Zionism needs to also respect the right to self determination of the other people living west of the Jordan.  And any desire to expand Israel’s border East of the Jordan is unacceptable.

Soul Sleep and Christian Mortalism are not the same

 And yet they’re stuck sharing the same Wikipedia Page.

Soul Sleep and believing the Soul is just as dead as the body between physical death and physical resurrection have a lot in common, both reject the Platonist/Pythagorean/Essene/Origenist view of The Soul that has become the mainstream popular view. One definitely does and the other still could involve a lack of any concise state between death and resurrection.  

But Soul Sleep allows more wiggle room, it could allow Souls in Sheol/Hades/The Grave to be in a sort of Dreamlike state, same with the Martyrs under the Altar in the Throne Room in Revelation 6 at the 5th Seal and later washing their robes in chapter 7.  Which gives me flexibility in how to deal with passages that seem to imply a pre resurrection afterlife.

But more importantly the idea that the Soul is just dead is what Annihilationists tend to believe.

What Jesus says in Matthew 10:28 is important here.

“And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”

Annihilationists like Lex Meyer seem to think this verse proves their position even though it contradicts it.  If the Soul simply dies when the body dies then anyone who can kill the body can kill the Soul.  Instead killing the Soul is something only God can do, and Jesus goes on to assure us God never would do that.  And in John 11:26 Jesus promises us that we will NEVER die.

The New Testament refers to the dead as asleep multiple times.  That’s why I consider Soul Sleep the face value Biblical View and the burden of proof is on those who reject it.  And the verses they most cling to I've already addressed here.

https://solascripturachristianliberty.blogspot.com/2019/09/do-we-have-promise-that-we-will-be-with.html

It’s also the most ancient traditional view being implied in Justin Martyr and explicitly taught by Athenagoras.  It was also the View of the Smyrna-Lyon tradition of Polycarp-Irenaeus and possibly compatible with what Tertullian taught.  Some who actually believe in Soul Sleep may have unwittingly used more Mortalism based language, so I remain unsure what to think of Tatian, Octavius or Marcus Minucius Felix.

The fact that so many mainstream Christians now treat Soul Sleep as a damnable heresy shows how far we’ve fallen into Platonist Error.

Soul Mortalism is still closer to the Biblical Truth then the mainstream view, but I do want the difference to be known as well as that Soul Sleep is where I stand.

Update October 22nd 2024: This Article by a John Anderson provides a large list of times The Dead are referred to as Asleep.

https://www.fulcrum7.com/apologetics/2021/1/29/fifty-four-texts-that-describe-death-as-sleep#:~:text=The%20Bible%20calls%20death%20%E2%80%9Csleep,the%20Mount%20of%20Transfiguration%20(Mat.

That Author probably holds other Beliefs I disagree with, I haven't read the entire website and even in this article takes the ill advised Tactics of quoting Ecclesiastes  at face value, and clearly doesn't seem to believe in Universal Salvation.  But regardless it's a good resource.

So I'm gonna copy/Paste the list of Verses from that article here, he doesn't say which Translation he used but I'm confident the KJV agrees with all of these..

Deuteronomy 31:16: “The Lord said to Moses, Behold, thou shalt sleep with thy fathers.”

II Samuel 7:12:  “When thy days be fulfilled, and thou shalt sleep with thy fathers.""

I Kings 1:21:  “When my lord the king shall sleep with his fathers.”

I Kings 2:10:  “David slept with his fathers.”

I Kings 11:21:  “David slept with his fathers.”

I Kings 11:43:  “Solomon slept with his fathers.”

I Kings 14:20: “Jeroboam...slept with his fathers.”

I Kings 14:31:  “Rehoboam slept with his fathers.”

I Kings 15:8: “Abijam slept with his fathers.”

I Kings 15:24:  “Asa slept with his fathers.”

I Kings 16:6:  “Baasha slept with his fathers.”

I Kings 16:28:  “Omri slept with his fathers.”

I Kings 22:40:  “Ahab slept with his fathers.”

I Kings 22:50:  “Jehoshaphat slept with his fathers.”

II Kings 8:24:  “Joram slept with his fathers”

II Kings 10:35:  “Jehu slept with his fathers”

II Kings 13:9:  “Jehoahaz slept with his fathers”

II Kings 13:13:  “Joash slept with his fathers”

II Kings 14:16:  “Jehoash slept with his fathers”

II Kings 14:22:  “The king slept with his fathers”

II Kings 14:29:  “Jeroboam slept with his fathers”

II Kings 15:7:  “Azariah slept with his fathers”

II Kings 15:22: “Menahem slept with his fathers”

II Kings 15:38:  “Jotham slept with his fathers”

II Kings 16:20:   “Ahaz slept with his fathers”

II Kings 20:21:  “Hezekiah slept with his fathers”

II Kings 21: 18:  “Manasseh slept with his fathers”

II Kings  24:6:  “Jehoiakim slept with his fathers”

II Chron. 9:31:  “Solomon slept with his fathers”

II Chron. 12:16:  “Rehoaboam slept with his fathers”

II Chron. 14:1:  “Abijah slept with his fathers”

II Chron. 16:13:  “Asa slept with his fathers”

II Chron. 21:1:  “Jehoshaphat slept with his fathers”

II Chron. 26:2:  “The king slept with his fathers”

II Chron. 26:23:  “Uzziah slept with his fathers”

II Chron. 27:9:   “Jotham slept with his fathers”

II Chron. 28:27:  “Ahaz slept with his fathers”

II Chron. 32:33:  “Hezekiah slept with his fathers”

II Chron. 33:20:  “Manasseh slept with his fathers”

Job 7:21:  “Now shall I sleep in the dust”

Job 14:12:  “They shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep”

Psalm 13:3:  “Lest I sleep the sleep of death”

Psalm 90:5:  “Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep”

Psalm 146:4  “His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.” 

Daniel 12:2:  “Many of they that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake”

Jesus described death as “sleep”:

Matthew 9:24:  “The maid is not dead but sleepeth.”

Mark 5:39:  “The damsel is not dead but sleepeth”

Luke 8:52:  “She is not dead but sleepeth”

John 11:11:  “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth”

At Jesus’ crucifixion: 

Matthew 27:52: “Many bodies of the saints which slept arose”

Luke reiterates I Kings:

Acts 13:36:  “David...fell asleep, and was laid unto his fathers”

Paul describes death as sleep:

I Cor. 15:20:  “Christ is risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that sleep”

I Cor. 15:51:  “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed”

I Thess 4:13:  “I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren,  concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope”

I Thess. 4:14:  “If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus”

And in the comments section 2 Peter 3:4 is added.

The Tribes of Mizraim

 What I want to discus here is how my research into the Tribes of Mizraim named in Genesis 10:13-14 clearly verifies that we are dealing with North Western Africa, even if the name Mizraim itself might be difficult to find there.  Plus I think Khem/Kemet comes from Ham.

Tribes is the term I'm using because strictly speaking Genesis 10 names no sons of Mizraim, they are all tribal designations (the -im suffix) that came from Mizraim.  They could come from names of sons, or names given to regions, or other things.

I should also add that I don't think Josephus's "Ethiopic War" happened, I think that was a myth he or someone before him imagined because they didn't know where to finds the tribes of Mizraim.

I want to start with Patrhos, it is a well documented name for Upper Egypt, particularly the area around Thebes.  It comes from Egyptian pꜣ tꜣ-rsy "the southern land" (e.g., pBritish Museum EA 10375, line 16; cf. Sahidic Coptic ⲡⲁⲧⲟⲩⲣⲏⲥ and Bohairic Coptic ⲡⲁⲑⲟⲩⲣⲏⲥ.^[1][2]).  Isaiah 11:11 lists Pathros between Mizraim and Cush, suggesting that in that context Isaiah is using Mizraim mainly of Lower Egypt.

Caphtor is a complicated subject because of the desire some have to make it Crete or Cyprus or a location in Turkey.  But even Wikipedia ultimately comes down on the side of it being in the Nile Delta region.

The equation of Keftiu with Caphtor commonly features in interpretations that equate Caphtor with Crete, Cyprus, or a locality in Anatolia. Jean Vercoutter in the 1950s had argued, based on an inscription of the tomb of Rekhmire that Keftiu could not be set apart from the "islands of the sea" which he identified as a reference to the Aegean Sea. However in 2003, Vandesleyen pointed out that the term wedj wer (literally "great green") which Vercoutter had translated "the sea" actually refers to the vegetation growing on the banks of the Nile and in the Nile Delta, and that the text places Keftiu in the Nile Delta.^{[Claude Vandersleyen, Keftiu: A Cautionary Note, Oxford Journal of Archaeology, vol 22, issue 2, 2003]}

The Targums and Miamonides refereed to Caphtor as Caphutkia and places it as Damietta on the eastern edge of the Nile Delta near classical Pelusium.  

But the name Caphtor could also be related to Coptos and the Greek Aegyptos and thus Egypt.  They come from Hut-ka-Ptah the name of the Temple Complex of Ptah in Memphis.  There is a Hebrew word spelled and pronounced the same a Kaphtor and translated Knop or Lintel, it's used in The Pentateuch only when describing The Menorah. 

I actually think these two tribes may be enough to account for all of Egypt proper.  Caphtor as Lower Egypt and Pathros as Upper Egypt, Egypt's traditional two great divisions.

The Casluhim are recorded in the inscriptions of the Temple of Kom Ombo as the region name Kasluḥet.  [Archibald Henry Sayce (2009). The "Higher Criticism" and the Verdict of the Monuments. General Books LLC. p. 91.]  Ancient Jewish traditions associated them with Pentapolis aka Cyeneica, suggesting they were the people indigenous to that region before the Greek Colonists came there in Classical times.

As far as the alleged confusion about whether the Philistimes came from Casluhim or Caphtor.  Amos 9:7 refers to their relationship to Capthor as a direct comparison to Israel's relationship with Egypt. So I believe they were Casluhim who had sojourned in Caphtor before eventually settling in the Gaza Strip.

The Lehubim is the name elsewhere contracted to Lubim and the people from who's name comes Libya, a region that at it's broadest Classical Greek definition also included the land of the decedents of Phut, the Berbers in the far west of Africa. 

The three remaining names in Genesis 10:13 I suspect are to be looked for in modern Sudan and Ancient Nubia.

The Naphtuhim may be the namesake of Napata, and/or perhaps via the tendency of B and P to sometimes become confused in etymology Nobatia and Nubia itself.  The Nubians were originally a distinct ethnic group from the Kushites, but the two get conflated a lot making my research difficult.  It seems they were originally further up the Nile from the region Egypt usually called Kush.

I think the name of Anamim/Anemim/Enemim could come from people of Khnum, an Egyptian Deity worshiped on Elaphantine/Syene island near Aswan, but was mythologically viewed as the source of the Nile.  Maybe they were the people of Kerma, or maybe way further south near Tana Kirikos or Lake Victoria.  Or maybe they were the Blemmyes/Blemmues/Balnemmoui?  (Turns out the Blemmyes spoke a Cushetic Language.)  Or Anem could be Akhmim which may have actually been Khent-min.

The Ludim present potential for confusion with the Lud/Lod son of Shem who settled in Turkey commonly known as Lydia (or Lydus in Greek Mythology).  But I think it's the Mizraimite Ludim who are being alluded to in Jeremiah 46:9 and Ezekiel 30:5 with the context there being about Egypt and other nations near Egypt.  Those Ludim are presented as being famed for their Archery which was also the case with the Ancient Nubians.

I think the Mizraimite Ludim were the people of the region known in late Antiquity and medieval times as Alodia which name can be traced back to Ancient Kushite inscriptions as Alut.  Here are some maps of Christian Nubia.

As an extra Biblical Note, I think Makuria is also the land Herodotus knew as Macrobia.

Since I mentioned Phut, Mizraim's brother, above I might as well deal with the documentation on him.

Pliny the Elder Nat. Hist. 5.1 and Ptolemy Geog. iv.1.3 both place the river Phuth on the west side of Mauretania (modern Morocco). Ptolemy also mentions a city Putea in Libya (iv.3.39).  This might be the same river mentioned by other authors under other names being connected to the Atlas Mountains.

Other references seem to place Phut closer to Egypt.  Putaya was the name of the Persian Satrapy of Libya, Nebuchadnezzar refereed to the Cyrenians as the "Putu Yavan" (Ionians in Libya).  I think this location closer to Egypt is probably where Phut first settled, then they migrated further west and their original settlement was taken over by the Casluhim and Lehubim/Lubim.

The notion that Phut and Lubim became different names for the same place is attested by Josephus in AotJ Book 1:6/2.

Egypt as a major Empire and center of Trade located on the crossroads of two continents had a very diverse population. So none of this means other grandsons of Noah didn't also contribute to ancient Egypt.  I still think the Origins of Osiris and Horus could partly lie in the Horite genealogy of Genesis 36 (thus descent from the Hitties and Hivites), as well as that Seb/Keb/Geb could be partly based on one of the three Sebs who were sons of Cush.

The Philistines.

I feel like ranting on this subject a bit.  We now know that the City of Gaza is indeed the oldest of the Philistine Pentapolis, Biblically it's the only one mentioned in Genesis.  We also know the oldest settlement there was an Egyptian Fort built back in the Early Bronze Age.  We also know it was essentially Egypt's regional capital in Canaan during the 18th and Nineteenth Dynasties.  Meaning archeology tells us exactly why The Bible depicted them as essentially Egyptian Colonists.

But the notion that the Philistines weren't in that region till Rameses III, and that they came from the Aegean, continues to pervade because Egyptian records don't use that name till then.  I think Philistines/Peleset was never what they called themselves but always a mostly derogatory term, related to a Hebrew verb used of wallowing in the dust/dirt.  I think the time of Rameses III is simply when these colonials decided to claim independence from their mother empire like the Yankees in 1776, and so only then did the Pharaoh also use this insulting term for them.

But most importantly the Peleset were NOT Sea Peoples in any 20th Dynasty records, scholars like to group then in with the "peoples of the Sea" and "peoples of the Isles" they allied themselves with, but Rameses III did NOT apply that term to the Peleset or the Tjekker.  

If the Philistines post Rameses III seem in their language and fashion and art similar to the Mycenean Greeks, it's because of cultural exchange via the Denyen/Danoi/Danaans they were allied with, not because they originally came from there.

I also read an English Translation of the Peshita where Genesis 10:13-14 says that out of Casluhim came both the Philistines and Caphtorim.

The Bible says the Philistines main patron Deity was Dagan, this is somewhat a mystery since Dagan is in the standard Canaanite pantheon but not a major player. And Archeologists haven't found the evidence for this, partly because they only count anything as Philistine starting with Rameses III.  We know the Egyptians tended to syncretize storm gods like Baal/Hadad with Set.  So Dagan might have been the Canaanite deity who was identified with Osiris or maybe Amon.

I have also come to think about how the nature Hebrew winds sometimes using the names for in fact peoples or locations and started to consider that maybe the Philistim of the Table of Nations has nothing to do with the later Biblical Philistines was a reference to Pelusium.

Capitalism was never Progressive or Revolutionary and Liberalism is not inherently Pro Capitalist.

The problem with the common depiction of the history of the transition from Feudalism to Capitalism in England being focused the Enclosures of the Commons is that the existence of the Commons was actually a problem for either Feudalism or Capitalism, they both require all the land monologized by a ruling class.  And indeed most Enclosures that happened during the Middle Ages and even into the 17th Century were for the Feudal Aristocracy not the proto Bourgeois.

Liberalism in the modern English Speaking world began during the English Revolution with The Levellers led by John Liburne and Richard Overton, just like how Communism was revived with the Diggers led by Gerrard Winstanley.  Overton called for the unenclosing of previously Common Land, the Levellers didn’t want to abolish Private Property entirely like the Diggers, but there being Common Land was a vital piece of their vision.

Under Capitalism Private Property is not actually a Right, it’s a Privilege, but people with Privilege love to treat an attack on their privilege as if it violates their rights.  The early Liberals from the Levellers to John Locke to Rousseau saw Property as a Right that all are entitled to.  I am still a Communist who sees ending Private Property entirely as the correct answer.  But I refuse to see these true Liberals as inherently more aligned to Capitalism than Communism simply because of one thing Karl Marx said.

Robert Filmer in Patriarcha created a Private Property ideology much more like what modern Capitalism Apologists believe, and he did so as a Jacobite Royalist supporting Feudalism not as a Liberal, he was a Reactionary not a Revolutionary.  He is who John Locke wrote his discussion of Property to refute as James Tully documents in A Discourse on Property: John Locke and his Adversaries. Also The Inclosure Act of 1773 was passed by the Tory Government of Lord North.

However, in time some wealthy landowners became influenced by Liberal ideology and slowly started corrupting it with Laisseze-Fair and Meritocratic ideas, principally David Hume in England and the Physiocrats in France.  Real Liberalism is not an ideology that Justifies Capitalism at all, that’s it’s corrupt Prodigal offspring.

The first half of The Communist Manifesto has been described as the most Pro-Capitalist text ever written.  The idea that Capitalism was good when it started, that it “resolved the class contradictions of Feudalism”, that it was necessary for Capitalism to happen before we can do Socialism or Communism is still dogmatically held to by too many modern Marxists especially MLs.

The Liberation that actually happened during this period was accomplished by Liberalism, but even then not everything they were fighting for was achieved.  Then Capitalists Co-Opted Liberalism as they destroyed the only upsides of Feudalism.  Then Marxists start giving Capitalism credit for what Liberalism accomplished while calling Liberalism the Justifying Ideology of Capitalism so they can label any Leftist with actual Democratic Values a “Bourgeois Liberal” while they slowly turn into Fascists with a USSR Fetish.

We also have MLs now rejecting the concept of being Left Wing anymore because of how that terminology originated with the French Revolution and so they say to call yourself Left Wing is merely “the Left Wing of Capitalism”.  The problem is NO the French Revolution didn’t truly create a modern Capitalist state out of France until its Right Wing prevailed on the 18 Brumaire.  The Left during the Revolution included the Enrages and the Conspiracy of the Equals who Marx acknowledged as true Communist precursors, but it also included Anti-Capitalist Liberals like Claude Fouchet and Nicolas Bonneville.

And the problem with Marxism being too Pro-Capitalism was becoming apparent already in the 19th Century when Russia was still under Feudalism.  Early Russian Marxists like Georgi Plekhanov argued that Russia needed to become Capitalist first, and this was vehemently opposed by the Narodniks who went on to form the Socialist Revolutionary Party.  This issue in Russian Marxism led directly to Leninism. 

The belief that we needed Capitalism for the benefits of the industrial Revolution is ridiculous, I frankly find it incredibly unsettling that so many people who claim to believe in the Collectivist values of Communism think Industrialization required the Profit Motive.

The Youtube channel veritas et caritas has a video on how Co2 emission was known to inevitably be a problem even in the early 1800s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSRzAYqbKxc&pp=ygUhdmVyaXRhcyBldCBjYXJpdGFzIGNsaW1hdGUgY2hhbmdl

If Society was never Capitalist the issue could have bene solved way sooner.  Now we're on the verge of it being too late and those in power still refuse to put their short term profit motive aside and do anything about it.  Even though we already found out how to make Electric Cars in the 19th Century.

The Lords Day is The Sabbath not Sunday

First I want to make clear I'm not a Seventh Day Adventist or a member of any any other dogmatically Sabbath based sect (I am considering being Baptized as a Seventh Day Baptist but they are a denomination not interested in being Judgmental towards those who disagree with them).  

I do not support Legalism, Christians are not bound to observe any weekly service, at all. I'm writing this to refute the notion that The New Testament "Lords Day" is Sunday.

Not everyone who believes weekly Sunday worship is Biblical defines it as Sunday supplanting the Sabbath.  Some like Chris White  just define it as the New Testament ordaining weekly Sunday worship as a separate thing from The Sabbath.  

In The New Testament the term "The Lord's Day" occurs only once. Revelation 1:10 "I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet".

We're not told what day of the week this is, or if it's a weekly day at all. Sunday supporters just assume this phrase means something distinct from the Sabbath and therefore it backs up their other reasons for saying The New Testament calls for worship on the First Day of The Week.

But in Matthew 12:8 Jesus said He was the Lord of the Sabbath, and Isaiah 58:13-14 calls the Sabbath, "The LORD's Holy Day". So using Scripture to Interpret Scripture this can only mean the Sabbath.

As far as extra Biblical references go (which don't actually matter to me). The Didache (supposedly the oldest Extra-Biblical Christian writing) also does not say when "The Lord's Day" is, just refers to it. The one quote of Ignatius of Antioch often used in this debate says in the only surviving Greek text (which is the language he wrote in) "If, then, those who had walked in ancient practices attained unto newness of hope, no longer observing Sabbath, but living according to the Lord's life ...". Clearly not about when or if we should do a weekly observance at all, simply referring to us not being bound by The Law. Some later Latin texts add "The Lord's Day" to this, and some even make clear it's Sunday, but these are clearly latter corruptions.

It's not till the second half of the Second Century AD. that indisputable references to The Lord's Day being Sunday occur, in texts like the Apocryphal Gospel of Peter, or Acts of Peter, or Acts of Paul, or Acts of John, or Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth in 170 AD. You might think that sounds sufficiently early, but they're after the Bar Kochba revolt which occurred around about a third of the way into the Second Century. That is when the Church started taking on Anti-Semitic tendencies in response to the persecution of Christians carried out under Bar Kochba. I feel this separation of Christian observance from the Sabbath was based solely on that agenda.

Now, for Acts 20:7 and 1 Corinthians 16:2.

The Corinthians reference is to me certainly not about weekly observance. "Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come." One could argue that Paul expected his Epistle to be read to the Congregation on a Sabbath meeting, and that they should then begin saving up this money the very next day.

Acts 20:7 I don't really see as calling for anything. It just says they broke bread together, and then Paul preached.

I personally find the debating that goes own between Protestant and Evangelical denominations on when to observe the "Lord's Supper", should it be Weekly, Monthly or Yearly, and so on to be silly. Jesus told us when in the actual account of the Supper itself "when ye eat". It's not supposed to be an appointed ceremony, it's simply a matter of whenever we eat we remember that Jesus's Body was Broken and his Blood was Shed for us.

And I don't think Paul needed a special day to Preach on either, Preaching is simply what he did.

This being during the counting of the Omer means it involved Biblical Significance for the First Day of The Week already in The Torah in Leviticus 23.  The Resurrection and Pentecost were on Sundays because Leviticus 23 ordained them to be, those Sundays being important did not introduce anything new.

I keep hearing that ALL of Jesus post Resurrection appearances were on Sundays from the Evangelical Sunday supporting people.  However only the Doubting Thomas incident could be interpreted that way.  Besides that it's well known The Ascension was a Thursday being day 40 of the Omer (Acts 1:3). 

When you read through Acts, you'll see Sabbath observances are definitely still kept by Early Christians, even Paul. Even if the word Sabbath isn't used, if Paul is disputing with Jews in a Synagogue, you can infer that it is a Sabbath or a New Moon or a Holy Day. And for this reason it's clear that even the Mars' Hill Sermon was preached on a Sabbath not a Sunday, in Acts 17:16-19.

Ezekiel 45 clearly has the Sabbath still being observed in the Messianic Temple.  And I believe that is the New Heaven and New Earth not The Millennium.

So what day we do a weekly observance is not something to be Dogmatic on. Or even if we do a weekly observance at all.  I'm ultimately against the entire modern definition of what a "church" is, archaeology shows no church buildings were built till the Third Century. But the evidence both Biblical and Extra-Biblical shows that the first 2 or 3 generations of The Church met on the Jewish Sabbath, not Sunday.  And then the Nazarenes kept the Sabbath at least into the late Fourth Century.

The history even of the how Sunday replaced Saturday is more complicated then most people realize.  Even in the Nicene Era a lot of Christians were kind of just doing both.

The Eucharist has more Hebrew Bible precedent then just the Passover Seder, it is also connected to Melchizedek's Supper in Genesis 14 and the Shewbread.  The Shewbread was kept in the Holy Place on the Table of Shewbread all Week and then eaten by the Priests on The Sabbath.  Under the New Testament all Believers are the Priesthood, so that is Biblical Support for the Eucharist being part of what we do on the Weekly Sabbath.

https://solascripturachristianliberty.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-showbread-and-eucharist.html

Feminine perspectives on Universal Salvation.

 I recently obtained Sarah Apetrei’s book The Reformation of The Heart: Gender and Radical Theology in The English Revolution.  It’s about the often overlooked significance of many Women during the Religious chaos of that period including how on some subjects they were more radical than their male counterparts.   

And the Chapter titled Salvation is about Universal Salvation.  Mentioning women like Lady Eleanor Davies, Elizabeth Attaway, Anne Yeman, and Anna Tarpnel (and also mentioned Elizabeth Bathurst, Lady Anne Conway and Jane Lead a generation later).

I think a similar tendency may have existed in other eras too.  Yes the vast majority of known documented Universalists are Men since Men have usually been more allowed to publish and publicly teach their ideas to begin with. 

However it’s important not to forget the arguably greatest Universalist Theologian Gregory of Nyssa,  depicts his OneeSan Macrina The Younger as his chief spiritual mentor especially on this subject.

Julian of Norwich was a medieval English Mystic who might be the best precedent for it in the English speaking world prior to the Revolution.  Some women have also had a role to play in the modern revival of consideration for the topic.

I hold the controversial view that Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalene were the same person and was the Beloved Disciple, making her the Author of the Fourth Gospel and perhaps also the Epistles commonly attributed to John, at least the First of them which I think was originally an appendix to the Fourth Gospel which I prefer to title The Dissertation on the Word of Life.  

I can build my argument for Universal Salvation independent of those books, but some of the most Emotionally Powerful verses come from them.  Emphasizing how God Loves the Whole World, that none can pluck us out of Jesus hand in 10:28-29, that He will Draw all men unto him in 12:32, that we are Saved because God first loves us, in 1 John 4:19.

There may already be a lot more known then I’m already aware of. 

Baptists should believe in Universal Salvation.

The first reason is that many Baptists love to stress that Baptists have long been advocates of Religious Freedom aka Liberty of Conscience.  

Baptists have been at the forefront of it right from the beginning of the Baptists as we today understand them with Thomas Helwys and John Smyth.  Before them some notion of Religious Toleration has been proposed in the English speaking world by some 16th Century Puritans like Robert Browne, but for them it was just about disagreements within Christianity (or even just within Protestantism), it was these first Baptists who were the first to argue for Religious Liberty for even Jews, Muslims and Atheists.

And this tradition continued with Leonard Busher followed by Richard Overton, the real ideological brain of the Levellers, and then Roger Williams and John Clarke who founded Rhode Island.  Then Isaac Backus and John Leland during the era of the American Revolution.

My reason for arguing Universal Salvation should naturally go with belief in Liberty of Conscience is not quite what you’d probably first assume.  The relationship between Religious Freedom and Evangelism should be the argument that conversions made under force or coercion simply will not be sincere.  

I believe Jesus Christ should be viewed as the model for Human morality, not as a Sovereign who doesn’t hold Himself to the same rules as His subjects.  So if it’s morally wrong for us to persecute, torture or kill people for holding the wrong beliefs, it’s an absurd contradiction to then say that is ultimately exactly what Jesus will do when He returns.

For the Scriptural Reasons Universal Salvation is true, start by checking out my Six Points of Universal Salvation page, then read others posts with the Universal Salvation tag where I go more in depth.

Now my fellow Universal Salvation believers in Pedobaptist denominations may argue that since Salvation isn't only for a select few; why not just Baptize the babies automatically?  Well as an Evangelical Universalist I still see a meaningful distinction between those who are in The Kingdom already and those who aren’t yet.  Water Baptism is a ritual performed to symbolize choosing to become a full Citizen of The Kingdom.  

But returning to why specifically Baptists should rethink any knee jerk rejection of Universal Salvation is the fact that Baptists who came to that conclusion appeared very early on.  And were even important players in getting the ball rolling on modern Universalism in the first place.

They start at least with the 17th Century Bell Alley General Baptist Church of Thomas Lambe, Henry Denne and Samuel Oats.  And in her book The Reformation of The Heart: Gender and Radical Theology in The English Revolution starting on page 69 Sarah Apetrei highlights the women of that Congregation who were important voices of Universal Salvation like Elizabeth Attaway.  They were an influence on Gerrard Winstanley and The Quakers.

The Everlasting Gospel by Georg Klein-Nicolai is a German book on Universal Salvation that seems to have its origin among the Schwarzenau Brethren also called the Dunkers and German Baptists.

The rise of Universal Salvation in the American Colonies in the late 18th Century that led to the foundation of the Universalist Church of America involved several Baptists and people of a Baptist Background.  Elhanan Winchester would probably be the most orthodox to modern Baptists, but there’s also Adams Streeter and Hosea Ballou who also each had been Baptist Pastors, Caleb Rich who was born into a Baptist family, and Giles Chapman who married a German Baptist.  

James Murray and his mentor James Relly never had actual ties to any Baptist Church, but they came to a view on the Sacraments basically the same as the Quakers and like Gerrard Winstanley and the early Quakers a Baptist perspective on the Pedobaptism vs Credobaptism debate plays a role in how they argue that.

The Universalist Church of America as a denomination never had a uniform policy on Baptism, but they were always consistently Congregationalist.

George Macdonald had been a Congregationalist, so not a Baptist but someone who's agree with us on Church Polity.

The main contemporary Baptists who believe in Universal Salvation are the Primitive Baptist Universalists in Appalachia, who are more theologically liberal then other Primitive Baptists on a number of things.  I’m hoping writing this can help change that.

The Seventh Day Baptists are partly known for being one of the most allowing of divergent doctrinal views within its denomination.  And I do agree that the Sabbath was never changed to Sunday, that’s a misunderstanding of two verses.  So it does disappoint me that when I read the Statement of Faith on their official website the only belief of mine that is in potential conflict with any part of it is Universal Salvation.  

I also see a logical relationship between Sabbatarianism and Universal Salvation.  Believing that Sunday supplanted the Sabbath goes hand in hand with the mainstream Christian view that God permanently divorced Israel to take a new wife.  I’m not a Dispensationalist or strictly speaking a Two House Theology advocate.  Rather for me God’s determination to restore Israel no matter how far they fall is a specially emphasized part of His refusal to allow any to perish.  

And going back to Sarah Apetrei's book, there is documentation of the wife of John Belcher an early Seventh Day Baptist as Pastor of a Church at Belle Lane in the 1660s believing in Universal Salvation.

I know a lot of Baptists are among the most strict KJV Onlists so I should also link to this old post of mine.

https://solascripturachristianliberty.blogspot.com/2017/05/kjv-only-universalism.html

And for the Landmarkists who think the Novatians were ancient Baptists, there is evidence they believed in Universal Salvation.  It was their critic Cyprian who popularized the idea that there is no Salvation outside The Church.

Novatus, or as he is often called, Novatian, an eminent presbyter of Rome, who contested the bishopric of the church there with Cornelius, advanced something like Universalism. He extolled in the highest, though in general terms, the unbounded goodness of God (De Regula Fidei, cap. ii., prope finem, edit. Jackson, Lond., 1728, pp. 23-25); and maintained that the wrath, indignation, and hatred of the Lord, so called, are not such passions in him as bear the same name in man; but that they are operations in the divine mind which are directed solely to our purification (De Regula Fidei, cap. iv.). In short, he asserted the peculiar principles of Universalism; but whether he pursued them out to their necessary result does not appear.

https://universalistchristian.org/books/ancient-history/

Age of Consent and Adulthood

If I identify with any specific branch of Christianity more then the others it's The Baptists (but with some Quaker characteristics), especially The General Baptists.  But one annoyance I have with a lot of modern Credo-Baptist sects is a refusal to state a clear absolute minimum age one can choose to be Baptized, with some even thinking Elementary School kids can be old enough.

Baptism should be viewed as in part a Commitment.  So anyone you consider to young to get Married is also to young to be Baptized because I view Baptism as in-part becoming Betrothed to Christ.  But I think most Churches are permitting Marriage at too young an age as well.

Exodus 30:14, Leviticus 27:3 and Numbers 26:2-4 tell us that about 20 is when The Torah considered someone legally an Adult Citizen of the Congregation.  Numbers 1:3 and 2 Chronicles 25:5 also say 20 is the minimum age you could serve in the Military.

However since I view New Testament water Baptism as evolving out of the Water Immersion ritual that was part of consecrating the Aaronic Priesthood (Exodus 29:4, 40:12 and Leviticus 8:6) applied to the Priesthood of All believers Doctrine that only Congregational Polity practicing Christians even pretend to take seriously.  Age milestones related to the Levites specifically may be worth looking at.

In Numbers 8:24 the age of 25 is when Levites start waiting upon the service of the Congregation, but in Numbers 4:3-47 the age of 30 is when they started to do the work of the Congregation.

One of the arguments against Infant Baptism being the original norm of the Church is the clear evidence that early Christian Tradition going back to at least the 2nd Century said 5 years of Catechism was necessary before Baptism  This tradition remains formally in-place after Infant Baptism was standardized but is applied only to adult converts.  But that combination makes no sense, why can Infants be Baptized right away but adults need to be prepared to know what they are committing to?

Now a lot of people in Acts seem to be Baptized right after they convert, but in Acts 2 and 8 we are dealing with people coming from an Israelite background, the Ethiopian Eunuch was reading Isaiah already, the stuff the 5 year Catechism was necessary for may be stuff they already knew.

I'm a true Paulian Christian, I don't believe we are under The Law in any rigid or legalistic sense.  But I am Hebrew Roots enough to still believe The Torah is useful, for things like this especially.  And I think a lot of early Christian traditions that don't seem directly mandated by The New Testament have their roots in applying Torah ideas though a New Testament filter.

So I think either 25 was originally the Minimum age to begin Catechism and then 30 when 5 years have passed for Baptism, or Catechism could begin at 20 with 25 for Baptism and another five years before you can be considered an "Elder". I don't think NT use of Presbyter meant Elder or Senior in the old age sense but more closer in application to the Japanese honorific Sempai, I think Congregational polity denominations often cede to much ground to Presbyterians and Episcopalians on how to define those words.

It is of course possible the Catechism was only required for Adult Converts and those raised in the faith were expected to know when they reached the minimum age.  But I do think it'd a mistake for parents to pressure their kids to hard to get Baptized as soon as they turn 20 or even 25, let them think about it for awhile if they want to.

Thirty as an ideal age for Baptism is a natural conclusion one could draw from Luke 3:21-23 seeming to say Thirty was when Jesus was Baptized.

So 20 as the minimum age for even beginning to prepare for Baptism in my view should also be the minimum age of Consent for Sex and Marriage.  But I can even sympathize with raising that to 25 based on the science about how the Brian isn't fully developed till 25.

Rabbinic Judaism at some point developed the Bar Mitsvah tradition of considering adulthood to in some sense begin at 12 or 13.  I don't know where this came from, there is nothing supporting it in The Torah or anywhere else in The Hebrew Bible.  Manasseh became king at 12, but he didn't turn out to be a very good King, maybe that had something to do with it.

However a lot of Christians think 12 as some sort of milestone age is vindicated in The New Testament by Luke 2:40-42.  Nothing here says Jesus being 12 is the reason for anything.  The Torah required only adult males to attend the Pilgrimage Festivals but those Men did often bring their families including Wives and Children.  Nothing in Luke 2 says Jesus wasn't there for prior observances of Passover, this is just a time when something notable happened.  And it's notable precisely because it's unusual for someone this young to be this intellectually skilled.  This is a story about how Jesus as the Son of God was not like other 12 year olds, it's not a model for anything.

[I've also been considering a theory on New Testament chronology that have the Passover when Jesus was Twelve be the first one after the removal of Archelaus which makes sense as the first time Joseph would have brought his family given what the end of Matthew 2 says.  But that's a secondary theory and not necessary to explain it.]

Contrary to popular assumption NO it was not in Ancient or Medieval times common for people to get married with at least the woman being as young as 16 or even 12 in some claims.  While on the books marriages that young might have been technically allowed all the evidence shows that in practice the norm was usually at least 20.  The notable exceptions were usually among the Aristocratic or Royal Families making important marriage alliances and even they often weren't consummated right away.  But those exceptions are often what people write historical fiction about helping spread the confusion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6Ey6tAbUfg&pp=ygUUcHJpbWEgbm9jdGEgZGVidW5rZWQ%3D

There are no Biblical verses stating a clear ideal or minimum marriage age, but at least 3 notable people didn't get married till 40, Isaac, Esau and Moses (Jacob was Esau's twin and he got married even later). 

And no nothing in Scripture supports the "if she can bleed she can breed" meme people assume about pre-modern cultures.  

The one Bible verse some will cite for that is 1 Corinthians 7:36 but it does not explain what "flower of her age" means, the natural assumption to me is Puberty being over not when it starts, that "flowering' is a process not a singe event.   "Flower" isn't even a good translation of the Greek, the Greek text here is communicating the idea of being physically fully grown, which happens at about 20.  So I would consider 20 the age of consent for sex but still hold off on marriage till 25.  

Also regardless of age some people abuse "let him do what he will" from this chapter to defend martial rape. The context of this chapter is addressing believers questioning whether Sex and Marriage is right for them at all, Paul is giving people permission to enter consensual marriage, not disregarding the woman's consent.

Thing is I do want to lower the Voting Age, and some people may find that bizarre in the above context.  But to me the whole point of Democracy is to empower the most vulnerable.  The youngest people are the ones thinking about the future most which is why they need a greater voice.  You aren't consenting to anything when you Vote, you are telling the State or Society what you prefer and they consent only if enough people agree.

But I do think 25 or 30 should be the minimum age to actually old office. I disagree with 35 being required for the Senate and Presidency, that should be lowered to 30 the age David was crowned at.  

In both Numbers 4:3-47 and Numbers 8:25 the age of Fifty is when Levites retire.  And looking at a lot of contemporary issues not letting people over Fifty stay in Congress sounds like a good idea.  Letting people between 50-60 remain in advisory positions with no direct powers could also work.  Sixty as a milestone age comes from Leviticus 27:3-7.

Thing about the Voting Age is you can't have it both ways, if you want to have a minimum voting age there should also be a maximum one because the elderly do at a certain point become functionally children again.  Except that Old people vote the most Conservatively because they're most motivated by Nostalgia, so political bias clearly influences what Conservatives and Centrists think about the voting age since it suits their interests to stifle calls for radical change.  So in my opinion either both the youngest and oldest can vote, or neither.

The Continuity between Pre-Civil War Parties and their Modern forms

There's a lot about both parties that have changed during their long histories, but also a lot about both parties that has stayed the same.

The Party Switch narrative is correct in that specifically Southern White Supremacists switched from being Democrats to being Republicans in the mid 20th Century.  How and why it happened is a longer and more complicated story than the common simplified narrative that makes it about 1 or 2 presidential elections in the 1960s, but the gist of that narrative is true. 

In fact I’ll even say there’s another type of voter who switched from being more likely to be Democrats to more likely to be Republicans slightly sooner and that’s Classical Liberals or Pro-Capitalism Libertarians like Grover Cleveland.

However, the problem I have is when people act like this means in every way they completely switched, that there was nothing Liberal about any of the Antebellum Democrats and nothing Conservative about the Antebellum Republicans.  The fact is that what political positions seem to innately go together today did not always innately go together, many of them seemed innately at odds in the past.  At their philosophical core the continuity between what these parties were when they were founded and what they are today is greater than the divergence.

Typical attempts to in any way deconstruct the Party Switch narrative are done with an agenda of supporting the modern Republican Party.  But that’s not what I’m doing, I don’t like either party in its current state and think both had more redeeming qualities in the past then they do now but would not fully endorse either at any time period.  Which one I would nominally consider the lesser Evil depends on the circumstances. But the basic fact that the Republican Party is today the party of the Racists is not a fact that can be denied no matter how you look at its history.

I shall start with the origins of the Democratic Party.

Andrew Jackson was a Slave Plantation Owner and a Racist against both Blacks and Native Americans.  But he very much demonstrated that he did not prioritize his positions on those issues over the Unity of the Union.  He opposed “States Rights” during the Nullification Crisis creating tension with other Southern Democrats like John C. Calhoun, and even predicted the next Crisis to provoke Secession would be the Slavery question.  Regardless Jackson was also the first U.S. President who was an active vocal defender of Slavery.

The reasons Jackson is a villain to modern Leftists were unforntatly not divisive issues at the time, I'm sure people on the right sides of them did exist but they were not what principally animated any Presidential Elections of the 1820s and 30s.  The organized vocal anti Jackson sentiment of the time came from the right, from New England and New York aristocrats and also the Anti-Masons, modern Conspiracy Theorists lionizing Jackson have it backwards, at the time people who believed in the Illuminati saw Jackson as an Illuminati puppet.

The Democrats were named what they were because they wanted to make the country more Democratic, there is a reason why in both the 19th and 21st Centuries every Presidential Election with a discrepancy between the Popular Vote and Electoral Vote it was the Democrats who lost even though they got more votes.  And both then and now the Party was partly driven by Anti-Wall Street Populism.

The Republican Party when it was founded is often mischaracterized as a Single Issue Party with that issue being opposition to Slavery.  The thing is the nation had already had Anti-Slavery single issue parties and they were no more successful than any other single issue party.  The Republican Party was simply the first major Political Party that was not internally divided on the Slavery issue.

And that includes the Democrats, Anti-Slavery Democrats always existed, particularly in the northern States.  Martin Van Buren was a co-founder of the Party who came down against Slavery when that became a divisive issue.  In New York the Pro-Slavery Faction were called the Hunkers and the Anti-Slavery faction the Barnburners.  Remember when I said above the Classical Liberals were mostly Democrats in the 1800s? Well they were usually with the Anti-Slavery Democrats like Samuel Tilden, which is not surprising since Classical Liberals followed the Economic Ideology of Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill who both made their opposition to Chattel Slavery well known.  Local and State level Politicians in the North often didn’t concern themselves with Slavery one way or the other which is why I have trouble even finding the Anti-Slavery Democrats outside New York, but one example is Nelson Dewey the first Governor of my home state of Wisconsin.

The most vocal and uncompromising Pro-Slavery Southern Democrats were not Liberals, Classical or Otherwise, nor were they “Conservative” by any modern understanding of Conservatism, they were Agrarian Neo-Feaudalists who self identified as Anti-Capitalist and loved Thomas Carlyle.  But those two types were not the only types the Democrats had, they also had the ideological ancestors of the future Progressive Democrats.

Slavery was not the only issue early American Parties were internally divided on, for the most part they were not even truly Ideologically defined parties to begin with.  America’s first party system was during Washington’s first term primarily about the fight over Hamilton's Bank but after that issue was settled it became principally Political Anglophiles (Federalists) vs Political Francophiles (Democratic-Republicans).  However the French Revolution context of that made it so Anglophiles tended to lean Tory (or at least Burkean) and Francophiles tended to lean Jacobin (or at least Girondin).

However one interesting expectation would be how after the Hattian Revolution many former Saint-Domingue Slave owner emigres migrated to the Southern United States, especially the Carolinas.  Some of them were Royalist but some supported The French Revolution in-spite of how popular Abolitionist Sentiment was across all the factions of the Revolution in Paris.  And then there's how Napoleon complicated things.

The story of how the Democratic Party is related to prior American political parties is usually oversimplified as just being a daughter of the Democratic-Republicans.  And there is some truth to that especially in New York where Tammany Hall is the continuity between them.  The problem is after the Federalist Party was basically dead and the U.S. became functionally a Single Party State for awhile, many Federalists just joined the Democratic-Republicans without really changing their positions on anything, this is especially true of John Quincey Adams.

Jacksonian Democracy is basically the partial fulfillment of the vision of Northern Federalist James Wilson.  While the Ethos of the Southern Democrats arguably began with Charles Cotesworth Pinckney who was Hamilton’s handpicked successor as leader of the Federalists.  Oliver Wolcott Jr was an important Federalist who became a Jacksonian at the end of his life.  And James Buchanan was a Federalist till 1824.  Meanwhile Thomas Jefferson who was still alive in 1824 was vocal in his distaste for Andrew Jackson.

Another interesting detail of the Jackson era Nullification Crisis was that James Madison came out in clear opposition to allowing states to Secede from the Union.

Early American Labor Unions were already more inclined to support the Democrats over Republicans even before the Civil War.. William H. Sylvis supported Stephen Douglas during the 1960 Election but was Loyal to the Union during the Civil War. Before that just look at the history of the Locofocos and the Working Men's Party.

Also pre Civil War it was already the Democrats who were more supportive of Immigrants while the Nativist WASP Xenophobes like the Know Nothings and Bowery Boys were more inclined towards first the Whigs then the Republicans.  George F. Edmunds was of the founding generation of the Republican Party being elected to office as a Republican in 1954, and went on in 1894 to be a founding member of the Immigration Restriction league which throughout its history was lead by Republicans like Henry Cabot Lodge though most Democrats also wound up voting for the Legislation it backed in 1917.  The principal sponsors of the 1924 Immigration Act were also Republicans, Albert Johnson and David A. Reed.

The reason so many people want to believe the “party switch” represented a more complete switch then it actually was is because the simplistic shorthand definition of what a “Conservative” is makes one assume a Conservative could only ever claim to oppose Slavery in Hindsight.  However Edmund Burke is popularly referred to as the father of Modern Conservatism, and he was very vocal in his opposition to Slavery.  John Wesley was an Abolitionist to the right of even Burke actually calling himself a Tory and opposing the American Patriots.  The Federalists in the United States were very much the Edmund Burkes of America, especially Alexander Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris and John Adams, all three opposed Slavery with Morris being the one person at the Constitutional Convention trying to get Slavery outright Abolished at the country's inception.  And they equally shared Burke’s hatred of the French Revolution.

The Whigs were born out of the ashes of the Federalist Party, especially Northern Federalists, and then the early Republican Party was entirely led by Former Whigs.  During it's brief existence the Confederacy never developed much of a Party system, but in North Carolina an opposition party made of former Whigs did exist for a bit and called itself the Conservative Party.

Alven R. Bovay was a former Whig co-founder of the Republican Party who in 1874 denounced the Party considering its Anti-Slavery Mission statement complete at a time when Reconstruction was already on the verge of failing and went on to join the Temperance movement.  So he sounds exactly like a modern “Racism is already solved” type Conservative.

Following the various “Compromises” of 1850 and 1854 the most recent changes to the Status Quo were in favor of the Slave States.  So in that context fighting those changes became definitionally Conservative or even full on Reactionary.

The appearance of the Republican Party being a single issue party was marketing, they got the Votes of even Marxists because Marx himself rightly deemed opposing Slavery the most vital issue in the U.S. at that time, and also many Anti-Slavery Democrats left to join the Republicans.  But the leadership of the Party was almost entirely former Whigs who were a Burkean Conservative Party.  At the 1856 Convention their platform already treated another issue as of near equal importance, opposing Polygamy on the same false Biblical Logic that their 2004 opposition to Gay Marriage was based on.  At the 1860 Convention’s Platform they downplayed the Slavery question refusing to call for outright Abolition.  This platform condemned Disunion but also affirmed the sovereignty of the States, so no the Republicans didn’t start caring about States Rights only when former Southern Democrats joined them a century later. 

Opposing Slavery was always objectively good, but not everyone who opposed Slavery did so for the right reasons.  Some were Racists who didn’t want Black people in the country at all.  But more influential than that were the Northern Capitalists who viewed the Southern Plantation owners as Economic Rivals they wanted to crush, and the South as a whole as a Pre-Capitalist Society ripe for Imperialist exploitation.  And that’s why most of the Republicans never really wanted Reconstruction to go all the way, actually making the Freed Slaves truly fully enfranchised citizens would make them more difficult to exploit.  Giving them ownership of the Land they spent Generations working would get in the way of Proletarianizing them.

Meanwhile a lot of the founding Republicans were mainly just opposed to Slavery expanding westward and/or the Fugitive Slave Act and not actively calling for Abolition in the states where it was already entrenched.

With the Democrats the unifying factor that enabled Neo-Feudalists and Classical Liberals and proto-Social Democrats to be able to coexist in the same party was their shared hatred of Wall Street and Bankers.  Benjamin Tilman was one of the most vile and despicable openly racist Southern Democrats, but he also has his name on one of the most important pieces of Progressive Era Antitrust legislation, the Tilman Act of 1907.  There were even pro New Deal Segregationists like Tom Connolly.

Republican President Calvin Coolidge was Fiscally Conservative and also Anti-Racist.

No one actually denies the Republican Party had Conservatives before 1960, but they desperately want to pretend that in the Roosevelt era Republican Party there was no overlap between the Conservative Republicans and those who were still fighting Racism.  However Robert Taft and Hamilton Fish were absolutely leading the fight to get Anti-Lynching legislation passed while self identifying as Conservative at the same time, and Taft at least is who later Conservative Republicans sought to claim they were carrying the mantle of even while squabbling with each other.  

That said the Republicans party also already had Racists at that time, James Wolcott Wadsworth Jr. opposed Anti-Lynching legislation on States Rights grounds, as did William Sterling Cole, Harold Knutson and Clare Hoffman. And the Republicans even already had a full blown Nazi in Jacob Thorkelson.  

Even the Progressives the Republican Party had during the era of Teddy Roosevelt Progressivism did in fact take Conservative positions on some things like Prohibition.  And their Conservationism was much more Eco-Fascist then actually Environmentalist.