Repent!

Originally posted by kirksey957
OK, when I read about the "sheep and goats" it has always been my assumption that the sheep were the "good guys." Maybe this is not the case.

You know, I don't know why sheep and goats are used as they are in that parable. If Jesus was a carpenter (assuming the parable really originated with him), who lived in Nazareth and perhaps worked in the nearby city of Sepphoris...maybe he was something of a "towny" who just used an example that would speak to the nomadic, herding history of Israel. In other wrods, maybe he didn't really know anything about sheep and goats per se....

In fact, the sheep-traits and goat-traits are almost reversed, if anything: to think of something like trotting off to the nearest prison to comfort the inmates is not "sheep-like," and it is a parable about taking pro-active action...

EDIT: And maybe there's some kind of O. Henry twist, a humorous character-reversal in the story that the original audience would have perceived (because they understood the differences between goat-behavior and sheep-behavior), perhaps helped by a wink and a shrug from J, so that they undersood that they were supposed to be pro-active "goats," taking risks for the kingdom. A lot can be lost when just the written word remains, perhaps rendered by someone who didn't know anything about sheep or goats either.... In the end, I have to go back, to "I dunno...."