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“If we have to have a choice between being dead and pitied, and being alive with a bad image, we’d rather be alive and have the bad image.”
— Golda Meir
Zionism is the movement for the self-determination and statehood for the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland, the land of Israel.
“If Hamas put down their weapons, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons, there would be no Israel."
ברוך השם
Doc Dutch (01-08-2022)
There always seemed to be some Witch Doctor, High Priest, Soothsayer around. It seemed to go hand-in-hand. After a 1,000 year Rule, the Renaissance finally drove a wedge between the State and the Church.
If you notice, 'Religion' continues to try and seize back Power.
Prefer Secular Humanist Law?
Or the Religious Law that kills people for 'working on the Sabbath', 'homosexuality', 'Witchcraft'?
Jack (01-08-2022)
You are going to be waiting a very long time for the Holy Spirit to fill your mind with knowledge about particle physics, Roman history, or Greek metaphysics.
I acquire that kind of knowledge from trained subject matter experts. I don't wait around hoping the knowledge will just pop into my mind by divine intervention.
Practice of Charity Changes in the Christian Roman Empire
According to Kenneth Harl, professor of antiquity at Tulane University, the nature and practice of charity changed dramatically as the pagan Roman Empire evolved into a Christian state.
The practice of public distributions, or almsgiving, in pagan Rome were dispensed according to rank: the higher your social rank, the more you received from the State.
The Christian tradition of almsgiving in the Roman Empire reversed this tradition: in the Christian tradition of almsgiving, the more you needed, the more you received. This ensured that the poor and destitute were the primary beneficiaries of charity. It was simply considered more pious to practice almsgiving this way
Doc Dutch (02-02-2022)
The New Testament is the first piece of literature in the western tradition that writes directly about the poor and destitute with dignity and empathy.
There is nothing remotely similar in Greek literature of antiquity. To the extent the destitute and impoverished even show up in ancient Greek literature, they are treated as subjects of comedy or caricature.
So, I think Greek concepts of public distributions were probably not dissimilar to pagan Roman practices.
The moral of the story is the very idea that almsgiving should primarily benefit the destitute and poor is something all of us in the west inherited, knowingly or unknowingly, from the Judeo-Christian tradition. It just seems like a perfectly natural and self evident ethical imperative because that ethical tradition has been with us for 1,800 years.
A downside of Christian ethical tradition is that it left us as a legacy the burden of unnecessary guilt, particularly about sexuality.
Last edited by Cypress; 02-02-2022 at 10:33 PM.
Doc Dutch (02-02-2022)
I see jesus like socrates and seneca, a true philosopher murdered due to envy of the powerful.
the fact of the jesus cult merger with the roman imperial cult doesnt mean that much.
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