RE: Love thy neighbor
May 8, 2017 at 3:20 am
(This post was last modified: May 8, 2017 at 3:21 am by Fake Messiah.)
Yeah but what is "Ben-Hur" about? It's about Ben who is angry at Romans for occuping them, but at the same time he loves his Roman friend. Then it switches and all his anger is centered toward Messala so that during the movie we see him on the journey getting Romanized (he even met the Emperor) so that he even becomes Roman himself and only Messala seems to be the problem. He kills Messala and then that holy rain falls so that his sister and mother get healed and then what? They live happily ever after?
And when it come to Caligula you must understand that during the first two centuries of the Empire the vice was encouraged at Rome only during the very brief reign of the insane Caligula (4 years), the 9 years of the influence of Messalina, and the reign of Nero (54-68); 27 years out of more than 200.
But like I mentioned Seneca, after him there was this Stoic movement for assisting the helpless. From Nerva to Marcus Aurelius the emperors set the example of founding orphanages and homes for the aged, and the wealthier citizens generously followed it. Civic festivals, civic baths and theaters and aqueducts, were established by the wealthier Romans. The municipalities were compelled to provide schools at which every free Roman child could obtain gratuitous education, and poorer youths were assisted to pass to the higher schools. There has been no such humanitarian movement in Europe since those days until the 19th century. Woman's position was relieved of all the old injustice; slavery was so consistently censured that, if paganism had continued, it could not have survived as long as it did; war was denounced by Lucan and others; the gladiatorial displays were heavily condemned by Plutarch and Seneca.
Christianity taught brotherhood and mercy because brotherhood and mercy were familiar doctrines of the age. Eventual triumph of Christianity was political, not spiritual. Indeed if you look up emperor Constantine you can see he was far from a moral man.
Nevertheless Rome had it's moral problems, like war and slavery and it might have looked divine if Christianity demolished those problems as it came to power, but needlessly to say it did not.
Jesus had many opportunities to disavow slavery. He never did. St. Paul reaffirmed the practice. The Bible was widely used to justify slavery in the United States. Popes and other fathers of the Catholic Church owned slaves as late as 1800. Jesuits in colonial Maryland and nuns in Europe and Latin America owned slaves. The Church did not condemn slavery until 1888, after every Christian nation had abolished the practice.
And when it come to Caligula you must understand that during the first two centuries of the Empire the vice was encouraged at Rome only during the very brief reign of the insane Caligula (4 years), the 9 years of the influence of Messalina, and the reign of Nero (54-68); 27 years out of more than 200.
But like I mentioned Seneca, after him there was this Stoic movement for assisting the helpless. From Nerva to Marcus Aurelius the emperors set the example of founding orphanages and homes for the aged, and the wealthier citizens generously followed it. Civic festivals, civic baths and theaters and aqueducts, were established by the wealthier Romans. The municipalities were compelled to provide schools at which every free Roman child could obtain gratuitous education, and poorer youths were assisted to pass to the higher schools. There has been no such humanitarian movement in Europe since those days until the 19th century. Woman's position was relieved of all the old injustice; slavery was so consistently censured that, if paganism had continued, it could not have survived as long as it did; war was denounced by Lucan and others; the gladiatorial displays were heavily condemned by Plutarch and Seneca.
Christianity taught brotherhood and mercy because brotherhood and mercy were familiar doctrines of the age. Eventual triumph of Christianity was political, not spiritual. Indeed if you look up emperor Constantine you can see he was far from a moral man.
Nevertheless Rome had it's moral problems, like war and slavery and it might have looked divine if Christianity demolished those problems as it came to power, but needlessly to say it did not.
Jesus had many opportunities to disavow slavery. He never did. St. Paul reaffirmed the practice. The Bible was widely used to justify slavery in the United States. Popes and other fathers of the Catholic Church owned slaves as late as 1800. Jesuits in colonial Maryland and nuns in Europe and Latin America owned slaves. The Church did not condemn slavery until 1888, after every Christian nation had abolished the practice.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
