RE: Would Jesus promote punishing the innocent instead of the guilty?
September 6, 2020 at 4:16 pm
(September 6, 2020 at 2:59 pm)Grandizer Wrote: Can we see the context in which the phrase you speak of was said, btw? Line number please. I have a translated Bacchae text available right now.
Sure, in some translations of The Bacchae and the Acts the word "pricks" is translated into "goads".
So you have Dionysus, free from prison, telling Pentheus, “Don’t kick against the goad – a man against a god,” just like in Acts 26:14 “Why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads”
And it also comes after familiar scene where Paul, Dionysus comes to be imprisoned. Not recognized as a divine figure, King Pentheus of Thebes locked him in chains until he could demonstrate that Dionysus is just the wild imaginary figure of repressed women. An earthquake, however, soon rattles the city and Dionysus emerges, chains shed, to the astonishment of Pentheus.
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"