An enlightening post, Doc- thank you. Well, I have very suspicious and negative views of Emperor Constantine the Great as he had centuries of pagan myths and rituals to transform into early Christianity.// "Constantine's Sword" (author forgotten and hope I got the title right) and "Julian" by Gore Vidal.// However...easy for Jefferson with his slaves to celebrate the land though I do see genius in the man- he lived in his own time, afterall. Yes- I am musing that perhaps I am a city girl with a farmer's heart who has wreaked her garden- my Secret Jungle- after two decades of hard work. Then there's the death bed promises to my mother. One broken and dearly regretted but the land remains and I hope outlives me.// Some days I think life is a pursuit of sadness.
On Mar 26, 6:14 pm, Doc Holliday <[email protected]> wrote: > AMEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! save the voodoo superstitions! > > and in reiteration > > snip> > In his only book, Notes on the State of Virginia (1787), Jefferson > urged readers to resist the factory life of large European cities and > stay on the land. "Those who labour in the earth are the chosen > people > of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his > peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue," Jefferson wrote > in the famous chapter called "Manufactures." Farmers intuit the laws > of God within the laws of nature, and so become virtuous, he > reasoned. > They are, by the nature of their work, resourceful, neighborly, > independent. They are the elemental caretakers of the world. Nor do > they succumb to the crude opinions of the masses. But the farmer is > free-thinking and inquisitive. The manufacturer, by contrast, is a > specialist, a cog, a wage slave. "Dependence," Jefferson concluded, > "begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and > prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition." A manufacturer > cannot > be a citizen of a democracy, only a consumer within an oligarchy. > Four years later, Hamilton submitted to Congress his Report on > Manufactures, in which he dismissed Jefferson's agrarian vision in > favor of developing industry, division of labor, child labor, > protective tariffs, and prohibitions on many imported manufactured > goods. Today, fewer than 1 percent of Americans work on farms, and > many of those are huge, industrial farms that generate massive > amounts > of toxic by-products. That Jefferson's self-reliant farmer is so > unrecognizable to us today is evidence enough, should we need any, > that we have inherited Hamilton's America, not > Jefferson's..................... > more.............. > The difference between Jefferson and Hamilton is the difference > between a version of Christianity based on Jesus' life and death and > Resurrection, and one based on his teachings. Or to put it another > way, it is a difference between where one locates basileia tou theou— > the kingdom of God. Is it, as Luke's gospel says, "in the midst of > you" (17:21), or is it, as John's gospel claimed, a reward saved for > the sweet hereafter? To live by Jesus' teachings would be to live > virtuously as stewards of the land; it would be to create an economy > based on compassion, cooperation, and conservation; it would be to > preserve the Creation as the kingdom of God. Jefferson was proposing > a > country of countrysides, a pastorale in which we would want to live; > Hamilton was giving us a nation of factories from i which we would > want > —perhaps in the end need—to be saved. > "Thomas" is the Aramaic word for twin. That Thomas Jefferson's > version > of Christianity actually found a twin gospel—one that included no > miracles, no claims of divinity, but only the teachings of Jesus— > hidden beneath an Egyptian cliff, and that this ancient gospel was > also recorded by a man known as Thomas, makes for a remarkable story. > Sometime near the end of the nineteenth century, two British > archaeologists, Bernard P. Grenfell and Arthur S. Hunt, were > searching > through an ancient trash heap along the Nile River, at a site known > as > Oxyrhynchus, when they found three small papyrus leaves. One of the > fragments read, "These are the [ ] sayings [ ] the living Jesus spoke > [ ] also called Thomas [ ]." New Testament scholars had long known > that there once existed a Gospel of Thomas because in the third > century Hippolytus denounced such a text in his Refutation of All > Heresies. And because Thomas's gospel ran afoul of the early Church > bishops, particularly Irenaeus, most copies of it were likely > destroyed. > In 1945, 150 miles upstream near another river town called Nag > Hammadi, an Egyptian farmer named Muhammad `Ali al-Samman was guiding > his camel beneath the nitrogen-rich cliffs that line the Nile, > collecting fertilizer for his fields. As he dug at the base of one > cliff, Muhammad `Ali found a sealed jug, obviously ancient. Fearing a > jinn but hoping for gold, he broke the jar open with his mattock. He > found neither. What fell out were twelve books (codices), made from > papyrus and bound in leather. Figuring the manuscripts might be worth > something, Muhammad `Ali gathered them up in his turban and carried > them home. According to New Testament scholar James M. Robinson, who > has pieced this whole story together, Muhammad 'Ali's mother used > some > of the leaves from the books to ignite their out-door clay oven. > Muhammad `Ali traded others for oranges and cigarettes. > Meanwhile, shortly after the discovery, Muhammad `Ali and his > brothers > hacked to death a man they claimed had killed their father six months > earlier. But when local police started poking around, asking about > the > murder, Muhammad `Ali didn't want to answer any further questions > about the codices. Since the manuscripts were written in Coptic, an > Egyptian variant of Greek, he hid one at the house of a Coptic > priest. > The priest, in turn, sent it to Cairo by way of his brother-in-law to > ascertain its value on the antiquities market. But someone tipped off > Egyptian authorities, who then threatened to take the brother-in-law > into custody and told him he could return home only if he sold the > codex to the Coptic Museum, which he promptly did. > Here a one-eyed bandit named Bahij `Ali enters the story. Cairo's > leading antiquities dealer, Cypriot Phocion J. Tano, had retained > Bahij `Ali to acquire as many of the codices as possible. But again, > the Egyptian government heard about Tano's acquisitions and pressed > him to entrust the manuscripts to the Coptic Museum for "safe > keeping." Tano spent much of the 1950s trying unsuccessfully to get > the codices back. > In 1952 the French scholar Henri-Charles Puech realized that a > tractate in Codex II contained sayings that matched the Oxyrhynchus > fragments. Less than sixty years after Grenfell and Hunt uncovered > hard evidence that a Gospel of Thomas did at one time exist, Puech > was > able to conclude that the entire text had been found. > When all of the remaining codices were accounted for, there turned > out > to he fifty-two separate tractates hidden at Nag Hammadi. How did > they > end up in this remote port town? In 325 C.E. the Roman Emperor > Constantine, newly converted to Christianity, called for a conference > of bishops in Nicaea. He charged them to come up with a short > document > that would unite Christians and eradicate heresy. The result was the > Nicene Creed. Forty-two years later, one of the drafters, Athanasius, > the bishop of Alexandria, issued a letter to Egyptian monks calling > for all heretical manuscripts to be destroyed.1 Scholars suspect that > monks at the St. Pachomius monastery, near Nag Hammadi, refused the > order, and instead buried the codices in a large jug. > Unfortunately, years of infighting among international scholars > stalled the publication of what came to be called the Nag Hammadi > library, and the European countries that controlled the publication > rights showed a remarkable indifference to the task. In the end it > was > an American, James M. Robinson, who obtained photographs of the > individual Coptic tractates and passed them on to a team of American > translators. As a result, the first complete edition of the Nag > Hammadi Library was published in English. > Perhaps because of this head start, much of the ground-breaking > scholar-ship devoted to the Gospel of Thomas has come from Americans: > Robinson himself, Stephen J. Patterson, John Dominic Crossan, Helmut > Koester, Ste-van Davies, and Elaine Pagels. But I have another > theory: > it was Thomas Jefferson's Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth that > prepared the Americans for what they would find in the ancient Gospel > of Thomas. In some Borgesian way, Jefferson's gospel has become a > predecessor to the Gospel of Thomas, though it was composed some > 1,700 > years later. > The similarities between the two gospels are remarkable, as much for > what they do not say as for what they do. Like Jefferson's gospel, > Thomas's ignores the virgin birth. Thomas's Jesus never performs a > miracle, never calls himself the Son of God, and never claims that he > will have to die for the sins of humankind. Instead he tells > parables, > he issues instructions, and, most alarmingly, he locates the kingdom > of God in that one place we might never look—right in front of > us.>end > snip > > Peace, > Doc > > On Mar 26, 5:11 pm, rigsy03 <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > This is very misplaced populist rage inflamed by the Democrats for > > political purposes and it stinks and the stink will trail them like > > the stink of a skunk and hopefully upset the next election and return > > the Republican Party to its conservative philosophy and to a new day > > in our governance. Our debris trails back to the Kennedys and electing > > officials on their "star" or media power instead of their competance. > > The "vast wasteland" of tv has rotted brains who vote like they are > > voting for an idol or acrobat dance contest. A country's success is > > built on sturdy stuff or it flops: the worth of its treasury, the > > strength of its defense against enemies, the value/wealth of its home > > industries, the truth of its ethics and values. America has pretty > > much destroyed the basic strength of a vital society- the family. The > > agrarian. The respect- and that is one of the worse losses. > > > On Mar 26, 4:28 pm, Fritz da Cat <[email protected]> wrote:- Hide > > quoted text - > > - Show quoted text - --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more. -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
