Thomas_More
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Careful when using the word ‘depart’ from. You mean ‘comes from.’
To English readers it sounds like we ‘never left’ Lenin Stalin and Mao! But I know you mean we have never been with them.” Paul distorted the original principles of the primitive christians, it should be called Paulism, he was the real founder of the Catholic Church which is the negation of the Roman primitive christians, and the economic base of catholicism was Feudalism.”
*****
Too simplistic. I agree that Paul was the founder of what would become the Athanasian Church, but that triumphant Church was created in the East, where all the doctrinal matters were fought over and hammered out, and it was a slave-owning society, not a feudal one.
Rome was just one bishopric, called papacy because of its size, not because of any special precedence. All the Churches formed the Catholic Church, but it wasn’t the Roman Catholic Church, which didn’t exist until 1054, when the Bishop of Rome (Pope) broke away from the others.By that time feudalism was the system in western Europe, and the Roman Church, in isolation for a long time from the Asian Churches, was accommodated to it. (Saxon England and the Celtic churches were not subject to Rome – the latter separate since the 7th century, and the English having lapsed from communion with Rome and holding communion with the East).
1066 and William Bastard brought both feudalism to England and also the papal mandate to re-establish submission to Rome.*****
” There is not any citation in the Bible indicating that the followers of Jesus cannot be married, or cannot have a woman, according to the Bible the apostles were married. ”
True, but Paul states that those who cannot live unmarried had better marry rather than live in sin, but that it is better not to be married at all.
I have no wish to defend Paul nor to say he wasn’t probably a lecher. I’m just saying that his words were used to legitimise the power, later on, of monastic clergy over secular.
Yes, he would have been a liar, and a hater of love, life and beauty. Joachim Kahl calls him a “neurotic philistine.” But Paul won. And so did his follower Athanasius of Alexandria, the leader of the Pauline sect which became Orthodox Christianity, and all later trinitarian Christianity.
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In Switzerland today one sees friars followed by their women and children, at a distance, and whom they cannot acknowledge – or so I was told by a German theology student.
Whether it was genuine or not is irrelevant.
The point is that celibacy, and assumed virginity, was idolised, as long as it went hand in hand with monastic vows.
And the real reason for this was that, with only monks being enthroned as bishops, the power was retained by the monastic clergy.
This is still the case (protestants excepted). The most a married priest can become is an archpriest.
In the Roman Church celibacy for all clergy began to be enforced in the 11th century, but still, secular (non-monastic) priests would mostly remain barred from the higher clergy.The idea that celibacy was superior to married life had begun in the Hellenist world and was inherited by the Church (and is stressed by St. Paul, who says marriage is a condescension to those too weak to remain virgins – and hence unworthy of higher things).
For a time, I believe, it was a toss-up between which would triumph: Christianity or Mithraism.
Tendencies now typical of classic Christianity were already growing within Hellenism (“paganism”), such as the valuing of celibacy and virginity as superior to marriage.
The anti-Christian Emperor Julian chose celibacy after once being married. He was a neo-Platonist, which was extremely popular among the ruling class. Hellenists had their own “Jesus”, the wandering preacher Apollonius of Tyana, who visited India.When Christians were fighting among themselves and different Christian factions alternately had control of the state, celibacy ensured ecclesiastical power, since only monks could become bishops. This was betimes enforced by violence, and monks would invade the towns to punish the secular clergy’s recalcitrance.
Yes. But Spartacus’ revolt is well documented.
Or was that a name put about by the slaves in revolt to frighten the Roman state? No one met Spartacus. Was he a collective name?Protestant (but not Anabaptist or Catholic) Christianity has always blamed the poor for being poor – especially Calvinism, the favourite choice for the bourgeoisie in the early modern period.
You may be right.
” Ancient Greek has two verbs for crucify: anastauroo (ἀνασταυρόω), from stauros (which in modern Greek only means “cross” but which in antiquity was used of any kind of wooden pole, pointed or blunt, bare or with attachments) and apotumpanizo (ἀποτυμπανίζω) “crucify on a plank”,[4] together with anaskolopizo (ἀνασκολοπίζω “impale”). In earlier pre-Roman Greek texts anastauro usually means “impale”.[5][6][7]
The Greek used in the Christian New Testament uses four verbs, three of them based upon stauros (σταυρός), usually translated “cross”. The most common term is stauroo (σταυρόω), “to crucify”, occurring 46 times; sustauroo (συσταυρόω), “to crucify with” or “alongside” occurs five times, while anastauroo (ἀνασταυρόω), “to crucify again” occurs only once at the Epistle to the Hebrews 6:6. Prospegnumi (προσπήγνυμι), “to fix or fasten to, impale, crucify” occurs only once, at the Acts of the Apostles 2:23.
The English term cross derives from the Latin word crux,[8] which classically referred to a tree or any construction of wood used to hang criminals as a form of execution. The term later came to refer specifically to a cross.[9] The related term crucifix derives from the Latin crucifixus or cruci fixus, past participle passive of crucifigere or cruci figere, meaning “to crucify” or “to fasten to a cross”.[10][11][12][13]”
The cross was not originally used by the early Christians as their emblem. There are no crucifixion images, I believe, in the catacombs of Rome, and Jesus is portrayed as a mischievous clean-shaven boy. The Christian emblem was not a cross but a fish.
The bearded Christ came later and was based on images of Zeus.
” ( although the roman did not use cross )”
Are you sure? So Spartacus wasn’t crucified?
I don’t believe that. To crucify comes from crux (cross).
