The Golden Ass

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Features

February 2002

St. Ambrose, Two Letters from a Saint
two thousand years of anti-Semitism in five minutes
just a thought - Celsus (175 AD): "Against the Christians"
an afterthought (on Celsus (175 AD): "Against the Christians")
The Kennedy assassination (Friday November 22, 1963)
Manicheism and Literature
when matriarchs ruled the earth

friday november 22, 1963

I don't intend to add another conspiracy theory, nor do I have any new answers. I shall not comment on the Warren report, and I care little for any theory that doesn't account for the 4th shot recorded on the tape: the acoustic evidence is incontrovertible. But this is not my point. I shall not exonerate Lee Harvey Oswald, nor accuse him to have been the sniper. Perhaps he was a patsy, perhaps he fired a few shots, perhaps he was just an unfortunate bystander - I really don't care. All I want to do, is ask a simple question, and leave speculations to people who are better at it.

I mean, if indeed there had been a conspiracy, it must have involved the smallest circle of people, because after so many years of investigating and speculating, nothing substantial has leaked to the public yet. If there was a conspiracy, the secret is well kept. But perhaps a larger number of people without direct knowledge might have unwittingly contributed to the assassination and the subsequent cover-up? Which is easiest done along the line of a military command structure, in which everybody is kept informed strictly on a need to know base. In such scenario only one top ranking officer, apart from the actual shooter, may have known the full truth, and already have taken it to his grave.

Besides, where would the money come from? The logistics for high profile assassinations doesn't come cheap. But even under this aspect, the "money" doesn't need to actually have been in the know! All that is needed is temporary access to a (Swiss?) bank account, preferably for a perfectly legal purpose. After the deed is done the account is closed and disappears from the books, and the "money" is left no wiser than the rest of the public. So considering the options, the "conspiracy" most difficult to prove, would be committed by an assassin entirely on his own - in other words no conspiracy at all; just murder. But there is a problem.

The murders of Bob Kennedy and the attempt at Ronald Reagan show that there are ways to kill your man in a crowded place with a handgun. It is a high risk strategy for the assassin, but his only option if the target travels in a protected vehicle and doesn't expose himself in an open area. However, we know that the weapon of choice in the JFK assassination had been a sniper rifle. Now that raises a crucial question. How did the assassin know that Kennedy would travel in an open car?

I think we see the problem: according to my sources, the decision to take a car without roof was made at the very last moment, apparently by the President himself, and against the advice of his security people. It was not a decision that came beforehand from the oval office. So we have a situation, where in the last minute the assassin has to make up his mind, how to kill the president. If he wished to use a rifle, he had to know that his victim came in an open car.

Maybe, this question is not so very difficult to answer. The occasion was probably live on radio and television and if so, the reporter certainly mentioned whether the limousine was open or covered. Still there are logistics to consider. It takes time for a sniper to get himself into position. So the real question here is, how long it would take for a sniper to set up himself, after he had gleaned from the public media the essential bit of information?

We can of course speculate that a determined assassin would lay in wait anyway, and if no opportunity arises to fire his shot, he would switch to plan B. Quite possible! But this tallies badly with the official version of a lone assassin who had prepared himself for months and months to snipe at the president with a not exactly first choice rifle. There is no evidence that Oswald had a plan B. But then he didn't live to tell the story.

two thousand years of anti-semitism in five minutes
"Constantine's Sword - The Church and the Jews, a History" by James Carroll

Many Nazis in the upper echelons, who'd sent Jews to the phony shower-rooms, had a strict catholic up-bringing. For some Catholic moderates this suggests an uncomfortable connection between European anti-Semitism and ecclesiastic tradition. In 180 AD the Roman emperor Marc Aurel expressed concern over the "military discipline" of the early church; 135 years later, emperor Constantine decided to employ exactly this quality and issued his edict of tolerance. It legalized an institution which to the present day sees it as its god-given right to persecute and if possible obliterate every dissenter, even so it had originated itself in dissent from its Jewish parent.

Like any other institution, the Catholic Church is built on legal charters inspired by precedents - i.e. the New Testament. It is open to everybody who can read, that St. Paul opposes Jewish law as the means of salvation (Rom. 4:15, 7:5, 10:9, 11:6) and he is the instigator of the infamous blood libel (1 Thes. 2:15). (There is also testimony of a different tenor, for instance the letter of Jesus' own brother, but this didn't carry the debate.) So it is not surprising, that the emperor's vicar, St. Ambrose, pulled rank and prestige, to prevent restitution and punishment, when at Raqqa, Syria, in 385 AD, the local bishop had instigated the Christian mob to burn a synagogue to the ground.

Ambrose (339-397) made it an issue of principle and refused to dispense the Eucharist, until he had obtained binding promises from the emperor (see the two letters of the saint, printed in this issue). Legally this has set a pivotal precedent in the history of Christian-Jewish relations. We look at the incitement and institutionalization of "justified" atrocities. "What could be less Christian, than killing others for being different?" asks an Amazon reviewer, but the New Testament can be curiously explicit on how to deal with opposition:

"Those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me (Lk. 19:27) *) "For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and a man's foes shall be they of his own household. (Mt. 10:35-37)." Think not that I am come to send peace on earth:(Mt. 10:33-37)." "I am come to send fire on the earth, and what will I, if it be already kindled?" (Lk. 12:49, 51)!

We look at an all out assault on culture and just about anybody who has the temerity of begging to differ.

In 415, Alexandria's bishop, St. Cyril decided to have expelled the Jews from Alexandria - some 40,000, after 700 years of residence. The army raided their quarters, raped the women and looted homes and synagogues. Survivors went into permanent exile. After this the saint dispatched his mob against the mathematician and pagan philosopher Hypathia. They stripped her naked and dragged her through the streets into a church. A certain Peter the Reader killed her with his club. Her corpse was cut to pieces and the flesh scraped from the bones with shells and pot shards.

Finally, in 617 the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius ordered all Jews forcibly converted; many expatrited from the shrinking empire. West and East began to drift apart. In 1071 the celibacy campaigner, Pope Gregory VII, and his counterparts in Constantinople negotiated a "reunion" to end the schism of the two churches. To celebrate the occasion a bonfire consumed complete manuscripts of Sappho and Alceios, it is said 11,000 verses. Having survived 1,600 years, barely 270 lines were left of Sappho's poetry. The treaty lasted until 1078. Then relations became strenuous again.

So Pope Innocent III (easily the greatest single mass murderer prior to the Nazis) finally directed the 4th "Crusade" against the sister-church. Before Friday, April 13, 1204 Constantinople, despite of fires and iconoclastic upheavals, had been the last vestige of antique civilization. Now the mob on both sides of the walls, burned, looted, and smashed to smithereens the last intact remains of ancient art and science. After which the crusaders proceeded to rape 20,000 women. (The film-maker Buñuel once explained, that no Eskimo or Chinese could possibly enjoy sex as much as a sin-stricken Catholic!)

After the event, Pope Innocent III did indeed express remorse - but only because things had gotten out of hands - his hands! So he decided to strengthen the Church's executive powers: in 1208 he introduced the Holy Inquisition. A crusade against Albigensian "heretics" was to be conducted under Rome's direct supervision. The genocide in the Languedoc lasted from 1208 to 1244. The new institution had created a politically convenient precedent for prosecutions, and the authorities in the entire Christian world took note.

During the Dark Ages, the network of Jewish money-lenders had provided the only workable banking system in Europe. So, not surprisingly, now and then magistrates and royal courts would find it convenient to clear their debts in a "spontaneous" pogrom, aided and abetted by the 4th Lateran council in 1215, where Innocent III's encyclical decreed Jews to live in ghettos, banned any intermarriage between Jews and Gentiles, and barred Jews from certain professions. Like the Nazis the Pope required Jews to wear a yellow sign on their garb to mark their identity.

Innocent III didn't need to recommend to burn and destroy Jewish literature, his predecessors had already done so. Only after the Knights Templar and Italian bankers safely had established their own financial networks, (Dante's Beatrice was a Bardi), the services of Jewish moneylenders were no longer essential and we see in 1255 a Pope Gregory IX suddenly condemn physical atrocities against Jews. It came of course too late for the victims. The fact remains that the Holy Office had volunteered to create the legal precedent and ideological pretext.

The Spanish auto-da-fés made their first appearancen 1238 in Aragon. In 1290, King Edward I expelled all Jews from England; they didn't return before Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) gave his rather muted permission. In 1306, King Philip IV of France tried to follow the example of his English colleague; the epidemics from 1348-1349 roused the indoctrinated and superstitious mob to massacre Jews all across Europe. In 1492 the Spanish reconquest reached the final phase: all Jews were ordered to convert or leave. It opened the floodgates.

Many fleeing Jews were murdered en route; Portugal took the opportunity to enslave penniless Jewish refugees, followed by orders of King Manuel of Portugal in 1497 that Jews had to convert or leave. All children under 14 were to be seized, baptized, and reared as Christians; 20,000 Jews who gathered in Lisbon to prepare their escape into exile were forcibly baptized. The Portuguese just couldn't bear to stand behind: in 1536 they established their own Inquisition. They even carried their zeal to their colonies in India and harrassed the Hinduists. In 1571 the Inquisition reached Peru and Mexico.

Resistance was futile. Documents tell us of a converted son, who was sent after his mother in exile and persuaded her to return into the Inquisition's jurisdiction. She did - and was tortured and roasted alive over a slow fire. And with her every Sephardi who refused baptism or exile. A Jew who wished to lay down the stigmatizing garb and leave the ghetto without getting wet in the baptistery, had to go to the Netherlands, or put his hopes on the century of secular enlightenment and Napoleon. The catchword was "assimilation," and it seemed to work. But then came the Nazis ... .

* It has repeatedly been brought to my attention that the sentence in Luke is drawn from a parable and therefore has to be seen in its "merely metaphorical" context. But this doesn't change anything at all, on the contrary: as a little story with a moral it has been put in a concrete circumstantial setting: the situation when Herod the Great's rule had passed on to his sons. I fail to see how this possibly could blunt the edgy statement? It is a reference to the common expectation of the imminent end of times, it attacks the credentials of Herod's successors as insufficient and it is a veiled hint at Jesus' own aspirations.

two letters from a saint

The Bishop and Confessor, Saint Ambrose of Milan (c. 340 - 397 on Good Friday), was a melancholy and rabidly anti-Semitic church politician, whose policy, under a mantle of unbending politeness, relied on acts of violence, calculated to look like caprices. He became a player of more significance for the course of history, than Jesus Christ himself. His personal courage was only matched by the acumen and intelligence of his actions, and the toughness of his character. If personality should play any role in the making of history, then it is fair to say, that without Ambrose the history of the Church and perhaps of Christian religion - at least in the West of Europe - may have petered out after only a few more centuries. If anybody was to be the rock on which to build the Church, then it was Ambrose - and he knew it. So did the Church, who awarded him with the title of a "Doctor of the Church."

Letter XL
Ambrose, Bishop, to the most clement prince, and blessed Emperor, Theodosius the Augustus.

"... I have never been in such anxiety as at present, since I see that I must take heed that there be nothing which may be ascribed to me savouring even of sacrilege. And so I entreat you to listen with patience ... for, if I am unworthy to be heard by you, I am unworthy to offer [the Eucharist] for you, who have been entrusted by you with your vows and prayers. Will you not yourself hear him whom you wish to be heard for you? ... and therefore the silence of the priest ought to displease your Clemency, and his freedom to please you.

For you are involved in the risk of my silence, [sic! hear, hear, what a threat - who does this Ambrose think he is?] ... I am obeying the commands of God. And I do this first of all out of love for you ... . If I am not believed in this, ... I speak in very truth for fear of offending God. ... But if the guilt of silence and dissimulation on my part would both weigh me down and not set you free, I had rather that you should think me too importunate, than useless and base. Since it is written, as the holy Apostle Paul says, whose teaching you cannot controvert: "Be instant, in season, out of season, reprove, entreat, rebuke with all patience and doctrine."

We, then, also have One Whom it is even more perilous to displease, ... you know the passage: "When ye shall stand before kings and rulers, take no thought what ye shall speak, for it shall be given you in that hour what ye shall speak; for it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father Who speaketh in you." And ... in the cause of God whom will you listen to, if not to the priest, at whose greater peril sin is committed? ... I know that you are Godfearing, merciful, gentle, and calm, having the faith and fear of God at heart, but often some things escape our notice.

... If I saw that you sinned against me, I ought not to keep silence, for it is written: "If thy brother sin against thee, rebuke him at first, then chide him sharply before two or three witnesses. If he will not hear thee, tell the Church." Shall I, then, keep silence in the cause of God? ... A report was made by the military Count of the East that a synagogue had been burnt, and that this was done at the instigation of the Bishop. You gave command that the others should be punished, and the synagogue be rebuilt by the Bishop himself. ... Are you not afraid, lest, which will happen, he oppose your Count with a refusal?

He will then be obliged to make him either an apostate or a martyr, ... either of them equivalent to persecution, if he be compelled either to apostatize or to undergo martyrdom. You see in what direction the issue of the matter inclines. If you think the Bishop firm, guard against making a martyr of a firm man; if you think him vacillating, avoid causing the fall of one who is frail. For he has a heavy responsibility who has caused the weak to fall. ...

Having, then, thus stated the two sides of the matter, suppose that the said Bishop says that he himself kindled the fire, collected the crowd, gathered the people together, in order not to lose an opportunity of martyrdom, and instead of the weak to put forward a stronger athlete. O happy falsehood, whereby one gains for others acquittal, for himself grace! ... Why order judgment against one who is absent? [Suppose] you have the guilty man present, you hear his confession.

"I declare that I set fire to the synagogue, or at least that I ordered those who did it, that there might not be a place where Christ was denied. If it be objected to me that I did not set the synagogue on fire here, I answer, it began to be burnt by the judgment of God, and my work came to an end. And if the very truth be asked, I was the more slack because I did not expect that it would be punished. Why should I do that which as it was unavenged would also be without reward [from heaven]?"

... But let it be granted that no one will cite the Bishop to the performance of this task, for I have asked this of your Clemency, and although I have not yet read that this edict is revoked, let us notwithstanding assume that it is revoked. What if others more timid offer that the synagogue be restored at their cost; or that the Count, having found this previously determined, himself orders it to be rebuilt out of the funds of Christians? You, O Emperor, will have an apostate Count, and to him will you entrust the victorious standards?

... Shall, then, a place be made for the unbelief of the Jews out of the spoils of the Church, and shall the patrimony, which by the favour of Christ has been gained for Christians, be transferred to the treasuries of unbelievers? We read that Of old temples were built for idols of the plunder taken from Cimbri, and the spoils of other enemies. Shall the Jews write this inscription on the front of their synagogue: "The temple of impiety, erected from the plunder of Christians"? But, perhaps, the cause of discipline moves you, O Emperor. Which, then, is of greater importance, the show of discipline or the cause of religion? ...

At Constantinople lately, the house of the bishop was burnt and your Clemency's son interceded with his father, praying that you would not avenge the insult offered to him, that is, to the son of the emperor, and the burning of the episcopal house. Do you not consider, O Emperor, that if you were to order this [recent] deed to be punished, he would again intervene against the punishment? ... There is, then, no adequate cause for such a commotion, that the people should be so severely punished for the burning of a building, and much less since it is the burning of a synagogue, a home of unbelief, a house of impiety, a receptacle of folly, which God Himself has condemned.

For thus we read, where the Lord our God speaks by the mouth of the prophet Jeremiah: "And I will do to this house, which is called by My Name, wherein ye trust, and to the place which I gave to you and to your fathers, as I have done to Shiloh, and I will cast you forth from My sight, as I cast forth your brethren, the whole seed of Ephraim. And do not thou pray for that people, and do not thou ask mercy for them, and do not come near Me on their behalf, for I will not hear thee. Or seest thou not what they do in the cities of Judah?" God forbids intercession to be made for those.

And certainly, if I were pleading according to the law of nations, I could tell how many of the Church's basilicas the Jews burnt in the time of the Emperor Julian: two at Damascus, one of which is scarcely now repaired, and this at the cost of the Church, not of the Synagogue; the other basilica still is a rough mass of shapeless ruins. Basilicas were burnt at Gaza, Ascalon, Berytus, and in almost every place in those parts, and no one demanded punishment. And at Alexandria a basilica was burnt by heathen and Jews, which surpassed all the rest. The Church was not avenged, shall the Synagogue be so?

But it is related that the judge was ordered to take cognizance of the matter, and that it was written that he ought not to have reported the deed, but to have punished it, and that the money chests which had been taken away should be demanded. The buildings of our churches [once] were burnt by the Jews, and nothing was restored ... but what could the Synagogue have possessed in a far distant town, when the whole of what there is, is not much; ... what could the scheming Jews have lost by the fire? These are artifices of the Jews ..., into what calumnies will they not break out, who by false witness calumniated even Christ?

Into what calumnies will not men break out who are liars, even in things belonging to God? ... Will you give this triumph over the Church of God to the Jews, ... this rejoicing to the Synagogue, this sorrow to the Church? The people of the Jews will set this solemnity amongst their feast-days, and will doubtless number it amongst those on which they triumphed either over the Amorites, or the Canaanites, or were delivered from the hand of Pharaoh, King of Egypt, or of Nebuchodonosor, King of Babylon. They will add this solemnity, in memory of their having triumphed over the people of Christ.

... they deny that they themselves are bound by the Roman laws, ... yet now they think that they ought to be avenged, as it were, by the Roman laws. Where were those laws when they themselves set fire to the roofs of the sacred basilicas? If Julian did not avenge the Church because he was an apostate, will you, O Emperor, avenge the injury done to the Synagogue, because you are a Christian? And what will Christ say to you afterwards? ..."I have chosen thee the youngest of thy brethren, and from a private man have made thee emperor. ... When there was the greatest danger lest the perfidious designs of the barbarians should penetrate the Alps, I conferred victory on thee ... ."

... I have, then, recounted these things not as to one who is ungrateful, but have enumerated them as rightly bestowed, in order that, warned by them, you, to whom more has been given ... .The woman who entered into the house of the Pharisee, had cast off the Jew, but gained Christ. For the Church shut out the Synagogue, why is it now again attempted that in the servant of Christ the Synagogue should exclude the Church from the bosom of faith, from the house of Christ? I have brought these matters together in this address, O Emperor, out of love and zeal for you.

.... I should not fear even offending your feelings for the sake of your own salvation. It is a serious matter to endanger your salvation for the Jews. When Gideon had slain the sacred calf, the heathen said, The gods will themselves avenge the injury done to them. Who is to avenge the Synagogue? Christ, Whom they slew, Whom they denied? Will God the Father avenge those who do not receive the Father, since they have not received the Son? ...

But at any rate if too little confidence is placed in me, command the presence of those bishops whom you think fit, let it be discussed, O Emperor, what ought to be done without injury to the faith, ... Let your Clemency consider from how many plotters, how many spies the Church suffers. ... What shall I answer hereafter, if it be discovered that, by authority given from this place, Christians have been slain by the sword, or by clubs, or thongs knotted with lead? How shall I explain such a fact? How shall I excuse it to those bishops, ... . For if they who war for you serve for a stated time of service, how much more ought you to consider those who war for God.

... I beg you not to disdain to hear me who am in fear both for yourself and for myself, for it is the voice of a Saint which says: "Wherefore was I made to see the misery of my people?" that I should commit an offence against God. I, indeed, have done what could be done consistently with honour to you, that you might rather listen to me in the palace, lest, if it were necessary, you should listen to me in the Church. (another threat: "if you don't listen dude, I go public!"

Letter XIL
To his sister

"... when it was reported that a synagogue of the Jews and a conventicle of the Valentinians had been burnt by Christians at the instigation of the bishop, an order was made while I was at Aquileia, that the synagogue should be rebuilt, and the monks punished who had burnt the Valentinian building. Then since I gained little by frequent endeavours, I wrote and sent a letter to the Emperor, and when he went to church I delivered this discourse.

... In the book of the prophet it is written: "Take to thyself the rod of an almond tree." ... For the Lord seems to signify by the rod that the prophetic or priestly authority ought to be straightforward, and to advise not so much what is pleasant as what is expedient. And so the prophet is bidden to take an almond rod, because the fruit of this tree is bitter in its rind, hard in its shell, and inside it is pleasant, that after its likeness the prophet should set forth things bitter and hard, and should not fear to proclaim harsh things. ... Wherefore also the Apostle says: "What will ye, shall I come to you with a rod, or in love and in the spirit of gentleness?"

... let us now consider what the lesson from the Gospel contains: "One of the Pharisees invited the Lord Jesus to eat with him, and He entered inte the Pharisee's house and sat down. And behold a woman, who was a sinner in the city, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, and standing behind at His feet, began to wash His feet with her tears." And then he read as far as this place: "Thy faith hath saved thee, go in peace." ... Our Lord Jusus Christ judged that men could more readily be bound and led on to do the things that are right by kindness than by fear, and that love avails more than dread for correction.

And so, ... if we repay Him by services befitting men who are grateful, He has declared in this woman that there will be a reward for this grace itself to all men. ... let no one be startled at the word "creditor." We were before under a hard creditor, who was not to be satisfied and paid to the full but by the death of the debtor. ... But it was sin, not nature, which had made us debtors, and ... sin is of the devil; ... . He had reduced the human race to perpetual captivity by the heavy debt of inherited liability, which our debt-laden ancestor had transmitted to his posterity by inheritance. The Lord Jesus came, [and] ... poured out His Blood for the blood of all.

... And, finally, the Pharisee, when the Lord asked him, "which of them loved him most," answered, "I suppose that he to whom he forgave most." And the Lord replied. "Thou hast judged rightly. " The judgment of the Pharisee is praised, but his affection is blamed. He judges well concerning others, but does not himself believe that which he thinks well of in the case of others. You hear a Jew praising the discipline of the Church, extolling its true grace, honouring the priests of the Church; if you exhort him to believe he refuses, and so follows not himself that which he praises in us. His praise, then, is not full, because Christ said ... to Simon: "Thou seest this woman. I entered into thine house, and thou gavest Me no water for My feet, but she hath washed My feet with her tears."

... For this was why the Pharisee gave no water for the feet of Christ, that he had not a soul pure from the filth of unbelief. ... Therefore, Simon the Pharisee, who had no water, had also, of course, no tears. For how should he have tears who had no penitence? For since he believed not in Christ he had no tears. "Thou gavest Me no kiss, but she from the time she came in hath not ceased to kiss My feet." ... . Whence, then, can a Jew have a kiss, seeing he has not known peace, nor received peace from Christ ... . The Synagogue has not a kiss, but the Church has, ... . Whence should the Jew have this kiss? For he who believed in His coming, believed not in His Passion. For how can he believe that He has suffered Whom he believes not to have come?

The Pharisee, then, had no kiss except perchance that of the traitor Judas ... as the sign of betrayal, the Lord said to him: "Judas, betrayest thou the Son of Man with a kiss?" ... yes, he kissed Him indeed with his lips. The Jewish people has this kiss, and therefore it is said: "This people honoureth Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me."... So, then, the Church alone has kisses as a bride, for a kiss is as it were a pledge of espousals and the prerogative of wedlock. Whence should the Jew have kisses, who believes not in the Bridegroom? ... And not only has he no kisses, but neither has he oil wherewith to anoint the feet of Christ, for if he had oil he would certainly, before now, soften his own neck.

Moses says: "This people is stiff-necked," and the Lord says that the priest and the Levite passed by, and neither of them poured oil or wine into the wounds of him who had been wounded by robbers; for they had nothing to pour in, since if they had had oil they would have poured it into their own wounds. ... The Synagogue has not this oil, inasmuch as she has not the olive, and understood not that dove which brought back the olive branch after the deluge. For that Dove descended afterwards when Christ was baptized, and abode upon Him, as John testified in the Gospel, ... but how could he see the Dove, who saw not Him, upon Whom the Spirit descended like a dove?

So when accusing the Jews, He says: "O My people, what have I done to thee, or wherein have I troubled thee, or wherein have I wearied thee? ... Wherefore, O Emperor, ... Christ in His mercy hath conferred it on thee, and therefore, in love for His ... Church, give water for His feet, kiss His feet, so that you may not only pardon those who have been taken in sin, but also by your peaceableness restore them to concord. ... When I came down from the pulpit, he said ... "I had indeed decided too harshly about the repairing of the synagogue by the bishop, but that has been rectified. The monks commit many crimes."

Then Timasius the general began to be over-vehement against the monks, and I answered him: "With the Emperor I deal as is fitting, because I know that he has the fear of God, but with you, who speak so roughly, one must deal otherwise." ... the Emperor said that he would amend the edict. I went on at once to say that he must end the whole investigation, lest the Count should use the opportunity of the investigation to do any injury to the Christians. He promised that it should be so. "Act," he said, "on my promise." And so I went to the altar, whither I should not have gone unless he had given me a distinct promise. ... And so everything was done as I wished.

2/1/2002 - abridged and edited

just a thought
Celsus, "On the True Doctrine: A Discourse Against the Christians"

I am not sure who was the first - Celsus or rabbinical libels - to identify Jesus as the illegitimate son to a Roman solder, a Syrian Archer Pantera, born in Sidon, Phoenicia. Incidentally near Bingerbrück (now in the Museum of Kreuznach) a tombstone had been excavated, of a certain tribune of the archers, Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera, whose cohort had been transferred from Syria to the Rhine in 9 AD. (Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum, XIII, 7514, and Dessau, Inscriptiones selectae, 2571).

The fact is generally dismissed as a strange coincidence. But actually such "coincidence" is an awfully long shot. There is this one grave, that answers to name, age and period, and nothing like it anywhere else. And it had surfaced in the most logical of all places! After the loss of three legions in 8 AD., Rome had to scramble for reinforcements from all over the empire. Before his transfer this tribune had been stationed in Ceasarea's barracks, a brisk four hours walk away from Jesus' homestead, Nazareth.

So he may very well have known the physical mother of a physical Jesus. In fact the gospels themselves could have planted the seed for this rumor. There is this strange episode of a Roman centurion who asks Jesus for help (Mt. 8:5; Lk. 7:2) but displays remarkable sensitivity for the Jewish fear to defile themselves when they enter the home of a gentile! Before I had even had heard of Pantera, I was sometimes wondering how Jesus and that centurion actually had been connected.

Commentators think he was an observant Gentile, i.e. a Gentile who attended synagogue and followed Jewish law. But how observant could an active officer be in the Roman army? In camp, he had every day to swear allegiance to the emperor and pray to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, as well as to the image of the emperor's genius. No observant Gentile would do that.

an afterthought

If my memory serves me right, Celsus wrote his attack on the new Christian sect in 178 AD. and died approximately five years before Origin (185-253) was born. Origin, our only source on Celsus' book, waited until 248 before he wrote his rebuttal. That's playing it rather safe, but not untypical for the way Christian apologists used to operate. Tertullian "refuted" Marcion's "heresies" some 54 years after the evil heretic's death. Well, better that, than being on time and having the opposition roasted alive.
S.

when matriarchs ruled the earth

There is an undeniable connection between, say, dowry customs and liberality in the practice of sexual orientations, or between inheritable land and the required virginity of a bride. Matriarchal societies don't allow the male to inherit land. A wife is subject to visits from her husband on the premises of her own clan, but the couple never moves in together, and the bride's clan pays a recompense for the time of the groom's absence from his own people. There seems to be no idea of "illegitimate" births. Females freely trade their favors, while in the barracks the male looks for alternative sexual outlets.

Systems of this kind seem to have evolved from prehistoric agriculture and established the matrilinear dynasties of our oldest epics. Excavations of the "Yang"-people at bronze age sites in China, unearthed settlements of strict gender apartheid, where the males lived confined to the barracks for a life of permanent warfare. Every summer the stockades opened their gates and chariots ventured out to harass the neighborhood and conquer more territory for the female proprietors of the land. Exactly the same pattern, which Plutarch had observed in his report on the Spartans and their never ending campaign against their Peloponnesian neighborhood in the Messenian wars ("Lycurgus").

Interestingly neither Plutarch nor the Confucian historians had a clue what they were dealing with. In the Confucian scheme of things the Yang were thought to be the founders of the realm and China's first dynasty, which finally had lost the mandate of heaven, because of what looked in the eyes of a male chauvenist Confucian, like moral depravity. Even the urban Plutarch, himself a member of a male dominated society, expressed himself as mildly shocked by the liberal conduct and economical dominion of the fair sex in Sparta's society.

Plutarch and his Chinese colleagues failed to appreciate that the values of female virginity and marital chastity (for her! not him!) made sense only as currency in a world of male heredity and dynastic alliances. To accomplish this, the fathers had to overturn the old system, either by open rebellion, or by emigrating from their clans and assuming the life of free roaming nomads and shepherds who had learned to tame and ride the horse. We see now why in Gen. 4:4 "the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering." To make the new laws legal it was necessary to rewrite history and claim paternal pedigrees reaching back to the gods in heaven.

Evidence for a "patriarchal revolution" that finally overturned the old establishment has left traces not only in classic literature and the Bible (Genesis 2:21 and 3:16!): the Amarna tablets testify to upheavals among pastoral Canaanites who are depicted more like social outcasts than a separate tribe or invading nation. The movement finally carried the day against their urban masters - or rather mistresses - and that may explain some of the early fanaticism and retentive taboos of the Hebraic religion. Grumpy old Yahweh still had many peers. The Bible can be read in many ways, it is also a warcry for male dominance and a testimony to homophobia.

In Greece and Italy the situation was not very different from Palestine. Patriarchs took the helm and remodelled the economy and their sex-life, but with a significant difference: in Palestine the Jews had always been a minority surrounded by matriarchs; in Italy and Greece only two matriarchal enclaves survived the early iron-age: the Etruscans and the Spartans. Both were feared by their neighbors for their warlike prowess and very little understood socially. In Palestine the pressure created a need for fanaticism and monotheistic unity, while Italy and Greece settled comfortably in a polytheistic status quo.

This had a positive side: except for Palestine, wars of total annihilation seemed to have had become a thing of the past. The Roman Empire, like every empire, grew through warfare, treaties and trade. But the conquered people often emancipated within the same generation to full citizenship and the benefits of the Roman rule of law. Only the rural fundamentalists in Palestine and the intellectual opposition in the old Maccabeean strongholds, saw things differently. And in the end their spokesperson, a mendicant preacher from Galilee, prevailed.

The doomsday scenarios of apocalyptic monotheism, a fierce Manichean morality, and later on jihads and crusades, took turns to bring us back to square one. It was also the time when the "love-courts" in the Languedoc introduced the brand-new concept of romantic love. And for whatever reason, on both sides of the divide, the new idea seemed to have fitted in nicely, even so it must strike us as something of a paradox. Perhaps it suitably turned up the heat in the studs' corral and helped to motivate the hunks in the killing fields.

manicheism & literature

"Mani was born in southern Babylonia (now in Iraq). At the age of 24, he began to manifest himself publicly and to proclaim his doctrines. From that point on, Mani preached throughout the Persian Empire. At first unhindered, he later was opposed by the king, condemned, and imprisoned. After 26 days of trials, Mani delivered a final message to his disciples and then was thrown into boiling pitch (sometime between 274 and 277).

"Mani viewed himself as the final successor in a long line of prophets, beginning with Adam and including Buddha, Zoroaster, and Jesus. He regarded himself as the carrier of a universal message destined to replace all other religions. Hoping to avoid corruption and to ensure doctrinal unity, he recorded his teachings in writing and gave those writings canonical status during his lifetime. The Manichaean Church from the beginning was dedicated to vigorous missionary activity.

"Mani himself encouraged the translation of his writings into other languages and organized an extensive mission program. Manichaeism rapidly spread west into the Roman Empire. From Egypt it moved across northern Africa (where the young Augustine temporarily became a convert) and reached Rome in the early 4th century. The 4th century marked the height of Manichaean expansion in the West, with churches established in southern Gaul and Spain.

"During the lifetime of Mani, Manichaeism spread to the eastern provinces of the Persian Sasanian Empire, until the persecution by the Muslim 'Abbasid in the 10th century forced the Manichaean leadership to transfer to Samarkand in Uzbekistan. A Manichaean missionary reached the Chinese court in 694, and in 732 an edict gave the religion freedom of worship in China. Although persecuted in 843, it continued in China at least until the 14th century.

"Teachings similar to Manichaeism resurfaced during the Middle Ages in Europe. Groups such as the Paulicians (Armenia, 7th century), the Bogomilists (Bulgaria, 10th century), and the Cathari or Albigensians (southern France, 12th century) bore strong resemblances to Manichaeism and probably were influenced by it. At its core, Manichaeism was a type of Gnosticism, a dualistic religion that offered salvation through special knowledge (gnosis) of spiritual truth.

"Like all forms of Gnosticism, Manichaeism taught that life in this world is unbearably painful and radically evil. Inner illumination or gnosis reveals that the soul which shares in the nature of God has fallen into the evil world of matter. Knowledge (gnosis) enables a person to realize that, despite his abject present condition, he does not cease to remain united to the transcendent world. Thus, knowledge is the only way to salvation.

"The myth unfolds in three stages: a past period in which there was a separation of the two radically opposed substances-Spirit and Matter, Good and Evil, Light and Darkness; a middle period (corresponding to the present) during which the two substances are mixed; and a future period in which the original duality will be reestablished. At death the soul of the righteous person returns to Paradise. But only a portion of the faithful followed a strict ascetic life.

"The community was divided into the elect, who felt able to embrace a rigorous rule, and the hearers who supported the elect with works and alms. The essentials of the sacramental rites were prayers, almsgiving, and fasting. Confession and the singing of hymns were also important in their communal life, in addition to which the elect abstained from procreation and wordly possessions. Manichaean scriptures were rediscovered in Chinese Turkistan and Egypt."
(Encyclopedia Britannica)

I.
As a religion Manichaeism has departed from the face of the earth; as an attitude it has become a prevalent force in our culture. In film and book things are depicted in black and white and enact some eternal struggle between good and evil on some metaphysical battlefield. The simplistic conceptions of Sunday school and Hollywood, which call for the hero in shining armor to defend the universe against some sort of supernatural evil, obviously are stuck in a time warp.

"Religions and ideologies are founded on the desire to translate relativity and ambiguity into their own dogmatic discourse," says Milan Kundra. This is certainly true and part of the malaise of our college education in literature, which seems to take pride in mass-producing the tone-deaf reader. More than once I told teachers with Ph.D.'s front and aft, that their way of teaching leaves little to be surprised upon, if the taste for literature is in decline.

The student's attention is diverted from what really matters in imaginative writing. Instead he is asked to find an angle of an ultimately moral nature: Is Anna the victim of a narrow minded tyrant, or Karenin the victim of her immorality? Does Joseph K. suffer persecution by an oppressive system, or should we look for signs of his actual guilt? The result is an inability to tolerate ambiguities, which makes it hard to actually listen to a good novel's complex music.

I think there is little disagreement, that all modern literature stems one way or the other from Cervantes' "Don Quixote." Unintentionally, Cervantes single-handedly had created a new perspective on narrative plausibility. It should have educated our tastes for the ingredients of good narrative ever since. It didn't. Many people feel tired by a modern novel's host of gray shaded characters, and its delicate calculus of destiny which doesn't play favourites.

When even the basest character appears not to be the perfect villain, or a protagonist seems too feeble to pass for a hero, readers seem to lose their bearings. Incidentally the evolution of the modern novel went parallel to the development of modern science. Both had been products of the printing press and the ascend of an economically increasingly powerful middle-class. Cervantes merely meant to propel his story, but his feigned attack on feudal values, became the warcry of enlightenment.

There had been "realistic" novels before. The anonymous "Lazarillo de Tormes" (1554) and the "Guzman de Alfarache" by Mateo Aleman (1547-1614), or "La vida del Buscon" ("The Life of a Scoundrel,") by Francisco Gomez de Quevedo y Villegas (1580-1645) are Spanish examples for the picaresque novel with roots reaching back as far as to "Celestina or the Spanish Bawd" by Fernando de Rojas (1473/1476 - 1541) and even Petron's "Satyricon." (65 BC).

It was soon to be imitated all over Europe. In England by Tobias Smollett (1721-71) and Henry Fielding (1707-1754), in Germany by Grimmelshausen (1622-1676). These novels presented themselves as unpretentious comedy. But the mock-attack in "Don Quixote" on the "Amadis de Gaul" by Joa~o de Lobeira (late 13th, early 14th century) and its sequels raised the bar and made an issue of narrative realism itself. The novel became an instrument of scrutiny and the human condition its object.

Cervantes' novel was no longer a case of simply fleshing out some crack of proverbial wisdom. "Don Quixote" begins with a laugh and the still rather crude humor of the whole situation. It was a truly quixotic thing to do, but from that point on morals in the narrative universe took a new turn and became increasingly a character issue. Fictional people began to have a life instead of a destiny and would die in their beds of natural causes. A new and entirely European art form was about to take shape.

In the process a certain order of values and meaning, of good and evil, slowly departed from the narrative universe. When Don Quixote goes on his quest, he refuses to recognize the world for what it is, but all the same can not escape the all too familiar impediments of our existence. Sancho better had the purse ready to square the bills; and it is a slim purse. The first modern novel is the melancholic daydream of a man who knows that he has passed his prime.

Cervantes had reached the critical age where he could see himself doing childish things again, because well in sight of the final stretch, he'd just found out that nothing really matters. But unlike his modern reader, Cervantes was not a nihilist, neither had he abandoned his faith. He would rather live in a world where the old rules maintain a modicum of application. He also was bright enough to realize they didn't.

So he created in his novel a protagonist, who is not exactly his alter ego, but an object of his empathy, someone who found a way to live through Cervantes' own predicament, and in the end he simply let him die a "good" death. The good Don reclaims his sanity but nothing is resolved. Maybe Kafka was right and Don Quixote was merely a dream in Sancho's mind but it effectually had put an end to a long tradition of epic values and Manichaean morality.

II.
This tradition had gone through many phases, and the worlds depicted there, have become strange and alien in the course of time. A certain kind of lazy criticism gives it an appearance of solemn importance to dig for Jungian "archetypes" and the mythological pattern. These days, Hollywood's script departments assess every submission according to its compliance with Joseph Campbell's scheme of stations in "The Heroes Journey."

If their handbooks are to be trusted, their favorite yardstick seems to be the "Wizard of Oz." Once a viewer is familiar with the scheme, he will recognize it in a surprising variety of film genres. I can see a kind of justification for such clichéd methodology. There is only so much you can squeeze in in two hours. However Shakespeare could have been a lot more boring, if he had always anticipated Campbell's scheme of things.

The narrative epics I have read myself, basically fall into three groups. (I exclude from my list Ovid's "Metamorphoses" (18 AD), Lucan's "Pharsalia" (65 AD), the "Dionysiaca" by Nonnos of Panopolis (c. 400-476 AD), Dante's "Divine Comedy" (1321), and Milton's "Paradise Lost" (1667). They belong to a different type of poetry, which doesn't concern us here.) In the first group we find the oral epics of some or other tribal tradition, of which I only know the "Iliad" (c. 750 BC).

All the other epics are composed for the book, such as the "Odyssey" (c. 725 BC), the very ancient "Gilgamesh" (c. 1,200 BC in its present Accadic form, but some Sumerian fragments date back to 2,300 BC), "The Argonauts" of Apollonius of Rhodes (c. 260 BC) and Valerius Flaccus (Ý90 AD), Virgil's "Aeneid" (19 BC), and the only Indian epic I have ever read, the "Bhagavad-Gita" (about 2nd century AD; the Indian chronologies are notoriously unreliable).

Although these lays and epics seem to stretch over a vast expanse, geographically and historically, they all have certain characteristics in common. Extensive clan genealogies, blood feuds, and arbitration are of great importance, and none of the heroes is utterly evil or good. The Gods are an irresponsible lot, and choose their protégées as it pleases their whims. They make dangerous company, but can get hurt themselves.

The heroic morality gives expression to the code of conduct among feudal lords and aristocratic warriors. One has a healthy respect for the enemy. This is a man's world and of men challenging fate. To achieve "justice" requires heroic efforts and is virtually impossible without alliances and personal divine protection. There is a tragic concept of destiny, the protagonist is confronted with choices which are not really his own doing, but as a true hero he will take the burden of responsibility, even if it leads to his own downfall.

III.
The second group is made up of the medieval romances which I have almost always found a chore to read. Ferdowsi's "Shahnameh" (940-1020 AD), the"Song of Roland" (11th century), the "Cantar del mio Cid" (c. 1140), the "Nibelungen" (13th century), "Percival" (1185) by Chrétien de Troyes, Joa~o de Lobeira's "Amadis de Gaul," and Ariost's mock-heroic "Orlando Furioso" (1516) is all I have ever managed to stomach.

It is an experience that makes you reaching for Alka-Seltzer. I found it often long-winded, repetitive and labyrinthian, and loaded with obscure symbols. This is the confused comic book world of "Star Wars." The Manichean virus holds everything in its grip, every character is merely a pawn in the eternal chess game between the black magic of evil, and the white magic of good. One wrong move can cause consequences that affect entire generations to come.

Depending under which spell he has fallen, from one second to the next, a protagonist can completely fall out of character - if he has any in the first place. Under such condition, true tragedy is simply impossible; all there is, are sad turns of a predestined fate. Justice is no longer a concept to be struggled for, but a foregone conclusion. Right and wrong is never a question, and everything centers around a fetish (a ring, the cross, magic swords, the Holy Grail) as the ultimate answer to just about everything.

However, unlike their predecessors in the first group, these epics open up a bit more to the tender sex. The institution of the Provencal Court d'Amor had left its mark and influences the conflicting parties in a curious way. We witness the birth of the modern concept of "romantic love." We also witness to escalating atrocities when the heroes come to blows after the usual courtesies. I might be wrong, but there seems to be a reason.

Women, especially woman with children, can't afford to care much for niceties and distinctions. Whoever makes them worry about their loved ones, or threatens their brood must be Satan incarnate. And this makes perfect sense, but it doesn't do much for any concept of fair dealing. Black is black and white is white. Incidentally the most aggressive warrior societies on record had been matriarchies.

But even in such world of prophesied doom and witchcraft, the ancient values of heroism now and then light up the scene in a dark fire. Heroes still try to be heroes. Hagen from the "Nibelungen," is a political schemer; he ambushes and murders golden boy Siegfried (a contract killing), but for the rest of the time he is an exceptionally brave warrior and unwaveringly loyal to his king. But even he is merely a puppet of predestined fate.

IV.
The third group of epics is relatively recent and was a creation of budding nationalism and modern aspirations for statehood. James Macpherson's "Fingal; an ancient epic poem, in six books" (1762), Count Musin-Pushkin's "Song of Igor" (1795), and Elias Lûnnrot's openly eclectic "Kalevala" (1849) had been put together to provide the appearance of an age old heritage, and under this aspect, they are no more than skillful forgeries.

The telltale signs betray the recent origin: the plot structure is a tat too sophisticated, the character development is more complex than should be expected in all that simplistic pretence. Instead of heroism we find generous swills from Rousseau's phony morality of the congested heart; the knowledgeable archaisms strike us as slightly parodistic, and especially the elaborations on beauty in nature (of which the old epics have absolutely nothing to say) give away the game.

A not at all despisable scholarship had gone into the enterprise and a few effectively placed allusions to the facts and phrasing of genuine documents are capable to deceive the credulous expert to this very day; but it all comes along just a touch too cute. Generally it is fun to read, but despite the ambitions of its inception, it basically belongs to the same kind of writings as the tales of the Grimm brothers.

Nations sought for a voice of their own and for lack of a genuine heritage, somebody had to invent it. For the talented writer this sort of thing is an easy cop out and avoids the more tricky problems of modern narrative and genuine imagination.

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