The Pope's speech to the German Parliament

[fpb]

http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/the_listening_heart
As ever, the man is worth listening to. But the responses in the comments thread just show how bloody useless it is to deliver intellectually distinguished and morally valuable speeches in a world where most people know no history but are stuffed full of out-of-context factoids and believe themselves entitled to judge.

Comments

[kennybhoy.livejournal.com]

You consider the Essenes' apocalyptic to be representative of C1st mainstream Jewish thought?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Thanks for an intelligent challenge. Yes, on the whole, I do. Specifically, I think that the concept of the relationship between Jews and Gentiles only shows variations on the superiority complex manifested in the DSSs. Even in the Gospels there are statements that make the blood run cold - think of the Syro-Phoenician woman begging Jesus to treat her as a dog who picks up the scraps from her masters' table, the masters being the Jews. And politics eventually followed the shape of Jewish dreams. The revolt of 64-70 may be mistaken, because of its short reach, for a struggle for national independence, but nobody can call the later Bar Kochba phenomenon anything but an attempt to take over the whole heart of the Roman Empire, that is all its eastern provinces. And there can be no doubt that the disasters that followed were what led to the great Rabbinical reworking of the following centuries, with the Jews adapting themselves to being a minority in the realms of others.

P.S.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

When I said, "thanks for an intelligent challenge", I did not mean to demean any of the people who actually answered here; rather, I was thinking of the sort of thing that turned up in the comments thread after the Pope's speech.

Re: P.S.

[mentalguy.livejournal.com]

Well, and in any case there is plenty of reason to be grateful for concise and literate questions.

Re: P.S.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

The more reason not to suggest, even by implication, that Kraygern and Dean Steinlage have anything to do with the sort of thing that makes one grateful for concise and literate questions. (Lovely formulation, by the way!)