Their virgin predates our virgin by a good 500 years…
Chorus
[145] And may Zeus’ pure daughter, she who holds
securely the sacred wall, willingly, meeting my will, look upon me;
and, grieved at our pursuit, come with all her might, a virgin to a
virgin’s aid, [150] to deliver me—
The intercessionary powers of a virgin, a quaint reminder for Europeans of our cultural roots, have been incorporated in the chilling orthodoxy of christianity. I find it frightening that the zealots continue to hold on so tightly to their need to subjugate people to the will of their religious institutions. It hasn’t been that long since they were burning people for questioning the "true faith." Wonder if they have plans to bring that back?
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Sandhill Trek
Link: Sandhill Trek. A good blog with some thought-provoking commentary.
Actually, Frank, it’s all based on a mistranslation.
The original texts just say “young woman”. Some ancient translator got it wrong and wrote “virgin” instead.
Admittedly I’m an atheist, so maybe we should ask AKMA for his version.
Stu
So you’re telling me that there WAS progress in the four or five hundred years between the time when Aeschylus and Euripides were mounting plays about the “Suppliant Women” and the time when the christian myths were documented, but that in the next five hundred to a thousand years as all those interesting christian texts hardened into lifeless dogma the progress of civilization between 450bce and 30ce was stripped away by those power mad zealots and there - a thousand years after Greek civilization’s flower bloomed - those miserable mind-rats at Niceae wiped it all out and had us starting over at square one? Is that what you’re telling me Stu, in your long Germanic convoluted constructions? (Oh wait… it was me that went on for over a hundred words without a punkt).
Whenever I hear discussion about the FCC’s tightening of rules against “profanity” on radio/tv, and then the possible extending of their dominion to non-broadcast realm, I have to pinch myself. 21st century, humans on the moon, etc. etc.
But then I have to think how the average “numbnut” can barely put together much more then a string of profanities, how “global English” is such an impoverished language, and maybe it is a good thing, keeping profanites off the media?
Religions, the original, “tried and true” corporations. “For it’s three steps forward ana two steps back… ” the dance of “progress”.
“It hasn’t been that long since they were burning people for questioning the ‘true faith.’ Wonder if they have plans to bring that back?”
They already have, Frank. Unfortunately, they already have.
See http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/061705E.shtml.