The Four Cardinal Virtues
In some Christian traditions, there are four cardinal virtues: prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice. These were derived initially from Plato's scheme and adapted by Saint Ambrose, Augustine of Hippo, and Thomas Aquinas. Plato identified them with the classes of the city described in the Republic, and with the faculties of man.
Temperance was associated with the producing classes, the farmers and craftsmen, and with the animal appetites; fortitude with the warrior class and with the spirited element in man; prudence with the rulers and with reason. Justice stands outside the class system and divisions of man, and rules the proper relationship among the three of them.
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Full article here.
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In some Christian traditions, there are four cardinal virtues: prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice. These were derived initially from Plato's scheme and adapted by Saint Ambrose, Augustine of Hippo, and Thomas Aquinas. Plato identified them with the classes of the city described in the Republic, and with the faculties of man.
Temperance was associated with the producing classes, the farmers and craftsmen, and with the animal appetites; fortitude with the warrior class and with the spirited element in man; prudence with the rulers and with reason. Justice stands outside the class system and divisions of man, and rules the proper relationship among the three of them.
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Full article here.
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The Adopted Goddess
Imbolc is a pagan holiday celebrated from February 1 through sundown February 2. Based on a Celtic tradition, Imbolc was meant to mark the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox in Neolithic Ireland and Scotland.
Imbolc celebrations took the form of a festival in honor of the pagan goddess Brigid. Over the centuries, Brigid was adopted into Christianity as St. Brigid. Like the goddess, St. Brigid is associated with milk and fire.
The celebration of St. Brigid's Day on February 1 was put in place by the church to replace Imbolc. On her feast day, an effigy of St. Brigid of Kildare is traditionally washed in the ocean and surrounded by candles to dry, and stalks of wheat are transformed into cross talismans known as Brigid's crosses.
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Full article here.
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Imbolc is a pagan holiday celebrated from February 1 through sundown February 2. Based on a Celtic tradition, Imbolc was meant to mark the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox in Neolithic Ireland and Scotland.
Imbolc celebrations took the form of a festival in honor of the pagan goddess Brigid. Over the centuries, Brigid was adopted into Christianity as St. Brigid. Like the goddess, St. Brigid is associated with milk and fire.
The celebration of St. Brigid's Day on February 1 was put in place by the church to replace Imbolc. On her feast day, an effigy of St. Brigid of Kildare is traditionally washed in the ocean and surrounded by candles to dry, and stalks of wheat are transformed into cross talismans known as Brigid's crosses.
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Full article here.
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"Christianity is and will always be Judaism! All your attempts to deny the Jewish origin and substance of Christianity will be in vain. We will not rest until the Jewish element and its teachings have been pushed out of the religious life of our folk."
— Rudolf Hammer (Christentum doch Judentum, 1939)
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— Rudolf Hammer (Christentum doch Judentum, 1939)
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"On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, 'To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates.'" — Genesis 15:18
If you believe in the Bible, you believe in the Old Testament. If you believe in the Old Testament, you are a Zionist.
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If you believe in the Bible, you believe in the Old Testament. If you believe in the Old Testament, you are a Zionist.
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The Word Of God
As a Catholic, E. Michael Jones believes the Torah to be the word of God and therefore has no choice but to believe that the Jews were chosen by his God, as it is stated in Deuteronomy 14:2.
He then claims that "if the Jews followed the Torah, there would be no problem"—likely implying that they are following the Talmud instead, while the Talmud is simply a Rabbinic interpretation of the Torah and hardly more vile to begin with.
Christians often argue this to try to whitewash their God's word, despite many Torah verses—such as Deuteronomy 15:6 and Genesis 27:29—clearly justifying Jewish behavior.
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As a Catholic, E. Michael Jones believes the Torah to be the word of God and therefore has no choice but to believe that the Jews were chosen by his God, as it is stated in Deuteronomy 14:2.
He then claims that "if the Jews followed the Torah, there would be no problem"—likely implying that they are following the Talmud instead, while the Talmud is simply a Rabbinic interpretation of the Torah and hardly more vile to begin with.
Christians often argue this to try to whitewash their God's word, despite many Torah verses—such as Deuteronomy 15:6 and Genesis 27:29—clearly justifying Jewish behavior.
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"It is decisive for the lot of a people and of humanity that culture should begin in the right place. Not in the "soul"—as was the fateful superstition of the priests and half-priests—the right place is the body, the gesture, the diet, physiology; the rest follows from that. Therefore, the Greeks remain the first cultural event in history: they knew, they did, what was needed; and Christianity—which despised the body—has been the greatest misfortune of humanity so far."
— Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols)
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— Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols)
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"Paul was the real founder of Christianity. He went about like Trotsky to find adherents to his teachings among all peoples. He was the role model for modern Jewish radicals. And so one can and must say today, no matter how difficult and bitter these words may be for some: Real Christianity is nothing but tamed Bolshevism."
— Rudolf Hammer (Christentum doch Judentum, 1939)
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— Rudolf Hammer (Christentum doch Judentum, 1939)
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Venerating A Rabbi As A Saint
Gamaliel the Elder, or Rabban Gamaliel I, was a leading authority in the Sanhedrin in the early first century CE. He was the grandson of the great Jewish teacher Hillel the Elder.
Paul the Apostle was brought up in Jerusalem "at the feet of Gamaliel, and taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers" (Acts 22:3).
No details are given about which teachings Paul adopted from Gamaliel, as it is assumed that as a Pharisee, Paul was already recognized in the community at that time as a devout Jew.
The Eastern Orthodox Church venerates Gamaliel as a saint, and he is commemorated on August 2.
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Full article here.
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Gamaliel the Elder, or Rabban Gamaliel I, was a leading authority in the Sanhedrin in the early first century CE. He was the grandson of the great Jewish teacher Hillel the Elder.
Paul the Apostle was brought up in Jerusalem "at the feet of Gamaliel, and taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers" (Acts 22:3).
No details are given about which teachings Paul adopted from Gamaliel, as it is assumed that as a Pharisee, Paul was already recognized in the community at that time as a devout Jew.
The Eastern Orthodox Church venerates Gamaliel as a saint, and he is commemorated on August 2.
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Full article here.
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No One Personally Knew Jesus
It’s important to note that we have no authentic writings from the leaders of the Jerusalem Church, or from anyone who claimed to be a personal disciple of Jesus.
Everything we know about the three "Jerusalem Pillars," James, Peter/Cephas and John, comes from Paul—and Paul say nothing about Peter, John or anyone else traveling around with Jesus.
Apart from one suspicious and highly uncharacteristic partial line, he says nothing that would make us think he believed James had any special relationship to Jesus.
The implication here can’t be emphasized enough: there is nothing in the New Testament that was actually written by anyone who could claim to have personally known Jesus.
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From: Nailed by David Fitzgerald.
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It’s important to note that we have no authentic writings from the leaders of the Jerusalem Church, or from anyone who claimed to be a personal disciple of Jesus.
Everything we know about the three "Jerusalem Pillars," James, Peter/Cephas and John, comes from Paul—and Paul say nothing about Peter, John or anyone else traveling around with Jesus.
Apart from one suspicious and highly uncharacteristic partial line, he says nothing that would make us think he believed James had any special relationship to Jesus.
The implication here can’t be emphasized enough: there is nothing in the New Testament that was actually written by anyone who could claim to have personally known Jesus.
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From: Nailed by David Fitzgerald.
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Cannibalistic Sacraments
If there was a Jesus cult in Jerusalem after 30 CE, it completely disappeared forty years later when Titus conquered the city and outlawed many local customs, including human sacrifice. Tacitus described the siege of Jerusalem, but his writing is abruptly cut off at the moment when Roman forces entered the city as if the final chapters were deliberately destroyed—so no one knows what the Romans found there.
However, Romans did express disapproval of the Jews' or Christians' cannibalistic sacraments. Porphyry called it "absurd beyond all absurdity, and bestial beyond every sort of bestiality, that a man should taste human flesh and drink the blood of men of his own genus and species, and by doing should have eternal life."
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From Varieties of Jesus Mythicism by John W. Loftus.
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If there was a Jesus cult in Jerusalem after 30 CE, it completely disappeared forty years later when Titus conquered the city and outlawed many local customs, including human sacrifice. Tacitus described the siege of Jerusalem, but his writing is abruptly cut off at the moment when Roman forces entered the city as if the final chapters were deliberately destroyed—so no one knows what the Romans found there.
However, Romans did express disapproval of the Jews' or Christians' cannibalistic sacraments. Porphyry called it "absurd beyond all absurdity, and bestial beyond every sort of bestiality, that a man should taste human flesh and drink the blood of men of his own genus and species, and by doing should have eternal life."
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From Varieties of Jesus Mythicism by John W. Loftus.
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"A patriotic Jew named Paul or Saul conceived the idea of humbling the Roman power by destroying the morale of its soldiery with the doctrines of love and non-resistance preached by the little sect of Jewish Christians."
"Our tribal customs have become the core of your moral code. Our legends and our folk-tales are the sacred lore which you croon to your infants. Our national history has become an indispensable part of the learning of your pastors and priests and scholars. Our Kings, our statesmen, our prophets, our warriors are your heroes. Our ancient little country is your Holy Land. Our national literature is your Holy Bible."
"We have pulled down your idols, cast aside your racial inheritance, and substituted for them our God and our traditions. No conquest in history can even remotely compare with this clean sweep of our conquest over you."
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From: A Real Case Against The Jews by Rothschild biographer Marcus Eli Ravage.
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"Our tribal customs have become the core of your moral code. Our legends and our folk-tales are the sacred lore which you croon to your infants. Our national history has become an indispensable part of the learning of your pastors and priests and scholars. Our Kings, our statesmen, our prophets, our warriors are your heroes. Our ancient little country is your Holy Land. Our national literature is your Holy Bible."
"We have pulled down your idols, cast aside your racial inheritance, and substituted for them our God and our traditions. No conquest in history can even remotely compare with this clean sweep of our conquest over you."
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From: A Real Case Against The Jews by Rothschild biographer Marcus Eli Ravage.
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"Christianity first painted the devil on the wall of the world. Christianity first brought the idea of sin into the world. The belief in the remedies, which is offered as an antidote, has gradually been shaken to its very foundations. But the belief in the disease, which Christianity has taught and propagated, still exists."
— Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All-Too-Human)
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— Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All-Too-Human)
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Heaven & Hell
"Our view of the afterlife isn't from Jews, Christians, but from Homer, Plato, Virgil."
"By the late Second Temple period, most Jews believed there would be a Day of Judgement, after which righteous souls would be raised, and sinful souls would be punished. And how did they come to think that? Because of the Greek ideas that spread during the Hellenization of the Mediterranean after Alexander’s conquest."
"In Homer's eighth-century BCE Iliad and Odyssey, we're taken to the underworld and see these ideas in action. About three centuries after Homer came Socrates, and his ventriloquist Plato, whose mythic dialogues promoted the idea of an immortal soul. (It's no coincidence that the only book in the Hebrew Bible to suggest 'everlasting life,' the Book of Daniel, was composed during the Hellenistic Period.) Then, in the first century BCE, the Roman poet Virgil wrote the Aeneid, in which he adds Plato's ideas to Homer. And there you go."
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Full article here.
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"Our view of the afterlife isn't from Jews, Christians, but from Homer, Plato, Virgil."
"By the late Second Temple period, most Jews believed there would be a Day of Judgement, after which righteous souls would be raised, and sinful souls would be punished. And how did they come to think that? Because of the Greek ideas that spread during the Hellenization of the Mediterranean after Alexander’s conquest."
"In Homer's eighth-century BCE Iliad and Odyssey, we're taken to the underworld and see these ideas in action. About three centuries after Homer came Socrates, and his ventriloquist Plato, whose mythic dialogues promoted the idea of an immortal soul. (It's no coincidence that the only book in the Hebrew Bible to suggest 'everlasting life,' the Book of Daniel, was composed during the Hellenistic Period.) Then, in the first century BCE, the Roman poet Virgil wrote the Aeneid, in which he adds Plato's ideas to Homer. And there you go."
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Full article here.
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The Jerusalem Post
'Heaven and Hell': New history of the afterlife shows origins of the idea
Our view of the afterlife isn't from Jews, Christians, but from Homer, Plato, Virgil.
"As we know, it took some time, but the new Christian religion did spread, eventually permeating the Roman world. In the year 315, the emperor himself, Constantine, converted to Christianity. In 380, Emperor Theodosius declared it the official state religion. And just 15 years later, in 395, the empire fractured and the classic (western) half utterly collapsed. In the ensuing vacuum, Christianity rose to power—and in Rome itself, of all places. The victory was complete, some 350 years after Paul's grand vision came to him in a flash."
— David Skrbina (The Jesus Hoax)
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— David Skrbina (The Jesus Hoax)
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In the 3rd century, the Neoplatonist philosopher Porphyry wrote:
"How can people not be in every way impious and atheistic who have apostatized from the customs of our ancestors through which every nation and city is sustained? ... What else are they than fighters against God?"
Once distinguished from Judaism, Christianity was no longer seen as simply a bizarre sect of an old and venerable religion; it was a superstitio. Superstition had for the Romans a much more powerful and dangerous connotation than it does for much of the Western world today: to them, this term meant a set of religious practices that were not only different, but corrosive to society, "disturbing a man's mind in such a way that he is really going insane" and causing him to lose humanitas.
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Full article here.
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"How can people not be in every way impious and atheistic who have apostatized from the customs of our ancestors through which every nation and city is sustained? ... What else are they than fighters against God?"
Once distinguished from Judaism, Christianity was no longer seen as simply a bizarre sect of an old and venerable religion; it was a superstitio. Superstition had for the Romans a much more powerful and dangerous connotation than it does for much of the Western world today: to them, this term meant a set of religious practices that were not only different, but corrosive to society, "disturbing a man's mind in such a way that he is really going insane" and causing him to lose humanitas.
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Full article here.
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Why Didn’t Anyone Notice Jesus?
The truth is, not only did plenty of contemporary historical accounts survive from the first century, but many of these very writers were in the right time and place and had excellent motive to have written about Jesus’ famous life, teachings, ministry and miracles. But there is no external corroboration for anything written in the Gospels.
If Jesus had been an actual historical figure we have a thorny paradox. Either this Jesus was a remarkable individual who said and did a host of amazing, revolutionary things—but no one outside his fringe cult noticed for over a century. Or he didn’t—and yet after his death, tiny communities of worshipers that cannot agree about the most basic facts of his life spring up, scattered all across the empire.
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From: Nailed by David Fitzgerald.
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The truth is, not only did plenty of contemporary historical accounts survive from the first century, but many of these very writers were in the right time and place and had excellent motive to have written about Jesus’ famous life, teachings, ministry and miracles. But there is no external corroboration for anything written in the Gospels.
If Jesus had been an actual historical figure we have a thorny paradox. Either this Jesus was a remarkable individual who said and did a host of amazing, revolutionary things—but no one outside his fringe cult noticed for over a century. Or he didn’t—and yet after his death, tiny communities of worshipers that cannot agree about the most basic facts of his life spring up, scattered all across the empire.
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From: Nailed by David Fitzgerald.
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Renouncing Family & Country
Edward Gibbon argued that the tendency of Christian converts to renounce their family and country, (and their frequent predictions of impending disasters), instilled a feeling of apprehension in their pagan neighbors. He wrote:
"By embracing the faith of the Gospel the Christians incurred the supposed guilt of an unnatural and unpardonable offence. They dissolved the sacred ties of custom and education, violated the religious institutions of their country, and presumptuously despised whatever their fathers had believed as true, or had reverenced as sacred."
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Full article here.
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Edward Gibbon argued that the tendency of Christian converts to renounce their family and country, (and their frequent predictions of impending disasters), instilled a feeling of apprehension in their pagan neighbors. He wrote:
"By embracing the faith of the Gospel the Christians incurred the supposed guilt of an unnatural and unpardonable offence. They dissolved the sacred ties of custom and education, violated the religious institutions of their country, and presumptuously despised whatever their fathers had believed as true, or had reverenced as sacred."
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Full article here.
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"In the entire works of the Jewish historian Josephus, which constitute hundreds of pages, there are only two paragraphs that purport to refer to Jesus. Although much has been made of these 'references', they have been dismissed by many scholars and even by Christian apologists as forgeries. Bishop Warburton (1698-1779) labeled the Josephus interpolation regarding Jesus as 'a rank forgery, and a very stupid one too.'"
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From: The Origins of Christianity by D.M. Murdock.
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From: The Origins of Christianity by D.M. Murdock.
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"Christians proclaim their opposition to Paganism, yet celebrate Easter, which is named after the Pagan Goddess Eostre. And they don't celebrate this most important of festivals on a fixed date which marks the crucifixion of Jesus, but according to a Pagan lunar calendar. Even more absurdly, they mark this holy day by eating eggs, a symbol of the Pagan Goddess. Why don't we have chocolate crucifixes? After all, Christianity is about eating the body of Christ. Although it might be a bit of a problem deciding which end to start."
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From: The Laughing Jesus by Tim Freke.
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From: The Laughing Jesus by Tim Freke.
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Just Another Jewish Cult
When Christianity began, Judaism was highly sectarian and diverse. There was no ‘normative’ set of Jewish beliefs, but a countless array of different Jewish belief systems vying for popularity. We know of at least ten competing sects, possibly more than thirty, and there could easily have been more. But we know very little about them, except that they differed from one another (sometimes radically) on various political, theological, metaphysical, moral and other issues.
In fact the evidence we do have establishes that, contrary to common assumption, innovation and syncretism (even with non-Judaic theologies) was actually typical of early-first-century Judaism, even in Palestine, and thus Christianity looks much less like an aberration and more like just another innovating, syncretistic Jewish cult.
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From: On the Historicity of Jesus by Richard Carrier.
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When Christianity began, Judaism was highly sectarian and diverse. There was no ‘normative’ set of Jewish beliefs, but a countless array of different Jewish belief systems vying for popularity. We know of at least ten competing sects, possibly more than thirty, and there could easily have been more. But we know very little about them, except that they differed from one another (sometimes radically) on various political, theological, metaphysical, moral and other issues.
In fact the evidence we do have establishes that, contrary to common assumption, innovation and syncretism (even with non-Judaic theologies) was actually typical of early-first-century Judaism, even in Palestine, and thus Christianity looks much less like an aberration and more like just another innovating, syncretistic Jewish cult.
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From: On the Historicity of Jesus by Richard Carrier.
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"Only two generations after Mark [written c. 66–74 CE] and Matthew [written c. 70-110 CE], Roman converts adapted the gospel vocabulary to face a new enemy. As earlier generations of Christians had claimed to see Satan among their fellow Jews, now converts claimed to see Satan and his demonic allies at work among other Romans."
— Elaine Pagels (The Origin of Satan)
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— Elaine Pagels (The Origin of Satan)
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