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by | May 21, 2015 · 7:40 pm

GENESIS RABBAH
(compiled 3rd-5th century)

Commentary on Genesis 9:5

 

Because of its age and significance, the expository commentary on the book of Genesis [q.v., under Hebrew Bible] Bereshit Rabbah, commonly known in English as Genesis Rabbah, is considered to be of primary position in the Midrash, a collection of scriptural exegesis and commentary that is part of the larger body of rabbinic literature. The Talmudic literature, including the Mishnah and the Babylonian [q.v.] and Palestinian Talmuds, along with the midrashic commentaries like Genesis Rabbah, forms the primary written authority for Jewish civil and religious law.

The midrashic writings of the rabbinic literature are a collection of biblical exegesis divisible into two main categories: the Midrash Aggadah, or exegesis with a didactic or edifying purpose, and the Midrash Halakha, or exegesis with the purpose of establishing law. The word “midrash” means “to study” or “to investigate,” and it is used to signal works of expository exegesis, either didactic or legal, from different periods of time.

The midrash Genesis Rabbah is attributed by tradition to the rabbinic teacher R. Hoshaiah, who lived in Palestine during the 3rd century a.d. However, there is evidence of numerous later additions to the work, and it is probable that the text was not fixed for several centuries after its original composition. Genesis Rabbah is of primary importance in the midrashim, and the biblical commentary it includes has exerted a significant influence on subsequent exegesis and Jewish law.

In Genesis Rabbah, the text of Genesis is explicated in an unbroken sequence, verse by verse, except for the genealogies and a few repetitious passages, which are omitted. The commentary on Genesis 9:5 presented here—just a few short sentences—is of signal importance in Jewish theology and law because it “creatively,” as Noam Zohar puts it, finds in this passage the basis for the prohibition of suicide. The commentary defines suicide as a form of murder. However, the fact that the verse is prefaced by “but” or “yet”(omitted in most translations) is taken, following midrashic practice, to signify that the prohibition may also allow for exceptions applies, as in cases like that of Saul, who first asked his armor-bearer to kill him and then fell on his sword to avoid capture and torture by the Philistines, and in cases like those of Chananyah, Mishael, and Azaryah (often called by their foreign names, Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego) in the Book of Daniel, where they choose to die in the fiery furnace rather than worship Nebuchadnezzar’s idol. No explicit reason is given for such exceptions, though the distinction may refer to the motive for choosing death, rather than the causal manner of bringing it about. Nevertheless, the passage has been of signal importance in Jewish thought, serving to differentiate martyrs from suicides; whether martyrs may actively kill themselves would later be hotly debated in medieval Judaism.

Source

Genesis Rabbah, tr. Baruch Brody. Material in introduction from Noam Zohar and Daniel J.H. Greenwood.

 

 COMMENTARY ON GENESIS 9:5

This [prohibition of murder (in Genesis 9:5, “for your life-blood I shall demand satisfaction,”)] includes the person who strangles himself. I might think it applies in the case like that of Saul. The verse says “but.” I might think that it applies to Chananyah, Mishael, and Azaryah. The verse says “but.”

Comments Off on GENESIS RABBAH
(compiled 3rd-5th century)

Commentary on Genesis 9:5

Filed under Ancient History, Genesis Rabbah, Judaism, Middle East, Selections

by | · 7:38 pm

BHAGAVAD-GITA
(3rd century)

from The Way to Eternal Brahman

 

The Bhagavad-Gita, perhaps the best-loved of the Hindu religious texts, was probably composed in the 3rd century A.D. and later inserted into the great work of the Hindu epic period, the Mahabharata. The Mahabharata, a poem of some 100,000 verses composed between about 300 B.C. and 300 A.D., is an account of the origins, conduct, and consequences of a great war—said to have taken place in 900 B.C.—between two royal families, the Pandavas (the five sons of Pandu, of whom the third son Arjuna is the central figure) and the Kauravas (their cousins, the hundred sons of Dhritarashtra). Within this long epic, the portion known as the Bhagavad-Gita, or Song of God, opens just before the battle begins, as Arjuna, repulsed by the thought of the carnage the war would involve, decides to lay down his arms. Krishna, his friend and confidant, the god Vishnu in human form, who is serving as his charioteer, is disappointed, and thus begins a debate between the two over whether Arjuna should fight.

The Bhagavad-Gita stands as one of the most prominent and authoritative works in Hindu religious literature, and together with the Upanishads [q.v.] and the Brahma-Sutra is regarded as part of the basic trio of essential texts. Despite its primary significance in Indian thought, however, the Gita, like the entire Mahabharata, is not classified as shruti, or divine truth revealed by deity, but is instead considered to be smriti, or inspired teachings that explain or clarify divine truth. Regardless of its classification, the epic has profoundly influenced Hindu political, intellectual, and philosophical life throughout the centuries since its composition.

The majority of the Bhagavad-Gita consists of the dialogue between Arjuna and Krishna occurring just before the great battle on the plain of Kurukshetra. In the Gita dialogue, Shri Krishna (“Shri” refers to his venerated status) embodies Brahman, or the ultimate reality, and at times, he speaks as God. In the selection presented here, Arjuna inquires about the nature of Brahman, and asks how it is revealed at death to a mortal who unites in consciousness with God. Krishna describes a technique to be used by a yogi at death that allows the person to unite with Brahman and thus to escape the cycle of death and rebirth to which all living things are otherwise subject. This escape, referred to as “the path of no return,” is called Deva Yana in the Upanishads, “the path of the bright ones,” as distinct from Pitri Yana, “the path of the fathers,” which does lead to rebirth. (It should be noted that the “realm of Brahma,” which is also subject to death and rebirth, is not the same as Brahman (the universal, changeless reality), but instead refers to the highest of the worlds of Hindu mythology, in which “Brahma” designates one of the Hindu trinity, with Vishnu and Shiva.) According to yoga technique referred to in this passage, the yogi must employ a special method of leaving his body at death: first, the vital force is drawn up the sushumna, the central spinal passage, and gathered in the brain “between the eyebrows”; the yogi then leaves his body through an aperture in the center of the brain called the sahasrara. The technique Krishna describes thus portrays the yogi as taking a voluntary, deliberate, and partly causal role in his own death.

Source

The Song of God: Bhagavad-Gita, VIII: “The Way To Eternal Brahman,” trs. Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, New York: New American Library of World Literature, Inc., 1954, pp. 74–78. Also used for quotations in bibliographic note.

 

from BHAGAVAD-GITA: THE WAY TO ETERNAL BRAHMAN

ARJUNA: Tell me, Krishna, what Brahman is. What is the Atman, and what is the creative energy of Brahman? Explain the nature of this relative world, and of the individual man.

Who is God who presides over action in this body, and how does He dwell here? How are you revealed at the hour of death to those whose consciousness is united with you? 

SRI KRISHNA: Brahman is that which is immutable, and independent of any cause but Itself. When we consider Brahman as lodged within the individual being, we call Him the Atman. The creative energy of Brahman is that which causes all existences to come into being.

The nature of the relative world is mutability. The nature of the individual man is his consciousness of ego. I alone am God who presides over action, here in this body.

At the hour of death, when a man leaves his body, he must depart with his consciousness absorbed in me. Then he will be united with me. Be certain of that. Whatever a man remembers at the last, when he is leaving the body, will be realized by him in the hereafter; because that will be what his mind has most constantly dwelt on, during this life.

Therefore you must remember me at all times, and do your duty. If your mind and heart are set upon me constantly, you will come to me. Never doubt this.

Make a habit of practicing meditation, and do not let your mind be distracted. In this way you will come finally to the Lord, who is the light-giver, the highest of the high.

He is all-knowing God, lord of the emperors,
Ageless, subtler far than mind’s inmost subtlety,
Universal sustainer,
Shining sunlike, self luminous.
What fashion His form has, who shall conceive of it?
He dwells beyond delusion, the dark of Maya.
On Him let man meditate
Always, for then at the last hour
Of going hence from his body he will be strong
In the strength of this yoga, faithfully followed:
The mind is firm, and the heart
So full, it hardly holds its love.
Thus he will take his leave: and now, with the life-force
Indrawn utterly, held fast between the eyebrows,
He goes forth to find his Lord,
That light-giver, who is greatest.

Now I will tell you briefly about the nature of Him who is called the deathless by those seers who truly understand the Vedas. Devotees enter into Him when the bonds of their desire are broken. To reach this goal, they practice control of the passions.

When a man leaves his body and departs, he must close all the doors of the senses. Let him hold the mind firmly within the shrine of the heart, and fix the life-force between the eyebrows. Then let him take refuge in steady concentration, uttering the sacred syllable OM and meditating upon me. Such a man reaches the highest goal. When a yogi has meditated upon me unceasingly for many years, with an undistracted mind, I am easy of access to him, because he is always absorbed in me.

Great souls who find me have found the highest perfection. They are no longer reborn into this condition of transience and pain.

All the worlds, and even the heavenly realm of Brahma, are subject to the laws of rebirth. But for the man who comes to me, there is no returning.

There is day, also, and night in the universe:
The wise know this, declaring the day of Brahma
A thousand ages in span
And the night a thousand ages.

Day dawns, and all those lives that lay hidden asleep
Come forth and show themselves, mortally manifest:
Night falls, and all are dissolved
Into the sleeping germ of life.

Thus they are seen, O Prince, and appear unceasingly,
Dissolving with the dark, and with day returning
Back to the new birth, new death:
All helpless. They do what they must.

But behind the manifest and the unmanifest, there is another Existence, which is eternal and changeless. This is not dissolved in the general cosmic dissolution. It has been called the unmanifest, the imperishable. To reach it is said to be the greatest of all achievements. It is my highest state of being. Those who reach It are not reborn. That highest state of being can only be achieved through devotion to Him in whom all creatures exist, and by whom this universe is pervaded.

I show you two paths.
Let a yogi choose either
When he leaves this body:
The Path that leads back to birth,
The path of no return.
There is the path of light,
Of fire and day,
The path of the moon’s bright fortnight
And the six months’ journey
Of the sun to the north:
The knower of Brahman
Who takes this path
Goes to Brahman:

He does not return.
There is the path of night and smoke,
The path of the moon’s dark fortnight
And the six months’ journey
Of the sun to the south:
The yogi who takes this path
Will reach the lunar light:
This path leads back
To human birth, at last.

These two paths, the bright and the dark, may be said to have existed in this world of change from a time without any beginning. By the one, a man goes to the place of no return. By the other, he comes back to human birth. No yogi who knows these two paths is ever misled. Therefore, Arjuna, you must be steadfast in yoga, always.

The scriptures declare that merit can be acquired by studying the Vedas, performing ritualistic sacrifices, practicing austerities and giving alms. But the yogi who has understood this teaching of mine will gain more than any who do these things. He will reach that universal source, which is the uttermost abode of God.

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(3rd century)

from The Way to Eternal Brahman

Filed under Ancient History, Asia, Bhagavad-Gita, Hinduism, Selections

by | · 7:36 pm

TERTULLIAN
(c. 160-c. 220)

from To the Martyrs
from The Crown of Martyrdom

 

Tertullian, born a Roman citizen at or near Carthage, was originally a pagan, the son of a Roman centurion. He was educated in rhetoric and law, the standard education of a well-to-do Roman, and converted to Christianity before the year 197. Following his conversion, Tertullian traveled through Greece and Asia Minor before settling in Carthage and marrying. According to St. Jerome, he served the church as a presbyter. He wrote numerous theological treatises, apologies, and attacks on various heresies, and was the first important Christian theologian to write in Latin. According to Augustine, Tertullian broke with Montanism and in his later years formed his own sect, the Tertullianists; some modern scholars assert that the sect was simply named after him. In either case, the sect survived some two centuries until the time of Augustine. Because of his apostasy, Tertullian was scorned in antiquity, but in the 19th and 20th centuries has been re-considered to be a seminal figure in early Christianity and, with Augustine, one of the preeminent formative fathers of modern Christianity.

Tertullian’s literary style was highly individualistic and original: he was witty, vehement, and eloquent, often employing puns and seeming contradictions. His work is often described as legalistic in character. Much of it falls into three main categories: attacks against Jews and other non-Christians (Apologeticum, an animated defense of Christians against Roman accusations of depravity and sedition, and Adversus Judaeos); denunciations of Christian heresies (Adversus Valentinianos, which attacked Gnosticism); and later writings in which he began to be critical of the “visible” Church and became sympathetic to the Montanists, a prophetic sect with a demanding moral code that had become well known from Asia Minor to Africa. Other writings (De cultu feminarum, on the proper dress of women, and De monogamia, concerning monogamy) dealt with practical and moral issues. Among his many contributions to Christian thought, Tertullian developed the concepts of the Trinity; of the dual nature, divine and human, of Jesus; and of Original Sin; as well as an early version of natural law and the view that Scripture can be interpreted rightly only within the Church, though he later emphasized private interpretation of scriptural texts. He promoted an extreme austerity in dress and fasting. In accordance with Montanist views, he strongly encouraged Christians to embrace persecution and even martyrdom.

In the early work entitled “To the Martyrs,” Tertullian praises past martyrs and invites Christians to accept the “harsher treatment” God has prepared for them and consider the “heavenly glory and divine reward” that awaits the willing martyr. This work and “The Crown of Martyrdom” together provide an account of the merits and benefits of martyrdom. Tertullian’s exhortation to martyrdom poses a challenge to the line between suicide and martyrdom; in it, he presents a number of examples of suicide that Roman culture would have respected—Empedocles, Lucretia, Regulus—and argues in effect that Christians too should be respected for their steadfastness in persecution and their willingness to sacrifice themselves for their faith.

Sources

Tertullian, “To the Martyrs,” chs. 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, in Disciplinary, Moral, and Ascetical Works, trs. Rudolph Arbesmann, Emily Daly, and Edwin Quain, in The Fathers of the Church, ed. Roy Defarrari. New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1959, pp. 17-29; “The Crown of Martyrdom,” from The Christian’s Defense, in Fathers of the Church: A Selection of the Writings of the Latin Fathers,  tr. F. A. Wright, London: George Routledge and Sons, Ltd., 1928, pp. 48-51.

from TO THE MARTYRS

Blessed martyrs elect, along with the nourishment for the body which our Lady Mother the Church from her breast, as well as individual brethren from their private resources, furnish you in prison, accept also from me some offering that will contribute to the sustenance of the spirit.  For it is not good that the flesh be feasted while the spirit goes hungry.  Indeed, if care is bestowed on that which is weak, there is all the more reason not to neglect that which in still weaker.  Not that I am specially entitled to exhort you.  Yet, even the most accomplished gladiators are spurred on not only by their trainers and managers but also from afar by people inexperienced in this are and by all who choose, without the slightest need for it, with the result that hints issuing from the crowd have often proved profitable for them.

In the first place, then, O blessed, ‘do not grieve the Holy Spirit’ who has entered prison with you.  For, if He had not accompanied you there in your present trial, you would not be there today.  See to it, therefore, that He remain with you there and so lead you out of that place to the Lord.  Indeed, the prison is the Devil’s house, too, where he keeps his household.  But you have come to the prison for the purpose of trampling upon him right in his own house.  For you have engaged him in battle already outside the prison and trampled him underfoot.

Let him, therefore, not say: ‘Now that they are in my domain, I will tempt them with base hatreds, with defections or dissensions among themselves.’  Let him flee from your presence, and let him, coiled and numb, like a snake that is driven out by charms or smoke, hide away in the depths of his den.  Do not allow him the good fortune in his own kingdom of setting you against one another, but let him find you fortified by the arms of peace among yourselves, because peace among yourselves means war with him.  Some, not able to find this peace in the Church, are accustomed to seek it from the martyrs in prison.  For this reason, too, then, you ought to possess, cherish and preserve it among yourselves that you may perhaps be able to bestow it upon others also.

Other attachments, equally burdensome to the spirit, may have accompanied you to the prison gate; so far your relatives, too, may have escorted you.  From that very moment on you have been separated from the very world.  How much more, then, from its spirit and its ways and doings?  Nor let this separation from the world that is more truly a prison, we shall realize that you have left a prison rather than entered one.  The world holds the greater darkness, blinding men’s hearts.  The world puts on the heavier chains, fettering the very souls of men.  The world breathes forth the fouler impurities—human lusts.  Finally, the world contains the larger number of criminals, namely the entire human race.  In fact, it awaits sentence not from the proconsul but from God.  Wherefore, O blessed, consider yourselves as having been transferred from prison to what we may call a place of safety.  Darkness is there, but you are the light; fetters are there, but you are free before God.  It breathes forth a foul smell, but you are an odor of sweetness.  There the judge is expected at every moment, but you are going to pass sentence upon the judges themselves.  There sadness may come upon the man who sighs for the pleasures of the world.  The Christian, however, even when he is outside the prison, has renounced the world, and, when in prison, even prison itself.  It does not matter what part of the world you are in, you who are apart from the world.  And if you have missed some of the enjoyments of life, remember that it is the way of business to suffer some losses in order to make larger profits.

I say nothing yet about the reward to which God invites the martyrs.  Meanwhile, let us compare the life in the world with that in prison to see if the spirit does not gain more in prison than the flesh loses there.  In fact, owing to the solicitude of the Church and the charity of the brethren, the flesh does not miss there what it ought to have, while, in addition, the spirit obtains what is always beneficial to the faith: you do not look at strange gods; you do not chance upon their images; you do not, even by mere physical contact, participate in heathen holidays; you are not plagued by the foul fumes of the sacrificial banquets, not tormented by the noise of the spectacles, nor by the atrocity or frenzy or shamelessness of those taking part in the celebrations; your eyes do not fall on houses of lewdness; you are free from inducements to sin, from temptations, from unholy reminiscences, free, indeed, even from persecution.

The prison now offers to the Christian what the desert once gave to the Prophets.  Our Lord Himself quite often spent time in solitude to pray there more freely, to be there away from the world.  In fact, it was in a secluded place that He manifested His glory to His disciples.  Let us drop the name ‘prison’ and call it a place of seclusion.

Though the body is confined, though the flesh is detained, there is nothing that is not open to the spirit. In spirit wander about, in spirit take a walk, setting before yourselves not shady promenades and long porticoes but that path which leads to God. As often as you walk that path, you will not be in prison. The leg does not feel the fetter when the spirit is in heaven. The spirit carries about the whole man and brings him wherever he wishes. And where your heart is, there will your treasure be also.  There, then, let our heart be where we would have our treasure.

Granted now, O blessed, that even to Christians the prison is unpleasant—yet, we were called to the service in the army of the living God in the very moment when we gave response to the words of the sacramental oath.  No soldier goes out to war encumbered with luxuries, nor does he march to the line of battle from the sleeping chamber, but from light and cramped tents where every kind of austerity, discomfort, and inconvenience is experienced.  Even in time of peace soldiers are toughened to warfare by toils and hardships: by marching in arms, by practicing swift maneuvers in the field, by digging a trench, by joining closely together to form a tortoise-shield.  Everything is set in sweating toil, lest bodies and minds be frightened at having to pass from shade to sunshine, from sunshine to icy cold, from the tunic to the breastplate, from hushed silence to the war cry, from rest to the din of battle.

In like manner, O blessed, consider whatever is hard in your present situation as an exercise of your powers of mind and body.  You are about to enter a noble contest in which the living God acts the part of superintendent and the Holy Spirit is your trainer, a contest whose crown is eternity, whose prize is angelic nature, citizenship in heaven and glory for ever and ever.  And so your Master, Jesus Christ, who has anointed you with His Spirit and has brought you to this training ground, has resolved, before the day of the contest, to take you from a softer way of life to a harsher treatment that your strength may be increased.  For athletes, too, are set apart for more rigid training that they may apply themselves to the building up of their physical strength.  They are kept from lavish living, from more tempting dishes, from more pleasurable drinks.  They are urged on, they are subjected to torturing toils, they are worn out: the more strenuously they have exerted themselves, the greater is their hope of victory.  And they do this, says the Apostle, to win a perishable crown.  We who are about to win an eternal one recognize in the prison our training ground, that we may be led forth to the actual contest before the seat of the presiding judge well practiced in all hardships, because strength is built up by austerity, but destroyed by softness.

We know from our Lord’s teaching that, while the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak.  Let us, however, not derive delusive gratification from the Lord’s acknowledgement of the weakness of the flesh.  For it was on purpose that He first declared the spirit willing: He wanted to show which of the two ought to be subject to the other, that is to say, that the flesh should be submissive to the spirit, the weaker to the stronger, so that the former draw strength from the latter.  Let the sprit converse with the flesh on their common salvation, no longer thinking about the hardships of prison but, rather, about the struggle of the actual contest.  The flesh will perhaps fear the heavy sword and the lofty cross and the wild beasts mad with rage and the most terrible punishment of all—death by fire—and, finally, all the executioner’s cunning during the torture.  But let the spirit present to both itself and the flesh the other side of the picture: granted, these sufferings are grievous, yet many have borne them patiently, nay, have even sought them on their own accord for the sake of fame and glory; and this is true not only of men but also of women so that you, too, O blessed women, may be worthy of your sex.

It would lead me too far were I to enumerate each one of those who, led by the impulse of their own mind, put an end to their lives by the sword. Among women there is the well-known instance of Lucretia. A victim of violence, she stabbed herself in the presence of her kinsfolk to gain glory for her chastity. Mucius burnt his right hand on the altar that his fair fame might include this deed.  Nor did the philosophers act less courageously: Heraclitus, for instance, who put an end to his life by smearing himself with cow dung; Empedocles, too, who leaped down into the fires of Mt.Etna; and Peregrinus who not long ago threw himself upon a funeral pile. Why, even women have despised the flames: Dido did so in order not to be forced to marry after the departure of the man she had loved most dearly; the wife Hasdrubal, too, with Carthage in flames, cast herself along with her children into the fire that was destroying her native city, that she might not see her husband a suppliant at Scipio’s feet. Regulus, a Roman general, was taken prisoner by the Carhaginians, but refused to be the only Roman exchanged for a large number of Carthaginian captives. He preferred to be returned to the enemy, and, crammed into a kind of chest, suffered as many crucifixions as nails were driven in from the outside in all directions to pierce him. A woman voluntarily sought out wild beasts, namely, vipers, serpents more horrible than either bull or bear, which Cleopatra let loose upon herself as not to fall into the hands of the enemy.

You may object: ‘But the fear of death is not so great as the fear of torture.’  Did the Athenian courtesan yield on that account to the executioner?  For, being privy to a conspiracy, she was subjected to torture by the tyrant.  But she did not betray her fellow conspirators, and at last bit off her own tongue and spat it into the tyrant’s face to let him know that torments, however prolonged, could achieve nothing against her.  Everybody knows that to this day the most important festival of the Lacedaemonians is the δίαμαστίγwσις, that is, The Whipping.  In this sacred rite all the noble youth are scourged with whips before the altar, while their parents and kinsfolk stand by and exhort them to perseverance.  For they regard it as a mark of greater distinction and glory if the soul rather than the body has submitted to the stripes.

Therefore, if earthly glory accruing from strength of body and soul is valued so highly that one despises sword, fire, piercing with nails, wild beasts and tortures for the reward of human praise, then I may say the sufferings you endure are but trifling in comparison with the heavenly glory and divine reward.  If the bead made of glass is rated so highly, how much must the true pearl be worth?  Who.  Therefore, does not most gladly spend as much for the true as others spend for the false?

I omit here an account of the motive of glory. For inordinate ambition among men as well as a certain morbidity of mind have already set at naught all the cruel and torturing contests mentioned above.  How many of the leisure class are urged by an excessive love of arms to become gladiators?  Surely it is from vanity that they descend to the wild beasts in the very arena, and think themselves more handsome because of the bites and scars.  Some have even hired themselves out to tests by fire, with the result that they ran a certain distance in a burning tunic.  Others have pranced up and down amid the bullwhips of the animal-baiters, unflinchingly exposing their shoulders.  All this, O blessed, the Lord tolerates in the world for good reason, that is, for the sake of encouraging us in the present moment and of confounding us on that final day, if we have recoiled from suffering for the truth unto salvation what others have pursued out of vanity unto perdition.

Let us, however, no longer talk about those examples of perseverance proceeding from inordinate ambition.  Let us, rather, turn to a simple contemplation of man’s ordinary lot so that, if we ever have to undergo such trials with fortitude, we may also learn from those misfortunes which sometimes even befall unwilling victims, For how often have people been burned to death in conflagrations!  How often have wild beasts devoured men either in the forests or in the heart of cities after escaping from their cages!  How many have been slain by the sword of robbers!  How many have even suffered the death of the cross at the hands of enemies, after having been tortured first and, indeed, treated with every kind of insult!  Furthermore, many a man is able to suffer in the cause of a mere human being what he hesitates to suffer in the cause of God.  To this fact, indeed, our present days may bear witness.  How many prominent persons have met with death in the cause of a man, though such a fate seemed most unlikely in view of their birth and their rank, their physical condition and their age!  Death came to them either from him, if they had opposed him, or from his enemies, if they had sided with him.

 

from THE CROWN OF MARTYRDOM

“Why do you Christians complain,” you say, “that we persecute you, if you wish to suffer, since you ought to love those by whom you suffer what you wish?” Certainly we wish to suffer, but in the way in which a soldier suffers war. Nobody indeed willingly suffers war, since both panic and danger there must inevitably be faced; but yet the man who just now was complaining about battle fights with all his strength and rejoices when he wins a victory in battle, because he gains both glory and spoil. Our battle is to be summoned before tribunals, where we fight for the truth at the risk of our lives. And our victory is to obtain that for which you strive, a victory which brings with it both the glory of pleasing God and the spoil of eternal life. But, you may say, we are convicted; yes, when we have won the day; we conquer when we are killed, and we escape when we are convicted. You may call us “faggoted” and “axle-men”, because bound to a stake half an axle’s length we are burned amid heaps of faggots; but that is our garb of victory, our chariot of triumph, our garment decked with palm-leaves. Naturally therefore we do not please those whom we have conquered, and so we are regarded as desperate and reckless men.

Among you, however, such desperation and recklessness raises the standard of virtue in the cause of glory and renown. Mucius, for example, willingly left his right hand in the altar fire: “Oh loftiness of spirit!” Empedocles freely gave all his body to the flames of Etna for the people of Catana’s sake: “Oh what strength of mind!” The queen who founded Carthage flung herself upon the pyre in accordance with her marriage vow: “What an encomium for chastity!” Regulus, rather that be the one of all the foemen spared, suffered tortures all over his body: “What a brave man, victorious even in captivity!” Anaxarchus, when he was being crushed to death with a barely pestle, kept saying: “Pound, pound away: it is Anaxarchus’ coating, not Anaxarchus himself, that your are pounding”: “What a magnanimous philosopher who could even joke about such a death as his!”

In these cases glory was lawful, because it was human, and no imputation of reckless prejudice or desperate conviction was cast upon them when they despised death and every sort of cruelty. They were allowed for country, for empire, and for friendship to suffer what we are not allowed to suffer for God. For all these you cast statues and write inscriptions on their portraits, and engrave them epitaphs to last for ever. Certainly, as far as records can do it, you yourselves confer a kind of resurrection from God, if he should suffer for God, you deem to be mad. Go on, good governors; the mob will think you all the better if you sacrifice Christians to them; crucify, torture, condemn, destroy us; your injustice is the proof of our innocence. For that reason God allows us to suffer these things. Just recently by condemning a Christian woman to the brothel rather than to the wild beasts, you acknowledged that stain upon chastity is reckoned among us as more dreadful than any punishment and any death. Your cruelties, though each be more elaborate that the last, do not profit you; they serve rather as an attraction to our sect. The more you mow us down the greater our numbers become; our blood is the seed from which new Christians spring.

Many men among yourselves have written exhortations for the endurance of pain and death; Cicero, for example, in the Tusculans, Seneca in the treatise On Chance, Diogenes, Pyrrho, and Callinicus. But their words do not find as many disciples as the Christians make by their deeds. The very obstinacy, with which you reproach us, is our best teacher. Who is there that is not roused by the sight of it to ask what there is really within it? Who does not join us when once he has asked? Who does not long to suffer, when once he has joined, that he may buy back the whole grace of God and procure all indulgence from Him by the payment of his own blood? To this action all sins are forgiven. Hence it is that even in court we thank you for your verdict. There is an enmity between what is of God and what is of man; and when we are condemned by you we are acquitted by God.

Comments Off on TERTULLIAN
(c. 160-c. 220)

from To the Martyrs
from The Crown of Martyrdom

Filed under Africa, Ancient History, Christianity, Europe, Martyrdom, Selections, Tertullian

by | · 7:33 pm

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
(c. 150-c. 215)

from The Miscellanies (Stromata)
   The Praises of Martyrdom
   Those Who Offered Themselves for       Martyrdom Reproved

 

Titus Flavius Clemens, or St. Clement of Alexandria, was a Greek theologian of the early Christian church, the second known leader of the Alexandrian school of theology. He was born to a pagan family, allegedly in Athens, although his place of birth and the dates of his birth and death are uncertain. He studied under Pantaeus at the Catechetical School of Alexandria, the first Christian scholastic institution of its kind, known for promoting the allegorical method of biblical interpretation. Clement succeeded Pantaeus as its leader from about 190 until 203. Under the leadership of Pantaeus, Clement, and his pupil Origen, this school grew famous as a center of learning at the time.

Clement was the author of Exhortation to the Greeks, the three books of The Tutors, and the eight books of the Stromateis or Stromata, usually translated as Miscellanies, from which the selections here are taken. Clement also wrote Who Is the Rich Man That Shall Be Saved? In 202 or 203, Clement left Alexandria as a new round of persecutions of Christians began.

In the short selections here, Clement addresses what had become a troubling issue for the church, especially during periods of persecution. Christians were committed to belief in God and the divinity of Christ, and would prefer death to denying this faith. But some writers, notably Ignatius [q.v.] and Tertullian [q.v.], stressed the desirability of martyrdom and exhorted Christians to become martyrs. Indeed, some Christians openly flaunted their faith as a way of courting or provoking their own martyrdom. Clement, in a view the church came to accept, opposes this excess; he honors the genuine martyr, the one who achieves perfection and performs “the perfect work of love” in voluntarily sacrificing his body, but excoriates those who have “rushed on death” or have “presented themselves for capture.” In Clement’s view, they are guilty in much the same way as the murderer and the self-killer, the suicide; while martyrdom is to be respected, the true Christian should do everything possible to avoid it, short of betraying one’s faith.

Source

The Writings of Clement of Alexandria, Vol. II. Miscellanies (Stromata), Book IV, chs. iv, x. tr. Rev. William Wilson. Ante-Nicene Christian Library, Vol. XII.  Edinburgh: T &T Clark, 1869, pp. 145-148, 173-174.

from THE PRAISES OF MARTYRDOM

Whence, as is reasonable, the gnostic, when called, obeys easily, and gives up his body to him who asks; and, previously divesting himself of the affections of this carcase, not insulting the tempter, but rather, in my opinion, training him and convincing him,

“From what honour and what extent of wealth Fallen,”

as says Empedocles, here for the future he walks with mortals.  He, in truth, bears witness to himself that he is faithful and loyal towards God; and to the tempter, that he in vain envied him who is faithful through love; and to the Lord, of the inspired persuasion in reference to His doctrine, from which he will not depart through fear of death; further, he confirms also the truth of preaching by his deed, showing that God to whom he hastes is powerful.  You will wonder at his love, which he conspicuously shows with thankfulness, in being united to what is allied to him, and besides by his precious blood, shaming the unbelievers.  He then avoids denying Christ through fear by reason of the command; nor does he sell his faith in the hope of the gifts prepared, but in love to the Lord he will most gladly depart from this life; perhaps giving thanks both to him who laid the plot against him, for receiving an honourable reason which he himself furnished not, for showing what he is, to him by his patience, and to the Lord in love, by which even before his birth he was manifested to the Lord, who knew the martyr’s choice.  With good courage, then, he goes to the Lord, his friend, for whom he voluntarily gave his body, and, as his judges hoped, his soul, hearing from our Savior the words of poetry, “Dear brother,” by reason of the similarity of his life.  We call martyrdom perfection, not because the man comes to the end of his life as others, but because he has exhibited the perfect work of love.  And the ancients laud the death of those among the Greeks who died in war, not that they advised people to die a violent death, but because he who ends his life in war is released without the dread of dying, severed from the body without experiencing previous suffering or being enfeebled in his soul, as the people that suffer in diseases.  For they depart in a state of effeminacy and desiring to live; and therefore they do not yield up the soul pure, but bearing with it their lusts like weights of lead; all but those who have been conspicuous in virtue.  Some die in battle with their lusts, these being in no respect different from what they would have been if they had wasted away by disease.

If the confession to God is martyrdom, each soul which has lived purely in the knowledge of God, which has obeyed the commandments, is a witness both by life and word, in whatever way it may be released from the body,—shedding faith as blood along its whole life till its departure.  For instance, the Lord says in the Gospel, “Whosoever shall leave father, or mother, or brethren,” and so forth, “for the sake of the gospel and my name,” he is blessed; not indicating simple martyrdom, but the gnostic martyrdom, as of the man who has conducted himself according to the rule of the gospel, in love to the Lord (for the knowledge of the Name and the understanding of the gospel point out the gnosis, but not the bare appellation), so as to leave his worldly kindred, and wealth, and every possession, in order to lead a life free from passion. “Mother” figuratively means country and sustenance; “fathers” are the laws of civil polity: which must be contemned thankfully by the high-souled just man; for the sake of being the friend of God, and of obtaining the right hand in the holy place, as the Apostles have done.

Then Heraclitus says, “God and men honour those slain in battle;” and Plato in the fifth book of the Republic writes, “Of those who die in military service, whoever dies after winning renown, shall we not say that he is chief of the golden race?  Most assuredly.”  But the golden race is with the gods, who are in heaven, in the fixed sphere, who chiefly hold command in the providence exercised towards men.  Now some of the heretics who have misunderstood the Lord, have at once an impious and cowardly love of life; saying that the true martyrdom is the knowledge of the only true God (which we also admit), and that the man is a self-murderer and a suicide who makes confession by death; and adducing other similar sophisms of cowardice.  To these we shall reply at the proper time; for they differ with us in regard to first principles.  Now we, too, say that those who have rushed on death (for there are some, not belonging to us, but sharing the name merely, who are in haste to give themselves up, the poor wretches dying through hatred to the Creator)—these, we say, banish themselves without being martyrs, even though they are punished publicly.  For they do not preserve the characteristic mark of believing martyrdom, inasmuch as they have not known the only true God, but give themselves up to a vain death, as the Gymnosophists of the Indians to useless fire.

But since these falsely named [gnostics] calumniate the body, let them learn that the harmonious mechanism of the body contributes to the understanding which leads to goodness of nature.  Wherefore in the third book of the Republic, Plato, whom they appeal to loudly as an authority that disparages generation, says, “that for the sake of harmony of soul, care must be taken for the body,” by which, he who announces the proclamation of the truth, finds it possible to live, and to live well.  For it is by the path of life and health that we learn gnosis.  But is he who cannot advance to the height without being occupied with necessary things, and through them doing what tends to knowledge, not to choose to live well?  I living, then, living well is secured. And he who in the body has devoted himself to a good life, is being sent on to the state of immortality.

 

from THOSE WHO OFFERED THEMSELVES FOR MARTYRDOM REPROVED

When, again, He says, “When they persecute you in this city, flee ye to the other,” He does not advise flight, as if persecution were an evil thing; nor does He enjoin them by flight to avoid death, as if in dread of it, but wishes us neither to be the authors nor abettors of any evil to any one, either to ourselves to the persecutor and murderer.  For He, in a way, bids us take care of ourselves.  But he who disobeys is rash and foolhardy.  If he who kills a man of God sins against God, he also who presents himself before the judgment-seat becomes guilty of his death.  And such is also the case with him who does not avoid persecution, but out of daring presents himself for capture.  Such a one, as far as in him lies, becomes an accomplice in the crime of the persecutor.  And if he also uses provocation, he is wholly guilty, challenging the wild beast.  And similarly, if he afford any cause for conflict or punishment, or retribution or enmity, he gives occasion for persecution.  Wherefore, then, we are enjoined not to cling to anything that belongs to this life; but “to him that takes our cloak to give our coat,” not only that we may continue destitute of inordinate affection, but that we may not by retaliating make our persecutors savage against ourselves, and stir them up to blaspheme the name.

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(c. 150-c. 215)

from The Miscellanies (Stromata)
   The Praises of Martyrdom
   Those Who Offered Themselves for       Martyrdom Reproved

Filed under Africa, Ancient History, Christianity, Clement of Alexandria, Martyrdom, Selections, Sin

by | · 7:31 pm

JUSTIN MARTYR
(c. 100-165)

from The Second Apology: Why Christians Do Not Kill Themselves

 

Saint Justin (the) Martyr, theologian and philosopher, was one of the first Christian apologists, sainted and numbered among the Fathers of the Church. He was born in the city of Flavia Neapolis (now Nabulus, West Bank), a Roman city built on the site of the ancient Shechem, in Samaria. His parents practiced the Roman religion. Justin studied Greek philosophy, especially that of Plato and the Stoics, before converting to Christianity; he also knew Judaism and Greco-Roman religion well. After his conversion to Christianity, he traveled about on foot defending its truths, often entering into violent controversies, and later opened a Christian school in Rome. He developed the conception of a divine plan in history and laid the foundation for a theology of history drawing from both philosophy and Christian revelation.

In Rome, Justin wrote the Dialogue with Trypho, emphasizing the continuity of the Old and the New Testaments, and two Apologies for the Christians, collections of reasoned defenses against Roman allegations of Christian insurrection, directed to the emperors Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. Justin’s work in general addressed a philosophically sophisticated Greek and Roman audience. After debating with the Cynic Crescens, however, Justin was denounced to the Roman prefect as subversive and condemned to death; he was scourged and martyred by beheading in Rome during the rule of Marcus Aurelius.

In this very short selection from “The Second Apology,” Justin provides an earnest answer to the sort of flippant remark that might be made by a non-Christian detractor, perhaps a Roman who is influenced by Stoicism and thus views suicide as a potentially rational and prudent act, and who mocks the Christian belief in a personal afterlife. If Christians believe in a personal  afterlife in which one will be received into the presence of God, the detractor seems to imply,  why do they suffer martyrdom rather than commit suicide? Why not kill oneself and go directly to God? Justin’s brief answer alludes to the central Christian values of the educative, formative purpose of human life, the pursuit of moral good and the rejection of evil, and the importance of continuing the Christian faith (i.e., instruction in the divine doctrines), as well as preserving God’s creation, the human race itself; his reasons display the basis of the Christian belief that suicide is wrong.

Source

Justin Martyr,  “The Second Apology of Justin for the Christians Addressed to the Roman Senate,” ch. 4. In Ante-Nicene Fathers,  ed. Philip Schaff,  vol I: The Apostolic Fathers, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, ed. Alexander Roberts and  James Donaldson, Edinburgh, 1867.

 

from THE SECOND APOLOGY: WHY CHRISTIANS DO NOT KILL THEMSELVES

Lest any one should say to us, ‘All of you, go, kill yourselves and thus go immediately to God, and save us the trouble,’ I will explain why we do not do that, and why, when interrogated, we boldly acknowledge our faith.  We have been taught that God did not create the world without a purpose, but that He did so for the sake of mankind; for we have stated before that God is pleased with those who imitate His perfections, but is displeased with those who choose evil, either in word or in deed.  If, then, we should all kill ourselves we would be the cause, as far as it is up to us, why no one would be born and be instructed in the divine doctrines, or even why the human race might cease to exist; if we do act thus, we ourselves will be opposing the will of God.

Comments Off on JUSTIN MARTYR
(c. 100-165)

from The Second Apology: Why Christians Do Not Kill Themselves

Filed under Ancient History, Christianity, Europe, Justin Martyr, Middle East, Selections, Stoicism

by | · 7:28 pm

PLINY THE YOUNGER
(62-113)

from Letters:
   To Calestrius Tiro
   To Catilius Severus
   To Marcilius Nepos
   To Calpurnius Macer

 

Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, known as Pliny the Younger to differentiate him from his uncle Gaius Plinius Secundus, Pliny the Elder (23–79) [q.v.], had a successful career in the Roman Senate. He was a consul and governor of Bithynia and Pontica in the years just before his death; his comments on the treatment of Christians in these provinces are among the earliest historical references to Christianity. Pliny’s work is preserved in 10 volumes of letters (some 368 in all) that constitute an important source of first-hand documentation and social commentary concerning life in the Roman Empire at the turn of the 1st century.

Pliny’s Letters include accounts of deliberations about suicide by two friends, one, Corellius Rufus, who killed himself to avoid further suffering from incurable illness, and another, Titius Aristo, who decided not to do so if there were any chance of recovery. In both cases, the prospect of suicide is made known to or discussed with family members, friends, and a physician. There is the famous Arria, who consulted with no one at all, as well as the less famous woman of Lake Como who forces her husband into suicide to avoid a lethal condition by tying herself to him and jumping into the lake. Pliny’s particular interest is in the role of reason in such deliberations about suicide. Nevertheless, for Pliny, understanding a suicide or contemplated suicide does not diminish his grief or anxiety over it.

Sources

The Letters of the Younger Pliny, With An Introductory Essay by John B. Firth. New York and Felling-on-Tyne, [date?], Book I, Letter XII, “To Calestrius Tiro”; Book I, Letter XXII, “To Catilius Severus”; Book III, Letter 16, “To Marcilius Nepos,” following the Teubner text, edited by Keil, Available at Project Gutenberg, text #3234. “To Calpurnius Macer,” Book VI, Letter 24. Pliny: Letters and Panegyricus, tr. Betty Radice, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969, p. 455. Online at www.gutenberg.org.

from LETTERS

To Calestrius Tiro

I have suffered a most grievous loss, if loss is a word that can be applied to my being bereft of so distinguished a man. Corellius Rufus is dead, and what makes my grief the more poignant is that he died by his own act. Such a death is always most lamentable, since neither natural causes nor Fate can be held responsible for it. When people die of disease there is a great consolation in the thought that no one could have prevented it; when they lay violent hands on themselves we feel a pang which nothing can assuage in the thought that they might have lived longer. Corellius, it is true, felt driven to take his own life by Reason–and Reason is always tantamount to Necessity with philosophers– and yet there were abundant inducements for him to live. His conscience was stainless, his reputation beyond reproach; he stood high in men’s esteem. Moreover, he had a daughter, a wife, a grandson, and sisters, and, besides all these relations, many genuine friends. But his battle against ill-health had been so long and hopeless that all these splendid rewards of living were outweighed by the reasons that urged him to die.

I have heard him say that he was first attacked by gout in the feet when he was thirty-three years of age. He had inherited the complaint, for it often happens that a tendency to disease is handed down like other qualities in a sort of succession. While he was in the prime of life he overcame his malady and kept it well in check by abstemious and pure living, and when it became sharper in its attacks as he grew old he bore up against it with great fortitude of mind. Even when he suffered incredible torture and the most horrible agony–for the pain was no longer confined, as before, to the feet, but had begun to spread over all his limbs–I went to see him in the time of Domitian when he was staying at his country house. His attendants withdrew from his chamber, as they always did whenever one of his more intimate friends entered the room. Even his wife, a lady who might have been trusted to keep any secret, also used to retire. Looking round the room, he said: “Why do you think I endure pain like this so long? It is that I may outlive that tyrant, even if only by a single day.” Could you but have given him a frame fit to support his resolution, he would have achieved the object of his desire. However, some god heard his prayer and granted it, and then feeling that he could die without anxiety and as a free man ought, he snapped the bonds that bound him to life. Though they were many, he preferred death.

His malady had become worse, though he tried to moderate it by his careful diet, and then, as it still continued to grow, he escaped from it by a fixed resolve. Two, three, four days passed and he refused all food. Then his wife Hispulla sent our mutual friend Caius Geminius to tell me the sad news that Corellius had determined to die, that he was not moved by the entreaties of his wife and daughter, and that I was the only one left who might possibly recall him to life. I flew to see him, and had almost reached the house when Hispulla sent me another message by Julius Atticus, saying that now even I could do nothing, for his resolve had become more and more fixed. When the doctor offered him nourishment he said, “My mind is made up,” and the word has awakened within me not only a sense of loss, but of admiration. I keep thinking what a friend, what a manly friend is now lost to me. He was at the end of his seventy-sixth year, an age long enough even for the stoutest of us. True. He has escaped a lifelong illness; he has died leaving children to survive him, and knowing that the State, which was dearer to him than everything else beside, was prospering well. Yes, yes, I know all this. And yet I grieve at his death as I should at the death of a young man in the full vigour of life; I grieve–you may think me weak for so doing–on my own account too. For I have lost, lost for ever, the guide, philosopher, and friend of my life. In short, I will say again what I said to my friend Calvisius, when my grief was fresh: “I am afraid I shall not live so well ordered a life now.” Send me a word of sympathy, but do not say, “He was an old man, or he was infirm.” These are hackneyed words; send me some that are new, that are potent to ease my trouble, that I cannot find in books or hear from my friends. For all that I have heard and read occur to me naturally, but they are powerless in the presence of my excessive sorrow. Farewell.

To Catilius Severus

Here am I still in Rome, and a good deal surprised to find myself here. But I am troubled at the long illness of Titus Aristo, which he cannot shake off. He is a man for whom I feel an extraordinary admiration and affection: search where you will, he is second to none in character, uprightness, and learning–so much so that I hardly look upon his illness as that of a mere individual being in danger. It is rather as if literature and all good arts were personified in him, and through him were in grievous peril. What a knowledge he has of private and public rights and the laws relating to them! What a mastery he has of things in general, what experience, what an acquaintance with the past! There is nothing you may wish to learn that he cannot teach you; to me, certainly, he is a perfect mine of learning whenever I am requiring any out-of-the-way information.

Then again, how convincing his conversation is, how strongly it impresses you, how modest and becoming is his hesitation! What is there that he does not know straight away? And yet, often enough, he shows hesitation and doubt, from the very diversity of the reasons that come crowding into his mind, and upon these he brings to bear his keen and mighty intellect, and, going back to their fountain-head, reviews them, tests them, and weighs them in the balance. Again, how sparing he is in his manner of life, how unassuming in his dress! I often look at his bedroom and the bed itself, as though they were models of old-fashioned economy. However, they are adorned by his splendid mind, which has not a thought for ostentation, but refers everything to his conscience. He seeks his reward for a good deed not in the praise of the world, but in the deed itself. In short, you will not find it easy to discover any one, even among those who prefer to study wisdom rather than take heed to their bodily pleasures, worthy to be compared with him. He does not haunt the training grounds and the public porticos, nor does he charm the idle moments of others and his own by indulging in long talks; no, he is always in his toga and always at work; his services are at the disposal of many in the Courts, and he helps numbers more by his advice. Yet in chastity of life, in piety, in justice, in courage even, there is no one of all his acquaintance to whom he need give place.

You would marvel, if you were by his side, at the patience with which he endures his illness, how he fights against his suffering, how he resists his thirst, how, without moving and without throwing off his bed- clothes, he endures the dreadful burning heats of his fever. Just recently he sent for me and a few others of his especial friends with me, and begged us to consult his doctors and ask them about the termination of his illness, so that if there were no hope for him he might voluntarily give up his life, but might fight against it and hold out if the illness only threatened to be difficult and long. He owed it, he said, to the prayers of his wife, the tears of his daughter, and the regard of us who were his friends, not to cheat our hopes by a voluntary death, providing those hopes were not altogether futile. I think that such an acknowledgment as that must be especially difficult to make, and worthy of the highest praise; for many people are quite capable of hastening to death under the impulse of a sudden instinct, but only a truly noble mind can weigh up the pros and cons of the matter, and resolve to live or die according to the dictates of Reason.

However, the doctors give us reassuring promises, and it now remains for the Deity to confirm and fulfil them, and so at length release me from my anxiety. The moment my mind is easy, I shall be off to my Laurentine Villa–that is to say, to my books and tablets, and to my studious ease. For now as I sit by my friend’s bedside I can neither read nor write, and I am so anxious that I have no inclination for such study.

Well, I have told you my fears, my hopes, and my future plans; it is your turn now to write and tell me what you have been doing, what you are doing now, and what your plans are, and I hope your letter will be a more cheerful one than mine. If you have nothing to complain about, it will be no small consolation to me in my general upset. Farewell.

To Marcilius Nepos

I have often observed that the greatest words and deeds, both of men and women, are not always the most famous, and my opinion has been confirmed by a talk I had with Fannia yesterday. She is a granddaughter of the Arria who comforted her husband in his dying moments and showed him how to die. She told me many stories of her grandmother, just as heroic but not so well known as the manner of her death, and I think they will seem to you as you read them quite as remarkable as they did to me as I listened to them.

Her husband, Caecina Paetus, was lying ill, and so too was their son, both, it was thought, without chance of recovery. The son died. He was a strikingly handsome lad, modest as he was handsome, and endeared to his parents for his other virtues quite as much as because he was their son. Arria made all the arrangements for the funeral and attended it in person, without her husband knowing anything of it.

When she entered his room she pretended that the boy was still alive and even much better, and when her husband constantly asked how the lad was getting on, she replied: “He has had a good sleep, and has taken food with a good appetite.” Then when the tears, which she had long forced back, overcame her and burst their way out, she would leave the room, and not till then give grief its course, returning when the flood of tears was over, with dry eyes and composed look, as though she had left her bereavement at the door of the chamber. It was indeed a splendid deed of hers to unsheath the sword, to plunge it into her breast, then to draw it out and offer it to her husband, with the words which will live for ever and seem to have been more than mortal, “Paetus, it does not hurt.” But at that moment, while speaking and acting thus, there was fame and immortality before her eyes, and I think it an even nobler deed for her without looking for any reward of glory or immortality to force back her tears, to hide her grief, and, even when her son was lost to her, to continue to act a mother’s part.

When Scribonianus had started a rebellion in Illyricum against Claudius, Paetus joined his party, and, on the death of Scribonianus, he was brought prisoner to Rome. As he was about to embark, Arria implored the soldiers to take her on board with him. “For,” she pleaded, “as he is of consular rank, you will assign him some servants to serve his meals, to valet him and put on his shoes. I will perform all these offices for him.” When they refused her, she hired a fishing-boat and in that tiny vessel followed the big ship. Again, in the presence of Claudius she said to the wife of Scribonianus, when that woman was voluntarily giving evidence of the rebellion, “What, shall I listen to you in whose bosom Scribonianus was killed and yet you still live?” Those words showed that her resolve to die gloriously was due to no sudden impulse.

Moreover, when her son-in-law Thrasea sought to dissuade her from carrying out her purpose, and urged among his other entreaties the following argument: “If I had to die, would you wish your daughter to die with me?” she replied, “If she had lived as long and as happily with you as I have lived with Paetus, yes.” This answer increased the anxiety of her friends, and she was watched with greater care. Noticing this, she said, “Your endeavours are vain. You can make me die hard, but you cannot prevent me from dying.” As she spoke she jumped from her chair and dashed her head with great force against the wall of the chamber, and fell to the ground. When she came to herself again, she said, “I told you that I should find a difficult way of dying if you denied me an easy one.”

Do not sentences like these seem to you more noble than the “Paetus, it does not hurt,” to which they gradually led up? Yet, while that saying is famous all over the world, the others are unknown. But they confirm what I said at the outset, that the noblest words and deeds are not always the most famous. Farewell.

To Calpurnius Macer 

How often we judge actions by the people who perform them!  The selfsame deeds are lauded to the skies or allowed to sink into oblivion simply because the persons concerned are well known or not.

I was sailing on our Lake Como with an elderly friend when he pointed out a house with a bedroom built out over the lake. “From there,” he said, “a woman of our town once threw herself with her husband.”  I asked why.  The husband had long been suffering from ulcers in the private parts, and his wife insisted on seeing them, promising that no one would give him a more candid opinion whether the disease was curable.  She saw that there was no hope and urged him to take his life; she went with him, even led him to his death herself, and forced him to follow her example by roping herself to him and jumping into the lake.  Yet even I, who come from the same town, never heard of this until the other day—not because it was less heroic that Arria’s famous deed, but because the woman was less well known.

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from Letters:
   To Calestrius Tiro
   To Catilius Severus
   To Marcilius Nepos
   To Calpurnius Macer

Filed under Ancient History, Europe, Pliny the Younger, Selections

by | · 7:09 pm

EPICTETUS
(c. 55-c. 135)

from Discourses:
   How from the Doctrine of Our       Relationship to God We Are to       Deduce Its Consequences
   How We Should Bear Illness
   Of Freedom

 

Born in Hierapolis, Phrygia (modern Turkey) to a slave woman, Epictetus was himself a slave during his childhood and adolescence. He was lame, according to Origen’s account, from injuries caused by his master Epaphroditus’s twisting his leg until he broke it, although others accounts describe Epaphroditus as a good master. Epaphroditus, himself a freedman of Nero, sent Epictetus to study with the most influential Stoic teacher and theoretician of the time, Gaius Musonius Rufus, and Epictetus was freed by his master, or on the death of his master, sometime after Nero’s death in 68. Epictetus traveled to Rome and began instructing students in Stoicism. In the year 90, he was expelled, along with other Stoic philosophers, by the Roman emperor Domitian, and then moved to Epirus, where he led a large, thriving school of Stoic physics, logic, and ethics. He did not marry, but in his old age, with the help of a nurse, he took in an orphaned child who would otherwise have been exposed. Epictetus’ teachings were collected in two volumes by his pupil Lucius Flavius Arrian: the Discourses, written about 108, of which four of eight books survive, and the Encheiridion (also called the Manual or Handbook), made up of fragments from the Discourses. Arrian explains their informal expression by saying he did not intend to write a book, but to keep notes of what he used to hear Epictetus say “word for word in the very language he used, as far as possible, to capture the directness of his speech.”

Epictetus espoused the Stoic view of the ideal condition for a human being—to be aware of, yet immune to, the bruisings of fortune—to lack all dissatisfaction with anything about the world, to be disappointed by nothing, and to achieve an impersonal point of view. Yet Epictetus also held that if you can help people adjust their desires and attitudes to more realistic levels, you can help them improve their lives. To live in accordance with virtue is to live in accordance with nature, but in giving practical advice, Epictetus clearly realized that lowered expectations were less likely to be disappointed.

A number of Stoic thinkers, especially Seneca, celebrated suicide as the act of the wise man: it was the guarantee of freedom. Epictetus stressed a component of the Stoic view that suicide ought not to be undertaken too quickly to avoid suffering, since people can live best by accepting their powerlessness over circumstances through their capacity for control of the will and by refusing to allow the vicissitudes of life, even illness, to affect them. One need not in general kill oneself to avoid the sufferings of life, and to do so without good reason would be inappropriate. Epictetus used the Platonic (and originally Pythagorean) argument that traded on the metaphor of the person as guard or sentinel, stationed by God at a post, to discourage suicide in response to painful circumstances: “Friends, wait for God, till he give the signal and dismiss you from this service; then depart to him. For the present, endure to remain at this post where he has placed you.” Strategies like analysis, delay, detachment, and so on may minimize fortune’s blows. Yet suicide is the most drastic method of escaping pain, and it can certainly be used when all else has failed: The door, to use the frequent Stoic metaphor, is always open.

Source

Epictetus, Discourses,  Book 1, ch.  9; Book III, ch. 10; Book IV, ch. 1, tr. Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1865), Roslyn, New York: Walter J. Black, Inc., 1944, pp. 27-28, 198-199, 281-282.

from DISCOURSES

How From the Doctrine of Our Relationship to God We Are to Deduce Its Consequences

I think that your old teacher ought not to have to be working to keep you from thinking or speaking too meanly or ignobly of yourselves, but should rather be working to keep young men of spirit who, knowing their affinity to the gods and how we are, as it were, fettered by the body and its possessions, and by the many other things that thus are needful for the daily pursuits of life, from resolving to throw them all off, as troublesome and vexatious and useless, and depart to their divine kindred.

This is the work that ought to employ your master and teacher, if you had one.   You would come to him and say: “Epictetus, we can no longer bear being tied down to this poor body-feeding, and resting, and cleaning it, and vexed with so many low cares on its account. Are not these things indifferent and nothing to us and death no evil?  Are we not kindred to God; and did we not come from him?  Suffer us to go back whence we came.  Suffer us to be released at last from these fetters that bind and weigh us down. Here thieves and robbers, courts and tyrants, claim power over us, through the body and its possessions. Suffer us to show them that they have no power.”

In which case it would be my part to answer: “Friends, wait for God, till he give the signal and dismiss you from this service; then depart to him.  For the present, endure to remain at this post where he has placed you.  The time of your abode here is short and easy for men like you; for what tyrant, what thief, or what court can be formidable to those who count as nothing the body and its possessions?  Wait, do not foolishly depart.”

 

How We Should Bear Illness

Now is your time for a fever. Bear it well. For thirst; bear it well. For hunger; bear it well. Is it not in your power? Who shall restrain you? A physician may restrain you from drinking, but he cannot restrain you from bearing your thirst well. He may restrain you from eating, but he cannot restrain you from bearing hunger well. “But I cannot follow my studies.” And for what end do you follow them, slave? Is it not that you may think and act in conformity with nature? What restrains you, but that, in a fever, you may keep your reason in harmony with nature?

Here is the test of the matter.  Here is the trial of the philosopher; for a fever is a part of life, as is a walk, a voyage, or a journey.  Do you read when you are walking?  No, nor in a fever.  But when you walk well, you attend to what belongs to a walker; so, if you bear a fever well, you have everything belonging to one in a fever.  What is it to bear a fever well?  Not to blame either God or man, not to be afflicted at what happens, to await death bravely, and to do what is to be done.  When the physician enters, not to dread what he may say; nor, if he should tell you that you are doing well to be too much rejoiced; for what good has he told you?  When you were in health, what good did it do you?  Not to be dejected when he tells you that you are very ill; for what is it to be very ill?  To be near the separation of soul and body.  What harm is there in this, then?  If you are not near it now, will you not be near it hereafter?  What, will the world be quite overturned when you die?  Why, then, do you flatter your physician?  Why do you say, “If you please, sir, I shall do well”?  Why do you give him occasion to put on airs?  Why not give him what is his due (with regard to an insignificant body—which is not yours, but by nature mortal) as you do a shoemaker about your foot, or a carpenter about a house?  It is the season for these things, to one in a fever.  If he fulfills these, he has what belongs to him.  For it is not the business of a philosopher to take care of these mere externals—of his wine, his oil, or his body—but of his reason.  And how with regard to externals?  Not to behave inconsiderately about them.

What occasion is there, then for fear; what occasion for anger, for desire, about things that belong to others, or are of no value?  For two rules we should always have ready—that there is nothing good or evil save in the will; and that we are not to lead events, but to follow them.

 

Of Freedom

[Socrates] did not even deliberate about it; though he knew that, perhaps, he might die for it.  But what did that signify to him?  For it was something else that he wanted to preserve, not his flesh; but his fidelity, his honor, free from attack or subjection.  And afterwards, when he was to make a defense for his life, does he behave like one having children, or a wife?  No, but like a man alone in the world.  And how does he behave, when required to drink the poison?  When he might escape, and Crito would have him escape from prison for the sake of his children, what did he say?  Does he think it a fortune opportunity?  How should he?  But he considers what is becoming, and neither sees nor regards anything else.  “For I am not desirous,” he says, “to preserve this pitiful body; but that part which is improved and preserved by justice, and impaired and destroyed by injustice.”  Socrates is not to be basely preserved.  He who refused to vote for what the Athenians commanded; he who despised the thirty tyrants; he who held such discourses on virtue and mortal beauty—such a man is not to be preserved by a base action, but is preserved by dying, instead of running away.  For a good actor is saved when he stops when he should stop, rather than acting beyond his time.

“What then will become of your children?”  “If I had gone away into Thessaly, you would have taken care of them; and will there be no one to take care of them when I am departed to Hades?”1  You see how he ridicules and plays with death.  But if it had been you or I, we should presently have proved by philosophical arguments that those who act unjustly are to be repaid in their own way; and should have added, “If I escape I shall be of use to many; if I die, to none.”  Nay, if it had been necessary, we should have crept through a mouse hole to get away.  But how should we have been of use to anybody?  Where could we be of use?  If we were useful alive, should we not be of still more use to mankind by dying when we ought and as we ought?  And now the remembrance of the death of Socrates is not less, but even more useful to the world than that of the things which he did and said when alive.

Study these points, these principles, these discourses; contemplate these examples if you would be free, if you desire the thing in proportion to its value.  And where is the wonder that you should purchase so good a thing at the price of other things, be they never so many and so great?  Some hang themselves, others break their necks, and sometimes even whole cities have been destroyed for that which is reputed freedom; and will not you for the sake of the true and secure and inviolable freedom, repay God what he has given when he demands it?  Will you study not only, as Plato says, how to die, but how to be tortured and banished and scourged; and, in short, how to give up all that belongs to others?

If not, you will be a slave among slaves, though you were ten thousand times a consul; and even though you should rise to the palace, you will be a slave none the less.

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(c. 55-c. 135)

from Discourses:
   How from the Doctrine of Our       Relationship to God We Are to       Deduce Its Consequences
   How We Should Bear Illness
   Of Freedom

Filed under Afterlife, Ancient History, Epictetus, Europe, Illness and Old Age, Selections, Stoicism

by | · 7:03 pm

TACITUS
(c. 55-c.117)

from The Annals: The Death of Seneca

 

Cornelius Tacitus, born in northern Italy or southern Gaul, was a Roman political leader and historian who chronicled Roman history of the 1st century A.D.. He was educated in rhetoric in Rome for a career in law and apparently served in several positions of leadership, including quaestor, praetor, and consul. In the year 112 or 113, he held the position of proconsul, or local governor, in the Roman province of Asia. Tacitus spent the last years of his life working on his histories.

Tacitus wrote two major historical works, the Histories (104–109), arranged into 14 books, and the Annals (c. 115–117), comprised of 16 books. These compositions, of which fewer than half survive today, together provide a history of Rome from the years 14 to 96 A.D..

In the fifteenth book of the Annals, Tacitus relates the suicide of the Stoic statesman Seneca the Younger [q.v.], whose writings on suicide are also included in this volume. According to this account, Seneca was implicated in a conspiracy instigated by the plebeian Piso against the emperor Nero. Earlier in his life, Seneca had been Nero’s tutor, and later, together with Burrus, became a trusted advisor to Nero. It is said that much of the decency and moderation of the first five years of Nero’s rule may be attributed to the guidance of Seneca and Burrus. However, Nero grew envious of Seneca’s fortune and attempted to have him poisoned. After the attempt failed, Nero accused Seneca of involvement in the conspiracy and gave the imperial order that Seneca commit suicide. In Tacitus’ account, Seneca voluntarily complied with the order. He also consented to his wife Paulina’s determination to die with him, and they opened their veins together. After a prolonged period of suffering, poison was administered and eventually caused Seneca to die; Paulina’s attempt at suicide was prevented at Nero’s command once she herself was already unconscious.

Tacitus’ account conveys Seneca’s expectation that his suicide, despite the fact that it was unjustly ordered by Nero, will be viewed as an act of courage, to be rewarded with fame and glory, though less so than Paulina’s suicide. He says to her: “we will leave behind us an example of equal constancy; but the glory will be all your own.” Seneca’s death is often regarded as a model of Stoic suicide.

SOURCE
Tacitus,  The Annals, Book XV, 60-64, ed. E. H. Blakeney, tr. Arthur Murphy, New York: E. P. Dutton; London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1908, Vol. 1, pp. 498-502.

from THE ANNALS: THE DEATH OF SENECA

The next exploit of Nero was the death of Seneca Against that eminent man no proof of guilt appeared; but the emperor thirsted for his blood, and what poison had not accomplished, he was determined to finish by the sword.  Natalis was the only person who had mentioned his name. The chief head of his accusation was, “That he himself had been sent on a visit to Seneca, then confined by illness, with instructions to mention to him, that Piso often called at his house, but never could gain admittance, though it was the interest of both to live on terms of mutual friendship.” To this Seneca made answer, “That private interviews could be of no service to either; but still his happiness was grafted on the safety of Piso.” Granius Silvanus, a tribune of the prætorian guards, was dispatched to Seneca, with directions to let him know what was alleged against him, and to inquire whether he admitted the conversation stated by Natalis, with the answers given by himself. Seneca, by design or accident, was that very day on his return from Campania.  He stopped at a villa of his own about four miles from Rome. Towards the close of day the tribune arrived, and beset the house with a band of soldiers.  Seneca was at supper with his wife Pompeia Paulina, and two of his friends, when Silvanus entered the room, and reported the orders of the emperor.

Seneca did not hesitate to acknowledge that Natalis had been at his house, with a complaint that Piso’s visits were not received. His apology, he said, imported no more than want of health, the love of ease, and the necessity of attending to a weak and crazy constitution. “That he should prefer the interest of a private citizen to his own safety, was too absurd to be believed.  He had no motives to induce him to pay such a compliment to any man; adulation was no part of his character. This is a truth well known to Nero himself: he can tell you that, on various occasions, he found in Seneca a man, who spoke his mind with freedom, and disdained the arts of servile flattery.” Silvanus returned to Rome.  He found the prince in company with Poppæa and Tigellinus, who, as often as cruelty was in agitation, formed the cabinet council.  In their presence the messenger reported his answer. Nero asked, “Does Seneca prepare to end his days by a voluntary death?” “He showed,” said the tribune, “no symptom of fear, no token of sorrow, no dejected passion: his words and looks bespoke a mind serene, erect, and firm.” “Return,” said Nero, “and tell him he must resolve to die.” Silvanus, according to the account of Fabius Rusticus, chose to go back by a different road.  He went through a private way to Fenius Rufus, to advise with that officer, whether he should execute the emperor’s orders.  Rufus told him that he must obey. Such was the degenerate spirit of the times. A general panic took possession of every mind. This very Silvanus was one of the conspirators, and yet was base enough to be an instrument of the cruelty which he had combined to revenge. He had, however, the decency to avoid the shock of seeing Seneca, and of delivering in person the fatal message. He sent a centurion to perform that office for him.

Seneca heard the message with calm composure. He called for his will, and being deprived of that right of a Roman citizen by the centurion, he turned to his friends. And “You see,” he said, “that I am not at liberty to requite your services with the last marks of my esteem. One thing, however, still remains. I leave you the example of my life, the best and most precious legacy now in my power. Cherish it in your memory, and you will gain at once the applause due to virtue, and the fame of a sincere and generous friendship.” All who were present melted into tears. He endeavored to assuage their sorrows; he offered his advice with mild persuasion; he used the tone of authority. “Where,” he said, “are the precepts of philosophy, and where the words of wisdom, which for years have taught us to meet the calamities of life with firmness and a well prepared spirit? Was the cruelty of Nero unknown to any of us?  He murdered his mother; he destroyed his brother; and, after those deeds of horror, what remains to fill the measure of his guilt but the death of his guardian and his tutor?”

Having delivered himself in these pathetic terms, he directed his attention to his wife. He clasped her in his arms, and in that fond embrace yielded for a while to the tenderness of his nature. Recovering his resolution, he entreated her to appease her grief, and bear in mind that his life was spent in a constant course of honour and of virtue. That consideration would serve to heal affliction, and sweeten all her sorrows. Paulina was still inconsolable. She was determined to die with her husband; she invoked the aid of the executioners, and begged to end her wretched being. Seneca saw that she was animated by the love of glory, and that generous principle he thought ought not to be restrained. The idea of leaving a beloved object exposed to the insults of the world, and the malice of her enemies, pierced him to the quick. “It has been my care,” he said, “to instruct you in that best philosophy, the art of mitigating the ills of life; but you prefer an honourable death. I will not envy you the vast renown that must attend your fall. Since you will have it so, we will die together. We will leave behind us an example of equal constancy; but the glory will be all your own.”

These words were no sooner uttered, than the veins of both their arms were opened. At Seneca’s time of life the blood was slow and languid. The decay of nature, and the impoverishing diet to which he had used himself, left him in a feeble condition. He ordered the vessels of his legs and joints to be punctured. After that operation, he began to labour with excruciating pains. Lest his sufferings should overpower the constancy of his wife, or the sight of her afflictions prove too much for his own sensibility, he persuaded her to retire into another room. His eloquence still continued to flow with its usual purity. He called for his secretaries, and dictated, while life was ebbing away, that farewell discourse, which has been published, and is in everybody’s hands. I will not injure his last words by giving the substance in another form.

Nero had conceived no antipathy to Paulina. If she perished with her husband, he began to dread the public execration. That he might not multiply the horrors of his present cruelty, he sent orders to exempt Paulina from the stroke of death. The slaves and freedmen, by the direction of the soldiers, bound up her arm, and stopped the effusion of blood. This, it is said, was done without her knowledge, as she lay in a state of languor. The fact, however, cannot be known with certainty. Vulgar malignity, which is ever ready to detract from exalted virtue, spread a report, that, as long as she had reason to think that the rage of Nero was implacable, she had the ambition to share the glory of her husband’s fate; but a milder prospect being unexpectedly presented, the charms of life gained admission to her heart, and triumphed over her constancy. She lived a few years longer, in fond regret, to the end of her days, revering the memory of her husband. The weakness of her whole frame, and the sickly languor of her countenance, plainly showed that she had been reduced to the last extremity.

Seneca lingered in pain. The approach of death was slow, and he wished for his dissolution.  atigued with pain, worn out and exhausted, he requested his friend, Statius Annaeus, whose fidelity and medical skill he had often experienced, to administer a draught of that swift-speeding poison, usually given at Athens to the criminals adjudged to death. He swallowed the potion, but without any immediate effect. His limbs were chilled: the vessels of his body were closed, and the ingredients, though keen and subtle, could not arrest the principles of life. He desired to be placed in a warm bath.  Being conveyed according to his desire, he sprinkled his slaves with the water, and “Thus,” he said, “I make libation to Jupiter the deliverer.” The vapour soon overpowered him, and he was committed to the flames. He had given directions for that purpose in his last will, made at a time when he was in the zenith of power, and even then looked forward to the close of his days.

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(c. 55-c.117)

from The Annals: The Death of Seneca

Filed under Ancient History, Europe, Selections, Tacitus

by | · 6:56 pm

LOTUS SUTRA
(c. 50 A.D.-c. 200 A.D.)

from Former Affairs of the Bodhisattva Medicine King

 

The Lotus Sutra, or Saddharma Pundarika Sutra, is one of the earliest Mahayana Buddhist texts and is considered to be the principal Mahayana sutra. Developing somewhat after Hinayana, the more ancient form of Buddhism that later evolved into modern Theravada, Mahayana is the second, though larger, of the two main branches of Buddhist thought. Mahayana Buddhism developed in India between the 2nd century B.C. and the 1st century A.D., and by the 4th, 5th, and 6th centuries A.D. had begun to spread into China, Korea, Japan, Tibet, Vietnam, and Central Asia, where further schools such as Pure Land Buddhism and Zen appeared. Mahayana Buddhism is more liberal in its interpretations of the teachings of the historical Buddha than Theravada, with a more mythologized interpretation of the nature of the Buddha; it also incorporates a wider variety of practices. Its monastic communities, or sangha, can include both lay believers and monks, both of whom can seek to become bodhisattva, aspirants to bodhi who seek to reach or enlightenment, who will also help all beings achieve nirvana. Although Buddhism remains widespread in much of Asia, by the 13th century A.D., it had largely disappeared from India.

Little is known about the origin of the Lotus Sutra, also called the Lotus of the True Law, although most scholars place its composition sometime in the 1st century a.d., with its final form being reached around 200 A.D.. The earliest translation of the Lotus Sutra into Chinese was made by Dharmaraksha in 286 A.D., and it has become the most popular Buddhist text in China and Japan. It is the sole canonical text for Japanese Buddhists of the Nichiren sect.

In its fairly simple, accessible literary style, illustrated with parables and poetic images, the Lotus Sutra propounds all the major doctrines of Mahayana Buddhism and focuses on the doctrine of the “one true vehicle [or way],” Ekayana, which includes both the “greater vehicle,” Mahayana, and the “lesser vehicle,” Theravada. In a parable, the Buddha explains the nature of revelation and the way in which it is adapted to the limited faculties of not-yet-enlightened human beings, until they are ready for full revelation.

The dramatic narrative of the Lotus Sutra contains a succession of dialogues that serve to make an impression on the reader of the great wisdom, power, and eminence of the Buddha. The selection presented here centers on a discourse given by Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, who lived from c. 563–483 B.C., to a congregation of followers at a famed place called Vulture’s Peak. He is represented as an almost eternal being, omnipotent, nearly free from the cycle of birth and rebirth, though from time to time, he descends to earth and is reborn among humans, as is the case in the discourse at Vulture’s Peak. The discourse stresses the proper use of wisdom, the need for compassion, and the importance of moral living.

The section of the text presented here is a Buddhist version of the myth of the phoenix. In it, a monk, the bodhisattva Mahasattva Sarvasattvapriyadarshana, or the bodhisattva Gladly Seen by All Living Beings, feeds himself for 12 years on the substances usually used in sacrificial rituals and then, by self-immolation, sacrifices his perfumed and anointed body to the Buddha. The Bodhisattva’s body burns for 1,200 years before he is reborn, having achieved a “heroic feat.” This is one step on his way to final extinction, having achieved Nirvana.

Source

Lotus Sutra, ch. 23. “Former Affairs of the Bodhisattva Medicine King,” tr. Burton Watson, New York: Columbia University Press, 1993, pp, 280-289. Footnotes interpolated.

from THE LOTUS SUTRA

Former Affairs of the Bodhisattva Medicine King

At that time bodhisattva Constellation King Flower spoke to the Buddha, Saying: “World-Honored One, how does the bodhisattva Medicine King come and go in the saha world?  World-Honored One, this bodhisattva Medicine King has carried out some hundreds, thousands, ten thousands, millions of nayutas of difficult practices, arduous practices.  Very well, World-Honored One, could I ask you to explain a little?  The heavenly beings, dragons, gods, yakshas, gandharvas, asuras, garudas, kimnaras, mahoragas, human and nonhuman beings, and the bodhisattvas who have come from other lands and the multitude of voice-hearers, will all be delighted to hear you.”

At that time the Buddha addressed the bodhisattva Constellation King Flower, saying: “Many kalpas in the past, immeasurable as Ganges sands, there was a Buddha named Sun Moon Pure Bright Virtue Thus Come One, worthy of offerings, of right and universal knowledge, perfect clarity and conduct, well gone, understanding the world, unexcelled worthy, trainer of people, teacher of heavenly and human beings, Buddha, World-Honored One. This Buddha had eighty million great bodhisattvas and mahasattvas and a multitude of great voice-hearers equal to the sands of seventy-two Ganges. This Buddha’s life span was forty-two thousand kalpas, and the life span of the bodhisattvas was the same. In his land there were no women, hell dwellers, hungry spirits, beasts of asuras, and no kinds of tribulation. The ground was as level as the palm of a hand, made of lapis lazuli and adorned with jeweled trees.  Jeweled curtains covered it over, banners of jeweled flowers hung down, and jeweled urns and incense burners filled the land everywhere.  There were daises made of the seven treasures, with a tree by each dais, the tree situated an arrow-shot length from the dais.  These jeweled trees all had bodhisattvas and voice-hearers sitting under them, and each of the jeweled daises had hundreds of millions of heavenly beings playing on heavenly instruments and singing the praises of the Buddha as an offering.

“At that time, for the sake of the bodhisattva Gladly Seen by All Living Beings and the other numerous bodhisattvas and multitude of voice-hearers, the Buddha preached the Lotus Sutra.  This bodhisattva Gladly Seen by All Living Beings delighted in carrying out arduous practices.  In the midst of the Law preached by the Buddha Sun Moon Pure Bright Virtue he applied himself diligently and traveled about here and there, single-mindedly seeking Buddhahood for a period of fully twelve thousand years.  After that he was able to gain the Samadhi in which one can manifest all physical forms.  Having gained this Samadhi, his heart was filled with great joy and he thought to himself: My gaining the Samadhi in which I can manifest all physical forms is due entirely to the fact that I heard the Lotus Sutra.  I must now make an offering to the Buddha Sun Moon Pure Bright Virtue and to the Lotus Sutra!

“Immediately he entered the Samadhi and in the midst of the sky rained down mandarava flowers, great mandarava flowers, and finely ground, hard black particles of sandalwood; they filled the whole sky like clouds as they came raining down.  He also rained down the incense of the sandalwood that grows by the southern seashore.  Six taels of this incense is worth as mush as the saha world.  All these he used as an offering to the Buddha.

“When he had finished making this offering, he rose from his Samadhi and thought to himself: Though I have employed my supernatural powers to make this offering to the Buddha, it is not as good as making an offering of my own body.

“Thereupon he swallowed various perfumes, sandalwood, kunduruka, turushka, prikka, aloes, and liquidambar gum, and he also drank the fragrant oil of champaka and other kinds of flowers, doing this for a period of fully twelve hundred years. Anointing his body with fragrant oil, he appeared before the Buddha Sun Moon Pure Bright Virtue, wrapped his body in heavenly jeweled robes, poured fragrant oil over his head and, calling on his transcendental powers, set fire to his body. The glow shone forth, illuminating worlds equal in number to the sands of eighty million Ganges. The Buddhas in these worlds simultaneously spoke out in praise, saying: ‘Excellent, excellent, good man! This is true diligence. This is what is called a true Dharma offering to the Thus Come One. Though one may use flowers, incense, necklaces, incense for burning, powdered incense, paste incense, heavenly silken banners and canopies, along with the incense of the sandalwood that grows by the southern seashore, presenting offerings of all such things as these, he can never match this!  Though one may make donations of his realm and cities, his wife and children, he is no match for this!  Good man, this is called the foremost donation of all.  Among all donations, this is the most highly prized, for one is offering the Dharma to the Thus Come ones!’

“After they had spoken these words, they each one fell silent.  The body of the bodhisattva burned for twelve hundred years, and when that period of time had passed, it at last burned itself out.

“After the bodhisattva Gladly Seen by All Living Beings had made this Dharma offering and his life had come to an end, he was reborn in the land of the Buddha Sun Moon Pres Bright Virtue, in the household of the king Pure Virtue.  Sitting in cross-legged position, he was suddenly born by transformation, and at once for the benefit of his father he spoke in verse form, saying:

Great king, you should now understand this.
Having walked about in a certain place,
I immediately gained the Samadhi
that allows me to manifest all physical forms.
I have carried out my endeavors with great diligence
and cast aside the body that I loved.

“When he had recited this verse, he said to his father: ‘The Buddha Sun Moon Pure Bright Virtue is still present at this time.  Previously I made an offering to this Buddha and gained a dharani that allows me to understand the words of all living brings.  Moreover I have heard this Lotus Sutra with its eight hundred, thousand, ten thousand, millions of nayutas, kankaras, vivaras, akshobhyas of verses.[1] Great king, I must now once more make an offering to this Buddha.’

“Having said this, he seated himself on a dais made of the seven treasures, rose up into the air to the height of seven tala trees and, proceeding to the place where the Buddha was, bowed his head to the ground in obeisance to the Buddha’s feet, put the nails of his ten fingers together and spoke this verse in praise of the Buddha:

A countenance so rare and wonderful,
Its bright beams illuminating the ten directions!
At a previous time I made an offering,
And now once more I draw near.

“At that time, after the bodhisattva Gladly Seen by All Living Beings had spoken this verse, he said to the Buddha: ‘World-Honored One, is the World-Honored One still present in the world?’

“At that time the Buddha Sun Moon Pure Bright Virtue said to the bodhisattva Gladly Seen by All Living Beings: ‘Good man, the time has come for my nirvana.  The time has come for extinction.  You may provide me with a comfortable couch, for tonight will be my parinirvana.’

“He also commanded the bodhisattva Gladly Seen by All Living Beings, saying: ‘Good man, I take this Law of the Buddha and entrust it to you. In addition, the bodhisattvas and great disciples, along with the Law of anuttara-samyak-sambodhi, and the thousand-millionfold seven-jeweled world, with its jeweled trees and jeweled daises and heavenly beings who wait on and attend them—all these I hand over to you. I also entrust to you the relics of my body that remain after I have passed into extinction.  You must distribute them abroad and arrange for offerings to them far and wide.  You should erect many thousands of towers [to house them].’

“The Buddha Sun Moon Pure Bright Virtue, having given these commands to the bodhisattva Gladly Seen by All Living Beings, that night, in the last watch of the night, entered nirvana.

“At that time the bodhisattva Gladly Seen by All Living Beings, seeing the Buddha pass into extinction, was deeply grieved and distressed.  Out of his great love and longing for the Buddha he at once prepared a pyre made of sandalwood from the seashore, and with this as an offering to the Buddha’s body, he cremated the body.  After the fire had burned out, he gathered up the relics, fashioned eighty-four thousand jeweled urns, and built eighty-four thousand towers, high as the three worlds, adorned with central poles, draped with banners and canopies and hung with a multitude of jeweled bells.

“At that time the bodhisattva Gladly Seen by All Living Beings once more thought to himself: Though I have made these offerings, my mind is not yet satisfied.  I must make some further offering to the relics.

“Then he spoke to the other bodhisattvas and great disciples, and to the heavenly beings, dragons, yakshas, and all the members of the great assembly, saying, ‘You must give your undivided attention. I will now make an offering to the relics of the Buddha Sun Moon Pure Bright Virtue.’

“Having spoken these words, immediately in the presence of the eighty-four thousand towers he burned his arms, which were adorned with a hundred blessings, for a period of seventy-two thousand years as his offering.  This caused the numberless multitudes who were seeking to become voice-hearers, along with an immeasurable asamkhya of persons, to conceive a desire for anuttara-samyak-sambodhi, and all of them were able to dwell in the Samadhi where one can manifest all physical forms.

“At that time the bodhisattvas, heavenly and human beings, asuras and others, seeing that the bodhisattva had destroyed his arms, were alarmed and saddened and they said: ‘This bodhisattva Gladly Seen by All Living beings is our teacher, instructing and converting us.  Now he has burned his arms and his body is no longer whole!’

“At that time, in the midst of the great assembly, the bodhisattva Gladly Seen by All Living Beings made this vow, saying: ‘I have cast away both my arms.  I am certain to attain the golden body of a Buddha.  If this is true and not false, then may my two arms become as they were before!’

“When he had finished pronouncing this vow, his arms reappeared of themselves as they had been before.  This came about because the merits and wisdom of this bodhisattva were manifold and profound.  At that time the thousand-millionfold world shook and trembled in six different ways, heaven rained down jeweled flowers, and all the heavenly and human beings gained what they had never had before.”

The Buddha said to the bodhisattva Constellation King Flower: “What do you think?  Is this bodhisattva Gladly Seen by All Living Beings someone unknown to you? He is in fact none other than the present bodhisattva Medicine King!  He cast aside his body as an offering in this fashion immeasurable hundreds, thousands, ten thousands, millions of nayutas of times.

“Constellation King Flower, if there are those who have made up their minds and wish to gain anuttara-samyak-sambodhi, they would do well to burn a finger or one toe of their foot as an offering to the Buddha towers.  It is better than offering one’s realm and cities, wife and children, or the mountains, forests, rivers, and lakes in the ‘lands of the thousand-millionfold world, of all their precious treasures.  Even if a person were to fill the whole thousand-million world with the seven treasures as an offering to the Buddha and the great bodhisattvas, pratyekabuddhas and arhats, the benefits gained by such a person cannot match those gained by accepting and upholding this Lotus Sutra, even just one four-line verse of it!  The latter brings the most numerous blessings of all.

“Constellation King Flower, among all the rivers, streams, and other bodies of water, for example, the ocean is foremost. And this Lotus Sutra is likewise, being the most profound and greatest of the sutras preached by the Thus Come Ones. Again, just as among the Dirt Mountains, Black Mountains, Small Iron Encircling Mountains, Great Iron Encircling Mountains, Ten Treasure Mountains and all the other mountains, Mount Sumeru is foremost, so this Lotus Sutra is likewise.  Among all the stars and their like, the moon, a god’s son, is foremost, so this Lotus Sutra is likewise.  For among all the thousands, ten thousands, millions of types of sutra teachings, it shines the brightest. And just as the sun, a god’s son, can banish all darkness, so too this sutra is capable of destroying the darkness of all that is not good.

“As among the petty kings the wheel-turning sage king is foremost, so this sutra is the most honored among all the many sutras. As the lord Shakra is king among the thirty-three heavenly beings, so this sutra likewise is king among all the sutras. And as the heavenly king, great Brahma, is the father if all living beings, so this sutra likewise is father of all sages, worthies, those still learning, those who have completed their learning, and those who set their minds on becoming bodhisattvas. And as among all ordinary mortals, the srotaapanna, sakridagamin, anagamin, arhats and pratyekabuddhas are foremost, so this sutra likewise is foremost among all the sutra teachings preached by all the Thus Come Ones preached by all the bodhisattvas, or preached by all the voice-hearers.  A person who can accept and uphold this sutra is likewise foremost among all living beings.  Bodhisattvas are foremost among all voice-hearers and pratyekabuddhas, and in the same way this sutra is foremost among all the sutra teachings.  As the Buddha is king of the doctrines, so likewise this sutra is king of the sutras.

“Constellation King Flower, this sutra can save all living beings. This sutra can cause all living beings to free themselves from suffering and aguish. This sutra can bring great benefits to all living beings and fulfill their desires, as a clear cool pond can satisfy all those who are thirsty. It is like a fire to one who is cold, a robe to one who is naked, like a band of merchants finding a leader, a child finding its mother, someone finding a ship in which to cross the water, a sick man finding a doctor, someone in darkness finding a lamp, the poor finding riches, the people finding a ruler, a traveling merchant finding his way to the sea.  It is like a torch that banishes darkness. Such is this Lotus Sutra. It can cause living beings to cast off all distress, all sickness and pain.  It can unloose all the bonds of birth and death.

“If a person is able to hear this Lotus Sutra, if he copies it himself or causes others to copy it, the benefits he gains thereby will be such that even the Buddha wisdom could never finish calculating their extent.  If one copies these sutra rolls and uses flowers, incense, necklaces, incense for burning, powdered incense, paste incense, banners, canopies, robes, various kinds of lamps such as lamps of butter oil, oil lamps, lamps with various fragrant oils, lamps of champaka oil, lamps of sumana oil, Lamps of patala oil, lamps of varshika oil, or lamps of navamalika oil to make offerings to them, the benefits that he acquires will likewise be immeasurable.

“Constellation King Flower, if there is a person who hears this chapter on the Former Affairs of the Bodhisattva Medicine King, he too will gain immeasurable and boundless benefits.  If there is a woman who hears this chapter on the Former Affairs of the Bodhisattva Medicine King and is able to accept and uphold it, that will be her last appearance in a woman’s body and she will never be born in that form again.

“If in the last five hundred year period after the Thus Come One has entered extinction there is a woman who hears this sutra and carries out its practices as the sutra directs, when her life here on earth comes to an end she will immediately go to the world of Peace and Delight where the Buddha Amitayus dwells surrounded by the assembly of great bodhisattvas and there will be born seated on a jeweled seat in the center of a lotus blossom. He [2] will no longer know the torments of greed, desire, anger, rage, stupidity of ignorance, or the torments brought about by arrogance, envy or other defilements. He will gain the bodhisattva’s transcendental powers and the truth of the birthlessness of all phenomena.  Having gained this truth, his faculty of sight will be clear and pure, and with this clear pure faculty of sight he will see Buddhas and Thus Come Ones equal in number to the sands of seven hundred twelve thousand million nayutas of Ganges.

“At that time Buddhas will join in praising him from afar, saying: ‘Excellent, excellent, good man!  In the midst of the Law of Shakyamuni Buddha you have been able to accept, uphold, read, recite and ponder this sutra and to preach it for others.  The good fortune you gain thereby is immeasurable and boundless.  It cannot be burned by fire or washed away by water.  Your benefits are such that a thousand Buddhas speaking all together could never finish describing them.  Now you have been able to destroy all devils and thieves, to annihilate the army of birth and death, and all others who bore you enmity of malice have likewise been wiped out.

“’Good man, a hundred, a thousand Buddhas will employ their transcendental powers to join in guarding and protection you. Among the heavenly and human beings of all the worlds, there will be no one like you. With the sole exception of the Thus Come One, there will be none among the voice-hearers, pratyekabuddhas of bodhisattvas whose wisdom and ability in meditation can equal yours!’

“Constellation King Flower, such will be the benefits and the power of wisdom successfully acquired by this bodhisattva.

“If there is a person who, hearing this chapter on the Former Affairs of the Bodhisattva Medicine King, is able to welcome it with joy and praise its excellence, then in this present existence this person’s mouth will constantly emit the fragrance of the blue lotus flower, and the pores of his body will constantly emit the fragrance of ox-head sandalwood.  His benefits will be such as have been described above.

“For this reason, Constellation King Flower, I entrust this chapter on the Former Affairs of the Bodhisattva Medicine King to you.  After I have passed into extinction, in the last five hundred year period you must spread it abroad widely throughout Jambudvipa and never allow it to be cut off, nor must you allow evil devils, the devils’ people, heavenly beings, dragons, yakshas of kumbhanda demons to seize the advantage!

“Constellation King Flower, you must use your transcendental powers to guard and protect this sutra.  Why?  Because this sutra provides good medicine for the ills of the people of Jambudvipa.  If a person who has an illness is able to hear this sutra, then his illness will be wiped out and he will know neither old age or death.

“Constellation King Flower, if you see someone who accepts and upholds this sutra, you must take blue lotus blossoms, heap them with powdered incense, and scatter them over him as an offering.  And when you have scattered them, you should think to yourself: Before long this person will pick grasses, spread them as a seat in the place of practice, and conquer the armies of the devil.  Then he will sound the conch of the Law, beat the drum of the great Law, and free all living beings from the sea of old age, sickness, and death!

“For this reason when those who seek the Buddha way see someone who accepts and upholds this sutra, they should approach him with this kind of respect and reverence.”

When [the Buddha] preached this chapter on the Former Affairs of the Bodhisattva Medicine King, eighty-four thousand bodhisattvas gained the dharani that allows them to understand the words of all living beings.  Many Treasures Thus Come One in the midst of his treasure tower praised the bodhisattva Constellation King Flower, Saying: “Excellent, excellent, Constellation King Flower.  You succeeded in acquiring inconceivable benefits and thus were able to question Shakyamuni Buddha about this matter, profiting immeasurable numbers of living beings.”

NOTES:
  1. Kaṅkara, vivara, and aksobhya are all extremely large numerical units.
  2. As the text makes clear later on, the woman has been reborn in male form.

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(c. 50 A.D.-c. 200 A.D.)

from Former Affairs of the Bodhisattva Medicine King

Filed under Ancient History, Asia, Buddhism, Lotus Sutra, Selections

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THE NEW TESTAMENT
(c. 50-c. 125)

Matthew: The Death of Jesus and the    Suicide of Judas
Acts: Paul Prevents a Suicide
I Corinthians: The Body as Temple
Philippians: Paul in Prison: On the    Desire to Die

 

In addition to the texts of the Hebrew Bible [q.v.], known to Christians as the Old Testament, the Christian Bible also includes the books and letters known as the New Testament. These texts are accounts of the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth (c. 8–4 B.C. to c. 30–36 A.D.) by his immediate disciples and subsequent followers, expressions of their faith in his divine and human nature as Jesus Christ, the Messiah, and the Son of God, as well as their understandings of the history of their tradition and God’s purpose for the world. Preserved in koine, the Greek dialect common to the eastern Mediterranean regions, these 27 texts include the four gospels (the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), the historical book of Acts, the letters by and attributed to Paul, letters from disciples, and the Apocalypse (Revelations) attributed to John. These texts from the 1st and possibly 2nd century A.D. form the scriptures distinctive to Christianity, a new religion arising from Judaism that would distinguish itself from both Judaism and the Roman state religion, and within a few hundred years, would itself become the dominant religion in the West. The effort to compile a single, coherent collection of the authoritative early writings of this new religion began sometime during the last decades of the 2nd century, and it was not until the second half of the 4th century that the New Testament reached its settled, final shape.

The texts presented here—from Matthew, Acts, I Corinthians, and Philippians—are placed in the order in which they occur in the canonical New Testament, though this does not reflect their dates of composition. The earliest, Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, was written sometime between 50 and 60 A.D., before he was imprisoned in Rome for the first time. Paul’s first extant letter to the church at Corinth, I Corinthians, was written from Ephesus sometime around Easter, probably in the year 55, during one of his many missionary journeys. The Gospel of Matthew was composed between 80 and 90, and Acts, a history of the early church by the author of the gospel attributed to Luke, has been dated as early as 60 and as late as 125.

The text presented here from Matthew describes the only suicide reported in the canonical gospels, that of Judas Iscariot, one of Jesus’ 12 disciples. Judas had betrayed Jesus to the Roman authorities, a betrayal that led to Jesus’ crucifixion. Although a different version of Judas’s death, not involving suicide, can be found in Acts 1:18–20, the account in Matthew interprets Judas’s self-hanging as a suicide of remorse. Some later commentators have seen Judas’s suicide as an act of ultimate atonement for the sin of betrayal, although by the High Middle Ages, Judas’s suicide was often seen as a greater sin than the betrayal itself. Acts also contains an account of the jailor in Philippi who, responsible for keeping Paul and Silas under close guard, attempts suicide when he believes they have escaped; it is Paul who prevents the jailor’s suicide.

Paul’s letters address many questions about church discipline and practice, questions of morality, and fundamental Christian doctrine. The passage from I Corinthians provides part  of the theological basis for the Christian prohibition of suicide: the view that the body is the  “temple of God,” the place where the soul dwells, the site of the fusion between spirit and flesh that is the human person. Suicide is wrong in part because it destroys the body that is the seat of the soul.

Paul’s Letter to the Philippians provides indirect insight into Christian attitudes about  suicide. As many later writers (e.g., Angela of Foligno [q.v.]) also do, Paul describes his ambivalence about death: he desires to “depart and be with Christ,” and he sees death and the afterlife it promises as “a gain”; but he also recognizes reasons for remaining in the body, reasons that persuade him that it is better not to end his life. This tension between the desire to die and the obligation to live remains of continuing concern in the Christian view of suicide throughout its later history.

Source

The Oxford Study Bible: Revised English Bible with the Apocrypha, eds. M. Jack Suggs, Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, and James R. Mueller, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. 1299-1301, 1414-1415, 1450, 1488.

from THE NEW TESTAMENT

Jesus then came with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, ‘Sit here while I go over there to pray.’ He took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee. Distress and anguish overwhelmed him, and he said to them, ‘My heart is ready to break with grief.  Stop here, and stay awake with me.’ Then he went on a little farther, threw himself down, and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass me by. Yet not my will but yours.’

He came back to the disciples and found them asleep; and he said to Peter, ‘What! Could none of you stay awake with me for one hour?  Stay awake, and pray that you may be spared the test.  The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.’

He went away a second time and prayed: ‘My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to pass me by without my drinking it, your will be done.’  He came again and found them asleep, for their eyes were heavy.  So he left them and went away again and prayed a third time, using the same words as before.

Then he came to the disciples and said to them, ‘Still asleep?  Still resting?  The hour has come!  The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.  Up, let us go!  The traitor is upon us.’

He was still speaking when Judas, one of the Twelve, appeared, and with him a great crowd armed with swords and cudgels, sent by the chief priests and the elders of the nation.  The traitor had given them this sign: ‘The one I kiss is your man; seize him.’  Going straight up to Jesus, he said, ‘Hail, Rabbi!’ and kissed him.  Jesus replied, ‘Friend, do what you are here to do.’  Then they came forward, seized Jesus, and held him fast.

At that moment one of those with Jesus reached for his sword and drew it, and struck the high priest’s servant, cutting off his ear.  But Jesus said to him, ‘Put up your sword.  All who take the sword die by the sword.  Do you suppose that I cannot appeal for help to my Father, and at once be sent more than twelve legions of angels?  But how then would the scriptures be fulfilled, which say that this must happen?’

Then Jesus spoke to the crowd: ‘Do you take me for a bandit, that you have come out with swords and cudgels to arrest me?  Day after day I sat teaching in the temple, and you did not lay hands on me.  But this has all happened to fulfil what the prophets wrote.’

Then the disciples all deserted him and ran away.

Jesus was led away under arrest to the house of Caiaphas the high priest, where the scribes and elders were assembled.  Peter followed him at a distance till he came to the high priest’s courtyard; he went in and sat down among the attendants, to see how it would all end.

The chief priests and the whole council tried to find some allegation against Jesus that would warrant a death sentence; but they failed to find one, though many came forward with false evidence.  Finally two men alleged that he had said, ‘I can pull down the temple of God, and rebuild it in three days.’  At this the high priest rose and said to him, ‘Have you no answer to the accusations that these witnesses bring against you?’  But Jesus remained silent.  The high priest then said, ‘By the living God I charge you to tell us: are you the Messiah, the Son of God?’  Jesus replied, ‘The words are yours.  But I tell you this: from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Almighty and coming on the clouds of heaven.’  At these words the high priest tore his robes and exclaimed, ‘This is blasphemy!  Do we need further witnesses?  You have just heard the blasphemy.  What is your verdict!’  ‘He is guilty,’ they answered; ‘he should die.’

Then they spat in his face and struck him with their fists; some said, as they beat him, ‘Now, Messiah, if you are a prophet, tell us who hit you.’

Meanwhile Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard when a servant-girl accosted him; ‘You were with Jesus the Galilean,’ she said.  Peter denied it in front of them all.  ‘I do not know what you are talking about,’ he said.  He then went out to the gateway, where another girl, seeing him, said to the people there, ‘He was with Jesus of Nazareth.’  Once again he denied it, saying with an oath, ‘I do not know the man.’  Shortly afterwards the bystanders came up and said to Peter, ‘You must be one of them; your accent gives you away!’  At this he started to curse and declared with an oath: ‘I do not know the man.’  At that moment a cock crowed; and Peter remembered how Jesus had said, ‘Before the cock crows you will disown me three times,’ And he went outside, and wept bitterly.

When morning came, the chief priests and the elders of the nation all met together to plan the death of Jesus.  They bound him and led him away, to hand him over to Pilate, the Roman governor.

When Judas the traitor saw that Jesus had been condemned, he was seized with remorse, and returned the thirty silver pieces to the chief priests and elders.  ‘I have sinned,’ he said; ‘I have brought an innocent man to his death.’  But they said, ‘What is that to us?  It is your concern.’  So he threw the money down in the temple and left; he went away and hanged himself.

Acts 16: 16-34: Paul Prevents a Suicide

Once, on our way to the place of prayer, we met a slave-girl who was possessed by a spirit of divination and brought large profits to her owners by telling fortunes.  She followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, ‘These men are servants of the Most High God, and are declaring to you a way of salvation.’  She did this day after day, until, in exasperation, Paul rounded on the spirit.  ‘I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her,’ he said, and it came out instantly.

When the girl’s owners saw that their hope of profit had gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them to the city authorities in the main square; bringing them before the magistrates, they alleged, ‘These men are causing a disturbance in our city; they are Jews, and they are advocating practices which it is illegal for us Romans to adopt and follow.’  The mob joined in the attack; and the magistrates had the prisoners stripped and gave orders for them to be flogged.  After a severe beating they were flung into prison and the jailer was ordered to keep them under close guard.  In view of these orders, he put them into the inner prison and secured their feet in the stocks.

About midnight Paul and Silas, at their prayers, were singing praises to God, and the other prisoners were listening, when suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the jail were shaken; the doors burst open and all the prisoners found their fetters unfastened.  The jailer woke up to see the prison doors wide open and, assuming that the prisoners had escaped, drew his sword intending to kill himself.  But Paul shouted, ‘Do yourself no harm; we are all here.’  The jailer called for lights, rushed in, and threw himself down before Paul and Silas, trembling with fear.  He then escorted them out and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved?’  They answered, ‘Put your trust in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household,’ and they imparted the word of the Lord to him and to everyone in his house.  At that late hour of the night the jailer took them and washed their wounds, and there and then he and his whole family were baptized.  He brought them up into his house, set out a meal, and rejoiced with his whole household in his new-found faith in God.

1 Corinthians 3: 9-17: The Body as Temple

Or again, you are God’s building.  God gave me the privilege of laying the foundation like a skilled master builder; others put up the building.  Let each take care how he builds.  There can be no other foundation than the one already laid: I mean Jesus Christ himself.  If anyone builds on that foundation with gold, silver, and precious stones, or with wood, hay, and straw, the work that each does will at last be brought to light; the day of judgement will expose it.  For that day dawns in fire, and the fire will test the worth of each person’s work.  If anyone’s building survives, he will be rewarded; if it burns down, he will have to bear the loss; yet he will escape with his life, though only by passing through the fire.  Surely you know that you are God’s temple, where the Spirit of God dwells.  Anyone who destroys God’s temple will himself be destroyed by God, because the temple of God is holy; and you are that temple.

Philippians 1: 12-26: Paul in Prison: On the Desire to Die

My friends, I want you to understand that the progress of the gospel has actually been helped by what has happened to me.  It has become common knowledge throughout the imperial guard, and indeed among the public at large, that my imprisonment is in Christ’s cause; and my being in prison has given most of our fellow-Christians confidence to speak the word of God fearlessly and with extraordinary courage.

Some, it is true, proclaim Christ in a jealous and quarrelsome spirit, but some do it in goodwill.  These are moved by love, knowing that it is to defend the gospel that I am where I am; the others are moved by selfish ambition and present Christ from mixed motives, meaning to cause me distress as I lie in prison.  What does it matter?  One way or another, whether sincerely or not, Christ is proclaimed; and for that I rejoice.

Yes, and I shall go on rejoicing; for I know well that the issue will be my deliverance, because you are praying for me and the Spirit of Jesus Christ is given me for support.  It is my confident hope that nothing will daunt me or prevent me from speaking boldly; and that now as always Christ will display his greatness in me, whether the verdict be life or death.  For to me life is Christ, and death is gain.  If I am to go on living in the body there is fruitful work for me to do.  Which then am I to choose?  I cannot tell.  I am pulled two ways: my own desire is to depart and be with Christ—that is better by far; but for your sake the greater need is for me to remain in the body.  This convinces me: I am sure I shall remain, and stand by you all to ensure your progress and joy in the faith, so that on my account you may have even more cause for pride in Christ Jesus—through seeing me restored to you.

Comments Off on THE NEW TESTAMENT
(c. 50-c. 125)

Matthew: The Death of Jesus and the    Suicide of Judas
Acts: Paul Prevents a Suicide
I Corinthians: The Body as Temple
Philippians: Paul in Prison: On the    Desire to Die

Filed under Ancient History, Christianity, Middle East, New Testament, Selections