A member of the Jewish faith or ethnicity. According to their own tradition, the Jews are said to have escaped from slavery in Egypt. According to both Roman (notably Tacitus) and Egyptian (notably Manetho) historians of antiquity, however, the Jews descended from Egyptian lepers (referring both to those actually suffering from leprosy as well as troublesome elements in society) that were expelled from Egypt to live in the desert, much like the British sent their fringe elements to the colonies. The Jewish people are said to have formed much of their culture in reaction to the Egyptians and as a result of the peculiarities surrounding their banishment. Some traditions they continued from Egypt, such as the burial of the dead and the belief in the importance of the physical body for resurrection. Other times they intentionally developed traditions in opposition to the Egyptians—in part as a result of their resenting their banishment. Tacitus points to their sacrificing of oxen, which the Egyptians associated with the god Apis, as well as of rams, a symbol associated with Amun. As for traditions resulting as peculiarities from the banishment, he suggests that their refraining from swine related to their having been plagued by leprosy (as pigs are prone to this in the desert), their frequent fasts to their wandering without food, and their unleavened bread to their hurried acquisition of corn. Perhaps more significant examples of traditions formed opposite to those of the Egyptians and in accordance with the material conditions of their time of wandering would be commands against graven images and the worship of multiple deities. Their refraining from the use of material images or symbolism may be a result of the fact that they 1) in their poverty resented and could not compete with the Egyptians and so inverted the value to feel themselves justified and 2) in their sickness could not stand to associate divinity with anything a part of the material or temporal world. Another example is their obsession with the idea that God has only one form and face and their taking as antithetical any conception of divinity other than their own tribal deity—as opposed to the Egyptian belief that Amun-Ra, the formless all-powerful creator behind the universe, had many manifestations. Judaism may have started out an Egyptian-lite religion, the elaborate pantheon of the Egyptians being too complicated for the new and wandering tribe and the need for a return to the essential and basic having taken hold. The line from the Bible “Yet I am the LORD thy God from the land of Egypt, and thou shalt know no god but me: for there is no saviour beside me” (Hosea 13:4) may have a completely different meaning than that usually assumed. Yet this is not the complete story, as it fails to take into consideration the influence of the Levantine pantheon on the formation of the Jewish tribal deity. An Egyptian inscription from 1390-1352 BCE mentions the “Shasu of Yhw”, the Shasu being a nomadic people from the Levant region and Yhw being their (or one of their) god(s). See YHWH
for more details.
There are many proud Jews--a beautiful people with a rich cultural heritage who have survived many hard times.
The belief that God is everything and that everything is God.
Does not mean that there is no transcendent aspect to nature, merely that every piece is an incarnation of the whole.
Christian: Do you think this pencil is God?
Pantheist: Sure. It's the will to power just like you, the stars, or anything else.
The proper term for someone who is sexually aroused by clowns. Sometimes called "Bozophilia" or "Clown Paraphilia". Includes individuals that like to have sex with clowns, like to have sex as clowns, like to watch clown porn, like to have sex around clowns, etc.
Necrophiliacs like to have sex with corpses.
Coulrophiliacs like to have sex with clowns.
The swastika is an equilateral cross with its arms bent at right angles either right-handed or left-handed. It is traditionally oriented so that a main line is horizontal, though it is occasionally rotated at forty-five degrees, and the Hindu version is often decorated with a dot in each quadrant. The earliest appearance of this symbol dates back to around the 5th millennium BCE. It came to be a universal symbol of good fortune, harmony, and protection. It is a cross-cultural symbol that was used by ancient American Indians, Hindus, Buddhists, Vikings, Greeks, Romans, Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Mayans, Aztecs, and Persians. For most cultures a right-handed swastika (with the top arm pointing right and the bottom arm pointing left) represented life and good luck, while a left-handed swastika (with the top arm pointing left and the bottom arm pointing right) represented death, evil, and bad luck. Counterclockwise movements are thought to send energy out (white, bright, emanating) while clockwise movements are thought to pull energy in (black, dark, devouring). Buddhists outside of India started using left-handed swastikas because the right-handed swastika was used by the Nazis. Early Christians used it as a symbol of the cross, possibly as the cross in a disguised form. In Asia it is still used to designate a church on maps and the Kanji for 10,000 is derived from the swastika, which was associated with 10,000 gods. Many Hindus and Buddhists still consider it holy. The name is derived from the Sanskrit svastika, coming from su- meaning good or well, asti meaning being, and ka meaning little. Thus swastika means little thing associated with well being. A German archealogist named Heinrich Schliemann had proposed that the swastika was a specifically Indo-European symbol and this theory had become popular for a while leading to much use of it in the West between 1880-1920. It was because of this that the Nazis took up the symbol in the early twentieth century, seeing it as a symbol of the Aryan race. Of course, not only is the symbol not a specifically Indo-European symbol, but the Aryan race is a myth (the term Aryan refers to people that were linked linguistically, but who were genetically very diverse). It is lamentable that such a beautiful and powerful symbol has been perhaps irrevocably tarnished and entangled with racism and the holaucast.
Some form of the right-handed swastika is found in almost every culture as a symbol of life and prosperity.
A number of distinct words and concepts in the original Greek that the New Testament was written in were all translated into the single English word Hell, from the Teutonic word ‘Hel’ which meant ‘to cover’ and later was the name of the Norse goddess of the underworld and later of the underworld itself.
In 2 Pet. 2:4 this word is used to describe a place where angels, not human beings, that have sinned are temporarily imprisoned.
This word is used by Jesus to reference a physical (not ethereal) and specific (not abstract) garbage dump in the southwest of Jerusalem where the physical bodies (not ethereal spirits) of criminals were disposed of and cremated in flames instead of being given an honorable burial. When Jesus says hell in contexts such as "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?” (Matthew 23:33) Geenna is the word actually used. Today this valley is no longer a garbage dump and has instead been converted into a park.
This word, which means “unseen” describes the state of nonexistence in death. A being in the state of Hades does not do or experience anything. Sometimes poetic license is taken to express some point, but this is figurative. The term itself in the context of the bible refers to the state of nothingness, the Greek counterpart to the Hebrew Sheol.
Although this later evolved into a type of afterlife, originally this, like Hades, meant merely the grave. The good and bad alike go here.
Lake of Fire
This was a later construction found in Revelations.
The Christian concept of hell evolved out of a hatred for the Romans, who ruled over the Jews, and a desire to annihilate them totally. This incredibly black hatred and desire for revenge to an unjust degree was forged out of a deep-seated insecurity, the childish rage that can only think of destroying one’s adversaries, and an incredible jealousy that wanted to rule over the Romans the way the Romans currently ruled over the Jews—taken to infinity.
"You're all going to hell!"
1. Of or having the disposition of the worst characteristics stereotypically associated with Christianity.
2. One who is Ignorant, Intolerant, Bigoted, Uncritical in Thought or Analysis, Cruel, Hate-Filled, Prejudiced, Uncaring, Irresponsible, Persuaded by Tradition, Irrational, Unquestioningly Obediant to Authority, Stupid, Meak, Unloving, Conservative, Oppressive/Oppressed, a Hater of Pleasure or Happiness, a Hater of Freedom, Hypocritical, a Holder of Self-Contradictory Positions, One Prone to Confirmation Bias, One Prone to Hostility in the George Kelly Sense of the Word, Dogmatic, Nihilistic.
3. A thing associated with the above characteristics.
Don't be such a Khrit.
That was a really Khritty thing to do.
Don't Khrit on me.
This is a Khrit conversation, I'm out of here.
But that's such a Khrit value--don't go along with it.
His real name was Yeshua of Nazareth, the name Joshua being the closest translation into English. He was given the title "christ" by his followers. Christ is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word "messiah", which in turn means "annointed one". This was assigned to him because he was thought by his followers to be a messiah sent by God to bring about the "Kingdom of God"--the independent Jewish state. He was one of many military messiahs at the time who fought against the Roman occupation of Judea and failed. Most likely born of an affair between a Roman soldier and a Jewish woman and put to death for inciting a riot. According to the gospels, he attacked licensed business men at the temple during Passover with a whip. These business men were changing the currency for Jews that were traveling from other parts of the Empire so that they could buy sacrifices and fulfill their religious obligations. This terrorist assault was probably fueled by Jewish upset with a tax the Romans had placed on the temple that went to the construction of public facilities in Judea--such as the aqueduct and the roads. The Roman soldiers were at red alert during Passover, when Jews from all over the Empire pilgrimaged to the Jewish temple in Judea, as assaults such as this were likely to invoke a riot that would get many innocent people killed. The penalty for this was, quite reasonably, death by crucifixion--one was whipped, hung naked on a cross by the road to humiliate one and so others would see what would happen if they tried to invoke a riot, and denied a Jewish burial--having one's body thrown to dogs and wild animals to rip apart and devour totally. Contrary to popular belief, Jesus never claimed to be God. The term "Son of God" was used by many to refer to individuals that had a special covenant with God. The term "Son of Man" was an idiomatic and common Jewish expression at the time that essential meant "I" or "this man" and was the equivalent of saying "my/his father's son." The act of forgiving others their sins was performed by rabbis, who were no more asserting themselves to be God than Catholic priests are during Confession. If people were upset at him doing this, it was because he was asserting that he had the authority of a rabbi, though he had not been approved by the temple. More radical claims about his divinity are found in John, but this was the last of the gospels, and if you put the works of the Bible in the order they were written (Note: this is different than the order in which they are presented in the Bible. Paul's works were written first, then Mark, then Matthew, then Luke, then John) you can actually see the story evolving--with each step new miracles are added and old miracles are made more miraculous and the claims about Jesus become bolder. This is the general way in which tall tales work. Jesus's alleged powers were derived from Pagan God-Men such as Mythra and Horus. The story of Jesus's life as described in the Bible shares 200 points of similarity with the story of Horus's life--and Horus's story was formed and circulated hundreds of years before Jesus was allegedly born. The alleged teachings of Jesus closely match those of the famous Jewish religious leader Hillel the Elder who lived one or two generations before Jesus was born. After Jesus's execution his followers continued in his tradition, lead by his brother James, until they were destroyed along with other rebel groups and the Jewish Temple in 70 CE as the Romans crushed the Jewish rebellion. The view of Jesus as a spiritual redeemer was made possible after the more spiritual (as opposed to militant) and universal (as opposed to Jewish) version of Christianity preached by Paul (who never met the pre-crucifixion Jesus but claimed to have received a vision of Jesus resurrected), and opposed by James and Jesus’s followers, was all that remained. The war with the Romans that left the Jewish (and true) Christians destroyed allowed the seeds that Paul had planted to take root and take over. A militant messiah was no longer practical, so a peaceful messiah was created to appease the Romans and gain influence over them economically and culturally.
Jesus Christ--the religion based on him taught the world despair and taught life to hate itself.