Disgust

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  the divine plan to which all the kingdoms of this world and even Satan himself are made subservient. He hands the one city over to God, the other to the demons. Yet he softens the rigor of the contrast by the express acknowledgment of shades in the one, and rays of light in the other. In the present order of the world the two cities touch and influence each other at innumerable points; and as not all Jews were citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem, so there were on the other hand true children of God scattered among the heathen like Melchisedek and Job, who were united to the city of God not by a visible, but by an invisible celestial tie. In this sublime contrast Augustine weaves up the whole material of his Scriptural and antiquarian knowledge, his speculation, and his Christian experience, but interweaves also many arbitrary allegorical conceits and empty subtleties. The first ten books he directs against heathenism, showing up the gradual decline of the Roman power as the necessary result of idolatry and of a process of moral dissolution, which commenced with the introduction of foreign vices after the destruction of Carthage; and he represents the calamities and approaching doom of the empire as a mighty preaching of repentance to the heathen, and at the same time as a wholesome trial of the Christians, and as the birth-throes of a new creation. In the last twelve books of this tragedy of history he places in contrast the picture of the supernatural state of God, founded upon a rock, coming forth renovated and strengthened from all the storms and revolutions of time, breathing into wasting humanity an imperishable divine life, and entering at last, after the completion of this earthly work, into the sabbath of eternity, where believers shall rest and see, see and love, love and praise, without end.126 Less important, but still noteworthy and peculiar, is the apologetic work of the Gallic presbyter, Salvianus, on providence and the government of the world.127 It was composed about the middle of the fifth century (440–455) in answer at once to the charge that Christianity occasioned all the misfortunes of the times, and to the doubts concerning divine providence, which were spreading among Christians themselves. The blame of the divine judgments he places, however, not upon the heathens, but upon the Christianity of the day, and, in forcible and lively, but turgid and extravagant style, draws an extremely unfavorable picture of the moral condition of the Christians, especially in Gaul, Spain, Italy, and Africa. His apology for Christianity, or rather for the Christian faith in the divine government of the world, was also a polemic against the degenerate Christians. It was certainly unsuited to convert heathens, but well fitted to awaken the church to more dangerous enemies within, and stimulate her to that moral self-reform, which puts the crown upon victory over outward foes. "The church," says this Jeremiah of his time, "which ought everywhere to propitiate God, what does she, but provoke him to anger?128 How many may one meet, even in the church, who are not still drunkards, or debauchees, or adulterers, or fornicators, or robbers, or murderers, or the like, or all these at once, without end? It is even a sort of holiness among Christian people, to be less vicious." From the public worship of God, he continues, and almost during it, they pass to deeds of shame. Scarce a rich man, but would commit murder and fornication. We have lost the whole power of Christianity, and offend God the more, that we sin as Christians. We are worse than the barbarians and heathen. If the Saxon is wild, the Frank faithless, the Goth inhuman, the Alanian drunken, the Hun licentious, they are by reason of their ignorance far less punishable than we, who, knowing the commandments of God, commit all these crimes. He compares the Christians especially of Rome with the Arian Goths and Vandals, to the disparagement of the Romans, who add to the gross sins of nature the refined vices of civilization, passion for theatres, debauchery, and unnatural lewdness. Therefore has the just God given them into the hands of the barbarians and exposed them to the ravages of the migrating hordes. This horrible picture of the Christendom of the fifth century is undoubtedly in many respects an exaggeration of ascetic and monastic zeal. Yet it is in general not untrue; it presents the dark side of the picture, and enables us to understand more fully on moral and psychological grounds the final dissolution of the western empire of Rome.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  collected in December and January, and preserved in earthen vessels; but he fell at last into skepticism, madness, and debauchery.288 Sozomen tells of a certain Batthaeus, that by reason of his extreme abstinence, worms crawled out of his teeth; of Alas, that to his eightieth year he never ate bread; of Heliodorus, that he spent many nights without sleep, and fasted without interruption seven days.289 Symeon, a Christian Diogenes, spent six and thirty years praying, fasting, and preaching, on the top of a pillar thirty or forty feet high, ate only once a week, and in fast times not at all. Such heroism of abstinence was possible, however, only in the torrid climate of the East, and is not to be met with in the West. Anchoretism almost always carries a certain cynic roughness and coarseness, which, indeed, in the light of that age, may be leniently judged, but certainly have no affinity with the morality of the Bible, and offend not only good taste, but all sound moral feeling. The ascetic holiness, at least according to the Egyptian idea, is incompatible with cleanliness and decency, and delights in filth. It reverses the maxim of sound evangelical morality and modern Christian civilization, that cleanliness is next to godliness. Saints Anthony and Hilarion, as their admirers, Athanasius the Great and Jerome the Learned, tell us, scorned to comb or cut their hair (save once a year, at Easter), or to wash their hands or feet. Other hermits went almost naked in the wilderness, like the Indian gymnosophists.290 The younger Macarius, according to the account of his disciple Palladius, once lay six months naked in the morass of the Scetic desert, and thus exposed himself to the incessant attacks of the gnats of Africa, "whose sting can pierce even the hide of a wild boar." He wished to punish himself for his arbitrary revenge on a gnat, and was there so badly stung by gnats and wasps, that he was thought to be smitten with leprosy, and was recognized only by his voice.291 St. Symeon the Stylite, according to Theodoret, suffered himself to be incessantly tormented for a long time by twenty enormous bugs, and concealed an abscess full of worms, to exercise himself in patience and meekness. In Mesopotamia there was a peculiar class of anchorets, who lived on grass, spending the greater part of the day in prayer and singing, and then turning out like beasts upon the mountain.292 Theodoret relates of the much lauded Akepsismas, in Cyprus, that he spent sixty years in the same cell, without seeing or speaking to any one, and looked so wild and shaggy, that he was once actually taken for a wolf by a shepherd, who assailed him with stones, till he discovered his error, and then worshipped the hermit as a saint.293 It was but a step from this kind of moral sublimity to beastly degradation.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  newspaper, and manager of all the community’s significant business interests. * The control he exerts over the lives of his followers is staggering. Winston has also fathered approximately a hundred children, at last count, with more than thirty wives. He answers to nobody but God and the prophet in Colorado City. After Winston pushed Debbie’s father out of the way, she and Winston became bitter enemies, but they remained tightly bound by a mind-boggling web of family connections. Although Debbie is just a year older than Winston, she is his stepmother. Her oldest daughter is his half sister. Debbie’s actual sister became the first of Winston’s numerous wives. One of Debbie’s stepchildren is Alaire Blackmore, seven years older than Debbie, who had been adopted by Ray Blackmore at birth. When Alaire was eighteen, she was married to Ray, her own adoptive father. Alaire was thus a cowife to Debbie as well as Debbie’s stepdaughter. After Ray died, Alaire was married to Debbie’s father; when Winston assumed power she was taken from Debbie’s dad and married to Winston—who was her own brother by adoption. Although these relationships are almost impossible to make sense of without a flow chart, such convoluted permutations are simply business as usual in Bountiful and other polygamist societies. For all their fecundity, Mormon Fundamentalists are strangely squeamish about sex. Boys and girls are forbidden to date, or even flirt, before marriage. Sex education consists of teaching children that the human body is a shameful vessel that should be veiled from the eyes of others at all times. “We were told to treat each other like snakes,” explains one of Debbie’s sons. Women and girls are required to wear long dresses, even while swimming. Boys and men wear long pants and long-sleeved shirts. Both genders must wear sacred long underwear beneath their clothing at all times, even on sweltering summer days. According to the Law of Chastity, sexual intercourse is officially forbidden even between husband and wife unless the woman is ovulating. Gravel crunching beneath its tires, Debbie’s car rounds a bend, and the house where she grew up suddenly comes into view, moldering at the edge of a soggy

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  hillside bearded in ferns and evergreen forest. It’s been many years since she’s been back here. “See where that car is parked off to the side there?” Debbie says, pointing to an old vehicle rusting beneath a graceful canopy of red cedars. “When I was six, that’s where Renny Blackmore * took me. Said he was going to teach me how to drive.” Instead of giving Debbie a driving lesson, Renny (one of Winston’s teenage brothers) sexually assaulted her. “Yechh,” she recalls, grimacing. “Thinking about what he did to me in that car still gives me a creepy feeling.” In spite of—or, more likely, precisely because of—the atmosphere of sexual repression in Bountiful, incest and other disturbing behaviors are rampant, although the abuse goes conspicuously unacknowledged. Debbie remembers older boys taking girls as young as four into a big white barn behind the school to play “cows and bulls” among the hay bales. A boy who would grow up to become a prominent member of the church leadership raped one of Debbie’s friends when he was twelve and the girl was seven. When Debbie was four, she says, Winston’s fourteen-year-old brother, Andrew Blackmore, * jammed “a stick up my vagina and left it in there for a while, telling me to lie very still and not to move.” Before Debbie’s father died, in 1998, he built a much larger second home just above the modest building where Debbie was raised: a barnlike, white clapboard house with fourteen bathrooms and fifteen bedrooms where some fifty people reside. These days the household is presided over by Memory Blackmore— “Mother Mem”—and her forty-one-year-old son, Jimmy Oler, Debbie’s half brother. Neither of them is home at the moment, but a half dozen teenage girls are juggling babies on their hips in the huge downstairs living room; they are the wives of Jimmy and some of the other Bountiful men. Among these girls is a giggling, gap-toothed kid who looks like she belongs in elementary school—but happens to be immensely pregnant. At the top of the stairs is a long hallway plastered with snapshots of Debbie’s extended family. Debbie herself appears in several of the photos. One of them shows her as a smiling teenager in a pink, frilly, ankle-length dress. It was taken at her wedding to Ray Blackmore, when she was only a year older than the pregnant fourteen-year-old downstairs. Debbie’s new husband, standing beside her in the picture, is a wizened, gray-haired man, almost four times as old as she

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  Women and girls are required to wear long dresses, even while swimming. Boys and men wear long pants and long-sleeved shirts. Both genders must wear sacred long underwear beneath their clothing at all times, even on sweltering summer days. According to the Law of Chastity, sexual intercourse is officially forbidden even between husband and wife unless the woman is ovulating. Gravel crunching beneath its tires, Debbie’s car rounds a bend, and the house where she grew up suddenly comes into view, moldering at the edge of a soggy hillside bearded in ferns and evergreen forest. It’s been many years since she’s been back here. “See where that car is parked off to the side there?” Debbie says, pointing to an old vehicle rusting beneath a graceful canopy of red cedars. “When I was six, that’s where Renny Blackmore * took me. Said he was going to teach me how to drive.” Instead of giving Debbie a driving lesson, Renny (one of Winston’s teenage brothers) sexually assaulted her. “Yechh,” she recalls, grimacing. “Thinking about what he did to me in that car still gives me a creepy feeling.” In spite of—or, more likely, precisely because of—the atmosphere of sexual repression in Bountiful, incest and other disturbing behaviors are rampant, although the abuse goes conspicuously unacknowledged. Debbie remembers older boys taking girls as young as four into a big white barn behind the school to play “cows and bulls” among the hay bales. A boy who would grow up to become a prominent member of the church leadership raped one of Debbie’s friends when he was twelve and the girl was seven. When Debbie was four, she says, Winston’s fourteen-year-old brother, Andrew Blackmore, * jammed “a stick up my vagina and left it in there for a while, telling me to lie very still and not to move.” Before Debbie’s father died, in 1998, he built a much larger second home just above the modest building where Debbie was raised: a barnlike, white clapboard house with fourteen bathrooms and fifteen bedrooms where some fifty people reside. These days the household is presided over by Memory Blackmore—“Mother Mem”—and her forty-one-year-old son, Jimmy Oler, Debbie’s half brother. Neither of them is home at the moment, but a half dozen teenage girls are juggling babies on their hips in the huge downstairs living room; they are the wives of Jimmy and some of the other Bountiful men. Among these girls is a giggling, gap-toothed kid who looks like she belongs in elementary school—but happens to be immensely pregnant. At the top of the stairs is a long hallway plastered with snapshots of Debbie’s extended family. Debbie herself appears in several of the photos. One of them shows her as a smiling teenager in a pink, frilly, ankle-length dress. It was taken at her wedding to Ray Blackmore, when she was only a year older than the pregnant fourteen-year-old downstairs.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Pat said they were going to do the round. Wanda was coming and probably Brockett. Dickie West the American aviator was in Paris, and she also had promised to join them. Oh, yes, and then there was Valérie Seymour—Valérie was being dug out of her hole by Jeanne Maurel, her most recent conquest. Pat supposed that Valérie would drink lemon squash and generally act as a douche of cold water, she was sure to grow sleepy or disapproving, she was no acquisition to this sort of party. But could they rely upon Stephen’s car? In the cold, grey dawn of the morning after, taxis were sometimes scarce up at Montmartre. Stephen nodded, thinking how absurdly prim Pat looked to be talking of cold, grey dawns and all that they stood for up at Montmartre. After she had left, Stephen frowned a little. 2The five women were seated at a table near the door when Mary and Stephen eventually joined them. Pat, looking gloomy, was sipping light beer. Wanda, with the fires of hell in her eyes, in the hell of a temper too, drank brandy. She had started to drink pretty heavily again, and had therefore been avoiding Stephen just lately. There were only two new faces at the table, that of Jeanne Maurel, and of Dickie West, the much discussed woman aviator.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Nay, it was received as a kind of oracle, that it was foolish arrogance, and, as they termed it, presumption for any one trusting to Thy goodness, and the righteousness of Thy Son, to entertain a sure and unfaltering hope of salvation. " ’Not a few profane opinions plucked up by the roots the first principles of that doctrine which Thou hast delivered to us in Thy Word. The true meaning of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, also, was corrupted by numerous falsehoods. And then, when all, with no small insult to Thy mercy, put confidence in good works, when by good works they strove to merit Thy favor, to procure justification, to expiate their sins, and make satisfaction to Thee (each of these things obliterating and making void the virtue of Christ’s cross), they were yet altogether ignorant wherein good works consisted. For, just as if they were not at all instructed in righteousness by Thy law, they had fabricated for themselves many useless frivolities, as a means of procuring Thy favor, and on these they so plumed themselves, that, in comparison of them, they almost contemned the standard of true righteousness which Thy law recommended,—to such a degree had human desires, after usurping the ascendancy, derogated, if not from the belief, at least from the authority, of Thy precepts therein

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  To purge the city from the defilement caused by this insult to the holy mass and the hierarchy, a most imposing procession was held from the Louvre to Notre Dame, on Jan. 29, 1535. The image of St. Geneviève, the patroness of Paris, was carried through the streets: the archbishop, with the host under a magnificent däis, and the king with his three sons, bare-headed, on foot, a burning taper in their hands, headed the procession, and were followed by the princes, cardinals, bishops, priests, ambassadors, and the great officers of the State and of the University, walking two and two abreast, in profound silence, with lighted torches. Solemn mass was performed in the cathedral. Then the king dined with the prelates and dignitaries, and declared that he would not hesitate to behead any one of his own children if found guilty of these new, accursed heresies, and to offer them as a sacrifice to divine justice. The gorgeous solemnities of the day wound up with a horrible autodafé of six Protestants: they were suspended by a rope to a machine, let down into burning flames, again drawn up, and at last precipitated into the fire. They died like heroes. The more educated among them had their tongues slit. Twenty- four innocent Protestants were burned alive in public places of the city from Nov. 10, 1534, till May 5, 1535. Among them was Etienne de la Forge (Stephanus Forgeus), an intimate friend of Calvin. Many more were fined, imprisoned, and tortured, and a considerable number, among them Calvin and Du Tillet, fled to Strassburg.432 These cruelties were justified or excused by charges of heresy, immorality, and disloyalty, and by a reference to the excesses of a fanatical wing of the Anabaptists in Münster, which took place in the same year.433 But the Huguenots were then, as their descendants have always been, and are now, among the most intelligent, moral, and orderly citizens of France.434 The Sorbonne urged the king to put a stop to the printing-press (Jan. 13, 1535). He agreed to a temporary suspension (Feb. 26). Afterwards censors were appointed, first by Parliament, then by the clergy (1542). The press stimulated free thought and was stimulated by it in turn. Before 1500, four millions of volumes (mostly in folio) were printed; from 1500 to 1536, seventeen millions; after that time the number is beyond calculation.435 The printing-press is as necessary for liberty as respiration for health. Some air is good, some bad; but whether good or bad, it is the condition of life. This persecution was the immediate occasion of Calvin’s Institutes, and the forerunner of a series of persecutions which culminated under the reign of

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The second or larger Catechism appeared in French, 1541, in Latin, 1545, etc.; both reprinted in parallel columns, Opera, vol. VI. 1–160. (Niemeyer in his Coll. Conf. gives the Latin text of the larger Cat. together with the prayers and liturgical forms; comp. his Proleg. XXXVII.–XLI. Böckel in his Bekenntniss-Shriften der evang. Reform. Kirche gives a German version of the larger Cat., 127–172. An English translation was prepared by the Marian exiles, Geneva, 1556, and reprinted in Dunlop’s Confessions, II. 139–272). Calvin had a hand in nearly all the French and Helvetic confessions of his age. See Opera, IX. 693–772. *Albert Rilliet and Théophile Dufour: Le Catéchisme français de Calvin publié en 1537, réimprimé pour la première fois d’après un exemplaire nouvellement retrouvé, et suivi de la plus ancienne Confession de Foi de l’Église de Genève (avec un notice sur le premier séjour de Calvin à Genève, par Albert Rilliet, et une notice bibliographique sur le Catéchisme et la Confession de Foi de Calvin, par Théophile Dufour), Genève (H. Georg.), and Paris (Fischbacher), 1878, 16°. pp. cclxxxviii. and 146; reprinted in Opera, XXII. Schaff: Creeds of Christendom, I. 467 sqq. Stähelin, I. 124 sqq. Kampschulte, I. 284 sqq. Merle D’Aubigné, VI. 328–357. Geneva needed first of all a strong moral government on the doctrinal basis of the evangelical Reformation. The Genevese were a light-hearted, joyous people, fond of public amusements, dancing, singing, masquerades, and revelries. Reckless gambling, drunkenness, adultery, blasphemy, and all sorts of vice abounded. Prostitution was sanctioned by the authority of the State and superintended by a woman called the Reine du bordel. The people were ignorant. The priests had taken no pains to instruct them and had set them a bad example. To remedy these evils, a Confession of Faith and Discipline, and a popular Catechism were prepared, the first by Farel as the senior pastor, with the aid of Calvin;476 the second by Calvin. Both were accepted and approved by the Council in November, 1536.477 The Confession of Faith consists of twenty-one articles in which the chief doctrines of the evangelical faith are briefly and clearly stated for the comprehension of the people. It begins with the Word of God, as the rule of faith and practice, and ends with the duty to the civil magistracy. The doctrine of predestination and reprobation is omitted, but it is clearly taught that man is saved by the free grace of God without any merit (Art. 10). The necessity of discipline by admonition and excommunication for the conversion of the sinner is asserted (Art. 19). This subject gave much trouble in Geneva and other Swiss churches. The Confession prepared the way for fuller Reformed Confessions, as the Gallican, the Belgic, and the Second Helvetic. It was printed and distributed in April, 1537, and read every Sunday from the pulpits, to prepare the citizens for its adoption.478 Calvin’s Catechism, which preceded the Confession, is an extract from his Institutes, but passed through several transformations.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  It could be shown by comparison that every apostle has more than four bodies and every saint two or three. The arm of St. Anthony, which was worshipped in Geneva, when brought out from the case, turned out to be a part of a stag. The body of Christ could not be obtained, but the monks of Charroux pretend to have, besides teeth and hair, the prepuce or pellicle cut off in his circumcision. But it is shown also in the Lateran church at Rome. The blood of Christ which Nicodemus is said to have received in a handkerchief or a bowl, is exhibited in Rochelle, in Mantua, in Rome, and many other places. The manger in which

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  They are excluded from the Church on earth; they must die and go to Sheol; but Christ will raise them up on the resurrection day and save them in heaven. The Scripture does not condemn the Ismaelites or the Ninevites or other barbarians. Christ gives his blessing to unbaptized children. How could the most merciful Lord, who bore the sins of a guilty world, condemn those who have not committed an impiety?1134 Servetus agreed with Zwingli, the Anabaptists, and the Second Scotch Confession, in rejecting the cruel Roman dogma, which excludes all unbaptized infants, even of Christian parents, from the kingdom of heaven. (c) In the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, Servetus differs from the Roman Catholic, the Lutheran, and the Zwinglian theories, and approaches, strange to say, the doctrine of his great antagonist, Calvin.1135 Baptism and the Lord’s Supper represent the birth and the nourishment of the new man. By the former we receive the spirit of Christ; by the latter we receive the body of Christ, but in a spiritual and mystical manner. Baptism kindles and strengthens faith; the eucharist strengthens love and unites us more and more to Christ. By neglecting this ordinance the spiritual man famishes and dies away. The heavenly man needs heavenly food, which nourishes him to life eternal (John 6:53).1136 Servetus distinguishes three false theories on the Lord’s Supper, and calls their advocates transubstantiatores (Romanists), impanatores (Lutherans), and tropistae (Zwinglians).1137 Against the first two theories, which agree in teaching a carnal presence and manducation of Christ’s body and blood by all communicants, he urges that spiritual food cannot be received by the mouth and stomach, but only by the spiritual organs of faith and love. He refers, like Zwingli, to the passage in John 6:63, as the key for understanding the words of institution and the mysterious discourse on eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Christ. He is most severe against the papal doctrine of transubstantiation or transelementation; because it turns bread into no-bread, and would make us believe that the body of Christ is eaten even by wild beasts, dogs, and mice. He calls this dogma a Satanic monstrosity and an invention of demons.1138 To the Tropists he concedes that bread and wine are symbols, but he objects to the idea of the absence of Christ in heaven. They are symbols of a really present, not of an absent Christ.1139 He is the living head and vitally connected with all his members. A head cut off from the body would be a monster. To deny the real presence of Christ is to destroy his reign.1140 He came to us to abide with us forever. He withdrew only his visible presence till the day of judgment, but promised to be with us invisibly, but none the less really, to the end of the world.1141 6. The Kingdom of Christ, and the Reign of Antichrist.1142 We have already noticed the apocalyptic fancies of Servetus.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Arius and two Egyptian bishops, who agreed with him, were banished to Illyria. During the violent Arian controversies, which shook the empire between the first and second Oecumenical Councils (325–381), both parties when in power freely exercised persecution by imprisonment, deposition, and exile. The Arians were as intolerant as the orthodox. The practice furnished the basis for a theory and public law. The penal legislation against heresy was inaugurated by Theodosius the Great after the final triumph of the Nicene Creed in the second Oecumenical Council. He promulgated during his reign (379–395) no less than fifteen severe edicts against heretics, especially those who dissented from the doctrine of the Trinity. They were deprived of the right of public worship, excluded from public offices, and exposed, in some cases, to capital punishment.1000 His rival and colleague, Maximus, put the theory into full practice, and shed the first blood of heretics by causing Priscillian, a Spanish bishop of Manichaean tendency, with six adherents, to be tortured, condemned, and executed by the sword. The better feeling of the Church raised in Ambrose of Milan and Martin of Tours a protest against this act of inhumanity. But public sentiment soon approved of it. Jerome seems to favor the death penalty for heresy on the ground of Deut. 13:6–10. The great Augustin, who had himself been a Manichaean heretic for nine years, justified forcible measures against the Donatists, in contradiction to his noble sentiment: "Nothing conquers but truth, the victory of truth is love."1001 The same Christian Father who ruled the thinking of the Church for many centuries, and moulded the theology of the Reformers, excluded all unbaptized infants from salvation, though Christ emphatically included them in the kingdom of heaven. Leo I., the greatest of the early popes, advocated the death penalty for heresy and approved of the execution of the Priscillianists. Thomas Aquinas, the master theologian of the Middle Ages, lent the weight of his authority to the doctrine of persecution, and demonstrated from the Old Testament and from reason that heretics are worse criminals than debasers of money, and ought to be put to death by the civil magistrate.1002 Heresy was regarded as the greatest sin, and worse than murder, because it destroyed the soul. It took the place of idolatry in the Mosaic law. The Theodosian Code was completed in the Justinian Code (527–534); the Justinian Code passed into the Holy Roman Empire, and became the basis of the legislation of Christian Europe. Rome ruled the world longer by law and by the cross than she had ruled it by the sword. The canon law likewise condemns to the flames persons convicted of heresy.1003 This law was generally accepted on the Continent in the thirteenth century.1004 England in her isolation was more independent, and built society on the foundation of the common law; but Henry IV. and his Parliament devised the sanguinary statute de haeretico comburendo, by, which William Sawtre, a parish priest, was publicly burnt at Smithfield (Feb.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  1553 and 1554, where he says that "Servetus was justly punished at Geneva, not as a sectary, but as a monster made up of nothing but impiety and horrid blasphemies, with which, by his speeches and writings, for the space of thirty years, he had infected both heaven and earth." He thinks that Servetus uttered a satanic prediction on the title-page of his book: "Great war took place in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting with [not against] the dragon." He also wrote an elaborate defence of the death-penalty for heresy in his tract De haereticis a civili magistratu puniendis, adversus Martini Bellii [pseudonym] farraginem et novorum academicorum sectam. Geneva (Oliva Rob. Stephani), 1554; second ed. 1592; French translation, 1560. See Heppe’s Beza, p. 38 sq. III. Anti-Calvinistic. Bolsec, in his Histoire de la vie ... de Jean Calvin (1577), chs. III. and IV., discusses the trial of Servetus in a spirit hostile alike to Calvin and Servetus. He represents the Roman Catholic view. He calls Servetus "a very arrogant and insolent man," and a "monstrous heretic," who deserved to be exterminated. "Desireroy," he says, p. 25, "que tous semblables fussent exterminez: et l’église de nostre Seigneur fut bien purgée de telle vermine." His more tolerant editor, L. F. Chastel, protests against this wish by an appeal to Luke 9:55.

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  replaced, but this is done under the supervision of a priest. The concern is not only for hygiene but for purity, and the focus is on abnormal growth or coloring, whether in a human being or in a building. Even the defilement of corpses can be understood as distaste for the abnormal, since unburied corpses are in an in- between state and are anomalous in the land of the living. The attempt to relate impurity to death breaks down most obviously in Leviticus 12, which discusses the impurity caused by childbirth. A woman who bears a male child is ceremonially unclean for seven days, and her time of blood purification is thirty-three days. She is impure for double that length of time if she gives birth to a female. The uncleanness here is caused by bodily emissions, which are messy and do not fit in neatly distinct categories. Compare the discussion of bodily discharges, male and female, in Leviticus 15. Neither the birth of a child nor a discharge of semen can be said to symbolize death. The concern is for an abnormal state or occurrence, but loss of control over the human body may also be a factor. At least, the inclusion of childbirth and of bodily discharges shows that the concern is not with death in a narrow sense, but rather with the edges of life. We are reminded of the limits of human control. There is no obvious reason why a woman should be impure longer after the birth of a girl than that of a boy. The monetary value placed on a man in Lev 27:1-8 is roughly double that of a woman. It is not unreasonable, then, to suspect that the difference implies that females are inferior in some sense. But greater impurity does not necessarily imply lesser value. A human corpse defiles more than the carcass of an animal. Fear of defilement is very widespread in the ancient world and may indeed be universal. It does not always admit of rational explanation. Impurity laws preserve vestiges of old taboos based on the fear of the unknown. They have more to do with primal fears about life and death and loss of human control over the body than with ethical principles in the modern sense.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  He acted as almoner and treasurer. He followed Condé to the battle of Dreux, Dec. 19, 1562, at which Condé was taken prisoner. It was made a matter of reproach that he took an active part in the battle. He did indeed ride in the front rank, but he denied that he struck a blow. He was in citizen’s dress. He then retired to Normandy with Coligny. The expected help from England did not arrive, and it was determined to send him to London. So utterly sick was Beza of the military life that he seriously meditated going directly back to Geneva from London. But the Pacification Edict of March 12, 1563 freed Condé and ended hostilities, and Beza did not make his contemplated English journey.

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  The rebels against Rome in the first century C.E. take their name, Zealots, from the same source. Finally, P adds an interesting notice in Num 31:8, 16. The Moabite women, we are told, acted on the advice of none other than Balaam, and the Israelites accordingly killed Balaam with the sword. The Priestly writers were evidently uncomfortable with the idea of a “good” pagan prophet and undermine the older account of Balaam by this notice. It is also axiomatic for the Priestly writer that the women who tempted the Israelites must not be allowed to live. The Phinehas story underlines some of the fundamental tensions in the Priestly tradition. On the one hand, that tradition was characterized by respect for life, human and animal, as is shown by the prohibition against eating meat with the blood. On the other hand, the violence of Phinehas, like the summary executions of dissidents like Korah, shows an attitude of intolerance, where the demands of purity and holiness take precedence over human life. No doubt the Priestly writers would protest that the laws of purity and holiness are themselves in the service of human life and are intended to make it better. The intolerance shown in this story has its root in the certitude of Phinehas and those he represents that their way is God’s way. Where people are convinced that they speak for God, there is no need to compromise or to consider other points of view. Many modern people, religious as well as secular, react to the story of Phinehas with revulsion. At the very least, we must acknowledge that the theology of the Priestly writers (and of other biblical writers besides) is fundamentally at odds with modern democratic and pluralistic sensibilities on this issue. The same is true, to a lesser extent, of the Priestly preoccupation with purity. There are also many people, however, who continue to find the orderly world of the Priestly writers attractive, and who find comfort in its sharp dichotomies between sacred and profane, pure and impure, Israelite and Gentile. FOR FURTHER READING

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  Israelites swear that they will not give their daughters to the men of Benjamin, the future of the tribe seems in doubt. When the people of Jabesh-gilead are slaughtered, however, for failing to come out with the rest of the tribes, their virgin daughters are spared and given to the Benjaminites. Finally, in a scene reminiscent of the Roman tale of the Sabine women, the Benjaminites are allowed to snatch the young women who came out to dance at the festival of the Lord (Tabernacles) at Shiloh, north of Bethel. The book ends on a positive note, insofar as the tribe of Benjamin is restored, but again the price of its restoration is paid at the expense of the women, who are repeatedly treated as disposable commodities in this story. Like many of the stories in Judges, this one is not edifying. It can contribute to moral education by showing the horror of some kinds of behavior. Later tradition would labor to portray the judges in a positive light (as in Hebrews 11). The biblical text, however, seems designed to show the depravity of human, and specifically Israelite, nature and its need for divine mercy and assistance, rather than to exemplify any human virtue. FOR FURTHER READING Commentaries R. Boling, Judges (AB 6A; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975). Assumes more underlying historicity than is usual in more recent scholarship. V. H. Matthews, Judges and Ruth (New Cambridge Bible Commentary; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Commentary on canonical text, informed by cultural parallels. S. Niditch, Judges: A Commentary (OTL; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008). Emphasizes folkloristic aspects. Distinguishes an epic-bardic voice, a theological (Deuteronomistic) voice and a humanistic one in chapters 1 and 17– 21. J. M. Sasson, Judges 1–12 (Yale Anchor Bible; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013). Distinguished by use of ancient Near Eastern parallels and postbiblical Jewish tradition. J. A. Soggin, Judges (trans. J. Bowden; OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1981). More skeptical than Boling on historical questions. Historical Issues B. Halpern, The First Historians (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988). Innovative study of historiographical method in the Deuteronomistic History, with several examples from Judges. A. Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 10,000–586 B.C.E. (ABRL; New York: Doubleday, 1990) 295–367. Authoritative discussion of the archaeological evidence. R. D. Miller, Chieftains of the Highland Clans: A History of Israel in the Twelfth and Eleventh Centuries B. C . (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005). Uses an anthropological model to illuminate the society of the Judges. Literary and Feminist Studies S. Ackerman, Warrior, Dancer, Seductress, Queen (New York: Doubleday, 1998). Study of female characters in the book of Judges, in the ancient Near Eastern context. Y. Amit, The Book of Judges: The Art of Editing (Leiden: Brill, 1999). The main editing of Judges was pre-Deuteronomic. M. Bal, Death and Dissymetry: The Politics of Coherence in the Book of Judges (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). Provocative feminist literary analysis. A. Brenner, A Feminist Companion to Judges (Feminist Companion to the Bible

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  scapegoat bears iniquity in the sense of removing it. The priests also remove it, in the sense of atoning for it. (In Exod 34:7 God is said to bear iniquity for some people while visiting it on others.) It is doubtful, however, whether Ezekiel is thought to atone for the sin of Israel by his ordeal of lying on his side. Rather, he seems to bear the punishment of the people in the sense that he illustrates and dramatizes it. There is no implication that people are relieved of their guilt simply by looking at Ezekiel. They might be relieved if they were moved by his symbolic action to recognize their condition and repent of their sins. Primarily, the prophet’s action is meant to help them recognize their guilt and their impending punishment. The 390 days and 40 days represent the number of years allotted for the punishment of Israel and Judah. Neither figure was historically accurate. The kingdom of Israel was never restored, and the Babylonian exile lasted more than forty years. Ezekiel is given further instructions about his diet while performing these actions. (That he is allowed to prepare and eat food suggests that he was allowed some freedom of movement.) Two points are significant in this instruction. First, his food is rationed, as it would be in time of siege. Second, he is to prepare it over human dung. The point is to show that the food is unclean. Ezekiel’s reaction is visceral: “Ah L ORD God! I have never defiled myself; from my youth up to now. . . .” He is allowed to substitute animal dung, which has been used as fuel in the poorer countries of the Middle East down to modern times. It is not clear that human dung would make the food unclean, but it is unlikely to have been a fuel of choice for a priest like Ezekiel. Lands outside Israel were considered unclean in any case, so the uncleanness was a corollary of exile. What is clear from the exchange between the prophet and the Lord is that for a Zadokite priest like Ezekiel, defilement was a fate worse than death. Ezekiel is given one further symbolic action to perform at this point. He is told to shave his head and his beard with a sword and divide the hair to symbolize the fate of the inhabitants of Jerusalem. One-third would die of pestilence or famine, one-third would fall by the sword, and one-third would be scattered. It has been noted that this fate corresponds to the curses of the covenant, especially as they are formulated in Lev 26:23-33, where the Israelites

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  peasant revolt notwithstanding). They are simply given into the hand of the Israelites by the Lord. Neither were the Canaanites oppressing Judah in the time of Josiah. Moreover, the book of Deuteronomy is notably humane in its legislation for Israelite society. Why then do the Deuteronomists insist on such savage treatment of the Canaanites? No definite answer can be given to these questions, but a few suggestions may be offered. First, Josiah’s reform was, among other things, an assertion of national identity. Judah was emerging from the shadow of Assyria and laying claim to sovereignty over the ancient territory of Israel. The assertion of identity entails differentiation from others, especially from those who are close but different. The ferocity of Deuteronomic rhetoric toward the Canaanites may be due in part to the fact that Israelites were Canaanites to begin with. Moreover, Josiah promoted a purist view of Yahwism that tolerated the worship of no other deities. The Canaanites were perceived as a threat to the purity of Israelite religion. It may be that the violence of Joshua toward the Canaanites was meant to provide a model for the violence of Josiah toward those who deviated from strict Yahwism, although we do not know that he ever engaged in the kind of herem that is attributed to Joshua. Underlying the whole Deuteronomic theology, and indeed most of the Hebrew Bible, is the claim that the Israelites had a right to invade Canaan because it was given to them by God. This claim is found already in the promise to Abraham in Genesis and is repeated constantly. It would not be problematic if the land were empty, but it was not. The God of Israel, it would seem, does not care much for the Canaanites. Jews and Christians traditionally identify with Israel when they read the Bible, and do not give much thought to the Canaanites either. There are of course numerous historical parallels to the conquest of Canaan. The entire history of Western colonialism involved claims of divine authorization for transparently selfish interests. The most glaring example is perhaps the conquest of North America by white settlers of European origin and the near eradication of Native Americans. There is also a troubling analogy in the rise of modern Israel in Palestine and the dispossession of the Palestinians. To be sure, each of those cases has its own complexity, and none is simply identical with the biblical

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  JEHU’S COUP The career of Elisha reaches its climax in 2 Kings 9, in the story of Jehu’s coup. The story is memorable primarily for its bloodthirsty character. King Ahaziah of Judah is killed as well as Joram of Israel. Jezebel faces her fate with some grandeur, dressing for the occasion. Her fate is gruesome nonetheless. She is thrown from an upper window, and the dogs eat her flesh. Throughout this story there is a concern for the fulfillment of prophecy, in this case the prediction of Elijah in 1 Kgs 21:23. The story testifies to the hatred of Jezebel in the circles that preserved the stories of Elijah and Elisha. Even more gruesome is the beheading of Ahab’s seventy sons by the leaders of Samaria. In the end, Jehu kills all who were left of the house of Ahab and everyone who was associated with the royal house. He also slaughters the kin of Ahaziah of Judah, whom he meets on the way. Finally, he kills every worshiper of Baal in Samaria. This whole bloodbath is justified by “the word of the L ORD that he spoke to Elijah” (10:17). In view of the way that Jehu’s actions are justified by appeal to prophecy, it seems quite plausible that the prophetic stories were edited at the court of one of his descendants. (Four of his descendants reigned in Samaria, and the dynasty lasted a hundred years.) The Deuteronomistic editor added only a characteristic note of disapproval: even though Jehu allegedly stamped out the worship of Baal, he still walked in the sin of Jeroboam, by maintaining places of worship outside Jerusalem (2 Kgs 10:29). The “sin of Jeroboam” was not an issue at all in the stories in 1 Kings 17–2 Kings 9. Some question about the historicity of Jehu’s coup is raised by the inscription from Tel Dan that mentions the house of David, which (as reconstructed by Finkelstein and Silberman) seems to indicate that the Syrian king who was responsible for the inscription (most probably Hazael) claimed credit for the deaths of the Israelite and Judean kings. It is possible that he regarded Jehu as his instrument, and so, therefore, the accounts are not incompatible. We should also note that the inscription is largely reconstructed, and that the parts in