Kipling: his present;
Anderson: our future;
Stirling: an alternative future, in The Peshawar Lancers (New York, 2003).
Stirling's Bombay has a "...Parsi mayor..." (p. 355).
"Except for beef, Narayan Singh would cheerfully eat anything with anyone; Nanak Guru, the founder of the Sikh faith, had disliked caste and the ritual-purity rules about who could eat with whom." (p. 349)
This was part of the appeal of Christianity:
Roman imperialist oppression and uniformity necessitated a new message of universal hope, transcending local rituals. Displaced slaves needed to believe that their god was omnipresent, not local. The new message was that one dying and rising god saves all men with a perfect sacrifice which, re-enacted with bread and wine, supersedes complicated ritual cleanliness, repeated animal sacrifices and divisive dietary laws.
- copied from here.
India preserves intact many features of the ancient world, including even Jainism - Mahavira is regarded as its reformer, not its founder!
6 comments:
Hi, Paul!
And Christianity was more radical than the Sikhs! In Mark 7.17-23 Our Lord discarded the entire apparatus of "unclean" foods and ritual purity as no longer needed. For a Christian ALL foods are clean, including beef (never mind the pork Jews abstain from).
Sean
http://vridar.org/2010/05/22/why-christianity-happened-origins-of-the-pauline-mission-reviewing-ch-5-of-james-crossleys-book/
Sean,
James Crossley argues that Jesus and the first Christians were Law-observant Jews but that Christianity survived and spread by adapting and becoming a Gentile religion. I have tried to give a link to a review of one of his books.
Paul.
Hi, Paul!
Of course the Son of God Incarnate as Man in Jesus Christ and the first of His followers, the Apostles, were Law observant Jews. No sensible person denies that. I knew of things like that as long ago as reading the Gospels and Henri Daniel-Rops' book JESUS AND HIS TIMES as a boy. To say nothing of how Fr. John Meir also goes into such matters in meticulous detail in his massive four volume MARGINAL JEW series (the first three volumes of which I have read).
My point being, of course, that Our Lord came not only to redeem mankind by his atoning death on the cross and his Resurrection, but also to fulfill the Law and the Prophets. The Law was a preparation and foreshadowing of Christ, therefore, after His coming, the merely ceremonial rites of Judaism, such as the kosher/purity laws, were no longer needed.
Thanks for referencing James Crossley to me. I will look up the book you mentioned.
Sean
Sean,
But Crossley's point is that the discarding of "unclean foods" and of ritual purity would only have happened later:
http://jgrchj.net/reviews/2.R1-Fuller%20on%20Crossley.pdf
Paul.
Hi, Paul!
Actually, the discarding, as no longer needed, of the Jewish kosher/purity laws began EARLY in Christian history. What Our Lord did and said began that process. And officially, we see that discarding happening at the Apostolic Council in Acts 15. True, St. Paul had to debate with and oppose the Judaizing Christians who insisted the kosher laws were still binding (as we see in various of his Letters, such as Galatians).
Sean
Post a Comment