Sunday, September 7, 2008

Interesting quote from B.C.

This quote is from the Sept/Oct 2008 BAR, page 36:

Theophrastus (372-288 B.C) remarks that "being a race of philosophers, they converse with each other about divinity, and during the night they view the stars, turning their eyes to them and invoking their God with prayers."
On Piety, cited by Poryphry, third century A.D., in
On Abstinence, 2.26. Meyer Reinhold and Lousi Feldman,
Jewish Life and Thought Among Greeks and Romans
(Mpls: Fortress Press, 1996), primary readings, p.7.
In Exodus 19:6a, God says that Israel "will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation."
It is fun (a rejoicing kind) to see that the Jewish nation was known by others as a people interested in divinity.
In the New Testament, Peter states that those in Christ "are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. (1 Peter 2:9)
We are called to be declarers of God's excellencies to the world. Oh that modern historians could write of us, that we loved the [true] divinity!

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