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Quote by Luis E. Navia

“Most of the anecdotes reported about him by Diogenes Laertius appear to belong to this stage, no less than many of the statements attributed to him in other sources. He is caustic in his remarks and brutal in his comments about people, not hesitant to display an abysmal contempt for society at large and for the countless people who crossed his path. He shows no respect for the laws and argues that the wise man should not guide himself by them, but only by his own rational principles (D. L. VI, 11 ). Neither is there in him any respect for the things that most people value, such as reputation, wealth, social position, luxury, an easy life, physical beauty, and other similar things. He pierces mercilessly through the mantle of social illusions that, like enticing and elusive ghosts, make people move aimlessly in all directions. He seeks to purge language, his own and that of others, of euphemisms that cover up the truth. His freedom of speech knows no bounds -he speaks the truth as he sees it, regardless of the consequences of his words. His behavior is reserved and, at times, even bellicose, and the roughness with which he deals with those who approach him for instruction does not create around him a welcoming aura. Repeatedly, echoing a statement made by Socrates in Plato 's Apology, he insists that h e i s not like the rest and says that the main advantage he has derived from philosophy is his ability to be in touch with himself (D.L. VI, 6).”

Quote by Luis E. Navia

Book:Antisthenes of Athens: Setting the World Aright
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Antisthenes of Athens: Setting the World Aright

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Luis E. Navia

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“Antisthenes' learning from Socrates came to an end in the spring of 399 B.C., when Socrates was tried and executed. The charge was irreligiosity, which implied, as pointed out earlier, a lack of respect or fearlessness. He did not have the fear, respect, and reverential awe ( crif3ac;) toward the laws and their foundation-the gods-that were expected of law-abiding citizens. At least in word, he had challenged the structure of the State and, worse still, had taught others to do like-wise, according to the affidavit submitted by the prosecutors. He had stood apart from the people and had seldom taken part in their political affairs. He had shown little respect for Homer and other epic poets, from whom people learned their moral values. He had set up himself as a monarch and had claimed access to a secret voice that guided his conduct. For this, the Athenians found him guilty and sentenced him to die by hemlock poisoning. To make things worse, he had defended himself in what was an unusual way, neither asking for mercy nor producing his family before the jurors nor giving any indications of wanting to reach an accommodation nor showing consternation at the prospect of death. Socrates' execution must have had a profound impact on his associates. From Plato's seventh letter, for instance, we learn how it affected his assessment of the Athenian polity and, in fact, of every other polity. All human political and social arrangements, Plato concluded (Epist. 7.325d-326a), were almost beyond repair and could not be helped except by some miraculous plan and a streak of good luck. Later on, he would insist on the necessity of casting aside all existing political and social arrangements in order to undertake the task of reforming them as if on a new canvass, because those used hitherto were useless. Like an artist bent on correcting a painting full of flaws, who eventually decides to discard it, Plato envisioned the possibility of recreating society on a new foundation. His political dialogues, the Republic and the Laws, are the literary testament of his aspirations. Antisthenes, however, appears not to have sheltered such aspirations. The human world, which according to Plato was "almost beyond repair," was for Antisthenes truly beyond repair and there was nothing to do about it, except to tear it down, and Socrates' execution provided irrefutable evidence for this. Socrates had practiced what the Athenians regarded as an inviolable right-n:appfJ”

PlatoSocratesAntisthenes
Book:Antisthenes of Athens: Setting the World Aright
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“We began this book with a passage from Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead, in which we accompanied Antisthenes in his descent to Hades. We now conclude this chapter with yet another passage from Lucian, in which we find Antisthenes already in Hades. Antisthenes, Diogenes, and other Cynics, Lucian tells us, persist in doing in the underworld exactly what they did while in this physical world, namely, raising hell about whatever they saw and heard. That and only that is what they are still doing after death, in fact, in so loud and harsh a fashion that those whose fate has been to share with them the same place in Hades beg the gods of the underworld to segregate the Cynics to some remote comer where their shouting cannot be heard. The gods, however, ignore this request, because they know that an important component of the punishment for those who passed their time on earth seeking pleasure, amassing fortunes, exploiting the weak and the poor, confusing people through deceptive language, and in other subhuman forms of behavior, is that they need to be reminded of how empty their lives were on earth. The Cynics wait at the gates of Hades for new arrivals, men and women who, while alive, turned themselves into less than human creatures and who now are about to suffer the unhappy consequences of their actions. As Diogenes invites Antisthenes to rush with him to the gates because new arrivals are entering, Antisthenes remarks: Let us be off at once, Diogenes, for, indeed, the spectacle will surely be an amusing one-to see them weeping and lamenting, and some begging to be let go, and some making their entrance with reluctance, and, regardless of how hard Hermes pushes them in, resisting and struggling, but all to no purpose.”

HadesDiogenesAntisthenesDialogues Of The Dead
Book:Antisthenes of Athens: Setting the World Aright
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“10:10. to distinguish. Leviticus is concerned with orderliness. This orderliness is reminiscent of the creation account in Genesis 1. There are key parallels of wording, especially the term for distinction (lēhabdîl). As God creates by making distinctions, expressed in divine speech, in Genesis ("God distinguished between the light and the darkness"), so the function of the priesthood is described in Leviticius as "to distinguish (lēbabdîl) between the holy and the secular, and between the impure and the pure." Here the law is conceived as a reflection in the human realm of the order that was originally pictured in the cosmic realm.”

OrderlinessLeviticus
Book:Commentary on the Torah
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“19.2. be holy. What is meant here by being holy? The chapter that begins with this statement stands out because, perhaps more than any other in the Torah, it merges major commandments with so many different sorts. It includes most of the Ten Commandments, sacrifices, justice, caring for the poor and the infirm, treatment of women, of the elderly, food, magic, loving one's neighbor as oneself, loving an alien as oneself. If one had to choose only one chapter out of the Torah to make known, it might well be this one. The strange mixing of so many different kinds of commandments may convey that every commandment is important. Even if we are naturally inclined to regard some commandments as more important than others, and some commandments as most important of all, this tapestry presses us to see what is important and valuable in every commandment, even commandments that one may question.”

HolinessCommandmentsLeviticus
Book:Commentary on the Torah
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“25:10. a jubilee: you shall go back, each to his possession. In the law of the jubilee, YHWH commands that every fifty years all property is to return to the original owners. This appears to be an economic program designed to prevent the feudal system, common in the rest of the ancient Near East, from developing in Israel. That is, it functions to prevent the establishment of a class of wealthy landowners at the top of the economic scale and a mass of landless peasants at the bottom. Every Israelite is to be apportioned some land (described in the books of Numbers and Joshua), and the deity commands that in every fiftieth year the system returns to where it started. If an Israelite has lost his ancestral land as a result of debt or calamity, he regains ownership of it in the jubilee year. Land is unalienable. Individuals can suffer difficult times, but there is a divinely decreed limit to their loss, and the nation as a whole can never degenerate into a two-tiered system of the very rich and the very poor.”

JubileeLeviticus
Book:Commentary on the Torah
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“Entering the house of God to dwell with God, beholding, glorifying and enjoying him eternally, I suggest, is the story of the Bible, the plot that makes sense of the various acts, persons and places of its pages, the deepest context for its doctrines.”

Old TestamentLeviticusPentateuchTabernacle
Book:Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of the Book of Leviticus
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“Seen in this light, what strikes many modern readers as the ludicrous attention to detail in the book Leviticus, involving God in the minutiae of daily life—all the cooking and cleaning of a people's domestic life—might be revisioned as the very love of God. A God who cares so much as to desire to be present in everything we do.”

Daily LifeLeviticus
Book:The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and Women's Work
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“Sacrifice is the only mechanism for forgiveness in the book of Leviticus. There is no suggestion in Leviticus that repentance alone can bring forgiveness for violations of the laws, no indication that one can appeal to YHWH's mercy. His grace, or His kindness for atonement. Indeed, the words "repentance" (šûb), "mercy" (raḥǎmîm), "grace" (ḥēn), and "kindness" (ḥesed) do not occur in Leviticus.”

ForgivenessLeviticusAnimal Sacrifice
Book:Commentary on the Torah
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“18.22. you shall not lie with a male like lying with a woman. Why is male homosexuality explicitly forbidden in the Torah but not female? Some would surmise that it is because women are controlled in a patriarchal Israelite society; and so a woman would simply have no choice but to marry a man. But this is not an adequate explanation, because there would still be opportunities for female homosexual liaisons. Some would say that the concern is the seed, which is understood to come from the male, and therefore is "wasted" in another male. But the text calls homosexuality "an offensive thing" (in older translations: "an abomination"), which certainly sounds like an abhorrence of the act, and not just a concern with the practical matter of reproduction. The reason may rather be because the Torah comes from a world in which there is polygamy. A man can have sex with his two wives simultaneously. That this is understood to be permissible is implied by the fact that the law in v. 18 above forbids it only with sisters (see the comment). Or, even if the above case means marriage and not simultaneous sex, then simultaneous sex still is not forbidden anywhere in the Torah. If simultaneous sex with one's two (or more) wives is practiced, it would be difficult to allow this while forbidding female homosexuality. (At minimum, it could require a number of laws specifying what sort of contact is permissible and under what circumstances.) In the present state of knowledge concerning homosexuality, it is difficult to justify its prohibition in the Torah. All of the movements in Judaism (and other religions) are currently contending with this issue. Its resolution ultimately must lie in the law of Deuteronomy that states that, for difficult matters of the law, people must turn to the authorities of their age, to those who are competent to judge, and those judges must decide (Deut 17:8-9). In my own view, the present understanding of the nature of homosexuality indicates that it is not an "offensive thing" (also translated "abomination") as described in this verse. The Hebrew term for "offensive thing" (tô'ēbāh) is understood to be a relative term, which varies according to human perceptions. For example, in Genesis, Joseph tells his brothers that "any shepherd is an offensive thing to Egypt" (46:34); but, obviously, it is not an offensive thing to the Israelites. In light of the evidence at present, homosexuality cannot be said to be unnatural, nor is it an illness. Its prohibition in this verse explicitly applies only so long as it is perceived to be offensive, and therefore the current state of the evidence suggests that the period in which this commandment was binding has come to an end.”

HomosexualityLeviticus
Book:Commentary on the Torah
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