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Hold the Line: The Insurrection and One Cop's Battle for America's Soul

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Michael Fanone

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“You religious men who boast so much that you live on charity including what the poor manage to scrape together out of their meagre income - how can you justify your actions? How can your moral conscience be clear when you acknowledge that in no way do you contribute to the society that is maintaining you, day after day? In your self complacent conceit, you denigrate and harshly condemn, those who, with their sweat and hard work, provide you with a life fit for a king. What is the reason you spend your lives living comfortably in some ashram or isolated monastery when life only makes sense if it is experienced with your fellow brothers and sisters by showing compassion to them? It is easy and simple enough to spend your lives meditating in the Himalayas being irritated by nothing and no one if not the occasional goat, rather than placing yourselves in the midst of your fellow men and living an ordinary life of toil as they do. Do not delude yourselves, because what you refer to as a state of internal peace represents nothing but the personal satisfaction of the conscious ego that is admiring and adoring itself..”

InspirationalRadicalControversialKnowing OneselfMetaphysical Truth RealityEsoteric WisdomTheosophyHistory Of ReligionSophia Wisdom
Book:The Secret Gospel of Jesus, AD 0-78
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“[W]hat made Christians especially dangerous to the Roman order was their refusal to pay what Romans regarded as ordinary respect to their Roman rulers; and this brought some of them into direct and total opposition to the temporal as well as the divine authorities - to the emperors and to their divine patrons, the gods.”

History Of Religion
Book:Adam, Eve, and the Serpent: Sex and Politics in Early Christianity
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“In decreeing the Decalogue, moreover, YHWH bypasses Moses to address the people as a whole, communicating his will to them in quasi-democratic openness, without the need for any royal or prophetic intermediary. That is not only without precedent in the history of religion; it is also unparalleled in the Hebrew Bible. God’s proclamation of the Decalogue accordingly lies at the heart of the theme of revelation.”

DemocracyHistory Of ReligionDecalogue
Book:The Invention of Religion: Faith and Covenant in the Book of Exodus
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“[W]hen the emperor Constantine abruptly changed Roman policy from one of persecuting Christians to protecting and favoring them with massive gifts of money, tax exemptions, and enormous prestige, the bishops, now in political favor, sometimes used these new resources to promote unanimity; thus in 381, the Christian emperor Theodosius made "heresy" a crime against the state.”

History Of Religion
Book:Adam, Eve, and the Serpent: Sex and Politics in Early Christianity
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“There were always historians who said [historical Jesus research] can not be done because of historical problems. There were always theologians who said it should not be done because of theological objections. And there were always scholars who said the former when they meant the latter.”

ReligionHistoryHistory Of Religion
Book:The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant
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“[C]ontemporary Jesus research is still involved in textual looting, in attacks on the mound of Jesus tradition that do not begin from any overall stratigraphy, do not explain why this or that item was chosen for emphasis over some other one, and give the distinct impression that the researcher knew the result before beginning the search.”

ReligionHistoryHistory Of Religion
Book:The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant
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“The declining age of learning and of mankind is marked, however, by the rise and rapid progress of the new Platonists. The school of Alexandria silenced those of Athens; and the ancient sects enrolled themselves under the banners of the more fashionable teachers, who recommended their system by the novelty of their method and the austerity of their manners. Several of these masters—Ammonius, Plotinus, Amelius, and Porphyry—were men of profound thought and intense application; but, by mistaking the true object of philosophy, their labors contributed much less to improve than to corrupt human understanding. The knowledge that is suited to our situation and powers, the whole compass of moral, natural and mathematical science, was neglected by the new Platonists; whilst they exhausted their strength in the verbal disputes of metaphysics, attempted to explore the secrets of the invisible world, and studied to reconcile Aristotle with Plato, on subjects of which both of these philosophers were as ignorant as the rest of mankind. Consuming their reason in these deep but unsubstantial meditations, their minds were exposed to illusions of fancy. They flattered themselves that they possessed the secret of disengaging the soul from its corporeal prison, claimed a familiar intercourse withe dæmons and spirits; and, by a very singular revolution, converted the study of philosophy into that of magic. The ancient sages had derided the popular superstition; after disguising its extravagance by the this pretense of allegory, the disciples of Plotinus and Porphyry becomes its most zealous defenders. As they agreed with the Christians in a few mysterious points of faith, they attacked the remainder of their theological system with all the fury of civil war. The new Platonists would scarcely deserve a place in the history of science, but in that of the church the mention of them will very frequently occur.”

PhilosophyMagicMetaphysicsHistory Of Religion1776300Neo Platonism
Book:The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Volume I
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