[continued from previous message]   
      
   As is generally the case, India's enemy was not just outside the country, but   
   also inside it. Throughout many millenniums, Hindu religious dogma had   
   inculcated a slavish mentality in the vast majority of the Indian population,   
   through the medium of the    
   caste system. For the above-mentioned reasons, Mahatma Gandhi refused to   
   consider any significant alteration of that system, once threatening to fast   
   to his death before he would allow even the possibility of any real political   
   emancipation for the most    
   abject sector of Indian society, the Untouchables. Like the clever capitalists   
   (and communists) of today, who publicly address the street-cleaners by the   
   high-sounding title of “sanitary engineers”, Gandhi's only gift to the   
   Untouchables was to refer to    
   them as Harijans the “children of God”.   
      
   It is not a mark of Gandhi's saintliness, but rather the result of his   
   craftiness that his deceitful philosophy has been so well appreciated by most   
   of the elite power groups ever since his time.   
      
   [238] Matthew 5:39-41.   
      
   [239] John 10:14-18.   
      
   [240] Matthew 22:15-22; Mark 12:13-17; Luke 20:19-25.   
      
   [241] Luke 14:26.   
      
   [242] Matthew 22:34-40.   
      
   [243] Luke 16:1-13.   
      
   Even according to the standards set forth by Jesus himself, it would appear   
   that, on this one occasion, Jesus was ready at least to compromise with the   
   devil.   
      
   [244] Matthew 6:30, 7:11; Luke 18:9-14.   
      
   [245] John 13:34-35, 15:12, 15:17.   
      
   [246] John 8:41-47.   
      
   [247] 1 John 3:7-10, 4:1-6.   
      
   [248] John 6:47-66.   
      
   We should remember that the Jews, as well as the early Christians, had a   
   strong proscription against eating blood. In fact, any Jew who maintains a   
   kosher diet will still today adhere to that proscription. Further, the   
   meticulous dietary code of the Jews    
   never permitted the consumption of human flesh. Moses seems never to have even   
   contemplated that possibility.   
      
   [249] There is no harm here in pointing out a few tragic medieval ironies   
   related to the Eucharist Service – ironies that started as mere libels and   
   culminated in mass murder. Each week the Christians would come together and,   
   at least symbolically, drink    
   the blood of a Jew. Yet in the Middle Ages, the Church spread the atrocious   
   propaganda against the Jews that Jewish religious rites required Jews to drink   
   the blood of a Christian baby – this despite the clear proscription in the Old   
   Testament against    
   consumption of any blood whatsoever.   
      
   Indeed, this absurd and grossly unjust blood libel may have been exceeded in   
   terms of hypocritical imbecility only by the subsequent charge that the Jews   
   were also in the habit of desecrating the host. In 1215, the Fourth Lateran   
   Council officially    
   endorsed the doctrine of transubstantiation, i.e. that the consecrated wafer   
   and wine used at Mass were, somehow, miraculously transformed into the real   
   body and blood of Jesus. Of course, no one except a good Christian would   
   believe such a preposterous    
   notion but, nevertheless, within a few short years, Jews throughout Europe   
   were being slaughtered mercilessly for allegedly stealing, or trying to steal,   
   those magical biscuits with intention to torture Jesus once again. Strangely,   
   it was only the    
   Christians who really may have imagined that those wafers and that wine had   
   anything to do with the long dead and decomposed body of Jesus, and yet they   
   apparently never stopped to consider how Jesus might have felt, having his   
   body chewed up and his    
   blood slurped down.   
      
   This whole subject would be quite laughable were it not for the fact that tens   
   of thousands, and perhaps hundreds of thousands or even, ultimately, millions   
   of Jews were butchered as a consequence of those libels – libels that arose,   
   in the final    
   analysis, as a direct result of the recorded teachings of Jesus himself   
   concerning the nature and function of his physical form.   
      
   [250] Matthew 28:1-8; Mark 16:1-8; Luke 24:1-10; John 20:1-14.   
      
   [251] Toxic shock syndrome is a glaring example of the dangerous effects of   
   technological effort to suppress a biological distinction between women and   
   men.   
      
   [252] Note that this trend to suppress women is found in almost every   
   patriarchal society, regardless of religious background. Though our topic here   
   is Western religion, the same analysis applies equally to Eastern religions.   
   To understand this better,    
   contemplate the following excerpts from the Analects of Confucius on the   
   subject of right behavior for women: “Man is the representative of Heaven and   
   is supreme over all things. Woman yields obedience to the institutions of men   
   .... Woman's work is    
   simply the preparation and supplying of wine and food. She may take no step of   
   her own motion, and may come to no conclusion in her own mind.”   
      
   [253] These books are Ruth and Esther. In both cases, the heroine tends to   
   sire the spotlight with an equally, if not more, admirable male figure, i.e.   
   Boaz and Mordecai.   
      
   [254] There are only five books in the Old Testament with neutral titles. They   
   are Judges, the first and second book of the Chronicles, Psalms, and Proverbs.   
   Here it should be remembered that the first five books of the Old Testament   
   are called the Five    
   Books of Moses.   
      
   At least one prominent Judge – Deborah – was a woman (See Judges 4:1-5:31).   
   All of the Kings were clearly men. Ecclesiastes, the Preacher, was a man,   
   believed to be King Solomon. The Lamentations were “of Jeremiah”, a male   
   prophet.   
      
   [255] Recall that the full title of Acts is The Acts of the Apostles, and the   
   apostles were all men. The Epistles, subsequent to Acts, as well as Revelation   
   at the end of the New Testament, were carefully attributed to the particular   
   man said to have    
   written each (see the complete titles of these books).   
      
   [256] 1 Chronicles 6:1-3.   
      
   [257] Genesis 25:1-2; 1 Chronicles 1:27-34.   
      
   [258] 1 Chronicles 1:1.   
      
   [259] Genesis 1:5.   
      
   [260] In the English language (as in Hebrew and Latin, but in contrast to   
   Bengali and Sam'skrta), there is no personal pronoun which can refer back to a   
   specific individual and, at the same time, transcend the question of feminine   
   or masculine gender. In    
   English, we find one neuter pronoun, “it”, but this pronoun is used to   
   designate only inanimate objects, non-human creatures and, occasionally,   
   unborn babies. With regard to adolescent or adult human beings and God, the   
   personality of unspecified sex is    
   referred to traditionally as “he”. The use of “s/he” (as is common in this   
   book) is a temporary adjustment, for s/he is not a single pronoun but rather   
   the clumsy combination of both “she” and “he”, spoken as “she or he” or,   
   perhaps more usually, as “he    
   or she”.   
      
   Some proposals have been offered in respect to this much-needed but as yet   
   little-debated “neutral” pronoun, for instance, the word, co. However, none of   
   these proposals has garnered a high degree of acceptance up to now. A recent   
   and appealing    
   suggestion is that we take and use the phonetic word, shree, which is a fast   
   contraction of “she or he” and which may be written as we do now, i.e. s/he.   
   (The possessive form would then be s/he's.) This pronoun, s/he, has the   
   additional charm of being a    
   Sam'skrta word that signifies respect toward the one to whom we refer or   
   address.   
      
   [261] Genesis 1:26-27.   
      
   [262] Genesis 2:18-20.   
      
   [263] Genesis 2:21-23.   
      
   [264] Genesis 2:24-25.   
      
   Note the language in Genesis 2:25 – “the man and his wife”, not “the husband   
   and the wife”, not “the wife and the husband”, and most assuredly not “the   
   woman and her husband”.   
      
      
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   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)