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All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

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  • Reading your journal entry reminded me of a story I heard initially from Paul Harvey (the radio host). Initially, Sergeant York applied for conscientious objector status in some part because of the 6th Commandment, "thou shall not kill".

    It was later explained to him that the particular Hebrew verb used in the Old Testament actually means "to murder", not "to kill".

    There's a link here [ptm.org] about it for those interested.

    • You know - another thing - this reminded me of another tidbit in the discussion that we grazed over. We were racing from the Bible to the early church and got up to 300-400 AD, where Constantine changed the rule (based on a vision he experienced) from no Christians can be soldiers, to ALL soldiers had to be Christian.

      This brings up all kinds of questions, such as "Were the soldiers that became Christians really Christian?" and "Was it really a free choice of the soldiers to convert?"

      Jason
      • This brings up all kinds of questions, such as "Were the soldiers that became Christians really Christian?" and "Was it really a free choice of the soldiers to convert?"

        The Empire was never my specialty, but my guess to both questions would be "no". I suspect most soldiers fell into the "I'll believe whatever you want as long as I get to keep my head and my paycheck" category.

        I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "really Christian" though. By that I mean if you asked a 4th century centurion what it meant to be Christian, I'm not sure what kind of answer you would get even from a true believer. There was no "Bible" yet - only the Old Testament, and then only in Hebrew (at least, I don't think it had been translated to Greek yet). None of the various Councils (Nicaea, etc) had happened yet, so there was no organized doctrine, plus who knows what tangental documents floating around (Gnostic Gospels, etc).

        I'm sure your local B&N or Borders has some good books on Constantine/Religion of the Empire, etc. :)

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