"God said your will is my will that’s how much we love you my will has always been that you have free will."
The book When God Had a Wife is recommended for a clearer understanding of male and female energy dynamics in history.
Full quote: "Hence, because of the lofty consciousness which touches them, they are sometimes spoken of as the Race of the Gods; also as sons of Yoga, because the Barhishads sent out their chhâyas when immersed in yogic meditation.
Created in God's image as male and female simultaneously, this Adam is tasked with subduing the earth, harnessing nature through intellect and technology, and building cooperative communities for practical success.
Formed alone from dust with God breathing life into him, this Adam experiences solitude, seeks intimate connection with God, and serves the world receptively rather than conquering it.
The Bible’s story of Adam and Eve and the “gods” who created them begins here.
“So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept.
Hence, one can see the meaning of the statement by God:
For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’”
It seems clear that the action by the gods of stationing the cherubim to keep does today in contemporary Hebrew) missile.
It seems clear that the action by the gods of stationing the cherubim to keep humans from the tree of life was actually denying the humans the knowledge of their heritage.
No longer would the Earth human be allowed to openly intermingle with the gods or leave the planet with them.
Adam and Eve were created by the god Sakla out of the earth
About 4,500,000 years BC, Archangel Michael with his band of Blue Flame angels and many Beings from the Light Realm, with the blessing of the Father/Mother God, escorted to this planet the first souls who were to become the seeds of the Lemurian race.
Erich von Däniken’s works, like Chariots of the Gods, suggest extraterrestrials (e.g., from Pleiades or Sirius) engineered human evolution, similar to the text’s Elohim creating Homo sapiens.
King Saul, facing an imminent battle with the Philistines and receiving no response from God through usual means, consulting a medium (the Witch of Endor) to summon the spirit of the deceased prophet Samuel for advice.
The medium sees a figure rising from the earth, referred to in the Hebrew text as "elohim" (often translated as "gods," "a god," or "a spirit").
Note that in verse 13, the Hebrew term "elohim" is rendered as "ghostly figure" here, but literal translations (e.g., King James Version) use "gods" to reflect the plural form, aligning with the query's phrasing.
A footnote in this version indicates alternatives like "spirits" or "gods."
“The Philistines are fighting against me, and God has departed from me.
Kronos was the god of time, and he had all his kids through dividing the parts of his body.
And let's start perhaps with the most important one, which is the word Elohim, which is usually translated as God.
But if Elohim is not God, then the Bible is another thing.
And many topics, like the Garden of Eden, the burning bush, sacrifices to the gods, the chosen people.
But let's begin and see how far we can go with the problem of this word Elohim—whether it means god or gods or something else—and what you discovered translating when you were asked to translate as literally as you could, without putting any, if possible, interpretation.
In effect, the term Elohim is the most important because Elohim is a plural term in the Hebrew language, but it is always translated as God—singular.
But this is clearly a mistranslation; it is clearly a mistake, a theological mistake, because the theologians need to say that in the Bible there is God.
But it's important to say that the Bible doesn't speak about God.
I want to be clear: I don't speak about God.
I don't want to say that God does not exist.
God is not my concern.
And also, if the Bible does not speak about God, that doesn't mean that God does not exist.
It has consequences for the religions, but not about the faith of the singular person, the individual—because if God exists, God exists, and the faith can refer to it.
I want to say that the god of the religions is not in the Bible.
But what you're saying here is not only that it appears as plural many times—so it's not God but gods—but that these gods are very peculiar creatures that do all sorts of things that don't look like god-like stuff.
And the gods like sacrifices of stuff that's burned for some very weird reasons.
But the most important is Elohim, because, as you said before, if Elohim means god, the Bible is one thing; if Elohim doesn't mean god, the Bible is entirely another thing.
They're not gods, but they're not humans.
If now you're suggesting—or even saying—that the human race is not created by God—they'll be happy about that—but you're saying it's not just a product of evolution, natural evolution, but it's engineered by some sort of creatures more advanced than us.
But given the fact that the theologians tell us that this book is the book of God, I suggest reading this book carefully, with an open mind—just like we read other books, just like we can read Mahabharata, Bhagavad Gita, Veda, and so on—with the same open mind.
Now, more things here: when you were mentioning other traditions, and you're mentioning polytheism probably—and that's again, I express my ignorance in all these matters—when in India, for instance, I suppose they don't have a problem with the Devas or these many gods.
But I think that it is not possible to talk about polytheism because these individuals were not considered as gods, but individuals—dangerous individuals to whom it was necessary to worship because of their knowledge, because of their technology, and so on.
But they weren't spiritual gods.
And this, for example, is clearly written in the Bible of the Judges, where it is written that Yahweh is as Chemosh, the so-called god of the Moabites, and it is written that it has the same power.
Yes, because ruach is always translated as spirit of God.
Because in some verses, ruach can be the spirit—can be the spirit of God.
But in other verses, clearly it can't be the spirit of God; it must necessarily be another thing.
So it's impossible that in that case ruach means spirit of God—because if that were true, we must have the spirit that is to the north, but it isn't in the south, in the east, or in the west.
Oh my God, here we go—even more controversial.
As a joke—but that's serious—I don't know what people would like to believe now that there's this third ingredient in the menu, because those who hated the idea of God the Creator maybe really scared about—well, if the alternative is these flying things, well, I rather now prefer the old story told.
And—well, it's not a problem to offer possibilities because we've been told a fiction; we've been told a regular man; we've been told a man who also has a god; we've been told even if he was a mushroom—I've also come across that hypothesis, a serious one actually.
Okay, my last comment question: so here in The Future Human, we explore the future human, but to do that we need to see where we are—our place—and very importantly, also—that's why we've also been reflecting each other—it's—uh—the few often someone says that the man wants to do as the—as god.
And we have a wrathful god; we have a judgmental god; we have a god that's angry.
That's all I want to say, but I—I found—I like the word that the Elohim is—I also—you mentioned El Shaddai—in—in the—in our understanding from the—our Bible is—is the god of—of prospect and—and a helping hand.
I had a question that I posted over here—if you remember way back—and it might have been the 60s when this book Chariots of the Gods came out by Erich von Däniken.
He speaks of the—uh—uh—children—the children of the gods—what—and I think it overlaps to what you're speaking about—um—intermarrying with the children—I think the women, children of the humans—and that there were two different people.
She also speaks of what you're talking about: that there was an intermarriage between the sons of gods and the daughters of men.
And did the—and is it—would you agree that the sons of gods, when they intermarried with the daughters of men—that they polluted—that they—uh—the consciousness was lowered?
For example, in the Book of Ezekiel, and in the Book of Exodus, the kavod of Yahweh is clearly described, that when Moses asked Yahweh for the possibility to see his kavod, and Yahweh told him "you cannot stay in front of kavod because if you are in front of kavod you will die," and—this is important—Yahweh cannot do anything, so God is impotent, not potent, in front of the danger of the kavod, and this is very interesting—Yahweh tells Moses "you can hide behind these rocks," so the rocks can do what God cannot do.
So we have to use the context to understand the real meaning of single terms, like the verb 'bara' which is present in the first verse of the Bible in Genesis, so the term 'Shaddai', that doesn't mean "Almighty" but it means "lord of the mountains", "lord of the steppe." But in the Bible you always find the translation "Almighty" but they know it's not "Almighty" because for example in the Bible of Jerusalem in the notes they write that the translation "Almighty" is a mistake, but since God must be in the Bible, and God must be Almighty, so they insert the term "Almighty" also they know that 'Shaddai' doesn't mean "Almighty."
They now changed my name they made a revision of this book to insert another name and cancel my name, and when the relationship finished they started again to translate Elohim with God, but when I was working for them Elohim was not translated.
The vowels started to be written between the sixth and the ninth century after Christ, right, so that's when—sorry for the English, no problem, so this is an interpretation in the Hebrew text that is put upon those consonants YHVH and generally it's interpreted as God.
Bethel means the house of El—house of God, house of El, which is often translated as the house of God, yes, but you're saying that there's no legitimacy to that translation?
No absolutely not but, excuse me it's okay, but I am sure of that not because I know of the real translation of the term El or Elohim, but because nobody knows the translation, first, and second if we read what is really written in the Bible everyone would understand that El and Elohim and Eloah doesn't mean God, can't mean God!
And yet modern Judaism defines itself as a monotheistic faith which believes in one God, so where is that God in the Hebrew Bible?
I understand Dagon and Ashera being referred to as idols, but the word Elohim is also, according to you, wrongly translated as the one God?
Yes it's a wrong translation, so Elohim refers to a multiplicity of—yes to a multiplicity of gods certainly, yes absolutely.
By reading and translating the Bible and finding names which corresponded to the writings of the peoples that fought with the people of Israel, but those peoples are of the same family of Abraham, and in their scripts they named clearly the names of their Elohims, and the name of their Elohims are present in the Bible, for example in the Book of Judges, Chemosh is named as the god of the Moabites.
So you're seeing these Elohim as some sort of—you're not jumping to conclusions about what they are, but you're saying they're not gods.
I suppose the most controversial thing that you're saying really is that God, as we are taught to understand God—I don't know, personally speaking I'm not a Christian I don't belong to any of the mainstream religions I don't have strong religious views I have had experiences that I would describe as spiritual but I'm not a Christian but I have an idea of what Christians think God is and what Christians think God is is a man often with a beard who is the father of Jesus Christ somehow and is alone, he is one God, and if I understand you correctly you're saying there's no basis for that in the Bible?
Old Testament, absolutely, there is no basis for this construction of the image of the god like a person.
I may say—mistranslated in the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark as "a radio for talking to God," talking to God, talking to Yahweh whatever he was.
I agree absolutely because we are not sure of what they were, and the Elohim—I know, for example a protestant pastor Barry Downing wrote in his books that Elohims are here and are ruling all around the world like a secret government exactly and he is a Protestant Pastor who has a personal faith in God but he tells that Elohims were absolutely not God.
Were they—okay they were not God—were they good?
It is stated in the Bible, in the Torah and every day he wanted also the smoke of burnt meat because for example in the Book of Numbers Chapter 28 this smoke that he wanted to smell was able to calm him yes I remember that passage absolutely, so it's possible that—and in this smoke there are some molecules that are similar to endorphin molecules I don't know how to say endorphins, yeah endorphins that our brain produces when we are in a state of stress right and in the Book of Numbers, Yahweh says several times that this smoke calmes you he says this smoke calms me, because these smoke calmes me several times so it's clear and you wouldn't expect the one God, the creator of the universe, to need to be calmed by smoke no interesting but it's clear—it's not my translation, it's the normal translation it sounds more like a human being, and the needs, and wishes, and weaknesses of a human being so does the bible tell us give us any hint as to where these entities, these Elohim, this Yahweh, where they come from?
Give me an example for example in the Book of Ezekiel, and in the book of Exodus in the book of Exodus the kavod of Yahweh is clearly described that when Moses asked Yahweh of the possibility to see this kavod and Yahweh says to him "you cannot stay in front of kavod, because if you are in front of kavod you die" that is important—and so Yahweh cannot do anything about it so God is impotent, not potent, in front of the of the danger of the kavod and, this is very interesting—Yahweh tells Moses "you can hide yourself behind these rocks" so the rocks can do what God cannot do I absolutely get your point Impressive Yes, very much so.
It's a different story from the story that the Ethiopian National epic tells the Ethiopian National epic is called the Kebra Nagast, "The Glory of Kings" and in that they claim that the Queen of Sheba was an Ethiopian Queen she made her famous biblical visit to the court of Solomon she was made pregnant by Solomon, according to the Ethiopian version she returned to Ethiopia, she bore the child, his name was Menelik, it means "the son of the wise man" and the story is that at the age of about 20 or 21 he went back to Jerusalem, he was recognized by his father, and somehow after one year in the court of Solomon he contrived to steal the Ark of the Covenant this is written in the Kebra Nagast and he carried it off to Ethiopia and we are told in the Kebra Nagast that Solomon was okay with this because it meant that God wanted it to be in Ethiopia rather than somewhere else.
So they were really another kind of Jewish religion indeed so here we come to the interesting point where history connects with this story because that Jewish temple on the island of Elephantine is a fact it did exist there were communications between it and Jerusalem the temple had the same dimensions as the Temple of Solomon when I searched the Bible for an explanation for the construction of the temple, the only explanation I find is as a house of rest for the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord it's a place in which the Ark of the Covenant is to be put and then suddenly while the first Temple still exists, we have another temple built in Egypt of the same dimensions those Ethiopian Jews say that their ancestors were driven out of that Island this also is true we know from the Egyptian history that this happened there was a Jewish community on that island and there was conflict with the Egyptian authorities because the island of Elephantine is dedicated to the Egyptian god Khnum, and Khnum is a ram-headed deity so the tension was caused by the sacrifice of rams that was taking place so the Falashas say, to cut a long story short, that their ancestors fled south they didn't go north through a hostile Egypt and back to Jerusalem they went south and they followed the Nile River system they followed the Blue Nile branch and they ended up in Lake Tana in Ethiopia and that's the heartland of Ethiopian Judaism Lake Tana, which is the source of the Blue Nile and suddenly I could see how this story made sense because how do you get the connection between Jerusalem and Ethiopia what connects them once you come into Egypt and into the Nile Valley, what connects them is the River Nile and it made perfect sense and Lake Tana was the place where the the Falashas had their homeland so once I learned all of this I began to feel that the Ethiopian story really deserved serious investigation and I looked into it in great depth and it was the moment where there was a transition in my life from investigating current affairs issues to investigating the past it put me on that path and the very first thing that I felt about the Ark of the Covenant as I was reading and I read all of the descriptions very very carefully is this thing sounds like a piece of technology it's constructed, it's carefully made, there's a blueprint, there's instructions on what to do, there's gold, there's wood, there's gold, there's these mysterious tablets that are placed inside it, whatever they are and it opened my eyes to the possibility that there might be a forgotten technological episode in the past of humanity and I would not have gone on to write my books about the possibility of a Lost Civilization if I had not first had that encounter with the mystery of the Ark of the Covenant personally I think the Ethiopian claim is rather strong for a lot of reasons but in a way its role in my life was to educate me as to the range of mysteries in the past that archaeologists completely ignore, and just scornfully dismiss they are not interested in myths, in traditions, any such thing they just they just dismiss it and in the process of doing so, as we say in English, they are throwing out the baby with the bath water they're missing important things in their desperate effort to be scientists so it was an important lesson for me there are mysteries in the past that are unexplained, which certainly are not explained by the present model of history, and that that model therefore must be questioned and that's what I've subsequently devoted my life to doing and often I think many mysteries are explained away too simply yeah, that's right, far too simple too simply of a way yeah, definitely but I think that your journey in Ethiopia was a great gift for us all thank you absolutely a great gift for us all thank you, it was an amazing adventure for me and it and it opened my eyes to problems and issues that I had been completely unaware of before and it set me on the track that I'm still that I'm still on today I think it's impossible to understand the human condition in the present if we have only a single view of the past we must have a diversity of views, we must be open to all of them and this is the main problem I have with archeology.
Okay, fortunately we are living in other times yeah fortunately we are, but those times are relatively recent when when the church was capable of burning people at the stake, in extremely painful and awful ways I find a great deal of hypocrisy in the church in this matter I draw your attention particularly to the Spanish conquest of Mexico between 1519 and 1521 those Spaniards who were brutal murderers of the worst kind claimed to be horrified when they witnessed human sacrifice of the Aztecs the Aztecs would carry out acts of human sacrifice but not a single one of them was able to contemplate the possibility that burning a fellow human being at the stake is an act of human sacrifice they are sacrificing that entity to what they believe is God it's no different they were in no position to—but also Yahweh asked for human sacrifice of child tell me more, I didn't know that, please talk to me some more about that in the book of Jeremiah it says that he had the necessity to request these human sacrifices because the people wanted to obey his orders and of course there's the case of Isaac, who Yahweh instructs to kill his—is it Isaac?
Yes He instructs Isaac to sacrifice his son and then changes his mind at the last minute very cruel behavior it was normal, and Abraham accepted it as normal, because Yahweh wanted to test the fate of Abraham and when he saw that Abraham was disposed to give his son in sacrifice, Yahweh sent a so-called angel in Hebrew "malach" that means "messenger" to stop it because Yahweh saw that Abraham was able to kill his son to demonstrate his faith, his availability to obey orders of Yahweh it was normal, absolutely normal so very cruel and obnoxious behavior absolutely Yahweh didn't accept criticism absolutely so he can not be the god of love, absolutely no he was a god of war only a god of war a god, not a god of course but to use this term—an entity of war, a human being who uses war.
Yes, but what is important, and in the conferences, in the lectures, I always say this—I don't say that God does not exist I don't know about God I don't speak about God I only say that in that book there is no spiritual God there are the Elohim, and the Bible is the history of the relationship between Yahweh—one of the Elohim—and one people because Yahweh didn't—he didn't much care about others no, the others did not exist for him, or if they didn't want to submit, they must be exterminated the Bible is this book, nothing else it's really important to get these translations correct in a book that is so influential yes and so I value and respect your work in putting some correction to this record you have a book coming out translated into English, and the English—Elisabetta it's ready?
God's in the Bible okay, so I'm a layman I know nothing about the Bible I've read tiny bits of it as a child and haven't since I know very little so to begin with you've talked a lot about the Elohim but what's the orthodox understanding of what the Elohim are?
God but in the traditional orthodox understanding of the Elohim they're plural, right?
The sons of God mated with the daughters of men they refers to a Greek Bible, not to the Hebrew Bible okay but in that Bible, in the Greek Bible, their orthodox understanding of Elohim, is that to be the same as God, or is that as angels, or is that as a separate beings?
No, Elohim is always translated as "God" "Elohim" in Greek is "Theos" "Elohim" in Hebrew, "Theos" in Greek, "God" in modern translations.
When I had this meeting with those four important theologians all four said that in the Bible we cannot have the certainty of God so I'm sure that the Bible doesn't speak of God, but in that occasion also those theologians said the same thing so they said there's no one God in the Bible?
Many people more and more and more in less than three years in my channel we have almost 25 million views in less than three years okay, but if I go up to any normal priest and say to him "there's no God in the Bible", of course he's going to disagree why should anybody believe your interpretation rather than the orthodox interpretation of the Vatican?
The majority of priests don't want to hear my words because often they are in crisis, because they don't know how to how to answer my questions because I read I read in front of them and I say "explain to me what is written here" and they—okay but there's a body of biblical scholars that around the world who would say that—and also the entire church system would say that there is one God, and he is described in the Bible now that's been that way for two thousand years or more now why would everyone have missed this?
Because they don't want to hear what I'm saying because they are grateful for their faith it's necessary for them, for a human brain it's necessary many scientists studied these questions and they wrote that God is—the image of God is inherent in the brain, and so it's easier to believe in God than not and they don't want—but overall they don't understand what I'm saying I'm not saying that God does not exist absolutely, I don't know, I don't have this truth, absolutely I simply say that that book doesn't speak of God that's all beyond that if God exists, fantastic!
For me no problem, absolutely I don't want to say that God doesn't exist because I don't know I don't know.
So I understand with English we have very flat definitions of words When there's a word it means exactly this—I believe, and I don't speak Hebrew, so I don't know, but I believe Hebrew is much more fluid and much more flexible it's much more difficult so as I understand it there's different ways to read a word yes multiple ways to read a word it's necessary to carefully read the context to understand the meaning of a unique term because for example, "kavod" means "something heavy" meaning "a person of weight" in the sense that that person has an importance in the society it also means "a famous person", a "person of glory" so the theologians chose the term "glory" and always apply it to the term kavod without considering the context but when we read that the context says that "I cannot see the kavod in front of me because it will kill me" "but when the kavod passes I have to be hidden behind rocks" so it cannot be the "glory of God", because God in that case is not able to control the effects of his glory so it's ridiculous so the context implies, in every situation, the possible real meaning of this term so I read a book called Neuro-Apocalypse by a guy called Reverend Danny Nemu, and he went into all of this, and he talked a lot about the serpent in the Bible, and how in the original Hebrew, the word for it says "the serpent Eve" and the translation in the Bible that we get is the serpent "deceived" Eve, but the same word could also mean "elevated", and there's different ways of reading the same word and the whole Bible can be translated in a completely different way, just choosing different interpretations yes but but it's it's necessary to pay attention to pay attention carefully to some few words and these words are the most important: if you understand the real meanings of these terms, you can read another book much more fascinating than the book they presented to us and the serpent is one of the Elohim the interpretation of Hebrew exegesis says that the serpent had two arms, two legs, and so it was like us but serpent, meaning one who knows, one who has a profound knowledge okay?
So you're saying there's no God in the Bible as it was translated from Hebrew to Greek, and yet the Hebrews, the Jewish people, have their own Torah in Hebrew and they're still a monotheistic people, they still believe in one God so if the translation is wrong, why do the Jews believe that there's one God when they have the original text?
They know that in the Hebrew Bible there is Yahweh who is the Elohim who chose them, who rules above them and they have to have faith in him only in him but the other gods can exist do they believe that the other gods do exist?
Or do they believe there is only one God?
There are so many currents in Judaism that you can find every kind of thought in Judaism you can find, from atheism, pure atheism to the maximum of the orthodox beliefs all are present so in your translations of the Bible, your own interpretation of these different words, you've come to the conclusion that there's no God in the Bible at all Yes and there is Elohim which are powerful people of which Yahweh is one and so were these people just—you were saying they were just people, they were just normal people, but they were vastly more technologically superior Yes does that imply—is there any implication at all of them being a different species?
I told you that the words that are usually translated as "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters" really mean that the soul-spiritual essence of the Elohim spreads out, and that this very element of warmth—the kind of warmth we think of as radiating down from the hen into the eggs in the process of brooding—enters into the elements that were there at the time.
With the words "The Spirit of God radiated as a brooding warmth over the elements of the water," you have an indication of the recapitulation of the warmth of ancient Saturn.
This is announced in the mighty words: "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light."
There is a sentence in Genesis which is rendered "And God divided the light from the darkness," and we are then told that light and darkness alternate.
At a particular place it says "And the evening and the morning were the first day," and then it says "And God called the light day." This is a real stumbling block for the scholars.
There is a connection between "deus" and "dies"—God and day.
This superior design is the Cosmic Plan, the very will of Deep Love of Cosmic Consciousness (God), which covers the entire universe, it is said to be cosmic.
At what level or dimension is God?
God is in all levels in all dimensions, in all beings.
“Rahman IS LOVE, GOD IS LOVE, JESUS IS LORD AND THE MISSION IS FOR HUMANITY “
The cities are floating fortresses, invulnerable to the gods.
Eventually, the gods beg Shiva to intervene.
Then later, their remains were dug up, mixed with seed grain, and plowed back into the earth—a grotesque blend of death, decay, and rebirth believed to bless the harvest and appease the gods.
In Norse myth, a Yule boar was offered to Freyr, god of peace and plenty, during the winter solstice—a ritual marking the darkest time of year and the hope of returning light.
In some Mediterranean traditions, pigs were seen as spiritual surrogates, animals offered in place of humans to appease the gods.
In some traditions, they are divine messengers or even gods themselves.
It might be the god of winter knocking at the door.
Animals were slaughtered, meat preserved, shelter prepared, offerings made to the gods, and always the question lingered: Will it be enough?
After Enoch's ascension, God designates Methuselah as a priest, with Noah's brother Nir as his successor.
The Slavonic Book of Enoch (2 Enoch) depicts Methuselah seeking a blessing from Enoch and receiving instructions on righteous living; after Enoch's departure to heaven, Methuselah and his brothers build an altar and celebrate in praise of God.
This verse appears in God's description of Leviathan, a powerful sea creature, as part of a larger speech emphasizing divine control over creation (Job chapters 38–41).
The surrounding verses (Job 41:25–32) depict Leviathan as untamable, with its wake shining and the sea stirred like ointment, underscoring themes of human humility before God's works.
“As has been indicated, in that particular experience there were still those who were physically entangled in the animal kingdom with appendages, with cloven-hooves, with four legs, with portions of trees, with tails, with scales, with those various things that thought forms (or evil) had so indulged in as to separate the purpose of God’s creation of man, as man – not as animal but as man.
The Temple of Sacrifice; sacrificing self that the spirit, the purpose, the love of God might be made manifest through the individual.”
And in that near-death experience, it was almost like you called out to God saying, "Give me a job.
To your point, I was saying, "Hey God, give me a job.
And now this teaching of "asking and therefore it is given to you" really clicked for you when you asked God during your near-death experience, "Give me a job."
When you make a commitment to God to live, to stay in your body, you don't say no.
And Theo is the beginning or God.
And that's the symbol for Theo or God.
That's our God-given right, by the way.
God's love unto you.
In Hindu, it's Nagas; in Tibet, it's Shambhala; in Greek, it's Hades; and in North American culture, there are many beings ranging from gods to demons living deep underground.
Many believe that the book "The Smoky God" tells a true story and not just a legend.
And funnily enough, in several inner Earth books like "The Smoky God," the inner Earth has a constant temperature of 23.5 degrees during all times of day.
Emerson wrote "The Smoky God or Voyage to the Inner World," published in 1908.
These are tales; no fairies or gods exist.
You were very easy to manipulate and control by many aspects of consciousness passing themselves off as God with a big G.
We have talked about how all of you were built by the creator gods.
Fully vulnerable, God held my hand; we sped through my DNA spirals, feeling strands on my skin.
God-consciousness was to reduce this threefold flame of life to a mere one-sixteenth of an inch.
Humanity could no longer misuse God’s powers and energies.
Unkulunkulu is equated with Umvelinqangi, the "first out-comer," emphasizing his role as creator without implying a divine transcendence like a heavenly god.
Pre-missionary beliefs lacked a supreme deity; missionaries later equated this lord with Utikxo (among Amakxosa) or God.
Unlike anthropomorphic gods in other traditions, it lacks a detailed personal narrative but embodies control over the elements.
Umvelinqangi serves as a sky god, distinct from Unkulunkulu, the earthly progenitor of humanity.
Some argue it reflects European influence, while others, based on oral evidence, affirm its indigenous roots as a sky god greater than Unkulunkulu.
"Then Adam said to Eve, 'When we were on the mountain we were comforted by the Word of God that conversed with us; and the light that came from the east shown over us.
But now the Word of God is hidden from us; and the light that shown over us is so changed as to disappear, and let darkness and sorrow come over us.
And we are forced to enter this cave which is like a prison, in which darkness covers us, so that we are separated from each other; and you can not see me, neither can I see you.' When Adam had said these words, they cried and spread their hands before God; for they were full of sorrow.
And they prayed to God to bring the sun to them, to shine on them, so that darkness would not return to them, and that they wouldn't have to go under this covering of rock.
He then cried and beat his chest, then he fell on the ground on his face and made his request, saying: 'O Lord, plague me not, neither consume me, nor yet take away my life from the earth.' For he thought the sun was God."
The statement that "God created man in his own image" is correct from either the physical or spiritual point of view.
Thus the material self is also in the image of the material "gods."
Aymaran myth (South America, Bolivia/Peru): Humans, made from clay by the creator god Pachacamac, emerge as various tribes from different openings in the Earth after a flood destroys a previous race.
Hungarian myth (European, Hungary): Eye seeds and Magya seeds lie below a primeval sea; a sun god as a golden duck retrieves them, awakening animals and the Magyars as they emerge to the surface.
See the list of mountains that are linked to different Gods.
So they're used to talking about God and the devil and Satan and angels and demons.
So we come to the Elohim and we're used to seeing that word translated as God or gods, but it can be translated as landlords or chieftains.
So the Elohim is the Bible's earliest word that gets translated as God.
So unfortunately, when Christians read the Hebrew scriptures and see the Lord, naturally they think these are stories of God.
But you go back to the beginning of Christian history and there were plenty of really central church fathers who said the Yahweh stories and Elohim stories cannot be understood as God's stories because they are morally incompatible with the teachings of Jesus.
And it's a bit of a smoking gun that in all the gospels and New Testament, neither Jesus nor anyone who writes for him ever uses the word Yahweh as a word for God.
He taught about theos which is the Greek concept of God: the source of the cosmos and everything in it.
Elevating this Yahweh character into God—and in The Eden Conspiracy, I show how that happened—means you've just empowered your kings and queens and emperors to use violence and force and brutality to manage their own societies and invade other people's countries because they can do all that in the name of God.
Because isn't that how God behaved?
Once we disentangle this and realize, yes, there are God's stories in the Bible, but the Elohim and Yahweh stories are something else, we break the chain of that logic.
And it got excluded because what the empire wanted—I mean the Roman Empire—out of Christianity and out of its canon was a neatly ordered theocratic society where you've got God at the top and then the emperor somewhere close to him, then the bishops and the senators in the middle telling everyone what to do, making the laws, and then the priests and the people at the bottom just meekly paying, praying, and obeying.
That's why the Gnostic texts and the Book of Enoch were excluded at the beginning of Christianity: to keep the picture simple so that obeying God and obeying the state amount to more or less the same thing.
Does that sound anything like the character of God as Jesus portrays God?
So how is it that for the best part of 2000 years, Christianity has run with the idea that the Yahweh character in the Hebrew scriptures is a portrayal of God, and that that is the God that Jesus worshiped?
Saul said, "They have been brought from Amalek, the people having spared the best of the sheep and cattle to sacrifice them to Yahweh your God; the rest we have consigned to the curse of destruction."
And from the booty, the people have taken the best sheep and cattle and what was under the curse of destruction only to sacrifice them to Yahweh your God in Gilgal."
Now let's be honest: does that sound anything like the character of God as Jesus describes God in the Gospels?
That is nothing like the qualities of God revealed by Jesus and those who wrote for him in the New Testament.
When those writers describe the character of God, they speak about a god of love and forgiveness—love which is patient and kind, never jealous, not boastful or conceited, is never rude, never seeks its own advantage, doesn't take offense or store up grievances.
And how is it that Christianity, for the best part of 2000 years, has run with the idea that the Yahweh character of the Hebrew scriptures is a portrayal of God, and that that is the God that Jesus worshiped?
What I argue in The Eden Conspiracy is that although Yahweh later became used as the holy name for God, originally Yahweh referenced an entity which colonized our Hebrew ancestors and governed over them with brutality.
And that Yahweh was not a portrayal of God and was certainly not the God whom Jesus called Father.
El Shaddai does not mean that, and they suggest it could mean either "God of the mountains" or "God of the plains."
If Yahweh's character is so abominable, why is it that for so long Christians have identified their concept of God—a transcendent, loving God—with the character of Yahweh in the Hebrew scriptures?
By the time Jesus came on the scene, Yahweh was being used as the holy name for God; it was the name for the Jewish God.
When he criticizes their theology, they reply: "We are not illegitimate children; the only father we have is God."
Jesus answered: "If God were your father, you would love me, since I have my origin in God and have come from him.
Now, "father" was the language that Jesus used to address God.
Now, the Gospels and New Testament are written in Greek, and so the word "God" is "Theos," and the concept was fairly established that this referred to the God and source of the cosmos and everything in it—that in which we all live and move and have our being, of which we are all offspring.
And Jesus in Matthew 7 and Luke 11 says: "What kind of father would treat his children like that?" He makes a mockery of the Yahweh stories as if they were depictions of the God whom he called Father.
There's the king and his God Yahweh; all the others will be forgotten.
And so we now have an ordered theocracy with one God, one king, one high priest, one temple in Jerusalem—all the tithes coming there, and only the one high priest telling us what's what, what's true, what's false, what's news, what's fake news.
And what they are saying is: we should be sure that Christians moving forward don't worship anything that is less than God.
Don't eat meat sacrificed to idols; our worship is of God, the source of the cosmos and everything in it—that in which we all live and move and have our being, of which we are all offspring.
That's how the Apostle Paul defines God in Acts 17.
And towards the end of John's Gospel, he makes clear to his Jewish followers that his God and Father was something unknown to them.
But Jesus is now saying: my God and Father—what I'm talking about—is something new to you.
So by the time we have the reconstruction of the temple and Ezra the senior priest overseeing that, we now have a set of scriptures teaching Yahwism: there's only one God, and his name is Yahweh.
The problem with gluing them together is that it sends the signal that this God whom we call Yahweh is the same God whom Jesus worshiped and taught about.
Though Yahweh came to be used as the holy name for God, originally it referred to this colonizing entity—this experience of colonization and brutalization by other non-human powers.
And the problem is, if you confuse those things—if you confuse God with a dragon, if you confuse God with a colonizer, if you confuse God with a violent, genocidal, jealous ET entity that has no empathy towards its humans—you end up with a very distorted vision not only of God but of yourself.
If you worship a God who divides the human race into "my people" and "not my people," you will have to think in that same racist kind of way.
And indeed we have through the ages: we've justified invasions, colonizations, enslavements, misogyny, all kinds of violence and injustice in the name of a violent God.
And my books—The Eden Conspiracy, Escaping from Eden, The Scars of Eden, Echoes of Eden—argue that the time is more than due for us to unravel this connection: to be sure that when we use the word "God," we're speaking only of the source of the cosmos and everything in it—that in which we all live and move and have our being, of which we are all offspring—which is a beautiful, inclusive vision in the words of the Apostle Paul in Acts 17.
And that we do not consider the Yahweh figure of the Hebrew stories as God.
We have Yahweh, El Shaddai, Elyon, all the Elohim, the elohim adah—they are stories of paleo-contact, not of "Almighty God," which turns out to be an invented translation altogether.
Yahweh was all about: "You worship me and nobody else because I'm a jealous God." And Jesus said: "I didn't come to be served; I came to help you."
The God to whose temple they are going is the lawgiver of Crete, and this may be supposed to be the very cave at which he gave his oracles to Minos.
Nothing in life seems to be of much importance to them; they are spectators rather than actors, and men in general appear to the Athenian speaker to be the playthings of the Gods and of circumstances.
Chance, and God, and the skill of the legislator, all co-operate in the formation of states.
And the answer is, that we are to fear God, and honour our parents, and to cultivate virtue and justice; these are to be our first principles.
In the first class are placed offences against the Gods, especially sacrilege or robbery of temples: next follow offences against the state,—conspiracy, treason, theft.
The law is preceded by an admonition, in which the offenders are informed that no one ever did an unholy act or said an unlawful word while he retained his belief in the existence of the Gods; but either he denied their existence, or he believed that they took no care of man, or that they might be turned from their course by sacrifices and prayers.
'Let us say, if you please, that man is of some account, but I was speaking of him in comparison with God.'
Yet the comparisons of life to a tragedy, or of the working of mind to the revolution of the self-moved, or of the aged parent to the image of a God dwelling in the house, or the reflection that 'man is made to be the plaything of God, and that this rightly considered is the best of him,' have great beauty.
In several passages the Athenian praises himself in the most unblushing manner, very unlike the irony of the earlier dialogues, as when he declares that 'the laws are a divine work given by some inspiration of the Gods,' and that 'youth should commit them to memory instead of the compositions of the poets.' The prosopopoeia which is adopted by Plato in the Protagoras and other dialogues is repeated until we grow weary of it.
For example, the address to the poets: 'Best of strangers, we also are poets of the best and noblest tragedy; for our whole state is an imitation of the best and noblest life, which we affirm to be indeed the very truth of tragedy.' Or again, the sight of young men and maidens in friendly intercourse with one another, suggesting the dangers to which youth is liable from the violence of passion; or the eloquent denunciation of unnatural lusts in the same passage; or the charming thought that the best legislator 'orders war for the sake of peace and not peace for the sake of war;' or the pleasant allusion, 'O Athenian—inhabitant of Attica, I will not say, for you seem to me worthy to be named after the Goddess Athene because you go back to first principles;' or the pithy saying, 'Many a victory has been and will be suicidal to the victors, but education is never suicidal;' or the fine expression that 'the walls of a city should be allowed to sleep in the earth, and that we should not attempt to disinter them;' or the remark that 'God is the measure of all things in a sense far higher than any man can be;' or that 'a man should be from the first a partaker of the truth, that he may live a true man as long as possible;' or the principle repeatedly laid down, that 'the sins of the fathers are not to be visited on the children;' or the description of the funeral rites of those priestly sages who depart in innocence; or the noble sentiment, that we should do more justice to slaves than to equals; or the curious observation, founded, perhaps, on his own experience, that there are a few 'divine men in every state however corrupt, whose conversation is of inestimable value;' or the acute remark, that public opinion is to be respected, because the judgments of mankind about virtue are better than their practice; or the deep religious and also modern feeling which pervades the tenth book (whatever may be thought of the arguments); the sense of the duty of living as a part of a whole, and in dependence on the will of God, who takes care of the least things as well as the greatest; and the picture of parents praying for their children—not as we may say, slightly altering the words of Plato, as if there were no truth or reality in the Gentile religions, but as if there were the greatest—are very striking to us.
But, on the other hand, the priority of the soul to the body, and of God to the soul, is always insisted upon as the true incentive to virtue; especially with great force and eloquence at the commencement of Book v.
The principle that the balance of power preserves states; the reflection that no one ever passed his whole life in disbelief of the Gods; the remark that the characters of men are best seen in convivial intercourse; the observation that the people must be allowed to share not only in the government, but in the administration of justice; the desire to make laws, not with a view to courage only, but to all virtue; the clear perception that education begins with birth, or even, as he would say, before birth; the attempt to purify religion; the modern reflections, that punishment is not vindictive, and that limits must be set to the power of bequest; the impossibility of undeceiving the victims of quacks and jugglers; the provision for water, and for other requirements of health, and for concealing the bodies of the dead with as little hurt as possible to the living; above all, perhaps, the distinct consciousness that under the actual circumstances of mankind the ideal cannot be carried out, and yet may be a guiding principle—will appear to us, if we remember that we are still in the dawn of politics, to show a great depth of political wisdom.
That men are the possession of the Gods (Laws), is a reflection which likewise occurs in the Phaedo.
The remark, whether serious or ironical (Laws), that 'the sons of the Gods naturally believed in the Gods, because they had the means of knowing about them,' is found in the Timaeus.
The Republic is the ideal, in which no man calls anything his own, which may or may not have existed in some remote clime, under the rule of some God, or son of a God (who can say?), but is, at any rate, the pattern of all other states and the exemplar of human life.
His thoughts recur to a golden age in which the sanctity of oaths was respected and in which men living nearer the Gods were more disposed to believe in them; but we must legislate for the world as it is, now that the old beliefs have passed away.
In some respects the Statesman is even more ideal than the Republic, looking back to a former state of paradisiacal life, in which the Gods ruled over mankind, as the Republic looks forward to a coming kingdom of philosophers.
Strangers, let me ask a question of you—Was a God or a man the author of your laws?
'A God, Stranger.
The lesser goods are health, beauty, strength, and, lastly, wealth; not the blind God, Pluto, but one who has eyes to see and follow wisdom.
And the Cretans are said to have invented the tale of Zeus and Ganymede in order to justify their evil practices by the example of the God who was their lawgiver.
But, first, I must define the nature and power of education, and by this road we will travel on to the God Dionysus.
'We cannot follow you.' Let me put the matter in another way: Every creature is a puppet of the Gods—whether he is a mere plaything or has any serious use we do not know; but this we do know, that he is drawn different ways by cords and strings.
The individual follows reason, and the city law, which is embodied reason, either derived from the Gods or from the legislator.
'That is reasonable enough.' And now, suppose that the Gods had given mankind a drug, of which the effect was to exaggerate every sort of evil and danger, so that the bravest man entirely lost his presence of mind and became a coward for a time:—would such a drug have any value?
'Very true.' Let us return to the lawgiver and say to him, 'Well, lawgiver, no such fear-producing potion has been given by God or invented by man, but there is a potion which will make men fearless.' 'You mean wine.' Yes; has not wine an effect the contrary of that which I was just now describing,—first mellowing and humanizing a man, and then filling him with confidence, making him ready to say or do anything?
But the finer sense of pleasure and pain is apt to be impaired in the course of life; and therefore the Gods, pitying the toils and sorrows of mortals, have allowed them to have holidays, and given them the Muses and Apollo and Dionysus for leaders and playfellows.
But the particular enactments must be the work of God or of some God-inspired man, as in Egypt their ancient chants are said to be the composition of the goddess Isis.
For he must lead the multitude and not be led by them, and must not weakly yield to the uproar of the theatre, nor give false judgment out of that mouth which has just appealed to the Gods.
And they said'—'The pleasant life,' this is an answer not fit for a God to utter, and therefore I ought rather to put the same question to some legislator.
Is the approval of gods and men to be deemed good and honourable, but unpleasant, and their disapproval the reverse?
First will enter the choir of children, who will lift up their voices on high; and after them the young men, who will pray the God Paean to be gracious to the youth, and to testify to the truth of their words; then will come the chorus of elder men, between thirty and sixty; and, lastly, there will be the old men, and they will tell stories enforcing the same virtues, as with the voice of an oracle.
'Whom do you mean by the third chorus?' You remember how I spoke at first of the restless nature of young creatures, who jumped about and called out in a disorderly manner, and I said that no other animal attained any perception of rhythm; but that to us the Gods gave Apollo and the Muses and Dionysus to be our playfellows.
'Most true.' And there is a seventh kind of rule which the Gods love,—in this the ruler is elected by lot.
In order to guard against this evil, the God who watched over Sparta gave you two kings instead of one, that they might balance one another; and further to lower the pulse of your body politic, some human wisdom, mingled with divine power, tempered the strength and self-sufficiency of youth with the moderation of age in the institution of your senate.
Now that God has instructed us in the arts of legislation, there is no merit in seeing all this, or in learning wisdom after the event.
Their case seemed desperate, for there was no Hellene likely to assist them by land, and at sea they were attacked by more than a thousand vessels;—their only hope, however slender, was in victory; so they relied upon themselves and upon the Gods.
'Most true.' And with this freedom comes disobedience to rulers, parents, elders,—in the latter days to the law also; the end returns to the beginning, and the old Titanic nature reappears—men have no regard for the Gods or for oaths; and the evils of the human race seem as if they would never cease.
'What is it?' That God governs all things, and that chance and opportunity co-operate with Him.
When God has done all this, He has done the best which He can for a state; not so well if He has given them two legislators instead of one, and less and less well if He has given them a great many.
Cronos, then lord of the world, knew that no mortal nature could endure the temptations of power, and therefore he appointed demons or demi-gods, who are of a superior race, to have dominion over man, as man has dominion over the animals.
They took care of us with great ease and pleasure to themselves, and no less to us; and the tradition says that only when God, and not man, is the ruler, can the human race cease from ill.
But those who are obedient to the laws, and who win the victory of obedience, shall be promoted to the service of the Gods according to the degree of their obedience.
Friends, we say to them, God holds in His hand the beginning, middle, and end of all things, and He moves in a straight line towards the accomplishment of His will.
He who would be happy follows humbly in her train; but he who is lifted up with pride, or wealth, or honour, or beauty, is soon deserted by God, and, being deserted, he lives in confusion and disorder.
'Every man ought to follow God.' What life, then, is pleasing to God?
There is an old saying that 'like agrees with like, measure with measure,' and God ought to be our measure in all things.
The temperate man is the friend of God because he is like Him, and the intemperate man is not His friend, because he is not like Him.
And the conclusion is, that the best of all things for a good man is to pray and sacrifice to the Gods; but the bad man has a polluted soul; and therefore his service is wasted upon the Gods, while the good are accepted of them.
In the first place we affirm, that after the Olympian Gods and the Gods of the state, honour should be given to the Gods below, and to them should be offered everything in even numbers and of the second choice; the auspicious odd numbers and everything of the first choice are reserved for the Gods above.
Next demi-gods or spirits must be honoured, and then heroes, and after them family gods, who will be worshipped at their local seats according to law.
Living on this wise, we shall be accepted of the Gods, and shall pass our days in good hope.
'Most true: and now, having a preamble, let us recommence our discourse.' Enough has been said of Gods and parents, and we may proceed to consider what relates to the citizens—their souls, bodies, properties,—their occupations and amusements; and so arrive at the nature of education.
In the words of a great English writer—'Her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world.' Though the particular laws of Sparta and Crete had a narrow and imperfect aim, this is not true of divine laws, which are based upon the principles of human nature, and not framed to meet the exigencies of the moment.
Drunkenness, like madness, had a sacredness and mystery to the Greek; if, on the one hand, as in the case of the Tarentines, it degraded a whole population, it was also a mode of worshipping the god Dionysus, which was to be practised on certain occasions.
Right and wrong, instead of being measured by the will of God, are created by the law of the state.
The strongest assertions are made of the purely spiritual nature of religion—'Without holiness no man is accepted of God'; and of the duty of filial obedience,—'Honour thy parents.' The legislator must teach these precepts as well as command them.
They all go back to mind and God, who holds the beginning, middle, and end of all things in His hand.
But we admit also that God governs all things, and that chance and opportunity co-operate with Him (compare the saying, that chance is the name of the unknown cause).
Lastly, while we acknowledge that God and chance govern mankind and provide the conditions of human action, experience will not allow us to deny a place to art.
Hear now, all ye who heard the laws about Gods and ancestors: Of all human possessions the soul is most divine, and most truly a man's own.
Wherefore I bid every one next after the Gods to honour his own soul, and he can only honour her by making her better.
Wherefore also the soul is second only to the Gods in honour, and in the third place the body is to be esteemed, which often has a false honour.
He who honours his kindred and family may fairly expect that the Gods will give him children.
Engagements with strangers are to be deemed most sacred, because the stranger, having neither kindred nor friends, is immediately under the protection of Zeus, the God of strangers.
A prudent man will not sin against the stranger; and still more carefully will he avoid sinning against the suppliant, which is an offence never passed over by the Gods.
Truth has the first place among the gifts of Gods and men, for truth begets trust; but he is not to be trusted who loves voluntary falsehood, and he who loves involuntary falsehood is a fool.
Let no man either laugh or grieve overmuch; but let him control his feelings in the day of good- or ill-fortune, believing that the Gods will diminish the evils and increase the blessings of the righteous.
So much of divine matters and the relation of man to God.
Every division should have a patron God or hero; to these a portion of the domain should be appropriated, and at their temples the inhabitants of the districts should meet together from time to time, for the sake of mutual help and friendship.
This is the ideal state; than which there never can be a truer or better—a state, whether inhabited by Gods or sons of Gods, which will make the dwellers therein blessed.
Inasmuch as our citizens are not fitted either by nature or education to receive the saying, Friends have all things in common, let them retain their houses and private property, but use them in the service of their country, who is their God and parent, and of the Gods and demigods of the land.
This may be secured in the following manner: when the possessor of a lot dies, he shall leave his lot to his best-beloved child, who will become the heir of all duties and interests, and will minister to the Gods and to the family, to the living and to the dead.
If, on the other hand, a war or plague diminishes the number of inhabitants, new citizens must be introduced; and these ought not, if possible, to be men of low birth or inferior training; but even God, it is said, cannot always fight against necessity.
Secondly, respect the original division of the lots, which must not be infringed by buying and selling, for the law says that the land which a man has is sacred and is given to him by God.
The guardians will keep a vigilant watch over the citizens, and they will punish those who disobey God and the law.
He who exceeds the limit must give up the excess to the state; but if he does not, and is informed against, the surplus shall be divided between the informer and the Gods, and he shall pay a sum equal to the surplus out Of his own property.
Twelve lots will be assigned to twelve Gods, and they will give their names to the tribes.
For it is clear that there are great differences in the power of regions to produce good men: heat and cold, and water and food, have great effects both on body and soul; and those spots are peculiarly fortunate in which the air is holy, and the Gods are pleased to dwell.
'Very good.' Yes; and I will be as good as my word, if God be gracious and old age permit.
But justice cannot always be strictly enforced, and then equity and mercy have to be substituted: and for a similar reason, when true justice will not be endured, we must have recourse to the rougher justice of the lot, which God must be entreated to guide.
Those who hold the priestly office by hereditary tenure shall not be disturbed; but as there will probably be few or none such in a new colony, priests and priestesses shall be appointed for the Gods who have no servants.
The appointment of priests should be left to God,—that is, to the lot; but the person elected must prove that he is himself sound in body and of legitimate birth, and that his family has been free from homicide or any other stain of impurity.
These shall be elected in the following manner:—The twelve tribes shall be formed into three bodies of four, each of which shall select four candidates, and this shall be done three times: of each twelve thus selected the three who receive the largest number of votes, nine in all, after undergoing a scrutiny shall go to Delphi, in order that the God may elect one out of each triad.
They will lead the streams to the temples and groves of the Gods; and in such spots the youth shall make gymnasia for themselves, and warm baths for the aged; there the rustic worn with toil will receive a kindly welcome, and be far better treated than at the hands of an unskilful doctor.
Now by service a man learns to rule; and he should pride himself upon serving well the laws and the Gods all his life, and upon having served ancient and honourable men in his youth.
Every divisor is a gift of God, and corresponds to the months of the year and to the revolution of the universe.
And now let us divide the state, assigning to each division some God or demigod, who shall have altars raised to them, and sacrifices offered twice a month; and assemblies shall be held in their honour, twelve for the tribes, and twelve for the city, corresponding to their divisions.
And do not forget our former precept, that every one should seek to attain immortality and raise up a fair posterity to serve God.—Let this be the prelude of the law about the duty of marriage.
The bride and bridegroom, who are taking a great step in life, ought to have all their wits about them; they should be especially careful of the night on which God may give them increase, and which this will be none can say.
Near the temples, which are holy places and the habitations of the Gods, should be buildings for the magistrates, and the courts of law, including those in which capital offences are to be tried.
These three disorders of mankind we must endeavour to restrain by three mighty influences—fear, and law, and reason, which, with the aid of the Muses and the Gods of contests, may extinguish our lusts.
He should embrace the mean, and cultivate that state of calm which mankind, taught by some inspiration, attribute to God; and he who would be like God should neither be too fond of pleasure himself, nor should he permit any other to be thus given; above all, not the infant, whose character is just in the making.
'What is their method?' They make a calendar for the year, arranging on what days the festivals of the various Gods shall be celebrated, and for each festival they consecrate an appropriate hymn and dance.
A fourth musical law will be to the effect that hymns and praises shall be offered to Gods, and to heroes and demigods.
'Very good.' I say then, that God is the object of a man's most serious endeavours.
But man is created to be the plaything of the Gods; and therefore the aim of every one should be to pass through life, not in grim earnest, but playing at the noblest of pastimes, in another spirit from that which now prevails.
They should live sacrificing, singing, and dancing, with the view of propitiating Gods and heroes.
I have already told you the types of song and dance which they should follow: and 'Some things,' as the poet well says, 'you will devise for yourself—others, God will suggest to you.'
They will partly teach themselves, and partly will be taught by God, the art of propitiating Him; for they are His puppets, and have only a small portion in truth.
'You have a poor opinion of man.' No wonder, when I compare him with God; but, if you are offended, I will place him a little higher.
Him we will address as follows: We have spoken to you, O illustrious teacher of youth, of the song, the time, and the dance, and of martial strains; but of the learning of letters and of prose writings, and of music, and of the use of calculation for military and domestic purposes we have not spoken, nor yet of the higher use of numbers in reckoning divine things—such as the revolutions of the stars, or the arrangements of days, months, and years, of which the true calculation is necessary in order that seasons and festivals may proceed in regular course, and arouse and enliven the city, rendering to the Gods their due, and making men know them better.
But most persons must be content with the study of them which is absolutely necessary, and may be said to be a necessity of that nature against which God himself is unable to contend.
'What are these divine necessities of knowledge?' Necessities of a knowledge without which neither gods, nor demigods, can govern mankind.
Men often suppose that it is impious to enquire into the nature of God and the world, whereas the very reverse is the truth.
'How do you mean?' What I am going to say may seem absurd and at variance with the usual language of age, and yet if true and advantageous to the state, and pleasing to God, ought not to be withheld.
And if that is a ridiculous error in speaking of men, how much more in speaking of the Gods?
Moreover there shall be twelve festivals to the twelve Gods after whom the twelve tribes are named: these shall be celebrated every month with appropriate musical and gymnastic contests.
Nor shall the Gods below be forgotten, but they must be separated from the Gods above—Pluto shall have his own in the twelfth month.
But there is another subject of the highest importance, which, if possible, should be determined by the laws, not of man, but of God; or, if a direct revelation is impossible, there is need of some bold man who, alone against the world, will speak plainly of the corruption of human nature, and go to war with the passions of mankind.
'What is it?' The declaration that such things are hateful to the Gods, and most abominable and unholy.
Perhaps this is a dream only, yet it is the best of dreams; and if not the whole, still, by the grace of God, a part of what we desire may be realized.
For this is 'to move the immoveable'; and Zeus, the God of kindred, witnesses to the wrongs of citizens, and Zeus, the God of strangers, to the wrongs of strangers.
The offence of removing a boundary shall receive two punishments—the first will be inflicted by the God himself; the second by the judges.
In autumn God gives us two boons—one the joy of Dionysus not to be laid up—the other to be laid up.
Nothing unnecessary is to be imported from abroad, whether for the service of the Gods or for the use of man—neither purple, nor other dyes, nor frankincense,—and nothing needed in the country is to be exported.
The will of God, the authority of the legislator, and the dignity of the soul, have taken their place in the mind of Plato.
The remark that elder men, if they want to educate others, should begin by educating themselves; the necessity of creating a spirit of obedience in the citizens; the desirableness of limiting property; the importance of parochial districts, each to be placed under the protection of some God or demigod, have almost the tone of a modern writer.
He has now lost faith in the practicability of his scheme—he is speaking to 'men, and not to Gods or sons of Gods' (Laws).
To make the soul as good as possible, and to prepare her for communion with the Gods in another world by communion with divine virtue in this, is the end of life.
As in the Republic, he fixes certain forms in which songs are to be composed: (1) they are to be strains of cheerfulness and good omen; (2) they are to be hymns or prayers addressed to the Gods; (3) they are to sing only of the lawful and good.
Two thoughts seem to be struggling in his mind: first, the reflection, to which he returns at the end of the passage, that men are playthings or puppets, and that God only is the serious aim of human endeavours; this suggests to him the afterthought that, although playthings, they are the playthings of the Gods, and that this is the best of them.
In another passage he says that life is a game of which God, who is the player, shifts the pieces so as to procure the victory of good on the whole.
Again, life is a chorus, as well as a sort of mystery, in which we have the Gods for playmates.
But neither wars nor amusements are the true satisfaction of men, which is to be found only in the society of the Gods, in sacrificing to them and propitiating them.
But unnatural unions of another kind continued to prevail at Crete and Lacedaemon, and were even justified by the example of the Gods.
But seeing that we are legislating for men and not for Gods, there is no uncharitableness in apprehending that some one of our citizens may have a heart, like the seed which has touched the ox's horn, so hard as to be impenetrable to the law.
To the intending robber we will say—O sir, the complaint which troubles you is not human; but some curse has fallen upon you, inherited from the crimes of your ancestors, of which you must purge yourself: go and sacrifice to the Gods, associate with the good, avoid the wicked; and if you are cured of the fatal impulse, well; but if not, acknowledge death to be better than life, and depart.
The manner of his burial and the purification of his crime is a matter for God and the interpreters to decide and for his kinsmen to execute.
But since God has favoured both him and his victim, instead of being put to death, he shall be allowed to go into exile and take his property with him, the damage due to the sufferer having been previously estimated by the court, which shall be the same as would have tried the case if death had ensued.
An injury done by a younger man to an elder is abominable and hateful; but the younger man who is struck by an elder is to bear with him patiently, considering that he who is twenty years older is loco parentis, and remembering the reverence which is due to the Gods who preside over birth.
The uttermost penalty will fall upon those who lay violent hands upon a parent, having no fear of the Gods above, or of the punishments which will pursue them in the world below.
Most of these offences have been already considered; but there remains the question of admonition and punishment of offences against the Gods.
Let the admonition be in the following terms:—No man who ever intentionally did or said anything impious, had a true belief in the existence of the Gods; but either he thought that there were no Gods, or that they did not care about men, or that they were easily appeased by sacrifices and prayers.
'What will they say?' Probably something of this kind:—'Strangers you are right in thinking that some of us do not believe in the existence of the Gods; while others assert that they do not care for us, and others that they are propitiated by prayers and offerings.
But we want you to argue with us before you threaten; you should prove to us by reasonable evidence that there are Gods, and that they are too good to be bribed.
'Well, there is no difficulty in proving the being of the Gods.
The oldest of them relate the origin of the world, and the birth and life of the Gods.
These narratives have a bad influence on family relations; but as they are old we will let them pass, and consider another kind of tales, invented by the wisdom of a younger generation, who, if any one argues for the existence of the Gods and claims that the stars have a divine being, insist that these are mere earth and stones, which can have no care of human things, and that all theology is a cooking up of words.
Shall we suppose some impious man to charge us with assuming the existence of the Gods, and make a defence?
The proof that there are Gods who are good, and the friends of justice, is the best preamble of all our laws.' Come, let us talk with the impious, who have been brought up from their infancy in the belief of religion, and have heard their own fathers and mothers praying for them and talking with the Gods as if they were absolutely convinced of their existence; who have seen mankind prostrate in prayer at the rising and setting of the sun and moon and at every turn of fortune, and have dared to despise and disbelieve all this.
You and your friends are not the first or the only persons who have had these notions about the Gods.
There are always a considerable number who are infected by them: I have known many myself, and can assure you that no one who was an unbeliever in his youth ever persisted till he was old in denying the existence of the Gods.
The two other opinions, first, that the Gods exist and have no care of men, secondly, that they care for men, but may be propitiated by sacrifices and prayers, may indeed last through life in a few instances, but even this is not common.
'How do you mean?' In the first place, they say that the Gods exist neither by nature nor by art, but by the laws of states, which are different in different countries; and that virtue is one thing by nature and another by convention; and that justice is altogether conventional, made by law, and having authority for the moment only.
This is repeated to young men by sages and poets, and leads to impiety, and the pretended life according to nature and in disobedience to law; for nobody believes the Gods to be such as the law affirms.
'Nay, Stranger, the legislator ought never to weary of trying to persuade the world that there are Gods; and he should declare that law and art exist by nature.' Yes, Cleinias; but these are difficult and tedious questions.
'And shall our patience, which was not exhausted in the enquiry about music or drink, fail now that we are discoursing about the Gods?
But first I must pray the Gods to assist at the demonstration of their own existence—if ever we are to call upon them, now is the time.
'Yes, in one of those ways the soul must guide all things.' And this soul of the sun, which is better than the sun, whether driving him in a chariot or employing any other agency, is by every man called a God?
'Yes, by every man who has any sense.' And of the seasons, stars, moon, and year, in like manner, it may be affirmed that the soul or souls from which they derive their excellence are divine; and without insisting on the manner of their working, no one can deny that all things are full of Gods.
'No one.' And now let us offer an alternative to him who denies that there are Gods.
Either he must show that the soul is not the origin of all things, or he must live for the future in the belief that there are Gods.
Next, as to the man who believes in the Gods, but refuses to acknowledge that they take care of human things—let him too have a word of admonition.
'Best of men,' we will say to him, 'some affinity to the Gods leads you to honour them and to believe in them.
Or you have seen the wicked growing old in prosperity, and leaving great offices to their children; or you have watched the tyrant succeeding in his career of crime; and considering all these things you have been led to believe in an irrational way that the Gods take no care of human affairs.
'Very good.' He will easily be convinced that the Gods care for the small as well as the great; for he heard what was said of their goodness and of their having all things under their care.
'He certainly heard.' Then now let us enquire what is meant by the virtue of the Gods.
'Certainly.' And to the Gods we ascribe virtues; but idleness and indolence are not virtues.
'Of course not.' And is God to be conceived of as a careless, indolent fellow, such as the poet would compare to a stingless drone?
Whether God or man, he who does so, must either think the neglect of such matters to be of no consequence, or he is indolent and careless.
And now we will examine the two classes of offenders who admit that there are Gods, but say,—the one that they may be appeased, the other that they take no care of small matters: do they not acknowledge that the Gods are omnipotent and omniscient, and also good and perfect?
'Certainly.' Then they cannot be indolent, for indolence is the offspring of idleness, and idleness of cowardice, and there is no cowardice in God.
'True.' If the Gods neglect small matters, they must either know or not know that such things are not to be regarded.
'Impossible.' And do not all human things share in soul, and is not man the most religious of animals and the possession of the Gods?
And the Gods, who are the best of owners, will surely take care of their property, small or great.
And God is not inferior to mortal craftsmen, who in proportion to their skill are careful in the details of their work; we must not imagine the best and wisest to be a lazy good-for-nothing, who wearies of his work and hurries over small and easy matters.
'Never, never!' He who charges the Gods with neglect has been forced to admit his error; but I should like further to persuade him that the author of all has made every part for the sake of the whole, and that the smallest part has an appointed state of action or passion, and that the least action or passion of any part has a presiding minister.
'What do you mean?' I mean that God acts in the way which is simplest and easiest.
This,—as we declare to the youth who fancies that he is neglected of the Gods,—is the law of divine justice—the worse to the worse, the better to the better, like to like, in life and in death.
This is also the explanation of the seeming prosperity of the wicked, in whose actions as in a mirror you imagined that you saw the neglect of the Gods, not considering that they make all things contribute to the whole.
And how then could you form any idea of true happiness?—If Cleinias and Megillus and I have succeeded in persuading you that you know not what you say about the Gods, God will help you; but if there is still any deficiency of proof, hear our answer to the third opponent.
Enough has been said to prove that the Gods exist and care for us; that they can be propitiated, or that they receive gifts, is not to be allowed or admitted for an instant.
'Let us proceed with the argument.' Tell me, by the Gods, I say, how the Gods are to be propitiated by us?
There is an immortal conflict going on, in which Gods and demigods are our allies, and we their property; for injustice and folly and wickedness make war in our souls upon justice and temperance and wisdom.
There is little virtue to be found on earth; and evil natures fawn upon the Gods, like wild beasts upon their keepers, and believe that they can win them over by flattery and prayers.
'Quite so.' And they who maintain that the Gods can be appeased must say that they forgive the sins of men, if they are allowed to share in their spoils; as you might suppose wolves to mollify the dogs by throwing them a portion of the prey.
'That is the argument.' But let us apply our images to the Gods—are they the pilots who are won by gifts to wreck their own ships—or the charioteers who are bribed to lose the race—or the generals, or doctors, or husbandmen, who are perverted from their duty—or the dogs who are silenced by wolves?
'God forbid.' Are they not rather our best guardians; and shall we suppose them to fall short even of a moderate degree of human or even canine virtue, which will not betray justice for reward?
And now our three points are proven; and we are agreed (1) that there are Gods, (2) that they care for men, (3) that they cannot be bribed to do injustice.
First, there is the impiety of those who deny the existence of the Gods; these may be honest men, haters of evil, who are only dangerous because they talk loosely about the Gods and make others like themselves; but there is also a more vicious class, who are full of craft and licentiousness.
The two other sorts of impiety, first of those who deny the care of the Gods, and secondly, of those who affirm that they may be propitiated, have similar subdivisions, varying in degree of guilt.
As to that class of monstrous natures who not only believe that the Gods are negligent, or may be propitiated, but pretend to practise on the souls of quick and dead, and promise to charm the Gods, and to effect the ruin of houses and states—he, I say, who is guilty of these things, shall be bound in the central prison, and shall have no intercourse with any freeman, receiving only his daily rations of food from the public slaves; and when he dies, let him be cast beyond the border; and if any freeman assist to bury him, he shall be liable to a suit for impiety.
The law is designed to prevent this, and also to deter men from attempting to propitiate the Gods by secret sacrifices, which only multiply their sins.
To him who is careless of such consequences, and, despising the word of the wise, takes up a treasure which is not his—what will be done by the hand of the Gods, God only knows,—but I would have the first person who sees the offender, inform the wardens of the city or the country; and they shall send to Delphi for a decision, and whatever the oracle orders, they shall carry out.
But the legislator will tell them, that no man should invoke the Gods when he is practising deceit or fraud, in word or deed.
For he is the enemy of heaven, first, who swears falsely, not thinking of the Gods by whom he swears, and secondly, he who lies to his superiors.
(Now the superiors are the betters of inferiors,—the elder of the younger, parents of children, men of women, and rulers of subjects.) The trader who cheats in the agora is a liar and is perjured—he respects neither the name of God nor the regulations of the magistrates.
If he sell adulterated goods, the slave or metic who informs against him shall have the goods; the citizen who brings such a charge, if he prove it, shall offer up the goods in question to the Gods of the agora; or if he fail to prove it, shall be dishonoured.
The class of artisans is consecrated to Hephaestus and Athene; the makers of weapons to Ares and Athene: all of whom, remembering that the Gods are their ancestors, should be ashamed to deceive in the practice of their craft.
If any man is lazy in the fulfilment of his work, and fancies, foolish fellow, that his patron God will not deal hardly with him, he will be punished by the God; and let the law follow:—He who fails in his undertaking shall pay the value, and do the work gratis in a specified time.
Let men fear, in the first place, the Gods above; secondly, the souls of the departed, who naturally care for their own descendants; thirdly, the aged living, who are quick to hear of any neglect of family duties, especially in the case of orphans.
Concerning duty to parents, let the preamble be as follows:—We honour the Gods in their lifeless images, and believe that we thus propitiate them.
This proves that the Gods hear the curses of parents who are wronged; and shall we doubt that they hear and fulfil their blessings too?' 'Surely not.' And, as we were saying, no image is more honoured by the Gods than an aged father and mother, to whom when honour is done, the God who hears their prayers is rejoiced, and their influence is greater than that of the lifeless statue; for they pray that good or evil may come to us in proportion as they are honoured or dishonoured, but the statue is silent.
Let no man deceive himself by the supposed example of the Gods, for no God or son of a God ever really practised either force or fraud.
The prize is to be a crown of olive, which the victor shall offer up at the temple of his favourite war God...In any suit which a man brings, let the indictment be scrupulously true, for justice is an honourable maiden, to whom falsehood is naturally hateful.
The three shall be crowned with an olive wreath, and proclamation made, that the city of the Magnetes, once more preserved by the Gods, presents her three best men to Apollo and the Sun, to whom she dedicates them as long as their lives answer to the judgment formed of them.
While they hold office, they shall dwell within the precinct of the God.
He knew that his contemporaries believed in the Gods, for many of them were the sons of Gods; and he thought that the easiest and surest method of ending litigation was to commit the decision to Heaven.
In our own day, men either deny the existence of Gods or their care of men, or maintain that they may be bribed by attentions and gifts; and the procedure of Rhadamanthus would therefore be out of date.
Let Zeus, the God of hospitality, be honoured; and let not the stranger be excluded, as in Egypt, from meals and sacrifices, or, (as at Sparta,) driven away by savage proclamations.
The good man will offer moderate gifts to the Gods; his land or hearth cannot be offered, because they are already consecrated to all Gods.
White is a colour which is acceptable to the Gods; figures of birds and similar offerings are the best of gifts, but they must be such as the painter can execute in a day.
The rites which are to be celebrated after death in honour of the Gods above and below shall be determined by the Interpreters.
The legislator will instruct the people that the body is a mere shadow or image, and that the soul, which is our true being, is gone to give an account of herself before the Gods below.
'He should.' And is there any higher knowledge than the knowledge of the existence and power of the Gods?
No man can now truly worship the Gods who does not believe that the soul is eternal, and prior to the body, and the ruler of all bodies, and does not perceive also that there is mind in the stars; or who has not heard the connexion of these things with music, and has not harmonized them with manners and laws, giving a reason of things which are matters of reason.
'Let us proceed along the road in which God seems to guide us.' We cannot, Megillus and Cleinias, anticipate the details which will hereafter be needed; they must be supplied by experience.
The subject of religion in Book X is introduced as a prelude to offences against the Gods, and this portion of the work appears to be executed in Plato's best manner.
In the last four books, several questions occur for consideration: among them are (I) the detection and punishment of offences; (II) the nature of the voluntary and involuntary; (III) the arguments against atheism, and against the opinion that the Gods have no care of human affairs; (IV) the remarks upon retail trade; (V) the institution of the Nocturnal Council.
The arguments which Plato uses for the being of a God, have an extremely modern character: first, the consensus gentium; secondly, the argument which has already been adduced in the Phaedrus, of the priority of the self-moved.
The answer to those who say that God 'cares not,' is, that He governs by general laws; and that he who takes care of the great will assuredly take care of the small.
Plato did not feel, and has not attempted to consider, the difficulty of reconciling the special with the general providence of God.
And the answer is substantially the same which the modern theologian would offer:—that the ways of God in this world cannot be justified unless there be a future state of rewards and punishments.
This passage is also remarkable for being at variance with the general optimism of the Tenth Book—not 'all things are ordered by God for the best,' but some things by a good, others by an evil spirit.
Secondly, he remarks the self-conceit of a newly-fledged generation of philosophers, who declare that the sun, moon, and stars, are earth and stones only; and who also maintain that the Gods are made by the laws of the state.
So in modern times there are some whose infidelity has arisen from doubts about the inspiration of ancient writings; others who have been made unbelievers by physical science, or again by the seemingly political character of religion; while there is a third class to whose minds the difficulty of 'justifying the ways of God to man' has been the chief stumblingblock.
We too have our popular Epicureanism, which would allow the world to go on as if there were no God.
They do not like expressly to deny God when it is more convenient to forget Him; and so the theory of the Epicurean becomes the practice of mankind in general.
For the larger half of Christians continue to assert that the justice of God may be turned aside by gifts, and, if not by the 'odour of fat, and the sacrifice steaming to heaven,' still by another kind of sacrifice placed upon the altar—by masses for the quick and dead, by dispensations, by building churches, by rites and ceremonies—by the same means which the heathen used, taking other names and shapes.
He gives no encouragement to individual enthusiasm; 'the establishment of religion could only be the work of a mighty intellect.' Like the Hebrews, he prohibits private rites; for the avoidance of superstition, he would transfer all worship of the Gods to the public temples.
Yet in the Timaeus he had himself allowed that God made the world out of pre-existing materials: in the Statesman he says that there were seeds of evil in the world arising out of the remains of a former chaos which could not be got rid of; and even in the Tenth Book of the Laws he has admitted that there are two souls, a good and evil.
And the members of the Nocturnal Council are to continue students of the 'one in many' and of the nature of God.
The duty of having children is also enforced by a still higher motive, expressed by Plato in the noble words:—'A man should cling to immortality, and leave behind him children's children to be the servants of God in his place.' Again, as at Athens, the father is allowed to put away his undutiful son, but only with the consent of impartial persons (Telfy), and the only suit which may be brought by a son against a father is for imbecility.
A peculiar sanctity and tenderness was to be shown towards the aged; the parent or grandparent stricken with years was to be loved and worshipped like the image of a God, and was to be deemed far more able than any lifeless statue to bring good or ill to his descendants.
Or we may compare him to a statue hid away in some temple of Zeus or Apollo, no longer existing on earth, a statue which has a look as of the God himself.
ATHENIAN: Tell me, Strangers, is a God or some man supposed to be the author of your laws?
CLEINIAS: A God, Stranger; in very truth a God: among us Cretans he is said to have been Zeus, but in Lacedaemon, whence our friend here comes, I believe they would say that Apollo is their lawgiver: would they not, Megillus?
Of the lesser goods the first is health, the second beauty, the third strength, including swiftness in running and bodily agility generally, and the fourth is wealth, not the blind god (Pluto), but one who is keen of sight, if only he has wisdom for his companion.
And when we have gone through all the virtues, we will show, by the grace of God, that the institutions of which I was speaking look to virtue.
For assuming that you have reasonably good laws, one of the best of them will be the law forbidding any young men to enquire which of them are right or wrong; but with one mouth and one voice they must all agree that the laws are all good, for they came from God; and any one who says the contrary is not to be listened to.
The Cretans are always accused of having invented the story of Ganymede and Zeus because they wanted to justify themselves in the enjoyment of unnatural pleasures by the practice of the god whom they believe to have been their lawgiver.
ATHENIAN: To be absolutely sure of the truth of matters concerning which there are many opinions, is an attribute of the Gods not given to man, Stranger; but I shall be very happy to tell you what I think, especially as we are now proposing to enter on a discussion concerning laws and constitutions.
You must have heard here the story of the prophet Epimenides, who was of my family, and came to Athens ten years before the Persian war, in accordance with the response of the Oracle, and offered certain sacrifices which the God commanded.
At the outset of the discussion, let me define the nature and power of education; for this is the way by which our argument must travel onwards to the God Dionysus.
ATHENIAN: Let us look at the matter thus: May we not conceive each of us living beings to be a puppet of the Gods, either their plaything only, or created with a purpose—which of the two we cannot certainly know?
And thus the moral of the tale about our being puppets will not have been lost, and the meaning of the expression 'superior or inferior to a man's self' will become clearer; and the individual, attaining to right reason in this matter of pulling the strings of the puppet, should live according to its rule; while the city, receiving the same from some god or from one who has knowledge of these things, should embody it in a law, to be her guide in her dealings with herself and with other states.
ATHENIAN: Suppose that some God had given a fear-potion to men, and that the more a man drank of this the more he regarded himself at every draught as a child of misfortune, and that he feared everything happening or about to happen to him; and that at last the most courageous of men utterly lost his presence of mind for a time, and only came to himself again when he had slept off the influence of the draught.
ATHENIAN: Let us return to the lawgiver, and say to him:—'Well, lawgiver, there is certainly no such fear-potion which man has either received from the Gods or himself discovered; for witchcraft has no place at our board.
And the Gods, pitying the toils which our race is born to undergo, have appointed holy festivals, wherein men alternate rest with labour; and have given them the Muses and Apollo, the leader of the Muses, and Dionysus, to be companions in their revels, that they may improve their education by taking part in the festivals of the Gods, and with their help.
But, whereas the animals have no perception of order or disorder in their movements, that is, of rhythm or harmony, as they are called, to us, the Gods, who, as we say, have been appointed to be our companions in the dance, have given the pleasurable sense of harmony and rhythm; and so they stir us into life, and we follow them, joining hands together in dances and songs; and these they call choruses, which is a term naturally expressive of cheerfulness.
To do this, however, must be the work of God, or of a divine person; in Egypt they have a tradition that their ancient chants which have been preserved for so many ages are the composition of the Goddess Isis.
And therefore the judges must be men of character, for they will require both wisdom and courage; the true judge must not draw his inspiration from the theatre, nor ought he to be unnerved by the clamour of the many and his own incapacity; nor again, knowing the truth, ought he through cowardice and unmanliness carelessly to deliver a lying judgment, with the very same lips which have just appealed to the Gods before he judged.
For tell me, my good friends, by Zeus and Apollo tell me, if I were to ask these same Gods who were your legislators,—Is not the most just life also the pleasantest?
and they replied, Those who lead the pleasantest—that would be a very strange answer, which I should not like to put into the mouth of the Gods.
Shall we say that glory and fame, coming from Gods and men, though good and noble, are nevertheless unpleasant, and infamy pleasant?
ATHENIAN: The next suggestion which I have to offer is, that all our three choruses shall sing to the young and tender souls of children, reciting in their strains all the noble thoughts of which we have already spoken, or are about to speak; and the sum of them shall be, that the life which is by the Gods deemed to be the happiest is also the best;—we shall affirm this to be a most certain truth; and the minds of our young disciples will be more likely to receive these words of ours than any others which we might address to them.
Next will follow the choir of young men under the age of thirty, who will call upon the God Paean to testify to the truth of their words, and will pray him to be gracious to the youth and to turn their hearts.
And I said that the Gods had pity on us, and gave us Apollo and the Muses to be our playfellows and leaders in the dance; and Dionysus, as I dare say that you will remember, was the third.
Shall we begin by enacting that boys shall not taste wine at all until they are eighteen years of age; we will tell them that fire must not be poured upon fire, whether in the body or in the soul, until they begin to go to work—this is a precaution which has to be taken against the excitableness of youth;—afterwards they may taste wine in moderation up to the age of thirty, but while a man is young he should abstain altogether from intoxication and from excess of wine; when, at length, he has reached forty years, after dinner at a public mess, he may invite not only the other Gods, but Dionysus above all, to the mystery and festivity of the elder men, making use of the wine which he has given men to lighten the sourness of old age; that in age we may renew our youth, and forget our sorrows; and also in order that the nature of the soul, like iron melted in the fire, may become softer and so more impressible.
Such traditions concerning the Gods I leave to those who think that they may be safely uttered (compare Euthyph.; Republic); I only know that no animal at birth is mature or perfect in intelligence; and in the intermediate period, in which he has not yet acquired his own proper sense, he rages and roars without rhyme or reason; and when he has once got on his legs he jumps about without rhyme or reason; and this, as you will remember, has been already said by us to be the origin of music and gymnastic.
ATHENIAN: And did we not say that the sense of harmony and rhythm sprang from this beginning among men, and that Apollo and the Muses and Dionysus were the Gods whom we had to thank for them?
They would also have abundance of clothing, and bedding, and dwellings, and utensils either capable of standing on the fire or not; for the plastic and weaving arts do not require any use of iron: and God has given these two arts to man in order to provide him with all such things, that, when reduced to the last extremity, the human race may still grow and increase.
No one had the wit to suspect another of a falsehood, as men do now; but what they heard about Gods and men they believed to be true, and lived accordingly; and therefore they were in all respects such as we have described them.
For indeed, in these verses, and in what he said of the Cyclopes, he speaks the words of God and nature; for poets are a divine race, and often in their strains, by the aid of the Muses and the Graces, they attain truth.
MEGILLUS: If some God, Stranger, would promise us that our new enquiry about legislation would be as good and full as the present, I would go a great way to hear such another, and would think that a day as long as this—and we are now approaching the longest day of the year—was too short for the discussion.
ATHENIAN: There is a seventh kind of rule which is awarded by lot, and is dear to the Gods and a token of good fortune: he on whom the lot falls is a ruler, and he who fails in obtaining the lot goes away and is the subject; and this we affirm to be quite just.
ATHENIAN: A God, who watched over Sparta, seeing into the future, gave you two families of kings instead of one; and thus brought you more within the limits of moderation.
Now that God has instructed us what sort of government would have been or will be lasting, there is no wisdom, as I have already said, in judging after the event; there is no difficulty in learning from an example which has already occurred.
They saw that on the former occasion they had gained a seemingly impossible victory, and borne up by this hope, they found that their only refuge was in themselves and in the Gods.
One sort consisted of prayers to the Gods, which were called hymns; and there was another and opposite sort called lamentations, and another termed paeans, and another, celebrating the birth of Dionysus, called, I believe, 'dithyrambs.' And they used the actual word 'laws,' or nomoi, for another kind of song; and to this they added the term 'citharoedic.' All these and others were duly distinguished, nor were the performers allowed to confuse one style of music with another.
ATHENIAN: Consequent upon this freedom comes the other freedom, of disobedience to rulers (compare Republic); and then the attempt to escape the control and exhortation of father, mother, elders, and when near the end, the control of the laws also; and at the very end there is the contempt of oaths and pledges, and no regard at all for the Gods,—herein they exhibit and imitate the old so-called Titanic nature, and come to the same point as the Titans when they rebelled against God, leading a life of endless evils.
ATHENIAN: That God governs all things, and that chance and opportunity co-operate with Him in the government of human affairs.
When this has been accomplished, God has done all that he ever does for a state which he desires to be eminently prosperous; He has done second best for a state in which there are two such rulers, and third best for a state in which there are three.
ATHENIAN: Then let us invoke God at the settlement of our state; may He hear and be propitious to us, and come and set in order the State and the laws!
But if states are to be named after their rulers, the true state ought to be called by the name of the God who rules over wise men.
CLEINIAS: And who is this God?
In like manner God, in His love of mankind, placed over us the demons, who are a superior race, and they with great ease and pleasure to themselves, and no less to us, taking care of us and giving us peace and reverence and order and justice never failing, made the tribes of men happy and united.
And this tradition, which is true, declares that cities of which some mortal man and not God is the ruler, have no escape from evils and toils.
I say this, because I am going to assert that we must not entrust the government in your state to any one because he is rich, or because he possesses any other advantage, such as strength, or stature, or again birth: but he who is most obedient to the laws of the state, he shall win the palm; and to him who is victorious in the first degree shall be given the highest office and chief ministry of the gods; and the second to him who bears the second palm; and on a similar principle shall all the other offices be assigned to those who come next in order.
For that state in which the law is subject and has no authority, I perceive to be on the highway to ruin; but I see that the state in which the law is above the rulers, and the rulers are the inferiors of the law, has salvation, and every blessing which the Gods can confer.
ATHENIAN: 'Friends,' we say to them,—'God, as the old tradition declares, holding in his hand the beginning, middle, and end of all that is, travels according to His nature in a straight line towards the accomplishment of His end.
To justice, he who would be happy holds fast, and follows in her company with all humility and order; but he who is lifted up with pride, or elated by wealth or rank, or beauty, who is young and foolish, and has a soul hot with insolence, and thinks that he has no need of any guide or ruler, but is able himself to be the guide of others, he, I say, is left deserted of God; and being thus deserted, he takes to him others who are like himself, and dances about, throwing all things into confusion, and many think that he is a great man, but in a short time he pays a penalty which justice cannot but approve, and is utterly destroyed, and his family and city with him.
CLEINIAS: Every man ought to make up his mind that he will be one of the followers of God; there can be no doubt of that.
ATHENIAN: Then what life is agreeable to God, and becoming in His followers?
Now God ought to be to us the measure of all things, and not man (compare Crat.; Theaet.), as men commonly say (Protagoras): the words are far more true of Him.
And he who would be dear to God must, as far as is possible, be like Him and such as He is.
Wherefore the temperate man is the friend of God, for he is like Him; and the intemperate man is unlike Him, and different from Him, and unjust.
And the same applies to other things; and this is the conclusion, which is also the noblest and truest of all sayings,—that for the good man to offer sacrifice to the Gods, and hold converse with them by means of prayers and offerings and every kind of service, is the noblest and best of all things, and also the most conducive to a happy life, and very fit and meet.
But with the bad man, the opposite of this is true: for the bad man has an impure soul, whereas the good is pure; and from one who is polluted, neither a good man nor God can without impropriety receive gifts.
Wherefore the unholy do only waste their much service upon the Gods, but when offered by any holy man, such service is most acceptable to them.
In the first place, we affirm that next after the Olympian Gods and the Gods of the State, honour should be given to the Gods below; they should receive everything in even numbers, and of the second choice, and ill omen, while the odd numbers, and the first choice, and the things of lucky omen, are given to the Gods above, by him who would rightly hit the mark of piety.
Next to these Gods, a wise man will do service to the demons or spirits, and then to the heroes, and after them will follow the private and ancestral Gods, who are worshipped as the law prescribes in the places which are sacred to them.
Doing this, and living after this manner, we shall receive our reward from the Gods and those who are above us (i.e.
And how a man ought to order what relates to his descendants and his kindred and friends and fellow-citizens, and the rites of hospitality taught by Heaven, and the intercourse which arises out of all these duties, with a view to the embellishment and orderly regulation of his own life—these things, I say, the laws, as we proceed with them, will accomplish, partly persuading, and partly when natures do not yield to the persuasion of custom, chastising them by might and right, and will thus render our state, if the Gods co-operate with us, prosperous and happy.
'But before virtue the immortal Gods have placed the sweat of labour, and long and steep is the way thither, and rugged at first; but when you have reached the top, although difficult before, it is then easy.' (Works and Days.)
About the honour of the Gods and the respect of parents, enough has been already said; and we may proceed to the topics which follow next in order, until the preamble is deemed by you to be complete; and after that you shall go through the laws themselves.
ATHENIAN: I understand you to mean that we have made a sufficient preamble about Gods and demigods, and about parents living or dead; and now you would have us bring the rest of the subject into the light of day?
ATHENIAN: Listen, all ye who have just now heard the laws about Gods, and about our dear forefathers:—Of all the things which a man has, next to the Gods, his soul is the most divine and most truly his own.
Wherefore I am right in bidding every one next to the Gods, who are our masters, and those who in order follow them (i.e.
But I mean to say that in acting thus he injures his soul, and is far from honouring her; whereas, in our opinion, he ought to honour her as second only to the Gods.
And when, disregarding the word and approval of the legislator, he indulges in pleasure, then again he is far from honouring her; he only dishonours her, and fills her full of evil and remorse; or when he does not endure to the end the labours and fears and sorrows and pains which the legislator approves, but gives way before them, then, by yielding, he does not honour the soul, but by all such conduct he makes her to be dishonourable; nor when he thinks that life at any price is a good, does he honour her, but yet once more he dishonours her; for the soul having a notion that the world below is all evil, he yields to her, and does not resist and teach or convince her that, for aught she knows, the world of the Gods below, instead of being evil, may be the greatest of all goods.
Wherefore the soul also is second (or next to God) in honour; and third, as every one will perceive, comes the honour of the body in natural order.
He who honours his kindred, and reveres those who share in the same Gods and are of the same blood and family, may fairly expect that the Gods who preside over generation will be propitious to him, and will quicken his seed.
In his relations to strangers, a man should consider that a contract is a most holy thing, and that all concerns and wrongs of strangers are more directly dependent on the protection of God, than wrongs done to citizens; for the stranger, having no kindred and friends, is more to be pitied by Gods and men.
Wherefore, also, he who is most able to avenge him is most zealous in his cause; and he who is most able is the genius and the god of the stranger, who follow in the train of Zeus, the god of strangers.
For the God who witnessed to the agreement made with the suppliant, becomes in a special manner the guardian of the sufferer; and he will certainly not suffer unavenged.
Truth is the beginning of every good thing, both to Gods and men; and he who would be blessed and happy, should be from the first a partaker of the truth, that he may live a true man as long as possible, for then he can be trusted; but he is not to be trusted who loves voluntary falsehood, and he who loves involuntary falsehood is a fool.
Therefore I say that a man should refrain from excess either of laughter or tears, and should exhort his neighbour to do the same; he should veil his immoderate sorrow or joy, and seek to behave with propriety, whether the genius of his good fortune remains with him, or whether at the crisis of his fate, when he seems to be mounting high and steep places, the Gods oppose him in some of his enterprises.
Still he may ever hope, in the case of good men, that whatever afflictions are to befall them in the future God will lessen, and that present evils He will change for the better; and as to the goods which are the opposite of these evils, he will not doubt that they will be added to them, and that they will be fortunate.
But of human things we have not as yet spoken, and we must; for to men we are discoursing and not to Gods.
But that they to whom God has given, as He has to us, to be the founders of a new state as yet free from enmity—that they should create themselves enmities by their mode of distributing lands and houses, would be superhuman folly and wickedness.
Whether the legislator is establishing a new state or restoring an old and decayed one, in respect of Gods and temples,—the temples which are to be built in each city, and the Gods or demi-gods after whom they are to be called,—if he be a man of sense, he will make no change in anything which the oracle of Delphi, or Dodona, or the God Ammon, or any ancient tradition has sanctioned in whatever manner, whether by apparitions or reputed inspiration of Heaven, in obedience to which mankind have established sacrifices in connexion with mystic rites, either originating on the spot, or derived from Tyrrhenia or Cyprus or some other place, and on the strength of which traditions they have consecrated oracles and images, and altars and temples, and portioned out a sacred domain for each of them.
The least part of all these ought not to be disturbed by the legislator; but he should assign to the several districts some God, or demi-god, or hero, and, in the distribution of the soil, should give to these first their chosen domain and all things fitting, that the inhabitants of the several districts may meet at fixed times, and that they may readily supply their various wants, and entertain one another with sacrifices, and become friends and acquaintances; for there is no greater good in a state than that the citizens should be known to one another.
Whether such a state is governed by Gods or sons of Gods, one, or more than one, happy are the men who, living after this manner, dwell there; and therefore to this we are to look for the pattern of the state, and to cling to this, and to seek with all our might for one which is like this.
The state which we have now in hand, when created, will be nearest to immortality and the only one which takes the second place; and after that, by the grace of God, we will complete the third one.
Such also are the feelings which they ought to entertain to the Gods and demi-gods of the country.
This may be secured for the whole city in the following manner:—Let the possessor of a lot leave the one of his children who is his best beloved, and one only, to be the heir of his dwelling, and his successor in the duty of ministering to the Gods, the state and the family, as well the living members of it as those who are departed when he comes into the inheritance; but of his other children, if he have more than one, he shall give the females in marriage according to the law to be hereafter enacted, and the males he shall distribute as sons to those citizens who have no children, and are disposed to receive them; or if there should be none such, and particular individuals have too many children, male or female, or too few, as in the case of barrenness—in all these cases let the highest and most honourable magistracy created by us judge and determine what is to be done with the redundant or deficient, and devise a means that the number of 5040 houses shall always remain the same.
If, on the other hand, there come a wave bearing a deluge of disease, or a plague of war, and the inhabitants become much fewer than the appointed number by reason of bereavement, we ought not to introduce citizens of spurious birth and education, if this can be avoided; but even God is said not to be able to fight against necessity.
For then neither will the God who gave you the lot be your friend, nor will the legislator; and indeed the law declares to the disobedient that these are the terms upon which he may or may not take the lot.
In the first place, the earth as he is informed is sacred to the Gods; and in the next place, priests and priestesses will offer up prayers over a first, and second, and even a third sacrifice, that he who buys or sells the houses or lands which he has received, may suffer the punishment which he deserves; and these their prayers they shall write down in the temples, on tablets of cypress-wood, for the instruction of posterity.
Moreover they will set a watch over all these things, that they may be observed;—the magistracy which has the sharpest eyes shall keep watch that any infringement of these commands may be discovered and punished as offences both against the law and the God.
But if a person have yet greater riches, whether he has found them, or they have been given to him, or he has made them in business, or has acquired by any stroke of fortune that which is in excess of the measure, if he give back the surplus to the state, and to the Gods who are the patrons of the state, he shall suffer no penalty or loss of reputation; but if he disobeys this our law, any one who likes may inform against him and receive half the value of the excess, and the delinquent shall pay a sum equal to the excess out of his own property, and the other half of the excess shall belong to the Gods.
After this they shall assign twelve lots to twelve Gods, and call them by their names, and dedicate to each God their several portions, and call the tribes after them.
ATHENIAN: That we will, by the grace of God, if old age will only permit us.
CLEINIAS: But God will be gracious.
Pol.), shall share in the election of magistrates; and the election shall be held in whatever temple the state deems most venerable, and every one shall carry his vote to the altar of the God, writing down on a tablet the name of the person for whom he votes, and his father's name, and his tribe, and ward; and at the side he shall write his own name in like manner.
And this is the reason why we are obliged to use the equality of the lot, in order to avoid the discontent of the people; and so we invoke God and fortune in our prayers, and beg that they themselves will direct the lot with a view to supreme justice.
Those who hold hereditary offices as priests or priestesses, shall not be disturbed; but if there be few or none such, as is probable at the foundation of a new city, priests and priestesses shall be appointed to be servants of the Gods who have no servants.
The officers of the temples shall be appointed by lot; in this way their election will be committed to God, that He may do what is agreeable to Him.
As for the interpreters, they shall be appointed thus:—Let the twelve tribes be distributed into groups of four, and let each group select four, one out of each tribe within the group, three times; and let the three who have the greatest number of votes (out of the twelve appointed by each group), after undergoing a scrutiny, nine in all, be sent to Delphi, in order that the God may return one out of each triad; their age shall be the same as that of the priests, and the scrutiny of them shall be conducted in the same manner; let them be interpreters for life, and when any one dies let the four tribes select another from the tribe of the deceased.
The fountains of water, whether of rivers or of springs, shall be ornamented with plantations and buildings for beauty; and let them bring together the streams in subterraneous channels, and make all things plenteous; and if there be a sacred grove or dedicated precinct in the neighbourhood, they shall conduct the water to the actual temples of the Gods, and so beautify them at all seasons of the year.
Every man should remember the universal rule, that he who is not a good servant will not be a good master; a man should pride himself more upon serving well than upon commanding well: first upon serving the laws, which is also the service of the Gods; in the second place, upon having served ancient and honourable men in the days of his youth.
In the first place, let there be a tribunal open to all private persons who are trying causes one against another for the third time, and let this be composed as follows:—All the officers of state, as well annual as those holding office for a longer period, when the new year is about to commence, in the month following after the summer solstice, on the last day but one of the year, shall meet in some temple, and calling God to witness, shall dedicate one judge from every magistracy to be their first-fruits, choosing in each office him who seems to them to be the best, and whom they deem likely to decide the causes of his fellow-citizens during the ensuing year in the best and holiest manner.
But for the present, trusting to the mere assertion of this principle, let us divide the state; and assigning to each portion some God or son of a God, let us give them altars and sacred rites, and at the altars let us hold assemblies for sacrifice twice in the month—twelve assemblies for the tribes, and twelve for the city, according to their divisions; the first in honour of the Gods and divine things, and the second to promote friendship and 'better acquaintance,' as the phrase is, and every sort of good fellowship with one another.
A ten years' experience of sacrifices and dances, if extending to all particulars, will be quite sufficient; and if the legislator be alive they shall communicate with him, but if he be dead then the several officers shall refer the omissions which come under their notice to the guardians of the law, and correct them, until all is perfect; and from that time there shall be no more change, and they shall establish and use the new laws with the others which the legislator originally gave them, and of which they are never, if they can help, to change aught; or, if some necessity overtakes them, the magistrates must be called into counsel, and the whole people, and they must go to all the oracles of the Gods; and if they are all agreed, in that case they may make the change, but if they are not agreed, by no manner of means, and any one who dissents shall prevail, as the law ordains.
Now, to add to the law an express provision, not only that the rich man shall not marry into the rich family, nor the powerful into the family of the powerful, but that the slower natures shall be compelled to enter into marriage with the quicker, and the quicker with the slower, may awaken anger as well as laughter in the minds of many; for there is a difficulty in perceiving that the city ought to be well mingled like a cup, in which the maddening wine is hot and fiery, but when chastened by a soberer God, receives a fair associate and becomes an excellent and temperate drink (compare Statesman).
Let this then be our exhortation concerning marriage, and let us remember what was said before—that a man should cling to immortality, and leave behind him children's children to be the servants of God in his place for ever.
And he who obeys this law will do a noble action; but he who will not obey, and gives or receives more than fifty drachmae as the price of the marriage garments if he be of the lowest, or more than a mina, or a mina-and-a-half, if he be of the third or second classes, or two minae if he be of the highest class, shall owe to the public treasury a similar sum, and that which is given or received shall be sacred to Here and Zeus; and let the treasurers of these Gods exact the money, as was said before about the unmarried—that the treasurers of Here were to exact the money, or pay the fine themselves.
Drunkenness is always improper, except at the festivals of the God who gave wine; and peculiarly dangerous, when a man is engaged in the business of marriage; at such a crisis of their lives a bride and bridegroom ought to have all their wits about them—they ought to take care that their offspring may be born of reasonable beings; for on what day or night Heaven will give them increase, who can say?
For the beginning, which is also a God dwelling in man, preserves all things, if it meet with proper respect from each individual.
For in friendships there must be some degree of desire, in order to cement and bind together diversities of character; but excessive intercourse not having the desire which is created by time, insensibly dissolves friendships from a feeling of satiety; wherefore a man and his wife shall leave to his and her father and mother their own dwelling-places, and themselves go as to a colony and dwell there, and visit and be visited by their parents; and they shall beget and bring up children, handing on the torch of life from one generation to another, and worshipping the Gods according to law for ever.
If, however, our plan of legislation is ever to take effect, then the house shall precede the marriage if God so will, and afterwards we will come to the regulations about marriage; but at present we are only describing these matters in a general outline.
Near the temples are to be placed buildings for the magistrates and the courts of law; in these plaintiff and defendant will receive their due, and the places will be regarded as most holy, partly because they have to do with holy things: and partly because they are the dwelling-places of holy Gods: and in them will be held the courts in which cases of homicide and other trials of capital offences may fitly take place.
ATHENIAN: Again, the practice of men sacrificing one another still exists among many nations; while, on the other hand, we hear of other human beings who did not even venture to taste the flesh of a cow and had no animal sacrifices, but only cakes and fruits dipped in honey, and similar pure offerings, but no flesh of animals; from these they abstained under the idea that they ought not to eat them, and might not stain the altars of the Gods with blood.
And these three disorders we must endeavour to master by the three great principles of fear and law and right reason; turning them away from that which is called pleasantest to the best, using the Muses and the Gods who preside over contests to extinguish their increase and influx.
And when some one applies external agitation to affections of this sort, the motion coming from without gets the better of the terrible and violent internal one, and produces a peace and calm in the soul, and quiets the restless palpitation of the heart, which is a thing much to be desired, sending the children to sleep, and making the Bacchantes, although they remain awake, to dance to the pipe with the help of the Gods to whom they offer acceptable sacrifices, and producing in them a sound mind, which takes the place of their frenzy.
For I maintain that the true life should neither seek for pleasures, nor, on the other hand, entirely avoid pains, but should embrace the middle state (compare Republic), which I just spoke of as gentle and benign, and is a state which we by some divine presage and inspiration rightly ascribe to God.
And our virgin lady, delighting in the amusement of the dance, thought it not fit to amuse herself with empty hands; she must be clothed in a complete suit of armour, and in this attire go through the dance; and youths and maidens should in every respect imitate her, esteeming highly the favour of the Goddess, both with a view to the necessities of war, and to festive occasions: it will be right also for the boys, until such time as they go out to war, to make processions and supplications to all the Gods in goodly array, armed and on horseback, in dances and marches, fast or slow, offering up prayers to the Gods and to the sons of Gods; and also engaging in contests and preludes of contests, if at all, with these objects.
First we should ordain festivals—calculating for the year what they ought to be, and at what time, and in honour of what Gods, sons of Gods, and heroes they ought to be celebrated; and, in the next place, what hymns ought to be sung at the several sacrifices, and with what dances the particular festival is to be honoured.
This has to be arranged at first by certain persons, and, when arranged, the whole assembly of the citizens are to offer sacrifices and libations to the Fates and all the other Gods, and to consecrate the several odes to Gods and heroes: and if any one offers any other hymns or dances to any one of the Gods, the priests and priestesses, acting in concert with the guardians of the law, shall, with the sanction of religion and the law, exclude him, and he who is excluded, if he do not submit, shall be liable all his life long to have a suit of impiety brought against him by any one who likes.
But that we may not be hindered from completing the natural arrangement of our laws, let us proceed to the conclusion of them in due order; for very possibly, if God will, the exposition of them, when completed, may throw light on our present perplexity.
Ought not prayers to be offered up to the Gods when we sacrifice?
ATHENIAN: And our third law, if I am not mistaken, will be to the effect that our poets, understanding prayers to be requests which we make to the Gods, will take especial heed that they do not by mistake ask for evil instead of good.
ATHENIAN: Then it will be proper to have hymns and praises of the Gods, intermingled with prayers; and after the Gods prayers and praises should be offered in like manner to demigods and heroes, suitable to their several characters.
ATHENIAN: I say that about serious matters a man should be serious, and about a matter which is not serious he should not be serious; and that God is the natural and worthy object of our most serious and blessed endeavours, for man, as I said before, is made to be the plaything of God, and this, truly considered, is the best of him; wherefore also every man and woman should walk seriously, and pass life in the noblest of pastimes, and be of another mind from what they are at present.
We ought to live sacrificing, and singing, and dancing, and then a man will be able to propitiate the Gods, and to defend himself against his enemies and conquer them in battle.
'Telemachus, some things thou wilt thyself find in thy heart, but other things God will suggest; for I deem that thou wast not born or brought up without the will of the Gods.'
And this ought to be the view of our alumni; they ought to think that what has been said is enough for them, and that any other things their Genius and God will suggest to them—he will tell them to whom, and when, and to what Gods severally they are to sacrifice and perform dances, and how they may propitiate the deities, and live according to the appointment of nature; being for the most part puppets, but having some little share of reality.
ATHENIAN: Nay, Megillus, be not amazed, but forgive me: I was comparing them with the Gods; and under that feeling I spoke.
ATHENIAN: What will be the manner of life among men who may be supposed to have their food and clothing provided for them in moderation, and who have entrusted the practice of the arts to others, and whose husbandry committed to slaves paying a part of the produce, brings them a return sufficient for men living temperately; who, moreover, have common tables in which the men are placed apart, and near them are the common tables of their families, of their daughters and mothers, which day by day, the officers, male and female, are to inspect—they shall see to the behaviour of the company, and so dismiss them; after which the presiding magistrate and his attendants shall honour with libations those Gods to whom that day and night are dedicated, and then go home?
But we have not as yet spoken, O illustrious guardian of education, of the manner in which your pupils are to use those strains which are written in prose, although you have been informed what martial strains they are to learn and practise; what relates in the first place to the learning of letters, and secondly, to the lyre, and also to calculation, which, as we were saying, is needful for them all to learn, and any other things which are required with a view to war and the management of house and city, and, looking to the same object, what is useful in the revolutions of the heavenly bodies—the stars and sun and moon, and the various regulations about these matters which are necessary for the whole state—I am speaking of the arrangements of days in periods of months, and of months in years, which are to be observed, in order that seasons and sacrifices and festivals may have their regular and natural order, and keep the city alive and awake, the Gods receiving the honours due to them, and men having a better understanding about them: all these things, O my friend, have not yet been sufficiently declared to you by the legislator.
Now the unwarlike muse, which honours in dance the Gods and the sons of the Gods, is entirely associated with the consciousness of prosperity; this class may be subdivided into two lesser classes, of which one is expressive of an escape from some labour or danger into good, and has greater pleasures, the other expressive of preservation and increase of former good, in which the pleasure is less exciting—in all these cases, every man when the pleasure is greater, moves his body more, and less when the pleasure is less; and, again, if he be more orderly and has learned courage from discipline he moves less, but if he be a coward, and has no training or self-control, he makes greater and more violent movements, and in general when he is speaking or singing he is not altogether able to keep his body still; and so out of the imitation of words in gestures the whole art of dancing has arisen.
Not every one has need to toil through all these things in a strictly scientific manner, but only a few, and who they are to be we will hereafter indicate at the end, which will be the proper place; not to know what is necessary for mankind in general, and what is the truth, is disgraceful to every one: and yet to enter into these matters minutely is neither easy, nor at all possible for every one; but there is something in them which is necessary and cannot be set aside, and probably he who made the proverb about God originally had this in view when he said, that 'not even God himself can fight against necessity;' he meant, if I am not mistaken, divine necessity; for as to the human necessities of which the many speak, when they talk in this manner, nothing can be more ridiculous than such an application of the words.
ATHENIAN: I conceive them to be those of which he who has no use nor any knowledge at all cannot be a God, or demi-god, or hero to mankind, or able to take any serious thought or charge of them.
For so necessity grounded in nature constrains us, against which we say that no God contends, or ever will contend.
ATHENIAN: Men say that we ought not to enquire into the supreme God and the nature of the universe, nor busy ourselves in searching out the causes of things, and that such enquiries are impious; whereas the very opposite is the truth.
But when any one has any good and true notion which is for the advantage of the state and in every way acceptable to God, he cannot abstain from expressing it.
ATHENIAN: My good friends, at this hour all of us Hellenes tell lies, if I may use such an expression, about those great Gods, the Sun and the Moon.
ATHENIAN: Just so, Megillus and Cleinias; and I maintain that our citizens and our youth ought to learn about the nature of the Gods in heaven, so far as to be able to offer sacrifices and pray to them in pious language, and not to blaspheme about them.
And if what I say is true, only just imagine that we had a similar notion about horses running at Olympia, or about men who ran in the long course, and that we addressed the swiftest as the slowest and the slowest as the swiftest, and sang the praises of the vanquished as though he were the victor—in that case our praises would not be true, nor very agreeable to the runners, though they be but men; and now, to commit the same error about the Gods which would have been ludicrous and erroneous in the case of men—is not that ludicrous and erroneous?
ATHENIAN: At all events, the Gods cannot like us to be spreading a false report of them.
ATHENIAN: Next, with the help of the Delphian oracle, we have to institute festivals and make laws about them, and to determine what sacrifices will be for the good of the city, and to what Gods they shall be offered; but when they shall be offered, and how often, may be partly regulated by us.
ATHENIAN: Then we will first determine the number; and let the whole number be 365—one for every day—so that one magistrate at least will sacrifice daily to some God or demi-god on behalf of the city, and the citizens, and their possessions.
The law will say that there are twelve feasts dedicated to the twelve Gods, after whom the several tribes are named; and that to each of them they shall sacrifice every month, and appoint choruses, and musical and gymnastic contests, assigning them so as to suit the Gods and seasons of the year.
Further, they shall not confuse the infernal deities and their rites with the Gods who are termed heavenly and their rites, but shall separate them, giving to Pluto his own in the twelfth month, which is sacred to him, according to the law.
Nor shall any one dare to sing a song which has not been approved by the judgment of the guardians of the laws, not even if his strain be sweeter than the songs of Thamyras and Orpheus; but only such poems as have been judged sacred and dedicated to the Gods, and such as are the works of good men, in which praise or blame has been awarded and which have been deemed to fulfil their design fairly.
But as to rhapsodes and the like, and the contests of choruses which are to perform at feasts, all this shall be arranged when the months and days and years have been appointed for Gods and demi-gods, whether every third year, or again every fifth year, or in whatever way or manner the Gods may put into men's minds the distribution and order of them.
There is, however, another matter of great importance and difficulty, concerning which God should legislate, if there were any possibility of obtaining from Him an ordinance about it.
ATHENIAN: The declaration that they are unholy, hated of God, and most infamous; and is not the reason of this that no one has ever said the opposite, but every one from his earliest childhood has heard men speaking in the same manner about them always and everywhere, whether in comedy or in the graver language of tragedy?
These are, perhaps, romantic aspirations; but they are the noblest of aspirations, if they could only be realised in all states, and, God willing, in the matter of love we may be able to enforce one of two things—either that no one shall venture to touch any person of the freeborn or noble class except his wedded wife, or sow the unconsecrated and bastard seed among harlots, or in barren and unnatural lusts; or at least we may abolish altogether the connection of men with men; and as to women, if any man has to do with any but those who come into his house duly married by sacred rites, whether they be bought or acquired in any other way, and he offends publicly in the face of all mankind, we shall be right in enacting that he be deprived of civic honours and privileges, and be deemed to be, as he truly is, a stranger.
And let the first of them be the law of Zeus, the God of boundaries.
Let no one shift the boundary line either of a fellow-citizen who is a neighbour, or, if he dwells at the extremity of the land, of any stranger who is conterminous with him, considering that this is truly 'to move the immovable,' and every one should be more willing to move the largest rock which is not a landmark, than the least stone which is the sworn mark of friendship and hatred between neighbours; for Zeus, the god of kindred, is the witness of the citizen, and Zeus, the god of strangers, of the stranger, and when aroused, terrible are the wars which they stir up.
He who obeys the law will never know the fatal consequences of disobedience, but he who despises the law shall be liable to a double penalty, the first coming from the Gods, and the second from the law.
Let no one pay any duty either on the importation or exportation of goods; and as to frankincense and similar perfumes, used in the service of the Gods, which come from abroad, and purple and other dyes which are not produced in the country, or the materials of any art which have to be imported, and which are not necessary—no one should import them; nor, again, should any one export anything which is wanted in the country.
There shall be twelve hamlets, one in the middle of each twelfth portion, and in each hamlet they shall first set apart a market-place, and the temples of the Gods, and of their attendant demi-gods; and if there be any local deities of the Magnetes, or holy seats of other ancient deities, whose memory has been preserved, to these let them pay their ancient honours.
But Hestia, and Zeus, and Athene will have temples everywhere together with the God who presides in each of the twelve districts.
Yet seeing that we are not like the ancient legislators, who gave laws to heroes and sons of gods, being, according to the popular belief, themselves the offspring of the gods, and legislating for others, who were also the children of divine parents, but that we are only men who are legislating for the sons of men, there is no uncharitableness in apprehending that some one of our citizens may be like a seed which has touched the ox's horn, having a heart so hard that it cannot be softened any more than those seeds can be softened by fire.
When any such thought comes into your mind, go and perform expiations, go as a suppliant to the temples of the Gods who avert evils, go to the society of those who are called good men among you; hear them tell and yourself try to repeat after them, that every man should honour the noble and the just.
But if any citizen be found guilty of any great or unmentionable wrong, either in relation to the Gods, or his parents, or the state, let the judge deem him to be incurable, remembering that after receiving such an excellent education and training from youth upward, he has not abstained from the greatest of crimes.
Next, after what relates to the Gods, follows what relates to the dissolution of the state: Whoever by permitting a man to power enslaves the laws, and subjects the city to factions, using violence and stirring up sedition contrary to law, him we will deem the greatest enemy of the whole state.
And out of the citizens who have more than one son of not less than ten years of age, they shall select ten whom their father or grandfather by the mother's or father's side shall appoint, and let them send to Delphi the names of those who are selected, and him whom the God chooses they shall establish as heir of the house which has failed; and may he have better fortune than his predecessors!
And may the result be good, and if God be gracious, it will be good!
But shall this new word of ours, like an oracle of God, be only spoken, and get away without giving any explanation or verification of itself?
Laws have been already enacted by us concerning the robbers of the Gods, and concerning traitors, and also concerning those who corrupt the laws for the purpose of subverting the government.
And if one slay another with his own hand, but unintentionally, whether he be unarmed or have some instrument or dart in his hand; or if he kill him by administering food or drink, or by the application of fire or cold, or by suffocating him, whether he do the deed by his own hand, or by the agency of others, he shall be deemed the agent, and shall suffer one of the following penalties: If he kill the slave of another in the belief that he is his own, he shall bear the master of the dead man harmless from loss, or shall pay a penalty of twice the value of the dead man, which the judges shall assess; but purifications must be used greater and more numerous than for those who committed homicide at the games—what they are to be, the interpreters whom the God appoints shall be authorised to declare.
And if a cousin or nearer relative of the deceased, whether on the male or female side, does not prosecute the homicide when he ought, and have him proclaimed an outlaw, he shall in the first place be involved in the pollution, and incur the hatred of the Gods, even as the curse of the law stirs up the voices of men against him; and in the second place he shall be liable to be prosecuted by any one who is willing to inflict retribution on behalf of the dead.
And he who would avenge a murder shall observe all the precautionary ceremonies of lavation, and any others which the God commands in cases of this kind.
Now the legislator may easily show that these things must be accomplished by prayers and sacrifices to certain Gods, who are concerned with the prevention of murders in states.
But who these Gods are, and what should be the true manner of instituting such trials with due regard to religion, the guardians of the law, aided by the interpreters, and the prophets, and the God, shall determine, and when they have determined let them carry on the prosecution at law.
For him, what ceremonies there are to be of purification and burial God knows, and about these the next of kin should enquire of the interpreters and of the laws thereto relating, and do according to their injunctions.
And if any lifeless thing deprive a man of life, except in the case of a thunderbolt or other fatal dart sent from the Gods—whether a man is killed by lifeless objects falling upon him, or by his falling upon them, the nearest of kin shall appoint the nearest neighbour to be a judge, and thereby acquit himself and the whole family of guilt.
And if any one of the houses be unfortunate, and stained with impiety, and the owner leave no posterity, but dies unmarried, or married and childless, having suffered death as the penalty of murder or some other crime committed against the Gods or against his fellow-citizens, of which death is the penalty distinctly laid down in the law; or if any of the citizens be in perpetual exile, and also childless, that house shall first of all be purified and undergo expiation according to law; and then let the kinsmen of the house, as we were just now saying, and the guardians of the law, meet and consider what family there is in the state which is of the highest repute for virtue and also for good fortune, in which there are a number of sons; from that family let them take one and introduce him to the father and forefathers of the dead man as their son, and, for the sake of the omen, let him be called so, that he may be the continuer of their family, the keeper of their hearth, and the minister of their sacred rites with better fortune than his father had; and when they have made this supplication, they shall make him heir according to law, and the offending person they shall leave nameless and childless and portionless when calamities such as these overtake him.
All the preceding injuries and every kind of assault are deeds of violence; and every man, woman, or child ought to consider that the elder has the precedence of the younger in honour, both among the Gods and also among men who would live in security and happiness.
Wherefore it is a foul thing and hateful to the Gods to see an elder man assaulted by a younger in the city, and it is reasonable that a young man when struck by an elder should lightly endure his anger, laying up in store for himself a like honour when he is old.
Let this be the law: Every one shall reverence his elder in word and deed; he shall respect any one who is twenty years older than himself, whether male or female, regarding him or her as his father or mother; and he shall abstain from laying hands on any one who is of an age to have been his father or mother, out of reverence to the Gods who preside over birth; similarly he shall keep his hands from a stranger, whether he be an old inhabitant or newly arrived; he shall not venture to correct such an one by blows, either as the aggressor or in self-defence.
If he thinks that some stranger has struck him out of wantonness or insolence, and ought to be punished, he shall take him to the wardens of the city, but let him not strike him, that the stranger may be kept far away from the possibility of lifting up his hand against a citizen, and let the wardens of the city take the offender and examine him, not forgetting their duty to the God of Strangers, and in case the stranger appears to have struck the citizen unjustly, let them inflict upon him as many blows with the scourge as he was himself inflicted, and quell his presumption.
He who shall dare to lay violent hands upon his father or mother, or any still older relative, having no fear either of the wrath of the Gods above, or of the punishments that are spoken of in the world below, but transgresses in contempt of ancient and universal traditions as though he were too wise to believe in them, requires some extreme measure of prevention.
If those who are near at the time be inhabitants of the same place, whether they be youths, or men, or women, let them come to the rescue and denounce him as the impious one; and he who does not come to the rescue shall fall under the curse of Zeus, the God of kindred and of ancestors, according to law.
For we have already said in general terms what shall be the punishment of sacrilege, whether fraudulent or violent, and now we have to determine what is to be the punishment of those who speak or act insolently toward the Gods.
But first we must give them an admonition which may be in the following terms: No one who in obedience to the laws believed that there were Gods, ever intentionally did any unholy act, or uttered any unlawful word; but he who did must have supposed one of three things—either that they did not exist—which is the first possibility, or secondly, that, if they did, they took no care of man, or thirdly, that they were easily appeased and turned aside from their purpose by sacrifices and prayers.
ATHENIAN: They will make some irreverent speech of this sort: 'O inhabitants of Athens, and Sparta, and Cnosus,' they will reply, 'in that you speak truly; for some of us deny the very existence of the Gods, while others, as you say, are of opinion that they do not care about us; and others that they are turned from their course by gifts.
Now we have a right to claim, as you yourself allowed, in the matter of laws, that before you are hard upon us and threaten us, you should argue with us and convince us—you should first attempt to teach and persuade us that there are Gods by reasonable evidences, and also that they are too good to be unrighteous, or to be propitiated, or turned from their course by gifts.
When lawgivers profess that they are gentle and not stern, we think that they should first of all use persuasion to us, and show us the existence of Gods, if not in a better manner than other men, at any rate in a truer; and who knows but that we shall hearken to you?
CLEINIAS: But is there any difficulty in proving the existence of the Gods?
They speak of the Gods in prose as well as verse, and the oldest of them tell of the origin of the heavens and of the world, and not far from the beginning of their story they proceed to narrate the birth of the Gods, and how after they were born they behaved to one another.
Of the words of the ancients I have nothing more to say; and I should wish to say of them only what is pleasing to the Gods.
For do but mark the effect of their words: when you and I argue for the existence of the Gods, and produce the sun, moon, stars, and earth, claiming for them a divine being, if we would listen to the aforesaid philosophers we should say that they are earth and stones only, which can have no care at all of human affairs, and that all religion is a cooking up of words and a make-believe.
Shall we assume that some one is accusing us among unholy men, who are trying to escape from the effect of our legislation; and that they say of us—How dreadful that you should legislate on the supposition that there are Gods!
It is a matter of no small consequence, in some way or other to prove that there are Gods, and that they are good, and regard justice more than men do.
Who can be calm when he is called upon to prove the existence of the Gods?
Who can avoid hating and abhorring the men who are and have been the cause of this argument; I speak of those who will not believe the tales which they have heard as babes and sucklings from their mothers and nurses, repeated by them both in jest and earnest, like charms, who have also heard them in the sacrificial prayers, and seen sights accompanying them—sights and sounds delightful to children—and their parents during the sacrifices showing an intense earnestness on behalf of their children and of themselves, and with eager interest talking to the Gods, and beseeching them, as though they were firmly convinced of their existence; who likewise see and hear the prostrations and invocations which are made by Hellenes and barbarians at the rising and setting of the sun and moon, in all the vicissitudes of life, not as if they thought that there were no Gods, but as if there could be no doubt of their existence, and no suspicion of their non-existence; when men, knowing all these things, despise them on no real grounds, as would be admitted by all who have any particle of intelligence, and when they force us to say what we are now saying, how can any one in gentle terms remonstrate with the like of them, when he has to begin by proving to them the very existence of the Gods?
Wait awhile, and do not attempt to judge at present of the highest things; and that is the highest of which you now think nothing—to know the Gods rightly and to live accordingly.
And in the first place let me indicate to you one point which is of great importance, and about which I cannot be deceived: You and your friends are not the first who have held this opinion about the Gods.
I have known many of them, and can tell you, that no one who had taken up in youth this opinion, that the Gods do not exist, ever continued in the same until he was old; the two other notions certainly do continue in some cases, but not in many; the notion, I mean, that the Gods exist, but take no heed of human things, and the other notion that they do take heed of them, but are easily propitiated with sacrifices and prayers.
As to the opinion about the Gods which may some day become clear to you, I advise you to wait and consider if it be true or not; ask of others, and above all of the legislator.
In the meantime take care that you do not offend against the Gods.
After this fashion and in this manner the whole heaven has been created, and all that is in the heaven, as well as animals and all plants, and all the seasons come from these elements, not by the action of mind, as they say, or of any God, or from art, but as I was saying, by nature and chance only.
ATHENIAN: In the first place, my dear friend, these people would say that the Gods exist not by nature, but by art, and by the laws of states, which are different in different places, according to the agreement of those who make them; and that the honourable is one thing by nature and another thing by law, and that the principles of justice have no existence at all in nature, but that mankind are always disputing about them and altering them; and that the alterations which are made by art and by law have no basis in nature, but are of authority for the moment and at the time at which they are made.
They are told by them that the highest right is might, and in this way the young fall into impieties, under the idea that the Gods are not such as the law bids them imagine; and hence arise factions, these philosophers inviting them to lead a true life according to nature, that is, to live in real dominion over others, and not in legal subjection to them.
should he only rise up in the state and threaten all mankind, proclaiming that if they will not say and think that the Gods are such as the law ordains (and this may be extended generally to the honourable, the just, and to all the highest things, and to all that relates to virtue and vice), and if they will not make their actions conform to the copy which the law gives them, then he who refuses to obey the law shall die, or suffer stripes and bonds, or privation of citizenship, or in some cases be punished by loss of property and exile?
CLEINIAS: Why, Stranger, if such persuasion be at all possible, then a legislator who has anything in him ought never to weary of persuading men; he ought to leave nothing unsaid in support of the ancient opinion that there are Gods, and of all those other truths which you were just now mentioning; he ought to support the law and also art, and acknowledge that both alike exist by nature, and no less than nature, if they are the creations of mind in accordance with right reason, as you appear to me to maintain, and I am disposed to agree with you in thinking.
CLEINIAS: Why, Stranger, shall we, whose patience failed not when drinking or music were the themes of discourse, weary now of discoursing about the Gods, and about divine things?
ATHENIAN: Yes, Megillus, and we should do as he proposes; for if impious discourses were not scattered, as I may say, throughout the world, there would have been no need for any vindication of the existence of the Gods—but seeing that they are spread far and wide, such arguments are needed; and who should come to the rescue of the greatest laws, when they are being undermined by bad men, but the legislator himself?
But if there be no other way of showing our agreement in the belief that there are Gods, of whom the law is said now to approve, let us take this way, my good sir.
ATHENIAN: Then I suppose that I must repeat the singular argument of those who manufacture the soul according to their own impious notions; they affirm that which is the first cause of the generation and destruction of all things, to be not first, but last, and that which is last to be first, and hence they have fallen into error about the true nature of the Gods.
ATHENIAN: Come, then, and if ever we are to call upon the Gods, let us call upon them now in all seriousness to come to the demonstration of their own existence.
ATHENIAN: And this soul of the sun, which is therefore better than the sun, whether taking the sun about in a chariot to give light to men, or acting from without, or in whatever way, ought by every man to be deemed a God.
ATHENIAN: And of the stars too, and of the moon, and of the years and months and seasons, must we not say in like manner, that since a soul or souls having every sort of excellence are the causes of all of them, those souls are Gods, whether they are living beings and reside in bodies, and in this way order the whole heaven, or whatever be the place and mode of their existence—and will any one who admits all this venture to deny that all things are full of Gods?
ATHENIAN: And now, Megillus and Cleinias, let us offer terms to him who has hitherto denied the existence of the Gods, and leave him.
ATHENIAN: Either he shall teach us that we were wrong in saying that the soul is the original of all things, and arguing accordingly; or, if he be not able to say anything better, then he must yield to us and live for the remainder of his life in the belief that there are Gods.
Let us see, then, whether we have said enough or not enough to those who deny that there are Gods.
And now we are to address him who, believing that there are Gods, believes also that they take no heed of human affairs: To him we say—O thou best of men, in believing that there are Gods you are led by some affinity to them, which attracts you towards your kindred and makes you honour and believe in them.
Perhaps you have seen impious men growing old and leaving their children's children in high offices, and their prosperity shakes your faith—you have known or heard or been yourself an eyewitness of many monstrous impieties, and have beheld men by such criminal means from small beginnings attaining to sovereignty and the pinnacle of greatness; and considering all these things you do not like to accuse the Gods of them, because they are your relatives; and so from some want of reasoning power, and also from an unwillingness to find fault with them, you have come to believe that they exist indeed, but have no thought or care of human things.
Now, that your present evil opinion may not grow to still greater impiety, and that we may if possible use arguments which may conjure away the evil before it arrives, we will add another argument to that originally addressed to him who utterly denied the existence of the Gods.
ATHENIAN: There will probably be no difficulty in proving to him that the Gods care about the small as well as about the great.
ATHENIAN: And the one, like other meaner things, is a human quality, but the Gods have no part in anything of the sort?
ATHENIAN: Surely God must not be supposed to have a nature which He Himself hates?
Reflect; he who acts in this way, whether he be God or man, must act from one of two principles.
For surely, when it is impossible for him to take care of all, he is not negligent if he fails to attend to these things great or small, which a God or some inferior being might be wanting in strength or capacity to manage?
ATHENIAN: Now, then, let us examine the offenders, who both alike confess that there are Gods, but with a difference—the one saying that they may be appeased, and the other that they have no care of small matters: there are three of us and two of them, and we will say to them—In the first place, you both acknowledge that the Gods hear and see and know all things, and that nothing can escape them which is matter of sense and knowledge: do you admit this?
ATHENIAN: Then not from inactivity and carelessness is any God ever negligent; for there is no cowardice in them.
ATHENIAN: Then the alternative which remains is, that if the Gods neglect the lighter and lesser concerns of the universe, they neglect them because they know that they ought not to care about such matters—what other alternative is there but the opposite of their knowing?
ATHENIAN: And we acknowledge that all mortal creatures are the property of the Gods, to whom also the whole of heaven belongs?
ATHENIAN: And, therefore, whether a person says that these things are to the Gods great or small—in either case it would not be natural for the Gods who own us, and who are the most careful and the best of owners, to neglect us.
ATHENIAN: Let us not, then, deem God inferior to human workmen, who, in proportion to their skill, finish and perfect their works, small as well as great, by one and the same art; or that God, the wisest of beings, who is both willing and able to take care, is like a lazy good-for-nothing, or a coward, who turns his back upon labour and gives no thought to smaller and easier matters, but to the greater only.
CLEINIAS: Never, Stranger, let us admit a supposition about the Gods which is both impious and false.
ATHENIAN: I think that we have now argued enough with him who delights to accuse the Gods of neglect.
ATHENIAN: In a way which may be supposed to make the care of all things easy to the Gods.
ATHENIAN: I will explain: When the king saw that our actions had life, and that there was much virtue in them and much vice, and that the soul and body, although not, like the Gods of popular opinion, eternal, yet having once come into existence, were indestructible (for if either of them had been destroyed, there would have been no generation of living beings); and when he observed that the good of the soul was ever by nature designed to profit men, and the evil to harm them—he, seeing all this, contrived so to place each of the parts that their position might in the easiest and best manner procure the victory of good and the defeat of evil in the whole.
'This is the justice of the Gods who inhabit Olympus.'
O youth or young man, who fancy that you are neglected by the Gods, know that if you become worse you shall go to the worse souls, or if better to the better, and in every succession of life and death you will do and suffer what like may fitly suffer at the hands of like.
This is also the explanation of the fate of those whom you saw, who had done unholy and evil deeds, and from small beginnings had grown great, and you fancied that from being miserable they had become happy; and in their actions, as in a mirror, you seemed to see the universal neglect of the Gods, not knowing how they make all things work together and contribute to the great whole.
If Cleinias and this our reverend company succeed in proving to you that you know not what you say of the Gods, then will God help you; but should you desire to hear more, listen to what we say to the third opponent, if you have any understanding whatsoever.
For I think that we have sufficiently proved the existence of the Gods, and that they care for men: The other notion that they are appeased by the wicked, and take gifts, is what we must not concede to any one, and what every man should disprove to the utmost of his power.
ATHENIAN: Well, then, by the Gods themselves I conjure you to tell me—if they are to be propitiated, how are they to be propitiated?
For as we acknowledge the world to be full of many goods and also of evils, and of more evils than goods, there is, as we affirm, an immortal conflict going on among us, which requires marvellous watchfulness; and in that conflict the Gods and demigods are our allies, and we are their property.
Injustice and insolence and folly are the destruction of us, and justice and temperance and wisdom are our salvation; and the place of these latter is in the life of the Gods, although some vestige of them may occasionally be discerned among mankind.
ATHENIAN: What else can he say who declares that the Gods are always lenient to the doers of unjust acts, if they divide the spoil with them?
Must not he who maintains that the Gods can be propitiated argue thus?
ATHENIAN: And to which of the above-mentioned classes of guardians would any man compare the Gods without absurdity?
CLEINIAS: That would be a fearful image of the Gods.
ATHENIAN: And are not all the Gods the chiefest of all guardians, and do they not guard our highest interests?
ATHENIAN: Then are the three assertions—that the Gods exist, and that they take care of men, and that they can never be persuaded to do injustice, now sufficiently demonstrated?
I would not have the wicked think that, having the superiority in argument, they may do as they please and act according to their various imaginations about the Gods; and this zeal has led me to speak too vehemently; but if we have at all succeeded in persuading the men to hate themselves and love their opposites, the prelude of our laws about impiety will not have been spoken in vain.
For he who does not believe in the Gods, and yet has a righteous nature, hates the wicked and dislikes and refuses to do injustice, and avoids unrighteous men, and loves the righteous.
But they who besides believing that the world is devoid of Gods are intemperate, and have at the same time good memories and quick wits, are worse; although both of them are unbelievers, much less injury is done by the one than by the other.
The one may talk loosely about the Gods and about sacrifices and oaths, and perhaps by laughing at other men he may make them like himself, if he be not punished.
In like manner also the notion that the Gods take no thought of men produces two other sorts of crimes, and the notion that they may be propitiated produces two more.
As to that class of monstrous natures who not only believe that there are no Gods, or that they are negligent, or to be propitiated, but in contempt of mankind conjure the souls of the living and say that they can conjure the dead and promise to charm the Gods with sacrifices and prayers, and will utterly overthrow individuals and whole houses and states for the sake of money—let him who is guilty of any of these things be condemned by the court to be bound according to law in the prison which is in the centre of the land, and let no freeman ever approach him, but let him receive the rations of food appointed by the guardians of the law from the hands of the public slaves; and when he is dead let him be cast beyond the borders unburied, and if any freeman assist in burying him, let him pay the penalty of impiety to any one who is willing to bring a suit against him.
The reason of this is as follows: Gods and temples are not easily instituted, and to establish them rightly is the work of a mighty intellect.
And women especially, and men too, when they are sick or in danger, or in any sort of difficulty, or again on their receiving any good fortune, have a way of consecrating the occasion, vowing sacrifices, and promising shrines to Gods, demigods, and sons of Gods; and when they are awakened by terrible apparitions and dreams or remember visions, they find in altars and temples the remedies of them, and will fill every house and village with them, placing them in the open air, or wherever they may have had such visions; and with a view to all these cases we should obey the law.
The law has also regard to the impious, and would not have them fancy that by the secret performance of these actions—by raising temples and by building altars in private houses, they can propitiate the God secretly with sacrifices and prayers, while they are really multiplying their crimes infinitely, bringing guilt from heaven upon themselves, and also upon those who permit them, and who are better men than they are; and the consequence is that the whole state reaps the fruit of their impiety, which, in a certain sense, is deserved.
Assuredly God will not blame the legislator, who will enact the following law: No one shall possess shrines of the Gods in private houses, and he who is found to possess them, and perform any sacred rites not publicly authorised—supposing the offender to be some man or woman who is not guilty of any other great and impious crime—shall be informed against by him who is acquainted with the fact, which shall be announced by him to the guardians of the law; and let them issue orders that he or she shall carry away their private rites to the public temples, and if they do not persuade them, let them inflict a penalty on them until they comply.
And if a person be proven guilty of impiety, not merely from childish levity, but such as grown-up men may be guilty of, whether he have sacrificed publicly or privately to any Gods, let him be punished with death, for his sacrifice is impure.
First, let us speak of treasure-trove: May I never pray the Gods to find the hidden treasure, which another has laid up for himself and his family, he not being one of my ancestors, nor lift, if I should find, such a treasure.
Now as to him who is careless about having children and regardless of the legislator, taking up that which neither he deposited, nor any ancestor of his, without the consent of the depositor, violating the simplest and noblest of laws which was the enactment of no mean man: 'Take not up that which was not laid down by thee'—of him, I say, who despises these two legislators, and takes up, not some small matter which he has not deposited, but perhaps a great heap of treasure, what he ought to suffer at the hands of the Gods, God only knows; but I would have the first person who sees him go and tell the wardens of the city, if the occurrence has taken place in the city, or if the occurrence has taken place in the agora he shall tell the wardens of the agora, or if in the country he shall tell the wardens of the country and their commanders.
When information has been received the city shall send to Delphi, and, whatever the God answers about the money and the remover of the money, that the city shall do in obedience to the oracle; the informer, if he be a freeman, shall have the honour of doing rightly, and he who informs not, the dishonour of doing wrongly; and if he be a slave who gives information, let him be freed, as he ought to be, by the state, which shall give his master the price of him; but if he do not inform he shall be punished with death.
Let this be the rule prescribed: No one shall call the Gods to witness, when he says or does anything false or deceitful or dishonest, unless he would be the most hateful of mankind to them.
And he is most hateful to them who takes a false oath, and pays no heed to the Gods; and in the next degree, he who tells a falsehood in the presence of his superiors.
For every one who is guilty of adulteration in the agora tells a falsehood, and deceives, and when he invokes the Gods, according to the customs and cautions of the wardens of the agora, he does but swear without any respect for God or man.
Certainly, it is an excellent rule not lightly to defile the names of the Gods, after the fashion of men in general, who care little about piety and purity in their religious actions.
If a man sells any adulterated goods and will not obey these regulations, he who knows and can prove the fact, and does prove it in the presence of the magistrates, if he be a slave or a metic, shall have the adulterated goods; but if he be a citizen, and do not pursue the charge, he shall be called a rogue, and deemed to have robbed the Gods of the agora; or if he proves the charge, he shall dedicate the goods to the Gods of the agora.
After this preface let our law run as follows, and may fortune favour us: No landowner among the Magnetes, whose city the God is restoring and resettling—no one, that is, of the 5040 families, shall become a retail trader either voluntarily or involuntarily; neither shall he be a merchant, or do any service for private persons unless they equally serve him, except for his father or his mother, and their fathers and mothers; and in general for his elders who are freemen, and whom he serves as a freeman.
All these continue through life serving the country and the people; some of them are leaders in battle; others make for hire implements and works, and they ought not to deceive in such matters, out of respect to the Gods who are their ancestors.
If any craftsman through indolence omit to execute his work in a given time, not reverencing the God who gives him the means of life, but considering, foolish fellow, that he is his own God and will let him off easily, in the first place, he shall suffer at the hands of the God, and in the second place, the law shall follow in a similar spirit.
And if any one lets out work to a craftsman, and does not pay him duly according to the lawful agreement, disregarding Zeus the guardian of the city and Athene, who are the partners of the state, and overthrows the foundations of society for the sake of a little gain, in his case let the law and the Gods maintain the common bonds of the state.
ATHENIAN: O ye Gods, he will say, how monstrous that I am not allowed to give, or not to give, my own to whom I will—less to him who has been bad to me, and more to him who has been good to me, and whose badness and goodness have been tested by me in time of sickness or in old age and in every other sort of fortune!
But if these things are really so, in the first place men should have a fear of the Gods above, who regard the loneliness of the orphans; and in the second place of the souls of the departed, who by nature incline to take an especial care of their own children, and are friendly to those who honour, and unfriendly to those who dishonour them.
Neither God, nor a man who has understanding, will ever advise any one to neglect his parents.
To a discourse concerning the honour and dishonour of parents, a prelude such as the following, about the service of the Gods, will be a suitable introduction: There are ancient customs about the Gods which are universal, and they are of two kinds: some of the Gods we see with our eyes and we honour them, of others we honour the images, raising statues of them which we adore; and though they are lifeless, yet we imagine that the living Gods have a good will and gratitude to us on this account.
ATHENIAN: Oedipus, as tradition says, when dishonoured by his sons, invoked on them curses which every one declares to have been heard and ratified by the Gods, and Amyntor in his wrath invoked curses on his son Phoenix, and Theseus upon Hippolytus, and innumerable others have also called down wrath upon their children, whence it is clear that the Gods listen to the imprecations of parents; for the curses of parents are, as they ought to be, mighty against their children as no others are.
And shall we suppose that the prayers of a father or mother who is specially dishonoured by his or her children, are heard by the Gods in accordance with nature; and that if a parent is honoured by them, and in the gladness of his heart earnestly entreats the Gods in his prayers to do them good, he is not equally heard, and that they do not minister to his request?
ATHENIAN: May we not think, as I was saying just now, that we can possess no image which is more honoured by the Gods, than that of a father or grandfather, or of a mother stricken in years?
whom when a man honours, the heart of the God rejoices, and he is ready to answer their prayers.
And therefore, if a man makes a right use of his father and grandfather and other aged relations, he will have images which above all others will win him the favour of the Gods.
This is what we must do, Megillus and Cleinias, in the best and fairest manner that we can, saying what the punishments are to be of all actions of theft and violence, and giving laws of such a kind as the Gods and sons of Gods would have us give.
And if any one is disobedient, the judges shall either at once expel him from the country, or he shall pay a fine of three minae, which shall be dedicated to the God who presides over the contests.
Wherefore let no one be deluded by poets or mythologers into a mistaken belief of such things, nor let him suppose, when he thieves or is guilty of violence, that he is doing nothing base, but only what the Gods themselves do.
For such tales are untrue and improbable; and he who steals or robs contrary to the law, is never either a God or the son of a God; of this the legislator ought to be better informed than all the poets put together.
The crown of victory shall be an olive wreath which the victor shall offer up at the temple of any war-god whom he likes, adding an inscription for a testimony to last during life, that such an one has received the first, the second, or the third prize.
Let me endeavour to explain my meaning by an ancient tale: If Patroclus had been brought to the tent still alive but without his arms (and this has happened to innumerable persons), the original arms, which the poet says were presented to Peleus by the Gods as a nuptial gift when he married Thetis, remaining in the hands of Hector, then the base spirits of that day might have reproached the son of Menoetius with having cast away his arms.
Tradition says that Caeneus, the Thessalian, was changed by a God from a woman into a man; but the converse miracle cannot now be wrought, or no punishment would be more proper than that the man who throws away his shield should be changed into a woman.
Let us invent a mode of creating them, which shall be as follows: Every year, after the summer solstice, the whole city shall meet in the common precincts of Helios and Apollo, and shall present to the God three men out of their own number in the manner following: Each citizen shall select, not himself, but some other citizen whom he deems in every way the best, and who is not less than fifty years of age.
But if all the three, or two out of the three, have equal votes, let them commit the election to good fate and fortune, and separate off by lot the first, and the second, and the third; these they shall crown with an olive wreath and give them the prize of excellence, at the same time proclaiming to all the world that the city of the Magnetes, by the providence of the Gods, is again preserved, and presents to the Sun and to Apollo her three best men as first-fruits, to be a common offering to them, according to the ancient law, as long as their lives answer to the judgment formed of them.
He knew that the men of his own time believed and had no doubt that there were Gods, which was a reasonable belief in those days, because most men were the sons of Gods, and according to tradition he was one himself.
He appears to have thought that he ought to commit judgment to no man, but to the Gods only, and in this way suits were simply and speedily decided by him.
But now that a certain portion of mankind do not believe at all in the existence of the Gods, and others imagine that they have no care of us, and the opinion of most men, and of the worst men, is that in return for a small sacrifice and a few flattering words they will be their accomplices in purloining large sums and save them from many terrible punishments, the way of Rhadamanthus is no longer suited to the needs of justice; for as the opinions of men about the Gods are changed, the laws should also be changed—in the granting of suits a rational legislation ought to do away with the oaths of the parties on either side—he who obtains leave to bring an action should write down the charges, but should not add an oath; and the defendant in like manner should give his denial to the magistrates in writing, and not swear; for it is a dreadful thing to know, when many lawsuits are going on in a state, that almost half the people who meet one another quite unconcernedly at the public meals and in other companies and relations of private life are perjured.
And our Cretan colony ought also to acquire the fairest and noblest reputation for virtue from other men; and there is every reason to expect that, if the reality answers to the idea, she will be one of the few well-ordered cities which the sun and the other Gods behold.
To Apollo at Delphi and to Zeus at Olympia and to Nemea and to the Isthmus, citizens should be sent to take part in the sacrifices and games there dedicated to the Gods; and they should send as many as possible, and the best and fairest that can be found, and they will make the city renowned at holy meetings in time of peace, procuring a glory which shall be the converse of that which is gained in war; and when they come home they shall teach the young that the institutions of other states are inferior to their own.
These are the customs, according to which our city should receive all strangers of either sex who come from other countries, and should send forth her own citizens, showing respect to Zeus, the God of hospitality, not forbidding strangers at meals and sacrifices, as is the manner which prevails among the children of the Nile, nor driving them away by savage proclamations.
If a person wishes to find anything in the house of another, he shall enter naked, or wearing only a short tunic and without a girdle, having first taken an oath by the customary Gods that he expects to find it there; he shall then make his search, and the other shall throw open his house and allow him to search things both sealed and unsealed.
Touching offerings to the Gods, a moderate man should observe moderation in what he offers.
Now the land and the hearth of the house of all men is sacred to all Gods; wherefore let no man dedicate them a second time to the Gods.
White is a colour suitable to the Gods, especially in woven works, but dyes should only be used for the adornments of war.
Concerning the dead of either sex, the religious ceremonies which may fittingly be performed, whether appertaining to the Gods of the under-world or of this, shall be decided by the interpreters with absolute authority.
Now we must believe the legislator when he tells us that the soul is in all respects superior to the body, and that even in life what makes each one of us to be what we are is only the soul; and that the body follows us about in the likeness of each of us, and therefore, when we are dead, the bodies of the dead are quite rightly said to be our shades or images; for the true and immortal being of each one of us which is called the soul goes on her way to other Gods, before them to give an account—which is an inspiring hope to the good, but very terrible to the bad, as the laws of our fathers tell us; and they also say that not much can be done in the way of helping a man after he is dead.
If this be true, a man ought not to waste his substance under the idea that all this lifeless mass of flesh which is in process of burial is connected with him; he should consider that the son, or brother, or the beloved one, whoever he may be, whom he thinks he is laying in the earth, has gone away to complete and fulfil his own destiny, and that his duty is rightly to order the present, and to spend moderately on the lifeless altar of the Gods below.
CLEINIAS: We must not, Stranger, by the God of strangers I swear that we must not, for in our opinion you speak most truly; but we should like to know how you will accomplish your purpose.
ATHENIAN: Is not the knowledge of the Gods which we have set forth with so much zeal one of the noblest sorts of knowledge—to know that they are, and know how great is their power, as far as in man lies?
We do indeed excuse the mass of the citizens, who only follow the voice of the laws, but we refuse to admit as guardians any who do not labour to obtain every possible evidence that there is respecting the Gods; our city is forbidden and not allowed to choose as a guardian of the law, or to place in the select order of virtue, him who is not an inspired man, and has not laboured at these things.
ATHENIAN: Are we assured that there are two things which lead men to believe in the Gods, as we have already stated?
ATHENIAN: No man can be a true worshipper of the Gods who does not know these two principles—that the soul is the eldest of all things which are born, and is immortal and rules over all bodies; moreover, as I have now said several times, he who has not contemplated the mind of nature which is said to exist in the stars, and gone through the previous training, and seen the connexion of music with these things, and harmonized them all with laws and institutions, is not able to give a reason of such things as have a reason.
CLEINIAS: I agree, Stranger, that we should proceed along the road in which God is guiding us; and how we can proceed rightly has now to be investigated and explained.
The danger is not a slight or ordinary one, and I would advise you, Cleinias, in particular, to see to the matter; for if you order rightly the city of the Magnetes, or whatever name God may give it, you will obtain the greatest glory; or at any rate you will be thought the most courageous of men in the estimation of posterity.
In the first chapter of the Bible, the name for God is Elohim (number 430), which is plural and means "divine ones." The Elohim, or divine ones, are more than one.
In Genesis 1:1 of the King James Bible, it states: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." However, the original Phoenician language says: "In the beginning of the creation, Elohim created the heavens and the earth."
Elohim is not "God." "El" means deity in Phoenician-Canaanite, and "im" indicates plurality, like adding "s" in English.
Thus, it means "the gods created the heavens and the earth."
This explains Genesis 1:26-28, where it says: "God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." Who is "us" and "our"?
Later, in Genesis 3:22, it states: "Man has become as one of us, knowing good and evil." Again, "us" refers to Elohim, the gods.
The gods created the heavens, the earth, and all on it.
In Genesis 9:1, after the flood, God tells Noah and his sons: "Multiply and replenish the earth." "Replenish" implies doing it again, suggesting a prior civilization destroyed by the flood.
Similarly, in Genesis 1:28, God tells Adam and Eve: "Multiply and replenish the earth," implying recreation after desolation.
More importantly, I don't believe in this version of God you're preaching.
I don't think this is the God that Jesus revealed.
Are they going to come away with the mainstream Christian creeds that are believed and practiced by 99.9% of Christians today, such as: to be saved, you must confess Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior, believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, and his sacrifice will wipe away your sins so you won't go to hell when you die?
If we love this man and believe he was sent from God, the Messiah, the son of God, shouldn't we at least look into this and see if it's true?
There's no question what Jesus's soteriology was, which in a nutshell is: repent and God forgives you.
Jesus never taught about God needing blood to forgive people.
So Jesus didn't seem very cool with the idea that God needs blood and never taught such a thing.
He said, "Repent with a humble heart and you go up justified before God." He taught this in numerous parables.
He finishes by saying, "And love your neighbor as yourself." In a parallel passage, when he's asked, "Teacher, what is the greatest commandment of all?"—aka, how do you get saved?—he says, "The greatest commandment of all is love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength," the Jewish Shema from Deuteronomy 6.
Or let's say Paul—Romans 10:9—Paul says if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, you will be saved.
I love that kind of Messiah who teaches: love God, love your neighbor, forgive to be forgiven, repent, and God forgives you, keep the commandments." Who's got a problem with that?
This is kind of how Islam sees Jesus: that he was a messiah who came from God, taught to love God and love neighbor, and got crucified for it.
The Nazarenes believed in marriage and reproduction to populate God's kingdom with children.
It's the big scandal at the heart of Christianity that the first Christians were Jewish Christian Nazarenes who did not believe Jesus was God who incarnated like a Greek demigod like Apollo or Perseus.
They were Semitic Jews who believed in the Messiah, the Mashiach, who was prophesied in the scriptures to be the son of David—of the lineage of David—a real person like you and I, chosen by God and anointed by God.
I make mistakes and learn from them, and God uses them for my good.
I understand your pain." The inspiring thing is that Jesus did experience all that and transcended it through his God consciousness and devotion to God.
Those are far secondary to his actual teachings and pointings to God.
Would any Christian deny that Jesus already showed us the perfect way to God and his teachings are that way?
I came to point to the one God, not to become the one God and be worshiped as a deity." It would make Jesus throw up in his mouth.
In John 1, it says in the beginning was the logos, the word; the word was with God.
To me, Christ is the divine idea of man in the mind of God.
If God is perfect and omniscient, all of God's thoughts are perfect.
God is incapable of imperfection.
Everything God does must be perfect in its own way—different expressions of that infinite perfection.
If that's true, God must have a perfect idea of man in God's mind: the archetype, the blueprint we're all supposed to shoot for.
He was a man who realized this truth within himself: God's perfect ideal of man—the most righteous, loving ideal—is in me now, and I can actualize it by living according to God's law and communing with God daily.
Although they believe there's one God—Brahman—that God is infinite and expresses in infinite ways, tangible in our lives.
You have all the gods and goddesses of the Hindu tradition—none of which a true Hindu believes is a real deity worthy of worship.
These are the three turning points around which the ego revolves—the only three real functions the ego has, and the only three ways we create separation from God in our mind and awareness.
The first temptation: "If you are the son of God, command these stones to become bread to satiate your hunger." The devil is asking Jesus to prove he's not lacking.
Prove you're not starving." Jesus responds: "Man does not live by physical bread alone, but by the bread of God." He appeals to the higher dimension.
The third: He takes him to the top of the temple and tempts Jesus to throw himself off: "If you are the son of God, prove it by throwing yourself off and saving yourself.
Doesn't scripture say he'll take his angels' charge concerning you?" Jesus says: "It is written: you shall not put the Lord your God to the test." Again, he appeals to higher truth.
Sun worship was happening in Zoroastrianism; he says: "Why teach people to worship the sun as a god when it's the one God who makes the sun?" His followers say: "The priests are unhappy and coming to kill you; get out." He escapes just before, like in the canonical gospels.
Constantine sees the sign of the cross in the sky during a military battle, hears a voice—purportedly God's: "By this sign, conquer." He made the cross the painted symbol on Roman shields, the military banner.
We project our thought system onto the demonic: "They think like us." Christians notoriously mistake believing the Bible has never been corrupted—no interpolations, nothing erroneous—because God wouldn't let that happen.
Difficult to swallow: why did God let disasters happen but not the Bible change?
How does God pick where to interfere with free will?
God has hands behind back—not interfering.
This is why contradicting beliefs about God: yes, God commanded genocide in the Old Testament—slay women, children.
That was God.
Then God changed mind with Jesus: love enemies, do no harm.
That's the same God.
Because ancient scriptures were distorted—negative polarity influenced scribes to believe God needs blood, is wrathful, commands war.
In earliest Jewish Christian texts from Nazarenes, the Clementine writings, there's a section from Peter attacking God commanding war and peace—split mind.
Peter says: if God commands war, who commands peace?
If God favors death, who favors life?
He explains the ludicrous nature: we believe God has split mind, two-faced—death sometimes, life others.
Jewish Christian Nazarenes rejected: God is love, eternal law that cannot change.
God cannot change mind.
God cannot lose power.
Devil isn't fighting God, sucking children to hell.
God has no enemy.
Otherwise, negative polarity weaves 10% evil into 90% truth: give 90% truth so you recognize, then "sacrifice a goat." "All other stuff right, so that must be God." Tricky.
This saint sent from God very different than religion told.
Every tradition: Islam, Judaism—many Jews respect Yeshua but don't believe he was God.
Many people believe in their religion but have their own current—they've left 90% not behind, but "I'm not sure, everybody fighting, but it gives connection to center, Lord, Christ, God, Allah, guru." They found their corner: "I'm spiritual, not religious." Because religious people prophesying as so religious, the juking feels alien to embodied teachings of spirituality.
When left Christianity, thought maybe no God, atheists right.
Went through closet atheist phase—terrified, didn't want no God.
Said if believe in God, good reasons in reality.
Reality show me God real.
Watch life, see every choice, reckon with soul: "I violated God's laws, harmed others, lived selfishly—can't stay knowing that." Even offered stay dead in heaven or go back, say: "No part wanted back after super heavenly state." But mistakes—not loving neighbor—conscience forced back: "Can't end on failure.
Want live God's truth." Often Jesus meeting in NDE, showing life, tour of heaven: "Want another chance go back love neighbor?" With tears: "Yes, Lord.
Come back motivated live loving devotion, service to others, God.
Realize: "Wasn't good person; life about being good." Millions NDEs: universe big morality test—of soul's conscience, sensitivity to truth, God; embody truth.
If can't, want another lifetime—soul part of God can't satisfy with judgment, selfishness, ego.
Classic NDE: source, light, God completely non-judgmental—unconditional love.
When look at good moments—forgave, humbled—soul radiant joy, overwhelming fulfillment: "Did it, lived God's truth." Most fulfilling feeling.
But according to the information I have discovered, we cannot return and reunite with God until we have completed all of our lessons and gained all the knowledge we are capable of.
Then, it is our destiny to return and share all we have learned with God.
In this sense, we are literally cells in the body of God.
An acceptance of reincarnation took away the power of the heaven or hell mob to frighten people into doing as they, sorry, ‘God’, said.