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- Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy,alt.atheism,alt.mindcontrol
- Path: sparky!uunet!usc!news.service.uci.edu!ucivax!ucla-cs!lanai.cs.ucla.edu!pierce
- From: pierce@lanai.cs.ucla.edu (Brad Pierce)
- Subject: A carefully tuned network of filters
- Message-ID: <1993Jan24.070121.19378@cs.ucla.edu>
- Sender: usenet@cs.ucla.edu (Mr Usenet)
- Nntp-Posting-Host: lanai.cs.ucla.edu
- Organization: UCLA, Computer Science Department
- Date: Sun, 24 Jan 93 07:01:21 GMT
- Lines: 26
-
- "Our sense of the past is created for us largely by history's winners.
- The voices of the losers, when heard at all, are transmitted through a
- carefully tuned network of filters. The final triumph of orthodox
- Christianity is instructive in this regard.
-
- "...
-
- "Occasionally we are blessed with extraordinary discoveries that make
- it possible for the first time to read the original score. The Dead
- Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi codices were two such finds. They have
- revolutionized our conception of the Palestinian Jewish setting of
- early Christianity on the one hand and our understanding of Gnostic
- Christianity on the other. But they have also taught a painful lesson.
- The seemingly insuperable difficulties encountered in trying to
- reconcile these new documents with ancient descriptions of them by
- their orthodox opponents - whether Jewish or Christian - remind us not
- only how little we know of history's losers but even more poignantly
- how consistently 'bad' the reports of the winners have been."
-
- -- John G. Gager
-
- [Source: John G. Gager, _The Origins of Anti-Semitism: Attitudes
- Toward Judaism in Pagan and Christian Antiquity_, Oxford University
- Press, 1983; pp. 265-266.]
-
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-