No one even realized, that without the OT, there never would’ve been a New Testament. In the early 1600s, one Italian cardinal gloated that he had amassed 10,000 outlawed Jewish books and consigned them to the flames. In the 1550s, Jewish books, as well as rare rabbinical manuscripts, were burned by the hundreds of thousands in Italian cities. The 16th century intensified matters, with the onslaught of the printing press: to some, a gift from heaven to others, a machine from hell. The common man, which meant almost everyone, did not have the ability to truly understand the message of the Bible: they did not understand the pain and poverty that was the lot of all but the priests and the feudal lords, and later, the emerging merchant class.Īnd that unlikely conjunction of stars-the printing press and Martin Luther-both appearing in the 15th century, almost caused the walls of the Vatican to come tumbling own. In 1415, a papal bull prohibited Jews from owning, studying, or even reading, the Talmud. As one historian noted, this not only threatened the clerical monopoly on knowledge, it had clerics worried about losing their jobs. In the past, translation into the vernacular was first deemed ungodly. The Lollards, an English group trying to reform Christianity in the 14th century, faced murderous opposition from the clergy and other interested parties when they tried to translate the Bible into English. In whatever ways, books have always threatened the establishment. With it went the House of Wisdom, containing the greatest library of the medieval world, and in its heyday drawing to it the foremost students of science: of optics and astronomy, chemistry and mathematics, zoology and geography. If they contain only the doctrine of the Koran, burn them anyway, for they are superfluous.” Some 600 years later (in 1258), the caliphate’s capital of Baghdad was destroyed by the Mongols. Omar was reported to have said: “If the books of this library contain matters opposed to the Koran, they are bad and must be burned. Again, in 392AD, by the Christian Patriarch of Alexandria, who considered it a pagan temple. And finally, in 642, by Caliph Omar, the successor to Mohammad. Once, perhaps accidentally by Julius Caesar in 48BC, while battling enemies in the city. In its history, the library had been burned down several times. In its day, the Library of Alexandria was said to contain all the knowledge of the world. For good measure, he also buried their authors alive. The first book burner was the Ch’in Emperor of China (from the 3rd century BC), since some books recorded great deeds performed before his time, which of course he considered quite impossible. Where they burn books, in the end…they also burn people. Not surprisingly, the act of book burning has been often followed by “ the gruesome executions of heretics, scholars, and enemies of the state.” The stars of the show include the Catholic Church, Nazi Germany, and many of today’s Islamist fundamentalists. As one scholar put it: “ The goals of the book burners have been to extirpate history, to intimidate and stamp out opposition, to create solidarity, and to cleanse society of controversial ideas.” Since ancient times, people from almost all religions and societies have been burning books.
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