The priesthood was, in the Old Testament, generally seized in its initial stages by force. It comes as a reward for manslaughter. This is a simple fact that confronts any careful reader of the Old Testament in general and the Torah in particular. This truth produced an entire tradition of zealotry within the Old Testament that continued into the New Testament period. Simply defined, zealotry in this context is the idea that acts of violence, even the killing of other human persons, are not only allowed but required in defense of that which is holy and pure. This idea has been (wrongly) appealed to and applied throughout Christian history to defend everything from the inquisition to the crusades to witch-hunting. …
The Beatitudes (Matt 5:1-12) form a prologue or introduction to Christ’s Sermon on the Mount in St. Matthew’s Gospel. The corresponding blessings, but in this case with accompanying woes, play a similar role in the Sermon on the Plain found in St. Luke’s Gospel (Luke 6:20-26). Often these blessings are extracted from the surrounding material in much the same way that the Ten Commandments are extracted from the other commandments of the Torah as a sort of summary. Like the Ten Commandments, they are often memorized. They are sung or recited at several points in the liturgical worship of the Orthodox Church, including within the funeral services. The word ‘Beatitude’ is a transliteration of the Latin ‘beatitudo‘ which refers to…
