Ernst Röhm, the chief of the brown-shirted Nazi storm troopers (Sturmabteilung, or S.A.) was the only person known to have addressed Hitler as du, and to be so addressed in turn. (In public, at least, even Hitler's mistress Eva Braun addressed him as Sie, and referred to him as der Führer.) Hitler and Röhm were close associates and, judging from pronoun use, good friends. Major Röhm had been Hitler’s contact in the German army when the small Nazi Party was beginning its rise. He also oversaw the street battles of his brown shirts against the Communists during the 1920s, and was a powerful and dominant figure in the Party, second only to Hitler himself.
But in early 1934, the German generals made it very clear to Hitler that if he wanted their support, Röhm and his private Nazi army had to go. On June 30 of that year, on Hitler's order, Röhm and hundreds of other people, in the Party and outside it, were murdered. Röhm was offered a pistol and encouraged to commit suicide. He refused, saying contemptuously, “If Adolf wants me killed, let him do it himself.” Röhm was shot immediately thereafter. To the best of our knowledge, no one ever again addressed Hitler as du.
RELIGIOUS FIGURES
The first person we know of in History to be nicknamed "Rocky" had nothing to do with boxing. He received his nickname in a pun spoken by none other than Jesus Christ Himself. The incident is recorded in the 16th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew:
When Jesus came to the coast of Caesarea Philippi he asked his disciples saying, Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am? And they said, Some say you are John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. He saith unto them, But who say you that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou are the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou Simon bar Jonah, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
In Greek, "Peter" is "Petros." The Greek word petra means "stone." Jesus's pun therefore was, "You are Rocky, and I will build my church on this rock."
If it weren't for me, you wouldn't have the clothes on your back!
A somewhat complex theological argument which split the world of Christian Theology during the 4th century was the question of whether in the Trinity the Son (incarnated as Jesus Christ) was equal to the God the Father or inferior to Him. The leader of the "egalitarians" was a bishop named Athanasius. His view, that Father and Son were equal, was supported by the ecumenical council at Nicaea in 325, but it was subsequently rejected by the ecclesiastical establishment. Athanasius was condemned to death, and he fled from Alexandria, Egypt, and along with some supporters boarded a ship and sailed up the Nile. A massive manhunt ensued, his enemies in pursuit and he and his followers eluding them. At one point a ship carrying his enemies, sailing south, passed his ship sailing north. Not recognizing him, the enemy captain called out, "We are seeking the bishop Athanasius. Have you seen him?"
"Yes," the captain of Athanasius' ship called back, "and he isn't far from here."
Encouraged by the reply, the enemy ship sailed on.
The same argument led to an interesting incident a half century later. The Athanasian point of view carried the day, but the contrary view, Arianism (the Son was inferior to the Father), still had many adherents.
Arcadius, the eldest son of the Roman Emperor Theodosius I, was declared co-ruler with his father in 383 A.D. when he was five years old. At his coronation a local elderly bishop behaved with obsequious deference to Theodosius, but treated Arcadius with disrespectful condescension. Outraged at the impertinent impudence of the bishop, Theodosius ordered him arrested and imprisoned. As the soldiers dragged the bishop from the hall, the old man cried out, “Thus be it ever to any man who denies the equality of the Father and the Son!" Startled and amused, Theodosius then had the bishop released.
Saint Patrick, as everyone knows, brought Christianity to Ireland during the 6th century and in the process baptized many local chieftains into the Christian faith. One of these chieftains, or kings, was named Aengus, a sincere and devout man whose understanding of Christianity was, to put it politely, rudimentary.
Patrick was an old man when he baptized Aengus, and by that late time of his life he leaned heavily upon a wooden walking stick (the ancestor of the shillelagh, perhaps.) In any event, as he baptized the king, Patrick had unwittingly rested the sharp tip of the stick upon the instep of Aengus’ foot. As the saint leaned upon the stick during the ceremony, the stick stabbed through the king’s foot, breaking his bones and resulting in an effusion of blood.
At last Patrick looked down and realized what he had done. He fell to his knees and begged the king’s forgiveness, which was cheerfully given. But when Patrick asked why Aengus had not said anything about the injury and the accompanying pain, Aengus replied simply, “I thought it was part of the ritual.”
Tomás de Torquemada was the "grand inquisitor" of 15th century Spain, that is to say the man who was in charge of the Spanish Inquisition, the official name for which was the Holy Office. The original purpose of the Inquisition was to ferret out those Spaniards who were pretending to be Catholics but were in reality Muslims or Jews. (After the reconquista many Spaniards of those faiths underwent sham conversions in order to keep their property and remain in Spain. They were suspected of outwardly conforming to Catholicism while secretly practicing their real religions.) The inquisitors often had difficulty deciding which of the accused were true Catholics and which were engaging in deceit. Once, while interrogating a cell filled with prisoners, Torquemada's solution to the problem was simple. "Kill them all," he said. "God will know his own."
Martin Luther, the 16th century Protestant reformer, was a scholar, linguist, professor, priest, prolific writer, political figure, and a man who rocked 16th century Europe to its very foundation. He was also a German, and as such had affection for beer. He reportedly had a large beer stein upon the side of which was inscribed, in this order, the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' Creed, and the Ten Commandments. It was said that Luther was the only man in Wittenberg who could drain the stein down to the Fifth Commandment in one draught.
Luther may have been a cheerfully Germanic imbiber of the gift of the hops, but he was also a quite serious theologian of staggering historical impact. In 1529 his close friend Philip Melanchthon, at the behest of Count Philip of Hessen, organized a meeting with the Swiss Protestants led by Huldrich Zwingli in hopes of uniting the reform movement against the Roman Catholic Holy Roman Emperor. Luther and Zwingli agreed on most points of Theology, but they differed on one crucial point: the nature of the Eucharist (the Lord's Supper, Holy Communion, etc.). Zwingli maintained that the bread and wine merely symbolized the Body and Blood of Christ; Luther maintained that there existed a sacramental union by which Christ's true body and blood were really present "in, with, and under the bread and wine." Christ, Luther argued, did not say "This symbolizes my body," or "This symbolizes my blood"; His words were very clear.
It was also clear to all present that they had reached an impasse when in mid-argument Luther took a piece of chalk from a pocket in his robe and wrote in the center of the round table the words Hoc est corpus meum, "This is my body." He then circled the Latin quotation, sat back, glowered at Zwingli, and said not another word.
Oliver Cromwell, Lord High Protector of the Puritan Commonwealth of England after the execution of King Charles I, had an interesting perspective on both faith and food. It was customary to say grace before meals (ask the blessing, give thanks, etc.), and Cromwell's grace was to say the least an unusual one:
"Some have appetite and no meat. Some have meat and no appetite. I have both. Thanks be to God!"
When St. Francis of Assisi announced his decision to become a monk, his father was furious. His father was a successful, wealthy merchant who had prospered greatly from the Commercial Revolution then beginning in Italy, and he had every expecta
tion that his son would follow in his footsteps. For young Francis to choose a life of poverty (i.e., abandoning the family business), chastity (i.e., no grandchildren for his parents), and obedience (but not to him) was incomprehensible to his father. When he confronted his son in the public square, surrounded by curious onlookers, his father tried every argument he could think of to talk his son out of the foolish future he had chosen, all to no avail. At last he resorted to parental authority: "You must obey me! If it weren't for me, you wouldn't even have the clothes you are wearing!"
Whereupon Francis stripped naked, turned, and walked away.
In 1414, Jan Hus, the Bohemian (i.e., Czech) religious reformer (or heretic, as Roman Catholics would have it) travelled to Constance, Switzerland, to defend his views before an ecumenical council of the Church. Though he had already been excommunicated and his life was thus in danger, he trusted the guarantee of safe passage he had been granted by Sigismund, the Holy Roman Emperor. He shouldn't have. He was tried for heresy, convicted, and burned at the stake.
Bohemia and England had been closely connected ever since Princess Anna of Bohemia had married King Richard II of England in 1382, and events in each country were closely followed in the other. In the Czech language the name Hus means "goose"; and when Hus was burned at the stake, the English added the expression "His goose is cooked" to their figures of speech.
When asked about the afterlife, Confucius said, “Not know life. How know death?” (Literal translation from the Chinese.) And when asked about reputation, Confucius said, “It is not sufficient to be loved by righteous men. One must seek also to be hated by unrighteous men.”
Not wishing to be a lightning rod for trouble, the author has chosen to phrase the following anecdote in a somewhat vague manner.
When a small religious minority in a certain city did not accept a certain person as a prophet, he ordered the execution of the men in their community, some 800 in all. They were beheaded in groups of six, their heads and bodies cast immediately into a long trench. After all 800 had been killed, their property was distributed amongst their murderers. The property included over 1000 women (who were, of course, property, not people), one of whom was particularly beautiful. This religious leader claimed her as his own, and he asked her to marry him. The woman, whose husband, father, and brothers had just been beheaded, for some inexplicable reason declined the honor.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (the Mahatma, or "Great Soul") was educated in England during the height of the power of the British Empire, and he spent a good deal of time trying to figure out why this people from a small distant island had grown so great. He read widely and explored possible explanations for British predominance. One idea that he considered seriously was that the British ate meat, unlike the vegetarian Hindus. (The Hindu tradition of Ahimsa, usually translated as non-violence, though it has karmic implications, is at the root of Hindu vegetarianism.)
Deciding to see if consumption of meat would make him stronger, he ate a few bites of roasted goat at a London restaurant operated by Sikhs. He spent the rest of the night sleeping fitfully and awakening from a recurring nightmare in which a live goat was thrashing about and bleating madly in his stomach. He never touched meat again.
Pontius Pilate, the Roman official governing Judea in 33 A.D., presided over the trial and crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Though he ordered the execution to pacify an angry mob, Pilate did not believe Jesus to be guilty of the charges levied against Him. According to account of the trial recorded in the Gospel of John, when Jesus said, "Everyone who is of the truth heareth my voice," Pilate responded, "What is truth?"
This cryptic question has sparked volumes of speculation as to the meaning of Pilate's words, but the explanation is actually quite simple. The Romans had a fondness for wordplay, and a very popular game was the creation of anagrams. The letters in the Latin words, "Quid est veritas?", what is truth, can be rearranged as "Est vir qui adest," which means, it (truth) is the man right here; in other words, Pilate believed Jesus. The incident is recorded in the Gospel of St. John, who witnessed the trial, heard what Pilate said, and obviously remembered it. But he was a Jew, not a Roman, and his knowledge of Latin was in all likelihood rudimentary. Though he remembered Pilate’s words, he probably didn't get the joke.
When St. Augustine was a young man, he struggled greatly with the temptations of “the devil, the world, and our flesh,” as the Bible describes them. His struggle is reflected in a famous prayer from his youth: “O Lord, grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.”
In later years he and his mother, St. Monica, travelled from Milan to Rome, where they discovered much to their chagrin that worship practices differed from what they were accustomed to back home. (In Milan, for example, it was customary to fast on Saturday; in Rome it was not.) Confused as to the proper way to behave, they consulted their friend and pastor, St. Ambrose, the bishop of Milan. He settled the matter by saying, simply and eventually famously, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”
One of the most tantalizing mysteries in History is the connection between the ancient Hebrews and the ancient Egyptians. The Biblical record preserves a lengthy tradition of interaction between the two: Abraham's grandson Joseph being sold into slavery in Egypt, and then rising to the rank of what today would be called prime minister; his brothers and father (Jacob, nicknamed Israel) moving to Egypt and prospering there; a new pharaoh "who knew not Joseph" reducing the Hebrews to slavery; the male babies of the Hebrews being massacred to reduce their numbers: and Moses, a Hebrew raised by Egyptians, leading them by God's command out of Egypt to Mt. Sinai to receive the Law, and then to the promised land.
When read through the eyes of faith, all of this is historical fact. When read with a more critical eye, it raises, well, tantalizing questions, and the possible answers to these questions raise more questions still.
Question one: how could a slave like Joseph rise to become an important and powerful government official? Unlikely. However, the Hebrews were a Semitic people, and in 1760 BC Egypt was conquered by the Hyksos (Egyptian for "shepherd kings"), who were themselves Semites. These Semitic foreigners ruled Egypt for the next few centuries, a fact that gives some plausibility to the idea that a Semite of humble origins like Jacob could conceivably have advanced his position as an ethnically related late-comer to the new ruling class.
Question two: were the Hebrews enslaved by the Egyptians? The Hyksos were expelled by the Egyptians in 1560 BC, and a new native dynasty took power ("there arose a new pharaoh who knew not Joseph"). It would be a natural consequence that after the Hyksos were expelled their Hebrew allies would be enslaved.
Question three: was Moses a Hebrew raised by Egyptians? Was there an Egyptian massacre of Hebrew babies? Who knows? But one thing is certain: "Moses" is not a Hebrew name. It was an Egyptian name, and not an uncommon one at that. And on an ancient Egyptian stele, the so-called Menerptah Stele, are carved the words "Israel is desolate, his seed is not."
Question four, and this is the big one: what connection, if any exists between Moses, monotheism, and ancient Egypt? The Egyptians were polytheists, were they not? The surprising answer is that for a brief period of time, at least officially, they were not.
In somewhere around 1350 BC, Amenhotep IV succeeded to the Egyptian throne, and embarked upon a religious revolution that nearly destroyed the country. He proclaimed that there was only one God (capital G used intentionally here), and that his name was Aton. All other gods were false gods, including Amen, whose name was in his own, so he changed his name from Amenhotep to Akhenaton. Aton was represented in the art of the era (called the Amarna Age from the name of the new capital city) as the solar disk, but this was more than simple sun worship. The power of God gives life, and in Amarna art the rays of the sun, holding the ankh (the loop-topped cross that was the hieroglyph for "life"), beam their salutary power down upon the earth. The sun shines everywhere, upon everyone. Therefore God is the father of all men, all men are brothers, and
warfare is a sin.
This, of course, constituted an open invitation for Egypt's enemies to invade her, which they did. Akhenaton died (he was probably assassinated) around 1335 BC, and it took years for a general (later pharaoh) named Horemheb to beat back the Hittites, but even then when peace was restored Egypt had permanently lost Syria.
The interesting thing about these events is that they occurred at about the same time as the Exodus. We do not know precisely when the Exodus happened, though it would require a very limited historical perspective to maintain that nothing like it ever happened at all. If we accept the early date for the Exodus, say around 1450 BC, then the monotheism of Moses may have influenced Akhenaton; if we accept the late date, say around 1250 BC, then the monotheism of Akhenaton may have influenced Moses. (In his book Moses and Monotheism, Sigmund Freud speculated that Moses was a priest of Aton who, after Akhenaton's death, got the Hebrews to accept monotheism in exchange for being freed of Egyptian slavery.)
But whatever the connection was, there definitely was a connection. A man with an Egyptian name establishing the rudiments of a monotheistic theology among a people enslaved in Egypt at a point in time around which an Egyptian king established an abortive monotheistic regime cannot possibly be a coincidence.
One final tantalizing piece to the unsolved and unsolvable puzzle:
The ruins of Akhenaton's capital city, Akhetaten, now called Tell-al-Amarna, were excavated early in this century. Among the written records recovered in cuneiform on baked clay tablets and in hieroglyphs on papyrus scrolls and wall carvings was a hymn of praise to Aton written, if not by Akhenaton himself, then by his priests. As the archeologists transcribed and translated the hymn, it began to seem strangely familiar to them.
Warm and Witty Side of Attila the Hun Page 8