Question About Lewis's
'The Ten Commandments'
Steve
From:
To: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Subject: WebMaster:_Positive_Atheism_Index
Date: Wednesday, July 26, 2000 3:33 PM
Just a note: in your essay about the 7th commandment and adultery, you state,
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"Leontium, whose lover was the great philosopher Epicurus, was herself a woman of rare ability, and the author of several books." |
Epicurus was probably celibate. If you look at his surviving writings, you see a deep distrust for sexual intercourse. Epicurus did, of course, accept both men and women into the Garden (his school), and opponents of his, especially Stoic writers, claimed that Epicurus had numerous lovers, and that was why he accepted women into the school (most of the philosophical schools only allowed men), but that charge has been discredited. If you have information suggesting that the two of them were lovers, I'd be interested in reading it.
Thanks.
Steve
From: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
To:
Subject: Re: WebMaster:_Positive_Atheism_Index
Date: Wednesday, July 26, 2000 4:38 PM
Ths book The Ten Commandments was written by the late Joseph Lewis, who depended heavily on Lecky, Lea, and Frazer. Lewis also likes to provide endless lists of "facts" to more than fortify his case. Because of this, some of the "facts" he has listed have had minor errors (such as when he said that Minrat went free, when, in fact, he was executed). I am not sure about the precision of his remark about Epicurus, but this opinion was probably in circulation either when Lewis wrote or when the other historians wrote.
As such, this work is posted for informational use only, and does not necessarily mean that we agree one hundred percent with what it says, nor are we willing to back up (or retract, as the case may be) anything except: Cliff's editorials; the FAQ section; Cliff's responses in the Letters section.
We concerted and posted this book as an important atheistic work which is very hard to find and which, according to our research, is in the public domain (our conversion of it to e-text and the HTML markup is copyrighted and it is edited in such a way that if somebody used our e-text to publish a commercial copy of the book using our e-text, we could detect that our e-text was used).
We also tend to agree with the main gist of the book: the Ten Commandments don't mean today what they meant to the people who originated them.
Cliff Walker
"Positive Atheism" Magazine
From:
To: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Subject: Re: WebMaster:_Positive_Atheism_Index
Date: Wednesday, July 26, 2000 4:44 PM
Thanks for clearing it up [Epicurus and Leontium]. I think most people (who think about it) realize that the 10 commandments mean something different now than they did when they were written. They even mean something different to Christians than to Jews.
A book I might suggest is "Ain't Nobody's Business if You Do." I forget the name of the author, but he talks about the problems with using the bible as a legal code -- unfortunately, he also enjoys stringing together statements, some of which are factually suspect (The theme of the book is that consensual crimes should be legalized -- drug use, prostitution, etc).
The big thing that people forget about the 613 commandments -- no reason to single out 10 -- is that (1) they were intended as a legal code, not a moral one, and (2) they weren't considered binding on anyone who's not a Jew. I do think people forget those facts.
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