Comment by 29athrowaway | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 29athrowaway | Hacker News Reader

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> Its popularity has been deeply tied to Christian imperialism and its adoption has often been forced.

I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news but ancient Israel was also a kingdom/empire.

You are just migrating from the conventions from empire to the conventions from another one.

If imperialism is bad there might be non-imperial calendar alternatives you may enjoy more, like the French Republican calendar.

If you dislike Ancient Rome, you may also consider not using the Latin alphabet.

Most of the atrocities you mention took place during a time when literacy rate was really low, masses took place in Latin and absolutely nobody understood what was going on. Copies of the Bible were extremely expensive and for over 1000 years there was not even paper to print them. Most of the people involved in those acts of violence had no idea what actual Christianity even meant because their only connection to Christianity was attending a church on Sunday where the entire thing was in Latin.

Jesus was an extremely tolerant guy and his message was one of tolerance and forgiveness, which is extremely unusual for a monotheistic belief system.

Another thing to take into consideration is that it is the successor of Christian imperialism mostly what helped found modern Israel and is helping protect Israel today. So perhaps it may be a good idea to relax those views a bit.

This is getting a bit out of the scope of HN but... here goes nothing. Firstly, Jews =/= Israel! I have never been to Israel and do not plan on ever going. Nor do I support their actions/government. Secondly, the United States and other governments do not protect Israel for Christian fundamentalist reasons. While republicans would like you to believe they support Israel so that Jesus can return to Earth or whatever shit they believe the truth is that they are simply preserving hegemony in an oil rich region that lines their owners pockets. Second of all, Christian imperialism is clearly a much bigger concept than Roman imperialism. Countless nations have utilized Christian fundamentalism as a excuse to colonize people all over the world and commit atrocities. Yes the romans spread the gregorian calendar but it was created for and named after Pope Gregory XIII. The calendar clearly has far more to do with Christianity than the Roman empire. I mean the entire thing is built around the death of Christ. None of this is to say that Jews have not committed sins or carried out horrible acts in the name of their religion, however, unlike most religions proselytizing is a feature (not a bug) of Christianity. The Gregorian calendar has clearly been used as a tool to achieve this goal. Lastly, I aim to look forward and not backwards in life. We cannot change the past but we can question our present structures and hierarchies. By switching to the Jewish calendar I do not aim to convert others to Judaism, I simply am trying to reconnect to my all too often forgotten roots.

The Gregorian calendar is a bugfix on the Julian ones though, and while julius Caesar might have been pope, but definitely not Christian. He's 100% the roman empire guy though

Posted this in response to another comment but:

While the Julian calendar was clearly more secular, The motivation for the adjustments in the Gregorian calendar was to re-align Easter to a historically accurate date and to ensure that people around the world were celebrating it at the same time. While you are definitely right that the Gregorian calendar stems from Roman culture, one cannot deny that its revisions were religiously motivated and funded. Further, that its history and global adoption is intertwined with the spread of Christianity around the world. With its global adoption cultures all around the world have lost their connection to their own calendars and practices.

"Pope" comes from the Latin Pontifex Maximus". Julius Caesar (100 - 44 BCE) was a Roman Pontifex Maximus, Gregory VIII (1572 - 1585 CE was a Catholic Pontifex Maximus.

And keeping track of calendars was part of their job!!

>The Pontifices were in charge of the Roman calendar and determined when intercalary months needed to be added to synchronize the calendar to the seasons. Since the Pontifices were often politicians, and because a Roman magistrate's term of office corresponded with a calendar year, this power was prone to abuse: a Pontifex could lengthen a year in which he or one of his political allies was in office, or refuse to lengthen one in which his opponents were in power. A Pontifex with other political responsibilities, especially away from Rome, might also have been simply distracted from his calendrical duties as chief priest. This caused the calendar to become out of step with the seasons; for example, Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon in January 49 BC actually took place in mid-autumn.

Under his authority as pontifex maximus, Julius Caesar introduced the calendar reform that created the Julian calendar, with a fault of less than a day per century, and which remained the standard till the Gregorian reform in the 16th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontifex_maximus#Roman_Republi...

> I mean the entire thing is built around the death of Christ

i.e.: the death of an ethnic Jew

> Christian fundamentalism as a excuse to colonize people all over the world and commit atrocities.

Monotheistic belief systems are not tolerant of people that believe in other deities.

This "fundamentalism" can be found in every monotheistic belief system, especially as you start going back in history.

History is full of examples of Christian kingdom/empires/countries waging war against each other.

World history of full of conflicts in single every region of the world, including regions with negligible Christian presence.

> however, unlike most religions proselytizing is a feature (not a bug) of Christianity

D'varim 13, 7-10

D'varim 13 demands that Israeli(te) cities practice Judaism, but does not extend that to any other region. Proselytizing to non-Jews (historically, non-Israelis) is explicitly banned in Judaism.

Interesting. Thanks for that clarification

Before the Talmudic era Jewish proselytes were common. The practice was adopted and "refined" by Christian Jews but not taken up by Rabbinic Judaism.

Disputes over which god is the supreme or only god in that region go all the way back to this guy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_(deity)

Heh, that guy even made his way into Judaism! Since Judaism is the closest surviving descendant of the ancient Canaanite religion (and the language we call "Hebrew" is simply a Canaanite dialect, mutually intelligible with the other Canaanite dialects that have since died out). We merged him into Yahweh, the original god of Judea; others were merged in too, e.g. El's original consort Asherah became the "Shekhinah" (feminine presence of Yahweh) and also "Shabbat Ha'malka" (the vaguely-mystical but uh, totally not a deity, yup, uh-huh, figure called the "Queen of the Sabbath").

Israel and Judea were vassal states more often than not. Independent sometimes. Empires never.

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