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[integer at www.god-emil.dk]

jesus. socrates. confucius. and buddha all come from a time
in their native culture when several connected events were occurring.
the introduction of literacy threatened the hegemony of traditional aristocracies
and at the same time increasing commerce and the connectedness of society
threatened the isolation and tranquility of single communities. 

cities with their nervously permeable boundaries and fluctuating populations
were an uncomfortable but essential part of the landscape within which the stories are set.
looked at this way, each of the four, to say nothing of their contemporary
and near contemporary competitors, idealized a countercultural set of ideas
inimical to the hurly-burly of the thriving society of the time.

jesus represents judean isolation and separatism at a point when a succession
of empires had definitively brought palastine into the wider world. 
confucius could not find a prince to make him sage-in-chief and neither
could socrates' disciple plato. socrates was famously out of temper
with his home city of athens.

all these figures make hay out of giving voice to sentiments which many
can approve and few espouse. but there is a 2nd feature they hold in common,
and that is their reception in latter centuries. each has been successful
in a line of tradition that can be traced with some difficulty from their
time to the present, but their image depends heavily on having been
gradually rewritten and in the process assimilated to western cultural norms.







c t!pd

>this morning one father

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murdr doez not zolv an!dz!ng

ne!dzr doez nn

doez lv +?

hou should ! knou