Word: emperors
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...King, though right royally fond of whiskey & soda, touched no alcohol in any form from 1915 until Armistice Day. Queen Mary, rationing everything in Buckingham Palace, herself made sure every night that the servants were not wasting electricity but had turned out every light. As one of the King Emperor's principal aides-de-camp afterward said privately: "The War aged him for he was subjected to a peculiar, unremitting strain. He knew that every day everyone he encountered expected to leave the presence of the King with a higher heart and more determined...
...stable but to one of a series of basement grottoes where they are informed Christ was born. The Nativity Church may not be the best possible guide, since it was built well after the fact, circa 324, by Helena, mother of Constantine, the first Roman Emperor to become a Christian. Nonetheless, she was heeding strong oral traditions that seem to have prevailed in the region for many years, and the idea of a cave is not so exotic as it might seem. Then, as now, many West Bank houses were built onto natural caverns that function as rooms and basements...
...might guess, they wonder where Luke got them. The first angel's language, some note, was less biblical than ... imperial. Brown called it "a christology phrased in a language that echoes Roman imperial propaganda." Recent scholars have said it is a near parody of one of the Emperor's titles at the time: "Son of God, Lord, Savior of the World, and the One Who Has Brought Peace on Earth...
...angel's birth announcement embodies the hope that Jesus' coming kingdom will turn political as well as religious worlds upside down. "Luke can't be saying anything other than 'You think you have a son of God in Augustus?'" he says. "'You think you have a savior in the Emperor? It's all foolishness. If you want to know the peace of God, not the Pax Romana, you have to look somewhere else.'" Since the '60s, such readings have inspired Christian social activists from civil rights preachers to Catholic liberation theologians...
...Jews. None of that gripping story, however, can be found in Luke. According to Luke, Joseph and Mary, Nazarenes, are on a brief if inconvenient visit to Joseph's ancestral home of Bethlehem, complying with a vast census ("All the world should be enrolled") ordered by the Roman Emperor Augustus. Meanwhile, Mark, written closer to Jesus' actual lifetime, omits Bethlehem and refers to Nazareth as Jesus' patrida, or hometown...