Warm and Witty Side of Attila the Hun by Jeffrey Sackett Page B

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.
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    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.
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    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.”
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    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