Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of maps
- List of figures
- Acknowledgments
- Maps
- Introduction: Shenoute's life, times, and Discourses
- Part I Heretics and Other Enemies of the Church
- Part II Shenoute as Pastor and Preacher
- Part III The Christian's Struggle with Satan
- Part IV The Conflict with Gesios
- 18 Not because a fox barks
- 19 Let our eyes
- 20 A26
- 21 God says through those who are his
- 22 God is blessed
- Bibliography
- Index of names
- Index of subjects
- Index of biblical passages
19 - Let our eyes
from Part IV - The Conflict with Gesios
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2015
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of maps
- List of figures
- Acknowledgments
- Maps
- Introduction: Shenoute's life, times, and Discourses
- Part I Heretics and Other Enemies of the Church
- Part II Shenoute as Pastor and Preacher
- Part III The Christian's Struggle with Satan
- Part IV The Conflict with Gesios
- 18 Not because a fox barks
- 19 Let our eyes
- 20 A26
- 21 God says through those who are his
- 22 God is blessed
- Bibliography
- Index of names
- Index of subjects
- Index of biblical passages
Summary
Let our eyes – in accordance with the scriptures – look at what is right, and let our eyelids gaze at just things, and we will recognize how great is the impurity of the soul of every pestilential person who is inimical toward the faith of the universal Church. For not only does the great prophet Moses command, “Be not lawless,” and, “Make no graven images for yourselves in the likeness of any image, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies under heaven, the likeness of any reptile that creeps on the earth, the likeness of any fish that moves in the waters under the earth,” and, “Lift not your eyes up to heaven and see the sun and the moon and the stars and all the order of heaven and go astray and worship them and serve them,” but he also ordered, “If they set them up, they will be killed.”
And yet now someone has made for himself the image of Kronos and the images of the other demons, not having contented himself with the images of effeminate men and lewd and licentious women, whose activities are shameful to speak of, just as you (pl.) saw them all, each according to its type, even the images of priests with shaven heads and altars in their hands, everything that was in the temples back when he whose memory is of good repute, Theodosius the righteous emperor, had not yet given orders that they should be laid waste, just as his honored descendants, the present righteous emperors who rule the earth, have decreed in their edicts to demolish and to dig out the foundations of what remains until no stone among them is left on top of any other stone.
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- Selected Discourses of Shenoute the GreatCommunity, Theology, and Social Conflict in Late Antique Egypt, pp. 206 - 211Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2015