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Today is the last day of antiquity in our calendar. And since we have reached the end of our migrations through the pre-Christian era--eras, I should call it, in the plural--I think it's -- I may devote five minutes to the character of the 28th of February. They threaten it with abolition. The -- the papacy and the chambers of commerce seem to have entered an unholy alliance to deprive us of all the mobil- -- movable holidays. I don't understand it, but the cardinals seem to know better.

The mobile character of the calendar is an important reminder of the fact that it is ex- -- an experience which has created calendars. The 28th of February consists -- or is the last of five days: 24th, 25th, 26th, 27th, and 28th of February, which in Rome were observed to the end, also politically, as ruling the -- the interregnums. An interregnum in Rome consisted of five days. And you had, between the two consulates, from February 24th to -- to March 1st, you had an interrex, who ruled before the new consul- -- the new king was -- was aboi- -- -pointed.

So you know the word "interregnum," and it also reminds you of this old Egyptian, and Roman, and Greek calendar. These five days were laid upon the year; that was the phrase, because the year consisted of 360 days in ancient Rome, in ancient Latium. Down to the king -- to the rule of kingships in Rome, down to 500, the calendar was, as an Egyptian calendar, laid out of 10 times 36 days. Thirty-six divided -- multiplied by 10 leads you to 360. And so there were five days' surplus, and these five days were the interregnum. The five days were embodied by the five great gods of whom in Rome Mars was the leading God, and therefore his -- the first month that followed the interregnum is to this day March. Mars, March, same name, of course--is the god of Rome.

It means that the observation of the great flood, and the observation of the fertility ritual was the reason for people to count the years. And this discipline was brought into Etruria and into Rome by the so-called pontifices. A priest in Rome is called a pontiff, because he builds bridges when there is a flood. He is a bridge-maker--you could also say a ditch-maker. And therefore fertility and religion are -- were identical, as I have tried to show you.

Now Rome is a very wonderful example of the fact that this Egyptian religion was exported to all kinds of other countries. And we still are indebted to the Romans for this strange idea that February has only 28 days. This came about, because before the kings were driven out, expelled, and the Etruscans were driven out of Rome in the person of Tarquinius Superbus, the -- year had,

as you see from the word "November," "October," and "September," had 10 months. Ten months of 36, December was the last. And in the so-called Saturnalia and Chris- -- at Christmas, you still have a remnant of the original pagan New Year in Rome. And the Saturnalia, the slaves danced on the noses of their masters, you see. They could do as they pleased. They played the free men, and the masters had to serve them at dinner.

The two months, January and February, are a late invention. And there were not enough days available--just 31 for January, and 28 for February, you see, to cover the gap that developed when they wanted to simplify matters. And say, "After all, we don't see the Nile's flood every year. We don't even -- can observe not even Orion and his constellation on the New Year day; therefore, let's go off and have a regular"--what we call regular--"year of 30 days."

The appeal was, of course, to some approach, approximation of the moon year. Now the moon has neither 30 days, nor 2- -- even 29 days. It's between 27 and 29. The moon year is -- has 355 -- -4 days. But the temptation, the attraction of the moon has been solid, has been perpetual. And the -- as you know, the Arabs still have the moon-year to this day. And since there are -- is this discrepancy that the moon certainly never takes 36 days to recover to his plenitude, so it is understandable that the compromise was made to call the month a 30-day entity. Only in the figure of February, and that's why I cherish it, is there a remain- -- -minder of the fact that the year is much older than this duo-decimal compromise between moon and sun. -- That's a rather despicable compromise for rationalists and mathematicians. And the real year has nothing to do either with sun or moon, as I have tried to show you. It has to do with the constellation which brings on the Great Flood. And we are plagued today by this victory of popular religion which says that the Egyptians worshiped the sun and the moon. They never did. That's not true. It's a lie. But all our textbooks are filled with these lies, because they are written by people who have received a scientific education.

But religion comes from liturgy, from service, from doing something. It comes from the fact that the pharaoh had to travel every year for -- all the length of his country, in the king's progress, as Queen Elizabeth had to do it, in the days of Kenilworth.

And it is very strange that you are fed a history which is not based on experience, but on abstract calculations. That's not history. So you learn nothing of -- who learns that February is the last month of the ancient calendar? I think it's the most interesting fact. And it has absolutely nothing to do with this obsession with ours that we have to live in a scientific universe. Don't try it. You can't. We can live in an observing, in a liturgical universe in which we render services

to each other. That's the only way in which we can live with each other. And we cannot live by abstract: "2 and 2 is 4."

So we are -- and I think this is a curse. If the Church should -- the Roman Church seems to be on the way out, because it is willing to give up the real calendar of our tradition and to go with the chambers of commerce, for these abstract notions that the year will then have, you see, 360 days every year, and something in addition. And it will ab- -- be absolutely just so that the interest of the bank can be paid monthly. That's the only interest they have in this calendar business today. And you see, it is very -- a plague that the days of the calendar are irregular, because you can't pay the same amount of interest for February as for March. Thank God, I say.

So much to the Egyptians. Now the antiquities before, I have mentioned to you. The story of parenthood, the story of priesthood, the story of poetry, and the story of prophecy have come to an end in this lecture course so far, because we have tried, at least, to say how the Jews opposed the mechanical time of the mere observations in the sky. But how much better were the Egyptians than still -- than our mathematicians? Because they at least observed the sky over Egypt. And the religion of Judaism reminded man that his time was with God, and not with things. Neither animals, nor seasons, nor the flood of the Nile were good enough to shelter man's soul. And man had his sabbath on the side of God. God rested on the seventh day, man rests on the seventh day. Nothing else in nature rests on the seventh day. There is no shelter for movement for anything outside your heart. You must move too, physically. You remain in the world. As children of the world, we are constantly on the move. And most people, of course, go to lunatic asylums, because they never can stop this movement. Lunacy means to be dependent on the movement of sun and moon. "Lunacy" comes from "luna." And it's very reasonable, because if we are moved by the stars, then we must go crazy, because it is man's privilege to be able to rest.

You take a sick man, the first thing the doctor will note is that he can't take a holiday, he can't take a vacation, he can't sit still. He can't. He's on the move all the time. Something is working in him. Most priests are of this connotation, of course. They can't stop, not even on Sundays.

And this constant movement of humanity, you see, the Jews recognize as being ill-related to the fact that we are on the part of the creator also and not only on the part of the creatures. Man is creature and creator. He proves that he is a creator by being able to do absolutely nothing to rest. And anybody who is constantly active is a -- may be a very nice ant, or -- or bee, or ani- -- other animal, ox, and -- and -- but he is not divine. He has no creative faculty. He can only repeat. All creatures, you see, must repeat. And that's their life. They are recur-

rent entities. But something new can only enter the world from the mouth, and the heart, and the hand of somebody who is rested, who comes: out of the mouth of the mother of God as a little word, "I come." It's a wonderful line of Alfred the Great, the king of England.

That is, our primevality--if I may say this word -- coin this word, I mean, our being newly born is the condition of our humanity. And that was recognized by the invention, or the creation, or the ordaining of the Sabbath. This -- impossible is about the Sabbath that it is an absolutely unnatural institution. The na- -- the Sabbath is unnatural, because it -- that doesn't exist in nature that somebody does nothing. Lits no fire, doesn't cook, doesn't work. That's not natural. So if you look for the supernatural, as you sometimes do in your naivet‚ and these -- definitions of what's natural and supernatural, don't look too far. Your divine laziness is your divine nature. If you do nothing, you are closer to God than if you do everything. Everything is just still in the world. And it is very little.

And this is -- I don't understand why I have never heard this taught to me in my youth, that the -- doing nothing on the Sabbath is against the rules of nature. But it is. Nature is incessantly active. The laws of physics work without pause and interval. Only a physicist can go home and say, "I've done enough for today," clo- -- close down his laboratory, and go on a picnic with his wife. And that's why he's a human being, and not because he discovers the laws of the universe.

Or put it around: he only can discover the laws of the universe when there is a part in his soul in which he is not a part of the universe, but is quite indifferent to the universe, you see, and looks at it from the outside. And say, "How would it be if this universe turned the other way around?" Well, you can only think this if you are not turning, yourself.

That's why I think the physicists are criminals, that they promote today the 12 months' college life, this academic treadmill. The vacations are -- the Sabbath written large. And all creativity comes only from your vacations, and not for your taking on a job during the vacation. Be ashamed of yourself. Just to earn a few more dollars, you must go out and -- and earn money during the vacation. You don't know what your vacations are given you for. They are given for to feel like the dependence on the creator, who thought it over, how He should create the world. Don't you think He needs people who think this over now, too?

How can anything really important enter your head if, after you have heard my lectures, and other people's lectures, you are not lying fallow? This is very serious. This country is destroying all its talents today by not honoring the

period which God has created for man and -- which my friend Richard Cabot in Cambridge, famous professor there, used to call "incubation." The time for incubation. That's a -- that important time, and you dishonor it. You destroy it. First, you try to have four terms a year in a college, you see, which may be possible for the poodle there, but not for any human being. And then you have the -- the -- the demand that during the three terms you listen to -- to lectures. They are -- putting you to sleep, anyway. And then you go shoe-shining, or something like that.

Believe me, all my independence of mind comes from my vacation time. There you become a human being. And I tell you why. It is terribly difficult to do nothing. It is very tempting to go -- be corrupted. I mean, all the vices of man, of course, crop up when you do nothing. Vacations are not an easy thing. It is not true that you are virtuous in your vacation time. We are only -- usually virtuous when other people prescribe what we have to do. As soon as you are left to your own devices, I mean, these devices are very devilish.

And therefore, leisure is the victory of man over his temptations. And that's why this surrender to a power which expects you to fulfill what is demanded for the world at large is the opposite from leisure. It's a holiday. Man sanctifies himself when he is able to do nothing, expecting to be told what he should do. Do you think that Moses got his -- his Ph. degree in -- in Egypt, only by going to -- to school for four quarters of a year? His bright idea of creating the Sabbath certainly was a creative moment in which he surrendered to the -- necessity that we must be sanctified.

And this you can only learn when you do nothing. You can't do it when you take exams. You can't take it when you write papers. You can't take it when you have appointments. You can't take it when you drive your car. You can't take it when you move. You must have the strange and very rare power to stand still, because that is the one divine quality which is allowed man in complete antagonism to the rest of the world.

And that's why it is -- what you do not understand, most of you, is: what it means not to be worldly. A church that has a church calendar propped full of saint days and holidays is not the day -- the -- the image of a holiday. Holy people are people who no longer depend on their actions of something that already exists, that is prescribed, but wait for the countermanding of God's orders to this existing order. And this countermanding power can only enter your heart if this heart is open to something that is not routine, that is not utterly different from anything you have heard before, trained in before, are expected to do, and certainly are paid for. Nothing paid deserves your interest in -- at you -- this age of yours, gentlemen. It's very nice to have money on the side. But it must

be on the side. That's not your main -- your main character, to be paid for something.

It seems to me that you don't know this, that you think to be paid for is already such a virtue, that you strut around and say, "I'm paid." Well, please; of course you're paid, because you are part of the world. But if you are part of the world, then you are as worthless as the whole world is. Can be thrown away in the wastepaper basket.

That's why it is difficult for you to estimate the grandeur of the Sabbath, and the meaning of the word "holy day." The -- on the holy day, on the seventh of every week, man leaves the world and passes over to that source, this fountainhead of novelty, of renovation, of renascence, of rebirth in which this -- world hasn't been created yet, but begins all over again. Fortunately every one of you knows these things to some extent. He can't help it, because he lives in a Christian tradition. And it is quite impossible to escape some -- some allusion to the verity.

I have only to stress this, because the modern rascality really consists -- in -- in trying to prove you that you are natural. I'm the most unnatural being there ever has been. And I hope you will become equally unnatural. Otherwise there is no hope for the world. The world needs unworldly people.

The second thing I want to speak today about is the strange way in which our Lord has hung up antiquity before our eyes, if we just can see -- dangle it there, in a very remarkable way. Not just 28th of February, and the last five days of February remind you of the ancient character of our order of life, but also the word "Bible." The word "Bible" comes from the town of Byblos, B-y-b-l-o-s. And as you know, "bibliography"--you know the word, and "bible" are still there in the -- Greek and in the Hebrew tradition and in your tradition you at least, some of you still know what the Bible is meant to do. You don't read it, but it is given to you as a present. And I would pass a law that nobody should read the Bible before he's 40. It would be the -- become the most popular best-seller. It is a great mis- -- great commiseration that you receive this book far too early, at a time when you absolutely have no idea of what it contains. And that has ruined it at this moment. And it's on the way out. People get Bibles, but they don't read Bibles. Now I would like to see a state of affairs where you don't get Bibles, but read them.

Why? The -- the Bible is an attempt on the part of its authors--especially Moses--to tell the same story I have tried to tell you here in such a way that it becomes an all-human story.

To give you a very practical example. The No- -- the flood, the Great Flood is said -- told in the Old Testament as the story of Noah. Noah builds an arch -- an arc, and he comes out of it with the help of the dove, and -- who shows him that there is land to be had.

Now if you consider carefully what the Bible really does in this -- in this one item, it does it all right through--the whole Bible is written in the same manner--it says, "The Egyptians said that for 5,000 years, they have to worship, and have to travel the -- down the river Nile when the flood comes from the snow in Abyssinia. They don't need this. It is not necessary to have this chronology, and these priests pre-figuring all the dates in advance for the next 4,000 years, as they have done so carefully." The rainbow of Noah is the one sign in the sky that is totally irregular, that cannot be pre-figured. It's something of which there is no need for chronology, calendar, astrology, anything. You cannot predict a -- a rainbow.

So the Jewish author picks out the one event in the sky world, which is utterly unscientific, which has to come once in a lifetime, or it cannot come, you see, and therefore is unpredictable. And since God of course is unpredictable--in Galsworthy's drama Escape, there is a wonderful -- line. The Episcopal minister is asked by a refu- -- by a prisoner who has escaped from prison: "Save me, save me," And hides in the vestry there, you see.

And the -- the priest looks very doubtfully on him and says, "Why should I save you?"

"Because you are the servant of the Lord. And doesn't the Lord save the -- save the poor and the captives?"

And the Anglican priest just shakes his head and says, "I'm not so sure. He is incalculable."

Now that's the story of Noah in modern terms. Mr. Galsworthy had just taken a leaf from the description of the rainbow. The rainbow is unpredictable and incalculable. And if you don't leave room for the incalculable, you des- -- desert your humanity. because there is in you the same element of the incalculable.

The other example, I may take any example in the -- . Adam is said to have lived 930 years. Now of course that's a millennium, short of one life, 70 years, a man's life, you see. So it is said that Noah's era begins already with the birth of Noah at the lifeti- -- in the lifet- -- at the end of Adam's existence. And the millennium very realistically draws to a close when the last powerful chieftain of

pre-Noahitic -- antiquity dies, or when his regime, his ancestry loses its power.

Nobody today reads these 930 with any understanding. But they are very wisely chosen. Because they mean that the Adamitic era, you see, is there. It doesn't mean that Adam lives 930 years, but the reign of Adam, the reign of these -- tribal orders where an ancestor, you see, can command respect. That is there.

So the Bible of course is -- goes on with all these stories. You take circumcision. All the ancients had to initiate their youth by circumcision or some similar ritual. Sometimes the girls too were circumcised, in order to make them mature, and make them participate in the life of the order, the whole, and make them understand pain, so they could understand why victims were even slaughtered.

I -- you remember that I tried to show you that in order to understand mankind's primitive orders, you have to take into account initiation, physical vigor, maturity, mating, marriage, enthusiasm for the -- two -- between the two sexes, and the sacrifice of voluntary, or forced death. You have to have victims; you have to have slaughter; you have to have warfare. Without this, man cannot fulfill himself.

You don't know this. and so I have a very hard time to teach you any important truth, because you sit here like children who can escape marriage, by -- with the help of LSC I suppose, and who can escape going to war in Vietnam. You don't have to go to war in Vietnam, but you have to sacrifice your life for something. And since most of you are like little children--you just look -- I look into your faces, and I see that you have never faced death, and never faced surrender to great passion. You are with -- this side of passion, this side of dying. And therefore, it is a very hard thing to talk to you about reality. You can hardly understand it, and it's not your fault. It's just premature.

Now the initiation has been an attempt to enable everybody to realize the togetherness of pain, and independence, and freedom, and maturity. In -- in the circumcision, therefore, the initiation was meant to anticipate an element of death. And therefore circumcision is not an arbitrary ritual. The Islam -- people, as you know, do it to this day; the Jews do it to this day. And it is quite serious, because it does consider man as having to pay a great price for entering humanity.

However, the Jews felt that it was separating the tribes. and therefore the -- circumcision, as you know, happens in Judaism now a week after birth. And so the initiation is -- it's a different way of -- of converting an old pagan usage. They -- they make it premature. They put it at a time when our consciousness is not concerned with it. For the baby, this event that happens there, that the child --

the boy is circumcised is this side of his memory. But it should -- and it is meant to remember--and that's how the Bible describes it in the case of Zipporah and Moses--that it is a bloody sacrifice. That some blood has to be shed for a man to enter society. He's not just born as a piece of nature, and as a guinea pig. Most of you try to forget these things and think it's an awful ritual. I don't think it is. I think it's an important fact that man has to pay a price for becoming a member of society. And in this sense, I think there is an eternal meaning.

And then there's another conversion of an old pagan ritual: that's human sacrifice. You know that Isaac was taken up by his father to the mountain to be sacrificed. And then he is dismissed, because there fortunately is a nice animal which can be slaughtered in his pla- -- its pla- -- his place.

Well, this story is important again, because it shows you how Moses went about to give honor to all the existing ritual by converting them. It's the --. I think I like the expression "conversion" for these forms of the narrative in the Old Testament, because it is the first form of converting something that in itself is -- is too independent, stands too much by itself, and converting it in the stream of our development, of our growth. All these, that the rainbow is mentioned instead of the astrology, allows people to see the mighty hand of the creator in the sky, but not in the wrong way as the chambers of commerce and now the Vatican tries to do it with his -- with his pedantic -- calendar of -- of 300 -- I don't know what it will be -- be, but it will be terrible. That is, they want to enshrine us into a calendar that is every year the same. My whole interest in dy- -- buying calendars then is out. So I can only warn the calendar makers: I won't buy any one anymore.

It's like an obsession. Nobody ex- -- only the banks are behind this, you see. And the -- why doesn't anybody tell Cardinal Spellman that it is only the banks? I think he is too deep in with them.

All the stories in the Bible take up a pagan ritual and convert it into a tolerable, free, human ritual, you see. The -- the ancients -- the pagans had holidays in a sense, too. But they had no sabbath. They had initiation, too. But they had not the power to make it a part of the normal life of every human being. But they used it for the aggrandizement of their tribal traditions. If you give it to a child, this -- this circumcision, the child thereby is not made into a Cherokee or an Apache, or any special culture hero, has to be worshiped at this occasion. It is not even language. And I think the greatest genius of the -- ritual is in the fact that this boy, although made a member of the tri- -- the society is not inflicted on him, is not inflicted our great curse, the Babylonian confusion of tongues. He is not circumcised in any one language. And you know what a -- what an effort it has been for the Church to remodel the sacredness of language, and to say that English is admitted through the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, which was written

already on the Cross, to show that God is indifferent to the various languages of mankind.

Now in the circumcision ritual of the Jews, there is this liberation, because if you give a mature man a blessing, or a curse, or a communication in a certain language, he will forever be scared by this linguistic tattoo, engraving on his mind. This wor- -- these words will stay with him, and he will think that he commits a crime if he gets out from under these words spoken. There is much linguistic magic still in our life to this day. It is very hard for somebody to believe in the equality of man in the terms of a Negro dialect. You can very well believe it in Anglo-Saxon, because there the Negroes are only second-hand citizens -- second-rate citizens. All men are born equal, you see, with the understanding that the man who wrote this sentence, at least, was a white man.

I have yet to see any truth adopted by a white man said not by a white man in the first place. And that would be the touchstone that they care for truth.

Now Judaism is today still a pre-Christian faith. And that's very much to be considered and to be taken seriously. My Jewish friends are very eager to stress this fact that you can never cease to be a Jew, that you are an apos- -- apostate. I always point out to them that the word "apostate" is fortunately a Christian expression. So they must at least admit that the crime against Judaism has to be cons- -- committed in a Christian language.

But it is very serious, because the whole tragedy of Judaism of course is -- is bound up with the fact that there is no way out of the people of Moses. They can never leave this congregation.

And I just got a -- a symposion, "The Anguish of the Jews," written by seven Jewish friends of mine, in which they point out this. And dig up anybody of Jewish descent and say "He's an apostate." I cannot even answer them, in protesting this. And it makes no sense. They live by this, and die by this -- and more or less die by this, of course, and are murdered for this, that they say that no Jew can cease to be a Jew.

It's very serious. And it's -- it shows what the four universes of the antiquity have done. They have created four inescapable universes. Nobody who was a tribesman could get out of it. Nobody who was an Egyptian or believed in astrology could get out from these predictors, you see, and these predictions. Nobody who was Greek could ever do anything but go homosexual, and have slaves, and preach eternal war--as Plato did, this best of all mortals, yet terrifyingly limited. And the Jews cannot tolerate that anybody ceases to be a Jew. And that's the practice to this day.

So providence, as you know, has looked out for some solution and has -- asked the Christian nations to found the state of Jeru- -- of Israel.

A great cousin of mine there lives, who is a Christian of Jewish descent. And she has formed there a Christian community in Jerusalem, of Christian Jews. And believe it or not, the Jews have to tolerate it. They do. And so without any theoretical discussion--never believe that theories will solve anything--but by the de facto way of having Christian Jews -- or Jewish Christians, or however you call them, living in the midst of Israel living as full-fledged citizens of this new enclave there, in -- between the Arabs, between the Christians, you see, and between the ancient world. This -- something has come to pass in this strangulation and this terrible bloodshed of the Jews in the last 20 years, unnoticed. Nobody makes much -- says much about it. Quite the contrary. If you read the "Anguish" -- the pamphlet, this symposion, "The Anguish of the Jews," it seems as though the last 2,000 years haven't changed anything in the situation. And we are just back to the slaughter when -- of the times when the first temple was -- the second temple was destroyed. But it isn't quite that bad. I think there is a corner of the existence of the people of Israel in which they have been pulled into an era in which change, in which renovation, rebirth, renascence, is open to any human being.

But I mention this at an entrance into the Christian era, to which we now come, to show you that the point of the Christian era is that there are no absolutes. There is no order on this earth which cannot and may not have to be changed, you see. And -- when Paul VI, the sixth pope with the name of Paul, but the seventh in the line of the Apostles--Paul of -- the Apostle Paul of Tarsus--went to Jerusalem and said to the Jews "Shalom,"--he didn't say one word, but that's enough--he ended this row of the papacy. At -- in his journey to Jerusalem, he showed that he couldn't fulfill all his offices by staying in Rome.

Now the idea had been that it was enough for Peter, the prince of the Apostles, to be in Rome, and to represent inside the Roman Empire the unity of the new faith, even this has come to an end. It is not true that the pope can function -- he had to go to the United Nations--I don't know if he had, but he got a free ticket--and so he did go. But I think that the important step was that he did, was that he went to Jerusalem. And that makes history. There were seven Pauls, and there will be no eighth Paul; you can be sure of that. Not of any importance. In a corner, he may be. Because in the Christian era, there is nothing that is the same every day.

The essence of the word "Christianity" is the syllable "r-e," re. It begins with "resurrection," it begins with "renascence," it begins with "rebirth," it begins with "regeneration." But whatever you take up in your own life, my dear people,

don't forget that no dogma of yours is eternal. It always waits for your syl- -- the syllable "re," to be reinforced, rediscovered, remade, reproduced, whatever you have. Any economist -- here may be some of you who are devotees to this strange trade. The -- he is not a scientific economist who deals with production. That's good for chambers of commerce. The economist begins when he ponders the secret of reproduction. A human pol- -- a statesman becomes a statesman when he ponders also of human reproduction and not of production. That's quite indifferent, I mean. That's just for the day. Most of you live of course day by day, and are just children of time. But creators of time is only that person who can introduce the syllable "re," into anything that goes on, because he is responsible for the reappraisals, the renovation, the reinstitution, the reproduction of mankind.

I have now -- as I see, I have half an hour. Isn't that true? Ja? How much do I have? So allow me to brea- -- put in a break here. We leave the ancient times. We enter the attempt to say to all men: "It's very nice to be a poet; it's very nice to be a Jew or a prophet; very nice to be Egyptian, agriculturist, with great productivity; and it is very nice to honor your ancestors and your parents. Do this." But it isn't enough. In order to save the ances- -- worship of your ancestors and the piety, and in order to save your understanding of the seasons, and to be in line with God's rest on the Sabbath, and to be a cultured Greek with poetic tastes, mankind will not allow these things to happen. They will destroy each other, because these four things have gone on independently.

I told you that the word "Byblos" is the name for the Bible, and in Greek for "book." And in antiquity, it was the for- -- furthest Egyptian outpost in which Egyptian was written, and in which therefore the secret of writing books was conveyed to the West. The word -- the town of Byblos lies north of Jerusalem on the seashore at the corner between Asia Minor and Syria, where it -- the land turns. It's an important place, because we have dug up there any number of old religious traditions, all contemporary with the oldest layers of the Bible, and even before. And the ced- -- cedars of the Lebanon gave rise to the importance of Byblos, because it is the place from where the Egyptians could get wood. If you go to Egypt, there are no trees. There are only trees -- palm trees, which you have to cut up in very small pieces in order to build a boat.

So you -- only boats you could build from palm trees of Egyptian wood are the boats which cross the Nile from east to west, or west to east, because that's a very short ferry boat ride. But if you want to go on the great ride from the Nile -- from the First Cataract down to the -- to the Mediterranean, or enter the Mediterranean itself, you have to get the cedars from the Lebanon, which are poetically transfigured in the Bible. You may have heard of the cedars of the Lebanon in the Song of Songs.

The Egyptians knew this. And you can say that the power of the Egyptian pharaohs, strangely enough, being totally dependent for the rest of their -- power on the locality, on the geography, on the territorialism of their existence, on their limitations was based on their relation to the cedars of Lebanon. This one thing they needed from the outside.

And therefore from the very beginning, they secured permanent relations with Lebanon. And probably that's why they, to this day, are such, you see, successful traders that they even can turn a bankruptcy into a profit. You know, they had the greatest bankruptcy of the last 20 years there, in -- in all of Europe and America. And you can only envy them for this. They must have gotten tremendously rich on this. But before, they got rich on the cedars of Lebanon because they were the shipbuilders, or they were the traders through whose intervention the shipbuilding in Egypt was possible, and gave the -- the power, the dreadnoughts to the pharaoh. Because these boats on the Nile which could travel 1500 kilometers, 1,000 miles down the river, you see, in the high flood, had to be much stronger than any canoe. You couldn't go on a canoe with this.

And therefore, it's very strange that the most local of all the powers we know in history, the pharaohs, really depended on an article of import for their military might, for their power to put it over, so to speak, on the -- on the river {rinces}, as they called them, on the side -- on the people -- on the two beaches, on the two sides of their river. They could sneer at them and say, "Look at my cedars of -- from the Lebanon. I have the power to intimidate you."

And this has been a ritual in Egypt to this day, when in 1881, 19 corpses of the pharaohs were brought down the river Nile from Luxor, to the -- to Cairo, to the museum there--at the behest, of course, of some European Egyptologists--all the na- -- all the river {rinces}--as the French call them; how would you say this in English? all the people on the banks of the river Nile were standing there mourning, and -- and shouting, and pitying themselves, and in sack-clothes, and hitting their breasts in despair, because the old power of Egypt was taken out from the Nile, you see, this power which had dominated the north-south, southnorth tract. And for which these native fellahim, these native peasants had only awe. They could never hope to do anything but cross the river from east to west, and west to east, you see. Never hope to be in the cavalry.

Now Byblos therefore had a tremendous interest in -- for the Egyptians from the very first day. And it's no wonder that the Greeks and the Hebrews then called -- took the word "Bible" from this one city. "Bible" simply means the thing from Byblos. And the same with the Greek word "biblion," and "bibliography," et cetera for -- for -- for -- for books.

I think you must know this, because now I'm going to tell you how this was re-converted. Since Christianity--since the new era--consists in enabling everybody to go back to the beginning of -- begin once more afresh, without original sin, without the implication of what had been. Since Adam, you see, was newly created, as though Cain had not murdered his brother Abel, that's the essence of Christianity.

The first thing with which the New Testament begins, and which no theologian ever mentions for this reason, is: {Fuge in Aegyptum}. That is, "Fly to Egypt," Mary and Joseph are told. To take the -- Christ child out of that which the Exodus, the flight from Egypt once had created, the people of Israel. Take Him back to the beginning. Take Him back to Egypt. {Fuge in Aegyptum}. It's a tremendous word. Only three words are used. {Fuge in Aegyptum}. The thing is not explained. Typical of the Bible. The thing is done, but the commentaries come later.

Now you have read Matthew, and I'm sure you have not noticed the importance of this sentence. It means that for the child, Jesus, Israel has ceased to exist. And "{Fuge in Aegyptum}" means that the same country that was the country of the persecutors, the -- country of superstition, the country of danger, the country of finiteness is now open, and is the new world in which He has to be ef- -- become effective.

I've never known three words of greater impact. And the whole New Testament seems to me contained in these three words. And nothing more had -- would have to be said, if you only would understand it. {Fuge in Aegyptum}. You all have to do this: {fuge in Aegyptum}. There are people who have to leave college in order to become good students.

Nothing is today sacred. Nothing is safe. We don't know where we find our salvation. Everyone has to find it. {Fuge in Aegyptum}. Fly into Egypt. That's the beginning of the Gospel of St. Matthew. You would do me a favor if you would go home, and buy a Bible, if you don't have one, and find the chapter and verse in which it is -- this sentence is found. You see, the interesting thing about important statements is that they are very short. Three words are enough. That everybody knows them, and nobody cares for them. And then they are very important. What you read, gentlemen, these are -- thousand words a minute, fast reader, quick reader -- how do you call it? Wie? You see? How is it called? "Fast reader" is the word today? You have -- wie?

(Speed reader.)

Speed reader. Terrible. Ja, speed -- speed reader, you see. Now if we could

kill these people who advertise speed reading, I mean, that would be real progress. They murder the spirit. They are all atheists.

No. To say something in three words which can be de- -- repeated meaningfully through your lifetime, that's something. {Fuge in Aegyptum}. That says everything. Because it means you have to re-find your salvation in forms unnotice- -- -known before. But it's the same salvation; it's the same regeneration which others found before, in existing forms.

We'll be plagued by this sentence in the future. You can imagine that the Hindus and the Chinese must be told, "{Fuge in Aegyptum}." They cannot possibly follow Christ- -- western industrialism in order to be sa- -- saved. That's not -- cannot -- it -- in- -- the -- our faith has entered them by such a detour, you see. I mean, if you write a book, Four Hundred Million Customers, in order to make the Chinese smoke, you cannot sell them Christianity. That's -- they never forget that the first -- the first encounter with -- with the Christians was via cigarettes.

All missionaries today are plagued by this fact, that they are confused with the accident of their birth, of how they -- Christianity came to these eastern peoples. And Heaven knows how this can be solved. I have a number of friends who are missionaries, and who are suffering under this quandary very much. How can they free themselves from what the -- the -- the pagans see in their own nature, I mean, embodied?

Well, but this is from the very beginning. "{Fuge in Aegyptum}" therefore I think is for our days a great, central sentence for understanding the Christian era. And since it is at the beginning, I would like to place it there today, and to make you feel that the four universes of antiquity come so much to an end, that Christianity is only to be found where the tribe, where the priesthood, where the poets--or the philosophers for that matter--and where Judaism -- are superseded, visibly superseded. Christ is executed by the Jews, you see. He is condemned by the Romans--that is, by the Greeks. That's why his inscription is in the three languages who condemn him -- which condemn him--I don't know what you want; and why He is the son of God and not only of the tribe of Judah. That isn't good enough for His problem.

Christianity is erected against the four universes which before contained any son of man. Be it Chinese, or be it -- May- -- Malayan, or be it -- . They all had to be either tribesmen, or empire-men, or Jews, or Greeks. This is -- the Christian era says, "That's not good enough. We must start man on a road in which he"--let me put it very mildly--"can alternate and choose between these four old orders." The old orders are not rejected, but they are made relative. Do we still go to

gymnasium and learn Greek? You may. Or Latin. What does it matter? And as soon, however, as it becomes so, that the people who go to such liberal arts colleges become homosexuals, clamp down, paganism has re-entered, it's no longer a Christian education: that's the end of it.

I was asked by one of you about homosexuality. And the only answer I had was to be absolutely silent. I will not say one word to this boy about this problem. It is no problem. It's just not -- no problem. As soon as you treat it as a problem, you are Greek. Greeks live by problems. Human beings live by discerning what can be made into a problem, and what must not be made into a problem. This con- -- college here, and this city of San Francisco and -- Berkeley dies from the idea that anything can be treated as a problem. Don't commit yourself to this nonsense. There are simply things which you decline to debate, and that's all. And then they are finished.

The -- the word "problem" itself should today be crucified. It's the most miserable word of the human language, because it is a purely Greek word, and it's applied to things of Church and state where it cannot be used. Not everything is a problem. Only things are problems. You are not a problem. You are a child of God, or a child of the Devil. But certainly not a problem. If you call a man a "problem child," he's already on the way to the mental asylum. The word "problem" is the word that makes you sickest. Distinguish what is a problem and what is a question. Whether you should marry a man, that's a question; it's not a problem. As soon as you treat it as a problem, you want to be objective. Can you marry a man objectively? Impossible. Don't try.

But how was it done? The great operation of the Christian era is the taking-on of all the four universes of antiquity at once. The Christian era is a fact only in as far as something utterly new began. There is no tribe in antiquity; there is no country in antiquity-- no China, or Egypt, or Rome, for that matter; and there is no religion of antiquity; and there is no art and science of antiquity which was not challenged, revamped, remodeled.

What I have to do now -- from now on, and of course, it's a short period in which I have to try to achieve it. But we will begin on March--what is it? March 2nd--to show how the creator of our era, being so aware of His own mortality, as a -- of His own frailty, of His humanity, mobilized all the divinity in you- -- yourself to get help for His task. Every one of you is enlisted in this army founded on the day of Easter in Galilee, or in Jerusalem, I should say, because -- because Jesus had no illusions.

Some one of you came the other day and -- with a rather startling question. He -- he couldn't understand what the Resurrection was. He wanted ob-

viously to know whether Jesus went around the next day in -- in visible form. That's not the Resurrection. The word -- syllable "re" is a very great syllable by which you and I belong to the Christian era. This gentleman from Cupertino who said that 100 dead people a week were a small price for the boom belongs to the pre-Christian era. And I don't know whether -- more than 80 percent of the United States people at this moment should not stand condemned to bel- -- live in the pre-Christian era. You can relapse into the pre-Christian era any minute. Every one of us can go pagan, and pre-Christian--and do, more or less, all the time. And this dipping into the mire of pre-Christianity is today the fashion.

The -- emerging into the -- our era, into that era which can take on all tribes, all countries, all arts and sciences, and all nation- -- nationalism, all -- how would you call this? the cho- -- chosenness of Israel and any other people of the same complexion--this power can be lost. It is not true that a country because it was Christian will stay Christian. A great nation in Ger- -- as Germany did give up Christianity, receded from it. And only the few victims of Hitler save it today as being still remembered as part of the Christian nations. No -- nobody, except those -- whom he executed are safe -- a safe bet in Germany.

So all of us are at any moment in danger of leaving the era. The Christian era is an enterprise, my dear friends, and is not a fact. And today the -- Christian era as a fact seems to die. I can give you chapter and verse on what the historians do to kill it today. I mean, the -- the scientists are bent -- hell-bent to negate that with the crucifixion of the single, poor, weak fellow in Galil- -- in -- in Jerusalem, anything happened of any decisive character. They know better: they read the inscription and documents in Rome; the emperor Nero, and what-not; and that's of course the important history. So they say, "How can you say that we count now the era from the coming of -- from the -- from the birth of Christ? That's just silly." And they underline our own hymns which say that there was nothing but a baby in a manger. And how can you say that a new time began with this?

It is really very difficult to insist on this. And most of you only believe this temporarily, passingly. Most of you are 90 percent pagans and 10 percent Christians. And some are 80 percent Christians, and 50 percent. And it isn't so easy. All the odds are against us. All the probabilities, all the scientific facts are against the fact that the birth of a child in a manger in -- in -- in Bethlehem could have made a difference. And why it made a difference, and how it made a difference --.

Two Catholic priests--and let me -- close today -- for today with this thought, because this I think -- it may explain our dilemma for the last -- for the next three weeks. Two Catholic priests, French people, have published a great work on the Church, the history of the Church. And it is untranslatable fortunately in -- in English. But in the German translation, the expression for the first

volume, the title for the first volume is "The Making of the Church."

Now of course, if the Church was made, then it is a part of the world, and is of no interest to anybody. There are so many makes, shifts, and so many makers; they can have a copyright, and what-not, if the Church is made, I'm not interested in it. And I am not in makeshift -- in churches made.

Of course, the Church was created. If the Church wasn't created, then there is no Church. And today, the blasphemy, however, among the min- -- ministry, in the clergy is rampant that the Church is made, is done, is fabricated, is -- is erected, is established. The word "establishment" is even used for this. Now if the Church is established, it's not of any divine origin. And I'm not interested. If you -- as far as humanity goes, I'm so proud of myself that I can do anything one better. But I'm very humble when the thing has been done for me, beyond human making, my manufacturing. Like the Sabbath.

When this man rested, and came as a -- out of the mouth of the Mother of God, "As a little word I come," that rings a bell in my ear. I have to listen. That's something really beyond my powers. I can think something up. But that God should have thought down into me, Heaven forbid that I shouldn't listen to this.

So today's problem is that the words of the theologians--who speak of the death of God, as you know, on the side; it's only the death of theology of course which they mean by this, and in this they are right. And theology has died, thanks to God. And -- well, it has waited a thousand years. In 1100, a man called Abel- -- -lardus, a very great spirit, said this much, that theology would have to die. And he was -- is right. It only has taken 900 years, longer than he thought.

You and I can tell off the theologians. Shouldn't we know of God just as much as they do? I hope we do. Everybody can, by participation in His camp- -- in God's campaign in this world. Now I'm quite serious. But it has to be said today were you are really intimidated by the -- by the self-defense of the theologians, who -- have all their professorships in jeopardy, you see. And they were quite sure for the last 500 years that there was -- always be a chair open for somebody who didn't understand God. And so now that seems to -- to milt -- to -- to melt away, I mean. There is no -- no certainty that there will be chairs of theology in the next 300 years. And I rejoice in this. -- That's the honor of God. How can anybody be more an expert on God than you and I? Utter nonsense.

In the things of the world, you can be more experienced and more knowledgeable than you -- than I, you see. But in your communication with the divinity, I don't think that you can claim that he is an expert.

So I mean to s- -- tell you that the building-up of the -- a universe in which Christianity can be operative in those four pagan universes created before Him, or pre-Christian universe, I can't dare to call the -- Israel a -- a pagan universe, of course, but a universe in opposition to the rest of the world, it was. Now we are speaking of a world in which you and I can speak of the brotherhood of man without a sneer, without having to think of Auschwitz, without believing that this was all just a pious phrase for white Protestant Christians, and that it is true, and will be true -- tomorrow even truer, that we are the children of one Father. If there is any hope that this can be done in the future, we must see traces of this in the past.

We enter today the third millennium. And that is not without some solemnity. The world -- the year 1967 is close enough to the eve of a new count of thousand years. And just as Adam died in the year 930 of the first millennium of our human era, and then was spelled by Noah and the city-builders, the Egyptian pyramid-builders, so in this sense I believe that our millennium is drawing to a close, and there is something to be said about new methods in the next millennium. The Christian era is also divided into chronological units of a thousand years, by and large, each.

And so, what I propose to do for the next three weeks is to tell you something about the first millennium of the Christian era, the second millennium of the Christian era, and the third millennium of the Christian era.