Description
Part one:
Each question should be half of a page of a college writing blue book. In your response
you must identify the historical or religious context to which each passage pertains (e.g. speaker, subject, occasion, purpose, general time period). More importantly, you need to explain its relevance to its respective tradition. Evidence of independent and compelling insight on the readings is strongly recommended. Each response should be at least a full paragraph in length.
1) “The Duke of She observed to Confucius: ‘Among us there was an upright man called Kung who was so upright that when his father appropriated a sheep, he bore witness against him.’ Confucius said: ‘The upright men among us are not like that. A father will screen his son and a son his father—yet uprightness is to be found in that.’” (Analects)
2) “‘Then is it permissible for a subject to assassinate his lord?’ Mencius said, ‘Someone who does violence to the good we call a villain; someone who does violence to the right we call a criminal. A person who is both a villain and a criminal we call a scoundrel. I have heard that the scoundrel Zhou was killed, but not heard that a lord was killed.’” (The Mencius)
http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/services/dropoff/china_civ_temp/week03/pdfs/select7.pdf
3) “As God lives, who has taken away my right, and the Almighty, who has made my soul bitter; As long as my breath is in me, and the spirit of God in my nostrils, my lips will not speak falsehood and my tongue will not utter deceit. Far be it from me to say that you are right; Till I die I will not put away my integrity from me” (“Book of Job”) https://ebible.org/kjv/Job.htm
4) “Ananda, a nun, even one who has been ordained for a hundred years, must respectfully salute a monk, even one who has been ordained but a day. This, Ananda, is the first cardinal rule for nuns, which they should respect, esteem, honor, and venerate as long as they live and steadfastly maintain as though it were the shore of the great ocean.” (“The Acceptance of Women into the Order”)
5) “So Gilgamesh, fill thy body, make merry by day and night, keep each day a feast of rejoicing! Day and night, leap and have thy delight! Put on clean raiments, Wash thy head and bathe thee in water. Look cheerily at the child who holdeth thy hand, And may thy wife have joy in thy arms!” (“The Epic of Gilgamesh”) .
https://uruk-warka.dk/Gilgamish/The%20Epic%20of%20Gilgamesh.pdf
6) “Sujata bowed to him and shyly asked him to accept her special food offering of rice boiled in cream and sweetened with wild honey. Gautama smiled and ate the delicious rice, the best food he had had since leaving the palace. It made him feel strong and good. Then he rested in the grove until the heat of the grove had passed.” (Kohn, “The Life of the Buddha”)
part two:
Please read again closely the Patacara story found in the selection entitled “The Conversion of Patacara” (Course Reader). Make sure you understand the specific circumstances that first led her to leave her family and those that subsequently resulted in her suffering. Her choices and experiences will serve as the case study for you to demonstrate your understanding of the perspectives and applications of some of the wisdom traditions we have encountered so far.
300-400 words for each following wisdom tradition.
1.The “author” of Job
2.The Buddha
- Confucius
Sample Solution
Dante Alighieri played a critical role in the literature world through his poem Divine Comedy that was written in the 14th century. The poem contains Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. The Inferno is a description of the nine circles of torment that are found on the earth. It depicts the realms of the people that have gone against the spiritual values and who, instead, have chosen bestial appetite, violence, or fraud and malice. The nine circles of hell are limbo, lust, gluttony, greed and wrath. Others are heresy, violence, fraud, and treachery. The purpose of this paper is to examine the Dante’s Inferno in the perspective of its portrayal of God’s image and the justification of hell.
In this epic poem, God is portrayed as a super being guilty of multiple weaknesses including being egotistic, unjust, and hypocritical. Dante, in this poem, depicts God as being more human than divine by challenging God’s omnipotence. Additionally, the manner in which Dante describes Hell is in full contradiction to the morals of God as written in the Bible. When god arranges Hell to flatter Himself, He commits egotism, a sin that is common among human beings (Cheney, 2016). The weakness is depicted in Limbo and on the Gate of Hell where, for instance, God sends those who do not worship Him to Hell. This implies that failure to worship Him is a sin.
God is also depicted as lacking justice in His actions thus removing the godly image. The injustice is portrayed by the manner in which the sodomites and opportunists are treated. The opportunists are subjected to banner chasing in their lives after death followed by being stung by insects and maggots. They are known to having done neither good nor bad during their lifetimes and, therefore, justice could have demanded that they be granted a neutral punishment having lived a neutral life. The sodomites are also punished unfairly by God when Brunetto Lattini is condemned to hell despite being a good leader (Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). While he commited sodomy, God chooses to ignore all the other good deeds that Brunetto did.
Finally, God is also portrayed as being hypocritical in His actions, a sin that further diminishes His godliness and makes Him more human. A case in point is when God condemns the sin of egotism and goes ahead to commit it repeatedly. Proverbs 29:23 states that “arrogance will bring your downfall, but if you are humble, you will be respected.” When Slattery condemns Dante’s human state as being weak, doubtful, and limited, he is proving God’s hypocrisy because He is also human (Verdicchio, 2015). The actions of God in Hell as portrayed by Dante are inconsistent with the Biblical literature. Both Dante and God are prone to making mistakes, something common among human beings thus making God more human.
To wrap it up, Dante portrays God is more human since He commits the same sins that humans commit: egotism, hypocrisy, and injustice. Hell is justified as being a destination for victims of the mistakes committed by God. The Hell is presented as being a totally different place as compared to what is written about it in the Bible. As a result, reading through the text gives an image of God who is prone to the very mistakes common to humans thus ripping Him off His lofty status of divine and, instead, making Him a mere human. Whether or not Dante did it intentionally is subject to debate but one thing is clear in the poem: the misconstrued notion of God is revealed to future generations.
References
Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). Dante’s inferno: Seven deadly sins in scientific publishing and how to avoid them. Addiction Science: A Guide for the Perplexed, 267.
Cheney, L. D. G. (2016). Illustrations for Dante’s Inferno: A Comparative Study of Sandro Botticelli, Giovanni Stradano, and Federico Zuccaro. Cultural and Religious Studies, 4(8), 487.
Verdicchio, M. (2015). Irony and Desire in Dante’s” Inferno” 27. Italica, 285-297.
