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Post by joustos on Jul 15, 2019 18:06:06 GMT
As a born and raised Catholic, I used to hear and read the famous Latin phrase : "Memento Homo quia pulvis es at in pulverem reverteris" (= Remember, O Man, that you are dust and to dust you shall turn). The application of ashes on one's forehead was a physical reminder of one's mortality.
I always thought that the phrase came from or was based on the Old Testament. In fact there is such a reminder in the book of Genesis. However, lately I discovered what could be a different and earlier source for that phrase: "Nostrum est quod vivis, cinis et manes et fabula fies. Vive memor leti. Fugit hora" ( = it is our business while alive; tomorrow you will become ash and a tale [told by an idiot, Shakespeare would add]. Live mindful of death. Time flies), by Persius or Persius Flaccus (34-62), an Etruscan man who became a Latin poet and satirist who became popular In Rome and in the Middle Ages.
During that first century A.D., the Old Testament had been translated into Greek but not fully into Latin. It is doubtful that the Latin or "Catholic" liturgy employed that phrase. Persius was known and may have been the sourse of the "Memento Homo" phrase. Persius was a pagan but as an Etruscan, he was very much into religion and may have used his "Memor" phrase out of either an Etruscan or a pre-Christian Latin religion. Coicidence or a linguistic phrase in pre-Semitic Canaan and Palestine (where the Old Testament was written down)?
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thinqtv
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Post by thinqtv on Aug 21, 2019 20:47:40 GMT
As a born & raised Catholic in the US after Vatican II, we didn't speak Latin, but I thinQ the priest mumbled that in English when he smeared dirt on our heads. It is in Genesis 3:19 (had to look that up, I don't memorize the Bible).
Supposedly Moses wrote the book of Genesis around 500BC. I don't know Hebrew, Latin, or Greek, so I can't comment on the translation process, nor do I know Moses's literal wording. Perhaps the dust phrase was a popular meme in Rome in the first century, i.e. a third-party source exists. Correlation does not imply causation.
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Post by Elizabeth on Aug 21, 2019 22:12:59 GMT
Ok but when did Jesus ever put ashes or dirt one His forhead or teach anyone to do so? This is so foreign to me. Is this a Catholic daily or weekly tradition of some sort?
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Post by xxxxxxxxx on Aug 21, 2019 23:03:03 GMT
As a born and raised Catholic, I used to hear and read the famous Latin phrase : "Memento Homo quia pulvis es at in pulverem reverteris" (= Remember, O Man, that you are dust and to dust you shall turn). The application of ashes on one's forehead was a physical reminder of one's mortality.
I always thought that the phrase came from or was based on the Old Testament. In fact there is such a reminder in the book of Genesis. However, lately I discovered what could be a different and earlier source for that phrase: "Nostrum est quod vivis, cinis et manes et fabula fies. Vive memor leti. Fugit hora" ( = it is our business while alive; tomorrow you will become ash and a tale [told by an idiot, Shakespeare would add]. Live mindful of death. Time flies), by Persius or Persius Flaccus (34-62), an Etruscan man who became a Latin poet and satirist who became popular In Rome and in the Middle Ages.
During that first century A.D., the Old Testament had been translated into Greek but not fully into Latin. It is doubtful that the Latin or "Catholic" liturgy employed that phrase. Persius was known and may have been the sourse of the "Memento Homo" phrase. Persius was a pagan but as an Etruscan, he was very much into religion and may have used his "Memor" phrase out of either an Etruscan or a pre-Christian Latin religion. Coicidence or a linguistic phrase in pre-Semitic Canaan and Palestine (where the Old Testament was written down)? "All are atoms": Lucretius, The Nature of Things. And atom is a point particle, no different than an axiom of awareness, or awareness itself. Empirical and Abstract reality share this nature. It is an observation of we come from the point and will return to the point if nature is to be observed as a recursive image of God, with the All of nature strictly being a speck (point) unto the Creator thus further exemplifying that in the act of self reflection (which defines God according to the 24 Philosophers) we see God looking at himself through nature. The phrase ashes to ashes observes a metaphorical truth as well in which due to the infinite nature of the universe qualities (as infinities or continuums, much in the same manner we observe a quality such as Red as being a continuum or a Bird) can be arithmetical put together to give an image in the mind or to intuition. This phrase, and its inherent definite nature here the nature of ashes is projected from one state to another, necessitates time as finiteness being intellectual in nature. God is the form and function of the line. One phenomenom, dirt, inverts to another phenomenon, another type of dirt. This however shows a circularity, where the property of dirt exists as circular. This alternation, is recursive, thus necessitating God is a Circle in both form and function (again reflected in the 24 philosophers and many other religions). So ashes to ashes and dust to dust, while from one perspective is very cold and brutal, is also kind and loving where God is always present even in the percievably worst of circumstances. This also implies that is man comes from dust and returns to it, man also may come back as well. It can be viewed as an empirical metaphor for you reap as you sow, and the Golden rule, while necessitating a dualism of absolute ruthlessness and ever present mercy that effectively makes God more terrifying than the devil.
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Post by fschmidt on Aug 23, 2019 4:41:04 GMT
(= Remember, O Man, that you are dust and to dust you shall turn). "For the fate of people and the fate of animals is the same. As one dies, so dies the other; they all have the same breath. People have no advantage over animals since everything is futile. All are going to the same place; all come from dust, and all return to dust." -- Ecclesiastes 3:19-20
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Post by joustos on Aug 23, 2019 14:28:24 GMT
Ok but when did Jesus ever put ashes or dirt one His forhead or teach anyone to do so? This is so foreign to me. Is this a Catholic daily or weekly tradition of some sort? The Catholic ritual of laying or pressing ashes on the forehead is annual: on the Wednesday of the "holy Week"; it was established by the Church on the basis of the Old Testament, which all Christians (the new children of Abraham) follow. The Catholics retained also various pagan rituals or customs, albeit in a modified fashion. For example, December 25th was celebrated as the birth of Jesus, exactly in the manner that Mithra (of the Zoroastrian religion) was celebrated by Roman soldiers. This "sun-god" was assimilated to the late Greek sun-god, Apollo, who carries the sun on his chariot. There is still a fine mosaic of Apollo [= Jesus] in the crypts of the Vatican from the 2nd century. On the eve of all saints day [the day of all dead Christians], in England they celebrated this holy evening [=hollow-ween] in their own imaginative way; in Southern Italy there is the vanishing tradition of leaving some food and drinks on the table for the night, just in case some of the departed decide to pay a visit. This tradition goes back to the ancient Greek [and Magna-Graecian] custom of leaving a "Supper" for Hekate at a three-way crossroad, as she was the triadic goddess from the realm of the dead, the interior darkness of the Earth.
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