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He was a student of Gamaliel, who was a Pharisee, and they believed in the resurrection; some Christians believed in reincarnation, like most religious people of that time.
Gamaliel (often spelled Gramael) was a famous first-century Jewish Pharisee, a leading teacher of the law, and a respected member of the Sanhedrin (the ancient Jewish council and court).
Role in the Sanhedrin: Defended the Apostles: In the Bible book of Acts (chapter 5), when the Jewish leaders wanted to kill the early followers of Jesus, Gamaliel spoke up in the Sanhedrin.Wisdom and Caution: He advised the council to leave the apostles alone, saying that if their movement was just a human plan, it would fail on its own. However, if it was from God, fighting it meant fighting God. His advice saved the apostles from execution.
Historical and Religious Impact: Teacher of Paul: According to the New Testament, Gamaliel was the teacher who trained the Apostle Paul (Saul of Tarsus) in strict Jewish law.High Status: In Jewish tradition, he is called Rabban Gamaliel the Elder and is remembered as one of the greatest teachers of the Mishna
Instead of Christianity, it should have been called Jesuism because there were many Christian sects, Christs, and messiahs around the ancient and Roman world. The letters of Paul should have been first organised or indexed in the Bible because his writings appeared before the Greek and Roman scriptures. Many of his letters ( or whoever wrote them ) contradict the New Testament
Wrestling is another popular violent sport which was also popular among the Greeks and the Roman. Gladiators shared similarities with modern wrestling. It is another sport which generates large profits and violent fans
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrestling
In Mexico,o it is known as Lucha Libre, but it is not as violent as the original wrestling
h. ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucha_libreGladiators were rarely killed because they were expensive, highly trained assets. Training them required significant time and money from their owners (lanistae). Furthermore, top fighters were celebrated sports stars with devoted fan bases, making it bad business and unpopular with crowds to kill them needlessly.
While cinematic portrayals often show every match ending in fatal bloodshed, historical records and archaeological data suggest that only about 10% to 20% of bouts resulted in a gladiator’s death. Several factors kept fatality rates low:
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Financial Investment: Gladiators required heavy investments in housing, food, and medical care. Losing a fighter meant losing a valuable commodity, and promoters had to pay heavy compensation to the owner if a rented gladiator was killed.The Missio System: When a gladiator was disarmed or seriously wounded, he could drop his weapon and raise his finger to ask for mercy (missio). The sponsor of the games, often taking the roaring crowd’s reaction into account, would usually spare the loser to fight another day, provided he put up a good, brave fight.
Strict Rules and Referees: Bouts were highly regulated and overseen by referees who prevented fights from becoming chaotic brawls. If a match grew too one-sided, a draw could be declared, or the fight could be stopped before either man suffered fatal injuries.
However, death was still an inherent risk. Fatalities were primarily restricted to untrained criminals sentenced to death in the arena (damnati), or matches that were explicitly decreed to be “without mercy
https://www.thecollector.com/reasons-roman-gladiators-were-like-wwe-stars/. Roman gladiators were like WWE stars
PS The Minister of Education of the USA runs a professional wrestling business. She does not have a degree in Pedagogy,
Boxing also produces brain damage in some cases, where the fight was to the death of the opponent.
The Italian-American Mafia essentially controlled professional boxing from the 1930s through the early 1960s. This era of total monopoly was orchestrated primarily by the Lucchese crime family soldier Frankie Carbo (known as the “Czar of Boxing”) and his partner Frank “Blinky” Palermo, who ran the International Boxing Club (IBC).
The cartel fixed fights, extorted managers, and dictated exactly who could fight for world titles. How the Mob Took Over: The Mafia used systemic corruption to monopolise the sport, implementing strict control tactics: The International Boxing Club (IBC): The mob used the IBC as a front organisation.
It controlled promotional rights, major arenas (including Madison Square Garden), and lucrative television contracts. The “Mob Tax”: If an independent manager wanted their fighter to get a title shot, they had to secretly surrender a 50% stake in the fighter’s earnings or contract to Carbo.Controlled Matchmaking: Fighters who refused to sign with mob-controlled managers were blacklisted.
Legendary fighters like Archie Moore were kept away from title shots for over a decade because they refused to cooperate with organised crime. Fixed Fights: Matches were routinely thrown to maximise gambling profits or to artificially build up a marketable contender.Famous Examples of Mob Interference: Several historic boxing figures were deeply entangled in the Mafia’s web, willingly or unwillingly: Primo Carnera: The 1933 Heavyweight Champion’s career was entirely manufactured by mobsters like Owney Madden. Carnera, a naive giant, genuinely believed his wins were real, unaware his handlers were bribing and threatening his opponents.
He retired with virtually no money left to show for his fame. Jake LaMotta: The famous “Raging Bull” was forced to throw a fight against Billy Fox in 1947. In exchange for diving, the mob finally granted LaMotta the world middleweight title shot he had earned years prior. Sonny Liston: Liston’s contract was heavily controlled by Blinky Palermo and St. Louis mob boss John Vitale. Widespread suspicion of mob fixing still surrounds Liston’s losses to Muhammad Ali (then Cassius Clay) in 1964 and 1965. The Downfall: The Mafia’s stranglehold on the sport came to an end in the early 1960s due to two major developments: Kefauver Hearings: U.S. Senator Estes Kefauver launched a massive congressional investigation into organised crime in boxing.
High-profile testimonies, including Jake LaMotta admitting to throwing a fight, exposed the IBC’s corruption. Federal Prosecution: In 1961, federal prosecutors successfully convicted Frankie Carbo and Blinky Palermo of extortion and conspiracy. Carbo was sentenced to 25 years in prison, effectively dismantling the shadow syndicate that ruled the ring.
It is against the concept of community within the original Jewish tribes.
The sense of community in Judaism is often described as “peoplehood” or “tribalism”, representing an extended family connected by shared history, covenant, and mutual responsibility.
Rather than just a religion, it is an ethnoreligious identity where individual purpose and communal wellbeing are deeply intertwined. The community structure is defined by several core concepts:
Mutual Responsibility: Grounded in the phrase Kol Yisrael Arevim Zeh BaZeh (all Israel is responsible for one another), this creates a strong social safety net. It is realised through acts of loving-kindness (Chessed), such as delivering meals to mourners (sitting shiva) or visiting the sick.
Kehillah (Communal Assembly): Jewish tradition emphasises coming together for prayer (e.g., the requirement of a minyan for communal worship) and celebrating life-cycle events. Shared meals and holidays foster bonding and collective memory. Diversity as Modern Tribalism: While specific tribal lineages (aside from the Kohanim and Levites) were largely lost after ancient exiles, the various global Jewish communities (such as Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi) function as modern-day “tribes.”
These subgroups preserve unique customs and philosophies that enrich the broader nation. Shared Values and Action: Programs like The Tribe and movements like the Foundation for Jewish Camp focus on bringing diverse families and youth together to learn values and participate in social action (tikkun olam)
The same situation is applicable to baseball too, which is very popular in the USA and the Caribbean islands.
The baseball players are like gods admired by everybody because businesses have turned them into heroes and because they have money, and many young people want to leave school in order to become baseball players. Some are called the king of baseball, and it is also a sign of patriotism.
Some have killed women or sexually abused them, but they are pardoned because they are heroes, and they can buy the court system, and the baseball club pay their lawyers and their fines.
Some have obtained doctorate degrees without any academic education, while people who have really obtained an academic degree do not receive the same honorific distinction.
Sports in our society are more than entertainment, it is bread and circuses for the working class, a profitable business for the capitalist class, and a tool to alienate the working class.
Going to a stadium is like going to a Roman circus or a colosseum; it is also a dangerous place because many fanatics like to fight against each other, and some structures have been partially destroyed
Some structures have collapsed due to the weight of the fans, and the emotions and fanaticism have motivated them to jump and have produced cracks in the columns, and they have fallen like pancakes.
As William Morris said, in a socialist society we are going to be artists, because arts and sports are going to be viewed from a different perspective and the concept of profits will not exist, and we are going to have free time to practice arts, craftsmanship and sports with our family and relatives.
American ( USA ) football is one of the most dangerous sports, and it was proven by a Neurologist who almost got killed because he opposed and denounced that business; it was like opposing the Italian or Russian mafia. Many young people have died and continue dying due to brain damages provoked by that so-called sport, but it generates a lot of profits for the investors. They do not care about scientific research, and fanatics do not care either
There are better and more urgent issues in this world than sports and entertainment. It is only bread and circuses
The so-called American dream was a fallacy created by the US capitalist class to make workers believe that they were able to live in wealth and happiness under the capitalist mode of production, and that anybody was able to get rich and obtain equality. That fallacy has been proven to be totally wrong: poverty, unemployment, death, depression and anxiety, inequality, racism have spread all around society, and the best solution that they have found is to submit themselves to religion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_American_Dream_(novel)
The concept of third-world countries does not exist any more; it was a concept created during the Cold War, and some countries were not aligned with NATO or the Warsaw Pact. It was not based on the economic development of some countries. Some so-called third-world countries had healthcare, education and transportation financed by the state.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/may/25/american-dream-great-gatsby. The Great Gatsby is the opposite, which is the present status
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Gatsby
All these theorists do not understand or do not know that the state is financed with surplus value and the burden ot taxation falls on the profits of the capitalist class, and the normal tendency is to reduce taxation, and when taxation is reduced, the state benefits are reduced too, or states are forced to emit fictitious capital and take loans, or implement austerity plans, or sell state resources which they wrongly call neoliberalism
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Many of those social demcorats reforms were enacted when the capialist pay high taxation, in some places it was 90% but most of their contribution went into the financing of world war 2 and the war machinery, and then during the post war boom higher taxation continued for a short period of time, at present the taxation is approximate 15%, or probably less, and austerity plan have been narcted in most countries around the world incuding the USA.Football a capital idea
From the June 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard
Football is now a commodity packaged and sold to make money for the clubs’ shareholders.
Football fans were given something meaty to chew on recently when the English Football Association appointed an Italian, Fabio Capello, as manager of the national team. Capello, in turn, brought with him a bevvy of besuited Italian colleagues to help him to ensure that England qualify for, and preferably do well in, the next major tournament, the 2010 World Cup.Most football fans, including large sections of the press, have been tearing their hair out in frustration because the England team hasn’t been doing too well recently in comparison with the top national sides. (Let’s leave aside the fact that England isn’t strictly speaking a nation and that the United Kingdom actually has four ‘national’ teams). The crunch came when the previous manager, Steve McClaren, failed to ‘lead’ England to the 2008 European Championship finals this coming summer. He was considered not to have enough charisma or technical know-how for the job. Capello was seen as the best qualified manager to take over. The only fly in the ointment was his nationality, but for the sake of getting the right man, this was overlooked and those who would have preferred an Englishman breathed a collective sigh of resignation. At least this foreigner, with his no-nonsense approach and impressive managerial CV, might knock a bunch of spoiled, overpaid players into shape and win something.
The widespread prevalence of religion in an advanced society like the USA shows that workers are oppressed and alienated, but most of them do not want to admit it; even more, the concept of class struggle is not even mentioned in USA society; it is hidden;
The real illusion is that they think that they are free and they are not wage slaves, and that anybody can become rich by working hard, and when they become old, that dream never realises, and religion is the best alternative to cover up their oppression produced by the capitalist class.
Corruption is always blamed on the politicians or the foreign workers, but it is never blamed on the capitalist mode of production where a minority group of human beings take their own labour and become rich, and that concept is not mentioned either; labour stealing has been blessed by the legal system; it is not strange that a man like Trump could have been elected president
A rich man like Trump is worshipped like a god, because the rich themselves have said that they are not corrupt because they do have money, and corruption exists within the poor people, which motivates workers to go against other workers.
Evangelicals have created a new idea known as the gospel of prosperity, saying that God has blessed them, and pastors are allowed to have money and live like kings; therefore, rich people have also been blessed by god, the same old concept of the Egyptian kings and feudalist kings
But it’s also of interest how one blood cult from the ancient world – with all its fantastical beliefs and against all reason and common sense – still controls so many minds in the 21st century.
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It shows what Karl Marx said:
Karl Marx argued that religion exists because the material and social conditions that require it—oppression, alienation, and suffering—still exist.
He famously referred to it as the “opium of the people,” meaning it serves as an illusory comfort that dulls the pain of real societal distress without curing it.
His core argument about why religion survives relies on materialist philosophy:
Marx wrote in his Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right that religious suffering is both the “expression of real suffering” and a “protest against real suffering”.
People turn to the divine because their earthly conditions are intolerable.
Because capitalism and class inequality strip workers of their humanity and dignity, religion acts as a metaphysical balm. It promises a better afterlife or divine justice, which pacifies the oppressed and redirects their focus away from changing the material world.
For Marx, one cannot just wish religion away by attacking faith. He believed that “the abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness”. As long as the root causes of alienation and inequality remain, the “condition which needs illusions” persists.
“Religion is the opium of the people. It is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of our soulless conditions.”
Marx’s view on religion is different to the secular atheists
U.S. American evangelicalism is spreading here in the UK.
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They are fanatics and anti-scientific
But the US churches do not constitute a single church (unless they all unite and form one), so which one would be the state church and the state clergy?
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Most of them are Arminian, and the rest are Calvinist. There is no official religion. They claim that the US is a Christian nation, but it is not; there are more than 370 different types of religions. It is different to Latin America, where the catholic religion became the religion of the state and the religion of the nation, and the religion of the educational system and the court system, and signed concordats (concordato) with different governments, including dictators.
A “concordato” is an official agreement or settlement. The term primarily refers to a formal treaty between the Vatican and a sovereign state defining the relationship between the Catholic Church and the government. In civil or business contexts, it translates to an arrangement or settlement to avoid bankruptcy.
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In international law, a concordat is a binding treaty between the Holy See (representing the Catholic Church) and a national government. Concordat –
These treaties define the church’s legal status, rights, and privileges within the country.
The Lateran Treaty (1929): An agreement between Italy and the Holy See that established Vatican City as an independent sovereign state.
Reichskonkordat (1933): A controversial treaty between the Vatican and Nazi Germany regulating the rights of the Catholic Church in Germany.
Concordat of 1801: Signed between Napoleon Bonaparte and Pope Pius VII, seeking to reconcile French Catholics with the secular government after the French Revolution.
In Italian law and business, a concordato preventivo is a court-supervised insolvency procedure. Concordato Preventivo: Italy’s Pre-emptive Agreement for …. It allows a company facing a severe financial crisis or insolvency to avoid bankruptcy (fallimento) by proposing a restructuring plan or orderly liquidation to its creditors. Understanding Italy’s new concordato preventivo
Additionally, the Concordato Preventivo Biennale (CPB) is a fiscal tool that allows certain eligible taxpayers to negotiate and pre-agree their taxable income with the Italian Revenue Agency (Agenzia delle Entrate) for two years, aiming to simplify tax payments. Concordato Preventivo: Italy’s Pre-emptive Agreement for ….
Derived from the Italian/Spanish verbs meaning “to agree” or “to settle,” the noun form (e.g., concordat in English, concordato in Italian) refers broadly to an agreed-upon compromise or resolution. In business or contract law, this can mean a pre-arranged settlement, an agreed price (prezzo concordato), or contractual terms (decisioni concordate)
Hollywood studios have made a lot of money using the bible to make religious movies, and the Vatican has made a lot of money too, propagating myths, including the cult of the Virgin Mary, saints, miracles and concordatos
The Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City is one of the most visited Catholic sites globally, drawing up to 20 million pilgrims yearly.
While it generates immense wealth, including millions in daily coin offerings funnelled through underground collection systems, this money remains entirely in Mexico. The Vatican does not receive these funds, relying instead on its own distinct financial operations.
The funds generated at the sanctuary are managed locally by the Archdiocese of Mexico to support the massive daily maintenance of the shrine’s multiple temples, local clergy, social outreach, and administrative staff.
Like virtually all Catholic dioceses worldwide, the Vatican operates as an independent entity with its own budget, completely separate from the local collections of international shrines.
While the Holy See does not receive financial dividends from the site, the Vatican News actively promotes the global spiritual significance of Guadalupe, acknowledging its crucial role in the history of the Americas
A myth invented by the Spanish invaders to pacify the Aztecs. There are more than 30 Virgin Marys in Latin America, and all of them produce large profits
