of the Roman Empire. This idea of the international ac- 

 ceptance of a citizen's rights was the forerunner of similar 

 ideas holding for several major modem nations. 



During the period of Roman supremacy in the Medi- 

 terranean area, an important new religious teacher ap- 

 peared in the small country of Palestine, which had been 

 occupied by the inherently religious Hebrew people since 

 about 2000 B.C. These people, despite enslavement by 

 the Egyptians around 1600 B.C., and later by the Baby- 

 lonians (their great city Jerusalem was destroyed c. 550 

 B.C.), had managed to maintain their integrity for some 

 twenty centuries because of their powerful religious con- 

 victions. In the first century A.D. Jesus Christ, whose birth 

 was supposed by his biographers to have been partheno- 

 genetic (probably on religious grounds), taught Christi- 

 anity in his country. The basic tenet of this faith was the 

 belief in an omnipotent God who was considered able 

 to give immortality in an extraterrestrial domain to those 

 of his followers implicity accepting him, and acting in 

 accordance with the moral laws stated by Christ. These 

 included the recognition of the rights of one's fellow-men, 

 the service without material reward of others, and the dis- 

 carding of prejudices against other peoples of different 

 descent from one's own. Although Christ's conclusions re- 

 garding the tolerance of all men are to be upheld whole- 

 heartedly today, his advocation of the service of men to 

 others (with the hope of an eventual heavenly reward 

 of life after physical death), do not receive support in the 

 light of our present knowledge of Man's evolutionary de- 

 velopment. And the whole concept of the continued ex- 

 istence of the mind apart from the body is open to very 

 serious doubt to us today. To Christ during his life, which 

 was cut short by his execution by the Romans, were at- 



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