Contrary to what many Christians have thought throughout the ages, for Matthew following Jesus does not mean abandoning the Jewish Law and joining a new religion that is opposed to it.
For Matthew, Jesus provides the true understanding of the Jewish Law, and his followers must keep it.
No man is an island, entire of itself ; every man is a piece of the continent...
-John Donne
Doña Gracia Nasi Mendes was one of the most powerful Jews in the sixteenth century. Born into a Roman Catholic family that had been forcibly converted from Judaism in Portugal, she then “returned” to Judaism, using her business acumen and wealth to support other Jews (and especially other former conversos) to excape the scrutiny of the Inquisition in Antwerp, Venice, and Ferrara, Italy. Eventually, she made her way to the Ottoman Empire, where she joined forces with her nephew and son-in-law, Don Joseph Nasi, to continue her business and charitable activities.
Sayfa 176
The view of society as a totality is no doubt illuminating when set against the view that ideas, politics, law, religion, and so on have a life and history of their own, independently of mundane economic matters. Nevertheless it does not amount to ‘the law of development of human history’, or to a scientific discovery comparable to Darwin’s theory of evolution. To qualify as a contribution to science, a proposed law must be precise enough to enable us to deduce from it certain consequences rather than others.
Sayfa 54
