Word: babylonian
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...that was punished was the defiling of a virgin, and that was viewed as a property crime. A girl's virtue was a marketable asset, and so a rapist was often ordered to pay the victim's father the equivalent of her price on the marriage market. In early Babylonian and Hebrew societies, a married woman who was raped suffered the same fate as an adulteress -- death by stoning or drowning. Under William the Conqueror, the penalty for raping a virgin was castration and loss of both eyes -- unless the violated woman agreed to marry her attacker...
...detail-specific guides to beating some kind of celestial point spread but timeless alerts that humanity must be constantly vigilant against sin's allure. The temptation to seek clues to the Second Coming on CNN is easy to understand, since Saddam has proclaimed himself a successor to Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian King who enslaved the Israelites of old. That makes it deceptively easy for prophecy mongers to identify Iraq with Babylon. Somewhat awkwardly, it also undercuts a long- standing Protestant tradition that this symbol of corruption refers to the Church of Rome...
...cast Saddam merely as a gangster is to misunderstand not only why he invaded Kuwait but also why he has gained so much popular support among the "Arab masses." Saddam's propaganda variously portrays him as Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian King who destroyed Jerusalem in 587 B.C., or as Saladin, the Kurdish warrior who fought off the Crusaders...
...evacuate their embassies and prepare to fly out of the country, Iraqis wait at service stations in lines 30, 40, 50 cars long to buy enough gas to make sure they can drive out of the city in case of attack. The government closed the museums and moved its Babylonian and Abbasid treasures to bomb shelters. Many Iraqis were putting tape over their windows to prevent shattering in case of bombing. Others are laying in a month's supply of food, getting ready to sit out what their leader has promised will be the "mother of all battles...
...biblical times, not one square inch should be traded away as part of an Arab-Israeli settlement. Yitzhak Shamir's talk of "Greater Israel" is as ominous for the prospects of there ever being real and lasting peace in the region as Saddam's militant nostalgia for Nebuchadnezzar's Babylonian empire...