"Philip Jose Farmer - Jesus on Mars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

soon we'll be talking in person.'
The set went blank. Both were silent for a minute.
'I wonder,' Bronski said slowly, 'why the Martians permit the depiction of
animal and human life on these sets yet bar it in their art? Theoretically, the
Mosaic law should apply to images in TV, too. But then they may not be as
orthodox as I'd supposed.'
Orme was somewhat irritated. 'Good God, Avram! Why worry about such
a minor thing? We've got real troubles and big questions to consider, so who
gives a hoot?'
Bronski shrugged. 'What else have we got to think about? There's nothing
we can do except go along with our, uh, hosts. Anyway, points like that interest
me.'
'Yeah? Me, too, when I've got time on my hands.'
Bronski looked around and smiled wryly. Orme burst into laughter.
'I see what you mean. What else do we have but time on our hands, heh?
Well, let me ask you. Do orthodox Jews watch TV?'
'There's an ultraorthodox group in Israel, the Neturai Karta, who refuse to
own or watch TV, or listen to radios, for that matter. They claim to be the only
true Jews left in the world. They even refuse to recognise Israel as a state. But
they're almost extinct, and the orthodox regard them with horror - or perhaps pity.
Yes, the orthodox do watch TV, though they turn it off on the Sabbath. But the
Martian Jews could be the Terrestrial counterpart of the Neturai Karta, though I'd
doubt it.'
Orme said, 'These people have been here for two thousand years. Surely,
they've changed in that time? Even your superorthodox Jews don't stone women
caught committing adultery or punch out a man's eye because he blinded
someone?'
'I wouldn't expect it. The Mosaic laws were rigorously applied when the
Hebrews were nomadic tribes, wild Bedouins, in many ways. The laws were
barbarically harsh, but they were necessary to keep order and to preserve the
faith. Savage as they seem to us, they were more humane than the laws of their
contemporaries. After the Jews settled down in Palestine and became civilised,
they gradually softened the letter of the law with the spirit of humanity and in
accordance with the circumstances of the times and the environment. A century
before Jesu's birth, stoning as a punishment for adultery had ceased.'
'But John says that when Jesus was in the temple some doctors of law
and some Pharisees brought to him a woman caught in the act of adultery. They
said, that Moses had laid down the law that such women were to be stoned, and
they asked him what he thought about it. They hoped to frame a charge against
him. Now are you saying that story wasn't true?'
'The story may be true,' Bronski said, 'but its location could not have been
Jerusalem. The incident probably took place in Galilee, where the natives were
more conservative in religious matters - in some respects, anyway - and probably
did stone adulterers, if they could do so without attracting the attention of the
authorities. It was the law that any adulteress had to be brought to Jerusalem for
judgement. There they would only have had to undergo the test of the bitter
waters, and if they failed, they would have been punished - but nothing like
stoning or in fact any capital punishment whatsoever. They probably would have
been divorced and returned in disgrace to their family.
'Anyway, the Martian Jews have had no alien interference or influence for