What was the war over a dot?
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In one of the Shayde stories, she describes humans warlike past as so extreme that "we once fought a war for three hundred years over a dot above a letter." or something very like that. Which war is she talking about? Which letter? Which dot?
I'm so confused!
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@Bard2dbone - Yeah, this was one of the Things Mum Told Me, so I have no other source than the story.
Perhaps a better historian can weigh in?
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I really need to find more background on this. This sounds like the exact kind of 'proof-how-dumb-people-are' stuff that I frequently rant over. I'm surprised at how empty my memory banks are on this. I'm aware of way too many wars being fought to decide whose God was more peaceful, loving, and merciful. I'm also sadly aware of how rarely the leaders recognized the irony of that.
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This is one of those religious quibbles that can cause sects maniacs.
In the writing of the era, there were two similar words. One means "like God" and the other means "is God". And the difference between the two is the position of an iota. A dot. A fraction to the left, and the text read "Jesus is like God". A smidge to the right and it read "Jesus is God".
This was incredibly important to the people at the time, because knowing the nature of Jesus was the big thing. They tried looking at the oldest available text, but some lazy-arse scribe had put the most important dot in the world at the time...
Right.
Square.
In the.
Fucking.
Middle.
To say that things got heated was a massive understatement, because three hundred years of war. And a permanent rift in the religious atmosphere of the world. One that's caused lasting damage to international relations from those days to this.
