Academic Perspectives
According to the editors of the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia, the prevailing notion in ancient middle eastern cultures was that bodily ailments and defects, such as blindness and loss of hearing, as well as circumstantial ailments, such as poverty, were punishments for sin; the blind, together with cripples and lepers, were outcast by society and were prevented from entering towns, becoming paupers as a result. The biblical provision of laws to protect individuals afflicted in this manner would have had the effect, perhaps intended, of reducing the prejudice they suffered.
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Famous quotes containing the word academic:
“Short of a wholesale reform of college athletics—a complete breakdown of the whole system that is now focused on money and power—the women’s programs are just as doomed as the men’s are to move further and further away from the academic mission of their colleges.... We have to decide if that’s the kind of success for women’s sports that we want.”
—Christine H. B. Grant, U.S. university athletic director. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A42 (May 12, 1993)