In his April 9 WorldNetDaily column, Ellis Washington does another one of his dialectic symposiums in which imposes his own viewpoints onto the great philosophers of history. This time around, Washington purports to analyze the allegory of Plato’s Cave and the idea of the philosopher king. Washington once again invokes Socrates, as well as Plato, Jesus, “realist” St. Thomas Aquinas and “anti-realist” Immanuel Kant.
At one point Washington — er, “Socrates” — declares:
Plato hearkens back to the forced suicide I suffered under the Athenian state because I refused to moderate my philosophical teachings. Four centuries later, this ridicule and rejection would happen to another philosopher, Jesus Christ – the greatest philosopher of us all!
Given that, as Washington notes, Socrates lived 400 years before Jesus, it’s highly unlikely that he would declare Jesus to be “the greatest philosopher of us all!”
Washington also claims Jesus said:
All earthly knowledge is but mere shadows. My servant St. Paul wrote, “… we see through a glass darkly; but now face to face.” I am the light of the world. Light removes darkness and shadows. I transcend reality and the Shadowlands. I told the unbelieving Jewish leaders of my day, “Search the scriptures [Torah]; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.”
Jesus spoke to the “unbelieving Jewish leaders of my day” in 17th-century Old English pronouns? Really?