Today is the commemoration of the Holy Innocents.

[hrmjustin]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_the_Innocents

[shenmue]

1. Thanks

Always enjoy a proper choir.

[hrmjustin]

2. A good choir goes a long way.

[edhopper]

3. Another biblical story without any corroborating evidence

including the unfortunate fact that Herod the Great died in 4 BCE.
And the whole "announcement a King is born" thing is beyond dubious.
Things about the nativity story just don't add up. But believers want to believe I guess.

[struggle4progress]

7. The literal readings of the fundamentalists often seem to me less interesting

than the literary readings

But perhaps the story, even if riddled with inaccuracies, has some germs of historical truth in it. Herod the Great had his wife Mariamne I executed, as well as three of his sons, Antipater II, Alexander, and Aristobulus. And since he treated his own family so, he is unlikely to have treated non-family better: in fact, hundreds are known to have been executed in consequence of the treason charges Herod preferred against his sons

The area was difficult to rule, and various messianic claimants appeared, such as Herod's former slave Simon of Peraea: such challenges were regularly put down with some brutality. Herod the Great was partially succeeded by his sons Herod Antipater and Herod Archelaus, during whose reign the messianic shephard Athronges declared himself king, with temporary regional success for several years. The names being the same, and the Roman regularly intervening on behalf of their client-kings like Herod, there might have been rather regular massacres of peasants by Romans -- or by troops loyal to Roman clients such as Herod the Great, Herod Antipater, or Herod Archelaus -- with the aim of enforcing the peace by terrorizing the population

[edhopper]

14. Some of those are documented

like Jerusalem in 79 AD. Until we see any other evidence, this would remain just speculation. I also think their is a world of difference between a man naming himself the messiah and the fanciful story of three outsiders coming and naming a boy born in a barn as King of Kings, setting off a massacre of babies.

[struggle4progress]

16. I suspect your literalist reading prevents you from understanding what I wrote

There's a wonderful line very early in Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest that indicates the distinction between literal and literary readings of texts: But it's the truth even if it didn't happen. In Kesey's book, this line not only plays into the allegorical nature of literary messaging but also suggests the oblique communication style common among institutionally-powerless people and might further provide actual insights into the psychological dynamics of the odd verbal comments occurring in some forms of mental illness: what one cannot safely say directly, one says indirectly through statements which are not literally true -- and hence are dismissed as "crazy" by "the squares" -- but which can be extraordinarily informative to anyone able to perceive context without "buying into" the context. So Randle Patrick McMurphy might be a mere "hallucination" of Chief Bromden, in the sense that there never was an actual McMurphy anyone at the hospital could ever have actually have met, yet Bromden's tale could discuss essential "truths" about the hospital and its staff, which a discerning listener might hear -- with the "hallucination" protecting Bromden himself from retaliatory staff reactions, because his "hallucination" can be safely dismissed as a symptom of his mental illness

In my view, a similar literary reading of the gospel texts can be quite informative, suggesting meanings that are not available to a reader unwilling to deviate from strict literalism. As the actual history is now quite remote from us, and as the mindset of that era is in some (but not all) ways alien to a modern mindset, a useful literary reading is not always immediate and can benefit from some historical knowledge about the era in which the texts arose. One needs to know something about the actual social and political structures of that time and place, in order to understand what might be safely said and what might be unsafe to say. It is, for example, entirely clear that claims of kingship challenged not only the real Roman authority but also the subsidiary authority of Roman vassals like Herod and his heirs, just as the later-added titles "Son of God" and "Savior" challenged the authority of the Roman emperors (like Augustus) who used these titles for themselves, and to say (for example) that "the Son of God" and "our Savior" was born in a filthy manger in a tiny provincial backwater, rather than surrounded by opulence in a Roman palace, presents a particular worldview that emphasizes institutionally-powerless ordinary people rather than rich children luckily born into good families with the right connections

I expect many of the various details reported in the gospels bother you in much the same way that the manger story bothers you, as being of dubious historicity, whether it be the miraculous conception, or the census, or the tale of the magi, or the massacre of the innocents and the flight into Egypt. But all I want to say, regarding that, is: you seem to me to read the texts as "the squares" do

[edhopper]

19. I understood you

and i appreciate this longer, and enjoyable post.
In rereading, my post wasn't very clear. I was trying to say that it's interesting to speculate what events the Bible might be referencing, while also understanding the allegorical meaning of the story (as you seem to do). Then I went off responding to others who speculate why the stories could be true as described, which is not what you were doing.
Quick forum posts are not as articulate as we would sometimes wish.

[trotsky]

15. You mean literal readings like...

that Jesus existed, that he was the messiah, that he was crucified, and rose from the dead to save us from sin?

Are people who believe in those literal readings fundamentalists?

[struggle4progress]

17. Are you actually trying to say something interesting? Or are you just trolling for a reaction?

[trotsky]

18. I am just curious to find out if there are some things that you think it's OK...

to interpret literally, without being labeled a fundamentalist.

If you could try to stay out of the mud with the accusations, that would be great.

[struggle4progress]

20. I want Jesus to walk with me

[trotsky]

21. Let the record show that I tried once again to engage in an honest discussion with you. n/t

[struggle4progress]

22. What an interesting comment! It could certainly lead to a long productive conversation!

[trotsky]

23. Thanks for the loving snark.

Truly, your faith inspires you to be a better person.

[struggle4progress]

24. I thought Dorothy Melton had a beautiful voice

[Evoman]

31. why are you being snarky?

I know that it is q question that is very difficult to answer. If you cannot answer it because it might ring as hypocritical or because it tears away at your original argument, then the best thing to do is admit you simply can not answer the question. Snarkimg or fighting so you do not have to answer an excellent, albeit difficult answer, lessens you. People who can admit they are wrong or who admit when they are ignorant are much easier to respect.

This behaviour is beneath you. I don't know...maybe its because I'm dying and I don't care anymore what a bunch of internet people think of me and I want to leave this Earth with as much character as I can, but I refuse to do this anymore. I will admit when I'm wrong. I won't pretend to not hear a question so I don't have to answer. And I will tell the absolute truth no matter how bad it makes me look. Answer his question, s4p. Answer it with no snark, no posturing, no fighting. Argue about the topic at hand if you must, but there is no reason to fight.

On edit...can't quite tell, but I want to reiterate that this post is directed at struugle4progress.

[struggle4progress]

35. I'm sorry to hear you're ill

[okasha]

12. Why does the death of Herod

in 4 BCE rate an "unfortunately?" That year is one of the most commonly accepted dates for Jesus' birth.

This story is meant to establish a typological equivalence between Jesus and Moses, who escapes a similar fate at the hands of Pharaoh in the Exodus narrative. Matthew was addressing a Jewish audience and slanted his gospel accordingly.

[edhopper]

13. Unfortunate for those who think

it is factually true and not allegory.

[okasha]

28. I'm still not sure why you think that's "unfortunate" or at all significant.

It's simply a glitch--a by-product of Dionysus Exiguus' Easter calendar introduced in 525 CE. It has nothing whatsoever to do with whether the story is read allegorically or literally. The 4 BCE date corresponds to Matthew's placement of Jesus' birth at the end of King Herod's reign and to Luke's statement that Jesus began his ministry when he was abuut 30, during the reign of Tiberius.

[muriel_volestrangler]

34. it does clash with Luke's claim of a census by Quirinius/Cyrenius

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Census_of_Quirinius

who was took over after Herod the Great's son was kicked out, and thus places the 2 nativity stories at least 10 years apart. This unfortunately shows at least one is a complete fabrication, and not just in the miraculous details. Which raises questions such as whether the gospels were made-up stories to demonize certain people such as Herod and his family, and whether marking the Massacre of the Innocents is continuing such false propaganda.

[okasha]

36. This sort of problem

is not uncommon in historical writings. We have at least three possible birth years for Anne Boleyn--1501, 1504 and 1507. That doesn't make her early life "a complete fabrication," it just means we don't have unambigouos sources.

There's plenty of extra-Biblical information on Herod to bear out his paranoia and cruelty. The Massacre of the Innocents, had it occurred, would have been a drop in the ocean.

[muriel_volestrangler]

37. But no-one thinks the circumstances of her birth are important

We have one story that he was born in Bethlehem, where his parents lived (and nothing about 'no room at the inn'), that the Jewish king instigated a massacre to try to kill him, that they fled to Egypt to avoid it (though God didn't get round to stopping the massacre instead), and that they then moved to Nazareth where they hoped to be anonymous. We also have another, that he was born about 10 years later, to parents who already lived in Nazareth (but were temporarily in Bethlehem, due to the kind of census that the Romans never did) and that no notice was taken by the state at all, or by wise foreigners, but that it was in humble circumstances, with humble witnesses. And 2000 years later this is still used as the basis of how Jesus was 'one of us'.

And typically, churches try to claim both gospels are correct, and don't talk about the contradictions. I've not heard of someone claiming Anne Boleyn was born in 1501 and 1504, or 1507.

[okasha]

46. But again, the problem is a literalist reading of the text.

For a nearer parallel than Anne (the circumstances of whose birth were in fact important to her contemporaries; her daughter Elizabeth's even more so) consider Alexander. Most--I daresay all--present-day scholars accept that he was the son of Olympias of Epidauros and Philip of Macedon. Olympias claimed, and Alexander apparently believed, that his father was Zeus. Several pieces of the surviving iconography depict him as Zeus/Amon. Then there was Augustus, whose biological father was alleged to be Apollo.

I'm not going to go into the long explication, but a number of circumstances, such as divine parentage, were attributed to Jesus that were presented as deliberate parallels/contrasts to the Roman Emperor and a corresponding contrast between the Empire and the Kingdom of Heaven preached by Jesus.

[muriel_volestrangler]

47. We don't start threads about 'anniversaries' of details of Alexander's birth

let alone have media wars about how to mark a time of year that has been designated the season to claim it is X years since the birth. I don't think they went that far even at the height of Alexander's power.

[okasha]

48. I'm sure there are some posters here who would start flame wars

if certain other posters started a thread on the date of Alexander's birth--and claim to be speaking for "the rest of the people in the room" to boot.

[rug]

4. The TV miniseries "Jesus of Nazreth" had a gruesome version of this.

[struggle4progress]

5. It is such a haunting song

[hrmjustin]

6. You might like this choir.

[struggle4progress]

8. Yup. I posted it here last year!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/121859111

[hrmjustin]

9. Lol. We think alike.

[struggle4progress]

10. I conclude you are a person with excellent musical taste

[hrmjustin]

11. You too my friend.

[AtheistCrusader]

25. Like Giordano Bruno?

Which innocents are we talking about here?

[hrmjustin]

26. When Herod killed all children under 2 in Bethlehem.

[AtheistCrusader]

27. Church and government records show Giordano Bruno was bound upside down and burned.

No contemporary sources outside the new testament record anything about said event in Bethlehem. Just like the 3 hour eclipse, quake, saints rising from their graves and walking the streets of Jerusalem, etc.

[hrmjustin]

29. don't believe it then.

[uriel1972]

32. Funny how nobody at the time noticed...

Not the Romans, or the Greeks, or the Judeans, whom you might have thought would take a little umbrage.A highly cultured and literate people, who had little time for Herod and his dynasty did not mention this atrocity in writing.

Nor did the Greeks or the Romans, who would have been revolted in the main, but would have also taken the opportunity to demonise the Jews. The Jews were often seen as the ultimate foreigners even then.

Oh well, it's in the Bible so it must be true then.

[hrmjustin]

33. You don't have to believe it. I do.

[struggle4progress]

40. Many people noticed Herod's cruelty in pursuit of power. Octavian (for example) famously remarked

"It's safer to be Herod's pig than Herod's son"

... After putting down the Judean/Parthian revolt against their rule, Rome appointed Herod king of Judea. Herod had complete authority, and he used it ruthlessly. He established an enormous secret police force, brutally killed anyone suspected of plotting against him, and created Roman peace by slaughtering all dissidents. Herod controlled the sacrificial cult by placing a lackey in the position of High Priest. In any of his appointees was foolish enough to displease him, Herod killed him and replaced him with another lackey ...
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Herod.html

... Herod's atrocities included the drowning of Mariamne's brother Aristobolus III in 35 after appointing him high priest and seeing his popularity soar, the execution of Hyrcanus in 30 on charges of conspiracy after his return from Parthian captivity, of Mariamne in 29 on charges of adultery and plotting to murder him, of his mother-in-law Alexandra a year later after an attempted coup, and of three of his sons ...
http://www.answers.com/topic/herod-the-great

... Herod's reign ended in terror. The monastery at Qumran, the home of the Essenes, suffered a violent and deliberate destruction by fire in 8 BCE, for which Herod may have been responsible. When the king fell ill, two popular teachers, Judas and Matthias, incited their pupils to remove the golden eagle from the entrance of the Temple: after all, according to the Ten Commandments, it was a sin to make idols. The teachers and the pupils were burned alive ... The story about the slaughter of infants of Bethlehem .. is not known from other sources, but it would have been totally in character for the later Herod to commit such a terrible act ...
http://www.livius.org/he-hg/herodians/herod_the_great02.html

... Hearing .. that the king was gradually sinking .. these teachers threw out hints .. that this was the fitting moment .. to pull down what had been erected .. for .. the king had .. erected over the great gate a golden eagle ... At mid-day, accordingly, when numbers of people were perambulating the Temple, they let themselves down from the roof on stout cords and began chopping off the golden eagle with hatchets. The king's captain .. hastened to the scene with a considerable force, arrested about forty of the young men and conducted them to the king. Herod first asked them whether they had dared to cut down the golden eagle; they admitted it ... This provoked the king to such fury that ... he ordered those that had let themselves down from the roof, together with the teachers, to be burnt alive; the remainder of those arrested he handed over to his executioners ...
http://www.josephus.org/causesOfWar.htm#eagle

Herod was the slave of the Hasmonean house ... One day he heard a Bath Kol say, 'Every slave that rebels now will succeed.' So he rose and killed all the members of his master's household ... Who are they, he said, who teach, From the midst of thy brethren thou shalt set up a king over thee? The Rabbis! He therefore arose and killed all the Rabbis, sparing, however, Baba b. Buta, that he might take counsel of him. But he placed on his head a garland of hedgehog bristles and put out his eyes ...
http://halakhah.com/bababathra/bababathra_3.html
http://halakhah.com/bababathra/bababathra_4.html

... On his deathbed, Herod had a feeling that not too many tears would be shed upon the news of his death. To make sure the day of his death would be a really bad day for the Jews and to increase the general amount of mourning, Herod imprisoned the Who's Who of Jewish society and ordered to execute the entire bunch of them the second he died ...
http://www.emersonkent.com/history_notes/herod_the_great.htm

[edhopper]

41. thank you for making the point

All these tales about his creulty, and yet nothing about the slaughter of thousands of infants. Seems much more logical that the writers who wanted this myth included found a good villain to hang it on.

[struggle4progress]

42. First of all, "Matthew" provides no numerical estimates of the reported slaughter, but if it were

a historical fact the total numbers might have been rather small, since the expected population of Bethlehem in the first century CE cannot have exceeded a few hundred persons total

Second, if such an event occurred, it would have made very little impression on Herod's Roman protectors, since the victims would have been non-Roman children. The Romans were primarily interested in the subjugation of the province, by whatever means required; had little interest in what nowadays might be called the "human rights" of their conquered subjects; regarded their own "lawful authority" and the authority of their vassal kings as absolute; and officially took little interest in "inferiors" such as children. Under common Roman law, the pater familias had an absolute right to kill his children, even when adult, as being his creation and property, and they held a similar view of the rights of a king with respect to his subjects, so that a king murdering his own children, or his subjects, or the children of his subjects, would not generally be considered a gross abuse of power. If Herod had to kill thousands of people to stay in control (as he sometimes did in the course of his reign), the Romans were unlikely to take much interest in the matter, unless it might suggest Herod was losing control and required Roman intervention (as he also sometimes did in the course of his reign)

Third, the survival of historical records depends on various circumstances. The Jewish revolts leading ultimately to the utter sack of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the local Jewish population into the diaspora, would not have been conducive to a careful and detailed historical memory of events in the first century CE -- and in fact our major source seems to be the Roman collaborateur Josephus, who apparently was able to obtain some accounts from Herod's secretary, another Roman collaborateur

None of this, of course, proves the historical veracity of the account in "Matthew" but it does suggest that texts such as "Matthew" should be reckoned among the records that we have, though from scientific point-of-view we are also required to bear in mind the relatively late date of composition of the text and its evident reliance on earlier unwritten folklore. And both the folklore recorded in Matthew, as well as the folklore recorded later in the Talmud, remembers Herod as a real bastard, a view oh him that other sources also seem to confirm. Stories recorded from folklore may be more historically accurate, or less historically accurate, but they do in some sense provide cultural summaries in a memorable and easily understood form, so that the lessons learned can be passed from generation to generation, as I have already tried to indicate to you in #7 and #16 upthread

I'm unsure why, given the available evidence that Herod was a cruel power-hungry son-of-a-bitch, your main conclusion is "the writers who wanted this myth included found a good villain to hang it on"

The opening chapters of Matthew are packed with all manner of attacks on the assumptions current in its day: Matthew, in his opening, provides a careful patriarchal genealogy for Joseph, which he then immediately undermines by announcing that Jesus is not the biological son of Joseph, and Joseph is reported as abandoning his natural instinct and the common custom by quietly and willingly raising the child as his own; the magi who come to adore the "King of the Jews" are surprisingly not Jewish but are foreigners and though they are skilled at reading esoteric signs in the sky, they are such fools about politics-on-the-ground that they initially approach Herod (who himself is well-aware he is widely regarded as an illegitimate ruler) for help in finding this newly-born king; at which point, poor dreaming Joseph has yet another of his inconvenient dreams, this one warning him to save the child's life by fleeing immediately into Egypt. So Joseph's marriage, which might normally be anticipated as a joyful event, immediately becomes for him a long series of headaches; the unexpected arrival of visitors from afar bringing precious gifts means it's time to run away as fast as possible; and Joseph, having heard throughout his whole life that the LORD with a mighty arm brought Israel out of Egypt, now finds he has no choice but to return there. The question of historical veracity, which apparently concerns you greatly here, does not really seem very interesting to me, in comparison to the literary question: just what exactly is Matthew trying to say to us?

[edhopper]

43. Again, thank you for that response

at times I seem to be answering several arguments at once. From various places.
I think considering what we really know about Jesus, compared to what we don't and things that are in opposition to the history we know is interesting. For many Christians the nativity is a very important anchor for Jesus' divinity. That is why I discuss it.
I also agree that the sociopolitical ideas behind the Gospels are very interesting. They also give me reason to dismiss any divine hand in the Gospels. The more prosaic reasons are more logical.
In the end, Jesus was the son of God, or not. And here we have a book full of contradictions and myths about him. With no corroboration.
For some (though maybe not for you) discussing if anything in the Bible is true is of interest.

[uriel1972]

44. Unfortunately for some, the historicity of the Bible

Remains linked to the Authority of it's message. That is, if you can't trust all of it, just what can you trust in it.

What that means is there is a whole cadre of people with a vested interest in keeping scientific and historical endeavour captured under the shadow of one book.

Whilst I don't think much of cherry-picking of any flavour, I do prefer to deal with those who seek a spiritual path than those who would shoe-horn the entire world into a 'Literal' Biblical world of extreme, crazy and self-contradictory fundamentalism.

[struggle4progress]

45. I very seldom see the "inerrant Bible" folk posting here at DU

[uriel1972]

49. True... nt

[struggle4progress]

30. I expect we can all agree that being an obnoxious asshole ought not be a burning offense,

and I myself go rather further to claim that capital punishment is generally inappropriate

All the available evidence, unfortunately, suggests that Bruno's "crime" was simply that he was a monumental jerk who insulted and alienated just about everybody he ever met and that he is remembered today only because he was burned

Bruno never made any serious contribution whatsoever to science: when he met with the leading astronomical observers and calculators of his time, he ridiculed their instruments and told them arrogantly he had no interest whatsoever in their calculations: he was, however, willing to steal their ideas to pass off as his own, provided the ideas seemed to fit into his own philosophical speculations -- the most notable example being the daring suggestion of English astronomer Thomas Digges who, being unable to measure the parallax of the 1572 nova, conceptually abolished the ancient notion of the firmament and proposed that the stars were suns like ours, only much further away and perhaps infinite in number -- a suggestion which Bruno seems to have stolen from Digges and publicized as his own

The natural result was that Bruno gradually exhausted the welcome of his various patrons in his wander across Europe and ultimately had no sanctuary in any of the Protestant countries during the reactionary Counter-Reformation: on his return to Italy, such luminaries as Galileo had become entirely uninterested in him or in his fate

The natural guess is that Bruno's generally unpleasant behavior presumably continued and so, in the Italian politics of his day, he ultimately fell afoul of the Inquisition, leading to an eight year trial and his eventual conviction -- the records of which were ultimately commandeered by Napoleon but then destroyed in the course of their return to the Vatican, presumably because those records did not reflect particularly well on his judges

[Act_of_Reparation]

38. There's no need to speculate; the Vatican kept records for all seven years of Bruno's trial...

...and it turns out he was charged with:

Holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith and speaking against it and its ministers.
Holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith about the Trinity, divinity of Christ, and Incarnation.
Holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith pertaining to Jesus as Christ.
Holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith regarding the virginity of Mary, mother of Jesus.
Holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith about both Transubstantiation and Mass.
Claiming the existence of a plurality of world and their eternity.
Believing in metempsychosis and in the transmigration of the human soul into brutes;
Dealing in magics and divination.

Sounds like heresy to me.

I have no idea how it is you get to sleep at night.

[struggle4progress]

39. "... The detailed Holy Office transcripts of Giordano Bruno’s trial were destroyed between 1810,

when Napoleon demanded files from the Vatican Archives be sent to Paris, and 1815-1817 when the files were returned to Rome ... All we have left of the Bruno trial is a summary written in 1598, two years before his execution, and preserved in a volume labeled “Miscelleanea Armadi.” It was rediscovered on November 15, 1940 by Cardinal Angelo Mercati, Prefect of the Vatican Archives, who published it in 1942 ..." http://wdtprs.com/blog/2012/02/the-burning-of-giordano-bruno/

"... In popular accounts .. it is often said that he was condemned for his Copernicanism and his belief in life on other worlds. He is portrayed as a martyr to free thought, and an early, prosecuted proponent of the modern view of the universe, hounded across Europe by the Inquisition for his beliefs and finally paying the ultimate price for them in a fiery public death ... These accounts .. leave out two fundamental aspects of the case of Giordano Bruno ... The one key fact of the study of Bruno's life is that we do not actually know the exact grounds of his conviction on charges of heresy. The simple reason is that the relevant records have been lost ... Bruno was not an astronomer and demonstrated a very poor grasp of the subject ... The theme of his On the Infinite Universe and Worlds is not Copernicanism but pantheism ... Bruno is often credited with recognizing that the Copernican system allowed an infinite Universe. In truth, the idea that the Copernican system allowed (or at least did not rule out) an infinite Universe was first proposed by Thomas Digges in 1576 ... The second, often overlooked fact of Bruno's life concerns his period of exile between 1576 and 1591. Most brief popular accounts state the bare facts of his peregrinations around Europe, but what is left unsaid is that his wanderings appear to have had less to do with his being hounded by the Inquisition as it did with his own rather difficult personality. While Bruno was fairly successful for a time at finding sympathetic patrons to support him, he invariably did something to alienate and outrage them, usually fairly quickly after entering their service. The Inquisition had little to do with it, as once he left Italy, he was effectively out of their reach ..." http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Essays/Bruno.html

"... During his English period he outraged the Oxford faculty in a lecture at the university; upon his return to France, in 1585, he got into a violent quarrel about a scientific instrument. He fled Paris for Germany in 1586, where he lived in Wittenberg, Prague, Helmstedt, and Frankfurt. As he had in France and England, he lived off the munificence of patrons, whom after some time he invariably outraged. In 1591 he accepted an invitation to live in Venice. Here he was arrested by the Inquisition and tried. After he had recanted, Bruno was sent to Rome, in 1592, for another trial. For eight years he was kept imprisoned and interrogated periodically. When, in the end, he refused to recant, he was declared a heretic and burned at the stake. It is often maintained that Bruno was executed because of his Copernicanism and his belief in the infinity of inhabited worlds. In fact, we do not know the exact grounds on which he was declared a heretic because his file is missing from the records. Scientists such as Galileo and Johannes Kepler were not sympathetic to Bruno ..." http://galileo.rice.edu/chr/bruno.html

"... In 1576 he left Naples to avoid the attention of the Inquisition. He left Rome for the same reason and abandoned the Dominican order. He travelled to Geneva and briefly joined the Calvinists, before he was excommunicated, ostensibly for slandering the philosophy professor Antoine de la Faye. After Bruno apologized his excommunication was revoked, but in autumn 1579, deeply disappointed by Calvinist intolerance, he left for France. He went first to Lyon, but he could not find work there and in late 1579 he arrived in Toulouse, at that time a Catholic stronghold, where he obtained a position as lecturer of philosophy ... After religious strife broke out in Toulouse in summer 1581, he moved to Paris, where first he held a cycle of thirty lectures on theological topics ... In April 1583, he went to England with letters of recommendation from Henry III, working for the French ambassador, Michel de Castelnau ... He also unsuccessfully sought a teaching position at Oxford ... In October 1585, after the French embassy in London was attacked by a mob, he returned to Paris ... In 1586, following a violent quarrel about Mordente's invention, "the differential compass", he left France for Germany ... In Germany he failed to obtain a teaching position at Marburg, but was granted permission to teach at Wittenberg, where he lectured on Aristotle for two years. However, with a change of intellectual climate there, he was no longer welcome, and went in 1588 to Prague, where he obtained 300 taler from Rudolf II, but no teaching position. He went on to serve briefly as a professor in Helmstedt, but had to flee again when he was excommunicated by the Lutherans ... Apparently believing that the Inquisition might have lost some of its impetus, he returned to Italy. He went first to Padua, where he taught briefly, and applied unsuccessfully for the chair of mathematics, that was assigned instead to Galileo Galilei. Bruno .. moved to Venice in March 1592. For about two months he functioned as an in-house tutor to Mocenigo. When Bruno announced his plan to leave Venice to his host, the latter, who was unhappy with the teachings he had received and had apparently developed a personal rancour towards Bruno, denounced him to the Venetian Inquisition ..." http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_giordano03.htm