Nothing New Under the Sun

One book I am reading written by G.H.P. Thompson on Ephesians, Colossians and Philemon brought to light the surprise (to me anyway), that there really is nothing new, as Ecclessiastes tells us. Thompson explains some of the thinking in the days of Paul when he wrote the letter to the Ephesians. Stoicism was a philosophy of that time period. It was founded by someone called Zeno, from Cyprus around 250 B.C. The Stoics were very interested in unity. Apparently, the Stoics believed that the world really was like one great big city to which every human being belonged. They held a belief in "world-wide commonwealth, in which which all have equal status." (Sounds like some Democrats today.) 'I am a citizen of the world,' some of them would say. I could only think of todays mindset of "globalism" and laugh to think that this too is nothing new. Two to three hundred years before Jesus came people held the same views of the world that many in the year 2006 have. Now we are just called Democrats, or Republicans. But the ideas we hold have been around long before us and our forefathers.