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Whacking Onan Vast Left brings up an interesting difficulty:"Whacking Onan for, well...? Ditto. To my mind, YHWH has some 'splaining to do. Fortunately, he has nearly 1200 more chapters in which to bring me around."After re-reading his comments, I thought about addressing this there, but I figured it would get a fairer shake on the front page. The story of Onan is less-known than that of Joseph or Isaac, but "whacking" is as good a verb to use as any: the word "onanism," named for him, means coitus interruptus or masturbation. The backstory is this: A younger son of Judah, Onan was ordered to marry his brother's widow, which he did, sort of: And Judah said to Onan, "Go in to your brother’s wife and marry her, and raise up children for your brother." And Onan knew that the children should not be [legally] his. So when he slept with his brother’s wife he came on the ground so that he would not raise children for his brother. That displeased the LORD, who killed him as well.Rather a strange command on the part of Judah, but we'll get back to that. The first task, though, is to realize what exactly Onan did and what it meant. The moral issue here is not that he used "ancient birth control*" or that he enjoyed his wife without giving her an orgasm or something of that sort. In fact, it has little to do with the sex at all. It had to do with a concept known as "Levirite marriage." Rabbi Tilsen explains it this way: "The purpose of this rule is insure that the deceased's property rights, some of which may be entwined with the widow, will remain within his tribe, and to insure that the widow has the support she needs." In the Ancient Near East, where there was no welfare and where property was tied to family, the only support a woman could often count on was that of her husband. Women whose husbands died were too often left no alternative but a life of destitution and prostitution since the only property she had was her own body. Levirite laws ensured that a widow would be cared for, and that property for that care would remain in the family, by marrying that widow to the next available brother of her husband. She was in a very real sense married into a family, not just to a man. The children of such a union were guaranteed the inheritance rights that his original father would have passed to him and they then received the moral obligation to care for their mother with the production from that property. In short, this requirement, rather than being exploitive of Tamar, was protective of her long-term well-being. As for what appears to us a very strange command, Judah was in full accord with legal and cultural expectations of the time when he asked Onan to live up to these familial obligations. Onan blatantly refused, which eventually left Tamar no choice (at least in her mind) but to prostitute herself out to her father-in-law without his knowledge**. In short, by refusing to impregnate his wife, he was not only endangering the family inheritance (and the food that could be grown on it) but more importantly he was depriving her of the financial support that was her legal and moral right. For that abject refusal, God killed him. One can argue whether a man who would selfishly condemn an innocent woman to a life of destitution and prostitution deserves the death penalty, but at least then we are arguing over the correct things. * Catholic doctrine to this day underays their opposition to birth control using the story of Onan for support. Incorrectly, IMO, because the sin was not in the sex but in the refusal of family responsibility. ** Though that hardly makes him an innocent in this whole affair, to say the least. As Matthew Henry, 18th Century commentator noted about Genesis 38: "This chapter gives an account of Judah and his family, and such an account it is, that it seems a wonder that of all Jacob’s sons, our Lord should spring out of Judah. But God will show that his choice is of grace and not of merit, and that Christ came into the world to save sinners, even the chief. Also, that the worthiness of Christ is of himself, and not from his ancestors." Labels: bible  It seems that nature is intent on polluting itself:A yearlong study has concluded that dust pollution is a serious problem on the Nipomo Mesa.First it was bears crapping in the woods, and now it's the wind off the ocean blowing sand where the government doesn't want it. Just when is mother nature going to realize that if she wants to keep this up, she's going to need to file an Environmental Impact Statement? We can't have nature breaking the our environmental safety standards just because she feels like it. Labels: environmentalism  Downing Street fails to see the irony:The Iranian hostage crisis took a sinister turn last night when Tehran withdrew an earlier offer to release one of the 15 captive sailors and marines and issued a second, strangely-worded letter in her name calling for Britain to withdraw from Iraq."To be doing this to a woman"? It's a little late to play the gender card, isn't it? This is precisely the problem with the politicially-correct pretending that just because women soldiers can (whatever) as well as their male counterparts, it is incumbent upon a free and fair society to put them in the same positions as men. Can anyone imagine that Downing Street, were the soldier to be black, would say, "it is cold and callous to be doing this to a black guy"? How about bringing up the homosexuality of a gay soldier in these circumstances? Such a complaint would make no sense; in fact, it would be an obvious insult. Yet because the captured soldier is a woman, whom we are assured by the politically correct are no different than male soldiers and ought to be given the same "opportunities," all of a sudden Downing Street is raising the fact of her sex as if it differentiates her from any other soldier and demanding that she receive preferential treatment on that account*. But in fact Downing Street is correct in this instance. It is fundamentally different, and both cold and callous, to take advantage of a woman in this way. But it might be a good time for us to ask, at the same time we are complaining about her ill-treatment, who precisely it was that put her in harm's way, and perhaps especially for what political purpose it was done. * Or at least that the Iranians to forego the value her womanhood lends to their propaganda efforts. Fat chance, guys. Labels: feminism   VastLeft poses a question in two parts:[W]hat inspiration and/or life lessons do you think one can draw from Genesis?Please forgive the length of this post, and for those of you not interested, maybe I'll post something smaller in a bit. Some questions demand more blog space than is typical to do them justice. But following with one of the main themes of Genesis, the last part of the question shall get the first answer. The two themes you lay out I believe make up a good portion of one of the major themes of Genesis. Of course, as the name implies, another of the major themes is “beginnings” (of the universe, of the earth, of man, of sin, of sacrifice, of clothing, of marriage, of culture, of government, and of much more). The second major theme is that God is sovereign over all those things, and both of your points (especially the promises and the younger siblings) illustrate ways in which God’s sovereignty is manifested in his continuing revelation to and redemption of mankind. Genesis provides a picture of a perfect universe which becomes broken by evil, and within which God begins laying the foundations of setting aright again*. If you imagine scripture in the shape of an hourglass, it might help you picture this. The beginnings of scripture are universal, yet their focus becomes smaller and smaller, first on a specific people, then on a tiny nation, then on a believing remnant of a tiny nation. By the time the New Testament begins, that focus is one man, Jesus Christ (promised in the OT, delivered in the NT), from which the process begins working backward, becoming universal once again at the end. The themes you pick out are not just themes in Genesis, but carry straight through the entire bible in different ways. For example, the promise of fruitful and blessed families, setting aside the universal that everyone wants fruitful and blessed families, find their apex in one family, that of Abraham, which becomes a nation, yet they are a small nation with but a few small periods of glory. Most of the time finds them under someone’s foot, whether Pharaoh’s or later Nebuchadnezzar’s, then at last Caesar’s. The upstart younger brother motif is part of that, because in each case God chooses the younger, the smaller, and often (as in the case of Jacob) the weaker - through no merit of their own - to rule over the elder and stronger. There is obvious application to the nation of Israel, to whom these books were primarily given. God has promised them blessing and the fact that they are currently a smaller and weaker brother in no way sets that aside. God has shown them that his choices transcend culture (in all ancient cultures – Israel not excepted – the eldest brother was the ruler, a tradition that still carries over to modern England, for example). That motif is played out consistently in the histories (Israel’s greatest King, David, was a younger brother selected by God), in the prophets** (through the selection of tiny Bethlehem as the birthplace of Jesus), and in the words of Jesus himself (“But many that are first shall be last and the last shall be first”). The idea is that it is not through strength or power or position that God works the redemption promised in Genesis 3, but by his sovereign choices. Not our works, but his grace. Sibling rivalry, in this case, is not a theme so much as it is an inevitable and real-life result of that. But there’s also another reason for it, and that is that the Patriarchs continue to mess up their own families. They act faithlessly (e.g. Abraham’s taking of the maid Hagar), they act selfishly, foolishly, greedily. They play favorites among their children (Jacob’s favoritism of Joseph is a perfect example) in ways that always bring about bad results. In fact, in many ways, the Patriarchs are not so much role models of conduct as they are object lessons. They testify to the innate unfaithfulness of man, and yet overriding it all is the faithfulness of God. And perhaps that ties back to your first point, that there are not too many characters to admire. The characters that are presented have their warts on full display (the only character who is wholly faithful is Joseph (and maybe Enoch, but his is a bit part)). Just wait, Judges gets worse. Far worse. And even when the New Testament (e.g. Hebrews 11) praises the patriarchs, most of the time it’s praising not their actions in general but their faith in specific cases. When God calls them to act in ways that require them to trust him, that’s what they get praised for. But most of the time they are just like you and I and everyone else, fallen humans who mess up each other much of the time. This is not literature designed to give us heroes as much as to give us insight into ourselves. I do, however, think at least part of the problem with God seeming cruel and arbitrary is that on first reading we miss these themes. Is he arbitrary? He is certainly sovereign. And if he chooses to bless wimpy Jacob over manly Esau or the promised son Isaac over the established one Ishmael, that’s his choice. He is under no obligation to respect human cultural expectations, and so his sovereignty seems arbitrary to us (why pick Jacob? I have no idea). Is he cruel? That’s an issue that would take far too long to address - I have the distinct feeling I'm going to run long already - so I’ll have to shoot you over to Glenn Miller (this specific piece is on the cruelty of nature as a manifestation of the cruelty of God, and I think it covers your question broadly). But there is one final thing to remember, and that is especially important because as you stated you are reading this “through modern eyes.” That’s a problem, and it’s not a problem unique to scripture. You would get the same problem reading, for example, Caesar’s Gallic Wars. Without understanding Caesar’s precarious legal position, the election process in Rome, the effects of the death of Crassus and Julia on the relationship between Caesar and Pompey - none of which are explicitly mentioned in the text but all of which play a major role not only in what Caesar does, but in how he presents what he does – you will never understand what Caesar is doing. Caesar does not tell you he’s writing PR, and you’ll never know it if all you read was Caesar and that through modern eyes. You are reading a book written to a certain people in a certain culture in a certain time, about other people living in a culture that is to us frankly bizarre. They have experiences and understandings and background that are not part of the text. And that plays out in a huge way in how Genesis covers people like Lot, so let me just hit on him briefly. Lot, as you know, slept with his daughters, and there’s nary a hint of condemnation for the act (just like there’s not a hint of condemnation for Noah’s drunkenness). But the act of Lot had implications that played out in Israel’s history. Lot’s sons by his daughters were the progenitors of the Moabites and the Ammonites, two peoples who were, even 1000 years later, a trouble to the promises of God***. The condemnation of Lot’s act is therefore played out in a history that the audience knew but that we might not if we look through it with only modern eyes - sin is not just personal, it affects everything. The same will be the case in David’s adultery (which *is* condemned by a prophet to his face): Israel’s greatest king acted faithlessly and the results of that would not only destroy his own family (one must consider that fratricide and sibling rape would at least make family picnics an uncomfortable affair) but the one fleeting period of glory that the nation enjoyed. Lot stands condemned not by words in Genesis but in the experience of the readers of Genesis, David by the experience of the readers of Samuel. Therefore when we see the acts that the patriarchs do, we have to look at them through the eyes of the audience, and we have to look for condemnation in the results of those acts, even if those results don’t completely play out for centuries. Genesis covers a tremendous amount of historical time in a few chapters, and there is simply no way to include backstory for it all, especially when it was unnecessary to those who first received it.**** The book of Genesis is a book of beginnings, but it’s also a book of object lessons, and perhaps there you can draw the “life’s lessons” that you don’t see laid out in black and white. We can see faith and faithfulness and forgiveness rewarded, not only in one’s life but in the lives of the descendents of the faithful. We can see that cruelties and lies and trickery and vengeance are punished somewhere down the line, if not in our their lives then in the lives of the children who did what they did and not what God said. And finally we can see that through this all, God is faithfully working toward Mankind's ultimate redemption by carving out a people for himself - the neck of the hourglass is growing narrower and narrower until finally it reaches the one point it can grow no smaller, the point at which only one man can pass through it, and from there it begins to grow again. Rather than being a heavenly scold, God is a great teacher who uses not just words but examples to instruct us. But throughout that lesson, there remains the fact that God is sovereign. He has a plan for humanity which includes not only redemption, but judgment: acts of God that will set this broken universe right no matter what it costs him and no matter what it costs us. If one understands the plan, the ultimate goal of the restoration of paradise, then one can see how all the acts that are so confusing by themselves (like Babel) work together to lead mankind to the one man who can lead us back to God. That went longer than I hoped, but theology is not really my thing and there’s probably a way to say all of that in a much neater fashion. But I do hope that even if you disagree with my answers, at least it has given you something to think about. * Obviously that work is not completed in Genesis; the problems of the first 3 chapters of Genesis are not resolved until the last 3 chapters of Revelation. ** “But you, Bethlehem Ephratah, though you be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall he come forth to me one that is to be ruler in Israel; one whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.” – Micah 5:2 *** Just as Abraham's unfaithfulness with regards to Hagar resulted in trouble that exists to this day. **** Just try writing a history of the last 1000 years in 40 pages and you'll see the challenge. The vast majority of what you wish to say will be left out as a matter of necessity. Labels: bible  One of my side projects* is the creation of an annotated translation of Nennius' Historia Brittonum. Nennius is a 9th Century conglomeration of histories and legends and is an early source of a lot of Arthurian material as well, and the best-known translation was done about a century and a half ago. I enjoy it because it's really all over the place historically; the author/compiler was not terribly careful about picking his sources, which paradoxically makes him more valuable (or maybe just more enjoyable) than an historian who threw away anything he didn't like.There's one part in it that always makes me laugh, one of those ancient stories that sticks with peoples and maybe grows in the telling. And it tells what happened to one group of settlers coming from Spain in the something-hundreds BC when they got tired of being ignored by Chumley and his pals: After these came three sons of a Spanish soldier with thirty ships, each of which contained thirty wives. And having remained there during the space of a year, there appeared to them, in the middle of the sea, a tower of glass, the summit of which seemed covered with men to whom they often spoke but received no answer.It will be a good thing for humanity (though a loss to the story-telling industry) when the scourge of the iceberg is at long last removed from our planet. * To be honest, it's been on-and-off for a few years. It will be a few more years before it's done, mostly owing to the fact that I still don't know enough Latin to do such a translation justice. But in the meantime I can still dream. Labels: history (hat tip to PiffordT, who realized all today lacked was a steroid-laced shot of emotional pain. Now I shall sleep well.)  Washington State proposes a solution guaranteed to hide the problem:State lawmakers appear on the verge of dumping the math and science sections of the 10th-grade Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL), and replacing them with a very different kind of test.When you have a math test that only 56 percent of your students can pass after 10 years of your "education," it is perfectly obvious that the solution is to get rid of test questions where they actually have to do math and replace them with multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blanks questions. This, of course, was the problem with NCLB in the first place, just as it is the problem with all government schooling. It is far easier to change the goals than it is the change the internal culture of a bureaucracy. So that, inevitably, is what will happen, soaring rhetoric and wasted dollars notwithstanding. Labels: education   Time Magazine this week proposes Bible classes for public schools*:SIMPLY PUT, THE BIBLE IS THE MOST influential book ever written. Not only is the Bible the best-selling book of all time, it is the best-selling book of the year every year. In a 1992 survey of English teachers to determine the top-10 required "book-length works" in high school English classes, plays by Shakespeare occupied three spots and the Bible none.And actually, they make a very good case, especially in regards to English literature. While I have little doubt one can get a degree in English Lit without knowing the Bible (help me out, Rebel Nun, I may be too cynical here***) I doubt that one can truly understand that lit without being well-versed in the things the best English writers over the centuries have been well-versed in. The same goes for history. To be blunt, it is impossible to understand American history, especially in the Colonial Period, without understanding what the Colonists thought of themselves, how they saw themselves, what they believed they were doing. To understand them, one has to understand the Bible or at least understand their understanding of it. All that said, I truly wonder if our students aren't simply too disinterested, too cool, and, well, too modern to gain anything from such a study. And the reason I wonder that is because I was reading through the Bible Study for Atheists tonight, which proves (at least to me) that many such studies are simply going to waste even more of the students' time, time that could be far better spent rolling condoms. Bible study is simply too much work if one must take it seriously. Genesis 10's Table of Nations (to pick just an example) is a genealogy that attempts to show the origins of all nations and their language groups after the flood. I won't reproduce it all here (it's over here if you want to read it - I've ripped out those annoying verse notations and included its companion chapter, 11). Here's what the BS4A has to say about it: Time to take another look at the family tree. We get down about fourteen generations, and there's a total of four named women, and we have never heard once about the births of any of them (unless you count the spare-rib story).Of course, it's not even a study per se. Rather it's simply a chance to poke fun and play number games. I know I should not expect more from self-proclaimed Atheists, and that's the problem. I truly don't. Now, a curious person could draw from the passage any number of questions, like "WHY are there no women listed?" (There is a reason). How about "What is the historical relationship between Assyria and Babylon?" "Are the Philistines related to today's Palestine? I even see Gaza mentioned there. Why is that?" "What and where was Tarshish?" "What does it mean that in the days of Peleg, the earth was divided?" "What are the relationships between the languages of these families?" "Do any of these names turn up in other nations? Why?" "Have any of these places been discovered? Where? How do they fit together?" Maybe in exploring one might never find Tarshish or one might discover that Philistines (that word might be used in English lit as well, what does it mean?) and modern Palestinians are unrelated. One might discover absolutely nothing of value. But at least one would have looked. Or would they? I truly wonder if public school classes on the Bible would get anything more than "no wonder every single priest and pastor in the world is gay****." And if that's all students are going to get, they might as well not learn history as not learn the Bible. * Yes, I am surprised. It's Eastertime. Shouldn't we be having the annual debunking issue instead? The Jesus Family Tomb didn't even make it thru lent. ** They might even understand the first line of Rush's 2112. *** Perish the thought. **** Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course. Labels: education  Do not click this link if you are offended by medieval nudity or the F word, or if you like My Little Pony.  Fife Symington displays the typical politician's short memory:Former Gov. Fife Symington says now that those strange lights that appeared over Phoenix a decade ago were from another world and that he had a close encounter with an alien craft on March 13, 1997.That's a pretty short trip to "I don't know why people would ridicule it" from Symington himself ridiculing it from a position of authority in order to avoid panicking people over something they could not control. Now personally, I have no idea what the Phoenix Lights were (the official explanation is that they were A-10 flares). Nor do I particularly care; UFOs are not really my thing. But one thing I am sure of if that if we ever do get visited by aliens, unless it breaks out uncontrolled like the dragons of "Evolution," those who expect the government to solemnly and publicly announce what they really believe has happened are in for a big disappointment. Rule #1 in politics is CYA. But it's followed closely by "Don't scare the horses*." UPDATE: Of course, it does bring up a good question: if politicians did discover, for example, that the world was going to be destroyed by a meteor or something in 48 hours and that there was nothing anyone could do to stop it, should they tell people? For what reason or benefit? Talk amongst yourselves... * Unless that scaring can be turned into more power to the politicians, that is. Labels: politics  Vox Day misses the magiclogic:Accurately quoting is not a lie. Darwin did beat a puppy. He did enjoy it. The quote is accurate. To be sure, he regretted it and did not continue to do so, but it doesn't change the fact that the quote is precisely accurate and within context.Sure he's right about that and all, but besides that I think Vox misses a very subtle point of moonbat magiclogic. Let me see if I can spell it out: Evolution (the item under specific discussion here) is true. Therefore anyone who argues against it (Creationists in this case) is a liar. Liars lie by definition. Therefore it's not necessary to examine the specific argument a creationist makes; by definition, it's a lie. If you look closely you 'll note that the magiclogician will always tip his audience off to the use of magiclogic by saying "Jeebus," "WTFOMGBBQ," or "OH.MY.GOD." somewhere in the post. But the last two must be capitalized or the magiclogic fails. That, for example, is why Dan Savage was forced to write a whole page denouncing Garrison Keillor* for saying gays might need to act like normal Americans if they wish to be treated as normal Americans by normal Americans: he wrote "Oh. My. God." italicized but without capitalization. And as a result the magiclogic failed. Hey, that's a necessary component of the conjuration. I didn't make it up. Magiclogic is perfect for those times when you don't want to be seen taking your opponent - whether global warming deniers, Alexis De Tocqueville, or any other non-moonbat - or his arguments seriously, which in certain company is considered very bad form indeed. Magiclogic allows you to quickly demonstrate to those who already agree with you that you grasp the Well Known Fact(tm) that they are bad and are ready to sit back and enjoy all your commenters telling you how clever you are. QEDOMGBBQ. * While still ignoring his main point, I might add. Labels: moonbats   Meet the new boss, same as the old boss:WASHINGTON -- Democrats are using the same tricks as President Bush in their rival plan to balance the federal budget by 2012: ignoring long-term costs of the war in Iraq and the need to fix a tax law that threatens unsuspecting middle-class families.When it comes to budgets the Democrats, like their Republican bretheren, load up the appropriations process with pork spending and trivialities and then return later in the year with a series of "emergency appropriations" (which themselves are loaded up even more) that remain off budget. They ignore costs they know they will incur. They count revenues they know will never accrue. And they create phony items like "elimination of fraud and waste" that magically knock millions off spending every year. But don't just take my word for it. The next time you see an article like this one talking about how the budget deficit is down, wander on over to the US Treasury debt site and calculate the actual amount of debt increase that took place (Yes, I'll admit I always do. I'm sick like that). The results are surprisingly consistent over time. Since the budget does not reflect actual spending on the part of the government anyway, it can't be that hard to balance a budget. Sometimes I think that the phony-baloney budget is left unbalanced simply so the government can demonstrate "progress" while continuing to spend all they want under the table. After all, just adding in a $400 billion line item called "Lottery Winnings" or "Martian Excise Taxes" would balance it, and it would not be much more inaccurate than it is right now. Labels: democrats, republicans  Garrison Keillor runs afoul of the gay pride:Satirist Garrison Keillor apologized Tuesday for a column asserting that gay men may have to quell their "flamboyance" to be accepted as parents, saying he believed "gay people who set out to be parents can be just as good parents as anybody else, and they know that, and so do I."His grievous sin consisted of speaking a truth that is, as the title of his article claimed, obvious: "The country has come to accept stereotypical gay men -- sardonic fellows with fussy hair who live in overdecorated apartments with a striped sofa and a small weird dog and who worship campy performers," he wrote. ". . . If they want to be accepted as couples and daddies, however, the flamboyance may have to be brought under control."And the fact is that he's exactly correct. If gays want to be fully accepted - which means if they want others to change their attitudes - then they are going to have to make some adjustments to their own behavior which will bring them more closely in line with societal norms. People may be forced by morality and law to put up with or ignore the Fabulous (and they should have to - the Fabulous have every right to be who they are) but people do not have to accept anyone except on their own terms. Sorry, guys, freedom for all means you can march down Main Street in leather chaps with your bare ass hanging out, but it also means your neighbor does not have to lend you his lawn mower if he doesn't like you. The problem with the advice is not that it's incorrect but that's it's exactly what gay activists don't want to hear*. But the irony is not that Keillor, a liberal's liberal, is being turned on so quickly by his own. It's that, like an 18-year-old rural Minnesota girl who hops a Greyhound for Broadway with high hopes of making it big**, Keillor's perspective is at once sheltered and naive. In his book "Homegrown Liberal" Keillor lays out what he believes liberalism is all about: I am a liberal and liberalism is the politics of kindness. Liberals stand for tolerance, magnanimity, community spirit, the defense of the weak against the powerful, love of learning, freedom of belief, art and poetry, city life, the very things that make America worth dying for. (p. 20)Now that Keillor, for suggesting that in order to gain society's acceptance gays ought to act like members of society, has been called an "asshole," a "withered old adulterer," and many other more-or-less true names by other liberals, in addition for being forced to apologize***, I wonder if he still thinks liberalism stands for tolerance and freedom of belief. Maybe those are the things Keillor's own liberalism stands for, though as Buckley pointed out long ago, Liberals' open-mindedness is often less offended by other attitudes than by the fact that there are other attitudes. Today liberalism, especially of the hard-left, moonbat persuasion, stands for enforced uniformity of thought and speech, denial of the consequences of personal action, and the outcasting of anyone who suggests that individuals ought to adjust their own actions rather than remaking an entire society to accept them as they wish to be. If he believes that liberals protect the rights of people to say what they think, he obviously has not recently visited a campus run by liberals. Though I have never been a fan of his politics or his show, I'm sure Keillor's a fairly smart guy. It will be interesting to see if he draws the correct conclusions from his unexpected encounter with the Lionesses of Leather. * That people need to change their own behavior is exactly the advice that no Moonbat wants to hear. Leftism demands that actions be separated from consequences; it is the institutionalization of personal irresponsibility. ** a story often told but seldom with a happy ending. *** although, and perhaps to his credit, he apologized in true politicians' fashion: for the resultant misunderstanding but not for the statement itself. Labels: moonbats   rather, says the logic of animal rights activists, give him death:Tiny, fluffy and adorable, Knut the baby polar bear became an animal superstar after he was abandoned by his mother.It's a strange kind of law that requires that people kill a perfectly healthy animal for its own protection and a stranger kind of mind that would conclude such a thing is in its best interests. I wonder if feeding by hand is species-appropriate for humans. If not, all you bottle-wielding mothers had better watch out: the Lethal Injection Unicorn is coming for your babies, armed with a legal pad and a court order. Labels: moonbats  CNBC's Jim Cramer inadvertently reveals how the game is played:"A lot of times when I was short, I would create a level of activity beforehand that would drive the futures. . . . It's a fun game," ...Not only does the SEC not understand it, regular investors and especially academic market commentators miss it as well. The Efficient Market Hypothesis, that bit of Wall Street Wisdom that states that at "any given time, security prices fully reflect all available information," rather than being truly profound, is truly naive. Stocks are more often moved by purposeful whispers and the lemmings that heed them than by changing company fundamentals. That stock tout on TV is less for the benefit of the viewer than it is for the well-connected friends of the talking head, for whom "the game" is both fun and profitable. This must be the fault of all those damned Ethiopian immigrants.  First dwarf Hoary apparently has the two confused:McCain says mistakes have been made [in Iraq] but leaving too soon would be a much bigger mistake. "I believe the consequences of failure are catastrophic and I believe they'll follow us home if we leave."I'm glad to hear that our borders are so secure that the only way terrorists can get into America is if we carelessly reveal to them such heretofore well-kept secrets as "ports" and "airline terminals" by moving a hundred thousand soldiers to our side of both. Labels: republicans   Daniel Clark uncovers a strange truth about global warming hysterists:[I]t's almost impossible to distinguish the original purpose of a left-wing political rally. What starts out being an 'anti-war' demonstration will invariably become an convention of environmentalists, gun control advocates, pro-abortionists, animal rights activists, racial Balkanists, and outright Communists, because that's the only way to prevent the size of the crowd from being laughably small. Therefore, environmental alarmists must incorporate other causes within their own, in order to keep their core of support relatively large and energized. Clearly, they've determined their alliance with the feminists to be vital to these ends.I'm not sure if the fact (and anyone who has attended a sizeable left-wing rally can attest that it is a fact) reflects conscious numbers-building as much as it does the propensity for those who fall into one category to fall into most of them. These "coalitions" seem less a collection of disparate groups than a single group* carrying disparate sandwich boards. * made up of people who like to march naked and shout homemade nursery rhymes, and who have nowhere else to be. I seem to be having trouble uploading pictures of my new (only) grandson, so for those who wish to ooh and aah over Noah Caspian Jones, Rebel Nun has pictures up here. And I seriously can't figure out why I have Geto Boys in my head right now. There's something seriously wrong with walking around singing, Damn it feels good to be a grandpa.  Slate's David Plotz blogs 1Kings 22:[T]he last prophet, Micaiah, warns Ahab that the other prophetical advice is flawed and that he will die taking the town. Ahab ignores the caution, instead sending Micaiah to prison with orders that he not be released "until I come home safe." To which Micaiah wittily and cruelly responds, "If you ever come home safe, the Lord has not spoken through me."Readers of the KJV will search in vain for this confusing act on the part of Samaria's whores as Plotz is blogging from the Jewish Publication Society bible. The difference in the verses (in this case 38) is interesting: And they washed the chariot by the pool of Samaria; and the dogs licked up his blood; the harlots also washed themselves there; according unto the word of the LORD which He spoke. - JPSWhy the difference? The short answer is one that most people probably don't know: there is not "one bible" in the same manner that there is "one Beowulf," to choose a famous example. In the case of that Saxon epic, we have but a single manuscript copy and as a result there is no question of contradictions: a man with one watch always knows the time. But in the case of the Bible, we have tens of thousands of manuscript copies in dozens of languages from dozens of places and recorded over the course of 15 centuries. These copies all contain copyist errors, additions, and omissions*, and one of the jobs of a translator who assembles a bible using manuscripts is choosing which of the variant readings to include. The JPS chooses manuscripts which contain the gruesome image; the manuscripts used to assemble the KJV did not contain the phrase. But even before we can answer Plotz's question specifically, we have to resolve how the prostitutes bathed in the blood of King Ahab. Since no one on this blog that I know of (including myself) reads Hebrew and has access to manuscripts of 1Kings, we'll have to limit ourselves to choosing variant translations to try to decipher exactly what is being alleged. Here are a couple variant readings (I'll skip those that follow the KJV in excluding the particular passage as they are of no help to us) which might give us some data with which to answer the question: And they washed the chariot by the pool of Samaria, and the dogs licked up his blood, and the harlots washed themselves in it, according to the word of the Lord which he had spoken" - RSVSo it seems we have a few possibilities:
The fact that prostitutes bathing in the blood of kings is not a common act or symbol (though it could be a very powerful one***) leads to the same idea. The fact that the phrase is included in some documents and excluded in others leads to the idea that it was added as a reference point so those reading might know precisely which pool is being spoken of - at least I find that explanation less unlikely than that some scribe found the reference too icky and so deleted it or that such a powerful image was accidentally dropped****. Taking all that, finally we reach the issue that Plotz specifically asks about: why would a whore bathe in blood? I conclude she had no choice. When Ahab's army cleaned the blood from his chariot, they used the closest body of water they could find, a nearby pool well-known as a place where prostitutes gathered and bathed. Therefore if the prostitutes did truly bathe in the blood of Ahab - who led Isreal into spiritual harlotry more than any king before him (1Ki 16:33) - it was not a purposeful act on their part, but simply an example of the ironies of history one discovers when taking apart God's word. * There are no two copies that are precisely the same, though the vast majority of errors are minimal and easily explained and corrected. The rest are what blogs are for. ** Naboth the Jezreelite was judicially murdered so Ahab could take his land for a botanical garden. (1 Ki 21) *** A symbolic approach might also explain the insertion of swine in the Septuagint version, which not coincidentally is the version with the most powerful 'bathed in blood' imagery. ****Does that make it "original" or not? I suspect the KJV may be correct in excluding it if originality is the goal. But that does not make it unhistoric - rather like the account of Moses' death in a book he wrote it simply makes the phrase explanatory. Labels: bible   End the Occupation tells us that tomorrow is a day of action for this dead chick:On March 16, 2003, an Israeli soldier used a Caterpillar bulldozer to crush to death 23-year old American activist Rachel Corrie. Rachel was protesting the demolition of a home belonging to Samir Nasrallah, a Palestinian physician, in Rafah. Despite her bright orange vest and the fact that she stood 20 meters* in front of the bulldozer—the Israeli soldier contended that he did not see her.I'm apparently supposed to meet with my local Caterpillar corporate leaders so I can call them murderers or something, but I thought instead I would write an almost-haiku in honor of Rachel, and how she lives on in all of our hearts. After all, she was only trying to help**. So here goes: Olympia's ownThere. I feel like I've accomplished so much. * it's quite a feat to run over someone who is 60 feet away from you. ** Help kill civilians by protecting tunnels used to smuggle explosives into Gaza. Labels: moonbats  The customers at Julius Caesar's Subprime Mortage Emporium are not happy.  I told you this was coming:March 13 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. lawmakers will have to consider providing aid to about 2.2 million subprime mortgage borrowers who are at risk of defaulting and losing their homes, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd said today.If history is any indication, the final bill will be 3-10 times higher than the original estimates which, it might be noted, are based on a problem that must occur but has not occurred yet. It's the domino effects that cause the real problems, and those effects cannot be known until the collapse gets going in earnest. It has barely begun. But don't worry. It'll all be off budget so it won't hurt the government's efforts to deal with the deficit, and it will ensure that those who created money from nothing to lend to people who could not really afford homes* don't suffer any troublesome losses. The people who borrowed the money, well, that's what bankruptcy court is for. Move along, people. Nothing to see here. * also known as "bankers." (hat tip: Mish) UDPATE: Interesting that all three of the top stories on CNNMoney concern the effects of the gathering subprime blowup. And for those keeping track at home, the Implode-O-Meter hit 37 today. I think they need to create a java utility that could be displayed anywhere. That would be cool. The rest is pretty much gonna suck. UPDATE II: 38 Labels: economy The interesting thing here is not how easy it is to get people to agree to ban something (after all, these people are also known as "voters") but how easy it is to make something sound bad by appealing to ignorance.  Like others who get their history from watching too much Bugs Bunny, The Sea of Faith is just sure Jesus said she's a-flat, like your head:At the time of Jesus, the Jews, Romans and Greeks believed that the earth was flat, had ends and was supported by pillars and that the sky was a solid dome also supported by pillars.With history like this, who needs, well, history? But just for fun, let's apply a little: Did the Romans, Jews, and Greeks believe in a flat Earth? That would have come as news to the very Greek Aristotle, who wrote 400 years before Christ that: "[O]bservations of the stars make it evident not only that the earth is circular, but also that it is a circle of no great size... There is much change, I mean, in the stars which are overhead, and the stars seen are different, as one moves northward or southward... All of which goes to show [that] the earth is circular..." -- On the Nature of the HeavensThe spherical nature of the Earth was apparent to anyone in the ancient world who traveled, so long as they gave it a minute's thought - and looked up. Others who did so were the 6th Century bc Pythagoras (he of the eponymous Theorem) and Eratosthones (2nd century bc), who not only calculated the Earth's circumference within 2%, he calculated the distance to the sun and the moon just for grins. As for the Jews, Job, in what is quite possibly the oldest book in the Bible, says that rather than pillars*, God "hangs the Earth upon nothing" (26:7) and Isaiah (40:22) says that God sits upon "the circle of the Earth." Now one might argue that Job and Isaiah are prose, and therefore cannot truly represent what the Hebrews envisioned scientifically. Fine, I'll accept that, but then let's not have any rubbish about how the Psalms (e.g. 93:1), which are poetry, teach a fixed earth because they say that it "cannot be moved." OK, how about "stars falling from the sky"? Do we not today still talk about "falling stars" and "shooting stars"? We know thay are not really stars by our modern accounting - that's just a manner of speaking - but to the ancients, all the bright things "up there" were accounted as stars. Their word encompassed every body in the heavens, and that their words do not make the same distinctions that ours do is simply a matter of different languages. We don't even have a word that means what theirs did, and so direct translation is misleading at best. In the New Testament, Jude talks about "wandering stars," and we know stars don't really wander all that much perhaps. The Greek word he used? "Planetes." That one might look familiar. It might also come as a bit of a surpise for Socrates to learn that he lived in the middle of the 5th Century, about the time Rome was falling. He was born ca 470 bc, which would have made him close to 1000 years old when he made that discovery. Then he stuck around to star in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, I suppose. Skipping forward from Jesus a millennium and a half: whether or not Galileo was forced to renounce heliocentricity by some Pope in the 16th Century is irrelevant to the "the world view of the first century." It is far more relevant to the politics of a Church** that was on the verge of falling apart and for political reasons would not allow its authority undermined no matter the source. There is no doubt that some people believed in a flat earth...that there were even arguments about it is sufficient evidence to prove that. But to propose that *everyone* did, that no one even considered the possibility of a spherical Earth until half a millennium after Christ, is the most ignorant brand of rubbish imaginable***. Unfortunately, it is upon that pile of ignorance that too many would-be teachers build their modern fairy stories. * The "solid dome supported by pillars" comes from the Babylonians, not the Greeks, Romans, or Jews. ** I'll not defend the church on that, they were wrong on all counts. *** It's like saying that the 21st century world view doesn't believe in Uzbekistan because most of us can't find it on a map. Labels: christianity, history  There's a reason I only accidentally hold stock in this company:In Q3 and Q4, 2006, IDGJ Management was able to penetrate key markets and develop corporate relationships that form the initial and long-term success in proliferating its deliverables across a multitude of Corporate Idioms.I always figured writing like that was indicative of a company (or industry) completely infested with overpaid bureaucracy, mediocrity, and incompetence (sort of like most Women's Studies departments) and therefore on its last legs. Sad to see it coming from a company that's barely a year old...  On his march from the sea to the Halls of Montezuma, Cortes stopped in the city of Cholula, the center of worship of the god Quetzalcoatl. Before he left, he acquired the major black mark against his character that still dogs him today, The Massacre of Cholula.Stolen Continent describes the episode this way: Cortes' new Tlaxcalan allies pleaded with him not to go through Cholula, arguing that the city was not a safe place for them. After careful consideration, Cortes decided to go, and took with him over 100,000 Tlaxcalan porters and soldiers. When the Conquistadors arrived, the Cholulans saw the heavily armed Tlaxcalans and protested to Cortes that their old rivals would not be welcomed into their city. Cortes ordered the Tlaxcalans to camp outside the city, while the Spanish soldiers were welcomed and treated to bountiful feasts...What a bad, bad man, no? The peaceful, smiling Chololans, who just wanted to be friends*, all murdered by those naughty Spaniards without so much as a butter knife with which to defend themselves. At least that's what Cortes' modern detractors would have you believe. But as is usually the case, there is significantly more to the story. So let's let's bring in a few facts that might allow us to understand events from Cortes' point of view, from inside an enormous walled city, 500 men and a few porters against 100,000 increasingly hostile natives:
So was his resultant destruction of the primary men of the town an unwarranted massacre? Or was Cortes, knowing that war was coming, justified in launching a pre-emptive strike? Your mileage may vary. * With a great big hug and kiss from me to you. Won't you say you love me too? ** According to Diaz, the old woman, seeing how rich and good-looking Marina was, proposed marriage on behalf of her son. As she was to soon be a widow anyway, why not? Labels: history  Larry Kudlow worries about those big-spending Democrats:The big labor offensive in the Democratic Congress is rattling the stock market.So George Bush creating the TSA is not a problem for the economy*, but the Democrats unionizing it is? I rather suspect that if they become unionized, those folks with the starchy white shirts and blue badges will become even less efficient, which in a paradoxical burst of governmental anti-logic will allow the people they are currently harassing** to become more productive. But Kudlow proves that the GOP has learned absolutely nothing from either their rise to power nor their unceremonius plummet from it. OF COURSE the Democrats are going to unionize TSA. The Democrats are going to do whatever they can to turn the machine that the GOP has built, the programs and the employees and the bureaus, away from the GOP and toward their own goals, using those people to build a voter base dependent upon their continued good will and largesse. Such a result was written in stone the minute the GOP created TSA. So now the GOP is reduced to fighting against the logical and inevitable result of their own Frankenstein monster, and whining about how Democrats continue to act like Democrats. And the worst part is not that they will act surprised, but that they will genuinely BE surprised. They truly never saw it coming. * Unless one actually has to fly, of course. ** Perhaps better known as, the people who actually create things. Labels: republicans  I came across an interesting (yet strangely familiar) ebook today over at Ebook Maniacs, and if you check out page 29, you'll see a similarly familiar picture: our very own Rebel Nun getting married on a beach in Hawaii*.I wrote and sold this book a little more than a year ago and wondered what ever became of it. Well, now I know. So if you're interested in 90-some pages of El Borak's noise about blogs and blogging, there you go. It's free and worth every penny. Go ahead and download it: I already got paid. Regular readers will note more than a little of El B's trademark sarcasm, like the picture of Julius Caesar's assassination in the section on blog comments, with the notation that there are always people who think they can run your empire better than you can. They will also note, I suppose, that on this blog I follow almost none of my own advice. That's on purpose, of course: I'm not trying to build a blog empire here. But who knows what you can build with all my vast expertise** at your disposal? * and yes, I asked her for permission to use it. ** We all know two negatives make a positive. but in what case do two positives make a negative? "Yeah, right."  OK, so maybe it is a conspiracy after all...PHILADELPHIA - An unknown number of new George Washington dollar coins were mistakenly struck without their edge inscriptions, including "In God We Trust," and made it past inspectors and into circulation, the U.S. Mint said Wednesday.Godless bastards. The ACLU is everywhere, man. Labels: money  India shows how making something illegal fixes the problem:NEW DELHI: High metal prices may end up generating a few extra bucks for the government mints.Of course, a similar market will never develop in America because the mint has made it illegal to melt or export US coins. But you have to be impressed by the spin. No doubt when our last copper/nickel/zinc coins are replaced by steel ones, the government will find some way to pass off the act as "an important element of the currency management strategy" as well. It's almost as if the current stragedy wasn't the real reason metal prices are so high relative to dollars in the first place. * just as when faced with slow elevators, defenestration is an important element of the time-management strategy. Labels: money  Let the CYA begin:March 2 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve, seeking to limit defaults that have roiled the subprime mortgage-lending market, told banks to scrutinize their underwriting standards and be more transparent with customers about borrowing risks...Well guys, nice of you to show up*, since it was announced today that at the nation's largest subprime lender, Countrywide, about 20% of their loans outstanding are now in arrears. The hook was set and the suckers reeled in. Now all that remains is to clean up the guts. Lest anyone think that the belated arrival of government white hats to set straight the business practices of those companies that took advantage of the Fed's liquidity deluge and housing bubble is an example of of government regulation in the interest of the consumer, let me let you in on a little something. The arrival of Kimosabe Sam simply means the market is officially coming apart and it's time for politicians to start to look for someone, other than themselves, to take the blame for what looks to have the makings of a very nasty mess. * Now that the Loan Arranger is on the job, I won't have to mention the problem any more. It's as good as solved. Huzzah! Labels: economy But perhaps it is better now that we just get bankruptices. (Language warning)  In January I noted that the subprime lending market - those lenders who lent mortgage money to people who marginally (and often fraudulently) qualified - was on the ropes. At the time, the Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter, which tracks subprime lenders who are leaving the market through bankruptcy, buyout, or regulatory action, set the number of dead lenders at 16. That number is now 31, the addition of about 3 a week.This week, the nation's fifth-largest subprime lender, Fremont, imploded and will exit the market. The nation's second-largest subprime lender, New Century, faces shutdown by regulators. But the reason this collapse will not end until the last subprime lender folds is because the entire industry shares a culture, not unlike the Savings and Loan industry shared before its collapse, where the problems of one are shared by all - not because they are inter-related* but because their business plans are identical: leverage rising housing prices on borrowed money. The fatal assumption in that is obvious. Only the timing is in question. Roger Rafter provides a blunt look at how the industry portrays itself to investors and regulators (in its own words). But the word is out, and while the former are beginning to dump lending stocks wholesale, the latter are starting to climb all over these lenders like flies on a gut wagon: I listened to the New Century Financial conference call today...(and on it goes) The rising of interest rates combined with a significant group of people who can't afford them (which is why they took out subprime ARMs in the first place) makes a subprime lender collapse a foregone conclusion. So what can be done about it? To save the industry? Nothing. It's toast. Buh-bye. To save your portfolio? While I don't give financial advice, I would suggest that if the letters REIT or MBS appear anywhere close to your investments, especially your 401(k), you ____________ like hell. I'll let you fill in the missing word according to your own risk tolerance. * like hedge funds, a completely separate problem. (hat tip: Mish) UPDATE: New Century opened this morning at ~$5, just about 1/3 where it closed on Friday (which means if you owned it Friday, 2/3 of your money is gone) and about 90% off its high for the year. This** is "The Gap" that investors fear. How much more of that can investors take until all mortgage money, not that that thrown haphazardly at higher prices, flees for the safety* of Treasury bills? And how will you buy (or sell) a house if lenders are not lending? * Rather than that ridiculous clothing store. ** They wish. Labels: economy   But they didn't say much:Willard Mitt Romney: 21%Well, other than Ann Coulter calling John Edwards a faggot. Quick, who did FDR face off against in 1944? It won't be long before that's an easier question to answer than who Hillary Clinton faced in 2008.  Tony Phyrillas wonders if the ACLU has infiltrated the mint:Have you seen the new U.S. $1 coins? My first impression was that the coin was designed by a committee made up of ACLU members.... just like how our currency is not the same as when our parents and grandparents grew up. The idea that the edge of the coin is "the easiest to wear away" is rubbish. High points on the front and back are, which is why if one is so lucky as to find a buffalo nickel in one's change, it is almost guaranteed to be lacking a date. That date represents a high point of the obverse and therefore is rubbed away long before the edges, generally the least worn portion of the coin, show any significant wear. Three seconds of thought - and two coins in your pocket - should be sufficient to discover why. If you look modern quarter or dime (or a fiddy cent piece if you can find one) you will see the vestigial results of the days when the edges were often the first part of the coin worn away. But those ridges were not placed there because it was the nature of Dark Ages coinage* to wear edge-first, but because it was the nature of men to grind edges down purposely, recovering a portion of the silver that used to make up much of our circulating currency. The lack of ridged edges told everyone who might receive the coin that it was not of full weight, and therefore not of full value. It should go without saying** that the reason no one today purposely grinds the edges from our coinage is that the metal value of our ridged coinage is not worth the electricity it would take to run your dremel. While it is possible (I did not say "probable" or even "likely") that the banishment of the US motto to the edge of a coin that no one will ever really use*** is an ACLU-inspired conspiracy to acclimate us to some future God-free currency that our children's children's children must pass off as valuable, it is certain that we are already the inheritors of the opposite. We have kept the forms of our grandparents' money and attached them to a token currency whose only value derives from the "full faith and credit" of the government. And in that we truly trust for some reason. * Modern history began in 1964 with the assassination of JFK. ** But it doesn't. *** Thus the odds of the edge wearing away, already remote, become infinitesimal. Labels: money   Mark A. Smith consults the book of cheating husbands:In the forty days between the “resurrection” and alleged ascension of Jesus, the Apostles either never left Jerusalem (per Jesus' command) -OR- they did leave Jerusalem (for Galilee, per Jesus' command)Of course, all historians know that if we have difficulty reconciling accounts, they must all be tossed, right? That's why we only know anything that happened until the second newspaper of the day is published, I guess. Actually, while Mr. Smith's Table of Contradiction (which you must click thru to see) is conclusive in isolation, what actually happened is fairly easily discerned by what he left out**. John (20:19) for example explains how "that same day" (the day of the Resurrection) Jesus appeared to the disciples in Jerusalem, then again a week later (20:26). Then a mere 5 verses later (21:1 and following) we read, "After these things Jesus showed himself again to the disciples at the sea of Tiberias..." Where, you might ask, is this "Sea of Tiberias"? It's in Galilee. In short, the disciples were not in Jerusalem the whole time - and no one claims they were - but for a week or a little more. They were in Jerusalem for the Passover, then went home, then returned later for the feast of Pentecost. They were Jews, and that's what Jews did. It makes perfect historical sense because the disciples did not live in Jerusalem and probably had no financial support that would enable them to remain there for 2 months even if they wanted to. How many of us could remove to DC for 2 months with just the money we're carrying on us? But if Jesus ordered them to Galilee, why didn't they take off at a brisk trot right after the Last Dessert? Here we enter the realm of historical reconstruction. Immediately following the arrest of Jesus (very late Thursday night) all of the disciples are scattered in the Garden of Gethsemane. Most of them, in the dark and knowing that Jesus had been taken, headed back to Bethany where they had been staying and which was right up the road upon which they would find themselves once they fled the garden. So early Friday morning finds Jesus' 9 disciples dragging themselves, perhaps in small groups, perhaps one-by-one, back to a little home owned by Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. Did I say 9? Well, Judas dared not who his face of course, but where are the other 2? Peter and John followed Jesus' arrest party and were watching the trial. Did the 9 know this? No, at this point they can only assume that the 2 have been arrested as well and that therefore they are in some danger. That's why once Jesus is on the cross, we find only John there with Jesus' mother Mary. The others are still hiding, Peter is off alone with his shame. Jesus comes off the cross late Friday afternoon and at last the women arrive and watch as strangers lay the body in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea (whom if they recognize at all, it's only as a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin). A message was obviously sent (by whom? No idea) to Bethany to inform them that Peter and John had not been arrested after all and therefore their own danger is past. So they assemble in Jerusalem for news. But now the sun has gone down and it's the Sabbath. No travel this day by law. The women decide to pay last respects to Jesus' body by packing it according to custom, and they stay in Jerusalem so Mary, Mary, Mary, and Mary can get to the tomb early. Sunday arrives, the women visit the tomb, and Jesus goes all Lord of Life on them. Obviously the disciples aren't going to travel now but are going to await events. They are still in Jerusalem a week later. Why? The only plausible reason is that a live Jesus told them to wait; otherwise they would have gone home when the crowds did. OK, so that explains a) why the disciples didn't leave Jerusalem right away, why they did eventually, and why they came back and Luke therefore had something to write about in Acts (it would have been awfully boring otherwise). That means the right side of Mr. Smith's table can be mostly set aside (with one exception, which I'll get to). In accordance with Scientific Law, Peter was never in two places at once, though I'm pretty sure his wife had a tough time believing his story anyway. But what of the crux of the problem, that Jesus specifically said that his bretheren were to go to Galilee and see him there? Well first of all the disciples did and did. But more importantly, not all of Jesus' followers were in Jerusalem. "Wait a minute," you might say, "Jesus had twelve disciples and you just said they were in Jerusalem! What do you take us for?" And it's true that those twelve make up the group that we call "The disciples." But they were simply the innermost circle of his followers. He also had among the Jews of Jerusalem Nicodemus and the aforementioned Joseph, among Herod's household Joanna, and Mary and Martha and Lazarus of Bethany. He had trained and sent out "The Seventy" (Luke 10:1) which did not include the disciples. At Pentecost (Acts 1:15) there were 120 present, and Paul is probably referring to Galilee in 1Cor 15:6 when he says that after Jesus was seen by the Twelve he was seen by 500. If Jesus was going to appear to and teach 500 people, he could not do so in Jerusalem: he had to travel to Galilee, where a) they probably lived, as that was his base, b) they could be relatively undisturbed. It's not likely that he would rent an auditorium in Jerusalem and make everyone travel there. Jerusalem and Galilee are both necessary if our story is to include all the facts. So finally, what of Luke's note where Jesus commanded that they "should not leave the city until (they) receive power from on high" which in all honesty is the toughest "contradiction" on the Table of Biblical Doom? It is simply a summary statement to the effect that what was about to happen was going to begin in Jerusalem. They were not to permanently*** leave the city, which after the Resurrection would mark the beginning of the Christian mission, until the Holy Spirit came and equipped them for the task. OK, so what's the Cortes reference above? It's an interesting exercise to compare how historians treat history to how non-historians treat scripture. For example, in the Hunt for Red October, Captian Ramius states, "when Cortes reached the new world, he burned his ships..." and that image is part of the common knowledge of most educated people. But not historians. What do they say happened to Cortes' fleet? "Five of the best ships were allowed to drift ashore. Four others were then sunk in the harbor." (WW Johnson) "Only five of the ten ships were run aground at first... a few days later, four other ships were run aground." (Madariaga) "All the vessels were sunk except one caravel." (Fuentes) The ships were "scuttled and sunk." (Abbot) Bernal Diaz and Cortes (who were both there and who are the main sources of our knowledge of what did happen to the ships) give accounts that differ with every one of the above, and with each other, in particulars. Since we have "contradictions," does that mean Cortes' ships are still floating off Vera Cruz? Does it mean Cortes never existed? Does it mean that all historians - and all eyewitnesses - are liars, on the level of cheating husbands? After all, we know that ships can't be both run ashore and sunk in the harbor, right? No, what it means is that a man with one watch always knows what time it is, but a man who wears two is never completely sure. Looking at 4 independent accounts of ANY event is going to give us differences to deal with. Any time 4 people describe anything, they are going to disagree, they are going to leave things out, they are going to emphasize what interests them or their audience, they are going to summarize the things that don't. It does not mean the accounts are not historical; in fact, multiple differing accounts by eyewitnesses and those who rely on them raise our confidence that what was claimed to happen happened pretty much as they claim. No historian denies that Cortes' fleet was destroyed before he headed to the Halls of Montezuma. We may never perfectly know the particulars and we can never know the things that were said and done - things that might clear up our contradiction - that were not recorded for us. However, that doesn't give us historical license to throw away the things that were written down. It just means that we're going to have to treat the accounts like we treat any other historical account, understanding and respecting the limitations of history and - perhaps most importantly - the limitations of our own knowledge. *Why does Jesus look so bummed? Because his disciples forgot where they were supposed to meet him. ** He also makes the mistake of assuming that Jesus' commands were to be carried out immediately and literally regardless of circumstances, that summaries necessarily contradict specifics, and that the disciples always did as they were told. None of those, I think, hold up very well. *** I say 'permanently' because it's not like they were under some kind of house arrest. In fact, they walked out of the city with Jesus in the very next verse. Labels: christianity |
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When you need a picture of 'the one that got away,' try Lyin' Your Bass Off. |
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