Stalin, Hitler, Mao, McCarthy — these are people who have been vilified pretty thoroughly by history.
Stalin has a complete other story. Not to paint him as a hero, but to tell a more factual representation. He fought the German war machine more than any single person. We can’t judge people as only “bad” or “good.” Hitler is an easy scapegoat throughout history and its been used cheaply. He’s the product of a series of actions. It’s cause and effect….People in America don’t know the connection between WWI and WWII….I’ve been able to walk in Stalin’s shoes and Hitler’s shoes to understand their point of view. We’re going to educate our minds and liberalize them and broaden them. We want to move beyond opinions….Go into the funding of the Nazi party. How many American corporations were involved, from GM through IBM. Hitler is just a man who could have easily been assassinated.
–Movie director Oliver Stone, talking about his upcoming Showtime documentary miniseries “Secret History of America,” which he promises will put mass murderers such as Stalin and Hitler “in context” (just like JFK’s assassination, no doubt)
(The Live Feed, via Weasel Zippers.)
I don’t mean the oldest person, of course, but the oldest example of writing in the Hebrew language. It has significant implications for biblical history, according to Israel National News:
A breakthrough in the research of the Hebrew Scriptures has shed new light on the period in which the Bible books of the Prophets were written. Professor Gershon Galil of the Department of Biblical Studies at the University of Haifa has deciphered an inscription dating from the 10th century BCE (the period of King David’s reign) and has proven the inscription to be ancient Hebrew, thus making it the earliest known example of Hebrew writing.
The significance of this breakthrough relates to the fact that at least some of the Biblical scriptures are now proven to have been composed hundreds of years before the dates presented today in research and that the Kingdom of Israel already existed at that time.
This is directly contrary to at least some current theorizing among very liberal biblical scholars:
Galil added that once this deciphering is received at research centers, the inscription will become the earliest Hebrew inscription to be found, testifying to Hebrew writing abilities as early as the 10th century BCE. This stands opposed to the dating of the composition of the Bible in much current academic research, which does not recognize the possibility that the Bible or parts of it could have been written during this ancient period.
Galil also noted that the inscription was discovered in a provincial Judean town, explaining that if there were scribes in the periphery, it can be assumed that those inhabiting the central region and Jerusalem were even more proficient writers. “It can now be maintained that it was highly reasonable that during the 10th century BCE, during the reign of King David, there were scribes in Israel who were able to write literary texts and complex historiographies such as the books of Judges and Samuel.” He added that the complexity of the text, along with the impressive fortifications revealed at the site, refute theories that attempt to deny the existence of the Kingdom of Israel at that time.
This doesn’t mean that the inscription in question is itself biblical, though it certainly echoes biblical themes. Here’s Galil’s translation:
1′ you shall not do [it], but worship the [Lord].
2′ Judge the sla[ve] and the wid[ow] / Judge the orph[an]
3′ [and] the stranger. [Pl]ead for the infant / plead for the po[or and]
4′ the widow. Rehabilitate [the poor] at the hands of the king.
5′ Protect the po[or and] the slave / [supp]ort the stranger.
The article identifies Isaiah 1:17, Psalm 72:3, and Exodus 23:3 as similar passages. There are others as well, all of which indicates that this kind of social consciousness was well established in Israel very early on.
Thanks to Dr. Galil for his excellent work. Let’s hope it penetrates the understanding of the world of biblical scholarship.
(Via Stand Firm.)
“Are the Muslims in Europe and America – and there are millions of them in some countries – able to celebrate Ramadan and the Muslim holidays in the city centers, like some people do in our Arab and Muslim countries and cities, in the Arabian Peninsula?
–Qatar Muslim cleric Sheikh Yousuf Al-Qaradhawiin a recent Friday sermon, asking a rhetorical question with an answer the opposite of what he thinks to be the case
(Via Mere Comments.)
According to polling done by the Associated Press, there are a lot of people out there who just don’t get it:
Clearly, there are dog people and there are cat people. But it’s not much of a contest: 74 percent of people like dogs a lot, and only 41 percent like cats a lot.
Cats win the dislike vote handily, according to an Associated Press-Petside.com poll. Fifteen percent of the adults questioned said they disliked cats a lot while the number who said they disliked dogs a lot was just 2 percent.
Joseph Moreus, 61, of Westminster, Calif., understands why dogs come out on top.
“They have more personality. They are loyal,” he said. “Cats are all about cats but dogs are interested in pleasing their owners. Cats don’t care if they please you or not.”
And that’s just the point. Cats aren’t suck-ups. If they like you, they show it; if they don’t, they don’t pretend. Cats are just superior in every way. Hey, don’t point that Web cam at me…
(Story via Hot Air, picture from I Can Has Cheezburger?)
One of the persons most responsible for the deformation of modern (at least post-1960s) theology has died, according to the National Catholic Reporter:
Mary Daly, radical feminist theologian and a mother of modern feminist theology, died Jan. 3 at the age of 81. She was one of the most influential voices of the radical feminist movement through the later 20th century.
Daly taught courses in theology, feminist ethics and patriarchy at Boston College for 33 years. Her first book, “The Church and the Second Sex,” published in 1968, got her fired, briefly, from her teaching position there, but as a result of support from the (then all-male) student body and the general public, she was ultimately granted tenure.
After “The Church and the Second Sex,” she said she moved from “Christian reformist” to “radical, post-Christian” feminist.
Studying archetypal forms and prepatriarchal religion convinced Daly that church doctrine consisted of a series of significant “reversals.” She explained these to NCR writer Jeanette Batz in 1996:
- the Trinity, from the triple goddess once celebrated worldwide;
- the virgin birth, from the parthenogenesis that once begat divine daughters;
- Adam giving birth to Eve.
Women operating on patriarchy’s boundaries, she once wrote, can spiral into freedom by renaming and reclaiming an ancient woman-centered reality that was stolen and eradicated by patriarchy.
I think that probably says just about all that needs to be said.
The climate right now is that Republicans use everything they can to undermine and delegitimize this president. And it‘s actually un-American. It‘s traitorous, in my opinion. Do you want to give aid and comfort to our enemies? Continue to treat this president like he wasn‘t elected and he doesn‘t know what he‘s doing! He knows what he did. He knows what he‘s doing. I‘m proud of him.
–Joan Walsh of Salon.com, morphing into what she undoubtedly most despises as she decries criticism of the president as “un-American” and “traitorous”
(Via Newsbusters.)
From global warmers to Mayan calendarists, apocalypse is in the air. So that must mean it’s time for another Harold Camping prediction. Camping, a civil engineer by trade, is the guy who runs Family Radio, and he predicted that the rapture would happen in 1994. Undaunted by that failure, he’s back with another date, according to the San Francisco Chronicle:
Harold Camping lets out a hearty chuckle when he considers the people who believe the world will end in 2012.
“That date has not one stitch of biblical authority,” Camping says from the Oakland office where he runs Family Radio, an evangelical station that reaches listeners around the world. “It’s like a fairy tale.”
The real date for the end of times, he says, is in 2011.
Camping, 88, has scrutinized the Bible for almost 70 years and says he has developed a mathematical system to interpret prophecies hidden within the Good Book. One night a few years ago, Camping, a civil engineer by trade, crunched the numbers and was stunned at what he’d found: The world will end May 21, 2011.
Well, I’m glad we’ve got that cleared up. Leave it to the “number crunchers” to figure it out. And how did he come to this conclusion, you ask?
By Camping’s understanding, the Bible was dictated by God and every word and number carries a spiritual significance. He noticed that particular numbers appeared in the Bible at the same time particular themes are discussed.
The number 5, Camping concluded, equals “atonement.” Ten is “completeness.” Seventeen means “heaven.” Camping patiently explained how he reached his conclusion for May 21, 2011.
“Christ hung on the cross April 1, 33 A.D.,” he began. “Now go to April 1 of 2011 A.D., and that’s 1,978 years.”
Camping then multiplied 1,978 by 365.2422 days – the number of days in each solar year, not to be confused with a calendar year.
Next, Camping noted that April 1 to May 21 encompasses 51 days. Add 51 to the sum of previous multiplication total, and it equals 722,500.
Camping realized that (5 x 10 x 17) x (5 x 10 x 17) = 722,500.
Or put into words: (Atonement x Completeness x Heaven), squared.
“Five times 10 times 17 is telling you a story,” Camping said. “It’s the story from the time Christ made payment for your sins until you’re completely saved.
“I tell ya, I just about fell off my chair when I realized that,” Camping said.
Me, I just about fell off my chair when I realized that a guy who should have learned his lesson the first time–the lesson that comes from Matthew 24:36, where Jesus says that no one, not even civil engineers with vivid mathematical imaginations, knows the day or hour of His return–was making the same mistake. The Bible isn’t a code book, waiting for a clever enough cryptographer to crack it. And Camping’s math, of course, is gibberish built upon wholly arbitrary assumptions. For instance, why is seventeen the number of heaven? The only conjunction of the two is in the Noah story, which in Genesis 7:11 says, “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.” The reason Camping puts these two things together is because it fits his scheme, which is designed for the purpose of finding a date in the near future (it really wouldn’t excite anyone to say you’d found out that the day of the rapture was August 12, 2845, now would it?). Put together the right combination of numbers and assumptions, and you can come up with just about anything. In particular, you can juggle the numbers in such a way as to come up with what you want.
The sad thing is that this would-be prophet, like so many before him, is going to take in who knows how many people with his numbers game, and do who knows how much spiritual damage in the process. Every time some bozo with a megaphone puts out this kind of tripe, there are people who buy it, and then, when he turns out to be wrong, are turned from Christ because they think He failed them.
God save us from guys with calculators.
