tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-76860629851278279552024-02-19T03:43:33.996-08:00Adventures of Dr. H.Kennethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16189601025476724628noreply@blogger.comBlogger55125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686062985127827955.post-11326564151193641472020-10-06T06:29:00.002-07:002020-10-06T06:29:25.015-07:00Trump, the Nobel Prize and the Ivory Tower<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4KypHczQOCZPi6xGlda6DttYl89Z4bxmTXdQmlns4Ob0AUxJlDgzL6ekMtERTVyHyuoNmpPI6eITDUfTUkk5VAF5z6rWFUmuPPeZhvZSHN125HLnkDd6eSVs_jiVike5Q7KBO86JoLydj/s1024/Nobel-Prize-medals-Getty-trump-AP.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4KypHczQOCZPi6xGlda6DttYl89Z4bxmTXdQmlns4Ob0AUxJlDgzL6ekMtERTVyHyuoNmpPI6eITDUfTUkk5VAF5z6rWFUmuPPeZhvZSHN125HLnkDd6eSVs_jiVike5Q7KBO86JoLydj/s320/Nobel-Prize-medals-Getty-trump-AP.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p style="font-family: "Calisto MT"; font-size: 14.7px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36px;">Academics, like political pundits, often feel invisibly compelled to become classic killjoys. Such is the case with regard to the recent Middle East peace deals, orchestrated by the Trump administration, between Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain. What should be a cause for universal celebration has predictably been downplayed, not only in the international press but among those ensconced in scholarly ivory towers. Jonathan Cristol, Research Fellow at Adelphi University, cynically observed, “…these deals do not usher in some sort of new era of peace and harmony.” Middle East professor at Lehigh University, Henry Barkey, declared, “The Trump administration should be in these countries’ debt because they gave it an excuse to gloat about the diplomatic achievement.” He went on to assert that a Biden administration would have been careful to consider all the “ramifications” of the deals before promoting and entering into them. By “ramifications” he is echoing the criticism of Notre Dame professor of religion and peace studies, Atalia Omer: “The main problem behind this ‘peace deal’ is it ignores the Palestinian struggles and demands.”</p><p style="font-family: "Calisto MT"; font-size: 14.7px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Calisto MT"; font-size: 14.7px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36px;">Leave it to academics to confuse serious progress toward a more peaceful region, and by extension a more harmonious world, with the rejectionist rantings of the corrupt Palestinian Authority, intent on establishing what would effectively amount to a terrorist state on the order of Gaza, situated on the very outskirts of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. It takes no scholarly pedigree or Ph.D. to recognize that what has for decades been referred to as a “peace process” with the Palestinians is in fact nothing short of a “war process.” It is hardly practical to imagine that the tiny state of Israel, no larger in area than New Jersey, could realistically be subdivided into two sovereign nations, that of the Palestinian Arabs inexorably committed to the destruction of their Israeli neighbors. It is precisely in the ivory tower that the world of theory expresses itself in sharp disconnect with the practical realities of this war-torn region. However the academics might fantasize to the contrary, the Middle East is not Switzerland, where men in lederhosen come yodeling over the hillsides. </p><p>
<span style="font-family: "Calisto MT"; font-size: 14.7px; text-indent: 36px;">Having lived in Northern Galilee and worked for a television news gathering operation in southern Lebanon, I have, unfortunately, seen the face of terrorism “up-close and personal.” When my friend and colleague, a Christian man from Ohio, was murdered in his own living room by radicalized Lebanese Shiites, just a few kilometers from Israel’s northernmost villages, it became obvious to this observer that genuine hope for this troubled region must be found, not by catering to the demands of the Palestinians and their professorial acolytes in other countries, but by building bridges with the moderate Arab states in the region, who recognize, as Israel does, the need to form a bulwark against Islamic radicalism and forge a future built on shared values of peace and security. For the agreement with both the UAE and Bahrain, President Trump has surely earned not one but indeed two Nobel peace prizes. For this he deserves the gratitude of the region and the world.</span><span style="font-family: "Calisto MT"; font-size: 14.7px; text-indent: 36px;"> </span> </p>Kennethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16189601025476724628noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686062985127827955.post-32563082902381927862020-09-15T11:17:00.005-07:002020-09-15T11:17:50.424-07:00<p style="text-align: center;"><b style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: large;">Bahrain, Biden and Bombast</span></b></p><p><b style="font-family: Helvetica;"></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b style="font-family: Helvetica;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxDoQjvFXPP9h37m_UaRsGj6R5-O0v7GmeJ9nZ-KMMFqq-_ImJKzZAgZVMIgBgrJs538f7hjTyg9QyHw6PJ-BI-av5tKur-fIre0oTz5cbssr8t6mBtO27Nolodl3zofsXW-dLtv6n189r/s800/778775e1c71b4e908502daddebd68086_18.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxDoQjvFXPP9h37m_UaRsGj6R5-O0v7GmeJ9nZ-KMMFqq-_ImJKzZAgZVMIgBgrJs538f7hjTyg9QyHw6PJ-BI-av5tKur-fIre0oTz5cbssr8t6mBtO27Nolodl3zofsXW-dLtv6n189r/s320/778775e1c71b4e908502daddebd68086_18.jpg" width="320" /></a></b></div><b style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></b><p></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">For Jews around the world, and of course in the land of Israel, it is the season of the High Holy Days: Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. There is an ancient tradition that “on Rosh Hashanah, all the world passes before God like sheep.” But beyond the expectation of the divine verdict, it is also a season of renewal and a time of hope. Nothing more epitomizes the longing for a better day than the “impossible dream” of peace between Israel and the Arab world. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed his people on Israel T.V., declaring: “It took us twenty-six years from the second peace agreement with an Arab state (Jordan) to the third peace agreement (with the UAE). And it took us not twenty-six years but twenty-nine days between a peace agreement with the third Arab state and the fourth Arab state (Bahrain). And there will be more…”</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Some would call these developments nothing short of miraculous. Yet it is clear that their catalyst was none other than the great dealmaker, President Donald Trump, and his skillful Jewish son-in-law, Jared Kushner. For Joe Biden, by contrast, such peace deals are not miracles; they are “accidents.” He remarked: “I think Trump is going to accidentally do something positive here, in terms of this issue of … other Arab states.” It goes without saying, however, that for the people of Israel, who have lived in a state of cold war if not hot war with their Arab neighbors since the birth of their nation in 1948, these developments are infinitely more providential than accidental. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The latest peace agreement, with Bahrain, was announced on the nineteenth anniversary of 9/11. Leading Israel's newscast that Sabbath Eve was a melody by the celebrated songstress of the Jewish state, the late Naomi Shemer. Its hauntingly beautiful refrain went out over the airwaves and the internet: “After the Holidays all will be renewed; Our daily life will return and be refreshed; The air, the dust, the rain, the fire; You too, you too will be renewed.” </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In today's cynical culture and vulgar political climate, it's easy to become jaded, to miss the “miracle on the Mediterranean” that today’s Israel represents. For Joe Biden and the Democrat Party operatives who feed him his lines, it’s much easier to frame not only American culture but the world at large in terms of identity politics, to harp on the essentially Marxist narrative of the “oppressors” and the “oppressed.” Biden’s party views the Palestinians as the oppressed ones, though the terrorist cadre among them have perpetrated untold acts of murderous aggression against innocent Israeli civilians. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Their Jewish neighbors, by contrast, are without question members of the most persecuted ethnic group in all of human history. They have suffered exile, dispersion, and near annihilation at the hands of genocidal Nazis. Now that a new diplomatic horizon is presenting itself for this truly persecuted people, it suits America’s minions of the radical left to frame it as happenstance. But in the Jewish state, suffering like so many countries from the China Virus, the coming Days of Awe are indeed days of hope. And for the UAE and Bahrain, Israel at last “is real.”</span></p>Kennethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16189601025476724628noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686062985127827955.post-92073520046339397872019-10-12T07:19:00.000-07:002019-10-12T07:21:07.817-07:00Famous Amos<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "helveticaneue";"><b>Famous Amos</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">True prophets are often the ones we least suspect of greatness. In the case of ancient Israel they often lacked social standing and possessed no special pedigree. Their authority derived solely from the power of their message. So it was with a remarkable man of righteous indignation, who arrived on the scene in the middle of the eighth century before the Common Era. His name was Amos, from a small city in Judah called Tekoa about 6 miles south of Bethlehem and eleven from Jerusalem. By this time in the history of Israel the once united kingdom of David and Solomon had irrevocably split in two. Ten northern tribes had created their own kingdom, while only Benjamin and Judah, from which Amos hailed, remained in the south. Little did anyone realize that this man Amos would be at the vanguard of Israel‘s ancient social justice movement. Oddly, we don’t know a lot about him.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">A most unusual suspect, this Amos! In the very first line of his book he’s said to be “among the sheep breeders of Tekoa.” Elsewhere he calls himself a “tender of sycamore fruit.” The Hebrew word he uses to describe himself is </span><span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">boker</span><span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">, which, while translated as “herdsman,” also means “cowboy.” Certainly Amos was involved in agriculture. Presumably he switched professions, having started out as a ... Jewish cowboy? Oy vey!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">In any case his message was quite radical. It's true that the idea of social justice goes back to Mount Sinai and the story of the exodus from Egypt. God is depicted as working on behalf of the oppressed and the powerless, namely, the enslaved Israelites. But now, centuries later, it is the Israelites themselves who are the oppressors of those who are weak among them. To have the audacity to point that out, and for a culture to embrace such criticism and be able to point a finger at itself - that’s one of the most revolutionary developments, not just for Israel, but for human civilization. In modern times we might think of Ghandi, who confronted Britain, a "Christian" nation, about the egregious sins and injustices it was committing against the Indian people. Arguably, it was Amos who started the social justice ball in motion. And that was when Amos became Famous Amos!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">From his own narrative we learn that he travels north during the reign of the powerful king Jeroboam the second. And he suddenly appears in the cultic shrine of the city of Bethel, to confront the local priest. He feels compelled to make the journey, but he’s anything but thrilled about it. What kind of spirituality is this? As in Buddhism, Amos is very much aware of the su</span><span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">ff</span><span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">ering around him. But this isn’t like eastern religion, where the general goal is being in harmony with all things. It’s not like Buddhism. There’s no Nirvana (with its annihilation of self) to strive toward. The prophet Amos is literally wrenched out of his comfort zone by divine power. Israel's deity is roaring like a lion from Mount Zion and Jerusalem, and what choice does he have? His commission is one of confrontation, not harmony. He is to declare not an age of peace, but judgment upon the nations. On Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Ammon and Moab. Some might've said, no worries, those are our enemies! Remarkably, Amos castigates the pagans, not for what they’ve done to the Israelites, but for what they’ve done to one another... But </span><span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">the judgment doesn't stop there. Next, we hear of the transgressions of Judah, then of Israel:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">“Because they sell the righteous for silver, And the poor for a pair of sandals. They pant after the dust of the earth </span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">which is </span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">on the head of the poor, And pervert the way of the humble.” (Amos 2:6-7)</span><br />
<span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">.</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">עַל</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">-</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">מִכְרָם בַּכֶּסֶף צַדִּיק</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">,</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"> וְאֶבְיוֹן בַּעֲבוּר נַעֲלָיִם הַשֹּׁאֲפִים עַל</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">-</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">עֲפַר</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">-</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">אֶרֶץ בְּרֹאשׁ דַּלִּים</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">,</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"> וְדֶרְֶ עֲנָוִים יַטּוּ</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">There you have it. The Israelites were no better than the uncircumcised pagan nations – the </span><span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">goyim</span><span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">. You can't get farther away from the religion of personal peace and tranquility than this. He had been forced to open his mouth, like it or not. Amos declares:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">“A lion has roared! Who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken! Who can but prophesy?” (Amos 2:8)</span><br />
<span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">אַרְיֵה שָׁאָג</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">,</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"> מִי לֹא יִירָא</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">;</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"> אֲדֹנָי יְהוִה דִּבֶּר</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">,</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"> מִי לֹא יִנָּבֵא</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">He goes on:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">“That in the day I punish Israel for their transgressions, I will also visit </span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">destruction </span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">on the altars of Bethel; And the horns of the altar shall be cut o</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">ff </span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">And fall to the ground. I will destroy the winter house along with the summer house; The houses of ivory shall perish, And the great houses shall have an end.” (Amos 2:14-15)</span><br />
<span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">כִּי</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">,</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"> בְּיוֹם פָּקְדִי פִשְׁעֵי</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">-</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">יִשְׂרָאֵל</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">--</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">עָלָיו</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">:</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"> וּפָקַדְתִּי</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">,</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"> עַל</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">-</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">מִזְבְּחוֹת בֵּית</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">-</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">אֵל</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">,</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"> וְנִגְדְּעוּ קַרְנוֹת הַמִּזְבֵּחַ</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">,</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"> וְנָפְלוּ לָאָרֶץ וְהִכֵּיתִי בֵית</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">-</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">הַחֹרֶף</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">,</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"> עַל</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">-</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">בֵּית הַקָּיִץ</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">;</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"> וְאָבְדוּ בָּתֵּי הַשֵּׁן</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">,</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"> וְסָפוּ בָּתִּים רַבִּים</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">That must have gone down well! On and on the prophet thunders his denunciations, declaring himself to be God's mouthpiece, ending each terrifying stanza with "says the Lord.” This is a radically monotheistic God, who isn't to be equated with any part of the natural world. This is the God who formed the mountains, who creates the wind and makes the morning darkness. Who treads the high places of the earth and who sits above it all. Only a God who is truly "other" can judge of the world in righteousness. Here we have the two great pillars of Israelite monotheism. This deity is all powerful and all just.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">But this is hardly a God one would wish on anybody. For he is as terrible as he is great. And what an odd message to inspire? Whoever heard of a prophet castigating his own people? But that’s why Amos was a true revolutionary. When he barges in on the local priest at Bethel (Amaziah is his name) he pronounces his series of woes. It’s an ancient case of speaking truth to power. He’s the ancient Lone Ranger. He’s a rhetorical Robin Hood, straight in from Sherwood Forest. It was after all the very nature of a prophet to be a solitary man.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">The arrogant priest imagines Amos to be one of the earlier breed of ecstatic soothsayers. Amaziah curtly demands that he leave:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">“Go, you seer! Flee to the land of Judah. There eat bread, And there prophesy. But never again prophesy at Bethel, For it </span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">is </span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">the king’s sanctuary, And it </span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">is </span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">the royal resi- dence.” (Amos 7:12-13)<br />.</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 12pt;">חֹזֶה</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">,</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 12pt;"> לְֵ בְּרַח</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">-</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 12pt;">לְָ אֶל</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">-</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 12pt;">אֶרֶץ יְהוּדָה</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">;</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 12pt;"> וֶאֱכָל</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">-</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 12pt;">שָׁם לֶחֶם</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">,</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 12pt;"> וְשָׁם תִּנָּבֵא</span><br />
<span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">.</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 12pt;">וּבֵית</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">-</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 12pt;">אֵל</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">,</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 12pt;"> לֹא</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">-</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 12pt;">תוֹסִיף עוֹד לְהִנָּבֵא</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">:</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 12pt;"> כִּי מִקְדַּשׁ</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">-</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 12pt;">מֶלְֶ הוּא</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">,</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 12pt;"> וּבֵית מַמְלָכָה הוּא</span><br />
<span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">The Hebrew word, </span><span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">khozei </span><span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">in fact reminds us of the earlier kind of soothsayer. That’s</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">when Amos makes an interesting declaration.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">“I am not a prophet nor the son of a prophet.“ (Amos 7:14)</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">לֹא</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">-</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">נָבִיא אָנֹכִי</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">,</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"> וְלֹא בֶן</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">-</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">נָבִיא אָנֹכִי</span><br />
<span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">Immediately people are confused. Don’t we call him a prophet, and a great one at that? Ah, but he was a very di</span><span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">ff</span><span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">erent breed from any who came before. He distinguishes himself from the schools of wandering, ecstatic oracular prophets, from Samuel to Elijah. And he distinguishes himself all the more by doing something the earlier prophets never did. He writes down his messages in powerful poetic Hebrew. He is the first of the great writing prophets, recording in detail his confrontation with the priest. Moreover, if the people of this northern region were unprepared to heed his admonitions, another fate would await them:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">“Your wife shall be a harlot in the city; Your sons and daughters shall fall by the sword; Your land shall be divided by </span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">survey </span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">line; You shall die in a defiled land; And Israel shall surely be led away captive From his own land.” (Amos 7:17)</span><br />
<span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">אִשְׁתְָּ בָּעִיר תִּזְנֶה וּבָנֶיָ וּבְנֹתֶיָ בַּחֶרֶב יִפֹּלוּ</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">,</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"> וְאַדְמָתְָ</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">,</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"> בַּחֶבֶל תְּחֻלָּק</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">;</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"> וְאַתָּה</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">, </span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">עַל</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">-</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">אֲדָמָה טְמֵאָה תָּמוּת</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">,</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">וְיִשְׂרָאֵל</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">,</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"> גָּלֹה יִגְלֶה מֵעַל אַדְמָתוֹ</span><br />
<span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">Now there's something even modern social justice warriors don't usually have the chutzpah to do – pronounce doom on their own nation:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">"Hear this word that the Lord has spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt.” (Amos 3:1)</span><br />
<span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">שִׁמְעוּ אֶת</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">-</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">הַדָּבָר הַזֶּה</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">,</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"> אֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר יְהוָה עֲלֵיכֶם</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">--</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">:</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"> עַל כָּל</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">-</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">הַמִּשְׁפָּחָה</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">, </span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">אֲשֶׁר הֶעֱלֵיתִי מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם</span><br />
<span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">By this time in Israelite tradition there was a firm notion of a coming "day of the Lord,” in which God's people would be redeemed from all their trials. But in an enormous rhetorical twist, the prophet Amos turns this notion on its head:</span></div>
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<span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">“For what good </span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">is </span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">the day of the Lord to you? It </span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">will be </span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">darkness, and not light.” (Amos )5:18</span><br />
<span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">.</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">לָמָּה</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">-</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">זֶּה לָכֶם יוֹם יְהוָה</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">,</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"> הוּא</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">-</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">חֹשְֶׁ וְלֹא</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">-</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">אוֹר</span><br />
<span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">It's been said that the most important word in all of the Hebrew Bible is the word "covenant." That is, a contract between God and Israel. Israel keeps the Commandments; God provides protection. But now even covenant takes on a di</span><span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">ff</span><span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">erent meaning. Israel hasn't been chosen in the sense of being ethnocentric or better than anybody else. The covenant is about burden, not privilege:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">“You only have I known of all the families of the earth; Therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities. Can two walk together, unless they are agreed? Will a lion roar in the forest, when he has no prey?” (Amos 3:2-4)</span><br />
<span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">רַק אֶתְכֶם יָדַעְתִּי</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">,</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"> מִכֹּל מִשְׁפְּחוֹת הָאֲדָמָה</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">;</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"> עַל</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">-</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">כֵּן אֶפְקֹד עֲלֵיכֶם</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">,</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"> אֵת כָּל</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">-</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">עֲונֹתֵיכֶם הֲיֵלְכוּ שְׁנַיִם יַחְדָּו בִּלְתִּי אִם</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">-</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">נוֹעָדוּ הֲיִשְׁאַג אַרְיֵה בַּיַּעַר וְטֶרֶף אֵין לוֹ</span><br />
<span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">The Israelites are responsible to make their own world better; and that's as much a part of the social justice message as anything. In other words, don't curse the darkness unless you're ready to light a candle. Otherwise Israel’s deity, who is the Lord of history, will intervene, even sending an invading army – the Assyrians – upon the land. The pagan nations roundabout were content to say that the blows of history are random. Ethical monotheism says exactly the reverse. History’s blows are not random. They are the result of the people’s own indi</span><span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">ff</span><span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">erence. In the age of Amos, most people preferred the cultic rituals of temple worship (or even Canaanite fertility cults) to the ethical demands of a righteous deity. It's been argued that even in modern times few are interested in the religion of compassion, preferring the relatively e</span><span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">ff</span><span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">ortless religion of institutionalized worship. Amos, where are you?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">Modern scholars, not surprisingly, weigh in on the issue of whether Amos was against all sacrifice taking place outside of Jerusalem’s Temple. Was that why he appeared at the sanctuary in Bethel? Or was the location of the sacrifice unimportant in comparison to the enormous ethical issues involved? A kindred issue is: what sort of religion was being practiced at Bethel? Israelite monotheism, or a kind of “monolatry,” in which Israel had its singular God, but did not deny the existence of the gods of the surrounding nations, such as Baal and Ashera.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">And that brings to mind a large debate over the very nature of monotheism. Did it come about, as the Bible indicates, as a sudden revelation to Abraham, basically out of the blue? Or, as many if not most modern scholars theorize, slowly and in stages, evolving from primitive Canaanite paganism, to monolatry, to full-blown ethical monotheism. Renowned Israeli philosopher and Biblical scholar, Yehezkel Kaufmann, wasn’t buying it. He insisted that Israelite monotheism didn’t evolve from paganism, but amounted to a whole new beginning, rooted in Moses. After all, the structure of Israelite monotheism lacked any hint of pagan folklore, and the Bible contains not a trace of what we think of </span><span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">as mythology. We don’t find battles among the gods or tales of their birth, perhaps because the war with myth had been fought and won well before the Bible took shape.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">So in a nutshell, was Amos upset because the Israelites were practicing monolatry? Was his harsh harangue part of a larger war against idolatry? Or were the northern Israelites indeed monotheistic, but worshipping in the wrong place - outside of the Jerusalem temple? Furthermore, in Amos’ view, is morality and social justice inseparable from ritual? Does it stem from religious observance, and the right kind of religious observance? Kaufmann argued that Amos did NOT reject Israel’s traditional religion, the so-called “temple cult.” But he did place a revolutionary new stress on morality that went hand in glove with a new attitude toward the temple cult. That of course was his view, which of course is arguable.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">How, then, should we think of history’s first great voice of social justice? Was he, as some see him, a “dissident intellectual,” not particularly concerned with empty religious ritual? Or was he a “conservative radical,” who saw true morality as stemming from faith, which was intimately linked to “kosher” religious observance? Where do you suppose the Rev. doctor Martin Luther King came down? Is religious faith a necessary ingredient for social justice? That’s one to chew on...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">There’s one last issue regarding the prophet Amos. The last section of the book seems to address some age in the far distant future. We read:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "times"; font-size: 12pt;">“</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">On that day I will raise up The tabernacle of David, which has fallen down, And repair its damages; I will raise up its ruins, And rebuild it as in the days of old... Behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord, “When the plowman shall overtake the reaper... I will bring back the captives of My people Israel; They shall build the waste cities and in- habit </span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">them</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">... And no longer shall they be pulled up From the land I have given them,” Says the Lord your God.</span><br />
<span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">(Amos 9: 11-15)</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">,</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"> אָקִים אֶת</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">-</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">סֻכַּת דָּוִיד הַנֹּפֶלֶת</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">;</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"> וְגָדַרְתִּי אֶת</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">-</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">פִּרְצֵיהֶן</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">,</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"> וַהֲרִסֹתָיו אָקִים</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">,</span><br />
<span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">וּבְנִיתִיהָ</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">,</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"> כִּימֵי עוֹלָם הִנֵּה יָמִים בָּאִים</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">,</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"> נְאֻם</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">-</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">יְהוָה</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">,</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"> וְנִגַּשׁ חוֹרֵשׁ בַּקֹּצֵר וְשַׁבְתִּי</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">,</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"> אֶת</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">-</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">שְׁבוּת עַמִּי יִשְׂרָאֵל</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">,</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">וּבָנוּ עָרִים נְשַׁמּוֹת וְיָשָׁבוּ וְלֹא יִנָּתְשׁוּ עוֹד</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">,</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"> מֵעַל אַדְמָתָם אֲשֶׁר נָתַתִּי לָהֶם</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">--</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;">אָמַר</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 14pt;">,</span><span style="color: #ae1916; font-family: "lucidagrande"; font-size: 14pt;"> יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיָ</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">Not a few modern commentators conclude that this must have been added centuries later, long after Jerusalem had been conquered by the Babylonians, after the people had gone into exile for seventy years, and returned to rebuild their cities. Someone, a later scribe perhaps, appended this final passage to make it look as though these things had been prophesied by the original Amos, in the 8th century BCE. Because if Amos really had been so precise about what would happen to the Israelites over the next two centuries, he would have been the greatest soothsayer ever to have put quill to parchment. Moreover, if the prophet had announced the return from captivity before the people were even threatened with exile, his words would have made no sense to his </span><span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">audience, and he would probably been dismissed as mad. So, should we politely rip out the last 5 verses of the book of Amos? As with so much else, it’s up to you, the ultimate jury, to deliver the verdict.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helveticaneue"; font-size: 12pt;">And the rest is history...</span></div>
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Kennethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16189601025476724628noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686062985127827955.post-2490014543800393902019-09-21T06:08:00.002-07:002019-09-21T06:08:43.577-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700;">Who or What Is a Prophet?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12pt;">The immortal words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. still echo in our ears: “I have a dream today.” They were a clarion call for what became one of the great movements of the modern world. Of course I’m talking about the social justice movement. The idea that all should be treated, not according to wealth or social class, but according to the content of their character. Of course Dr. king didn’t invent the idea of social justice. A century and a half ago Abraham Lincoln thunderously declared that all people are created equal. But he didn’t invent such ideas either. Nor did the framers of the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. Don’t you suppose it would be helpful to figure out how and when this curious notion of human rights originated?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12pt;">The truth is, Martin Luther King, like India’s social justice warrior, Mouhandas Gandhi, borrowed extensively from the Bible, specifically from the legacy of the great Hebrew prophets of old. In fact we might make a case that the entire concept of social justice, as we think of it today, is directly rooted in the ancient Israelite prophetic class. And those same prophets are not to be taken for granted. They were in fact about as revolutionary as the wheel. Think about it. The ancient Greeks had their soothsayers and shamans. The ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians had their fortunetellers. But only Israel had prophets in the true sense of the word.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12pt;">One immediate issue we might raise is whether there would have been a Jewish people at all without the prophets. After all, the Jews were a conquered people, having been vanquished by the Babylonians in the year 586 BCE. Their great city of Jerusalem was burned. Their temple destroyed. And their leadership was taken into captivity in faraway Babylon. What normally happens to conquered peoples? They ordinarily become extinct, intermingling with their conquerors, as cultures change and evolve in new directions. The Jews were one ancient people who did not assimilate, but survived against all odds, with their own culture intact. Why? They must have had some powerful motivating factor that kept them alive and distinct. They no longer had a land; they no longer had an army. But they did have an idea. It was an idea as powerful as any imagined.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12pt;">Of course it was the Israelites who gave us the concept of one God – monotheism. But even that wasn’t sufficient reason why this people should survive. So what if this people had only a single God? What if this were a cruel, vengeful God? A God of wrath rather than mercy? Arguably it was the Israelite prophets who at a critical moment in time, transformed the very idea of God into an emblem of transcendent compassion. In the end what we have is not just monotheism. It’s properly called ethical monotheism. And that made all the difference. It gave a conquered people a reason to survive. That said, there are yet other angles to consider.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12pt;">Let me point out that many contemporary scholars would even go as far as to say that the books of Moses, that is the Torah, assumed their final edited form after the earliest classical Israelite prophets. In other words, the prophets, who abruptly appeared during the period of the monarchy, beginning in the 700s BCE, wrote at a time when there were only bits and pieces of the Books of Moses floating around. When all five books, Genesis through Deuteronomy, were finally edited and set in place, they became a counterbalance to the fiery voices of the prophets. First came the prophetic visionaries, then the priestly institutionalizers, who gave us law and order. It’s only a theory, but it does seem that the prophets represent a system of checks and balances against both kings and priests.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12pt;">Perhaps we ought to start our inquiry with the word itself. What does “prophet” mean? Of course it’s a Hebrew word, pronounced: Navi. It doesn’t mean one who foretells the future. A Navi isn’t God’s soothsayer. We should properly understand it as meaning “spokesman.“ Not a foreteller, but a forthteller. And on that score very much like Dr. Martin Luther King. And that means that most people, who automatically fancy the prophets as tellers of the future, have got it all wrong. That’s not to say they never delivered messages of things yet to come. That just wasn’t their primary mission. The divine commission was straightforward enough, even if it often sounded like Mission Impossible: “Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to stand up on behalf of the weak and the oppressed. To be a voice for social justice. This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds.” Not surprisingly, most of the prophets weren’t exactly thrilled with Mission Impossible, and were inclined to ask: “Couldn’t you have chosen somebody else?“ In the final analysis the truest characteristic of a prophet was reluctance. In a sense Israel’s greatest prophets, the likes of Amos, Isaiah and Jeremiah, came out of nowhere. Their appearance was as unexpected as it was sudden. There was however an earlier class of Israelite prophets, not nearly as well known, who arrived on the scene centuries earlier. These were in fact of the shamanic variety, wandering to and fro across the land and delivering oracular pronouncements, often in an altered state of consciousness. We might call them ecstatic prophets and consider them somewhat akin to the Greek oracles. Moses is called a prophet, and so is Samuel. We’re told that the young man Saul, whom Samuel anoints to be Israel’s first king, doesn’t really want the job and wanders off to join a troupe of these early prophets. He’s later found rolling around on the ground naked, and the saying arises: Is Saul too among the prophets.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12pt;">The last of this breed of early prophets is a venerable character known as Eliahu - Elijah. On Mt. Carmel in northern Israel, a monastery marks the spot where in tradition Elijah challenged 450 prophets of Baal to a great demonstration of who was the real God. Sacrifices were placed on an altar to Baal and on another to the God of Israel. The pa</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12pt;">gan prophets’ ecstatic appeals to Baal to kindle the wood on his altar were met with silence, but Elijah’s prayers were answered by fire from heaven, consuming the sacrifice, the stones of the altar itself, the earth and even the water in the trench. Under Elijah’s direction the impassioned Israelites went on to slay the priests and prophets of Baal, and a sudden rain brought an end to the drought which had been plaguing the land.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12pt;">Elijah may well represent the last gasp of this early prophetic movement. As he later flees from Jezebel’s wrath he seeks shelter on the so-called Mountain of God. Multiple signs appear - a mighty wind, an earthquake, and fire. But the divine presence is in none of them. Only then does he hear a still small voice. This is how Elijah encounters God. The essence of this narrative is that this God – the God of Israel – is not to be confused with any created thing. This God is Other - completely separate from the physical world. It's not exactly a social justice message, but it’s a powerful philosophic statement nonetheless.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12pt;">It would take another century and a half before a completely new breed of prophets would arise - prophets who didn’t just deliver oracles but who wrote entire books featuring some of the most powerful prose and poetry ever written. They would also make a new contribution to human civilization, for instead of praising their own society and culture with unquestioned support, they would turn established decorum on its head. For the first time in history they would lead a social campaign, questioning their own people. They would teach the importance of self criticism. Of urging society by example to make the world a better place. Of bequeathing to future generations a world that is better than they found it.<br />And the rest is history...</span></div>
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Kennethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16189601025476724628noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686062985127827955.post-66065381657354889342018-01-28T05:18:00.001-08:002018-01-28T05:18:23.728-08:00Digging Up Abraham<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">They called him "the father of pots.” It takes a certain kind of temperament to spend one's life digging around in the dirt. But eccentric Egyptologist Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie understood how archaeology would henceforth and forever be defined: the study of pots. It was he who declared that the construction of the ancient past is best accomplished not by considering gigantic monuments left behind, but by piecing together the tiny remnants of broken earthenware, the "unconsidered trifles.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">However, in the last decade of the 19th century Petrie was destined to stumble upon something that, while previously unconsidered, was hardly a trifle. It would in fact write a new chapter in the contentious field of biblical archaeology. Who was this William Flinders Petrie? The grandson of the first person to map Australia, here was a fellow with exploration in his blood. A sickly child, his mother, a scholar in her own right, taught him Hebrew, Greek and Latin. Though he lacked formal education, his father taught him surveying, which contributed to his later career as an archaeologist. As an eight year old boy he overheard a family discussion of an archaeological dig of an ancient Roman villa on the Isle of Wight, and protested that the earth ought to be cleared away with care rather than roughly shoveled out. As an elderly man, he later wrote:</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span><span style="font-kerning: none;">“All that I have done since was there to begin with, so true it is that we can only develop what is born in the mind. I was already in archaeology by nature.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">By the time he was a teenager, he was surveying prehistoric sites in Britain – an impressive beginning of a career that would lead him to Egypt, where he made a triangulation survey of the pyramids at Giza. He later got to work excavating the fabled city of Luxor: </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">“</span><span style="font-kerning: none;">Beyond the civilized regions of modern Egypt, past even the country palm Groves, where a stranger is rarely seen, there stretches out to the Mediterranean a desolation of mud and swamp, impassable in winter, and only dried into an impalpable salt dust by the heat of midsummer. To tell land from water, to say where the mud ends and the lakes begin, requires a long experience; the flat expanse as level as the sea, covered with slowly drying salt pools, may be crossed for miles, with only the dreary changes of dust, black mud, water, and a black mud again, which it is impossible to define as more land than water or more water than land. The only objects which break the flatness of the barren horizon are the low mounds of the cities of the dead; these alone remain to show that this region was once a living land, whose people prospered on the earth</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">It was in the funerary temple of the great pharaoh Merneptah that Petrie discovered an inscribed stone. Petrie was of course trying to uncover new evidence of ancient Egypt, but little did he know that what he had stumbled upon was nothing less than a milestone in biblical scholarship. Today it resides in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, but Petrie came upon it in the year 1896. Covered in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic characters, the black granite stone slab called a stele stands over seven feet tall. It celebrates Pharaoh Merneptah's triumphant campaigns of conquest. The gods Mut and Horus appear prominently, and two images of the god Amon face outward to the pharaoh. Toward the end of the inscription, in the twenty-fourth line, we find a single staggering proclamation: </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">“</span><span style="font-kerning: none;">The Canaan has been plundered into every sort of woe:</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span><span style="font-kerning: none;">Ashkelon has been overcome;</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span><span style="font-kerning: none;">Gezer has been captured;</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Yano%27am&action=edit&redlink=1"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 153); color: #000099; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">Yano'am</span></a></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> is made non-existent.</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span><span style="font-kerning: none;">Israel lies desolate; its seed is no more."</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Dating to the 13th century B.C.E., the stele represents the oldest mention of the word "Israel" anywhere in the world outside of the Bible itself. The Merneptah Stele is all the more important, considering that scholars have long been prone to “minimizing” the biblical text. Something about the scholarly temperament is trained to question everything. And that’s all the more true when it comes to a religious text. Casting doubt upon holy writ is somehow fashionable. It should hardly surprise us, then, that stories about the biblical patriarchs, about Moses, the great lawgiver, and about Joshua and the conquest of the land of Canaan, have come to be greeted with the same level of trust as Arthurian legend, and the knights of the Round Table. It all makes for a nice story, but don't take it too seriously. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Many minimalists have not dared admit to the existence of a national or ethnic identity called “Israel" until at least the ninth century B.C.E. That would have been during the period of Israel's monarchy, when two squabbling kingdoms, consisting of ten tribes in the north and two in the south, were locked in constant competition for political and military supremacy. There <i>was no</i> King David, so they tell us, and even the fabled King Solomon is only that – a fable. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">But if it isn't exactly possible to prove anything on the basis of a religious text like the Bible, what about a stone inscription from Egypt, that may safely be dated four centuries older than modern conventional wisdom about when Israel as a people came to exist? If ever there were an archaeological "smoking gun," the Merneptah Stele is a serious contender. Nonetheless, the minimalist camp isn’t about to take a stone slab like this one lying down.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Meet Philip R. Davies, professor emeritus of biblical studies at the University of Sheffield, England. Serving as director for the Centre for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and publisher of Sheffield Academic Press, he became a leading advocate for the movement known as the Copenhagen School. He and other prominent scholars, including Niels Peter Lemche, Keith Whitelam, and Thomas L. Thompson, have been branded biblical “minimalists” by their detractors. Then there’s the acclaimed Israeli archaeologist, Israel Finkelstein, who also casts serious doubt on much of the biblical record of things. The claims of the minimalists are straightforward enough: that the Bible's version of history isn't supported by any archaeological evidence unearthed so far. In short the Bible cannot be trusted as history.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Biblical minimalists are fond of declaring that the Bible was written thousands of years after the events it describes. Some extreme minimalists go as far as to suggest that it may have been written by Greek speaking Hellenistic Jews, perhaps as late as the first couple of centuries B.C.E. These later Israelites were supposed to have invented the myth of old Israel in order to justify themselves as its spiritual heirs. As with so many readers of the Bible, Davies began to doubt the historical validity of the text. He couldn't believe that over three million people – ancient Israelites – exited Egypt and crossed the Sinai desert over a period of forty years. He couldn't believe that the same Israelites, led by Joshua, committed genocide on a whole people – the Canaanites – and occupied the land in their place. In short he became convinced that the society and history created by the writers of the Bible was an imaginary one. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Nonetheless, in light of Petrie's discovery, those who minimize the biblical record are prone to pivot to other arguments. For example, the stele relates nothing about Israelites living in Egypt, prior to the supposed “exodus.” Finkelstein points out that the famed stele provides nary a word, not a single clue, that Israelites were ever <i>in</i> Egypt. Nor does any other Egyptian hieroglyphic evidence. It refers instead to a settled group of people, already dwelling in the land of Canaan. On the other hand, the stele is perfectly consistent with the idea that a historical character named Moses led his people out of Egypt in the days of the great Pharaoh, Ramses II, around the year 1280 B.C.E. After forty years of wandering, they would have entered Canaan under Joshua around 1240, well in time for a subsequent pharaoh, Merneptah, to launch an attack and claim that this rebellious people were now “desolate.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The minimalists have no choice but to claim that the “Israel” of the stele is not the same Israel that later came to thrive in the region, or that came to be identified with the Jewish people. Who, then, are Merneptah’s “Israel”? Some other people in Canaan who just happen to have gone by the same name? That’s not impossible, but it does require some mental gymnastics. It’s also the predicament in which some archaeologists find themselves when they start with “foregone conclusions.” As another modern Israeli archaeologist, Amnon ben-Tor, pointed out, the guiding principle of many is: “If it’s in the Bible, it must be wrong.” But don’t tell that to William Matthew Flinders Petrie, who never quite knew what he was looking for … until he found it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">We have to recognize that when it comes to finding hard archaeological evidence of historical characters who lived that long ago, even the likes of Moses, we're skating on proverbially thin ice. And if we can't even prove the existence of Moses, what about the greatest biblical patriarch of all – Abraham? In any case, British archaeologist K.A. Kitchen famously declared: "The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">That said, it’s time we meet Sir Leonard Woolley. Born in the northeast London Borough of Hackney in 1880, to a large and impoverished family, Leonard Woolley's long odyssey that would lead him to Abraham's birthplace amounted to a series of happy accidents. His father was a local vicar and had a parish there. He wanted to become a clergyman himself, but didn't do well enough on his exams. The warden of his college subsequently called him and gave him the news - he was to become an archaeologist. In 1912 he got his first chance to lead a dig at a prominent site in Syria called Carchemish, along with a young chap named T.E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia. They augmented their digging with a dose of spying on the nearby German construction of the Berlin to Baghdad Railway. With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Woolley was commissioned and dispatched to Cairo, where he teamed up again with Lawrence and with the illustrious archaeologist turned spy, Gertrude Bell, who established the first antiquities service in Iraq and founded the Iraq Museum. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Woolley observed:</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">“</span><span style="font-kerning: none;">The war brought the archaeologist out in a new light, and his habit of prying about in countries little known, his knowledge of peoples, and his gift of tongues, turned to uses far other than his wont. In Egypt alone there were half a dozen of us attached to the Headquarters Staff; in Mesopotamia, in the Greek Islands and at the Salonica, there were intelligence officers and interpreters who had graduated in archaeology, and the discovery that what had seemed the mere stock-in-trade of one’s profession could thus find wider scope made one regard it as possessing maybe some value of its own.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Woolley was subsequently captured when the ship on which he sailed was blown up in the Mediterranean. He spent the duration of the war in a Turkish POW camp. When the hostilities ended, he was granted a permit, in 1922, to excavate the ancient site of Ur in southwestern Iraq. Woolley's journey had brought him here, to the place where, he was convinced, Abraham’s journey began. Describing the topography, Woolley observed:</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">“</span><span style="font-kerning: none;">It was a delta periodically flooded, and in the summer scorched by a pitiless sun, but its soil, light and stoneless, was as rich as could be found anywhere on earth, and scarcely needed man’s labor to produce man's food. The description in Genesis of the creation of the earth as man's home agrees admirably with the process of the formation of the Mesopotamian delta: ‘Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so… And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.’”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Woolley made hugely important discoveries at the site, where a great ziggurat – curiously reminiscent of the biblical Tower of Babel – featured prominently. Later, Woolley’s future wife Katharine was to join the team, initially to run the domestic side of the expedition, but later as an able draughtsman who also helped uncover some of the most delicate finds. These included ancient tombs of great material wealth, containing paintings of Sumerian culture at its high point, as well as gold and silver ornaments and other furnishings. Woolley was fond of pointing out to visitors an area of houses south of the ziggurat, the likes of which Abraham might have inhabited. These houses are now dated to around 1800 B.C.E. – exactly when Jewish tradition places the patriarch’s birth. Woolley even suggested that flood stratum he found in the city might lay at the root of the story of Noah – perhaps a local inundation rather than a worldwide flood. The bottom line is that when place locations mentioned in the Bible match what we find in the archaeological record, we may well be onto something historical. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">But before jumping to the conclusion that Abraham may well have been a historical personage, bear in mind that for good archaeologists, as for good detectives, the devil is in the details. And one such detail is the conspicuous presence of camels in the biblical narrative. We read that Abraham’s servant, Eliezer, is sent to find a wife for the patriarch’s son, Isaac. When he encounters Isaac's bride to be, Rebecca, she draws water not only for Eliezer but for his ten camels as well. But biblical trouble arose when two researchers from Tel Aviv University found camel bones south of the Dead Sea, dating to the 10th century B.C.E. and determined that this was the earliest use of domesticated camels. That's 1,000 years later than the days of Abraham and Isaac. Which means there <i>were no</i> domesticated camels at the time of the patriarchs and they have no business being in the Biblical account. Might all of these stories have been fabricated out of whole cloth many centuries after the fact? On the other hand, we also have a list of domesticated animals from ancient Mesopotamia – Ugarit – dating as early as 1950 B.C.E., and mentioning, among other beasts, a camel. So for most every argument we have a counterclaim. And that's the way it is…</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Then there’s the fact that there are several places called Ur, and the best evidence of today’s archaeologists seems to indicate that the Ur of Abraham was in the same region as Haran in Northern Mesopotamia, and <i>not</i> the famous Ur in Southern Mesopotamia. There are in fact compelling reasons to place Ur of the Chaldees near Haran, identifying it with either Ura or Urfa. But even if Abraham came from one of these other locations, so what? Nothing has ever been uncovered to invalidate his existence, and the fact that such place names are accurate suggests that there might be more history here than our minimalist friends would care to admit. Indeed, the pastoral lifestyle of the patriarchs appears to many to mesh well with that of Bedouin nomads down to the present day – measuring wealth in terms of sheep and goats, clan conflicts with villagers over water wells, and disputes over grazing land. While this view of the biblical nomads has also been challenged, there is yet other circumstantial evidence that came to light with the discovery in 1933 of an ancient Sumerian city called Mari. It was inhabited from the fifth millennium B.C.E., until 1759 B.C.E., when it was sacked by the Babylonian king Hammurabi. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Some Bedouin tribesmen were digging in a mound for something to use as a gravestone, when they stumbled upon a headless statue. The French, to whom Syria belonged in those days, dispatched archaeologists from the Louvre to begin excavating the site. In short order they uncovered the ancient temple of Ishtar, along with more than 25,000 clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform lettering in ancient Akkadian. It was a veritable treasure trove, bearing directly on the biblical record, since, for example, it mentions the biblical city of Nahor, referenced by the book of Genesis. There are also references to a group of nomads known in Akkadian as <i>Habiru</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Some have identified Abraham as one of these <i>Habiru</i>, a word that sounds curiously</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">similar to “Hebrew.”</span><span style="font-kerning: none; vertical-align: 5.0px;"> </span><span style="font-kerning: none;">They were semi-nomadic people described elsewhere, by Egyptian sources, as “wanderers” or “outcasts.” They were shepherds, agriculturalists, stone-cutters, and soldiers. They might also be understood as “guerrilla warriors” – a kind of ancient militia who rose up as needed. In the ancient Egyptian Amarna tablets, they are called ‘Apiru.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The so-called father of biblical archaeology, William Foxwell Albright, also took notice. Born to Methodist missionaries in Coquimbo Chile in 1891, he overcame the physical limitations of severe nearsightedness and a crippled left hand - mangled by a farm machine in his early childhood. When he was ten years old his parents bought him his most cherished possession – the recently published <i>History of Babylonian and Assyria</i>. That two-volume work would launch him on his lifelong journey of ancient discoveries. More than anyone else, it was Albright who pioneered the movement that would bring the science of archaeology to bear on the study of the biblical world. He observed:</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">“</span><span style="font-kerning: none;">We read in the tablets of Ugarit that escaped slaves had been accustomed to find asylum with the ‘Apiru, preferably on the other side of the border between the Hittite empire proper and the vassal state of Ugarit. This practice was explicitly forbidden and runaway slaves had to be extradited. We find constant complaints in the Amarna tablets about 'Apiru raids in both Syria and Palestine, as well as about intrigues of Canaanite rulers with the 'Apiru. A Palestinian ruler distinguishes clearly between three groups: 'Apiru, robbers (or <i>habbatu</i>) and Beduin (or <i>Sutu</i>)... In other words, a clear distinction was drawn in this period, at least in Palestine and Syria, between 'Apiru and Beduin on one hand, and robber bands on the other. The 'Apiru might rob, and so might the Beduin; on the other hand, robbery was usually sporadic among the 'Apiru and they were much less nomadic then the Beduin."</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">While we can’t prove archaeologically that Israelites ever lived in Egypt, one intriguing theory links them with these semi-nomadic ‘Apiru, or <i>Habiru</i>, who included farmers, merchants, construction workers, and warriors. This theory too has its deficits, since the term seems to describe a social class rather than an ethnic group.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In any case, the book of Genesis relates that Isaac’s son Joseph was sold by his brothers into slavery in Egypt, only to rise to become the Pharaoh’s most trusted advisor. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Joseph ultimately saves his wayward brothers, who end up in Egypt themselves, in search of food during a famine. Interestingly enough, an Egyptian tomb painting from the Middle Kingdom (which lasted from around 2,000 to 1,800 B.C.E.) depicts Asiatic ‘Apiru entering the land - for sustenance in a time of famine.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Joseph’s entire family comes down to join him in Egypt, settling in the rich and fertile land of Goshen, and all ends well ... or appears to. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">For a long time, archaeologists and biblical minimalists have renounced the idea of an Israelite captivity in Egypt corresponding to the biblical record of the Exodus. Countering this, we have the relatively recent unearthing of Israelite-style four-room homes found among Medinet Habu, opposite Luxor in Egypt near the remains of the temple of Ay and Horemheb. These may be compared to the many homes that have been found in excavations in the land of Israel, given the distinct similarities of pattern and function. In other words, they are not Egyptian at all in design. This is an important discovery by which archaeology begins corroborating the evidence of the biblical record yet again. And although the timeline doesn’t seem to entirely match, this is a great moment for those who, like William Foxwell Albright, value the science of archaeology, while appreciating the historicity of the biblical record. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">While the Bible suggests that the Hebrews peacefully coexisted with the Egyptians for a good two centuries, if the Habiru theory holds any water, they may actually have been employed as an integral component in the defense of Egy pt, protecting it from the Canaanite menace to the north. That’s why the Bible takes pains to point out that they settle in the northern Nile Delta area – the land of Goshen. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Some speculate that this mercenary army is only about a thousand strong, significantly less than the hundreds of thousands of biblical tradition, but they are significant enough to trouble what the Bible calls: “a pharaoh ... who did not know about Joseph.”</span><span style="font-kerning: none; vertical-align: 5.0px;"> </span><span style="font-kerning: none;">The reference might conceivably be to Seti I (who ruled from 1294 to 1279 B.C.E.), and who became concerned about the growing power of this Hebrew horde, declaring:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“Behold, the people of the children of Israel are too many and too mighty for us; come, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there comes upon us any war, they also join themselves to our enemies, and fight against us, and get them up out of the land."</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">He decides that the best course is to set them to work, building fortifications and city walls. In point of fact, we’re not really sure what this “slavery” amounted to. The traditional idea that vast throngs of Hebrews wearing shackles labor under the cruel whips of their taskmasters is undoubtedly a stretch. By contrast, while standard English translations tell us they are “slaves,” the actual Hebrew word is <i>avadim</i>, meaning “laborers,” perhaps “corvée laborers,” or “day laborers.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">While minimalists continue to argue for a late date of composition of the biblical accounts (the 7th century B.C.E. or later), allowing none of this to be read as history, others, such as Israeli archaeologist Amihai Mazar, note that details in the Bible's narrative coincide well with what archaeology tells us about those ancient days. For example, we know that there were major building projects during the long reign of Pharaoh Ramses II, and the presence of slaves in Egypt and their migration <i>from</i> Egypt is well-attested in the archaeological and historical record.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Might the laborers, or <i>avadaim,</i> of the biblical account have found themselves working on the building projects of Pharaoh Ramses II? The Hebrews, according to this theory, aren’t “owned” in the way we imagine slaves in bondage; rather their servitude consists only in the dispensation of their labor. Hindsight being twenty-twenty, it must have seemed to the editors of the Bible that entering into the pharaoh’s employ, however it came about, was a grievous form of bondage. Who would not argue that it might have been better for the children of Abraham to suffer the ravages of famine in the land of Canaan than to enter the relative “safety” of servitude in Egypt? But enter they do, and in the end they will require nothing less than a revolution. They will need an “exodus.” </span></div>
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Kennethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16189601025476724628noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686062985127827955.post-28151681317460002462016-03-28T10:39:00.001-07:002016-04-07T20:46:02.862-07:00Whose Holy Land?: Archaeology Meets Geopolitics in Today’s Middle East<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Biblical Archaeology today is more than just an obscure field for academic eggheads. It’s a mine field, with implications that may well determine the course of events, geopolitically, for the Middle East and the entire world. It’s exciting enough that there are always “Indiana Jones” adventures lurking in the background, including fantastic new discoveries, as well as age-old discussions about the fate of the Ark of the Covenant, among other things. But more than that, there’s the modern struggle to flesh out a “narrative” – a story about the origins of the “Holy Land” and to whom it belongs. The artifacts of archaeology are more than just museum pieces; they’re the storytellers, witnesses in stone, relating, in unbiased fashion, what the unvarnished truth is behind who lived in this land and when. It’s not surprising then, that modern parties to the Middle East conflict would be locked in dispute about the ownership of the artifacts as well as the land. The bottom line is: Whoever controls the artifacts controls the narrative. And the narrative is what it’s all about.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>This is no small issue, and Israelis are keenly aware of what’s at stake, for archaeology is ultimately about history, and history is the raison d’être for Jews living in this land. At the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Ph.D. program in Biblical Archaeology is full, with a waiting list to get in. Never mind that the course of study is more grueling than imaginable, requiring proficiency in multiple languages and a good decade of rigorous study. Israelis want to know: Did we just drift through space and time, finally landing here? Or have we been in this land from almost the dawn of civilization? What about Palestinian claims on the land, and attempts to minimize Jewish claims by minimizing the archaeological record?</div>
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For my part, I want to “level” with “the folks” about what the Bible and its legacy has to do with what’s really at stake in the modern Middle East. While I happen to teach biblical archaeology at the second largest university in the United States, what I write isn’t designed as a college text for my students. It’s a lot more “edgy” than that, weaving the fabric of the ancient world into the most explosive issues in modern geopolitics. Having lived several years in Jerusalem and northern Galilee, and having worked for a television news-gathering organization in war-torn Lebanon, I ought to know a few things about the region, both ancient and modern. Bottom line: I’ve got a true story to tell, with real-world consequences; and I mean to tell it. </div>
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A good place to begin is with the creation of the modern state of Israel, which exists because of a single book: the Bible. Even though the majority of modern Israelis call themselves "secular," and though a good number of those are proud atheists, there's no denying that the Jewish state is located in the Middle East because that's where the Bible located it. Back in the nineteenth century, the father of the Zionist movement, Theodore Herzl, proposed alternatives to the land of Israel, which the Ottoman Turks (who owned the region back then) refused to sell. How about Argentina? How about Uganda, which the British generously offered to sell? The international Zionist Congress nixed them both. There had to be a connection with the ancient biblical homeland, or there wouldn't be enough motivation for the Jewish "pioneers" to come in large numbers. </div>
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That's the connection that continues to this day, for religious and secular Jews alike. Today's Israelis would like to believe that the land they love and covet – that they're willing to fight, bleed, and die for – really is part of their biblical heritage. The question for us is, can we rely on the biblical account at all? Are the locations referenced in holy writ "genuine," and the stories about them "accurate." Or is the Good Book just "whistling Dixie"? Would discrediting the Bible actually change the “narrative” of the Middle East Conflict, playing out today? The Palestinians, among others, think that it would, and they’re more than willing to indulge in some “Bible Wars” as one more weapon in their anti-Israel arsenal. Oddly enough, they’re joined in this dubious cause by a small army of “minimalist” biblical scholars, as referenced by the editor-in-chief of Biblical Archaeology Review, Hershel Shanks. Mr. Shanks points out that a serious prejudice exists against the Bible and its record among the most respected scholars in the whole field of biblical archaeology. </div>
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Remarkably, this prejudice is found even among Israeli scholars, who we might think would be in the first line of defense of the sacred text. Shanks points to his good friend, Ronny Reich of Haifa University, excavator-in-chief of the City of David, who excoriated another Israeli archaeologist, Eilat Mazar of the Hebrew University, for using the Bible as a guide for where to dig. Now, let’s get this straight. If you put a spade to the ground on the basis of, say, a Canaanite inscription or an Egyptian hieroglyph, you’re a genius. But dare to excavate on a hunch from the Bible and you’re completely irresponsible, perhaps even a crazed “fundamentalist.” To be sure, the Middle East has no shortage of fundamentalists, Jewish and Muslim alike. But good archaeology doesn’t have to be fundamentalist-driven to establish who lived in this land millennia ago. And mightn’t that knowledge have serious implications on whom the land belongs to today? </div>
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Back at my own university, I like to tell my students that what archaeology really amounts to is “the study of pots.” But the implications of such “trivia” are often astounding, for how you interpret the pots creates the story you tell. What happens, however, when you can’t even get your hands on the pots? What happens when there’s no freedom of access to important archaeological sites, because they have effectively been laid claim to by Islam? While it’s fashionable today to speak in support of the Palestinians and criticize Israel for expropriating “Arab land,” history tells us quite the reverse. Whether at the Temple Mount in the heart of Jerusalem, where a Muslim shrine sits atop the ancient Holy of Holies, or in Hebron, where a mosque dominates the site of Abraham’s ancient tomb, the truth is that down through history, the Arabs never batted an eye about expropriating Jewish land and building their own monuments and holy sites atop Jewish ones. The site of the Jewish Temple is now the Islamic site of the isra and miraj – the “nocturnal journey” of Muhammad from Mecca to Jerusalem and his subsequent ascent to heaven. Abraham, whose burial place is revered among Jews, is now Ibrahim, the father of the “true” child of promise, Ismail (Ishmael). The father-son duo would subsequently build the “Sacred House,” the Ka’bah, in Mecca.</div>
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It’s a bit like going on vacation, only to find, on your return, that somebody has broken into your house, taken it over, and now claims to be you. Moreover, you aren’t even allowed access to your house, to prove that it was originally yours. But what if there are photographs, documents, books, mementos and the like, that indisputably demonstrate your ownership of the premises? “I’m sorry,” says the new “owner.” “You are not even allowed to search for them, as the property is mine and has always been mine.” </div>
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The larger, political narrative that the Arab world wants to tell – and has effectively convinced most of the world to believe – is that the Jews amount to modern colonialists, infiltrators from Europe and elsewhere, who have seized Arab land by force. Jewish archaeology must be countered, even suppressed, so that the Arab narrative will prevail. Even the Dead Sea Scrolls, the two-thousand-year-old library of manuscript finds from the Judean Desert, clear evidence of ancient Jewish presence in this land, must be returned to the Palestinians, as they were originally discovered on “Arab land.”</div>
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None of this, however, has been able to deter the half-million Jewish settlers, who moved into the area known as the West Bank of the Jordan River, in the decades following its conquest by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War. To them this territory is “Judea and Samaria,” the heartland of biblical Israel. Their ramshackle trailers and concrete homes are, they believe, sitting directly above multiple layers of Jewish civilization, dating all the way back to King Solomon, King David, and “Avraham Avinu” – “our father Abraham.” There is no place on earth where archaeology is more relevant to modern geopolitics and the incendiary issues that might culminate in the next regional war. </div>
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Near ancient Hebron, in the heart of what is planned to become the new Palestinian state, they have built the modern settlement of Kiryat Arba. Though considered illegal under international law, the settlers appeal to a higher authority, the Bible: “Now the name of Hebron before was Kirjath-Arba” (Joshua 14:15). These settlers are not about to be dislodged by anyone or for any reason, even if it means war, or, should Israel decide to evacuate them, civil war. Given such fanatical devotion, isn’t it time we ask archaeology to weigh in on the likes of Hebron and Kiryat Arba?</div>
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Other West Bank settlements have also been given biblical names, such as Ophrah, a town in the ancient territory of Benjamin, also mentioned in the book of Joshua (18:23). In another settlement, called Amona, founded in 1995, an Israeli woman explains, “I walk around here with my children and tell them, ‘This is the hill that Abraham climbed; this is where Jacob had his dream. It’s not something that was ‘once upon a time; it’s alive, and now.’” But we might ask: Can the science of archaeology substantiate any of this? Can we prove that any of the heroes of the Bible ever lived at all? Are the people around whom the whole Arab-Israeli conflict swirls living on top of history, or fairy tales? Whether or not it even matters to most people today, it certainly matters to them; and they’re the ones who are on the front lines of the battle for the Holy Land. </div>
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The heart of the struggle comes together in Jerusalem. When and if the battle of Armageddon is ever fought, it may well center on this eternal city. Jerusalem after all is the City of David… Or is it? Was there indeed a King David? Can we find remains of his city? What about the Temple and the great palace of Solomon? The plan before the international community is to make East Jerusalem the capital of the new state of Palestine. That would of necessity mean dividing the city, turning it into the Berlin of the twenty-first century. And it would most likely result in placing an international border exactly above the Western Wall of the Temple Mount. For those Israelis convinced that this is the spot closest to the ancient Holy of Holies, the result would likely be nothing short of categorical rejection of such a division, perhaps even civil war. The fight on both sides is over an ancient heritage, that may or may not be confirmed by the archaeological record. My hope is that what follows is well more than an entertaining read. It is needed. It is necessary. It is essential. It will present solid evidence to support claims to the land. It will have impact politically far beyond its immediate value as a work of scholarship.</div>
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So, perhaps it’s time to dig beneath the surface – quite literally – and discover the truth that the stones have been trying to tell us for so long. Hang on to your fedoras; it’s likely to be a wild ride…</div>
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A Personal Note<br />
I first arrived in Israel decades ago, in 1978, a history major at the University of Illinois, spending my senior year studying abroad. I was deeply interested in the idea of a modern nation sitting on top of an ancient land, and my goal was to gain a level of expertise in the biblical antiquities of the region. I had enrolled in a small private school for Holy Land research catering to graduate students, and I couldn’t wait to get out in the field. The school’s approach was to combine intense classroom study and library research with regular excursions across the length and breadth of the land of Israel, and I was soon “hooked.” I was, however, more than a little surprised at how much time we spent in the “occupied” Israeli territories – the West Bank of the Jordan River. My initial expectation was that we’d be spending most of our time visiting sites in Hebrew-speaking areas of modern Israel. Instead, our guides had us walking the back roads of the Muslim-Arab territories. We did of course see our share of sites within “Israel proper,” from ancient Caesarea, on the Mediterranean coast, to Capernaum, on the Sea of Galilee, to the great plateau of Masada, in the Judean Desert. But so many of the truly important biblical sites were smack in the heart of areas conquered by Israel in the June 1967 Six Day War, that I couldn’t help but wonder how this thoroughly Jewish ancient land ended up being claimed by Arabs as their own, as it were “from time immemorial.” </div>
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When headed off to the biblical city of Shekhem, that dates all the way back to Abraham, whom the Bible tells us built an altar there, we found ourselves in the Palestinian Arab city of Nablus. A hub of anti-Israeli militancy, it was apparent from even a cursory glance that the city was under constant military surveillance. Israeli soldiers were stationed on rooftops, making sure that calm pervaded in the streets below. We had come to see the antiquities, and the biblically picturesque Mount Gerizim in the distance, which we were able to do without disturbance. The peace may have been uneasy, but at least there was quiet. Down to the south, we stopped in ancient Jericho, the city famously conquered by the Israelite hero Joshua. The archaeology was stunningly impressive. The modern city, like Nablus, was under Israeli military rule, insuring, on a practical level, peace and quiet. Jericho was open for tourism, and open for business.</div>
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Further south into Judea we saw biblical Hebron, home to the Tombs of the Patriarchs – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. The massive structure occupying the site was built by none other than King Herod the Great – the most architecturally complete ancient edifice in all the land of Israel. In the 1970s, it was possible to visit both the mosque the sits atop Herod’s great limestone ashlars and the more ancient remains beneath. Again, under Israeli military occupation, there was, at the very least, peace and quiet. Hebron, like Nablus and Jericho, was open for tourism, and open for business.<br />
Jerusalem itself was, of course, the “crown jewel” of archaeological treasures. We strolled freely around the huge plateau known as the Temple Mount, the Haram al-Sharif in Arabic. There was nary a concern for security, only sheer excitement at the prospect of entering into the Dome of the Rock itself and taking in, with wide-eyed amazement, the splendor of this site, the third holiest in the Islamic world. </div>
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In the decades that followed, however, everything would change on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem. The signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 and the dawn of the “peace process” would bring only turmoil. Nowadays, when I escort American groups on tour to Israel, there are many places we simply don’t visit. Our Israeli guides won’t take us there. Shechem/ Nablus is off-limits to American tourists. Violence in Nablus spiked during the first decade of the twenty-first century, becoming a focal point of the “Second Intifada” against Israel, and a center for the production and firing of rockets. Jericho is a possibility for those who want to venture there privately, but the days of Israeli tour groups filling the shops, en-route to the archaeological site, are long gone. Hebron is a no-go these days as well, and tourists can forget about visiting the Dome of the Rock. </div>
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I’m left musing, “Now that we have a ‘peace process,’ what happened to the peace?” In any case, it was clear to me from the beginning that if we look, not at modern border lines, but beneath the surface of this “holy land,” biblical Israel was substantially larger than the sliver of a country called “Israel” today. It was equally clear that the multitude of Jewish settlers, who today live in these “occupied Israeli territories,” are driven, not only by the biblical stories, but by the physical remains of a great Jewish civilization that lies buried beneath these same West Bank hills and valleys. It is the interplay between those remains and the contemporary geopolitical struggle that will be the focus of the pages that follow. Whose land is it? The proof lies under the ground. We will have to do the digging.</div>
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Kennethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16189601025476724628noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686062985127827955.post-56004286666239419822016-03-21T14:10:00.003-07:002016-03-21T14:10:30.128-07:00Passover, Easter and the “Apocalypse”<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Springtime is a season that's all about rebirth and renewal, and it also has as its spiritual centerpiece two religious holidays, Easter for Christians and Passover for Jews. But hardly anyone recognizes that each of these holiday has much in common with the other, though not as one might think. What I mean by that is that both Passover and Easter share an undercurrent of apocalypticism, the origin which is in Judaism itself. Indeed, the whole concept of eschatology, that is the “end of days,” normally associated with Christianity, is at its core Jewish, and intimately connected with the springtime feasts celebrated by both Jews and Christians. <a name='more'></a>Take Passover, the great Jewish commemoration of the Exodus from Egypt. Hardly anyone thinks of Passover as apocalyptic, but it is, and that fact is underscored by the mystical presence throughout the festivities of the prophet Elijah. At the heart of the Passover observance is a festive meal, and it's no accident that a place at the table is to be set at the beginning for the prophet Elijah, just in case he shows up at this home on this evening. Later, at the end of the meal, the door is opened to see if perhaps Elijah has come. It is then that everyone raises a final cup of wine and declares, "Next year in Jerusalem!”<br /><br />The meaning of all this is lost on many modern observers of Passover, but the core of the tradition is the belief that one day Elijah will herald the arrival of the Messiah. In most Jewish circles today, little is said about the Messiah or the messianic age. But among the Orthodox there is a sincere belief that the "anointed one" is destined to arrive at some point in history. The tradition goes back to ancient Israel, when the prophet Isaiah wrote of a future king who will sit on David's throne. But what most people don't recognize is that even among the ancient Israelites there were two competing traditions about the Messiah. <br /><br />According to one, the “Messiah son of David” will come with signs and wonders, as a mighty judge at the end of the age, The prophet Daniel depicts him coming with the clouds of heaven. The prophet Zechariah, by contrast, presents a very different view: "Behold, your king comes to you… humble and riding upon a donkey.” The sages of old call him “Messiah son of Joseph,” and reconcile the two by saying that if Israel is worthy, the Messiah will arrive accompanied by miracles from On High. If, however, Israel is unworthy, the Messiah will come in deep humility.<br /><br />In such a case the coming of the Messiah will be accompanied by birth pangs – considerable travail and suffering, known in Hebrew as Hevlei ha-Mashiakh, literally, the “pangs of the Messiah.” There are specific predictions in Jewish writings of what such pangs will include:<br /><br />• Parents and the elderly will be disrespected,<br />• The old will have to seek favors from the young,<br />• Those in a person's household will be counted as enemies,<br />• Insolence will increase,<br />• There will be no one to offer correction,<br />• Religious study will be despised and used by nonbelievers,<br />• The government will become godless,<br />• Academies will become places of immorality,<br />• Pious sages will be denigrated, and many people will leave the faith,<br />• The Jewish people will be split into factions, <br />• Atheism will sweep the world,<br />Others will remain steadfast.<br /><br />Amazingly, there is even an early Jewish tradition, recorded in the Talmud, that this “Messiah son of Joseph” will be slain. There is also an ancient stone inscription, unearthed just a decade ago in Israel, that declares that after three days the “prince of princes” will live again. Sound familiar?<br /><br />Now, think about the meaning of Easter. What does the "passion of Jesus" represent but the "pangs of the Messiah" on a personal level? Many scholars scoff at the idea that Jesus prophesied his own death. Such details must have been added by later editors, to make Jesus “seem” like a prophet. But what if Jesus actually understood himself, prophetically, as the “Messiah son of Joseph”? Could it be that he knew that it was only a matter of time until the Romans apprehended him as a “troublemaker,” and that he would surely be executed, yet live again, as the stone had predicted? Could it be that he saw this as doing his part in fulfilling the "pangs of the Messiah"? Could it be that the one disciple who understood this prophetic “destiny,” yet who gets the “bum rap” of all history, was none other than Judas Iscariot? Could it be that Judas was actually part of the larger prophetic plan in Jesus’ mind, acting as his friend, not his enemy? Mind-blowing, isn't it? But that's where biblical scholarship often leads – headlong into controversy!<br /><br /><br /></div>
Kennethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16189601025476724628noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686062985127827955.post-39692171440346050912015-09-04T14:13:00.001-07:002015-09-04T14:13:34.661-07:00Teaching the Most Depressing Subject on Earth: The Professor and the Green Screen<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The history of the Holocaust. What a topic to have to teach! But of course I'm a professor, and that's my job. Complicating matters has been the fact that my course on the history of the Holocaust is totally online. So I'm supposed to assign some readings, ask for written responses, and hope we don't all die of boredom. No way! We have a gorgeous TV studio on campus, with state of the art editing equipment, a green screen, and even a Teleprompter. And nobody's using it. Of course I had to figure out exactly what to do with all this equipment. By now we've probably all seen at least a few examples of traditional video lectures, delivered by traditional professors in the traditional way. But let's face it; a lot of these are barely more engaging than reading a phone directory. The goal I've set for myself has been to reinvent teaching. Not just thinking outside the box, but teaching outside it! And that means you don't stand in front of the podium reading stale old notes. We’re producing television here; and that means it all starts with a script. I cut out everything extraneous and get to the nub of what I want to teach. Amazingly, I find that it's actually possible to compress what I would normally teach in an hour and a quarter down to 20 minutes or so. Naturally, a story like this involves a lot of historical characters. But rather than just talking about them, why not become them? All it takes is a little costuming, putting on an accent and maybe a few props. It dawned on me that I could become any number of characters in the larger saga. And the green screen can place me anywhere in the world. Of course I'll still be the professor, dressed in suit and tie, introducing the people I impersonate. But when the moment comes, it's off to the green room, where I do my costume change and return to shoot my character segment. The editing for that segment is all done in sepia color, with a filter that makes it all look like old time news real footage. The audio is even made to sound a bit tinny. What we produce in the end isn't really a university lecture at all. It's something akin to a documentary, though not exactly. What we've done is to invent a whole new medium. There's nothing like it anywhere. Potentially, we can take this far beyond the confines of academia. The possibilities are endless, and we're just getting started. Stay tuned...</div>
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Kennethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16189601025476724628noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686062985127827955.post-48530353911461414872015-08-28T09:35:00.002-07:002015-08-28T09:35:51.660-07:00Creative Destruction<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Creative destruction. That's what happens when new technology effectively kills off tried and true ways of doing things, yet brings about new opportunities – that sometimes even allow us to make a dent in the universe.</div>
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I'm a professor at the second largest university in the United States. Pretty cool gig, right? But not when you watch your classes, some of the most popular on campus, dwindle in enrollment to just a handful. Why? Because with the dawn of online learning, students started abandoning my classes for anything taught on the web. And I taught face-to-face. I had to adapt, and fast. So I got myself certified in online teaching, and jumped into an amazing new “market.”</div>
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The immediate problem that arose was, how am I going to distinguish myself from everybody else, who just assign texts to read and assignments to turn in? Boring… Major-league boring. I asked myself: what do I do that really works? Why were my classes ever popular to begin with? Well, everybody seems to like my lectures, which weren't just lectures, but often semi-theatrical presentations. </div>
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Then I realized that the university has a full television studio, with state of the art cameras, a teleprompter, a green screen, and a full editing suite. I can't imagine what it cost the taxpayers. And nobody's using it! So I teamed up with the videographer and editor-in-chief, and began to bring my lectures to life. Among other things, I teach the history of the Holocaust – a pretty depressing topic. But rather than just talking about various characters in the sad saga, why not bring them to life, with some costuming, some acting, and a good dose of chutzpah? Let's make television!</div>
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A year later, the creative side of the destruction is taking off, and I now have a record enrollment (sixty-five!) in a class that was struggling for survival the last time I taught it. Every week I magically “zap in” another character, who can be placed in front of any background in the world via the green screen. Online teaching will never be the same…</div>
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Check out a brief segment from one of my character impersonations (complete with feigned Polish accent). Meet Abba Kovner, a dynamic Jewish ghetto fighter during the darkest days of the Holocaust. Here he is at the end of the tragedy, issuing a warning, that the threat of genocide didn't end with the death of Hitler. There is a new “slaughtering knife” that waits in ambush for the Jewish people. When we look around at the world today, at Iran and even continental Europe, where it’s once again dangerous to be Jewish, he nailed it, didn't he?<br />
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Kennethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16189601025476724628noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686062985127827955.post-4011719401103462952015-08-23T05:23:00.003-07:002015-08-23T05:23:30.773-07:00Meet the Visionaries<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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It’s time we meet the “Visionaries,” a group identified by contemporary scholars, believed to have come into focus over 2,500 years ago, in the sixth century, B.C. The Israelites have spent seventy long years in exile, in faraway Babylon. It is in exile that they have learned a new kind of spirituality, schooled in suffering and deprivation. They have waited for the opportunity to return, one day, to their ruined city of Jerusalem and their destroyed Temple. Their dreams are at last realized when a great Persian emperor named Cyrus comes to power. He issues a historic edict allowing his Jewish subjects to come home and rebuild their capital and the sacred shrine they have so long revered. </div>
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The monarchy established centuries before by King David and his son Solomon has long vanished, so the returnees are led by their priests, who serve as de-facto rulers. While the goal of restoring their homeland is noble, it soon becomes clear that they represent a new “ruling class,” an upper-class priestly hierarchy who are “in cahoots” with the Persians. In tension with this new “theocracy,” a grassroots movement spontaneously appears, united by a purer vision of what a restored Jerusalem and rebuilt Temple should resemble. They are the Visionaries, and, according to the theory, they are responsible for some of the most profound depictions of otherworldly encounters ever recorded. They are “anti-establishment” folk, meeting together in secret groups that cultivate spirituality. </div>
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They feel alienated, deprived and marginalized by their own national and religious leaders, but that’s exactly what fuels their passion. Oddly enough, the bulk of the people are strangely drawn to them, as they begin to methodically record their visionary experiences, in the tradition of the great prophets (such as Isaiah and Jeremiah) of bygone days. The movement they begin will last for centuries and will cultivate scores of otherworldly encounters, recorded in books such as Enoch and Jubilees, and in the Dead Sea Scrolls, that were for whatever reason (perhaps <i>because</i> of the sensational visions they relate) systematically banned from the Bible. </div>
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Kennethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16189601025476724628noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686062985127827955.post-59176486556153822632015-08-21T04:14:00.001-07:002015-08-21T10:20:41.885-07:00The Paranormal Bible<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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We’ve all heard of “altered states” – of people in modern culture who have profound metaphysical experiences of one kind or another, ranging from out-of-body experiences to UFO encounters. But let’s “flash back” to biblical days. How many people in ancient times experienced “other levels” of consciousness? If such experiences occur in today’s world, doesn’t it stand to reason that people long ago would have recorded similar phenomena? In truth the ancients had just as many paranormal experiences as modern people, but they were recorded in texts that were systematically excluded from the Bible – precisely <i>because</i> they were “paranormal.” So I ask, what would the Bible look like if we put them back in? Unfortunately, today’s academicians don’t communicate very well across disciplines, so textual scholars aren’t even allowed to ask what experiences ancient authors had that might have been similar to paranormal phenomena across the centuries and down to the present. The next question is, who were these ancient authors?</div>
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Check out: http://www.lulu.com/shop/kenneth-hanson/the-paranormal-bible/ebook/product-20313653.html</div>
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Kennethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16189601025476724628noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686062985127827955.post-77960838217777728112015-08-20T12:49:00.002-07:002015-08-20T12:49:17.847-07:00The Visionaries<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Garamond;">How did a trained scholar of ancient Hebrew
literature and a Dead Sea Scrolls specialist get involved with research on
ancient aliens? Answer: I found myself dragged into it, kicking and screaming.
Some time ago, I was being interviewed on a nationally syndicated radio show when the host asked me whether I thought some
of the ancient texts I deal with have anything to do with alien visitation.
Inexplicably, I found myself answering that from a Jewish perspective: it's
actually easier to talk about to talk about “space aliens” than it is to
believe in various and sundry supernatural entities, including Satan and an
assorted host of angels and demons. This is because Judaism as a faith is
strictly monotheistic, and from time immemorial has been wary of focusing on
intermediary beings between God and humankind. If we start paying too much
attention to angels and demons, God forbid, people might start worshiping them
instead of the Almighty.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond;">My conclusion: ancient aliens, whether they ever
visited us in antiquity, are by no means un-kosher! After my interview that
night, I got to thinking about what I had said. There is in fact a veritable
library of ancient Jewish literature – books systematically “banned” from the
biblical canon – whose main focus involves supernatural entities, angels,
demons, and yes, Satan. The fact that Judaism has historically been so wary of
such entities is probably the main reason these books were excluded in the
first place. But the accounts are there, nonetheless, and this reality, over
time, forced me to go “where no scholar has gone before” – doing serious
research on what these ancient Israelites may or may not have seen. Were they
just fabricating the stories they told about these entities – a polite way of
calling them liars? Or did they really experience something? Did they really
have contact, “close encounters,” with what we can categorize, if not
“extraterrestrials,” then at least “non-terrestrial” beings? Perhaps what they
saw were “inter-dimensional” beings, who have been with us almost from the
beginning of time and manifested themselves in various ways to people of
disparate cultures, from the pagan gods and goddesses of antiquity to the
entities reported by modern UFO contactees. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond;">Just as I began to look into all of this, I was
approached by the History Channel, which contacted me independently and asked
if I’d be interested in doing an interview for their series “Ancient Aliens.”
If any more impetus were needed for me to continue this line of research, this
was it. I happily said yes and charged into the realm of “close encounters.” My
immediate fear was obvious: I might never again be able to show my face in the
halls of academia. But if this is where the research was leading, how could I
not be honest with myself? My work would subsequently lead me into distinct
directions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond;">First, I discovered the research of Jacques
Vallée, the French computer scientist, venture capitalist and seminal ufologist
after whom the character “Lacombe” in the film <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Close Encounters of the Third Kind</i> was loosely based. Vallée had
started by investigating the appearance of strange lights in the sky, looking
into the possibility that we may have been visited by some kind of
extraterrestrial spacecraft. His focus shifted however, to considering the
possibility that we are dealing with beings who are truly “inter-dimensional,”
who appear across space and time in apparent defiance of physical laws. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond;">Then, I began to examine the research of certain
scholars of ancient literature, who have identified a group they refer to as
the Visionaries. These were an assortment of ancient Israelite priests, returning
from exile in faraway Persia, as early as the sixth century B.C. A new temple
was built in those days, replacing Solomon's great structure, destroyed by the
Babylonians nearly a century before. But the new temple was ruled by a corrupt
and power-hungry lot, as far as the Visionaries were concerned. Being shoved
aside and marginalized by the “powers that be,” the Visionaries instead
cultivated spirituality. They began to have dreams, visions and revelations, in
which the heavens were opened, and a host of spiritual beings were presented to
them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond;">Suddenly, the writings of Jewish antiquity began
to dovetail with Jacques Vallée’s “inter-dimensional hypothesis.” I began to
realize, at the risk of being shunned and marginalized myself, by my fellow
academicians, that I might really be onto something here. Are today's close
encounters and alien visitations basically the same experience that the ancient
Visionaries had, describing angels and demons, and writing scores of scrolls,
parchments, and entire books, that were systematically banned from the Bible?
Come what may, I had to find out.</span><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 15.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Kennethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16189601025476724628noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686062985127827955.post-23505201801419617792015-04-01T08:54:00.001-07:002015-04-01T08:54:11.887-07:00Encounter in Jerusalem!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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On Dec. 26, 2015 I led a small group of tourists to Israel. I had prepared in advance to show them certain cites they might normally see on a tour. At a meeting at my home I specifically mentioned that the Via Dolorosa is incorrect and that I will show them the “real” location of Jesus’ trial. I downloaded from my external hard disk a video from the History Channel that I had recorded approximately 10 years earlier, entitled “In the Footsteps of Jesus.” I reviewed all of it in detail prior to the trip, making notes. I was particularly focused on the segment in which British archaeologist Shimon Gibson identified the precise location which he believed to have been the location of the “Praetorium” — where Pontius Pilate would have held court and where Jesus would have been tried. </div>
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On arriving in Israel, I was concerned that I might be unable to find the exact spot for my group, as our time was limited and, while I had in fact been to the spot before (on the basis of the same History Channel video), over 5 years had elapsed since my last trip to Israel. </div>
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We had only one day (Jan. 2, 2015) in which to explore the Old City of Jerusalem. On the morning of Dec. 31, 2014, one member of our group began suffering from incapacitating back pain. The tour guide suggested that, as group leader, I stay behind in Tel Aviv with her (helping to get her to the local hospital and ultimately back to the U.S.), while the rest of the group journeyed on (to the Dead Sea). I was unable to rejoin the group and stayed that night in Tel Aviv. The following morning, January 1, 2015, I helped our group member get to the airport, continuing on to Jerusalem myself.</div>
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I arrived at our hotel, the Crowne Plaza Jerusalem, but was told that it was too early for me to check in. I checked my backpack and the luggage handlers suggested that I visit the Jewish market for the next several hours. </div>
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Instead, I decided to head to the Old City alone, to see if I could find the archaeological site in question. I took the new light rail line from the nearby central bus station to Jaffa Gate (the main entrance to the Old City). The weather was partly cloudy, chilly but not cold, and suitable for such a journey. Arriving at Jaffa Gate, I entered and might have continued straight ahead, exploring various shops and the old Citadel. I decided, however, to proceed directly to my target, the ancient Praetorium. I remembered the general area, but I couldn't remember the precise location. I thought to myself, "I have the documentary loaded in my iPhone, in case I needed to identify the spot; I hope it won't use a lot of battery if I start reviewing it…”</div>
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I turned right, immediately exiting the Old City by the main road, and followed the exterior wall, walking straight ahead. The walkway adjacent to the wall soon became a parking lot, and I realized that I needed to walk down the embankment and proceed up a small road, still close to the wall. I stopped to look at a sign indicating the archaeological significance of the wall. I reasoned that the Second Temple staircase depicted on the map was exactly what I was looking for:</div>
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After this I veered to the left, taking yet another path hugging the wall:</div>
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I followed the path in a shallow ascent, until I reached a high point, and then looked down. I immediately recognized the location from the History Channel video and from my own visit five years earlier:</div>
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But I also noticed two men standing exactly at the spot in question. After taking a few more steps I noticed that the man speaking bore a striking resemblance to Shimon Gibson. “It couldn’t be…” I thought to myself. “This is impossible.” As I drew closer I realized that I was in fact looking at the very man I had grown accustomed to seeing on the History Channel, Shimon Gibson. He was conducting a private tour with another Englishman, explaining the site exactly as he had done on the documentary 10 years earlier. I said to him in Hebrew, " Are you Shimon Gibson, the famous archaeologist?" </div>
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He replied, "Well, I'm not sure how famous…” I asked him if I could video his remarks, and he said yes.</div>
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His explanation was almost identical with what he had shared on the documentary, though he added certain details that were not presented on the documentary (such as the exact location of the steps on which Pilate would have presided, and the barracks from which Jesus would have been brought to stand before the crowd) that were critical to what I wanted to share with my own group. Afterwards, he mentioned that he currently lives and teaches in Jerusalem, and he also mentioned the book he wrote on the subject. I thanked him, and he said goodbye, continuing on his way with the gentleman who had hired him for a private tour. If I had come 10 minutes earlier, Shimon Gibson would not have been there. If I had come 10 minutes later, he would already have been gone.</div>
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Following this encounter, I spent the next few hours visiting the old Citadel at Jaffa Gate, and walking through some familiar streets in Jerusalem where I had previously lived. By the time I returned to the hotel, the sky had grown cloudy, with occasional rain showers. It has also grown colder, and I thought to myself that if such conditions had prevailed earlier in the day, I would never have walked along the old wall when I did, and Shimon Gibson might not have done so either. Bottom line: any number of variables would have produced a very different result. The chance that I would have met the very archaeologist I had seen 10 years before on video, standing in the exact same place and delivering the exact same lecture, seems beyond coincidental.</div>
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The video of the encounter is posted on youtube:</div>
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Kennethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16189601025476724628noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686062985127827955.post-142611708973106052014-04-06T13:44:00.001-07:002014-04-06T13:50:32.394-07:00Will the Real Jesus Please Stand?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">How much do we know about ancient Judaism, and what was the relationship of the man named Jesus of Nazareth to the religion of his own people? What do we know about the politics of the age, the anti-Roman agitation that was rampant across the land of Israel, and the “Zealot” movement? What were the various social and religious currents active in the land of Israel in the latter part of the Second Temple period, and where might Jesus fall with respect to them? A handy rubric for looking at all of these trends are the writings of the ancient Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus, who famously described four major “philosophies” prevalent among the Jews of that era. They include the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes and the Zealots. To be sure, Josephus, love him or hate him, gives us a natural point of departure. The question of us is: “To which of Josephus’ ‘four philosophies’ was the historical Jesus closest?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Josephus declared that he himself belonged to the Pharisees, who enjoyed the support and good feeling of the bulk of the population:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Now, for the Pharisees, they live meanly, and despise delicacies in diet; and they follow the conduct of reason … They are able greatly to persuade the body of the people; and whatsoever they do about Divine worship, prayers, and sacrifices, they perform them according to their direction; insomuch that the cities give great attestations to them on account of their entire virtuous conduct, both in the actions of their lives and their discourses also.</span></div>
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<a name='more'></a> When it comes to the discourses of Jesus, we can actually interpose his teachings into the larger debate between the Pharisee schools of the liberal Hillel and the more “conservative” Shammai. This comes as surprise to many, who think of Jesus as – at best – a not very observant Jew. It also comes as an understandable shock to those who are inclined to view the Pharisees, not only as Jesus’ natural antagonists, but as conspiratorial murderers, whose hypocrisy knew no bounds. To discover that Jesus’ famous “Golden Rule” is essentially a paraphrase of the Pharisee Hillel is surprising enough, but to find that the larger context of the great “Hillelism” (“That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor”) is a debate over conversion to Judaism opens the door to a much greater cognitive dissonance. This is because Shammai was said to have pushed away hopeful converts. Similarly, Jesus is said to have instructed his disciples not to go into the way of the <i>Gentiles</i> (Matthew 10:5). In what ways might this alter the traditional view of Jesus as the founder of a non-Jewish faith?<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In fact, we might ask: did Jesus ever <i>speak</i> to non-Jews, much less seek to “convert” them? A common rejoinder is: “What about the ‘woman at the well</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; letter-spacing: 0px;">,</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">’ in John’s Gospel?” I point out, much to the chagrin of some, that John is not a “synoptic” gospel and is the least “reliable” as a historical account. But even if this story is accepted at face value, we are told that the woman is a Samaritan. While a mutual understanding came to be reached over the centuries that Samaritans are <i>not</i> Jews, the issue was far from settled in the first century. Consequently, we can hardly assert that Jesus went out of his way to address a “Gentile.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Another objection commonly raised relates to the episode of the Roman centurion, whose servant Jesus healed. True enough, we cannot imagine that the Roman military officer would have been Jewish, but some interesting details emerge when we look closely at the Gospel accounts. It becomes clear that while Jesus initially wants no dealings with the Roman, his disciples point out that “he built us a synagogue.” This single detail highlights an entire class of non-Jewish devotees of the faith of Israel known as “God-fearers.” They were fairly widespread in the Greco-Roman world, having abandoned paganism in favor of the only monotheistic option in late antiquity – Judaism. They voluntarily observed many Jewish customs and rituals and engaged in philanthropic endeavors on behalf of the Jewish people. But Jesus, as an observant Jew, would not deign to enter the “un-kosher” home even of a God-fearer. The centurion declares: “</span><span style="color: #011220; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I am not worthy to have you come into my home. Just say the word from where you are, and my servant will be healed.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">” Indeed Jesus, though impressed by the man’s faith, does not enter his home, but performs a “long-distance miracle.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Quizzically, we might go on to reference the common expression in modern circles: WWJD – “What would Jesus do?” Perhaps the question should be slightly rephrased: “Where would Jesus <i>daven</i>?” (that is, perform Hebrew prayers). Provocative? Certainly, for those whose images of Jesus hardly correspond with an ancient “ultra-orthodox” Pharisee-oriented sage. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Another common misconception is that the Nazarene must have been the equivalent of an “ultra-liberal,” ancient “Reform” Jew, intent on relaxing many provisions of Torah law. This was certainly not the case when it came to the question of divorce, on which the House of Shammai and the House of Hillel were notoriously divided. The more “conservative” Shammai was quoted as saying: “A man may not divorce his wife unless he has found unchastity in her.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> Hillel, by contrast, declared that a man may divorce his wife “even if she spoiled a dish for him.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> Jesus appears to side with the more “stringent” Pharisee, Shammai, being quoted as saying: “Anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery.” We can easily see Jesus taking a “conservative,” even a rigid position, hardly in-keeping with the image of a reformer bent on relaxing Jewish law. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We also need to emphasize the fact that the Pharisees were known to have cultivated the concept of an “Oral Law,” communicated to Moses on Mt. Sinai and just as binding upon the Israelites as the written Torah. It’s common for many to imagine Jesus in strong opposition to this aspect of Pharisee “doctrine.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But if that were the case, we might find an even greater affinity between Jesus and another class in ancient Judean society, known for having rejected the whole of the “Oral Torah,” and with it the concept of the resurrection of the dead (also heralded by the Pharisees). Indeed, if we assert that Jesus had some problem with Oral Law, we have just made him one of the Sadducees, of who Josephus wrote: </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The Sadducees … say that we are to consider to be obligatory only those observances which are in the written word…</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In fact, we frequently see Jesus making reference to Oral Law in the teachings attributed to him in the Gospels, an example being the parable of the so-called “Good Samaritan.” Here we find a nameless man, robbed, beaten and left for dead by the side of the road. Who should come by but a priest (doubtless a Sadducee), who makes a “wide berth” around the victim, lest he ritually defile himself by possible contact with a corpse. The unlikely hero of the story is a “despised Samaritan,” who, unconcerned about ritual impurity, behaves in a manner consistent with the Oral Torah, specifically the “law of the <i>goses</i>” (the dying man). Acting like a liberal Pharisee, the Samaritan assumes “power of attorney” in the situation, binding his wounds and renting him a room at the local inn at his own expense.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Many are inclined to point out that Jesus is repeatedly said to have condemned the Pharisees, lambasting them as “hypocrites.” But what are the implications of such a charge vis-à-vis Christian attitudes toward Jews down through the centuries, given that rabbinic Judaism falls in a direct line of descent from ancient Pharisaism? To what extent is the anti-Semitism of the last two millennia rooted in the charge placed in the mouth of Jesus, and applied with broad strokes to the whole Jewish people? </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The clearest conclusion is that Jesus’ natural enemies were the Sadducees (enraged as they were by his violent act of overturning the tables of the moneychangers in the Temple) and that his natural allies (notwithstanding the editorial polemic of certain Gospel narratives) were the Pharisees and perhaps the fiercely militant, anti-Roman Zealot faction. If any of this can be established through the tools of scholarship, what are the real-life implications with respect to Christian attitudes, down through history and in contemporary society, toward Jews and Judaism? What are the implications regarding the charge that “the Jews” rejected Jesus, becoming “Christ-killers”?</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; text-indent: 36px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This “minefield” takes on yet another level of complexity as we evaluate the Christian textual sources to determine the historicity and message of the Jewish Jesus. How much can we learn about Jews and Judaism from non-Jewish sources? To what extent are the Christian Gospels the product of textual editing? What can we learn about the tools of literary criticism, common to a wide range of texts, from such analysis?</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; text-indent: 36px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The work of New Testament researchers is critical, not only in finding correlations between Jesus’ teachings and those of the Jewish sects described by Josephus, but in mitigating some of the troublesome/ anti-Jewish flavor that occasionally comes across in the Gospels. The blanket condemnation of the Pharisees (supposedly in the mouth of Jesus) is a case in point. When it comes to the “passion” narrative, modern scholarship has asserted that the so-called “trial” of Jesus before the Jewish Sanhedrin was no trial at all, that the Gospels embellish the account to depict Jewish culpability for Jesus’ execution, and that the only responsible party was the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; text-indent: 36px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> Notably, the charge of “blasphemy,” present in both Mark and Matthew, is absent in Luke’s account. It might well be argued that Luke is, in this important recounting of the “trial” of Jesus, more evenhanded and less inflammatory that the other two synoptic Gospels, which could have significant implications in understanding the genesis of the charge of “deicide” – the murder of God.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; text-indent: 36px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> Not only does it not record a “Jewish conspiracy” to put Jesus to death; it instead reflects genuine grief and solidarity with Jesus on the part of the Judeans. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; text-indent: 36px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Then there is the so-called “blood curse,” uttered by a mass of Jerusalemites who had hastily assembled themselves before Pontius Pilate: “Then answered all the people, and said, his blood<b> </b>be upon us, and on our children” (Matthew 27:25).</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; text-indent: 36px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> Luke’s account, by contrast, conveys a very different narrative:</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px; text-indent: 36px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin-left: 36px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And there followed him a great multitude of the people, and of women who bewailed and lamented him. But Jesus turning to them said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never gave suck!’”</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin-left: 36px; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We should in fact compare these verses with traditional <i>Jewish</i> lamentation recorded after the destruction of the Temple in the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch:</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin-left: 36px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Blessed is he who was not born</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin-left: 36px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Or he, who having been born, has died.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin-left: 36px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But as for us who live, woe unto us,</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin-left: 36px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Because we see the afflictions of Zion…</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin-left: 36px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Let not the brides adorn themselves with garlands;</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin-left: 36px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And, ye women, pray not that ye may bear…</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin-left: 36px; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It’s noteworthy that in Luke, the words “for your children” form part of a tonally Jewish lamentation, whereas in Matthew the words “<i>on</i> our children” are imbedded in a different and much more sinister context. The remarks of Jesus to the women making lamentation are conspicuously absent in Matthew as well as Mark, along with mention of the sympathetic “multitude.” This accords well with the later tendency to blame “the Jews” for their “blindness.” It is a theme that would be echoed by countless ecclesiastical authorities, and arguably responsible for twenty centuries of anti-Semitic bombast. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; text-indent: 36px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The importance of discussing such issues in the Gospels themselves can’t be overstated, because as we trace the dispersion of the Jewish people across the centuries, we find a long legacy of persecution, largely spurred by Christian theology and the specific charge that “the Jews” killed Christ. The implications are broad, even affecting Jewish-Christian relations today. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; text-indent: 36px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In the final analysis, by entering “into the trenches” with Jesus and Jesus research, we engage in more than an academic exercise; we help shape the future contour of inter-religious understanding. We’d be hard pressed to find a more worthy goal. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px; min-height: 15px; text-indent: 36px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In what ways do both Christians and Jews misunderstand Jesus as a historical character?</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">How does a study of Jesus enhance our understanding of Second Temple Judaism and the subsequent growth of rabbinic Judaism?</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In light of our detailed discussion of textual source material regarding the teachings of Jesus and those of other ancient Jewish sects, to which of these movements was the historical Jesus most closely allied? </span></div>
<br />
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">How does a study of the historical Jesus impact interfaith relations, both in terms of appreciating the development of anti-Judaism/ anti-Semitism, historically, and present day Jewish-Christian dialogue?</span></div>
</div>
Kennethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16189601025476724628noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686062985127827955.post-2002799322166471352014-02-22T10:40:00.001-08:002014-02-22T10:40:26.776-08:00From my new book: The Visionaries...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisZvFAdUaerqyoMv3bl0vO5spZ2bTM1h1IWhBxtbQzKFDb3T2ATpL3pU7XljnozmC4Je7Iz-DRYeH29lG6iofZ8P22NG_gTm8ZdIQEnBOkXQPrMUBQb8yBZVOciCMzCcC95c0eMsz_lFQv/s1600/Gustave_Dore%CC%81_(1832-1883)_-_The_Bible_(1865)_-_Zechariah_6-5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisZvFAdUaerqyoMv3bl0vO5spZ2bTM1h1IWhBxtbQzKFDb3T2ATpL3pU7XljnozmC4Je7Iz-DRYeH29lG6iofZ8P22NG_gTm8ZdIQEnBOkXQPrMUBQb8yBZVOciCMzCcC95c0eMsz_lFQv/s1600/Gustave_Dore%CC%81_(1832-1883)_-_The_Bible_(1865)_-_Zechariah_6-5.jpg" height="320" width="258" /></a></div>
<div class="FreeForm" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="FreeForm" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">How did a trained scholar of ancient Hebrew
literature and a Dead Sea Scrolls specialist get involved with research on
ancient aliens? Answer: I found myself dragged into it, kicking and screaming.
Some time ago, I was being interviewed on a nationally syndicated radio show,
“Coast-to-Coast A.M.,” when host George Noory asked me whether I thought some
of the ancient texts I deal with have anything to do with alien visitation.
Inexplicably, I found myself answering that from a Jewish perspective, it's
actually easier to talk about to talk about “space aliens” than it is to
believe in various and sundry supernatural entities, including Satan and an
assorted host of angels and demons. This is because Judaism as a faith is
strictly monotheistic, and from time immemorial has been wary of focusing on
intermediary beings between God and humankind. If we start paying too much
attention to angels and demons, God forbid, people might start worshiping them
instead of the Almighty. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="FreeForm" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">My conclusion: ancient aliens, whether they ever
visited us in antiquity, are by no means un-kosher! After my interview that
night, I got to thinking about what I had said. There is in fact a veritable
library of ancient Jewish literature – books systematically “banned” from the
biblical canon – whose main focus involves supernatural entities, angels,
demons, and yes, Satan. The fact that Judaism has historically been so wary of
such entities is probably the main reason these books were excluded in the
first place. But the accounts are there, nonetheless, and this reality, over
time, forced me to go “where no scholar has gone before” – doing serious
research on what these ancient Israelites may or may not have seen. Were they
just fabricating the stories they told about these entities – a polite way of
calling them liars? Or did they really experience something? Did they really
have contact, “close encounters,” with what we can categorize, if not
“extraterrestrials,” then at least “non-terrestrial” beings? Perhaps what they
saw were “inter-dimensional” beings, who have been with us almost from the
beginning of time and manifested themselves in various ways to people of
disparate cultures, from the pagan gods and goddesses of antiquity to the
entities reported by modern UFO contactees. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="FreeForm" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">Just as I began to look into all of this, I was
approached by the History Channel, which contacted me independently and asked
if I’d be interested in doing an interview for their series “Ancient Aliens.”
If any more impetus were needed for me to continue this line of research, this
was it. I happily said yes and charged into the realm of “close encounters.” My
immediate fear was obvious: I might never again be able to show my face in the
halls of academia. But if this is where the research was leading, how could I
not be honest with myself? My work would subsequently lead me into distinct
directions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="FreeForm" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">First, I discovered the research of Jacques
Vallée, the French computer scientist, venture capitalist and seminal ufologist
after whom the character “Lacombe” in the film <i>Close Encounters of the Third Kind</i> was loosely based. Vallée had
started by investigating the appearance of strange lights in the sky, looking
into the possibility that we may have been visited by some kind of
extraterrestrial spacecraft. His focus shifted however, to considering the
possibility that we are dealing with beings who are truly “inter-dimensional,”
who appear across space and time in apparent defiance of physical laws. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="FreeForm" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">Then, I began to examine the research of certain
scholars of ancient literature, who have identified a group they refer to as
the Visionaries. These were an assortment of ancient Israelite priests, returning
from exile in faraway Persia, as early as the sixth century B.C. A new temple
was built in those days, replacing Solomon's great structure, destroyed by the
Babylonians nearly a century before. But the new temple was ruled by a corrupt
and power-hungry lot, as far as the Visionaries were concerned. Being shoved
aside and marginalized by the “powers that be,” the Visionaries instead
cultivated spirituality. They began to have dreams, visions and revelations, in
which the heavens were opened, and a host of spiritual beings were presented to
them.</span></div>
<div class="FreeForm" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12pt; text-align: left;">Suddenly, the writings of Jewish antiquity
began to dovetail with Jacques Vallée’s “inter-dimensional hypothesis.” I began
to realize, at the risk of being shunned and marginalized myself, by my fellow
academicians, that I might really be onto something here. Are today's close
encounters and alien visitations basically the same experience that the ancient
Visionaries had, describing angels and demons, and writing scores of scrolls,
parchments, and entire books, that were systematically banned from the Bible?
Come what may, I had to find out.</span></div>
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Kennethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16189601025476724628noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686062985127827955.post-73524857780541756542014-01-21T03:37:00.001-08:002014-01-21T03:41:40.374-08:00Three Cheers for … Canada!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI1GxVL_q2Ji2YB9ghNnNVHpuDigPaPJBJfPoo1ilDDosRDPJB9cN51Rwm9IbFWPPLJhmHi_yZzt91reUKJbWjLKTSqSIoOonijEmVEtLlgZ0SfLelFBgWA03m6EIyOTuoLX3cByaIm46D/s1600/ShowImage.ashx.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI1GxVL_q2Ji2YB9ghNnNVHpuDigPaPJBJfPoo1ilDDosRDPJB9cN51Rwm9IbFWPPLJhmHi_yZzt91reUKJbWjLKTSqSIoOonijEmVEtLlgZ0SfLelFBgWA03m6EIyOTuoLX3cByaIm46D/s1600/ShowImage.ashx.jpeg" height="204" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Stephen Harper. There’s a name most US citizens don’t exactly have on the tips of their tongues on a daily basis. Too bad, because he’s not only the prime minister of Canada; he’s a statesman of the first order, who happens to be in the state of Israel this week, raising his voice on behalf of the Jewish nation and the Jewish people. Addressing the Israeli Knesset on Monday, he stood up to declare publicly his unswerving support for the Jewish state’s most fundamental desire … to exist! Here is one world leader who has the courage to articulate (in the face of a torrent of “political correctness”) that Israel has the right to defend itself. Why come to Israel and “stick his neck out” to support a tiny little country demonized in the world press and condemned repeatedly by the United Nations? Because, in his words, “This … is a very Canadian trait, to do something for no reason other than it is <i>right</i>.” He concluded: “Therefore, through fire and water Canada will stand with you.” And I’m saying to myself, “Wow!” Can anyone imagine the President of the United States uttering such words? I can’t…</span></div>
</div>
Kennethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16189601025476724628noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686062985127827955.post-5241343935087993952013-10-27T14:43:00.002-07:002013-10-27T14:43:44.632-07:00"Ancient Aliens"!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
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<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; text-indent: 36px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; text-indent: 36px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; text-indent: 36px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">UFOs, ETs, alien abductions… It’s surprising how many people want to know, not only about modern stories of extraterrestrials, but about the possibility of long-lost encounters with “ancient aliens.” Many people today are equally curious about whether the Book of Books – the Bible – relates the same kind of phenomena that in the modern world are the domain of ufologists. How many ancient Israelites experienced such “interdimensional” encounters? </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Just as I began to look into all of this, I was approached by the History Channel, which contacted me independently and asked if I’d be interested in doing an interview for their series “Ancient Aliens.”</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; text-indent: 36px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>
<a name='more'></a><br />
<div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; text-indent: 36px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">If any more impetus were needed for me to continue this line of research, this was it. I happily said yes and charged into the realm of “close encounters.” My immediate fear was obvious: I might never again be able to show my face in the halls of academia. But if this is where the research was leading, how could I not be honest with myself? My work would subsequently lead me in two distinct directions.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; text-indent: 36px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">First, I discovered the research of Jaques Vallée, the French scientist after whom the film <i>Close Encounters of the Third Kind</i> was loosely based. Vallée had started by investigating the appearance of strange lights in the sky, looking into the possibility that we may have been visited by some kind of extraterrestrial spacecraft. His focus shifted however, to considering the possibility that we are dealing with beings who are truly “interdimensional,” appearing across space and time in apparent defiance of physical laws. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; text-indent: 36px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Then, I began to examine the research of certain scholars of ancient literature, who have identified a group they refer to as the Visionaries. These were an assortment of ancient Israelite priests, returning from exile in faraway Persia, as early as the sixth century B.C.E. A new temple had been built in those days, replacing Solomon's great structure, destroyed by the Babylonians nearly a century before. But the new temple was ruled by a corrupt and power-hungry lot, as far as the Visionaries were concerned. Having been shoved aside and marginalized by the “powers that be,” the Visionaries instead cultivated spirituality. They began to have dreams, visions and revelations, in which the heavens were opened, and a host of spiritual beings were presented to them. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; text-indent: 36px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Suddenly, the writings of Jewish antiquity began to dovetail with Jaques Vallée’s “Interdimensional Hypothesis.” I began to realize, at the risk of being shunned and marginalized by my fellow academicians, that I might really be onto something here. Are today's close encounters and alien visitations basically the same experience that the ancient Visionaries had, describing angels and demons, and writing scores of scrolls, parchments, and entire books, that were systematically banned from the Bible? Come what may, I had to find out.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Now, deep into researching the Visionaries and their peculiar stew of “unbiblical” writings, I have discovered that the movement they began was destined to last for centuries and would cultivate scores of non-terrestrial encounters, recorded in books such as Enoch and Jubilees, and ultimately the Dead Sea Scrolls, that were for whatever reason (perhaps <i>because</i> of the sensational visitations they relate) systematically excluded from Holy Writ -- "Banned from the Bible"!</span></div>
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Kennethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16189601025476724628noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686062985127827955.post-47880198277984516422013-08-16T07:44:00.001-07:002013-08-16T07:44:11.275-07:00APOCALYPTIC ARCHETYPES: The Book of Revelation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Why is a Judaica scholar staring intently at the New Testament book of Revelation? Because even though it's come down to us in Greek, it is at its heart a Jewish book. Its tone and content is of course far afield from Judaism today, but what we're talking about is <i>ancient</i> Judaism – a very different animal.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I often wonder why so many people are interested, indeed fascinated by this book. And my best explanation is that it does for us basically what a roller coaster ride, or the Tower of Terror, does. It scares us to death! And let's face it; for some unknown reason people like to be scared. It gives us a delicious, narcotic-like adrenaline rush. </span></div>
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<a name='more'></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">As a professor of Judaic Studies I've actually avoided the book of Revelation for quite a few years. Among my academic colleagues, it's fairly easy to relegate the book to second-class status. Properly understood, the book isn't really "prophecy" at all. It's “apocalyptic.” Classical biblical prophecy, I like to say, isn't so much about “foretelling” as “forth-telling.” It's about great ethical messages that have to do with “change,” with compassion for the downtrodden and underprivileged. Put simply, it's about making the world a better place. (Remember Michael Jackson crooning “Heal the World”…) And when we do just that, the future, including the “messianic age,” will take care of itself.</span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Apocalyptic, by contrast, is properly understood as an “unveiling.” It's about pulling the curtain back to reveal divine mysteries at work in human history, shaping and molding future events to comport with the predestined divine will. The imagery and symbolism maybe understood only by a select few; to all others they are incomprehensible mysteries. So it is with the book of Revelation, which I argue is perhaps the most misunderstood book ever written. Do I have the audacity, the unbridled <i>chutzpah</i>, to pretend that I know exactly what the book of Revelation is all about? Well, actually, (call me arrogant if you like) I do! But that will have to wait for future posts.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In the meantime, if anything could be calculated to bring forth in the mind of this writer thoughts of a <i>modern</i> “apocalyptic” scenario of truly biblical proportions, it would be what's going on in the Middle East right now. Egypt, the most important Arab nation in the world, and one of only two Arab states with which Israel has diplomatic relations, is up in flames. The “Arab Spring,” just as predicted by certain pundits (Caroline Glick among them), has turned into a long harsh winter. With the military on one side, having seized power through coup, and the Muslim brotherhood on the other, the possibility of some sort of regional war erupting is higher than ever. And that of course brings us back full circle to the Apocalypse, back to the book of Revelation, and in a sense “back to the future.” In the words of the prophet Jeremiah (6:14), people talk of “peace, peace, when there is no peace.” My admonition: what out ahead! We're in for a very bumpy ride!</span><br />
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Kennethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16189601025476724628noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686062985127827955.post-34576170441751902412012-10-02T17:54:00.001-07:002012-10-03T11:08:53.413-07:00Gospel of Jesus’ Wife? – Beware the Sound of One Hand Clapping<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<img src="webkit-fake-url://A4980EA4-C11C-43B9-94BE-2C211C5F7142/image.tiff" /><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I once remarked on the History Channel documentary, “Banned from the Bible”: “Just when we think that the very last word on biblical scholarship has been said, the landscape changes, and usually in completely unexpected ways. Sometimes we really think we’re on to something, and then somebody comes along and debunks it all… It means that it’s an ongoing mystery as well as an incredible detective saga.”</span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It shouldn’t surprise us, then, that out of the blue we have a new “gospel,” or what purports to be a gospel. It’s only a small fragment, but the few lines scribbled across it (in ancient Coptic) are stunning, for they make the earliest direct reference to Jesus having had … A WIFE. And that wife would of course by Mary Magdalene. Voilà! Instant headlines! </span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">As soon as the find was announced, the media and the blogosphere came alive with the news. Who could doubt it now? After all, the parchment had been trotted out by an eminent scholar at Harvard Divinity School, Dr. Karen King, whose peer-reviewed article on the subject has been provisionally accepted for publication in <i>Harvard Theological Review</i>. So, let’s all hail the greatest discovery since peanut butter! Or is it? </span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">My favorite professorial adage these days is this: <i>Beware the sound of one hand clapping</i>. In other words, no matter how convincing something seems, it’s vital to recognize that whatever the argument, there’s bound to be an argument to the contrary that’s just as convincing. </span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Sure enough, almost the instant the “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” was announced, the nay-sayers came round, intent on being the first to officially and convincingly debunk the find as a modern forgery. What, then, is the casual observer to think, when trained scholars are hopelessly divided? The first principe is pretty simple. Don’t form hasty conclusions. Carefully weigh the arguments on both sides, and try, as much as possible, not to “have a horse in the race.” So, let’s summarize the proverbial pros and cons of the new find…</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">PROS:</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The papyrus has been authenticated by New York University.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The language and grammar has been determined authentic by a Hebrew University professor.</span></div>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Most forgeries are much longer; this contains too little to have been faked.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">No less a scholar than Elaine Pagels has found the reference to Jesus’ wife remarkable.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">CONS:</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It surfaced anonymously, and its “provenance” (place of origin) is unknown.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It appears to parrot the Gospel of Thomas (4</span><span style="font-size: 8px; letter-spacing: 0px;"><sup>th</sup></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> century), suggesting that it may have been deliberately copied.</span></div>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The text appears to be a “patchwork” of words and phrases.</span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Neither the parchment nor the ink has yet been dated.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The mystery should be solved easily enough by radio carbon dating of the papyrus and the ink, right? Unfortunately, even that will amount to “one hand clapping.” Why? Let’s assume that testing proves the antiquity of both. But modern forgers are pretty sophisticated. It’s not at all hard to acquire a scrap of old parchment and then copy some interesting words on it. But how do you forge ancient ink? Simple. Just burn some other scrap of ancient parchment, and you now have authentically ancient carbon powder – the main ingredient for your fake “ink.” So, in other words, even if the dating tests “confirm” the find, we’ll never really know the truth? That’s about the size of it. </span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There is, however, another angle to all of this. Whether or not the papyrus is a fake, it’s true that ancient records refer to a whole line of “descendants,” or “heirs” of Jesus, who ruled the early churches in the east for generations, even while the western church was growing in Rome. While these “heirs” were thought to have been the offspring of Jesus’ brother James, is it much of a stretch to imagine that they included Jesus’ own offspring, via Mary Magdalene? This is not <i>DaVinci Code</i> speculation. It’s much more sound, and invites a fresh look into the eastern/ authentically Jewish origins of Christianity, prior to being overwhelmed by Greek and Roman authorities in the west. </span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The “family” of Jesus still needs to be addressed and researched, and the excitement generated by this tiny scrap of papyrus – authentic or not – is a step in the right direction. </span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">For more, read <i>Blood Kin of Jesus</i>, by Kenneth Hanson.</span><br />
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Kennethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16189601025476724628noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686062985127827955.post-15229209707288719782012-08-18T13:13:00.001-07:002012-08-18T13:21:42.671-07:00David’s City: Defying the Propaganda<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHkYxui1fDXre45ZQuyDqKijtuhK0T2V3j_CZcvvWLxvT-fisIh9MdikKCqPMkgmxKSnybf0FzE7Yso-Z8ZU1Pm5ZeqHcNOtV9T-qPzwaSHN1Q9tUVD-XlXma_2mzAegGjk3Gh3cqxrj7x/s1600/david_city_diagram.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="257" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHkYxui1fDXre45ZQuyDqKijtuhK0T2V3j_CZcvvWLxvT-fisIh9MdikKCqPMkgmxKSnybf0FzE7Yso-Z8ZU1Pm5ZeqHcNOtV9T-qPzwaSHN1Q9tUVD-XlXma_2mzAegGjk3Gh3cqxrj7x/s320/david_city_diagram.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">by Kenneth L. Hanson, Ph.D. Associate Professor Univ. of Central Florida, Orlando </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; text-align: -webkit-auto;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">author, </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">The Eagle and the Bible: Lessons in Liberty from Holy Writ</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">, New English Review Press, 2012 </span><br />
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</span> http://www.amazon.com/The-Eagle-Bible-Lessons-Liberty/dp/0985439408/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345321257&sr=8-1&keywords=eagle+and+the+bible<br />
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Modern Israel has built itself up based on the principle of creating “facts on the ground” – a complete infrastructure for a functioning nation-state – regardless of sanction, or lack thereof, by the international community. But as important as these “facts on the ground are,” imagine, how important it is for the morale of Israelis, surrounded as they are by enemies intent on their annihilation, to come across “facts underground.” Imagine coming to the confirmed archaeological site of the city and, quite possibly, the palace of ancient Israel’s greatest potentate, the illustrious King David.<br />
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The name of the place is Silwan. It is a sleepy suburb of Arab east Jerusalem, with a population of 40,000 Arabs. These days, however, it is much less sleepy and much more confrontational. Why? Because Silwan is the location of a major archaeological site, advertised as the City of David (Ir David in Hebrew). It is part of a natural rocky outcropping extending southward from a ridge-like area known as the Ophel, that in turn connects with the south end of the Temple Mount. Long ago, in the twelfth century, BCE, there was a city here called Jebus, after the Jebusite tribe of Canaanites – the ones conquered by the biblical hero Joshua. According to the Bible, the city remained in Jebusite hands until being conquered by King David, somewhere around the tenth century BCE. This was the genesis of the city that is today known as Jerusalem.<br />
Palestinian propagandists must undercut all of this. David and his memory must be minimized, if not erased from history. These detractors maintain that Silwan has been swamped with “militant” Jewish settlers, who claim it for Israel.15 In a television segment on the City of David, produced for the CBS program “60 Minutes,” correspondent Leslie Stahl observed that “the challenge is how to divide the city between the two sides.” <br />
Oh really? The trouble with political correctness is that it’s repeated so often that everyone sheepishly gives assent, and facts are no longer at issue. But in fact, east Jerusalem doesn’t need to be claimed; it is already part of Israel, and has been since 1967. It was formally annexed by Israel’s “Jerusalem Law” of 1980, which declared, “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel.” Those are the “facts on the ground.” Wars, like elections, have consequences. Israel didn’t just waltz in one day and seize Silwan. Israel was attacked in June, 1967, by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, along with Egypt and Syria. In spite of the fact that the Israeli government cabled King Hussein, urging him to stay out of the conflict, artillery fire was opened up along Jordan’s entire border with Israel. The fighting in Jerusalem was particularly brutal. In the end, however, east Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount, and sleepy Silwan, fell to the Israelis. This was a defensive war, for Israel’s survival, and taking Silwan was matter of securing victory, not initiating an “illegal occupation.” <br />
The facts underground, now being excavated after millennia of dusty silence, are of course seen by Israelis – “settlers” and ordinary citizens alike – as one more verification that “this land is ours!” Moreover, the underground facts are multiple. In the nineteenth century, famed British archaeologist Charles Warren came up with the shocking conclusion that the “real” City of David lay outside and well to the south of the medieval city walls we see today. In October, 1867, Warren explored a water conduit leading away from the natural spring to the east of the city called the Gihon. <br />
In an Indiana Jones-type adventure, Warren and his team crawled hundreds of feet into this tunnel, occasionally up to their mouths in the water that still flowed. It is known today as Hezekiah’s Tunnel, built by the biblical king who lived two centuries after David, trying to defend Jerusalem against the Assyrian general about to besiege the city, Sennacherib. An ancient inscription in paleo-Hebrew, found midway through, verifies the details of the biblical story. It is yet another fact underground, testifying to Israelite presence in exactly this part of ancient Jerusalem.<br />
But what about David? Is he anything more than an Arthurian-type legend? Of course this means something to Israelis, that goes well beyond archaeological interest. It goes to the meaning of why they are here in this land. Charles Warren noticed a cave-like chamber near the tunnel’s entrance at the spring. Clearing out the chamber with help from Arab workers, he found another tunnel, which he followed some forty feet, where it ended in a peculiar shaft the rose into the darkness. “Warren’s Shaft,” as it came to be called, has been the subject of much speculation through the years, giving rise to the notion that this might have been the very passageway used by young David and his men, to stealthily invade and conquer ancient Jebus. <br />
Archaeologists have recently cast doubt over whether Warren’s Shaft could have been used to conquer the city, as it is virtually impossible to climb. But in 1995, as a new visitors’ center at the City of David was being constructed, salvage workers underground came upon a new secret tunnel. It lead down from the ancient city proper to a water pool, and was guarded by a massive wall and towers. Bypassing Warren’s Shaft entirely, this tunnel would have afforded a group of stealthy invaders – David and his men – a clear line of entrance into the Jebusite stronghold. Tiny shards of pottery littered about date this subterranean burrow to about two millennia before the Common Era, well before David lived, which means that it would have been there when the daring Israelites would have carried out their insurgency. We therefore have a bona-fide archaeological link to the conquest of Jerusalem, not by the ancestors of the Palestinian Arabs, but by by the distant forefathers of Israeli Jews.</div>Kennethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16189601025476724628noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686062985127827955.post-64657501588979941282012-08-10T06:49:00.001-07:002012-08-11T12:53:25.236-07:00“Israelity” – One American’s Experience in the World’s Hotspot<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj59h_Q4Gyi3gIhR64x6QmWmOMW9xO-7crmL2DZcGPZzgXnz8_D-f57g1T-nh-B1cGLfu8QGMtODe0DADbZu2RnlpsPNbBxr28EqOt8uz4racWKcWQp23Ixfo4mB5JPIFir1Y6n92dU138A/s1600/DSC07378.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj59h_Q4Gyi3gIhR64x6QmWmOMW9xO-7crmL2DZcGPZzgXnz8_D-f57g1T-nh-B1cGLfu8QGMtODe0DADbZu2RnlpsPNbBxr28EqOt8uz4racWKcWQp23Ixfo4mB5JPIFir1Y6n92dU138A/s320/DSC07378.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; text-indent: 36px;"><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It dawned on me that I really ought to circulate certain personal/ life experiences that give me at least a bit of insight on Israel and the Middle East, as a microcosm of many of the issues that face America and the world today. My story involves both adventure and the shock of reality – a rude awakening to the reality of the “culture of death” that pervades much of the Arab world.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I first journeyed to the Middle East as a young undergraduate student, a senior in college trying to finish my studies as a history major in the “cradle of civilization.” It must have had something to do with that Robert Frost poem: “I took the road less traveled by…” I had never been out of the continental United States in my life (save for a single afternoon in Tijuana), and now found myself in a foreign country for the first time. I knew nothing of the language, Hebrew, and my stomach was certainly unaccustomed the cuisine. It told me so repeatedly. Naturally, we’re talking serious culture shock here. But I had come halfway around the world to study, and that was what I decided to do. I enrolled in a little nondescript school for Americans, nestled among the trees on Mount Zion, and threw myself into the study of the ancient Near East. That was how I conquered my culture shock.</span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">All trepidations aside, I barreled through my first semester of study abroad, and behold, I found that I could not get enough of this ancient, get modern land. I decided to stay on and study the Hebrew language, the tongue of the Israelite prophets of long ago, Isaiah, Jeremiah, <i>et al</i>, now revived as the modern mode of speech of a brave little nation, struggling to survive against almost insurmountable odds, including some twenty-two hostile Arab-Islamic dictatorships. </span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I came back to the States in due course and graduated, but my experience in Israel had fundamentally changed me. I decided to pursue graduate studies in international-intercultural communication and television, and within a few years I was on my way back to the state of Israel. This time I was in the employ of a ragtag little television station, situated just north of the Israeli border, in southern Lebanon. It was owned and operated by an American outfit that was trying to shine a little light into a region racked by internal conflict. I was sent to live in a border town in northern Galilee, called Kiryat Shmona. I was to commute over a hostile border every day to the Lebanese village of Marjayoun, where the television station was situated. <i>That was to be my job...</i></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Lebanon in those days was in the grip of civil war, between the Arab Muslim majority and a solid Christian minority, intent on preserving their religious and civil rights in the face of overwhelming oppression. They had allied with the Israelis had helped them carve out a small Christian enclave in the southern part of the country. It was known as Christian Free Lebanon, though the Israelis referred to it as their “security zone,” which served the pragmatic purpose of keeping militant terrorists far enough away from the border to prevent the firing of Katyusha rockets into Israel’s northern communities, including Kiryat Shmona. </span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Naturally, the Israelis had a vested interest in keeping Christian Free Lebanon “free.” Consequently, convoys of Israeli troops regularly crossed the border, and I was often among them, driving a company-provided Jeep Cherokee, en route to what amounted to a concrete bunker, known as Middle East Television. My job was to broadcast family-oriented television across the region, as far as our signal would carry, which included the northern suburbs of Tel Aviv. I like to brag that I am the man who brought <i>Bonanza</i> to the Middle East! There was Hoss Cartwright, who would come lumbering onto the set, speaking perfect Arabic of course. When I wasn’t broadcasting, I was putting my Hebrew to work, getting monthly permits from the Israeli Defense Force, allowing our crew to commute back and forth from northern Israel into Lebanon’s war zone. As the situation deteriorated, geopolitically, we were kindly instructed to wear flak jackets at all times when driving in our vehicles. Not that such precautions would do much good against roadside bombs and the like. </span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Then, one afternoon, while in the middle of another <i>Bonanza</i> broadcast, the walkie-talkie came to life. Something had happened out on the road leading from the Egel Gate on Israel’s border, across the valley to Marjayoun. With no one else at the controls in our television station, I had to leave Hoss Cartwright behind, grab the video camera, hop in the Jeep, and head off to “Ground Zero.” A small cadre of U.N. Observers in their blue berets (a lot of good they were…) had arrived already, perched on a hill overlooking the carnage below. </span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It seems that a young teenage Lebanese Shiite girl, her head full of murderous propaganda, had boarded a pickup truck full of high explosives and headed off for Israel, just a few kilometers to the south. For years prior to this, Israel had a policy of allowing southern Lebanese to cross their border and take day jobs in Israel, on humanitarian grounds. The crossing point came to be known as the Good Fence. But in this case the girl in the truck was a homicide bomber, and her target was the innocents – non-combatants, especially women and children. </span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">If this girl had managed to get through the border, she would have driven straight into Kiryat Shmona or Metulla (a little village nestled exactly on Israel’s border) and blown herself up in the middle of as many civilians as she could find. Her radical Islamic indoctrinators had no compunctions about sending one of their own “innocents” to her suicidal death. But as a girl she was less likely to be suspected as a terrorist, so the plan was good in their warped minds. The plan, however, went slightly awry. When the girl saw the Israeli convoy passing through the valley, having just crossed the border checkpoint under intense security, she panicked. Rather than driving ahead and trying to get through, she barreled straight into the convoy, detonating her truck, herself, and several troop transports in one horrific explosion. </span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Thirteen young Israeli soldiers, in the prime of life, died that day, and scores of others sustained serious injuries that would leave them forever scarred and disfigured. These were the details I was able to gather from the do-nothing “Observers” of the U.N. standing nearby. For me it was a moment of shivers and goosebumps, realizing that I had been on that road myself, passing through the valley just an hour before. I used to drive along with the convoys, since it always made me feel safer. <i>But “safe” would not be the case today.</i></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">As agonizing minutes passed, I had to set up the camera as quickly as possible, balancing it on its tripod. Inserting the tape, I pressed “record,” as helicopters began to descend into the valley. Touching down amidst the mayhem, numbers of uniformed I.D.F. troops leaped to the ground and fanned out across the terrain, holding in their hands – of all things – plastic bags. There was no doubt what they would be putting into those bags … body parts, human remains, from their comrades-in-arms. Unlike radical Islamists, who obviously care not at all for human life, Israelis, obliged to follow the precepts of Jewish law, are tasked to take great care to inter every part of the body for a proper and respectful burial. Even spilled blood must be soaked up in sponges and buried with the deceased.</span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">For me, however, it was the most gruesome thing I had ever witnessed. I had served in the American Army myself; but that was during peacetime. This was – and is – a common occurrence for the entire population of the Jewish state. I had the luxury of being just an “observer.” Today, I was just doing my job, which was soon interrupted by an Israeli military officer, who demanded that I surrender my videotape. I spent the rest of that afternoon tracking it down and trying to get it back. The Israelis, understandably skittish about the remains of their troops being videotaped, were nonetheless cooperative, and released the item.</span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">My videotape was hustled back to our bureau in Jerusalem, then picked up by the major U.S. television networks, to be viewed by millions of Americans on the evening news. What a way for a young news-gatherer on a foreign field to get an “international scoop.” “Good job,” they told me in the office. But I learned a lesson that day. Those young men who died in that convoy weren’t just statistics. They were the sons of thirteen Israeli mothers and fathers, and they were right in front of my eyes. This is the price the state of Israel must pay for having the audacity to want to be a free people in their own land. For them this is an everyday reality – <i>Isreality</i>.</span><br />
</div></div>Kennethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16189601025476724628noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686062985127827955.post-7542956443200945692012-07-16T13:57:00.000-07:002012-07-16T16:51:07.915-07:00The Dream Is Dying<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">by Kenneth L. Hanson, Ph.D.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Associate Professor</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Univ. of Central Florida, Orlando</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">author, <i>The Eagle and the Bible: Lessons in Liberty from Holy Writ</i>, </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">New English Review Press, 2012</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">President Barack Obama recently declared, “The nature of this office is also to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism.” Tell a story? Well, there are a lot of us these days who have stories to tell, that, far from reflecting unity, purpose and optimism, are testimonials to another sad reality: the “American dream” – at least under the Obama administration – is dying.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">My story is not that special, though it is unique in some ways. My wife is a medical doctor from the former Soviet Union … as smart as she is beautiful. A surgeon by training (holding a Ph.D. in medicine on top of her M.D.), she is not only extremely capable as a hands-on physician, but is also a businesswoman. Being a doctor has always meant everything to her, but she also knew that state-employed doctors in Russia earn on average only about $400 a month. She, however, had enough of an entrepreneurial spirit that, after practicing many years in emergency rooms and in cardiovascular surgery, she established her own plastic surgery clinic in the heart of Siberia. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Over time she was grossing a “respectable” $2,000 a month. When we married and she came to America, I was thrilled to bring her to the “land of opportunity,” where, as a doctor, she could earn multiple times her Russian income. Earning her American citizenship, she dug in and started studying to meet the American medical requirements. That meant passing a series of exams, every bit as stringent as the ones she took when she first became a doctor. Over the course of three years, studying day and night, in what was for her a “foreign” language – English – she did it. She took her exams and passed. Now “certified” as a physician in the United States, she still lacks a license to practice medicine. That’s because the U.S. first requires the completion of a medical residency program, under supervision in a hospital, that takes anywhere from three to six years, depending on one’s specialty. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Bear in mind, not all countries require this for incoming medical doctors. In the European Union, for example, there are reciprocity agreements, whereby my Russian wife could work as a medical doctor with no further hurdles or obstacles in front of her. There are many regions in the world where a properly credentialed doctor in one country can practice in another. Not so in the United States. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Here, medical residency positions (of which there is a drastic shortage) first go to graduates of American medical schools … which of course my wife is not. She must therefore wait far back in line for a residency position to open, somewhere, anywhere … which never does, regardless of her qualifications. These include training medical doctors in cardiovascular surgical techniques at one of the largest medical academies in Russia. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Now, after years of frustration, along comes … Obamacare … with its promise of providing free medical coverage to how many millions of new patients, including throngs of undocumented aliens? Respectable estimates are in the range of thirty million. Now, wouldn’t one imagine that if the administration were really serious about this, the first thing they would have done would have been to take some of that initial trillion dollars of “stimulus” money and fast-track the creation of new residency programs for all the doctors trying to get their licenses? Maybe they would even eliminate some of the residency requirements altogether and foster more reciprocity agreements, so that more foreign trained medical graduates could legally work in this country. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Has the Obama administration contemplated any of that? Of course … not! There is not a single new residency program, and there will not be a single additional doctor in this country to care for the thirty million new patients. And “we the people” are expected to believe that “if you like your health care plan, you can keep it”? We’re expected to believe that there will not be “rationing” of medical services in this country?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The truth is, the new health care law (now upheld by the Supreme Court) isn’t about providing medical care to the millions who can’t afford it. It’s about creating enough phony “compassion,” via the biggest bloated entitlement program ever invented, to buy the votes of the “dependent class” and forge a permanent socialist/ Marxist power bloc that will indeed “fundamentally transform” America.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Many doctors have already complained that the resulting mess leaves them little choice but to leave the medical profession altogether. Others have gone on national television (the Huckabee show being a prime example) to explain that they must reluctantly advise up-and-coming young medical students not to become physicians at all. They’ll only end up working for the state, drowning in paperwork, and, by the way, not making any money to speak of. Maybe they’ll match the $400 a month earned by their Russian counterparts.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">This is the message that I must now convey to my Russian-born doctor-wife, whose only desire is to return to the profession she loves so dearly and to serve as a physician here in the United States. This is the “land of opportunity” to which I brought her. Is the “American dream” still alive and well? Maybe so; but I’m inclined to think, as she does, that the dream is dying.</span></div>
</div>Kennethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16189601025476724628noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686062985127827955.post-1029765167688598352012-06-13T14:54:00.000-07:002012-06-13T14:54:59.806-07:00Friday Night Torah!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEQojrHSzFHxRzVTwlWYNPgMlXLq1ig4Qc-1_UP9Gs2K-J7w5gkUMPQFnvvnU2Stg6R5aRJX_fmjF9q1-nlTpIAp6c2Do_3B1JeaZn8Fobe2_9H5puiI1a8QvUAhD8_tIsJz-mYpspPpwt/s1600/hands.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEQojrHSzFHxRzVTwlWYNPgMlXLq1ig4Qc-1_UP9Gs2K-J7w5gkUMPQFnvvnU2Stg6R5aRJX_fmjF9q1-nlTpIAp6c2Do_3B1JeaZn8Fobe2_9H5puiI1a8QvUAhD8_tIsJz-mYpspPpwt/s320/hands.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;">This week's Davar Torah is all about "espionage." The parasha of the week --</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"><i>Shlakh Lekha</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;">-- relates how 12 "secret agents" were commissioned to "spy out" the land of Canaan prior to the coming Israelite invasion of their new "Promised Land." Trouble is, 10 of the 12 come back terrified, complaining of great, fortified cities and "giants" in the land. Even the grapes are too big! What do we make of this "hesitant" approach to taking possession of the land we would come to call Israel? There are lessons to learn here, in Dr. Ken Hanson's new multimedia presentation that promises to be a "visual feast." Friday night... Be there!</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;">http://www.betchaim.org/</span></div>Kennethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16189601025476724628noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686062985127827955.post-88799882550996536292012-06-03T06:58:00.000-07:002012-06-03T06:59:43.027-07:00Mayor Bloomberg, Coke, and the Bible<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">C.S. Lewis famously wrote: “</span><span style="color: black; letter-spacing: 0px;">Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">What could be more illustrative of the prophetic truth of these words than the new rules proposed by New York’s Mayor Bloomberg to ban the purchase of sugary soft drinks in excess of 16 fl. oz.? But this shouldn’t surprise us. After all, when a population (like ours) gradually surrenders its freedom to what amounts to a “benevolent dictatorship,” all for what we mistakenly think is “security,” we end up with neither security nor benevolence. We just get tyranny. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Is government today the "new nanny"? Or perhaps the "new pharaoh"? Next time we buy a Coke, let's make it a large one, in honor of this new definition of "pro-choice"!</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">http://www.amazon.com/The-Eagle-Bible-Lessons-Liberty/dp/0985439408/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1338731900&sr=8-1</span></div>
</div>Kennethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16189601025476724628noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686062985127827955.post-27717974202288167952012-06-02T05:15:00.000-07:002012-06-02T05:28:12.311-07:00So, You Wanna Go Back to Egypt?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Does the Bible really weigh in on political theory? You bet it does! It’s all about “freedom.” Let’s face it; freedom is a word that’s really cheap, misunderstood, overused. It doesn’t really grip people the way it ought to. But when you think about it, “freedom” is a theme that runs all through the biblical text. And by the way, it’s not really what we think of today, in terms of the great conservative-liberal debate. When the Bible talks about freedom, conservatives might want to embrace that, but to be honest, it’s more on the level of what we’d call “classical liberalism.” That’s what emphasized – all through history – real individual freedom. Classical liberalism is all about the freedom of the individual, not to be governed in the minute details of our lives, by the state. Not to be ruled over by some “mastermind,” whether a king or monarch, or some oligarchy of all-wise, all-knowing autocrats.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Let’s go back to ancient Egypt, where the Hebrews are said to have been enslaved, and desperately looking for freedom. The freedom of course comes at the hands of their great deliverer, Moses. But isn’t it odd, that after they leave Egypt – after the great Exodus through the Red Sea – they end up wandering for forty years and saying to each other, “Were there no graves in Egypt that we had to come out here to die?” “We were better off in Egypt.” Isn’t that a little bit odd?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The first thing we need to understand is that Egypt isn’t necessarily the horrible, tyrannical society we imagine, from the Charlton Heston film. There was a great bureaucracy in ancient Egypt, which was well-oiled and worked smoothly. Even those who were supposedly enslaved had their needs taken care of. It’s been argued in fact that the Israelites weren’t so much “slaves” as they were “day laborers.” The Hebrew itself calls them “avadim” – which means “workers,” not necessarily “slaves.” As long as the Hebrew “workers” did what they were expected to do, their needs were taken care of. They were provided for. They had food to eat and shelter. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Now, they’re supposed to jettison all that “security” and trade it for a barren desert, not knowing whether they'll ever eat anything other than “manna.” Freedom is a terrifying thing, and people will readily surrender it for whatever looks like “security.” Back in Egypt, if famine came, you got a “government handout” from the grain silos – a system put in place (says the Bible) by the great patriarch Joseph. But to be a “classical liberal,” you have to tell the government essentially to “shove it”! “I’ll take care of myself, even if comes to gathering manna in the desert.” That’s where we’re at in Europe and America today. Are we willing to jettison some of those government handouts – even face the “desert” for some time – to save succeeding generations from the curse of unsustainable debt that will surely sink us all? That’s “classical liberalism.” Or … do we wanna go back to Egypt? </span><br />
P.S. In honor of Mayor Bloomberg's new "ban" on the "freedom" to choose what kind of soft drink to consume, let's all go out and purchase an enormous sugary Coke or Mt. Dew (well beyond the new 16 oz. limit) in solidarity with the "patriots" of NYC! Stand up for classical liberalism!</div>
</div>Kennethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16189601025476724628noreply@blogger.com0