Minor Thoughts from me to you

Yesterday, as an example of how languages are constantly evolving, I taught my Writing & Grammar 9 students the origin of the English word "goodbye" (it started life as the phrase "God be with you" - just in case you didn't know).

Now I read an article I'll certainly be sharing with them tomorrow: according to the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages and the National Geographic Society, approximately 7,000 languages are currently spoken on Earth... and one of them disappears forever every two weeks.

Chances are nobody will remember them after they're gone, either, since roughly half of Humanity's languages have never been written down, and are only spoken by 0.2 percent of our world's total population.

The Living Tongues Institute is doing everything it can, of course, to record as many of these endangered lessons as possible before they go the way of the dodo, but it has its work cut out for it. The language of the Native-American Yuchi tribe - possibly unrelated to any other tongue known to Man - is now only familiar to five elderly men. Which actually makes Yuchi five times as well-known as Siletz Dee-ni or Amurdag.

According to the article, the director of the Living Tongues Institute is making a few noises about "the key to getting a language revitalized" being "getting a new generation of speakers", but we all know that's a fantasy. Whatever their historical value, languages thrive only so long as they are practically useful to their speakers. In the new global community developing before our eyes, obscure tribal languages simply have no compelling reason to exist. There's nothing for that.

Nor is there any reason to fret about it, I'll add, though I know that's easy for me to say, seeing as how I'm an American, and so popular is my language that I make a living teaching it to children in other countries. But listen: languages have always died or morphed beyond recognition over time. All that's noteworthy about the phenomenon now is simply the speed at which it is occurring.

Once upon a time, two cultures met and changed each other - or one swallowed the other - over a period of time measurable in hundreds of years. That same effect requires only decades today. We should be thankful for this, since - generally speaking - the evolution of a society has always been dependent upon its taking the best elements with which it comes into contact and allowing the lesser elements to fade away.

Still: I hope the Living Tongues Institute manages to record as many of these endangered languages as possible, in the interests of posterity.

I am informed that the first five minutes of comedian Drew Volle's debut at The Ice House, one of the more famous comedy clubs in L.A., is now posted up on YouTube.

Reasons to check him out:

(A) He's funny (always a good reason to watch a comedian). A testament to this is how quickly he's risen onto the professional scene: within months, he's gone from the open-mic nights to receiving invitations from The Comedy Store. That's pretty impressive.

(B) He's my brother.

In a recent entry (Sunday's "Alan Greenspan's life is for sale. We don't know where.") I noted that Mr. Greenspan's autobiography The Age of Turbulence, now on sale, has received rather odd publicity: some newspapers are running whole articles about the book's declaration that the U.S. is mainly in Iraq due to oil-related reasons, but somehow failing to -... er, well, mention the name of the book in said articles (one again, that's The Age of Turbulence, Folks!).

I suggested that this was because Democrat-filled newsrooms are in a bit of a pickle: on the one hand, Alan Greenspan - the (Perceived) Bush-Lover and Elder Statesman of Finance - dissing Mr. Bush is too tempting a tale for them to resist reporting. On the other hand, Alan Greenspan's opinions are not the kind to which they'd prefer drawing a lot of attention.

How little did I know.

Mr. Greenspan has since clarified his book's comments to the world, and in a surprising twist, yes, Mr. Greenspan says, he (rightly) rips Mr. Bush to pieces concerning a lot of the president's fiscal policies - but, his tome's analysis of Desert Storm II as primarily oil-driven wasn't one of the negative bits. Actually, Mr. Greenspan thinks insuring the world's continued access to Iraqi oil is a dandy reason to have invaded.

Got that? Mr. Greenspan is not - repeat, not! - accusing President Bush of invading Iraq in order to secure access to Iraq's oil. He is just saying that nobody in power is willing to admit that securing access to that oil is a great benefit of the invasion, much less that killing Hussein for such reason alone probably would've been perfectly justifiable.

I mean, why not, right? He wasn't the elected leader of a people or anything; he was the man with his boot on an entire people's neck. And the homicidal nutcase was in control of one of the world's largest oil reserves. If anyone's whack-worthy in our national interest, why not him?

Now I disagree with that viewpoint, but it's certainly more interesting than what every news story about his book has entirely (and suspiciously) focused on: the news that one more creditable guy technically disagrees with President Bush.

What a bunch of dishonest people these journalists are. At least I can justify the glaring errors in my news stories; I'm just an amateur blogger.

Alan Greenspan's memoir is due for release tomorrow, and the news stories teasing its contents, they be a-poppin'.

Not that this is actually going to help Mr. Greenspan's book's sales as much as it might, since hilariously, both of the articles I've read on the subject today failed to mention the book's title. How much good does free publicity do when the journalists all forget to type in the name of your book?

But then, maybe "America's elder statesman of finance" should've expected as much; after all, while the leaking of his new book's anti-Bush comments are like manna from Heaven to the anti-Bush crowd, most of the rest of the tome is probably nothing people want to hear. While Mr. Greenspan is no longer a believer in Objectivist principles, as Ayn Rand's disciples have furiously noted, the time he spent as a member of her inner circle in the 1950's did ingrain in him at least some modicum of true respect for capitalism - so much so that Mr. Greenspan still advocates a U.S. return to the gold standard. That sort of talk is anathema to the majority of Democrats and Republicans today.

Mr. Greenspan was such a great chairman for the Federal Reserve, though, precisely because of this prevalent mindset in America that one should have faith in free markets just as most people have faith in Jesus Christ: sure, it's important to believe in them, but completely counting on them is just folly. Unlike his belligerent brothers and sisters in the Libertarian and Objectivist movements, Mr. Greenspan decided he was willing to play ball with this delusion. Once nominated to office he gladly went about saving America's government from its own policies, treating every symptom he could find while being careful not to directly attack the disease. As Leonard Peikoff, Ayn Rand's disappointment of an intellectual heir, has fumed: "When he was on the Social Security commission, he helped them to save the rotten institution, rather than to phase it out."

Ironically, such behavior is exactly the target of his mentor Ms. Rand's best-known book. In her final novel, Atlas Shrugged, Ms. Rand's characters learn that capitalists cannot survive by simply doing their best within a framework established by the collectivist mentality of their fellow brothers and sisters.

Of course, Atlas Shrugged ends with its featured capitalists hiding in the mountains and the whole world around them going to Hell in a hand basket, and therein lies the rub. Many feel that abiding by principles to which you confess belief extremely limits one's ability to accomplish anything in this world. Thus Mr. Greenspan chose, much like President Bush himself has, to simply guide the U.S. economy according to whatever plan he thought (a) would help at all and (b) he could get away with. The man who wrote articles like this in 1966 lowered the dollar in the 1990's. Judge the results for yourself.

The name of his autobiography, by the way, is The Age of Turbulence.

You're welcome, Alan.

I've surely got be the world's worst blogger, to have yet written nothing here on Minor Thoughts about the recent kidnapping (and release) of twenty-three Korean missionaries in Afghanistan.

After all, not only have Joe and I always given over the majority of our attention here to politics, economics, and that portion of God's kingdom which extends onto this Earth, the Church, but (a) I personally am living in South Korea right now and (b) have relatives of my own living in Afghanistan. Throw in my own associations with a number of missionaries and one might justly suspect, considering I am that obnoxious kind of people perfectly willing to offer his unsolicited opinion on just about anything, that the hostage situation would receive at least a mention.

But during such crises, there's very little one lone lil' blogger can say that isn't being said everywhere else. The very point of the blog-o-sphere (that's still what the kids are calling it these days, right? I told you I'm out of touch) is, after all, the opportunity it presents to receive alternative perspectives generally unavailable from the mass media - that is, we no longer need to be told by news corporations what your typical man on the street thinks, because the man on the street is basically running his own newspaper, and what he thinks is sometimes far more interesting than previously reported, even if his presentation is inferior. Republican radio shows in the U.S. became popular for the same reason.

The aftermath of the Korean hostage situation suggests far more interesting questions.

That's 'cause, as Reuters has recently noted, the nineteen Korean missionaries recently released by Afghani terrorists haven't exactly received a hero's welcome home. Oh, the Korean people are glad their brothers and sisters are safe, sure, but they still have a bone to pick; their complaint is that twenty-two people foolishly put themselves in an extremely dangerous situation and as a result, Korea itself (and the Afghani reconstruction effort) paid the price - being forced (a debatable term, yes) to deal with terrorists to insure their recovery.

"This crisis [has] raised grave questions about the divide between the country's responsibility and the responsibility of individuals," JoongAng Ilbo, a large Korean newspaper, has grimly muttered.

Indeed it has - but they're questions with fairly obvious answers. As countries all over the world have embraced populism and rejected (if only rhetorically, in many cases) the concept of absolute rule by the few, the notion has naturally evolved that any citizen - and not just royal and government officials - who gets in trouble overseas deserves rescue by his or her government.

On any sensible review, however, that's a ridiculous premise. First of all, making all men equal, one must remember, does not always mean elevating every man to the level of importance once accorded kings; often it means simply knocking the kings themselves down a few pegs, to a lower level on par with their brothers and sisters. Nation-states of old paid high ransoms for captured kings and the like because the citizens of those nation-states believed those people were divinely chosen to rule, or simply were gods themselves. If someone captures a god, it's important to the whole country to get him or her back. The disappearance of one man who knowingly left the safety of his country for private reasons is far less worth negotiations with extremists, especially when those negotations may have real consequences for every other citizen of his country (Koreans are now banned from entering Afghanistan; all of them have lost their freedom to travel there on any business).

Of course, any government employee sent into a foreign country by his or her superiors should rightfully expect as much assistance as possible, should trouble come; such officials are their fellow citizens' official representatives, speaking (or killing, or whatever) in their name. But missionaries arrive at their destinations as representatives only of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Let men and women such as the captured Koreans go forth and spread the Gospel, then, but let them not burden their brothers and sisters - who asked for no part in the holy mission - with the fallout from their actions. From a pragmatic standpoint, there is no compelling reason today why the kidnapping of any citizen should lead to negotiations with the kidnappers. No person is worth it.

Nor can the government - and by extension, every citizen in a country - afford to clean up after the missteps of those who voluntarily risk themselves for religious, political, or personal reasons. Logically, the adoption of that unfair weight should not even be a consideration; it's a mismatch with any government's purpose, which is to supervise the specific, limited geographic area in which its citizens reside.

This brings us to a second point, which is an answer to the obvious moral appeal: "But isn't any life worth saving, even if it's costly, and even if the person brought it on himself or herself? What, should a government just leave someone to die?"

Well, leaving aside the evident fact that many lives would probably not be in such danger if their governments didn't keep negotiating with kidnappers, the harsh but just responses are "no" and "Why should that be the government's job?". We make decisions concerning how much a life is worth every day; if we lowered every speed limit in America to 5MPH, we'd have a lot less traffic-related death, but nobody suggests it would be worth it. And why should the government, charged with representing the interests of all, allow its policies for all to be swerved because of an unnecessary risk knowingly taken on by one of its citizens?

Korea's caving in to terrorist demands was a mistake, as are the preventative measures it's introduced in hopes of never seeing the situation repeated.

The line between personal and national responsibility should be clear: it's the border line.

Now here's a bit of rather uppity salesmanship:

English newspaper The Guardian is currently running an electronic ad (as I write this, you'll find it here) in which it chastises President George W. Bush... for not buying its daily editions.

"US Presidents have always come to us for an overview of world affairs," the advertisement declares solemnly as framed pictures of former presidents of our U.S. of A. scroll by. "...Except one."

The scrolling image comes to rest on an empty frame, marked, of course, with the name of our current president.

"Try our four-week subscription," ends the ad. "(Go on George, it is free!)"

Maybe President Bush gets his daily dose of egomania-flavored yellow journalism from The Times.

As I type out these words, Economist.com (my very favorite news magazine) has up an article concerning the root causes of suicide as a social phenomenon, which includes this statement: "Suicide rates have been rising in India, especially among the young, and over a third of those who kill themselves are under 30 years old."

Let's just all let that sentence sink in for a moment. Then let's all wonder what the writer of this story was thinking when he wrote it. The reporter is inviting us to be impressed that somewhere just over 30% of suicides occur... among people finished with at least 30-40% of their lifespans.

Which might lead those of us not "analytically-challenged" to suppose that suicides are either evenly spread across the spectrum of age in India, or there is actually a low rate of incident among the young in that country. Which would be good! Right?

Maybe Dan Rather's a better newsman than everyone gave him credit for; his supposedly rude comments about "dumbing... down and tarting up" the news are starting to look prescient.

"Can A Bikini Model Be Made Into An Instant Anchor?" the New York Post asks in a recent news story, and almost in unison, a chorus of (baritone) voices answers: "Why, yes! Yes, she can be!"

A television station in Tyler, Texas has offered itself as the filming site for a new FOX reality show, in which we are to witness the transformation of a bikini model (Lauren Jones) into a TV news anchorwoman. Media watchdog groups, your average bunch of feminists, and the news industry at large are as predictably nonplussed as they were when CNN tried to sell anchor Paula Zahn as "a little bit sexy."

The rest of us are of course too busy wondering why a marketing move like this is only the basis for a reality show as opposed to, say, an across-the-board status quo in broadcast journalism. I mean, let's face it here: whilst there is doubtlessly much highly-involved, clever investigative work going on behind the scenes every night at six o' clock (or whenever), the actual job of "news-anchoring" is nothing but typical stage performance. If you can read a teleprompter while comfortably looking like you're not reading a teleprompter, well, guess what, you're as qualified to anchor a major newscast as you're ever going to be - which means the only factors that can possibly differentiate you from your competition is your personality and level of physical attractiveness. Such factors are, coincidentally, what we've always hired models, actors, and actresses for.

And if I may speak on behalf of those brave men and women graduating from college with a degree in Theater, they could sure use the work.

The good money's on FOX's critics already knowing this, of course; the thought of Lauren Jones taking to the newsroom isn't just insulting to them, but downright scary, because they know that unless Miss Jones takes a dive and pretends sitting behind the newsroom desk is more technical than it looks (a likely prospect), their nightly hour of fame is in serious danger of being outsourced to people who look better than they do in tight clothes. Oh, they'll still be reporters, sure - they'll just be largely relegated to working from behind the scenes and out in the field. They no wanna.

Like so much of today's journalistic output, this news story is primarily driven by reporters' egos.

No. Numbers 23:19 reads: "God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?" There.

But LORD knows, He (!) is referred to as such in the Bible - every reference to Him is in the masculine tense (at least in the Hebrew and Greek; some languages don't have a gender-specific third-person pronoun), and there's no escaping that there has to be a reason for this.

If you're a liberal critic of Scripture, that reason is obvious: a culture of patriarchal tyranny. Men principally wrote the Bible, hence the Good Book is skewed in their favor. Of course if the Bible is so corrupted by masculine intent, its message is logically irredeemably compromised; say that men skewed it and you can say Christians skewed it; say men skewed it and you can say Jews skewed it. The authority of the Word ceases to have any meaning.

No matter how conservative any other critic, though, saying God is literally a man is a non-starter, since physically-speaking He repeatedly proves Himself to be nothing of the sort; for crying out loud, He's a bush at one point.

So God, whatever you choose to make of Him (!), cannot have chosen to be referred to in the masculine because that's an accurate description of His totality; therefore He must have chosen masculine expression because He wishes to be related to as a masculine creature, i.e. as a Father and King, rather than as Mother and Queen. Which makes sense, since we've already had explained to us by Paul that the marital model (and indeed, the life model) is meant to resemble God's relationship with His church. Why on Earth would God be identified with the church in that equation instead of the Christ? It would screw up the symbolism completely.

To summarize, perhaps God did not make men like they are because He is a he, but chose to be known as a he because He made men and women like they are. Perhaps God is called a "He" because He wants us to understand where He directly fits in the symbolism of life (and He designed it right, didn't He? Consider that women adore their fathers and are "Daddy's girls", while men attempt to be like their father. To be a "Momma's Boy" is understood to be unnatural and stunting).

In which case, all this cawing is basically the equivalent of a row about who gets to play the main character in a staged play. Sometimes the actors who play the main character get puffed with too much pride, and sometimes the rest of the actors allow themselves to be touchy and/or bitter; both foolishly judge how important they are to the director by where the director has placed them.

The fairly evident comeback to all this is: "What about all the feminine roles that God plays? How He nurtures us? How we are fed by Him?" Indeed, Jesus at one point compares himself to a hen who wants to take all her chicklets under her wing. My reply is simply that no symbol is all-encompassing ("Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get." "What if the chocolates get smashed? How's that like Life? Or what if they melt? What if...?" "Um, lighten up.").

And there's really no more reply that can be made, I think, come that point. Just as there is no Jew or Greek in the Christ, there is no man or woman. Of course we're of equal value.

I'm discussing this today, incidentally, because apparently the number of females on this planet who believe I don't respect the young lady in my life at all has apparently grown to include my best friend, who believes I am a total misogynist [she actually writes 'masochist' in the letter by accident, ironically probably a more accurate description] based on comments I made over Christmas Break. My comment was that I believe God is a man - not that I believe that literally, but I went ahead and deadpanned it. Also I joked to her that talking to my suitee's father would have been a lot easier in the old days: "I have land and cattle. What do you want for her?" (and as a minor aside, a Kenyan City Councilman recently tried this very tactic on our own President Clinton, only to be disappointed; he offered forty goats and twenty cows in exchange for Chelsea's hand.)

These comments were not, to say the least, taken well.

Which leads us to another Minor Thoughts lesson for today: watch your mouth, because not everybody has your sense of humor.

In other news, the world's first caffeinated soap has now hit the market. It's called Shower Shock, and it retails for $5.95. Thank you.

If you'd as recently as yesterday pitched me a story told through diary entries about love between two citizens of a collectivist government set in the distant future - a future in which the very word "I" is no longer remembered - I would have naturally assumed you were talking about Ayn Rand's Anthem, a novella she published in 1938.

As it turns out, the premise and general thrust of the book was undoubtedly pulled from another novel, written and published in Soviet Russia fully six years before Ayn Rand herself would immigrate from the USSR to America: We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin.

I discovered this by accident; I was flipping through my mother's copy of a book entitled 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, skimming the chronologically-listed entries, when I stumbled upon We's description:

"We is a prototypical dystopian novel... The novel consists of a series of diary entries by D-503, a mathematician and a thoroughly orthodox citizen of the authoritarian, futuristic state to which he belongs. The diary sets out as a celebration of state doctrine, which dictates that happiness, order, and beauty can be found only in unfreedom, in the cast-iron tenets of mathematical logic and of absolute power. As the diary and novel continue, D-503 comes under the subversive influence of a beautiful dissident... He finds himself drawn towards... the anarchism of a private love. He no longer identifies with 'we'..."

The writer of the entry declares it "not a straightforward denunciation of communism, but a moving, blackly comic examination of the contradictions between freedom and happiness that state socialism produces."

The parallels to Anthem are obvious and too close to be coincidence, especially considering the two respective authors hail from the same country. And I'm not, as it turns out, the only one who's noticed; [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthem_(novella) lists the similarities and differences between the two.

The question is of course begged, then, as to whether those similarities listed constitute a case of plagiarism. Ms. Rand being my favorite modern author for the last decade, I'm certainly biased, but my general understanding of creativity leads me to answer in the negative. Beginning from the same premise as an already-published work, even knowingly, is not plagiarism if a story proceeds to explore different possibilities allowed for by that base. This, even Wikipedia agrees Rand does.

Really, Rand couldn't help but do so; We _is a story about Collectivism gone as far as it can possibly go, but its conclusions as to where "as far as it can possibly go" is don't mesh with Rand's own beliefs. _We involves a society's evolution to the point of colonizing new planets; Rand cannot imagine that a collectivist state would ultimately result in anything but a new age of barbarism, so the collectivists of her Anthem are, many centuries after their ancestors built skyscrapers, technologically capable of manufacturing only candles. We is a comedy; Anthem is clearly frustrated, even enraged. We declares communism to be reasonable but ultimately monstrous; Anthem objects that there is anything reasonable in communism. Finally, We results in the protagonist's "reeducation", which is to say his demise; Anthem results in his triumph.

This last detail should not be overlooked as simply an arbitrary difference in plot. Involving any other two writers, it very well could be taken as such, but an important principle of Rand's Objectivist philosophy is the impotency of evil. The triumph of the hero in her books is a statement regarding the nature of the universe, which she believed "benevolent" (the only exclusion being her character Kira in We The Living, who's controversial death still makes Rand's followers uncomfortable).

Both books are anti-collectivist and involve several sci-fi propositions, but each proclaims a very different worldview - justification a-plenty for two separate stories.

Or even more, maybe, because I learned one more surprising fact from Wikipedia today when I looked up the book; _Anthem _entered the public domain in 1966, after Ms. Rand failed to renew its copyright.

Anybody have a good idea for an Anthem-based story?

Now this is interesting; famous pornography king Larry Flynt, publisher of such luminous periodicals as_ Hustler_, has offered up to $1 million dollars for documented evidence of an extramarital affair with any high-ranking political official in the U.S. - senators, congresspeople, mayors of big cities, and (naturally) presidential or vice-presidential nominees.

According to FOXNews, this isn't even the first time Flynt has placed a bounty on politicians' hanky panky; in 1998 (remember what happened that year?) he let out a similar net, and successfully caught a very big fish: Rep. Bob Livingston, R-La., who - if not for having to fall on his sword when he learned Flynt was investigating him - would almost certainly have become Speaker of the House.

Every male has a little voice inside his head (Satan's, presumably) telling him that there must be some good in the pornography industry somewhere. Apparently this is it.

Oy; the good folks at the Bridge-Linguatec School just sent me a packet on information concerning the CELTA certification course (Cambridge English Language Teaching Association), which - God willing - I'm taking this June. And here's an excerpt:

"...The course is very intensive. Trainees need a great deal of energy and stamina to work through the course. You will be at school every day from approximately 9 "“ 6, and your evenings will be taken up with reading, research, lesson planning, and written assignments. It is advisable not to have a part-time job or other outside distractions during this month, as it will take your focus away from the course and you will not receive as much benefit from your time here. The course is very intense and requires a great deal of time and energy. Past trainees have commented that homework takes from 3-5 hours every evening."

The failure rate among students, it goes on to say, is roughly 6-7%, and so is the class drop-out rate, for a total of round-abouts 12-14% who are accepted and find they can't hack it. As for those students who pass the course: "C" students account for 65% of the typical class, the "B" students 20-25%. "A" students: 3-4% ("These Candidates usually have a number of years of teaching experience").

I admit to slight concern.

But!: We're not here to worry about my future, now are we? No, we're here to discuss Exodus 1:1-7 some more. So, let's.

We return to the somewhat troublesome question of how seventy-five Jews become 2-3 million Jews within the seemingly absurd span of a little over four hundred years.

• Exodus 1:5: "The total number of persons that were of Jacob's issue came to seventy, Joseph being already in Egypt [and not counting Joseph's grandchildren and great-grandchildren]."

According to Plaut, this group of seventy consists of Jacob, sixty-seven male offspring, and two wives. Adding in Joseph's grandchildren and great-grandchildren, the total number of men comes to seventy-two.

• Exodus 12:40: "The length of time that the Israelites lived in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years..." [if you believe this verse and not Genesis 15:16, in which God says Israel shall dwell in Egypt for four hundred flat. Gen. 15:16 also says "the fourth generation" shall leave Egypt, whereas 1 Chron. 7:20-27 records ten. We won't be getting into this seeming contradiction today.]

Is it possible that a family of seventy men became a nation of two to three million, or even more? Well, mathematically-speaking, the answer is like every other answer in Judaism: "Yes, but it depends." Several questions have a great impact on the issue.

Question 1: Were the Jews still polygamists? If Jewish men can take more than one wife, the birth rate of Israel increases. Simple.

Question 2: Did Israel's children take foreign wives? Joseph's wife was an Egyptian. If Joseph's kin followed suit (at least until their enslavement), and especially if they were polygamists, then the potential for a powerful birth rate was more strong. On the other hand, Abraham clearly hated the idea of his son Isaac marrying anyone who was not of his own kind. Was this attitude passed down to Abraham's descendants as virtual law, or was it not until Mount Sinai that such rules were enshrined?

Question 3: Did Israel's children take wives of their own kin? We often think of the Hebrew race as simply beginning with "Father Abraham", but of course this isn't true; Abraham himself belonged to a people populating the Fertile Crescent.

Who were these people? A popular theory among today's scholars is that the word "Hebrew" (Ivri) shares the same roots of, or is derived from, the word "Habiru" - the name given to a people populating (you guessed it) the Fertile Crescent.

From Plaut:

"[The Habiru] may have been related by family ties; they became prominent in Mesopotamia and later spread out all the way to Egypt... Although at first they were nomads or semi-nomads, they later settled in the countries of their choice. They were, however, usually considered foreigners, which means that they succeeded in maintaining their group identity..."

This especially clicks when you consider that the word Ivri "was used only when the members of the Israelite tribes spoke of themselves to outsiders and when outsiders referred to them. Thus, Abraham is called ivri (Gen. 14:13)..." Otherwise the people referred to themselves by their tribes (e.g., Judah, Ephraim) or by their more immediate common ancestor, Israel."

Interestingly, despite the seemingly perfect fit, Plaut stops short of saying in his Commentary that the Habiru and Israelites were kin, even though others don't. He only suggests that the Israelites were identified with and/or shared familial ties with the Habiru.

If Jacob and his children were Habiru, however, then the likelihood of their having met other Habiru in Egypt - and intermarried with them - is far from remote. The Israel that left Egypt may even have absorbed some of these Habiru into its body.

The rate of procreation necessary in order, for example, for thirteen men to become three million within four hundred years isn't actually so tough to swallow when you crunch the numbers. Within the first generation, forty children would have to be born (a modest rate of less than four children per man); by the second, there would have to be one hundred and fifty-three. But if the answers to any or all of the three questions I've raised today are "yes", we find the Bible's account all the easier to accept.

That is to say, IF you were having any_ trouble_ accepting the Bible's account. I, of course, never doubted. I'm just doing this for all you faithless people.

Today we're starting our amateur exegesis of the Book of Exodus (Shemot), with W. Gunter Plaut's famous The Torah: A Modern Commentary as our guide to various Jewish perspectives on the passages we'll read. I see Plaut's book starts out with an essay by William H. Hallo, but for now let's just skip his general discussion of Exodus's themes. We'll encounter the points Hallo makes later anyway.

The Book of Genesis ended with Joseph dying at the ripe old age of one hundred and ten, having successfully moved his family down into comfortable digs in Egypt. At the end of Genesis, that family has seventy members - or seventy-five, if you count Joseph's grandkids and great-grandkids.

Not for long.

Exodus 1:7: "But the Israelites were fertile and prolific; they multiplied and increased very greatly, so that the land was filled with them."

The Church of God Daily Bible Study: "Although there is no record of the precise number that left Egypt in the Exodus, a military census taken not long after [the Jews left Egypt] listed the number of men 20 years of age and older who could serve in the army as 603,550 (Exodus 38:26). From that number, the total Israelite population of that time has been estimated at approximately 2 to 3 million."

This may seem like a lot of spawning to have accomplished within roughly 400 years, but hey, to quote Joe: "What else are you going to do after a hard day of slavery?"

I can't think of anything either, but even assuming Ancient Israel was a nation of nymphomaniacs, there are obviously a few seemingly insurmountable problems of logic with the rate of reproduction Exodus records. Especially when you consider that Exodus 6:13-30 lists only four generations between the time of Joseph's death and Moses' birth (in fulfillment of the prophecy laid out by God in Gen. 15:16, that "they shall return here in the fourth generation").

Now 1 Chron. 7:20-27 gives God's People a little more breathing room, recording ten generations' worth of slaves in Egypt, and this is, if not probable, at least mathematically feasible.

Assuming that each Jewish family had, on average, ten children, each generation would be five times as large as the one preceding. If each generation lasted, on average, 40 years (a generous number), then in 200 years a single pair of parents would result in a generation numbering 5x5x5x5x5 or 3125 persons. In 280 years the 7th generation would have increased by an additional factor of 25 (5x5) to an impressive 78,125 persons. Under these conditions the first generation sons of Jacob, with their wives, would multiply to a generation consisting of between 37,500 (12 x 3125) and 937,500 (12 x 78,125) individuals in the time frame ending 200-280 years from when the twelve brothers first entered Egypt in 1876 B.C. Those numbers would necessarily be inflated to perhaps twice their values allowing for prior generations still living at the time." - From "Displaced Dynasties".

The writers of the Hebrew Midrash, always game for adding an inane comment to any Bible verse, suggest that all the Jewish women had sextuplets during this period (and if this is so, all I can say is that those ancient women really raised the bar, and I demand to know from the safety of my remote location behind this computer screen why our women today whine so much about passing just one).

And Plaut himself, for the record, would like you all to know that "The Hebrew word [for 'multiplied'] is related to 'swarming creature' (Gen. 1:20), suggesting that the Israelites proliferated like animals."

Thanks for that, Gunther. As if I didn't feel dirty enough already writing about all this. I'm changing topics.

It is noted in the Midrash that "the roster of the names of Jacob's sons appears here in an order different from other passages. This is to teach us that the sons of the handmaidens... were not inferior to their brothers." I've heard elsewhere that the list is jumbled for stylistic purposes. Regardless, I can't see how it matters; even if you read anything into those lists other than convenient categorization of the children by their respective mothers, Joseph and Benjamin are the last sons Jacob blesses in Gen. 49:22-27.

That's it for today. Tomorrow's the day of rest for the majority of us Christians, too, so there may or may not be a post. Enjoy your Sunday without me, though, if such a thing is possible.

Also from The Best, Worst & Most Unusual, by Bruce Felton & Mark Fowler:

"In 1663 a noted orientalist presented to the French Academy a paper in which he concluded that Adam was 140 feet tall, Noah, 50 feet tall, Abraham, 40 feet tall, and Moses, 25."

There. Now at least when you read my Bible study notes here at Minor Thoughts over the next few months, you can't say there haven't been any worse.

I don't know how other people study God's Word, but I've settled into a sorta three-pronged approach; I simultaneously read through one commentary on the Old Testament and one on the New, while also just reading the Bible daily for fun, without looking up a single thing. The variety keeps me from studying pitfalls to which I've noticed I'm particularly prone, such as spending so much of my attention exploring the Hebrew legacy in the Torah that my spirit ends up horrifically starved for Jesus. So today I visited the Idaho Springs Public Library, a charmingly compact, creaky historical building in a charmingly compact, creek-y historical miner's town in Colorado ("cute", nay, "adorable", that's what the young lady would call it), and here's what I chose:

• The Torah: A Modern Commentary, by Gunther Plaut. Obviously, this is the Old Testament commentary I'll be reading, my textbook whilst I work my way again through the Humash. It's also the textbook for an entire denomination of Judaism, actually; since its publication the work has become the standard reader for Reform Jewdom. And boy howdy, am I so tickled to have it: I've already read Plaut's commentary on Genesis (Bereshit, in Hebrew), and if his respective commentaries on the remaining parts of the Pentateuch are as fairly-balanced (Plaut often includes not only Conservative and Orthodox interpretations of Scripture, but Christian as well), well-researched (he cites all his sources), and eye-opening (at least for an ignorant cuss like me), I won't be able to read this thing fast enough.

• The Gospel of Matthew, Vol. 1 of the Daily Study Bible Series, by William Barclay. This is what I grabbed off the shelf for my New Testament pick, but two chapters into it and I'm already thinking about returning it in favor of something else. William Barclay's a pretty famous theologian and his Daily Study Bible books are bestsellers, but there are plenty of good reasons to be uneasy about reading him. For one, he makes occasional references which he does not bother to cite, and makes leaps of logic (he fails to sell me on his ideas concerning authorship of the Gospels). For another, he is a heretic. Wikipedia claims him "a liberal theologian, denying both the inerrancy of scripture and the divinity of Christ. He described himself as a liberal evangelical. In his autobiography, he described himself as a universalist, believing all people will eventually be saved, an unorthodox position." Even assuming this is true, it might not be a deal breaker (I've learned more about the Old Testament from Jews, all of whom deny the divinity of Jesus, than I've learned from my pastors), but coupled with his other apparent faults... I think a second trip to the library's in order.

I was also finally going to read a book a friend of mine loaned to me eons ago, entitled The Search.. The hefty tome's authored by a Dr. Ron Charles and subtitled "A Historian's Search for Historical Jesus". It is quite possibly, to quote one Amazon reviewer, the "most informative book on the life of Jesus that has been printed in decades". But I'll never know, because despite supposedly possessing a B.A. in Theology, two M.A.s, two Ph.Ds, and one Th.D (whatever that is), Dr. Ron Charles never learned he's supposed to cite all his sources (though a Jamaican newspaper claims he used 160 of them). Either that, or he just didn't care enough to catalog them, in which case I don't care enough to read his book.

I assume the reason Dr. Charles had to self-publish his book is because every respectable book publisher agrees with me on this point. Or maybe the editors of those publishing houses just couldn't get past the frequent typos; in the acknowledgements section of The Search Dr. Charles thanks Michelle Thomas, Kim Stuckey, and Laura Wairs for their proofreading services, but it's thanks undeserved. The book's errors are numerous.

So, to review: a book published in 2003 that is supposed to summarize 33 years of research by an archaeologist with six university degrees who claims he's found Noah's Ark, had to be self-published, is full of technical errors, and has no citations. Oh, and the author's website, www.roncharles.com, is down, meaning the only mention of him Google can find is now an article in a Jamaican newspaper.

Anyone else reckon this Dr. Charles guy was a fraud who's number just eventually came up?

Anyway, I guess I should look on the bright side of all this. Hopefully my friend won't want me to send his book back now.

First Bible study entry starts tomorrow, most likely with a look at the first chapter of Exodus.

According to p. 127 of The Best, Worst, & Most Unusual, by Bruce Felton and Mark Fowler:

"When a women's collective claimed credit for the bombing of Harvard University's Center for International Affairs, in October 1970, the Cambridge police gallantly defended them.

'This was a very sophisticated bomb,' a police spokesman said. 'We feel that women wouldn't be capable of making such a bomb.'"

PS: Even more ironic is that the 1970 Harvard bombing is primarily remembered by historians as "a moment of light", as the explosives accomplished little real damage to the facility but did successfully unearth the long-lost Bonfil Collection, a set of nearly 29,000 photos of the Middle East so valuable as to be called "one of the great photographic collections of all time." The discovery revitalized the entire institute. Read a full article on it here.

The following is an excerpt from Tony Snow's most recent White House press briefing (held on the 24th):

MR. SNOW: [Saddam Hussein] willingly accepted the feeding tube today. It will be in, at a minimum, until Thursday. It has to be in for reasons that I don't understand for 72 hours.

Q I don't know the specifics, but how does one willingly accept a feeding tube?

MR. SNOW: I guess, you say, do you want a feeding tube? And he says, yes. And they say, okay, we're going to give you one. This apparently was a consensual feeding tubing.

Is anyone else as happy as I am that Scott McClellan has been replaced? Finally we have a White House spokesperson who has good rapport with the press corps., thinks on his feet, refuses to relinquish the dignity of his office and his boss's, keeps his official announcements skimpy on the wordage, and has an honest-to-God sense of humor. I can't believe it; reading a press briefing transcript is no longer headache-inducing. Even if the next president is a Democrat, he/she should keep this guy.

"I'm feeling pretty chipper tonight -- I survived the White House shake-up." -- President Bush, at a recent White House Dinner.

Now that's funny.

According to FOXNEWS.COM, the World Rock, Paper, Scissors Tournament (or "RPS" for short) is growing like gangbusters. Check out the website.

It's a fallen world we live in, Folks, yes... but never forget, it's also an entertaining one.

Joe, you've declared your intention to make your dissatisfaction with your native Republican Party known by aiding the Democrats' election this year.

But why should dissatisfaction with a party result in your abetting another just as bad, or worse? Why help either of them? Isn't the practical result of such action ultimately destined to be the same as that of those we so often hear say "I don't like what my party is doing, but the other people are worse"?

(And just because the thought hits me: If the Libertarian Party were to somehow come to power in America, would it evolve (or devolve)-as Republican and Democrat parties have-over time into the same sort of animal? Is a march toward centralized statism inexorable, as has been suggested by many? Hard to say, since many capitalist cultures have been nipped in the bud. What might have occurred in Hong Kong had not the British government tossed their great city to Red China?)

(And just because another thought hits me: Is it a dilution of the title of the Christ, which we hold, to associate with political parties? Which makes a greater statement: "I am fighting the Republicans and the Democrats because I am a Christian", or "I am fighting the Republicans and the Democrats because I am a classic liberal"? We seem to refer to our supposed chief alignment far more rarely than our secondary alignments.)

Let me try to see if I can make any sense of what I'm thinking here, point-by-point. And for the record, these are beliefs in an embryonic stage, at best; these are not fully-formed convictions or anything. So:

(1) Much of the Torah is given over to the LORD separating His people from other peoples as holy. The political parties of America are unholy, man-made creations; they are not the practical expression of the Christ of God on this planet Earth, as is The Church. Does aligning with them not dilute God's very own "brand name", then-first in name-recognition ("What is Adam?" "Adam's a Republican", instead of "What is Adam?" "Adam is committed entirely to his God and the Church") then later in beliefs, as cohabitation of the Promised Land with the Caananites led to dilution of Jewish beliefs (as Republican-Christian syncretism is an easily-observed phenomenon)? To summarize: By working actively in political parties, are we less obviously Christian to the maximum number of people? And don't we risk infecting ourselves with these parties' unclean worldviews?

(2) As Christians, our primary purpose is to serve others and show them the LORD's love, regardless of whether they become Christian themselves. Do we not immediately make ourselves the enemies of half the nation by registering as Republicans and Democrats, by campaigning for them? Being a Republican makes it much more difficult to witness to a Democrat, doesn't it?

(3) Despite being super-capitalists, we seem to give in to the same "zero-sum" mentality of statists. We believe that we must protect God's real work-the service of others spiritually and materially-by defending it within the political system. That is, we wish to feed the Five Thousand, so we try to keep the government from stealing our five thousand loaves of bread. But if we are, as the Christ has promised us, possessed of the ability to accomplish even greater works than He performed in His time, then what matter if the government taxes our bread and leaves us with five hundred loaves, or fifty? If we devote our full attention, our full energies, to putting out those loaves, we have God's promise that He will see to the rest.

We as human beings do have a finite amount of strength within us, but to what is that strength better put: putting out fliers for Senator Whoever, or volunteering at a soup kitchen? Walking door-to-door to speak with people about their politics, or speaking privately with people one-on-one about their problems (as one of the few people truly qualified to give the antidote to those problems: not a psychiatrist, but a Christian)?

This I know: the world is designed by the Enemy to keep us from the Master's work. Political parties are institutions of this world (they're kingdoms, which rise and fall, trying to systemitize a solution the Poor, who we shall always have with us). I see dots and I think they may connect.

Did the poor of Jerusalem put their sick under Peter's shadow (Acts) in hopes that he would tell them how to vote?

Am I now the John Galt to your Henry Rearden, Joe?

Hey, Folks: There's a great article by Marvin Olasky just published online at Townhall, listing resources for learning about the Islamic religion. If like me you're pretty ignorant on this major world religion's specifics, you might want to note a few of his recommendations.