Minor Thoughts from me to you

After three months, Anna and I have finally grown confident enough about the stability of our lives here in Korea that we've entered into a contract for internet service in our apartment. This means I'm listening to podcasts on my iPod again after about six months' abstinence from them. Here are my favorites:

Common Sense with Dan Carlin - It may surprise those who know me (or who have read any post about politics on this blog) that my favorite podcast about politics - indeed, the only one I still bother to regularly check - is by an independent centrist who supports socialized health care. But that's just proof of how great a communicator and honest a thinker Dan Carlin is: you don't have to agree with him to find his show consistently fascinating. Give it a listen.

Dan Carlin's Hardcore History - Dan Carlin also has a second, far more popular podcast on the less contentious subject of History. Listen to the show once and you'll soon find that you've consumed the entirety of its program backlog and are now waiting in agony along with the rest of us for the next, traditionally late installment of the best monologue on the web. My favorite podcast.

Reasonable Doubts - I've sifted through a lot that's on offer in the world of podcasts concerning the world's theologies and (later on, after I stopped believing) arguments against it. The three liberal, atheist professors from Michigan who run this show are the only (anti-)religious partisans with whom I still keep up. They are unabashed in their contempt for stupidity and ignorance among theists, but even while I myself was a theist I found them very willing to hear out other views and award them credit where it was due.

Free Talk Live - I don't listen to Ian, Mark, or their revolving guest hosts very often anymore, but that's mainly because I agree with it too often and it's way too effective at pushing my buttons. The program's nightly reports on how much injustice is really going on in my native country often enrages me to a degree I am certain is unhealthy. That said, it's still a great show, mainly because Ian and Mark are not only utterly authentic but also inhumanly patient, never failing to live up to their promise to discuss whatever their callers want to talk about. Sometimes this results in utter hilarity, since the policy inevitably draws the craziest people our society has to offer. For instance, one regular is a believer in every antisemitic conspiracy theory out there.

All of them are available for free on iTunes.

Above: "Summer reading list" by Kimberly Applegate.

Counting up how many books I've read in the last 3+ months, I find that I've just passed my reading list's halfway point; I'm on my nineteenth entry out of thirty-six.

A commute to work by bus has its advantages.

Let's throw some ratings into the mix here. We'll use a five-star system:

1 - being God-awfully inept and offensive. 2 - being so flawed that it lacks entertainment value. 3 - being entertainment, but a clearly flawed work. Inoffensive and forgettable.
4 - being a perfectly respectable example of How It's Done, but falling short of Art. 5 - being something special, a superior achievement.

FICTION

The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett - I paid a visit to the former chair of the Shorter College Humanities Department recently and we naturally flung books at each other before parting. This was his selection. Finished. 4 stars.

Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan - The movie looks like a great deal of fun, but in general I'm a firm believer of reading the book first. So I will. Finished. 2 stars..

Up in the Air, by Walter Kim - Another book purchased simply because the previews for the movie greatly intrigue me. Finished. 3 stars. Loses points on the dismount with a tacked-on "shocking revelation".

Native Son, by Richard Wright - Because I like my reading lists to have some diversity and realized I didn't have any great African-American novels on it. I love Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Ellison was connected with Wright, so I selected this to fill the gap.

War & Peace, by Leo Tolstoy - I'm probably being absurdly optimistic in purchasing this book and putting it on my reading list for this year; as anyone can tell you, it's huge, and God knows the block of time it'll require has plenty of other claims on it, the rest of this list included. Still, I've really wanted to read it ever since finishing The Death of Ivan Ilyich, and having it readily available is the first step, so just maybe...

Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky - And buying Tolstoy made me think of Dostoevsky, whose The Brothers Karamazov I finally finished when I last visited Korea.

The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden, by John Steinbeck - I've already read Grapes, but I did it back in high school, which really is more or less equivalent to having not read something at all (children are all Philistines; their souls have not yet developed). One of Steinbeck's other novels ranks as an absolute favorite of mine, The Winter of Our Discontent, and one of the particularly proud moments of my time in college was when I had the honor of introducing my Creative Writing professor to it, who afterward declared it one of her all-time favorites as well.

The Angel's Game, by Carlos Ruis Zafon - Zafon's other novel, The Shadow of the Wind, is one of the most enjoyable books I read in '09. My wife's already read this one and told me it's darker, which disappointed her and somewhat disappoints me - Shadow was one of those books where you bounced in your bed at the ending, which is a rarity for me - but so it goes; no doubt it will still be, as Stephen King called Shadow, one gorgeous read.

The Baroque Trilogy (Quicksilver, The Confusion, The System of the World) and Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson - Apparently a force with which to be reckoned in science fiction, which accounts for why I haven't heard of him. I've received a lot of recommendations from friends who are into the genre, though, and Snow Crash made TIME's "100 Greatest Novels of the 20th Century", so I feel pretty confident these'll be enjoyable. Finished with Snow Crash. 5 stars.

The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman - I've always been curious about the His Dark Materials trilogy, a fantasy series that's often referred to as the anti-Chronicles of Narnia. I'm not willing to blindly plump for all three, but I'm pretty sure the first installment is a self-contained story, like The Lion, The Witch, & The Wardrobe. So it turns out that the first book was not self-contained, but it was so good Anna and I immediately purchased the next two. I'm on the third volume now. Grade So Far: 5 stars.

The Magicians, by Lev Grossman - What if a bunch of today's adults found out Hogwarts and Narnia were real? Sounds fun. Finished. 4 stars.

Supreme Courtship, by Christopher Buckley - On the strength of his Thank You For Smoking. Finished. 4 stars.

A Farewell to Arms and The Son Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway - I'd never actually read Hemingway until I picked up_ For Whom The Bell Tolls_ at the airport on my way to my honeymoon destination. I am now of course very much looking forward to reading the rest of his body of work. In March I accidentally found and finished The Old Man and the Sea.

This Side of Paradise, by F. Scott Fitzgerald - Obviously I'm taking the opportunity to fill in a few shameful gaps in my reading experience.

Riding Lessons, by Sara Gruen - Because her Water For Elephants is utterly charming.

Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer - I consider it sort of a duty to read anything that gets as popular as this book. Plus my wife's read them all and wants to be able to discuss them with me. Hey, who knows? I didn't want to read the Harry Potter books, either. Finished. 2 stars.

Her Fearful Symmetry, by Audrey Niffenegger - On the strength of her first book, The Time Traveler's Wife, which reminded its readers of how great science fiction can be when it's not just left for geeks to write. Finished. 3 stars, but not for any observable deficiency; the narrative simply doesn't compel.

The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton - Since all of her novels are in the public domain now, Amazon asks only ninety-nine cents in return for all thirty-one of them. I actually finished this particular book back in January (we're over a month into '10, after all). Verdict: enjoyable, but The Age of Innocence is far more rewarding to the modern reader. 3 stars.

Between, Georgia, by Joshilyn Jakson - My mother's recommendation. I honestly have no idea.

Being Written, by William Conescu - One of several impulse buys. A minor character in a book realizes his nature and struggles with the author to achieve greater prominence. Finished - and boy, this book wasn't what I thought it would be at all. 4 stars, but I'm disturbed..

Persona Non Grata, by Ruth Downie - My trial installment for a light-hearted series in which an ancient Roman doctor and his slave girl solve mysteries.

Tipperary, by Frank Delaney - In preparation for my Kindle spree I walked about a Barnes & Noble, just letting covers leap out at me. My wife tells me this one did. I naturally no longer remember.

The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth - A tale set in an alternative history in which the Fascists gained political power in America prior to World War II. Why not? Finished. 2.5 stars. Undeniably the work of someone who knows what he's doing, but its message is extraordinarily deceitful and the pace of the plot sometimes unforgivably slow.

NONFICTION

The Art of Biblical Narrative, by Robert Alter - Assigned by my Old Testament professor at college, this is one of the books that spearheaded the (re-?)introduction of literary analysis of the Bible to universities in the last century. Obviously I've read it (got a "B" - Dr. Wallace wasn't easy), but I'd like to read it again at a more leisurely pace. And maybe take notes this time. An assured 5 stars.

Foreskin's Lament, by Shalom Auslander - A memoir from an author who has written only one other book to my knowledge, an anthology of short stories collectively entitled Beware of God, which was so side-splittingly hilarious and poignant I'll probably be buying anything with his name on it for the foreseeable future. Finished. 4 stars.

The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel..., by Israel Finkelstein - A survey of what modern archaeology has to say about the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah and their Biblical records. Finished. 3 stars. Fully half the book is dull summarizing of the Bible stories themselves. The rest is very interesting.

Nothing to Envy, by Barbara Demick - Six North Korean refugees describe life beyond the DMZ, and how they escaped it. Being in such close proximity to what may be the most evil regime on this planet almost demands an interest in it, so I've always known that when I returned to Seoul I'd be bringing along more reading material about the DPRK. Finished. 5 stars and very moving.

The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man, by Dr. Robert "The Bible Geek" Price - A biblical scholar's assessment of the four gospels' authenticity. Finished. 4 stars.

On Writing, by Stephen King - The best book on writing fiction I've ever read, written by the writer's writer. I owned a physical copy but gave it away.

Brotherhood of Warriors, by Douglas Century - A look into Israel's special forces. Already read this one too, but I need to comb through it again for research purposes. Finished. 4 stars for what it is - but what it is doesn't happen to be that audacious, so don't take that as a strong recommendation.

So I'm poking around the internet for a directory of given names for Midianites or Amalekites and I find this - a step-by-step, program-assisted guide to creating whatever Canaanite name you want.

Apparently it was created as a tool for people playing roleplaying games in an ancient Canaanite setting - that is, playing Dungeons & Dragons or something of the sort in Biblical scenery. Even as a scion of the whole Comics/RPG/Sci-Fi/Fantasy culture, I've never heard of that, but imagining how such a thing might play out entertains me immensely.

UPDATE: After a little more digging about, I've learned that there is indeed a fairly new role playing game produced for enthusiasts of Biblical mythology, aptly named Testament. And there's a magazine named - I kid you not - Targum that contains supplementary information for it.

The game features character classes such as "desert hermit", "Levite priest", and of course "champion of Israel" (that is, a judge). Characters have piety ratings and glorious opportunities for advantages like the "Nazirite feat", which "adds +8 to an attribute of your choice, as long as you don’t drink alcohol, drink wine, cut your hair, or let your Piety drop below 10 (by, for example, dallying with a Qedeshot dancer and letting her cut your hair)."

I want to buy this game just to read the rest of its instruction manual.

Above is a picture of Testament's cover.

The foreword written afterward

About two weeks ago, the inexplicable bug bit me to write a daily commentary on the Book of Judges. I wanted it to have a conversational tone, with its tongue often straining at its cheek, and I wanted it to largely eschew the "spiritual metaphors" and "hidden meanings" that pastors, priests, and rabbis see in it in favor of discussing... well, what interests me: its influences and sources, its composition, its historicity. Everything that most people can spend their entire life faithfully attending church every Sunday without once hearing mentioned, but which scholars have enjoyed discussing for over a hundred years.

Below's what happened. It's not by any means exhaustive; in fact, it's intentionally the opposite, a light skip along Joshua's pages rather than a labored dissection of the ancient work. It's also certainly not authoritative. I've never attended seminary, nor was I even a Religion major in college; my knowledge of Biblical criticism comes from a few courses I took in college as electives and the reading I've done for pleasure since. And even if I was formally trained, the fact is that Biblical criticism is a field in which everyone does the best they can with the clues available, a lot of which are circumstantial. My college professor often concluded a discussion of a particular item in the Scriptures by saying, "I only know two things for sure: I don't know and you don't know."

That's not always true, of course. There are some things I think serious students of the Bible can now declare in total confidence - for instance, that Joshua's campaign as described in the Bible just doesn't match the archaeological evidence we have. But views such as mine on the origin of the Levites are easily debatable with DNA evidence and simply good questions, such as my wife's, who just asked me why Levi's featured in stories like Genesis 34 if he never really existed.

With those caveats outta the way, here's hoping you find something worthwhile in the study. I did. It's just as they say: "The best way to learn is to teach."

The Commentary Index

Joshua 22-24 - About the altar of Gilead.

Joshua 21 - The secret origin of the Levites.

Joshua 20 - On the six cities of refuge.

Joshua 12-19 - How the twelve tribes truly came into possession of Canaan.

Joshua 11 - The Anakim and other tall tales.

Joshua 10 - Joshua's greatest hit.

Joshua 9 - Anti-Gibeonite propaganda.

Joshua 7-8 - Why knowing God's will for your life may be easier than you think.

Joshua 5-6 - On the fall of Jericho.

Joshua 2-4 - Why Rahab deserves a better rep and how important God's parting the waters really is.

Joshua 1 - On the authorship of the Book of Joshua and Joshua's possible secret heritage.

For decades now state and local governments have been content to turn taxation over to the Federal governmnet. It's a pretty sweet gig. The Feds raise taxes -- capital gains, income, tarrifs, gasoline, whatever -- and get all of the voter anger and contempt. Then the Feds turn around and give the money back to the state in the form of grants, road spending bills, earmarks, or other forms of largesse.

It's an arrangement that gives State and local lawmakers the thrill of spending without the pain of actually, themselves, being responsible for taxing that much out of their residents.

It's an arrangement that does have some downsides. The biggest is the complete lack of local control. Remember the golden rule: he who has the gold makes the rules. A local Madison neighborhood is finding that out the hard way.

The pedestrian walkway under University Avenue at Spring Harbor Drive may be old and spooky. But school and neighborhood officials say it's necessary to keep kids and residents safe when they cross that roadway, where drivers routinely exceed the posted 35 mph speed limit.

Now they're worried that plans for a $7 million reconstruction of 1.9 miles of the avenue -- from North Segoe Road in Madison to Allen Boulevard in Middleton -- next year don't include re-building the tunnel.

... Madison officials say it would cost $1 million just to build a new tunnel because federal laws would require it to be accessible for people with physical handicaps -- unlike the current walkway -- and so far the money isn't available.

City officials say they'd love to make the passage's users happy, and staff engineer Christy Bachmann said the city has applied several times for federal money to redo the tunnel, but the project always ranks low and loses out on the grants. Ald. Mark Clear, whose 19th District includes the underpass, said the city has to do something with the passage come next spring.

"Because the reconstruction project is federally funded, they require that the pedestrian underpass at University Avenue and Spring Harbor Drive be brought into ADA compliance or removed," Clear said, referring to the federal Americans with Disabilities Act.

Glen Yoerger, an engineer for the city of Madison, said the reconstruction of the street, 80 percent of which will be paid for with federal funds with the remainder coming from local funds, will install curb and gutters and medians where needed along University Avenue, among other improvements.

Well, better luck next time kids. Your Aldermen, County Board members, state Assemblymen, state Senators, and Governor long ago gave up the right to actually govern this state. As a result, they're powerless to help you now.

Speaking personally, I'd love to see a State legislature and a State governor stand up to the Feds and fight to keep tax dollars. Then, take responsibility for collecting the money for local needs and spending the money in a way that will best serve local needs. The Feds are never going to be as good at knowing what your State needs as you. Quit dodging responsibility and start doing your jobs.

And welcome back to the Internet’s greatest Bible commentary, in which Yours Truly reads through the Bible and explains its many mysteries as best my limited education allows. I encourage you to read the Good Book along with me, because my time’s too valuable to write summaries. Here we go!

Today's entry is our grand finale. Stay tuned for another bookend post akin to the one which began this series.

22:10. And they came to the regions of the Jordan, that are in the land of Canaan, and the children of Reuben and the children of Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh built an altar there by the Jordan, a great altar to look upon.

As Dr. Robert Price would admonish us, the first question we'll ask ourselves about Chapter 23 is the most important: what use did the writer of this passage's contemporary audience have for it? What's its function?

The answer's not difficult: this story explains why, at the time of writing, there existed altars to the LORD in the land of Gilead which matched Jerusalem's in age and grandeur. Their existence and the love of the populace for them is a sticking point for the YWHists, who have said that God desires His worship to be centralized in Jerusalem.

What the writer has come up with is pretty clever. The altars were legally built, but the original intention was never to worship with them. They're just to remind you that you're supposed to be worshiping the LORD over in Jerusalem. So: you don't have to knock 'em down, but don't use 'em!

Chapter 23 is of course "The Story Thus Far". Since the story of Joshua and other important scrolls were not collected in one volume until well after the time of Jesus, it was important to include a summary of previous events within the work.

23:15. And it shall be, that as all the good things that the Lord your God has spoken to you have come to pass, so shall the Lord bring upon you all the evil things, until He has destroyed you from this good land, that the Lord your God has given you.

23:16. When you transgress the covenant of the Lord your God, that He has commanded you, and you will go and serve strange gods and you will bow to them; then the wrath of the Lord will burn against you, and you will perish quickly from upon the good land that He has given you."

This is a reference to Assyria's destruction of Israel and/or Babylon's of Judah. If you're a Christian, you likely believe that this is an example of prophecy; if you have a secular view of the Scriptures, these verses show that the Book of Joshua was either written or revised later than Canaan's foreign domination.

Chapter 24 has some fun working of the crowds by Joshua. "Choose for yourself, People, but I'm going to serve the LORD." "We will, too!" "You? Pfffft. You can't handle it." "Yes, we can! We're going to serve the LORD!" "Alriiiight... Did everyone hear that? You said it, not me."

It's worth pointing out, because I think it's one of the simplest admissions that many evangelical Christians tend not to consider but are willing to make, that "the people" didn't really all say the dialogue ascribed to them here. The author clearly made the words up in order to get across the crowd's sentiments in a stylish way.

24:33. And Eleazar the son of Aaron died; and they buried him in the hill of Phinehas his son, which was given to him in Mount Ephraim.

As previously mentioned in this series, Eleazar should already have died in the desert.

NEXT: An afterword, but I don't blame you if you don't want to stick around. Thanks for reading.

Bible Translation: Judaica Press's Tanach with Rashi commentary, courtesy of Chabad.org.

OTHER POSTS IN THIS SERIES:

Joshua 21

Joshua 20

Joshua 12-19

Joshua 11

Joshua 10

Joshua 9

Joshua 7-8

Joshua 5-6

Joshua 2-4

Joshua 1

I'd planned to finish up my commentary on the Book of Joshua today - there's little enough material in the last chapters that I think I can do it in one entry - but my father sent me a very hefty e-mail and I ended up writing a day's worth of words for him instead.

The subject on which we're writing each other is actually related. I told my father a little over a week ago that I was an atheist. He didn't come after me during the actual Skype conversation in which I said it, but his first salvo of Christian apologist answers to atheists - all of which you've probably heard before if you're interested in such things - started appearing in my e-mail box within 48 hours. I'll be answering them until he tires out. That might be bad news for the commentary if we weren't so close to the end, but I'm sure I can squeeze out one more post in the next day or two.

TTFN.

Can a simple accessory change your life? I guess it depends on how easily the course of your life is altered. But this M-Edge Kindle 2 case did change my life in a minor way. Nothing earth shattering. I haven't discovered a new direction, found new motivation, or rededicated myself to the assistance of aged grandmothers caring for bewildered orphans. On the other hand, I do read my Kindle far, far more than I used to.

Last year, around this time, I read my Kindle frequently. But it wasn't in an all-out fight to my dominant mode of reading. It was nice, but it was somewhat awkward. I enjoyed reading it in bed and I enjoyed reading it while sitting on park benches. I enjoyed reading it while waiting for my grill to heat up, right before tossing a nice juicy steak on it. But I didn't enjoy reading it while eating.

See, I've always read while eating. At least from as far back as I can remember, anyway. I'd even say it's a healthy habit. If I eat while reading, I eat slowly and chew everything thoroughly. Medical type personnel are always apt to say that that's a good thing that promotes healthy digestion. Without a good book, I tend to just bolt my food down so I can get back to something more interesting -- like reading.

Anyway, without this case, it was awkward to read while eating. I had to find something near my plate that I could use to prop up my Kindle: a milk jug, a particularly sturdy napkin holder, a pot of mashed potatoes, etc.

But this case. This case does all of the hard work of propping up a book for me. It supports my book at a perfect reading angle and looks nice doing it. It's now my preferred way of reading while I eat -- by far. It beats a paper book all hollow. And, since so much of my reading time these days is confined to meals, it's my preferred way of reading any book.

Now, if only there were a Kindle lending library stocked with every book ever published, I'd be a happy man.

(About the build quality: I bought the "real leather" variety. Don't waste your money. The leather is probably real but feels little different from the fake leather that I've felt on other products. The padding underneath is adequate but thin. The straps do a great job of holding the Kindle in place and feel like they'll last for a while. Also, this case goes great with an M-Edge e-Luminator2 book light.)

And welcome back to the Internet’s greatest Bible commentary, in which Yours Truly reads through the Bible and explains its many mysteries as best my limited education allows. I encourage you to read the Good Book along with me, because my time’s too valuable to write summaries. Here we go!

I like how another blog I ran across while researching today's post started its own entry on this subject:

Who the hell were the Levites?

I may have to steal and modify it into my standard opening, or maybe the title format for my posts here. "What the hell are the cities of refuge?", "Who the hell is Joshua, son of Nun?", "Who the hell wrote the Book of Joshua?", etc.

21:1. And the heads of the fathers' [houses] of the Levites approached Eleazar the priest, and Joshua the son of Nun, and the heads of the fathers' [houses] of the tribes of the children of Israel;

22:2: And they spoke to them in Shiloh in the land of Canaan, saying, "The Lord commanded through Moses to give us cities to dwell in, and the open land around them for our cattle."

Among the twelve tribes of Israel, the Levite tribe is uniquely cursed, uniquely blessed, and uniquely fictional. Their curse is to inhabit forty-eight cities situated throughout land belonging to the other tribes, rather than possessing a whole region to call their own. Their blessing is to be a people comprised entirely of the LORD's ministers - His priests, His temple workers, their support staff. Their history as described in the first five books of the Bible and their identification there as a separate people, ethnically related to their eleven (or twelve) brother tribes, is the invention of tradition with an assist by the priesthood's writers.

It's possible the Levites might as well have been their own tribe by the time the Book of Joshua was written; it's not difficult to imagine an exclusive caste of intermarrying priests, temple workers, seers, and their servants developing in Canaan during the Late Bronze and early Iron ages. Nor is it difficult to imagine the great advantage that being seen as a people gave them. As a race instead of just an organization they had an additional claim to land and temporal power over it, which made disdain for their authority in their power bases not only a violation of holy ground but also of a nation's sovereign borders. Again, you can compare the status they desired with that of the Catholic Church in its heyday, when it was very literally God's kingdom on Earth, with its own citizens, borders, and troops, along with numerous embassies - that is, churches - in other countries.

But the blood that ran through the veins of the Levites who dwelled in Ephraim was Ephraimite blood, just as the blood of those priests who lived in Judahite territory was Judahite, and so on. Some were perhaps of mixed descent.

As for their occupational heritage, it was not one they owed to YWH. These seers, temple caretakers, ritual butchers, and outright magicians had plied their trade as Canaan's intermediaries with the spirit world long before He monopolized their business. The name by which they're still known even references their previous service to a powerful snake deity (consider that their name shares its root word with "leviathan"), a service which dramatically ended when King Hezekiah smashed their main idol.*

Sea changes in the ritualism and theology of the Levites were not only brought about by a dynasty that schizophrenically vacillated between state-mandated henotheism and traditional Canaanite polytheism. The various clans of Levites constantly waged wars of religious propaganda against each other. A sect would attempt to undercut the authority of a rival faction by promoting unflattering stories about that group's founding members.

The Levites who speak to Joshua in this chapter represent a fusion of those two brotherhoods, who were painfully united out of necessity when the Assyrians devastated Israel. Refugees from the ruined kingdom fled into Judah and brought their beliefs with them. The compromise these Moses-touting immigrants eventually struck with the Aaronite priests of Jerusalem resulted in the stories so familiar to Bible readers today.

* Cultural shifts are never so neat, of course. Illegal worship undoubtedly continued despite Hezekiah's suppression and began to revive under his polytheistic son Manasseh, but the "YWH-Only" crowd likely dealt it a serious blow every time they came to power, from which the religion self-evidently never completely recovered.

NEXT: The weekend. Come back on Monday.

Bible Translation: Judaica Press's Tanach with Rashi commentary, courtesy of Chabad.org.

OTHER POSTS IN THIS SERIES:

Joshua 20

Joshua 12-19

Joshua 11

Joshua 10

Joshua 9

Joshua 7-8

Joshua 5-6

Joshua 2-4

Joshua 1

TIME's running a feature-length article on their website about how archaeologists are informing our understanding of the Bible. I note that they quote Israel Finkelstein, the book of whom is one of my primary resources for my commentary on the Book of Joshua.

I wish the reporter had added a little more detail to this sentence:

In 1986, archaeologists found the earliest known text of the Bible, dated to about 600 B.C. It suggests that at least part of the Old Testament was written soon after some of the events it describes.

What text, Dude? Which part? Inquiring minds want to know and now will have to look it up themselves - and they're lazy, so they hate doing that!

But the piece is a pretty good summary of the history and current state of Biblical archaeology, at least as I understand the subject. Check 'er out.

And welcome back to the Internet’s greatest Bible commentary, in which Yours Truly reads through the Bible and explains its many mysteries as best my limited education allows. I encourage you to read the Good Book along with me, because my time’s too valuable to write summaries. Here we go!

Wow. That last post really pulled us ahead, didn't it? Only four more chapters to go now. You hardcore bloggers out there will think I'm a wimp for saying it, but I'm glad; publishing a daily series has been fun but tiring. I want to continue on to the Book of Judges, but I think I'll be taking a break before I do.

Onto Chapter 20.

20:2. "Speak to the children of Israel, saying, 'Prepare for you cities of refuge, of which I spoke to you through Moses.

This order was given by the LORD way, way back in Numbers/Bamidbar 35.

20:6. And he shall dwell in that city until he stand before the tribunal for judgment, until the death of the High Priest that shall be in those days. Then shall the slayer return, and come to his own city, and to his own house, to the city from which he fled."

I was confused when I first read this verse and had to seek clarification, so I'll now offer the same. A man who accidentally kills another may legally take refuge in one of six designated cities, after which he is marched back to his own town under guard in order to stand trial. If he is found guilty of intentional murder, he is executed; if not, he is returned to the city of refuge, wherein he must remain until the death of the high priest living there, an event which atones for an exile's sin.

Three cities are selected for the purpose on the western side of the Jordan River and three are selected to the east of it. Each of the three to the west - Shechem, Hebron, and Kadesh - were major centers of religion and naturally belonged to the Levites, so we can safely assume that the other three - Bezer, Ramoth, and Golan - were as well.

Their ability to protect people comes from the ancient and especially Hebrew idea of "holy ground", derived from a god's ownership of it and presence on it. Such land is naturally not beholden to any temporal authority, so its caretakers are in theory free to defy any secular parties' demands of it, such as extradition of a fugitive. This idea is basically still a part of the Catholic Church's doctrine and until the seventeenth century, it still had the clout to make its churches sanctuaries from local law.

(I should note in fairness that the Catholic Church itself argues its concept of sanctuary has nothing to do with ancient cities of refuge. Quoth the Catholic Encyclopedia: "The right of sanctuary was based on the inviolability attached to things sacred, and not, as some have held, on the example set by the Hebrew cities of refuge." Since the power of the cities rested on the inviolability of sacred things, however, I think the two concepts are justly identified with each other.)

Historically, the Hebrew cities of refuge may have not actually worked out so well in practice as they were supposed to in theory. Apparently they didn't in other civilizations of the time. Wikipedia's entry on the subject says:

Over time, these general rights of asylum were gradually curtailed, as some sanctuaries had become notorious hotbeds of crime; in Athens, for example, the regulations were changed so that slaves were only permitted to escape to the sanctuary of the temple of Theseus.

Some historians suggest this is why only six cities are listed when in theory any Levite city should work. By the time the Book of Joshua was written, other cities had eliminated the policy.

Later there was also the problem of what to do when not all six of the cities in question were under Jewish authority. Rabbis pragmatically concluded that alternative cities could be designated as necessary. Other Hebrew traditions and bylaws concerning issues with the cities of refuge are just as entertainingly practical. The Mishnah tells us that the mothers of the high priests were understandably concerned that the refugees would wish a quick death upon her son and that their thoughts would cause exactly that (an "evil eye" -type superstition), so they traditionally offered gifts of food and clothing to the new arrivals.

It was my intention to cover two chapters in today's post, but after reading Chapter 21 I've realized that doing it justice is going to require its own day's work.

NEXT: The secret identity of the Levites!

Bible Translation: Judaica Press's Tanach with Rashi commentary, courtesy of Chabad.org.

Picture: Cities of refuge, as in Joshua 20:1-9, illustration from a Bible card published 1901 by the Providence Lithograph Company.

OTHER POSTS IN THIS SERIES:

Judah 12-19

Joshua 11

Joshua 10

Joshua 9

Joshua 7-8

Joshua 5-6

Joshua 2-4

Joshua 1

Holy cow. The Wisconsin Democrat is calling it quits:

In a major blow to Democrats, House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey has told close associates that he will not seek re-election and an announcement of his plans is expected as early as Wednesday.

The Wisconsin Democrat faces tough poll numbers at home but until Tuesday night his staff had insisted he was running aggressively and had hired campaign staff. But a person close to him confirmed the decision to POLITICO Wednesday and said Obey was preparing to make a statement.

via Obey Won't Seek Re-election - Daniel Foster - The Corner on National Review Online.

Seeing as how I think the House Appropriations Committee is full of the most arrogant, big spending collection of corruptocrats in the entire Congress and seeing as how Congressman Obey was their Chairman -- you might say that I'm elated at this news.

So: please find below my summary of Joshua 12-19.

Which I lifted from a page on Wikipedia, that famous fount of information. That page also says that

... by the Bible's account, and archaeologically as well, the Israelites did not conquer the plains at that time; thus, those borders that run through the plains are nominal; they partition land that Israel did not possess.

Thanks, Wikipedia!

The above map begs an important question that I haven't yet addressed in this series: if Joshua's campaign never took place - and make no mistake, the verdict on that question is in - then how did these tribes actually come to Canaan?

Well, they didn't come from anywhere. The people who eventually identified themselves as Israel, a chosen people that had destroyed and replaced the vile Canaanite population formerly living in the Levant, were actually the latest generation of Canaanites themselves. At the risk of losing all credibility with you as a scholar (oh, wait - I have none! Well then, let's carry on!), I'm going to quote Wikipedia's summary of the question:

Since archaeological remains show a smooth cultural continuity in [Canaan in the Late Bronze Age], rather than the destruction of one culture (Canaanite) and replacement by another (Israelite), a large body of archaeologists believe that the Israelites were simply an emergent subculture within Canaanite society — i.e. that an Israelite conquest would be... logical nonsense — it would have involved the Canaanites invading themselves, from Canaan.

There is evidence that many Canaanite cities were suddenly destroyed in the Late Bronze Age, but believers in the Abrahamic religions err in taking it all as proof of an Israelite invasion. If they widened their perspective of the archaeological finds to include what was happening at the time in the Eastern Mediterranean as a whole, they'd understand that the finds are part of a greater mystery: the unsolved question of why every civilization in the Eastern Mediterranean abruptly collapsed in a very short period, with the exception (barely) of Egypt.

One tribe of desert-wanderers, who principally worshiped a god named YWH and who never ate pigs, did indeed "invade" and settle in Canaan during the Late Bronze Age. They didn't see it as an opportunity so much as a necessity; the collapse of civilization meant that the Canaanites were once again living at a subsistence level and didn't have extra grain and vegetables to trade for the wanderers' sheep. The desert-wanderers would now have to farm for themselves. This they did by settling in small villages throughout the central highlands of the Levant, laying down roots that would eventually turn them into a small, unwealthy nation named Judah. Because the highlands were so difficult to reach and held too few resources to make conquering their inhabitants worth it, it survived the new and powerful kingdoms that emerged around it.

This tribe of Judah was never part of a greater monarchy that included the far more wealthy kingdom of Israel to the north. They were clearly of the same ethnicity, as well as of the same breed as the other desert-wanderers who settled Edom, Moab, and Ammon. They once had a leader named David, famed for how brilliantly he led his army of habiru against the Israelites and Ammonites. Eventually they would come under the power of a theocratic regime led by the high priest Hilkiah and the king Hezekiah, who were determined to obliterate the traditional polytheism of their people.

They had big dreams, those men. They imagined a unified Canaan with its capital in Jerusalem, where the throne would always be occupied by a descendant of the House of David. To facilitate this expansion of Judah's power, a history was written, either over time or all at once, in which the many differing traditions of the Israelite and Judahite tribes were threaded together to form one narrative. This history showed that all of their revered ancestors - Abram/Abraham, Isaac, Jacob - were of one family, and thus so were they, and damn it, it was time to start acting like it by integrating into one political unit and reestablishing their independence from foreigners.

That didn't happen, of course. Judah's rebellion against its Assyrian master resulted in ruin, with only Jerusalem being spared thanks to a last-minute bribe. Later attempts by "YWHist" kings to throw off the yoke of foreign agents resulted in the exile to Babylon.

All of which you might say is a digression from Joshua 12-19, but I think it's related; both the chapters and this post are about how the mythic kingdom of Israel was originally organized. The chapters deal with the content of the myth itself and I've dealt here with the writing of it.

We'll return to the story of Joshua tomorrow. 'Til then.

NEXT TIME: I'll be honest with you. I'd have to read ahead to know.

SOURCES: Wikipedia, The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman

OTHER POSTS IN THIS SERIES:

Joshua 11

Joshua 10

Joshua 9

Joshua 7-8

Joshua 5-6

Joshua 2-4

Joshua 1

And welcome back to the Internet’s greatest Bible commentary, in which Yours Truly reads through the Bible and explains its many mysteries as best my limited education allows. I encourage you to read the Good Book along with me, because my time’s too valuable to write summaries. Here we go!

11:1. And it was, when Jabin king of Hazor heard, he sent to Jobab king of Madon, and to the king of Shimron, to the king of Achshaph.

11:2. And to the kings that were on the north of the mountains, and of the plains south of Chinnaroth, and in the valley, and in the regions of Dor on the west.

By the end of Chapter 10, Joshua has successfully conquered and obliterated all the cities in the southern half of Israel. Now Israel has to reckon with the major cities to the north, which it does.

5:18. Joshua made war a long time with all these kings.

This verse is the subject of one of Rashi's many entertainingly preposterous notes. According to the venerated sage, this verse is actually a rebuke to Joshua, because the Israelite leader, aware of his divinely ordination to parcel out the Promised Land to the tribes of Israel, took his sweet time killing the Canaanites in order to extend his lifespan.

5:21. And at that time, Joshua came and cut off the 'Anakim from the mountains, from Hebron, from Debir, from 'Anab, and from all the mountains of Judah, and from all the mountains of Israel; Joshua destroyed them completely with their cities.

Here we have mention of the Anakim, or "the descendants of Anak", a small ethnic minority that are physically intimidating to their neighbors because of their great height. Oddly enough, traditional Jewish sources tend to prefer a down-to-earth interpretation of passages involving these people, while some Christians still link them with the nephilim of Genesis and conclude they were demon-human hybrids of astonishing size.

The Anakim could well have been nephilim - giants - but remember how relative that word is. People in the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age were far shorter than the average man or woman is today. Goliath's height of six feet and seven inches (200cm) was considered awe-inspiring at the time it was recorded, but today I have a cousin that tall.

In his book The Greek Myths, Robert Graves suggests that the Anakites' mighty ancestor Anak is the same mythic figure whom the ancient Greeks knew as Anax. There are undeniable parallels - like Anak, Anax was said to be the giant leader of a tall people named after him, the Anactorians - and both legends existed in the same time period, in two lands known to have been in contact. It's a neat thought, so I hope it's true.

OK, then. Since Chapter 12 is a major gear change from the type of stuff we've been reading so far, I'm going to end today's entry here.

NEXT TIME: As any policeman or military officer can tell you, behind every successful mission lies a mountain of paperwork. Join Joshua as he gets down to the less sexy, bureaucratic side of leading an invasion.

Bible Translation: Judaica Press's Tanach with Rashi's commentary, courtesy of Chabad.org.

OTHER POSTS IN THIS SERIES:

Joshua 10

Joshua 9

Joshua 7-8

Joshua 5-6

Joshua 2-4

Joshua 1

And welcome back to the Internet’s greatest Bible commentary, in which Yours Truly reads through the Bible and explains its many mysteries as best my limited education allows. I encourage you to read the Good Book along with me, because my time’s too valuable to write summaries. Here we go!

10:1. [The Amorite kings learned that]...the inhabitants of Gibeon had made peace with Israel, and were among them;

10:2. That they feared greatly, because Gibeon was a great city, as one of the royal cities, and because it was greater than Ai, and all her men were mighty.

In these setup verses lies another hint that the various episodes of Joshua's campaign were originally standalone stories. We have here five Amorite kings going ape over Gibeon joining Israel, "because it was greater than Ai" - a comparison which should mystify any reader who recalls how Ai is described only two chapters ago: "they are but few" (7:3). Ai is understood by the writer of Joshua 8 to be a pathetic distraction that unfortunately develops into something bigger due to Achan's sin, but here the writer - be he the same man or another - is clearly imagining a city of somewhat more repute.

10:3. And Adonizedek, king of Jerusalem...

Adonizedek is the second king of Jerusalem mentioned in the Bible, after Melchizedek, and his name merits some attention. Most believe it translates into English as "My Lord is Righteousness" just as Melchizedek's does "Righteousness is my king", but both meanings may be the result of reinterpretation by later Hebrew and Christian thinkers. "Tzedek" could also be the name of a deity, possibly a second name for the Canaanite god El _before he became the _Elohim we all know and love, and if so that would fit very well with the naming practices of Canaanite kings, including the Israelites themselves. They often incorporated their patron deities' names into their own.

10:5. And the five kings of the Amorites, the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Jarmuth, the king of Lachish, the king of Eglon, gathered together and went up, they and all their camps, and encamped on Gibeon, and made war against it.

The Amorites were a powerful people who are nevertheless well past their heyday here, at least if we're assuming that this war is really happening when the Bible says it is. From 2000-1600 B.C.E. they were so dominant in Mesopotamia that scholars sometimes refer to that cultural and political phase of the Levant as the Amorite Period. Hammurabi, the famous king of Babylon, was an Amorite. Their hegemony was eventually broken by the Hittites, who themselves imploded before the time of Joshua's invasion.

5:10. And the Lord confused them before Israel, and slew them with a great slaughter at Gibeon, and they chased them by the way that goes up to Beth-horon, and smote them to Azekah, and to Makkedah.

"Confusion" might better be read "chaos". I've heard on more than one occasion a historian say that casualties in ancient warfare were usually light until for whatever reason one side broke formation and ceased to function as a unit. At that point people really started dying in large numbers - mostly on the side which had caved. The Lord is simply being credited here with the breaking of the Amorite ranks.

5:11. And it was as they fled from before Israel, and were in the descent of Beth-horon, that the Lord cast down great stones from heaven upon them to Azekah, and they died. There were more who died with the hailstones than whom the children of Israel slew with the sword.

What do we make of this record of a miracle?

Christian apologists bristle when skeptics dismiss accounts like this one out of hand, but I don't think they're fairly acknowledging the propensity for absolutely bizarre embellishments to which ancient scribes apparently leaned. An Egyptian pharoah had it written down (prior to winning the actual fight) that the gods had drowned his opponents in a giant tidal wave. Jewish writers claimed that an angel saved Jerusalem by striking down 185,000 Assyrian soldiers... after which Hezekiah apparently bribed Sennacherib to leave out of pity. Other examples abound. It wouldn't be unfair to suggest the stones raining down from Heaven in this story are a complete fabrication. It certainly wouldn't be unfair to suggest that they're just embellished hailstones, taken as a sign.

5:13. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is this not written in the book of Jashar?

Creation.com has done its homework on other cultures' versions of this famous miracle, while of course remaining predictably certain that the Book of Joshua's version is the true account. I'll quote it here:

"[Many] cultures have legends that seem to be based on this event. For example, there is a Greek myth of Apollo’s son, Phaethon, who disrupted the sun’s course for a day... In fact, the New Zealand Maori people have a myth about how their hero Maui slowed the sun before it rose, while the Mexican Annals of Cuauhtitlan (the history of the empire of Culhuacan and Mexico) records a night that continued for an extended time... It should also be noted that the Amorites were sun and moon worshippers."

I'd append to the last sentence of the above paragraph: "Like everyone else." Sun worship is so prevalent a feature of ancient religion that it's almost not worth noting the Amorites practiced it.

It's even found in the religion of the Hebrews, in this very story. Joshua's demand of the celestial bodies to freeze takes the form of a poetic couplet in the midst of a story otherwise composed of prose, which is about as big a hint as there can be that Joshua's words pre-date the story around them. Divorced of its context the quotation suggests itself to be a pagan incantation, famous saying, or both; the exact words of miracle workers, including Jesus, were often repeated verbatim by magicians in an attempt to achieve the same results. The couplet can also be taken as Exhibit B in the case that Joshua as a character pre-dates his Biblical incarnation (see Joshua 1 in this series).

Concerning the "book of Jashar" (also spelled "Jasher") mentioned in 5:13: while many think the book is the source for this story and simply no longer exists, Orthodox Judaism identifies it as another name for the Torah.

5:14. And there was no day like that before it or after it, that the Lord hearkened to the voice of a man, for the Lord fought for Israel.

The writer of the Book of Judah now has to cover for the fact that he just quoted a man's successful ordering around of the sun and moon: really, of course, God did it.

Whew. I knew this was going to be a long entry. I got to get to bed.

NEXT TIME: We continue our daringly sequential exegetical escapade with Chapter 11.

Bible Translation: Judaica Press's Tanach with Rashi commentary, courtesy of Chabad.org.

OTHER POSTS IN THIS SERIES:

Joshua 9

Joshua 7-8

Joshua 5-6

Joshua 2-4

Joshua 1

The minimum wage isn't bad because it hurts employers. It's bad because it hurts non-traditional employees.

Coyote Blog » Blog Archive » Case Studies on the Minimum Wage

To run our campgrounds, we mainly employ retired people. Of my 500 workers, well over half are over 60 years old, more than 150 are over 70, some 25 or so are over 80 and a few are even over 90! Most are on social security and medicare, and many have pensions and retirement health plans. A good number are disabled and have some sort of disability support. While they work slower, they make up for their low productivity in part by their friendliness with customers and their life experience.

Most of my employees travel the country in their RV. They take most of the year off, but many like to work over the summer to make a little money and to pay for their camping site. I give many of them a free or subsidized campsite, worth about $500+ a month, plus all their utilities and then pay them minimum wage for the hours they work. Many are thrilled with these terms - so many that I have a waiting list now of over 300 names of people who are looking for this type work. This list is currently growing by about 10 names a day.

There may be employers somewhere who have a power imbalance over their employees. Some days, I envy them. My employees most all have independent means of support. Further, they all have wheels on their houses, so they can and do pick up and leave if they aren't enjoying their job. And, if they don't like our company, there are thousands of other campground operators who are looking for help.

So why are so many people lining up for minimum wage jobs when lefties and progressives are telling them that they should not want those jobs? Here are some reasons:

• They value the amenities that come with the job, including living for free in a beautiful outdoor setting, something it is impossible to value under minimum wage laws
• They have other means of support, so the money is incidental. In fact, I get more inquiries from employees asking me to reduce their hours so as not to mess up their social security or disability payments as I do people asking for more pay
• They get to work with their spouse as a team. There are not many employers out there that let a husband and wife split up work between them any way they want or even work together - can you imagine such a situation on a GM assembly plant?
• They would have a hard time getting hired by anyone else. Very few employers will hire new workers in their sixties, and certainly not older than that. Older workers can be slower and less productive. For $12 an hour, I would have to hire younger workers too, but at minimum wage, I can afford the lower productivity of older workers and gain the benefit of their experience and trustworthiness.

This last point help set the stage for our cases. I love hiring older workers at $5.15 an hour, and they love the job and line up for it. But what happens when I have to pay these less productive workers $6.00 an hour? What about $7.50? What about at $12.00 an hour? Here are some examples of what happens

Case 1: The jobs just go away ...

Case 2: The jobs get outsourced to contractors ...

Case 3: The jobs get automated away ...

Case 4: Prices go up to customers ...

Coyote Blog » Blog Archive » Update on the Arizona Minimum Wage

We are changing our operating strategy from hiring retired couples who live on-site to hiring younger workers. This is a change I really hate. The business model of hiring retired folks who live on-site at a campground is an old and successful one. Folks in their seventies (and I even have workers in their eighties and nineties) don't work very fast, and they have more workers comp claims, but they had the ability to live on-site and life experience that helped them with customer service. But trade-offs that worked at $5.15 an hour don't work as well at $7.25 and higher. So far only selectively, but we are hiring younger folks from the local community to come in and do some of the janitorial and maintenance work. Even if I pay them $8 or $10 an hour, they make sense if they can be twice as productive.

Businesses, sadly, don't have an unlimited ability to raise their prices. Every time the cost of labor goes up, the profit margin goes down. When the profit margin goes below 0% (or whatever margin the owner is willing to accept), prices must go up. If prices can't go up -- as frequently happens in a competitive marketplace -- costs must go down. If the government mandates that labor must cost at least some number, per unit, then the number of units has to go down.

In this case, Warren Meyer is faced with the unpalatable choice of reducing the number of elderly employees at his company or losing the ability to run his business. This isn't something that his specific employees want. They're thrilled with the amount he was giving them. I strongly suspect that they'd work for even less, if given the choice. But they can't. They're not allowed to. They're forced into unemployment because the government refuses to consider that they may not fit the mold.

The minimum wage isn't bad because it hurts employers. It's bad because it hurts non-traditional employees. We're not all alike and it shouldn't be our government's policy to criminalize those who have different preferences about how they'd like to be paid.

The minimum wage isn't bad because it hurts employers. It's bad because it hurts those who want to be their employees. Imagine you're either a recent college graduate or soon to be a college graduate. You're armed with a degree in English, History, Business, Electrical Engineering, or, well, it almost doesn't matter. You're armed with a degree. But so are hundreds of thousands of other recent graduates from across the country.

You can submit a resume to every employer who's looking for help. In fact, you have. But, then again, so have hundreds of other people. Some companies receive hundreds or even thousands of resumes for just one open position. How in the world are you ever supposed to rise to the top of the pile?

You think, despairingly: "If only they knew what a great worker I was. Once they see the work I can do, I know they'll hire me." Then you get a bright idea. You'll volunteer to work for free for a week or a month. You'll let them see the work you can do. Hopefully they will decide to hire you afterwards. And, if they don't, at least you'll have done something better than just sit around waiting.

Not so fast. Your bright idea is illegal. After all, we have a minimum wage in this country. You aren't allowed to work for anything less than $7.25 an hour. And free is most definitely less than $7.25 an hour.

"If you're a for-profit employer or you want to pursue an internship with a for-profit employer, there aren't going to be many circumstances where you can have an internship and not be paid and still be in compliance with the law," the Labor Department's Nancy J. Leppink tells the New York Times.

The Times also quotes Trudy Steinfeld, director of New York University's Office of Career Services, regarding opportunities for unpaid internships. "A few famous banks have called and said, 'We'd like to do this,' said Ms. Steinfeld. "I said, 'No way. You will not list on this campus.'"

John Stossel relates his experience with hiring unpaid interns.

When I asked WCBS to hire me a researcher, my bosses looked at me as if I'd asked for the moon. Since they wouldn't pay, I started calling colleges to ask if they had students who wanted internships. Many did. From then on, I got much of my best help from unpaid college students.

Many later moved on to paying jobs at the networks, and many became network TV producers…

At first I felt guilty asking students to work for no pay. But I stopped feeling bad about it after most told me they'd learned more in our newsroom than they'd learned on their campuses. Their schools charge them money, while I taught them for free.

And, he discovered, if you did want to work for free, you couldn't do anything that actually helped your possible future employer. So, a practical demonstration of the value you can add to a business is right out.

[T]he six federal legal criteria that must be satisfied for internships to be unpaid. Among those criteria are that the internship should be similar to the training given in a vocational school or academic institution, that the intern does not displace regular paid workers and that the employer "derives no immediate advantage" from the intern's activities -- in other words, it's largely a benevolent contribution to the intern.

Perhaps, in the eyes of the Labor Department, it should be a benevolent contribution to the intern, from the business. But what if the intern genuinely wants to help, in exchange for the possibility of a job? What if the intern wants to create a great resume that can be used to stand out from the pack when applying for the next job? Doesn't the intern have any choice about how and when he can sell his labor? And for what price?

As I see it, the minimum wage is hurting those who want to work hard, who want to stand out. The minimum wage isn't bad because it hurts employers. It's bad because it hurts those who want to be their employees.

Crist Makes Break With GOP - WSJ.com

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist formally launched his bid for a U.S. Senate seat as an independent candidate Thursday evening, abandoning the Republican primary and casting himself as the outsider in a "broken" political system.

Apparently, the political system is "broken" because the political system no longer wants Charlie Crist. Good to know.

The minimum wage isn't bad because it hurts employers. It's bad because it hurts employees.

An Entrepreneur and the Minimum-Wage

To All Team Members:

The schedule for next week has been posted. You may notice that hours have been cut back on your schedule. This is across the board, not just you. I don't want anyone to think they've done something wrong to deserve a cut in hours, so I wanted to explain why it's happening.

There are a couple of reasons for this:

1) May and September are very slow months for our business. Anyone who has worked Sundays recently has seen the drop off in traffic. Now that we're entering May, that drop off will continue on to other days as well, and it will get worse.

2) The recent increase in the minimum wage to $7.25/hour. Since we've opened, I've had a lot of people ask why they can't get more hours, and it's a great question.

I would LOVE to give everyone all the hours they want, and then some. Our customers would be happier across the board, we could accomplish much more every day, our business would grow, I could hire even more people, and on and on. However, we operate on a tight budget just like any other business, and in order to survive, we have to make money. That means our labor cost (the total amount you are all paid) must stay below a certain percentage of our total sales. If it doesn't, we go broke and everyone loses their jobs.

Our brilliant Congressmen in Washington, D.C. decided a couple years ago that it would be a good idea to raise the minimum wage by about 40% to $7.25/hour. It just took effect last year. That probably sounds like great news for everyone - more money in everyone's pockets can only be good, right?

Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way in the real world. If I'm forced to pay everyone 40% more, I can't afford to schedule as many employees for as many hours, since our sales aren't going up by 40%. Remember, I can only afford to pay you guys a certain percentage of all the money coming in the door. That means hours get cut, and everyone ends up poorer.

In a perfect world, it should work the opposite way: you should be free to choose how much you think your skills and time are worth (since you know best), and I should be free to pay you whatever that amount is if I want to hire you. Everyone wins in that case. I get as many good employees as I want that I can afford to pay, and you get valuable job training, references, and relationships to carry into the future.

To prove how bad of a deal minimum wage is for you guys as hard-working job-seekers, just look at this way:

I'm not being forced to pay $7.25/hour; YOU are being forced to accept $7.25/hour no matter what, even if you'd be willing to take less in order to get (or keep) a job.

You can thank our elected officials in Raleigh and Washington for sticking you with such a raw deal.

If you have any questions about any of this or want to talk more about it, please feel free to come see me, the door is always open.

(Obamacare delenda est)

And welcome back to this week's final installment of the Internet's greatest Bible commentary, in which Yours Truly reads through the Bible and explains its many mysteries as best his limited education allows. He encourages you to read the Good Book with him, because his time's too valuable to write summaries. Here we go!

9:6 And [the Gibeonites] went to Joshua to the camp at Gilgal, and said to him and to the men of Israel: "We have come from a distant land, and now make a covenant with us."

Notice that the Israelites consider a promise made to someone to be binding, even if that person lied to obtain it. Oaths, blessings, and curses were powerful and irrevocable things in antiquity. Their importance is why one of the Ten Commandments is to "not take the LORD's name in vain", as the King James Version famously puts it. The commandment is warning you that it's a sin to say something like "I swear by God in Heaven that I will repay you next Tuesday" and then break your word.

"Wait! Wait! Back up! Who were the Gibeonites?" you ask. Well, they were, quite simply, the people who lived in the city of Gibeon, much as New Yorkers are people who live in New York. Ethnically-speaking, they were apparently Hivites.

"And who are the Hivites?" you implacably inquire.

I hate it when you ask questions I can't answer. But at least in this case nobody can. Out of the seven different nations living in Canaan at the time of Joshua's invasion, the Hivites are the most obscure. The only detail known about them is that they were uncircumcised, which seems to me like a highly personal thing to know about folks who are otherwise completely mysterious to you.

At least why they're mentioned in the Book of Joshua is easier to figure out. Whoever the Gibeonites were and whatever happened to them, they clearly still lived in Canaan at the time the Book of Joshua was written. The writers of the Book of Joshua needed to explain their presence.

Remember the writers' goal and you'll understand the problem: the story of Joshua was written to help unite all the people of Israel and Judah against their conquerors, the Assyrians. First, it tells the inspiring story of an Israelite general taking over the Promised Land. Joshua and his army are meant to serve as an example for everyone to follow. Second, the Book of Joshua shows Joshua dividing the Promised Land among the twelve tribes of Israel. It reminded the Jews, as it still does today, that they were one people, not many, and that the whole land belonged to them, so they had a right and even a God-given duty to kick out foreigners.

But if that was true, who were these Gibeonite people? Everyone knew this un-assimilated minority had been living in Canaan for practically forever. They weren't children of Abraham, that was for sure; just look at their yoohoos.

Chapter 9 of the Book of Joshua answers this question with a story so convenient and racist that it's practically impossible to accept at face-value: they were so scared of us when we arrived that they tricked us into letting them live, then promised to be our gofers. Especially considering the importance that the ancient Israelites placed on one's heritage, the writers' message is equally transparent: the Gibeonites of today are also cowards and should still be our gofers.

Still, if I were a Gibeonite I would count myself lucky. After all, the writers of Genesis explained Moab and Ammon to be what happens when girls sleep with their fathers.

By the way, there is a modern city of Gibeon - "New Gibeon" now - but it's full of Jews, not Hivites. It's small because it was only resettled in 1977 and because you have to be brave/crazy to live there; it lies in the Arab territory now known as the West Bank / Judea and Samaria Area. Here's a picture:

Have a good weekend!

NEXT TIME: Chapter 10! Duh!

Bible Translation: Judaica Press's Tanach with Rashi commentary, courtesy of Chabad.org.

OTHER POSTS IN THIS SERIES: Joshua 7-8 Joshua 5-6 Joshua 2-4 Joshua 1