Is Utah going to be destroyed by a comet on March 1?

Greetings.

Jewish date:  2 ’Adhar 5770 (Parashath Terumah).

Today’s holiday:  Tuesday of the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time/Shrove Tuesday/Mardi Gras (Roman Catholicism).

Worthy cause of the day:  “MoveOn.org Political Action: Toyota: Stop lobbying against car safety”.

Topic 1:  “BIBLE CODE PREDICTIONS: 2010” (noted in “Utah to be destroyed by a comet! Or not!”).  According to this site, based on hidden codes in the Hebrew Bible, Utah is supposed to be destroyed on March 1 by a comet impact.  I have no trust in Bible codes.  YHWH is quite capable of giving direct messages, and the Hebrew Bible is full of them.  Some of these messages, such as “do not worship idols” and “treat the poor well”, proved difficult for people to keep and thus were repeated by the prophets over and over again so that even someone who is not particularly bright can see they are there.  Looking for hidden codes, as demonstrated in Michael Drosnin’s heretical The Bible Code, is an easy way for people to latch onto the Hebrew Bible (or whatever scripture they hold dear) as important and completely ignore the text’s actual message.  I also have grave doubts that the methodology of Bible codes is actually valid; The Skeptic's Dictionary reports that the unlikely message “The Bible Code is a silly, dumb, fake, false, evil, nasty, dismal fraud and snake-oil hoax.” was found hidden in Drosnin’s The Bible Code II:  The Countdown.  If one can find a message as long, unambiguous, and unlikely to be intentional as that hidden in such a book, one can forget about the short, ambiguous, messages of the Bible codes being real.  But to be open-minded, I have decided to put the predictive power of this dabbler in Bible codes to the test.  Therefore I have put “Comet destroys Utah” on my calendar for March 1, and we will see if it really comes to pass.  If it does (which would be surprising, since one would think a state-annhilating comet would have been noticed by astronomers already), then the Bible-coder will have something to gloat about.

Topic 2:  “Was Haiti Punished for Sin?”:  Rav Shmuley Boteach has clearly read Job and knows that bad things happen to those who do not deserve them.

Topic 3:  For today’s religious humor:  “Basement cat”:


Peace.

Aaron

Blogging for Jesus and religious intolerance

Greetings.

Jewish date:  11 Shevaṭ 5770 (Parashath Beshallaḥ).

Today’s holiday:  Feast of Timothy and Titus (Roman Catholicism).

Worthy causes of the day:  “action.firedoglake.com | Tell House Progressives: Stand Up for Real Reform, Vote Down the Senate Bill” and “Payment Cuts for Medicare Physicians are Bad News for Older Americans - The Petition Site”.  Also:  I got my H1N1 influenza shot this morning.  Please consider getting your H1N1 flu shot and save someone else from getting the disease.

Topic 1:  “Pope to priests: Go forth and blog”.  It may sound a bit odd, but Pope Benedict XVI is being practical.  The mission of Christianity is to evangelize, so it makes perfect sense for the Roman Catholic Church to be pushing social media on the Internet.

Topic 2:  More religious intolerance:  “Horrors of religious violence found in Nigeria” (Muslim versus Christian), “Pakistani Christian Sentenced to Life under ‘Blasphemy’ Law” (Muslim against Christian), “Lahore: 12-year-old Christian domestic worker killed by Muslim employer” (Muslim against Christian), and “For bigots, Israel can do no right” (anti-Semitic against Jewish).  I know these themes are like a broken record, but these problems do not go away quickly or on their own.

Topic 3:  For today’s religious humor, this contribution by Barry:  “Son of Ceiling Cat walks on ice”:


Peace.

Aaron

Anti-Semitism and misapplied technology

Greetings.

Jewish date:  10 Shevaṭ 5770 (Parashath Beshallaḥ.)

Today’s holidays:  Conversion of St. Paul (Roman Catholicism); Feast of Gregory the Theologian, Archbishop of Constantinople (Greek Orthodox Christianity); Feast of Saint Margarita (Greek Orthodox Christianity).

Worthy causes of the day:  “Demand Quality Pre-K Educators - The Petition Site”, “Keep Health Insurance Accessible for Americans Aged 50 and Higher - The Petition Site”, and “action.firedoglake.com | Tell House Progressives: Stand Up for Real Reform, Vote Down the Senate Bill”.

Topic 1:  More on contemporary anti-Semitism:  “Protesting Anti-Semitism is "Hardline"?” and “Middle East Pride”.  The latter references some particularly improbable accusations.

Topic 2:  Two misapplications of technology:  “Solar-powered Bibles sent to Haiti” and “Egypt mufti wants to put prayer ringtone on silent”.  The former, which are machines which can read the Christian Bible to 300 people at a time, are a waste, since we have a technology going back hundreds of years called “paper” which requires no power whatsoever.  For the price of one machine, one can buy many paper Bibles and thus reach more people, especially if these people share their Bibles, read them out-loud to the illiterate, and discuss their contents with each other.  Not to mention that humans are better suited to teach the illiterate to read than mere machines.  The later article discusses Muslim sacred music being used to tell when someone is calling; understandably, the grand mufti of Egypt considers this inappropriate and potentially confusing.

Image of non-dangerous tefillin via Wikipedia

Topic 3:  The patent absurdity of in-flight panic over tefillin still has the attention of Jewish humorists.  Thus today’s religious humor is “Top 10 Signs that the Guy Putting on Teffilin Next to you on your Flight is Really a Terrorist”.

Peace.

Aaron

Never blindly trust a translation II

Greetings.

Jewish date:  5 Shevaṭ 5770 (Parashath Bo’).

Today’s holidays:  Feast Days of Fabian and Sebastian (Roman Catholicism).

Worthy cause of the day:  “Take Action: General Mills Palm Oil Causes Rainforest Destruction”.

Topic 1:  Recently I complained about the inherent flaws of translations.  I gave two examples then showing that a bad translation can give impressions which are wrong.  And now I give another one.  In my reading of the New Testament in Koinē Greek, I am working on the first chapter of Luke, and it so happens that in Luke 1:26 describes Mary as enmnēsteumenēn.  The parallel passage in Mark, verse 1:18, describes her as mnēsteutheisēs.  These words—the same word, expressed a bit differently—is conventionally translated in English as “betrothed”—and this translation is wrong.  From the way the same word is used in the Septuagint versions of Exodus 22:15, Deuteronomy 20:7, Deuteronomy 22:23, Deuteronomy 22:25, Deuteronomy 22:27-28, and Hosea 2:21-22, it clearly means something significantly different.  Judaism recognizes two stages to marriage, ’erusin and nissu’in.  ’Erusin, which is usually contracted by by the groom giving the bride a ring, is not betrothal.  (There is not even a real concept of betrothal in Judaism.)  After ’erusin, the bride is considered a married woman, and if she sleeps with any man other than her husband, she commits adultery.  It is with nissu’in, however, that the husband brings his wife into his domain (symbolically), and the marriage can be consummated.  (It should go without saying that Judaism forbids premarital sex.)  Mary, at the time discussed by these verses, is a me’oreseth and thus already Joseph’s wife, but without the marriage being consummated.  It is for this reason that Joseph in Matthew 1:19 plans to divorce Mary:  she has presumably committed adultery, for which Jewish law requires divorce.  If they had not been actually, then she would not have been forbidden to him, even what she had presumably done is prohibited.  Thus by mistranslation of a single term, the whole incident is given an incorrect interpretation.

Topic 2:  More reports of current anti-Semitism:  “Global National Issues On-Air Clarification After HRC Complaint (January 19, 2010)” and “BBC: Denying Jewish Jerusalem”.  For a twist, “Israel: Bringing Hope Amidst Haiti's Rubble” reports on positive reporting about Israel for a change.

Topic 3:  For today’s religious humor:  “LOLcat bible book uv Fluffeh, ch 7 v 10 by wonphatcat”:

(Hint:  Matthew 4:18 and Mark 1:17.)

Peace.

Aaron