Beware of pygargs

Greetings.

Jewish date:  28 ’Av 5770 (Parashath Shofeṭim).

Today’s holidays:  Nineteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Roman Catholicism), Feast Day of St. Britishthermalunit, inventor of AC (Church of the SubGenius).

Worthy causes of the day:  “Ban New Offshore Drilling - Take Action Today @ The Rainforest Site”, “ColorOfChange.org:  Tell Google: "Don't be evil" / And to stop dealing away the Internet”, “MoveOn.org Political Action: Google: Don't Be Evil”, and “Alliance for Justice:  Congress: Repair the Damage Caused by the Corporate Court”.

Topic 1:  It has occurred to me that there is an irony in the terminology of the Arab-Israeli War.  The Muslims call Israel “Palestine” in an effort to dissociate it from Judaism.  Now, where does this term come from?  After the Romans finally crushed the Bar Kokhba’ Revolution (with much difficulty), they adapted the name of traditional rival state about where now the Gaza Strip is, the Pelesheth (= “low-country”) and started calling Israel Syria Palestina.  This was later shortened to “Palestine”.  Thus the Muslims are implicitly identifying with Israel’s oppressors and occupiers from the Roman Empire.  The irony comes in that the “Palestinians” claim to be oppressed and occupied.  They could have gone with “Canaan” instead, given that the Kena‘anim lost out to the Children of Yisra’el, but no one has any nostalgia for the Kena‘anim.

More anti-Semitism:  “Canadian Media Bark up the Wrong Tree in Lebanon Ambush (August 4, 2010)”, “Dead Photojournalist Waiting To Happen” and “Border Clash: A Case Study in Reuters Photography” deal with reporter bias, participation in an international incident, and stupidity.  (I am aware “stupidity” is a strong and undiplomatic word, but putting oneself in a position where one could easily be mistaken for an enemy soldier and get shot is pretty stupid.)  “Photo Bias Rampant In the Media” deals with the photographic equivalent of quoting out of context:

“Sky News Discovers Gaza's Middle Class” reveals that not all Gazans are suffering.

Related:  “Taqiyya - Lying For Islam” deals with lying in the name of Islam.

Image of “pygargs” via Wikipedia

Topic 2:  Some strangeness from the King James Version (KJV):  The KJV renders dishon in Deuteronomy 14:5 as “pygarg”, which is not an English word at all.  “Pygarg” is an adaptation of the Greek pygargos, meaning “white-rumped”, which is used in the Septuagint.  Why they did this, I am not really clear.  “Addax” is a perfectly good English word, though maybe they really did not know anything about addaxes in England at that point.

Topic 3:  For today’s religious humor: “Basement kitteh tabulates quarterly figures.”:


Peace.

Aaron

Getting annoyed at the KJV again

Greetings.

Jewish date:  14 ’Av 5770 (Parashath ‘Eqev).

Today’s holidays:  Seventeenth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Roman Catholicism), Feast Day of St. Shylock (Church of the SubGenius), Guru Purnima (Hinduism).

Topic 1:  I am getting annoyed again at the King James Version (KJV) again.  Deuteronomy 4:13 is rendered as referring to “ten commandments”, a familiar phrase in English which has no basis in the original Hebrew, which uses the term ‘asereth haddevarim, which means “the ten words” (hence “Decalogue”) or “the ten sayings”.  Keep in mind that there are many more commandments in the Torah that just ten; Jewish tradition holds there are 613 distinct commandments for the ages.  Furthermore the first Saying in the Decalogue, “I am YHWH your God who brought you out of the land of Misṛayim from the house of slavery”, is not a commandment.

Deuteronomy 6:4 is rendered in the KJV as “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD:”  This translation is obviously wrong to any English-speaking observant Jew.  An accurate translation would be “Hear, Yisra’el:  YHWH is our God; YHWH is one.”  The KJV seems to be translating from the Septuagint, which has a nasty habit of using Kyrios to render both “YHWH” and “lord”.

Image of Fred Phelps, who believes that God agrees with him based on selective reading, via Wikipedia

Topic 2:  For today’s religious humor, submitted by Barry: “Super Heroes vs. the Westboro Baptist Church”:  The infamous hate-filled Westboro Baptist Church recently decided to protest at Comic-Con.  Now, many have counter-protested the protests of the Westboro Baptist Church, but given the nature of fandom, the result was what may be the most absurd counter-protest yet.  Note the included video:


Peace.

Aaron

The Gospel According to Mel Gibson

Greetings.

Jewish date:  5 ’Av 5770 (Parashath Devarim).

Today’s holidays:  The Nine Days (Judaism), Feast Day of Our Lady of Mount Carmel (Roman Catholicism).

Worthy cause of the day:  “Friends of Israel Initiative”.

Topic 1:  The Passion of the Christ (2004), which might be better titled The Gospel According to Mel Gibson, after the man responsible for this film.  This is the most overtly anti-Semitic of the Gospel films your humble blogger has seen, putting the blame for the death of Jesus directly on the Pharisees, Priests, and a Jewish mob.  Pontius Pilate is exonerated entirely, being backed into a situation where he has no safe option.  If he exonerates Jesus, he is afraid that Caiaphas’s followers will revolt.  If he kills Jesus, he is afraid that Jesus’s followers will revolt.  If he puts down a revolt, Caesar will be very, very angry with him because of all the killing of revolting Jews he has been doing for 11 years which his majesty wants stopped.  Pontius tries getting away with “merely” letting Roman soldiers who enjoy their work too much beat up Jesus, but as this fails to pacify the mob, he gives into their demand for crucifixion.  This is a marvelous piece of work to make Pontius Pilate a sympathetic character (albeit not the bloodthirsty monster historians think he was), but it does nothing to really explain why the Jews would want Jesus dead in the first place.  Despite that Jews are correctly depicted as speaking Aramaic, there is no sign of research into Second Temple Period Judaism or any attempt to understand what Jesus’s Jewish opponents were thinking.  Gibson uncritically buys into the blood libel of the Gospels and simply echoes it in the film.

(Parenthetical tangent:  Romans are incorrectly depicted as speaking Latin when they really should have been speaking Greek, the other common language used over there at the time.  Greek was commonly used enough that the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek for Greek-speaking Jews during the Second Temple Period.  It took a few centuries more for a Latin version to be created.  But I digress.)

Rather than work out motives for the antagonists, Gibson puts a great deal of effort into depicting the end of Jesus’s life, from the Garden of Gethsemane to the Resurrection.  Standard Christian doctrine is that Jesus suffered and died for our sins so we could receive salvation, and Gibson takes us through all that suffering, step by step, to an extent far greater than any other Gospel film your humble blogger is aware of, to show what Jesus was willing to go through for our sake.  The result is a film which is very dark, very ominous, very violent, and very bloody.  Not to mention this Jesus really looks and sounds beaten up.  Many people will find this too disturbing to watch.  The scenes of torture at the hands of the Romans are interspersed with flashbacks, mostly showing Jesus making predictions and encouraging behaviors opposed to the violence he suffers.

Also unusual in this film is the depiction of Satan.  Most depictions of Satan in Gospel films are dull, with nothing to really show him as evil.  Satan here is surreal and androgynous, neither clearly male nor female, but clearly meant to be attractive.  He(?) interacts with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, releasing a snake which Jesus stomps on, possibly meant as a reference to the Garden of ‘Edhen and the punishment of the original snake (Genesis 3:16).  Satan continues to stalk Jesus throughout the film, unseen by anyone else, evidently as a cause or symbol of the torment Jesus is put through.  Infamously, Satan holds an ugly baby thing while Jesus is being flogged, perhaps a bit of a parallel between the Father and Jesus.  (Or maybe not.)  Satan is also furious at the end, with Jesus successful in what he set out to accomplish.

The Passion of the Christ is great for reviewing all the horrible things which purportedly happen to Jesus at the end of his life.  Unfortunately, the care and detail which went into the making of this film did not go into making the story more believable.

Topic 2:  Your humble blogger is getting annoyed by the translators who created the King James Bible not knowing Hebrew well.  This past week I have come across translations/transliterations of names of groups of people such as “Anakims” (Deuteronomy 1:28, 2:10-11), “Emims” (Deuteronomy 2:10-11), “Horims” (Deuteronomy 2:12), “Zamzummims” (Deuteronomy 2:20), “Avims” (Deuteronomy 2:23), and “Caphtorims” (Deuteronomy 2:23).  The Hebrew suffix -im indicates the plural, mostly of masculine nouns.  In each of these cases the -im of a plural noun has been misinterpreted as an integral part of a collective noun.  There is no excuse for this level of grammatical incompetence in a translator.

Peace and Shabbath shalom.

Aaron

Ṣiṣith, tekheleth, and free speech

Greetings.

Jewish date:  25 Siwan 5770 (Parashath Qoraḥ).

Today’s holidays:  Monday of the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time (Roman Catholicism), Edtors’ Day (Church of the SubGenius), Feast Day of Carl Kellner (Thelema).

Worthy causes of the day:  “Save BioGems: Take Action: Stop the Pebble Mine”, “74 Democrats sold you out to AT&T, Verizon and Comcast”, “Stop Shell Oil's Offshore Drilling Plans in the Arctic - Take Action Today @ The Rainforest Site”, “Congress: close the hedge fund loophole”, “DCCC | Oil Spill is 'not an environmental disaster'? Sign our petition to set GOP Rep Young straight”, and “Save the International Affairs Budget - The Petition Site”.

Image via Wikipedia

Topic 1:  Another translation error in the King James Version (KJV):  In Numbers 15:37-41 is the commandment of ṣiṣith, which are macramé tassels put on the corners of four-cornered garments.  The people who created the KJV were apparently not familiar with Jewish practice, since they translate ṣiṣith as “fringe” and is under the impression they are supposed to be on the borders of garments, not the corners.  Furthermore, the ṣiṣith are supposed to contain a string dyed with tekheleth, a specific blue dye produced by murex snails.  The KJV, following the Septuagint, translates this as “a ribband of blue”.  The moral of all this:  it pays to know the original language of religious texts.

FYI:  I actually wear ṣiṣith with tekheleth every single day.  The Torah was not given to be ignored.

Topic 2:  “16-yr old "Daniel" confronts lion's den of haters to stand for the honor of Israel”:

This is a video about a protest following the Mavi Marmara incident which I have been kveching about lately.  The student with the Israeli flag going up against a mob of hostile, anti-Semitic protestors has not only got guts, but he has the epistemology right.  The fact that there are more anti-Semites attacking Israel than just him does not make them right, and the fact that they probably want to hurt him does not make them right either.  Furthermore, he has his civil rights right, too.  In the United States there is the civil right of free speech, even to say things no one else agrees with, and this lone pro-Israel protestor is exercising them even in the face of hostility.

Topic 3:  For today’s religious humor at the expense of the Free Gaza Movement: “Top Ten Signs The Cruise You are On is a Flotilla” and “Top 10 Flotilla Dating Profile Headlines”.

Peace.

Aaron

Translation anomalies and the origin of ethics

Greetings.

Jewish date:  6 Nisan 5770 (Parashath Ṣaw).

Today’s holidays:  Fifth Sunday of Lent (Roman Catholicism), Spring Equinox (Thelema), Naw-Rúz (Bahá’í Faith).

Worthy cause of the day:  “Stop the Money Train to Washington - The Petition Site”.

Topic 1:  Yet another translation problem:  The King James Version translates the Hebrew minḥah (used  first  in Leviticus 2:4 and periodically afterwards) as “meat offering”.  While this may have been an accurate translation in the days of King James I, the meaning of “meat” has changed substantially since then.  The actual meaning of minḥah, which makes sense in context, is “flour offering”.

I also came across a translation anomaly in the New Testament recently, too.  In the story of the prodigal son, Luke 15:16 specifically, pigs are described in the original Greek as eating keratiōn.  The King James Version translates this as “husks”, while the New International Version says “pods”.  But the dictionary claimed something rather more specific:  “St. John’s bread”, also known as “carobs” and Ceratonia siliqua.  I have no idea why this discrepancy exists.

Topic 2:  “The Ethical Dog”.  There is a major question about where morality and ethics come from.  My view is that they are social constructs which may (or may not) be imposed by a god.  This article notes that the constructs have evolutionary roots:  ethics evolved because they aid the survival of those who play by the rules and thus getting genes on to the next generation.

Topic 3:  For today’s religious humor:  “My temple is prepared.”

I am under the impression that at least some cats really seem to think this way.

Peace.

Aaron

Mistranslations of materials used for the Tabernacle

Greetings.

Jewish date:  5 ’Adhar 5770 (Parashath Terumah).

Today’s holidays:  Friday after Ash Wednesday (Roman Catholicism), Chaoflux (Discordianism).

Worthy cause of the day:  “Dick Cheney confessed to a war crime. Prosecute him.”

Topic 1:  Yet another round of pointing out what can go wrong with translation.  Thus says the King James Version (KJV) of Exodus 25:1-9:

And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring me an offering: of every man that giveth it willingly with his heart ye shall take my offering. And this is the offering which ye shall take of them; gold, and silver, and brass, And blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats’ hair, And rams’ skins dyed red, and badgers’ skins, and shittim wood, Oil for the light, spices for anointing oil, and for sweet incense, Onyx stones, and stones to be set in the ephod, and in the breastplate. And let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them. According to all that I shew thee, after the pattern of the tabernacle, and the pattern of all the instruments thereof, even so shall ye make it.

I have already discussed mistranslation of Divine names.  Today I am going to talk about the materials donated and used for the Tabernacle.  “Blue”, “purple”, and “scarlet” are not colors; rather they are specific dyes:  tekheleth, ’argaman, and tola‘ath shani.  The former two are produced by snails, the latter (I think) from an insect larva.  While the colors of the dyes are correct, calling them by their colors gives the false impression that the colors alone are important.  Furthermore, the “badger” referred to is actually the taḥash, a creature which no one really knows what it is and may or may not really be the badger.  The tendency to pretend one knows what words mean also recurs in the description of the ḥoshen (breastplate) in Exodus 28:17:20 in the listings of gemstones embedded in it.  At least some other terms without English equivalents, such as shiṭṭim and ’efodh, are merely transliterated without anyone pretending they are something else.

Topic 2:  For today’s religious humor:  “Even kittehs must face”:

I am really not clear on when people began to talk about things wrong with their psyches as “demons”.  Possibly this is an offshoot of the notion of demonic possession which is dealt with frequently in the Gospels.

Peace and Shabbath shalom.

Aaron

A dancing monk, words with multiple meanings, and Jon Stewart

Greetings.

Jewish date:  25 Shevaṭ 5770 (Parashath Mishpaṭim).

Today’s holiday:  Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time (Roman Catholicism).

Worthy causes of the day:  “Heart Disease and Stroke. You’re the Cure.:  Alert Letter:  Let the Senate Rules Committee Know it's Time to Pass the Cigarette Tax”, “MoveOn.org Political Action: Tell Congress: Stand with Melanie”, and “Take Action: Help Protect New Mexico's Paleozoic Treasures”.

Topic 1:  “Japanese monk gets down with the beat for Buddhism”:  An interesting tactic for promoting Buddhism.

Image of the frontispiece of the KJV via Wikipedia

Topic 2:  Yet another problem with translation:  words may have multiple meanings.  Thus says the King James Version (KJV) of Exodus 22:28:  “Thou shalt not revile the gods, nor curse the ruler of thy people.”  The original Hebrew actually allows for four possible interpretations of whom one is not supposed to revile:  1) gods in general, 2) ’Elohim (= YHWH, God of Israel), 3) angels, and 4) judges.  The KJV, strangely, takes the interpretation least compatible with Jewish and Christian theology, option 1.  Intuition suggests the KJV’s misinterpretation may be an inspiration for Mormonism’s polytheism

Topic 3:  For today’s religious humor, submitted by Harold:  “Scewby Jew”, in which Jon Stewart deals mercilessly with Ḥamas’s anti-Semitic cartoons for children.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Story Hole - Children's Cartoons From Hamas
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Peace.

Aaron

Never blindly trust a translation III, or, How to Serve Man

Greetings.

Jewish date:  17 Shevaṭ 5770 (Parashath Yithro).

Today’s holidays:  Monday of the Fourth Week of Ordinary Time (Roman Catholicism), Candlemass/Festival of Light (Ritual of the Elements; not to be confused with Candlemas) (Thelema).

Worthy cause of the day:  “Oppose the Murkowski Attack on the Clean Air Act - The Petition Site”.  Also, I donated platelets yesterday.  Please consider donating blood or blood components yourself if you can and save some lives.

Topic 1:  Yet another example of things that can go wrong in translation.  Soon after the Exodus, the Children of Yisra’el asked for food.  And YHWH grants their request, and in the morning they find something resembling Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes on the ground.  And thus the King James Version translates Exodus 16:15:

And when the children of Israel saw it, they said one to another, It is manna: for they wist not what it was. And Moses said unto them, This is the bread which the LORD hath given you to eat.

What is the problem here?  This translation makes no sense.  No one is going to simply call anything “manna” simply because they do not know what it is.  The original Hebrew for they the Children of Yisra’el were saying to each other is Man hu?  This is a question, not a statement, and a somewhat archaically phrased on at that.  It translates as “What is it?”  The strange substance did end up being called man, so essentially everyone was calling it “what” due to a lack of a better name.

(And the comparison of man to Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes is not my idea; it is what I was taught back in grade school at Addlestone Hebrew Academy.)

Topic 2:  For today’s religious humor:  “Now I lays me down to sleep by penskii”:


Peace, and please be nice to the dog.

Aaron

Never blindly trust a translation

Greetings.

Jewish date:  26 Ṭeveth 5770 (Parashath Wa’era’).

Today’s holidays:  Tuesday of the First Week of Ordinary Time (Roman Catholicism).

Worthy causes of the day:  “MoveOn.org Political Action: Save the Clean Air Act” and “Another bad idea from Alaska”.

Topic 1:  More coverage of anti-Semitism:  “Canadian Muslim Paper Condemned For Blood Libel”.  Some people either do not know how implausible organ theft is (disembodied human organs under the best of conditions have lives measured in mere hours, which make the logistics of such a crime very tight at best) or do not care.  Major rule:  If it sounds implausible, be suspicious.

Topic 2:  “Sikhs strive to keep language alive”.  The gist of this is that Sikhs in the United States are finding they have an urgent need to make sure all their people know the Punjabi language and Gurmukhi script the Guru Granth Sahib, their scripture, is written in.  Now, many out there might ask why knowing Punjabi matters.  The Guru Granth Sahib has been translated into English, and thus American-born Sikhs can always read it in translation.  The problem is that translations are imperfect.  There is the obvious issue that words and constructions in one language do not always correspond exactly to words and constructions in another language, which alone is enough of a reason for Sikhs to learn Punjabi (and the rest of us to learn the language of our own religion).  But there is another, less famous reason:  even given the constraints of the former problem, sometimes the translations get it wrong.  To illustrate, I present here two examples which have been bugging me recently.

1) Thus is it written in the King James Version (KJV) on Exodus 6:2-3:

And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am the LORD:  And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name JEHOVAH was I not known to them.

The KJV, while in some aspects a good translation, utterly mangles Divine names.  Anyone who had not read the Hebrew Bible in the original Hebrew and reading the KJV from the start would think this is the first time that the Tetragrammaton (= “YHWH”, rendered here with the wrong vowels as “JEHOVAH”) is mentioned.  And he/she would be wrong.  The Tetragrammaton first appears in chapter 2 of Genesis.  Usually the KJV, following the Septuagint, renders it “the LORD”, but on a few occasions it uses “JEHOVAH” instead, thus creating the illusion of a distinction which does not exist.  Furthermore, the KJV, following the Seputagint, has a tendency to give interpretations of personal Divine names instead of transliterating them.  This erases distinctions between certain names (“’El”, “’Eloahh”, and “’Elohim”; “YHWH” and “Yahh”) and gives the illusion that certain interpretations are the only ones there are.  In this passage, “God” really stands for “’Elohim”, but “God Almighty” stands for “’El Shadday”.  As such, the KJV, by its translation errors, gets the text wrong.

2) Thus is it written in the KJV on Mark 12:35-37:

And Jesus answered and said, while he taught in the temple, How say the scribes that Christ is the son of David?  For David himself said by the Holy Ghost, The LORD said to my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool.  David therefore himself calleth him Lord; and whence is he then his son? And the common people heard him gladly.

The KJV here reflects the Greek text well, but that is not where the problem is.  The problem is with Jesus’s argument.  Jesus cites Psalms 110:1, claiming it “my Lord” refers to Mashiaḥ (the Messiah/Christ).  Since “Lord” refers to a god, Jesus claims, Mashiaḥ must be a god.  Besides the fact that Jesus does nothing to show this verse actually refers to Mashiaḥ and this interpretation flies in the face of everything taught about Mashiaḥ in the Hebrew Bible, this interpretation is untenable, even completely ignoring the context of Psalms 110:1.  Thus is it written in Psalms 110:1, my translation:

For (or by) Dawidh:

Spoken by YHWH to my lord:  “Sit at my right

Until I place your enemies as a footstool for your feet.”

In the original Hebrew, YHWH is talking to a human.  There is no single term used twice, period, and the second term is not a Divine name or a general term for a god.  So why does Jesus think the same term is used twice?  Because in the Greek the same term is used twice.  “YHWH” is conventionally (and wrongly) rendered Kyrios (“Lord”) in Koinē Greek, and Hebrew ’adhon (“lord”) is also rendered kyrios in Koinē Greek.  By relying on a translation, Jesus (or someone putting words into his mouth) makes an inference which is untenable in the original Hebrew.

The moral of all this:  Do not rely blindly on translations, because translators make mistakes and give the impressions of things not found in the original text.  This is why it is important for Sikhs to know Punjabi and for everyone to know the languages of their scriptures.


Topic 3:  Today’s religious humor:  “Little did you know that the freezer…”.

I am really not sure where the idea of a porthole to Hell comes from.  If anyone knows, please tell me.

Peace.

Aaron

KJV Onlyism, plagiarizing the Terminator franchise, FlashForward, and The Golden Compass

Greetings.

Jewish date:  30 Tishri 5770.

Today’s holidays:  Ro’sh Ḥodhesh (Judaism), Twenty-Ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Roman Catholicism), Padwa & Govardhan Puja (day 5 of Diwali; Hinduism).

Worthy cause of the day:  “Take Action: No Lobbyists for War Criminals”.

Topic 1:  There is a joke about a church lady who held by the King James Version (KJV), reasoning that if “Bible English” was good enough for Jesus, it was good enough for her.  This is funny because, as is well known, the Hebrew Bible was composed originally in Hebrew with a little Aramaic and the New Testament was composed probably in in Koine Greek.  The KJV, published in 1611, is merely a translation.  Rabbi David Radinsky (formerly of Brith Shalom Beth Israel in Charleston, SC) claimed it is an excellent translation—except where it is wrong—but it is a translation nevertheless.  And as such, it perforce suffers from the major problem of all translations:  that it does not mean quite the same thing as the original text.  As such, reason demands that original texts, being better sources of information, must always be given primacy, i.e., if one wants to really know the word of God, what really counts are the actual words of God.  Irrationally, nevertheless there is still a King James Only movement which at its best prefers the KJV and at the worst considers the KJV a new revelation, despite no claim thereto or the total lack of evidence thereof.  On Friday I heard about probably the worst case of KJV Onlyism ever:  “Amazing Grace Baptist Church to Burn Bibles, Other Books for Halloween”.  Pastor Marc Grizzard of the Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, North Carolina, plans this Halloween to burn non-KJV Bibles, as well as various Christian literature and music of which he does not approve.  Grizzard reportedly is not only a KJV Onlyist, but considers all other versions to be “perversions” and “Satanic”.  I really have no idea what he is thinking.

Topic 2:  “99 Red Balloons singer Nena in Damanhur naked time travel sect”.  Oberto Airaudi, the founder of the Italian group Damanhur claims he has invented a time machine which can only transport naked people.  Putting aside the fact that this time machine has not been reliably demonstrated yet—science publications would be crowing about the breakthrough if it were—is not the nakedness-only limitation of the device something right out of the Terminator franchise?  If one is going to make an outrageous claim, then one should at least have the audacity to make an original claim, rather than plagiarizing science-fiction.

Topic 3:  It was suggested out to me that I ought to be watching FlashForward, as the show purportedly deals with prophecy.  I therefore watched the four episodes available so far on Hulu.  Despite what was purported, the show deals with anything but prophecy.  Prophecy is receiving messages from divine beings, such as YHWH or angels, and seeing the future (prescience) is not a requirement for prophecy at all.  FlashForward, on the other hand, is centered around (almost) everyone on Earth blacking out for 137 seconds on October 6, 2009 at 11:00:00 AM (Pacific Time) and having a vision of what will happen to them on April 29, 2010 at 10:00 PM.  Though there is speculation that this may be prophecy—along with lots of other rampant speculation—there is no proof any divine being being the cause (direct or indirect) of the visions.  What this show is really about is the question of free will versus predestination.  There is much speculation on whether the prescient visions are truly necessarily the future or whether what is seen can be prevented.  Though some of the characters have pleasant visions, others are troubled by what they see.  E.g., a happily married woman foresees evidence that she will commit adultery.  Her husband, an FBI agent, foresees that there will be people coming after him.  Another FBI agent sees nothing, and he receives a phone call from someone telling him she foresaw reading an intelligence briefing claiming that he will be murdered on March 15.  Already the plot has crept towards fulfillment of many of the visions, with the characters seeking ways to avoid unwanted destinies.  Considering how the show is structured, we can only expect them to get increasingly desperate as April 29 approaches.

Topic 4:  I have now read chapters 4-10 of The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, Book 1).  It must be noted that I cannot always predict in advance what parts of the story will prove theologically relevant.  Even before chapter 4 someone was kidnapping children for some mysterious purpose.  Since then the reader is told that it is purported that a department of the Church known as the General Oblation Board is behind this dastardly deed.  I am crying fowl over this, because this use of “oblation” is in violation of the accepted meaning; an oblation is something offered, while these children are not offered, but taken under false pretenses.  Furthermore, I am not aware of the Roman Catholic Church ever practicing or condoning the kidnapping of poor children, and it certainly does not do so today.  Yes, I am aware that His Dark Materials is fiction, but so far as this fiction reflects reality, the General Oblation Board does a wretched job.  If one is going to write fiction to criticize religion, it makes no sense and is not legitimate to criticize a practice which does not exist.

Peace, and have a happy new month.

Aaron