Historical Reliability of the Bible

- a Visual Sermon by Dr David Instone-Brewer

2,000-Year-Old Biblical Burial Box Reveals Clue About Death Of Jesus | FoxNews.com

2,000-Year-Old Biblical Burial Box Reveals Clue About Death Of Jesus | FoxNews.com

The Fall of the US Auto Industry

Forbes Columnist Jerry Flint outlines the reasons, and the solutions but the ultimate blame for the almost assured fall is:

• But the blame has to fall on Detroit's executives. They didn't know enough about their own business to build better cars than the foreigners did, and they were unprepared for a change that was sure to come, sooner or later.

I blame the MBA-ization of American industry. Together with the education degree the MBA is a going to be the downfall of the USA. Both degrees are superficial treatments purporting to teach pupils 'how to' rather than a basal knowledge required to properly navigate their endeavors. Hence we have k-12 math teachers that know no math, industry managers that don't have the vision of their foreign counterparts. Outside of one year in the early 90's GM has never had a CEO that had experience in engineering, design, R&D, or manufacturing. They've all been bean counters, no car guys. GM is losing $1 billion a month with no end in sight. They just bean counted themselves to death. GM isn't the only American corporation that fits this mold, most do.

1st Century AD History and the New Testament

A PBS discussion of the 1st century backdrop in the New Testament mostly from Josephus.

[Josephus' two books] are two of our prime sources for the history of this period. And Josephus gives a kind of catalog for what the major groups are within first century Judaism.... He talks about the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the Essenes. He also mentions another group, [for whom] my label is Insurrectionists..........

The Pharisees are known to everybody from the New Testament where they enjoy a very negative press. They clearly are seen as the opponents of Jesus and "the bad guys." Who the Pharisees really were is a different question entirely, once we get past the Jewish polemic, the anti-Pharisee polemic of the gospels. And we realize the Pharisees were a conspicuous Jewish group. They seem to have been a scholarly group or a group of Jews who, as Josephus the historian says, had a reputation as the most meticulous observers of the ancestral laws. So here is a group which claim expertise [in] understanding the Torah of Moses and claimed expertise in the observance of the laws. And apparently most Jews were prepared to accept that claim.... Their opponents, of course, were the Sadducees, who were no less pious than the Pharisees, but the Sadducees did not believe in the authoritative nature of the ancestral laws. What did the Sadducees do then, exactly, we don't really know. Except the Sadducees apparently had a great deal of following among the well-to-do, among the priestly classes, and seem to have been characterized primarily by two things. One, they opposed the Pharisees and two, they denied belief in the resurrection of the dead, a belief that the Pharisees espoused and the Sadducees denied. And this, of course, made the Sadducees famous as we see very clearly in the New Testament passages where the only thing in the gospels you know about the Sadducees is basically that they deny the belief in the resurrection...........

Great Post on Modern Copperheads Over at Gatewaypudit

This is a good one. Read all of it.

Democrats haven't changed a lick in 143 years as you can tell from this 1864 political cartoon by Thomas Nast

Dave Clark sent this very revealing 1864 campaign poster a while back and described the uncanny comparisons to today's anti-war party:

1.) Showing the enemy soldier stronger and more resilient than our own. Here the southern soldier (enemy) is upright and strong, the northern (US) broken and dejected.
2.) The "useless war" on the tomb. Even then the pessimist couldn't see the righteousness of the conflict.
3.) The flag flown upside down in a distress display; even then they saw little hope and only failure.
4.) The grieving widow....[MORE]

WMD in Iraq, Saddam's Explanation

There was every reason to believe that Saddam Hussein had WMD's. First he used them in Kurdistan. We know that our friends the Germans sold them the technology and set up his chemical plants. (If want to poison people by gas you should go to the pioneers in the field, they have lot's of experience). He denied access to UN inspectors in 1998, thumbing his nose at Clinton administration more interested in stains on a blue dress. Meanwhile the Iraqi people had to endure the UN sanctions, and Saddam's brutality. In a post 9-11 world with the US enforcing the UN sanctions that caused 1.5 million deaths, a wise decision was made to get rid of Saddam. Argue as you will, Iraq is far better off without Saddam and we (the US) are responsible for far fewer deaths in the post-2003 invasion than if we had just kept enforcing the sanctions and allowed Saddam to stay in place. A Fox News story gives a reasonable explanation as to why Saddam led us to believe that his WMD plants were still humming along:

• George Piro, who told Kessler he befriended Saddam to extract confessions, said, "When we were saying bye, he started to tear up."
• Saddam also feared Iran and told his American captors he wanted Tehran to believe he possessed nuclear and biological weapons, according to Kessler.
• "Saddam said that if America thought that he had WMD, then, of course, Iran would, and this would fulfill his goal of making sure that Iran did not want to attack Iraq," Kessler told NBC News...[more]

Churchill and the Jews

Martin Gilbert vividly shows in "Churchill and the Jews." By chronicling Churchill's warm dealings with English and European Jews throughout his long career, and his heartfelt support of Zionism, Mr. Gilbert conveys Churchill's deep admiration for the Jewish people and captures his crucial role in creating the state of Israel. Churchill offers the powerful example of a Western statesman who--unlike other statesmen in his own time and ours--understood the malignant nature of anti-Semitism and did what he could to oppose its toxic effects....[more]

Iraqi Deaths from the UN Sanctions and from the US-led Invasion/Occupation

There is a common belief promulgated by the anti-war left and the MSM that US-led invasion is causing widespread misery and death in Iraq. Over at the anti-war website Iraq Body Count, there is the figure of 75,458-82,203 as of October 22, 2007. That's a large figure but remember that most of these deaths were from sectarian violence.

What were the deaths prior to the US-led invasion? In 1990 the UN sanctions barred the importation of simple chemicals such as chlorine for disinfection. Chlorine can be used in chemical weapons. The result can be summarized in this Wikipedia Article:

• The sanctions regime was finally ended on May 22, 2003 (with certain arms-related exceptions) by paragraph 10 of UNSC, after approximately 1.5 million people had died.Resolution 1483. [18]

May 22, 2003 marked the beginning of the US-led invasion of Iraq. 80,000 vs. 1.5 million

Sino-German Cooperation

A little remembered episode in history, Sino-German cooperation up to WWII.

54th Massachusetts

54th Massachusetts, real Civil War heroes.

Jefferson Davis' Dress

I wonder if he wore makeup and what was his dress size? A heroic last stand.

From the November 22, 1873 NY Times:

"JEFF. DAVIS' DISGUISE.; HIS ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE CAPTURE IN A WOMAN'S DRESS STATEMENT OF GEN. PRITCHARD"

Capture of Jefferson Davis, at Irwinsville, GA., wood engraving, Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, June 1865.

Lot's more great images at GMU's web site.

Stallone on Myanmar

Oct 1, 4:21 PM (ET)

By JEFF WILSON

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Sylvester Stallone says he and his "Rambo" sequel movie crew recently witnessed the human toll of unspeakable atrocities while filming along the Myanmar border.

"I witnessed the aftermath - survivors with legs cut off and all kinds of land-mine injuries, maggot-infested wounds and ears cut off," Stallone told The Associated Press in a phone interview Monday. "We hear about Vietnam and Cambodia and this was more horrific."...[more]

Sabians followers of John the Baptist

Are these the followers of Apollos mentioned in Acts as the preacher of the baptism of John? The Wikipedia article on them only traces them back to 900 AD. Apollos later became a Christian through Aquila and Priscilla.

By Zaid Sabah, USA TODAY

BAGHDAD — Dressed in gleaming white robes, a small group of Sabians gathered on a Sunday afternoon to wash away their sins — and to forget about the problems facing Iraq and the followers of their ancient religion.

The Sabians belong to a centuries-old sect that follows the teachings of John the Baptist but is neither Muslim nor Christian. Flowing water plays a symbolic role in their faith, and several people were baptized at the recent ceremony, including three couples who were getting married....[More]

The Tax Collector in The Gospels The 1st and 21st Century Contexts

The tax collector earned the scorn of the gentile, common Jew, the Pharisee, and Jesus in the Gospels. Jesus recognizes that the tax collector was a man in need of redemption in Matthew and Luke (another Link). His apostle, Matthew was a tax collector before he sought salvation.

How do we perceive the tax collector in the 21st century? I'm sure there are many Christians working for our IRS. How do they justify the righteousness of working as tax collectors when they are so scorned as sinners in the Gospels? If read without context, the tax collector in modern America is a sinner and should give back half of anything he earned to the poor, and perhaps make severe restitution to others.

Christians working for the IRS should rest easy. The Gospels were written in the 1st Century AD with the Jews and others under the domination of Romans. The Jews suffered under this occupation and tax collectors were part of the Roman apparatus for domination of Judea. In modern America, we have control of the tax collector (in principle) and they are in the service of a government we have elected.

This underscores the importance of reading Scriptures in its historical context. The word of God is made clearer to us when we consider the historical context in which human hands wrote scripture.

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Note added Sept. 28 - Wikipedia article on publicans

613 Commandments of Judaism

From Judaism 101:

• Below is a list of the 613 mitzvot (commandments). It is based primarily on the list compiled by Rambam in the Mishneh Torah, but I have consulted other sources as well. As I said in the page on halakhah, Rambam's list is probably the most widely accepted list, but it is not the only one. The order is my own....[more]

Rome Reborn

An interesting CG recreation of Rome c.a. 320 AD.

'like a Swede at Poltava'

Published: 15th May 2007 14:07 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/7314/

This summer will see the first ever excavation of the battlefield at Poltava in the Ukraine. Researchers are hoping to uncover fresh information about the Swedish army's overwhelming defeat at the hands of Russian forces in 1709....
....The defeat at Poltava was so decisive that it later gave rise to the Russian phrase 'like a Swede at Poltava', meaning totally helpless.....

Swedish Teens Ignorant of Communism

From a Swedish newspaper,

....Of the 1004 young Swedes involved in the nationwide poll, 43 percent believed that communist regimes had claimed less than one million lives. A fifth of those surveyed put the death toll at under ten thousand. The actual figure is estimated at around 100 million.

The poll also found that 40 percent of young Swedes believed that communism contributed to increased prosperity in the world; 22 percent considered communism a democratic form of government; 82 percent did not regard Belarus as a dictatorship....[Read More]

Americans aren't the only ones ignorant of world history and perspective. We in the free western world can be ignorant with no consequences. Worse still, if we are informed it may make demands of conscience, so many of us prefer to be ignorant and dismissive of such monstrosities.

the False Messiah, Sabbatai Zevi

Steve Sailor writes about Sabbatai Zevi:

........Another historical character worthy of Borges is the False Messiah, Sabbatai Zevi. One of the major figures in Paul Johnson's A History of the Jews is the 17th Century mystic Sabbatai Zevi, a bipolar ecstatic from Smyrna who, with the help of his brilliant publicity agent Nathan of Gaza, declared himself the redeemer of the Jews. His claims caused wild excitement in Jewish communities throughout the world. But when Sabbatai Zevi (there are alternate spellings such as Shabbetai Zevi and Shabbtai Tzvi) traveled to Constantinople in 1666, the Ottoman Sultan threatened him with death unless he performed a miracle or converted to Islam. He chose the latter....

Jewish Messianic Claimants

Over in Wikipedia there is an interesting list of Jewish Messianic Claimants. There is also an interesting article on Jewish messianism. When I lived nearby New York City in the late 80's and early 90's a branch of Hasidic Jews, the Lubavitchers believed that their Rabbi, Menachem Schneerson was the Messiah.