The Nude New Jews (and Jewesses)

I have written earlier about nude baptism being the standard of the early church, and that the office of deaconess was orginially tied in with the responsibility to minister to female baptizands; it turns out that this practice was actually inherited from the Jews (edited to add: I noticed that one of my commenters had already pointed this out).

I quote here Gill's comments on Matthew 23:15 (note that, being a Whelmist, he is reluctant to transliterate the word in question):

The Ethiopic version reads the words, "baptize one proselyte, and when he is baptized"; referring to a custom among the Jews, who baptized; or dipped their proselytes in water, as well as circumcised them; about which there are great disputes in their writings; some alleging, that the dipping of them was necessary to the making them proselytes . . when he is healed [from the circumcism] they immediately dip him; and two disciples of the wise men stand over him, and acquaint him with some of the light commands, and some of the heavy commands; then he dips, and comes up, and is as an Israelite in all respects: if a woman, the women set her in water up to her neck, and two disciples of the wise men stand by her without, and inform her of some of the light commands, and some of the heavy commands.''

"Says R. Eliezer, in the name of R. Jose ben Zimra, if all that come into the world were gathered together to create even one fly, they would not be able to put breath into it: but you will object what he saith, "the souls they made in Haran", Gen_12:5, but these are the proselytes whom Abraham proselyted; but why does he say "made", and not proselyted? to teach thee, that whoever brings near a stranger, and proselytes him, "is as if he created him". You will say Abraham made proselytes, but not Sarah: the text is, "the souls which they made in Haran": which he made is not written, but which they made: Abraham proselyted the men, and Sarah proselyted the women.''

So we can see that even in Jewish culture, baptizing was in the nude, and special considerations had to be given when women were being so baptized. This separate practiced was inherited by the Christian community.

Another life that wasn't wasted

 “Wally” Funk wanted to be an astronaut. But in the 1950's, when boys hoping to get a toy space helmet for Christmas were building imaginary spaceships out of cardboard boxes, girls weren't expected to have any such ambitions. It didn't matter that she was already a pilot, having taken her first lessons at the age of nine. Or that President Eisenhower himself had written her a letter congratulating her on her expert marksmanship; she was a girl, and girls couldn't march in the infantry, ride in the cavalry, OR fly o'er the enemy. And only military officers were being considered for the space program, so it just wasn't to be.

But Wally Funk had a secret weapon: longevity. Having been trained as a backup for the Mercury mission, and then turned away when there turned out to be seven men with the Right Stuff, she lived through the entire US space program, observing the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Shuttle Missions from afar, while racking up an impressive series of “firsts”: first in her class at Stephens College (graduating at age 19), first female Flight Instructor at a US military base, first female Field Examiner for the FAA, first female Air Safety Investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board. And first place finisher, in a field of 80, of the Pacific Air Race. By the time the Shuttle program finally opened up to women, she was no doubt qualified in every way except one: she was now too old! She was turned down three times. And it's a good thing, by the way, that Christa McAuliffe, rather than Wally, got the nod to be the first civilian in space: she never made it, as the Challenger exploded shortly after takeoff, killing all aboard.

As for Wally, she lived on. And she kept flying, serving as the Chief Pilot for five different aviation schools. But she never gave up her dream. When the first Shuttle flight to be commanded by a woman took off, she was an honored guest at the launch. Finally, as the 21st century dawned, it looked as if civilian space travel might finally become a possibility. Wally took the money she'd inherited from her art collector parents, and royalties from her books, to make a down payment of the first Virgin Galactic space tourism flight. By this time she was in her seventies, and space tourism was still a decade off. But when the first flight finally took off with paying passengers, it was competitor Blue Orbit rather than Virgin Galactic. Their maiden flight set two records: 18-year old Oliver Daemen became the youngest person in space, and Wally, at 82, the oldest by half a decade (and it was a good thing for the record books that she was on that first flight, as the second, just a few months later, carried 90-year-old William Shatner). She had somehow managed to outlast the entire span of the male-only U.S. space program, AND to outlive the age restriction. In that way she was reminiscent of the first woman in space, who was sent along on an early robotic flight purely as a token, but kept on training long enough to see the Soviet space program open up to women, and became a fully qualified cosmonaut.

I was inspired to write this post when I noticed that, like Linus Pauling, Mary Wallace Funk got tired of not being allowed to study what she wanted to in high school, so dropped out and entered college at age 16. With all the progress they have made in so many other areas, in this way America have regressed: it's no longer possible for a frustrated genius to get into college without first ticking off the box of a secondary school education. At the very most, he or she can take limited college classes concurrently while completing secondary school, or complete it early by correspondence; just dropping out is no longer an option for bright young students like Linus and Wally.

I imagine there are a few exceptions in subsequent generations, but I suspect none from the 21st century.

A review of David Instone-Brewer's Bible Contexts Series - Chapter 20: Cain's "wife"

Dr. David Instone-Brewer is an eminent Bible Scholar in England, one of the experts responsible for the last tranche of changes to the NIV. He knows a lot more than I do about a lot of things, and since he makes it easy to access most of what he writes, I follow him to my advantage--especially in the area of Old Testament Studies, which is his specialty. What I've learned from him, however, are generally facts and insights I hadn't been exposed to before. I don't sit at his feet for much of what he weaves into his teaching, which are just standard tenets of atheism (although I admit, some of them are new to me as well). For although he identifies as an evangelical, he nonetheless looks to atheist scholars and their disciples to inform his interpretation of the Scriptures--and is thus oft led astray.

Dr. D is greatly hampered in his ability to gain insights from the book of Genesis, believing as he does that it was composed as a sort of religious fiction during the Babylonian captivity to inspire Jews not to lose hope in their present situation, or something along those lines. He doesn't believe that it is even intended to be a serious historical record, and certainly not that it was compiled from written eyewitness accounts. There is therefore no apparent limit to the imaginations his mind can supply from a reading of this section of the Scriptures, guided by the speculations of the atheists which lie behind much of his theology. And since he drinks deeply at the font of those who have no access to absolute truth, he all but admits that what he sincerely believes to be true today may be ridiculed a decade or a century from now, as atheist philosophers discard old and unworkable alternative explanations for how the world works, and imagine new ones yet to be disproven. This approach leads him far astray from orthodox understanding. 

Take, for example, his chapter on Cain's Wife. He already reinterprets the first two chapters of Genesis in an atheistic framework, starting with a random humanoid whose ancestral line went back to stardust. He then departs from the atheist narrative just a bit to give God credit for taking this human-looking animal, the pinnacle of billions of years of random evolution, miraculously granting him a human spirit, and then--in a most unusual departure from his involvement of the previous billions of years, and in a biological process we can hardly imagine, much less explain scientifically--splitting off a half-clone which became the first human woman. He then set the newly enlightened couple in special walled enclosure he called Eden and commanded them not to eat a certain fruit. They did so regardless, and as a result they were cast out of Eden to resume their evolutionary progress without any life-sustaining access to the fruit of the tree that conveyed some sort of immortality. And here enters Cain's Wife, who he proposes was a non-human, implying along the way that the host of present mankind must be descended from her.

I hesitate to critique Dr. D in any area of actual OT Studies, as he is an acknowledged expert in both the Hebrew language and rabbinical literature. But here he has left far behind anything directly related to the Hebrew Scriptures to dabble in Evolutionary Biology, in which he is no expert--leaving me on much firmer ground to dispute him. [Edit: he does claim biological expertise based on his undergraduate studies, but then, so could I, having sat for General Science in Bible College.]

I will be interacting in this post with Chapter 20 of his book Bible Contexts which, at least for now, can be found at his website http://www.biblecontexts.com/. He introduces the chapter as follows:

If Cain married someone living outside Eden, this would explain some strange details in Genesis. It would also explain how our gene pool contains so much variation.

---

His book is all about explaining strange details in Genesis with even stranger speculations. He sees a problem with God selecting just two humanoids--really, only one--to begin the human family tree. Although his God is capable of many amazing feats, Dr. D seems constrained by his acceptance of atheist teaching to place the Laws of Nature at a higher tier on the hierarchy than that occupied by Nature's God. The God who could split the first man in half at the sub-cellular level to produce the first woman was nonetheless stumped at providing this pair's descendants with enough genetic variety to produce the four blood types, so He needed to pull in some genes from the neighboring humanoids to pull it off. Thus, Cain's Wife. 

Now Mrs. Cain was not a Neanderthal, mind you--Cain had already inherited those genes from his long-dead humanoid ancestors. What she provided instead was access to the "rich gene pool" that had resulted from millions of years of primate evolution. Dr. D uses a modern analogy to explain why this was not only sufficient, but necessary, if humanity were to survive The Fall:

 Cain could, of course, have married his sister – though the Bible doesn’t say this happened. It is difficult to imagine her wanting to marry a brother (especially the nasty brother who murdered the nice one). Presumably this incest wouldn’t be dangerous like it is today because God could have made sure there weren’t any dangerous recessive genes in Adam’s chromosomes. However, our human race would be very weak if the entire gene pool had been limited to just Adam’s chromosomes. Restricted gene pools often cause problems in overrefined agricultural animals or crop lines because this makes them vulnerable to pests and changes in the environment. This is solved by interbreeding with wild species to reinvigorate the gene pool by introducing more variety.

Here he makes a mistake commonly perpetuated by pseudoscientists, assuming that a genetic bottleneck always results in a dangerously depleted gene pool. The reason modern agricultural crops and animals have depleted gene pools, and wild varieties don't, is precisely the result of human intervention to breed out unwanted variation. Absent that unnatural selection, a fairly robust set of genes will continue to be passed on, even in a small population. But racism is a powerful and primordial urge, such that organisms resist hybridisation and generally seek to mate with creatures most like themselves, resulting in further speciation, as any organisms that depart from the standard in the same direction tend to seek out each other for breeding, leaving an even more depleted genome to their descendants. Were it not for the balancing act of another primordial urge--that of men, having gone forth to conquer, seeking and finding sexual release amongst the females of the conquered races--humans would be much more genetically depleted than we are. 

If I were to hypothesize myself, I would say that God created Adam with two completely different sets of chromosomes, with each of the millions of gene pairs consisting of different alleles. Thus Eve was far more distant from Adam, genetically, than any two humans are today; at the time she was split off from him, she only shared 50 per cent of his genetic material. And if God were powerful enough to pull off forming yet another haploid set for the rest of Eve, then he only shared half of her genome--providing far more diversity than Cain could have brought into the young race by impregnating a distant descendant of the Neanderthals and Denisovans. Adam could well have carried one haploid gene for Type A blood, and one for Type B. We don't even have to split that in half again to get all three of the blood types just among their children, provided that Eve possessed the same. And if, post-Fall, any two of their children ended up with an allele that lacked the information for producing either the A or B antigen, Type O could emerge as early as their grandchildren's generation. It's a stupendous pity that Dr. D, with all his learning, didn't see how God could accomplish this without having Cain interbreed with a non-human. 

       Mutations occur very rarely, unless there are carcinogens present. This is good, because most mutations are dangerous – as seen by the effects of carcinogens. Reproductive cells are protected from mutations by DNA repair mechanisms, which make sure that accidental mutations are rarely passed on to our children. A few do get through – on average sixty-four mutations – though this is tiny compared to the three billion base pairs that are copied perfectly.⁴ However, some of these are so harmful that they result in miscarriage – about 10 percent of pregnancies end this way. So even a small increase in mutation rate would result in a lot more miscarriages.

Dr. D goes on at length to describe just how humanly impossible it would have been for God to actually get the human race going with just two people. Okay, and where does the book of Genesis imply that God can't do anything humanly impossible? This cognitive dissonance would be laughable, did he not with such sincerity lend credence to the atheist hypotheses. Of course, the way heredity works now, in our currently depleted human population, where any two humans on the planet share at least 99.9 per cent of the same genome, does not necessarily speak to how things would have worked back when they shared barely half of that. We don't really have any idea what a genuinely rich gene pool looks like, as the nature of genetic recombination means that some genes go missing with each successive generation, and after several thousands of years, every genome has become depleted to one extent or another--unnatural selection greatly accelerating the process. And since this goes against the collective wisdom of Evolution--which imagines, contrary to all evidence, the gene pool at large becoming progressively richer over time--Dr. D. just isn't going to hear this from his atheist mentors or their disciples.

So whom DID Cain marry? Well, as all scholars have noted, Genesis doesn't say. And why should it? If humanity began with only one man and one woman, and no ape-men to "enrich the gene pool," then of course he married his sister. Anyone with even half a human brain could figure that out with just a little help; there's no need to state the obvious. All we need is the succinct statement of the compiler of Genesis 3 that Eve was "the mother of all living." That leaves no room for any previous races to insert their alleles into the human genome, period. 

Dr. D should have stuck with interpreting and explaining the Bible, and left fairy-tale speculations to those who reject the Genesis account out of theological necessity. 

Who are the false teachers in Acts 20:30?

 As I posted earlier (here, here, and here), The Newer and Improveder International Version has a hard time being consistent with its translation of the Greek word for 'men', being unwilling to exclude women altogether from that designation, but not showing any good reason for why it does or doesn't. An excellent example is in Acts 20:30.

First, let's back up and see how various translations handle 'men' in Acts 17:34 (from blueletterbible):

However, some men joined him and believed, among them Dionysius the Areopagite, a woman named Damaris, and others with them. - NKJV

But some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them. - ESV

But some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them. - NASB

So, the more literal versions were okay with translating ανδρες as 'men', despite the associated difficulty of including a woman in their number. How about the least literal translations?

but some joined him and became believers. Among them were Dionysius, a member of the council, a woman named Damaris, and others with them. - NLT

Well, that was pretty safe, Just leave off translating the word, as the NIV did in Acts One. But most of them tried to translate it with something:

However, some people joined him and believed, including Dionysius the Areopagite, a woman named Damaris, and others with them. - CSB

But some people joined him and believed. Among them were Dionysius, who was a member of the Areopagus, a woman named Damaris, and others with them. NET

Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others. - NIV

So, to the CBD, ανδρες could, and presumably should, be either left untranslated, or at least translated vaguely as 'some people', whenever women could, or should, be included in the referent. So what happened in Acts 20:30, when Paul warned the Ephesian Elders about the coming of false teachers?

Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves. - NKJV

and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them. - ESV

and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them. - NASB

Again, the more literal versions translate ανδρες as 'men', despite the difficulty that false teachers of a female sort would likewise arise (Revelation 2:20). Surely, though, the translators of the more progressive versions would be able to see women in this verse? Let's check.

Even some men from your own group will rise up and distort the truth in order to draw a following. - NLT

Men will rise up even from your own number and distort the truth to lure the disciples into following them. - CSB

Even from among your own group men will arise, teaching perversions of the truth to draw the disciples away after them. - NET

Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. - NIV

Well, suddenly all their problems with a literal translation of ανδρες seem to have vanished at this verse. Despite the difficulty, all are agreed that only those Ephesians of the male sort were in any danger of becoming false teachers. But Paul himself, later writing to Timothy in Ephesus, specifically spoke of

"gullible women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth." - NIV 2 Timothy 3:6-7

Global search-and-replace has failed them once again. 

EDIT Oct 2, 2020
It has been brought to my attention that (at least in the 2005 Edition), the TNIV  did in fact read "some will arise" and this was one of the reversions made in the 2011 NNIV. 

Who are our neighbors?

On my way through town the other day I noticed that several yards contained the same sign, with a message in Spanish, English, and Arabic. Now, I happen to be proficient in all of these languages, so I was able to discern some differences in the translations.

First of all, it was obvious that the English version was the original one. It read, "No matter where you're from, we're glad you're our neighbors."

Now, all three of these language have the capability to address someone in either a formal or a familiar way; as it happens, the familiar is obsolete in English, so the original is in what would have earlier been considered the formal construction, but is now the only way of expressing such a sentiment. However, the formal construction is rarely so used in Arabic--as is the familiar in Spanish. So one would not expect the two translations to have the same construction. They don't; but ironically, the Arabic uses the rare formal construction, and the Spanish the rare familiar. Thus the Arabic is more a formal equivalency translation than the Spanish.

But ironically, given that English no longer distinguishes between number in the second person, the Spanish version is an exactly literal translation of the English, while the Arabic version is more of a paraphrase. It would literally read, "It doesn't matter where your country [is], but we're glad that you're our neighbors."

I wonder if the owners of these signs first looked up the online database of registered violent and sexual offenders to see how many had moved into their neighborhood, before so welcoming them.

ETA: I just realized why the Arabic is in the plural. In Arabic, one has to distinguish between male and female in the singular (not so in Spanish); this construction is the only possible way to translate in a gender-neutral manner. Thus the Spanish and Arabic separately convey different nuances of the English.

A sister, a wife: Lingering patriarchy in the Newer and Improveder NIV

It is well known that the major impetus behind the latest two revisions of the New International Version was egalitarian. Egalitarianism has gradually taken over most denominations, even those among whose major distinctions against sister denominations was their greater reluctance to embrace it.

Don’t we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord’s brothers and Cephas[that is, Peter]? --1 Corinthians 9:5 NNIV

Now, there's a major problem with this verse for egalitarians: it's written from a patriarchal perspective, and the CBT has done nothing to soften that blow, as much as it is in their power to do so.

One well-known Bible scholar, Eldon J. Epp, has gone so far as to write an entire book promoting the idea that among the early apostles were women, specifically one named Junia. But what happens when we try to plug her name into this verse?

Don’t we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord’s brothers and Junia?

Oops. The CBT sure missed that one in their global search-and-replace. Their puzzling reluctance* to ever use the gender-sensitive word 'spouse' really got them in trouble here. Furthermore, even the very phrase 'take a wife' reeks of patriarchy.

Look for a global search-and-replace of 'spouse' for 'wife' in the next NIV update. But while they're at it, they may as well replace 'husband' too, just to be fair.

*All the more puzzling because, at a recent event hosted by an equal-opportunity seminary where one of the professors is a member of the CBT, a professor was heard to ask a the male half of a married couple, "Is that your spouse sitting next to you?"

What is Transgender? A Societal Answer

Earlier I started a series on the topic of Transgender, starting with the Linguistic definition, followed here by the Societal Definition, and culminating, I believe, in a Legal Definition (whenever the latter is finally settled).

I don't recommend any of my readers listen to this video, due to the foul language (the relevant parts at least are subtitled), but I will sum up its content in one sentence: As of October 2016 in Ontario, it only takes one hour to go from being a woman with a female photo identity card to a woman with a male photo identity card--issued by the government no less. It's much easier than changing one's name; many women spend as long just changing their clothes.  She probably needed more documentation to prove her new address than her new gender identity.

Now, think about that for just a minute. Women have been changing their last names for many centuries--far longer than Western civilization has existed on these shores--but it's not even been the span of a single lifetime since they could change their gender, and now it can be done in less than an hour, with no physical exam, no court hearing, no sworn statement, not even any witnesses present? It's even easier than getting legally married!

Now, this is not all entirely new. Homosexual behaviour was so common in first century Western Civilization that the Apostle Paul included it several times in various lists of sins. We even get our word 'lesbian' from the behaviour common to female inhabitants of ancient Lesbos Island in Greece. What is new is the legal fiction that male and female are social, rather than biological, constructs.

Allowing one's feelings to trump biological reality is at once a social, and a legal, decision. During a time in which a majority of people are reluctant to start calling a woman 'he' just because she identifies as male, it soon becomes a legal matter. As was pointed out in the uncensored video, a law is pending in Canada which will make it a crime punishable by jail to call a woman--who calls herself a man--by female pronouns. Thus, at least for a time, the legal and social definitions are hopelessly intertwined.

But the groundswell of murmuring will simply not be legislated away. Witness the grumbling by female athletes at this year's Olympics over the  IAAF's decision not to disqualify athletes from competing as women, even if they have characteristically male testosterone levels--which means that by the next Olympics, female competitors who aren't doping up on testosterone won't stand a chance of winning, at least not against a Russian athlete.

The societal definition of transgender in Western civilization is certainly in flux, more so than it has been since the fall of Rome. But everything eventually trends toward the mean, so the current societal ambivalence will eventually give way to biological reality. In the meanwhile, buckle your seat-belts: we are in for a wild ride.

What is a transgender? A linguistic answer

Chances are you are arriving at this blog as the result of an internet search. This isn't surprising, as the concept of transgender has exploded upon the public consciousness of the western world rather recently, and many people are confused as to just what transgender means or is. As a scholar who has been following this topic for several decades, it is incumbent upon me to make things as plain as possible--as I did for my series of posts on albinism, which continue to enlighten thousands every year.

Let's start with a contemporary definition, taken from the first hit on a Google search:

Transgender: denoting or relating to a person whose self-identity does not conform unambiguously to conventional notions of male or female gender.

So, right off we see that transgender is unconventional. From the same source, that word is defined:

Unconventional: not based on or conforming to what is generally done or believed.

So, transgender is something unusual, not ordinary. In fact, it doesn't even fit into a conventional belief system. To sum it up, transgender is a new way of looking at the world that conflicts with what has previously been done and believed. Let's go back a bit and see how earlier dictionaries defined it:

According to Google Ngram, the word was first coined at the dawn of the 20th century. But one will look in vain for even a mention of the word in any dictionary before the close of that century. It isn't found in my Funk & Wagnell's Unabridged Dictionary of 1929 (updated 1959), nor my Websters Collegiate Dictionary of 1983 (updated 1991; published citations of the word doubled in the following year). Popular usage of the word itself is younger than the majority of people claiming that it describes them. Instead, one will have to look elsewhere for a word that describes the actions and beliefs now codified in the word transgender: transvestite.

It first appears in Google Ingram in 1897, but the word, and the behaviour it connotes, were so new in 1929 that Funk & Wagnells didn't include it. It remained so obscure that even thirty years of updates failed to add it to the lexicon. By 1983, however, Websters includes the word, dating its origin to ca. 1922, and defines it as:

Transvestite: A person . . . who adopts the dress and often the behavior typical of the opposite sex esp. for purposes of emotional or sexual gratification.

This is exactly the definition of a transgender. Only the label has changed, and this transfer was not complete until the dawn of this century.

Why the change in label? It certainly isn't because 'transvestite' is no longer a useful word. Look through photos of those claiming to be trangender women (often abbreviated as 'trans woman') and you will see that virtually 100% have long hair. Why? Because although there is no longer any cultural expectation that a woman not shear her locks, long hair is still culturally associated with the female sex, and those desperate to present themselves as women universally subvert this cultural norm to their own purposes.

Likewise, dresses. "Trans women" are much more likely to appear in public wearing a dress then are women themselves. Again, it is all part of a desperate ploy to appear feminine using any cultural device available to them.

So far, we are only speaking of transvestites--a word composed of elements that refer to regulating one's public appearance to match that of the opposite sex. But transgender goes beyond that; it claims to have effected an actual transference from one sex to the other. In this, it co-ops another word that adequately describes what happens in nature when certain species make the transition from a phenotypical female to phenotypical male, or vice versa: transsexual, the usage of which, along with 'transvestite', began its decline at the dawn of this century. 'Transgender' has replaced them both, and thus suffers from an inbuilt ambiguity: is a transgender someone who has actually taken steps to transition from one sexual identity to another, or merely one who wishes to?

This inbuilt ambiguity is at the very heart of the controversy currently raging over whether or not transgenders should be able to use the public restroom of their choosing. The definition with which I began this post indicates that the wordsmiths desire it to be both: A person need nothing more than an inner desire to gain access to the toilets, locker rooms, and showers of either designation. Remember that: this is not about transsexuals, or even transvestites. Bathroom Bills which give transgenders access give access to anyone based on nothing more than his or her claim to be transgender. By definition, nothing more can be required of them.

Ken Miller Update

Ken Miller has, like the dangerous criminal the US Government believes him to be, been ordered to a Medium Security federal prison (but in his home state rather than in the state he was tried). He begins his 2 year minimum terms on March 22nd, 2016. You can send him letters of encouragement at:
Pastor Ken Miller

FCI Petersburg Medium 

1060 River Rd. 

Hopewell, VA 23860

UPDATE:
The good news is that at the last minute he was reassigned to minimum security. And, of course, no prisoner can receive mail by name, just by number. Here is the corrected contact information:

FCC Petersburg Low
Kenneth L Miller 08464-082
P.O. Box 1000
Petersburg, VA 23804

The end of "Women and Children First?"

"Women and Children First!" was the cry as the SS Titanic began to slip beneath the waves of the North Atlantic over one hundred years ago. The policy was such an ironclad element of European culture that some men reportedly survived only by passing as women, and one of the richest men in the world went down with the ship rather than taking a woman's place.

That ethos still survives, but barely. In a fire aboard an Adriatic ferry just last year, causing the death of ten passengers in the mayhem which followed, one survivor complained, "They didn't take into consideration the women or the children, nothing." Another, who was rescued along with her 2-year-old daughter, told the Associated Press, "They called first on women and children to be evacuated from the ship."  So while officially the rule still applies, apparently there are fewer Europeans willing to implement it.

Yet in the aftermath of the Katmandu earthquake last month, there was some consideration given to women and children--along with the elderly of both sexes, in the first few flights out from the damaged airport.
This can be traced to the Nepali culture having more regard for actual disability than sex. The World Bank reported:

The Nepal Motor Vehicle and Transport Management Act requires all public transport to have special reserved seats for women. This study shows little evidence to support this provision. Provisions of this nature are regarded as short term solutions and do not address the underlying societal attitudes and norms which currently allow harassment to happen. The provision can be interpreted as maintaining the subordinate position of women (need for protection), and there was a strong feeling among many women who participated in this study, especially younger ones, that the approach should be one which enables women to enjoy similar freedoms to men, i.e. right to travel safely on all public transport. Mostly, people preferred the idea of priority seats for pregnant women, parents carrying small children, elderly and persons with reduced ability to stand rather than for women.

A pregnant woman of any age--especially one carrying a toddler--and any handicapped person, is much more in need of special consideration than a typical older teenager of either sex. As the biblical consideration for a woman as the weaker vessel is extinguished in Western culture, one would hope that it is at least replaced by a logical hierarchy of need, rather than a mad free-for all or battle between interest groups.

Another look at Sarah's three measures of flour

Traffic has been pretty steady lately to this post on Sarah's gigantic tortilla recipe. I already updated it several times, so it's time for a new post on the topic.

Why, one may ask, would Sarah make up such a huge batch of pita bread? Well, it's time to take a new look at the scene in Genesis 18. And please, forget every movie clip you've seen of it, which probably had no more than five actors, including all the extras.

Abraham was a chieftain with a considerable retinue. Note that he had a young man butcher the calf that he selected; he did not leave his visitors hanging for hours whilst he prepared their meal. Neither, are we to suppose, that Sarah ground the three measures of flour herself. She remained in the tent not because her help was needed to make the tortillas, but because women didn't insert themselves into a conversation between men. That she listened in all the same indicates that she wasn't bent over a loudly grinding set of millstones, but rather had her ear pressed to the side of the tent, where her laughter could be heard.

So, given the number of staff that was necessary even to prepare the meal, it makes sense that a large amount would be prepared--way more than Abraham's three guests could consume--with the remainder, once the choicest cuts were shared with the guests, made available to the staff. Three measures of flour would make no more tortillas than a retinue the size of Abraham's could be expected to consume.

Missing in Action: The NIV's Young Men in 1 Peter 5:5

Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble. --KJV (Cambridge)

Likewise you younger people, submit yourselves to your elders. Yes, all of you be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility, for “God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.” --NKJV 1982, 1990

 Young men, in the same way be submissive to those who are older. All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble."
-- NIV 1973-1984

In the same way, you who are younger, submit yourselves to your elders. All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, "God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble and oppressed." TNIV, NNIV

   Back before the NIV had even gone to press--when we were both children--my elder sister, when wanting to get her way, used to remind me of the biblical exhortation to "obey your elders." Obviously she held to an egalitarian interpretation of this verse, one actually encouraged by the KJV as it was.

  The NIV, however, in search of accuracy, turned that notion on its head. Not quite all the way--though; they identified the gender of those submitting, but not those being submitted to! This, despite the fact that the entire preceding portion of this chapter of First Peter is talking about 'elders' who 'feed the flock' and 'take oversight,' not merely 'older people.' 

  Well, the gender police fixed that. Since 2001, the NIV brand has not only applied the command across the board to all young people, but it even calls those to whom they should submit 'elders.' But what about the rest of the verse? In the KJV family of versions, the elders have to turn back around and submit to everyone else--something the CBT was quite in favour of when translating Ephesians 5:21, but instead, here they are advocating nothing more than an all-around equanimous dose of humility. This turns out to be the result of them using a 'superior' Greek text, which lacks the second occurrence of the word for 'submit.'  But is it really? As I read the Greek, the missing word is still understood by the context--so they must have some other reason for omitting it.

What it is, I have no idea.

Hangin' with 'the brothers'--The NIV and John 2:12

As I've mentioned before in this series on translation, there is a glaring exception to the NNIV's general policy of using search-and-replace to add 'and sisters' to every mention of 'brothers' in the NT: Jesus' siblings, which are never so mentioned.

Our most recent example of such is in John 2:12--

NIV '73 After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples. Here they stayed for a few days.

NIV '78, '84, '01, '11 After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples. There they stayed for a few days.

So, this verse got attention in the very first NIV revision, when the entire Bible was published. But none since. Interestingly, there is a textual problem in this verse--one that does come through in the various translations--

Jerusalem Bible
After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and the brothers, but they stayed only a few days.

You see, very early on in the history of the Bible, the doctrine of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary took a strong hold among those who read it--and those who copied it. Thus it came about that certain passages in the gospels were altered to, on the one hand, downplay the possibility that Mary had any other children, and, on the other hand, to present Joseph as Jesus' father, so as to equate the possibilities of him parenting Jesus and his "brothers." The Jerusalem Bible, a Catholic translation, goes probably the farthest in subsuming the disciples themselves into a band of "brothers" (despite wide textual variation in this verse, no manuscript that leaves out 'disciples' has 'the brothers').

The reigning Greek text in 1973 was NA26, a.k.a. UBS-2. This text follows the Perpetualist manuscripts in leaving out the 'his' with 'brothers,' but the CBT's translation philosophy allowed them to translate in such a way as to not disclose which text they were following. This textual decision was never reconsidered, either by the compilers of the two subsequent Greek texts, or the latest two iterations of the CBT.

Apparently a commitment to the handful of NT manuscripts (p66*, p75, B, L, Psi, 0141, 0162, 1071) that follow the Perpetualist line so ruled the retention of this verse as-is that the CBT never considered the possibility that, in addition to his still-virgin mother and his stepbrothers, Jesus hung out in Capernaum with at least one of his stepsisters as well.

I guess the CBT felt that their place was back home in Nazareth. Just hangin' around.

Brothers in the hood: Racism in Romans 9:3-4. NIV

I have earlier defined racism as:

The belief that one's own race is superior to all others, and that with that superiority come certain rights and privileges.

 On the first read through the following paragraph in the King James Bible, Paul doesn't immediately strike one as a racist:

Romans 9:3-5 King James Version
For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh: Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.

But what happens when you read it in the NIV?

New International Version 1973-84
For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever praised![a] Amen.
a. Or Christ, who is over all. God be forever praised! Or Christ. God who is over all be forever praised!

Pauls "own race" definitely comes across as superior, with certain rights and privileges, even when the translation had been gone over to remove all language offensive to women--well, almost all:

New International Version (T/NIV) 2001-2011
For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised![a] Amen.
a. Or Messiah, who is over all. God be forever praised! Or Messiah. God who is over all be forever praised!

The CBT started off the problem way back in the late 1960's or early 1970's when they decided not to bother translating the Greek words οἵτινές εἰσιν,"who are." They apparently thought the passage would flow better as "my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel." Fifty years ago, the usage of 'race' as synonymous with 'ethnic group' had not yet gone obsolete, especially in poetry. But this is a most singular translation of the Greek word συγγενής, which is usually translated 'relatives' in the NIV. Biblical uses of this word refer to those outside the immediate family but still in the extended family; in Luke 21:16 it is also used in an expanding list of relations, falling between 'brothers' and 'friends.' So how did it become 'race' here?

And how did 'brothers' fare in Luke 21:16? Ah, 'and sisters' of course had to be added, although the gender of the friends was still left unspecified. Whatever happened to the English word 'sibling?'

What's of even more concern is that even as recently as 2011, this 1960's reference to 'race' has been left intact. It's without question that the CBT revised the verse in 2001, when they applied a global search-and replace to make sure the word 'brothers' never appeared in the TNIV without 'and sisters' being tacked on to the end*. But here they found that 'brothers and sisters' just didn't fit in an expanding list of relatives, especially in the context of 'sonship' and 'patriarchs.' When all else fails, the NNIV translates ἀδελφoι as 'people.' But it really doesn't make sense to keep 'race' in the verse, as it reads as a double redundancy, with 'people' now added twice to the text: 

my people, those of my own race, the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship. . .

Where is Virginia Mollenkott when you need her?

*update April 2012: There are some exceptions. Jesus' brothers are never identified as his "brothers and sisters," except, of course, when the sisters are explicitly mentioned. Interestingly enough, even though most manuscripts--including two ancient Greek codices and most of the Old Latin--do explicitly mention "and sisters" in Mark 3:32--and that is even the reading of the NIV's base text--the NIV doesn't provide the sisters with so much as a footnote.

MEN at war

"The Government of India have caused this tablet to be erected to the memory of the twenty one non-commissioned officers and men of the 36 Sikh Regiment of the Bengal Infantry whose names are engraved below as a perpetual record of the heroism shown by these gallant soldiers who died at their posts in the defence of the fort of Saragarhi, on the 12 September 1897, fighting against overwhelming numbers, thus proving their loyalty and devotion to their sovereign, the Queen Empress of India, and gloriously maintaining the reputation of the Sikhs for unflinching courage on the field of battle."

Thus reads the inscription commemorating The Battle of Saragarhi.

Notice that in 1897, the word "men" in a military context carried a very specific meaning. It was a subset of enlisted soldiers--those who were not of non-commissioned rank--just simple infantrymen.

There's that word again--"MEN." It just keeps coming up whenever people talk about soldiers, for the simple reason that soldiers historically were men. Thus we have infantryMEN in the Army, airMEN in the Air Force, seaMEN in the Navy, and just plain MEN in the Marines.

The push for inclusion of females in all branches of the Armed Forces, and eventually all MOSs, is making people increasingly uncomfortable with these labels.

There's one thing women have never done, though--other than go to the moon, which at least one of them most assuredly will do before men once again step foot thereupon--they have never made a last stand.

A review of Benjamin Titus Robert's book "Ordaining Women"

When a book released in 1891 is still in print almost 120 years later, one would expect it to offer timeless truths on the topic. Indeed, in the preface he states,

I have purposely avoided all appeals to sentiment and to "the spirit of the age," and based my arguments mainly on the Word of God.

But on the very next page, he starts out the first chapter by making a comparison between the philosophy that relegated entire classes of humans to a state of subjection in slavery, and the philosophy that relegates the entire class of womankind into a state of subjection in which she is not allowed to lead the church of Christ. In short, he makes the whole issue of the Biblical Role of Women one of prejudice. As for appeals to sentiment, he asks (all punctuation as in the original),

. . . is it not possible that the current sentiment as to the position which WOMAN should be permitted to occupy in the Church of Christ may also be wrong? Reader, will you admit this possibility?

The book is also rather dated by the dire picture it paints in Chapter 2 of the legal state of woman's domestic situation--a situation that has been greatly ameliorated since then--without regard, I would propose, to the availability of ordination to women, and not one that has any direct bearing on what the Bible teaches on the subject.

The book is dated in other ways, which Bishop Roberts perhaps cannot be expected to have foreseen. He writes, for instance, "The mother who brings up her children to obey her is sometimes obliged to use the switch upon the refractory child." But as women have attained more and more influence, 'switching' refractory children has gone from being an obligation of dutiful parents to being grounds for removing a refractory child from the home, and landing the offending parent in jail. How ironic that the very women that Bishop Roberts lauded as being equal to the task of moulding the laws and customs of this country should be at the forefront in making the switch.

I really should quote the entire section in which this sentence appears, as it shows how far Bishop Roberts had yet to come in removing sexist language from his vocabulary:

Words are arbitrary signs of ideas. And often the same word represents things which have no relation to each other. The mother who brings up her children to obey her is sometimes obliged to use the switch upon the refractory child. The railroad man, by turning the switch wrong, wrecked the train. The fashionable woman when she buys a switch is careful to have it match her own hair. The farmer cuts his wheat with a cradle. His wife rocks the baby in a cradle.

Note that although he sees child discipline to be an equal prerogative of the female parent, he doesn't envision a farmer having a husband who rocks their baby, nor a woman guiding a train.

We finally encounter in Chapter Four the eponymous topic of the book. While he earlier expressed an appreciation for the Quakers' acceptance of woman preachers, he here makes objection to their stopping short of ordaining their preachers, which practice he sees as clearly taught in the Scriptures. While he's at it, he takes the Quakers to task for every other area of theology in which he perceives them to be deficient. Clearly, he is not suggesting we emulate the Quakers any farther than their view on the Equal Role of Women. Chapter Four continues with a similar critique of the Roman view of ordination. Ironically, Bishop Roberts undercuts the doctrine of the very denomination which he founded--the Free Methodists--by pointing out that there is no biblical support for the supervisory office of ordained Bishop! And finally, by equating Ordination with any commissioning service for someone called to serve God in a specific way, he undercuts the whole thesis of his book, as women in this sense have been no doubt been ordained from the earliest days of the church. Whether they were ever ordained to the Bishopric, however, is another question entirely.

In Chapter Six, Bishop Roberts gives away his approach. Speaking of Gal. 3:28, he writes,

If this gives to men of all nations the right to become ministers of the gospel, it gives to women exactly the same right. Make this the KEY TEXT upon this subject, and give to other passages such a construction as will make them agree with it, and all is harmony. . . Why should not this be done?

Well, it should not be done for the simple reason that this is eisegesis, not exegesis. We need an understanding that will fit ALL passages on the subject, without hammering square pegs into round holes so that they, too, will fit the round hammer.

The New Feminist People's Collective

Who died in Afghanistan on August 12th, 2011? According to most news reports, it was "Eight NATO troops." A few news services referred to "8 service members" or even the "7 U.S. soldiers" who, along with a single unidentified European, made up the day's casualty list.

As recently as the mid-1980's, the U.S. Marines stationed in Lebanon were popularly referred to as "our boys in Beirut." At the time it was still common to speak of a nation's military by the number of "men in uniform." But times have changed, and one can no longer assume the sex of any military service member. Thus, the emergence of the strangely plural collective "troops." One never speaks of a single "troop," although such a military designation has existed at least since the thirtieth chapter of Genesis. But the awkward term "military service member," a more politically correct way of speaking of a soldier, is most often pluralized by "troops--" although clearly eight soldiers constitute a single troop at most.

It's an axiom of linguistics that the meanings of words change over time. How it works is that the connotation of a given word changes in frequency to the point that its old usage is subsumed into its new one. Inasmuch as soldiers have long since ceased to operate in troops, the old meaning lay pretty much unused. Whenever this happens, a new meaning typically attaches to the old word, and it goes on to a new life as a component in an ever-so-slightly evolved language. It's also axiomatic that some people resist such changes, yet they happen nonetheless.

Given that English has become so standardised in the past century, I guess I'm a little surprised that it continues to change nonetheless. But it's this sort of change that is the most common and the most widespread: the recycling of an old word whose primary meaning has yielded to a newer, more politically correct usage.

How to run afoul of the Patriot Act by doing absolutely nothing for 20 years

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — According to the federal government, two sisters in rural Kentucky do not exist.

Raechel Colleen Schultz and her sister, Stephanie Marie Schultz, were born at home in Kentucky and Alabama respectively. They were home-schooled and their parents never sought birth certificates, vaccination records or Social Security numbers for them.

Now, 29-year-old Raechel and 23-year-old Stephanie have sued the Social Security Administration in an effort to get Social Security numbers and cards, which will allow them to work legally. The suit, filed July 29 in U.S. District Court in London, Ky., is the latest legal battle for the women as they attempt to obtain legal recognition of their existence.

"No one has ever heard of anything like this before," said their attorney, Douglas Benge. "When the girls first came to see me, it's one of those things of, 'What do I do now?'"

Notice first of all that these women ('girls' seems to be unintentionally demeaning here) are not accused or even suspected of any crime. If anything, it was their parents who offended the law by failing to get them registered, but it is the girls who are now being punished for it. Without the ability to be recognized by the government, they have absolutely no rights as citizens--even though they have lived their entire lives in the United States. Furthermore, without being able to legally identify themselves, they are deprived of even basic civil rights, like the ability to use public transportation, drive, or even get out of jail on bail if unjustly arrested. In short, they are no better off than the niggers of 50 years ago--maybe worse. They not only can't sit in the front of the bus--they aren't even allowed on at all.

One giant leap--for gender sensitivity?

It's been forty-two years since Humanity went to the Moon. When the first person stepped off the Eagle onto the Sea of Tranquility, they said, "That's one small step for [a] human, one giant leap for Humankind."

Or at least, that's how it would read in the NNIV.

But the stubborn fact remains, only Men have ever been to the moon. And they went as representatives of "All Mankind."

Breastfeeding fathers? The NIV and Numbers 11:12

Don't clic here
"Have I conceived all this people? have I begotten them, that thou shouldest say unto me, Carry them in thy bosom, as a nursing father beareth the sucking child, unto the land which thou swarest unto their fathers?" --KJV

Now, there's a problem with this. Has anyone ever heard of a nursing father? Yet the word is in the masculine gender. This is how the NASB has it:

"Was it I who conceived all this people? Was it I who brought them forth, that You should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom as a nurse [Or foster-father] carries a nursing infant, to the land which You swore to their fathers’?" --NASB

Now, by 2010, 'nurse' still carried a female connotation, but much less so than it did 50 or even 25 years earlier, when a man who was a nurse was always referred to as "a male nurse."

So, let's give the CBT credit for making the best of the gender-specificity problem on the first try.

"Did I conceive all these people? Did I give them birth? Why do you tell me to carry them in my arms, as a nurse carries an infant, to the land you promised on oath to their forefathers?" --ONIV

But the New and Improved NIV couldn't resist getting rid of that last vestige of sexism, the word "forefathers:"

"Did I conceive all these people? Did I give them birth? Why do you tell me to carry them in my arms, as a nurse carries an infant, to the land you promised on oath to their ancestors?" --NNIV

The NLT clearly went too far trying to feminize the entire verse:

"Did I give birth to them? Did I bring them into the world? Why did you tell me to carry them in my arms like a mother carries a nursing baby? How can I carry them to the land you swore to give their ancestors?"

But focusing on gender only obscures a literal understanding of the passage. This is the situation: Moses is complaining to God that the people he gave him are too much to bear. Moses is carrying on a one-sided conversation with God:

Why am I saddled with the impossible job of leading these people? (is it because I deserved it?)
What have I done to deserve it? (is it because I'm their progenitor or something?)
Did I conceive them?
Did I carry them in my womb?
Did I give birth to this people?
(implied answer: No)
Then why are you making me carry them at my breast all the way to the promised land?
How can I possibly feed them all? They are hollering for food.

This is obviously a metaphorical picture Moses is painting, of someone who has never been pregnant, much less given birth--and therefore can't lactate--being handed a baby and told to nurse it. S/he can't! Neither can Moses handle the burden of providing food for six hundred thousand men and their families.

God's answer?

"Okay, so you can't handle the responsibility for all these whiners. Send seventy men up on the mountain and I'll distribute your authority upon them so they can share the load of leading my people."

This is clearly the intended meaning of this passage. Interpreting it literally, as the KJV does, offends the language; we don't have nursing fathers--at least not in the dialects of most English speakers. Interpreting it metaphorically, on the other hand, unpacks the literal meaning: Moses didn't think he could physically handle the job God had given him.

The NIV, more concerned with gender sensitivity than unpacking the meaning, obscures the literal meaning by translating ha-omen as "nurse." For one thing, it's not the usual Hebrew word for wet-nurse; look how the NIV translates its other occurrences in the Bible:

Ruth 4:16 Then Naomi took the child in her arms and cared for him.

Lamentations 4:5b Those brought up in royal purple now lie on ash heaps.

Isaiah 49:23 Kings will be your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers.

Isaiah 60:4 Your sons come from afar, and your daughters are carried on the hip.

The word omen signifies, not a breastfeeding relationship, but one of caring for a nursing baby in other ways than breastfeeding. Moses uses it ironically: God is telling him to take a nursing baby, and care for it himself--without breastfeeding--all the way through the wilderness journey to the promised land! Clearly this is impossible, as Moses sees the situation. So let's see how we could allow this meaning, clear in Hebrew, to come across in English:

So Moses said to YHWH, "Why are You doing this to Your servant? What have I done to deserve You putting the burden of all these people on me? Did I conceive all these people, or give them birth, that You should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom,’ as if I were a father carrying his suckling child all the way to the land which You swore to their forefathers? Where am I to get meat to give to all these people? For theirs is a constant whine in mine ears, saying, ‘Give us meat, that we may eat.’"

Once again, we see the NIV's Committee for Bible Translation  translating a masculine word in such a way as to thrust femininity into a context where it has no business being. Their pink-coloured glasses have blinded them again.

EDIT July 2017

It's been brought to my attention that the word 'nurse' as a verb carries very different connotations in American and British English, respectively.
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, the primary meaning of 'nurse' is to care for a person or animal that is sick. From that, the verb split into to secondary meanings on either side the Atlantic--and in both cases, these became the most common usages of the verb: In Britain and thus the Commonweath, to 'nurse' a baby simply means to care for it; the term 'baby-sit' is approximately analogous. But in the USA, to 'nurse' a baby clearly means allowing it to suck at the breast (whether natural or artificial).
The ONIV was an attempt to produce an English version free of both Briticisms and Americanisms. To accomplish that, it would have been best to eliminate the word 'nurse' altogether, but a compromise at least was reached in using the word only as a noun, where it carries close to the same meaning in either dialect--someone whose job is to care for sick and injured people--a meaning, however, that simply doesn't apply here.