Will the last Jew out of Baghdad please pull the drapes?

OK, corny title. But at least original. TIME's article is called The Last Jews of Baghdad. Here's an intersting quote:
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"I don't want them to leave at all because the Jewish presence here is very important," White says. "But unless we care for them, I dread for what is going to happen to them. I do not want them to leave, but I think that is the only way."
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I'm not sure what he's referring to. The presence of eight people on the Ark was certainly important, but how would ancient Babylonia suffer from eight fewer people who live in hiding already, too afraid to even worship at the last synagogue?

Actually, I think their departure would be far more significant. For thousands of years the Jews of the Diaspora have persisted in refusing to return from exile. Events of only the last 90 years have turned what for 2500 years had never been more than a trickle into a flood that has continued to gush forth in wave after wave of Jews returning to the land promised to the seed of their ancestor. To finally have the last Jew leave the land of their original exile would seem to portent something very significant.

The same scene may soon be played out in Iraq's neighbor to the East, the former Persia, where Daniel first read of the impending end of Jewry's forced exile. Here remains the largest Jewish population in any Muslim country, though only a quarter of its former size. While three-fourths have left Iran because they thought they could live better elsewhere, most of those who remain won't leave as long as they are reasonably sure it's the only way to live at all: Why leave? Really, it's OK here, and it's home"

Should conditions in Iran approach those in Iraq, the entire remnant of the Babylonian and Persian captivities may well find themselves elsewhere.

Where's that? Well, mostly not in Israel, for now anyway. America is the preferred destination; this does not bode well for that nation should a time come when all Jews everywhere will feel compelled to return to Israel. The only way it will happen here is if a virulently anti-Jewish regime comes to power. And that will not bode well for a host of people other than the Jews themselves.

The Lunar Sabbath and Pentecost

Since quite a few of the hits this blog has been receiving lately relate to the Lunar Sabbath question, this would be a good time to share the results of my ongoing research.

Earlier I said that I was leaving the Pentecost question for later, since it was the hardest to answer.

It's later.

The Pentecost problem is simply this: The Jews were instructed in Leviticus 23:16 to count "fifty days to the day after the seventh sabbath." According to the weekly sabbath calendar, the day after the seventh sabbath would in fact mark the 50th day. But in a lunar sabbath calander, seven weeks of sabbaths would not equal forty-nine days.

But is this (fifty days, to the day after) the meaning of the text, or could it actually mean "count fifty days--to the day--after the seventh sabbath--" which would mean fifty days AND seven sabbaths; approximately doubling the time being counted?

To answer this question, we begin with linguistics. The Greek language is much more precise than the Hebrew in matters of chronolgy, and this is how this passage (v.15-16) was translated into Greek around the time of Jesus:

Kai ariqhsete umin apo ths epaurion twn sabbatwn, apo ths hmeras hs an prosenegkhte to dragma tou epiqematos epta ebdomadas oloklhrous ews ths epaurion ths escaths ebdomados ariqmhsete penthkonta hmeras. . .

In English:
And ye shall number to yourselves from the day after the sabbath from the day on which ye shall offer the sheaf of the heave-offering seven full weeks until the morrow after the last week ye shall number fify days. . .

Here we see that the word "sabbath" and "week" are interchangeable in Greek, giving a possible meaning in this case that the fifty-day count comes after the seven-week count. Could this actually be the case?

There are several ways to test this hypothesis. First of all, we have several historical accounts of Passover and/or Pentecost given in the Scriptures, and we can glean clues from them as to what time of the year is actually in view. Let's look at these.

1. The first Passover occurred when the barely was ready to harvest but the wheat hadn't yet borne fruit. This is clear from Exodus 10:31ff. This gives us an idea that the wheat harvest was several months behind the barely harvest. In fact, historical records indicate that it was close to four months (John 4:35) until the next harvest. But note that in Leviticus 23, the feasts at both ends of this 7-week-and-50-day period require the bringing of FIRSTfruits; i.e. the first pick of the harvest of barley and wheat respectively. So the interval between these two festivals should coincide with the respective differences in harvest time of barley and wheat. Fifty days just isn't enough for a 3- to 4-month growing season.

2. The question may be asked, "But what if the wheat was planted earlier?" Unlikely as that may be, there would still be another question to be faced: the grape harvest. At Pentecost, the disciples were specifically accused of having had too much fresh grape juice to drink. This beverage is only available around the time of the grape harvest, and grapes in Palestine don't ripen until summer--putting us at least 100 days after Passover.

3. There are many verses that equate harvest, including grape harvest, with summer. Click on the title above for a link to some of them. Note that Gideon was using an empty winepress to thresh wheat, indicating that the grape harvest came somewhat later, at the end of the summer. One hundred five days after Passover would be just into the fifth month of the year, around mid-July on our calendar.

Understanding the 7+50 count gives us an interesting insight into the ministry of Jesus: Acts 1:3 says that he ascended forty days after his Resurrection, which coincided with the Firstfruits Sheaf Offering. Thus it was not ten days that his disciples spent awaiting the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost, but more than sixty. Only then was the Day of Pentecost fully come.

A Striking Blow to Global Warming

Creation on the Web has come out with a great article on Global Warming. Rather unusual for such a topic, CMI takes no position for or against; it simply reports on the latest developments in the debate.

And the latest developments are rather disastrous for the Global Warming camp.
Read the report here.

The video referred to in the article can be viewed on Youtube. Click on the title for the first segment.

For those who don't care to watch the whole video, here's a synopsis.

- Many of the scientists whose names are listed as supporting the IPCC's report, don't. Some have had to go to court to get their names removed from the list.
- Global Warming was unheard of before 1975
- Global Warming was first proposed in a BBC TV special in the late 1970's, as a good thing.
- Margaret Thatcher used the threat of Global Warming as a political weapon against striking mine workers
- The scientific data indicate that Global Warming is a direct result of solar activity, and CO2 levels are an indirect result (not a cause) of elevated temperatures.
- Global warming makes for milder weather, not more severe.
- Some of the same dire predictions being made by Global Warming chicken-littles were first broadcast by those warning of the same effects, but due instead to Global Cooling.
- Global Warming as a pseudo-religious political movement has taken on a life of its own, and anyone who opposes it is branded a heretic [much as happened 50 years earlier with Darwin's Theory].

As someone who lived through a few winters before the latest warming trend began, I have to say I'm glad for Global Warming and hope it continues.

The Success of the Public School System

The Public School system in the Untited States, as overseen by the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, is a big business--a very successful business, I propose.

Now, in any unregulated industry, only the successful businesses survive. Others go under. Granted, public eduction is a heavily regulated industry, but it thrives nonetheless, even in the face of serious competition. Why have public schools survived? It is because they are so good at what they do.

What do public schools do? Well, whether they are crime-ridden inner-city structures or posh suburban campuses, all public schools do one thing, and they do it well:

They pay teachers a lot of money.

A few years ago, the taxpayers of Kalkaska, Michigan, tried to change this. They cut funding to the school system so severely that all the students were dismissed and the schools for all intents and purposes shut down.

The Teachers, however, continued to get paid. Thus the school, even while closed, succeeded in its primary mission: To pay teachers a lot of money.

This is not the story you will get from the AFT. According to their website,

"Teachers, especially new ones, are finding it increasingly difficult to find affordable housing in their communities and to pay off student loan debts. These and other factors place the teaching profession—already plagued by high turnover and recruiting challenges—in further peril, according to the latest AFT teacher salary survey. The AFT teacher salary survey for the 2004-05 school year found that the average teacher salary was $47,602, a 2.2 percent increase from the previous year. The report asserts that, to make teacher pay competitive with pay in other professions by the end of the decade, teachers need a 30 percent raise—an additional investment in our children’s future of almost $15 billion per year. The 2005 salary survey also examines the impact of rising housing costs and student loan debt on teachers in the 50 largest cities."

Now, it may surprise my readers, but I am all in favor of teachers getting paid $30 or $40 an hour. In fact, I have some educational needs in my family for which I would be willing to put up such a sum myself.

I, however, take no joy in paying such sums for the supposed education of other men's children. And I forsee the day in which the Public School System will loose its monopoly on education, and be forced out of business because competent teachers will be able to earn more money in the private sector, and parents will be unwilling to continue turning their children over to substandard teachers when other options become available.

Why do I foresee the demise of the Public Schools?

Because they have a Flawed Business Plan. Paying teachers a lot of money is no way to build a business, as long as it is tied to the level of their perceived needs rather than to the level of their contribution to the education of children.

What is a mixed language?

Since about 1984, when the 10th Edition came out, I have been an avid reader of The Ethnologue, a resource that lists, categorizes, and describes every language known to science--all terrestrial, by the way.

Every edition--which comes out approximately every four years--lists more languages than the one before. The main reason for this is that formerly listed languages are constantly being examined and determined to actually consist of two or more languages closely related, but distinct enough for each to rate its own listing.

In addition to the usual Language Family taxonomy (which has also grown and evolved over the years), several languages are also listed in group headings such as Gypsy Languages, Creole Languages, Pidgin Languages, Jewish Languages, Deaf Languages, and Mixed Languages. One category, listed as a Language Family, should also be listed here, which is Artificial (made-up) Languages. All 3 of the ones currently listed could also be listed under Indo-European Languages--although there are more recent ones, not yet listed, that couldn't. More specifically, these 3 (and, to some extent, all others) are all based on Latin, so they could even be further described as Romance Languages.

Here, however, we encounter a problem of classification: What about languages that trace their immediate ancestry back to two different language families? The artificial language Esperanto, for example, borrows just as heavily from the Germanic family as from the Romance. So, some have pointed out, does English. Why then is English listed in the a Germanic Family, then, when only about half of its basic vocabulary (and almost none of its technical vocabulary) comes from its Germanic parent Anglo-Saxon?

The answer could be that the definition of a Mixed Language has never been nailed down. Linguists encountering a tribal language that combined grammatical elements of one language family with vocabulary of another were quick to list it as a "mixed language," never realizing that their own native tongue did exactly the same.

The main gypsy language spoken in England, Angloromani, has undergone an interesting transformation over the years. Listed in the Ethnologue until 1988 as a Indo-Aryan language akin to all the other Romani tongues, it was suddenly found in the 11th Edition to be a Germanic Language more closely related to English than any Germanic language of the Continent. What gives? Merely because Angloromani is replete with English-derived nouns and sentence structure, an expert had reclassified it as a form of English. This classification was perpetuated clear through to the recently released 15th Edition, which wisely compromised by assigning Angloromani to the Mixed Language category.

This phenomenon is sure to continue. Take Pennsylvania Dutch, a Mennonite dialect of German that is now at least 35% English and grows more so with each passing generation. Even stereotypical Pennsylvania Dutch phraseology like "throw the horse over the fence some hay" is usually now heard only in ethnic jokes. The language is changing because all Pennsylvania Dutch speakers, monolingual as they typically are their first few years of life, are educated in English, and they find it impossible to resist slipping words, phrases, and even whole sentences of that language into their everyday conversations.

Guess what: It's the same exact thing as happened to English itself, some 800 years earlier. All education in England was conducted in French and Latin, with the result that words from those two languages so overwhelmed the native language of Englishmen that they ceased to speak it altogether in its pure form. So English itself is a mixed language of Saxon and French.

But how about French? Well, it was the result of cosmopolitan Franks learning Vulgar Latin. Frankish was a Germanic tongue that left its heavy footprints all over the result of the mixture with Vulgar Latin. Add to that the influence of Norse, and you have the Norman French that became the language of Norman England for several centuries until it was subsumed into the new mixed language of Middle English.

Vulgar Latin--what was that? Well, it was somewhat of a mixture of educated Latin and the Celtic dialects native to Gaul, which was later overrun by the Franks.

You can see how this goes on. Latin itself bears a lot of influence from Greek; Greek from Hebrew; Hebrew from ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, and Persian. No language that is spoken by people educated in another language can long remain pure.

Take Maltese, for example. Originally the Arabic tongue spoken by Muslim conquerors in the 700's, it suffered a long and unrelenting pressure first from the Norman French spoken by the counter-invaders of the 800's, but then from the Italian spoken by Malta's greatest trading partner once it was wrenched once and for all from the Caliphate. Then the English took possession, and for the last two centuries all linguistic development has tended in their direction. Today, a native of either Italy or Arabia respectively, fluent in English, could read a Maltese publication with quite a high level of comprehension--depending on whether the subject matter is technical (Italian/English) or conversational (Arabic/Italian). A mixed language--or just a dual vocabulary?

So what exactly is the difference between a language that is merely influenced by another, and one that is actually a mixture of two distinct languages? It's still hard to say, but expect this category--still limited to only 9 languages in the 14th Edition of the Ethnologue but up to 21 by the 15th--to keep growing as linguists come to grips with the reality of the situation. Maybe, someday, even English will make the list.