Senator Lugar's death throes

I wrote earlier about Senator Lugar seeing the writing on the wall. Well, it appears that he has--and is trying to erase it. Like his ex-fellow Hoosier senator Bayh, he's spending the last 2 years of his term sending out an increasing number of very conservative-sounding constituent emails.

UPDATE July 2016: Senator Bayh is now running to get his old seat back from Senator Coats, who got it back from him. Indiana politics is certainly interesting.

Can Albino Parents Have a Black Child?

96885 In this post, I addressed the question of whether a black father can produce an albino child. This is fast becoming my #2 most-visited post of all time, second only to the one on Arthur Blessit's divorce, which continues to pull in hits just about every day, 2 years after I posted it.

Today, for the benefit of my new readers, I address another question which pulls viewers to my blog:

Can albino parents have a black child?

This possibility is an interesting one. An albino woman can actually have an all-white or an all-black child, or several of both. There's a fifty-fifty chance that a black man with one albino gene and a "black" woman with two albino genes (i.e., an albino woman) will have one a child like the mother, or one like the father. Although I'm not aware of any specific cases, this is probably not all that uncommon in Tanzania, where the "black" albino population is greater than anywhere else and many albino women have "black" (half-albino) children.

But even stranger things are possible. A white albino, for example, can marry a black albino, and have all albino children. These in turn will all carry the information for black skin, however unexpressed, and can themselves have brown children, even if their mates are white.

I'm really not all that interested in this myself. Albinism is a genetic defect I wouldn't wish on anyone, but it's a fact of life that is never likely to be eradicated--nor to I encourage anyone to try it.  But as long as the question continues to draw people to my blog, I though I'd give them the information they're obviously seeking.

The NIV in Philippians 1:1--an inclusive translation?

I earlier wrote a post on the O/NNIV's flipflop on women and children in Acts 21:5. My readers might have caught this (according to Blogspot, that post had 16 of them), but the CBT may well be right now after all (meaning they were wrong earlier). The Greek phrase is πάντων σὺν γυναιξὶ καὶ τέκνοις, "all with women/wives and children," which the TNIV now interprets as "all of them, including wives and children." While I do have a quibble with the English phrasing--I would speak rather of "women and children" (as in Matthew 14:21 O/NNIV)-- "including" is their translation of  σὺν (sun or syn) here.

But let's draw our attention to another place where the CBT translated σὺν. It turns out that the O/NNIV in Philippians 1:1 translates "πᾶσιν τοῖς ἁγίοις ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ τοῖς οὖσιν ἐν Φιλίπποις σὺν ἐπισκόποις καὶ διακόνοις" as "all the saints/God's holy people . . .together with the overseers and deacons." NASB has "including the overseers and deacons." O/NKJV has "with the bishops and deacons."

Obviously, the overseers and ministers at Philippi were a subset of "all the saints" there. So "including" would be the most logical word to use to translate syn. And the example had already been set by the NASB. So why did the CBT retain "together with" in Philippians, but change "and" to "including" in Acts?

I might add that the NNIV, without explicitly recognizing the church leaders of Philippi as "God's holy people," explicitly turns the brethren of Rome into men and women preachers in vv. 14-17.

UPDATE 2015: see earlier post.

Priscillian and Leo on the Johannine Comma

I have written earlier on the Johannine Comma, without mentioning Priscillian, who is thought by many to have been its author around 380. Leaving aside such speculation, I bring in Leo the Great, Bishop of Rome in the mid-fifth century. A great foe of Priscillianism, he quoted directly from 1 John 5:6-8 in his tenth epistle, and headed up the Council of Chalcedon which released a quotation of it in both Greek and Latin. It would be instructive to see how these read.

Priscillian (or a protégé of his in Liber Apologeticus):
 Sicut Johannes ait: Tria sunt quae testimonium dicunt in terra: aqua caro et sanguis; et haec tria in unum sunt. Et tria sunt quae testimonium dicunt in coelo: pater, verbum et spiritus; et haec tria unum sunt in Christo Jesu.

Pope Leo the Great:
 Et spiritus est qui testificatur quoniam Spiritus est veritas. Quia tres sunt qui testimonium dant spiritus et aqua et sanguis et hi tres unum sunt.

Council of Chalcedon:
 Et spiritus est qui testificator quoniam Christus est veritas. Quia tres sunt qui testimonium dant spiritus aqua et sanguis et hi tres unum sunt.

Chalcedon Greek version:
. . .τρεις γαρ εισίν οι μαρτυρούντες, το πνεύμα και το ύδωρ και το αίμα, και οι τρεις εις το εν εισί.

The Greek version is significant, and differs from the publication of the Council, in retaining the reading in v. 6 as "the spirit is truth" rather than the Latin version, which typically reads "Christ is Truth." Thus it can be seen that both of these official reports followed the version current in their respective languages. The text, without the Comma, is exactly as it is in the majority of Greek copies--and the minority of Latin copes, respectively--that are extant today. The Comma appears to have either been unknown to Leo, or, at best, known but rejected as an intrusion of Priscillianism.

Furthermore, the Comma in Liber Apologeticus is significantly different than the version that eventually ended up in most Vulgate manuscripts--assuming that there even is a majority reading of the Comma. Note the variant caro (flesh) instead of spirit: this reading is also found in the earliest known copy of the Vulgate to contain the Heavenly Witnesses before the Earthly ones, the 11th century Paris Bibl. Maz. Lat. 7:
Quoniam tres sunt qui testimonium dant in coelo, pater verbum, et spiritus. Et tres sunt qui testimonium dant in terra, caro, sanguis et aqua; et hic tres in nobis unum sunt.

More action in the Timothy Miller kidnapping case

Man charged in custody battle wants VT trial moved

LISA RATHKE, Associated Press Updated 01:17 p.m., Monday, September 12, 2011

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — A Nicaraguan missionary charged with helping a woman involved in a custody dispute with her former lesbian partner flee the United States with the child wants his trial moved from Vermont to Virginia. In a motion filed Thursday in federal court in Rutland, Vt., a lawyer for Timothy David "Timo" Miller also wants statements made to investigators in April dismissed, claiming that his client was not read his Miranda rights.

Miller, who is free on $25,000 bond and is awaiting trial, is accused of providing Lisa Miller and her 9-year-old daughter with travel assistance and a place to live outside the U.S. He pleaded not guilty to abetting an international parental kidnapping. Timothy Miller and Lisa Miller are not related. Lisa Miller and her child disappeared in September 2009 in the midst of a long-running custody dispute with her former partner, Janet Jenkins of Fair Haven, Vt., after a Vermont judge awarded Jenkins custody. The two women were joined in a civil union in Vermont in 2000 with Miller giving birth to Isabella two years later. But the couple split up the next year. Miller then renounced homosexuality and became an evangelical Christian. She was granted custody of the child; Jenkins had visitation rights. But Miller, who once lived in Forest, Va., has repeatedly failed to obey court orders and in November of 2009 a Vermont judge ordered her to surrender custody to Jenkins.

Miller failed to show up with the child on Jan. 1, 2010, and a federal warrant was issued for her arrest. A lawyer for Timothy Miller says the Christian pastor who was living in Managua, Nicaragua, was stopped April 18 by U.S. marshals and an FBI agent when he arrived at Reagan National Airport with his wife and four children to attend a wedding in Virginia. Miller was interviewed at the airport police department office, where he told investigators he had been contacted by another man to purchase airplane tickets for Lisa Miller, and used his mother-in-law's credit card to do so, according to the motion filed by Pennsylvania attorney Jeffrey A. Conrad.

Miller, who is described by the FBI as an Amish-Mennonite pastor from Tennessee, was arrested at the end of the interview, charged with international parental kidnapping. But Conrad argues the incriminating statements should be thrown out because Miller was the subject of an interrogation and was detained without having his rights read. He also says that the most appropriate place for the trial is in the Western District of Virginia. The alleged actions that constitute international parental kidnapping took place there and the defendant was in Nicaragua when the alleged crime occurred and has never traveled to Vermont or had contact with anyone in the state, Conrad said in the motion.

I'm not thrilled with this development at all. As much as I believe Timo Miller to be innocent of the charge of kidnapping, I'm disappointed that he's moved to suppress evidence that he himself provided.There is already sufficient evidence to convict him, even without his confession. And I'm not happy  with the attempt to throw it out on Miranda grounds. For one thing, I think police officers ought to be able to question suspects, and information freely offered in such an interrogation should be admissible. Moreover, if his confession was true, what purpose is served by suppressing it, other than suppressing the truth? This case has to be won or lost on constitutional grounds, not slick legal tricks.

That said, it should be clear that the Vermont court has no jurisdiction in this case, Timo Miller never having set foot in the state prior to his arrest. Any jurisdiction they may have had over Lisa Miller's custody arrangement is of no consequence: it is Timo Miller who is on trial for deeds he is alleged to have done, none of which occurred in Vermont.

I only wish that the two motions had been made separately, or, better yet, that the first would have been dropped as an option before it was ever made. I hope it's overturned.

Lastly, this alleged wedding, originally located in Pennsylvania and now in Virginia, actually took place in Indiana.

And if any of the agents reading this post would like more information, I'll be willing to provide it once they publish the real name of Lisa Miller's husband.

UPDATE October 2nd: the U.S. Attorney responded to a motion to suppress statements made by Timothy Miller before his Miranda rights were read to him. In his response, Coffin said prosecutors didn’t plan to use the statements Conrad wanted to exclude.