One of the many things I’m unhappy with in the world (hate is such a strong word) are the children of rich yuppies who’s career is some charitable organization for saving the rain forest or ending poverty. The link below is to a Slate Magazine article describing the waste and corruption that exist in some [...]
Archive for June, 2011
The Corrupting Power of Doing Good
Posted in Uncategorized on June 22, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Two Documentaries.
Posted in Uncategorized on June 11, 2011 | 2 Comments »
I saw two documentaries tonight, Transcendent Man, a documentary by Barry Ptolemy about futurist Ray Kurzweil ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil), and The God Who Wasn’t There. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Who_Wasn%27t_There ) There is world of difference in the quality of the two ideas expressed. Ray Kurzweil, a computer scientist of considerable skill, makes a number of astonishing predictions for [...]
Oral Tradition and the Israelite Folk History. Part 3
Posted in Biblical History, Folk Lore, Folk Traditions, History of Israel, McNair Research Project, Religion on June 10, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
J. Maxwell Miller and John H. Hayes’ book, “A History of Ancient Israel and Judah” commit part of their work to analyze the role history had in developing the accounts of the Book of Judges. I will attempt to explain their views. The first thing to look at is the composition of Judges its self. Judges appears [...]
Oral Tradition and the Israelite Folk History. Part 2
Posted in Biblical History, Folk Lore, Folk Traditions, History of Israel, McNair Research Project, Religion on June 8, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
The limits of Israel’s Historical Folk Traditions How far back in time can we expect accurate historical accounts from Israel’s(by Israel, I mean that which is the core of the Israelite state and not peripheral states that were part of Israel at different points, such as Judah and Edom) folk traditions? I think an answer can be found by comparing [...]
Oral Tradition and the Israelite Folk History. Part 1
Posted in Biblical History, Folk Lore, Folk Traditions, History of Israel, McNair Research Project, Religion, tagged Folk Traditions on June 7, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
I’ve been reading Jan Vansina’s book “Oral Tradition: A study in HistoricalMethodology” ( http://www.amazon.com/Oral-Tradition-Study-Historical-Methodology/dp/0202308197/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1307430411&sr=1-2 ) I wanted to read a book about how to think about oral traditions. My work in using the literature of the Ancient Near East frequently means using accounts that attempt to record the happenings of centuries before writing was used to capture [...]
