The people who are afraid of having their guns taken away want them for the purpose of spilling the blood of tyrants. Now that the tyrants are here, it strikes me that maybe these gun people don't so much hate tyrants as they want their own kind of tyrant to rule over them.
The fools don't know that Donald Trump would take their guns away in a heartbeat if he felt threatened.
Monday, March 19, 2018
Thursday, March 1, 2018
Literature from the Bible
This post is not about the old college textbook of the same name, but my reading of the first couple of chapters of the Gospel of Matthew brought the title to mind. As a college freshman with a religious upbringing, I thought the concept of reading the Bible as mere literature was a little bit scandalous, but things change.
The author of the Matthew gospel wants, first of all, to establish that Jesus is the messiah that the Jews have been waiting for, and to do that, he needs to show that the circumstances of his birth fulfill various prophecies.
He starts with the "begats," demonstrating a direct ancestral line beginning with Abraham, continuing on through King David, and leading to Joseph after 42 generations. The David part is very important, the messiah prophesied to be a "Son of David." (One problem with the whole ancestry argument, of course, is that Joseph is not supposed to be Jesus's biological father, but that's not the point of my little essay.)
Readers of novels are familiar with how they are plotted. The author has to move his or her characters around from point to point to make the story work. In some novels, it's possible to see the machinery at work, which, to me at least, detracts from the enjoyment of the story. The machinery is highly visible in the first chapter of Matthew.
First, Joseph finds out that Mary is pregnant, but not by him. An angel tells him not to divorce Mary, but to take her to his home. The prophecy of the virgin birth is fulfilled.
Then, the first plot device, if I may call it that, occurs. King Herod gets wind of the fact that an "infant king of the Jews" has been born, and that, as the prophets have predicted, the baby was born in Bethlehem. (Matthew dispenses with the mechanism, recounted in another gospel, of getting Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem.)
Herod feels threatened by this infant king, and decides to kill him. An angel warns Mary and Joseph to flee to Egypt and hide there until Herod has finished killing all the male children under the age of two. This part of the story takes care of two Old Testament prophecies: first that Jesus has to be "called" from Egypt, and second to fulfill Jeremiah's declaration that there would be weeping and lamentations over murdered children.
King Herod dies, allowing Jesus's family to return from Egypt. But Joseph is afraid to return to Judaea when he finds out that Herod has been succeeded by his son, Archelaus. The angel tells Joseph that they will be safe in Nazareth, neatly fulfilling the prophecy that "He will be called a Nazarene."
The whole story of Herod's jealousy of the baby Jesus is, I think, designed to move Jesus from Bethlehem, to Egypt, and finally to Nazareth, in order to show the Jews that Jesus has fulfilled the words of the prophets. To me, the whole thing reads like a clumsy fiction.
The author of the Matthew gospel wants, first of all, to establish that Jesus is the messiah that the Jews have been waiting for, and to do that, he needs to show that the circumstances of his birth fulfill various prophecies.
He starts with the "begats," demonstrating a direct ancestral line beginning with Abraham, continuing on through King David, and leading to Joseph after 42 generations. The David part is very important, the messiah prophesied to be a "Son of David." (One problem with the whole ancestry argument, of course, is that Joseph is not supposed to be Jesus's biological father, but that's not the point of my little essay.)
Readers of novels are familiar with how they are plotted. The author has to move his or her characters around from point to point to make the story work. In some novels, it's possible to see the machinery at work, which, to me at least, detracts from the enjoyment of the story. The machinery is highly visible in the first chapter of Matthew.
First, Joseph finds out that Mary is pregnant, but not by him. An angel tells him not to divorce Mary, but to take her to his home. The prophecy of the virgin birth is fulfilled.
Then, the first plot device, if I may call it that, occurs. King Herod gets wind of the fact that an "infant king of the Jews" has been born, and that, as the prophets have predicted, the baby was born in Bethlehem. (Matthew dispenses with the mechanism, recounted in another gospel, of getting Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem.)
Herod feels threatened by this infant king, and decides to kill him. An angel warns Mary and Joseph to flee to Egypt and hide there until Herod has finished killing all the male children under the age of two. This part of the story takes care of two Old Testament prophecies: first that Jesus has to be "called" from Egypt, and second to fulfill Jeremiah's declaration that there would be weeping and lamentations over murdered children.
King Herod dies, allowing Jesus's family to return from Egypt. But Joseph is afraid to return to Judaea when he finds out that Herod has been succeeded by his son, Archelaus. The angel tells Joseph that they will be safe in Nazareth, neatly fulfilling the prophecy that "He will be called a Nazarene."
The whole story of Herod's jealousy of the baby Jesus is, I think, designed to move Jesus from Bethlehem, to Egypt, and finally to Nazareth, in order to show the Jews that Jesus has fulfilled the words of the prophets. To me, the whole thing reads like a clumsy fiction.
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