Jews in Baghdad

When I read the biography of Gertrude Bell last year, I was especially impressed with her accounts of the Jewish community in Baghdad in the 1920's. She remarked in particular on the fact that of all women in Baghdad - Muslim, Christian and Jewish, the Jewish women were the most literate and had schools available to them.

This site offers a history of the Jewish community in Baghdad, remarking about the period when Bell was there,

With British entry to Baghdad on February 3, 1917 (fixed as yom nes 17th Adar) there began a period of freedom for the Jews of Baghdad and many of them were employed in the civil service. When the state became independent in 1929 there was an increase in anti-Semitism, especially after the appearance of the German ambassador A. Grobbe in Baghdad (1932).

About educational institutions and medical services one can read,

Until operation "Ezra and Nehemiah" there were 28 Jewish educational institutions in Baghdad, 16 under the supervision of the community committee and the rest privately run. The number of pupils reached 12,000 and many others learned in foreign and government schools. About 400 students studied medicine, law, economics, pharmacy, and engineering. In 1951 the Jewish school for the blind was closed; it was the only school of its type in Baghdad. The Jews of Baghdad had two hospitals in which the poor received free treatment, and several philanthropic services. Out of 60 synagogues in 1950, there remained only 7 in 1960.

This site says that,

During these centuries under Muslim rule, the Jewish Community had it's ups and downs. By World War I, they accounted for one third of Baghdad's population.

For some reason Christians often give the impression that they have an edge on matters of literacy and philanthropy, that the recognition of the sacrifice of Christ, the son of God, is a necessary condition for altruism. This is not consistent with the teaching of the Torah, or the rest of the Hebrew scriptures where I read about the ideal Jewish woman, Prov. 31.

She stretches out her hand to the poor; yea, she reaches forth her hands to the needy.

She opens her mouth with wisdom; and on her tongue is the law of kindness.

Go here to read about the last Jews in Baghdad today. HT Evangelical Text Criticism

Baghdad was once one of the great cradles of Jewish culture and wisdom, but now, according to the Christian priest who has been looking after them, there are only eight Jews left in the Iraqi capital, and their situation is "more than desperate.

Continue reading.

Snow by Pamuk

There are many excellent reviews of Pamuk's Snow, and after reading the book, I read the reviews in this order, Margaret Atwood, to see what a Canadian woman would see in Snow. She calls it the Male Labyrinth Novel, and yes, it is one of the many political novels that I have read recently by men that falls into a genre. I might call it the oppressive politics as a bitter sweet love song; but the twists and turns, the farcical thriller aspects all complicate this. Why read other books when you can read a real author?

Michael McGaha's review adds considerably information about Pamuk and the real political circumstances of his career. Definitely read this review to see how it all fits together. Then I browsed a few other reviews, also good.

It is not quite the intricate tapestry of My Name is Red, but Snow is a more immediate political novel, taking the reader across the lines of race and gender into another reality. Personally, I like Pamuk because of his absorption in books and literature and poetry and history, but in this novel the women come into their own. The plot centres around the suicide of the "head scarf girls". Only a novel with a parade of individual characters can do justice to a complex issue like this. I will keep on reading Pamuk.

Shorts from Regent

This has been my first time back in a lecture hall for many years so I have been fascinated by the ubiquity of the laptop, the soft clatter of typing, the software and the mp3 recorders of various kinds. It was also my first time looking at an interlinear New Testament. Lots of firsts. But, Waltke and Fee use the old fashioned overhead and hand out lots of paper.

I was supposed to meet with Dr. Waltke two weeks ago, but it was put off because another women about my age was setting up a camera on a tripod outside his office door when I arrived. I could see that she wanted more than a few spare moments with the great man, so I said that I would wait. I chatted with her for a few minutes and found out that she was health professional researching breastfeeding and motherhood. She said that Dr. Waltke had confided in her that his memory went back to when he was a baby and he could remember breastfeeding, so she was going to interview him on this topic. Go figure!

When I did have my interview with Dr. Waltke a week later, the coffee shop line snaked through the atrium so we retreated to the staff hideout and a private thermos. To his consternation the thermos was empty. At first, I thought - how kind this man is to insist on my having coffee, but it soon became apparent that I wouldn't get a word out of him until he had his cup firmly in front of him. He went in and out a few times, looking either for whoever made coffee or making it himself, I wasn't sure which. This took some time. Finally, he returned with a full thermos and poured me a cup. He then poured himself a half cup and drank it black. He kept the thermos beside him and would only pour in half a cup at a time, so that it was always very hot when he drank it.

When this was all settled he leaned forward on his elbows and looked at me with great concentration and said, "I have a question for you first." I could not quite imagine what. "How do my course assignments compare with Gordon Fee's?" he asked. Well, all professors think alike, I thought. But I am just auditing so I couldn't answer his question.

Actually, I did find out the next day what was going on. In Fee's class, I sat beside a young man who had also been in Waltke's class. He commented, "I really want to take Fee's class -this is so great, I love it so much, I don't know what to do, but I am going to have to quit." Apparently he figured out that if he worked 16 hours a day for 6 days a week for 6 weeks, he would be able to complete the bare minimum of assignments for Waltke's 2 week course. So he was going to ask for a refund for his fees for Fee's class. I guess this trend was not going over well in accounting. It must have gotten back to Waltke.

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One afternoon I joined in a small discussion with John Stackhouse, author of Finally Feminist. Most of his books are on other topics, but this one did come up briefly. John described his upbringing in the Plymouth Brethren. He explained what it was like to listen to the ministry of all men, but only men. The Brethren used to depend on only one verse for the silence of women - 1 Cor. 14: 35. "It is a shame for women to speak in the church." In the assembly a woman's voice was never heard, not in testimony, singing or even as a Sunday School teacher. Women were silent. However, every single male had to participate in leading or ministering from the age of 18 on, regardless of gifts, inclination or training. John just rolled his eyes, trying to describe what it was like.

After the discussion with John, a pastor from the south came up to me and asked for a ride back to his car. He had arrived too late for the designated parking and had left his car on the side of a road about one mile away. He asked if I was driving east from the campus. Since I wasn't driving to Japan, I said yes, I was definitely heading east.

I got a little lost in a new campus suburb on the way out, driving around an endless crescent. Finally we emerged, a little disoriented, onto the road where he had left his car and I drove along it a little. He was explaining how he had rented a zippy Japanese vehicle but, for some reason, had had to exchange it for an small American model of mediocre performance just that morning. We drove along chatting when suddenly he looked around startled and started to moan that his car had been stolen. It was not where he had left it!

I quickly calculated the likelihood of a car of the make he had mentioned being picked out by a joyriding teenager - not very high, and had an inspiration. "No worries," I said, "All my girlfriends have had their cars stolen too. But, every time it has turned out that they simply forgot where they had parked. So we will drive around the block and find your car right where you left it." We did, and he was very grateful - as if I had made his car materialize out of thin air."Thank you, sister," he said.

P 46 Index

This is taken directly off the blog of Brandon Wason, Novum Testamentum Blog . He has moved his blog and I can't access this page any more by the usual method, so I have pulled this out of cache and reposted it so it doesn't get lost. I hope that's okay. Thanks for all your work, Brandon.

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A New Way to Access Michigan's P46 Images

P⁴⁶ is without question one of the most important manuscripts for New Testament studies, and arguably the most important text of the Pauline Corpus. The manuscript itself was comprised of 104 leaves strung together into a codex. Today 86 of those original 104 leaves are extant and housed in both Michigan and Dublin. The reason for its importance is that it is the earliest extant collection of Paul's letters. The usual date ascribed to it is 200 C.E., though Aland notes that there is leeway on either side (Text 87). The order of the contents of P⁴⁶ is as follows: Romans, Hebrews, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, Galatians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, and 2 Thessalonians. The Pastoral Epistles, in their present form, were not contained in P⁴⁶ as there was not enough space on the remanding leaves for them to have been included. Most scholars claim that 2 Thessalonians was counted, despite the fact that it has not been preserved over the centuries. Parts of Romans and 1 Thessalonians are also missing. 1 Thessalonians, if I recall correctly, does not contain an alpha in the title, thus some have argued that 2 Thessalonians was never included because the collater of P⁴⁶ only knew 1 Thessalonians as Paul's only letter to that group. Another issue with P⁴⁶ is how it handles the doxology in Romans by placing it after Romans 15:33 and before chapter 16. P⁴⁶ is generally categorized as belonging to (or preceding) the Alexandrian text-type, though there are some Western qualities about it.

As I mentioned above, part of P⁴⁶ resides in Michigan at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. They possess thirty of the 86 leaves, which they have made availabe on their website (which I blogged about in August). I often refer to the APIS (The Advanced Papyrological Information System at U Michigan) website to look at the very detailed images of P⁴⁶, yet their system is often very difficult to navigate. I finally took the time to list the contents of each of the leaves (front and back, thus sixty images) and link to them individually, which is what I have below:

• 3553 • Rom 11.36—12.8
• 3554 • Rom 12.10—13.1
• 3555 • Rom 13.2-11
• 3556 • Rom 13.12—14.8
• 3557 • Rom 15.11-19
• 3558 • Rom 15.20-28
• 3559 • Rom 15.29—16.3
• 3560 • Rom 16.4-13
• 3561 • Heb 1.7—2.3
• 3562 • Heb 2.11—3.3
• 3564 • Heb 2.3-11
• 3565 • Heb 3.3-13
• 3569 • Rom 16.14-23
• 3570 • Rom 16.23—Heb 1.7
• 3571 • Heb 3.13—4.4
• 3572 • Heb 4.4-14
• 3573 • Heb 4.14—5.7
• 3574 • Heb 5.8—6.4
• 3575 • Heb 6.4-13
• 3576 • Heb 6.13—7.2
• 3577 • Heb 7.2-11
• 3578 • Heb 7.11-20
• 3579 • Heb 7.20-28
• 3580 • Heb 7.28—8.8
• 3581 • Heb 9.10-16
• 3582 • Heb 9.18-26
• 3583 • 1 Cor 2.3-11
• 3584 • 1 Cor 2.11—3.5
• 3585 • 2 Cor 9.7—10.1
• 3586 • 2 Cor 10.1-11
• 3587 • 2 Cor 10.11—11.2
• 3588 • 2 Cor 11.3-10
• 3589 • 2 Cor 11.12-22
• 3590 • 2 Cor 11.23-33
• 3591 • 2 Cor 11.33—12.9
• 3592 • 2 Cor 12.10-18 (typo on APIS)
• 3593 • 2 Cor 12.18—13.5
• 3594 • 2 Cor 13.5-13
• 3595 • Eph 1.1-11
• 3599 • Eph 1.12-20
• 3600 • Eph 1.21—2.7
• 3601 • Eph 2.10-20
• 3602 • Eph 2.21—3.10
• 3603 • Eph 3.11—4.1
• 3604 • Eph 4.2-14
• 3606 • Eph 4.15-25
• 3607 • Eph 4.26—5.6 (typo on APIS)
• 3608 • Eph 5.8-25
• 3609 • Eph 5.26—6.6
• 3610 • Eph 6.8-18
• 3611 • Eph 6.20—Gal 1.8
• 3612 • Gal 1.10-22
• 3613 • Gal 1.23—2.9
• 3614 • Gal 2.9-21
• 3615 • Gal 3.2-15
• 3616 • Gal 3.16-29
• 3617 • Gal 4.2-17
• 3618 • Gal 4.20—5.1
• 3619 • Gal 5.2-17
• 3620 • Gal 5.20—6.8

The Girls

The Girls is the only novel I have read recently about abundant and fulfilling love. The two girls, twins conjoined on the side of the head, not only negotiate an equitable and loving relationship, in which the stronger one does not dominate or make decisions for the other; but their relationship also serves as a metaphor for successful conjugal love. Romance and tenderness erupt in the most unlikely places and it is an important plot device that no character goes unkissed. Sad and funny but very satisfying. I loved it.

My Name is Red, War Trash, Kite Runner, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress are books written by men about cultural and political themes. Swallows of Kabul and Half of Man is Woman are novels in which failed conjugal love serves as a metaphor for male impotence under a repressive political regime. They are satisfying to read simply because the authors, writing in a very different cultural and linguistic environment, are able to successfully communicate a universal message using the theme of conjugal love.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a story of failed love and the kindness and tenderness of family and community. Memory Keeper's Daughter and Glass Castle are novels of triumph in a dysfunctional family.

At least that's my take.

Reading Habits

Kite Runner - 2005, US 1912 reviews, 4 1/2 stars; UK 236 reviews, 4 1/2 stars
Swallows of Kabul 2005, US 42 reviews 4 1/2 stars; UK 3 reviews 5 stars
Memory Keeper's Daughter 2006, US 588 reviews 3 1/2 stars; UK 36 reviews 3 1/2 stars
Glass Castle 2006, US 707 reviews 4 1/2 stars; UK 3 reviews 5 stars
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan 2006, US 339 customer reviews 4 1/2 stars; UK 20 reviews 5 stars
Suite Française 2006, US 203 reviews 4 1/2 stars; UK 21 reviews, 5 stars
Half of Man is Woman 1991, US 1 review 5 stars; UK no reviews
My Name is Red 2002, US 105 reviews 4 1/2 stars, UK 24 reviews, 3 1/2 stars
The Girls 2007 US 72 reviews 4 1/2 stars, UK 42 reviews 3 1/2 stars
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, 2002, US, 208 reviews, 4 stars; UK 13 reviews, 4 stars
Snow 2005, US 106 reviews, 3 1/2 stars; UK 22 reviews, 3 1/2 stars
Reading Lolita in Tehran 2003, US 317 reviews, 3 1/2 stars; UK 18 reviews , 4 1/2 stars
The Places in Between 2006, US 115 reviews, 4 stars; UK 17 reviews, 4 1/2 stars
Bookseller of Kabul 2004, US 113 reviews, 4 stars; UK 39 reviews, 3 1/2 stars
War Trash 2006, US no reviews; UK 2 reviews, 4 1/2 stars

I have decided to analyse my reading habits. First, novels represent about half of my reading time. I like it that way and I really don't know what to say to people who claim they have eliminated novels from their reading schedule. Some of these same people haven't eliminated watching sports on TV, of course. Oh well. Each to their own.

My favourite books are in this order, My Name is Red, a little long and difficult but if you love books and the history of books, it is wonderful. Next, War Trash, Balzac, Snow Flower, Half of Man is Woman, Swallows of Kabul, Places in Between. And so on.

I found Kite Runner just plain irritating with its formula plot and predictable ending, and the Glass Castle was very enjoyable but surely overrated. There are many books which I am extemely happy to read, and discuss but wouldn't rate as top literature. Memory Keeper's Daughter and The Girls, for example. I wouldn't miss them for anything but they probably will not be enduring tales. I would still recommend all of these books as a good read.

So how did I choose these books? The best books I have read recently, Swallows of Kabul and Snow Flower, were selling for a few bucks in a bin at Safeway. I hadn't heard of them but just from reading the back cover I was able to decide that these were books for me and I wasn't disappointed. Three cheers for Safeway. My Name is Red and War Trash were from the library. The Glass Castle and The Girls were recommended by a sister. I like the variety these books represent. I don't feel that I wasted any time on poorly written books.

So far this seems to me to be an appropriate way to chose books. Notice how poorly Snow, the Nobel prizewinner, fared in the Amazon reviews. I am reading it right now and won't comment yet.

Update: Here are some sites with book reviews.

Booklist online - features a book by Ha Jin
New York Times - Shadow of the Silk Road

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

I consider this book by Lisa See to be one of the more powerful and memorable books that I have read this year. This is the intertwined history of footbinding and nu shu, the 'secret' women's writing of China.

It is an emotionally realistic story of a female friendship, with a strong plotline, details of the men's work and study along with intricate descriptions of embroidery and cooking.

The strength of this story is that the author does not tell you what to think about footbinding. You are left to make up your own mind what you would have done in the situations described.

In a tragic reversal of fortune, the young girl from a higher class is fated for a life of poverty and sorrow. In the last few pages we learn of how she has concealed a lifetime of suffering from abuse and violence from her closest friend. The other girl experiences increasing fortune and attributes her own eventual security and dominance to her own moral strength rather than to an indifferent fate. The abuse is not only the physical damage the heroine suffers but the increasing isolation and depression she experiences from the misunderstanding and judgment of her close female friend.

Fortunately we are not left entirely bereft. Each character experiences in others mitigating tenderness and kindness if not love.

Love and Oppression

I have just finished reading The Swallows of Kabul by Yasmina Khadra,

Khadra is the nom de plume for Algerian army officer Mohamed Moulessehoul (In the Name of God; Wolf Dreams), who illustrates the effects of repression on a pair of Kabul couples in this slim, harrowing novel of life in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. Gloomy prison guard Atiq Shaukat is tired of his grim duties, keeping watch over prisoners slated for public execution. Life at home, where his wife, Musarrat, is slowly dying of a chronic illness, is no better. Mohsen Ramat, meanwhile, clings to the remains of his middle-class life together with his beautiful, progressive wife, Zunaira, after the Taliban strip them of their livelihood and dignity. Khadra's storytelling style recalls that of Naguib Mahfouz in the early chapters, in which the tense dissatisfaction of both couples is revealed. The pivotal event occurs when Ramat discharges his frustrations by participating in the brutal stoning of a female Taliban prisoner.

This story reminds me of Half of Man is Woman by Zhang Xianliang,

This more or less autobiographical novel excels by its emotional depth. It shows us the 'human' side of re-education camps and state firms.

The main character is an intellectual democrat, who sees and knows that the Chinese common man has been terrorized, deceived and used as guinea pigs by the powerful. They were / are the (dead or alive) victims of the power struggle at the top of the Communist Party with all its expulsions and rehabilitations. As the author states coldly: 'The Cultural Revolution established a new world record of criminals'. When the inmates of the camps hear about another round of liquidations, they are happy that they already know their own punishment (at that moment, their work camp is a paradise).

This book is also an impressive tale about the battle of the sexes with candid treatment of sexual and marital problems. The author is a master in the description of emotional scenes, sometimes as a violent participant and at times as a cold observer. But he always finds the passionate human touch. The dream scenes are equally impressive, while the use of humanized animals is highly original.

This novel is not less than a masterpiece. Not to be missed.

Both books use tender but sad love stories as a metaphor for political oppression. One is written by an intellectual in a Chinese labour camp and the other written by an Algerian army officer. These deeply emotionally works of fiction deserve to be widely read. I note with despair that reading fiction has gone out of style with some people. They feel they do not have time to spend listening to the artistic expression of the human spirit under oppression.

I would also put in this class of fiction, Suite Française by Irene Nemirovsky, a Jewish woman who lived and died in France during WWII.

The Glass Castle

Jeannette Walls' memoir is lightly written tale of a childhood lived below the poverty line, surviving on barely enough calories, with unwashed clothes in a makeshift shack. The parents are educated and pass on a love of learning and books, but intermittently unemployed and irresponsible, they do not provide the basic necessities for their children. From the Jacket,

What is so astonishing about Jeannette Walls is not just that she had the guts and tenacity and intelligence to get out, but that she describes her parents with such deep affection and generosity. Hers is a story of triumph against all odds, but also a tender, moving tale of unconditional love in a family that despite its profound flaws gave her the fiery determination to carve out a successful life on her own terms.

Similar memoirs include Frank McCourts Angela's Ashes, and Helen Forrester's series, beginning with Twopence to Cross the Mersey . All of Forrester's books make excellent reading.

A Definition of a Memoir

A memoir is a piece of autobiographical writing which is often shorter than a comprehensive autobiography. The span of time covered in the memoir is often brief compared to the person's complete life span. The memoir often tries to capture certain highlights or meaningful events in one's past. Included in the memoir is a contemplation of the meaning of that event at the time of the writing. The memoir may be more emotional and descriptive, and concerned with capturing the feelings of the event, rather than documenting every fact and detail of a person's life. A memoir usually has a particular focus of attention, focusing on the selected events from a perspective that may not include other facts and details from the person's life. In other words, the memoir is highly focused and selective in the memories it includes.

John Buchan

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the incipient racism of John Buchan, a much admired British statesman and author. I often find that the inner dialogue of the fiction writer displays subconsciously the social context of his period in intriguing ways. In my first post I showed how Buchan, writing in 1940, characterized the First Nations as fungi, the halfbreeds as grassy filaments, the American as a shrub with deeper roots, and the British as a solid oak.

While this is of particular significance in Canada, it is representative of the racism of the 1930's elsewhere. I cannot help but find Buchan's views so pervasive as to be unremarkable in his time.

Here is what Grumpy Old Bookman has to say about Buchan and his attitudes. He rightly points out Buchan's about face on Jews. However, I shall not be so forgiving because of his attitudes, expressed in 1940, towards the Native people of North America.

But one cannot, I suppose – and I say this with a deep sigh – one cannot leave Buchan without touching, briefly, upon his alleged ‘anti-semitism’ and racism.

It is perfectly true that the 2005 reader, who has had an awareness of political correctness injected into his veins, will wince a bit at some of Buchan’s throwaway remarks. There are references, for example, to a ‘nigger band’ playing in a nightclub. And there are indeed derogatory references to Jews, as in the description of the same nightclub’s clientele: ‘the usual rastaquouère crowd of men and women… mixed with fat Jews and blue-black dagos.’

Before we get too excited about this, we do have to remember that we are talking about the English (a term which in this instance includes Scottish) upper classes here. Buchan married into the aristocracy, and he mixed with the greatest in the land. It is undeniable that, in the 1920s and 1930s, such people were typically arrogant, and were dismissive of almost everyone on earth apart from those few who came from their own select background. See the film Gosford Park if you want to know how they treated their servants.

Furthermore, we need to bear in mind that words such as Frog (for Frenchman), and Wog (for an Arab) were in frequent use well into my lifetime. Indeed, when I was a boy we were sometimes cautioned that ‘Wogs begin at Calais’. In other words, you can’t trust anyone but an Englishman; and you can only trust him if he went to the right sort of school.

With the benefit of hindsight such attitudes are unattractive; but in their day they were commonplace, and it is a little hard to abuse Buchan for being a man of his time.

Once anti-semitism, in its virulent form, appeared in Nazi Germany, Buchan was quick to condemn it publicly; so much so that Hitler promptly added him to the list of men who, after the proposed German invasion of England, were to be imprisoned for ‘Pro-Jewish activity’. In due course Buchan realised the sensitivity of some of his earlier (and entirely trivial) references to Jews, and eliminated them from his later work. If you wish to know more, the issue has been dealt with in Roger Kimball’s valuable essay on Buchan.

It would be unfortunate, to say the least, if such a remarkable body of work, by such a remarkably far-sighted man, were to be ignored, or, worse, condemned, on the strength of a few lines here and there.

My intent is to move next to an examination of Archibald Flemings experiences with the First Nations of Canada.

Jesus H. Christ

Is it Jesus H. Christ or Jesus J. Christ, I wonder? Iyov has blogged about a case of litigation in which Jesus is mentioned as Jesus J. Christ. I am puzzled. Earlier this year I blogged about the anagram JHS or IHS. This has possibly lead to the name Jesus H. Christ, but I don't know where the J. could have come from.

The IHS monogram is an abbreviation or shortening of Jesus' name in Greek to the first three letters. Thus ΙΗΣΟΥΣ, ιησυς (iēsus, "Jesus"), is shortened to ΙΗΣ (iota-eta-sigma), sometimes transliterated into Latin or English characters as IHS or ΙΗC.

The symbol is said to appear rarely in the catacombs, only in the catacomb of Priscilla and the atrium of the Capella Græca (Greek Chapel).1 It was popularized in the fifteenth century, however, by Franciscan disciple Bernadine of Sienna as a symbol of peace. In 1541 St. Ignatius Loyola adopted the symbol with three nails below and surrounded by the sun as the seal of the Jesuit order.

Contrary to some authors, the monogram originally stood for either for Iesus Hominum Salvator ("Jesus Savior of Men") nor for "In His Service." Some attribute its origin to Constantine's vision, where he saw a cross with the inscription "In hoc signo vinces" ("in this sign you shall conquer,"2 which is abbreviated, according to them, as IHS. However, this seems to require a stretch, as do claims that it is really a pagan symbol.3 The simplest explanation, as an abbreviation of Jesus' name, is best.

Now for the fun stuff. This symbol is the centre of much discussion in Silas Marner by George Eliot, chapter 10,

Dolly sighed gently as she held out the cakes to Silas, who thanked her kindly and looked very close at them, absently, being accustomed to look so at everything he took into his hand -- eyed all the while by the wondering bright orbs of the small Aaron, who had made an outwork of his mother's chair, and was peeping round from behind it.

"There's letters pricked on 'em," said Dolly. "I can't read 'em myself, and there's nobody, not Mr. Macey himself, rightly knows what they mean; but they've a good meaning, for they're the same as is on the pulpit-cloth at church. What are they, Aaron, my dear?"

Aaron retreated completely behind his outwork.

"Oh, go, that's naughty," said his mother, mildly. "Well, whativer the letters are, they've a good meaning; and it's a stamp as has been in our house, Ben says, ever since he was a little un, and his mother used to put it on the cakes, and I've allays put it on too; for if there's any good, we've need of it i' this world."

"It's I. H. S.," said Silas, at which proof of learning Aaron peeped round the chair again.

"Well, to be sure, you can read 'em off," said Dolly. "Ben's read 'em to me many and many a time, but they slip out o' my mind again; the more's the pity, for they're good letters, else they wouldn't be in the church; and so I prick 'em on all the loaves and all the cakes, though sometimes they won't hold, because o' the rising -- for, as I said, if there's any good to be got we've need of it i' this world -- that we have; and I hope they'll bring good to you, Master Marner, for it's wi' that will I brought you the cakes; and you see the letters have held better nor common."

Silas was as unable to interpret the letters as Dolly, but there was no possibility of misunderstanding the desire to give comfort that made itself heard in her quiet tones. He said, with more feeling than before -- "Thank you -- thank you kindly." But he laid down the cakes and seated himself absently -- drearily unconscious of any distinct benefit towards which the cakes and the letters, or even Dolly's kindness, could tend for him.

Dear Dolly, I assume from this that she couldn't read but maybe she understood well the meaning of the gospel, to love your neighbour.

The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Here are excerpts from two different reviews of The Memory Keeper's Daughter which I just finished reading.

From The Washington Post

My first daughter was born lifeless and gray-blue. "Like a seal," I remember thinking as the room went bright white and the doctor started suctioning her mouth. I pushed my wife's head back onto the pillow so she wouldn't be able to see the slick form down below. The oxygen tank hissed angrily. In the minutes that followed, as we waited and waited for my daughter to cry, all the hopes we'd stored up were suffocated under the weight of our new future that filled the room with fear.

Mercifully, few parents experience the shattering birth moment we did, and it may be that memories of my daughter's birth magnified the emotional impact of Kim Edwards's debut novel. But I think anyone would be struck by the extraordinary power and sympathy of The Memory Keeper's Daughter.

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I don't read a lot of fiction and I most especially do not read romances. I'm not sure how this book is categorized but it is the most compulsively readable, emotional, and memorable book I've read since "Gone With the Wind" over 40 years ago. This is an epic story of a doctor who, in an emotional moment and with all his medical knowledge telling him to protect those he loves, makes a decision that affects him and everyone around him forever.

On a blizzardly night in 1964, David Henry helps his wife give birth to twins, one a perfect boy and the other a girl with Downs Syndrome. At that time, imperfect children were "put away" in institutions where they died young and families and friends spoke of them in shame-filled whispers, if at all. David grew up with a very sickly sister whose death at age 12 ended all meaningful life for his parents. With all good intentions of sparing his wife and new son the pain he and his parents endured, he made a fateful decision and told his wife the little girl had died at birth. It was a decision that, once made, could not be redeemed nor remedied.

This is a book about the family of a Down's syndrome child and examines the disasterous effect of maintaining silence about her existance and not accepting this child into the family. It is poignant in that it deals with a very real dilemma. It is beautifully written with delicately developed imagery and well drawn emotional and psychological character sketches. The author writes as a Christian although we only get glimpses of this through a few lines of Bible quotations, in the KJV, and other brief references.

The book is easy to read and provides numerous characters to identify with. I would highly recommend it for those with handicapped children or those who know someone with a handicapped child. However, I find the treatment of the Down's syndrome child herself to be disappointingly undeveloped. The book is more about her birth family. It is still an important book about a very important topic and I'm glad that I took time out to read this book. It is a good read for anyone. Lots of romance, family drama, strong visual imagery and exquisite language. Okay, there were a few improbable events in the storyline but I managed to enjoy it just the same.

Sick Heart River

Going through my books recently I happened on Sick Heart River, John Buchan's final book, written shortly before he died in 1940. This book is available to buy or read online.

John Buchan is best known as the author of the spy thriller Richard Hannay series. He also wrote Prester John, many biographies and other books. Buchan was a British politician and the Governor General of Canada from 1936 to 1940. He had been a correspondant and speech writer in WWI and it was with great reluctance that he signed the papers which entered Canada in WWII.

Buchan was the son of a Scottish minister and was himself later twice Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. He was influential as a writer, politican and Christian and was greatly loved by those who knew him.

Sick Heart River is a dying man's last conversations with God. In this story Buchan's familiar hero, Leithen, undertakes a journey to northern Canada in search of an American businessman who has disappeared into the wilderness. After many adventures, worthy of such an author, Leithen finds the American. He realizes that this is not the end of the journey, but turns his attention to reflecting on the will to live. A nearby group of Hare Indians are dying of an epidemic. Leithen aids their village, saves lives, loses his own through ill health and overwork, but in the process experiences redemption. Buchan himself died shortly after writing this book.

Although there is much to admire in this book it is also fraught with conflict and rebellion against human frailty and mortality. Buchan contemplates Job,

As he lay wakeful, scarcely conscious of the dull pain in his chestor of the spasms in his breathing, but desperately aware of hisweakness, he felt the shadow of eternity deepening over him. Like Job, the last calamities had come on him. Thank Heaven he was free from loquacious friends. Like Job he bowed his head and had no impulse to rebel. The majesty of God filled his universe. He was coming face to face with his religion.

Like Job, he was abashed by the divine majesty and could put his face in the dust. It was the temper in which he wished to pass out of life. He asked for nothing--"nut in the husk, nor dawn in the dusk, nor life beyond death." He had already much more than his deserts! and what Omnipotence proposed to do with him was the business of Omnipotence; he was too sick and weary to dream or hope. He lay passive in all-potent hands.

and then rejects the lesson of Job.

There had been a sense of his littleness and the omnipotence of God, and a resignation like Job's to the divine purpose. And then there had come a nobler mood, when he had been conscious not only of the greatness but of the mercy of God, and had realised the vein of tenderness in the hard rock of fate.

He will not submit to his circumstances but must triumph. He believes that God has given this to him. Leithen is empowered to reach out to his fellow man and give himself to them. The writing is powerful and comes directly from the heart of a man who knows that he himself is dying.

On a more disturbing level, one must consider the role which Leithen takes as he steps in to organize and rehabilitate the demoralized Indian village. Instead of writing of the white man as the cause of the epidemic, Buchan paints Leithen as saviour, although at the same time experiencing his own redemption. Buchan writes,

And yet . . . As Leithen brooded in the flicker of the firelight before he fell asleep he came to have a different picture. He saw the Indians as tenuous growths, fungi which had no hold on the soil. They existed in sufferance; the North had only to tighten its grip and they would disappear. Lew and Johnny, too. They were not mushrooms, for they had roots and they had the power to yield under strain and spring back again, but were they any better than grassy filaments which swayed in the wind but might any day be pinched out of existence? Johnny was steadfast enough, but only because he had a formal and sluggish mind; the quicker, abler Lew could be unsettled by his dreams. They, too, lived on sufferance. . . . And Galliard? He had deeper roots, but they were not healthy enough to permit transplanting. Compared to his companions Leithen suddenly saw himself founded solidly like an oak. He was drawing life from deep sources. Death, if it came, was no blind trick of fate, but a thing accepted and therefore mastered. He fell asleep in a new mood of confidence.

So in this one book we can celebrate both the human opening himself up to God, and at the same time, the hero Leithen offering his superior British cultural heritage as a remedy for the disease and misfortune of others. It is significant as it represents the dying thoughts of a leading and influential British statesman going into WWII. The war has begun as Buchan writes and he reflects on the news in this novel.

Buchan is revered as a great man and I don't intend to tear that down. In fact, I don't find Buchan's attitudes out of line with the way others were writing in the 1930's. But we must also look into our heritage and be willing to see the vein of self-worship and incipient racism, and be critical of the ways that we defend our own traditions.

I recommend this book as a representative conversation with God. However, I intend to write next about another man who encountered Buchan in the north, a man who actually lived his life among the native people of northern Canada and left us his autobiography.

Archibald Fleming, a contemporary of Buchan, was able to reflect on and reject the racism of his own era. His book represents the flip side of the racism of the 1930's, the thoughtful reaction of a sensitive and honest Christian leader. If Buchan's book presents the problem of racism within oneself, then Fleming's book reminds us that there is another way to live.

Simone Weil

I am reading a biography of Simone Weil, a French philosopher of the early twentieth century. Weil was a women from a privileged secular Jewish family who had extraordinary intellectual gifts and devoted her short life to understanding poverty and affliction. She worked as a teacher and volunteered her time in the evening to giving lectures to workers and promoting trade unions. She spent several years on and off in hard physical labour, something for which she was particularly unsuited. She had immense difficulty with fine motor control, and only acquired legible handwriting as a child through prolonged effort. She also suffered paralysing migraines.

Weil was driven by her desire for social justice. She moved from a position of strict pacifism to action, and participated in the Spanish civil war and the French resistance. She converted to Christianity and in her later writing expressed the plight of the worker as "affliction" rather than "oppression". She died of tuberculosis in 1942 at the age of 34. She had restricted her food intake out of sympathy for those in occupied France.

Oppression and Liberty , her first significant work, made a tremendous impact on me when I read it years ago; more recently I read The Need for Roots, her last work. Notes from her lectures on philosophy were later published and are still used today as a university philosophy text.

In Waiting for God she wrote about human relationships,

He who treats as equals those who are far below him in strength really makes them a gift of the quality of human beings ... As far as it is possible for a creature, he reproduces the original generosity of the Creator. ... The supernatural virtue of justice consists of behaving exactly as though there were equality when one is the stronger in an unequal relationship.

And on faith and religion,

We must have given all our attention, all our faith, all our love to a particular religion in order to think of any other religion with the high degree of attention, faith and love that is proper to it.

She said,

when from the depth
of our being,
we need, we seek a sound

which does mean
something: when we cry out
for an answer

and it is not granted, then,
we touch the silence of God---

Some begin to talk,
to themselves, as do the mad;
some give

their hearts to silence.

from Stephanie Strickland. The Red Virgin.

Russ Moore and Rosie the Riveter

Sometimes, too often, I sneak a peak at the conservative blogs, the patriarchal blogs, and sometimes I just do a double take. I blink, I wrinkle my forehead and I ask why I am struck with profound dissonance. Take this. Here is a post by Russ Moore on Evangelical Same-Sex Marriages. Apparently he has taken it into his head that egalitarian marriages are "same sex" marriages. Bizarre. Why are these guys out to throw scorn on an egalitarian relationship? As if a man should be ashamed to treat a woman as an equal.


But even more bizarre is the fact that this illustration was posted with his post. This image was in the original post, here, scroll down to May 1, 2007, but does not show up in the link to the full post here . However, there she is, Rosie the Riveter, who more appropriately serves as an icon on this site , which has the following goal.

To recognize and preserve
the history and legacy of working women,
including volunteer women, during World War II;
to promote cooperation and fellowship
among such members and their descendants;
and to further the advancement of patriotic ideals,
excellence in the work place,
and loyalty to the United States of America.

Is there something here that Russ Moore is against - patriotism, volunteerism, excellence in the workplace? Probably not. It is just the image of a strong woman that these men - Stinson, Dever, Mahaney, and Moore, cannot abide. They don't want women who can stand on their own, and provide for and protect, and particpate and support others with their strength. God help us.

Oh right, I forgot, they don't want women in the workplace, because, you know, if there is a war, women should just stay home - in the house and not participate, not build weapons, not test fly airplanes, not keep industry moving. Especially a widow like Rosie the Riveter has no business in the workplace.

I am uneasy knowing that there is another image conference this weekend.

"Word for word"

Yesterday I finished my post with this quote and implied that I did not agree with it.

The application may be right from the text, but it is not applications or ideas that are inspired. It is words.

And I don't agree with it. Here is why. First, Jesus and the writers of the Christian scriptures quoted the Hebrew scriptures in a way that can be called eclectic and paraphrastic. Not word for word. Here is the article that I am planning to write about some time on the BBB. Which Old Tesament did Jesus prefer and quote from? So why should we differ from what Jesus did?

Next, what was the model of translation given to us. The Greek Septuagint, I would suppose. After all this time I would have thought that I would know that there is no "word for word" concordance between words in the Hebrew and words in the Greek. But I really thought that people who argued for "word for word" had something up their sleeve.

Lately, I've been reading a few Psalms in the Greek and Latin and then checking a little on the Hebrew, just a word here and there. And finally I realised that there are 4 words for "man" "human being" in Hebrew and 2 in Greek, and there is no set pattern as to how to translate them. In fact, each Hebrew word is translated into Greek by both Greek words. So, that's it - no "word for word" translation there.

Well, at least there might be the same number of words in Greek as in Hebrew, right? No, actually there seem to be twice as many words in the Greek Septuagint as there are in Hebrew. So, not "word for word" in that way, either.

Eclectic, paraphrastic, good enough for Jesus, good enough for me. That's why I don't worry about Bibles being "word for word".

Ruth Tucker

About 15 years ago I read Women in the Maze by Ruth Tucker. It was one of about 5 books which I read at the time which supported women's equality in the church. I gave or lent out all of those books and only remember them when I come across a related story. This is what happened today.

I discovered a new blog called Parchment and Pen and sat and read few posts. I then took a look at the contributors and saw Ruth Tucker's name in the sidebar. Ruth had been teaching at Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids until recently when she was forced to leave under very unpleasant circumstances. This story was publicized last summer and I read it at the time but did not have time to post about it.

It is a detailed account of gender discrimination in the church and seminary and leads to other issues such as whether one should expose wrong-doing in the church. Her different sites and posts dealing with the issue of when to go public are thought-provoking and insightful.

The wrong doing that most concerns me also relates to gender discrimination. However, the people most maligned are for the most part men. These are the translators of the TNIV Bible translation, which has been accused of creating a translation which allows God's image to be distorted. Or in the words of the executive director of the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, as reported on this blog,

Christians should respond by purchasing Bibles that reflect an essentially literal translation. Will we read translations that reflect the most accurate depiction of God or will we read translations that provide room for His image to be distorted? The application may be right from the text, but it is not applications or ideas that are inspired. It is words.

I guess this post has wondered a bit from one topic to another, but the issue of when and how to speak out is a tough one and deserves reflection.

Reading Lolita in Tehran

by Azar Nafisi. This is a recounting of a "lady professors" experiences in Iran through the 80's and 90's. As a professor of English literature she exposes her students to "decadent" western novels. Her passion for freedom of opinion and literary expression is contagious and I read every page in wonder that I did not value this much the books which were freely available to me.

It is only when the freedom of choice is removed and thought and opinion are prescribed that one becomes sensitive to the value of reading as transformation.

Here are her thoughts on wearing the veil,

The issue was not so much the veil itself as freedom of choice. My grandmother had refused to leave the house for three months when she was forced to unveil. I would be similiarly adamant in my own refusal. Little did I know that I would soon be given the choice of either veiling or being jailed, flogged and perhaps killed if I disobeyed. page 152

A stern ayatollah, a blind and improbable philosopher-king, had decided to impose his dream on a country and a people and to re-create us in his own myopic vision. So he had formulated an ideal of me as a Muslim woman, as a Muslim woman teacher, and wanted me to look, act and in short live according to that ideal. Laleh and I , in refusing to accept that ideal, were taking not a political stance but an existential one. No, I could tell Mr. Bahri, it was not that piece of cloth that I rejected, it was the transformation being imposed on me that made me look in the mirror and hate the stranger I had become. page 165

Christian women also have the right not to be objects molded according to someone else's vision. Is there anything more revolting than the stereotype of "so-called" biblical men and women. When will we remember how Paul nurtured the younger Christians and Phoebe protected and provided for him?

Speaking Out

I recently read this post, To Speak or Not to Speak ? which mentioned R. Groothuis thoughts on speaking out.

I recently re-read an article by Rebecca Groothuis where she categorizes people into 3 groups concerning biblical equality. She discourages conversation with people who are very vocally against what they term ‘worldly feminism’ and says it is most often a fruitless exercise to try to convince a person whose mind is made up.

Those who hold to hierarchy but accept that Christians who have other views are also concerned for being true to the scriptures are good candidates for some discussion but here again, it seldom convinces them to change their view. The most profitable group to speak with are those who have genuine questions and are willing to discuss different ways of translating certain passages and are open to learning what we have to communicate.

If I wonder why other women are not speaking out in the conservative blogosphere, I guess this post gives me a clue. For me, I feel that I am happy to write as long as it represents problem-solving for my own thinking. I am not simply repeating myself for the fun of it.

I know it may look as if I am sometimes, but each time I tackle an issue I seek greater depth or competence in some way. I have been surprised at how rewarding it is to comb through footnotes, etc, trying to get at the core of someone else's thinking. If nothing else, it is an academic discipline that I feel sure will pay off when applied to other areas.

It is interesting though that Jimmy Carter in Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis, called for more women to speak out. He writes,

Women are greatly abused in many countries in the world, and the alleviation of their plight is made less likely by the mandated subservience of women by Christian fundamentalists. What is especially disappointing to me is the docile acceptance by so many strong Christian women of their subjugation and restricted role. page 93

So I speak out and wonder in what way I can impact on the condition of women in other countries and cultures. I remember recently Stephen Lewis, a Canadian politician, returned from Africa and was speaking on the radio about the condition of women in places in Africa he had visited. He started to cry and was unable to continue speaking for a few minutes.

It is not only there but here, and not only women, but men and children, it is the lack of human rights and dignity anywhere that should call to us.

This is in answer to a recent comment on my blog.

Between Two Worlds: "Why Is There No Respect for Motherhood? Why Does the West Not Value Its Women?"

Between Two Worlds: "Why Is There No Respect for Motherhood? Why Does the West Not Value Its Women?"

I live in a very mixed ethnic society. I have one student whose mother was murdered by her father-in-law; this mother is one of many women murdered routinely by family members in our city. I have another student who was whisked overseas to be married at the age of 14. I have seen other things I wish I had not.

But I feel proud to know that a Vancouver beauty queen is heading up this campaign.

This website was created to spread information about the 19-year old Iranian girl Nazanin Mahabad Fatehi, who was previously sentenced to death by hanging for killing a man who ambushed and tried to rape her. At the end of May, the Iranian head of Judiciary overturned her death sentence, and sent the case back to a lower court. Nazanin's re-trial ended on Jan 10 2007.

Nazanin was released on Jan. 31 after three years of prison. In Iran girls are considered adults at the age of 9 and can be married off to old men or found guilty of immorality.

So I was just bowled over to find out that the plight of one adult female in combat fatigues has influenced certain so-called Christian males to make common cause with the president of Iran. One adult woman decides to exercise her contitutional freedom and some people forget that 9 year old girls can be legally married and impregnated according to the laws of this regime.

No wonder Catherine Booth makes more sense to me as a preacher and defender of women than this bunch of chumps who wish to set themselves up as models of male leadership.

Susan Wise Bauer on Stackhouse.

Here is an excellent review by Bauer on Finally Feminist by John Stackhouse. I recommend it to anyone who wishes to know more about his book.

HT Jim Hamilton.

I commented today on Jim Hamilton's post where he mentions Bauer's review of Stackhouse's book but Jim deleted me. I had been involved in a discussion on the original post by Bauer as well as some other blog threads on the topic so I was familiar with the discussion.

I later received an email from Stackhouse, who wrote to commiserate with me on the sad treatment that some of us former Plymouth Brethren have suffered for expressing our so-called 'feminist' views! I include John's email as encouragement for myself and others as an example of Plymouth Brethren who extend their egalitarian views on church government to women. F. F. Bruce is another. God bless them both.

Dear Sister Suzanne,

We have not met, I don't think, although I have picked up clues that we almost have! I have come across a little correspondence you have had with members of the ****[a blog which shall go unmentioned] on-line.

Wow. ..... Your composure in the face of attacks by ****& co I find frankly astonishing--a tremendous tribute to the grace of Christ and your submission to him. Bless you for this excellent example, that both convicts and encourages me.

I hope we do meet someday,

John

===
John G. Stackhouse, Jr.,
Ph.D.Sangwoo Youtong Chee Professor of Theology and Culture
Regent College

And yes we did later meet.

The Places in Between

by Rory Stewart

I felt great sympathy with this man's mother before I finished the book. He did not get enough to eat, nor did the dog! A harrowing story of a lone walk across Afghanistan in 2002. But a engaging narrative with a perfect blend of contemporary characters, history, culture and landscape.

And this is why I loved this book. He wrote these lines,

As we ate, our host, Khalife Amir, played a tamboura lute made from a small, yellow plastic oil bottle, a table leg and two wooden awls. He fingered only the lower string. I had not heard music for a month. My days had passed in silences with flurries of thought in a landscape that changed slowly.

Note by note the music brought a sense of time back to me. Each pause was charged with anticipation of the next note and the slow revelation of a tune. Khalife Amir measured silence, dividing each minute into a succession of clear notes from the string and then weaving time together again with his tenor voice.

Here is the NY Times review.

An interesting character mentioned in passing in this book was Nancy Dupree who wrote An Historical Guide to Afghanistan. I had not heard of her before. Another historic personnage who figured in this book was Babur.

After reading this book the traveller knows that there is always somewhere to go to get away from the crowds.

Catherine Booth Resources

I have enjoyed rereading this biography of Catherine Booth, Catherine Booth — a Sketch by Colonel Mildred Duff , which was given to me by one of my sisters when I was a teenager. It is written in an easy style and I find is quite engaging.

However, it does not compare with reading the actual writings of Catherine Booth. They are powerful and articulate. Some of her works here are sermons recorded in shorthand and edited by Booth and then published. I highly recommend reading some of her sermons and other writing.

Here is a piece that I found particularly moving. In this short paragraph taken from The Iniquity of State Regulated Vice (1884) we get a glimpse of Catherine Booth as a mother (she had 8 children), as a preacher, as a social reformer and a women who was not afraid to confront parliament in a time when women did not have the right to vote. She knew what it meant to care for widows and orphans. In a A Speech Delivered at Exeter Hall, London, on February 6th, 1884,on the Iniquity of State Regulated Vice,

I did not think we were so low as this--that one member should suggest that the age of these innocents should be heightened to 14, and that another suggested it should be not so high. Another that it should be reduced to 10, and oh! my God, pleaded that it was hard for a man--HARD--for a man!--having a charge brought against him, not to be able to plead the consent of a child like that.

I would not tell what, but for the grace of God, I should feel like doing to the man who brought that argument to bear on my child. (Applause.) I have a sweet innocent little girl--many of you have also--of 14, as innocent as an infant of any such things--what, if a man should make an application of this doctrine to her. Well may the higher classes take such care of their little girls? Well may they be so careful never to let them go out without efficient protectors. But what is to become of the little girls of poor unprotected widows?

I highly recommend these writings - they are as pertinent today as when they were written, is some cases sadly so.

Female Ministry, Or, Woman's Right to Preach the Gospel (1859)

Female Teaching: Or, The Rev. A.A. Rees versus Mrs. Palmer (1861)

Godliness: Being Reports of a Series of Addresses Delivered At James's Hall, London, W., During 1881

The Iniquity of State Regulated Vice (1884)

Papers on Aggressive Christianity (1880)

Papers on Practical Religion (1879)

Popular Christianity: A Series of Lectures (1888) (2nd ed.)

Laura Margolis

I am watching Shanghai Ghetto about Jewish refugees from Germany in Shanghai during WWII. I have read more about the Russian Jewish community in Shanghai, but this is a detailed documentary with interviews from those who lived as children in the Shanghai ghetto.

I decided that I had to check out more information about Laura Margolis who was featured in this film. She died in 1997 at the age of 93. Here is a bit about her life,

Born in Istanbul, where her father was a doctor to the Sultan of Turkey. Ms. Margolis came to the United States with her family in 1907. She worked with Settlement House helping immigrants in Buffalo, N.Y. and for Jewish Social Services in Cleveland before becoming the first female field agent of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in 1937.

The JDC first sent her to Cuba to help refugees fleeing Europe who were not being permitted to come directly to the USA. She tried to find a port of entry for a ship, the St. Louis, carrying Jews, but it was forced to return to Europe. In 1939, she was sent to Shanghai, where tens of thousands of fleeing Jews found refuge.

Ms. Margolis, at considerable personal risk to herself, saved the lives of some 4,000 Jewish refugees who, close to starvation, precariously survived in the Heime (camps) in the Shanghai ghetto.

The White Countess is a drama that gives a more atmospheric notion of pre WWII Shanghai. I enjoyed it.

The abuses of slavery

This is in reponse to a discussion in the comment section of the BBB that physical abuse is a distortion of an otherwise just relationship of headship and submission. I have heard the argument that it is not fair to judge a practise by its distortion.

In my experience the psychological effects of submission outweigh by far the physical cruelty of abuse, however painful that may be. Teaching your fellow human that he or she is created by God for subordination is the true cruelty, not the physical act of enforcing submission.

I was relieved to see this exact point being made in so many words by the controversial philospher Kwame Appiah. He writes,

When I think about how the world of the Ashanti remains etched and scored by slavery, an odd question arises: What is it about slavery that makes it morally objectionable? European and American abolitionists in the 19th century tended to focus, reasonably enough, on its cruelty: on the horrors that began with capture and separation from one’s family, continued in the cramped and putrid quarters below the decks of the middle passage and went on in plantations ruled by the lash.

William Wilberforce, the evangelist and Tory member of Parliament who was as responsible as anyone for the passage of the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, was not an enthusiast for democracy when it came to expanding the franchise, and he railed against the “mad-headed professors of liberty and equality.”

It was the torments of slavery’s victims that moved him so. (He was also a founding member of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.) Once freed slaves had been properly Christianized, he believed, “they will sustain with patience the sufferings of their actual lot.” In the United States, abolitionists mainly shared his perspective, naturally emphasizing the abundant horrors of plantation slavery.

Slavery’s more sophisticated defenders had a response. They agreed that cruelty was wrong, but, they maintained, these horrors were abuses of the slavery system, not inherent features of it.

What if their paternalist fantasies had come true, and a world of kindly slave masters had developed? Would slavery be acceptable? Of course not. Even a well-treated slave is diminished by his status. As a social or legal institution, slavery has built into it a denial of the social basis of self-respect: it defines the slave as lower in status by denying that she could have personal aims worthy of consideration and rejecting the enslaved person’s right to manage his or her own affairs.

When you’re a slave, someone else is in charge of your life. What keeps the wound from healing is that this subordination is something you inherited from your parents and will pass along to your children.NY Times March 18, 2007

I can only thank this writer for articulating so well the problem of a headship - submission relationship. Maybe one day we will all understand better that the core teaching of the scriptures is found in Lev. 19:18, Matt. 22:39, Mark 12:31, Rom. 13:9, Gal. 5:14, James 2:8.

Thou shalt love thy neighbour (thy next one) as thyself: I am the LORD.

Ilse Fredrichsdorff

It seems that I have reopened this blog. I don't have many aspirations for writing here, but I do wish to use this space to keep track of some of the books and other material that I am reading.

Today I remembered that I wanted to have a record of this post by Michael Bird.

Who the heck is Ilse Fredrichsdorff?In reading over Robert Yarbrough's excellent book, The Salvation-Historical Fallacy (p. 342, n. 9) he gives this quote from the preface of M. Albertz, Die Botschaft des Neuen Testament (1947-57) which left me gob-smacked:


"This book is dedicated to the young brethren of the Confessing Church. I was united with them in my office as leader of the Office of Theological Examination of the Confessing Church in Berlin-Brandenburg. I was all the closer to these brethren, whose status was illegal from the start, in that perforamnce of my ministry resulted in the loss of my freedom as well as my ordination, withdrawn by a bogus ecclesiastical authority. This book's dedication bears two names [one is Erich Klapproth, the other is] Ilse Fredrichsdorff ... When the church struggle began she was a young girl belonging to the Confessing Church congregation Nicolai-Melanchthon in Spandau. Through our congregation she came to take up theological study. She studied in our theological college and in Basel with Karl Barth. She became curate of the only truly evangelical confessional school that could be established under the Third Reich, the school for non-Aryan Christian children who were no longer permitted to attend the public school. During the war she reamined in congregations northeast of Berlin, in that region where the last battle prior to Berlin was waged. She was so much in demand for her pastoral skills that the major of the troop emplacements behind which lay the villages she served repeatedly requested her aid among the troops. Later she led the displaced congregations with the word of God, went back to the hunger zone as much as possible, and, after she had buried hundreds of the thousands who perished, succumbed herself to starvation (II/1, 13-14)."

Catherine Booth: Adaption of measures

I found this afternoon a book of sermons called Aggressive Christianity by Catherine Booth. These sermons were taken down in shorthand and appear in the book as she preached them.

This one, Adaption of Measures relates well to a post I recently published on the BBB.

People contend that we must have quiet, proper, decorous services. I say, WHERE IS YOUR AUTHORITY FOR THIS? Not here. I defy any man to show it. I have a great deal more authority in this book for such a lively, gushing, spontaneous, and what you call disorderly, service, as our Army services sometimes are, in this 14th of Corinthians than you can find for yours.

The best insight we get into the internal working of a religious sevice in Apostolic times is in this chapter, and I ask you - is it anything like the ordinary services of to-day? Can the utmost stretch of ingenuity make it into anything like them? But even that is not complete. We cannot get the order of a single service from the New Testament, not can we get the form of government of a single church.

Hence one denomination think theirs is the best form, and another theirs; so Christendom has been divided into so many camps ever since; but this very quarelling shows the impossibility of getting from the New Testament the routine, the order, and the fashion of mere modes. They cannot get it, because it is not there!!

Do you think God had no purpose in this omission? The form, modes, and measures are not laid down as in the Old Testament dispensation. There is nothing of this stereotyped routinism in the whole of the New Testament. Why? Now there may be some who may have difficulties in this matter.

I said to a gentleman, who came to me with this and that difficulty about our modes and measures,

I will meet your difficulties by bringing them face to face with the bare principles of the New Testament. If I cannot substantiate and defend them by that I will give them up for ever. I am not wedded to any forms and measures.

To many of them I have been driven by the necessities of the case. God has driven me to them as at the point of the bayonet, as well as led me by the pillar of cloud, and when I have brought my reluctance and all my own conventional notions, in which I was brought up like other people, face to face with the naked bare principles of the New Testament, I have not found anything to stand upon! I find things here far more extravagant and extreme, than anything we do, looked at carefully

Here is the principle laid down that you are to adapt your measures to the necessity of the people to whom you minister: you are to take the Gospel to them in such modes and habitudes of thought and expression and circumstances, as will gain for it from them a HEARING. You are to speak in other tongues - go and preach it to them in such a way as they will look at it and listen to it! Oh! In that lesson we read what beautiful freedom from all set form and formula there was!

Combining Diacritics vs Precomposed Greek

Well, here I am back at combining diacritics. I may have to change the title of this blog to Suzanne's doodlepad. This is probably not a post of general interest.

To keep a long story short, most polytonic Greek is posted in precomposed form and displays well in IE7. But sometimes Greek text has been produced using combining diacritics. It is a pain because that makes two standards and you can't tell with the naked eye which is which. At least if they display properly you shouldn't be able to. But you can see in the first image how they both look in IE7.

The second image shows both kinds of text in their correct display form in New Athena Unicode and they should look identical.(Are you bored yet?)

The third image is of the two kinds of text displayed by individual glyph.You can see that the combining diacritics text has the ability to decompose, the other kind does not.

There are many pros and cons to all this, but I believe that the usual way to display Greek is by precomposed text. This is the opposite to Hebrew.

As far as Polytonic Greek is concerned, the best resource is Rodney Decker's resources. This page will take you from the age of the dinosaurs up to the present, so I would recommend starting to read this paper on page 10 or 11. The relevant stuff is on pages 14 and 15. Read point 4.3.3 and on footnote 3 on page 15. In fact, if you have to decide in any paper which part to read, I would recommend the footnotes.

In short, most polytonic Greek text is produced in precomposed text. Zhubert produces precomposed as well, so no problem. This is what the MS Greek keyboard does too and probably most of the others. But sometimes there is a bit of the combining diacritics stuff around. For some reason IE does not handle this well, although Firefox, as usual, has no problem. Go figure. BTW, here is a MAC biblioblog.

Anyway, IE7 now does font substitution like Firefox so fonts are not the problem - codepoints are. I use Babelpad to look at things like this along with Babelmap, from Babelstone, along with reading Babelstone Blog, which is a pretty cool blog about Unicode. Except that Andrew is writing about the Morrison Collection right now, so you have to check his archives.

Note: This post has been edited with new images.