Websites To Beware

Arameans of Mesopotamia

According to this website (Arameans of Mesopotamia) "The Assyrians don't exist at all! It is only an invention of the English missionaries who gave this name to the East-Aramean Nestorians in order to form a militant youth organisation for their political plan in Iraq."

Evangelicals tussle over Jews, gender in new Bible

NEW YORK - Conservative Protestants often find themselves in theological arguments with liberals about the Bible's historical reliability. But an unholy squabble over Scripture has erupted in recent days that pits evangelicals against each other.

The flash point is the inclusive language used in the forthcoming "Today's New International Version" of the Bible, with questions of gender and proper translation sparking fierce debate - plus a side argument developing over treatment of Jews in the New Testament.

What's at stake is more than victory in an intellectual game. Millions of dollars in potential sales could be on the line.

The International Bible Society, sponsor of the new version, believes change is necessary to reach 21st century readers. Its North American publishing ally, Zondervan, now has "Today's NIV" for pro-inclusive customers, and the original "New International Version," a sales smash since its introduction in 1978, for traditionalists.

But there's danger of a gender backlash among evangelicals - the biggest consumer block among Bible buyers - as other new evangelical versions enter a competitive market.

Another problem is that James Dobson, the most influential personality in Christian radio, brokered a 1997 pact in which the Bible society and Zondervan accepted 13 anti-inclusive translation guidelines.

The Bible society is withdrawing from its "firm commitment," Dobson said Tuesday, and "risks dividing the Christian community again, as well as damaging its own reputation." He called the new Bible is "a step backward."

The language issue originated in the 1980s with the ascent of religious feminism. A panel from the more liberal National Council of Churches published translations of key Bible passages that abolished "male-biased" language regarding God and Jesus Christ.

Jesus' famous prayer became "O God, Father and Mother, hallowed be your name." To avoid male pronouns, John 3:16 turned into "for God so loved the world that God gave God's only Child." Instead of "the Son of man," Jesus was "the Human One" and "the Lord's supper" was "the Sovereign's supper."

Traditionalists and aesthetes blanched. A separate National Council committee rejected the approach when it produced the "New Revised Standard Version" of the Bible in 1989. This pioneering work left God and Jesus alone but used inclusive wording in references to humanity.

Soon after, the NIV translators began a rewrite, similarly using inclusive wording for humans only. The Bible society authorized publication of this version in Britain, but World magazine of Asheville, North Carolina, crusaded in 1997 against revising the NIV. In the end, the Bible society halted the British edition and vowed that the NIV would remain unchanged.

For future work, it agreed to the Dobson guidelines, later endorsed by major evangelical figures: Bill Bright, Charles Colson, Jerry Falwell, D. James Kennedy, Pat Robertson and two Southern Baptist seminary presidents.

Then on Jan. 18, the Bible society wrote the '97 meeting participants that it was about to issue "Today's NIV," thus "withdrawing its endorsement of" the guidelines which are now deemed "too restrictive" because "English usage is changing dramatically."
Last week, the New Testament portion of "Today's NIV" was displayed at a trade show and on the Internet, with bookstore release in April. The complete Bible with Old Testament is due by 2005.

Though the old NIV remains unaltered, Wayne Grudem of Arizona's Phoenix Seminary says he and others in the 1997 negotiations understood that the Bible society promised to end inclusive revisions.

"They have broken faith with the Christian public," he maintains. The Bible society, meanwhile, believes it has the right to change policies.

Grudem and colleagues in the conservative Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood of Louisville, Kentucky, quickly assembled a report citing dozens of changes they find objectionable. An accompanying statement from 30 Bible scholars declared that "Today's NIV" distorts biblical texts and "should not be commended for use by the church."

Disagreements fall into several basic categories:



-->"The Jewish leaders" now oppose Jesus in John's Gospel, not "the Jews," as in most translations. Stek says the change conveys the writer's original intent, avoiding the misunderstanding that he was referring to all Jews, a touchy matter in interfaith relations. Conservative critics respect the intent, but believe the literal translation must stand.


-->Added words. Rather than strict word-for-word translation from the Greek, some terms are added. For instance, "brothers and sisters" is sometimes used instead of the literal "brothers" in the Greek. John Stek, chairman of the "Today's NIV" translators, says the change is justified if the biblical group addressed included both genders.


-->Male nouns. The word "man" is often changed to "person." Critics say that's acceptable when the Greek word is "anthropos," which can be generic, but the Greek "aner" means only "man." Stek says that's a matter of opinion and lexicographers disagree.


-->Male pronouns. The new translation often uses plural pronouns and avoids the words "him" or "his." Critics complain this surrenders the intended spiritual force of verses referring to a single person. Stek thinks that's a modern, individualistic reading that doesn't reflect ancient culture.

-->Verses like Acts 20:30, translated generically to imply that both genders taught doctrine in New Testament times, are a sore point for the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, which believes only males should exercise church authority.

Such opposition "comes from an ideological agenda," said Bible society spokesman Larry Lincoln, and is disobeying biblical teaching against dividing the church.

Complicating matters, some opponents of "Today's NIV" are involved with new rivals like the "English Standard Version" and "Holman Christian Standard" Bible.

But Grudem contends fidelity to the exact Greek and Hebrew wording is vital.

"People deeply want to trust every word of their Bibles.

They meditate on every word. They preach on every word," he said. "If you don't have a Bible you can trust, it strikes at the heart of the Christian faith."

Source: Jerusalem Post

Scholars say Bible's version of Exodus probably isn't true

Provocative sermon divides congregation
At Sinai Temple on the west side of Los Angeles, Sunday's sermon questioning the authenticity of the Exodus by Rabbi David Wolpe -- and a follow-up discussion at Monday's service -- provoked tremendous, and varied, response. Many praised Wolpe for his courage and vision. "It was the best sermon possible, because it is preparing the young generation to understand all the truth about religion," said Eddia Mirharooni, a Beverly Hills, Calif., fashion designer. A few said they were hurt -- "I didn't want to hear this," one woman said -- or even a bit angry. Others said the sermon did nothing to shake their faith that the Exodus story is true. "Science can always be proven wrong," said Kalanit Benji, a University of California, Los Angeles, undergraduate in psychobiology. Added Aman Massi, a 60-year-old Los Angeles businessman: "For sure it was true, 100 percent. If it were not true, how could we follow it for 3,300 years?" But most congregants -- along with secular Jews and several rabbis interviewed -- said that whether the Exodus is historically true or not is almost beside the point. The power of the sweeping epic lies in its profound and timeless message about freedom, they say. The story of liberation from bondage into a promised land has inspired the haunting spirituals of black slaves, the emancipation and civil rights movements, Latin America's liberation theology, peasant revolts in Germany, nationalist struggles in South Africa, the American revolution, even Leninist politics, according to Michael Walzer in the book, "Exodus and Revolution." --Los Angeles Times


By Teresa Watanabe / Los Angeles Times

It's one of the greatest stories ever told: A baby is found in a basket adrift in the Egyptian Nile and is adopted into the Pharaoh's household. He grows up as Moses, rediscovers his roots, and leads his enslaved Israelite brethren to freedom after God sends down 10 plagues against Egypt and parts the Red Sea to allow them to escape. They wander for 40 years in the wilderness and, under the leadership of Joshua, conquer the land of Canaan to enter their promised land.
For centuries, the biblical account of the Exodus has been revered as the founding story of the Jewish people, sacred scripture for three world religions and a universal symbol of freedom that has inspired liberation movements around the globe.
But did the Exodus ever actually occur?
On Passover Sunday this week, Rabbi David Wolpe raised that provocative question before 2,200 faithful at Sinai Temple on the west side of Los Angeles. He minced no words.
"The truth is that virtually every modern archeologist who has investigated the story of the Exodus, with very few exceptions, agrees that the way the Bible describes the Exodus is not the way it happened, if it happened at all," Wolpe told his congregants.
Wolpe's startling sermon may have seemed blasphemy to some. In fact, however, the rabbi was merely telling his flock what scholars have known for more than a decade. Slowly and often outside wide public purview, archeologists are radically reshaping modern understandings of the Bible. It was time for his people to know about it, Wolpe decided.
After a century of excavations trying to prove the ancient accounts true, archeologists say there is no conclusive evidence that the Israelites were ever in Egypt, were ever enslaved, ever wandered in the Sinai wilderness for 40 years or ever conquered the land of Canaan under Joshua's leadership. To the contrary, the prevailing view is that most of Joshua's fabled military campaigns never occurred -- archeologists have uncovered ash layers and other signs of destruction at the relevant time at only one of the many battlegrounds mentioned in the Bible.
Today, the prevailing theory is that Israel probably emerged peacefully out of Canaan -- modern-day Lebanon, southern Syria, Jordan and the West Bank of Israel -- whose people are portrayed in the Bible as wicked idolators. Under this theory, the Canaanites who took on a new identity as Israelites were perhaps joined or led by a small group of Semites from Egypt -- explaining a possible source of the Exodus story, scholars say. As they expanded their settlement, they may have begun to clash with neighbors over water rights and the like, perhaps providing the historical nuggets for the conflicts recorded in Joshua and Judges.
"Scholars have known these things for a long time, but we've broken the news very gently," said William Dever, a professor of Near Eastern archeology and anthropology at the University of Arizona and one of America's pre-eminent archeologists.
The modern archeological consensus over the Exodus is just beginning to reach the general public. In 1999, an Israeli archeologist, Ze'ev Herzog of Tel Aviv University, set off a furor in Israel by writing in a popular magazine that stories of the patriarchs were myths and that neither the Exodus nor Joshua's conquests ever occurred. In the hottest controversy today, Herzog also argued that the united monarchy of David and Solomon, described as grand and glorious in the Bible, was at best a small tribal kingdom.
In a new book this year, "The Bible Unearthed," Israeli archeologist Israel Finklestein of Tel Aviv University and archeological journalist Neil Asher Silberman raised similar doubts and offered a new theory about the roots of the Exodus story. The authors argue that the story was written during the time of King Josia of Judah in the seventh century B.C. -- 600 years after the Exodus supposedly occurred in 1250 B.C. -- as a political manifesto to unite Israelites against the rival Egyptian empire as both states sought to expand their territory. The young Israeli king's growing conflict with the newly crowned Pharaoh Necho, the book argues, was metaphorically portrayed through the momentous and probably mythical struggle between Moses and the pharaoh.
Dever argued that the Exodus story was produced for theological reasons: to give an origin and history to a people and distinguish them from others by claiming a divine destiny.
Some scholars, of course, still maintain that the Exodus story is basically factual. Bryant Wood, director of The Associates for Biblical Research in Maryland, argued that the evidence falls into place if the story is dated back to 1450 B.C. He said that indications of destruction around that time at Hazor, Jericho and a site he is excavating that he believes is the biblical city of Ai support accounts of Joshua's conquests. He also cited the documented presence of "Asiatic" slaves in Egypt who could have been Israelites and said they wouldn't have left evidence of their wanderings since they were nomads with no material culture. But Wood said he can't get his research published in serious archeological journals.
"There's a definite anti-Bible bias," Wood said.
The revisionist view, however, is not necessarily publicly popular. Herzog, Finklestein and others have been attacked for everything from faulty logic to pro-Palestinian political agendas that undermine Israel's land claims. Dever -- a former Protestant minister who converted to Judaism 12 years ago -- says he gets "hissed and booed" when he speaks about the lack of evidence for the Exodus, and regularly receives letters and calls offering prayers or telling him he's headed for hell.
Many of Wolpe's congregants said the story of the Exodus has been personally true for them even if the details are not factual: when they fled the Nazis during World War II, for instance, or, more recently, the Islamic revolution in Iran. Daniel Navid Rastein, a Los Angeles medical professional, said he has always regarded the story as a metaphor for a greater truth: "We all have our own Egypts -- we are prisoners of something, either alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, overeating. We have to use (the story) as a way to free ourselves from difficulty and make ourselves a better person."
Judaism has also traditionally been more open to non-literal interpretations of the text than, say, some conservative Christian traditions.
"Among Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist Jews, there is a much greater willingness to see the Torah as an extended metaphor in which truth comes through story and law," said Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles.
Among scholars, the case against the Exodus began crystallizing about 13 years ago. That's when Finklestein, director of Tel Aviv University's archeology institute, published the first English-language book detailing the results of intensive archeological surveys of what is believed to be the first Israelite settlements in the hilly regions of the West Bank.
The surveys, conducted during the 1970s and 1980s while Israel possessed what are now Palestinian territories, documented a lack of evidence for Joshua's conquests in the 13th century B.C. and the indistinguishable nature of pottery, architecture, literary conventions and other cultural details between the Canaanites and the new settlers.
If there was no conquest, no evidence of a massive new settlement of an ethnically distinct people, scholars argue, then the case for a literal reading of Exodus all but collapses. The surveys' final results were published three years ago.
The settlement research marked the "turning point" in archeological consensus on the issue, Dever said. It added to previous research that showed Egypt's voluminous ancient records contained not one mention of Israelites in the country, although one 1210 B.C. inscription did mention them in Canaan. Kadesh Barnea in the east Sinai desert, where th Bible says the fleeing Israelites sojourned, was excavated twice in the 1950s and 1960s and produced no sign of settlement until three centuries after the Exodus was supposed to have occurred. The famous city of Jericho has been excavated several times and was found to have been abandoned during the 13th and 14th centuries B.C.
Moreover, specialists in the Hebrew Bible say that the Exodus story is riddled with internal contradictions stemming from the fact that it was spliced together from two or three different texts written at different times. One passage in Exodus, for instance, says that the bodies of pharoah's charioteers were found on the shore, while the next verse says they sunk to the bottom of the sea.
And some of the story's features are mythic motifs found in other Near Eastern legends, said Ron Hendel, a professor of Hebrew Bible at the University of California, Berkeley. Stories of babies found in baskets in the water by gods or royalty are common, he said, and half of the 10 plagues fall into a "formulaic genre of catastrophe" found in other Near Eastern texts. One ancient treaty between an Assyrian and Aramaic king, for instance, noted that violations would be punished by gods sending down locusts and hail.
Carol Meyers, a professor specializing in biblical studies and archeology at Duke University, said the ancients never intended their texts to be read literally. "People who try to find scientific explanations for the splitting of the Red Sea are missing the boat in understanding how ancient literature often mixed mythic ideas with historical recollections," she said. "That wasn't considered lying or deceit; it was a way to get ideas across."
Virtually no scholar, for instance, accepts the biblical figure of 600,000 men fleeing Egypt, which would amount to a few million people, including women and children. The ancient desert at the time could not support so many nomads, scholars say, and the powerful Egyptian state kept tight security over the area, fortified with fortresses along the way.
Even Orthodox Jewish scholar Lawrence Schiffman said "you'd have to be a bit crazy" to accept that figure. He believes that the account in Joshua of a blitzkrieg military campaign is less accurate than the Judges account of a gradual takeover of Canaan. But Schiffman, chairman of Hebrew and Judaic studies at New York University, still maintains that a significant number of Israelite slaves fled Egypt for Canaan.
Wood argued that the 600,000 figure was mistranslated and the real number amounted to a more plausible 20,000. He also said the early Israelite settlements and their similarity to Canaanite culture could be explained by pastoralists with no material culture moving into a settled farming life and absorbing their neighbors' pottery styles and other cultural forms.

Source: DETNEWS.com

Was Ezekiel an epileptic?

By Judy Siegel

JERUSALEM (November 19) - Ezekiel's visions may have resulted as much from disease as from divine inspiration, according to a California neuroscientist, who believes the prophet suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy.

Dr. Eric Altschuler, of the University of California at San Diego, presented his theory about Ezekiel and epilepsy before last week's meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego and reported in the latest issue of New Scientist. Altschuler said a careful reading of the Book of Ezekiel shows he had "all the classic signs of the condition."

Sufferers of temporal lobe epilepsy experience partial seizures, often accompanied by a dreamy feeling that things are not quite as they should be, said Altschuler. Ezekiel - who lived some 2,600 years ago - displayed some obvious signs of epilepsy, such as frequent fainting spells and episodes of being unable to speak, Altschuler said.

The prophet, who foretold the fall of Jerusalem and the First Temple in 586 BCE at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, exhibited other peculiarities associated with the disease, the neuroscientist claims. For instance, "he wrote compulsively, a trait known as hypergraphia."

Altschuler said the Book of Ezekiel is the fourth longest book in the Bible - only slightly shorter than Genesis. "It's impenetrable," Altschuler maintains. "He goes on and on."

He was a young widower, as his wife reputedly died during the siege of Jerusalem. "Ezekiel was also extremely religious, another characteristic associated with this form of epilepsy. While many Biblical figures are pious, none was as aggressively religious as Ezekiel," said Altschuler. "Other signs of epilepsy can include aggression, delusions, and pedantic speech - and the man had them all."

Altschuler made headlines earlier this year when he claimed that the biblical strongman Samson, who brought an amphitheater down on himself and his Philistine captors, may have suffered from "antisocial personality disorder."

Source: Jerusalem Post

Was Jesus Christ a Kurd?

KurdishMedia.com - By Dr Fereydun Hilmi 22 November 2001
Reading Robin Kurds article in which he expresses worries that the Kurds might somehow start behaving as the Racist Turks, such as Huriyet and other Turkish newspapers. He is concerned that the Kurds might one day say: How happy they are to be Kurds. He is afraid that Kurdish reaction to centuries of Turkish oppression, massacres and degrading treatment of his nation will be the cause of the spiritual downfall of all Kurds. But I looked in his article for one example of Ozgurpolitikas alleged racism and found none. I was hoping for a quotation or a sample of the kind of words used by that Turkish language newspaper. I wanted to see any evidence of the fascism which some people (including some Kurds) are most watchful for and critical of.

If like me you look for patterns in things you will notice that whenever there is any possibility of the Kurdish cause reaching a positive turning point and they start demanding and asking for their right to self-determination, the nationalism and racism card is plaid by someone or other. It seems that all it takes is for the Kurds to say: we too are free people and wish to be independent for them to be accused of racism or nationalism. The people who accuse are strangely silent except to write and speak up at such times. The purpose is always to make the Kurds feel guilty about their condition and be deterred and discouraged from joining in the popular call for their freedom and liberty. They are not a nation we are made to believe. They have too many dialects and so on, and on. We are reminded of these characteristics incessantly in the full knowledge that China has over a hundred distinct languages and yet there is a nation called Chinese, and India is another example. In fact there are many other nations and states, which are of similar constitutions and that has never been a reason for doubting their nationhood. Indeed this is so ridiculous that Turkey itself is not only made up of racially contradictory nations but also speaking several languages including all the so called Kurdish, Turkic and other languages and dialects. On that basis, therefore, we can say that there is no Turkish nation and hence the Kurds (who are quite happy with their dialects or separate languages) are a far more cohesive nation than the Turks.

Why we Kurds should care a damn what the Turks or any of our other enemies think of us is a mystery. We know they bear us no goodwill. We know they do not like us and never will. Why should we then try to justify to them or anyone else our nationhood? And why should we be apologetic for loving our nation and homeland (even though sadly not all Kurds have such sentiments) The Americans always sing their own peoples glory. The French and the British are proud of even their colonial past. The Arabs and Jews believe that God himself chose them out of all the races on earth to spread his message (albeit in the most violent and contradictory way one can imagine). The Germans we know consider themselves the super race and so on and on. Mr Kurd however is so afraid of the Kurds actually liking their people and homeland enough to express happiness at being so. That would be a disaster would it not? But why not tell us what we should do to gain our freedom and liberty in Turkey? Surely there would be no reason for hatred and racism once the Turks let our people go to live in freedom instead of asking them to take their punishment and oppression quietly and with eyes full of false love and affection.

But what exactly is Mr Kurd advocating? Is he suggesting that the Kurds should love the Turks back for every massacre they carry out? Does he think that if they hit us on the right cheek, they would not kick us up the backside if we presented it to them to kick? Should Kurdish women welcome their military rapists with open arms and encourage them to do the same to the rest of their family just to prove that we are good Internationalists who will never get angry at anything in case we are accused of racism?

What is it that makes the Kurds behave in this unbelievably naive way? Is it possible that at a time when the Christian Americans send huge bombers to take revenge on medieval, bearded and primitive-like people for atrocities they are not exactly sure who committed, the Kurds behave as Jesus did two thousand years ago? Would the British treat Judas in the same way Jesus did even though they have been Christians for most of a millennium if not longer? Why would the Christian Germans behave as they did towards the Jews and the Americans drop two atomic bombs in answer to the bombing of Pearl Harbour while the Kurds go and kiss Saddam on both cheeks in response to the Anfal and Halabja Genocide?

And when Hussein Kamil (Iraqs modern Judas) betrayed his father-in-law, did Saddam forgive him as I am sure the Kurds would? Isnt Kurdish history full of treacherous acts, quickly and easily forgiven and forgotten, by this and that leader only to meet their ends at the hands of those they forgave?

If we try to take the parable of the life and philosophy of Jesus and consider the result we see that he forgave Judas and went, carrying his own cross to be nailed to death on it. The Kurds too it seems are destined to suffer the same end, because they are the type who do not take what is theirs until it is taken away and they then start crying foul.

But it is not only Kurdish writers and thinkers who seem to fail to grasp the facts of life and live in a world of Cuckoos. Our greatest and most famous appeaser Sellaheddin did it too. Who but a Kurd would fight someone like Richard the Lion-Heart with thousands of invading crusaders and take him medicine when ill to cure his illness?

Therefore, unlike popular belief Jesus could not have been a Jew or an Arab. They both believe in the eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth edict and have been killing and massacring each other since time immemorial. He certainly was not Persian for was it not the Persian prince Korush (Cyrus) who led an army of ten thousand Greek Mercenaries from Anatolia into Babylon to kill his brother because this brother, King Ardeshir, had earlier insulted him while their father was on his deathbed, only to be killed himself and his head raised on a spear as an example of what happens if you dare cross the King?

And he was not a Turk who we know were nowhere to be seen at the time of his birth and life.

Jesus we are told spoke Aramaic (Kurdish for Tranquility), pronounced Aramy by the people of the area. Indeed the word Aram is a Kurdish word as well as a popular Kurdish name. But what is much more significant is this: his behaviour and philosophy coincide totally onto the Kurdish character. The Kurds (or Medes if you prefer) had already ruled parts of Israel during Jewish times and the three Wisemen came from where the Kurds had lived for thousands of years bearing news and gifts to the newly born. Is all that coincidence or significant evidence?

Could he therefore have been a Kurd? Now, theres a thought!

Source: KurdishMedia.com