Peter Sean Bradley

Refuting Rabbinic Objections by Etian Bar

I read this book as part of a dialogue I am internally constructing between Rabbi Tovia Singer's YouTube episodes and potential respondents. Rabbi Singer is an articulate and knowledgeable defender of the proposition that Christianity is an invented faith that is leading Christians to damnation because of their idolatrous worship of a mere man. Singer has a knack for arguing that Christianity's originators twisted and misrepresented the Jewish scriptures.

A little study will show that Rabbi Singer is erring in refusing to acknowledge that the early Christians, such as St. Paul and the Gospel writers were quoting the Greek version of a non-Masoretic text (aka the “Septuagint) verbatim. Singer refuses to acknowledge the so-called Septuagint as being anything other than a bad translation of the Masoretic text, when in fact (a) the Masoretic text reflects a post-Christian development and (b) the Septuagint (so-called) actually reflects an earlier textual tradition confirmed in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Elsewhere, however, Rabbi Singer scores some points, so I thought I would examine a response to such objections. In this case, the author is an Israeli Messianic Jew named Eitan Bar. Bar categorizes the objections and provides a response, largely from rabbinical sources in the Talmud. His answers are very informative. For example, Rabbi Singer had mentioned Messiah son of Joseph a few times to discount the importance of that “messiah.” Bar's citation of Rabbinical sources indicates that there is far more to the concept - which I was unfamiliar with - than Singer permits.

Bar explains:

“As you could probably guess, Rabbinic Yeshivahs don't exactly teach about Zechariah or his prophecies. Attempts have been made to interpret it in various ways, but the problem for contemporary rabbis is that the Sages of Early Judaism always interpreted Zechariah 12 the same way as today's Messianic Jews: As a prophecy about the Messiah who is to be pierced to death! One of the ancient interpretations in the Talmud explains that the prophecy in Zechariah 12 means that the Messiah, son of Joseph, must die. He is, according to ancient Jewish tradition, the tormented and suffering Messiah. If so, why is it such a surprise when the New Testament attributes this verse to Jesus? ... the Messiah who suffered and died upon the cross for their sins. The Babylonian Talmud says: “One holds that it was for the Messiah the son of Joseph who was killed, as written in Zechariah 12: When they look on me, whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child” (Tractate Sukkah, Chapter 5).

Bar, Eitan. Refuting Rabbinic Objections to Christianity & Messianic Prophecies (p. 34). ONE FOR ISRAEL Ministry. Kindle Edition.

Likewise the fraught claim about “alma” and virgin is enlightened by rabbinical commentary as follows:

“The Jewish biblical scholar Dr. Fruchtenbaum writes that the rabbis quote Rashi as someone who interprets the word ‘alma' as a ‘young woman,' and concedes that so does Rashi consider the word in Isaiah 7:14 to refer to a young woman rather than a virgin. However, Fruchtenbaum points out that it's easy to understand why Rashi would take a different position in this particular case: he was involved in polemical debates against Christians, and therefore he took an opposite position to the one which had been accepted up until his time in order to try and disprove Jesus' messiahship. In fact, he took a different position to the one that he himself held in a different case – Rashi didn't always interpret the word ‘alma' as a ‘young woman'. This word also appears in the Song of Songs and in these verses he interpreted ‘alma' as a ‘virgin'. Moreover, Rashi himself indicated that other Jewish scholars producing Biblical commentary in his time also interpreted the word ‘alma' in Isaiah 7:14 as a ‘virgin'. And it is important to note that the ancient Jewish Sages also held the belief that the Messiah wouldn't have a biological father. Here is what they taught – “The redeemer whom I shall raise up from among you, will have no father”
(Genesis Rabbah of Rabbi Moshe haDarshan)

Bar, Eitan. Refuting Rabbinic Objections to Christianity & Messianic Prophecies (pp. 63-64). ONE FOR ISRAEL Ministry. Kindle Edition.

Bar makes this argument about the “Septuagint” which is strong, but a useful corrective for those who completely discount that text:

“The Septuagint, was written only 600 years after Hosea, about 1,200 years before the Masoretic translation. An even higher level of grammatical accuracy is contained within the Septuagint because it was penned long before the time of Jesus, meaning it was closer to the original language of Hosea and wasn't theologically influenced by the appearance of Jesus and the New Testament.

Bar, Eitan. Refuting Rabbinic Objections to Christianity & Messianic Prophecies (p. 154). ONE FOR ISRAEL Ministry. Kindle Edition.

For me, a drawback with the book is that it does not provide the support for its citations. It would have been useful for him to provide footnotes and identify neutral books that the reader can review to verify his claims. Another drawback is that this book does become polemical toward the end, but that is probably understandable in light of Bar's probable treatment as a traitorous pariah.

On the End of the World by Joseph Roth.

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I became acquainted with Joseph Roth by reading his anti-Nazi work, “The Spider's Web.” That book detailed the rise of a front-line veteran who gets involved in Volkisch politics in the early 1920s. My sense is that Roth was incorporating a lot of his personal observations into his novel and that his book had value more as a historical source that described the feeling of being alive in that era than as a work of literature (although it had its moments.)

Roth was clearly anti-Nazi. He was Jewish, which makes that an easy deduction, but he also remained something of an Austrian Monarchist. In 1933, Roth left Berlin and went to Paris in exile. This book collects various essays he wrote for the exiled German/Austrian press from 1933 to his death in early 1939.

The essays are occasional writing; they are Roth's responses to events. Roth doesn't spend a lot of time describing those events because he assumes that everyone knows what he is talking about. What the modern reader gets therefore are (a) Roth's feelings to the nightmare of Hitler and (b) often, an introduction to great events of the past that have been forgotten. For example:

“In this same Vienna Prater, a week ago, the Third Reich improvised a scene to compete with the Chamber of Horrors. A number of Jews had to ‘bite the dust'59. This heroic metaphor, which permitted the Germans to render death on the battlefield visible, appreciable, the National Socialists have borrowed for a fox-hunt, forcing the Jews to bite at the scornful grass for their own gloating pleasure. In the Prater, right next to the ‘Chamber of Horrors' and the ‘Grotto of Horrors'!

Roth, Joseph. On the End of the World (p. 44). Steerforth Press. Kindle Edition.

That really happened, lest we forget.

And, then, we move on to some fresh horror, and forget this ephemeral, brutal event.

Here is another one where Roth describes the conduct of one of the assassins of Austrian Prime Minister Dolfuss:

“The open-armed Yugoslavs might well show discouragement. But we, who have known for a long time now the heroes of the new Germany, are hardly surprised by the crime committed by the Austrian legionnaire, but rather to learn that such an individual raped a Yugoslav peasant woman and not a young male farmhand from Dravograd. This constitutes a serious break with the traditions of the SA18 and the National Socialist party in general.

Roth, Joseph. On the End of the World (p. 16). Steerforth Press. Kindle Edition.

You can see in that passage a theme he presented in The Spider's Web, namely the tendency of the SA (and Nazis, generally) toward homosexuality.

[Shhhh!!! Don't mention that....we will see if that gets past the censors, but, nonetheless, it seems to have been an accepted perspective among those who were there.]

This is an observation from 1934 that preserves the understanding that “Hitler's Pope” wasn't:

“These barbarians would equally have been capable of imagining Baldur concluding a pact with Pacelli,26 being an opponent of proletarian free thinkers. Papen being dispatched to Rome has all the air of being down to pure chance. Germany has taken its time to understand that the prohibition of freedom of thought and the persecution of the Jews was never going to allow it to pass itself off as a Christian state. When the Pope sees a photo of Hitler his preference – and with reason – is for the free thinkers. As for the Almighty, after contemplating Papen, he probably inclines more favourably towards the congenial atheist than the hypocrite. No, neither the Catholics in Austria nor those of the Saar would countenance Hitler's sudden conversion to Christianity. Even Hitler's ancestors, those Germans who claimed to fear nothing in the world but the Almighty himself, ultimately suffered a punishing defeat. What to make of these people of the Third Reich who no longer fear God, only everyone else in the world, even the Jews?!

Roth, Joseph. On the End of the World (p. 19). Steerforth Press. Kindle Edition.

Most of the essays are opaque to us. There are a few that stand out as great writing. For example, his essay on nightlife at a Parisian cafe - “In the Bistro After Midnight” - rings with authenticity in a film noir way. It is a kind of mood piece that put me there and became my favorite essay of the book, even though it offers no special historical value.

Roth also strikes out a few good aphorisms:

“Who dares, wins! He who has won three times, has no more need to dare!'

Roth, Joseph. On the End of the World (p. 55). Steerforth Press. Kindle Edition.

I should warn against mockery. There is nothing to laugh at here! Fascism is evidently in the throes of its menopause.

Roth, Joseph. On the End of the World (p. 64). Steerforth Press. Kindle Edition.

If we must state an initial truth, let us say that history is made by human beings who have only the merest glimpse of the significance of their words and their actions due to an insufficient capacity for instinct, experience and common sense.

Roth, Joseph. On the End of the World (p. 69). Steerforth Press. Kindle Edition.

We grope blindly into our histories and we are blind within our history.

Roth, Joseph. On the End of the World (p. 69). Steerforth Press. Kindle Edition.

The country whose nationality we haul around, we can leave, albeit with a wrench. But the epoch in which we were born that we can never leave, unless we happen to die.

Roth, Joseph. On the End of the World (p. 71). Steerforth Press. Kindle Edition.

Fodder for thought.

The Last Graduate (Scholomance 2) by Naomi Novik

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This is book two in Naomi Novik's Scholomance series.

In the first book, we were introduced to the Scholomance, an isolated educational facility where teenage wizards are confined for four years. Apparently, the world is so populated by evil, manna-consuming, entities, aka “mals”, who love the sweet taste of young wizards that wizard society has to exile its youngsters to a school where they can avoid the 9 out of 10 death rate in the real world. Unfortunately, the Scholomance is also infested with mals, so the death rate in the Scholomance is 3 out of 4.

The real death purge comes at graduation when seniors try to run across graduation hall, which has become thoroughly infested with mals. Consequently, all of the Scholomance activities are directed to learning to be one of the few survivors of the death race across the hall.

In the first book, we were introduced to Galadriel. El was at the low end of the social ladder as a loner “loser.” But El knows something no one knows, she's actually an incredibly gifted “Malificer,” a wizard with the ability to use dark magic. Where other kids are learning spells for cleaning their rules, El is being given spells on destroying armies and cities.

In book one, we see El start to move up the social ladder as she makes a few friends and begins to associate with Orion Lake. Orion is a hero - the unique individual with the ability to kill mals and the generous spirit to do so without being asked.

The second book picks up where the first book ended. At the close of the first book, El and her friends had helped the graduating seniors fix the machinery that cleansed the graduation hall of vermin. In this book, El is now a senior and must deal with her last year at the Scholomance, the question of what her class will discover in the graduation hall, what is to be done about the younger kids, and her own feelings about Orion.

The story makes for a gripping fun read as El intelligently and sarcastically negotiates her last year of the high school from Hell.

There will be a third book, so we may follow El out into the adult world.

The Narrows by Travis Riddle

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Oliver is in his mid-twenties, just starting his career, when his best friend, Noah, from his hometown commits suicide. Oliver returns home for the funeral. His childhood friends Davontae and Sophia also return for the funeral. This is a melancholy occasion for Oliver. He and Noah had unresolved issues when they last saw each other.

Oliver becomes convinced that Noah's death was not a suicide. Odd things are happening in the small Texas town of Shumard. For example, Oliver watches a high school dissolve in a suburban street. He catches a glimpse of another reality across a small river. Oliver begins to inquire and, eventually, discovers an odd character who calls himself “the Knave.”

Up until the introduction of the Knave, the book has largely been uneventful, to the point of boredom. Oliver is fairly mopey, which is a fair condition to be in when a friend dies, but it doesn't move the story along. I also found myself not very interested in his friends Davontea and Sophia, who seemed interchangeable, except that Sophia was a female. There might have been an interesting backstory in how a girl joined the three male friends, but, apparently, in a bit of “check the woke boxes,” Sophia was born Simon and came out as trans in college because, you know, trans were a big deal in 2020. But it was a meaningless detail; apart from mentioning that Sophia was Simon nothing further was made of this detail and it added nothing to the story.

The story picks up the pace with the introduction of the Knave. I will credit the book for giving answers, but, frankly, the Knave betrayed the tone of the book. Up until the Knave appears, the book is presenting a story with potential dimensions of cosmic horror. However, the Knave is simply a monster who collects jewels from people and keeps them in a house in the alternate version of Shumard across the Narrows. The story turns into a narrative about fighting the monster with no cosmic horror in sight.

This book had promise. The characters had some depth. The opening created a slow burn. However, the ending was a kind of fizzle.

The Invention of God by Thomas Romer

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This book recounts a textual/archeological exploration into the development of the Jewish idea of God. This book updates a previous book I read on the subject. It also adds insights that are oftentimes stunning. For example, it is commonplace to say that no one has known how to pronounce the name of God YHWH since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD when no one had any cause to enter the Holy of Holies and pronounce the name of God. Romer disputes this by pointing to theophoric names which end with “yah.” In fact, the word “alleluja” incorporates a shortened form of the name of God in the last syllable in a word that means, essentially, “Praise Yah.”

To make a long story short, Romer argues that YHWH started as a war god in the area of Sinai. Romer does not accept the notion that there was Moses who led the “exodus” from Egypt. He thinks that the ancient Israelites had been there all along, although there could have been some immigration from or through the Sinai. Romer sees archeological evidence for YHWH among the Shasu populations engaged in copper and gold mining. Romer notes that the Torah indicates that Moses did not know the name of the God of Israel until he learns the name in Midian and obtains the assistance of a priest of Midian. This plus various ambiguous references to “Yah” in Egyptian documents supports Romer's argument for an origin of YHWH outside of Israel.

Romer argues that tribes who were the precursor to the House of David brought YHWH into Israel as their house god. At that time, YHWH had the status of a “Baal” a local war god. The Most High God in Israel was El. YHWH was seen as a son of El. In Deuteronomy 32:8, El seems to a lot Israel to YHWH as his part of the world.

Romer next argues that El was displaced by, and eventually submerged into, YHWH when the House of David assumed power and made Jerusalem its capital. Romer believes that David and Solomon are also fictional creations. He accepts the historicity of the kings of the dual monarchy. In Romer's recounting, the stories of Israel backsliding into polytheism were not so much about backsliding as they were about the way things were, namely, YHWH had a wife goddess, Asterath: YHWH was worshipped in local cultic locations; there was no monotheism, and, certainly, no Pentateuch.

Romer believes that there was a statue to YHWH in the temple in Jerusalem. The commandment that there should be no other gods before him, meant that in the temple, no statue of another god should be located in the direction where the stature of YHWH faced. Romer finds evidence of the statue in the Temple in Isaiah:

“The text of Isaiah 6 suggests that the dĕḇîr (the part of the temple where the god resides) of the Temple of Jerusalem contained a throne with a statue of Yhwh, perhaps represented in the manner of El enthroned and surrounded by cherubim and seraphim.

Römer, Thomas. The Invention of God . Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.

Read his argument. I found this persuasive since it explained what Isaiah was talking about in what is an otherwise incredibly psychedelic vision.


This statue was subsequently taken to Babylon as part of the spoils of Jerusalem. Romer explains:

“One can observe, though, that at the end of the books of Kings great emphasis is placed on the deportation of the “utensils (kĕlê) of the temple” to Babylon (2 Kings 25:14–15). One might speculate whether this very general term could not include one or several cult statues, all the more so given that the text of Isaiah 52:11 speaks of the return from Babylon of those who bear the kĕlê Yhwh: “Depart, depart, come out from there! Do not touch anything impure. Come out from the midst of Babylon! Purify yourselves, you who carry the utensils of Yhwh (kĕlê Yhwh)!” The expression used here is peculiar; the more usual formulation would have been “utensils of the house of Yhwh.” Further evidence in favor of the view that the statue of Yhwh had been deported along with other utensils can perhaps be found in the description given in Ezekiel 10:18–19 of the departure of the glory of Yhwh from the Temple and city of Jerusalem: “The glory of Yhwh departed from the threshold of the temple; it stood above the cherubim. So the cherubim opened their wings and raised themselves from the earth. Before my eyes the wheels came out at the same time.”44 This vision takes up again the motif of the deity standing on a cherub. Verse 4 in fact speaks of a single cherub (“the glory of Yhwh raised itself above the kĕrûḇ on the threshold of the House”),45 whereas verse 18 mentions cherubim in the plural and alludes perhaps to the throne flanked by cherubim on which the god is seated. The composition of Ezekiel 10 is a vexed question and we shall simply mention that it certainly does not have only one author.46 Suffice it to say that the two iconographic motifs just mentioned are traditionally associated with a statue of the god located above the cherubim. In Ezekiel and elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, the statue has been replaced by the kāḇôd, the glory of god. However, the text in Ezekiel retains some traces that point to a deportation of a statue of Yhwh by the Babylonians.

Römer, Thomas. The Invention of God . Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.

That's pretty murky.

Romer argues for an understanding that there were substantial differences in the cult of YHWH in the northern and southern kingdoms.

“Some specialists in biblical studies think that the cult of Yhwh in Judah was in effect very different from that of Israel: the Yhwh of Israel was worshipped rather on the model of Baal, that is, as a god of storms and fertility, whereas in the south, he had incorporated the traits of the old sun god who was the tutelary deity of Jerusalem. This picture needs qualification—rather than strict opposition, it is more likely that there were differences in relative emphasis between the cult in the north and in the south.

Römer, Thomas. The Invention of God . Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.

There is evidence in archeological remains - inscriptions and statues - and in the text of the Bible that suggests the statue of YHWH might have been the form of a bull:

“The same narrative then recounts that Jeroboam, after having founded his own kingdom among the tribes of the north, constructed two sanctuaries, at Bethel and at Dan, where he set up boviform statues representing the god who had led the Israelites out of Egypt. (28) The king Jeroboam took counsel and had made two calves of gold and said to the people: “You have gone up too often to Jerusalem; these are your gods, Israel, who have brought you out of the land of Egypt.” (29) He set up one in Bethel and one in Dan (30)—this was his sin. The people marched in procession before one [of the calves] as far as Dan.

Römer, Thomas. The Invention of God . Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.

And:

“Similarly, in the book of Hosea, which criticizes the worship of the bull and of Yhwh as a baal, Yhwh is compared in chapter 6 to the rising of the sun: “(3) Let us know, let us seek to know Yhwh; his coming is established like that of the dawn.” And the original text of verse 5 compares the divine judgments of Yhwh to light itself.36 So we have in place a conception of Yhwh that combines the traits of a storm god with the attributes of a solar deity.

Römer, Thomas. The Invention of God . Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.

In Jerusalem, it could have been in the form of a seated man:

“Although it would have been anathema to the editors of the Bible, and also is anathema to certain theologians, Yhwh had a parhedros, the goddess Asherah, who was also called the “Queen of Heaven.” It is also likely that there was a statue of Yhwh in the Temple of Jerusalem, perhaps of a Yhwh seated on a throne of cherubim, like El at Ugarit.

Römer, Thomas. The Invention of God . Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.

If you have ever wondered, as I have, how the Israelites could have gone off the rails so quickly at Sinai to worship a “golden calf,” this makes a lot of sense. The golden calf was a recollection at a later time - after the Babylonian Captivity - of earlier worship practices prior to the Captivity.

Of course, it was the Babylonian Captivity that changed everything. Jewish exiles constructed a monotheistic religion and wrote the texts we now call the Torah. To be fair, Romer gives due credit to King Josiah's reforms:

“Even though the reforms of Josiah, or rather of his counselors, were not lastingly established, they were one of the most historically important moments in the evolution of the cult of Yhwh. From that time on, Yhwh became “one” god (not yet unique, but singular), and Jerusalem became the only place in which his sacrificial cult could be legitimately practiced. This new vision of Yhwh also began to manifest itself in an abundant literature that became the origin of the biblical corpus, and that was edited by the members of groups who supported Josiah's religious changes.

Römer, Thomas. The Invention of God . Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.

It was Josiah, of course, who “discovered” the forgotten book of the law, apparently, Deuteronomy, which required the centralization of worship in Jerusalem. Romer points out that the rediscovery of lost texts have been a traditional way for reformers to justify their reforms. Romer also points out the ambiguities of Josiah's “monotheism:

“The original version of Deuteronomy was not found during works on the temple, but rather was written in order to promote the ideas behind Josiah's reforms. It opened with the affirmation that can be found in chapter 6 of the version of the book that has come down to us: Šĕmaʿ yiśrāʾēl yhwh ʾĕlōhēnû yhwh ʾeḥād. After the call to listen (“Hear O Israel”) the rest of phrase can be translated in different ways: “Yhwh, our god, Yhwh is unique,” or “Yhwh, our god, Yhwh alone,” or “Yhwh, our god is the one Yhwh.” The most plausible way to read it is to take this nominal proposition as being comprised of two distinct assertions: “Yhwh is our god” and “Yhwh is ONE.” These two assertions are easily understandable in the context of the reforms of Josiah: Yhwh is the (only) god of Israel and he is one—that is, there is only the Yhwh of Jerusalem, but there is no Yhwh of Samaria, Yhwh of Temān, Yhwh of Bethel, and so on. The claim that Yhwh is “one” corresponds to the fact that there is only one place where he has a legitimate cult, as Deuteronomy goes on to explain, notably in chapter 12. The opening of the original version continued: “(4) Hear, Israel! Yhwh is our god, Yhwh is ONE. (5) You shall love Yhwh your god with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength.” These verses are clearly connected to the reforms of Josiah. First of all, the notice in 2 Kings 23:25 that gives a final appreciation of Josiah's reign claims that he was the only king who exactly satisfied the prescriptions of Deuteronomy 6:4–5: “There was no king before him who came back to Yhwh as he did with all his heart, all his being and all his strength.”

Römer, Thomas. The Invention of God . Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.

So, the proclamation of the “oneness” of YHWH may have been intended as a denial of any YHWH outside of the YHWH of Jerusalem, rather than a statement that there is only one god.

Thus, far, Romer's arguments have been fairly strong. He supports his evidence with references to archeology and texts that seem solid. Sometimes it seems like he's making a leap from saying that something “might” be true to adopting it as the premise for later arguments. However, at this point, I have to wonder how this revolution happened. Did no one notice that an entire mythology about Moses, the Conquest, Abraham, etc. had been invented? Where did the stories of David and Solomon come from? Were there no dissenters from the imposition of monotheism on the country? No polytheist prophets? No prophets of the “YHWH is a storm god” variety left behind their prophecies condemning foreign novelties? That just doesn't seem likely.

This is an educational and fascinating read. If you are a believer, your understanding of the scriptures will grow as new insights are understood. But I still have a problem with a revolution that happened so quickly, so completely, so radically, and which left no evidence of a struggle behind. There's a lot to be said for Romer's version, but I think the truth is more complicated still.

A lot of what is going on here is that Romer knows the Canaanite background, which he reads onto the evidence. Sometimes this leads to some fascinating insights, but it will have the tendency to dissolve whatever was unique about the ancient Hebrew religion, assuming that its uniqueness did not appear virtually fully formed in the sixth century.

This is a readable and interesting book. If you fear to have your faith tested or your understanding of pre-Exilic Jewish history threatened, then it might not be a book for you.

The Karaites by Juan Marcos Bejarano Gutierrez

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Gutierrez has published a number of these monographs on Jewish history. He explains in this volume that his main interest focuses on the Conversos of Spain, which implicates Sephardic Jews. He became interested in the Karaites when he discovered a text describing the circumstances of a Converso group that returned to Judaism through the Karaite sect of Judaism.

I had heard the term Karaite before but never gave it much thought. On a side note, I had just learned about the treatment of “mamzers” in Judaism last week. These two topics came together in a glorious coincidence in this monograph.

Briefly, Karaites were a sect of Judaism that opposed Rabbinic Judaism because of the Rabbinate doctrine of the Oral Torah passed down through the rabbis from Sinai and preserved in the Mishnah and the Talmud. Karaites repudiated the concept of the Oral Torah, holding to the written Torah alone. Because of this approach, Karaites did not adhere to the rituals and traditions in Rabbinic Judaism, which meant that their rituals were not the rituals of Rabbinic Judaism.

Karaite Judaism is now probably down to a population of less than 100,000. Most Jews are Rabbinical Jews. However, back in the 7th to 13th century, Karaite Judaism was a substantial tradition in the Islamic world and dominated Rabbinical Judaism in many areas.

For Rabbinical Judaism, Karaite Judaism presented a problem - the mamser problem. Mamsers are “bstrds” under Jewish law. More importantly, Mamsers are children born of adulterous relationships. Worse still, mamzers are condemned to the 10th generation, cannot marry Jews (although they can marry other mamzers and converts) and are kept outside the synagogue. The problem for the Rabbis was that Karaites did not adhere to rabbinical laws of divorce, which meant that any Karaite who divorced under Karaite law, remarried, and had children, was producing mamzers.

This was a serious issue. It remains a serious issue for Judaism as the Orthodox Jewish community, which controls divorce law, still (largely) refuses to recognize Karaites as being entitled to entry to Israel as Jews.

All of this can be gleaned from this thin monograph. Gutierrez is not so much interested in the history of the sect. His interest is in comparing the treatment of Conversos with Karaites. The comparison is that Rabbinical Judaism generally takes a more lenient attitude toward the Conversos who are not viewed as having a real choice in their lax rituals.

The book is readable. I found it very interesting.

The Gospel of Judas by David Brakke

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Gnosticism is a strange belief system. Reading a Gnostic text is not a straightforward affair because Gnostic beliefs are so heavily mythologized and allegorical, and, yet, Gnostic beliefs also incorporate Christian symbols and characters, creating something familiar and, yet, disturbingly unfamiliar. Christ as a character in a story saying vague and cloudy things mingles with terms like Barbelo, aeons, Sakla and Nebro.

David Brakke's book provides a great way of understanding the Gnostic elements in the so-called Gospel of Judas. His approach is to provide a background history about the text, allow the reader to read the text, and then break down the text section by section with a commentary on the section the reader has just covered. The commentary is more of an essay on various topics in the section, rather than a line-by-line explication of the text.

Brakke's writing is scholarly. This is not for a casual reader. I skipped all of the technical discussions about the translation of the Coptic text. It didn't interest me and was over my head.

On the other hand, I think I got a solid grounding on Gnostic theology as a way that helps unfold the Gospel of Judas. Brakke inclines toward the idea that the Coptic Gospel of Judas was written in the mid to late second century and reflects a text that Irenaeus described in his book “Against the Heresies.” The text describes Jesus's alleged interactions with Judas in the week before the Crucifixion of “the body that carried Jesus.” The Gospel opens with Jesus laughing at his disciples for doing disciple-like things. Judas observes that Jesus comes from the Barbelos. From this, Jesus takes Judas into his confidence

So, what is the “Barbelos”? My understanding is that the Barbelos is the Mother Aeon of Wisdom who in other Gnostic texts spun off or birthed the demiurge - the lower creator god whom the Christians worship, but who is called “Saklas” or “Nebro.” To be fair, although aeon appears to be used in other texts as a term for a subdivine entity, Brakke explains that aeon is used in the Gospel of Judas as a name for a domain inhabited by a subdivine being, angel, or aeon.

The text makes it clear that the disciples are mistaken and conned by worshipping God, who is actually a lesser subdivine being known as Saklas. Judas will turn Jesus over to the authorities so that the one who bears Jesus will be tortured:

//26Jesus said, “Truly I say [to you], this baptism 56 [ . . . in] my name [ . . . ] 4will destroy the entire race of Adam, the earthly man. 6Tomorrow the one who bears me will be tortured. 8Truly I [say] to you, no hand of a mortal human being [will . . . ] me. 12“Truly [I] say to you, Judas, as for those who offer sacrifice to Saklas, they all shall [perish], 15for the [ . . . ] upon the [ . . . ] and all [ . . . ] 18everything that is [evil]. 18But as for you, you will surpass them all, 20for you will sacrifice the human being who bears me.

Brakke, David. The Gospel of Judas (The Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries) (p. 389). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

The Gnostic text asserts that the Christian baptism will condemn those who accept it. Moreover, Christians (and Jews, maybe all humans) will be replaced by a Great Race that is totally free of the domination of angels, aeons and subdivine beings.

In performing this task, Judas will replace the disciples, and in fact, he will replace Saklas (or the Jewish/Christian God.)

//15Jesus said, “Truly I say to you (pl.), it is the stars that bring completion upon all these. 18When Saklas completes the times that have been assigned to him, 21their first star will come with the races, and the things that have been said will be brought to completion. 24Next they will fornicate in my name and kill their children, 55 1and [ . . . ] wicked, 2and [ . . . ] 4the aeons, 5bringing their races and presenting them to Saklas. 7And next [ . . . ] will come, bringing the twelve tribes of [Israel] from [ . . . ], 9and all [the races] will serve Saklas, sinning in my name. 12And your (sing.) star will [rule] over the thirteenth aeon.” 14But then Jesus laughed.

Brakke, David. The Gospel of Judas (The Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries) (p. 375). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

This is all strange stuff, but I was surprised to learn that the term aeon is found in Ignatius's Letter to the Trallians. I had thought it was a term made up by Gnostics.

The value-added for me is that the Gospel of Judas confirms the Catholic view of the Eucharist as a sacrifice of the body of Christ. The author of Judas clearly had an animus against the orthodox Catholic Church. Thus, the author sought to condemn Catholic practices and rites as misbegotten deviations from true understanding. Brakke explains:

//Likewise, the disciples' dream of sacrifice to Saklas anticipates or is analogous to Judas's sacrifice of the human Jesus. In Jesus's eschatological interpretation of the dream, it signifies end-time events that include the acceptance of a single sacrifice from the hands of a single priest (40. 18–22), which may refer to the sacrifice of the human Jesus, which Jesus later describes as occurring among the events of the end (56.6–22). In that later description, Jesus places in parallel positions “those who offer sacrifice to Saklas” and “you,” that is, Judas, “for you will sacrifice the human being who bears me” (56.13–22). These clues indicate that the sacrificial activity in the disciples' dream has two references: in its contemporary meaning it refers to the eucharist, in which Christians give thanks to god and share bread; in its eschatological meaning it refers to events at the end, which include the crucifixion of Jesus's human bearer. The author criticizes an understanding of the eucharist as a sacrifice made to the god of Israel, over which leaders who claim to be both priests and successors to the disciples preside, and which takes it meaning in part from the death of Jesus. A consensus of historians of early Christian worship, however, holds that Christians did not combine into a single eucharistic theology the concepts that the eucharistic elements are a sacrifice, that the eucharistic sacrifice repeats or reenacts the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, and that the presiders over the eucharist are priests until the third century, when Cyprian of Carthage (among others) exemplifies this understanding (Rouwhorst 2010; Schmid 2012a, 85–86; Bradshaw 2004). Nonetheless, sources from the first and second centuries contain the ingredients for such an understanding, and Judas suggests either that its author saw it as an implication of attested rhetoric or that some Christians did hold such a view, even if other surviving sources do not put all the pieces together in as explicit a manner as Cyprian does.

Brakke, David. The Gospel of Judas (The Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries) (pp. 122-123). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

And:

//The sacrificial understanding of worship that Judas criticizes did not characterize all Christians in all places (and probably not even most Christians in most places); rather, it belonged to Christians in the author's context, whether that was Rome or some other location. Or at least so he thought: possibly the author himself put these elements together from his reading of works like the ones I have discussed, although the vehemence of his rhetoric suggests personal contact with his opponents. My interest here has been in establishing the plausibility of and context for the sacrificial theology and ritual that Judas portrays, but this relatively new piece of evidence may suggest also reconsideration of the scholarly consensus about sacrifice, priesthood, and the eucharist in the second century.

Brakke, David. The Gospel of Judas (The Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries) (pp. 129-130). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

So, Brakke's book provides a way to understand Gnosticism, which, interestingly, provides an insight into the history of Christian doctrine.

Study Guide: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

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I read Station Eleven a few years ago. I posted an appreciative review of it, which became the top review on Amazon.

Then, a few years passed and I forgot the details. When the HBO series came on, I was wondering whether I was misremembering what I read or if the show had made changes from the book. (“Wait a second...wasn't Jeevan a paramedic????”)

Rather than plowing through the book so that I could disentangle the threads, I picked up this study guide.

It was a quick read. The writer did a nice job of organizing the material so that the book made a lot more sense than when I read the book originally. There were details about the story that I completely missed, which is not a hard thing to do given the structure of the book. Also, the author does a nice job of identifying and discussing themes.

It is sort of like the conversation you would like to have at a book club.

When God Spoke Greek by Timothy Michael Law

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This is the second book I've read on the Septuagint this month. Unlike “Translation of the Seventy” by Michael Gallagher, this book seems to take the position that the Septuagint (aka the “LXX”) constituted a literary tradition in its own right.

The Septuagint is a catch-all term for Greek translations of Hebrew scriptures written in approximately the second century BCE. Although these texts are still used as the Old Testament by the Eastern Orthodox Church, they are largely dismissed as “bad translations” by most popular sources, such as the annual revisiting of the claim that the Virgin Birth is based on a “poor translation” of “maiden.”

Law's position is a bit more dramatic than that (or of Gallagher's book.) Law writes:

“We will soon encounter some remarkable differences between the Hebrew and Greek scriptures. This should be stated very clearly right away since the Septuagint translation is sometimes misjudged as merely a translation when it is more than that. In many places the messages contained in the Septuagint are different from what we have in the Hebrew Bible, a significance whose weight will be forced upon us when we see how New Testament authors and early Christian writers constructed their theological visions on the basis of the Septuagint. The divergent character of the Septuagint is not always a result of the ingenuity of its translators. Sometimes we see evidence that the Greek translation was produced from an alternative Hebrew text that has since been lost. The Septuagint and Hebrew Bible often reflect divergent traditions of scriptural texts in the same biblical books, and it is not always possible to discover if one was from an earlier time than another. Sometimes they are simply different, perhaps parallel traditions. Today most English Bible versions are based on a medieval edition of the Hebrew Bible. Until the last century many assumed the Hebrew scriptures existed only in this form preserved in the medieval edition, but most now recognize it reflects only one of several forms of the scriptures in circulation before the second century CE.

Law, Timothy Michael. When God Spoke Greek: The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible (pp. 19-20). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

Similarly, the current version that is used as the “gold standard” is not a pristine and pure form that has existed from time immemorial:

“There is no question that the text of the Hebrew Bible we know today is very ancient. But the Dead Sea Scrolls, along with a renewed appreciation of the Septuagint, force us to adopt a new perspective: while the medieval Masoretic scribes preserved an ancient tradition, they transmitted only one scriptural tradition out of a number of divergent possibilities that existed before the second century CE. The earlier period was characterized by plurality, not uniformity. There is nothing at all mistaken in affirming that the Hebrew Bible in today's editions reflects a very ancient tradition reaching back at least to the third century BCE and perhaps even earlier. But this is only part of the story. Before 1947 scholars usually explained the history of the Bible by referring to three main witnesses to, or “types” of, the Old Testament text: the Masoretic Text, the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the Septuagint.4 The Masoretic Text actually refers not to a single text but to a group of manuscripts that have shared features.

Law, Timothy Michael. When God Spoke Greek: The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible (pp. 21-22). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

And:

“Perhaps most importantly, we must recognize that the Hebrew Bible editions in our hands today, those based on the medieval Masoretic Text, do not represent the “original text” of the Bible. The greatest modern authority on the Hebrew textual tradition puts it bluntly: “One thing is clear, it should not be postulated that the Masoretic Text better or more frequently reflects the original text of the biblical books than any other text.”9

Law, Timothy Michael. When God Spoke Greek: The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible (p. 23). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

Law offers this interesting example, which most readers probably skip over:

“We can be absolutely certain that the story in the Septuagint is based on a Hebrew edition that reflects an earlier stage in the development of the tradition of this story, and the Hebrew Bible is a later expansion of that tradition. In the process of enlarging the story disturbances were introduced into the text but were left unresolved. Conscientious readers of the English Bible may have already noticed certain confusing aspects of the David and Goliath story that are there because the Hebrew Bible is used as the basis for the English translations. For example, both the Septuagint and the Hebrew Bible tell how David is introduced to Saul in 16:17–23 as a harpist whom Saul loved so much that he made him his armor bearer. In 17:55–58, which is found only in the later Hebrew Bible, Saul oddly has no clue who David is. The famous story of the love shared between David and Jonathan (18:1–4) and Saul's attempt to kill David when an evil spirit came upon him (18:10–11) were also later additions not found in the earlier version.

Law, Timothy Michael. When God Spoke Greek: The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible (pp. 30-31). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

It may be a bit disorienting to realize that the Hebrew text evolved from the translation of the LXX to the earliest Masoretic Texts (“MT”). Law offers some examples of this, such as this one from Ezekiel:

“The second difference is that 36:23c–38 are missing. This is a very rich passage in which God promises to give a new heart to the people, replacing theirs of stone, and to put his spirit within them; but it is difficult for modern readers to appreciate that this was not originally in the older Hebrew text or in the earliest Septuagint text.

Law, Timothy Michael. When God Spoke Greek: The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible (p. 53). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

I've dropped into some of the issues that interest me, but this is a methodical book that covers the history and textual analysis of the document. In many ways, this book is more interesting than the Gallagher book, although, frankly, both should be read for a fuller treatment of the issue.

One area that I felt Law's book fell down was its treatment of the Deuterocanonical books (“DCB”). For some reason, Law refused to use the term “deuterocanonical” but, instead, refers to them by the Protestant pejorative term “apocryphal.” Law provides a very nice survey of the DCB texts and even acknowledges that the Book of Wisdom provided Paul with the backbone of one of his arguments in Romans.

Given the loose canon that existed, Law suggests that the DCB may have continued to be treated as authoritative/inspired/canonical in Jewish communities outside of Judea even after the Judean community was narrowing the canon:

“There is no reason to believe the communities outside of Palestine did not continue using the other Hellenistic Jewish writings, including those now part of the Apocrypha. In fact, it has been argued that they did use other books, and we know from medieval debates that not all Jews accepted the scriptures that came from Palestine.

Law, Timothy Michael. When God Spoke Greek: The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible (p. 83). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

It is useful to keep in mind that there was a lack of uniformity even within the lack of uniformity.

I found this to be a thoughtful and informative book.

The Grand Strategy of Classical Sparta by Paul Rahe

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Because of the title, I came to this book expecting to learn more about Sparta. I thought this book would focus on Spartan strategy, concerns, background, etc. In other words, I relied on the title of the book. In fact, I made my decision to purchase on that basis.

In truth, this book is a very excellent, very informative, very accessible book about the history of the Persian Wars, including substantial material of the period prior to the war. We get a critical assessment of the historians of that epoch, and who can be trusted on which issue and why. All in all, it is an excellent resource.

The greatest insight I obtained from the book had to do with Athens. What I think I picked up - overstating for effect - was that prior to the Persian Wars, Athens was one of the many leading states of Greece, but not a leader. Sparta clearly outranked it in military pre-eminence. What launched Athens out of the pack was the discovery of silver and Themosticles's policy of building ships. (Obviously, Athens had had enough clout to invade Ionia, which set up the promised retaliation by Persia.) The additional ships put Athens into a military leader in the Persian Wars, and the civic pride engendered by its victories at Marathon and Salamis was what created the Athenian mystique.

Again, a kind of oversimplified summary.

Nonetheless, it doesn't have a lot to do with Sparta.

So, forewarned is fore-armed. If you are looking for a focus on Sparta, this is not your book. The book that is here is nonetheless terrific and worth your time.

...but the good news is Hollywood is cutting its own throat.

Virtue Bombs by Christian Toto

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The author, Christian Toto, operates the “Toto in Hollywood” website. Toto in Hollywood (“TIH”) is the go-to source for news and insights into the flaming trainwreck that is popular culture. Toto is on the conservative side of the spectrum and so is uniquely free to point out that the emperor is naked in movie reviews and opinion pieces into the mass implosion of movie, television, comedy, etc.

If you've been reading TIH, a lot of this is going to be familiar. Nonetheless, get the book. The book provides a handy, condensed version of the last decade of TIH. Also, given “dense-packing” of Woke idiocy, it is so easy to forget the idiocy of last year, much less the early foreshadowing of the dysfunctional state of our current situation in 2022 that we experienced back in the heady days of 2012.

Toto surveys virtually every bit of woke dysfunction up to last month from every angle. He has a chapter on the effort to cancel Gina Carrano, for example. He covers the cowardly implosion of stand-up comedy. He explains why television shows and movies are no longer entertaining. He looks at the Grammies and rap music.

I found his chapter on stand-up comedy particularly insightful. I recently discovered Lilly Singh via a Matt Walsh segment where he watches woke female comics and dares them to make him laugh. Singh was one of them and she was awful. I then discovered a Youtube post by three hip Gen Z dudes - who had no axe to grind - and they had the same experience. Singh has her own show, but her “comedy” involves handing out Woke bromides and then bravely facing the applause of trained seals.

What the heck?

Citing Comedian Steve McGrew, Toto explains:

“I've seen several comics change their act to become more woke; they think it will make them more valuable and more wanted or in demand by the powers that be in Hollywood.” Even black comics who rarely told race-related jokes are suddenly talking about racism and skin color, he says. “Nothing will get you a Netflix special quicker than being a woke urban comic.”

Toto, Christian. Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul (p. 220). Bombardier Books. Kindle Edition.

For his part, Steve McGrew was blacklisted:

“Comedian Steve McGrew knows all about woke culture. The openly conservative comic was being punished early and often by Facebook before it was cool (and darn near ubiquitous for people on the Right). He lost an annual gig in Las Vegas after club owner Brad Garrett (yes, that Brad Garrett of Everybody Loves Raymond fame) learned McGrew supported Trump, and he found a new level of disdain in comedy circles for joining “The Deplorables” comedy tour.

Toto, Christian. Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul (p. 219). Bombardier Books. Kindle Edition.

So, time to look up McGrew and avoid anything with Garrett.

Andrew Klavan writes the introduction, which includes this observation that I've been making for a few years:

“I didn't care. American kids were having their legs blown off by squirrely dirtbags far from home. I wasn't going to curse them out in L.A. meetings so I could get work in Hollywood. I can't prove it, but I know it's so. I was blacklisted—and by the same perfidious toads who'd just spent fifty years whining about the last blacklist.

Toto, Christian. Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul (pp. 8-9). Bombardier Books. Kindle Edition.

How many times have we been told that the fight against Communists - and there were Communists and they actually supported a totalitarian, genocidal foreign power thanks to, inter alia, the Venona Intercepts - was a cruel, malicious, ignorant fight against a non-entity?

But as soon as these “perfidious toads” got power, they implemented their own blacklist.

Just like they did in the 1930s.

Just like we knew they always would, even when they were described as “liberals in a hurry.”

I like the equation of the Woke with a cult. Communism was a cult. Wokeness has all the indicia of a religious cult:

“She promoted woke jokes, knowing how influential comedy can be in changing hearts if not minds. Yet something began to bug her about the woke movement, which she now compares to a cult. She started to question elements of its belief system, a true no-no in any good cult. She also started educating herself about other philosophical movements, including the bootstrap ethos shared by Canadian professor Jordan Peterson. Slowly she realized the folly of her belief system, and she eventually left the comedy world.

Toto, Christian. Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul (pp. 232-233). Bombardier Books. Kindle Edition.

There is a lot here. There is a lot to be concerned about. Toto signs off with despair and hope:

“The cultural forces lined up against free expression, creativity, and all-American values look intimidating, if not downright invincible. The Left conquered Hollywood, and now they're trying to silence their ideological foes. How many times did progressives attempt to remove Rush Limbaugh off the airwaves, much as they're attempting to do with Fox News superstar Tucker Carlson? The biggest names in the culture bow to the mob, with few exceptions. No matter how much wealth, fame, or, yes, privilege a superstar has, it's often not enough to sufficiently stiffen their spine. The woke mob counts the media, academia, Hollywood, and Corporate U.S.A. as its foot soldiers (not counting the actual foot soldiers known as Antifa). Any one of those institutions alone would be formidable. Added together? They're nearly unstoppable. I say “nearly” because the American DNA still matters, still rejects the speech-snuffing measures those institutions embrace. That spirit offers the last best hope that the woke war can be won, both in Hollywood and the culture at large.

Toto, Christian. Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul (p. 227). Bombardier Books. Kindle Edition.

What is to be done? Well, support the good guys. Buy their products. Talk them up. Spread their message. Support them out loud while you can.

Sort of like a Top 500 Amazon reviewer giving a helpful, laudatory review.

Fight the war where you can.

Translation of the Seventy by Edmon Gallagher

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The Septuagint is a catch-all term for Greek translations of Hebrew scriptures written in approximately the second century BCE. Although these texts are still used as the Old Testament by the Eastern Orthodox Church, they are largely dismissed as “bad translations” by most popular sources, such as the annual revisiting of the claim that the Virgin Birth is based on a “poor translation” of “maiden.”

This is an introduction and survey of the Septuagint. The author largely takes a minimalist position to the Septuagint's authority. Gallagher makes the point that the earliest stories about the Septuagint, particularly the inspired translation narrative, were limited to the Pentateuch. Gallagher discounts this story tout court and suggests that there was an ad hoc project of translating into the Greek language by mostly unknown translators (with Sirach being an exception.)

For the sake of convenience, I will refer to the Septuagint as the LXX, although it is fair to keep in mind that the LXX translations were not circulated as a unit and had variations in various LXX texts. The LXX had occasional variations from the Hebrew text, some of which became significant to early Christianity. Gallagher explains these variations as:

“The Greek translations of the Old Testament books often diverge from the standard Hebrew text we now possess, which is called the Masoretic Text (MT). The reasons for these divergences are basically two: either the Greek translator decided to translate the book in a rather loose way, or he translated rather literally a Hebrew text that is different from the MT.

Gallagher, Edmon. Translation of the Seventy: History, Reception, and Contemporary Use of the Septuagint (p. 34). ACU Press. Kindle Edition.

This seems to put the accent on the “poor translation” theory, but, in fact, early Christians viewed the variations - to the extent that Christians or Jews were aware of the variations (Philo was not) - as divinely inspired. Gallagher outlines the fact that the writers of the texts contained in the New Testament, including Jews like Paul, used LXX variants far more often than they used the Hebrew text.

Early Church Fathers relied on the LXX even more exclusively, at least up until Jerome, who felt he had a mission to return to the sources, namely, the Hebrew truth. Jerome operated on the mistaken notion that the Hebrew text he had was identical to the Hebrew text that existed from time immemorial. Jerome's desire to replace the LXX with the Hebrew text was not completely successful, but the Latin Vulgate was largely based on Jerome's Hebrew text.

Gallagher discusses the role of the Dead Sea Scrolls (“DSS”) in informing scholars that the Hebrew text was itself subject to textual variations and that the text used by Jerome and later Jewish scholars was itself corrupted, as some Christians had argued when Jerome was doing his translation.

Another patristic point that has been verified was Augustine's concern that abandoning the LXX would split the Latin church from the Greek Church (which continues to use the LXX):

“Augustine feared that the new translation would create a division between the Greek and Latin churches if the LXX was no longer the common text (Ep. 71.4).26

Gallagher, Edmon. Translation of the Seventy: History, Reception, and Contemporary Use of the Septuagint (p. 211). ACU Press. Kindle Edition.

Jerome also denied that the apostles used the LXX except when it agreed with the Hebrew version. Jerome was obviously wrong on this point.

Gallagher denies that the use of the LXX had anything to do with the inclusion of the deuterocanonical books (“DTB”) in the Christian canon. Gallagher's argument was not clear to me, but it seemed to be based on the argument that one text does not become canonical by physical proximity to another. The LXX books are found among the DSS, but we do not know if the Essenes viewed these books as canonical. Similarly, some of the DTB are found in LXX collections with canonical books, but this doesn't mean that those other books were considered to have the same status as the books acknowledged to be inspired. Gallagher writes:

“That is, because the apostles quoted the Septuagint, they must have accepted the Septuagint as Scripture, the entire Septuagint—not the Septuagint as defined by ancient Jews but as contained in codices from centuries later. Obviously, I think this argument is hopelessly flawed. To rephrase the faulty assertion: because Paul quoted Greek Isaiah, he must have accepted Greek Tobit as Scripture. How can that argument stand? Is that not like saying that if one of the Dead Sea Scrolls quotes the proto-MT form of Isaiah, then the author of that scroll must have accepted as Scripture the MT collection?

Gallagher, Edmon. Translation of the Seventy: History, Reception, and Contemporary Use of the Septuagint (p. 60). ACU Press. Kindle Edition.

Gallagher also observes:

“As for the books traditionally considered deuterocanonical, the New Testament contains no explicit quotations but some strong allusions, as we will see. The second century saw more Christian use of the deuterocanonicals, but Hengel also points out that evidence for such use is particularly prominent in the West, whereas these books “are scarcely transmitted in the East until Clement of Alexandria.”55 These writings became increasingly important for Christians, though even Origen still interacts with them relatively infrequently.

Gallagher, Edmon. Translation of the Seventy: History, Reception, and Contemporary Use of the Septuagint (pp. 69-70). ACU Press. Kindle Edition.

Early lists of canonical books, such as that compiled by Melito of Sardis, use the Hebrew canon, which excluded the DCB. Augustine, on the other hand, included the DCB in his canon list. The difference appears to be that Augustine paid attention to what Christians were actually doing, while some Christians mistakenly thought that there was fixed Jewish canon and Hebrew text that had existed from the beginning of time.

Gallagher makes the point that there was no Jewish canon prior to the third century CE, or if there was, it was a loose canon. The envelope of the canon for both Jews and Christians was loose in the first century CE. Gallagher notes that the DCB was useful to Christians - many Christian doctrines are found in those texts. As such, the DCB became canonized and the idea of the LXX expanded to include the DCB.

This seems to make some sense, but the circulation of the books in Greek as part of scripture must have played some role. There is guilt by association; can there be an authority by association?

Gallagher also seems to accept the “poor translation” model of the LXX. Concerning the virgin birth issue, he writes:

“Eight). If it is the case that only the Septuagint and not the Hebrew text of Isaiah 7 contains the idea of a virgin giving birth, then perhaps Christian theology is inextricably bound to the LXX. Maybe so, but I remain unconvinced—but not because I think the Hebrew text of Isaiah actually does contain a virgin birth. Rather, it seems to me that we may have misconstrued the reason that Matthew quoted Isaiah 7 or which element of Isaiah 7 Matthew thought the birth of Jesus fulfilled. Matthew does not really highlight Mary's virginity to any great extent, as others have noticed. But he does highlight the name of the child, Immanuel, explaining that it signifies “God with us.” Since the presence of Christ among his disciples is a theme of Matthew's Gospel,4 perhaps we could say that Matthew quoted Isaiah 7 not to tie Mary's virginity to a prophecy but to explain the significance of her child, “God with us”—which would mean that Matthew's point was not connected exclusively with the Septuagint. Moreover, scholars have argued that the Greek word used in LXX Isaiah 7:14 and often translated “virgin” may not have carried such connotations (but rather something more like “young woman”) for the Greek translator (or Matthew?).

Gallagher, Edmon. Translation of the Seventy: History, Reception, and Contemporary Use of the Septuagint (pp. 258-259). ACU Press. Kindle Edition.

Gallagher notes the interesting feature that the LXX may reflect an earlier version of the bible, but largely in passing:

“The LXX as a textual witness to the Old Testament is important for the modern Christian reader of Scripture (to say nothing of the Jewish reader, or the nonreligious reader, for that matter) because it either reflects an alternative Hebrew tradition (sometimes earlier than the MT) or offers an early interpretation of the Hebrew tradition preserved in the MT. The

Gallagher, Edmon. Translation of the Seventy: History, Reception, and Contemporary Use of the Septuagint (p. 262). ACU Press. Kindle Edition.

Gallagher acknowledges textual variation and that the DSS include variants closer to the LXX, but he follows that up with the observation that the variants approximating the Hebrew text are far more numerous, which misses the point that the LXX could be a fair translation of a valid variant.

This book is sometimes inside-game for beginners. I generally got the impression that Gallagher's position minimized the legitimacy of the LXX. I did not get a deep appreciation that the Hebrew version was evolving in the period after the translation of the putative LXX books.

So, this book is informative, but probably needs to be supplemented with other texts on the subject.

The Last Appointment by Charles Levin

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Charles Levin is a good short story writer. There is an art to writing short stories. The author does not have the time for a leisurely build-up of time, setting and character. The story has to unfold within paragraphs. Most modern short story writers can't manage the knack and end up writing science from a novel.

I was impressed by Levin's ability to tell an efficient and entertaining story.

Levin fills out this short story collection with a variety of essays. The essays are interesting. He has some acute observations to share.

I can't say that anything stands out in particular, other than the initial story (which has been done before), but it is not a bad investment of time or money.

Unhappenings by Edward Aubry

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This is a very entertaining book.

Throughout his life, Nigel Walden has had a problem with continuity. Things “unhappen” around him. He has girlfriends until he wakes up one morning and finds out that they died when they were five or that they have always actually been the girlfriend of another boy. He gets a good grade on a paper, but when he walks into class he discovers that he has always failed on the paper.

It makes for a withdrawn and confused life.

I was guessing for around 20% of the book about whether this book was about parallel universes or time travel. Since this is a science fiction book and Nigel seems to be credible, I stayed away from the obvious conclusion that he was schizophrenic.

Nigel is also visited by a girl whose age moves around a lot and who takes him to odd places and time to do random things.

All in all, the story was quite entertaining and captivating. It may have dragged in the middle part when we learn the rules of the game and Nigel finds someone who is not subject to “unhappening.” Ultimately, the story ends on a wistful and melancholy note.

I really enjoyed this book.

Hitler and I by Otto Strasser

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Strasser was a close associate with Hitler and Hitler's inner circle in the earliest days of the National Socialist Party. He opens this memoir with his recollection of meeting with Hitler in 1920, which was within a year of Hitler's joining the Nazis. Otto and his brother Gregor were responsible for establishing the Nazis in northern Germany, where they had the Nazis had their greatest successes. Gregor would go on to become one of the Nazi's first members of the Reichstag, and, eventually, was offered the Vice-Chancellor position to undercut Hitler's rise to power. Gregor was eventually executed in the Night of Long Knives in June 1934.

Otto was able to flee Germany upon Hitler's elevation to the Chancellorship in January 1933. Otto's relationship with Hitler had gone sour in 1930, which caused Otto to leave the Nazis and use his contacts with disgruntled Nazis to from the “Black Front,” which was an anti-Nazis subversive organization.

The crux of Otto and Gregor's dispute with Hitler is that the Strasser's were committed socialists. The Strassers and their followers believed that the term Socialist was the key element of the name “National Socialist”:

‘There is no question of revenge and there is no question of war,' I replied. ‘Our Socialism must be “national” in order to establish a new order in Germany and not to set out on a new policy of conquests.' ‘Yes,' said Gregor, who had been listening very seriously, ‘from the Right we shall take nationalism, which has so disastrously allied itself with capitalism, and from the Left we shall take Socialism, which has made such an unhappy union with internationalism. Thus we shall form the National-Socialism which will be the motive force of a new Germany and a new Europe.' ‘And,' I continued, ‘the emphasis in this amalgamation must be on the socialism. Don't you call your movement Nationalsozialist in a single word, Herr Hitler? German grammar tells us that in compound words of this kind the first part serves to qualify the second, which is the essential part.'

Strasser, Otto. Hitler and I (p. 9). Kindle Edition.

Socialism was originally a key part of the Nazi program, but Hitler was always the opportunist and moderated the social revolutionary/socialist aspects of the program in favor of Prussian nationalism.

Otto's version of Hitler is surprising since it is the version we expect, namely, Hitler was an overweening, crazy, perverted arsehole. A lot of the memoirs of Hitler's intimates tend to burnish Hitler's reputation - either because that's what they saw or they were so deeply invested in the Hitler mythos that they can't walk it back. Otto describes Hitler from the beginning as a shallow, two-faced ranter. I found it interesting that the tradition of saying “Heil, Hitler” did not begin until the early 1930s and the Strassers continued to refer to Hitler as “Herr Hitler” up to the end.

There are other insights that are surprising in that they are what we expect. For example, there is a constant claim on the internet that Hitler was a Christian. On this point, Otto Strasser has no doubt:


“‘Your incessant quarrels with my people. Last year it was Streicher, then it was Rosenberg, and now it's Goebbels. I've had enough of it.' ‘There is no connection between them, Herr Hitler. Julius Streicher is a dirty swine. At the Nurnberg Congress last year he served me up with Jewish sexual crimes as a “delicate aperitif.” I told him I considered his paper disgusting and that I liked literature, not pornography. In fact we had quite a violent quarrel, which, in view of its subject, should neither shock nor surprise you.' ‘And Rosenberg?' asked Hitler, discountenanced by the word ‘pornography.' ‘What have you got against him?' ‘His paganism, Herr Hitler.' Adolf rose and began to pace the room. ‘Rosenberg's ideology is an integral part of National-Socialism,' he solemnly declared. ‘I thought you had made peace with Rome.' Hitler stopped and looked me in the eyes. ‘Christianity is, for the moment, one of the points in the program I have laid down. But we must look ahead. Rosenberg is a forerunner, a prophet. His theories are the expression of the German soul. A true German cannot condemn them.' I made no answer, but stared at the man. I was genuinely taken aback by his duplicity.

Strasser, Otto. Hitler and I (pp. 77-78). Kindle Edition.

And:

“On December 20, 1924, a telegram addressed to the fortress of Landsberg ordered the immediate release of Hitler and Kriebel. Hitler left the prison the same day. Saul the revolutionary, transformed into Paul the good apostle, left on his journey towards the conquest of power. His first care was to make peace with Rome. ‘One cannot fight two enemies at once,' he explained to the deputy Jurgen von Ramin, who visited him at Landsberg. He adhered to this policy in spite of the attacks of the Right-Wing paper the Reichswart, edited by Count von Reventlow, and he solemnly informed Herr Heinrich Held, Prime Minister and leader of the Popular Catholic Party of Bavaria, that he condemned General Ludendorff's atheism. ‘The latter alone is the enemy of the Roman Church,' declared Hitler, who was profoundly imbued with German paganism, more so, perhaps, than Ludendorff or Rosenberg himself.

Strasser, Otto. Hitler and I (pp. 47-48). Kindle Edition.

Here is an interesting aside that I want to look into:

“Good Father Staempfle, a priest of great learning, edi¬ tor of a paper at Miessbach, spent months rewriting and editing Mein Kampf, He eliminated the more flagrant inaccuracies and the excessively childish platitudes. Hitler never forgave Father Staempfle for getting to know his weaknesses so well. He had him murdered by a ‘special death squad' on the night of June 30, 1934.

Strasser, Otto. Hitler and I (p. 46). Kindle Edition.

I was also interested in the attitude of the Nazi elites toward Hitler's Mein Kampf:

“It took place at the Nazi Party Congress at Nürenberg in 1927. I had been a member of the Party for two years and a half, and presented the annual report. In the courseof it I quoted a few phrases from Mein Kampf, and this caused a certain sensation. That evening, at dinner with several colleagues, Feder, Kaufmann, Koch, and others, they asked me if I had really read the book, with which not one of them seemed to be familiar. I admitted having quoted some significant passages from it without bothering my head about the context. This caused general amusement, and it was agreed that the first person who joined us who had read Mein Kampf should pay the bill for us all. Gregor's answer when he arrived was a resounding ‘No,' Goebbels shook his head guiltily, Goering burst into loud laughter, and Count Reventlow excused himself on the ground that he had had no time. Nobody had read Mein Kampf, so everybody had to pay his own bill.

Strasser, Otto. Hitler and I (p. 47). Kindle Edition.

The book is interesting for two other reasons. First, there is an excellent action/adventure story as Strasser stays one step ahead of the Gestapo after 1934.

Second, this book was written in 1940, apparently prior to the Fall of France. Thus, we have a moment of time preserved in amber and can see what people were thinking at that precise time.

In that regard, this observation is chilling:

“I shall never forget the last words of my last conversation with Gregor before my flight to Austria. ‘You'll see,' my brother said to me, ‘Adolf will end by blowing his brains out.' ‘Only if there's a sufficient audience to applaud him,' I replied, knowing his vanity, and his histrionic temperament. Hitler's individual fate matters little. Hitler and Stalin, Hitlerism, Prussianism, and Bolshevism, will be conquered by the forces of a new Germany and of a civilized Europe.

Strasser, Otto. Hitler and I (p. 185). Kindle Edition.

Duped by Saul Kassin

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I came to this book because of watching the opening installment of “Mind over Murder” on HBO. That documentary tells the crazy story of how five people confessed to being together at a murder they were not at. Many of the individuals created memories to correspond to their confessions. Only one of the six accused and convicted murderers refused to confess and he got the death penalty for a crime that DNA evidence showed that he could not have committed.

This is crazy stuff. Prior to the documentary and this book, I also would have gone along with the idea that if someone confessed to a crime they must have done it. Fortunately, after the advent of DNA evidence in the 1990s, we now have a kind of check on confessions in some cases.

“Duped” does a great job of laying out the sociological research to explain how false confessions are made to happen and what effect they have on the system. They happen to immature and/or low IQ people, generally, although people who trust authority must also be swept up in the system. They happen because the police are very good at generating and staging confessions, and generally are not much better than the average citizen in picking out liars, although they have a great deal of confidence in the truth detection abilities. The author explains that the method many police are trained in incentives the police to pick out the likely suspect and then use various techniques, such as isolation, lengthy interrogations, feeding information about the crime to the suspect, until some suspects begin feeding the information back to the police. Another technique is simply lying. The law permits the police to lie to suspects, although most people don't know this, and trusting individuals confronted with a police officer telling them falsely that their fingerprints are on the murder weapon will accept the premise and begin doubting their own recollection.

Some suspects simply want an interrogation to end and confess to end, thinking that trial will show they are innocent. Unfortunately, as “Duped” points out, once a confession is in the bag, there is a tendency for experts and witnesses who learn of the confession to find or discover evidence that corroborates the confession.

The worst thing about false confessions is that real killers go free. The author provides several examples of false confessions ending investigations that subsequently were linked to the real killer through DNA evidence.

The author makes several sensible suggestions, such as recording the entirety of the interrogation and stopping the police from lying.

This was an interesting book, which, frankly, has shaken a lot of my faith in the criminal justice system.

Baby Teeth by Daniel Polansky (Tor.com)

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The last story of 2021 was a good one.

This is a Tor.com short story. Normally, Tor short stories are mediocre. They are basically previews of forthcoming novels that assume you already know the backstory, character and setting. Short stories require greater writing story because, while novels can be leisurely developed over time, a short story has to deliver character, background, conflict and a punch at the ending, if it is going to be memorable, all within the space of a dozen pages.

Baby Teeth by Daniel Polansky lives up to these requirements. The protagonist is a middle-school nerd who plays D&D with his nerdy friends, who are just on the cusp of growing up. One of those friends - Jessica - rejects his invitation for a date to the dance because she “doesn't like him in that way.”

While he's growing up, he meets a, well, vampire killer, who saves him from a dead friend. He helps the vampire killer through what should be a life-changing adventure, transforming him into a hero.

But it doesn't.

This is a well-written and thoughtful story that should leave you thinking about your dreams as a child.

Lore by Alexandra Bracken

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My appreciation of this book followed a bell curve. At first, I was fairly bored with the stock urban fantasy characters - angry, outcast anti-hero, sassy gay sidekick, lost friend from youth - but I became interested in the story midway through with its unusual background, but at the end, I was back to impatience at the cliches and tropes.

So, to begin with, Lore is Melore Perseides of the Bloodline of the hero Perseus. Sometime in the 6th century, nine Olympian gods - who are real, as, apparently, are other pantheons - rebelled against the loss of their believers to the upstart Galilean. Zeus put them down because he's a pluralist kind of god and condemned Ares, Poseidon, Athena, Apollo and the rest of the Olympians other than Hera and Hades to exile from Olympia and the requirement of the “Agon,” where there immortality is stripped for seven days every seven years. During the Agon, anyone who kills a god, takes over as that god, immortality included.

To make matters even more competitive, Zeus recruited the bloodlines of nine Greek heroes to act as hunters of the gods during the Agon. The hunters want to kill the gods so as to bring the god's power under their control for wealth and power during the intervening years.

Lore is the last remaining scion of the Perseus bloodline. When she was 12 years old, her family was slain by the bloodline of the hero Cadmus (the “Kadmeides.”) Worse, the Kadmeides have a “new god,” the successor to Ares, under their control and he intends great things.

We meet Lore as a 19-year-old on the eve of the next Agon in New York City where she is kicking the ass of men in underground boxing matches. She had received training as a warrior, up until she was around 12, which explains why a 19-year-old girl with limited upper body strength can best any male challenger despite the numerous examples of women athletes regularly losing to male to female transgenders.

You go, girl!

She meets her lost friend, Castor, of the line of Achilles. She discovers later that Castor has “ascended” to the position left vacant by Apollo's death. She also is recruited by an injured Athena - who presents as an unlikable character throughout the yarn - to help Athena's cause in return for the promise that Athena will put down the new Ares.

Then, Lore is off and running everywhere - breaking into House Achilles and then House Cadmus. She goes toe to toe with numerous hunters and their best warriors, whom she regularly bests despite not training and being a nineteen-year-old girl. She suffers fatal injuries on two occasions. On one she is helped by Castor's healing powers in his form as the new Apollo.

This is the author's book, but at some point, the over the top girl warrior aspect becomes too much. If she had magical powers or superior training, then maybe it would be fine, but neither apply to Lore. For me, “too much” was reached when Lore was wielding the Aegis against the new Ares. The Aegis wasn't doing too much, but Lore is able to stand up to this godlike warrior and cut off his arm, and go for a draw in wrestling him, all while resenting his male chauvinism. Again, perhaps the example of “transwomen” breaking the jaws of female boxers has jaded me.

I didn't particularly like the stock feminism that comes out at odd moments. Lore chastises Athena with arguments that men are bad, Athena is bad for supporting men, and Athena was wrong for turning the Medusa into a monster (or not, according to Athena) just like they were in the middle of a feminist class consciousness-raising session rather than being hunted by two bloodlines of warriors.

Priorities, people.

Another bit of senseless ideology was the pairing of Lore's sassy gay friend with Castor's best friend, because that friend has been protecting Castor because of an unrequited crush because, obviously, any male relationship has to be sexual for it to be meaningful. Again, this is the author's book, but is it really necessary to have an unnecessary gay romance in every story published after 2020?

The ending turned into a lot of talking and posturing. This is pure stock villain dialogue:

““What use do I have for it now?” he said, glowering at her. “When my victory draws near? I cannot summon him and I will not be able to carry it. From this day on, I will only ever hold a sword.”

Bracken, Alexandra. Lore (p. 526). Disney Book Group. Kindle Edition.

And this was done better elsewhere:

“Lore drove down harder, and saw the moment his eyes widened when she didn't take a stance he recognized, and instead drove her knees down onto his lower stomach, just where his breastplate ended.

“Your biggest mistake was trapping yourself in this city with me,” Lore said.

Bracken, Alexandra. Lore (p. 522). Disney Book Group. Kindle Edition.

I am all for young characters going on their “hero's journey” but this is uniquely snotty. We've seen nothing that indicates that Lore has the ability to take on a god (much less two). This is right up there with Bat Woman's statement that the Bat-suit will be “perfect when it fits with a woman.” Humility and modesty are virtues and make for likable characters, but hey!, You Go, Girl.

Grace Explained by Brian Thomas Beckett Mullady

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This is a readable and accessible book of Thomistic theology on the subject of grace. If you are purchasing this as a self-help book or a popular saccharine-filled book on nebulous spirituality - as suggested by the title - you will be disappointed. Father Mullady has a nice, plain, easy-going writing style and he has a gift for synthesizing important and difficult propositions of theology in a way that is vivid and understandable. I've been studying Thomism for more than twenty years, but I got a lot out of Father Mullady's insights.

Father Mullady sets the stage in a way that is important and surprising. In following Aquinas, who follows Aristotle in this regard, the final end of mankind is God because man is an intellectual being and it is ultimate desire of intellectual beings to learn and to know the truth. Mullady explains:

“When we talk about the desire to see God, most people think of it as a desire of the will, which means that it requires a conscious moral decision. Therefore, it can't be there just by nature because that would mean that God is obliged to give His supernatural life to human beings, which would compromise His perfect freedom. But in the work of St. Thomas Aquinas, the desire for God is not a desire of the will, but rather is related to the power in man that wonders at the causes of the world, a wonder that can only be satisfied in seeing God. That power, of course, is the intellect, and that is where the desire to see God is located.

Mullady, Fr. Brian Thomas Becket; Mullady, Fr. Brian Thomas Becket. Grace Explained: How to Receive — and Retain — God's Most Potent Gift (p. 12). EWTN Publishing Inc.. Kindle Edition.

I must confess that I am one who has made that mistake. I understand that the desire to see God is a desire of the will to rest in the Good, but there is also the desire to know which is fundamental to the intellect. In this regard, as Mullady points out, mankind is different from other created material beings who do not share the same intellect. As Mullady explains:

“Since this tendency is identical with all natures having an intellect, it must be true for the angels as well. Though each angel has its own unique nature, because of the presence of the intellect, their natural fulfillment must be the same as man's. The tendency to the supernatural is not caused by the ability to realize this purpose or to be created in grace; it is identical with possessing an intellect. Thomas gives six arguments for this that have nothing to do with man being created in grace, and nothing to do with the will whatsoever, but rather have to do with the inadequacy of the unaided mind to know the truth — not only for man, but also for angels.

Mullady, Fr. Brian Thomas Becket; Mullady, Fr. Brian Thomas Becket. Grace Explained: How to Receive — and Retain — God's Most Potent Gift (p. 12). EWTN Publishing Inc.. Kindle Edition.

But human beings are material and our desire to know cannot fully reach up to God without assistance. That assistance is called “grace.”

“It is important to note that the desire causes the need for grace, and not the other way around. Man by nature is called to an end he cannot attain by nature because of the exalted character of the end. Thomas Aquinas puts it this way: “Ultimate felicity is to be sought in nothing other than the operation of the intellect, since no desire carries on to such sublime heights as the desire to understand the truth” (Summa contra Gentiles, III, 50). Other desires human beings have can be satisfied in other things, but not this one. Aquinas concludes then about the sublimity of human nature: “Let those men be ashamed, then, who seek man's felicity in the most inferior things when it is so highly situated” (Summa contra Gentiles III, 50).”

Mullady, Fr. Brian Thomas Becket; Mullady, Fr. Brian Thomas Becket. Grace Explained: How to Receive — and Retain — God's Most Potent Gift (pp. 13-14). EWTN Publishing Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Grace is the means that bridges the gap between man and God. Grace changes and fills the soul, allowing it to more easily choose God:

“Grace, then, is health of the soul. By grace, the human soul is qualitatively raised to enjoy God's own life. Grace, therefore, while it doesn't transform the person into a different substance, is still a true interior change. It is not just God overlooking the sickness of the soul, with the soul remaining in exactly the same condition as it was before the reception of grace.

Mullady, Fr. Brian Thomas Becket; Mullady, Fr. Brian Thomas Becket. Grace Explained: How to Receive — and Retain — God's Most Potent Gift (pp. 45-46). EWTN Publishing Inc.. Kindle Edition.

“The Catholic Church has always taught that grace involves a true interior change which is both the forgiveness of sins and something more: the divine indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Justification, then, is both the forgiveness of sins and the indwelling of the Spirit. This is transformative and restorative, not just a papering-over of evil. Grace is a result of God's love, and He does not just leave us as we are. In human love, we respond to a lovable quality we already find in a person. This is not true of God's love, which does not respond to already-existing qualities in things but rather brings those qualities into being. After all, God's love brings forth our being to begin with; everything that exists does so because God loves it into existence.

Mullady, Fr. Brian Thomas Becket; Mullady, Fr. Brian Thomas Becket. Grace Explained: How to Receive — and Retain — God's Most Potent Gift (p. 46). EWTN Publishing Inc.. Kindle Edition.

God's actions in providing grace are categorized differently according to effect. Actual grace is help given to a person in an actual circumstance to reject sin and accept/love God. Sanctifying grace establishes a habit of virtue in the soul of the recipient. Charismatic graces are given to people - even sinners - to build up the church. Cooperating grace entices but does not force our free will. Operating grace effects justification.

Father Mullady helped clear up my understanding of justification. While Protestantism tends to separate the moment of justification from sanctification by using two different words, i.e., justification and sanctification, Catholicism tends to use one word, i.e., “justification,” to describe the entire process from conversion to ultimate salvation. Catholicism recognizes, however, that “justification” breaks down into an initial moment of conversion, at which point, actual grace and cooperating grace work to entice the individual to turn away from sin and toward God, and the rest of justification, during which the cultivation of sanctifying grace occurs. The effect of the Catholic scheme is to make the role of grace more central. Mullady explains:

“In these final two chapters, we will consider the results, or effects, of two kinds of grace: operating grace (justification) and cooperating grace (merit). Let's begin by returning to a definition of operating grace: the initial movement of God within us that moves our free will. That free will, as we have said, has to be capable of being moved (that is, we cannot have blocked it from being moved), but we only participate in this movement in the sense that we receive it. This is the initial movement of grace, and it is what makes our souls to be right in God's eyes. Since our souls are spiritual, it is necessary that in order for them to be right, we must in some sense share life with God. It is a fundamental point of this book that both angels and human beings have as their final purpose seeing God in the face, knowing Him directly, by the light of glory, and that humans have to be prepared for this purpose while on earth by our free choices. But we have to experience the true life of God within us if our free choices are to conform to the way He knows and loves. It is in this first result of grace that man, in his soul, becomes righteous and just: the usual term for this is “justification,” by which we truly become a child of God.

Mullady, Fr. Brian Thomas Becket; Mullady, Fr. Brian Thomas Becket. Grace Explained: How to Receive — and Retain — God's Most Potent Gift (p. 54). EWTN Publishing Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Mullady deals with the Protestant bete noir of “merit” by noting that the Bible acknowledges the concept of merit and explains:

“In Catholic theology, all merit is divided into two types: congruent and condign. This respects the manner in which one becomes worthy of repayment for a service rendered. Condign merit is quid pro quo among equals. It is based on strict equivalence: I buy a loaf of bread and I owe the seller a just price. This cannot take place with God. He is infinite; we are not. There can be no demand for justice for our works from God.

Congruent merit is not strict equivalence between equals but an example of proportionate equality. God accepts that the person has done what he is able to do given the limitations of his nature and rewards him not because his actions are strictly worthy of God, but because he has chosen to cooperate with grace. It is not that our acts of free will cause God to reward us, but that He chooses to condescend to reward us for doing the best we can. He is saying, in effect, “I never condemn those who do what I ask of them; since I never act against human nature, I reward based on human nature.” God promised to reward us and His promise is infallible.

But there is also a part of our action that is worthy of merit in strict equivalence, and that is the part that is the direct result of the movement of the Holy Spirit. Remember that both we and God act in our good works. The merit received as a result of our allowing the Holy Spirit to act in us is called condign merit. This is the reward given strictly according to the order of justice as the deed merits — not from our cooperation with grace but to the extent that we have become, in a sense, transparent to the movement of the Spirit. In other words, God rewards two in any meritorious act: Himself and the individual who acts.

Mullady, Fr. Brian Thomas Becket; Mullady, Fr. Brian Thomas Becket. Grace Explained: How to Receive — and Retain — God's Most Potent Gift (p. 59). EWTN Publishing Inc.. Kindle Edition.

This is a book well worth the investment.

The Transformation of Israelite Religion to Rabbinic Judaism by Juan Marcos Bejarano Gutierrez

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This is a broad and fairly superficial survey of the topic concerning how Judaism went from an Ancient Near Eastern (“ANE”) religion with some peculiarities to the form of Rabbinic Judaism which is normative today.

Of course, there were the defining elements of the Sinai and Torah revelations/covenants that gave the Jewish religion a different premise from other ANE religions. Likewise, Gutierrez argues that the putative polytheism of ancient Judaism until the prophets combed through Judaism to repress its apparent polytheism is overstated. There was a monotheistic commitment prior to the prophets reflected by the success of the prophets:

‘To speak of the prophets such as Isaiah as instrumental in the introduction of strict monotheism is therefore incorrect according to this view. The most persuasive evidence for this lies in the very conditions of Israelite religion following the disintegration of Judean independence after the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE. The returning Babylonian exiles from subsequent generations returned with a religious expression very much connected to the idea of uncompromising monotheism, which arguably would not have occurred if indeed the character of popular Israelite belief was so ingrained with the mythological beliefs of assumed polytheism.

Bejarano-Gutierrez, Dr. Juan Marcos. The Transformation of Israelite Religion to Rabbinic Judaism (pp. 10-11). Yaron Publishing. Kindle Edition.

The Babylonian Captivity oriented the leadership class of Israel toward a literate, law-abiding, monotheistic religion, which Guiterrez argues, was present previously:

“The returning Babylonian exiles from subsequent generations returned with a religious expression very much connected to the idea of uncompromising monotheism, which arguably would not have occurred if indeed the character of popular Israelite belief was so ingrained with the mythological beliefs of assumed polytheism.

Bejarano-Gutierrez, Dr. Juan Marcos. The Transformation of Israelite Religion to Rabbinic Judaism (p. 11). Yaron Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Scribes came to dominate and to diminish the importance of the prophets. The adherence to the law required legal rulings, attention to precedent, and a class that could make such rulings. The focus of the individual believer included not only the Temple, but the written word. Scripture was read throughout the Diasporan communities. The Torah and other sacred texts were kept in the Temple as equivalent to Temple treasures, which helped to form the idea of a canon of scriptures, although the “canon” was not exclusive:

“The liturgy of the Temple service came to include readings from various sections of the Pentateuch, including passages from Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Also, three copies of the Torah were kept in the Temple, each reflecting a textual variant currently in existence.

Bejarano-Gutierrez, Dr. Juan Marcos. The Transformation of Israelite Religion to Rabbinic Judaism (p. 18). Yaron Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Guitierrez discusses the categories of canonization, including an odd third category:

“It appears that the rabbis of the Mishnaic period, for example, differentiated between works they considered as canonical but uninspired and those, which they regarded as both inspired and canonical literature. Surprisingly, a third category exists, that of non-canonical but inspired works. As an example, later Judaism regarded the Mishnah, Talmud, and Halakhic codes as authoritative texts for daily life and practice, though not inspired through divine revelation. In this regard, such works are to be considered canonical. In contrast, the Hebrew Scriptures were regarded as inspired, canonical literature. The Tannaim and Amoraim regarded the Hebrew Scriptures as having been written under divine inspiration, n'amarah b'ruach HaKodesh – spoken through the Holy Spirit.

Bejarano-Gutierrez, Dr. Juan Marcos. The Transformation of Israelite Religion to Rabbinic Judaism (p. 22). Yaron Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Unfortunately, in my reading, he did not go far enough in explaining what was contained in or what happened to the category of “inspired but not canonical.” I will have to research more about books that “defilith the hand.”

But that is the virtue of this book. It is more of a springboard and introduction to the subject and so can be profitably used as a place to begin further study. In itself the book is quite short and read in short order. It is not by any means a comprehensive survey of the topic.

Shadows of a Doubt by Jeff Reynolds

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This is a solid alt-hist, urban fantasy that just couldn't resist the temptation to engage in racist virtue signaling. The annoyance factor of the racism tainted the book, ruining whatever enjoyment I might have found.

The book is set in an alternate Baltimore, which is the capital of the United Territories of Coventine. The UTC is a magical world with elves, goblins, trolls, etc., where magic works. On the other hand, the UTC seems to cover a large part of our version of the United States and there are things like the Catholic Church. No explanation is given for how this history developed, or what Coventine is and why it is “United.”

I like alt-hist, which is why I found the author's approach annoying. Part of the fun of alt-hist is to look under the hood and see how the world developed. How did a Catholic Church exist in a land where there are Elves? How did England take-over the New World in the face of magic? How does magic interface with the history that had to have happened to get something so similar? However, we don't get any of this in this story. Instead, it is all just postulated as if it made sense, which it doesn't.

The story involves Mirabel Sinclair, who is a young, orphaned, lapsed Catholic, WHITE, closeted-lesbian woman who is learning the private detective game. She's hired to find the Goose that Lays the Golden Egg. Then, her mentor is killed and the inevitable supporting characters drop everything to advance the plot, which involves oppressed witches fighting bigotry.

In other words, it is basic urban fantasy and not bad at that. It's perhaps a bit cliched, but cliches are cliches for a reason. I found the book to be a bit too long in developing the story. However, as an urban fantasy, it was solid journeyman work.

What destroyed the book for me was the anachronistic Woke virtue-signaling where “white” is a pejorative term meaning something akin to “bad,” “bigot,” “narrow-minded,” and/or “oppressor.” The book revels in a scheme where there are whites - bigot, oppressor, bad - on the one hand, and the underclass of elves, goblins, native-Americans, and blacks. This two-dimensional ideological schema popped its head up whenever it was able. For example:

“He'd spent seven years off and on in the Baltimore West correctional facility, housed with the rest of the violent non-human offenders—including blacks, I thought with disgust...“

Reynolds, Jeff. Shadow of a Doubt (Mirabel Sinclair) (p. 32). Trollbreath Creations. Kindle Edition.

“The spectacles and hat did little to hide his features. Not that there was anything wrong with being a troll, but most didn't flaunt it given the bigotry from white folks.

Reynolds, Jeff. Shadow of a Doubt (Mirabel Sinclair) (p. 6). Trollbreath Creations. Kindle Edition.

“Church. He kept bringing it up, and I kept avoiding it. The endless sermons about the evils of elves and trolls, gnomes, pixies, all the other races, how they lacked an immortal soul. The not-subtle implication blacks were another race, too, as well as the great nations of peoples who lived here before we came. Brown skin, differently shaped eyes, it didn't matter the physical categories. Anyone not human, not white, were included. Although yes, father Gregory didn't preach such racist tripe, nor had sister Mary Margaret or the nuns within Saint Brendan's orphanage. But I avoided them all on general principle. Ingy believed in a world spirit, and that appealed to me more.

Reynolds, Jeff. Shadow of a Doubt (Mirabel Sinclair) (pp. 17-18). Trollbreath Creations. Kindle Edition.

“most white landlords in Baltimore wouldn't rent to blacks. Oh, they'd rent to me, a good Catholic white woman,

Reynolds, Jeff. Shadow of a Doubt (Mirabel Sinclair) (p. 21). Trollbreath Creations. Kindle Edition.

“A slumming white girl with her friends,

Reynolds, Jeff. Shadow of a Doubt (Mirabel Sinclair) (p. 109). Trollbreath Creations. Kindle Edition.

“The elves were notorious in their hatred of other races. They weren't racist against other elves, so there wasn't a barrier of color like here. They simply hated anyone not of pure elvish blood.

Reynolds, Jeff. Shadow of a Doubt (Mirabel Sinclair) (pp. 176-177). Trollbreath Creations. Kindle Edition.

“You know the authorities would have hunted me down like a dog and strung me up by the neck. Gnome kills white woman plays well in the newspapers;

Reynolds, Jeff. Shadow of a Doubt (Mirabel Sinclair) (pp. 191-192). Trollbreath Creations. Kindle Edition.

So, there you go - even in alt-hist fantasy land, “whites” are tainted by the original sin of racism, unlike everyone else, including the Elves who at least don't discriminate against other elves.

This is anachronistic and weird stuff for the 1930s. There was a lot of prejudice going on back then: the Jews looked down on the Irish; the Protestants looked down on the Catholics; Everyone looked down on everyone else. As a Catholic in America, this woman's “white” bona fides in the 1930s were hanging by a thread as can be seen in the recent campaign against “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion,” assuming Al Smith ran for president in this world.

So, what we have here is a modern political ideology.

I don't read escapist books so that an author can ignorantly virtue signal. I practice civil rights law for those who have their civil rights violated and I don't like racism, no matter who is the target. In this case, stereotyping “whites” is racism, and it annoys me just as much as stereotyping blacks, Hispanics or elves would.

I also groaned whenever Mirabel expressed her desires for her life-long friend. Of course, we had to have lesbians somewhere. I can't watch a Netflix show today without lesbians and transexuals. It's de rigeuer these days to have such aspirational relationships, which is probably why so much of pop culture is dying, namely, the product is not being designed for anyone outside of a tiny market.

Why should I care if two women get it on together? Altruism? As a guy, I don't identify with either of the characters in this tale of unrequited love. I take this as another sign that the author is not writing for the 99% of the market that isn't composed of consumers of woke virtue-signaling, and, as such, I shall absent myself from future installments of this series.

Woke Racism by John McWhorter

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Linguist and public intellectual John McWhorter considers the contradictions of the ideology of “woke racisms” and concludes that only a religion could be so incoherent, and, therefore, ideological wokeness must be a religion. From this, he concludes that those who have converted to this “religion” cannot be reasoned with but, instead, must be tolerated in a way that prevents them from imposing their religion on the rest of us.

McWhorter is not the first to note the similarity of woke ideology to a religion. Frankly, he is not even the best. Steven D. Smith provides a more compelling explanation in “Pagans and Christians in the City.” Smith argues that religions contain imminent and transcendent elements. Imminent religions find the eschaton in the here and now; transient religions place the eschaton in the hereafter. No religion is entirely one or the other, but secular leftism represents as close to the perfect imminent religion as possible, lacking any sense of the immortality of personal being and with it, an absence of hope in some time after our life. Christianity places its hope in a distant eschaton, but also believes that God is sustaining us in this life.

McWhorter notes the “catechism of contradiction” that is wokism's creed, such as not dating someone of another race is racist, but dating someone of a different race is racist because it “exotifies” the date. McWhorter's argument is that only a religion could hold such contradictions without melting down. This argument is illogical and, frankly, a caricature of religion. While there are religious traditions that revel in their illogic, there are also those like Thomism and Calvinism that are hyperrational.

But first, there is the matter of nomenclature. McWhorter opts to refer to the woke as “the Elect” because of their own emphasis on their own moral purity and elite status. This appellation is also apt in that it highlights the fear of contagion that these people have when faced with impure thoughts.

The burden of McWhorter's argument is probably that Wokism is not a science or scholarly discipline, notwithstanding its location in academia. Wokism is an ideology, like Communism, and Communism is certainly a faith with a creed, praxis, and eschaton. As such, Wokism is a faith, like a religious faith and is not properly treated like a scholarly discipline. To someone religious like myself, McWhorter's constant degradation of religion qua religion is not helpful, but McWhorter lives in the Woke world. For the secular atheists who also live in that world, the ignominy of being told that they are a religion may be the best tactic.

McWhorter also canvasses the reasons for Wokeness. He finds that it is so useless for practical improvements and logic, that it must fill some need in the woke individual. He channels Eric Hoffer's insights about the role that the desire to belong and the submergence of individual identity into that of a group plays in radical ideological movements.

McWhorter is at his best in explaining what should and should not be done in dealing with face issues. His plan to improve to the situation of blacks is to 1. end the war on drugs, 2. teach phonics, and 3. improve the standing and availability of vocational training. His explanations as to why these suggestions make sense are solid and, best of all, race neutral.

His solution for the problem of dealing with the Elect is courage and backbone:

“What we must do about the Elect is stand up to them. They rule by inflicting terror, either through invective or quietly trailing off with the likes of “Well, I guess if you think racism is okay, then . . .” They think that to require them to engage in actual reason is heretically “white.” There is nowhere to go with them from there.

Our response to this cannot be to simply fold, because this means giving up the post-Enlightenment society we hold dear. We must stop being afraid of these people, and once we do, there is something we need to steel ourselves against and get used to.

People often ask, “How can I talk to people like this without being called a racist?”

The answer is: You cannot.

That is, they will call you a racist, no matter what you do or say beyond what they stipulate as proper. Black people: Be ready for the alternate slam, that you are “self-hating” and “betraying your own people.” They will say this to and about you.

The coping strategy, therefore, must be not to try to avoid letting them call you a racist, but to get used to their doing so and walk on despite it.

Specifically, on top of all else we are required to manage, enlightened Americans must become accustomed to being called racists in the public square.

We must become more comfortable keeping our own counsel, and letting our own rationality decide whether we are racist, rather than entertaining the eccentric and self-serving renovated definitions of racism forced upon us by religionists.

When that type calls you a racist—and I mean white ones every bit as much as black ones—you need not walk off, “doing the work” of wondering whether your accuser was right. You are Galileo being told not to make sense because the Bible doesn't like it.

McWhorter, John. Woke Racism (pp. 172-173). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Being hated is hard. Being gaslit is harder. My advice is to have a group or a friend you trust to give you a reality check. We are pack animals and if everyone is shouting 2+2=5, we may need someone to remind us that is not true.

Also, read this book and others like it to avoid gaslighting.

Queen of Candesce (Virga Book 2) by Karl Schroeder

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This is a call-back to classic science fiction with big ideas and swashbuckling. Virga is a planet-sized, gas-filled bag in space. It lacks gravity. It is inhabited by humans who have created low-tech versions of artificial gravity through centrifugal force. Lumps of soil provide farm lands. Water may exist in vast bubbles. Animals have evolved to move by flying. We know nothing of the universe outside of Virga, except that there are hostile artificial intelligences who are prepared to take over Virga if the field surrounding Virga that suppresses electronics is turned off.

The center region of Virga is home to Candesce, the Sun of Suns, which illuminates the central region of space. Candesce is an artificial sun. Other artificial suns in outlying regions allow humans to live outside the central regions in nations that stay together and float in the air current around Virga.

The first book followed the adventures of Hayden Griffin. Griffin belongs to the nation of Aerie which was conquered by the nomadic nation of Slipstream. His parents were part of the Aerie resistance with plans to light up a new sun and declare independence. Things go wrong and Hayden is left with a mission of vengeance that took him to Candesce with Slipstream admiral Chaison Fanning and his connivingly competent wife Venera Fanning. This group gets the “key to Candesce,” which almost leads to disaster as an agent of the outside entities almost get the key to Virga. The story ends with Hayden jetting away to complete his mission, Chaison's ship destroyed, and Venera dropping away from Hayden into the open air of Virga in the hope of finding some place to land.

The second book opens with Venera arriving at the strange “world” of Spyre which is a large spinning tube with a smaller tube inside. The tubes spin to provide artificial gravity. Spyre is old and is falling apart. Its society has devolved into micro-nations, composed of a few buildings or a few acres. Venera uses her skills at conniving to elevate herself in this crazy culture. She has the Key to Candesce, which is of particular interest to the nation of Sacrus. Sacrus appears to have tentacles throughout Virga. The key will allow it to expand out of the restricted area it controls on Spyre.

During the course of this story, Venera becomes humanized. She started in the first book as a kind of villain. In this book, she becomes concerned with other people and acts heroically. Her mission remains to escape Spyre and to return to Slipstream for vengeance.

This is a fun and easy read. The format of this series seems to be to follow the original characters separately, which was surprising to me since I thought we would be following Griffin to the next stage of his mission. The next book appears to involve Chaison Fanning.

Crimes of the Century by The Great Courses

I liked this so much that I've given it as a gift to several crime aficionados (with the hope of hooking them on history.)

This covers various murders that were dubbed “THE Crime of the Century” during the 20th century. Many are forgotten today. Many are misunderstood. The professor - Richard B. Spence - does a great job of correcting both phenomena.

The lectures start with the unsolved murder of a film producer, who apparently skipped out on his family in New York to start a new life in Hollywood. The professor presents the background, the players, and a possible solution in an interesting and coherent manner. Although a history lecture about a grisly topic, the narration is captivating. It's at least as good as the best documentary, although lasting only 30 minutes.

I was surprised at how much I did not know about the Manson murders, the Son of Sam, and the assassination of Leon Trotsky.

What fascinates me about historical murder is how they introduce us to history at ground level. We are not talking about the lives of the rich and influential in many of these cases. Even when we are, the forgotten people of history play important roles. It is a way of seeing “the other side of history” in one of those rare moments when the spotlight shifts for a moment to the life of real people living their real ives.

I recommend this series without reservation.

Post Script to the Peloponnesian War

Leuctra 371 by Sean O'Broghan

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I came to this after reading Donald Kagan's The Peloponnesian War. Kagan's book had whetted my interest in Greek antiquity. The Peloponnesian War had been a decades-long struggle between the Athenian Empire (aka the Delian League) and Sparta and its allies lasting from 457 BC to 404 BC. The war was a close run thing that could have gone either way on various occasions. However, in the end, Sparta won. Sparta then imposed a hegemony on Greece, betraying the ideal of Greek autonomy with which it had begun the war.

Spartan hegemony was shorter than the war. The Peloponnesian War ended in 404 BC; Sparta lost its hegemony to Thebes in Boeotia in 371 BC. Thebes was an odd contender for the Greek crown. Thebes had sided with the Persians in the Greek-Persian War and had been on the wrong side at Platea. During the Peloponnesian War, Thebes had been an ally of Sparta against Athens, but while it was a regional player, it was not one of the heavy-weights like Sparta, Athens, or Corinth. However, as the author points out, given its location and geography, the region where Thebes had predominance, Boeotia, was the dance floor of battles, with many major engagements being fought in Boeotia.

However, at Leuctra in 371 BC, the Theban general Epaminondas was able to take a technique that had proven successful against Spartan hoplites previously and combine it with its revived “Sacred Band” military tradition. The Sacred Band were Thebes elite troops composed of 300 paired homosexual lovers. The notion was that the pairing of lovers gave the unit more commitment for the fight. It appears that the Sacred Band was man for man the equal of Sparta's elite troops.

The tactic that Epamonindas used was to overweight his left side with a phalanx that was 25 to 50 soldiers deep and occupied the first ranks of the phalanx. Epaminondas also presented his qualitatively weaker right side in echelon so that it would not come into contact with the Spartans until his left side had crushed the strong Spartan right side. Part of Epaminondas' tactic - a traditional move in Greek hoplite battles - was to go after the leaders of the opposing forces. In this, he was successful and the death of the Spartan king and its best fighters gave him the tactical victory and ultimately the war since Sparta could not make up for the losses.

After Leuctra, the legend of Spartan invincibility was destroyed. Spartan allies abandoned Sparta. Thebes marched into Laconia and re-established Messenia. thereby freeing the Helot slaves on whom the Spartans depended.

Theban hegemony lasted about as long as Spartan hegemony had. Ultimately, it was exterminated by the rising power of Macedonia:

“The Theban Sacred Band had a prestigious existence from its formation (around 378 BC) until it was wiped out to a man at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC (Plutarch Pelopidas 18.5).”

Dahm, Murray. Leuctra 371 BC (Campaign) (p. 59). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.

The battle of Leuctra is described in a variety of sources, including Plutarch, Xenophon, Diodoros, and Pausanias. The author considers Xenophon to be untrustworthy concerning the battle of Leuctra because of an anti-Theban bias.

This is an Osprey campaign book so it follows the usual format of providing information on background, forces, battlefield, order of battle, and the battle itself. It is filled with helpful maps and pictures to illustrate the battlefield and the equipment of the combatants.