Translating my thoughts into words.
We can never thank enough those who have served our country. I remember my grandfather, my wife’s grandfather, my brother, and brother-in-law. There are so many.
Follow this link to see an amazingly touching and poignant tribute to our veterans. Read from the bottom to the top. I remember asking my grandfather, also a WW2 vet, if he had ever shot anyone. He said “no” as well…
HT: Cidu Bill
I have mentioned before that the LoC is posting some of their photographic holdings to Flickr as they are scanned. Today saw the release of a new batch. This one included photos of senators including these two from PA (my adopted state). The size difference is great (and great).
Penrose is on the left and, at least according to Wiki, was quite the wit. Among other facts about his life
Boies Penrose (November 1, 1860 – December 31, 1921) was an American lawyer and Republican politician from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He represented Pennsylvania in the United States Senate from 1897 until his death in 1921.
Wiki includes the following quotes:
“Public office is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” — Boies Penrose
“I believe in the division of labor. You send us to Congress; we pass laws under which you make money…and out of your profits, you further contribute to our campaign funds to send us back again to pass more laws to enable you to make more money.” — Senator Boies Penrose (R-Pa.), 1896, citing the relationship between his politics and big business.
“All physical and economic tests that may be devised are worthless if the immigrant, through racial or other inherently antipathetic conditions, cannot be more or less readily assimilated…” — Boies Penrose, 1902, Chinese Exclusion and the Problem of Immigration
The first is a truism, the second reality (of all parties), and the third, well I am not sure. I need some context for that one. There is less info on George T. Oliver at Wiki, but he was still quite the business man and politician.
George Tener Oliver (January 26, 1848–January 22, 1919) was an American lawyer, publisher, and Republican party politician from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He represented Pennsylvania in the United States Senate. He was born in Ireland while his parents were visiting there. After graduating from Bethany College, West Virginia (A.B., 1868; A.M.,1873) he studied law in an office in Pittsburgh, where he practiced from 1871 to 1881. He then engaged in the iron and steel industry, accumulating a large fortune. Oliver sold most of his holdings about 1899 and purchased the Pittsburgh Gazette-Times and, in 1900 the Chronicle-Telegraph.
So head over to the LoC’s Flickr feed for the photos and stick around to see how much you will discover and learn while chasing down the subjects of their images. Other images just uploaded include a Suffrage Parade in DC (below), President and Mrs. Wilson at his inauguration, and “Bulgarian giving water – dying Turk, Adrianople” (below).
[This became long. I really hope you will read it all, but if you are short on time, skip to the last two paragraphs. Ta.]
Dr. Claude Mariottini has a long post with a non-review of Mario Liverani’s Israel’s History and the History of Israel. (For those not following along, I say “non-review” since as part of Biblical Studies Writing Month Dr. Mariottini has written a thorough review to be published elsewhere.) In that post Dr. Mariottini takes issue with “minimalists,” those who argue that very little to known of the historical narratives in the Bible can be proved to be true, and turns the table, challenging them to prove the non-existence and historical irreality (my own word, according to the spell check) of the Bible.
Dr. Jim West (I am a doctor as well, just not a “real” doctor, as my grandmother will tell you) calls this an “impossible impossibility” and says that you cannot prove a negative. Duane Smith (who is not a doctor but has two masters and actually did a real job for a career) says the Game is a afoot! and has a humorous and accurate description of the problem of this academic pong match. He also has a postscript which demonstrates that you can prove a negative. Well, sort of.
The example from the article cited by Smith is:
1) If unicorns had existed, then there is evidence in the fossil record.
2) There is no evidence of unicorns in the fossil record.
3) Therefore, unicorns never existed.
The article then goes on to deal (but not substantially) with the reason why this inductive reasoning does not hold true. We can say the fossil record found to date shows no evidence of unicorns, but we know that fossilization was a fairly rare occurrence and we certainly do not have all of the fossils deposited at our disposal to examine. Thus, it is merely probable that unicorns never existed.
Think about it for just a moment. Although the ancients likely had discovered dinosaur fossils which led to many of the dragon and cyclops-type myths, it wasn’t until 1824 when William Buckland gave us the first scientific description of a dinosaur, the “Megalosaurus.” So, the record, as known and understood until 1824 told us nothing about dinosaurs. Does that mean they did not exist? Our ignorance does not constitute evidence of somethings non-existance.
Now Dr. West objects to Dr. Mariottini:
They demand proof of the historicity of the events narrated by the text.
But of course they do! This is how history is supposed to be done- and how it is done in every historical discipline except ours!!! The never ending quest for proof is simply the quest for evidence upon which faith can be based and hence a denial of the place and function of faith in a person’s relationship with God. My quibble with the maximalists isn’t because I think they are wrong historically (though they are)- it’s because I think they are wrong theologically.
(BTW, I now see a number of comments on Jim’s post dealing with what I am about to say, so I will be brief.) The problem with Jim’s comment is that all historical disciplines have to depend upon the sources available to them and none of it is with complete certainty. When you are dealing with ancient history, as many of the commenters pointed out, you are often left with nothing but texts (or hardly anything). We have very little non-textual physical remains from Sumer and Akkad or even Babylon for that matter. But there are good historians working with the texts they have to develop and relate histories of these peoples and nations.
Finally, (if you are still reading) here is my beef with minimalists. It is not that they deny that we can know anything about the history of early biblical times or that they deny that David existed, yada yada yada. (Which I believe arose from three yods or an ellipses being written. dot dot dot yod yod yod. Yiddish, yeah?) It is that they make their own histories! The problem isn’t a healthy dose of skepticism or conservative historicity it is that they put forth a load of rubbish as their own, better reconstruction of why the Pentateuch was written and what it was really about. Think of Mendehall and Gottwald’s so-called “internal revolt” model of how the “conquest” really occurred. Why is it that a reconstruction by scholars three thousands years removed from what may or may not have happened is more accurate than a written account, removed perhaps by hundreds of years yet based upon ancient traditions? Both may be wrong, but I find it hard to believe the detailed reconstructions that such scholars offer.
So my plea: I do not ask that you believe the biblical narrative or even that those folks ever existed, but please do not foist your own biblical fantastes* upon the academic world.
*No, that is not a typo.
