Diana: WORST. BEGINNING. OF. A. (SUPPOSEDLY). ROMANTIC. SONG. EVER!

Lyrics - Diana Paul Anka

I'm so young and you're so old
This, my darling, I've been told

Smooth move there, Mr. Anka: remind her that she's old.  Oh, wait, that's only what you've been told.   What you're actually telling her is that she's not really old, people just think she is.  Like that's really going to make her feel better.  Then again, he probably made more in a year than I'll make in ten, so what do I know?

A Social Network Christmas

The Christmas Story Retold | The Prodigal Thought

Usually these kinds of things are quite cheesy. But I thought this re-telling of the Christmas story, via Facebook, was quite well done.

Not much to add, except watch for the spoiler alert after my response and see if you can spot the minor edit below (just pretend it's Waldo):

While I would admit that something like "The Digital Story of the Nativity" is a little cheesy (e.g., the three wise men discussing what gifts to bring), I don’t think it’s entirely bad, either (then again, I also happen to like "Bethlehemian Rhapsody" and "Hotel Can’t Afford Ya", so some might find my tastes a bit skewed). However, I clearly prefer "A Social Network Christmas", as it seems a bit more reverent and somber both in music and tone, thereby probably capturing the emotions of those who were involved better. Also, there seems to be a better synchronization between the music and what’s being typed.
Um, did I just review a couple of youtube videos? (Which might help explain why I prefer to write under an pseudonym).

SPOILER ALERT!!!!
SPOILER ALERT!!!!
SPOILER ALERT!!!!

SPOILER ALERT!!!!

(I don't want to hear anyone claiming they weren't warned!)

My favorite parts of the video:

1. 1:24 Joseph typing that he's hurting/confused at hearing about Mary's pregnancy
2. 1:57 + 1:59 "Oh, that's convenient..." and Joseph unfriended
3. 2:42 "IT'S A BOY!" typed in at same time song starts with "Rejoice...."
4. "His name shal be <close up> Jesus </video>
5.  

 BTW, there is no # 5, I just wanted to see how many people are paying attention.

A song fit for The King* written** by Queen

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Children of all ages,

We proudly present....

The Bethlehemian Rhapsody***

And, if you act now, you'll also get

(free of charge)
The Hotel Can't Afford Ya

*No, I don't mean Elvis, I mean THE King.
** Well, the music was written by them, at least.
*** Thanks to NT Blog for drawing my attention to the Bethlemian Rhapsody

The mad lovechild of Dr. Seuss and H.P. Lovecraft

The Call of Cthulhu Page 01 by *DrFaustusAU on deviantART

The Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft

For beginning readers.

So far, the book is up to pp. 44-45.
Page 1:

The most merciful thing in the world is, I think,
that the mind is unable to connect and link
all the disparate pieces of things that we know
and thus learn of the horrors that lurk down below.

More fun deconstructing children's literature

SAET » Tom Wright Reads Humpty Dumpty » The Society for the Advancement of Ecclesial Theology

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Clearly the writer is telling an Israel story, and here alludes to the Temple.  This echoes other lines in early 2^nd Nursery Literature, such as Mother Hubbard’s cupboard (the "storehouse" of the Temple) and the bone (resurrection life) which she sought for her dog ("Gentiles"). "But when she got there, the cupboard was bare and the poor little doggie had none."  The temple had nothing to offer the Gentiles, and they thus remained in their state of Adamic sin and decay.

Somehow, Wright (and everyone who responded to the post) missed the significance of the name "Humpty Dumpty", an error I sought to correct in my response (awaiting moderation; I've added here the "during the clearing of the temple":that I meant to original comment and changed the word "invasion" in the original to "intrusion".)

"Clearly the writer is telling an Israel story, and here alludes to the Temple."
I’m surprised that no one has of yet deconstructed the name "Humpty Dumpty" itself. Remove the nonsensical last syllable from both words and you get "Hump" and "Dump".
The former, especially with the mention of the "wall" as noted by Wright, is a clear reference to the Temple Mount. But note that instead of the Temple {"wall") being on the Mount {"Hump"), the order is reversed in the rhyme so that the "Hump" is on the "wall". IOW, everything has been turned upside down and is in chaos (It may also be a subtle allusion to Jesus’ "city on a hill" in Matthew 5:14, but once again, with the order upside-down). This is further strengthened by the "Hump" being combined with the "Dump", as the name of Jerusalem’s dump is the well-known... Gehenna (or "Hell"), indicating an intrusion of the unholy into the place of the sacred that echoes Jesus’ quote of Jeremiah 7:11*: "My house shall be called a house of prayer: but ye make it a den of robbers" during the clearing of the temple.
Need Mother Goose paint a clearer picture than this of what is going on here?

*I’m tempted to make a Slurpee joke here, but will attempt to resist it.

In a similar vein (the link to the following was provided in the "SAET » Tom Wright Reads Humpty Dumpty » The Society for the Advancement of Ecclesial Theology" post).

Initial Explorations: Bultmann Reads Mother Goose

Internal evidence rejects the view that wehave here an original composition by Mary (Mother) Goose of Boston(1686-1743).[1] The phrasing of I-A is definitely late eighteenthcentury, since the Goose Period would have rendered it "diddley-diddley" (and thus "fiddley" in I-B). Furthermore, the sequence "cat-cow-dog-dish" represents an obvious redaction and is a compilation ofat least four different accounts.[2] Thus, the author of the piece isunknown,[3] and its date set between 1780 and 1820.[4] The Sitz imLeben of the Depression of 1815 may be reflected in III.2.

 See also "Of Bears (and others) of 'very little brain'"

Of bears (and others) of "very little brain"

Reconstructing the Pooh Community - Justin Taylor

But few know of [Richard Bauckham's] years spent in the Winnie-the-Pooh books, reconstructing the community behind the texts [by using methods similar to those used to reconstruct the "Johannine community"]. In this unpublished paper he summarizes the "major methodological breakthrough which virtually all Pooh scholarship now takes for granted." Here is a snippet:

I couldn't do justice to the humor of what follows, you'll just have to read it yourself.  Instead, I'll just skip to my response

So what he's saying is that both Winnie the Pooh and the Gospel of John must have been the works of redactors working with multiple sources?  Because we all know there's no way that the Gospel of John could have been the work of a single author.

For a parody of the "documentary hypothesis" (a.k.a., JEDP), there's New Directions in Pooh Studies: Überlieferungs- und religionsgeschichtliche Studien zum Pu-Buch, for which I've provided the following excerpt:

There is little need, at the present stage of scholarship, to attempt a justiÞcation of the principle that the dogma of unitary authorship for works of literature must be totally abandoned. In all conÞdence we may say that a priori we may expect the Pooh corpus (viz. Winnie-the-Pooh, hereafter abbreviated W, containing traditions of higher antiquity than the Deutero-Pooh book, The House at Pooh Corner, hereafter abbreviated H) to be of composite origin; even if there were such a person as A.A. Milne, traditionally the 'author', we may be sure that he did not write the Pooh books. His name does not occur once within the narratives themselves, and we can hardly be expected to take a title-page, manifestly a later addition, seriously.

 See also "More fun deconstructing children's literature"

Review: The Mosaic Authorship of the Pentateuch

The Mosaic Authorship of the Pentateuch

By Professor George Frederick Wright, D. D., L. L. D.

Chapter 2 of The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth, Vol. 1 (the series of booklets from which fundamentalism took its name)

The Good

• Shows how "Jehovah" and "Elohim" were used interchangeably and therefore the original clue to the division of the Pentateuch into the alleged "J" and "E" documents is baseless
• Demonstrates two instances (Exodus 18:6 and Genesis 39:20-22) where alleged difficulties that are supposed as indicating multiple authorship can be resolved through textual criticism
• Shows how the standards used by the "destructive critics" to divide the text are arbitrary- if one applied them to other works (such as the Epistle to the Romans, Robert Burns' "To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough", or the writings of Macauley or Milton "by selecting lists of words from the documents prepared by them when holding high political offices and from their various prose and poetical writings"), then one would have to attribute multiple authorship to these as well
• Argues that the moral law, the civil law, and the ceremonial law "were naturally and necessarily in existence at the same time"
• Gives nine "considerations" that support the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch

The Bad

• At times, he lets adjectives serve as arguments (e.g., Dahse is a brilliant mind and working on an important book)

The Mixed

• While most of the article seems easily understandable to the average reader, he could have made the section on the sacrificial system much clearer by including an example or two of how critics of the Bible have used the misunderstanding of the difference between altars and sanctuaries to argue for multiple authorship.

Conclusion Aside from the above minor criticism, it's hard to find fault with the article.
RATING: 8/10

Review: The History of the Higher Criticism

The History of the Higher Criticism

by Canon Dyson Hague, M.A.

Chapter 1 of The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth, Vol. 1 (the series of booklets from which fundamentalism took its name)

The Good

• Explains difference between Higher Criticism and Lower Criticism
• Explains why Higher Criticism isn't always antithetical to orthodox Christianity, and why many assume that it is
• Fairly good summary of the history of rationalist Higher Criticism.
• Shows why the compromise position is untenable.  If the Bible has been tampered with to the degree that the liberal Higher Critics claim, then it is no longer reliable.

The Bad

• Presupposes that the Bible is special, such as the "Subjective Conclusions" section (while I agree with him that it is, he is likely to fail to convince any skeptics by doing so).
• Resorts to ad hominem in the "German Fancies" section.  This section would have been greatly improved if he had instead given some examples of what he thought was "hypothesis-weaving and speculation" on their part and why.
• On a similar note, he gives no examples of how the Germans Higher Critics were more "speculative... and conjectural" than the French-Dutch or British-American counterparts.

 

The MiXeD

• While he does well to point out the anti-supernatural bias of many of the rationalist Higher Critics, he never really explains how this alone discredits their arguments (again, I'm not disagreeing with what he says, but instead think he could have strengthened his case by arguing against their conclusions, rather than against their beliefs because he is unlikely to convince any skeptics that way)..
• Names scholars of equal academic credentials who disagree with the liberal Higher Critics, but doesn't provide any of their arguments.

Conclusion
Obviously, an article as short as his can't provide in-depth analysis of all the issues.  However, room for even a superficial treatment of a few of them could have been made by removing the unsupported assertions and replacing it with solid argumentation.  Instead of simply preaching to the choir, more effort should have gone into trying to convince the skeptic (or even the undecided).

RATING: 3/10 (while a good introduction to the topic, it needs less fluff, more meat)