Tuesday, April 29, 2025

Started: Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls   (This is a reread.  I originally read it in elementary school--I forget exactly when, but around 4th grade.)

Check out this book on Amazon: https://amzn.to/436YfYv                  (This is an Amazon Associate's Link.  If you buy anything through that link, I get a commission.)
at No comments:

Peter Pan by James M. Barrie: Book Review


This is the novel, and not the stage play.  As I mentioned in the video, my understanding is that originally the novel was called Peter Pan and Wendy and the stage play was called Peter Pan.  But nowadays most reprintings of the novel just call it Peter Pan, so that's the name I'm going with here. 

Started: April 22, 2025

This is a reread.  I read this book for the first time when I was in 6th grade.  I did it again as an audiobook in 2010.  (2010 was before I started reviewing rereads on this blog, so I didn't review it at that time.)  So this is be my 3rd time going through this book.  (I have also revisited parts of this book in 2014 in my lessons-- here and here, but I did not reread the whole book at that time, only selections from it.)  However, as this is my first time reviewing this book on this blog, according to my new rules, I'm doing this as a video only review.



Addendum: One of the disadvantages of doing these video reviews unscripted is that sometimes I'll just forget to talk about something until after I've shut off the video camera.  In this case, I had meant to talk about the last chapter, but it slipped my mind.  
The last chapter is really heartbreaking.  It's where James Barrie reminds his readers that there's a tragic side to the story of Peter Pan, and it really hits me everytime I read it.  I was noticing this time around that the emotional punch in the last chapter is done by the author doing an expert job of describing the reactions of the characters.  It's very well-written, and calculated to produce exactly the reaction that it produces.





Did you enjoy this review? Consider supporting me on Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/joelswagman

Support me on Patreon: https://patreon.com/JoelSwagman

Check out this book on Amazon: https://amzn.to/44A0g0u           (This is an Amazon Associate's Link.  If you buy anything through that link, I get a commission.)
at No comments:

Wednesday, April 23, 2025

We Are Your Sons: The Legacy of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg by Robert and Michael Meeropol: Review

(Book Review--History)

Started: April 14, 2025

I had read parts of this book before, but not the whole thing--as I mentioned in this post here.  However as this is my first time reviewing this book on this blog, so according to my new rules, I'm doing this as a video only review.




I was able to read this book thanks to the Michigan statewide state-wide interlibrary loan service called MeLCat, which may be in danger thanks to a Presidential executive order.  If you, like me, enjoy using MeLCat, contact your local representatives and let them know. 

Did you enjoy this review? Consider supporting me on Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/joelswagman

Support me on Patreon: https://patreon.com/JoelSwagman

Check out this book on Amazon: https://amzn.to/42wbMaO       (This is an Amazon Associate's Link.  If you buy anything through that link, I get a commission.)
at No comments:

Tuesday, April 22, 2025

Started: Muppet Babies Omnibus

Check out this book on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3Gkc3Gl                (This is an Amazon Associate's Link.  If you buy anything through that link, I get a commission.)
at No comments:
Started: Babylonian Creation Myths by W.G. Lambert (This volume contains a few different ancient texts, and I may treat it as a compilation volume, and review each text separetly.  We'll see how it goes.  The main part of this book is the Enuma Elish, which will be a reread, since I read it once before, but that edition I read contained commentary by someone who thought the Enuma Elish was proof of UFOs, so this present volume should presumably be a more sober and traditional approach to the  Enuma Elish.)

Check out this book on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3Y7FYYs                            (This is an Amazon Associate's Link.  If you buy anything through that link, I get a commission.)
at No comments:
Started: Peter Pan by James M. Barrie  This is a reread.  I read this book for the first time when I was in 6th grade.  I did it again as an audiobook in 2010.  (2010 was before I started reviewing rereads on this blog, so I didn't review it at that time.)  So this will be my 3rd time going through this book.  (I have also revisited parts of this book in 2014 in my lessons-- here and here, but I did not reread the whole book at that time, only selections from it.)

Check this book out on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/44A0g0u                   (This is an Amazon Associate's Link.  If you buy anything through that link, I get a commission.)
at No comments:

Ruby Bridges: Movie Review


This is my first time watching this movie, so according to my new rules, I'm doing this as a video only review.





Did you enjoy this review? Consider supporting me on Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/joelswagman

Support me on Patreon: https://patreon.com/JoelSwagman

Check out this movie on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3RtW3Ut            (This is an Amazon Associate's Link.  If you buy anything through that link, I get a commission.)
at No comments:

Monday, April 21, 2025

Adventures of the Gummi Bears: A New Beginning: Disney Afternoon Adventures Vol. 4: Book Review


Started: April 18, 2025

(This is my first time reading this book, so according to my new rules, I'm doing this as a video only review.)



I was able to read this book thanks to the Michigan statewide state-wide interlibrary loan service called MeLCat, which may be in danger thanks to a Presidential executive order.  If you, like me, enjoy using MeLCat, contact your local representatives and let them know.  

Did you enjoy this review? Consider supporting me on Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/joelswagman

Support me on Patreon: https://patreon.com/JoelSwagman

Check out this book on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3RolCGz         (This is an Amazon Associate's Link.  If you buy anything through that link, I get a commission.)
at No comments:

Sunday, April 20, 2025

This Week in Booktube: April 20, 2025
(These are the Booktube videos I watched this week. As always, I encourage you also to check out each of the videos I've linked to down below.  Support Booktube.  And let me know what you've watched this past week.)

Google document: docs, pub

at No comments:
Contradictions in the Resurrection Story--Interesting Random Facts
I really should have written this post years ago, given that this information has been living in my head rent free since 8th grade.  I've alluded to it or referenced it many times before on this blog (e.g, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).  But I've never made a full post properly explaining it.  So here we go.
When I was in 8th grade, our 8th grade Bible teacher did a lesson on all of the contradictions in the resurrection account (*1).  He told us that if you examine the different accounts of the resurrection in the Bible, they all contradict eachother in ways that are impossible to harmonize.  He told us that the Church had sometimes tried to produce harmonized accounts of the resurrection story, but that none of those accounts worked. (*2)
He then had us open our Bibles, and read the resurrection accounts in each of the 4 different gospels, and pointed out the contradictions between them.  And sure enough, there were big contradictions between them that just couldn't be harmonized with each other.  It blew my mind at the time, because it was one of the first times that I realized there were big problems with the biblical narrative (*3).
Now, I don't want to get too much into the weeds here discussing every contradictory detail about the resurrection across all 4 gospels.  We'd be here all day.  (Wikipedia has a nice chart listing some of the main differences, if you wanted to check there.)  So let's just compare Matthew and John as an example.
Here is Matthew 28 from the NIV:
1 After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.
2 There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3 His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. 4 The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.
5 The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. 6 He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. 7 Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.”
8 So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9 Suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. 10 Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”
And here is John 20:
1 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. 2 So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”
3 So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. 4 Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, 7 as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. 8 Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. 9 (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) 10 Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.
11 Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb 12 and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.
13 They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”
“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” 14 At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.
15 He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”
Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”
16 Jesus said to her, “Mary.”
She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).
17 Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
18 Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.
You can see, of course, that they both can't be true.  In one version, the women see the angel come down, there's a violent earthquake, they see the stone rolled away, and the angel tells them that Jesus has risen, and the women are filled with joy.
In the second version, Mary Magdalene arrives by herself, she sees that the stone is already gone, and the tomb is empty and (without an angel to tell her what is happening) she assumes that someone has removed Jesus's body, and asks the gardner what he did with the body, before realizing the gardner is Jesus.

In addition to the shock of realizing that the Biblical narrative was contradictory, I remember also being surprised that I had never noticed these contradictions before.  Because I had heard both of these stories many times before in Sunday School.  I had heard the story about how the angel had come down in front of the tomb to tell the women that Jesus waas resurrected.  And I had also heard the story about how Mary Magdalene had found an empty tomb, and then mistaken Jesus for the gardener.  And I had never before realized that those two stories contradicted each other.  Why had I never realized this before? (*4)

Now, believe it or not, our 8th grade Bible teacher was actually a conservative Christian, and his purpose in teaching us about the contradictions in the resurrection account was not to weaken our faith, but rather to make our faith stronger.  In his view, these contradictions proved that the resurrection had to be real.
His logic was as follows:
* He said that eye-witness accounts often contain contradictory details.  Whenever there is a car accident, eye witnesses who are questioned afterwards often will remember the incident differently.
* He also said claimed that if accounts are too similar, it invites suspicion.  People who are looking to perpetuate a fraud will take care to make sure that their stories are all consistent.  He mentioned his background working with juvenile delinquints in the past.  Whenever they committed any kind of a crime, the first thing they did was to get together to make sure that they all had their "stories straight" in case they got questioned by the police.  
Thus, fact that the gospels all have contradictory stories indicate that the apostles weren't trying to create a fraud, because if they had been, they would surely have met together to get their "stories straight".  And so, it proves the truth of the resurrection.

In the 30+ years since this lesson, I have often wondered how representative his thinking was of Christian apologetics in general.  He was actually the only Christian I ever heard who wanted to talk about the contradictions in the resurrection account.  All the other Christians I've known either don't know about the contradictions in the resurrection account, or would prefer not to talk about them.
(That following Sunday, I brought the subject up with my Sunday School teacher, and mentioned the contradictions in the resurrection account, and how they can't be harmonized.  She gave me a blank stare, and then just changed the subject to something else.) (*5)
So, I guess I'm not sure who I'm talking to here, but just for the record, let me go through all the reasons why I've come to believe his argument doesn't make sense.

Let's start with the claim that eye-witness accounts often contain differing information.  Fine.  I'll accept this for some of the minor details.  Maybe after witnessing a high speed car-crash, some of the bystanders might have differing recollections on how fast the cars were going, or who hit who first.  "Gee officer, it all happened so fast, I'm not sure if blue car was in the intersection first, or the red car."

But does this work for major details?  Can you say, for example, "Gee officer, it all happened so fast, I'm not sure if there was a violent earthquake and an angel came down from heaven and rolled away the stone, or if I came up to the tomb and it was just empty with no one there."  
And who are the multiple witnesses in this scenario anyway?   If we're assuming the gospels are based on eye-witness testimony (*6), then presumably Matthew and John both are getting their information from Mary Magdelene, right?

But there are even bigger problems.  We haven't yet talked about the first appearence of Jesus to the disciples.  In the gospel of Luke, Jesus appears to his disciples while they are still in Jerusalem.  Some of them doubt he's alive, but Jesus gives them proofs and opens their minds.  And then after they believe, Jesus leads them out to Bethany, and ascends to heaven from there.
36 While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
37 They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. 38 He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? 39 Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.”
40 When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet. 41 And while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” 42 They gave him a piece of broiled fish, 43 and he took it and ate it in their presence.
44 He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.”
45 Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. 46 He told them, “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, 47 and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things. 49 I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”
50 When he had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. 51 While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. 52 Then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. 53 And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God.
Acts (the companion book to Luke) offers a slightly different account in which Jesus stayed with his disciples for 40 days in Jerusalem.
But in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus told Mary to tell the disciples to meet him at Galilee, and so the surviving 11 disciples went to Galilee, and Jesus appeared to them there.  In Matthew, this is obviously the first time Jesus is appearing to his disciples, because some of them are still doubting that he's alive.
16 Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 
So again, you can see why you can't just explain this away by assuming confused eye-witnesses.  "Gee officer, it all happened so fast, I'm not sure if Jesus appeared to us that night in Jerusalem, and then stayed with usin Jerusalem for 40 days, or if we had to hike all the way out to Galilee to see him for the first time."

So there's that.
Secondly, it struck me even as an 8th grader that my teacher was using backwards logic by assuming that the lack of similarities meant that the Gospel stories had to be true.
Follow me on this:
The logic is that police are more likely to believe an alibi if the story is consistent across multiple people.  This is because if the police know that if the perprators all tell different stories, then it is likely that they are lying.  The juvenile delinquints know this, therefore they make sure to make their stories consistent.  
Therefore consistent stories are unreliable, and contradictory stories are true?  I mean, that's kind of backwards, right?  The reason criminals take such trouble to get their stories straight is because the police know that consistent stories are more likely to be true than inconsistent ones.

Imagine two policeman are working on the case:
1st policeman: Well, they must be telling the truth.
2nd policeman: What do you mean?  Their stories don't match up at all.
1st policeman: Yeah, that proves they were telling the truth.  If they were lying, they would have tried to get their stories straight before they came in here.
2nd policeman: But none of the details lined up. They couldn't even agree on what town it took place in.  One of them said Jerusalem, the other one said Galilee.
1st policeman: That just proves they must have been telling the truth all along.

And then, there's the synoptic problem.  I didn't know this in 8th grade, but it turns out that scholars believe that Matthew and Luke were both copying from Mark, because a number of passages are word for word identical--I explained all about the synoptic problem in this previous post here.  
So, if the argument is that different and contradictory accounts are reliable, and similar reports are unreliable, then what to do about all the stories in Matthew, Mark and Luke that are exactly the same?

But wait, you might ask, if Matthew and Luke are both copying from Mark, then why do they have different accounts of Jesus appearing to his disciples after the resurrection?
And the answer is that Mark's Gospel actually originally ended at verse 8 with the angel in the empty tomb, and the women running out.  Verses 9-20 were added later.  
4 But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. 5 As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.
6 “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. 7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’”
8 Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.
[The earliest manuscripts and some other ancient witnesses do not have verses 9–20.]
So, Matthew, Mark and Luke produce similar versions up until the point of the angel in the empty tomb.  But because Mark's gospel ends here, Matthew and Luke each had to make up their own separate stories about Jesus appearing to the disciples.  So Matthew makes up one story about Jesus appearing to his disciples in Galilee, and Luke makes up a story about Jesus appearing in Jerusalem (*7)

So... what to make of all this?
Bart Ehrman's explanation actually makes a lot of sense to me.
Bart Ehrman points out that our earliest accounts of the resurrection come from Paul.  (Scholars believe Paul wrote his letters before the gospels were written.)  
Ehrman points out that Paul mentions Jesus appearing to several people, but Paul doesn't know any of the stories that are in the gospels.  Paul just mentions that Jesus appeared to people.  See 1st Corinthians 15:
3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
Ehrman also points out that Paul doesn't mention anything about an empty tomb or a stone rolled away.  In fact, Paul doesn't mention anything about a tomb at all.  Going off of Paul's account, it's not even clear Jesus was buried in a tomb.
Ehrman believes that after Jesus died, Jesus' disciples began to have visions of him.  Ehrman points out that this is a fairly common phenomon, that people often have visions of their loved ones after they died.  Based on Paul's writings, that Jesus just "appeared" to various people, this seems plausible.

By the time we get to Mark's gospel, which was written in 70 AD, the story has expanded.  Now we have an empty tomb.
Matthew and Luke are both copying from Mark, and expanding on Mark, so the story gets expanded yet again.  Now we have stories of Jesus appearing to and interacting with his disciples.
And then finally we get John, which scholars believe is the last gospel to be written, in which these stories are even more developed. (*8) , (*9)

That makes the most sense to me of anything.
If that doesn't make sense to you, then fair enough.  But then, let me know, how do you make sense of the contradictions in the resurrection account?

Footnotes: docs, pub
(*1) I grew up in the Christian school system, so we studied the Bible as one of our core subjects.

(*2) Some years ago, I linked to an article written by someone making fun of the Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties (A) attempts to harmonize the 4 different resurrection accounts.  After going through the harmonization narrative beat by beat she concludes:
And there you have it.  The tomb is a kind of Grand Central Station.  Mary Magdalene is an idiot.  The disciples need a whole lot of telling.  Jesus is a master of disguise.  And harmonization is a specially dishonest form of special pleading, but also – well, a bit of a joke.
I've not actually encountered any other attempts at harmonizing the resurrection accounts.  If someone knows of something out there, let me know. 

(*3) The general view in my religious commmunity was that the first 11 chapters of Genesis might not be literally true, because they were a metaphor--or something.  But once we entered into the historical parts of the Bible, I had been taught to believe there were no mistakes in it.

(*4) I had a similar feeling many years later when I learned that there are two contradictory accounts of creation in Genesis: there is the 6 day account in Genesis 1 (in which animals were created before man) and the Adam and Eve creation story in Genesis 2 (in which Adam was created first, and then the animals).  I had heard both of these stories so many times, why had I never realized they contradicted each other?

(*5) One of the reasons I've held off on writing this post over the years is that I thought it was silly to write a long rebuttal to something someone said to me once in 8th grade, unless I got more evidence that this is something that was widely believed by more people than just my 8th grade teacher.  But, like I said at the top of the post, this lesson has been living rent free in my head for so many years, I suppose I might as well write about  it.
As to not knowing how widespread these beliefs are in Christian circles, I suppose it's somewhat on me for not reading more Christian apologetics over the years.  If I was more widely read, maybe I'd have more of an idea of what the offical conservative Christian line on this is.  
As I mentioned in my review of The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel, Lee Strobel dips his toe into the water here and suggests that perhaps the contradictions in the resurrection account might prove the lack of collusion between the disciples.  But then, on the very next page, Lee Strobel goes on to also say that properly understood, there are no contradictions in the resurrection account.  This is something that is typical of Lee Strobel (as I complained about in my review).  He'll often try to advance two contradictory arguments at once.  Also, Lee Strobel does absolutely no work to try to prove that the resurrection accounts don't contradict each other.  He just claims that they don't. Declaring something without evidence is also something that's very typical of Lee Strobel, as I also complained about in my review.
To be fair, I guess I should acknowledge that there's one other Christian writer I know who dealt with the contradictions in the resurrection story: Peter Enns in The Bible Tells Me So.  Peter Enns' book was an attack on the inerrantist position from a liberal Christian perspective, so Peter Enns was very good at pointing out all the contradictions in the Bible.  But, in my opinion, Peter Enns was not very good at giving the reader any other alternative framework.  It's like, okay, so, all the gospels have contradictory accounts of the resurrection. So what am I supposed to do with this information?  Do I still believe in the resurrection now, or what?

(*6) For the record, the gospels are not based on eye-witness testimony, but we'll just pretend they are for the purposes of illustrating why this argument still wouldn't work.

(*7) Technically, scholars don't think Matthew and Luke themselves made up these stories--they believe they were drawing on previous sources.  But somebody must have made them up.

(*8) I know longer remember which of Bart Ehrman's books he advances this theory in.  I think he's mentioned it a few times, actually, but the Ehrman books that I've read all kind of run together in my memory.  It was one of these: The History of the Bible: The Making of the New Testament Canon, Did Jesus Exist?, Forged, Jesus, Interrupted or Misquoting Jesus.

(*9) Incidentally, there's a similar thing going on at the beginning of Jesus's life.  Neither the letters of Paul, nor the gospel of Mark, mention anything about the birth of Christ, and so both Matthew and Luke come up with their own accounts of how Jesus was born, and both Matthew and Luke create completely different accounts of the birth of Jesus--this was something I wrote about before in a previous post: Historical Problems With the Christmas Story
at No comments:

Saturday, April 19, 2025


Many years ago, when I was teaching English in Japan, a Japanese colleague once asked me when Easter is every year.
I paused, thought about it, and realized I had no idea how the date of Easter was determined.  I had just always checked the calendar every year to see when Easter was.  I knew that sometimes it came early, and sometimes it came late, but I had no idea why.
It was one of those moment where I thought to myself: "I wonder why I've never been curious about this before.  It's strange how you can go your whole life, and just take certain things for granted, without ever being curious about it until somebody asks you."
So, I Googled it, expecting that there would be a really simple answer.  And instead I got this really complicated answer about how there was some sort of mathematical formula to determine the date of Easter every year.  I attempted to read some of it, only partially understood it, and eventually went back to my Japanese colleague and said, "It appears that the way the date of Easter is decided is really complicated."

That was over 20 years ago, so let's go over to Wikipedia now, and see if I can make any more sense of this.
Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the Paschal full moon (a mathematical approximation of the first astronomical full moon, on or after 21 March – itself a fixed approximation of the March equinox).
Uh, okay, that actually doesn't sound too complicated, right?  The first Sunday after the first full moon after the March equinox.
But what exactly is a "Paschal full moon"?  How is that different than a regular full moon?  And what do they mean "a mathematical approximation of the first astronomical full moon"?

Okay, well let's click on the link, then, and go over to the Paschal full moon page:

The paschal full moon is the ecclesiastical full moon of the northern spring and is used in the determination of the date of Easter. The name "paschal" is derived from "Pascha", a transliteration of the Aramaic word meaning Passover. The date of Easter is determined as the first Sunday after the "paschal full moon" that falls on or after March 21. (March 21 is the ecclesiastical equinox, the date fixed by the Gregorian reform of the calendar as a fixed reference date for the Spring Equinox in the Northern hemisphere; the actual Equinox can fall on March 19, 20 or 21). This "full moon" does not currently correspond directly to any astronomical event, but is instead the 14th day of a lunar month, determined from tables. It may differ from the date of the actual full moon by up to two days.[3][better source needed]

The calculations to determine the date of the paschal full moon can be described as follows:

  • Nineteen civil calendar years are divided into 235 lunar months of 30 and 29 days each.
  • This period of 19 years (the metonic cycle) is used because it produces a set of civil calendar dates for the ecclesiastical moons that repeats every nineteen years while still providing a reasonable approximation to the astronomical facts.
  • The first day of each of these lunar months is the ecclesiastical new moon. Exactly one ecclesiastical new moon in each year falls on a date between March 8 and April 5, both inclusive. This begins the paschal lunar month for that year, and thirteen days later (that is, between March 21 and April 18, both inclusive) is the paschal full moon.
  • Easter is the Sunday following the paschal full moon.
Hmmm, um, this is getting a bit more complicated.  I'm not sure I follow all of this.
Okay let's go back to the main Date of Easter Page to see if we can make any more sense of this:

The saltus and the seven extra 30-day months were largely hidden by being located at the points where the Julian and lunar months begin at about the same time. The extra months commenced on 1 January (year 3), 2 September (year 5), 6 March (year 8), 3 January (year 11), 31 December (year 13), 1 September (year 16), and 5 March (year 19).[31][32] The sequence number of the year in the 19-year cycle is called the "golden number", and is given by the formula

GN = (Y mod 19) + 1

That is, the year number Y in the Christian era is divided by 19, and the remainder plus 1 is the golden number. (Some sources specify that you add 1 before taking the remainder; in that case, you need to treat a result of 0 as golden number 19. In the formula above we take the remainder first and then add 1, so no such adjustment is necessary.) [g]

Cycles of 19 years are not all the same length, because they may have either four or five leap years. But a period of four cycles, 76 years (a Callippic cycle), has a length of 76 × 365 + 19 = 27,759 days (if it does not cross a century division). There are 235 × 4 = 940 lunar months in this period, so the average length is 27759 / 940 or about 29.530851 days. There are 76 × 6 = 456 usual nominal 30-day lunar months and the same number of usual nominal 29-day months, but with 19 of these lengthened by a day on leap days, plus 24 intercalated months of 30 days and four intercalated months of 29 days. Since this is longer than the true length of a synodic month, about 29.53059 days, the calculated Paschal full moon gets later and later compared to the astronomical full moon, unless a correction is made as in the Gregorian system (see below).

...and I give up!

**************
Or is Wikipedia making this more complicated than it needs to be?  I tried to find some Youtube videos explaining this, and the 2or 3 Youtube videos that I watched just say that Easter is on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox.  Example below: 


So are these Youtube videos oversimplifying?  Or is Wikipedia over-complicating?

**************************************************
I mentioned above that I first tried to look this up 20 some years ago.  When I was searching on Google 20 years ago, one little factiod that I came across, and that got stuck in my head, was that Easter was the only holiday that was based on both the solar calendar and the lunar calendar.  I don't remember where I read that, but I read it somewhere.  So there you go.

**************************************************
In Asia, Easter was always noticeable by its absence.  As I noted back in 2004:
In Japan, Easter is a holiday that is notable by its absence. Most Western holidays have been imported to Japan in one form or another. Christmas isn't officially celebrated, but the decorations are everywhere. Valentines day is arguably bigger in Japan than in the states. Halloween is a non-event, but Japanese people know it exists, and us JETs are usually asked do some sort of Halloween English lesson in October.
But for Easter, nothing. In fact the past two years, Easter came and went without me even realizing it.

In later years, I would learn the same was true in Cambodia and Vietnam as well.  It's strange but, for whatever reason, Easter seemed to be the only major Western holiday that never got imported over into Asia.

at No comments:

...hopefully I'm not disturbing him by sending this, but I thought he might appreciate the head's up, just in case he is actually losing ad revenue.
For my review of season 10 of the Revolutions Podcast, see HERE.
I happened to notice those episodes were missing because I'm currently doing one last run through of The Revolutions Podcast.  Follow my progress HERE.
at No comments:

The Dragonslayer (Bone #4) by Jeff Smith: Book Review



[This is a reread in the sense that I read these same issues before when I read Bone: The Complete Cartoon Epic.  However, this is my first time reviewing this volume by itself, so for the purposes of my new review project, I'm going to count this as a video only review.]





Did you enjoy this review? Consider supporting me on Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/joelswagman

Support me on Patreon: https://patreon.com/JoelSwagman

Check out this book on Amazon: https://amzn.to/44u1zxU         (This is an Amazon Associate's Link.  If you buy anything through that link, I get a commission.)
at No comments:

Friday, April 18, 2025

Started: Adventures of the Gummi Bears: A New Beginning and Other Stories

No Amazon link today.  (I can't find this book on Amazon).
Update: found it here: https://amzn.to/3RolCGz                   (This is an Amazon Associate's Link.  If you buy anything through that link, I get a commission.)
at No comments:

Thursday, April 17, 2025

"Wouldn't it be crazy if there was a process, I don't know, maybe we'll call it due process, that would make it so we're not arguing if someone committed a crime after the fact of them being put in a prison outside of the country."--Well said, Phil.

at No comments:
Starting: The Complete Dick Tracy Volume 16: 1954-1956

Check this book out on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3EsMPVx               (This is an Amazon Associate's Link.  If you buy anything through that link, I get a commission.)
at No comments:

I Am Greta: Movie Review


This is my first time watching this movie, so according to my new rules, I'm doing this as a video only review.




Did you enjoy this review? Consider supporting me on Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/joelswagman

Support me on Patreon: https://patreon.com/JoelSwagman

Check out this movie on Amazon: https://amzn.to/42j4d8w            (This is an Amazon Associate's Link.  If you buy anything through that link, I get a commission.)
at No comments:

Wednesday, April 16, 2025

R-T, Margaret, and the Rats of NIMH by Jane Leslie Conly: Book Review


Started: April 12, 2025

(This is my first time reading this book, so according to my new rules, I'm doing this as a video only review.)




The quote I alluded to is from Nicodemus from Chapter 21 of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.  The exact quote is as follows:
Surely rats would have developed reading and writing, judging by the way we took to it. But what about machines? What about cars and airplanes? Maybe not airplanes. After all, monkeys, living in trees, must have felt a need to fly, must have envied the birds around them. Rats may not have that instinct.
In the same way, a rat civilization would probably never have built skyscrapers, since rats prefer to live underground. But think of the endless subways-below-subways-below-subways they would have had.





I was able to read this book thanks to the Michigan statewide state-wide interlibrary loan service called MeLCat, which may be in danger thanks to a Presidential executive order.  If you, like me, enjoy using MeLCat, contact your local representatives and let them know. 

Did you enjoy this review? Consider supporting me on Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/joelswagman

Support me on Patreon: https://patreon.com/JoelSwagman

Check out this book on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4jzlRe2            (This is an Amazon Associate's Link.  If you buy anything through that link, I get a commission.)
at No comments: