Tofu--Interesting Random Facts

Recently, I've become aware through a few conversations just how little most Americans know about tofu.

It seems a lot of people think of tofu as some sort of meat substitute that came out of the California health craze in the 1980s.

In all honesty, I probably thought the same thing before I moved to Asia.  But I know better now, so I thought I'd help spread the knowledge.

Tofu isn't a 20th Century invention.  According to Wikipedia:

It originated in China and has been consumed in the country for over 2,000 years.^[1][2] Tofu is a traditional component of many East Asian and Southeast Asian cuisines;

...and although tofu is often used as a meat substitute in America, in Asia tofu is often used as a meat supplement--that is the tofu is often cooked alongside the meat, and takes on a bit of the flavor of the meat juices.

In other words, it's not considered a food only for vegetarians in Asia.

Tofu is originally from China, where it is called "dofu".  It is called "tofu" in Japanese, however, and it is from Japanese that it came into English.

Years ago, I knew a guy in Japan who was dating a Chinese student.  She was rather upset about the nomenclature.  "It's originally from China," she said.  "So you should use the Chinese name 

dofu instead of the Japanese name tofu.  Yet you say tofu in English.  Why is that?"

I told her I didn't know.

But I've looked it up on Wikipedia just now, and according to Wikipedia:

The English word "tofu" comes from Japanese tōfu (豆腐). The Japanese tofu, in turn, is a borrowing of Chinese 豆腐 (Mandarin: dòufǔ; tou4-fu) 'bean curd, bean ferment'.^{[7][8][9][10]}

The earliest documentation of the word in English is in the 1704 translation of Domingo Fernández Navarrete's A Collection of Voyages and Travels, that describes how tofu was made.^[11] The word towfu also appears in a 1770 letter from the English merchant James Flint to Benjamin Franklin.^[12]: 73 The term "bean curd(s)" for tofu has been used in the United States since at least 1840.^[13][14]

Lynching of Mack Charles Parker--Interesting Random Facts

I'm rereading Black Like Me, and one of the points in the book is the "Parker lynch case"

At the shoe stand, Sterling did not give his usual cordial greeting. His eyes looked yellower than usual.

“You heard?” he asked. 

“No . . . I haven’t heard anything . . .” 

He told me the Mississippi jury refused to indict in the Parker lynch case. The news had spread over the quarter like a wave of acid. Everyone talked of it. Not since I was in Europe, when the Russo-German Pact of 1939 was signed, had I seen news spread such bitterness and despair. 

(This is from p.48-49, but the case also gets discussed a few more times later in the book.) 

Sounds like this case was a really big deal back in its day, but I never even heard of it.

It's strange.  You think that you learned all the major events in the Civil Rights Movement.  After all, I learned about Emmet Till,  The Murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner, The Scottsboro Boys, Medgar Evers, etc.  And I thought I knew it all.  But this is a reminder that there was a whole lot more stuff happening that never makes it into the history classroom--probably just because there's just way too much to talk about, so the teachers have to just choose a couple of cases to talk about, rather than try to include everything.

Anyway, if you (like me) had never heard of the Parker lynch case, you can read all about it on Wikipedia.  It's not pleasant reading, but it is American history.

Mack Charles Parker (May 20, 1936 – April 24, 1959) was a Black American victim of lynching in the United States. He had been accused of raping a pregnant white woman in northern Pearl River County, Mississippi. Three days before he was to stand trial, Parker was kidnapped from his jail cell in the Pearl River County Courthouse by a mob, beaten and shot. His body was found in the Pearl River, 20 miles west of Poplarville, 10 days later. Following an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the men who killed him were released. Despite confessions, no one was ever indicted for the killing.^[1][2][3][4] Historian Howard Smead called the killing the "last classic lynching in America."^[5]

...etc.  Read the whole article for all the details.

The Tribe of Benjamin, The Tribe of Simeon and The Kingdom of Judah--Interesting Random Facts

I've told this story a couple times before (here and here), but when I was in 7th grade, I was taking confirmation classes (W) at my church, and as we worked through the Biblical narrative, we got to the split between Israel and Judah.  The confirmation teacher summarized it like this.  "There were 10 tribes that formed the northern Kingdom of Israel. The tribe of Judah in the South was left to become the Kingdom of Judah.  And there was one tribe, the tribe of Benjamin, that was stuck in the middle between these two kingdoms."

This contradicted what I had learned in Bible class at the Christian school I attended during the week.  So I raised my hand and said, "No, that's wrong. The tribe of Benjamin was part of the Kingdom of Judah."     

The confirmation teacher didn't agree.  "No, the tribe of Benjamin was in the middle," he said.

But I was sure I was right, so as the class moved on to other topics, I began flipping through my Bible to find proof that the tribe of Benjamin was definitely part of the Kingdom of Judah.  Everyone in the confirmation class had copies of the NIV Student Bible, which contained boxes of explanatory text next to the Bible passages, and I found a text box in the Student Bible that clearly said the southern Kingdom of Judah consisted of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin.  I tapped the teacher on the arm (we were all seated around a table, and I was sitting next to him), and showed him the passage.  He stopped the class to issue a correction.  "Okay, everyone, it looks like Joel was right.  The tribe of Benjamin was part of the Kingdom of Judah."

I was so proud of myself.  I knew the Bible better than the teacher (or so I thought.)  For years afterwards, this was a point of pride for me.

...until, of course, I eventually matured, and realized what an annoying little snot I must have been.  "Ah, so that's why nobody liked me."  (Nobody, after all, likes an annoying pedant.) *

However, some 30+ years later, I think I'm beginning to realize that my confirmation teacher might actually have been right.

In my re-readthrough of the Bible, I noticed that the historical books of 1st Kings and 2nd Kings often describes the Kingdom of Judah as just the tribe of Judah.  The tribe of Benjamin is mentioned as joining up with Judah a couple of times, but only a couple of times.  

Upon noticing this, I went to Wikipedia to double check whether or not the tribe of Benjamin was actually part of the Kingdom of Judah.  Wikipedia (at least as of this writing) appears to unambiguously classify Benjamin as part of the Southern Kingdom.  

After the brief period of the United Kingdom of Israel, Benjamin became part of the southern Kingdom of Judah following the split into two kingdoms.

So, that settled my mind for a little while.

But more recently, I've been reading through Psalms, and I came to Psalm 80, which reads:

Shepherd of Israel, listen

you who lead Joseph like a flock;

enthroned on the cherubs, shine

on Ephraim, Benjamin and Mannesseh;

rouse your strength,

come to save us

The footnote in The Jerusalem Bible identifies "Ephriam, Benjamin and Mannesseh" as "The principle tribes of the North".

So, I crossed reference this with the notes for The NIV Study Bible, which goes into more detail:

It seems likely that "Ephraim, Benjamin and Manasseh" (v. 2) here represent the northern kingdom.  If Jeroboam was indeed given ten tribes (see 1 Kings 11:29-36), leaving only one to Rehoboam–Judah (see 1 Kings 12:20), which was actually two tribes because Simeon was located within Judah–then Benjamin belonged to the northern kingdom.  However, part of Benjamin must always have remained with the southern kingdom since its territory actually bordered on Jerusalem itself, and the southern kingdom continued to control Jerusalem’s environs (see 1 Kings 12:21). This suggests that the disaster suffered was the Assyrian campaign that swept the northern kingdom away (see 2 Kings 17:1-6). 

(p.864 of NIV Study Bible).

Okay, time to Google for more information.  I found this website here on the Tribe of Benjamin, which goes into a lot more detail, and also seems to confirm that Benjamin was neither part of the Northern Kingdom nor the Southern Kingdom:

The northern border of Benjamin would come to constitute the northern frontier of the southern kingdom of Judah. It became the limit of the southern frontier of the northern kingdom of Israel. Simply put, the land of Benjamin was the frontier between Israel and Judah. It buffered the north from the south, and the Benjamite northern border was the very line of separation between the two kingdoms - much like the DMZ between North and South Korea today.

Consequently, the loyalties of the tribe of Benjamin were always divided, and many skirmishes were fought along this frontier over the course of its history. Only one major war was waged on the soil of Benjamin, though sporadic fighting occurred along the frontier, with both sides caught in a perpetual cycle of gaining, then subsequently losing, ground.

It would be nice to have more references here, so I could check the Bible myself, and find out what war and skirmishes are being referred to.  (I don't remember skirmishes over the Tribe of Benjamin being mentioned a lot in 1st and 2nd Kings, but I could just be forgetting.)  But the website sounds like it knows what it's talking about.

So how about that?  I guess my confirmation teacher was right after all!

********************************************

On another note:

Speaking of  the Kingdom of Judah, there's actually one more tribe in the mix: the Tribe of Simeon.  In my youth, both at my Christian school and at my Church don't ever remember the tribe of Simeon being discussed at all.  It was always the 10 Northern Tribes of Israel, and Benjamin and Judah in the South.  But I don't remember anyone mentioning the Tribe of Simeon.

But if you look on the map, it looks like the Tribe of Simeon was completely surrounded by the Tribe of Judah.   

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/12_Tribes_of_Israel_Map.svg

(I mentioned this before in my review of Genesis.  According to the Bible, it looks like Simeon was absorbed by Judah in response to the curse that Jacob put on Simeon and Levi for their attack on the Shechemites in Genesis 34.)
So that means there must have been at least 3 tribes in the Southern Kingdom: Judah, Benjamin (sort of) and Judah.

Notes

*Although actually, I think at the time, the urge to correct my confirmation teacher was less about wanting to prove I was smarter than the teacher, and more about trying to protect what I thought I already knew.  Some children have a hard time tolerating ambiguity, and I was one of them.  Having already learned the "fact" that the tribe of Benjamin was part of the Kingdom of Judah, I didn't want to have to unlearn this, and accept that there was some confusion about the historical record.  I had already learned this thing!  Don't you dare tell me I have to learn it differently now.

Amazon Links

* Check out the NIV Student Bible on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/43tZ5xD 

* Jerusalem Bible here: https://amzn.to/4fbgM92

* NIV Study Bible here: https://amzn.to/43zCIHa

(These are Amazon Associate's Links.  If you buy anything through these links, I get a commission.)

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

Date of Easter--Interesting Random Facts

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.

Wikipedia says: 

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!

And this is before you even get to the part of the Wikipedia page outlining the various algorithms that are used to calculate the date of Easter.

**************

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.

Mecha Builders--Interesting Random Facts

Admittedly this entry is less of the random fact variety and more of the "Did you know this bizarre show exists" variety, but... did you know this really bizarre show exists?  I've found out about it recently because my kids are really into it. It takes Sesame Street characters and re-imagines them as superhero robots.  To quote Wikipedia: 

The series focuses on "mecha" versions of three legacy characters: Mecha Abby Cadabby, Mecha Elmo, and Mecha Cookie Monster, all reimagined as mechanical beings with the power to enlarge to giant size in addition to unique built-in tools and gadgets. The trio usually solve a problem using a three-step formula: plan, test, and solve. Later episodes would add a fourth main cast member in the form of Elmo's pet dog Tango

 

Check out this show on Amazon: https://amzn.to/42urvIu         (This is an Amazon Associate's Link.  If you buy anything through that link, I get a commission.)

Buddy Holly was only 22 when he died--Interesting Random Facts

Everybody knows the story of Buddy Holly and The Day the Music Died, but I was reading about it again just now, and I realized that Buddy Holly was only 22 when he died.  I don't think I had realized he was that young.  I mean, Buddy Holly is so frequently cited as an influence on other musicians (see here), that I just assumed he had reached at least his mid-twenties or late twenties to have had such an influence.  

So if he was only 22 when he died, that means his entire career was when he was under 22.  According to Wikipedia, Buddy Holly was only 18 when he started recording.  And he was only 21 in this video clip: 

...and, doing some more reading, it looks like Ritchie Valens, who infamously died in the same crash, was even younger at 17.  

...but I think there might have been something with singers in the 1950s just being really young just in general.  For example, did you know that the girl who did Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree was 13 when she recorded that song?

Passenger Pigeons--Interesting Random Facts

I've been reading The Silver Age Teen Titans Archives: Volume 1, which contains reprinted comics from the 1960s.  In the first reprinted issue, from 1964, the villain is Brom Stikk, and the plot revolves around the fact that passenger pigeons were once so common in America, and are now completely gone.

Image from: https://marswillsendnomore.wordpress.com/2013/07/27/robin-kid-flash-and-aqualad/braveandthebold054_13-teentitans9/

(see here and here for more).

I was curious, so I Googled it, and found the Wikipedia article:

The passenger pigeon or wild pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) is an extinct species of pigeon that was endemic to North America.

It mainly inhabited the deciduous forests of eastern North America and was also recorded elsewhere, but bred primarily around the Great Lakes. The pigeon migrated in enormous flocks, constantly searching for food, shelter, and breeding grounds, and was once the most abundant bird in North America, numbering around 3 billion, and possibly up to 5 billion.

Passenger pigeons were hunted by Native Americans, but hunting intensified after the arrival of Europeans, particularly in the 19th century. Pigeon meat was commercialized as cheap food, resulting in hunting on a massive scale for many decades. There were several other factors contributing to the decline and subsequent extinction of the species, including shrinking of the large breeding populations necessary for preservation of the species and widespread deforestation, which destroyed its habitat. A slow decline between about 1800 and 1870 was followed by a rapid decline between 1870 and 1890. In 1900, the last confirmed wild bird was shot in southern Ohio.^[2][4] The last captive birds were divided in three groups around the turn of the 20th century, some of which were photographed alive. Martha, thought to be the last passenger pigeon, died on September 1, 1914, at the Cincinnati Zoo. The eradication of the species is a notable example of anthropogenic extinction.

I found this interesting because:

1) I had never heard of passenger pigeons before, but this 1964 children's comic treats it like their extinction was common knowledge.  Is this a forgotten piece of history?  Did more people know about passenger pigeons in the 1960s, and then it just faded out of public memory?

(Of course it could be just me, but, I ran this by the my mother, sister and brother-in-law, and they had never heard of the passenger pigeon before either.  What about you, dear reader?)

2) It's interesting the huge scale of the reverse, huh?  This went from being the must abundant bird in North America to being extinct. That's a pretty remarkable change.

There's tons more interesting material on the Wikipedia page: everything from their vocalizations, to their relationship with humans to (perhaps most interestingly) the potential resurrection of the species.  Check out the Wikipedia page if you have time.

Abbie Hoffman and The Who (plus John Sinclair)--Interesting Random Facts

I'm currently rereading Woodstock Nation by Abbie Hoffman, which I first read back in 1996.

One of the differences between reading this book in 1996 and reading it now is that now you can look everything up on Wikipedia.

The book is packed with all sorts of references to the culture, people and events of 1969, but if you were born after 1969, it can sometimes be a bit confusing trying to figure out what Abbie Hoffman is talking about.

The best example of this is Abbie Hoffman's relationship with the rockband The Who.  All throughout Woodstock Nation, it is very apparent that Abbie Hoffman has some sort of grudge against The Who.  And it's also apparent that there was some sort of incident that happened with Abbie Hoffman and The Who at Woodstock, but it's a bit hard to work out what exactly happened (especially since Abbie Hoffman is deliberately writing Woodstock Nation in a satirically over-the-top tone, so it's often unclear what is real and what is satire.)

But now it's the year 2025, and you can just look that stuff up on Wikipedia.  And because this is an interesting little bit of random trivia, I thought it would make for a perfect entry in my Interesting Random Facts series.

To quote from Wikipedia: 

At Woodstock in 1969, Hoffman interrupted the Who's performance to attempt to speak against the jailing of John Sinclair of the White Panther Party. He grabbed a microphone and yelled, "I think this is a pile of shit while John Sinclair rots in prison ..." Pete Townshend was adjusting his amplifier between songs and turned to look at Hoffman over his left shoulder. Townshend shouted "Fuck off! Fuck off my fucking stage!"^[25][26][27] and reportedly ran at Hoffman with his guitar and hit Hoffman in the back, although Townshend later denied attacking Hoffman.^[28] Townshend later said that while he actually agreed with Hoffman on Sinclair's imprisonment, he would have knocked him offstage regardless of the content of his message, given that Hoffman had violated the "sanctity of the stage," i.e., the right of the band to perform uninterrupted by distractions not relevant to the show. The incident took place during a camera change and was not captured on film. The audio of this incident, however, can be heard on The Who's box set Thirty Years of Maximum R&B (Disc 2, Track 20, "Abbie Hoffman Incident").

...a couple of observations about this:

1) The incident took place during a camera change? Ah man, what are the odds of that?  Too bad it wasn't captured on film, it would have been a great edition to the Woodstock movie.  

2) Back in the Calvin days, my friend Brian Bork actually had a copy of the box set Thirty Years of Maximum R&B, and I remember listening to that audio when I borrowed the album from him.  (This was about 3 years after I had read Woodstock Nation.)  So at the time that did at least help me to put the pieces together on what this incident actually was.

If you don't happen to have a copy of The Who's Thirty Years of Maximum R&B handy, you can, of course, find the audio of the incident easily available on Youtube.  
Here's one Youtube video which apparently has some of the visuals as well:

Pete Townshend vs. Abbie Hoffman (video)

So, there you go.  An interesting little detour through pop culture history: Abbie Hoffman, The Who, and John Sinclair.

But for anyone who's not a 1960s nut, I guess the next question is: Who the heck is John Sinclair?

John Sinclair is interesting in that he's not really well remembered today, but during 1969, he was a huge cause celebre among the counter-culture movement.  Abbie Hoffman talked about him a lot.  And John Lennon even wrote a song about him.

John Sinclair was the leader of The White Panthers and he became a cause celebre when:

Arrested for distribution of marijuana in 1969, Sinclair was given ten years in prison. The sentence was criticized by many as unduly harsh, and it galvanized a noisy protest movement led by prominent figures of the 1960s counterculture. 

And his case certainly attracted a lot of high profile celebrities.  See also from Wikipedia:

The severity of his sentence sparked high-profile protests, including an infamous incident at the 1969 Woodstock Festival wherein Yippie activist Abbie Hoffman jumped on the stage and seized a microphone during a performance by The Who. Hoffman managed to shout only a few words about Sinclair's plight before he was forcibly ejected from the stage by guitarist Pete Townshend.^[39][40]

With a more successful protest, attended by Stevie Wonder and Bob Seger, John Lennon performed his new song "John Sinclair" on television^[41] and recorded it for his next album, Some Time in New York City (1972),^[42] though by that time Sinclair had been released.^[43] With "directness and simplicity", said one critic,^[41] the lyrics lament Sinclair's intended harsh punishment: "They gave him ten for two—what else can the bastards do?"^[41] The event drew 15,000 sympathizers. Sinclair drew a 9+1⁄2-to-10-year prison sentence in 1969 from Detroit Recorder's Court Judge Robert Colombo for giving two joints to undercover officers. He served 29 months but was released a few days after Lennon, Stevie Wonder, Bob Seger and others performed in front of 15,000 attendees at the University of Michigan's Crisler Arena.

Various public and private protests culminated in the "John Sinclair Freedom Rally" at Ann Arbor's Crisler Arena in December 1971. The event brought together celebrities including Lennon and Yoko Ono; musicians David Peel, Stevie Wonder, Phil Ochs and Bob Seger, Archie Shepp and Roswell Rudd; poets Allen Ginsberg and Ed Sanders; and countercultural speakers including Abbie Hoffman, Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, Jerry Rubin, and Bobby Seale.^{[6][44][45][46][47]} Three days after the rally, Sinclair was released from prison when the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that the state's marijuana statutes were unconstitutional.^[1][37] These events inspired the creation of Ann Arbor's annual pro-legalization Hash Bash rally.^[48]

Back in the 1990s, when I was first learning about all this history, I remember thinking to myself: Okay, it was unfair that he got 10 years for 2 joints.  But lots of people get unduly harsh sentences for drug possession all the time.  What made this case so special?  And given all the other things that were going on at this time, the Vietnam War, the invasion of Cambodia, the My Lai massacre, the civil rights movement, Fred Hampton's assassination, etc, given all that, why did John Sinclair in particular get so much attention from all these movement celebrities at the time?

And I still wonder this, actually.  I don't know, maybe you just had to be living through those years to understand.