Dhimmi

The term "dhimmi" refers to a non-Muslim person in a country which has been occupied by Islamic armies. This word, and the concept for which it stands, shaped history in southeastern Europe for several centuries.

Muslim armies steamrolled over North Africa, the Middle East, and Spain for five centuries after the death of Muhammed in 632 A.D.; magnificent basilicas and monasteries in Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia were left in smoking ruins by Muslims from the eighth to the tenth centuries.

Spain was pillaged and devastated many times: Zamora in 981, Barcelona in 987, Santiago de Compostela in 997. In 1000, Castile was ravaged, its Christian and Jewish populations either killed, or enslaved and then deported. This was the fate of the dhimmi.

God at the U of M Hospital

During these first few years of the twenty-first century, research hospitals, like Ann Arbor's U of M, having been looking ever more closely at the link between spirituality and wellness.

To be sure, no simple link exists: we cannot simply assert that those who sharpened their spiritual awareness don't suffer from the same health problems as everybody else. They get sick and die like the rest of us.

But it is also indisputable that some fascinating correlations exist among the realms of faith and health. The mediator between those two is sometimes psychology. All three play a role in a recent dissertation, "God in Fatherlessness", submitted in June 2000 by a staff member at Michigan's hospital.

There exists, on the one hand, the established connection between fatherlessness (through death, divorce, or a father who is physically present but emotionally unavailable) and a decreased ability to engage spiritually. On the other hand, there are the indirect links between spirituality and health.

The recent dissertation adds to this already complex mix the notion that fatherlessness pushes the fatherless toward the conclusion that the absent father is "negatively intended"; one possible conclusion is that the fatherless are nudged, not only toward mere atheism, but toward a view that God is somehow malicious.

Final conclusions in these questions will be found only after much more research, but this will clearly be a major field of medical exploration as the century moves forward.

Getting Married in Somalia?

The Associated Press recently (11/11/2006) reported that the Islamic government of Somalia has made it illegal, punishable by death, to get married without the explicit prior consent of the parents of both the bride and the groom, no matter how old they may be. “It is against the teaching of our religion and parents do not approve of it,” said Sheik Mahad Mohamed Sheik Hassan, chairman of Somalia's Islamic court. The fact that the title “Sheik” occurs twice indicates his high governmental position.

The Muslim government has also banned movies, live music, and sporting events. Somalia is currently in the midst of a civil war. Both sides, however, seem to embrace the view that Islamic law should control society.

Persia or Iran?

We tend to think of Iran as one of the large Islamic countries in the Middle East, but that perspecitve is relatively recent in history. The area has been known as Iran for only a few years, but for centuries it has been called Persia. For 600 years, its most popular religion was Christianity.

Persia is home to two large groups of Christians, the Assyrian Church of the East and the Syriac Orthodox Church. Although these churches were originally maintaining ties with the Christian churches in the Roman Empire, they were indeed quite different from the churches in the Roman Empire. One reason for this is language.

Another factor was that the churches within the Persian Empire did not maintain such close ties with their counterparts in the Roman Empire. Additionally, there was the continuous rivalry between these two great empires. Quite frequently, Christians in Persia were (often falsely) accused of sympathizing with the Romans, even though the Roman Empire was persecuting and killing Christians, while the Persian Empire embraced Christianity. In Persia, unlike Rome, it was both legal and popular for people to leave Zoroastriansim (the mythological belief system of Persia prior to Christianity).

But it was not until the Council of Ephesus in 431 A.D. that the vast majority of Christians in Persia broke their ties with the churches in the Roman Empire.

Most of the Christians in the Sassanid empire lived on the western edge of the empire, predominately in Mesopotamia, but there were also important communities on the island Tylos (present day Bahrain), the southern coast of the Persian Gulf, the area of the Arabian kingdom of Lakhm and the Persian part of Armenia. Some of these areas were the earliest to be Christianized; the kingdom of Armenia choose the Christian faith sometime before 100 A.D., and became the first independent Christian state in the world in 301 A.D.; while a number of Assyrian territories had almost become fully Christianized even earlier during the 1st century, they never became independent nations.

Most Christians in the Persian Empire belonged to a number of predominately Christian ethnic groups. Some of these groups were the Assyrians, the Arabs of southern Mesopotamia, the Armenians, as well as some smaller ethnic groups such as the Syriacs. The latter group was taken to Persia as prisoners of war from the many conflicts with the Roman Empire. Conversion was common among ethnic Persians and other ethnicities residing in the empire. Among them were certain small Caucasian and Kurdish tribes which had converted to Christianity.

For approximately 600 years, these groups lived as Christians. In 651 A.D., the first wave of “jihad” from the Islamic Caliphate swept across Persia in a fourteen-year-long bloodbath. Christians could flee, convert to Islam, become enslaved, or be killed. Eventually, the name “Iran” would replace “Persia” as the usual name for the region.

What Does Wikipedia Have to Say about the Renaissance?

Giorgio Vasari was the first to coin the term Renaissance, in 1550, though an awareness of the ongoing rebirth in the arts had been in the air earlier. Since that time, historians have differed in their interpretations of the meaning of Renaissance. Many historians now view the Renaissance as more of an intellectual and ideological change than a substantive one. Marxist historians, for example, hold the view that the changes in art, literature, and philosophy affected only a tiny minority of the very wealthy and powerful, leaving the lives of the great mass of the European population unchanged.

Many historians now point out that most of the negative social factors popularly associated with the "medieval" period - poverty, ignorance, warfare, religious and political persecution, and so forth - seem to have actually worsened in this era which saw the rise of Machiavelli, the Wars of Religion, the corrupt Borgia Popes, and the intensified witch-hunts of the 16th century. Many people who lived during the Renaissance did not view it as the "golden age" imagined by certain 19th century authors, but were concerned by these social maladies. Significantly, though, the artists, writers, and patrons involved in the cultural movements in question believed they were living in a new era that was a clean break from the Middle Ages.

Johan Huizinga (1872–1945) acknowledged the existence of the Renaissance but questioned whether it was a positive change. He argued that the Renaissance was a period of decline from the High Middle Ages, destroying much that was important. The Latin language, for instance, had evolved greatly from the classical period and was still a living language used in the church and elsewhere. The Renaissance obsession with classical purity halted its natural evolution and saw Latin revert to its classical form. Robert Lopez has contended that it was a period of deep economic recession. Meanwhile George Sarton and Lynn Thorndike have both argued that scientific progress was slowed.

Historians have begun to consider the word Renaissance as unnecessarily loaded, implying an unambiguously positive rebirth from the supposedly more primitive Middle Ages. Many historians now prefer to use the term "early modern" for this period, a more neutral term that highlights the period as a transitional one that led to the modern world.

A 4,000-Mile Journey to Nowhere - The Harrowing Journey of Exile under Stalin

Josef Stalin is known as the brutal Soviet ruler, responsible for the deaths of millions of Russians, Poles, Ukranians, Jews, and Germans. What is not so well-known is that also arranged for the deaths of millions of Koreans, long before the Korean War. Researchers at the University of Michigan have made a documentary film about Stalin's mass killing of Koreans.

In 1937, Vladmir Tyan watched as soldiers shot his father and older brother. He had no time to mourn. Chased from their house, the rest of the family lived on the street for three days. Then they boarded a train.

“You’d hear in the neighboring car the cries of children, the elderly, and the sick,” Dekabrina Kim recalls. “They took out the dead, and no one knew where they were buried.”

“The train went to a dead halt, and we were told it was our stop,” says Sergei Yun. “Each family dug a hole to live in. There were no trees or charcoal. We lived that way for two or three years.”

The victims’ stories describe what occurred when Stalin deported some 180,000 Soviet Koreans that he dubbed “unreliable people.” Evicted from their homes and farms and locked into crowded cattle cars headed for Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan - remote destinations nearly 4,000 miles and one month away - they found themselves on desolate lands without housing.

Making history public

These stories are largely unknown outside of Central Asia, and only a small number of scholarly documents have shed light on this chapter of Stalin’s Great Terror. “Few knew that this 1937 episode served as the opening salvo for a series of similar ethnic cleansings and deportations that involved Germans, Jews, Ukranians, Poles, Tatars, and Chechens,” says Meredith Jung-En Woo, an LSA political science professor. With David Chung, co-director of LSA’s Archive of Diasporic Korea and lecturer at the U of M, Woo is making this historical event better known to the world. Determined that LSA would be the site of the world’s first digital archive on the history of these Soviet Koreans, Woo and Chung traveled to Kazakhstan. The team bought Soviet and Kazakh newsreels and film footage, and scanned family photos, letters, and official documents. They did extensive interviews with survivors and their children, exploring the memories of the old and the challenges the young still face.

“Time was running out,” says Woo, “because the last survivors of the deportation, well into their seventies and eighties, were dying.” “With materials as compelling as these, a documentary film practically forced itself on us,” says Woo. With seed money from the U of M, they expanded the project.

The film is the harrowing saga of Koreans who were deported from the Soviet Far East, where they had lived in farming and fishing villages, enjoying their own theater, schools, and Korean language newspaper. Told through the eyes of deported Koreans, the film is also a story of multiethnic and multicultural Kazakhstan struggling to forge a new national identity in the aftermath of independence from the Soviet Union - and the place of the Korean-Kazakhs in this struggle. “We have our own soul, our own aura, and you can’t confuse us with anyone,” second-generation deportee and musician Jacov Khan says in the film. “We certainly all feel some envy when looking at Korean-Koreans or Kazakh-Kazakhs,” adds second-generation deportee Svetlana Nigai, who now lives in Almaty. “They have their own mother land. When people ask us what our native language is, we say Russian. But when they ask our nationality, that is a tougher question to answer.”

Progress with Stem Cells?

Stem cells are producing promising results these days. Adult stem cells, that is. For people with blocked arteries, a growth factor called GMCSF, when injected into the body, stimulates bone marrow to release more stem cells and enables new arteries to be grown. Tests have shown a 60 percent improvement in blood-vessel function as a result.

Blindness caused by outside factors often cannot be repaired with corneal transplants, yet stem cells offer new hope. While not yet producing perfect vision, patients can become self-dependent again. They are able to see well enough to do the basic tasks of life.

Tests in mice have yielded a way to spur the growth of neural stem cells in the brain - possibly paving the way to treating or curing Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and multiple sclerosis. Key in all three of these stories is that using one's own stem cells, rather than those of another, prevents the body's immune system from rejecting them, much like a transplanted organ. It is becoming clear that the hope for an Alzheimer or Parkinson cure comes from adult stem cells, not embryonic ones.

Outside the U.S., in Portugal, physicians have actually succeeded in partially regenerating various internal human organs, using adult stem cells.

Meanwhile, we're still waiting for any success story from the use of embryonic stem cells. We'll try to keep you posted.

Roman Civil War

The late Roman Republic was plagued with civil wars for approximately a century. What made these bloody conflicts possible?

The Roman civil wars were very different than the civil war in the United States. The Roman internal conflicts were not about political issues or moral principles. The Roman civil wars were about personalities.

The typical Roman soldier had a primary loyalty, not to the Roman Republic, but to his general and officers. If two generals decided to compete for power, a civil war arose. This pattern culminated in the Battle of Actium.

Movies and History

For better or worse, Americans gain a significant and increasing percentage of their knowledge of history from movies.

Learning history from movies can be helpful, but there is an even greater need for critical thinking than when learning from books.

Certainly, history books can be loaded with "spin" - history is told in a certain way to advance the author's political agenda.

But movies are subject to double spin - they have the same political spin as books, and then a second layer of spin is added because the movie needs to be entertaining. Movies may contain historical inaccuracies, not only beause of the filmmaker's political views, but also because the filmmaker may change the events simply to make them more entertaining. People going to see movies demand to be entertained, but they don't care if they're accurately informed. Recent films about the Trojan War and Alexander the Great demonstrate this sufficiently.

The informed viewer can exercise critical thinking by watching two different films about the same historical events.

Cleopatra, for example, was the subject of a 1963 film by Elizabeth Taylor, and a 1934 film by Claudette Colbert; view them both, and you'll hopefully "cancel out" the spins of the various screenwriters.

Likewise, Marie Antoinette was the subject of a 1938 film by Norma Shearer, and a 2006 film by Kirsten Dunst. Both are informative.

In either case, it helps to read even a brief, half-page encyclopedia article about the people and events concerned. Reading even a little before the film not only makes you understand it better, it helps you to enjoy it more, because you understand.

More recent events in film include the movie "End of the Spear" (made in 2005), which depicts the murders in the Amazon Basin of several Americans; the same situation was filmed as "Beyond the Gates of Splendor" in 2002. Both films seem fairly accurate.

Women Enter American Politics

In 1917, Jeannette Rankin, a Montana Republican, became the first woman to serve in the House of Representatives. She'd been elected in 1916. Committed to her pacifist beliefs, she was the only member of Congress to vote against entry into both World War I and World War II.

Shortly after Ms. Rankin's election to Congress, the 19th Amendment was passed in 1919. This means that the first woman was elected to Congress before the right to vote was even given to women! The amendment's journey to ratification had been a long and difficult one. Starting in 1896, the Republican Party became the first major party to officially favor women's suffrage. That year, Republican Sen. A. A. Sargent of California introduced a proposal in the Senate to give women the right to vote. The proposal was defeated four times in the Democratic-controlled Senate. When the Republican Party regained control of Congress, the Equal Suffrage Amendment finally passed (304-88), over the objections of the Democrats.

When the amendment was submitted to the states, 26 of the 36 states that ratified it had Republican-controlled legislatures. Of the nine states that voted against ratification, eight were controlled by Democrats. Twelve states, all Republican, had already given women full suffrage before the federal amendment was finally ratified.

The Origins of an American Political Party

The Republican Party was born in the early 1850's by anti-slavery activists and individuals who believed that government should grant western lands to settlers free of charge. The first informal meeting of the party took place in Ripon, Wisconsin, a small town northwest of Milwaukee. The first official Republican meeting took place on July 6th, 1854 in Jackson, Michigan. The name “Republican” was chosen because it alluded to equality and reminded individuals of Thomas Jefferson's party. Jefferson had called his political party the “Democratic Republican” party. The name “Republican” also reminded voters of the grand era of Rome, before it became an empire. At the Jackson convention, the new party adopted a platform and nominated candidates for office in Michigan.

In 1856, the Republicans became a national party when John C. Fremont was nominated for President under the slogan: “Free soil, free labor, free speech, free men, Fremont.” Even though they were considered a “third party” because the Democrats and Whigs represented the two-party system at the time, Fremont received 33% of the vote. Four years later, Abraham Lincoln became the first Republican to win the White House.

The Civil War erupted in 1861 and lasted four grueling years. During the war, against the advice of the Democrats, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation that freed the slaves. The Republicans of the day worked to pass the Thirteenth Amendment, which outlawed slavery, the Fourteenth, which guaranteed equal protection under the laws, and the Fifteenth, which helped secure voting rights for African-Americans.

The Republican Party also played a leading role in securing women the right to vote. In 1869, Republicans were the first major party to favor women's suffrage. When the 19th Amendment finally was added to the Constitution, 26 of 36 state legislatures that had voted to ratify it were under Republican control. The first woman elected to Congress was a Republican, Jeanette Rankin from Montana in 1916.

Presidents during most of the late nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century were Republicans. The White House was in Republican hands under Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush. Under the last two, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, the United States became the world's only superpower, winning the Cold War from the old Soviet Union and releasing millions from Communist oppression.

Republicans have supported these ideas: Individuals, not government, can make the best decisions; all people are entitled to equal rights; and decisions are best made close to home.

The symbol of the Republican Party is the elephant. During the mid term elections way back in 1874, Democrats tried to scare voters into thinking President Grant would seek to run for an unprecedented third term. Thomas Nast, a cartoonist for Harper's Weekly, depicted a Democratic jackass trying to scare a Republican elephant - and both symbols stuck. For a long time Republicans have been known as the “G.O.P.” And party faithfuls thought it meant the “Grand Old Party.” But apparently the original meaning (in 1875) was “gallant old party.” And when automobiles were invented it also came to mean, “get out and push.”

Anti-War Protest?

The Crusades were not popular among the Christians of Europe, even if they were considered a military necessity as a counter-attack against the home base from which surprise attacks and invasions had been launched against sleepy and unsuspecting places like Spain, France, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Austria.

During the Middle Ages while the Just War Theory - a debate about when or if a war was ever part of "justice" - was becoming more developed and Crusades were happening. Peace movements among Christians flourished. Francis of Assisi may or may not have been a pacifist, but he lived as if he were. A peace movement known as the "Great Alleluia" involving thousands of people took place in northern Italy in the 13th century, lead by an energetic priest who went from town to town, preaching in public. In 1233 the movement had grown to such proportions that 400,000 people gathered to demonstrate for peace and reconciliation. Another Italian peace movement known as the "Bianchi" moved about in thousands from city to city. Peacemaking was their major work. One chronicler notes that by the time one of these processions reached Rome its numbers had swelled to 200,000. Various groups of monks and priests opposed the Crusades, sometimes with words, and sometimes with actions.

Popular opposition to the Crusades spread, sometimes for these spiritual reasons, and sometimes for more worldly reasons: the Crusades cost money, and the soldiers who were part of them behaved like pagans. Yet the public tolerated these Crusades, even if they didn't like them, because it was understood that the alternative was a massive invasion by the Islamic armies into Europe.

People remembered how a Muslim army took over almost half of France, burning the wheatfields and houses, raping and killing the villagers, before Karl Martell and his army were able to turn them back. Those horrifying memories made the Crusades seem like a necessary, if unpleasant, defensive move.

War in Ireland

The Irish seem to have been at war, off and on, forever, or at least for the last few centuries. Certainly, in the last few years, there have been periodic terrorist or guerilla-style attacks between the those in the northern part of the island, and those in the southern part.

The newspaper and TV routinely report these conflicts as the struggle between the Protestant and Catholic parts of Ireland. To be sure, southern Ireland is largely Roman Catholic, and northern Ireland is mainly Anglican. But is that really what the conflict is about?

Remember, Christianity in Ireland split into the two group in 1532, when Henry VIII started the English Reformation.

But the warfare in Ireland has been going on since the 1100's, and perhaps even earlier, when there was no religious division on island.

The fighting is Ireland is about the same things that most other wars are about: land, power, and money. It is not a religious war.

Sampling Errors

When we study the culture of a different time or place, we read their books, view their paintings, hear their music, and so form for ourselves a concept of what that society was like.

But how much material do we need to form an accurate view? Consider the following:

Shakespeare wrote approximately 154 sonnets, give or take. If I've read only one of them, can I make generalizations about them? What if I've read ten? Or twenty? He wrote around thirty-eight plays; if I've studied one of them, is that enough to form an impression of what his plays are like?

Sophocles penned about 123 plays; if I've read only two of them, can I make categorical statements about what the average Sophocles play is?

The statue of the Minoan Snake Goddess, with her eye-catching topless outfit, is much studied. But that is only one single statue, from a culture that made thousands of statues. Can I make generalizations about their statues from only this one? Or make generalizations about their religions, or about the roles which women played in their society?

Think of it this way: imagine yourself studying history 4,000 years from now, and reading about life in a typical North American city in our era. If you were to read only one magazine from this time, and use it to try to form a general idea about our culture, what would happen if that one magazine were Sports Illustrated? Or Vogue? Or Playboy?

Clearly you need several samples, and various samples, to gain a more accurate concept of a society.

The Gospel of Whom?

The manuscript known as “The Gospel of Judas” has recently been featured in TV shows. Although researchers have studied this document for decades, it has suddenly become popular in the electronic media, after the technical scholars in the university have concluded that it contains little historical information about the actual events of the first century.

The life of Jesus took place in a Hebrew culture in the first century, and the most reliable documents about that era are written by first-century Hebrews; the “Gospel of Judas” is a Greek document, written several centuries later.

Clearly, Jesus remains a controversial and influential figure in history; but whatever their personal beliefs, historians simply seek the most reliable texts about the life of any famous person. There are always plenty of spurious sources concerning any historical event or person.

In recent lectures and articles, James Voelz (Cambridge University, England) and Jeffrey Kloha addressed four aspects of the gospel of Judas manuscript:

1) How the manuscript is portrayed in the media: the “popular media” of TV, radio, and internet isn’t allowed to take the time to do a careful historical analysis of the manuscript, because people want “entertaining” news.

2) Basic features of the manuscript: written much later than the historical accounts of the life of Jesus, it couldn’t possible have been written by an eyewitness to the events. Instead, it relies upon tradition.

3) Gnosticism as a point of reference for the manuscript: “Gnosticism” is belief system, a mixture different Greek philosophical ideas, combined with a few ideas from Judaism and Christianity – interesting ideas, but they can’t be the ideas which were being discussed in Jerusalem in first century, because they are ideas from a later era.

4) The manuscript and canonicity: this manuscript, known to ancient authors and modern scholars, was never taken seriously because of its obvious flaws. Rejected by serious researchers, the TV industry picked it because it is entertaining, if untrue.

“There is nothing of the historical Jesus, the Jesus that walked the earth, in this document,” commented Kloha. “It is important that we know about this document since people are watching and reading media reports about it and being influenced by them.” Instead of a factual account of the actual events that happened during the life of Jesus, this document presents a series of Greek philosophical ideas that flourished during the later years of the Roman Empire. Modern archaeology and ancient texts give us some core facts about events in Jerusalem during the first century; the “Gospel of Judas” is clearly a combination of later traditions.

The gospel of Judas was featured in a National Geographic Society television documentary. It is dramatically different from the four gospels that are contained within the New Testament and purports to provide a secret account of a revelation that Jesus spoke with the disciple Judas Iscariot.

“Jesus is never described as ‘the Christ’ in this manuscript,” commented Kloha. “Instead, an individual named Seth is referenced as the Christ.”

In describing the media’s portrayal of the document, Voelz stated, “They are conveniently omitting a lot of information that would put the manuscript in a bad light. It is important for people to know how odd this document is.” The ideas presented in the “Gospel of Judas” are not the ideas of either Jews or Christians in the first century; the concepts of “Messiah” are different.

There are other documents about these events which are simply more reliable, more accurate, and older, having been written by eyewitnesses to the events in question.

Surprise!

Historians and scientists love to surprise people. For example, most people know that Cleopatra was the queen of Egypt, but did you know that she wasn't Egyptian? She was actually Greek, the descendant of one of Alexander's Macedonian generals; she and her family spoke Greek, and didn't consider themselves Egyptians, although they would engage in the traditional ceremonies of the Pharaohs in order to get the popular support of the Egyptians.

But some reporters go too far in their desire to surprise readers, when the actually falsify sources, and create fictions, merely so that they can say something unexpected. For exampel, the actress who played Jan Brady in the famous TV series did not die of a drug overdose; she's alive and well. But the story about her was created those desiring to surprise an audience.

More serious examples have been uncovered by The Washington Times, in January of 2002:

Hoping to close two national forests, government scientists planted evidence that the forests were inhabited by an endangered species of lynx.

The scientists' dishonesty undermined a three-year study and confirmed suspicions that some government scientists fake studies is order to control environmental policy.

Another example from American history:

Emory University historian Michael Bellesiles apparently believes so strongly in gun control that he invented a history for the purpose of undermining the Constitution's Second Amendment, the right of citizens to own guns.

Professor Bellesiles' politically correct book, Arming America, was awarded the Bancroft Prize, a prestigious award for historians. But scholars examining the work say Mr. Bellesiles' conclusions are based on made-up and nonexistent sources.

Mr. Bellesiles aruges that gun ownership was so rare among early Americans, even on the frontiers, that no one would have cared enough about the right to give it constitutional protection. He claims to have studied many wills and to have found scant evidence of guns being bequeathed to heirs.

When skeptical scholars checked his sources, they found he claimed to have studied wills of people in Colonial Rhode Island known to have died without wills! He also claims to have studied probate records in San Francisco for the years 1849-59. However, the city's librarians say no such records exist. They were destroyed in the 1906 earthquake.

Most historians and scientists are honest. But we need to think critically, especially when they are writing about issues related to modern politics. They might be so interested in keeping tourists out of national forests, or in eliminating the Second Amendment, that they falsify data to support their points. When science meets politics, look for fake evidence; when history intersects with controversial issues, watch for falsified sources.

Which Sargon?

The Ancient Near East included three different rulers, all named Sagon:

The first reigned from approximately 2350 until 2300 B.C., and gained control of both Sumer and Akkad; he united them to form Babylonia, and his empire included all of Mesopotamia, and had significant influence to regions well beyond that area.

The second reigned around 1850 B.C., ruled Assyria early in its heyday.

The third also ruled Assyria, between 722 and 705 B.C., and was responsible for the final wave of attacks on the North Kingdom of Israel, conquering its capitol city Samaria; the Hebrew author Isaiah gives us information about him.

Three men, with the same name, in different countries, living over a thousand years apart!

The Many Sides of John Locke

The writings and ideas of John Locke stand as some of the most brilliant in English history. They are marked by, among other things, their variety.

One aspect of Locke's thought is political; he is famous for his significant influence on the Founding Fathers and their creation of the United States Constitution. A different side of Locke is seen in his purely philosophical essays, in which he ponders questions of human consciousness, perception, and knowledge; his formulations of empiricism and the process by which the mind turns sensations into ideas remain influential to this day.

These two facets of Locke are connected by a third and a fourth.

One connection is the legal implication of Locke's empiricism; if each human being is indeed born as a "blank slate", then the legal defense - used by, e.g., a kleptomaniac caught stealing - of "I was born that way" is illegitimate. Locke denies the existence of innate ideas.

A second connection between Locke's politics and his purely philosophical ideas is the implication of religious belief. Locke took great pains to show that the majority (not all) of humans arrive at their religious beliefs rationally, and that, therefore, we can also rely on the majority to vote on laws that are, on average, good laws. Locke said that, because religious beliefs are most central and essential to human thought, then their rationality ensures the rationality of other human thought. He also pointed out that those occasional instances of irrational religious belief are usually due to a lack of information or a lack of study, and can be corrected by exercise of the rational faculties of the mind upon substantial bodies of fact.

The REAL Martin Luther King

It is most appropriate for students in the Humanities to note a national holiday, Martin Luther King's birthday, because Rev. King was a diligent student of the humanities.

Originally born as Michael King, Jr., in 1928 (his father was named Michael King, Sr.), the father and son both changed their names to "Martin Luther" after studying the works of the German Reformer. One can only imagine how profound the impact of Luther's books was, if they caused father and son to change their names. This is truly a gigantic historical leap - from Germany in 1517 to Atlanta, Georgia in the 1940's.

King went on to do graduate research at Boston University. His dissertation, over 200 pages long, was an analysis of the writings of a German philosopher named Paul Tillich. King's research required him to have reading knowledge of German, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. King analyzed Tillich's concept of God, and compared it to the way other philosophers viewed God. King was looking for the perfect balance between a "transcendent" view of God and an "immanent" view of God; the transcendent view is more cosmic and eternal, and immanent view is more personal and relational. King believed that a balanced view of God - not moving to either extreme - would improve both individuals and societies.

Too often, the television gives us the impression that King's main activity was giving speeches and marching. In reality, he spent years of his life in libraries. King's ideals of equality and non-violence came from studying texts.

Paul Tillich was a major influence on King. King also read books by Ghandi; Ghandi, in turn, had been educated in England. It was from England that Ghandi brought to his native India ideals of non-violence and equality, and began to criticize India's "caste" system. Ghandi wanted a "Magna Carta" for India. It's ironic that to get from England to America, these ideas went through India. Ghandi wanted to import the British ideas about the dignity and value of every human life, and about civil justice, into India. He probably did not foresee, at least initially, that they would be then exported to other countries, especially to the USA.

King had also read Thoreau and Emmerson, who in turn had been educated in the seminaries of New England, mainly at Harvard, where the Bible was studied in the context of its original Greek and Hebrew grammar, and in the context of rise and fall of the major ancient empires. This mixed approach - a personal commitment to valuing each human life, a geo-political context of major world powers, and the careful examination of text - would be formative.

So we see what a wide range of texts and authors are wrapped up in the influences which enabled King to take his remarkable place in American history. We see, in his words and writings, how a Humanities education can be powerful.

Statistics, Statistics!

Most of us, at one time or another, have heard something like this: "in the Middle Ages, the average life span was shorter than forty years; today, life expectancy often reaches as high as the mid seventies."

Makes us sound pretty cool, right? I mean, with all our modern technology and science, and good medical care, we're much better off!

Well, not really.

Notice the slightly different wordings: "average life span" and "life expectancy". These are, to statisticians, two very different things.

Average life span is simply the arithmetic mean of a group of human beings, for example, those living in Europe in the Middle Ages. Some of them died as small babies, others lived to be 100 years old or more, and most were between those two extremes. Add them up, divide, and you have the average. You learned to do that in some math class.

But "life expectancy" is a little trickier. For example, the generation of Americans who fought World War Two is now over eighty years old. We look around, and see many of them still living; others have died only recently, having made it into their seventies. And so we say that this generation had a pretty good "life expectancy". But their average life span was much shorter. We forget about the hundreds of thousands who actually died in the 1940's, fighting in the Pacific against Japan. When they are factored into the group, we find that the average life span is much shorter than the life expectancy. Remember, many of those soldiers who died were under twenty years of age.

Your life expectancy is defined, roughly, as how long you can expect to live if you have already made it to a certain age, say 20 or 30, and if there are no major unforeseen catastrophes, say like a war or an earthquake.

It's not meaningful to compare a modern life expectancy to a medieval average life span. That's comparing apples to oranges.

Given that the modern life span is shorter than the modern life expectancy, maybe we're not so much better off than those folks in the Middle Ages after all.