#correspondence bible study

[anushaarticles]

In this Article we see about Fearless women in the Bible, the way they faced every challenge prayerfully with faith. Here are the few inspiring women…

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

• Not one word written by Jesus • Not one word about Jesus from any witness • Not one word about Jesus written in the time of Jesus • Not even one credibly sourced reference to Jesus • No inscriptions to Jesus from the time of Jesus • No monuments to Jesus from the time of Jesus • No artifacts for Jesus from the time of Jesus

Jesus is JUST A STORY!

"In the entire first Christian century Jesus is not mentioned by a single Greek, or Roman historian, religion scholar, politician, philosopher or poet. His name never occurs in a single inscription, and it is never found in a single piece of private correspondence. Zero! Zip references! In other words, there is no non-Christian evidence from the first century of a 'historical Jesus'."

-- Bart D. Ehrman, Bible scholar, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

"Still, to press yet further on the issue of evidence we do not have. I need to stress that we do not have a single reference to Jesus by anyone pagan, Jew or Christian - who was a contemporary eyewitness, who recorded things he said and did."

-- "Did Jesus Exist" - Bart D. Ehrman. HarperOne Publishing

Believers sometimes say things like, "are you really going to claim that Jesus didn't exist?"

Yes. Yes, I am. What other intellectually honest conclusion can I come to when history cannot find anywhere history's purported most important person? When you're even quoting things he supposedly said, this absence of evidence isn't some minor quibble that can just be brushed off. What is anyone supposed to do when the evidence for Jesus is even worse than the evidence for Bigfoot?

[jasper-pagan-witch]

2024 Grimoire Challenge Review - January Week 1

Well, I had to wait until Wednesday to get out of the house and get a binder and some paper for my challenge grimoire this year, so I basically speedran all of the December prep and the first week of January, because I will never learn and never improve on this habit of mine.

Keeping in line with other grimoires I've used in the past (such as the Epsilon Ledger and the Delta Book of Tarot Spreads), this red binder has been named the Eta Binder. I wrote down my proper name (let's go, trans mages!), tacked @2024-grimoire-challenge onto it to remind myself that that's what we're doing, and gave it a date of working. Since I started on Wednesday, that's 1/3/2024 (because I'm an American) to an unknown end date.

I had to scramble to come up with a list of 52 plants and stones to work on. I just went through the list of herbs and teas offered by my local ("local" being half an hour away) spice shop and capped it off with some Missouri flowers. For the stones, I just flipped through Judy Hall's Crystal Bible (somehow both a really good and really bad reference book) back and forth a bunch of times until I had a list of crystals I hadn't already done dives about.

As for my magical study ideas, I mostly just threw shit down that I've been interested in or have just gotten interested in. I gave each deity I worship their own bulletpoint and also split up the specific areas of pop culture magic I'm digging more into. I made sure there was a blend of comfortable old stuff, brand new stuff that I'm not sure of, and things that are generally outside of my purview.

Through the power of "work had too many 3-ring binder dividers", I have split my binder into seven sections - 1 is Plants, 2 is Stones, 3 is Work-Related Notes, 4 is Spells Designed (if I complete any, they'll be moved into my spell binder that also houses all of my correspondence lists), 5 if Journal, 6 is currently blank, and 7 is Empty Pages.

Then I finally got started on the actual projects. For the plant and crystal prompts this week, I used an integer generator online to choose two numbers randomly and received caraway (aka Carum carvi) and muscovite (aka KAl2(AlSi3O10)(F,OH)2), so I used my normal research process for the two. It was actually pretty fun, if you ignore the fact that my hand hurt so much because it ended up being 4 pages (well, 2 pages but front and back) EACH of information drawn from books and digital sources that I was all but copying word for word.

As for the Work-Related Notes, that's where I've saved things like my Definitions page, Spellwriting 101 (in my practice), and a page about my Common Tools.

I will admit that I skipped the year outline, mostly because the passing of the year means near nothing in my craft. I don't celebrate any particular "magical holidays", I don't work by the moon cycle, I'm definitely not Wiccan and thus don't celebrate the Wheel of the Year, seasons just mean whether or not I have to wear a coat, and I don't care about matching particular workings to days of the week. I'm starting to think I'm just a deeply boring person, upon reflection.

Then we get to the Work Spaces / Altars page, and oh boy! I don't actually do...workings at my altars, so they're probably better described as shrines. I have my Primary Work Space (my wooden desk, the metal microwave stand I've stolen from somewhere, and the tiny red bookshelf under the microwave stand) that is an absolute MESS at every given point that holds whatever the fuck I'm working on, regardless of what project it is. I have a Thoughtform & Spirit Shelf (which is actually a partial shelf) in my big red bookshelf that holds the anchors for my thoughtforms but also my PokeFamiliar. I have five altars around my room that are currently holding seven deities, a candle for an eighth deity, the Lokifam, three spirits, the Unknown Benefactor, the symbol of an animal spirit I want to reach out to at some point this year, and Jasper's Casper (an adorable little ghost that my coworker and her daughter crocheted for me to celebrate the first anniversary of me working at the library).

Shit's a bit cramped in here!

And today, I'm writing about my Personal Practices that have made it into my craft. I'm actually working on this now, but I paused to write up this summary. It's pretty neat to think about all the stuff I've done that I still do.

Results: My hand hurts and my head is throbbing, but c'est la vie. This is a really fun challenge, and I hope it goes all the way through 2024, unlike when I tried to do the 2023 challenge and the host of that one vanished into the aether.

[tanadrin]

Can you talk some more about the Anglo Saxon Genesis and the Old Saxon one? I haven't heard about this before.

The Junius Manuscript is one of the four surviving major codices of Anglo-Saxon literature, and contains four big works: Genesis, Exodus, Daniel, and a poem called Christ and Satan. The first three are verse translations/retellings of all or part of their respective Old Testament books; the fourth poem relates the Fall of Satan and the Harrowing of Hell, plus the episode of Christ's temptation in the desert from the Bible.

Daniel and Exodus are complete poems that were probably composed as units, but Genesis is a bit more complicated. Genesis can be divided into two major units on stylistic grounds, a longer Genesis A, which corresponds roughly to the first half of the Biblical Genesis, and a separate Genesis B, which is interpolated into Genesis A.

Genesis B specifically tells the story of the fall of the angels and the fall of man; it uses different vocabulary and common words in a slightly different way than other Old English poetry, and is generally considered (just judging from the fact a lot more people have written on Genesis B than on Genesis A) a more interesting and better piece of poetry. This assessment I think is kind of accurate! Genesis A is kind of clunky and just not that well-written. Anyway back in 1875, Eduard Sievers hypothesized that Genesis B was originally composed in Old Saxon, the continental predecessor to northwestern Low German, which is closely related to Old English. And lo and behold, in 1894, Karl Zangemeister found fragments of the Old Saxon original in a computus kept in the Vatican library (Palatinus Latinus 1447), which proved Sievers was correct. Along with the Heliand, it's one of only two poetic works that survive in Old Saxon, so it's pretty important for the study of Old Saxon literature.

IIRC Siever's evidence was both metrical and etymological, i.e., included the sort of thing that comes off as "English department" nonsense to nonspecialists. But he was right! And proven so in a very dramatic fashion that philologists rarely get to experience. If you read German, and can find a copy, you can look up Der Heliand und die angelsächsische Genesis for more information, but I confess I am much too lazy to attempt to do that tonight.

[yamayuandadu]

Basic misconceptions about Mesopotamian mythology

Most of the so-called “Sumerian mythology” is simply the school curriculum of Old Babylonian scribes who did not speak Sumerian as a vernacular anymore, it’s a misnomer, sort of like calling medieval European copies of the Bible written in Latin “Latin mythology” would be. Sumerian is chiefly a language, not a religion.

It is difficult to tell if there ever was a full separation between “Sumerian” and “Akkadian” pantheons since even in the linguistically “most Sumerian” Lagash deities with Akkadian names were worshiped since the dawn of recorded history, most notably Ishtaran. There were also areas where Mesopotamian deities were basically mixed with Hurrian (Arrapha = modern Kirkuk) or Elamite (Susa and the “Elamite lowlands”) ones.

“Seven gods who decree” were largely invented by early Assyriologists who wanted a coherent, self-contained pantheon. In reality the composition of the top of the pantheon varied by both time period and location and rarely, if ever, the gods on top were seven in number.

Multiple deities early authors like Kramer or Jacobsen didn’t even bother to write about can easily count as “major,” for example Ishtaran or Nanaya.

Mesopotamian gods did not necessarily embody forces of nature nor was being related to a specific force of nature a prerequisite for being a major deity. In fact, some of the most major ones were tied to activities directly tied to organized society, like specific cities, medicine or scribal arts. Many deities who have nothing to do with nature are already attested in the oldest documents, too, for example the metalworker goddess Ninmug.

There are multiple works of literature older than Epic of Gilgamesh. Literally dozens.

Enuma Elish being treated as some grand central text of Mesopotamian mythology is kind of as if one tried to gain full understanding of Greek mythology by centering the declaration of deification of a single Roman emperor. Also, Tiamat is virtually absent from Mesopotamian texts otherwise.

It is physically impossible to draw a single family tree of Mesopotamian gods and in at least some cases new ancestors were invented specifically to avoid divine incest (confirmed by Wilfred G. Lambert). There are multiple deities with no genealogy to speak of, including regional gods, spouses of most major deities and divine courtiers. The genealogy of many deities was variable, too.

This being said - Nanna(/Suen) and Ningal being parents of Inanna was the default, not a variant tradition. Epic of Gilgamesh is an outlier in not following this view. Such was the power of this tradition that foreign deities treated as analogous to Inanna/Ishtar were assigned as children to corresponding moon gods... or just outright “borrowed” Nanna and Ningal as parents, as in the case of Pinikir.

The names Inanna and Ishtar more or less variably designated the goddess of Uruk, but there were other, not necessarily fully identical goddesses sharing these names - Inanna of Zabalam (that’s the one with a son, not Inanna of Uruk), Ishtar of Kish, “Ishtar” of Nineveh (in reality Hurrian Shaushka) and more. There were also multiple medicine goddesses. Many recent studies (1990s onward) generally emphasize the differences instead of lumping them together.

Inanna was not blamed for Dumuzi’s death in most compositions dealing with it.

Queen Kubaba has nothing to do with the similarly named goddess from northern Syria.

[morbidology]

On the morning of 14 May, 1985, 15-year-old Paula Cooper and three of her friends skipped school in Gary, Indiana. They had a plan to commit a burglary at a local home in their neighborhood. 

That morning, they turned up on the doorstep of 78-year-old Ruth Pelke, a bible studies teacher, under the pretense of requesting lessons from the elderly woman. She welcomed the group of teenage girls into her home.

Once inside, one of Cooper’s accomplices struck Ruth over the head with a vase and slashed her arms and legs. Cooper then stabbed Ruth a total of 33 times with a butcher knife. The group of girls then ransacked Ruth’s home, making off with just $10 and a handful of jewellery. They then stole Ruth’s car and fled from the scene. 

The four girls were quickly apprehended and Cooper was described as the ringleader. Her defence attorney argued for leniency for his client, describing how she had been the victim of sexual abuse, and had been moved from school to school.

On 11 July, 1986, Paula Cooper was sentenced to die for her role in the gruesome murder. The three other girls received more lenient sentence, and all were eventually released from prison. 

From behind bars, Cooper earned a GED and took correspondence courses, then in 1989, her death sentence was commuted to life in prison. After serving 26 years, Cooper was released from prison. She expressed great remorse over her actions, and Ruth’s grandson, Bill Pelke, announced that he had forgiven her.

On 26 May, 2015, Ruth Cooper was found dead in her home. She had taken her own life by shooting herself in the head.

[dangerously-human]

One particularly interesting bit from Friendsgiving tonight was getting on the topic of life stages and how "young adults" has been defined over the years of this Bible study group's existence, and the adventurer grinning across the table at me and asking, "So when do Rachel and I get kicked out of the group?" As if he's not a couple years younger than me, because he's always, always bunched us together, has never let me get away with the microgeneration jokes that you make in this life stage unless it puts us both in the same bracket. Everyone else kind of does the same thing with us, we're the mom and dad of the group, and even with the people closer to his age than mine, he draws the line so we're on the same side of it. Which I guess is nice, because this group used to have more of a spread, and now they're pretty much all <25 and maybe it's fun to fall slightly into the wise mentor role sometimes.

And I am mostly okay with this, even if it feels really weird because these are my best friends, the people I do life with, but yeah, I already know it's been recently redefined as an 18-30 group, so casually replied that I'm at the tail end of the young adults era and will graduate to a different group next fall. And Bible study bestie pivoted the conversation slightly to the left to joke about one of the younger guys thinking I was 36 last year, and how I haven't stopped laughing about it, especially because I'm so used to being assumed younger than I am. I don't know what I'm getting at here, really. I've always been developmentally young for my age (that would be the autism), and that fades in adulthood but it never really goes away, and I guess maybe it's an odd shift that this is the first time in my life that most of my friends have been younger than me, usually they were a year or two older and in early adulthood, it skewed even higher than that. I am fascinated by the ways we subdivide the young adults years, and how that corresponds, or doesn't, with life stages. I do feel like church life is about to change for me in a big way, and I don't know how I feel about that all the time - like, it will be great to spend more time around parents, as I move toward being a host parent with the crisis care ministry I volunteer with, and I do miss learning from people older than me in a mixed ages Bible study, but I'm starting to understand why single people are sometimes reluctant to be nudged into a group where they only sort of fit, and I still hate that the church tends to become sex-segregated as you get older, it's weird. Still, it'll be good to get connected with different people in my church family and grow in a different way. And who knows, maybe the adventurer and I will "graduate" together. Even after all that anticipation, I still forget I'm 30 a lot of the time, and it was a strange reminder tonight. I'm just. Thinking, I guess.

[shittypeople34]

Why do   you want to be baptized?”   Over the years, I’ve regretted baptizing people who were pushed into it by anxious parents or   pressing circumstances. Baptism is important to spiritual development, and must be undertaken   with the proper understanding of what it means and what is expected of the person afterward. 

“Well, I used to think baptism was an optional thing, but I’ve done some reading and studying   on the subject, and I’ve realized that I need to have my sins washed away, like Paul did in   Damascus [see Acts 22:16, “Arise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling upon the name   of the Lord”]. In the past I picked up the idea from watching religious shows on television that   baptism is not very important,” Jeffrey said.   Now, he said, his view had changed. He had come to believe in the importance of baptism by   studying books and pamphlets and the New Testament books of Mark, Acts and Romans. He   believed he needed to be “buried with Christ,” as Romans describes it. He wanted to be baptized   like many were on the day of Pentecost—as reported in Acts.   Finally, he said, “I really want to be baptized.”   I was surprised. Jeffrey had studied the subject beyond basic Bible correspondence courses. He   was familiar with Bible passages about the subject; he understood the purpose and place of   baptism. He very much wanted to address the sin in his life. He believed in Jesus Christ, and said   he wanted to “put Him on in baptism”—a common phrase in my Christian fellowship.   So, he did understand the nature of baptism—and once the issue of proper understanding is   settled, the issue of urgency kicks in. Such urgency is illustrated by the account of the Philippian   jailer in Acts, who was baptized in the middle of the night. Once the Apostle Paul saw that the jailer   had a good understanding of the need for baptism, he did not waste any time.   My decision came quickly. “Yes, I’ll baptize you. It’s clear that you understand what baptism is   all about.” When I told him this, he let out a loud sigh, an obvious feeling of relief.   “Why did you make that noise just now?” I asked. His answer has remained with me since. “I   was very nervous about meeting you today,” he said. “I was afraid you would come and tell me that   I couldn’t be baptized because my sins are too evil.”   “I would never say that,” I said. “Such a thought never entered my head. The whole point of   baptism is dying to one’s old life of sin. All sins are evil before God. I don’t know of any sins too   evil for Christ’s blood to wash away.”   In the years since our first meeting, I have been asked many questions about Jeffrey Dahmer.   The most common is, “Was Jeffrey Dahmer really sincere about his baptism?” My answer always   takes me back to that moment in that little room when I agreed to baptize him, and he confided his   fears that I would reject his request.   I think Jeffrey was serious about his baptism.

[zizekianrevolution]

We see Lacan going to studies of animal behavior in order to stress this point in the paper and he talks for instance about pigeons and he says that scientists of its time have demonstrated that pigeons only go through a process of sexual maturation if they are exposed to an image of another pigeon or and that's interesting to an image of themselves right so Lacan on goes to the animal world and he says look images have this constitutive function not only for humans but also for animals he talks about locusts saying something on a similar vein so what we see is that Lacan develops a theory of a constitutive type of image and he calls this image in the paper on the mirror stage an imago gestalt so why is it a gestalt well we said that it's an aha moment but also we call it a gestalt because it compensates for something that is incomplete all right it creates a whole the body image or let's say the ego the embodied ego that is bigger than its parts right the fragmented body right the body that is made of fragmented organs so this is why we would call it the gestalt and the term imago is also a very interesting one and first of all it refers to other psychoanalytic theories and that's that's interesting by itself but also we see in the paper Lacan making a psychoanalytic joke and he says that practitioners of antiquity right this is what he says those that those who wrote the bible or were there when the bible was written already noticed the constitutive function of the image when they stated that human beings are created in the image and likeliness of god right this is what what is called imago dei this is how we say it now for Lacan it is not the image of god that is constitutive for Lacan human beings are created by their own image and that's a very interesting argument that that you have here and presented in the paper now we are talking about a psychic representation of the unified body right we're not talking about a unified body the body itself on the organismic level does not truly correspond to its representation and when we talk about this representation of the unified body we see that Lacan associates it with freud's notion of the ideal ego now you can open Freud and you'll see that he makes a distinction in german between two terms between idealiq and so there is ideal ego and ego ideal now Lacon takes this distinction very seriously and he well he talks about it in the paper on the mirror stage but he implements it in many many other places in his teaching and it's a very very fruitful distinction that Lacan makes and i'll just start by talking about the ideal ego because this form of let's say prototypical form of ego construction is deliberated in the paper on the mirror stage in 1949 and Lacan calls it the ideal I in the paper this is how you'll find it translated the ideal “I” so in this paper on the mirror stage the ideal ego or ideal I is presented as the most primordial form of ego construction prior to the function of the I in the formation of self-identity and the establishment of inter-subjective relationships so the ideal ego functions as an imaginary ideal and imaginary ideal of perfection that in fact masks the fragmented reality of the child's body and once the child identifies with the ideal ego the child gains the basic organizing psychic faculties that are associated with it and well these faculties facilitate exactly the child's motor development and at a certain point allows the child to navigate its body in its environment more than that what we might say is that the ideal ego establishes a distinction between what is our body what is the child's body what is inside of the body what belongs to the body and what is outside of it

Leon Brenner

[nicosraf]

May you list out the classes of Angels in your story? I know Lucifer is a Cherubim and it’s implied that Uriel is an Ophanim and Rosier is a Seraph! What are the list of the Angel classes from the other characters? Is there a class system with the hierarchy of heaven?

Short answer: I wrote in cherubim, seraphim, and ophanim, though there isn't any hierarchy/class-system in Heaven.

Michael is a seraph (towards the end, he's described as having six wings), and I imagine Baal to be a cherub, Asmodeus to be an ophanim, Phanuel to be a seraph, Raphael to be a cherub, and Azazel to be a seraph. (I say 'imagine' because one of these might shift but I'm like 80% sure on it.)

Long answer about celestial hierarchy and etc.,:

You made a mistake asking me this because I have really strong feelings about about The Celestial Hierarchy and about Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. I actually recently finished studying the The hierarchie of the blessed angells: their names, order and offices: the fall of Lucifer with his angells, which is some 1635 didactic poem by Thomas Haywood that I need to post pictures of because it was very pretty, so thank you for reminding me. I’m only mentioning this because Pseudo-Dionysius (and Heywood) are in this camp of theology guys who think there’s a type of angel assigned to each sphere around the Earth to correspond to the old Ptolemaic model of the universe. What this means is that most old angelology books are all trying to force this connection that isn’t biblical, and this is why the whole hierarchy is pretty messy.

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite himself was also just someone pretending to be St. Dionysius the Areopagite. Whether he did it out of respect or to try and gain some legitimacy for his angel fanfic – who knows. Either way, I'm not a fan of him (and apparently neither was Milton, who is my lover btw), and I think there's a really long conversation to be had about why early Christian authorities may have liked the idea of a hierarchical heaven with levels of authority, rather than only God's authority reigning over paradise. Hm.

Anyway, I personally don't think a paradise can exist where there's a strict hierarchy in place. And in the Bible, there is no referenced hierarchy beyond the fact that there appears to be a chief of the angels, which is Michael. (Catholic Bibles tend to include Raphael calling himself an archangel, too, if I'm remembering correctly). The only "types" of angels that are explicitly referenced are the seraphim and cheurbim. "Ophanim" as a term isn't found in most Bibles, but they're described, so I've accepted them too. (It's worth noting that the Bible never refers to the seraphim, cherubim, or ophanim as angels, so they might not even be angels at all but some other celestial things.)

The way I interpreted it is that these three are the non-material forms of angels, which they're actually not in often. This is my personal interpretation of the fact that angels are only present and described strangely (you know, that "biblically accurate angel" meme) in proximity to God's throne.

For story reasons, angels are almost always enfleshed, so their different "types" don't come up much, but they do have casual knowledge that differences exist, like when Baal instructed Lucifer to take out "only two" wings. But it's clearly a difference that doesn't have an effect on their society.

Dw, there will be more on the "types" in the books to follow. As a side note, it was kind touchy to write the categorization at all into ABM. I didn't want to make it a big thing because 1. equality among the angels is pretty significant to the story and 2. I was afraid angel categorization could become a sort of quasi-gender or, even worse, quasi-race for them.

But yes sorry for ranting I hope this answered your question ahsjdsajdhlhjsl <3333

[anushaarticles]

Peter was a Fisherman, Who wavered his faith even after seeing Jesus performing many miracles. In this article, we see how peter was before Christ and with Christ in the Bible.

[yr-obedt-cicero]

You’ve probably been asked this question a lot but were the Hamilton’s strict parents?

I would consider them so. Before I begin about Hamilton and Elizabeth individually, it's important to settle the family dynamic they had; Hamilton was usually off at work, and couldn't always be there every day with the kids. But Elizabeth was a “stay at home mom” (Which doesn't work in the common case it's used in; as Elizabeth didn't have the opportunity to go out and work if she even wanted to), she was always with the kids and running the house. It definitely appears like they weren't the lenient, coddly type. Don't get me wrong, they were very affectionate parents, smothering even. And they valued having a tight knit family — that it was a family virtue of Hamilton's that his family wasn't to be separated ever if possible. But they definitely weren't the kind of parents that were friends with their kids. I would describe their parenting style as helicopter parents, where they were very involved in their children's activities and lives.

I'm not too sure about Elizabeth, because not much is written on account of her parenting style. But considering how strict her own mother was, she likely ruled out the same teachings as when she was a girl. If Elizabeth was strict in any sense, it was likely with religion, as that was a very essential thing to her in life — and she was was very adamant her children attend church, and she would read them a Bible lesson every morning. Unfortunately, there isn't much insight on motherhood for Elizabeth, as most of her correspondence was burned and since she spent all of her days with her kids there was nothing that needed to be written down. She harped on John C. often for him to update the progress on his biography, so you can make the assumption if she wanted her children to get work done she wouldn't allow slacking off.

With Hamilton you can get a good idea of his parenting style and what role he played in the household; Hamilton was majorly in charge of the boy's, and would take them with him into the city when he could. It seems on disciplinary matters, Hamilton was only called upon if the case proved severe enough, like a “Wait until your father comes home and hears about this”. Rarely in any of his correspondence with Elizabeth is there mentions of him needing to correct much from the kids. Only a brief mention with Philip, who was the most rebellious of the children; “I am anxious to hear from Philip. Naughty young man.”

Hamilton played a very active role in his children's education, in fact, all of the surviving letters to his kids are about their education. Hamilton managed all the children's schooling, and even mentored Philip himself after he graduated college. He was a very strict and unrelenting teacher, probably prioritizing education above all due to how sacred it was for him as a child himself. He wrote Philip a very strong rule list that dictated and managed every day of Philip's life while studying for the bar.

And he was always keeping an eye on the children when they would leave, as I mentioned before; Hamilton often did not like the family to be apart where he could not keep an eye on things. As Hamilton was reluctant to let Philip travel alone for very long, and even had a friend of his keep an eye on him while he passed through Providence;

“As my eldest son Philip, who lately graduated, will pass through Providence on his way to Boston, I give him this line barely to introduce him to you; since the time I have prescribed for his return will not permit the stay of more than a day at Providence.”

(source — Alexander Hamilton to Jeremiah Olney, [August 12, 1800])

He also just seemed protective of his children in general. He would constantly write panicking letters to Elizabeth when he heard one of the kids had gotten sick, and would usually try his hardest to rush home. According to Hosack, after Philip nearly died in 1797, Hamilton took on nursing his kids himself whenever they fell ill and prescribed their medicine, or found the greatest doctors in the state, himself.

So, overall, yeah I would consider them so.

[deathlessathanasia]

"Detienne, taking as his key the well-known myth that Adonis' pregnant mother Myrrha or Smyrna (both Greek words for myrrh) was metamorphosed into a myrrh tree, from whose trunk the newborn in due time emerged, sees Adonis as essentially the fruit of an aromatic shrub, a perfume, an anti-agricultural product. His method is to find a counter-phenomenon in Attic society, in response to which the Adonia can take their significance: surely the Thesmophoria, the autumn festival in honor of Demeter at which the women of Athens celebrated the growth of food crops. Detienne finds a further, sociological opposition here: the Thesmophoria were celebrated only by the wives of Athenian citizens; the Adonia were notoriously celebrated by prostitutes. He positions Adonis and the data of his cult within various oppositional codes discernible in Greek culture-each illustrated by a diagram-that parallel one another quite precisely, replicating the same meaning in different terms: aromatically, Adonis stands for heady perfume; botanically, for profitless agriculture; socially, for seduction and extramarital pleasure. The Adonia, Detienne declares, were a celebration of infertility and fruitless sex, a spectacular illustration of the dangers of untrammeled female sexuality, serving to balance and emphasize the autumn celebration of fruitfulness and legitimate connubiality in the service of the polis.

But much evidence slips through Detienne's grid. In several versions of the birth of Adonis myrrh has no place: in our earliest his mother is one Alphesiboea ([Hes.], fr. 139 M-W); in another she is one Metharme ([Apollod.], Bibl. 3.14.3). Philostephanus of Cyrene made him the son of Zeus alone (ap. [Probus] on Verg., Ecl. 10.18).22 As for the carnival of whores, the Adoniac festivities in brothels in Diphilus, fr. 42.38-41 PCG and Alciphron 4.14.8 (based on fourth-century comedy), are to be supplemented by Aristophanes, Lys. 391-96, and Menander, Sam. 35-50, in which wives and daughters of citizens celebrate the Adonia. Most surprisingly, Detienne's theory takes only passing account of the ritual lamentation, which ancient sources make the most conspicuous feature of the festival, and in general ignores what the celebrants themselves thought of what they were doing-unless we are to imagine that the women of Athens climbed onto their roofs once a year deliberately to celebrate their own failings to the community. There was probably another reason, one which feminist studies of the cult have begun to seek.

Another assumption, however, more fundamentally flaws Detienne's interpretation. While proposing to tease an inherent meaning from Athenian cult practice by identifying the inherent correspondences and oppositions within it, Detienne fails to define a perspective more specific than a homogeneous Greco-Roman society. Adonis, for example, must have meant many things to many people at many times (even different things to the same people at different times), but Detienne's formula assumes that he meant essentially the same thing to everybody, no matter how many borders of nation, culture, language, gender, or time he may have crossed-as if any detail of the myth of Adonis tapped into one immanent meaning and could be adduced for the significance of the Athenian cult. Rhetorical motives are undifferentiated: a line of Sappho is treated equally with a line of Philodemus; the testimony of Aristophanes is put on a par with the testimony of St. Cyril. This method is programmatic and derives from Levi-Strauss, who articulates the principle thus vis-A-vis his interpretation of Oedipus: "[W]e define the myth as consisting of all its versions; or to put it otherwise, a myth remains the same as long as it is felt as such." Combining details from diverse myths of Adonis, regardless of date or provenance, Detienne treats the resulting conglomeration as a single sacred tale holding a precious key to the meaning of the ritual. But for whom does it hold meaning? For Detienne alone. Purportedly context-based, his method actually isolates phenomena from their diverse cultural uses and recontextualizes them into an artificial code that transcends the messy inconsistencies of Greek thought."

- The Sexuality of Adonis by Joseph D. Reed

[hopethroughscriptureministries]

10 Creative and Fun Bible Exercises

1. Scripture Scavenger Hunt

Create a list of themes (e.g., love, courage, faith) and challenge participants to find verses related to each theme. They can do this alone or in teams. For added fun, hide physical or digital clues around your home or online, leading to different Bible verses.

2. Bible Character Role-Play

Pick a story from the Bible and assign characters to each participant. Have them act out the story, improvising dialogue based on the scripture. This is a great exercise to do with family or friends and helps to bring biblical narratives to life.

3. Verse Art Challenge

Select a meaningful verse and encourage participants to create an art piece inspired by it. This can be a drawing, painting, digital art, or even a piece of music. Share these creations online to inspire others.

4. Interactive Bible Study

Host an online Bible study where participants take turns leading the discussion on a chosen passage. Incorporate multimedia elements like videos, music, and digital polls to make the study interactive and engaging.

5. Biblical Escape Room

Design an escape room game using Bible knowledge. Create puzzles and riddles that require solving based on biblical stories and verses. This can be set up at home or virtually, and is perfect for group participation.

6. Scripture Cooking

Find recipes in the Bible (like the ingredients for unleavened bread) and have a cooking session where participants make these dishes. While cooking, discuss the historical and spiritual significance of the foods mentioned in the Bible.

7. Bible Verse Journaling

Encourage participants to start a journaling practice where they write down a verse each day and reflect on its meaning and how it applies to their life. Share excerpts or insights in an online group to foster a sense of community.

8. Verse Memorization Challenge

Create a friendly competition to memorize Bible verses. Use apps or create flashcards to help with memorization. Share progress and tips on social media to motivate others to join in.

9. Biblical Geography Tour

Use Google Earth or other virtual tour tools to explore the locations mentioned in the Bible. Pair each location with its corresponding scripture and discuss the historical context and significance of these places.

10. Bible-Inspired Creative Writing

Encourage participants to write short stories, poems, or songs inspired by Bible passages. Share these creative works in an online forum or group, celebrating the diverse ways people interpret and find inspiration in scripture.

Engage and Inspire

These exercises are designed to not only deepen biblical knowledge but also to create an engaging, fun, and interactive experience. Share your experiences, art, and insights on social media, and watch your community grow as others are drawn to these creative ways to explore the Bible.

[ausetkmt]

Biden condemns white Supremacy at site of church shooting in South Carolina

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — Courting Black voters he needs to win reelection, President Joe Biden on Monday denounced the “poison” of white supremacy in America, declaring at the site of a deadly racist church shooting in South Carolina that such ideology has no place in America, “not today, tomorrow or ever.”

Biden spoke from the pulpit of Mother Emanuel AME Church, where in 2015 nine Black parishioners were shot to death by the white stranger they had invited to join their Bible study. The Democratic president’s speech followed his blunt remarks last Friday on the eve of the anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, in which he excoriated former President Donald Trump for “glorifying” rather than condemning political violence.

At Mother Emanuel, Biden said “the word of God was pierced by bullets of hate, of rage, propelled not just by gunpowder, but by a poison, a poison that has for too long haunted this nation.”

That’s “white supremacy,” he said, the view by some whites that they are superior to other races. “It is a poison, throughout our history, that’s ripped this nation apart. This has no place in America. Not today, tomorrow or ever.”

It was a grim way to kick off a presidential campaign, particularly for someone known for his unfailing optimism and belief that American achievements are limitless. But it’s a reflection of the emphasis Biden and his campaign are placing on energizing Black voters amid deepening concerns among Democrats that the president could lose support from this critical constituency heading into the election.

Biden’s campaign advisers and aides hope the visit lays out the stakes of the race in unequivocal terms three years after the cultural saturation of Trump’s words and actions while he was president. It’s a contrast they hope will be paramount to voters in 2024.

AP AUDIO: Biden condemns white supremacy in a campaign speech at a SC church where Black people were killed.

AP correspondent Jennifer King reports.

Biden also used his second major campaign event of the year to thank the state’s Black voters. After an endorsement by Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn, one of the highest-ranking African Americans in the U.S. House, the state made Biden the winner of its Democratic presidential primary in 2020. That, in turn, set him on a path to become the party’s nominee and defeat Trump to win the presidency.

��I owe you,” he said.

Biden was briefly interrupted when several people upset over by his staunch support for Israel in its war against Hamas called out that if he really cared about lives lost he would call for a cease-fire in Gaza to help innocent Palestinians who are being killed under Israel’s bombardment. The chants of “cease-fire now” were drowned out by audience members chanting “four more years.”

The president also swiped at Republican presidential candidates Nikki Haley, a former governor of South Carolina, and Trump, without naming either one.

Haley was governor at the time of the shooting and gained national attention for her response, which included signing legislation into law removing the Confederate flag from the state Capitol. But she has been on the defensive recently for not explicitly naming slavery as the root cause of the Civil War when the question was posed at a campaign event. Her campaign responded Monday with a list of comments attributed to Biden that it said showed he’s racially insensitive.

Biden called it a “lie” that the war was about states’ rights. “So let me be clear, for those who don’t seem to know: Slavery was the cause of the Civil War. There’s no negotiation about that.”

Haley, speaking at a Fox News Channel town hall on Monday, pushed back that it was “offensive” for Biden to give a political speech at the church. She also raised Biden’s ties to Democratic segregationist senators early in his career.

During his successful 2020 run for the White House, Biden faced criticism from fellow Democratic contenders for alluding to his work with Sens. James Eastland of Mississippi and Herman Talmadge of Georgia while trying to make a point about lost civility in national politics.

“I don’t need someone who palled around with segregationists in the ‘70s and has said racist comments all the way through his career lecturing me or anyone in South Carolina about what it means to have racism, slavery, or anything related to the Civil War,” Haley said.

On more current events, Biden noted the scores of failed attempts by Trump in the courts to overturn the 2020 election in an attempt to hold onto power, as well as the former president’s embrace of the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

“Let me say what others cannot: We must reject political violence in America. Always, not sometimes. Always. It’s never appropriate,” Biden said. He said “losers are taught to concede when they lose. And he’s a loser,” meaning Trump.

It was June 17, 2015, when a 21-year-old white man walked into the church and, intending to ignite a race war, shot and killed nine Black parishioners and wounded one more. Biden was vice president when he attended the memorial service in Charleston.

Biden’s aides and allies say the shootings are among the critical moments when the nation’s political divide started to sharpen and crack. Though Trump, the current Republican presidential front-runner, was not in office at the time and has called the shooting “horrible,” Biden is seeking to tie Trump’s current rhetoric to such violence.

Two years after the attack, as the “Unite The Right” gathering of white nationalists in Charlottesville, Virginia, erupted in violent clashes with counterprotesters. Trump said merely that “there is blame on both sides.”

Biden and his aides argue it’s all part of the same problem: Trump refused to condemn the actions of the white nationalists at that gathering. He’s repeatedly used rhetoric once used by Adolf Hitler to argue that immigrants entering the U.S. illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country,” yet insisted he had no idea that one of the world’s most reviled and infamous figures had used similar words.

And Trump continues to repeat his false claims that he won the 2020 election, as well as his assertion that the Capitol rioters were patriotic and those serving prison time are “hostages.”

At Mother Emanuel, Biden revisited themes from the Jan. 6 anniversary speech he delivered Friday.

Biden has repeatedly suggested that democracy itself is on the ballot, asking whether it is still “America’s sacred cause.”

Trump, who faces 91 criminal charges stemming from his efforts to overturn his loss to Biden and three other felony cases, argues that Biden and other top Democrats are themselves seeking to undermine democracy by using the legal system to thwart the campaign of Biden’s chief rival.

South Carolina is the first official Democratic nominating contest where Biden wants another strong showing.

In an interview with The Associated Press before Biden’s appearance, Malcolm Graham, a brother of Charleston church victim Cynthia Graham-Hurd, said the threat of racism and hate-fueled violence is part of a needed national conversation about race and American democracy.

“Racism, hatred and discrimination continue to be the Achilles’ heel of America, of our nation,” said Graham, a city councilman in Charlotte, North Carolina. “Certainly, what happened to the Emanual Nine years ago is a visible example of that. What happened in Buffalo, years later, where people were killed under similar circumstances, shows that racism and discrimination are still real and it’s even in our politics.”

After the speech, Biden met privately with religious leaders and family members and survivors of the church shooting. He also dropped in at Hannibal’s Kitchen, a soul food restaurant, to shake hands.

Later Monday, Biden flew to Dallas to make a brief stop at a memorial service for Eddie Bernice Johnson, the influential former Texas congresswoman who died on New Year’s Eve. Johnson was 89.

Biden said in a statement last week that he and Johnson had worked together during her 30 years in Congress and he was grateful for her friendship and partnership.

[femme-et-traditionnelle]

If you had a make a suggestion, where should a non Christian traditional Man look for a homely, traditional girl in the current dating atmosphere?

A very good question, yet I don't have much of an answer to it. Here is what I understood from my own personal story:

As a traditional woman, I could never find a similarly minded man before looking into the Christian circles. The secular men that would show interest in me enjoyed my traditional apppearance yet were treating me like a an easy girl, very much far away from what a traditional woman wants.

Actually, I started getting back to Catholicism (baptized as a child then turned away from it as a teen) when I realized how much my moral values, and the ones I wanted to raise my future children with, were aligned with the Church's. Attending Bible group, Masses, studying religion history and devoting myself in prayers eventually led my back to the Catholic Faith.

Yet let me tell you, even in Catholic circles, I would find many men not ready to follow the Church's teachings when it came to their wife/relationship. It took to find the right person, my one and only, my Fiancé.

And I found him at the very last place you would think a strongly Catholic man would be. Nothing would have let me guess he was a traditional minded man either, not until month and month into our correspondence.

What I mean by this, is that one type of person isn't found in one kind of place. Before coming back to the Church, I was a traditional homely woman yet I was living the same way as everyone else. I guess my appearance was a give away, dresses and skirts, braided or curled hair, soft spoken, good manners... but it isn't even the case for every traditional woman as some don't have the possibilities to dress and look how they want/feel.

But what is the dating scene like nowadays? I have no idea. If we're talking dating websites/apps, I have no idea what non Catholic ones are like. If we're talking in person meeting, I am not even sure this is still a thing.

I am very sorry I can't be of much help to you. I will pray that you find your destined soulmate someday, if that is the only way I can help 🙏🌸