Our story begins on the 1921 British Mount Everest Reconnaissance Expedition. The British Empire was at its territorial peak and a team of explorers were commissioned to snoop around the mountains of Tibet to find a route to access Mt. Everest. Political and personal differences were causing schisms among the group and a younger explorer with no former experience in the Himalayas had fallen ill. As you can imagine, tensions were pretty high on this death-defying journey. Fortunately, the team was able to find Lhagba La (meaning, “Windy Gap”), which gave future expeditions access to Mt. Everest. The mission was a success and the team returned home safely.
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really?
Joktan: The First Creole Speaker
I enjoy nondogmatic speculation on issues where the Bible isn’t entirely clear. Did Jews build the Trojan horse? Did Elijah use Ba’al’s myths against him? We probably won’t know for sure on this side of eschatology, but they are fun things to think about. They can also be edifying topics for discussion because they force us to analyze what is written in the Word and give it precedence over what isn’t written in the Word.
I have developed a hypothesis that Joktan was the first creole speaker in recorded history. This hypothesis begs a few questions: 1) What is creole? 2) Who was Joktan? 3) Why did Joktan speak creole? and 4) Are you sure?
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Knowing is half the battle
Videos of Jews who have converted to Christianity have been emerging on the internet. There seems to be a common thread among many of them: they were taught at an early age that the New Testament was an evil book and they should stay away from it. I don’t even blame them for thinking Christianity is evil; just look at the atrocities committed against the Jews in the name of replacement theology. But, I don’t think that Jews, nor Christians for that matter, should avoid reading something on the account of it being heresy. As a minimum, we need to be prepared to give an answer to objectors and we need to hear the objection before we can respond.
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Faith, Believe, Fides, Credo, and Gelēfan
The way we speak affects the way we think and the way we think affects the way we speak. And the way we speak is affected by centuries of geopolitical conflict and linguistic changes. Check out this map with translations of the word, “faith,” in various languages around Europe:
If you look at the map, you can see certain words that are similar and clumped together. The Slavic languages have something like “vera” (in the Cyrillic alphabet, “вера”). Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish are all from the North Germanic branch, so they are all similar, whereas German and Dutch are from the West Germanic branch, so they look like each other.
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How to count to 31 on one hand
Christians should constantly be learning the Bible. Learning is part of a healthy Christian lifestyle. But, there’s no reason that the learning lifestyle should be restricted to the Bible, so here’s a nerdy trick that I learned years ago: How to count to 31 on one hand.
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What did Ruth really do with Boaz?
When you take an in-depth look at the events in the book of Ruth leading to Ruth and Boaz’s marriage, you come to believe that Boaz might have actually been a victim of sexual assault very similar to date rape. This is a rather harsh accusation to make blindly, so let’s take a look at the evidence. The argument begins in an unlikely place: the conflict between Saul and David.
When Saul returned from following the Philistines, he was told, “Behold, David is in the wilderness of Engedi.” Then Saul took three thousand chosen men out of all Israel and went to seek David and his men in front of the Wildgoats’ Rocks. And he came to the sheepfolds by the way, where there was a cave, and Saul went in to relieve himself. Now David and his men were sitting in the innermost parts of the cave. And the men of David said to him, “Here is the day of which the LORD said to you, ‘Behold, I will give your enemy into your hand, and you shall do to him as it shall seem good to you.'” Then David arose and stealthily cut off a corner of Saul’s robe. (1 Samuel 24:1-4 ESV)
Now, where it says, “and Saul went in to relieve himself,” the Hebrew is a bit more graphic. More literally translated, it would say, “and Saul went in to cover his feet.” What does that mean? Well, first of all, the word, “foot,” can be confusing. In Russian, we have the word, noga, which can mean the entire leg. There is much controversy about how they nailed Christ to the cross, because the Greek word for “hand” can also include the wrist and above. Hebrew has one word, kârâ‛, which apparently comes from a primitive root meaning “to bend.” This kârâ‛ is said to mean from the knee down. But, the body part that Saul covers is the regel.
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