August 2006

Spam comments

Following advice from Kevin and Jay, I installed the Akismet plug-in for WordPress. It’s been doing a great job of catching the spam comments (mostly advertisements for various drugs and/or plane tickets to China). But guess which post gets the most spam comments? You guessed it: “About comment moderation.”

My fall semester

Okay, so here’s how my fall semester is shaping up.

I’m teaching five sections of three different classes. Yes, you heard that right. They are:

  • Religion 101: The History and Religion of Israel (3 sections)
  • Religion 592: The Pentateuch
  • Religion 599: Third-Semester Hebrew (equivalent to our Hebrew 502)

Last spring I agreed to lead one student through an independent study of our third-semester Hebrew class, because she was unable to take it during the summer session when it is normally offered. At that time a second student requested to join in, and I agreed to that as well. Dr. Timothy Willis, who normally handles the Hebrew language instruction in our division, will be teaching overseas this year in Pepperdine’s Florence, Italy program, so I was happy to step in and pinch-hit. The upside is that I’m going to get to spend some time renovating my Hebrew skills with two or three of our religion majors. Tim has done me an invaluable service by giving me his syllabus, assignments, and quizzes, so that I can basically just duplicate his class. The downside is the extra scheduled meeting time every week.

Last week, an unexpected staffing shortage had our division chair, Randy Chesnutt, scrambling for faculty in Religion 101 classes, so I agreed to take on an extra session. The upside is that I going to get to know fifty more of our wonderful Pepperdine students than I otherwise would. The downside is that the class meets during Monday Night Football.

I’m also chairing one committee and sitting on two others, as well as trying to prepare a presentation for the Abilene Christian University Lectureships and two papers for the Society of Biblical Literature meeting.

I’m overcomitted. I need to learn better how to say “No.” But I honestly don’t know to which of the “extras” this semester it would have made sense to say “No.” I can overwork myself for a semester or throw 50+ students’ degree plans off track. To me that’s sort of a no-brainer. “The needs of the many outweight the needs … of the one.” The students who need the Hebrew class are good people with good reasons for not being able to take it on the regular schedule, during the summer session, and it’s not scheduled to be taught again until summer 2008. The other situation came up suddenly and was sort of an emergency situation, and the students enrolled in my Monday night class don’t need to have their first semester in college be disrupted any more than is common to first-year experiences.

Similarly, with the committee assignments, it’s not that I’m so important that the committees wouldn’t function without me, but that I think the work of these three committees is important enough that I want to be involved. Actually, come to think of it, maybe I should try to back off of one of these committees. Yes, that’s probably a good idea. I think I’ll e-mail Robert right now. Thanks for talking me into that.

In the meantime, you’ll understand if my blog posts are relatively infrequent and perhaps shorter than normal during the next four months. (Yeah, right. Me, a man of few words. :snicker: )

Jonathan Wells’s Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design

Jonathan Wells recently published a new book entitled The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design. The bloggers over on The Panda’s Thumb have been running a series of chapter-by-chapter reviews. They don’t like it, of course, but they have very good reasons for that judgment.

The Exodus Decoded around the internet

Over the next few days, maybe stretching into a couple or three weeks, you’ll be getting my personal views on The Exodus Decoded as I watch and review it segment by segment. Here are some other takes from around the internet.

Of course, you can go straight to the horse’s mouth: there’s an official site, complete with anticipated gift shop. I might even buy something from them if they have cool reproductions of certain artifacts, even if those artifacts don’t have the ramifications Jacobovici thinks.

There’s a Wikipedia article on The Exodus Decoded, though as always, caution is advised when using Wikipedia (Jacobovici’s name is even misspelled in the article).

“Newsy” treatments of the program can be found at Tidings Online, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, the Toronto Sun, the Daily Breeze, the Evansville Courier & Press, and undobutedly a number of other sources farther down in the Google results than I was willing to look.

On the Biblical Archaeology Society web site, you can read an exchange of e-mails between Hershel Shanks and Simcha Jacobovici (ironically, Shanks’s first e-mail in the series begins with the line, “This is a private communication”). The BAS also has an article by Ronald Hendel (who was briefly on my dissertation committee before he moved from SMU to Berkeley), who points out many difficulties with the program.

The Exodus Decoded: An extended review, part 1

I’ve “lightly” watched about the first half of The Exodus Decoded, and on the positive side I must say that it is as heavy on slick production value as it is light on reliable content. Visually, the program is engaging and entertaining. Unfortunately, all that entertainment value is squandered on content that just won’t hold up. I’m not going to try to address all of the issues raised (and mishandled) in ED in a single post. Instead, I’ll treat them one by one, roughly in the order that they are raised in the program itself.

Jacobovici’s “schtick” is rather staggering when you think about it. He, and filmmaker James Cameron, who introduces the program, claim that biblical scholars have missed “clues” to the historicity of the exodus, clues that are “hiding in plain sight.” Later in the program, Jacobovici gets more brash; he accuses scholars of “ignoring” evidence that is “staring them in the face.”

In the first segment of the program, Jacobovici presents what he calls “Exhibit A” in his case: the Ahmose “Tempest” Stela. According to Jacobovici, the Tempest Stela—which is apparently not on public display anywhere, but according to Jacobovici is in storage in a Cairo museum—tells a story remarkably similar to the biblical story of the ten plagues. In Jacobovici’s view, this confirms Ahmose himself as the Pharaoh of the exodus.

The Tempest Stela (I will call it this in preference to “Ahmose Stela,” since another stela of Ahmose is known) is a relatively little-known artifact, and not all that much has been published about it. The American Theological Library Association database lists only one journal article about it: Malcolm H. Weiner and James P. Allen, “Separate Lives: The Ahmose Tempest Stela and the Theran Eruption,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 57 (1998) 1–28. This “article” is really a juxtaposition of two essays, one by Allen and one by Weiner. We’ll return to Weiner’s contribution later in this series, as appropriate to the structure of The Exodus Decoded, and focus our attention first on the essay by Allen. (By the way, the fact that the essays by Weiner, of the Institute for Aegean Prehistory, and Allen, of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was published in JNES puts paid to Jacobovici’s assertion that scholars from different disciplines have failed to recognize the clues relevant to verifying the exodus because they “don’t talk to each other.”) Incidentally, the Tempest Stela was badly broken over the years, but reconstruction is aided by the curious fact that the Tempest Stela contained the same inscription on both sides.

First, the props—both in the sense of “praise” and in the sense of objects used to enhance a video production. Jacobovici’s production team has done a really attractive job of reconstructing the Tempest Stele. Jacobovici’s version looks like it has some gaps in the wrong places, and is a little disproportionate (height to width), but is nevertheless a very nice-looking and near-accurate piece of work, even if the glowing amber “missing pieces” are a bit cheesy.

Reconstruction of the Tempest Stela from The Exodus Decoded
Drawing of the Tempest Stela from Weiner and Allen, JNES (1998)

Unfortunately, Jacobovici’s skill in interpreting the Tempest Stela falls far short of his effects staff’s skill in visually reconstructing the stela. Recall that Jacobovici’s thesis is that the Tempest Stele describes the biblical ten plagues from an Egyptian point of view, and that therefore Ahmose is the Pharaoh of the exodus. There are numerous problems with this thesis—taking it no further than this simple equation. My analysis here is very much dependent on Allen’s description of the stela in JNES 57; anything I say about the stela here should be understood to come with an implied “According to Allen in JNES 57″ attached.

When evaluating all of this, it’s important to keep the time frame in mind throughout the entire discussion. After all, one of Jacobovici’s major claims that the scholars are dating the exodus at least a century and a half too late. The customary dating for Ahmose’s reign is c. 1550–1525 BCE. Allen dates the Tempest Stela to Ahmose’s first regnal year; the date itself was once in what is now a lacuna in the text, so Allen’s reconstruction might be inaccurate, but he makes a good case for it on the basis of content, orthography, and the physical dimensions of the lacuna. Thus, if the Tempest Stela can be connected to the ten plagues, the plagues would have happened sometime in the period 1550–1525 BCE, with a good case being made for 1550 itself. Keep this in mind throughout this entire series of posts.

A critical question for Jacobovici’s case is whether or not the description of the calamity in the Temple Stela really resembles the biblical description of the ten plagues. Here’s the description of the calamity from the Temple Stela, as translated by Allen (lines 6–10 on the face of the stela, 8–12 on the reverse):

[Then] the gods [made] the sky come in a storm of r[ain, with dark]ness in the western region and the sky beclouded without [stop, loud]er than [the sound of] the subjects, strong[er than …, howling(?)] on the hills more than the sound of the cavern in Elephantine. Then every house and every habitation they reached [perished and those in them died, their corpses] floating on the water like skiffs of papyrus, (even) in the doorway and the private apartments (of the palace), for a period of up to […] days, while no torch could give light over the Two Lands.

Allen comments on the nature of the tempest:

The main features of the storm were apparently torrential rain; darkness; and loud noise, probably from the thunder or wind, or both. The text does not note the duration of the deluge, but its aftermath is described as lasting for a period of several days or even weeks. It evidently occasioned large-scale flooding, property damage, and loss of life; the mention of “the east and west (banks)” being denuded of “covering” [in later lines than those quoted above—RCH] suggests that it also washed away large sections of cropland.

So here’s what we have: the Tempest Stele of Ahmose describes a massive thunderstorm that results in darkness (from the cloud cover, I suppose) and a flood that does not abate for several days, or even weeks. How closely does this resemble the biblical description of the ten plagues? There are indeed some meteorological phenomena in the ten plagues: in particular, the fourth seventh plague consists of hail, lightning, thunder, and rain, and the ninth plague, darkness, may have been meteorological (I think the “tangible darkness” of Exodus 10:22 is meant to evoke thoughts of a terribly thick sandstorm; note that the third and sixth plagues also involve airborne particulate matter, dust and soot). None of the other biblical plagues are overtly meteorological, and the Tempest Stele says nothing about water turning to blood (the first biblical plague; a surprising omission, if it relates to the plagues, since an abundance of water is the pressing problem in the Tempest Stela). There is no mention on the Tempest Stela of swarms of frogs (second plague), gnats (or mosquitoes, third plague), flies (fourth plague), or locusts (eighth plague). Ahmose’s PR agent (a.k.a. the stela’s author) says nothing about any diseases on livestock (fifth plague) or humans (sixth plague). There are indeed corpses floating around on the Tempest Stela, but there is no hint that these are limited to the firstborn (tenth plague), nor was the cause of their death mysterious—they were killed in the storm, or drowned in the subsequent flood. Note well that the biblical plagues story does not say anything about a flood in connection with the ten plagues, not even the plague of hail, and the Tempest Stela does not mention hail.

By now it should be clear that Jacobovici’s claim that the Tempest Stela of Ahmose reports, from an Egyptian perspective, the same events as the biblical ten plagues story hangs by the slimmest of threads. The Tempest Stela’s catastrophe could, at most, be seen as vaguely parallel to the plagues of hail and darkness, but even here there are enough significant differences to cast serious doubt on the suggested parallel. To try to connect the Tempest Stela with the ten plagues story as a whole, one must suppose either that the Tempest Stela (whose inscription dates within Ahmose’s twenty-five-year reign, as does the catastrophe itself) presents an exaggerated version of only one of ten catastrophes, or perhaps a mangled conflation of two of them, or that the biblical version (whose linguistic properties are characteristic of an era hundreds of years later than any proposed time frame for the exodus) presents a vastly expanded list of plagues based on a single, albeit devastating, thunderstorm. Neither of these scenarios, though, is what Jacobovici proposes. What it boils down to is simply this: The story of a devastating thunderstorm is just not the same as the story of the ten plagues. There is no compelling link between the text of Ahmose’s Tempest Stela and the biblical story of the exodus.

I would be remiss if I did not address one other issue, even though the foregoing analysis should be enough to demonstrate that Jacobovici’s suggestion of a link between the Tempest Stela and the book of Exodus hasn’t a leg upon which to stand. Jacobovici is unduly impressed by the fact that a line in the Tempest Stele refers to “god” in the singular, rather than “gods” in the plural. The exact phrase that seems to have caught Jacobovici’s attention is in line 10, “Then His Incarnation said: ‘How much greater is this than the impressive manifestation of the great god, than the plans of the gods!’” (Allen’s translation) Jacobovici seems to want to interpret this as Ahmose attributing the catastrophe to “the great god”—singular—over against the “gods”—plural—of Egypt. But this is a misreading of the text. It is patently clear from line 6 (see above) that Ahmose attributes the storm to “the gods”—plural. Moreover, carefully reread the line just quoted. It says, “How much greater is this than the impressive manifestation of the great god, than the plans of the gods!” It does not say, “How much greater is this the impressive manifestation of the great god, than the plans of the gods!”—as it is misquoted on the Exodus Decoded web site (follow the link then click on part 4). This is very important, because Ahmose is contrasting “this”—the catastrophic storm—with both “the impressive manifestation of the great god” (singular) and “the plans of the gods” (plural). As Allen explains,

The key to the meaning of this clause appears to lie in the parallel theme of “the great god,” on the one hand, and “the gods,” on the other, which is sounded throughout the stela. Ahmose’s explicit response to the storm—”How much greater is this than the impressive manifestation of the great god, than the plans of the gods!” (ll. 10 F, 14 B)—indicates that both “the great god” and “the gods” were considered agents of its occurrence. The description of his subsequent actions follows the same pattern: first he returns to Amun’s presence in Thebes, then—following measures taken for the relief of the country—he orders restoration of “the templest that had fallen to ruin in this entire land.” The pair of clauses in ll. 6 F and 14 B are probably to be understood in the same light: as parallel statements of the theological basis for the storm. In the mind of the Egyptians, the catastrophe was evidently seen as a manifestation of Amun’s desire that Ahmose return to Thebes and of the gods’ demand that he turn his attention to the state of their temples.

Ahmose wasn’t referring to Israel’s God when he marveled at the severity of the storm. “The great god” is Amun, who is explicitly mentioned in line 3 of the stela, if Allen’s reconstruction (following W. Helck, Historische-biographische Texte der 2. Zwischenzeit und neue Texte der 18. Dynastie, 1975) of “A[mun-Re, lord of thrones of the Two Lands] was in Thebes” is correct. And again, notice that Ahmose says that the severity of the storm was greater than the manifestation of the great god (Amun). Allen comments,

Unusual as it is, the notion of events exceeding the original intent of their divine author has a literary parallel of sorts in the story known as “The Destruction of Mankind,” which describes the sungod’s efforts to stop the slaughter of human beings begun by Hathor on his orders.

In other words, Ahmose isn’t floored by some great god from out of nowhere who was more impressive than “the gods”; rather, he seems to think that the catastrophe overran the original divine plan. (By the way, this theme is known in the Bible too; see Isaiah 10:5–11.)

In sum, Jacobovici’s thesis of a parallel between the Tempest Stela and the biblical story of the ten plagues simply doesn’t hold water. Only a willful blurring of vision, or very careless interpretation of the surface sense of both texts, can lead anywhere near such a conclusion.

This post has dealt only with that portion of The Exodus Decoded that runs from the beginning of the program to the first commercial break (as broadcast on the History Channel on August 20, 2006). I’ll be back in a later post with comments on the second segment of the broadcast.

Beloit’s annual (un)reality check

Every year, Beloit College releases a “Mindset List” at the beginning of the new school year. The list gets a lot of press, but looking at this year’s list—and then looking back at the earlier lists in light of student reactions to this year’s list—reveals just how vapid and, well, unrevealing the silly thing is. Here’s this year’s list, with commentary.

1. The Soviet Union has never existed and therefore is about as scary as the student union.

I don’t know whether these items are intended to show the students’ alleged ignorance or the list compilers’ inability to do basic math. Beloit’s introduction to the list notes that most students in the class of 2010 were born in 1988. The USSR dissolved in 1991. In reaction to the list at Inside Higher Ed, some members of the class of 2010 have spoken to this issue, demonstrating their knowledge of the USSR. They may not remember the USSR as a firsthand experience, but they certainly know about it from high school history classes, or their parents’ stories, or the History Channel, or Wikipedia, or Google. As for the “scary” part, what difference does it make on God’s green earth whether the class of 2010 was ever scared of the Soviet Union? Arguably, raising a generation of Americans to be scared of the Soviet Union gave us McCarthy and the nuclear arms race. We’re supposed to mourn the loss?

2. They have known only two presidents.

Reagan was president until January 1989, succeeded by the elder Bush (I was soooo tempted to write “elderberry” just then, for you Monty Python fans, some of whom may be in the class of 2010), then Bill Clinton, then Dubya. Most students in the class of 2010 have lived through four presidents. Now, to be fair, the list says that they have known only two presidents, but what does known mean here? I was born during the Johnson administration but I have never personally known any president. Growing up, the first sitting president I knew anything about was Nixon, and the first president I really paid attention to was Carter, but I know a few things (much less than I should) about our earlier presidents. The same may be true of the class of 2010. It’s possible—though I don’t think Beloit is on solid ground to take this for granted—that the first sitting president who really made much difference to the class of 2010 was Clinton, but that hardly means that the class of 2010 is ignorant about the American presidency.3. For most of their lives, major U.S. airlines have been bankrupt.

And the importance of this is what? Air travel is still save and relatively affordable, despite the various restructurings of the major airlines. How does this factoid tell me anything about the mindset of the class of 2010?

4. Manuel Noriega has always been in jail in the U.S.

For this item it looks like the list compilers have simply grabbed a major news item from the class of 2010’s prekindergarten years. Noriega’s regime was overthrown in 1989; he surrendered to US troops in 1990 and was tried in 1992. Never mind that 1992–2006 doesn’t constitute “always.” How does this bit of historical trivia (come on, a thousand years from now how significant will Manuel Noriega turn to have been?) help me understand the mindset of the class of 2010?

5. They have grown up getting lost in “big boxes.”

Sounds like the list compilers have been listening to too many Osh commercials. It may be hard to find things in a “big box” store if you don’t know the layout, but quite frankly, once you do know the layout (and it’s not that hard since each brand tends to run on a template), you can find things—including the cash registers and the exit doors—with ease. Perhaps little kids might get lost in a “big box” store (code Adam and all that) but let’s get real. It’s not that hard to navigate around a Wal-Mart or Home Depot. By couching this item in terms of “getting lost” in the store, the list misses, or at best only vaguely hints at, some of the real impact of the “big boxes” on the class of 2010 and indeed all of global culture, namely, such things as the displacement of small “mom and pop” businesses in favor of the big chains, the homogenization of global retail, etc.

6. There has always been only one Germany.

The two Germanies reunified in 1990. Most of the class of 2010 would have been two or three years old at the time. Again, 1990–2006 is not “always,” not even for the class of 2010. They are not a bunch of idiots who can’t think back farther than they can remember. Members of the class of 2010 are undboutedly aware of East and West Germany, even if they don’t have personal firsthand memories of the night the wall was torn down.

7. They have never heard anyone actually “ring it up” on a cash register.

Again, so what? They have the advantage of computerized cash registers. Whoop-te-do. Unless somebody is just really nostalgic for the sound of the manual cash register, this is meaningless.

8. They are wireless, yet always connected.

And more power to them! I would be too, if I could afford the technology and, more significantly, the subscription plans. Right now I am typing on a laptop in the dining room (okay, it’s really more of a “dining area”; okay, really more of one corner of the living room) that is connected wirelessly (802.11b) to a router in the master bedroom. I carry a cell phone everywhere; my PDA is Bluetooth-enabled although my slightly older PowerBook isn’t. And I was in the class of 1989—when most of the class of 2010 was about one year old. There are significant implications to the connectedness of the shrinking world, and to growing up in an ever-shrinking world, but this list item utterly fails to get at any of these.

9. A stained blue dress is as famous to their generation as a third-rate burglary was to their parents’.

An accurate recounting of the presidential scandal du jour, but otherwise unrevealing of anything about the class of 2010.

Okay, I don’t want to through each of the 75 items like this. Most of the rest could be grouped into such categories as “false,” “overstated,” or “irrelevant.” What the list really boils down to is this: the members of the class of 2010 take for granted some things that earlier generations lived through. Wow. What a revelation.

Out of 75 items on Beloit’s list, I find only these to have any sort of value for me getting into the “mindset” of the class of 2010:

5. They have grown up getting lost in “big boxes.”
8. They are wireless, yet always connected.
14. The Moral Majority has never needed an organization.
17. They grew up pushing their own miniature shopping carts in the supermarket.
18. They grew up with and have outgrown faxing as a means of communication.
20. Text messaging is their email.
30. Non-denominational mega-churches have always been the fastest growing religious organizations in the U.S.
31. They grew up in mini-vans.
33. They have no idea why we needed to ask “…can we all get along?”
41. They have always been able to watch wars and revolutions live on television.
44. Retin-A has always made America look less wrinkled.
53. They have always preferred going out in groups as opposed to dating.
55. They have always had access to their own credit cards.
66. Dolphin-free canned tuna has always been on sale.
71. The U.S. has always been studying global warming to confirm its existence.

I would unpack these to tell you more about why I think these have some revelatory value, but honestly, I need to work on my class materials. Classes start on Monday, and if I walk in unprepared, the class of 2010 will see right through me. I will just say that items 5, 17, and 55 highlight the fact that college students are savvy consumers—and they often approach their college education with a consumerist attitude (they’ve been taught to do this by the culture). Items 8, 18, and 20 remind me that my students are tech-savvy and aren’t going to be impressed by flannelgraph; moreover, these items, together with item 41, point to accessibility as a hallmark of contemporary life (that’s why I give my students my cell phone number and AIM screen name—which, by the way is “drchrisheard” for those of you who care). Items 44 and, to a lesser extent, 31 point to the “cult of youth” in contemporary America (not that this is new; remember “Don’t trust anyone over 30″?). Items 14 and 30 remind me of the general conservative turn in recent US culture. To some degree, I take items 33, 66, and 71 as good news, demonstrating that some progress has been made on significant social issues. On the other hand, I have to dissent somewhat from item 33; while students in the class of 2010 may or may not be able to identify the event that catapulted the phrase “can we all get along?” (more often quoted as “can’t we all just get along”) into the national spotlight, they are certainly aware of the broader racial issues and tensions that provide context for that saying (though I do think progress has been made in the fifteen years since then)—and they were certainly alive then, as the incident happened in 1991 and the aftermath boiled over in 1992.

In brief, I don’t find much of use in Beloit’s list this year. I went back to look at other lists, and found that although I had previously considered some of them slightly humorous, they now seem trite. So long, “Mindset List.” Hello, class of 2010.

Indiana Jones IV: The Da Vinci Clone?

Sci-Fi Wire had a report earlier today whose headline made me practically jump for joy (well, as high as one can jump after a morning of oral surgery—which actually went quite smoothly and was almost entirely painless thanks to a local anaesthetic and a great dentist and staff): George Lucas says that he, Steven Spielberg, and Harrison Ford are all on board to film a fourth Indiana Jones movie in 2007, for a mid-2008 release. When I read more deeply into the story, though, I started to feel a bit of trepidation:

As for the story? “We’re basically going to do The Phantom Menace,” Lucas said cryptically, referring to Star Wars: Episode I. “People’s expectations are way higher than you can deliver. You could just get killed for the whole thing. … We would do it for fun and just take the hit with the critics and the fans. … But nobody wants to get into it unless they are really happy with it.”

Lucas added: “The ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ situation has freed up an idea for a plot that was originally deemed too incendiary. I discovered a McGuffin. … I told the guys about it, and they were a little dubious about it, but it’s the best one we’ve ever found. … Unfortunately, it was a little too ‘connected’ for the others. They were afraid of what the critics would think. They said, ‘Can’t we do it with a different McGuffin? Can’t we do this?’ and I said no. So we pottered around with that for a couple of years. And then Harrison really wanted to do it, and Steve said ‘OK.’ I said, ‘We’ll have to go back to that original McGuffin and take out the offending parts of it, and we’ll still use that area of the supernatural to deal with it.’”

The best-case scenario here is that Lucas’s “cryptic reference” to The Phantom Menace is simply a way of saying that he’s going to tell the story he wants to tell, without regard for fans or critics. Of course, labeling this “best” is a really weird use of the term “best”; maybe I should write “least-worst” instead. Why Lucas would intentionally make Indiana Jones IV as bad as Star Wars I is well beyond my powers of comprehension.

I can easily imagine several scenarios worse than the least-worst case scenario mentioned above. Not too long ago there was a comic book series entitled Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. Try this on for size: Indy finds clues to the lost continent of Atlantis. He somehow ends up in a submarine which takes him to the sunken continent. He learns that it is populated by an unsavory bunch of froglike humanoids. One of them, whose name in the Atlantean tongue resembles something like “J. R. Binks” in English, tags along with Indy for the rest of the picture, spouting off about how “Messa want to go home” whenever trouble—in the form, for example, of a sixty-foot coelocanth—threatens the submarine and its intrepid crew.

That last paragraph was intended for comic effect. But I do have a serious concern and I hope I am just jumping at shadows. Suppose that Lucas’s The Phantom Menace reference was more substantial. Recall Lucas’s reference to a McGuffin. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, the McGuffin is, well, the lost ark (of the covenant); in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the holy grail. So what’s the McGuffin in The Phantom Menace? One could argue that it’s Anakin Skywalker, although he is more important to the core plot than many McGuffins turn out to be. Anakin—the prophesied boy-child, conceived virginally, he of the overwhelming midichlorian count. Now what could Indy happen upon in Indy IV that would be similar to Anakin, explosive, and have some sort of supernatural connections? Maybe … the last descendant of Jesus and Mary Magdalene? Jesus reborn? Or (if it’s a Left Behind twist) the Antichrist? Please, please, please let me be sooooo wrong about this.

The Exodus Decoded: anticipation is making me wait

Sorry for the bad ’70s music allusion, but this is just a note to say that I could not watch The Exodus Decoded when it aired on the History Channel last night (we had “game night” at church last night, and a couple of hours of Carcasonne was more important than Jacobovici’s “documentary”), but if I programmed my VCR correctly I’ll be able to watch it later. This morning—just two hours from now—I’ll be lying in the dentist’s chair undergoing a root canal, but even though he has TVs attached to the chairs I don’t think I could take both at the same time.

A fun read

I just finished the audiobook version of Robin Cook’s latest medical thriller, Crisis. I found it to be entertaining, if you can put up with some of Cook’s writing foibles. Over the course of several Cook novels, Jack Stapleton and Laurie Montgomery have found a place in my stable of favorite fictional characters, so I was pleased to see them back in this book. It’s disappointing, though, that Laurie gets to do nothing in this book but complain. She has something to complain about, though: less than a week before their wedding, Jack flies to Boston (from New York) to try to help his brother-in-law, who is being sued for medical malpractice. Plenty of red herrings and a bit of action help to keep things going, though in some ways as the book neared its end my biggest question was not what Jack would find in the autopsy that he stays in Boston until Friday morning to perform, but whether he would actually make it to the Riverside Church in New York by 1:30 PM to get married.

Earlier I mentioned “foibles.” Cook’s writing is rather reptitive; when describing the characters, he tends to rely on a few stock phrases that keep coming up over and over. That can grate on the ear after a while; the first time Cook tells you that Jack Stapleton has a sarscastic streak, that’s helpful to readers who don’t yet know him, but the tenth time, it’s as if Cook has a word quota to fill. In the audiobook version, there are a couple of misused words; I don’t know if these were the reader’s fault or the writer’s, but at one point the narrator said “unrelentless” instead of “unrelenting,” and later, “perceptively” (reflecting or suggesting perception) rather than “perceptibly” (capable of being perceived). Also, Cook pushed one of my “pet peeve” buttons when he used the phrase “beg the question” to mean “raise the question”; to “beg the question” is not to raise a question, but to presuppose the conclusion in the course of making an argument.

Foibles aside, I thought Crisis was a fun book.

About comment moderation

Some of you may have noticed that since changing over to WordPress I have comment moderation turned on. This means that your comments may take a while—even a couple of days, depending on how fast I get around to moderating them—to show up. If you’ve followed the comments lately, you should realize that my comment moderation is not an attempt to squelch any disagreement in the comments. Rather, the point is to prevent spam comments, of which I’ve had a good couple of dozen since the transition. If any of you really do want to buy airline tickets to China, I presume you’ll find your way to the appropriate airline web sites. Otherwise, I’ll keep delaying the comments long enough to ensure they’re not international spam before letting them on through.

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