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| Photograph by Laura King |
New York Times CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — A historian of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School has identified a scrap of papyrus that she says was written in Coptic in the fourth century and contains a phrase never seen in any piece of Scripture: “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife …'”
The faded papyrus fragment is smaller than a business card, with eight lines on one side, in black ink legible under a magnifying glass. Just below the line about Jesus having a wife, the papyrus includes a second provocative clause that purportedly says, “she will be able to be my disciple.”
The finding was made public in Rome on Tuesday at an international meeting of Coptic scholars by the historian Karen L. King, who has published several books about new Gospel discoveries and is the first woman to hold the nation’s oldest endowed chair, the Hollis professor of divinity.
The provenance of the papyrus fragment is a mystery, and its owner has asked to remain anonymous. Until Tuesday, Dr. King had shown the fragment to only a small circle of experts in papyrology and Coptic linguistics, who concluded that it is most likely not a forgery. But she and her collaborators say they are eager for more scholars to weigh in and perhaps upend their conclusions.
Even with many questions unsettled, the discovery could reignite the debate over whether Jesus was married, whether Mary Magdalene was his wife and whether he had a female disciple. These debates date to the early centuries of Christianity, scholars say. But they are relevant today, when global Christianity is roiling over the place of women in ministry and the boundaries of marriage.
The discussion is particularly animated in the Roman Catholic Church, where despite calls for change, the Vatican has reiterated the teaching that the priesthood cannot be opened to women and married men because of the model set by Jesus. Emphasis mine. {Read More}
... Yes, the entitlement state has expanded, but America remains one of the hardest-working nations on earth. Americans work longer hours than just about anyone else. Americans believe in work more than almost any other people. Ninety-two percent say that hard work is the key to success, according to a 2009 Pew Research Survey.
It says that Romney doesn’t know much about the political culture. Americans haven’t become childlike worshipers of big government. On the contrary, trust in government has declined. The number of people who think government spending promotes social mobility has fallen.
The people who receive the disproportionate share of government spending are not big-government lovers. They are Republicans. They are senior citizens. They are white men with high school degrees. As Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution has noted, the people who have benefited from the entitlements explosion are middle-class workers, more so than the dependent poor.
Romney’s comments also reveal that he has lost any sense of the social compact. In 1987, during Ronald Reagan’s second term, 62 percent of Republicans believed that the government has a responsibility to help those who can’t help themselves...
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| Ayaan Hirsi Ali, 2006 |
... The riots in Muslim countries—and the so-called demonstrations by some Muslims in Western countries—that invariably accompany such provocations have the appearance of spontaneity. But they are often carefully planned in advance. In the aftermath of last week’s conflagration, the State Department and Pentagon were investigating if it was just such a coordinated, planned assault.
The Muslim men and women (and yes, there are plenty of women) who support—whether actively or passively—the idea that blasphemers deserve to suffer punishment are not a fringe group. On the contrary, they represent the mainstream of contemporary Islam. Of course, there are many Muslims and ex-Muslims, in Libya, Egypt, and elsewhere, who unambiguously condemn not only the murders and riots, as well as the idea that dissenters from this mainstream should be punished. But they are marginalized and all too often indirectly held responsible for the very provocation. In the age of globalization and mass immigration, such intolerance has crossed borders and become the defining characteristic of Islam.
And the defining characteristic of the Western response? As Rushdie’s memoir makes clear, it is the utterly incoherent tendency to simultaneously defend free speech—and to condemn its results.
I know something about the subject. In 1989, when I was 19, I piously, even gleefully, participated in a rally in Kenya to burn Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses. I had never read it.
Later, having fled an arranged marriage to the Netherlands, I broke from fundamentalism. By the time of Sept. 11, 2001, I still considered myself a Muslim, though a passive one; I believed the principles but not the practice. After learning that it was Muslims who had hijacked airplanes and flown them into buildings in New York and Washington, I called for fellow believers to reflect on how our religion could have inspired these atrocious acts. A few months later, I confessed in a television interview that I had been secularized. {Read Entire Article Here}
Mitt Romney has a plan for a stronger middle class. By making trade work for America, balancing our budget, and championing small business, we'll create 12 million new jobs.
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| Lady Chatterley's Affair hour tour - Ivy and Piper |
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| Lady Chatterley's Affair hour tour - Ivy and Piper |
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| Lady Chatterley's Affair hour tour - Ivy and Piper |
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| House of Fifty |
THE HILLThe Obama administration is sticking to its position that Tuesday's deadly attack in Benghazi wasn't premeditated, contradicting U.S. lawmakers and Libya's own president.
Speaking on several Sunday shows, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice placed the blame for violence that has spread to two dozen countries across the Muslim world squarely on a U.S.-made anti-Islam video.
Republicans and many others are dubious, with some lawmakers suggesting the attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi was a coordinated attack by a militant group.
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Libya's own leader, interim president Mohammed Magarief, has said that foreigners infiltrated Libya over the past few months and planned the attack that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.
“The idea that this criminal and cowardly act was a spontaneous protest that just spun out of control is completely unfounded and preposterous,” Magarief told NPR in Benghazi on Sunday. “We firmly believe that this was a pre-calculated, pre-planned attack that was carried out specifically to attack the U.S. Consulate.
“The intention was there from the beginning, for it to take this ugly barbaric, criminal form,” he said.
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He told CBS that about 50 people have been arrested in conjunction with the attack on the U.S. consulate, which he said was “definitely planned by foreigners” who entered Libya several months ago and immediately started plotting the assault. He said “a few” of the perpetrators were from Mali and Algeria while others were Libyan “affiliates” and “sympathizers.”
“These ugly deeds, criminal deeds … do not represent in any way, in any sense, the aspirations and feelings of Libya toward the United States and its citizens.”
“The way these perpetrators acted and moved and their choosing the specific date [of Sept. 11] for this so-called demonstration, I think this leaves us with no doubt that this was pre-planned, pre-determined.”
Magarief said the security situation “is difficult, not only for Americans but for Libyans themselves.”
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Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told CBS he didn't buy the notion that the attack in Libya was spontaneous.
“Most people don't bring rocket-propelled grenades and heavy weapons to a demonstration,” McCain said. “That was an act of terror. And for anyone to disagree with that fundamental fact I think is really ignorant of the facts.”
Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a former FBI official, told Fox News the violence in Libya had “all the hallmarks of an al-Qaeda-style attack.” {Read More}
USA Today - Many college students watching the party conventions were probably dissatisfied — neither party directly matched their beliefs. Partly this is an unfortunate effect of any two-party political system.
However, significant changes in our national political outlook create a growing segment of the population with beliefs that cut across the current conception of the conservative vs. liberal debate.
A growing number of people, particularly youth, identifies as socially liberal while being fiscally conservative. Earlier this year, a Reason poll showed that 61% of people aged 18-29 would be open to electing a president who is socially liberal and fiscally conservative.
This should have major implications — not just in this election, but also for the foreseeable future. A survey conducted late last month by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that the “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” voting bloc was essentially the only persuadable group in 2012. While so-called independents make up about one-third of the electorate, most lean toward one party or the other.
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To many, creating a coalition catering to fiscal conservative/social liberals may appear illogical.
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The stirring visions that essentially founded both parties have cooled from their once white-hot magma, calcifying into the hard rock that characterizes today’s political paralysis.
The current political alignment produces stalemate after stalemate in Congress and the myth of an America split between two minds. But however toxic today’s polarization may be, it’s hard to imagine it’s any scarier than uniting a racially-divided party during segregation.
Both parties have chance to forge a coalition that re-shuffles the deck in a way that fiscal conservatives and social liberals can be a part of a big-tent coalition.
Whichever gets to it first is the party that will “win the future.”
MEDIAITE - MSNBC host Chris Matthews said on his program that he thought Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney was displaying a suspicious level of arrogance by thinking that he could run for president against Barack Obama. He said he “didn’t like the look” of what Romney could have been thinking, although he said he opted to refrain from getting “into his head on this.”
“I thought the decision by Romney to run for president, even as this president had not yet even been inaugurated, Mayor, showed a certain kind of disdain,” said Matthews. “I don’t want to get into his head on this – I don’t like the look of it – but he seemed to think, ‘Well, this guy could be beat by me.’”
Matthews said that Romney’s suspicion that he could defeat President Obama in 2012, even though he knew that he was not “a first-rate politician,” was an “arrogant point of view.”
“I’ve got a message for Mitt Romney – I wouldn’t do any head games with Barack Obama,” said former San Francisco Mayor Willy Brown. “He’s not smart enough, I don’t think he’s clever enough and he clearly has no street about him at all.”
