Alexander, the pupil of Aristotle for a while, met with the High Priest at Jerusalem on his way to conquer Asia, as reported by Josephus. From Book xi. 4-5, Jaddua the high priest was in terror when he heard that Alexander was coming. Alexander had sent a letter to Jerusalem during his siege of Tyre, asking for provisions, auxiliaries, and suggesting that Jerusalem send tribute now instead to him rather than Darius. The high priest had answered Alexander that…”he had given hi

Ghosts are souls that are somehow stuck in their involvement in worldly things, and so are not in the best condition. From both the Dixboro Ghost and the ghost in Hamlet , we conclude that these are stuck regarding revenge, or the injustice of their murders and revenge toward their murderers. In the Dixboro story, one mark of authenticity- aside from the question of what ghosts are- is that Martha undergoes a Purgatory, as well as revealing one and preventing another a murder

The origin of the Alphabet may turn out to have something to do with Abraham and the descendants of Abraham in Egypt, connecting two studies: the reading of Genesis and the linguistic archaeology evident from a patient reading of the history of the alphabet. The origin of the alphabet is known to have something to do with Egypt, Crete, Phoenicia or Byblos, and ancient Greece. From Wikipedia: The history of alphabetic writing goes back to the consonantal system used for Semiti

Seven Nation Army Many points here are taken from contributors to the website Songmeanings.com . The guitar riff became famous when played at sports events, though no one much gets the meaning. It is a rare example of a marching beat, like martial rathe than religious music, though it is in fact uniquely both at once. I sang parts of this song this morning when I woke up. Some songs one has to live in order to understand. All fibs are told to protect the innocents. It is s

Blue Orchid is about the corruption of innocence, probably in love, though the song has been read as being about molestation, and may carry this meaning as an undercurrent. Commentators, as on Songmeanings, note that a Russian child sex ring was named “Blue Orchid.” But that is not the meaning here. The reason that it seems the song must be about love and infidelity is the line “Your lips taste sour / But you think its just me teasing you.” The lyrics are these: You got a re

Three Plays on Love and Rule : Commentaries on Romeo and Juliet , A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest Mark A. McDonald Introduction These three plays together will allow a concise study of love, and provide an introduction to the archetypes pertaining to rule and the cultivation of practical wisdom. The apprehension of a pattern regarding the nature of love allows Shakespeare to join both tragedy and his new sort of high comedy, resolving the Italian tragedy wit

Seeing Nausika: On the Two in Homer Said To Be Like Immortal Goddesses Or Of Love: from Ages Timeless, Ever to Earth Unremembered. Mark A. McDonald Sight stirred remembrance of a rose, In secret silence, shroud till death Admiring ember– One of many souls, Would prove, as frost on glass, to live by thy breath. What that the kings of nations come, To spill their treasures at her feet, And ancient heroes rush as moths to flame To seal mortality’s defeat– That back through whenc

Mark A. McDonald It is in wondering about things told and shown by longtime Plymouth resident Elise Emrick that I first learned about the mystery of the black stone. Elise showed me Indian things found on the property of Emrick Estates, on North Territorial Road near Beck. These included spear and arrow heads, and an old Indian well made of a barrel in the ground, uncovered and reburied there by Paul Emrick, near the spot where she herself helped build a stone and concret

Vassa- Equiano is a great writer, and achieved much of his purpose in awakening the conscience of Britain to the evil and horrors of slavery. He was taken as a slave across Africa and sold, sent on a ship to America. This book, the first of the slave narratives, led to the outlawing of the slave trade in the US constitution by 1807. Vassa is led through adventure after adventure, eventually buying himself from his owner, becoming free. Although the American Revolution occu

Preface As readers of the dialogues, we are supposed to see the answers for ourselves to questions such as “What is piety?” Answers are indeed presented in the dialogues. I am able to comment on the Euthyphro at all for publication because we translated the dialogue, with Dr. Sweet back at the University of Dallas. Irving Wasserman introduced us to the study and love of Plato, in his 1981 course called the Introduction to philosophy, back at Grand Valley, here in Mich

[In progress: notes] The departments in the universities cultivate certain kinds of characters and studies to the exclusion of others. This became apparent when, studying at Grand Valley, we became acquainted with a study of Wittgenstein that had become a part of academic philosophy. Wittgenstein has to do with the narrowing of philosophy to the purpose of developing a clear and precise language for science, which is assumed to be the true pursuit of knowledge. Here philos

Texts, Luke 8: 22-; Matthew 8: 23-34 Benjamin Rush is said to be the first to turn American psychiatry from the understanding of madness as caused by the possession by demons and the attempt at a scientific account in terms of natural causes. [note 1]. It had barely been a century and a half since the trial of witches in Salem. Our joke on this, as a reader of the New Testament, is that Jesus had, though a better cure rate than Rush, or anyone else in modern psychiatry. But t

An essay, The Eight Reasons for the Fourth Amendment, is available for free. Go back up to the menu, let the sub headings appear, then click on one of these. An 18 page essay, Jefferson and the Meaning of the Declaration: That Continental Congress intended to Include all Men is free here exclusively on WordPress: Thomas Jefferson and the Meaning of the Declaration: That the Continental Congress Intended to Include All Men. Mark A. McDonald, Oakland Community College, Dece

I am trying to distinguish the pre-Mosaic Egyptian teaching from the post-Mosaic, as in the Papyrus of Hunifer and the Papyrus of Ani. Akhenaton and this montheism seems to have occurred before Moses, but after Joseph went into Egypt with the teaching of Abraham of the name "God Most High," given by Melchizadek. The Pyramid texts, with the earliest copy of the Book of Life, contain spells and negative commandments, but lack anything like the transcendent theology attributed t

On Easter morning, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb before sunrise, and saw that the stone had been rolled away. She must also have seen that the tomb was empty, since she went to John and Peter and told them that they had taken the Lord out of the tomb, and “we do not know where they have laid him.” So John and Peter ran to the tomb, and though John outran Peter, he paused, and Peter went in first, and saw what may be the shroud of Turin, and the napkin that was on his head.

I'v been occasionally translating John, and listening to the classes of Chuck Missler, and have some things to add. I should take up the work of a commentary on this, easily one of the ten best of all books. Here I have the beginning and the end: The word gignomai is mistranslated as "made," it is "have come to be," and this is more general than the making of the creation. " Gignomai " includes beings that are not made but begotten. Made would be poiesis . This mistranslati

In progress- Anyone want to do a class reading Macbeth? I will try to work up a Macbeth essay as good as that of Lowenthal, as though I were in the class of de Alvarez again, trying to demonstrate the virtue of the approach. I have just a couple notes to Macbeth in my Lear book, and have very much rushed past this, his shortest play and one of the 4 or 5 great tragedies. Tyranny is first an order of soul. This leads to the difficulty of the first attempt to define tyranny as