Antiquitopia

The first-century BCE Antikythera Mechanism, sometimes called the world's first analog computer, has received renewed study with X-Ray technology--so, from the world of art with van Gogh repaints (see post from yesterday) to the ancient world of science, this X-Ray technology is always revealing new things, giving us better understandings of the development of art and science. What can this device do? It predicted solar eclipses, kept track of the Olympiad, and, I gather, helped reconcile solar and lunar calendars. We often recognize ancient abilities to keep track of astronomical events--they could see the stars far better than we can (or any of us who live close to any large city or town) because of modern light pollution-- but we sometimes forget how technologically advanced ancient peoples were. See NYTimes article here (and reprinted below) and Nature.com article here . July 31, 2008 Discovering How Greeks Computed in 100 B.C. By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD After a...

Just today I added the functionality of a site meter to my site so I can keep track of the traffic on the site, and I would have never known that so many people visit my site if it weren't for this--since very few people actually comment. But just since late Wednesday afternoon until now (about 1 a.m.), I have had visitors from all around the U.S. from New York to Chicago to L.A., and international visitors from Monaco, Greece, and New Zealand. I am somewhat amazed that my review of Peter Schaefer's Jesus in the Talmud from about a year ago is still drawing readers. But most people have been interested in my posting on the Russia/Ukraine Church split (or potential split) and, interestingly enough, my series of quotations from Chuck Palahniuk's Rant . Anyway, I'll keep posting on religion, antiquity, and whatever catches my fancy, and I hope you all enjoy it and keep reading!

In case anyone didn't know, my absolute favorite painter is the earless Vincent van Gogh. My girlfriend just got me a mug with one of van Gogh's self-portraits on it, and when you fill it with hot liquid, the ear disappears! It is hilarious! Anyway, whenever I go to the Met, I have to make homage to the Impressionist / Expressionist wing where I can see some of his stuff. So I get excited anytime he's in the news--which is rare. And right now, due to advances in X-Ray technology, he is! I just read the following : Hidden Van Gogh revealed in color by scientists Wed Jul 30, 11:33 AM ET Scientists have made a colored view of an early rejected painting underneath Vincent van Gogh's 'Patch of Grass' painting, using advanced X-ray techniques, a Dutch university said on Wednesday. The very detailed image shows the face of a woman and may give art historians a better understanding of t...

A while back, I posted on an ancient incantation from Ugarit to reverse the Evil Eye. See here . This text was over three thousand years old. And the Evil Eye was something feared throughout the ancient near east and the ancient Mediterranean. Yet I should not neglect to mention that this extremely ancient and widespread belief in the maleficence of the evil eye has survived and is alive and well today, continuing to permeate religious belief and ritual of all backgrounds. Large numbers of Jews, Christians, and Muslims (and others) all retain the traditions of the evil eye. In fact, I have found the people have been coming onto my blog from Google searches on the evil eye (and how to reverse its effects). I doubt my website will give much practical help, however. Moreover, I have a comment on my posting from an independent vendor of Evil Eye amulets, bracelets, and so forth. Check out her site here . I doubt that my blog has enough traffic to boost her business however. By th...

Jillian Tamaki Forty years ago, Pope Paul VI issued an encyclical entitled "Humanae Vitae," which stated the Roman Church's position on Birth Control--an absolute no. The encyclical had its anniversary recently, and now is all over the news...or the "news that's fit to print," the New York Times, which an article here , and letters to the editor in response to the article here . This encyclical has not fared very well. In fact, according to the article, no papal decree has fared so poorly in public opinion and in actual practice: Never before July 25, 1968, however, had opposition been so immediate, so public and so widespread. World-famous theologians called press conferences to rebut the pope’s reasoning. Conferences of Catholic bishops issued statements that all but licensed churchgoers to ignore the encyclical. Pastors openly criticized “Humanae Vitae” from the pulpit. And ignore they have, for the most part. In the West, disagreement with and disregard ...

The NYTimes has an article on a potential ecclesiastical rift between the Ukraine and Russia. The Ukraine and Russia have not been on the best of terms lately...to say the least. The Ukrainian President, Viktor Yushchenko, claims to have been poisoned by pro-Russian opponents. The Ukrainians also are seeking to eject Russia's navy from their seaport in the Black Sea, and join NATO, Russia's Cold War rivals. Russia, in turn, has threatened to cut off natural gas deliveries, which the Ukraine needs. But now there is a new thing under contention: the Church. President Yushchenko now seeks to separate the Ukrainians from the Russian Orthodox Church. One should not be surprised at this, since many Church splits in history take place along political lines that take into consideration economic, social, and cultural factors--like the Protestant Reformation, for example. What is more, Orthodoxy since its inception (let's say with the Council of Nicea in the Fourth Century CE)...

Today in the Chronicle : July 29, 2008 Israeli Universities Step Up Criticism of Military Policy on Palestinian Students In a scathing letter to Israel’s defen se minister, the leaders of six Israeli universities have denounced a military policy that prevents Palestinians from studying in Israel as a gross violation of academic freedom, the human-rights group Gisha reported. The policy, which Gisha has challenged in petitions to Israel’s Supreme Court over the past two years, bars Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza from entering Israel without permission from the army. The letter was signed by rectors and deans of Ben Gurion University of the Negev, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv University, the University of Haifa, the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, and the Weizmann Institute of Science. Meanwhile, five Israeli professors have requested that the Supreme Court allow them to join Gisha’s latest petition, the organization said. One of the pr...

I think I've seen this before, but Paleojudaica just posted on it today. And, being from St. Louis myself, I could not pass letting people know about it--although Jim Davila has far more volume on his blog than I do, perhaps there is a handful of people who read me and not him, like friends and family in St. Louis who can actually take advantage of this offer: HEAVEN ON EARTH A Virtual Tour of Our Holy Temple Wednesdays: July 30, August 6 and 13 7:30 - 9:00 pm This summer, nearly 2,000 years since the destruction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, Chabad of Greater St. Louis will unveil Heaven on Earth, a three-week interactive course developed by the renowned Rohr Jewish Learning Institute, which recreates the ancient Jerusalem Temples from the ground up. Heaven on Earth will be offered at the Lazaroff Chabad Center, at 8124 Delmar Blvd., in University City, on three consecutive Wednesday evenings, 7:30 to 9 pm, beginning on July 30. Through an interactive and innovative virtual t...

Baylor is making headlines (well...at least in the Chronicle for Higher Education) due to its recent firing of its president. See the Chronicle article here . Much of the difficulty appears to be a shift in goals that have affected the tenure process. The Baptist university is trying to become a top research institution, while maintaining its Christian character. In the process, it seems that some priorities in the hiring and tenure process have shifted, and 12 out of 30 tenure bids were denied this year. 10 of these appealed the decision, with 7 reversals. Forbidden Gospels has talked about this recently (since she is geographically closer to Baylor), and has suggested two things: to become a top tier research university, 1) Baylor must secularize and 2) it must reward research above teaching in the tenure process. She suggests that the resistance is due to the conflict of becoming a top-tier research institution and maintaining their faith identity. In response, Rebecca Les...

So, this differs from my usual fare, but since I've been dating a math teacher, it caught my eye. According to a new national study, there is absolutely no gender gap in math aptitude, disproving the old stereotype that placed girls in more humanities-oriented courses and boys in math and science. Here is the NYTimes article : Math Scores Show No Gap for Girls, Study Finds By TAMAR LEWIN Published: July 25, 2008 Three years after the president of Harvard , Lawrence H. Summers , got into trouble for questioning women’s “intrinsic aptitude” for science and engineering — and 16 years after the talking Barbie doll proclaimed that “math class is tough” — a study paid for by the National Science Foundation has found that girls perform as well as boys on standardized math tests. Although boys in high school performed better than girls in math 20 years ago, the researchers found, that is no longer the case. The reason, they said, is simple: Girls used to take fewer adva...

According to Reuters, Pope B16 has an open invitation to visit Iraq and help interreligious dialogue between the dominant Muslim population and the minority Christian population, much of which fled the country during the U.S. invasion. There has been some violence against the Iraqi Christians, particularly the targeting of clergy and churches by Sunni militants. One might recall that last February the Archbishop of Mosul of the largest of Iraq's Christian denominations--the Chaldean Catholics--was kidnapped and found dead two weeks later. Maliki thinks that the Pope's presence could help interreligious understanding, which is necessary for Iraq's future. See the full article here .

I just read this in the Chronicle: July 24, 2008 Bible Professor Will Leave Seminary Instead of Facing Hearing A tenured professor at Westminster Theological Seminary who faced a hearing next month to determine if he would be dismissed is leaving on August 1 under what the Pennsylvania seminary called “mutually agreeable terms,” according to a statement on its Web site. The professor, Peter Enns, who taught the Old Testament at the seminary, wrote a book expressing the view that human beings shaped the Bible. The institution’s Board of Trustees suggested that the idea was contrary to the conservative seminary’s faculty oath. —Beckie Supiano And here is the earlier story: July 10, 2008 Tenured Professor Faces Dismissal at Theological Seminary A tenured professor at Westminster Theological Seminary will face a hearing next month to determine if he will be dismissed for his teachings about the Bible, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported this morning. The professor, ...

If you are having trouble seeing the Codex Sinaiticus on its new site because there are too many concurrent connections, go to the German version of the site (which evidently has less traffic than the English section). It is a very nice tool. It has photos of each page which you can view with two different types of light and which you can magnify, a transcription of each verse, and translation (the translation was not up when I was playing around on the German site). Have fun looking at the oldest most complete Bible online!

Codex Sinaiticus, one of the most important ancient texts, since it is the earliest most complete New Testaments that has survived (plus the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas), is now going to be digitized and parts of it, Mark I think, will go online today. The majority of the text has been housed in the British Museum, with pages or fragments of it being housed in Leipzig, St. Petersberg, and at St. Catherine's in the Sinai. It also contains Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) along with "Apocrypha"--often referred to as the Septuagint (LXX), although this designation only technically refers to the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible). The first half of the Old Testament texts are missing (from Genesis up to 1 Chronicles). Those going online today or soon include 1 Chronicles, 2 Esdras, Esther, Tobit, Jeremiah, Lamentations, and Psalms. Most New Testaments rely upon a reconstructed synthetic text that takes into account all ...

Winding up his Middle-East tour, Barack Obama made a surprise pre-dawn visit to the Western Wall, the Wailing Wall, in Jerusalem yesterday, placed a prayer on a slip of paper in one of the cracks, while he and his wife read a Psalm, Psalm 122. This is part of a larger unit of Psalms called the "Songs of Ascents" (Psalms 120-134). Songs of Ascents tend to be shorter than other Psalms, and may have been sung by the Levitical choir on the steps of the temple. This particular Psalm calls for peace, and, I thought, if the Psalm is going to be in the news, why not make it the quote of the day? I was glad when they said to me, "Let us go to the house of the LORD!" Our feet have been standing within your gates, O Jerusalem! Jerusalem, built as a city which is bound firmly together, to which the tribes go up, the tribes of the LORD as was decreed for Israel, to give thanks to the name of the LORD. There thrones for judgment were set, the thrones of...

In the previous post, I noted procedures now in place at Penn State and Temple for students to report liberal bias in the classroom. If, in fact, there is discrimination based upon someone's point of view--one that they can present in the class, be challenged on, but be evaluated on how they present it rather than the view itself--then there is, indeed, a problem. For a long time, the university in America has been regarded as one of the last bastions of liberalism or progressive thought (from one point of view) or as a hold-out of liberalism left over from the 60s but really having no connection with the rest of society (from another point of view). Although, I should note that the structure or organization of the university is amazingly conservative--a hold-out from the middle ages! Divisions in to the current form of departments is a hold-over from the nineteenth-century, and, in fact, may need to be revised. Yet, the NYTimes and the Chronicle this past month have issued arti...

Two Pennsylvania universities (Penn State and Temple) have instituted policies that give students pathways to file grievances against professors who have presented biased classroom lessons. It turns out to be a procedure to protect "conservative" students from the "liberal" bias of their professors, which conservative activists have labeled "liberal indoctrination." So, when they grow up and learn things from their parents, churches, or local politicians, that is not "indoctrination" as well? There is a degree to which much learning is indoctrination (whether "liberal" or "conservative" or whatever), and we should avoid creating cookie cutter students who arrive at the exact same conclusions that their professors give them. But more than anything higher education is about getting students to think for themselves, and often that means breaking down previously (and dearly) held conceptions, disabusing them of what they thoug...

Today is the feast day of Mary Magdalene. Her story, or the story of her stories, is rather fascinating. Called "apostle to the apostles," she was a prominent single woman within Jesus' inner circle and a leading figure after his death. Over time her prominent position became troubling as the Church merged with mainstream ancient society, placing her at the margins, and eventually figuring her as a prostitute or the "woman caught in adultery" in later times. For a discussion of these traditions, see April DeConick at Forbidden Gospels and Deidre Good at Not Being a Sausage .

A while back I made some brief comments on the " naughty bible ." At the moment, though, Exploring Our Matrix, has a more extensive list of blogs that are now discussing sex and/in the Bible. For those interested, check it out here .

Rick Warren, the pastor of the gigantic Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, CA., has individually invited both John McCain and Barack Obama to meet at a forum at his megachurch before the Democratic and Republican conventions. Since the campaigns began, McCain and Obama have never been on the same stage together, but now they have a chance to court evangelical voters. Rick Warren is best known for his book, The Purpose Driven Life , which was a NYTimes best seller and a book of wide appeal well beyond the evangelical sub-culture. In this forum they will be discussing Rick Warren's primary foci: AIDS, poverty, and the environment. I've noted a heightened interest in these social areas among Evangelicals before, areas which in the past have been primarily associated on the Democratic platform. So, Rick Warren has done what no one else has: brought the two candidates together to discuss side-by-side their views on these crucial global issues. This, by the way, comes on the he...

After my last post, I just could not help but quote the incantation against the Evil Eye, something feared throughout the ancient Mediterranean and ancient near east--Tolkien's Eye of Sauron seems to rely upon some of these characteristics, particularly the first line: The Eye goes, yea it runs; It has seen its brother, that he is good. Its brother, that he is lovely; It has begun to devour his flesh without a knife. To drink his blood without a cup; It is the eye of a BTY-man that has seen him [the brother], The eye of a BTY-woman that has seen him, The eye of a price-setter, The eye of an assembler, The eye of a gate-keeper. The eye of a gate-keeper, to the gate-keeper let it return! The eye of the assembler, to the assembler let it return! The eye of the price-setter, to the price-setter let it return! They eye of the BTY-man, to the BTY-man let it return! The eye of the BTY-woman, to the BTY-woman let it return! RS 22.225, Trans. Dennis Pardee This text is rather well put toget...

This recitation casts out the tormentors of a young man: The pain of your rod it has banished, The producers of the pain of your rod. It goes forth at the voice of the ta'iyu priest, Like smoke from a window, Like a serpent from a pillar, Like mountain-goats to a summit, Like lions to a lair. The rod has recovered, Yea the road has come near. Should you sin against your body, Should you commit evil against yoru body, You should eat moldy bread, Drink fig-juice in oppression, On the heights, in the well-watered valleys, In the shadows, even at the sanctuary. Then, as for the sorcerers, the tormentors, Horanu will drive them out, Even the companions of the 'lads of knowledge' he will drive out for you. With respect to heat, do not sag, May your tongue not stutter, May your canal not be decanalized. The god can clothe you, The god can make you naked. For the man, descend from the rod To the earth, O flow; For the son of man, from illness he is delivered. [The rest of the text ...

Although when I usually speak of politics, it is with a connection to religious issues, but here are some non-religiously-related data that reflects American disgruntlement with our leaders. Lately Congress, or at the very least Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, and the President seem to have been more openly criticizing each other. Pelosi has called Bush "a total failure" while Bush has noted that the current legislative session is the longest in 20 years that Congress has gone without passing a single bill. Last Month, Reid criticized Republicans who sided with Bush on Medicare, saying, "Who would be afraid of him? He's got a 29 percent approval rating!" Now, Bush has a 28% approval rating. At this point in our nation's history, the U.S. and, in fact, the world, is ready for a new President of the U.S. But Congress is not doing much better. If you thought a 28% approval rating is bad enough, the Congressional approval rating is a mere 18% (its all time low...

When you walk down the street in New York, you hear some of the strangest (and funniest) snippets of conversations. Sometimes, I'll be walking near someone, overhear something s/he says, and it takes all of my strength to keep from laughing out loud. This is a very common phenomenon, and there is a generally well-known website (among New Yorkers) that people send their eavesdroppings to--now, so that everyone who reads my blog can have a taste, I am adding the website, Overheard in New York , to my "oft-visited places." Enjoy!

First things first, this is my 100th posting ever! It only took me about 13 months of blogging to get here, but today is that great milestone! For that milestone, I would like to give a quote of the day from the Baal Cycle : She [Anat] seizes Divine Mot (Death), With a sword she splits him With a sieve she winnows him. With a fire shes burns him. With millstones she grinds him, In a field she sows him. The birds eat his flesh, Fowl devour his parts, Flesh to flesh cries out. Baal Cycle , 6.2.30-37. The Baal Cycle , sometimes called the Baal Epic , is basically about the Kingship of the Canaanite God Baal. It consists of six tablets that were inscribed around 1400-1350 BCE in the ancient city of Ugarit. The six tablets depict Baal's struggles to establish his kingship over the universe. The first two tablets depict his defeat of the Sea (Yamm), providing the counterpart to the Enuma Elish , in which Marduk establishes his authority by defeating the Sea (Tiamat). The differences...

Strange question, isn't it? You would naturally think the answer would be a resounding YES!!! Of course it is a sacrilege for someone outside the Catholic faith (someone who does not believe) to partake of the host. And such is the position of the rather conservative group, the Catholic League. But, according to Catholic scholar, Anthony Stevens-Arroyo, a friend of mine by the way, it is not. He comments on Sally Quinn's partaking of the host at Tim Russert's funeral. Tim was Catholic, and so it was a Catholic funeral. Sally is not. In fact, she is agnostic, if not atheist. The Catholic League was upset by this. According to Stevens-Arroyo, their logic is as follows: Now, every believing Catholic must be vigilant against intentional desecration of the host. Presumably, the ire directed against Sally Quinn is sparked by the requirement that reception of the sacrament be motivated by faith in Christ. Quinn says she has none; ergo, such logic runs, her reception disre...

Ok...this looks really cool. It is a skyscraper that is also a farm! And the idea came out of Columbia University. See the NY Times article here . See some cool concept pictures here: Gordon Graff COWS AND PLOWS? Prototype designs for vertical farms, a concept created in 1999 by Dickson Despommier of Columbia and his graduate students.

I found the following in the Chronicle for Higher Education News Blogs --something I found scary. An intro to Western Civ instructor from an Iowa community college was fired for teaching that the story of Adam and Eve was a myth rather than something that was literally true. It seems this has been something followed for a while now, but this is the first I have heard about this incident. When you get down to it, how else can you really teach many of the predeluvian stories in Genesis? This is something we run up against all the time in religious studies and biblical studies. At my orientation meeting for Literature of the Humanities, in which we will be reading Genesis, some preceptors from other departments were a bit worried about how to approach biblical materials. It is always important to define your terms: myth, from the Greek, Mythos , means "story." In terms of religious studies, it does not mean what it has come to mean in modern society--something that is fal...

While I am reading on some Ancient Near Eastern relationships with some of the texts for my dissertation, I have reread the Epic of Gilgamesh, which, as it turns out, I will probably be teaching this fall as well--it is nice when teaching and research can overlap! Anyway, here is the quote of the day: "How, O how could I stay silent, how, O how could I keep quiet? My friend whom I love has turned to clay: Enkidu my friend whom I love has turned to clay. Am I not like him? Must I lie down too, never to rise again?" Epic of Gilgamesh , Tablet X, column V. This passage indicates the intense friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Enkidu has now died, gone down to the underworld ruled by goddess Ereshkigal. The souls, shades, or whatever, of the deceased are usually depicted as birds in Mesopotamian literature, so, Enkidu's shade has flown below, and his body has returned to clay (much like the biblical phrasing of "dust to dust"). It is a place from where...

On the cover of the latest New Yorker magazine, there is a sketch of Barack Obama dressed in a turban and Muslim garb, giving a fist pump to his wife, who is holding an AK-47. They are in the Oval Office, with an American Flag burning in the fireplace, and a portrait of Osama bin Laden on the wall. The New Yorker claims that this is just satire, and it is part of its article on the politics of fear, meant to mock the portrait that Obama's right-wing critics have painted of him. But Obama isn't laughing. For others, it seems, the satire just falls into the right-wing critics hands, playing into their imagery (or the New Yorker is not implicated in what they critique). The problem is a matter of consistency. If one wants to do this type of satire, one should consistently do it; otherwise, it can be misinterpreted, as this particular cover was. For example, I think that Stephen Colbert, who engages in this type of satire very consistently, could more easily get away with it...

Today is July 14th, and, for those who are French, happy Bastille Day! See some celebratory pictures of the Champs-Elysees here .

Having not been to a concert for a long time (I actually just don't remember the last time I had been to a concert), I went to no less than TWO in just a few days time. On Wednesday night, I went to see Melissa Etheridge in concert at the WaMu theater at Madison Square Garden. It was a blast. She has a lot of bluesy elements in her music, a dash of folksy, in an overarching framework of rock 'n roll. In the end, she puts on a really good show, and seems to connect well with her audience. One of the fringe benefits of being a male at her concert is that the line for the men's bathroom was nonexistent. Tons of middle-aged women there... And I had never been to the Garden before, so it was a new experience. Then last night we happened into some tickets for the free Bon Jovi concert on the Great Lawn of Central Park--this concert was in conjunction with All Star week, since the All Star game is going to be played in Yankee Stadium this year. There were something like 50,...

I just learned from Jim Davila at Paleojudaica that Catherine Bell, one of the world's leading scholars in ritual studies and Chinese religions, died at the young age of 55 on May 23, 2008 after a long illness. I remember bumping into her at a party at the annual meeting of AAR/SBL in San Antonio a few years ago. She taught at Santa Clara and retired last year due to her illness. She is best known in religious studies for her 1992 book, "Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice," which in 1994 won the American Academy of Religion book award in History of Religions. See a full obituary on the Santa Clara Religious Studies website here .

I have been reading through more literary criticism as of late for teaching my class next year, Literature of the Humanities, and, while in an independent bookstore in St. Louis, I found a book of posthumously published essays by Italo Calvino, who wrote one of my favorite books, Invisible Cities . This book of essays is called, Why Read the Classics?, after its opening essay. I thought such a book would be very relevant for a class that is loaded with classic authors from Homer to Virginia Woolf. In this opening essay, he speaks of both "classics" and "your own classics," noting that classics are works that will shift over time, both in which works will be included as classics and in terms that our understanding of them will shift, not just as centuries pass, but even from our youth to our old-age. Classics are those works that we may read when young, forming us in some ways, and then revisit when older, never exhausting what it has to say to us. Each rereadi...

I have been reading Chuck Palahniuk's Rant lately. And it is a wild ride of a read, playing with and twisting concepts of genetics, pathogens, societal constructs (from the Easter Bunny to traffic rules to religion), and time--pushing everything to the edge through creative interrelationships between them. In the middle of it, he employs Victor Turner's concept of Liminality, even folding Turner into the prose in a way few others than Palahniuk could. So, here are a few morsels that might be of interest to a religionist: On Liminality: "Common to almost all spiritual beliefs is the idea of Lim[i]nal Time. To ascetics, it can be the moment of greatest suffering. To ascetics, it can be the moment of greatest suffering. To Catholics, it's the moment the Communion wafer is presented to the congregation. The moment is different for each religion or spiritual practice, but Liminal Time itself represents a moment in which time stops passing. The actual definition is ...

The New York Times is running an article on the "Revelation of Gabriel," a Dead Sea find that is a rare example of ink on stone. The controversy is that it supposedly speaks of a Messiah who will die and rise after three days (and not Jesus). Jim Davila at Paleojudaica also has a series of posts on this document--see here . By ETHAN BRONNER Published: July 6, 2008 JERUSALEM — A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days. If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, since it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time. The tablet, probably found near t...

So, one of my new favorite websites is the Unemployed Philosopher's Guild , newly added to my "oft-visited" sites, where you can buy, among many other fascinating items, these "Freudian Slippers." If you go to the cups and mug section, I have the "Jesus Saves" / "Jesus Shaves" mug. It is a great mug. Firstly, it says "Jesus saves," while Jesus holds a pair of scissors and coupons. But when you pour hot liquid into the mug, the scissors and coupons disappear along with Jesus' beard! Where the coupons previously were, you see a razor. And the "Jesus Saves" turns into "Jesus Shaves." For a demonstration, see here . I think I could go broke by buying the mugs on this site. I like the Descartes one as well. Descartes is sitting at his desk, and says his famous line, "I think therefore I am" (cogito ergo sum). You pour in hot liquid, and the saying switched to "I think not," and Descar...