This article was first published in the Summer 2007 issue of Bible and Spade.
Nebo who? You mean you don’t remember Nebo-Sarsekim? No wonder, because if you consult your concordance, you will find that he is referred to but once in the Old Testament. Nebo-Sarsekim was a high Babylonian official named in Jeremiah 39:3. The mention of this individual in the Hebrew Bible is yet another example of an obscure “factoid” which demonstrates the historical accuracy and eyewitness nature of the Biblical record.
The time was the ninth day of the fourth month of the 11th year of the reign of Zedekiah (Jer 39:2), i.e., July 18, 587 BC. The place was Jerusalem. The event was the fall of Jerusalem and the Southern Kingdom of Judah to the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar after a siege of two and a half years, a very sad time in the history of God’s people. After the city wall was broken through,all the officials of the king of Babylon came and took seats in the Middle Gate: Nergal-Sharezer of Samgar, Nebo-Sarsekim a chief officer, Nergal-Sharezer a high official and all the other officials of the king of Babylon (Jer 39:3).
The tablet mentioning Nebo-Sarsekim was found in Sippar, an ancient Babylonian city 20 mi (32 km) southwest of modern Baghdad and 35 mi (57 km) north of Babylon. In the late 19th century, tens of thousands of cuneiform tablets were recovered from the site and brought to the British Museum (Gasche and Janssen 1997). Later, in 1920, the Nebo-Sarsekim tablet, only 2.13 in (5.5 cm) wide, from the same site, was acquired by the museum. Credit: Ian Jones/Telegraph
Michael Jursa, associate professor at the University of Vienna, made the discovery. Since 1991, he has been sifting through the approximately 130,000 inscribed tablets at the British Museum to ferret out data on Babylonian officials. On July 5, 2007, just another day in the tablet room, Jursa made the find of a lifetime when he discovered the Biblical name (Reynolds 2007). The tablet is so well preserved that it took him only minutes to decipher (Alberge 2007). It was a mundane receipt acknowledging Nebo-Sarsekim’s payment of 1.7 lb (0.75 kg) of gold to a temple in Babylon. Dated to the tenth year of Nebuchadnezzar (595 BC), eight years before the fall of Jerusalem, the tablet reads in full:
[Regarding] 1.5 minas [0.75 kg] of gold, the property of Nabu-sharrussu-ukin, the chief eunuch, which he sent via Arad-Banitu the eunuch to [the temple] Esangila: Arad-Banitu has delivered [it] to Esangila. In the presence of Bel-usat, son of Alpaya, the royal bodyguard, [and of ] Nadin, son of Marduk-zer-ibni, Month XI, day 18, year 10 [of] Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon (Reynolds 2007).
The Hebrew spelling of the name is slightly different from the cuneiform, but there is no question that it is the same person. Although the NIV translates Nebo-Sarsekim’s title as “chief officer,” the literal translation is “chief eunuch,” exactly the same as in the tablet.
Reflecting on his discovery, Jursa commented, “It is very exciting and very surprising. Finding something like this tablet, where we see a person named in the Bible making an everyday payment to the temple in Babylon and quoting the exact date is quite extraordinary” (Alberge 2007). Irving Finkel, Assistant Keeper in the Department of the Middle East at the British Museum, stated,
This is a fantastic discovery, a world-class find. If Nebo-Sarsekim existed, which other lesser figures in the Old Testament existed? A throwaway detail in the Old Testament turns out to be accurate and true. I think that it means that the whole of the narrative [of Jeremiah] takes on a new kind of power” (Reynolds 2007).
This is not the first archaeological discovery relating to the fall of Jerusalem. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon at the time and leader of the invading force, is well known to us. His palace has been excavated in Babylon and many of his records recovered (Wiseman 1985; Klengel-Brandt 1997: 252–54). One such record, the Babylonian Chronicle for the years 605–595 BC, describes the fall of Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar in 597 BC, the so-called “second deportation,” the first being in 605 BC when Daniel and his companions were taken to Babylon (Dan 1:1–5). The tablet was found in Babylon and purchased by the British Museum in the 19th century. The section pertaining to the fall of Jerusalem reads,
Year 7 [597 BC] in Kislev the king of Babylonia [Nebuchadnezzar] called out his army and marched to Hattu [the west]. He set his camp against the city of Judah and on the second Adar [March 16] he took the city and captured the king [Jehoiachin]. He appointed a king of his choosing there [Zedekiah], took heavy tribute and returned to Babylon (Millard 1997: 468).
Babylonian Chronicle for the year 605–595 BC. First published by Donald J. Wiseman in 1956, it records the last (21st) year of the reign of Nabopolassar and the first 11 years of his son Nebuchadnezzar. Among Nebuchadnezzar’s accomplishments was the capture of Jerusalem, dated precisely to March 16, 597 BC. The document is on display in the British Museum, London. Credit: Michael Luddeni
The Bible describes the same events in some detail. When Nebuchadnezzar besieged and captured Jerusalem in 597 BC, Jehoiachin was on the throne. He took Jehoiachin, the royal family and important men in the kingdom to Babylon. He then placed Jehoiachin’s uncle, Mattaniah, on Judah’s throne and changed his name to Zedekiah (2 Kgs 24:11–17). Jehoiachin was a young man of 18 when he became king of Judah. He reigned but three months before being carried off to Babylon, where he lived out the rest of his days (2 Kgs 24:8, 12, 15; 25:27–30). Four tablets found in Nebuchadnezzar’s palace name Jehoiachin and his family as among those who were receiving rations from the king (Weidner 1939; Wiseman 1985: 81–82).
Ration record from Babylon mentioning Jehoiachin. During Robert Koldeway’s excavations at Babylon at the turn of the 20th century, he discovered what archaeologists call the “Northern Palace,” most likely the royal residence of King Nebuchadnezzar. Koldeway found there a number of cuneiform-inscribed clay tablets dating to the years 594–569 BC. They list kings captured from throughout the ancient Near East who were living in the palace and receiving rations of grain and oil from the king. Four of the tablets list rations for “Jehoiachin, king of Judah” and his family. These tablets are today in the Pergamum Museum, Berlin. Credit: Walter Pasedag
In his campaign against Jerusalem in 589–587 BC, Nebuchadnezzar laid waste all the fortified cities of Judah. While Jerusalem was being besieged, Jeremiah delivered a message to king Zedekiah concerning the fate that awaited him (Jer 34:1–7). The passage ends with the statement that the only fortified cities that were still holding out, apart from Jerusalem, were Lachish and Azekah (Jer 34:7). A group of 21 letters found at the site of Lachish date from this time period. They appear to be military communiqués sent to the military commander at Lachish from another outpost. The final words of Letter 4 echo those of Jeremiah 34:7: “we are watching the [fire] signals of Lachish…for we cannot see Azekah” (Pardee 2002: 80).
Lachish Letters 1 (left) and 2 (right), on display in the British Museum, London. A British expedition to Lachish under the direction of James Starkey in the 1930s discovered 21 letters in a chamber of the city gate written on flat, broken pieces of pottery (ostraca). The stratum where they were found and the shape of the script indicates that they date to the time of the Babylonian invasion of Judah, 589–587 BC. Their content reflects the turmoil that was taking place in Judah at that time. Credit: Michael Luddeni
Another official named in Jeremiah 39:3 is also known from cuneiform sources as Nergal-Sharezer. Jeremiah 39:13–14 goes on to say that he was instrumental in releasing Jeremiah from the Courtyard of the Guard where he was being held as prisoner. Nergal-Sharezer was married to Nebuchadnezzar’s daughter Kashshaia and later became king of Babylon (559–556 BC), the Neriglissar of the classical sources (Wiseman 1985: 10–12; Leick 1999: 122).
In addition to Nebo-Sarsekim, Nebuchadnezzar and Nergal-Sharezer, the name of yet another Babylonian official has turned up in a Babylonian text. His name is Nebuzaradan. He played a significant role in the events of 587 BC. Nebuzaradan was a high-ranking military official, called “Captain of the Guard” in the Biblical text, perhaps reporting directly to Nebuchadnezzar. He was responsible for supervising the burning of the city (2 Kgs 25:8–9; Jer 39:8a 52:12–13), tearing down the defenses (2 Kgs 25:10; Jer 39:8b 52:14), deporting 832 captives to Babylon (2 Kgs 25:11; Jer 39:9; 52:15, 29), plundering the Temple (2 Kgs 25:15; Jer 52:17–19), and rounding up Judean officials to appear before Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kgs 25:18–21; Jer 52:24–27).
Nebuchadnezzar gave Nebuzaradan specific instructions to deal kindly with Jeremiah (Jer 39:11–12). He released Jeremiah and gave him a choice of either going to Babylon or remaining in Judah (Jer 40:2–4). Jeremiah chose to remain in Judah, and joined the newly appointed Judean leader Gedaliah at Mizpah (Jer 39:14; 40:5–6). Five years later, Nebuzaradan returned to Jerusalem and deported another 745 people to Babylon (Jer 52:30). A clay prism found in Nebuchadnezzar’s palace, dating to ca. 570 BC, contains a list of court officials. Among them is Nebuzaradan, with the title “Chancellor” or “Chief Baker” (Wiseman 1985: 73–75).
We sometimes wonder why such mundane details as the names of Babylonian officials are recoded in God’s word. Yet, it is these seemingly insignificant bits of information that demonstrate the historical accuracy of the Biblical text and how that accuracy has been preserved through the centuries.
The Bible and Archaeology – Is the Bible from God? (Kyle Butt 42 min)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry King’s Show. One of two most popular posts I […]
I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry King’s Show. One of two most popular posts I […]
Prophecy–The Biblical Prophesy About Tyre.mp4 Uploaded by TruthIsLife7 on Dec 5, 2010 A short summary of the prophecy about Tyre and it’s precise fulfillment. Go to this link and watch the whole series for the amazing fulfillment from secular sources. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvt4mDZUefo ________________ John MacArthur on the amazing fulfilled prophecy on Tyre and how it was fulfilled […]
John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 2) I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry […]
John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 1) I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry […]
Adrian Rogers – How you can be certain the Bible is the word of God Great article by Adrian Rogers. What evidence is there that the Bible is in fact God’s Word? I want to give you five reasons to affirm the Bible is the Word of God. First, I believe the Bible is the […]
Is there any evidence the Bible is true? Articles By PleaseConvinceMe Apologetics Radio The Old Testament is Filled with Fulfilled Prophecy Jim Wallace A Simple Litmus Test There are many ways to verify the reliability of scripture from both internal evidences of transmission and agreement, to external confirmation through archeology and science. But perhaps the […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is […]
Here is some very convincing evidence that points to the view that the Bible is historically accurate. Archaeological and External Evidence for the Bible Archeology consistently confirms the Bible! Archaeology and the Old Testament Ebla tablets—discovered in 1970s in Northern Syria. Documents written on clay tablets from around 2300 B.C. demonstrate that personal and place […]
In the liner notes for Woody Allen: The Stand-Up Years 1964-1968, longtime director and producer Robert B. Weide (Curb Your Enthusiasm) waxes nostalgic about the halcyon days of 1960s stand-up, a time when George Carlin, Joan Rivers and Bill Cosby all converged on the New York comedy scene. Weide himself had learned more about Allen’s stand-up career when he produced and directed the 2012 PBS special Woody Allen: A Documentary.
“Between sets,” Weide writes, “Woody and Bill Cosby would often stroll the neighborhood together until it was time for each of them to return to their respective venues for their next performance. Imagine that.”
As I listened to the three stand-up albums included in this collection, I did imagine that. I couldn’t help but imagine it given the recent volley of sexual abuse allegations lodged against Cosby and the ongoing conversation around Allen’salleged abuse of his then-partner Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter Dylan. And as I pictured Cosby and Allen peacefully traipsing through Greenwich Village—Cosby allegedly already assaulting women at the time, Allen still decades away from his own abuse allegations, not to mention his controversial marriage to Farrow’s adopted daughter Soon Yi-Previn—I wondered why Weide would choose this image to introduce Woody Allen’s illustrious stand-up career.
Then I remembered Weide’s all-too-vigorous defense of Allen’s gentlemanly honor last January and everything became clear. This collection is intended for a world where art can be separated from the artist and where craft trumps all else.
For those familiar with Allen’s craft, the excerpts from his stand-up career collected on The Stand-Up Years depict the incubation of his film persona. He starts his routine by saying that he wants to talk about his “private life” but his performances are anything but straightforwardly confessional. Instead, his act is equal parts carefully rehearsed neurotic anecdotes—he jokes that he “used to steal second base, and feel guilty and go back” when he was “captain of the latent paranoid softball team”—and laconic two-liners: “I was involved in an extremely good example of oral contraception two weeks ago. I asked a girl to go to bed with me, and she said ‘No.’” His middle-class Jewish background is also a recurring theme, as found in a rapidly escalating yarn about mistaking Klansmen for Halloween partygoers or in a quip about being hired as the “Show Jew” at a Madison Avenue advertising agency before being fired “because I took off too many Jewish holidays.” Woody Allen may have left stand-up behind but he took this nebbish persona with him.
His delivery, too, is classic Woody Allen. As he embarks on each new anecdote, he gulps with trepidation, as if oxygen is a liquid that must be swallowed down before he can venture to speak. Once he gets started, however, he delivers his stories as if they are poems, picking up the pace with the liberal use of enjambment: “I did not marry the first girl I fell in love with because there was a tremendous religious conflict / At the time. She was an atheist and I was an agnostic. We didn’t know which religion not to bring the children up in.” After listening to two hours of Allen’s stand-up, I can report that the throughlines between his classic routines and, say, his character Alvy Singer’s opening monologue in Annie Hall are remarkably clear.
But as generative as this character type would become for Allen, its earlier incarnation could be something of a bully in a way that resonates alarmingly with the barely disguised contempt he displayed for Mia Farrow in his New York Times op-ed last year. During his stand-up career, Allen joked so vociferously about his first ex-wife Harlene Rosen—whom he married when he was 19 and she was 16—that she once sued him for defamation of character. Yes, his joke about spending money on a divorce rather than a vacation because “the vacation in Bermuda’s over in two weeks but a divorce is something that you’d always have” produces one of the collection’s biggest laughs. But apart from that, Allen digs into Rosen with such relish that he quickly crosses the line from classic divorce schtick into genuine cruelty, as typified by this particularly egregious sexual assault joke:
“[My ex-wife] lives on the upper west side of Manhattan, and she was coming home late at night, and she was violated. That’s how they put it in the New York papers: ‘She was violated.’ And they asked me to comment on it, and I said ‘Knowing my ex-wife, it probably was not a moving violation.’”
When Allen performed this joke on The Dick Cavett Show, Cavett laughed enthusiastically and the audience erupted in unwavering applause. The joke is already uncomfortable in audio form but on television, the whole scene drips with the same sort of smug 1960s chauvinism that still lurks underneath the put-upon facades of many Allen protagonists.
And Allen’s frequent digs at the woman he terms “the dread Mrs. Allen” only compound the jarring effect of his fabricated stories about, for example, taking a moose to a costume party. These are classic zany 60s-style bits that, to ears like mine, which were raised on Silverman and Seinfeld, sound more like a friend narrating a Saturday Night Live skit than a performer on a stage. As Weide observes in the liner notes, they are “extremely visual stories” that put “a movie in your head.” In contrast to Allen’s flights of fancy, the heart of contemporary stand-up is its honesty or, at least, the pretension to it. We expect today’s comics to tell us stories that sound grounded, even if most or all of the details are embellished. For me, adjusting to the absurdism of Allen’s era would be less of an ask if I could still sense an underlying integrity. Weide calls Allen’s stories “roller coaster[s]” but roller coasters require a certain degree of trust in the ride operator. And after all that has happened in Allen’s life, it’s hard to return to that place of trust.
Fifty years ago as they rambled around Manhattan, Allen and Cosby were at the start of promising careers in comedy. Both men have since led tumultuous personal lives, one more privately than the other, but their respective careers are ending on different notes. Netflix recently cancelled Bill Cosby’s special while Amazon has justannounced a new Woody Allen series. The details of what happened between Allen and Dylan Farrow are still inconclusive and they seem as difficult to ascertain today as they did in the 90s. But, to me, Allen’s questionable reputation is more than just a footnote to a retroactive consideration of his stand-up career. His relentless bullying of his once-teenage bride hardly encourages me to do otherwise.
In 2015, it’s hard to stomach outrageous tall tales from a man who may have been telling them for most of his adult life. Here’s a sentence that was just as true during his stand-up career as it is today: When Woody Allen wants to talk to you about his “private life,” it’s impossible to know whether or not he is telling the truth.
Samantha Allen is the Internet’s premier alpaca enthusiast as well as a Daily Beast contributor. Follow her on Twitter.
____
Woody Allen Stand Up Comic 1964 1968 22 A Love Story
I have spent alot of time talking about Woody Allen films on this blog and looking at his worldview. He has a hopeless, meaningless, nihilistic worldview that believes we are going to turn to dust and there is no afterlife. Even though he has this view he has taken the opportunity to look at the weaknesses of his own secular view. I salute him for doing that. That is why I have returned to his work over and over and presented my own Christian worldview as an alternative.
-INCLUDES ALL THREE LIVE STAND-UP ALBUMS RECORDED BETWEEN 1964-1968
-REMASTERED AND AVAILABLE ON CD AND DIGITALLY
-BONUS MATERIAL INCLUDES: AUDIENCE Q&A AND OVER 20 MINUTES OF AUDIO EXCERPTS FROM WOODY ALLEN: A DOCUMENTARY
____ Woody Allen’s past movies and the subject of the Meaning of Life examined!!! Out of the Past: Woody Allen, Nostalgia, the Meaning of Life, and Radio Days Kyle Turner Jul 25, 2014 Film, Twilight Time 1 Comment “I firmly believe, and I don’t say this as a criticism, that life is meaningless.” – Woody […]
Woody Allen Should Have Quoted Pascal: “Magic in the Moonlight” January 7, 2015 by Roger E. Olson 9 Comments Woody Allen Should Have Quoted Pascal: “Magic in the Moonlight” I am no Roger Ebert and don’t watch that many movies, but in my opinion, for what it’s worth, Woody Allen’s 2014 film “Magic in […]
______________ If anyone has read my blog for any length of time they know that I am the biggest Woody Allen fan of all time. No one except maybe Bergman has attacked the big questions in life as well as Woody Allen. Furthermore, Francis Schaeffer is my favorite Christian Philosopher and he spent a lot […]
___________ Woody Allen to make first TV series for Amazon Prime ‘I’m not sure where to begin,’ says 79-year-old Oscar-winner about his small screen debut, as streaming TV service seeks to gain march on rivals with exclusive content Comment: in signing Woody Allen, Amazon Prime has delivered a nuclear blast to the competition Woody […]
______________________ Woody Allen: “the whole thing is tragic” July 20, 2012 Mr. Allen, do you truly believe that happiness in life is impossible? This is my perspective and has always been my perspective on life. I have a very grim, pessimistic view of it. I always have since I was a little boy; it hasn’t […]
______________ Dr. Jack Graham Challenges Agnostic Woody Allen’s ‘Hopeless State of Mind’ BY NICOLA MENZIE , CHRISTIAN POST REPORTER August 23, 2013|4:51 pm Prolific Hollywood filmmaker and religious skeptic Woody Allen maintains in a recent interview that human life on earth is “just an accident” filled with “silly little moments,” and the “best you can […]
________ Woody Allen Should Have Quoted Pascal: “Magic in the Moonlight” January 7, 2015 by Roger E. Olson 9 Comments Woody Allen Should Have Quoted Pascal: “Magic in the Moonlight” I am no Roger Ebert and don’t watch that many movies, but in my opinion, for what it’s worth, Woody Allen’s 2014 film “Magic […]
___________ Woody Allen to make first TV series for Amazon Prime ‘I’m not sure where to begin,’ says 79-year-old Oscar-winner about his small screen debut, as streaming TV service seeks to gain march on rivals with exclusive content Comment: in signing Woody Allen, Amazon Prime has delivered a nuclear blast to the competition Woody Allen […]
If anyone has read my blog for any length of time they know that I am the biggest Woody Allen fan of all time. No one except maybe Bergman has attacked the big questions in life as well as Woody Allen. Furthermore, Francis Schaeffer is my favorite Christian Philosopher and he spent a lot of […]
_______ Woody Allen’s New Film Is Called ‘Irrational Man’ Posted on Friday, January 30th, 2015 by Angie Han 85 SHARES TwitterFacebook Woody Allen‘s latest film finally has a release date and a studio. Irrational Man will be distributed by Sony Pictures Classics, as were Allen’s last six films.Emma Stone, Joaquin Phoenix, Parker Posey, and Jamie […]
and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them.
Harry Kroto
__________________________
There are 3 videos in this series and they have statements by 150 academics and scientists and I hope to respond to all of them. Nobel Laureate Dr. Aaron Ciechanover is found in the 114th video clip in the third video below and his quote is found below in this post and my response is after that.
50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 1)
Another 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 2)
A Further 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 3)
What did Dr. Aaron Ciechanover say in this film series that Harry Kroto wanted me to watch?
______________________________
Quote from Dr. Aaron Ciechanover:
YOU DON’T THEN BELIEVE IN ANY KIND OF AFTERLIFE THEN OR CONSCIOUSNESS OR GOD? “My Israeli purse contains a certificate from the Israeli organ organization that says if I die they can take all the organs give them to whoever they want, I don’t believe in anything that is beyond life… Once we are born we are going to die. Nevertheless, I am a strong religious Jew. Maybe religious Jews will not accept what I am saying…Maybe they feel different about God and the services and prayer and obedience, For me it is a cultural thing.”
__________________________________
It is true that the view that there is no afterlife is very widespread today and in fact, many people have left the Christian worldview because they did not understand why God had created a place called HELL. My simple question to them would be does he think that HITLER GOT OFF HOOK OR NOT? :
On the popular show MODERN FAMILY Jay has a talk with his grandson Manny:
Manny: So you are not worried about getting in trouble you know with God ?
Jay:oh I think He has bigger things on his plate
Manny: so you are not worried about hell?
Jay : let me let you in on a little secret kid, there is no hell
Manny: seriously no hell!!! That is fantastic!!so everyone goes to heaven?
Jay: yep!! End of story!!
Manny: even bad people?
Jay: yeah they are in another section.
Manny: I was thinking about this heaven of yours that is filled with bad people.
Jay: it is not full, it is the tiniest fraction and they are walled in.
Manny: what if they break out?
Jay: they are surrounded by a lake of fire.
Manny: there are fiery lakes in heaven? This is turning into hell!!!——–
___________________
What do you do with Hitler? There are three posts I have done in the past that deal this subject in an emphatic way. On my blog I have two posts that thousands of people have read over the last 18 months and they are in my all-time top ten list of most viewed and the ironic thing is that both deal with hell and what do you do with a guy like Hitler if you don’t believe in hell.
The first one post dealt with Chris Martin of Coldplay and his life journey of being raised as an evangelical but leaving during his college years because of his rejection of the idea of hell. Then when he writes his best selling song of all-time “Viva La Vida” he writes that the evil king pictured in the song is “eternally damned,” and Saint Peter will not be calling his name.
In the second one Mike Huckabee caused quite a stir when he said that Osama bin Laden was in hell right now. In this post I include a portion of an article I wrote for our online church magazine back in 1999 that discusses this same subject. It goes like this:
___________________
Woody Allen’s movieCrimes and Misdemeanorsdoes a great job of showing thatif God does not exist then people like Stalin and Hitler were “home free” in that they were never going to be punished for what they did.
“Existential subjects to me are still the only subjects worth dealing with. I don’t think that one can aim more deeply than at the so-called existential themes, the spiritual themes.” WOODY ALLEN
Woody Allen’s 1989 movie, CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS , is an excellent icebreaker concerning the need of God while making decisions in the area of personal morality.In this film, Allen attacks his own atheistic view of morality. Martin Landau plays a Jewish eye doctor named Judah Rosenthal raised by a religious father who always told him, “The eyes of God are always upon you.”However, Judah later concludes that God doesn’t exist.He has his mistress (played in the film by Anjelica Huston) murdered because she continually threatened to blow the whistle on his past questionable, probably illegal, business activities. She also attempted to break up Judah ‘s respectable marriage by going public with their two-year affair.Judah struggles with his conscience throughout the remainder of the movie. He continues to be haunted by his father’s words: “The eyes of God are always upon you.” This is a very scary phrase to a young boy, Judah observes. He often wondered how penetrating God’s eyes are.
Later in the film, Judah reflects on the conversation his religious father had with Judah ‘s unbelieving Aunt May at the dinner table many years ago:
“Come on Sol, open your eyes. Six million Jews burned to death by the Nazis, and they got away with it because might makes right,” says aunt May
Sol replies, “May, how did they get away with it?”
Judah asks, “If a man kills, then what?”
Sol responds to his son, “Then in one way or another he will be punished.”
Aunt May comments, “I say if he can do it and get away with it and he chooses not to be bothered by the ethics, then he is home free.”
Judah ‘s final conclusion was that might did make right. He observed that one day, because of this conclusion, he woke up and the cloud of guilt was gone. He was, as his aunt said, “home free.”
Woody Allen has exposed a weakness in his own humanistic view that God is not necessary as a basis for good ethics. There must be an enforcement factor in order to convince Judah not to resort to murder. Otherwise, it is fully to Judah ‘s advantage to remove this troublesome woman from his life.
The Bible tells us, “{God} has also set eternity in the hearts of men…” (Ecclesiastes 3:11 NIV). The secularist calls this an illusion, but the Bible tells us that the idea that we will survive the grave was planted in everyone’s heart by God Himself. Romans 1:19-21 tells us that God has instilled a conscience in everyone that points each of them to Him and tells them what is right and wrong (also Romans 2:14 -15).
It’s no wonder, then, that one of Allen’s fellow humanists would comment, “Certain moral truths — such as do not kill, do not steal, and do not lie — do have a special status of being not just ‘mere opinion’ but bulwarks of humanitarian action. I have no intention of saying, ‘I think Hitler was wrong.’ Hitler WAS wrong.” (Gloria Leitner, “A Perspective on Belief,” THE HUMANIST, May/June 1997, pp. 38-39)
Here Leitner is reasoning from her God-given conscience and not from humanist philosophy. It wasn’t long before she received criticism. Humanist Abigail Ann Martin responded, “Neither am I an advocate of Hitler; however, by whose criteria is he evil?” (THE HUMANIST, September/October 1997, p. 2)
The secularist can only give incomplete answers to these questions: How could you have convinced Judah not to kill? On what basis could you convince Judah it was wrong for him to murder?
As Christians, we would agree with Judah ‘s father that “The eyes of God are always upon us.” Proverbs 5:21 asserts, “For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and He ponders all his paths.” Revelation 20:12 states, “…And the dead were judged (sentenced) by what they had done (their whole way of feeling and acting, their aims and endeavors) in accordance with what was recorded in the books” (Amplified Version). The Bible is revealed truth from God. It is the basis for our morality. Judah inherited the Jewish ethical values of the Ten Commandments from his father, but, through years of life as a skeptic, his standards had been lowered. Finally, we discover that Judah ‘s secular version of morality does not resemble his father’s biblically-based morality.
Woody Allen’s CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS forces unbelievers to grapple with the logical conclusions of a purely secular morality. It opens a door for Christians to find common ground with those whom they attempt to share Christ; we all have to deal with personal morality issues. However, the secularist has no basis for asserting that Judah is wrong.
Larry King actually mentioned on his show, LARRY KING LIVE, that Chuck Colson had discussed the movie CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS with him. Colson asked King if life was just a Darwinian struggle where the ruthless come out on top. Colson continued, “When we do wrong, is that our only choice? Either live tormented by guilt, or else kill our conscience and live like beasts?” (BREAKPOINT COMMENTARY, “Finding Common Ground,” September 14, 1993)
Later, Colson noted that discussing the movie CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS with King presented the perfect opportunity to tell him about Christ’s atoning work on the cross. Colson believes the Lord is working on Larry King.
(Caution: CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS is rated PG-13. It does include some adult themes.)
___________________________
In the third post I mention that I had the unique opportunity to discuss this very issue with Robert Lester Mondale and his wife Rosemary on April 14, 1996 at his cabin in Fredricktown, Missouri , and my visit was very enjoyable and informative. Mr. Mondale had the distinction of being the only person to sign all three of the Humanist Manifestos in 1933, 1973 and 2003. I asked him which signers of Humanist Manifesto Number One did he know well and he said that Raymond B. Bragg, and Edwin H. Wilson and him were known as “the three young radicals of the group.” Harold P. Marley used to have a cabin near his and they used to take long walks together, but Marley’s wife got a job in Hot Springs, Arkansas and they moved down there.
Roy Wood Sellars was a popular professor of philosophy that he knew. I asked if he knew John Dewey and he said he did not, but Dewey did contact him one time to ask him some questions about an article he had written, but Mondale could not recall anything else about that.
Mondale told me some stories about his neighbors and we got to talking about some of his church members when he was an Unitarian pastor. Once during the 1930’s he was told by one of his wealthier Jewish members that he shouldn’t continue to be critical of the Nazis. This member had just come back from Germany and according to him Hitler had done a great job of getting the economy moving and things were good.
Of course, just a few years later after World War II was over Mondale discovered on a second hand basis what exactly had happened over there when he visited with a Lutheran pastor friend who had just returned from Germany. This Lutheran preacher was one of the first to be allowed in after the liberation of the concentration camps in 1945, and he told Mondale what level of devastation and destruction of innocent lives went on inside these camps. As Mondale listened to his friend he could feel his own face turning pale.
I asked, “If those Nazis escaped to Brazil or Argentina and lived out their lives in peace would they face judgment after they died?”
Mondale responded, “I don’t think there is anything after death.”
I told Mr. Mondale that there is sense in me that says justice will be given eventually and God will judge those Nazis even if they evade punishment here on earth. I did point out that in Ecclesiastes 4:1 Solomon did note that without God in the picture the scales may not be balanced in this life and power could reign, but at the same time the Bible teaches that all must face the ultimate Judge.
Then I asked him if he got to watch the O.J. Simpson trial and he said that he did and he thought that the prosecution had plenty of evidence too. Again I asked Mr. Mondale the same question concerning O.J. and he responded, “I don’t think there is a God that will intervene and I don’t believe in the afterlife.”
I’ve written before about the importance of recognizing the role of the Creator in determining life’s purpose, but as a non-believer, I had little problem determining the purpose of my life. As a man who rejected God’s existence, I was comfortable assigning meaning to my life. What was the purpose of life? Well, for me, it was to live nobly and enforce the laws as a police officer, to be a faithful husband to my wife and a good father for my kids. I had no problem answering the “what” question. I failed to recognize, however, that the more important questions did not begin with “what”. When it comes to the meaning of life, the most important questions begin with “why”.
Why is it noble to enforce the law and be a good husband and father? Why is my standard of good and evil the correct standard? Why do I think my ideas about purpose and meaning are important or honorable in the first place? Are my ideas about purpose and meaning simply a matter of opinion, or do I think I’m living a life that is objectively valuable and meaningful? I first discovered the importance of these “why” questions as I became saturated in the subcultures of our society. As a patrol officer, a member of the gang detail and then a member of the career criminal team, I found that the offenders I investigated had no problem assigning meaning to their lives; these folks lived contentedly within the purposes they had constructed for themselves. The gangsters I worked with for two years lived within a world of values and mores that were quite different from my own. Their goals and desires were influenced by their status within the gang and this status was achieved as they rejected much of what I valued in my own life. The more they misbehaved, the more stature they achieved within their own group. They definitely had their own ideas related to purpose and meaning, and they retained these values throughout their lives, both in and out of custody.
As a police officer, I rejected the values held by the people I arrested. I disagreed dramatically with their definitions related to the purpose of life. But why did I think my beliefs related to purpose were more valid than theirs? If everyone gets to assign their own meaning, who are we to judge those who select an evil (or even benignly contrary) purpose? Why should we even think anything is good or bad related to life’s meaning? There are gang neighborhoods in Los Angeles County in which people are living with an idea of purpose and meaning that is very different than my own. Are they wrong about the meaning of life? If so, why? Some would say it simply comes down to whether or not any harm is being done to others; if someone’s purpose in life involves harming others, we ought to be able to appropriately judge that purpose as misguided and wrong.
But I bet you would attempt to re-direct your son or daughter if they told you they decided the purpose of their life was to watch Hulu and Netflix all day. Even though this behavior would have no negative impact on the lives of others, I think you would invest some time trying to convince them to adopt a “better” or more productive purpose for their lives. But why should they listen to you? Why should they come to believe that your ideas about purpose and meaning are more valid than their own? Why isn’t the meaning they’ve chosen for themselves good enough? Why should they accept what you have to say in the first place? It’s a times like these, when we find ourselves evaluating two competing ideas about meaning and purpose that we confront the impotence of our subjective choices. If there is no transcendent, objective meaning to our lives, it’s all really a matter of opinion. If that’s the case, good luck trying to get your kids to stop watching videos. If, however, we have been designed by a Creator God for a purpose that transcends our own limited desire and perspective, we can begin to help our kids understand that we are arguing for more than an opinion. When we address the “why” questions, the “what” questions are much easier to answer and defend.
Ricky Gervais act outs atheist bewilderment and frustration in the face of nice Christian nonsense Carl Sagan – Parents Carl Sagan said that he missed his parents terribly and he wished he could believe in the afterlife but he was not convinced because of the lack of proof. I had the opportunity to correspond […]
________ Ernst Mayr 1904-2005 Bill Gates, John Grisham, James Michener, E. O. Wilson, Ernst Mayr, George Lucas… Published on May 19, 2012 Bill Gates, John Grisham, James Michener, E. O. Wilson, Ernst Mayr, George Lucas, James Cameron, Larry King, Ian Wilmut, Jane Goodall, Stephen Jay Gould, Tim D. White, Leon Lederman, Timothy Berners-Lee and Bill […]
In today’s news you will read about Kirk Cameron taking on the atheist Stephen Hawking over some recent assertions he made concerning the existence of heaven. Back in December of 1995 I had the opportunity to correspond with Carl Sagan about a year before his untimely death. Sarah Anne Hughes in her article,”Kirk Cameron criticizes […]
_____________ John J. Shea Professor Ph.D., Harvard University, 1991 2nd Annual Human Evolution Symposium PART ONE Uploaded on Nov 23, 2010 “Out of Africa: Who, Where, and When?” Sept. 27, 2005. Stony Brook University. Convened by Richard Leakey. 1. Welcome – Bob McGrath, Provost, Stony Brook University 2. Opening remarks – Richard Leakey, Stony […]
The 1st century AD Jewish writer Josephus recorded the ascension of King Herod to the throne of Judea. The Bible also refers to King Herod in such passages as Matthew 2:1, which reads, “…Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod” (NIV). A quote from Josephus concerning Herod is as follows:
“As soon as Herod was established on the throne, he conferred honors on those in Jerusalem who had supported his cause, and punished the partisans of Antigonus. Converting his valuables into money, he sent large sums to Anthony and his friends.”
Quote taken from: Josephus, Josephus the Essential Works. Trans & Ed. by Maier, Paul L. Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2007. Print. P. 241.
The inscription on this piece of a wine jug refers to King Herod who is noted in the Bible as having killed the babies in Bethlehem near the time of Christ’s birth.
Click “Read more” below to see the museum placard that accompanies this artifact.
The first of the three Roman emperors mentioned in the Bible is Augustus who reigned from 27 BC – AD 14. He is referred to in Luke 2:1 and is a well documented historical figure. The photo here shows a marble bust located in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum, Turkey.
The second of the three Roman emperors mentioned in the Bible is Tiberius who reigned from 14-37 AD. He is referred to in Luke 3:1, and his reign is also discussed by other ancient authors (e.g. Tacitus, Suetonius, etc.). The photo here shows a bust located in the Ephesus Museum, Turkey.
The third of the three Roman emperors mentioned in the Bible is Claudius who reigned from 41-54 AD. He is noted in Acts 11:28 and 18:2. Ancient historians such as Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio also wrote about him. The photo here shows a model head located in the Museum of Roman Civilization, Rome.
In Luke 20:23-25 Jesus requested a coin and then asked the crowd, “Whose image and inscription are on it?” They replied that it was “Caesar’s.” Several types of coins were in circulation at that time that showed an image of Caesar, with the one displayed here being a typical example. It contains the image of Tiberius Caesar who reigned 14-37 AD, the time of the ministry of Christ. The text on the silver coin is written in Latin, and the coin itself is now in a private collection. Click on “Read more” below to see the reverse side of the coin.
This quote, from the 1st century AD Jewish writer Josephus, references the execution of John the Baptist, which is also recorded in the Bible (Matthew chapter 14).
“Now, to some of the Jews the destruction of Herod’s army seemed to come from God as a…punishment for what he did to John who was called the Baptist. For Herod had executed him…” (Jewish Antiquities).
Quote taken from: Josephus, Josephus the Essential Works. Trans & Ed. by Maier, Paul L. Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2007. Print. P. 271.
View of the Western Wall,* which is part of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Many people from around the world come here to place written prayers into the crevices between the building blocks. The lower portion of the wall displayed in the photo represents part of the Temple complex that was rebuilt by King Herod starting in c. 19 BC. Herod’s rebuilt Temple was the one visited by Christ. The Gospels record Christ at the Temple in such passages as John 2:12-25. Click “Read more” below to see an aerial photo of the Temple Mount.
This photo displays the location of a first-century AD house in the village of Capernaum that archaeological evidence indicates was quite likely the home of the Apostle Peter with whom Jesus may have lived (Mark 1 and 2). The miracle during which a paralyzed man was lowered through the roof likely occurred at this location. Excavations were carried out on the site between 1968 and 1998, and it was learned that it was used early in the Christian era as a church and as a place of pilgrimage. Also, inscriptions that refer to Jesus Christ were found. Today the structure is still visible under a larger modern church that was built over it to commemorate the site. To see a photo of this modern church, click “Read more” below.
In 2004 workers digging a sewer line in Jerusalem uncovered this terraced stone pool that was identified by archaeologists as the Pool of Siloam referred to in John’s Gospel. This pool is noted in John 9:7 as the place where Jesus sent a blind man to be healed. The approximate date the pool was originally constructed was indicated by coins placed in antiquity into the plaster pool lining. The pool, which is about 225 feet wide, is located near the end of Hezekiah’s tunnel (discussed above) and can be seen by visitors to the area.
This inscribed limestone slab was found in Caesarea Maritima, Israel in 1961. It was originally made in c. 30 AD. It is written in Latin and reads, “Tiberium Pontius Pilate Prefect of Judea.” Pontius Pilate is known from the Bible as the one who condemned Jesus to death (Matthew 27).The artifact is about 32 inches in height and is now housed in the Israel Museum.
PHOTO RELEASED TO THE PUBLIC DOMAIN: BRBurton (Thank you)
View of Mars Hill, also called the “Areopagus,” in Athens, Greece. The Bible reads, “Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious….” (Acts 17:22 NIV). Mars Hill (the Areopagus) is located next to the Acropolis in the center of Athens, and it appears to have originally had a building on it in which the Areopagus council met (the building is now gone). Paul likely gave his speech before the Areopagus council in the building on this hill, or perhaps in another building in which the council met (e.g. Royal Stoa). Today there is a plaque on the side of the hill, and this plaque contains the text of Paul’s speech. The full plaque can be read in modern Greek by clicking “Read more” below and enlarging the photo.
The Bible refers to a proconsul in ancient Greece by the name of Gallio (Acts 18). The Greek language inscription shown to the left refers to the same Gallio noted in the Bible. It was written in the 1st century AD and was discovered in Delphi in 1905. It originally consisted of various fragments that were pieced together in 1967. The artifact is now in the Delphi museum, Greece. Click on “Read more” below to see the remains of the Temple of Apollo in Delphi.
The Bible records that the people involved in a riot in the city of Ephesus shouted, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” (Acts 19:34 NIV). This photo displays a marble statue of the goddess known as the “Great Artemis.” It was discovered in the city and measures over nine feet in height. It was made in the 1st or early 2nd century BC and is now on display in the Ephesus museum. Ephesus was known in the ancient world as a center for the worship of Artemis, and the temple devoted to her in the city was considered to be one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
The inscription shown in the photo was discovered in 1924 at the location of ancient Corinth in Greece. The text is in Latin and reads, “Erastus…bore the expense of this pavement.” This is probably a reference to the same “Erastus” referred to in Romans 16:23 as a city official. The inscription, with seven inch letters, dates to the 1st century AD. The limestone slab is in its original location in a field at the ruins of ancient Corinth.
The Roman historian Tacitus wrote his book, The Annals of Imperial Rome, in c. 110 AD, roughly a decade after the death of the last apostle, John. Tacitus is one of the earliest non-Christian sources to discuss Jesus and his crucifixion. The quote by Tacitus is shown below, and by clicking “Read more” at the bottom of this post additional quotes about Christ and the early Christians can be seen.
Tacitus (Roman historian, c. 110 AD): “Their originator, Christ, had been executed in Tiberius’ reign by the governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate” (Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome. Rev. ed. Trans. Grant, Michael. New York: Penguin, 1971. Print. P. 365.)
The Bible and Archaeology – Is the Bible from God? (Kyle Butt 42 min)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry King’s Show. One of two most popular posts I […]
I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry King’s Show. One of two most popular posts I […]
Prophecy–The Biblical Prophesy About Tyre.mp4 Uploaded by TruthIsLife7 on Dec 5, 2010 A short summary of the prophecy about Tyre and it’s precise fulfillment. Go to this link and watch the whole series for the amazing fulfillment from secular sources. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvt4mDZUefo ________________ John MacArthur on the amazing fulfilled prophecy on Tyre and how it was fulfilled […]
John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 2) I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry […]
John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 1) I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry […]
Adrian Rogers – How you can be certain the Bible is the word of God Great article by Adrian Rogers. What evidence is there that the Bible is in fact God’s Word? I want to give you five reasons to affirm the Bible is the Word of God. First, I believe the Bible is the […]
Is there any evidence the Bible is true? Articles By PleaseConvinceMe Apologetics Radio The Old Testament is Filled with Fulfilled Prophecy Jim Wallace A Simple Litmus Test There are many ways to verify the reliability of scripture from both internal evidences of transmission and agreement, to external confirmation through archeology and science. But perhaps the […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is […]
Here is some very convincing evidence that points to the view that the Bible is historically accurate. Archaeological and External Evidence for the Bible Archeology consistently confirms the Bible! Archaeology and the Old Testament Ebla tablets—discovered in 1970s in Northern Syria. Documents written on clay tablets from around 2300 B.C. demonstrate that personal and place […]
Esarhaddon was an Assyrian king noted in Biblical passages such as 2 Kings 19:37. He erected the monument shown in the picture to commemorate a military victory in Egypt. The dolerite monument is over ten feet high and was made in the 7th century BC. It was found in 1881 in the modern city of Zinjirli, Turkey, and the text is written in the Akkadian language using cuneiform script. Esarhaddon himself is depicted in the carving, which is now located in the Museum of the Ancient Near East, Pergamum Museum, Berlin.
This photo displays a bronze inscription recently found in southern Arabia (the land of Sheba) that refers to “the towns of Judah.” It indicates that there were trade relations between Israel and the homeland of the Queen of Sheba. The artifact is dated to the end of the 7th century BC, after the time of Solomon, though it shows the plausibility of the contact between Israel and the land of Sheba during Solomon’s era as portrayed in such passages as 1 Kings 10. The artifact was likely a memorial inscription displayed on a temple wall, and the text is written in the Sabaean language using the South Arabian alphabet. Click “Read more” below to see a map showing the location of Sheba at the southern end of Arabian peninsula.
This small scroll is one of the two Silver Scrolls, which contain the oldest known copies of Biblical passages. Written about 600 BC, they were discovered in 1979 in Jerusalem at a place outside the Old City known as Ketef Hinnom. The Hebrew language text on the scrolls is taken from Numbers 6:24-26, which reads, “May Yahweh bless you and keep you; May Yahweh cause his face to shine upon you and grant you peace.” The smaller of the two scrolls, which is the one pictured here, is about 1.5″ long, and the larger one is about 4″ long. Both scrolls are now located in the Israel Museum. Click “Read more” below to see a close-up of the location the Scrolls were discovered.
This ceramic brick is inscribed in cuneiform with the name of Nebuchadnezzar II, who is mentioned some 90 times in the Bible (e.g. Ezra 1:7). Ancient kings often used inscribed bricks in their building projects. This one was originally made in c. 604-562 BC and was found in the ruins of ancient Babylon during excavations in 1927. It reads, “Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, Guardian of the temples of Esagila and Ezida, Firstborn son of Nabopolasser, king of Babylon.” It is now (2011) in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on loan from Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin.
This ceramic cylinder is inscribed in cuneiform script with the name of the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II, who is referred to in the Bible more than any other foreign king (e.g. 2 Kings 24:1). The cylinder enumerates his building activities and was made in c. 604-562 BC. The artifact is 8.38 inches long. It is now (2011) locatedin The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on loan from the Yale Babylonian Collection.
This ancient Babylonian tablet is part of the Babylonian Chronicles, which, among other events, records the capture of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 597 BC. The event is also recorded in the Bible in 2 Kings 24. The tablet was written in the 6th century BC, and is made of baked clay. It is a little over three inches in height and the writing is in the Akkadian language using cuneiform script. It was discovered in the late 1800s in Babylon and is now located in the British Museum.
This arrowhead was recently found in Jerusalem in material retrieved from the Temple Mount. It is of the type used by the Babylonian army that destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BC. The attack is recorded in the Bible in 2 Kings 24:10.
The name inscribed in hieroglyphs on this artifact is “Haaibra,” the throne name of Pharaoh Hophra (Apries) who is referred to in the Bible in Jeremiah 44:30. The sandstone block was purchased in Cairo in 1919, and is now on display in the Oriental Institute Museum at the University of Chicago.
This clay cylinder was inscribed in Akkadian cuneiform in the 6th century BC by the Neo-Babylonian King Nabonidus. It refers to his son Belshazzar, who is also referred to in the Bible in Daniel 5 and 8. The cylinder was discovered in the 19th century in Ur and is now in the British Museum. It measures about four inches in length and is one of four such cylinders.
This standard weight is from Persepolis in ancient Persia and is inscribed in three languages with text that reads, “I am Darius, Great King…” Darius is also recorded in the Bible as a Persian king in passages such as Ezra 4:5. The stone dates to c. 500 BC and weighs about 10 lbs., 13 oz. It is made of diorite and is now located in the Oriental Institute Museum at the University of Chicago.
This alabaster jar comes from 5th century BC Egypt, and is inscribed with the name of the Persian King Xerxes–sometimes called Ahasuerus–who is referred to in the Bible in such passages as Ezra 4: 6. It is inscribed in both cuneiform and hieroglyphs, and is about ten inches high. It is now located in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
This silver bowl dates to the 5th century BC and comes from ancient Persia. It was used as a wine-drinking vessel, and it comes from the royal house of the Persian ruler Artaxerxes I. It is inscribed with the name of Artaxerxes himself, as well as his father Xerxes and his grandfather Darius. Of interest is the fact that the Biblical figure Nehemiah is listed as a cup-bearer to Artaxerxes in Nehemiah 2:1. Found before 1935,* it is nearly 12 inches in diameter and is one of four such bowls discovered so far. The inscription is in the Old Persian language using cuneiform script, and the bowl is on display in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Both the Bible and the Greek historian Herodotus speak about the same Persian kings: Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes and Artaxerxes. In the brief quotes included here the Biblical text is given first, followed by four passages from Herodotus. BIBLE – …during the entire reign of Cyrus king of Persia and down to the reign of Darius king of Persia. At the beginning of the reign of Xerxes …And in the days of Artaxerxes king of Persia. (Ezra 4:5-7) NIV.
HERODOTUS – …we inquire further about Cyrus and the Persians… (The Histories 1.95).
HERODOTUS – …after giving these orders, Darius summoned into his presence… (The Histories 5.106).
HERODOTUS – …having appointed Xerxes as King of the Persians… (TheHistories7.4).
HERODOTUS – …during the reigns of… Xerxes, son of Darius, andArtaxerxes, son of Xerxes… (TheHistories 6.98).
Herodotus quotes taken from: Herodotus, The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories. Trans. Purvis, Andrea L., Ed. Strassler, Robert. New York: Pantheon, 2007. Print.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are the largest collection of ancient Biblical manuscripts ever found. Representing all books of the Hebrew Bible except Esther, they were found in Israel near the settlement of Qumran next to the Dead Sea between 1947 and 1956. In addition to copies of Biblical books, other texts such as Biblical commentaries are also included in the collection. (There is even a treasure map called the Copper Scroll, though no treasure has ever been found.) Originally written primarily in Hebrew* on parchment (animal skin) and on papyrus (a paper-like material) in c. 200 BC to AD 70, they are now for the most part located in the Shrine of the Book, a wing of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.** The Psalms Scroll is shown above; to see a photo of the Copper Scroll, click “Read more” below. To go to the Dead Sea Scrolls online site click this link: Dead Sea Scrolls online .
*In addition to Hebrew, a smaller percentage are written in Aramaic and Greek.
**Various limited portions exist in different locations. For example, the Copper Scroll is located in the Archaeological Museum in Amman, Jordan.
PHOTO RELEASED TO THE PUBLIC DOMAIN: Israel Antiquities Authority (Thank you).
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry King’s Show. One of two most popular posts I […]
I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry King’s Show. One of two most popular posts I […]
Prophecy–The Biblical Prophesy About Tyre.mp4 Uploaded by TruthIsLife7 on Dec 5, 2010 A short summary of the prophecy about Tyre and it’s precise fulfillment. Go to this link and watch the whole series for the amazing fulfillment from secular sources. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvt4mDZUefo ________________ John MacArthur on the amazing fulfilled prophecy on Tyre and how it was fulfilled […]
John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 2) I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry […]
John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 1) I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry […]
Adrian Rogers – How you can be certain the Bible is the word of God Great article by Adrian Rogers. What evidence is there that the Bible is in fact God’s Word? I want to give you five reasons to affirm the Bible is the Word of God. First, I believe the Bible is the […]
Is there any evidence the Bible is true? Articles By PleaseConvinceMe Apologetics Radio The Old Testament is Filled with Fulfilled Prophecy Jim Wallace A Simple Litmus Test There are many ways to verify the reliability of scripture from both internal evidences of transmission and agreement, to external confirmation through archeology and science. But perhaps the […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is […]
Here is some very convincing evidence that points to the view that the Bible is historically accurate. Archaeological and External Evidence for the Bible Archeology consistently confirms the Bible! Archaeology and the Old Testament Ebla tablets—discovered in 1970s in Northern Syria. Documents written on clay tablets from around 2300 B.C. demonstrate that personal and place […]
Bing Crosby (with Vic Schoen‘s Orchestra) (recorded January 4, 1949; released by Decca Records as catalog number 24559, with the flip side “Why Can’t You Behave?”[4])
Allan Jones with orchestra conducted by Robert Armbruster. Recorded in Hollywood on April 26, 1950. It was released by EMI on the His Master’s Voice label as catalog number BD 6085.
^ abcdGardner, Edward Foote (2000). Popular Songs of the 20th Century: Chart Detail & Encyclopedia, 1900-1949. St. Paul, Minnesota: Paragon House. ISBN1-55778-789-1.
Cole Porter “Let’s Do it, Let’s Fall in Love” in the movie MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Midnight in Paris – Let’s Do It Let’s do it : Cole Porter.( Midnight in Paris ) Celebrate Wikipedia Loves Libraries at your institution in October/November. Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: […]
The song used in “Midnight in Paris” I am going through the famous characters that Woody Allen presents in his excellent movie “Midnight in Paris.” By the way, I know that some of you are wondering how many posts I will have before I am finished. Right now I have plans to look at Fitzgerald, Heminingway, Juan […]
The Institute for Creation Research has become known for its attention to research. It’s important to recognize that we don’t try to “prove the Bible.” The Bible doesn’t need our help. Whether or not there is evidence, the Bible is true! In our research we assume the Bible, and conduct our investigations in that framework. We interpret all historical data within the model of true history given in Scripture.
For instance, we do a lot of research in Grand Canyon, a huge scar in the earth gouged out by moving water. We go there with the firm conviction that the world-restructuring flood of Noah’s day covered Arizona, and that its processes and aftereffects would have left their mark. We interpret the data in that light.
This is not a naïve stance. Everyone has a perspective. Evolutionary naturalism has become such a worldview and is unquestioningly used by its adherents in their interpretation of data. We feel that of the two broad viewpoints of history, creation is the better choice. The Bible and its teachings have proven to be trustworthy, and a solid foundation for our faith. It handles the data better, with no inconsistencies or contradictions.
Since the Bible is the inerrant Word of God, there is no need to fear putting it to the test (I Thessalonians 5:21). Francis Schaeffer used to declare the Bible to be “true Truth.” It is absolutely accurate in all matters on which it touches, and the worldview it presents is applicable in all areas. Research can fill in the gaps in our knowledge, for the Bible doesn’t give all the details. Furthermore, in the Dominion Mandate of Genesis 1:28, we (i.e., all representatives of mankind) are commanded to study creation, in order to use it wisely for man’s good and God’s glory. The Creator instructed Adam to “subdue [the earth]: and have dominion over [it].” Furthermore, He is pleased when we learn more of Him through research into what He has done and give Him the glory. Research can answer questions which might have arisen in the minds of Christians, remove obstacles to salvation in the path of non-Christians, and show the superiority of the Biblical way of thinking. It can and should do all these things.
Nevertheless, some Christians think otherwise. They feel that the Bible is beyond such investigation, and doesn’t even need to be supported. They are offended that we attempt to demonstrate its accuracy, and chastise us for trying. While this may sound “spiritual,” it differs from Christ’s example.
After His resurrection, He appeared to His disciples in the upper room, but Thomas was not present (John 20:24). When told by the others that they had seen the risen Lord, Thomas insisted that he needed to see the evidence. “Except I shall see in His hands the print of the nails . . . I will not believe” (v.25). A few days later He again appeared. This time Thomas was present. Did Jesus upbraid him for his need for evidence? Not at all. He graciously invited Thomas to come and see the scars. The evidence was there, and his faith was well placed. Throughout Scripture we find God revealing Himself and validating the truth with evidence. Still, He requires faith, but that faith is a reasonable faith, based soundly on demonstrable fact.
I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the video below. It is very valuable information for Christians to have. Actually I have included a video below that includes comments from him on this subject.
Francis Schaeffer
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 5) TRUTH AND HISTORY
The 45 minute video above is from the film series created from Francis Schaeffer’s book “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” with Dr. C. Everett Koop. This book really helped develop my political views concerning abortion, infanticide, and youth euthanasia, and it gave me a good understanding of those issues.
E P I S O D E 1 0 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode X – Final Choices 27 min FINAL CHOICES I. Authoritarianism the Only Humanistic Social Option One man or an elite giving authoritative arbitrary absolutes. A. Society is sole absolute in absence of other absolutes. B. But society has to be […]
E P I S O D E 9 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IX – The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence 27 min T h e Age of Personal Peace and Afflunce I. By the Early 1960s People Were Bombarded From Every Side by Modern Man’s Humanistic Thought II. Modern Form of Humanistic Thought Leads […]
E P I S O D E 8 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VIII – The Age of Fragmentation 27 min I saw this film series in 1979 and it had a major impact on me. T h e Age of FRAGMENTATION I. Art As a Vehicle Of Modern Thought A. Impressionism (Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, […]
E P I S O D E 7 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VII – The Age of Non Reason I am thrilled to get this film series with you. I saw it first in 1979 and it had such a big impact on me. Today’s episode is where we see modern humanist man act […]
E P I S O D E 6 How Should We Then Live 6#1 Uploaded by NoMirrorHDDHrorriMoN on Oct 3, 2011 How Should We Then Live? Episode 6 of 12 ________ I am sharing with you a film series that I saw in 1979. In this film Francis Schaeffer asserted that was a shift in […]
E P I S O D E 5 How Should We Then Live? Episode 5: The Revolutionary Age I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Francis Schaeffer noted, “Reformation Did Not Bring Perfection. But gradually on basis of biblical teaching there […]
Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IV – The Reformation 27 min I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer makes three key points concerning the Reformation: “1. Erasmian Christian humanism rejected by Farel. 2. Bible gives needed answers not only as to […]
Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 3 “The Renaissance” Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 3) THE RENAISSANCE I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer really shows why we have so […]
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 2) THE MIDDLE AGES I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer points out that during this time period unfortunately we have the “Church’s deviation from early church’s teaching in regard […]
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 1) THE ROMAN AGE Today I am starting a series that really had a big impact on my life back in the 1970′s when I first saw it. There are ten parts and today is the first. Francis Schaeffer takes a look at Rome and why […]
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 5) TRUTH AND HISTORY Published on Oct 7, 2012 by AdamMetropolis This crucial series is narrated by the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer and former Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop. Today, choices are being made that undermine human rights at their most basic level. Practices once […]
The opening song at the beginning of this episode is very insightful. Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 4) THE BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY Published on Oct 7, 2012 by AdamMetropolis This crucial series is narrated by the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer and former Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop. Today, choices […]
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 3) DEATH BY SOMEONE’S CHOICE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis This crucial series is narrated by the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer and former Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop. Today, choices are being made that undermine human rights at their most basic level. Practices […]
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” (Episode 2) SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis This crucial series is narrated by the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer and former Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop. Today, choices are being made that undermine human rights at their most basic level. Practices […]
It is not possible to know where the pro-life evangelicals are coming from unless you look at the work of the person who inspired them the most. That person was Francis Schaeffer. I do care about economic issues but the pro-life issue is the most important to me. Several years ago Adrian Rogers (past president of […]
This essay below is worth the read. Schaeffer, Francis – “Francis Schaeffer and the Pro-Life Movement” [How Should We Then Live?, Whatever Happened to the Human Race?, A Christian Manifesto] Editor note: <p> </p> [The following essay explores the role that Francis Schaeffer played in the rise of the pro-life movement. It examines the place of […]
Testimony of former agnostic Nancy Pearcey who met her husband at Francis Schaeffer’s L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland!!!!! Francis Schaeffer was a huge influence on many modern day pro-life leaders. Below is the video testimony of Nancy Pearcey and how she wrestled with the truth that Schaeffer confronted her with. She actually fled after one month and then later went back and committed her life to Christ through faith.
Best-selling author Nancy Pearcey and writer-editor J. Richard Pearcey have teamed up to create the Francis Schaeffer Center for Worldview and Culture on the campus of Houston Baptist University.
The purpose of the Francis Schaeffer Center is to “promote foundational research and out-of-the-box creative thinking based on historic Christianity as a total way of life informed by verifiable truth concerning God, humanity, and the cosmos,” according to the FSC mission statement.
Nancy Pearcey serves as director of the Francis Schaeffer Center. Formerly an agnostic, Nancy is professor and scholar-in-residence at HBU. She is the author of seminal works such as Total Truth, The Soul of Science, and Saving Leonardo, and also serves as editor at large of The Pearcey Report. Nancy was heralded in The Economist as “America’s pre-eminent evangelical Protestant female intellectual.”
Courses created by FSC will give students a unique opportunity to work through Nancy’s award-winning books and other foundational resources on worldview and cultural engagement. “Our goal at FSC is to equip students in every major to be critical and creative thinkers,” Pearcey said. “Under the visionary leadership of President Robert Sloan, Houston Baptist University is moving forward strategically to implement a Christian worldview approach more intentionally and comprehensively across all the disciplines.”
The Center is named for noted author Francis A. Schaeffer, whose work with wife Edith at L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland won international respect for giving an “honest answer to honest questions.” Time magazine hailed the Schaeffers’ work as a “Mission to Intellectuals.”
J. Richard Pearcey serves as associate director of the Center. Richard is scholar for worldview studies at HBU, as well as editor and publisher of The Pearcey Report. He is formerly managing editor of the Capitol Hill newspaper Human Events and associate editor of the “Evans-Novak Political Report.”
“If the Christian worldview is true to reality, and we think a rational case can be made that it is, it can be the key to a renaissance of humanity, freedom, and creativity,” Richard said. “Nancy and I met at L’Abri in Switzerland, so we are grateful for the opportunity to say ‘thank you’ to the Schaeffers and their work by inspiring students and others — teachers, activists, professionals — to apply Christian thought forms across the whole of life, from art to science to business and politics.”
HBU Provost John Mark Reynolds said, “When I was a young adult, the writings and films of Francis Schaeffer modeled a way of doing Christian apologetics that had an important impact on my life. It is my honor to see HBU set up a study center dedicated to the Schaeffer approach to worldview studies. There is no better time for Christians to impact the culture, few better models than Schaeffer for evangelicals, and no better team than Nancy and Richard Pearcey to set up the center.”
According to the FSC mission statement, “Since its founding, Houston Baptist University has built a rich heritage of Christian higher education. . . The Francis Schaeffer Center for Worldview and Culture will give focus to HBU’s goal of equipping students and faculty with a Biblical worldview for application to their thinking and their lives. FSC will equip HBU students, faculty, staff, campus organizations, stakeholders, and outside partners to apply the liberating principles of a Biblical worldview in the classroom, across the campus, and around the world.”
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis The 45 minute video above is from the film series created from Francis Schaeffer’s book “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” with Dr. C. Everett Koop. This book really helped develop my political views […]
E P I S O D E 1 0 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode X – Final Choices 27 min FINAL CHOICES I. Authoritarianism the Only Humanistic Social Option One man or an elite giving authoritative arbitrary absolutes. A. Society is sole absolute in absence of other absolutes. B. But society has to be […]
E P I S O D E 9 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IX – The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence 27 min T h e Age of Personal Peace and Afflunce I. By the Early 1960s People Were Bombarded From Every Side by Modern Man’s Humanistic Thought II. Modern Form of Humanistic Thought Leads […]
E P I S O D E 8 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VIII – The Age of Fragmentation 27 min I saw this film series in 1979 and it had a major impact on me. T h e Age of FRAGMENTATION I. Art As a Vehicle Of Modern Thought A. Impressionism (Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, […]
E P I S O D E 7 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VII – The Age of Non Reason I am thrilled to get this film series with you. I saw it first in 1979 and it had such a big impact on me. Today’s episode is where we see modern humanist man act […]
E P I S O D E 6 How Should We Then Live 6#1 Uploaded by NoMirrorHDDHrorriMoN on Oct 3, 2011 How Should We Then Live? Episode 6 of 12 ________ I am sharing with you a film series that I saw in 1979. In this film Francis Schaeffer asserted that was a shift in […]
E P I S O D E 5 How Should We Then Live? Episode 5: The Revolutionary Age I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Francis Schaeffer noted, “Reformation Did Not Bring Perfection. But gradually on basis of biblical teaching there […]
Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IV – The Reformation 27 min I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer makes three key points concerning the Reformation: “1. Erasmian Christian humanism rejected by Farel. 2. Bible gives needed answers not only as to […]
Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 3 “The Renaissance” Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 3) THE RENAISSANCE I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer really shows why we have so […]
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 2) THE MIDDLE AGES I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer points out that during this time period unfortunately we have the “Church’s deviation from early church’s teaching in regard […]
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 1) THE ROMAN AGE Today I am starting a series that really had a big impact on my life back in the 1970′s when I first saw it. There are ten parts and today is the first. Francis Schaeffer takes a look at Rome and why […]
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 5) TRUTH AND HISTORY Published on Oct 7, 2012 by AdamMetropolis This crucial series is narrated by the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer and former Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop. Today, choices are being made that undermine human rights at their most basic level. Practices once […]
The opening song at the beginning of this episode is very insightful. Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 4) THE BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY Published on Oct 7, 2012 by AdamMetropolis This crucial series is narrated by the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer and former Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop. Today, choices […]
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 3) DEATH BY SOMEONE’S CHOICE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis This crucial series is narrated by the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer and former Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop. Today, choices are being made that undermine human rights at their most basic level. Practices […]
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” (Episode 2) SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis This crucial series is narrated by the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer and former Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop. Today, choices are being made that undermine human rights at their most basic level. Practices […]
It is not possible to know where the pro-life evangelicals are coming from unless you look at the work of the person who inspired them the most. That person was Francis Schaeffer. I do care about economic issues but the pro-life issue is the most important to me. Several years ago Adrian Rogers (past president of […]
This essay below is worth the read. Schaeffer, Francis – “Francis Schaeffer and the Pro-Life Movement” [How Should We Then Live?, Whatever Happened to the Human Race?, A Christian Manifesto] Editor note: <p> </p> [The following essay explores the role that Francis Schaeffer played in the rise of the pro-life movement. It examines the place of […]
Great article on Schaeffer. Who was Dr. Francis A. Schaeffer? By Francis Schaeffer The unique contribution of Dr. Francis Schaeffer on a whole generation was the ability to communicate the truth of historic Biblical Christianity in a way that combined intellectual integrity with practical, loving care. This grew out of his extensive understanding of the Bible […]
Dr Richard Land discusses abortion and slavery – 10/14/2004 – part 3 The best pro-life film I have ever seen below by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop “Whatever happened to the human race?” Over the years I have taken on the Ark Times liberal bloggers over and over and over concerning the issue […]
The best pro-life film I have ever seen below by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop “Whatever happened to the human race?” Francis Schaeffer pictured above._________ The 45 minute video above is from the film series created from Francis Schaeffer’s book “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” with Dr. C. Everett Koop. This book really […]
The best pro-life film I have ever seen below by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop “Whatever happened to the human race?” Over the years I have taken on the Ark Times liberal bloggers over and over and over concerning the issue of abortion. I asked over and over again for one liberal blogger […]
Francis Schaeffer pictured above._________ The best pro-life film I have ever seen below by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop “Whatever happened to the human race?” Over the years I have taken on the Ark Times liberal bloggers over and over and over concerning the issue of abortion. I asked over and over again […]
The best pro-life film I have ever seen below by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop “Whatever happened to the human race?” On 1-24-13 I took on the child abuse argument put forth by Ark Times Blogger “Deathbyinches,” and the day before I pointed out that because the unborn baby has all the genetic code […]
PHOTO BY STATON BREIDENTHAL from Pro-life march in Little Rock on 1-20-13. Tim Tebow on pro-life super bowl commercial. Over the years I have taken on the Ark Times liberal bloggers over and over and over concerning the issue of abortion. Here is another encounter below. On January 22, 2013 (on the 40th anniversary of the […]
Dr Richard Land discusses abortion and slavery – 10/14/2004 – part 3 The best pro-life film I have ever seen below by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop “Whatever happened to the human race?” Over the years I have taken on the Ark Times liberal bloggers over and over and over concerning the issue […]
The story for The Longest Ride really began when I learned about Black Mountain College. I had been struggling to find something that excited me for my next novel when I came across a reference to the college online. I was, to understate it, greatly captivated: that an isolated college in my home state of North Carolina was so influential to the American art scene seemed so unlikely that I began researching the school immediately. Thinking about all that happened during the school’s 25-odd years in operation—World War II included—seemed so ripe with possibility. Soon enough, Ira’s character came into my mind and The Longest Ride began coming together.
Then, because Ira and his wife, Ruth, were such a wonderful example of enduring love, I wanted to find a perfect counterpoint as an example of new love. And that’s how I came up with Luke and Sophia. Sophia was created to resonate with my college-aged fans, and Luke is really the quintessential All-American guy. I had never been to a Professional Bull Riding event, but there are so many ranches throughout North Carolina, it just seemed to make sense that he would be a bullrider.
Fully Awake: Black Mountain College Introduction
Uploaded on Jul 27, 2009
FULLY AWAKE is a 60 minute documentary film about the legendary Black Mountain College (1933-1957), an influential experiment in education in Western North Carolina that inspired and shaped 20th century modern art. The film uses narration, archival photography, and interviews with former students, teachers, and historians to explore the schools beginnings, its unique education methods, and how its collaborative curriculum inspired innovation that changed the very definition of art. For more information, please visit http://www.fullyawake.org or to purchase the film, please visit http://www.filmbaby.com.
The third post in this series was on Jorge Fick. Earlier we noted that Fick was a student at Black Mountain College and an artist that lived in New York and he lent a suit to the famous poet Dylan Thomas and Thomas died in that suit. Both Susan Weil and Robert Rauschenberg were featured in the second post in this series and both of them were good friends of the composer John Cage who was featured in my first post in this series. The fourth post in this seriesis on the artist Xanti Schawinsky and he had a great influence on John Cage who later taught at Black Mountain College. Schawinsky taught at Black Mountain College from 1936-1938 and Cage right after World War II. In the fifth post I discuss David Weinrib and his wife Karen Karnes who were good friends with John Cage.
In 1952 David Weinrib and his wife Karen Karnes came to Black Mountain College and became friends with John Cage and his partner Merce Cunningham and several others such as David Tudor and Paul and Vera Williams and Mary Caroline Richards. In 1954 they all moved to Stony Point, Rockland County, 40 miles from New York and they had hoped to start a community that would grow but it didn’t turn out that way. Below is the story of the art of Karen Karnes and her first husband David Weinrib and the story of John Cage and his mushroom story as told by Francis Schaeffer.
Josef Albers
Fiddling with Leica.
1944
Merce Cunningham
In an oudoor solo.
1948
Merce Cunningham
Photo by Robert Rauschenberg
1952
Black Mountain College
Uploaded on Apr 18, 2011
Class Project on Black Mountain College for American Literature
____________________
Mark Shapiro: The Ceramic Art of Karen Karnes (at 11 min mark discusses Black Mountain College)
Published on May 23, 2012
Mark Shapiro gave a presentation about the life and work of ceramic artist Karen Karnes at the 2012 American Craft Council Baltimore Show. http://www.craftcouncil.org
An interview of Karen Karnes conducted 2005 Aug. 9-10, by Mark Shapiro, for the Archives of American Art’s Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America, at the artist’s home and studio in Morgan, Vt.
Karnes discusses her childhood in Brooklyn and the Bronx as the daughter of Russian and Polish immigrants working in the garment industry; living in a cooperative housing project built especially for garment workers and their families; attending the High School of Music and Art, New York City; going on to Brooklyn College, and fortuitously landing in the class of Serge Chermayoff, who taught primarily in the Bauhaus style; meeting her first husband, David Weinrib, with whom she eventually moved to Pennsylvania; David bringing home a slab of clay for her to work with, her first experience with the material; traveling to Italy and working in a ceramics factory there; attending a summer session at Black Mountain College in North Carolina and taking a class with Josef Albers; moving to Stony Point, in Rockland County, N.Y., to start Gatehill Community; her first gallery relationship, with Bonniers, New York City; the birth of her son Abel in 1956; the first time she used a salt kiln, while at the Penland School of Arts and Crafts, Penland, NC, in 1967, and its effect on the character of her work; her relationship with the Hadler-Rodriguez Galleries, New York City; the pottery show in Demarest, New Jersey; her teaching philosophy and methods…meeting her life partner, Ann Stannard, in 1970; Ann’s home in Wales, and living there before settling in Vermont; the fire that destroyed their home and studio in 1998; the issues of privacy and isolation in an artists life; her expectations about her career, especially as a Jewish woman; and her feelings on the work of contemporary potters.
Karnes also recalls John Cage, Soetsu Yanagi, Bernard Leach, Shoji Hamada, Charles Olsen, Marguerite Wildenhain, Paul and Vera B. Williams, Mary Caroline Richards, Goren Holmquist, Paul J. Smith, Mikhail Zakin, Jack Lenor Larsen, Isamu Noguchi, D. Hayne Bayless, Zeb Schactel, Warren Mackenzie, Garth Clark, Joy Brown, Robbie Lobell, Paulus Berensohn, and others.
_________________
00
when david weinrib* installed hank de ricco’s 27 pole piece on the green area outside of the design center, it took me a while to get used to this
_____________
(L–R) Leon Smith, Guardian, 2003, painted steel, 5 ½ x 3 x 2½ feet; Sculpture Park Curator David Weinrib with sculptor Leon Smith
work called Double Loops 1965
1962 work called Needle
Weinrib’s Pocket
Published on Apr 11, 2014
Curatorium. Hudson ny
Sometimes we sit around Harriet HQ and daydream about what it woulda been like to be a student at Black Mountain College in the 50s. Sitting in on Charles Olson’s marathon workshops
On Friday, November 30th at 8:00 pm the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center (56 Broadway in downtown Asheville) presents a rare opportunity to hear first-hand about the Black Mountain College pottery program and the amazing artists who worked at the school in the early 1950s. Artist David Weinrib was potter-in-residence and guest faculty along with Karen Karnes from summer 1952 through summer 1954 at Black Mountain College.
In 1952, David Weinrib and Karen Karnes were invited to come to Black Mountain College for the summer. This visit evolved into their positions as BMC’s Potters in Residence. That same year, they played hosts to a symposium moderated by Marguerite Wildenhain, featuring Bernard Leach, Shoji Hamada and Soetsu Yanagi as presenters. The following year, the pair organized a summer session with yet another influential group of ceramicists: Peter Voulkos, Daniel Rhodes and Warren Mackenzie. These symposia were hugely influential to the studio pottery movement, with some potters claiming that their directions as artists were forever altered.
In the time that followed his Black Mountain College experience, Weinrib was instrumental in starting the intentional community, the Gate Hill Cooperative at Stony Point in New York. Involved in this live/work project were several faces from BMC: John Cage, David Tudor, Karen Karnes, Paul & Vera Williams and M.C. Richards.
David Weinrib has worked as an instructor, potter, designer, curator and sculptor (in various mediums, including plastics), and has received numerous awards for his work. The pieces that Weinrib created at BMC have a painterly quality that is at once engaging and unique. His work displays a versatility and creative energy that is not often rivaled.
This is perhaps one of the most famous photographs taken at the Archie Bray Foundation. From left to right are Soetsu Yanagi, Bernard Leach, Rudy Autio, Peter Voulkos, and Shoji Hamada.
_____________
Shoji Hamada, Bernard Leach, Soetsu Yanagi, and Marguerite Wildenhain at Black Mountain College
Catalog essay for the show that Mark curated at the Penland Gallery, March 22–May 8, 2011.
People often ask whether I was a student of Karen Karnes. It is always somehow awkward to answer. I first say no, explain that she doesn’t really teach, that I have gotten to know her over the years, that her work and place in the world are deeply important to me. That she is a mentor even though I never actually studied or worked with her.
My hunch is that many potters feel this way. The thirteen artists whose work is represented in Many Paths: A Legacy of Karen Karnes certainly do. In fact, Karnes’s outstanding career of over sixty years has touched several generations of potters. She has inspired many young potters to pursue their unlikely vocation, and artists of her own generation—even those working in other fields—to take up clay. Her influence derives mostly from her quiet personal magnetism, integrity, and the uncanny power of her work. An encounter with Karnes is often a transformational event.
Unlike many of the well-known figures of the studio pottery movement, Karnes never taught for any length of time at a university, influencing students as they passed through. Nor did she have apprentices working in her studio to internalize her attitudes and protocols and carry them forward, nor books extending her following. Many of the prominent mentors in modern ceramics have arisen out of such contexts. For example, the British potters Bernard Leach and his apprentice Michael Cardew not only influenced the many apprentices who worked in their studios, but their seminal writings reached thousands of readers. University professors such as Karnes’s contemporary, Warren MacKenzie (who himself apprenticed with Leach), have had important impacts on younger potters [1].
In the Studio
Karnes has preferred to work in the quiet privacy of her studio, rarely employing assistants, and never directly on her work. Though she did share her studio at several points over her career—at Black Mountain College in 1952–4 with her then-husband sculptor, David Weinrib; and for several years with Weinrib and the poet, painter, and scholar M.C. Richards at the Gate Hill Cooperative in Stony Point, New York—she did so in the spirit of cooperative engagement with partners and peers. (She shared a studio again two decades later when she formed a life-partnership with Ann Stannard, an accomplished educator and artist, this time for a decade or so until Ann’s interests moved on to other areas.) But generally, Karnes fiercely protected the privacy of her studio and worked alone.
Growing up, McKenzie Smith was an occasional visitor to Gate Hill, where Karnes had her studio for 25 years, and Smith’s aunt, Johanna Vanderbeek, was also a resident. He recalls Karnes’s formidable presence, amidst the wildness and freedom of the scene at Gate Hill in the late 1960s—“flat-out naked hippieville,” it seemed to him, in contrast to his more conventional Florida upbringing. Karnes stood apart, literally, as her studio was separated from two clustered hillside quadrangles, and in her serious and disciplined persona. She might indulge the band of roving boys McKenzie was tearing around with by giving them each a small lump of clay, but after a brief time she would indicate clearly that it was time for them to move on so that she could return to work.
Her studio solitude only shifted as she entered her 80s and welcomed Normandy Alden, a student she’d met teaching with me at Haystack School in 2005, to share her studio in northern Vermont. By then Karnes was producing much less work and needed help maintaining her studio and rural homestead.
The Question of Teaching
Karnes is sometimes erroneously described as having been on the faculty at Black Mountain College, but actually she and Weinrib were artists-in-residence and did not officially teach. Curious faculty and students would visit the pot shop; M.C. Richards, for example, began working more seriously in clay there with the couple’s encouragement.
Later, at Gate Hill, after she and Weinrib split up and MC moved back into the city, Karnes taught some classes in her studio, but she strictly limited her teaching to one afternoon a week and stopped when her pots sold more reliably. It was in these studio classes, though, that Mikhail Zakin, who had been working in jewelry and sculpture, took up pottery; eventually she helped Karen build her salt kiln. Zakin, five years Karnes’s senior, might be said to be the earliest and longest bearer of her influence.
In the 1960s, as workshop teaching opportunities expanded with the growth of the craft movement, Karnes taught sporadically, twice at Haystack School and, notably, once here at Penland, where in 1967 she first salt-glazed, a career-changing event. From then on her primary material vocabulary turned to salt surfaces and her work for the next dozen years took on the iconic orange-peel texture and rich tonality that we associate with classic Karnes. But though many studio potters became regulars on the workshop circuit, Karnes did not. She was simply too absorbed with the private pleasures and demands of the studio, now irresistible as she was finding her voice—and market—with this new approach.
Still, one workshop she gave at the Wesleyan Potters studio in Connecticut broke the pattern. It was so compelling that the students arranged to continue meeting every few months on an ongoing basis. The “Continuum,” as they called it, met periodically in different studios over half a dozen years until 1979, mainly under Karnes’s leadership, but also under guest presenters such as British potters Mick Casson and David Leach. It was as a peripheral participant in this group that Malcolm Davis first encountered Karnes.
Old Church
The institution, however, most associated with Karnes’s legacy is the annual pottery show at the Art School at Old Church Cultural Center, in Demarest, New Jersey, just north of Manhattan. The weekend show, which she has curated since 1974, each year features 25 potters from around the country. Potters donate a third of their sales to benefit the art school, which Zakin had founded in an old abandoned church. For years, the show was the main fundraising event for the school. When Zakin originally came to Karnes with the idea of the show, Karnes accepted her curatorial role on condition that the potters be “really treated well”: the school would provide them with housing, food, and prepared display spaces, take care of sales and packing so they could enjoy each other, mingle with the customers, and maybe even spend an afternoon in the city. This was to be a show by potters forpotters. And the potters, Karnes was adamant, would be promptly paid. The atmosphere would be celebratory and coalesce around a festive potter’s dinner on Saturday night. The idealism with which the show was conceived is consistent with Karen’s early history of communitarian self-sufficiency, and reflects the values of mutual aid among the tradespersons living in the Bronx “Coops,” the first worker-owned housing project in New York City, where she grew up with her parents, who were garment workers and socialist union activists.
Each year, Karnes introduces younger potters among the regulars who rotate in and out of the show. A few participants enjoy a kind of tenured status—Zakin, who has participated from the beginning; Rob Sieminski, since 1977; Scott Goldberg since 1980; and Malcolm Davis a few year later. All of the potters in Many Paths (with the exception of Alden, who is currently in graduate school, and Paulus Berensohn, who worked in other media and did not produce pots in quantity) have shown multiple times at Old Church. They all remember feeling honored and encouraged by Karen’s belief in their work, and especially grateful for the sustaining sense of community that she fostered.
For many, the show was their first national professional venue, a chance to put work next to peers and senior practitioners in the field and in front of a savvy public. The event has been a rite of passage for many, myself included. Malcolm Davis’s first experience of the show is typical. As he was just beginning to make pots seriously, Karnes responded to something incipient in his forms, and invited him to exhibit, though he didn’t feel his work yet merited it. “She saw something in my pots and opened a door to professionalism and gave me courage. It was a huge stroke.”
Karnes and Zakin set up the show to give concrete economic support to the potters. Not only did it connect potters to enthusiastic buyers each December, but the invitations dependably went out considerably in advance, and first-time potters were given a several-year commitment. All this meant that the show could be part of a longer-term plan, giving potters a respite from the uncertainties of juried craft shows. Rob Sieminski, knowing he could count on an income stream every December, felt greater freedom to take bolder risks in his work because of this and the sense of Karnes’s unqualified support for his creativity. As he says, “pots with nails fired into them” (a feature of his work for a number of years) “weren’t exactly an obvious popular direction.”
In the case of Robbie Lobell, Karnes’s support extended to the sharing of her pioneering formula for making flameware—low-expansion clay and glazes that could be put directly over a burner. These were the basis of Karnes’s famous line of casseroles that sold so well over almost four decades. Lobell felt the practical intent of Karnes’s generous gesture. “She always talked about how hard it is to be a potter. She was handing me something that would allow me to make a living.”
Bob Briscoe notes, “Karen proved that there is strong support for functional ceramics in the general public. By recognizing and nurturing this support, Karen has shown that it is possible for numerous potters to make their living doing what they love.” In fact, the show has become a model for several others around the country, notably the Northern Clay Center’s American Pottery Festival, which Bob Briscoe and Mathew Metz initiated after brainstorming on their long drive back to Minnesota after participating in Old Church in 1998 [2].
The Woman over Time
From very early on, Karnes was a strong and successful woman, making her living by selling her wares independently and on her own terms, without the backup of a professional spouse’s income. She built her own kiln (with Zakin) and began firing with salt at a time when such activities were quite male-dominated. Mary Barringer and Aysha Peltz, whose sights as young potters were set on making a living from studio production, were particularly encouraged by Karnes’s example as a successful independent craftswoman. Barringer’s words speak for scores of women who encountered Karnes as they were thinking about making a life in clay: “I visited Karen at her Stony Point studio, and I can still recall the impact that seeing her in her own working space had upon me. Seeing with my own eyes the evidence of a working woman potter opened a door in my mind that I had not realized was closed. Karen’s example sent me forth into my working life.”
Karnes’s vitality, continued productivity, and constant creative growth well into her 80s is one of her most admired qualities, remarked on by many but particularly meaningful to younger women. Regardless of the limitations of her body, she has never ceased to make new work, experimented with different firings as a guest in colleague’s kilns—and last year even building a new salt kiln. And she has continued her role as Old Church curator. “As a woman aging in a physically demanding field, Karen is a hero for me,” says Silvie Granatelli. Working alongside Karnes in her Morgan, Vermont, studio, encouraged Normandy Alden to “look expansively at my own life in clay and consider how I might prepare for an aging body that inevitably comes.” Gail Kendall hopes to “match her vigor and engagement in the field over time. She is always changing, growing, and exploring.”
Life and Art
Karnes seems to have achieved an almost perfect merging of life and art, perhaps any artist’s highest aspiration. As Scott Goldberg puts it, “Karen has devoted her life to her work. Through the years, she steadily, self-confidently, invents, and holds to ideals that express exquisite, subtle form and meticulous craftsmanship. Her unwavering approach to the merging of the crafts of life and art has been an inspiration to me.” This seemingly effortless representation of her whole being in her work, the way it encompasses her environment, body image, all the rhythms of her days is truly remarkable. Peltz sees this fluid and peaceful integration of experience and expression at the heart of Karnes’s accomplishment, “her self, sources, and experiences are present in her work with an organic ease that few potters achieve.”
This resonates with my sense of Karnes as an embodiment of the complete artist, one confidently in pursuit of a transformative vision, in harmony with the world, at peace with her refusal of its distractions, organically and inexorably moving with her work into new places. As she says in one of her rare pronouncements about her creative process, “The pots kind of grow from themselves—it’s a feeling. The forms will extend themselves—or contract. I feel my forms live in my body, on my breath.” It is this somatic integration of her creativity, her beautiful embodiment of it that makes her so compelling.
Even her very physical presence carried Karnes’s art. Maren Kloppman remembers the “magical moment” she met Karnes during a thunderstorm. Karnes’s “keen eye and gentle honest criticism inspired ambition and possibility in me,” says Kloppman. For Paulus Berensohn, the encounter was fateful. He was a young New York dancer, was attending an annual picnic at Gate Hill, when he wandered off from his hosts and happened to see Karnes at her wheel—no surprise that she was hard at work even during such an event—through the window of her studio, facing away from him. As he describes it, “she was seated throwing a cylinder her back long straight and beautiful. She reached a graceful arm toward the slip bucket and without for a second taking her eyes off the spinning pot, picked up the waiting sponge. I just had to learn that dance.”
The graceful confidence that she exudes physically flows in part from how completely she is at peace with her choices and accepts their moral implications. She rejects compromise of her artistic intent for worldly gain and eschews any distraction from her muse. I am reminded of a dealer who, knowing of the demand for Karnes’s classic large-scale work, her need for funds, and the limitations of her aging body, suggested that she hire a young thrower to make her forms. Karnes, baffled, responded, “Why would I ever do that?” Zakin sums it up eloquently: “Karen is somebody who lives with total integrity to her value system. That has been the great lesson for me—that it can be done, that you can live that way.”
Mentors and Patrons
These stories focus on Karnes’s influence on and mentorship of other artists, but it seems important to circle back to her early days as an artist, her own experience starting out. I have mentioned how Karnes’s conditions for curating the Old Church show reflected the ameliorative engagement of her childhood milieu, a commitment to helping others that is in her blood. This instinct was also nurtured by mentors and patrons who played different supportive roles in her early career.
As a student in the 1940s, her creative gift was recognized by Serge Chermayeff, the Chechen-born modernist architect and designer who headed the art department at Brooklyn College. Chermayeff believed in her strongly and encouraged her to apply to Harvard in architecture. Though she declined, she is one of the only former students he singles out in his Chicago Architects History Project interview (1986) in which he calls her pot an example of the “brilliant… awfully good” students he taught at Brooklyn [3]. He later arranged for her full fellowship at Alfred University in Charles Harder’s studio. She was again recognized during her stay in the Italian pottery town of Sesto Fiorentino when her work caught the eye of leading designer Gio Ponti. Ponti was so taken with her work that he featured it in his prestigiousDomus magazine. Chermayeff and Ponti were both masters in fields somewhat peripheral to Karnes’s chosen one, and were in positions to offer avenues of advancement to the young Karnes.
At Black Mountain College, Karnes experienced a different kind of a transformational teaching when she encountered a master working in her own material, the legendary Japanese potter, Shoji Hamada, who along with Bernard Leach, Soetsu Yanagi, and Marguerite Widenhain came to the college to give a seminar the first summer of her residence. She describes “breathing in” his spirit as he quietly worked, uncomplaining, with the available clay while Leach went on and on about proper clay, plasticity, etc. She says that whenever she had any doubts about throwing pots in front of a group she would recall Hamada’s peaceful undistracted presence.
At the college she also enjoyed the support of the college’s rector, poet Charles Olsen. While in the 1950s, pottery was somewhat marginal to the heady abstract discourse of the students, Olsen wanted to move the college toward a curriculum based on his “institute model” where students would study consecutively four of bodies of knowledge that would begin with crafts, with pottery enjoying parity with weaving, architecture, and graphics. As he stated in a 1952 letter to Wildenhain (who he tried to recruit to the college before Karnes signed on), “…it damn well interests me as an act, (pots do)” [4].
Finally, the architect Paul Williams extended generous patronage to Karnes (and the other residents at Gate Hill Cooperative), building her house and studio and even providing a VW bug for the community to use, enabling Karen to pursue her passion at a time when she had few material resources at her disposal. The consistent support Karnes has extended to others over her long career, then, is a reciprocation rooted in the legacies and support from which she herself benefited.
The diversity and excellence of the work of the multigenerational assembly of artists in Many Paths and their connections to Karnes and to one another is testimony itself to Karnes’s rich legacy. Though the space here at the Penland Gallery has limited this group to a baker’s dozen, many more in the Penland community and around the country also carry her as a touchstone of excellence and a model of commitment, community, and integrity. Potters everywhere have been transformed by the fierce beauty of her life and work. Karnes is not just essential to the many paths taken by the artists in this show; her presence runs through generations of American ceramists.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Karen Karnes for being the inspiring artist and person she is; to Kathryn Gremley at the Penland Gallery for encouragement and putting the exhibition together; to the Penland School for funding this essay; and to the thirteen artists in the show, for their work and their thoughts about Karnes’s influence that are at the heart of Many Paths. Finally I am indebted to my wife Pam Thompson for her incisive editing and unwavering support.
Notes
1 MacKenzie exemplifies this model of mentorship. From his position at the University of Minnesota, he created a vibrant ceramic culture and taught many students, notably an exceptional group of potters in the late 1960s, including Michael and Sandy Simon, Mark Pharis, Randy Johnston, Wayne Branum, and Jeff Oestreich.
2 The highly successful St. Croix Pottery Tour has since extended this legacy. The Tour, a circuit of six host studios north of the Twin Cities, hosts an additional three dozen guest potters and includes social events that reflect the community spirit that Karnes nurtured at Old Church.
3 Serge Chermayeff, interview by Betty J. Blum. Wellfleet, MA, 23–4 May 1985. Chicago Architects Oral History Project. (Chicago: Ernest R. Graham Study Center for Architectural Drawings. Department of Architecture, The Art Institute of Chicago) 26.
4 Charles Olsen, letter to Bernard Leach. 24 May 1952. Black Mountain College Papers, II. 25.
Practically every major artistic figure of the mid-twentieth century spent some time at Black Mountain College: Harry Callahan, Merce Cunningham, Walter Gropius, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Robert Rauschenberg, Aaron Siskind, Cy Twombly – the list goes on and on. Yet scholars have tended to view these artists’ time at the college as little more than prologue, a step on their way to greatness. With The Experimenters, Eva Diaz reveals the influence of Black Mountain College – and especially of three key instructors, Josef Albers, John Cage, and R. Buckminster Fuller – to be much greater than that. Diaz’s focus is on experimentation. Albers, Cage, and Fuller, she shows, taught new models of art making that favored testing procedures rather than personal expression. The resulting projects not only reconfigured the relationships among chance, order, and design – they helped redefine what artistic practice was, and could be, for future generations. Offering a bold, compelling new angle on some of the most widely studied creative minds of the twentieth century. The Experimenters does nothing less than rewrite the story of art in the mid-twentieth century.
Chicago, 2015, 17.8 x 25.4cm, illustrated, 256pp. Hardback.
When I was a teen I was lucky to meet John Cage. He died in 1992 so one had to be quick about it. He was in Broward Community College. He preformed his work with the students there, which were regular instruments and found instruments(that one wouldn’t consider an instrument). He rehearsed the work twice when he said the performance was fine and played the whole thing. He had a very Zen like attitude to his creations that all the performances were going to be different, but a specific attitude what instruments or situations were going to be used. It was a relief to me that a performance doesn’t have to be identical. Most of his later works were done with the I Ching divination, that would show the outcome of the notes, the instruments he would use was asked of the I Ching. He didn’t want a self expression, but the notes and instruments would follow a certain way. Then later there was a formal concert were he played his piano composition that were early and not chance works. Then he did a very long reading from one of his books which was a total chance operation from the I Ching. I had earlier taken pictures with him. I let him sign his book, “A Year from Monday.” A few years later I went to a concert that they played Martinu orchestra music, Cage music for percussion, and a large work of Earl Brown a friend contemporary of Cage sat beside me in the audience. It was a very memorial concert for many orchestral instruments. A past time cage had was collecting mushrooms, hence the picture.
John Cage, Stony Point (c.1955)/Photo credit: David Gahr
Here’s a little find! A short interview with Laurette Reisman, former student of John Cage’s Mushroom Identification class at the New School in 1962, talking about Cage, mushroom walks, and the conception of the New York Mycological Society. This story was produced by Aasim Rasheed for National Public Radio’s “Storycorps Digital Storytelling” program. Reisman, interviewed by Rasheed, calls John Cage “The Mushroom Man.” Thanks to Rasheed for providing the interview in both recorded and transcribed form to the ever-growing archives of the John Cage Trust!
I’m teaching an apologetics and worldview class for high schoolers. One of the textbooks we are using is James Sire’s The Universe Next Door (5th edition).
In discussing nihilism Sire talks about how “nihilism means the death of art” (p. 114). Sire writes:
Art is nothing if not formal, that is, endowed with structure by the artist. But structure itself implies meaning. So to the extent that an art-work has structure, it has meaning and thus is not nihilistic. Even Beckett’s Breath has structure. A junkyard, the garbage in a trash heap, a pile of rocks just blasted from a quarry have no structure. They are not art. (p. 115)
Since Sire mentions Beckett’s Breath here is one renditon:
Breath
Uploaded on Jan 11, 2008
National Theatre School First Year Technical Production Class project, production of Samuel Beckett’s play Breath.
_________________
Sire goes on to state:
Some contemporary art attempts to be anti-art by being random. Much of John Cage’s music is predicated on sheer chance, randomness. But it is both dull and grating, and very few people can listen to it. It’s not art. (p. 115)
To get a flavor for John Cage’s work here are few items. The first piece is “Music of Changes–part one”
John Cage-Music of Changes Book 1 (1951)
Published on Nov 14, 2012
Vicky Chow, piano
DiMenna Center, NYC
NY SoundCircuit
June 9, 2012
John Cage performing Water Walk
___________
This piece entitled “Imaginary Landscape No. 4” uses 12 radios to make random sounds
John Cage: “Imaginary Landscape No. 4” for 12 radios (1951)
Uploaded on Dec 7, 2008
As performed by students of Hunter College (NYC) in Prof. Joachim Pissarro’s + Geoffrey Burleson’s “Cage Class” 12/5/08. 2 players per radio – 1 for frequency tuning, the other for volume, tone, and page-turning of the score.
John Cage’s 4’33”
Uploaded on Dec 15, 2010
A performance by William Marx of John Cage’s 4’33.
Filmed at McCallum Theatre, Palm Desert, CA.
Composer John Adams wrote the following in The New York Times review of Mr. Cage’s new biography, “The Zen of Silence” :
“John Cage….prodded us to reevaluate how we define not only music but the entire experience of encountering art.”
Read the complete review of Kenneth Silverman’s book:
John Cage – 4’33”
Uploaded on Oct 1, 2010
John Cage’s most famous musical composition is called 4’33”.
It consists of the pianist going to the piano, and not hitting any keys for four minutes and thirty-three seconds (he uses a stopwatch to time this). In other words, the entire piece consists of silences — silences of different lengths, they say…
(c) John Cage
_____________
In light of 4’33” this TED Talk by philosopher Julian Dodd of Manchester in which he asks, “Is John Cage’s 4’33” Music?”
Is John Cage’s 4’33” music?: Prof. Julian Dodd at TEDxUniversityOfManchester
Published on Jun 8, 2013
Julian is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Manchester with a particular interest in the philosophy of music. He has recently worked on authenticity in musical performance, the ontology of jazz and musical profundity. In this talk Julian discusses the controversial 4’33” by 20th century American composer John Cage, a famous classical music composition…or is it?
In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)
I first learned of John Cage from reading Francis Schaeffer’s The God Who Is There (1968). Here a few of his comments:
Back in the Chinese culture long ago the Chinese had worked out a system of tossing coins or yarrow sticks by means of which the spirits would speak. The complicated method which they developed made sure that the person doing the tossing could not allow his personality to intervene. Self-expression was eliminated so that the spirits could speak.
Cage picks up this same system and uses it. He too seeks to get rid of any individual expression in his music. But there is a very great difference. As far as Cage is concerned, there is nobody there to speak. There is only an impersonal universe speaking through blind chance.
Cage began to compose his music through the tossing of coins. It is said that for some of his pieces, lasting only twenty minutes, he tossed the coin thousands of times. This is pure chance, but apparently not pure enough; he wanted still more chance. So he devised a mechanical conductor. It was a machine working on cams, the motion of which could not be determined ahead of time, and the musicians followed that. Or as an alternative to this, sometimes he employed two conductors who could not see each other, both conducting simultaneously; anything, in fact, to produce pure chance. But in Cage’s universe nothing comes through in the music except noise and confusion or total silence. All this is below the line of anthropology. Above the line there is nothing personal, only the philosophic other, or the impersonal everything.
There is a story that once, after the musicians had played Cage’s total chance music, as he was bowing to acknowledge the applause, there was a noise behind him. He thought it sounded like steam escaping from somewhere, but then to his dismay realized it was the musicians behind him who were hissing. Often his works have been booed. However, when the audience boo at him they are, if they are modern men, in reality booing the logical conclusion of their own position as it strikes their ears in music.
Cage himself, however, is another example of a man who cannot live with his own conclusions. He says that the truth about the universe is a totally chance situation. You must just live with it and listen to it; cry if you must, swear if you must, but listen and go on listening.
Towards the end of The New Yorker Profile we read this:
In 1954 … the sculptor David Weinrib and his wife moved into an old farmhouse on a tract of land in Stony Point, Rockland County, forty miles from New York, which the Williamses had brought. Cage lived and worked in an attic room that he shared with a colony of wasps, and often took long, solitary walks in the woods. His eye was caught right away by the mushrooms that grew so abundantly in Rockland County, in all shapes, and sizes and brilliant colors. He started to collect books on mushrooms and to learn everything he could about them, and he has been doing so ever since. After all, mushroom hunting is a decidedly chancy, or indeterminate pastime.
No matter how much mycology one knows—and Cage is now one of the best amateur mycologists in the country, with one of the most extensive private libraries ever complied on the subject—there is always the possibility of a mistake in identification. “I became aware that if I approached mushrooms in the spirit of my chance operations, I would die shortly,” Cage said not long ago. “So I decided that I would not approach them in this way!”
In other words, here is a man who is trying to teach the world what the universe intrinsically is and what the real philosophy of life is, and yet he cannot even apply it to picking mushrooms. If he were to go out into the woods and begin picking mushrooms by chance, within a couple of days there would be no Cage!
Francis Schaeffer The God Who Is There [1968] in Francis A. Schaeffer Trilogy (Westchester, Ill.: Crossway, 1990), 77-79.
________________
THE LONGEST RIDE Interview – Nicholas Sparks, Britt Robertson & Scott Eastwood
In Plot Recreated With Reviews, a feature I’ve been doing for a few years now, we use the summary grafs from reviews to recreate the entire plot of the movie, an idea based on the premise that a bad movie isn’t nearly as entertaining as curmudgeonly, verbose critics describing a bad movie. It all began with a Nicholas Sparks movie, and Nicholas Sparks, God bless that old cheese-dick cornball, no movies are better fodder for Plot Recreated with Reviews than his.
This week brings us The Last Ride, based on a 2013 Sparks novel, a love story starring Clint Eastwood’s wooden son Scott and Britt Robertson (along with Eastwood, it also stars Charlie Chaplin’s granddaughter Oona and John Huston’s grandson Jack). It features everything you’d expect from a Nicholas Sparks movie – gauzy romance, melodramatic tragedy, gratuitous flashbacks to the 40s, a pretty white lady who has to choose between an old-fashioned hunk and her empty internship/scholarship/fellowship in New York City – along with a fresh new Holocaust twist. I haven’t seen it, but something tells me the guy who sets all his novels in North Carolina writes really realistic Jews. As a nod to the title, it’s apparently 128 minutes long. Two-plus hours. So as you read this, never forget the sacrifice these critics made.
“The Longest Ride” tells the story of a bull rider and an upwardly mobile sorority girl who meet one day at the rodeo. (SF Chronicle)
Scott Eastwood, 29, plays Luke, a hunky, but gentlemanly, bull rider. He lives in a well-appointed former barn. Meadow grass blows in the breeze whenever he saunters by. (USA Today)
Luke continues to ride, against doctor’s orders, because he needs money to save his family ranch. (FilmRacket)
Sophia is a New Jersey girl, an art history major at Wake Forest University who has tagged along with some of her sorority sisters hoping to see “the hottest guys.” (NY Times)
Her sorority sisters squeal and shout, “I want a cowboy!” Moronic bull-riding commentators call Luke “easy on the eyes and a magician on a bull!” (Red Eye)
He rides a bull, falls off and loses his hat. She picks it up as he dusts himself off. Her blue eyes lock with his blue eyes. “Keep it,” he grins, and she pokes the dirt and sawdust with the toe of her cowgirl boot to show she’s interested. (Tribune News Services)
When he asks her on a date, she is all but unfamiliar with this quaint custom. What, you mean he wants to pick her up? And have plans? And not just text here “Wanna hang out?” Ladies, he even arrives with flowers, to the collective sighs of the entire sorority house. (BeliefNet)
The first date is eventful: Luke brings her flowers, surprises her with a romantic picnic near a mountain lake, and saves an elderly man from a burning car. (The Dissolve/USA Today)
Amid a mild thunderstorm, and before drifting out of consciousness, the man adamantly urges Sophia to save the box of love letters he has in the front seat. (Slant Magazine)
As Luke lugs [the old man] to safety, Sophia pulls a box of letters from the burning car (he just carries them around, as one does). (Miami Herald)
And the stage is set for one of Sparks’ bifurcated then-and-now narratives, in which the lessons of the past help to guide the action of the present. (Variety)
20TH CENTURY FOX
During each of Sophia’s daily visits to Ira (Alan Alda) [at the hospital], she reads a different letter that he wrote many years before, and on each occasion this introduces a flashback to the early 1940s. (SF Chronicle)
The Alda character is revealed as one Ira Levinson, a Jewish nonagenarian whose coveted letters tell of his 60-year romance with wife Ruth (Oona Chaplin).
It’s not quite clear why he wrote so many letters to a woman he saw every day — letters that sometimes seem to narrate what they did together just a few hours before the time of composition — but it’s sweet that he saved them. (NY Times)
In a nod to Jewish culture and history, we learn Ruth’s desire for family is tied to the loss of hers. Most of her relatives didn’t make it out of Austria before Hitler took control. That reveal comes as she and Ira walk home from a synagogue, moments that look remarkably like typical Southern Sunday go-to meeting scenes except for the “good Shabbats.” (LA Times)
…phlegmatic Borscht Belt accents and references to Shabbos. (Variety)
Some jokes work in either era, like Viennese sophisticate Ruth fondly calling her small-town beau “a country pumpkin.” When Ira explains that Americans say “bumpkin,” she says either term works fine. (Minneapolis Star Tribune)
There’s even a consultant in Jewish culture listed in the credits. (BeliefNet)
She wants kids but he returns from war impotent, leading him to drown his sorrows at the local soda jerk. (Metro)
20TH CENTURY FOX
Unable to have children, Ira and Ruth collect art, traveling to nearby Black Mountain College to buy paintings by real-life artists. (NY Times)
…and their failure to adopt a parentless hillbilly boy who shows intellectual promise, simply serve to demonstrate how few obstacles Luke and Sophia face compared to theirs. (Hollywood Reporter)
As Sophia runs into relationship trouble with Luke, she [continues to] visit Ira in the hospital and reads the letters with him. (AV Club)
He’s into rodeos, barbecue and “old school” manly ways; she’s into Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock and liberated female thinking. (Toronto Star)
Luke doesn’t believe in women buying him a drink or calling him first. (AV Club)
Sophia loves art, as she explains: “I love art. I love everything about it.” (AV Club)
This guy’s “old-school” and says so. (“Call me old-school,” Luke says.) (Chicago Tribune)
When Sophia invites Luke to meet the art dealer she intends to intern under, and his reaction to the collection she brought from New York to display to prospective buyers is a smirk: “I think there’s more bullsh*t here than in my field.” (Slant Magazine)
Twice here, when characters get their hearts scuffed, thunder claps and it begins to rain. (LA Weekly)
[But] as Sophia hears Ira’s stories, she realizes Luke is the one for her. (FilmRacket)
Tillman has fun contrasting an old-fashioned gentleman like Luke with the frat bros at Sophia’s college, soft man-children in pastel polo shirts who text late at night instead of courting her with dinner dates and flowers. (LA Weekly)
Soon after, she decides pop music gives her headaches and switches the radio to country. (LA Weekly)
Beautiful landscapes loom large. Gauzy curtains sway as the lovebirds get tastefully amorous. (USA Today)
Seacoast and sunlight, white people kissing in-the-rain (NY Times)
sun-dappled shots of lovers sitting together, smiling and staring at an undetermined spot (Metro)
misty vistas of gauzy fog draped delicately over lush North Carolina forests and gleaming lakes (Seattle Times)
kissing under a spray of water (NY Times)
honey-glow sunsets and utter fraudulence (Chicago Tribune)
at least three instances of Ira giving Ruth a gift and her jumping on him in joy. (Metro)
Smiles are dazzling. Complexions are flawless. Hair is perfect. (Seattle Times)
Insulting to immigrants, minorities, soldiers and horses (Red Eye Chicago)
Montages of walks along the ocean, horseback rides through verdant meadows and Eastwood’s ever-present abs (LA Times)
His blue eyes, high cheekbones and chiseled jaw have Clint Eastwood’s genetic imprint. His toned pecs and abs are given nearly as much focus (USA Today)
to say nothing of the incipient crinkles in both his voice and his forehead. (The Wrap)
At the right angle, he looks exactly like Dirty Harry Callahan — but the young Eastwood has more sex appeal than his flinty father did. (Newsday)
those distracting Eastwood abs. (LA Times)
chiseled Luke could easily get a gig as an underwear model (The Wrap)
20TH CENTURY FOX
The two end up in a lovemaking montage that intercuts bull-riding with their mistily shot grapplings. (Boston Globe)
one effective sequence that cuts together Luke’s professional bull-riding, Sophia’s attempt to ride a practice rig, and the couple having sex constantly. (AV Club)
crosscutting their first sexual tryst with clips of him teaching her to ride an oil barrel suspended by ropes (Slant Magazine)
But, despite their attraction, they know the romance is going nowhere. She’s about to graduate and head up to New York to work in an art gallery. She might as well say she’s going to spend the summer burning American flags. (Guardian)
Much is made of this art-gallery internship throughout the movie: Should Sophia stay with the man she loves …or take a job that pays no money? (SF Chronicle)
The movie tries to wring suspense from Luke’s confrontation with his greatest enemy: the villainous bull that threw him off and gave him his head injury in the first place. (AV Club)
One year earlier, Luke was violently thrown from a practically undefeated bull-nado and spent two weeks in a coma. Disregarding doctor’s orders, his only current priority is to buck his way to the top. (Slant Magazine)
His mom (Lolita Davidovich) begs him to quit. “It’s eight seconds,” his mom says. “That girl could be the rest of your life.” (USA Today)
Everyone sane in Luke’s life is begging him to hang up the spurs. Naturally, he won’t. He’s got to be the best. And that means one final ride against Rango (credited “as himself”), even if the doctors warn he may never walk again. (Guardian)
“This is what I do,” he tells Sophia. “It’s all I know.” (Toronto Star)
Luke, in the lead as 2015’s top cinematic narcissistic asshole, doesn’t, in fact, sever his spine. His idiotic machismo gets him the trophy and, even worse, the girl. This is after she dumps him for refusing to give up his idiotic career. (Guardian)
A third-act twist, in which these nice and nice-looking people are handsomely rewarded for so much niceness, has all the narrative sophistication of a 10-year-old closing her eyes and wishing dreamily before blowing out the candles. (Austin Chronicle)
Finally everything is tied up in a neat moral bow, with Luke realising that the challenge of the rodeo pales next to the “longest ride” of the title, which – I hope I’m not giving too much away – is the ride they call life. (Sydney Morning Herald)
Folks, I hope that was enough closure for you. I combed through so many damned reviews waiting for someone to spoil the twist ending that I feel like I’ve seen this horrible movie six times over.
Also, after putting together at least three or four of these features on Nick Sparks movies, I’ve come to the conclusion that you could actually write a really solid Nick Sparks fan-fiction story in the style of a Nick Sparks novel. It’s about this guy from rural North Carolina whose college girlfriend leaves him to take a scholarship in New York. Instead of just moving to be with her, the guy stubbornly stays home, and spends the next 30 years writing the same goddamned story about a handsome, perfect, old-fashioned good ol’ boy being such a honey-dicked stud that he gradually convinces some liberated woman to turn down her scholarship and spend the rest of her life having his babies and baking peach cobbler. Then one day, he crashes some dumb car he bought with his schmaltz money, and the woman who left him all those years ago reads about it in the newspaper and rushes to his side. She gets to the hospital just in time to tell him that she’s read all his books, and that his 37 nearly identical self-mythologizing novels are the ultimate proof of what an obsessed, delusional sociopath he always was, right before he dies. He doesn’t have time to alter his will and it turns out he’s left everything to her, the only woman he ever loved. She uses a little of it to fix the transmission on her Volvo and have him cremated, and gives the rest to charity. The end.
Milton Friedman rightly pointed out that the crisis of the Great Depression was not a failure of the free market system but of government and Dan Mitchell concurs!!!
It’s difficult to promote good economic policy when some policy makers have a deeply flawed grasp of history.
This is why I’ve tried to educate people, for instance, that government intervention bears the blame for the 2008 financial crisis, not capitalism or deregulation.
But one of the biggest challenges is correcting the mythology that capitalism caused the Great Depression and that government pulled the economy out of its tailspin.
Now, to augment that analysis, we have a video from Learn Liberty. Narrated by Professor Stephen Davies, it punctures several of the myths about government policy in the 1930s.
Top Three Myths about the Great Depression and the New Deal
Uploaded on Jun 17, 2011
Historian Stephen Davies names three persistent myths about the Great Depression. Myth #1: Herbert Hoover was a laissez-faire president, and it was his lack of action that lead to an economic collapse. Davies argues that in fact, Hoover was a very interventionist president, and it was his intervening in the economy that made matters worse. Myth #2: The New Deal ended the Great Depression. Davies argues that the New Deal actually made matters worse. In other countries, the Great Depression ended much sooner and more quickly than it did in the United States. Myth #3: World War II ended the Great Depression. Davies explains that military production is not real wealth.; wars destroy wealth, they do not create wealth. In fact, examination of the historical data reveals that the U.S. economy did not really start to recover until after WWII was over.
Professors Davies is right on the mark in every case.
And I’m happy to pile on with additional data and evidence.
Myth #1: Herbert Hoover was a laissez-faire President – Hoover was a protectionist. He was an interventionist. He raised tax rates dramatically. And, as I had to explain when correcting Andrew Sullivan, he was a big spender. Heck, FDR’s people privately admitted that their interventionist policies were simply more of the same since Hoover already got the ball rolling in the wrong direction. Indeed, here’s another video on the Great Depression and it specifically explains how Hoover was a big-government interventionist.
Myth #3: World War II ended the depression – I have a slightly different perspective than Professor Davies. He’s right that wars destroy wealth and that private output suffers as government vacuums up resources for the military. But most people define economic downturns by what happens to overall output and employment. By that standard, it’s reasonable to think that WWII ended the depression. That’s why I think the key lesson is that private growth rebounded after World War II ended and government shrank, when all the Keynesians were predicting doom.
By the way, Reagan understood this important bit of knowledge about post-WWII economic history. And if you want more evidence about how you can rejuvenate an economy by reducing the fiscal burden of government, check out what happened in the early 1920s.
P.S. If you want to see an economically illiterate President in action, watch this video and you’ll understand why I think Obama will never be as bad as FDR.
P.P.S. Since we’re looking at the economic history of the 1930s, I strongly urge you to watch the Hayek v Keynes rap videos, both Part I and Part II. This satirical commercial for Keynesian Christmas carols also is very well done.
TEMIN: We don’t think the big capital arose before the government did? VON HOFFMAN: Listen, what are we doing here? I mean __ defending big government is like defending death and taxes. When was the last time you met anybody that was in favor of big government? FRIEDMAN: Today, today I met Bob Lekachman, I […]
worked pretty well for a whole generation. Now anything that works well for a whole generation isn’t entirely bad. From the fact __ from that fact, and the undeniable fact that things are working poorly now, are we to conclude that the Keynesian sort of mixed regulation was wrong __ FRIEDMAN: Yes. LEKACHMAN: __ or […]
MCKENZIE: Ah, well, that’s not on our agenda actually. (Laughter) VOICE OFF SCREEN: Why not? MCKENZIE: I boldly repeat the question, though, the expectation having been __ having been raised in the public mind, can you reverse this process where government is expected to produce the happy result? LEKACHMAN: Oh, no way. And it would […]
The massive growth of central government that started after the depression has continued ever since. If anything, it has even speeded up in recent years. Each year there are more buildings in Washington occupied by more bureaucrats administering more laws. The Great Depression persuaded the public that private enterprise was a fundamentally unstable system. That […]
Worse still, America’s depression was to become worldwide because of what lies behind these doors. This is the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Inside is the largest horde of gold in the world. Because the world was on a gold standard in 1929, these vaults, where the U.S. gold was stored, […]
George Eccles: Well, then we called all our employees together. And we told them to be at the bank at their place at 8:00 a.m. and just act as if nothing was happening, just have a smile on their face, if they could, and me too. And we have four savings windows and we […]
Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose (1980), episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 1 FREE TO CHOOSE: Anatomy of Crisis Friedman Delancy Street in New York’s lower east side, hardly one of the city’s best known sites, yet what happened in this street nearly 50 years ago continues to effect all of us today. […]