The common elements in all three "mountain" divine revelations and the appearance of the same elements in the experiences of climbers suggest that a prolonged stay on a mountain can affect various brain functions in a manner that allows them to have such experiences. One possible explanation is that the feeling of a presence, autoscopy, hearing a presence and emotional manifestations follow deficits in body-processing. The fact that we have a body and that we sense that we are living within a body is not a trivial fact. Our brain processes multisensorial inputs that the body senses, and locates our "self" accordingly. An important role is played by a special brain region, the temporoparietal junction, which integrates the data from the various regions concerned with self-processing. This data include basic perceptions: We situate ourselves in accordance with what we see, hear and feel, but there are also more complex processes at work. We permanently mentally represent ourselves, our movements, our surroundings and what is happening there. A prolonged stay at high altitudes and the shortage of oxygen can impair multisensory integration in the temporoparietal junction.

When we externally stimulate this region of the brain with an electrode or measure a spontaneous (epileptic) activity there, similar sensations of another's presence, autoscopy, hovering and fear have been experienced. In addition, a prolonged stay at high altitudes, especially while in solitude, causes a loss of neural inhibitions: Just as this organ consists of complex systems that stimulate certain processes, it also has others of similar importance that inhibit or prevent certain processes from occurring, to help us create a good picture of the reality we are experiencing, instead of an exaggerated or "disturbed" one.

'Ink & Blood' is mild success for city

HUNDREDS VISIT DAILY, BUT MORE WERE EXPECTED

By Frank E. Lockwood

[LEXINGTON] HERALD-LEADER STAFF WRITER

A heavily advertised exhibit on the Bible hasn't drawn crowds of biblical proportions to downtown Lexington, but it's selling more tickets than local art and basketball museums.

Promoters say more than 1,000 visitors a day have been filing through the exhibit in its final week -- paying up to $16 a person to see a rare collection of sacred writings on paper, parchment and papyrus.

Organizers say they can't accurately estimate how many people have attended. But selling tickets for "Ink & Blood: Dead Sea Scrolls to the English Bible" was "a little bit more of a challenge than we originally thought," said chief operating officer Craig Salazar.

[...]

Iraq's forgotten minorities including the Assyrians from the ancient Assyrian Empire ("The men of Nineveh" referred to by Jesus Christ himself in the Bible and the one remaining people groups on Earth who can watch "The Passion" by Mel Gibson without subtitles since their native tongue is ancient Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke.)

Other non-Muslim and non-Arab Iraqi minorities include Mandeans and Yezidis, plus there are the often-forgotten minority Muslim groups such as the Turkoman and Shabak who are oppressed by Barzani Kurds. Although hardly mentioned in the major media, these ancient people have been fleeing Iraq in unprecedented numbers under persecution by Islamic militants and severe discrimination by the Kurdish Muslims, among whom many of these minorities live in northern Iraq.

Not just the Christians, but many of the city's minorities - from obscure sects like the ancient Sabeans to the Sunni Muslims who used to run Iraq and still predominate in the rest of the Arab world - live in fear of the hard-line Shia religious parties and their militias that now rule Iraq's second-largest city.

Freedom has been curtailed for women, too. Several decades ago, almost no woman in Basra covered her head. Now, they all do, under fear of harassment or worse. Women working for foreign companies or governments, and those considered to have loose morals, have been marked for death by the militants - two Iraqi sisters who worked in the laundry at the American compound in Basra were assassinated last year.

Jordan's biblical sites

By John McCaslin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
August 27, 2005

PETRA, Jordan -- Enthusiasm flows from Rustom Mkhjian like the stream of holy water his team of archaeologists christened John the Baptist Spring. What's enlightening about this discovery, hailed as one of the most significant archaeological and religious finds of modern time, is that I am standing in the kingdom of Jordan -- in the long-lost settlement of Bethany Beyond the Jordan where John the Baptist converted untold numbers while preparing for the coming and eventual baptism of Jesus Christ.
"Some people still think Jordan is a small town in Montana," Akel Biltaji, an adviser to King Abdullah II, tells me, "but we share with others the Holy Land."
Giving his trowel a rest, Mr. Mkhjian, a supervisor of archaeological works for the Jordanian Department of Antiquities, leads me into the shade of John's recently resurrected grotto on the banks of Jordan River.
He sifts through considerable biblical text and archaeological discourse before pointing to a specific patch of sandy ground at the base of some newly excavated steps.
"There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind, based on religious records and all the supporting evidence we've uncovered here, that this is the very spot -- right here at the bottom of the steps -- where Jesus was baptized," he says.
That would make this particular excavation -- one of more than a dozen within the grotto that reveal arches and walls, marble and mosaic floors -- the ruins of Bethabara, a church built about 500 years after Jesus' death to commemorate His exact baptismal place.

[...]

"The Cave" (PG-13) A team of scientists, who look more like panelists at a underwear-model convention, explore a cave that is purported to hold ancient secrets but actually holds a hottie-eating creature. These spelunkheads stick around long enough to be picked off, one by one. It's not original, but it delivers a few jolty thrills and a couple of laughs and wraps things up before it starts to get too dumb. îî1/2

Jonah and Genre

Readers who have misconstrued the genre of Jonah as history have therefore approached it with an erroneous set of expectations and have often tried to force it to fit their expectations. When it is discovered that the book does not fit those expectations, the tendency is often to blame the book, declaring it "untrue" and implying that it is somehow of less significance because it does not describe historical events.

From How to Read the Bible (Oxford University Press, 2005)
Permission Granted from Oxford University Press

By Steven McKenzie,
Professor, Rhodes College
August 2005

The only minorities ensured specific rights are Kurds, who have a federal region in the north, and speakers of Syriac, who it says are free to educate their children in the language.

"This constitution guarantees the Islamic identity of the majority of the Iraqi people, as well as complete religious rights for all individuals to freedom of beliefs and religious practice."

"Iraq is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious country and it is part of the Islamic world, and the Arab people in it are part of the Arab nation."

"The Arabic language and Kurdish language are the two official languages of Iraq, and the right of Iraqis to educate their children in mother tongues such as Turkmen and Syriac in government teaching establishments ... or any other language in private institutions is guaranteed."

The Date of the Sardis Synagogue in Light of the Numismatic Evidence

Jodi Magness

In the 1960s excavations at the site of Sardis in Lydia brought to light the remains of a large and richly decorated synagogue building. The synagogue was installed in a pre-existing Roman bath and gymnasium complex along one of Sardis’s main thoroughfares. Based largely on the coins discovered beneath the mosaic floors, the excavators have dated the synagogue’s construction to the mid- to late-fourth century C.E. In this paper I reexamine the numismatic evidence and conclude that the synagogue was constructed about two centuries later. Dating the synagogue to the mid-sixth century places the building and the Jewish community it served in a different historical setting.

The Casualties of War: The Truth about the Iraq Museum

Matthew Bogdanos

As Baghdad was falling to coalition forces in April 2003, the international media reported that the Iraq Museum had been ransacked and more than 170,000 of the finest antiquities from the very cradle of civilization had been stolen while U.S. forces stood idle. The list of missing objects read like a “who’s who” of Near Eastern archaeology, and the world reacted with shock and outrage. In response, the United States dispatched to the museum a highly specialized multiagency task force that had been conducting counterterrorism operations in southern Iraq at the time of the looting. Their mission was to determine what had happened at the museum and to recover whatever antiquities they could. Among several startling discoveries were that the museum compound had been turned into a military fighting position and that the initial reports that over 170,000 priceless antiquities had been stolen were wrong. Although final inventories will take years to complete, the best current estimate is that approximately 14,000–15,000 pieces were initially stolen. The investigation determined that there had been not one but three thefts at the museum by three distinct groups: professionals who stole several dozen of the most prized treasures, random looters who stole more than 3,000 excavation-site pieces, and insiders who stole almost 11,000 cylinder seals and pieces of jewelry. The investigation also determined that the international black market in Iraqi antiquities continues to flourish. Working closely with Iraqis and using a complex methodology that includes community outreach, international cooperation, raids, seizures, and amnesty, the task force and others around the world have recovered more than 5,000 of the missing antiquities. This is a comprehensive report of those thefts and recoveries, as well as an attempt to correct some of the inaccuracies and misunderstandings that have been commonly reported in the media.

"This constitution guarantees the Islamic identity of the majority of the Iraqi people, as well as complete religious rights for all individuals to freedom of beliefs and religious practice."

"Iraq is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious country and it is part of the Islamic world, and the Arab people in it are part of the Arab nation."

"The Arabic language and Kurdish language are the two official languages of Iraq, and the right of Iraqis to educate their children in mother tongues such as Turkmen and Syriac in government teaching establishments ... or any other language in private institutions is guaranteed."

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Egypt detains Briton over manuscripts

8/22/2005, 4:37 p.m. CT
By SALAH NASRAWI
The Associated Press

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) — Airport authorities detained a British man for questioning Monday after they allegedly found valuable Islamic and Coptic manuscripts in his luggage, officials said.

[...]

Adil Abdel Rahman, the airport's antiquities inspector, said Ross was allegedly carrying dozens of manuscripts, including old books on religion, medicine and astrology. He allegedly also had handwritten Coptic Bibles in his luggage.

[...]

As a result we are requesting the incorporation of the following into the permanent Iraqi Constitution:

1. Designate our united name and national identity in the Constitution as (Chaldean Assyrian Syriac).
2. Recognize our people as the indigenous people of Iraq, and Syriac as the language and culture of the country and preserve it according to international standards on indigenous peoples.
3. Guarantee that our political, cultural, and administrative rights as noted in the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL) be established in the Nineveh Plain and in the areas in which we constitute a majority within whatever form of federalism is agreed upon.
4. Guarantee that we are represented according to our percentage in the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of government.
5. Grant citizenship to any our people who have emigrated including their children and grandchildren and return citizenship to any Iraqis whose citizenship has been revoked since the establishment of Iraq most specifically including the victims of the 1933 massacre.
6. Return lands and villages that were expropriated or forcibly taken because of various circumstances in Iraq to their rightful owners.
7. Guarantee secularism and justice, equality, and civil rights for all.

New Hub for Septuagint Studies in North America

Newswise — The Septuagint, the earliest Greek translation of the Old Testament and the Bible of the early Christian church, was one of the key religious texts in the third century B.C.—and it’s soon to have a high profile in western Canada. On September 17, Vancouver’s Trinity Western University launches the Septuagint Institute, a hub for Septuagint research, translation, and publication projects.

[...]

Worcester once home to ‘The Learned Blacksmith’

Albert B. Southwick (Wooster Telegram and Gazzette)
Commentary

For the past 180 years or so, the American Antiquarian Society has been host to thousands of scholars, researchers, historians, genealogists and linguists. George Bancroft, Henry David Thoreau, Carl Sandburg, David McCullough and countless others have mined its vast resources of manuscripts and printed matter. But few were more remarkable than Elihu Burritt (1810-1879), a blacksmith.

Mr. Burritt was born in New Britain, Conn, one of 10 children. He was or-phaned before he reached his teens. His formal education was limited to three months in a school run by his brother. But it left him with a voracious thirst for knowledge that never waned. When, in his 20s, he heard of the AAS and its remarkable library, he walked to Worcester, got a job at William Wheeler’s blacksmith shop on Union Street, and spent all his free waking hours at the AAS, then located on Summer Street, poring over its volumes of foreign languages. An entry in his journal reads as follows:

“Six lines of Hebrew today, thirty pages of French, ten pages of Cuvier’s ‘History of the Earth,’ eight lines Syriac, ten lines Danish, ten of Bohemian, nine of Polish, 15 names of the stars, and ten hours forging.” He later wrote that the AAS had “such a collection of ancient, modern and Oriental languages that I never before conceived to be collected in one place.”

[...]

Mr. Burritt spent his last few years in his native city, New Britain. In 1874 he wrote a friend as follows: “I feel I am played out as a lecturer ... I am deeply into my philological work. I have finished the Sanscrit, Hindustan, and Persian series, and am about half through with the Turkish ... Then I intend to take up the Semitic family, or Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac and Ethiopic ... Thus you see I am beginning a work which should occupy a long life ... ”

He died five years later, presumably still studying foreign languages, as he had in Worcester 50 years earlier.