Friday, July 31, 2015

avec attention & sans prévention

et je reconnois, que ceux qui liront cet Ouvrage avec attention & sans prévention


Il semble que le bon Dom Augustin Calmet ait eu affaire des gens qui étaient "prévenus" sur tel ou tel interprétation de son œuvre précédant et qui par là se disaient "eh oui" dans des endroits où l'auteur n'était pas d'accord avec eux.

Notamment, ils avaient crû qu'il avait, comme c'était la mode, voulu tourner en ridicule les sentiments à l'époque encore populaires sur les sujets des apparitions.

Je ne crois pas que Dom Augustin Calmet soit le dernier écrivain à devoir se plaindre du fait que tel ou tel lecteur soit prévenu - informé en avance sur ce qu'il devait (devoit auroit écrit l'auteur ...) trouver. Comme un protestant peu instruit est prévenu par ses pasteurs sur ce qu'il doit trouver en implications anticatholiques dans l'épître aux Romains, bien avant d'ouvrir le livre sacré.

Mais St Paul, c'est quand même un auteur avant les jours de Dom Augustin Calmet, je ne disais pas qu'il n'était pas le premier, quoique c'est vrai aussi, je disais qu'il n'était pas le dernier de souffrir de ce genre de mauvaises lectures. Qui peut-on citer après Dom Augustin Calmet? Je ne suis probablement qu'un exemple parmi tellement d'autres, mais je suis un exemple que je connais.

On vient de me taxer l'autre jour d'apostat, et ça de la part d'un catholique, bien que je suis catholique.

Je ne crois pas possible de lire vraiment mes blogs et d'arriver à cette conclusion, pour quiconque me lit "avec attention & sans prévention". Et je ne voudrait pas croire que le seul sujet de notre conversation, mon refus de taxer le Seigneur des Anneaux comme de l'occultisme aurait pu donner occasion de ce reproche : on ne croit pas tout ce qu'on aime lire, et il ne s'agissait pas de défendre la pratique des neufs hommes ayant pris des anneaux de Sauron* - du tout. Il s'agissait de souligner que Tolkien lui-même n'approuvait pas ce fait. Un auteur n'approuve pas tous les faits de tous ses personnages.

Quant à Tolkien, ceux qui liront son œuvre avec attention & sans prévention ne pourront pas conclure qu'il approuve le genre de pratiques que l'église a condamné et qui est une des significations du vocable "magie". Quant à moi, ce qui me liront avec attention & sans prévention ne pourront ni arriver à la conclusion que je prend son histoire comme véritable, ni que j'aurais plus que lui-même approuvé la magie dans le sens interdit. Ni que je "crois mes fantasmes" ou encore pire que je le fasse au dépens des vérités de la foi chrétienne. Ni que je veule en quelque façon tourner en ridicule la vérité chrétienne.

Par contre, quant à ceux qui trouveront mes dires ridicules malgré mes intentions, j'ai un bon exemple en Dom Augustin Calmet quant à l'attitude détaché que je dois maintenir vis-à-vis ces "esprits forts".

Hans Georg Lundahl
BU de Nanterre/Paris X
St Ignace de Loyole
31-VII-2015

* Qui représente à peu près Abaddon ou peut-être Belzébut, un démon juste inférieur à Satan (Morgoth, chez Tolkien) lui-même.

Saturday, July 25, 2015

Of Course, "True Prophet" in One Sense, Not Another



1) A Heretic Who Was A True Prophet, 2) Of Course, "True Prophet" in One Sense, Not Another

One can speak of "true prophet" as one whose prediction is fulfilled.

One can also speak of "true prophet" as one who is prophecying on behalf of the Lord. And whose predictions are fulfilled.

The heretic mentioned in previous post was of course not the latter.

He was the kind of prophet Deuteronomy warns of. There is a prediction fulfilled and the predictor is trying to get people away from the true faith.

A bit like the predictions of Delphic Apollo. Self fulfilling predictions.

This politician caused a good deal of bloodshed to happen after the Catholic became King (and after he was unlawfully deposed at "Glorious Revolution"), by predicting that fact. Those who believed and feared, brought about the fulfilment of the prediction. Like Akrisios, like Oidipous, with innocent victims (more or less), like Iokaste, like Eteokles and Polyneikes, like Antigone and (in some ways a victim too) Ismene. It took two people, two men, believing the oracle, to ruin the lives of themselves, five other persons close to them and uncounted Thebans and neighbouring soldiers.

So also, believing this politician's oracle about James II becoming a second spell of "Bloody Mary" really made William of Orange ("William III") a second spell of Edward VI and of the bloodthirsty crushing of the Prayer Book Rebellion.

So, let's not get confused about terminology. That Protestant politician was NOT a prophet of the Lord.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Bibl. Mouffetard
St James Apostle and Martyr
25-VII-2015

Friday, July 24, 2015

A Heretic Who Was A True Prophet



1) A Heretic Who Was A True Prophet, 2) Of Course, "True Prophet" in One Sense, Not Another

There is a great article about Bloody Mary and her reputation over centuries.

Here:

The Truth About "Bloody Mary"
Sunday, July 19, 2015 By Nancy Bilyeau
on Tudorscribe: Writing Fiction & Nonfiction About the 16th Century
nancybilyeau.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-truth-about-bloody-mary.html


Here is however one paragraph or one and a half which interest me:

The succession crisis over James, Duke of York, directly led to the vilification of Mary Tudor. Fear that James, who converted to Catholicism, would succeed his brother, Charles II, gripped much of England. Should a Catholic become king, one politician warned, the kingdom would see persecutions as “bloody or bloodier than the ones in Mary’s reign.” An anonymous ballad in 1674 declared that after Edward VI died “Then Bloody Mary did begin/in England for to tyrannize.” She was used as a threatening memory of tyranny and death and slavish devotion to the Pope. This was the genesis of Bloody Mary.

The revolution of 1688 put a Protestant on the throne and the Act of Union in 1707 ensured that a Catholic could never rule England. But paranoia about Jacobite risings led to more and more denunciations of Mary I. ...


The politician, obviously Protestant, was in a sense right. Not that James II emulated the 284 killings of Protestants by burning, but rather that Protestants ensured bloodier persecutions of Catholics than the reverse had been effected by Mary Tudor./HGL

Is Capitalism Scriptural?

Chad Hovind claims so. Here is one paragaph which says something on where he gets his ideas about Christendom and theological coherence from:

When Gov. William Bradford, of the Plymouth Colony, switched to a free enterprise system that he extracted from the Scriptures, productivity and generosity were released. Free enterprise resulted in the bounty of our first Thanksgiving. (If a group of zealot Puritans can’t make socialism work, why would we think that Washington D.C. could make it work?)


Chad omits to say what they switched from. Not quite, he says it in a parenthesis indirectly.

But if the zealot Puritans could not make socialism work, that means they tried. And if they tried, that means, in their case, they had a spell of thinking it Scriptural. And if they had a spell of thinking it Scriptural, why shall we trust the Capitalism they came up with after it would be excellent Theology?

Now, Chad Hovind linked to an article on another site. Here is what that site says:

After a brief experiment with the “common course,” a sort of primitive agrarian communism, the colony quickly centered around private subsistence agriculture. This was facilitated by Bradford’s decision to distribute land among all the settlers, not just members of the company.


In other words, no, they did not go from "socialism" to "capitalism". They went from kibbutz Communism to Distributism.

Had Bradford distributed land ONLY to members of the company and asked other settlers to try to get wage paid labour positions with those who had land, now, THAT would have been Capitalist.

So, Gilbert Keith Chesterton vs Chad Hovind, 1-0, either in history or in political terminology or in both.

And I certainly do agree that Distributism is Scriptural. If even a Puritan (like Bradford) tells you so, why should a Catholic doubt?

That doesn't mean kibbutz Communism is unscriptural. It only means that it takes greater zealots than Puritans (or by now even Jews) to make it work. We know their names from history, they are called Benedictines, Culdees, Cistercians. In other words, monks. Oh, not forgetting, a bit further East they are following rule of St Basil. That kind of communism existed for instance in Russia UP TO 1917 or following years, when "Communism" as in Bolshevism destroyed it.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre University Library
Vigil of St James Apostle
24-VII-2015

Chad Hovind's article:

TheBlaze : Capitalism is not just a Good idea; It’s God’s Idea Dec. 4, 2013 11:36am by Pastor Chad Hovind
http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/capitalism-is-not-just-a-good-idea-its-gods-idea/


Article on "History":

History : William Bradford
http://www.history.com/topics/william-bradford


As a side note, regarding pre-industrial life spans, 1590-1657 = 70 years. As I have found, this is not untypical, though on the higher edge.

Tuesday, July 7, 2015

How Many Hours are we Talking About, and How Heavy?


1) Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : "in a time when most people died at an average age of 35" ; 2) What others have to say about Life Expectancy through history - and my take on that ; 3) Longevity in Selected Ancestry and Inlaws of Eleanor of Montfort ; 4) Tudor Times Demographical Stats ; 5) How Many Hours are we Talking About, and How Heavy? ; 6) New blog on the kid : When "Answers" Paint Middle Ages Black ; 7) Creation vs. Evolution : CMI Provided some Lifespans of the Past ; 8)Other list from CMI of lifespans ; 9) Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Medieval and Early Modern Lifespans, Again: Berkeleys and Related ; 10) Story of a Cardinal's Title with Pre-Industrial Demographics

Introduction.

From same response session by Lita as previous:

A man may sell his daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. This is illegal in America, but if the opportunity existed in another country, is this still right with God?


You’re assuming that the ancient world was as friendly as the Western world is to those who have enough wealth and leisure time to sit around on the Internet making bigoted assumptions about an ancient text.

Way to view the text as a bigoted 21st century Western man! This is more like the scenario—a family is destitute and they have the choice to either let their teenaged daughter starve to death with them, or ‘sell’ her (really, give her in marriage) to someone better off who could take care of her, and the bride gift her husband gives would allow the family to survive. Not what you’d read in a modern romance novel, but the ancient world was not as convenient as the modern Western world is—since most people in the world throughout history had to work long hours just to survive.


What I really want to talk about is this last sentence, which I consider erroneous.

"but the ancient world was not as convenient as the modern Western world is—since most people in the world throughout history had to work long hours just to survive"

As this was part of her defence for a passage which these days has some attackers, I will return to what Haydock says.

Now, there are three categories of society

which we can deal differently with when it comes to working hours.

1) The élite. Kings, priests, nobles, officers, judges, at least major judges of appeal, prefects of provinces where applicable (like, not in San Marino sized states) ...

Not what she was talking about, since not most, but only a minority. But they at least did not have to work long hours just to survive.

Just noting, this is not in any way contradicting her - yet - since it was not these she referred to.

There are two more categories, which together make up "most people" in any land.

2) Prime producers of raw material necessities, first and foremost food. Fishers, farmers, shepherds, cowherds, pigherds. And so on.

3) Anything in between categories 1 and 2, including soldiers (who were usually paid by tax money under control of the élite), but foremost artisans, since these being in "free competition" (not really quite free, but not as protected as soldiers from not being paid) would be relevant for a study of working hours and what you get for them.

Now, let us take each at a time.

2, mainly farmers:

I could let on the "Irish voice", if I were making a video for tektontv instead of writing a blog post. Here goes*:

[Leprechaun with Irish voice:] "Imagine if every farmer you knew, who enjoys tractors fuelled by petrol, and who is working hard as that, had to produce the same thing, but with only his hands and feet, and perhaps an ox or a horse to draw the ploughs, and even had to sow by hand, how hard all this work would be, he would be totally exhausted. (Sob, sob!)

"But that was really true, since back then, there were no tractors, they were only invented one hundred years ago or so. (Sob, sob!)

"Now imagine the real tragedy. While farmers are only 10 percent of the population now, back then they were 90 percent and all those suffered these terrible chores of yore."

[Me:] "Hold it!"

[Leprechaun with Irish voice:] "?"

[Me:] "How many were the farmers relatively speaking back in the Middle Ages, you said? Or back in the Bronze Age?"

[Leprechaun with Irish voice:] "They were 90 percent, and none of them (sob, sob) had tractors ...."

[Me:] "What does that mean for how much food they had to produce without tractors?"

[Leprechaun with Irish voice:] "Farmers always have to produce food for everyone, so they had to produce as much as now - without any tractors (sob, sob)."

[Me:] "Sure, ALL the farmers had to produce for ALL the people, but what about EACH farmer?"

[Leprechaun with Irish voice:] "?"

[Me:] "First of all every farmer has to produce for himself. The baker won't grow his wheat for him."

[Leprechaun with Irish voice:] "And then ... (not sobbing, but crying .... stopping to cry, sobbing) .... then every farmer has to produce for everyone else!"

[Me:] "Sure, but how many are that?"

[Leprechaun with Irish voice:] "Everyone else, of course!"

[Me:] "Yes, but as farmers are now 10 percent and everyone else is 90 percent, that is nine people per farmer."

[Leprechaun with Irish voice:] (Sob, sob ...)

[Me:] (Looking desperately for a handkerchief to offer him in my pockets - no, all are already used.)

[Leprechaun with Irish voice:] "Nine people per farmer! Think how terrible that must have been before the tractors!"

[Me:] "But there weren't nine people per farmer before the tractors!"

[Leprechaun with Irish voice:] "?"

[Me:] "There were nine farmers to help each other about the tenth guy who wasn't farming."

[Leprechaun with Irish voice:] "?" (Making even bigger eyes!)

[Me:] "Sure, you said yourself there were 90 percent farmers."

[Leprechaun with Irish voice:] "So you mean the tractors hasn't made the workload overall lighter for each farmer? Just moved out people from farms into towns?"

[Me:] "Yes." (Watching leprechaun drop to the ground unconscious after the shock of letting that thought in.)

3, mainly townspeople artisans:

One might start guessing that farmers were a bit lighter off actually than now, since if more burdened on the muscles, at least less stressed.

But how about townspeople?

You worked more to make the shoes you were to sell or the bread you were to sell, or the pots you were to sell, or ... well, you get it.

However, when this was done, you could buy less for it.

Correct? Yes.

It must have sucked, right? No. Why?

Think of it like this.

1) You could not afford to buy any batteries for your cassette recorder, and there were no batteries to buy for it, and there was no cassette recorder, and there were no cassettes. But this means, that you were not socially handicapped if you had neither cassette recording nor LP of the classic Beatles and Elvis or the latest Twisted Sisters (contrasting my taste in an artist recently having died or a pop group recently dissolved after death of John Lennon, with some talent for singing Obladi blada, with the taste of classmates for still extant rock groups). ANYTHING you would now be buying from the music industry was then simply not on the to buy list.

OK, anything except instruments or concerts, that is.

2) Women who wanted to be fashionable were even back then able to get rouge for cheeks, possibly khool for eyelashes, but lipsticks (and the whale blubber that implies) and nylon stockings were off the list.

Somehow, woman managed to be considered beautiful** without those two (probably the reason they are picked out in Polly's or Jill's tirade against Susan Pevensie).

3) And you certainly couldn't buy any gasoline for you car. Wait a minute, you couldn't have a car either. Even worse, you would hardly afford train tickets to 30 km (20 miles) from where you lived back and forth each day just to get to work.

How did they possibly survive such conditions!

Could it be that the general "shortage" (to put it extremely mildly!) of cars had meant that no one was being employed thirty km or twenty miles away from home anyway?

4) Could there even be a somewhat curious pattern which could be fairly well summed up by the formula:

What they couldn't afford with the prices for hand made goods only was what wasn't there to be bought anyway. And what wasn't there to be bought was generally also not an everyday necessity.


[Leprechaun with Irish voice:] (After waking up:) "We've been had, guys!"

[Me:] "You can say that again!"

Hans Georg Lundahl ... signed too early! I had promised a bit of apologetics on Exodus 21:7. Context:

7 If any man sell his daughter to be a servant, she shall not go out as bond-women are wont to go out.

8 If she displease the eyes of her master to whom she was delivered, he shall let her go: but he shall have no power to sell her to a foreign nation, if he despise her.

9 But if he have betrothed her to his son, he shall deal with her after the manner of daughters.

10 And if he take another wife for him, he shall provide her a marriage, and raiment, neither shall he refuse the price of her chastity.

11 If he do not these three things, she shall go out free without money.


Here is Haydock comment on some of these:

Ver. 7. Go out, to work in the fields, according to Grotius; or rather, to enjoy her liberty. A father who sold his daughter, always expected that she should be the wife of the purchaser, or of his son. If this did not take place, she was free after six years, or before, if her master died. Constantine sanctioned the power of the Romans to sell their children. The Phrygians and Thebans had the like custom. (Calmet)

Ver. 9. Daughters. When she is old enough to be married, he shall give her a dowry like his own daughter, or like a free woman. (Haydock)

Ver. 10. Marriage. This seems to insinuate that she was divorced: but the best commentators suppose, that the introduction of the second wife was not to infringe the rights of the first. Hebrew, "he shall not diminish her food, raiment, and dwelling," but treat her as his wife. The Athenians required husbands to visit their wives thrice a month.

Price, &c. A sufficient dowry, or the rights of marriage; "her company," (omilian.) Septuagint.


So, if my excuse for that custom being in the law was not "everyone was working his or her arse off to get food and no one had time for liberty or dignity", what was it?

Israelites had just come out from Egypt - that is one part. They had taken on some bad manners, which Moses simply tolerated for the hardness of their hearts (as with divorce, where Christ says so explicitly), besides the world was getting so dangerous due to diverse evil empires in the neighbourhood that keeping slavery made sense even as a kind of protection for slaves. And this rule meant that a Hebrew daughter sold as slave didn't get treated as a slave, but as someone's wife. Or got free plus money. Show a nation back then with such rules! Not even Rome or Athens!

Only later were Christians making things even better.

And now, I have earned some right by writing to sign.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Edilburg of Yorkshire
7-VII-2015

Credits to Lita Cosner:

CMI Feedback : Hoax ‘testimony’ and Hoax endorsement:
Is eating shellfish still an abomination?
Published: 10 July 2010(GMT+10)
http://creation.com/hoax-testimony-hoax-endorsement


Footnotes:

* May J. P. Holding excuse any possible ineptitude in imitating his style! It's inimitable!

** But they didn't always manage to consider themselves beautiful without the rouge, though obviously, quite often they were in fact so!

Monday, July 6, 2015

One Reason Christians Do NOT Keep OT Rituals

I was reading a response by Lita Cosner on a hoax testimony by a former homosexual who was worrying about Leviticus describing shellfish as abominations.

Or pretending to. Now, though she saw through it, she knew serious answers were needed too and gave such.

Another female friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination-Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don’t agree. Can you settle this?


You have taken this out of context. The full passage says, “abomination to you”. Who is “you”? Again, the signatories to the Sinaitic Covenant, or the Jews under the Mosaic Law. “Abominations” are a certain class of sins that would pollute the land, because it was ignoring the “boundaries” God put into place. Shellfish aren’t “natural” fish with fins and scales, so not appropriate for food according to the Sinaitic Covenant.


Now, for shellfish, the boundary may have been arbitrarily ritual, applying only to Jews. This doesn't mean abomination always works this way. Sodomy as a sin against a boundary set in place by God in Eden. "Be ye fruitful and multiply" was the first equivalent of "with the power invested me by ... I hereby pronounce you man and wife".*

Actually, I am not sure some of the dietary rules didn't get there to maintain sexual morality.

Shellfish, which has neither fins nor scales, has zinc. Eels which have neither fins nor scales, have lots of fat.

Canaaneans presumably ate lots of it, in order to keep in form for orgies.

Hebrews kept pure by not eating it. Catholics kept pure by eating it on the one hand but fasting wednesdays and fridays on the other hand over centuries.**

Protestants who have no weekly fast and no kashroot have over centuries headed apostasies into divorce and contraception in marriage and sodomy and apostasy from faith into evolutionism and atheism. Priests after Vatican II not keeping the two day fast (which would be more obliging on priests and monks and nuns and religious, than on laymen) are presumably (rather than such who continued keeping it) alone among those who committed acts of sexual predation on the youngest, on underage and sometimes even outright children.

But there is another side to the rituals than just this "over securitarian" way of making sure one doesn't sin on such and such an issue (like avoiding drunkenness by teetotalism, which is not obliging normally on men - though the teetotal issue was not there in the kashroot, except for nazirs***). It is making sure in a similar way one doesn't sin by mixing too much with Pagans.

Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. My work requires that I shave. What is a proper form of atonement?


Again, unless they and you are signatories to the Sinaitic covenant you don’t have to worry about it. Once again, the command was to keep the Jews separate from the surrounding pagans, including prohibiting Jewish men from copying pagan beard styles.


Well, duh!

Christians (including ethnic Jews as well as Samarians) were being persecuted by Jews who no longer had a Temple to centre their kashroot on and who collectively more and more hated Christ°. But sometimes Jewish hatred of Christianity also took turns of seduction by familiarity and friendliness.

And Christians still keeping kashroot were likelier to fall for it.

So, the Church ended the keeping of kashroot around year 70, when God using the Romans had ended the temple, so as to prevent this.

Also some Jewish styles might not have been agreeable to Christians to begin with. I have seen someone claim the the Tunic which was Seamless was the ritual headcovering, which reaches down on shoulders, the tallit. No, it was a Tunic. Or the Latin would not have tunica. It could possibly have been a tallit katan.

Same claim says he also wore Tsitsit. I'll investigate a little here, see were we go.

Now, it is true the Latin Bible uses the same word "fimbria" about both the hem of the garment of Christ and the Tsitsin of Pharisees.

However, it is from the mere text not quite clear if Jesus just had smaller Tsitsit or the fimbria of his tunic or mantle was a hem without any Tsitsit. The bleeding woman very obviously either touched a hem or a tassle visible - but the visible tassles (at least the very visible ones) were what Christ criticised when saying Pharisees extend the fimbria of their garments (the nearest language I know to original context is Latin).

Gaffiot qualifies fimbria as either "bord de vêtement" (hem) or "frange" (tassle). The adjective fimbriatus means ("dentelé, frangé" =) "having tassles" or "having macramé", but since any textile piece that is finished has a hem, perhaps it is not surprising of the cognate adjective does not being used as having a hem.

So, if the tsitsit (which Christ would have called fimbria in Latin) were absent or present as smaller knots rather than larger tassles, in either case the woman would have touched the hem, not so easily one of the tsitsit, though that is not impossible. And ... WAIT.

Tsitsit are kraspeda in Greek. And here is one Greek version of the passages referring to Christ's mantle:

Καὶ ἰδοὺ γυνὴ αἱμορροοῦσα δώδεκα ἔτη προσελθοῦσα ὄπισθεν ἥψατο τοῦ κρασπέδου τοῦ ἱματίου αὐτοῦ:

And ... a woman with bleeding through twelve years having come forth from behind took hold of ... of what? τοῦ κρασπέδου.

Well, he wore a smaller knot or tassle, but on the mantle. And presumably in corners, like four°°. Definitely smaller than those of the Pharisees. And though a pious observance back then, not a requirement, about like carrying a rosary now.

And it would have been taken as obvious by Jewish Christians while they kept kashroot (up to 70) and opaque to other Christians before 70 and even of Jewish origin after 70, when they no longer kept the kashroot. EITHER way, it must NOT look like what was NOT opaque, the large fimbriae of Pharisees. Which is probably the reason why Tsitsit are not seen on early Christian art of Christ as good shepherd. Or perhaps the shepherd working dress depicted in those (a short tunic, not the long one we were talking of) was anyway without Tsitsit.

It is even possible Jews have the Tsitsit on tallit katan rather than mantle now, as a recognition of Our Lord's words about showing off the Tsitsit - in which case they forgot to mention who told them.

But even relinquishing Tsitsit would be done for the purpose of not getting swamped in Jewish company, as Jews were rejecting Christ and damning themselves, just as Israelites had back when they were faithful (the times they were) taken good care (under very direct and detailed commands from God but also with some creative good will) to not get swamped in Canaanean company.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Thomas More
6-VII-2015

Credits to Lita Cosner:

CMI Feedback : Hoax ‘testimony’ and Hoax endorsement:
Is eating shellfish still an abomination?
Published: 10 July 2010(GMT+10)
http://creation.com/hoax-testimony-hoax-endorsement


Footnotes:

* As she also said beginning of next paragraph:

Homosexual behaviour was not qualified in this way “to you”; i.e. it was an objective abomination, not just one to the signatories of the Sinaitic Covenant. Certainly, homosexual acts break the ritual boundary of appropriate relationships, but they also violate the Creation ordinance of marriage as one man and one woman (Genesis 1:27, 2:24), endorsed by Christ Himself as the words of the Creator (Matthew 19:3–6).


** The two day weekly fast was probably invented by Jews in Babylon not being able to keep kashroot, since invited by Babylonians, but on the other hand wanting to keep pure. This was probably the first time the Catholic way of being just as concerns the connexion stomach genitals was tried by a larger group, and the two weekdays were later changed by Christians to Wednesday, when Our Lord was betrayed by Judas taking the money, and Friday, when Our Lord was crucified. When they came back from Babylon they continued to keep two days per week fasts and added the kashroot back also. Which was a bit more than needed, but not bad. And Catholics a bit later still added the longer fasts (after Christianity was legal : a longer fast kept by someone who would not want detection as a Christian would have been dangerous, since exhausting if done with ordinary workload).

*** Who are, under the New Covenant, replaced by monks and nuns. And yes, these either drink no wine or regulate daily quantities, in rule of St Benedict.

° Flavius Josephus, who according to TF didn't, got in trouble with other Jews.

°° Just checked, the commandment says four, and therefore Christ certainly wore such. Hence I had to strike through a sentence as erroneous. Deuteronomy 22:12. Does this predict the Gospels shall be four, like the four corners of the world? Or does this predict Jewry - wearers of tassles in four corners of garments - being involved when Gog and Magog come from four corners or the world? Note, the inhabited world is not the whole globe, all through, nor all the surface of it, but a Riemann-rectangle (not to be confused with rectangles, those being Euclidean things!) on part of the globe surface. That Riemann-rectangle has four corners, just as a real rectangle has. And it is not a rectangle, since like other Riemann-figures on globes, it has a greater sum of angles than the corresponding Euclidean figure. In this case a rectangle. Which proves the Riemann-rectangle is not a rectangle, since its angles are greater than right ones - except where the sides are also caved inwards near the angle, which is the case on some corners of the inhabited world. And we are presumably talking of a Riemann-rectangle bent so its NW corner Alaska (Riemann-rectangle being broken up in two pieces by Atlantic) and its NE corner Sakhalin nearly meet N of Pacific. Unless all Americas count as only islands, in which case the Riemann-rectangle is shorter and England with South Africa the NW and SW corners. It is certain NW corner speaks English either way, it is certain SW corner had English speaking interference (South Africa by Cecil Rhodes, Chile by CIA involved with Pinochet). Since either way the four corners of the world are involved, the commandment might actually predict both.