"O the untrustworthiness of Egyptologists who do not know their trips "(I Am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra - by Ishmael Reed) I was going to approach the whole thing differently but have now lost interest, but for the dangers of religious bigotry, whether it's Islamophobia or anti-Semitism, racism and tribalism, generally, it's really not Cornelius Ignoramus'es business what you think, believe, know, don't know, think you know and teach, but for anyone who has the luxury of time I would recommend this from my point of view rather neutral source: Israel's Prophetic Tradition: Essays in Honour of Peter Ackroyd (Cambridge University Press)
The whole thrust of any discussion of Hammurabi in connection with the revelation at Mt. Sinai and related matters has often led to certain unavoidable comparisons being made, all leading to some inevitably anti-Semitic conclusions. There is a vast literature that covers some of these discussions, conjectures, diverse understandings, morbid visions, broad-assed visionary generalisations, in this time and in this place, some people playing Sherlock Holmes and Indiana Jones movie roles far removed from the real ruins in time and place. I am no stranger to the Uncle Ben and John Henrik Clarke school or Martin Bernal versus Mary Lefkowitz and more. Much much more...
Even on stage, anyone is free to cop out of a discussion and I've seen it happen, some so-called scholars running away from reasonable confrontation with their tails tucked firmly between or behind their legs.
Well, with just a little imagination a man can discuss with himself – that's what most books are about – they are internal discussions, sometimes in linear progression, the print reckoned in terms of mileage. You've gotta to have the stamina for the marathon or as I-Roy says, "When I'm through with you, you will weak in the seat."
Now, with all this anti-Semitism ( God's legislation is from Babylon) some people think that they are succeeding in subverting the authenticity of each word from the Almighty and that they are thereby subverting the Hebraic Faith which is the foundation of all else that follows, such as Christianity and al-Islam.
It started with
"That it should end up in the "holy books" is interesting." (GE)
That's where it starts in this thread
It continued: ""In fact I think that this particular law is quite reasonable – though not divine." (GE)
OAA joined in to concur with his lady in distress:
"The holy books, in particular the OT is an amalgam of updated previous Middle Eastern lore.
The similarity between the code of Hammurabi and the Ten Commandments is not accidental."
(That was OAA sounding off. The Chosen Birds of the same feather flock together, agree with each other)
He continued:
"It is now generally agreed that the origins of Abraham (the Biblical patriarch) is in present day Iraq." (But everybody knows that. Abraham, probably a Kurd from the North of Iraq, crosses the Euphrates River and by that act is defined as a Hebrew)
"I believe the narrative of the great flood is of Babylonian
"pagan" origin." (She believes. A flood supposedly covers a vast area and the narrative about that flood is supposed to come from somewhere else?)
GE takes a shot at poetry conjugates it for us all:
"BTW we are all chosen people.
I am chosen
You are chosen
He, she or it is chosen
We are chosen
They are chosen" (GE singing on behalf of all mankind)
Reminds me of Footnote to Howl by Allen Ginsberg | Poetry Foundation
Dr Sikiru Eniola will have to be addressed separately; let's hope that he doesn't bolt away.
Everyone knows about that back ground. Permission approved.On Sun, 1 Sep 2019, 12:38 Gloria Emeagwali, <gloria.emeagwali@gmail.com> wrote:I was actually looking forward to a discussion about Hammurabi the King of Babylon etc. The moment you brought in that "anti- Semitic " trope, however, I decided to fall out. Any genuine criticism or comment or statement would be thus classified. I don't have the stamina for circular arguments, unfortunately.Permission to fall out, Sir. Thank you.GE--On Sun, Sep 1, 2019 at 6:02 AM Cornelius Hamelberg <hamelbergcornelius4@gmail.com> wrote:Tomorrow ( Monday) will wind up with whatever implications you have in mind about Hammurabi and Canaanite culture. Just reading this Sabbath's Torah portion Re'eh ((Deuteronomy 11:26-16:17)) one understand that the prohibitions are against some of the prevalent practices about even food and drink among the surrounding cultures.
More on the roots of anti-Semitism generated by resentment of the idea that God has a "Chosen people"
D.H. Lawrence and the Jews ( just check out the index to his Selected Letters and some of the filth therein)
The Buddha was born some 600 years before Jesus. Buddhists and Buddhist texts have not generated such much hostility...
--On Sun, 1 Sep 2019 at 01:08, Cornelius Hamelberg <hamelbergcornelius4@gmail.com> wrote:Dear Gloria In Excelsis Emeagwali,
Sorry that in the link that I provided to that letter, the letter gets truncated somewhere in the middle.
It's on page 168 of Selected Letters – D.H. Lawrence – Edited by James T. Boulton
or you can, click on Untitled - Page 353 - Google Books Result
for D.H. Lawrence's "My Dear Eder, Oh, do take me to Palestine , and I will love you forever "
Sin-cerely,
CH
On Sat, 31 Aug 2019 at 21:31, Cornelius Hamelberg <hamelbergcornelius4@gmail.com> wrote:To The Dearly Chosen Gloria In Excelsis Emeagwali:
Of course even before Abraham was born, we are to assume what you yourself can substantiate, that in many parts of the world, there were already laws that prohibited e.g. murder; which does not mean to say that when the Almighty legislated – "You shall not murder" - that commandment was not divine.
But, first things first. And I'm not going to say, "credo ergo sum"
4U2 read: The haftarah for this Sabbath : Isaiah 66:1 - 24
Two other lists here:
1. List of people known as "the Wise"
2. List of people known as "the Wise"
List 2 is as a result of reading this self-explanatory letter from D.H.Lawrence to Louis Goulding, dated 23 March 1921, mildly illustrating some of the prejudices of a hundred years ago (from page 202 of Selected Letters – D.H. Lawrence – Edited by James T. Boulton).
Nor is the smug tone of Lawrence's letter to to Dr. David Eder, post 25April1919, any different.
There are many such instances that I could quote from Lawrence's letters and from T. S. Eliot's works and letters. There are many atrocious instances from other celebrated authors.
Why this rash of anti-Semitism? I'll tell you: It mostly boils down to some misunderstanding and a lot of ill-will and ill-feelings sometimes violently expressed in words and actions, towards the idea of Jews, Israel, God's elect as the "Chosen People"
This too deserves some attention:
What is meant by " the Jews are God's Chosen People?
Thankfully such rabid anti-Semitism is in scarce evidence in the parts of African poetry, literature and drama that I am acquainted with - and I must say that I was alarmed when I first saw that title " Devil on the Cross" However, the expectation raised by the title is not fulfilled by the contents
So, you have to be circumspect with what you Dear Gloria In Excelsis Emeagwali say and how you say it; not that Beloved Toyin Falola or Beloved Ken Harrow is going to slaughter you for just jiving about something - God forbid!
Of course, depending on who is singing this lyric it could be true, if it's a matter of self-identity and nothing to do with the Almighty – as it can be possibly true that there are those that are the chosen disciples of God's enemies who also sing
"I am chosen
You are chosen
He, she or it is chosen
We are chosen
They are chosen"
As Nobel Prize Laureate Dylan also sings,
"Look out your window, baby, there's a scene you'd like to catch
The band is playing "Dixie", a man got his hand outstretched
Could be the Fuhrer
Could be the local priest
You know sometimes Satan, you know he comes as a man of peace "("Man of Peace"Yes, there's the Gilgamesh epic, there's people like Sheikh Ahmed Deedat who smirked that "The Chosen people stole the unchosen people's land", just as there are some pious gentlemen of the cloth who claim that the Quran stole from the Holy Bible.
Just as some people still don't realise that most of the Greek philosophers, such as Plato and Socrates were born before Jesus or that Aristotle had completed his major works on God's planet more than three hundred years before baby Jesus was born in Nazareth or Paul the theologian composed his first little epistle...
Supposed to rhyme with chosen
Bob Dylan: Everything is broken.
But don't forget :
"I am chosen
You are chosen
He, she or it is chosen
We are chosen
They are chosen"
On Fri, 30 Aug 2019 at 16:49, Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@ccsu.edu> wrote:--Cornelius the Wise,You really got me wrong. In fact I think that this particular law is quite reasonable - though not divine.
Speaking about Hammurabi, there are lots of toxic laws among the 282:
# 15. If a man aid a male or female slave of the palace, or a male or female slave of a freeman to escape from the city gate, he shall be put to death.
Be careful about what you are defending. Of course you can blame it on Canaanite influence in the-devil-made- me do- it mode of thinking.
Having said that let me point to one of the reasonable ones:
# 35 If a man buy from an officer the cattle or sheep which the king has given to that officer, he shall forfeit his money
BTW we are all chosen people.I am chosenYou are chosenHe, she or it is chosenWe are chosenThey are chosen
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department, Central Connecticut State University
www.africahistory.netChief Editor- "Africa Update"www.vimeo.com/gloriaemeagwali
Gloria Emeagwali's Documentaries2014 Distinguished Research Excellence Award in African StudiesUniversity of Texas at Austin2019 Distinguished Africanist AwardNew York African Studies Association
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <hamelbergcornelius4@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, August 29, 2019 10:23 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Compensation mattersPlease be cautious: **External Email**
I suppose that it's no coincidence that you'll also find the sun, the moon and the stars there. There is common sense and a divine spark of wisdom that animates all of us living souls. Innately and instinctively we know that some things are right and some things are wrong.
There is the analogy of the four sons...
What Gloria in excelsis Emeagwali has probably found in her Hammurabi is the principle of retaliation, a feature of the corrupt Canaanite religions and codes of ethics that pervaded that area. Gloria in excelsis Emeagwali must understand that Hashem has communicated His legislations through his chosen servant Moses, in order to save Moses and his people from being corrupted by the culture of their neighbours and this they do by distancing themselves from any corrupt system. With the Almighty as the King of Israel, Israel is to be governed by the laws of the Almighty's Kingdom in which those who acknowledge Hashem as king, live, because Israel - all Israel, past, present and future is indeed destined to be "a kingdom of priests, a holy people "
So what you find in Judaism is the equality principle of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" - that the servant's vulnerable eye and his employer's eye are equal, so are the rich man's tooth and the poor man's tooth - that in Judaic justice all eyes and all teeth are equal before the law, so to speak. This principle has never been interpreted to mean cruel, physical retaliation, that the victim should gorge out his assailant's eye – it has always been interpreted to mean compensation, that such injury should be compensated.
--On Thu, 29 Aug 2019 at 14:43, Gloria Emeagwali <gloria.emeagwali@gmail.com> wrote:
This legal instruction about animal trespass into a field or vineyard, emerges from the Babylonian, Akkadian and Hebrew context, and although it may not be one of the legal stipulations of Hammurabi, the king of Babylon who claimed that he was inspired by the sun god, it surely sounds like one.--That it should end up in the "holy books" is interesting.
Professor Gloria Emeagwaliafricahistory.net
Sent from my iPhoneCorrections – should read: Wherever it can be established that these breaches have occurred and by whom, isn't it only fair that the affected farmers receive compensation? Some mechanism has to be in place to ensure that this is carried out - human beings are surely more precious to the Almighty than the bovine species. So, these kinds of disputes/ transgressions could be resolved without any recourse to violence, reprisals, bloodshed...
--On Thu, 29 Aug 2019 at 00:21, Cornelius Hamelberg <hamelbergcornelius4@gmail.com> wrote:
--In the wake of the salacious & nauseous sex-scandal details about a predatory professor, his sixteen-year-old female undergraduate victim, and the equally serious accusations levelled at what someone has unkindly headlined "Biafrauds or Nigerians: Cyber fraud suspects in USA", the erstwhile beleaguered, all-purpose scapegoat indiscriminately being accused of every imaginable crime under the Nigerian heavens, i.e. our dear Fulani Herdsmen Brethren, who used to occupy so much Naija media space have receded into the background, somewhat, although, perhaps, the respite from the media blaze is only temporarily, even if their alleged pillage, kidnappings, murder, rape, church arsons, obviously being committed by some non-Fulani scoundrels, continues unabated all over the Federation, because the real miscreants are not being apprehended by Naija Law enforcement as they should be...
In the meantime, we are to suppose that there will always be one or two incidents of Fulani cattle straying into /romping over other peoples farm property etc. Last night I was reminded that these type of perennial problems have always existed in agricultural societies, so it was not unexpected to read in Shemot 22 : 4 // Exodus 22: 5
"If a man leads his animals into a field or a vineyard, or lets his animal loose and it eats in another's field, the best of his field or the best of his vineyard he shall pay."
Wherever it can be established that these breeches have occurred and by who isn't it only fair that the affected farmers receive compensation? Some mechanism has to be in place to ensure that this is carried out - human beings are surely more precious than to the Almighty than the bovine species. SO these kinds of disputes/ transgressions can be resolved without any recourse to violence, reprisals, bloodshed...
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