Rev. Erudite Redneck, B.S., B.S., M.A., M.Div.

Oh, but feel free to mop up the cheese in the second video.
 

Territorial Imperative, it exists in lichen, lizards, chickens, horses, and people. In people it takes many forms. Home, homeland, living room, country nation, hunting grounds, etc. etc.

Territorial Imperative always means violent reaction to those not of that territory. Lichen on a rock have clear open areas between colonies. Along their boundaries they fight to the death.

I have no way of knowing, but lichen may even sing songs about their glorious dead. Elephants do that. Whales do too. Well maybe they are songs of mourning.

So the tribe that wins writes the book.

As for the blood, does old bleeding count as much as recent bleeding? As for Israel, do the crusaders who ruled there for 300 years (longer than America has been around) deserve a part of the place? How about all those people that one little Hebrew tribe displaced.

When I think of blood on the battle field I think of the farm next to the one that one of my greatX? Uncles had at Gettysburg.
There was a mass Confederate grave of 200 or more dead in one of his best corn fields. After the war the bones were dug up and removed to a cemetery. For several decades after that he grew wine grapes on the plot. It seems the blood of those dead rebels really enhance the grape production and made a good wine.

Territorial Imperative, it grows deep in our very body cells.
"But I guarandamntee you that I *get* what's going on with ancient Israel -- and maybe modern Israel, as wrong as it seems to be -- and Judah better than most of my lib brothers and sisters, if not y'all."

Had an epiphany?
 

I've had a few epiphanies. Among them: To cling to old devotions for familiarity or comfort is as foolish as dismissing such devotions out of hand as so much old news. Geopolitically, we're gonna be where we are, as a nation, for a long, long time.
 

I suspect climate change will realign us to a large degree.
 

Exodus 32

25 Moses saw that the people were running wild and that Aaron had let them get out of control and so become a laughingstock to their enemies.

26 So he stood at the entrance to the camp and said, "Whoever is for the LORD, come to me." And all the Levites rallied to him.

27 Then he said to them, "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: 'Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.' "

28 The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died.

29 Then Moses said, "You have been set apart to the LORD today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day."

So what does your class say about this purge? Kinda reminds me of the teabaggers fixing the Rpublican Party. Purity at all cost.
 

Yeah, this was one of the many passages that left a lot of us in quiet contemplation.

More interesting is this idea, which is gaining ground but still only with a minority of scholars: Aaron was not creating a false god and leading the Israelites astray; with Moses, the bearer of Yahweh's presence gone, seemingly never to return, Aaron was making another bearer of Yahweh, a throne, not unlike the ark, in the shape of a bull, not unlike other bearers of not only other gods, but of Yahweh -- "Bull of Jacob."
 

Possibly, but also consider that Moses had been gone a long time and maybe they were creating a god or goddess to lead them in his stead. The Golden Calf and its Priest (Aaron) then being a substitute leader for Moses.

Remember that these people have been in Egypt for hundreds of years and that many of the people in the Israelite band were in fact ethnic Egyptians in origin. It would most probable the the golden calf was either the Egyptian Cow Goddess Hathor or the Bull God Apis. Most probably again there were followers of these two god-dess in the group. Indeed the purge by Moses may have been the destruction of these people,i.e. the Egyptian element that had become part of the Israeli families.

Remember that Moses had an Ethiopian Egyptian wife before he was sent back by God to Egypt. What happened to her? Where is she?

Indeed the whole 40 years in the wilderness is to purge the tribe of all those who knew Egypt in any way was it not?
 

yeah, but the bull image also is Canaanite, yes? Proto-Israelite? (Maybe an overstatement but still ...) Also Aaron wasn't the only one to craft golden calves; see Jeroboam, who did so *plus* set up "high places" for worship for his peeps in the North, after the secession. The winners write the history: The Southern writers of I Kings and Exodus, sees both as acts of idolatry, and Aaron and Jeroboam clearly were violating rules of worship -- and Jeroboam's politics is plain, although Aaron's is'nt. But to simply say both were creating new gods is to see it too simply. Besides, I always thought Aaron, and Miriam, both, get shortshrift.
 

Yes, the bull image goes back to at least 12,000 B.C. in the Levant area. Also the proto-semetic word for El is written in the form of a bull or cow:

http://net.lib.byu.edu/imaging/negev/Names.html

But again they just came from Egypt where Apis and Hathor are right there in their face for several hundred years.

But if the Heberew are harking back to El, then why is El/God so pissed at them?
 

For the same reason God whacked New Orleans with Katrina?

Fascinating stuff, this progression from There's God on the Mountain! to Here's God where we are! to Here's God on the Mercy Seat, going with us wherever we go! To Oh holy shit, the Philistines stole the ark, and our God! to Ahhh, God is God of the Gods! to Ohhh, God is GOD and is God over the whole world; and from God blesses us when we are righteous! and curses our enemies! to Wait a minute, God sometimes curses us to chastise us, USING our enemies! to God raises up Others to get through to us (Cyrus of Persia) ... and later, from Jesus: God is at hand! God is in YOU ... God is in the Other ... God is ... and so we've come full circle to "I am-was-will be!"

So i took some short cuts. :-)
 

If I build a house on a sandbar, next to a river, at the level of an adjacent lake, and below the level of a nearby sea...yeah, it's God's fault. Anyway...

Rudy, Drlobo, could you petition T-Boone and yore other Okies to please take the mad-hatter back. He's gettin 'Les' and 'Les' likeable...more and more stupid.
 

Loney, I thought I might hear from you on Les's debacle. I was gonna e-mail ya, but could find yer address.

Aside from the botched nontaking of the timeout on third down, aside from not kicking a FG, was the babbling Mr. Miles did to the reporter as he was stumbling off the field. He totally lost control of the game, and couldn't even explain hisself. Wow.
 

TTU was just better.
 

Tech kicked sooner butt.

But we's talkin' about LSU.
 

Hell, football are football, My son went to Tech and my daughter is at LSU. Neither one of them ever went to a game.
 

DocLobo..

If yore youngin's went to latech and lsu, then youse musta been livin down here in mosquito land...where at? And why would you leave such a bassakwards paradise?
 

Naw, youngest boy went to Texas Tech for grad school. Daughter is a LSU, finished an MLS (or what ever it s called there) last year and is working for a grant program to make La. Librarians this year at LSU.

Three kids and they have gone to OU, UCO, OCU in Oklahoma; Texas Tech and TCU in Texas, Reed in Oregon, Eastern Washington University in Washington, University of Nebraska, and LSU.

Believe it or not, they are probably not finished. I am, they aint. I was paying for college up till last year and I have been retired for 8 years.

BUT, what ever you do NEVER let your kids take out STUDENT LOANS.
Those loans are incarnate evil, they turned higher education into a profit center for bankers and a cash cow for universities.