new guy here.

[_RockSlider]

oh boy, here we go again

[_ludwigm]

oh, ok. So why would we be told that lot had incestual relations that began his blood line? There has to be a point to it.

It's how one group explains the "other" group. The Moabites and Ammonites were enemies of the Israelites. This is a nifty myth they came up with to explain why.

100% correct explanation. The same method used today during political campaigns.

The story just ends there. Moab and Ammon. I guess it's time to dig in and find out where they and their seed ended up.

The story doesn't end here.
The carrying-on is:

3. An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to their tenth generation shall they not enter into the congregation of the LORD for ever:
4. Because they met you not with bread and with water in the way, when ye came forth out of Egypt; and because they hired against thee Balaam the son of Beor of Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse thee.
5. Nevertheless the LORD thy God would not hearken unto Balaam; but the LORD thy God turned the curse into a blessing unto thee, because the LORD thy God loved thee.
6. Thou shalt not seek their peace nor their prosperity all thy days for ever.

13. And the high places that were before Jerusalem, which were on the right hand of the mount of corruption, which Solomon the king of Israel had builded for Ashtoreth the abomination of the Zidonians, and for Chemosh the abomination of the Moabites, and for Milcom the abomination of the children of Ammon, did the king defile.

1. Now when these things were done, the princes came to me, saying, The people of Israel, and the priests, and the Levites, have not separated themselves from the people of the lands, doing according to their abominations, even of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites.

Then, Ruth came into picture.
Please, read the book of Ruth! (up to now, LittleNipper didn't reach it...)

10. Moreover Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of Mahlon, have I purchased to be my wife, to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance, that the name of the dead be not cut off from among his brethren, and from the gate of his place: ye are witnesses this day. - said Boaz

And Boaz is in the line of Christ.

1. The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
5. And Salmon begat Booz [Boaz] of Rachab; and Booz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse;
6. And Jesse begat David the king; and David the king begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Urias;
17. So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations; and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations.

Do You want more?
Then read my next comment...

[_ludwigm]

Skip this if You didn't read the previous one...

(I'm sorry for the character errors, the downloaded text probably comes from scanned pages, and I had no time to edit)
Isaac Asimov is known as scifi writer. This is one of his other works, from the "Opus 200" collection. The first few line seem to be offtopic, but don't worry.

"Lost in Non-Translation" (1972)
At the Noreascon (the Twenty-ninth World Science
Fiction Convention), which was held in Boston on the
Labor Day weekend of 1971, I sat on the dais, of
course, since, as the Bob Hope of science fiction, it is
my perennial duty to hand out the Hugos. On my left
was my daughter, Robyn—sixteen, blond, blue-eyed,
shapely, and beautiful. (No, that last adjective is not a
father's proud partiality. Ask anyone.)

My old friend Clifford D. Simak was guest of honor,
and he began his talk by introducing, with thoroughly
justified pride, his two children, who were in the au-
dience. A look of alarm instantly crossed Robyn's face.

"Daddy," she whispered urgently, knowing full well
my capacity for inflicting embarrassment, "are you
planning to introduce me?"

"Would that bother you, Robyn?" I asked.

"Yes, it would."

"Then I won't," I said, and patted her hand reassur-
ingly.

She thought a while. Then she said, "Of course,
Daddy, if you have the urge to refer, in a casual sort
of way, to your beautiful daughter, that would be all
right."

So you can bet I did fust that, while she allowed her
eyes to drop in a charmingly modest way.

But I couldn't help but think of the blond, blue-eyed
stereotype of Nordic beautv that has filled Western lit-
erature ever since the blond, blue-eyed Germanic
tribes took over the western portions of the Roman
Empire, fifteen centuries ago, and set themselves up
as an aristocracy.

. . , And of the manner in which that stereotype has
been used to subvert one of the clearest and most im-
portant lessons in the Bible—a subversion that con-
tributes its little bit to the serious crisis that today
faces the world, and the United States in particular.

In line with my penchant for beginning at the be-
ginning, come back with me to the sixth century B.C.
A party of Jews had returned from Babylonian exile to
rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem, which Nebuchad-
nezzar had destroyed seventy years before.

During the exile, under the guidance of the prophet
Ezekfel, the Jews had firmly held to their national
identity by modifving, complicating, and idealizing
their worship of Yahweh into a form tliat was directly
ancestral to the Judaism of today. (In fact Ezekiel is
sometimes called "the father of Judaism.")

This meant that when the exiles returned to Jerusa-
lem, they faced a religious problem. There were peo-
ple who, all through the period of the exile, had been
living in what had once been Judah, and who wor-
shiped Yahweh in what they considered the correct,
time-honored ritual. Because their chief city (with Je-
rusalem destroyed) was Samaria, the returning Jews
called them Samaritans.

The Samaritans rejected the newfangled modifica-
tions of the returning Jews, and the Jews abhorred the
old-fashioned beliefs of the Samaritans. Between them
arose an undying hostility, the kind that is exacer-
bated because the differences in belief are compara-
tively small-
In addition there were, also living in the land, those'
who worshiped other gods altogether—Ammonites,
Edomites, Philistines, and so on.

The pressures on the returning band of Jews were
not primarilv military, for the entire area was under
the more or less beneBcent rule of the Persian Em-
pire; they were social pressures, and perhaps even
stronger for that. To maintain a strict ritual in the face
of overwhelming numbers of nonbelievers is difficult,
and the tendency to relax that ritual was almost irre-
sistible. Then, too, young male returnees were at-
tracted to the women at hand and there were inter-
marriages. Naturally, to humor the wife, ritual was
further relaxed.

But then, possibly as late as about 400 B.C., a full
century after the second Temple had been built, Ezra
arrived in Jerusalem. He was a scholar of the Mosaic
law, which had been edited and put into final form in
the course of the exile. He was horrified at the back-
sliding and put through a tub-thumping revival. He
called the people together, led them in chanting the
law and expounding on it, raised their religious fervor,
and called for confession of sins and renewal of faith.

One thing he demanded most rigorously was the
abandonment of all non-Jewish wives and their chil-
dren. Only so could the holiness of strict Judaism be
maintained, in his view. To quote the Bible (and I
will use the recent New English Bible for the pur-
pose ):

"Ezra the priest stood up and said, *You have com-
mitted an offense in marrying foreign wives and have
added to Israel's guilt. Make vour confession now to
the Lord the God of vour fathers and do his will, and
separate yourselves from the foreign population and
from vour foreign wives.' Then all the assembled peo-
ple shouted in reply, 'Yes; wte must do what vou say
. . . (Ezra 10:10-12).

From that time on, the Jews as a whole began to
practice an exclpsivi.sm, a voluntary separation from
others, a multiplication of peculiar customs that fur-
ther emphasized their separateness; and all of this
helped them maintain their identity through all the
miseries and catastrophes that were to come, through
all the crises, and through exiles and persecutions that
fragmented them over the face of the earth.

The exclusivism, to be sure, also served to make
them socially indigestible and imparted to them a
high social visibility that helped give rise to condi-
tions that made exiles and persecutions more iikely.

Not everyone among the Jews adhered to this pol-
icy of exclusivism. There were some who believed
that all men were equal in the sight of God and that
no one should be excluded from the community on
the basis of group identity alone.

One who believed this (but who is forever name-
less) attempted to present this case in the form of a
short piece of historical fiction. In this fourth-century-
B.C. tale the heroine was Ruth, a Moabite woman.
(The tale was presented as having taken place in the
time of the judges, so the traditional view was that it
was written by the prophet Samuel in the eleventh
century B.C. No modem student of the Bible believes
this.)

Why a Moabite women, by the way?

It seems that the Jews, returning from exile, had
traditions concerning their initial arrival at the bor-
ders of Canaan under Moses and then Joshua, nearlv a
thousand vears before. At that time, the small nation
of Moab, which lay east of the lower course of the
Jordan and of the Dead Sea, was understandably
alarmed at the incursion of tough desert raiders and
took steps to oppose them. Not only did they prevent
the Israelites from passing through their territory, but,
tradition had it, they called in a seer, Balaam, and
asked him to use his magical abilities to bring misfor-
tune and destruction upon the invaders.

That failed, and Balaam, on departing, was sup-
posed to have advised the king of Moab to let the
Moabite girls lure the desert raiders into liaisons,
which might subvert their stem dedication to then-
task. The Bible records the following:

"When the Israelites were in Shittim, the people be-
gan to have intercourse with Moabite women, who in-
vited them to the sacrifices offered to their gods; and
they ate the sacrificial food and prostrated themselves
before the gods of Moab. The Israelites joined in the
worship of the Baal of Peor, and the Lord was angry
with them" (Numbers 25:1-3).

As a result of this, "Moabite women" became the
quintessence of the type of outside influence that by
sexual attraction tried to subvert pious Jews. Indeed,
Moab and the neighboring kingdom to the north, Am-
mon, were singled out in the Mosaic code:

"No Ammonite or Moabite, even down to the tenth
generation, shall become a member of the assembly of
the Lord . . . because they did not meet you with
food and water on your way out of Egypt, and be-
cause they hired Balaam ... to revile you . . , You
shall never seek their welfare or their good all your
life long" (Deuteronomy 23:3-4, 6).

And yet there were times in later history when
there was friendship between Moab and at least some
men of Israel, possibly because they were brought to-
gether by some common enemy.

For instance, shortly before 1000 B.C., Israel was
ruled by Saul. He had held off the Philistines, con-
quered the Amalekites, and brought Israel to its great-
est pitch of power to that point. Moab naturally
feared his expansionist policies and so befriended any-
one rebelling against Saul. Such a rebel was the Ju-
dean warrior David of Bethlehem. When David was
pressed hard by Saul and bad retired to a fortified
stronghold, he used Moab as a refuge for his family.

"David . . . said to the king of Moab, 'Let my fa-
ther and motlier come and take shelter with you until
I know what God will do for me.' So he left them at
the court of the king of Moab, and they stayed there
as long as David was in his stronghold" (1 Samuel
22:3-4).

As it happened, David eventually won out, became
king first of Judah, then of all Israel, and established
an empire that took in the entire east coast of the
Mediterranean, from Egypt to the Euphrates, with the
Phoenician cities independent but in alliance with
him. Later, Jews always looked back to the time of
David and his son Solomon as a golden age, and Da-
vid's position in Jewish legend and thought was unas-
sailable. David founded a dynasty that ruled over Ju-
dah for four centuries, and the Jews never stopped
believing that some descendant of David would yet
return to rule over them again in some idealized fu-
ture time.

Yet, on the basis of the verses describing David's
use of Moab as a refuge for his family, there may have
arisen a tale to the effect that there was a Moabite
strain in David's ancestry. Apparently, the author of
the Book of Ruth determined to make use of this tale
to point up the doctrine of nonexclusivism by using
the supremely hated Moabite woman as his heroine.

The Book of Ruth tells of a Judean family of Bethle-
hem—a man, his wife, and two sons—who are driven
by famine to Moab. There the two sons marry Moa-
bite girls, but after a space of time all three men die,
leaving the three women—Naomi, the mother-in-law,
and Ruth and Orpah, the two daughters-in-law—as
survivors.

Those were times when women were chattels, and
unmarried women, without a man to own them and
care for them, could subsist only on charity. (Hence
the frequent biblical injunction to care for widows
and orphans.)

Naomi determined to return to Bethlehem, where
kinsmen might possibly care for her, but urged Ruth
and Orpah to remain in Moab. She does not say, but
we might plausibly suppose she is thinking, that Moa-
bite girls would have a rough time of it in Moab-
hating Judah.

Orpah remains in Moab, but Ruth refuses to leave
Naomi, saying, "Do not urge me to go back and desert
you . . . Where you go, I will go, and where you stay,
I will stay. Your people shall be my people, and your
God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I
will be buried. I swear a solemn oath before the Lord
your God: nothing but death shall divide us" (Ruth
1:16-17).

Once in Bethlehem, the two were faced with the
direst poverty, and Ruth volunteered to support her-
self and her mother-in-law by gleaning in the fields. It
was harvest time, and it was customary to allow any
stalks of grain that fell to the ground in the process of
gathering to remain there to be collected bv the poor.
This t^leanin^ was a kind of welfare program for those
in need. It was, however, backbreaking work, and any
young woman, particularly a Moabite, who engaged
in it underwent certain obvious risks at the hands of
the lusty young reapers. Ruth's offer was simply he-
roic.

As it happened, Ruth gleaned in the lands of a rich
Judean farmer named Boaz, who, coming to oversee
the work, noticed her working tirelessly. He asked
after her, and his reapers answered, "She is a Moabite
girl . . . who has Just come back with Naomi from
the Moabite country" (Ruth 2:6).

Boaz spoke kindly to her and Ruth said, "Why are
you so kind as to take notice of me when I am only a
foreigner?" (Ruth 2:10). Boaz explained that he had
heard how she had forsaken her own land for love of
Naomi and how hard she worked to take care of her-

As it turned out, Boaz was a relative of Naomi's
dead husband, which must be one reason why he was
touched bv Ruth's love and fidelity. Naomi, on hear-
ing the story, had an idea. In those days. if a widow
was left childless, she had the right to expect her dead
husband's brother to marry her and offer her his pro-
tection. If the dead husband had no brother, some
other relative would fulfill the task.

Naomi was past the age of childbearing, so she
could not qualify for marriage, which in those days
centered about children; but what about Ruth? To be
sure, Ruth was a Moabite woman and it might well be
that no Judean would marry her, but Boaz had proven
kind. Naomi therefore instructed Ruth how to ap-
proach Boaz at night and, without crudely seductive
intent, appeal for his protection.

Boaz, touched by Ruth's modesty and helplessness,
promised to do his duty, but pointed out that there
was a kinsman closer than he and that, by right, this
other kinsman had to have his chance first.

The verv next day, Boaz approached the other kins-
man and suggested that he buy some property in
Naomi's charge and, along with it, take over another
responsibility. Boaz said, "On the day when you ac-
quire the field from Naomi, you also acquire Ruth the
Moabitess, the dead man's wife . . ."(Ruth 4:5).

Perhaps Boaz carefully stressed the adjectival
phrase "the Moabitess," for the other kinsman drew
back at once. Boaz therefore married Ruth, who in
time bore him a son. The proud and happy Naomi
held the child in her bosom and her women friends
said to her, "The child will give you new life and
cherish you in your old age; for your daughter-in-law
who loves vou, who has proved better to you than
seven sons, has borne him" (Ruth 4:15).

In a society that valued sons infinitely more than
daughters, this verdict of Judean women on Ruth, a
woman of the hated land of Moab, is the author's
moral—that there is nobilitv and virtue in all groups
and that none must be excluded from consideration in
advance simply because of their group identification.

And then, to clinch the argument for any Judean so
nationalistic as to be impervious to mere idealism, the
story concludes: "Her neighbors gave him a name:

'Naomi has a son,' they said; 'we will call him Obed.'
He was the father of Jesse, the father of David" (Ruth
4:17).

Where would Israel have been, then, if there had
been an Ezra present to forbid the marriage of Boaz
with a "foreign wife"?

Where does that leave us? That the Book of Ruth is
a pleasant story, no one will deny. It is almost always
referred to as a "delightful idyll," or words to that ef-
fect. That Ruth is a most successful characterization
of a sweet and virtuous woman is beyond dispute.

In fact everyone is so in love with the storv and
with Ruth that the whole point is lost. It is, by right, a
tale of tolerance for the despised, of love for the
hated, of the reward that comes of brotherhood. By
mixing the genes of mankind, by forming the hybrid,
great men will come.

The Jews included the Book of Ruth in the canon
partly because it is so wonderfully told a tale but
mostly (I suspect) because it gives the lineage of the
great David, a lineage that is not given beyond Da-
vid's father, Jesse, in the soberly historic books of the
Bible that anteceded Ruth. But the Jews remained, by
and large, exclusivistic and did not leam the lesson of
universalism preached by the Book of Ruth.

Nor have people taken its lesson to heart since. Why
should they, since every effort is made to wipe out
that lesson? The story of Ruth has been retold any
number of ways, from children's tales to serious nov-
els. Even movies have been made of it. Ruth herself
must have been pictured in hundreds of illustrations.
And in every illustration I have ever seen, she is pre-
sented as blond, blue-eyed, shapely, and beautiful—
the perfect Nordic stereotype I referred to at the be-
ginning of the article.

For goodness' sake, why shouldn't Boaz have fallen
in love with her? What great credit was there in
marrying her? If a girl like that had fallen at your feet
and asked you humbly to do your duty and kindly
marry her, you would probably have done it like a
shot.

Of course she was a Moabite woman, but so what?
What does the word "Moabite" mean to you? Does it
arouse any violent reaction? Are there many Moabites
among vour acquaintances? Have vour children been
cha-sed bv a bunch of lousv Moahites latelv? Have
thev been reducing property values in vour neighbor-
hood? When was the last time vou heard someone sav,
"Got to get those rotten Moabites out of here. They
just fill un the welfare rolls"?

In fact, judging by the way Ruth is drawn, Moa-
bites are English aristocrats and their presence would
raise property values.

The trouble is that the one word that is not trans-
lated in the Book of Ruth is the kev word "Moabite,"
and as long as it is not translated, the point is lost; it is
lost in non-translation.

The word "Moabite" reallv means "someone of a
group that receives from us and deserves from us
nothing but hatred and contempt." How should this
word be translated into a single word that means the
same thing to, sav, many modern Greeks? . . . Why,
Turk." And to manv modem Turks? . . . Why,
"Greek." And to many modern white Americans? . . .
Why, "black."

To get the proper flavor of the Book of Ruth, sup-
pose we think of Ruth not as a Moabite woman but as
a black woman.

Reread the story of Ruth and translate "Moabite" to
"black" every time you see it. Naomi (imagine) is
coming back to the United States with her two black
daughters-in-law. No wonder she urges them not to
come with her. It is a marvel that Ruth so loved her
mother-in-law that she was willing to face a society
that hated her unreasoningly and to take the risk of
gleaning in the face of leering reapers who could not
possibly suppose they need treat her with any consid-
eration whatever.
And when Boaz asked who she was, don't read the
answer as, "She is a Moabite girl," but as, "She is a
black girl." More likely, in fact, the reapers might have
said to Boaz something that was the equivalent of (if
you'll excuse the language), "She is a nigger girl."

Think of it that way and you find the whole point is
found in translation and only in translation. Boaz' ac-
tion in being willing to marry Ruth because she was
virtuous (and not because she was a Nordic beauty)
takes on a kind of nobility. The neighbors' decision
that she was better to Naomi than seven sons becomes
something that could have been forced out of them
only by overwhelming evidence to that effect. And
^. the final stroke that out of this miscegenation was
I-born none other than the great David is rather breath-
taking.

[_DrW]

Hey Ludwig,

Thanks for posting the Asimov story. Had never seen this one before and enjoyed reading it.

I especially appreciated Asimov's willingness to call out these stories from the scriptures as myths and fictions.

While the story of Ruth does teach a moral lesson (one which the LDS Church has yet to fully understand and appreciate, by the way) it is nonetheless just a story, like the vast majority of other scriptures.

If fundamental religionists were somehow able to grow out of their childlike fantasy world and recognize as much, I think the world would be a much better place in which to live for all concerned.

[_Fence Sitter]

Ludwig,

+1

Thanks, very interesting.

[_ludwigm]

Thanks for posting the Asimov story. Had never seen this one before and enjoyed reading it.

Here is the second part of the same novel - about the samaritan ...

While the story of Ruth does teach a moral lesson (one which the LDS Church has yet to fully understand and appreciate, by the way) it is nonetheless just a story, like the vast majority of other scriptures.

I've cited the novel three years before, and after that referred to the church's policy of blacks.

We get something similar in the New Testament. On
one occasion a student of the law asks Jesus what
^must be done to gain eternal life, and he answer? his
, own question by saying, "Love the Lord your God
^with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your
r strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor
r&s yourself (Luke 10:27).

These admonitions are taken from the Old Testa-
ment, of course. That last bit about your neighbor

comes from a verse that says, "You shall not seek re-
-venge. or cherish anger towards your kinsfolk; you
shall love your neighbor as a man like yourself' (Leviti-
cus 19; 18).

(The New English Bible translation sounds better
to me here than the King James's: "Thou shalt love
thy neighbor as thyself." Where is the saint who can
truly feel another's pain or ecstasy precisely as he feels
own? We must not ask too much. But if we simply
grant that someone else is "a man like yourself," then
he can be treated with decency at least It is when we
refuse to grant even this, and talk of another as our
inferior, that contempt and cruelty come to seem nat-
ural, and even laudable.)

Jesus approves the lawyer's saying, and the lawyer
promptly asks, "And who is my neighbor?" (Luke 10:-
29). After all, the verse in Leviticus first speaks of
refraining from revenge and anger toward kinsfolk;

might not, then, the concept of "neighbor" be re-
stricted to kinsfolk, to one's own kind, only?

In response, Jesus replies with perhaps the greatest
of the parables¿of a travel&r who fell in with robbers,
who was mugged and robbed and left half dead by
the road. Jesus goes on, "It so happened that a priest
was going down by the same road; but when he saw
him, he went past on the other side. So too a Levite
came to the place, and when he saw him went past on
the other side. But a Samaritan who was making the
Journey came upon him, and, White House^n he saw him, was
moved to pity. He went up and bandaged his wounds,
bathing them with oil and wifie. Then he lifted him
onto his own beast, brought Mm to an inn, and looked
after him there" (Luke 10:31-34).

Then Jesus asks who the traveler's neighbor was,
and the lawyer is forced to say, "The one who showed
him kindness" (Luke 10:37).

This is known as the Parable of the Good Samari-
tan, even though nowhere in the parable is the rescuer
called a good Samaritan, merely a Samaritan.

The force of the parable is entirely vitiated by the
common phrase "good" Samaritan, for that has cast a.
false light on who the Samaritans were. In a free-
association test, say "Samaritan" and probably every
person being tested will answer, "Good." It has be-
come so imprinted in all our brains that Samaritans
are good that we take it for granted that a Samaritan
would act like that and wonder why Jesus is making a
point of it.

We forget who the Samaritans were, in the time of
Jesus!

To the Jews, they were not good. They were hated,
despised, contemptible heretics with whom no good
Jew would have anything to do. Again, the whole
point is lost through non-translation.

Suppose, instead, that it is a white traveler in Mis-
sissippi who has been mugged and left half dead. And
suppose it was a minister and a deacon who passed by
and refused to "become involved." And suppose it was
a black sharecropper who stopped and took care of
the man.

Now ask yourself: Who was the neighbor whom you
must love as though he were a man like yourself if
you are to be saved?

The Parable of the Good Samaritan clearly teaches
that there is nothing parochial in the concept "neigh-
bor," that you cannot confine your decency to your
own group and your own kind. All mankind, right
down to those you most despise, are your neighbors.

Well, then, we have in the Bible two examples¿in the
Book of Ruth and in tlie Parable of the Good Samari-
tan¿of teachings that are lost in non-translation, yet
are terribly applicable to us today.

The whole world over, there are confrontations be-
tween sections of mankind denned by a difference of
race, nationality, economic philosophy, religion, or
language, so that one is not "neighbor" to the other.

These more or less arbitrary differences among
peoples who are members of a-single biological spec-
ies are terribly dangerous, and nowhere more so than
here in the United States, where the most perilous
confrontation (I need not tell you) is between white
and black.

Next to the population problem generally, mankind
faces no danger greater than this confrontation, par-
ticularly in the United States.

It seems to me that more and more, each year, both
whites and blacks are turning, in anger and hatred, to
violence. I see po reasonable end to the steady escala-
tion but an actual civil war.

In such a civil war, the whites, with a preponder-
ance of numbers and an even greater preponderance
of organized power, would in all likelihood "win."
They would do so, however, at an enormous material
cost and, I suspect, at a fatal spiritual one.

And why? Is it so hard to recognize that we are all
neighbors, after all? Can we, on both sides¿on both
sides¿6nd no way of accepting the biblical lesson?

Or if quoting the Bible sounds too mealy-mouthed,
and if repeating the words of Jesus seems too pietistic,
let's put it another way, a practical way:

Is the privilege of feeling hatred so luxurious that it
is worth the material and spiritual hell of a white'
black civil war?

If the answer is really yes, then one can only de-
spair.

Note that Asimov has written this in 1972.
I repeat it FYI:

These more or less arbitrary differences among
peoples who are members of a single biological spec-
ies are terribly dangerous, and nowhere more so than
here in the United States, where the most perilous
confrontation (I need not tell you) is between white
and black.

1972. Six year before the "Official Declaration—2", which is
- revelation
- doctrine
- both
- none of above
- whatever

Had Asimov closer contact to the Lord than His mouthpiece, the pres/proph of the onetruechurch?

Suspect. He was of russian origin. He was jewish. He has believed in evilution (sorry, it should have been evolution).
He may have been leftist. Anyway, he was an intellectual.
He could have been the seventh of "september six".

_________________
"Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right."
- From the Foundation cycle.

.

.

[_LittleNipper]

You may wish to consider the following:
http://www.answers2prayer.org/bible_stu ... hical.html

2 Peter 1:16-17 "We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty."

1 John 1:3-4 "We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ."

Acts 2:22 "Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know."

[_redi2ride]

Wowsers! ludwigm! I logged in to see a massive regurgitation on my introduction thread .lol. It's to late for me to read it I'm tired. I will get to it soon. Thank you LittleNipper.

[_ludwigm]

Wowsers! ludwigm! I logged in to see a massive regurgitation on my introduction thread

regurgitation? ?? ??? "young blade! ... You might have said at least a hundred things"

CYRANO (imperturbably):
Is that all?. . .
THE VISCOUNT:
What do you mean?
CYRANO:
Ah no! young blade! That was a trifle short!
You might have said at least a hundred things
By varying the tone. . .like this, suppose,. . .
Aggressive: 'Sir, if I had such a nose
I'd amputate it!' Friendly: 'When you sup
It must annoy you, dipping in your cup;
You need a drinking-bowl of special shape!'
Descriptive: ''Tis a rock!. . .a peak!. . .a cape!
--A cape, forsooth! 'Tis a peninsular!'
Curious: 'How serves that oblong capsular?
For scissor-sheath? Or pot to hold your ink?'
Gracious: 'You love the little birds, I think?
I see you've managed with a fond research
To find their tiny claws a roomy perch!'
Truculent: 'When you smoke your pipe. . .suppose
That the tobacco-smoke spouts from your nose--
Do not the neighbors, as the fumes rise higher,
Cry terror-struck: "The chimney is afire"?'
Considerate: 'Take care,. . .your head bowed low
By such a weight. . .lest head o'er heels you go!'
Tender: 'Pray get a small umbrella made,
Lest its bright color in the sun should fade!'
Pedantic: 'That beast Aristophanes
Names Hippocamelelephantoles
Must have possessed just such a solid lump
Of flesh and bone, beneath his forehead's bump!'
Cavalier: 'The last fashion, friend, that hook?
To hang your hat on? 'Tis a useful crook!'
Emphatic: 'No wind, O majestic nose,
Can give THEE cold!--save when the mistral blows!'
Dramatic: 'When it bleeds, what a Red Sea!'
Admiring: 'Sign for a perfumery!'
Lyric: 'Is this a conch?. . .a Triton you?'
Simple: 'When is the monument on view?'
Rustic: 'That thing a nose? Marry-come-up!
'Tis a dwarf pumpkin, or a prize turnip!'
Military: 'Point against cavalry!'
Practical: 'Put it in a lottery!
Assuredly 'twould be the biggest prize!'
Or. . .parodying Pyramus' sighs. . .
'Behold the nose that mars the harmony
Of its master's phiz! blushing its treachery!'
--Such, my dear sir, is what you might have said,
Had you of wit or letters the least jot:
But, O most lamentable man!--of wit
You never had an atom, and of letters
You have three letters only!--they spell Ass!
And--had you had the necessary wit,
To serve me all the pleasantries I quote
Before this noble audience. . .e'en so,
You would not have been let to utter one--
Nay, not the half or quarter of such jest!
I take them from myself all in good part,
But not from any other man that breathes!

Thank you LittleNipper.

Did he wrote anything worth to mention?