Blue Cord

Steve Cook kindly responded to the points I raised in “An Ithamarite Priesthood.” I think we are mostly in agreement, but I want to address a couple of things he said.

Steve correctly points out that Ezekiel 40:45 still calls the Ithamarites “priests.” The question, then, is how do we define priests. Obviously, the Ithamarites did not have access to the altar, but having altar access is not a sine qua non for priests. So, would Ithamarites have been considered priests in the postexilic period and, if so, how do we define priests in this period? Would a former priestly line that had been reduced to overseers still have been a cohesive enough group to produce parts of the OT?

By the way, my books just arrived from Lithuania, and Blenkinsopp’s Sage, Priest, and Prophet is one of the first ones I want to read. I am sure it has something to say on the definition of priests.

I agree with Steve that the Ithamarites might have felt differently about the matter than Zadokites. But if so, why don’t we have any literature in the OT that offers competing claims to those of the Zadokites? If the Ithamarites did produce parts of the OT, then why no “pro-Ithamarite” passages? In the absence of these, I would be more inclined to think that they accepted the fact that they no longer had claim to function as priests. This could have happened if the Ithamarites were a minor line in the preexilic period and had only a few representatives in the exile.

I am interested in Steve’s reading of Isaiah 66:5 as a Ithamarite complaint. While it is a complaint, I would be interested in hearing why he thinks this is Ithamarite literature. Of course, Steve has more important things to be doing in the next two weeks (and the ones after that), so I hope he doesn’t feel any pressure to respond.

The latest issue of the Review of Biblical Literature has a review of the new Smyth & Helwys commentary on Ezekiel by Margaret Odell. For those who are unfamiliar with this series, it is published by the Baptist press started by the moderates after the Baptist troubles of the 1980s and 1990s. The series is aimed at providing leading biblical scholarship in a way that is accessible to nonspecialists. Translational and text-critical matters are not discussed, while technical footnotes are relegated to the end.

The review, written by Johan Lust, is generally positive, although he takes issue with Odell for not dealing with questions of compositional history. He also points to a few interpretative issues where he differs with her. He finds the section at the end of each chapter devoted to way the text could be preached to be quite good and well connected with her analysis of the text.

Tyler Williams at Codex will want to add this one to his list of commentaries on Ezekiel.

Having been listening to a lot of talk radio since I got back to the States, I am appalled at the lack of critical thinking exhibited by the hosts on these shows. This goes for shows at both the right and left ends of the spectrum (although conservative / libertarian shows outnumber the liberal shows by a large margin). Since critical thinking is one of the things we are supposed to be teaching in our colleges, I thought I would check on the education of talk show hosts.

To my surprise, I found that quite a number of talk show hosts do, in fact, have undergraduate degrees, and many of them also have done graduate work (most often in law). But the top rated shows are hosted by people with little education. Here is a run down:

• Rush Limbaugh dropped out of Southeast Missouri State University after two semesters. He had failed almost every class and earned a D in speech class.
• Sean Hannity dropped out of college, although which college is unclear. Both New York University and University of California Berkeley are listed in different bios.
• Alan Colmes does not appear to have gone to college at all. It is not listed in any of his bios.

Here is a list of those who do have degrees:

• Al Franken graduated from Harvard University, but he is getting out of talk radio later this week.
• Hugh Hewitt graduated from Harvard and has a law degree from the University of Michigan.
• Neal Boortz earned a law degree from John Marshall Law School in Atlanta.
• Larry Elder also holds a law degree.
• Bill O’Reilly graduated with honors from Marist College.
• Michael Medved graduated with honors from Yale. He later dropped out of the Yale Law School.
• Dennis Prager did an undergraduate degree but dropped out of his masters work.
• G. Gordan Liddy has a law degree, but of course his role in Watergate would suggest he forgot most of what he learned.
• And in the biggest surprise, Michael Savage holds a Ph.D. in epidemiology and nutritional science. If he learned critical thinking during his education, he seems to have decided not to use it on his radio program.

It is not the case, of course, that only those people who have gone to college are critical thinkers. Some people can be self-educated and learn to think critically without a college degree.

But given that so many talk show host do have a college education, the question now becomes “Why do so few talk show hosts use critical thinking in their shows?” Here are some of my guesses at an answer:

• Critical thinking would lead to calmer, more rational debates. This is boring and would lead to lower ratings.
• Critical thinking leads people to see both sides of a debate. Since one of the purposes of talk radio is to polarize people, this would be counter productive.
• Critical thinking leads people to be more moderate. But moderate is boring. The exciting people, for better or worse, are at the extremes of the political spectrum.
• Critical thinking disallows personal attacks (the ad hominim fallacy), while personal attacks are one of the more exciting parts of talk radio for some people.

Unfortunately, radio programs are driven by ratings. Higher ratings lead to more advertisers. More advertisers means more money. Think of how different radio would be if instead of seeking profits, the owners of radio programs sought to encourage a free, critical, and open exchange of ideas to promote the common good. I’m not holding my breath.

Charles Halton at Awilim has an interesting post on the for profit education model of “schools” such as the University of Phoenix. In referencing a New York Times article, he discusses some of the problems the school is having. He hits part of the nail on the head when he points the finger at

the incentive to offer the lowest quality education it can get by with while attracting the highest number of students in order to maximize profit.

While I think many of their problems do stem from trying to maximize profits, I am sure the “University” of “Phoenix” also suffers from one of the problems that faces many traditional universities: the problem of credentialing.

Education has traditionally been about changing the person who is learning. The goal of the education is not to acquire a specific skill set related to one particular career. Instead, the goal is the development of the student into a person who is able to ask and answer questions about the world. Education should create a critical thinker who is able to analyze all experiences and encounters by drawing on a large body of knowledge. It should also create people who are inherently curious about the world and know how to continue learning on their own.

Today, however, many students enter college because having a degree will increase their ability to get hired and get a higher paying job. They want the credentials to get a job. And quite a few of our colleges are selling themselves this way. For those of you who work at a college, how many of your admissions departments talk to students about their ability to get a better job with a college education?

Such students are less willing to sit through classes that don’t seem immediately relevant to their careers. I heard this all the time from business majors at LCC. They saw no need for Bible classes because they were not going to work in a religious field. But I have heard it at other colleges as well, where students lament that they have to learn things that they are “not going to use.”

I suspect the University of Phoenix draws an even higher number of these students than a traditional university. For one thing, they market themselves that way. They state up front that their degree will help you get a better job while allowing you to continue advancing in the career you are currently in by not asking that you stop working to get an education. While this is not necessarily the root of the University of Phoenix’s trouble, I suspect it contributes.

Of course, since many of us teach at religious colleges and seminaries, I suppose we could be guilty of educating for prophets.

I went to see Hannibal Rising last Friday, its opening day. I saw it at the 12:45 showing, which had more to do with the fact that I am unemployed and needed the matinée prices than it did with my eagerness to see the movie.

The early afternoon crowd was rather interesting. It was older than I would have expected, especially for a psychological thriller / horror movie such as this. Most interesting was the elderly woman down front who crocheted through the whole movie.

The Hannibal Lecter films now number four. Silence of the Lambs was first, of course. It came out in 1991 and won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Actress. Hannibal came out ten years later, followed by Red Dragon the following year. Hannibal Rising, the fourth in the series, is actually the first chronologically. It tells the story of the young Hannibal Lecter from his childhood in Eastern Europe during World War II and his subsequent years in medical school in France.

It turns out Hannibal is from Lithuania. Never mind the fact that no Lithuanian in the history of the world has ever named his child Hannibal. It is not a Lithuanian name. It is a Semitic name, although I couldn’t imagine even a Litvak naming their child Hannibal. Of course, the name was chosen long before the back story of him in Lithuania was written, the name being chosen because it rhymed with cannibal.

[Please note: the rest of this post contains spoilers about Hannibal Rising. Do not read on if you don’t want to know things about the plot.]

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