Educators From The United States

"V. Bérard attributed the [Greece and Israel] links mainly to the role of the Phoenicians. P. Jensen explained matters through the diffusion of the Gilgamesh Epic. ...but their one-sidedness and exaggeration brought them, and indeed the problem itself, into disrepute among critical scholars. The history of the problem has been ably documented by W. Baumgartner..."

"For centuries scholars have been forced to grapple with the problem of accounting for the parallels between Greek literature and the Bible. Did Greece borrow from Israel? Or did Israel borrow from Greece? Can the parallels be accidental, do they obliterate the uniqueness of both Israel and Greece?"

"Homer and Bible... towered above their predecessors and contemporaries."

"The thesis of this book is simply that Greek and Hebrew civilisations are parallel structures built upon the same East Mediterranean foundation. ...the evidence is so abundant that our problem is one of selection and arrangement."

"Archeological discoveries at sites like Ugarit prevent us from regarding Greece as the hermetically sealed Olympian miracle, or Israel as the vacuum-packed miracle from Sinai."

"The nomadic Semite... roves as a herdsman, partaking of Allah's hospitality."

"The excavators cleared out one of the ancient cisterns, and a few of the winter rains sufficed to fill the cistern with enough water to supply the expedition with water for the whole season. This illustrates the possibilities of almost any country, provided the right kind of people are there. With energetic people, the few, but heavy, winter rains and be stretched a long, long way."

"By examining the pottery on any given site you can tell during which periods it has been occupied."

"At Aqaba we were received in the most hospitable manner of the Arabs. We were put up in the police station there. The prisoners, oddly enough, were walking about enjoying apparent freedom. They were used as waiters and servants instead of being shut up in cells. ...I could detect no trace of bullying of even of discourtesy to the prisoners."

"Solomon was a 'copper king', and all along that Araba, on both sides, we found many copper mines and smelting stations, all attributable to Solomon and his immediate successors."

"It has been said that the Bedouin Arab is a parasite that lives on the camel, and this to a great extent is true. It is the camel that carries him about; it is the camel's hair that supplies him with both his clothes and his tent; the camel's dung is the fuel of the desert; it is the camel's meat that supplies food for his banquets; the camel's milk is his beverage; and I could go on enumerating the basic gifts of the camel to his Arab master."

"It was Yawhism that distinguished the two Hebrew nations from the other Canaanites and it was the great Hebrew prophets who transformed their little 'Canaanite' people into one of the great factors of world history."

"Transjordan, or Palestine east of the Jordan Rift is not sufficiently known and has therefore been in need of archeological study. ...these nations in antiquity belonged to a group of people called the Canaanites. Culturally and linguistically they were practically identical with the Judean and Israelite 'Canaanites' west of the Rift."

"The competent archeologist can date pottery much as some of us can date cars or dresses of our own century."

"I hope that the reader will not regard the contents of this book as an escape from the present world but rather as a key part of it."

"For every mound excavated in the Near East, a hundred remain untouched. ...most of the excavated mounds have been dug only in small part."

"The Sabbath, perhaps the most important labour legislation next to the abolition of slavery, is a Hebrew institution."

"Babylonian mathematics and astronomy have left an indelible impression on our exact sciences. We still call some of the planets by their Babylonian names in translation."

"Traders (like the Phoenicians) carried their methods as well as their wares to Europe by ship."

"That Homeric epic and the earliest Hebrew poetry were the results of long and rich developments should have been apparent to anyone who realizes that artistic perfection is never created ex nihilo."

"Mesopotamian merchants spread their commercial institutions far and wide, into Western Asia, Egypt and Europe. The ancient inhabitants of Babylonia used the word qaqqadum, 'head', in the sense of 'principal'... our English word 'capital' (via Latin caput [head]) reflects ancient Mesoptamian usage. ...our financial system, that reckons with interest on principal, harks back to the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers."

"Prior to 1952, when M. Ventris first published his decipherment of the 'Linear B' tablets from Crete and Greece, showing that they were Greek, everyone assumed that Hebrew was recorded in writing before Greek. But now... we are reading Linear B Greek texts, written before the birth of Abraham (let alone before the date of any known Hebrew text)."

"While Ugarit is revolutionizing the problem of Old Testament origins, the Dead Sea scrolls are doing the same for the New Testament. How fortunate is this generation to live at a time when the sources of our culture—sacred and profane—are illuminated in a brighter light of history than our forefathers imagined possible!"

"Professor Gordon has made himself at home in both the Semitic and Indo-European compartments of philology. This makes it possible for him to do things and to see things that are beyond a single compartment scholar's horizon."

"During the 1960's Cyrus Gordon, a respected professor of the Semitic languages and an ardent diffusionist, revived the Paraíba Stone's claims to authenticity. Basically Gordon asserted that the Paraíba inscription contained Phoenician grammatical constructions unknown in 1872. These same constructions were originally used in the 1870's to argue against the stone's authenticity. Subsequent research during the twentieth century, Gordon said, revealed that the anomalous grammatical usages in the Paraíba Stone were genuine. Other equally qualified specialists disagree with his conclusions and continue to declare the Paraíba Stone a hoax. That opinion remains the judgement of archeologists and historians in general."

"In 1894 Cyrus Thomas, a Smithsonian Institution archeologist, identified the Bat Creek site as a Cherokee burial ground. That identification has been challenged in the twentieth century by various writers including the irrepressible Cyrus Gordon, professor of Semitic languages. They claim that the Bat Creek inscription is Hebrew and related to the Bar Kochba rebellion that took place during AD 135 in Roman Judea. Gordon attempted to bolster the theory by pointing out that the Bat Creek inscription ties in quite nicely with various finds of Roman and Bar Kochba coins in the Kentucky and Tennessee area. Unfortunately, experts consider these finds to be fakes. Gordon's willingness to consider the possibility that these inscriptions were made by refugees from the defeat of the Jewish Revolt in AD 70 does not help his case because the arguments against it are almost as strong as those against the Bar Kochba rebellion."

"Dr. Gordon... contended that Hebrew inscriptions many centuries old had been found at two sites in the southeastern United States. Frank Moore Cross said... that Dr. Gordon was "in many ways a great scholar" but that this belief "simply did not make sense.""

"Cyrus Gordon is a brilliant linguist and one of the greatest living Semitists. Despite attempts by his enemies to replace it, his pioneering Ugaritic Grammar remains the standard work on the first new Semitic language to be discovered this century. Nevertheless, for the past thirty years he has been on the fringes of academia and most scholars consider him to be a crank. This is partly because his sins or errors are not ones of omission – towards which academia is extremely lenient – but of commission, which are considered irredeemably heinous. Moreover, his attempts to demonstrate the existence of Phoenician or even early Jewish influence on America are so far from conventional wisdom as to make him appear ludicrous. This means that all his original work can be, and has been, brushed aside with contempt."

"There is no way to sort-of compartmentalise human liberty into "okay, I have social liberty and I have economic freedom." No, they're the same thing. You have— If you don't have economic freedom, you don't have personal liberty, and vice versa, if you don't have personal liberty, you don't have economic freedom, either."

"If everyone could maybe please put aside the hate for a bit and pitch in to help, that would be great."

"It was an honor to visit with President Donald Trump. He was friendly, remarkably kind, and incredibly generous with his time."

"Today we remember the 13 service members that tragically lost their lives in Afghanistan. We will never forget their service to our nation. Please continue to keep their families in your prayers."

"So a federal government agency convinced a private company to shadow ban a story which turned out to be true and had massive implications on a presidential election. This is borderline fascism and should worry everyone."

"Thanks to @DDPYoga and low carbs for making 55 look (and feel) this good!"

"Along with 54 other Tennessee county mayors and executives, I signed a letter to @GovBillLee @ltgovmcnally @CSexton25 @TNattygen with concerns about @POTUS 's overreach and encouraging them to continue to protect the rights of Tennesseans to make our own health care decisions."

"Mr. President, if we, as elected officials, ignore, disregard, and contravene the laws which bind us, how can we expect our fellow citizens to respect and follow the laws which bind all of us as a society? Finally, as an American, I am appalled by your statement; “This is not about freedom or personal choice.” On the contrary, in America, it is always about freedom."

"Me: The sky is blue. Twitter: No, it's not. Also Twitter: Trump said the sky is blue. He's lying. More Twitter: Sometimes the sky is red. Why do you hate red sky? Even More Twitter: You're stupid because you think the sky is blue. Yet More Twitter: Republicans say the sky is blue. The sky must be a different color. It doesn't matter what color. It just isn't blue. Additional Twitter: Technically, the sky only appears blue due to the atmosphere's charged particles oscillating and scattering the sunlight passing through it. Blue is scattered more than other colors. Hence, the sky's blue hue. Translation: You don't understand science... ...and you're stupid. Have a great day, everyone!"

"The problem when you have someone on the hard left or the hard right is they will have to move back to the center in the general election, and I don’t know that Warren can do that as well as Biden could"

"The Republican Party stands for individual liberty [and] free markets; its the party of growth, its the part of economic opportunity, those are things that benefit everyone. That's how we need to grow this party, by ensuring that those are the ideas that we are spreading."

"What happens if that big red wall is ever breached? If it is, our state and our country will fundamentally change and we can never, ever let that happen. The Republican Party must remain a bulwark against European democratic socialism which unfortunately the Democratic Party has become. In order top do that we have to grow our party, and we have to grow it among young people and among minorities, we have to become more inclusive, but what I mean by that is we do not abandon our ideas, we need to stand even more firm."

"I'd also like to thank my Democratic opponent, Linda Haney. We all know that a Democrat is gonna have a struggle in a countywide race in Knox County, but she did step up to the plate and she put fourth a good effort, and I think that is admirable. Democracy works when everyone has a voice and we can hear everyone's ideas."

"For me, what are you trying to accomplish? You go out and show the world you’re extremely angry? Guess what, sunshine? No one cares. If you want to do something constructive, get out of your echo chamber, get off Facebook and social media where everybody is talking about the same thing you agree with. Stop denigrating and screaming at people you don’t agree with, and go talk with your neighbor who maybe voted for Donald Trump. What you’ll find is they’re not a homophone racist bigot. What they are is generally a common, hard-working decent person who is fed up with a permanent Washington political overclass. They're tired of people in Washington not looking out for their interests."

"I think libertarianism does appeal to most people because that's how we lead our lives until the state gets involved. We lead our lives in voluntary interactions with other folks, and we follow what libertarians call the nonaggression axiom which means you're not supposed to initiate force against someone else except, of course, in defence of your own liberty or property. So that's something that's the Golden Rule, and that's something we can all relate to."

"There have been many [libertarian writers who have inspired me]: Milton Friedman, Murray Rothbard—just-just a number of people who have influenced me—Mary Ruwart, Harry Browne who ran for president as a Libertarian a couple times—so there've been a number of people."

"The great thing about libertarianism is [that] it really is the American Dream—it is the ability of everybody to live their life, to build their life, according to what they want so long as you don't hurt anybody else."

"Any tax rate is actually overtaxation."

"The whole idea, the whole premise of taxation needs to be examined. It's based on theft."

"What is it—medieval serfs paid about twenty-five percent of their crops to the estate lord, to the manor lord, and Americans are paying fifty percent in taxes by the time you figure out income tax and then all the various state and local taxes, and, to think we're not, y'know, overtaxed is insane."

"He has made more people realise that they're libertarians perhaps than anyone in history with the Ron Paul Revolution and all of the things that it launched."

"I think nullification would be a very good thing."