Welcome to the last Monday before Christmas and the onset of Koynezaa. We are now into winter in the Northern Hemisphere: it’s Monday, December 22, 2025, and it’s National Date Nut Bread Day, an okay pastry if it’s slathered with cream cheese, comme ça. ChatGPT drew this for me:
It’s a thin day for holidays, the others being Abilities Day and National Cookie Exchange Day.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the December 22 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The U.S. has boarded and apprehended another tanker carrying Venezuelan oil. We’re getting closer and closer to war with Maduro’s country. (And we’re pursuing a third one, hightailing it into the Atlantic Ocean.)
The U.S. Coast Guard stopped and boarded a Panamanian-flagged tanker carrying Venezuelan oil early Saturday, according to a U.S. official and two people inside Venezuela’s oil industry.
All three spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. The boarding represents the United States’ second action this month against a tanker carrying Venezuelan crude oil to Asia, escalating President Trump’s pressure campaign against the Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. Mr. Trump has accused Mr. Maduro of flooding the United States with fentanyl and of stealing oil from American companies, without providing evidence.
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump had announced “a total and complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers going into and out of Venezuela.”
But the vessel boarded on Saturday, called the Centuries, is not on a list of entities under U.S. sanctions that is publicly maintained by the Treasury Department. The people inside Venezuela’s oil industry said the cargo belongs to an established China-based oil trader with a history of taking Venezuelan crude oil to Chinese refineries.
The ship had recently left Venezuela and was in Caribbean waters.
Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, said in a post on X Saturday afternoon that the Coast Guard had “apprehended” a tanker that had been docked in Venezuela.
, , , , It was unclear how long the United States intended to detain the Centuries. The U.S. official who confirmed the boarding of the ship said that American authorities did not have a seizure warrant to take possession of it, as they did when they seized another tanker earlier this month that was carrying Venezuelan oil.
The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
The Venezuelan government said in a statement that the country “denounces and categorically rejects the theft and hijacking of another private vessel transporting Venezuelan oil, as well as the forced disappearance of its crew.”
The Centuries had loaded between 1.8 million and two million barrels of Merey-16 crude oil at the José Terminal in Venezuela between Dec. 7 and Dec. 11, according to data analyzed by TankerTrackers.com and Kpler, two companies that monitor global shipping. The voyage was the vessel’s seventh export of Venezuelan oil since 2020.
So I guess in this case the U.S. gets the oil (where does it go?) but the ship, flying the Panamanian flag, presumably has to go back to Panama. Since there’s no way to move large amounts of oil except by ship, a blockade will surely be a severe blow to Venezuela. Unless this kind of action turns out to be illegal, at some point Maduro will have to cry “uncle”.
*Trump has secured six countries to join his “Board of Peace” aimed a rebuilding Gaza and securing a decent leadership for the territory. However, this doesn’t mean that these things will happen.
The US is telling interlocutors that it has secured commitments from Egypt, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, Italy and Germany to have their leaders join US President Donald Trump on the Board of Peace that will oversee the postwar management of Gaza, four officials familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel.
Commitments from six countries — including prominent stakeholders in the Mideast and Europe — offer critical international buy-in to the Trump administration’s efforts to advance its Gaza peace plan out of the initial ceasefire phase.
However, willingness to sit on the Board of Peace does not mean further support from each country is guaranteed, according to a US official, an Israeli official and two Arab diplomats who spoke to The Times of Israel for this story on condition of anonymity.
Still, the US is hoping that broad, prominent membership in the Board of Peace will boost the initiative’s international legitimacy and increase the likelihood that countries will be willing to contribute funds, troops or other forms of support.
Accordingly, the US is aiming for roughly half a dozen more leaders to join the panel headed by Trump, including Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Here are points 9 and 10 from Trump’s 20-point peace plan:
9. Gaza will be governed under the temporary transitional governance of a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee, responsible for delivering the day-to-day running of public services and municipalities for the people in Gaza. This committee will be made up of qualified Palestinians and international experts, with oversight and supervision by a new international transitional body, the “Board of Peace,” which will be headed and chaired by President Donald J. Trump, with other members and heads of state to be announced, including Former Prime Minister Tony Blair. This body will set the framework and handle the funding for the redevelopment of Gaza until such time as the Palestinian Authority has completed its reform programme, as outlined in various proposals, including President Trump’s peace plan in 2020 and the Saudi-French proposal, and can securely and effectively take back control of Gaza. This body will call on best international standards to create modern and efficient governance that serves the people of Gaza and is conducive to attracting investment.
10. A Trump economic development plan to rebuild and energise Gaza will be created by convening a panel of experts who have helped birth some of the thriving modern miracle cities in the Middle East. Many thoughtful investment proposals and exciting development ideas have been crafted by well-meaning international groups, and will be considered to synthesize the security and governance frameworks to attract and facilitate these investments that will create jobs, opportunity, and hope for future Gaza.
But of course requirement #6 (below) hasn’t happened yet, and that has to be done before Gaza is rebuilt and gets a new government:
6. Once all hostages are returned, Hamas members who commit to peaceful co-existence and to decommission their weapons will be given amnesty. Members of Hamas who wish to leave Gaza will be provided safe passage to receiving countries.
So the plan calls for this “board of peace” to apparently create a Palestinian/international committee to run the Gaza Strip and then begin reconstruction in consort with another “panel of experts”. So we’re a long way away from fulfilling the peace agreement. Right now the main impediment is Hamas’s unwillingness to lay down its arms and disband, and until that’s done I can’t see another group running Gaza, even if it is appointed by the “Board of Peace.”
*The Muslim man who did the heroic act of disarming one of the shooters who killed Jews at Bondi Beach in Australia is being demonized as a “traitor” in the Arab world (h/t Stacy).
Bondi hero Ahmed Al Ahmed has been labelled a “traitor” in the Arab world for tackling a terrorist gunman and saving the lives of Jews at Bondi.
When the Facebook page for the Palestinian news source Ramallah News posted Mr Ahmed’s story, most of the hundreds of comments were hostile towards his lifesaving actions.
“Treason comes to you from the closest people” and “he sold himself and his life for the safety of the Jews” were among the comments.
“I wish it (the bullet) hit your heart,” one commentator said, while another said “May Allah not heal you”.
Melbourne man Ahron Shapiro, a senior researcher for Palestinian Media Watch who analysed the comments, told The Australian that about 75 per cent of them were negative.
Ramallah News has millions of followers and is one of the most popular Palestinian news sources.
It also posted a news item about the Bondi shooting that drew the ire of hundreds of commentators, who claimed that Israel itself was behind the attack.
It comes after Ahmed Mr Ahmed was handed a cheque of more than $2.5 million for his heroism during the shooting stunned the world.
The southwest Sydney tobacconist owner leapt into action and tackled a longarm rifle from Sajid Akram who was firing indiscriminately at Jewish families on Sunday.
His actions have been praised by locals, politicians and celebrities.
Mr Al Ahmed has since been handed a cheque of $2,533,585 from 43,000 donors.
“I deserve it?” he asks in the video.
“Every penny,” influencer Zachery Dereniowski tells him.
Asked if he could say one thing to all those who donated, Mr Al Ahmed replied, “To stand with each other, all human beings. And forget everything bad, behind the back [in the past] and keep going to save lives.
“When I do save the people, I do it from the heart. Because it was a nice day everyone enjoying, celebrating with their kid, woman, man, teenager, everyone was happy and they deserve to enjoy and it’s their right.
“This country, best country in the world, the best country in the world, but we’re not going to stand and keep watching, enough is enough.
“God protect Australia. Aussie, Aussie Aussie.”
Yes, the man is a hero. Don’t forget as well that two elderly Jews were both killed trying to take down the shooters as well, and some parents died after throwing their bodies atop their children. I hope that heroism is recognized as well. Could some of the opprobrium directed by Muslims at Mr. Al Ahmed come from jealousy of his big check. Seriously, if I were Al Ahmed, I’d be pretty worried about my safety. After all, this is a country with plenty of antisemitism, and he saved Jews.
*In the NYT. Nicholas Kristof interviews Bart Erman about Jesus, asking “What would surprise Jesus about 2025?” Erman, while sensibly rejecting the idea that Jesus was the son of God/God, or was divine in any sense, has nevertheless accepted the fact that the Jesus myth is based on a real person, a view for which we have little evidence. Instead, Erman sees Jesus as an apocalyptic preacher who was subject to a lot of divine embroidery after he was crucified. Erman’s surely more reasonable than those people who buy the Jesus story in its entirety, but I am still not convinced that there was a Jesus figure, nor that, if there was one, his “teachings” as given in the Bible are from that person. A couple Q&As in the exchange. Kristof’s questions are in bold, Erman’s answers in plain text; all text in the article is indented:
You have a new book coming out soon, “Love Thy Stranger,” arguing that Jesus taught a revolutionary message that transformed Western moral thinking. What was that message?
The heart of Jesus’ message is that loving “others” means caring not only for family and friends but even for strangers — whoever is in need, whether we know them or whether they are like us. This kind of altruism was not promoted — or even accepted — in the Greek and Roman worlds that Jesus came out of. But it is a view that completely transformed the thinking and ethical priorities of the Western world down till today.
. . . Speaking of slavery, why did Jesus not condemn slavery? He didn’t seem to have a larger message about broader social justice, did he?
No, he didn’t condemn it, nor did virtually anyone else in antiquity. With respect to Jesus, it’s safe to say he and his followers were far less concerned with institutional injustice than individual suffering.
Many of us have broader views. We tend to urge ethical behavior because we want to make society a better place for the long haul. But for Jesus, there wasn’t going to be a long haul. He preached that the end was coming in his own generation. That created a real urgency for helping those who were suffering, but a relative apathy for institutional reform.
. . .The Gospel of Matthew suggests that those who go to heaven are those who feed the hungry and help the sick. Meanwhile, Bible-thumping members of Congress are trimming food stamps and pushing millions off Medicaid. I struggle to understand that.
I do too. So many people who claim to follow Jesus appear to have no idea what he actually taught. When I was an evangelical, we thought it was important to know what the Bible said and act on it. But today the evangelical movement focuses largely on social agendas not promoted in the Bible while ignoring ethical injunctions the Bible makes repeatedly. Whatever one’s views of abortion today, it is simply wrong to say the Bible opposes it. The Bible never mentions a deliberate attempt to abort a fetus, and the only biblical passages that relate to the question of whether a fetus is to be treated as a living person with human rights indicate the answer is no (e.g., Exodus 21:22-25). What the Bible does stress, page after page, is the need to care for the poor, the outcast, the “other.”
So too with gay rights: People regularly quote Leviticus about how it’s a sin for a man to sleep with a man (Leviticus 18:22). But they then ignore the very next chapter, which explicitly insists that immigrants to your country are to be treated just the same as citizens (Leviticus 19:33-34). Why do people focus on one verse instead of the other? They simply pick what they find useful for their own views.
. . . If Jesus were to time-travel and show up for Christmas 2025, what would surprise him the most?
I don’t think Jesus would recognize Christianity today. The idea that he was a pre-existent divine being who came into the world as a newborn is not found in any of his own teachings in our earliest Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, and I think he would be flabbergasted to hear it.
There’s a lot to chew on here, and a lot to take issue with. First, and I won’t belabor this, is the question of there was a real Jesus person. Second is the unwarranted assumption that the words in the Bible attributed to said Jesus person are his real message. Given that Erman accepts the fact a lot of the New Testament’s (and Jesus’s own words!) are fictional, why are we to believe that? Third, how do we know that the West would be much worse if we didn’t have Christianity? It was not a controlled experiment in which we have a “control” West that came to being without religion. Finally, as Erman admits, people pick and choose among what’s in the Bible, and that includes Jesus’s “teachings.” Jesus did say that there is no way to heaven except through belief in him, that he’d return within the lifetime of people who heard him (didn’t happen) and of course Jesus believed in hell, presumably for those who didn’t believe in his divinity. Remember that all of these “teachings” are from the Gospels written by unknown people, Gospels that sometimes contradict one another. And I’m not convinced that Jesus’s “message” was to love everyone, including those who rejected his message. It seems to me that Jesus’s main message—if you think that the undocumented Jesus Person had one— was to love other Christians.
*Here’s a clickbait-y (for me) headline from the Wall Street Journal: “Charlie Kirk’s Empire is lining up behind a JD Vance Presidential bid.” I haven’t thought much about the Republican candidate for President in 2028, but it does seem likely to be Vance, though right now he doesn’t seem to be building up a resumé to buttress that. But let’s see what the WSJ says:
Before Charlie Kirk was fatally shot, he was readying for JD Vance to become the next president of the United States. Now, Erika Kirk is determined to make that happen.
In her kickoff remarks for Turning Point USA’s first major event since his death, Kirk’s widow told the 31,000 attendees: “We are going to get my husband’s friend JD Vance elected for 48 in the most resounding way possible.”
The vice president will be the closing speaker Sunday at the mega conference held here. Behind the scenes, Turning Point is setting up infrastructure to boost his potential 2028 presidential bid. The conservative group is planning to put representatives in all of Iowa’s 99 counties ahead of the presidential primary. Iowa is an important early state in the presidential nominating process, and Turning Point is already trying to build grassroots support for Vance there, according to Tyler Bowyer, a top executive with the organization and a close friend of the late Kirk.
“Why mess around? Let the Democrats destroy each other in the primary process, while we benefit from the rare luxury of having a candidate that’s so clearly the front-runner,” Bowyer said in an interview backstage at the conference.
Though he hasn’t declared his intent to run for president, Vance, 41 years old, has put himself in position to be President Trump’s successor. The author of the bestselling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” worked in Silicon Valley before becoming an Ohio senator in 2022.
The president has publicly and privately noted that Vance is his likely heir, often citing him along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with whom Vance has a close relationship. Rubio has said he wouldn’t challenge Vance for the nomination.
Adding the full weight of support from Turning Point’s thousands of members, massive media operation and political organizing would give Vance another advantage.
Although I agree with Vance on some things, like his support of Israel and opposition to wokeness, I disagree with him on far more, like his opposition to gay marriage and abortion. I can’t imagine voting for him no matter what Democrat runs for the Presidency, and Turning Point’s support is just one more reason not to favor him. If Democrats would get their act together, I wouldn’t be too worried about Vance, especially given Trump’s plummeting approval ratings. But I’d bet (a small sum of ) money right now that Vance will be the G.O.P.’s next Presidential candidate.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili got no cutlet. Look at that face!!!!
Hili: Nothing lasts forever.
Andrzej: What do you mean?
Hili: That cutlet you finished all by yourself.
In Polish:
Hili: Nic nie jest wieczne.
Ja: Co masz na myśli?
Hili: Ten kotlet, który sam do końca zjadłeś.
*******************
From Things With Faces:
From The Language Nerds: “downpour” in different languages. Is it accurate?:
From CinEmma:
From Masih; a trumped-up charge of spying for israel led to this guy’s execution yesterday morning:
This morning, the Islamic Republic hanged Aqel Keshavarz, architecture student, right after morning prayer.
This is why, For millions of Iranians, “Allahu Akbar” means killing, death, and terror. https://t.co/WREBq80xFL
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) December 20, 2025
Here’s an odious (and presumably Muslim) woman caught on camera blowing out Hanukkah candles on a menorah. And it’s in Tel Aviv! According to the Times of Israel, there’s an investigation:
She blows out the candles, her friend claps, then she returns to blow out the Shamesh which has relit itself, grinning all the time.
Hanukkah is about people trying to blow out our candles (see Maoz Tsur verses that many don’t sing). They’re gone. We’re still here. @HilzFuld https://t.co/joaZfmVsRv
— Deborah E. Lipstadt (@deborahlipstadt) December 19, 2025
The ideologues still won’t accept UK law. Bridget Phillipson is Secretary of State for Education and Minister for Women and Equalities in the UK.
A judge has now accused Bridget Phillipson of trying to rewrite the Supreme Court ruling that sex in the Equality Act means biological sex.
Her barrister argued that letting biological males into women’s toilets and changing rooms does not breach the law. The judge said that… pic.twitter.com/YomDdzHN7n
— Genspect (@genspect) December 20, 2025
From Malcolm; cat paradise!
She is in heaven 🥹 pic.twitter.com/pmcEeFYjaK
— The Cats 𝕏 (@TheCatsX) November 18, 2025
From Luana: This must be from Steve Stewart-Williams’s upcoming book (see also his Substack post here).
People vs. Things: Why Men and Women Choose Different Jobs
“We’re therefore faced with a decision: Should gender equality mean identical outcomes, or identical freedom to follow one’s interests?”
[Link below.] pic.twitter.com/ADicxQtYL3
— Steve Stewart-Williams (@SteveStuWill) December 18, 2025
One I retweeted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
A Dutch Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived at Auschwitz. She was nine years old and would be 91 today had she lived.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-12-22T11:55:33.553Z
And two from Dr. Cobb. First, beautiful rays:
Really big rays swimming in the shallow water at the beach near Clearwater, Florida. These are Spotted Eagle Rays. Although they can sting people like most rays they would rather avoid humans. #nature #amazing #beach #animals #wildlife #ocean #florida
— See Through Canoe (@seethroughcanoe.bsky.social) 2025-12-20T20:10:39.369Z
And global warming:
"how can someone not at least find it interesting watching a whole planet shift geological ages in the blink of an eye?"Hear, hear!
I think that Sal Mercagliano in his “What’s going on with shipping?” you tube videocasts explains some of the law of the sea issues around the ship seizures very well. Sal is a merchant marine academy grad and professor of maritime history at Campbell University. He has experience as a merchant mariner and some officer type ratings. He discusses latest seizure (that Jerry references above) at url
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1EdxzQLjXY
In earlier videos he discusses the “arrest” of the tanker “Skipper” last week and the whole set of issues around ghost fleet ships. His videos are generally short, 15-20 minutes, and over the past year or so I have felt they are really informative and to the point. As a layman, I found the one on the seizure of the Sipper to be particularly informative on law of the sea in these areas.
A little surprised that nobody has commented on the ghost tanker “Skipper” being named after the Alan Hale character on the 1960’s sitcom, Gilligan’s Island. I smile every time I see the name.
Should be a crowd pleaser here at WEIT: I tweeted lately Ginger might be the last cast member standing. Standing a few miles from me now — she lives in the lower East Side!
I’m disinclined to ask her on a date however….. my 1970s dreamboat! 🙂
D.A.
NYC
The M/F demographics are in your favour. What’s to lose? “Faint heart ne’er won fair lady.” (FWIW, I liked it whenever Mary Ann won out over Ginger; also liked when Mary Ann was added to the title song, except for the resulting very poor scansion.)
Thanks for video tip. Excellent discussion. I’ve subscribed.
Yes Jim — it is a smart youtube and I watch it. Often I’ve found the “background data” on conflicts is the most telling. Shipping is a big one in international relations.
As a trader I looked to less obvious metrics to understand the price of various things, weaknesses, liabilities and the like.
In the Ukraine conflict, shipping and Preston Stewart (a smart U.S. veteran) are excellent. The stories behind the stories.
best,
D.A.
NYC
I have been amazed at the number of ships that Sal shows always out on the seas and around harbors…and I have spent all of my life in Hampton Roads, home to the huge Newport News shipyard which built the S.S. United States, numerous subs and carriers; the world’s largest Navy base; and lots of container ship piers. I read about the container innovation in Simon Winchester’s “Atlantic”. But seeing the constant ongoing business of shipping is, as I said, amazing to me.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Art is how we decorate space, music is how we decorate time. -Jean-Michel Basquiat, artist (22 Dec 1960-1988)
Too many in the West still think of religions as being good things. Hence, they think, since Islam is a religion, it must be benign, and any bad stuff must be a perversion of that religion.
This is wrong, Islam — mainstream Islam — is a disasterously backward and harmful ideology, and for Western countries to import millions of Muslims is utterly reckless and dumb. It gains the West nothing while causing tensions that will last for hundreds of years.
None of that is to deny that plenty of Muslims, such as Mr Al Ahmed, are good people. That’s the case with any bad ideology: of the supporters of Stalin’s or Mao’s communism, or even the 8 million members of the Nazi party at its peak, large swathes would be good people led astray by a harmful ideology.
Hard to disagree with this take.
+1 again Mr. Coel.
I have a whole column devoted to this idea. 🙂
I think people just put the nearest available stamp on incoming data, if you will.
So… Islam is “just like Christianity but Arabic” and (here’s the rub) a “religion of peace” they’re told. Incorrectly.
D.A.
NYC
Indeed, to call the Religion of War a “religion of peace” must be the ultimate in Orwellian doublespeak.
” … the day-to-day running of public services and municipalities for the people in Gaza.”
First set up a new nation with a secular state. Guarantee individual rights, private property, and free speech, but no mention of religion or gods in its constitution.
Good luck with that!
Attempting to interpret or reconcile the gospels always strikes me as an inherently futile and foolish effort, akin to trying to discern whether Santa Claus ever read Moby Dick.
Bart Ehrman believes that Jesus really had 12 disciples that followed him around Galilee. He also believes that the author of the gospel of John is independent of the Synoptics, and that Paul had an experience and became a sincere believer. Really?
Almost invariably, when Bible-believers (or former believers like Bart Ehrman) study the gospels to learn the true nature of Jesus, they can easily find whatever confirms their preconceptions. That’s because the gospels, written decades or possibly a century after the events they describe, represent clashing perspectives and contain countless contradictions. For example, it’s funny that Bart Ehrman says “I don’t think Jesus would recognize Christianity today. The idea that he was a pre-existent divine being who came into the world as a newborn is not found in any of his own teachings in our earliest Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, and I think he would be flabbergasted to hear it.”, when that’s exactly what the gospel of John says! (Except for entering the world as a newborn — John is quite clear that Jesus was a divine being that first appeared in Earth as a grown man, with no indication of ever having been a child.)
The fact is that there never was, is, or ever shall be one complete, coherent teaching of Jesus, if there ever even was such a person to begin with. If you’re looking for Jesus the bringer of a message of peace, or Jesus the violent revolutionary, or Jesus the proto-feminist or the endorser of slavery or the nutjob predicting the imminent end of the world, you’ll find him in the gospels!
“For example, it’s funny that Bart Ehrman says ‘I don’t think Jesus would recognize Christianity today. The idea that he was a pre-existent divine being who came into the world as a newborn is not found in any of his own teachings in our earliest Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, and I think he would be flabbergasted to hear it.’, when that’s exactly what the gospel of John says!
Ehrman is well-aware of what the gospel of John says. However, given it’s belated authorship and its wildly different claims from those in the synoptic gospels, he just doesn’t believe (and rightly so) that John is at all historical with respect to what Jesus supposedly said with respect to his own divinity. This is why Ehrman maintains that Jesus would be shocked by the Christian claim (AND the claims in John) that Jesus was divine.
“that’s exactly what the gospel of John says”
But that’s why Ehrman doesn’t mention John here. I’ve read some Biblical criticism (written for laypeople) including some Ehrman; I find it fascinating. It’s been a while, but from memory:
John was written later than the other three gospels. And notice that Ehrman specifies “our earliest gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke” — presumably the earliest copies we have of Matthew and Luke don’t contain birth stories (and notice that the later versions of those two gospels tell two different, and incompatible, birth stories. Were Mary and Joseph fleeing Herod’s persecution, or were they going to Bethlehem to pay their taxes? Equally unlikely stories!)* Meanwhile, Mark is widely agreed to be the earliest gospel, and Mark doesn’t mention the birth of Jesus at all.
There are clear signs that both Matthew and Luke had access to Mark and borrowed some stories from that text. Those three gospels tell much the same story (barring the birth stories, which were added later) that’s why you’ll sometimes see them called “the synoptic gospels”. John is very different, in style, content, and theology.
It’s considerations like these that Biblical critics use to try and figure out composition history, authorial intent, what was most likely going on historically, etc. — same as with any ancient text.
*Presumably both authors wanted to convince Jews that Jesus was the (or a?) Messiah, by making him be born in Bethlehem despite the fact that he was almost certainly from Nazareth.** There were Old Testament prophecies that the Messiah would be born there. This sort of thing is why I believe Ehrman is right that there WAS a historical Jesus. Enough was known about his real life that later redactors had to work to make him look like a God-Man.
There’s some really primitive stuff in Mark. If I recall correctly, in Mark Jesus refers to his mother only as “Woman”. Surely not the way a nice Jewish boy would address his mother if they were on good terms!
** https://ehrmanblog.org/did-jesus-actually-come-from-nazareth/
Re Saul of Tarsus, AIUI there is pretty good documentation that his epistles did exist, some evidence that the author of Acts did indeed have eyewitness sources for at least some of Paul’s narrative, and solid textual evidence that identifies the pseudo-Pauline scriptures.
IIRC, Paul’s writings never assert that J.C. was ever a physical being. His Damascus road experience is a plausible hallucination (which some speculate resulted from temporal-lobe epilepsy). All up, I find him to be the most plausible of all the alleged Apostles.
On men and women among the professions: How about a preference for working with animals? Does that go in Things, or is it counted as closer to People?
People. Women are 68% of veterinarians in the US and have been the majority since 2009. I have seen claims that they make up more than 80% of the veterinarian student population. This suggests it is mostly about interest, but a contributor could be a male propensity to be, let’s say, a bit less conscientious about undergraduate grades.
Social media would suggest that kitten and puppy dog videos are the new baby pics for the increasingly childless West.
https://www.avma.org/resources-tools/reports-statistics/market-research-statistics-us-veterinarians
From 30 years of being robbed by vets, I think those numbers are accurate.
12 years of cat extortion, 15 years of dog doctor piracy. But whatcha gonna do?
MOST of my vets have been female.
And there’s surely a “substitution” factor, Doug. I am a middle aged man who pushes his limited mobility 15 year old dog around Manhattan in a pet stroller.
No kidding. So sue me already! 🙂
Years ago I read a study about (MRI) brain chem in people looking at pictures of their pets.. OR… their children, respectively. Identical.
Amusingly, I note in (South) Korea pet strollers recently outsold human baby strollers. Korea is at the sharp end of population decline.
best regards,
D.A.
NYC
Weird, I had a cat for 18 years (1993-2011) in Canada and have had a dog for 5 years now in Australia and almost every single veterinarian I saw has been male. The only exception was when I took my dog to the emergency clinic a couple of years ago, when the vet on duty was a woman.
With absolutely no data and only anecdotes, I will here claim that females dominate in the professions that work with animals. The staff and volunteers at pet shelters are overwhelmingly female. This is true for every pet shelter that I have been in. There are a couple tv shows about the behind-the-scenes drama at zoos. Save for a few males here and there, the staff is otherwise female.
Adding another anecdote, I would opine that Dr. Pol is the exception that proves the rule. He’s a man, obviously, but his expertise is farm animals. These (wonderful creatures) are sources of products, so in the big, bad world are as much “things” as they are animate beings. Even Dr. Pol exemplifies the general pattern.
If you watch the video of the woman with five cats, you can see her putting the first one on her lap, cuddling it, wiggling it, and playing pat-a-cake. My first thought on seeing that was “this woman needs a baby.”
Pets are baby substitutes. Or in some cases, an addition to babies & kids.
Noting you bio pic there, F.K.
I don’t know how people do pets and kids at the same time. It seems like a horrendous workload.
My little guy – who “identifies as a cat” to get in WEIT’s Coyyenza Hall of Fame but is, (don’t tell the boss) is a dog – takes up a LOT of my time.
I’m told human young are even more demanding!
D.A.
NYC
“Yes I have no kids. And if my genes don’t like it they can jump in the lake.”
– S.A. Pinker
My sister is an extreme case: four children and a house full of cats and dogs! 🐕 🐈
“What has posterity ever done for me?” (Groucho Marx)
Pinker should amend his statement to include economists.
I grew up with cats and dogs, so in my family they were an addition rather than a substitute.
I became skeptical of global warming/climate change after the Battle in Seattle, when all the demands for change somehow coincidentally were the regular list of Progressive demands. To my mind “climate change” was the first big lie of the 21st century, pushed by the liberal pols and MSM. A phoney crisis to justify radical change. I think the evidence for it iis largely bunk, like that supporting transgenderism.
Yeah, kinda like that whole “the Earth is round” hoax. More progressive nonsense.
The evidence for anthropogenic global warming is overwhelming.
Public warnings about this trend began long before any whiff of far-left activism.
The claim for global warming is the consensus of high thousands of researchers over decades, young and old practitioners alike.
No Big Lie conspiracy exists, since human nature being what it is there would be quite a few who would break with the Illuminati-level secret indoctrination meetings in order to spill the tea.
Dr B:
Do you accept that carbon dioxide and methane molecules absorb infrared wavelengths?
Do you accept that the concentration of these two gases in the atmosphere is increasing?
If yes to both, then how could an enhanced greenhouse efffect NOT be happening?
Motivated reasoning and outright denial. Not a good combination, Dr.
The evidence that human-caused release of CO2 is causing global warming is pretty much beyond reasonable doubt at this point.
However, what effect that will have on Earth’s climate, what effect it’ll have on things like global food production, and what mitigation it is sensible to undertake, are all a lot less certain and one can indeed reasonably disagree with a lot of the activist rhetoric on those matters.
I agree completely. As I pointed out on WEIT a few weeks ago, the local symptoms of the undoubted warming where I live are best accounted for by an increase in the minimum daily temperatures: not necessarily a bad thing and definitely not the “world on fire” rubbish.
Climate-change pronouncements are like land acknowledgements. Some people are entirely sincere about them. Others scoff at them and think them dangerous. Yet no one, except a few true believers with that thousand yard stare, actually wants to make the hard choices to emit enough less CO2 and methane from his own consumption patterns to make any difference to the earth’s climate. Just as hardly anyone making a land acknowledgement has any intention of giving back his own land. (It’s true that climate change and land acknowledgements are leftist-progressive coded. Those folks don’t actually have any land to give back, or any cars to stop driving and they don’t pay the income taxes it takes to subsidize green energy and aboriginal aspirations, so they bear no personal consequences should what they call for ever come to pass.)
As to the rejoinder, “But don’t you care about the world your great-grandchildren will inherit?” the short answer is No, and neither do you, from your revealed preferences. The long answer is that most of my great-grandchildren’s generation will be born to people who are currently living in Somalia and Nigeria. Social cohesion? Feh.
If we could all agree that we are all making this collective shrug even though some of us wish we would could make others “do better”, then we could all get along in harmony.
Top notch Leslie. Yes.
It is unfortunate that the climate issue has become so far left coded, a moral panic, bc the science is real that there’s climate…. change. As there has always been. But the “we did (white men for some reason….) it so we must somehow impoverish the planet to reverse it” is bonkers.
The worst moral panics are often born from some truth but then the manias make it impossible to ask: “Is this a good thing/bad thing?” “What are the tradeoffs?” etc. Because by that point there are marches and Swedish truant moppets and the UN.
Plus… given where I worked, in VC and trading, I have ….deep …. contempt for “predictions” and the moral certainty they engender in activists.
D.A.
NYC
“[W]e are all making this collective shrug even though some of us wish we would could make others ‘do better’.”
Thanks Leslie. I agree with the commenters upthread that the data and the models lead to accurate predictions about how the climate will change, but not about what individuals and governments should do in response.
In my work I’m embedded with hundreds of people who want me to “do better”, and their exhortations inevitable rub off on me. So I still react instinctively to things like that Total Greenhouse Gas Forcing graphic with a “do something” feeling. But when I stop to think about it everyone is in their actions making that collective shrug. So I try not to blame them for badgering me, and I try not to blame myself for wanting to live in comfort. Very much like the land-back discourse.
Not so. Land acknowledgements are woke virtue signalling. Climate change is real and dangerous. Just because some woke point that out doesn’t mean that it is wrong, any more than Trump being against castrating minors means that it’s right. And there are many people who do a substantial amount do do their part.
Like what?
“Um….recycling…?” would be the modal response in Canada. (A diesel powered truck comes to the ends of our driveways to collect the yoghurt tubs for us before eventually taking it to the same landfill everything else goes to.)
Many people do take public transit to work, and some even ride their bicycles. They can say they are doing their part, but in most cases it is something they would do anyway, because better or cheaper for their particular circumstances.
Land acknowledgements are very real and sacred to aboriginal people in Canada. They provide a cultural milieu where anyone who pushes back against any concrete aboriginal demand, including to have the actual land back, is considered hateful, ignorant, “disrepectful”, of course racist, and hostile to reconciliation, which is becoming a thought-crime.
Like what? I have commuted solely by bicycle since 1993 and have not owned a car since 95.
You derided us upthread by saying we don’t care (you used the editorial ‘you’) anymore than you and you can tell that by our choices. I chose to live that way, mostly because I love riding my bicycle, TBH. But also because when it comes time for my carbon to return to whence it came, I will have left a smaller footprint than most.
Go ahead, sneer at that. I’m used to it and I don’t care.
It is the mutha of all collective-action problems — apparently insoluble, and surely fatal for some (many?) people alive today.
What you or I do individually has exactly zero detectable effect, notwithstanding ideology, wishful thinking, alleged “butterfly effects”, etc. And what any nation or bloc does might have a detectable effect, but a marginal one.
Even most of the plausible collective actions will not substantially mitigate the problem. The current boasts of “net zero” greenhouse-gas emissions are largely fraudulent, since most of the alleged offsets are purely performative. But, in some alternate universe where we do somehow manage to reduce actual emissions to zero, and thereby mitigate the problem for the long term, it’s a very long term indeed. With the CO₂ in the atmosphere today it will take several human generations to get back down to the +1.5℃ officially tolerable warming. We and all our living relatives won’t see it.
So if in desperation we somehow do manage to act collectively, we’re left with currently-implausible actions: geo-engineering, atmospheric carbon capture, emigration to Mars, etc. Maybe these or something similar will work out. It will definitely be a golden age for snake-oil salespeople.
(Please, someone accuse me of being a loony doomsayer. It’ll be an opportunity to post some more about sampling bias.)
Nope. We are doomed. Of course there will no collective action for all the reasons you and other cite. We are never going to willingly stop putting carbon in the atmosphere. Or even reduce what we put up there. Only when we start to run out will that happen (and thats when the wars will commence). We can only hope to mitigate the damage and expand on the improvements that climate change will bring.
I’m not optimistic because it’ll likely involve the forced movement of millions, and we all know how much we humans delight in having millions of new neighbors. The wars are going to be horrific.
You’re an optimist 🙂. I expect that unprecedented migrations and wars will happen much sooner than the running low of cheap fossil fuels. Well before then various regions will run low on potable water (for drinking, agriculture, hydroelectricity, …). It’s already starting (Tehran, Sahel, Lake Meade, …), and the excrement will dramatically hit the impeller when the Himalayan glacial meltwater becomes insufficient for India + Pakistan + ….
Once again you give you standard seach. I think that there is a reasonable chance that I will be seriously affected by climate change in my lifetime and it is something that I don’t want my children to fight from a disadvantage.
Can you safeguard your children, if any exist, from the ramifications? Maybe… but it’s far from certain. Hope you consumption is worth the risk.
That is the sad part. The left grabbed climate change as an issue since the business right saw their profits endangered. Now it is lumped together with idiotic woke agendas and bashing concern about climate change is a right wing virtue signal.
Fighting climate change is inherently conservative. It is fighting a change after all and conserving what we have. Even nationalists should want it since it is a way to reduce migration and the upheaval that comes with it. It is also a way to slow growth in developing countries, maintaining the lead of the West. All for the small, small price of giving a damn and buying less senseless crap.
Regarding the question of Jesus’ existence as a nondivine historical figure: my impression is that the vast majority of scholars accept Jesus as a historical figure. (I understand that there are exceptions.)
One might try to establish the (possibly personal) criteria by which we question the existence of Jesus and apply the same criteria to evaluate the historicity of other figures.
For example, what would be the results if we apply those same criteria to other ancients like Romulus, Homer, Thales, Socrates, and others?
But it is not so simple. Is the historicity of Socrates as important to people as the historicity of Jesus? Perhaps not. This difference might have influenced those who wrote about ancient people.
Perhaps we should limit the class to characters of importance to religion. How about Abraham or Moses or anyone else of similar distinction?
I have not had a problem in accepting that the biblical Jesus is based on a real person. But if we happen upon great evidence to the contrary, I will not be disappointed. Not even surprised. But then I would be comfortable with the nonexistence of Socrates or Thales or Homer.
The question “Did Jesus exist?” needs a lot of clarification to be meaningful. Consider the following questions:
Q1: Did there exist anybody named Yeshua in Nazareth in the first half of the first century AD.
A: Yes, of course. Yeshua was a common name. That is like asking “Does there at present exist in the city of Philadelphia a person named John?” We know the answer is yes without doing any research.
Q2: Did there exist someone named Yeshua who grew up in Nazareth who became a preacher?
A: Yes. The region was infested with religious fanatics and preachers of all kinds. It is like asking “Does there exist a Priest in Philadelphia named John?” The answer is, of course, still clearly yes.
Q3: Did there exist a Nazarene dude named Yeshua who became a preacher who preached ideas similar to the gospel accounts of Jesus’ teachings?
A: Likely enough, but the more conditions we add, the less likely is the affirmative answer.
Q4: Did there exist a Nazarene dude named Yeshua who preached ideas similar to those ascribed to Jesus and who also was born of a virgin, walked on water, fed a multitude with two fish and five loaves, and rose from the dead?
A: No, of course not.
My point is that we must first decide just how closely the life of a Nazarene named Yeshua must resemble the fictionalized persona of Jesus before it makes sense to say “Yes, that was the historical Jesus.”
I suggest that you’re not asking the right questions. The better questions are:
Did Paul (almost certainly the earliest Christian whose writings we have) think of Jesus as a recently-lived human being who had lived among members of the community that he joined, or did he think of Jesus as a divine being in heaven, known about from scripture (the OT) and possibly from visions?
Did “Mark” (likely the writer of the first gospel, though we have no idea who he was) think that he was writing about a recently-lived human and reporting stories derived from those who had met him, or was “Mark” writing a theological allegory, constructed out of scripture and theological teachings, some time around AD 80, as a reflection on the destruction of the Jewish temple?
The thesis of those who argue that Jesus was not a real person is that Paul (and possibly “Mark” also) did not even think about Jesus as being a recently-lived human, but only as a divine being.
Does Paul say that he met anyone who had anything to do with Jesus? A brother, a sister, friend, or acquaintance? Or anyone who had seen him before his demise? If he is the earliest Christian who wrote anything about Jesus, I would think he had a good chance of meeting someone who knew Jesus, if the chap ever existed of course.
Paul writes that he visited with Peter and James: “Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and abode with him fifteen days. But other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord’s brother.” (Galatians 1:18-19; KJV)
Paul also uses the same Greek word for “brother” a few sentences earlier where everyone agrees that he meant “fellow Christian”. Paul shows no awareness of Peter or James having met Jesus, and openly disputes their authority, which makes no sense if they had spent years living with Jesus. He also explicitly says that he obtained none of his teachings from other Christians (which makes no sense if the sect was buzzing with stories of Jesus by people who had recently lived with him, but does make sense if all there was was scripture).
Another good question is: “Why aren’t the 23 books of the NT that are not gospels full of stories about Jesus, his mother, his siblings, and the 12 disciples?”.
Bart Ehrman clearly believes that Paul spoke of meeting Jesus’ actual brother. But to Coel’s point about the Greek word used: how can I as a non-expert possible assess the evidence for Jesus’ historical existence when key questions can hang on the correct translation of a New Testament Greek work?
The problem with relying on the experts (I’ll restrain myself from adding scare quotes) is that the great majority are hard-core Christians — after all, not many atheists would devote a career to the study of Jesus! Many generalists, and historians with other specialties, do indeed defer to the “consensus” (there, I used them) of the specialists, but there are deep cracks in the edifice! To make a very long story short, it turns out that there isn’t a shred of historical evidence that an individual human being was at the root of the Christian religion, and loads of evidence to the contrary. All we have to go on are the writings of the inventors of the new religion, as handed down to us by way of centuries of editors and redactors, and the earliest ones (that is, closest in time to the actual events) portray Jesus as some kind of angelic being that had never been seen or heard on earth, and only revealed himself in visions or inspired reading of the Old Testament, unknown to humankind until after his death, that having taken place at some remote time in some otherwordly place. That’s a very weak foundation for any claims about an actual human being.
Bart Ehrman wrote a book “Did Jesus Exist?” to respond to the arguments of people who believe that Jesus was a myth.
It’s true that Ehrman began his studies because he was a believing evangelical, but, ironically, lost his faith precisely because of what he learned in his historical studies of the early Christian era. He is now an atheist.* That’s a sign that his beliefs follow the evidence, and not the other way around. And so, when he argues that the evidence favors the existence of Jesus (not the part about the miracles), I find him credible.
(* To be strictly accurate, Ehrman calls himself agnostic, on the grounds that, even though he has ceased to believe in God, he doesn’t know that God doesn’t exist. I used to call myself agnostic for the same reason. But then I realized that being ‘agnostic’ about the existence of an omnipotent supernatural deity is as senseless as being ‘agnostic’ about the existence of fairies or elves or demons. If I can be confident that none of the latter exist – and I am – I can be at least as confident that gods don’t exist. And so I’m an atheist.)
Given the wide acclaim accorded to Ahmed Al Ahmed for demonstrating the best of humanity in his selfless and heroic act on Bondi Beach, I was not expecting to read that he also has critics. But of course there he does, a lot of them, in all the usual places.
Oh, and one more thing. The Jews are responsible: https://palwatch.org/page/41768.
Yes Norm. In 1970s/80s multicultural Australia my best childhood mates were from Iran, Egypt and Lebanon. Lots of Chinese, Greek and Viets in my classes.
I thought my country did that kinda well and I note Mr. Ahmed is about my age.
Perhaps a difference now is in those days people were fleeing, respectively, the Islamic Revolution, Egyptian poverty and the Lebanese civil war (a gift of the Palestinian people to the lucky folks of Lebanon). Now…. not so much.
Subsequently… people more of the shooters’ “team” have arrived in Australia.
all the best Norm,
D.A.
NYC
(formerly Melbourne)
I’m not sure how much Vance supports Israel. He seems to me a chameleon who will change his stance if it brings him what he wants. He does remain a close friend of Tucker Carlson and did not denounce his antiSemitism.
https://www.jns.org/sorry-jd-antisemitism-and-not-liking-israel-arent-that-different/
J.D. Vance is hard to read. I’d need to see, hear, and read a lot more to get a handle on him. He’s seems to be good at reading the room, so he may indeed be a bit of a chameleon and hard to pin down.
I came in the news. English rock and blues singer Chris ReEa died today at the age of 74. RIP!
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c0q5g3v02qjt
It is raining:
pipe steals (pijpestelen; Dutch, from 16th/17th century models of pipes)
Stick a hose in a car exhust feed into the car with the windows up turn the ignition and see how long you last… breathing clean air regardless of what’s flying around, pollen, dust, naturally occuring pollutants, e.g. volcanic activity, has to be a net good for a hairless ape and fellow creatures.
Global warming may be the catch cry but clean air like sanitation, clean water, will be the overall benefit if renewable energy is persued and dominates fossil fuels.
I care less about the fossil argument now that renewable sources have arrived, support development, research and production.
So apart from petroheads… and I know a few, phase out the fossil dependency, less of one a lot more of the other.
This makes sense possibly only to me.
Antisemitism in Australia is vastly exaggerated (by the media).
If you exclude the extremist Muslims, maybe it is.
Question is, “Can you?”
Re Bridget Phillipson, Labour’s UK Minister for Women and Equalities, and her blatant attempt to circumvent the clear meaning and purpose of the law by claiming it doesn’t apply because it doesn’t explicitly mention the specific action (or inaction) that she is taking —
1. Reminds me of a similar chancer with a very different political orientation.
2. Highlights a serious problem with the view that some specific action in a specific situation is not illegal until the courts specifically say so (after all appeals).
Two old jokes:
“It’s raining cats and dogs outside – I just stepped in a poodle.”
An air-freighter carrying car-parts exploded in mid-air, and people below thought it was raining datsun cogs.
Very good!
Re female : male :: people : things —
1. WTF is a Mediamatician ??
2. I’m not impressed with any wider conclusions based on just “the number of apprenticeship contracts in an occupation in the canton of Bern as of August 2014.”
3. WTF is an apprentice information technologist? In my (admittedly non-Swiss) IT career I never encountered such a category.
4. What are the units of that purported “things versus people” scale” Maybe the size of the hats they pulled the data from?
5. Where is the alleged “[Link below]”?
Harrumph.
“It seems to me that Jesus’s main message—if you think that the undocumented Jesus Person had one— was to love other Christians.”
In the gospel of Luke, the story of the Good Samaritan is an exhortation to love everyone. The Samaritans were considered enemies of the Jews. Told to “love thy neighbor as thyself,” an “expert in the law” asked “Who is my neighbor?”
The story goes:
*In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’
“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”
The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”
Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”*
🎯
Not to mention “Love your enemies” and people who assault or rob you. And he, a holy person, actually talked with women, not the done thing. Or maybe he had a DEI quota.
Maybe the Jesus stories tell us not to take all the Old Testament laws too seriously. One of the absurd New Testament quirks is that Matthew 1v6 says Jesus couldn’t have been born without his ancestor King Solomon being born from the union of King David and Bathsheba who had been married to Uriah. David and Bathsheba made love while Uriah was fighting with the army. When Bathsheba discovered she was pregnant David had Uriah sent to the front line where he would probably be killed in battle. You could imagine Uriah would pray for God’s protection. In this instance God was like, “Nope, you have to die so that Jesus can be born one day as a descendant of Bathsheba. ” After Uriah’s death the prophet Nathan speaks to King David and could have said “look i could have you and Bathsheba stoned to death for adultery but luckily for you God is going to bless you and Bathsheba with a son called King Solomon whose descendant will be baby Jesus, saviour of the elect few. That is the good news but the bad news is that God is now going to use his rarely used ability of terminating people to kill your first child with Bathsheba but i can not explain to you why God didn’t terminate the pregnancy before you resorted to sending Uriah to almost certain death except that then you wouldn’t be free to marry Bathsheba. The Lord works in mysterious ways. Maybe we should have a no fault divorce clause to spare people going to these extreme acts ?”
Jesus isn’t made to enlighten us about these OT stories or be at all critical of them but it can be set in contrast to his saying about not one dot or iota of the law will be removed.
The Bible is a book at war with itself.
See stories in 2 Samuel ch 11&12
See Youtube “Miserere mei, Deus – Allegri “- Tenebrae conducted by Nigel Short which is a version of Psalm 50 which is supposed to be David’s cry of angst / ,mixed feelings after sleeping with Bathsheba.