Twice in the past week I’ve tacked right or left on my book. Yesterday I thought of a new front cover and a week earlier I reconsidered my table of contents organization. This will not really change what I’ve written over the past twenty years or the last twenty days. Its more like the mysterious development of a caterpillar in a chrysalis as it transforms into a winged insect. I wish I could guarantee pretty wings.
Yesterday, in addition to the possible new book cover, I began researching some method of setting up an accompanying campaign webpage. Starting in 1999 I used Microsoft’s Frontpage 95 to do it. It didn’t not require knowing HTML code but operated like the early Apple MacIntosh that let you do things like children playing with blocks. I upgraded that software to Frontpage 98 then 2000 then 2003 the last of which was different enough that it was a pain in the butt to work with. After that Microsoft gave up on the App and in time something called extensions stopped being supported by anyone as my web page grew more antique. I haven’t tried to add anything to keep it up to date for three years. Even that was minimal. I was only adding pictures of new snow sculptures and new books read but that was it. I called up my web host and asked them to update some things. One such change was making my site compliant with Google which was showing both this blog and my old website as being insecure.
What that meant practically was that if visitors stored their credit card numbers on either site it could be compromised. I don’t do such a thing so the danger was minimal but it was enough that schools wouldn’t let students peruse my pages. Well I changed that on both sites and this morning I see that hardly anyone has visited Lincolndemocrat today. Hmmmm!
I got a kick out of “Ben” the support tech looking through my antique snowbizz.com page because he was getting a kick out of looking at it.
I’ve got a book to finish writing but that won’t stop me from catching stay thoughts like flypaper and wanting to say something about them here. At church in our living room today I paid attention to Mathew 28 verse 20. Of course many Bibles translate this into English differently: Two versions are mentioned on Wikipedia:
20: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.
The modern World English Bible translates the passage as:
20: teaching them to observe all things that I commanded you. Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.
This could be a harbinger of Revelations written a hundred years after Mathew. The end of the world sounds more ominous. Is it the end of mankind? end of life? end of Earth? end of the Universe? There is an entire field of study in Christianity and Islam about the end times. Current Trump supporters tend toward a belief in the rapture. Maybe Earth continues revolving around the sun but good Bible thumpers will set at God’s feet like the little children Jesus told us to suffer while something else happens to those left behind. And “Left Behind” was a very popular book series among “conservative” Christians that seemed to have been written as a counterweight to the very popular book about witches by J.K. Rowling.
If what Jesus was really telling us that there would be an end to an “age” not the “world” a very different meaning could be taken from this Gospel test. The Age could be the end of Roman patience with the Jews which took place about thirty years after the crucifixion of Jesus. or it could have been the end of the Roman Empire, or the end of people reading the Bible, or the end of superstition. Ages come and go.
I don’t speak Aramaic. I have no idea if who ever heard Jesus quoted him directly or second hand or third hand. I have no idea if the monks copying this passage altered it for religious or political reasons. I can’t be sure which of the many versions in English along that you can find in Bible Hub for comparison’s sake are the most faithful. Maybe the end of “the Age” is simply the end of Biblical literal-ism which led some Christians to support slavery because if it was in the Bible its OK with God.
Nuff speculation on that.
The other story I heard on NPR before church was also interesting in that it seemed to anticipate the many BLM protest speeches which have driven our President down to check on the dust in the White House bunker. Its an interesting 6 minute listen on a scholar who lays out the story of Alaric, the angry Goth and former foreign worker in the Roman Legions who sparked the “Fall of Rome.”
Does it anticipate a Fall of the United States? I don’t think so in part because the book was written and the people in the streets today protesting are doing their best to make sure another disenfranchised Alaric is not needed to do battle the White Supremacist, Donald Trump.
