Arachne at FreeLists---The Arachne Fan Club! On Mon, 24 Oct 2005 16:48:49 -0400, L.D. Best wrote: > Interesting note, that ... The female ass was keeping her own mouth > shut, saying not a thing. It was only when forced by a male power > broker that the ass spoke, most certainly against her will. > But more seriously ... it serves one well, when reading JudeoChristian > texts, to remember that those who wrote down the words -- regardless of > their origin -- were men, who thought like men, and were attempting to > communicate with men. Thus there is a great deal of gender bias, and > even attribution of gender where none exists. Some of the attributions of gender might have been lost due to errors in translation. Even the fundamentalists (i.e., those who interpret the Bible "literally") will concede that there are some errors in translation. > As far as putting in a good word with St. Peter, if I see him around > I'll ask him to intercede for leniency on your behalf. > l.d. Thanks, I will need a lot of help and a lot of compassion and leniency to keep me out of going to wherever you will be going. > P.S. I'm quite sure that your and my vision of what would be heaven are > so different we'd be unlikely to cross paths after crossing over. > ==== > Samuel W. Heywood wrote: >> Arachne at FreeLists---The Arachne Fan Club! >> On Mon, 24 Oct 2005 09:57:03 -0400, L.D. Best wrote: >>> But how could something dumb speak at all? >>> ==== >> Interesting question. For answers I turned to Numbers, Chapter 22, >> to read the story concerning the reported event to which St. Peter >> refers in the quotation above. >> In verse 28 of the story the Bible says "And the Lord opened the mouth >> of the ass, and she said unto Balaam . . . . ." The equine creature is >> described as a female several times in the story. The original report >> of the talking equine admonishing the mad prophet does not say that she >> spoke in "man's" voice. It seems that St. Peter failed to do his homework >> on this account when he wrote and circulated his second letter. When you >> arrive at the Pearly Gates to request permission to enter you will have an >> opportunity to flame him for that. Give him hell, L.D. >> If you would do that for me you might get to go where I'm going. Sam Heywood -- This mail sent via the Arachne Browser, GPL version 1.83 Beta Arachne at FreeLists -- Arachne, The Web Browser/Suite for DOS and Linux --