Expletive Deleted

Happy birthday, Thomas Paine!

Robert Green Ingersoll on Thomas Paine:

To speak the praises of the brave and thoughtful dead, is to me a labor of gratitude and love.

Through all the centuries gone, the mind of man has been beleaguered by the mailed hosts of superstition. Slowly and painfully has advanced the army of deliverance. Hated by those they wished to rescue, despised by those they were dying to save, these grand soldiers, these immortal deliverers, have fought without thanks, labored without applause, suffered without pity, and they have died execrated and abhorred. For the good of mankind they accepted isolation, poverty, and calumny. They gave up all, sacrificed all, lost all but truth and self-respect.

One of the bravest soldiers in this army was Thomas Paine; and for one, I feel indebted to him for the liberty we are enjoying this day. Born among the poor, where children are burdens; in a country where real liberty was unknown; where the privileges of class were guarded with infinite jealousy, and the rights of the individual trampled beneath the feet of priests and nobles; where to advocate justice was treason; where intellectual freedom was Infidelity. It is wonderful that the idea of true liberty ever entered his brain.

Poverty was his mother -- Necessity his master.

He had more brains than books; more sense than education; more courage than politeness; more strength than polish. He had no veneration for old mistakes -- no admiration for ancient lies. He loved the truth for the truth's sake, and for man's sake. He saw oppression on every hand; injustice everywhere; hypocrisy at the altar, venality on the bench, tyranny on the throne; and with a splendid courage he espoused the cause of the weak against the strong, of the enslaved many against the titled few.

I just finished Eric H. Cline's book From Eden to Exile: Unraveling Mysteries of the Bible. It examines seven "mysteries" of the Hebrew Bible from an archaeological perspective. Mr. Cline is a biblical archaeology scholar and is the associate directory of an ongoing excavation in Meggido (the biblical Armaggedon) in Israel.

The book is aimed at the interested layman and his writing style is very readable and easy to understand. His treatment of the various mysteries in the Hebrew Bible is short but informative. While I question some of his positions, on the whole the book is a great resource and I recommend it to everyone.

The seven mysteries his book tackles are:

1) The Garden of Eden

2) Noah's Ark

3) Sodom and Gomorrah

4) Moses and the Exodus

5) Joshua and the Battle of Jericho

6) The Ark of the Covenant

7) The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel

What's surprising in his book is his acknowledgement and treatment of crackpots. I'm used to scholars ignoring works by the lunatic fringe, for even acknowledging their theories gives them too much credibility. Not with Cline's book. In each of the mysteries, he enumerates both sober and fantastical ideas, challenging them for their consistency with the archaeological record. His dismissal of some fringe works can be acerbic, but not unwarranted as most of these "theories" get more media attention and gives genuine research a bad name.

I won't go into detail on each of the mysteries (go out and buy a copy if you want to know more!) but I will have to nitpick on his chapter about the Ark of the Covenant. I think he gives too much credibility with the biblical claim that King Josiah rediscovered the Ark (p. 151, "Since no one has seen the ark since at least Josiah's time"). It seems to me that Josiah concocted the story to give divine credence to his religious reforms. I think it's much too convenient that Josiah would suddenly stumble upon the Ark, with its Deuteronomic revisions of the Law, and how it so happens to justify his reforms.

Maybe I'm being too unsympathetic in my reading of that rather innocuous line, but at the very least Mr. Cline should've hinted at the possibility of Josiah's fabrication of the story about the ark. (Cline admits that he's less interested with examining the text of the bible and more with what archaeology has to say, so I guess he doesn't want to wade into contentious textual criticism territory.)

We Filipinos will celebrate our Independence Day tomorrow June 12th. Why June 12, even though technically the Philippines got its independence on the fourth of July?

With the outbreak of the Spanish-American War on April 20, 1898, the Filipino insurrectionists, who were already revolting from their Spanish conquerors, expanded their campaigns and, with victory almost at hand, declared independence in the province of Cavite on the afternoon of June 12, 1898. Emilio Aguinaldo became the first leader of the Philippine Republic. Since neither Spain nor the US recognized the Philippine Declaration of Independence, America sent a fleet of ships to the capital, Manila, where they engaged and defeated an ill-prepared and demoralized Spanish fleet.

When Spain conceded defeat to the Americans, they were forced to hand over their overseas colonies, including the Philippines. Of course, the Filipinos had already declared independence and therefore it did not recognize the handover of power. When American troops arrived in the Philippines on August 14, 1898 to occupy their new spoils of war, the Filipinos resisted and the Philippine-American War commenced. Untrained and poorly armed, the Philippine resistance relied on guerilla tactics rather than confronting the superior American soldiers head-on. Americans responded by burning entire villages, forcing the civilian population to live in concentration camps, and summarily executing surrendering Filipino fighters. With the full force of American aggression pressing against the Philippine Army, the organized resistance to the US occupiers was finally quashed in 1902.

Spain and the United States chose to ignore the proclamation of freedom by the little brown natives in the Philippine Archipelago and instead awarded the subjugation of the land to the victor of their brief skirmish.

The Philippines was finally given back its independence on July 4, 1946 after the end of WWII. From 1946 to 1961 the country celebrated Independence Day on July 4, but was changed by President Diosdado Macapagal (father of current president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo) back to June 12. And so, every year we Filipinos celebrate our Independence Day on June 12 rather than July 4.

Ang Pambansang Awit ng Pilipinas: Lupang Hinirang

Bayang Magiliw
Perlas ng Silanganan,
Alab ng puso
Sa dibdib mo'y buhay.

Lupang Hinirang,
Duyan ka ng magiting,
Sa manlulupig,
'Di ka pasisiil.

Sa dagat at bundok,
Sa simoy at sa langit mong bughaw,
May dilag ang tula
At awit sa paglayang minamahal.

Ang kislap ng watawat mo'y
Tagumpay na nagniningning,
Ang bituin at araw niya
Kailan pa ma'y 'di magdidilim.

Lupa ng araw, ng luwalhati't pagsinta,
Buhay ay langit sa piling mo;
Aming ligaya, na 'pag may mang-aapi
Ang mamatay nang dahil sa 'yo.

On a personal note, on Independence Day tomorrow, I will marry my long-suffering girlfriend Cate in a church ceremony (alas, it cannot be helped) at three in the afternoon with the reception to follow at a hotel. Cheers!