Well it seems that the find Pete documented in great detail yesterday has taken a life of its own. As commenter Harry rightly noted the visible psalm is number 83. This has already begun to feed some hungry imaginations. Irish in Britain worried that Fox News was pushing an AP story for its own ends. However, Israeli news aggregator, Israel Insider, has a fuller intrepretation of the ‘coincidence’.
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Ireland is in the middle of a boom – a running boom. Chances are, even if you have never run a step yourself (apart from some painful P.E. classes many moons ago), someone you know has taken up running over the last little while. Road races in Northern Ireland and in the Republic have seen [...] read our review »
Well, Mick, as I said.. the detail was added, thanks to Aoife at the National Museum of Ireland for the images again, for the benefit of those not wearing tin-foil hats..
Although I’d also point out that, somehow, the report the Guardian ran noted the wrong Psalm..
At first glance, I thought it said ‘portentious find in an Irish blog’ which I assumed was a post on Slugger which didn’t have an inherent left-wing bias. Now, that would make it on to Fox News.
Cato
I thought that too!
Mick and Cato,
I must have missed the hoardes of left-wing bloggers.
Left and Right politics in NI are second fiddle to Orange and Green because the State’s identity itself is disputed between 2 national groups, the British and the Irish.
It looks like the 2 parent nations will increasingly run NI until the people of NI sort out their identity problems.
As violence decreases and social contact increases, a more common identity between the British and Irish groups could well emerge; and this identity could well have new links to the parent nations.
At some stage the natural divisions in society between conservative and liberal, left and right etc will transcend in importance the differing national identities and ‘normal’ politics will take hold.
Belfast strangers meeting abroad will do less polite detective work.
All over southern Lebanon tonight, hatred of Israel is being created for generations. And no-one in that region is talking about left and right.
By and large, we are turning away from that.
We’re on the right track.
Mickey Bo RIP
Shame it was found open at this psalm. We need less religion in politics in the world, not more.
So, to summarise, pid.. and to keep on-topic..
“All over southern Lebanon tonight, hatred of Israel is being created for generations. And no-one in that region is talking about left and right.”
Well.. thank you for that..
ANYhoo.. about this manuscript..
“Shame it was found open at this psalm”
Here’s the thing, Garibaldy.. it wasn’t.
Purely coincidentially, that’s the only immediately identifiable section of the extensive fragments, for now.
Pete,
Fair point, but you know what I meant. See what happens when I stick on topic. Now, about Stalin…
pid
I’d be interested in talking more about the common identity you hope will emerge between the British and Irish people here. Will it be a separate identity – Northern Irish, Anglo-Irish, Anglo-Celt, or just a case of keeping your own identity while respecting the other?
I think the latter because 12 years on from a ceasefire I think people hold to their own cultural identity as fiercely as they ever did and that that is the best we can hope for.
On the thread:
A quirky interesting coincidence which lends credence to my belief that if Herculaneum can be properly excavated, we can lay our hands on all classical literature written down before AD79.
Surely if this is a case of divine intervention, God would have been better to send a map of where the two soldiers are being held?
The danger is that false prophets will misinterpret this message from God.
What I think God is trying to say here, bearing in mind that he picked a bulldozer and an Irish bog to reveal his thoughts, is that the Irish economy is over-reliant on construction.
Therefore he wants the irish to stop building new houses and donate the bulldozers to the IDF who can more usefully use them to flatten palestinian houses, thereby securing “God’s pastureland” for the exclusive use of “God’s chosen people”.
The tin-foil doesn’t work.. by the way..
When I lightheartedly referred to “God’s chosen people” in the original post, someone posted “so God’s chosen people are the Israeli Jews!!”, incredulously asking whether that gave them the right to kill UN peacekeepers.
Well, er, dead Blue Helmets aside, the answer to whether the Jews are God’s chosen people (including the ones in Israel, actually reading psalm 83, especially the ones in Israel) is actually “yes”.
Any believer in the three great religions which trace their foundation to Abraham, ie Judaism, Christianity and Islam, will have to accept that God’s covenant was with the, you know, Jews.
Don’t blame me folks, it was God who chose the Yids not me!
back on topic……..
3 cheers to whoever found it for alerting the authorities. I hope he is rewarded.
I wonder how many priceless finds have been destroyed. Rummy’s unknown unknowns.
‘Don’t blame me folks, it was God who chose the Yids not me!’
Then Jesus came along and basically said they didn’t deserve to be and opened it up to the whole world (at the point of a sword more often than not, post JC)
smcgiff
You can no doubt direct me to the quotation in the Bible where Jesus said Jews didn’t deserve to be God’s chosen people, I don’t remember that bit.
As I recall He was a Yid himself, a rabbi actually.
Harry,
‘You can no doubt direct me to the quotation in the Bible where Jesus said Jews didn’t deserve to be God’s chosen people, I don’t remember that bit.’
I’m not a bible quoting kinda guy, while I’ve read the bible (recently enough), I’ve a lot better things to do with my time that to learn it off verbatim. My take on it was he believed the Jewish leaders and people were just carrying out the acts of Judaism as an end in themselves (animal sacrifice etc.) and had lost their way. And that God was the God of all people.
‘As I recall He was a Yid himself, a rabbi actually.’
He was a Jew in the same way as I’m a Catholic i.e. raised that way. Whereas he went on to rebel against his religion I went one step further and realised the whole thing is a load of B****X. As we’ve not had sight or sound of Jesus in approx two thousand years, I think he may have since come around to my way of thinking.
This Yahweh bloke is a lunatic!
The chosen people thing is a bit of a stretch though Harry. I mean if I were writing the book I’d put in that I am the chosen person too, and nobody else. Think it would be a tad more convincing if say the Bible had been written for example in ancient Asia, or south America, and it was revealed to them that there were these people called the Jews and they were actually the chosen ones, nobody else. I mean we shouldn’t be believing anybodys self-penned propoganda.
Although its true that Jesus was a Jew, and that if it weren’t for St. Paul, he might have just turned out to have started a reformation movement in Judaism instead – which may or may not have saved millions throughout history.
To close this thread:
“The Director of the National Museum of Ireland … would like to highlight that the text visible on the manuscript does not refer to wiping out Israel but to the ‘vale of tears’,” the museum said.
The vale of tears is in Psalm 84 in the King James version.
“It is hoped that this clarification will serve comfort to anyone worried by earlier reports of the content of the text,” the museum said.
So there ye go. All that excitement over nothin!
Well, probably best to give the full explanation, circles, as noted in the latest Museum press release
Pete, don’t tell Israel Insider, he’ll be very disappointed, it’s not everyday he gets an on-topic message from the Lord.
Shuggie
I’d suspect that anyone who ran with a message-from-on-high theory based on the initial report is too far gone to note, or believe, the clarification from the Museum.
‘News spreads of portentious find in an Irish bog…’
Mick:
When I read the title I thought that someone had found one of the disappeared with no help from the Provos.
Oh well…