Mo' Dernity, Mo' Problems

A Lonely Minority: The Modern Story of Egypt's Copts by Edward Wakin

My Grandfather is a Copt (he lived in Egypt, went to medical school in France (where he met my Grandmother), and immigrated to the US). So my brother read this book and I decided to get in on the action.

Seems like the Copts have some things in common with the Jews in Europe & the Chinese in Asia - they're a minority group that faces discrimination because they are more educated and productive than the ruling majority. An unfortuntate twist, though, is that while a Chinese cannot switch to being Malay, a Copt can switch to being a Muslim. And because Egyptian law gives certain additional rights to Muslims, they're a built in incentive for conversion. The author seemed to think that many Copts converted to Islam so that they could get an easy Islamic divorce.

The Teaching Company

I've been borrowing audio lectures from the New Haven public library.

Robert Lee and His High Command Taught by Gary W. Gallagher

A very enjoyable lecture series. Most of the lectures have a biographical focus, and Gallagher avoids going too much into troop movements.

Some fun things I didn't imagine - prior to the Civil War, one of Lee's generals (Jubal Early, maybe, I can't remember) argued against secession on the grounds that the Constitution already provided adequate protection for the right to own slaves. I'd always assumed things broke down into pro-Union/anti-slavery and pro-Slavery/anti-Union.

Also, there were some basic facts about the Civil War that I just didn't understand until listening to this course. First, since there were about 5 million white Southerners against 20 million white Northerners, there was never really even a possibility that the South would take assistant and win an outright victory. Instead, the idea was to put up a good enough fight that the Northern Copperheads would vote Lincoln's side out of office and agree to allow the South to keep slavery.
Another very interesting thing - people often see the Confederacy being all about state's rights. But there's good reason to question this interpretation. Because the Confederacy existed in war time, the government had to assert quite a lot of national control. For example, they instituted a national draft before the North did. And they mobilized material resources on a national scale.

Robert Lee recommended promising blacks their freedom if they fought in the war. This proposal was refused, but it's an interesting paradox - offering to free slaves who fought to protect the institution of slavery.

Lee's generals were a fascinating bunch. Stonewall Jackson, James Longstreet, Jeb Stuart, & all the rest. Good times.

Buddhism taught by Malcolm Eckel

I've got to admit that this course did very little to give me any insight into Buddhist philosophy. Here's an example - Eckel said something like this - "If Heraclites taught that a man couldn't step into the same river twice, then the Buddhists taught that a man couldn't even step into the same river once." Wacktastic!

But I did enjoy the history of the different schools of Buddhism, and the odd tales of great Buddhist teachers of old. My favorite tale is the story of Angulimala, who's name means "garland of fingers." You see, his teacher told him that he had to collect the fingers of 100 people in order to receive instruction. He tried hiding the fingers in the woods, but it was hard to keep track of them, so he made himself a gruesome necklace.

Historical Jesus taught by Bart Ehrman

This course is taught from the perspective that the are earlier sources (like the Q document) that have a non-orthodox theology, and that only in the later Gospel sources do we get a Divine Jesus. The theory about Q is, as far as I can tell, based on the fact that Matthew and Luke have a lot of things in common that they don't share with Mark. Ehrman doesn't spend much time debating the strength of the Q hypothesis (and he offers no explanation at all of the alternative views), but instead basis his analysis on his belief that Mark and Q are earlier than Matthew and Luke.

Previously I'd spent a little while learning about the OT from a similar perspective. The OT course I took from Stuebenville assumed that there were 5 different authors cutting and pasting things into the Pentateuch and that Isaiah was written by at least 3 people. It's a really really boring way to read Scripture, because every time you find an incongruity in the text you explain it by postulating more authors instead of by, like, thinking about the text.