Jamie123

Sorry Zil - I imagine this topic grosses you out (and I don't blame you) but if use of blood as war paint is wrong, we ought at least to ask why. Leviticus 17 clearly prohibits the drinking of blood, but... Exodus 12:7 - In the Passover, the blood of the sacrificed lamb is to be places on the sides and tops of the door frames. (When I did confirmation classes many years ago, some bright spark suggested that the "top and the sides" - being at 90 degrees to each other were a prefiguring of the cross. The priest teaching us admitted he had never thought of that before.) Leviticus 4:6-7 - The blood of the sacrificed bull is to be sprinkled in front of the sanctuary curtain, then placed on the horns of the altar. Blood was not to be imbibed, but it had its ceremonial uses. As for wearing blood as war paint, I can't help thinking of Revelation 19:11-16. Here Jesus appears and defeats the beast, and we know this is a reference to Jesus because "his name is the Word of God" ("Logos" from John 1). Verse 13 says "He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood" (presumably his own). I'm not saying the Gadianton robbers were good guys - I just don't see that their going to war smeared with blood is necessarily a black mark against them.

It probably won't be the last time. "Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!"

Only over "this wicked band". It sounds like the "king" was an irrelevance except to a very few people.

The law of Moses certainly prohibited them from drinking blood, but I'm interested in whether they were allowed to use it in other ways. (I have read the entire OT, but I don't have all the intricacies of Mosaic law memorised.) Also there is the matter of spin. Did the Gadianton people self-identify as "robbers", or is that just what their enemies called them? Perhaps they would have seen themselves as more like "freedom fighters".

I wouldn't attach too much weight to "sense of decency". What is considered "decent" changes from age to age. It wasn't all that long ago that ammonia extracted from human wee was used to bleach linen - disgusting though that sounds today.

I wonder whose blood it was - or maybe it wasn't human blood at all, but the blood of animals they had slaughtered anyway for food. Was there ever a prohibition against using animal blood as war paint?

It reminds me of the "Wheel of Fortune" I always interpreted the "Wheel" a little differently from this woman. I saw the wheel as constantly rotating: the man in squalor at the bottom if the wheel learns humility and hard work and so he rises and eventually becomes a king at the top, but then hubris and complacency set in and he gradually falls until he is back where he started and the cycle repeats - though I agree that would make the goddess "Fortuna" who turns the wheel a bit superfluous. I have seen this painting myself in Rochester Cathedral. The colours are amazingly vivid given that it is so old. It gives you a taste what our English churches must have been like before the Puritans got their mucky hands on them. P.S. the words to Carl Orff's Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi in English are: Fortune, like the moon you are changeable, ever waxing, ever waning, hateful life first oppresses and then soothes as fancy takes it; poverty and power it melts them like ice fate – monstrous and empty, you whirling wheel, you are malevolent, well-being is vain and always fades to nothing, shadowed and veiled you plague me too; now through the game I bring my bare back to your villainy fate is against me in health and virtue, driven on and weighted down, always enslaved. so at this hour without delay pluck the vibrating strings; since Fate strikes down the strong man, everyone weep with me! It sounds like something Job might have said.

It's a never ending cycle isn't it? Things go bad, people repent, things turn good, people stop repenting, things go bad again until people start repenting again...etc.

It sounds very much like the promises of Hitler that Chamberlain trusted. "Peace in our time" etc.

The dates have to be at least 4 years out, as Jesus was born about 4BC. (We know this because that was when Herod died, so Jesus' birth couldn't have been born any later than that).

I always used to wonder why 3 Nephi was so far separated from 1 and 2 Nephi. I guessed even back then that it couldn't have Ben the same Nephi - though it does seem odd. It ought to be "The third book named after a bloke called Nephi". P.S. this is nice - it's about a poor pussy cat who gets rescued. (Don't ask me what a "cow cat" is*) * Penny just dropped.its a cat with 🐄 markings.

Anyone who read British comics in the 1970s will remember Billy the Cat and Katie - the acrobatic crime fighters of Burnham. This is how their adventures would likely have gone for real..

Helaman 12:15 - not only does Nephi (or Mormon, or whoever) assume that the Earth moves and not the Sun, he assumes that the reader would assume this too. Aristarchus of Samos taught heliocentrism in 3rd century BC but that was long after Lehi left for America. (Don't let anyone tell you that Copernicus was the first to suggest it.) Prior to Aristarchus, there were theories that the earth did move, though not around the sun, but around a "central fire" - though this was certainly no earlier than 5th century. One could only conclude that that Nephite or Lamanite astronomers must have worked it out independently (who knows what their scientific achievements might have been?) or else it was known by divine revelation.

Is that a typo, or is your real name Liz? (It never occurred to me that Zil is Liz backwards.)

Maybe "calling" isn't the right word. People agree to be rostered to do different things to help, but there's no sense that God is "calling" them to it. Another of my "things" is to collect my friend Marjory from her house and drive her to church, set out all the tables and chairs for after-service coffee in the church hall. Then put the coffee machine on, while Marjory sets out all the cups and saucers and gets the biscuits ready. When the last hymn is starting we rush out, run around like headless chickens when we discover the coffee machine never switched itself on, get the tea ready, pour out the tea and coffee when people arrive, afterwards wash up, put the tables and chairs and cups and saucers away. Go into another another panic because Room 5 is locked and no one has the key. Find the key. Put the coffee machine and the tea and coffee and uneaten biscuits away, and then drive Marjory home. All good fun.

The nave, vestry and sanctuary, plus the choir stalls and the piano area - are pretty much the whole church. It's not like our local Methodist church, whose internal arrangements remind you of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. There is the porch too, which sometimes needs sweeping out of dead leaves. It's a very small church - but very old. It predates the town, and was originally a stopping-off chapel for soldiers on their way to the Crusades. We do have a church hall too, which is a lot larger, but the cleaning of that is organized separately.

Similar...but doesn't quite inspire the same level of evil glee as abandoning "dear old Henry" to the horrors of the landfill!

Every month me (and another bloke called Alan) have to vacuum the church. I do the back area around the piano and the organ, and the nave (where most people sit) and Alan does the "holy end" - the vestry and the area around the altar. I guess it's similar to what you people call a "calling". Anyway, the vacuum cleaner I use is "Henry": I have no idea whether you have "Henry" in America but he is really popular here. He has a top that looks like a derby hat, with a long cord that pulls out and you wind a handle to get it back. And you drag him around to where the dirt is, and he sucks it up his long extended nose. If you pull him too fast he topples over and his "hat" comes off. Anyway, I have seen Henry vacuum cleaners in B&Q for about £150. I have often thought of buying one and taking him straight to the rubbish tip and chucking him with all the other used appliances. That would wipe the smile off his smug little face, don't you think?

What do you call a man with a plank of wood on his head? Edward What do you call a man with two planks of wood on his head? Edward Wood What do you call a man with three planks of wood on his head? Edward Woodward What do you call a man with four planks of wood on his head? I don't know either, but Edward Woodward would.

Chapter 9: Great stuff! All very Agatha Christie! The Chief Judge is murdered but whodunit? There are the five "obvious suspects", but their guilt is a little too obvious. Along comes Nephi (Miss Marple with divine revelation) to solve the mystery. Whatever anyone else says, I say Joan Hickson was the bestest Miss Marple of all:

I was thinking much the same thing!

Just a little joke. It occurred to me that though Anglicanism is still deeply embedded in my life, I've recently been giving more attention to the Book of Mormon than to the Bible. Not that I've even giving enough attention to either, but the Book of Mormon has caught my imagination a lot. I keep thinking about the "stripling warriors". I'm not sure how great a father Helemon was to his actual children (I suspect a good one - he seems like that kind of man) but he was a great father figure to his men. They must have been a similar age to the students here at the university (the younger ones anyway) so however much I've mucked up as a father, I can still strive to be like Heleman and do my best for the students. Its quite an inspiration.

Ah well, living arrangements would scarcely change. My wife left me about 6 months ago for...well, for a number of reasons, but mainly because she couldn't cope with my declining mental health. Things are as they are (more's the pity) but sending large arachnids to a chronic arachnophobe would not, I suspect, help much.