The Laughlins

Earlier this month, Princeton hosted a symposium (here in Jerusalem) to talk about the Talpiot Tomb, which was the subject of a Discovery Channel "documentary" about a year ago Discovery Channel Page on the Documentary. The symposium consisted of about 50 scholars in various fields who gave their assessments of this controversy. Although their overall conclusion was that this could not have been the tomb of Jesus (and his family), the reports that made it into the press gave quite a different story. This has outraged many of the scholars who took place in the conference, and they are assembling an online collection of their own personal summaries/quotes of what they believe about the matter and what they ACTUALLY said at the symposium to "set the record straight." UHL Blog Please take a moment to read some of these if you are interested.

I'm not going to use this as a post to make any kind of a theological point, because I feel like my "angst" right now is with the level of falsified news reporting that I have seen 1st or 2nd hand in my time here. Perhaps this one hits me even more because some of those 50 scholars included professors and scholars that Mark and I are acquainted with here, and we have had personal conversations with them over their frustrations with how the media has shown that they care nothing for the truth in this matter. Don't be an ignorant zombie when you take in ANYTHING! That goes for any source - even this blog! Do your own research, be educated, and please do not tell me that something is so just because you watched it on the History Channel, or the Discovery Channel, or anything else...as good as they may be at times. Choose to be as informed as possible and draw your own conclusions. I realize that this can't be done with all things. Its quantitatively impossible, and you'll go crazy. Its just a general mindset to have. So there is my soapbox post.

We had a two-part Christmas this year. In the morning, Audra and Hun Kwang came over, and we had a little Christmas brunch together. Mark made a great quiche :)













In the afternoon, Mark and I headed to the Hornkohl's house, where we joined the Hornkohls as well as two other couples for a Christmas dinner. We had a great time. Mark and Anna shared more recipes in the kitchen, while Aaron and I played a little baseball with the boys at the park.












On another note, I (Aubrey) overbooked myself this semester, and have been sick for over a month. It got increasingly worse, so I went to the doctor a week ago. They took X-rays, said I had the beginning stages of pneumonia, and gave me 4 prescriptions. I am feeling better, but not 100% yet. I decided that I was taking on too much and stressed with a feeling of being behind in every aspect of life (a lesser one being this blog and communication "home" in general). So I recently adjusted my schedule (and also finished my Biblical Hebrew class), and I am enjoying a good pace of life again and finding a little time to do the "normal" things that I used to. On that note, I will attempt to be a better blogger (did you like that alliteration?) in the near future :)

I have recently finished a Beginning Biblical Hebrew class, in which we spent the semester going through the book of Jonah section by section. Mark and I were having some fun discussions today about different sections of the book, but I found the overall story to be the most remarkable part. According to various commentators (I will quote C.L. Feinberg as an example), "This [Jonah's call from God] is the only case of a prophet being sent to the heathen." Nineveh was the Assyrian capital, and by many estimates, the largest city in the world during Jonah's time. I just find it very interesting and incredible that God wanted to give this city a chance to repent. When Jonah finally went to the city and announced that it would be "overturned" in 40 days, the ENTIRE city repented immediately - "from the greatest of them to the smallest." They all (including the king) wore "sacks," sat in ashes, and fasted - they even made every animal of the city fast (they weren't allowed to eat/graze). And God spared the city.



One of my "nerdy" interests was in regard to the last verse (Jonah 4:11), where it says that there were more than 12 x 10,000 (120,000) people that did not "know between his right and his left" (that is my literal translation). I have heard two main interpretations for this: 1) The city had 120,000 people, and the right and left refers to their ignorance of what is right (right) and wrong (left) in a moral sense. 2) 120,000 people that don't know their right from their left refers to their ignorance (in general), most likely refering to the children (innocent/ignorant) of the city, which would imply that the entire city's population was much larger (many who hold to this interpretation estimate the total pop. to be appx. 600,000). In this case, Nineveh would have been one ginormous city!



So, I decided to have fun on the archaeological end and to see what I could find in excavation/survey reports of Nineveh. The information that I found definitely supports that Nineveh would have had a population of at least 120,000 (minimum) and quite possibly larger. I have no big conclusion for you (who really does?), but the size of the city in general is quite impressive. Even though the size of the city can be roughly determined, it is hard to know how spread out the population was (within the walls of the city), as they seemed to have room for most of their flocks and cattle as well.

Below, I have included sections from the book "Nineveh and Its Remains: With An Account of a Visit to the Chaldeans..." by Henry Austin Layard (1849), which talk about the dimensions of the city.