tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post3770677609973638677..comments2024-03-19T00:26:30.753-07:00Comments on The Jesus Blog: Jesus before the Gospels: a serial review (pt. 1)Anthony Le Donnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01282792648606976883noreply@blogger.comBlogger25125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post-20620631976807943802016-04-19T16:21:19.614-07:002016-04-19T16:21:19.614-07:00Here's a link to my review of "Jesus Befo...Here's a <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1591707420" rel="nofollow">link to my review</a> of "Jesus Before the Gospels."<br />My comments are less verbose than these review parts. At the end of my review I've include links to these more academic reviews for those who want a longer version.Clif Hostetlerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09192652526880912362noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post-54115513691716660512016-04-06T15:59:28.430-07:002016-04-06T15:59:28.430-07:00I am familiar with Dennis's work, and even wor...I am familiar with Dennis's work, and even worked with him when I included his testimony in a book I edited, Leaving the Fold: Testimonies of Former Fundamentalists.Edwardtbabinskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13036816926421936940noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post-71261270834676640482016-04-06T15:56:38.726-07:002016-04-06T15:56:38.726-07:00CORRECTED EDITED
Thank you both for your replies....CORRECTED EDITED <br />Thank you both for your replies. Yes, I know Bart is pro literary dependence. And from what I have read elsewhere, Gospel writers might have been using a few scrolls as they were composing and rather than go back and check exact wording simply cited stories they read or heard as best they remembered them while composing their Gospels.<br /><br />The most obvious and undeniable feature of the Gospels for me is how such stories grew over time. The number of words allegedly spoken by the resurrected Jesus grew over time from Mk to Mt, Lk, Jn. The stories of the birth and post resurrection appearances grew over time, being added to Mt and Lk. Lk's genealogy goes back further than Mt's. Lk includes tale of second miraculous birth, outdoing Mt. Lk's nativity tales resemble a musical with sing-songy prayers added. It takes time and effort for such embellishments to occur over time from Mk to Mt to Lk. <br /><br />The Synoptics grow in length in that order as well, and Lk's parables are the longest most refined with added parables never before seen. Jn is a shorter Gospels only because he has no parables, instead Jesus speaks about himself, not in parables about the kingdom of God. And Jn has no exorcisms as well. Nothing apparently must detract from the focus on Jesus. <br /><br />But John is like Lk in at least one respect, the lengthy parables of Lk resemble the lengthy dialogue interactions and lengthy prayers in John. To create such lengthy texts takes time and literary artistry. <br /><br />No matter the fine points of synoptic Gospel theorists and questions concerning exactly if or how proto-Gospel material was added to, the obvious evidence is that the Gospels as we have them were most likely completed in a form we know them in the order Mk Mt Lk Jn. <br /><br />Also note how the presence of angels remains most elusive in the earliest Gospel, Mk, including the young man at the tomb who might simply be the same steadfast young man who fled last of all at Jesus' arrest. And in Mt Jesus' father Joseph merely encounters an angel in a dream, and of course another appears at the empty tomb, but Luke and Acts are rife with angels appearing not just in dreams but seen by individuals and a host of shepherds at Jesus' birth and two angels at the tomb, two angels at the Ascension (another new story that first appears in Lk), and angels appearing throughout Acts. <br /><br />Scholars need to start work on Gospel trajectory criticism, like those trajectories of Gospel growth mentioned above, not to mention the tale of the anointing of Jesus and raising of Lazarus in Jn that appears to have grown out of earlier tales in Mk and Lk. <br /><br />Also consider the way the resurrection appearances in Mk and Mt are said to take place in Galilee, "h has gone before you to Galilee, there you will see him," but by the time Lk and Jn are composed the apostles are commanded to remain in Jerusalem so Jesus is first seen in a major city instead of out in the country. The evidence of legendary embellishment over time as seen just by comparing Gospel tales is strong. Edwardtbabinskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13036816926421936940noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post-77183578236901021822016-04-06T05:14:43.586-07:002016-04-06T05:14:43.586-07:00Very interesting. Thank you for sharing.Very interesting. Thank you for sharing.Rafaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14471888340005683193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post-82139377296110884312016-04-05T16:53:27.628-07:002016-04-05T16:53:27.628-07:00Thanks for your answer. Yes, not quite what I was ...Thanks for your answer. Yes, not quite what I was looking for, though ritual/ liturgy is the "halfway" for that. Ritual/ liturgy would be the religious context to study the role of food in the development/ keeping of social memory. Just to give an example, George MacDonald, Bread Alone, says that "Food is the vehicle through which Deuteronomy envisages Israel expressing her remembrance of YHWH." And Peter Altmann (Festive Meals in Ancient Israel) works within the same lines, using the anthropological work of David Sutton (Remembrance of Repasts: An Anthropology of Food and Memory), who says: "At least for us old folks we don't just long for them [the foods] for their delicious taste but because they awaken in us, unconsciously, a series of rare scenes which are being constantly lost and remain only memories.". So, I just think it would interest to see such results that are being used for understanding sacrifice/ offering in the Hebrew Bible to also understand how Jesus' memory was preserved in a context of shared meals.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01005368700913323063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post-23260157165767195972016-04-05T14:53:43.393-07:002016-04-05T14:53:43.393-07:00From Dr. G
Even if the stream of oral transmissio...From Dr. G<br /><br />Even if the stream of oral transmission does reassemble a chain, it's worth noting that each individual link would be a human person, with his own personal and cultural biases. So the "link" or telephone model is quite compatible with the idea of socio- cultural notions entering into the mix. <br /><br />In other words, the link and cultural models are not mutually exclusive hypotheses. And in my own work I use both of these, among others.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post-27557545676645986112016-04-05T11:50:57.325-07:002016-04-05T11:50:57.325-07:00No, no, no, Karl. You don't want to send it t...No, no, no, Karl. You don't want to send it to Rafael. You want to send it to me.Chris Keithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12007521996155910288noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post-30492002801447049232016-04-05T08:51:52.339-07:002016-04-05T08:51:52.339-07:00Thank you, Edward, for your comment.
Just a very ...Thank you, Edward, for your comment.<br /><br />Just a very basic response: Some scholars may substitute memory for literary dependence when addressing source-critical questions. More common, I think, is scholars <i>supplementing</i> literary dependence with theories of memory (Eric Eve has a forthcoming book in this vein, entitled, <i>Writing the Gospels</i>).<br /><br />Those of us who are engaging social memory research (Keith, Le Donne, Kirk, Thatcher, and others), however, use the term <i>memory</i> to refer to something other than a vehicle or medium (esp. a mental faculty) for the production of other gospel texts. We are referring to images of the past in general, images that utilize various media (including written texts, so literary dependence is something we might discuss <i>within</i> a study of social memory, along with other communicative media: ritual, art, performance, statuary, news reporting, etc.).<br /><br />Does that make sense?Rafaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14471888340005683193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post-65023237228668332002016-04-05T07:37:45.543-07:002016-04-05T07:37:45.543-07:00Gene Stecher
Chambersburg, Pa.
Edward, that "...Gene Stecher<br />Chambersburg, Pa.<br /><br />Edward, that "literary dependence" also seems to involve a mimetic (mimesis, to imitate) relationship between the gospels (particularly Mark and Luke)and the Homerian epics Odyssey and Iliad, as well as Virgil's Aeneid, who himself used Homer. <br /><br />Dennis MacDonald suggests (Mythologizing Jesus, Rowman and Littlefield: 2016), for example, that the mimetic motives of the gospel writers was to show that Jesus was more powerful, more moral, and more compassionate than any of the Greco-Roman gods, semi-gods, and heroes. MacDonald puts 24 gospel episodes into that classification, including the two feedings of thousands, mastering the winds on the sea, healing a deranged tomb-dwelling demoniac, raising a child back to life, walking on water, curing a woman's blood flow, and so forth.<br /><br />In other words, MacDonald has provided an excellent reason for seeing worth in outlandish stories and actions normally rejected by the modern mind.<br /><br />Also see the review "Out-Homering Homer" at https://www.westarinstitute.org/blog/homering-homer-poet/#comments.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post-82516757541987455292016-04-05T07:06:59.326-07:002016-04-05T07:06:59.326-07:00Here's my podcast on the Telephone Game / Chin...Here's my podcast on the Telephone Game / Chinese Whispers should it be of interest to readers. It was inspired to record it because of Ehrman's use of the analogy in his NT Intro: <br /><br />http://podacre.blogspot.com/2013/09/nt-pod-66-oral-traditions-and-game-of.htmlMark Goodacrehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05115370166754797529noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post-39788288668253884792016-04-05T06:54:20.418-07:002016-04-05T06:54:20.418-07:00Ed: Bart Ehrman does work on the basis also of lit...Ed: Bart Ehrman does work on the basis also of literary relations between the Synoptics. He thinks that Matthew and Luke used Mark and Q. So he is absolutely on board with literary connections. But he also thinks, I think reasonably, that these particular literary connections do not exhaust the evangelists' source material. Rafael also accepts that there is a literary interrelationship of some kind between the evangelists (I think he holds to a weak form of the 2ST, but I could be wrong about that). Having said that, I agree in part with the spirit of your comment here. There are too many scholars who regard the study of oral tradition and memory as alternatives to careful study of the Synoptic Problem, and this is really unfortunate.Mark Goodacrehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05115370166754797529noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post-82585798704010463072016-04-04T18:16:25.064-07:002016-04-04T18:16:25.064-07:00EDITED, CORRECTED
Why so much interest in memory s...EDITED, CORRECTED<br />Why so much interest in memory studies when there is so much plain evidence of literary dependence? See for instance:<br /><br />https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synoptic_Gospels#/media/File:Synoptic_word-for-word.png<br /><br />https://books.google.com/books?id=GBhkhvprGbMC&lpg=RA1-PA11&vq=leper&pg=RA1-PA11#v=onepage&q&f=false<br /><br />A far more worthwhile question to ponder is the degree of confirmation bias of the Gospel writers who chose their oral and written sources to produce a life of Jesus. If the authors themselves were part of a sect who believed in the soon coming final judgment of the world (as it appears they were, based on Paul and the Gospels) that might be taken as a reason to try and make their Lord appear that much more significant--the actions and teachings of the world's final wonder-working prophet, final messiah or anointed one, to beat all other revelations and messiahs. <br /><br />Also, if eyewitness testimony was involved, why does Matthew copy the exact same number of miracles as Mark? Matthew doubles up a few, but they come out to the same numbers and cases of miracles at in Mark. Though Jesus was supposedly performing loads of miracles, curing everyone in some cases, Matthew simply repeats Mark's miracle tales, case by case (as I said, doubling up two of them but coming out to the same over all types and numbers of miracles). <br /><br />New miracles begin to be added by Luke and John. Luke adds the raising of the widow's son, which has so many parallels with the tale of Elijah doing the same thing, it appears more like a later story that arose or maybe even invented by Luke, rather than having anything to do with memory studies. While the fourth Gospel adds the tale of the raising of Lazarus that none of the previous Gospels nor Acts mention, but which seems based (along with the foot anointing episode) on earlier tales in Mark and Luke (where Lazarus was a mere figure in a parable whom the Rich man wants raised). This looks like a miracle tale added to the Jesus story later, rather than having anything to do with eyewitness testimony. <br /><br />For more on the miracle tales and why they do not appear to be based on eyewitness testimony: http://edward-t-babinski.blogspot.com/2015/06/christianity-raises-as-many.htmlEdwardtbabinskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13036816926421936940noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post-59067545202198954902016-04-04T18:01:59.184-07:002016-04-04T18:01:59.184-07:00I'm not aware of anyone doing this, Caio. Some...I'm not aware of anyone doing this, Caio. Some (e.g., social psychologists) address the issue of cultural distinctions between edible animals that are food and those that are not, but that's not what you're talking about, is it?<br /><br />There is currently a three-volume work on Memory and Reception of Jesus in Early Christianity, and part of that project includes ritual/liturgy as reception. (This project includes a two-day conference in London; see http://historicaljesusresearch.blogspot.com/2015/12/memory-and-reception-of-jesus-in-early.html) Again, not quite what you're asking about, but related as we get into the Lord's Supper as a commemorative ritual that preserved and enacted the memory of Jesus.<br /><br />Sorry I can't be of more help.Rafaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14471888340005683193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post-74940164027861768792016-04-04T17:54:03.224-07:002016-04-04T17:54:03.224-07:00Karl: Thank you for drawing attention to this. I w...Karl: Thank you for drawing attention to this. I would welcome receiving a copy of this volume. If you send me a private e-mail I'll be happy to give you my shipping address. ;-)Rafaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14471888340005683193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post-2065043201331321742016-04-04T17:52:03.385-07:002016-04-04T17:52:03.385-07:00Gene,
Thank you for this. Yes, you're right t...Gene,<br /><br />Thank you for this. Yes, you're right that I didn't mention Ehrman's two practical examples. And I won't have time to do so here, but let me provide one quote from his discussion of Lincoln and then explain why, in fact, Ehrman's appeal to Schwartz's work was actually <i>worse</i> than his neglect of memory studies in general.<br /><br />Ehrman wrote: "The past is not a fixed entity back there in time. It is always being transformed in our minds, depending on what our minds are occupied with in the here and now. As Schwartz claims, the somewhat ironic portrayal of Abraham Lincoln as a civil rights prophet 'demonstrates the malleability of the past and justifies Maurice Halbwachs's claim that "collective memory, [<i>sic</i>] is essentially a reconstruction of the past that adapts the image of historical facts to the beliefs and spiritual needs of the present"'" (Ehrman, <i>Jesus before the Gospels</i>, 7; citing Schwartz, <i>Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory</i>, 4 [<i>sic</i>; the text Ehrman quotes is on p. 5]).<br /><br />Any reader unfamiliar with either Schwartz or social memory would be excused, having read Ehrman, for thinking that Schwartz is an advocate for a Halbwachsian approach to collective memory and/or the social frameworks of memory. This, however, is quite untrue. Schwartz is at least as critical of Halbwachs as he is supportive of him. In the very next paragraph, Schwartz says, "Social memories, as aspects of culture, do more than 'express' social reality; they shape reality by articulating ideals and generating the motivation to realize them" (p. 5). A little further on, "Lincoln's 1863 emancipation policy must be distinguished from 1963 efforts to integrate blacks into contemporary society, but if Schwengel's remaking of Abraham Lincoln required some invention and exaggeration, <i>the historical record also justified it</i>" (p. 6; my emphasis). These excerpts reveal the shortcoming in Ehrman's reading of Schwartz, specifically, and his approach to memory more generally. Ehrman writes as if distortion of the past in the present falsifies memory (he repeatedly speaks of "'false' or 'distorted' memory," which "involves a memory that is wrong" [p. 19; see also p. 302n. 3]) without inquiring <i>how</i> or <i>why</i> the present affects/distorts images of the past. This leads to an atemporal conception of both memory and society that sees images of the past as products in the present without mooring or constraint by the past or previous images of the past. Schwartz's work explicitly and programmatically takes aim at this atemporal conception, which he calls "presentism."<br /><br />Anyway, I'm getting long-winded. I do appreciate your comment, Gene. And to anyone else who has read this far, he's right: I did ignore Ehrman's two practical examples. These, however, are even more problematic than the issues I did discuss, and I anticipate that I will return to these examples in my review of later chapters (esp. chapters 6 and 7).Rafaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14471888340005683193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post-42961493426381465942016-04-04T16:52:41.245-07:002016-04-04T16:52:41.245-07:00Thank you, Larry. I think your suspicion is more r...Thank you, Larry. I think your suspicion is more right than I would've hoped. His target is more fundamentalist understandings of the Gospels' "memory" of Jesus than exploring/advancing the work of memory and the historical Jesus.<br /><br />Re: your second point (which is clear enough, and not unkind, though I can't say whether it was as clear as you would've liked): Memory studies in general are an amorphous lot, and their application to Jesus studies has inherited this trait. Your complaint, however, that "they don't engage each other in a way I've found satisfying" is spot on. Michael Thate's book was scandalously thin on engagement on this work other than Schröter, Bauckham, and Allison. Foster's article, too, dug a narrow trench in memory work on Jesus. Similar complaints could be leveled against others, but perhaps it suffices to say that Chris Keith's two-part essay on memory studies on Jesus in <i>Early Christianity</i> is the best attempt to account for and engage the entire field instead of narrow and selective parts of the field. Sadly, Ehrman is not the only one who uses the language of memory to reconfirm and resay what he already knew about Jesus. Allison, in his typically candid style, acknowledges this aspect of his work on Jesus.Rafaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14471888340005683193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post-76041177423664660662016-04-03T14:23:05.309-07:002016-04-03T14:23:05.309-07:00From Dr. G
Claude Levi Strauss wrote a book that ...From Dr. G<br /><br />Claude Levi Strauss wrote a book that suggested the distinction between the raw and the cooked amounted to the underlying structure of one culture he studied, as I recall. <br /><br />Food laws, purity laws, the culture's own definition of the clean and the unclean, are often central to many cultures. And in Catholicism, eating the bread and drinking the wine or blood, are often presented as perhaps the most important ritual in defining one as Catholic. <br /><br />The beliefs associated with eating memorialized many things.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post-59508539775993423572016-04-02T13:43:37.562-07:002016-04-02T13:43:37.562-07:00Good point about the Lincoln and Columbus examples...Good point about the Lincoln and Columbus examples, but I think Rafael is fair in his critique about the links-in-a-chain -- amply illustrated in the quotations above. The telephone game (BrE: "Chinese whispers") is used by Ehrman himself, and I suspect the analogy is doing too much work in his thinking. I must admit that I think it's a really terrible analogy. (I once podcasted about it after realizing how poor it was when teaching NT Intro.)<br /><br />Anyway, great first piece Rafael. I look forward to hearing more.Mark Goodacrehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05115370166754797529noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post-62534856479960098902016-04-02T10:20:09.142-07:002016-04-02T10:20:09.142-07:00From Richard Bauckham's Website!
News
(1 Apr...From Richard Bauckham's Website!<br /><br />News<br /><br />(1 April 2016)<br />Yesterday I recorded two hours of debate with Bart Ehrman for Premier Christian Radio (London) about his book Jesus Before the Gospels (and related also to my Jesus and the Eyewitnesses). They will be broadcast in two installments next Saturday and the following Saturday, and will be available as podcasts.<br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16435451531495721354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post-4470912609807055402016-04-01T13:06:59.536-07:002016-04-01T13:06:59.536-07:00Definitely not a chain...that image has always bot...Definitely not a chain...that image has always bothered me. <br /><br />Because of my interest in gossip and rumor, I imagine memory as intricately linked with social speech processes. Probably because I'm a surfer, I've become accustomed to visualizing the re-membering of any particular incident as memory-carried/construed-by-speech that looks like the concentric swells emanating from a singular storm system, in all directions. Overlay that picture with a cultural matrix - the spider web in your post, Chris! - and you got the makings of a traditioning process. Memory constituted by the waves of re-membering speech and talk processed by/within a specific complex cultural web. Jack Danielshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02726516201872440792noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post-62052330466557950362016-04-01T10:40:10.848-07:002016-04-01T10:40:10.848-07:00Karl, you wouldn't have a personal investment ...Karl, you wouldn't have a personal investment in this volume, would you? :)Chris Keithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12007521996155910288noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post-68296712871006926422016-04-01T06:12:54.202-07:002016-04-01T06:12:54.202-07:00Great critique. I would like to know if you are aw...Great critique. I would like to know if you are aware of any author working with the relation between food/ meals and social memory in Jesus studies. I know some few authors are working on that to study OT sacrifice/ offering. But it could be an interesting application for the memory of Jesus, as a meal was the most important environment to keep his memory, right?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01005368700913323063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post-15824547766788721692016-03-31T21:36:31.262-07:002016-03-31T21:36:31.262-07:00Highly recommended: John Kloppenborg's chapter...Highly recommended: John Kloppenborg's chapter on "Memory, Performance, and the Sayings of Jesus" in https://global.oup.com/academic/product/memory-in-ancient-rome-and-early-christianity-9780198744764?cc=us&lang=en&Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16888769268991595246noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post-32919041859867880242016-03-31T16:53:12.289-07:002016-03-31T16:53:12.289-07:00Gene Stecher
Chambersburg,Pa.
Rafael, thanks so m...<br />Gene Stecher<br />Chambersburg,Pa.<br /><br />Rafael, thanks so much for this opportunity and beginning interesting outline. I too have only read the Introduction, and a few more pages (allowed at the purchase site). The book won't arrive until next Tuesday.<br /><br />I'm wondering if comparing Ehrman's theories with the Telephone Game and links in a chain, rather than as a web, etc., are a bit unfair.<br /><br />You did not mention Ehrman's two practical examples: Lincoln and Columbus. He went into considerable detail to demonstrate how the memories of these men were influenced by the cultural situation of the ones remembering. Thus the vestiges of colonialism might go a long way to influencing positive images of Columbus, and the transformative impact of the civil rights movement might go along way to reinforcing positive memories of Lincoln. Actually, Columbus wasn't such a nice guy, and Lincoln spoke against racial equality.<br /><br />Please forgive any oversimplification of which I may be guilty.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post-61463734001723196762016-03-31T13:03:44.707-07:002016-03-31T13:03:44.707-07:00Rafael, thanks for this. I'm reading Ehrman al...Rafael, thanks for this. I'm reading Ehrman along with you, not as carefully as you. You've confirmed my two biggest take-aways from the Introduction: Ehrman does not seem to engage much of the interesting literature on Jesus-memory-history, and he seems to be interrogating what he HAS read with questions that aren't themselves all that interesting. Is this book going to focus mostly on debating fundamentalism? If so, I probably won't finish it.<br /><br />I probably won't say this as clearly as I'd like, but I often walk away from Jesus-memory-history with a sense of disappointment. Admittedly, I've only scratched the surface of these memory-histories, but they seem to me to have surprisingly little in common, and they don't engage each other in a way I've found satisfying. I think memory-theory potentially represents a paradigm shift in how we understand history and in what we think history can do for us. What can we know, and how can we come to know it? It's here where Ehrman (so far) is most disappointing: it seems that Ehrman sees memory-thoery as confirming everything and every way he thought before he began this study. Which suggests to me that he's missing something fundamental.<br /><br />But like you, I've only read the intro, and I'm hoping for better. Thanks again!Larryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14778209150227808697noreply@blogger.com