Compensation matters

In the wake of the salacious & nauseous sex-scandal details about a predatory professor, his sixteen-year-old female undergraduate victim, and the equally serious accusations levelled at what someone has unkindly headlined “Biafrauds or Nigerians: Cyber fraud suspects in USA”, the erstwhile beleaguered, all-purpose scapegoat indiscriminately being accused of every imaginable crime under the Nigerian heavens, i.e. our dear Fulani Herdsmen Brethren, who used to occupy so much Naija media space have receded into the background, somewhat, although, perhaps, the respite from the media blaze is only temporarily, even if their alleged pillage, kidnappings, murder, rape, church arsons, obviously being committed by some non-Fulani scoundrels, continues unabated all over the Federation, because the real miscreants are not being apprehended by Naija Law enforcement as they should be...

In the meantime, we are to suppose that there will always be one or two incidents of Fulani cattle straying into /romping over other peoples farm property etc. Last night I was reminded that these type of perennial problems have always existed in agricultural societies, so it was not unexpected to read in Shemot 22 : 4 // Exodus 22: 5

“If a man leads his animals into a field or a vineyard, or lets his animal loose and it eats in another's field, the best of his field or the best of his vineyard he shall pay.”

Wherever it can be established that these breeches have occurred and by who isn’t it only fair that the affected farmers receive compensation? Some mechanism has to be in place to ensure that this is carried out - human beings are surely more precious than to the Almighty than the bovine species. SO these kinds of disputes/ transgressions can be resolved without any recourse to violence, reprisals, bloodshed...

Corrections – should read: Wherever it can be established that these breaches have occurred and by whom, isn’t it only fair that the affected farmers receive compensation? Some mechanism has to be in place to ensure that this is carried out - human beings are surely more precious to the Almighty than the bovine species. So, these kinds of disputes/ transgressions could be resolved without any recourse to violence, reprisals, bloodshed...

The Babylonian Talmud

I suppose that it’s no coincidence that you’ll also find the sun, the moon and the stars there. There is common sense and a divine spark of wisdom that animates all of us living souls. Innately and instinctively we know that some things are right and some things are wrong.

There is the analogy of the four sons...

What Gloria in excelsis Emeagwali has probably found in her Hammurabi is the principle of retaliation, a feature of the corrupt Canaanite religions and codes of ethics that pervaded that area. Gloria in excelsis Emeagwali must understand that Hashem has communicated His legislations through his chosen servant Moses, in order to save Moses and his people from being corrupted by the culture of their neighbours and this they do by distancing themselves from any corrupt system. With the Almighty as the King of Israel, Israel is to be governed by the laws of the Almighty’s Kingdom in which those who acknowledge Hashem as king, live, because Israel - all Israel, past, present and future is indeed destined to be “a kingdom of priests, a holy people “

So what you find in Judaism is the equality principle of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” - that the servant’s vulnerable eye and his employer’s eye are equal, so are the rich man’s tooth and the poor man's tooth - that in Judaic justice all eyes and all teeth are equal before the law, so to speak. This principle has never been interpreted to mean cruel, physical retaliation, that the victim should gorge out his assailant’s eye – it has always been interpreted to mean compensation, that such injury should be compensated.

Justice Olayinka Agbetuyi,

I was fully expecting this kind of rejoinder from e.g. a Palestinian terrorist who understands that Palestinian terrorism is a serious problem.

Here is the current situation in Israel according to Israeli media

Memri

I believe that you would get the best reply from Prime Minister Netanyahu himself without any prevarication or from an IDF Rabbi or - in the absence of a duly constituted Sanhedrin, from the Israeli Justice System's rules of engagement in the Holy Land.

In the same way some people misunderstand Vayikra – Leviticus – Chapter 19: 18 in which the Almighty says to his chosen people, “You shall neither take revenge from nor bear a grudge against the members of your people; you shall love your neighbour as yourself. I am the Lord.”

The Almighty’s teaching and His revelation at Mt. Sinai is very different from Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount” in which he advises his audience “Love your enemies”; needless to say, although the Muslims say that they recognise Jesus as a prophet of Islam, they do not follow his advice in that regard. Many years ago when I asked my best Palestinian friend Ahmed, that as the offspring of Aba Abraham wasn’t it about time that the Pals started taking make peace with their cousins, he was very angry. I asked him, “why are you angry?” He replied, “They are not my cousins, they are my enemies!”

As Rabbi Jacob Neusner puts it on page 27 in his A Rabbi talks with Jesus:

“ It is a religious duty to resist evil, to struggle for good, to love God, and to fight against those who make themselves into enemies of God. The Torah knows of nothing of not resisting evil and does not value either the craven person who submits or the arrogant person, who holds that it is beneath one’s dignity to deign to oppose evil. Passivity in the face of evil serves the cause of evil. The Torah calls eternal Israel always to struggle for God’s purpose; the Torah sanctions warfare and recognises legitimate power. So I find amazing Jesus’ statement that it is a religious duty to fold before evil “

As for Cornelius Ignoramus the best advice to him is to be found in Mishlei (The Book of Proverbs) which states so clearly, “Trust in Hashem with all your heart and do not rely on your own understanding” ( Mishlei 3: 5) and which is the front-piece of the most excellent little book “ With All Your Heart - A practical Approach to Bitachon by Rabbi S. Wagschal – which is s short, exact commentary on that piece of wisdom...

But, for you yourself to answer the question, briefly consider the following:

1. The current state of The Death Penalty in Israel

2. That there is a Judaic Law that states if someone is on his way to kill you, it's an obligation: you must rise and kill him first

An important question arising is, how far back in time should reprisal killings that constitute the seemingly endless cycle of violence, go? Starting from the time when Joshua wiped out the Canaanite in obedience to a Divine Command?

Dear Gloria In Excelsis Emeagwali,

This is only part 1 of my reply  and it only addresses your addressing my humble axx  as "Cornelius the Wise"

I'll get back to you fully about Hammurabi, Canaanite influence, Mesopotamian myths, and  especially deal with your sweet little poem 

For now,  here is part 1: 

Here it is : A list of people known as "the Wise"

No coward am I, at least not verbally, but I have been erstwhile inspired by the hyperbolic Julius Eto who I’m sure was not flirting when he greeted our precious Professor Toyin Falola with this valedictory salutation as an opening gambit “Very dear Prof. Falola “ Who knows, perhaps  he will be gathering momentum  in the days ahead  and he may soon be promoting our precious  to “ Most Dearest Professor Falola“ at which point even a less dear professor  or a Nigerian President may be moved to reply, 

“ Yes.  Do you need something? What do you want? ?”

About the wise, once upon a time, one of my best friends was Akintola Wyse  - we were classmates from 1958-1965  and roommates at college, 1965-1866) ( I used to lecture him about the meaning of his name, "Wise"

In 1960, we discussed intensely what  Touchstone the clown says (in As You Like It)

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.” The heathen philosopher, when he had a desire to eat a grape, would open his lips when he put it into his mouth, meaning thereby that grapes were made to eat and lips to open...”

Of course, were you to address Cornelius Ignoramus correctly, I’m sure that he would gladly wear the crown.

Titles like wise, clown, etc remind me I wrote to one of our fellows as follows. “ BTW, I have no objection to our pan-African USA -Africa Dialogue Series being so dominated by Nigerian domestic issues but I’m missing the participation of folks like Pablo Idahosa, Kwame Zulu Shabazz, even the pompous Besserwisser John Mukum Mbaku Esq. from Cameroon posing as the world’s most omniscient legal brain. As for that other clown suffering from illusions of grandeur, currently wiping Oga Falola’s arxxx, the less said the better. “

I haven’t heard from him since. No problem . Since that excerpt does not provide an explanatory context, well , it’s extracted from this that has been slightly redacted, so, you be the judge:

“Wishing You & Her Majesty a well-deserved Shabbat Shalom

and bon appétit at the smorgasbord in Kingdom Come

I used to think that it was only Sierra Leoneans and Mama Queen ( Victoria and descendants) that love to award titles. In Sierra Leone, it used to be titles galore, all day long: Sir Samuel Lewis, Sir Ernest Samuel Beoku-Betts, Sir Salako Ambrosius Benka-Coker, Sir Milton Margai, Sir Henry Josiah Lightfoot Boston, Sir Albert Margai (they say that his purchase of that knighthood cost the country at least one mighty diamond), Sir Samuel Bankole Jones...

And then there is the preponderant tendency of academic accolades outside of the academies, the citadels of learning, most loved and revered but not always deserved by those with little or no brains: not surprisingly, one of the first things that Ernest Bai Koroma did after ascending to the political throne of Sierra Leone was to raise the salaries of he himself, his ministers, his members of parliament (so that none of them would complain) and then to award himself a long-coveted Honorary Doctorate, to earn him the missing, requisite respect at home and at the many summits at which he would be mingling with the true academics and literati of the international community.

Just for the record, my first real encounter with the Ghanaian Akpeteshie was at George Nelson Preston’s wedding, his tying the knot/ jumping the broom with his beloved Akosua, which my Better Half and I had been invited to celebrate at Twifo Hemang. You remember Kerouac with reference to tea, saying that, “The first sip is joy, the second is gladness, the third is serenity, the fourth is madness, the fifth is ecstasy.”?

Not so with AKPETESHIE! For me at Twifo Hemang , for starters, the FIRST SIP , was a burning sensation of satisfaction as it hit – pierced the inner throat ( years later I found the same satisfaction with Cointreau – instantaneously, it makes you wanna holler or sing)

Achtung, achtung, with AKPETESHIE the serenity is short-lived, the gladness and madness come together, and the ecstasy arrives at the moment when you spontaneously pass out. At George's wedding, I saw this happening right in front of my eyes, one after the other I witnessed some of the local guests passing out and being taken out on a stretcher – apparently, all this was quite normal. As for me, I survived, I did not pass out, but never in my life have I downed so much coca-cola – this was to dilute the intoxicating effects. My Better Half, she had decided to stick to Johnny Walker, whereas I had opted to stick with the real men - the seasoned drinkers, not the boys.

My second real initiation into the rites of Ghanaian Akpeteshie was soon after the final of the 1971 African Cup of Champions Clubs at KUMASI where Asante Kotoko played Engelbert of Zaire to a 1-1 draw, after which we (Better Half & Me) marched to the Kingsway Hotel and finished all the beer there and later on hooked up with some Sierra Leone friends - (Samuel Oju King –Sierra Leonean bassman for The Echoes who were stationed at Kumasi) and there imbibed more Akpeteshie, on top of the previous Star Beer.

Fact is whether you name it Omolé in Sierra Leone, or Akpeteshie in Ghana , o r Ogogoro in Nigeria, as Shakespeare would have said, the same alcoholic beverage by any other name would be as equally intoxicating, and when I woke up that morning (and to this day) all I could remember was that Asante Kotoko had given Engelbert of Zaire a real drubbing.

In those days and right now too, my favourite is Palmy. That’s the one I miss most. And coconut juice. And my rose garden. I miss Ghana, I miss Sierra Leone, and I miss Nigeria.

About the Sabuni affair - if it happened at all, then it’s possible that the Congolese wench must have seduced the Great Fredrik, or Fredrik the Great may have been singing this kind of sweet Soukous in her ear, in Perfect Lingala:

“Jah knows how much I've tried

The truth I cannot hide,

To keep you satisfied

True love that now exist

Is the love I can't resist

So, jam by my side”

My own personal prayer during Brother Obama’s presidency was that they (the Republicans or the racists) would not succeed in sending a Monica Lewinsky on him – especially not a White Monica Lewinsky – then Trump would have been publicly calling for the Brother to be deported back to Kenya…

Much more upsetting of course, is the criminal activities of Nigeria’s predatory sex professors. I wonder if that kind of dilemma is being faced in the inter-racial context of power-relations at universities in the United States

BTW, I have no objection to our pan-African USA -Africa Dialogue Series being so dominated by Nigerian domestic issues but I’m missing the participation of folks like Pablo Idahosa, Kwame Zulu Shabazz, even the pompous Besserwisser John Mukum Mbaku Esq. from Cameroon posing as the world’s most omniscient legal brain. As for that other clown suffering from illusions of grandeur, currently wiping Oga Falola’s arxxx, the less said the better.

My real fear is that what’s seen as the Raila Odinga sell-out could also happen in Sierra Leone where the opposition when not sitting on their hands seem to have taken a leave of absence and resorted to some part-time jiving on social media.

I’m afraid that all of the above is far from Sabbath table talk, as is indeed picking upå the pen or pounding the keyboard. Anyway, it's only your own sense of humour in speech and writing that has permitted me certain liberties 

Best Regards,

from yours truly,  

Sorry that in the link that I provided to that letter, the letter gets truncated somewhere in the middle.

It’s on page 168 of Selected Letters – D.H. Lawrence – Edited by James T. Boulton

or you can, click on Untitled - Page 353 - Google Books Result

for D.H. Lawrence’s “My Dear Eder, Oh, do take me to Palestine , and I will love you forever “

Sin-cerely,

CH

“I am chosen

They are chosen”

“I am chosen

They are chosen”

It’s a holy library

Tomorrow ( Monday) will wind up with whatever implications you have in mind about Hammurabi and Canaanite culture. Just reading this Sabbath’s Torah portion Re’eh ((Deuteronomy 11:26-16:17)) one understand that the prohibitions are against some of the prevalent practices about even food and drink among the surrounding cultures.

More on the roots of anti-Semitism generated by resentment of the idea that God has a “Chosen people”

D.H. Lawrence and the Jews ( just check out the index to his Selected Letters and some of the filth therein)

T. S. Eliot and the Jew

The Buddha was born some 600 years before Jesus. Buddhists and Buddhist texts have not generated such much hostility...

“O
the untrustworthiness of Egyptologists
who do not know their trips “(I Am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra -   by Ishmael Reed) 
I was going to approach the whole thing differently but have now lost interest, but for the dangers of religious bigotry, whether it’s Islamophobia or anti-Semitism, racism and tribalism, generally, it's really not Cornelius Ignoramus’es business what you think, believe, know,  don’t know, think you know and teach, but for anyone who has the luxury of time I would recommend this from my point of view rather neutral source: 
Israel’s Prophetic Tradition: Essays in Honour of Peter Ackroyd (Cambridge University Press)

The whole thrust of any discussion of Hammurabi in connection with the revelation at Mt. Sinai and related matters has often led to certain unavoidable comparisons being made, all leading to some inevitably anti-Semitic conclusions. There is a vast literature that covers some of these discussions, conjectures, diverse understandings, morbid visions, broad-assed visionary generalisations, in this time and in this place, some people playing Sherlock Holmes and Indiana Jones movie roles far removed from the real ruins in time and place. I am no stranger to the Uncle Ben and John Henrik Clarke school or Martin Bernal versus Mary Lefkowitz and more. Much much more...

Even on stage, anyone is free to cop out of a discussion and I’ve seen it happen, some so-called scholars running away from reasonable confrontation with their tails tucked firmly between or behind their legs.

Well, with just a little imagination a man can discuss with himself – that’s what most books are about – they are internal discussions, sometimes in linear progression, the print reckoned in terms of mileage. You’ve gotta to have the stamina for the marathon or as I-Roy says, “When I’m through with you, you will weak in the seat.”

Now, with all this anti-Semitism ( God’s legislation is from Babylon) some people think that they are succeeding in subverting the authenticity of each word from the Almighty and that they are thereby subverting the Hebraic Faith which is the foundation of all else that follows, such as Christianity and al-Islam.

It started with

“That it should end up in the “holy books” is interesting.” (GE)

That’s where it starts in this thread

It continued: ““In fact I think that this particular law is  quite reasonable – though  not divine.” (GE)

OAA joined in to concur with his lady in distress:

“The holy books, in particular the OT is an amalgam of updated previous Middle Eastern lore.

The similarity between the code of Hammurabi and the Ten Commandments is not accidental.”

(That was OAA sounding off. The Chosen Birds of the same feather flock together, agree with each other)

He continued:

“It is now generally agreed that the origins of Abraham (the Biblical patriarch) is in present day Iraq.” (But everybody knows that. Abraham, probably a Kurd from the North of Iraq, crosses the Euphrates River and by that act is defined as a Hebrew)

“I believe the narrative of the great flood is of Babylonian

"pagan" origin.” (She believes. A flood supposedly covers a vast area and the narrative about that flood is supposed to come from somewhere else?)

GE takes a shot at poetry conjugates it for us all:

“BTW we are all chosen people.

They are chosen” (GE singing on behalf of all mankind)

Reminds me of Footnote to Howl by Allen Ginsberg | Poetry Foundation

Dr Sikiru Eniola will have to be addressed separately; let's hope that he doesn't bolt away. 

OAA,

So, you think that The Tanakh is just "is an amalgam of updated previous Middle Eastern lore" and nothing more?

If you have read the Jewish Bible you wouldn't talk like this 

Nor do they talk like this down here:

Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Tanakh

Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament

Dr Sikiru Eniola,

I’m sure that you know all about the Arab-Israeli Wars, just as I’m sure that you and Brother Buhari too would prefer to be on the side of peace and justice.

Prior to the Arabs attacking tiny Israel again in 1967 the Pals had all of Gaza which was being administered by Egypt and the West Bank including the Temple Mount – the Almighty’s most sacred piece of holy estate which was then being administered by Jordan...

They say that the Arabs only need to win one war.

Right now I fear for Beirut if the Government of Lebanon does not rein in Hezbollah which after all, is not Lebanon’s national army.

I have nothing against fighting a just war for a just cause, but not when peaceful negotiations could achieve the same goals. Is it possible that Trump’s Peace Plan that’s being touted as “The deal of the Century” will bear fruit or is it destined to be dead on arrival?

As Jesus is reported to have said, “if your eye be single your whole body shall be full of light.” Your eye is no doubt single and wonderfully full of light about the Palestinian suffering. This kind of selective vision or rather the monomaniac singularity of vision that’s exclusively focused on the beleaguered, long-suffering Palestinians, is impressive. Fortunately, unlike the suffering servant of Isaiah 53, the Palestinians are not a shuffering and shmiling kind of people – and their voice reverberates and resonates throughout the Arab world and beyond.

As El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz once told his disciples.,

“There is nothing in our book, the Qur'an, that teaches us to suffer peacefully. Our religion teaches us to be intelligent. Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery. That's a good religion. In fact, that's that all-time religion. That's the one that Ma and Pa used to talk about: an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, and a head for a head, and a life for a life. That's a good religion.”

MEMRI

A Summary of some of what’s been going down

Palestinians

I follow this on Facebook Days of Palestine

Enough to make your blood boil

I suppose that on the home turf your other most immediate and equally pressing problem is Boko Haram who have sworn allegiance to ISIS and who also want to carve out their own caliphate from the region in North Eastern Nigeria which some people will remember as Borno and Gongola and from there maybe advance to subdue the rest of the Federation unto submission and establish their Islamic Caliphate on the carcass of what was once Nigeria, just as the Palestinian Terrorists, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Hezbollah, Shia Iran etc., would like to erect an Islamic Republic of Palestine – God forbid - over the carcass of what was is Israel...

To be fair to us all, Dr King’s letter from a Birmingham Jail can be partially quoted here:

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

When the focus is on injustice - there’s much to cry about – Just take a look at the A to Z of the Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch country reports.

For balance: Some updates on what happening in the Holy Land right now...

News and Information

Israel News

 Re- all the hullabaloo about an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth being interpreted to mean compensation ( damages) - the same argument could be extended for Reparations!

Heaven forbid that Cornelius Ignoramus should ever run away from a good argument – because somebody’s mother lied or because somebody died.

This week’s Torah Portion Shoftim // Deuteronomy 16:18 - 21:9 ( about Justice) has it staring at us in the face, not as an exception but as a very particular face – which shows that as much as possible we should try to avoid inane generalities or start singing songs that we don’t know (even if we are professors of musicology.) For contextualisation it’s best to start from 16.18...

Devarim / Deuteronomy 19 :19-21 :

“then you shall do to him as he plotted to do to his brother, and you shall [thus] abolish evil from among you.

And those who remain shall listen and fear, and they shall no longer continue to commit any such evil thing among you  You shall not have pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.”

As far as separation from the unchosen Canaanite culture and its norms are concerned these were explicit commands:

Devarim/ Deuteronomy 20 : 10 – 20 :

10 When thou drawest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it.

11 And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that are found therein shall become tributary unto thee, and shall serve thee.

12 And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it.

13 And when HaShem thy G-d delivereth it into thy hand, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword;

14 but the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take for a prey unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which HaShem thy G-d hath given thee.

15 Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations.

16 Howbeit of the cities of these peoples, that HaShem thy G-d giveth thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth,

17 but thou shalt utterly destroy them: the Hittite, and the Amorite, the Canaanite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite; as HaShem thy G-d hath commanded thee;

18 that they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods, and so ye sin against HaShem your G-d.

19 When thou shalt besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by wielding an axe against them; for thou mayest eat of them, but thou shalt not cut them down; for is the tree of the field man, that it should be besieged of thee?

20 Only the trees of which thou knowest that they are not trees for food, them thou mayest destroy and cut down, that thou mayest build bulwarks against the city that maketh war with thee, until it fall.