It worked!

Search for Jew on Google, and Wikipedia's definition has moved to the number one spot. You-know-who is still number two, so keep linking to Jew. :-)

(Reading up on this, I came across the ADL's useful debunking of Internet rumours - scroll down to it.)

Ancient Near Eastern Texts

Thought it might be useful to read the KJV, for comparisons with other ANE mythology and history texts. So today, I read Genesis 1 (I'll bet people do that a lot, like giving up smoking all the time, and grind to a halt somewhere in the begats. Let's see how far I get.)

Here are my questions and observations for later research (your remarks are welcome):

- Is the deep supposed to predate the arrival of God? There's no mention of His creating it - he just organises it. (Cf the Mesopotamian creation story, the Enuma Elish.)

- God gives humans and animals plants as food. Do humans and animals only begin to eat meat after the Fall?

- Are the "signs" in verse 14 astrological?

I chose the KJV for the famously beautiful language. The same choice of translations is available for many of the Mesopotamian texts - the Enuma Elish I linked to above is the one that starts with the lovely phrase "When on high" (like Genesis - "In the beginning" - it's named for its opening line.)