Wednesday Bible Study: Meet the Jews
Ezra 5 is the first time we encounter the word Jew, at least in the English translations I have seen. That ' s interesting because it signals a new kind of identity, no longer national but ethnic. Judah is now subsumed into a province of the Persian empire. This chapter essentially establishes that, but this chapter and the next affirm that the empire has granted the newly defined Jews -- no longer a separate kingdom but now a people within a larger empire -- religious rights. Note, however, that it also undermines any historical basis for the modern nation of Israel. Now, the Jews are no longer a nationality, but an ethno...
Source: Stayin' Alive - May 3, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Digital Self-Neuromodulation Therapy for PTSD: Interview with Oded Kraft, CEO of GrayMatters Health
GrayMatters Health, a medtech company based in Israel, has developed Prism for PTSD, a self-neuromodulation therapy. The company has identified what they describe as brain-mechanism-specific biomarkers for certain mental disorders. These involve combining fMRI and EEG data. The Prism for PTSD system targets a specific biomarker called amygdala-derived-EFP, which is involved in the fight or flight response, and which can frequently be triggered in those with PTSD.
The new technique that GrayMatters Health developed involves applying an EEG cap to a patient’s head, and then placing them in front of a screen. An animatio...
Source: Medgadget - May 2, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Exclusive Neurology Psychiatry GraymattersH PTSD Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Neighborhood dispute
Ezra 4 is chronologically muddled, evidence that the text accreted over time. Of course, we don ' t know how much of this actually happened. On the one hand, it ' s hard to see why these stories are here if there isn ' t some basis for them, on the other hand some of this doesn ' t seem very plausible. I ' ll try to sort out some of the complications. In verses 1 and 2 Zerubabbel is not identified but he is the leader of the community, identified elsewhere in the Tanakh as being of the Davidic line and as the governor of Judah. The reference to Esahaddon king of Syria is to the story in 2 Kings 17, in which the Assyri...
Source: Stayin' Alive - April 30, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Let the slaughter begin
The action in Ezra 3 is pretty straightforward. The priests build an altar and start up the sacrifices, then they lay the foundation for the temple. This does serve to remind us that the basis of this religion is the ritual killing of animals by a hereditary priesthood to propitiate a narcissistic deity. That ' s what he demands: kill animals and burn them. If you do different rituals to propitiate other gods, he ' ll have you murdered en masse by other tribes. If your hereditary priests kill enough animals and burn them, he ' ll be good to them. That ' s the theology.3 When the seventh month came and the Israel...
Source: Stayin' Alive - April 26, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Hit the snooze button
Ezra 2 rivals or beats out a couple of the early chapters of Chronicles for the most boring book in the Bible. It ' s mostly just a list of men ' s names and purported numbers of their descendants who returned from exile. Who cares? I will just note that it ' s highly unlikely that Nebuchadnezzar kidnapped anything like this number of people. He would have taken the royal household, the literate priesthood, and some other high status people who might have been able to challenge his viceroy ' s rule, but obviously most of the population remained.There are a couple of other problems here. This list is repeated in Nehemiah, b...
Source: Stayin' Alive - April 23, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Literary Complications
What are now considered the Book of Ezra and the Book of Nehemiah were originally a single document. Medieval monks separated them and Rabbinical tradition accepted the separation in the 16th Century. Scholars used to attribute Ezra/Nehemiah to the Chronicler, and while composition of the book(s) probably began around 400 BC and may have been associated with Chronicles, it was revised and amended over the next 250 years before being translated into Koine Greek as part of the Septuagint. It contains interpolated documents in Aramaic as well as the main narrative in Hebrew. It is organized around theological conce...
Source: Stayin' Alive - April 19, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Literary Complilcations
What are now considered the Book of Ezra and the Book of Nehemiah were originally a single document. Medieval monks separated them and Rabbinical tradition accepted the separation in the 16th Century. Scholars used to attribute Ezra/Nehemiah to the Chronicler, and while composition of the book(s) probably began around 400 BC and may have been associated with Chronicles, it was revised and amended over the next 250 years before being translated into Koine Greek as part of the Septuagint. It contains interpolated documents in Aramaic as well as the main narrative in Hebrew. It is organized around theological conce...
Source: Stayin' Alive - April 19, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Government Proposes To Make Bad Standards on Race and Ethnicity Worse
John F. EarlyI recently laid out the case to stop government classification of people by race and ethnicity in a CatoBlog post. Those observations were stimulated by The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) posting a notice for comment in the Federal Register with respect to a report from the Federal Interagency Technical Working Group and Race and Ethnicity Standards to revise the existing standards for collecting data by race and ethnicity. Comments are due by April 27, 2023.Ipublished a similar op ‐ed in the Wall Street Journal, which subsequently printed a singleletter to the editor in re...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - April 18, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: John F. Early Source Type: blogs
XRHealth and Amelia Virtual Care Announce Merger, Creating the Largest XR Therapeutics Platform in the World
Both Companies will Be merged Under the XRHealth Brand Name and By the End of the Year Are Forecasted to Have over 500K VR Treatments, Exceed 25K Patients Treated, and Be Deployed by Over 2500 Clinicians
XRHealth, a Boston-based developer and operator of virtual treatment rooms, and Amelia Virtual Care, a global leading virtual reality platform for mental health professionals based in Barcelona, Spain, today announced their intention to merge into one company, which will remain called XRHealth. The union aims to create an XR therapeutic powerhouse, uniquely capable of addressing both physical and mental health issues. The...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - April 18, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Healthcare IT News Tags: Health IT Company Healthcare IT 2023 HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition Amelia Virtual Care Amelia VR Asabys Asabys Partners Augmented Reality CBT Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Cognitive-Behavioral VR Therapy Eran Orr Guill Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Getting it over with
The last chapter of Chronicles collapses the story told in the last three chapters of Kings. It ' s pretty much the same story, but the Chronicler seems anxious to get it over with. Just to recap, Kings was originally compiled during the reign of Josiah, but the story of the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple was added later, presumably during the Babylonian exile. This doesn ' t add anything. It pretty much ignores the destruction of the northern kingdom, which doesn ' t interest the Chronicler. Although the writers of both books ascribe the downfall of the Hebrew kingdoms to apostasy and Yahwe...
Source: Stayin' Alive - April 16, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
The gob, it is smacked
Yesterday was a very busy news day, that gave us plenty to think about, but I have to admit that my brain was most engaged by the story of the leaked classified documents. You may think that out of character, but it ' s because the other news of April 13*, however more important it may have been, unfortunately wasn ' t so surprising and strange. How can it be that a low-ranking enlisted airman has been printing out highly classified documents, folding them up and stuffing them in his pockets, walking out with them, spreading them out on his kitchen counter, photographing them, and posting them online, formonths? Now, ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - April 14, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Thank God it's almost over
" It " being Chronicles. This chapter is interesting textually simply because the same story is told much more briefly in Kings, where the Passover only takes three verses, IIRC. Since Kings was written in part as a panegyric to Josiah, it ' s curious that this existed but was not included. What could be the source? My best guess is that it was originally in the Book of Kings, was somehow omitted from the canonical version but was still there at the time Chronicles was first compiled. On the other hand, Kings gives a better explanation of the events that ended Josiah ' s life, which are quite mysterious here. Wh...
Source: Stayin' Alive - April 12, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: I'm not making this up
This is an absolutely real screenshot from the group Facebook page for my town ' s residents. This is the true meaning of Easter, it seems. (The post also advertises the time and place of the Easter service, which I omit.). This is what Christianity in the U.S. has become. And no, I don ' t recall this sentiment in the Gospels from my Sunday school days.Consider joining us Resurrection Sunday at New Life! Contemporary music, inspiring faith building messages, and childcare through age 10.I have no further comment. Now, turning to Chronicles, Ch. 34 introduces the reign of Josiah. This is largely taken from the Book of King...
Source: Stayin' Alive - April 9, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: A whole different story
The reign of Manasseh is described in the Book of Kings (2 21), and it starts off the same way, with him taking the throne at age 12 and doing all the abominations, but it ends completely differently. In Kings, God just threatens to do bad shit to Judah, specifically:12
Thereforethus saith
the LORD God of Israel,Behold, I am bringing such evil upon Jerusalem and
Judah,that
whosoever heareth of it, both his ears shall tingle.
God said to his prophets,
Because Manasseh has been so wicked, even more wicked than the Amorites,and has made Judah sin with his idols,I will bring so much evil on Jerusalem and Judah that it will mak...
Source: Stayin' Alive - April 5, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Getting real
We ' re at the point where the story in Chronicles and the Deuteronomistic history have emerged from the mists of myth into a basis in historical reality. The failed siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib is established history. The story is also told in Kings, but it ' s a completely different recounting of very similar events, which is more evidence that this really happened, in other words at least two different people wrote an account of the same events. (The Chronicler is evidently drawing on, or copying from, a lost source.) Historians aren ' t convinced that a plague was the reason for Sennacherib ' s defeat, but otherwi...
Source: Stayin' Alive - April 2, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
