Modern-Day Emperor Worship

And I bet you thought this sort of thing went out with the Romans . . .

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=YO3UR4VQ05ZZJQFIQMGCFGGAVCBQUIV0?xml=/news/2007/02/19/wphilip19.xml

Sad, isn't it?

Herodotus Vindicated?

For hundreds of years, archeologists and historians have been speculating about the origins of the Etruscans, the civilization that dominated central Italy before Rome's rise to power. They should have just trusted Herodotus:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11174-on-the-origin-of-the-etruscan-civilisation.html

Yet another example of the trustworthiness of ancient sources in the face of modern skepticism.

The Bible and English Literature

My wife and I read to each other in the evenings, and recently we've been going through a volume of Rudyard Kipling's short stories. I have been struck by the extent to which Kipling's style was influenced by the Authorized Version (or King James Version, if you prefer) of the Bible.

For example, in the story "Three and--an Extra," we find the following statement concerning Mrs. Hauksbee, a lady given to dallying with married men: "You had only to mention her name at afternoon teas for every woman in the room to rise up and call her not blessed." This, of course, is a clever twist on the description of the virtuous woman in Proverbs 31:28 : "Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her." Kipling knew the Scripture and was confident his readers did as well.

The ironic part about all this is that Kipling was no Christian. In fact, a thinly-veiled hostility to the Church is evident in much of his writing. Yet he still worked within the idiom of the Bible. The same could be said of many other 18th- and 19th-century English and American authors.

Isn't it sad that these unbelievers' writing styles were more influenced by the Bible than the style of professing Christian writers today?