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The J-1 Exchange Visitor Program provides opportunities to participate in educational and cultural programs in the US and to return home to share your experiences. J-1 status is appropriate for international visitors coming to UAB temporarily to participate in research or teaching. J-1 exchange visitor visas are available in several categories and timeframes, as described below.
ISSS is responsible for issuing the Certificate of Eligibility for J-1 Status (or DS-2019). To issue such a document, we will proceed in 2 steps:
Step #1: the prospective Exchange Visitor will need to provide documentation of English proficiency meeting one of the Department of State's guidelines (see details below).
Step #2: Once such proof is provided, the prospective Exchange Visitor and UAB Department will need to provide the necessary forms and documents AT LEAST 2 MONTHS prior to the Exchange Visitor scheduled start date.
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English Proficiency Determination
Department of State regulations require J-1 exchange visitor sponsors, such as UAB, to document English proficiency sufficient to "function on a day-to-day basis in the [academic] environment" for all visitors who are non-native English speakers or who are not residents/citizens of a country where English is an official language. According to federal regulations, acceptable methods of English verification for J-1 purposes are:
- Proof of graduation from a four-year institution where the curriculum was conducted in English
- Signed documentation from an English language school confirming oral and reading comprehension proficiency
- Evidence of passing a recognized English language exam, such as the TOEFL (minimum iBT of 77), IETLS (minimum 6.0 overall with at least 5.5 on each section), or PTEA (minimum 51)
- Skype assessment by one of UAB's professional Teachers of English as a Second or Other Language (More information available HERE)
Scholars (and their families) looking for additional language development once they arrive in the US are encouraged to participate in Community English Classes offered free of charge by UAB's School of Education.
Compensation and/or Reimbursement for Occasional Lectures and Short-Term Consultations
J-1 scholars in the Professor and Research Scholar categories can accept compensation for one-off lecture opportunities at institutions other than UAB as long as the opportunity is: a) directly related to the objective of the exchange visitor's program, b) incidental to the exchange visitor's primary program activities, c) not going to delay the completion of the visitor's program at UAB, AND d) is documented in SEVIS by the ISSS office prior to the activity taking place. The scholar will be considered as an independent contractor for I-9 purposes.
If you wish to take advantage of a one-time lecture opportunity, please book an appointment with an A/RO (J-1 "Alternate Responsible Officer" or "Responsible Officer" in Department of State lingo) in the ISSS office and bring the following documentation with you:
- Address of the location where you will provide the lecture
- A letter from the host institution stating the terms of the opportunity, including the duration, number of hours, field or subject, amount of compensation, and description of the activity
- A letter from your UAB department chair recommending the opportunity and stating how it will enhance your program at UAB.
Template letters are provided here for your convenience. Once one of our A/ROs has reviewed the documentation with you during the scheduled interview, we will make a determination as to whether the activity is warranted and will update your SEVIS record accordingly. Please note if you do not follow the above process, ISSS will be unable to write a letter on your behalf or otherwise facilitate any payment to you from the host university.
Short-Term Scholars
Short-term scholars can remain in the US from a minimum of one day to a maximum of six months. No extension can be granted. The 12- and 24-month bars do not apply to short-term scholars who wish to return to the US in the J-1 Research Scholar/Professor category.
J-1 Research Scholars/Professors
Professors and research scholars can stay in the US for a minimum of three weeks up to a maximum of five years to engage in research and/or teaching. The appointment must be non-tenure track. The visitor must have a specific objective, such as to conduct research, teach, or consult. Sponsoring UAB departments should complete and return the International Staff Appointment Form to ISSS to begin processing the exchange visitor's Form DS-2019. If you wish to sponsor an exchange visitor to participate in a program involving observation, consultation, teaching, and research, please also complete and return the Supplement for Foreign Medical Graduates. If your prospective hire has previously held J-1 status in the US, please contact ISSS; the 12- or 24-month bars may prevent him/her from obtaining another J-1 visa in the research scholar/professor category.
UAB welcomes talented medical residents and fellows from across the world every summer, but UAB cannot issue DS-2019s to individuals coming to the US for graduate medical education or training. If your objective is to pursue medical training at UAB, you must seek sponsorship through the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG), which is the only sponsoring agency that can issue a Form DS-2019 for foreign medical graduates who want to pursue medical training in the US.
More information is available here.
212(e) Home Residence Requirement
Exchange Visitors who receive financial support from the US or another government, whose skill has been listed by their country of nationality or last permanent residence as one in short supply there, or who are foreign medical graduates coming to the US for graduate medical education or training are subject to a two-year home residence requirement. Exchange Visitors subject to this requirement must return to their home country and remain there for two years before becoming eligible to apply either permanent residence in the US or a temporary employment (H-1B) visa. The two-year home residency requirement can be waived in some instances, most commonly via a Conrad 30 waiver for physicians practicing in healthcare shortage metropolitan areas or providing patient care to medically underserved populations. Eligibility for a Conrad 30 waiver is decided initially by the Alabama Department of Public Health. If you need a waiver, please contact ISSS.


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by netrov
Can one explain divergences in the Gospels geopolitically? Two Lazeruses? Three Marys?
As some have asserted, the Gospels in the New Testament are four in number for a symbolic reason, there being four seasons and four points of the compass - or, to use a Biblical expression, four corners of the earth.. Thus the fourfold frame governs both the spatial and the temporal aspect of the world. In other words we are talking about geopolitics.
Few subjects have aroused so much controversy as that of the four gospels with regards to when they were written, by whom and with what authority. Two developments should be viewed in conjunction and they are the original composition of the gospels and their selection to form the New Testament. It is generally held that the first process began on the eve of the first Jewish war against Rome and continued through the latter part of the first century. The second was concluded near the end of the second century. The four gospels were evidently held in reverence and deemed admissible for reading in church services before their final endorsement in the canon of the New Testament. From an apologetic point of view the Church could have preferred to endorse Tatian's harmonization of gospel tradition in one work, and maybe saved itself a lot of awkward questions in the course of time.
Both the composition of the gospels and the process of selection making them part of the New Testament reflect equally the tensions and movements towards harmony that attended the history of the early church. Here three main parties contended for supremacy, and these can be named as the traditionally minded Jewish Christians like St. Peter, the followers of St Paul's teachings and the Gnostics.
The four gospels present different perspectives on the story of Christ's ministry death and resurrection and cannot always be easily reconciled if taken to be historical accounts. It is a widely held opinion among scholars of the New Testament that Saint Mark's Gospel preceded the others and was written around the year 65 AD or slightly later. They assume that material in this gospel was incorporated by Saint Matthew and Saint Luke into their gospels, which were supplemented by material derived from a source presumably recorded in a lost document referred to as Q ( from the German word Quelle). The Lord's Prayer, according to this analysis was a part of Q. In St Mark's gospel we find at most an echo of the prayer in the saying of Jesus that one can only expect forgiveness if one forgives others. The gospels of Matthew and Luke contain material that is peculiar to each. These three accounts are termed the synoptic gospels to distinguish them from the Gospel according to St John, which differs from them chiefly in its emphasis on the more theological and philosophical aspects of the Christian view. This notwithstanding, certain parallels and affinities linking St John's Gospel with the others cut across the distinction between the synoptic and non-synoptic division. In one respect St Luke's gospel is the odd man out, as it alone among the four excludes any reference to Christ's encounter with the Disciples in Galilee after the Resurrection. St Mark's Gospel, like St John's, gives no account of Christ's birth.
Before entering into the question of variant representations in the gospels one should emphasize their overriding unity, which comprehends this list of salient points on which they agree.
Jesus Christ, as the Son of God (also Son of Man, Messiah, and Son of David), supersedes the prophets and holy men of the Old Testament. This is not to say that all subtleties of doctrines concerning the Trinity had become fully clarified.
John the Baptist was the immediate precursor of Jesus, whose baptism in the river Jordan marks the beginning of Jesus' ministry.
The Holy Spirit is a person rather than attribute of God the Father, as previously understood.
Jesus aroused the hostility of the Jewish religious authorities, particularly in Jerusalem.
Jesus employed parables as a means of making profound truths intelligible to all segments of the Jewish population ( in synoptic gospels).
Jesus had twelve disciples, one of whom, Judas, proved a traitor.
Times of tribulation and divine intervention were at hand.
Jesus was crucified on a Friday during or (in John's gospel probably) just prior to the Passover festival. His death was ordained by God the Father as a sacrifice offering salvation to believers.
Joseph of Arimathaea asked for Jesus' corpse and had it taken to a tomb hewn out of rock.
Jesus rose from the dead before or at daybreak on the first Sunday morning after the Crucifixion, and news to this effect was communicated to devout women who wished to anoint Jesus' body and later his disciples, though on when and where no obvious unanimity emerges. At the end of Mark's gospel the final 12 verses of the gospel are considered by some to be additions to the origin text of this gospel. If these verses are left out of account, the gospel would end with the discovery that the body of Jesus was no longer in the tomb where it had been laid. A youth told the women to go on to Galilee where they would meet Jesus in person, but they told no one because they were afraid.
The divergences between the gospels are most apparent in their accounts of the Nativity in Matthew and Luke and in the precise details of events that attended and followed the Resurrection. Irrespective of the question as to whether these variations involve discrepancies and contradictions, they imply different points of emphasis that could have been influenced by the attitudes of the Evangelists to the wider world in which they lived and strove to spread the Gospel - in large measure, therefore, their attitudes to the Roman Empire. This is my thesis, at least, which I hope to defend in due course.
In this question Mark seems to be the most neutral. His gospel contains what some have taken to be dismissive words spoken by Jesus to Mary and his siblings (or cousins) when saying that anyone who follows him is his mother, brother or sister. Apparently, there were to be no privileges for being Jesus' blood relations or, in a wider context, for being Jewish. Mark's inclusion of this passage might indicate a desire to emancipate the churches outside Judea and Galilee from being unduly influenced by the Jewish founders of the early church in Jerusalem.
Matthew was evidently incensed by the oppression enforced by the Hasmonean/Herodian and Sadducee-run establishment that controlled the religious, if not the political, order in Jerusalem. Matthew's nativity account incorporated references to Judea's near neighbours, Parthia (Persia) to the east and Egypt to the south west.The Old Testament presents a far from hostile picture of Persia, at least for the most part. In Persia a fair-minded emperor allowed Jews the right to defend themselves against Haman's conspiracy to annihilate them according to the book of Esther. Though Darius placed Daniel in a lions' den, he was evidently much relieved when Daniel left it unscathed. In the prophecy of Isaiah Cyrus is termed 'the Lord's anointed' for proving instrumental in granting the Jews permission to return to Jerusalem. Furthermore, there is a strange parallel between the role attributed to the Magi in Matthew's account of Herod's plot to murder Jesus and that told by Herodotus, the world's first great historian, concerning the infant Cyrus. According to this story the Magi interpreted a dream that the Persian king Astyages had experienced and was deeply troubled by. They told the king that his daughter Mandane would give birth to a great king who would be a conqueror of Asia. Upon hearing this Astyages plotted to have his grandson murdered. Here is Herodotus' account in translation:
Before Mandane and Cambyses had been married a year, Astyages had another dream. This time it was that a vine grew from his daughter's private parts and spread all over Asia. As before, he told the interpreters about his dreams, and then sent for his daughter, who was now pregnant.When she arrived, he kept her under watch, intending to make away with her child; for the fact was that the Magi had interpreted the dream to mean that his daughters son would usurp his throne. To guard against this Astyages , when Cyrus was born, sent for his kinsman Harpagus, the steward of his property. whom he trusted more than anyone, and said to him: I have some instructions for you, Harpagus, and mind that you pay attention to them, whatever they may be.My safety depends upon you. If you neglect it and serve others, the day will come when you will be caught in your own trap. Get hold of Mandane's child, take it home and kill it. Then bury it how you please.
Herodotus, The Histories, in: Penguin Classics, Translated by Aubrey de Selincourt, 1974, P.87.
Clearly Matthew's inclusion of a story showing that wise men from a land hostile to Rome recognized Christ's kingship could antagonize the Roman authorities, and for this reason, so argues a New Testament commentator with a strongly conservative point of view, Luke avoided any mention of the Magi in his version of the nativity story. James Kiefer argues:
Luke had urgent and compelling reasons for carefully avoiding the whole subject of Herod and the Magi. The Magi were Parthians. Now the Romans had made repeated but unsuccessful efforts to conquer Parthia (Persia), and the Parthians fought back aggressively (capturing Jerusalem in the fifth century AD). Even when the two empires were not fighting, they were constantly manoeuvring, seeking allies and buffer states and spheres of influence, and trying to put rulers favorable to themselves on the thrones of the various minor principalities of the Middle East. In the closing years of Nero's reign, the Parthians put a pro-Parthian king, Tiridates, on the throne of Armenia, thereby causing an international crisis, which was finally resolved by allowing Tiridates to keep his throne on condition that he come to Rome and do homage to Nero for it. Now Luke, who may have been writing his gospel at the very time of the Tiridates affair, was not ignorant of Imperial politics. He had accompanied Paul when Paul went to Rome to be tried before Nero, and he knew that Christianity was in danger of being declared treasonable. That its founder had been executed by a Roman governor on a charge of claiming to be King of the Jews was, to put it mildly, awkward. But the story of the Magi would have been understood to mean that when he was born a group of Parthians had acknowledged his claim to be King of the Jews, and had supported that claim against the rival claim of Herod, the pro-Roman king. It was bad enough to have Christians suspected of being part of a Jewish National Liberation Front. To have them suspected of Parthian connections would have been ten times worse. Luke was no fool. Whatever he knew about the Magi he kept to himself.
I might add that Herod the Great was once chased away from Jerusalem by powerful Parthian incursions. An anti-Roman implication in Matthew's stress on the triumphal and defiant aspect of the Resurrection, which could well be understood as a complete refutation of the Sadducees' disbelief in the possibility of a general resurrection of the dead, which the Pharisees affirmed, and, to boot, the Sadduccees were closely allied to Herod, and Herod to the Romans.. Matthew's vehemence seems to indicate that the memory of the Sadducees was very vivid in his mind, though the target for his anger might also have been Nero, who also entertained a group of Magi at the imperial court.
The Jewish historian Josephus was no less hostile to the Herodians but he became reconciled with the Roman establishment eventually. It was precisely these elements that had formed a close coalition with the emperors of Rome.
St. Luke like St. Paul, who repudiated the Hebrew name Saul in favour of his Roman name, appealed to the custodians of Roman law and authority claiming his rights as a Roman citizen, showed no bitterness towards Rome. One might even commend Luke for his farsighted vision when recognizing that the Roman empire would offer an ideal basis for spreading the gospel message. At the same time the political fusion of Christianity and the Roman empire eventually led to the impression that Christianity condoned Roman imperialism and a suppression of Jewish and Semitic culture, which may have later provoked the rise of Islam. Mohammed came into contact with those still influenced by the beliefs of Judeo-Christians, the 'Nazarines' (Arab. nazrani refers to 'Christian'), who had adhered to many Mosaic laws and practices. Luke, however, proved conciliatory to Jewish sentiments in emphasizing Mary's punctilious observance of Jewish laws concerning postnatal purity and the circumcision of a boy eight days after birth. In all, he couches Jesus' ancestry in terms of the religious rather than temporal or royal history of Israel. David is the last king listed in Luke's genealogy, which some apologists believe to be the line of Mary's ancestry (so as to obviate the need to reconcile this with the genealogy given by Matthew), Luke traced Jesus' lineage back to Adam, the first man, (not just to Abraham, the first forbear mentioned in Matthew's gospel) and thus emphasises universal aspect of Christ's purpose. As Luke himself stated that many accounts of Jesus' life had already been written, it is reasonable to assume that his gospel and its sequel, the Acts of the Apostles, arrived quite late on the scene, late enough even to betray the influence of Josephus's history of the recent past, a case argued by the noted freethinker Richard Carrier. By such a stage it was becoming clear that the conflict between Jewish traditionalists and upholders of the Pauline position was approaching its conclusion - in favour of the latter. In Luke's gospel and its sequel, The Acts of the Apostles, the Disciples were admonished not to leave Jerusalem but wait until coming of Holy Spirit. This occurred on the Jewish festival of Weeks (Pentecost). Luke, consciously or not, reinforced the foundation of what became the Christian liturgical year based on two of Jewish pilgrim festivals. As the Festival of Weeks (shavuot) fifty days after Passover, commemorated the giving of the Law (Torah) according to Jewish belief, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit meant to Christians that the old Law had been superseded by the ministry of the Spirit. Only one of the Three Pilgrim Festivals (shalosh regalim) remains left out of the church year, Succoth or the Festival of Tabernacles. Luke's gospel also provides long-term devotional material with the Magnificat based on Hannah's song of rejoicing in the Hebrew Bible and the words that gave rise to the blessings of Ave Maria. All this seems to indicate that the Church was well advised to prepare itself for a long haul through history, despite early Christian expectations of the rapture and the imminent return of Christ.
The Gospel of John's great emphasis on the divinity of Christ as co-equal and co-eternal with the Father does not allow much room for the temporal and political concerns. He noted without a commentary the widespread notion among Jews that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem without stating that this opinion was relevant to the birth of Jesus. He also noted that Jesus was present at a public baptism without stressing, or even stating unequivocally, that John had baptized him. Even at the Last Supper the only mention of any symbolic act was that of Christ's washing the disciples' feet, not the inauguration of the Eucharistic rite. Only according to his gospel were Andrew and Peter disciples of John the Baptist before following Jesus. For reasons that are no longer quite obvious John sets the scourging of the Temple near the beginning of his gospel though it is a late incident in the synoptic accounts, and places an early incident, the miraculous draught of fishes, near the gospel's end, when Jesus appears to the disciples in Galilee after the Resurrection. In his gospel also there is relatively little emphasis on Christ's struggle against the tribulations and vexations of the physical world, skipping references to the temptations in the wilderness and the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. Also, according to his gospel the Crucifixion began at noon, and there is perhaps less emphasis on the aspect of physical suffering than in the synoptic gospels. When we consider all the events packed in between late evening on Thursday and Christ's (last) appearance before Pilate, John's time scheme seems in some way more plausible than that established by the synoptic writers.
A particular feature of St John gospel is the importance it gives to private meetings with individuals, the Samaritan woman, Nicodemus and Mary Magdalene. The reasons for certain features such as the circumlocutionary expressions 'the mother of Jesus' and 'the disciple Jesus loved' and an element of numerology indicated by the catch of 153 fishes would problably have been clearer to John's immediate circle of readers/listeners than they are now.
If John wrote, or posed a strong influence on, the Apocalypse that bears his name, one can hardly deny his strong opposition to pagan Rome identified as the Whore of Babylon. By the same token his ambit of action and commitment would have been the one the most Hellenized parts of the Roman Empire, Asia Minor and domain of the seven churches addressed in the Book of Revelation. The Book Revelation was possibly the most disputed work in the final canon (hence its late acceptance therein), doubtless because of its denunciation of pagan Rome. Perhaps in this light one should understand Constantine's decision to found the city that bears his name as a more appropriate seat of the newly established Christian empire than Rome itself.
The background of the times when the gospels were written was one of contention and dispute between the Jewish traditionalists, the Pauline school of Christianity with its insistence that the Law of Moses was redundant in the new dispensation of grace and the Gnostics, who doubted that the Resurrection was a physical event. The gospels were not the first documents that were to be included in the New Testament canon. This distinction goes to Paul's Epistle to the Thessalonians and other epistles he wrote. In these, references to the birth, life and death of Jesus are sparse, and those that are made concern basic Christian practices such as the rite of Communion, which Paul stated had been inaugurated on the night of Jesus' betrayal, the eve of the Crucifixion. Paul and later Luke attested to the critical dissension between Paul and the Peter concerning the validity or otherwise of Jewish dietary laws in Christian belief, particularly as this concerned the question whether Jewish and Gentile Christians should share a common table. Thus it appears that the period beginning with the formation of the Church after the death of Jesus and completed by the time the last gospel was written saw a considerable process of evolution, which continued during the years over which the gospels themselves were written. During the same period a clear and final division between Jews and Christians had not come about, as Jewish Christians shared the use of traditional institutions such as synagogues and the Temple itself with other Jews. From the Acts we gather that the commemoration of Christ's death by partaking of bread and wine followed the end of the Sabbath at nightfall (hence Saturday night in our terms), and as such constituted a special Christian extension of Sabbath festivities. Gamaliel's advice (recorded in The Acts) to fellow Jews that they should wait to see if the Christian movement would prosper and thus demonstrate that it followed God's will and purposes suggests that initially the Christian movement was not thoroughly condemned as heretical by the entire Jewish religious establishment. The final rift between Jews who maintained the Law of Moses and Jewish Christians seems to have taken place in the aftermath of the first Jewish revolt and gave rise to an insertion in the eighteen blessings of daily prayer condemning heretics (minim) and 'slanderers'. Whatever common ground might have remained after 90 AD, this was completely lost in the course of Bar Kochbar's war against Rome as Jewish Christians rejected his messianic claims and refused to fight for his cause.
Without going into the vexed question concerning the timing of the emergence of the gospels as recognized holy and authoritative writings, one can state with certainty that the groups of Jewish Christians who upheld the dietary laws derived from interpretations of Torah passages and faith in a specifically Jewish Messiah, regarded St Matthew's writings as the gospel truth while a denigrator of the Old Testament, Marcion at the other end of the spectrum, took St. Luke's gospel or major parts of it (without the introductory section telling of the Nativity) as the basis of his claims. In fact the inclusion of four gospels was a token of the need to reconcile possible centrifugal forces in Christianity that might threaten its essential unity. The fixation of the four gospels in the NT canon was arguably in part a countermeasure against heretical, largely gnostic-influenced, or otherwise dubious gospels (e.g. The Gospel of Peter) that arose in the second century.
The learned elders who decided on the canon of the New Testament were in varying degrees aware of the difficulties of reconciling the gospel accounts, yet, to their credit, they retained all four. The main currents of early Christianity represented by the Evangelists did blend into what emerged as the early Catholic church that united the western and eastern churches until the Great Schism of 1054, despite the challenges of Arianism and the monophysite crises, or this is what I will argue later. However, not all tensions were resolved, as would become very clear at the time of the Reformation. Again, another story.
Within the New Testament the name Lazarus occurs only in the gospels of St. John and St. Luke. In St. John's gospel Lazarus has a place of honour, for according to this evangelist he was raised from the dead by Jesus a matter of weeks before Passover and the Crucifixion. In fact the Lazarus incident galvanized the Jewish religious establishment into seeking ways to destroy Jesus. He lived near Jerusalem in the village of Bethany, also the home of his sisters Martha and Mary. Jesus evidently felt a strong affection for Lazarus and wept on his account when his friend lay dead in his tomb. In the much disputed 'Secret Mark' version of gospel events Jesus, on passing through Bethany, raises a young man from the grave at the behest of the latter's distraught mother, who is not named and appears not to belong to the circle of Jesus' friends and disciples. If - and it's a big 'if' - one assigns an early, even first-century, date to 'Secret Mark' ,the question is open as to whether its author was influenced by the account in John's gospel of the raising of Lazarus or whether he drew on an independent source.
The story of the raising of Lazarus poses the culmination of the seven miraculous 'signs' witnessing to Jesus' divinity, the first of which took place in Cana when Jesus changed water into wine for the benefit of those attending a wedding celebration.
According to St. Luke's gospel Jesus told a parable, though hardly a typical one, about the interconnected and contrasting fates of Lazarus, a pauper, and Dives, a man of great wealth. Lazarus lived and died beside the portal of Dives' villa in such a state of destitution that dogs would habitually lick the sores on his limbs. When both of them died, their condition in eternity posed the diametric opposite of their situations when alive, for Dives was sent to Hades and the fire of eternal damnation whereas Lazarus was taken to Abraham's bosom and eternal bliss. Dives requested that Lazarus be permitted to place a drop of water on his tongue to assuage his suffering but this plea was rejected. When he requested that Lazarus be permitted to return to earth and warn the brothers of Dives about the tortures of Hades so that they might mend their ways to avoid an eternity of woe, this request was also turned down on the grounds that even though one return from the dead to warn them, those who ignore the teachings of Moses and the prophets will not repent from their evil ways.
Most readers of the New Testament assume that the Lazarus in Luke has nothing to do with the Lazarus in John. Not all scholars are convinced of this, for they detect a certain affinity, tenuous though it may seem, between the Lazarus figures in the gospels. Both die, and though only the Lazarus in St. John's gospel returns to life physically, the idea that Luke's Lazarus could return to earth, albeit in the form of a spirit, is accorded an honourable mention. In a sense the Lazarus in Luke and the Lazarus in John present opposite notions about the psychological effect that the return of a dead person to earth in whatever guise would exert on the minds of those who encounter him.
The argument that the figures of Lazarus are connected by more than the association of a common name should not be considered in a vacuum, that is to say, without reference to other questions relating to the identity of Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha. Scholars have wondered why such a dramatic event as the raising of Lazarus from the dead was not recorded in the so-called synoptic gospels ascribed to the saints Matthew, Mark and Luke. In the gospel according to Saint John the twin events in Bethany, the raising of Lazarus and the anointing of Jesus by Mary, foreshadow. and even set in motion, the events leading to the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. It has even been posited that the writers of the synoptic gospels certainly did know about the raising of Lazarus from the dead but decided not to mention this event for fear of exposing Lazarus to insult and violence at the hands of the Jewish enemies of Christianity. By the time John wrote his gospel, it is argued, Lazarus was either dead or had moved to a safe location.
The gospel of Luke's omission of any reference to the events in Bethany is all the more surprising for the fact that it is the sole synoptic gospel to contain a passage about the sisters Mary and Martha, though without any reference to a brother named Lazarus. In this Martha chided her sister for not helping with the household chores but was herself mildly reproved by Jesus for fussing too much about unnecessary tasks while her sister rightly dedicated her time to devotion and spiritual concerns. A reference to Mary's placing herself at Jesus' feet calls to mind the posture of the woman, Mary herself according to St. John's gospel, who anointed Jesus in Bethany just before his final entry into Jerusalem. (The gospels of Mark and Matthew record only that 'a woman' anointed Jesus in the house of one Simon the Leper in Bethany 'two days before Passover`. Those who seek to harmonize gospel narratives must assume that Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, performed the anointing act in Simon the Leper's house but the discrepancy between the setting of the event six days and two days before Passover remains).
The writer of St. Luke's gospel records that Jesus passed through Bethany on his way to Jerusalem a week before the Crucifixion and that Jesus rested the night at Olivet a day before Passover but he does not refer to the anointing act in Bethany. However, the gospel of St. Luke recounts an incident that strikes one as very similar to that of Mary's or 'a woman's) act of anointing Jesus. The incident in Luke's gospel runs as follows: once when Jesus was a guest at the table of a Pharisee a woman came to Jesus and anointed his feet with a precious ointment. Like Mary at Bethany she dried Jesus' skin with her hair. When Jesus did not reprove her act, some present cast doubt on Jesus' claim to be a prophet on the grounds that he should have recognized that the woman was a 'sinner' in the sense of one who had incurred the opprobrium of sexual misconduct. Jesus asked Peter which of two people would show greater gratitude for being released from debt, the one who owed a small amount or the one who owed a great amount. On the basis of Peter's answer Jesus pronounced that the woman loved much because she had been forgiven much. In this case the woman's deed occasioned reproof from some of those present, though not against herself, as in the case of Mary in Bethany, but against Jesus.
Conservative scholars hold that the gospels must have recorded two incidents in which a woman anointed Jesus. This being so, the writer of St. Luke's gospel could have obliged later commentators of the New Testament by recording the anointing of Jesus at Bethany in line with the other gospel writers. The absence of any such record leaves a gap in the narration of events that we arguably detect from the fact that in Luke's gospel there is no indication as to what initially prompted Judas to desert and betray Jesus. In St. John's gospel Judas' betrayal had an explicitly monetary basis. Judas resented the fact that the ointment lavished on Jesus was very costly and could have been sold to provide charity to the poor. Judas' underlying obsession with money rather than any concern about social justice soon came to light when he agreed to betray Jesus for monetary gain. In Mark and Matthew the disciples or certain of those present are reported to object to the extravagance of the woman's gesture with no particular reference to Judas. However, in these gospels an account of Judas' resolve to betray Jesus immediately follows the passage telling of the disgruntlement about the cost of the ointment used to anoint Jesus. This juxtaposition is unlikely to be coincidental.
As the writer of Luke's gospel was well versed in the gospel of Mark and probably that of Matthew, his omission of any mention of the anointing of Jesus in Bethany two days before Passover was surely intentional. I conjecture that the reason might have lain in the writer's desire to elevate Mary the mother of Jesus as the consummate manifestation of womanhood to be ever blessed through all generations with no rival to share her honour. (In Mark's gospel, by contrast, Mary is little mentioned, and only then in a somewhat dismissive tone). The woman who anointed Jesus in Bethany received a comparable honour to that accorded to the Virgin Mary in Luke's gospel, and so might detract from the unique glory of the Virgin. Also the subliminal eroticism adhering to a woman's act of wiping a man's body with her hair was hardly in keeping with Paul's ruling that women in acts of prayer and devotion should keep their heads covered and the writer of Luke's gospel had much to write about Paul in his second treatise. True, the woman who, according to Luke's gospel, anointed Jesus in the house of a Pharisee did the same, but the moment was less auspicious than that of the anointing in Bethany and one could not necessarily expect a woman 'sinner' to have a fully developed sense of decorum. Here we should consider the temporal setting of Luke's gospel. The writer of Luke's gospel, possibly a physician by that name, was evidently very sympathetic to Saint Paul and his doctrinal and moral teachings. Paul was averse to granting women positions of pre-eminence in church affairs. In his list (in the first epistle to the Corinthians) of those who witnessed the Resurrection there is no mention of Mary Magdalene, the first of all to witness the event according to the gospel writers. By the time the gospel of Luke was being written, Mary Magdalene's standing and reputation were probably viewed with envy and suspicion by those in the ranks of the church that had the male supremacist leanings. Eventually her status as the anointer of Jesus was accepted and promulgated in a sermon delivered by Pope Gregory 1 but that would be half a millenium later. Pope Gregory conflated the 'three Marys' the Virgin Mary, Mary of Bethany and the penitent sinner identified with Mary Magdalene, into one icon of ideal Christian womanhood. The Orhodox churches of the east have never accepted the notion of the unity of the three Marys and modern scholarship in general rejects this too. However, St. Gregory's conflation fits the theory of the anima set forth by Carl Jung and anticipated in the final scene of Goethe's drama of Faust Part II..
The Early Church Fathers rejected the gospel of Peter on grounds that it expressed heretical attitudes which reflected Docetic and Gnostic influences. The basis of this inference lay in the fact that the gospel did not unequivocally assert the physical death and bodily resurrection of Jesus. One result of this rejection was the century-lomg loss and disappearance of the gospel, but after a fragment of the gospel was discovered in Egypt in 1884 the scholars have engaged in heated controveries over it.
Those who have recently discussed the gospel in books and articles, notably Raymond Brown,Ron Cameron, J. D. Crossan, Helmut Koestler and F. F. Bruce, differ significantly and widely on the question of whether the writer of the gospel influenced, or was influenced by, the canonical gospels. Estimates of the time of the gospel's composition range from the second half of the first century to the second half of the second. In Ron Cameron's opinion useful criteria for assessing when the gospel was written include measuring the stress the evangelists placed on OT sources and prophecies, the greater this stress the earlier the time of the gospel's composition, and verbal clues provided by certain words such as kyrie ,"the Lord," which at some later stage replaced the name of Jesus. Peter's gospel would then include both early and late elements according to such indications. The reference to "the Lord's Day" points to a development that emerged in the second century as a token of the demotion of the Jewish Sabbath and its replacement by Sunday as the day of the Resurrection. We encounter this term in the Book of Revelation where it does not appear to evince the same polemical force.The exoneratation of Pllate as the one responsible for the death of Jesus points to a desire to place the sole guilt for the execution on Herod Antipas and "the Jews," which seems to indicate that the gospel was composed when hostility between Jewish and Gentile Christians was reaching its height, that is to say, during and after the revolt led by Bar Kochbar. The gospel might still echo tendencies that arose in the first century when there had been disputes between various schools of belief among the followers of Jesus. Perhaps the most fruitful approach to understand the relationship between the gospel of Peter and the canonical gospels is to admit its essentially dialogic nature.
The gospel of Peter contains an account of the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus that shares something in common with the accounts of the canonical gospels but diverges from them quite radically. As in the Gospel of Luke, the King Herod Antipas portrayed in Peter's gospel played a role in the proceedings against Jesus that led to the Crucifixion. However, according to the gospel of Peter Herod led these proceedings while Pilate took little or no part in them.
The gospel of Peter echoes Matthew and Mark in quoting the final words of Jesus dying on the Cross with the words "My Power, you have forsaken me." In the gospels of Matthew and Mark the dying Jesus alludes to the opening verse of Psalm 22 in line with the trend within the early Christian fellowship to base its claims on the authority of the Hebrew scriptures, and the term "my power" is one place removed from such original terms of reference. The gospel agrees with Matthew that the Jewish and Roman authorites placed guards at the tomb of Jesus, and with Mark, that Mary Magdalene and other women came to the tomb, found it empty and were told by an angelic youth that Jesus had risen from the tomb, after which the women were so petrified that they were unable to recount this even. While Mark's angel told the women that Jesus would await the disciples in Galilee, Peter's angel reported that Jesus would return "whence he had come." Did the angel mean Galilee or Heaven? This statement may well be deliberately ambiguous.
In Peter's gospel there is no reference to the appearances of Jesus on Easter Sunday and the following Sunday and therefore it does not correspond to accounts in the gospels of Luke, John and Mark (after chapter 16, verse 8 until verse 20, that is to say, in the passage suspected of being inserted by an editor so as to accord with Luke's or John's version of events), for the author claiming to be Peter reports that the disciples kept themselves hidden in Jerusalem until the seven-day Passover festival was over. It breaks off at the point where Peter and some fellow disciples decide to go fishing, which seems to indicate some connection to the end of John's Gospel
The parallels between accounts given by Matthew , Mark (up to chapter 16, verse 8) and that of Peter are close enough for us to assume that "Peter" was acquainted with the text or the drift of the text of Matthew's and Mark's gospels, or, less probably, vice versa. In the gospel of Peter the risen Jesus and two angels appear to the guards posted to keep watch at the tomb but not simultaneously to the women who came to anoint the body of Jesus. In Matthew's gospel the guards and the women at the tomb witness the descent of an angel who opens the tomb and declares that Jesus has risen. In the same gospel the women meet Jesus on their way from the tomb to the place where the disciples were located. In Peter's gospel Mary Magdalen and her female companions encounter an angelic youth seated in the tomb and he announces to them that Jesus has risen, which seems to accord with the account in Mark's gospel.
Let us consider certain anomies we discover in the message of the gospelof Peter. The writer of the gospel claims to be Peter, the leader of those early Christians who maintained close contact with their Jewish roots and culture, yet the Peter we meet as the author of the gospel bearing his name adopts a decidedly antagonistic attitude to the Jews as the people solely responsible for the death of Christ. "Peter" and Luke accord Herod Agrippa a leading or significant role in the trial of Jesus but if "Peter" was familiar with Luke's gospel, why should he make no room for reporting the appearances of Jesus to his disciples on Easter Sunday? There are two explanations to consider. Either "Peter" did not know of Luke's account of events after the Resurrection or he chose to ignore it because of its emphasis on the physical nature of the body of Christ after the Resurrection, an emphasis what was not in keeping with an alternative understanding of Christ's crucificion, death and resurrection. If, on the other hand, Luke knew of the teachings presented in the gospel of Peter or by antecedant sources, it is possible that the accounts of events on Easter Sunday and the following Sunday in the gospels of Luke and John constitute a reaction to claims that Jesus only appeared to die on the Cross and did not return to life in a physical body. Incidently this is the view presented in the Koran.
On the basis of my observations I venture to draw certain conclusions. The gospel of Peter was written at some time in the first half of the second century but it captures something of the mood that must have prevailed in the early years of Christianity, its sense of rapture and the immanent return and vindication of Christ and the shaming of his Jewish adversaries, even those living at the time of the Cruciifixion. The feeling I mean is palpable in the image of Christ's ascent to Heaven at the moment of Resurrection as a towering figure accompanied at either side by two giant angels. Even his enemies and persecutors must acknowledge his victory. One could argue that the description of the Resurrection in the gospel of Peter is in some ways more logical and plausible than the descriptions in the canonical gospels. According to the gospel of Peter those who were present at the tomb at the exact point in time when Jesus rose from the dead saw Jesus himself. The fear of the women who came to anoint Jesus is adequately explained.
According to the Acts of the Apostles Jesus remained on the earth for forty days after the Resurrection and so it took only ten more days of waiting before the Holy Spirit was given to the followers of Jesus at the festival of Pentecost. Thus the Church secured two further days in the emergant Church year based on the traditional Jewish annual calendar. The expection of the imminent Rapture of believers and the return of Christ was giving way to the needs of an established church order for which certain aspects of the Jewish tradition provided a useful model, meaning that the extreme anti-Judaism of the Gnostics and Marcion with their rejection of the OT canon and with their concept of a cruel and fierce Jewish deity had to be thrown overboard. The questions surrounding Marcion's version of Luke's gospel reveal a similarity with those surrounding the relationship between the canonical gospels and the gospel of Peter. In Marcion's version of Luke there is no account of the nativity of Jesus and hence of the punctilious observance by Joseph by Mary of the Jewish rites of purification and circumcision. Did he banish the nativity story from his version of the gospel or was the nativity story added to the original gospel in order to refute the position adopted by Marcion?
Thus the debate continues. At least we should eschew simplistic arguments of the kind that on the one hand suggest that the writers of the canonical gospels copied parts of the gospel of Peter or, on the other, that the unity of NT canon had been firmly established and recognized despite the difficulty of reconciling and harmonizing the four gospels before the writer of the gospel of Peter manipulated material found in them to meet his own ends. The mystery of the emergence of the gospels whether canonical or not and will probably remain even if the rest of the gospel of Peter should be in discovered in a remote cave in a desert area somewhere in the Middle East.
Concerning the Gospel of James
According to a tradition Pope Gelasius 1 issued a decree in the last decade of the fifth century which finally settled the composition of the canon of books that made up the New Testament. At the same time the decree, known as Decretum Gelasianum, listed gospels and other writings that were deemed heretical, among them the Gospel of James. Unlike the Gnostic gospels of Peter, Thomas and Mary Magdalene and Marcion's version of Luke without the story of Christ's birth, the Gospel of James asserted the the humanity and the Jewish affiliation of Jesus. The Gospel of James, which tells readers more about Mary than it does about Jesus, laid foundation for tenets upheld by the Roman Catholic Church averring her perpetual virginity and for the dependent assertion that Jesus had stepbrothers and sisters but no siblings. Why then did the Church, possibly with the reinforcement of Galesius himself, reject the book as heretical? Let us return to this question in due course.
In the Gospel of James no mention is made of the dedication of the Infant Jesus in the Temple, its focus being rather on Mary. Her parents Anna and Joachim regarded their child as a special gift from God and dedicated her to a life of service and devotion in the Temple in Jerusalem. where she remains until the age of twelve when the Mosaic laws of purity required that she leave the Temple precincts. It was considered appropriate that she should find a husband who could provide for her. Joseph, a widower with children, agreed to assume this responsibility.
When Mary became pregnant, suspicion fell on both Joseph and Mary as it seemed that they had indulged in premarital relations They had to submit to the ordeal prescribed in the Torah in such matters but their innocence was clearly established. In Matthew's gospel Joseph at first assumed that Mary had become pregnant in the ordinary way and as an honorable person he sought to shield her and put her away discreetly. Herod learned from wise men from the east that a holy child destined to be the Messiah had been born in Bethlehem. He ordered the mass execution of infants and young children in Behlehem. Zacharias the father of John the Baptist was put to death in the course of this operation. Mary fled to a cave near Jerusalem and survived the massacre.
We note that story told in the Gospel of James conjoins events reported in Matthew and Luke, leading mainly conservative scholars to assume that the gospel poses a deliberate fusion of elements derived from the gospels of Matthew and Luke. The question as to which author owed source material to which is complicated and involves comparisons between the canonical gospels and those which were later rejected by the Church as heretical or otherwise unacceptable.
There are interesting parallels to drawn between the gospels of James and Peter. Both claim the authority vested in their being written by a leading apostle. Both share elements found in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. The author of the Gospel of Peter reports that King Herod Antipas conducted the trial of Jesus while Pilate, on the sidelines, was effectively exonerated from any part in the execution of Jesus. The gospel also tells of the stationing of guards at the tomb of Jesus and these guards witness the moment of Christ's ascent to heaven much in line with Matthew's account of the Resurrection.
According the main stream of scholarly opinion the gospels of Peter and James were composed in the first half of the second century, possibly during the second Jewish-Roman war and its aftermath. In their various ways they reveal a positive or perhaps realistic, new attitude to Rome. as the dominant power in the known world. Rome could not be conquered by the sword but only by the truth and spirit of Christianity. At the same time the author of James, like Luke, did not wish to offend Jewish sentitivities, as Jews constituted a major part of the Christian population and would probably swell its number in future after being isolated and disheartened by the failure of the Jewish bid to achieve independence.
In this context we may view the great stress that the author of the Gospel of James laid on the value of virginity. in the previous Jewish tradition virginity per se had no value comparable to the state of marriage, for which it provided the preparation. This was not so in the world of ancient Rome and Greece as we can tell from the institution of the Vestal Virgins and the reverence paid to Diana, Queen of Heaven. Indeed, Rhea Silvia, so central to the foundation myth of Rome, was a Vestal Virgin until she was waylaid by Mars and thus became the mother of Romulus and Remus. Theodosius managed to abolish the cult of the Vestal Virgins in but it took another century before Gelasius terminated the celebration of the Lupercalia . Gelasius installed a new festival in February, the Purification of the Virgin Mary, so deeply entrenched it was in the Roman psyche. This festival took place in February when devotees assembled at the reputed cave in which a she-wolf nurtured the infants Romulus and Remus. It marked period of cleansing and purification at the end of the Roman year, which originally began in March. Gelasius installed a new festival in February, the Purification of the Virgin Mary. Was this meant to replace the Lupercalia on the basis of both celebrations' common concern with purification? Arguably Gelasius continued a process inaugurated by Gospel of James but did not wish to justify this by referring to a work in which a conscious amalgamation of Jewish and Roman tradition was all too transparent. According to Catholic apologetics Mary had no need to submit to Jewish laws requiring circumcision for her son and her own purification forty-one days after the birth of Jesus but did so as an act of humility and submission. Originally her submission to the Law of Moses was understood as a gesture to bruised Jewish sentiments. Of course, one could cite other examples of correspondences between Roman, later Celtic or Germanic, celebrations and events in Christian calendar, between the Saturnalia and Christmas, between Haloween and All Saints Day, and, if we return to the subject of Mary, between the festival of Diana in August and the festival of the Dormition or Mary's Assumption. Need the church be so senstive about these acts of replacement? Paul referred to the God the Greeks ignorantly worshipped, and few religions can be so corrupt as not to contain some element of sanctity which would come to fuller light in the Christian age.

subset: commoncrawl


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2019 Educational Events
From informative yard tours to certificate level trainings,
we have something for everyone who LOVES STONE!
** registration required for all events **
MARCH 30 STONE IMMERSION Learn to speak the Language of Stone! Informative yard tour and presentation open to hobbyists, homeowners and smaller landscape businesses wanting to 'speak stone' with more fluency. FREE EVENT!
APRIL 20 HEAVY LIFTING! From safe and smart hand-lifting to complex rigging and working with the Marenakos SuperCrane, we will cover stone-moving techniques tailored to assist the stone mason, landscape professional or ambitious gardener. FREE EVENT!
MAY 8‑9 DRYSTONE WALLING I Hands-on training with Scottish Master Drystone Waller, Nick Aitken. Limited to 8 participants. Workshop Fee $275.00 (FULL)
JUNE 6 STONE IN THE LANDSCAPE: DESIGN CHARRETTE with Lloyd Glasscock Bringing 35 years of experience in the NW landscape & nursery industry, as well as the NW Flower & Garden Show Garden Coordinator, Lloyd has more than a few seeds of design knowledge to sow! Not to be missed! Workshop Fee $35, includes lunch. MORE INFO
JUNE 21-22 DRYSTONE WALLING II Hands-on two-day workshop on walling, with special features for more experienced wallers. Instructor: Nick Aitken. Limited to 8 participants. Workshop Fee $275
AUGUST 21-24 DRYSTONE WALLING Level I Certification Certification through THE DRY STONE CONSERVANCY, Kentucky. For the serious Drystone builder! Instructors: Scottish master wallers, Neil Rippingale and Nick Aitken. Limited to 16. Workshop Fee $495.00 + DSC certification fees. MORE INFO
SEPTEMBER 13 LANGUAGE OF STONE II with Daniel Wood, Lurvey Supply For landscape professionals and stone masons. Delve deeper into what it takes to build a successful career upon stone; one job at a time! Covering product specification, relationship building strategies with clients and project management, led by Lurvey's Stone and Materials Manager, LEED Consultant, Natural Stone Institute's Educational Chair, Daniel Wood. Workshop Fee $75.00 MORE INFO HERE
DECEMBER 7 Winterage Fun-raiser! Honoring Patrick McAfee on his birthday! Pat may be in Dublin, but we thought we'd have the party here! Come in from the cold, and connect with other like-minded craftsmen, carvers, builders, designers and homeowners who also love stone! Details TBA.
WE'RE ALWAYS BUILDING! Dates, workshops and schedules may change. For up-to-date info contact: firstname.lastname@example.com or call us at: 425.392.3313
Visit the Marenakos stone yard-your campus for learning about STONE!
Marenakos Rock Center 30250 S.E. Highpoint Way, Issaquah, WA


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Blogging Drought, much?
I'll be honest, I was much lacking in the Christmas spirit this holiday. Something about your brother being committed, just doesn't seem to put a sista in a Holly Jolly good mood. As a result, my normally contagious Christmas joy didn't come to fruition.
It's sorta difficult to Blog: "Hey everyone!! Guess what?!! I'm a pissy little Grinch right now and totally not in the mood to document or photograph any evidence of this ridiculous holiday."
I do have 3 beautiful, healthy children. And several sweet nieces and nephews... and I obviously am very thankful and willing to sponge a little of their spirit.
The show must go on...
For the gabillionth year on a row, I was co-director of the Christmas pageant. The Kid was mind-blowingly awesome, opening the event in front of the entire congregation... without notes. Future politician? Or lawyer, perhaps.
And there were two SUPER cute lil doves.
After making fun of Elfiebellyadablahblah... I stole one of her best ideas. Sneaking into the girls' room and drawing on their sleeping noses. TOO CUTE! We even tried to get The Kid (whom obviously doesn't believe).... he awoke but is under strict instructions to 'play along with Santa' for as long as possible (or he'll really get coal) so he sweetly let me color his nose.
In the morning, the girls realized what had happened and immediately they both blamed their brother! They ran into his room to yell at him, only to discover he had also received a Rudolph nose! Oh.. the hilarity...
We invited the cousins for our annual cookie decorating evening... except (since I'm Scrooge) I purchased Gingerbread houses 75% off and let them go nuts.
The Gipper joined us for the first time! And super Aunt straight handed her a spoonful of icing... 2 days later she ran up to me at the next gathering, arms opened... So that icing trick worked.
Christmas Eve, we attended Mass (Flag Girl's gang kept us amused) and returned to our home for our always relaxed evening.
Uncle was a little bit difficult,
but we did get this cute picture.
And isn't it really all about the photo opp, anyhow??
Christmas Day, The Kid proved once more he is a spoiled brat and my mom loves him more than me.
But at least he is totally handsome.
Finally, puffy skirt matching sistas.
THAT has to put a mom in a better mood.
Coach's answer?? Best gift Eva!!
(Coach wouldn't really say 'Eva' but he does speak in exclamation marks..)


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I decided to check on the availability of tickets for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart during our trip to NYC this fall. It's one of the few shows we actually watch (read Tivo) and thought it may be fun…or tedious…to see a taping. Either way it was low risk and probably worth our time.
I send an e-mail requesting tickets and receive a canned response letting me know that I'll hear from them if tickets are available. Yeah, yeah…whatever.
The next day I receive another e-mail . Not a ticket confirmation, a ticket reservation confirmation.
The e-mail reads: "You will receive an e-mail ticket letter two weeks prior to your show date, however if you do not receive your e-mail ticket within that (two week) time frame you must contact us at email@example.com." Then: "Once the show is filled up, we will no longer accept confirmations. Because of this you should contact us immediately if your ticket letter did not arrive." And finally…(and this kills me): "Any contact after a week prior to your show or after the show has filled up show date will be cancelled. There are NO EXCEPTIONS."
Now let me get this straight. I'm supposed to contact them if I don't receive the letter within two weeks of the show date I requested. I must contact them immediately if the letter does not arrive because the situation cannot be remedied otherwise. And…(the best part): Any contact after a week prior is too late.
So for those of you not following along…a synopsis: I want tickets for October 14 so I should have a letter on October 1. If there is no letter…I must contact them within two weeks (between October 1 & 14). But if the show is full then I shouldn't contact them at all. Of course…if I don't contact them by October 7…it's too late.
Who wrote this shit?
Are they hiring potential writers as customer service reps? Are they simply trying to weed out the simple minded folks that cannot solve the riddle…or are they just living up to their name?
You tell me Batman!


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About ISTH
The International Society on Thrombosis and Hemostasis (ISTH) is a global not-for-profit membership organization advancing the understanding, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of thrombotic and bleeding disorders. Click here to learn more about the ISTH.
About the ISTH 2017 Congress
At the ISTH 2017 Congress, thousands of the world's leading experts on thrombosis, hemostasis and vascular biology come together to present the most recent advances, exchange the latest science and discuss the newest clinical applications designed to improve patient care.
Through an extensive lineup of educational sessions, poster and oral communications, state-of-the-art lectures, medical industry exhibits and professional networking opportunities, the Congress promotes important scientific discourse and advancement.
For more information, visit the ISTH website.
About ISTH 2017 Congress Daily News
The ISTH 2017 Congress Daily News is the official news source for the ISTH 2017 Congress in Berlin, Germany featuring the most interesting and exciting events and presentations and interviews with leading experts in thrombosis and hemostasis.
Scientific Editors:
Margaret Rand, Ph.D.
Sara Israels, M.D., FRCPC
NSCI Group


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Definitions for "Ideas"
Ideas is a long running high-brow radio documentary show on CBC Radio One. Premiering in 1965, it is currently hosted by Paul Kennedy and is on between 9:00 and 10:00 each weekday evening.
There is no copyright in an idea alone, just the expression of it. However, see formats. See also Autodesk v. Dyason (No.2) (1993) 176 CLR 300.
Keywords: metaphysical, concept, transcendent, immortality, empirical
a formulated thought, opinion, or concept that can be represented in visual or verbal form.
the species of representation which gives rise to metaphysical beliefs. Ideas are special concepts which arise out of our knowledge of the empirical world, yet seem to point beyond nature to some transcendent realm. The three most important metaphysical ideas are God, freedom and immortality.
concepts, philosophies, images or issues that provide the psychological stimulus to solve problems or adjust to the environment (242)
Keywords: hume, fainter, imagination, impressions, copies
The moves in Kenpo are taught to be no more than ideas which can vary with each changing situation.
Keywords: astronomy, science, initiative, education, space
Keywords: platforms, brand, product, delivering, basic
A brand name of a software product
Every market offering includes a basic idea. Products & services are platforms for delivering some idea or benefit.


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Take Me Home
New horizons as my soul is dying
Leaving me not to return
Trapped in cages, Turning pages
So afraid of what I'll learn
Take me home… to Planet Gemini
Life's for taking, soul is breaking
Sold out to the highest God
Found my lies, through my ties
Nothing left for you to know
Take me home, to where I'm from… Planet Gemini
In the night, trapped inside
So afraid of things that have gone by
Feeling naked, Body's breaking
Nothing's left so why try
Take me home, to where I'm from… Planet Gemini
Two Worlds
We walk through forever, We die for the silence
To Armageddon we stand or we will fall
Misunderstanding the world that surrounds you is common in most souls I've seen
The lost culmination of where you've been searching
You might as well drown in the fear and the sadness and grief
We cling to the shadows, we fight another day
Through walls of air's manipulation
We spite or else we fade away
Constantly hiding in corners and shadows is never the way I have found
Misrepresenting yourself as a savior
You might as well die cause your soul is so far underground
So prey for deliverance, and crawl toward the guilt
Two steps away from heaven, two lines to hell we build
Wandering blindly like sheep and like lepers may be the way you're forced to live
Seeking the trust whist you're playing the victim
you might as well burn in the fires that you once helped build
some might just say it's a miscalculation
but how can we reap when the sewing is already filled
Moving to fast it seems these moments don't last
I've got this silvery flame that I'm breathing
Dying to live but I have nothing to give
and I have lost with the hand that I'm seeing
And I say "Oh it seems our time is at an end
the dark one is coming around the bend"
So I say "Oh lost messiah won't you delve in your desire
Leave them screaming to your shadow cause it's just a shell of what you once were"
Breaking the pace it's like I'm losing this race
I'm moving slower to steady tonight
another quick dose has turned by brain comatose
as I scream over the wind that I'm fine
Please give me hope, for the troubles that I'm in
Although my nerves are wearing thin
So I say "Oh lost messiah won't you step into the fire
make them bleed into your shadow cause it's just a shell of what you once were"
Where do you run to when your mind it is gone?
Is there somewhere my soul can go hide?
Heaven's all around you so just dry your crying eyes
but remember that hell's not far behind
Why do we persist it's such a shame to exist
But we keep dredging along throughout time
I'm cautious to say that things are better this way
There is no reason in fact… there's no rhyme
Leave me alone, to sort the thoughts in my head
To choke on the words I never said
so I say "Oh lost messiah so abused they all conspire
as they rip into your shadow cause it's just a shell of what you once were"
Oh the worlds on fire.
Well there's a cloud over heaven, I've got my eyes shut tight and I just can't see
and you can keep salvation, cause the fire is cleansing to my disbelief
I've got this strange fixation, I focus all of my powers on dying inside
Cause I can see tomorrow, and the future has never been looking so bright
There's a hole in heaven
a hole in heaven… I believe
Tomorrow starts the new day, I said that yesterday but today it is true
and who's to say the new way, may not be something better for many of you
This moment meets the numbers, I'm counting down from the ten and I'm ending at one
No matter who believes me, I'm fairly certain that I am the fortunate son
There's a hole in heaven
a hole in heaven… I must see
Oh can you see the fire, It's
burning up like the smoke that I taste on the side
and who can take you higher than the devil that we all have buried inside?
I pray for Armageddon, I just fall to my knees and I wish you away
Cause if I wake tomorrow, I'll have the same old misfortune I live through today
There's a hole in heaven
a hole in heaven… probably
Here in my Mind
Light, a flickering flame.
A candle still burning now
It's smoking my name
A riveting fight for what we believe
and still we have no control
No power to be
I'm losing my mind or something, It's only my right.
Side with nothing at all
make no more decisions of
the last one to fall
like in here in my mind
the end is so clear
we stare at the darkness now
the truth it is here
I'm walking for miles to see him, He's saving my soul.
Find another dark place
and once I have lost again
There's never a trace
of hope we can find
this struggle within
I'm fighting for every breath
I'll never give in
I'm praying aloud for someone, I'm losing control.
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[Spoiler Alert] In order to deeply analyze the hacks in Mr. Robot Episode 10 (shutdown-r), this article covers various important plot points. If you haven't watched through the season three finale episode, come back and read this later.
Even if it hadn't included any technical hacks, this last episode sure did hack my mind.
LATEST IN A SERIES: Corey Nachreiner, CTO at Seattle-based WatchGuard Technologies, is reviewing episodes of Mr. Robot on GeekWire. The show airs on USA Network on Wednesdays at 10 p.m. Join the conversation on Twitter using #MrRobotRewind, and follow Corey @SecAdept.
With all its twists, reveals, and deaths, there was a lot going on in the season three finale of Mr. Robot. I'm sure many fans (me included) will be discussing things like Angela's father, Dom's turning, and Elliot and Mr. Robot's new relationship for quite a while.
However, that's not what the Mr. Robot Rewind series is here for. Instead, this article dissects the technical hacks in the show, helps explain what you might have missed, and judges them on real-world accuracy.
Hack-wise, the final episode of the season started slow. However, Elliot did get a significant bit of computer time near the end. Let's jump in and explore the hacks and hacker-related scenes from the episode.
Lock Picking and Code Cracking Cameos
The first hints to hacker culture make us recall things we've seen Elliot and the Fsociety crew do before—picking locks and cracking codes.
After Mr. Robot (MR) and Elliot start talking again, MR tells Elliot about Santiago, and he goes to search his apartment for leads on Darlene. During the scene, we see Elliot pick a desk lock.
There's no huge meaning or reveal here. However, I've mentioned many times during the Rewind series that lock-picking culture is closely tied to hacker culture, especially at conferences like DEF CON. While picking locks is not hacking, Elliot knowing how to do it actually grounds him in the real-world hacking scene, simply because it's a skill real hackers talk about and practice.
We also see MR-Elliot find a new hidden code on a Red Wheelbarrow BBQ flier.
Irving interrupts MR-Elliot before they solve this code, so it really doesn't add any context to the episode; it's just a fun Easter egg. However, the screenshot does hide a message. As the first "N" suggests, those numbers translate to letters:
While that looks like gibberish, if you apply the classic ROT-13 cipher (decent ROT-13 decoder) to it, you get:
That phrase has some misspellings (which Mr. Robot ARGers are finding more meaning in), but it's actually a fun reference to the beginning of "The Hacker Manifesto," a popular essay written by an arrested 80s hacker, and also published in the Phrack ezine.
Again, this particular code actually ends up having nothing to do with the overall episode narrative, but code cracking is a cool part of the hacker culture, and this one hid a relevant hacker shout-out.
Fixing whiterose's Congo Shipment
The beginning of the finale had me worried about this Rewind article, since we see no computer usage. It's not until 50 minutes into the hour and ten-minute episode that Elliot gets on a terminal.
During the final scene in the barn, Elliot is gambling that whiterose is watching and listening to everything through a security IP camera. He offers her a deal, saying he can get her Congo shipment (whatever that may be) to meet its original timeline. This scene also includes an intense conclusion, where whiterose clearly picks Elliot over someone she loves.
Anyway, after whiterose's choice, Leon pulls out a laptop with Slackware Linux and tells Elliot to pay up. Unfortunately, we don't see any screenshots that suggest what Elliot did to "hack" this shipment. But, he mentions that, "the Coast Guard allowed a humanitarian shipment into Iran," suggesting he somehow disguised this shipment as aid. However, if there was a hack here, we didn't see it. So I can't really comment on the accuracy of whatever Elliot did.
However, during this scene, we do see a link.
This Bit.ly link points to a downloadable Dropbox file. As they always do, these links actually work in real life. You can download the file you saw Elliot give to Leon and the Dark Army (DA) in this episode. The file unextracts to a text file containing GPS coordinates.
"lat":"10º37'3.14\" S",
"lng":"22º20'22.2\" E"
Those coordinates point to a location in the DR Congo. So far, I have no clue what the meaning of those coordinates might hide (if anything), but I still love the way the show producers actually hide these real-world files in their show. As I've mentioned before, hackers tend to love these sorts of Easter eggs and puzzles, so just the fact that the show includes them gives it real hacker cred.
Brute Forcing Romero's Encrypted Keyloggers
After he shares the shipping fix with whiterose, the DA essentially lets Darlene, Elliot, and Dom (who's now assumed to be a mole for the DA) go. So, Elliot continues with his plan to reverse the 5/9 attack by stealing Romero's keylogger evidence from the FBI's Sentinel system (see the last Rewind article for more context).
However, now that Irving has turned Dom, Elliot no longer needs to hack Sentinel. He can exploit Dom's insider access. In Santiago's FBI vehicle, we see Dom log in to Sentinel and hand over control to Elliot. He's in!
Elliot does a quick search for Romero's key intercept, and voila. He finds image files for the four USB keyloggers, which he downloads as a Zip file. He then gets to cracking Romero's disk encryption password, and succeeds. The average viewer probably understood this through Elliot's voiceover, but let's explore some of the subtler technical details.
The first thing we see Elliot type is:
python getlyrics.py –m artist –i artists.txt –o lyrics.txt
Getlyrics.py seems to be exactly what it sounds like; a python script that goes to some online source to download the lyrics associated with an artist's song or song library. Via Google searches, I was able to find a few real examples of this sort of script, but not one that seems to match the show exactly.
For instance, getlyrics.py really exists. It is indeed a script that allows you to download lyrics based on a search term from an online source called AZLyrics.com. However, it doesn't seem to be a perfect fit. While this shares the exact name as the script seen in the show, the parameters shown in the episode don't exist with this script. If you search Google for generic "python lyrics" you will also find PyLyrics. This too is a script to grab lyrics from lyrics.wikia.com, however, its usage seems different than what you see in the show. In any case, I'm not sure if the version we see in the episode really exists, or is just a "fake" one based on these other two. Whether this particular script is totally real or not, the concept is totally realistic, and these sorts of lyric download scripts do exist.
Anyway, back to the command. Since I can't find the exact copy of the script, I can only extrapolate what some of the parameters were, but let's break down the command.
- The first parameter of py is "-m artist." While it's not in the real-world scripts, I'm guessing this parameter puts the script in the mode of searching an artist's library of songs, rather than an individual song.
- The second parameter, "-i artists.txt," defines an input file. Presumably, Elliot created a text file full of musical artists. Since he's trying to crack Romero's passwords, I'm assuming their friendship and familiarity is what allows Elliot to focus on musicians and groups Romero liked. More on why I think that soon.
- The last parameter is "-o lyrics.txt." This creates an output file called txt that would contain all the results of the lyric searches.
In short, this command would create a text file full of the lyrics from songs and artists that Romero likes. Here's the result of the command, including some of the downloaded artists like Curtis Mayfield.
So why does Elliot need this?
Remember, he needs to crack the key Romero used to encrypt the keyloggers. There are many programs out there that help you brute force a password, by essentially trying every character combination. The problem is, after 6 characters, brute forcing can get really slow. Once you have a password over 10-12 characters, today's computers will not be able to brute force those passwords within an acceptable period of time. Chances are Romero—a smart hacker—used a long and secure password. Furthermore, the FBI would also have used their significant computer resources already to try (unsuccessfully) to brute force the password. So, how will Elliot succeed where the FBI has failed?
One way to speed up brute-forcing is a dictionary list. Rather than randomly incrementing characters, a brute force program will start by using a list of words from a dictionary you define. They can even use combinations of these words. However, Romero is probably also smarter than normal dictionary attacks, and would pick a longer password, or a passphrase, or something totally random.
This is where a custom dictionary might come in. Hackers that know a lot about their victim can cater their password dictionary to that specific victim. In this case, it appears Elliot is presuming that Romero's password will involve music from his favorite artist. He downloaded these lyrics to use in a custom password dictionary.
That brings us to the next screenshot we see flash for a second:
This shot gives us some hints of what Elliot is up to. First, on the left side of the screen we see the command:
cryptsetup luksdump ~/keyintercept_1.raw
Immediately, this command points to something called Linux Unified Key Setup or LUKS, which is a disc encryption standard for Linux. It appears Romero encrypted his keyloggers with LUKS. The cryptsetup command Elliot runs is pointed to one of the keylogger images he grabbed from the FBI. This command would essentially give him info about the encrypted disc, including what type of encryption it uses (AES).
On the right side of the screen, we see Elliot beginning a "Brutefo.." command. Let's take a closer look at that.
Again, the show seems to use a real-life program. Bruteforce-luks is a C application designed to brute force the passwords for LUKS encryption images. You can learn more about this program and its usage here. Let's unpack his command.
- The –t parameter defines how many concurrent threads to use while brute-forcing. Elliot picked 8. This essentially tries to speed things up a bit.
- The –f parameter defines a word dictionary. Elliot is using the lyric file from his last step, since he has guessed Romero's password involves music lyrics.
- We don't see the whole command, but the last part of a bruteforce-luks command is the LUKS partition you want to focus on. So I assume the command finished with Elliot pointing it at the ~/keyintercept_1.raw file that represents and an image of one of Romero's keyloggers (he probably only has to crack one, since they probably all share the same password).
We then see some follow up to this command:
This window shows us that Elliot's hunch was correct. The brute force program found a password from the lyric file that worked. The password is, "And if there's hell below We're all gonna go," which is the name of one of the tracks (Don't Worry) from a Curtis Mayfield album called, "Curtis."
Next, Elliot runs a command to open and mount the encrypted keylogger image using that password, which works. Then he runs a command (lsblk) to see how and where the image is mounted, and he uses the cd command to move to that directory. When he lists the directory (ls), he finds the now unencrypted keylogger output called keylog.txt. As you can tell from my description, though I couldn't find an exact match for the lyrics script they used, everything shown in these screenshots is true to life. These commands all work. I will say, Elliot was exceedingly lucky to have the lyrics work out so perfectly. If the lyric site had written the lyrics with slightly different grammar or caps, it wouldn't have worked. Also, bruteforcing typically takes longer than we saw, even with a dictionary. However, for the show's purpose, it is still pretty accurate.
To end the scene, we see Elliot type, "less keylog.txt" to see what's in that file, but it cuts off before you see the results. However, he then tells Darlene that the key logs show that Romero caught somebody else exporting the key data for the 5/9 hack. Who is that somebody?
The Keys to E Corp's Kingdom Hidden Within an Image
If you finished the episode, you know the answer to that question. Mr. Robot — Elliot's alter — exported the keys. Though MR might represent the "bad" side of Elliot, who will go a bit further to obtain his results, he's still part of Elliot, and shares some "good." In the same way, Elliot shares some or MR's "bad." In any case, even MR considered the chance that something could go wrong, or that their plan would have unexpected consequences. More importantly, he knew that good Elliot would have had a recovery plan. During this scene, MR and Elliot come to terms. While I don't think we'll see any true integration (that would be a cure for DID), I do think you can look forward to the alters working together in the next few seasons.
Back to our "Hackuracy" article, this scene matters to us because MR reveals that he exported the keys to the remote virtual machine they access at home, and he burned them to a CD. Remember, the blank CD that was shown during the title sequence? That's the one.
After this dialog, Elliot goes home to open this CD. MR also told him that the important key info (seed data and algorithm) is embedded in an image, and Elliot will know the one.
During the next sequence, we see Elliot open DeepSound—a steganography program we've seen him use before—and extract a bunch of images. As he goes through them, he finds the Back to the Future photo. For anyone holding out for weird time travel theories, perhaps the "rewind" is metaphoric. This image contains the key to turning back the 5/9 hack.
While Elliot has already used one steganography app to recover hidden data (getting this picture from music using DeepSound), he now needs to find some hidden data in the picture itself, which is a file called IMG_5528.jpg.
Here's his next screen:
Let's cover some of the commands we see in this screen.
- First, you see Elliot use a command called lsb.py to analyze two images (I'm not sure why he looked at the other image when he knew IMG_5528.jpg is the right one?). Lsb.py is a real script used to do a certain type of image steganography that leverages something called the least significant bit (LSB). Many researchers have shown [PDF] that this is a good way to hide data in JPG images. The analyze command displays an image with plotted points where the target's LSBs are. This might help analysts figure out if there is additional data in an image. If you want to learn more about steganography and a bit more about LSB, watch my video in this blog post. BTW, there is a related Easter egg buried in that video for the curious.
- After that, Elliot runs the xxd command, which just displays a hex dump of the image (I guess he's looking for something unusual).
- He creates a copy of the image he suspects (just so he doesn't damage the original), a normal procedure for anyone doing digital forensic analysis).
- Next, he runs a program called stepic. This seems to be another real python script. His specific command, "stepic -d -i IMG_5528_copy.png -o outfile," decodes any data hidden in the copied image, and puts it in a file called outfile. You can learn about stepic parameters here.
- He then runs cat to display the contents of outfile, which turns out to be a custom python script. This is likely the "algorithm" that MR mentioned, and it shows clues to the seed data.
- In the output on the screen, you can see the actual python script. While I haven't gone to the trouble of transcribing and running it, it does look like accurate, working code. At the highest level, this python script seems to take three inputs; a password, the data from an offset in some input file, and the result of a "nonrand" function, which seems to be the opposite of a random number generator. Normally, if you want to make a really unique, nondeterministic "thing," crypto algorithms use randomness with pseudorandom data generators. The fact that Mr. Robot has "non-randomness" in this algorithm shows that he always wanted it to be reversible, as long as you have the right password and input file.
- In the final commands, Elliot moves (mv) the python script from the outfile to one called keygen.py, and then runs it and gives it the input file and password. By the way, we see that the Back to the Future image is the right input file. We don't see Elliot enter the password, but I assume he must know it, or have gotten it from MR.
As you can tell, these steps, and even the Python code, are all pretty dang accurate. However, there was one small mistake in this screen. In the Python code, MR asks for a data file input with the following code.
infile = raw_input("File: ")
As you might expect, that code will display, "File:" when it expects a user to input a filename. But, when we see Elliot run this code, it displays "Input filename:". That's not what we see in the python code. I'm assuming this is a small production issue. Maybe the writers wanted to change the display visualization to be more descriptive. However, the code we see run, is not exactly the code that was moved to keygen.py. Of course, I'm just being a pedantic stickler here. This scene is extremely technically accurate compared to anything else you've ever seen on TV.
Anyway, after running the keygen, Elliot ends up with a symmetric RSA private key, which is apparently what was used to encrypt all E Corp's data. He then sends the key to E Corp's recovery email alias.
Easter Eggs and Odds 'n' Ends
By now, you probably know the show hides a lot of neat Easter eggs in every episode, and many are puzzles that are part of a larger ARG. I mentioned some of these hidden things above, but there are more to find. I will share a few in a moment, but in this article I want to show how cool and complex some of these puzzles can be, by focusing on just one of the things the ARGsociety found after this episode, a neat clue on the Red Wheelbarrow BBQ site. Here's the gist.
- In earlier episodes, a link pointed to a fake Red Wheelbarrow BBQ site that you can visit. This site has many puzzle pieces and things you can solve, but it has also had interesting updates after certain episodes.
- In seemingly unrelated news, the nightly build of the real Firefox web browser got a new extension mysteriously added to it called Looking Glass. This extension freaked some people out since it changed the way some web pages looked, and they posted about it on Reddit.
- Turns out this Looking Glass extension was made for Mr. Robot. It parses any web page for a list of Mr. Robot related words, and then adds some animation effects and extra stuff to those words. At a surface level, it's just a fun Easter egg.
- By the way, if you have Firefox and want this extension, you can manually download it here. Then go to "about:config" in Firefox and search for "Looking." You will find the extension, and must enable "true" for its Boolean setting.
- HOWEVER, the surface changes from this extension are just part of the story, this extension also adds a header called "X_1057" to your browser's response when visiting three particular sites, including the Red Wheelbarrow one. This header triggers very different responses from certain ARG websites.
- Specifically, if you go to one of the kids' activity pages on that site with and without this extension enabled, you get a very different version of the kids' activity page. In fact, the geniuses from ARGsociety actually found three different versions of the page.
- This led to finding a binary puzzle, which eventually led to a new password. If you don't mind spoilers, this image (created by an ARGsociety member) shows the three images and how they come together to solve the puzzle.
- BTW, the password to this puzzle is also an Easter egg of sorts, since it references pop culture as well.
I wanted to highlight this just to show how deep the ARG rabbit hole goes. To solve this puzzle, not only would you have to have found the web links buried in the show, but you would have to visit a certain page with and without a special browser extension, and then solve some technical and cryptographic puzzles. While I suspect this level of interaction isn't for all fans, this ARG puzzle is very much in the wheelhouse of hacker culture. It's amazing the length the show runners have gone to in order to create this ARG.
Besides that big Easter egg, here's a few more odds 'n' ends.
- You see some email addresses in some screenshots. Try emailing them, you might be surprised.
- There were other sites you could find from this episode.
- Whoismrrobot.com has an update, but do you know the password? If not, join ARGsociety.
- Lots of rewind references in the show, including a superman scene.
- Does Darlene have an alter!?!
Learning from Mr. Robot: Remember Insider Attacks
Sadly, it's time to say bonsoir to Mr. Robot and the Rewind series until next season. However, before we conclude, what can we learn from this episode's accurate technical hacks?
I'll keep it simple by just focusing on one of the non-technical threats of the show –malicious insiders. In this episode, we see a lot of "moles." Irving murdered Santiago—the OG mole—but coerced Dom to become a new one. According to most of the latest research, more cyber breaches today are caused by external attackers. However, we also sometimes have to worry about malicious insiders that have the valid credentials they can use to steal our data. There is no easy way to find and stop malicious insiders, since you have already entrusted them with your data. However, one basic tip is to implement data loss protection solutions. These solutions can at least show you when your data moves, and some behavior analytics solutions could also highlight when a trusted user suddenly does something very suspicious.
That completes this season of Mr. Robot Rewind. I hope to see you next year once the show returns. Who knows what crazy hacks and insane schemes we'll see then. As always, I look forward to you sharing your thoughts and comments below.


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