A new week brings with it a new guest blogger. We’re very happy to have as a guest someone whose name most regular T & S readers will recognize: bloggernacker and frequent comment participator Daniel H. Bartholomew, aka Danithew.
Our new guest grew up in White Plains, NY and attended church at Westchester Ward (in Scarsdale) with esteemed guest-blogger Bryce Inouye for approximately fourteen years. He earned a BA in English from BYU with a minor in Hebrew, where he also studied Arabic and lived in the Arabic house for a year. Since then, he has lived abroad and studied Hebrew and Arabic at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for three years. (He writes: “For six of those months I lived in a Palestinian village called Zaim and for two of those years I hometaught the only Mormon family in Gaza.”) Danithew is planning to finish his master’s degree in Middle
East Studies (emphasis in political science) at the University of Utah this academic year. He’s also holding down a full-time job to support his wife through medical school, where she is now a fourth-year student. Finally, we would be remiss not to note that he is an expert in Chupacabra lore, and that he served his mission in Guatemala.
Further biographical information can be found at his own blog, at:
http://wump.info/wumpblog/index.php?p=289
Welcome aboard, Danithew!
Welcome! I’ve enjoyed your comments, and am looking forward to your posts. Would it be cheeky to make a request? Using your expertise for some discussion of the situation in the Middle East?
Hey Wump! Cool — it’s a Westchester Ward takeover of Times and Seasons.
Don’t forget, I’m here to tell everyone what really happened when you tell stories about Boy Scout camping trips.
LOL Bryce! That really irritates me because you’ve lived such a pristine logical life that I don’t have even a smidge of dirt on you to counter-blackmail you with. I publicy beg for mercy.
Actually, my policy in life has always been to “shoot the hostage.” So I’ll just tell everyone now that we went on a camping trip once with good ‘ol troop 99 and I forgot my sleeping bag.
There, the humiliation has begun but the terror is over. I can live with that (as I have for so many years). :mrgreen:
By the way Bryce, are you still in touch with BP at all?
Karen,
Thanks! I always enjoy reading your posts and comments as well. :cool: I’ll try and have a Middle East thoughts/experiences type post in the coming days.
I had several friends who where looking into the Church in France, who had big hang-ups with the Christ of the Doctrine and Covenants. This, I believe, is where the duality is most evident:
“LISTEN to the voice of Jesus Christ, your Redeemer, the Great I AM, whose arm of mercy hath atoned for your sins… For the hour is nigh and the day soon at hand when the earth is ripe; and all the proud and they that do wickedly shall be as stubble; and I will burn them up, saith the Lord of Hosts, that wickedness shall not be upon the earth… And their tongues shall be stayed that they shall not utter against me; and their flesh shall fall from off their bones, and their eyes from their sockets� DC 29
I particularly found the eyes falling out of the sockets rather descriptive. The apocalyptic Christ is, at once, triumphant and terrible. Is it possible that, within certain contexts, the Lord assumes one role over the other for effect? i.e., is it more important for our long term salvation to think of the second coming as an awful event as apposed to the Jesus that weeps upon blessing the children?
Sorry, wrong thread. My appologies.
Chupacabra lore — I see the goat eater everywhere …
What led you to become an Arabic specialist?
Stephen
http://ethesis.blogspot.com/
This is going to sound really funny … but it will make sense. I promise.
When I was in Jerusalem for the first time (winter semester 1993 at the Jerusalem Center) I hometaught a number of the Arabic intensive program students (Dan Peterson was their prof too — it was fun chatting with him in the Oasis when the opportunity arose). These students were a really cool bunch but I noticed that because they only studied Arabic they were particularly biased (favorably) towards the Arab side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Well, a few years later (after trying to ignore what I felt were promptings) I started studying Hebrew. My main interest at the time was to study Biblical Hebrew but I also wanted to study modern Hebrew so that I could chat with Israelis. Because I had an interest in understanding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from an objective perspective (as objective as possible, I suppose) I determined that in addition to studying Hebrew I would have to study Arabic also — otherwise I was concerned I would be as biased for the Israelis as my hometeachees were towards their Palestinian friends. So it all kind of went from there.
Yes, I’m a weird weird duck.
It’s pretty hard to study Arabic without getting hooked. Almost no one at BYU that I knew studied Arabic because they’d been planning to for any length of time. They just kind of fell into it.
I didn’t know you’d been to the Jerusalem Center twice- I also went twice. I found my two experiences there to be very different. How about you? Were you on the regular program both times?
Dan —
I haven’t seen BP in a few years — it’s surprising how little I get up to New York. He was the bishop in the 2nd ward after the ward split. Did you know his son David (“Doodlebug”) or was that after you left? Anyway, I think he’s back from a mission. We’re getting old.
Erica,
I attended the regular Jerusalem Study Abroad program in 1993 but when I lived in Israel from 1996-1999 I was a student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. No worries though. :)
Oh, that’s how I knew you. It was at church. I never got to know most of the students when I was there for Arabic. I probably just lumped you in with everyone else in my mind. It makes much more sense now. David could have set me straight.
Ma- Salaama, Daniel, good to have you blogging here. I never studied languages in collegs, though I think I ought to have studied Arabic. But having grown up in India, I am fluent in a bunch of Indian languages, including Hindi and Urdu. Any Hindi/Urdu speakers here besides Dan Richards?
Finally found where all those hits from times and seasons were coming from! Thanks for the little link–by the way, I am not a military soldier, perhaps a Christian Soldier, but in this case a army contractor. Not a big deal, but thought I would say thanks and mention that. Enjoying a little time in Germany before I head back to Iraq. There are of course many stories and pictures of Iraq at my blog “Ernest Goes to Iraq” including those from the “Mormon Brigade” that was stationed in Kirkuk with me if you search the recent archives. Take care!
Ernest