brain sizes: Einstein's and women's

Dan Holzman holzman at
Tue Sep 3 21:56:42 EST 2002

In article <W3dd9.43929$Ic7.3324656 at>,
John Knight <jwknight at> wrote:
>Even Mordecai's genealogy may have been a reference to ancestors rather =
>than immediate relatives, because when immediate relatives are =
>described, the Holy Bible usually specifies "begat".

What John fails to understand (it is left as an exercise to the reader
whether he choose to fail to understand it or is merely profoundly
ignorant) is that there is a difference between relating a geneology
and giving someone's full name.

To use myself as an example, someone giving my geneology in Biblical
terms would say "Stan begat Robert, Robert begat Daniel," prepending
my Grandfather's ancestors as far back as they were wanting to go.
Someone giving my name in the Hebrew form would say "Daniel ben Robert
ben Stan ha Levi" or "Daniel, son of Robert, son of Stan the Levite"

It is also worth noting that John is very selective aboout which "ben"
he decides is figurative instead of literal -- he has nothing
putatively derogatory to say about "Nethani'ahites" or
"Shelemi'ahtes."  Once again, it is clear that John started with a
conclusion, and then looked for data to fit it, discarding the rest.

>But then why would one obscure Israelite born more than 18 generations =
>after Jacob, who was one of perhaps millions of Israelites, have been =
>given the "honor" of having his descendants referred to as "jews"?

This position relies on the notion that the descendants of this one
fellow being the Jews rather than those of Judea, which is as
unfounded as everything else you've posited.

While we're on the topic of things you're completely off-base about --
the folks at are completely wrong about Hebrew
not having vowels.  God's name is given out as YHVH precisely because
the witholding of the vowels keep people from knowing the Ineffable
Name.  So much for taking every "Den" "Don" "Din" and "Dun" and
turning it into "Dan"

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