Thinking to Believe

This past week has brought to the public’s attention the discovery of two important manuscripts: one of Leviticus and one of the Qur’an.

Leviticus

The Leviticus manuscript was actually discovered in 1970 in a Torah ark from a Byzantine-era synagogue excavated at Ein Gedi in Israel. It was burnt by a fire, however, and could not be deciphered until now. The scroll was found to contain Leviticus 1:1-8. It is dated no later than the 6^th century A.D. (when the synagogue and village were burned).

Qur’an

Two pages of the Qur’an (portions of Surahs 18-20) were discovered inside the codex of another late 7^th century Qur’anic manuscript at Birmingham University.  Radiocarbon dating of the manuscript has revealed an age of A.D 568A- 645.  Muhammad lived from A.D. 570 – 632, making it a live possibility that the manuscript fragment was composed while Muhammad was still alive.

(more…)

A story broke on July 15 that I’ve been meaning to write about. During an interview[1] with Florian Mundt, German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, made it clear that she does not want Germany to follow the American example of making legal provision for same-sex marriage.  Merkel said she supports civil unions with benefits equal to marriage, but she “make[s] a different at some point.” For her, that point is the definition of marriage: “For me, personally, marriage is a man and a woman living together.”

While I disagree with Merkel that same-sex couples should receive the same benefits as married couples, her position is actually quite sensible.  Essentially she is saying “Same-sex couples should be treated as equal to married couples in every way, but they have no right to have their relationship called a ‘marriage’ because a marriage is, by nature, a male-female union.”  She is drawing on the intuition that “marriage” has an essence – that marriage is fundamentally a male-female union, and thus it is impossible for a same-sex union to be a marriage. This position is quite rational since it is based on objective observations about human nature and biological function.

(more…)