Importance of becoming better informed

“Why are photocopies of the Dead Sea Scrolls on the Internet not available free to the public?” Thus starts Don Srail’s Talkback piece in the Biblical Archaeology Review site, and he goes on to lament the suppression of valuable information from the public eye.

Once long ago, my dad was trying to move a bed from one room to another. And I was helping him. But being just four or so, he told me later, I was an additional weight that he was dragging with the bed. So it is in this struggle to get true science and true archaeology into the open, many of us are more of a nuisance than a help.

Madurai’s wall of shame

I find it hard to believe that such a wall exists. But it’s true. The city of Madurai is tense because police broke a portion of this wall yesterday. It is a 100-meter wall that was built 20 years ago to keep “low caste” people from entering the “upper caste” area of a village.

Caste is a very complex matter in India, a monster that clings so closely to us even 60 years after Independence. I worry for the children who are caught in the crossfire, those growing with the wrong notion that they are in some way superior, and those growing up believing that they are inferior.

My great grandfather’s father converted to Christianity from one of these very same castes that built this wall. So I am a pure-blooded one-of-these-castes person. I am in no way inherently superior to any one else—not superior to a Dalit or any other Indian or Asian or European or anyone else.

What does the Bible say about such divisions among human beings?