The Turkish government responded to the pope’s comments by recalling its ambassador to the Vatican, and summoned the Vatican’s ambassador in Ankara to express its “great disappointment and sadness.”

It’s okay, Turkey, I get disappointed when people bring up my horrendous crimes against humanity too.

So, what actually happened and when?

In 1915 there were about 2 million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) where their ancestors had lived for 3000 years. They were both an ethnic and religious minority in the Muslim-ruled country. (Armenia, when it was independent, was the first country to make Christianity its official religion.) The Turkish government wanted a solution to the “Armenian problem” so they decided to force them from their homes and send them into the Syrian Desert without food or water.

It began on April 24 of that year. On that day the government arrested and executed several hundred Armenian intellectuals – many Armenians were well-educated business owners, lawyers, doctors, and craftsmen, in contrast to the majority Turkish peasant farmers – and the rest were given a choice of walking until they dropped dead of exhaustion and exposure or stopping walking and being shot dead on the spot.

The military weren’t the only ones to get to join in the mass murdering fun. Killing squads made up of murders and ex-convicts went about crucifying (literally), drowning, and burning Armenians. They raped the women and kidnapped children, converting them to Islam and giving them to Turkish families. The children were given new Turkish or Arabic names and were beaten if they spoke Armenian.

In May, the Ottoman government began confiscating “abandoned” Armenian property. This resulted in a lot of property seizures since people were not allowed to take anything with them nor were they allowed to sell it before they left.

Ancient cities were leveled and all traces of Armenian culture was destroyed.

The genocide didn’t end until 1922. During those years the Armenian population in Turkey went from a couple million to fewer than 400,000.

The architects of the Armenian Genocide fled to Germany which promised not to prosecute them for their crimes. They were later located and assassinated by Armenian activists.

If you see similarities between the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust, you’re not imagining it. Hitler saw how little was done by other countries to come to Armenia’s aid and used it as a guideline for his own genocidal plans.

Thus for the time being I have sent to the East only my ‘Death’s Head Units’ with the orders to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of Polish race or language. Only in such a way will we win the vital space that we need. Who still talks nowadays about the Armenians? – Adolf Hitler

In the 5th Century BC in Ireland, October 31 was seen as the divide between summer and winter and was called Samhain (pronounced sow-han because after a few days of partying, you have a really hard time pronouncing the letter “m” – not really, it’s just that their language is weird like that).

It was the night that the spirits of the dead could walk the Earth. To encourage the spirits not to linger, people would put out the fires in their homes (to make it cold and unwelcoming) and dress as demons, goblins, and witches. They would parade through the houses, making as much noise as possible. (Parents of small children can relate.)

Then they would gather outside the village where the druid priests would light huge bonfires. The fires were a tribute to the sun god in thankfulness for the crops they had grown. It was also meant to frighten away spirits who might want to inhabit a villager’s body over the next year. Sometimes, if someone seemed to be already possessed, that person was thrown onto the fire. (The 5th Century BC was not a high point in caring for the mentally ill.) This was to warn off other spirits from trying to take over any of the other villagers.

The festivities changed some over the years. The Romans came and banned burning the crazies possessed, and burned effigies instead. The Christians came and the holiday began losing its connection to the old religion. In the 8th century, Pope Gregory III designated November 1 as All Saints Day, a day to honor saints and martyrs. Church sanctioned holidays were moving in on the holidays of the old gods and taking over their festivities.

People probably didn’t care much. They still got bonfires and a night of partying. While churches in other parts of the world had All Saints Day on November 1, not much was going on for All Hallow’s Eve (Halloween) until the potato famine forced Irish immigrants to come to the United States. America in the 1840s discovered Mischief Night where young people in costumes would go out and destroy stuff (knock over outhouses, for example). They also brought the custom of trick-or-treating.

Even in the 1880s people were already talking about making the holiday less frightening so as not to upset the children. Now, a little over a century later we’re just trying to take away the fun and creativity. The only appropriate costumes anymore are generic store-bought ones that are guaranteed not to offend anyone – funny how most of them are licensed comic book or movie characters. (But the change isn’t for profit, it’s for the Chiiiiilllldddrrreeennnn!)

At least we can still dress our pets up in weird costumes.

Jean Astruc noticed that some passages used the name Yahweh for God and others used Elohim. He believed that Moses used two different documents for his sources. Later, a man named Julius Wellhausen extended this theory by identifying four different sources that date from different periods and emphasize different concerns. Along with the two sources mentioned above are the Priestly source and the Deuteronomic source.

In the parts that use “Yahweh” for the name of God, His name is known to Adam but in the parts that use “Elohim” and the priestly source, His name isn’t known to man until He reveals it to Moses (in Exodus). He says, “I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as El Shaddai, but I did not make myself known to them by name, Yahweh.”

The Deuteronomic source is basically Deuteronomy. Instead of telling a story, it is a book of speeches. Although these speeches were supposed to be ones that Moses delivered to his people after they had been wandering as nomads for years, its laws are ones for an agricultural society. For example, Deuteronomy 19:14:

The Priestly source is mostly in Leviticus and parts of Numbers. The concerns expressed in this source are about worship: sacrifices, the Sabbath, holidays, circumcision, rituals, and what is pure and impure (food, behavior).

The Yahweh texts are thought to have been originally written about 1000 BC and the Elohim, about 900 BC. They were combined around 800 BC. The Deuteronomic texts were also written about that time and then combined with the first two after another hundred years. The Priestly texts were added in during the 6th Century BC.

The stories in the Bible are older than the dates they were written because they were part of an oral tradition and many of them have similarities to older Babylonian stories. Despite similarities, the Bible introduced some revolutionary religious ideas.

The most revolutionary was the idea of a single God who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and exists everywhere. In polytheism gods lived in a special place where only they existed (although they would come to Earth to visit people…mostly to get up to no good.) The gods represented things in nature – the sky, fertility, crops, or the sea. In polytheism, religious stories (myths) told about the lives of the gods, in monotheism the Bible tells the stories of people and their relationship to God.

While it was obviously a couple of hundred years before same sex marriage started becoming legal in some states, Sylvia Drake and Charity Bryant met, fell in love, and spent the rest of their lives together.

The lived and worked together as tailors in Weybridge, VT. They shared a bed, combined their incomes, tithed to the church, led charitable organizations, and lived as any other married couple. They had enough business that they could take in other young women as apprentices for periods of time and teach them how to make men’s clothing.

While we might be surprised at how accepting the town was, for that time, it was also not that simple. The women had to work at being valuable members of the community. Along with their charitable activities, they were active members of their church (Sylvia also taught Sunday school), and helped their nieces and nephews pay for their educations.

They are buried together in Weybridge Hill Cemetery.

If you’re interested in reading more about Charity and Sylvia, there’s a book about them, Charity and Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America by Rachael Hope Cleves.

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

Weddings were followed by feasts which could last for several days. It was a point of pride in Middle Eastern cultures then, as it is now, for the host to be able to provide plentiful food and wine for their guests. Running out of wine while the party is still going strong would have brought dishonor on the family even if it wasn’t due to their poor planning or lack of funds. Maybe they had enough before, but then Jesus decided to invite his disciple bros. Not a problem, a few more are always welcome.

Mary decides to state what is obviously obvious.* “They have no wine.” He might tease her a bit, but he’ll still provide the wine to make his mom happy. She’s confident that he can do something about the lack of wine. Does this mean she knows he can perform miracles? The Koran (3:49) says:

And (make him) a messenger to the Children of Israel (saying): I have come to you with a sign from your Lord, that I determine for you out of dust the form of a bird, then I breathe into it and it becomes a bird with Allah’s permission, and I heal the blind and the leprous, and bring the dead to life with Allah’s permission; and I inform you of what you should eat and what you should store in your houses. Surely there is a sign in this for you, if you are believers.

But this story is originally from the Gospel of Thomas, written about 140 AD. It is not a part of the official Christian canon and earlier miracles would conflict with the statement that the miracle of the wine was “the first of his signs”.

*Dads tell dad jokes, moms state the obvious. Parents act like parents no matter the place or time. What would be a dad joke in Jesus’s case? The platypus?

Now it usually is used to mean a harsh scolding that enumerates all your current misdeeds. If you also get a list of everything you’ve done wrong in forever, that means you’ve married a wife with an excellent memory.

Where did this come from? Well, in 1714 the British Parliament passed a law that would allow the local constabulary to disperse a crowd of 12 or more people in order to prevent “tumults and riotous assemblies”. First they would be read a proclamation that they must break up the group, within an hour, on pain of death.

Our Sovereign Lord the King chargeth and commandeth all persons, being assembled, immediately to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart to their habitations, or to their lawful business, upon the pains contained in the act made in the first year of King George, for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies. God Save the King!

The riots were serious business. It was a clash of politics and religion – the Whigs vs. the Tories. At that time, the Whigs were Scottish Presbyterians and the Tories were Irish Catholics. The Whigs were wanted primacy of Parliament over the King and the Tories said, “That will only happen on opposite day, and that’s not today!” (That quotation of the Tories may not be exactly, completely, historically accurate. Feel free to disregard that and just assume they said something boring about wanting the King to be over Parliament.)

Have you noticed that the difference between Riot Act and Patriot Act is just one little “pat”? Probably the one they give you going through airport security.

If you want to read the text of the Riot Act, you may do so on Project Gutenberg. If that’s too tl;dr for you, you can listen to it on LibriVox.

You can find a lot more about Whigs and Tories on this George Mason University page, Historical Outline of Restoration and 18th Century British Literature.

Instead of posting a picture of a riot, I posted a field of flowers. You’re welcome.