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Monday 13 August 2007

Run, Spot, Run


Bob Thiel helpfully reminds us that Living University opens this week with a raft of unaccredited qualifications on offer. Not that Bob uses the "u"-word, and you'll certainly have problems finding any admission that it's an unaccredited operation on the LU website.

But, what-me-worry. Check out the "university" "bookstore" (use of two sets of quote marks is intentional) and you'll get a good idea of the quality of papers on offer. Teaching "Life, Ministry, and Teachings of Jesus" from a Harmony of the Gospels? How unique! The other three key texts are all published by fundamentalist Baker Books.

One text you won't find at LU, I suspect, will be Lester Grabbe's Ancient Israel, the latest offering from a highly respected biblical scholar who just happens to have started out at Ambassador College. Grabbe perhaps uses too many big words to meet the reading age requirements of LU's teaching staff, let alone the students, but the truth is that the guy has real grunt in the academic world. Ancient Israel will be released later this year, but is already available for preorder.

Prospective LU enrollees might better be served by brushing up on their "Janet and John" readers.

23 comments:

Lussenheide said...

Hey...is "LU" going to have a FOOTBALL TEAM??!!

Nominations now open for the team name and masccot!

How about the "Pirates" with a "skull and crossbones" on the helmet! ?

"LU"ssenheide

Anonymous said...

How about the picture of the attractive female student on the homepage of LU website? Who believes she is a real LU student?

I didn't think LCOG has any attractive women?

Douglas Becker said...

The BA program seeks to develop servant-leaders who:

• Can demonstrate the veracity and reliability of the Bible;

• Demonstrate a working familiarity with the Hebrew Scriptures;

• Understand and can explain the New Testament and its implication and application;

• Demonstrate and exemplify Christian leadership and values;

• Show understanding of Christian history and theology;

• Know and understand biblical doctrines;

• Demonstrate knowledge of the world’s major religions and how they differ from Christianity; and

• Demonstrate understanding of eschatological events and biblical prophecy.

The old adage must be employed: You cannot teach what you do not know.

Douglas Becker said...

Question:

Did the church wide fast bring Living the peaceable fruit of righteousness?

Or now that the campus is opening up on Living University, is it in the future to have campus shootings?

Douglas Becker said...

United has had the Ambassador Bible Center for some time.

Gerald Flurry has Ambassador University up and going.

Roderick Meredith is finally getting Living University to be a reality.

But what of David Pack and the Restored Church of God? He claims the only true legitimacy of the rightful heir to Herbert Armstrong and yet, Herbert Armstrong, a high school dropout who never more than finished the eighth grade, founded Ambassador College as Chancellor.

For all the pretensions of Pack as the end time apostle in God's circle of protection, he has no on site Bible Center, college or university, showing that he is a fraud.

David Pack needs to put his money where his mouth is. Or are there insufficient funds from inheriting the health food stores?

Anonymous said...

"How about the picture of the attractive female student on the homepage of LU website? Who believes she is a real LU student?"

That would be Orlin Grabbe's forte...

Go meet Lester Grabbe's brother, Orlin Grabbe. Orlin also worked in the theology dept at AC when I was there. One, the guiet theolgical thinker. The other, an open minded free thinker. RCM may like Orlin's site everybit as much as Lester's. :)

Just search "Orlin Grabbe"

(Caution: While you might enjoy quantum physics and topics bigger than those found in Sunday School, this site not for prudes or the feint of heart. I warned you!)

Tom Delamater said...

Their motto should more accurately read:

"All the World, Though Deceived, Is Our Campus."

Douglas Becker said...

It is unlikely that J. Orlin Grabbe is the brother to Lester Grabbe.

It is apparent that the J. Orlin Grabbe link is little more than a porn site.

On the other hand, orlingrabbe.com seems to be some sort of news page and if you go to the blog, you can download Islam ring tones.

And just how is the discussion of Orlin Grabbe related to Living University again?

Anonymous said...

Must be a coincidence that Orlin and Lester Grabbe were both working for WCG on the faculty when I was there. Yeah that's it

Anonymous said...

http://www.aci.net/Kalliste/Pasadena_memories.htm

Editor's Note: The following memoir was written in 1979 while the author was a graduate student at Harvard. It was circulated privately at that time to a few friends. This is its first publication.—Zola

Memories of Pasadena
by J. Orlin Grabbe

The arrival of Franz Josef Strauss had generated an atmosphere of eschatological ecstasy and hubris. Speculation was rife. Perhaps the church would not flee to Petra in advance of the German-led European takeover of America. The church might still be around, headquartered in California, but allowed to escape because we knew the Führer personally.

and so on......:)

Anonymous said...

The posting here noted Lester Grabbe's "Ancient Israel" as a LU text. That brought up in me, "hey I wonder what Orlin is doing?" Well I found Orlin.

So I suppose it has nothing to do with anything besides that and the fact that the same family can produce very different offspring. Orlin, as Lester, is and always was brilliant.

Anonymous said...

Orlin was my roommate during our freshman year at Embarrassing College. Lester is most definitely his brother.

I was amazed in the late '90s to learn what Orlin had done with his life, and later to see his website. He had always been a straight arrow while we were students. I guess, like most of us, he went through some sort of post-WCG greening process, and being of high intellect, his life took some exhilarating turns.

BB

PS. I prefer to call the erotica gracing Orlin's website "art", or "explicit art". Most of the stuff he posts is fairly upscale and classy, and calling it pornography cheapens it.

Anonymous said...

Also would be a coincidence is the J Orlin Grabbe of 'Memories of Pasadena" article who lives in Costa Rica (J. Orlin Grabbe is the author of International Financial Markets and resides in Costa Rica),would not also be the same J Orlin Grabbe of his website that also lives in Costa Rica..("Local time San Jose, Costa Rica")

Merely pointing out that for every Lester there is an Orlin, for every Abel, there is a Cain, for every Jesus there is a Judas and for every 'still am' there is a 'used to be.'

Anyway, interesting the RCM is still using "A Harmony (DisHarmony actually) of the Gospels" 1950 as if nothing new has been learned. I would imagine "The Genesis Flood" by Whitcomb and Morris will be the science text for LU as well. The more things change...

the more they stay the same...

Anonymous said...

Thank's BB for the confirmation. Orlin was always hilarious and brilliant. And you are correct about the pictures on the site.

They reflect an honest and feminine reality that is artistic and beautiful.

Porn is when you mislead with untruths and claim that the Gospels are harmonious and reflect the one or three year life of Jesus, depending on which one your read, accurately.

Anonymous said...

Nominations now open for the team name and masccot!

How about Leeches!

        AMERICAN KABUKI said...

Is Janet and John the kiwi version of the American "Dick and Jane" series?

There's more than one Grabbe extended family with AC connnections, and they are unrelated.

Gavin said...

Dick and Jane, yup, probably.

Janet and John were originally a British series I think... not sure whether you Yanks copied the Poms or vice versa, but Janet and John were adapted for most of Her Majesty's dominions. I learned to read with Janet, John and Spot the dog. They were famously repetitive in order to pound in the basic sight vocabulary.

See Spot run
Run Spot run

No, hang on, I got that wrong. Blame the colonial cringe for giving those Brits the credit! Wikipedia to the rescue:

"Originally, these stories were written by Mabel O'Donnell and Rona Munro from New Zealand, and published by Row Peterson and Company as the Alice and Jerry books in the USA.

"However in 1949, publishers James Nisbet and Company licensed and sold them in the UK as the Janet and John books and they became hugely popular and influential in the teaching of schoolchildren throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

"Janet and John were portrayed as average English children, living a typical middle-class life, and the books consisted of stories that progressively incorporated key words needed in the development of reading skills.

"By the 1970s, Janet and John’s straightforward and simple world was seen as being outdated and the books fell out of favour."

So... as Bart Simpson might say, who the hell were Dick and Jane? ;-)

Douglas Becker said...

It appears there will be no sports: Only HPRO 314, Fitness, Hygiene, and Wellness is offered so far.

Sports would probably be a bad idea, even though their illustrious founder won the regional golden gloves championship in his youth as a part of his lost glories. The reason is that sports teaches people to win in a competition.

That would be bad.

Roderick Meredith can't stand the competition at his stage of life. And standing off stage are his sons vying to take over, and its clear from their aggressive posturing that they wouldn't tolerate the competition either.

In the supreme irrelevancy of an entropic university already in decline before it starts, one could hope in the production of alpha males to dominate the scene and snatch the failure of defeat in a declining empire away from its origins and give new life through some new Nimrod dominating the scene.

Douglas Becker said...

Porn?

Not porn?

All I can say that with my web host it would be a violation of Terms of Service.

And after my experiences with Wade Ewart Cox, I'm rather careful about that.

Anonymous said...

"How about the picture of the attractive female student on the homepage of LU website? Who believes she is a real LU student?

I didn't think LCOG has any attractive women?"

Makes me wonder if Playboy magazine will do a feature edition like it has done with other colleges - "The Girls of Living University"

Anonymous said...

How about IN SEARCH OF ANCIENT ISRAEL by Davies ? Any chance of RCM becomming a Minimalist ?

"Many readers will remember the great impact that this book had on the question of the relationship of the history of ancient Israel to the biblical text. Though Davies had been preceded by others, it was this book more than any other that sparked the Minimalist-Maximalist debate (see Ziony Zevit in Biblica 83).
Immediately Davies says that the genre of literature of "history of Israel" is obselete. Instead there are three ancient Israels: one is the narrative found in the Bible; one is the history of the inhabitants of Palestine during the Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age; and the third is the amalgamation of these former two. For Davies the "ideo-logical structure" of the Bible is the Persian period although a certain amount of material must have survived from earlier times (see page 91).

"It is unfortunate that this debate became as volatile as it did. For example, five years before Davies' book came out, Norman Whybray argued that the Pentateuch was a post-exilic document. One might expect Whybray and Davies to be allies in this matter. Yet he and Davies find themselves at odds in V Philips Long's _Israel's Past in Present Research_ which was published seven years after Davies' book."

        AMERICAN KABUKI said...

Gavin asks...

So... as Bart Simpson might say, who the hell were Dick and Jane? ;-)



Nobody is quite sure, but Dick and Jane spent a lot of time watching a spot run.

Scholars differ on their exegis of the original texts, some say the texts were divinely insired parables of modern life, while literalists insist Dick and Jane were characters of historical importance.

Freudians are quick to point out the double entredre's present in the books titles and themes.

Neo-conservatives insist the books were merely drug induced ramblings of self indulgent hippies unable to purge themselves of guilt for having put America through defeat in Vietnam.

Bob Theil is quick to point out the similarity of the characters to an earlier English nursery rhyme of Jack and Jill who went up a hill, to fetch a pail of water. The pail of course representing the Living Church of God, and the water, The Holy Spirit which only flows through God's one true church under Rodrick C Meredith.

Douglas Becker reminds us that 20th century scribes borrowed the characters without the usual scholarly attribution.

Anonymous said...

Kudos to Orlon Grabbe! That site is so very much more interesting than this dull rehash that I'm not wasting a minute more here. Have you read his fabulous short stories? Then there is the wealth of collected information on so many topics. The guy's a genius - and he find the female body beautiful (it is! and I'm a woman and not a lesbian!) Some people, with brains, are really able to move past this drivel. The rest of you are really boring. But thanks for the tip on Orlon!