It's "International Week" at school during which the kids learn about a particular foreign country.
Kenny's class has Greece. I sent him into school today with a white twin top-sheet ... and the Greek New Testament.
1 His class learned the upper case alphabet - Kenny told me the etymology of our word
alphabet - and a few nouns. His light research project, due
Fri., 1/26 - figure
that one out! - required him to pick a Greek god, answer some questions and summarize a popular myth featuring the god.
I suggested he do Jesus, but he said,
"It's has to be a B.C.god!"
But Jesus was born 4 B.C. ...
Figure
that one out.
Oh, oh,
Ancient Greece. Of course.
I still pushed him to pick Jesus but he senses that Jesus doesn't fit in the same category as Athena and Zeus. OK, but I didn't want him picking any of those
ordinary Greek gods either. His selection needed some
panache.
And, so, wouldn't you know, I brought my Scofield NASB to the Precepts session Thursday and the middle chapters of Micah
2 took us to
Deut. 16:18-20. And, apart from a fleeting mental lament that our leaders don't qualify, my wandering eye fell down to the next verse, last one on that Scofield Bible page:
"You shall not plant for yourself an Asherah of any kind of tree ..."
and the notes clinched it:
"These were 'groves' devoted to the worship of Asherah, who was the Babylogian goddess Ishtar, the Aphrodite of the Greeks, the Venus of the Romans."
I must be thinking ahead already to Valentine's Day.
So I convinced him to do Aphrodite and I helped him complete the research paperwork with information from Wiki. I left out some
graphic details of her origin except that her name means "sea form" and she was born as an adult.
3 The vignette he chose to relate was the
Judgement of Paris, a very interesting tale. Since Aphrodite emerges the fairest, he was glad he hadn't picked Athena.
1 Most of his teachers are Jewish, so if the LXX I have were as portable as the GNT, I would gladly have sent that one in. Trust me.
2 Micah 5:14. God doesn't like cities.
3 A thing Jesus didn't do.