Hockey in Egypt

No more basketball. UConn won both the men's and women's tourneys. I give myself a nice pat on the back and say let's move on.

For the few of you keeping track, its Denver vs. Maine for the NCAA Hockey Finals. I did manage to watch the tail end of the Maine-BC game. Pretty good of what I saw. Given that the final is being played in Boston, I give the edge to Maine, but it would be interesting to see Denver knock them off.

Stanley Cup Playoffs are underway and I don't have the foggiest idea what the rankings are. After we weed out the first round I'll pay a little more attention. Given that this most likely is the last season for a little while, its been a very sorry way to go out. At this point, I think hockey is close to dead anywhere south of Detroit. We'll get some thinning of the league over the course of the lockout and that may not be a bad thing.

Probably the thing that's been grabbing my attention for most of the past couple of days is some more ancient chronology work. Its interesting that many historians and archaeologists discount the bible (old and new testament) because they are so tied into certain ideas and when something doesn't jive with that, they dismiss it. One interesting point was the excavation of the city of Jericho conducted in the 20s and 30s. The archeologist in charge sorted through and noted the walls falling down due to a major catastrophe (earthquake or such) and then a major fire. The city was lightly rebuilt and then torched again. Then, after a dormant period, the city was rebuilt. The archaeologist's dating of the collapse of the walls and the first fire fell around 1400BC and the second fire about 200 years or so later. He didn't do much with it and a second archeologist came in around 1950 or so and claimed that he had been in error with his dates and that all this happened much earlier than he claimed so that the theory that the Israelites entered Canaan around 1250 could be preserved.

But, if you use that theory, then you have no evidence of the walls falling under Joshua's attack, or the burning of the Benjaminite cities during the first civil war (Judges 19-21) (Jericho was a manned outpost controlled by the tribe of Benjamin). So, modern scholars say that the stories of Joshua aren't true, because it wouldn't fit their timeline.

I'm still reading the pages and doing some independent research myself but the author does make for some interesting arguments. It also clears up a few problems I've had in my own mind. The biggest one I can think of is that the pharaoh during the Exodus has always been named as Ramses II, arguably the most powerful pharaoh of all time. Yet we've always just been led to believe that Ramses II continued on to greatness and glory after losing a vast slave workforce and a substantial portion of his chariot army? That's always bugged me. But under some of the new theories, Ramses II reign is pushed forward to the time of the Judges and Samuel, possibly even early David.

I'll post more information and how I work my brain around it later. If you want to read some of his theories yourself go to Bible Mysteries. Take some things with a grain of salt, but others bear definate consideration.