Hotel. We have a block of rooms reserved at $111.00 per night at the Renaissance Charlotte. This is a lovely hotel in the best area of Charlotte so this price is extremely reasonable. There is also an upgrade option if you choose to include a breakfast package.  Twenty five room are reserved for Friday and Saturday nights and 10 rooms for Sunday.  This is not to say there are not more rooms but these are what we have committed to under contract and are guaranteed for a limited time. There are also other hotels in the immediate area.

To make reservations please call 800-468-3571 and identify yourself with the UIWU event, so we meet our obligation with Renaissance.

We have reserved the smaller conference room for the children as we did last year.

Registration: The conference registration fees are $25 per person and $40 for a couple or family the weekend of the conference. You may also choose to pre-pay the registration fee before April 27th at the reduced pre-conference rate of $20 per person and $35 per couple or family. Please register whether you decide to prepay or noton the drop down form at the tab “April Meeting” at http://unitedisrael.org/blog. If you want to pre-pay and save some money you can use Paypal (http://paypal.com) and make a payment to: unitedisrael33@gmail.com or you can also send a check made out to UIWU marked April meeting to 2124 Crown Centre Drive, Suite 300, Charlotte, NC 28227. Those who preregister will have a printed name-tag when you arrive.

Beginning March 1st and running through Passover week, April 13th there is a “two for one” sale on copies James D. Tabor’s book, Restoring Abrahamic Faith. We are doing this to encourage people to give copies away, get copies for family members, or for those who have never ordered yet–an incentive. This offer is valid only by ordering through genesis2000.org or sending a check–see details at the web site. In other words, order 1 copy and you will be shipped 2, and so forth, whatever quantity you pay for your order is simply doubled. Dr. Tabor will also autograph all copies sent out, so they literally will go from his hands to yours.

Pass the word and let’s get this book into as many hands as possible.
You can go ahead and order if you wish…copies will ship out on Friday.

In 1995  looking over all this history and talking with David Horowitz about what he remembered and we made a startling discovery using Arthur Spier’s Comprehensive Hebrew Calendar–a most useful book that has all the holydays and Torah readings between 1900-2100, correlated with the Gregorian calendar. The Torah reading that weekend, for Sabbath, January 1, 1944, was Vayiggash–Genesis 44:18-47:17, which begins the tearful but joyful tale of Joseph revealing himself to his brothers. The Torah portion begins with the phrase “Then Judah came near (vayiggash) to him,” and leads up to the scene of Joseph’s revelation of himself to his brothers.

When we told David this he was utterly astounded, as he had not remembered or realized it. That reading, Vayiggash, has indeed been a central one for UIWU and its purposes through all these years. The ancient Rabbis must have realized its implications as well since the Haftarah reading paired with it is Ezekiel 37:15-28 about the “two sticks,” Judah and Joseph, being joined as one, just following the famous vision of the valley of Dry Bones, and thus serving as its interpretation.

When we got our UIWU Torah scroll from the late Edna Dillon, of blessed memory, in August, 2003 and we first unrolled it here in Charlotte we were curious to see where it had last been read. It had been stored in a closet for at least 30 years and was touched by no one. You guessed it–the Torah was rolled to Genesis 44:18–Vayiggash! Edna said it was only used when David was able to visit the West Union, West Virginia group, so he must have read from that passage on his last visit with them–probably sometime in the early 1970s.

In terms of standard English Bibles I prefer the Revised Standard Version (RSV) over the NRSV. The problem is that it is hard to get these days since the NRSV has taken over with most publishers.  You can still get the RSV Oxford Annotated edition with the Apocrypha, still in print, and I would suggest it as a basic resource for the “entire” Bible with notes (plus wonderful Oxford maps)–but be careful here not to confuse it with the newer one that is the NRSV. This is the correct one on Amazon here.
The Revised Standard Version represents many advances over the King James and American Standard Version tradition. The problem with it is that in many places it incorporates conjectural readings, emendations, and alternative textual traditions like the Septuagint. These are indicated in the footnotes, but one just has to be aware one is not always dealing with just the standard Masoretic text.

The English Standard Version (ESV) attempts to keep all the virtues of the RSV in terms of scholarship and academic integrity, while removing this objection and relying wholly and solely on the Masoretic traditional Hebrew text. It has swept the evangelical Christian market and also attracted the attention of many scholars, on its way to replacing the popular New International Version (NIV) that had once held that market. It comes in many editions but the standard textual edition is reasonable in price and you can get it with the apocrypha on Amazon here.

I would recommend either one or both of these as a basic translation of the Hebrew Bible, the Apocrypha, and the New Testament for general reading and reference, and whether one has much interest in the N.T. or not, it is clearly an important part of our culture and from an academic and historical point of view both the N.T. and the Apocrypha are needed for general Biblical studies.

The problem with both the RSV and the ESV is that they still are not as literal and careful with the Hebrew as I would want but on the whole the ESV makes a fair attempt.

In terms of English Bibles though I still favor heavily the 1901 American Standard Version (not to be confused with the New American Standard Version that also can be good), both for its accuracy and literalness as well as its unprecedented use of the Divine Name Jehovah, which few standard translations have ever done. It is basically “out of print” but you can find editions if you want a hard copy. It is easily available in electronic formats, both free on the web and for various devices.  I have the ASV on my iPad and computer and often use it as an English parallel to the Hebrew. I find it to be quite accurate, and an advance over the KJV.

In terms of Jewish translations of the Tanakh the choices are much more limited. There are four main ones I would note:

1. The 1985 Jewish Publication Society Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures. This one is the most widely available and would be somewhat equivalent to the RSV in terms of its academic approach to the text. However, it does, for the most part, stay with the original Masoretic Hebrew rather than bringing in alternative readings. Its drawback is that it can be very loose with the text and put meanings into the English that are clearly more interpretations, thus closing off to the average reader the more literal or original meaning.

2. The older 1917 Jewish Publication Society Tanakh is now, alas, out of print but it was heavily modeled on the ASV but without, of course, using the Divine Name, but choosing “LORD” for YHVH as most English translations have done. This is the Bible that David Horowitz used all his life and Ralph Buntyn has David’s personal leather bound copy. I have one of my own that I bought years ago, back in the 1970s. If you check the used bookstores you can find a copy. You can also get an e-book version for $.99 on Amazon here that will download to the Kindle app on any device! There are also numerous web sites that have this 1917 JPS Tanakh on-line. I do recommend it and if I had a parallel version of the Hebrew Bible with this 1917 translation I would consider it the best of all worlds in terms of the Hebrew Bible.

3. The Koren “Jerusalem Bible,” produced in Israel with the traditional Hebrew text and a fairly literal English translation by Harold Fish on facing pages. You can get it at many bookstores but most easily via Amazon here.  Two disadvantages are the print is small and the binding is not of the highest quality. I have used and worn out about three of these but over the years switched to a Hebrew Bible with no English.

4. The 1996 Stone Edition of the Tanakh. Even though this one is quite popular I find the translation far far from accurate and literal and just as the Christian translations of the Bible have a strong theological slant in many places this translation of the Tanakh has a decidedly Jewish slant that gets in the way of the literal/accurate meaning of the text itself.

So the upshot of this note, depending on your own preferences would be to get:

1. A copy of either the Oxford RSV and ESV with the Apocrypha just so you have a standard full English Bible. Which you chose might depend on whether you want the notes, maps, etc. of the Oxford or just the straight text of the ESV.

2. A copy of the 1917 Jewish Publication Society Tanakh if you can find one through a used book dealer. Otherwise, if you use electronic devices, it is easy to obtain, or, alternatively get a copy of the ASV, which is very similar and has the added bonus of using the Divine Name.

A final personal note…

I had to suspend most of my work on the Transparent English Bible (Original Bible Project) when I became chair of the Department of Religious Studies here at UNC Charlotte in 2005, taking on a 40 hour+ per week job, 12 months a year. This left me almost no “extra” time for the translation and what time I have had for research I have given to writing the four books (The Jesus Dynasty, Restoring Abrahamic Faith, The Jesus Discovery, and Jesus and Paul) and related research, filming, and archaeology projects. I have the intention of returning to the TEB work when I retire from the chair job in May, 2013 and we have plans to publish portions of the translation in e-book format as early as 2012. If you are not familiar with this “best of all translations,” you can download a sample of Genesis 1-12 at the Web site.

This is all quite visible of course but it pales in significance to the slaughter of the hundreds of millions of captive animals slaughtered daily, but behind closed doors, in our worldwide industrial animal killing operations, along with the daily direct slaughter that goes on in the second and third world societies on the planet.

The words of the Prophets come to mind, Hosea 6 of course but especially Amos 5:21-24–the last verse of which, along with Jeremiah 7:21-22, makes clear that Israel in the wilderness did not sacrifice at YHVH’s command for those 40 years of Sukkah living which was meat free–even though they at one point begged for meat and got it aplenty–till it nauseated them when they ate so much it came out their noses (see Numbers 11). Another ideal, worldwide, slaughter free time is coming according to Isaiah 11 & 65 for all humanity–and the covenant will be with the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and the land creatures of the earth (Hosea 2)–back to Eden it seems:

Before they call I will answer; while they are yet speaking I will hear.
The wolf and the lamb shall graze together;
the lion shall eat straw like the ox,
and dust shall be the serpent’s food.
They shall not hurt or destroy (slaughter)
in all my holy mountain,” says YHVH.
For the earth be filled with the knowledge
of YHVH as the waters cover the sea…

As I have written before to this group I believe it can be shown that the “Millennium” of ancient Jewish and Christian hope has already arrived, strictly speaking, sometime around the Gregorian year 2000 as is obvious to all who have tallied up the Masoretic chronological tradition. Accordingly, now more than ever “Let us do the Millennial thing.” (see attached article) We can begin to model right now the peaceful kingdom of the Prophets in this small but significant way by living by the ideals of Eden, where every green seeing bearing plant and tree was given for food.

Peace upon all creatures great and small…

The first is an older but thoroughly enlightening interview with Islamic cleric Abdul Hadi, head of the Islam community in Italy, conducted by Pastor Kenneth Rawson, a Christian Zionist who was a great friend of our founder David Horowitz. You will be pleasantly surprised at his take on the Jerusalem situation in the light of the Koran:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMAzKhpUzCE&feature=related

The second is a very succinct but accurate lesson in the 20th century history of the territory of greater Palestine beginning with the victory of the Allies in WWI overthrowing Turkish rule. It too contains many surprises contrary to the popular narrative heard today of which our top people in the media today seem banefully ignorant:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7ByJb7QQ9U&NR=1