Top Ten World Cup Rankings After Matchday 2

Honourable mentions: England, Brazil, Portugal, Spain, Canada, South Korea, Ivory Coast.

10. USA

Very impressed with the U.S. team and considering the two tricky opponents they've faced so far they've done very well to take all six points. A run to the quarter finals is very possible.

9. Mexico 

Mexico has handled its business professionally, not allowing a goal in either of its victories. In a probable match with England in the round of 16 they have a very good chance to advance. They're playing with grit and passion. They're on a mission.

8. Norway

A clinical striker can erase a lot of sins in football. Plus, you add the team spirit and the traveling fans bringing positive energy to every stadium, that's tough to beat. That formula has the makings for a long run.

7. Colombia 

Colombia plays exciting, thrilling football. They're easy on the eye. They play attacking football. Poised. Defensively sound. Just a great team with strong personalities.

6. Japan

Drawing the Netherlands and obliterating Tunisia showed that Japan can play any game that's required. They're well coached. They can score, defend, run. They will be a dangerous opponent in the knockout stage.

5. Morocco 

Brazil and Scotland each presented a unique challenge and Morocco managed to get 4 points, securing qualification after two games. Similar to Japan, they can play any way and still succeed. They have a lot of in-form players and a recent history of tournament success. Another deep run is likely.

4. Germany 

Germany did what Germany does in its first game, and managed to beat a tough Ivorian Coast team in extra time on matchday two. That tells me what I needed to know. This team can adapt, slow the game down, and score when the pressure is on. That's what required to go on a long run in the knockout stage.

3. France

I doubted France, and they still haven't faced a good team in this tournament, but they're making it look too easy. The Mbappe factor is just hard to overlook. The World Cup is basically his tournament until he retires. He always shows up. And that's all a team needs to go far. Just one guy who can score in his sleep.

2. Netherlands 

Holland dismantled Sweden after tying with Japan. They have the power, finesse, pace, and technical ability to go toe to toe with basically anyone in this tournament, no matter if they're European, African, or South American. Of all the European teams I trust them the most to beat an Argentina, an Ivory Coast, or a Morocco.

1. Argentina 

I didn't want to predict it, but we may see a champion go back to back for the first time since 1962. Argentina are playing like a well oiled machine right now. Austria and Algeria are no slouches, either. They're talented and well structured teams but they were no match for the champions. Argentina with a motivated Messi seems unstoppable.

Top Ten Good Goys Gone Bad In History

 

10. Nixon

9. Napoleon 

8. Adolf

7. Tsar Nicholas II

6. Philip IV of France

5. Titus

4. JFK

3. King Edward I

2. Agag

1. ?

The Challenge of Translating the Bible with Prof. Robert Alter

 

Wikipedia:

Robert Bernard Alter (born 1935) is an American professor emeritus of Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1967. He has published two dozen books, including an award-winning translation of the Hebrew Bible in 2018, which was twenty-four years in the making.

Video Title: The Challenge of Translating the Bible with Prof. Robert Alter. Source: Fieldstead and Company. Date Published: February 28, 2023. Description:

Robert Alter is Professor in the Graduate School and Emeritus Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California at Berkeley, where he has taught since 1967.  

He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the Council of Scholars of the Library of Congress, and is past president of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics.   He has twice been a Guggenheim Fellow, has been a Senior Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities, a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem, and Old Dominion Fellow at Princeton University.  

He has written widely on the European novel from the eighteenth century to the present, on contemporary American fiction, and on modern Hebrew literature.   He has also written extensively on literary aspects of the Bible.  His twenty-four published books include two prize-winning volumes on biblical narrative and poetry and award-winning translations of Genesis and of the Five Books of Moses.  He has devoted book-length studies to Fielding, Stendhal, and the self-reflexive tradition in the novel. Books by him have been translated into ten different languages.   Among his publications over the past twenty-five years are Necessary Angels: Tradition and Modernity in Kafka, Benjamin, and Scholem (1991), The David Story: A Translation with Commentary of 1 and 2 Samuel  (1999),  Canon and Creativity: Modern Writing and the Authority of Scripture (2000), The Five Book of Moses: A Translation with Commentary (2004), Imagined Cites  (2005),  The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary (2007), Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible (2010),  The Wisdom Books: A Translation with Commentary (2010), and Ancient Israel: The Former Prophets (2013).  His completed translation of the Hebrew Bible with a commentary has just appeared in a three-volume set. 

In 2009 he received the Robert Kirsch Award from the Los Angeles Times for lifetime contribution to American letters and in 2013 the Charles Homer Haskins Prize for career achievement from the American Council of Learned Societies.

Hugo Gressmann - Babylonian Influence on the Hebrews

 

An excerpt from, "Babylonian Influence on the Hebrews: The Tower of Babel. Hugo Gressmann" by William Creighton Graham, University of Chicago - The Journal of Religion, April 1930:

This series of five lectures, the first to be delivered under the Hilda Stch Stroock Foundation of the Jewish Institute of Religion, New York, constitutes literally the last of the many notable contributions of the late Professor Hugo Gressmann to Old Testament Study. The Preface by Professor Obermann contains a touchingly beautiful appreciation of the author's work and an eloquent tribute to his personality. 

The theme of the lectures is the intellectual and spiritual relationship between Israel and the Babylonians. "The Tower of Babel" stands as the symbol of Babylonian civilization, and it is from the angle of the influence of the latter upon Hebrew thought that the theme is approached. 

The first lecture deals with the form and the symbolism of the Babylonian temple tower and expounds the influence of these upon the architecture and thought of the whole ancient Near East. In the second lecture this theme is developed by an exposition of the dependence of the "legends of mankind in Genesis i-xi" upon the Babylonian legends. The third lecture discusses Babylonian influence upon the literary forms and ideology of Hebrew prophecy. It is followed, through an examination of the Johannine Apocalypse, by a lecture on the relation between late Hellenistic Judaism and Babylonia. The concluding lecture most interestingly contrasts and compares the religions of Babylon and Israel. 

Making all due allowance for Professor Gressmann's well-known enthusiasm for the civilization of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, and for the fact that his theme itself did not permit the presentation of the claims of other civilizations to a part in influencing Hebrew thought and life, these lectures contribute materially to the very desirable end of freeing us from the tendency, fostered by certain dogmatic positions relative to the nature of Scripture, of regarding the Hebrew people as having lived their life, socially speaking, in a vacuum. They also contribute splendidly to a better understanding of the influence of the Semitic world on the origin and development of what we today designate as the scientific view of life.

Wikipedia:

Hugo Gressmann (March 21, 1877 – April 6, 1927) was a prominent Old Testament scholar in Protestant Germany and a friend and associate of the eminent scholar Hermann Gunkel. He was a member of the history of religions school.

An excerpt from, "The Tower of Babel" by Hugo Gressmann, Jewish Institute of Religion Press, New York, 1928, Pg. 1 - 2:

As the pyramids are the symbol of Egypt, so the tower of Babel is the symbol of Babylonia, not only of its art, but also of its religion and its literature. From an architectural standpoint it belongs to the wonders of the old world. From a religious standpoint it is a necessary part of every Mesopotamian temple, from which it cannot be separated any more than the clock-tower can be divorced from the Christian church, although it had another meaning and is in no way related to Christianity historically. Considered from the view-point of literary history, the tower of Babel not only played a réle for the Mesopotamian authors but also for the peoples of the whole Near East. A great number of legends and motifs associated with it have been the themes of the phantasy of poets and artists even as late as the Christian middle ages.

It is not the purpose of these lectures to gather these stories together and to speak about them, but rather to treat the general relations or Israel to Babylonia. If we have chosen the tower of Babel as the special symbol of Babylonian culture, it is not only because it incorporates the Babylonian spirit and art in its most impressive form but also because we cannot understand the Babylonian influence upon Israel in the truest sense, unless we take into consideration the tower of Babel. For in many instances it will be the centre of our attention because it played such a role in ancient Israel and also in later Judaism. It is therefore fitting that we devote our first lecture to the tower of Babel, in order to grasp its true significance and to illustrate it at least by several examples. It towered to heaven as a titanic work; it was not as a wanton sin against God, but it was as a pious act that they built this gigantic tower, and therefore we are not surprised that it attracted mightily the peoples of the world.

Wilfred G. Lambert On The Link Between Sumerian Epics And Babylonian Epics

 

Wikipedia:

Wilfred George Lambert FBA (26 February 1926 – 9 November 2011) was a British historian and archaeologist, a specialist in Assyriology and Near Eastern Archaeology.

. . .Lambert taught and researched at the University of Birmingham for thirty years, during which period he made weekly trips to work on deciphering cuneiform tablets in the British Museum. After retirement, he worked with the Museum on their Catalogue of the Western Asiatic Seals Project, dealing with the inscriptions on the seals. In January 2010, Professor Lambert and Irving Finkel identified pieces from a cuneiform tablet that was inscribed with the same text as the Cyrus Cylinder.

Lambert was an external consultant for the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary. His work, 'Introduction: the transmission of the literary and scholarly texts', in Cuneiform Texts in the Metropolitan Museum of Art II: Literary and scholastic texts of the first millennium BC, was used as background material for The Higher Education Academy's project, Knowledge and Power in the Neo-Assyrian Empire. He was also noted for his new discoveries in relation to the Gilgamesh text.

. . .Lambert was widely regarded as one of the foremost Assyriologists of the 20th century, known for his meticulous philological work and contributions to the decipherment and interpretation of cuneiform texts. His scholarship significantly advanced the understanding of Mesopotamian religion, wisdom literature, and mythology. Among his most influential works is Babylonian Wisdom Literature (1960), which brought new attention to ancient Near Eastern didactic and philosophical texts, including dialogues, fables, and instructions. He also played a critical role in the study and reconstruction of the Enūma Eliš, the Babylonian creation epic, and provided authoritative editions of Akkadian texts that remain standard references in the field.

Beyond his publications, Lambert contributed to the field through decades of teaching at the University of Birmingham and active participation in major international research projects, including work with the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary and the State Archives of Assyria. His expertise in Sumerian and Akkadian lexicography, as well as his comparative approach to Mesopotamian and biblical traditions, earned him widespread respect. Lambert was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1971, a recognition of his scholarly impact and intellectual leadership in ancient Near Eastern studies.

An excerpt from, "Babylonian wisdom literature" by Wilfred George Lambert, 1960, Oxford University Press, Pg. 6:

When considering Babylonian epics it is necessary to bear in mind how much is directly owed to Sumerian forerunners. The Descent of Ištar, to take the obvious example, is nothing but a free rewriting of the Sumerian Descent of Inanna. Even where the actual story is not proved to be of Sumerian origin the motifs and phraseology can be strongly influenced by Sumerian. It will be understood that Babylonian epics are under a burden of tradition, for which their change in outlook is all the more remarkable. The nearest approach to Enki's libertinism in the whole range of Babylonian literature is in an incantation which describes how Sin, the moon god, fell in love with one of his cows called Geme-Suena ('Handmaid-of-Sin"), assumed the form of a bull, and secretly mated with her. It is probably one of those old elements which have survived in incantations with their "fresh earthy pregnance", to quote a phrase of Landsberger, and this metamorphosis of the god is better paralleled in Canaanite and classical Greek myths than in Mesopotamian sources. In general the gods of Babylonian epics are more respectable, if more dull. Era, as already noted, does not let loose destruction without first persuading Marduk and the other gods of its desirability. In the Gilgamesh Epic Ištar wishes to send a destructive divine bull to earth for revenge on Gilgameš, who had insulted her. By correct etiquette she begs permission from her father Anu, who only grants it after making careful inquiry if his daughter's intemperate revenge may not lead to the extinction of mankind by famine. Ištar satisfies her father, and use of the divine bull is sanctioned. Another daughter of Anu, the demon Lamaštu, so provoked her father by her improper designs that he forthwith kicked her from heaven to earth. In divine families naughty children have to be punished just as among humans. Two Babylonian epics do centre on fighting among the gods: the Zú Myth, in which the demon god Zû steals the Tablet of Destiny (a literal cuneiform tablet laying down the status quo), and the Epic of Creation, in which the old generation of gods, angry with the younger for its noise, try to destroy them, but are themselves destroyed by Marduk. In both of these epics the main body of gods are assumed to be in the right. Zů, the irresponsible demon, has robbed them of a thing the loss of which could bring chaos on the universe. In the Epic of Creation a primeval monster is threatening extinction on the gods and has to be faced. The responsible gods sit in committee like a group of civil servants, until a junior member is prevailed upon to take up the cause.

Despite the odd misdemeanour, the Mesopotamian gods learnt the art of being good citizens by 1000 B.C. The very fact that many of the old myths, such as the Paradise Myth, were not passed on is evidence of the change of outlook.