Naturally, this was a claim I was going to have to test. ;) Maps of ebird reports of robins around Houston and across the US and southern Canada, Feb. 2020 vs. Feb. 2021:
So that's a neat illustration of the difference between there being robins around but too few and far between that you're likely to see one (which is the case here a lot of winters, if not most, too), and there being enough robins around that you can't miss them (which happens here the odd winter--looks like 2017 was the last one--when there's enough crab apples or whatever, and people say "the robins are confused!").
Someday I ought to dig more deeply into the context of the bible ... maybe. I have just a little scanned-some-wikipedia-articles awareness of theories about the development of Yahwehist monotheism out of the amorphous pantheon in the general area, and a similarly vague awareness of theories about how different texts were woven together into the received scriptures ... but even just that little is hugely helpful in terms of looking out for certain kinds of glitches in the bible (like the places where it seems ambivalent about what a "god" is and how many real ones of those there are) and for places where the narrative is out of order in one way or another. Without any awareness of those contexts (let alone sticking to the the-whole-thing-was-dictated-as-is-by-God! idea) I don't know how anyone could read the bible at all carefully and not be very confused about why it is the way it is.
no subject
Naturally, this was a claim I was going to have to test. ;) Maps of ebird reports of robins around Houston and across the US and southern Canada, Feb. 2020 vs. Feb. 2021:
So that's a neat illustration of the difference between there being robins around but too few and far between that you're likely to see one (which is the case here a lot of winters, if not most, too), and there being enough robins around that you can't miss them (which happens here the odd winter--looks like 2017 was the last one--when there's enough crab apples or whatever, and people say "the robins are confused!").
Someday I ought to dig more deeply into the context of the bible ... maybe. I have just a little scanned-some-wikipedia-articles awareness of theories about the development of Yahwehist monotheism out of the amorphous pantheon in the general area, and a similarly vague awareness of theories about how different texts were woven together into the received scriptures ... but even just that little is hugely helpful in terms of looking out for certain kinds of glitches in the bible (like the places where it seems ambivalent about what a "god" is and how many real ones of those there are) and for places where the narrative is out of order in one way or another. Without any awareness of those contexts (let alone sticking to the the-whole-thing-was-dictated-as-is-by-God! idea) I don't know how anyone could read the bible at all carefully and not be very confused about why it is the way it is.