Telling Tall Tales: Shared Mythology in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

Today I happened upon a description of a beer made by Cigar City Brewing of Tampa, FL – Double Barrel-aged Hunahpu’s – which is a 2016 release of an Imperial Stout, aged in rum barrels & apple brandy barrels and blended together.

As rated and ranked by the crowd-sourced beer enthusiast’s website BeerAdvocate, where reviewers rate beers according to various measures of quality, not upon “popularity” based upon sales volume, per se, Hunahpu’s Imperial Stout was graded 100, which is a perfect score, and was ranked 2nd within the category of Imperial Stouts, had a 3rd overall weighted rank, while the website’s contributors gave it an overall rating of 4.78 out of 5 truncated mean for all beers on the site. Its flavor notes read “Stout aged on Peruvian cacao nibs, ancho and pasilla chiles, cinnamon and Madagascar vanilla beans aged in apple brandy and rum barrels before being blended together.”

After having read the review notes, I navigated over to the Cigar City Brewing site to see the brewery’s page for the brew, to see what they said about it, and read that they describe it as being:

“Extremely dark in color with a brown head with notes of big notes of chocolate and espresso, moderate notes of vanilla and cinnamon and mild notes of tobacco and chilis. Flavor opens with a big blast of chocolate and moderate espresso with notes of dark toffee and interjecting notes of vanilla with lingering hints of cinnamon and tobacco and chili notes with a mild Scoville heat in the finish. Extensive aging in both rum and apple brandy barrels adds candied apple, allspice, vanilla and oaky tannic qualities to this rare and complex stout.”

I also found the following about the beer’s curious name:

Did you know?

In Mayan mythology, Hun Hunahpu was the father of the Mayan hero twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque. Hun Hunahpu, along with his brother Vucub Hunahpu, was tricked by the Dark Lords of the underworld and slain. Hun Hunahpu’s corpse morphed into a cacao tree, his head becoming a cacao pod, which in typically awesome mythology fashion, spit upon the hand of a young maiden named Xquic who promptly became pregnant with the hero twins. The twins would ultimately grow up to avenge their father and uncle and defeat the Dark Lords and ascend the heavens to become the moon and sun.

That’s quite a tale, to be certain, and as I read it, the preposterous absurdity of it all was reminiscent of another well-known fairy tale told by observant Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike.

Artist’s depiction of the Hebrew exodus

That tall tale is of Moses, regarded as

World’s Oldest Man

“Methuselah lived 900 years,” says the partial lyric in one song.

The account to which the song refers, is found in the Old Testament book of Genesis, chapter 5, verse 27, which states that, “Altogether, Methuselah lived a total of 969 years, and then he died.” (NIV)

But more recently, the World’s Oldest Man, Masazo Nonaka, who was aged 113, has died overnight. That according to his family, granddaughter Yuko Nonaka, who called the family doctor, who in turn, officially pronounced his death.

Of her grandfather’s death Yuko said in part that, “We feel shocked at the loss of this big figure. He didn’t have any health problem. He went peacefully and that’s at least our consolation.”

In April 2018, the Guinness World Records certified Masazo Nonaka, then aged 112 years and 259 days, as being the World’s Oldest Living Man.

Masazo Nonaka was certified by Guinness World Records as the Oldest Living Man April 2018.

Born July 25, 1905, he grew up in a large family – six brothers, one sister – in his youth was a lumberjack and farmer, married in 1931, and fathered five children. He succeeded his parents in owning and operating Yado Nonaka Onsen, a hot springs inn at the foot of

Travel Light

Most tabernacles these days are pretty fancy places, far removed in size and style from the original dwelling place of God, which was a modest tent in the desert. Moses built it, but the master architect was God, who delivered the blueprint on Mt. Sinai. It served as

Holy Ground Is All Around

You’re not looking for God in the supermarket. You don’t expect to see God in traffic. You don’t usually have a religious experience while doing homework, standing in line at the bank, or eating cereal. Moses was certainly not expecting to

Offshoring American Enterprise: Good, Bad, or Indifferent?

I may step on a few toes with my next remark, but I can always apologize, and ask forgiveness if it so be the case that my remarks are found offensive.

However, suffice it to say, that our nation’s Congress, has, for at least the past 20 years, or so – and even moreso in the past decade plus – embarked upon a very

Alabama Republican Introduces Bill to Eliminate Overtime Pay

I wouldn’t have believed it had I not read it for myself from the official Congressional website.

U.S. Representative Martha Roby, a Republican from Alabama’s 2d Congressional District has introduced H.R. 1406, officially named the “Working Families Flexibility Act of 2013” which would END the requirement of the Fair Labor Standards Act for employers to pay Time-and-a-Half to employees for every hour worked over 40 in one week.

http://beta.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/1406

The Congressional Budget Office has reported on the bill, and in part wrote that:

Theology Throwdown

A regular visitor and commenter upon my blog – one whom I also appreciate – recently posted a remark that, “Catholics pray to Mary, and Jesus said, “no man comes to the Father except through me.”

Never mind the fact that that sentence is like a metaphorical mix – or rather, a mixing of one’s metaphors. It’s like asserting that a ‘stitch in time saves a cat’s nine lives,’ or ‘a penny saved is no use crying over spilled milk.’ It’s totally discombobulated.

That remark was prefaced with the statement that