Eduard C Hanganu

[Hebrews 10] Ver. 14.—"For by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified."

Γάρ. The apostle, 1. Gives the great reason of this state of things with reference unto the Lord Christ in the discharge of his office, namely, that he did not repeat his offering, as the priests under the law did theirs, every year, and every day; and that he is set down at the right hand of God, expecting his enemies to be made his footstool,—wherein they had no share after their oblations: and this is, because "by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified." This being done, there is no need of any daily sacrifice, nothing that should detain the Lord Jesus out of the possession of his glory. So the particle γάρ, "for," infers a reason in these words of all that was assigned before unto him, in opposition unto what was done by the priests of the law: it was "by one offering." 2. What he did so effect, which rendered all future offerings and sacrifices impossible: "He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified."

The eminency of this offering the apostle had before declared, which here he refers unto. It was not of bulls or goats, but of himself,—he "offered himself to God;" of his body,—that is, his whole human nature. And this offering, as he had observed before, was only "once offered;" in the mention whereof the apostle includes all the opposition he had made before between the offering of Christ and those of the priests, as to its worth and dignity.

He hath by his "one offering" wrought and procured for them the complete pardon of sin, and peace before God thereon, that they should have no more need of the repetition of sacrifices; he hath freed them from the yoke of carnal ordinances, and the bondage which they were kept in by them, prescribing unto them a holy worship, to be performed with boldness in the presence of God, by an entrance into the holy place; he hath brought them into the last and best church-state, the highest and nearest relation unto God that the church is capable of in this world, or the glory of his wisdom and grace hath assigned unto it. And this he hath done εἰς τὸ διηνεκές, "for ever," so as that there shall never be any alteration in that estate whereunto he hath brought them, nor any addition of privilege or advantage be ever made unto it.

John Owen – The Works Of John Owen, vol. XXIII, pp. 481-494.

The four prophetic oracles in Daniel 2, 7, 8, and 9 are four distinct – but not separate – Divine predictions. Daniel 8 does not repeat Daniel 7. Daniel 9 is not an appendix to Daniel 8. Historical records provide empirical evidence that the little horn in Daniel 8 is Antiochus IV Epiphanes.

Complex and advanced communication in English requires more than just basic composition skills limited to a reasonable lexical “bank,” a tolerable word order, and an essential grammar. Rather, it demands superior thought patterns, coherent and cohesive discourse, and methodical, high-level, content organization. Failure on the writer’s part to meet these advanced criteria will make the text less and less transparent to the reader, and, in the worst, extreme cases render the text even opaque.

Two papers (Laiu, 2015a; Laiu, 2015b), intended as theological rebuttals but that never deliver in their appointed tasks, seem to indicate that broken English “academic” prose is not rare or even uncommon among the “theologians,” and that some papers are, indeed, written with such poor composition skills that to read them is much too difficult if not almost impossible. This research examines the two theological papers at the word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, and document level from the lexical, semantic, and discourse perspectives in order to establish how available, accessible, and intelligible their contents are to the readers.

The Seventh-day Adventists [further, Adventists] are big on prophetic interpretation, and their most favorite prophetic books are Daniel and Revelation. Their revivals never miss the chance to explain again and again to their members and to their visitors how the biblical prophecies should be interpreted and what the texts mean. From all the prophecies in the above books, the time visions in Daniel 8:14 and Daniel 9:24 take a special place and are accorded special treatment because the Adventists, as historicists, believe that these prophecies are nothing less than time outlines or calendars for the future. From this historicist, dogmatic, and exclusive perspective, the Adventists claim that chapter 9 in Daniel is an appendix to chapter 8 and holds the explanation for the time element (Nichol, 1977, vol. 4, p. 850) in Daniel 8:14, that is, the 2300 evenings and mornings (Dan. 8:14 NIV) that are calculated with the historicist time equation into 2300 full calendar years. The Adventist theologians also claim that what connects Daniel 8 and Daniel 9, is the verb chathak (Daniel 9:24) which is translated in their exclusive interpretation as cut off. This peculiar translation would also “prove” that the 70 weeks would be cut off from that longer period [the 2300 days] (Nichol, 1977, vol. 4., p. 850). States the Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary [further, SDABC]:

Are determined. Heb. chathak, a word occurring only here in the Bible. It occurs in post-Biblical Hebrew with the meaning “to cut,” “to cut off,” “to determine,” “to decree.” The LXX has krinō, “to decide,” “to judge,” etc. Theodotion’s version has suntemnō, “to shorten,” “to abbreviate,” etc., which meaning is reflected in the Vulgate reading abbreviare. The exact shade of meaning here intended must be determined from the context. In view of the fact that ch. 9 is an exposition of the unexplained portion of the vision of ch. 8 (see on ch. 9:3, 21–23), and inasmuch as the unexplained portion had to do with the 2300 days, it is logical to conclude that the 70 weeks, or 490 years, were to be “cut off” from that longer period. Furthermore, in the absence of contrary evidence, it may be assumed that the 70 weeks would be cut off from the beginning of that period. Viewed in the light of these observations, the translation of chathak as “to cut” seems singularly appropriate. In so far as the 490 years were especially assigned to the Jews with respect to their role as God’s chosen people, the translations “determine” and “decree” are also appropriate to the context. (Nichol, 1977, vol. 4, pp. 850-851)

The Adventist Claims
The Adventists make the following claims in relation to their historicist dogmatic interpretation for chapters 8 and 9 in Daniel:
1. that chapter 9 in Daniel is an appendix to chapter 8 that provides the explanation for the time element, that is, the 2300 days included in Daniel 8:14.
2. that the Hebrew hapax verb chathak —unique occurrence in the Bible— links the two chapters and should be translated as cut off and not as  determined or  decreed in the sentence “seventy ‘sevens’ are chathak [Standard translation - determined, decreed] for your people and your holy city” in Daniel 9:24 (NIV).
3. that, based on the historicist time principle, the 2300 evenings and mornings in Daniel 8:14 are 2300 literal and calendar years and end in 1844 with an event that occurs in heaven but cannot be supported with biblical and historical evidence because there is no historical empirical evidence for such an event.

This paper disputes the Adventist historicist claim that the Hebrew hapax verb chathak in Daniel 9:24 should be translated as cut off instead of determined or decreed, and contends that contextual discourse constraints demand that the Hebrew verb should be rather translated  determined or decreed. The empirical evidence follows below.

The YDP is not a true empirical principle for two main reasons:
(1) the Adventist time device has a limited and selective application, unlike the principles and laws mentioned above that have universal applications. It is not a principle, but an Adventist convenience used to confirm a predetermined dogmatic conclusion for Daniel 8:14.
(2) the peculiar Adventist historicist prediction for a historical event that was supposed to have occurred in 1844 based on the historicist calculation has failed. There is no actual historical record for the claimed event, no proof that it has ever occurred.
The evidence is clear and irrefutable that the claimed Adventist time formula or equation has no biblical or linguistic support, and has failed to deliver. For these reasons, this outdated historicist calculation needs to be abandoned as untrue and invalid and replaced with a scientific and empirical approach for the interpretation of Daniel 8:14 and other biblical time prophecies.

From the traditional-dogmatic Seventh-day Adventist [further, Adventist] theological perspective, chapters 8 and 9 in Daniel, the prophetic book, are treated as the parts of a whole and integral chapter, and not as distinct and autonomous accounts, because chapter 9 is assumed to include the final section in the ram, he-goat, and horns vision – Gabriel’s much postponed explanation for “the time element ” [emphasis in the original] (Nichol, 1977, p. 850), which the Adventists allege to be contained in the chapter 8 vision given to the troubled and exhausted prophet about a decade earlier (Hasel, 1977, p. 168; Shea, 1991, p. 115).

The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary [further, SDABC] indicates that the main reasons for the Adventist “original” approach to chapters 8 and 9 in Daniel are that 1. “some commentators have missed the close connection between chs. 8 and 9, and thus the relationship between the 2300 ‘days,’ of ch. 8 and the 70 ‘weeks’ of ch. 9,” that 2. “all symbols of the vision of ch. 8:2-14 are explained fully in vs. 15-26, with the exception of the 2300 ‘days’ of vs. 13, 14,” that 3. “Daniel did not understand the 2300-day time period, the only part of the vision not yet explained,” and that 4. “the angel discontinued the explanation of the vision of this time” because Daniel had fainted and was unable to listen to Gabriel (Nichol, 1977, vol 4, p. 850).

This paper will provide irrefutable factual-empirical evidence that the Adventist dogmatic interpretation for chapters 8 and 9 in Daniel has no historical, scriptural, and linguistic support and that the chapter amalgam suggested in the Adventist interpretation for Daniel is based on the severe distortion of historical facts, biblical texts, and discourse data.

In 167 BC, at the instigation of an influential faction of Jewish elites, the Syrian king, Antiochus IV, began a program of forced Hellenization which prohibited behaviors and altered institutions that were particularly defining for Jewish identity:

. . . the king sent letters by messengers to Jerusalem and the cities of Judah; he directed them to follow customs strange to the land, to forbid burnt offerings and sacrifices and drink offerings in the sanctuary, to profane sabbaths and feasts, to defile the sanctuary and the priests, to build altars and sacred precincts and shrines for idols, to sacrifice swine and unclean animals, and to leave their sons uncircumcised (1 Macc 1:44–48).1

The king also proscribed Jewish dietary laws, and the eating of unclean food became something of a litmus test for faithfulness to Antiochus’s directives. Finally, imperial authorities destroyed copies of the Torah—the sacred source for Jewish religious practices—and determined possession of the law to be a capital offense. Antiochus’s goal was transparently socio-political: “that [his whole kingdom] should be one people, and that each should give up his customs” (1 Macc 1:41–42).2 The king perceptively discerned that, in order to achieve his desired ends, he would have to abolish traditional Jewish distinctions between sacred and profane foods, times, and places. For the “customs” associated with these distinctions (along with male circumcision) had served to set apart Jewish inhabitants of the empire as the chosen people of Yahweh and thereby obstruct any attempt to render the Jews “one people” with their Greek overlords.

Hellerman, J. ,JETS 46/3 (September 2003), 401.

One of the most difficult and persistent theological conundrums is the origin of the little horn in Daniel 8: 9. The matter has been studied, deliberated, and argued without too much success in various theological circles for quite an extensive time, but the issue still remains to be settled. Some biblical scholars argue that the little horn arose from the “four notable horns” that followed the dissolution of Alexander the Great’s immense empire, while other scholars and theologians are certain that the little horn came out of one of the “four winds of heaven” mentioned in the same discourse fragment.

This paper argues that although the topic is theological in nature and the efforts to solve the little horn riddle have been for the most part dogmatic—deductive and non-empirical rather than inductive and empirical—there is a better approach to the problem’s solution, and that approach is based in a linguistic method—anaphora resolution. Evidence provided in this paper will show that the anaphora resolution approach can help solve the puzzle that surrounds the little horn in Daniel 8:9 and provide a logical and empirical clarification to the biblical text.

This document’s content appears to provide ample evidence that while Gane was compelled to accept in private the fact that the YDP has no empirical and legitimate biblical and linguistic basis and should be discarded as a historicist time “equation” in the Adventist interpretation for Daniel and Revelation, he could not afford to affirm this fact in public due to the serious and irreversible consequences that would have followed when he “came out” of his dogmatic SDA historicist closet and promoted this “heretical” perspective in the open Adventist forum. His celebrated position as an Old Testament professor at Andrews, his prized reputation as the avant-garde SDA scholar at this time, and his bread would have been gone with a wink.

That this affirmation is no wild fiction and no exaggeration, and that such awful things could have happened to Gane has been demonstrated in the past few years with professor Laiu Florin who taught for more than two decades Biblical Languages and Old Testament hermeneutics at the Romanian Theological Institute, and who dared to present at an European theologians’ conference a document that Gerhard Pfandl from the Adventist Magisterium, the notorious BRI, did not approve. The immediate serious consequence was that Laiu was demoted to a desk position and left forgotten there for a while in order to atone for his “sins” in sackcloth and ashes. Repeated appeals to BRI went unanswered for a few years, but the recent good and unexpected news is that through some phenomena that could not be explained Laiu has been taken out of the cellar and restored to his classroom position.

His experience, though, is fortunate and rare. Numerous SDA theologians and scholars who have dared in the past to present “improper” ideas and write theological documents that have failed the BRI “correctness” test lost their academic privileges and even their membership with the Adventist church and were never restored to their previous positions. The most classical example in the past six decades is what happened to theologian Desmond Ford when suggested that the SDA prophetic interpretation for Daniel and Revelation was on the rocks and needed serious and hard work to become biblical. Ford, a kind and humble man was dumped from his chairmanship and professorial position at the Avondale College in Australia, and was declared the ultimate SDA heretic and apostate. He has continued to be belittled and persecuted for more than six decades, and it seems that he will never see BRI and SDA church “redemption” in this life time.

To believe and promote the truth in the SDA church costs too much and few dare to spend the emotional, social, and financial capital for such a traumatic venture.

Daniel, the presumed “encoded” Bible book, has been for millennia a persistent puzzle for Hebrew scholars and theologians, but a traditional grammatical approach that has attempted to “decode” the text has not been too successful. There are still, in Daniel’s chapters, countless interpretation issues that await clarification, and frustrated theologians and scholars seem to have hit the traditional brick wall in their efforts to find solutions to such problems.

One of the most vexing enigmas is the origin of the little horn in Daniel 8: 8. The matter has been studied, deliberated, and argued without too much success in various theological circles for quite a long time, and the issue still remains to be settled. Some biblical scholars contend that the little horn arose from the “four notable” horns that followed the dissolution of Alexander the Great’s immense empire, while other scholars and theologians are certain that the little horn came out of one of the “four winds of heaven” mentioned in the same biblical text.
This paper argues that although the topic is theological in nature and the efforts to solve the little horn riddle have been for the most part dogmatic—deductive and non-empirical rather than inductive and empirical—there is a better approach to the problem’s solution, and that approach is based in a linguistic method—anaphora resolution. Evidence provided in this paper will show that the anaphora resolution approach can help solve the puzzle that surrounds the little horn in Daniel 8, and provide a logical and factual clarification for the biblical text.

O analiza a celor cinci viziuni din cartea lui Daniel (capitolele 2, 7, 8, 9, si 10-12) si a tematicii si continutului lor, indica faptul ca exista diferente significante intre viziunile din capitolele 2, 7, 8, 9, si 10-12. Evidenta textuala si lingvistica demonstreaza ca cornurile mici din capitolele 7 si 8 nu sunt identice. In timp ce cornul mic din capitolul 7 reprezinta Roma, cornul mic din capitolul 8 reprezinta Antiochus IV Epiphanes.

Aceasta concluzie schimba complet interpretarea profetica Adventista de Ziua a Saptea [AZS]. “Doctrina Sanctuarului” asa cum a fost predicata in cei 150 de ani de la infiintarea bisericii AZS se dovedeste ca nu are o baza biblica. Pacatele celor credinciosi sunt sterse la convertire, nu la o imaginara si nebiblica Judecata de Cercetare, si in acest caz idea unei judecati de cercetare in care se face o evaluare spirituala a credinciosilor ca sa se vada daca au facut fapte vrednice pentru admiterea lor la cer devine nu numai nebiblica ci si absurda si inutila.

Faptul ca “Doctrina Sanctuarului” se dovedeste nebiblica si incorecta face necesara reexaminarea celorlalte 27 de puncte de doctrina AZS pentru a verifica daca aceste 27 doctrine sunt intr-adevar biblice si daca Adventismul are intr-adevar o baza profetica pentru existenta lui.

This research document provides ample and true biblical and historical evidence that the SDA historicism has failed in its attempt to establish itself as a valid and reliable interpretation school for the prophecies in Daniel and Revelation. The issues that have confronted and still confront the SDA historicism are as follows:

Definition and Application Issues

Factual evidence indicates that the SDA definition for historicism is fragmented into various and uneven formulations that as a whole present an inconsistent hermeneutical perspective. This fragmentation has produced uneven prophetic interpretations and incorrect exegetical applications to Daniel and Revelation due the intentional or non-intentional confusion between human historical events and assumed fictional or non-terrestrial events. Some claimed and assumed “events” also appear to have been concocted and reshaped from real event distortion and misinterpretation.

No Divine Origin for Historicism

The SDA theologians have claimed that God himself has originated the historicist hermeneutics and that the Bible has been written from a historicist perspective. Another assumed but undocumented SDA claim is that Daniel, John, Jesus, Paul, and other Bible writers have written their books as historicists. All these claims are assumptions derived from an excessive theological focus on historicism as a method and the attempt to obtain a pre-established deductive conclusion that cannot be substantiated with biblical and historical evidence and fails to demonstrate authentic and reliable “fulfillments” for the SDA assumptive and erroneous time and event predictions.

Selective Historical Attestation

The SDA historicist theologians have used selective, tendentious, and therefore biased historical data to establish false claims for “prophetic fulfillments,” a fallacious and non-scientific approach to data authentication. Based on these deceptive “proofs” the SDA theologians have argued for untenable and irresponsible prophetic interpretation positions on Daniel and Revelation. Such excesses have weakened and discredited the SDA historicism in the Christian World and have made the historicist hermeneutics impossible to consider and accept.

Repeated SDA Prediction Failures

The fact that William Miller, the amateur historicist and preacher has committed multiple interpretation and logical errors while he computed the prophetic time for the assumed Second Coming in 1844 is well known. What is less known and ignored is the fact that the SDA pioneers and also the present SDA theologians and scholars are still dependent on Miller’s hermeneutics and worldview in their Daniel and Revelation interpretations. There were multiple attempts for time setting during the Millerite effervescent period and also multiple “prophetic fulfillment” errors, and these errors have been adopted in the SDA theological circles as true and self-evident “prophetic fulfillments.” This research document has provided the most relevant examples that demonstrate the repeated Adventist failures to provide verification for the speculative hermeneutical approach through solid historical evidence that would indicate indisputable prediction fulfillment and validate the spurious SDA historicist claims.

Historicist Mania and the Gospel

The SDA fixation or rather obsession with the eschatological prophecies in Daniel and Revelation has caused a backlash effect and collateral damage in the Adventist circles. The true fact is that almost all Adventist church members have noticed that most “Net Seminars” or local Evangelistic Meetings appear to have a singular focus, and that is not the Gospel but the strange beasts in Daniel and Revelation. One other item that is promoted and circulated in an excessive manner and on a regular basis in the SDA evangelistic meetings is the one related to the presumed time “landmarks” or the word’s end countdown. The obsessive denominational focus on Daniel and Revelation associated with the excessive preaching from the two prophetic books together with the bombastic and triumphalist emphasis on the “final events” and the “imminent” Second Coming which is considered the “remnant message” or the “present truth” has replaced the Christian Gospel with fantastic and implausible tall tales and has caused almost the complete and inexcusable failure to preach the genuine Gospel, the Bible’s Good News, of salvation, to the truth-starved world.

This research document provides extensive and reliable biblical and historical evidence that the SDA historicism, like the other three main hermeneutical schools that have failed the scientific and biblical test for adequate and reliable biblical and prophetic interpretation—preterism, idealism, and futurism—has failed in its attempt to define and establish itself as a valid and reliable interpretation school for the predictive and eschatological prophecies in Daniel and Revelation. The fundamental and severe issues that have confronted and still confront the SDA historicism are as follows:

Definition and Application Issues

Factual evidence indicates that the SDA definition for historicism is fragmented into various and uneven formulations that as a whole present an inconsistent hermeneutical perspective. This fragmentation has produced uneven prophetic interpretations and incorrect exegetical applications to Daniel and Revelation due the intentional or non-intentional confusion between human historical events and assumed fictional or non-terrestrial events. Some claimed and assumed “events” also appear to have been concocted and reshaped from real event distortion and misinterpretation.

No Divine Origin for Historicism

The SDA theologians have claimed that God himself has originated the historicist hermeneutics and that the Bible has been written from a historicist perspective. Another assumed but undocumented SDA claim is that Daniel, John, Jesus, Paul, and other Bible writers have written their books as historicists. All these claims are assumptions derived from an excessive theological focus on historicism as a method and the attempt to obtain a pre-established deductive conclusion that cannot be substantiated with biblical and historical evidence and fails to demonstrate authentic and reliable “fulfillments” for the SDA assumptive and erroneous time and event predictions.

Selective Historical Attestation

The SDA historicist theologians have used selective, tendentious, and therefore biased historical data to establish false claims for “prophetic fulfillments,” a fallacious and non-scientific approach to data authentication. Based on these deceptive “proofs” the SDA theologians have argued for untenable and irresponsible prophetic interpretation positions on Daniel and Revelation. Such excesses have weakened and discredited the SDA historicism in the Christian World and have made the historicist hermeneutics impossible to consider and accept.

Repeated SDA Prediction Failures

The fact that William Miller, the amateur historicist and preacher has committed multiple interpretation and logical errors while he computed the prophetic time for the assumed Second Coming in 1844 is well known. What is less known and ignored is the fact that the SDA pioneers and also the present SDA theologians and scholars are still dependent on Miller’s hermeneutics and worldview in their Daniel and Revelation interpretations. There were multiple attempts for time setting during the Millerite effervescent period and also multiple “prophetic fulfillment” errors, and these errors have been adopted in the SDA theological circles as true and self-evident “prophetic fulfillments.” This research document has provided the most relevant examples that demonstrate the repeated Adventist failures to provide verification for the speculative hermeneutical approach through solid historical evidence that would indicate indisputable prediction fulfillment and validate the spurious SDA historicist claims.

Historicist Mania and the Gospel

The SDA fixation or rather obsession with the eschatological prophecies in Daniel and Revelation has caused a backlash effect and collateral damage in the Adventist circles. The true fact is that almost all Adventist church members have noticed that most “Net Seminars” or local Evangelistic Meetings appear to have a singular focus, and that is not the Gospel but the strange beasts in Daniel and Revelation. One other item that is promoted and circulated in an excessive manner and on a regular basis in the SDA evangelistic meetings is the one related to the presumed time “landmarks” or the word’s end countdown. The obsessive denominational focus on Daniel and Revelation associated with the excessive preaching from the two prophetic books together with the bombastic and triumphalist emphasis on the “final events” and the “imminent” Second Coming which is considered the “remnant message” or the “present truth” has replaced the Christian Gospel with fantastic and implausible tall tales and has caused the almost complete and inexcusable failure to preach the genuine Gospel, the Bible’s Good News of salvation to the truth-starved world.

For the “Historicist” Adventists, the world’s historical narrative ends in 1840 with the claimed “last” World Empire – The Ottomans. No modern and current world empires are included in this “prophetic chart” that is supposed to show how the prophecies in Daniel 2, 7, 8, 9, and 10-12 present historical events without interruption into the Second Coming.

Retrieved on April 7, 2015 from http://www.biblepicturepathways.com/prophecy-charts.php

For the “Historicist” Adventists, the world’s historical narrative ends in 1840 with the claimed “last” World Empire – The Ottomans. No modern and current world empires are included in this “prophetic chart” that is supposed to show how the prophecies in Daniel 2, 7, 8, 9, and 10-12 present historical events without interruption into the Second Coming.

Retrieved on April 7, 2015 from http://www.biblepicturepathways.com/prophecy-charts.php

For the “Historicist” Adventists, the world’s historical narrative ends in 1840 with the claimed “last” World Empire – The Ottomans. No modern and current world empires are included in this “prophetic chart” that is supposed to show how the prophecies in Daniel 2, 7, 8, 9, and 10-12 present historical events without interruption into the Second Coming.

Retrieved on April 7, 2015 from http://www.biblepicturepathways.com/prophecy-charts.php

For the “Historicist” Adventists, the world’s historical narrative ends in 1840 with the claimed “last” World Empire – The Ottomans. No modern and current world empires are included in this “prophetic chart” that is supposed to show how the prophecies in Daniel 2, 7, 8, 9, and 10-12 present historical events without interruption into the Second Coming.

Retrieved on April 7, 2015 from http://www.andrews.edu/library/car/cardigital/digitized/documents/b26868970.pdf

This short research paper is intended to summarize Ellen White’s English language skills from the information contained in her own autobiographic and personal comments which she made at different times in her life, and from information contained in the biographic book that her nephew, Arthur L. White wrote, and offers some possible explanation for the radical and implausible distance between Ellen White’s non-existent language skills and the well-written documents that were published under her name and for which she took credit.

The attached short research paper demonstrates that the books Ellen White claimed to have written based on visions or angelic dictations and that were published and credited in her name could not have been her production because

(1) their content had been plagiarized to the largest degree and there was nothing original in those books for which Ellen White could have claimed ownership, and because

(2) Ellen White’s illiterate and inept writer (non)skills would not have allowed her to prepare the books for the press. Those who edited the plagiarized pages and integrated them into literate, coherent, and “original” texts that could be sent to the press and published were the little known or invisible “editorial assistants” or “helpers” who never received credit for writing the books released under Ellen White’s name.

Among the numerous puzzles and controversies that shadow Ellen G. White’s published and non-published works, the most agitated and debated issue seems to be the plagiarism accusation. A lot has been written in the SDA circles on this topic both against Ellen White and in her defense, and the debate continues with no definite and final conclusion. This research paper argues that the alleged SDA “prophet” did not plagiarize the published works credited under her name because she was illiterate and unskilled and was unable to produce on her own documents that could be published. She might have stolen some texts from certain books, and scrawled things on paper in her unschooled and inept manner, but what she scribbled could not have been sent to the press and published without the ghost writers who made drastic editorial alterations and massive grammar corrections on her scribbles to a degree that forfeits her claims for genuine and true authorship to the publications for which she took dishonest credit.

Hard and irrefutable facts that escaped to the public through incautious SDA apologetic documents provide ample evidence that demonstrates that numerous and literate ghost writers plagiarized full paragraphs and often entire books from various sources and assembled those stolen texts into “new” and “original works,” and also modified, changed, edited, and corrected Ellen G. White’s plagiarized scribbles into literate and legible paragraphs and chapters, and then submitted to the press those altered and edited fraudulent compilations under Ellen White’s name under the false claim and spurious pretense that all the information that was included in those ghost publications came straight and unmediated to Ellen G. White through direct visions from God or through authentic and real-time angelic dictations.

Recent factual evidence shows that Ellen White plagiarized little and wrote even less because her basic English Composition skills were far below standard or even average. The “prophet” could not write in legible longhand, could not organize text in logical structures, could not edit sentences and paragraphs, could not prepare documents for the press, and could not publish.
Those who did all the large scale plagiarism, that is, the massive authorial theft, from countless books and other intellectual under Ellen White’s not so gentle and kind “prophetic guidance” and “encouragement” or rather direct and undisguised coercion, were the more than two dozen “helpers,” “secretaries,” “editorial assistants”—in fact GHOST WRITERS—who sweated in Ellen White’s labor camp. The “editorial assistants” were also those who compiled and organized the stolen material into books, articles, pamphlets, and letters, edited and prepared the documents for the press, and readied them for publication.
What Ellen White did was to take undeserved credit for the works published under her name, and to collect the enormous sums that resulted from the slave labor that took place without pause in her book shop. The “prophet,” then made sure to waste her fortune on numerous real estate assets, on excessive and extravagant travel, and on a lavished and pampered life.
The ghost writers were never credited, and were never rewarded for their massive and diligent work that made her rich and famous.
In the end, the facts indicate that Ellen White was a guilt-free crook who believed that the ends justified the means. Under the false claim that she was “God’s messenger,” Ellen deceived and manipulated people, offended numerous SDA church members with false “personal testimonies,” hated with a passion all those who refused to accept her bogus claims, denounced all those who opposed her claimed “prophetic gift” and her lies, and denigrated, threatened, and often attempted to cause financial ruin to those she considered her enemies.
The truthful and undeniable evidence that supports the statements made in this research document is in the open and available to all those interested to know the “White Truth,” about Ellen White, and the readers are invited to become acquainted with this evidence and accept the factual and undistorted, but inconvenient and scandalous truth.

This ADVENTIST TODAY web site snapshot includes the paper “Ellen G. White and Her English Composition Skills” posted in the magazine and the lame arguments and excuses some Ellen White “believers” have made in her defense as a reaction to the posted paper.

The purpose of this research document is to resolve the theological confusion that troubles the SDA theological circles about the claimed “unconditional” prophecies in Daniel and Revelation, that is, (1) to dispute the erroneous and unbiblical Calvinistic notion that in the Divine plan humans are simple “spectators”—passive creatures that drift on the historical “panorama” and have no control over their future, and (2) to provide a realistic and viable solution to the SDA false hermeneutical position that appears to place in an insoluble impasse God’s plan for humankind in Daniel and Revelation with the human free will.

This document will argue that,

1. The SDA Calvinistic notion that humans are mere “spectators” —passive and impotent creatures on the historical timeline or “panorama,”—created without choices or alternatives about their future and predestined to “election” or “reprobation,” is illogical and false, and has no biblical basis. Closer to the inspired Scriptural revelation is Erickson’s weak Arminian perspective that argues that in God’s plan the humans have been endowed at their creation with free will and with the freedom to make choices and determine their own future.

2. The alleged “conditional” biblical “prophecies” defined as “those biblical predictions whose fulfillment is dependent on the action or reactions of human beings” are “conditional” in the sense that these prophetic messages are rebukes, threats, and promises intended to induce needed changes in human behavior—repentance and reform, or to reward obedience to the divine requirements and expectations. When rebukes and threats have met their intended purposes with the humans and repentance occurs, God “changes His mind,” that is, he modifies his prophetic verdicts from the initial punishment verdicts to reward verdicts. The opposite situation also occurs, that is, when humans alter their good behaviors and fall into sin, God again “changes His mind,” and modifies his prophetic verdicts from reward verdicts to punishment verdicts. 

3. The misunderstood “unconditional” apocalyptic or eschatological time prophecies in Daniel and Revelation that the SDA historicist theologians and scholars have misread and misinterpreted as “biblical predictions whose fulfillment is independent of the action or reaction of  human beings” are in actual fact divine forecasts—“unconditional” in the sense that the predicted historical situations and events have, in God’s transcendence, occurred in the divine present—the eternal NOW—that includes the past, present, and the future in an indissoluble time frame. While the humans look for such situations and events to occur in their “future,” from God’s omniscient perspective and foreknowledge outside time these historical incidents have  been completed, and are past, irreversible, unalterable, and therefore “unconditional.” The human freedom and human will remain unaltered; God’s divine plan works on an individual and group scale—from persons to kingdoms and to empires, but it is contingent in its fulfillment details on human choices, while God uses those human choices to promote and accomplish His eternal and perfect plan for the sinful mankind.

This Document’s Intended Purpose

The purpose of this research document is to resolve the theological confusion that troubles the SDA theological circles about the claimed “unconditional” prophecies in Daniel and Revelation, that is, (1) to dispute the erroneous and unbiblical Calvinistic notion that in the Divine plan humans are simple “spectators”—passive creatures that drift on the historical “panorama” and have no control over their future, and (2) to provide a realistic and viable solution to the SDA false hermeneutical position that appears to place in an insoluble impasse God’s plan for humankind in Daniel and Revelation with the human free will.

This document will argue that,

1. The SDA Calvinistic notion that humans are mere “spectators” 23—passive and impotent creatures on the historical timeline or “panorama,”24—created without choices or alternatives about their future and predestined to “election” or “reprobation,”25 is illogical and false, and has no biblical basis. Closer to the inspired Scriptural revelation is Erickson’s weak Arminian perspective that argues that in God’s plan the humans have been endowed at their creation with free will and with the freedom to make choices and determine their own future.

2. The alleged “conditional” biblical “prophecies” defined as “those biblical predictions whose fulfillment is dependent on the action or reactions of human beings”27 are “conditional” in the sense that these prophetic messages are rebukes, threats, and promises intended to induce needed changes in human behavior—repentance and reform, or to reward obedience to the divine requirements and expectations. When rebukes and threats have met their intended purposes with the humans and repentance occurs, God “changes His mind,” that is, he modifies his prophetic verdicts from the initial punishment verdicts to reward verdicts. The opposite situation also occurs, that is, when humans alter their good behaviors and fall into sin, God again “changes His mind,” and modifies his prophetic verdicts from reward verdicts to punishment verdicts. 

3. The misunderstood “unconditional” apocalyptic or eschatological time prophecies in Daniel and Revelation that the SDA historicist theologians and scholars have misread and misinterpreted as “biblical predictions whose fulfillment is independent of the action or reaction of  human beings”28 are in actual fact divine forecasts—“unconditional” in the sense that the predicted historical situations and events have, in God’s transcendence, occurred in the divine present—the eternal NOW—that includes the past, present, and the future in an indissoluble time frame. While the humans look for such situations and events to occur in their “future,” from God’s omniscient perspective and foreknowledge outside time these historical incidents have  been completed, and are past, irreversible, unalterable, and therefore “unconditional.” The human freedom and human will remain unaltered; God’s divine plan works on an individual and group scale—from persons to kingdoms and to empires, but it is contingent in its fulfillment details on human choices, while God uses those human choices to promote and accomplish His eternal and perfect plan for the sinful mankind.

The transparency of a text is related to the relation between the endophora in the text, and the exophora. Exophorically interpreted devices create an opaque link between the text and its context for the reader outside the context. On the other side, the higher the proportion of endophorically interpreted devices is in the text, the more self-sufficient the text is.

This research work provides factual argumentation against two Political Correctness, or “Nextspeak” claims:

1. that belletristic, theological, or scientific work must be “dispassionate” and “impartial,” otherwise such works cannot be objective.

2. that “name calling” or personal invective negates the scientific value of a literary, theological, or scientific work.

The evidence presented in this document could be summarized in the four points enunciated in the introduction and repeated below:

(1) That freedom of speech, of expression, and of “tone” (various rhetorical devices) in a spoken and written language) is a Divine, universal, and inalienable human right that is recognized in the Bill of Rights and in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and cannot be circumscribed or banned. All humans have the right to express themselves in a manner that fits best their needs to communicate certain impressions, ideas, and feelings.

(2) That the notion of a “dispassionate” language - that is, a language devoid of feelings and emotions - is an absolute nonsense, and indicates serious and gross ignorance of the human mind and affections. Normal humans show emotions. Humans that lack emotional reactions to other humans or to events are said to be with a blunted affect, and are not normal. Lack of normal and spontaneous emotional response to external stimuli indicates certain mental affections among which might be schizophrenia, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, or brain damage.3 Some theologians or scholars who want to appear “dispassionate” and “impartial” repress their natural emotions and pretend to have reached neutral conclusions in their research work, but the true fact remains that unless their mental states are pathological their emotions are present, although hidden. Total intellectual and emotional detachment from a certain research topic is a delusion and a deception.

(3) That “civil” language – that is, “political correct language” is not the norm or standard in the universal literature, both ancient and modern, and both belletristic and scientific. Numerous classic and modern works are replete with “unconventional,” “unsanctioned” “incorrect,” harsh, rude, offensive, and even vulgar language. One must be ignorant, illiterate, or delusional in order to ignore and dismiss such well-established facts. Jarnes and his crowd of obtuse individuals need to come out of their retrograde shells and read the classics of the American literature in order to familiarize themselves with the “uncivil” language used in those pages that are replete with rhetorical invectives such as the ones mentioned above. 

(4) That the “dispassionate” or “neutral” theological language that Jarnes embraces and promotes is unbiblical and fallacious. Both the Old Testament [further, OT], and the New Testament [further, NT] – contain inspired language that is quite often passionate, harsh, rude, and intolerant to the sinners. The “humble” and “meek” or rather weak, feeble, and emasculated Christ who is the main character in the SDA children’s stories and religious tales is a fictitious character with no biblical roots – the distorted and false image of a biblical and righteous God who exposes sin, denounces wickedness, and also confronts, offends, and threatens with death the unrepentant and rebellious sinners and damns the wicked to eternal destruction.

(5) That to expose intentional and even unintentional theological errors and deceptions, confront those theologians and “shepherds” who propagate falsehood is a biblical mandate that requires often harsh and offensive language, and even invective. That to warn church members against the false theologians and their false teachings is not an insolent and gratuitous act, but a sacred Christian obligation that Jesus exemplified in his righteous and blameless human life as both man and God and passed on through his sacred words and the NT Scriptures to the new generations of Christians until the end of time as an integral and indispensable part of the proclamation of the Gospel – the good and wonderful news of salvation and eternal life to the repentant sinner, but at the same time the bad and horrible news of eternal destruction to the obstinate and wicked sinner.

This research work provides factual and ample argumentation against two claims that David Jarnes, book editor at PPPA, and others who share his perspective have made about the research manuscript “Antiochus IV and Daniel’s Little Horn Reexamined.” Their untested claims were that (1) “the tone of [my research] work makes it clear that it is not a dispassionate search for truth,” and (2) that “[n]ame-calling – ‘bigoted SDA Pseudo-Historicists,’ ‘Truth Fabricators,’ ‘Falsehood Wholesalers,’ etc.  – immediately reveals that something other than a search for truth has driven the writing of the paper presented.”1 This is because “no paper is either well-written or scholarly when it directs ‘snarl words’ at those who disagree with the author.”2
The evidence presented in this document could be summarized in the five points enunciated in the introduction and repeated below:
(1) That freedom of speech, of expression, and of “tone” (various rhetorical devices) in a spoken and written language) is a Divine, universal, and inalienable human right that is recognized in the Bill of Rights and in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and cannot be circumscribed or banned. All humans have the right to express themselves in a manner that fits best their needs to communicate certain impressions, ideas, and feelings.
(2) That the notion of a “dispassionate” language—that is, a language devoid of feelings and emotions—is an absolute nonsense, and indicates serious and gross ignorance of the human mind and affections. Normal humans show emotions. Humans who fail to show natural emotional reactions to other humans or to events are said to have a blunted affect, and are not normal. Lack of normal and spontaneous emotional response to external stimuli indicates certain mental affections among which might be bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, or brain damage.3 Some theologians or scholars who want to appear “dispassionate” and “impartial” repress their natural emotions and pretend to have reached neutral conclusions in their research work, but the true fact remains that unless their mental states are pathological their emotions are present, although hidden. Total intellectual and emotional detachment from a certain research topic is a delusion and a deception.
(3) That “civil” language or “politically correct language,” not the norm or standard in the universal literature—whether ancient or modern, belletristic or scientific. Numerous classic and modern works are replete with “unconventional,” “unsanctioned” “incorrect,” harsh, rude, brutal, offensive, and even vulgar language. One must be either ignorant or delusional to overlook and dismiss such well-established facts. Jarnes and his clique of obtuse and backwards individuals need to come out of their retrograde shells and read the classics of the American and international literature in order to familiarize themselves with the “uncivil” language used in those pages that are replete with rhetorical invectives such as the ones mentioned above. 
(4) That the “dispassionate” or “neutral” theological language that Jarnes embraces and promotes is unbiblical and fallacious. Both the Old Testament [further, OT], and the New Testament [further, NT] – contain inspired language that is quite often passionate, harsh, rude, and intolerant to the sinners. The “humble” and “meek” or rather weak, feeble, and emasculated Christ who is the main character in the SDA children’s stories and religious tales is a fictitious character with no biblical roots – the distorted and false image of a biblical and righteous God who exposes sin, denounces wickedness, and also confronts, offends, and threatens with death the unrepentant and rebellious sinners and damns the wicked to eternal destruction.
(5) That to expose intentional and even unintentional gross theological errors and deceptions, and to confront those theologians and “shepherds” who propagate falsehood, is a biblical mandate that requires often harsh and offensive language, and even invective. That to warn church members against the false theologians and their false teachings is not an insolent and gratuitous act, but a sacred Christian obligation that Jesus exemplified in His righteous and blameless human life as both man and God and passed on through his sacred words and the NT Scriptures to the new generations of Christians until the end of time as an integral and indispensable part of the proclamation of the Gospel – the good and wonderful news of salvation and eternal life to the repentant sinner, but at the same time the bad and horrible news of eternal destruction to the obstinate and wicked sinner.

In his inadequate and failed endeavor to refute the apotelesmatic principle as a sound method for prophetic interpretation, Ouro uses Barr’s sharp criticism and brutal warnings against the unscientific and pseudo linguistic approach that attempts to draw a direct contrast between the Greek and Hebrew thought and then draw a generalization without support from empirical evidence that would validate such a claim, in order to support and defend his own erroneous perspective on the matter because he misreads and misunderstands Barr and interprets the Hebrew scholar’s criticism as an affirmation and support for his own fallacious position.

In the argument process that captivates his attention, Ouro comes much too close to Barr, and manages misread and plagiarize him, an unexpected and unacceptable action that tarnishes his reputation and discredits him as an academic and scholar.

The purpose of this research work is to find out whether or not the number of vague and ambiguous linguistic devices that occur in The New York Times opinion articles is correlated with the rhetorical persuasiveness of the articles, and to obtain a qualitative dimension for the correlation. The writer expects to conclude from the obtained data that the rhetorical persuasion in the papers has increased in proportion to the quantitative increase of vague and ambiguous rhetorical events in the articles under examination.

Brown and Gilman’s (1960) research on pronouns of address in German, French, Italian, and Spanish provided evidence that the four European languages used two levels of  pronouns of address, informal (proximal), and formal (distal), governed by  social semantics of power and solidarity. Additional studies on American English (Brown & Ford, 1961), Italian (Bates & Benigni, 1975), French and Spanish (Lambert & Tucker, 1976) and Greek and Latin (Dickey, 1996; 2002) confirmed Brown and Gilman’s (1960) conclusions. Lambert and Tucker (1976), however, argued that the semantic model proposed by Brown and Gilman (1960) did not describe the complete range of language interactions that characterizes human social relations. Indeed, data on Hindi (of the Indo-European group) and Javanese (of the Austronesian group) languages demonstrates that their address pronouns are much more elaborate than those of the languages examined by Brown and Gilman. Hindi operates on three levels of address pronouns, while Javanese uses honorifics in addition to second-person pronouns (Geertz, 1960). Research done on other European and Asian languages including Polish (Kiełkiewicz-Janowiak, 1992), Turkish (Başoğlu, 1987), Egyptian Arabic (Parkinson, 1985), and Korean (Hwang, 1975),  also revealed that a good number of  European and Asian languages use more complex pronoun  organizations than the European languages researched by Brown and Gilman (1960). One such language is Romanian, from the Romance languages group.

This paper provides evidence that  Romanian has a structure of  pronouns of address which includes four levels of formality (neutral, informal, formal, and very formal) and eleven sublevels of proximal (informal) and distal (formal) address pronouns, governed by three semantics (neutrality, solidarity, and power). The Romanian pronouns of address described in this research have been collected through the examination of the complete works of a Romanian writer, Creangă’s Amintiri Din Copilărie “Childhood Memories,” that include both the rural and urban pronouns of address which were written and spoken in the Moldavian dialect, the dialect of the eastern region of the Carpathian Mountains in the second half of the 19th century. Data has been assembled through a complete search on the pronouns of address that occur in Creangă’s works in order to acquire most if not all the address pronouns from the literature under examination. The pronouns collected were classified into four main levels of Romanian language formality (very formal, formal, informal, and very informal) and eleven sublevels, and then placed into a “Table of Proximal and Distal Pronouns of Address in Romanian,” including all Romanian address pronouns presented in the paper and their distal and proximal relevance to the Romanian speaker.

When people use language, they express thoughts and feelings, describe their connection with or distance from different social groups, and define the communicative events in which they are engaged. Whorf and Sapir, therefore, have argued that human “language is a guide to social reality” and that “the real world is…built on the language habits of the group,” which means, in other words, that our worldview depends to a large degree on the lexicon and grammar of the language we speak (Fasold 51), while Halliday and Hasan claimed that our languages encode the “contexts of situation,” that can be reconstructed from the registers, because “the words that are exchanged in these contexts get their meaning from the activities in which they are embedded” (Halliday 5).

In their research on pronouns of address, Brown and Gilman (1960), collected data indicating that German, French, Italian and Spanish, used two levels of pronouns (formal and informal) governed by two social semantics (power and solidarity). Further research on American English (Brown and Ford 1961and Ervin-Tripp 1972), Italian (Bates and Benigni 1975), French and Spanish (Lambert and Tucker 1976) and Greek and Latin (Dickey 1996; 2002) confirmed Brown and Gilman’s (1960) conclusions. Research by Geertz (1960) on Hindi and Javanese, Hwang (1975) on Korean, Parkinson (1985) on Egyptian Arabic, Başoğlu (1987) on Turkish, and more recently Kiełkiewicz-Janowiak (1992), on Polish, while essentially confirming Brown and Gilman’s (1960) investigation, reveals more complexity in the use of forms of address, and also appears to indicate that variation in the use of forms of address is language-specific. All the aforementioned studies are qualitative in nature, with a focus on the number and function of forms of address in languages, but no quantitative research seems to be available to date concerning the quantitative use of forms of address in a particular language.

This paper endeavors to eliminate this quantitative gap in the research on forms of address by providing an analysis of the quantitative distribution of forms of address in Romanian. The Romanian forms of address used in this research have been collected through the examination of the complete works of a Romanian writer, Creangă’s Amintiri Din Copilarie “Childhood Memories.” These works include both rural and urban forms of address written and spoken in the Moldavian dialect, the dialect of the eastern region of the Carpathian Mountains in the second half of the 19th century. Data has been assembled through a complete search on the forms of address that occur in Creangă’s works in order to acquire most if not all forms and instances of forms of address from the literature under examination. The forms of address collected were then categorized into six groups (pronouns, names, titles, kinship terms, terms of affection, and insults). The cumulative table that resulted from the tabulation of the total number of 900 forms and instances of forms of address shows that titles were used most frequently (415 or 46%), followed by terms of affection (148 or 16.4%) and address pronouns (103 or 11.4%).  The number of names was 87 or 9.7%, that of kinship terms 84 or 9.3%, while the number of insults, the smallest, was 63 or 7%.

In his research on bilingualism, Weinreich noticed a process of “interference” between the two languages of the bilingual speaker, marked by deviation from the grammatical norms of either language. Lado referred to this process as a “transfer of forms, meanings and culture” from the native language of the speaker (L1) to his second or foreign language (L2). Corder and Sharwood Smith redefined the notion as a “cross linguistic influence” that included the third and fourth languages of the learner, while Odlin confirmed the notion of transfer with data from empirical evidence.

Research data shows that transfer occurs whenever two or more languages come into contact, and that these influences are effected in two directions: from the native language of the learner(L1) to the second language (L2) as substratum transfer, and from the second language (L2) to the native language (L1) as borrowing transfer. The influence of one language on the other could be positive, facilitating the learning of the lexicon and grammar, or negative, shown in lexical, pragmatic, discourse, or cultural departure from the target language norms. That digression phenomenon could create vagueness, lack of coherence and focus, and lack of relevance in the interlanguage of the learner of the second language. This paper discusses such issues of logicality, ambiguity and relevance in the written English of a native Romanian.

In his research on bilingualism, Weinreich (1953) saw “interference” between the two languages of the bilingual, marked by deviations from the grammatical norms of either language. Lado referred to the process as a “transfer of forms, meanings and culture” from the native language of the speaker to his second or foreign language (1957:2). Corder (1981) and Sharwood Smith (1986) redefined the notion as a “cross-linguistic influence” that included the third and fourth language of the learner, while Odlin (2000) confirmed the concept of transfer with empirical evidence.

Research data shows that transfer occurs whenever two or more languages come into contact, and that these influences are affected in two directions: from the native language of the learner to the second language (“substratum transfer”), and from the second language to the native language (“borrowing transfer”). The influence of one language on the other could be positive, facilitating the acquisition of lexicon and grammar, or negative, revealed in the morphological, lexical or pragmatic divergence from the target language. This paper looks for evidence of transfer errors or negative substratum transfer in the written English of a native Romanian.

In this project, I plan to list the first 50 words Emanuela and Cristian acquired, look at the rate of acquisition of these words, group them based on grammatical classes, and discuss their rate of distribution. I then plan to extend my investigation to the next 50 words for each of the children, and repeat the investigation on the words from 51 to 100. I will then cumulate the distribution tables for the first 50 and the next 50 for both Emanuela and Christian, and discuss the rate of distribution for the first 100 words they acquired. Finally, I will compare the rates of distribution for the first and last 50 words for both Emanuela and Cristian, and draw conclusions on the results.

This approach to the work on my project follows loosely research performed by Ferguson and Farwell, Stoel-Gammon and Cooper, and Pine (Berko 134; Berko 320-321). The first and the second groups of researchers performed phonological investigations on the first 50 words of children. Pine collected data on the first 100 words of seven children, and grouped the words based on their functions—attention, labeling, description, demand, and protest (Berko 320-321).  I decided to research the first 50 words on my children, extend the investigation to another 50 words, and in the end analyze the trends in lexicon acquisition through a cumulation of all the data.

In this second language acquisition project I would like to investigate the Romanian words Emanuela and Cristian acquired until they had completed the acquisition of 250 English words, and look at the rate of acquisition and grammatical distribution of the Romanian words they acquired. I will then compare Emanuela’s acquired words with Christian’s, and discuss the data obtained.

The initial assumption of this project is that both Emanuela and Cristian acquired Romanian at about the same rate, and in similar proportions, and that they will have similar lexicons with similar grammatical class distributions, due to the fact that they lived in the same linguistic environment, and were under the same influences, both English and Romanian.

The definition of the concept of grammar has been a matter of dispute in language research for a long time, and has involved different aspects and meanings, depending on the different language theories which have informed various formulations.

This paper examines these various grammar definitions and their theoretical foundations, and investigates the five principal grammar theories or perspectives, in the English language, that is, their main claims and their deficiencies. Among the five theories investigated in this paper are the traditional grammar, the structural perspective, the generative-transformational grammar, the cognitive perspective, and the functional grammar.

This paper explores the evolution of the English language grammar from a historical perspective (with an excursus into the Sanskrit grammar), examines its ancient Greek roots and the influence that Latin grammar has had on the advance of the traditional English grammar, and evaluates the development of the modern English perspectives on grammar which discount the similarities that exist between Latin and English as languages with a common ancestor. Such theories discard the conventional English grammar as an obsolete replica of the ancient Latin grammar, and reject the English grammar’s role in the acquisition of English writing skills.

This paper reviews the intense debate that has been taking place in the past six decades concerning the value of traditional grammar instruction in the improvement of students’ writing abilities since the release of the Braddock Report (1963), whose conclusion was that grammar instruction did not improve the students’ writing skills, but had a “negligible,” or “even a harmful effect,” on students.

Subsequent studies have shown that the Braddock Report’s inferences had been based on incorrect and misconstrued data (Tomlinson, 1994). More recent data has demonstrated improvement in the students’ writing after grammar instruction (Lyster, Lightbown & Spada, 1999).On the other hand, Feng and Powers (2005) mention Weaver, McNally and Moerman (2001) who think that “to teach or not to teach grammar is not the question,” but whether “what and how to teach it,” a matter that  teachers and instructors have to confront (Feng & Powers, 2001). The vast number of methods and approaches designed for grammar teaching indicates the confusion amongst the English instructors concerning an acceptable grammar definition, and the most acceptable methods and approaches for the teaching of the discipline.

Genre has been for centuries a familiar concept in literature, and its main role has been perceived to be that of a classification device. Based on certain clusters of criteria, literary works have been grouped into different categories, each group diverse from the others due to its generic structure.
The conventional definitions of genre, formulated on the basis of certain structural characteristics of different works, have been of categories with "particular form, content, technique, or the like" (The Oxford English Dictionary), and not much more.

In the past five or six decades, though, the research on genre and generic structures has established that there is a clear relationship between generic structures and the context of situation, and that certain features of a text allow the readers to anticipate the content of a passage, something that has a positive effect on text comprehension. More research has shown that, far from simple classification devices, genres are interactional and communicational devices, bearers of discourse meaning, and encoders of social action.

This paper investigates four theoretical perspectives on the metaphor with their descriptions and definitions of the linguistic device: (1) the traditional model, in which the metaphor is defined as a grammatical device, or figure of speech,  and its role is limited to a decorative function, (2) the interactive model, in which metaphor is a thought process—the result of a mental interaction that  occurs between the reader and the text, (3)  the domain mapping model, in which the metaphor is perceived as a lexical device, and the rhetorical effect comes from the mapping of lexical devices which expand the meaning of words and expressions, and (4) the pragmatic model, which claims that the metaphor is an implicature, and its meaning results from its propositional content and the context of situation.

Research data collected in the past four decades has narrowed the difference between literal and non-literal in language, and has provided evidence which contradicts the idea that the literal language is the norm while the non-literal language is the exception. Studies show that the common spoken and written language is metaphorical, and only a small part is literal and can be defined as non-figurative. Metaphors are not irregular and abnormal phenomena in human communication, but the norm, and their functions are not limited to figures of speech, but expand into multiple areas. Metaphors are language in action which provides ideational, intertextual, and
interpersonal contexts for discourse, generate new knowledge, and provide textual coherence and
cohesion through its grammatical structure within various genres, and contributing in this fashion to the rhetorical effects of the discourse as intended by the writer and perceived by the reader.

The identification of the genre of a text is an important aspect of written language comprehension, and interpretation, and should be part of the required language skills for college students. Scholars are divided, though, about instruction in genre. Some think that students acquire genre knowledge in a natural manner, through the mere exposure to texts which represent various generic structures, while other scholars believe that the students need explicit instruction in genres in order to be able to categorize texts, recognize their generic structures, and comprehend the social functions and the rhetorical roles that text perform inside the social and cultural milieu in which they are embedded.

Understanding genre as social action which accomplishes various rhetorical functions in the social context has important implications for instructors and students. Often college education appears to be detached from the real, professional life, and students think that taking composition courses has a mere didactic purpose, and that no acquired college skills could be transferred into authentic and lucrative professions. Research done in the past decades shows that students could be instructed in genre in such ways that their acquired theoretical and practical knowledge might be used in actual careers. This can be achieved through solid, explicit genre teaching in classrooms, through the use of mediating genres that lessen the gap between the academic context, and the business world, and through cooperative work between the classroom and various businesses which could benefit from the professional work which students could perform free of charge.

That text and context are interdependent, redundant, and predict each other is taken for granted by most of us, though successful communication depends greatly on it. Because all the use of language occurs in a context, learning new information is far from a mere cognitive process and includes contextualization as a component—anticipating events and ideas and integrating  them into the text-context network with its textual and extra-textual aspects.

Halliday describes the context of situation under three headings, field, tenor, and mode, concepts that serve to interpret the social context of a text—the process of interaction in which meaning is exchanged. The field of discourse refers to the nature of the social interaction, the tenor deals with the nature of the participants, their social statuses and roles and the permanent or temporary relationships in which they are engaged, while the mode refers to the part which language is playing in the interaction.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the three aspects of the context of situation (field, tenor and mode) in Kipling's short story entitled The Church that was at Antioch and the Biblical pasage that served as the source for Kippling's literary piece.

As both text and context are semiotic phenomena or systems of meaning which intersect and complement each other, we can be informed about text by the investigation of the context, while a study of the context will reveal notions about the text.

Halliday has introduced three components of the context of situation: field, tenor, and mode. These three parameters describe aspects of our social situations which always act upon the language as it is being used. The field of discourse refers to what is happening, the nature of social interaction that is taking place; the tenor of discourse refers to the participants in the interaction, their statuses and roles, and relationships; the mode of discourse looks at the part the language is playing in the interaction, its functions and the means by which its purpose is accomplished.

The often repeated claim that “languages change” in themselves is illogical and incorrect from a grammatical viewpoint, and is an assumption without an empirical basis. As inanimate objects, languages cannot change on their own will and power. People are those who change languages, and it is quite troublesome to realize that most people who change the English language have no expertise in it, that their average language level is less than intermediate, and that often those who contribute the most to the language change are illiterate or semi-literate and therefore “change” the English language not with the intent to improve it but due to ignorance and ineptitude in language matters. 
The continuous erosion of the English language lexicon exemplified in this paper is not an improvement, and cannot be considered language progress, but must be understood as regress and as a reduction and limitation of the English language speakers, in general, to express themselves with precision and elegance in the language. English Language change in its multiple aspects could seldom be considered an improvement or progress when left to inexpert and incompetent individuals, and the evidence indicates that most often the changes introduced are negative and diminish its power of expression and persuasion.

The World Literature contains remarkable narratives that capture the readers’ thoughts and emotions with unusual plots, singular turns of events, and unpredictable, radical life changes. Through events that challenge their mental, spiritual and emotional abilities, some protagonists encounter impossible challenges, experience terrible misfortunes, live in constant danger that often threatens their lives, and confront great storms of fate that might crush people unequipped to endure such dreadful trials.

Some protagonists break under such extreme events, while others prevail over misfortunes and disasters. Other protagonists are people who live uneventful lives for a while, and then are thrown into bizarre social or political crises that might end in their deaths.

The purpose of this course is to follow the protagonists in their social, cultural, and political contexts, observe the singular events that will alter their lives and that could strengthen or break them, and examine the reactions to the severe challenges and the solutions the protagonists find for those challenges.  The texts that will be the source for our research and investigation are taken from the French, Czech, American, and British literatures.

The final stage in the research document production process should be the error detection and correction work whose purpose is to insure that the document’s final draft is free from all possible format, lexical, and punctuation errors. This process requires high language competence and performance and a robust error detection skill set. Lynn Renee, the translator’s wife, an exceptional proofreader with unique skills to perform such difficult and tedious task has done the error detection on the draft below.

In The Struggle for the American Curriculum, Herbert M. Kliebard (2004) investigates the development of the American curriculum between 1893 and 1958, and provides the reader with an inclusive account of main events that took place in education during the above period. Kliebard examines the curriculum movements, the socio-economic and political context which defines them, the ascendance and regress of different ideologies, the struggle for curriculum control, and describes the educators behind the reforms which have shaped American education during the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. This paper will focus on the work and educational legacies of some of the leading personalities who were at the head of the educational movements which took place during the period mentioned above.

In 1949 Ralph Tyler published Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction, the book which was going to control the American curriculum design for more than six decades. Known as The Tyler Rationale, and “originally published as a syllabus for Education 360” (back of the title page), a course Tyler had been teaching at the University of Chicago, the small publication, in print for more than 50 years, provided the first comprehensive theoretical framework for the American curriculum, and represented the “competencies,” or “ends-means,” curriculum model, the established design pattern during the second half of the 20th century (Eisner, 1979, p. 33). The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors that produced Tyler’s curriculum perspective, to discuss the basics of his Rationale, and then to review the criticism of his curriculum model in the light of recent times curriculum developments.

In the chronicle of the American education John Dewey has been mentioned as a legend, in the multiple senses of the word. Some have looked at him as just another stone in education’s burial ground, some have treated him as an individual whose life and work have been blown out of proportions, and others have revered him as the philosopher and doctrinarian of the American education, the man who had put flesh and muscle on an educational frame that had been missing direction and purpose. The goal of this paper is to review the framework of Dewey’s educational theory, to examine the implications of one of his most notable and notorious declarations in the light of his educational perspective and the socio-educational circumstance that motivated it, and to assess whether his educational perspective is still relevant for the curriculum of today, or must be relegated to the large educational archive of the United States and of the world.

Curriculum design raises a complex and difficult challenge for the educators, as there is no “pattern” or “matrix” curriculum that would guide the process, and no documented universal standards or outcomes.  Whereas “the development of standards represents a movement toward consensus about what it is that students should learn,” agreement in this area does not also mean that there is consensus on curriculum, as “the experts in our [education] field are in fundamental disagreement” concerning curriculum issues (Posner, 2004, p. 4).

The Purpose of Curriculum Analysis

Left with the confusion created by this  “fundamental disagreement” among curriculum experts, educators seem to have three alternatives: “1. Ignore all experts and just use one’s own common sense; 2. Follow one authority’s ideas; 3. Borrow from all experts as long as their ideas “work.” (Posner, 2004, p. 4).  As each of the referred to options “is fraught with danger,” Posner thinks that “the only viable answer…is one that includes the idea of reflective eclecticism.” This concept “is based on the assumption that, much as we would like to deny it, there is no panacea in education,” and that “what curriculum decision makers need is an understanding of the myriad curriculum alternatives,” and the “dilemmas that underlie each curriculum decision,” and to “be able to unpack the tacit assumptions behind each alternative,” since “when they can do this, they will have gained the ability to assess critically the alternatives and the claims their proponents make (Schwab, 1971)” (Posner, 2004, p. 4).

The instrument which would “contribute to the development of reflective eclecticism” for curriculum designers is curriculum analysis, defined by Posner (20004) as:
…an attempt to tease a curriculum apart into its component parts, to examine those parts and the way they fit together to make a whole, to identify the beliefs and ideas to which the developers were committed and which either explicitly or implicitly shaped the curriculum, and to examine the implications of these commitments and beliefs for the quality of the educational experience” (2004, p.14).

This paper, the curriculum analysis of a course in English Composition I which is taught at Ivy Tech Community College in Evansville, Indiana, is based on Posner’s (2004) “Curriculum Analysis Questions,” listed on pages 20-22 of his book Curriculum Analysis.

This book examines forms of address in Romanian and their hierarchical structure that comprises four levels of social formality (neutral, informal, formal and very formal) and three social semantics (neutrality, solidarity and power). Spoken and written language use indicates that Romanian forms of address help to establish individual identities in the Romanian social context, create relationship levels within Romanian social groups, promote social interaction, and impact language communication events. The Romanian forms of address for the research have been collected through the examination of relevant Romanian literature that includes rural and urban forms of address in the spoken and written Moldavian dialect of the Romanian language. The forms of address compiled were tabulated into six classes (names, titles, kinship terms, pronouns, terms of affection and insults), and their occurrence and incidence rate were afterwards examined and discussed in their literary and social contexts, a process that allowed the socio-linguistic evaluation of their functions and communicative significance.

Translator’s Note

The opinions, explanations, and perspectives on Ellen G. White’s claimed works and visions that have been presented in this translated paper are those of the author’s alone, and not the translator’s. For the translator’s perspective on Ellen G. White and the various publications released under her name, please read:

• Eduard C. Hanganu (2015, January 13). “Ellen White and Her English Composition Skills” Academia.edu. http://www.academia.edu/.

• Eduard C. Hanganu (2015, January 13). “Ellen G. White’s Writer Skills Summarized” Academia.edu. http://www.academia.edu/.

• Eduard C. Hanganu (2015, January 16). “Ellen G. White and Her Ghost Writer Book Shop” Academia.edu. http://www.academia.edu/.

Daniel, the presumed “encoded” Bible book, has been for millennia a persistent puzzle for Hebrew scholars and theologians, but a traditional grammatical approach that has attempted to “decode” the text has not been too successful. There are still, in Daniel’s chapters, countless interpretation issues that await clarification, and frustrated theologians and scholars seem to have hit the traditional brick wall in their efforts to find solutions to such problems. One of the most vexing enigmas is the origin of the little horn in Daniel 8: 8. The matter has been studied, deliberated, and argued without too much success in various theological circles for quite a long time, and the issue still remains to be settled. Some biblical scholars contend that the little horn arose from the “four notable” horns that followed the dissolution of Alexander the Great’s immense empire, while other scholars and theologians are certain that the little horn came out of one of the “four winds of heaven” mentioned in the same biblical text. This paper argues that although the topic is theological in nature and the efforts to solve the little horn riddle have been for the most part dogmatic—deductive and non-empirical rather than inductive and empirical—there is a better approach to the problem’s solution, and that approach is based in a linguistic method—anaphora resolution. Evidence provided in this paper will show that the anaphora resolution approach can help solve the puzzle that surrounds the little horn in Daniel 8, and provide a logical and factual clarification for the biblical text.

This book examines forms of address in Romanian and their hierarchical structure that comprises four levels of social formality (neutral, informal, formal and very formal) and three social semantics (neutrality, solidarity and power). Spoken and written language use indicates that Romanian forms of address help to establish individual identities in the Romanian social context, create relationship levels within Romanian social groups, promote social interaction, and impact language communication events. The Romanian forms of address for the research have been collected through the examination of relevant Romanian literature that includes rural and urban forms of address in the spoken and written Moldavian dialect of the Romanian language. The forms of address compiled were tabulated into six classes (names, titles, kinship terms, pronouns, terms of affection and insults), and their occurrence and incidence rate were afterwards examined and discussed in their literary and social conte...

This paper explores the evolution of the English language grammar from a historical perspective (with an excursus into the Sanskrit grammar), examines its ancient Greek roots and the influence that Latin grammar has had on the advance of the traditional English grammar, and evaluates the development of the modern English perspectives on grammar which discount the similarities that exist between Latin and English as languages with a common ancestor. Such theories discard the conventional English grammar as an obsolete replica of the ancient Latin grammar, and reject the English grammar’s role in the acquisition of English writing skills.

That text and context are interdependent, redundant, and predict each other is taken for granted by most of us, though successful communication depends greatly on it. Because all the use of language occurs in a context, learning new information is far from a mere cognitive process and includes contextualization as a component—anticipating events and ideas and integrating them into the text-context network with its textual and extra-textual aspects. It is fascinating to become aware of this text-context relationship in our daily activities, among which is the reading of the newspaper, especially when we realize that we can predict quite a lot from the news we are going to read. Let's imagine that your "New York Times" copy has just been delivered this morning, and you cannot wait to open it and read “all the news that's fit to print.” The first thing you are aware of is the date of the paper: Sunday, April 19, 2014. Time deixis is of capital importance when you read...