Word: nebuchadnezzar
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Bible: The Old Testament and The New Testament (each: Doubleday, $12.95 hardcover; Avon, $4.95 paperback). It was the omissions in the Old and New Testaments that begat Asimov's Guide to the Bible (1968 and 1969). "It happens," writes the author, "that millions of people today know of Nebuchadnezzar, and have never heard of Pericles, simply because Nebuchadnezzar is mentioned prominently in the Bible and Pericles is never mentioned at all." Biblical Scholar Asimov characteristically mentions all: history, biography, geography, archaeology and cross-culture myths that are the roots if not the artistic and spiritual blossoms of the Good...
...sovereign "in the case of people you wish to assassinate." The Book of Judges describes how Ehud, acting in behalf of the defeated Israelites, assassinated Eglon, the King of Moab. There is the story of the widow Judith saving the Israelites by cutting off the head of Nebuchadnezzar's general, Holofernes, who was besieging Bethulia. Such killings, however, were defiant acts against a conqueror and thus not strictly foreign policy assassinations. Rome was sufficiently bloody with assassinations-the murders of Julius Caesar and Tiberius Gracchus, for example-but these were factional acts, intramural mayhem...
...mention of a term paper is a crushing blow, and the last dreamy whiff of your future self is quickly extinguished by the thought of long sleepless nights typing 20-page papers on such topics as the role of date-growing in the fall of Nebuchadnezzar the Second. Outside in the Square, there is a bit of a September chill in the air, but the vivid prospect of endless reading lists and embattled nights in the library is such as to even preclude rhapsodizing on the joys of the New England autum. The stentorian monotone of a spectacles professor rings...
...John the Baptist talks about the Messiah as "he who is mightier than I, the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie," Taylor makes the allusion more straightforward: "I am not even worthy to be his slave." In the Book of Daniel, when Nebuchadnezzar makes a gold image and orders people to worship it when they hear the sounds of "horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp," Taylor offers instead a touch of Sousa: "When the band strikes up." Despite such lapses, Taylor's Bible is easy to read and remarkably understandable...