Чарльз Мюррей шутит

For reasons too complicated to explain, today I came across the two sentences that are probably my favorites among everything I've written, for no other reason than my joy at having thought them up. They conclude "Jewish Genius" (2007) - @charlesmurray

This reasoning pushes me even farther into the realm of speculation. Insofar as I am suggesting that the Jews may have had some degree of unusual verbal skills going back to the time of Moses, I am naked before the evolutionary psychologists’ ultimate challenge. Why should one particular tribe at the time of Moses, living in the same environment as other nomadic and agricultural peoples of the Middle East, have already evolved elevated intelligence when the others did not?

At this point, I take sanctuary in my remaining hypothesis, uniquely parsimonious and happily irrefutable. The Jews are God’s chosen people.

-- Jewish Genius

обсуждение там тоже интересное и познавательное. вот пример:

-- Methinks this challenge, such as it is, smacks of trolling. The Hebrew scriptures convey a thickly nuanced, always contingent, and frequently adversarial relationship with YHWH, suffused deeply with _instrumental_ suffering.

-- So, indistinguishable from chance.

почему-то, обсуждая выдающийся еврейский интеллект, не вспоминают выдающуюся еврейскую хуцпу:

I have often imagined that at the beginning God said to Abraham " I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is that your tribe will produce talented people out of all proportion to its numbers. The bad news is that you will be hated for it" @jmurphy9894