Jots & Tittles

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Burning Bush Explained

God spoke to Moses from a burning bush. If a team of Norwegian scientists is right, the incendiary shrub may not have been a miracle, but a natural phenomenon common in the desert regions of North Africa.

Last year geologist Henrik Svensen and physicist Dag Dysthe, both from the University of Oslo, went to the Timbuktu region of Mali, on the southern edge of the Sahara desert, to investigate strange local phenomena: surface vegetation spontaneously catching fire and underground fires visible through holes in the earth. Since the 1880s, scientists have thought volcanic activity was to blame; the Norwegian team, however, discovered a more prosaic cause: Buried layers of peat, a highly flammable product of decayed vegetation, easily catch fire during times of drought. Vast peat fires can rage just meters—or less—under the parched earth and may ignite the roots of trees and bushes, causing them to burst into flames.

Svensen told BR, “In the richly vegetated areas, we did indeed find remnants of trees that were burned out.” Peat fires, he says, are known anywhere there are layers of organic material just beneath the surface. What about Egypt? “It could be that this idea is worth testing,” Svensen said.

The team’s findings are reported in the July issue of the journal Geology, although the biblical implications were reported in the Norwegian newspaper Nettavisen. The scientists have no explanation, of course, for the voice of God that boomed commandingly from the bush in Exodus.

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Ruining Miracles

There’s a long history of scientists and Bible readers trying to find natural explanations for biblical miracles. Here’s a sampling:

From Absalom to Zechariah

Since the tenth century A.D., it’s been known as Absalom’s Pillar. Passersby have traditionally hurled stones and insults at this 55-foot-tall teapot-lidded monument in Jerusalem’s Kidron Valley, below the Temple Mount, erroneously believing it to be the pillar that David’s rebellious son Absalom erected in his own honor in 2 Samuel 18:18. Archaeologists know better: The monument and the network of tombs in the rock behind it were probably built 1,000 years after Absalom, in the first century B.C. or A.D., as the burial complex for a local wealthy Jewish family.

But now a surprising, previously unknown phase in the life of this Jerusalem landmark has been revealed, thanks to the patience of a retired Jerusalem anthropologist, Joe Zias. Zias, with the help of eminent Dead Sea Scroll epigrapher Emile Puech and the fickle sun, has discovered an almost completely worn-away Greek inscription in the façade above the door in the south side of the monument. The inscription marks the monument as the tomb of “Zechariah … father of John”—that is, the father (according to Luke) of John the Baptist.

The pillar probably wasn’t really John the Baptist’s father’s resting place any more than it was Absalom’s, but Byzantine Christians, eager to link existing Jerusalem landmarks with New Testament figures, made the association with Zechariah; they evidently added the inscription and turned 011the monument into a holy Christian site. Puech, who has been laboriously deciphering the writing and was able to date it to the fourth century A.D., also says he may have found the name Simeon in another inscription on the monument, though it will require further study. As Jerome Murphy-O’Connor wrote in the June BR, Byzantine tradition held that Zechariah, Simeon and Jesus’ brother James were buried together in this area. The Bene Hezir tomb, about 40 yards to the south, is often misidentified as the tomb of James; the pyramid-shaped tomb even farther south is popularly called the Tomb of Zechariah.

Zias told BR that the inscription he found is big: “You can read the thing, I’m telling you, from 30 meters, it’s that huge.” And it’s directly over the original entrance to the tomb, nearly 30 feet off the ground on the south face of the pillar—“right where [an inscription] is supposed to be.” (In the photo above, the entrance is just visible on the right face.) Why then has no one ever spotted it?

Zias first noticed the faint letters in a decades-old photograph of Absalom’s Pillar taken by Zev Radovan (whose work frequently appears in BR). But because the letters have been so worn away (perhaps due to repeated stoning), it is impossible to see them unless the light is exactly right. Thus the inscription was completely overlooked by archaeologists, including the eminent Nahman Avigad, who studied the monument in the 1950s.

Zias frequented the monument over two summers and visited at different times of day, trying to see the writing he thought he saw in the old photo. When the sun finally did cooperate, he made a rubber molding of the inscription, from which a papier-mäché cast was made.

Puech and Zias published their discovery in the July issue of Revue Biblique, the publication of Jerusalem’s Ecole Biblique et Archéologique Française.

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The Bible in the News

Until August 1926, cars traveling north from New Mexico to Utah and Colorado moved along Route 660—that is, the sixth branch off Route 60. But in 1926, 60 came to be known as 66, and Route 660 became 666. Most drivers were far more bothered by the numerous blind spots and excessive speeders on this treacherous two-lane ribbon of asphalt than by what most would understand as the coincidence between the number of this road and the number of the beast in Revelation 13:18, which many identify with Satan, the Evil One, and/or the Antichrist.

But this past July, Beelzebub Boulevard (or Purgatory Pathway or Lucifer’s Lane, as it has been called) underwent another name change, from the colorful, if devilish, 666 to the inoffensive, if bland, 491, so as to disassociate the highway with the devil. Journalists and headline writers stirred up a cauldron of images: “‘Satan’s Highway’ Has Devilish Name Problem,” “New Mexico Wants to Take the ‘Devil’ out of U.S. 666,” “Devilish 666 Name Is Going Down in Flames” and “Sixes Nixed on ‘Devil’s Road.’” While most articles did a good job of recounting the road’s claim to fame (or infamy—almost three dozen people died in just two years on Route 666) and made an effort to connect the change with sensitivities of local Navajos (some of whom are Christian), they were not very successful in their forays into the Bible. At least half the articles misstated the name of the book—it’s Revelation, not Revelations, for heaven’s sake—and less than ten percent took the time to give the chapter or verse number. Only one feature (Cox News Service, May 15, 2003) explained how “rational scholars” have interpreted this passage within its first-century C.E. context, often seeing 666 as a reference to the Roman emperor Nero Caesar. According to ancient Greek numerological codes, the letters of Nero’s name add up to 666.

Canada, too, has a Route 666, but the name does not seem to disturb our northern neighbors. Their Route 666, the Grovedale-Alberta Highway, is not slated for change.

The number 666 has created a devilish problem for faculty and staff at the Kentucky Mountain Bible College, in rural Breathitt County. Their telephone number had a 666 prefix, “like a Scarlet Letter attached to us,” in the words of one official. Until it was changed to something more benign, “many a would-be devout Bible student, and more importantly, many a would-be benefactor” had been put off, according to this same vice president, who also noted that only a toll-free 1–800 number appeared on the school’s Web site before the change. Ireland’s Sunday Tribune (March 9, 2003, under the headline “Satan’s Number Is Up in Bible Country”) advised “persons wishing to head to the wilds of Kentucky” that they may wish to “visit the nearby Jack Daniels brewery instead.”

Officials in Maine, like their Canadian counterparts, were unmoved by the possibility of “satanic” connections. Public Utilities Commissioners there denied a request by residents in the Bowdoinham exchange to change their prefix from 666 to 616. Admittedly, no Bible college was losing business in this instance (State of Maine Telephone Regulation Report, July 18, 2003).

Elsewhere, sensitivity to the number 666 waxes and wanes in ways impenetrable to even a seasoned biblical scholar. So, for example, the Defense Ministry of South Korea increased the number of troops it was to send to Iraq from 666, but denied that it was linked to the number’s biblical connotation (The Korea Herald, April 5, 2003).

As is so often the case in my research, Australians and New Yorkers occupy a unique place in mass media. Radio 666 in Canberra, Australia, has become the second most popular station after a surge in listeners, and 666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan is valued at close to a billion dollars. Meanwhile, the Melbourne comedy show The 666—One Hell of a Show is packing ‘em in. Can Broadway be far behind?

Burning Bush Explained

God spoke to Moses from a burning bush. If a team of Norwegian scientists is right, the incendiary shrub may not have been a miracle, but a natural phenomenon common in the desert regions of North Africa.