Readers Reply

004

Faint Praise

I don’t particularly like BR. But the contributors can apparently read, write and count to ten without taking their shoes off, and most seem to have a better than average knowledge of Hebrew, Greek and Latin. All of which is more than I can say for the fundamentalist fanatics and cultists that keep sending you derogatory letters.

You’ll be receiving my renewal notice forthwith.

Monuments

Ode to Deism

In “Mad to See the Monuments,” BR 17:06, Steven Holloway reports that the number of Deists in England in the mid- to late 1700s was “few, and their ideas did not penetrate deeply into the social milieu.” I think it is important to note that the American colonies were part of England at that time (albeit across the Atlantic). Deism was alive and well here! Indeed, Thomas Paine, who wrote Common Sense (so influential in encouraging the public to support revolution), was an avowed Deist, as were Thomas Jefferson and the majority of members of the Continental Congresses.

The Declaration of Independence refers to the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God—both Deist ideas. The preamble to the Constitution states that it is “We the people” (and not God) who establish our form of government—another Deist belief.

The American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the resulting seeds of democracy are evidence of how those English (later American) Deists changed the world!

Jewish Church

Good Except One Word

Dieter Georgi’s article “Was the Early Church Jewish?” BR 17:06, was a well-written and thoughtful piece. I especially appreciated his personal journey back to his childhood in Nazi Germany and his youthful perception and perplexity. However, I take exception to one sentence at the end of the paragraph honoring his Jewish contemporaries in the Frankfurt of his youth. He states that he is writing “in honor of those who were killed by a diabolic mixture of arrogance and ignorance, of piety and atheism.”

To the best of my understanding, most of the leaders and high-ranking officials responsible for the Holocaust as well as the general population were churchgoing people. As a matter of fact, the church itself never issued an edict of excommunication against any of them. I don’t know of any group of atheists who killed millions of people or even thousands of people during the period 1932 to 1945. The work was done by theists as a result of hundreds of years of hateful diatribe emanating from the various churches that dominated the cultures of Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Hungary, etc. So I think that sentence needs to be rewritten to state that millions and millions were killed by a diabolic mixture of arrogance, ignorance, church-sponsored hatred, xenophobia and bigotry. Atheism doesn’t belong in the mix. And I’m sure that had Paul (Saul) known of the consequence of his agenda, he would have aborted it immediately.

The Church of Jerusalem

It was a pleasure to read the thoughtful “Was the Early Church Jewish?” by Dieter Georgi. I have one caveat, however. 006Georgi had precious little to say about the church in Jerusalem, about which we read in Acts, Eusebius and elsewhere. This church, headed by James the Just, the brother of Jesus, was quite influential and was “Jewish,” as we note in Galatians.

Dieter Georgi responds:

The existence of a Torah-oriented Jerusalem church is a major element of my picture of the early church. I certainly agree with you on this. I would even add that the picture drawn by Luke in Acts and by the church father Eusebius is nowhere near complete. Neither author is interested in a complete portrait because neither one intends to show the breadth and depth of the religious life and theology(ies) of that community. Neither one is interested in telling much about the community’s continuous communication with other Jews in and around Jerusalem or about the continuance of that version(s) of church life beyond the First Jewish War.

Star of Bethlehem

It’s a UFO

Haven’t we read far too many hypotheses on the Star of Bethlehem in the past couple of decades (the latest being Simo Parpola’s “The Magi and the Star,” BR 17:06)? One wonders when New Testament scholars will start reading up on the hundreds of UFO reports that indicate such crafts have at times silently hovered low over a person’s house, sometimes emitting a bright beam. According to polls taken in the past 35 years, half of the U.S. population believe that UFOs are genuine craft, not of manmade origin.

It’s a Bunch of Angels

Simo Parpola’s article gets a person very excited not only about what the magi saw, but about the very timing of Jesus’ birth (see “The Magi and the Star,” BR 17:06). Yet, when it is all said and done, one is let down once again. First, the Bible is clear that it was a single star (not plural). So it seems a little stretch to think that it was a conjunction of Jupiter, Saturn and Mars. Second, the Bible is clear that this star stopped right over “where the young child was.” It didn’t mention the star stood over Bethlehem in general, but over the very spot where the child Jesus resided. It’s difficult to picture a conjunction doing this.

We, as Bible-believing Christians, will continue to have to take this phenomena by faith without reliance upon astrological events. Who knows, but maybe the star was a band of angels?

It’s a Miracle

If the “star” of Bethlehem were a real star, it would have come so close to the Earth that it would have burned up the world. What’s wrong with simply calling it a miracle from God?

008

It’s Old News

I was somewhat amused to discover the article “The Magi and the Star,” BR 17:06. I thought this was rather old news since I had learned of it in my seminary days some 40 years ago.

The idea is set forth in much shorter form in a book by Ethelbert Stauffer titled Jesus and His Story (Knopf, 1959). Stauffer points out that the magi were not the only ones observing the conjunction of Jupiter and Venus along with the encounter of Jupiter with Saturn in the sign of the fish (Pisces). It was also observed by Augustus. In the Roman astrological system Augustus was Jupiter in human form, Venus was the star of the Julian family and Saturn the sign of the Golden Age. Stauffer concluded: “Thus, the star of Bethlehem, too, is a historical fact. It, too, however, was a sign of God as ambiguous as all the other events in the story of Jesus. Whose coming was presaged by the heavenly phenomena of the year 7 B.C.—Augustus or Jesus?”

It’s time we admitted we don’t know what year Jesus was born, what month he was born in or where he was born. The birth stories of Jesus make for nice Christmas pageants but as history they are highly deficient. The meaning of Jesus’ life is found in the cross and the resurrection and not in the manner or place of his birth.

Preposition Proposition

One quick comment on “The Magi and the Star,” BR 17:06. In a footnote to the article you write, “The Gospel of Luke…indicates that Jesus was born during a worldwide census…” The Greek term used in Luke 2:2 is protos, and although most (all?) English translations translate it as “first” it also often means “before, prior” (see Luke 11:38, John 15:18, etc.). Therefore, it is possible (and likely, given the weight of your astronomical evidence indicating a date of 7 B.C.) that a more accurate translation of the verse would be, “This was the census before Quirinius was Governor of Syria.”

The Sign of the Fish

Hearty thanks and congratulations to Dr. Simo Parpola for his wonderfully insightful article, “The Magi and the Star,” BR 17:06. In my Ph.D. dissertation (“The Interpretation of Religious Symbols in the Graeco-Roman World: A Case Study of Early Christian Fish Symbolism,” Yale Univ., 1993, pp. 248–260, 304–307), I noted the importance of the triple conjunction in 7 B.C.E. precisely because it took place in Pisces, the sign of the fish. Fish symbolism figures prominently in early Christianity, both in texts (e.g., the call of the fishermen and the multiplication of fish and loaves) and art (where it likely serves as the earliest marker of Christian identity). In the ancient world, fish symbolized both life and death. This coincides with the Near Eastern understanding of Pisces as a sign of the end of one age and the beginning of another. It also explains how early Christians came to use fish as symbols of their two most important sacraments—baptism and the Eucharist. Both indicate a kind of symbolic death and rebirth (or resurrection).

Further, another phenomenon may have motivated Near Eastern sky watchers and early Christian writers: namely, the precession of the equinoxes. Ancient astronomers observed that the position of the Earth gradually changed in relation to the cosmic elements (we now understand this as the gyroscopic wobble of the earth’s axis) approximately one degree every 72 years. At the beginning of the Common Era, the occurrence of the vernal equinox (which many ancient calendars used as the beginning of their year) was starting to take place under the sign of Pisces rather than the sign of Aries. Since 4000 B.C.E., we consequently have four astrological periods related to the shifting constellations of the vernal equinox: c. 4000–2000 B.C.E., Taurus; c. 2000–1 B.C.E., Aries; c. 1–2000 C.E., Pisces; and c. 2001 C.E.–4000 C.E., Aquarius. The precession to Pisces might well have suggested a seminal cosmological moment, one that was linked to the epoch-making symbolism of the fish constellation.

No wonder, as Dr. Parpola suggests, that some sky watchers in the ancient world would have concluded that a messiah ushering in a new era would be born at this very moment!

Wright

Sin

N.T. Wright’s question, “How can we gain a biblical understanding of the social and political events of our day?” interested me (“Speaking of Good and 009Evil,” BR 17:06). The Book of Judges gives example after example of God’s actions to turn Israel’s attention to their sin. “And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord…so the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he gave them over to plunderers…and he sold them into the power of their enemies.”

King Solomon, filled with great wisdom, took this a step further when he dedicated the Temple. He attributed to sin not only defeat by one’s enemies but also drought, famine, plague, sickness, blight, mildew and infestations of locusts and caterpillars (1 Kings 8:22–53). In regards to the disasters in September, I believe our country ought to be looking within, to see how we might be sinning against God.

True Religion

N.T. Wright points out that “much of the Bible was written under the shadow of a pagan empire.” It appears in the Tower of Babel, in Egypt’s enslaving of the Israelites, in the Babylon of the prophets, and, climactically, in the world empire of Rome as it confronts the writers of the New Testament. “Where today,” he asks, “do we see the new Babylon, the new Rome? Where today is the world suffering as a result of contemporary imperialism?” His implication is, I think, clear.

When I first read his piece, I felt a chill—not because America can so easily be seen as the new Babylon, the new Rome. Rather I was suddenly terrified to realize how easy it is to see the Christianity I have lived and practiced all my life as an other-worldly fanaticism. But the apocalyptic shadow that hovers over the New Testament has had to have been outlived. Religion is authentically practiced when it is rooted in a culture of ordinary people going freely about the human business of supporting themselves, marrying, raising their families. To be truly and freely religious we must be guided, rather, by the values that other-worldly fanaticism abhors: critical reason and individual autonomy for both men and women, rich and poor. These things must be protected from apocalyptic fanaticism, and sometimes protection requires the use of force.

Wright Wants to Keep His Job

I promised myself that I would not write to your magazine about the intentional incorrectness of your articles. I have come to realize that you allow these uneducational but controversial articles so that readers like myself will respond.

N.T. Wright’s December column is an example (see (“Speaking of Good and Evil,” BR 17:06)). He states that Isaiah describes God crying and panting like a woman in labor (citing Isaiah 46:3–4). The text says no such thing. Never once in all the recorded scripture is God referred to as a woman. Mr. Wright put this in his column to stir up an emotional reaction. This type of statement has no other value unless it is to increase his reader mail so he can keep his job.

I know you will not publish anything that would show your “scholars” to be devious or personally deceptive, so I am certain that this letter, like previous letters from me, will end up in your trash basket without any response. And your magazine will continue to print articles that court social groups who want to see their personal views bolstered.

But if enough of your subscribers begin to feel as I do—that your magazine does not promote the increased understanding of the Bible—and do not renew their subscriptions, one of two things will happen: You will cease publication or you will change your presentation of information.

I hope it will be the latter.

Potpourri

Read More

Your December 2001 Jots and Tittles gives us a religious reading list from beliefnet.com, divided into categories of Judaism, Evangelical Christianity, Progressive Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Earth-Based Religion Books.

That list leaves somebody out: the billion-member-plus Catholic Church. If you’re looking to start a Catholic reading list I suggest you start with the Catechism of the Catholic Church. After that, the number one devotional book is Thomas à Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ (after the Bible, of course) and many Catholics use the missal. Beyond that I have too many “favorites” to list.