Archaeologist ‘discovers childhood home of Jesus’ in Nazareth
23 Nov, 2020 13:37
Archaeologist ‘discovers childhood home of Jesus’ in Nazareth
Part of the archaeological site underneath the Sisters of Nazareth Convent in Nazareth. © Wikimedia Commons; left: FILE IMAGE. © Global
A prominent British archaeologist has put forward a compelling case arguing that a well-preserved ancient house in Nazareth was the childhood home of Jesus.
The building dates back to the first century and the site is now home to the Sisters of Nazareth Convent. In modern times, it was first identified as the house where Jesus grew up with Joseph and Mary in the 19th century, but the theory was dismissed in the 1930s and has been rejected ever since.
However, after 14 years of fieldwork and research on the site, Ken Dark, a professor of archaeology and history at Reading University in the UK, has found that the convent stands on a dwelling that ancient Nazarene believed was Jesus’ first home.
Significant chunks of the building survive, including a rock-cut staircase. In its first-century heyday, it probably included a number of living and storage rooms around a courtyard, and a roof terrace.
Inscription confirms ancient ring belonged to Pontius Pilate, man who ordered Jesus’ crucifixion
Professor Dark discovered that people in the area believed that the building was Jesus’ house from at least the 380s. His analysis also confirmed the building’s status as a first-century dwelling. No such case can be made for any other sites in the city.
The archaeologist’s investigation of the two-story house revealed excellent craftsmanship and an understanding of rock that would be consistent with it having been built and owned by a tekton – the description of Joseph’s profession in the Greek gospels, which means that he was not only a carpenter, but also a stonemason or builder.
His fieldwork also indicates that a cave church decorated with mosaics was built next to the house’s remains in the fourth century. In the fifth century a church was built over both the house and the cave church and it was the largest church in Nazareth at the time.
This church was elaborately decorated with marble and mosaics and it exactly matched a seventh-century description of the large Byzantine church that was said to have stood on the site of Jesus’ home and was an important pilgrimage destination.
In his book, ‘The Sisters of Nazareth Convent: A Roman-Period, Byzantine and Crusader Site in Central Nazareth’, Professor Dark probed the likelihood of memory of a building’s history being transmitted from the first century to the fourth century, when the first church was built at the site. “My conclusion is that, from anthropological evidence and studies of oral tradition, there’s absolutely no reason why they couldn’t have known,” he said.
https://www.rt.com/news/507553-jesus-ch ... h-convent/
Christianity
The Forgotten Radicalism of Jesus Christ
First-century Christians weren’t prepared for what a truly inclusive figure he was, and what was true then is still true today.
“Get used to different.”
That line comes from a marvelous new TV series on Jesus’ life, “The Chosen,” in which Jesus, played by Jonathan Roumie, invites Matthew to become one of his disciples. Simon Peter, already a disciple, registers his fierce objection. Matthew is a tax collector, who were viewed as tools of Roman authorities, often dishonest and abusive. They were therefore treated as traitors and outcasts by other Jews.
“I don’t get it,” Simon Peter says to Jesus about his decision to invite Matthew, to which Jesus responds, “You didn’t get it when I chose you, either.”
“But this is different,” Simon Peter answers. “I’m not a tax collector.” At which point Jesus lets Simon Peter know things aren’t going to be quite what his followers expected.
First-century Christians weren’t prepared for what a truly radical and radically inclusive figure Jesus was, and neither are today’s Christians. We want to tame and domesticate who he was, but Jesus’ life and ministry don’t really allow for it. He shattered barrier after barrier.
One example is Jesus’ encounter, in the fourth chapter of the gospel of John, with the Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus and the woman talked about Jesus being the Messiah, why he was even deigning to talk with her, and the unnamed woman’s past and present, which she initially sought to hide from Jesus. (It included her five previous husbands, according to the account in John, and the fact that “the one whom you now have is not your husband.”) Yet not a word of condemnation passed the lips of Jesus; the woman felt heard, understood, cared for. Jesus treated her, in the words of one commentator, “with a magnetic dignity and respect.”
The encounter with Jesus transformed her life; after it the woman at the well became “the first woman preacher in Christian history,” proclaiming Jesus to be the savior of the world to her community, according to the New Testament scholar Kenneth Bailey.
This story is a striking example of Jesus’ rejection of conventional religious and cultural thinking — in this case because Jesus, a man, was talking earnestly to a woman in a world in which women were often demeaned and treated as second-class citizens; and because Jesus, a Jew, was talking to a Samaritan, who were despised by the Jews for reasons going back centuries. According to Professor Bailey, “A Samaritan woman and her community are sought out and welcomed by Jesus. In the process, ancient racial, theological and historical barriers are breached. His message and his community are for all.”
This happened time and again with Jesus. He touched lepers and healed a woman who had a constant flow of menstrual blood, both of whom were considered impure; forgave a woman “who lived a sinful life” and told her to “go in peace,” healed a paralytic and a blind man, people thought to be worthless and useless. And as Jesus was being crucified, he told the penitent thief on the cross next to him, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”
Jesus was repeatedly attacked for hanging out with the wrong crowd and recruited his disciples from the lower rungs of society.
And Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan, a story about a man who helps a wounded traveler on the road to Jericho, made the hero of the story not an influential priest, not a person of social rank or privilege but a hated foreigner.
For Christians, the incarnation is a story of God, in the person of Jesus, participating in the human drama. And in that drama Jesus was most drawn to the forsaken and despised, the marginalized, those who had stumbled and fallen. He was beloved by them, even as he was targeted and eventually killed by the politically and religiously powerful, who viewed Jesus as a grave threat to their dominance.
Over the course of my faith journey, I have wondered: Why was a hallmark of Jesus’s ministry intimacy with and the inclusion of the unwanted and the outcast, men and women living in the shadow of society, more likely to be dismissed than noticed, more likely to be mocked than revered?
Part of the explanation surely has to do with the belief in the imago Dei, that Jesus sees indelible dignity and inestimable worth in every person, even “the least of these.” If no one else would esteem them, Jesus would.
Among the people who best articulated this ethic was Abraham Lincoln, who in a 1858 speech in Lewiston, Ill., in which he explained the true meaning of the Declaration of Independence, said, “Nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on, and degraded, and imbruted by its fellows.”
Yet another reason for Jesus’ connection with outcasts undoubtedly had to do with his compassion and empathy, his desire to relieve their pain and lift the soul-crushing shame that accompanies being a social pariah and an untouchable.
But that is hardly the only reason. Jesus modeled inclusion and solidarity with the “unclean” and marginalized not only for their sake but for the sake of the powerful and the privileged and for the good of the whole.
Jesus must have understood that we human beings battle with exclusion, self-righteousness and arrogance, and have a quick trigger finger when it comes to judging others. Jesus knew how easily we could fall into the trap of turning “the other” — those of other races, ethnicities, classes, genders and nations — into enemies. We place loyalty to the tribe over compassion and human connection. We view differences as threatening; the result is we become isolated, rigid in our thinking, harsh and unforgiving.
Jesus clearly believed that outcasts had a lot to teach the privileged and the powerful, including the virtues of humility and the vice of supreme certitude. Rather than seeing God exclusively as a moral taskmaster, Jesus understood that the weak and dispossessed often experience God in a different way — as a dispenser of grace, a source of comfort, a redeemer. They see the world, and God, through a different prism than do the powerful and the proud. The lowly in the world offer a corrective to the spiritual astigmatisms that develop among the rest of us.
It’s easy for us to look back 20 centuries and see how religious authorities were too severe and unforgiving in how they treated the outcasts of their time. The wisest question those of us who are Christians could ask ourselves isn’t why we are so much more humane and enlightened than they were; rather, it is to ask ourselves who the modern outcasts are and whether we’re mistreating them. Who are the tax collectors of our era, the people we despise but whom Jesus would welcome, those around whom are we determined to build a “dividing wall of hostility,” to use the imagery of the Apostle Paul?
“How Christians, including me, responded to the AIDS crisis in the ’80s haunts me,” my longtime friend Scott Dudley, senior pastor of Bellevue Presbyterian Church in Bellevue, Wash., recently told me. “Had we, like the first Christians, cared first and cared most for modern day ‘plague’ victims, I think we’d be in a whole different conversation with the L.G.B.T.Q. community. We may still have significant differences of opinion. However, I believe the dialogue would be one of more mutual respect, and I believe the L.G.B.T.Q. community would feel less afraid of the wounds Christians can inflict.” But even if the conversation were not different, as Scott knows, caring first and caring most for those victims of a plague would have been the right thing to do.
No society and no religious faith can live without moral rules. Jesus wasn’t an antinomian, one who believes that Christians, because they are saved by grace, are not bound to religious laws. But he understood that what ultimately changes people’s lives are relationships rather than rule books, mercy rather than moral demands.
Jesus’ teachings are so challenging, so distinct from normal human reactions and behaviors, that we constantly have to renew our commitment to them. Every generation of Christians need to think through how his example applies to the times in which they live. We need our sensibilities to align more with his. Otherwise, we drift into self-righteousness and legalism, even to the point that we corrupt the very institution, the church, which was created to worship him and to love others.
The lesson from Jesus’ life and ministry is that understanding people’s stories and struggles requires much more time and effort than condemning them, but it is vastly more rewarding. And the lesson of Christmas and the incarnation, at least for those of us of the Christian faith, is that all of us were once outcasts, broken yet loved, and worth reaching out to and redeeming.
If God did that for us, why do we find it so hard to do it for each other?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/24/opin ... 778d3e6de3
First-century Christians weren’t prepared for what a truly inclusive figure he was, and what was true then is still true today.
“Get used to different.”
That line comes from a marvelous new TV series on Jesus’ life, “The Chosen,” in which Jesus, played by Jonathan Roumie, invites Matthew to become one of his disciples. Simon Peter, already a disciple, registers his fierce objection. Matthew is a tax collector, who were viewed as tools of Roman authorities, often dishonest and abusive. They were therefore treated as traitors and outcasts by other Jews.
“I don’t get it,” Simon Peter says to Jesus about his decision to invite Matthew, to which Jesus responds, “You didn’t get it when I chose you, either.”
“But this is different,” Simon Peter answers. “I’m not a tax collector.” At which point Jesus lets Simon Peter know things aren’t going to be quite what his followers expected.
First-century Christians weren’t prepared for what a truly radical and radically inclusive figure Jesus was, and neither are today’s Christians. We want to tame and domesticate who he was, but Jesus’ life and ministry don’t really allow for it. He shattered barrier after barrier.
One example is Jesus’ encounter, in the fourth chapter of the gospel of John, with the Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus and the woman talked about Jesus being the Messiah, why he was even deigning to talk with her, and the unnamed woman’s past and present, which she initially sought to hide from Jesus. (It included her five previous husbands, according to the account in John, and the fact that “the one whom you now have is not your husband.”) Yet not a word of condemnation passed the lips of Jesus; the woman felt heard, understood, cared for. Jesus treated her, in the words of one commentator, “with a magnetic dignity and respect.”
The encounter with Jesus transformed her life; after it the woman at the well became “the first woman preacher in Christian history,” proclaiming Jesus to be the savior of the world to her community, according to the New Testament scholar Kenneth Bailey.
This story is a striking example of Jesus’ rejection of conventional religious and cultural thinking — in this case because Jesus, a man, was talking earnestly to a woman in a world in which women were often demeaned and treated as second-class citizens; and because Jesus, a Jew, was talking to a Samaritan, who were despised by the Jews for reasons going back centuries. According to Professor Bailey, “A Samaritan woman and her community are sought out and welcomed by Jesus. In the process, ancient racial, theological and historical barriers are breached. His message and his community are for all.”
This happened time and again with Jesus. He touched lepers and healed a woman who had a constant flow of menstrual blood, both of whom were considered impure; forgave a woman “who lived a sinful life” and told her to “go in peace,” healed a paralytic and a blind man, people thought to be worthless and useless. And as Jesus was being crucified, he told the penitent thief on the cross next to him, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”
Jesus was repeatedly attacked for hanging out with the wrong crowd and recruited his disciples from the lower rungs of society.
And Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan, a story about a man who helps a wounded traveler on the road to Jericho, made the hero of the story not an influential priest, not a person of social rank or privilege but a hated foreigner.
For Christians, the incarnation is a story of God, in the person of Jesus, participating in the human drama. And in that drama Jesus was most drawn to the forsaken and despised, the marginalized, those who had stumbled and fallen. He was beloved by them, even as he was targeted and eventually killed by the politically and religiously powerful, who viewed Jesus as a grave threat to their dominance.
Over the course of my faith journey, I have wondered: Why was a hallmark of Jesus’s ministry intimacy with and the inclusion of the unwanted and the outcast, men and women living in the shadow of society, more likely to be dismissed than noticed, more likely to be mocked than revered?
Part of the explanation surely has to do with the belief in the imago Dei, that Jesus sees indelible dignity and inestimable worth in every person, even “the least of these.” If no one else would esteem them, Jesus would.
Among the people who best articulated this ethic was Abraham Lincoln, who in a 1858 speech in Lewiston, Ill., in which he explained the true meaning of the Declaration of Independence, said, “Nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on, and degraded, and imbruted by its fellows.”
Yet another reason for Jesus’ connection with outcasts undoubtedly had to do with his compassion and empathy, his desire to relieve their pain and lift the soul-crushing shame that accompanies being a social pariah and an untouchable.
But that is hardly the only reason. Jesus modeled inclusion and solidarity with the “unclean” and marginalized not only for their sake but for the sake of the powerful and the privileged and for the good of the whole.
Jesus must have understood that we human beings battle with exclusion, self-righteousness and arrogance, and have a quick trigger finger when it comes to judging others. Jesus knew how easily we could fall into the trap of turning “the other” — those of other races, ethnicities, classes, genders and nations — into enemies. We place loyalty to the tribe over compassion and human connection. We view differences as threatening; the result is we become isolated, rigid in our thinking, harsh and unforgiving.
Jesus clearly believed that outcasts had a lot to teach the privileged and the powerful, including the virtues of humility and the vice of supreme certitude. Rather than seeing God exclusively as a moral taskmaster, Jesus understood that the weak and dispossessed often experience God in a different way — as a dispenser of grace, a source of comfort, a redeemer. They see the world, and God, through a different prism than do the powerful and the proud. The lowly in the world offer a corrective to the spiritual astigmatisms that develop among the rest of us.
It’s easy for us to look back 20 centuries and see how religious authorities were too severe and unforgiving in how they treated the outcasts of their time. The wisest question those of us who are Christians could ask ourselves isn’t why we are so much more humane and enlightened than they were; rather, it is to ask ourselves who the modern outcasts are and whether we’re mistreating them. Who are the tax collectors of our era, the people we despise but whom Jesus would welcome, those around whom are we determined to build a “dividing wall of hostility,” to use the imagery of the Apostle Paul?
“How Christians, including me, responded to the AIDS crisis in the ’80s haunts me,” my longtime friend Scott Dudley, senior pastor of Bellevue Presbyterian Church in Bellevue, Wash., recently told me. “Had we, like the first Christians, cared first and cared most for modern day ‘plague’ victims, I think we’d be in a whole different conversation with the L.G.B.T.Q. community. We may still have significant differences of opinion. However, I believe the dialogue would be one of more mutual respect, and I believe the L.G.B.T.Q. community would feel less afraid of the wounds Christians can inflict.” But even if the conversation were not different, as Scott knows, caring first and caring most for those victims of a plague would have been the right thing to do.
No society and no religious faith can live without moral rules. Jesus wasn’t an antinomian, one who believes that Christians, because they are saved by grace, are not bound to religious laws. But he understood that what ultimately changes people’s lives are relationships rather than rule books, mercy rather than moral demands.
Jesus’ teachings are so challenging, so distinct from normal human reactions and behaviors, that we constantly have to renew our commitment to them. Every generation of Christians need to think through how his example applies to the times in which they live. We need our sensibilities to align more with his. Otherwise, we drift into self-righteousness and legalism, even to the point that we corrupt the very institution, the church, which was created to worship him and to love others.
The lesson from Jesus’ life and ministry is that understanding people’s stories and struggles requires much more time and effort than condemning them, but it is vastly more rewarding. And the lesson of Christmas and the incarnation, at least for those of us of the Christian faith, is that all of us were once outcasts, broken yet loved, and worth reaching out to and redeeming.
If God did that for us, why do we find it so hard to do it for each other?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/24/opin ... 778d3e6de3
The ancient religious practice of 'chalking the door' on the rise
Gabriella Swerling
The Telegraph Wed, January 6, 2021, 9:21 AM CST
A mysterious series of letters and numbers are appearing on the door frames of houses across the country.
It may look like a string of code, or a particularly complicated scientific equation, but those worrying that the end is nigh, fear not – this is merely the resurrection of a centuries-old Christian tradition, currently being touted as ‘Holy graffiti’.
The trend for ‘chalking the door’ – a blessing which is believed to have originated in, and spread from, Central Europe at the end of the Middle Ages – has seen an uptake in recent weeks as Britons look for a sense of community in a bid to lift spirits.
Those partaking in the trend chalk their doors with the names or initials of the three wise men, or Magi, and the numerals of the New Year, connected with a series of crosses.
The initials C, M, and B commemorate the Magi (Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar), but also stand for the Latin prayer-request Christus Mansionem Benedicat: “May Christ bless this house.”
In this way, this year doors are being marked with the commemoration: 20+C+M+B+21.
The so-called ‘Holy graffiti’ has seen huge growth in England amid Covid-19 restrictions as Christians use the chalk to mark their doorway in a traditional Epiphany celebration.
Rev Arwen Folkes, the Rector of St Peter’s in East Blatchington, Seaford, East Sussex, said she began the tradition in her parish last year, but said that this year it has become particularly poignant.
“The tradition of chalking the door was new to my parish, but last year I offered it for those who might appreciate it,” she said. “People did look at me slightly bemused, but lo and behold this pandemic comes and I can’t tell you the comfort this has brought to people.
“In January 2020 none of us knew how profoundly important reviving the tradition of blessing and chalking one's home would prove to be.
“Those little numbers and letters on the entrance became a reminder of faith and strength for the year that was about to unfold on us.”
This year the Rev Folkes has made bags filled with mini-chalk, a prayer, and an explainer for people to use at home.
“There is a huge sense of relief, perhaps even joy, at seeing the way in which people have taken this blessing from the church to their own doorsteps,” she added.
“You can walk around the parish and see around 50 houses that have this blessing on the door.”
“What a lovely and significant tradition for us to embrace at a time of such worry and uncertainty.”
Her parishioners, Kay Blackburn, a 77-year-old retired history of art lecturer, and her husband, Keith, 77, a retired civil servant, chalked their door last year for the first time, but said that this year the trend is more significant than ever.
“We thought it was such a lovely idea to bless your house,” Mrs Blackburn said. “It also gives you an opportunity to think about the role of the Three Kings and that they followed a star, and how we all have to follow our own star. It’s quite a deep thing.”
“We’re about to go and deliver some chalks to people who are unable to collect them themselves. We can still see the chalk from last year on some of the houses, which is so lovely.
“This is just such a difficult time for everybody, with all this uncertainty, and everyone is missing their family and friends, and it’s not like you can pop round for a cup of tea, so the chalk offers a bit of comfort, even if you’re not a churchgoer.”
On or near the feast of the Epiphany, a Christian feast day that celebrates the revelation of God incarnate as Jesus Christ, the tradition has been to ask God’s blessing on homes and mark the door post with chalks that have been blessed for that purpose.
However, the tradition is still new to many Christians.
Rev Fergus Butler-Gallie of Holy Trinity, Sloane Square, in the Diocese of London said: "I had seen maybe a decade ago chalking the door in the Czech Republic but never in England. Now it is everywhere.
"People are more confident in these external expressions of faith. They make people ask what the chalking means and is an informal 'conversation starter' which can actually be a gateway to faith."
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/an ... 37845.html
Gabriella Swerling
The Telegraph Wed, January 6, 2021, 9:21 AM CST
A mysterious series of letters and numbers are appearing on the door frames of houses across the country.
It may look like a string of code, or a particularly complicated scientific equation, but those worrying that the end is nigh, fear not – this is merely the resurrection of a centuries-old Christian tradition, currently being touted as ‘Holy graffiti’.
The trend for ‘chalking the door’ – a blessing which is believed to have originated in, and spread from, Central Europe at the end of the Middle Ages – has seen an uptake in recent weeks as Britons look for a sense of community in a bid to lift spirits.
Those partaking in the trend chalk their doors with the names or initials of the three wise men, or Magi, and the numerals of the New Year, connected with a series of crosses.
The initials C, M, and B commemorate the Magi (Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar), but also stand for the Latin prayer-request Christus Mansionem Benedicat: “May Christ bless this house.”
In this way, this year doors are being marked with the commemoration: 20+C+M+B+21.
The so-called ‘Holy graffiti’ has seen huge growth in England amid Covid-19 restrictions as Christians use the chalk to mark their doorway in a traditional Epiphany celebration.
Rev Arwen Folkes, the Rector of St Peter’s in East Blatchington, Seaford, East Sussex, said she began the tradition in her parish last year, but said that this year it has become particularly poignant.
“The tradition of chalking the door was new to my parish, but last year I offered it for those who might appreciate it,” she said. “People did look at me slightly bemused, but lo and behold this pandemic comes and I can’t tell you the comfort this has brought to people.
“In January 2020 none of us knew how profoundly important reviving the tradition of blessing and chalking one's home would prove to be.
“Those little numbers and letters on the entrance became a reminder of faith and strength for the year that was about to unfold on us.”
This year the Rev Folkes has made bags filled with mini-chalk, a prayer, and an explainer for people to use at home.
“There is a huge sense of relief, perhaps even joy, at seeing the way in which people have taken this blessing from the church to their own doorsteps,” she added.
“You can walk around the parish and see around 50 houses that have this blessing on the door.”
“What a lovely and significant tradition for us to embrace at a time of such worry and uncertainty.”
Her parishioners, Kay Blackburn, a 77-year-old retired history of art lecturer, and her husband, Keith, 77, a retired civil servant, chalked their door last year for the first time, but said that this year the trend is more significant than ever.
“We thought it was such a lovely idea to bless your house,” Mrs Blackburn said. “It also gives you an opportunity to think about the role of the Three Kings and that they followed a star, and how we all have to follow our own star. It’s quite a deep thing.”
“We’re about to go and deliver some chalks to people who are unable to collect them themselves. We can still see the chalk from last year on some of the houses, which is so lovely.
“This is just such a difficult time for everybody, with all this uncertainty, and everyone is missing their family and friends, and it’s not like you can pop round for a cup of tea, so the chalk offers a bit of comfort, even if you’re not a churchgoer.”
On or near the feast of the Epiphany, a Christian feast day that celebrates the revelation of God incarnate as Jesus Christ, the tradition has been to ask God’s blessing on homes and mark the door post with chalks that have been blessed for that purpose.
However, the tradition is still new to many Christians.
Rev Fergus Butler-Gallie of Holy Trinity, Sloane Square, in the Diocese of London said: "I had seen maybe a decade ago chalking the door in the Czech Republic but never in England. Now it is everywhere.
"People are more confident in these external expressions of faith. They make people ask what the chalking means and is an informal 'conversation starter' which can actually be a gateway to faith."
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/an ... 37845.html
Christian girl chained up in cattle pen for five months after forced marriage to Muslim
Colin Freeman
The Telegraph Mon, January 18, 2021, 7:39 AM CST
Pakistani Christians protest against child marriage and forced conversion, in Karachi - Fareed Khan/AP
Pakistani Christians protest against child marriage and forced conversion, in Karachi - Fareed Khan/AP
A Christian girl has been taken into care in Pakistan after allegedly being abducted by a Muslim man who forced her to marry him and kept her chained up in a cattle pen.
The girl spent five months chained up in the pen in the yard of her 45-year-old captor's home, where she was forced to work all day clearing the animals’ dung, her family claim.
They said that when she was rescued by police last month, she had cuts on her ankles left by the shackles put on her by captor, who is also said to have raped her repeatedly.
The case has now been taken up by human rights groups, who say the family's initial complaint to police went ignored for three months. They claim that every year, hundreds of girls from Pakistan's Christian and Hindu minority groups are abducted and forced into Muslim marriage, with the justice system often turning a blind eye for fear of offending Islamic hardliners.
They say that Britain, which gives £302 million in aid last year to Pakistan, should insist that more is done to counter prejudices against minorities and challenge institutionalised tolerance of sexual abuse.
In November, The Telegraph reported on the case a 14-year-old girl allegedly kidnapped by a Muslim man who then used threats of violence to make her sign false papers consenting to marriage.
When she escaped from his custody, a court initially ruled the marriage legal and returned her to her abductor's home. She is now in hiding, with the British charity Aid to the Church in Need petitioning Boris Johnson to allow her to seek asylum in Britain.
Mr Johnson previously spoke out in favour of Britain granting asylum to Asia Bibi, a Christian woman who spent ten years on death row in Pakistan on trumped-up blasphemy charges.
The most recent case involves a girl from the city of Faisalabad, in Pakistan's eastern Punjab province, who was allegedly abducted near her home on June 12 last year. The Telegraph knows her identity but is not disclosing it to preserve her privacy.
In a statement to Aid to the Church in Need, her father said that she had been raped multiple times. He added: "[She] has told me she was treated like a slave. She was forced to work all day, cleaning filth in a cattle yard. 24-7, she was attached to a chain.”
He claimed that despite his repeated pleas, it was not until September that police allowed him to file an official complaint. One police officer allegedly called him a "chuhra," a term of derision for Christians that translates loosely as "latrine cleaner". Another officer, he said, threatened to register a blasphemy case against him.
He also disputed the findings of a court-commissioned medical report – carried out to assess whether the girl was underage – which found she was around 16 or 17. His daughter's birth record proved she was only 12, he said. The court has placed the child in a women’s refuge pending further inquiries.
John Pontifex, of Aid to the Church in Need, which campaigns on behalf of persecuted Christians worldwide, said the case "called into question" the effectiveness of UK overseas aid.
"Pakistan has for many years been the top recipient of UK aid and the premise for it has been the need to tackle extremism, abuse of girls and people from minority faiths," he said. "Yet when push comes to shove, cases such as this show that Pakistan is doing very little both to help the victims and bring the culprits to justice."
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/ch ... 51787.html
Colin Freeman
The Telegraph Mon, January 18, 2021, 7:39 AM CST
Pakistani Christians protest against child marriage and forced conversion, in Karachi - Fareed Khan/AP
Pakistani Christians protest against child marriage and forced conversion, in Karachi - Fareed Khan/AP
A Christian girl has been taken into care in Pakistan after allegedly being abducted by a Muslim man who forced her to marry him and kept her chained up in a cattle pen.
The girl spent five months chained up in the pen in the yard of her 45-year-old captor's home, where she was forced to work all day clearing the animals’ dung, her family claim.
They said that when she was rescued by police last month, she had cuts on her ankles left by the shackles put on her by captor, who is also said to have raped her repeatedly.
The case has now been taken up by human rights groups, who say the family's initial complaint to police went ignored for three months. They claim that every year, hundreds of girls from Pakistan's Christian and Hindu minority groups are abducted and forced into Muslim marriage, with the justice system often turning a blind eye for fear of offending Islamic hardliners.
They say that Britain, which gives £302 million in aid last year to Pakistan, should insist that more is done to counter prejudices against minorities and challenge institutionalised tolerance of sexual abuse.
In November, The Telegraph reported on the case a 14-year-old girl allegedly kidnapped by a Muslim man who then used threats of violence to make her sign false papers consenting to marriage.
When she escaped from his custody, a court initially ruled the marriage legal and returned her to her abductor's home. She is now in hiding, with the British charity Aid to the Church in Need petitioning Boris Johnson to allow her to seek asylum in Britain.
Mr Johnson previously spoke out in favour of Britain granting asylum to Asia Bibi, a Christian woman who spent ten years on death row in Pakistan on trumped-up blasphemy charges.
The most recent case involves a girl from the city of Faisalabad, in Pakistan's eastern Punjab province, who was allegedly abducted near her home on June 12 last year. The Telegraph knows her identity but is not disclosing it to preserve her privacy.
In a statement to Aid to the Church in Need, her father said that she had been raped multiple times. He added: "[She] has told me she was treated like a slave. She was forced to work all day, cleaning filth in a cattle yard. 24-7, she was attached to a chain.”
He claimed that despite his repeated pleas, it was not until September that police allowed him to file an official complaint. One police officer allegedly called him a "chuhra," a term of derision for Christians that translates loosely as "latrine cleaner". Another officer, he said, threatened to register a blasphemy case against him.
He also disputed the findings of a court-commissioned medical report – carried out to assess whether the girl was underage – which found she was around 16 or 17. His daughter's birth record proved she was only 12, he said. The court has placed the child in a women’s refuge pending further inquiries.
John Pontifex, of Aid to the Church in Need, which campaigns on behalf of persecuted Christians worldwide, said the case "called into question" the effectiveness of UK overseas aid.
"Pakistan has for many years been the top recipient of UK aid and the premise for it has been the need to tackle extremism, abuse of girls and people from minority faiths," he said. "Yet when push comes to shove, cases such as this show that Pakistan is doing very little both to help the victims and bring the culprits to justice."
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/ch ... 51787.html
Can you tell the story of Christianity through its churches?
Peter Stanford
The Telegraph Sat, January 16, 2021, 9:45 AM
Hagia Sophia in Istanbul - Muhammed Enes Yildirim/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Hagia Sophia in Istanbul - Muhammed Enes Yildirim/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
The closure of some churches during the Covid emergency, and restrictions placed on entry to others, has reminded even agnostics that, although fewer and fewer now attend church regularly, they are something we might just miss if they weren’t there. Yet, the reality remains that in more normal times, especially in secular Europe, these historic buildings are often seen as at best museums, without any great symbolic or political importance any more.
Not in one corner of Europe, though. Last summer, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, announced that Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, which spent its first thousand years as a Christian church, then became a mosque, and more recently a museum, was once again to become a place of worship for Muslims. This latest twist in its chequered history is in some ways unsurprising, explains Allan Doig, Anglican chaplain, art and architecture historian at the University of Oxford and author of this ambitious study, since Hagia Sophia was always meant to be “a statement of power”. The original church – built by the Roman Emperor Constantine on a massive promontory overlooking the Bosphorus – was intended first and foremost as a symbol of divinely sanctioned imperial power in his new capital city. When it was burnt down during riots in 532, his successor Justinian I wanted something even bigger to bolster his authority, so much so that he put up what remained the world’s largest cathedral for the next thousand years. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the city’s new Ottoman rulers signalled their arrival by covering up the mosaics of Mary and her child Jesus, adding four minarets around its peerless dome, and declaring Hagia Sophia a mosque.
And then in 1935, as he consciously swept away that Ottoman past with his new secular Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk pointedly transformed the building into a museum. By so publicly unpicking Atatürk’s legacy now, the populist Erdoğan is therefore simply riding the wheel of history, using Hagia Sophia to position himself as the champion of a broader Islamic “renaissance”, to the evident delight of his supporters.
This tangled tale is just one of 12 that Doig tells in his well-illustrated tour of the Christian world’s greatest landmarks of the base, earthly instincts that are intertwined in such heavenly buildings. All the obvious candidates are there, starting with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, reputedly on the spot where Jesus died on the cross of Calvary and rose again. Built in the fourth century as a monument to the Christian claim to a city regarded as holy by three great faiths simultaneously, its current structure dates back to the Crusader period.
With St Peter’s in Rome, Doig moves closer to our own times by examining the motives of another strongman, Mussolini, who in the Thirties, after he had made peace between Italy and the Vatican, brutally demolished the narrow, crowded streets of the Borgo that had led up from the River Tiber and disgorged awe-struck pilgrims into the sweeping embrace of Bernini’s colonnade in front of St Peter’s. The broad, grand artery of the Via della Conciliazione he built in its place, leading to the mother church of Catholicism, was Mussolini claiming that his rule was somehow blessed or ordained from on high.
Beyond the usual suspects, more modest and less familiar church buildings are included in Doig’s argument, like God’s House at Ewelme in Oxfordshire. Established in 1437 by Chaucer’s granddaughter, Alice, and her husband, William de la Pole, later chief adviser to Henry VI, it was typical of a taste in the period for combining a school for local children and an almshouse of the local poor – both laudable and Godly projects – with a chapel suitable for such a beneficent but grand family. Faith and worldly riches could then sit easily side by side in one building.
There is a strong closing chapter on the post-war Coventry Cathedral, rising from the ashes of its predecessor as both symbol of peace and of the Church’s role in bringing it to the modern world. But overall this is a book that underdelivers on the lofty promise made by its title. It is at best a patchy and partial history of the global Christian church. The cast list is too short for such a universal claim, with Luther’s Reformation hardly meriting a mention, despite its profound impact on the way churches were arranged and decorated.
What it lacks most, though, are engaging, descriptive passages. Doig has impeccable artistic and architectural pedigree, and he has clearly visited all these churches, but for a book about places, there is oddly little sense of place. He fails, except in passing, to connect the often overwhelming amount of detail he gives about history and site with a picture of what these churches look like inside and outside.
The result is that, inadvertently, he does make most of his subjects feel like museums – at least I assume, since he is a priest, that it is inadvertent. Yet even the humblest English village church is potentially a living, breathing treasure house on our doorsteps, whose origins and trappings reveal not just the preoccupations of those who once worshipped there; they also tell us something about where we come from and who we are now.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/lifesty ... 45995.html
Peter Stanford
The Telegraph Sat, January 16, 2021, 9:45 AM
Hagia Sophia in Istanbul - Muhammed Enes Yildirim/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Hagia Sophia in Istanbul - Muhammed Enes Yildirim/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
The closure of some churches during the Covid emergency, and restrictions placed on entry to others, has reminded even agnostics that, although fewer and fewer now attend church regularly, they are something we might just miss if they weren’t there. Yet, the reality remains that in more normal times, especially in secular Europe, these historic buildings are often seen as at best museums, without any great symbolic or political importance any more.
Not in one corner of Europe, though. Last summer, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, announced that Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, which spent its first thousand years as a Christian church, then became a mosque, and more recently a museum, was once again to become a place of worship for Muslims. This latest twist in its chequered history is in some ways unsurprising, explains Allan Doig, Anglican chaplain, art and architecture historian at the University of Oxford and author of this ambitious study, since Hagia Sophia was always meant to be “a statement of power”. The original church – built by the Roman Emperor Constantine on a massive promontory overlooking the Bosphorus – was intended first and foremost as a symbol of divinely sanctioned imperial power in his new capital city. When it was burnt down during riots in 532, his successor Justinian I wanted something even bigger to bolster his authority, so much so that he put up what remained the world’s largest cathedral for the next thousand years. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the city’s new Ottoman rulers signalled their arrival by covering up the mosaics of Mary and her child Jesus, adding four minarets around its peerless dome, and declaring Hagia Sophia a mosque.
And then in 1935, as he consciously swept away that Ottoman past with his new secular Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk pointedly transformed the building into a museum. By so publicly unpicking Atatürk’s legacy now, the populist Erdoğan is therefore simply riding the wheel of history, using Hagia Sophia to position himself as the champion of a broader Islamic “renaissance”, to the evident delight of his supporters.
This tangled tale is just one of 12 that Doig tells in his well-illustrated tour of the Christian world’s greatest landmarks of the base, earthly instincts that are intertwined in such heavenly buildings. All the obvious candidates are there, starting with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, reputedly on the spot where Jesus died on the cross of Calvary and rose again. Built in the fourth century as a monument to the Christian claim to a city regarded as holy by three great faiths simultaneously, its current structure dates back to the Crusader period.
With St Peter’s in Rome, Doig moves closer to our own times by examining the motives of another strongman, Mussolini, who in the Thirties, after he had made peace between Italy and the Vatican, brutally demolished the narrow, crowded streets of the Borgo that had led up from the River Tiber and disgorged awe-struck pilgrims into the sweeping embrace of Bernini’s colonnade in front of St Peter’s. The broad, grand artery of the Via della Conciliazione he built in its place, leading to the mother church of Catholicism, was Mussolini claiming that his rule was somehow blessed or ordained from on high.
Beyond the usual suspects, more modest and less familiar church buildings are included in Doig’s argument, like God’s House at Ewelme in Oxfordshire. Established in 1437 by Chaucer’s granddaughter, Alice, and her husband, William de la Pole, later chief adviser to Henry VI, it was typical of a taste in the period for combining a school for local children and an almshouse of the local poor – both laudable and Godly projects – with a chapel suitable for such a beneficent but grand family. Faith and worldly riches could then sit easily side by side in one building.
There is a strong closing chapter on the post-war Coventry Cathedral, rising from the ashes of its predecessor as both symbol of peace and of the Church’s role in bringing it to the modern world. But overall this is a book that underdelivers on the lofty promise made by its title. It is at best a patchy and partial history of the global Christian church. The cast list is too short for such a universal claim, with Luther’s Reformation hardly meriting a mention, despite its profound impact on the way churches were arranged and decorated.
What it lacks most, though, are engaging, descriptive passages. Doig has impeccable artistic and architectural pedigree, and he has clearly visited all these churches, but for a book about places, there is oddly little sense of place. He fails, except in passing, to connect the often overwhelming amount of detail he gives about history and site with a picture of what these churches look like inside and outside.
The result is that, inadvertently, he does make most of his subjects feel like museums – at least I assume, since he is a priest, that it is inadvertent. Yet even the humblest English village church is potentially a living, breathing treasure house on our doorsteps, whose origins and trappings reveal not just the preoccupations of those who once worshipped there; they also tell us something about where we come from and who we are now.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/lifesty ... 45995.html
By Lila MacLellan
Quartz at Work reporter
August 28, 2020
As a child in New York City, Steven Roberts attended a predominantly Black church where—as is common in Black churches across the US—God and Jesus were depicted as white men.
Being watched and policed by a white Jesus was confusing, says Roberts, now an assistant professor of psychology at Stanford University and co-director of its Social Concepts Lab. Perhaps it was partly his pastor’s framing of God as a judge, he tells Quartz, but the contrast between the Black congregants and the all-seeing white man who featured prominently in the room, high and mighty, made him feel uncomfortable.
Many Black Americans have made similar observations. In a BBC interview in 1971, Muhammad Ali famously cataloged all the questionable “white” cultural symbols—including angels, the men in Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, and a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Jesus—that he would ask his mother about when he was a boy. The writer James Baldwin spoke of his community being victimized by “an alabaster Christ.” And more recently, Black Lives Matter activists have called to remove images of a white, Eurocentric Jesus—which are counterfactual—as intentional symbols of white supremacy in the US.
Scholars have documented how those depictions have supported a white supremacist agenda. And they’re beginning to investigate how the whiteness of divine images has impacted the mental landscape for Black Americans. Recent research led by Simon Howard, a psychology professor at Marquette University, suggested that white religious icons are linked to subtle anti-Black and more marked pro-white sentiment among Black Americans who have been exposed to those images.
Roberts is continuing that line of investigation. He led a team of psychologists for a study published this year in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that investigated a related question: How does the race and gender assigned to a metaphysical God relate to real life ideas about who belongs in positions of leadership? And how might God’s whiteness contribute to overwhelmingly white and male corporate leadership?
They discovered that among US Christians and non-Christians alike, and among adults and children, the more people see God as white, the more likely they are to favor a white candidate for a corporate managerial role.
Roberts and his team are not suggesting that, on its own, the widely viewed image of a white God explains the grossly unequal racial representation in US corporate leadership. The reasons for that are myriad. But their results indicate that the widespread imagining of God as white has helped to build and protect the rigid racial hierarchy that exists in organizations.
“Racism is not about bad apples or people who hate other people,” says Roberts. “Racism is embedded in our images and in our school systems, it’s the air that we breathe. We’re all affected and infected by it.”
Western culture has wallpapered people’s psyches with images of a bearded supreme figure who is white and masculine. The effects of that conditioning on how we choose managers and CEOs need to be made visible.
“Draw a picture of God”
Roberts’ paper, co-authored by other Stanford researchers and psychologists from Vanderbilt and California Polytechnic State University, involved several studies that tried to get to heart of the dynamics between racialized leaders and religious figures.
First, controlling for racist, sexist, and conservative belief systems, the psychologists found that white Christians were indeed more likely to see God as white, whereas Black Christians were more likely to see God as Black. When asked to select candidates for a hypothetical leadership role at an invented company, participants who saw God as white were more likely to choose a white man for the role. But if someone saw God as Black, they were more likely to select a Black candidate.
“The extent to which God is conceptualized as White, which may be a deeply rooted intuition, predicted increased ratings of White candidates, even among Black Christians,” the study authors write.
For another study, the psychologists recruited Christian children of various races and asked them to draw pictures of God. Separately, they presented the kids with photos showing the faces of Black men and women, and followed up: “There are lots and lots of people at the place where I work,” the psychologists said. “But only three of them are bosses. Which three do you think are bosses?”
Both Black and white children depicted God as male and white, suggesting that this vision of God forms early in a person’s development, says Roberts, and is only later adjusted to match their in-group. And similarly to the adults who saw God as white in the first study, the children were not partial to Black faces as contenders for “boss.”
In brighter news, the children were just as likely to select women as men as bosses. For children, the psychologists surmised, God’s race was more relevant than God’s gender. Sadly, however, the first few studies all supported the hypothesis that the more adults and children see God as white, the more inclined they are to view white people as the best fit for a managerial role.
Who should rule the planet Zombot?
Roberts and his team also wanted to explore the association between God’s image and a leader’s physical attributes in isolation, outside of a strictly Christian context. What would happen if God had an entirely different identity? Asking people to picture God as a different race or gender was ruled out, so they dreamed up a fictional planet instead.
The planet used in their study, called Zombot, is inhabited by two peoples, Hibbles and Glerks. These peoples shared one supreme being, Liakbor, who “created everything on Zombot, including the water and lands, the grass and trees, and all of the creatures that live on it.”
Even on planet Zombot, the psychologists found that US Christian adults believed that Hibbles should rule when Liakbor was a Hibble, and that Glerks should rule when Liakbor was a Glerk. Neither group was expected to take control when the creator was a generic alien.
The psychological associations participants made between “God” and the beings that looked like God also worked in reverse: When shown images of one group—either Hibbles or Glerks—living in a fine castle on Zombot, participants assumed that Liakbor was of the same Zombotian extraction as that privileged tribe.
Roberts and his team then recruited 51 preschoolers of various backgrounds who had never heard of God at all and introduced them to Zombot. Like the adults, the four and five-year-olds in that study used “information about a fictional God to make inferences about who should be in leadership,” Roberts says. “It was one of the more important findings because it shows that this is not a Christian thing. It’s a psychological thing about, ‘What identity do you attribute to God?’”
What is going on?
Simon Howard at Marquette University—who was not involved in Roberts’ study, and also remembers being puzzled by a white Jesus in his childhood—calls the research “phenomenal.”
“It’s pretty compelling evidence when you take all his studies together and the interpretation is that the way in which people imagine or conceptualize deities does influence who they think should be in power,” he told Quartz.
Still, Roberts and his co-authors acknowledge the study’s limitations: It focuses on US culture and Christianity, and future research may want to pose the same questions in multiple cultures and among other faith groups. They ask: “Does the conception of God as a White man emerge among racial minorities in predominately European contexts, such as Germany and Sweden? What about in predominantly Black and Brown contexts with a heavy Christian influence, such as Ghana and Mexico?”
Howard, too, believes the color of God’s skin in famous paintings like Warner Sallman’s Head of Christ, which has been reproduced a billion times all over the world, is “part of the story,” but not the full explanation for the racial hierarchy in American business. He sees the relationship as mostly indirect.
“When someone in power shares racial membership with God or a boss-like figure in our lives, people might be reluctant to question those individuals,” Howard proposes. “If this person is likening themselves as a God…and we’re not necessarily supposed to challenge authority or challenge God, then we might be less likely to challenge the white men who are in positions of power. And if they’re going unchallenged, they may maintain power.”
In hiring practices, he says, a societal bias towards white candidates might be explained by associating Godliness with whiteness, meaning “whiteness is either superior or more competent than blackness or non-whiteness.”
The very existence of a white-dominated hierarchy also reinforces the notion that God is white, as Roberts’ Zombot study would suggest. We’re stuck in a kind of self-perpetuating loop of racial oppression. Its existence is real and meaningful, the authors write, no matter why God’s race was deemed white in the public imagination in the first place.
How do we change?
In a delightful moment within the mostly discouraging project, Roberts was leading a group of researchers working with children when he learned just how open young minds could be. One of the psychologists asked a child, “What does a boss look like?” The kid pointed at Roberts.
“It was so cute to me because it highlighted that they didn’t really know what we were talking about,” Roberts says. “And they have such a flexible concept. I’m not a white guy, so that was fun.”
But by adulthood, he says, “it’s just a whole different situation.”
Indeed, in another one of his studies, an adult participant who was shown a painting featuring a Black, female deity by the Afro-Cuban American artist Harmonia Rosales, left this written response for the researchers: “The artist is challenging the notion that #1 God is a man, #2 God is White. If I were at an art gallery and saw this painting, I would walk by shaking my head as it is just one more politically correct recreation of who God is. Disgusting! Oh, and I say this as an African American woman.”
That was shocking, says Roberts. It was also sobering evidence about how adults might reject or even be repulsed by information that challenges their long-established vision of God’s human form. To address racial inequities in leadership by asking people to rethink God’s skin color or gender might not be fruitful.
Addressing this issue early in a person’s life, when children are still forming their ideas about the world, might be the best way to disrupt the pattern of mental model making. “My belief is that kids don’t come into the world with this belief that there’s a white man floating in the sky. That’s something you learn,” says Roberts, who also teaches a popular undergraduate class called How to Make a Racist. “Nobody enters into the world wanting to believe that some people are more deserving or better than others; that’s something that people learn and pick up on the way, and that has consequences,” he says.
The study offers “clear evidence to suggest that if kids don’t have that belief in mind, they’re not going to make that inference that whoever God is, whoever shares that identity on Earth is actually the best,” he continues. “But the problem is: how do we, in practice, prevent them from getting that concept?”
“Maybe with this research and other work, teachers, educators, everyone can start to think: How can we prevent those things being learned? How do we prevent ourselves from even teaching those things? How do we change?”
Simon also argues for rethinking the religious imagery children are exposed to in the same way that Americans are now questioning Confederate symbols. “A Confederate statue conveys a certain meaning, and if people think that they should come down based on what they represent, then why aren’t we having that same conversation about statues and images of Jesus being portrayed as white?” he asks. “We’re not ready as a society to have that conversation, but it’s one that should be had, because—and I say this without any reservation—I think images of Christ portrayed as white are white supremacy in plain sight.”
The members of Roberts’ Social Concepts Lab are also studying interracial relationships and racism within science. The findings of their work, Roberts says, doesn’t lay blame for racist outcomes with one group or even bad intentions. “Nobody is saying that the church is bad or this kind of relationship is bad,” he explains, “We’re just saying, ‘Hey look, race and racism in our images and our culture has implications for how we behave. It has implications for who we elect to leadership positions as implications for who we fall in love with.”
Black ministers who have been talking for decades about how damaging it is to portray God as white have written to Roberts with notes of gratitude. “They’ve been trying to preach to their congregations and to people about how these images can be damaging,” he says, “but no one ever believed them.” Now they have the data as proof.
https://qz.com/work/1893701/how-white-d ... yptr=yahoo
Quartz at Work reporter
August 28, 2020
As a child in New York City, Steven Roberts attended a predominantly Black church where—as is common in Black churches across the US—God and Jesus were depicted as white men.
Being watched and policed by a white Jesus was confusing, says Roberts, now an assistant professor of psychology at Stanford University and co-director of its Social Concepts Lab. Perhaps it was partly his pastor’s framing of God as a judge, he tells Quartz, but the contrast between the Black congregants and the all-seeing white man who featured prominently in the room, high and mighty, made him feel uncomfortable.
Many Black Americans have made similar observations. In a BBC interview in 1971, Muhammad Ali famously cataloged all the questionable “white” cultural symbols—including angels, the men in Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, and a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Jesus—that he would ask his mother about when he was a boy. The writer James Baldwin spoke of his community being victimized by “an alabaster Christ.” And more recently, Black Lives Matter activists have called to remove images of a white, Eurocentric Jesus—which are counterfactual—as intentional symbols of white supremacy in the US.
Scholars have documented how those depictions have supported a white supremacist agenda. And they’re beginning to investigate how the whiteness of divine images has impacted the mental landscape for Black Americans. Recent research led by Simon Howard, a psychology professor at Marquette University, suggested that white religious icons are linked to subtle anti-Black and more marked pro-white sentiment among Black Americans who have been exposed to those images.
Roberts is continuing that line of investigation. He led a team of psychologists for a study published this year in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that investigated a related question: How does the race and gender assigned to a metaphysical God relate to real life ideas about who belongs in positions of leadership? And how might God’s whiteness contribute to overwhelmingly white and male corporate leadership?
They discovered that among US Christians and non-Christians alike, and among adults and children, the more people see God as white, the more likely they are to favor a white candidate for a corporate managerial role.
Roberts and his team are not suggesting that, on its own, the widely viewed image of a white God explains the grossly unequal racial representation in US corporate leadership. The reasons for that are myriad. But their results indicate that the widespread imagining of God as white has helped to build and protect the rigid racial hierarchy that exists in organizations.
“Racism is not about bad apples or people who hate other people,” says Roberts. “Racism is embedded in our images and in our school systems, it’s the air that we breathe. We’re all affected and infected by it.”
Western culture has wallpapered people’s psyches with images of a bearded supreme figure who is white and masculine. The effects of that conditioning on how we choose managers and CEOs need to be made visible.
“Draw a picture of God”
Roberts’ paper, co-authored by other Stanford researchers and psychologists from Vanderbilt and California Polytechnic State University, involved several studies that tried to get to heart of the dynamics between racialized leaders and religious figures.
First, controlling for racist, sexist, and conservative belief systems, the psychologists found that white Christians were indeed more likely to see God as white, whereas Black Christians were more likely to see God as Black. When asked to select candidates for a hypothetical leadership role at an invented company, participants who saw God as white were more likely to choose a white man for the role. But if someone saw God as Black, they were more likely to select a Black candidate.
“The extent to which God is conceptualized as White, which may be a deeply rooted intuition, predicted increased ratings of White candidates, even among Black Christians,” the study authors write.
For another study, the psychologists recruited Christian children of various races and asked them to draw pictures of God. Separately, they presented the kids with photos showing the faces of Black men and women, and followed up: “There are lots and lots of people at the place where I work,” the psychologists said. “But only three of them are bosses. Which three do you think are bosses?”
Both Black and white children depicted God as male and white, suggesting that this vision of God forms early in a person’s development, says Roberts, and is only later adjusted to match their in-group. And similarly to the adults who saw God as white in the first study, the children were not partial to Black faces as contenders for “boss.”
In brighter news, the children were just as likely to select women as men as bosses. For children, the psychologists surmised, God’s race was more relevant than God’s gender. Sadly, however, the first few studies all supported the hypothesis that the more adults and children see God as white, the more inclined they are to view white people as the best fit for a managerial role.
Who should rule the planet Zombot?
Roberts and his team also wanted to explore the association between God’s image and a leader’s physical attributes in isolation, outside of a strictly Christian context. What would happen if God had an entirely different identity? Asking people to picture God as a different race or gender was ruled out, so they dreamed up a fictional planet instead.
The planet used in their study, called Zombot, is inhabited by two peoples, Hibbles and Glerks. These peoples shared one supreme being, Liakbor, who “created everything on Zombot, including the water and lands, the grass and trees, and all of the creatures that live on it.”
Even on planet Zombot, the psychologists found that US Christian adults believed that Hibbles should rule when Liakbor was a Hibble, and that Glerks should rule when Liakbor was a Glerk. Neither group was expected to take control when the creator was a generic alien.
The psychological associations participants made between “God” and the beings that looked like God also worked in reverse: When shown images of one group—either Hibbles or Glerks—living in a fine castle on Zombot, participants assumed that Liakbor was of the same Zombotian extraction as that privileged tribe.
Roberts and his team then recruited 51 preschoolers of various backgrounds who had never heard of God at all and introduced them to Zombot. Like the adults, the four and five-year-olds in that study used “information about a fictional God to make inferences about who should be in leadership,” Roberts says. “It was one of the more important findings because it shows that this is not a Christian thing. It’s a psychological thing about, ‘What identity do you attribute to God?’”
What is going on?
Simon Howard at Marquette University—who was not involved in Roberts’ study, and also remembers being puzzled by a white Jesus in his childhood—calls the research “phenomenal.”
“It’s pretty compelling evidence when you take all his studies together and the interpretation is that the way in which people imagine or conceptualize deities does influence who they think should be in power,” he told Quartz.
Still, Roberts and his co-authors acknowledge the study’s limitations: It focuses on US culture and Christianity, and future research may want to pose the same questions in multiple cultures and among other faith groups. They ask: “Does the conception of God as a White man emerge among racial minorities in predominately European contexts, such as Germany and Sweden? What about in predominantly Black and Brown contexts with a heavy Christian influence, such as Ghana and Mexico?”
Howard, too, believes the color of God’s skin in famous paintings like Warner Sallman’s Head of Christ, which has been reproduced a billion times all over the world, is “part of the story,” but not the full explanation for the racial hierarchy in American business. He sees the relationship as mostly indirect.
“When someone in power shares racial membership with God or a boss-like figure in our lives, people might be reluctant to question those individuals,” Howard proposes. “If this person is likening themselves as a God…and we’re not necessarily supposed to challenge authority or challenge God, then we might be less likely to challenge the white men who are in positions of power. And if they’re going unchallenged, they may maintain power.”
In hiring practices, he says, a societal bias towards white candidates might be explained by associating Godliness with whiteness, meaning “whiteness is either superior or more competent than blackness or non-whiteness.”
The very existence of a white-dominated hierarchy also reinforces the notion that God is white, as Roberts’ Zombot study would suggest. We’re stuck in a kind of self-perpetuating loop of racial oppression. Its existence is real and meaningful, the authors write, no matter why God’s race was deemed white in the public imagination in the first place.
How do we change?
In a delightful moment within the mostly discouraging project, Roberts was leading a group of researchers working with children when he learned just how open young minds could be. One of the psychologists asked a child, “What does a boss look like?” The kid pointed at Roberts.
“It was so cute to me because it highlighted that they didn’t really know what we were talking about,” Roberts says. “And they have such a flexible concept. I’m not a white guy, so that was fun.”
But by adulthood, he says, “it’s just a whole different situation.”
Indeed, in another one of his studies, an adult participant who was shown a painting featuring a Black, female deity by the Afro-Cuban American artist Harmonia Rosales, left this written response for the researchers: “The artist is challenging the notion that #1 God is a man, #2 God is White. If I were at an art gallery and saw this painting, I would walk by shaking my head as it is just one more politically correct recreation of who God is. Disgusting! Oh, and I say this as an African American woman.”
That was shocking, says Roberts. It was also sobering evidence about how adults might reject or even be repulsed by information that challenges their long-established vision of God’s human form. To address racial inequities in leadership by asking people to rethink God’s skin color or gender might not be fruitful.
Addressing this issue early in a person’s life, when children are still forming their ideas about the world, might be the best way to disrupt the pattern of mental model making. “My belief is that kids don’t come into the world with this belief that there’s a white man floating in the sky. That’s something you learn,” says Roberts, who also teaches a popular undergraduate class called How to Make a Racist. “Nobody enters into the world wanting to believe that some people are more deserving or better than others; that’s something that people learn and pick up on the way, and that has consequences,” he says.
The study offers “clear evidence to suggest that if kids don’t have that belief in mind, they’re not going to make that inference that whoever God is, whoever shares that identity on Earth is actually the best,” he continues. “But the problem is: how do we, in practice, prevent them from getting that concept?”
“Maybe with this research and other work, teachers, educators, everyone can start to think: How can we prevent those things being learned? How do we prevent ourselves from even teaching those things? How do we change?”
Simon also argues for rethinking the religious imagery children are exposed to in the same way that Americans are now questioning Confederate symbols. “A Confederate statue conveys a certain meaning, and if people think that they should come down based on what they represent, then why aren’t we having that same conversation about statues and images of Jesus being portrayed as white?” he asks. “We’re not ready as a society to have that conversation, but it’s one that should be had, because—and I say this without any reservation—I think images of Christ portrayed as white are white supremacy in plain sight.”
The members of Roberts’ Social Concepts Lab are also studying interracial relationships and racism within science. The findings of their work, Roberts says, doesn’t lay blame for racist outcomes with one group or even bad intentions. “Nobody is saying that the church is bad or this kind of relationship is bad,” he explains, “We’re just saying, ‘Hey look, race and racism in our images and our culture has implications for how we behave. It has implications for who we elect to leadership positions as implications for who we fall in love with.”
Black ministers who have been talking for decades about how damaging it is to portray God as white have written to Roberts with notes of gratitude. “They’ve been trying to preach to their congregations and to people about how these images can be damaging,” he says, “but no one ever believed them.” Now they have the data as proof.
https://qz.com/work/1893701/how-white-d ... yptr=yahoo
THE BIBLE MAY BE STRANGER THAN YOU THINK … AND WHY IT MATTERS
Despite the Bible’s ubiquity, despite the Bible’s appearance as a book like any other on our twenty-first century shelves, despite its frequent citation in private and public discourse, the Bible regularly—on closer inspection—shatters our preconceptions and assumptions. This, I argue, is a very good thing for believers and non-believers alike.
We talk about the Bible and its contents as a simple straight-forward repository of instruction and inspiration. Yet it doesn’t take much close reading to see that the Bible is even, not uncommonly, at odds with itself. Consider, nowhere in the Bible is there a list enumerated one through ten and named “The Ten Commandments.” Think about that. Yet we regularly talk about the biblical Ten Commandments, as if they’re a single, clear-cut thing. We even debate posting them in public places. But of those biblical lists we call the Ten Commandments, there are at least two (arguably three) different versions in the Bible, and not every believer agrees how either one should be numbered (Exodus 20:1-14; Deuteronomy 5:6-18; arguably also Leviticus 19:1-36). What’s more, the only biblical list of laws that appears within English translations by the moniker “the Ten Commandments” is yet another list (now we’re up to four) and bears little resemblance to the others (Exodus 34:10-28).
I point this out not to exasperate but as one among many possible examples reminding all of us that the Bible actively resists literalistic application. On the contrary, the Bible demands of its readers equal measures of learning and humility, unfailingly applied. And that, I argue, is where the believing can start, if one is so inclined. It’s from that point, with that posture of engagement, the muscular application of mind and heart, that believers might encounter the Word of God and readers of other or no faiths can appreciate what an amazing book it is.
The Bible is so common in individual households, so frequently cited in public discourse that it’s easy to overlook and forget how very strange it is. For one thing, we talk about it as one thing. But there are actually several different Bibles. Among them is the Jewish Tanakh or Hebrew Bible, which is (arranged in a different order) either the whole or part (depending on which stripe of Christian we’re talking about) of a Christian Old Testament, which composes the bulk but not entirety of Christian Bibles, which also include a New Testament. So there’s that.
Indeed, besides that, there are several other things about the Bible (any Bible) that make it so unusual. To name a few: it’s actually a collection of books, some of which are themselves collections; it evolved over a long period of time (centuries), in terms of both the content of individual books and as a collection of books; the whole thing is really really old, so old that even the youngest parts of it come from times and places vastly different from today; the languages through which we’ve received it (with the exception of a little bit of Aramaic) are now dead, and few people who read the Bible have had the opportunity and wherewithal to learn those languages. (In other words, if you’re reading the Bible in a modern language, you’re reading a translation.) Finally, get this: we don’t have an original.
Usually, though, it’s the strange stuff within the Bible that gets people’s attention. If they’re paying attention. Hang on, the astute reader may say, having gotten only two pages in. Didn’t I just read about the creation of human beings? Why, then, am I reading that humans haven’t yet been created? Or: whaaa?! Angel-beings mating with human women who then bear hybrid half-gods? And should our dear reader get all the way through Leviticus and Numbers (God-bless-‘er) she would certainly ask: of the six hundred thirteen specific laws, did I miss all those about abortion (no, they’re not there); or, why do the one or two that might (or might not) have to do with homosexuality get so much attention when there are so many laws that we never hear anything about, laws vociferously condemning adultery, dictating food choices, and preoccupied with clothing and hygiene, for example? (And if our reader is indeed a “she,” might well ask if many of those laws apply to her as a woman, anyway, since its audience is presumed to be male.)
To list things in the Bible that might seem odd to a modern reader, believer or not, is far too great a task for this space. It’s too great a task even for A Most Peculiar Book, the whole book I wrote on the topic. But what’s most important is not so much to detail each of the Bible’s oddities—both what’s strange about the Good Book, and what’s strange in it—as it is first, simply to recognize them. This is no small thing.
After all, it’s human to assume that one should accept an authority’s words at face value, no matter what they are. Isn’t that what it means to be authoritative? The trouble here is manifold. For one thing, what exactly does the Bible say? I don’t mean to be coy with this question, but consider: if you’re reading the Bible in English (or Spanish, or Korean, or Hindi, or,… unless you’re reading biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, and koine Greek), you’re reading a translation. And if you’ve ever studied a foreign language, you know first-hand that every translation is necessarily an interpretation. There is no perfect one-to-one correspondence across languages. Translations can mislead, even without any ill intent.
For another thing, the Bible’s forms of text are themselves diverse and so demand different ways of reading. Consider: shouldn’t you read the dictates of a law differently than you do a work of poetry filled as it is with metaphors and innuendo, differently than you do a genealogy, differently than a symbols-saturated apocalyptic narrative? What’s more, some of the Bible’s texts are expressly at odds with each other. Among the most striking, both Isaiah and Micah prophesy a time when “they shall beat their swords into plowshares,” while Joel prophesies “they shall beat their plowshares into swords.” The book of Joshua concludes with the Israelites having gotten rid of all the Canaanites; the very next book, Judges, presumes the continued presence of Canaanites. Most disturbing to some readers are examples of unethical behavior modeled or even commanded by heroes, even by God. For example, at the end of the book(s) of Samuel, God incites David to commit an act deemed sinful. (Chronicles says that Satan incited the action.)
It’s important that we recognize and acknowledge what’s surprising, strange, and even disturbing about and in the Bible not as justification to dismiss it or otherwise consign it to the trash pile of obsolescence, certainly not as reason to criticize its believers for their belief. It’s important (especially for us believers) to note these oddities, because then we’re ready to take the Bible seriously. Which brings us to why it matters.
The Bible’s oddities demand that we bring both head and heart to any engagement with it. They’re there, whether we like it or not. I submit that it’s not only a question of how to make sense of what’s strange, but a clarion call by the Bible (a call by God herself, if you believe the Bible to be the Word of God), to think for ourselves. By its content alone, the Bible itself defies a so-called literal application. There’s too much within it that doesn’t make sense on the surface to our modern ears or is flatly at odds with itself.
Engaging the Bible, then, taking it seriously requires learning—not rote memorization or tacit acceptance of interpretations promoted by someone or another—but learning about the Bible’s development, about the historical and physical contexts out of which the books arose, took shape, and what their texts might have meant back then. Learning about the Bible in this way enables people better to interpret any particular text for themselves and place the implications within the context of the whole. Thinking for oneself like this requires the humility to submit to learning.
Otherwise, at best, what’s strange in and about the Bible are mere curiosities or nonsensical details to be ignored or dismissed with useless platitudes about God’s ways being inscrutable or the like. At worst, without any background knowledge or commitment to the kind of learning that illuminates context and enriches understanding (using one’s head), and without using one’s heart as a compassionate member of the human race on an earth we share, the Bible becomes simply one more weapon of hatred and destruction.
Notice how this kind of learning, this kind of thinking for ourselves, strips away arrogance and prepares a person to exercise precisely the admonition that thrums like a drumbeat throughout the Bible—to love God and to love others. Exactly what that means and how to do it surely merits a lifetime of open-hearted learning.
https://religiondispatches.org/the-bibl ... it-matters
Despite the Bible’s ubiquity, despite the Bible’s appearance as a book like any other on our twenty-first century shelves, despite its frequent citation in private and public discourse, the Bible regularly—on closer inspection—shatters our preconceptions and assumptions. This, I argue, is a very good thing for believers and non-believers alike.
We talk about the Bible and its contents as a simple straight-forward repository of instruction and inspiration. Yet it doesn’t take much close reading to see that the Bible is even, not uncommonly, at odds with itself. Consider, nowhere in the Bible is there a list enumerated one through ten and named “The Ten Commandments.” Think about that. Yet we regularly talk about the biblical Ten Commandments, as if they’re a single, clear-cut thing. We even debate posting them in public places. But of those biblical lists we call the Ten Commandments, there are at least two (arguably three) different versions in the Bible, and not every believer agrees how either one should be numbered (Exodus 20:1-14; Deuteronomy 5:6-18; arguably also Leviticus 19:1-36). What’s more, the only biblical list of laws that appears within English translations by the moniker “the Ten Commandments” is yet another list (now we’re up to four) and bears little resemblance to the others (Exodus 34:10-28).
I point this out not to exasperate but as one among many possible examples reminding all of us that the Bible actively resists literalistic application. On the contrary, the Bible demands of its readers equal measures of learning and humility, unfailingly applied. And that, I argue, is where the believing can start, if one is so inclined. It’s from that point, with that posture of engagement, the muscular application of mind and heart, that believers might encounter the Word of God and readers of other or no faiths can appreciate what an amazing book it is.
The Bible is so common in individual households, so frequently cited in public discourse that it’s easy to overlook and forget how very strange it is. For one thing, we talk about it as one thing. But there are actually several different Bibles. Among them is the Jewish Tanakh or Hebrew Bible, which is (arranged in a different order) either the whole or part (depending on which stripe of Christian we’re talking about) of a Christian Old Testament, which composes the bulk but not entirety of Christian Bibles, which also include a New Testament. So there’s that.
Indeed, besides that, there are several other things about the Bible (any Bible) that make it so unusual. To name a few: it’s actually a collection of books, some of which are themselves collections; it evolved over a long period of time (centuries), in terms of both the content of individual books and as a collection of books; the whole thing is really really old, so old that even the youngest parts of it come from times and places vastly different from today; the languages through which we’ve received it (with the exception of a little bit of Aramaic) are now dead, and few people who read the Bible have had the opportunity and wherewithal to learn those languages. (In other words, if you’re reading the Bible in a modern language, you’re reading a translation.) Finally, get this: we don’t have an original.
Usually, though, it’s the strange stuff within the Bible that gets people’s attention. If they’re paying attention. Hang on, the astute reader may say, having gotten only two pages in. Didn’t I just read about the creation of human beings? Why, then, am I reading that humans haven’t yet been created? Or: whaaa?! Angel-beings mating with human women who then bear hybrid half-gods? And should our dear reader get all the way through Leviticus and Numbers (God-bless-‘er) she would certainly ask: of the six hundred thirteen specific laws, did I miss all those about abortion (no, they’re not there); or, why do the one or two that might (or might not) have to do with homosexuality get so much attention when there are so many laws that we never hear anything about, laws vociferously condemning adultery, dictating food choices, and preoccupied with clothing and hygiene, for example? (And if our reader is indeed a “she,” might well ask if many of those laws apply to her as a woman, anyway, since its audience is presumed to be male.)
To list things in the Bible that might seem odd to a modern reader, believer or not, is far too great a task for this space. It’s too great a task even for A Most Peculiar Book, the whole book I wrote on the topic. But what’s most important is not so much to detail each of the Bible’s oddities—both what’s strange about the Good Book, and what’s strange in it—as it is first, simply to recognize them. This is no small thing.
After all, it’s human to assume that one should accept an authority’s words at face value, no matter what they are. Isn’t that what it means to be authoritative? The trouble here is manifold. For one thing, what exactly does the Bible say? I don’t mean to be coy with this question, but consider: if you’re reading the Bible in English (or Spanish, or Korean, or Hindi, or,… unless you’re reading biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, and koine Greek), you’re reading a translation. And if you’ve ever studied a foreign language, you know first-hand that every translation is necessarily an interpretation. There is no perfect one-to-one correspondence across languages. Translations can mislead, even without any ill intent.
For another thing, the Bible’s forms of text are themselves diverse and so demand different ways of reading. Consider: shouldn’t you read the dictates of a law differently than you do a work of poetry filled as it is with metaphors and innuendo, differently than you do a genealogy, differently than a symbols-saturated apocalyptic narrative? What’s more, some of the Bible’s texts are expressly at odds with each other. Among the most striking, both Isaiah and Micah prophesy a time when “they shall beat their swords into plowshares,” while Joel prophesies “they shall beat their plowshares into swords.” The book of Joshua concludes with the Israelites having gotten rid of all the Canaanites; the very next book, Judges, presumes the continued presence of Canaanites. Most disturbing to some readers are examples of unethical behavior modeled or even commanded by heroes, even by God. For example, at the end of the book(s) of Samuel, God incites David to commit an act deemed sinful. (Chronicles says that Satan incited the action.)
It’s important that we recognize and acknowledge what’s surprising, strange, and even disturbing about and in the Bible not as justification to dismiss it or otherwise consign it to the trash pile of obsolescence, certainly not as reason to criticize its believers for their belief. It’s important (especially for us believers) to note these oddities, because then we’re ready to take the Bible seriously. Which brings us to why it matters.
The Bible’s oddities demand that we bring both head and heart to any engagement with it. They’re there, whether we like it or not. I submit that it’s not only a question of how to make sense of what’s strange, but a clarion call by the Bible (a call by God herself, if you believe the Bible to be the Word of God), to think for ourselves. By its content alone, the Bible itself defies a so-called literal application. There’s too much within it that doesn’t make sense on the surface to our modern ears or is flatly at odds with itself.
Engaging the Bible, then, taking it seriously requires learning—not rote memorization or tacit acceptance of interpretations promoted by someone or another—but learning about the Bible’s development, about the historical and physical contexts out of which the books arose, took shape, and what their texts might have meant back then. Learning about the Bible in this way enables people better to interpret any particular text for themselves and place the implications within the context of the whole. Thinking for oneself like this requires the humility to submit to learning.
Otherwise, at best, what’s strange in and about the Bible are mere curiosities or nonsensical details to be ignored or dismissed with useless platitudes about God’s ways being inscrutable or the like. At worst, without any background knowledge or commitment to the kind of learning that illuminates context and enriches understanding (using one’s head), and without using one’s heart as a compassionate member of the human race on an earth we share, the Bible becomes simply one more weapon of hatred and destruction.
Notice how this kind of learning, this kind of thinking for ourselves, strips away arrogance and prepares a person to exercise precisely the admonition that thrums like a drumbeat throughout the Bible—to love God and to love others. Exactly what that means and how to do it surely merits a lifetime of open-hearted learning.
https://religiondispatches.org/the-bibl ... it-matters
INSIDER Mon, February 8, 2021, 4:00 AM
Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam, has outlawed churches and punished Christian worship for decades.
The kingdom's 1.4 million Christians meet in secret, but authorities are signaling more openness.
This is the inside story of the American mission to woo MBS to build the kingdom's first church.
On a sunny, cloudless October morning in 2019, twenty-five American Christians gathered at the base of Jabal al-Lawz, an umber-colored mountain in northwest Saudi Arabia.
Their leader, the evangelical author and preacher Joel Richardson, took out a Bible he'd brought from back home in Kansas, and started to read out loud.
Soon after, he and his congregation began singing hymns, while their hired Saudi tour guides pulled out their smartphones, and started to film.
Richardson was leading the first-ever Christian tour to Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam where the public practice of any other religion is famously forbidden.
Still, the preacher was taken aback when his phone rang that evening. It was the State Department with a message: "Be careful."
Richardson is to this day bemused. "I guess some of the videos went viral on Saudi social media or something," he told Insider in a recent interview.
Saudi Arabia is liberalizing, but Christians still worship underground
The scene at Jabal al-Lawz, which some Christians believe to be the true location of Mount Sinai, illustrates the rapid social change underway in Saudi Arabia, as well as the dangers that still face the 1.4 million Christians living there.
In the past decade, those caught in the act of worship have been punished, arrested, jailed, or deported, and the sight of Christians brandishing Bibles and singing hymns in broad daylight would have riled many devout Muslims.
In 2014, the kingdom's religious police deported 12 Ethiopian Christians caught worshipping in Dammam in February, and raided a home in September after hearing it was used for church services, the State Department said. In 2011, 35 Christians were arrested at a private gathering in Jeddah, Human Rights Watch reported, adding that 29 women among them were "subjected to arbitrary body cavity searches."
Saudi Arabia's millennial crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman - known also by his initials, MBS - has reformed his country since taking power in 2017. Yet advances in religious freedom have come slowly, clearly posing a more existential issue for the crown prince to tackle than mass tourism, Hollywood blockbusters, or music festivals.
"There are no churches here," one Christian who has lived in Saudi Arabia all her adult life told Insider. "We choose to lay low in respect to their culture and religion." The person requested anonymity over fears for her safety, but her identity is known to Insider.
As more non-Muslim expats arrive for work, the kingdom has increasingly turned a blind eye to their faith - even disbanding the religious police in 2016 - while maintaining that Bible preaching or proselytizing Muslims is unacceptable.
The State Department's warning to Richardson was clear: As a Christian in Saudi Arabia, tread carefully.
The US government has for years asked Saudi Arabia to end the ban on churches, with little success.
"I have gone there and talked to top leaders about opening up a church for these people and they have always said, 'Saudi Arabia is different and it is the land of the two holiest shrines of Islam,'" Nina Shea, a former US Commissioner on International Religious Freedom, told Insider. "The whole country is a shrine, in a sense, and therefore they cannot have a church built."
David Rundell, a former chief of mission at the US Embassy in Riyadh, added: "It's something that we have spoken to the Saudis about on numerous occasions."
Since MBS's ascension, a group of US evangelical heavyweights have taken the baton. In October 2018, Joel Rosenberg, one of America's prominent evangelical authors, accepted an invitation from the prince to meet him in Riyadh.
With Rosenberg came the Rev. Johnnie Moore, a religious advisor to President Donald Trump, and a string of other televangelists. (Trump's 2016 victory was largely thanks to evangelical support, and top officials like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is an evangelical, have close ties to Rosenberg.)
It was the first time a group of American evangelicals had entered a Saudi royal court in 300 years and, in a two-hour meeting conducted off the record, MBS "discussed virtually every controversial issue," Rosenberg later wrote for Fox News, without specifying.
Rosenberg said he also asked MBS when he would let a church be built.
"Not now," MBS replied, as Rosenberg later told Israel's i24News. "This would be a gift to al-Qaeda," the prince added, referencing the fact that the terrorist group has often targeted Christians and churches.
Some clerics have argued that the rule only applies to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. According to Rosenberg, MBS also told the 2018 meeting he had "asked my scholars" to define the Arabian peninsula.
Not deterred, Rosenberg and his group returned to Saudi Arabia in 2019, and left once again with evidence that change was afoot. The delegation was briefed about the historic existence of churches on the peninsula, Moore told Insider recently, adding: "It is a very significant thing - open conversations about archaeological evidence of churches that existed at the time of the Prophet."
There, MBS also acknowledged that the Prophet had "lived peacefully among Jews and Christian monks," wrote attendee Skip Heitzig, the senior pastor of Calvary of Albuquerque, in a subsequent blog post.
The delegation was set to visit MBS once again in 2020, but the pandemic put an end to those plans, a representative for Rosenberg told Insider, adding that a 2021 trip may be derailed for the same reason.
Despite the hurdles, the group have kept steady pressure on Saudi officials. On September 28, 2020, Rosenberg and seven other evangelicals from the 2018 and 2019 trips traveled to McLean, Virginia, to dine at the home of Princess Reema bint Bandar al-Saud, the Saudi ambassador to the US, the representative said.
The Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington, DC, did not respond to Insider's request for comment for this article.
A possible location
Though efforts to secure a church in Saudi Arabia have seemed fruitless to date, experts say it is a matter of when, not if.
"Definitely, I think it's coming," Prince Abdullah bin Khaled al-Saud, a Saudi academic, told Insider. "Especially in the diplomatic quarter in Riyadh or Neom."
Neom is a $500 million, carbon-neutral, 10,230-square-mile megacity due to be completed in 2025, and MBS's pet project. Promotional brochures shared with Insider show Neom would have a diverse population "from a mix of homelands, religions and backgrounds," and a "progressive law compatible with international norms."
NEOM Saudi
The site of Neom in Tabuk Province, Saudi Arabia. NEOM
Ali Shihabi, a member of Neom's advisory board, told Insider: "The issue has been mentioned for Neom," adding that a church was "certainly on the to-do list of the leadership."
Rundell, the former diplomat in Riyadh, told Insider that Neom is a feasible location for the first church due to the unique nature of the legal system. "Neom is creeping toward being a non-Saudi entity in many regards," he said.
However, others think placing a church in Neom will be meaningless.
"It's going to be a PR stunt," Ali al-Ahmed, a Saudi analyst, told Insider. "You need to have one where most of the Christians living in the big cities are: Jeddah, Riyadh."
Shea, the former US commissioner on religious freedom, said that while most Christians living in those cities would find little use for a church hundreds of miles away, "it would be helpful to have a symbol of tolerance ... that isn't a mosque in Neom."
"It's something."
While Neom is believed to be the leading contender for the first Saudi church, Shihabi said the diplomatic quarter in Riyadh is another likely setting. "That allows an element of 'diplomatic cover' for public consumption," he said.
For religious leaders like the Catholic bishop Paul Hinter, whom Pope Francis appointed last May as Apostolic Administrator for the Northern Vicariate of Arabia, it is important that the flock in Saudi Arabia have a church that they can actually access.
"My wish is that such churches or worship places be located where the expat workers and employees are living," he told Insider, "and not only in the future showcase city or cities."
Rosenberg has not publicly commented on the feasibility of a church in Neom. However, during the 2019 visit, he was taken to see the site, telling Arab News he was "eager to come back and bring others when the time is right."
Crown Prince Mohammed announcing "The Line," a city to be built at Neom, on January 10, 2021. Saudi Royal Court
The quest for a church in Saudi Arabia is long and contentious
Rumors that Christian leaders of various denominations have negotiated with the Saudis for a church have swirled for decades, long before MBS's rise. Each Christian denomination has its own house of worship, and the ultimate goal is for each to have their own church in Saudi Arabia.
In 2008, Catholic Archbishop Paul-Mounged el-Hashem told The Guardian that "discussions are under way" about building a church. And in 1973, Pope Paul VI sanctioned the building of the first Saudi-funded mosque in Rome, believing a reciprocal gesture would come from the kingdom. It did not.
In Washington, the necessity for securing a church in Saudi Arabia has gone in and out of fashion as different administrations passed through the White House. "It was quite an important issue during the Bush administration because they had a strong domestic constituency amongst religious conservatives," Rundell said, adding the issue was also important to the Trump administration.
President Joe Biden's plans are less clear. Unlike his predecessor, he has promised to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for its actions, vowing during his election campaign to make the kingdom "the pariah that they are." The State Department declined to comment.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman meets with Lebanese Maronite Patriarch Bechara Boutros Al-Rahi in Riyadh, November 14, 2017. Bandar Algaloud/Courtesy of Saudi Royal Court/Handout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS PICTURE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY.
Crown Prince Mohammed meeting with Lebanese Maronite Patriarch Bechara Boutros l-Rai in Riyadh on November 14, 2017. Saudi Royal Court
MBS has shown greater willingness to embrace different religions, having already met with Maronite Patriarch Bechara Boutros al-Rai, Coptic Bishop Ava Morkos, Catholic Cardinal Jean-Louis Pierre Tauran, and the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby.
But before MBS, religious authorities in the Middle East had little success in engaging their Saudi counterparts on the issue.
Bishop Paul Hinder, who as a Catholic envoy in the region visited Saudi Arabia every year from 2004 to 2011, told Insider it was "almost impossible to get in touch with civil or/and religious authorities" at the time.
The kingdom is now showing willing, Hinder said, though adding that the reality for Christians remains "far from being 'normal.'"
Moore added: "I personally believe religious freedom is possible in Saudi Arabia and I didn't believe that before."
MBS will make the call, but some will object
If MBS ends the ban on churches, it will not go unopposed.
"Is there going to be a pushback? I definitely think there will be," Prince Abdullah, the academic, told Insider. "[But] are they going to be violent? I doubt that because of the efficiency and strength of the security apparatus in the kingdom."
One opponent is Sheikh Assim al-Hakeem, a leading Saudi cleric. "Do you see any mosques in the Vatican? No. Likewise, we are not allowed to have any churches," he told his YouTube channel.
"These lands are holy lands."
A labor of love
Christian tours to Saudi Arabia, like Richardson's in October 2019, are growing in popularity as the kingdom becomes more tolerant. Living Passages, a leading Christian tour company, is already offering four trips in 2021, while others are seizing the moment.
"This could be one of the top [Christian] tourist sites in the world, especially in the northwest where they're trying to develop the Neom project," said Ryan Mauro, who leads Christian tours to Saudi Arabia.
A church is coming for Saudi Arabia, experts are sure, but the timeline is unclear. Even Rosenberg, who spent hours pressing MBS on religious freedom, is hopeful but not holding his breath.
"The crown prince's plan, after all, is Vision 2030, not Vision 2020," he wrote after his 2019 visit.
For the Christian community, the quest for a church is a labor of love.
"I should be happy on the day when the hundreds of thousands of Catholics living in Saudi Arabia will have their churches and the possibility to gather and pray in freedom," Bishop Hinder said.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/in ... 29304.html
Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam, has outlawed churches and punished Christian worship for decades.
The kingdom's 1.4 million Christians meet in secret, but authorities are signaling more openness.
This is the inside story of the American mission to woo MBS to build the kingdom's first church.
On a sunny, cloudless October morning in 2019, twenty-five American Christians gathered at the base of Jabal al-Lawz, an umber-colored mountain in northwest Saudi Arabia.
Their leader, the evangelical author and preacher Joel Richardson, took out a Bible he'd brought from back home in Kansas, and started to read out loud.
Soon after, he and his congregation began singing hymns, while their hired Saudi tour guides pulled out their smartphones, and started to film.
Richardson was leading the first-ever Christian tour to Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam where the public practice of any other religion is famously forbidden.
Still, the preacher was taken aback when his phone rang that evening. It was the State Department with a message: "Be careful."
Richardson is to this day bemused. "I guess some of the videos went viral on Saudi social media or something," he told Insider in a recent interview.
Saudi Arabia is liberalizing, but Christians still worship underground
The scene at Jabal al-Lawz, which some Christians believe to be the true location of Mount Sinai, illustrates the rapid social change underway in Saudi Arabia, as well as the dangers that still face the 1.4 million Christians living there.
In the past decade, those caught in the act of worship have been punished, arrested, jailed, or deported, and the sight of Christians brandishing Bibles and singing hymns in broad daylight would have riled many devout Muslims.
In 2014, the kingdom's religious police deported 12 Ethiopian Christians caught worshipping in Dammam in February, and raided a home in September after hearing it was used for church services, the State Department said. In 2011, 35 Christians were arrested at a private gathering in Jeddah, Human Rights Watch reported, adding that 29 women among them were "subjected to arbitrary body cavity searches."
Saudi Arabia's millennial crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman - known also by his initials, MBS - has reformed his country since taking power in 2017. Yet advances in religious freedom have come slowly, clearly posing a more existential issue for the crown prince to tackle than mass tourism, Hollywood blockbusters, or music festivals.
"There are no churches here," one Christian who has lived in Saudi Arabia all her adult life told Insider. "We choose to lay low in respect to their culture and religion." The person requested anonymity over fears for her safety, but her identity is known to Insider.
As more non-Muslim expats arrive for work, the kingdom has increasingly turned a blind eye to their faith - even disbanding the religious police in 2016 - while maintaining that Bible preaching or proselytizing Muslims is unacceptable.
The State Department's warning to Richardson was clear: As a Christian in Saudi Arabia, tread carefully.
The US government has for years asked Saudi Arabia to end the ban on churches, with little success.
"I have gone there and talked to top leaders about opening up a church for these people and they have always said, 'Saudi Arabia is different and it is the land of the two holiest shrines of Islam,'" Nina Shea, a former US Commissioner on International Religious Freedom, told Insider. "The whole country is a shrine, in a sense, and therefore they cannot have a church built."
David Rundell, a former chief of mission at the US Embassy in Riyadh, added: "It's something that we have spoken to the Saudis about on numerous occasions."
Since MBS's ascension, a group of US evangelical heavyweights have taken the baton. In October 2018, Joel Rosenberg, one of America's prominent evangelical authors, accepted an invitation from the prince to meet him in Riyadh.
With Rosenberg came the Rev. Johnnie Moore, a religious advisor to President Donald Trump, and a string of other televangelists. (Trump's 2016 victory was largely thanks to evangelical support, and top officials like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is an evangelical, have close ties to Rosenberg.)
It was the first time a group of American evangelicals had entered a Saudi royal court in 300 years and, in a two-hour meeting conducted off the record, MBS "discussed virtually every controversial issue," Rosenberg later wrote for Fox News, without specifying.
Rosenberg said he also asked MBS when he would let a church be built.
"Not now," MBS replied, as Rosenberg later told Israel's i24News. "This would be a gift to al-Qaeda," the prince added, referencing the fact that the terrorist group has often targeted Christians and churches.
Some clerics have argued that the rule only applies to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. According to Rosenberg, MBS also told the 2018 meeting he had "asked my scholars" to define the Arabian peninsula.
Not deterred, Rosenberg and his group returned to Saudi Arabia in 2019, and left once again with evidence that change was afoot. The delegation was briefed about the historic existence of churches on the peninsula, Moore told Insider recently, adding: "It is a very significant thing - open conversations about archaeological evidence of churches that existed at the time of the Prophet."
There, MBS also acknowledged that the Prophet had "lived peacefully among Jews and Christian monks," wrote attendee Skip Heitzig, the senior pastor of Calvary of Albuquerque, in a subsequent blog post.
The delegation was set to visit MBS once again in 2020, but the pandemic put an end to those plans, a representative for Rosenberg told Insider, adding that a 2021 trip may be derailed for the same reason.
Despite the hurdles, the group have kept steady pressure on Saudi officials. On September 28, 2020, Rosenberg and seven other evangelicals from the 2018 and 2019 trips traveled to McLean, Virginia, to dine at the home of Princess Reema bint Bandar al-Saud, the Saudi ambassador to the US, the representative said.
The Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington, DC, did not respond to Insider's request for comment for this article.
A possible location
Though efforts to secure a church in Saudi Arabia have seemed fruitless to date, experts say it is a matter of when, not if.
"Definitely, I think it's coming," Prince Abdullah bin Khaled al-Saud, a Saudi academic, told Insider. "Especially in the diplomatic quarter in Riyadh or Neom."
Neom is a $500 million, carbon-neutral, 10,230-square-mile megacity due to be completed in 2025, and MBS's pet project. Promotional brochures shared with Insider show Neom would have a diverse population "from a mix of homelands, religions and backgrounds," and a "progressive law compatible with international norms."
NEOM Saudi
The site of Neom in Tabuk Province, Saudi Arabia. NEOM
Ali Shihabi, a member of Neom's advisory board, told Insider: "The issue has been mentioned for Neom," adding that a church was "certainly on the to-do list of the leadership."
Rundell, the former diplomat in Riyadh, told Insider that Neom is a feasible location for the first church due to the unique nature of the legal system. "Neom is creeping toward being a non-Saudi entity in many regards," he said.
However, others think placing a church in Neom will be meaningless.
"It's going to be a PR stunt," Ali al-Ahmed, a Saudi analyst, told Insider. "You need to have one where most of the Christians living in the big cities are: Jeddah, Riyadh."
Shea, the former US commissioner on religious freedom, said that while most Christians living in those cities would find little use for a church hundreds of miles away, "it would be helpful to have a symbol of tolerance ... that isn't a mosque in Neom."
"It's something."
While Neom is believed to be the leading contender for the first Saudi church, Shihabi said the diplomatic quarter in Riyadh is another likely setting. "That allows an element of 'diplomatic cover' for public consumption," he said.
For religious leaders like the Catholic bishop Paul Hinter, whom Pope Francis appointed last May as Apostolic Administrator for the Northern Vicariate of Arabia, it is important that the flock in Saudi Arabia have a church that they can actually access.
"My wish is that such churches or worship places be located where the expat workers and employees are living," he told Insider, "and not only in the future showcase city or cities."
Rosenberg has not publicly commented on the feasibility of a church in Neom. However, during the 2019 visit, he was taken to see the site, telling Arab News he was "eager to come back and bring others when the time is right."
Crown Prince Mohammed announcing "The Line," a city to be built at Neom, on January 10, 2021. Saudi Royal Court
The quest for a church in Saudi Arabia is long and contentious
Rumors that Christian leaders of various denominations have negotiated with the Saudis for a church have swirled for decades, long before MBS's rise. Each Christian denomination has its own house of worship, and the ultimate goal is for each to have their own church in Saudi Arabia.
In 2008, Catholic Archbishop Paul-Mounged el-Hashem told The Guardian that "discussions are under way" about building a church. And in 1973, Pope Paul VI sanctioned the building of the first Saudi-funded mosque in Rome, believing a reciprocal gesture would come from the kingdom. It did not.
In Washington, the necessity for securing a church in Saudi Arabia has gone in and out of fashion as different administrations passed through the White House. "It was quite an important issue during the Bush administration because they had a strong domestic constituency amongst religious conservatives," Rundell said, adding the issue was also important to the Trump administration.
President Joe Biden's plans are less clear. Unlike his predecessor, he has promised to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for its actions, vowing during his election campaign to make the kingdom "the pariah that they are." The State Department declined to comment.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman meets with Lebanese Maronite Patriarch Bechara Boutros Al-Rahi in Riyadh, November 14, 2017. Bandar Algaloud/Courtesy of Saudi Royal Court/Handout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS PICTURE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY.
Crown Prince Mohammed meeting with Lebanese Maronite Patriarch Bechara Boutros l-Rai in Riyadh on November 14, 2017. Saudi Royal Court
MBS has shown greater willingness to embrace different religions, having already met with Maronite Patriarch Bechara Boutros al-Rai, Coptic Bishop Ava Morkos, Catholic Cardinal Jean-Louis Pierre Tauran, and the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby.
But before MBS, religious authorities in the Middle East had little success in engaging their Saudi counterparts on the issue.
Bishop Paul Hinder, who as a Catholic envoy in the region visited Saudi Arabia every year from 2004 to 2011, told Insider it was "almost impossible to get in touch with civil or/and religious authorities" at the time.
The kingdom is now showing willing, Hinder said, though adding that the reality for Christians remains "far from being 'normal.'"
Moore added: "I personally believe religious freedom is possible in Saudi Arabia and I didn't believe that before."
MBS will make the call, but some will object
If MBS ends the ban on churches, it will not go unopposed.
"Is there going to be a pushback? I definitely think there will be," Prince Abdullah, the academic, told Insider. "[But] are they going to be violent? I doubt that because of the efficiency and strength of the security apparatus in the kingdom."
One opponent is Sheikh Assim al-Hakeem, a leading Saudi cleric. "Do you see any mosques in the Vatican? No. Likewise, we are not allowed to have any churches," he told his YouTube channel.
"These lands are holy lands."
A labor of love
Christian tours to Saudi Arabia, like Richardson's in October 2019, are growing in popularity as the kingdom becomes more tolerant. Living Passages, a leading Christian tour company, is already offering four trips in 2021, while others are seizing the moment.
"This could be one of the top [Christian] tourist sites in the world, especially in the northwest where they're trying to develop the Neom project," said Ryan Mauro, who leads Christian tours to Saudi Arabia.
A church is coming for Saudi Arabia, experts are sure, but the timeline is unclear. Even Rosenberg, who spent hours pressing MBS on religious freedom, is hopeful but not holding his breath.
"The crown prince's plan, after all, is Vision 2030, not Vision 2020," he wrote after his 2019 visit.
For the Christian community, the quest for a church is a labor of love.
"I should be happy on the day when the hundreds of thousands of Catholics living in Saudi Arabia will have their churches and the possibility to gather and pray in freedom," Bishop Hinder said.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/in ... 29304.html
Christian Prophets Are on the Rise. What Happens When They’re Wrong?
They are stars within one of the fastest-growing corners of American Christianity. Now, their movement is in crisis.
Jeremiah Johnson, a 33-year-old self-described prophet, was one of the few evangelical Christians who took Donald J. Trump’s political future seriously back in 2015.
This track record created a loyal audience of hundreds of thousands of people who follow him on social media and hang on his predictions about such topics as the coronavirus pandemic, the makeup of the Supreme Court, and the possibility of spiritual revival in America. And they took comfort ahead of the presidential election last fall when Mr. Johnson shared a prophetic dream of Mr. Trump stumbling while running the Boston Marathon, until two frail older women emerged from the crowd to help him over the finish line.
So when Joseph R. Biden Jr. was certified as the winner of the election, Mr. Johnson had to admit he had let his followers down.
“I was wrong, I am deeply sorry, and I ask for your forgiveness,” he wrote in a detailed letter he posted online. “I would like to repent for inaccurately prophesying that Donald Trump would win a second term as the President of the United States.”
The desire to divine the future is a venerable one, fueling faith in figures from ancient Greek oracles to modern astrologists. Christianity in particular is a religion whose foundational text is filled with prophecies proven true by the end of the book. Whether the gift of prophecy continues into the present day has long been the subject of intense theological debate. But in recent years, self-described prophets have proliferated across the country, accelerating in stature over the course of the Trump era. They are stars within what is now one of the fastest-growing corners of Christianity: a loose but fervent movement led by hundreds of people who believe they can channel supernatural powers — and have special spiritual insights into world events.
Many are independent evangelists who do not lead churches or other institutions. They operate primarily online and through appearances at conferences or as guest speakers in churches, making money through book sales, donations and speaking fees. And they are part of the rising appeal of conspiracy theories in Christian settings, echoed by the popularity of QAnon among many evangelicals and a resistance to mainstream sources of information.
The prophetic imagination roams far beyond national politics. It follows the Super Bowl and the weather; it analyzes events in pop culture, like Kanye West’s recent turn toward evangelism, and global events, including a particular fascination with Israel. Many prophets caution followers against trusting what they read in the news, but in its place they offer a kind of alternative news cycle, refracting and interpreting events in the real world through a supernatural lens.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/11/us/c ... 778d3e6de3
They are stars within one of the fastest-growing corners of American Christianity. Now, their movement is in crisis.
Jeremiah Johnson, a 33-year-old self-described prophet, was one of the few evangelical Christians who took Donald J. Trump’s political future seriously back in 2015.
This track record created a loyal audience of hundreds of thousands of people who follow him on social media and hang on his predictions about such topics as the coronavirus pandemic, the makeup of the Supreme Court, and the possibility of spiritual revival in America. And they took comfort ahead of the presidential election last fall when Mr. Johnson shared a prophetic dream of Mr. Trump stumbling while running the Boston Marathon, until two frail older women emerged from the crowd to help him over the finish line.
So when Joseph R. Biden Jr. was certified as the winner of the election, Mr. Johnson had to admit he had let his followers down.
“I was wrong, I am deeply sorry, and I ask for your forgiveness,” he wrote in a detailed letter he posted online. “I would like to repent for inaccurately prophesying that Donald Trump would win a second term as the President of the United States.”
The desire to divine the future is a venerable one, fueling faith in figures from ancient Greek oracles to modern astrologists. Christianity in particular is a religion whose foundational text is filled with prophecies proven true by the end of the book. Whether the gift of prophecy continues into the present day has long been the subject of intense theological debate. But in recent years, self-described prophets have proliferated across the country, accelerating in stature over the course of the Trump era. They are stars within what is now one of the fastest-growing corners of Christianity: a loose but fervent movement led by hundreds of people who believe they can channel supernatural powers — and have special spiritual insights into world events.
Many are independent evangelists who do not lead churches or other institutions. They operate primarily online and through appearances at conferences or as guest speakers in churches, making money through book sales, donations and speaking fees. And they are part of the rising appeal of conspiracy theories in Christian settings, echoed by the popularity of QAnon among many evangelicals and a resistance to mainstream sources of information.
The prophetic imagination roams far beyond national politics. It follows the Super Bowl and the weather; it analyzes events in pop culture, like Kanye West’s recent turn toward evangelism, and global events, including a particular fascination with Israel. Many prophets caution followers against trusting what they read in the news, but in its place they offer a kind of alternative news cycle, refracting and interpreting events in the real world through a supernatural lens.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/11/us/c ... 778d3e6de3
The Bones of Jesus’ Disciple Might Not Be His
Candida Moss
The Daily Beast Mon, February 15, 2021, 3:59 AM
For 1,500 years pilgrims have been visiting Rome’s Basilica dei Santi XII Apostoli to venerate the remains of two of Christianity’s most important saints: the Apostles Philip and James the Younger. In 2016, after lying unmoved for 150 years, the Vatican granted the Franciscan friars who manage the church permission to open the case that holds their remains. Inside the reliquary the Franciscans discovered pieces of the foot of St. Philip and the femur of St. James. Initial forensic analysis sent a ripple of excitement throughout the Church: the remains appeared to show evidence of the manner of the saints’ executions. These new observations suggested that the relics were authentic; a small fragment of St. Philip even made its way to the United States.
But now, barely five years later, subsequent testing reveals that the excitement was premature.
The discovery is important because both St. Philip and St. James are central figures in the history of early Christianity. James is not mentioned in any of the lists of the 12 disciples found in the Gospels, but he is regularly mentioned in the New Testament and considered to be an Apostle. Paul describes him as an Apostle, one of the pillars of the Jerusalem church, and a key leader in the community of Jesus followers.
Philip is one of the 12 central disciples who followed Jesus and some scholars have speculated that he was originally a disciple of John the Baptist. According to the Gospel of John, Philip was originally at Bethsaida and purportedly suffered martyrdom in Hierapolis in Asia Minor, either by beheading or crucifixion. In 2011 an archaeologist claimed to have uncovered his tomb in Turkey. Both Philip and John were the inspiration for mystical and esoteric ancient Christian fan fiction. Though we don’t know exactly how or when the remains of these two apostles ended up in Rome, we know that the first church at this location was founded in the sixth century and named for the apostles Philip and James.
From late antiquity until the present, Christian tourists to Rome would make a stop at the church in order to commune with the remains of the saints that—they believed—had the power to heal, inspire, and protect them. To this day the altar in the Basilica is fitted with a window through which the faithful can glimpse the final resting place of the saints. Though it might seem macabre, the veneration of relics seems more normal today than it did to non-Christian Romans. For the first three centuries of the Common Era Christians were buried in cemeteries outside of the walls of the city. Contact with the dead was considered to be contaminating and, as Sarah Bond has written, being involved in the funerary business was a taboo profession.
It was only in the fourth century, with the normalization of Christian funerary traditions and escalating interest in the remains of the saints, that churches began to bring the bodies of the saints inside the buildings. Rather than radiating toxic pollutants, the remains of saints now emanated religious power. Wealthier Christians would pay a premium to be buried close to the saints in the hopes that some of their sanctity would literally rub off on them. Though some religious leaders, like Athanasius, the fourth century bishop of Alexandria, and Shenoute, the founder of one of Christianity’s first monasteries, were opposed to bone gathering, the popularity of relics only increased. It’s in the context of late antique relic-mania that the remains of Philip and James were brought to the Eternal City.
Having arrived at the church near Trajan’s forum in the sixth century the relics have remained there ever since. After the initial burst of forensic analysis was made publicly available, subsequent testing to confirm the composition of the relics and the age of the remains was commissioned and conducted. Kaare Lund Rasmussen, a professor of chemistry and archaeometry at the University of Southern Denmark, headed a team of researchers from the University of Groningen in Holland, University of Pisa in Italy, Cranfield Forensic Institute in England, Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology in Italy, and the National Museum of Denmark and published the results of their findings in the journal Heritage Science.
The samples from the relics were obtained as the church was refurbishing the cases that house the relics. The samples themselves were retrieved by Rasmussen and Franciscan parish priest Agnello Stoia. A comparison of the chemistry of Philip’s bones with that of other European skeletons and human remains from Qumran, in Israel, suggests, according to the study, “that his diet “was very special… by European standards” and fits “better with the Qumran individuals” even if there are other explanations for the similarities between them.
Analysis of the remains of St. James, however, was less promising. When the remains of the saints were first opened, there was great excitement that the foot of St. Philip appeared to contain a hole, where the nail from his crucifixion pierced his foot. The evidence for fractures on the femur of St. James was also suggestive. One source records that James was martyred by being hurled to the ground from the top of the temple in Jerusalem; another suggests that he was bludgeoned. Could these fractures be evidence for the authenticity of these stories? Carbon dating of the relics suggests that the deceased lived in the early third century. Oil encrusted on the remains was dated to 267-539 A.D. As the article puts it, “the preserved relic is not that of St James. With the date of AD 214–340 (2σ) the preserved skeletal remains originate from an individual some 130–260 years younger than St James.”
Even though the remains attributed to James are not from the martyred saint, the discovery can shed light on our understanding of early Christianity. The evidence suggests that “When the early church authorities were searching for the corpse of an apostle who lived a couple of hundred years earlier, they would look in ancient burial grounds where bodies of holy men might have been put to rest.” You might say that, rather than simply gathering any old bones, Christians were making a good-faith effort to recover the remains of someone who might plausibly been a saint. Rasmussen said that he thinks that it is likely that whoever retrieved the femur and moved it to what is now the Santi Apostoli church believed that it belonged to St. James. All of which is to say that while the relics aren’t authentic, late antique Christians weren’t con artists.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/bo ... 37615.html
Candida Moss
The Daily Beast Mon, February 15, 2021, 3:59 AM
For 1,500 years pilgrims have been visiting Rome’s Basilica dei Santi XII Apostoli to venerate the remains of two of Christianity’s most important saints: the Apostles Philip and James the Younger. In 2016, after lying unmoved for 150 years, the Vatican granted the Franciscan friars who manage the church permission to open the case that holds their remains. Inside the reliquary the Franciscans discovered pieces of the foot of St. Philip and the femur of St. James. Initial forensic analysis sent a ripple of excitement throughout the Church: the remains appeared to show evidence of the manner of the saints’ executions. These new observations suggested that the relics were authentic; a small fragment of St. Philip even made its way to the United States.
But now, barely five years later, subsequent testing reveals that the excitement was premature.
The discovery is important because both St. Philip and St. James are central figures in the history of early Christianity. James is not mentioned in any of the lists of the 12 disciples found in the Gospels, but he is regularly mentioned in the New Testament and considered to be an Apostle. Paul describes him as an Apostle, one of the pillars of the Jerusalem church, and a key leader in the community of Jesus followers.
Philip is one of the 12 central disciples who followed Jesus and some scholars have speculated that he was originally a disciple of John the Baptist. According to the Gospel of John, Philip was originally at Bethsaida and purportedly suffered martyrdom in Hierapolis in Asia Minor, either by beheading or crucifixion. In 2011 an archaeologist claimed to have uncovered his tomb in Turkey. Both Philip and John were the inspiration for mystical and esoteric ancient Christian fan fiction. Though we don’t know exactly how or when the remains of these two apostles ended up in Rome, we know that the first church at this location was founded in the sixth century and named for the apostles Philip and James.
From late antiquity until the present, Christian tourists to Rome would make a stop at the church in order to commune with the remains of the saints that—they believed—had the power to heal, inspire, and protect them. To this day the altar in the Basilica is fitted with a window through which the faithful can glimpse the final resting place of the saints. Though it might seem macabre, the veneration of relics seems more normal today than it did to non-Christian Romans. For the first three centuries of the Common Era Christians were buried in cemeteries outside of the walls of the city. Contact with the dead was considered to be contaminating and, as Sarah Bond has written, being involved in the funerary business was a taboo profession.
It was only in the fourth century, with the normalization of Christian funerary traditions and escalating interest in the remains of the saints, that churches began to bring the bodies of the saints inside the buildings. Rather than radiating toxic pollutants, the remains of saints now emanated religious power. Wealthier Christians would pay a premium to be buried close to the saints in the hopes that some of their sanctity would literally rub off on them. Though some religious leaders, like Athanasius, the fourth century bishop of Alexandria, and Shenoute, the founder of one of Christianity’s first monasteries, were opposed to bone gathering, the popularity of relics only increased. It’s in the context of late antique relic-mania that the remains of Philip and James were brought to the Eternal City.
Having arrived at the church near Trajan’s forum in the sixth century the relics have remained there ever since. After the initial burst of forensic analysis was made publicly available, subsequent testing to confirm the composition of the relics and the age of the remains was commissioned and conducted. Kaare Lund Rasmussen, a professor of chemistry and archaeometry at the University of Southern Denmark, headed a team of researchers from the University of Groningen in Holland, University of Pisa in Italy, Cranfield Forensic Institute in England, Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology in Italy, and the National Museum of Denmark and published the results of their findings in the journal Heritage Science.
The samples from the relics were obtained as the church was refurbishing the cases that house the relics. The samples themselves were retrieved by Rasmussen and Franciscan parish priest Agnello Stoia. A comparison of the chemistry of Philip’s bones with that of other European skeletons and human remains from Qumran, in Israel, suggests, according to the study, “that his diet “was very special… by European standards” and fits “better with the Qumran individuals” even if there are other explanations for the similarities between them.
Analysis of the remains of St. James, however, was less promising. When the remains of the saints were first opened, there was great excitement that the foot of St. Philip appeared to contain a hole, where the nail from his crucifixion pierced his foot. The evidence for fractures on the femur of St. James was also suggestive. One source records that James was martyred by being hurled to the ground from the top of the temple in Jerusalem; another suggests that he was bludgeoned. Could these fractures be evidence for the authenticity of these stories? Carbon dating of the relics suggests that the deceased lived in the early third century. Oil encrusted on the remains was dated to 267-539 A.D. As the article puts it, “the preserved relic is not that of St James. With the date of AD 214–340 (2σ) the preserved skeletal remains originate from an individual some 130–260 years younger than St James.”
Even though the remains attributed to James are not from the martyred saint, the discovery can shed light on our understanding of early Christianity. The evidence suggests that “When the early church authorities were searching for the corpse of an apostle who lived a couple of hundred years earlier, they would look in ancient burial grounds where bodies of holy men might have been put to rest.” You might say that, rather than simply gathering any old bones, Christians were making a good-faith effort to recover the remains of someone who might plausibly been a saint. Rasmussen said that he thinks that it is likely that whoever retrieved the femur and moved it to what is now the Santi Apostoli church believed that it belonged to St. James. All of which is to say that while the relics aren’t authentic, late antique Christians weren’t con artists.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/bo ... 37615.html
The Apostle James a flawed but fearless man
Bob Campbell, Odessa American, Texas
Tribune Publishing Sat, March 13, 2021, 10:47 AM
Like most of the disciples, James, brother of John and one of the sons of the fisherman Zebedee, was an assertive man who was at times irascible.
Often referred to as "James the Greater," indicating that he was older or taller than the disciple called "James the Lesser," he was in Jesus's inner circle with Peter and John and was privileged to see Jesus's transfiguration with Moses and Elijah on top of a mountain, possibly Mount Tabor.
Clergymen Aubrey Jones, Gian Carlo Villatoro and Doug Doyle say Jesus called James and John "Boanerges," or "sons of thunder," because they wanted to call down fire from Heaven to incinerate a village of hostile Samaritans.
"We also know that James was present when Christ raised a little girl from the dead," said the Rev. Jones, pastor of Chapel Hill Baptist Church. "He could certainly be short-tempered."
Noting that James and John left their father's boats on the Sea of Galilee to answer Jesus's call, Jones said, "The disciples were manly men.
"James wasn't management. He may have been the boss's kid, but he was on the boat with everybody else. Jesus was looking for those with courage, those who had strength, not just physical strength but inner strength. James would get along with our guys in the oilfield." While Peter became the most prominent apostle after Christ's ascension to Heaven and John was the last apostle to die and the only one who wasn't martyred, Jones said, James "might not have had the flash of Peter, but he was an irritant to the leadership of his day because King Herod had him beheaded.
"That tells us he was faithful and didn't back down," the pastor said. "We don't know a lot about him, but we know more about him than most of the other apostles. We know that he did what he was called to do and served as he had the opportunity."
Jones said the disciples, later named apostles, were following the Son of God and were reverent to him, but in another sense they were a group of men who interacted as men typically do.
"Yes, it's Jesus and yes, they're disciples, but they might not have always been very flattering to one another," he said. "It was a group of guys. James certainly made his mark for the kingdom. That's all that is asked of us, to be faithful."
The Rev. Villatoro, pastor of Victory Church, said James "was very passionate in his commitment to the cause.
"Being passionate doesn't mean you are wise or right, but it is such a strong force in people that anyone, even Christians, can be passionate about something that isn't right," Villatoro said. "I've seen people who were so passionate about one person, whether their mom, dad or child, and James was that kind of person.
"You have to learn how to handle your passion and it was Jesus's meekness and patience as a mentor that changed him. Wisdom is the key and James got his wisdom from Jesus.
"We cannot succeed without a strong mentor in front of us."
Villatoro said James's other most important trait was trustworthiness. "The Lord Jesus had Peter, John and James in his inner circle to see his transfiguration, which happened near the end of the three years of Jesus's ministry," he said. "So that tells us he was trustworthy and a leader."
Villatoro said James didn't seem jealous of John's more favored position, reclining against Jesus at the Last Supper and asking which disciple would betray him. "We don't see arguments between them because they are devoted to the same cause," the pastor said.
"It's beautiful that they learned they needed to surrender to God's will. James was ready to go all the way."
Doyle said James "was in the privileged group at the transfiguration and he is present in the Garden of Gethsemane before the crucifixion.
"At critical times, he is one of the ones who is there," the West University Church of Christ preacher said. "He got closer to the teacher than the other students because he was more interested, more committed and more dedicated."
As one of the Sons of Thunder, Doyle said, James "was willing to jump in quicker than the others.
"People get nicknames in recognition of what they are and he could sometimes be misguided," he said. "We don't have all the details, but we have enough to flesh out the character of James."
Noting that James's and John's mother asks Christ in Matthew 20:20-21 if they can sit on his right and left in Heaven, Doyle said, "They're competing for the plum positions.
"They have a lot to learn, but he chooses them and they follow him. When you pick 12 people, you get a widespread group of personalities, strengths and weaknesses."
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/ap ... 00082.html
Bob Campbell, Odessa American, Texas
Tribune Publishing Sat, March 13, 2021, 10:47 AM
Like most of the disciples, James, brother of John and one of the sons of the fisherman Zebedee, was an assertive man who was at times irascible.
Often referred to as "James the Greater," indicating that he was older or taller than the disciple called "James the Lesser," he was in Jesus's inner circle with Peter and John and was privileged to see Jesus's transfiguration with Moses and Elijah on top of a mountain, possibly Mount Tabor.
Clergymen Aubrey Jones, Gian Carlo Villatoro and Doug Doyle say Jesus called James and John "Boanerges," or "sons of thunder," because they wanted to call down fire from Heaven to incinerate a village of hostile Samaritans.
"We also know that James was present when Christ raised a little girl from the dead," said the Rev. Jones, pastor of Chapel Hill Baptist Church. "He could certainly be short-tempered."
Noting that James and John left their father's boats on the Sea of Galilee to answer Jesus's call, Jones said, "The disciples were manly men.
"James wasn't management. He may have been the boss's kid, but he was on the boat with everybody else. Jesus was looking for those with courage, those who had strength, not just physical strength but inner strength. James would get along with our guys in the oilfield." While Peter became the most prominent apostle after Christ's ascension to Heaven and John was the last apostle to die and the only one who wasn't martyred, Jones said, James "might not have had the flash of Peter, but he was an irritant to the leadership of his day because King Herod had him beheaded.
"That tells us he was faithful and didn't back down," the pastor said. "We don't know a lot about him, but we know more about him than most of the other apostles. We know that he did what he was called to do and served as he had the opportunity."
Jones said the disciples, later named apostles, were following the Son of God and were reverent to him, but in another sense they were a group of men who interacted as men typically do.
"Yes, it's Jesus and yes, they're disciples, but they might not have always been very flattering to one another," he said. "It was a group of guys. James certainly made his mark for the kingdom. That's all that is asked of us, to be faithful."
The Rev. Villatoro, pastor of Victory Church, said James "was very passionate in his commitment to the cause.
"Being passionate doesn't mean you are wise or right, but it is such a strong force in people that anyone, even Christians, can be passionate about something that isn't right," Villatoro said. "I've seen people who were so passionate about one person, whether their mom, dad or child, and James was that kind of person.
"You have to learn how to handle your passion and it was Jesus's meekness and patience as a mentor that changed him. Wisdom is the key and James got his wisdom from Jesus.
"We cannot succeed without a strong mentor in front of us."
Villatoro said James's other most important trait was trustworthiness. "The Lord Jesus had Peter, John and James in his inner circle to see his transfiguration, which happened near the end of the three years of Jesus's ministry," he said. "So that tells us he was trustworthy and a leader."
Villatoro said James didn't seem jealous of John's more favored position, reclining against Jesus at the Last Supper and asking which disciple would betray him. "We don't see arguments between them because they are devoted to the same cause," the pastor said.
"It's beautiful that they learned they needed to surrender to God's will. James was ready to go all the way."
Doyle said James "was in the privileged group at the transfiguration and he is present in the Garden of Gethsemane before the crucifixion.
"At critical times, he is one of the ones who is there," the West University Church of Christ preacher said. "He got closer to the teacher than the other students because he was more interested, more committed and more dedicated."
As one of the Sons of Thunder, Doyle said, James "was willing to jump in quicker than the others.
"People get nicknames in recognition of what they are and he could sometimes be misguided," he said. "We don't have all the details, but we have enough to flesh out the character of James."
Noting that James's and John's mother asks Christ in Matthew 20:20-21 if they can sit on his right and left in Heaven, Doyle said, "They're competing for the plum positions.
"They have a lot to learn, but he chooses them and they follow him. When you pick 12 people, you get a widespread group of personalities, strengths and weaknesses."
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/ap ... 00082.html
Do Catholics need to abstain from meat on Fridays in Lent when it's a feast day?
Victoria Dodge, Lafayette Daily Advertiser
USA TODAY Fri, March 19, 2021, 10:53 AM CDT
Bishop J. Douglas Deshotel celebrates Ash Wednesday mass at The Cathedral of Saint John the Evangelist in Lafayette, LA. Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2020.
Lent is a 40-day period where Catholics abstain from luxuries and refrain from eating any meat, except fish, on Fridays in preparation for Easter. But what happens when religious observances with different obligations fall on the same day?
During Lent in 2021, two major Feast Days occur: the Solemnity of the Feast of St. Joseph on March 19, and the Solemnity of the Feast of the Annunciation on March 25.
St. Joseph's Day — also called the Solemnity of Saint Joseph — always happens during Lent. But this year it falls on March 19, a Friday.
The feast of St. Joseph is also unique in 2021 as Pope Francis has declared this to be the "Year of St. Joseph" for the worldwide Church and Bishop Douglas Deshotel has declared a "Year of St. Joseph" for the Diocese of Lafayette.
Feast days, or solemnities, are days in the Catholic church where Saints and events in the Bible are celebrated. Despite the name, the days are not always commemorated with a banquet of food but instead mean "an annual religious celebration, a day dedicated to a particular saint" according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
However, a major part of the Church’s observance of Saint Joseph's Day involves the tradition of St. Joseph's Table or St. Joseph's Altar according to Diocese of Lafayette's director of communications Blue Rolfes.
The altar features a three-tiered table — representing the Holy Trinity — with a number of traditional dishes. These dishes include foods such as breads in symbolic shapes - crosses, palms, lilies, or wreaths symbolizing St. Joseph — and symbolic pastries, usually including figs in the shape of the Bible, chalices, doves, or a Monstrance. Dried figs, olive salad, fava beans are also included.
With all these specialty reasonings for celebrating Saint Joseph's Day, what is the hierarchy when a feast day occurs on a Friday during Lent?
The laws of the Catholic Church provide for the occurrence of Feast Days during Fridays in Lent. Canon 1251 from the 1983 Code of Canon Law addresses this situation:
Canon 1251: Abstinence from meat, or from some other food as determined by the Episcopal Conference, is to be observed on all Fridays, unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday. Abstinence and fasting are to be observed on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.
When a solemnity falls on a Friday in Lent, the celebration of the Solemnity takes precedence over the requirement of fasting from meat or some other food.
In other words, celebration of the solemnity overrides the Lenten requirement.
This article originally appeared on Lafayette Daily Advertiser: Do Catholics need to abstain from meat on Saint Joseph's Day Feast Day?
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/ca ... 52175.html
Victoria Dodge, Lafayette Daily Advertiser
USA TODAY Fri, March 19, 2021, 10:53 AM CDT
Bishop J. Douglas Deshotel celebrates Ash Wednesday mass at The Cathedral of Saint John the Evangelist in Lafayette, LA. Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2020.
Lent is a 40-day period where Catholics abstain from luxuries and refrain from eating any meat, except fish, on Fridays in preparation for Easter. But what happens when religious observances with different obligations fall on the same day?
During Lent in 2021, two major Feast Days occur: the Solemnity of the Feast of St. Joseph on March 19, and the Solemnity of the Feast of the Annunciation on March 25.
St. Joseph's Day — also called the Solemnity of Saint Joseph — always happens during Lent. But this year it falls on March 19, a Friday.
The feast of St. Joseph is also unique in 2021 as Pope Francis has declared this to be the "Year of St. Joseph" for the worldwide Church and Bishop Douglas Deshotel has declared a "Year of St. Joseph" for the Diocese of Lafayette.
Feast days, or solemnities, are days in the Catholic church where Saints and events in the Bible are celebrated. Despite the name, the days are not always commemorated with a banquet of food but instead mean "an annual religious celebration, a day dedicated to a particular saint" according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
However, a major part of the Church’s observance of Saint Joseph's Day involves the tradition of St. Joseph's Table or St. Joseph's Altar according to Diocese of Lafayette's director of communications Blue Rolfes.
The altar features a three-tiered table — representing the Holy Trinity — with a number of traditional dishes. These dishes include foods such as breads in symbolic shapes - crosses, palms, lilies, or wreaths symbolizing St. Joseph — and symbolic pastries, usually including figs in the shape of the Bible, chalices, doves, or a Monstrance. Dried figs, olive salad, fava beans are also included.
With all these specialty reasonings for celebrating Saint Joseph's Day, what is the hierarchy when a feast day occurs on a Friday during Lent?
The laws of the Catholic Church provide for the occurrence of Feast Days during Fridays in Lent. Canon 1251 from the 1983 Code of Canon Law addresses this situation:
Canon 1251: Abstinence from meat, or from some other food as determined by the Episcopal Conference, is to be observed on all Fridays, unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday. Abstinence and fasting are to be observed on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.
When a solemnity falls on a Friday in Lent, the celebration of the Solemnity takes precedence over the requirement of fasting from meat or some other food.
In other words, celebration of the solemnity overrides the Lenten requirement.
This article originally appeared on Lafayette Daily Advertiser: Do Catholics need to abstain from meat on Saint Joseph's Day Feast Day?
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/ca ... 52175.html
New Orleans D.A.: Priest, 2 dominatrices face vandalism charges after having sex on altar
Chris Pastrick, The Tribune-Review, Greensburg
Tribune Publishing Sat, March 20, 2021, 7:07 PM
A former priest and two women are facing charges for having sex on the altar of Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Pearl River, La.
The Times-Picayune — New Orleans Advocate reports a passerby spotted lights on inside the church. Looking into the church's windows and glass doors, the passerby saw Travis John Clark, 37, the pastor there, engaging in sexual activities with two "corset-clad women."
The incident happened between Sept. 29-30. On Thursday, the St. Tammany District Attorney's Office charged Mindy Lynn Dixon, 41, of Kent, Wash., and Melissa Kamon Cheng, 28, of Alpharetta, Ga., and Clark with institutional vandalism for "knowingly vandalizing, defacing, or otherwise damaging property and causing damage valued at over $500 and under $50,000."
More serious obscenity charges were dropped after attorney Bradley Phillips, who represents the women — called "professional dominatrices" by the Times-Picayune — argued the act was private and legal as it did not occur in public.
"Once again, (the state has) overstepped their bounds as this nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to regulate the morality of private individuals," Phillips said in a statement. "Just because you don't like something, doesn't make it criminal. My clients look forward to their day in court as we continue to fight this baseless allegation."
Clark was not able to be reached for comment.
The paper reported court documents say the women — in corsets and high heels — "performed sex acts on a half-naked Clark as they recorded it with a phone and tripod-mounted camera."
Police seized plastic sex toys, stage lights and a pair of recording devices inside the church, records show.
On Friday, New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Michael Aymond acknowledged the charges in a statement, saying, "We have and will continue to cooperate with law enforcement. We are proceeding to the Vatican to petition for their laicization presenting information from both the criminal and canonical investigations.
"Our prayers remain with all those who were hurt by the actions of these two men, and in a particular way, we offer our prayers for healing of survivors of abuse."
The paper reports Clark was removed from his post the day after his arrest.
Aymond, the paper reports, ordered that the altar on which the sex acts took place be burned. During a ceremony to consecrate a new one in October, Aymond said the former priest's "behavior was obscene. The desecration of this church and the altar is demonic — demonic. ... He was using that which was holy to do demonic things."
The three accused are scheduled to arraigned Monday in Covington, La. If they are convicted, they could get up to two years in prison and a fine.
Chris Pastrick is a Tribune-Review digital producer. You can contact Chris at 412-320-7898, [email protected] or via Twitter .
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/or ... 00761.html
Chris Pastrick, The Tribune-Review, Greensburg
Tribune Publishing Sat, March 20, 2021, 7:07 PM
A former priest and two women are facing charges for having sex on the altar of Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Pearl River, La.
The Times-Picayune — New Orleans Advocate reports a passerby spotted lights on inside the church. Looking into the church's windows and glass doors, the passerby saw Travis John Clark, 37, the pastor there, engaging in sexual activities with two "corset-clad women."
The incident happened between Sept. 29-30. On Thursday, the St. Tammany District Attorney's Office charged Mindy Lynn Dixon, 41, of Kent, Wash., and Melissa Kamon Cheng, 28, of Alpharetta, Ga., and Clark with institutional vandalism for "knowingly vandalizing, defacing, or otherwise damaging property and causing damage valued at over $500 and under $50,000."
More serious obscenity charges were dropped after attorney Bradley Phillips, who represents the women — called "professional dominatrices" by the Times-Picayune — argued the act was private and legal as it did not occur in public.
"Once again, (the state has) overstepped their bounds as this nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to regulate the morality of private individuals," Phillips said in a statement. "Just because you don't like something, doesn't make it criminal. My clients look forward to their day in court as we continue to fight this baseless allegation."
Clark was not able to be reached for comment.
The paper reported court documents say the women — in corsets and high heels — "performed sex acts on a half-naked Clark as they recorded it with a phone and tripod-mounted camera."
Police seized plastic sex toys, stage lights and a pair of recording devices inside the church, records show.
On Friday, New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Michael Aymond acknowledged the charges in a statement, saying, "We have and will continue to cooperate with law enforcement. We are proceeding to the Vatican to petition for their laicization presenting information from both the criminal and canonical investigations.
"Our prayers remain with all those who were hurt by the actions of these two men, and in a particular way, we offer our prayers for healing of survivors of abuse."
The paper reports Clark was removed from his post the day after his arrest.
Aymond, the paper reports, ordered that the altar on which the sex acts took place be burned. During a ceremony to consecrate a new one in October, Aymond said the former priest's "behavior was obscene. The desecration of this church and the altar is demonic — demonic. ... He was using that which was holy to do demonic things."
The three accused are scheduled to arraigned Monday in Covington, La. If they are convicted, they could get up to two years in prison and a fine.
Chris Pastrick is a Tribune-Review digital producer. You can contact Chris at 412-320-7898, [email protected] or via Twitter .
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/or ... 00761.html
Resurrection: How credible are the eyewitness accounts of Jesus?
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SuRjb44x8E
In the academic world, the full range of scholars in the field generally grant that shortly after the crucifixion of Jesus, many people had experiences that led them to believe they had seen the risen Christ. Several theories have been advanced in an attempt to explain this, but when historiographical criteria are applied to each of them, only one satisfies all five criteria.
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SuRjb44x8E
In the academic world, the full range of scholars in the field generally grant that shortly after the crucifixion of Jesus, many people had experiences that led them to believe they had seen the risen Christ. Several theories have been advanced in an attempt to explain this, but when historiographical criteria are applied to each of them, only one satisfies all five criteria.
Why Is Jesus Still Wounded After His Resurrection?
“The risen but scarred body of Christ is the ultimate signifier of divine empathy.”
As a person of the Christian faith, I’ve long understood what the Apostle Peter meant when he said, “By his wounds you have been healed.”
But I have always wondered why Jesus, after his Resurrection, in his glorified body, still bore the visible marks of his wounds. After all, scars are signs of imperfection, a defacement, something most of us try to hide — and in the case of Jesus, they were reminders of searing pain, vulnerability and indignity.
In his Summa Theologica, St. Thomas Aquinas, in listing objections he would go on to answer, wrote, “Scars and wounds imply corruption and defect.” It was not fitting for Christ, “the author of the Resurrection, to rise again with scars.” Yet he did.
Throughout my Christian journey, which began as a skeptical young man writing down question after question on my dad’s work stationery, I’ve found that there are aspects of my faith that I don’t fully understand and that sometimes I hardly understand. They seem both counterintuitive and profound, but for reasons that lie just out of my grasp. It’s at moments like these that I reach out to people wiser than I am — an unofficial community of theologians, pastors and friends — who help me to see new patterns emerge.
In sorting through this complicated topic, maybe the place to start is with the Christian belief that Jesus’ death by crucifixion was part of an unfolding drama, not the end of the story. Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, told me that “the Resurrection is not the overturning of the cross, as though crucifixion were defeat and Resurrection a contradiction of that defeat. The cross and the Resurrection were part of one act of love and mission and redemption.”
Cherie Harder, president of The Trinity Forum, told me, “I wonder if part of the reason Jesus’s redeemed body bore the nail marks is because doing so reflects who he is, as well as what he has suffered, and the fullness of the healing and redemption.”
According to Duke Divinity School’s Kate Bowler, “We bear all the ruins of the lives we’ve lived and the loves we’ve endured. What a gift to have a Savior who does the same.” The Episcopal priest and theologian Fleming Rutledge expressed it to me this way: “The wounds of our Redeemer will always be there, for all eternity, as the sign of the price he paid — ‘Love divine, all loves excelling.’” Or, as she went on to say, “For ever and ever, the price that was paid by the Son of God will be the measure of his love.” To assert the love you have for another is one thing; to pay the supreme cost as an expression of that love is quite another.
But don’t the prints of the nails, the gash of the spear, reveal weakness and vulnerability? Wouldn’t it be better to remove rather than memorialize the visible signs of an agonizing death?
Andy Crouch, who writes about the intersection of Christianity and culture, pointed out to me that the Latin word “vulnerable” comes from “vulnus,” which means “wound.” If God is woundable, is God therefore vulnerable? “The persistence of the scars show that the answer is unmistakably, and eternally, yes,” Mr. Crouch said.
If a scar is a healed wound, a wound that the body has marvelously managed to rescue and restore — then in some way, Christ’s entire bodily form, having suffered the ultimate injury of death but having been rescued and restored, is that of a scar. He will be worshiped, the book of Revelation (5:6) says, in the form of “a Lamb looking as if it had been slain.” Perhaps our scars, which are so often a source of shame and regret, are the truest clues we have to the full form of our resurrection bodies.
These observations echo those of St. Augustine, who speculated that we shall see in the bodies of martyrs the traces of the wounds they bore for Christ’s name “because it will not be a deformity, but a dignity in them; and a certain kind of beauty will shine in them.”
Philip Yancey, in responding to my query about why the glorified body of Jesus would be disfigured by scars, said, “Jesus’ retained wounds stand as a visual proof.” Mr. Yancey, whose books include “What’s So Amazing About Grace?” and “The Jesus I Never Knew,” added:
He could have had a perfect body, or no body, when he returned to splendor in heaven. Instead he kept a remembrance of his visit to earth, and for a keepsake of his time here, he chose scars. The pain of humanity became the pain of God.
By now answers that had eluded me were coming into focus. “That Jesus’ wounds are also seen in his resurrected body underscores that the suffering love that led Jesus to a cross and to wear a crown of thorns is part of God’s eternal redeeming love for humanity,” Mark Labberton, the president of Fuller Theological Seminary, told me. “The scars witness to God’s suffering, resurrected hope.”
Beyond that, Dr. Labberton said, the fact that the traces of Jesus’ wounds aren’t simply wiped away allows us to “make meaning of our losses, and to make meaning of our lives.” In other words, an essential part of what happened to Jesus shouldn’t be forgotten — it cannot be forgotten — even in eternity.
In this way, it is similar to the situation facing victims of trauma, according to Dr. Labberton. To recover, they shouldn’t be told to forget their trauma; they need to find ways to re-contextualize and integrate it into their life stories. It is part of their story, never to be downplayed, but it need not define who they are in perpetuity. “The wounds of Jesus are not the final word,” according to Dr. Labberton, “but they are meaningful.”
Or, as Cherie Harder put it to me, “Healing requires seeing.”
Scott Dudley, the senior pastor at Bellevue Presbyterian Church in Bellevue, Wash., told me that when he’s counseling or mentoring others “often the most helpful thing I bring is my wounds.” He added, “Everything important about being a pastor I did not learn in seminary.” He learned it through the pain of a personal loss that will never completely fade. “Wounded people make the best healers because they know what it means to be wounded,” Dr. Dudley said. “I’m a better healer not in spite of my wounds, but because of my wounds.”
“All that to say sometimes the most helpful things we bring is our wounds, which is another reason Jesus kept a reminder of his,” he added. His point isn’t that Jesus’ wounds were flaws; it is that they were wounds that left scars, and that not hiding them from us is a great help to us.
This hints at one of the most important human (and divine) qualities: empathy. “If Jesus showed us his scars, even after his Resurrection, then maybe we can learn to integrate pain and suffering into our lives in a way that frees us from wasting energy spent in denial and shame,” Peggy Wehmeyer, a former religion correspondent for ABC News, told me. She knows of what she speaks, having poignantly written in these pages about the suicide of her husband in 2008.
Simon Steer, the school chaplain at Abingdon School in Abingdon, England, said to me, “The risen but scarred body of Christ is the ultimate signifier of divine empathy.” It is a reminder to Dr. Steer that in his own struggles with depression, “Christ is with me in the dark night of the soul.” Jesus himself experienced a “dark night of the soul” at the Garden of Gethsemane, where we’re told his soul was “deeply grieved,” and especially as he hung on the cross, naked, beaten and left to die, feeling forsaken by God.
The artist Makoto Fujimura, author of the marvelous recent book “Art and Faith: A Theology of Making,” writes about the Japanese tradition of Kintsugi. Kintsugi is the art of repairing broken pottery pieces with lacquer dusted with gold. A Kintsugi master will take the broken work and create a restored piece that “makes the broken parts even more visually sophisticated,” according to Mr. Fujimura. “No two works, done with such mastery, will look the same or break the same way.” It is built on the idea that in embracing flaws and imperfections, you can create a more beautiful and more valuable piece of art.
Applying that concept to theology, Mr. Fujimura makes this point: It’s through our brokenness that God’s grace can shine through, “as in the gold that fills fissures in Kintsugi.” Jesus came not to “fix” us, according to Mr. Fujimura, and not just to restore us, but to make us something new.
“Even ‘fixing’ what is broken is an opportunity to transcend the ‘use’ of the object,” Mr. Fujimura writes in “Art and Faith”:
Kintsugi bowls are treasured as objects that surpass their original ‘useful’ purpose and move into a realm of beauty brought on by the Kintsugi master. Thus, our brokenness, in light of the wounds of Christ still visible after the resurrection, can also mean that through making, by honoring the brokenness, the broken shapes can somehow be a necessary component of the New World to come.
I find the concept that fractures in our lives can be redeemed and leveraged for good deeply moving. All things, even broken things, can be made new again, and sometimes they can be made even more beautiful. And they need not be hidden, in shadows or in shame. None of this means that people, if they had a choice, would endure the blast furnace of pain and loss, of trauma and shattered lives. It means only that even out of ashes beauty can emerge.
As we were discussing the topic of the Resurrection and the wounds of Jesus, the theologian Richard J. Mouw pointed me to the words from the 19th-century hymn, “Crown Him with Many Crowns”:
Crown him the Lord of love:
Behold his hands and side,
Rich wounds yet visible above,
In beauty glorified:
No angel in the sky
Can fully bear that sight,
But downward bends his burning eye
At mysteries so bright.
The line “in beauty glorified” particularly resonated with Dr. Mouw, a former professor of philosophy, who offered up his speculation that “Our own wounds will not be left in the grave but will also be in beauty glorified.” He told me that the fact that Jesus took the traces of his own wounds with him to heaven and beautified them can be seen as hopeful for us:
Our griefs, shamings, betrayals, disabilities are so much a part of who we are that they will not be simply discarded and left behind. They will become essential to the beauty that awaits us.
“‘Mysteries so bright’ indeed,” Dr. Mouw reiterated, bringing the phrase back to me. “Angels cannot grasp them. But one day we will.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/03/opin ... 778d3e6de3
“The risen but scarred body of Christ is the ultimate signifier of divine empathy.”
As a person of the Christian faith, I’ve long understood what the Apostle Peter meant when he said, “By his wounds you have been healed.”
But I have always wondered why Jesus, after his Resurrection, in his glorified body, still bore the visible marks of his wounds. After all, scars are signs of imperfection, a defacement, something most of us try to hide — and in the case of Jesus, they were reminders of searing pain, vulnerability and indignity.
In his Summa Theologica, St. Thomas Aquinas, in listing objections he would go on to answer, wrote, “Scars and wounds imply corruption and defect.” It was not fitting for Christ, “the author of the Resurrection, to rise again with scars.” Yet he did.
Throughout my Christian journey, which began as a skeptical young man writing down question after question on my dad’s work stationery, I’ve found that there are aspects of my faith that I don’t fully understand and that sometimes I hardly understand. They seem both counterintuitive and profound, but for reasons that lie just out of my grasp. It’s at moments like these that I reach out to people wiser than I am — an unofficial community of theologians, pastors and friends — who help me to see new patterns emerge.
In sorting through this complicated topic, maybe the place to start is with the Christian belief that Jesus’ death by crucifixion was part of an unfolding drama, not the end of the story. Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, told me that “the Resurrection is not the overturning of the cross, as though crucifixion were defeat and Resurrection a contradiction of that defeat. The cross and the Resurrection were part of one act of love and mission and redemption.”
Cherie Harder, president of The Trinity Forum, told me, “I wonder if part of the reason Jesus’s redeemed body bore the nail marks is because doing so reflects who he is, as well as what he has suffered, and the fullness of the healing and redemption.”
According to Duke Divinity School’s Kate Bowler, “We bear all the ruins of the lives we’ve lived and the loves we’ve endured. What a gift to have a Savior who does the same.” The Episcopal priest and theologian Fleming Rutledge expressed it to me this way: “The wounds of our Redeemer will always be there, for all eternity, as the sign of the price he paid — ‘Love divine, all loves excelling.’” Or, as she went on to say, “For ever and ever, the price that was paid by the Son of God will be the measure of his love.” To assert the love you have for another is one thing; to pay the supreme cost as an expression of that love is quite another.
But don’t the prints of the nails, the gash of the spear, reveal weakness and vulnerability? Wouldn’t it be better to remove rather than memorialize the visible signs of an agonizing death?
Andy Crouch, who writes about the intersection of Christianity and culture, pointed out to me that the Latin word “vulnerable” comes from “vulnus,” which means “wound.” If God is woundable, is God therefore vulnerable? “The persistence of the scars show that the answer is unmistakably, and eternally, yes,” Mr. Crouch said.
If a scar is a healed wound, a wound that the body has marvelously managed to rescue and restore — then in some way, Christ’s entire bodily form, having suffered the ultimate injury of death but having been rescued and restored, is that of a scar. He will be worshiped, the book of Revelation (5:6) says, in the form of “a Lamb looking as if it had been slain.” Perhaps our scars, which are so often a source of shame and regret, are the truest clues we have to the full form of our resurrection bodies.
These observations echo those of St. Augustine, who speculated that we shall see in the bodies of martyrs the traces of the wounds they bore for Christ’s name “because it will not be a deformity, but a dignity in them; and a certain kind of beauty will shine in them.”
Philip Yancey, in responding to my query about why the glorified body of Jesus would be disfigured by scars, said, “Jesus’ retained wounds stand as a visual proof.” Mr. Yancey, whose books include “What’s So Amazing About Grace?” and “The Jesus I Never Knew,” added:
He could have had a perfect body, or no body, when he returned to splendor in heaven. Instead he kept a remembrance of his visit to earth, and for a keepsake of his time here, he chose scars. The pain of humanity became the pain of God.
By now answers that had eluded me were coming into focus. “That Jesus’ wounds are also seen in his resurrected body underscores that the suffering love that led Jesus to a cross and to wear a crown of thorns is part of God’s eternal redeeming love for humanity,” Mark Labberton, the president of Fuller Theological Seminary, told me. “The scars witness to God’s suffering, resurrected hope.”
Beyond that, Dr. Labberton said, the fact that the traces of Jesus’ wounds aren’t simply wiped away allows us to “make meaning of our losses, and to make meaning of our lives.” In other words, an essential part of what happened to Jesus shouldn’t be forgotten — it cannot be forgotten — even in eternity.
In this way, it is similar to the situation facing victims of trauma, according to Dr. Labberton. To recover, they shouldn’t be told to forget their trauma; they need to find ways to re-contextualize and integrate it into their life stories. It is part of their story, never to be downplayed, but it need not define who they are in perpetuity. “The wounds of Jesus are not the final word,” according to Dr. Labberton, “but they are meaningful.”
Or, as Cherie Harder put it to me, “Healing requires seeing.”
Scott Dudley, the senior pastor at Bellevue Presbyterian Church in Bellevue, Wash., told me that when he’s counseling or mentoring others “often the most helpful thing I bring is my wounds.” He added, “Everything important about being a pastor I did not learn in seminary.” He learned it through the pain of a personal loss that will never completely fade. “Wounded people make the best healers because they know what it means to be wounded,” Dr. Dudley said. “I’m a better healer not in spite of my wounds, but because of my wounds.”
“All that to say sometimes the most helpful things we bring is our wounds, which is another reason Jesus kept a reminder of his,” he added. His point isn’t that Jesus’ wounds were flaws; it is that they were wounds that left scars, and that not hiding them from us is a great help to us.
This hints at one of the most important human (and divine) qualities: empathy. “If Jesus showed us his scars, even after his Resurrection, then maybe we can learn to integrate pain and suffering into our lives in a way that frees us from wasting energy spent in denial and shame,” Peggy Wehmeyer, a former religion correspondent for ABC News, told me. She knows of what she speaks, having poignantly written in these pages about the suicide of her husband in 2008.
Simon Steer, the school chaplain at Abingdon School in Abingdon, England, said to me, “The risen but scarred body of Christ is the ultimate signifier of divine empathy.” It is a reminder to Dr. Steer that in his own struggles with depression, “Christ is with me in the dark night of the soul.” Jesus himself experienced a “dark night of the soul” at the Garden of Gethsemane, where we’re told his soul was “deeply grieved,” and especially as he hung on the cross, naked, beaten and left to die, feeling forsaken by God.
The artist Makoto Fujimura, author of the marvelous recent book “Art and Faith: A Theology of Making,” writes about the Japanese tradition of Kintsugi. Kintsugi is the art of repairing broken pottery pieces with lacquer dusted with gold. A Kintsugi master will take the broken work and create a restored piece that “makes the broken parts even more visually sophisticated,” according to Mr. Fujimura. “No two works, done with such mastery, will look the same or break the same way.” It is built on the idea that in embracing flaws and imperfections, you can create a more beautiful and more valuable piece of art.
Applying that concept to theology, Mr. Fujimura makes this point: It’s through our brokenness that God’s grace can shine through, “as in the gold that fills fissures in Kintsugi.” Jesus came not to “fix” us, according to Mr. Fujimura, and not just to restore us, but to make us something new.
“Even ‘fixing’ what is broken is an opportunity to transcend the ‘use’ of the object,” Mr. Fujimura writes in “Art and Faith”:
Kintsugi bowls are treasured as objects that surpass their original ‘useful’ purpose and move into a realm of beauty brought on by the Kintsugi master. Thus, our brokenness, in light of the wounds of Christ still visible after the resurrection, can also mean that through making, by honoring the brokenness, the broken shapes can somehow be a necessary component of the New World to come.
I find the concept that fractures in our lives can be redeemed and leveraged for good deeply moving. All things, even broken things, can be made new again, and sometimes they can be made even more beautiful. And they need not be hidden, in shadows or in shame. None of this means that people, if they had a choice, would endure the blast furnace of pain and loss, of trauma and shattered lives. It means only that even out of ashes beauty can emerge.
As we were discussing the topic of the Resurrection and the wounds of Jesus, the theologian Richard J. Mouw pointed me to the words from the 19th-century hymn, “Crown Him with Many Crowns”:
Crown him the Lord of love:
Behold his hands and side,
Rich wounds yet visible above,
In beauty glorified:
No angel in the sky
Can fully bear that sight,
But downward bends his burning eye
At mysteries so bright.
The line “in beauty glorified” particularly resonated with Dr. Mouw, a former professor of philosophy, who offered up his speculation that “Our own wounds will not be left in the grave but will also be in beauty glorified.” He told me that the fact that Jesus took the traces of his own wounds with him to heaven and beautified them can be seen as hopeful for us:
Our griefs, shamings, betrayals, disabilities are so much a part of who we are that they will not be simply discarded and left behind. They will become essential to the beauty that awaits us.
“‘Mysteries so bright’ indeed,” Dr. Mouw reiterated, bringing the phrase back to me. “Angels cannot grasp them. But one day we will.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/03/opin ... 778d3e6de3
The long history of how Jesus came to resemble a white European
Anna Swartwood House, Assistant Professor of Art History, University of South Carolina
The Conversation Sun, April 4, 2021, 9:40 AM
Painting depicting transfiguration of Jesus, a story in the New Testament when Jesus becomes radiant upon a mountain. Artist Raphael /Collections Hallwyl Museum, CC BY-SA
The portrayal of Jesus as a white, European man has come under renewed scrutiny during this period of introspection over the legacy of racism in society.
As protesters called for the removal of Confederate statues in the U.S., activist Shaun King went further, suggesting that murals and artwork depicting “white Jesus” should “come down.”
His concerns about the depiction of Christ and how it is used to uphold notions of white supremacy are not isolated. Prominent scholars and the archbishop of Canterbury have called to reconsider Jesus’ portrayal as a white man.
As a European Renaissance art historian, I study the evolving image of Jesus Christ from A.D. 1350 to 1600. Some of the best-known depictions of Christ, from Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper” to Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment” in the Sistine Chapel, were produced during this period.
But the all-time most-reproduced image of Jesus comes from another period. It is Warner Sallman’s light-eyed, light-haired “Head of Christ” from 1940. Sallman, a former commercial artist who created art for advertising campaigns, successfully marketed this picture worldwide.
Through Sallman’s partnerships with two Christian publishing companies, one Protestant and one Catholic, the Head of Christ came to be included on everything from prayer cards to stained glass, faux oil paintings, calendars, hymnals and night lights.
Sallman’s painting culminates a long tradition of white Europeans creating and disseminating pictures of Christ made in their own image.
In search of the holy face:
The historical Jesus likely had the brown eyes and skin of other first-century Jews from Galilee, a region in biblical Israel. But no one knows exactly what Jesus looked like. There are no known images of Jesus from his lifetime, and while the Old Testament Kings Saul and David are explicitly called tall and handsome in the Bible, there is little indication of Jesus’ appearance in the Old or New Testaments.
Even these texts are contradictory: The Old Testament prophet Isaiah reads that the coming savior “had no beauty or majesty,” while the Book of Psalms claims he was “fairer than the children of men,” the word “fair” referring to physical beauty.
The earliest images of Jesus Christ emerged in the first through third centuries A.D., amidst concerns about idolatry. They were less about capturing the actual appearance of Christ than about clarifying his role as a ruler or as a savior.
To clearly indicate these roles, early Christian artists often relied on syncretism, meaning they combined visual formats from other cultures.
Probably the most popular syncretic image is Christ as the Good Shepherd, a beardless, youthful figure based on pagan representations of Orpheus, Hermes and Apollo.
In other common depictions, Christ wears the toga or other attributes of the emperor. The theologian Richard Viladesau argues that the mature bearded Christ, with long hair in the “Syrian” style, combines characteristics of the Greek god Zeus and the Old Testament figure Samson, among others.
Christ as self-portraitist
The first portraits of Christ, in the sense of authoritative likenesses, were believed to be self-portraits: the miraculous “image not made by human hands,” or acheiropoietos. Tretiakov Gallery, Moscow
This belief originated in the seventh century A.D., based on a legend that Christ healed King Abgar of Edessa in modern-day Urfa, Turkey, through a miraculous image of his face, now known as the Mandylion.
A similar legend adopted by Western Christianity between the 11th and 14th centuries recounts how, before his death by crucifixion, Christ left an impression of his face on the veil of Saint Veronica, an image known as the volto santo, or “Holy Face.”
These two images, along with other similar relics, have formed the basis of iconic traditions about the “true image” of Christ.
From the perspective of art history, these artifacts reinforced an already standardized image of a bearded Christ with shoulder-length, dark hair.
In the Renaissance, European artists began to combine the icon and the portrait, making Christ in their own likeness. This happened for a variety of reasons, from identifying with the human suffering of Christ to commenting on one’s own creative power.
The 15th-century Sicilian painter Antonello da Messina, for example, painted small pictures of the suffering Christ formatted exactly like his portraits of regular people, with the subject positioned between a fictive parapet and a plain black background and signed “Antonello da Messina painted me.”
The 16th-century German artist Albrecht Dürer blurred the line between the holy face and his own image in a famous self-portrait of 1500. In this, he posed frontally like an icon, with his beard and luxuriant shoulder-length hair recalling Christ’s. The “AD” monogram could stand equally for “Albrecht Dürer” or “Anno Domini” – “in the year of our Lord.”
In whose image?
This phenomenon was not restricted to Europe: There are 16th- and 17th-century pictures of Jesus with, for example, Ethiopian and Indian features.
In Europe, however, the image of a light-skinned European Christ began to influence other parts of the world through European trade and colonization.
The Italian painter Andrea Mantegna’s “Adoration of the Magi” from A.D. 1505 features three distinct magi, who, according to one contemporary tradition, came from Africa, the Middle East and Asia. They present expensive objects of porcelain, agate and brass that would have been prized imports from China and the Persian and Ottoman empires.
But Jesus’ light skin and blues eyes suggest that he is not Middle Eastern but European-born. And the faux-Hebrew script embroidered on Mary’s cuffs and hemline belie a complicated relationship to the Judaism of the Holy Family.
In Mantegna’s Italy, anti-Semitic myths were already prevalent among the majority Christian population, with Jewish people often segregated to their own quarters of major cities.
Artists tried to distance Jesus and his parents from their Jewishness. Even seemingly small attributes like pierced ears – earrings were associated with Jewish women, their removal with a conversion to Christianity – could represent a transition toward the Christianity represented by Jesus.
Much later, anti-Semitic forces in Europe including the Nazis would attempt to divorce Jesus totally from his Judaism in favor of an Aryan stereotype.
White Jesus abroad
As Europeans colonized increasingly farther-flung lands, they brought a European Jesus with them. Jesuit missionaries established painting schools that taught new converts Christian art in a European mode.
A small altarpiece made in the school of Giovanni Niccolò, the Italian Jesuit who founded the “Seminary of Painters” in Kumamoto, Japan, around 1590, combines a traditional Japanese gilt and mother-of-pearl shrine with a painting of a distinctly white, European Madonna and Child.
In colonial Latin America – called “New Spain” by European colonists – images of a white Jesus reinforced a caste system where white, Christian Europeans occupied the top tier, while those with darker skin from perceived intermixing with native populations ranked considerably lower.
Artist Nicolas Correa’s 1695 painting of Saint Rose of Lima, the first Catholic saint born in “New Spain,” shows her metaphorical marriage to a blond, light-skinned Christ.
Legacies of likeness
Scholar Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey argue that in the centuries after European colonization of the Americas, the image of a white Christ associated him with the logic of empire and could be used to justify the oppression of Native and African Americans.
In a multiracial but unequal America, there was a disproportionate representation of a white Jesus in the media. It wasn’t only Warner Sallman’s Head of Christ that was depicted widely; a large proportion of actors who have played Jesus on television and film have been white with blue eyes.
Pictures of Jesus historically have served many purposes, from symbolically presenting his power to depicting his actual likeness. But representation matters, and viewers need to understand the complicated history of the images of Christ they consume.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Anna Swartwood House, University of South Carolina.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/lo ... 23976.html
Anna Swartwood House, Assistant Professor of Art History, University of South Carolina
The Conversation Sun, April 4, 2021, 9:40 AM
Painting depicting transfiguration of Jesus, a story in the New Testament when Jesus becomes radiant upon a mountain. Artist Raphael /Collections Hallwyl Museum, CC BY-SA
The portrayal of Jesus as a white, European man has come under renewed scrutiny during this period of introspection over the legacy of racism in society.
As protesters called for the removal of Confederate statues in the U.S., activist Shaun King went further, suggesting that murals and artwork depicting “white Jesus” should “come down.”
His concerns about the depiction of Christ and how it is used to uphold notions of white supremacy are not isolated. Prominent scholars and the archbishop of Canterbury have called to reconsider Jesus’ portrayal as a white man.
As a European Renaissance art historian, I study the evolving image of Jesus Christ from A.D. 1350 to 1600. Some of the best-known depictions of Christ, from Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper” to Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment” in the Sistine Chapel, were produced during this period.
But the all-time most-reproduced image of Jesus comes from another period. It is Warner Sallman’s light-eyed, light-haired “Head of Christ” from 1940. Sallman, a former commercial artist who created art for advertising campaigns, successfully marketed this picture worldwide.
Through Sallman’s partnerships with two Christian publishing companies, one Protestant and one Catholic, the Head of Christ came to be included on everything from prayer cards to stained glass, faux oil paintings, calendars, hymnals and night lights.
Sallman’s painting culminates a long tradition of white Europeans creating and disseminating pictures of Christ made in their own image.
In search of the holy face:
The historical Jesus likely had the brown eyes and skin of other first-century Jews from Galilee, a region in biblical Israel. But no one knows exactly what Jesus looked like. There are no known images of Jesus from his lifetime, and while the Old Testament Kings Saul and David are explicitly called tall and handsome in the Bible, there is little indication of Jesus’ appearance in the Old or New Testaments.
Even these texts are contradictory: The Old Testament prophet Isaiah reads that the coming savior “had no beauty or majesty,” while the Book of Psalms claims he was “fairer than the children of men,” the word “fair” referring to physical beauty.
The earliest images of Jesus Christ emerged in the first through third centuries A.D., amidst concerns about idolatry. They were less about capturing the actual appearance of Christ than about clarifying his role as a ruler or as a savior.
To clearly indicate these roles, early Christian artists often relied on syncretism, meaning they combined visual formats from other cultures.
Probably the most popular syncretic image is Christ as the Good Shepherd, a beardless, youthful figure based on pagan representations of Orpheus, Hermes and Apollo.
In other common depictions, Christ wears the toga or other attributes of the emperor. The theologian Richard Viladesau argues that the mature bearded Christ, with long hair in the “Syrian” style, combines characteristics of the Greek god Zeus and the Old Testament figure Samson, among others.
Christ as self-portraitist
The first portraits of Christ, in the sense of authoritative likenesses, were believed to be self-portraits: the miraculous “image not made by human hands,” or acheiropoietos. Tretiakov Gallery, Moscow
This belief originated in the seventh century A.D., based on a legend that Christ healed King Abgar of Edessa in modern-day Urfa, Turkey, through a miraculous image of his face, now known as the Mandylion.
A similar legend adopted by Western Christianity between the 11th and 14th centuries recounts how, before his death by crucifixion, Christ left an impression of his face on the veil of Saint Veronica, an image known as the volto santo, or “Holy Face.”
These two images, along with other similar relics, have formed the basis of iconic traditions about the “true image” of Christ.
From the perspective of art history, these artifacts reinforced an already standardized image of a bearded Christ with shoulder-length, dark hair.
In the Renaissance, European artists began to combine the icon and the portrait, making Christ in their own likeness. This happened for a variety of reasons, from identifying with the human suffering of Christ to commenting on one’s own creative power.
The 15th-century Sicilian painter Antonello da Messina, for example, painted small pictures of the suffering Christ formatted exactly like his portraits of regular people, with the subject positioned between a fictive parapet and a plain black background and signed “Antonello da Messina painted me.”
The 16th-century German artist Albrecht Dürer blurred the line between the holy face and his own image in a famous self-portrait of 1500. In this, he posed frontally like an icon, with his beard and luxuriant shoulder-length hair recalling Christ’s. The “AD” monogram could stand equally for “Albrecht Dürer” or “Anno Domini” – “in the year of our Lord.”
In whose image?
This phenomenon was not restricted to Europe: There are 16th- and 17th-century pictures of Jesus with, for example, Ethiopian and Indian features.
In Europe, however, the image of a light-skinned European Christ began to influence other parts of the world through European trade and colonization.
The Italian painter Andrea Mantegna’s “Adoration of the Magi” from A.D. 1505 features three distinct magi, who, according to one contemporary tradition, came from Africa, the Middle East and Asia. They present expensive objects of porcelain, agate and brass that would have been prized imports from China and the Persian and Ottoman empires.
But Jesus’ light skin and blues eyes suggest that he is not Middle Eastern but European-born. And the faux-Hebrew script embroidered on Mary’s cuffs and hemline belie a complicated relationship to the Judaism of the Holy Family.
In Mantegna’s Italy, anti-Semitic myths were already prevalent among the majority Christian population, with Jewish people often segregated to their own quarters of major cities.
Artists tried to distance Jesus and his parents from their Jewishness. Even seemingly small attributes like pierced ears – earrings were associated with Jewish women, their removal with a conversion to Christianity – could represent a transition toward the Christianity represented by Jesus.
Much later, anti-Semitic forces in Europe including the Nazis would attempt to divorce Jesus totally from his Judaism in favor of an Aryan stereotype.
White Jesus abroad
As Europeans colonized increasingly farther-flung lands, they brought a European Jesus with them. Jesuit missionaries established painting schools that taught new converts Christian art in a European mode.
A small altarpiece made in the school of Giovanni Niccolò, the Italian Jesuit who founded the “Seminary of Painters” in Kumamoto, Japan, around 1590, combines a traditional Japanese gilt and mother-of-pearl shrine with a painting of a distinctly white, European Madonna and Child.
In colonial Latin America – called “New Spain” by European colonists – images of a white Jesus reinforced a caste system where white, Christian Europeans occupied the top tier, while those with darker skin from perceived intermixing with native populations ranked considerably lower.
Artist Nicolas Correa’s 1695 painting of Saint Rose of Lima, the first Catholic saint born in “New Spain,” shows her metaphorical marriage to a blond, light-skinned Christ.
Legacies of likeness
Scholar Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey argue that in the centuries after European colonization of the Americas, the image of a white Christ associated him with the logic of empire and could be used to justify the oppression of Native and African Americans.
In a multiracial but unequal America, there was a disproportionate representation of a white Jesus in the media. It wasn’t only Warner Sallman’s Head of Christ that was depicted widely; a large proportion of actors who have played Jesus on television and film have been white with blue eyes.
Pictures of Jesus historically have served many purposes, from symbolically presenting his power to depicting his actual likeness. But representation matters, and viewers need to understand the complicated history of the images of Christ they consume.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Anna Swartwood House, University of South Carolina.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/lo ... 23976.html
Although it may not be possible to determine the exact image and description of Jesus through historical means, nevertheless advanced souls throughout history have experienced visions of him and some have indeed beheld Jesus in his physical form, for example St. Francis of Asisi.
Christ Appears to Yogananda ~ “I am not the author. It is Christ”
On August 1, 2004, at the beginning of the SRF World Convocation, the new scripture The Second Coming of Christ was unveiled.
Paramahansaji tells of Christ’s appearance to him, blessing him and the new scripture
“I am not the author. It is Christ.” The Second Coming of Christ ~~
My singular desire to discern rightly the true meaning of Christ’s words was given wondrous confirmation one night during a period when I was working on these interpretations. It was in the Hermitage at Encinitas, California. I was sitting in my darkened room in meditation, praying deeply from my soul, when suddenly the blackness gave way to a celestial opal-blue effulgence. The entire room was like an opal flame. In that light the radiant form of the blessed Lord Jesus appeared.
His face was divine. His appearance was of a young man in his twenties, with sparse beard and moustache; his long black hair, parted in the middle, had a golden light about it. His feet were not touching the floor. His eyes were the most beautiful, the most loving eyes I have ever seen. The whole universe I saw glistening in those eyes. They were infinitely changing, and with each transition of expression I intuitively understood the wisdom conveyed. In his glorious eyes I felt the power that upholds and commands the myriad worlds.
As he gazed down at me, a HOLY GRAIL appeared at his mouth. It descended to my lips and touched them; then went up again to Jesus. After a few moments of rapt silent communion, he said to me: “THOU DOST DRINK OF THE SAME CUP OF WHICH I DRINK.”
At that I bowed down. I was joyous beyond dreams to receive the testimony of his blessings, of his presence…His words meant that I was drinking of his wisdom through the Holy Grail of his perceptions which he has dropped in my consciousness, and he was pleased. He approved very dearly and blessed me for writing these interpretations. This I can say without pride, because the interpretation of Christ’s words herein is not mine. It has been given to me. I am happy this book is coming through me: but I am not the author. It is Christ. I am only the vehicle through which it is explained.
Paramahansa Yogananda, The Second Coming of Christ
https://yoganandasite.wordpress.com/201 ... is-christ/
******
How Christ May Come To You In Person ~ Yogananda and Jesus
CHRIST IS RIGHT HERE, he can be seen if you look within your forehead at the point between the eyebrows: the center of Christ consciousness [Kutastha Chaitanya] the seat of the single or spiritual eye. If you want to see Christ, concentrate at this point of spiritual vision; look through the spiritual eye. …
After death, Jesus resurrected his body and allowed hundreds of people to see him. To the doubting Thomas he said, “It is I; touch me.” Why did he materialize his body? That others might behold him after resurrection and know that all who are in tune can behold him and know that he is. St. Francis said, “I meet Christ every night in flesh and blood.” You too can behold him, if you can put yourself in tune, just as I have seen him many times.
There is a way to invite Christ…He will be drawn only to the altar of your love. If there is sufficient love and devotion in your heart, then, and only then, will he come to you. He may actually materialize in person.
https://yoganandasite.wordpress.com/201 ... and-jesus/
******
Painter of Christ, Heinrich Hofmann ~ SRF magazine excerpts
In his Introduction to The Second Coming of Christ, Paramahansa Yogananda gives a wonderful description, from his own divine experiences, of what Jesus looked like. He then writes:
“Of all the pictures I have seen of him in the West, the rendering by Hofmann comes closest to showing the accurate features of the incarnate Jesus.” ….
https://yoganandasite.wordpress.com/201 ... -excerpts/
Christ Appears to Yogananda ~ “I am not the author. It is Christ”
On August 1, 2004, at the beginning of the SRF World Convocation, the new scripture The Second Coming of Christ was unveiled.
Paramahansaji tells of Christ’s appearance to him, blessing him and the new scripture
“I am not the author. It is Christ.” The Second Coming of Christ ~~
My singular desire to discern rightly the true meaning of Christ’s words was given wondrous confirmation one night during a period when I was working on these interpretations. It was in the Hermitage at Encinitas, California. I was sitting in my darkened room in meditation, praying deeply from my soul, when suddenly the blackness gave way to a celestial opal-blue effulgence. The entire room was like an opal flame. In that light the radiant form of the blessed Lord Jesus appeared.
His face was divine. His appearance was of a young man in his twenties, with sparse beard and moustache; his long black hair, parted in the middle, had a golden light about it. His feet were not touching the floor. His eyes were the most beautiful, the most loving eyes I have ever seen. The whole universe I saw glistening in those eyes. They were infinitely changing, and with each transition of expression I intuitively understood the wisdom conveyed. In his glorious eyes I felt the power that upholds and commands the myriad worlds.
As he gazed down at me, a HOLY GRAIL appeared at his mouth. It descended to my lips and touched them; then went up again to Jesus. After a few moments of rapt silent communion, he said to me: “THOU DOST DRINK OF THE SAME CUP OF WHICH I DRINK.”
At that I bowed down. I was joyous beyond dreams to receive the testimony of his blessings, of his presence…His words meant that I was drinking of his wisdom through the Holy Grail of his perceptions which he has dropped in my consciousness, and he was pleased. He approved very dearly and blessed me for writing these interpretations. This I can say without pride, because the interpretation of Christ’s words herein is not mine. It has been given to me. I am happy this book is coming through me: but I am not the author. It is Christ. I am only the vehicle through which it is explained.
Paramahansa Yogananda, The Second Coming of Christ
https://yoganandasite.wordpress.com/201 ... is-christ/
******
How Christ May Come To You In Person ~ Yogananda and Jesus
CHRIST IS RIGHT HERE, he can be seen if you look within your forehead at the point between the eyebrows: the center of Christ consciousness [Kutastha Chaitanya] the seat of the single or spiritual eye. If you want to see Christ, concentrate at this point of spiritual vision; look through the spiritual eye. …
After death, Jesus resurrected his body and allowed hundreds of people to see him. To the doubting Thomas he said, “It is I; touch me.” Why did he materialize his body? That others might behold him after resurrection and know that all who are in tune can behold him and know that he is. St. Francis said, “I meet Christ every night in flesh and blood.” You too can behold him, if you can put yourself in tune, just as I have seen him many times.
There is a way to invite Christ…He will be drawn only to the altar of your love. If there is sufficient love and devotion in your heart, then, and only then, will he come to you. He may actually materialize in person.
https://yoganandasite.wordpress.com/201 ... and-jesus/
******
Painter of Christ, Heinrich Hofmann ~ SRF magazine excerpts
In his Introduction to The Second Coming of Christ, Paramahansa Yogananda gives a wonderful description, from his own divine experiences, of what Jesus looked like. He then writes:
“Of all the pictures I have seen of him in the West, the rendering by Hofmann comes closest to showing the accurate features of the incarnate Jesus.” ….
https://yoganandasite.wordpress.com/201 ... -excerpts/
Scholars Claim The Bible Made A Monumental Mistake About Jesus
Ken Macdonald
By Ken Macdonald
March 17, 2021
One widely assumed fact about the Messiah is probably wrong. That’s what Bible scholars are saying – and their evidence is basically flawless. After all, the Bible is actually the source of this jaw-dropping problem with what we know about the Son of God. And while that may come as a surprise, it’s not too hard to see how this monumental error could have happened. But, if what the scholars are saying is true, it does beg the question: just how accurate are our assumptions about Jesus?
Well, it could be that they’re not that accurate at all. Think about it: most of what we think we know about Jesus comes from what’s written in four books of the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And sure, the accounts given of Jesus’ life in these gospels do not always match – but they do give a rounded picture of Christ’s time on Earth. They are also part of the problem.
You see, the four gospels were written sometime between 66 and 110 A.D. So that’s after Jesus’ death. It’s also likely that the books were written by people who hadn’t actually seen the events of Christ’s life. Instead, they may simply have recorded stories that had been passed from person to person. This is the first problem.
Because if the gospels were not written by first-hand witnesses, this means that there is room for factual errors. And if mistakes did creep in to the text, then these would have been carried over from one version of the Bible to the next. This could account for the shocking inaccuracy that’s stood the test of time – until now, of course. But there are ways to verify Bible stories, too.
Yep, there are other sources we can rely on for information about Jesus. Historians are nothing new, after all, and there have been plenty of notable scholars through the ages. Take Roman historians Publius Cornelius Tacitus and Titus Flavius Josephus, for example. Aside from having magnificent names, these guys confirmed that Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor of Judea, put Jesus to death. This assertion tallies with details contained within the gospels.
And Josephus was actually Jewish. He was born in Jerusalem in around 37 A.D. and originally given the Hebrew name Yosef ben Matityahu. When Josephus refers to both Jesus and his brother James, then, we can be fairly certain he’s talking about a real guy. So we do have good historical evidence for the existence of Jesus. But that doesn’t mean that the Bible is faultless – as we shall see.
That’s because unfortunate mistakes can still creep into the information we have about the Messiah. And while it may come as a result of second-hand information, it could equally be because the four gospels were written in ancient Greek. Why? Because it’s in the translation of these biblical texts that errors can slip in.
Here is where it gets a bit technical – but bear with us. There’s an important difference between translation and transliteration. You probably know that translation is changing a word in one language to the same word in another. Pretty straightforward, right? Well, maybe – but translation is never easy and can have its pitfalls. So what’s transliteration?
Transliteration involves changing a word from one alphabet to another. This can be severely complicated where two different alphabets don’t have exactly corresponding letters. The upshot is that the scholars who translated – or transliterated – the words of the Bible were faced with various tricky problems. And this leaves them open to monumental mistakes.
And trust us, there have been some glaring mistakes in Bibles over the centuries. As far back as 1562, the Geneva Bible’s second edition featured the words “Blessed be the place-makers” instead of “Blessed be the peacemakers.” This version of the sacred book even became known as the “Place-makers’ Bible.”
Another particularly noteworthy error occurred in an edition of the Bible that was published in English in 1631. Two men called Robert Barker and Martin Lucas were responsible for this version of the good book, which rather alarmingly came to be known as the “Sinner’s Bible” – or sometimes the “Wicked Bible.”
Barker and Lucas were not trying to create a new translation of the book, either. Instead, their intention had been simply to publish a new edition of the King James Bible that reproduced every word. And as Barker had in fact been the publisher of the very first edition of the King James Bible in 1611, the more recent version should have been in good hands.
But a terrible inaccuracy crept into Barker and Lucas’ work – probably owing to the carelessness of a compositor. The compositor was the skilled worker tasked with setting the individual lead letters into wooden blocks ready for the printing press. So, if either this individual or the typesetter made an error, then it would appear in the final text.
And, unfortunately, said typographical error was slap bang in the middle of one of the most important passages of the Old Testament: the Ten Commandments. Even worse, the mistake succeeded in completely reversing the commandment’s meaning. Ultimately, you see, the text should have read, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”
In the Barker and Lucas Bible, however, the affected passage read, “Thou shalt commit adultery.” Crucially, the word “not” was entirely omitted by the compositor. Somewhat inevitably, then, this edition of the book was also dubbed the “Adulterer’s Bible.” And the consequences of this inexcusable blunder were dire.
The English king of the time, Charles I, was said to have been particularly furious with the error, and so Barker and Lucas were summoned to appear before the Star Chamber – a powerful special court of the day. The two men were then fined the large sum of £300 – approximately $40,000 in today’s money – while their licenses as printers were revoked. Most of the copies of the so-called Wicked Bible were then tracked down and burned.
But not all of the Bibles in question were destroyed. And while no one knows for sure how many are still in existence today, the consensus is that they are rare indeed. That makes copies of the Wicked Bible very valuable; when one came up for sale at auctioneers Bonhams in 2015, it sold for some $40,000. So, if you happen to stumble across a very old version of the Good Book, check the Ten Commandments – as you may just have hit the jackpot.
Another error crept into a 1653 printing of the King James Bible by the Cambridge Press. More specifically, the slip-up was included within the New Testament’s 1 Corinthians, which states “Know ye not that the righteous shall inherit the kingdom of God?” This, of course, makes perfect sense to any practicing Christian.
Yet the Cambridge Press managed to change the meaning of this verse entirely simply by adding an unintended “un.” And as a result, the passage printed ended up reading, “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom of God?” Understandably, the affected edition would go on to be known as the “Unrighteous Bible.”
And there was yet another typographical lapse in a 1682 version of the King James Bible. In a passage in the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy that deals with divorce, the phrase “And if the latter husband hate her…” should appear. Within the so-called “Cannibal’s Bible,” however, this verse was rendered as “And if the latter husband ate her…”
In a 1716 edition of the King James Bible, however, the book of Jeremiah contained a particularly unfortunate gaffe. There, the phrase “Sin no more” had somehow been changed to “Sin on more” – which obviously has a quite different meaning. And, apparently, some 8,000 copies of this version of the Bible were printed before the typo was spotted.
Image: Historica Graphica Collection/Heritage Images/Getty Images
Then, in 1795, came what would ultimately be dubbed the “Child Killer Bible.” Normally, the Gospel of Mark, chapter 27, verse 27, should read, “But Jesus said unto her, let the children first be filled…” In this, the Messiah appears to say that the youngsters should be allowed to eat first. Yet the meaning of this verse changes dramatically if – as in this edition of the Bible – you replace “filled” with “killed.”
Perhaps the most bizarre misprint of them all, though, appears in what has since become known as the “Owl husband Bible.” While women should have been beseeched to “submit [themselves] to [their] own husbands,” this 1944 edition had “owl” in place of “own” – making the entreaty strangely surrealistic.
So, over the centuries, a choice collection of errors have been printed in various Bibles – with the examples we’ve cited being only a selection. But there is one mistake that puts all others in the shade. This blunder concerns Jesus himself, and it’s related to the very name that we know the Messiah by.
Before we get onto this monumental inaccuracy, though, let’s just take a moment to consider how we refer to the man whom many believe to be the Son of God. Often, he is simply known as Jesus Christ – despite the fact that Christ is not actually a name but a title.
Image: Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images
Yes, Christ is an honorific that comes from the Greek word christos, which in turn derives from the Hebrew term mashiakh. This means “the anointed,” and it has been transliterated into English as “messiah.” In the Hebrew tradition, you see, outstandingly righteous people were anointed with a special holy oil. But this particular messiah would not have been known in his everyday life as Jesus Christ.
In Jesus’ time, Jewish people typically followed a first name with “son of.” This meant that Christ would likely have been referred to as “Jesus son of Joseph.” Alternatively, the “son of” formula could be replaced by location, with this perhaps explaining why we speak of Jesus of Nazareth.
And the “son of” or “daughter of” system could be extended further. For example, in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is referred to as “the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon.” This brings to the table Jesus’ entire family – with the notable exception of his father, Joseph.
But an error we all make almost every time we refer to the Christian Messiah has to do with the very name “Jesus.” Why? Well, this was not how the man was known during his own life. Instead, his Hebrew name – the one used in the Gospels in their original Greek – is Yeshua. And in modern English, it’s incorrect to render Yeshua as Jesus, as the moniker is in fact the Hebrew version of Joshua.
What’s more, there are actually several other Yeshuas in the Bible, with the name appearing no fewer than 30 times in the Old Testament in reference to four different characters. And we don’t call any of these men Jesus; instead, Yeshua is transliterated as Joshua. Perhaps the Bible’s most famous Joshua is the one who brought down the walls of Jericho and seized the Canaanite city – massacring all of its inhabitants as a consequence.
So, as Christ was actually called Yeshua in his own time, how have modern Christians come to refer to him as Jesus? And why do we refer to the four Yeshuas in the Old Testament as Joshua rather than Jesus? Well, the explanation largely comes down to translational and transliterational mistakes.
Let’s remember for starters that the Old Testament was written mostly in Hebrew with some Aramaic, and in time it was translated from those languages into English. By contrast, the New Testament – including the four gospels – was originally written in Greek. And as we’ve seen, when scholars came across the Hebrew name Yeshua in the Old Testament, they transliterated that as Joshua.
However, when “Yeshua” appeared in Greek in the New Testament, it looked rather different. You see, the ancient Greeks did not have the sound “sh” in their language, and this led them to substitute the “sh” with an “s” sound. An extra “s” was then added to the end of what would have been “Yesua” to conform to Greek grammar rules and make the name masculine.
So, thanks to those changes to the Son of God’s name, we end up with Yesus. Then the initial “Y” was changed to an “I” in the Romanized transliteration, turning the word into “Iesus.” And that moniker is said to have been featured within the initialism “INRI” that was supposedly inscribed on Jesus’ cross. Those letters stand for the Latin phrase Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum – meaning “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”
Meanwhile, the “J” that we are familiar with at the beginning of Jesus’ name only appeared much later. There is no such letter in the Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and Latin alphabets, nor an equivalent sound in those respective languages – hence the Latin use of “I” instead. And even in English, “Iesus” was frequently used right up until the 18th century.
In fact, there was no distinction between “I” and “J” in the English language until sometime around the middle of the 17th century. As a result, the first King James Bible – published in 1611 – used the form “Iesus,” with Jesus’ father’s name similarly being rendered as “Ioseph.” So, where did the “J” eventually come from? Well, the surprising answer to that question is most probably Switzerland.
An English queen had a part to play, too. Mary I began her reign in 1553 and was a determined Roman Catholic at a time when many of her people had left the church to become Protestants. And her persecution of religious dissenters was so cruel that it would go on to earn her the nickname “Bloody Mary.” During the Tudor monarch’s time on the throne, some 280 Protestants were burned at the stake.
In the face of this persecution, many English Protestants therefore fled their homeland and went to Switzerland, where their religious beliefs were tolerated. Then, while in the country, the refugees began work on a new English edition of the Bible. And during their time in exile, these people came across a linguistic innovation: the Swiss “J.” In that way, the first complete Geneva Bible – published in 1560 – used the form “Jesus” for the Messiah’s name.
And over time, this moniker was the one that prevailed. By 1769, then, the Geneva Bible’s new formulation of Jesus was the only way in which the Son of God’s name was spelled. In English, Yeshua, Joshua and Iesus had been completely replaced, and today they are largely forgotten.
It’s possible to argue, then, that the most glaring error in all contemporary English Bibles is the Messiah’s name. A purist could argue that it should be Yeshua, after all, though perhaps Joshua would be more accurate. But in the real world Yeshua became Iesus, and eventually this was changed to a word that resonates around the world: Jesus.
Unofficially, though, there are other old writings that tell us a little about Jesus’ life. These snippets – penned centuries ago – may not be part of Christian scripture as we know it today, but they have nevertheless proved invaluable in the quest to determine what Christ was really like. And in 2015 two researchers came across one such artifact that proved to be of huge theological significance.
At the University of Oxford, two biblical scholars are hard at work investigating ancient fragments of scripture. And one particular find stands out during the course of the academics’ efforts: a piece of text that at first they believe to be a “lost Gospel” of the New Testament. But while this isn’t quite the case, the duo have still uncovered something special. Astonishingly, they have found an ancient copy of the heretical First Apocalypse of James – an account of Jesus’ lessons to his brother.
The document is of a considerable vintage, too, as it’s believed to be 1,500 years old or more. But that’s not the only reason why it’s noteworthy. You see, the fragment also appears to be in Greek – the language in which the story of the First Apocalypse was originally composed.
The University of Texas at Austin’s Dr. Dirk Obbink and Professor Geoffrey Smith were the ones who stumbled upon this incredible item, and what they discovered is of great importance. You see, not only does this rare manuscript bear text in the Greek language, but it also appears to feature teachings that Jesus is said to have once given to his brother. And the theological implications of the find could therefore prove to be very significant indeed.
But first, let’s consider the notion that Jesus actually had a sibling – something that may not be known by everyone. You see, the New Testament does in fact refer to “brothers” of Jesus: Simon, Judas, Joseph and James. The scripture also alludes to “sisters” – though these women are never actually referred to by name.
However, a number of Christian denominations – including the Assyrian Church of the East, the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church – believe that Jesus’ mother, Mary, was a virgin both before and after Christ’s birth. According to these branches of the faith, then, the Son of God couldn’t have had any biological brothers or sisters.
And the men and women mentioned in the New Testament may not actually have been full siblings of Jesus. They could potentially have been children from a former relationship between Jesus’ father, Joseph, and another woman, for instance. Alternatively, these so-called brothers and sisters may instead have been merely nephews and nieces of Joseph or Mary.
Such confusion may simply have arisen as a result of poor translation throughout the centuries. You see, the words in the New Testament that have come to be interpreted as “brother” and “sister” actually mean a variety of things in the original language in which they were written. In the end, then, there could well have been some misinterpretation down the line.
But the fact that brothers and sisters are referenced at all in the Bible suggests that these individuals had a particularly close relationship to Jesus – regardless of whether they were actual siblings. Some experts have posited, then, that these people were once important figures of early Christianity.
For instance, a figure known as James the Just is named in the New Testament as being a “brother” of Jesus. It’s also known that James was influential during his lifetime – and that’s the case whether he was a brother, a half-sibling, a cousin or merely a close associate of Christ.
In particular, James is said to have been at the helm of the Jerusalem Church. And, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia and the Book of Acts, the holy city was apparently the site of the first-ever religious monument to be dedicated to the Christian faith – making James somewhat of a pioneer.
James’ importance is only thought to have increased, too, when his namesake, the Apostle St. James was killed – apparently at the behest of King Herod Agrippa I of Judea. St. Peter also left Jerusalem in around this period, leaving James to further consolidate his power.
The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church explains James’ significance further, revealing that he was “from an early date, with Peter, a leader of the Church at Jerusalem. And from the time when [he] left Jerusalem after Herod Agrippa’s attempt to kill him, James appears as the principal authority who presided at the Council of Jerusalem.”
Mentions of James also crop up within the Gospels of Luke, Mark and Matthew as well as the Acts of the Apostles. He is also alluded to in the Pauline epistles and appears within works by the ancient historians Jerome and Eusebius.
And, naturally, the erstwhile leader of the Jerusalem Church plays a critical role in the First Apocalypse of James – a section of the New Testament apocrypha. The apocrypha are a collection of texts that are said to have been composed during Christianity’s beginnings and which frequently speak of Jesus and his apostles.
In fact, certain parts of the New Testament apocrypha were once touted as being true Christian scripture. From about the fifth century onward, however, only a limited range of texts became largely accepted within the religion. As such, then, many of Christianity’s major denominations don’t regard the apocrypha as official writings.
Indeed, at one time, the New Testament apocrypha were believed to be heretical. In essence, they were deemed to contain religious ideas and points of view that exist in contradiction to the agreed consensus. And a person who stood by such nonconformist beliefs could – for several centuries, at least – have been labeled as a heretic.
Interestingly, though, there’s a simple reason why the New Testament apocryphal texts are said to be heretical. You see, a man named Athanasius the Great – who served as the 20th bishop of Alexandria during the fourth century A.D. – didn’t consider them to be official doctrine.
Notably, Athanasius is believed to have chosen the 27 books of the New Testament that are still used today. And in 367 A.D. the religious man clearly laid out his opinion on his picks, writing, “No one may add to them, and nothing may be taken away from them.”
Before Athanasius’ ruling, there had been much debate regarding what should be deemed an official part of the New Testament and what would be omitted. And if different decisions had ultimately been made, then some of the apocrypha may well have been included in the Bible.
So, how were the New Testament books chosen? Well, broadly speaking, the earliest texts about Jesus made the cut. Other documents, by contrast, were deemed as being apocryphal and often prevented from reaching the masses. And owing to the fact that these manuscripts were often less well-preserved than their more legitimate counterparts, they typically only exist today as incomplete documents.
But there may still be a lot that we can glean from the apocrypha. For example, the four official gospels included within the New Testament tend to ignore the younger years of Jesus’ life. However, details of this period can be found in other texts that weren’t officially accepted by Christian officials.
The First Apocalypse of James is just one such example, with its narrative focusing around conversations that were supposedly held between the book’s namesake and Jesus. And as we’ll soon discover, the document not only speaks about the afterlife, but it also mentions visions of the future.
Interestingly, though, the First Apocalypse of James was actually uncovered relatively recently. Alongside 52 other documents, a man named Mohammad Ali al-Samman found the text in December 1945. This copy of the First Apocalypse – which had been worded in Coptic – was discovered in a community in Egypt called Nag Hammadi. Another Coptic version of the script was later found, too.
Then, in 2017, the First Apocalypse hit the headlines once more. This time, though, the fragment found was in Greek – the language in which the piece of apocrypha had originally been written. And the important artifact had actually been unearthed within a collection of other texts known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri.
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri were originally discovered during the 19th and 20th centuries. Only around 10 percent of these manuscripts are literary documents, though, with many of the others relating to taxes, trading or censuses. And while most of the texts were composed in Greek, some were written in other languages such as Latin and Arabic.
What’s more, experts have been trying to put some order to the Oxyrhynchus Papyri for over 120 years now. But while more than 5,000 of these fragments have since been analyzed, this number reportedly represents up to only 2 percent of the total works that need to be translated and sorted through. Many of the pieces of text are apparently tiny, too – coming in at no more than an inch or two each.
In 2015, though, the scraps that feature the First Apocalypse of James in Greek were discovered at the University of Oxford’s Sackler Library. And this was all down to Obbink and Smith – the biblical scholars who had been sifting through the Oxyrhynchus Papyri.
This document was originally created, it’s said, in the fifth or sixth century A.D. And based on the manner in which the fragment was written, experts believe that it may have once been used for the purposes of teaching someone how to understand and compose the written word.
Brent Landau is among those who suggest that this particular copy may have been an educational document. In 2017 the University of Texas at Austin lecturer told the college’s website, “The scribe has divided most of the text into syllables by using mid-dots. Such divisions are very uncommon in ancient manuscripts, but they do show up frequently in manuscripts that were used in educational contexts.”
Landau went on to characterize the scribe of this Greek version of the First Apocalypse of James, saying that they would likely have “had a particular affinity for the text.” And the academic reached this conclusion from the length of the writings. You see, while most teachers would only have utilized a brief passage of the work, this document presented it in full.
And while reflecting on the discovery that he had helped to make, Smith said to the University of Oxford’s website, “To say that we were excited once we realized what we’d found is an understatement. We never suspected that Greek fragments of the First Apocalypse of James [had] survived from antiquity. But there they were, right in front of us.”
So, what exactly does the First Apocalypse of James reveal? Well, in general, it speaks of some of the lessons that Jesus supposedly bestowed upon James. There are mentions of heaven along with some prophecies in the text – even a reference to James’ own demise.
The account primarily takes the form of a discussion between Jesus and James, although the bottom of the script also features a section that vaguely alludes to James’ fate. And though this part of the document is a little fragmented, it’s believed to suggest that James will be crucified.
In fact, the initial section of the text speaks about James’ understandable worries of crucifixion. Ultimately, though, it’s said that he will receive “passwords” that will apparently allow the religious leader to overcome evil adversaries and get into heaven.
The document also tells us a little bit about James himself. According to the text, he was the leader of the Christian church in its initial stages. His relationship to Jesus is made explicit, too, when Christ is quoted as saying, “You are not my brother materially.”
Smith has elaborated on the importance of this narrative, explaining to the University of Oxford’s website, “The text supplements the biblical account of Jesus’ life and ministry by allowing us access to conversations that purportedly took place between Jesus and his brother, James – secret teachings that allowed James to be a good teacher after Jesus’ death.”
Obbink, who had worked with Smith on the text, was also thrilled by the discovery of this Greek version of the First Apocalypse of James. And according to the academic, the document gives us an intriguing window into how readers engaged with scripture in the past.
Obbink told the University of Oxford that the writings “[show] how the early reading public interacted with different versions of the gospel. In the city center of Oxyrhynchus [in Egypt], Greek-speaking elites read the Gospel of James in the original Greek – alongside our earliest surviving copies of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.”
According to Obbink, though, things were different for people who lived outside of the urban centers. He added, “In the rural countryside, at Nag Hammadi, it was the heretical Gospel of James that hermit monks chose to translate into Coptic for native Egyptian speakers.” So, people of the period apparently soaked up information in varying ways.
The discovery of this Greek-language section of the First Apocalypse of James was first announced in November 2017 at the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting in Boston. And there may be further revelations to come, too. Ultimately, you see, Landau and Smith intend to publish their initial discoveries on the subject in the Egypt Exploration Society’s Graeco-Roman Memoirs series.
https://allaroundmoney.com/g/anthropolo ... out_Jesus_
Ken Macdonald
By Ken Macdonald
March 17, 2021
One widely assumed fact about the Messiah is probably wrong. That’s what Bible scholars are saying – and their evidence is basically flawless. After all, the Bible is actually the source of this jaw-dropping problem with what we know about the Son of God. And while that may come as a surprise, it’s not too hard to see how this monumental error could have happened. But, if what the scholars are saying is true, it does beg the question: just how accurate are our assumptions about Jesus?
Well, it could be that they’re not that accurate at all. Think about it: most of what we think we know about Jesus comes from what’s written in four books of the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And sure, the accounts given of Jesus’ life in these gospels do not always match – but they do give a rounded picture of Christ’s time on Earth. They are also part of the problem.
You see, the four gospels were written sometime between 66 and 110 A.D. So that’s after Jesus’ death. It’s also likely that the books were written by people who hadn’t actually seen the events of Christ’s life. Instead, they may simply have recorded stories that had been passed from person to person. This is the first problem.
Because if the gospels were not written by first-hand witnesses, this means that there is room for factual errors. And if mistakes did creep in to the text, then these would have been carried over from one version of the Bible to the next. This could account for the shocking inaccuracy that’s stood the test of time – until now, of course. But there are ways to verify Bible stories, too.
Yep, there are other sources we can rely on for information about Jesus. Historians are nothing new, after all, and there have been plenty of notable scholars through the ages. Take Roman historians Publius Cornelius Tacitus and Titus Flavius Josephus, for example. Aside from having magnificent names, these guys confirmed that Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor of Judea, put Jesus to death. This assertion tallies with details contained within the gospels.
And Josephus was actually Jewish. He was born in Jerusalem in around 37 A.D. and originally given the Hebrew name Yosef ben Matityahu. When Josephus refers to both Jesus and his brother James, then, we can be fairly certain he’s talking about a real guy. So we do have good historical evidence for the existence of Jesus. But that doesn’t mean that the Bible is faultless – as we shall see.
That’s because unfortunate mistakes can still creep into the information we have about the Messiah. And while it may come as a result of second-hand information, it could equally be because the four gospels were written in ancient Greek. Why? Because it’s in the translation of these biblical texts that errors can slip in.
Here is where it gets a bit technical – but bear with us. There’s an important difference between translation and transliteration. You probably know that translation is changing a word in one language to the same word in another. Pretty straightforward, right? Well, maybe – but translation is never easy and can have its pitfalls. So what’s transliteration?
Transliteration involves changing a word from one alphabet to another. This can be severely complicated where two different alphabets don’t have exactly corresponding letters. The upshot is that the scholars who translated – or transliterated – the words of the Bible were faced with various tricky problems. And this leaves them open to monumental mistakes.
And trust us, there have been some glaring mistakes in Bibles over the centuries. As far back as 1562, the Geneva Bible’s second edition featured the words “Blessed be the place-makers” instead of “Blessed be the peacemakers.” This version of the sacred book even became known as the “Place-makers’ Bible.”
Another particularly noteworthy error occurred in an edition of the Bible that was published in English in 1631. Two men called Robert Barker and Martin Lucas were responsible for this version of the good book, which rather alarmingly came to be known as the “Sinner’s Bible” – or sometimes the “Wicked Bible.”
Barker and Lucas were not trying to create a new translation of the book, either. Instead, their intention had been simply to publish a new edition of the King James Bible that reproduced every word. And as Barker had in fact been the publisher of the very first edition of the King James Bible in 1611, the more recent version should have been in good hands.
But a terrible inaccuracy crept into Barker and Lucas’ work – probably owing to the carelessness of a compositor. The compositor was the skilled worker tasked with setting the individual lead letters into wooden blocks ready for the printing press. So, if either this individual or the typesetter made an error, then it would appear in the final text.
And, unfortunately, said typographical error was slap bang in the middle of one of the most important passages of the Old Testament: the Ten Commandments. Even worse, the mistake succeeded in completely reversing the commandment’s meaning. Ultimately, you see, the text should have read, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”
In the Barker and Lucas Bible, however, the affected passage read, “Thou shalt commit adultery.” Crucially, the word “not” was entirely omitted by the compositor. Somewhat inevitably, then, this edition of the book was also dubbed the “Adulterer’s Bible.” And the consequences of this inexcusable blunder were dire.
The English king of the time, Charles I, was said to have been particularly furious with the error, and so Barker and Lucas were summoned to appear before the Star Chamber – a powerful special court of the day. The two men were then fined the large sum of £300 – approximately $40,000 in today’s money – while their licenses as printers were revoked. Most of the copies of the so-called Wicked Bible were then tracked down and burned.
But not all of the Bibles in question were destroyed. And while no one knows for sure how many are still in existence today, the consensus is that they are rare indeed. That makes copies of the Wicked Bible very valuable; when one came up for sale at auctioneers Bonhams in 2015, it sold for some $40,000. So, if you happen to stumble across a very old version of the Good Book, check the Ten Commandments – as you may just have hit the jackpot.
Another error crept into a 1653 printing of the King James Bible by the Cambridge Press. More specifically, the slip-up was included within the New Testament’s 1 Corinthians, which states “Know ye not that the righteous shall inherit the kingdom of God?” This, of course, makes perfect sense to any practicing Christian.
Yet the Cambridge Press managed to change the meaning of this verse entirely simply by adding an unintended “un.” And as a result, the passage printed ended up reading, “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom of God?” Understandably, the affected edition would go on to be known as the “Unrighteous Bible.”
And there was yet another typographical lapse in a 1682 version of the King James Bible. In a passage in the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy that deals with divorce, the phrase “And if the latter husband hate her…” should appear. Within the so-called “Cannibal’s Bible,” however, this verse was rendered as “And if the latter husband ate her…”
In a 1716 edition of the King James Bible, however, the book of Jeremiah contained a particularly unfortunate gaffe. There, the phrase “Sin no more” had somehow been changed to “Sin on more” – which obviously has a quite different meaning. And, apparently, some 8,000 copies of this version of the Bible were printed before the typo was spotted.
Image: Historica Graphica Collection/Heritage Images/Getty Images
Then, in 1795, came what would ultimately be dubbed the “Child Killer Bible.” Normally, the Gospel of Mark, chapter 27, verse 27, should read, “But Jesus said unto her, let the children first be filled…” In this, the Messiah appears to say that the youngsters should be allowed to eat first. Yet the meaning of this verse changes dramatically if – as in this edition of the Bible – you replace “filled” with “killed.”
Perhaps the most bizarre misprint of them all, though, appears in what has since become known as the “Owl husband Bible.” While women should have been beseeched to “submit [themselves] to [their] own husbands,” this 1944 edition had “owl” in place of “own” – making the entreaty strangely surrealistic.
So, over the centuries, a choice collection of errors have been printed in various Bibles – with the examples we’ve cited being only a selection. But there is one mistake that puts all others in the shade. This blunder concerns Jesus himself, and it’s related to the very name that we know the Messiah by.
Before we get onto this monumental inaccuracy, though, let’s just take a moment to consider how we refer to the man whom many believe to be the Son of God. Often, he is simply known as Jesus Christ – despite the fact that Christ is not actually a name but a title.
Image: Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images
Yes, Christ is an honorific that comes from the Greek word christos, which in turn derives from the Hebrew term mashiakh. This means “the anointed,” and it has been transliterated into English as “messiah.” In the Hebrew tradition, you see, outstandingly righteous people were anointed with a special holy oil. But this particular messiah would not have been known in his everyday life as Jesus Christ.
In Jesus’ time, Jewish people typically followed a first name with “son of.” This meant that Christ would likely have been referred to as “Jesus son of Joseph.” Alternatively, the “son of” formula could be replaced by location, with this perhaps explaining why we speak of Jesus of Nazareth.
And the “son of” or “daughter of” system could be extended further. For example, in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is referred to as “the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon.” This brings to the table Jesus’ entire family – with the notable exception of his father, Joseph.
But an error we all make almost every time we refer to the Christian Messiah has to do with the very name “Jesus.” Why? Well, this was not how the man was known during his own life. Instead, his Hebrew name – the one used in the Gospels in their original Greek – is Yeshua. And in modern English, it’s incorrect to render Yeshua as Jesus, as the moniker is in fact the Hebrew version of Joshua.
What’s more, there are actually several other Yeshuas in the Bible, with the name appearing no fewer than 30 times in the Old Testament in reference to four different characters. And we don’t call any of these men Jesus; instead, Yeshua is transliterated as Joshua. Perhaps the Bible’s most famous Joshua is the one who brought down the walls of Jericho and seized the Canaanite city – massacring all of its inhabitants as a consequence.
So, as Christ was actually called Yeshua in his own time, how have modern Christians come to refer to him as Jesus? And why do we refer to the four Yeshuas in the Old Testament as Joshua rather than Jesus? Well, the explanation largely comes down to translational and transliterational mistakes.
Let’s remember for starters that the Old Testament was written mostly in Hebrew with some Aramaic, and in time it was translated from those languages into English. By contrast, the New Testament – including the four gospels – was originally written in Greek. And as we’ve seen, when scholars came across the Hebrew name Yeshua in the Old Testament, they transliterated that as Joshua.
However, when “Yeshua” appeared in Greek in the New Testament, it looked rather different. You see, the ancient Greeks did not have the sound “sh” in their language, and this led them to substitute the “sh” with an “s” sound. An extra “s” was then added to the end of what would have been “Yesua” to conform to Greek grammar rules and make the name masculine.
So, thanks to those changes to the Son of God’s name, we end up with Yesus. Then the initial “Y” was changed to an “I” in the Romanized transliteration, turning the word into “Iesus.” And that moniker is said to have been featured within the initialism “INRI” that was supposedly inscribed on Jesus’ cross. Those letters stand for the Latin phrase Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum – meaning “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”
Meanwhile, the “J” that we are familiar with at the beginning of Jesus’ name only appeared much later. There is no such letter in the Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and Latin alphabets, nor an equivalent sound in those respective languages – hence the Latin use of “I” instead. And even in English, “Iesus” was frequently used right up until the 18th century.
In fact, there was no distinction between “I” and “J” in the English language until sometime around the middle of the 17th century. As a result, the first King James Bible – published in 1611 – used the form “Iesus,” with Jesus’ father’s name similarly being rendered as “Ioseph.” So, where did the “J” eventually come from? Well, the surprising answer to that question is most probably Switzerland.
An English queen had a part to play, too. Mary I began her reign in 1553 and was a determined Roman Catholic at a time when many of her people had left the church to become Protestants. And her persecution of religious dissenters was so cruel that it would go on to earn her the nickname “Bloody Mary.” During the Tudor monarch’s time on the throne, some 280 Protestants were burned at the stake.
In the face of this persecution, many English Protestants therefore fled their homeland and went to Switzerland, where their religious beliefs were tolerated. Then, while in the country, the refugees began work on a new English edition of the Bible. And during their time in exile, these people came across a linguistic innovation: the Swiss “J.” In that way, the first complete Geneva Bible – published in 1560 – used the form “Jesus” for the Messiah’s name.
And over time, this moniker was the one that prevailed. By 1769, then, the Geneva Bible’s new formulation of Jesus was the only way in which the Son of God’s name was spelled. In English, Yeshua, Joshua and Iesus had been completely replaced, and today they are largely forgotten.
It’s possible to argue, then, that the most glaring error in all contemporary English Bibles is the Messiah’s name. A purist could argue that it should be Yeshua, after all, though perhaps Joshua would be more accurate. But in the real world Yeshua became Iesus, and eventually this was changed to a word that resonates around the world: Jesus.
Unofficially, though, there are other old writings that tell us a little about Jesus’ life. These snippets – penned centuries ago – may not be part of Christian scripture as we know it today, but they have nevertheless proved invaluable in the quest to determine what Christ was really like. And in 2015 two researchers came across one such artifact that proved to be of huge theological significance.
At the University of Oxford, two biblical scholars are hard at work investigating ancient fragments of scripture. And one particular find stands out during the course of the academics’ efforts: a piece of text that at first they believe to be a “lost Gospel” of the New Testament. But while this isn’t quite the case, the duo have still uncovered something special. Astonishingly, they have found an ancient copy of the heretical First Apocalypse of James – an account of Jesus’ lessons to his brother.
The document is of a considerable vintage, too, as it’s believed to be 1,500 years old or more. But that’s not the only reason why it’s noteworthy. You see, the fragment also appears to be in Greek – the language in which the story of the First Apocalypse was originally composed.
The University of Texas at Austin’s Dr. Dirk Obbink and Professor Geoffrey Smith were the ones who stumbled upon this incredible item, and what they discovered is of great importance. You see, not only does this rare manuscript bear text in the Greek language, but it also appears to feature teachings that Jesus is said to have once given to his brother. And the theological implications of the find could therefore prove to be very significant indeed.
But first, let’s consider the notion that Jesus actually had a sibling – something that may not be known by everyone. You see, the New Testament does in fact refer to “brothers” of Jesus: Simon, Judas, Joseph and James. The scripture also alludes to “sisters” – though these women are never actually referred to by name.
However, a number of Christian denominations – including the Assyrian Church of the East, the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church – believe that Jesus’ mother, Mary, was a virgin both before and after Christ’s birth. According to these branches of the faith, then, the Son of God couldn’t have had any biological brothers or sisters.
And the men and women mentioned in the New Testament may not actually have been full siblings of Jesus. They could potentially have been children from a former relationship between Jesus’ father, Joseph, and another woman, for instance. Alternatively, these so-called brothers and sisters may instead have been merely nephews and nieces of Joseph or Mary.
Such confusion may simply have arisen as a result of poor translation throughout the centuries. You see, the words in the New Testament that have come to be interpreted as “brother” and “sister” actually mean a variety of things in the original language in which they were written. In the end, then, there could well have been some misinterpretation down the line.
But the fact that brothers and sisters are referenced at all in the Bible suggests that these individuals had a particularly close relationship to Jesus – regardless of whether they were actual siblings. Some experts have posited, then, that these people were once important figures of early Christianity.
For instance, a figure known as James the Just is named in the New Testament as being a “brother” of Jesus. It’s also known that James was influential during his lifetime – and that’s the case whether he was a brother, a half-sibling, a cousin or merely a close associate of Christ.
In particular, James is said to have been at the helm of the Jerusalem Church. And, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia and the Book of Acts, the holy city was apparently the site of the first-ever religious monument to be dedicated to the Christian faith – making James somewhat of a pioneer.
James’ importance is only thought to have increased, too, when his namesake, the Apostle St. James was killed – apparently at the behest of King Herod Agrippa I of Judea. St. Peter also left Jerusalem in around this period, leaving James to further consolidate his power.
The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church explains James’ significance further, revealing that he was “from an early date, with Peter, a leader of the Church at Jerusalem. And from the time when [he] left Jerusalem after Herod Agrippa’s attempt to kill him, James appears as the principal authority who presided at the Council of Jerusalem.”
Mentions of James also crop up within the Gospels of Luke, Mark and Matthew as well as the Acts of the Apostles. He is also alluded to in the Pauline epistles and appears within works by the ancient historians Jerome and Eusebius.
And, naturally, the erstwhile leader of the Jerusalem Church plays a critical role in the First Apocalypse of James – a section of the New Testament apocrypha. The apocrypha are a collection of texts that are said to have been composed during Christianity’s beginnings and which frequently speak of Jesus and his apostles.
In fact, certain parts of the New Testament apocrypha were once touted as being true Christian scripture. From about the fifth century onward, however, only a limited range of texts became largely accepted within the religion. As such, then, many of Christianity’s major denominations don’t regard the apocrypha as official writings.
Indeed, at one time, the New Testament apocrypha were believed to be heretical. In essence, they were deemed to contain religious ideas and points of view that exist in contradiction to the agreed consensus. And a person who stood by such nonconformist beliefs could – for several centuries, at least – have been labeled as a heretic.
Interestingly, though, there’s a simple reason why the New Testament apocryphal texts are said to be heretical. You see, a man named Athanasius the Great – who served as the 20th bishop of Alexandria during the fourth century A.D. – didn’t consider them to be official doctrine.
Notably, Athanasius is believed to have chosen the 27 books of the New Testament that are still used today. And in 367 A.D. the religious man clearly laid out his opinion on his picks, writing, “No one may add to them, and nothing may be taken away from them.”
Before Athanasius’ ruling, there had been much debate regarding what should be deemed an official part of the New Testament and what would be omitted. And if different decisions had ultimately been made, then some of the apocrypha may well have been included in the Bible.
So, how were the New Testament books chosen? Well, broadly speaking, the earliest texts about Jesus made the cut. Other documents, by contrast, were deemed as being apocryphal and often prevented from reaching the masses. And owing to the fact that these manuscripts were often less well-preserved than their more legitimate counterparts, they typically only exist today as incomplete documents.
But there may still be a lot that we can glean from the apocrypha. For example, the four official gospels included within the New Testament tend to ignore the younger years of Jesus’ life. However, details of this period can be found in other texts that weren’t officially accepted by Christian officials.
The First Apocalypse of James is just one such example, with its narrative focusing around conversations that were supposedly held between the book’s namesake and Jesus. And as we’ll soon discover, the document not only speaks about the afterlife, but it also mentions visions of the future.
Interestingly, though, the First Apocalypse of James was actually uncovered relatively recently. Alongside 52 other documents, a man named Mohammad Ali al-Samman found the text in December 1945. This copy of the First Apocalypse – which had been worded in Coptic – was discovered in a community in Egypt called Nag Hammadi. Another Coptic version of the script was later found, too.
Then, in 2017, the First Apocalypse hit the headlines once more. This time, though, the fragment found was in Greek – the language in which the piece of apocrypha had originally been written. And the important artifact had actually been unearthed within a collection of other texts known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri.
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri were originally discovered during the 19th and 20th centuries. Only around 10 percent of these manuscripts are literary documents, though, with many of the others relating to taxes, trading or censuses. And while most of the texts were composed in Greek, some were written in other languages such as Latin and Arabic.
What’s more, experts have been trying to put some order to the Oxyrhynchus Papyri for over 120 years now. But while more than 5,000 of these fragments have since been analyzed, this number reportedly represents up to only 2 percent of the total works that need to be translated and sorted through. Many of the pieces of text are apparently tiny, too – coming in at no more than an inch or two each.
In 2015, though, the scraps that feature the First Apocalypse of James in Greek were discovered at the University of Oxford’s Sackler Library. And this was all down to Obbink and Smith – the biblical scholars who had been sifting through the Oxyrhynchus Papyri.
This document was originally created, it’s said, in the fifth or sixth century A.D. And based on the manner in which the fragment was written, experts believe that it may have once been used for the purposes of teaching someone how to understand and compose the written word.
Brent Landau is among those who suggest that this particular copy may have been an educational document. In 2017 the University of Texas at Austin lecturer told the college’s website, “The scribe has divided most of the text into syllables by using mid-dots. Such divisions are very uncommon in ancient manuscripts, but they do show up frequently in manuscripts that were used in educational contexts.”
Landau went on to characterize the scribe of this Greek version of the First Apocalypse of James, saying that they would likely have “had a particular affinity for the text.” And the academic reached this conclusion from the length of the writings. You see, while most teachers would only have utilized a brief passage of the work, this document presented it in full.
And while reflecting on the discovery that he had helped to make, Smith said to the University of Oxford’s website, “To say that we were excited once we realized what we’d found is an understatement. We never suspected that Greek fragments of the First Apocalypse of James [had] survived from antiquity. But there they were, right in front of us.”
So, what exactly does the First Apocalypse of James reveal? Well, in general, it speaks of some of the lessons that Jesus supposedly bestowed upon James. There are mentions of heaven along with some prophecies in the text – even a reference to James’ own demise.
The account primarily takes the form of a discussion between Jesus and James, although the bottom of the script also features a section that vaguely alludes to James’ fate. And though this part of the document is a little fragmented, it’s believed to suggest that James will be crucified.
In fact, the initial section of the text speaks about James’ understandable worries of crucifixion. Ultimately, though, it’s said that he will receive “passwords” that will apparently allow the religious leader to overcome evil adversaries and get into heaven.
The document also tells us a little bit about James himself. According to the text, he was the leader of the Christian church in its initial stages. His relationship to Jesus is made explicit, too, when Christ is quoted as saying, “You are not my brother materially.”
Smith has elaborated on the importance of this narrative, explaining to the University of Oxford’s website, “The text supplements the biblical account of Jesus’ life and ministry by allowing us access to conversations that purportedly took place between Jesus and his brother, James – secret teachings that allowed James to be a good teacher after Jesus’ death.”
Obbink, who had worked with Smith on the text, was also thrilled by the discovery of this Greek version of the First Apocalypse of James. And according to the academic, the document gives us an intriguing window into how readers engaged with scripture in the past.
Obbink told the University of Oxford that the writings “[show] how the early reading public interacted with different versions of the gospel. In the city center of Oxyrhynchus [in Egypt], Greek-speaking elites read the Gospel of James in the original Greek – alongside our earliest surviving copies of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.”
According to Obbink, though, things were different for people who lived outside of the urban centers. He added, “In the rural countryside, at Nag Hammadi, it was the heretical Gospel of James that hermit monks chose to translate into Coptic for native Egyptian speakers.” So, people of the period apparently soaked up information in varying ways.
The discovery of this Greek-language section of the First Apocalypse of James was first announced in November 2017 at the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting in Boston. And there may be further revelations to come, too. Ultimately, you see, Landau and Smith intend to publish their initial discoveries on the subject in the Egypt Exploration Society’s Graeco-Roman Memoirs series.
https://allaroundmoney.com/g/anthropolo ... out_Jesus_
Notwithstanding the historical controversies over the composition and the contents of the Bible, elevated saints throughout history have been able to confirm and verify the essential truths contained therein through their own personal spiritual experiences.
For example, Paramahansa Yogananda authored a two-volume "The Second Coming of Christ" in which he illuminates the gospels in greater detail.
Description:
In this unprecedented masterwork of inspiration, Paramahansa Yogananda takes the reader on a profoundly enriching journey through the four Gospels. Verse by verse, he illumines the universal path to oneness with God taught by Jesus to his immediate disciples but obscured through centuries of misinterpretation: "how to become like Christ, how to resurrect the Eternal Christ within one's self". This landmark work transcends divisive sectarianism to reveal a unifying harmony underlying all true religions. A groundbreaking synthesis of East and West, it imparts the life-transforming realization that each of us can experience for ourselves the promised Second Coming - awakening of the all-fulfilling Divine Consciousness latent within our souls. Yogananda said, "In titling this work The Second Coming of Christ, I am not referring to a literal return of Jesus to earth. He came two thousand years ago and, after imparting a universal path to God's kingdom, was crucified and resurrected; his reappearance to the masses now is not necessary for the fulfillment of his teachings. What is necessary is for the cosmic wisdom and divine perception of Jesus to speak again through each one's own experience and understanding of the infinite Christ Consciousness that was incarnate in Jesus. That will be his true Second Coming."
https://www.amazon.ca/Second-Coming-Chr ... 0876125577
For example, Paramahansa Yogananda authored a two-volume "The Second Coming of Christ" in which he illuminates the gospels in greater detail.
Description:
In this unprecedented masterwork of inspiration, Paramahansa Yogananda takes the reader on a profoundly enriching journey through the four Gospels. Verse by verse, he illumines the universal path to oneness with God taught by Jesus to his immediate disciples but obscured through centuries of misinterpretation: "how to become like Christ, how to resurrect the Eternal Christ within one's self". This landmark work transcends divisive sectarianism to reveal a unifying harmony underlying all true religions. A groundbreaking synthesis of East and West, it imparts the life-transforming realization that each of us can experience for ourselves the promised Second Coming - awakening of the all-fulfilling Divine Consciousness latent within our souls. Yogananda said, "In titling this work The Second Coming of Christ, I am not referring to a literal return of Jesus to earth. He came two thousand years ago and, after imparting a universal path to God's kingdom, was crucified and resurrected; his reappearance to the masses now is not necessary for the fulfillment of his teachings. What is necessary is for the cosmic wisdom and divine perception of Jesus to speak again through each one's own experience and understanding of the infinite Christ Consciousness that was incarnate in Jesus. That will be his true Second Coming."
https://www.amazon.ca/Second-Coming-Chr ... 0876125577
Our Lady of Kibeho
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEkY6vwZc3U
The very first Marian Apparitions on the Continent of Africa recognized by the Holy See. These apparitions took place at Kibeho, the small village of southwestern Rwanda. It was on November 28, 1981, that the Virgin Mary visited Rwanda to deliver her message to the whole world. She appeared to three girls who were students in high school (Alphonsine Mumureke, Nathalie Mukamazimpaka, and Marie Claire Mukangango.) She appeared to them several times between 1981 to 1989. She Identified herself as "Nyina wa Jambo"(Kinyarwanda for "Mother of the Word".) On June 29, 2001, after a long time of investigations, His Excellency Most Reverend Augustin Misago, the bishop of the Diocese of Gikongoro, declared the authenticity of those apparitions after the approval of the Holy See. The Marian Sanctuary at Kibeho was named "The Shrine of Our Lady of Kibeho" in 1992. The main message of Our Lady of Kibeho was an urgent call to conversion of hearts and an urgent call to a constant prayer without hypocrisy.
*******
BOOK
Thirteen years before the bloody 1994 genocide that swept across Rwanda and left more than a million people dead, the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ appeared to eight young people in the remote village of Kibeho. Through these visionaries, Mary and Jesus warned of the looming holocaust, which (they assured) could be averted if Rwandans opened their hearts to God and embraced His love. Mary also sent messages to government and church leaders to instruct them how to end the ethnic hatred simmering in their country. She warned them that Rwanda would become "a river of blood"—a land of unspeakable carnage—if the hatred of the people was not quickly quelled by love. Some leaders listened, but very few believed. The prophetic and apocalyptic warnings tragically came true during 100 horrifying days of savage bloodletting and mass murder. Much like what happened at similar sites such as Fátima and Lourdes, the messengers of Kibeho were at first mocked and disbelieved. But as miracle after miracle occurred in the tiny village, tens of thousands of Rwandans journeyed to Kibeho to behold the apparitions. After the genocide, and two decades of rigorous investigation, Our Lady of Kibeho became the first and only Vatican-approved Marian (related to the Virgin Mary) site in all of Africa. But the story still remained largely unknown. Now, however, Immaculée Ilibagiza has changed all that. She has made many pilgrimages to Kibeho, both before and after the holocaust, has personally witnessed true miracles, and has spoken with a number of the visionaries themselves. What she has discovered will deeply touch your heart!
https://www.amazon.ca/Our-Lady-Kibeho-S ... 1401927432
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEkY6vwZc3U
The very first Marian Apparitions on the Continent of Africa recognized by the Holy See. These apparitions took place at Kibeho, the small village of southwestern Rwanda. It was on November 28, 1981, that the Virgin Mary visited Rwanda to deliver her message to the whole world. She appeared to three girls who were students in high school (Alphonsine Mumureke, Nathalie Mukamazimpaka, and Marie Claire Mukangango.) She appeared to them several times between 1981 to 1989. She Identified herself as "Nyina wa Jambo"(Kinyarwanda for "Mother of the Word".) On June 29, 2001, after a long time of investigations, His Excellency Most Reverend Augustin Misago, the bishop of the Diocese of Gikongoro, declared the authenticity of those apparitions after the approval of the Holy See. The Marian Sanctuary at Kibeho was named "The Shrine of Our Lady of Kibeho" in 1992. The main message of Our Lady of Kibeho was an urgent call to conversion of hearts and an urgent call to a constant prayer without hypocrisy.
*******
BOOK
Thirteen years before the bloody 1994 genocide that swept across Rwanda and left more than a million people dead, the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ appeared to eight young people in the remote village of Kibeho. Through these visionaries, Mary and Jesus warned of the looming holocaust, which (they assured) could be averted if Rwandans opened their hearts to God and embraced His love. Mary also sent messages to government and church leaders to instruct them how to end the ethnic hatred simmering in their country. She warned them that Rwanda would become "a river of blood"—a land of unspeakable carnage—if the hatred of the people was not quickly quelled by love. Some leaders listened, but very few believed. The prophetic and apocalyptic warnings tragically came true during 100 horrifying days of savage bloodletting and mass murder. Much like what happened at similar sites such as Fátima and Lourdes, the messengers of Kibeho were at first mocked and disbelieved. But as miracle after miracle occurred in the tiny village, tens of thousands of Rwandans journeyed to Kibeho to behold the apparitions. After the genocide, and two decades of rigorous investigation, Our Lady of Kibeho became the first and only Vatican-approved Marian (related to the Virgin Mary) site in all of Africa. But the story still remained largely unknown. Now, however, Immaculée Ilibagiza has changed all that. She has made many pilgrimages to Kibeho, both before and after the holocaust, has personally witnessed true miracles, and has spoken with a number of the visionaries themselves. What she has discovered will deeply touch your heart!
https://www.amazon.ca/Our-Lady-Kibeho-S ... 1401927432
This is an excellent and a marvellous book and gives insights into how revelations could have happened to prophets and saints in the past.
BOOK
The Boy Who Met Jesus: Segatashya Emmanuel of Kibeho
It's the greatest story never told: that of a boy who met Jesus and dared to ask Him all the questions that have consumed mankind since the dawn of time.
His name was Segatashya. He was a shepherd born into a penniless and illiterate pagan family in the most remote region of Rwanda. He never attended school, never saw a bible, and never set foot in a church. Then one summer day in 1982 while the 15-year-old was resting beneath a shade tree, Jesus Christ paid him a visit.
Jesus asked the startled young man if he'd be willing to go on a mission to remind mankind how to live a life that leads to heaven. Segatashya accepted the assignment on one condition: that Jesus answer all his questions-and all the questions of those he met on his travels-about faith, religion, the purpose of life, and the nature of heaven and hell. Jesus agreed to the boy's terms, and Segatashya set off on what would become one of the most miraculous journeys in modern history.
Although he was often accused of being a charlatan and beaten as a result, Segatashya's innocent heart and powerful spiritual wisdom quickly won over even the most cynical of critics. Soon, this teenage boy who had never learned to read or write was discussing theology with leading biblical scholars and advising pastors and priests of all denominations. He became so famous in Rwanda that the Catholic Church investigated his story.
The doctors and psychiatrists who examined Segatashya all agreed that they were witnessing a miracle. His words and simple truths converted thousands of hearts and souls wherever he went. Before his death during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, Segatashya continued his travels and conversations with Jesus for eight years, asking Him what we all want to know:
· Why were we created?
· Why must we suffer?
· Why do bad things happen to good people?
· When will the world end?
· Is there life after death?
· How do we get to Heaven?
The answers to these and many other momentous, life-changing questions are revealed in this riveting book, which is the first full account of Segatashya's remarkable life story. Written with grace, passion, and loving humor by Immaculée Ilibagiza, Segatashya's close friend and a survivor of the Rwandan holocaust herself, this truly inspirational work is certain to move you in profound ways.
No matter what your faith or religious beliefs, Segatashya's words will bring you comfort and joy, and prepare your heart for this life . . . and for life everlasting.
https://www.amazon.ca/Boy-Who-Met-Jesus ... 1401935826
BOOK
The Boy Who Met Jesus: Segatashya Emmanuel of Kibeho
It's the greatest story never told: that of a boy who met Jesus and dared to ask Him all the questions that have consumed mankind since the dawn of time.
His name was Segatashya. He was a shepherd born into a penniless and illiterate pagan family in the most remote region of Rwanda. He never attended school, never saw a bible, and never set foot in a church. Then one summer day in 1982 while the 15-year-old was resting beneath a shade tree, Jesus Christ paid him a visit.
Jesus asked the startled young man if he'd be willing to go on a mission to remind mankind how to live a life that leads to heaven. Segatashya accepted the assignment on one condition: that Jesus answer all his questions-and all the questions of those he met on his travels-about faith, religion, the purpose of life, and the nature of heaven and hell. Jesus agreed to the boy's terms, and Segatashya set off on what would become one of the most miraculous journeys in modern history.
Although he was often accused of being a charlatan and beaten as a result, Segatashya's innocent heart and powerful spiritual wisdom quickly won over even the most cynical of critics. Soon, this teenage boy who had never learned to read or write was discussing theology with leading biblical scholars and advising pastors and priests of all denominations. He became so famous in Rwanda that the Catholic Church investigated his story.
The doctors and psychiatrists who examined Segatashya all agreed that they were witnessing a miracle. His words and simple truths converted thousands of hearts and souls wherever he went. Before his death during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, Segatashya continued his travels and conversations with Jesus for eight years, asking Him what we all want to know:
· Why were we created?
· Why must we suffer?
· Why do bad things happen to good people?
· When will the world end?
· Is there life after death?
· How do we get to Heaven?
The answers to these and many other momentous, life-changing questions are revealed in this riveting book, which is the first full account of Segatashya's remarkable life story. Written with grace, passion, and loving humor by Immaculée Ilibagiza, Segatashya's close friend and a survivor of the Rwandan holocaust herself, this truly inspirational work is certain to move you in profound ways.
No matter what your faith or religious beliefs, Segatashya's words will bring you comfort and joy, and prepare your heart for this life . . . and for life everlasting.
https://www.amazon.ca/Boy-Who-Met-Jesus ... 1401935826
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Holy Fire descends in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (VIDEO)
1 May, 2021 15:11
Orthodox Christian worshippers attend the Holy Fire ceremony amid eased coronavirus restrictions at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem's Old City. © Reuters / Ammar Awad
The Holy Fire appeared in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on Great Saturday, a day before Orthodox Easter. With Israel easing Covid-19 restrictions, hundreds of worshipers flocked to the church for the ceremony.
Orthodox Christians believe that once a year, blue light emits from the tomb of Jesus Christ deep inside the church. It then turns into a flaming column, which the clerics use to light candles in order to pass the fire to the pilgrims.
The ceremony, which symbolizes the resurrection of Jesus, usually gathers tens of thousands of worshipers, but in 2020, it was marred by the harsh coronavirus measures. Last year, when Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem Theophilos III emerged from the building carrying the flame, the courtyard was largely empty, with only a few clerics in face masks and Israeli police officers attending.
This time, the ‘miracle’ was witnessed by a much larger crowd, as Israel has eased restrictions on gatherings in recent months, following a record vaccination drive which has seen more than half of the population vaccinated against Covid-19.
The Holy Fire will be flown to a dozen countries, including Russia, Greece, Ukraine, Poland, Bulgaria, and Georgia. Representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church have been waiting for the lamp with the flame at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport to deliver it to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow for the Easter service.
https://www.rt.com/news/522688-holy-fir ... jerusalem/
Holy Fire descends in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (VIDEO)
1 May, 2021 15:11
Orthodox Christian worshippers attend the Holy Fire ceremony amid eased coronavirus restrictions at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem's Old City. © Reuters / Ammar Awad
The Holy Fire appeared in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on Great Saturday, a day before Orthodox Easter. With Israel easing Covid-19 restrictions, hundreds of worshipers flocked to the church for the ceremony.
Orthodox Christians believe that once a year, blue light emits from the tomb of Jesus Christ deep inside the church. It then turns into a flaming column, which the clerics use to light candles in order to pass the fire to the pilgrims.
The ceremony, which symbolizes the resurrection of Jesus, usually gathers tens of thousands of worshipers, but in 2020, it was marred by the harsh coronavirus measures. Last year, when Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem Theophilos III emerged from the building carrying the flame, the courtyard was largely empty, with only a few clerics in face masks and Israeli police officers attending.
This time, the ‘miracle’ was witnessed by a much larger crowd, as Israel has eased restrictions on gatherings in recent months, following a record vaccination drive which has seen more than half of the population vaccinated against Covid-19.
The Holy Fire will be flown to a dozen countries, including Russia, Greece, Ukraine, Poland, Bulgaria, and Georgia. Representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church have been waiting for the lamp with the flame at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport to deliver it to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow for the Easter service.
https://www.rt.com/news/522688-holy-fir ... jerusalem/
Pope Francis Faces Another German Reformation
For most of the Pope Francis era, the pope himself was the most turbulent figure in Roman Catholicism: dropping rhetorical bombshells, making unexpected gestures and appointments and using his power and influence to reopen debates his predecessors closed.
Over the past two years, however, the sources of Catholic turbulence have shifted. The pope has repeatedly decided against making dramatic moves, most notably in early 2020, when following a synod on the challenges facing the Amazon region, he declined to issue an expected blessing for experiments with married priests. But meanwhile the centrifugal forces he has set in motion, the sense of grievance and paranoia among traditionalists and sweeping ambition among liberals, are now pulling at the church from both extremes.
The latest and starkest example is happening this week across Germany, where Catholic priests are offering mass blessings to same-sex couples, in a calculated act of defiance of the Vatican. For a while now, Rome has been trying to prevent the German church from taking decisive steps on a range of issues — same-sex relationships, married and female priests, intercommunion with Protestants — that would threaten the S-word, “schism.” The priests issuing the blessings, on the other hand, seem eager to pull their bishops toward a confrontation in which they hope that Rome will blink.
In a sense, the debates driving this confrontation are exactly the kind of arguments that Francis, in his calls for a freer and more honest debate within the church’s hierarchy, seemed intent on opening up. For a time, the German bishops, representing one of Catholicism’s richest and most liberal national churches, seemed to be working in a tacit partnership with the pope. Their push for maximalist change created space for him to go partway with the liberalizers, changing church teaching gradually and with a certain deniability.
That’s more or less what happened with the debate over communion for the divorced and remarried: The Germans sought a formal path for remarried Catholics to receive the Eucharist, and Francis delivered an ambiguous text that effectively allowed different Catholic countries and dioceses to choose their own approach.
The expectation from liberal Catholics, and the fear of conservatives, was that this model would begin a kind of decentralization of doctrine, in which the church’s rules varied dramatically across national borders and diocesan lines.
But Francis declined to make that kind of move with married priests. And as with many revolutions, raising liberal expectations and then dashing them created pressure for the German bishops to go further on their own. So for more than a year, with Covid interrupting, the German church has been engaged in a synodal path, basically a series of conferences on church reform, in which most of the major post-sexual-revolution issues are on the table — even as Rome keeps issuing warnings that the Germans are on dangerous ground.
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/11/opin ... 778d3e6de3
For most of the Pope Francis era, the pope himself was the most turbulent figure in Roman Catholicism: dropping rhetorical bombshells, making unexpected gestures and appointments and using his power and influence to reopen debates his predecessors closed.
Over the past two years, however, the sources of Catholic turbulence have shifted. The pope has repeatedly decided against making dramatic moves, most notably in early 2020, when following a synod on the challenges facing the Amazon region, he declined to issue an expected blessing for experiments with married priests. But meanwhile the centrifugal forces he has set in motion, the sense of grievance and paranoia among traditionalists and sweeping ambition among liberals, are now pulling at the church from both extremes.
The latest and starkest example is happening this week across Germany, where Catholic priests are offering mass blessings to same-sex couples, in a calculated act of defiance of the Vatican. For a while now, Rome has been trying to prevent the German church from taking decisive steps on a range of issues — same-sex relationships, married and female priests, intercommunion with Protestants — that would threaten the S-word, “schism.” The priests issuing the blessings, on the other hand, seem eager to pull their bishops toward a confrontation in which they hope that Rome will blink.
In a sense, the debates driving this confrontation are exactly the kind of arguments that Francis, in his calls for a freer and more honest debate within the church’s hierarchy, seemed intent on opening up. For a time, the German bishops, representing one of Catholicism’s richest and most liberal national churches, seemed to be working in a tacit partnership with the pope. Their push for maximalist change created space for him to go partway with the liberalizers, changing church teaching gradually and with a certain deniability.
That’s more or less what happened with the debate over communion for the divorced and remarried: The Germans sought a formal path for remarried Catholics to receive the Eucharist, and Francis delivered an ambiguous text that effectively allowed different Catholic countries and dioceses to choose their own approach.
The expectation from liberal Catholics, and the fear of conservatives, was that this model would begin a kind of decentralization of doctrine, in which the church’s rules varied dramatically across national borders and diocesan lines.
But Francis declined to make that kind of move with married priests. And as with many revolutions, raising liberal expectations and then dashing them created pressure for the German bishops to go further on their own. So for more than a year, with Covid interrupting, the German church has been engaged in a synodal path, basically a series of conferences on church reform, in which most of the major post-sexual-revolution issues are on the table — even as Rome keeps issuing warnings that the Germans are on dangerous ground.
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/11/opin ... 778d3e6de3
Why Christians Must Fight Systemic Racism
I wake up to messages on social media from other Christians calling me a racist, communist, false teacher. Such messages have become as ordinary as my cup of coffee before morning prayer. I receive them because part of my work as a Christian theologian addresses issues of systemic injustice. I never imagined such work would be controversial. Racism — personal and societal — still affects the lives of people of color in the United States. Part of the Christian witness involves addressing this among a host of other maladies.
Nearly every Christian of color I know who addresses these issues has been subject to similar attacks, no matter the nuance of our argumentation or the sources we cite. I have been accused of believing that all white people are irredeemably racist and of seeing humans as only victims or oppressors. None of this is true, but that does not seem to matter. They call us “woke,” but the disdain with which they use that word makes it feel like a stand-in for deeper and more cutting insults.
I remain puzzled as to why discussions of racism and injustice stir up so much venom from fellow believers. They do not simply disagree. They are angry. Despite this hysteria, there is simply no theological or historical reason for Christians to hesitate over acknowledging structural racism.
When people point out bias or racism in structures (health care, housing, policing, employment practices), they are engaging in the most Christian of practices: naming and resisting sins, personal and collective. A Christian theology of human fallibility leads us to expect structural and personal injustice. It is in the texts we hold dear. So when Christians stand up against racialized oppression, they are not losing the plot; they are discovering an element of Christian faith and practice that has been with us since the beginning.
The Law of Moses says: “You shall not pervert the justice due to your poor in their lawsuits. Keep far from a false charge, and do not kill the innocent and those in the right, for I will not acquit the guilty. You shall take no bribe, for a bribe blinds the officials, and subverts the cause of those who are in the right” (Exodus 23:6-8). The Hebrew Scriptures see the links between power, money and justice. Therefore when I read in modern scholarship depictions of the ways in which money subverts justice, I find a convergence of interests and a place for dialogue.
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus quoted the prophet Isaiah in his first agenda-setting sermon. He said that he had come to “set the oppressed free.” In Isaiah’s time and ours the oppressed are “the shattered ones,” those who have been broken apart by a life filled with exploitation. They are those who have not been given a fair shake, the victims of bribes, land grabs and economic disenfranchisement. Oppression is both spiritual and material.
Christianity teaches that humans, left to our own devices, often pursue their own distorted interests. We call this tendency sin. When you add in political and economic power to get what you want at the expense of others, you have the recipe for systemic injustice. Systemic racism is just one form (out of many) that people use to get what they want at the expense of others. People can rob you at gunpoint and governments can rob you through eminent domain. Both are wrong.
The texts of the Old and New Testaments open up the possibility of introspection and learning. The Psalmist wonders: “Who can discern their own errors? Cleanse me from my hidden faults” (Psalm 19:12). The writer recognizes that there may be parts of themselves that they do not know. Christians should be open to the possibility that they may have hidden racial biases of which they are not aware. This is well documented, for example, in the areas of health care and medical treatment. When someone gives us a chance to finally know ourselves and heal, we should be open to the possibility. Training in potential hidden biases is not indoctrination in every case (admittedly it can be done in unhealthy ways); it can be a chance for growth.
In the struggle against systemic racism, our analysis, solutions and implications may diverge in ways as different as our perceptions, temperaments and underlying beliefs about reality. My religious beliefs will give my arguments a certain tenor. They are a part of who I am; it was the gift my grandparents and parents gave me, their weapon against anti-blackness and despair. Others have trod different paths.
That does not mean that we cannot talk to one another. W.E.B. Du Bois, Frederick Douglass, Fannie Lou Hamer, James Baldwin and Martin Luther King Jr. held a variety of religious views. Nonetheless, they managed to speak to a religiously diverse America. That is what the public square is for. That is the rough and tumble of democracy.
I am a Christian theologian, not a critical race theorist. When I say that, it is not an attempt to avoid censure or to seal these worlds off from each other. There are no respectability politics here. Instead, it is a statement about the shape of my training and my respect for others’ expertise. Black historians, theologians, philosophers and legal scholars disagree about a host of things. There is an entire Black intellectual tradition about the nature and means of Black freedom of which much of America remains blissfully unaware.
When we arrive at points of consensus, it is not because we are all working within the same framework. It is because we are all staring at the same monster come to steal, kill and destroy.
Many fear that Christians who speak out against racism want to tear down America. That is not true; we are the fools who believe that America might better embody its ideals for all people. We are the people of hope. We don’t want destruction of any good thing; we want justice. Let us then set aside this tired drama and fear-mongering distracting us from real issues. The lines are stale and the plot predictable. Let’s instead write a different script and possibly a more just future for everyone.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/18/opin ... 778d3e6de3
I wake up to messages on social media from other Christians calling me a racist, communist, false teacher. Such messages have become as ordinary as my cup of coffee before morning prayer. I receive them because part of my work as a Christian theologian addresses issues of systemic injustice. I never imagined such work would be controversial. Racism — personal and societal — still affects the lives of people of color in the United States. Part of the Christian witness involves addressing this among a host of other maladies.
Nearly every Christian of color I know who addresses these issues has been subject to similar attacks, no matter the nuance of our argumentation or the sources we cite. I have been accused of believing that all white people are irredeemably racist and of seeing humans as only victims or oppressors. None of this is true, but that does not seem to matter. They call us “woke,” but the disdain with which they use that word makes it feel like a stand-in for deeper and more cutting insults.
I remain puzzled as to why discussions of racism and injustice stir up so much venom from fellow believers. They do not simply disagree. They are angry. Despite this hysteria, there is simply no theological or historical reason for Christians to hesitate over acknowledging structural racism.
When people point out bias or racism in structures (health care, housing, policing, employment practices), they are engaging in the most Christian of practices: naming and resisting sins, personal and collective. A Christian theology of human fallibility leads us to expect structural and personal injustice. It is in the texts we hold dear. So when Christians stand up against racialized oppression, they are not losing the plot; they are discovering an element of Christian faith and practice that has been with us since the beginning.
The Law of Moses says: “You shall not pervert the justice due to your poor in their lawsuits. Keep far from a false charge, and do not kill the innocent and those in the right, for I will not acquit the guilty. You shall take no bribe, for a bribe blinds the officials, and subverts the cause of those who are in the right” (Exodus 23:6-8). The Hebrew Scriptures see the links between power, money and justice. Therefore when I read in modern scholarship depictions of the ways in which money subverts justice, I find a convergence of interests and a place for dialogue.
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus quoted the prophet Isaiah in his first agenda-setting sermon. He said that he had come to “set the oppressed free.” In Isaiah’s time and ours the oppressed are “the shattered ones,” those who have been broken apart by a life filled with exploitation. They are those who have not been given a fair shake, the victims of bribes, land grabs and economic disenfranchisement. Oppression is both spiritual and material.
Christianity teaches that humans, left to our own devices, often pursue their own distorted interests. We call this tendency sin. When you add in political and economic power to get what you want at the expense of others, you have the recipe for systemic injustice. Systemic racism is just one form (out of many) that people use to get what they want at the expense of others. People can rob you at gunpoint and governments can rob you through eminent domain. Both are wrong.
The texts of the Old and New Testaments open up the possibility of introspection and learning. The Psalmist wonders: “Who can discern their own errors? Cleanse me from my hidden faults” (Psalm 19:12). The writer recognizes that there may be parts of themselves that they do not know. Christians should be open to the possibility that they may have hidden racial biases of which they are not aware. This is well documented, for example, in the areas of health care and medical treatment. When someone gives us a chance to finally know ourselves and heal, we should be open to the possibility. Training in potential hidden biases is not indoctrination in every case (admittedly it can be done in unhealthy ways); it can be a chance for growth.
In the struggle against systemic racism, our analysis, solutions and implications may diverge in ways as different as our perceptions, temperaments and underlying beliefs about reality. My religious beliefs will give my arguments a certain tenor. They are a part of who I am; it was the gift my grandparents and parents gave me, their weapon against anti-blackness and despair. Others have trod different paths.
That does not mean that we cannot talk to one another. W.E.B. Du Bois, Frederick Douglass, Fannie Lou Hamer, James Baldwin and Martin Luther King Jr. held a variety of religious views. Nonetheless, they managed to speak to a religiously diverse America. That is what the public square is for. That is the rough and tumble of democracy.
I am a Christian theologian, not a critical race theorist. When I say that, it is not an attempt to avoid censure or to seal these worlds off from each other. There are no respectability politics here. Instead, it is a statement about the shape of my training and my respect for others’ expertise. Black historians, theologians, philosophers and legal scholars disagree about a host of things. There is an entire Black intellectual tradition about the nature and means of Black freedom of which much of America remains blissfully unaware.
When we arrive at points of consensus, it is not because we are all working within the same framework. It is because we are all staring at the same monster come to steal, kill and destroy.
Many fear that Christians who speak out against racism want to tear down America. That is not true; we are the fools who believe that America might better embody its ideals for all people. We are the people of hope. We don’t want destruction of any good thing; we want justice. Let us then set aside this tired drama and fear-mongering distracting us from real issues. The lines are stale and the plot predictable. Let’s instead write a different script and possibly a more just future for everyone.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/18/opin ... 778d3e6de3
An exiled English king who became a hermit saint could have been the first resident of a 1,200-year-old cave house, archaeologists believe
Bethany Dawson
Sun, July 18, 2021, 10:08 AM
Picture of 8th century cave uncovered to be the hide out of an exiled king
Royal Agricultural University
A cave house has been uncovered in England, thought to have housed an exiled king .
The building was thought to be a party destination for the 18th-century elite, but a much older history is unfolding.
These finds are by archaeologists from the Royal Agricultural University and Wessex University.
An ancient cave house beside a river has been revealed to be the home of a deposed English king who became a hermit in the East Midlands of medieval England.
For a long time, the caves in Foremark and Ingleby in South Derbyshire were considered to be a folly dating back to the 18th century, when the building was used for parties by the English upper classes.
But a new study has uncovered that they are far more likely to be dated back to the 9th century Dark Ages.
Edmund Simons, principal investigator of the project and a research fellow at the Royal Agricultural University (RAU), said in a press release: "This makes it probably the oldest intact domestic interior in the UK - with doors, floor, roof, windows etc - and, what's more, it may well have been lived in by a king who became a saint."
Local legends link the caves to Saint Hardulph - a fragment of a 16th-century book states that at 'that time Saint Hardulph has a cell in a cliff a little from the Trent' and local folklore identifies these caves as those occupied by Hardulph, also known as Eardwulf the king of Northumbria from 796 to 806.
The new study strongly links the saint - who was sent into exile after he was defeated in battle and removed from the throne - to the ancient cave house.
"The architectural similarities with Saxon buildings, and the documented association with Hardulph/Eardwulf, make a convincing case that these caves were constructed, or enlarged, to house the exiled king," said Simons.
Picture of 8th century cave uncovered to be the hide out of an exiled king
Picture of 8th century cave uncovered to be the hide out of an exiled king Royal Agricultural University
"It was not unusual for deposed or retired royalty to take up a religious life during this period, gaining sanctity and in some cases canonization. Living in a cave as a hermit would have been one way this could have been achieved," said Simons.
The landmark discovery has been lead by archaeologists from the Royal Agricultural University's newly-formed Cultural Heritage Institute in conjunction with Wessex Archaeology.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/ex ... 07438.html
Bethany Dawson
Sun, July 18, 2021, 10:08 AM
Picture of 8th century cave uncovered to be the hide out of an exiled king
Royal Agricultural University
A cave house has been uncovered in England, thought to have housed an exiled king .
The building was thought to be a party destination for the 18th-century elite, but a much older history is unfolding.
These finds are by archaeologists from the Royal Agricultural University and Wessex University.
An ancient cave house beside a river has been revealed to be the home of a deposed English king who became a hermit in the East Midlands of medieval England.
For a long time, the caves in Foremark and Ingleby in South Derbyshire were considered to be a folly dating back to the 18th century, when the building was used for parties by the English upper classes.
But a new study has uncovered that they are far more likely to be dated back to the 9th century Dark Ages.
Edmund Simons, principal investigator of the project and a research fellow at the Royal Agricultural University (RAU), said in a press release: "This makes it probably the oldest intact domestic interior in the UK - with doors, floor, roof, windows etc - and, what's more, it may well have been lived in by a king who became a saint."
Local legends link the caves to Saint Hardulph - a fragment of a 16th-century book states that at 'that time Saint Hardulph has a cell in a cliff a little from the Trent' and local folklore identifies these caves as those occupied by Hardulph, also known as Eardwulf the king of Northumbria from 796 to 806.
The new study strongly links the saint - who was sent into exile after he was defeated in battle and removed from the throne - to the ancient cave house.
"The architectural similarities with Saxon buildings, and the documented association with Hardulph/Eardwulf, make a convincing case that these caves were constructed, or enlarged, to house the exiled king," said Simons.
Picture of 8th century cave uncovered to be the hide out of an exiled king
Picture of 8th century cave uncovered to be the hide out of an exiled king Royal Agricultural University
"It was not unusual for deposed or retired royalty to take up a religious life during this period, gaining sanctity and in some cases canonization. Living in a cave as a hermit would have been one way this could have been achieved," said Simons.
The landmark discovery has been lead by archaeologists from the Royal Agricultural University's newly-formed Cultural Heritage Institute in conjunction with Wessex Archaeology.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/ex ... 07438.html
What We Lose When We Livestream Church
Riding around town earlier this year, my 3-year-old daughter shouted, “Look, a church!” It took me a second to understand what she meant. I didn’t see any churches. All I could see was a parking deck. Then I realized my daughter couldn’t remember our church building. Since last summer our church has been meeting under the cover of a parking deck so that we could still assemble in person without wilting in Alabama’s summer sun.
No doubt our church could have saved money and hassle by offering only livestreamed preaching and music. I could have been spared a wicked sunburn on Easter when we switched to the top of the deck. But the body of Christ, or church, isn’t the same when you separate its members (1 Cor. 12:27). The hands and feet and ears and eyes need to be assembled for this body to work for the good of all.
Christians need to hear the babies crying in church. They need to see the reddened eyes of a friend across the aisle. They need to chat with the recovering drug addict who shows up early but still sits in the back row. They need to taste the bread and wine. They need to feel the choir crescendo toward the assurance of hope in what our senses can’t yet perceive. My daughter needs to know the church members, even if it means wearing masks and setting up lawn chairs in a parking deck.
This all would seem to suggest that “virtual church” is an oxymoron. But when Covid-19 forced congregations to go remote and turned pastors into tech gurus, some churches even welcomed the change. You can understand the logic. Even the biggest church buildings could never accommodate a fraction of the potential audience for livestreamed services. Early in the pandemic, pastors touted online viewer numbers that dwarfed even their best-attended Christmas and Easter services.
Viewed this way, the pandemic didn’t temporarily sidetrack churches. It introduced a revolution in religion. The internet tears down nearly every previous hindrance to church attendance. You can watch from your lake house or the hotel room before your daughter’s travel soccer game. You don’t need to tune in at any given time. You can flex around your sleep or work schedule.
The logic extends, however, beyond what some churches want to acknowledge. Livestreaming is more than a little too convenient. You don’t even need to watch your own church’s services. You can drop in on that church across town you’ve always wondered about. Or even the church on the other side of the country, or in a different country. Why visit any churches in person before you’ve at least watched several online? Why bother with any one church at all? Watch the sermon over here and the music over there. Change it up the next week. Or skip a week. Or two. No one will notice the blip in the analytics.
The convenience of ubiquitous livestreaming largely benefits larger churches at the expense of smaller churches without dynamic preachers and cutting-edge music. Add in HD-quality, multicamera production and it’s not a fair fight for viewers looking to upgrade their digital experience.
Livestreaming also benefits churches with more symbolic views on the sacraments of communion and baptism, at the expense of churches with more formal, participatory liturgy. Livestreaming privileges the elements of Christian worship that communicate over video, namely teaching and music. You can’t program the body and blood of Christ in 1s and 0s of digital code.
As churches prepare for the start of fall programming, leaders debate whether or not they should turn off the livestream, especially if the Delta variant doesn’t abate. Livestream technology will almost certainly prevail in a majority of churches. Larger churches will seek to capitalize on growing online audiences by hiring pastors dedicated to serving people who never gather outside comment sections. Smaller churches will feel the pressure to keep up with expectations. For visitors, no livestream will be the equivalent of no website. And there are compelling reasons to have livestreams even now that vaccinations are widely available and many churches are back to worshiping in person. Some members still can’t gather in person because of medical conditions that prohibit vaccination.
Church leaders who pull the livestream plug will face stiff resistance. They will be accused of acting in self-interest, because they know livestream viewers are not likely to donate much money. And church leaders coming off the political, pandemic and racial divisions of 2020 through the first half of 2021 won’t be eager to pick new fights. It’s much easier to let the livestream status quo continue, even if it means fewer volunteers and fewer resources for already overburdened leaders.
But this is a fight they must not duck. Because assembly is still required. The very word we translate from Greek as “church” in the New Testament suggests we must assemble in person. The church wasn’t just a bridge of 2,000 years until humanity reached Peak Zoom. It’s essential for the religion where God took on flesh and dwelt among us. It’s essential in a faith that believes Jesus physically rose from the dead and then sat down to enjoy a meal with his stunned friends.
Even if churches continue to livestream while we learn how to live with Covid-19, they can still mitigate the unintended consequences. Instead of automatically uploading to social media, churches can offer the link upon request, so that they can follow up with members and visitors in need. Or if they shut down the livestream, church leaders can revive the practice of Sunday afternoon visitation to shut-ins, so that they can share the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper together.
For some, livestreaming appeared as a silver lining amid the greatest disruption to the global church since the Black Death of the 14th century. It is instead a mirage that distracts from devastating membership and attendance declines that have not yet reversed from March 2020. Half of practicing Christian millennials, for example, didn’t watch their churches’ livestreams in the early months of the pandemic.
Maybe they’re trying to tell us that more options, more convenience and more isolation won’t lead to more deeply committed and connected Christians. Maybe they’re trying to tell us not to forsake the assembly.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/08/opin ... 778d3e6de3
Riding around town earlier this year, my 3-year-old daughter shouted, “Look, a church!” It took me a second to understand what she meant. I didn’t see any churches. All I could see was a parking deck. Then I realized my daughter couldn’t remember our church building. Since last summer our church has been meeting under the cover of a parking deck so that we could still assemble in person without wilting in Alabama’s summer sun.
No doubt our church could have saved money and hassle by offering only livestreamed preaching and music. I could have been spared a wicked sunburn on Easter when we switched to the top of the deck. But the body of Christ, or church, isn’t the same when you separate its members (1 Cor. 12:27). The hands and feet and ears and eyes need to be assembled for this body to work for the good of all.
Christians need to hear the babies crying in church. They need to see the reddened eyes of a friend across the aisle. They need to chat with the recovering drug addict who shows up early but still sits in the back row. They need to taste the bread and wine. They need to feel the choir crescendo toward the assurance of hope in what our senses can’t yet perceive. My daughter needs to know the church members, even if it means wearing masks and setting up lawn chairs in a parking deck.
This all would seem to suggest that “virtual church” is an oxymoron. But when Covid-19 forced congregations to go remote and turned pastors into tech gurus, some churches even welcomed the change. You can understand the logic. Even the biggest church buildings could never accommodate a fraction of the potential audience for livestreamed services. Early in the pandemic, pastors touted online viewer numbers that dwarfed even their best-attended Christmas and Easter services.
Viewed this way, the pandemic didn’t temporarily sidetrack churches. It introduced a revolution in religion. The internet tears down nearly every previous hindrance to church attendance. You can watch from your lake house or the hotel room before your daughter’s travel soccer game. You don’t need to tune in at any given time. You can flex around your sleep or work schedule.
The logic extends, however, beyond what some churches want to acknowledge. Livestreaming is more than a little too convenient. You don’t even need to watch your own church’s services. You can drop in on that church across town you’ve always wondered about. Or even the church on the other side of the country, or in a different country. Why visit any churches in person before you’ve at least watched several online? Why bother with any one church at all? Watch the sermon over here and the music over there. Change it up the next week. Or skip a week. Or two. No one will notice the blip in the analytics.
The convenience of ubiquitous livestreaming largely benefits larger churches at the expense of smaller churches without dynamic preachers and cutting-edge music. Add in HD-quality, multicamera production and it’s not a fair fight for viewers looking to upgrade their digital experience.
Livestreaming also benefits churches with more symbolic views on the sacraments of communion and baptism, at the expense of churches with more formal, participatory liturgy. Livestreaming privileges the elements of Christian worship that communicate over video, namely teaching and music. You can’t program the body and blood of Christ in 1s and 0s of digital code.
As churches prepare for the start of fall programming, leaders debate whether or not they should turn off the livestream, especially if the Delta variant doesn’t abate. Livestream technology will almost certainly prevail in a majority of churches. Larger churches will seek to capitalize on growing online audiences by hiring pastors dedicated to serving people who never gather outside comment sections. Smaller churches will feel the pressure to keep up with expectations. For visitors, no livestream will be the equivalent of no website. And there are compelling reasons to have livestreams even now that vaccinations are widely available and many churches are back to worshiping in person. Some members still can’t gather in person because of medical conditions that prohibit vaccination.
Church leaders who pull the livestream plug will face stiff resistance. They will be accused of acting in self-interest, because they know livestream viewers are not likely to donate much money. And church leaders coming off the political, pandemic and racial divisions of 2020 through the first half of 2021 won’t be eager to pick new fights. It’s much easier to let the livestream status quo continue, even if it means fewer volunteers and fewer resources for already overburdened leaders.
But this is a fight they must not duck. Because assembly is still required. The very word we translate from Greek as “church” in the New Testament suggests we must assemble in person. The church wasn’t just a bridge of 2,000 years until humanity reached Peak Zoom. It’s essential for the religion where God took on flesh and dwelt among us. It’s essential in a faith that believes Jesus physically rose from the dead and then sat down to enjoy a meal with his stunned friends.
Even if churches continue to livestream while we learn how to live with Covid-19, they can still mitigate the unintended consequences. Instead of automatically uploading to social media, churches can offer the link upon request, so that they can follow up with members and visitors in need. Or if they shut down the livestream, church leaders can revive the practice of Sunday afternoon visitation to shut-ins, so that they can share the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper together.
For some, livestreaming appeared as a silver lining amid the greatest disruption to the global church since the Black Death of the 14th century. It is instead a mirage that distracts from devastating membership and attendance declines that have not yet reversed from March 2020. Half of practicing Christian millennials, for example, didn’t watch their churches’ livestreams in the early months of the pandemic.
Maybe they’re trying to tell us that more options, more convenience and more isolation won’t lead to more deeply committed and connected Christians. Maybe they’re trying to tell us not to forsake the assembly.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/08/opin ... 778d3e6de3
Believe It or Not, Jesus Was a Good Jew
Candida Moss
Sun, August 22, 2021, 6:59 AM
Jesus of Nazareth is history’s most famous carpenter, but he is also, according to one poll history’s most famous Jew. He was born to Jewish parents, was circumcised, went to (the) Temple, attended synagogue, and read the Torah. See, he’s a first century middle eastern Jew. Nearly two thousand years of Christianity, however, have presented Jesus as something else: as a religious innovator who was not just in conflict with Jewish authorities, but was actively trying to overturn and replace Judaism. A new book seeks to challenge this misunderstanding and argues that Jesus wasn’t just ethnically Jewish, he was an active supporter of Jewish religious laws.
In his recently published book Jesus And the Forces of Death, Dr. Matthew Thiessen, an associate professor of religious studies at McMaster University, looks at Jesus afresh. “It’s so easy for most Christians to think of Jesus as the first Christian. Which for many Christians today means not Jewish,” Thiessen told The Daily Beast, “but when Jesus is understood as Christian, the gospel narratives read as though Jesus rejects Judaism and condemns Jews. Jesus becomes anti-Jewish.” The legacy of an anti-Jewish Jesus has been felt throughout history and continues even today but that could change. “When we realize that Jesus was Jewish,” Thiessen told me “and the gospel writers wanted to stress Jesus’s Jewishness, then we read stories of Jesus’s interactions with the Pharisees or Sadducees as inner-Jewish conversations, not some sort of Christian rejection or condemnation of Judaism and the Jewish law.”
Thiessen isn’t the first to make this point. He builds here on the important work of scholars like Geza Vermes, Paula Fredriksen, Amy-Jill Levine, and Joel Marcus all of whom picture Jesus as thoroughly embedded in ancient Judaism. What’s distinctive about Thiessen’s argument is the way that he reconsiders debates and interactions between Jesus and other Jewish religious leaders in the Gospels. In particular, Thiessen is focused on ritual purity regulations or what he calls the “forces of death.” In Jewish law ritual purity regulations govern certain bodily processes (childbirth, menstruation, abnormal genital discharge, skin abnormalities, and death) that both make you impure and are also contagious. To modern Christians, he writes, these seem alien and arcane, but if you want to understand Jesus you have to saddle up because we cannot understand Jesus unless we understand how “first century Jews constructed their world.”
This is of particular importance because—whatever else Jesus says about his religious rivals or Jewish laws—he encounters and interacts with people who were ritually impure in the Gospels. One of the first miracles in the Gospel of Mark, for example, involves a person who has a skin condition (it’s called lepra in Greek but it’s not leprosy). The condition makes the man ritually impure. Jesus touches him and the lepra is gone. Some scholars argue that the very fact that Jesus touched the man and risked becoming impure himself is a sign that he doesn’t care about impurity. Thiessen disagrees. The whole story, he said, is about ritual cleaning: “the man begs Jesus to purify him and Jesus tells him ‘Be pure.’ He then even tells the man to follow the laws required in Leviticus 13–14 to remove the residual ritual impurity.”
We see exactly the same dynamic at work in other stories, for example in Mark 5 when Jesus raises the tween daughter of a man called Jairus. Once again Jesus touches a ritually impure body—in this case a corpse—and, of course, the girl comes back to life. Thiessen argues that by raising the girl back to life Jesus is “removing the source of her ritual impurity.” In fact, in all cases when Jesus encounters someone who is ritually impure that person walks away purified. Christians usually read these stories as being about the forgiveness of sins, but Thiessen argues that Jesus’s ministry is actually a “purification mission: removing moral impurities or sins, ritual impurities, and impure spirits—an apocalyptic battle between the forces of holiness and the forces of impurity, in which holiness destroys impurity and death.” The problem is squarely located in the enemy camp rather than the conscience of the individual: impurity and holiness are fighting for supremacy.
Given that impurity is linked to death, Thiessen told me, Jesus’s constant battle with the forces of death anticipates his own resurrection at the end of the Gospels. These “early skirmishes with death forces foretell his later encounter with death itself in the cross.” It’s like an action movie or video game in which the hero picks off the henchmen early on, only to face the villain for a final showdown at the end. And just like any modern action movie, there must be a moment when it seems like the hero isn’t going to make it.
Thiessen’s reading is compelling and does a lot to position Jesus as an authentically Jewish interpreter of ritual purity regulations. That Jesus comes into conflict and disagreements with scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees does not make him not Jewish. Disagreement was incredibly common among ancient Jewish ritual experts and almost seems to be the hallmark of rabbinic literature. It is later Christians, rather than first century Jews, who seek to exclude others based on interpretive disagreements.
His interpretation does raise some questions for modern Christians about the role of Jewish purity laws in their lives. If Jesus is reinforcing the idea that impurity existed and needs to be avoided, you might wonder, then do Christians need to take those practices more seriously? This would have troubling consequences for women, whose bodies are habitually associated with impurity (though, spoiler, Christianity does the same thing and associates women’s bodies with sin). Thiessen told me that he doesn’t pretend to be a theologian or ethicist but that it’s clear in the Gospel of Luke that these laws aren’t supposed to apply to non-Jews anyway. “Since almost all Christians today are non-Jews, it’s become a moot point, but it’s not because Jesus rejected these laws himself!”
Reading a book about contagious religious dirt during a pandemic is eye-opening. Perhaps the real takeaway here is that Jesus, like any ancient Jew, took purity laws regulating contagion seriously and treated them with respect. Perhaps Christians should too.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/be ... 17391.html
Candida Moss
Sun, August 22, 2021, 6:59 AM
Jesus of Nazareth is history’s most famous carpenter, but he is also, according to one poll history’s most famous Jew. He was born to Jewish parents, was circumcised, went to (the) Temple, attended synagogue, and read the Torah. See, he’s a first century middle eastern Jew. Nearly two thousand years of Christianity, however, have presented Jesus as something else: as a religious innovator who was not just in conflict with Jewish authorities, but was actively trying to overturn and replace Judaism. A new book seeks to challenge this misunderstanding and argues that Jesus wasn’t just ethnically Jewish, he was an active supporter of Jewish religious laws.
In his recently published book Jesus And the Forces of Death, Dr. Matthew Thiessen, an associate professor of religious studies at McMaster University, looks at Jesus afresh. “It’s so easy for most Christians to think of Jesus as the first Christian. Which for many Christians today means not Jewish,” Thiessen told The Daily Beast, “but when Jesus is understood as Christian, the gospel narratives read as though Jesus rejects Judaism and condemns Jews. Jesus becomes anti-Jewish.” The legacy of an anti-Jewish Jesus has been felt throughout history and continues even today but that could change. “When we realize that Jesus was Jewish,” Thiessen told me “and the gospel writers wanted to stress Jesus’s Jewishness, then we read stories of Jesus’s interactions with the Pharisees or Sadducees as inner-Jewish conversations, not some sort of Christian rejection or condemnation of Judaism and the Jewish law.”
Thiessen isn’t the first to make this point. He builds here on the important work of scholars like Geza Vermes, Paula Fredriksen, Amy-Jill Levine, and Joel Marcus all of whom picture Jesus as thoroughly embedded in ancient Judaism. What’s distinctive about Thiessen’s argument is the way that he reconsiders debates and interactions between Jesus and other Jewish religious leaders in the Gospels. In particular, Thiessen is focused on ritual purity regulations or what he calls the “forces of death.” In Jewish law ritual purity regulations govern certain bodily processes (childbirth, menstruation, abnormal genital discharge, skin abnormalities, and death) that both make you impure and are also contagious. To modern Christians, he writes, these seem alien and arcane, but if you want to understand Jesus you have to saddle up because we cannot understand Jesus unless we understand how “first century Jews constructed their world.”
This is of particular importance because—whatever else Jesus says about his religious rivals or Jewish laws—he encounters and interacts with people who were ritually impure in the Gospels. One of the first miracles in the Gospel of Mark, for example, involves a person who has a skin condition (it’s called lepra in Greek but it’s not leprosy). The condition makes the man ritually impure. Jesus touches him and the lepra is gone. Some scholars argue that the very fact that Jesus touched the man and risked becoming impure himself is a sign that he doesn’t care about impurity. Thiessen disagrees. The whole story, he said, is about ritual cleaning: “the man begs Jesus to purify him and Jesus tells him ‘Be pure.’ He then even tells the man to follow the laws required in Leviticus 13–14 to remove the residual ritual impurity.”
We see exactly the same dynamic at work in other stories, for example in Mark 5 when Jesus raises the tween daughter of a man called Jairus. Once again Jesus touches a ritually impure body—in this case a corpse—and, of course, the girl comes back to life. Thiessen argues that by raising the girl back to life Jesus is “removing the source of her ritual impurity.” In fact, in all cases when Jesus encounters someone who is ritually impure that person walks away purified. Christians usually read these stories as being about the forgiveness of sins, but Thiessen argues that Jesus’s ministry is actually a “purification mission: removing moral impurities or sins, ritual impurities, and impure spirits—an apocalyptic battle between the forces of holiness and the forces of impurity, in which holiness destroys impurity and death.” The problem is squarely located in the enemy camp rather than the conscience of the individual: impurity and holiness are fighting for supremacy.
Given that impurity is linked to death, Thiessen told me, Jesus’s constant battle with the forces of death anticipates his own resurrection at the end of the Gospels. These “early skirmishes with death forces foretell his later encounter with death itself in the cross.” It’s like an action movie or video game in which the hero picks off the henchmen early on, only to face the villain for a final showdown at the end. And just like any modern action movie, there must be a moment when it seems like the hero isn’t going to make it.
Thiessen’s reading is compelling and does a lot to position Jesus as an authentically Jewish interpreter of ritual purity regulations. That Jesus comes into conflict and disagreements with scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees does not make him not Jewish. Disagreement was incredibly common among ancient Jewish ritual experts and almost seems to be the hallmark of rabbinic literature. It is later Christians, rather than first century Jews, who seek to exclude others based on interpretive disagreements.
His interpretation does raise some questions for modern Christians about the role of Jewish purity laws in their lives. If Jesus is reinforcing the idea that impurity existed and needs to be avoided, you might wonder, then do Christians need to take those practices more seriously? This would have troubling consequences for women, whose bodies are habitually associated with impurity (though, spoiler, Christianity does the same thing and associates women’s bodies with sin). Thiessen told me that he doesn’t pretend to be a theologian or ethicist but that it’s clear in the Gospel of Luke that these laws aren’t supposed to apply to non-Jews anyway. “Since almost all Christians today are non-Jews, it’s become a moot point, but it’s not because Jesus rejected these laws himself!”
Reading a book about contagious religious dirt during a pandemic is eye-opening. Perhaps the real takeaway here is that Jesus, like any ancient Jew, took purity laws regulating contagion seriously and treated them with respect. Perhaps Christians should too.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/be ... 17391.html
A NEW BOOK ARGUES THAT THIS ‘DIVINE INSTITUTION’ IS THE KEY TO UNDERSTANDING WHITE EVANGELICAL CULTURE
At a small group Bible study in suburban Colorado Springs, circa 2008, a group of 20-something white professionals gathered to discuss Mark 10:21-25. In this famous parable, Jesus instructs a rich man to sell all that he has and give it to the poor. The rich man dejectedly walks away, unwilling to comply. Jesus tells his disciples—in words many Christians can recite by heart—“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
A literal reading of this parable would spell trouble for most of the young adults at this Bible study. According to anthropologist Sophie Bjork-James, who recounts this story in her sharp new book, The Divine Institution: White Evangelicalism’s Politics of the Family, the participants were uniformly white and well-off. But these self-described literalists immediately—almost instinctively—disregarded the literal meaning of this passage. Jesus wasn’t “condemning money or wealth,” the group agreed, just warning his followers not to put anything before their relationships with God.
But if some passages are to be understood metaphorically, others do require a literal interpretation. These same evangelicals see scriptural prohibitions against same-sex behavior and in favor of male headship as timeless decrees. How do believers navigate this hermeneutical minefield? What nudges evangelicals toward these “proper” interpretations of the Bible?
More...
https://religiondispatches.org/a-new-bo ... al-culture
At a small group Bible study in suburban Colorado Springs, circa 2008, a group of 20-something white professionals gathered to discuss Mark 10:21-25. In this famous parable, Jesus instructs a rich man to sell all that he has and give it to the poor. The rich man dejectedly walks away, unwilling to comply. Jesus tells his disciples—in words many Christians can recite by heart—“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
A literal reading of this parable would spell trouble for most of the young adults at this Bible study. According to anthropologist Sophie Bjork-James, who recounts this story in her sharp new book, The Divine Institution: White Evangelicalism’s Politics of the Family, the participants were uniformly white and well-off. But these self-described literalists immediately—almost instinctively—disregarded the literal meaning of this passage. Jesus wasn’t “condemning money or wealth,” the group agreed, just warning his followers not to put anything before their relationships with God.
But if some passages are to be understood metaphorically, others do require a literal interpretation. These same evangelicals see scriptural prohibitions against same-sex behavior and in favor of male headship as timeless decrees. How do believers navigate this hermeneutical minefield? What nudges evangelicals toward these “proper” interpretations of the Bible?
More...
https://religiondispatches.org/a-new-bo ... al-culture