Monday, March 18, 2024

The Magi and the Star that Stopped

by Damien F. Mackey This will be a two-part article in which, firstly, I shall attempt to account for the ethnicity of the eastern Magi, and, secondly - but not originally - identify Matthew 2’s “Star”. Some might call it arrogance, while others might recognise it as a personal conviction that one’s well-researched conclusion is most definitely the correct one. Whatever about all that, the entertaining Fr. Dwight Longenecker, Catholic priest, author and lecturer, is utterly convinced that he has, after a long and serious probe into the matter, properly identified the enigmatic Magi of Matthew 2. Fr. Dwight tells all about it in the following articles, the validity of whose conclusions I shall consider further on: https://dwightlongenecker.com/the-myth-of-the-magi/ The Myth of the Magi About this time in 2017 my book The Mystery of the Magi was published. I had high hopes for it. Of all my books it was the one I had spent the most time on. I had actually done something like RESEARCH believe it or not. I mean, the darn thing had footnotes and a bibliography!!! Seriously, I had worked hard on the book and thought I had made some important discoveries about the historical basis of the Magi story in Matthew’s gospel. I hoped New Testament scholars and historians of the period might at least read it and that it might be critiqued and if I was wrong in my speculation, that the book would raise the issues of the possible historicity of the story of the wise men. I was not prepared for how difficult it would be to dislodge centuries of myth about the magi. Whoa! I hear you say, “Myth! Father, are you a liberal after all? You don’t believe the Bible? You think the Magi story is a myth?” Yes and no and not quite so let me explain. First of all, I don’t think Matthew’s account of the magi visiting Bethlehem is fiction. I think the story is based in real events with real historical characters. However, I’m aware that most Biblical scholars think the whole thing is a fanciful fairy tale. In fact, thinking that the Magi story is a fairy tale is a kind of test of whether you are a serious Bible or scholar or not. Raymond Brown admits it and even jokes about it in his big fat book The Infancy Narratives. I was told the same thing by several well known conservative Bible scholars–both Evangelical and Catholic. “Whoa!” they said, “Don’t you know that if I even suggest that the Magi story might have some basis in historical truth I’ll be laughed out of my job and relegated to teaching Sunday School in North Dakota!” (no offense intended towards the good people of ND) I had a conversation with one condescending scholar on the phone who said, “But you are beginning from entirely the wrong premise. There is no historical basis for the Magi story.” “Uh. That is what my book is about. The historical basis for the magi story.” “You don’t seem to understand. There is NO historical basis for the magi story.” “No, YOU don’t seem to understand. That is what my book is about.” The conversation ended. So why do the scholars think the magi story has no historical basis? Because, of all the stories from the New Testament, the Magi story actually has become rather mythical, magical and mysterious. I explain in my book how the Magi story began to be elaborated by the Gnostic writers in the third and fourth centuries and beyond. They were very influenced by Manicheanism, and with their emphasis on secret knowledge and magical lore, the magi story was tailor made. The gnostic magi became the heroes of far out and fanciful gnostic apocryphal writings. Soon they had names, they were kings and they followed a magical star and rode on camels on a long trek across the desert. Add a few more centuries and a lot more story tellers and soon they came from India, China and Africa. One was old, one middle ages and one young. Then they represented the three main racial groups – African, Caucasian and Asian. But none of that is in Matthew’s gospel. This mythical version became the received version and it is still the version we tell ourselves at Christmas. In rejecting this elaborated mythical version, (which they were right to do) the scholars threw out the magi with the magic. They decided the magi story was nothing but a fanciful fable made up long after the birth of Christ by Christians who wanted make him seem more special. In rejecting the myth they went ahead and created their own myth–the myth that the magi story can’t possible be historically true, and that myth is even harder to shift than a myth that is fanciful and magical. So I decided to dig past all the myths and explore the culture, history, politics, geography and religion of first century Judea and Arabia. As I did the research I kept asking why nobody had done this before. What I was discovering was truly ground breaking and fascinating. Then I realized, the reason no one had bothered to do the homework was because they all believed the myth. The traditional folks continued to believe the myth about three wise men named Balthasar, Melchior and Caspar going on a long desert journey on camels following a magical star while the liberals continued to believe the myth that the whole thing was a myth. Consequently neither side bothered to look into the question whether there might have been such characters and where they might have come from and why they might have been motivated to go on a quest to find a newborn King of the Jews The result was The Mystery of the Magi. Most of those who read it thought highly of the book. Unfortunately many did not read it. Why? Because they already figured that they knew about it already. In other words, they were not concerned with the Mystery of the Magi because they believed the Myth of the Magi. …. November 30th, 2019 …. Fr. Dwight will come to the conclusion that the Magi were wise Nabataean Arabs from the fabulous land of Petra: https://stream.org/mystery-of-the-magi-solved-an-interview-with-fr-dwight-longenecker/ …. Matthew says they came “from the East.” He was writing to the Jews in the area of Jerusalem-Judea. For them “the East” was the huge territory controlled by the Nabateans — present day Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, most of Iraq and Lebanon. We know this was “the East” for them not only because that kingdom lies to the East of Judea, but also because in the Old Testament “the people of the East” most often refers to the various tribes of the Arabian peninsula. …. The Stream: So who were the Nabateans? And why would they … or specifically, counselors to the Nabatean king … be interested in some Hebrew prophesy about a Messiah? The Nabateans were a trading nation controlling the trade routes from Yemen across the Arabian desert to the Mediterranean port of Gaza and from Egypt North to Syria and beyond. Their capital of Petra was at the crossroads of these two important routes. They traded in luxury goods from India and China through Yemen and back with goods from across the Roman Empire. Gauze? It came from Gaza. Damask fabric? It came from Damascus. The Nabatean culture at the time of Jesus’ birth was a blend of Abrahamic tribes that had wandered in the Arabian desert, immigrants from Babylon who occupied the Arabian peninsula and the influence of the Greeks. Petra was therefore a very cosmopolitan city with the traders bringing not only goods, but culture influences from the ancient world from China to Greece and Rome and from Africa North to Syria, Persia and present day Turkey. As wise men they would have been astrologers, but also students of the prophecies from the different cultures — including the Jewish prophecies. At the downfall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C., many Jews went into exile — not only to Babylon, but into the Babylonian controlled territory of Arabia. Some think the second portion of the book of Isaiah was actually written there, and this includes the important prophecy in chapter 60. …. Were the Magi “enlightened pagans’’? Although Biblical critics claim to find whom they call “enlightened pagans” all through the Bible (Old and New Testaments), I am not so sure that they always get this right. I took a sample of such characters: MELCHIZEDEK; RAHAB; RUTH; ACHIOR; JOB; and concluded - in some cases following other researchers - that none of these was in reality a pagan (Gentile). Keeping it very simple by way of summary here: MELCHIZEDEK was, according to Jewish tradition, the great Shem, righteous son of Noah. Whilst that does not make him a Hebrew (Israelite/Jew), which tribal concepts did not exist at that early stage, he, truly blessed as he was (cf. Genesis 9:26-27), was not, as is commonly thought, an enlightened Canaanite (hence pagan) king. Melchizedek was the eponymous Semite (Shem-ite), whose “slave” Canaan was (9:26). RAHAB the prostitute, in the Book of Judges, was truly enlightened (Hebrews 11:31): “By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient”, but she, actually Rachab, may need to be distinguished from (the differently named) Rahab of Matthew’s Genealogy of Jesus the Messiah (Matthew 1:5). RUTH was a Moabite only geographically, but not ethnically, otherwise she would have encountered this ban from Deuteronomy 23:3-4: No Ammonite or Moabite or any of their descendants may enter the Assembly of the LORD, not even in the tenth generation. For they did not come to meet you with bread and water on your way when you came out of Egypt, and they hired Balaam son of Beor … to pronounce a curse on you. ACHIOR. The same comment would thus apply to Achior ‘the Ammonite’, presuming that he truly was an Ammonite. He wasn’t. Achior needs some special extra treatment (see further on). JOB was, in my firm opinion, Tobias, the son of Tobit, a genuine Israelite from the tribe of Naphtali, in Ninevite captivity. I suspect that his given pagan name in captivity was the Akkadian ‘Habakkuk’ (also shortened to Haggai), the prophet of that name. And I suspect, too, that others could be added to the list, as Israelites, not pagans. The Magi, for one. Delilah, a presumed Philistine. Whilst she may not deserve the epithet, “enlightened”, Delilah most probably was an Israelite - as convincingly explained by George Athas: https://withmeagrepowers.wordpress.com/2016/07/11/samson-and-delilah-the-israelite-woman/ Achior, his conversion and circumcision Various significant misconceptions abound about this important character, ACHIOR. First of all, Achior of the Book of Judith (and the Douay’s Tobit) was not an Ammonite. The Book of Judith, as we now have it, suffers from an unfortunate confusion of names (people and places), making it most difficult to make sense of it. “… Achior, the leader of all the Ammonites” (Judith 5:5), should read, instead, “… Achior, leader of all the Elamites”. Not that Achior was ethnically an Elamite, but because king Esarhaddon had assigned him to govern Elam. For Achior was the same person as the famous Ahikar, governor of Elam, of whom the blind Tobit tells (2:10): “… Ahikar took care of me for two years before he went to Elymaïs [Elam]”. To confuse matters even further, the Book of Judith has a gloss (1:6), in which Achior/ Ahikar is now called “Arioch”: “Rallying to [the king] were all who lived in the hill country, all who lived along the Euphrates, the Tigris, and the Hydaspes, as well as Arioch, king of the Elamites …”. As noted further back, had Ruth been a Moabite, or Achior an Ammonite – as is commonly thought – then the Deuteronomical ban against these two nations (23:3-4) would disallow either from being received into the Assembly of Israel – which, in fact, Achior was, after the triumphant Judith had shown him the head of his Commander-in-chief, “Holofernes” (Judith 14:6-7, 10): When [Achior] came and saw the head of Holofernes … he fell down on his face in a faint. When they raised him up he threw himself at Judith’s feet and did obeisance to her and said, ‘Blessed are you in every tent of Judah! In every nation those who hear your name will be alarmed’. …. When Achior saw all that the God of Israel had done, he believed firmly in God. So he was circumcised and joined the House of Israel, remaining so to this day. The unfortunate misconception that Achior was an Ammonite, who would join the Assembly of Israel despite the Deuteronomical ban, is one of the primary reasons why the Jews (Protestants) did not accept the Book of Judith into their scriptural canons. The confusion of names (people and places), as already mentioned, is another reason. But this, too, can be rectified. Tobit himself tells us precisely who was this Ahikar (Achior) (Tobit 1:21-22): But not forty days passed before two of Sennacherib’s sons killed him, and when they fled to the mountains of Ararat, his son Esarhaddon reigned after him. He appointed Ahikar, the son of my brother Hanael, over all the accounts of his kingdom, and he had authority over the entire administration. …. Now Ahikar was chief cupbearer, keeper of the signet, and in charge of administration and accounts under King Sennacherib of Assyria, so Esarhaddon appointed him as second-in-command. He was my nephew and so a close relative. The Magi were Transjordanian Israelites Whilst I greatly enjoyed reading Fr. Dwight Longenecker, and I admire both his infectious enthusiasm and his genuine efforts to identify the Magi, my own conclusion is that they were - like those other alleged biblical “enlightened pagans” - true Israelites. Fr. Dwight was right to look for a biblical East, rather than for a more global one, for the home of the Magi. We recall that he wrote: Matthew says they came “from the East.” He was writing to the Jews in the area of Jerusalem-Judea. For them “the East” was the huge territory controlled by the Nabateans — present day Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, most of Iraq and Lebanon. We know this was “the East” for them not only because that kingdom lies to the East of Judea, but also because in the Old Testament “the people of the East” most often refers to the various tribes of the Arabian peninsula. …. That, too, the biblical approach, is the one that I favour, but I would identify the Magi’s East, instead, with the East of the Book of Job (1:1-3): In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil. He had seven sons and three daughters, and he owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred donkeys, and had a large number of servants. He was the greatest man among all the people of the East. I vaguely recall having read of (but can no longer trace it) a tradition that had the Magi descended from the prophet Job. The best location for Job’s “Uz” is Ausitis in the Hauran region east of the Jordan. Job, as young Tobias, had returned to that region, to “Ecbatana”, accompanied by the angel Raphael (Tobit 7:1). This was the Syrian Ecbatana, which is Batanaea, or Bashan, south of Damascus. This East was very close to Israel proper. There, holy Naphtalian descendants of Job patiently awaited the return of “His Star” (Matthew 2:2). But how did they know that it was coming? And how did they know that it was “His”? A key to this, and to the identification of the “Star” itself, may be Tobit 13. Old Tobit (now dying), a possible ancestor of the Magi, proclaimed this to his son, Tobias (i.e. Job) (13:11-18): A bright light will shine to all the remotest parts of the earth; many nations will come to you from far away, the inhabitants of the ends of the earth to your holy name, bearing gifts in their hands for the King of heaven. Generation after generation will give joyful praise in you; the name of the chosen city will endure forever. Cursed are all who reject you and all who blaspheme you; cursed are all who hate you and all who speak a harsh word against you; cursed are all who conquer you and pull down your walls, all who overthrow your towers and set your homes on fire. But blessed forever will be all who build you up. Rejoice, then, and exult over the children of the righteous, for they will all be gathered together and will bless the Lord of the ages. Happy will be those who love you, and happy are those who will rejoice in your peace. Happy also all people who grieve with you because of your afflictions, for they will rejoice with you and witness all your joy forever. My soul blesses the Lord, the great King, for Jerusalem will be rebuilt as his House for all ages. How happy I will be if a remnant of my descendants should survive to see your glory and acknowledge the King of heaven. The gates of Jerusalem will be built with sapphire and emerald and all your walls with precious stones. The towers of Jerusalem will be built with gold and their battlements with pure gold. The streets of Jerusalem will be paved with ruby and with stones of Ophir. The gates of Jerusalem will sing hymns of joy, and all her houses will cry, ‘Hallelujah! Blessed be the God of Israel!’— and the blessed will bless the holy name forever and ever.” Some time later, as the Temple about which Tobit spoke here was nearing completion, the motivating prophet Haggai - who I believe to have been Tobit’s very son, Tobias (= Job/Habakkuk) - will promise the return to the Temple of the Glory of the Lord, commonly known as Shekinah (a name that does not, however, appear in the Bible). Haggai announces (2:6-9): This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘In a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. I will shake all nations, and what is desired by all nations will come, and I will fill this House with glory,’ says the LORD Almighty. ‘The silver is mine and the gold is mine,’ declares the LORD Almighty. ‘The glory of this present House [Temple] will be greater than the glory of the former House,’ says the LORD Almighty. ‘And in this place I will grant peace,’ declares the LORD Almighty. His Star “Stopped” What a contrast in attitudes (personalities?)! Fr. Dwight Longenecker’s complete certainty that he has identified the Magi, and Matthew Erwin’s almost matter-of-fact right identification (so I think) of the “Star”. Once again, as in the case of Fr. Dwight, the biblical approach is taken. Previously I wrote regarding Matthew Erwin and his identification of the “Star”: At last I have found an article that, for me, makes proper sense of the Nativity Star. Professor Matthew Ervin, in December 2013, explained it as the Glory of the Lord. He uses the word, Shekinah, which word, however, is not found in the Bible. I would prefer: Glory of the Lord (כְבוֹד יְהוָה), Chevod Yahweh (e.g. 2 Chronicles 7:1). Matthew Ervin writes in a simple blog: https://appleeye.org/2013/12/15/the-star-of-bethlehem-was-the-shechinah-glory/ The Star of Bethlehem Was the Shekinah Glory …. Theories as to what the Star of Bethlehem was are myriad. The usual answers look to celestial objects ranging from real stars to comets. Indeed, the inquiry has been so wide sweeping that virtually every object appearing in the sky has been posited as the Bethlehem Star. However, when Scripture is examined the identity of the Star is evident. The Greek ἀστέρα or astera simply identifies a shining or gleaming object that is translated as star in Matthew 2:1-10. The magi specifically referred to it as, “His star” (v. 2). In addition, the behavior of this Star alone is enough to discount any natural stellar phenomenon. …. If not a regular stellar object then what exactly was the Star of Bethlehem? The synoptic narrative in Luke’s Gospel provides an answer: And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. Luke 2:8-9 (ESV) The glory of the Lord here is a powerful example of the Shekinah Glory. This type of glory is a visible manifestation of God’s presence come to dwell among men. The Shekinah was often accompanied by a heavenly host (e.g. Ezek. 10:18-19) and so it was at the birth of Christ (Luke 10:13). The Shekinah Glory declared Messiah’s birth to the shepherds (Luke 2:8-11). The Star of Bethlehem likewise declared to the magi that Messiah had arrived (Matt. 2:9-10). No doubt this is because Matthew and Luke were describing the same brilliant light in their respective gospels. Although the Shekinah takes on various appearances in Scripture, it often appears as something very bright. This includes but is not limited to a flaming sword (Gen. 3:24), a burning bush (Ex. 3:1-5; Deut. 33:16), a pillar of cloud and fire (Ex. 13:21-22), a cloud with lightning and fire (Ex. 19:16-20), God’s afterglow (His “back”) (Ex. 33:17-23), the transfiguration of Jesus (e.g. Matt. 17:1-8), fire (Acts 2:1-3), a light from heaven (e.g. Acts 9:3-8) and the lamp of New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:23-24). It was the Shekinah Glory that dwelled in the Holy of Holies. It was last in Solomon’s temple but departed as seen by Ezekiel (Ezek. 9:3; 10:4-19; 11:22-23). Haggai prophesied that the Shekinah Glory would return to the temple in Israel and in a superior way (Hag. 2:3; 2:9). And yet it would seem that this never happened for the Second Temple was destroyed in 70 A.D. Perhaps though the Shekinah did return. The Star of Bethlehem was the Shekinah Glory declaring the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ and residing in His person. And why not? The Messiah was prophesied to come as a star (Num. 24:17), and Jesus is called the, “bright morning star” (Rev. 22:16). …. [End of quote] It would be most fitting for the prophet Haggai to foretell the return of the Glory cloud. The family of Job-Tobias knew, from what we now have written in Tobit 13, that the Glory of the Lord was going to return after the Exile. Job, as Haggai, now in his late old age, had advised the people, disappointed at the sight of the second Temple, that the Glory of the Lord would return to it. And return again it did, with the Birth of Jesus Christ, the New Temple, who would render obsolete “the old stone Temple” (pope Benedict XVI). In other words, the second Temple was only ever to be temporary, and would be dramatically replaced (destroyed even) by He who is the true Temple of God. The Shepherds saw the Light at close hand and were able to go directly to the stable. For the Magi, the guiding Light conveniently stopped, just as the shining Cloud was wont to do during the Exodus (Numbers 9:17): “When the cloud moved from its place over the Tent, the Israelites moved, and wherever the cloud stopped, the Israelites camped”. The Magi had long been expecting it. Their possible ancestor, Tobit, had foretold its return, and his son, Haggai, had confirmed it some time later. The Magi, who - as descendants of Job, as I think - were undoubtedly clever and educated, did not really need, though, to be able to read the heavens and constellations (as Job almost certainly could, Job 38:31-33) to identify the Star. They were expecting it and they simply had to wait until they saw it. This was a manifestation for Israel, to be understood by Israel, which is a solid reason why I think that the Magi must have been Israelites, not Gentiles. The Nativity Star of relevance to Israel determined the ethnicity of Matthew’s Magi. Child Jesus at Pontevedra stands on a luminous cloud The resplendent Christ Child appeared again, with his holy Mother, at Pontevedra, Spain, 10th December, 1925, likewise “elevated on a luminous cloud”. We read about it at: https://fatima.org/news-views/the-apparition-of-our-lady-and-the-child-jesus-at-pontevedra/ On July 13, 1917, Our Lady promised at Fatima: “If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved … I shall come to ask for the Consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays.” As Fatima scholar Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité tells us, this first secret of Our Lady “is a sure and easy way of tearing souls away from the danger of hell: first our own, then those of our neighbors, and even the souls of the greatest sinners, for the mercy and power of the Immaculate Heart of Mary are without limits.” …. Circumstances of the Apparition …. The promise of Our Lady to return was fulfilled in December 1925, when 18-year-old Lucia was a postulant at the Dorothean convent in Pontevedra, Spain. It was here, during an apparition of the Child Jesus and Our Lady, that She revealed the first part of God’s plan for the salvation of sinners: the reparatory Communion of the First Saturdays of the month. Lucia narrated what happened, speaking of herself in the third person – perhaps, in humility, to divert attention from her role in the event: “On December 10, 1925, the Most Holy Virgin appeared to her [Lucia], and by Her side, elevated on a luminous cloud, was the Child Jesus. The Most Holy Virgin rested Her hand on her shoulder, and as She did so, She showed her a heart encircled by thorns, which She was holding in Her other hand. At the same time, the Child said: “‘Have compassion on the Heart of your Most Holy Mother, covered with thorns, with which ungrateful men pierce It at every moment, and there is no one to make an act of reparation to remove them.’ “Then the Most Holy Virgin said: “‘Look, My daughter, at My Heart, surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce Me at every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude. You at least try to console Me and announce in My name that I promise to assist at the moment of death, with all the graces necessary for salvation, all those who, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months, shall confess … receive Holy Communion, recite five decades of the Rosary, and keep Me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of making reparation to Me.’” The Great Promise and Its Conditions As Fatima author, Mark Fellows, noted: “The Blessed Virgin did more than ask for reparatory Communion and devotions on five First Saturdays: She promised Heaven to those who practiced this devotion sincerely and with a spirit of reparation. Those who wonder whether it is Mary’s place to promise eternal salvation to anyone forget one of Her illustrious titles: Mediatrix of all Graces.” …. Our Lady promises the grace of final perseverance – the most sublime of all graces – to all those who devoutly practice this devotion. The disproportion between the little requested and the immense grace promised reveals the great power of intercession granted to the Blessed Virgin Mary for the salvation of souls. Furthermore, this promise also contains a missionary aspect. The devotion of reparation is recommended as a means of converting sinners in the greatest danger of being lost. …. For more information, see The Magnificent Promise for the Five First Saturdays (Section III, pp. 8-16). …. https://fatima.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/cr49.pdf

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Jesus Christ gives meaning to ancient history and geography

by Damien F. Mackey “After three days they found him in the Temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers”. Luke 2:46-47 Jesus, who even as a child of twelve was skilfully able to teach Jerusalem’s teachers, would later, as an adult, correct many misconceptions and false traditions on a whole range of issues. ‘You have heard that it was said … but I tell you …’ (e.g. Matthew 5:38). This was the voice of One who spoke words of unerring authority (Mark 1:21-22): “They went to Capernaum; and when the Sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes”. Just as when he had been a boy of twelve, when his listeners were “amazed” (ἐξίσταντο) by his knowledge, so now, again, at Capernaum, were those who heard him “astounded” (ἐξεπλήσσοντο) by his authoritative speech. And Jesus continues today to teach us, through the Scriptures, and in prayer. For, in a mere two verses filled with meaning, Jesus will succinctly span BC history, from Creation down to his own approximate era, and will, in so doing, identify for us the location of the Garden of Eden (Luke 11:50-51): ‘Therefore this generation will be held responsible for the blood of all the prophets that has been shed since the beginning of the world, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, this generation will be held responsible for it all’. Eden was the holy place to which Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, had brought their sacrifices, and in whose vicinity Cain slew Abel (by cutting his throat like a sacrifice?) (cf. I John 3:12). Jesus is telling us that the Jerusalemites who persecuted the prophets, and who even slew some of them (e.g., Zechariah son of Jehoiada and Urijah son of Shemaiah), including the last one, Zechariah son of Berechiah (cf. Matthew 23:35), were geographically of the same region as Cain and Abel had been, and were as well of the spirit of Cain, but not of the holy Abel. In other words, the long sought for location of Eden was the site of Jerusalem – obviously much altered topographically and greatly impoverished since the halçyon days prior to the Fall of Adam and Eve. This has many ramifications, including for the proper identification of the four rivers - generated by the one Edenic river (Genesis 2:10). Those four rivers, Pishon (פִּישׁוֹן), Gihon (גִּיחוֹן), Hiddekel (חִדֶּקֶל) and Perath (פְרָת), must have geographically en-framed Eden. Jesus, the Lord of History (and Geography), easily encompasses history from the beginning (Abel) until modern times (Zechariah) in two telling verses. In so doing, he helps us to know that this Zechariah was not the martyred Zechariah son of the High Priest, Jehoiada, since this Zechariah was not the most recent martyr. Urijah son of Shemaiah, for instance, had come after Zechariah son of Jehoiada. But even that was not so recent. Hence, Matthew 23:35 is not contradictory about Zechariah as many like to suggest. Jesus Christ is the Key to Knowledge and he is not about to contradict the Truth. That is done, instead, by the likes of the “experts”, the blind know-alls, the types who resisted Jesus and had him crucified (Luke 11:52): ‘Woe to you experts in the Law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering’. We lose all fine meaning, then, when we shift Eden, the central point of Genesis 2, from the region of Jerusalem to east of the Tigris (חִדֶּקֶל) and Euphrates (פְרָת) rivers, which easterly re-orientation seems to be the preferred location today for the ancient Garden of Eden. But: Ezekiel 5:5: “This is what the Sovereign LORD says: ‘This is Jerusalem, which I have set in the centre of the nations, with countries all around her’.” Editor Moses would have had only one place meaning in mind for “Cush”, when he wrote of the Gihon river that “it winds through the entire land of Cush” (Genesis 2:13). Moses is traditionally said to have led Egyptian armies into Nubia, or Cush (Ethiopia). That fixes the Gihon river as the Blue Nile. And the Tigris and Euphrates are well known. Those like Dr. David Rohl, who want to turn Moses’s “Cush” into the Kusheh Dagh in Iranian Azerbaijan: and search in vain for the vestiges of the Garden of Eden in that NE region of the ancient world, succeed only in emptying the Scriptures of their meaning and import. Some of the unhappy consequences of this are: • The authoritative words of Jesus Christ about Abel and Zechariah then become meaningless, and even unjust for his Jerusalemite “generation”. • The whole wonderful cosmic symmetry of the Fall of Man, and then the Redemption of Man, occurring in the same geographical location, is totally lost. “O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature: Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen”. • All the Garden of Eden symbolism at the Fall, of the tree and thorns and pain and sweat, ceases to be reflected by the same Garden symbolism at the Passion and Redemption: It now becomes a case of poet John Donne’s And new philosophy calls all in doubt: “Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone, All just supply, and all relation; Prince, subject, father, son, are things forgot, For every man alone thinks he hath got To be a phoenix, and that then can be None of that kind, of which he is, but he.” And it is interesting that John Donne aimed this famous statement at the new philosophies, which were mathematically and science-based and anti-metaphysical, reflecting a world largely of a priori theory, rather than one of studied reality. The culmination of all of this would be a cosmography of models and numbers that has as much bearing upon reality as does the Kusheh Dagh location have for the Garden of Eden. Our models of Astronomy today are cosmographies lacking an inherent meaning, lacking what pope Benedict XVI called “a cosmology discerning the visible inner logic of the cosmos”.

Thursday, March 7, 2024

How C.S. Lewis made me a Christian – Barney Zwartz

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else”. C.S. Lewis My son has just finished reading the seven Narnia books to my grandchildren, aged six and five. I am delighted by this because as a child I was addicted to these books, reading them over and over (and again as an adult). Every good communicator knows the power of a story, and Narnia author C.S. Lewis – a great literary critic and explainer of Christianity whose influence is as strong today 60 years after his death – certainly did. The first published, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, is the most perfect allegory of Christianity but, growing up in a household in which religion was utterly irrelevant, I did not understand this. The power of the story worked on its own terms. Only after I became a Christian in my mid-20s did I understand how important an influence Lewis was on my journey. He showed me that we live in an ineluctably moral universe, in which personal responsibility really matters. He helped shape my understanding of good and bad as real rather than constructs – without in any way being “preachy”. Lewis wrote of his Narnia books that such stories could bypass the inhibitions wrought on so many by the religiosity of much Christianity. “Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings. “But suppose that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their true potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could.” I have always had my share of watchful dragons, but Lewis’ priorities and values resonated and silently took root. Speaking of Lewis, theologian Alister McGrath noted: “Stories are not simply things to entertain us, they are things that are there to convey meaning, to open up newer imaginative possibilities. Here is a new way of seeing things, and if you enter into this way of seeing things the world is a very different place. “This rediscovery of the imagination in human truth-seeking and truth-telling is really very important. Lewis played a very important role in doing that.” What Lewis showed me in the Narnia books, though I understood this only much later, is well summarised in another of his famous lines: “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else.” Barney Zwartz is a senior fellow of the Centre for Public Christianity.

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

That ‘Nineveh’ anachronism again: Apollonius, Mohammed, Heraclius

by Damien F. Mackey “… Nineveh was so laid waste that it was considered a total myth of the Bible throughout most of the recent centuries, that is until it was discovered by Sir Austen Layard in the nineteenth century”. Archaeology of Ancient Assyria Poor old Nineveh! That ancient city gets dragged into various pseudo-histories purportedly belonging to AD time. And so I could not help exclaiming at the beginning of my article: Heraclius and the Battle of Nineveh (8) Heraclius and the Battle of Nineveh | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu What! What! What! The Byzantine emperor, Heraclius (reign, 610 to 641 AD), fighting a “Battle of Nineveh” in 627 AD! And here I am mistakenly under the impression that the city of Nineveh was completely destroyed in c. 612 BC, and that it lay hopelessly dead and buried until it was archaeologically resurrected by Layard in the mid-C19th AD. …. Again, I found that the Prophet Mohammed, a supposed contemporary of Heraclius - the latter being suspiciously, I thought, “A composite character to end all composites” - was likewise supposed to have had various associations with the (presumably long dead) city of Nineveh. See e.g. my article: Prophet Jonah, Nineveh, and Mohammed https://www.academia.edu/30409779/Prophet_Jonah_Nineveh_and_Mohammed Now I find that Apollonius of Tyana, supposedly of the C1st AD, was guided in his extensive travels - somewhat reminiscent of those of Tobias and the angel Raphael in the Book of Tobit (including “Nineveh”, “Tigris” and “Ecbatana”): A Common Sense Geography of the Book of Tobit https://www.academia.edu/8675202/A_Common_Sense_Geography_of_the_Book_of_Tobit by one, Damis, said to have been a native of Nineveh. And this Apollonius of Tyana is thought by many to have been the real model for Jesus Christ. I would have to agree with the following comment: https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/puppets-should-not-give-homilies “The case of Apollonius of Tyana is not comparable with the evidence we have for Jesus. We have multiple sources for the life of Jesus, while we only have one source for Apollonius. This source, Philostratus, claims to have recorded what eyewitnesses said about Apollonius, but your professor probably neglected to mention that the only eyewitness Philostratus mentions is one Damis from Nineveh. This city didn’t even exist in the first century (which means Damis probably did not exist, either). …”. If Nineveh did not then exist, and Damis “probably did not exist”, then I think it would be safe to say that neither did Apollonius of Tyana probably exist, but was a fictitious Greek appropriation of Jesus Christ whom Apollonius occasionally resembles quite remarkably. For the reason why this is, see my article: Apollonius of Tyana, like Philo, a fiction (3) Apollonius of Tyana, like Philo, a fiction | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu In the amusingly entitled: “APOLLONIUS CREED VS. JESUS THE ROCK”, David Marshall writes: One of the supreme principles of modern thought is that there must be no great inexplicable "gaps" in Nature. This is the source of controversy in biology, where proponents of Intelligent Design claim that life reveals micro-machinery that naturalistic evolution cannot explain. Critics of ID reply that no, all such "gaps" can in principle be explained, and the more we understand the story of life, the more such gaps have and will continue to close. Likewise, those who affirm miracles say that events such as the Resurrection of Jesus, or the sudden healing of a loved one after prayer, cannot easily be displayed on naturalistic grounds. Skeptics again beg to differ: "Nothing to see here, move along, folks. We may not have all the details, but nothing has happened that cannot in principle be explained by deceit, inattention, cognitive dissonance, the Will to Believe, confused reporting, or perhaps a timely group hallucination or two. These are all events that happen commonly in the natural world, and as Hume explained, prosaic explanations are therefore infinitely more likely than a miracle." Which sounds like begging the question to believers. The same debate has now raged for two centuries over the person of Jesus, and reports about his life. Here, it appears, lies a God-sized gap in Nature if ever there was one. A man who healed the blind! Who spoke with a voice of thunder, casting traders out of the temple as if the place belonged to him! Who fed thousands with a few loaves and fishes, and raised the dead! Who claimed to be "one with the Father," and spoke as if all of Israel's history, indeed all world history, would somehow be consummated by his mission, which involved his own sacrifice and then ultimate conquest of that ultimate boogeyman, death! All skeptical "historical Jesus" scholarship can be seen as a Herculean attempt to plug this gap in the universe. That includes the most famous and popular such attempts in our day, such as the work of scholars like Bart Ehrman and Paula Fredrikson, populists like Reza Aslan, the writings of the famous (or infamous) Jesus Seminar (and stars emerging from that constellation like John Crossan, Marcus Borg, Robert Funk, and John Spong), and the more radical writings of people like Richard Carrier and less-educated fellows on the "Jesus mythicist" fringe. I believe Christians should look on their colossal effort to "plug the gap" as an act of kindness. Opponents of the Christian faith are doing wonderful work for truth: they sift ancient writings over hundreds of years (Thomas Jefferson was already part of the game), turning every stone along the Sea of Galilee, sifting every play, drama, epic and farce out of Athens, tunneling under the pyramids of Egypt, knocking on the doors of forest mystics along the Ganges, climbing the Tibetan plateau, in the world's greatest scholarly manhunt. Our skeptical friends (atheists, agnostics, Muslims, Hindus, New Agers, nominal Christians) have been searching high and low for centuries, to locate their "missing man:" someone, anyone, who faintly resembles Jesus of Nazareth. Or, to put the matter another way, those who find the Jesus of the gospels both attractive and threatening would dearly like to find a genuine "Fifth Gospel." (A term that has been used for both the so-called "Gospel of Thomas" and for Fyodor Dostoevsky's masterpiece, The Brothers Karamazov). To summarize what I think is the true state of affairs, the actual results of this massive manhunt, let me begin autobiographically. Then let's take a brief look at one of the most popular ancient comparisons to Jesus. I have argued in three books that this search for a credible analogy to Jesus of Nazareth has utterly failed. (Or, from the Christian perspective, succeeded wildly, by showing just how huge the gap is between Jesus and all those the world would compare to him). I first set this argument down in a book called Why the Jesus Seminar can't find Jesus, and Grandma Marshall Could. After detailing twelve fatal errors committed by Jesus Seminar fellows, I described 50 characteristics that define the gospels, and make them unique. (Having to do with setting, style and literary qualities, character, moral teachings, pedagogy, social qualities, and theology). I then analyzed some works that are often compared to the gospels, including the "Gospel" of Thomas and Apollonius of Tyana, and found that when analyzed objectively, at best these supposed "closest parallels" only resemble the real gospels on 6-9 out of 50 characteristics. (The closest parallel I have found so far is The Analects of Confucius, which is our best source for the life of Confucius – though it lacks many of internal qualities that demonstrate the general historicity of the gospels). Later, for a Harvest House book called The Truth About Jesus and the "Lost Gospels" I analyzed all extant Gnostic "gospels." In doing that research, I found myself in for an even greater shock. It turned out that eminent scholars, having searched the ancient world high and low, offered up ancient "parallels" to the gospels that were as different from them in almost every meaningful way as a sea slug is from a falcon. "Great scholars" like Ehrman, Crossan, and Elaine Pagels had clearly fooled themselves, and their followers, to a monumental degree, seeing what just was not there, and missing what was. As C. S. Lewis memorably put it (so I quote roughly, from memory), "They claimed to see fern seed, and overlook an elephant standing fifty yards away in broad daylight." Finally, in a chapter of Faith Seeking Understanding called "The Fingerprints of Jesus," I focused on five qualities that the gospels share: his aphorisms or sayings, how he treated the weak, the cultural transcendence of his teachings, his revolutionary attitude towards women, and the particular character of his miracles. I made the case that like fingerprints, "These traits help the gospels grip the mind of the reader and mark them as unique. They are not the sorts of things a disciple would add intentionally, or in some cases even could invent." This "forensic" argument for Jesus and the gospels is distinct from, but I think complements, traditional and more purely historical arguments. (Such as those made by Craig Blomberg in his excellent "The Historical Reliability of the Gospels"). In the gospels, I argue, we meet a unique person, a person whose personality has imprinted itself powerfully on the minds of those who recorded the strange and wonderful events that took place in Palestine. Skeptics OUGHT to easily find numerous real parallels to the gospels. Again and again they seem to have persuaded themselves that they have succeeded and found this unholy "holy grail." But all such parallels have turned out to be mirages, a room full of grails as fake as those in Indiana Jones. (But much more obvious!) Every such attempt collapses upon sober analysis, as Lewis again noticed decades before the Jesus Seminar was yet a twinkle in Robert Funk's eyes: “I have been reading poems, romances, vision literature, legends and myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know that not one of them is like this.” Space and time being limited, I cannot give a very full argument here. I will, therefore, focus briefly on one of the most popular alleged parallels: The Life of Apollonius of Tyana. Apollonius is mentioned again and again by skeptics who hold him up as proudly as a fourth-grader with a five-pound trout. About 300 AD, the Roman governor Hierocles already compared the "god-like" Apollonius favorably to Jesus in his Lover of Truth. Like Jesus, Apollonius was said to have done miracles and to be "divine." Harvard Jesus scholar Paula Fredriksen likewise wrote that Apollonius "had numerous miracles attributed to him: spectacular healings, exorcisms, even once raising someone from the dead," showing that Jesus' miracles were not "unprecedented or unique." Funk also advised us to compare stories about Jesus with "what was written about other teachers and charismatic figures of his time," placing Apollonius at the top of her list: "It is revealing to know that there are other stories of miraculous births, that other charismatic figures healed people of their afflictions and exorcised demons." In my debates with Robert Price and Richard Carrier, both similarly pointed to Apollonius as a strong parallel to the life of Jesus. Carrier said, "Now everything he says about the gospels is true of all kinds of faith literature in all religions . . . There are other examples that look more like the gospels, for example, the Book of Tobit. Or Plutarch's biography of Romulus. Or Philostratus' biography of Apollonius of Tyana. There are a lot of these examples of faith literature that look more like the gospels. And if you wanted me to sit down and research and find the most similar example, I could. But it's not necessary. There's plenty of examples like this that have all the characteristics of the gospels . . . " This "gap" in the universe has thus, in their eyes, been completely filled. Until, that is, you take the time to actually read the Life of Apollonius, or any of these works. (The ones he gives here are quite ridiculous. Another, perhaps even more comical parallel Carrier gave elsewhere in the debate was The Golden Ass – the story of a man who accidentally bewitched himself and turned into a donkey until he ate some roses and turned back into a man). When one stops laughing, one has to shake one's head. The sober historian will begin by reminding skeptics that not only did Apollonius live after Jesus, his "life" was written up some 150 years after the gospels. In fact, it was written by one Philostratus, for the Empress Julia Domna, an early 3rd Century patroness of the arts and opponent of Christianity. The story tells how a popular 1st Century philosopher journeyed (like Hercules) to exotic locales, from Africa to India. The author claimed to work from (among other sources) letters his subject wrote to kings and philosophers, and from the diary of his Boswell and most famous disciple, one Damis of Ninevah. (A city which, unfortunately, did not actually exist at the time of the diarist's alleged birth, however). As I reminded Dr. Price, if you want parallels to Jesus to show that Jesus is really not so special, it is best to find some that are credibly independent of the gospels. If Apollonius were at all like Jesus, if his "miracles" were at all like the ones worked in the gospels, one very plausible hypothesis would be that Philostratus prettied him up to match his competitor. (A common tactic in religious entrepreneurship). Given that the book was sponsored by an opponent of Christianity, this hypothesis seems even more credible. And Philostratus may indeed have intended that at times. But one need not stress this point too much, because if you read the two sets of writings, what cries out to the heavens, the "elephant" in the room, is that in fact, Apollonius is nothing at all like Jesus. Not even his miracles, ripped off as some likely were from the gospels, are much like those of Jesus. I found that in fact, Apollonius of Tyana only shared six of 50 characteristics with the gospels fairly strongly, three weakly. Most of what they shared was not very important to historicity: that like Jesus, Apollonius was a teacher, and used a Q&A format to teach, and that the book tells stories. Let me briefly detail eight points of difference that are historically relevant: 1. The gospels were written within the plausible life-times of Jesus' first followers. Apollonius was written some 150 years after most the events it allegedly records. Such a gap is of deep significance to historicity. 2. Jesus carries out a remarkable, and unique, dialogue with the Hebrew tradition. He is Jewish from head to foot, steeped in the traditions and faith of his people. But he also challenges that tradition to the core, citing and fulfilling a plethora of prophecies and types and images from the ancient Hebrew world. One cannot do justice to this unique quality of the gospels, to which I know of no parallels, in a few words. Apollonius is not a dialogue with tradition, it is a monologue. In some ways a typical tourist, Apollonius floats dreamily across the world on a cushion of Greek arrogance. He is pleased to find his hosts in Babylon and India speak Greek. (This often happens in Greek novels, which center on lucky coincidences in far-away places). He visits all the sights, and takes the proper verbal snapshots, like backdrops to a James Bond flick. He is warmly welcomed by foreign priests, whom he instructs in superior (Greek, presumably) ritual. Why does this matter to those who want to know whether the gospels are telling the truth about Jesus or not? Apollonius is the kind of work a moderately clever writer could produce from his veranda, in pajamas and slippers. The gospels are not: they record an earthshattering encounter with a unique historical person who challenged his beloved tradition to its core. 3. The gospel writers relate many details about places correctly. Dozens of facts have been confirmed independently from Luke's description in Acts of the Apostles, for instance. By contrast, Philostratus sends us a series of post-cards from prominent cities on the edges of the ancient world. He describes how the citizens of Tarsus congregate by the river "like so many waterfowl," a tunnel under the Euphrates River, and a city in India hidden by what Star Trek fans might call a cloaking device. His account of geography and customs bare a relation to reality so long as his guru sticks to ground trampled by Macedonian army boots. But when he ranges past the conquests of Alexander the Great, Damis proves an "errant story teller:" "His description of the country between the Hyphasis and the Ganges is utterly at variance with all known facts regarding it . . . Damis, in fact, tells nothing that is true about India except what has been told by writers before him." (JW MCrinkle, quoted in Phillimore, Apollonius of Tyana, preface) Apollonius also describes special Indian fauna: griffins, phoenix, apes that cultivate pepper trees, sluggish, 30 cubit marsh dragons, and lively alpine dragons: "there is not a single ridge without one." 4. The Gospel narrative is mostly understated, "Just the facts, Ma'am" in a style that contrasts sharply with the words of Christ. Everyone else is a straight man, not because the disciples lack personality, but by contrast to the unforgettable central figure. "Master, master, we are perishing." "Are you the one, or should we look for someone else?" This distinguishes the gospels from Job, Bhagavad Gita, Candide, or most ancient novels or plays, in which the animating genius appears not as a figure within the text, but the literary puppet-master who brings all characters to life. All the characters in Job, for example, speak with the same gusto, even God. But in the gospels, the "spice" comes from the words of Jesus, not from Mark or even (usually) John. This, too, reflects the fact that the gospel writers were talking about a real, memorable person, not merely telling pretty stories. But Philostratus is telling stories. Apollonius contains much dialogue, in easy, colloquial tones, full of phrases like "But tell me," "By Zeus!" and the idiom of informal philosophical discourse: "So then . . . " "And what else could it be?" "We may rather consider this to be the case." The words of Apollonius do not much stand out from the text, in my opinion. 5. The gospels are full of realistic details, as even A. N. Wilson pointed out, when he was still a skeptic. It is often said that novelists can easily make up such details. But did they? Philostratus wants us to know his subject was remarkable, and tries to show this through the reaction of onlookers. At one point, Apollonius took a vow of silence. But when he entered a town in conflict, he shamed it into making peace by a gesture and the look on his face. Another time, the sages discussed how boiled eggs keep a child from alcoholism. "They were astonished at the many-sided wisdom of the company." It is hard to believe anyone was so impressed by such folklore, even in the 1st Century. One rare realistic touch comes when the sage talks to an Indian king through an interpreter. But this is spoiled by an earlier claim that he spoke all languages without studying. (As Eusebius already pointed out 1700 years ago). Besides crested dragons, spice-loving panthers (an addiction that proved their downfall), and 400 year-old elephants that shoot at enemies with their trunks, the hero's surprising fame in India, and his inane observations, which little justify that fame, allow the text to "work" for a modern audience only as a farce. Imagine the following dialogue between Steve Martin as Apollonius, and Bill Murray as a customs official, who at first takes Apollonius for a spirit: Bill Murray: "Whence comes this visitation?" Steve Martin: "I come of myself, if possible to make men of you, in spite of yourselves! All the earth is mine, and I have a right to go all over it and through it." Murray: "I will torture you, if you don't answer my questions." Martin (baring teeth): "I hope that you will do it with your own hands, so that you may catch it well, if you touch a true man." Murray (batting eyes): "By the gods, who are you?" Martin (with a magnanimous flourish): "Since you have asked me civilly this time and not so rudely as before, listen . . . I am Apollonius of Tyana . . . I shall be glad to meet your king." Subdued, the official offers gold, which the sage refuses. Then he suggests a barbecue, but recalls with horror that Apollonius is a vegetarian. Finally he offers vegan hors d'ouvres -- unfortunately not organic: Murray: "You should have leavened bread and huge dates as yellow as amber. And I can offer you all the vegetables that grow in the garden of the Tigris." Martin: "Wild, natural vegetables are more tasty than the forced and artificial!" The unintended comedy of Philostratus' work makes me rather glad that skeptics often appeal to it as a parallel to the gospels: I would have missed the fun of reading this unconsciously silly book otherwise. One wonders, though, how so many brilliant, highlyeducated skeptics can seriously claim Apollonius as some sort of parallel to Jesus. They are none so blind. 6. Jesus noticed and cared about individuals. Where the disciples noticed a "Samaritan" "woman," Jesus saw a hurting individual with a history of failed relationships who hungered for God. He often noticed individuals – a lady who had endured much from doctors, a woman about to be stoned, a man of faith, Zaccheus the Short – where others saw members of a class – tax collector, blind beggar, guide. Jesus possessed a quality rare in the healing profession, of looking a patient in the eye. With the sick, too, he saw not just a condition to attend, but a mother or brother or friend. If we possessed divine healing powers, would we think to ask a blind beggar who called on us, "What do you want?" Jesus did not dispense medicine to a procession of charity cases: he met and cared for human beings. Richard Carrier claimed that "Apollonius of Tyana notices individuals," as Jesus does. In fact, the disciples of Apollonius seem a nebulous lot. In his early days, the sage gathered seven, of whom nothing is said, apart from this parting shot when the philosopher set off for India: "I have taken council of the gods, and I have told you of my resolve . .. Since you are so soft, fare you well, and be true to your studies. I must go my way where Science and a higher Power guide me." But Apollonius' servants are forced to accompany him. Damius, whom he meets later in Ninevah, is probably no more than a rhetorical device. He serves two rhetorical purposes: to chronicle his master's adventures, and as foil to allow Philostratus to comment on sights along the way. When needed, extras appear, like the servants. They are just props. When confronted by two men with rival claims to buried gold, Apollonius judges their claims from universal principles: "I cannot believe that the gods would deprive the one even of this land, unless he was a bad man, or that they would, on the other hand, bestow on the other even what was under the land, unless he was better than the man who sold it." With pompous disinterest in real people like that, no wonder Apollonius became a wandering sage. So no, Apollonius does not really notice individuals – he's too busy preening and offering "wisdom." As for that alleged wisdom: 7. Jesus' teachings were surprising, shocking, paradoxical, and challenging. They were always original and surprising in form or context. G. K. Chesterton explained: "A man reading the gospel sayings would not find platitudes. If he had read even in the most respectful spirit the majority of ancient philosophers and of modern moralists, he would appreciate the unique importance of saying that he did not find platitudes. It is more than can be said of Plato. It is much more than can be said of Epictetus or Seneca or Marcus Aurelius or Apollonius of Tyana. And it is immeasurably more than can be said of most of the agnostic moralists and preachers of the ethical societies; with their songs of service and their religion of brotherhood." The gospels startle a reader by "strange claims that might sound like the claim to be the brother of the sun and moon," "startling pieces of advice," "stunning rebukes," and "strangely beautiful stories." An objective reader: "Would see some very gigantesque figures of speech about the impossibility of threading a needle with a camel or the possibility of throwing a mountain into the sea. He would see a number of very daring simplifications of the difficulties of life; like the advice to shine upon everybody indifferently as does the sunshine or not to worry about the future any more than the birds. He would find on the other hand some passages of almost impenetrable darkness, so far as he was concerned, such as the moral of the parable of the Unjust Servant. Some of these things might strike him as fables and some as truths; but none as truisms." By contrast, Apollonius of Tyana is choked with platitudes: "Is there any form of consumption so wasting as (falling in love)?" "Blessed are you then in your treasure, if you rate your friends more highly than gold and silver." Apollonius says little that is unique, and is often simplistic, making raids into the inane. But Philostratus is supposed to be one of the more clever writers of his time. Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John (according to our skeptics) are all anonymous writers, except maybe for Luke. Even on the traditional account, Jesus' disciples were a motley and mostly low-class crew. So why do the sayings of Jesus shine so much brighter than those of the "great sage," as transcribed by a "leading writer?" (And why do his words stand out from everyone else in the gospels?) The simplest explanation is clearly the best: the words of Jesus truly do trace to one unique genius, and represent a genuine, early memory of the actual teachings of our Lord. 8. But what about miracles? Isn't Apollonius proof that the miracles of Jesus were nothing special? Actually, I think such claims are proof, again, that some of our skeptical friends need to visit the eye doctor. The uber skeptic, Morton Smith, argued that miracles appear in the gospels because, indeed, Jesus did such things: "All major strands of the gospel material present Jesus as a miracle worker who attracted his followers by his miracles. All of them indicate that because of his miracles he was believed to be the Messiah and the son of a god. Anyone who wants to deny the truth of these reports must try to prove that within 40 to 60 years of Jesus' death all the preserved strands of Christian tradition had forgotten, or deliberately misrepresented, the most conspicuous characteristic of the public career of the founder of the movement." (Jesus the Magician: Charlatan or Son of God?, 4) Smith's own solution was to conflate "miracle" with "magic," which as I argue in Jesus and the Religions of Man, shows a failure in critical observation in itself. (Another way Smith dealt with Jesus was by inventing a saying of Mark to make Jesus look gay, probably as a gag). But this observation is accurate: Thomas Jefferson aside, one can't credibly take the miracles out of the gospels, anymore than one can de-bone a horse and still ride it. Glenn Miller has shown in a detailed summary that for two and a half centuries before the time of Jesus, miracle workers were essentially absent from the Roman world. ("Copy-Cat Savior" at ChristianThinktank.com). Skeptics like John Crossan often point to alleged parallels like Honi the CircleDrawer and Hanina ben Dosa, who strictly speaking, did no miracles at all. One prayed for rain, and rain came in a timely manner. But even that was reported long after the fact, and after the writing of the gospels. The desperation on the part of those who would make Jesus less lonely, is palpable. It is stunning that such seem to be the closest parallels skeptics can find, after an epic canvassing of ancient records. The search for an historical person who parallels Jesus on these points – the character and fact of his miracles – should convince us not that miracle workers were common, but exceedingly rare. No one seems to have found any records in the ancient world that parallel the realism, piety, practicality, and historicity of the miracle stories of Jesus. So what about Apollonius' "miracles?" Philostratus begins his work by reminding us that a philosopher can dabble in magic without tainting his credibility, as he says Plato, Pythagoras, Socrates, and Anaxagoras all did. For the most part, he prefers to describe Apollonius as philosopher rather than magician. Occasionally, though, his hero disappears or foretells the future. The Hindu gurus also practice levitation, for which a metaphysical explanation is given. The secret to virtue is not magic, but "science." Often, when called on to cure people of an illness, Apollonius chose to rebuke them of sin, instead, and let them know they had what came to them, coming to them. Often this looks like blaming the victim. Anthropologist Rene Girard even used Apollonius as a case study of scape-goating. When the people of Ephesus asked the good sage to save them from a plague, he did so by having them stone a beggar to death. Beaten to a bloody pulp, the beggar's eyes glowed red, thus revealing him to be a demon. Girard reacted to this "horrible miracle" by noting, "Jesus is poles apart from Apollonius. Jesus doesn't instigate stonings; rather, he does all he can to prevent them." (Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightening, 54) Philostratus also raised a girl from apparent, but possibly misdiagnosed death. Even those at the scene "could not decide" whether or not she had been alive. So while Philostratus, writing long after the gospels and probably aware of them, claimed his sage did miracles, too, they were infrequent, and of a totally different character from those of Jesus. Parallels with Christ's miracles are therefore superficial, and this "proof text" is the exception that proves the rule. There simply are no serious parallels to Jesus in the ancient world, on this, as on many traits, or the sum total of those traits, even less. For two thousand years, skeptics have tried to find some parallel to the life of Jesus, so as to render it less unique, and, if possible, dismiss it as "just another tall tale." This attempt has utterly failed, revealing Jesus as unique indeed. Apollonius of Tyana is a dreadful choice as a parallel Christ. It is about someone whose career mostly occurred after the life of Jesus, was written up hundreds of years later, perhaps purposely in order to compete with or undermine Christianity. Yet even so, read these two sets of ancient writings, and no comparison could be more incongruous. No one could be less like Jesus than the cocky, banal, self-satisfied, inane, and ridiculous Apollonius, who has nothing much to say that has not been said better on Saturday Night Live. Why is that? Philostratus is supposed to the more cosmopolitan and clever writer. Something obviously much deeper and more remarkable is going on in the Gospels than mere literary cleverness. It says something about the gospels that so many skeptics have spent so much time looking for parallels, yet the best they can come up with is something like Apollonius of Tyana. Divine fingerprints rest upon the gospels, of a visitation to which no remote parallel has yet been found. ….

Monday, February 26, 2024

Nabonassar also called Shalmaneser

by Damien F. Mackey “[Copernicus] seems to identify Nabonassar with the biblical Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, whom, following Eusebius, he calls Salmanassar, king of the Chaldeans”. N. M. Swerdlow, O. Neugebauer Having tradition supply an extra name for a potentate can sometimes serve to change the order of things. Thus, thanks to the Chronicle of John [of] Nikiu (supposedly C7th AD), I learned that Cambyses had the other name of Nebuchednezzar (Nebuchadnezzar), thus enabling me to associate the mad, Egypt-conquering Cambyses with the mad, Egypt-conquering Nebuchednezzar. See e.g. my six-part series: Cambyses also named Nebuchadnezzar beginning with: (5) Cambyses also named Nebuchadnezzar? | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu And, now, the above information opens the door to the possibility that Nabonassar may have been an Assyrian king, “Shalmaneser”. This could be very helpful, because, whilst Nabonassar is now well-known by name: https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/brill-s-new-pauly/nabonassar-e815690 “(Ναβονάσσαρος; Nabonássaros). Graecised form of the Babylonian royal name Nabû-nāṣir. N.'s reign (747-734 BC) is not marked by any spectacular events. His fame is due to the fact that Claudius Ptolemaeus (Cens. 21,9) chose the beginning of the first year of N.'s reign (calculated to 26 February 747 BC) as the epoch for his astronomical calculations (‘Nabonassar Era’; in the ‘Ptolemaic Canon’, a continuous list of the kings ruling over Babylonia until Alexander [4] the Great, then continued by the rulers of Egypt …” he is otherwise quite poorly known, as is apparent from what William W. Hallo wrote (in The Nabonassar Era and other Epochs in Mesopotamian Chronology and Chronography, 1988, p. 189): The numerous innovations thus associated with Nabonassar stand in sharp contrast to the actual circumstances of his reign. Whatever high hopes he may have harbored at its outset, they were very soon dashed on the rocks of hard political reality. We have no royal inscriptions of the fourteen-year reign, and two private inscriptions of the time may be regarded as evidence of the relative strength of private dignitaries and corresponding weakness of the monarchy …. Only three years after Nabonassar’s accession in Babylonia, there occurred that of Tiglatpileser III in Assyria. He was a truly heroic figure, destined to lay the foundations of the neo-Assyrian empire. He too tampered with traditional historiographic conventions, reviving the age-old concept of the bala (in its Akkadian guise of palû) to date and count his annual campaigns, but beginning these with his accession year instead of waiting, like his predecessors, for the first full year of his reign. …. [End of quote] Some queries, and some suggestions, are immediately necessary here, I find. That so apparently innovative and substantially reigning a king, of such a well-documented era as that of the neo-Assyrians, could have left “no royal inscriptions”, can only mean that - as according to my custom - an alter ego for him needs to be identified. And the most obvious candidate for this would be the likewise innovative, and contemporaneous, king, Tiglath-pileser so-called III, who is known to have ruled Babylon - and that under a non-Assyrian name. Especially if Tiglath-pileser was also named - as Nabonassar is said to have been - “Shalmaneser”. And that I have often argued to have been the case, for instance: King Tiglath-pileser was Tobit’s “Shalmaneser” (8) King Tiglath-pileser was Tobit’s “Shalmaneser” | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu So, it was the innovative Tiglath-pileser who had presumably, under his adopted name “Nabonassar”, as ruler of Babylon, inaugurated a new chronological era. Tiglath-pileser was multi-facetted This Tiglath-pileser was too larger-than-life a character for him not to have absorbed various alter egos, apart from Nabonassar. In I Chronicles 5:26, he is also called Pul (or Pulu) in a waw consecutive construction: So the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul king of Assyria, that is, Tiglath-Pileser king of Assyria. He carried the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh into captivity. He took them to Halah, Habor, Hara, and the river of Gozan to this day. And Tiglath-pileser so-called III was also Tiglath-pileser so-called I, according to my reconstructions, such as: Tiglath-pileser King of Assyria (8) Tiglath-pileser King of Assyria | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu And, with the necessary folding of the Middle Assyrian era of the c. C12th BC into the Neo Assyrian era of the c. C8th BC: Folding four ‘Middle’ Assyrian kings into first four ‘Neo’ Assyrian kings (8) Folding four ‘Middle’ Assyrian kings into first four ‘Neo’ Assyrian kings | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu as further reinforced by a repetition of Middle and Neo Elamite Shutrukid kings: Horrible Histories: Suffering Shutrukids (8) Horrible Histories: Suffering Shutrukids | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu then Shalmaneser so-called I must likewise be folded into Neo kings “Shalmaneser”. Was Nabonassar’s Assyrian alter ego an innovator? “Tiglath-pileser III (745-727 B.C.E.) introduced a new era in the history of the ancient Near East. He is the ruler who laid the firm foundations of the Neo-Assyrian empire, developing new methods of military occupation, political organisation and communications throughout his vast, subjugated territories. It is not by chance”. Bustanay Oded To find the historical prophet Jonah - and also to fill him out biblically (a task upon which I was able to focus without much distraction during the period of lockdown) - I had to turn upside down, and inside out, the conventional sequence of Assyro-(Babylonian) kings. See e.g. my article: De-coding Jonah (DOC) De-coding Jonah | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu Whilst I did not then come to the further conclusion that Nabonassar may have been a powerful Assyrian king who had ruled the city of Babylon, my Assyrian reconstruction around the prophet Jonah has important bearing upon the “Shalmaneser” of whom it was said that he was Nabonassar. Without going back here through all of the complicated details, let me simply summarise the extent of the composite king, Shalmaneser – Tiglath-pileser. My revised neo-Assyrian succession relevant to Jonah is as follows: 1. Adad-Nirari [I-III]; 2. Tiglath-pileser [I-III]/Shalmaneser [I-V]; 3. Tukulti-ninurta [I-II]/Sargon II-Sennacherib; 4. Ashurnasirpal-Esarhaddon-Ashurbanipal-Nebuchednezzar. According to my Jonah article, the last of these kings, my enlarged king 4., was Jonah 3:6’s repentant “king of Nineveh”. Now, was this Assyrian king [no. 2 above] in any way the inaugurator of a new outlook, or a new era?’ (as would seem to befit Nabonassar) Bill Cooper, who has favoured (my potential Nabonassar) this same king 2. above - in his guise as Tiglath-pileser III - as Jonah’s Ninevite king, has written of this king as if he had indeed inaugurated a new sort of era (which Cooper himself would attribute, mistakenly, I believe, to the Jonah effect). Thus he wrote (“The Historic Jonah”, p. 112): https://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j02_1/j02_1_105-116.pdf): …. Almost overnight, it seems, the empire underwent a total revival. Where defeat had so recently been staring them in the face, the Assyrians were now enjoying decisive victories. Where there had been economic collapse, there was now available wealth and a reasonable stability. Political turmoil and civil unrest now quietened down. In other words, the disaster-prone empire that Tiglath-pileser III had ‘inherited’ … was almost unrecognisable after the inauguration of his reign. Shortly after he took over the rule of the empire, something dramatic, almost disturbing happened to turn on its head Assyria’s forthcoming and imminent destruction. …. Be that as it may, Tiglath-pileser (so-called III) – {who would also be, in my reconstruction, the enlightened “Shalmaneser” of Tobit 1, Tobit’s royal patron} - is definitely considered by Assyriologists to have inaugurated something of “a new era”. Thus, for example, Bustanay Oded writes (“The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III: Review Article” (Israel Exploration Journal, Vol. 47, No. 1/2 (1997), pp. 104-110): “Tiglath-pileser III (745-727 B.C.E.) introduced a new era in the history of the ancient Near East. He is the ruler who laid the firm foundations of the Neo-Assyrian empire, developing new methods of military occupation, political organisation and communications throughout his vast, subjugated territories. It is not by chance”. And again, Shigeo Yamada, “The Reign and Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III, an Assyrian Empire Builder (744-727 BC)” https://journals.openedition.org/annuaire-cdf/1803 “… it has become fully apparent that [T-P III’s] reign marked the beginning of the imperial phase of Assyria, and that this period of time should be regarded as a watershed in the history of the ancient Near East”.

Sunday, February 25, 2024

Jesus Christ came as Bridegroom

by Damien F. Mackey John the Baptist says, “You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, ’I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.’ The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease. John 3:28-30 Introduction Every new disturbance in the world, be it of natural cause such as earthquakes, tsunamis or hurricanes; political, such as Middle Eastern crises, Islamic Jihads and Chinese aggression; or economic, for example the new wave of food shortages sweeping the world, finds its modern-day interpreter with the Book of Revelation in hand. Depending upon one’s political or religious proclivity the Beast of Revelation (Revelation 13:11) can be, now the President of the United States, or, previously, Saddam Hussein rebuilding the city of Babylon, or even the Pope ruling Catholicism. This sort of frenzied speculation became particularly apparent as Year 2000 approached, with the ‘millennium bug’ seriously biting the loony cultist fringe. For the Israeli government then had to deport a group of American ‘Christians’ for fear that they had violent intentions towards the Old City, suspecting them to be amongst fanatics who believe that the ancient Temple of Jerusalem is destined to be rebuilt in the near future. This would mean firstly clearing away - even with a bomb if necessary - the great Moslem shrine, the Dome of the Rock, that now occupies the mount. Meanwhile, certain Protestant and evangelical groups continue to persist with the notion, conceived during the Reformation, that the Pope is Antichrist and that the ‘Roman Catholic Church’ is the “famous prostitute” of Revelation, “riding a scarlet beast which had seven heads and ten horns” (17;2, 3), the seven heads being also “the seven hills” (18:9). This latter, they insist, must be a reference to Rome with its Seven Hills. And they puzzle as to why prayerful, Bible-believing Catholics cannot see this. The Modernist crisis has only reinforced this view in their minds, especially when they learn of ‘Catholic’ bishops denigrating the Bible and supporting Gay Acceptance, etc. No doubt some of these non-Catholic brethren are genuine in their beliefs. They are certainly firm in them. Leo Harris for instance, writing the Foreword to Thomas Foster’s The Pope, Communism and the Coming New World (Acacia Press, Victoria), having acknowledged that: “In the present remarkable days, with the Holy Spirit touching the lives of many people in both the Roman Catholic and main-line Protestant churches, one may feel reluctant to expose the errors found in any church system”, feels constrained nonetheless to add a point that will be taken up more vehemently by Foster himself: “However, it is no light matter that any one man should arise and claim supreme headship over the church as Christ’s sole representative or vicar”. Foster himself will go so far as to identify the Pope as Antichrist (which name, he insists, literally means in the place of Christ). I personally know of Protestants who, whilst likewise being quite uncomfortable with the concept of the Papacy, are prepared nonetheless - in the current climate of ecumenism - not to make too much of an issue out of it, but to accept that there is presently going on throughout the world what they might call a ‘mustering of all people of good will’ (including even Roman Catholics). Perhaps this new outlook is the first stirring of unity; the graces of the ecumenical effort. We Catholics have of course a view quite different from these Protestants regarding the Pope and the Church. We acknowledge the Pope to be the appointed Vicar of Christ on earth (cf. Matthew 16:18), the very foundation of the Church, and infallible in matters of faith and morals. The Church we consider to be pre-eminently Marian (even before it was Petrine). The Blessed Virgin Mary, according to John Paul II, “is the image of the Church whom we likewise call mother” (Homily 18 November 1980. Cf. Lumen Gentium, #63). We therefore shudder at the accusation made by Luther-inspired Protestants that the Catholic Church is to be identified with the loathsome “Harlot” of the Apocalypse, which derogatory title we consider to be a most appropriate label, symbolically speaking, for the Modernist ‘World Wide Church of Darkness’ (cf. Pope St. Pius X). Apocalypse already fulfilled In this article I shall be endeavouring to show - hopefully to assist ecumenical efforts by clearing away misgivings, but especially to provide Catholics with a defence against unwarranted accusations by Protestants - that the mystery Whore, “Babylon the Great”, is not Rome at all (either physical or spiritual) but the ancient City of Jerusalem where Jesus himself was crucified - and where many of the Prophets (beginning with Abel), Apostles and disciples of Our Lord were martyred. In this way I hope to establish that the Whore cannot possibly have anything to do with the Catholic Church. I shall be arguing here that the Book of Revelation has, in the main, already been literally fulfilled; that it was fulfilled with the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman armies under Titus in 70 AD, corresponding to the burning of “Babylon” in Apocalypse ch.s 17-18. Its relevance for us today is allegorical and symbolical (e.g. the above-mentioned likening of the Harlot, which is a city, with Modernism, which is a system of thought with a corresponding praxis). Indeed this view accords perfectly with John Paul II’s statement to a C20th audience that the Book of Revelation is ‘symbolical and figurative in meaning’. Essentially Revelation is about the divorce of one ‘woman’ (one formerly just ‘woman’ who had gone bad), and the marrying of a new, faithful one. The scroll of Revelation 5:1 is actually a bill of divorce; the divorce being completed in the most emphatic manner with the annihilation of the harlot city, “Babylon”. I am indebted to Kenneth Gentry (Jr.) in “A Preterist View of Revelation” for spelling this out. E.g. [pp. 51-2]: When viewed against the backdrop of the theme of Jewish judgment, personages (a harlot and a bride), and the flow of Revelation (from the sealed scroll to a capital punishment for “adultery” to a “marriage feast” to the taking of a new “bride” as the “new Jerusalem”), the covenantal nature of the transaction suggests that the seven-sealed scroll is God’s divorce decree against his Old Testament wife for her spiritual adultery. In the Old Testament God “marries” Israel (see esp. Ezek. 16:8, 31-32), and in several places he threatens her with a “bill of divorce” (Isa. 50:1; Jer. 3:8). (In C. Marvin Pate’s Four Views on the Book of Revelation, Zondervan, 1998. The word “preterist” is based on a Latin word præteritus, meaning “gone by”, i.e. past). Also I want to clear up the serious problem (one of commentators own making) whereby the Apostles, expecting (according to such commentators) Christ’s final coming (Parousia), in their own day, were thus mistaken because that did not come about - still has not. Such an interpretation would suggest that Our Lord had passed on to his intimate friends the wrong time-table. This is, of course, quite unacceptable. My argument here will be that the Apostles were referring first and foremost to Christ’s victorious coming in 70 AD, thus freeing the early Church from her Judaïc (now corrupted and nationalistic) connections. The destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD may not mean a lot to us now in the C20th -especially we who have grown up with Western-based education that tends to eschew (or not understand) everything Semitic - but it meant a heck of a lot to those of the Apostolic era, who were mostly Jews, and who continued to worship in the Jerusalem Temple and the synagogues virtually to the very end. The emphasis here will be on the historico-literal. Some Illustrations of this Interpretation The historico-literal level of biblical interpretation is the most basic one, and Popes and Saints have urged that Scripture scholars firstly identify that level. Saint Thomas Aquinas himself was utterly convinced of its importance; for, according to Monsignor G. Kelly, in his refutation of Fr. Raymond Brown and co. (The New Biblical Theorists, p. 13): “St. Thomas Aquinas is usually cited as a leading Church doctor who knew the importance of discovering the literal sense”. Obviously there can be only one historico-literal fulfilment of anything. The ancient prophet Hosea was actually commanded by God to pantomime the tragic situation of Israel’s infidelity to God, by taking for his wife an adulteress from the harlot nation of Samaria (northern Israel). ‘Go, marry a whore, and get children with a whore, for the country itself has become nothing but a whore by abandoning Yahweh’ (Hosea 1:2). God knew that this woman, a product of her environment, would be unfaithful to the prophet, but He nevertheless urged Hosea to take her back after her infidelity, as a sign to Israel that God was patient and long-suffering and was also prepared to take back unfaithful Israel (3:1-3). The bad wife/good wife scenario is in fact the whole tension of the Book of Apocalypse. The pantomime that Hosea had played out in c.700 BC would now be approximately re-enacted by Jesus Christ himself, the Saviour, in his divorce of the unfaithful earthly Jerusalem (Judaïsm) and his marriage with his new Bride, the heavenly Jerusalem. This time there will be no taking back of the adulteress, Jerusalem - even though He had passionately longed to do so: ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem ... How often have I longed to gather your children, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you refused!’ (Luke 13:34). His patience with her had at last run out, so to speak. The ‘Holy Family’ of the Old Testament The prophet Isaiah’s outspokenness before young king Ahaz would not have endeared him to that proud monarch who went on to become one of Jerusalem’s most evil kings. Though Scripture does not spell it out, there is the implication that Isaiah and his family eventually had to flee Jerusalem to escape king Ahaz’s wrath. This would make Ahaz a forerunner of Herod (cf. Matthew 2:13-14). Here is the reasoning behind such an assumption: Immanuel we are told, would, before he reached the age of reason, “feed on curds and honey” (Isaiah 7:15). What does that signify? It suggests that the family must have been obliged to head north, away from Jerusalem, to the region that had already been devastated and depopulated by the Assyrian armies, where briars and thorns had taken the place of abundant vineyards, and where “all who are left in the country will feed on curds and honey” (vv.22, 23). Now St. John the Evangelist, in the Book of Revelation, picks up this theme of Immanuel and his mother fleeing into the wilderness to escape the wrath of the ‘king’: The woman brought a male child into the world, the son who was to rule all the nations with an iron sceptre, and the child was taken straight up to God and to his throne, while the woman escaped into the desert, where God made a place of safety ready, for her to be looked after in the 1260 days (12:5-6). This “male child”, the victorious One, who rides the white horse, is the Christ, victorious in his Passion and Resurrection (cf. 5:5). Pope Pius XII stated unequivocally: “He is Jesus Christ” (as quoted in Opus Dei’s The Navarre Bible: Revelation, p. 70). This is actually quite obvious from Revelation’s further description of Him (19:12-16): ... the name written on Him was known only to Himself, his cloak was soaked in blood. He is known by the name, The Word of God. From his mouth came a sharp sword .... He is the one who will rule [the pagans] with an iron sceptre, and tread out the wine of Almighty God’s fierce anger. On his cloak and on his thigh there was a name written: ‘The King of Kings and The Lord of Lords’. He is also Immanuel, “God-with them” (21:3). As to Revelation’s “Woman”, the “Marian Dimension” of this has already been ably explained by others. The Woman also, of course, represents the Church; and, in literal terms, the fledgling Church of St. John’s day, the new Bride, which was forced to flee into the desert for the duration of 1260 days (i.e. 42 months or 3 and a half years - see below); no doubt in obedience to Our Lord’s Olivet command to his faithful to leave the city of Jerusalem on the eve of her destruction (Matt. 24:15-17,20-22; cf. Mark 13:14): So when you see the disastrous abomination, of which the prophet Daniel spoke, set up in the Holy Place (let the reader understand), then those in Judæa must escape to the mountains .... Pray that you will not have to escape in winter or on a sabbath. For then there will be great tribulation such as, until now, since the world began, there never has been, nor ever will be again. That this “great tribulation” refers literally to a pre-70 AD scenario - and not to any later time, including the C21st - is obvious from the mention of the “sabbath” restricting the movements of peoples in Palestine. All that Jewish legalism went right ‘out the window’ after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Jesus Christ challenges “the reader” to “understand” about the “Abomination that makes desolate”, from which the faithful must flee. But what might have been a riddle then for his contemporaries is really made easy for us by St. Luke, who, removing all the mystery, tells us that this refers to the pagan armies that will encompass Jerusalem (Luke 21:20). These are the Gog and Magog of Revelation 20:8 - the idea for which St. John borrowed from Ezekiel 38 and 39 - the multi-nation armies of the ruling empire that would attack Judæa and Jerusalem. “Armageddon” (Revelation 16:16) apparently refers to Jerusalem’s strong northern fortress of Har Magedo (Megiddo). St. John picks up this, Our Lord’s command to flee, when he writes: “A new voice from heaven; I heard it say, ‘Come out, My people, away from [Babylon] so that you do not share in her crimes and have the same plagues to bear. Her sins have reached up to heaven ...’.” (Revelation 18:4, 5; cf. 18:2). The 1260 days (i.e. 42 months or three and a half years) pertain to the period of the Jewish war in the era 66-70 AD. Now the Virgin Mary did not flee into the desert at this time in history, and for that precise duration of time; for She was no longer on earth, having taken her place beside her Son in heaven. So, just as in the case of Isaiah’s young wife, the literal details cannot be made to fit Mary. And yet the Woman of Apocalypse, in the far-sweeping gaze of the Holy Spirit, does symbolise Mary, as does Isaiah’s “maiden”. Fr. Kramer was therefore quite wrong in his blanket assertion in The Book of Destiny (p. 276) that: “The woman of chapter twelve is not the Blessed Virgin Mary”. Opus Dei, on the other hand, is most emphatic about this Marian connection, based on Pope St. Pius X (ibid., p. 26): As in the case of the parables, not everything in the imagery necessarily happens in real life; and the same image can refer to one or more things - particularly when they are closely connected, as the Blessed Virgin and the Church are. So, the fact that this passage is interpreted as referring to the Church does not exclude its referring also to Mary. More than once, the Church’s Magisterium has given it a Marian interpretation. For example, St. Pius X says: ‘Everyone knows that this woman was the image of the Virgin Mary ...’. Less satisfactory, though, do I find Opus Dei’s implication that the Holy Spirit’s text has trouble fitting a specific, given scenario (p. 97): The mysterious figure of the woman has been interpreted ever since the time of the Fathers of the Church as referring to the ancient people of Israel, or the Church of Jesus Christ, or the Blessed Virgin. The text supports all of these interpretations but in none do all the details fit. Such a misalignment is, I believe, forced upon those who fail to recognise in the entire Revelation a consistent historico-literal substratum: namely, that of the era of the Apostles. All of Revelation’s prophecies strongly reflect actual historical events in St. John’s near future, though - as is obvious to any sound commentator - they are set in apocalyptic drama and clothed in poetic hyperbole. There will be no problem fitting details once one has the appropriate matrix; the matrix that the Holy Spirit has in mind. Having said that, there is no harm in one’s allegorizing (one of the three spiritual senses) the whole situation of the Woman fleeing into the desert from the great Red Dragon as the current banishment of Marian devotion, by the Modernists, to the desert of oblivion, or the rejection by Catholics of Our Lady of the Rosary (Fatima) and her message. It seems to me that the historico-literal sense is necessary to the spiritual sense in a way analogous to the need of the soul for the body. Admittedly the soul can exist without the body, even in Heaven, but there is an incompleteness there that will be resolved only on the last day. Unmasking the Whore, “Babylon the Great” St. Augustine, in his The City of God, juxtaposed two cities - the camp of the just and that of the evil - from Cain and Abel right down to his own day. Taking a lead from this, but adopting alongside it the perspective relevant to this article, of the good and the evil woman - of divorce and re-marriage - I shall be contrasting Christ’s Bride with the Devil’s Harlot Woman. The Kingdoms of Israel and Judah (Jerusalem) are typified in many Scriptures (e.g. Isaiah 1:8, Lamentations 2:13) as a Woman. In Ezekiel, Israel is likened initially to a helpless girl-child upon whom God (as Father) took pity, nourishing her and watching her grow. Afterwards He dressed her in finery and (as Bridegroom) took her for His spouse; eventually crowning her with queenship so that she became the envy of the nations (16:4-14). But, with the passing of time, she became infatuated with her own beauty; using her fame to make herself a prostitute (v.15); even going beyond the excesses of a prostitute (vv. 21, 33-34). For her punishment, God handed her over to “all the lovers” [i.e., the nations], with whom she had been trafficking, but who had become sick of her filthy ways (v. 28). These were to treat her in the same way as were treated in antiquity “women who commit adultery and murder ... stripped ... stoned and run through with a sword” (vv. 38, 40). 1. Thus did Assyria do to the northern kingdom of Israel which Ezekiel calls Jerusalem’s “sister”. (Fulfilled in c. 720 BC, conventional dating). 2. And so, God warns through Ezekiel, would the Babylonians do to Jerusalem for not having learned from her sister’s mistakes. (Fulfilled in c. 590 BC, conventional dating). For the Lord Yahweh says this: “I now hand you [Jerusalem] over to those you hate, to those in whom you have lost interest. They will treat you with hatred, they will rob you of the fruits of your labours and leave you completely naked. And thus your shameful whoring will be exposed .... As you have copied your sister’s behaviour, I will put her cup in your hand”. The Lord Yahweh says this: “You will drink your sister’s cup, a cup that is wide and deep, leading to laughter and mockery, so ample the draught it holds. You will be filled with drunkenness and sorrow. Cup of affliction and devastation, the cup of your sister Samaria, you will drink it, you will drain it; then it will be shattered to pieces and lacerate your breast. I have spoken - it is the Lord Yahweh who speaks”. (Ezekiel 23:28, 29:31-33, 34). 3. And St. John is right in line with this Old Testament tradition. In Apocalypse he prepares the Jews for the second destruction of Jerusalem (by the Romans), just as Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel had done for the earlier destructions, of Israel (by the Assyrians) and Jerusalem (by the Babylonians). The Book of Revelation is absolutely saturated with references from Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel and Ezekiel; for, according to Fr. Kramer (ibid., 3-4. My emphasis): The Apocalypse is a prophetical book (IV.1), and it ranks St. John with the prophets of the Old Testament (X.11). The “mystery of God” had been declared by His “servants the prophets (X, 7) .... [Apocalypse] is so largely a restatement of the Old Testament prophecies, that some have called it a mere compilation. All the seemingly idiosyncratic imagery used in the Book of Revelation by Saint John the Evangelist (e.g. “wormwood”, “burning mountain”; “blood sun”, “great hailstones”, etc.) turns out upon investigation to be ‘re-cycled’ imagery in the sense that it has already been used - and its meaning established - in the Old Testament. Thus the above graphic image by Ezekiel of Jerusalem as the drunken whore, holding the cup of wrath in her hand, is exactly the same image of Jerusalem that we find in the Book of Revelation (though separated in time from Ezekiel by about half a millennium); the harlot drunk with wine and holding a golden cup in her hand. Thus St. John (17:4-6): The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and glittered with gold and jewels and pearls, and she was holding a golden winecup filled with the disgusting filth of her fornication; on her forehead was written a name, a cryptic name: ‘Babylon the Great, the mother of all the prostitutes and all the filthy practices on the earth’. I saw that she was drunk, drunk with the blood of saints, and the blood of the martyrs of Jesus .... Here the martyrs of the Old Testament (called “saints”) are distinguished from those of the New Testament (“martyrs of Jesus”); but they all suffered their fate in the one same city. This city, this vile ‘woman’, is apostate Jerusalem! She is also called “the Great City” (e.g. Revelation 14:8; 18:10), and, again, “the Great City known by the symbolic names Sodom and Egypt, in which their Lord was crucified” (11:8). Derogatory names like “Sodom”, “Gomorrah” and “Egypt” were indeed code-names - or, rather, labels of contempt - applied by the Old Testament prophets to Israel and Jerusalem turned harlot. Thus Isaiah addressed Jerusalem’s leaders: “Hear the word of Yahweh, you rulers of Sodom; listen to the command of our God, you people of Gomorrah ... What a harlot she has become, the faithful city, Zion, that was all justice!” (Isaiah 1:10, 21; cf. Jeremiah 23:14). And St. John, in turn, picks up this usage for Jerusalem - clearly Jerusalem because she is the only city of which it can be said “in which their Lord was crucified” - and he applies to her the mystery name of “Babylon”, “a cryptic [symbolical] name” (17:5). And, in case we missed it, St. John goes on to tell us of this “Great City” that: “In her you will find the blood of prophets and saints, and all the blood that was ever shed on earth” (18:24). Now the Evangelist’s description could not possibly apply to Rome, despite what even good commentators seem to think. E.g: Opus Dei (op. cit.) on Rev 17:1-19:10: “This first section of the final scene begins with the depiction of the city of Rome (described as the great harlot, the great city, great Babylon), its punishment, and its connexion with the beast (the symbol of absolutist antichristian power personified by certain emperors (cf 13:18). Fr. Kramer (The Book of Destiny, pp. 387-8): “The name of the harlot was written on her forehead. Seneca (“Contro. V.i”) says that Roman harlots wore a label with their name on their foreheads. That would make this verse point to Rome, since this woman is the figure of the great city. St. Peter (I Peter, V.13) writes from Babylon, by which he surely [sic] means Rome. Roman harlots may indeed have worn a label on their foreheads, which was ancient practice, but it was of Jerusalem that Jeremiah shouted: “You had a whore’s forehead” (Jeremiah 3:3). Note that Rome does not figure at all in the Old Testament until we come all the way down to its very last history, I and II Maccabees. Rome is there mentioned, but not at all in terms of John the Evangelist’s condemnatory: “In her you will find the blood of prophets and saints, and all the blood that was ever shed on earth”. Rather, Rome is spoken of most favourably, even eulogised, by the inspired Maccabean writer. Moreover, the Maccabees had actually formed an alliance with Rome (I Maccabees 8:1, 12-16). And obviously, from St. John’s description of “Babylon” in terms of great antiquity, it cannot refer to any modern-day (historically recent) city. No, St. John’s “Babylon” refers to Jerusalem! In fact Our Lord himself told the Pharisees in what great city the blood of all holy men had been shed, and was still being shed (Matthew 23:35-39): ‘... you will draw down on yourselves the blood of every holy man ... from the blood of Abel ... to the blood of Zechariah ... whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar [i.e., of the Jerusalem Temple]. I tell you solemnly, all of this will recoil on this generation. Jerusalem Jerusalem, you that kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you! ... Your House [Temple] will be left to you desolate [cf. Abomination that makes desolate], for I promise, you shall not see Me any more until you say: Blessings on Him who comes in the name of the Lord!’ (Matthew 23:35-39). ‘This generation’ There is a lot for us to chew over in this statement alone. For starters, here is mention of that coming of Christ that has so baffled exegetes, that seems emphatically to pertain to that generation. Yahweh God, who had conceded to Israel a 40-year probation in the desert under Moses (c. 1400 BC), would now again in the time of His Beloved Son allow for about 40 years (c. 30-70 AD), a full generation, to enable the Apostles to gather in whomsoever was destined to be saved. And just as Moses, with assistance from his loyal Levite priests, had to carry, cajole and exhort his people during the trying sojourn in the wilderness, so do we find St. Peter, with his loyal team of Sts. John, Paul, etc., doing the same. Thus St. Peter: “You must repent ... every one of you must be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. ... Save yourselves from this perverse generation”. (Acts 2:38, 41). And St. John: “I am writing this, my children, to stop you sinning; but if anyone should sin, we have our advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ ...”. (I John 2:1). And St. Paul: “The Holy Spirit says: If only you would listen to Him today; do not harden your hearts, as happened at the Rebellion [Moses’s day], on the Day of Temptation in the wilderness, when your ancestors challenged Me and tested Me, though they had seen what I could do for forty years”. (Hebrews 3:9) St. Paul in fact most eloquently tried to lift the peoples’ minds above the earthly Jerusalem that was passing away, to the heavenly Jerusalem. “What you have come to is nothing known to the senses [as it indeed had been in the case of those at Mount Sinai, with fire, noise etc.] ...” (Hebrews 12:18, etc.). St. Peter again: “... men with an infinite capacity for sinning ....They may promise freedom but they themselves are slaves ... to corruption; because if anyone lets himself be dominated by anything, then he is a slave to it; and anyone who has escaped the pollution of the world once by coming to know our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and who then allows himself to be entangled by it a second time and mastered, will end up in a worse state than he began in. It would even have been better for him never to have learnt the way of holiness, than to know it and afterwards desert the holy rule that was entrusted to him. What he has done is exactly as the proverb rightly says: The dog goes back to his own vomit, and: When the sow has been washed, it wallows in the mud”. (2 Peter 2:14, 19-22). And St. John again: “Write to the angel of the church in Sardis and say, ‘... I know all about you: how you are reputed to be alive and yet are dead. Wake up; revive what little you have left: it is dying fast. ... Repent. If you do not wake up, I shall come to you like a thief, without telling you at what hour to expect Me’.” (Revelation 3:1-4). In this way many were saved, “a huge crowd” (Revelation 19:6). But “the apostasy” of which St. Paul warned (2 Thessalonians 2:3), and from which St. John, too, was trying to hold back the seven churches of Asia (Revelation 1), and from which, too, St. Peter and the other Apostles would have been striving to protect Judæa and Samaria, was ever working its way also - as it had with Moses’s generation as typified at Meribah and Massa in the desert (Psalm 94). The ‘fruits’ of this apostasy would ultimately be mass destruction. Thus I believe the above texts of the Apostles to be all approximately contemporaneous witness and exhortation - not writings separated by decades, before and after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD! The Jewish people (especially) would be given a full generation of 40 years to change, with the Apostles urging them not to fall back. Eventually the destroying angel would pass by those who had been marked with the sign of the Lamb, that is the baptised who had persevered in their faith. But those who wore the mark of the beast (Revelation 14:10), the apostates, would be destroyed, and violently. This is exactly what Jesus Christ had prophetically alluded to prior to his Passion, when he - having had placed before Him by “some people” the examples of (i) those slain by the Roman troops of Pilate, and (ii) others killed by a falling tower – had insisted: ‘Unless you do penance you will all perish as they did [that is, by a violent death]’ (Luke 13:1-5). [Not to mention the danger of spiritual death]. For at the end of the 40 years of probation thousands upon thousands of Jews did die violent deaths at the hands of the Romans, with towers likewise falling upon them, and missiles, stones and fire. Our Lord’s warning applies to all wicked generations, including our own. And we have also had a ‘John and a Paul’ (in John Paul II) telling us, specifically with reference to Revelation, that Vatican II is most essentially a Council of Advent, of the Coming. But let us once and for all get away from the idea that some modern-day Beast is going to implant 666 micro-computer chips in the foreheads of his followers. More plausibly the ‘mark of the beast’ is - like a Satanic aping of the tau marked upon the forehead by the angel in Ezekiel (9:4) - an invisible, spiritual character that the destroying angel could discern, to kill or to spare. Nor should anyone be living in fear of terrible storms of hail of unnatural size. [Comment: I first wrote this before Sydney’s awesome hailstorm in April of 1999, when some claimed to have seen hailstones even “the size of a bucket”]. The “great hailstones weighing a talent each” of Revelation 16:21 are undoubtedly the same as those of the exact same weight as described by the Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus, eyewitness to the ultimate destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD (The Jewish War, 3.7.9, cf. 3.7.10, emphasis added): “... catapults ... threw at once landed upon them with great noise, and stones of the weight of a talent were thrown by the engines that were prepared for that purpose, together with fire .... which made the wall so dangerous that the Jews durst not to come upon it”. They were stones from the Roman catapults, not hailstones from the clouds. Josephus’s description of this doomed generation, fittingly punished, completely backs up Our Lord’s numerous complaints about it being “an evil and adulterous generation”, (e.g. Matthew 13:39; Mark 8:12; Luke 11:29), and even worse than Sodom and Gomorrah (Matthew 10:15; 11:24 Mark 6:11; Luke 10:12). Josephus wrote in retrospect (ibid., 5.10.5): “Neither did any other city ever suffer such miseries, nor did any age ever breed a generation more fruitful in wickedness than this was, from the beginning of the world”. Is there an analogous situation with the post-Vatican II generation - again one of history’s worst? Is its time of probation also running out? Those blessed to have the gift of Faith need to be exhorters and encouragers like the Apostles were to their “perverse generation”, to save some at any cost (cf. Romans 11:14; I Corinthians 9:22). “Must Soon Take Place” Revelation is a book of urgency. The events it describes were to happen soon. [When the Bible says “soon”, it means soon, as in the case of the birth of Isaiah’s Immanuel - not in the Third Millennium!]. We learn that lesson when we start reading Revelation at its beginning. Plato, in The Republic, had stated an important maxim: “The beginning is the most important part of the book”, and this principle holds a special significance for the would-be interpreter of Revelation. “Unfortunately”, as Gentry rightly notes (op. cit., p. 40), “too many prophecy enthusiasts leap over the beginning of this book, never securing a proper footing for the treacherous path ahead”. The key to Revelation is found in St. John’s beginning (1:1a, 3): This is the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants what must soon [Gk. tachos] take place .... Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near [Gk. engys]. Again, in case we missed it, St. John repeats this soon-ness at the very end (22:6): The angel said to me, ‘These words are trustworthy and true. The Lord, the God of the spirit of the prophets, sent His angel; to show His servants the things that must soon take place’ .... Then he told me, ‘Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, because the time is near’. Just as it would have been senseless for Isaiah’s “sign” for king Ahaz to have been something that would not occur until 700 years later, so would John the Evangelist - according to Gentry (op. cit. p. 42) “... be taunting [the churches] mercilessly if he were discussing events two thousand or more years distant. God answers the anxious cry “How long?” by urging their patience only a “little while longer” (6:10-11). Revelation promises there will no longer be “delay” (10:6)”. The angel’s command to St. John not to seal up the scroll is also tellingly in favour of this “soon” interpretation. The prophet Daniel, by contrast, had been commanded by the angel to keep his “words secret and the book [scroll] sealed until the time of the End”, because the things Daniel was shown were not to happen for a long time in the future - in fact several hundred years later, in the time of the Apostles’ generation. For Our Lord himself had, during his important Olivet Discourse when facing the Temple of Jerusalem, referred to the “abomination that makes desolate of which the prophet Daniel spoke” (Matthew 24:15; cf. Mark 14:13). We know from Josephus’s history that the Roman armies of Cestius Gallus, that came up to (and surrounded) Jerusalem in 66 AD, and had all but conquered the city, had suddenly, most strangely, retreated. Even Josephus recognised the hand of Providence in this most unexpected turnabout. Many Jews, he said, fled the city at the time - no doubt e.g. those obedient to Jesus Christ’s Olivet warning. And Josephus is correct in seeing this intermission as only intensifying the pressure ultimately, so that with the return of the Roman armies the final destruction of Jerusalem, when it came (in 70 AD), would be total. Thus would be fulfilled Our Lord’s prophecy that ‘Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the time of the Gentiles are fulfilled’ (Luke 21:24). St. John recalls this in Revelation 11:2: “But exclude the outer court [of the Temple]; do not measure it, because it has been given to the Gentiles. They will trample on the holy city for 42 months”. As Gentry has observed (op. cit., p. 66): “... the trampling of the temple in AD 70 (Dan. 9:26-27) after its “abomination” (9:27; cf. Matt. 24:15-16; Luke 21:20-21) ends the Gentiles’ ability to stamp out the worship of God. In Daniel 9:24-27, Matthew 23:38-24:2, and Revelation 11:1-2, the “holy city” and its Temple end in destruction”. But how do the “times of the Gentiles” relate to the forty-two months of Revelation 11:12)? Well, the period would range from the spring of 67 AD - when Emperor Nero sent his general, Vespasian, to put down the revolt of the Jews - to August 70 - when the Romans breached the inner wall of Jerusalem, transforming the Temple and city into a raging inferno: a period of forty-two months. The five months of Revelation 9:5 pertain specifically to the period when the Jewish defenders held out desperately (one might say, fanatically), from April 70 - when Titus began the siege of Jerusalem - until the crescendo at the end of August. According to Gentry (61): “This five months of the Jewish war happens to be its most gruesome and evil period” (cf. Wars, 5.1.1, 4-5; 10:5; 12:4; 13:6). The Setting Palestine, not the world, is the stage for the drama of Revelation, despite translations that tell us of Christ’s judgment bringing mourning upon “all the tribes of the earth” (NIV). Literal translation of the text shows that St. John actually focusses on all the tribes of “the land” (Gk. tês gês), the well-known Promised Land in which the Jews lived. We should probably translate the Greek word hê gê as ‘the land’ rather than ‘the earth’ in the great majority of cases where this occurs in Revelation. According to Gentry (p. 72): After mentioning the redeemed/sealed of Israel in 14:1-5, John turns his attention to further judgements on the land by means of three woes (14:6-21) and the seven bowls (chaps. 15-16). Though the prophecies are crafted in dramatic hyperbole, they refer to historical events. For instance, consider the reaping of the grapes of wrath: “they were trampled in the winepress outside the city, and blood flowed out of the press, rising as high as the horses’ bridles for a distance of 1,600 stadia” (14:20). For compelling reasons, “the city” here appears to be Jerusalem: (1) John defines the city earlier as Jerusalem (11:8); (2) the “harvest” is in “the earth/land” (Gk hê gê; 14:15-19); (3) this judgment falls on the place where Jesus was crucified; “outside the city” (John 19:20; cf. Heb. 13:11-13); and (4) the Son of Man “on the cloud” (Rev. 14:14-15) rehearses Revelation’s theme regarding Israel (1:7). The distance of blood flow is 1,600 stadia, which is roughly the length of the land as a Roman province: The Itinerarium of Antoninus of Piacenza records Palestine’s length as 1664 stadia. This prophecy refers to the enormous blood flow in Israel during the Jewish war. Allow me to document this: In his Wars Josephus writes: “the sea was bloody a long way” (3.9.3); “one might then see the lake all bloody, and full of dead bodies” (3.10.9); “the whole of the country through which they had fled was filled with slaughter, and Jordan could not be passed over, by reason of the dead bodies that were in it” (4.7.6); “blood ran down over all the lower parts of the city, from the upper city” (4.1.10); “the outer temple was all of it overflowed with blood” (4.5.1); “the blood of all sorts of dead carcasses stood in lakes in the holy courts” (5.1.3); and “the whole city ran down with blood, to such a degree indeed that the fire of many of the houses was quenched with these men’s blood” (6.8.5). The Burnings The burning up of a third of the trees of “the land” (Revelation 8:7) reminds of the Romans’ setting villages on fire in conjunction with their denuding the land of its trees. Gentry (ibid.): Note what Josephus writes about the policy of the Romans: “he also at the same time gave his soldiers leave to set the suburbs on fire, and ordered that they should bring timber together, and raise banks against the city” (Wars 5.6.2). The Romans destroyed the trees in Israel for fuel and for building their weapons: “All the trees that were about the city had been already cut down for the making of the former banks” (Wars 5.12.4). “They cut down all the trees that were in the country that adjoined to the city, and that for ninety furlongs round about” (Wars 6.1.1; cf. 3.7.8; 5.6.2). Of Vespasian’s march on Gadara, Josephus writes: “He also set fire, not only to the city itself, but to all the villas and small cities that were round about it (Wars 3.7.1.; cf. 4.9.1). Galilee was all over filled with fire and blood” (Wars 3.4.1.). Vespasian “went and burnt Galilee and the neighbouring parts” (Wars 6/6/2). When the temple finally burns, Josephus moans: “One would have thought that the hill itself, on which the temple stood, was seething hot, as full of fire on every part of it” (Wars 6.5.1). And, of course, ultimately the whole city of Jerusalem goes up in flames so that as the Romans take the Jews captive to Rome, they relate that they are from “a land still on fire upon every side” (Wars 7.5.5.) “Babylon”, the code name for the impious city of Jerusalem, was “ruined within a single hour”. “They see the smoke as she burns” (Revelation 18:9, 19). A friend of mine remarked that, if our times are following a pattern parallel to all of this, then what sort of punishment is our world in for! ‘Great Tribulation’ Now the ‘great tribulation’ of which Our Lord spoke is none other than the ‘great tribulation’ of which St. John wrote in, e.g., Revelation 7:14 (cf. Matthew 24:21). These are not meant to be separated by millennia! No need to extrapolate to, say, the Third Millennium, to find the “great tribulation” [though, allegorically, modernistic Relativism today are ‘in the spirit’ of the religious persecution that the Jews were then suffering at the hands of their own people]; the seven churches of Revelation (1:9; 2:9-10, 13) were already feeling the strain of it. And no need even to go to Rome and Nero for a terrible persecution of the early Christians. Jerusalem is far enough. On the eve of Nero’s accession, there was a great famine that “spread over the whole empire” (Acts 11:28; cf. Matthew 24:7). “It was about this time that King Herod started persecuting certain members of the Church. He beheaded James the brother of John, and when he saw that this pleased the Jews he decided to arrest Peter as well” (Acts 12:1-3). Some Church Fathers thought that Nero was the Beast of Apocalypse, having shown that his name adds up to 666; the Beast’s heads being the succession of Roman emperors. Be that as it may, in Herod (not either of the Herods contemporary with Jesus, of course) the Beast would have found an appropriate ally. Thus (Acts 12:21-23): ... Herod, wearing his robes of state and enthroned on a daïs, made a speech to them. The people acclaimed him with, ‘It is a god speaking, not a man!’, and at that moment the angel of the Lord struck him down, because he had not given the glory to God. He was eaten away with worms and died. Need we even necessarily go to the Eternal City of Rome for the martyrdom of Sts. Peter and Paul? I don’t know. St. Peter’s bones, we are told, lie beneath St. Peter’s in the Vatican. But that is not necessarily proof that he died there (cf. Exodus 13:19, where Moses carried Joseph’s bones from Egypt to Israel). In this regard, I was interested to read in the Opus Dei commentary re the two witnesses of Revelation 11, who definitely died in Jerusalem (v. 8), that “because the two witnesses testify to Jesus Christ and die martyrs, tradition identifies them with Sts. Peter and Paul ...”. But the two witnesses of Revelation could just as well - perhaps even more likely - be two other of the Apostles slain in Jerusalem before the city’s destruction by the Romans: e.g. James the Lesser. Eusebius (The History of the Church) wrote in detail about this great miracle-working Patriarch of Jerusalem whose martyrdom, he says, was “instantly followed” by the capture of Jerusalem by the Romans (13:1). Some of the Fathers thought that the two witnesses would be Enoch and Elijah, said not to have died. But this could be only in an allegorical sense; in the sense of the two witnesses coming “in the spirit” of Enoch and Elijah (like St. John the Baptist). The next thing we read in Scripture is Jesus’s telling his disciples re the Temple that ‘not a single stone standing here will be left on another’ (Matthew 24:2), and then afterwards telling His four chief Apostles, Peter, Andrew, James and John, privately (the famous Olivet Discourse), about what would happen to Jerusalem. The Book of Revelation is Our Lord’s revealing all of this through St. John now, several decades later, to an audience far larger than just the select four. The Book of Revelation is, I maintain, a continuation of the Gospels and especially of the Olivet Discourse. Why, then, don’t commentators realise the obvious; that Sts. Peter and John are referring to Jerusalem; but under the cryptic name of “Babylon”? And why “Babylon”, instead of, say, “Sodom” or “Egypt”? There is a sad and biting irony in this choice of epithet. Whereas the Babylonians had been they who had destroyed the Temple of Jerusalem the first time round, now it will be the Jews themselves, nick-named “Babylon”, who will be responsible for burning to the ground their very own Temple. And this time it would be irrevocable. Admittedly, what makes somewhat confusing the identifying of Revelation’s “Babylon” is that this scarlet Woman is portrayed as riding on a Beast whose description, “seven hills”, seems to point clearly to Rome. Commentators then take the whole package, Woman plus Beast, as pertaining to Rome; which city - according to tradition - did persecute the followers of Jesus. However, according to the following, this description could actually fit Jerusalem (http://musingsofanoldpastor.blogspot.com.au/search?q=seven): The City on Seven Hills Jerusalem was known long before Rome as the city of Seven Mountains/hills. Rev 17:9: And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth. 1. Mt. Gareb, 2. Mt. Acra, 3. Mt. Goath 4. Mt. Bezetha, 5. Mt. Zion, 6. Mt. Ophel, 7. Mt. Moriah. Revelation more naturally evokes the image of Jerusalem as the city seated on seven mountains in 17:9 than Rome. The view that Babylon is a cipher for Jerusalem in the Apocalypse cannot then be dismissed on the basis of this common objection; not only can it be defended that the evidence of 17:9 can fit Jerusalem, there are strong reasons to believe that it in fact does most properly fit Jerusalem. …. Nevertheless, we have already seen in the paradigmatical Old Testament cases of Israel and Jerusalem that two protagonists, not one, were involved, namely: 1. The once just Woman turned Harlot; and; 2. Her suitors who have wooed her in the past, made her rich, but who eventually come to loath her, then turn on her and destroy her. So some could argue that the same situation is to be found in Revelation: 1. The Woman, Jerusalem, rides on 2. Roman power, but is to be distinguished from the latter which will eventually cause her destruction. The Woman is Jerusalem; the Destroyer is Rome. When was the Book of Revelation Written? What has exacerbated the whole exegetical problem of properly interpreting Revelation on a literal level is, I believe, the conventional opinion that St. John wrote this Apocalypse in hoary old age, in c. 95 AD, about a quarter of a century after Jerusalem had been destroyed. Hence many commentators are loath to see any relevance for Revelation in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Protestant and Catholic writers alike accept the late 95 AD date of authorship (Protestant Thomas Foster sharing this view in common with Opus Dei and Fr. Kramer). However, with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran, there has emerged a new scholarship of great expertise as typified by Fr. Jean Carmignac, showing that the books of the New Testament literature (esp. the Gospels), were composed much earlier than was originally thought. And the signs are that the entire New Testament, including Revelation, pre-dates 70 AD. I believe that there is abundant evidence in the Apocalypse to indicate that it was written early. In fact the reason that prevented my writing this article initially was: Where to start? There is so much! My effort in the end had been greatly assisted by my finding Gentry’s preterist interpretation on the eve of commencing this article. The whole Book of Revelation is focussed upon the Holy Land and especially Jerusalem. The Temple; the golden altar; the 24 elders keeping watch at Beth Moked in the north from where an attack might come (and general Titus did in fact take Jerusalem from there, at the city’s weakest point); the sabbath restrictions; etc., etc. Apart from their late dating of St. John’s Revelation preventing commentators from recognising the obvious, that “Babylon” is Jerusalem, this path they have taken leads them into other awkward anomalies as well. It is commonly believed that St. Paul had already completed his missionary activity and had been martyred well before St. John the Evangelist wrote the Book of Revelation. Paul is given the credit for having established the seven churches to which John later wrote. This view forces commentators into making such strange observations as Fr. Kramer’s: “... St. John could not have interfered in the administration of the churches in the lifetime of St. Paul” (op. cit., pp. 7-8). Oh, no? Was St. Paul (who even refers to himself as a very late arrival on the scene, I Corinthians 15:8) greater than St. John, the Beloved Disciple of Our Lord? St. Paul himself would answer us an emphatic: ‘No’! Of his visit to Jerusalem after his 14 year absence, he tells us: “... James, Cephas and John, these leaders, these pillars, shook hands with Barnabas and me .... The only thing they insisted on was that we should remember to help the poor ...” (Galatians 2:9, 10). St. John was by no means subservient to St. Paul; but apparently gave orders to the latter. All the Apostles had a hand in establishing the churches throughout Judaea and Samaria, as Jesus Christ had commanded them, and then “to the ends of the earth”, which St. Paul boasted had been achieved even in his day (Colossians 1:23). And Our Lord told the Apostles, “solemnly”, that they would not have completed “the rounds of the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes” (Matthew 10:23). We had better look now briefly at that particular ‘Coming’. The ‘Coming’ for the Apostles The Son of Man refers on various occasions to his ‘coming with His kingdom’ in the context that it would occur whilst some of those present were still alive (e.g. Matthew 16:28; Luke 9:27). Liberal modernist exegetes, imagining that Christ could here be referring only to his final and definitive Coming, love to point out that, because it has not occurred to this day, Jesus Christ was prone to error, was not omniscient, and that the Apostles who had expected His coming in their day were deluded (especially St. Paul). But there may be more than one biblical ‘coming’. Only a matter of about a week after Our Lord had addressed the above words to His disciples, there had occurred the Transfiguration, to which St. Peter would refer back in later years in the context of “the coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ” (cf. 2 Peter 1:16 and 1:18-19). At least, it seems to have been a kind of preview of the real thing. The risen Lord told Peter, in regard to John: “‘If I want him to stay behind till I come, what does it matter to you? You are to follow Me’. The rumour then went out among the brothers that this disciple [John] would not die. Yet Jesus had not said to Peter, ‘He will not die’, but, ‘If I want him to stay behind till I come’.” (John 21:21-23) Since the Apostles greatly yearned for the ‘coming’ of Jesus Christ, could that have been the definitive ‘coming’ at the end of the world? I suggest not. Too far away. Rather the Apostles were yearning for a ‘coming’ of Jesus in their own day; one that would, in some cases, coincide with their martyrdom, their being uplifted into Heaven (as in the case of the deaths of the two witnesses). Apparently Christ had apprised them of this; for St Peter wrote: “I know the time for taking off this tent is coming soon, as Our Lord Jesus Christ foretold to me” (2 Peter 1:14). Presumably the Master would also have told St. Paul; for did he not ‘show [Paul] how much he himself must suffer for My name’ (Acts 9:16)? Was this ‘coming’ for the Apostles therefore the kind of consoling heavenly visitation that St. Stephen Protomartyr had experienced just before his death (Acts 7:56): ‘I can see heaven thrown open ... and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God’? Did it, for many of them, coincide with his victorious coming in 70 AD as the Rider upon the white horse, to oversee the destruction of harlot Jerusalem and the now-corrupted Judaïc system? Because Our Lord’s predictions are - for those who believe him to be the Word Incarnate - infallible, there must have been a ‘coming” already in the days of the Apostles, of that particular generation. 70 AD (conventional dating) is then the likely date for it. The 40 years of probation for the ‘woman’ were now up. It was to be divorce and execution.