Lee Harmon's Blog, page 99

Book review: The Case for Christmas

by Lee Strobel

★★
This little book is excerpted from an earlier 1998 book by Lee Strobel: The Case for Christ. Like others of the series, Strobel's MO is to interview other believing scholars and present his findings as a sort of scientific approach to uncovering the truth about Jesus.
Let me start by saying that I've never found much inspiration in Strobel's "The Case for …" series. It feels to me like he demeans the beauty and mystery of Christianity by trying to bring it down to earth, proving the unprovable. But when I noticed this little book attempting to prove the Christmas story, my curiosity won out. There are many valid arguments against the two conflicting birth stories in the Bible, and nothing whatsoever that I could think of as evidence for treating them literally, so I couldn't resist.
Strobel got on my wrong side right away with a blatant misquote of the Gospel of John:
John, who begins his gospel by eloquently affirming the incarnation—that is, "the Word," or Jesus, "became flesh and made his dwelling among us" on the first Christmas.
At least Strobel knew where to drop the quotation marks! But the reference to "the first Christmas" is misleading and untrue to John's Gospel. John wants nothing to do with the virgin birth, instead pointing out multiple times that Jesus' father was Joseph. Conservative Christians may read the birth stories in Matthew and Luke, and then read the incarnation story in John, and naturally try to overlay the two, but this would insult John. John's theology is one of eternal pre-existence, not of a miraculous birth, and John clearly describes the moment of incarnation at the Jordan river … not at birth.
Strobel never does provide proof of the virgin birth, but rather attempts an indirect route, disproving the debunkers. Luke tells the story of Jesus' miraculous birth, so Strobel stokes Luke as a careful historian, pointing out many places where Luke has been proven accurate, and uses that to deflect a major problem in Luke's report: That governor Quirinius and King Herod seem to serve simultaneously, though Herod died ten years before Quirinius arrived as governor. Strobel's "proof" that Luke's account is historical: a coin dated to 11 B.C., bearing Quirinius's name. Perhaps there were two governor Quiriniuses? But the rumor is absolutely not true; there exists no such coin, and Strobel should have done his homework. Strobel also neglects to mention the obvious: we know precisely who governed Syria in the years surrounding Herod's death. It was Quintilius.
Strobel jumps into the argument over whether Isaiah prophesied a virgin birth or whether the original Hebrew says only that a child will be born to a young woman. It's a fun argument, but totally irrelevant, because just a few verses later, Isaiah makes it clear that he's not predicting an event hundreds of years in the future, but in his own lifetime.
Strobel's best attempt is to argue for an early writing of the Gospels and traditional authorship. Then he deduces that these authors surely would not misrepresent the story so quickly after Jesus lived, because there would be others around to correct them.  He manages to uncover one reasonable scholar (Blomberg) who agrees with this dating. The vast majority of Bible scholars do not.
Strobel concludes that everything in the scripture about the Messiah has been fulfilled, and this proves Jesus' identity. I am growing so tired of hearing this. Any knowledgeable Jew would be totally baffled by this claim, because Jesus didn't fulfill any of the prophecies important to them! He didn't gather the Jews back to Jerusalem, he didn't rebuild the Temple, he didn't reestablish the Jews as God's favored people, he didn't bring world peace, he didn't unite the entire world in worship of one God, the list goes on. Perhaps we believe Jesus will come back and do all these things someday, but can we quit saying Jesus fulfilled the prophecies? He most assuredly did not … not in the political way the Old Testament expected.
I'm starting to get argumentative, so this is probably a good place to close. Can we just leave things to faith which belong in the realm of faith?

Galations 1:11-12, Paul's Authority

I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.

//Paul remains such an enigma to me! Driven beyond the endurance of superheroes, his influence in undeniable. But is it fair to label Paul the founder of Christianity?
Two books I've reviewed recently sit side-by-side in my library. I love studying from all angles, and these are five-star books that deal with Paul's accomplishment from two different directions: Barrie Wilson's How Jesus Became Christian and Tom Holland's Contours of Pauline Theology.
You can find lots of books on the topic of Paul's brand of Christianity. Some are happy to call Paul a founder, arguing that the message he espoused radically differed from the message of other apostles. Paul's influence among the Gentiles, they insist, overwhelmed that of the more Jewish version of Christianity centered in Jerusalem. 
Certainly Paul stood up for his understanding and adamantly preached his beliefs. In today's verse, Paul makes clear his authority to preach: Jesus, himself, gave him his revelation! Nobody taught him this stuff. It didn't come from the Jerusalem church or from any other men.
When those irritants back in Jerusalem accused Paul of lacking credentials to speak for Jesus, he angrily insisted "I am not in the least inferior to the 'super-apostles'" (2 Corinthians 12:11). Earlier in this chapter Paul tells how he was caught up to the third heaven (whether in or out of body, he wasn't sure) and how, there in Paradise, he "heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell."
One can hardly blame Paul for standing true to his convictions!

Hebrews 9:19-22, The Hebrew Club

When Moses had proclaimed every commandment of the law to all the people, he took the blood of calves, together with water, scarlet wool and branches of hyssop, and sprinkled the scroll and all the people. He said, "This is the blood of the covenant, which God has commanded you to keep." In the same way, he sprinkled with the blood both the tabernacle and everything used in its ceremonies. In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood ...
//When we were kids, we formed clubs and built forts and tree houses. We hung up signs that said, "No girls allowed." We made up secret handshakes and lots of rules. We scavenged for used cigarette butts and snuck them into the fort, where we smoked what was left of them with reverence, sitting around a tin cup of exhausted filters.
When we grew up, we took down the "No girls allowed" sign. Turns out they're human, too. We swapped the secret handshakes for embraces, and the rituals lost meaning.
I'm not Jewish, but I wonder ... do Jews sometimes look back on their history with the same sort of embarrassed nostalgia? All that playing with animal blood, all the dress-up games, all those rules, meant only to draw lines in the desert sand delineating the Hebrew Club? 
Sometimes when I read the book of Hebrews, I get the feeling that's how its author felt.


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Book review: Revelations: Visions, Prophecy & Politics in the Book of Revelation

by Elaine Pagels

★★★★★
Look. If Pagels writes a book, go buy it. You don't need a review, you just need a reminder that it's ready for purchase. But then I'd feel like I wasn't doing my job, so ...

I've been looking forward to Pagel's new book, hoping I would read her views on how to interpret Revelation, but this wasn't her focus. Pagels begins by discussing the apocalyptic writings of the early Christian period. The title, Revelations, is not a misspelling of the final book in our Bible; she really does mean "revelations" in the plural. She highlights several other visionary writings, including The Revelation of Peter, The Secret Revelation of James, and The Secret Revelation of John. It turns out the unexpected focus didn't disappoint me.
Pagels then progresses through the next few hundred years of Christianity, detailing how Revelation was received (or not!) by the Church, the argument over its authorship, and how its prophecies were used to bolster or condemn. Irenaeus and Justin the Philosopher strongly championed John's Apocalypse, both of them certain that its promise of tribulation could be seen plainly in the Christian persecution they were already witnessing. Tertullian praised John for the courage to portray Rome as Babylon, "proud of her power, and victorious over the saints," but damned and doomed. Even Constantine got in on the act, claiming that his rival, Licinius, was represented in Revelation by the dragon. Constantine wrote in a letter to Eusebius that he had restored "liberty to the human race" after he drove "that dragon out of public administration." Still, the vengeful book of Revelation barely squeaked into the Christian canon.
In the few instances where Pagels does attempt an interpretation of the original meaning of Revelation, her perspective is strongly influenced by her exhaustive studies in the Gnostic Gospels—the Nag Hammadi findings—and this emphasis shines a different light on the topic. For example, she compares Revelation to 4 Ezra (the Revelation of Ezra), a Jewish book somewhat contemporary with Revelation. Revelation is Christian, Ezra is not. But because she dates them concurrently (early 90's) and notes their similarities, she lets one aid in the interpretation of the other.
I loved the book, but I can't help contributing my two cents. I disagree with her approach to interpretation, believing that we can date Revelation to perhaps fifteen years earlier, so its teachings should stand more firmly on their own. History and Christian thought were changing rapidly during this period, and even fifteen years makes a major difference. One example: In a discussion of the hated "Babylon" in Revelation, I believe its original meaning referred not to Rome, but to Jerusalem. Only later, when Revelation's dreams failed to quickly materialize, did Christians lose interest in Jerusalem and shift to interpreting Babylon as Rome. Far more clues point to Jerusalem as the original intended meaning, and I think I'll run a blog series shortly with the arguments for Jerusalem. Keep an eye on my blog at www.dubiousdisciple.com. [image error]

Matthew 24:14, the Great Commission

And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.
//These are Matthew's words, and it seemed to be an understanding shared by Paul and others. The Gospel must be preached to the ends of the earth before Jesus comes back. Matthew, in telling us what to expect before the Lord's return, lists only one "sign of the times" for us to anticipate: the completion of this world mission. We've even made up a name for this evangelism ... we call it the "Great Commission." 
Paul seemed to consider himself the primary evangelist in this movement, concerned that he had little time to accomplish the task before Jesus arrived, and was on his way to Spain, the very end of the earth, to complete this purpose before his plans were finally derailed in Rome, where he would presumably spend the rest of his life. 
Whether or not Paul himself felt satisfied with his success, later biblical writers would agree that Paul properly fulfilled his commission. The author of Colossians would write, Every creature under heaven has heard the Word, and all over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing.
The book of Titus would affirm that Paul succeeded in his mission: For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, and as such the time had come, and they sought that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the Great God and our Savior Jesus Christ.
The book of Timothy also affirms that Paul's world mission has come to a close, and now the end would arrive quickly.
But life goes on. I guess the world turned out to be a little bigger than they thought.

Revelation 7:1, The Four Corners of the Earth

After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth to prevent any wind from blowing on the land or on the sea or on any tree.
//Ever wonder where the four corners of the earth hide? It's a little hard to find a corner on a sphere. Even if we grant that Bible writers imagined a flat earth, they never imagined it to be square! Take this verse in Isaiah 40:22, speaking of God:
He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in.
Thus, God chooses a vantage point above a circular earth, where he can keep an eye on all its inhabitants. He stretches the heavens over the earth like a tent, protecting a flat surface. This matches the description in Genesis of a flat earth, covered by a dome of sorts. The sun and the moon ride tracks daily across the underside of the dome. Yes, the Bible often assumes a flat earth. But where are its corners?
Let me ask you this. When you hear the phrase today, do you imagine corners on the earth? Of course not. It's a figure of speech, meaning from all over the globe. It was a figure of speech in Bible days as well (see Ezekiel 7:2 and Isaiah 11:12) where it came to mean from all over the flat circle of the earth. Tell any ancient Hebrew that the earth is square, and he'll laugh you to scorn. You don't see any corner edges in the sky dome, do you? 
Moreover, the Hebrew word Kaneph is better translated as "edge" or "extremity" than "corner," for which more precise Hebrew words exist if the writers really meant corner. And "four" in today's verse surely refers to the four directions, North, South, East, and West, as attested by its reference to the four winds. There is no insinuation that the land has four sides. In fact, anyone can see that the creation continues on beyond the edge of the land, and can feel the winds originating from over the water beyond the land's edge.

Book review: Near Death Experiences: The Rest of the Story

by P.M.H. Atwater

★★★★
Before I begin this review, I should explain my interest in NDE's from a religious viewpoint. It's not just that they hint of a possible afterlife, because I honestly don't know what to make of that. It's that they dig down below the surface of religion to what Atwater labels a "core experience." Says Atwater,
"The core truth or root of all religions and all sacred traditions is virtually the same throughout the world and always has been. It is the spiritual. It is that personal experience of Source/Deity/Allah/God. The majority of near-death experiencers glimpse that core truth in a moment of self-surrender they neither understood nor were prepared for, and they are forever changed." (p. 104)
Atwater is not a scientist, and doesn't approach her research from that direction. No double-blind studies with a control group. But she has logged 43 years of research, involving nearly 7,000 people. She explains,
"I am an observer and analyst who specializes in fieldwork … My protocol is that of a police investigator. I cross-check my findings with different people in different parts of our country at different times." (p. 238)
By the way, I'm an outsider. An estimated one in twenty people remember a near-death experience, and Atwater has enjoyed three herself. But No NDE for me, even though I should qualify, having drowned once. I'm still peeved that I got nothing out of that. 
Atwater's new book is not as much about the experiences themselves as it is about the profound affect they have on those who survive them. People are changed by this brush with the divine, whether we label it a religious experience or not. I do enjoy when Atwater lets the experiencers speak for themselves, leaving it up to us to make sense of the mysteries. When she jumps in, speaking in her exotic language, using phrases like "electromagnetic spectrum," I tend to lose focus. I'm a newbie to the paranormal, sorry.
This is a world where animals often speak and angels often fly on wings. I say "often," because different people, with different backgrounds, have different experiences. Hell is only hot and fiery if you're a Christian fundamentalist. Most others recalled hellish NDE's as cold and clammy. Dark tunnels often connect this world to the next, but they didn't used to. Tunnels with a light at the end were quite rare in NDE's before Robert Moody's book Life After Life became a bestseller, and the public began to fixate on tunnels. Too bad; everybody loves afterlife tunnels and the explanations they provide for wormholes, time travel, and shamanic visions.  
But one commonality in these experiences is that they are life-altering, and for that reason alone, the rest of us should not ignore what we can't explain. What these people experience will probably never be a part of our worldview—most of us are trapped in a reality wrapped around matter—but  NDE experiencers' connection often remains after the event, like a window left open to the supernatural. They are suddenly changed. Experiencers begin to remember the future before it happens, see auras of energy, see dead people. Atwater helps experiencers adapt back to a world that has become foreign, and helps the rest of us adapt to experiencers who have been radically changed. This is no trivial issue; 21% of experiencers in Atwater's research attempted suicide afterward. 75% divorced. Both spouses usually voiced the same complaint: "I don't know that person anymore." The vast majority return from their experiences convinced that there is a "plan" for life, yet two-thirds leave organized religion, or never have a religious commitment to begin with.
Atwater loses me when she delves into her otherworldly explanations for these phenomenon, talking about holograms and power punches and colloidal conditions. When she shifts from paranormal language into scientific explanations, I get at least a glimpse of what she's talking about, but can't really relate the explanations to scientific principles other than as vague parallels meant to describe the indescribable. "Superfluidity" doesn't really explain how out-of-body travelers can go through walls. "Quantum entanglement" has a long way to go before it explains entangled minds. "Multiverses" is a concept I find more than a little disturbing. But these comparisons do help me relate. In many ways, Atwater's book will feel like home to experiencers but leave outsiders like me still out in the cold. Four stars for the research and fascinating peek into a world that remains a bizarre mystery to the uninitiated.
One final note: Atwater's opinions about Jesus and the Bible don't increase her credibility. She should probably have left that to the Jesus scholars.  :-)

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2 Samuel 1:26, Was King David Gay?

I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother; you were very dear to me. Your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than that of women.
//This is a long-standing debate, and while I don't pretend to have the answer, I will weigh in with my guess after presenting some of the verses Bible readers point to.
1 Samuel 18:1, After David had finished talking with Saul, Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself. (NIV)
1 Samuel 19:1, And Saul spoke to Jonathan his son and to all his servants, that they should kill David. But Jonathan, Saul's son, delighted much in David. (RSV)
1 Samuel 20:30, Then Saul's anger was kindled against Jonathan, and he said to him, "You son of a perverse, rebellious woman, do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your own shame, and to the shame of your mother's nakedness? (RSV)
The ambiguity of these passages is evident. The problem, of course, is that homosexuality is a sin in the Bible. Leviticus 20:13 states this plainly: If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death. This new law was recorded hundreds of years after David lived, and as such, the law could not have impacted its past, but it could have impacted the time in which the scriptures were written down! At the time the stories of David were collated into scripture, a definite anti-gay bias existed, and this may have affected how the stories were presented. The language may have been purposefully toned down.
I promised my own guess, and it's this: David should not be called gay. As best I can tell, there simply was no clear distinction at the time he lived; no designation of gays or straights, simply a sliding scale of preference, and everybody fell somewhere on that scale. How gay sex grew into such an abomination in the eyes of Israel's later lawmakers, I don't know.

1 John 4:1, What is the Spirit like?

Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.
//Maybe you can help me with today's topic. We're instructed to try the spirits to see if they mesh with God. If they don't, discard 'em. But what is God's spirit like? Here are a couple examples from the Bible:
Galatians 5:22-23, But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.
Judges 15:14-15, and the Spirit of the LORD came mightily upon him ... And he found a new jawbone of an ass, and put forth his hand, and took it, and slew a thousand men therewith.
The latter verse is Samson, of course, a fellow that solved his problems with brawn, and the first verse comes from Paul, whose writings sometimes seem so saturated with brotherly love that it fills me with hope. With these two extremes in mind, what can we conclude about the Spirit of God? Perhaps only this: everybody finds in God whatever spirit they are looking for.

Book review: Revelation for Everyone

by N. T. Wright
★★★★
This is a friendly, feel-good peek at the bloodiest book in the Bible. As one who has written about Revelation from a historical-critical viewpoint, detailing all the gory first-century details which inspired the Book of Revelation, Wright's approach felt a little to me like bouncing happily along the surface. This is not a criticism; Wright's Revelation is more palatable than mine, certainly more inspirational for a 21st-century audience.
Given Wright's more conservative brand of Christianity, it's eerie how often he and I agree on the meaning of the Bible's most mysterious book. Wright recognizes the conflict between Christianity and Caesar worship pulsating through Revelation. He recognizes (as does nearly every serious scholar of Revelation) that the "Beast of the Sea," identified by the hideous number 666, refers to Nero Caesar, and Wright pays homage to the rumor that Nero had come back to life. He counts, like I do, the seven kings of Revelation beginning with Augustus, not Julius Caesar, the popular choice among preterists. He even acknowledges the frightening urgency in the tone of Revelation, because its prophecies were expected by John to be fulfilled immediately. Indeed, some had already occurred, like the two witnesses of Revelation, before John put pen to paper.
Yet in all these cases, Wright glosses over the historical connections and emphasizes, instead, Revelation's relevance to today. His focus is for Christians of today, recognizing that we still await the moment of Christ's return. The "earthquakes" of Revelation (which should be read non-literally as merely earth-shattering events) remind us of the fall of the Berlin Wall, or the smashing of the Twin Towers. That's a relevant stance, yet it did leave me feeling like Wright's treatment was a bit artificial, regardless of his claim … that Revelation "in fact offers one of the clearest and sharpest visions of God's ultimate purpose for the whole creation."
This highlights the fascinating thing about scripture, and in particular the book of Revelation. Its vivid imagery and Christian lessons relate to followers of every century. Unless you read the book of Revelation literally—a method of reading that was appropriate only to one age and audience, the people of Asia Minor to whom John was actually writing—Revelation continues to be just as meaningful and "true" today as then.
Do not miss the final chapters, about the New Jerusalem! Wright reminds us that "Jesus, according to the whole New Testament, is already reigning." He points out the fascinating verse in Ephesians 2:6, where the church is "seated in heavenly places in the Messiah Jesus." As to the binding of Satan, Jesus had already accomplished this (Matthew 12:29). What it all means is the great promise: God has come to dwell with humans. So many readers of Revelation assume that the final description would be about heaven that they fail to see the glory of God's New Jerusalem on earth—a "newness" we can share in today. Heaven and earth are forever joined together.
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