Every year, about this time, we are hit with two things – Christmas and the War on Christmas – generally from the same ’side’. The Comedy Central FoxNews pundit, Bill O’Reilly, has made it his mission to make a war on the war on Christmas, whether there is such an animal is of no consequence to him. (More than likely, the perceived War on Christmas is the actual ‘war’ on demonstrations of religion on the public square, serving as a confluence of political forces, left and right.) Further, it would most likely not matter to Mr. O’Reilly that the original war on Christmas was began by the Religious Right and that Americans did not celebrate Christmas until the middle of the 19th century, a generation or two after the founding of the Republic and centuries after the first colonies. Nor, I doubt, would it cross his mind that the long-standing Christmas traditions were but recently invented, and that Christmas has been historically derided as a ‘popish’ holiday.
Jun 12 2009
The American Patriot's Bible: The Word of God and the Shaping of America
The American Patriot’s Bible: The Word of God and the Shaping of America
(My initial post is here. For more from the blogosphere see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)
Let me first state, that the bible itself is a beautiful work, detailed, grand, majestic, and sturdy – yet that only makes it more difficult to read. I wonder how well the Orthodox Study Bible would have done had Thomas Nelson devoted half the attention to that publication as it had to this one. THe text is NKJV.
While many are declaring that this bible is a ’study’ bible, in no way does it measure up tothat title (I recommend the NLT Study Bible, if you need one.) Instead, it is propaganda for the religious right – and even conservatives should cry foul over this one. To be honest, I can see this work becoming a bible for many of the homoschooling right. It is a textbook for those that so often confuse American history with salvific history, who confuse the United States with either Israel or the Church.
It includes a U.S. map, the order of statehood and the ‘Seven Principles of the Judeo-Christian Ethic, which, by the way, was only recently invented by the likes of Scofield and Darby. Here are a few -
- Dignity of Life? Really, meaning like the Trail of Tears, the turning away of Jews escaping the Holocaust before WWII, the smallpox blankets, and slavery?
- Right to a God-centered education? Not sure where that is enshrined at, but I know who that is pointed to.
- The Abrahamic Covenant is superceded by the New Covenant. They wholly misuse it, citing the text ‘that if a nation obeys God’…yet, that nation was Israel then, the Church today, not a geo-political entity like the United States.
It includes a Call to Actions as well, which is a political diatribe meant to play on fears. Citing 2nd Chronicles 7.14 (if My people who are called by my name…) they apply it to the United States. Again, the confusion between the United States and a biblical understanding of what a ‘nation’ and a ‘people’ are is deep.
This is a holy book, are is supposed to be, not a magazine – so why is it that pictures of all manners of men (and rarely women) pictured. Whether or not you like our current President, his stated personal understanding of Christ should dismiss him from being in a Bible, heralded. The same goes for Lincoln and others who used religion as propoganda in a time of war or national crisis. Do you really think that quotes by John F. Kennedy should be included in God’s word?
At the start of each book, in each section (Torah, Writings, Poetry, etc…) they have images of American history. For the Torah, they have WWII soldiers, pictures of brothers during the Late War of North Aggression, and the preamble of the Constitution. I can only image that this is representative of Exodus, with Israel’s flight to political liberaty. The Minor Prophets include pictures of pioneers while the Gospels have the planting of a flag and lighthouse – because, you know, Christ died to make this country free.
In a Section, containing beautiful art and great quotes, entitled ‘Christianity and the American Frontier’ they fail to mention that a lot of times, ‘the American Fronter’ was inhabited by natives who were forcibly removed from their land as ‘America’ marched towards manifest destiny.
In another, The American Revolution, they make an erronous conclusion in speaking of the American Revolution and the Founding Fathers – ‘they saw them (the charges in the Declaration) as a part of the predetermined plan to take away their religious liberties and reestablish the Church of England to rule over their hearts and souls, thus enslaving the colonies.’ Really? What evidence of that is there, especially in the Declaration itself? Wasn’t the battle cry, ‘No taxation without representation?’ And wasn’t the majority of American leaders members of said Church?
In the same section, they note that it was the Churches (many of them Episcopalian) which fueled the ‘fires of liberty’. This book credits the ministers with urging a transformation of theory of Romans 13 – almost as if they are speaking to people today. They note ‘ministers turned the colonial resistance into a righteous cause.’
The APB is not a study bible, or a bible that I recommend buying, reading, or giving. It fuels the confusion that plagues us today – that somehow, we are above all, the only ‘nation’ which God has blessed. The product description reads:
THE ONE BIBLE THAT SHOWS HOW ‘A LIGHT FROM ABOVE’ SHAPED OUR NATION. Never has a version of the Bible targeted the spiritual needs of those who love our country more than The American Patriot’s Bible. This extremely unique Bible shows how the history of the United States connects the people and events of the Bible to our lives in a modern world. The story of the United States is wonderfully woven into the teachings of the Bible and includes a beautiful full-color family record section, memorable images from our nation’s history and hundreds of enlightening articles which complement the New King James Version Bible text.
Friends, the bible is not about a single geo-political entity – it is about the God shaping salvation for humanity. Honestly, it makes me weep for my country.
May 13 2009
The Patriot's Bible
Thomas Nelson has graciously sent me a copy of their newest addition to a very overcrowded bible market – the American Patriot’s Babel, er – no, it’s pretty hard for me to call it a ‘bible.’ I will do a full review next week, once I have had time to look it over, or when I can calmly read it.
Below are people already working it over good:
Between The Patriot’s Bible and the movie The American President: The Futilitiy of Study
Thomas Nelson Releases ‘American Patriot’s Bible’
From the editor’s:
THE ONE BIBLE THAT SHOWS HOW ‘A LIGHT FROM ABOVE’ SHAPED OUR NATION. Never has a version of the Bible targeted the spiritual needs of those who love our country more than The American Patriot’s Bible. This extremely unique Bible shows how the history of the United States connects the people and events of the Bible to our lives in a modern world. The story of the United States is wonderfully woven into the teachings of the Bible and includes a beautiful full-color family record section, memorable images from our nation’s history and hundreds of enlightening articles which complement the New King James Version Bible text.
Here is a small video clip of the Idol:
It’s not the clearest, but you get the idea
Dec 18 2008
Jesus Christ Outside the New Testament
Continuing from here, I found a site with the following information:
Tombs, Ordinances and Graffiti
Tomb Inscriptions – late 30’s C.E.?
“Several of the tombs in the Dominus Flevit ['the Lord wept'] catacombs outside Jerusalem bear inscriptions like, ‘Jesus, have mercy’, and ‘Jesus, remember me in the resurrection’, inscriptions thought to date from the 40’s or late 30’s, and indicating the presence in Jerusalem from a fairly early date of a community that believed in resurrection and in the power of someone named Jesus to see the believer safely through death and beyond.”
- Alan Millard, Discoveries From the Time of Jesus
The tombs were discovered during the rebuilding of a Franciscan chapel and excavated from 1953 to 1955.
“A tomb of the Late Bronze period gave finds which are important for the civilization of Jerusalem just at the time of its conquest by the Hebrews. A necropolis used from 136 BC to 300 AD produced a great amount of material. The necropolis had two periods each with different styles and cultures. The first, the earlier is characterized by Kokhim (oven-shaped) tombs running from 185 BC, while the second is characterized by tombs with an arcosolium belonging to the 3rd and 4th centuries AD. With the Kokhim tombs are closely connected the sarcophagus and the ossuary; the first cut in hard stone (mizzi) follow the motifs of classical art, both in structure and subject, in close artistic relation with the Tombs of the kings and ‘Herod’s’ of the 1 cent. AD; the ossuaries, on the other hand in soft stone (kacooley) follow a local trade technique with architectonic and floral motifs.
“On the ossuaries were found many more or less symbol signs (crosses, tau, Constantinian monograms) and 43 inscriptions (Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek) incised or traced with charcoal. Of interest is the recurrence of names common in the New Testament, as Mary, Martha, Philo the Cyrene, Matthew, Joseph, Jesus.”
- Dominus Flevit the site where “The Lord Wept”
Caesar’s Decree – c. 50 C.E.
“A stone slab found in Nazareth, of height 0.61m is inscribed (in Greek) with a decree demanding the death penalty for anyone who broke the seals on a tomb or stole a dead body.” (Attributed date c. 50 C.E.)
- Summarized extract – IVP Three Volume Bible Dictionary (under section for Nazareth)
“It is my pleasure that graves and tombs remain undisturbed in perpetuity for those who have made them for the cult of their ancestors, or children, or members of their house. If, however, any man lay information that another has either demolished them, or has in any other way extracted the buried, or has maliciously transferred them to other places in order to wrong them, or has displaced the sealing or other stones, against such a one I order that a trial be instituted, as in respect of the gods, so in regard to the cult of mortals. For it shall be much more obligatory to honour the buried. Let it be absolutely forbidden for anyone to disturb them. In the case of contravention I desire that the offender be sentenced to capital punishment on charge of violation of sepulture.”
- Ordinance of Caesar
“The Emperor threatens the death penalty for interference with, or the removal of bodies from, tombs, may belong to any date from Augustus to Claudius.”
- Summarized extract – Peakes Commentary of the Bible
(Various sections found from index under Claudius’ expulsion of Jews from Rome and Tombs, sanctity of.)The original owner of the stone left only a short note about its origins when he donated it to the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris – “Marble slab sent from Nazareth in 1878.”
“Nazareth may be the place, but the finder could have carried it there from somewhere else, a few days’ donkey journey away, wanting to sell it to Christian pilgrims. Since the nature of the connection with Nazareth is uncertain, no argument linking the stone with the early Christians can rely on its. Unless the stone was set up on Judaea and moved northwards later, Pontius Pilate cannot have had it made, because Galilee was in the kingdom of Herod Antipas, where Pilate had no power. Indeed, even a decree of Caesar would hardly be displayed in Galilee until after Antipas’ reign ended in AD 44. That means it is possible that Claudius made the decree.”
- Alan Millard, Discoveries From the Time of Jesus“Why would a Caesar have any cause to take such a specific interest in this part of the Empire and in a matter which, apparently, not an issue of Roman state? Surely this would seem to be better resolved by local Government and not one to demand the intervention of the Emperor. However, if the implications of any such alleged activity had affected Rome that would make it more understandable.”
- Mark Carlin
It would be serve us well to remind ourselves that this is not a first person account – although I would still say that those first person accounts became Christian accounts – of the life of Christ. The decree from the Emperor may be conjecture, but it shows that the issue of grave robbing had become raised to such a level of importance that the Emperor of Rome had to actually issue a decree. This could very well be in response to the celebration of the Resurrection of Christ. Afterall, what better way to stop such a reckus than to declare it a crime to remove the body of the deceased and to ban the admission of the crime?
Let’s step out a little further. If those tombs are indeed from the 1st century, then it shows that those in Jerusalem understood Christ as divine, urging the theory that the earliest Christology was the highest.
Dec 16 2008
Proofs of Jesus Christ outside the New Testament – Classical Writers
Most of this information, is widely known and perhaps widely disputed as well. It can be found in Robert E. Van Voorst’s book Jesus Outside the New Testament. This is in response to a discussion that is ongoing here because of this post. I decided to post instead of comment. As you can see, it is just too much to put into a comment. I believe that any discussion that has been maintained at the level which ours has is beneficial, if no one else, to me. There is enough here to dismiss the idea, I believe, that Christianity is a religion based on a myth or cultic character from 1st century Palestine. In the days that predated the mass media and communication, to see a movement powerful enough to be expelled from Rome in 49, having started only 16 years earlier, has to be contributed to something more than a myth or misunderstanding of ‘good teacher’. The Christian religion spread from Palestine to Rome in 16 short years and was large enough to be considered of refutation and mockery.
Continue reading “Proofs of Jesus Christ outside the New Testament – Classical Writers”
Oct 16 2008
Tomb of the general who inspired 'Gladiator'
I know that this isn’t exactly religious news, but, how cool is this….
via Found: Tomb of the general who inspired ‘Gladiator’ – Europe, World – The Independent
Continue reading “Tomb of the general who inspired 'Gladiator'”
Oct 10 2008
Byzantium: the chosen ones from a visceral civilisation
via Byzantium: the chosen ones from a visceral civilisation – Times Online
In Rimini there is a small square – the Piazza Ferrari. Here you can buy ice-creams, mooch under the linden trees, and peer down at 1,400-year-old Byzantine corpses. Excavations have just finished at the Surgeon’s House, discovered in 1989 when the piazza was being reland-scaped. Laid out on Gothic mosaics are the skeletons of a Christian community. The graves have been roughly gouged out of the tesserae, the bones are protected by crude roofing tiles. The Christians died during the turf wars of the 6th and 7th centuries – when the Goths and Byzantium both laid claim to Italian lands.
Rimini, just 40km (25 miles) along the coast from Ravenna (famous for its wonderful Byzantine decoration in the Church of San Vitale) reminds us that Byzantium – the subject of a major exhibition opening at the Royal Academy later this month – is not just about icons, gold mosaics and pretty churches – it represents a visceral civilisation, a world power whose tentacles stretched from Tripoli to St Petersburg, from North Africa to Trebizond. Byzantine control spanned a millennium. Many of our geopolitical boundaries, in the Balkans, the Middle East, Russia and Europe, were laid by Byzantine hands. Far from being an esoteric moment in art history, Byzantium is the story of us.
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