Category Archives: History

The ruins of Babylon are still there …

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… although damaged by Saddam Hussein’s reconstructions and by an American-build helicopter pad. The BBC has a report from the site, with a brief video and pictures. It seems there is plenty of the ancient city still in place, mostly unexcavated. Nebuchadnezzar’s palace can be seen alongside Saddam’s. There is work there for generations of archaeologists in uncovering a city which was already ancient in the time of the biblical Nebuchadnezzar.

See also this audio slideshow which is a trailer for an exhibition ‘Babylon: Myth and Reality’ at the British Museum in London, from now until March 2009. I’m not sure how many of the original tiles of the Ishtar Gate, now rebuilt by Saddam, are in London. But when I saw some of them in their regular museum home in Istanbul, I was stunned by their beauty and magnificence.

Right through the Bible Babylon (or Babel) is a symbol of evil, megalomania, and resistance to God. Saddam Hussein was perhaps consciously continuing this tradition. But in the New Testament Babylon is not just the physical city which was already in ruins. The lament over Babylon in Revelation 18 seems to be less for the city and more for the system of world trade which it symbolised. That system is now also in ruins, it seems – perhaps it will recover in part, but the time will surely come when God will put a final end to it.

How many tetrarchs inherited Herod's kingdom?

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A post by Bill Heroman on the obscure figure Lysanias, tetrarch of Abilene, known from Luke 3:1 and a very few ancient inscriptions, has turned up a bit of a mystery and misunderstanding. See also this post about Abilene.

It is very easy for someone with a little knowledge of Greek to deduce that the Greek word τετραάρχης tetraarchēs, traditionally transliterated “tetrarch”, means “ruler of a quarter”, that is, ruler of one of four subdivisions of a wider area. And indeed that is probably what it meant in classical Greek. But, as we shall see, this definition is rather misleading for the New Testament period.

Luke 3:1 mentions three tetrarchs (actually using the related verb for ruling as a tetrarch) ruling in 28 AD (as dated by Bill), Herod (otherwise known as Antipas) of Galilee, Philip of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias of Abilene. Luke also mentions that Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, the area which Bible readers will remember from Matthew 2:22 was ruled by Archelaus after the death of Herod the Great in 4 BC. It is well known from secular sources that Archelaus was deposed and replaced by a Roman governor in about 6 AD. It is also well known that Herod Antipas and Philip, also sons of Herod the Great, became rulers of parts of his kingdom on his death. The casual reader will easily conclude that Luke in 3:1 was listing the four successors of Herod the Great at that time, each ruling a quarter of what had been Herod’s kingdom. Indeed this seems to be the conclusion reached by the NIV Study Bible in its note on Matthew 14:1:

tetrarch. The ruler of the fourth part of a region. … At the death of Herod the Great the area [Palestine] was divided among four of his sons.

Wrong! – at least if the evidence Bill notes in a comment is correct, that Abilene had never been part of Herod’s kingdom. Actually the NIV Study Bible is inconsistent but apparently more accurate in its note on Luke 3:1:

At the death of Herod the Great (4 B.C.) his sons – Archelaus, Herod Antipas and Herod Philip – were given jurisdiction over his divided kingdom.

No mention here of a fourth son, and no suggestion that Lysanias was a successor of Herod the Great.

It seems that by the time of Jesus the term “tetrarch” had acquired a less specific meaning, perhaps “ruler of a subdivision” or simply “ruler of lesser status than a king”. It also seems that there were only three subdivisions of Herod the Great’s kingdom, and so only three tetrarchs within its boundaries, reduced to two when Archelaus was deposed. Lysanias was simply a low status ruler of a rather small neighbouring territory.

But I think the question must also arise of how Luke understood the situation. He may have understood “tetrarch” in its more classical sense. The form of Luke 3:1 suggests to me that he considered Lysanias to be a successor of Herod the Great like Antipas and Philip, and so one of the originally four tetrarchs. Or perhaps he took Abilene to be part of Palestine and so listed Lysanias as a ruler of one of four divisions of it. In fact Abilene lay a little to the north of the traditional boundaries of the Holy Land (and the borders of modern Israel), on the northern side of Mount Hermon. But then we shouldn’t insist on Luke being entirely accurate as a historian and geographer, although he has been proved to be much better at that than many liberal scholars used to think.

It seems to have been a popular misunderstanding that Herod the Great’s kingdom was divided into four. It is one which until today I shared with the author of the NIV Study Bible note on Matthew 14:1. Assuming that this really is an error, it is one which needs to be corrected with good publicity. So perhaps I can play my part in doing that.

A Missionary Elephant

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I found the following interesting paragraph in an article Myanmar:a hidden harvest by Tim Houghton, grandson of pioneer missionaries in the north of what was then Burma. I received this as publicity for the mission society Crosslinks, formerly BCMS. In fact I found the full article online.

In 1942 invasion by the Japanese meant that the missionaries had to escape from Burma by sea, air or, most remarkably, by foot across the northern ranges in what has become known as ‘The Muddy Exodus’. At the heart of this legendary trek was Maggie, the faithful BCMS elephant, who for years had kept communication open through the Hukawng valley in both monsoon and dry seasons. In her finest hour, Maggie helped both missionaries and soldiers through the Naga hills to safety in India.

It is interesting to see some of the different ways which have been used to spread the gospel, and in this case to save the lives of God’s servants.

The oldest known sin

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Phil Whittall reminds us that

we are stewards and caretakers of the earth. It’s the height of arrogance to think that a generation can destroy, consume the world and leave future generations to deal with the consequences.

Indeed! But a recent BBC article shows that human beings have been destroying their environment for at least 43,000 years, when our ancestors caused the extinction of many of the large animals of Tasmania. (Well, actually these early Tasmanians are probably the ancestors of no one alive today as ironically their distinct race has now become extinct, much more recently when we British allowed it so that we could use their island as a prison.) So the oldest known sin is not that of the proverbial “oldest profession”. It might be idolatry, but the earliest undisputed images of religious significance are somewhat later, from the Upper Palaeolithic. So it seems quite likely that the oldest human sin for which there is now any evidence is causing environmental change and the extinction of species.

These extinctions in Tasmania are by no means uncharacteristic. Rather they are among the earliest examples in what is known as the Quaternary Extinction Event, which has involved the loss of the vast majority of the large mammal genera in North and South America and Australia, as well as a significant number in Eurasia including the mammoth. Many reptiles and flightless birds have also died out. Such extinctions have continued into quite recent times, with the loss of birds such as the dodo.

The causes of these extinctions are controversial. But in very many cases there is a clear link in time to the arrival of the first humans. The new evidence from Tasmania confirms this link in time there also. It seems highly probable that in most if not all of these cases the species were hunted to extinction by humans.

Sadly this extinction event is continuing. Some of the surviving large land mammals are under threat from human activities, although now more from loss of habitat than from hunting. Meanwhile fish and marine mammals are now being hunted in unsustainable ways which put them in serious danger of extinction.

Does this have any theological significance? Can this historical evidence of the first sin be related to the biblical account of the first sin, Adam and Eve taking the apple, and the consequent Fall?

First of all, in accepting datings as old as this I have effectively rejected the young earth creationist position that no events happened more than 6,000 or perhaps 10,000 years ago. My position is to accept that the accounts given by scientists of ancient events are broadly accurate, although their explanations of these events may not be. (I use “event” here in a very broad sense of anything that has happened in the past.) I am more or less what is called a theistic evolutionist, but my account here is also compatible with ancient earth creationism. I don’t need to go into this in detail here.

On any explanation of the past there must have been a time when humans first became conscious and spiritually aware, whether this happened gradually through evolutionary processes (although I don’t think evolutionists have offered any convincing explanations of this one) or in some sudden way. If we accept that animals do not have the capacity of choosing to sin but humans do, there must have been a first man or woman to have this capacity, and there must have been a first man or woman, no earlier but possibly much later, who actually did choose to sin. In this sense there must actually have been an Adam or an Eve.

And the new evidence from the BBC suggests that that first sin must have taken place at least 43,000 years ago, as by that period humans were already showing selfishness and disobedience by hunting their prey to extinction – interestingly something which is very rare among animals, except for introduced species for which humans are so often responsible.

Sin is common to all humans, including aboriginal Australians and Tasmanians who were almost completely isolated from other human populations for up to 50,000 years before the late 17th century. This strongly suggests that this first sin predates that period of isolation. According to some scientists, the worldwide dispersal of modern humans followed a “great leap forward” to behavioural modernity which took place about 50,000 years ago, probably in their original homeland of Africa. Perhaps what scientists call a leap forward is much the same as what theologians call the Fall.

Who was St Stephen the Great?

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The story of how the SPCK bookshops were taken over by St Stephen the Great Charitable Trust, recently in the news, prompts me to this purely historical study of who this St Stephen the Great might be. I remembered only one thing, that he is not the biblical Stephen, the first Christian martyr. I thought I had remembered another fact, that he was a Serb like Radovan Karadzic, but it turns out that my memory was faulty.

It was hard to find good information about this St Stephen. I did manage to find the following transcription of Mark Brewer’s words from a video, but only courtesy of a Google cache as this is from one of the posts by Dave Walker whose deletion Mark Brewer seems to have demanded.

I’m Mark Brewer, Chairman of the Saint Stephen the Great charitable trust. Who was Saint Stephen the great? He was a man who lived in the fifteenth century who fought some forty seven battles against the Muslim Turks who were invading Eastern Europe at that time. During his lifetime, after every battle he commemorated a church, built a new church to the glory of God throughout eastern Romania. He restored churches that had been destroyed by the Ottoman Turks. He is therefore a very fitting patron saint for this trust. We want to aspire to do the very same thing that Saint Stephen did, we want to rescue restore and re-energise the churches of this great country to the glory of God and to the salvation of the people.

I also found with some difficulty a Wikipedia article about St Stephen the Great, who in fact seems to have been a 15th century ruler of Moldavia (Moldova). He does indeed seem to have been a great defender of the cause of state-controlled Christianity in eastern Romania. So it is not surprising that he was canonised by the Romanian Orthodox Church, and is even now considered in Romania to be the greatest Romanian of all time.

But there is another side to this man at least in his associates. The details are sketchy, but Stephen seems to have been a close relative of Vlad the Impaler, otherwise known as Dracula, Stephen’s contemporary as ruler of Wallachia (southern Romania). The name “Dracula” comes from the Order of the Dragon (dracul, a stange symbol for a supposedly Christian order) into which he had been initiated as a child. The two rulers were close associates. As young man Stephen fled to Vlad’s court for protection from his enemies; he sent troops to help Vlad regain his throne; and later he married Vlad’s niece. Vlad also defended Romania from Turkish invaders, and on one occasion managed to impale 20,000 Turkish prisoners. He probably avoided being canonised by the Orthodox by later converting to Catholicism.

Stephen doesn’t seem to have been the same kind of cruel character as Vlad. But, despite the claim that “He was victorious in 34 of his 36 battles”, he ended up losing the war and having to cede sovereignty over his lands to the Muslim invaders:

Finally on 20 August 1503 he concluded a treaty with Sultan Beyazid II that preserved Moldavia’s self rule, at the cost of an annual tribute to the Turks. From the 16th century on, the Principality of Moldavia would spend three hundred years as an Ottoman vassal.

Is this man a fitting patron saint for today? I would not presume to comment.

Miracles do happen!

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Nick Norelli has been prolific for the last few days, including blogging about accounts of miracles in the early church, 3rd to 5th century AD. In this post he explains the series and links to each post in it. If he had wanted he could have added examples from succeeding centuries right through church history to the present day.

Many of these accounts focus on healing. So those who allege that Todd Bentley is doing something new by focusing on healing have simply not read their church history. Todd’s style may be new, and so is the worldwide publicity for his ministry, but the content of what he is doing is not new. Ever since Origen wrote his reply to the sceptical Celsus in the 3rd century, as quoted in Nick’s first post, indeed ever since Jesus and the apostles (and that is not to mention anything in the Old Testament), Christians have performed miracles, especially healings, and used them to convince unbelievers of the truth of the gospel. This is what Todd is still doing, in a world full of people who, even if they hold to the form of good Christian religion, mostly deny that it has any power (2 Timothy 3:5). But the true Christian faith, the true message of the kingdom of God, is not just a matter of words, it has power (1 Corinthians 4:20) to heal and perform other miracles, and above all to change lives, to bring people from sin and darkness into the God’s holiness and light. The critics may not like it because it is a threat to their powerless religion, but this is the message which Todd is proclaiming.

Who has the right to test interpretations of Scripture?

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James Spinti has drawn my attention to what is called in German the Sitzerrecht and in Latin the lex sedentium. In the title of Alan Knox’s post which James quotes this is translated into English as “the rights of the one seated”, but in James’ post title it aptly becomes “The What?”

The point however is a simple one. The idea comes from 1 Corinthians 14:29-31, in which Paul effectively directs that in a church meeting someone who is sitting down, if they have a prophetic revelation, can stop the person who is standing and speaking and take over from them. By the time of the Reformation this was certainly not taken as a licence to interrupt a preacher, but it was understood by the early Reformers as, in Alan’s words,

a principle that teaches that all believers have the ability to understand Scripture and to weigh what another says concerning Scripture, even if that “other” is a teacher or preacher.

However, in Alan’s words as quoted by James,

Sometime during the 1500’s the magisterial reformers abandoned the idea of Sitzerrecht – that all believers have the right and duty to test teachers and determine the meaning of Scripture together – and embraced the principle that only a “technically qualified theological expert” could properly interpret Scripture for a gathered group of believers.

Here “the magisterial reformers” is a deliberate contrast with the early Anabaptists, who in general maintained “the idea of Sitzerrecht“.

Jim West was spurred to respond by James’ suggestion that Zwingli was wrong to abandon this principle. Perhaps Jim can clarify whether Zwingli abandoned it in response to persistent questioning by his Anabaptist opponents, replacing it by an appeal to his own authority. (No, Jim, I won’t say that he persecuted the Anabaptists, as doubtless you know better on this point than Wikipedia and the Catholic Encyclopedia.) Jim writes:

The ’spiritualists’ [i.e. the Anabaptists] were in need of refutation so Zwingli and the other Reformers rightly pointed out that interpretation of Scripture REQUIRED training- and based it on the well known verse which states: ‘Study to show yourself approved…’ That one verse broke the back of the ‘enthusiasts’ then, and I must say, does now too. Individual ‘interpretation’ without valid expertise leads to nothing but the most ridiculous heresy, such as we find in the likes of Todd Bentley …

The fallacy here is the assumption that Zwingli and the other “magisterial” Reformers had training which the Anabaptists lacked. This is probably not true of early Anabaptist leaders like Conrad Grebel, who had six years of university education followed by several years of private study with Zwingli, George Blaurock who studied at the University of Leipzig, and Felix Manz who was also an educated man. Zwingli, older than these three, was also educated, but nevertheless it is written of him that

Like many of his contemporaries, Zwingli went to work for the Church having studied little theology.

So, when Zwingli fell out with Grebel and Manz, his position became the official policy in Zurich surely not because of any greater theological education, but because of his seniority and his official position as pastor of the Grossmünster, and perhaps because his views were more acceptable to the political authorities in Zurich. In other words, he prevailed because of ecclesiastical and political power, not because of academic theological arguments. And the political authorities enforced Zwingli’s victory by drowning Manz and expelling the other Anabaptists.

So how do we apply this principle today, to cases like that of Todd Bentley who Jim brings into this? As I do support “the rights of the one seated”, I accept that any believer has the right to express their opinion about Todd and to judge his teachings and practices according to Scripture. But I do also see some limits to this, as I previously wrote about here. First, if it actually comes to making accusations of wrongdoing, Paul lays down the principle

Do not entertain an accusation against an elder unless it is brought by two or three witnesses.

1 Timothy 5:19 (TNIV)

So proper evidence is needed to support any accusation. Paul also gives this instruction:

Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.

Ephesians 4:29 (TNIV)

These principles of course apply equally to those with theological education and to those without it, and should perhaps rule out condemnations based on ignorance like this one.

Now I accept the importance of a properly nuanced theological study and discussion of the teachings and practices of a new Christian movement like Todd’s. The only one I have seen of this particular movement is the one by Dr Gary Greig which I discussed yesterday, which James Spinti has endorsed. So, Jim West, should I accept this at face value because it was written by someone with a PhD in theology? Somehow I don’t think you would say that I should. Well, I will give Jim the benefit of the doubt by assuming that his condemnation of “Lakeland-ianity” was based not on prejudice and third hand reports as it might appear but on his own proper theological study which he has chosen not to publish. Now I, as a mere MA in theology, am no doubt quite unqualified to evaluate the studies which the learned Dr West and Dr Greig have produced. But their conclusions are apparently diametrically opposite: one concludes

I wholeheartedly encourage you to support what God is obviously doing through the Lakeland outpouring.

and the other

Now it’s up to the adherents of Lakeland-ism to abandon the heresy and return to the truth.

They can’t both be right. So it is clear that possession of a doctorate in theology is no guarantee of knowing the truth in such matters.

So how do I decide which position to follow? I could of course look to those in ecclesiastical authority over me – in my case a vicar who has been to Lakeland and supports it with some reservations, as summarised by his friend Dave Faulkner. And indeed I do greatly respect my vicar’s views and would not go against them in public. But I don’t follow his authority uncritically, and reserve the option to confront him privately if I ever think he goes seriously wrong, and in an extreme case to leave his congregation.

For when it comes down to it I believe that this is an issue between me and God. As I wrote in a comment on Jim’s blog,

it is not the human brain but the divine Holy Spirit who leads us into all truth.

Jim is of course right that this does not solve the problem in any objective way, for

the One Spirit can’t lead to Two Truths. So being ‘led by the spirit’ isn’t determinative either, since anyone can make that claim.

Indeed. In the end I can only say that subjectively, as a matter between myself and God if I have allowed him to guide me, I believe that I can be sure of my own position. I cannot prove it to others, I can only leave it in their hands as a matter between them and God.

And on this particular issue I have to say that I am sure that, in general terms if not necessarily in every detail, Dr West is wrong and Dr Greig is right.

Provinces, dioceses and parishes: relics of mediaeval Christendom which must go

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Diocletian (reigned 284-305) was the last major non-Christian Roman emperor and the last great persecutor of the church in ancient times. Ironically, it was also him who divided up the Roman Empire into new administrative units called “dioceses“. As the Empire became Christianised, and then its administrative structures crumbled under the pressure of barbarian invasions, the bishops of the Catholic church became the only effective local authorities, and gradually dioceses became the areas within which a bishop had authority over all the churches. These dioceses became subdivided into parishes, which were generally the geographical areas associated with an individual church building and priest. Although under late Roman administration a province was a subdivision of a diocese, in the mediaeval western church the term “province” came into use for a higher level unit than a diocese, led by a metropolitan or archbishop.

This geographical division of the church into a hierarchy of different territorial units, although originating in late antiquity, fitted well with the feudal system of mediaeval Europe. Continue reading →

10-20-30

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Doug has tagged me with a new meme 10-20-30. I have been asked remember what you were doing 10, 20 and 30 years ago. So here goes:

1997: For most of the year I was home on furlough from my Bible translation work. By the end of October I was back in the capital city where I was based and getting on with checking the Old Testament translation.

1987: I started my second year of studies at London Bible College, now London School of Theology, and was enjoying getting to grips with biblical languages and with theological issues – but also, in retrospect, becoming less personally in tune with God.

1977: I graduated in physics from the University of Cambridge, and stayed on for a one year course in theoretical physics (in other places it would probably count as an MA course). At the time I intended to work on a PhD in this area, but by the next summer I had changed my mind, and so took the job which brought me to my current home in Chelmsford.

In response I will tag Lingamish, Eddie Arthur and Tim Chesterton.

My ancestral home

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This week I spent a few days visiting friends in Sheffield, and included a day out in the beautiful Peak District, in perfect autumn weather. See my photos in this Facebook album. During this day I paid a brief visit this week to my ancestral home. No, not the one in this first picture, which is Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, although I greatly enjoyed walking around its grounds. But the house I have in mind dates from the same period. The first house at Chatsworth was built in 1552, but the current house dates from around 1700.

The house I really want to talk about here belonged to and was probably built by my ancestor Arnold Kyrke, and an inscription “AK 1559” gives its approximate date. Continue reading →