Saint Peter still seems enigmatic.  There is a great deal in his career that appears evanescent and obscure, and it was this that tempted me to the subject.  I can only hope that I have helped to clean some of the mysteries up, or at least to present them in the terms that they deserve.

Let me say that I enjoyed the historical parts of the book, but Peter still seems enigmatic to me.  At times, Grant talked more of Jesus and Paul than Peter.  While these two people are important to discuss when talking about Peter, it just seems to me that I still don’t really understand Peter.  Bishop Rick previously made the claim that Paul founded Christianity.  Michael Grant seems to dispute that notion quite clearly.  From the Epilogue, page 176, Grant says

Peter was significant for two reasons, both of which I have discussed in some detail, and both of which remain firmly fixed in the historical picture.  In the first place Jesus chose him as his principal helper; the man who was assigned that remarkable honour and responsibility must have been very far from negligible.  Second, after the appalling event of Jesus’ Crucifixion, it was Peter who collected his disheartened followers together and formed them into a Christian community.  This was a tremendously difficult task, and the person who was able to do it must have exercised an extraordinary influence.  Moreover, unless Peter had done this, Jesus’s endeavors would never have survived.  Paul could not have achieved this without Peter’s work immediately after the Crucifixion; and so, without Peter, there would have been no Christian Church either in the subsequent centuries to today.

I’ve heard a few scholars make the case that James, Jesus brother was the leader of the early Christian church rather than Peter, but I didn’t understand the reasoning behind that.  Grant seems to believe that Peter got demoted following his well-known conflict with Paul regarding whether Gentiles would be circumcised.  Grant says that James came out of Peter and Paul’s dispute the winner.

Before I get into this triangle between Peter, Paul, and James, let me first discuss Grant’s point of view.  Grant died in 2004.  During his life, he was a professor of Humanity at Edinburgh University, and was vice-chancellor at Queen’s University in Belfast and the University of Khartoum.  As a historian, he “must” discount all miracles in the Bible.  On pages 4-5 he discusses miracles as says that,

most students of history, therefore, are not able to take these miraculous happenings into consideration.  They can believe in such stories, if they wish, but they do so as a matter of faith and not as historians.  Or they can disbelieve them, if they prefer.  In either case, it is their duty to attempt to find out what happened, within the realms of historical fact and possibility.  (italics in original)

…

Biographers of Jesus have sometimes excised this miraculous material from their narrative, in order to make it sound more credible to modern ears.  But any such attempts conflict strongly with the ancient accounts that have come down to us.  In the four Gospels, no fewer than 232 miracles are reported.  Take Mark, for example.  Out of that Gospel’s 661 verses, as many as 209 deal with miraculous doings.  And Matthew and Luke carry the same tendency still further.  Matthew, in particular, emphasizes the theme to an extraordinary extent.  ’It is hard to find a non-maraculous kernel of the Gospel.’⁴ And that is why Peter, too, was credited with miracles after Jesus’s death.  He was believed to have been following his great predecessor’s tradition.

So, as a believer and not a historian, it took me a bit of getting used to completely discounting all these miracles.  Chapter 10 is titled “The Clash with Paul.”  Grant talked about problems in chronology, and questions if an Apostolic Council in Jerusalem even occurred.  In Paul’s letter to the Galations, Paul dates this visit to 3 years after his conversion, so some scholars date the event to 35-37 AD (depending on the date of Jesus’ death.)  However, Acts 15 seems to place the event in 48 AD at Passover.  Grant says that “Acts 15 paints a picture of single-minded unanimity (homothumadon)³ — an idealized and inaccurate picture as most now believe.  Admittedly there was quite a long debate.^4″ From page 132,

But what actually happened at the Apostolic Council?  We shall assume for a moment that there was one, ignoring, however, the unsatisfactory nature of such a name, which is likely to produce anachronistic ideas.¹⁰ The Council has been the subject of a host of varying modern interpretations.  Probably the predominant view, for which there is a lot to be said–and it leaves open, perhaps uncomfortably open, the question of whether the council actually took place–is that Acts created the story from two fundamental traditions or memories which had been handed down to its writer.  The first tradition was that at Jerusalem the Christian leadership, including Paul, Peter, and James the brother of Jesus, came to an agreement that, although Pharisee missionaries to the Gentiles would argue to the contrary, Gentiles could be accepted into the ranks of Christians without having been circumcised.  This was a tradition that seems to be confirmed by Paul.  The second tradition was that nevertheless, in certain communities where Jewish and Gentile Christians were mixed, Gentiles were obliged, in order to maintain this association, to fall with certain other Jewish regulations regarding impurity, and rules relating to food.

As to circumcision, even Acts, determined though its writer is to record harmony, admits that there had been ‘fierce dissension’ on the subject,¹¹ which it probably does not differentiate sufficiently from the food problems.  The book does record what looks like a compromise between Paul and Barnabus, on the one hand, who were against imposing Jewish restrictions on Gentile converts, and Christians such as James who espoused orthodox Jewish practices.  In due course this decision was incorporated, we are told, in what is known as the Apostolic Decree, issued allegedly to ‘our brothers of Gentile origin’ in Antioch, the rest of Syria, and Cilicia.¹²

…page 134

Others try to get away from the problem by suggesting that Acts 15 is a conflation of two Jerusalem meetings.  The first of these peacefully aligned Peter with Paul, whose insistence on the Gentiles’ freedom from circumcision prevailed, whereas the second confirmed the Four Regulations (which may be fictitious) in the absence of Paul.  According to this second hypothesis, Paul never enforced the Decree, either because he did not know about it or because the churches in the other provinces were, or could be assumed as being, outside the area to which the Decree was meant to apply.  That is possible.  But in any case, even if the Apostolic Council did take place, which is more than doubtful, its decisions failed to have any effect, as will shortly become clear.

Grant discusses further details on whether the meeting may have occurred (and concludes it either didn’t occur, or was a small, private meeting between Peter, Paul, and James).  He then notes something of a schism.  From pages 136-7,

Two separate Christian missionary areas were now in existence (although Acts does not seem willing to accept the division), one for Jews and one for Christians.  The former was in the hands of Peter, which again casts doubt on his alleged activity among the Gentiles.  But this division, and the agreement to maintain it, was not likely to be workable in practice because of the inevitable clash of personalities, and, in addition because in most places the population was mixed, consisting of both Jews and of Gentiles, so that any clear-cut division into two  missionary areas was unattainable.

Furthermore, on page 140, Grant says that “there were at least two rival groups, or possibly four”.²⁹ He references Paul’s letter,

I have been told, my brothers, by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you.  What I mean is this: each of you is saying, “I am Paul’s man,’ or “I am for Apollos’; ‘I follow Cephas [Peter],’ or ‘I am Christ’s.’

Surely Christ has not been divided among you!

Grant discusses Paul chastising Peter in Antioch in Galations, attributing the event to 49 AD.  On page 138,

It is manifest that the period immediately after the Crucifixion of Jesus did not witness the harmony among his followers in which Acts has tried to induce us to believe, but was instead characterized by sharp rivalry between two mutually hostile groups.  One of the groups was that of James the brother of Jesus and his fellow-Jews born in Palestine, who believed in Jesus but were also convinced that this belief entailed all the maintenance of traditional Jewish institutions such as circumcision.  The other group was led by Paul, and consisted of men whose education had been partly Greek and who were of Gentile origin.  They, too, believed in Jesus, and although they may well have respected confirmity with many aspects of Jewish Law, they were certain this this faith in him, with all its power and intensity, completely superseded some of the other old regulations of Judaism.

There us little doubt about what happened.  James, leader of the faction which believed that Gentile Christians must obey Jewish customs, had not, after all, been prepared to abide by the Jerusalem agreement–if there was one–and had sent men, or a man, to persuade or compel Peter to cease from having meals with Gentile Christians.  Peter might have felt relatively liberal about this before–although, as we have seen, his actual conversion of Gentiles is doubtful–but now he gave in to James because, Paul said, he was ‘afraid’.  This is perhaps an unduly harsh condemnation of the dilemma in which Peter found himself, since what he was really trying to do was to mediate between two extreme positions.  And so he paid the penalty which flexible, diplomatic, careful, moderate mediators, compromisers and bridge-men pay.  He was said to be frightened (perhaps for the future of his own mission, but not, surely, of freedom fighters, as has been suggested.)²⁵ Can he be accused of wavering?  Yes, he certainly abandoned a position he believed in, but no doubt because he hoped to bridge the gap which had widened between James and Paul.

And one thing is clear.  First we had heard of Peter as the Christian leader.  Then we heard of a joint leadership of Peter, James, and John.  Now we learn that Peter has bowed to the wished of James.  The man who will henceforward take the lead among Jewish Christians of Jerusalem is not Peter; it is James.  The leadership of Christianity in its central Palestinian city has passed back to the family of Jesus himself, with whom it will remain for a  good many years.  That is another penalty that mediators and compromisers pay.  They do not manage to retain leadership.

There are several James’s mentioned in the New Testament, and James “the brother of Jesus” is not one of the original 12 Apostles.  There is James the Just, James the Great, and James the Less.  Grant describes these 3 James’s on page 150.

Although inadequately described in the New Testament, and accorded especially little justice in Acts, James is of importance in this story, because it was he who supplanted Peter as the leader of the Christians after the Crucifixion of Jesus.

The James (Jacob) to whom reference is made, neither the son of Zebedee (James ‘the Great’, executed by King Agrippa I) nor the son of Alphaeus (James ‘the Less’), was ‘the Lord’s brother’ according to Paul in his Letter to the Galatians.¹² The Gospels record brothers of Jesus, including James, and the contexts seem to show that these writers have a blood relationship between Jesus and his brothers in mind.  Tertullian (c.AD 160-240) and Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-211/216), too, confirm that this was what was believed in the first two centuries AD.  Origen (c. 184/6-254/5) and others, however, bearing in mind that ‘brother’ (adelphos) can cover a wider range of meanings, suggested that James was a stepbrother of Jesus: in other words, that Joseph had been married to another wife before he was married to Mary.  A rival theory, sponsored by Jerome (c. 348-420), held that Jesus and James were really cousins.¹⁴ These views, contradicting the simple brotherly relationship, came into being because it was increasingly stressed, from the second century onwards, that Mary, the wife of Joseph, was not only a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus, but remained a virgin all her life.

James, it appears, was not very keen on the preaching of Jesus, and may indeed have been positively opposed to it, as long as Jesus was alive.¹⁵ After the Crucifixion, however, he became converted.  This according to Paul, was because he was vouchsafed an Appearance of the risen Christ.¹⁶ Probably this Appearance was needed, and invented, by the tradition, because James’s kinship with Jesus (accompanied, as it had been, but a measure of scepticism) was not help to be sufficient to justify the prominent position which James now came to occupy.

For within a short time after Paul’s conversion James was a significant leader in the Christian Church, and he became even more important after Agrippa I had the apostle James ‘the Great’ (the son of Zebedee) executed in AD 44 and Peter fled from Jerusalem.  It was then that James ‘the brother of Jesus’ came to power in Peter’s place.  He had not been one of the original Twelve, but Paul seems to have regarded him as an apostle all the same.¹⁷

Although Acts does not, on the whole, do justice to James, the book does make him the chief spokesman for the Jerusalem church at the probably non-existent Apostolic Council, in which he was alleged to have intervened in favour of a measure of Jewish orthodoxy, indicating that Gentile converts should comply with the Four Regulations.¹⁸

…

Later tradition maintained that James was called ‘the Just’ (Zaddik, like the Qumran Teacher of Righteousness), and was noted for his pious fulfillment of Jewish Law.  He may have possessed priestly privileges, and it was perhaps because of his influence that he Pharisee Gamaliel urged leniency to Peter and the Christians.¹⁹

Grant says there are many mysteries surrounding James.  From page 153,

why are we given so little information about him?  Why has he been pushed into the position of a shadowy, background figure?²¹ The answer seems to be this.  Whether he was Jesus brother or not, James had known him personally, and had been close to him, in a way with which Paul could not hope to compete.  This meant that James was nearer to the source of the faith than Paul could ever expect to be.  Moreover, James’s aims and interests were by no means those of Paul.  On occasion, indeed, they held exactly opposite views.

For Paul, then, James must have been a continual source of disapproval and irritation.  And with the subsequent triumph of Pauline Christianity, his significance, even if it could not be expunged from the record completely, was at any rate retroactively lessened.  This made James an ambiguous figure, about whom Acts, in consequence, is curiously reticent.  In fact, however, James had been someone who could even overrule Peter.  Some have gone further still and have asserted that, despite the popular position that Peter was the first head of the Church, the neglected James had really been its first leader.  This seems to go too far.  Peter was the first leader of the Christians after Jesus’s death.  But the fact that he was later superseded by James is indicative of the significant setback his career had suffered.

So, what do you think about Peter, Paul, and James as “the” early leader of Christianity?

The discovery of the relationship by Emma probably dates to the summer or fall of 1835.  Bradley recounted several people who have tried to pin down the date, and noted problems with each date.  Some authors have discussed an “embarrassing” incident of polygamy in August 1835.   Joseph left for Pontiac, Michigan possibly to avoid embarrassment for his role.  On Oct 14, 1835, Joseph describes “dealing with household issues”, possibly a reference to evict Fanny.  However, Mark Ashurst-Mcgee suggests this incident refers not to Fanny, but a problem with employees at the printing office.

Fanny left Kirtland in August or Sept 1836, so the incident must have occurred prior to that.  Bradley notes that dissenters condemned Joseph on July 24, and Joseph left for Salem, Massachusetts for a treasure trip the next day on July 25.  Bradley believes Joseph sent Fanny to Missouri at the same time.  William McLellin gave his famous quote about having “no confidence” in church leadership around this time as well.  Fanny soon married non-member Solomon Custer after just a 6 week courtship.  Bradley believes it may have been a cover of legitimacy if Fanny was indeed pregnant.

Following Bridget Jack Meyer’s wonderful presentation on Women priesthood holders in early Christianity earlier in the week, I thought Joshua Gillon’s presentation called “Mormon Women Had the Priesthood in 1843: Examining the Claims” might be interesting.  I was greatly disappointed.  Josh is a PhD candidate of philosophy at Princeton, having completed a BA at BYU.  His talk was nothing more than a rant against the church.  He mis-characterized Michael Quinn’s discussion of women and the priesthood.  He employed tedious grammar exercises to make his points, and finished off with an F-bomb to end his presentation.  It was definitely the worst presentation I have ever heard at Sunstone, though there was another terrible one later in the day.

I wasn’t very excited to go the the panel called “Glenn Beck: Likely Mormon or Unlikely Mormon”, but there wasn’t anything else that sounded interesting at that time.  As I reviewed the list of panelists, I was looking forward to hearing Joanna Brooks of Mormon Matters, and David King Landrith of Mormon Mentality.  (I had met him earlier in the week.) Kathryn Hemingway, Eric Samuelson, and Robert Rees weren’t nearly so interesting as Joanna and David, though they all made good points.  Rees was the moderator and not a fan of Beck.  Landrith and Hemingway were supporters of Beck, while Brooks and Samuelson were not.

I really enjoyed Landrith’s presentation.  Landrith showed that Beck’s rhetoric is very similar to political discourse over the past 200 years.  Early founding fathers often compared each other to monarchists, and spoke about each other more harshly than Beck does of his opponents.  I thought it was an interesting presentation.  Brooks really wasn’t that antagonistic toward Beck.  She basically said we should ignore Beck because his ratings are going down and he knows it.  There is no need to feed into the frenzy–Beck will go away on his own.

Following lunch, I attended a fantastic presentation by Apostle Susan Skoor of the Community of Christ.  She discussed her personal faith journey, showing how she has moved among Fowler’s stages of faith.  Her talk was titled “Faith in the Midst of the Difficulties of Life.”  Baptized at age 8 into the RLDS church, she discussed losing her testimony in her 30s, nearly falling into atheism.  Receiving a blessing, and asked “Do you want to believe?”, as Alma says, she let this desire work in her.  She discussed her new found faith as a stage 5 person, and said she knew she was too selfish to reach stage 6.  As I listened to her story, I marveled at how open she was about her life’s journey.  I don’t think an LDS apostle would admit to losing faith as she did, and I don’t think an LDS apostle would discuss spirituality in such as “secular” way as she discussed Fowlers Faith Stage theory.  I was truly moved.

Clair Barrus discussed “Oliver Cowdery’s Rod of Nature.”  It was a bit too technical for me, but I know others enjoyed it.  Finally, I listened to a panel discuss “Men and the Priesthood: Taking on the Feminine.”  Tom Kimball discussed being an unorthodox Mormon.  His previous bishop did not want to let him baptize or ordain his children.  As the bishop got to know Tom better, he decided to allow it.  Tom has previously discussed his story on Mormon Stories.  Tom’s new bishop has taken a more hard line approach, and Tom’s boys have not progressed in the priesthood.  Tom compared his situation to the idea that women can’t ordain daughters in the LDS church as well.

Robin Linkart, President of the 6th Quorum of Seventy for the Community of Christ spoke next.  She gave an excellent presentation and discussed the new revelation in 1984 allowing women to hold the priesthood.  Many in the RLDS church broke off (they lost nearly 1/4 of their membership.)  She discussed the challenges the RLDS church went through, and her personal journey in the priesthood.  It was excellent.

Holly Welker spoke next.  She gave a rant that the priesthood should be abolished in the LDS church.  During Tom’s, Lisa’s, and the Q&A session, she made faces of disbelief and disagreement.  Honestly I believe a 5th grader would have better behavior than she exhibited.  She was incredibly rude and unprofessional.  Her behavior was embarrassing.

Lisa Butterworth finished up the panel.  She started the blog at FeministMormonHousewives.  Being a feminist and an unorthodox Mormon, she was asked to speak in support of the idea of an all-male priesthood.  She did the best she could, but it was evident that she didn’t fully support the topic she was asked to address.

Overall, I enjoyed most of the sessions.  If you missed my first post on Sunstone, click here.  I’m not sure why I attended so many feminist presentations, but I guess they sounded the most interesting.  So what is your take on women and the priesthood?  Do you see it happening in the LDS church in the next 20-50 years?  Would you support or oppose such a move if the prophet received a revelation allowing women to hold the priesthood?

Apostle Paul Savage of the Church of Christ with Elijah Message

Sunstone has been going on since Wednesday here in Salt Lake City.  It ends tomorrow, and I thought I would give a few words about the conference.  I have been blogging at Mormon Matters for about a year and a half, and have never met any other bloggers here….until this week!  It has been nice to nice BiV and Stephen Marsh.  I hope to meet others tomorrow.  It was also nice to meet with a few apostles.

I met Paul Savage at the MHA convention in May.  Today at Sunstone he gave a presentation titled “Why Elijah (or John the Baptist) must come before Christ’s Return.  I wasn’t able to attend his presentation, but spoke with him for a few minutes.  I learned he is one of 6 apostles for his church, based in Independence, Missouri.  Their church believes apostles are the highest office in the church, and they believe that many people can be prophets.  He noted that the Ephesians 4:11 lists apostles before prophets, so apostles should be the top of the hierarchy.

And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;

It was fun talking to him.  I’ve been reading Scattering of the Saints by John Hamer and Newell Bringhurst, and plan to talk more about Paul’s church in the future.  I also enjoyed meeting with Apostle Susan Skoor of the Community of Christ, formerly known as the RLDS church.  (I already have a photo of her on my previous post–click here.)  She is always extremely friendly, and a treat to meet.

CoC President Robin Linkart of the 6th Quorum of Seventy

She introduced me to Robin Linkart, the President of the 6th Quorum of Seventy.  She lives in Colorado, and is in charge of missionary efforts in the western United States from the Canadian border to Mexico.  (Sorry the photos are out of focus–I guess my $40 camera is only worth what I paid for it.)

Mark Scherer, is the historian for the Community of Christ.  He gave an interesting presentation on the latest revelation to be canonized in the Community of Christ, section 164 of the Doctrine and Covenants.  He said the revelation covers 4 main topics:  (1) open communion, (2) open baptism (don’t have to be rebaptized to join the RLDS church anymore), (3) moral and ethical behavior (allows countries to decide if they want to allow same sex marriage), and (4) the RLDS strives to collaborate more with evangelical Christians.

CoC Historian Mark Scherer

Bridget Jack Meyers, (aka “Jack”–she blogs at Clobberblog), gave a fascinating presentation called “Evidence for Women’s Priesthood in the Earliest Christianity.  She is a “never Mormon” that earned a BA degree from BYU and “seduced” (her words) a Mormon man there.  She is studying at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.  She outlined various scriptures showing early women Christian leaders, including a woman by the name of Junia in Romans 16:7.  Jack says Junia was a female apostle, and quoted early Christian theologian John Chrysostum discussing her.  Early Christian theologian Origen discussed a female leader by the name of Phoebe.  Jack gave many other examples, and it certainly deserves a blog post or two to discuss her research.

Yesterday, I was able to attend Stephen Marsh’s session called “How an Unpleasant Truth Can Be More Inspirational than a Pleasant Fiction.”  I learned that the session was based on his post from October, titled The Stories We Tell.  Briefly, Stephen told the true story about his daughter standing up for a disabled classmate.  Often stories such as this end with a happy ending where everyone realizes that they shouldn’t tease a disabled person, but in Stephen’s story, his daughter becomes ostracized.  Often, we don’t have happy endings, and sometimes it is hard to understand why God doesn’t bless us for doing the right thing.  I also learned that Stephen has 5 daughters, but 3 of them have died, despite his prayers to have them live.  It was an interesting presentation.  Often we learn more from our trials than our triumphs.

I’m excited to attend tomorrow.  If you’re in SLC, I encourage you to attend.  It’s at the Sheraton Hotel on 150 West 500 South.  If you attended, what sessions did you enjoy?  Do you have any questions about the sessions I attended?

I’ve been listening to a podcast from Yale University discussing the Bible.  There are definite similarities between the Babylonian story of  Gilgamesh and the stories of Adam and Noah.  Some people, such as Bishop Rick, have said

I think it is accurate to state that the flood story in the bible is both myth and a forgery. It is obviously a myth for reasons too numerous to mention here, but it is also copied from other cultures/religions, thus making it a forgery.

It could very well be a myth.  While some scholars believe the story is a myth, National Geographic put together a documentary called “In Search for Noah’s Flood”.  They discuss various flood stories, and make the case that a large, localized flood must have influenced these various cultures to write of this flood.  While there is no proof of a flood, it seems like a plausible explanation.

Recently I discussed a couple of sites in the Dead Sea region that some people believe are the sites of Sodom and Gomorrah.  While some people love to claim the Bible is actually a collection of myths, Dr. Carole Fontaine of the Andover Newton Theological School said, “Archeologists often find themselves hooted and hollered out of town, when they first suggest things like, ‘I’ve found Troy, or look, we’ve found Sodom and Gomorrah.’  But history has shown that in fact, the more you dig, the more you find.  It’s amazing how accurate the Bible sometimes turns out to be.”

Speaking of hooting and hollering, John Hamer recently recorded a famous comment regarding Book of Mormon archaeology.  He said,

The scholarly consensus on the alleged antiquity of the Book of Mormon was expressed way back in 1973 in Dialogue by Michael D. Coe, among the foremost Mayanist scholars, who wrote: “As far as I know there is not one professionally trained archaeologist, who is not a Mormon, who sees any scientific justification for believing the historicity of The Book of Mormon, and I would like to state that there are quite a few Mormon archaeologists who join this group”

The best Book of mormon archaeological site seems to be Nahom.  I’ve previously blogged about Nahom, and Daniel C. Peterson called it a “bulls eye”.  In the video called Journey of Faith (distributed by FAIR), a few BYU scholars state,

Daniel C. Peterson, Professor of Islamic Studies and Arabic, BYU, “The finding of Nahom strikes me as just a tremendously significant discovery.”

Noel B Reynolds, director of FARMS, BYU, “The gazetteers of Joseph Smith’s day listed no such place.”

Peterson, “What it really is, is a kind of prediction by the Book of Mormon, or something that we ought to find.”

William J Hamblin, Professor of Middle Eastern History, BYU, “Now the chances of finding that exact name from the exact time, in that exact place, by random chance, are just astronomical.”

Peterson, “And to find it in the right location, at the right time, is a really striking bulls eye for the book and there are those who say the book has no archeological substantiation. That’s a spectacular substantiation right there, it seems to me.  Something that would have been unexpected. It’s so unlikely that Joseph Smith could have woven into his story on his own.”

Hamblin, “The Book of Mormon has text, has made a complex prediction and modern archeology actually confirms that prediction.”

Peterson, “It’s a direct bulls-eye, as precise as you could wish it to be.”

I don’t think non-Mormon scholars are as impressed with the site as Peterson, but non-Bible believing scholars aren’t impressed with Sodom and Gomorrah either.  So, must we always believe that lack of evidence argues against historicity of the Bible or Book or Mormon, or is there reason to believe that some of these stories that scholars call myths, forgeries, or pious frauds really might have some historical use?  Is it true that “the more you dig, the more you find?”

I believe Paul invented Christianity, not Jesus. There are only a couple of last minute, thrown-in scriptures that Christians use to claim Jesus intended to start a new church, but the overwhelming evidence points to Jesus merely trying to reform Judaism.

He went on to say,

Paul is definitely the one that changed Christianity into what it is even today. It was Paul that actually brought the Gentiles into the fold without the need for circumcision. It was Paul that stated Jesus fulfilled Mosaic Law including the law of tithing, on and on. The movement that Paul inherited was not a unique religion but was a Jewish sect. Paul made it a unique religion. In fact, if there actually was a falling away, Paul is the one that initiated it.

In a previous post on the Apostle Paul’s Remains, Bishop Rick said,

There are many who believe that without Paul, there would be no Christian faith…that it is him that kept it from going the way of all the cults of the time. It was Paul that took Christianity beyond Judaism. Until then, it was really just another Jewish sect.

As I mentioned there, and I will mention again, I disagree with Bishop Rick.  Here in America, we tend to think the Catholic Church claims to be founded from Peter, and then Martin Luther started the Reformation.  Mormons believe Joseph Smith started the restoration.  However, such a  picture is highly simplistic, and not entirely accurate.

At the death of Christ, there was a large movement known as Gnosticism.  This dates right to the time of Christ.  Christian gnostics believed that Christ was not actually human, that he was not born, and that he came supernaturally to the earth.  They don’t believe in Mary, Joseph, the star, and all that is associated in the Biblical story.  The Gospel of Thomas is a gnostic gospel.  It is not a narrative, like the 4 gospels are, but rather just a group of sayings of Jesus.  Gnostics valued intellectual/spiritual knowledge above all.  One could say they were the first group to espouse “intellectualism.”  Gnosticism is kind of an umbrella term, like Protestantism.  Just as not all Protestants believe exactly the same things, there are different flavors of Gnosticism.  Gnostic groups rivaled Orthodox Christianity in size until about the 7th or 8th centuries.  Constantine persecuted the Gnostics in favor of Orthodox Christianity.  I did another post discussing the varying beliefs of Gnostics.

About 2 years ago, I did a post on Montanism which dates to about 170 AD.  Briefly Montanus was a Christian prophet from Turkey, and I discussed interesting similarites between him and Joseph Smith.  I also did a post on Marcionism.   Marcion lived 110 – 160 AD in Sinope, Turkey.  He is probably the first person who tried to establish a Christian canon.  His New Testament was much smaller than ours today.  It included an edited version of the Gospel of Luke, and 10 of Paul’s letters.  He was the son of a bishop, and originally embraced by the orthdox church, but due to his embracing of Gnostic doctrines, he was excommunicated.  However, his movement became so large that it rivaled the orthodox church in size for about a century.

I also know about Ariunism, but have yet to post on the topic.  Arius was an early Christian leader that rejected the doctrine of the Trinity.  Now his idea of God isn’t the same as the Mormon conceptualization either, but he does show some diversity of thought as well.

The Catholic church wasn’t really distinct from the Orthodox Church officially until about 1000 AD.  A case can be made that there was some schismatic activity as early as about 700 AD, but prior to 1000, there really was no Catholic church–it was known as the Orthodox Church.  I previously discussed the idea of theosis in the Eastern Orthodox Church, and its similarities to Mormon Exaltation.

So, suffice it to say, I think there is a lot more diversity of Christianity than simply Paul.  Certainly Paul was a great missionary, and affected Western Christianity significantly.  However, Gnosticism was well established at the time of Paul, and certainly other movements like Marcionism, Ariunism, and Montanism (to name a few) spread Christianity as well.  I think it is a stretch to call Paul the author of Christianity.

I’ve had a few exchanges with people over there.  Since I spent so much time, I thought I would highlight some of these exchanges here and show a Biblical basis for Exaltation.

While there are distinct differences in belief between the Trinity and the Godhead among Evangelicals and Mormons, I must say that this idea of theosis seems to have some amazing parallels with the Mormon concept of Exaltation. “As Athanasius put it, ‘God became man, that man might become God.’ That’s theosis, or deification.”

Skylark points out the differences between the Mormon concept of God, and the Evangelical nature of God. Yes, Trinity and Godhead are different concepts, and I readily admit that Athanasius didn’t believe in the Godhead. However, this idea of theosis–[Jesus], indeed, assumed humanity that we might become God bears remarkable similarities with Mormon theology. I don’t believe that most western Christians are comfortable quoting Athanasius. Please correct me if I am wrong, but are any other Christians routinely quoting Athanasius and teaching “that we might become God” during church services?

If I may be so bold, I will point to some Bible verses that support this idea of Athanasius idea that ‘we might become God.’

What is the reason Jews were so angry with Jesus? John 5:18 says “Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.”

Paul tells us in Phillipians 2:5-6, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: “

Psalm 82:6 says, “I have said, Ye [are] gods; and all of you [are] children of the most High.”

Jesus quotes this scripture from Psalms in John 10:34-39, “Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I have said you are gods’?

If he called them ‘gods,’ to whom the word of God came–and the Scripture cannot be broken–

what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, ‘I am God’s Son’?  Do not believe me unless I do what my Father does.

But if I do it, even though you do not believe me, believe the miracles, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father.”

Again they tried to seize him, but he escaped their grasp.”

Here’s one last scripture and I’ll stop for now because this is too long. In Luke 17:20 we are told, ‘The kingdom of God is within you.’”

Psalm 82:6 and John 10:34 “Ye are gods”

Psalm 82:6 says, “you [are] children of the most High.”

God created us as his children. Jesus said, John 10:36, “Do not believe me unless I do what my Father does.”

John 5:19, ‘Jesus gave them this answer: “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.’

If God created us as his children (an interesting choice of words), then Paul says in Romans 8:16-17 “that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God,”

Therefore, if God can create children, Jesus can create children. If we can be heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ, we have that capability too, because Luke 17:20 “The kingdom of God is within you.”

1 Corinthians 11:11 “Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord.”

Luke 3:22 “And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased.”

(1) Jesus is being baptized in the river Jordan (2) Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, (3) A voice from heaven (God the Father) said, “Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased.”

You want to interpret this as a trinity. Mormons feel this represents (using your words) “three separate Gods who are the supreme presidency of the universe.” We’re not going to agree Phoebe, and I am fine with that.

Frankly, I think the Mormon Godhead is not as far off from the Trinity as many people think. Please show me a single verse in the Bible that has the word “trinity”, yet the term “godhead” does actually appear in the Bible in Acts 17:29, Romans 1:20, and Colossians 2:9. We can get into the trinity if you want–there are some interesting posts over at Mormon Matters and I think Evangelicals and Mormons split hairs too much on this issue. We have more in common that you think, but due to differences in terminology we argue way too much on this issue.

I remind you that ancient Christians were accused of being polytheists by Jews. This gave way to the great debate over whether Jesus and God were homo-uzious (the same substance), or homoi-uzious (of similar substance). The trinity is a direct result of trying to maintain a foundation of monotheism against attacks of polytheism by Jews. I find it ironic that modern western Christians use the same tactic against Mormons (calling us polytheistic), that was once used against ancient Christians.

I know we disagree here, but let me address this again. I already posted the D&C scripture, which is the primary source of Mormon knowledge on this issue. The First Vision account also confirms this. As for the Bible, Genesis 1:27, “So God created man in his [own] image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

What image is that exactly? Let’s look at Gen 5:3, “And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat [a son] in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth:” What image was Seth? I think the obvious image of Adam. Therefore, what image was Adam? Using similar logic, Adam looked like God. Adam had a body as tangible as me. Adam is in God’s image. Adam looks like God with a body of flesh and bone.

Needless to say, I didn’t convince anyone over there (at least that I know of), but I thought you might enjoy some of these exchanges.  Comments?

What I found interesting was the fact that there were many similarities.  The same experts and evidence often appeared in multiple videos, yet often different conclusions were provided.  It reminds me of the debate concerning Book of Mormon evidence.

During Passover celebrations in 2001, Rabbi David Wolpe created international headlines in Israel by proclaiming to his Jewish congregation in Los Angeles, “the way the Bible describes the Exodus is not the way it happened, if it happened at all.”

For more than 1700 years, Christians have been looking for Mount Sinai, the place where Moses received the 10 Commandments.  Constantine’s mother, Helena was probably the first Christian in search of Christian artifacts in the 4^th century.  When Christians came across a strange-looking bush at the base of a mountain on the Sinai Peninsula, they erected a monastery claiming that they had found Mount Sinai.  The monastery still exists today, and you can walk the steps that these early Christians have claimed as the real Mount Sinai.

Prof Philip Davies, University of Sheffield, “When it comes to the Exodus, we have no evidence that it happened, and a good deal of evidence that it didn’t.  They made it up.”

Professor Eric Cline, George Washington University, “We do not have a single shred of evidence to date.  There is nothing archeologically to attest to anything from the biblical story: no plagues, no parting of the Red Sea, no manna from heaven, no wandering for 40 years.”

Dr. Kathlyn M. Cooney, Egyptologist, Stanford University,, “the most likely reason that we’re not finding any evidence for the Exodus in Egypt is that it didn’t happen the way that the Bible said it did, or that it didn’t happen at all.”

Since that famous (infamous) sermon in 2001, Wolpe has gone on to soften his words a bit.  In March 2010, he said it was possible that a small group of people left Egypt, came to Canaan, and influenced the native Canaanites.  Even skeptics admit there could be something to the story.

Cline, “I think there’s a very good chance that what actually took place was a series of migrations waves or migrations if you will, over three or 400 years of people leaving Egypt and making their way up to Egypt in ones, twos, threes, maybe even tens, hundreds at the most.”

So, let’s talk about some of the biggest questions concerning the Exodus.

The Burning Bush.

The Bible says that God spoke to Moses in the form of a burning bush that was not consumed.  As mentioned previously, a strange bush was found at the base of the traditional Mount Sinai.  Is there another explanation for this burning bush?  Colin Humphreys has an explanation for a burning bush, involving real fire.  As we all know, oil and natural gas are prevalent in the Middle East.  Humphreys believes the Acacia Bush is an ideal candidate for the Burning Bush.

“The most common bush in the desert is the acacia bush, and we know that if you burn an acacia bush you get charcoal.”

The Acacia Bush maintains it’s shape and turns to charcoal.  He gives a demonstration using a natural gas barbecue grill and an acacia bush.  The bush maintains it’s shape, even though flames shoot through the bush.

When did the Exodus Happen?

There are two main theories:  the Early Exodus Period, and the Late Exodus Period.  Supporters of the Early Period point to 1 Kings 6:1, ““Now it came about in the four hundred and eightieth year after the sons of Israel came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel…that he began to build the house of the Lord.”  Most historians put the Temple of Solomon at 965 BC.  This would put the Exodus at approximately 1445 BC.

Pharoah Thutmoses I reigned from 1525-1512 BC.  Scholars have speculated that his daughter Hatshepsut may have rescued Moses from the Nile.  She served as Pharoah from 1503-1482 BC, and battled with her stepson Thutmoses III (1504-1450 BC) for control of Egypt.  Thutmoses III eventually removed nearly all traces of Hatshepsut’s monuments.  Thutmoses III death in 1450 coincides well with the date of this Early Exodus time period.

Supporters of the late period refer to Exodus 1:11, “And they built for Pharoah store cities, Pithom and Ramses.”  Ramses II seems to be the most likely Pharaoh.  He lived 1290-1224 BC.  He moved the capital from Thebes to the Nile Delta, and built a new city called Pi-Ramses.  Some archaeologists have linked this city built on top of an ancient Israelite city.

Simcha Jacobovici believes the date of Exodus may be earlier.  He believes the eruption of the Santorini Volcano in 1500 BC may explain many of the Biblical plagues.  The Egyptian name Ahmose means “brother of Moses” in Hebrew—an interesting play on words.    At this time, Egypt was ruled by a Semitic people called the Hyksos, people who were hated by the Egyptians.  Since Joseph was of Semitic origins, this may have helped him join the ranks of the Hyksos ruling class.  The Bible refers to a pharaoh that “knew not Joseph.”

Egyptians have recorded and event called “the Hyksos Expulsion” around 1500 BC.  Could it be the Israelites were expelled, rather than left freely?  Perhaps it depends on who writes the history.

Is there an Israelite presence in Egypt?

In 1967 Professor Manfred Bietak, Chair of Egyptology at the University of Vienna, discovered the ancient Egyptian capital of Avaris.  It was the home to many ancient Egyptian pharaohs.  Some believe the architecture of this city bears resemblance to later Israelite/Canaanite architecture.

Jacobovici attributes Avaris to the Hyksos, while Dr Bryant Wood refers to the ruins as “Asiatic”, similar to later Canaanite   Let me quote from the Exodus Revealed video.

Dr Bryant G Wood, Director of the Associates for Biblical Research, “In this small village, there is stratum D2 dating to the time of Joseph.  All the remains are Asiatic in nature, material culture is Asiatic—there is nothing Egyptian.”

A map of the excavation site confirms its distinctive Israelite origins.  Archaeologists immediately recognized that the design of this horseshoe shaped dwelling was identical to structures built in Israel centuries later.  It was a prototype of Hebrew architecture constructed near the time Joseph was believed to have lived in Egypt.

…

There should be evidence of Israel’s arrival in Canaan, the Promised Land sometime between the 14^th and 12^th centuries BC.  Such evidence does exist.  More than 3200 years ago, the Pharaoh Mernepteh, ventured out of Egypt on a military campaign to the Land of Canaan.  Later, in a poem proclaiming his victory, he boasted that “…Israel is laid waste.”  This inscription dates from about 1210 BC, and establishes that the Israelites had arrived and settled in Canaan, well before the Mernepteh’s conquest at the end of the 13th century.

Additionally at Telamarna in Egypt, archaeologists have uncovered a series of letters on cuneiform plates.  Many were authored by Canaanite rulers early in the 14^th century BC.  These letters contain desperate pleas to the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten for military assistance to defend Canaan from nomadic invaders.  One of them warned that if pharaoh does not act, “…all Canaan will be lost.”  The invaders were identified by the term “apiru”.

Wood, “This is kind of a generic term for stateless individuals who weren’t connected with any particular urban center and so the Israelites undoubtedly would have been referred to as either Apiru, or Asiatics by the Egyptians.”

Dr Frank Moore Cross of Harvard University, “I do think that the term Apiru is the origin of the term Hebrew.”

If the name Apiru referred to the name of the Hebrew people, then the Telhermana inscriptions provide strong evidence for the presence of Israel in Canaan.  They also suggest Israel may have entered the country earlier than scholars had previously thought, at the beginning of the 14^th century BC.  Recent excavations of the Canaanite city of Hazor also support a 14^th century Israelite invasion.  Evidence has been uncovered that the city was destroyed at least twice during the period described in the biblical books of Joshua and Judges.

Scattered among the remains of a large palace were Egyptian and Canaanite idols—their heads and hands intentionally chiseled off.  Archaeologist Amnen ben Tour, has concluded by process of elimination that the invading Israelite army must have ravaged Hazor.  For neither the Egyptians, nor the indigenous Canaanite would have purposely destroyed their own gods.

How can we explain the Plagues?

I presented Jacobovici’s position on the plagues in my previous post.  National Geographic (NG) had similar explanations for plagues 2-6 dealing with insects and frogs.  NG even interviewed several entomologists and epidemiologists to further pin down the actual types of bugs most likely in these infestations.

The first plague, turning the Nile to blood has a few different explanations.  Jacobovici believes an underground natural gas into the Nile may have caused caused the waters to turn red and kill all the fish.  Two lakes in Cameroon turned blood red in 1984 and 1986.  Epidemiologist John Marr believes microscopic algae may have turned the Nile blood red.  In 1995, a coastal river in North Carolina turned bright red due to an algae bloom.

Marr, “Wisteria was labeled the cell from hell because it killed millions if not billions of fish.  If that occurred in North Carolina in the 1990’s, why couldn’t it have occurred in Egypt 3000 years ago?”

The last plague has some interesting interpretations too.  Moses prophesied that the firstborn of Egypt would all die, and the Israelites would be spared if they put lamb’s blood on their doorposts.  The Destroying Angel would “pass over” homes with lamb’s blood.  So, how can scientists explain such a selective mode of death?  Some believe the Firstborn is metaphorical.

Epidemiologist Martin Blaser of NYU, “There is no disease that we know of that just affects the firstborns, so I take that it’s a metaphor for a disease that kills one out of every 3 or 4 people.”

Blaser thinks bubonic plague may have been the culprit, because it affects both animals and humans.  Eric Cline of George Washington believes the plagues could refer to a “Sea People” that attacked Egypt.

Cline, “The attack of the Sea Peoples was probably the Egyptians worst nightmare.  They are the fiercest warriors that the Egyptians have faced, and the Egyptians tell us that everybody went down in the face of these sea peoples.  Only the Egyptians were able to stand, and even that was a Pyrrhic victory because the Egyptians were so weakened that they were never the same again.”

Although the Egyptians never mentioned the plagues, they did document these attacks in pictographs on the mortuary Temple of Ramses III.  Archaeological finds match these writings.

Cline, “I see no need to use divine intervention when human intervention can explain it just as well, if not better.”

Others believe the death of the firstborn may have been more literal.  Epidemiologist John Marr recently investigated the mysterious death of children that was due to a mold.  He postulated that following the plagues of locusts and hail, much of the grain in Egypt would have been moist and in short supply.

Rare molds can wreak havoc on human health, and can even cause internal hemorrhaging.  With little else to eat, the Egyptians may have resorted to moldy toxin laced grain.  Death would come suddenly, with no visible cause, as if the victims were touched by an angel of death.  Still, why the first born?  Marr found his answer, the final piece to the puzzle in an Egyptian tradition.

Marr, “During the times of famine, the eldest, the oldest Egyptian child would be given a double portion of food in order to stave off starvation.  Instead of saving them, it killed them.”

Jacobovici has another theory for the selective deaths during this final plague.

SJ, “The final plague took place at midnight, after Moses ordered the Israelites to sit down to what became known as the first Passover meal.  While the Israelites were involved in the Passover ritual, the Egyptians slept, and then it happened: every firstborn male Egyptian died.  Every house was affected.  No one has ever been able to offer up a plausible scientific explanation for the death of the firstborn until now.  According to our scenario, at this point in the sequence of events that began some 6 months earlier, the gas leaks that set the chain of plates in motion would have finally erupted.  Carbon dioxide would have seeped to the surface, and being heavier than air, would have killed animals and sleeping people before it dissipated harmlessly into the atmosphere.

In case you think all this is conjecture, consider this.  It happened in exactly the same way in 1986 at Lake Nyos, Cameroon.  On the fateful night of August 21, the villagers at Nyos went to sleep.  They couldn’t have known that the carbon dioxide gas which had turned the lake blood red, was now reaching a critical point.  As the people of Lake Nyos slept, the top of the lake was keeping the carbon down like a cap in a pop bottle.  But then the earth rumbled, and a landslide took place sending rock into the water, disturbing the surface pressure and releasing the gas.  The gas then rose to the surface, and like some alien monster, emerged from the water, droplets forming on it, turning the invisible gas into a visible fog.  The fog then rolled across the water, and across the land, suffocating everything in its path.  And as suddenly as it appeared, it disappeared, dissolving harmlessly into the atmosphere.

The next day those who had been sleeping on higher ground woke up to find some 1800 people dead, hundreds of cattle and small animals also dead, all around there was deadly silence.

SJ, “After the death of the First born, Pharaoh finally relented, letting Moses take his people out of Egypt.  According to the Bible, what made pharaoh give up was the selectivity of the deaths: the fact that it was only male, firstborn who died.  It was this selectivity that demonstrated to him that God himself was involved.  How can we account for this?

Well, Egyptian firstborn males had the privileged position.  They were the heirs to the throne, to property, title, and more.  They slept on Egyptian beds low to the ground, while their brothers and sisters slept on rooftops, sheds, and wagons.  The Israelites sitting up at their first Passover meal did not feel a thing, while the low traveling gas suffocated the privileged Egyptian males sleeping in their beds.

How many people participated in the Exodus?

The Bible says that 600,000 men left Egypt.  Adding women and children would have increased the total number to 2.5 million people, the size of modern-day Brooklyn, NY.  If the group were that large, there should be some evidence somewhere in the wilderness.

Cline, “if the Biblical numbers are correct, and you’ve got two and a half million people wandering around for 40 years, I would want to find entire landscapes denuded.  I’d want to find hundreds of sheep and goat carcasses, the bones.  Even if they didn’t ask for directions wandering for 40 years, there would be something.”

However, archaeologist Jim Hoffmeier of the Trinity Evangelical Divinity School says the number is probably far fewer, due to a mistranslation dating thousands of years.  The original Hebrew says there were 600 elith.

Hoffmeier, “The word elith can be translated 3 different ways:  it can be translated thousand.  Elith can also be translated to the clan.  The third option is that it’s a military unit, which I think is a more plausible scenario.”

According to Hoffmeier’s interpretation, instead of 600,000 men and their families, there were as few as 5000.

Hoffmeier, “we’re talking about a few tens of thousands, certainly not hundreds of thousands, adding women and children making it millions.”

How did the Red Sea part?  Where did the Israelites cross?

There are 3 main theories for the crossing of the Red Sea: a northern, central, and southern route.  Those supporting a northern route point to volcanic activity to explain the parting of the Red Sea.

Geo-archaeologist Floyd McCoy researches tsunamis at the University of Hawaii.  He says a tsunami might have created a land passage for the Israelites across a lagoon.  Although we think of a tsunami as a lot of water, what comes before is the disappearance of water.

Floyd, “Sometimes you get a warning that a tsunami is coming.  Sometimes that ocean disappears, and that’s called draw down.  Remember what a wave looks like; it’s sinusoidal:  bottom, top; trough, crest.  If the trough comes in first, that’s draw down; the ocean disappears.

The Israelites would have crossed on the northern edge of the Mediterranean ocean according to this theory.  However, several Egyptian military outposts have been found along a northern route into Israel dating to the Exodus period.  Many believe the Israelites would have avoided these military outposts when trying to leave Egypt.

In addition to the Biblical mistranslation of elith, Hoffmeier believes the Red Sea is a mistranslation, and the parting of the sea may have occurred closer to home.

Hoffmeier, “The Hebrew Yam Suf literally means sea of reeds.  When the Greek translators took the Hebrew Yam Suf and translated it into Greek, they translated it as Red Sea instead of Reed Sea.  So we’ve been stuck with a faulty translation for over 2000 years.”

Hoffmeier has been working with Prof Stephen O. Moshier, Geologist of Wheaton College.  Together they have pieces together satellite photos and ancient maps to identify a sea of reeds.  They’ve come up with Lake El Balah, on the eastern border of Egypt.  Jacobovici paints another picture of this scenario.

Hoffmeier, “It’s an ancient lake that survived until the 1850’s.  When the Suez Canal was put in, this ancient lake finally died.  Professor Manfred Biatek after conducting a thorough study of this area, proposed that this lake was known to the Egyptians as Ha Tufi, meaning the marshland, the marshy sea.  And the word tuf, the Egyptian word for reeds is the same word as suf in Hebrew.  So Yam Suf, he suggested, was a name derived from this body of water.  Now it is called the El Balah Lake.”  [In Hebrew it means the lake where God devoured.]

…

SJ, “Identifying the precise location of Yam Suf means that we can finally explain the miracle of the parting of the sea. This satellite photo clearly demonstrates that Lake El Balah is close to the edge of the Nile Delta, where soil accumulates and collapses from time to time.  As Pharaoh chased the Israelites to the shores Lake El Balah, the extreme seismic activity that caused the two plates and the Santorini eruption would have now caused the delta to start sliding into the eastern Mediterranean.  As this millions of tons of soil moved forward, the edge of the African plate, which had now released from its burden must have risen between one to one and a half meters.  In other words, the sea parted.

Water would have cascaded from higher ground to lower ground and drained from pools and sinkholes creating dry land for the Israelites to cross.  At this point, further seismic activity, or another collapse of the delta would have sent a major tsunami crashing against the coasts.

Pellegrino, “We get some glimpse of these tidal waves in Turkey where they carved out channel scablands 30 miles inland.  In order to do that at the shore, these waves would have had to have been more than half as high as the Empire State Building, and that’s exactly the description that we do have in the Bible.”

SJ, “If the tsunami went a mere 12 km inland, it would have reached Lake El Balah and engulfed the Egyptian army.  By this point, according to the Bible, the Israelites had advanced beyond the reach of the waves.

Those who support a central route believe Moses and his followers crossed an ancient frankincense trail across the central Sinai Peninsula.  In his younger days, Moses killed an Egyptian while defending a Hebrew slave.  The Bible says he fled to the land of Midian, in Modern Day Saudi Arabia.  It is likely that Moses would have followed the frankincense trail to Midian.  It is the shortest, most direct route to Midian.  If Moses had made the trek before, it is likely he would have followed it again.  Dr Lennart Moller of the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden notes that the Bible says that

In the Book of First Kings, In approximately 950 BC, King Solomon’s is said to have built his navy at Ezion Geber near Elath, an ancient city on the northern coast of the Gulf of Aqaba.  According to the Hebrew text, this gulf where Solomon’s ships were said to harbor, was call yam suf.

He believes Newieva Beach is large enough to hold a large Israelite party, and it has some unusual features that make crossing there more likely than other places.

The geography of the Gulf of Aqaba also resembles descriptions of the Yam Suf God once parted for Israel.  Aqaba is extremely deep, plunging more than a mile in some spots.  It is adjacent to a dense wilderness of rugged mountains.  It is located clearly outside the borders of ancient Egypt, as recognized during the time of Moses.  These similarities to the scriptures have led Lennart Moller and others to theorize the Gulf of Aqaba is the Red Sea of the Exodus story.  If they are correct, then 2 distinct possibilities for a crossing point exist:  the first is located on the bottom of the Sinai Peninsula, on the Straits of Tyron.  This channel 5 miles across is one of the most popular recreation areas on earth, as spectacular reefs and marine life attract divers from throughout the world, but the topography of the sea floor here would have made crossing highly unlikely.

For less than a mile offshore, a subterranean canyon plunges nearly 1000 feet at a grade so steep, passage on foot through jagged coral beds would have been virtually impossible, even if the waters were miraculously removed.  70 miles north of the straits, near the center o the Aqaba coast, another potential crossing site extends into the sea.  It is called the Newieva Peninsula.

Moller was attracted to Newieva Beach because of some interesting coral formations.

Moller, “The first time I was diving there, of course we were then looking for possible artifacts, and I had seen some pictures of what we could look for.  I was skeptical and excited because if this is the place for the crossing, then of course, that’s a big thing, so I was excited about that.  But I was also skeptical because 3500 years—that’s a long time.  But if Newieva is the crossing site, then of course you would expect to find remains of the Egyptian army.”

Like others who had explored Newiva before him, Moller immediately recognized the difficulty of this search.

Moller, “If we assume a number of artifacts were spread out on the sea bed, sooner or later corals would start to grow on them, and of course if you have an array of some coral all growing on something, it’s very hard to distinguish the structure that was there in the very beginning.”

Though the coral complicates any search here, it may have been instrumental in preserving the shapes of artifacts, for coral is a living organism that will not begin to grow on a foundation of sand or silt.  Instead, it must first attach itself to a solid object where it will sometimes conform to the shape of its host.

Moller, “So for instance if it were to grow on a wooden artifact, the wood would normally disappear in the sea waters after a time.  But if you have corals growing on the wooden artifact, the corals could have the shape of the wooden artifact and then the coral would consume the wood and material over a periods of time, but still keep the shape of the wooden artifacts.”

During the course of his exploration, Moller observed the pattern of coral growth at Neweiva differed from other parts of the gulf.  Unlike the coral at the northern and southern ends of Aqaba which often forms large dense reefs, sometimes covering acres, the formations at Nuweiva beach are generally smaller, and scattered randomly across the bottom of the sea floor.  Divers familiar with the area have compared the distribution of coral here to a junkyard, and the aftermath of a disaster.  This description is fitting, and among the strange formations in these waters, many display features indicative of human engineering.

Moller, “When we dive, and when we film, at the Neweiva location, we look for certain structures, and you try to look for 90 degree angles, or circular objects, wheel like structures, so that is what you scan for when you dive.  There are situations where you see something that looks like an axle, a hub, some that looks like a wheel, and you say to yourself, this is a coral reef.  This coral grew on an artifact, and that is what’s different to me when I compare corals at other locations around the world.”

Since the earliest explorations at Newieva, one distinctive type of formation has often been identified on the sea floor, a slender table-like structure, sometimes standing on end with a coral encrusted base, a straight shaft, and a circular top.

Moller, “It’s a 90 degree angle, and right angle between something that looks like an axle and a wheel.  You can see this in different varieties, and it looks very different from normal coral.  It is like a man-made structure with a coral roof on it.

While most of the possible artifacts found on the coast of Newieva are covered with coral, one significant discovery was not.

Moller, “There is one find at the Neweiva location that is of great interest, and this is the gilded wheel.  It is a wooden basic structure of the wheel, and it is covered with gold or electrum, a mixture of silver gold, and corals have not been able to grow on it.  It’s been fairly well preserved, although it’s very fragile.  It seems the wooden content has been dissolved.  You could break it if you try to remove it.”

After its discovery, the fragile wheel-shaped veneer was photographed and left in place on the sea floor.

Later analysis revealed that its dimensions and design resembled four-spoked chariot wheels painted on a 18^th Dynasty tomb wall near the Biblical date of the Exodus.

Moller referenced a southern crossing point as well, but dismissed it because of the steep cliffs and jagged coral.  Proponents of a southern route believe a volcanic land bridge may have appeared at this area.

Stephen J. O’Meara, Volcanologist, Volcano Watch International flies over an active volcano.  “Imagine the Jews, reaching this massive land bridge, formed by lava.  Here we have earth being created before our eyes.  You can see the lava flow going into the ocean on a new bench of land.  This is a very highly unstable platform of land.  The bench will not last for long.  This whole area can fall in just a matter of minutes.  Massive collapses have occurred here in Hawaii almost in the blink of an eye.”

The Red Sea forms part of the Great African Rift System.  The entire region has an explosive volcanic history.

O’Meara, “Although we see a very small lava flow, you have to in your mind scale this up to a massive volcanic eruption 3200 years ago.  It enters the water, the water boils, it disappears.  It’s enough to choke valleys and cause land bridges.”

In O’Meara’s scenario, an underwater eruption could have created a temporary unstable lava bridge.  The surface layer of lava cools quickly when it hits the water.  The Israelites could have crossed over this new land.

O’Meara walking on lava, near bright red lava flow, “But what’s amazing about this lava, even though it’s so hot that I have to keep walking right at this moment, that if I had to, to save my life, I could wait, walk over this lava in 10 minutes.”

This new unsupported land could have quickly disintegrated.

O’Meera, “and then when the Egyptians were on their chariots, [hops around because of the heat] and they tried to cross this same bed, the lava gave way.”

The collapse of this land bridge would have plunged pharaoh’s army into the sea.

O’Meara, “It makes sense.  Volcanoes are the only thing that makes sense.  The Bible is just filled with volcanic references and especially in Exodus out from the plagues to the parting of the Red Sea, and seeing pillars of fire, and mountains quaking, and burning bushes, all of them just in Exodus.  You imagine, you come up here and see this and you are not a scientist.  There were no scientists back then.  Listen to it!  [lava crackling]  It’s talking to you!  It’s written in the Bible, God says, ‘I am the rock.’  There you are!”

Where is Mount Sinai?

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, there are several proposed locations for Mount Sinai.  The traditional location is at the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula.  Tradition for this site goes back to the 4^th Century.  After Moses escaped to Midian, he found the Burning Bush.

Many scholars believe that Mount Sinai is in the Land of Midian in modern day Saudi Arabia.

Separated by the Red Sea and the Egyptian army in the Sinai Peninsula, Moses married a Midianite woman, tended the flocks of his father-in-law Jethro, and lived in obscurity for years, until the day he wandered to the base of Mount Sinai.  There God spoke through a burning bush and revealed his plan to free Israel from bondage.  Given the Biblical record, some believe that Mount Sinai must be in Midian, but is there any other evidence to support this theory?

Several Jewish documents, some written several hundred years before Christian traditions, locate the mountain of God in Midianite territory.  In 250 BC, a council of 70 Hebrew scholars translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek for the first time.  Their translation of the Exodus account presupposed that Mount Sinai stood in the Arabian Peninsula.  Three centuries later, the Jewish philosopher Philo placed the mountain “east of the Sinai Peninsula” and south of Palestine.  At the same time, the apostle Paul, who was educated under the Rabbi Gamaliel, also located Mount Sinai in Arabia (Galatians 4:25).

Kerkeslager, “So Paul and Philo, when they used the word Arabia, they’re not thinking of the Sinai Peninsula.  Once again, I think that point needs to be emphasized very clearly.  In terminology, Arabia in the 1^st century, Greek geographers usually had in mind the Arabian Peninsula.  That’s how that term is used.”

Perhaps that most specific description of Mount Sinai’s location can be traced to the first century historian Josephus, who wrote “it was the highest of mountains…” near “…the city of Madian.”  Shortly after this account, Madian was identified in the Arabian Peninsula by the Greek geographer Ptolemy.  1900 years later, archaeologists excavated this city that according to ancient records had once stood near Mount Sinai.  The ruins of Madian lie just outside the modern day town of El-bod near Saudi Arabia’s northwest coast.

…

Viveka Ponten of Stockholm, Sweden said, “I have always been interested in archaeological finds that could confirm the truths of the Bible.  I have wanted come to Saudi Arabia to see for myself—I want to be able to say ‘I have seen this place’.”

In 1996, Vivika Ponten entered Saudi Arabia on a work permit.  During the following years, she made several trips to Jebel Elboz.

Ponten, “It was very difficult to find the mountain.  I think I had been there for 7 months before I came to the mountain the first time.  We went around looking for it in the desert.  I did 5 long day trips—5 different locations, just looking and looking for this place.”

Throughout her search, Ponten encountered a strong local tradition that Moses had once lived in Arabia.

Ponten, “It seems to be a tradition among the locals there that this mountain range is called Jebel-Musa.  They call it that, and many places have the name of Moses, like their wells, that they call Adien-Musa, or Bijan-Musa, which means ‘the well of Moses’.”

When Ponten finally reached Jebel Alboz, her attention was drawn to specific features of the mountain that resembled the Biblical description.  Most prominent was a jagged peak, more than 8000 feet in elevation, and blackened, as if scorched by fire.  [Deuteronomy 9:18, the Lord descended on it in fire.)

At its base, an enormous pile of boulders, at least 15 feet high and 60 feet across (Exodus 32:5, he built an altar in front of the calf.)  The flattened top of this structure had the appearance of being man-made, and etched into its rock faces were petro glyphs of bovine creatures, cattle and bulls.  The distinctive horns and some of the inscriptions resemble pictures of ancient Egyptian Apis bulls.  Could these stones be the remains of an Israelite altar, once built at the base of a holy mountain?  Conclusive investigation is not possible at this time, for Saudi law severely limits all foreign research.

Ponten, “They have put up archaeological signs that tell this is an archaeological area, and you’re not supposed to trespass here.  It’s evident that the Arabs themselves consider this to be some old site of archaeological interest.

Satellite photos of the area have revealed another geographical feature that parallels the Biblical account: a sprawling plain more than 10,000 acres.  Flat, surrounded by mountains, and adjacent to the dried bed of an ancient river, it could have provided an ideal place for the Israelite encampment 3500 years ago.

Just west of the mountain stands another link to the possible Exodus account: a towering rock, 60 feet high.  It is split from top to bottom, and evidence of water erosion is etched into its base.  Many features of Jebel Alboz reflect the Biblical account of Mount Sinai.  As the highest mountain of northwest Arabia, it matches ancient Jewish historical records.

Kerkeslager, “Based on the textual evidence, Jebel Alboz is as good of a guess as any; it might even be the best guess.  It’s definitely better than anything in the Sinai Peninsula, and probably better than any other guess that we have.  It would be nice to have some excavation, and that’s really [why] we need excavations.  We need somebody who is competent, trained archeologist to go in and record the material carefully, submit it for dispute and debate among other scholars, because there are too many gaps in our knowledge.”

The intriguing similarities between Jebel Alboz, and the Biblical record may indeed stimulate new investigation here. Yet whether or not future excavations confirm this site as the actual mountain of God, a considerable body of documentary evidence indicates that Mount Sinai is located somewhere in northwestern Arabia.

Others believe Mount Sinai is somewhere on the Sinai Peninsula.  Jacobovici discusses another possible location discovered by Prof Uzi Avner.

Holy mountains in the desert are marked by ancient, open-air, rock sanctuaries.  In this area there is only 1 mountain surrounded by sanctuaries.  Today that mountain is called Jebel-Hashem el-Tarif.

Although this entire are is in the middle of a military zone, we got to it.  This mountain perfectly fits all the criteria for Mount Sinai.  It is surrounded by a huge plateau that could have accommodated hundreds of thousands of Israelites.  It is easily accessible.  It literally sits on the main trans-Sinai highway, which follows the topography of the ancient route.

Prof. Uzi Avner, Arava Environmental Institute, Israel, “The Mountain is not very high, only about 200 meters above the plateau, but it is very conspicuous.  You can see it from a distance.  The unique point is that it is surrounded by actually the largest concentration of open air sanctuaries that we now today in the desert.”

Conclusions?

So, do we need to believe that any of these scenarios?  Both skeptics and believers seem to agree that faith and science are two different animals.

Hoffmeier, “For people that have religious convictions, they don’t need proof.”

Cornuke, “it all boils down to, this is a supernatural event, and you can’t explain it in any other way.”

Ultimately, the power of Exodus lies more in faith than in science.

Cooney, “There’s no real scientific proof that the Exodus took place, but as a Christian or as a Jew, you shouldn’t need scientific proof to be a person of faith.  Faith doesn’t need to be scientifically proven, nor should it be; it’s faith.”

Cameron, “It seems that the Bible, geology, and archaeology, are all telling the same story.  But skeptics, who would like to regard the Exodus as myth, might resist the idea that it actually happened, because this would imply that God does indeed exist.  Believers on the other hand may feel that a scientific explanation of the Biblical story takes God out of the equation. “

SJ, “But in the Book of Exodus, God does not suspend nature, he manipulates it.  In other words, according to the Bible, we should be able to understand the science behind the miracles.  The greatest miracle of them all was the parting of the sea.

Rabbi David Wolpe believes that the historicity of the events in the Bible should not matter; faith is not determined by the same criteria as empirical truth.

So, what do you think?  Does any of this convince you of the historicity of the Exodus?  Do you think the Exodus is myth?

Palm Sunday

It is always celebrated exactly one week prior to Easter.  The celebration refers to Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem, riding on a donkey.  It is one event captured in all 4 gospels, but only The Gospel of John talks about people waving Palm fronds in front of Jesus.  The palm branch was a symbol of triumph and of victory in Jewish tradition, and it is evident that many Jews believed Jesus was more of a political/military king than a spiritual king.  There’s some interesting information at this Wikipedia Entry.  MSNBC has a nice photo of Pope Benedict the 16th celebrating Palm Sunday Mass earlier today.

I have often wondered why Palm Sunday is completely ignored by Mormons.  Palm Sunday is the beginning of the last week in the life of Jesus, and I just can’t figure out why Mormons wouldn’t want to celebrate with the rest of Christendom.  Do you have any ideas?

Passover

I didn’t realize that Passover is an eight-day celebration.  I remember attending a Passover meal and celebration with a college friend–it was a lot of fun!  I must say that Jews really know how to celebrate, and I think Mormons could learn some celebration techniques from them.  Passover is one of the most important Jewish holidays, which is also known as Pesach,  Chag he-Aviv, Chag ha-Matzoth and Z’man Cherutenu.

As you’re probably aware, the Passover celebration commemorates Moses leading the Jewish liberation from Egyptian slavery approximately 1500 years ago.  ABC annually broadcasts Cecil B. DeMille’s film, The 10 Commandments on Easter Sunday.  Moses told the Egyptian pharaoh that if he did not let the Israelites go, God would issue 10 plagues to afflict Egypt.  The term ‘Passover’ specifically refers to the 10th plague.  Moses told pharaoh that God would kill all the firstborn sons of Egypt.  Moses instructed the Israelites to spread the blood of a lamb on their doorposts so the destroying angel would “pass-over” their homes, leaving the firstborn Israelite sons alive.  This last plague finally caused pharaoh to release the Israelites from slavery, and the Exodus story follows.  I plan another post specifically devoted to the Exodus theories, but I want to talk specifically about the Passover and these 10 plagues in this post.

A 2-time Emmy award winner for investigative journalism named Simcha Jacobicivi (pronounced Sim-ka Yah-cob-oh-vitch) teamed up with Titanic Director James Cameron to put together a documentary titled The Exodus Decoded.  It aired on the History Channel in 2006; you can rent it via Netflix.  Jacobovici is not a stranger to controversy.  You may be familiar with another documentary of his titled The Lost Tomb of Jesus in which he claims to have discovered the bones of Jesus and his family in Jerusalem.  He has another documentary titled Quest for the Lost Tribes in which he believes he has discovered the Lost tribes in areas such as Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, China, Burma, and Africa.  Here is a website questioning Jacobovici’s Exodus claims, and another website questioning the Lost Tomb of Jesus DVD.

Jacobovici makes a very interesting case for the 10 plagues of Egypt; he believes they were the result of the Santorini Volcano eruption of 1500 BC.  He notes similarities between the Passover narrative and a volcanic eruption in 1986 in Cameroon.  I must say that there are some startling similarities, and Jacobovici seems to have some very interesting parallels.  Let’s talk about the actual 10 plagues of Egypt.

1.  The Nile will be turned to blood. Jacobovici notes that in 1984 and 1986, separate volcanic eruptions turned Lake Monoun and Lake Nyos in Cameroon blood red.  Dr George King of the University of Michigan explained that both of these lakes contained high levels of iron.  An underwater natural gas leak created a disturbance, turning the lake red in color.  Jacobovici notes that the Nile is near a fault line.  An underground gas leak could have turned the river blood red as mentioned in the Bible.

2.  A frog infestation.  Jacobovici says that all living things in the Nile would have died due to lack of oxygen in the water resulting from the gas leak and subsequent iron stirred up in the water.  However, frogs would have been able hop out of the water, explaining the frog infestation.

3.  Lice.  With all the dead fish, lice would have been a problem.

4.  Flies.  Once again, dead fish would have attracted flies

5.  An epidemic.  Disease would have spread to everyone following the death of so many fish in the Nile.

6.  Boils.  Jacobovici notes that many people developed Boils following the 1986 eruption at Lake Nyos, Cameroon, and shows several photos of these awful boils.  Jocobovici explains that “It turns out that carbon dioxide mixed with air put people into a kind of coma, reducing circulation to the skin and causing the kind of boils described in the Bible as plague #6.”

7.  An Unusual Hail storm.  I’ll abbreviate Jacobovici as SJ in the quotes below; I want to quote directly from the DVD here.

Rabbi Chaim Sacknovitz, “The seventh plague was the plague of hail, but the Bible describes hail in a very unique manner.  The hail was together with ice with fire, the idea being that the fire and the ice mixed together, that they coexisted together.  The Bible then describes God as making a miracle within a miracle, taking opposites in nature, and having them coexist together.”

SJ, “Incredibly, there is an Egyptian papyrus that tells the exact same story.  It’s called the Ipuwer Papyrus and is dated by many scholars to the Hyksos period.  The Ipuwer Papyrus specifically states that Egypt was struck by a strange hail, made of ice and fire mingled together.  Another piece of the puzzle has fallen into place.  It now seems clear that the biblical and Egyptian texts are describing what scientists call ‘accretionary lapilli”, volcanic hail, and could have only come from earthquake induced Santorini volcano.

Dr. Catherine Hickson, Geological Survey of Canada, “When the ash cloud goes up into great distances in the stratosphere, essentially what happens is that you have moisture in the atmosphere, you also have a lot of water vapor in the cloud itself, so small fragments of ash and crystal actually form the nucleus, very similar to a hail stone.”

8.  Plague of Locusts. Jacobovici says the volcano causing weather changes, and this hail storm would have excited the locusts.  He says,

Cold weather produces a drop in their body temperature and makes them land en masse.  The Volcanic hail and weather disruptions caused by the Santorini eruption would have forced great clouds of locusts which are common in this part of the world to suddenly land in Egypt.  As the hail storm cleared, and the temperature rose, so did the locusts, exactly as the Biblical account describes.

9.  Darkness. Following the Mount Saint Helens eruption, ash blocked out the sun and made it appear very dark.  Jacobovici quotes scientists as saying the cloud of ash from the Santorini eruption could have been 40 km from top to bottom, 200 km across–that would be approximately 25 miles high, and 122 miles across.  He quotes Prof Jean-Daniel Stanley of the Smithsonian Institution saying that ash was found at the ancient Egyptian capital of Avaris:  “We had to look through 10 to 20,000 grains to find one ash grain.  So, we found a total of 40 ash grains.  Not all ash looks the same.  Ash has an imprint aspect.  The ash particles that we find in the northern and northeastern Nile Delta are individual grains that came in from Santorini.”

10.  The Firstborn of Egypt die, and Israelite children are spared.  Jacobovici has an explanation for this phenomenon as well.  Once again, he cites the Cameroon eruption at Lake Nyos in 1986.

SJ, “The final plague took place at midnight, after Moses ordered the Israelites to sit down to what became known as the first Passover meal.  While the Israelites were involved in the Passover ritual, the Egyptians slept, and then it happened: every firstborn male Egyptian died.  Every house was affected.  No one has ever been able to offer up a plausible scientific explanation for the death of the firstborn until now.  According to our scenario, at this point in the sequence of events that began some 6 months earlier, the gas leaks that set the chain of plates in motion would have finally erupted.  Carbon dioxide would have seeped to the surface, and being heavier than air, would have killed animals and sleeping people before it dissipated harmlessly into the atmosphere.

In case you think all this is conjecture, consider this.  It happened in exactly the same way in 1986 at Lake Nyos, Cameroon.  On the fateful night of August 21, the villagers at Nyos went to sleep.  They couldn’t have known that the carbon dioxide gas which had turned the lake blood red, was now reaching a critical point.  As the people of Lake Nyos slept, the top of the lake was keeping the carbon down like a cap in a pop bottle.  But then the earth rumbled, and a landslide took place sending rock into the water, disturbing the surface pressure and releasing the gas.  The gas then rose to the surface, and like some alien monster, emerged from the water, droplets forming on it, turning the invisible gas  into a visible fog.  The fog then rolled across the water, and across the land, suffocating everything in its path.  And as suddenly as it appeared, it disappeared, dissolving harmlessly into the atmosphere.

The next day those who had been sleeping on higher ground woke up to find some 1800 people dead, hundreds of cattle and small animals also dead, all around there was deadly silence.

Villager, “I was sleeping among the dead people, inside the house, some of them were outside.  Animals every where lying cows, dogs, everything.  All the family, we were 56 but 53 died.”

SJ, “After the death of the first born, Pharaoh finally relented, letting Moses take his people out of Egypt.  According to the Bible, what made pharaoh give up was the selectivity of the deaths: the fact that it was only male, firstborn who died.  It was this selectivity that demonstrated to him that God himself was involved.  How can we account for this?

Well, Egyptian firstborn males had the privileged position.  They were the heirs to the throne, to property, title, and more.  They slept on Egyptian beds low to the ground, while their brothers and sisters slept on rooftops, sheds, and wagons.  The Israelites sitting up at their first Passover meal did not feel a thing, while the low traveling gas suffocated the privileged Egyptian males sleeping in their beds.  This conclusion is backed by the archaeology.  At Avaris, Professor Manfred Biatek has found mass graves dating to before and during our date for the Exodus.  The earlier graves are classic examples of ancient epidemics and killed men, women, and children.  But at the time of the Exodus, the mass grave he found has only males in it.

Biatek, “Here you see bones of burials in the early 18^th Dynasty.  They are all male victims. By the size of the graves, and the number of individuals in the graves, we think people died in rapid succession and the individuals were just thrown into the pit, some of them lying on their stomach, some lying on their side.  Some of the people were just 20 cm deep and just some dust put on top of them.  The bible says that pharaoh’s son also died during the plagues of the firstborn.  Since we claim that Ahmose is the pharaoh of the Exodus, we should be able to prove that Ahmose son died young.

Searching the Cairo museum, we found Ahmose’ son, the prince had died young, he was only 12.  For the first time ever, we have a face and a name to a victim of the biblical plagues.

So, I found this to be a really interesting scientific explanation for the plagues.  What do you think?  I found James Cameron and Simcha’s final words regarding these plagues interesting.  They discuss how these explanations will bother both skeptics and believers.

Cameron, “It seems that the Bible, geology, and archaeology, are all telling the same story.  But skeptics, who would like to regard the Exodus as myth, might resist the idea that it actually happened, because this would imply that God does indeed exist.  Believers on the other hand may feel that a scientific explanation of the Biblical story takes God out of the equation.“

SJ, “But in the book of Exodus, God does not suspend nature, he manipulates it.  In other words, according to the Bible, we should be able to understand the science behind the miracles.

Easter

You’ll notice that date of Easter varies considerably from year to year.  The reason for this is because of it’s relationship to the Passover.  Christ died during the Passover festival, and rose on the first day of the week (Sunday.)  There’s a Jewish joke that goes like this.

“When is Chanukkah this year?”

The other man smiled slyly and replied, “Same as always: the 25th of Kislev.”

There is a really interesting article on the Jewish calendar at Judaism 101.  (It’s a fantastic website.)  The Jewish calendar tries to correlate

the rotation of the Earth about its axis (a day); the revolution of the moon about the Earth (a month); and the revolution of the Earth about the sun (a year).

…

Months are either 29 or 30 days, corresponding to the 29½-day lunar cycle. Years are either 12 or 13 months, corresponding to the 12.4 month solar cycle.The lunar month on the Jewish calendar begins when the first sliver of moon becomes visible after the dark of the moon. In ancient times, the new months used to be determined by observation. When people observed the new moon, they would notify the Sanhedrin. When the Sanhedrin heard testimony from two independent, reliable eyewitnesses that the new moon occurred on a certain date, they would declare the rosh chodesh (first of the month) and send out messengers to tell people when the month began.

So, you can see that a 12 or 13 month year (they have leap months instead of leap days) can wreak havoc on knowing when holidays will be as we try to correlate the Jewish calendar with our Gregorian Calendar.  As Christians were debating when to celebrate Easter, the consensus was to keep Easter near the Passover festival.  As a result, the date of Easter changes with the changes in celebration of the Passover Festival.  Another Jewish joke says that every Jewish holiday can be boiled down to “They tried to kill us.  Let’s eat.”

I wish Mormons celebrated, rather than simply observed, the Easter holiday.  It would be nice to have more of a celebration of Easter; I really like Easter gets the short shrift for celebrations, but I think that Christmas celebrations in our church are lacking as well.  Two years ago, I posted the question, Why don’t Mormons celebrate Easter? It is my #2 post over the past 2 years. I always receive a spike in hits for that post around Easter.  If you do a Google search asking “do Mormons celebrate Easter”, my post comes up on the #2 position.  I expect that as Easter approaches this week, my 2 year old post will get another spike in views, and will probably be #1 by the end of the month.

So to answer my own question is, yes, we observe Easter, but we don’t celebrate Easter.  Do you wish there was a greater emphasis on Easter?

This quote comes from an episode of History’s Mysteries: Sodom and Gomorrah.  It was originally aired in 2000 on the History Channel.  (If you have Netflix, you can download it to your computer or television free with your subscription.  Here is the link.)  I’ve really enjoyed learning about archaeology evidence concerning these two Biblical cities.  I’m going to reference 2 videos here, and I’ll color-code quotes from each.  In addition to History’s Mysteries (highlighted in red), I’m also going to reference the 2006 series called Digging for the Truth: The Real Sin City: Sodom and Gomorrah (highlighted in purple.)

The Bible mentions 5 cities of the plain:  Zoar, Sodom, Gomorrah, Adman, and Zeboiim.  These cities date from the Early Bronze Age, approximately 3300-2050 BC.  William F. Albright, the “Father of Modern Biblical Archaeology” (from Johns Hopkins University), led a a team of archaeologists in 1924 into Jordan along the eastern side of the Dead Sea specifically to find evidence of Sodom and Gomorrah.  During the expedition, they discovered massive amounts of pottery dating to the Bronze Age.  They started digging, and discovered a site which is known today as Bab Edh-dhra.

Following the discovery of the site, Albright wrote an editorial indicating this could be a possible site for one of the infamous Biblical cities.  Strangely, Dr Walter Rast of Valparaiso University (Indiana) says that Albright decided to walk away from the site.  According to Rast, Albright decided

“That it probably would have been best if these sites are never found because of the evil that is associated with these sites, in the Biblical tradition.  Don’t undo God’s work.  Let it be left under the earth.”

Due to political instability in Jordan, the site was not studied again until the 1960’s.  Paul Lapp, director of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem began picked up where Albright left off, and soon found a massive cemetery.  At first it was believed that this massive cemetery might be the result of the massive destruction and loss of life associated with the Bible story.  However, carbon dating revealed that the cemetery held citizens over a 1300 year period from 3300 BC on down to 2000 BC, nullifying the idea that this large group of people died in a single catastrophe. Unfortunately, Lapp died in a swimming accident in 1970, and was not able to shed further light on the site.

In 1973, Walter Rast (of Valparaiso University) and Thomas Schaub, (a doctoral student at the Jerusalem University) discovered a second city just 8 miles from Bab Edh-dhra, which has been named Numeira.  Pottery remains were similar to Bab Edh-dhra, and this city had a more interesting demise.  There is evidence that the entire city was burned.  Was it arson from a conquering army, or fire and brimstone as it says in the Bible?  Archaeologists can’t tell, but it was definitely burned.  Quoting Schaub from the video,

“At Bab Edh-dhra, we have several things that indicate that the town had a violent interruption in its life.  There are walls severely tilted, almost to a 50 degree angle, walls that have collapsed and slid down.”

The scarred ruins discovered at Numeira, paint even a more shocking portrait of a fiery end.

Schaub, “We find the remains of that destruction right on the surface.  That’s the striking thing about this site of Numiera.  It’s so well-preserved.”

Rast, “When Schaub and I were walking around Numeira, we were able to see already evidence of a tremendous depth of destruction for this site.  Everywhere we have excavated, whether at the East end, or the West end, or the south side, we have found a deep level of destruction and debris.”

Schaub, “There is also along with fire, the collapse of a tower, and under that tower, we found skeletons of individuals—very dramatic exposure.”

Rast, “But they were not buried there, they were caught in some sort of destruction. They had a kind of character that was similar to what we have found much more extensively in Pompei.”

These 2 cities of the plains met their fates together, as in the fates of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Brimstone means literally “burning stone.”  In the Dead Sea region, highly flammable sulfur deposits are easily found in this region.  Josh Bernstein, host of Digging for the Truth, demonstrates how easy sulfur is to find and burn in the area.  If there was an earthquake releasing oil, natural gas, sulfur, and/or tar, it’s easy to imagine fire and brimstone raining down on Numeira.  There have been 17 earthquakes in the past 100 years—it is a well-known area of earthquakes.  National Geographic has a very dramatic simulation of what might have happened in this short 3 minute video.

But that’s not all.  Remember, there are 5 “cities of the plain” mentioned in the Bible, not just the infamous twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.

The Greek Orthodox Church of St George in Madaba, Jordan dates from the 6^th century AD.  The church was restored in the 19^th century.  The stone floor inside the church has mosaic from the Byzantine era containing a map.  The map is not complete, but Zoar, one of the 5 cities of the plan, is shown on the map.  Zoar is significant in the Biblical story, because Lot passed nearby as he escaped from Sodom and Gomorrah.

The map had intrigued Konstantinos Politis, director of the British Museum for years.  When superimposed on a modern map of the area, it seems to be quite accurate.  Zoar is shown to be on the southeastern edge of the Dead Sea, along with the image of another church in the area.

Armed with this map, Politis began looking for Zoar.   In 1987, Politis discovered an ancient monastery in a mountainous region southeast of the Dead Sea.  At the monastery, Politis found a Greek inscription: “St Lot, please bless these servants, April 605 AD.”

Politis, “It’s not a small chapel, it’s quite a large church built in the slopes, so there was quite a lot of effort and money that went into the effort.  The people who built this church were people of the Byzantine period, roughly from the 5^th, 6^th, 7^th centuries AD.  These are the early Christians.”

While an impressive discovery in its own right, a chance accident brings it to the forefront of Biblical archaeology.

Politis, “On September 15, 1991, two workmen were digging in the mountainside on the site and they came across this hall and it turned out to be a cave, and almost immediately I thought of the Old Testament: Genesis.  This can’t possibly be Lot’s cave? [He chuckles]”

As Politis searched the cave, he discovered a discovered pottery dating from 2500-1700 BC.  Apparently the cave was occupied by someone dating to the Early Bronze Age.

According to the Bible, Lot and his 2 daughters flee Sodom in the wake of its destruction.  They pass through the city of Zoar on their way to a cave.  This passage provides a clue to Politis’ discovery.

Politis, “The site is located about 2 km away from ancient Zoar, where Lot escaped the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, which some people have associated with Bab Edh-dhra and Numeira.”

Here’s another archaeological site in the right place and from the right time.  Could this really be Lot’s cave, the place where Lot’s daughters seduce him in order to repopulate the world?”

Wolpe, “If you claim that you found a cave where somebody commit incest 2000 years ago, [this] is a claim which could not possibly by any stretch of the imagination be proved.  It makes no more sense than pointing to any other cave and saying that’s Lot’s Cave because there is no evidence remaining of what happened, or if it happened, or how it happened, or where it happened.”

Politis, “Archaeological, scientifically, I am quite convinced that we have the church and the cave which the early Christians believed was Lot’s cave.  Whether Lot himself lived there and stayed with his daughters, I don’t know.  But to actually prove that this was Lot himself is impossible.”

I have to say, I find it really odd that these early Christians would build a monument where incest occurred.  David Wolpe rabbi of Sinai Temple (Los Angeles, California) explained the mind-set of Lot’s daughters, and why they would try to get pregnant by their father.

Wolpe, “What seems to have happened after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is that Lot’s daughters believed they were the last human beings left on earth.”

Intent on preserving their own lineage and all of humanity, Lot’s daughters devise a plan.  They come to him with great quantities of wine.

Wolpe, “They got their father drunk and had incestuous relationships with him in order to repopulate the world.  It says something very human about the desire to see life proliferate, even after a terrible catastrophe.

This is such an odd idea to me.  I can’t imagine believing what it would be like to think you’re the only human beings left on the planet.  Does it really seem the situation is so desperate that they needed to have incestuous relations?  They really odd thing to me is the idea that the sin of Sodom was sexual relations.  Isn’t this a bit of irony?  Is there any evidence of Sodom’s sinful sexual nature from these sites?

Rast, “You do have a couple of cases of syphilis as evidence in the bone material, but that would be natural for a community back at this time.  Sexually transmitted diseases would have been the case everywhere as a possibility in ancient society.”

Schaub, “But it would take a real stretch of the imagination to relate what we find in the ground to the decadence that seems to be associated with the Biblical story.”

Fontaine, “We sometimes find when we look at Bible stories, that people think they know what they say, but when we look more closely, we sometimes find the text is ambivalent.”

After close study of the Sodom and Gomorrah story in Genesis, many scholars have come to doubt its true intent was to condemn sexual deviance.

Fontaine, “The sin of the Sodomites is one of the biggest mysteries about this whole story.  The Bible deliberately makes it ambiguous in the book of Genesis as to what that sin might be.”

Schaub, “It’s just the one incident where people come and demand that, say in the story about Sodom in chapter 19, that Lot gives these men out to them so that they may know them—a sexual term, or has sexual intercourse with them.  That one incident really has to be tied into the larger picture of the few chapters which is really about hospitality.

Fontaine, “In the Jewish legendary material, again and again when we hear stories of Sodom, it’s not about sexual deviance; it’s about the people’s unwillingness to give charity to their poor, and their wretched treatment of strangers.”

Given the seeming primitive beliefs concerning adultery, taking the name of God in vain, is the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah really the idea that they didn’t take care of strangers very well?

Let’s turn to Lot’s wife, and the story of her turning into a pillar of salt.  Josh Bernstein talked with Rami G Khouri, Author of a book titled, Antiquities of the Jordan Rift Valley.

Khouri, “It’s a message.  It’s a moral message which is personified in these physical remains.”

This 20 foot tall salt-encrusted pillar is known as Lot’s Wife.  Bernstein refers to this pillar as a “Biblical scarecrow.”

Bernstein, “So if we’re looking at this metaphorically, and not literally, what’s the message?”

Khouri, “I think the message from the Biblical text certainly—and it goes throughout the whole Old Testament—is that people should obey God—they should be faithful, and trust God.  If you don’t obey God, you get zapped.   [This is] throughout the Bible.

Bernstein, “So the people could use this as a bogeyman.  They could say ‘you better listen to God when he speaks, because otherwise you’re going to turn into that pillar.’”

Khouri, “That’s right.  I think that’s the aim of the story.  Of course many stories of the Bible are like this.“

Wolpe has another perspective on the story.

“His wife was told not to look back, which has been symbolically taken as the idea that in some ways, when people leave evil practices, they pine for them; they still wish they could do what they used to do.”

So, what are we to make of these archaeological finds?  Is there enough evidence and explanation of Sodom and Gomorrah for you?  On the one hand, Rami Khouri says,

“These stories, these narratives, are based on facts that we can prove in many cases: geological facts, geographical facts, chronological facts, and historical facts…I think there were cities that were destroyed.  You will certainly find sites where the archaeological evidence synchronizes rather compellingly with the Biblical evidence.”

David Wolpe, “It would be remarkable if certain things in the Bible were proved to be archaeologically true, but it wouldn’t prove faith, because faith is by definition that which cannot be proven by empirical evidence.  You don’t use scientific criteria to prove faith.  I’m not looking to prove God through rocks and stones and ancient remains.”

….

Wolpe, “It is impossible to know if these cities are Sodom and Gomorrah even if you find evidence of destruction, because we don’t have in the Bible sufficient description of exactly what was in the cities to correspond to actual archaeological findings.  So, I remain a skeptic.”

Schaub, “Is there any possibility that these 2 sites could be the Biblical sites of Sodom and Gomorrah?  I’d say, ‘yes’, there is probably a connection.”

Dr Walter Rast, Valparaiso University, “But beyond circumstantial evidence, we don’t have much more to go on than the circumstantial evidence.  It cannot really stand by itself as really final proof.  You can set it forth as theory, and I wouldn’t mind setting it forth as theory.”

What do you make of all this?  Are the stories of Sodom and Gomorrah simply fables, or could there be some evidence to indicate some of these events actually transpired?

One of the interesting quotes from the book concerns whether Joseph started another denomination of Christianity, or a new religion.  From page 11,

Most antipolygamists were so alarmed by the Mormons that they refused to concede even that the latter-day faith was itself Christian….

In some senses, latter-day revelation and practices were indeed so distinct from other forms of Christianity that it is valid to call Mormonism a new religion.  Religious historian Jan Shipps has cogently argued that Mormonism in the nineteenth century brought believers out of one faith and into a new one–a distinct religion, emerging out of but different from Christianity.  As this book emphasizes, latter-day faith was also deeply related to American Protestantism and was frequently opposed with tools that had been deployed against Catholicism.  If nineteenth-century Mormonism was a new, post-Christian dispensation, it was also developed and defended in American space and time.

I guess what struck me about the quote was that Christianity developed out of Judiasm to form a new religion.  Is Mormonism a new religion formed from Christianity?