My little boy is in kindergarten. Along with the normal Christmas decorations he has been working on, he came home with a menorah, the candle Jews use to celebrate Hanukkah. (Now that I’m finally out of school myself, I plan to post more frequently–it was a tough semester.)
In my quest to find out things that aren’t generally well known, I came across a DVD called Mystery of the Three Kings by Questar Entertainment. I thought it brings up some really interesting points, some which really add to the Biblical story, while some details are a little strange. Here are some of the interesting things I took from the video.
Many critics of the Book of Mormon claim there is no archeologyical evidence. The Bible is assumed to be completely true. MSNBC has a link about a PBS show about archeaology of Bible that recently appeared on Nova.
William Dever, from the University of Arizona, is one of my favorite scholars. Let me quote from the PBS Article: Read more…
I came across this article in Newsweek, and archaeologists may have discovered King Solomon’s mine. This could be a major discovery, and add real evidence to the Biblical references to King Solomon.
I just finished a book called “DNA & Tradition”, by Rabbi Yaakov Kleiman. The book discusses evidence of Hebrew DNA, and talks about the science and religion of Judaism. As part of the discussion, I learned these interesting facts.
The oldest diaspora communities are in Assyria, later conquered by Babylonia (now modern-day Iraq) and Persia (now modern day Iran). They have been there for 2000-2500 years.
Wow, this is a really long post, and I didn’t cover everything, but what I did cover is quite considerable. I hope to hear some comments. I decided to update this post on 9/16 with some of Greg Prince’s insights into this topic. These updates are highlighted in orange. UPDATE Mar 10, 2009. Black Pete and William McCary were erroneously referred to as the same people. I made revisions to correct this inaccuracy, and this is shown in purple. I have also added some new information from Connell O’Donovan, who is one of the premier experts on this subject.
We have had an interesting discussion in a previous blog post on Joshua’s Unholy War. In this discussion, we have discussed the idea as to whether God commanded Joshua (and Moses) to commit genocide in wiping out the Canaanites in various cities, such as Jericho. I am claiming that the command to extinguish the Canaanites in the Book of Joshua was not inspired. As part of the discussion, we have explored two other topics: the priesthood ban, and Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac. I would like to focus this post on the priesthood ban, and will devote another post to the subject of Abraham.
When most of us hear the word “jihad” or “holy war”, we immediately know that a jihad is not what God wants. Most of us feel the same when we hear the word “crusade.” Really, does anyone think God wants people to fight in his name?
In the book of Joshua, Joshua claims to be commanded by God to destroy everyone and everything in what is now the land of Israel. Read more…
The history of baptism is quite interesting, and much more complex than most people know.
Baptism seems to be related to the ancient Jewish rite called “mikvah”, which was/is used for conversion to Judaism, ritual cleansing (Law of Moses type things, childbirth, women’s menstruation, and other things.) If you go to this link at Wikipedia, you can see a contemporary Mikvah font which look quite similar to a modern-day Christian baptismal font (at the bottom of the article.)
Read more…
I came across an article in the NY Times about a tablet dating from before the time of Christ, that “may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.” This would be a major shift in understanding of Jewish thought at the time of Jesus. The discovery is being called “a Dead Sea Scroll on stone.”
Here are some of the more interesting quotes from the article:
“Some Christians will find it shocking — a challenge to the uniqueness of their theology — while others will be comforted by the idea of it being a traditional part of Judaism,” Mr. Boyarin said.
We all know that science and religion can often be at odds with each other. Some examples include Evolution vs creation, DNA and the Book of Mormon; the list could be endless. In a recent comment, Book1830 makes the claim that Science and Religion (he refers to them as Scholarship and Apologetics) are at odds with each other. His summarized comments are below:
I posted previously on the topics of Gnosticism, Marcionism, and Montanism in my previous three posts. While discussing Marcionism, there was a debate about the apostasy. The topic got sidetracked into a discussion of the definition of scripture, so I thought I’d post a new topic regarding that topic.
Falcon makes the case that Joseph is a fraud because of his polygamy, and by extension, the Book of Mormon should not be considered scripture. So, I decided to issue a challenge. Here’s the reader’s digest version of the challenge, but you can see the entire set of instructions here.
I was reading an article in Time Magazine a while back about how Abraham is a central figure in Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. I was intrigued to learn that the article states, “The Koran includes scenes from Abraham’s childhood in which he chides his father for believing in idols and survives, Daniel-like, in a fiery furnace to which he is condemned for his fealty to Allah.” As I recall, the print version of the magazine had additional information on Abraham and Islam, including more details of this story.
To me, this sounds very similar to the account in the Pearl of Great Price. Is it possible, that Joseph translated a Muslim text? I find no accounts of this in the Bible, and I am not aware of any apocryphal writings about this story. Is anyone out there familiar with this? Are there other parallels with Islam, or is the story found elsewhere?
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