Month: December 2010

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Old Testament

It’s time to jump back in time as we start the minor prophets. Today we start with Hosea.

Background info, from our usual source,

Active during the last turbulent years of the northern kingdom, Hosea is the only native prophet of Israel whose oracles have been preserved in book form. Providing a unique view of late Israelite society and religion, Hosea uses the metaphor of an unhappy marriage to illustrate Yahweh’s relationship with Israel. Comparing his people to an unfaithful mate, the prophet urges a national return to Yahweh’s loving embrace, a reaffirmation of the bond that alone can save Israel from disaster. The first part describes Hosea’s marriage; the second enumerate Israel’s crimes and punishments; and the third gives a brief epilogue promising future repentance and reconciliation.

Wikipedia adds the following bit of temporal context:

Hosea prophesied during a dark and melancholic era of Israel’s history, the period of the Northern Kingdom’s decline and fall in the 8th century BC.

In today’s reading, Hosea receives a message telling him to marry a prostitute. This marriage will  illustrate how Israel has turned to other gods. He marries Gomer, a prostitute, and the children she bears are given names that are also symbolic of Israel’s relationship with God.

• Jezreel is named after the valley where King Jehu committed murders. This child symbolizes the ending of Israel’s independence.
• Lo-ruhamah means “not loved”, and that little girl represents God’s lack of love for the people of Israel.
• Lo-ammi means “not my people”. This little boy represents how the people of Israel are no longer God’s people.

New Testament

In today’s reading, the author tells us that the children of God are those who accept that Jesus was the messiah. Only these people can win the battle against the world.

The author of John then describes the basis on which he believes:

And Jesus Christ was revealed as God’s Son by his baptism in water and by shedding his blood on the cross—not by water only, but by water and blood. And the Spirit, who is truth, confirms it with his testimony. So we have these three witnesses— the Spirit, the water, and the blood—and all three agree. Since we believe human testimony, surely we can believe the greater testimony that comes from God.

The argument from internal testimony is problematic.

First, there is no way to verify that the testimony comes from God. A key factor in determining the reliability of a human testimony is being able to identify the source of the testimony. If the validity of a testimony depends on someone being who they say they are, then the fact that they claim to be that person will not, on its own, be sufficient to support that testimony.

It’s also worth nothing that human testimonies, even from verified sources, are not generally accepted in isolation. They must be corroborated by external evidence or independent testimonies. A testimony without corroborating evidence is generally considered lower quality or even unreliable.

The author implies that strong feeling can be used to determine truth:

All who believe in the Son of God know in their hearts that this testimony is true. Those who don’t believe this are actually calling God a liar because they don’t believe what God has testified about his Son.

However, strong feeling can only be used to determine subjective truths (opinions of beauty or taste or internal emotional state). Strong feeling has a terrible track record of distinguishing objective truths. To stick within the realm of religion, Muslims have strong emotional verification that the Quran is the true holy book. Christians have the same feeling about the OT and NT scriptures. Both of them cannot be right. Feelings, no matter how strong, cannot provide adequate justification for belief.

For more on the inadequacy of feelings for determining objective truths see this post introducing a series on logic and the many good books on the working of the brain such as Jonah Lehrer’s How We Decide.

Psalms and Proverbs

A medley of proverbs against flattery and sin and for caring for the poor and wisdom.

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Old Testament

Last day of Daniel. After this, we are going to start whizzing through the rest of the OT books.

Today we continue with the “explanation” of Daniel’s vision. I quote “explanation” because at this point it’s more like a telling of future events that used Danie’s vision as a starting point. Today’s continuation focuses on persecution and on a future king who claims greatness for himself. Of that king it is said

He will have no respect for the gods of his ancestors, or for the god loved by women, or for any other god

Notice the phrase I highlighted above. One thing that has been a persistent minor thread throughout our Old Testament readings is that many of the people who worshiped alternate gods were women. This persistence indicates the inadequacy of Yahweh to fulfill the needs of all his people and also underscores how much the temple culture excluded women.

After that, we read about more war and destruction.

At the end of time, the archangel Michael (the one who helped the messenger get through to Daniel and who guards Israel) will arise and those “whose name[s] [are] written in the book of the dead” will also be brought back from the dead.

The messenger then tells Daniel to keep this message secret until the end times. I suppose that is the author’s attempting to explain why this work did not appear until many years after it was set. This also adds strength to the implication that the author of Daniel believed that the end times were near (since the explanation had been revealed). As usual, I observe that the end times have sure been going on for a long time.

Amazingly, we actually get a concrete number on how long things will last:

From the time the daily sacrifice is stopped and the sacrilegious object that causes desecration is set up to be worshiped, there will be 1,290 days. And blessed are those who wait and remain until the end of the 1,335 days!

Well, the first part has been true for much longer than a thousand and some odd days, but that’s all we can really conclude since it is unclear what is meant by the “object that causes desecration”.

And that’s it. Tomorrow we start a new book.

New Testament

We finally get to the author’s much anticipated tests for determining truth. The tests prove to be uninspiring: a true prophet is one who holds certain positions on certain topics. The people belong to God are also those who listen to the author and his community. Anyone who does not agree with them has the spirit of deception rather than the spirit of truth. In short, the criteria that these believers are supposed to use for determining whether or not to believe someone is making sure they already agree with the opinions of the community.

At least the author of this book is consistent about his emphasis on the importance of loving one another.  This time around, he reinforces those ideas of love by emphasizing the vastness of God’s love.  The author also emphasizes the importance of the Holy Spirit and Jesus. I do have to say that anything positive this message of love might convey is pretty much washed out by the repeated assertions that this loving attitude only needs to apply to fellow believers.

Psalms and Proverbs

Today’s proverbs are all things we have heard before.

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Old Testament

Daniel’s vision, which I have already largely forgotten, is explained (sets of seven and anointed ones, I believe). It’s pretty much all politics. Kingdoms rise, fall, and meet in battle. Eventually there will be some prosecution involved. The details are not particularly interesting.

New Testament

A continuation of the discussion on righteousness and sin. The lack of righteous living or loving other believers shows that one does not belong to God. The author of this epistle seems to be carefully implying that having those two traits does not necessarily imply that one does belong to God. He also seems to be adding more weight to my earlier impression that he has watered down Jesus’ command to love others to the much weaker command to love other believers.

The discussion on love which follows further solidifies the author’s view on this point. Compassion and action are set out as necessary features of love.

Psalms and Proverbs

I like this proverb:

Whoever stubbornly refuses to accept criticism
will suddenly be destroyed beyond recovery.

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Old Testament

Ugh. I am exhausted tonight. The holiday season seems to generate a lot of activity.

Daniel prays to God. He declares how wrong and sinful the Israelites have been and how just their punishment is. But he contrasts that with reminders of God’s mercy and forgiveness. Daniel is also sure to point out that helping the Israelites would be in God’s own best interest since the people and city bear his name. This is not a bad tactic since we have seen before that God does not like mocking and has been said to change his mind about murdering his people because it would cause his name to be mocked.

Daniel’s prayer is answered with a message from the angel Gabriel. Rather prompt and direct, which is nice for the narrative flow. Gabriel’s response takes us back into a discussion of the end times (but with less horns). Gabriel explains that “a period of seventy sets of seven” (no units provided) is the time allocated for the Jews to stop rebelling, end their sin, atone, and otherwise do good things. Seven of these sets of seven will pass before the Anointed One becomes ruler. 62 more will see the end of the Anointed One’s reign. In the last set, the Anointed One will be killed and an evil ruler will arise, and then the evil ruler will meet his fate.

That is all claimed to have happened in the reign of Darius the Mede. During the reign of Cyrus of Persia, Daniel has another vision. After some time in mourning, Daniel sees a messenger who makes Daniel feel weak and afraid. The messenger would have come earlier but he was blocked by “the spirit prince of the kingdom of Persia”, whoever that is supposed to be. Fortunately, the archangel Michael comes to help the messenger. (Although we later learn that the messenger will have to return to help with this battle and then they will go on to fight the spirit prince of Greece. Also, apparently Michael is the spirit prince of Israel. We sure are getting a lot of angels and archangels and spirits in this book despite having barley seem them thus far. )

In any case, having arrived, the messenger says he will explain Daniel’s vision of the future. But that will have to wait until tomorrow.

New Testament

According to todays reading: The last hour is here! The Antichrist is coming! And many antichrists have appeared already!

And these already appeared antichrists are… people who left the author’s church. In other words, disagreeing with the author is enough to get you labeled an antichrist. Also, by the author’s definition I am an antichrist. Given how explicit he is about it, I am surprised I have not had that thrown at me as an insult more often.

The author encourages the recipients of this epistle to remain faithful to what they have been taught (so as to avoid becoming antichrists, I suppose) and to listen to the teachings of the Holy Spirit. On what basis does the author claim that the people who left his church did not sincerely think they were listening to the Holy Spirit?

Today’s reading finishes with a discussion that all who do right are God’s children and will someday be like Christ. All who sin does not know Jesus and is acting contrary to God. On its own, this discussion could be taken as support for a more universal Christianity, but given the previous context, it seems likely that the author considered a key aspect of doing right to be believing the right thing.

Psalms and Proverbs

Today’s first proverb praises giving to the poor as a path to prosperity. The second, which sounds very much like others we have seen, contrasts the wicked and the godly.

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Old Testament

Last month!

Another vision Daniel saw during Belshazzar’s reign.

In this vision, Daniel sees a ram overpower everything in its path. That ram is eventually defeated by a goat that does even worse things, including rebelling against the armies of heaven. The vision ends with voices which say that the goats desecrating rebellion will lass 2300 days.

This time around, Daniel has the angel Gabriel to explain the dream. Meeting Gabriel was rather a terrifying experience for Daniel. The ram, Gabriel reveals, represents the empires of Media and Persia. The goal which defeats the ram represents the Greek Empire which will eventually have a ruler who causes terrible destruction but will eventually be defeated. And apparently, these empires, the Median, Persian, and Greek, are doing their destroying at the end times. Of course, all those empires passed away a rather long time ago now.

Apparently, this vision made Daniel sick. Poor Daniel.

New Testament

Believers should model their lives on Jesus and take as their primary commandment the command to love each other. If they sin, Jesus will advocate for them, but the believers’ obedience to God’s laws will show how much the believers know God.

This seems like generally good advice, except that the author of John emphasizes loving fellow believers and seems to ignore loving others generally. Yet the story of the good Samaritan emphasized that it was important not only to love the people you recognized as fellow believers but to recognize as neighbors those who you might generally consider to be outsiders.

The discussion of love is followed by a poem addressing the letter’s recipients and a warning not to love this world.

Psalms and Proverbs

Today’s proverbs condemn greed and trusting your own insight.

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Old Testament

Now the Book of Daniel is starting to read more like an apocalypse. We step back in time slightly to a vision Daniel has during the reign of King Belshazzar (the “writing on the wall” guy). In this vision, Daniel  sees four strange beast. The fourth was most terrible of all. This fourth beast had 10 horns; another horn later replaced three of those ten. The new horn had eyes and a mouth and boasted. I will agree with Daniel in declaring that to be one freaky horn. In any case, the beasts eventually have their authority taken away and the horned beast is destroyed. A son of man is then given sovereignty over all nations.

Fortunately for us, Daniel asks a random person what the dream means and that person is able to explain it. The beasts represent different kingdoms. The fourth beast represents a particularly oppressive and destructive kingdom. The horns represent the rulers of that empire. Eventually, this kingdom will be judged and destroyed, and the sovereignty and power of the world’s kingdoms will be given to God’s holy people (presumably the Israelites in the view of the original author and Christian believers in the view of modern Christians). This kingdom will last forever.

That was weird but, at least, rather amusing.

New Testament

New book! What does Harris have to say?

An important tract directed against secessionists from the Johannine community, 1 John establishes a set of criteria by which to distinguish true belief from error.

Criteria for determining truth is good. It would be nice if these ended up being decent criteria, but I am not going to hold my breath. The discussion of the authorship of this epistle gives insight both into these letters and into the gospel attributed to the apostle John:

Most scholars believe that the same person wrote all three [epistles of John] but that he is not to be identified with either the apostle John or the author of the Gospel. Although some critics link him with the editor who added Chapter 21 to the Gospel, most commentators view the letter writer as a separate party, albeit an influential member of the Johannine “brotherhood”. The majority of scholars date the letters to about 100-110 CE, a decade or two after the Gospel’s composition.

We also learn that apparently the author of this book was another who believed that the activities he observed indicated the nearness of the end of time.

The book opens with a proclamation that the author and his fellow believers saw and touched Jesus who existed with God before he was revealed to the believers. After that the author claims that God is light, believers should live in the light, Jesus’ blood cleanses sin, and everyone has sin which must be confessed.

Psalms and Proverbs

Honest criticism is declared to be be better than flattery, in the end. That last bit is important since people generally seem to resent honest criticism at the time. Also, stealing from your parents makes you no better than a murderer; I am not sure I would go that far, but it certainly makes you a very very bad person.