Pie Jesu Dómine

Is There Any Evidence for Jesus Outside the Bible? (part 2)

Mara Bar-Serapion (70AD)

 Sometime after 70AD, a Syrian philosopher named Mara Bar-Serapion, writing to encourage his son, compared the life and persecution of Jesus with that of other philosophers who were persecuted for their ideas. The fact Jesus is known to be a real person with this kind of influence is important. Mara Bar-Serapion refers to Jesus as the “Wise King”:

 

“What benefit did the Athenians obtain by putting Socrates to death? Famine and plague came upon them as judgment for their crime. Or, the people of Samos for burning Pythagoras? In one moment their country was covered with sand. Or the Jews by murdering their wise king?…After that their kingdom was abolished. God rightly avenged these men…The wise king…Lived on in the teachings he enacted.”

 

From this account, we can add to our understanding of Jesus: He was a wise and influential man who died for His beliefs. The Jewish leadership was somehow responsible for Jesus’ death. Jesus’ followers adopted His beliefs and lived their lives accordingly.

 

Phlegon (80-140AD)

 In a manner similar to Thallus, Julius Africanus also mentions a historian named Phlegon who wrote a chronicle of history around 140AD. In this history, Phlegon also mentions the darkness surrounding the crucifixion in an effort to explain it:

 

“Phlegon records that, in the time of Tiberius Caesar, at full moon, there was a full eclipse of the sun from the sixth to the ninth hour.” (Africanus, Chronography, 18:1)

Phlegon is also mentioned by Origen (an early church theologian and scholar, born in Alexandria):

 

“Now Phlegon, in the thirteenth or fourteenth book, I think, of his Chronicles, not only ascribed to Jesus a knowledge of future events . . . but also testified that the result corresponded to His predictions.” (Origen Against Celsus, Book 2, Chapter 14)

 

“And with regard to the eclipse in the time of Tiberius Caesar, in whose reign Jesus appears to have been crucified, and the great earthquakes which then took place … ” (Origen Against Celsus, Book 2, Chapter 33)

 

“Jesus, while alive, was of no assistance to himself, but that he arose after death, and exhibited the marks of his punishment, and showed how his hands had been pierced by nails.” (Origen Against Celsus, Book 2, Chapter 59)

 

From these accounts, we can add something to our understanding: Jesus had the ability to accurately predict the future, was crucified under the reign of Tiberius Caesar and demonstrated His wounds after he was resurrected.

 

Pliny the Younger (61-113AD)

 Early Christians were also described in early, non-Christian history. Pliny the Younger, in a letter to the Roman emperor Trajan, describes the lifestyles of early Christians:

 

“They (the Christians) were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and bound themselves by a solemn oath, not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble to partake of food—but food of an ordinary and innocent kind.”

 

This early description of the first Christians documents several facts: the first Christians believed Jesus was GOD, the first Christians upheld a high moral code, and these early followers met regularly to worship Jesus.

 

Suetonius (69-140AD)

 Suetonius was a Roman historian and annalist of the Imperial House under the Emperor Hadrian. His writings about Christians describe their treatment under the Emperor Claudius (41-54AD):

 

“Because the Jews at Rome caused constant disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus (Christ), he (Claudius) expelled them from the city (Rome).” (Life of Claudius, 25:4)

 

This expulsion took place in 49AD, and in another work, Suetonius wrote about the fire which destroyed Rome in 64 A.D. under the reign of Nero. Nero blamed the Christians for this fire and he punished Christians severely as a result:

 

“Nero inflicted punishment on the Christians, a sect given to a new and mischievous religious belief.” (Lives of the Caesars, 26.2)

 

There is much we can learn from Suetonius as it is related to the life of early Christians. From this account, we know Jesus had an immediate impact on His followers: They were committed to their belief Jesus was God and withstood the torment and punishment of the Roman Empire. Jesus had a curious and immediate impact on His followers, empowering them to die courageously for what they knew to be true.

 

Lucian of Samosata: (115-200 A.D.)

Lucian was a Greek satirist who spoke sarcastically of Christ and Christians, but in the process, he did affirm they were real people and never referred to them as fictional characters:

 

“The Christians, you know, worship a man to this day—the distinguished personage who introduced their novel rites, and was crucified on that account….You see, these misguided creatures start with the general conviction that they are immortal for all time, which explains the contempt of death and voluntary self-devotion which are so common among them; and then it was impressed on them by their original lawgiver that they are all brothers, from the moment that they are converted, and deny the gods of Greece, and worship the crucified sage, and live after his laws. All this they take quite on faith, with the result that they despise all worldly goods alike, regarding them merely as common property.” (Lucian, The Death of Peregrine. 11-13)

 

From this account we can add to our description of Jesus: He taught about repentance and about the family of God. These teachings were quickly adopted by Jesus’ followers and exhibited to the world around them.

 

Celsus (175AD)

This is the last hostile, non-Christian account we will examine (although there are many other later accounts in history). Celsus was quite antagonistic to the claims of the Gospels, but in his criticism he unknowingly affirmed and reinforced the Biblical authors and their content. His writing is extensive and he alludes to 80 different Biblical quotes, confirming their early appearance in history. In addition, he admits the miracles of Jesus were generally believed in the early 2nd century:

 

“Jesus had come from a village in Judea, and was the son of a poor Jewess who gained her living by the work of her own hands. His mother had been turned out of doors by her husband, who was a carpenter by trade, on being convicted of adultery [with a soldier named Panthéra (i.32)]. Being thus driven away by her husband, and wandering about in disgrace, she gave birth to Jesus, a bastard. Jesus, on account of his poverty, was hired out to go to Egypt. While there he acquired certain (magical) powers which Egyptians pride themselves on possessing. He returned home highly elated at possessing these powers, and on the strength of them gave himself out to be a god.”

 

Celsus admits Jesus was reportedly born of a virgin, but then argues this could supernatural account could not be possible and offers the idea Jesus was the illegitimate son of a man named Panthera (an idea borrowed from Jews who opposed Jesus at the time). But in writing this account, Celsus does confirm several important claims: Jesus had an earthly father who was a carpenter, possessed unusual magical powers and claimed to be God.

 

Hostile Non-Biblical Jewish Accounts

 In addition to classical pagan sources chronicling the life of Jesus and His followers, there are also a number of ancient hostile Jewish sources describing Jesus. These are written by Jewish theologians, historians and leaders who were definitely not sympathetic to the Christian cause. Their writings are often very harsh, critical and even demeaning to Jesus. But there is still much these writings confirm:

 

Josephus (37-101AD)

 In more detail than any other non-biblical historian, Josephus writes about Jesus in his “the Antiquities of the Jews” in 93AD. Josephus was born just four years after the crucifixion. He was a consultant for Jewish rabbis at an early age, became a Galilean military commander by the age of sixteen, and he was an eyewitness to much of what he recorded in the first century A.D. Under the rule of Roman emperor Vespasian, Josephus was allowed to write a history of the Jews. This history includes three passages about Christians, one in which he describes the death of John the Baptist, one in which he mentions the execution of James (and describes him as the brother of Jesus the Christ), and a final passage which describes Jesus as a wise man and the messiah. There is much legitimate controversy about the writing of Josephus, because the first discoveries of his writings are late enough to have been re-written by Christians who were accused of making additions to the text. So to be fair, we’ll examine a scholarly reconstruction stripped of Christian embellishment:

 

“Now around this time lived Jesus, a wise man. For he was a worker of amazing deeds and was a teacher of people who gladly accept the truth. He won over both many Jews and many Greeks. Pilate, when he heard him accused by the leading men among us, condemned him to the cross, (but) those who had first loved him did not cease (doing so). To this day the tribe of Christians named after him has not disappeared” (This neutral reconstruction follows closely the one proposed by John Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus: The Roots of the Problem and the Person).

 

Now there are many other ancient versions of Josephus’ writing which are even more explicit about the nature of Jesus’ miracles, life and his status as the Christ, but let’s take this conservative version and see what we can learn. From this text, we can conclude: Jesus lived in Palestine, was a wise man and a teacher, worked amazing deeds, was accused by the Jews, crucified under Pilate and had followers called Christians.

 

Jewish Talmud (400-700AD)

 While the earliest Talmudic writings of Jewish Rabbis appear in the 5th century, the tradition of these Rabbinic authors indicates they are faithfully transmitting teachings from the early “Tannaitic” period of the 1^st Century BC to the 2^nd Century AD. Scholars believe there are a number of Talmudic writings referring to Jesus, and many of these writings are said to use code words to describe Jesus (such as “Balaam” or “Ben Stada” or “a certain one”). But for our purposes we’ll be very conservative and limit our examination to the passages referring to Jesus in a more direct way:

 

“Jesus practiced magic and led Israel astray” (b. Sanhedrin 43a; cf. t. Shabbat 11.15; b. Shabbat 104b)

 

“Rabbi Hisda (d. 309) said that Rabbi Jeremiah bar Abba said, ‘What is that which is written, ‘No evil will befall you, nor shall any plague come near your house’? (Psalm 91:10)… ‘No evil will befall you’ (means) that evil dreams and evil thoughts will not tempt you; ‘nor shall any plague come near your house’ (means) that you will not have a son or a disciple who burns his food like Jesus of Nazareth.” (b. Sanhedrin 103a; cf. b. Berakhot 17b)

 

“Our rabbis have taught that Jesus had five disciples: Matthai, Nakai, Nezer, Buni and Todah. They brought Matthai to (to trial). He said, ‘Must Matthai be killed? For it is written, ‘When (mathai) shall I come and appear before God?’” (Psalm 92:2) They said to him, “Yes Matthai must be killed, for it is written, ‘When (mathai) he dies his name will perish’” (Psalm 41:5). They brought Nakai. He said to them, “Must Nakai be killed? For it is written, “The innocent (naqi) and the righteous will not slay’” (Exodus 23:7). They said to him, “Yes, Nakai must be kille, for it is written, ‘In secret places he slays the innocent (naqi)’” (Psalm 10:8). (b. Sanhedrin 43a; the passage continues in a similar way for Nezer, Buni and Todah)

 

And this, perhaps the most famous of Talmudic passages about Jesus:

 

“It was taught: On the day before the Passover they hanged Jesus. A herald went before him for forty days (proclaiming), “He will be stoned, because he practiced magic and enticed Israel to go astray. Let anyone who knows anything in his favor come forward and plead for him.” But nothing was found in his favor, and they hanged him on the day before the Passover. (b. Sanhedrin 43a)

 

From just these passages mentioning Jesus by name, we can conclude the following: Jesus had magical powers, led the Jews away from their beliefs, had disciples who were martyred for their faith (one of whom was named Matthai), and was executed on the day before the Passover.

 

The Toledot Yeshu (1000AD)

 The Toledot Yeshu is a medieval Jewish retelling of the life of Jesus. It is completely anti-Christian, to be sure. There are many versions of these ‘retellings’, and as part of the transmitted oral and written tradition of the Jews, we can presume their original place in antiquity, dating back to the time of Jesus’ first appearance as an influential leader who was drawing Jews away from their faith in the Law. The Toledot Yeshu contains a determined effort to explain away the miracles of Jesus and to deny the virgin birth. In some places, the text is quite vicious, but it does confirm many elements of the New Testament writings. Let’s take a look at a portion of the text (Jesus is called ‘Yehoshua’):

 

“In the year 3671 (in Jewish reckonging, it being ca 90 B.C.) in the days of King Jannaeus, a great misfortune befell Israel, when there arose a certain disreputable man of the tribe of Judah, whose name was Joseph Pandera. He lived at Bethlehem, in Judah. Near his house dwelt a widow and her lovely and chaste daughter named Miriam. Miriam was betrothed to Yohanan, of the royal house of David, a man learned in the Torah and God-fearing. At the close of a certain Sabbath, Joseph Pandera, attractive and like a warrior in appearance, having gazed lustfully upon Miriam, knocked upon the door of her room and betrayed her by pretending that he was her betrothed husband, Yohanan. Even so, she was amazed at this improper conduct and submitted only against her will. Thereafter, when Yohanan came to her, Miriam expressed astonishment at behavior so foreign to his character. It was thus that they both came to know the crime of Joseph Pandera and the terrible mistake on the part of Miriam… Miriam gave birth to a son and named him Yehoshua, after her brother. This name later deteriorated to Yeshu (“Yeshu” is the Jewish “name” for Jesus. It means “May His Name Be Blotted Out”). On the eighth day he was circumcised. When he was old enough the lad was taken by Miriam to the house of study to be instructed in the Jewish tradition. One day Yeshu walked in front of the Sages with his head uncovered, showing shameful disrespect. At this, the discussion arose as to whether this behavior did not truly indicate that Yeshu was an illegitimate child and the son of a niddah. Moreover, the story tells that while the rabbis were discussing the Tractate Nezikin, he gave his own impudent interpretation of the law and in an ensuing debate he held that Moses could not be the greatest of the prophets if he had to receive counsel from Jethro. This led to further inquiry as to the antecedents of Yeshu, and it was discovered through Rabban Shimeon ben Shetah that he was the illegitimate son of Joseph Pandera. Miriam admitted it. After this became known, it was necessary for Yeshu to flee to Upper Galilee. After King Jannaeus, his wife Helene ruled over all Israel. In the Temple was to be found the Foundation Stone on which were engraven the letters of God’s Ineffable Name. Whoever learned the secret of the Name and its use would be able to do whatever he wished. Therefore, the Sages took measures so that no one should gain this knowledge. Lions of brass were bound to two iron pillars at the gate of the place of burnt offerings. Should anyone enter and learn the Name, when he left the lions would roar at him and immediately the valuable secret would be forgotten. Yeshu came and learned the letters of the Name; he wrote them upon the parchment which he placed in an open cut on his thigh and then drew the flesh over the parchment. As he left, the lions roared and he forgot the secret. But when he came to his house he reopened the cut in his flesh with a knife an lifted out the writing. Then he remembered and obtained the use of the letters. He gathered about himself three hundred and ten young men of Israel and accused those who spoke ill of his birth of being people who desired greatness and power for themselves. Yeshu proclaimed, “I am the Messiah; and concerning me Isaiah prophesied and said, ‘Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.’” He quoted other messianic texts, insisting, “David my ancestor prophesied concerning me: ‘The Lord said to me, thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee.’” The insurgents with him replied that if Yeshu was the Messiah he should give them a convincing sign. They therefore, brought to him a lame man, who had never walked. Yeshu spoke over the man the letters of the Ineffable Name, and the leper was healed. Thereupon, they worshipped him as the Messiah, Son of the Highest. When word of these happenings came to Jerusalem, the Sanhedrin decided to bring about the capture of Yeshu. They sent messengers, Annanui and Ahaziah, who, pretending to be his disciples, said that they brought him an invitation from the leaders of Jerusalem to visit them. Yeshu consented on condition the members of the Sanhedrin receive him as a lord. He started out toward Jerusalem and, arriving at Knob, acquired an ass on which he rode into Jerusalem, as a fulfillment of the prophecy of Zechariah. The Sages bound him and led him before Queen Helene, with the accusation: “This man is a sorcerer and entices everyone.” Yeshu replied, “The prophets long ago prophesied my coming: ‘And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse,’ and I am he; but as for them, Scripture says ‘Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly.’” Queen Helene asked the Sages: “What he says, is it in your Torah?” They replied: “It is in our Torah, but it is not applicable to him, for it is in Scripture: ‘And that prophet which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die.’ He has not fulfilled the signs and conditions of the Messiah.” Yeshu spoke up: “Madam, I am the Messiah and I revive the dead.” A dead body was brought in; he pronounced the letters of the Ineffable Name and the corpse came to life. The Queen was greatly moved and said: “This is a true sign.” She reprimanded the Sages and sent them humiliated from her presence. Yeshu’s dissident followers increased and there was controversy in Israel. Yeshu went to Upper Galilee. the Sages came before the Queen, complaining that Yeshu practiced sorcery and was leading everyone astray. Therefore she sent Annanui and Ahaziah to fetch him. The found him in Upper Galilee, proclaiming himself the Son of God. When they tried to take him there was a struggle, but Yeshu said to the men of Upper Galilee: “Wage no battle.” He would prove himself by the power which came to him from his Father in heaven. He spoke the Ineffable Name over the birds of clay and they flew into the air. He spoke the same letters over a millstone that had been placed upon the waters. He sat in it and it floated like a boat. When they saw this the people marveled. At the behest of Yeshu, the emissaries departed and reported these wonders to the Queen. She trembled with astonishment. Then the Sages selected a man named Judah Iskarioto and brought him to the Sanctuary where he learned the letters of the Ineffable Name as Yeshu had done. When Yeshu was summoned before the queen, this time there were present also the Sages and Judah Iskarioto. Yeshu said: “It is spoken of me, ‘I will ascend into heaven.’” He lifted his arms like the wings of an eagle and he flew between heaven and earth, to the amazement of everyone…Yeshu was seized. His head was covered with a garment and he was smitten with pomegranate staves; but he could do nothing, for he no longer had the Ineffable Name. Yeshu was taken prisoner to the synagogue of Tiberias, and they bound him to a pillar. To allay his thirst they gave him vinegar to drink. On his head they set a crown of thorns. There was strife and wrangling between the elders and the unrestrained followers of Yeshu, as a result of which the followers escaped with Yeshu to the region of Antioch; there Yeshu remained until the eve of the Passover. Yeshu then resolved to go the Temple to acquire again the secret of the Name. That year the Passover came on a Sabbath day. On the eve of the Passover, Yeshu, accompanied by his disciples, came to Jerusalem riding upon an ass. Many bowed down before him. He entered the Temple with his three hundred and ten followers. One of them, Judah Iskarioto apprised the Sages that Yeshu was to be found in the Temple, that the disciples had taken a vow by the Ten Commandments not to reveal his identity but that he would point him out by bowing to him. So it was done and Yeshu was seized. Asked his name, he replied to the question by several times giving the names Mattai, Nakki, Buni, Netzer, each time with a verse quoted by him and a counter-verse by the Sages. Yeshu was put to death on the sixth hour on the eve of the Passover and of the Sabbath. When they tried to hang him on a tree it broke, for when he had possessed the power he had pronounced by the Ineffable Name that no tree should hold him. He had failed to pronounce the prohibition over the carob-stalk, for it was a plant more than a tree, and on it he was hanged until the hour for afternoon prayer, for it is written in Scripture, “His body shall not remain all night upon the tree.” They buried him outside the city. On the first day of the week his bold followers came to Queen Helene with the report that he who was slain was truly the Messiah and that he was not in his grave; he had ascended to heaven as he prophesied. Diligent search was made and he was not found in the grave where he had been buried. A gardener had taken him from the grave and had brought him into his garden and buried him in the sand over which the waters flowed into the garden. Queen Helene demanded, on threat of a severe penalty, that the body of Yeshu be shown to her within a period of three days. There was a great distress. When the keeper of the garden saw Rabbi Tanhuma walking in the field and lamenting over the ultimatum of the Queen, the gardener related what he had done, in order that Yeshu’s followers should not steal the body and then claim that he had ascended into heaven. The Sages removed the body, tied it to the tail of a horse and transported it to the Queen, with the words, “This is Yeshu who is said to have ascended to heaven.” Realizing that Yeshu was a false prophet who enticed the people and led them astray, she mocked the followers but praised the Sages.

 

Now in spite of the fact that the ancient Jews who wrote this did their best to argue for another interpretation of the life of Christ, they did make several claims here about Jesus. This passage, along with several others from the Toledot tradition, confirm: Jesus claimed to be the Messiah, healed the lame, said Isaiah foretold of His life, was worshipped as God, arrested by the Jews, beaten with rods, given vinegar to drink, wore a crown of thorns, rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, was betrayed by a man named Judah Iskarioto, and had followers who claimed He was resurrected and ascended, leaving an empty tomb.

 

Let’s review what we’ve learned from hostile pagan and Jewish sources describing Jesus. We’ll do our best to discount the anti-Christian bias we see in the sources, just as we discounted the pro-Christian bias we think might exist in some versions of the writing of Josephus. Many elements of the Biblical record are confirmed by these hostile accounts, in spite of the fact they deny the supernatural power of Jesus:

Jesus was born and lived in Palestine. He was born, supposedly, to a virgin and had an earthly father who was a carpenter. He was a teacher who taught that through repentance and belief, all followers would become brothers and sisters. He led the Jews away from their beliefs. He was a wise man who claimed to be God and the Messiah. He had unusual magical powers and performed miraculous deeds. He healed the lame. He accurately predicted the future. He was persecuted by the Jews for what He said, betrayed by Judah Iskarioto. He was beaten with rods, forced to drink vinegar and wear a crown of thorns. He was crucified on the eve of the Passover and this crucifixion occurred under the direction of Pontius Pilate, during the time of Tiberius. On the day of His crucifixion, the sky grew dark and there was an earthquake. Afterward, He was buried in a tomb and the tomb was later found to be empty. He appeared to His disciples resurrected from the grave and showed them His wounds. These disciples then told others Jesus was resurrected and ascended into heaven. Jesus’ disciples and followers upheld a high moral code. One of them was named Matthai. The disciples were also persecuted for their faith but were martyred without changing their claims. They met regularly to worship Jesus, even after His death.

 

Not bad, given this information is coming from ancient accounts hostile to the Biblical record. While these non-Christian sources interpret the claims of Christianity differently, they affirm the initial, evidential claims of the Biblical authors (much like those who interpret the evidence related to Kennedy’s assassination and the Twin Tower attacks come to different conclusions but affirm the basic facts of the historical events). Is there any evidence for Jesus outside the Bible? Yes, and the ancient non-Christian interpretations (and critical commentaries) of the Gospel accounts serve to strengthen the core claims of the New Testament.

Commentary: Latter-day Saint Romney was never Christian enough for some Republicans. Somehow, Trump still is.

https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2019/04/25/commentary-romney-was/

“Truly he is risen!”

(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)

Χριστός ἀνέστη!

Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη!

In Greek, the language of the New Testament — and in equivalent phrases in other languages influenced by Greek Orthodox usage — it is customary to greet one another on Easter Sunday with Khristos anesti!  To which the traditional response is Alithos anesti!

Christ is risen!

Truly he is risen!

I’ve been quite moved by the 2019 Easter video message issued by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — not much more than a minute long and featuring the voice, I’m guessing, of Alex Boyé:

https://www.lds.org/church/news/share-easter-message-with-new-becauseofhim-video-and-invitation?lang=eng

This eight-minute video, titled “He is Risen” and also from the Church, may help you to share the story of Easter with family and friends:

https://www.lds.org/bible-videos/videos/he-is-risen?lang=eng

I offer, yet again, part of an Easter reflection of my own from 2012 (written, by the way, just a week or so after the entirely unexpected death of my beloved only brother, which devastated me).  In this passage from that brief article, I offer a re-reading — in my judgment, a very important one — of the story of Mary Magdalene’s encounter on that first Easter morning with the Risen Lord at the tomb:

The Gospel of John records Mary Magdalene’s meeting with the newly risen Savior near his garden tomb: “Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father” (20:17).

I’ve heard lessons, sermons and class comments seeking to explain why Mary was forbidden to touch the resurrected Lord.

But she wasn’t. 

The King James Bible misrepresents the original Greek, which actually has Christ telling Mary, “Don’t cling to me,” or, as the Joseph Smith Translation puts it, “Hold me not.” [I notice that it was this rendition, not that of the King James Version, that was used in last night’s Tabernacle Choir broadcast.]  And, in fact, the Greek verb implies that she was already clinging to him; in Greek, the Savior doesn’t tell her not to hold on to him but to stop doing so.

Filled with sheer, overwhelming happiness, Mary had thrown her arms around the Master in an exuberant embrace. But he needed to leave. That’s all. Nothing mysterious, but something very wonderful nonetheless: “Weeping may endure for a night,” says the Psalmist (30:5), “but joy cometh in the morning.”

From: “The gospel truly brings joyful news”

Thus, I would have made a somewhat different version of the rather staid and even unemotional Church film to which I link above — a considerably more joyful and exuberant one.  I understand the solemnity of the doctrine of eternal life, and the formality of the language (inaccurate, in this case) of the King James Version of the Bible.  But the sheer, humanly unforeseen joy of Christ’s resurrection must be remembered.

Χριστός ἀνέστη!

Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη!

Share the good news!

There is none greater.

------------------

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/04/truly-he-is-risen.html

How the ‘Harry Potter’ books are replacing the Bible as millennials’ foundational text

(by Tara Isabella Burton religionnews.com 4-25-19)

It’s a book nearly everybody knows, many of us nearly from birth. We reference it in our daily lives. We use its complicated moral systems to define our social and political stances and to understand ourselves better. Once we have read it, and learn the lessons considered therein, our political attitudes alter, making us more welcoming and more caring to outsiders.

Activists quote from the stories on placards to make their points at protests. Hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of people have written their own narratives in response to these foundational myths.
I refer, of course, to the “Harry Potter” series.

It may seem flippant to talk about J.K. Rowling’s behemoth young adult fantasy series as a foundational myth that threatens, at least among millennials and Gen Z, to replace the Bible. But the numbers bear out its place as mythical bedrock. Sixty-one percent of Americans have seen at least one “Harry Potter” film. Given that just 45% of us (and a barely higher 50% of American Christians) can name all four Gospels, it’s no stretch to say that Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff are better known in American society than Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

For politically progressive millennials in particular, “Harry Potter” is more than a book series. It’s an entire theology. While they rarely deal with questions of God explicitly, or propose a metaphysical theology per se, their explorations of good and evil are nothing if not cosmic.

And when it comes to millennial religious “nones,” its moral teachings are certainly no less known or espoused than the Good Book’s. Rowling’s narrative is the story of the redemption of perceived outsiders — the children of mixed Muggle-human families — from the vengeance of the wizarding elites, who slur the Muggle-born as “mudbloods.” House elves, a species consigned to servitude, reveal their dignity through their bravery.

Numerous studies have tracked a direct correlation between a budding political liberalism — particularly pro-immigrant stances — and the “Potter” books. Controlled studies show that reading passages from the books altered children’s views of strangers.

Nor is Rowling’s message of tolerance the only way in which we overlay the moral and ethical systems of Harry Potter over our own world. Our enemies are Voldemorts or his followers, such as the repressive and sadistic Hogwarts teacher Dolores Umbridge. Never mind “Onward, Christian Soldiers”; we attend rallies on the most serious, and sacred, issues as “Dumbledore’s army.”

“If HOGWARTS students can defeat the DEATHEATERS, then U.S. STUDENTS can defeat the NRA,” read one sign on the National Mall last March at the March for Our Lives, organized by survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shootings in Parkland, Fla. Another read: “Dumbledore’s Army: still recruiting.”

The difference, of course, is that “Harry Potter” makes no ontological truth claims. It advertises itself clearly as a work of fiction. Yet, for many nominal Christians as well as for the religiously unaffiliated, it functions as a paramount sacred text.

“Harry Potter” isn’t the only 20th-century cultural property to have doubled as a quasi-religion. As early as the 1970s, “Star Trek” – among the first “fandoms” in history – offered its devoted fans a vision of morality and the human condition rooted in the humanist, positivist secularism of its creator, Gene Roddenberry.

Likewise, in the 1990s hundreds of thousands of nones identified themselves as Jedi, the priestly class of space samurai in the “Star Wars” movies, on national censuses in the U.K., Wales and Australia.

But “Harry Potter” has garnered cultural capital on a far grander scale, due in no small part to the advent of the internet.

Between the publication of the first “Harry Potter” book and the fourth in the installment, the number of Americans who used the internet increased by 500%. Internet fan culture, at the same time, went from being the province of coders and technologically proficient insiders to include the average, often adolescent, fan consumer.

It’s in this intertwined history that “Harry Potter” most resembles the Bible. Scholars have long argued that the rise of Protestantism and that of the printing press were inextricably meshed, as Martin Luther’s tracts testifying to the power of personal faith fed a new means of distribution. The Reformation, in other words, thrived on the symbiosis between the ferocious demand for Luther’s controversial tracts and the new printing technology.

The rise of “Harry Potter” and modern internet culture is no less intertwined. The popular engagement with the “Potter” texts online brought millions to the World Wide Web, which in turn has indelibly shaped, and remixed, our approach to self and belief.

A cosmic-level foundational story, disseminated through a new medium that celebrates not just personal experience but the reimagining and responding to (and, through the rise of fanfiction, even rewriting) “Harry Potter” grounds many millennial nones’ moral, political and ethical systems.

The fact that the “Potter” series does not pretend to be anything more than fiction says a lot about what we require from our foundational texts. We buy Rowling’s language, her moral systems and her emotional tenor without needing — or wanting — it to make referential claims about the world, or God, out there.

This reflects broader trends among religiously unaffiliated Americans and among American Christians, a record low number of whom — just 30% — now see the Bible as the literal word of God. Another 14% frankly call it fables.

Fewer and fewer of us need to believe in a text in order to take it, well, as gospel.

----------------

https://religionnews.com/2019/04/25/how-the-harry-potter-books-are-replacing-the-bible-as-millennials-foundational-text/

Some resources for addressing tough topics, from the Interpreter Foundation

For a small presentation this evening on behalf of the Interpreter Foundation, the host has asked me to briefly address five topics that have disturbed some Church members:

1)      Joseph Smith and plural marriage.
2)      Joseph’s multiple versions of the First Vision.
3)      The Book of Mormon translation process.
4)      Was the Church intentionally trying to “cover up” certain aspects of Church history?
5)      The Church’s stance regarding LGBTQ.

I thought that it might be useful to prepare a small list calling attention to items that have been published by the Interpreter Foundation that touch upon these subjects.  With the exception of (5), on which we’ve published essentially nothing, I was frankly surprised at how much relevant material we have published.

Below is the preliminary list that I came up with.  The number following each item in parentheses is the number of the volume in which it appeared.  I began to give the URL for each article, but that was too time-consuming for the brief interval open to me, and I figured, anyway, that you could simply copy and paste the author’s name and the article’s title into your browser and thereby find it soon enough:

Joseph Smith and plural marriage.

Brian C. Hales, “Stretching to Find the Negative: Gary Bergera’s Review of Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: History and Theology”  (6)

Andrew C. Smith, “Hagar in LDS Scripture and Thought” (8)

Craig L. Foster, “Separated but not Divorced: The LDS Church’s Uncomfortable Relationship with its Polygamous Past” (10)

Brian C. Hales and Gregory L. Smith, “A Response to Grant Palmer’s ‘Sexual Allegations against Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Polygamy in Nauvoo’” (12)

Craig L. Foster, “An Easier Way to Understanding Joseph Smith’s Polygamy” (15)

Suzanne Long Foster, “Providing a Better Understanding for All Concerning the History of Joseph Smith’s Polygamy” (15)

Gregory L. Smith, “A Welcome Introduction” (15)

Brian C. Hales, “A Response to Denver Snuffer’s Essay on Plural Marriage, Adoption, and the Supposed Falling Away of the Church – Part 1: Ignoring Inconvenient Evidence” (16)

Brian C. Hales, “A Response to Denver Snuffer’s Essay on Plural Marriage, Adoption, and the Supposed Falling Away of the Church – Part 2: Facade or Reality?” (16)

Brian C. Hales, “Dating Joseph Smith’s First Nauvoo Sealings” (20)

Keith Thompson, “Joseph Smith and the Doctrine of Sealing” (21)

Brian C. Hales, “Opportunity Lost” (23)

Allen Wyatt, “Scary Ghost Stories in the Light of Day” (23)

Brian C. Hales, “Joseph Smith: Monogamist or Polygamist?” (25)

Brian J. Baird, “Understanding Jacob’s Teachings about Plural Marriage from a Law of Moses Context” (25)

Craig L. Foster, “Much More than a Plural Marriage Revelation” (29)

Brian C. Hales, “The Case of the Missing Commentary” (29)

Andrew C. Smith, Craig L. Foster, Brian C. Hales, and Gregory L. Smith, “Special Roundtable Discussion: Polygamy”

Joseph’s multiple versions of the First Vision.

Steven C. Harper, “Evaluating Three Arguments Against Joseph Smith’s First Vision” (2)

John A. Tvedtnes, “Variants in the Stories of the First Vision of Joseph Smith and the Apostle Paul” (2)

Neal Rappleye, “Rediscovering the First Vision” (15)

Robert A. Rees, “Looking Deeper into Joseph Smith’s First Vision: Imagery, Cognitive Neuroscience, and the Construction of Memory” (25)

 The Book of Mormon translation process.

Royal Skousen, “Why was one sixth of the 1830 Book of Mormon set from the original manuscript?”  (2)

Roger Nicholson, “The Spectacles, the Stone, the Hat, and the Book: A Twenty-first Century Believer’s View of the Book of Mormon Translation” (5)

Royal Skousen, “The Original Text of the Book of Mormon and its Publication by Yale University Press” (7)

Benjamin L. McGuire,
”The Late War Against the Book of Mormon” (7)

Royal Skousen, “A Brief History of Critical Text Work on the Book of Mormon” (8)

Robert F. Smith, “If There Be Faults, They Be Faults of a Man” (8)

Stanford Carmack, “A Look at Some “Nonstandard” Book of Mormon Grammar”  (11)

Royal Skousen, “Changes in The Book of Mormon”  (11)

Stanford Carmack, “What Command Syntax Tells Us About Book of Mormon Authorship”  (13)

Royal Skousen,”Restoring the Original Text of the Book of Mormon” (14)

Stanford Carmack, “The Implications of Past-Tense Syntax in the Book of Mormon” (14)

Stanford Carmack, “Why the Oxford English Dictionary (and not Webster’s 1828)”  (15)

Stan Spencer, “The Faith to See: Burning in the Bosom and Translating the Book of Mormon in Doctrine and Covenants 9” (18)

Stanford Carmack, “The More Part of the Book of Mormon Is Early Modern English” (18)

Stanford Carmack, “Joseph Smith Read the Words” (18)

Stanford Carmack, “The Case of the {-th} Plural in the Earliest Text (18)

Stanford Carmack, “The Case of Plural Was in the Earliest Text” (18)

Stan Spencer, “Seers and Stones: The Translation of the Book of Mormon as Divine Visions of an Old-Time Seer” (24)

Stanford Carmack, “How Joseph Smith’s Grammar Differed from Book of Mormon Grammar: Evidence from the 1832 History” (25)

Bruce E. Dale, “How Big A Book? Estimating the Total Surface Area of the Book of Mormon Plates” (25)

Stanford Carmack, “Barlow on Book of Mormon Language: An Examination of Some Strained Grammar” (27)

Stanford Carmack, “Is the Book of Mormon a Pseudo-Archaic Text?” (28)

Brian C. Hales, “Changing Critics’ Criticisms of Book of Mormon Changes” (28)

Was the Church intentionally trying to “cover up” certain aspects of Church history?

Allen Wyatt, “An Approach to History” (31)

Davis Bitton, “I Don’t Have a Testimony of the History of the Church” (31)

Daniel C. Peterson, “Research and More Research” (31)

Craig L. Foster, “Assessing the Criticisms of Early-Age Latter-Day Saint Marriages” (31)

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https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/04/some-resources-for-addressing-tough-topics-from-the-interpreter-foundation.html

Christian Dalits & Smelly Progressive Orthodoxies

(by Rod Dreher theamericanconservative.com 4-25-19)
                

There’s no way to look at this except a massive setback for the religious liberty cause:

A major faith-based foster care and adoption contractor for the state of Michigan said Monday it will place children in LGBTQ homes, reversing course following a recent legal settlement.

Grand Rapids-based Bethany Christian Services is responsible for about 8 percent of Michigan’s more than 13,000 foster care and adoption cases involving children from troubled households.

More:

On April 11, Bethany’s national board of directors voted to change the policy. It applies only in Michigan, not to its operations in other states. The policy change also does not impact private adoptions, according to Bethany.

From a different story:

An employee of Bethany Christian Services who spoke with WGVU anonymously also claimed that just before the agency’s announcement on their new policy, employees had threatened to walk out of their jobs if the policy was not amended.

Bethany Christian Services is one of the country’s largest Christian adoption services. It says that this policy change only affects its operations in Michigan. But a marker has been laid down: the Bethany board is willing to surrender wherever it is challenged. Why have religious liberty protections if organizations that need them will ultimately cave?

It would be interesting to know what the internal culture at Bethany in Michigan is like regarding this issue. How many people threatened to walk out?
According to WGVU:

On Thursday, Bethany Christian Services officially announced in a statement that they were changing their policy.
“Bethany will continue operations in Michigan, in compliance with our legal contract requirements. The mission and beliefs of Bethany Christian Services have not changed.”

That’s the story Bethany is telling itself and its donors to make it easier to accept the fact that their beliefs have changed. A lot of this is going to be going around in the years to come, as we are transitioning to the new orthodoxy. Like Hillary Clinton told us:

(link)

This is how the hardball left gets what it wants without having to change the law. Duke University recently fired a popular professor after 20 years of teaching there — this, based on complaints from a handful of woke students. The professor wrote about this:

What happened to me is being repeated at colleges and universities throughout the country. Unfortunately, a growing number of university students equate being made uncomfortable in the classroom with being “harmed.” And in this they are encouraged by a growing number of faculty and administrators who view the mission of the university as more about shielding students from such “harm” (for the sake of “inclusivity”) and less about meaningful education. In the “surveillance university,” students are encouraged to report on the transgressions of faculty, and in what has been called an impulse of “vindictive protectiveness,” faculty are judged guilty and harshly punished.
Such protectiveness is motivated less by a reasonable concern for students’ mental health and more by political ideology. The complaint of a group of conservative students who felt singled out or disrespected or uncomfortable in class would be taken far less seriously. I have been on the receiving end of faculty emails making light of just such complaints.

Nor would a complaint by religious students that God and Christianity were mocked by their professor have much purchase. And I have never heard that Sanford’s “safe space” is a welcome refuge for the (generally reviled) minority of “open” Trump supporters on campus, nor have I heard of “trigger warnings” for depictions of disrespect to the American flag or harm to the unborn.

Also, the Classical Association of the Midwest and South, a professional association of academics studying Greek and Roman culture, rescinded its decision to hold its 2023 meeting at Brigham Young University. Why? Because LGBTs and allies within the classics field claimed it would be “unsafe” for LGBT scholars to meet at BYU, because of the Mormon college’s policies on same-sex behavior. This is a lie, and they know it’s a lie. No sane person believes that LGBTs would be in danger at BYU. This is a lie they tell to stigmatize all those who disagree with them, and to make these people and institutions toxic. In its statement throwing BYU under the bus, CAMWS said

CAMWS strives to be a welcoming and inclusive society for the free exchange of diverse ideas and viewpoints.

They really said this. I bet many of them even believe it. They are so welcoming and inclusive and dedicated to the free exchange of diverse ideas and viewpoints that they cannot bring themselves to meet on the BYU campus, out of fear of getting Mormon cooties.

UPDATE: A reader who is in CAMWS writes:

An important correction: CAMWS did not cancel the meeting in Provo, they *merely* elected to shun BYU by removing the customary panel session held on the campus of the host institution. BYU will still host and the meeting will still be in Provo.

What despicable bigots. And note well, if you want to become a Classics scholar, you have to be part of organizations like this, and their smelly little orthodoxies. They hate traditionalists so much that they can’t bear to be in our presence, even. You think it’s going to stop there? Please. Within twenty years, they will have forced schools like BYU to surrender, or will have made BYU diplomas radioactive.

Megan McArdle writes that the old-fashioned liberal belief in open debate is highly unusual in societies, and was probably only sustainable in the transition period from one set of orthodoxies to another. More:

Existing orthodoxies are largely self-enforcing, transmitted by a million little social signals you absorb without noticing, and enforced by the ubiquitous fear of what the neighbors will think. For most people, most of the time, navigating a familiar orthodoxy is effortless.

Adopting a new orthodoxy, however, is messy — hence the midnight purges and self-incrimination sessions of infant communist regimes. And while the new orthodoxy gropes toward its final shape, people living under it experience a special, debilitating terror: the fear that anything you say might be held against you, that what is mandatory today might be forbidden tomorrow, with ex post facto justice meted out to anyone who failed to anticipate the change.

Nor will the transition be entirely comfortable even for the new orthodoxy’s proponents, who must eventually recognize that what they’re promoting is an orthodoxy — and that they have the power to enforce it.

As McArdle goes on to write, you can’t claim that you’re an underdog when you have the power to destroy people’s careers and lives — and exercise it:

Revolutionaries and reformers, working from outside the system, can’t force people to renounce wrong-think by threatening to strip them of their livelihoods and drum them out of the public square. Those weapons are available only to the powers-that-be. 

To advocate such tactics is therefore to admit that you are no longer fighting the system, but that you are the system — that in the centers of cultural production, at least, Rosa Luxemburg is giving way to the commissars, and Martin Luther to the Grand Inquisitor.

Read the whole column. 

Religious and social conservatives need to understand that there is no peace to be made with these people, and that they do not have to control the levers of state power to get their way. Just like that, BYU has been rendered poisonous to Classics scholars. The message has gone out to traditional religious believers within the Classics field: you are now an untouchable, a dalit.

 

This is going to happen to any and every Christian institution that does not yield to the progressives. Bethany didn’t have to surrender; it could have simply withdrawn those services. But it did surrender, and it’s telling itself and its donors that it did not do what it clearly did. Again: the lies that Christians and Christian institutions will tell and believe in order to save face despite their submission are going to be legion.

 

They aren’t lies like what progressives tell themselves — such as, “In order to protect diversity and free speech and inquiry, we have to shun Mormons,” and, as Woke (ahem) Forest University is doing, holding special no-whites-allowed faculty meetings to improve diversity on campus.Oh yes, and the meta-lie: that the Right is the prime aggressor in the culture war.

 

We really are in a time of transition. In my book The Benedict Option, a medical specialist — someone who, I can tell you, has risen very high in his field — told me that he would discourage his own children from going into medicine because he can clearly see the moral compromises that Christian doctors are going to have to make. He is afraid that his children would be so indebted by medical school student loans — which cannot be defaulted on — that they would have no choice but to surrender to performing procedures (abortions and other things) that violate their conscience.

When you think about what that Duke professor went through — 20 years of teaching, and great performance reviews, only to be sacked because a few Victims™ complained — what sense does it make for non-victim class people to put in the time, the work, and the expense of pursuing an academic career? How can you plan for the future when the political environment within institutions and corporations is changing to give ideologues the power to hire, fire, or retard your career advancement on the basis of your skin color, your religion, your sex, or other characteristics that make you a dalit in the eyes of progressives?

The Bethany thing is especially unsettling because it might involve a rebellion in the ranks. Philip Rieff wrote in 1966:

The death of a culture begins when its normative institutions fail to communicate ideals in ways that remain inwardly compelling, first of all to the cultural elites themselves.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Bethany faced an internal revolt from its younger employees, who have abandoned the traditional Christian teaching on sexuality, and expect their employer to do so too. If true, then nobody should assume that Bethany is alone in this, or that this is only something going on with Evangelicals. Pew finds that 70 percent of all Catholics (including a slight majority of weekly massgoers), and 85 percent of Catholic Millennials, accept homosexuality. Four years ago, Pew found that “roughly half” of Evangelical Millennials accepted homosexuality — numbers that can only have gone up since then.

We are living through the death of Christian culture, at least on matters of sex and sexuality, because the churches and other normative institutions have failed to communicate Biblical ideals in ways that remain inwardly compelling. Having lost on sex, we Christians are going to lose a great deal more, because the cultural revolution forbids us to think of male and female in traditional ways. We are living through the abolition of man. It is a terrible thing to watch a culture and a civilization turn on Christians, but it’s worse to watch the people within the churches surrender without a fight, because some are so desperate to be accepted, and others — like Cardinal Joseph Tobin — have simply rejected truth.

I wrote The Benedict Option anticipating this reality. There are still people who have the idea that I’m conceive of places to hide — this, even though I say plainly in the introduction that there are no places left to hide. Rather, the Ben Op is about building traditional Christian communities of resilience, within which we can live out our ideals, and communicate them in inwardly compelling ways to others, especially our children. If you aren’t building Ben Op communities and structures now, you and your children will not be able to resist the pressure that is here, and that is coming. You might not even be able to recognize your capitulation.

This is not speculation. It’s happening all around us. Read the signs of the times. This is the new orthodoxy. This is what it means to be in a cultural revolution.

UPDATE: A reader who is in CAMWS writes:

An important correction: CAMWS did not cancel the meeting in Provo, they *merely* elected to shun BYU by removing the customary panel session held on the campus of the host institution. BYU will still host and the meeting will still be in Provo.

 https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/bethany-surrenders-religious-liberty-christian-dalits/

New Testament Notes 242-245

(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)

This is one of the most famous stories from the life of Christ.

It’s also absent from the most ancient manuscripts of the New Testament.  (In some other early manuscripts, it appears after John 7:36, or after John 21:25, or even after Luke 21:38, with some textual variations.)

Does that mean that it’s not authentic?

Not necessarily.  But the situation is . . . well, a bit curious.

The story remains a great one, though.

And, beyond dispute, it’s very old.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/04/new-testament-notes-242-245.html

A witnessed fact, not a much later fantasy

(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)

Here’s an Easter column that I published in the Deseret News on 28 March 2013:

Modern people commonly assume that pre-modern people were stupid, inhabiting a primitive fantasy world detached from reality, unenlightened by science and awash in superstition. Such gullible minds, some modern “realists” claim, merely imagined the resurrection of Christ.

This is a largely baseless prejudice. Pre-modern people knew death intimately, in a way that most of us today don’t. For them, death occurred at home, in battle, through accidents or as a result of plague, not in a sterile hospital staffed by cool, efficient professionals. It was up close, personal and very visible. Family or friends typically disposed of the bodies of their dead. They couldn’t delegate that final service to others.

Thus, to suggest that the first Christians believed that Jesus rose from the tomb because they didn’t grasp the nature of death is to speak flat nonsense. Nobody knew better than they did that dead bodies don’t return to life.

When, on Easter morning, Mary Magdalene and the other women reported their encounter with the angels at the empty tomb to the apostles, “their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not” (Luke 24:11). Even after Peter himself had gone to the sepulcher, seeing it vacant and Jesus’ burial shroud neatly folded within, he “departed, wondering in himself at that which was come
to pass” (Luke 24:12; John 20:7). He didn’t naively rush to believe.

Jesus appeared to 10 of the remaining 11 apostles that evening, but Thomas wasn’t there with them. And then, despite their collective testimony that “We have seen the Lord,” he insisted, “Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hands into his side, I will not believe” (John 20:25).

The New Testament accounts suggest not gullibility on the part of the first Christian disciples but skepticism — the skepticism that some imagine is reserved for enlightened moderns. In the ancient world, as in ours, the dead don’t commonly return.

But skepticism maintained too long is foolishness, and the disciples’ incredulity was shattered by their experience with the risen Lord. The seeming defeat of the cross was swallowed up in the fact of the resurrection. The disciples were transformed. On the Saturday of Passover weekend, while the Lord’s body lay in his tomb — though, unannounced to mortals, he was at work organizing the proclamation of the gospel among the spirits of the dead (1 Peter 3:18-20; 4:6; Doctrine and Covenants 138) — the disciples, fearing further arrests and executions, literally discouraged at the apparent failure of their leader, were in hiding.

And yet, the four gospels testify that, with the exception of Thomas, they saw Jesus alive again the next day. “My Lord and my God,” said Thomas to Jesus when he too had actually seen the risen Savior (John 20:28).

Jesus trained them for 40 subsequent days and then commanded that they await the descent of the Holy Spirit upon them before acting further (Acts 1:3-4). That descent occurred at Pentecost, 50 days after the crucifixion. Instantly, the remaining apostles were out on the streets of Jerusalem, boldly testifying, at great personal risk, of Christ’s resurrection (see Acts 2-4).

Soon thereafter, this small band of Galilean peasants was carrying that revolutionary message across the Mediterranean, witnessing of “that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life” (1 John 1:1). And this seemingly failed little Jewish messianic movement proceeded to change world history.

But what of those who haven’t directly met the resurrected Jesus? “Thomas,” said the Savior, “because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed” (John 20:29).

“Did not our heart burn within us,” reflected Cleopas and his companion along the road to Emmaus after they realized the identity of the third man who had walked with them “while he talked with us by the way?” (Luke 24:32).

Even today, many can bear similar testimony. Someday I hope to demonstrate at book length that Christians have sound historical reason to do so. “We have not followed cunningly devised fables,” insisted Peter, “when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty” (2 Peter 1:16).
 
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/04/a-witnessed-fact-not-a-much-later-fantasy.html

Brushing aside the accounts of these men is not as simple as some imagine

(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)

I published this column in the Deseret News back on 25 March 2010:

Serious critics of the Book of Mormon must neutralize the testimonies of the witnesses to the Golden Plates.

This, however, is not easy. (It may be impossible.) Largely thanks to the meticulous research of professor Richard Lloyd Anderson, we know a great deal about them and about the six decades, both when they were dedicated followers of Joseph Smith and after they had been alienated from him and his church for many years, during which they testified to the Book of Mormon. For a very long time, those seeking to discredit their testimony accused them of insanity, or of having conspired to commit fraud. In the light of Anderson’s work, however, neither accusation can be sustained. They were plainly sane, honest, reputable men.

Recently, the preferred method of disposing of the witnesses has been to suggest — quite falsely — that they never claimed to have literally seen or touched anything at all, or to insinuate that they were primitive and superstitious fanatics who, unlike us sophisticated moderns, could scarcely distinguish reality from fantasy. Honest, but misguided.

It seems implausible, though, to assume that the witnesses, early 19th-century farmers who spent their lives rising at sunrise, pulling up stumps, clearing rocks, plowing fields, sowing seeds, carefully nurturing crops, herding livestock, milking cows, digging wells, building cabins, raising barns, harvesting food, bartering (in an often cashless economy) for what they could not produce themselves, wearing clothes made from plant fibers and skins, anxiously watching the seasons, and walking or riding animals out under the weather until they retired to their beds shortly after sunset in “a world lit only by fire,” were estranged from everyday reality. 

It’s especially unbelievable when the claim is made by people whose lives, like mine, consist to a large extent of staring at digital screens in artificially air-conditioned and artificially lit homes and offices, clothed in synthetic fibers, commuting between the two in enclosed and air-conditioned mechanical vehicles while they listen to the radio, chat on their cell phones, and fiddle with their iPods (whose inner workings are largely mysterious to them), who buy their prepackaged food (with little or no regard for the time or the season) by means of plastic cards and electronic financial transfers from artificially illuminated and air-conditioned supermarkets enmeshed in international distribution networks of which they know virtually nothing, the rhythms of whose daily lives are largely unaffected by the rising and setting of the sun. Somehow, the current generation seems ill-positioned to accuse the witnesses’ generation of being out of touch with reality.


I suppose that “hallucination” might strike a skeptic as an attractive way to defang the testimony of the Three Witnesses, with its divine voice and its angelophany and its clearly visionary flavor. But the experience of the Eight Witnesses is very different, and entirely matter-of-fact. Hallucination doesn’t seem to account for it well at all.

On the other hand, if it weren’t for the spectacularly supernatural character of the experience of the Three Witnesses, a desperate skeptic might be able to dismiss the whole thing as the product, merely, of crude deception. Perhaps Joseph Smith or some other brawny frontier blacksmith (Oliver Cowdery, perhaps?) forged golden stage props with which to fool the yokels. After all, the two tiny sets of inscribed metal plates that James Jesse Strang, would-be successor to Joseph Smith, “found” in Wisconsin and Michigan between 1845 and 1849 and subsequently “translated” certainly existed, and were almost certainly frauds. (One of Strang’s witnesses later testified to having helped manufacture them.) But Strang summoned no angels for public viewing, and no voice of God endorsed his “Book of the Law of the Lord.”

Even Latter-day Saints may not appreciate the strength of the witness testimonies. Fortunately, though, Anderson, trained in both legal reasoning at Harvard Law School and historical method through a doctorate at Berkeley, has devoted a lifetime to demonstrating the solidity of the evidence they provide. In his classic volume “Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses” — described by one of my BYU colleagues, not unreasonably, as “next to the scriptures themselves, the most faith-promoting book (he had) ever read”— and in later studies (two of which are available on the Web site of Brigham Young University’s Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship), he has set out a deeply impressive case. I earnestly commend his work to those unfamiliar with it.

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https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/04/brushing-aside-the-accounts-of-these-men-is-not-as-simple-as-some-imagine.html

Alleged Racism and the Newly-Dedicated Temple in Kinshasa

(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)

Back in late 2015, when the Kinshasa Democratic Republic of the Congo Temple was announced, I posted the following item on my blog, under the title “Whatever it is, they’re against it. In fact, they HATE it”:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has revealed the design for its soon-to-be-built temple in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  Ground for the new temple will be broken on 12 February 2016, in a ceremony presided over by Elder Neal L. Andersen, of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

As can readily be seen, the new temple will be very small and very modest:

http://www.ldschurchtemples.com/kinshasa/

Now, one might view the building of this temple as an effort to bring what Latter-day Saints believe to be the blessings of temple ordinances — the full blessings of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ — to a very poor people for whom travel to the already-existing African temples (in distant Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa) has heretofore been effectively impossible, beyond their wildest imaginations or hopes.  (Please — please — watch this moving six-minute photographic essay on the efforts made by Saints in Cameroon to reach the then-newly dedicated temple in Aba, Nigeria.  Perhaps you too will be moved to contribute a little bit to the “Temple Fund” of the Church.)

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly known as Zaire) is, by any measure, one of the poorest nations on the planet.  In terms of per capita gross domestic product, the International Monetary Fund (2014) puts it at 186th on a list of 187 countries.  The World Bank (2011-2014) ranks it as number 182 on a list of 185.  The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (1993-2014) puts it at 196 of 198.  (See here for the listings.)

The more bitter and extreme critics of Mormonism typically like to describe temples as “revenue centers” for “LDS Inc.”  The idea is that “the Corporation’s” requirement that those entering the temple be full tithe payers extorts money from “the sheeple,” thus allowing Church leaders, apparently, to wallow in sybaritic luxury.  Or something of that sort.  But this notion is difficult to maintain with regard to temples in Bolivia and Fiji and Nigeria, and it becomes simply impossible to believe for a temple in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  Kinshasa isn’t going to be a profitable source of money for the Church prior to unimaginable changes at the Second Coming, and perhaps not even then.  Rather, it will always be, financially speaking, a net liability, a drain (and a big one).

So the narrative of the Church’s more bitter and extreme critics had to change.  And it did.

The small size and simplicity of the pending temple in Kinshasa is, you see, an expression of contempt for black people.

(One might have thought that refusing to build a temple there at all — and refusing to build the three African temples already mentioned, and the two additional temples announced for Abidjan, in the Ivory Coast, and Durban, South Africa, and, for that matter, the temple announced for Port-au-Prince, Haiti — would have been a more obvious expression of such supposed contempt.  But you’re not supposed to think so much.)

Imagine, though, the outcry that would have ensued if the Church had unveiled a massive, imposing, magnificent marble-clad structure to be constructed in such an impoverished place.

The point, of course, is that whatever the “Mormon Corporation” does is wrong.  And not only wrong, but viciously so.  The evil men who lead it have never had a sincere or humane thought in their entire lives, and their followers are, when they’re not malicious and hateful, merely brain-dead automatons.

This case is a revealing illustration of the sheer unreasonable hostility that some people — mostly apostate former members, I suspect — harbor for Mormonism.

I rejoice that the people of the Congo will soon have relatively easy access to a temple.  Even in worldly terms, I expect that this simple little temple will be among the nicest buildings in Kinshasa and, indeed, in all of the nation.  Its grounds will be serene and well-maintained.  And it will certainly be one of the most beautiful buildings to which ordinary, non-elite, poor Congolese will, if qualified by their faithfulness, readily be admitted.  Remember that eighty cents constitutes a full tithe on income of eight dollars, and that, on no income whatever, $0.00 is a full tithe.  There is no “entry charge” for temples.  Only a requirement of faithful discipleship with which all, rich and poor, can comply.

And, predictably, they hated my blog post.  There was an indignant response in certain circles to what I had written.  I was, of course, lying about their complaints.  Nobody had ever suggested that racism was involved.

In fact, though, now that Kinshasa’s temple has been dedicated and is again in the news, precisely the same charges are being leveled, once more, against the leaders of the Church, and in precisely the same places.  The small size and simplicity of the temple — a mere “roach motel,” says one critic — illustrate supposed Latter-day Saint disdain for “second-class,” separate and unequal black members of the Church whom we white members allegedly find loathsome and regard as lucky even to hold the priesthood, and who remain under God’s curse.

The same people who attacked Church leaders for what they denounced as the “lavishness” of the Rome Italy Temple now attack Church leaders for the simplicity and small size of the Kinshasa Democratic Republic of the Congo Temple.  The same people who attacked President Nelson for bringing all of the apostles to Rome are attacking President Nelson for sending a mere single apostle — and a relatively junior apostle, at that — to dedicate the temple in Kinshasa.  The angles of attack change, but the attacks never end.

Incidentally, Elder Dale G. Renlund, the fairly junior apostle who dedicated the new temple in Kinshasa, served in Africa from 2009 until 2014, initially as first counselor in the Africa Southeast Area of the Church and then as Area President.  I suspect he felt overjoyed, honored, and privileged to dedicate the temple and that he would be astonished to see himself described as a personified expression of disdain and contempt.

It’s also worth noting, by the way, that there are now four dedicated temples in Africa, along with two temples under construction, and three more that have been announced.  Where photos or architectural renderings are available for them, you can judge for yourself whether they reflect racist disdain for those who worship, or who will worship, in them:

Dedicated, beside the temple in Kinshasa:

Aba Nigeria Temple

Accra Ghana Temple

Johannesburg South Africa Temple

Under construction:

Abidjan Côte d’Ivoire Temple

Durban South Africa Temple (nearly complete)

Announced:

Lagos Nigeria Temple (no image available)

Harare Zimbabwe Temple (no image available)

Nairobi Kenya Temple (no image available)

Also serving predominantly black Latter-day Saints are the

Santo Domingo Dominican Republic Temple

and the nearly-complete

Port-au-Prince Haiti Temple

and, arguably, several of the Brazilian temples.

“BYU Professor Brings Joseph F. Smith’s Vision of the Dead to Life in New Film”

(by Sydnee Gonzalez comms.byu.edu 3-2-19)

The inspiration for School of Communications professor Kevin Kelly’s upcoming film “I Saw the Hosts of the Dead” came as he was reading an Ensign article about about Joseph F. Smith’s vision by former BYU professor George S. Tate. As he learned more about the revelation and the context in which it was received, the idea for a film was born.

“I had no idea what was really going on at the time of the vision, it was such a startling thing to know,” said Kelly. “We read the scriptures, but putting it into context, it made a lot of sense why it was so significant and so important, especially at that time.”

A 30-minute version of Kelly’s film will premiere Sunday, April 7 at 9 a.m. on BYUtv before “Music and the Spoken Word.”

“I Saw the Hosts” of the dead is a documentary — mixed with a little live action — that explores Smith’s vision and the background behind it. Throughout his life, Smith had become closely acquainted with the reality of death from the murder of his father Hyrum Smith to the death of his son just months before the vision. Smith’s personal grief coincided with the unprecedented number of dead (between 70-120 million) as the result of World War I and an international epidemic of influenza, all setting the stage for Smith’s vision in 1918.

Last year marked a century since the historic vision. Kelly hopes the film helps individuals gain a better appreciation for the vision as church members celebrate its 100th anniversary.

“I think there will be some insights that people haven’t thought of before,” said Kelly.

The first interview that Kelly and his film crew were able to get for the film was with one of Smith’s great grandsons: President M. Russell Ballard.  

“He spent several hours with us, and his interview was so personal and touching,” said Kelly. “He really gave us his heart and set the tone for the rest of the filming.

One of the scenes that will be most eye-opening for viewers is the film’s live-action depiction of the vision. According to Kelly, it was one of the film’s hardest scenes to illustrate.

One of the film’s directors, BYU film student Barrett Burgin, proposed the idea of a live-action depiction. Kelly said that despite his initial trepidation, he fell in love with the idea after Burgin shared his vision for the scene.

“One of the most memorable experiences for me was filming our spirit world scene on Bonneville Salt Flats,” said Burgin. “The Flats flooded, giving the location a sort of sea of glass aesthetic. The visual was pretty stunning.”

The task of portraying the hosts of heaven proved to be difficult, however. The crew had to cast dozens of extras and find white costumes for all of them — including time- and region-specific costumes for many of the prophets who are mentioned in Smith’s revelation — and then edit the scene to appear like the individuals on film were in the hundreds and thousands.
Despite various obstacles to making the scene, everything came together in the end.

“There were so many tender mercies, so many little miracles that happened to get the film done,” said Kelly.

The vision scene features dozens of actors dressed in white of varying ages and time periods. They also incorporate Polynesian, Native American and traditional Latin American costumes from BYU’s Living Legends.

“We really wanted to make heaven really diverse as far as ethnicity, styles of wardrobe and age,” said Kevin.

Being able to use the Living Legends’ costumes was a tender mercy for the crew, Kelly said. Days before they were set to film, they were still short on costumes. Kelly said as he was walking with Burgin and trying to plan out how they would get the costumes, when Living Legends director Janielle Christensen was suddenly walking in front of them.

“I’ve seen [Christensen] maybe five times since I’ve been at BYU,” said Kelly. “Miracles like that were happening all the time.”

Kelly said that one of this biggest miracles was the amount of work the involved students put in.
“The film was a big ask for the students, but they just kept coming through,” said Kelly. “It’s my film, my name goes on it, but frankly, I couldn’t have done it without the students. It’s almost reverse mentoring for me — I learned so much from them.”

The students working on the film with Kelly have also had their own spiritual experiences creating the film.
“I’m thankful for the time I’ve spent working on the film. It really has become a project that I’ve put my heart into,” said KC Sosa, the film’s lead editor. “The experiences I’ve had while working on the film have been sacred.  We’ve seen miracle after miracle.”

Both the students and Kelly hope the film will elicit spiritual experiences for viewers as well.

“I hope they can really place themselves in the shoes of President Smith and understand what he was going through and get a sense of that time a hundred years ago,” said Kelly. “With all that suffering and all that sadness, this beautiful vision of life and hope was given.

Amy Hauck Wilson, an advertising major and the film’s associate producer, said the film emphasizes the importance of the gospel even 100 years after the vision. “Seeing all those people dressed in white acting as if they were doing missionary work in the spirit world made me think of how grateful I am that God gives His children so many chances to get acquainted with Christ’s gospel.”

The premiere of the shortened version of the film during General Conference weekend will be the end of a long journey for the film’s crew.

“Every time I come up against a big problem, there’s an answer — not always immediately, but there have always been answers that come,” said Kelly. “There have been lots of moments where I thought ‘wow, someone is looking after us.’ I guess it’s supposed to get made.”

https://comms.byu.edu/byu-professor-brings-joseph-f-smiths-vision-of-the-dead-to-life-in-new-film/