Idolatry and Sexual Confusion

Idolatry always leads to sexual confusion.  We are living in the midst of rampant idolatry, and in the midst of rampant sexual confusion, disorder, and an epic struggle to re-define our sexual identities.  But, this is nothing new.  One reason I love ancient history is that there really is nothing new under the sun.  Witness the “ritual castration” of the Galli, the ancient priest who served the “Syrian Goddess,” Atargatis of Hierapolis:

“Lucian’s On the Syrian Goddess 51 tells how men became Galli.  While the pipes were wailing and the men were dancing, frenzy seized many of them.  The man who was seized stripped off his clothes, grabbed a sword, and castrated himself.  He ran through the city and threw what was cut off into any house he chose and took from the house women’s apparel.  Thereafter he belonged to the goddess and wore women’s clothes” (Everett Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity, 264).

Ironies of Socrates and Plato

Speaking of Socrates and Plato, Joseph Heller captures the delightful irony in the philosophies of the two intellectual giants and the complexity of Plato’s relationship and portrayal of Socrates: 

“[Socrates] was a dedicated philosopher who had no philosophy, an educator without curriculum or system of education, a teacher without pupils; a professor who professed to know nothing; a sage with faith that a knowledge of virtue exists unborn inside each of us and might, perhaps, be brought to life through persevering search.

“He did not like books, which should have nettled Plato, who wrote so many.

“He had low regard for people who read them.

“He mistrusted books, he said in the Phaedrus, because they could neither ask nor answer questions and were apt to be swallowed whole.  He said that readers of books read much and learned nothing, that they appeared full of knowledge, but for the most part were without it, and had the show of wisdom without its reality.

“He said this in a book.

“The book, though, is by Plato, who denounced dramatic representations as spurious because the writer put into the mouths of characters imitating real people whatever the author wished them to say.

“Plato said this in a dramatic representation, in which he put into the mouth of Socrates and other real people exactly those things Plato wanted them to say”

(Joseph Heller, Picture This, 94).  This novel is fantastic!  That is, if you like history … It takes a painting by Rembrandt of Aristotle contemplating a bust of Homer as its starting point, and then ranges over the vast fields of Greek, Dutch, and modern history, drawing an astonishing number of connections and parallels between the eras.  It’s rough going, if you don’t know much history, but it’s well worth it!

Descendents of the Magi?

Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels by Kenneth E. Bailey

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book is amazing! Bailey lived for 60 years in the Middle East, and has literally lived through the Bible story. The book begins with a stunning study, which presents a convincing case that Jesus was actually born in a house (since many poor, Middle Eastern homes actually have mangers in the house!).   I won’t give away the rest of his argument, but I did want to share another tid-bit that lept out at me.

Speaking of the Magi, and who they might have been, he writes: “In the 1920s a British scholar, E.F.F. Bishop, visited a Bedouin tribe in Jordan. This Muslim tribe bore the Arabic name al-Kokabani. The word kokab means “planet” and al-Kaokabani means “Those who study/follow the planets.” Bishop asked the elders of the tribe why they called themselves by such a name. They replied that it was because their ancestors followed the planets and traveled west to Palestine to show honor to the great prophet Jesus when he was born. This supports Justin’s [Justin Martyr - ca. 165 A.D.] second-century claim that the wise men were Arabs from Arabia,” (Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, 53).

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Lutheran Sanctification

Two bits from my reading diet caught my eye:

“Nevertheless we still experience sin and death within us, wrestle with them and fight against them.  You may tie a hog ever so well, but you cannot prevent it from grunting.  Thus is is with the sins in our flesh,” (Complete Sermons of Martin Luther, vol. 1, 247).

“Precisely because the totality of the gift, the new being [the one justified by faith] knows that there is nothing to do to gain heaven.  Thus the Christian is called to the tasks of daily life in this world, for the time being.  Students, for instance, are sometimes very pious and idealistic about ‘doing something,’ and so get caught up in this or that movement ‘for good.’  It never seems to dawn on them that perhaps for the time being, at least, their calling is simply to be a good student!  It is not particularly in acts of piety that we are sanctified, but in our call to live and act as Christians” (Gerald O. Forde, ”The Lutheran View” in Christian Spirituality:  Five Views of Sanctification, ed. Donald L. Alexander, 31).

A Fearful Irony

“It was a fearful irony that the nuclear bombs released on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by a Christian nation destroyed the largest concentrations of Christians in Japan” (Edward Norman, The House of God: Church Architecture, Style and History, 300).