A review of David Instone-Brewer's Bible Contexts Series - Chapter 20: Cain's "wife"

Dr. David Instone-Brewer is an eminent Bible Scholar in England, one of the experts responsible for the last tranche of changes to the NIV. He knows a lot more than I do about a lot of things, and since he makes it easy to access most of what he writes, I follow him to my advantage--especially in the area of Old Testament Studies, which is his specialty. What I've learned from him, however, are generally facts and insights I hadn't been exposed to before. I don't sit at his feet for much of what he weaves into his teaching, which are just standard tenets of atheism (although I admit, some of them are new to me as well). For although he identifies as an evangelical, he nonetheless looks to atheist scholars and their disciples to inform his interpretation of the Scriptures--and is thus oft led astray.

Dr. D is greatly hampered in his ability to gain insights from the book of Genesis, believing as he does that it was composed as a sort of religious fiction during the Babylonian captivity to inspire Jews not to lose hope in their present situation, or something along those lines. He doesn't believe that it is even intended to be a serious historical record, and certainly not that it was compiled from written eyewitness accounts. There is therefore no apparent limit to the imaginations his mind can supply from a reading of this section of the Scriptures, guided by the speculations of the atheists which lie behind much of his theology. And since he drinks deeply at the font of those who have no access to absolute truth, he all but admits that what he sincerely believes to be true today may be ridiculed a decade or a century from now, as atheist philosophers discard old and unworkable alternative explanations for how the world works, and imagine new ones yet to be disproven. This approach leads him far astray from orthodox understanding. 

Take, for example, his chapter on Cain's Wife. He already reinterprets the first two chapters of Genesis in an atheistic framework, starting with a random humanoid whose ancestral line went back to stardust. He then departs from the atheist narrative just a bit to give God credit for taking this human-looking animal, the pinnacle of billions of years of random evolution, miraculously granting him a human spirit, and then--in a most unusual departure from his involvement of the previous billions of years, and in a biological process we can hardly imagine, much less explain scientifically--splitting off a half-clone which became the first human woman. He then set the newly enlightened couple in special walled enclosure he called Eden and commanded them not to eat a certain fruit. They did so regardless, and as a result they were cast out of Eden to resume their evolutionary progress without any life-sustaining access to the fruit of the tree that conveyed some sort of immortality. And here enters Cain's Wife, who he proposes was a non-human, implying along the way that the host of present mankind must be descended from her.

I hesitate to critique Dr. D in any area of actual OT Studies, as he is an acknowledged expert in both the Hebrew language and rabbinical literature. But here he has left far behind anything directly related to the Hebrew Scriptures to dabble in Evolutionary Biology, in which he is no expert--leaving me on much firmer ground to dispute him. [Edit: he does claim biological expertise based on his undergraduate studies, but then, so could I, having sat for General Science in Bible College.]

I will be interacting in this post with Chapter 20 of his book Bible Contexts which, at least for now, can be found at his website http://www.biblecontexts.com/. He introduces the chapter as follows:

If Cain married someone living outside Eden, this would explain some strange details in Genesis. It would also explain how our gene pool contains so much variation.

---

His book is all about explaining strange details in Genesis with even stranger speculations. He sees a problem with God selecting just two humanoids--really, only one--to begin the human family tree. Although his God is capable of many amazing feats, Dr. D seems constrained by his acceptance of atheist teaching to place the Laws of Nature at a higher tier on the hierarchy than that occupied by Nature's God. The God who could split the first man in half at the sub-cellular level to produce the first woman was nonetheless stumped at providing this pair's descendants with enough genetic variety to produce the four blood types, so He needed to pull in some genes from the neighboring humanoids to pull it off. Thus, Cain's Wife. 

Now Mrs. Cain was not a Neanderthal, mind you--Cain had already inherited those genes from his long-dead humanoid ancestors. What she provided instead was access to the "rich gene pool" that had resulted from millions of years of primate evolution. Dr. D uses a modern analogy to explain why this was not only sufficient, but necessary, if humanity were to survive The Fall:

 Cain could, of course, have married his sister – though the Bible doesn’t say this happened. It is difficult to imagine her wanting to marry a brother (especially the nasty brother who murdered the nice one). Presumably this incest wouldn’t be dangerous like it is today because God could have made sure there weren’t any dangerous recessive genes in Adam’s chromosomes. However, our human race would be very weak if the entire gene pool had been limited to just Adam’s chromosomes. Restricted gene pools often cause problems in overrefined agricultural animals or crop lines because this makes them vulnerable to pests and changes in the environment. This is solved by interbreeding with wild species to reinvigorate the gene pool by introducing more variety.

Here he makes a mistake commonly perpetuated by pseudoscientists, assuming that a genetic bottleneck always results in a dangerously depleted gene pool. The reason modern agricultural crops and animals have depleted gene pools, and wild varieties don't, is precisely the result of human intervention to breed out unwanted variation. Absent that unnatural selection, a fairly robust set of genes will continue to be passed on, even in a small population. But racism is a powerful and primordial urge, such that organisms resist hybridisation and generally seek to mate with creatures most like themselves, resulting in further speciation, as any organisms that depart from the standard in the same direction tend to seek out each other for breeding, leaving an even more depleted genome to their descendants. Were it not for the balancing act of another primordial urge--that of men, having gone forth to conquer, seeking and finding sexual release amongst the females of the conquered races--humans would be much more genetically depleted than we are. 

If I were to hypothesize myself, I would say that God created Adam with two completely different sets of chromosomes, with each of the millions of gene pairs consisting of different alleles. Thus Eve was far more distant from Adam, genetically, than any two humans are today; at the time she was split off from him, she only shared 50 per cent of his genetic material. And if God were powerful enough to pull off forming yet another haploid set for the rest of Eve, then he only shared half of her genome--providing far more diversity than Cain could have brought into the young race by impregnating a distant descendant of the Neanderthals and Denisovans. Adam could well have carried one haploid gene for Type A blood, and one for Type B. We don't even have to split that in half again to get all three of the blood types just among their children, provided that Eve possessed the same. And if, post-Fall, any two of their children ended up with an allele that lacked the information for producing either the A or B antigen, Type O could emerge as early as their grandchildren's generation. It's a stupendous pity that Dr. D, with all his learning, didn't see how God could accomplish this without having Cain interbreed with a non-human. 

       Mutations occur very rarely, unless there are carcinogens present. This is good, because most mutations are dangerous – as seen by the effects of carcinogens. Reproductive cells are protected from mutations by DNA repair mechanisms, which make sure that accidental mutations are rarely passed on to our children. A few do get through – on average sixty-four mutations – though this is tiny compared to the three billion base pairs that are copied perfectly.⁴ However, some of these are so harmful that they result in miscarriage – about 10 percent of pregnancies end this way. So even a small increase in mutation rate would result in a lot more miscarriages.

Dr. D goes on at length to describe just how humanly impossible it would have been for God to actually get the human race going with just two people. Okay, and where does the book of Genesis imply that God can't do anything humanly impossible? This cognitive dissonance would be laughable, did he not with such sincerity lend credence to the atheist hypotheses. Of course, the way heredity works now, in our currently depleted human population, where any two humans on the planet share at least 99.9 per cent of the same genome, does not necessarily speak to how things would have worked back when they shared barely half of that. We don't really have any idea what a genuinely rich gene pool looks like, as the nature of genetic recombination means that some genes go missing with each successive generation, and after several thousands of years, every genome has become depleted to one extent or another--unnatural selection greatly accelerating the process. And since this goes against the collective wisdom of Evolution--which imagines, contrary to all evidence, the gene pool at large becoming progressively richer over time--Dr. D. just isn't going to hear this from his atheist mentors or their disciples.

So whom DID Cain marry? Well, as all scholars have noted, Genesis doesn't say. And why should it? If humanity began with only one man and one woman, and no ape-men to "enrich the gene pool," then of course he married his sister. Anyone with even half a human brain could figure that out with just a little help; there's no need to state the obvious. All we need is the succinct statement of the compiler of Genesis 3 that Eve was "the mother of all living." That leaves no room for any previous races to insert their alleles into the human genome, period. 

Dr. D should have stuck with interpreting and explaining the Bible, and left fairy-tale speculations to those who reject the Genesis account out of theological necessity. 

A review of Contact, an alleged work of science fiction: Part One

I recently had the opportunity to view Contact, a movie that was released over two decades ago—almost the amount of time it would take for a transmission of it to reach the Vega system. I was struck from very early on in the production by the similarities between it and Isaac Asimov's famous story, Nightfall. I have written several posts reviewing that story, which are available here. I suggest reading them now, for background, before going any further. 

Now, I'll start out by saying that although I was aware of the movie when it came out, and that it was discussed in the Christian Media at the time, I've had no thoughts about it whatsoever for the past twenty plus years, so I trust that everything I say here will be uninfluenced by any other reviews. As I review Contact, I'll continue to allude to my earlier observations on this topic, which remain very relevant. Inasmuch as it's a long movie, I'll probably do this review in several installments. But, to begin at the very beginning:

The movie opens with the iconic roar of the MGM lion, framed by the Latin motto, Ars Gratia Artis--Art for Art's Sake. Not a single frame of the actual movie has yet been shown, but already we are being set up to believe that what follows is just pure entertainment--science fiction. But is it? Might there also be a deeper agenda, Art for the Sake of Persuasion? 

We then move into the opening sequence, which is a juxtaposition of animated video and archived audio. The animation is a zoom-out that begins with a satellite view of Cape Canaveral, tracking westward as the sun overtakes it from the east. Meanwhile the audio track is a montage of news broadcasts interrupted by brief bursts of contemporary music, working backward from the present day as the camera recedes from Earth, both tracks accelerating: the animation rapidly passes the Moon, Mars, the Asteroid Belt, Ceres, and Jupiter—already moving much faster than the speed of light—as the audio track has already reached a quarter century before present, to the Watergate Scandal of President Nixon, then immediately on to M.L. King's March on Washington. By the time Jupiter and its moons recede into the background we can hear an announcement of the assassination of President Kennedy. Then, as Saturn fades into the distance, we race through another two decades, passing through the McCarthy Era all the way to the beginning of the American involvement in World War Two. What is being hinted at is that news broadcasts are traveling into space at the speed of light, with the very earliest broadcasts leading the way into the rest of the galaxy. A bit of a stronger hint comes after the disappearance of Saturn, as the sun itself blinks out and we see a rapidly receding series of stars and galaxies as the audio takes us back through the Thirties to the earliest days of Radio. Then the audio itself gradually fades to background static, as we continue to back our way through a dusty nebula and into intergalactic space, where total silence reigns. Other galaxies zoom by with increasing rapidity, until the screen becomes a total blur which resolves into the left eyeball of our protagonist, the young Ellie Arroway. Meanwhile, the audio picks back up again as background static, resolving into the signal of a ham radio she is operating, with her voice now in real time, attempting to make contact with “anyone out there.” Thus the stage is set for a lifetime of hovering over a radio, seeking not only a signal from another rational being, but, most importantly, the opportunity for interaction therewith. And we see her determination as she scans the dials in search of a response, getting encouragement from her father to keep trying—then, when she finally lands a station out of Pensacola, he congratulates her for achieving the “farthest one yet.”

Okay, at this point in the actual screen-acting, we already move from the realm of science to science fiction, because that's just not how the propagation of ham radio waves works. One does not start out pulling in nearby signals, then progressively move to the outer limits on the country, then farther out into the hemisphere, and finally, with “a big enough antenna,” to the other side of the world. The propagation of radio waves on the frequencies of the amateur bands is such that one is actually more likely to land a station a thousand miles away, than an hundred. But, not to let the facts of science get in the way of a good story, the scriptwriters expect us to believe that Ellie will start small, and keep progressing until she is at the point of asking radio operators on the other side of the Universe to “come back.” 

But that's not Ellie's only goal: in the very next scene we see her asking her father, with growing excitement, how far out it is possible to hear: California? Alaska? China? The Moon? Jupiter? Saturn? Suddenly she grows reflective, and asks her dad the question only a ten year old could ask: Could we talk to Mom?

Ah, now the subject of Religion intrudes, because young Ellie is asking an existential question, one immeasurably beyond the reach of the technology that so fascinates her. Science she knows, geography and astronomy she is beginning to understand, but of the Eternal State, she is much the innocent child, asking questions far beyond her ken. Here her father fails her—being unable to give her the answer she wants—because he, like her, only believes in Science, and Science has no answers to any of the deeper questions of life. And here the movie reveals its main argument. Having, at the behest of her father, dismissed the possibility of making contact beyond the grave, Ellie turns to the next best thing: making contact beyond the Solar System. And here we stop to consider the implications.

”Hey Dad, do you think there's people on other planets?” she asks, again in all innocence. “I don't know Sparks, but it seems like if it's just us, that would be an awful waste of space.” And is precisely here that the movie lands on its main theme: this phrase will be repeated at crucial points in the plot, to drive the message home that somewhere, on a cosmic scale, there is a sense that it would be wrong for Earth to be the only populated planet. This doctrine is never proven, nor is there ever even seen any need to prove it. Ellie simply accepts it on faith, and goes on to make it the guiding belief in her life's work, which is to search for, and find, signs of intelligence in outer space. She will run into many obstacles in that quest—the entire plot of the movie consists of her overcoming them, one after the other—but she will never be shaken in her core belief that there MUST be someone else out there—and an unstated corollary to that belief is that they MUST be so immeasurably greater than humankind, both in intelligence and technology, that they will be able to bridge the unbridgeable gulf between us, and make meaningful contact. It only remains for us to let them know we are here, and to devotedly await their response.

Do you see where this is headed? One thing this movie does, and does well, is to demonstrate that humankind is incorrigibly religious: everyone is forced by their very nature to believe in a higher order of beings, ones whose powers and understanding are beyond our comprehension. And the movie will go on to demonstrate our absolute impossibility of approaching these beings using our own abilities, or of comprehending them using our own understanding. Atheistic Science is turned on its head, and shown to be just another religion after all. 

I think that's enough for the first installment; we are now fully seven minutes into a two-and-a-half-hour movie, and in the next scene we will see Ellie instantly transition to Dr. Arroway the astronomer, having finally achieved the ultimate in her muttered ten-year-old goal of "get[ting] a bigger antenna."

How God solved a marriage problem

I came across this report from a missionary in West Africa, and was immediately struck by the biblical response of the woman toward her husband. Had she lived in "a more civilised nation," she would have been told that it were her right, yea her duty, to put herself away from such a husband at once. Instead, she chose the biblical model of winning him by her silence. And then--God intervened. Here's the story (edited slightly to provide confidentiality):

A native woman stood up at the annual church meeting this past March in a predominately Islamic region. The woman testified that she had stood in the same meeting last year to ask for prayer for her Muslim husband's salvation. He often beat her for following Christ and refusing to attend mosque. She stood up to give an update.

A few months earlier, she had told him she wanted to attend a week-long church meeting. Her husband was livid. A whole week? Who would cook his food? Clean his house? She should be in the mosque and forget church. He beat her severely -- again. Nearly all Christian women that convert from Islam are illiterate. Many make these meetings a priority to ask Bible questions because they cannot read or obtain a Bible on their own. 

This Christian woman was determined to go to the church meeting, no matter her husband's violence. Still enraged, he locked up the house as soon as she left, declaring to the neighbors that his wife would never enter his home again. To make his point, he threw the key into the river as he headed to his girlfriend's house for the week.

The lady enjoyed the conference and headed home on Friday, stopping by the local market to buy fish. She planned to have a hearty meal ready for her husband when he came home from Friday prayers at the mosque. She had no idea that her husband had already locked her out of her home for good. Arriving home, she was puzzled that the house was locked up tight. She needed to start preparing the meal, so she borrowed a pot from her neighbor and began to clean the fish.

When she cut open the fish, a key fell out of its belly. Puzzled, she examined it and remarked to her neighbor that the key looked similar to her own house key. Her neighbor urged her to try it in the lock; and it worked! She opened up the house, cleaned it, and got her husband's supper ready for him.

As the husband walked home from Friday prayers at the mosque, he saw his house open and a fire going in the outdoor kitchen. Again, he was enraged, thinking the neighbors had helped his wife break the door or the locks, but on examination, he found nothing had been harmed. When he demanded to know how she got back into their house, she told him the strange story of the key in the fish's belly. Stunned, he didn't say another word.

Until Saturday night. He asked his wife if he could attend church the next morning. After Sunday morning church service, the man asked to speak to the pastor privately. He recounted the incredulous story about his house key and said, "I want to serve the God of the Christians. He is the One who knows and has power to do what no one else can." 

That Christian woman beamed as she talked. God had answered many prayers that her husband would repent and follow Christ. In his Gospel, Matthew tells of a fish caught with a coin in its mouth for taxes (Matthew 17). In 2018, a house key in a fish's belly became a key to the Kingdom for a Muslim man. 

Our Lord is still a Fisher of Men.

Invisible Angels

I earlier wrote about a documented characteristic of the appearance of angels: they are so bright, it can be hard to look at them. On the other hand, it's also documented that angels can look quite ordinary. There are examples both in the Bible and from anecdotes of both. In this post, I'll address an interesting quality of incognito angels: it appears they can't be photographed.

I got to thinking about this recently when reading the original version of Dracula by Bram Stoker, which brought the term 'vampire' into colloquial English. Among the characteristics of a vampire described in Dracula (and apparently original to Stoker) was an inability to cast a reflection in a mirror. In other words, the phenomenon of seeing a vampire was not due to the physical reflection of light off its corporeal body, but some independent effect on the eye or visual cortex. Such appears to be the case with all visible angels, whether they be elect or fallen.

I base this on the testimony of a friend of mine, returned from a mission trip to northern Ghana. While there--he reported--during a church service, he spotted a dove in the rafters of the church; something not all that uncommon in Ghana. But when he attempted to snap a photo of it on his digital camera, all he could see in the viewer were the empty rafters. Looking directly, he could see the dove; looking at the camera, he couldn't. He snapped a photo anyways, which he showed us upon his return. It showed the rafters, but where the dove would have been the picture was totally washed out, as if hit by an intense beam of light.

I ran across another apparent example of an angel visible to the eye as an ordinary man, but incapable of being captured in a photograph:

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865584511/Unknown-angel-priest-prays-with-19-year-old-at-accident-scene.html?pg=all

The priest's image did not show up in a single one of some 70 photos of the crash site. But it turned out he wasn't actually an angel, after all according to a man who admits to having been the mystery priest:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/12/father-patrick-dowling-angel-priest-_n_3746077.html?1376357440

So be careful about stories like this. I trust my friend's testimony, and saw the washed-out digital photo. But I wonder how many other stories like the 'mystery priest' end up being more than they actually were. Some level of science has been brought to bear on investigating this pheonomenon, but it has been roundly criticized for not being rigourous.

Revival Now--but what follows?

“It is a delicate matter, to write up revival!” wrote Dr. Joe Church, who, by his own account, seeded the East Africa Revival in 1929 by studying the Scofield Reference Bible with Simeon Nsibambi in Kampala, Uganda. Full revival was then launched from Gahini, Rwanda in the early 1930's as preachers fanned out with the message of repentance unto salvation.

Nay, counter the Ugandan Anglicans. The Balokole Revival started there in 1922, and spread to Rwanda from there in the late 1930's--and it was in spite of, rather than due to, Joe Church and his associates, who objected to their revival being taken over by unruly natives.

And an unruly revival it did become. As the Balokole threw aside both Anglican liturgical ceremonies and the animistic syncretism that had crept into them, they had to contend with a rash of new hyperspiritual fads, such as meeting naked (to demonstrate a complete freedom from lustful desires), ecstatic utterances (which had actually begun in 1916 in the Uriya Forest, and 1912 among the Luo), and dramatic physical signs such as collapsing, hyperventilating, quaking, grunting, shrieking, and thrashing--behaviour usually associated in those climes with demon possession. Muslim evangelists produced similar manifestations in their disciples, but without the public prayer and confession of sins that characterized the Anglican revival.

So, like revivals tend to be, it was messy. Yet it swept across East Africa for decades until it finally burned out in the 1950's. Lasting legacies of the East Africa Revival are numerous indigenous religious movements, still outside the mainstream of Christianity. And although Rwanda and Burundi remained over 90% professing Christian, what good did that do in the decades that followed, when both nations reeled under one genocidal bloodbath after another, that cost upwards of a million lives?

Be careful what you pray for, as you may just get it--and its typical aftermath. It's difficult to see how the countries at the epicenter of the East Africa Revival--Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, and Burundi--could be any worse off now, had revival never swept their land.

At the sound of the trumpet

"So the Spirit of the LORD took control of Gideon, who blew a trumpet, mustering the descendants of Abiezer to follow him into battle." --Judges 6:34 ISV

I don't follow World Net Daily news much anymore, having been burned a few too many times by their sensationalist approach to journalism. But I never dismiss any news out of hand due solely to the source, and this particular piece really caught my attention today.

In my coverage of mysterious air crashes, I keep running across the theory that a person could be pre-programmed to fly a plane into the ocean; it's about the least conspiratorial theory to account for several spectacular crashes in the past couple of decades. In this particular story, though--based on an eyewitness account now verified through the power of the internet--a trumpet was sounded to incited normally peaceable people to murderous violence.

“They were very hospitable and would invite you in,” she said. “But, if a distant signal was given – it sounded something like a trumpet – then they would instantly change, and would attempt to harm you. Yet if the signal sounded again, they would immediately switch back to normal.” 

It's the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the Armenian Genocide. What other lessons could we--should we--learn from this event?

This week also marked the passage of a man who passed on to me, as he received it from the lips of a man who experienced it, unpublished information on the Battle of Shiloh (which he still referred to as the Battle of Shiloh Church). He may have been the last living person who was only one link removed from a first-hand account of a Civil War battle and its aftermath, which goes to show that it can often take over 100 years for the history of a war, or even a battle, to finish being written.

Pelagia the Harlot, part three

Having written earlier about Pelagia the Harlot (here and there), it's time to wrap up my evaluation of this ancient account (but see last line).

First of all, we see in this account that literacy was not at all uncommon; both Pelagia and Nonnus were able to write to each other as a matter of course (in this installment, we see that even her slave was able to write). Secondly, we see how new converts were accepted into the Church at a time when it was already customary to give the seal of membership to infants:
- Due to the delicate nature of baptism--similar in some essentials to a gynaecological exam--the presence of a deaconess was required. 
- Penitents were first required to confess all their sins.
- The Bishop then exorcised the penitent.
- "Baptism" was delayed until the penitent could provide proof that they had left their former way of life; in the case of a prostitute, for example, she had to show some other means of support, lest the temptation exist to return.

Now, on to the final segment:


Chapter IX 
As we were drinking the wine, we suddenly heard a great shriek like that of a man suffering great violence. It was the shout of the devil.
"Woe! Woe! Why should I be suffering because of this decrepit old man? Weren't you satisfied with the thirty thousand Saracens whom you snatched from me, baptised and offered up to your God? Weren't you satisfied with Heliopolis, which used to belong to me along with everyone in it, which you have snatched from me and offered up to your God? And now you have taken from me the one in whom I had placed my greatest hope. O, how I suffer from this damnable man! Cursed be the day in which you were born. Her tears have flooded out over the floors of this hospice and all my hope has been cut off from me."
All these things he shouted out, lamenting outside the doors. Everybody there could hear him. And he continued, addressing himself to the neophyte.
"And you have done this to me, my lady Pelagia? Thinking to imitate my beloved Judas, were you? As one of the chosen apostles he had a place of glory and honour, and he betrayed his master. You have done the same thing to me!"
"Cross yourself and renounce him," the holy bishop Nonnus said to her. She signed herself in the name of Christ and breathed upon the demon, and at once he disappeared.

 Chapter X 
On the second day, the devil appeared by night to Pelagia, the handmaid of the Lord, as she was asleep in the cell of her holy mother Romana, and woke her up.
"Just answer me this, my lady Margarita," he said. "Weren't you plentifully supplied with god and silver? Wasn't it I who decorated you with gold and precious stones? Tell me, what have I done to upset you? Tell me, so that I can put things right. Don't make me a laughing stock for these Christians."
Pelagia, the handmaid of the Lord, crossed herself and breathed at the demon.
"My God has snatched me out of your very jaws," she said, "and led me into his bridal chamber. He it is who fights for me."
And the devil was suddenly no more to be seen. 

Chapter XI 
On the third day after her baptism, Pelagia had some instructions to give to the slave that looked after her possessions.
"Go to my wardrobe," she said, "and make a list of how much gold and silver I have, and how much richly decorated clothing I have, and bring it all back here."
He did as he was asked and brought back everything she possessed. She asked her holy mother, the lady Romana, to ask the holy Nonnus to come and see her, and gave him everything she possessed.
"These riches, my lord," she said, "are the rewards that Satan has given me. I want to give them freely to your holiness, to do with as you think best. It is my task now to seek for the riches of our Lord Jesus Christ."

The bishop summoned his chief steward, and in Pelagia's presence handed everything over to him..
"I want you to swear by the indivisible Trinity," he said to the steward, "that none of this goes either to the bishopric or to the church, but rather disbursed to widows and orphans and the poor, so that what has been gathered by evil can be distributed for good purposes, and so the riches of a sinner can become the treasury of the righteous. And if this oath is broken either by you or by anyone else who takes any of it for himself, let him be anathema and all his house, and let them be as those who cried out, 'Let him be crucified'".

Pelagia called together all her slaves, male and female, and freed them, taking their golden torcs off with her own hands. "Make haste and free yourselves likewise from this wicked world, full of sin," she said, "so that as we have been together in this world, so also we may be together in that blessed life where pain is no more."  

Chapter XII 
On the eighth day, when she was required to divest herself of the white baptismal garment, she got up at night without telling anyone, clothed herself in a coarse tunic which the bishop supplied her with, and from that day onwards she was nevermore seen in the city of Antioch. The holy Romana wept bitterly, but the holy Nonnus comforted her with these words:
"Don't weep, my daughter, but rather rejoice with great joy, for Pelagia has chosen that good portion just like Mary, whom the Lord in the Gospel preferred to Martha" (Luke 10.42).
Pelagia went to Jerusalem and built a cell for herself on the Mount of Olives, the place where the Lord prayed.

Chapter XIII
A little while later the bishop of the city dismissed the bishops and they went back to their own places. After three or four years, I, Jacob the deacon, had a desire to visit Jerusalem in order to pay my devotions to the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. I asked permission of the bishop and he let me go with these words:
"My advice to you, brother deacon, is that when you get to Jerusalem, you make enquiries there about a certain brother Pelagius, a monk and a eunuch who has been enclosed in solitude there for many years. Visit him. I am sure he will be of great benefit to you."
Of course he was really talking about the servant of God Pelagia, without actually saying so.

Chapter XIV
When I got to Jerusalem I worshipped the holy resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and next day made enquiries about the servant of God. And I went up the Mount of Olives and found him there where the Lord prayed, in a tiny cell completely enclosed except for a small window in the wall. I knocked on the window and it opened to me. Pelagia recognised me, but I did not recognise her. How should I have recognised her,
when that face which had once been of such marvellous beauty had withered away through severe fasting, and her eyes were sunken in her cheeks? 

"What have your come for, brother?" she asked.
"My bishop, Nonnus, told me to seek you out," I replied. "He told me to ask you to pray for him for you are a true saint of God."

Pelagius immediately shut the window and began to sing the third hour. I joined in the prayer from the other side of the wall, and went away quite uplifted by having seen such an angel. Returning to Jerusalem, I began to visit the monasteries and make the acquaintance of the brothers. 

Chapter XV 
Brother Pelagius had a great reputation in the monasteries, such that I decided to visit him again in order to have the benefit of his teaching. I went back and knocked on his window, and even presumed to call out to him by name, but there was no response. I did the same the next day and the day after, calling out to Pelagius by name, but no one answered. I said to myself that either there was no one there at all, or else that the monk who was there had departed this life. Inspired by a nudge from God, I began to think that I really should take seriously the possibility that he was dead, so I pushed open his little window and looked inside. I could see that he was indeed dead. I shut the window and tried to make the best I could of the situation by going back to Jerusalem bearing the news that the holy monk Pelagius, worker of miracles, was dead. 

The holy fathers, together with monks from various monasteries, came and opened up the cell and brought the holy body outside with as much care as if it were gold or precious stones. As soon as the holy fathers began to anoint the body with myrrh they of course discovered that it was a woman. They tried to keep such a wonderful thing secret but it proved impossible to hide it from the people, who cried out loudly, "Glory to our Lord Jesus Christ who has hidden so many riches upon earth, not only among men but also among women". As the news spread further among all the people, all the monasteries of virgins came from Jericho as well as from Jordan where the Lord was baptised, carrying tapers and torches and singing hymns, following the holy fathers who were carrying the holy body to its final resting place. 

So there you have the life of this harlot, a holy life of one who had been without hope. May the Lord have mercy upon her and upon us in the day of judgment, for to him belong honour and glory, power and majesty unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Well, so much for the story. Now me must deal with the question, "Is it factual?" which is a bit more to ask then "is it historical?" because most of history plays fast and loose with the actual facts. If it isn't even historical, however, then we know it wasn't factual either.

This is a hard question to answer. One of the easiest ways to determine that an account is unhistorical is to look for anachronisms. For example, the basilica of Antioch is mentioned, which had been built by the Emperor Constantine about the 330's. So any story set before that time wouldn't fit. But the setting of this story seems to be the Council of Antioch in 341, so--no problem, because that Council was called upon the occasion of officially dedicating the basilica to the memory of the martyr Julian (as it was so identified in this account). The big problem seems to be the presence of Nonnus, whom we know to have attended the Council of Chalcedon in 451, 110 years later.
But wait--I've just come across what seems to be a translation directly from the Greek account, of which the above is another whole step removed. I'll have to start all over by examining it, before passing further judgment.

The pagan hero vs the christian conqueror

I've written before about the warrior mindset and the pagan world view, but this is where they come together.

About a year ago I satisfied a sudden urge by reading through the entire Harry Potter series in a single week. I had basically ignored the series when it came out in book form, content merely to read reviews. I couldn't help being exposed, however, to images of the movie series, and after years of hearing one allusion after another I set out to see if I could examine the Potter phenomenon firsthand--thus my reading binge.

I came away from that binge with a better understanding of the pagan mindset--for Harry Potter's universe is, apart from passing references to Christmas and witch burnings, totally pagan. There is no supreme good or supreme evil, only an amorphous power that can be tapped equally for one or for the other, depending mostly upon the skill and dedication of the one tapping into it. And that is exactly the pagan mindset.

As I considered what made Harry such a powerful force (for good, as it turned out--or at least, against evil), I realized that the fact that he was good did help--but it wasn't sufficient. Other people in his universe were good, but being good was not sufficient in and of itself to overcome evil. Indeed, it was only the last straw at the tipping point. Harry's primary virtue was bravery. In every book in the series, he single-handedly took on the personification of evil, and prevailed. At other times, however, evil prevailed until he was able to acquire some magical tool to fight back. Tom Riddle also sought those tools, and had he managed to acquire them all, even Harry's bravery and goodness would not have been enough.

So, the formula for success in the pagan universe basically breaks down to:
Ownership of all the magical tools = victory every time.
Ownership of some of the magical tools + bravery = victory, unless going up against
Ownership of some of the magical tools + bravery + good. In that case,
Ownership of some of the magical tools + bravery + good = eventual ownership of all remaining magical tools, or at least all the most powerful one(s), thus resulting in victory.

Now, in the Christian world view, magical tools can be totally overcome, not by more powerful magical tools, but by spiritual purity (Matthew 17:21). Thus good is not the final ingredient needed only when up against a magically equal but evil force; it is the primary weapon against evil.

Thus  massive power struggle ensues, wherever the Christian worldview confronts the pagan one--with bravery and good on one side, and bravery and magical tools on the other. For the Christian, however, bravery is merely the last ingredient, to be pitted merely against the remaining bravery of the sorcerer who has just seen his most powerful magical tools rendered useless by an invisible foe.

Elijah on Mt. Carmel is an excellent example of the Christian world view confronting the pagan in a massive show of force. Mustering all the magical tools at their disposal, represented by hundreds of ecstatic priests sacrificing their own blood to Ba'al, the pagans were confronted by the spiritual purity of one man, represented by restoring the altar of God on the high place of Mt. Carmel. Elijah showed his superior bravery by daring to challenge and even mock Ba'al, and when the power struggle came down in favor of Elijah, by ordering the deaths of all his opponents.

It was a lack of bravery, however, that removed Elijah from the scene when no number of palace guards could even arrest him. When his bravery failed, all the spiritual purity he could muster availed him nothing, and he fled for his life from henpecked Ahab's pagan wife. Elijah needed some personal ministering, not only by an angel, but from the Voice of God Himself, before his powers returned.

Sorcerers can be defeated without any human or magical powers, simply by applying the formula of good + bravery against the foe of magic + bravery. The pagan's bravery will vanish when he sees his magical powers rendered inert, but he will try to win by threatening the Christian with physical harm instead. In order to prevail the Christian will have to show bravery against both attacks.

More thoughts on Asimov and Darkness

It's almost ironic that in Asimov's Nightfall, madness is the inevitable fate of those who experience Darkness--regardless of their prior conditioning or present belief. When Darkness falls, everyone realises the The Prophecy was right after all: the last sun really will go dark, and the stars really will come out. But even those who expected this to happen are unprepared: the Scientists had no idea of the vastness of their universe, full of many thousands of stars; and the Cultists, still clinging to a false hope in the efficacy of their blind faith, go mad all the same, cursing the Scientists for ruining everything with their blind rationalism. Left unspoken in the short story version is the fate of those in the Hideout who had prepared for Nightfall with hundreds of torches to carry them, sanity intact, through the brief hours of Darkness and into the virtually infinite Light of the next Cycle.

Like so many of Asimov's stories, this one also contains a bit of the autobiographical--but this time, in foresight rather than hindsight. Asimov seems to be predicting, at the tender age of 21, his eventual encounter with the Darkness which, in his blind rationalism, he refuses to admit exists. He realises that Science, like his own rejected Religion of Rabbinic Judaism, can only foresee the End--not forestall it. He envisions himself, at some divinely decreed date, entering Darkness because, either by false belief or a desire for detachment from belief, he has failed to enter the Hideout.

Regardless of what he may have believed about it during his lifetime, Asimov irrevocably entered Darkness on April 6, 1992.

I'm reminded of the words of Philip J. King, in Five Minutes in Hell:

"Help me, Lord!" he begs while looking up and seeing the face of Jesus in the countenance of the Father. "Please don't let me perish! I've done many good works. Oh, give me one more chance! I believe now with all my heart. I was too proud to believe before. Please, Lord, please!"

The sincere outburst from the heartbroken man goes unheeded as the great Judge of heaven and earth solemnly declares, "Whosoever is not found written in the Book of Life shall be cast in to the Lake of Fire. Depart from Me, ye worker of iniquity, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels."

The man, now too weak with despair to protest, does not resist as the angels carry him to the base of the throne. How he would like to get just one more glimpse of that beautiful city before his departure, but he is too blinded by his own tears to see it, even if he could.

He is astonished at the great strength of the angels as they cast him outward with terrific speed. Almost instantly everything is black—oppressively black—thick, misty black. There is not the tiniest ray of light—not even a flicker from the great white throne.

Already he must be an immeasurable distance from the throne. He feels himself falling faster and faster. Down, down he falls, away, way down.

"Please help me!" shouts the man into oppressive blackness. "Please, please help me!" Silence follows for what seems like many hours, and the man continues to fall.

Again the man shouts into the darkness. "Is there no one here to hear me? Am I the only one here? Please, will someone stop me from falling?"

The man is instantly startled as the voice of a demon replies, "Welcome to outer darkness, fellow-heir of damnation. Prepare to stay awhile."

Jewish Idolatry rears its ugly head

One common thread in idolatry is the deification of people after they are dead. Caesar liked the idea of deification so much that he went ahead and proclaimed himself god while he was still alive, and commanded all his subjects to pray to him. That's the extreme case, but more common are cases like Martin of Tours and Geat the Saxon. Adored (or feared) in life, they were prayed to (or worshiped) in death.

Others lived rather quiet, unassuming lives, but for various reasons were granted the attributes of deity long after their deaths, especially if their tombs were preserved to be later turned into shrines. Such is the case of Rachel the Matriarch. Many of her descendants will be traveling to her shrine this week to pray to her.

Inspired song writing

94020 The White Man doesn't generally refer to angels in his writing. Being a scientist, he likes things to follow the various laws that have been discovered to rule unchallenged in the material sphere. But he also recognizes another sphere, the immaterial. Angels are those beings that cross the boundary between those two spheres and interact on a material level with our own reality. Thus it is impossible to fully study them from a scientific perspective.

From the perspective of history, however, angels can be studied. History dutifully records WHAT happens, without having to go into the HOW. And history is replete with angelic visitations. In fact, history seems to turn on events of global significance that involved the trans-dimensional missions of angels: Creation; The Fall; The Incarnation; The Birth; The Cross; The Tomb. In a back-handed way, this was the basic premise behind the script of Ghostbusters.

Now that I think of it, I'm sure that it was angels who conveyed the blueprints of the Ark to Noah. It is totally fitting with God's character to have used his own intermediaries to communicate across the boundary between the temporal and the eternal. In fact, when he communicated directly with Moses, it was noted as being out of the ordinary for him to do so.

For over a decade now I've been studying the appearance of angels at one particular pivotal event in history: The Operation Auca Massacre. Details have continued to trickle out since Walter Liefeld took his wife, the former Olive Fleming, back to visit the scene of her first husband's martyrdom. At that point Dawa, their guide and a remote eyewitness to the massacre, mentioned that "chanting foreigners in robes" had appeared above the trees at the time the five missionaries were being killed.

This is where my spine starts to tingle. When Steve Saint returned to live among the people who killed his father, he picked up more information about this angelic visitation. The killers, being farther away than Dawa, only saw illuminations in the sky. But like Dawa, they heard the singing. And even more incredibly, Kimo, one of the killers, was able to identify the very song they heard when Steve brought a film crew down to document God's work among the Aucas since the Massacre. It was titled "Beyond the Gates of Splendor."

The song Kimo recognized was from the sound track of "Beyond the Gates of Splendor," specifically a song composed for the documentary, called "To Every Tribe and Nation."

A song composed in the 21st century, but sung by a choir of angels almost 50 years earlier. A song written under inspiration, and we almost never knew it. A Heavenly Song to welcome five faithful witnesses Home.

You know, I kind of suspect that this wasn't the first time it had been sung.

I'd like to sing it myself someday. I have a feeling that I will.

Demons in the Church

This from a Mennonite church in Central America:

"We had a 'vigil,' which means church lasting all through the night, consisting mainly in load praise songs. It took place on a Saturday night--nine hours of worship services with a 30 minute break in between for coffee and baleadas. I didn't get to bed until 5 am. There was also preaching, speaking in tongues, and an emphasis on making noise. The youth were encouraged to dance or at least sing with excitement. I had never seen exorcisms before, but that night there were two, one of them being M____. A bunch of people had to restrain him, and they kept repeating over in over 'in the name of Jesus.' Finally he went limp and everyone applauded. I don't know why he was attacked by a demon. During the time for giving testimonies, he spoke of feeling 'blows,' after entering 'the presence of the spirit.'"

Not your typical image of a Mennonite church, is it? Yet Mennonites are not any more immune than any other denomination to the inroads of the various Pentecostal movements that have swept America for a century, and are taking on a new life in countries across the world.

I must say I'm very concerned to hear about this, but not particularly surprised. Rodney Howard Browne's organisation is pushing to enroll foreign evangelists and pastors in its training program.

I have heard firsthand testimony of a person--an ex-Mennonite woman from Indiana--being observed after having come back from hearing Browne in Pensacola. She's got unmistakable symptoms of demon posession. No doubt this type can be cast out in such a service as described above--but does it stay out? I doubt it. And for every one cast out, seven more come back.

The Hand of God--another thought

What was necessary--or sufficient--to deflect the first attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941?

The entire Pacific Fleet, minus its aircraft carriers, wasn't sufficient.
The entire air wing on Ford Island wasn't sufficient.
The newly installed radar that picked up the incoming Japanese planes wasn't sufficient.
Advance warning of the attack from the spooks on Purple Code detail wasn't sufficient.

The attack occurred, unannounced and unhindered; the planes circled back for another pass and continued to do so until they exhausted their weapon load. The few planes that rose up to oppose them were just as likely to be shot down as were their targets.

What further resources could the US possibly have marshalled to defend against the anticipated attack of 1941? Yet it turned out to be a bloodbath; more American sailors died in the Battle of Pearl Harbor than in any battle before or since.

So . . .

What was necessary--or sufficient--to deflect the second attack on Pearl Harbor in 1968?

The SOSUS net wasn't sufficient-- it wasn't aware of K-129's location until after the launch was initiated.

The squadron of subs based in Pearl Harbor wasn't sufficient to detect the presence of K-129 hundreds of miles closer in than her assigned patrol area.

The Nike Zeus ABM system, developed to "Prevent a Nuclear Pearl Harbor," wasn't sufficient. It had already been put on hold due to unreliability.

The thousands of Soldiers, Airmen, Marines, and Special Forces stationed at Pearl Harbor were not sufficient. None of them were aware of the impending attack.

The spooks in their cubicles at Barbers Point knew nothing of the top-secret planning behind the attack. Hours after attempted launch, they noted in their intercept records that K-129 had uncharacteristically observed radio silence after leaving port, but by then it would have been far too late to do anything about it.

In short, despite billions worth of topline equipment, and a million-man military in a high state of Cold War readiness (two spook platforms having been recently taken by the Communists)--none of this availed anything to protect the lives and property of virtually everyone on Oahu island.

What more was needed than everything an armed and ready America could throw up in its defense? Prayer.

What was sufficient to make a nuclear missle blow up on launch, killing only its launch crew and sinking only its launch platform? One righteous man in ferverent prayer.

" I exhort FIRST OF ALL supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for . . . all who are in authority, that we might lead a quiet and peaceable life. . ." 1 Timothy 2:1