Archive for category Religious Musings

Three wise men? Three kings? Who were these chaps?

Posted by David Hurst in Religious Musings on December 4th, 2009

In the second of my mini series of short blogs about Christmas, I’m looking at the common misunderstanding of the “wise men” or “kings” that you see portrayed in every school nativity around the country.

Who or what were they?
This part of the story of the birth of Christ is found in Matthew 2:1, which in the KJV talks about “wise men” coming from the east. Other translations render the verse as “kings”. More accurate translations render the verse as “astrologers”, because indeed these men were Magi. The phrase is a Latinisation of the Greek word “magos”, which generally referred to priests of zoroastrianism, who were known for star worship and astrology.

How many where there?
The scripture doesn’t say. Commonly, people believe there were three of them because of there supposedly being three gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. However there could have been other gifts, and the quantity of each gift is not stated, so there could have been two or more Magi. We don’t know the exact number.

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Peace on Earth and good will to all men

Posted by David Hurst in Religious Musings on December 3rd, 2009

With Christmas 2009 rapidly approaching, I thought I might do a series of short posts on the various biblical inaccuracies that seem to spout forth over the festive period. This one is a classic: “peace on Earth and good will to all men”. How many times have you heard that?

It comes from Luke 2:14, which the King James Version (as per usual) mis-translates into the saying above. The early Latin texts render it: “et in terra pax hominibus, bonae voluntatis”. So, a more accurate translation would be: “peace on Earth to men of good will”. And that changes the meaning completely.

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Why don’t I use the King James / Authorised bible?

Posted by David Hurst in Personal, Religious Musings on August 21st, 2009

I got asked this question the other day and there’s a simple answer, which I shall write in the form of a question:

Why would I read a bible written in a language nobody speaks anymore?

Would you read a bible in Esperanto? What about one translated into Egyptian Hieroglyphs? Even if you had a grasp on these languages, wouldn’t it just make a difficult task that much more difficult?

Actually, I do have a KJV bible at home, which I occasionally reference in my studies, and also an American Standard Version, which is written archaic English too. It’s good to have lots of translations, purely because ancient languages are very different to modern languages and no translation does a perfect job of rendering the ancient into modern on every single scripture. Still, it must surely be better to read a translation in your own language…

The Old Testament was written in Hebrew and Aramaic. Why? Because, those were the common languages in use by the people who were reading the scriptures around the time they were written.

The New Testament, despite being written by Jews under Roman rule, was written neither in Hebrew nor in Latin. Instead it was written in Koine Greek. Why? Because one of the lasting remnants of the Greek empire was the Greek language and therefore majority of people at that time would have understood Koine Greek.

So, the bible was always intended to be accessible for all people and written in a language that the reader could easily understand. Quite why the mainstream religions insist on sticking to the archaic is beyond me to explain. But then, so many of them completely disregard most of the bible anyway.

The KJV has numerous inaccuracies of translation and was tainted from the start. To quote Wikipedia: “The king gave the translators instructions designed to guarantee that the new version would conform to the ecclesiology and reflect the episcopal structure of the Church of England and its beliefs about an ordained clergy. The translation was by 47 scholars, all of whom were members of the Church of England.” That doesn’t sound like am impartial basis upon which to commence an accurate translation to me.

Whatever your denomination, any study of the bible is incomplete without a reasonable background knowledge of the various ancient languages used in its writing. A good place to start is with an interlinear translation, which features the original Greek text, with a literal word-for-word translation, and then a modern language translation - all on the same page. It’s ideal for spotting the creative license taken by the KJV translators in support of their particular brand of religion. By thus distilling the various translations we use, we can be more sure that we won’t mis-read, mis-understand or mis-apply any scripture.

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Religion is a lot like a web browser

Posted by David Hurst in Religious Musings on May 18th, 2009

Being a web developer by trade, I am accutely aware of the issues presented in building a cross-browser compatible website. This is because our clients demand that their website always looks the same no matter which web browser is being used. What they are blissfully unaware of is that, despite there being set standards for writing website code (as laid out by the W3C et al), web browsers are not forced to render said website code in a particular fashion, and this allows for a considerable amount of creative licence on the part of the browser programming team - and more often than not the programming team in question is the Internet Explorer programming team.

Firefox has its bugs, as do Safari and Opera, but you can pretty much guarantee that the vast majority of your cross-browser development pain will be caused by Internet Explorer - or as I like to think of it: The Church of England Browser.

You see, religion works in much the same way: you have one set of code (the bible) and yet each of the browsers (religious denominations) chooses to interpret that code slightly differently. And yet, just like a website, I think it is entirely probable that the person that wrote the code would have had in mind a specific way in which it should be interpreted and therefore might not be too happy about the way some browsers just do whatever they damn well please.

This is turning into quite the analogy, so let’s leave the web behind a minute and focus on the theological for a moment.

The bible clearly condemns war. Well, actually, the Old Testament is full of war, but that’s different to the Christian faith and principles of the New Testament. Perhaps we do need the web analogy still. Think of the Old Testament as Web 1.0 and the New Testament as Web 2.0. Web 1.0 is not invalid and many of it’s principles remain true, but other elements have been superseded by Web 2.0. The same is true of the bible.

Jesus and his apostles, of New Testament fame, quoted liberally from the Old Testament, thus proving its relevance to those of a Christian persuasion. And whilst it is true that God actively helped the Israelite nation in warfare, one must remember that in doing so he was merely using His people as His tool to execute His judgment. In fact, the Old Testament itself talks about beating swords into plowshares and spears into pruning shears and ceasing warfare. The United Nations was particularly taken with this notion, and had the words of Isaiah 2:4 stuck on their building as some sort of motto, which they completely ignored by failing to turn any of their weapons into farming equipment. I digress…

How is it, that this straightforward piece of “code” can then be rendered by some religious “browsers” as: kill everybody? How can you have Catholics of one nationality going to kill Catholics of another nationality, with both claiming that God is on their side? Hmmmmmmmm. I detect a browser error. He cannot be on both sides, and therefore I suspect He is actually on neither side.

Jesus shunned politics, yet he had a clear and uncontested royal lineage that could be traced back to King David. He rightfully could have claimed his kingship, and indeed this is exactly what the Jews expected him to do. In fact, they tried to enthrone him as king, and he ran away. (John 6:15). Why? Because he chose instead to devote his life to talking about the future kingdom of God (Luke 4:43) - he even told us to pray for it in the Lord’s prayer - rather than focusing on the meaningless politics of the day which could never have brought any lasting benefits to humanity as a whole. He underlined this with a simple statement: “I am no part of this world.”

So then, how is it that the clergy of the Church of England are so involved with politics? Religion has shaped the governance of this country (and many others around the world) for eons, and it still refuses to let go. You see this particularly in the US of A, where politicians preach their manifestos from the church pulpits, creating an interlaced mush of religio-politics that must surely confuse the hell out of the parishioners - they usually look pretty confused to me anyway.

I think we are witnessing another browser error.

Here’s the thing: as sure as you know that Internet Explorer is a pile of festering turd completely incapable of following any standards whatsoever, you also know that there is a Firefox out there. Yes, it may be a little buggy in places, but it is rendering that code out the way it was intended to be viewed, and that’s all that matters.

Likewise, if you wade through all the religions, there simply must be one out there that is correctly distilling the truth. The problem is that you can’t just whip along to mozilla.org and download a copy, but I’m pretty sure that using purely the two principles discussed above, a diligent searcher will be rewarded with the Firefox of truth.

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Halloween is here - time to tape up the letterbox again

Posted by David Hurst in Personal, Rants, Religious Musings on October 31st, 2008

Halloween. I’m not a fan. Kids running around begging for sweets (or money now), usually without proper parental supervision. Adults getting dressed up as all manner of bizarre things and going to parties. Not me. I shall be sat at home, with my letterbox firmly taped up (thanks to some kids who chucked eggs in once), resolutely refusing to answer the door. My kids will be safely tucked up in bed.

Most people just see Halloween as a bit of fun and have no idea what it’s actually about. Let me enlighten you…

Halloween stems from an ancient Celtic festival called Samhain. The Celts celebrated their new year on 1 November, and this day marked the end of summer and the harvest, and the beginning of winter - a time of year they associated with death. The Celts believed that on the eve of the new year, 31 October for them, that the boundary between the worlds of living and dead became blurred.  They even believed that ghosts of the dead returned to earth at this time, causing trouble and damaging crops. They believed that these otherworldly spirits made it easier for Druids to foretell the future.

The Celts built huge bonfires and sacrificed crops and even animals to their gods. They dressed up in costumes - usually animal heads and skins - and spent the evening telling each other’s fortunes.

Later, when the Romans came, two Roman festivals were combined with Samhain. The first was Feralia, a day towards the end of October when the Romans commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a festival to honour Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. Pomona’s symbol is the apple, and this is the likely root of “bobbing” for apples that is often practiced today on Halloween.

In the 9th century, Pope Boniface IV designated 1 November as All Saints’ Day - a time to honour saints and martyrs. The pope was likely trying to replace Samhain with a church-sanctioned holiday. This celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas which comes from the ancient English word Alholowmesse, meaning All Saints’ Day. The night before began to be called All-hallows Eve, and from that we get the modern term Halloween.

A couple of hundred years later, the church, presumably forgetting their righteous interlude of trying to replace the festival of the dead with a more holy venture, then designated 2 November as All Souls’ Day - a day to honour the dead. This was celebrated in much the same way as Samhain and included big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels and devils.

What about modern day Halloween customs…?

The Pumpkin has become synonymous with Halloween. The Celts believed that the head was the most powerful part of the body, containing the spirit, so they used the head of the vegetable in their festival as a superstitious symbol. The name Jack O’Lantern traces back in Irish folklore to a greedy, gambling and hard-drinking old farmer called Stingy Jack. He is said to have tricked the Devil into climbing into a tree and then trapped him by carving a cross into the tree trunk. In revenge, the Devil supposedly cursed Jack, condemning him to forever wander the Earth at night with the only light he had: a candle in a carved out turnip. The pumpkin was used over a turnip in North America as it is easier to carve.

Trick or treating resembles the late medieval practice of “souling”, when poor people would go from door to door on Hallowmas (1 November), receiving food in return for prayers for the dead on All Souls Day (2 November). This practice was famously mentioned by Shakespeare in his comedy The Two Gentleman of Verona (1593), when Speed accuses his master of “puling [whining], like a beggar at Hallowmas”.

In Ireland, they play a game called Puicini, where a blindfolded person sits in front of a table where saucers are placed. The saucers are shuffled and the person chooses one by touching it. The contents of the saucer then determines the person’s life during the following year. A saucer with earth foretells death, water foretells emigration, a ring foretells marriage, and many more.

Unmarried women were frequently told that if they sat in a dark room on Halloween and gazed into a mirror, they would see the face of their future husband. Alternatively, they might see a skull, which foretells their death before they could marry.

So, in summary Halloween is intrinsically linked with pagan festivals and occultism.

The UK is full of agnostic people who have no belief in a spirit world, good or bad, and as such see Halloween as just a bit of fun. In African countries where occultism is far more prevalent, there are far fewer agnostic people - largely because they can see the very real effects of dabbling in the occult.

I find it a bit strange though that Halloween should be so widely practiced in the UK, which is nominally a Christian country. Occultism is not a Christian practice at all. In fact, to be Christian means to be Christ-like, or an imitator of Christ. Frankly, I don’t believe Jesus would have had anything to do with any of this nonsense. His teachings were perfectly explicit on what happens to people when they die.

So, as someone with a Christian faith, I choose not to get involved with Halloween in any shape or form. Everyone else can use their free will to do whatever they please, provided that does not extend to anti-social behaviour outside my front door, which is just as unacceptable tonight as it is on every other night of the year. Whatever your beliefs, it’s always worth knowing just what it is that you are celebrating, then you can make an informed choice rather than just going along with the crowd because the novelty toy industry wants you to.

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