Do sheep prove that Jesus wasn’t born on December 25th?

SHEPH_FIELDS_ORTHODOXSt. Luke records that when Jesus was born an angel of the Lord directed a group of shepherds to go find him.

Luke introduces this group of shepherds by saying:

And in that region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night [Luke 2:8].

This has led to a common argument that Jesus couldn’t have been born on December 25th.

Why? Because it was supposedly too cold for the shepherds to be pasturing their flocks at night in late December.

Is this true?

Not on your life.

 

Shepherds’ Fields

Sheep definitely were pastured in the vicinity of Bethlehem. Luke is correct about that. In fact, they are pastured there today.

There are even two fields (one Catholic, one Greek Orthodox) that are known as the “Shepherds’ Field,” where pilgrims go to commemorate the events that Luke records. Both have shrines today.

The Orthodox one is pictured above.

You can read more about the Shepherds’ Fields here.

Neither can be established as the site Luke mentions. (Indeed, the site may have been at another nearby location entirely.)

Now about the argument that it was too cold to be grazing sheep on December 25th. . . .

 

Too Cold?

You know those fashionable fleece jackets that are really popular that people wear to keep from being too cold?

The ones that return between five and six million hits on Google?

Yeah those!

You know where the stuff those fleece jackets are made of comes from?

That’s right! Sheep! (And/or goats.)

It turns out that God decided to have sheep grow this amazing stuff called wool.

This wool stuff not only makes sheep soft and fun for children to touch at petting zoos, it also keeps them warm—just like it keeps us warm once we shear it off them.

In fact, wool is one of the main reasons that we keep sheep in the first place.

Sheep also need us to shear them, because if we don’t then their wool will overgrow and make it very difficult for the sheep to go about its normal sheep business.

Here’s a picture of a sheep whose wool has been allowed to grow to the point that, when it was finally sheared, it produced enough wool for twenty men’s suits . . .

Shrek2

Anybody want to say it was too cold for that sheep to withstand the rigors of a December night in the vicinity of Jerusalem, where the average nightly low for such nights (today) is 43 degrees Fahrenheit?

Of course, average temperature changes over times, but the first century was well after the close of the last Ice Age.

So maybe we want to be a little careful about declaring it “too cold” to keep sheep outdoors in the Jerusalem-Bethlehem area without, y’know, actually checking the facts.

Speaking of which . . .

 

Let’s Check the Facts!

Whether or not Jesus was born on December 25th, the claim that sheep were not being grazed at this time of year is false. In fact, sheep are still grazed there at this time of year.

In biblical circles, there is a famous letter written in 1967 in which a visiting scholar noted that sheep were, in fact, being pastured in Shepherds’ Field on Christmas Eve itself.

Biblical chronologer Jack Finegan writes:

William Hendriksen quotes a letter dated Jan. 16, 1967, received from the New Testament scholar Harry Mulder, then teaching in Beirut, in which the latter tells of being  in Shepherd Field at Bethlehem on the just-passed Christmas Eve, and says: “Right near us a few flocks of sheep were nestled. Even the lambs were not lacking. . . . It is therefore definitely not impossible that the Lord Jesus was born in December” [Jack Finnegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology (2nd ed.), no. 569, quoting Hendriksen, New Testament Commentary: Matthew (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1973), 1:182].

So the idea that Jesus couldn’t have been born on December 25th because of Luke’s reference to the pasturing of sheep on this night is false.

 

What about the shepherds?

Of course, Luke also says the shepherds were out in the fields. Would it have been too cold for them?

After all, shepherds are not naturally covered in wool. (Well, not most of them.)

But they do tend to have access to wool clothing and wool blankets, and they can lie down together to keep warm (Eccles. 4:11; cf. Eccles. 4:9-12) and build fires (John 18:18), etc.

And, y’know, 43 degrees.

So yeah. Not too cold for them, either.

The Dating of Christmas

nativityWas Jesus really born on December 25th?

You’ll find strong opinions on both sides of this question, with some saying definitely yes and some saying definitely no.

I don’t have strong feelings on this question. Although the Church today liturgically celebrates the birth of Our Lord on December 25th, whether this is the exact date of his birth is a question that the Magisterium has not settled. I would be fascinated if it turned out he was born on this date, but it would not upset me if it turned out he wasn’t.

The important thing is that he was born!

Over time, I want to look at some of the arguments (good and bad) about the day of Christ’s birth, and I’ll use this page to keep track of those posts, since the subject is too broad to be dealt with in a single, initial post.

Oh, and before we begin, a note for those who wonder if I’ve seen the Star of Bethlehem documentary (I get asked about this regularly when I talk about Christmas). Yes, I’ve seen it. It has both positive and negative aspects. Some of the things it argues are correct, but not everything it says is perfectly argued. I’ll try to deal with it in the fullness of time.

Here goes . . .

 

What Year was Jesus Born?

In this sequence of posts I deal with the chronology of the year in which (thought not the day on which) Jesus was born.

The 100-year old *mistake* about the Birth of Jesus

Here I point out the flaws in the argument made by Emil Shurer that Herod the Great died in 4 B.C. This argument has skewed New Testament chronology for a century!

Jesus’ birth and when Herod the Great *really* died

Here I describe the reasons that point to the actual date of Herod the Great’s death in 1 B.C.

What year was Jesus born? The answer may surprise you

Now I add up the evidence, which reveals that Jesus was born in the year that the Church Fathers held Jesus was born: 3/2 B.C.

 

The Infancy Narratives

How the accounts of Jesus’ childhood fit together: 6 things to know and share

Here I argue that, despite claims to the contrary, the infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke do not contradict each other. Instead, they fit together amazingly well.

 

The Enrollment of Quirinius

Does St. Luke contradict himself on when Jesus was born?

Here I deal with an alleged contradiction between Luke’s statements that Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great, given the connection he makes to the enrollment of Quirinius.

 

The Star of Bethlehem

Was the Star of Bethlehem a myth? A UFO? Or something else?

Here I argue that the Star of Bethlehem could have been an ordinary, if uncommon, astronomical phenomenon and that we need not suppose that it was a myth or something preternaturally strange.

Responding to the “Go To” Skeptic on the Star of Bethlehem

Here I respond to arguments posed by Dr. Aaron Adair, a skeptic who thinks that the way Matthew describes the Star of Bethlehem aren’t consistent with ordinary astronomical phenomena.

 

The “Integral Age” Theory

Is the “integral age” theory an apologetics myth?

Here I look at the claim that the date of Christmas and the Annunciation were determined by an alleged Jewish belief that prophets live in whole year units. In it, I point out the lack of clear evidence for this and ask for further help researching the idea.

“Integral Age” update!

Here I record the results of further research that I was able to do with the help of various individuals who responded to the above post. Conclusion: The most that can safely be claimed is that some Jewish sages from approximately this period in history had the idea that some holy men (at least Moses) lived in whole year units and this may or may not have played a role in the thinking of early Christians in fixing certain feast days.

 

The Sheep Argument

Do sheep prove that Jesus wasn’t born on December 25th?

Here I deal with the argument that Jesus couldn’t have been born on December 25th because it was too cold for sheep to be pastured on that night, as Luke records.

“Integral Age” Update!

mosesdeathRecently I blogged about the common apologetics claim that the dates of Christmas and the Annunciation were based on the idea that Jesus lived to an “integral age.”

In other words, that Jesus died on the anniversary of his birth or conception.

According to some authors, it was popularly believed among ancient Jews that prophets and other holy men died on their birthdays.

But my own research into the topic did not back this up.

I therefore asked if others could shed any light on the subject, and they did!

With the generous help of various individuals, mostly on Facebook, I’ve been able to get further information on this subject.

 

The origin of “integral age”

Jon Sorensen noted that the phrase “integral age” may have been coined by William J. Tighe in this article. Tighe writes:

At this point, we have to introduce a belief that seems to have been widespread in Judaism at the time of Christ, but which, as it is nowhere taught in the Bible, has completely fallen from the awareness of Christians. The idea is that of the “integral age” of the great Jewish prophets: the idea that the prophets of Israel died on the same dates as their birth or conception.

Tighe provides no documentation for the claim that the idea of integral age “seems to have been widespread in Judaism at the time of Christ,” though he correctly notes that it is nowhere taught in the Bible.

 

Duchene’s proposal

Sorensen also pointed out that a variation of the argument was used by Louis Duschene in his book Christian Worship: Its Origin and Evolution. You can read his discussion of it here, starting on page 263.

Duschene admits that no text from the correct time period states that this is the way the dates of Christmas and the Annunication were determined, and so he says that his theory must be put forward as a hypothesis, although one he thinks can be defended.

It should be noted that Duschene is discussing early Christian sources, not Jewish ones, and so he is not claiming that Christians got this idea from Jews of the period.

His proposal is also picked up by the Catholic Encyclopedia, which attributes the idea to a “popular instinct, demanding an exact number of years in a Divine life” (source). Again, such an instinct would have been on the part of Christians. It is not claimed that this was picked up from Jewish individuals of their day.

 

A good day to die

One contact pointed to a statement in the Jewish Encyclopedia, which states “It is a good omen to die with a smile on the face, or to die on one’s birthday” (source).

Unfortunately, the text is not clear on the origin of this claim (though it may be Tur Yoreh De’ah 353; I have not been able to locate an online source to check this).

The idea that it’s a good omen to die on one’s birthday, though, does not establish that it was an ancient Jewish belief that the prophets or other men of God typically did so.

 

Moses’ Birth/Death Day

Several contacts pointed to statements in the Babylonian Talmud that claim that Moses died on the his birthday.

This appears to be stated in at least three places (b. Rosh Hashanah 1 [1:1, VIII.3.X], b. Sotah 12b [1:8, III.38.Q], b. Kiddushin 39a [1:9, II:9:B])

The least informative of these is the reference in Sotah, which simply says that Moses was born and died on the seventh of the month of Adar but does not go into why.

The reference in Rosh Hashanah appears to say that Moses died on his hundred and twentieth birthday, and it may indicate that the same was true of the patriarch Abraham, though this is less clear.

 

Finally, an argument!

The clearest discussion is found in Kiddushin, where Moses is said to have was born on the seventh of Adar and that he died on his hundred and twentieth birthday.

This passage cites two texts in support of this. The first is a statement Moses makes when he is about to die:

And he said to them, “I am a hundred and twenty years old this day; I am no longer able to go out and come in. The LORD has said to me, ‘You shall not go over this Jordan” [Deut. 31:2].

The Talmud argues that if Moses was merely in his hundred and twentieth year, he would not need to say that he was that old “this day,” and it tries to find additional meaning in this statement.

It then proposes another biblical passage, where God is promising blessings on those who obey him, as an explanation:

None shall cast her young or be barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days [Ex. 23:26].

 

Bad exegesis

The argument that the Talmud is making is not exegetically sound. The text in Deuteronomy need not be taken as Moses referring to his birthday. The “this day” in his statement that he is a hundred and twenty years old may just be a way of underscoring the impressive age he has achieved.

Even less plausible is the interpretation of the passage in Exodus to mean that those who obey God will live in whole year units. Understood naturally, it just means that those who obey him won’t die young but will live a full life (all things being equal).

What is significant for our purposes, though, is not whether the argument is exegetically sound. What matters is the fact that the Talmud uses the argument to support the idea that Moses died on his birthday.

This provides at least the kernel of something that could be applied more broadly.

 

Was Moses thought to be unique?

We have already noted that Rosh Hashanah may apply this reasoning to Abraham, however this is unclear. In more recent times, it has been applied to David and perhaps other figures. However, the only person that the Talmud clearly applies this reasoning to is Moses.

Further, while the Talmud dates the claim that Moses was born and died on the seventh of Adar to the period between A.D. 10 and 220 (b. Kiddushin 1:9, II.9.A-B), the argument involving those who obey God living in whole year units may date to a few centuries later.

 

Apologetic implications

As a result of all this, we should be careful in claiming that there was a widespread belief in ancient Judaism that prophets or other holy men died on their birthdays. The matter is too uncertain for that.

The most that can safely be claimed is that some Jewish sages from approximately this period in history had the idea that some holy men (at least Moses) lived in whole year units and this may or may not have played a role in the thinking of early Christians in fixing certain feast days.

I want to say a special thank you to all who provided assistance in this matter. It helped me carry the issue further than I was able to on my own!

I’ll post any further updates to this page to keep it current.

Is the “integral age” theory an apologetics myth? 9 things to know and share

prophet1Why do we celebrate Christmas on December 25th? Why is the Annunciation on March 25th?

According to some authors, it’s due to something called the “integral age” view that was common among ancient Jews.

But this idea itself might be a myth.

Here are 9 things to know and share . . .

BE SURE TO READ THE UPDATE TO THIS POST BY CLICKING HERE.

 

1) What is the “integral age” view?

Supposedly, it is a belief that was common in ancient Judaism, and it held that prophets (and other holy men) died on the same day that they were born or—according to some accounts—the day they were conceived.

They thus lived their lives in whole or “integral” years (from the Latin integer = “whole”).

 

2) What does this have to do with the Annunciation and Christmas?

According to some early Christian authors, Jesus was crucified on March 25th.

If that were true, and if someone held the integral age view, then Jesus would have either been born or conceived on March 25th.

This would provide a rationale for why the Church celebrates the Annunciation of Jesus on March 25, and why it celebrates his birth on December 25th—nine months later.

 

3) Why is it relevant to apologetics?

If this is the rationale for the dates of Advent and Christmas then it would be clear that they weren’t picked because of pagan holidays. They were picked based on the day Christ was thought to have been crucified.

Thus, apologists sometimes cite the integral age theory.

 

4) Who said Jesus was crucified on March 25th?

Tertullian (c. A.D. 200) is frequently credited with saying this. He wrote that Jesus was crucified “in the month of March, at the times of the Passover, on the eighth day before the calends of April” (An Answer to the Jews 8).

On the Roman calendar, the calends were the first days of the month.

If Jesus was crucified eight days before the calends of April then he was crucified eight days before April 1st—in other words, on March 25th.

Tertullian seems to have been the earliest author to propose this date for the Crucifixion, though it was later picked up by other Christian authors.

 

5) Was Tertullian correct?

No.  Modern scholars have almost universally concluded that Tertullian was mistaken.

The reason is that the four Gospels agree that Jesus was crucified on a Friday at Passover during the reign of Pontius Pilate (after the 15th year of Tiberius Caesar; see Luke 3:1).

None of the Fridays at Passover during the relevant years fall on March 25th, so Tertullian was mistaken.

Still, if people thought that’s when he was crucified, and if they held to the integral age view, that would still provide a rationale for the Annunciation on March 25 and Christmas on December 25.

 

6) Did they hold the integral age theory?

This is where it gets interesting. I’ve been doing extensive searching, both online and off, and I can’t find any ancient Jewish source attesting this view.

I can find modern Christian sources talking about it (like the apologetic writings mentioned earlier), but not ancient Jewish ones.

I also don’t find mentions of this in the scholarly literature I’ve checked.

For example, I can’t find any mention of it in Jack Finegan’s outstanding Hanbook of Biblical Chronology (2nd ed.)—and I really would expect to see some reference to it there.

I searched my Verbum library, which is very large. Nothing.

So I started searching on Google.

 

7) What did you find on Google?

Google shows different people different results, but here’s what I got.

If you search on “integral age”, you get 6,200 results, but most of the top ones have nothing to do with our question. A lot of them seem to have to do with a New Age concept.

If you search for “integral age” prophets, you get 3,070 results, but the top results are almost all about Christmas.

That’s a danger sign.

If this is a well-attested Jewish view then why does it only seem to be bringing up results about Christmas. Could it be an apologetics myth?

I checked several of the results that came up, but none of them cited an ancient Jewish source (or even a scholarly source which would be expected to include a reference to an ancient one). The ones I checked just said it was a Jewish belief.

We might be able to force Jewish references to the surface if we eliminate “Christmas” from the search, so I then searched on “integral age” prophets –Christmas. I got 648 results.

Now the Annunciation held the top spot in the results Google showed me. So I pulled out the Annunciation, too, by searching on “integral age” prophets –Christmas –Annunciation. I got 619 results.

Some New Age references were back. And none of the links I checked provided any ancient Jewish or modern scholarly references.

This was bad.

The search results I was coming up with did not make it look like this was an ancient Jewish belief.

So I decided to include search terms for specific Jewish sources where you might expect such a belief to be mentioned—like the Mishnah, the Talmud, or in a midrash.

The results I got were, respectively, 1 hit, 70 hits, and 10 hits.

Many of these had the term Talmud or midrash struck out because Google was trying to show me additional results even though these terms were not present.

And none of the ones I checked cited an ancient Jewish or modern scholarly source.

 

8) Is the “integral age” theory just a Christian apologetics myth, then?

From what I’ve been able to find, it could well be.

That’s not to say it’s a modern one. It could have been an idea that some ancient Christians had about what Jews believed. I haven’t tried tracing how far back in Christian history the claim goes.

But I have tried finding it in ancient Jewish and modern scholarly sources and not come up with anything.

As a result, I don’t feel safe citing this argument in my own apologetics at this point, because I can’t back it up. It has the earmarks of an apologetics myth.

So I have a request: Can anybody provide a quotation from an ancient Jewish source that talks about this belief?

How about a modern scholarly source that cites an ancient source (Jewish or otherwise)?

I’d much appreciate anything anyone can come up with! I’d love to have an ancient source for this claim.

 

9) If it is a myth, what then?

If the integral age theory is a myth then it means we shouldn’t be using it when we talk about the dating of the Annunciation and Christmas.

Of course, if it is a myth, that doesn’t mean these two Christian holidays were ripoffs of pagan ones. That’s a whole different matter.

Also, the difficulty in finding actual ancient references to back up this common contemporary claim should serve as a caution and as an illustration of the value of checking one’s sources and testing their claims.

BE SURE TO READ THE UPDATE TO THIS POST BY CLICKING HERE.

How I Pray: An Interview

me-2014Recently Tomas McDonald interviewed me for his blog, God and the Machine, on the subject of prayer.

On Facebook, Tom commented: “Jimmy’s reflections on prayer across time may prove that he is indeed the first ginger Time Lord.”

Here’s the interview . . .

Every Monday in How I Pray, I ask various Catholics about their prayer routines, their prayer lives, and their experience of prayer. This week I’m joined by the great apologist Jimmy Akin, whose clear and irenic explanations of Catholic teaching are always a welcome oasis in the often-fractious world of online Catholicism.

Who are you?

Ooo. One of the classic questions! You can keep asking it, over and over, peeling off layer after layer to get to the core of a person’s sense of self–and really annoy him in the process. :-)

To give you the top-level answer, my name is Jimmy Akin, and I’m a Catholic apologist.

I assume you’d like a fuller answer than just what you’d say in the introduction to the post, so what else can I say? Let’s see . . . I’m a blogger, podcaster, square dance caller, dance instructor, former private detective, former Chinese cook, comic book fan, science fiction fan, Gilbert and Sullivan fan, and a generally curious guy.

What is your vocation?

I am a widower, and I haven’t (yet) remarried, so I don’t presently have a vocation–at least in the proper sense that the Church has historically used the term.

All of the baptized have a general vocation to live in a Christian manner, but some are called to live that out in a specific way corresponding to matrimony, holy orders, or the consecrated life.

If I am ever so fortunate as to marry again, I will have the vocation of being a husband. That, however, would require me to overcome my natural shyness with the opposite sex and find a good woman who’s willing to put up with me.

What is your prayer routine for an average day?

Most of my prayers are spontaneous. I say many short prayers throughout the day, particularly when I am alone.

I have never calculated the average amount of time per day that I spend praying, but it is a substantial amount–comparable to performing more formal devotions.

How well do you achieve it, and how do you handle those moments when you don’t?

One of my common failings in prayer, like many people, is feeling that if I don’t say it “just right” then I need to say it again. This is a scruple, and like any scruple, it needs to be resisted.

I combat it by remembering Jesus’ statements that God already knows what we need and that we don’t need to go on stammering in prayer like the Gentiles do, thinking they need to wear down the deity with their prayers.

Though I observe my own rule imperfectly, I try to observe the rule, “Say the prayer once and trust God with any imperfections.”

I also try to keep my prayers from becoming purely formal by moving beyond the words and focusing on trusting God. I think of St. Paul’s remarks about how the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words, even when we don’t know how we should pray.

I think about the Centurion whose servant Jesus healed. Most people would have wanted Jesus to come and heal the servant in person, but the Centurion realized this was not necessary. He had faith that Jesus could do it from a distance. There is something similar with prayer.

For most of us, most of the time, we are reassured by using words, but prayer isn’t ultimately about giving God information. He already knows what we’re going to say. The words are a help to us, but not to him. They are, therefore, not essential. What’s important is not finding the right words but opening yourself to God and placing your faith in him. I think that exercising this kind of faith in God pleases him in the way that the faith of the Centurion did.

Do you have a devotion that is particularly important to you or effective?

When I have something really important that I need to pray for, I say the Memorare.

I also have a special devotion to Our Lady of Fatima, and I find the Chaplet of Divine Mercy particularly moving.

Do you have a place, habit, or way of praying?

I pray everywhere. Especially on airplanes.

When I pray, I try to recognize that it isn’t just me or the specific people I am praying for who are facing the situation I am praying about. There are people all over the world who are facing the same situations and who need prayer just as much.

As a result, I try to “universalize” my prayers when I can. If I hear an ambulance go by, I will often say a quick prayer “for all who are involved” (meaning, the injured, the emergency medical technicians, and everyone affected by the situation). I then try to add, “and for all in similar situations.”

Do you use any tools or sacramentals?

If I am praying the Rosary or the Chaplet of Divine Mercy by myself, rather than in a group, I commonly use mp3s to help me keep from getting distracted.

What is your relationship with the Rosary?

I don’t pray it as much as I’d like. When I do, I visualize the places in Israel where the mysteries occurred, and I imagine the Virgin Mary standing there. Visiting Israel and seeing the places where the mysteries occurred really deepened my experience of the Rosary.

Are there any books or spiritual works that are important to your devotional life?

My personal spirituality is bibliocentric, so the most important book for my devotional life is the Bible. It is when I’m thinking about and wrestling with the meaning of the biblical texts that I have the most spiritual insights.

What is your most recent spiritual or devotional reading?

The Gospel of Mark. I recently went through Mark verse-by-verse, and there are certain moments in Mark that just leapt out at me, full of meaning and resonance with situations in life.

Who couldn’t feel for the woman with the issue of blood (undoubtedly a gynecological problem) who was ritually unclean and thus forbidden to touch anyone, yet she secretly touched Jesus with faith that she would be healed. When he demanded to know who had done this, she was undoubtedly terrified–wondering if he might “take back” the miracle she had “stolen” by not asking first. Would he even put a curse on her and make her situation worse than it had been? But when she fessed up, he blessed her and sent her on her way. This reflects how God is willing to be merciful to us even when we approach him imperfectly. Our imperfections are not stronger than God’s mercy, as long as we seek him.

Similarly, who could not feel for Peter when he breaks down in tears after having denied the Lord–a reflection of the healing tears we all experience at times when we realize we have betrayed the Lord.

Are there saints or other figures who inspire your prayer life or act as patrons?

I don’t know how much I think in those terms. I think a lot about what God wants me to do and how he would have me approach a situation–in prayer or otherwise. In doing that, Jesus Christ is the obvious first point of reference, but the question “What would Jesus do?” can sometimes be misleading, and we can often deceive ourselves about it.

There’s a famous saying among Bible scholars: “By their Lives of Christ you shall know them.” This saying arose after people noticed that, whenever a scholar wrote a Life of Christ (a biography of him), the portrait he painted to Jesus tended to reflect the scholar’s own predilections. People tend to read themselves and their preferences into Jesus, and this is a tendency that needs to be resisted, so other reference points are valuable as well.

One reference point for me is Pope Benedict XVI. His thought and manner of proceeding have had a profound influence on me, and I often find myself looking at spiritual questions in light of what I think he would say about them. Often this calls me to take a more charitable and compassionate view of them than I might initially be inclined to.

Have you had any unusual or even miraculous experiences as a result of your prayer life?

Yes. When my wife, Renee, was dying, she had not been in touch with her father for twenty years–not since she was a little girl.

I was praying for her, and I was hoping that she would reconcile with him before she died. At one point we were driving to a medical appointment, and she said, “Do you think I should get in touch with him?”

“I think he would want to know,” I replied.

So we placed a call to his home in another state and left a message on his answering machine.

He called back something like an hour later. It turned out he was not at home, but a guy he had housesitting had heard the message and called him–and he was visiting a nearby town in Arkansas, where we were!

The odds of him being so close, and getting the message when he wasn’t at home, and being able to come and be reconciled with her so swiftly in the short time she had left was a true blessing and something that I have always regarded as an amazing act of Providence and an answer to prayer.

There have been similar divine “coincidences” that have happened at other points in my life. They don’t happen often, but when they do, it is profoundly meaningful to me.

I would like to see _________________ answer these questions.

Stephen Greydanus. He and I have discussed prayer often, and I know he will have interesting things to say.

Anything else you’d like to add?

I’d like to talk a little bit about ways of prayer that we don’t often think about.

Usually, we are focused on specific people and the situations they are facing, but there are so many people out there who either have no one praying for them or, even if they do, who would welcome our prayers.

Sometimes I pray for everyone in the world who would like my prayers. I also pray for those who would accept them (even if they wouldn’t have asked for them), and for those who need prayer (even if they wouldn’t want prayer at the moment).

When I am in particular need, I employ a variation on this, not only asking all the saints and angels to intercede for me, but also asking God to apply to my case the prayers of those who are praying for people out in the world, generically.

I also ask God to apply the good will of those who would pray about my situation if they knew about it. It strikes me that if a person has good will such that they would pray about something if they knew about it then there is an implicit kind of prayer contained in the person’s good will, and when I’m in need, I sometimes ask God to apply this to my case. I then immediately flip this around and pray for everyone in similar need out there.

Another type of prayer we don’t often think about is prayer across time. This is something C. S. Lewis talks about in his writings on prayer. While we may be bound by time, God is not. From the eternal now in which he exists, seeing all of history at once, God can hear my prayer from one point in time and apply it to any other point in time, whether past or future. As a result, it is legitimate in principle for us to pray for people in the past and the future.

The only case I can think of where it would not be legitimate is when we know the outcome of a particular situation and what God allowed to happen then. Thus I should not pray that a soldier who I know died in World War I should not die (since I know God allowed him to), but I might pray that, in the last moments of his life back in 1918, he turned to God and was saved.

Further, we have no idea what realms exist in God’s creation. There could be beings in need of prayer in countless times and places that we have no idea about, but they are all part of God’s domain, and so sometimes I add a qualifier to my prayers, asking that God will apply them to those “across all times and worlds”–anywhere in God’s domain–where they might do good.

I’ve even thought about composing a memorizable prayer to Jesus Christ, Pantokrator Kosmou (Greek, “Ruler of all the cosmos”) incorporating this concept, though thus far I haven’t done so.

 

The Weekly Francis – 24 November 2014

popefrancisThis version of The Weekly Francis covers material released in the last week from 6 November – 22 November 2014.

Angelus

General Audiences

Letters

Speeches

Daily Homilies (fervorinos)

Papal Tweets

Note: There are still a large number of documents that have not yet been translated into English.

Were the early Christians pacifists?

Men who came to Jesus: The Roman SoldierThere is a persistent claim that the early Christians were pacifists—in the strong sense of being opposed to all use of violence—and that it was not until the time of the Emperor Constantine that this began to change.

After Christianity became the official religion of the empire, the Church embraced the use of military force, with St. Augustine playing the part of the enabling villain, who came up with the idea of the just war.

This story plays with well-worn tropes: the fall from original innocence into corruption, the idea that Constantine corrupted the Church, that the Christianization of the empire was a bad thing, etc.

You may notice that these same tropes are often used in anti-Catholic apologetics stemming from the Protestant Reformation. That’s not surprising, since these tropes were needed to justify separation from the Church at the time of the Reformation.

It’s also not surprising that, relying on these same tropes, the denominations that historically have been strongly pacifistic stemmed from the Protestant community.

Most Protestants, of course, are not pacifists and recognize the legitimate use of military force, and there is a good reason for that: Protestants are the majority in many countries, just as Catholics are in others, and so they have been confronted with the task of ensuring the safety of their nations.

No nation can be safe if it is unwilling to use military force to defend itself. If, in the present, fallen state of the world, a nation were to suddenly renounce the use of military force and beat its swords into ploughshares, it would suffer a dire fate.

Either:

  • It would be conquered by its external enemies,
  • Its internal, criminal element would overrun it and turn it into a failed state,
  • Its more sensible-minded citizens would stage a coup and re-establish a government willing to use force to defend the nation, or
  • It would depend for its defense on another country that is less scrupulous about the use of force, making its safety and freedom dependent on the whims of that foreign state.

Any way you go, pacifism is not a stable, self-sustaining enterprise. It’s a dangerous world out there, and pacifists depend for their safety and security on the generosity and good will of non-pacifists.

Prior to the Christianization of the Roman empire, many Christians were not faced with the responsibility of defending the public and ensuring public order. As a result, some authors of this period had the luxury of entertaining pacifistic ideals without having to worry about keeping people safe.

But were they all in this condition? What about those Christians who were in the military?

What about the era of the New Testament itself? What attitude toward military service did it take?

Is the idea of a uniformly pacifist early Church accurate? Or does it distort what actually happened?

Here’s a video in which I take on the subject.

Click here to watch the video in your browser.

Did John Use Mark as a Template?

mark-and-johnThe Church Fathers on John’s Gospel

Clement of Alexandria gives the following account of when and how John’s Gospel was written:

[L]ast of all, John, perceiving that the external facts had been made plain in the Gospel, being urged by his friends, and inspired by the Spirit, composed a spiritual Gospel [preserved in Eusebius, Church History 6:14:7).

He notes that John was written last, that John was urged by others to write, and that he wrote his Gospel in a deliberately different style than the others, which had already presented “the external facts” about the life of Jesus.

A similar account is found in the Muratorian Fragment, which says:

The fourth of the Gospels is that of John, [one] of the disciples. To his fellow disciples and bishops, who had been urging him [to write], he said, ‘Fast with me from today to three days, and what will be revealed to each one let us tell it to one another.’ In the same night it was revealed to Andrew, [one] of the apostles, that John should write down all things in his own name while all of them should review it [Muratorian Fragment 9-16].

This account at least seems to agree that John was written last (though the reference to it being the “fourth of the Gospels” could be a reference to its canonical order).

It definitely agrees that John was urged to write it, and it indicates that John seems to have been initially hesitant to do so, not agreeing until there was a divine revelation. This hesitation might have been due to the existence of the other Gospels, which already recorded the basic facts of Jesus’ life.

 

John’s Gospel on John’s Gospel

The idea that John wrote to supplement the other Gospels and that he did so with some hesitation may be reflected in two passages in the Gospel itself:

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name [John 20:30-31].

This is the disciple who is bearing witness to these things, and who has written these things; and we know that his testimony is true. But there are also many other things which Jesus did; were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written [John 21:24-25].

The reference to the many other signs that Jesus performed “which are not written in this book” may be taken as a reference to other books—the other Gospels—in which they are written.

It could also reflect a hesitancy to write further about the author’s experiences with Jesus, because that would result in too long a work.

The latter understanding seems to be reflected in the second passage’s statement that, if all of Jesus’ deeds were written, “I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”

There may even be a reference to the elders who urged John to write when the second passage identifies the beloved disciple as the author and then says, “and we know that his testimony is true.” That statement may be the collective voice of the elders intruding into the text and endorsing John’s testimony.

All of this is disputed.

 

Isolated Evangelists?

In the last several decades, it has become fashionable in biblical scholarship to say that the Evangelists were all writing for individual communities and that their Gospels were not intended to be widely circulated, so they wrote with little awareness of each other’s work. According to a common view:

  • Mark wrote first and so didn’t know the work of any other Evangelist.
  • Matthew knew Mark but not Luke or John.
  • Luke knew Mark but not Matthew or John.
  • John didn’t know any of the other three Evangelists’ work.

Of course, like everything in biblical scholarship, each of these claims is disputed.

thegospelsforallchristiansBritish scholar Richard Bauckham published a major assault on the idea that the Gospels were written for narrow, isolated communities in a book that he edited and co-authored with several other individuals, entitled The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences (New Testament Studies).

It’s awesome.

GET IT HERE!

 

Did John Know Mark?

One of the essays that Bauckham contributed to the book is entitled “John for Readers of Mark.” In this piece, he argues that John not only knew Mark but that you can show this because John seems to have used Mark as a template or an outline.

In other words, John sequenced his own narrative in and around the elements in Mark’s narrative so that the two Gospels fit together like puzzle pieces.

If this view is correct, you should be able to make a table using parallel columns to show how the two Gospels fit together.

Bauckham did not provide such a table, and though he provided impressive arguments for his proposal, he did not go through the entirety of the two Gospels or test the proposal against the ideas that John might have used Matthew or Luke rather than Mark.

I decided to continue Bauckham’s investigation along these lines.

 

How Mark and John Fit Together

First, here is the table I came up with of how the two Gospels fit together (italics and parentheses indicate material that is in a different sequence in one Gospel than the other):

No.

Section

Mark

John

1. Prologue

1:1-18

2. John the Baptist, Jesus’ Baptism, & Testing

1:1-13

3. Early Ministry I

1:19-2:12

4.       Clearing the Temple

(11:11-25)

2:13-22

5. Early Ministry II

2:23-4:43

6. The Official’s Son

4:44-54

7 Galilean Ministry I

1:14-6:6

8. Sending the Disciples

6:7-13

9. Fate of John the Baptist

6:14-29

10. Visit to Jerusalem

5:1-47

11. Disciples Return

6:30

12. Feeding the Five Thousand & Walking on the Water

6:31-53

6:1-71

13. Galilean Ministry II

6:54-9:50

7:1-9

14. Judean Ministry I

10:1a

7:10-10:39

15. Transjordan Ministry

10:1b-31

10:40-42

16. Judean Ministry II

11:1-57

17. Travel to Jerusalem

10:32-52

18.    Anointing with Oil

(14:1-11)

12:1-8

19. Triumphal Entry

11:1-10

12:9-19

20. Clearing the Temple

11:11-25

(2:13-22)

21. Before the Supper

11:27-13:37

12:20-50

22.    Anointing with Oil

14:1-11

(12:1-8)

23. The Last Supper

14:12-26

13:1-14:31

24. Extended Discourse

15:1-17:26

25. After the Supper

14:27-52

18:1-12

26. Before Annas

18:13-23

27. Before Caiaphas

14:53-65

18:24

28. Peter’s Denial

14:66-72

18:25-26

29. Before Pilate

15:1-15

18:28-19:16

30. Crucifixion & Burial

15:16-47

19:17-42

31. Resurrection Narrative

16:1-8
(or 16:1-20)

20:1-21:25

 

Did John Use Mark as a Template?

I then went through the table, looking for evidence for and against the proposal. Here is a summary of my findings (most of these points I got from Bauckham, but some—especially those regarding the Last Supper—are original to me):

  • John’s prologue introduces John the Baptist (John 1:6-8, 15) and can be seen as interacting with the beginning of Mark (Mark 1:1-13).
  • John 1:19-4:43 can be seen as fitting between Mark 1:13 and 1:14.
  • In John 1:19-34, John the Baptist gives an account of his own ministry and of how he identified Jesus as the coming one that reflects Mark 1:1-13.
  • The fact that John does not directly record the baptism of Jesus (a major event!) suggests that his audience already had a written account of it.
  • John 3:24’s reference to an incident that occurred when “John had not yet been put in prison” seems to be intended to clarify when the events of John 1:19-4:43 fit into Mark’s outline.
  • In Mark 6:7-13, Jesus sends the disciples on a mission from which they will return in Mark 6:30. The material between these verses is thus a time when Jesus does not have the disciples with him. This period seems to be reflected in John 5:1-47, which is a period in which the disciples are not mentioned. Further, in both John and Mark, these sections contain material recording or referring to the death of John the Baptist, with John seeming to presuppose that the audience already knows how the Baptist died (presumably from Mark’s account).
  • John 7:1a seems to summarize a continuation of the Galilean ministry that is recorded in Mark 6:54-9:50. Further, John 6:4 and 7:2 imply a period of six months spent in Galilee that John does not otherwise record and that seems to correspond to Mark 7-9. This period is the last time that Jesus will be in Galilee until after the Resurrection.
  • Mark 10:1a and John 7:10-10:39 record a period in which Jesus ministered in Judea.
  • Mark 10:1b-31 and John 10:40-42 record a period in which Jesus ministered in the Transjordan.
  • The way that the Last Supper is recorded in Mark 14:12-26 and John 13:1-14:31 suggests supplemental intent on John’s part. John omits virtually everything Mark records happening before and at the supper and provides additional material about it not found in Mark. Even when he records the one event that the two have in common (Jesus’ prediction of Judas’s betrayal) John provides supplementary detail not found in Mark. Also, the events that John narrates seem to interweave easily with the events that Mark records. The fact that John does not record the institution of the Eucharist (another major event!), which he has already foreshadowed in John 6:26-71, is strong evidence that his audience already had a written record of its institution.
  • John’s supplemental intent may be illustrated by his giving names to figures that are otherwise unnamed in Mark (e.g., Peter and Malchus in the incident where Peter cuts off Malchus’s ear; cf. Mark 14:47, John 18:10).
  • John 18:13-23 discusses the relationship between Annas and Caiaphas, provides additional detail about how Peter got into the courtyard of the high priest, and preserves an account of Jesus’ appearance before Annas, which is not mentioned in Mark. All of these may be seen as an effort to supplement Mark’s account.
  • John 18:24 refers, in a single verse, to the appearance of Jesus before Caiaphas, which is described in detail in Mark 14:53-65. This may be evidence of John taking Mark’s account as read.
  • In John 19:7, the Jewish authorities charge Jesus before Pilate with making himself out to be the Son of God. This charge is not found in John’s account of Jesus’ appearances before the Jewish authorities, but it is found in Mark’s account (Mark 14:61-64).

On the other hand:

  • The clearing of the temple and the anointing with oil are placed differently in Mark and John.
  • John records Jesus’ prediction of Peter’s denial as occurring during the Last Supper, but in Mark it appears just after the supper.

These differences could be counted as evidence that John was not using Mark as an outline, but it also can be understood in other ways, such as John providing additional clarity on precisely when these events occurred (or, in the case of the clearing of the temple, that it happened more than once). The dislocation of these events thus does not overcome the positive evidence that John used Mark.

 

Did John Use Luke as a Template?

I then used the same methodology—making a table of how Luke and John might mesh and then reviewing each section for evidence that John might have used Luke. Here is a summary of my findings:

  • There is a possible agreement between Luke and John if the healing of the Centurion’s servant (Luke 7:1-10) is the same as the healing of the Official’s son (John 4:44-54). If they are different events (my preference) then there is no such interaction.
  • A similar, possible interaction is the miraculous catch of fish recorded in Luke 5:1-9. If this is the same event as the miraculous catch recorded in John 21:1-14 then it could be a case of John providing greater clarity about when this event occurred chronologically. However, if these are two different events (my view) then there is no such interaction.
  • There is also one notable agreement in that Luke and John place the prediction of Peter’s denial within the Last Supper (Luke 22:31-34, John 13:36-38), rather than after it (Mark 14:26-31).

These, however, pale in comparison to the differences in sequence that make it much less likely that John used Luke for a template compared to Mark. These include the following:

  • John would have had to skip the first 132 verses of Luke and begin by relating his prologue to material in Luke 3.
  • Luke 4:14 does not mention that Jesus began his Galilean ministry only after John was imprisoned (it thus fails to set up John 3:24)
  • Luke omits the Transjordan ministry found in John 10:40-42
  • Luke does not provide an account of Jesus’ encounter with Caiaphas, so John 18:24 could not be a summary of such an encounter.
  • And—most especially—the major disruptions posed by Luke’s travel narrative and the fact that John—with a known interest in clarifying chronology—would not have passed over them without doing anything to resolve them.

It thus appears more likely that John used Mark as a template than that he used Luke.

But what about the idea that he might have used Matthew?

 

Did John Use Matthew as a Template?

Finally, I repeated the procedure on Matthew. Here is a summary of my findings:

  • There is a possible agreement between Matthew and John if the healing of the Centurion’s servant (Matt.  8:5-13) is the same as the healing of the Official’s son (John 4:44-54). However, these may very well be two separate events (my preference), in which case there is no such agreement.

This single possible agreement is more than offset by elements that make it less likely that John used Matthew for a template than Mark. These include the following:

  • John would have had to skip the first two chapters of Matthew and begin by relating his prologue to material in Matthew 3.
  • In John the death of John the Baptist seems to be announced while Jesus’ disciples are out on mission, but in Matthew the disciples return to Jesus before the death of John the Baptist.
  • Matthew 19:1 seems to blur together the Judean and Transjordanian ministries recorded in John 7-10.

 

Conclusion

It thus appears that John more likely used Mark as a template than either Luke or Matthew. I thus think Bauckham is right: John likely meant his Gospel to interweave with Mark’s Gospel.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that John didn’t know Matthew’s or Luke’s Gospels. He may have; he just doesn’t seem to have used them as a template the way he did Mark’s.

Also, the above are simply a summary of my findings—not a full study—though I did such a study in brain-crushing detail, which you can read online.

CLICK HERE TO GET BRAIN-CRUSHING DETAIL!

What’s wrong with The Principle?

concentric-shellsThe Principle is a documentary promoting geocentrism, or the idea that the earth is at the center of the universe.

In a previous post, I looked at how well it worked as a film. (I gave it * * 1/2 stars out of 5.)

What about the content of the film? How well does that stand up?

It depends on the level you are talking about.

At the highest level, the film contains a message that science and faith are not enemies and should not be pitted against each other.

Fine.

But that doesn’t mean that the earth is at the center of the universe, which is what the film wants to suggest.

The summaries that The Principle provides about the history of astronomy also are generally accurate, though I was amazed that the filmmakers let Michio Kaku get away with saying that Giordano Bruno was burned alive “for simply saying that there are other worlds out there.”

This is not true, and the filmmakers should have provided a voice setting the matter straight. Even Wikipedia’s page on Bruno is more accurate than The Principle is on him.

The film’s discussion of recent physics is also largely fine. Even some of the critiques it offers of modern scientific ideas are good (e.g., that we shouldn’t overplay the idea of a multiverse). But again, these don’t prove geocentrism, which is what the film is interested in advocating.

 

“What If . . . ?” Advocacy

We should note the way in which The Principle advocates geocentrism. It does not come out and say, in a straightforward way, with the full editorial voice of the film, “The earth is at the center of the universe.”

Instead, it uses the kind of breathless “What if . . . ?” style of advocacy that you find in documentaries inviting us to consider whether—just maybe—Jesus Christ might have been married to Mary Magdalene. Or whether—just perhaps—he never rose from the dead. Or even—just maybe perhaps—he was a space alien.

Despite framing their theses in the form of questions, the viewer understands which points of view they’re advocating.

Know what I mean?

Now: What arguments does the film offer concerning geocentrism?

 

Alternate Interpretations

A good bit of the film just tries to poke holes in current cosmological ideas by proposing alternate interpretations rather than making a positive case for geocentrism.

This happens when they note that you could explain the fact that almost all galaxies appear to be moving away from us either by proposing an expanding universe, in which almost all galaxies are moving away from each other, or by proposing that our galaxy is at the center of the universe and everything is moving away from us.

Fine. Either one of those works.

What the filmmakers don’t point out is that these aren’t the only two options. While you could pick our galaxy as the center and see everything moving away from it, you can equally well pick any random location in the universe and use it as a reference point.

If you did that, the same exact thing would result: Almost all the galaxies would seem to be moving away from that randomly chosen point.

Since there are an infinite number of random points you could choose, you need to give the viewer a reason to pick our galaxy—and, more specifically, our planet—if you want us to suppose that we are at the physical center of things.

 

A Baby’s Smile? The Finale of a Symphony?

It’s hard to know what to make of some of the things in The Principle. For example, there is an opening montage in which you have multiple figures talking about whether the earth is or is in a “special” place, with many of them denying that it is.

The earth very obviously is a special place (it has life, liquid water, breathable oxygen, and it’s where I keep all my stuff), so when the film talks about the earth being or being in a special place, it seems to be using the word special to mean something like “central” or “at the center.”

But then why is Kate Mulgrew telling us that the earth seems special because nowhere else in the universe do we see a baby’s smile or the finale of a great symphony being performed?

That’s not evidence that the earth is at the center of anything. Indeed, there could be babies smiling everywhere in the galaxy and symphonies finishing all over the universe and we wouldn’t know it because we don’t have telescopes powerful enough to see them. “Absence of evidence does not equal evidence of absence.”

It’s hard to think that the filmmakers meant this to be taken seriously. Presumably, they put it in to give the viewers a warm fuzzy, without making a serious argument.

 

Concentric Shells?

The film seems to attempt only two serious arguments in favor of geocentrism. The first is based on the findings of physicist John Hartnett, who claimed to have discovered that there are regularities in the speeds that the galaxies appear to be moving away from us.

According to Hartnett, the galaxies seem to cluster around particular redshifts (i.e., particular speeds at which they are retreating). This can be visualized as a series of concentric shells (see illustration) with a center “somewhere cosmologically near our galaxy’s position,” in Hartnett’s words.

It should be noted that, although Hartnett himself thinks that our galaxy has a central location in the universe, he does not believe in geocentrism, and he believes that the producers of The Principle misrepresented his position in the film.

Further, Hartnett notes that even his galacto-centric interpretation of his data is not the only way of looking at it:

[T]he existence of concentric shells could be interpreted as some sort of oscillation in the expansion rate of the Universe. This view does not place any special significance on the centre of the large-scale structure being found exactly at the observer. This is because if cosmological redshift results from cosmological expansion then we only appear to be at some local centre.

Physicist Alec MacAndrew agrees. After noting that Hartnett’s data has been challenged and may not be accurate, he considers a proposal made by several scientists that the expansion rate of the universe changes over time in a way that makes the galaxies seem to cluster around particular speeds. He states:

In that case, observers will see preferential clustering of galaxies as a function of redshift, in concentric shells exactly centred on themselves from wherever in the universe they make the observation. Just like the recession of galaxies in a uniformly expanding universe always appears to be exactly centred on the observer, so universal oscillations in the expansion rate would leave a signature in the redshift data precisely centred on the observer, wherever he is [italics in original].

The argument based on the apparent speeds of the galaxies thus does not prove geocentrism (or even galacto-centrism).

 

The Cosmic Microwave Background

The other major argument that The Principle proposes for geocentrism is based on an analysis of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)—a low-level radiation that fills the universe and that is commonly thought to be the “afterglow” of the Big Bang.

The argument that The Principle makes is difficult to summarize concisely and without computer animations, but it can be put this way: If you look at the sky, there are tiny temperature fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background, and if you analyze these, you find features that seem to align with the plane of the solar system and the tilt of the earth’s axis. These seem to suggest that the earth is at the center of the universe.

Physicist Alec MacAndrew has written a technical takedown of the claim, which you can read here.

David Palm provides a somewhat less technical summary here. Here are a couple of takeaway points provided by Palm:

  • “Although you would never know it by reading geocentrist literature, the alignments which the new geocentrists highlight in the CMB are far from exact – they are only approximate.  It is true that any apparent alignments are interesting to physicists if they are expecting randomness.  But the inexactness of the alignments certainly does not create anything like a sound foundation upon which to build the extravagant claims of the geocentrists.  It is precarious, at best, to argue that the CMB data are actually ‘pointing to’ the earth when those alignments are off by 7, 14, even 16 degrees according to the most recent, most precise measurements.  The geocentrists are again playing fast and loose with the facts.  They demand we accept that God intentionally made the earth motionless at the exact center of the universe.  Yet, they’re content with supposed evidence that God is an extremely sloppy architect and cartographer who can’t manage to ‘point’ to the earth with a margin of error of less than 16 degrees.
  • “But it’s worse than that for the new geocentrists.  Because, as Dr. MacAndrew demonstrates, the CMB data don’t point at anything. As MacAndrew says, ‘the CMB multipole vectors give directional information but no positional information. If you were an astronomical distance away from the Earth, you would not be able to use the CMB multipole vectors to navigate to it.’  The claims of the new geocentrists that somehow the CMB ‘points at the Earth’ is completely fallacious.”

 

“Nothing Special”?

One of the most frustrating things about The Principle is a fallacy seemingly embraced by both the geocentrists and the non-geocentrists in the film.

Remember the opening montage I mentioned, where the question of whether the earth is or is in a “special” place kept being posed? Parties on both sides of the question seemed to be harboring the idea that if the earth isn’t in a special place then mankind is nothing special.

The geocentrists then seemed to suggest that since mankind is special, the earth must be or be in a “special” place. At one point, apologist Robert Sungenis says: “It’s tremendous to be human, so why wouldn’t we want to be in a special place in the universe, made by a special God?”

One of the problems with this argument is that what we want isn’t relevant. Another is the ambiguity of the word “special.”

The earth is a special place in ways that have already been noted: It has life, it has liquid water and breathable oxygen, etc.

The earth is also in a special place, because it’s in a location where those things are possible. If we were—say—at the distance from the sun that the planet Mercury is, that wouldn’t be the case.

Mankind is special because man has numerous qualities and abilities that are unique among all the living creatures on earth. From a theological point of view, man is also special because of his unique relationship with God.

But what does any of this have to do with being “special” in the sense of being at the center of the universe?

Nothing.

If God put the earth and mankind at the farthest point from the physical center of the universe (assuming the universe even has a physical center), none of the things that are special about them would change.

Just because something is special in one sense (having liquid water, having life, having intelligence) doesn’t mean that it is special in other senses (having liquid methane, having wings, being at the physical center of the universe).

This is simply fallacious reasoning.

As many have recognized.

But it’s the central—and fatal—fallacy of The Principle.

 

The Principle: A Movie Review

the principleRecently the Register asked me to review The Principle—a documentary that promotes geocentrism, or the idea that the earth is at the center of the universe.

This film is much smaller than most of those the Register reviews. Indeed, at the time of this writing it has only reported $16,826 at the box office—half of which was made in a single theater on its opening weekend.

But the film is being disproportionately discussed in conservative Catholic circles, so I agreed.

Like any documentary, this one can be looked at more than one way. One perspective concerns the production values and how well it is executed. Another concerns the content of the film and how successfully it argues its case.

In this piece, we will look at how well The Principle works as a documentary film. In a subsequent piece, we will look at its content.

So how does it work cinematically?

It’s not the worst documentary I’ve ever seen.

That would be Overlords of the UFO (1976). You can watch it here. It’s hilarious.

While The Principle is better than Overlords of the UFO in many ways, the two have at least one thing in common, which is that they contain footage of people who were profoundly embarrassed by the film and who subsequently disassociated themselves with the project.

In the case of Overlords of the UFO, physicist and UFO researcher Stanton Friedman was horrified by the film’s use of footage from an interview he gave to a television station, making it appear that he was in support of the loony ideas promoted by the producers.

In the case of The Principle, multiple figures distanced themselves, including physicists Lawrence Krauss, Michio Kaku, Julian Barbour, and mathematician George Ellis (see here, for example).

Also disassociating herself from the project was actress Kate Mulgrew (Captain Janeway from Star Trek: Voyager), who read the narration for the film (see her comments on her Facebook fan page).

Setting aside the fact that multiple individuals associated with the film feel that they were misled by the producers and misrepresented in the film, how does it hold up cinematically?

Some have said that they were impressed by the production values, and these are not bad.

In addition to the interview segments, a good deal of the film is made up of stock footage and outer space photographs. These days, though, anybody can get some stock footage from Shutterstock and some Hubble telescope images, load them into Final Cut Pro, put pre-existing music under them, and produce montages of the same caliber.

There are some video effects that were produced specially for the film, and many of these do look good.

What looks less good are the two-dimensional animations produced for the film, particularly those depicting historical figures. To produce these, illustrations and photographs of well-known historical figures (Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Galileo, Albert Einstein, etc.) were redrawn or retouched and then animated in a clunky way that is basically a step above the cutout animations that Terry Gilliam produced for Monty Python.

These animations in The Principle move in ways that are unintentionally comical.

Sometimes, though, the filmmakers attempt comedy with them, but the result is disappointing and, in one case, comes off as juvenile.

This happens in a sequence in which astronomer Edwin Hubble is depicted sitting at a telescope, smoking a pipe. The animation awkwardly leans forward and back, observing distant galaxies. Then the narration indicates that Hubble’s observations were consistent with or suggestive of geocentrism, but he couldn’t accept this fact.

At this point the animation of Hubble gets an absurdly exaggerated expression of shock on its face. It falls over backward in its chair, and the still-smoking pipe spins around in mid air, defying the law of gravity, before it too plummets out of frame.

Classy, guys.

How does the film’s pacing work?

It begins with a general discussion of “the Copernican principle” (the idea that the earth is not the center of the solar system or the universe) and hammers the idea that this theory suggests that there is nothing special about mankind.

It then backs up to give a short history of astronomy and astrophysics and how they moved through different phases, leading up to the present. This segment depicts science and faith initially being in harmony, then diverging, and now possibly moving back together.

In the end it suggests that there are reasons to question (read: reject) the Copernican principle and that science and faith may have a more fruitful encounter than they did following the Galileo incident.

This is the kind of structure that you would expect in a film of this sort, but the timing in the film is problematic. With a run time of about 90 minutes, the film seems simultaneously too short and too long. Many viewers will find it confusing and boring.

It will come across as confusing because it is too short to adequately explain all the concepts it throws at the viewer.

Unless the viewer is a scientist or—at least—someone who reads science books for fun (as I do, including multiple books by Lawrence Krauss and Michio Kaku, both of whom were interviewed for the film), he will have a hard time keeping up with many of the concepts in the film.

Lots of terms get thrown around—either with no definition at all or with a definition so brief that a normal viewer will not be able to absorb and remember it.

Multipoles? Dipoles? Octopoles? Ecliptic? Isotropic? Anisotropies?

These are not terms that will be familiar to most viewers, and if you want the viewer to understand what is being said, you need to slow things down and really explain these terms so that the viewer can grasp and remember them.

The film doesn’t do that, and so significant sections of the film will come across as confusing and impossible to follow for the normal viewer.

It’s not that they don’t make an effort to explain some of the terms. In fact, there is a goofy holographic-computer-interface-dictionary-lady-who-speaks-with-an-apparent-British-accent who pops up occasionally to define a term for us, but it is not enough for a viewer not already familiar with the jargon used in the film.

With significant sections of the film being unintelligible to a typical viewer and with the film at 90 minutes running time, many will feel parts of it boring.

Thus, in a way, the film seems too long.

It either needed to cut these sections and deliver a shorter, more intelligible film, or it needed to expand its length—explain the concepts involved—and become a more intelligible miniseries.

Artistically, judged simply as an example of documentary filmmaking, The Principle might get * * 1/2 stars out of five.

In the next post, we will look at the content of The Principle and how well it stands up.