The Alleged Pagan Roots Of Holidays

David Wood recently interviewed Michael Jones (of InspiringPhilosophy) about the supposed pagan background of Christmas. Michael has done a lot of research on the topic, and they discussed many of the issues that are often brought up in this context (the origins of the December 25 date, whether certain Biblical passages are opposed to Christmas trees, etc.).

I've done some work on the history of the December 25 date, but I haven't looked into most of the other issues much. That's partly because I don't think a lot is at stake. Even if things like Christmas trees and the use of mistletoe in the context of Christmas had the sort of pagan roots that people often allege, the association with paganism would be too distant to have the implications those people often suggest. Similarly, there are distant pagan connections to the calendar names we use (names of months, names of days, etc.), the food we eat, the clothing we wear, and so on. The people who are so upset about the supposed paganism of Christmas don't seem nearly as upset, if they're upset at all, about other pagan connections, like the ones I just mentioned. Meat sacrificed to idols had a relationship to paganism, but Paul considered it acceptable to eat such meat (1 Corinthians 8, 10). The relationship was distant enough to not be significant.

Many good points are made during David's discussion with Michael, and a lot of what they discuss is relevant to holidays (and other issues) in general, not just Christmas. Apparently, Michael has done similar work on Valentine's Day and Easter and is planning a discussion of objections to the history of Thanksgiving. I don't know enough about some of the Christmas issues they discuss to make much of a judgment of the accuracy of Michael's conclusions, but there's enough good material during the program to make it worth listening to.

A Response To Vincent Torley On The Virgin Birth

He recently posted an article about a lack of evidence for the virgin birth and argued against the historicity of much of the infancy narratives in the process. I want to make several points in response:

Listen To A Poltergeist Dragging Somebody Out Of Bed

The large majority of the Enfield tapes recorded by Maurice Grosse and Guy Playfair haven't been made available to the public, but some of the audio has occasionally surfaced in one context or another. Grosse gave people copies of some of his tapes, and he sometimes played portions of the audio during public events, for example, so there have been opportunities for people to get the material in contexts like those. Sometimes a portion of the audio will make its way onto YouTube, by whatever means.

Last year, a video was posted there that strings together some audio from several incidents in the Enfield case. One of those is an occasion when the poltergeist dragged Janet Hodgson out of bed. The most significant part of the original tape involves two draggings, not just the one that's now on YouTube, and it lasts about eight minutes. The segment I'll be linking below is only about one and a half minutes long in its original version, but the form on the YouTube video is a little longer, since the audio is being played at a slower speed. That slower speed makes it easier to hear what people are saying, but it also distorts their voices. A lot of YouTube recordings of the Enfield audio run at a slow speed, maybe in part because that slower speed makes the poltergeist's voice sound more dramatic. Whatever the reasons for the distorted audio, a large percentage of the Enfield tapes you find on YouTube are of much worse quality than the digitized version of the tapes, and the clip I'll be linking below has that sort of lower quality. It's better than nothing, though, and it adequately conveys some of what occurred and the evidence for it.

Events Involving The Operation Of Machinery In The Enfield Case

(I'll be citing Maurice Grosse and Guy Playfair's Enfield tapes. I'll use "MG" to refer to a tape from Grosse's collection and "GP" to refer to one from Playfair's, so that MG22B refers to tape 22B in Grosse's collection, GP50B refers to 50B in Playfair's, etc.)

Some of the paranormal events in the Enfield case involved the operation of machinery of some type. I'm distinguishing between the involvement of machinery and the involvement of the operation of machinery. If a refrigerator is moved by a poltergeist, that has some value, but it isn't significantly different than the movement of some other large object that we wouldn't normally refer to as a machine, such as a bookcase. I want to include everything from the malfunctioning of equipment often reported in poltergeist and other paranormal cases to the detection of paranormal activity by means of various types of machinery. I'm including events like the throwing of a tape recorder, whereas I'm not including something like the moving of a refrigerator, since the former has a lot more potential to be connected to the function of the machinery in question. It may just be a coincidence that a tape recorder was thrown rather than some other object nearby, such as a plate. But there's substantially more potential that the moving of a tape recorder was related to the poltergeist's interest in the operation of that recorder. The operation of tape recorders seems to be of more interest to a poltergeist than the operation of refrigerators (e.g., a poltergeist's interest in whether and how its activities are recorded on tape), so a poltergeist's activities related to the former have more potential to be related to the operation of that sort of equipment. I'm not trying to be exhaustive here, but I want to include examples of a broad variety of phenomena that can be summarized as involving the operation of machines in some manner. I'll explain some of my reasons for framing things that way at the conclusion of this article.

New Books To Get In 2021

This is the first of what I hope will be a series, which will consist of one post I'll put up near the end of each year. I'll mention some books I'm looking forward to that are due out the following year, and anybody who's interested can add their own books they're looking forward to in the comments section of the thread. You don't have to be expecting to agree with everything in the book or even most of what's in it. These are just new books, coming out next year, that you think are worth getting for whatever reason. And you don't have to be exhaustive. You can mention one, two, or however many you want. I'm hoping these posts will help us be more aware of what books are coming out and to make better plans about which books to get, which to read, in what order, and so on.

I'll just mention a few I'm looking forward to, to start things out. John Piper is publishing a book on providence. Lydia McGrew's book on the gospel of John, The Eye Of The Beholder, is supposed to come out next year. So is Stephen Carlson's book on Papias.

Are you putting yourself and others to work?

What did you do with your time this year?

"But my soul hath been refreshed and watered, when I hear of your [David Dickson's] courage and zeal for your never-enough-praised, praised Master, in that ye put the men of God, chased out of Ireland, to work. Oh, if I could confirm you! I dare say, in God's presence, 'That this shall never hasten your suffering, but will be David Dickson's feast and speaking joy (viz.), that while he had time and leisure, he put many to work, to lift up Jesus, his sweet Master, high in the skies.' O man of God, go on, go on; be valiant for that Plant of renown, for that Chief among ten thousands, for that Prince of the kings of the earth. It is but little that I know of God; yet this I dare write, that Christ will be glorified in David Dickson, howbeit Scotland be not gathered." (Samuel Rutherford, Letters Of Samuel Rutherford [Carlisle, Pennsylvania: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2012], 315-16)

A Well That Doesn't Run Dry

"I have walked through 65 Advent seasons as a believer in Jesus. I preached my way through half of them. So, counting Christmas sermons, that would be roughly 150 messages during Advent. I don't ever recall thinking, 'Oh my, how will I say anything fresh this year?' There are some wells that don't run dry. Some horizons that expand as you approach. Some stories that reach back forever, forward into eternity, down to the depths of mystery, and up to the heights of glory. Advent is one of those. It is inexhaustible." (John Piper)

Jesus' Inferiority To Samuel In Luke 2:52

The concepts and terminology in Luke 2:52 are taken largely from 1 Samuel 2:26. Yet, Luke is discussing Jesus' highly ordinary upbringing in a normal lower-class home in Nazareth, in contrast to Samuel's extraordinary upbringing in a sanctuary setting with Eli. Critics often allege that Matthew and Luke and/or their sources were making up stories to parallel Jesus to various Old Testament figures, like Samuel. But Luke refers to Jesus' upbringing in a setting that's substantially different than and inferior to Samuel's, even though he thought highly of Samuel and wanted to draw comparisons between him and Jesus. The desire to see Jesus in the Old Testament didn't prevent the early Christians from acknowledging differences between Jesus and those figures who came before him and even referring to ways in which Jesus was inferior.

Evidence For The Birth Narratives

Lydia McGrew has a good article on the subject at a site affiliated with the Unbelievable? radio program she recently appeared on. I also recommend participating in the comments section below the article. Too few Christians do that sort of work. Skeptics shouldn't be allowed to be so disproportionately represented in those contexts. If Christians have false priorities, are apathetic, are cowardly, or are lazy, among other problems, skeptics can easily outperform them. They often do.

Would Paul Have Known Much About Jesus' Childhood?

I've argued elsewhere that Paul tells us more in his letters about Jesus' childhood than people typically suggest. But before we even get to that sort of content in his letters, how much sense would it make to think Paul was as unconcerned about or ignorant of Jesus' childhood as people often suggest?

I've written some posts about what the Old Testament anticipates concerning the childhood of the Messiah, such as here and here. Paul was influenced by the Old Testament and would have had some interest in Jesus' childhood accordingly.

He was in contact with and following the work of multiple members of Jesus' immediate family for multiple decades (Acts 15:13, 21:18, 1 Corinthians 9:5, 15:7, Galatians 1:19, 2:9). The same is true of his relationship with the Twelve (Acts 9:27-28, 15:7, 1 Corinthians 1:12, 9:5, 15:5, Galatians 1:18, 2:7-10). In other posts, I've discussed how a traditional Christian view of Jesus' childhood is reflected in many places in all four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John). Paul was closely associated with all four of the individuals those documents have traditionally been attributed to. In addition to what's cited above regarding Matthew and John, see the following regarding Mark and Luke: Acts 13:5, 15:36-40, 16:10, Colossians 4:10-14, 2 Timothy 4:11, Philemon 24. Even if all four traditional gospel authorship attributions were to be rejected, Paul's widespread traveling and frequent contact with messengers among the churches and in other circles make it highly likely that he would have been familiar with at least much of the material on Jesus' childhood that was circulating and eventually appeared in the gospels. He also would have encountered, or had a lot of potential to have encountered, some figures who don't get much attention in modern discussions about these contexts, but would have had relevant information (e.g., Manaen in Acts 13:1).

Notice that even if we were to grant some skeptical scenarios for the sake of argument, some of what I'm appealing to would remain valid. Think of the third gospel, for example. The evidence suggests it was written by Luke, a companion of Paul, but let's assume for a moment that it wasn't. Why should we think it wasn't written by some other companion of Paul, then, given the evidence of the "we" passages in Acts? And if it wasn't written by any companion of Paul, why think it wasn't at least written by a segment of early Christianity that thought highly of Paul and, therefore, was highly influenced by him (which wouldn't require agreement with him on every issue)? The same line of reasoning can be applied to 1 Timothy and its citation of Luke's gospel as scripture (in 5:18). Even if we were to reject the Pauline authorship of 1 Timothy, why go even further by rejecting the document's reflection of Pauline thought and, more specifically, the perception at the time that Luke's gospel was circulating during Paul's lifetime and was viewed highly by Paul? More could be said, but what I've already brought up is enough to make my point. You can't get around the implications the gospel of Luke has for Paul's circumstances (e.g., what information he likely had access to, what views of Jesus' childhood he likely held) simply by doing something like denying the Lukan authorship of the third gospel or denying the Pauline authorship of 1 Timothy.

It seems highly likely that Paul had substantial interest in Jesus' childhood and access to reliable information on the subject. He probably held a view similar to what we see in the gospels.

The McGrew/Pearce Debate On Christmas Issues

Lydia McGrew recently debated Jonathan Pearce on issues surrounding Jesus' birth on the Unbelievable? radio program. I've reviewed Pearce's book on Christmas issues. And Steve Hays and I wrote some further responses to his work: here, here, here, and here. Those responses from Steve and I are focused on Jonathan's objections to the magi material in Matthew 2, and he raises those objections in his debate with Lydia. Anybody who's interested can read those exchanges from 2014. I won't be repeating what I said in that context, but will instead focus on other parts of the McGrew/Pearce debate. The large majority of what needs to be said in response to arguments like Jonathan's is covered on the pages linked above and in my recent collection of Christmas resources here.

Snopes Debunking The Bethlehem Birthplace

They just reposted an article from The Conversation that casts doubt on Jesus' birth in Bethlehem and other aspects of the infancy narratives. And here's the original version of the article they reposted. I've posted in the comments section of that original thread. We'll see how many other Christians post there and how substantive their comments are. Typically, Christians don't do much in this sort of context. That's one of the reasons why our culture is in the condition it's in.

Keep in mind that when a source like Snopes or The Conversation produces anti-Christian material like this recent article, it influences people who won't tell you they were influenced by it. When your spouse, children, or coworkers come across such material, whether they were searching for it or not, they typically won't say much, if anything, about it to other people. But it does affect them. It affects how they think, their confidence, who and what they're willing to associate with, what they say to other people about relevant subjects, etc. Material like what Snopes and The Conversation are producing is more influential than Christians suggest.

You can't just make dismissive comments about the media, liberals, atheists, and so on. You need to interact with what's being said. You need to participate in the discussions. And I'd estimate that only a tiny fraction of one percent of Christians in a place like modern America are sufficiently prepared to discuss the relevant New Testament data, non-Christian sources, patristic evidence, etc. The vast majority of Christians in a context like the United States will respond to material like what Snopes and The Conversation have produced in a highly inadequate way. They're too occupied with family get-togethers, cooking, joking around, following sports, watching movies, etc. When that tiny fraction of one percent of Christians do the relevant work to respond to sources like Snopes, the typical response from other Christians is apathy or contempt. That needs to change. When you see something like that Snopes article, what are you doing about it? How many of these conversations have you been participating in over the years? And what's the quality of your participation?

Pete Enns Is Wrong About Isaiah 9

See his article here. He's wrong about what Isaiah 9 refers to in its original context, and he's wrong about how the earliest Christians viewed the passage. On the original context, see here and here. On how the earliest Christians understood the passage, see here and my other posts since then that discuss the issues further.

The fact that Isaiah 9 opens with an eighth-century B.C. backdrop doesn't suggest that the entire passage will be fulfilled at that time or shortly after. It can be relevant to an eighth-century B.C. audience and be sufficiently understood by them without being entirely fulfilled at that time or shortly after and without being entirely understood by that initial audience. Jesus' fulfillment of the passage centuries later, without any fulfillment by Hezekiah or somebody else earlier, doesn't mean that the passage has "no relevance to Isaiah’s audience", as Enns claims. It has a lot of relevance, much as unfulfilled eschatology and other types of predictions not yet fulfilled have a lot of relevance to modern Christians.

Enns writes that "It is striking, though, that Matthew doesn’t go on and cite the rest of Isaiah 9, especially verses 6-7". He doesn't need to. It would be absurd to think that Jesus is the figure of the first two verses of the passage, but that verses 6-7 refer to somebody else. Verse 7 refers to David's throne. Jesus' Davidic Messiahship is a major theme in Matthew's gospel. It would be ridiculous to suggest that he thought Isaiah 9:6-7 refers to somebody other than Jesus. Similarly, Jesus only needs to cite a portion of Psalm 22 in order to suggest that the whole Psalm applies to him (Matthew 27:46).

Enns goes on to tell us that Matthew "is only one of two New Testament writers who bother to even tell us about Jesus’s birth". See here regarding the material on Jesus' childhood outside of Matthew and Luke. John's gospel, for example, tells us a substantial amount about Jesus' childhood, including his fulfillment of Isaiah 9. And notice that Jesus' appeal to the opening verses of Isaiah 9 in John 8:12 comes in the context of responding to allegations about issues like his ancestry and birthplace (John 7:41-42, 7:52), which implies that Jesus is intending to appeal to the Isaiah 9 passage as a whole, not just the opening verses. The closing verses of the Isaiah 9 passage, not the opening ones, are the verses that refer to birth and Davidic ancestry (with the implication of a Bethlehem birthplace, for reasons I've gone into elsewhere). The evidence suggests, then, that Jesus is applying the Isaiah 9 passage as a whole to himself in John 8:12. So, Enns' claim that "Connecting Isaiah 9 to Jesus was the work of later church theologians" is false.

The Fifth Gospel

"Isaiah, then, together with his rebukes of wickedness, precepts of righteousness, and predictions of evil, also prophesied much more than the rest [of the Biblical prophets] about Christ and the Church, that is, about the King and that city which he founded; so that some say he should be called an evangelist rather than a prophet." (Augustine, The City Of God, 18:29)

Even if critics' efforts to overturn the four gospels of the New Testament had been successful, there's a fifth gospel that's out of their reach. You can grant so much of what they claim about the gospels, even their breaking up of Isaiah and assigning it to different authors, their late dating of it, and their various hypotheses about the original referents in passages like Isaiah 9 and the Servant Songs. When you grant them so much, which they don't deserve, they still have no adequate explanation for why Jesus' life and influence on the world align so well with what Isaiah wrote.

We've written a lot about the prophecies of Isaiah over the years. I've written about Isaiah 9 recently, and you can find more about that passage in our archives, such as here and here. We've also written about other passages, like the Servant Songs. You can go here to find a collection of many of our articles on prophecy issues, including other ones on Isaiah and some discussing the principles involved in evaluating prophecy.

The Evidence For Jesus' Galilean Background And Its Usefulness

In other posts, I've discussed the evidential significance of Jesus' background in Galilee and Nazareth. Critics of Christianity make much of Jesus' Galilean background, often his residence in Nazareth in particular. That's probably because there's such good evidence for those aspects of Jesus' life, critics don't perceive those characteristics of his life as much of a threat, and they view his background in Nazareth as a means of undermining belief in his Bethlehem birthplace. Because of Micah 5:2 and its use over the centuries as evidence for Christianity, critics have given a lot of attention to trying to undermine the Christian use of that passage.

But they're repeating a mistake that's been perpetuated from the time of Jesus down to our own day. As I wrote in another post:

Isaiah 9 And The Resurrection

I've argued that Jesus set his public ministry in the framework of Isaiah 9:1-2. It's unlikely to be a coincidence that the two places where he chose to live as an adult lined up with the references to Zebulun and Naphtali in Isaiah 9:1 (Nazareth in the region of Zebulun, then Capernaum in the region of Naphtali).

The notion that Jesus set out to align himself with Isaiah 9 is corroborated by how he framed his resurrection appearances. Though he appeared to people outside of Galilee, he singled out Galilee and went out of his way to travel there to appear to his disciples in that location (Matthew 26:32, 28:7, 28:10, 28:16, Mark 14:28, 16:7). Think of a couple of the questions raised by his choice to appear in Galilee and his choice to emphasize the appearance there so much. Why Galilee? And why emphasize it so much, going out of his way to do so, even when he appeared outside of Galilee as well and appeared elsewhere before appearing in Galilee? The best explanation is his interest in fulfilling Isaiah 9. Saying that he made those choices because the beginning of his public ministry was so tied up with Galilee just pushes the question back a step. Why was the beginning of his ministry so tied up with Galilee? And why did he want to emphasize the Galilean relationship so much? I don't know of any explanation that's comparable to or better than his concern for fulfilling Isaiah 9.

Christians Should Believe In Ghosts

Earlier this year, Billy Hallowell published a book on demons, ghosts, and other paranormal topics. He was recently interviewed by Sean McDowell. Here's something I just posted in the comments section below the video. It's several paragraphs long, so I doubt many people will read it. But, for those who are interested, I explain why Christians should believe in ghosts, how we're often overly dependent on the demonic hypothesis, what harm that does, and what other explanatory options are available to a Christian.

Factors Involved In Evaluating Star Of Bethlehem Theories

We get media stories on the star of Bethlehem at this time of year, especially about the claims of people who advocate astronomical views of the star. Here's a post I put up on Facebook last year that briefly outlines four of the factors we should take into account when evaluating theories about the star.

California dreamin' no more

I'm a native Californian from the Los Angeles area. Quite arguably much of California has become a dystopia (e.g. many parts of LA and SF). Many parts of the state are more like a developing nation than a developed nation. A third world nation. Tremendous poverty, tent cities, drug addicts, mental issues, etc.

The dystopia that California has become is also known as the progressive dream. California is considered a role model for progressives. It's a foretaste of what the US could be if the US was like California according to progressives. As such, I think this post can serve as a warning about progressivism.

In any case, here are my pros and cons about my (once) beloved state. In no particular order:

The Significance Of Jesus' Being Raised In Nazareth

I've written elsewhere about the importance of Jesus' choice as an adult to live in Nazareth for a while, then live in Capernaum, which aligns with Isaiah 9:1. Critics could object that Jesus was trying to make himself look like the fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy, so that his alignment with the passage doesn't involve anything supernatural. That approach wouldn't resolve all of the problems Jesus' fulfillment of the passage poses for skeptics, though.

For example, they often object that the early accounts of Jesus' childhood are discontinuous with the early accounts of his adulthood. Supposedly, the accounts of his adulthood don't reflect the alleged events of his childhood the way we'd expect them to if those childhood events actually occurred. But even if Jesus set out to fulfill Isaiah 9 by normal means, without anything paranormal involved, his identifying himself as the figure of Isaiah 9 would be an example of substantial continuity between the accounts of his childhood and the accounts of his adulthood. So, objecting that Jesus lived in Nazareth and Capernaum as an adult to make himself look like the fulfillment of Isaiah 9 helps the critic avoid some conclusions that are favorable to Christianity, but still leaves him with other problems.

And notice the significance of the fact that Jesus didn't just choose to live in Nazareth for a while as an adult. He also grew up there, and he did so from an early age, from about the age of two. At that stage, he was far too young, by normal means, to have reasoned with his parents to persuade them to live in Nazareth in order to accommodate a claim of Messiahship he'd make later in life. So, Jesus was in the right place at the right time (in Nazareth, which is in the region of Zebulun, the first region mentioned in Isaiah 9:1) well before he was in a position to arrange being there by normal means. Jesus was in Nazareth, and was there both as an adult and as a child, even a child as young as about two years old, before moving to the region of Naphtali (Capernaum).

Isaiah and other Old Testament authors often refer to a Messianic branch or shoot who was to come. We could say that Jesus was planted in Nazareth by God's providence before he chose to live there for a while as an adult, followed by a move to Capernaum, in alignment with Isaiah 9.

But we should look even further back. Why are Zebulun and Naphtali mentioned in Isaiah 9 to begin with? The backdrop seems to be the Assyrian takeover of northern Israel in the eighth century B.C. However, Isaiah never refers to the northern kingdom as Zebulun and Naphtali anywhere else. He uses multiple other names (e.g., Ephraim in 7:5, Jacob and Israel in 9:8), but Zebulun and Naphtali aren't used elsewhere. Furthermore, there were other tribal territories in the north, not just Zebulun and Naphtali, that were affected by the Assyrian invasion. As H.G.M. Williamson explains:

"The detail is not important for the present verse, however, as these two tribes are probably mentioned only representatively of the northern part of the country; Asher and Dan, at least, must have been affected in a similar way to Zebulun and Naphtali. The same style of representative reporting affects the brief description of this self-same event in 2 Kgs 15.29, as there, alongside a list of towns, only Naphtali is mentioned of the tribal territories." (Isaiah 6-12 [New York, New York: Bloomsbury, 2018], 382)

As 2 Kings 15 illustrates, Zebulun and Naphtali wouldn't have to be singled out, much less mentioned in that order, if an author wanted to cite one or more tribal regions of northern Israel to represent the whole. So, the selection of Zebulun and Naphtali, in that order, in Isaiah 9 is significant accordingly.

There are many other aspects of Isaiah 9 that also line up well with Jesus' life. See here and here, for example.