As the holidays approach, it might be useful to look at the historical background of Christmas. Christmas takes place during the winter solstice when the day is shortest and the night is longest. People celebrated the winter solstice long before the birth of Jesus. The concept of the birth, death, and rebirth of the sun became associated with the savior god of many cultures.
Thousands of years before Jesus, the Mesopotamians held a festival of renewal at the winter solstice designed to help the god Marduk tame the monsters of chaos for one more year. In ancient Greece, before the time of Christ, the winter solstice ritual celebrated the rebirth of the god Dionysus, who was deemed to have died and arisen from the dead. During the winter solstice, the ancient Romans celebrated the feast of Saturnalia in honor of the god Saturn. There were also ancient pre-Christian celebrations of the winter solstice by the Buddhists, Celts, Druids, Chinese, Tibetans, Indians, Koreans, Japanese, Native Americans, and others.
The reason so many cultures developed winter solstice celebrations was in order to cheer themselves up during the darkest period of the year. We often hear about people developing the blues during the Christmas season. This is because many people suffer from Seasonal Affect Disorder (SAD) and become depressed during the season when there is so much darkness. The gods celebrated in the winter solstice festivals were frequently gods of light or the sun.
Christians began celebrating the birth of Jesus on December 25th during the fourth century AD. The early fathers of the Christian Church did not know the date when Jesus had been born. December 25th was the birthdate of the Roman god Mithra. Mithraism developed in Asia Minor long before the birth of Christ. It may have come from ancient Persia. Mithra was the god of light, or the Sun, and was born of a virgin. His worshippers believed that Mithra promised resurrection from the dead and that he ascended into heaven. The worship of Mithra included forgiveness of sin by baptism of initiates and a communion of bread and wine to commemorate Mithra’s last meal on earth. The worship of Mithra presented a real problem for the Church fathers because of the similarities to the worship of Jesus. In around 353 AD, the Church fathers decided to combat Mithraism and other pagan holidays by celebrating the birth of Jesus on Mithra’s birthday, December 25. Merry Mithramas!
Scholars are in general agreement that the Bible story about Jesus being born in Bethlehem is probably fictitious. We know that Jesus came from Nazareth. The Bible says that Caesar ordered a census to levy taxes and that Joseph, as a descendent of David, had to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem, the city of David, to register for the census (Luke 2:1-5). This was written to fulfill the prophecy that the “Messiah” would be “from the house of David.” However, the Romans kept careful records of their censuses, and scholars know that there was no worldwide census at the time of Jesus’ birth.
The late Raymond E. Brown, S.S., a Catholic priest and former Professor of Biblical Studies at Union Theological Seminary in New York, said in his magisterial The Birth of the Messiah, that “Luke’s reference to a general census of the Empire under Augustus which affected Palestine before the death of Herod the Great is almost certainly wrong….We have no evidence of one census under Augustus that covered the whole Empire, nor of a census requirement that people be registered in their ancestral cities.”
The Romans counted people at their place of domicile, not where their ancestors were born. They would not have required Joseph to travel to Bethlehem. They would have wanted him to stay in Nazareth and be counted where he lived. In addition, Caesar would not have taxed Judea while Herod was king. At the time of Jesus’ birth, Bethlehem would have been in an area that was exempt from Roman taxation.
The distinguished biblical scholar, E.P. Sanders of Oxford and Duke Universities, points out in his book, The Historical Figure of Jesus, that David lived 42 generations before Jesus. He asks, why would Joseph have to register for a tax in the town (Bethlehem) of an ancestor who lived 42 generations earlier? He describes Luke’s story of the Nativity as “Fantastic!” Another distinguished scholar, Bart D. Ehrman of the University of North Carolina, asks in his treatise, The New Testament: “Can it be possible that everyone in the empire was to return to the place their ancestors lived a thousand years earlier?”
John P. Meier of Notre Dame University, a Catholic priest who is considered by many to be the leading biblical scholar in the world, notes in his definitive work, A Marginal Jew, Rethinking the Historical Jesus, that, “Somewhere around 7-6 B.C. a Jew named Yeshua [Jesus], a shortened form of the Hebrew Yehoshua (Joshua), was born in the hillside town of Nazareth in lower Galilee. The Infancy Narritive traditions that locate his birth in Bethlehem of Judea (traditions isolated in chap. 2 of Matthew and Luke respectively) are probably later Christian theological dramatizations of the belief that Jesus was the royal Davidic Messiah.”
Friday, November 30, 2007
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Guns and Masculinity
A gun is like a pair of elevator shoes. It confers artificial stature. Despite the strong silent image that men would like to project, the truth is that most men are emotionally frail aggregations of self-doubt and vulnerability. The possession of a gun is like a tonic, adding an exhilarating sense of power to a sagging ego.
Following the bloody massacre at Virginia Tech University, there were predictable calls for further restrictions on guns. It seems that Seung-Hui Cho, a student with a history of serious mental problems, just walked into a Virginia gun shop on February 9 and picked up a Walther .22 caliber handgun which he had ordered online. On March 16, without submitting to any waiting period, Cho went into another gun shop and purchased a 9 millimeter semi-automatic Glock 19 and a box of 50 cartridges by showing some identification and undergoing an instant background check.
Gun control advocates believe that stricter gun control laws might have prevented the bloodbath. Astonishingly, there are other people who contend that the existence of gun control laws is what caused the slaughter! They say that if every student was allowed to carry a gun there would have been somebody to stop the gunman before he began the carnage.
I have tried to imagine what the campus at Virginia Tech would have looked like with lots of students and teachers packing heat. Would it be like Dodge City where you drew your six-shooter at the risk of being cut-down by a better gunman? Would America be a safer place if every university, college, technical school, high school, home, and workplace bristled with people armed to the teeth? No way.
Let’s face it, strict regulation of guns would obviously cut-down on these murders. Serious criminals will get guns whether they are legally available or not. But your ordinary people—angry spouses, disgruntled former employees, psychotic students, paranoid loners, and others-- who actually commit most of the murders, suicides, and accidental shootings, would be less likely to buy guns if they had to apply for licenses. The main danger from guns is not from career criminals. It is from regular people like you and me.
I would require written applications for licenses by all persons seeking to buy handguns. I would require a two-week waiting period. The purchasers would have to show compelling reasons for needing handguns, such as occupations as private detectives or security guards. They would have to recite their medical and psychiatric histories. They would have to list references. Gun licenses, like drivers licenses, should be subject to renewal every four years with the same background checks as the original licenses.
Hunting is, of course, a natural and acceptable use of guns by people. Humans have been preying upon their fellow animals for hundreds of thousands of years. Even though I am not a hunter, I have no problem with it. I do not think that it is necessary, however, to hunt with an assault rifle. The object of hunting is to kill the prey, not to obliterate it. I would allow rifles to hunters, but would require all such hunters to obtain a license and undergo a waiting period and background check. I would also restrict hunting rifle use to people over eighteen years of age.
Many men who buy guns do not do so in order to hunt, or to enforce the law, or for target practice. They do so to feel stronger. They will almost never have to use the gun to fend-off an intruder. Having a gun in the house may console them for their lack of actual power, but it can also be a real cause of danger. In 2004, there were 29,569 gun deaths in the United States. In a majority of those deaths people took direct aim at—themselves. That’s right, fifty-six percent of all gun deaths were by suicide. Forty percent were homicides. More than half of the homicides were domestic homicides--people like you and me shooting their wives, husbands, family members, neighbors, and friends. There were also many accidental shootings. The number of people who actually shot someone in self-defense was minuscule.
Bob Herbert of The New York Times reported on a Harvard study comparing firearm mortality among children in the five states with the highest rates of gun ownership versus those in the five states with the lowest rates. Respondents in all 50 states were asked whether any firearms were kept in or around their home. Children in states with the highest rates were 16 times more likely to die from accidental gunshot wounds, nearly seven times as likely to commit suicide, and more than three times as likely to be murdered with a firearm. The top quarter of states with the highest gun ownership had firearm homicide rates 114 percent higher than states within the lowest quarter of firearm ownership.
Putting handguns in the hands of any students in America who wanted them might have stopped the VT gunman, but it would have also armed thousands of other paranoid schizophrenics who harbor rages similar to those of Seung-Hui Cho. The last thing we need is more guns in schools, workplaces, and inner cities. As Bob Herbert put it, “only a lunatic could seriously believe that more guns in more homes is good for America’s children.”
Following the bloody massacre at Virginia Tech University, there were predictable calls for further restrictions on guns. It seems that Seung-Hui Cho, a student with a history of serious mental problems, just walked into a Virginia gun shop on February 9 and picked up a Walther .22 caliber handgun which he had ordered online. On March 16, without submitting to any waiting period, Cho went into another gun shop and purchased a 9 millimeter semi-automatic Glock 19 and a box of 50 cartridges by showing some identification and undergoing an instant background check.
Gun control advocates believe that stricter gun control laws might have prevented the bloodbath. Astonishingly, there are other people who contend that the existence of gun control laws is what caused the slaughter! They say that if every student was allowed to carry a gun there would have been somebody to stop the gunman before he began the carnage.
I have tried to imagine what the campus at Virginia Tech would have looked like with lots of students and teachers packing heat. Would it be like Dodge City where you drew your six-shooter at the risk of being cut-down by a better gunman? Would America be a safer place if every university, college, technical school, high school, home, and workplace bristled with people armed to the teeth? No way.
Let’s face it, strict regulation of guns would obviously cut-down on these murders. Serious criminals will get guns whether they are legally available or not. But your ordinary people—angry spouses, disgruntled former employees, psychotic students, paranoid loners, and others-- who actually commit most of the murders, suicides, and accidental shootings, would be less likely to buy guns if they had to apply for licenses. The main danger from guns is not from career criminals. It is from regular people like you and me.
I would require written applications for licenses by all persons seeking to buy handguns. I would require a two-week waiting period. The purchasers would have to show compelling reasons for needing handguns, such as occupations as private detectives or security guards. They would have to recite their medical and psychiatric histories. They would have to list references. Gun licenses, like drivers licenses, should be subject to renewal every four years with the same background checks as the original licenses.
Hunting is, of course, a natural and acceptable use of guns by people. Humans have been preying upon their fellow animals for hundreds of thousands of years. Even though I am not a hunter, I have no problem with it. I do not think that it is necessary, however, to hunt with an assault rifle. The object of hunting is to kill the prey, not to obliterate it. I would allow rifles to hunters, but would require all such hunters to obtain a license and undergo a waiting period and background check. I would also restrict hunting rifle use to people over eighteen years of age.
Many men who buy guns do not do so in order to hunt, or to enforce the law, or for target practice. They do so to feel stronger. They will almost never have to use the gun to fend-off an intruder. Having a gun in the house may console them for their lack of actual power, but it can also be a real cause of danger. In 2004, there were 29,569 gun deaths in the United States. In a majority of those deaths people took direct aim at—themselves. That’s right, fifty-six percent of all gun deaths were by suicide. Forty percent were homicides. More than half of the homicides were domestic homicides--people like you and me shooting their wives, husbands, family members, neighbors, and friends. There were also many accidental shootings. The number of people who actually shot someone in self-defense was minuscule.
Bob Herbert of The New York Times reported on a Harvard study comparing firearm mortality among children in the five states with the highest rates of gun ownership versus those in the five states with the lowest rates. Respondents in all 50 states were asked whether any firearms were kept in or around their home. Children in states with the highest rates were 16 times more likely to die from accidental gunshot wounds, nearly seven times as likely to commit suicide, and more than three times as likely to be murdered with a firearm. The top quarter of states with the highest gun ownership had firearm homicide rates 114 percent higher than states within the lowest quarter of firearm ownership.
Putting handguns in the hands of any students in America who wanted them might have stopped the VT gunman, but it would have also armed thousands of other paranoid schizophrenics who harbor rages similar to those of Seung-Hui Cho. The last thing we need is more guns in schools, workplaces, and inner cities. As Bob Herbert put it, “only a lunatic could seriously believe that more guns in more homes is good for America’s children.”
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