Tag: anthropology

La Dama de Elche / The Lady of Elche

On By Jennifer Mugrage4 Comments

Disclaimer: None of these pictures are mine. I found them on the Internet. If any of them are yours, and you don’t like them being used in this post, contact me and I’ll be happy to take them down.

This is the Lady of Elche, Spain.

As you can see, her shoulders are hunched up. Some people describe her as having an “elongated head,” but it could just be the hat. Or it could be a hat meant to imitate elongated heads, as we see in many other cultures, but especially Egypt and MesoAmerica, where there was also head binding.

The following two links are my bibliography. You can follow them to check what I’m about to tell you about the Lady.

https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/lady-of-elche-002305

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-lady-of-elche

When I first heard that this Lady had been found buried in Iberia, it freaked me out. That’s because my understanding of pre-Roman Iberia was that it was basically Celtic. I was prepared to find Celtic- or Scythian-style artifacts there, such as images of people with narrow chins, large eyes, and moustaches; men with deer antlers; horses, and spirals, perhaps worked in silver, wood, stone, or even gold.

Celtic portrait, with torque necklace

Kurgan stelae in Kyrgyzstan, closer to the probable homeland of the Celts/Indo-Europeans

That’s what I expected to find in Spain. Or maybe something that looked like Etrusacan art, or like statues from the Archaic period of Greece.

I was not prepared for a massive, highly realistic stone statue that looked more classical Greo-Roman in style and featured attire more reminiscent of … I don’t know. Ancient Mesopotamia? Peru? The Lady of Elche freaked me out because it seemed to suggest a whole different style of civilization in Iberia, previously unknown. I was thinking Stone Age or pre-Flood.

Then, I heard that the Lady was believed to be Carthaginian. She instantly became less mysterious, but no less horrifying.

Carthage was a colony of Phoenicians. Phoenicia was an advanced civilization from the Levant. They inhabited the port cities of Tyre and Sidon, near ancient Israel. This explains why the Lady seems to be dressed like someone from the Ancient Near East. The Phoenicians had a shipping empire, so not surprisingly, they started a colony in North Africa. Carthage was here:

As you can see, they are very close to Europe, including territories in Spain. That explains how the Lady of Elche could have Western European facial features and Carthaginian dress.

Like most advanced civilizations of the Ancient Near East, the Phoenicians practiced atrocities in their pagan worship. This was the group that had the god Molech, to whom babies were sacrificed in the fire.

They were dropped down into, or placed in niches in, the red-hot statue. Drums and horns covered the sound of the infants’ screams. Incredibly, Israelites kept taking part in this practice and God had to keep telling them to stop. There was even an Israelite king who “made his son pass through the fire.”

Given that Carthage was part of an advanced, baby-killing empire, the Lady of Elche at once becomes more horrifying. The blank look on the woman’s face becomes more sinister. Is this just a death mask? Or is it because she is cruel? Or mindwiped by all that she had seen and done?

I don’t have any historical reference for this, but an anonymous commenter on the Internet has asserted that the “ear covers” were worn by priests and priestesses to block out the screams of the victims of more gruesome rituals. The bigger the ear muffs, the worse the ritual. I’d like to pooh-pooh that, but it fits with everything else we know about the ancient world. Christ conquering the nations suddenly sounds much less like a step in oppression and more like a relief. If you know more about the earmuff question, I’d love to hear it I wouldn’t exactly love to hear about it, but I’m curious and please send me your information.

If you know how to indicate your interest in the Lady to the algorithm, you may find people dressed in historical re-constructions of the Lady of Elche’s garb, like these:

These ladies all look significantly happier than the original Lady.

The Yucatan Peninsula was just Completely Urban

On By Jennifer MugrageLeave a comment
Photo by Peng LIU on Pexels.com

Actual image of the Yucatan, c. 600 A.D.

Here is the article introducing yet another large Mayan urban center stumbled upon in the jungle through the use of LIDAR technology.

As the authors say in their Conclusion,

As archaeologists work to document and characterise ancient settlement systems throughout the tropics, local scale ‘dense pasts’ are proliferating. It is increasingly clear that dense palimpsests of human modification are not exceptional in these settings, despite long-standing biases that presumed them to be. The field of archaeology now confronts the twin tasks of understanding how these settlement palimpsests accrued through time, and of charting how they varied across space—the better to appreciate just how crowded tropical antiquity may have been.

Luke Auld-Thomas et. al., published online by Cambridge University Press, Oct. 29 2024

This expectation that, when we see a sparsely populated tropical jungle, it has always been a sparsely populated tropical jungle, is coming from a perfect storm of factors.

For one thing, there is the evolutionary picture of human history, which asserts that people started out, as, essentially, animals, and then became hunter-gatherers before, after a long, agonizing process, we developed agriculture and then all our technology flowed from that. This is over against the picture presented in Genesis, where man develops civilization right away. Christians who take their Bibles seriously might have resisted this false evolutionary picture of human history, but they’ve been few and far between. We were just too intimidated. But archaeological discoveries like this one are continually confirming Genesis.

Secondly, we have the Rousseauian idea of the “noble savage.” Rousseau just comes right out and says that, although history does not show it happening this way, he’s just going to assert that all people started out in a utopian “state of nature,” that only became corrupted when we came up with the horrible, destructive idea of Private Property. (Rousseau is, of course, not the only one who has painted this picture of history.) He also says that people living in a “state of nature,” without clothes, medicine, or a reliable diet due to agriculture, would be stronger and more healthy than people living in civilization. This attractive and totally erroneous picture has led a lot of explorers and anthropologists to expect–nay, hope for–small populations of noble hunter-gatherers, rather than civilizations, in what to them constituted the far-flung corners of the world. (“We don’t have any Noble Savages in Europe, but they must exist somewhere!”)

The third factor is physical. Outsiders (and even locals) didn’t see the Mayan cities because they were literally hard to see. The jungle grows over the ruins and destroys them to boot. Even this LIDAR data wasn’t immediately obvious and had to be looked at by an archaeologist who knew what to look for.

This other article speculates that “climate change” might have been responsible for the downfall of the Mayan civilization. (I guess that’s their interpretation of the original article’s use of the word “drought.”) What we know from history is that the collapse of civilizations is usually owing to a long process and multiple external and internal factors, and that like bankruptcy, it happens gradually, then suddenly. In the case of the Maya, besides the drought and perhaps disease that had filtered its way over from Europe, I might name internal warfare, the neighboring Aztec Empire, and oh yes–the human sacrifice.

Jesus, with some well-timed Trollery

On By Jennifer MugrageLeave a comment

Here are some thoughts I had when reading through the book of Mark a while back. Peruse them at your own risk. I hope you find them entertaining, maybe a slightly fresh take on Jesus, but remember this is not authoritative teaching.

Defining “Troll”

Let it be noted that my husband objects to use of the verb “troll” as applied to Jesus.

He was kind of shocked when I brought this up, as a step in my thinking-through-it process. And, I get it. One meaning of “troll” is when someone insults strangers just to be smug, superior and unkind. Obviously, Jesus doesn’t do that. He doesn’t need to cut other people down in order to build Himself up. And He isn’t bitter.

But there’s another definition of trolling, which is: intentionally to violate a social norm, in order to make a point. This is the sense in which trolling can be an art form. And this sense of the word is values-neutral. Trolling in this sense can be mean, or it can be strategic. It depends entirely upon who is the target, and what point you’re making.

I’m in Mark chapters 11 and 12, if you want to join me.

The Triumphal Entry

This in itself is a political powder keg, but we don’t have time to get into all that. I want to focus on the events of the Monday and Tuesday that followed. I just want to note Mark 11:11:

“Jesus entered Jerusalem and went to the Temple. He looked around at everything, but since it was already late, He went out to Bethany with the Twelve.”

The Turning over Tables Incident

The next day (Monday, the second day of their work week), Jesus goes to the outer court of the Temple and starts making a scene. It is obvious that He planned this the night before. I imagine Him sitting on Mary and Martha’s front porch in Bethany, quietly braiding his leather whip and savoring what He’s about to do. He has probably wanted to do it for years.

Also, notice that He didn’t just turn over tables, let the sacrificial animals free, and then leave. He “would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the Temple courts.” (v. 16) In other words, He essentially barricaded the Temple and sat there all day. I can only imagine the disciples’ mortification. “When evening came, they went out of the city.” (v. 19)

But we still haven’t gotten to the trolling part yet.

The Fallout: The Direct Challenge

Well, Jesus goes right back to the same place the next day (Tuesday), and there are the authorities waiting for Him. “By what authority are you doing these things?” (v. 28) And furthermore, “who gave you the authority to do this?” (also v. 28) You can tell they are mad because they repeat it.

Jesus puts off this direct challenge by posing them a riddle about John’s baptism. This won’t make them any less mad (quite the contrary), and it won’t stop them from killing Him eventually, but it does prevent them from arresting Him right there, because after that great answer He just gave, it would cause a riot. He needs a few more days, partly because He has more teaching to do and partly because His death has to happen on the Passover.

Also, they aren’t mad enough yet.

Jesus Uses the Time He Has Bought to Troll

Mark 12:1 – 12:

Jesus tells what has since been dubbed ‘The Parable of the Tenants,’ in which some ungrateful vineyard tenants refuse to pay their rent, beat or kill bill collector after bill collector, and finally kill (!) the owner’s son.

And then He adds, “What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.”

Hmm, their top-secret plan to kill Him is not so secret. He just told a thinly-disguised story about it, and wrapped up by saying, “You’ll get what’s coming to you.” This is the ultimate finger in the eye.

The Fallout II: The Obvious Political Trap

Mark 12:13 – 17

Having been stymied in the direct challenge, and still maddeningly unable to arrest Him because of the Jesus mobs, they re-group and send some different people (ooo so tricky!) with some flattery followed by a demand for His position on an impossible political issue.

“Teacher, we know you are a man of integrity. You aren’t swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are, but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”

He responds, with an almost audible eye roll, “Why are you trying to trap me?” Which is great, but that’s not enough when a political trap is sprung. You also have to know how to get out of the trap.

“Find me a denarius.” There is then a pause while they hunt one up, because not everybody carries denarii of course, and probably a bigger crowd gathers, wondering what is going on. Finally, they find one.

“Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?”
“Caesar’s.”

“Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”

And that, a devastatingly spicy one-liner, is how we get out of a political trap.

(For what it’s worth, I don’t think Jesus was laying out a whole socio-political philosophy here. I don’t think that with “render unto Caesar” He was saying that all of our money rightfully belongs to the State (since they print it), or that there is no such thing as an unfair tax rate, or that the ideal country could have as high taxes as it pleased and still be perfectly just. Nor do I think He was trying to imply that civic government (Caesar) is a completely different realm from the worship of God, and should never be influenced by it. I’m sure that He had some thoughts about civics and religion, and might even have shared them if someone had asked Him in a more relaxed setting. In this situation, He was just answering a sound-bite-length question with a sound-bite-length answer. Ask a snappy, poorly framed question, get an answer that meets it on its own level.)

The Fallout III: The Elaborate Hypothetical Theological Question Trap

Mark 12:18-27

The political sound-bite thing having failed to work out, the Sadducees decide they are going to ask Him a really hard one. They believe “there is no resurrection” – i.e., no afterlife or future life for those who have died. They have been thinking about this a lot, and the implications are just too absurd. For example, Leverite marriage allows (actually requires) a man to marry his brother’s widow if his brother dies childless. In the unlikely (but possible!) event that one woman married seven brothers in succession, how would that work out? “Whose wife would she be at the Resurrection?”

I could be wrong, but I imagine that by the time the Sadducees got done posing this question, many in the audience had glazed over. All that was left were the theology nerds, and the twelve who were desperately trying to keep up. Scholars love this kind of reductio ad absurdum with an elaborate hypothetical, and to lay people, when it’s not boring it’s intimidating.

The question does sort of confuse Jesus, but not for the reason they meant it to. He’s momentarily thrown by the shallowness of their understanding of the Resurrection type of life. His answer is essentially, “Huh? What do you mean? The Resurrection isn’t like that.”

“Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God?” He then drops a statement that to Him seemed obvious, but which the rest of us have been puzzling and speculating about ever since: “When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.”

Wait! we cry. What do you mean, no marriage? If we aren’t allowed to pair off, how can the resurrection life be any fun? Also, will we get to be with our family members from this life? What if we don’t want to, though? Also, what age do people appear to be in heaven? What about those who died as babies… do they grow up, or are they babies for all eternity? Do martyrs get to keep their scars? What about …

Jesus does this a lot. “What are you on about? Of course [insert mind-blowing new doctrine that raises a ton more questions]!” He does know how to talk to regular people and relate to us, but, my gosh, He is sooo much smarter than we are and His perspective is so different! And many of the things that cause us to do a double take, aren’t even His main concern when He’s talking to people.

So He gets back to the main point, which is whether there is another life for the dead, and proves it with one reference to a very basic and well-known verse in Exodus.

And now for something completely different: A Sincere Question

Mark 12:28 – 34

Someone who was impressed with Jesus’ answer to the theological question asks Him a sincere one: “What is the most important commandment in the Law?”

Jesus, recognizing the sincerity, gives him a straight answer. (I won’t spoil it. Go look it up.)

And interestingly, the questioner repeats Jesus’ answer back to Him with enthusiasm. “Well said, teacher!”

I don’t think this guy is sucking up to an authority (since Jesus is not exactly persona grata right this moment), and neither can I fault him for his utterance being not very original. I think he has been turning these things over in his mind, is delighted to get his instincts confirmed by Jesus, and is verbalizing it again as a part of his learning process of really nailing it down. (Some of us can’t learn unless our mouths are moving.)

Jesus agrees: “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

Trolling II: A Riddle

Mark 12:35 – 37

“How is it that the teachers of the law say that the Messiah is the son of David? David himself, speaking by the Holy Spirit, declared,

‘The Lord said to my Lord,/Sit at my right hand/until I put your enemies/under your feet.’

David himself calls him ‘Lord.’ How then can he be his son?”
The large crowd listened to Him with delight.

I usually don’t like being presented with puzzling things that I can’t understand, but the crowd’s response is, “Teacher, I have no idea, but I love it!” This shows how ready they are to soak up anything He has to say after yesterday’s and today’s performance.

Notice, the Emperor Has No Clothes

Mark 12:38 – 40

Having just given the severely underdressed Emperor a light smack on the behind, Jesus now wants to make sure that the lay people clearly understand the man is naked.

“Watch out for the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and and be greeted in the marketplace, and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. They devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. Such men will be punished most severely.”

Why was this necessary? For the same reason it’s necessary right now to point out, “Big Pharma is a scam. They collude with government agencies and push expensive, harmful drugs on doctors and patients rather than cheap and effective ones.” When someone has been a trusted authority for a long time, many people might not know about their dirty dealings. They might find it hard to believe. They might believe that what the authority says on the surface (the “lengthy prayers”) is sincere. Exposing it through trollery is good but it’s not enough. Jesus needs to use the cachet He has with the crowd, right now, to let them know about WidowsHousesGate and to let know that God is, in fact, just, and is not pleased with all of this. He won’t be around to shepherd these particular people much longer, so He wants to warn them about the wolves that, in a little while, will be the only voices they’ll hear.

Someone Jesus Will Not Troll

Mark 12:41 – 44

“Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a fraction of a penny.

“Calling His disciples to Him, Jesus said, ‘I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything — all she had to live on.'”

I love it that, during what is one of Jesus’ last three days to live, He chooses to spend some of it people watching.

I also love it that, even though He is relatively young and has never had to support a wife and kids – that is, He’s not in a demographic that is normally very sympathetic to widows — He immediately recognizes her situation and is aware of her struggle to survive, almost as if He were an older person with years of hard life experience.

Stuff I Love: Clothing

On By Jennifer Mugrage5 Comments

This is the last February post dedicated explicitly to stuff I love, and I admit it, I love clothes. When Marie Kondo, writing to the “Visual” person, said, “You tend to like clothes, and have a lot,” truer words were never spoke.

I try not to go overboard on my interest in clothes here at outofbabelbooks unless I can tie to ancient clothing. There are plenty of good fashion blogs out there, including “modest” fashion blogs by Christians, and compared to them, I don’t really have any expertise to offer. I haven’t had much money to spend on clothes until recently, and my tastes are what you might call eccentric. I also have a short attention span, which means I am not good at buying just a dozen “basic pieces” and wearing the heck out of them.

However, lest you think that fashion is by its nature a shallow subject, I present you this interview with Dimitry Toukhcher, a high-fashion men’s suit designer who voluntarily wangled himself into the position of becoming Jordan Peterson’s personal tailor. This man is very smart, and it’s amazing the significance he finds in trends in men’s clothing. (Let alone women’s.) For samples of his analysis, I have posted my transcript of snippets of the interview below.

Triggernometry: How does fashion reflect the people that you design for? And your beliefs and your politics?

DT: Yeah, I’ve thought a lot about this. … The bespoke movement in England actually started after the London Fire … so what happened was, as the luxury consumption started to elevate in England, the society also became more liberal. You saw this during King George IV, Edward VII – I know my clothing history — so a lot of the clothing brands that were built during those years, were built on a vision of moving towards a more liberal society. Tom Ford would be an example of that. Tom Ford’s entire mantra is libertine living.

Triggernomentry: What’s the logic behind that?

DT: Well, the logic is that you’re spoiling yourself. And so, in the 60s and 70s we saw the cultural shift with the Vietnam War. That’s actually when the bespoke tailoring thing kind of fell apart, because everyone was struggling. So everybody moved away from their father’s uniform. You know, it wasn’t cool. The counter-culture was liberal.

But what’s interesting to me — and this is completely serendipitous, not intentional — is today’s counter-culture is not liberal. Today’s counter-culture is a re-awakening. It’s a Renaissance. Today’s counter-culture is seeking iconography … baptisms … rules! And Jordan Peterson has sort of risen as the Internet’s father as a central figure for that. So it wasn’t that I purposely set out to design anything that would invoke society into some kind of a conservative movement, I just happened to work with the suits.

Triggernometry: And do you think the structure of the suit reflects people seeking a more structured way of life as opposed to the chaotic elements that extreme liberalism brings?

DT: I’m very intentional with that. I e-mailed Jordan [Peterson] and I said, “Hey, Jordan. The outfit you’re wearing [to meet] with this prime minister is the wrong outfit. This prime minister has a military background, and you’re wearing an unstructured jacket. … I wanna do a structured, more militaristic-looking jacket in a darker tone, so that you would pay homage and respect to the person with whom you’re sitting.”

I have a book coming out, and part of the book is actually talk [sic] about the evolution of suits through the decades – the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, etc. What’s interesting to me is [that] the movement of suits specifically — fashion in general, but suits specifically — today, is kind of moving towards what suits looked like back in the 1950s. Which is a fuller cut suit, which is a more traditionally conservative suit, not a lot of exuberant details. And the 1950s were an interesting era for that. We were coming out of the 40s where things were being rationed, so fabric was difficult to come by, and before that we had the 30s, where we had opulence. The 50s were not a re-emergence of the opulent 30s, but they were a breakaway from the restrictive 40s. And now that I look at the 2020s, what’s happening with clothing [is] it’s coming back to the 1950s. It’s almost like the clothing today is a re-emergence from a war. We didn’t actually have a very big physical war in the West, but we surely had a cultural war.

And the Triggernometry boys nod soberly, with the look of war survivors.

DT: So I do see suits coming back. I see a lot of really cool hats coming back. I have a friend who’s in the hat business, and business is booming. When was the last time you saw a guy wear a hat ten years ago?

You Guys! A Book of Poems about Prehistoric Burials!

On By Jennifer MugrageLeave a comment

There’s a reason I’m posting about this book on Feb. 14.

It does something that I want to do with my novels.

It takes the feeling that I get when hearing about bog burials, stone circles, cave paintings — and amplifies it.

Did I mention that I love it?

I’ll be posting quotations from this book throughout the month of February. The one I posted two days ago – To The Air – could have been written about the scene in The Long Guest where the family cremates … well, I won’t give it away. It was trying for the same thing as that scene, or vice versa. But I mostly posted it for that evocative last line.

you died horribly but are beautiful,

sleeping face and pointed cap and perfect feet,

a peat cutter’s slash dug into your back

but preserved as none of your captors are —

though what a price for immortality.

–from Tollund Man, p. 39

If you’ve ever seen a picture of Tollund Man, this is exactly it.

I haven’t yet read every poem in Bone Antler Stone. They require close attention, and some of them are not short. But every so often I’ll dip into it, and find gems like this one:

The sun sets into the sea with a hiss

and rises with the sound of a driven wheel,

the creak of speaking stone, metal and wood.

The sun sets into the sea to simmer

and rises with the sound of stretched leather

and the song of the horse’s chain and bit.

ibid, p. 23

The idea of the solar system as a great big machine, perhaps made of hoops or wheels, that is alluded to in that first stanza is actually very close to how some ancient cultures conceived of the cosmos.

The last poem in the collection shows the author leaving Orkney, where he went to view the burials, with a friend who is named Pytheas for some reason. This poem raises the thought that not everyone is going to “get” a book of poems like this one.

The price to pay for a place like that,

the price to pay for poems like these…

our intensity is terrifying or just tiresome,

and so the dead and the damp doubleback

into just another of our silent, stone secrets.

It the compares the book itself to a barrow burial waiting to be discovered at the right moment:

So Pytheas proceeded in reply,

assuring me that for us, and for ours,

there was only the odd look, the old look, the awed look,

but rarely the real look of revelation,

or the consolation of having communicated.

And so the motive was to make meaning and memory

a kind of barrow burial in bloom

a garlanded grave underground

forged with turf and stone and fire and then forgotten,

until a propitious step or a sudden storm

blows open this book’s binding

and lays each line out in the light again,

shells of syllables dotting the sand.

Well, with a propitious step, I have found it.

When You Don’t Bury

On By Jennifer Mugrage5 Comments

TO THE AIR

Not burial at all

but instead a great freeing,

flesh handed over to the

birds and elements,

dead lives widely scattered

and confined to no single ground.

Or the hunger of fire,

earth gods dusted with ashes

and sky gods smudged with our smoke,

the wide circle covered

and all of us everywhere.

–Tim Miller, Bone Antler Stone, 2018, 2024

Christmas Trees are Christian, but still Very Ancient

On By Jennifer Mugrage5 Comments

This post is about how we got our Christmas trees. For the record, I would probably still have a Christmas tree in the house even if it they were pagan in origin. (I’ll explain why in a different post, drawing on G.K. Chesterton.) But Christmas trees aren’t pagan. At least, not entirely.

My Barbarian Ancestors

Yes, I had barbarian ancestors, in Ireland, England, Friesland, and probably among the other Germanic tribes as well. Some of them were headhunters, if you go back far enough. (For example, pre-Roman Celts were.) All of us had barbarian ancestors, right? And we love them.

St. Boniface was a missionary during the 700s to pagan Germanic tribes such as the Hessians. At that time, oak trees were an important part of pagan worship all across Europe. You can trace this among the Greeks, for example, and, on the other side of the continent, among the Druids. These trees were felt to be mystical, were sacred to the more important local gods, whichever those were, and were the site of animal and in some cases human sacrifice.

God versus the false gods

St. Boniface famously cut down a huge oak tree on Mt. Gudenberg, which the Hessians held as sacred to Thor.

Now, I would like to note that marching in and destroying a culture’s most sacred symbol is not commonly accepted as good missionary practice. It is not generally the way to win hearts and minds, you might say.

The more preferred method is the one Paul took in the Areopagus, where he noticed that the Athenians had an altar “to an unknown god,” and began to talk to them about this unknown god as someone he could make known, even quoting their own poets to them (Acts 17:16 – 34). In other words, he understood the culture, knew how to speak to people in their own terms, and in these terms was able to explain the Gospel. In fact, a city clerk was able to testify, “These men have neither robbed temples nor blasphemed our goddess” (Acts 19:37). Later (for example, in Ephesus) we see pagan Greeks voluntarily burning their own spellbooks and magic charms when they convert to Christ (Acts 19:17 – 20). This is, in general, a much better way. (Although note that later in the chapter, it causes pushback from those who were losing money in the charm-and-idol trade.)

However, occasionally it is appropriate for a representative of the living God to challenge a local god directly. This is called a power encounter. Elijah, a prophet of ancient Israel, staged a power encounter when he challenged 450 priests of the pagan god Baal to get Baal to bring down fire on an animal sacrifice that had been prepared for him. When no fire came after they had chanted, prayed, and cut themselves all day, Elijah prayed to the God of Israel, who immediately sent fire that burned up not only the sacrifice that had been prepared for Him, but also the stones of the altar (I Kings chapter 18). So, there are times when a power encounter is called for.

A wise missionary who had traveled and talked to Christians all over the world once told me, during a class on the subject, that power encounters tend to be successful in the sense of winning people’s hearts only when they arise naturally. If an outsider comes in and tries to force a power encounter, “It usually just damages relationships.” But people are ready when, say, there had been disagreement in the village or nation about which god to follow, and someone in authority says, “O.K. We are going to settle this once and for all.”

That appears to be the kind of power encounter that Elijah had. Israel was ostensibly supposed to be serving their God, but the king, Ahab, had married a pagan princess and was serving her gods as well. In fact, Ahab had been waffling for years. There had been a drought (which Ahab knew that Elijah — read God — was causing). Everyone was sick of the starvation and the uncertainty. Before calling down the fire, Elijah prays, “Answer me, O LORD, answer me, so these people will know that you, O LORD, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again.” (I Kings 18:37)

Similar circumstances appear to have been behind Boniface’s decision to cut down the great oak tree. In one of the sources I cite below, Boniface is surrounded by a crowd of bearded, long-haired Hessian chiefs and warriors, who are watching him cut down the oak and waiting for Thor to strike him down. When he is able successfully to cut down the oak, they are shaken. “If our gods are powerless to protect their own holy places, then they are nothing” (Hannula p. 62). Clearly, Boniface had been among them for some time, and the Hessians were already beginning to have doubts and questions, before the oak was felled.

Also note that, just as with Elijah, Boniface was not a colonizer coming in with superior technological power to bulldoze the Hessians’ culture. They could have killed him, just as Ahab could have had Elijah killed. A colonizer coming in with gunboats to destroy a sacred site is not a good look, and it’s not really a power encounter either, because what is being brought to bear in such a case is man’s power and not God’s.

And, Voila! a Christmas Tree

In some versions of this story, Boniface “gives” the Hessians a fir tree to replace the oak he cut down. (In some versions, it miraculously sprouts from the spot.) Instead of celebrating Winter Solstice at the oak tree, they would now celebrate Christ-mass (during Winter Solstice, because everyone needs a holiday around that time) at the fir tree. So, yes, it’s a Christian symbol.

Now, every holiday tradition, laden with symbols and accretions, draws from all kinds of streams. So let me hasten to say that St. Boniface was not the only contributor to the Christmas tree. People have been using trees as objects of decoration, celebration, and well-placed or mis-placed worship, all through history. Some of our Christmas traditions, such as decorating our houses with evergreen and holly boughs, giving gifts, and even pointed red caps, come from the Roman festival of Saturnalia. This is what holidays are like. This is what symbols are like. This is what it is like to be human.

Still, I’d like to say thanks to St. Boniface for getting some of my ancestors started on the tradition of the Christmas tree.

Bonus rant, adapted from a discussion I had …

... in a YouTube comments section with a Hebraic-roots Christian who was insisting that Christmas is a “pagan” holiday:

So, as we can see, the evergreen tree is a Christian symbol, not a pagan one, and has been from the very beginning of its usage. St. Boniface cut down the tree that was sacred to Thor, and that was an oak tree, not a Christmas tree. Sacred oaks are pagan. Christmas trees, which incidentally are not actually considered sacred, are Christian.

Yes, I am aware, as are most Christians, that Jesus was probably not actually born on Dec. 25th. Yes, I am aware that Yule was originally a pagan feast time.

But let’s look at the symbolism, shall we?

For those of us who live in northern climes, and especially before the industrial revolution, the winter solstice is the scariest time of the year. The light is getting less and less, and the weather is getting worse and worse, and all in all, this is the time of year when winter officially declares war on humanity. Winter comes around every year. It kills the sick and weak. It makes important activities like travel and agriculture impossible. It makes even basic activities, like getting water, washing things, bathing, and going to the bathroom anywhere from inconvenient to actually dangerous to do without freezing to death. If winter never went away, then we would all surely die. That is a grim but undeniable fact. Read To Build A Fire by Jack London, and tremble.

Thus, people’s vulnerability before winter is both an instance and a symbol of our vulnerable position before all the hardships and dangers in this fallen world, including the biggie, death. And including, because of death, grief and sorrow.

Yule is a time of dealing with these realities and of waiting for them to back off for another year. After the solstice, the days slowly start getting longer again. The light is coming back. Eventually, it will bring warmth with it. Eventually, life.

Thus, it is entirely appropriate that when the Germanic tribes became Christians, they picked the winter solstice as the time to celebrate Jesus’ birth. He is, after all, the light of the world. A little, tiny light – a small beginning – had come into the bitter winter of the sad, dark world, and it was the promise of life to come. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. All this biblical, very Hebrew symbolism answers beautifully the question raised by the European pagans’ concern with the sun coming back.

Our ancestors were not “worshipping pagan gods” at Christmas. They were welcoming Christ (who is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) into the heart of their culture. They were recognizing that He was the light, using terms they knew, which were Germanic terms, and this is not surprising because they were Germans.

So, if you want to make the case that no holidays are lawful for Christians except those prescribed in the Old Testament for Israel, be my guest. Try to find some Scriptures to back that up. And maybe you can. But you cannot make that case by accusing people who put up a Christmas tree of worshipping pagan gods. All you’ll do then is reveal yourself to be historically ignorant.

Sources

BBC, “Devon Myths and Legends,” http://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/content/articles/2005/12/05/st_boniface_christmas_tree_feature

Foster, Genevieve, Augustus Caesar’s World: 44 BC to AD 14, Beautiful Feet Books, 1947, 1975, Saturnalia on p. 56 ff.

Hannula, Richard, Trial and Triumph: Stories from church history, Canon Press, 1999. Boniface in chapter 9, pp. 61 – 64.

Puiu, Tibi, “The origin and history of the Christmas tree: from paganism to modern ubiquity,” ZME Science, https://www.zmescience.com/science/history-science/origin-christmas-tree-pagan/

Saturnalia: The Roman Precursor to Christmas

On By Jennifer Mugrage3 Comments
Photo by Heather Smith on Pexels.com

And now to Rome, as always in December, came the Saturnalia.

“Io! Saturnalia!” That was the call that ushered in the merriest holiday of the Roman year — that hilarious, glorious, mid-December festival, the Saturnalia.

“Io! Saturnalia! Io! Io! Io!” That was the greeting that echoed through the holiday season. For it was in honor of Saturn — good, old, generous Saturn, kindest and most provident of the gods.

During those mid-December days (first three, later seven) no war was ever declared, nor battles fought, no criminals tried or punished. Courts were closed; schools dismissed; even the slave markets were shut down. During those days, all slaves were free [just] as in those golden days of old, all people had been equal. Everyone, rich, poor, young and old joined in a glorious holiday.

The day began with a sacrifice of thanksgiving in the early morning, followed by a public feast at midday, which turned into a wild, hilarious carnival before evening. In red pointed caps and colored costumes, merrymakers went singing and laughing through the streets, showering wheat and barley like confetti, and granting every wish, no matter how wild, ridiculous, or disgusting, made by the lucky one who had been chosen “King of the Saturnalia.”

The weeks ahead were always filled with preparation. Candlemakers and makers of dolls were busy pouring wax, turning out little earthenware images, and setting up booths for the doll fair. Every child would want a doll, and every household would need many candles for the Saturnalia.

Holly branches, with their bright berries, had to be cut and carted into the city, and houses trimmed with evergreen. Gifts for the family and friends must be selected and wrapped. For on the second day, after a family dinner of roast young pig, with all the trimmings, came an exchange of presents!

Augustus Caesar’s World: 44 BC to AD 14 by Genevieve Foster, Beautiful Feet Books, 1947, 1975, pp. 56 – 58

Even One Tree Hill is not as lonely as Potbelly Hill

On By Jennifer Mugrage6 Comments

I haven’t posted about the buried temple Gobekli Tepe in a while, so let me remedy that:

“A Monumental Cover-Up?“

For those in the back seats, Gobekli Tepe is an archaeological site in Turkey that I love for many reasons. It clearly partakes of the ancient megalithic culture that seems to have been worldwide (why? and how???). It has been dated to about 9000 B.C., which we must take with the usual grain of salt, but according to the people dating it, this was before the discovery of agriculture, the wheel, etc. Yet it employs circles, equilateral triangles, and other such evidence of having been built by mathematically capable people. For those new to Out of Babel Books, we frequently post about how wrong conventional archaeology appears to be about when and how civilization arose among human beings. If you click through to this article, you will see them struggling with that a bit.

The article also has some entertaining turns of phrase, for example: “In the end, searching for answers concerning motives and reasons from such an ancient time involves a great deal of speculation, since we cannot go back in time and probe the perpetrators.” Yes, that does sound like an unpleasant process for everyone involved.

The main reason I’ve included this link is the new-to-me information that Gobekli Tepe means “potbelly hill,” which I find charming. And it turns out the hill had a “belly button,” which was actually a sign that the hill was not natural, but had this temple buried below. Which I find creepy, like the whole site is creepy.

Besides “have we been completely wrong about the history of agriculture?,” the other question this article raises is “Why was Gobekli Tepe apparently deliberately buried?”

Why does one bury a thing? Particularly, why does one bury a statue, an idol, a god?

While acknowledging that we don’t know, the article references other instances of “de-sacralizing,” such as when an altar is no longer in use and we don’t want to pose a danger to anyone who might blunder upon it. They also reference the defaced and buried giant heads found in the Olmec region. If a statue is defaced, such as those heads are, we can reasonably guess that it, or its people, got conquered or overthrown by someone else, who wanted to humiliate the statue and rob it of its power. There are cases in the Old Testament where a king or someone else leading a reform not only defaces the pagan altars but defiles them (e.g., turning them into public toilets), so that no more honor may go to that god or goddess.

I don’t know whether the large stones at Gobekli Tepe were defaced. In every photograph I’ve seen of them, they appear to be not only intact, but still standing, as if they were buried so as to preserve them. But it’s possible that the archaeologists are the ones who set them upright again. Still, it’s customary when destroying an enemy’s temple to “leave no stone upon another.” So, unless a lot more reconstruction than I realized has been done under Potbelly Hill, I’m thinking the temple was buried for some other reason. I’m with the authors of the article on this one: We can’t tell what went down, but we can infer that it was probably not good.