Author Archives: Lila

Poison Ivy: More Dangers Of Elite Schooling

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In “Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite,” Free Press, 2014, William Deresiewicz writes that elite American schools corrupt the souls of their students …. but he fails to mention that they also endanger their bodies.

Recently, I looked at some crime statistics for Yale University, the premier academic seat of East Coast liberals – the Ivy League that trains the Ivy League, so to speak.

You’d think all that high-powered thinking would have had some impact for good where it most counts –  at home.

Not a chance.

Not only is New Haven, Connecticut, a haven of crime, Yale’s immediate environs are no bower of peace and prosperity.

The Yale Daily News, struggling to portray the campus’s successful spin on the subject as some kind of structural improvement, admits that Yale richly deserves its reputation as a poster-child for violent crime.

“Yale and New Haven’s reputation for being dangerous likely originated in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when crack-cocaine made the city an entirely different place. During that time, when the city was the site of a drug war, there were three times as many shootings in the city as there are today.

And Yale’s campus was not as safe either. There were over 1,000 major crimes — including motor-vehicle theft, larceny and rape — on Yale’s campus each year in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Crime on campus peaked in 1990 with 1,439 major crimes. The image of a dangerous Yale is epitomized by the murder of Prince, who was fatally shot in the chest on Feb. 17, 1991, on the steps of St. Mary’s Church on Hillhouse Avenue.

“When 19-year-old Christian H. Prince died in an attempted robbery — just a block from the university president’s house — whatever remained of the students’ sense of protection around campus died too,” The New York Times reported two days after the murder in a story headlined: “At Yale, Fear and Anger Join Grief Over Slaying.”

The murder shook the campus: “That was a bad time,” Deputy University Secretary Martha Highsmith said. “It was a horrible time.”

After the incident, the University spent millions of dollars installing new lights and blue phones and adding security personnel. But, just seven years later, Jovin was fatally stabbed.……

…In 2007 and 2008 combined, New Haven reported 2,690 violent crimes for every 100,000 residents, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reports. This number is comparable to the crime rates in two of Connecticut’s other major cities, Hartford and Bridgeport — 2,377 and 2,338 respectively. (As defined by the FBI, violent crimes include murder, forcible rape, robbery rape and aggravated assault.)

The average U.S. city of comparable size to New Haven had only 1,246 violent crimes per 100,000 residents — less than half as many.”

The average US city, of course, is no Swiss resort. If New Haven is TWICE as dangerous as the average in a field that includes such  vice- factories as Detroit, DC, Baltimore,  Atlanta, and Memphis, the situation is dire indeed.

Point two. The article relays perceptions of safety at Yale, focusing mainly on undergraduate students who live in carded security in campus dormitories.

But the main target of crime at Yale is the hapless graduate student living off-campus, who has to walk home in the dark.

One  comment on the article punctures the propaganda of the campus rag:

“This is the problem when you have school buildings spread out across a dangerous city and Yale does absolutely nothing to crack the town-gown animosity, give money back to a poor city and its citizens (many of whom are Yale employees), and protect students. Ms. Le’s death is a tragedy, and it is even worse to hear that it may have been committed by a member of the school community. But I will say this: New Haven is a dangerous city and Yale doesn’t care. Wait two weeks, let the news crews drive away, and I can almost guarantee that things will be back to normal for Yale security–putting all of us at risk. I commuted to Yale my last two years after a shooting and a stabbing on my corner. . . I spent thousands of dollars on commutation. I may have missed out on some social experiences, but my safety was–and still is–worth every penny. And for the liberals who claim that New Haven is safe: Go find a grad student living in New Haven Towers and ask them what a walk home at 8 PM is like. Offer to take the walk with that person, and maybe you’ll get a realistic view of the world.”

The comment makes a passing reference to a third point about crime on some campuses. Its source in the animosity between the locals and the “privileged” outsiders – the old town- and- gown conflict. To this hostility can be added racial feelings and class anger, as well as a dollop of xenophobia.

A 2010 analysis by the liberal Daily Beast put Yale in the top 25 most dangerous colleges in the US, a country where colleges abound in the tens of thousands.

And Yale made the top 25 again, in 2012, according to The Business Insider.

 

J. S. Bach, The Fifth Evangelist

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Robin Phillips at Salvo Mag writes about the profound influence of the composer who has been called the Fifth Evangelist:

“In April 2009, British atheist A.N. Wilson shocked the world by announcing that he was returning to the Christian faith. When asked later in an interview what was the worst thing about being faithless, the writer and newspaper columnist replied:

When I thought I was an atheist I would listen to the music of Bach and realize that his perception of life was deeper, wiser, more rounded than my own. . . . The Resurrection, which proclaims that matter and spirit are mysteriously conjoined, is the ultimate key to who we are. It confronts us with an extraordinarily haunting story. J. S. Bach believed the story, and set it to music.

Johann_Sebastian_BachA.N.Wilson is not alone.

In his Introduction to the book Does God Exist? Peter Kreeft noted that he personally knows three ex-atheists who were swayed by the argument, “There is the music of Bach, therefore there must be a God.” Of these, Kreeft informed his readers, two are now philosophy professors and one is a monk.

Even the God-hater Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), upon hearing a performance of the St. Matthew Passion, was compelled to admit that “one who has completely forgotten Christianity truly hears it here as gospel.”

In Japan today, tens of thousands of a people who were once fiercely anti-Christian have been converted to Christianity by listening to the music of J. S. Bach, writes George Weigel:

“A famous scientist of secular persuasion once proposed that, if humanity wanted to put its best foot forward in trying to communicate with extraterrestrial life, we ought to broadcast all of Bach to the far corners of the universe. A bit closer to home, the man whom Swedish Lutheran archbishop Nathan Soederblom once called the “fifth evangelist” is having a remarkable impact on the new evangelization in a surprising place: Johann Sebastian Bach has begun to convert members of the traditionally anti-Christian Japanese elite to Christ.

Classical music fans sensed that something intriguing was afoot when a series of exceptionally high-quality CDs by an ensemble called the “Bach Collegium Japan” began to appear in the stores a few years ago. Under the direction of its founder, Maasaki Suzuki, the Bach Collegium is recording every one of the master’s cantatas. But why on earth would a Japanese choir be doing Bach’s religious works?

Writing in First Things, Uwe Siemon-Netto explores the religious sociology of the intense Japanese demand for Bach. Maasaki Suzuki thinks it’s due to his country’s demonstrable spiritual crisis. Its traditional religions, Shinto and Buddhism, have lost their credibility. Palm readers and pornography are flourishing, and suicides are on the rise. Sixty percent of the country tells pollsters that they feel “afraid” every day.

“What people need in this situation is hope in the Christian sense of the word,” says Maasaki Suzuki, “but hope is an alien idea” in Japan. The Japanese language doesn’t have a word for hope in the biblical sense: there is one word for desire and another for the unattainable, but no equivalent of “hope,” the theological virtue. According to Maestro Suzuki, non-Christians crowd his podium after Bach Collegium performances to talk about any number of taboo subjects in Japanese society, like death. “And then,” says Suzuki, “they inevitably ask me to explain to them what ‘hope’ means to Christians.”

Suzuki, a Christian convert and member of the Reformed Church, evangelizes his Collegium members, teaching them Scripture during rehearsals. He can’t say precisely how many of his musicians or how many in their growing audience have become Christians. But he is convinced that tens of thousands of Japanese have been baptized because of Bach.”

****

This may not be as surprising as it sounds, for the man whom many consider to be the greatest artistic genius who ever lived was well-versed in theology and Bible studies.

Mark Galli at Christianity Today.com (July 28, 2000) writes:

“When he was 48, Johann Sebastian Bach (who died 250 years ago today) acquired a copy of Luther’s three-volume translation of the Bible.

(Lila: This so-called “Bach Bible” was actually a massive six-volume, three-folio 17th-century version with translation and commentary by Luther, as well as by the orthodox Lutheran theologian, Abraham Calov or Calovius).

He(Bach) pored over it as if it were a long-lost treasure. He underlined passages, corrected errors in the text and commentary, inserted missing words, and made notes in the margins.

Near 1 Chronicles 25 (a listing of Davidic musicians) he wrote, “This chapter is the true foundation of all God-pleasing music.” At 2 Chronicles 5:13 (which speaks of temple musicians praising God), he noted, “At a reverent performance of music, God is always at hand with his gracious presence.”

As one scholar put it, Bach the musician was indeed “a Christian who lived with the Bible.” Besides being the baroque era’s greatest organist and composer, and one of the most productive geniuses in the history of Western music, Bach was also a theologian who just happened to work with a keyboard.”

But theology only informed a life that embodied the Gospel practically.

Despite a fierce temper that led him into conflict with his superiors and resignation from his job (once, when an unworthy individual was elevated above him),  Bach was a devout man who fulfilled his family and social obligations in difficult circumstances and served his fellow-man with a humility rare, indeed unique, among men of his gigantic abilities and volatile temperament.

Christians.com:

Bach said, “Music’s only purpose should be the glory of God and the recreation of the human spirit”…….

Bach’s own life was in complete accord with his beliefs.

Though he possessed a musical genius found perhaps once in a century, he chose to live an obscure life as a church musician. Only once in his 65 years did he actually take a job where his brilliance might bring him to the world’s notice. For a while, he worked as Kapellmeister of the court of Prince Leopold. But such surroundings were a distraction to him. He soon left to accept a lowly position as cantor at a church in Leipzig, where he would again be cloistered in his unacclaimed but beloved world of church music.”

This unimpeachable testimony of the spiritual power of Bach’s music is made even more impressive when one realizes that Bach’s “evangelism” took place during the dawn of the Enlightenment, when deists like Voltaire were denouncing the church and its dogmas as “infamy” and when Christian belief was struggling not just against the corruptions of the Roman papacy and  newly formed Jesuit Counter-Reformation but against the zealous errors of the Reformation itself – with Pietism, on one hand, with its excessive emphasis on both emotion and austerity (downplaying the use of music in the service) and Rationalism on the  other, with its “higher criticism” of the Bible and its excessive emphasis on the unaided intellect.

Bach, by contrast, grounded his theology on the rock of Lutheran orthodoxy:

1. The Bible as the inspired and inerrant Word of God;

2.  The Redemption of Christ – Salvation from the Death Penalty of the Law – as the central message of the Bible;

3. And the primacy of the Word (and the hearing of the Word) over every moral or intellectual effort (“works”).

Despite the emotional depth of his music (that suggests Pietism) and his fascination with numbers (that suggests a kind of Rationalist leaning), Bach was firmly Orthodox.

Man was not brought to salvation by his good deeds, spiritual struggles, or inner emotions (as the Pietists  believed).

Those were “Works,” not Faith.

Neither were men brought to salvation by reason, understanding, and intellectual argument (as the Rationalists believed).

Instead they came by faith, through hearing the Word of God.

It was Christ’s work, not a man’s,  if he came to faith .

The centrality of the Word to faith made true doctrine the core of Lutheran orthodoxy.

Thus, Romans 10-17:

“Thus faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”

But this “hearing” is not the outward hearing of the ear. It is the inward hearing of the heart.

The Gospel Does Not Teach Masochism

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The website Non-violence.org offers a much needed corrective to the common misunderstanding of the Gospel teachings as pathological submissiveness.

If Jesus had wanted us to actively incur more abuse when he suggested that we “turn the other cheek” (a saying that is itself close to a text in Isaiah), why did he himself over-turn tables in the Temple and drive people out with a whip (!), call the leaders of his days “vipers, and “devils,” and seek to hide from his enemies until the appointed time of his crucifixion?

Misreading the poetic hyperbole that characterizes the Gospel  teachings on ethics by  our own dull-witted literalism we turn Jesus into a counselor of masochism, when he was actually teaching the power of the divine spirit working through us to overcome even the most difficult physical circumstances.

Non-violence.org:

“I thought it would be fun to offer a little clarification on what is arguably the most misused and abused reference to Nonviolence – Jesus’ teaching to “turn the other cheek.” Pick a politician (Christian or not), pick a self-proclaimed revolutionary, pick even a weekend activist and you’ve probably heard them say something like, “I’m all for peace and Nonviolence, but if somebody threatens me or my family, I’m not going to TURN THE OTHER CHEEK!”

What they’re really saying is, “… I’m not going to DO NOTHING! I’m not going to IGNORE IT!” But that is NOT what Jesus was saying. This is so vitally important to understanding Nonviolence, what it is, its power, and its superiority over violence, not just morally, but strategically.

Author Walter Wink does a wonderful job of explaining this. Here is a link to the more detailed text and/or you might learn more about Walter Wink and his work here.

But here’s an abbreviate explanation. It involves history (not an interpretation of the Bible), and I know how painful history can be to some of us but read on – it’s a fascinating take on the true meaning of “turn the other cheek.”

First, let’s refresh our memory of the Bible passage:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.” —Matthew 5:38-42, NIV

Here’s the history (sorry if it hurts… it’s actually pretty interesting)…

Note that Jesus said the RIGHT cheek. This is key. In Jesus time and place in history, the left hand was used for “unclean” purposes (I won’t go into the details… but you can probably guess some of them — imagine a time with no soap and limited water). You wouldn’t use your left hand to purchase food, shake someone’s hand, OR even strike someone. It would be a shameful act to use your left hand for these things.

Also, if you were to strike someone, you would use your BACKHAND to assert dominance and authority. If you instead used your fist or slapped with an open hand, this would mean the person you were striking was your equal (or even your superior!).

OK, did you follow that? It might help to get a partner and act this out (don’t really slap them!). Try pretend striking them while 1. not using your left hand and 2. using your backhand to assert your dominance. You’d be using your RIGHT hand, backhanding your inferior and striking them on their RIGHT cheek.

Aha! “If someone strikes you on the RIGHT cheek, turn to him the other also.”

Try it. Now, only the LEFT cheek is exposed. In order to strike your inferior on their LEFT cheek you have to either use your right forehand or punch them (this would make them your equal) OR use your left backhand (this would shame you in public).

Jesus’ call to “turn to him also the other” or as is often quipped “turn the other cheek” is NOT a call to simply ignore the insult. It is telling us to DEMAND EQUALITY! Stand up to your oppressor! Don’t take insults and attacks lying down!

Nonviolence is a brilliant way to end the violence. Retaliating in violence to a “superior” may have in Jesus’ day resulted in death or at least an escalation to the violence. But, Jesus was a brilliant Nonviolent strategist. A simple turn of the head refused the insult, demanded equality and justice, and ended the violence. This is active Nonviolence.

I also included in the Bible passage above, “And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.” Wink also gives us the historical significance of these – again, as you may have guessed, these are strategic Nonviolent actions, not acquiescence.

By offering also your cloak you would be reduced to nakedness. But in Jesus’ time, the nakedness would be an embarrassment to the viewer, not the naked. You would again claim justice by exposing yourself (literally) but also your oppressor.

And “walking the extra mile” – in Jesus’ time, Roman soldiers could under Roman law demand that inhabitants of occupied territories carry their equipment for them – up to one mile. However, they were not to require someone to carry the equipment for more than one mile – if they did, the soldier himself would be subject to punishment. So, “going that extra mile” isn’t about bending over backwards and bowing to an oppressor, it again goes above and beyond to Nonviolently reclaim justice. It will take strength and it may take suffering, but Nonviolence can, if waged strategically, overcome violence and oppression. It requires a refusal to be humiliated.

So, you see, this passage is a Nonviolence primer, NOT an excuse to do nothing in the face of wrong. Whether you consider yourself Christian, or hold to another religion, or choose no religion at all, the power of Nonviolence is powerful, effective, and available to you.

The misuse of this simple phrase has been used to disregard Nonviolence, escalate violence, and cause unspeakable pain and suffering. It’s well past time we set the record straight. “Turning the other cheek” is NOT passivity. It is powerful. It is the weapon of the strong.”

Although I did not know Wink’s work at the time, I  did come to a very similar assessment of how to react non-violently but effectively to abuse from the powerful in this piece.

The High Crime of Obeying Unjust Laws

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Pope Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christianae:

“It is a high crime indeed to withdraw allegiance from God in order to please men; an act of consummate wickedness to break the laws of Jesus Christ in order to yield obedience to earthly rulers… ‘we ought to obey God rather than men’ (Acts 5: 29)…

Commands that are issued adversely to the honor due to God and hence are beyond the scope of justice, must be looked upon as anything rather than laws… if the laws of men contain injunctions contrary to the eternal law of God, it is right not to obey them… Hence they who blame, and call sedition this steadfastness of attitude in the choice of duty, have not rightly apprehended the force and nature of true law…

Law is of it’s very essence a mandate of right reason, proclaimed by a properly constituted authority, for the common good. But true and legitimate authority is void of sanction, unless it proceed from God the supreme Ruler and Lord of all”.

How Many German Women Did GIs Rape?

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In a recent book, “When The Soldiers Came: The rape of German women at the end of WWII ” (Random House, March 2, 2015) Miriam Gebhardt, a German feminist claims that American soldiers raped 190,000 German women during the occupation of Europe after WWII (1945-1955).

The book is being trumpeted in the mainstream press, from The Daily Telegraph to  Der Spiegel and  The Daily Mail , and also in the alternative media.

In the process, the 190,000 becomes “hundreds of thousands,” then, “a quarter of a million,” (adding rapes by British soldiers) and then (perhaps by adding other post 1945 occupation estimates) “nearly a million” on the Internet.

However, even the author’s central claim of 190,000 rapes by American soldiers  is arrived at by extrapolation from much lower figures in the record, as Der Spiegel reports:

“The total is not the result of deep research in archives across the country. Rather, it is an extrapolation. Gebhardt makes the assumption that 5 percent of the “war children” born to unmarried women in West Germany and West Berlin by the mid-1950s were the product of rape. That makes for a total of 1,900 children of American fathers. Gebhardt further assumes that on average, there
are 100 incidents of rape for each birth. The result she arrives at is thus 190,000 victims.

Such a total, though, hardly seems plausible. Were the number really that high, it is almost certain that there would be more reports on rape in the files of hospitals or health authorities, or that there would be more eyewitness reports. Gebhardt is unable to present such evidence in sufficient quantity.

Another estimate, stemming from US criminology professor Robert Lilly, who examined rape cases prosecuted by American military courts, arrived at a number of 11,000 serious sexual assaults committed by November, 1945 — a disgusting number in its own right.”

More scholarly research suggests that Gebhardt’s extrapolations are more true of the Red Army, whose post-war rape of German women is a far better known story.

In July 2009,  reviewing the American premiere of “A Woman In Berlin,” a film about the mass rape of German women after the liberation/conquest of Berlin after WW II, an NPR review cites a figure of “2 million”  rapes as having been established by historians through hospital records, but then writes that the vast majority were committed by Soviet soldiers.  Several hundred rapes, confirmed by court-martial and other records, were committed by Allied soldiers.

In Elisabeth Jean Wood’s “Sexual violence during war: toward an understanding of variation,” (in “Order, Conflict, and Violence,” Shapiro, Kalyvas, and Masoud eds, Cambridge U. Press, 2008), she cites Norman Naimark, “The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1946-1949“ (Belknap Press, 1995) and Anthony Beevor, “The Fall of Berlin 1945” (Viking, 2002) for estimates of the number of rapes committed by Soviet troops in Berlin alone in 1945, and says the “best estimates” were made by staff at two hospitals in Berlin alone who put the number at between 95,000 and 130,000 (Beevor, 2002, 410).

In The Guardian in May 2002,  Beevor describes the situation outside Berlin  thus:

“The death rate was thought to have been much higher among the 1.4 million estimated victims in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia. Altogether at least two million German women are thought to have been raped, and a substantial minority, if not a majority, appear to have suffered multiple rape.”

But those are rapes by the Red Army, not by the allies, and that is an established historical narrative, supported by multiple credible authors.

In May 2014, Deanna Spingola, a well-known anti-Zionist “conspiracy” researcher in the alternative media, published a 794 page book on the Allied rape of women in WW II, “The Ruling Elite: Death, Destruction, and Domination“(Spingola, Trafford, 2014).

Spingola’s book only claims 14,000 rapes were inflicted by Allied soldiers, a much more sober account than the mainstream version, suggesting, as usual, that the mainstream purveys paranoia, conspiracy, and libel at least as often as the “conspiracy” community….and usually with much less warrant.

Spingola bases the 14,000 claim on hospital and court records, citing Giles MacDonogh, 2007, and Jeffrey Burds, 2009.

I looked up both books.

“After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation,” MacDonogh, Basic Books, 2007, is the work of a former Financial Times food journalist.

According to this review, MacDonogh’s book covers such horrors as the starvation and/killing/unnecessary deaths of some 3 million Germans in the post-war occupation, the slaughter of some 250,000 Sudetan Germans by Czechs, which I’ve blogged about earlier, and the mass rape of German women.

He writes that the mass rape of German women was largely the work of the Soviet army, although there were several thousands of rapes perpetrated by Allied soldiers, including the American and French.  MacDonogh claims that the British were less culpable in this area, preferring to barter for sex.

Mark Weber of the Institute for Historical Research (a scholarly Holocaust revisionist site), reviewing MacDonogh, says this about the rapes:

“Although most of the millions of German girls and women who were ravished by Allied soldiers were raped by Red Army troops, Soviet soldiers were not the only perpetrators. During the French occupation of Stuttgart, a large city in southwest Germany, police records show that 1,198 women and eight men were raped, mostly by French troops from Morocco in north Africa, although the prelate of the Lutheran Evangelical church estimated the number at 5,000. “

Spingola’s other source is Jeffrey Burds, “Sexual Violence in Europe in WWII, 1939-1945” (Politics & Society, 2009).

I couldn’t find the 14,000 number cited by Spingola until I looked at another book from the same year, “Taken By Force: Rape and American GIs In Europe In WWII,“ (Palgrave Macmillan: August, 2007) by J. Robert Lilley, an internationally known criminologist and sociologist, which gives the 14,000 number as the count for all Allied rape victims in France, Belgium, and Germany. Note that Lilley is one of Gebhardt’s sources, from which she extrapolated her 195,000 figure.

In any case, a year before Spingola and two years before Gebhardt, the Allied rape story had already been covered in an academic book.

In “What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI,” (U. of Chicago Press, May, 2013) Professor Mary Louise Roberts of Wisconsin University described how GIs raped French women after  WWII, again citing the figure of 14,000 for the number of women raped by GIs in Western Europe.

That would include West Germany, but not East Germany, of course, since East Germany was taken over by the Russians, not the Allies.

The book was reviewed by the New York Times. The reviewer describes why an earlier account of GI rape in 2003 by Robert Lilley had had a hard time getting published outside academia – it appeared to show the disproportionate prosecution of rapes committed by black GIs and it was written during the Iraq war.

Another figure for rape in the European theater, 17000,  also comes from Lilley, with the explanation that the difference between this figure and the figures in the JAG (Judge Advocate General) record reflects  that branch being overwhelmed by cases.

But Gebhardt’s thesis should not entirely be dismissed because of her failure to present convincing evidence.

Her larger argument carries weight. Calling sexual interactions between occupying soldiers and impoverished women in an occupied country “voluntary” is surely a euphemism,  as this harrowing account of the interaction between American GIs and Japanese women in occupied Japan argues:

“Immediately after the Japanese surrendered in 1945, the Japanese Ministry of the Interior made plans to protect Japanese women in its middle and upper classes from American troops. Fear of an American army out of control led them to quickly establish the first “comfort women” stations for use by US troops.7 By the end of 1945, the Japanese Ministry of Home Affairs had organized the Recreation Amusement Association (R.A.A.), a chain of houses of prostitution with 20,000 women who serviced occupation forces throughout Japan.8 (Many more women known as panpan turned to prostitution in the struggle to survive in the midst of the postwar devastation.) Burritt Sabin of the Japan Times reported in 2002 that just days before the R.A.A. was to open, hundreds of American soldiers broke into two of their facilities and raped all the women.9 The situation prompted MacArthur and Eichelberger, the two top military men of the U.S. occupation forces, to make “rape by Marines” their very first topic of discussion.10 Yuki Tanaka notes that 1300 rapes were reported in Kanagawa prefecture alone between August 30 and September 10, 1945, indicative of the pervasiveness of the phenomenon in the early occupation.11

Historian Takemae Eiji reports that
. . . US troops comported themselves like conquerors, especially in the early weeks and months of occupation. Misbehavior ranged from black-marketeering, petty theft, reckless driving and disorderly conduct to vandalism, assault arson, murder and rape. . . . In Yokohama, Chiba and elsewhere, soldiers and sailors broke the law with impunity, and incidents of robbery, rape and occasionally murder were widely reported in the press. 12

Two weeks into the occupation, the Japanese press began to report on rapes and looting.13 MacArthur responded by promptly censoring all media. Monica Braw, whose research revealed that even mention of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and particularly the effects of the bomb on civilians, were censored, maintains that pervasive censorship continued throughout the occupation years. “It [censorship] covered all means of communications and set up rules that were so general as to cover everything. It did not specify subjects prohibited, did not state punishment for violations, although it was clear that there were such punishments, and prohibited all discussion even about the existence of the censorship itself.”14

Censorship was not limited to the Japanese press. MacArthur threw prominent American journalists such as Gordon Walker, editor of the Christian Science Monitor, and Frank Hawley of the New York Times out of Japan for disobeying his orders. Even internal military reports were censored.15

Five months after the occupation began, one in four American soldiers had contracted VD.16 The supply of penicillin back in the U.S. was low.17 When MacArthur responded by making both prostitution and fraternization illegal,18 the number of reported rapes soared, showing that prostitution and the easy availability of women had suppressed incidents of rape.”

The United States Of Spying

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Andrew Napolitano via Lew Rockwell:

“When Gen. Michael Hayden, the director of both the CIA and the NSA in the George W. Bush administration and the architect of the government’s massive suspicionless spying program, was recently publicly challenged to deny that the feds have the ability to turn on your computer, cellphone or mobile device in your home and elsewhere, and use your own devices to spy on you, why did he remain silent? The audience at the venue where he was challenged rationally concluded that his silence was his consent.”

When I read this, I’m convinced that my experience in the past few years of having my private conversations surface in a wide-range of web-sites was not imagination or paranoia at all.

I am more than ever certain that the right explanation is spying by someone with access to government technology who was either a lawless private contractor or the witless employee of one of those urban DHS (Dept of Homeland Security) fusion centers that have become notorious for spying on anti-government dissidents.

Witless, because even the most brain-dead flunky of the government should know that venting your political opinion on a blog, sans any act of armed insurrection, espionage, or other illegal activity, is constitutionally-protected, indeed highly valuable, speech and that the government is not permitted in any way, shape, or form, to go on fishing expeditions in people’s private lives (remember those things?) to either back into charges, in the case of people who are engaged in wrong-doing, or to twist arms, in the case of people who are not  doing anything wrong and can only be coerced by the government’s own illegal actions or threats thereo.

 

A Historicist View Of Revelation

Odd though it must seem to confirmed skeptics and atheists,  seminal events in contemporary politics – such as the conflicts in the Middle East –  are closely tied to interpretations of ancient religious texts.

One of the most influential of these is the last book of the New Testament canon, the Revelation (of Jesus Christ to St. John), written by John the Divine, the author of  the Gospel of St. John, around 95-96 AD.

[This popular dating is based on the rather flimsy account of a Church Father. Far  more likely,  from the textual and historical evidence, is a date of 66 AD… or earlier.]

Historicists believe that the events predicted in Revelations have occurred- and will continue to occur – until the (still future) second coming of Jesus Christ.

Praeterists believe all the prophecies have already been fulfilled in the past and do not apply to anything today.

Futurists believe that all the the prophecies apply to the last few years before the Second Coming.

Idealists think Revelation describes spiritual rather than actual historical events.

The Biblical prophets themselves, as well as the early church, appear to have taken a  historicist position.

The preterist and futurist interpretations, on the other hand, had their birth during the Counter-Reformation, the Roman church’s response to the Protestant Reformation.

Historicists argue that futurism and preterism were developed to take pressure off the Papacy and the Roman church, which the Reformers were united in condemning as the Anti-Christ figure of Revelation.

The following passage is excerpted from a  historicist interpretation of  the first six  of the seven seals of the Book of  Revelation, a passage from the Bible that has had astounding influence on international politics in the Middle East:

“Horsemen: The first four symbols are  few connected by using the same symbol. In the total scheme of all the symbols, this style — making the first four in each group of seven to be connected — continues in the trumpets and bowls. In the first of the four trumpets, blows strike, (1) one third of the land and vegetation; (2) one third of the sea and shipping; (3) one third of rivers and fountains; (4) one third of sources of light, sun, moon and stars.

Under the figures of plagues, the first four vials or bowls are likewise blows against land, sea, rivers, and the sun. In the fulfillment of these figures there would naturally be a relation of the first four symbols historically, with the possibility of some overlapping in the fulfillment. Remember then, the design of the book is that the first four symbols in each group are interrelated.

1. White: is a symbol of something good, the bow and crown of armored authority, and expansion of territory in conquest. So the first period of time after Domitian should be characterized historically as an unusually “good” (righteous) period associated with conquest and expansion. When we look in a secular history book the period just following Domitian should say, “something good.”

2. Red: is a symbol of blood, war, fire, not of “good.” Take peace from the earth indicates a total disorder. Kill one another indicates internal war, not killing the enemy, it is a figure of civil war. A great sword indicates a lot of dying in battle. So the second period of time should be characterized historically by breakdown of society, a great deal of armed conflict with many killed in civil disorders and not because of invasion of outsiders. This must follow a period of peace and “good” and expansion.

3. Black: is a symbol of darkness and despair. The scales and high prices and instructions not to waste suggest need for care because of shortages. The third period following hard on the civil disorder should be a period of famine and associated hardships. “Hard times” is the key note.

4. Pale: is a symbol of sickliness. The symbols associate closely with death, the abode of the dead (hades) as epitomizing history in the period. Twenty five percent, or the fourth part of the earth, are to die from (1) sword; (2) famine; (3) disease; (4) wild animals. So the fourth period following the previous (and probably overlapping, as death and famine are part of both) should be a period characterized by depopulation of the earth due to war, famine, disease, and wild animals.

5. Saints under the altar: refers to the dead in Christ awaiting judgment day. These have been killed because of their faith and testimony. They want to know how long before God takes vengeance indicating the day of vengeance on the persecutors. “Rest a little season until,” should indicate a short interval following the last horse’s period. “The time that your brothers should be killed;” when this is fulfilled it will be a period of further persecution for a short but intense period when history is epitomized by that persecution.

So, following the four horsemen (1) peace and good, (2) civil war, (3) famine, (4) depopulation, there should follow a period that is characterized by persecution. In the vision, the persecution has been going on previously, persecution in which Christians have been dying, but this last will be a climax and completion of the persecution. Many Christians will die but after a little season the persecution stops. History is to look like this in the future from John’s view.

6. A great earthquake: equals complete shakeup of those things counted secure: government, religion, social order, ethics, economy; all shaken. The sun and moon are symbols of authority in human governments, the emperor, etc. The stars represent spiritual powers just as astrological charts indicate. The gods of paganism were associated with planets and stars. Heaven departing indicates the removal of spiritual powers or ethical inhibitors. No guidance from above! Mountains and islands are symbols of nations and governments. These being moved out of their places is a symbol of turnover of government, continuing the symbol of a great earthquake, that characterizes this period. The following verses (15-17) make it plain that the whole upheaval is identified with Jesus Christ and it is a day of reckoning for the enemies of the cross of Christ. It is a day that will cause his enemies to hide, disappear, flee away, and he will take vengeance.

So following the period of persecution, world history should be characterized by the world being turned upside down, the disappearance of pagan powers, while Christian ethics take their place. Government will be likewise reorganized and shaken violently at the end of which Christianity will be in a good position, as the next symbol makes clear.

All of chapter seven speaks of conversion. 144,000 of the nation of the Jews and then a great multitude out of every nation and language, beyond number, are brought to worship God and Christ. (Vs. 9) Verses 14 and 15 contain a description of conversion that is symbolic of the changes that most born again believers associate with their own experience. What is characterized in the whole of chapter seven is a great ingathering or gospel harvest that follows the revolutionary period just previous to it.

So the interval is a period of evangelism and expansion of the Christian gospel that should epitomize that historical period. Any one knowing the history of the world from the time of Domitian through the next few centuries will be struck with the incredible coincidence of the outline of the seer of Patmos with what actually happened.

Let the Winds blow: At the commencement of the Interlude of sealing the servants of God an angel is instructed to “Hold back the four winds until the sealing is over. Thus after the ingathering of souls, the Seventh seal will be associated with events that will look like the destructive action of blowing winds associated with the first of the Trumpets. A map of the next 100 yearas after The triumph of the Christian Cburch should look like blowing winds.

Also as noted in the fist chapter of this book The seventh seal IS the Seven Trumpets. Confirming that the trumpets can not be concurrent with the Seals. They are designed to be in sequence. Let us note the following Maps. The first shows the Roman Empire in 395 at the end of the 60 or so years described as the Triumph of Christianity. Notice how the Empire is still in a very neat condition.

Please click to see the map and click the back button to return to this page map

This next map shows the the next 100 year beginning in 410, Beginning fifteen years after the last map.
Please click to see the map and click the back button to return to this page. map

Review

Let us review one more time. The historical periods following the time of Domitian should follow:

1. Something good.
2. Civil disorder, many die.
3. Hard times.
4. Depopulation by twenty five percent.
5. Persecution.
6. Revolution of religious as well as political life.
7. Interval of ingathering or expansion of Christian gospel.
8. Let the Winds Blow

Historical Fulfillment

1. The period immediately following Domitian introduces a century of peace called the Pax Romana or translated the Peace of Rome. The emperors of the period are known in history books as the “Five Good Emperors.” Marcus Aurelius was a philosopher whose doctrines approached the ethics of Christianity. The name of emperor Antoninus Pius indicates his inclinations. This period, from 98 to 180 is also characterized by the additions of large border regions to the empire and expansion to the greatest limits ever. If God wanted to picture the period he could not have chosen a better symbol than a white horse and conquest.

2. History texts call the period from 180 to 280 the period of disorder. Eighty emperors ruled in a space of ninety years and most of them met death by violence. The post of emperor was actually bought and sold at public auction. The empire was ravaged by civil war for most of the period. Every few months a new soldier of fortune would make a claim on the title and march on Rome from distant as well as more local locations, fighting, pillaging, and burning as they approached a war weary city. The depletion of stocks, burning of countryside, disruption of markets, and farms denuded of crops took their toll and the next two figures overlap the end of this period.

3. The devastation of the wars of the previous period brought the empire the worst of famines and shortages. This period overlaps the end of the last.

4. The consequences of the preceding wars and famines created a climate for the depopulation of the earth that historians tell us characterized this period. Due to the depopulation, wild animals increased in formerly civilized areas and death from them was common enough to be placed in the histories. An outbreak of the black plague (bubonic plague) is recorded at this time. The figures of death due to sword, famine, disease, and wild animals is a perfect description of the period, which, with the last, overlaps and extends as a result of the wars to the early 300s when they were cause for what followed. The Christians were blamed!

5. From 300 to 313, “a little season,” the history of the Roman empire is characterized by persecution. It is the last and most severe of the ten great persecutions against the Christian religion which were authorized by the emperors of Rome. Many thousands died, many church buildings and Bibles went to the flames. Every elder, (bishop) was arrested and killed and all other Christian leaders went into hiding or suffered death in the arenas publicly, as sport for the spectators. Diocletian resigned midway and his successor and son-in-law carried on the extremities. He it was who issued the edict of persecution. He would later admit defeat and would issue the edict of toleration which ended the OFFICIAL persecution on a world scale forever. Christians have never faced death on such a scale since. Historians all epitomize this historical period as an epoch of persecution.

6. Following the end of the persecution, Constantine the Great left York in Britain and marched against Galerius and his successors. His conquests and subsequent emperorship are characterized by turning the imperial system of Rome upside down. Rather than merely tolerating Christianity, he issued in 325 the Edict of Milan, which made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. The pagan temples were closed and they were given to Christian churches; the pagan gods were swept away, not only from their pedestals but from peoples’ hearts. The figures of the stars falling and heaven being rolled up could not better describe the disappearance of the old religious and ethical order and the taking of its place by the Christian religion. Imagine being paid to become a Christian when only four or five years ago your family was being torn by lions for the same faith! New government took the place of the old order; the church would play a large part in the affairs of state; and the capitol would be moved from Rome to Constantinople. There could not possibly be a better set of figures to epitomize this great, eventful period than mountains and islands moving, a great earthquake and the day of Jesus Christ’s vengeance, and the shaking and disappearance of secure heavenly powers in favor of Jesus! There is much more to say about the fulfillment of these figures and while this is necessarily an outline it is extraordinary in its completeness and simplicity.”

Christian Zionists Are “Anti-Semites”

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An ordained Baptist minister explains why uncritical support for Israel is not only not Biblically mandated, it stands in opposition to Biblical teaching in which the Arabs are also blessed as the descendants of Abraham.

“Much of our Christian emphasis on foreign policy in the Middle East today is based on the promise that God made to Abraham in Genesis 12:3, “And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.”

The first half of this verse is a promise that God made to just one person, Abraham. The original Hebrew is in the second person singular, meaning that God is speaking only to Abraham. The King James Version correctly reflects this grammatical construction, since “thee” is singular, referring only to one person, whereas “ye” would refer to multiple persons.

Matthew Henry’s commentary states of Genesis 12:3a that “This made it a kind of league, offensive and defensive, between God and Abram.”

Of the second half of the verse, Matthew Henry says, This was the promise that crowned all the rest; for it points to the Messiah, in whom ‘all the promises are yea and amen.’ Note, (1), Jesus Christ is the great blessing of the world, the greatest that ever the world blessed with.”

Recently Genesis 12:3 has been spiritualized by Christian Zionist preachers, who say that this verse applies not just to Abraham, but also to Abraham’s descendants, specifically to the modern state of Israel founded in 1948. Supposedly, it means that evangelical Christians as individuals, and America as a nation, are bound to provide unquestioning support, financial and otherwise, to the state of Israel. It is said that if America fails to back up Israel in every way possible, financially, militarily and otherwise, then God will be through with America and will have us nuked.

When it is pointed out that the various Arabs nations, including Palestine, are also descended from Abraham, the Christian Zionists say that the promise of Genesis 12:3 applies only to the descendants of Isaac (Of course, there is no mention of Isaac in Genesis 12:3. They often misquote the verse, saying it refers to “blessing Israel,” but Israel is not mentioned in the verse either).

Zionists say, based on their non-literal, speculative, spiritualized interpretation of Genesis 12:3, that we are to give total, unquestioned support to some of Abraham’s children, while others of Abraham’s children are to be hated, persecuted, ethnically cleansed, bombed back into the Stone Age, maybe even nuked.

But in Genesis 21:13, 17-18 God also bestows His blessing on Ishmael and his descendants, saying, “For I will make him a great nation.” According to the same principles of interpretation by which we have made Genesis 12:3 a command for political support of the modern nation of Israel, Genesis 21:18 must be taken as a command for political support of the modern Arab nations. (Anybody want to start up a “Christian Ishmaelist” movement to lobby for Arab national greatness?)

Christian Zionists claim to have 70,000,000 followers in America, who insists that our politicians render unquestioning obedience to the military and political agenda of the Israeli Government.

Does God really demand that we support all actions and activities of the Israeli Government, even if those actions violate God’s moral standards of righteousness?

It should be pointed out that even in Old Testament times, when Israel was a nation specially chosen by, and ruled over by, Jehovah, He did not expect His people to support and endorse all actions of the government of Israel.

When the Government of Israel committed human rights violations, the prophets openly condemned them, 2 Kings 6:21 –23, 2 Chronicles 28:9-11, Nehemiah 5:7-11, Jeremiah 34:11-17, Amos 2:6-7, etc. Nowadays, liberal Jewish groups still protest human rights violations in Israel. Nevertheless, most fundamentalists Christians would never dream of doing such a thing – it is against their religion. It is their duty to either deny that such violations take place, or else to endorse and commend such violations. We have been told that God will smite us if we disagree with anything that Israel does.

The lawgiver Moses commanded the Hebrews that they should not oppress the strangers or non-Jews in their lands, Exodus 12:49, 22:21, 23:9, Leviticus 19:33-34, 25:35, Deuteronomy 10:18-19, 23:7, 24:17, 27:19. That message, of course, is not mentioned today – it is considered “politically incorrect.”

When King Ahab and Queen Jezebel unjustly expropriated the vineyard of Naboth, the prophet Elijah publicly denounced the kind for this unjust action, 1 Kings 21:17-24, Jehu cited this official action of the government of Israel against Naboth as justification for overthrowing that government, 2 Kings 9:25-26.

But nowadays, when the Israeli government expropriates the lands and properties of Palestinians without compensation, we look the other way and say nothing about it.

In Jeremiah 27:1-5, the prophet Jeremiah picketed a public meeting of the government of Judah with representatives of Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre and Sidon. He was protesting the foreign policy of Judah. We would never do anything like that today – it would be considered a violation of the command to “bless Abraham.”

In Jeremiah 27:6-17, the prophet advocated the surrender of Israel’s territory to the King of Babylon, in return for peace – today, we would call it “land for peace.” But today, our warmongering televangelists denounce “land for peace” as unthinkable for any reason whatsoever, and threaten God’s wrath against anyone who would support such a thing.

Supposedly it is better for Jewish and Arab children of Abraham to keep on killing each other over the land (while these sanctimonious war profiteers collect the money from sales of their Armageddon videos. Could it be a conflict of interest to allow American foreign policy to be dictated by these mega-millionaire preachers, who stand to make a profit if there is a war in the Middle East?)”

 

Exodus: The Historical Evidence

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Scholars have long dismissed the tale of Exodus as myth or metaphor because there did not seem to be any evidence of it in Egyptian archeology.

But a recent documentary, “Patterns of Evidence,” (directed by Tim Mahoney) shows other findings in the archeological record that match the Biblical story.

From World Net Daily:

“Mahoney explained:

“Mainstream archaeologists would say that if the Exodus ever happened, it happened at the time of Rameses, because of the biblical text that said the Israelites were building the city of Rameses. Yet when people understood Rameses lived around 1250 B.C., they didn’t find evidence for this type of story in that time period.

“But other archaeologists said to look deeper,” he continued. “Beneath the city of Rameses, was another city, much older, called Avaris. And that city was filled with Semitic people.

It started very small, just as the Bible says, and over time it grew into one of the largest cities of that time. And that is where we find, I think, the early Israelites. That’s the pattern that matches the story of the Bible. It’s not at the time of Rameses, but it’s at the location of Rameses.”

Mahoney also told WND about one of the biggest surprises revealed by “Patterns of Evidence: Exodus” – a statue of a Semitic leader in Egypt, a man who may be none other than the Bible’s Joseph.

“The story of Joseph tells of how he was sold as a slave and came into Egypt and then he rose to become this leader, second in command in Egypt,” Mahoney told WND. “Well, in Avaris, the archaeology shows a small group of Semitic-type people came in, and then there’s this house that matches the area where they would have come from. On top of that house a palace was built. They had tombs behind this palace. And this palace had a statue, and it was the tomb of a Semitic leader.

“The interesting thing is this statue found in the remainder of this tomb, a pyramid tomb – which was only given to royalty types – why did a Semitic character have this?” Mahoney asked. “What some people are saying is that this matches the story, maybe that prestige that Joseph would have received.”

The research team also discovered another biblical parallel.

“In the biblical story, Joseph said his bones should be removed when they left Egypt,” Mahoney recalled. “When the archaeologists uncovered this [Semitic leader’s tomb], a very unusual thing was discovered: There were no bones in this tomb. The bones were gone. Grave robbers never take the bones; they just take the goods, the bones have no value.”

Could the missing bones be yet another confirmation the Semitic leader was Joseph?”

My Comment:

This blog summarizes the evidence that the Asiatic Israelites/Hebrews/Semitic people,  from the region of Canaan, were indeed enslaved by the Egyptians.

They were called the Hyksos  and they entered/invaded Egypt from around 1720 BC to 1570 BC.

The ruins at Avaris in the Nile Delta where the Hyksos settled were excavated as early as 1966, so it’s strange that it’s still widely believed that there is no evidence for a Semitic migration to Egypt.

There is.

Item:

There are 18th dynasty wall paintings depicting enslaved Semitic people that appear to confirm the Biblical narrative of the Hebrew fall from grace under Egyptian rule.

Item:

The terms Apiru (state-less person) is used to refer to these slaves, and it is considered by some scholars to be the origin of the word Hebrew.

Others dismiss the connection as “wishful thinking.”

Item:

There are tablets from the region dated from the 14th century BC describing the invasion/entry of  the Apiru into Canaan and the pleas of the local people to the Egyptian Pharaoh, Akhenaten, to do something about it.

Item:

A 1210 BC inscription describes the Egyptian conquest of “Israel” in the Canaan region.

Item:

In the same century there was a tripling of the population of the Apiru in the Canaan are that cannot be explained simply by an increased birth-rate.

Item:

There are claims that underwater archeology confirms that an enormous disaster was associated with the Gulf of Aqaba, which some believe is the site of the drowning of Pharaoh’s army when the sea was parted in Exodus.  Others consider these findings simply conjecture or exaggeration or distortion of what are really the remnants of coral reefs.

 

The New Testament Has Not Been Altered

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Skeptics and popular opinion confidently assert that no one knows for sure if what was recorded in the original texts of the New Testament has been accurately conveyed to us.

Yet, this is completely false.

There are overwhelmingly more copies and versions of the New Testament available to us than of any other classical text and we accept those texts with much less hesitation.

From Stand To Reason:

“The science of textual criticism is used to test all documents of antiquity–not just religious texts–including historical and literary writings. It’s not a theological enterprise based on haphazard hopes and guesses; it’s a linguistic exercise that follows a set of established rules. Textual criticism allows an alert critic to determine the extent of possible corruption of any work.

The ability of any scholar to do effective textual criticism depends on two factors. First, how many existing copies are there to examine and compare? Are there two copies, ten, a hundred? The more copies there are, the easier it is to make meaningful comparisons. Second, how close in time are the oldest existing documents to the original?

If the numbers are few and the time gap is wide, the original is harder to reconstruct with confidence. However, if there are many copies and the oldest existing copies are reasonably close in time to the original, the textual critic can be more confident he’s pinpointed the exact wording of the autograph.

To get an idea of the significance of the New Testament manuscript evidence, note for a moment the record for non-biblical texts. These are secular texts from antiquity that have been reconstructed with a high degree of certainty based on the available textual evidence.

The important First Century document The Jewish War, by Jewish aristocrat and historian Josephus, survives in only nine complete manuscripts dating from the 5th Century--four centuries after they were written.[3] Tacitus’ Annals of Imperial Rome is one of the chief historical sources for the Roman world of New Testament times, yet, surprisingly, it survives in partial form in only two manuscripts dating from the Middle Ages.[4] Thucydides’ History survives in eight copies. There are 10 copies of Caesar’s Gallic Wars, eight copies of Herodotus’ History, and seven copies of Plato, all dated over a millennium from the original. Homer’s Iliad has the most impressive manuscript evidence for any secular work with 647 existing copies.[5]

Bruce’s comments put the discussion in perspective: “No classical scholar would listen to an argument that the authenticity of Herodotus or Thucydides is in doubt because the earliest manuscripts of their works which are of any use to us are over 1300 years later than the originals.”[6]

For most documents of antiquity only a handful of manuscripts exist, some facing a time gap of 800-2000 years or more. Yet scholars are confident of reconstructing the originals with some significant degree of accuracy. In fact, virtually all of our knowledge of ancient history depends on documents like these.

By comparison with secular texts, the manuscript evidence for the New Testament is stunning. The most recent count (1980) shows 5,366 separate Greek manuscripts represented by early fragments, uncial codices (manuscripts in capital Greek letters bound together in book form), and minuscules (small Greek letters in cursive style)![7]

Among the nearly 3,000 minuscule fragments are 34 complete New Testaments dating from the 9th to the 15th Centuries.[8]

Uncial manuscripts provide virtually complete codices (multiple books of the New Testament bound together into one volume) back to the 4th Century, though some are a bit younger. Codex Sinaiticus, purchased by the British government from the Soviet government at Christmas, 1933, for £100,000,[9] is dated c. 340.[10] The nearly complete Codex Vaticanus is the oldest uncial, dated c. 325-350.[11] Codex Alexandrinus contains the whole Old Testament and a nearly complete New Testament and dates from the late 4th Century to the early 5th Century.

The most fascinating evidence comes from the fragments (as opposed to the codices). The Chester Beatty Papyri contains most of the New Testament and is dated mid-3rd Century.[12] The Bodmer Papyri II collection, whose discovery was announced in 1956, includes the first fourteen chapters of the Gospel of John and much of the last seven chapters. It dates from A.D. 200 or earlier.[13]

The most amazing find of all, however, is a small portion of John 18:31-33, discovered in Egypt known as the John Rylands Papyri. Barely three inches square, it represents the earliest known copy of any part of the New Testament. The papyri is dated on paleographical grounds at around A.D. 117-138 (though it may even be earlier),[14] showing that the Gospel of John was circulated as far away as Egypt within 30 years of its composition.”

Why is the historical accuracy of the New Testament important? After all, wouldn’t the teachings of Jesus be valid even if he had never lived or even if his life differed from the account of it in the gospels?

I used to make this argument. In fact, I thought it was important to base any acceptance of Christian doctrine on something other than the historical evidence for Jesus, because, waylaid by the sophistries of “higher criticism” and some schools of Protestant theology, I thought the historicity of the gospels could not convincingly be demonstrated.

Hurrah for the Internet, for exposing me to Christian teachers who have busted that piece of propaganda wide apart. Not that I hadn’t been prepared for their revelations already.

Having waded through the propaganda in the daily papers and magazine, it was easy to accept that academic journals were no better.  And neither was theology or history.  They were all buried beneath agenda and myth-making.

But Christianity is not simply a teaching about ethics or a philosophy. It claims something else. The ethics of Christianity, after all, can be found anywhere. What is unique is the Christian claim to explain man’s spiritual destiny in terms of one sole figure – Jesus Christ:

F. W. Bruce writes:

“For the Christian gospel is not primarily a code of ethics or a metaphysical system; it is first and foremost good news, and as such it was proclaimed by its earliest preachers. True, they called Christianity ‘The Way’ and ‘The Life’; but Christianity as a way of life depends upon the acceptance of Christianity as good news. And this good news is intimately bound up with the historical order, for it tells how for the world’s redemption God entered into history, the eternal came into time, the kingdom of heaven invaded the realm of earth, in the great events of the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. The first recorded words of our Lord’s public preaching in Galilee are: ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has drawn near; repent and believe the good news.”

Whatever questions one can legitimately have about Christianity, they cannot be about the authenticity of the New Testament.

Indeed there was a man called Jesus of Nazareth. Indeed, he was universally called a just and good man by even his enemies.

Indeed, he performed what were considered miracles of healing.

Indeed, he was accounted a magician, a heretic, and a seditionist.

He was indeed turned in by the High Council of Jewish elders to the Roman authorities, who at the behest of the mob, arrested, convicted, tortured, and crucified him.

There were in fact reports quite early on of his miraculous resurrection and the history and teachings of Saul, a convert who was once one of his fiercest foes,  is not some later accretion in the textual record but among the earliest (prior to 100 AD). 

The earliest Christian record we have today is apparently a manuscript of the Gospel of Mark dating from the first century.

That would make it a copy available during the life-time of eye witnesses to Jesus’s life.

In that case, the original of Mark was indeed written during or just after the life of Jesus.