History – Christian Musings

Posted on February 25, 2025February 25, 2025 by Tai-Chi Philosopher

“To An Unknown God”

The story of Paul’s encounter with the altar at Athens “to an unknown God” is more interesting than most realize: Epimenides was a Cretan whom Paul acknowledges as a prophet who told the Athenians that if they set up an altar to an unknown God, he would save them from the plague they were suffering. In other words, God was still speaking to distant people, even though he was withholding primary knowledge of himself except for through the Jews, and ultimately through Christ.

And we can see this in other places: Balaam was a genuine prophet of God, even though he was also greedy, and not Jewish.

This has fascinating ramifications, and answers one of the main questions many people have about Christianity: what about all of the people who have never heard of it? The answer is that God has still sought to reach them throughout history, and I strongly suspect that his judgement of them is on a weighted scale that perfectly factors in how well the circumstances of their time and place allow. It makes one wonder if the Native American “Great White God” was Yahweh…or similar in so many other cultures…

On a similar note, Simeon’s story in Luke 2 shows that the so-called “silent years” weren’t actually silent. God never stopped speaking to individuals – he just put a pause on big national/biblical level prophecies.

Posted on December 24, 2024December 25, 2024 by Tai-Chi Philosopher · 1 Comment

The True Birthdate Of Christ

Merry Christmas everyone!

The past few days I’ve enjoyed these two sermons, which do wander a bit but also get pretty nerdy about the details about Jesus’ birth. Here’s a condensed version of what they make the case for, for all the other bible geeks out there:

Josephus (a non-Christian Jewish historian for the Roman Empire) explains to us that the census was a special census – probably the first in history where some women had to register. This was because Rome was at peace, entering a golden age, going to declare Caesar Augustus “Father of the Nation”. This means several things:
- The reason Mary had to register for the census was because children *she* bore had claims to the throne of David, and she had to renounce challenging Caesar over them.
- The arrival of a new king wasn’t just a challenge to Herod, but a huge wrench into the political zeitgeist of the time across the entire Roman empire.
- The census was to occur in summer and early autumn to avoid harvest
John the Baptist was 6 months older than Jesus.
Jesus was 30 years old during the 15th year of Tiberius’ reign
- Jesus birthday was therefore between September of 3 BC and September of 2 BC
Zachariah’s priestly duties were either May 19th-26th 4 BC or Nov. 22-29 4 BC
- This means John the Baptist’s conception was around either late May of 4 BC or early December of 4 BC
- This means John the Baptist was likely born around March 10 or September 10 of 3 BC
- This means Jesus would have been born in September of 3 BC or March of 2 BC
Rosh Hashanah – the Festival of Trumpets – was September 11th, 3 BC.
- Rosh Hashanah celebrates the start of the new year, is the anniversary of the creation of Adam and Eve, and is/was when new Jewish Kings were crowned
Revelations 12:1 – “A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head.”
- The constellation Virgo (consisting of 12 stars) with the Sun in her midsection and the moon at her feet occurred only once in the history of the world, 5:53-6:35, September 11th, 3BC
- The star Spica representing the wheat Virgo is holding touched the horizon at 6:12, September 11th, 3BC.
- John 12:24 – “Truly, truly I say to you, unless a kernel of wheat alights to the earth and dies, it remains a single seed. But if it dies, it bears fruit.”
- This implies that the exact moment of Jesus’ birth was 6:12, September 11th, 3BC.

But! December 25th is a relevant date:

The Bible says the magi – sorcerers and witches trained by the Babylonian school Daniel was put in charge of – showed up to a house, not the stables.
- They did not show up on Jesus’ actual birthday.
- This is reinforced by Luke using the word for Infant and Matthew using the word for Toddler
- Further reinforced by Herod needing to kill all under age 3.
Christmas is co-opted from the Roman celebration of Saturnalia – a period of gift giving and sacrificing to the chief Roman God, Saturn
- The magi followed pagan customs and were celebrating Saturnalia to give gifts to the newborn God King.
The “star in the east” the magi were following was likely the conjunction of Jupiter and Venus in the constellation of Leo. Jupiter was the “star” of Kingship, Venus the “star” of Love, and they appeared as a single bright star only twice in human history – June 17th 2 BC and again December 25th of the same year, right as Saturnalia was concluding.

So Christmas is the celebration of God subjecting Pagan rituals to himself and turning their tribute to himself, and of the Magi’s gift giving.

Posted on September 24, 2021 by Tai-Chi Philosopher

Was Sodom And Gomorrah An Asteroid Air-Burst?

This is an interesting historical theory.

Posted on July 11, 2021 by Tai-Chi Philosopher

Some Perspective On Old Testament Stories From An Unusual Source

Recently I’ve been reading through some of the Sagas of the Icelanders. For those unfamiliar with these, they’re the recorded histories of how the Vikings settled Iceland, from a thousand years ago, and the oldest novels in existence.

Here’s the tie in to scripture: in the Sagas it is very apparent that there are conflations between the individual and their household/group/warband, and also drastic condensing of conversations and times. And it’s written in exactly the same style as much of the old Testament. So when I reread the stories of those books, now I’m a lot more aware of these things occurring there as well, of conversations that took months getting condensed to a sentence and such.

Posted on July 8, 2020July 13, 2020 by Tai-Chi Philosopher · 1 Comment

American Nationalism And Christianity

I’ve been goaded a bit by a recent sermon to think about the tendency of many, including myself, to conflate patriotism/American nationalism with Christianity.

Point taken – our allegiance is to Christ, first and foremost, and we shouldn’t let any notions of nationalism hinder that.

²⁰To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. ²¹To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. ²²To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.

With that important point made, I feel like there’s also an important counterpoint to be made, in the interests of standing up for truth and history, and that is America’s unique relationship with God. It is a heritage that we shouldn’t just discard. _{(Just a bit of warning, if you try searching for some of the rest of this stuff online, it’s easy to fall down a rabbit-hole of Mormonism, they’re heavily into this stuff – but as with my opinion on the rest of Mormon beliefs, I think it’s a mix of things that are true with some weird things layered on top.)}

America, unlike any other country in history I am aware of through back to ancient Israel, is based on covenants of fellow citizens to each other before God. I will give just a few examples:

The Pilgrims, when they reached the new world, made a covenant with each other before God.
The Declaration of Independence is a covenant of its signatories, before God, acting on behalf of the states and territories they represented.
Federalism – the idea of states binding themselves around common causes – is very much in the idea and spirit of a covenant. The constitution is the actual charter that they have bound themselves to. Many of the states also have constitutions that are explicitly covenanted in nature. As an aside, both the Declaration and the Constitution are based off of John Locke’s very theologically based philosophies.

In addition, there are numerous times when God has shown his faithfulness strongly to these covenants, especially at some our most important crux points:

General Washington’s army was saved miraculously several times, after ordering them to attend days of prayer and fasting, appeal to God, and give thanks for all they had. His retreat from Long Island with his troops involved several sudden changes in weather that they credited God for using to saving them.
Lincoln’s leadership foundered throughout the beginning of the Civil War. He specifically wondered if God was on the cause he was fighting for, and prayed for a sign of whether he needed to change. Days later the battle plans for Lee’s planned invasion of the north fell Union hands, and the Union won the battle of Antietam. Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation specifically in response to these signs, changing the focus of the war from “preserving the union” to “ending slavery” – and remarkably close in timing to when the Union started winning the war. Lincoln would later call for national fasting and prayer to rededicate our country to God.

All of this is to say that America’s foundations are specifically built in covenant with God and the people and causes of our founding were supported by God. Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America discussed how religion was intertwined with everything in the country, and the founding fathers themselves wrote constantly that the key to preserving a Republic would be the morality of our people. Currently, we live in an era post-sexual-revolution, of mass-abortion, and where society is not only increasingly secular, but oftentimes blatantly hostile to the very notion of religion. I am not so certain God’s favor still rests with us, and I don’t think we should repeat the Israelites’ mistakes of assuming that the prior favor with our country would carry over forever despite our sins.