All the gods' birthdays?

 

Someone shared this meme with me this morning. (The red X is my own addition.) It claims that all of these ancient pagan deities were born on December 25th:

• Horus (Egypt)
• Osiris (Egypt)
• Attis (Greece)
• Krishna (India)
• Zoroaster (Persia)
• Mithra (Persia)
• Prometheus (Greece)
• Heracles (Greece)
• Dionysius (Greece)
• Tammuz (Babylon)
• Adonis (Greece) 
• Hermes (Greece)

Problem 1: Neither Egypt, Greece, India, Persia, nor Babylon had a month named "December".

December means "10th month", but the Roman calendar had been divorced from lunar cycles some 5 centuries before Christ, and then months were added in the middle to make the 10th month into the 12th month. All of these cultures used multiple calendars simultaneously. There were solar/astrological months, lunar months, seasonal divisions, etc., but none of them had a month that corresponded precisely to the Roman December.

Problem 2: It's just plain wrong.

Horus' birthday was celebrated in late summer, as was Zoroaster's. Krishna's was celebrated in early summer. There is no historical record of a birthday celebration for Mithras among the ancient Iranians. Osiris' birthday (or rebirth day) was celebrated in the spring.

Evidently, whoever made this meme just made the entire thing up. I haven't checked, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the images on the depicted coins have no connection at all to the names under them.

The Lesson: Stop believing everything you read or hear on the Internet no matter how true it sounds and no matter how badly you want it to be true.

Think for yourself. Do even a tiny bit of research before repeating things. Don't cause the world to blaspheme God's name by repeating lies and hysteria.

The Very Foggy Origins of Christmas Trees

If someone tells you he knows for a fact that Christmas trees came from some pagan religion, he's lying.

If someone tells you he knows for a fact that Christmas trees were started by Christians with no pagan connections, he's lying too.

Personally, I find it extremely unlikely that the Christmas tree tradition was invented in the 16th century out of whole cloth, but the unfortunate fact is that nobody knows who started it nor why. There is no solid historical evidence on the matter.

Of course, if just a fraction of the resources that go into Christmas were applied to keeping the holidays that we know beyond any doubt that God gave to mankind, the question would become purely academic.

(If someone does manage to find a primary source on the origin of Christmas trees, I'd love to see it! I will happily retract this statement.)

Paganism and the Doctrine of Balaam

Numbers 22:2-25:9
Micah 5:6-6:8
I Corinthians 1:20-31

Proverbs 26:2  As the bird by wandering, as the swallow by flying, so the curse causeless shall not come.

There seems a discrepancy between the idea that we are created in God’s image to the extent that our words have creative force, that there is power in our prayers, and the opposing idea that a curse has no power unless it is deserved and that a prophet can speak neither blessing nor curse unless God allows it. However, there is truth on both sides if properly understood.

There's an old joke about scientists claiming to be able to create life from nothing. When God challenged the scientists, they took a handful of dirt with which to demonstrate their new technology. "Huh-uh," God said. "Get your own dirt."

We were created in God’s image, but we are not exact copies. The earthly tabernacle was a corruptible copy of the one in Heaven, the feast days are shadows of the reality that is the Messiah, and mankind is an imperfect, much scaled down replica of God. Unlike him, we cannot create something out of nothing by merely speaking. We need something on which to build. We are unable to get our own dirt, so to speak, so we have to make do with what we can find.

When Balaam tried to curse Israel, he failed because, as a prophet, he could only give what prophecies God gave him. His patron, Balak, understood the principle of Proverbs 26:2, that a curse undeserved has no effect, so he took Balaam to first one place and then another, thinking that a different perspective might give Balaam the hook he needed to make the curse stick. But he misunderstood the nature of a real prophet: true prophecy comes from God and no other.

If a prophet speaks truth, then his words are the words of God, and God can no more curse the righteous than could Balaam. Hence Balaam’s statement that “[YHWH] has not seen iniquity in Jacob, neither has He seen perverseness in Israel.” It was not that Israel had no sin at all, but that God had chosen to forgive them like a husband who chooses to overlook his wife’s flaws. From God’s point of view, Israel had no sin to which a curse could be attached.

Finding no fault in Israel, Balaam showed Balak how he might create a fault that God could not overlook by seducing Israel into idolatry. This is the “doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to cast a stumbling-block before the sons of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit fornication.” (Revelation 2:14)

Eating “things sacrificed to idols” does not refer simply to eating meat from sacrificial animals, but to actively participating in the sacrifice. Those who teach God’s people that it is acceptable to engage in pagan rituals and abandon God’s law so long as their “hearts are in the right place” are today’s Balaam. They cause God’s people to commit sins that he cannot overlook, opening them to whatever curse the enemy might choose to throw.

Be careful when someone says to you that "God doesn't care if you do this or that if you're doing it in the right spirit." If it is something that God has commanded us not to do, then there is only one spirit in which you could possibly do it, and it isn't a "right" one.

Questions and Answers on Christmas

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Should it? I've read several discussions of the topic over the last week or so, and thought I'd throw my thoughts out there too. Specifically I want to answer three questions.

1. Should Yeshua's birth be celebrated?

I can't think of any reason why not. It was one of the greatest events in history, and God has a history of wanting people to celebrate great events. As long as it doesn't violate any of God's other commands, why not? Celebrate your own birth and those of your family and friends while you're at it.

2. Should Yeshua's birth be celebrated on December 25th?

This is, perhaps, a thornier question. I don't think many people seriously believe Yeshua was born on that date, but is that a problem? We should celebrate his birth in some fashion every single day! Since nobody can be absolutely sure on which day he was born, why shouldn't we just pick this one?

There is nothing inherently evil about any particular day on the calendar. October 31st is a day that God made just like December 25th, July 4th, and April 12th. There is nothing wrong with having a party, inviting friends and family to your house for a feast, or even exchanging gifts on those days. However, there may still be a problem!

God told Israel (with whom we have been joined) to "learn not the way of the heathen,"¹ and to "learn not to do after the abominations of those nations."² Of course, he did not mean "Don't do anything that pagans do." That would be absurd. Pagans sing, dance, and eat cookies, and there is nothing at all wrong with those things. God's intent seems to have been to say, "Don't adopt religious practices in order to emulate pagans or that are specifically pagan in nature." Does a peculiar celebration of Yeshua's birth held on December 25th pass or fail this test? Here are the apparent facts:

a) Yeshua was almost certainly not born on December 25th.
b) The date appears to have been chosen after the 1st century by gentile church leaders with little to no understanding of Torah and Jewish customs, and a strong desire to distance themselves from anything "Jewish".
c) A few church leaders of the day believed Yeshua had been born in December, but most seem to have settled on that day specifically because it was the Winter Solstice, an already a well-established holiday in most pagan religions, but notably absent from any of the Biblical holy days. The Roman church, especially, has a very long history of adopting pagan traditions and redressing them in quasi-biblical trappings.

God seems to have a habit of grouping significant events around particular days. Some of those days correspond to the Biblical Feasts, some of them don't. Since Yeshua is the focus of the Law, I'm willing to bet that all of the major events of Yeshua's life took place on or around one of the seven feast days. Here are a few examples:

a) Passover/Unleavened Bread/Firstfruits: Death and resurrection
b) Shavuot: Teaching in the temple as a child (and the giving of the Holy Spirit, aka Pentecost)
c) Rosh Hoshana: Second coming?
d) Yom Kippur: Day of judgment
e) Sukkot: Arrival in the Promised Land. Both times.

There are some very good reasons for supposing that Yeshua was actually born during Sukkot. While I haven't done the math myself (other trustworthy individuals have and you are welcome to check their work), it appears that John the Baptist was born around Passover. Yeshua would have been born six months later, which is about the time of Sukkot. Also, Old Testament prophecies (and John in the New Testament) talk of God tabernacling among his people, and tabernacling is what Sukkot is all about.³

I am not saying that everyone must celebrate Yeshua's birth during Sukkot or that anyone must celebrate his birth at all. I'm not even saying that it is wrong to celebrate his birth on December 25th. I am saying that the choice of that date seems to have been inspired by a desire to emulate a pagan religious practice.

Which brings me to Christmas trees.

3) Should believers have Christmas trees?

The origins of the Christmas tree are shrouded in even more mystery than the origins of December 25th as Christmas. There are a lot of theories with very little historical documentation. Here are some better attested facts:

a) Evergreen branches and lights were used as decorations by the Romans to celebrate Saturnalia. Some Christians retained this practice and might have incorporated it into their Christmas celebrations.
b) Many ancient peoples used evergreen branches as winter decorations to symbolize life against the cold of the season.
c) Some ancient peoples used evergreens to ward against evil spirits.
d) The first Christmas trees, as such, appear to have originated in Germany in the late Middle Ages. Nobody seems to know who started the custom or why.

There is nothing inherently wrong with decorating your house with evergreens. However, the date of Christmas was specifically chosen to correspond with the Winter Solstice, and evergreen branches and wreaths were used as decorations for Saturnalia, the Roman pre-Solstice holiday period, which corresponds to the Germanic Yule Tide, from which we get...Yule Tide and probably Advent. It seems to me that decorating with those objects as part of a Christmas celebration is dangerously close to emulating pagan religious practices while saying you are doing it for God. Maybe early Christians copied Saturnalia customs and maybe they didn't, but Paul said to avoid the appearance of evil. If you have evergreen decorations in your house normally, I don't see any reason to take them down, but I wouldn't put them up just for Christmas.

Christmas trees are almost certainly related to the many customs of decorating homes with evergreen branches during the winter. That, in itself, poses no problem, and the pagan roots of putting decorated trees indoors seem dubious. However, consider these words of God given through Jeremiah:

Jeremiah 10:2-4 Thus says the LORD: "Learn not the way of the nations, nor be dismayed at the signs of the heavens because the nations are dismayed at them, (3) for the customs of the peoples are vanity. A tree from the forest is cut down and worked with an axe by the hands of a craftsman. (4) They decorate it with silver and gold; they fasten it with hammer and nails so that it cannot move.

Clearly, God did not intend Jeremiah's audience to interpret this as referring to Christmas trees or even their analog in that day. The very next verse explains that he was talking about idols, carved figures used in the veneration of deities, but God's perspective is not limited to what's happening today. He knew 2500 years ago that we would be cutting trees down, prominently displaying them in our homes and buildings, decorating them with silver and gold, and bowing down before them to receive their gifts. And he knew that we would be reading Jeremiah's book. I don't believe in coincidences, so I'm going to play it safe and not put a Christmas tree up in my home.

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¹ Jeremiah 10:2
² Deuteronomy 18:9
³ I don't buy the argument about sheep not being in the fields during December. They didn't have huge barns in which to shelter their sheep. They kept them in the fields year round. According to the US Department of Agriculture, shepherds in Montana around the beginning of the 20th century kept their sheep on the open plains through much harsher winters than Israel has ever experienced. Why shouldn't Jewish shepherds in the 1st century BC?

[Updated December 1, 2020.]

Thou Shalt Not Rationalize Your Paganism

Deuteronomy 12:4 You shall not do so to YHWH your God.

God told Israel to completely destroy the Canaanites’ places and articles of worship, then He told them not to incorporate pagan elements into His religion.

For most of the last two thousand years, the Roman Catholic Church has made such assimilation an integral part of their evangelism, while most of the rest of the Church played along. We justify our disobedience to God by pointing to the numbers of people professing faith or being baptized.

Today, Christianity is so thoroughly infected with pagan imagery and practice that, like fish who can't see the water, we rarely even know it.

God understands how adaptability can be used to make the Church more seeker-friendly, yet He still commanded us not to compromise in this way. Easter eggs, jack-o-lanterns, Christmas trees, etc. All of those things were adopted from pagan religions, yet we keep doing them, thinking that we are pleasing God. “He knows my heart.”

Except that God specifically said, “Don’t do those things and say you are doing them for me.”