Superstitions about Black Cats and the Middle Ages

The other day my kids were talking about cats and someone made a comment about black cats. My oldest child just casually threw out the oft repeated fact that people in the Middle Ages were superstitious about black cats and associated them with witches.

As soon as he said that I asked myself, "Were people in the Middle Ages superstitious about black cats?"

Because our society's track record for accurately understanding what people thought in the Middle Ages isn't exactly stellar (see the Myth of the Flat Earth). So that sent me down a rabbit hole trying to find out where the superstition about black cats actually came from.

The thing is, the idea that people in the Middle Ages were superstitious about black cats has all the hallmarks of a "zombie fact". A zombie fact is something people just keep repeating and everyone just accepts it as fact, but if you dig down and try to find out if it is actually true you will find little to no evidence for it.

So we have two questions to investigate.

1. What evidence is there that people in the Middle Ages were superstitious about black cats?

2. When did people start associating black cats with witches? Did this idea actually come from the Middle Ages?

For question 1, you can find plenty of websites repeating the claim that people in the Middle Ages were superstitious about black cats. You can even find it stated as fact on Wikipedia. It is something that is considered so common knowledge that it doesn't even require a source citation.

But in a few places there are people who actually try to cite sources in support of the idea that people in the Middle Ages were superstitious about black cats. So I started digging.

One common piece of evidence given is a Papal Bull (formal letter from the Pope) issued in 1233 by Pope Gregory IX titled *Vox in Rama*. One author, who was influential in spreading the idea that the superstition about black cats came from the Middle Ages, wrote that in the letter Pope Gregory IX called for the mass killing of cats and claimed that black cats were satanic.

Unfortunately for the claims made by this author you can actually go read the actual letter (and have Google translate it from Latin, the word for cat in Latin is "gattus").

In the letter Pope Gregory goes into excessive and lurid detail about supposed satanic rituals happening in the Holy Roman Empire at the time. There is talk about a frog the size of a dog that the Satan worshipers kiss on its rear end, there is general depravity and sexual orgies, and at one point in the satanic ritual there actually is a black cat that the satanists bow to and kiss (again on its rear end). 

That's it. No call for the extermination of cats. No declaration that black cats are of the devil. There is no indication that these things actually happened, just that these were random rumors that filtered down from Germany to Rome. The actual letter was not set generally to the entire Catholic Church, but only to the Bishops of three cities in the Holy Roman Empire. It's impossible to determine the exact impact of these letters, but there is very little indication that they significantly affected the state of things in those three cities, let alone in the entire Holy Roman Empire.

On top of this, this particular piece of evidence was not mentioned until the 1990s when it showed up in a few books on the subject. This Papal Bull had largely gone unnoticed throughout history until the 1990s. This has all the indications of someone who had a conclusion and went looking for evidence to support it.

Sometime in the late 1800s a few sources began mentioning a connection between cats and witches supposedly widely accepted in the Middle Ages. They were sparse on the details and even more sparse on the evidence. Generally they appeal to three sources for the origin of the connection between cats and witches. Interestingly none of the three sources actually came from the Middle Ages, yet they are used as evidence that people in the Middle Ages thought this way.

The first thing that gets cited as evidence that black cats were associated with witches is the case of the Witches of Belvoir.

In 1618 three women, a mother and her two adult daughters, were arrested in England for murder and witchcraft. Interestingly the charge of witchcraft was actually valid, because by their own admission they practiced witchcraft and attempted to cast spells on the local Lord and Lady (who both died, for unrelated reasons, but still their deaths were the basis for the murder charge). So while actually charging someone for practicing witchcraft is ridiculous, and it is an incredible miscarriage of justice to execute someone for witchcraft, they actually did practice witchcraft.

So where does the cat come in? Well it turns out that the mother did have a pet cat (there was no indication it was black). There were also allegations that she could turn into a cat, but the same reports also said she could turn into a mole and a white dog. For some reason the much, much later sources who mention the cat connection also fail to mention the dog connection. But sources at the time do not fixate on her cat. Her cat was only incidental to the whole thing.

It was only sources in the late 1800s, more than 250 years later, that explicitly played up the connection to her cat. It was also about that time that her cat magically turned black, from it's original nondescript color. A few books from the late 1800s began to cite the case of the Witches of Belvoir as the start of the association between cats and witches, but that was only in retrospect and not based on what people thought at the time.

Another piece of evidence sources in the late 1800s cite for the connection between witches and black cats is a book on Demonology written by an Englishman named Edward Fairfax in the 1600s.

The problem is that while Edward Fairfax did write his book in the 1600s, and he did talk extensively about cats and witches (occasionally the cats were black), he seems to be rather unique in his connection between cats and witches. The other thing is that his book on Demonology was not widely known in the 1600s. The only known copies from his lifetime are all hand written, it was only in the mid 1800s, more than 200 years after he wrote it, that his book was actually published and widely distributed.

It was in the 1800s, the Age of Enlightenment and definitely not the Middle Ages, that his writings became influential. He is also the source on what is considered to be "standard lore" on werewolves. His ideas were particular to him and had no impact on people's superstitions until over 200 years after he died. Yet it is cited as evidence that people in the Middle Ages were superstitious about black cats and associated them with witches.

The last piece of evidence cited by sources in the late 1800s for the idea that cats were associated with witches in the Middle Ages was a book called "Beware the Cat!" published in the 1600s. It is a work of satire and a collection of stories, only some of which are about cats.

There is one story where a couple of characters are discussing a witch and one of them briefly speculates that she turned into a cat to escape her pursuers.

That's it. That's the only connection between witches and cats from the book. While the book itself is important from a historical perspective, it is considered one of the first English novels, it was not widely published or even known at the time and very few copies were made. It was not until 200 years later in the 1800s when it was republished in greater quantities that it became widely known.

In all of these sources from the late 1800s the connection between cats and witches is only mentioned incidentally and in passing. It is not presented as a major or critical concept. And in most of cases the color of the cat is not mentioned.

So how did the connection between witches and cats, especially black cats, become so ingrained if it was not really present or mentioned before the late 1800s?

It turns out that in the 1920s there were several puff pieces published for children that purported to explain "silly" superstitions that were common hundreds of years ago. Among these children's books were some that very explicitly made the connection between witches and black cats, complete with drawings of old ladies in black pointed hats holding black cats.

These books consistently claimed that it was people in the "Middle Ages" were the ones who believed these "silly" things. For their "authority" on the matter they usually, if at all, pointed to one of the three sources I mentioned above. About this time they add mentions to a "legendary cat" named Grimalkin, who is supposedly the ancestor of all cats owned by witches. The problem is that "Grimalkin" isn't the name of a cat. It's a Scottish word for wild cats in general.

The children's books from the 1920s that mentioned a cat named Grimalkin apparently just magicked the story out of thin air.

So as far as I can tell, what happened is that in the late 1800s a few more academically inclined books made passing reference to cats and witches, and pointed to a very select set of sources from the 1600s, which in reality were almost entirely unknown in their own time and only gained recognition after they were republished in the early 1800s. Even though these sources were not from the Middle Ages, the books citing them added the comment that these superstitions came from the Middle Ages. All without evidence.

Then in about the 1920s a number of children's books were published with tales of magic, and fairies, and everything, including stories about witches with their black cats. These children's books were not trying to teach children that that black cats were unlucky, or associated with witches, or the devil, they were just saying that people hundreds of years ago believed these "silly" superstitions (all without evidence). But these books were the first ones, in all of history to explicitly state that black cats (and specifically black cats) were associated with witches. They also very specifically stated that these ideas originally came from the Middle Ages, despite the fact that those ideas were not widely known until the late 1800s.

Quite ironically from those books people actually picked up the idea that black cats were unlucky and they were the actual source of all the superstitions about black cats. Quite literally the generation of people who grew up in the early 1900s, and their children, were the ones who first created the superstition about black cats. It did not come from the Middle Ages, it was accidentally created in the 1920s.

The black cat superstition is only a little over 100 years old and did not come from the Middle Ages.

Things not included in the Come Follow Me program.

As we wind down the Old Testament in Come Follow Me here are some of the things you missed because we don't include the Apocrypha.

Tobit: Do you have a hankering for historical fiction set in the time between the Old and New Testaments with a supernatural aspect and a side of moral preaching? Look no further than Tobit.

Judith: Still interested in historical fiction, but with a female protagonist who chops off a guy's head, and a plot and characters symbolizing Judah and its enemies? Judith is your book.

Esther: Are you disappointed because Esther is just too short? Did you know that there is more? Here's six more chapters worth of material.

Wisdom: Are you the kind of person that can't get enough of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, and you want another book full of pithy little sayings that teach wisdom? The Book of Wisdom is there for you.

Sirach: STILL not enough pithy little sayings? Sirach is the Stephen Covey of the Old Testament. Not doctrine, but written by a famous believer.

Baruch: Ever felt that you just wanted a little more Jeremiah? Well, it's not exactly Jeremiah, but Baruch really, really likes Jeremiah.

Letter of Jeremiah: Ever felt that you just wanted a little more Jeremiah? Well, this one actually is a little more Jeremiah.

Prayer of Azariah and Song of the Three Holy Children: Have you ever read Daniel chapter 3 and thought, "What if this chapter was 68 verses longer?" Read it to find out.

Susanna: Did you ever get to the end of the Book of Daniel and think, "This could have used more nudity and talk of sex." Susanna is the missing chapter from Daniel that you have been looking for.

Bel and the Dragon: Did you ever feel like your life was missing a good mystery story involving Daniel? Did you ever think that the story of Daniel in the lion's den was really missing something? These two stories, "Bel" and "The Dragon", have got you covered.

1 and 2 Esdras: Did you read Ezra and think, "Man, I really wanted to read more lists of all the names of the people who came to Jerusalem from Babylon, and the names of their ancestors, and what jobs their ancestors had, and the names of the cities and towns they came from, and the names of the villages and towns they settled in around Jerusalem, and EXACTLY how much gold and silver they brought with them." Well Esdras has all that and more! Gird your loins for discussions about wine, women, and the king! (It's the truth!) Also ancient international politics.

Prayer of Manasseh: You probably were always wondering about that one prayer mentioned briefly in a single verse in Chronicles where a king named Manasseh prayed after getting captured. No? Oh I thought everyone obsessed over things like that. Well here is that prayer! (Maybe)

1 Maccabees: Have you been looking for an unbiased, emotionless, 100% historically accurate history of the beginning of the Hasmonean Dynasty? Well you won't find any of that here! This is 100% pure, adulterated propaganda baby! Reading this you will find that Judas Maccabeus was a noble, holy, enlightened, faithful priest of the highest order who valiantly fought against the Godless heathens who did terrible things like... take a bath (gasp!), got a haircut (clutches pearls), and didn't believe in killing heretics! (faints) You will find a complete history of how Judas, his brothers, and nephews, violently defeated the nasty imperial army by valiantly running away. Many times. They were so successful at defeating the imperial armies that they only had to definitively defeat them 7 or 8 times and drive them from the land forever. Until they came back. Again. Hey once they even won a battle! You will learn how Judas nobly "stuck it to the man" by robbing poor defenseless villages, I mean put down hot beds of insurrection. And how Judas reminded all Jews to be faithful to God by personally killing Jews traveling to Jerusalem who didn't show him proper respect by voluntarily "donating" all their worldly possessions to their noble cause. Additionally you will learn how it is evil and an afront to God to buy the position of "high priest" (unless you are personally related to Judas Maccabeus, then it is a smart move and shows how intelligent you are). There will be many other important tidbits such as, let's play the game guess who is secretly Jewish! The Romans! Who knew? They are the lost ten tribes or something. We invited them to come visit Jerusalem and see what a great place it is. I'm sure they'll be great friends and allies in the future. (Ominous foreshadowing)

2 Maccabees: On a serious note, this is perhaps the most "modern" of all the books in the Bible. It comes with an introduction by the author. He identifies himself, states his experience and credentials, and explains his sources. He identifies potential biases, and discusses the difficulty of writing accurate history and the reliability of sources. Everyone should read the first chapter of 2 Maccabees because it explains many of the things about how scripture is written, but is never actually explicitly talked about anywhere else.

Addendum: A note about 1 and 2 Maccabees. They are written to support the Hasmonean Dynasty. They controlled Jerusalem shortly before the Romans took control (and the Hasmoneans were the ones who allied themselves with the Romans, and we know how that turned out). Herod the Great (the one that killed all the babies in Bethlehem, that Herod) married the last princess of the Hasmonean Dynasty. If there was any single group of people responsible for the state of society at the time of Jesus, the Hasmoneans are the number one culprits. They are responsible for the formation of both the Sadducees and Pharisees (there was a civil war between different parts of the royal family, and those who became the Sadducees supported one side, those who would become Pharisees supported the other side). They laid the groundwork for the conditions that would result in the assassination of Jesus.

2 Maccabees is still heavily pro-Hasmonean, the author was being paid by them to write their history after all, but it presents a more historical picture than 1 Maccabees. 1 Maccabees is pure propaganda. If you read through 1 Maccabees and think "Hey I like these guys. They are valiant defenders of the faith and scripture." You really, really need to rethink your approach to religion. The way of thinking on display in 1 Maccabees is the same way of thinking that Jesus later condemned as hypocrisy, and the same thinking was used to justify killing him. Basically if you take everything taught in 1 Maccabees and do the exact opposite then you should be good.

Joseph F. Smith had a classical understanding of time, and that is important

In 1918 Joseph F. Smith had a revelation on the Savior's visit to the spirit world and the redemption of the dead. Leading up to this revelation he had many questions weighing on his mind brought on by recent family deaths and his own reckoning with mortality.

While explaining his thinking leading up to the revelation Joseph F. Smith said,

25 I marveled, for I understood that the Savior spent about three years in his ministry among the Jews.... 27 But his ministry among those who were dead was limited to the brief time intervening between the crucifixion and his resurrection; 28 And I wondered at the words of Peter—wherein he said that the Son of God preached unto the spirits in prison... and how it was possible for him to preach to those spirits and perform the necessary labor among them in so short a time. (D&C 138:25-28)

Part of what made Joseph F. Smith ask his questions in the first place was the fact that he could not see anyway for the Savior to have sufficient time to preach to so many people who had already died. Without realizing it Joseph F. Smith had certain implicit metaphysical assumptions that determined what kinds of questions he would ask and what kinds of answers he would look for. Joseph F. Smith operated with a certain subconscious understanding of time that created a paradox that necessitated an answer.

If Joseph F. Smith had lived much later in our day and had asked the same question, "How could the Savior do more in three days than he had done in three years on Earth?" he would have different options available to answer this question regarding time. But for him, this question presented an unresolvable paradox. If members of the Church did not have the benefit of Joseph F. Smith's revelation and asked the same question today, a number of people would probably invoke the principles of relativity and relative time.

Possible answers could have included things like, "The flow of time is different in the spirit world.", or "Time is only something relevant to mortality, so the Savior was not bound by time constraints in the spirit world." Any of these answers would have lessened the urgency of resolving the three day time constraint on the Savior, and could have possibly lead Joseph F. Smith to consider his questions differently, or even a different set of questions.

Because of the proliferation of Einstein's theories of relativity we have a very different fundamental understanding of time than people previously had. Generally we do not even realize the immense difference in how we collectively understand time compared to even 100 years ago. The idea that time can flow at different rates, or that time is relative to the observer, has so permeated our society that major Hollywood movies can use the idea as a crucial plot point and we do not even consider how strange a concept it is for time to flow differently or fail to grasp the relative nature of time. Even the concept of time travel is a relatively modern concept that we do not realize entirely depends on certain crucial ontological concepts of time that have only entered our collective consciousness in the past 100 years.

For Joseph F. Smith his subconscious concept of time worked very differently from ours. He was not acculturated to a relative or even a dimensional understanding of time. For him time was the same for everyone, everywhere including the spirit world, and, even though it was subconscious and unintentional, how he understood time was central to the paradox that he faced. If he had a different subconscious concept of time then his approach to the question of how did the Savior accomplish in three days what he did not manage to do in three years would have turned out differently. Perhaps he would not have pondered the question in the same way, or he would have gone looking in different directions for different answers to resolve the issues that weighed on his mind.

My point is, when Joseph F. Smith was faced with certain questions, the ones that were the most paradoxical for him and presented the greatest challenge, were the ones that were only present because of how he subconsciously viewed time. The implicit cultural assumptions he unintentionally held placed boundaries on the kinds of questions he would ask, and the kinds of answers he sought. His ontology (his fundamental understanding of the nature of existence) informed the structure of the questions and paradoxes he faced.

In this case the unstated, and unintentional, prepositions of Joseph F. Smith lead him to a question that could be answered by revelation. In fact, his assumptions about the nature of time made his questioning possible. If he had a different understanding of time then he may not have been forced to reckon with his uncertainty in the same way. So his subconscious assumptions on the nature of time were beneficial and greatly simplified the issue he was considering. But it does not always turn out that way.

Quite often we are faced with paradoxes or questions we cannot find an answer for. Frequently the paradox only exists because of the subconscious, unintentional choices we have made in understanding the world. Many times I see people of faith asking some form of the question, "How does XYZ work if ABC?" or, "How can XYZ be true when ABC is true?" For them these are paradoxical questions for which there is no solution. But quite often the paradox only exists because of unstated assumptions they have made without even realizing it. Many such questions, such as the relationship between science and religion, are entirely dependent on subconscious assumptions we have made regarding the nature of science, scripture, authority, and revelation (not to mention epistemology, language, metaphysics, and God himself).

Sometimes the answer to someone's question simply requires the right information with an acceptable explanation. But other times the paradox lies entirely in unstated assumptions the person has made. These are the most difficult to address, because recognizing our own unstated assumptions about reality, and identifying them as the source of our confusion, is perhaps one of the most difficult human tasks in existence. It is easier to change someone's behavior than it is to make them realize that the intractable paradoxes that seemingly have no resolution are the result of unintentional assumptions they have made about the nature of reality itself. And the most difficult of these already difficult conflicts are the ones that are most closely bound to someone's identity.

In summary, I have used the example of Joseph F. Smith and the questions he faced about the spirit world to point out certain assumptions he had about the nature of time that may be very different from our assumptions today. Using this, I introduced the idea that the assumptions we unintentionally and subconsciously make can, in part, determine the types of questions we ask, and what we might consider to be an intractable paradox. Some questions can be answered through discovering new information, but other more paradoxical questions can only be resolved by considering what underlying assumptions we have unintentionally made about reality. Addressing these more paradoxical questions is a difficult endeavor that takes patience, experience, and practice. But by first recognizing that these unstated assumptions exist we can be more aware of assumptions that make some questions seemingly unanswerable, and ultimately give us a path towards resolving these paradoxes. Sometimes finding the answer to a question requires realizing that we are asking the wrong question.

Temple Doctrine Part 1: Order and Chaos

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while the spirit of God swept over the face of the waters. (Genesis 1:1-2, NRSV)

The very first act of God as recorded in Genesis was to create order from chaos. The primordial chaos was formless and void. It had no shape nor could any part of it be differentiated from another. There were no opposites, no light nor dark, neither hot nor cold. This primordial chaos was typified by water which anciently was the one thing that had no set form. But in the midst of the chaotic primordial waters God created a space where order, and therefore life, could exist. God took the indistinguishable primordial chaos and differentiated it creating light and dark, day and night, springtime and harvest. The opposite of life was the formless void.

In our current popular culture order is equated with rigidity and invariance. Order is viewed as something that limits free will and is oppressive. But that kind of order is only the order that people impose on the world. The order provided by God in Genesis is the natural order that is the basis of life. Without the natural order, life would know nothing but chaos and corruption. Here is one of the major themes of Genesis. The natural order is created out of chaos, and from that order life is created.

The creation story in Genesis is crafted to show progressive spheres of order. On the outside of creation is where we find the primordial chaos without order. But beneath the dome of the sky there is a space created where life can exist because of the order created by God. Inside of this sphere is where we find world as we know it. And at the center of creation God created a garden as a perfect symbol of an orderly life. It was not wild untended garden, but well kept and full of all useful plants. The garden sustained life and at the center of the garden was the tree of life that gave immortality and eternal life. 

But at some point corruption and it's resulting disorder and chaos enters the garden in the form of a serpent. But why a serpent? Here is where our modern culture fails to understand the symbolism here. Suppose I am telling a story and it is about a young girl who wears a red cape with a hood and she is walking through a forest. Just based on that, who does she meet in the forest? Does she meet a goat? Or a troll? Or a fairy? No, she meets a wolf. Why does she meet a wolf and not a bear, or perhaps a family of bears with papa bear, mama bear, and baby bear?

We know that she will meet a wolf because in our culture we have that story ingrained in our collective understanding. We can do this with many other stories. A story of three little pigs, what do they do and what happens to them? A story starts out with a tortoise and a rabbit, what will happen? A girl with long hair lives in a tower, what will happen? We know the answers to these questions because we have been taught them by our culture.

So in the story of the creation where God brings order to chaos, who will come to corrupt the order created by God? Here our culture fails us because we are not surrounded by the milieu of the ancient world. If we weren't steeped in our culture it would seem strange that three little pigs were building houses and why they used three different building materials. In the same way it seems strange to us that a serpent comes into the well ordered garden to corrupt it. But in the ancient world it was something generally understood and to be expected.

In the mythology of the Middle East the serpent was the symbol of the primordial chaotic waters. In Canaanite and Hebrew stories a serpent is the agent of chaos and evil. The Babylonian goddess Tiamat was the goddess of the sea and from her the world was created, and she is frequently described and depicted as a dragon or a serpent. The symbol of a serpent, especially a sea serpent, as an agent of chaos and evil can be found throughout Indo-European mythologies. From Norse mythology to Persian mythology, and almost everywhere in between, a serpent or a dragon represents evil, destruction, and death and in many cases is associated with water, the sea, or destructive storms. So the symbol of a serpent entering into the garden to tempt our first parents to bring death and corruption would have been readily understood by people anciently.

The effect of the serpent in the Garden of Eden was to bring corruption which would ultimately result in death. In this way the cosmic principle of order and life are contrasted with corruption and death. Without God the cosmos is chaotic and devoid of order and life. God brings order to the chaotic darkness and from that life can exist. But the world is not completely ordered. Corruption and death are fundamental parts of the world. We ourselves are corrupt and because of that we are cut off from the the orderly garden of life and the presence of God. We will die because of the inherent corruption found in the world.

In the temple endowment we symbolically go through the process of seeing order and life created in the world. We are introduced into the garden. We are expelled from the garden out into the corrupt world where we will experience sorrow and death. To return to the presence of God and gain eternal life we must have the order of God restored to us. This is something we cannot do by ourselves. Through ministering angels God reveals to us the Holy Priesthood, after the Order of the Son of God, which order is necessary for us to return to the presence of God. Just as God created life in the world by bringing order to the chaos, it is only through the Order of the Son of God that we can remove corruption and chaos from our lives and gain eternal life.

Beauty and the Beast as Moral Philosophy

Over the past few years it has become fashionable to provide criticisms about Disney movies and "Disney Princesses". Some of these criticisms are in jest while others definitely are not. While social commentary can be leveled at just about any part of our society, sometimes we do ourselves a disservice by only looking at what is wrong, and never what it right about a story.

Because my children, like many others, like to listen to Disney songs and watch Disney movies I have had plenty of time to hear and ponder on the content of various Disney movies. Something that struck me about Disney's Beauty and the Beast is that almost the entirety of people's assessment of the movie centers around Belle. In discussions about the movie the Beast, though a major character, is interestingly enough treated like a plot device to challenge Belle, and not as an individual to be empathized with despite having the greatest character growth. If we consider the personal growth of the Beast we find the story of a man finding his humanity.  

The origin story of the Beast is what sets up the moral of the tale. He is someone who has all the material things he would ever need. The Beast has control over his domain and no one will challenge him in his desires. Because of this he did not treat those around him with humanity. To him they were nothing more than objects that can be treated or mistreated according to his whims. This is shown symbolically when the enchantress shows up and he refuses to help her even though it would not inconvenience him in any way to help her. Because of his objectification of everyone everyone around him literally become objects in his house, and he loses his humanity and is transformed into an inhuman beast. This forms the main tension between the Beast and Belle and her father, Maurice.

When Maurice arrives at the Beast's castle he is the first and only human to enter into the life of the Beast that resists objectification. Normally the Beast would have treated Maurice like everyone else, as an object, but Maurice resists being objectified because of the very human traits of self-sacrifice and love for his daughter. Because Maurice cannot be objectified this enrages the Beast who casts him into prison and treats him inhumanely.

When Belle arrives at the castle she, like her father, resists objectification and offers to take the place of her father. This self-sacrifice demonstrates a defining characteristic of what it means to be human. The Beast did not demonstrate the bare minimum of self-sacrifice and for that he was cursed to lose his humanity. But both Belle and Maurice resist objectification because of their self-sacrifice and love.

Confronted with the reality of Belle staying in the castle, the Beast invites her to better quarters and thus begins his journey back to humanity. As their relationship develops there is constant tension between his beastly nature and her very real humanity. She resists his anger, violence, and all attempts to force her to bend to his will, all of which are beastly and not human characteristics. She is surprised to discover that the objects in the castle are all people, but they, like the Beast, have lost their humanity. Even though they personally exhibit characteristics of self-sacrifice and love, because they did not resist the objectification by the Beast they too fell under the curse. Their personal human characteristics were not enough to save them because they allowed the Beast to treat them as objects and not as humans.

Even though Belle can resist objectification, it is not possible for her human nature and his beastly nature to coexist. This comes to a head when he reacts violently to her entering the most personal and private part of his life. She finds that at the center of his private chambers a place containing his human insecurity which is symbolized by a fragile and dying flower. But his violent and inhuman reaction to his own weakness causes her to flee. 

The only thing that prevents her from leaving for good is because he follows her and demonstrates his first real human action of self-sacrifice. In protecting her from the wolves he is injured. In response to this very human action Belle responds with humanity and takes him back to the castle and stays with him. The Beast's transformation back to humanity began when Belle showed self-sacrifice and took the place of her father. The first part of the Beast's transformation finished when he finally reciprocated with his own self-sacrifice.

Here we have a contrast between his beastly nature and her human nature. But just as his beastly nature will ultimately prompt a beastly and violent response by the towns people, Belle's human nature prompts a human response from the Beast demonstrating that no one is beyond salvation as long as they are treated with humanity. Human actions beget more human actions, and beastly actions beget more beastly actions, but humans can always choose their humanity over being a beast.

After this event Belle exhibits the other part of human nature which is love. Just as she first showed her humanity through self-sacrifice she is the first to show her humanity through her love for the Beast. Because the Beast has regained a portion of his humanity he can he can now share his library with Belle, which symbolizes human learning and wisdom, demonstrating a reawakening of his humanity. During his process from beast to human he has to relearn all the things that can make him human, such as cleanliness, manners, dressing, dancing, music, and all artistic endeavors.

When his transformation back into being human is almost complete he again lets Belle into his most private place. The place where he originally transformed into a beast and lost his human identity. The physical location in the castle where this took place symbolizes his innermost and private thoughts and desires. There he is lonely, violent, and without control countering the complete control he exhibits in the rest of the castle. But with Belle entering she brings humanity literally into his private quarters and figuratively into his private thoughts. It is there that he realizes that if he is to ever be human then he has to release her from his control. Human nature is something that an individual can choose to show, but it is not something that can be controlled. The very act of trying to control human nature destroys the humanity of those who are controlled.

In the way Gaston attempts to control Belle's love we find the contrast between the Beast and Gaston. The Beast had lost his humanity, but found it again and thus knows he cannot control Belle without destroying her humanity. Gaston on the other hand is extolled as being the paragon of manliness, but that belies his true beastly nature. In order to have the love of Belle, Gaston tries to control her, but that very act denies her humanity and prevents there being any love between him and her.

In the end the Beast can only complete his transformation back into being a human when Belle freely returns his love. It cannot be forced or controlled because that freedom is fundamental to human nature. Before that can happen the Beast must wrestle figuratively with his inner demons and literally with Gaston. In a symbolic final fight where Gaston displays his true beastly nature, and the Beast demonstrates his new human nature, Gaston is cast down and dies, but first mortally wounds the Beast.

Here the Beast displays the human traits of self-sacrifice and love, and in response Belle freely gives him her love allowing the curse to be broken and completing his human transformation.

From this perspective the story of Beauty and Beast is a very human story about a man rediscovering his humanity. Belle, the heroine of the story, demonstrates her moral character by maintaining her humanity even when everyone around her has lost theirs. The story teaches that the part of us that makes us human are things that cannot be controlled or forced, they must be freely given. Only when we freely demonstrate self-sacrifice and love can we find our humanity and separate ourselves from the beastly nature found inside each of us. And that is the story of Beauty and the Beast.

Questions to Ask Before Asking Questions About Genesis

 A few questions people have posted online recently have prompted me to write this. This started out as a response to someone's thoughts on reconciling the story of the creation in Genesis with what we are figuring out from modern science.

 Before asking any questions about Genesis it is best to first ask yourself a few questions.

1. Who wrote the Bible?

More specifically, who wrote the book of Genesis? The easiest thing to do is assume that it was Moses. But how does that fit with what we know from an LDS perspective? In the Pearl of Great Price the Book of Moses is Joseph Smith's "translation" of Genesis chapters 1-6 up to verse 13. So the Joseph Smith translation took 5 and 1/2 chapters in Genesis and expanded them into 8 chapters for the Book of Moses. There are a couple of different ways of looking at this.

The material added by Joseph Smith could be divinely inspired or mandated material added to the original text by Moses. Or it could be material that originally was in the book written by Moses and later editors removed it when writing the "Reader's Digest condensed" version of Genesis. Either way the implication is that just the text from Genesis was not considered complete and additional revelation was needed.

This all of course assumes that Moses was the one who wrote the version that we have in Genesis. If you start looking into that question just realize that the answer gets very complex very quickly, and it does nothing to make the question "Who wrote the Bible?" any easier.

From the Book of Moses we learn that what was written about the creation and the Garden of Eden was shown to Moses in a vision. The story of the Garden of Eden was not written down by Adam. The story of the flood wasn't written down by Noah. If we assume that Moses wrote Genesis, and there are arguments that he may not have (or there may have been many editorial revisions), then whoever wrote Genesis in the form that we have now was writing 1,000-4,000 years after the events in the Book of Genesis. 

In so many ways the question of who wrote the Bible leads to the next major question that you have to ask.

2. What language was the Bible written in?

Anyone who has learned a second language knows that translation is not always as simple and straight forward as you might think. For many years my dad taught Spanish and something he always told his students was, "Spanish is not translated English!"

Yes, words like "que" are usually translated into English as "what". But "que" does not mean "what". The word "que" has its own meaning and use in Spanish that does not always correspond to "what" in English.

But it gets more complex from there. In most universities, and even in some high schools, students are required to take a few classes of a foreign language. In some cases taking advanced math classes counts towards the foreign language credit. This actually makes sense because as anyone who has suffered through several math classes knows, math is a foreign language. You have to learn how to read, write, and speak math. It's deceptive because math can use all English words and numbers, yet still be a completely foreign language.

The same is true of science. Science has its own language. Many people are completely unaware of this because if you pick up a book on physics or chemistry there will be mostly English words in there (or Spanish words in Spanish speaking countries, or Mandarin words in China, or etc.). But learning the language of modern science is literally like learning a foreign language.

So this brings us back to the question of what language was the Bible written in. Was it written in English? Why not? Other than the obvious fact that English didn't exist yet. Back when Moses was alive alphabets were still being invented!

Not only did Moses not write the Book of Genesis in English, but God didn't even speak to Moses in English! God spoke in a language that Moses understood! ("well duh qleap42, get to the point.")

God didn't speak to Moses in modern English because its not something Moses would have understood. In the exact same way, God didn't speak to Moses in the language of modern science. He spoke to Moses in a language that Moses could understand. Many people will say that if God had shown Moses the creation in vision, then God had to have shown Moses "the correct" way creation happened. Anything else would mean God was deceiving Moses. 

But these things were shown to Moses in a vision. Lehi in his vision of the tree of life saw the love of God as a tree with fruit on it. The vanity of the world was a great and spacious building without foundation. Did God deceive Lehi by representing "the love of God" as fruit on a tree? Or vanity as a "great and spacious building without foundation"? In the Book of John's Revelation, John saw many things, all of which were symbolic. Did God deceive John by showing him symbolic events about the end of the world?

Furthermore, what is the "correct" scientific understanding that God is supposed to have shown to Moses to not deceive him? The scientific understanding during the 18th dynasty in Egypt? Or was it the science of 7th century BC Babylon? The science of 3rd century BC Greece? 3rd century AD Rome? 11th century China? 16th century Europe? Science of the 19th century? The 20th, or the 21st? Perhaps better the 22nd? Or the 31st?

It's awfully presumptuous of us to think that God should have explained things to Moses in a way that Moses couldn't understand just so that we could. It's awfully presumptuous to think that we currently understand the universe correctly. That the way we see things is the way God sees them. It's awfully presumptuous to think that God can only explain things to people in a way that fits with our understanding of reality. Anything else is wrong and would mean God is deceiving them. That's an awfully prideful way of looking at things.

In the Doctrine and Covenants it mentions that in the last days everything will be reveled, including how the earth was made and the power by which it came to be. An interesting corollary of that is the idea that how the earth was made has not been revealed! That means the story in Genesis is not the story of the literal creation of the world, but symbols in a vision given to Moses so that he could understand. In that way God taught Moses how he, Moses, sits in relation to God. When Moses saw that he realized "that man is nothing, which thing [Moses] never had supposed."

Perhaps we should keep that in mind as we use science to learn things about the universe and how vast it is. When we consider the size and the true scope of reality that we are just now beginning to understand through science, we learn things we never thought possible. The size and scope of the universe is something that I literally deal with on a daily basis. Whenever I see someone, especially Latter-day Saints, insist the earth is only 6,000 years old, or that the earth was created in six 24 hour periods, I just think about just how big the universe really is. I think about how complex it is, from the creation of elements, the formation of stars and galaxies, the complexities of nuclear reactions, neutron stars, gravitational collapse, supernovas, neutron star mergers, basic chemistry, the time it took life to evolve, the complexities of life, the intricacies of evolution, evolutionary niches, the complex reactions that govern our bodies, the chaotic neuron cascades in our brains, not to mention the complexity of history, language, science, culture, and human societies. And there at the center of it all a God who knows and understands it all. Whose hand can hold millions of earths like this. Who watches as millions of earth come into being and millions pass away. God is someone who can know all that, and wants to teach us all of that, but first we have to learn how to understand what He is saying.

In all the vastness of creation it is awfully presumptuous of us to presume that we know how God made the earth because we read something in a book and assumed that we understood what it was saying.

Before we ask questions from Genesis, perhaps we should ask ourselves some questions.

We Already are in Hell

In this past conference Elder Dale Renlund spoke on a topic that is very familiar to anyone who has spent time studying theology, the problem of evil. He told of a conversation he had with a man while visiting Rwanda. The man asked the classic question,

“If there were a God, wouldn’t He have done something about [the genocide]?”

Elder Renlund explain the issue in this way, "For this man—and for many of us—suffering and brutal unfairness can seem incompatible with the reality of a kind, loving Heavenly Father.... This dichotomy is as old as mankind and cannot be explained in a simple sound bite or on a bumper sticker." Elder Renlund spoke about specific examples of unfairness and how to keep our faith in the face of such terrible evils. So while he spoke on examples of evil in the world, he didn't address the context of how we view the world.

Inherent in the man's question is an assumption about this world and the role and nature of God that he expected God to just do something to prevent the evil in the world. If there is something I have learned many times over, it is that the hardest mental exercise is recognizing and challenging our own assumptions. Almost everyone who considers the question, "Why does God allow such terrible things like the Rwandan genocide to happen?" fails to follow that up with the question, "What is it that makes me think that God should do anything about it?"

The simplest answer to this is that God is good, and good people should stop evil from happening, and God has the power to stop it. But the issue for the believer is that God is still there and loves us, but did not stop the evil. So from the perspective of a believer how should we resolve this issue.

To start I will ask a question to consider, and finding the answer will be left up to the interested reader.

The more interesting question is not, "Why does God allow evil to happen?", but,

"What is God doing to fix the evil that exists?"

When believers are faced with the problem of evil we seem to forget that God has already given us a framework to understand the problem of evil. Perhaps because we are so prone to view the story of Adam and Eve as a literal story that we fail to consider the symbolic meaning of the story.

Fundamentally we find ourselves in a fallen world. The name Adam in Hebrew is literally the word for humanity. From story of the Garden of Eden we learn that we, all humanity, are cut off from the presence of God. We are quite literally left to ourselves. Perhaps we do not consider the full implications of that. We, humanity, are responsible for all the evil that we do. We cannot say that we live in a fallen world, cut off from the presence of God, and then expect God to actively take charge of everything that happens in the world.

The story of the fall, especially as it is reiterated in the temple endowment ceremony, is trying to teach us the reality of the world we live in. As believers we must confront this fact, in this world there exists both good and evil, and whether we have more good or evil depends on us. In the endowment ceremony God himself does not come down to confront the evil of the world, but sends messengers.

We say that we currently live in a telestial world, and we must consider the implications of that statement. In D&C 76 we learn that those in the telestial kingdom do not experience the presence of celestial beings, but only receive "through the ministration of the terrestrial." Those in the telestial kingdom are "they who are thrust down to hell."

This means that the telestial world we live in is literally the location of hell.

In classical Christianity the standard view is that there is the earth, and then there are heaven and hell. The usually unspoken assumption is that earth is the middle point of glory. In Dante's Inferno the earth (or at least the surface) is the dividing line between heaven and hell. But in LDS theology our view is a little more lopsided. True to the view presented in the story of the expulsion from paradise, we live in a "fallen" world out of the presence of God. As explained in the Book of Mormon, separation from God is a kind of death, and "hell", or the second death, is a permanent separation from God.

From this perspective our current state is not that different from those who are "thrust down to hell." In the revelation on the Degrees of Glory the telestial glory, or our current temporary state, is the lowest degree of glory. There is not much below us since we have "fallen" after all and considering all the terrible depravities committed by humanity there is not much further for us to fall.

The classical idea of heaven and hell have worked its way into LDS theology in how we talk about the spirit world. There we speak of spirit paradise and spirit prison, but those ideas are not really found in our scriptures. In D&C 138 it mentions that all spirits, including the righteous considered their state as being in prison or bondage. It was not until Jesus appeared to the saints gathered together awaiting his coming were they given the hope that they could be released from their "prison". Even in the spirit world all of humanity was cut off from the presence of God, and we would have stayed that way if it had not been for Jesus Christ. Thus everyone, including the righteous found themselves in "spirit prison" or "hell" after their death.

This is rather interesting because in the Old Testament it does not mention separate places, such as heaven and hell, for the righteous and the sinners. There is only one place, sheol, where all the dead go. Only after the death and resurrection of Jesus could there be a division in the world of spirits to divide the righteous in the presence of God from those who are not. This means that for those who die there is no real change in their spiritual state. Thus "hell", or spiritual separation from God, is simply a continuation after death of our current separation from God.

With this context we can return to the original question, "How can God allow evil in the world?" The simplest bumper sticker answer is, "Because this world is Hell." With one exception there is nothing lower in glory, or goodness than this world. We are the furthest we can get from God.

This view of things should change how we view the world we live in. The amount of goodness or evil in the world depends on us. Through the ministering of angels, prophets, and apostles, we are shown what we must do to rise in our progression from a telestial world with all its pain and evil to a celestial and more perfect world. This is the symbolic teaching of the endowment ceremony. Because we are already out of the presence of God there really is nowhere else to go but up.

Many believers have it in their mind that God will come and cast out the wicked and thrust them down to hell. But right now, before the final judgement, there is not really anything worse than living in a world outside the presence of God. There is no worse hell to be thrust down into than to be left to witness the worst depravities of humanity. We already are in hell.

As members of the Church of Jesus Christ perhaps our message should not be "Repent or you will be punished and thrust down to hell!", but it should be, "Repent and fix the world you live in or you will be forced to continue to live in the hell of your own creation."

Whether we live in paradise or hell, that depends on us.

Faith is the Fundamental Substance of Reality

Something we do without realizing it is to interpret the scriptures and our faith through the lens of our cultural background. In our culture we are strongly influenced by Protestant theology. I sometimes joke that in the US everyone is a Protestant, even the Catholics. What I mean by that is we have been so thoroughly immersed in Protestant ways of thinking that we don't even realize we are doing it.

One of the places this shows up is how we talk about faith and knowledge. Because of our culture we are making implicit assumptions about what faith is and what it means to know something. Given those fundamental assumptions it is natural for someone to come to the conclusions, or ask the questions that you did.

Let me give an example of how we can unconsciously make an assumption that can lead to a paradox.

There is something called the "heap paradox". Suppose you have a heap of sand. In this particular heap there are 15,000,000 grains of sand. If you take a single grain of sand from the heap so that you now only have 14,999,999 grains, is it still a heap?

Any rational person would look at the sand sitting in a pile and say, "Yes. That is a heap of sand."

Now you take away another grain so that you have 14,999,998 grains. Is it still a heap? It should be.

Now you keep taking away single grains of sand until there are only 3 left. Can 3 grains of sand make a heap? Any rational person would look at it and say you need to get your eyes checked if you call 3 grains of sand a "heap of sand".

So at what point did the "heap of sand" turn into "not a heap of sand"? You could say that 15,000,000 grains were a heap. You could say that 1,500,000 grains were a heap. But at some point you get down to a minimum number and it stops being a heap. So, at what point did your "heap of sand" turn into "not a heap of sand"?

The inability to determine that is the "heap paradox", and it cannot be resolved.

But there was a problem with our mental exercise. We made a mistake and we didn't even realize it. And that mistake created the paradox.

By definition the number of things in a "heap" is undefined. Yes we can take a heap of sand and count the number of grains and get 12,749,873 grains. But the exact number isn't what makes it a heap. We use the word "heap" to mean a large, unknown, and not easily counted pile of things. The fact that we happen to know the number of things in the heap is unrelated to whether or not we call it a heap.

So, in the heap paradox we subtly shifted the definition of "heap" to include an exact value. Without realizing it we created the paradox.

A similar thing has happened in our culture with words like "faith" and "know". Over hundreds of years our understanding has drifted so that, while similar, we are missing something that was present in the original definition of the word we translate as "faith", and what it means to "know" something.

When Hebrews 11:1 is translated into English, because of hundreds of years of Protestant theology, we run into a paradox. In the original Greek the verse is,

Ἔστιν δὲ πίστις ἐλπιζομένων ὑπόστασις, πραγμάτων ἔλεγχος οὐ βλεπομένων.

This can correctly be translated as,

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (King James Version)

But there are other ways of translating this. For example,

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. (New International Version)

or,

Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see. (New Living Translation)

or,

To have faith is to be sure of the things we hope for, to be certain of the things we cannot see. (Good News Translation)

or,

Now faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen. (Christian Standard Bible)

In the KJV the word that is translated as substance is "ὑπόστασις" (hypostasis). In Greek the word hypostasis literally means "to stand (-stasis) under (hypo-)". It means it is the thing that supports or is the source of everything. In philosophy hypostasis is the fundamental substance of reality. It is the thing that makes up everything.

But it can also mean to possess a claim, or to have title (or a deed) to a guaranteed agreement. It entitles someone to what is guaranteed under the particular agreement. (We still use this idea in modern English. If someone has a legal claim that can be heard in court, we say they "have standing". They have standing under the law to claim something such as property, or redress of wrongs.)

So another way of (very loosely) translating Hebrews 11:1 could be,

Our faithfulness gives us standing to actively wait for the proof of things that we cannot see.

Or it could be translated (again very loosely) as,

Our faith is the fundamental substance of reality that we trust gives proof of the things we cannot see [such as God].

So, how does that change the way we talk about faith and what it means "to have faith"? That is the question.

A Different Nativity Story

I wanted to tell a slightly different nativity story. The Bible itself has very little written about the birth of Jesus. It doesn't even mention what time of year it happened. Over the years small additions to the story have been added to help flesh it out. But those were just assumptions created in later European culture. Because of this, and also because of translations issues, a number of items have become part of our "collective memory" about the nativity. For example the assumption that Jesus was born in a stable or barn, even though the Bible never says that. In some cases entire stories have been invented hinging on the mistranslation of a single word.

So I wrote this as an alternative nativity story. Some of the things included are my own interpolations, but in many cases I tried to use the best historical understanding that we have. In some places I have tried to use different words than is normal to make you pause and actually think about what is being said.

~~~~~oo0o000o0oo~~~~~

More than two thousand years ago a young couple about to be married had an unexpected surprise. It turned out that the soon-to-be-wife was pregnant. In their small community in Galilee this would have been quite a scandal, and in the culture at the time the shame of having a child out of wedlock would have followed her throughout her life. For her, while it was still a surprise, she had been warned about her coming pregnancy by an angel. In a great act of faith she accepted what the angel told her and said that she would be the Lord's servant. For the next few months she stayed with her cousin who also had a miraculous experience and received a promise that after many years of infertility she too would have a child. Together they rejoiced in what they had been called to do.

After several months Mary traveled back to her home and to her waiting fiance. The soon-to-be-husband and unknowing soon-to-be-new-adoptive-father found out that his soon-to-be-wife was pregnant, in a very impossible way, with what people would say was his first child. But he knew differently because he was a man of honor. After some thought he decided to do the honorable thing, as demanded by his culture, and break off the engagement. Being a kind, though honorable man, he didn't want to make a public display and wanted to keep everything "private". But again God interceded. In a dream an angel commanded him to ignore the honor based values taught to him by his culture, and to do a more holy thing so that a greater good could be done.

Joseph may have been a man of honor, but he was also a man of faith. He accepted what God had commanded him to do and married the woman who would come to be known as the Mother of God.

In their small community they would have been aware of the whisperings and gossip around them. Concerned with how it would affect the child he would raise, Joseph considered moving back with his family several days' journey to the south. Wanting to know what would be best for the child because the angel had told him the child would be a savior and ruler in Israel, even God Himself. There was a scripture known to the faithful that said the Ruler and Shepherd of Israel will be born in Bethlehem. This scripture came as an answer to his prayer to know whether he should move his new family.

Joseph took that as a sign that he was the right man to make sure the prophecy would be fulfilled. He was from Bethlehem and he had family there. Taking his young wife, and soon-to-be-mother, he set out on a journey of faith. He was a man of faith and was doing what he had been commanded by the angel. Also doing what he knew to be true from the scriptures. He knew it had to be this way.

Shortly after arriving at the house of relatives his wife went into labor. With the women in Joseph's extended family there to assist, Mary gave birth to the Son of God, the future Savior of not just Israel, but of the whole Earth. Despite his relative's generous accommodations there was not enough room in their guest room for the young couple, a new baby, and the others staying there. Mary needed rest and could not sleep if Jesus was woken up every few minutes by the others in the room. To help Jesus sleep they wrapped him tightly in some cloth and placed him, outside, in a disused stone watering trough for some animals. Not a very auspicious beginning for the King of Heaven.

Before long they heard hushed talking coming from outside and went out to find a group of shepherds had entered the fenced in yard by the house and were reverently observing the baby lying in the manger. The shepherds told them that they were visited by a host of angels proclaiming a covenant of peace between the kingdoms of the earth and the Kingdom of God, and that God would extend mercy to all people, even though they had sinned. And they instantly went looking for the Savior of the World, and just as the angel had said, they found the child, wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

On that night something changed. A sequence of events began that will ultimately culminate with God fulfilling the covenant he made with all humanity. The gulf of sin and alienation between all of humanity and God has been bridged. And God, through his Son, offers eternal life to all those who are faithful and willing to take upon them the name of The Son. As Christians we have taken His name upon us and faithfully await the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven, where, as promised, we will dwell in peace.

Misusing a Scripture about Worshiping Idols

It finally happened. Someone tried to use a scripture about Asherah poles to justify their particular belief. Five years ago I wrote about a hypothetic argument about planting trees near a temple. In Deuteronomy there is a verse that says,

"Thou shalt not plant thee a grove of any trees near unto the altar of the Lord thy God." Deuteronomy 16:21

Conceivably someone who did not understand the context could argue that this verse applied to modern day temples and that trees near the temple were forbidden. But in context, and translated correctly, this verse forbids Asherah poles, or groves near holy places. This commandment was directed at a common Canaanite religious practice, and directed the Israelites to not worship the goddess Asherah.

Recently I came across someone who said their father considered Christmas trees to be "of the devil" and pagan because Jeremiah 10:2-5 forbids it. In the King James Version the critical verses read,

2 Thus saith the Lord, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. 3 For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. 4 They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not. 5 They are upright as the palm tree, but speak not: they must needs be borne, because they cannot go. Be not afraid of them; for they cannot do evil, neither also is it in them to do good.

In this case the father interpreted these verses to be an condemnation of Christmas ("the customs of the people") and Christmas trees ("for one cutteth a tree out of the forest"). But with a little bit of historical knowledge (and a slightly better translation) we find that this is actually condemnation against worshiping wooden idols, such as wooden statues of the goddess Asherah.

A more modern translation (New Revised Standard Version) of these verses reads,

2 Thus says the Lord: Do not learn the way of the nations, or be dismayed at the signs of the heavens; for the nations are dismayed at them.
3 For the customs of the peoples are false: a tree from the forest is cut down, and worked with an ax by the hands of an artisan;
4 people deck it with silver and gold; they fasten it with hammer and nails so that it cannot move.
5 Their idols are like scarecrows in a cucumber field, and they cannot speak; they have to be carried, for they cannot walk. Do not be afraid of them, for they cannot do evil, nor is it in them to do good.

Because someone did not understand the historical context of this passage, they interpreted it to mean that Christmas trees were forbidden. This is why we need to learn the context of the scriptures or we will think things like, God condemns Christmas trees, and miss the original teaching of, don't worship dumb idols who can't do anything for you or answer your prayers.

Did Doctors in the 1800's really not wash their hands?

Spoiler: They washed their hands.

Earlier this year Google made a doodle for their main search page about Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis who practiced medicine in Vienna, and later in his native Hungary in Pest. Dr. Semmelweis is famous for advocating for hand washing before we even knew about the existence of germs. At his hospital in Vienna he was able to greatly reduce maternal mortality rates by simply having the doctors and medical students wash their hands. Supposedly there were doctors across Europe who resisted this idea and fought against the suggestion that they were killing their patients. Only later when doctors discovered the existence of germs and understood how they caused disease was Semmelweis vindicated. Countless lives could have been saved if people had just listened to Semmelweis, but doctors were obstinate and stubborn and refused to listen.

This version of the story is the one that gets repeated in numerous news stories from NPR to the Washington Post, along with other places. It makes for a dramatic story, which is why it gets repeated, but there is a problem with it. It isn't true.

To understand what happened we have to consider the context, and also look at what Semmelweis himself wrote about his own ideas and also what we wrote about his supporters and critics.

In 1847 Semmelweis started an experiment in national hospital in Vienna. In the maternity ward the mortality rate was terrible, to the point that it was reported that women would rather give birth in the street than go to the hospital. During some months one out of every seven women who entered the maternity ward died there. But for women who used midwives and not doctors, even in the hospital, the mortality rate was closer to one out of every hundred women. To Semmelweis this indicated that the problem was the doctors and the medical students.

Because the hospital was also a research institution, an autopsy was performed on every woman who died there. Usually the same doctors and students who performed the autopsies were the same doctors who later attended the births. You can probably see where this is going.

A woman dies after childbirth because of an infection. The doctor performs an autopsy on her, and later attends another birth and the woman also dies from an infection. Semmelweis noticed this and implemented strict handwashing procedures.

But here is where actual history diverges from the story that usually gets told. When people tell the story of Semmelweis they portray it like washing their hands was a new, unusual, and radical practice. But in reality the radical change Semmelweis started was to change what the doctors washed their hands with. The doctors routinely used soap and water to wash their hands. They weren't barbarians. If they did an autopsy they would always wash their hands with soap and water before doing anything else. They were doctors, and knew how to keep things clean, just not sanitized by our standards.

Semmelweis had the doctors wash their hands with a solution of chlorine (bleach) after an autopsy. In the months that followed the mortality rate dropped dramatically. After two years of collecting data the difference was so clear that Semmelweis's students began travelling across Europe to explain the new theory of how to prevent what they called "childbed fever". As reported in letters from his students the reception of his ideas was positive and enthusiastic. Much of this we know because Semmelweis later published a book entitled The Etiology, Concept, and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever where he laid out his theories and data. At the end of his book he included a chapter on reactions to his theories with excerpts from personal letters and also formal published responses to his ideas. He took extra care to respond to all those he thought had unfairly criticized his work.

It is from his own book that we get the story that he was persecuted and rejected by doctors across Europe. He made sure to bitterly complain of his critics inability to understand what to him was very plain. But it turns out that while his data was compelling, it didn't actually support his conclusions.

Semmelweis thought that dead or decaying matter would get on the doctor's hands, which would then release its miasma (smell) causing the women to get sick and die. Other doctors responded that after washing their hands, because every doctor actually did wash their hands, there wouldn't be enough dead material left on their hands to cause the sickness.

Essentially Semmelweis was saying that the raw matter of a dead body was one of the most potent poisons known to man. But this poison could only kill women, and kill them when they were giving birth. Furthermore he insisted, without evidence, that this was the only cause of "childbed fever", and there could be no other cause. This last point was the source of most criticism.

Dr. Carl Levy from Denmark pointed out doctors at his hospital did not perform autopsies. They outsourced autopsies to other doctors who did not work directly with patients. Also in Dr. Levy's reply to Semmelweis's own response to Dr. Levy, he casually mentioned that the doctors in Denmark would regularly wash with soap and water, and in some cases would wash with a chloride solution, just as Semmelweis demanded that doctors do. This exchange is recorded in Semmelweis's book, and shows that doctors in Europe actually did wash their hands.

Also recorded in Semmelweis's book was a letter from Sir James Simpson (the "father of anesthesiology"). Semmelweis attributed most of the criticisms from Simpson to issues of translation (he assumed that when his letter was translated from German into English something must have been lost since Simpson was not ecstatic about his ideas). But based on what Simpson wrote it is clear that he actually had no issue with Semmelweis one way or the other.

Simpson was surprised to learn that in Vienna they treated up to 32 women in the same room, and noted that in the UK they only had one patient per room. Also Simpson was not particularly impressed with reports that in Vienna they failed to change the sheets between patients. Additionally Simpson was not moved by Semmelweis's insistence that the English adopt his theories since, as Simpson noted, in England they had already been using chlorine solution washes before attending patients for many years. 

In fact one medical textbook published in 1854, quoted by Semmelweis in his book, noted that in English hospitals they had already adopted the practice of chlorine washes. When Simpson responded to Semmelweis he was a bit dismissive because he didn't think much of the hygienic practices of the doctors in Vienna who had apparently just barely discovered hand washing.

So what about the hospital in Vienna? Some versions of the story mention that the hospital administrator opposed hand washing. But this is contradicted by what Semmelweis wrote in his own book. It is true that his superior in the hospital didn't agree with Semmelweis, but his disagreement was over Semmelweis's theory, not the actual hand washing. After Semmelweis left Vienna the doctor who replaced him continued the practice of handwashing and kept the mortality rate low.

Semmelweis's reason for departure from Vienna is frequently cited as proof that he was persecuted for his ideas. Semmelweis was not promoted to the equivalent of full professor, and was also given a lower position along the lines of adjunct faculty. Frustrated Semmelweis left Vienna and returned to Hungary where he ultimately ended up working in the hospital in Pest.

To understand this we need to look at the larger events at the time. Vienna was the capitol of Austria, which was at the time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Austria-Hungary was an unstable collection of nations that would very quickly collapse in the aftermath of WW I. As a Hungarian Semmelweis was viewed with suspicion in Austria, especially since his siblings and other family members supported the Hungarian revolution in 1848 and 1849. It was precisely at the end of the revolution, with at least one of Semmelweis's brothers being executed for treason, that Semmelweis was passed over for promotion. Even though many of his colleagues recommended him, the hospital administration decided to hire an Austrian because of political considerations. He also had a contentious relationship with some of the doctors in the hospital, including his direct superior. So being passed over for promotion was more about politics and personal relationships than disrespect for his research.

But in his book Semmelweis maintains that it was because his superiors disapproved of his theories and wanted someone who would not promote them. But, as already noted, his replacement continued using a chloride solution for washing hands, and also wrote a textbook that included a section on Semmelweis's theory. 

So just based on the information included in Semmelweis's book, we learn that doctors commonly washed their hands with soap and water. The medical practices were not uniform across Europe, even down to how many patients were kept in a room and how often they changed the sheets. But in some countries, such as England, it was apparently routine for doctors performing surgery, or delivering a baby, to wash their hands with a chlorine solution. It was not the case that doctors all over the continent were repositories of unmitigated filthiness.

They did inadvertently spread disease because they did not know about germs, but there was nothing in Semmelweis's theory to imply the spread of germs. From the way he understood it he found a cure for a single, though deadly, disease. He never extended his ideas to other diseases such as dysentery, because he focused on a single problem. In his writing there is no indication that hand washing with a chloride solution could be a way of avoiding any other diseases. It was only later with the development of germ theory that doctors could recognize using a chloride solution (bleach) as a general way of controlling germs.

In retrospect Semmelweis is remembered for being correct about washing hands, but he was not correct about the core of his theory which assumed that miasma (vapor or gasses) emanating from decaying matter from a corpse was the primary source of the disease he was studying. A few of the articles written about him mention only in passing those things that made up the bulk of his theories. It was those things, that disease was caused by particles of decaying organic matter, that his contemporaries rejected. They were not opposed to hand washing, they did it anyway, they just didn't think that it was necessary to wash their hands to remove the minute traces of decaying organic matter.

Later because hand washing became such an important thing, that part of his writings were remembered and emphasized, and nothing else. He was only known for telling people to wash their hands, and not for ideas like self-infection through dead organic matter. Thus it was assumed that opposition to him was because of hand washing. And the only conceivable way someone could be opposed to hand washing was if they did not wash their hands. This is the unfortunate source of the idea that doctors in the 1800's did not wash their hands. But just using the writings of the man who is always cited for proof that doctors did not wash their hands, we can see that doctors did in fact wash their hands.

The καιρός of the Second Coming, Not the Χρόνος of the Second Coming

I have been seeing a large number of posts and comments about the time of the second coming and whether it will happen in a few years or not. Hopefully this post can change the way we think about the second coming.

A famous American writer once told a story of two fish swimming along. Another fish swimming by nods at them and says, "Morning, boys. How's the water?" The two fish keep swimming until one looks at the other and says, "What the #$!& is water?”

We are surrounded by our own culture and many times it determines how we think and view the world without us realizing it. In our culture time is something that structures our world. If you have to go to work, you are expected to be there at a certain time. Church meetings are scheduled at a specific time (and not Mormon standard time). TV shows air at preset times. Your GPS can tell you down to the minute how long it will take you to get somewhere. You can track the progress of a package being delivered. What ever device you are using to read this on has a clock that is synchronized over the internet by an official clock somewhere.

Our concept of time is something we are so embedded in that we have a hard time realizing that our concept of time is unique in all of human history. Up until a few hundred years ago the smallest unit of time anyone really used was the hour, and even that was a little hard to measure. For most of human history time was measured by the position of the sun, moon, and stars. The extreme modern obsession we have with exact times did not exist until recently.

Time in the ancient world, the world of the Bible, was a very different thing. For us time is something that increments up. Events start at some time, other events follow, and then things happen after that. There is a specific order to events. We want to keep things in chronological order. If you study history you will probably study it in chronological order, or will study a specific time period according to the years on a calendar.

In the world of the Bible how people interacted with time was very different. There was no exactness. Meetings or events didn't start at exact times. No one was checking the clock to see if a meeting should start, because there were no clocks! (None in the sense that we know them.) A festival, or feast, or celebration, or meeting would start when the necessary people were there to start it.

In Hebrew the word for time is יום, or Yom. The concept of yom is simple, but for us it can be confusing. Yom can be translated, depending on context as "day", "year", "age", "epoch", "season", or just an undefined amount of time. In one way we use the word "day" in the same way when we say, "Back in my day...."

In Greek time is broken down into two separate concepts. Greeks used the word Χρόνος (chronos) to talk about time as we are familiar with it. When King Herod asked the wise men what time they saw the sign of Christ's birth (as recorded by Matthew, which was written in Greek), he was asking them about the chronos of the event. It was something that could be put on a calendar. Time, as it relates to chronos has a start and an end. Or it could be used to indicate the time "before" something happened. But chronos could be an undefined amount of time, but it was still something that could be put on a calendar.

The other Greek word that gets translated into English as "time" is καιρός (kairos). While you could put kairos down on a calendar, it doesn't refer to a specific time. It refers to the right or opportune time. A comedian telling a joke has to time it right to make people laugh. Comedic timing isn't a chronos, thing, it's a kairos. When growing food in a garden you don't follow an exact schedule. You plant the garden when the time and weather conditions are right, and you harvest the food when it is ripe. If it's not ripe, you just have to wait. It's not something you can sit down with the plants and work out a day when they will be ready. This is a case of kairos.

The Apostles who recorded the words of Jesus used the word kairos to talk about the time of the "harvest". There wasn't a chronos for the time of harvest, there was a kairos. The time wasn't set. It depended on the conditions of the wheat. At times the apostles would call the saints to action saying that now was the kairos to act, now was the right time. It wasn't because they had reached the correct date set in heaven for it. The conditions were right to preach and convert many people. They had to take advantage of that moment before it passed.

When it came to the second coming, Jesus and the apostles never spoke of the chronos of the second coming. They only spoke of the kairos, the unknown time that it would be the right moment for it to happen.

32 “But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 33 Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time (kairos) will come. (Mark 13:32-33)

Even speaking of the "time of the gentiles" it was not a specific set period of time. There would be a beginning and end to the time of the gentiles. But those times were not, and are not set.

And importantly some of the critical "times" used by people to try to predict the chronos of the second coming, are not chronos at all, but kairos.

14 But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle, so that she could fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to her place where she is nourished for a time (kairos), and times (kairos plural), and half a time (half a kairos). (Revelation 12:14)

These times are not set times (chronos). They are movable times (kairos) that depend on certain conditions.

With this view, God does not have a "millennial" planner that He keeps hidden so that no one will know when He has scheduled the second coming. God is waiting and watching for the correct moment of the second coming. It is not a set time, and Jesus warned us against those who thought they knew the chronos or even the kairos of the second coming. God is not bound by any timetable. There is only one who knows the correct conditions (kairos) for the second coming, and that is God, and he will act when the conditions are right.

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Additional materials/reading:

Here's all the times chronos appears in the Bible (New Testament). You can check out how it is used and how it is translated.

https://biblehub.com/str/greek/5550.htm

When you separate the two concepts some things in the Bible start making a lot more sense.

Evidence in Science Requires Context

Suppose someone approached you and said, "There is a volcano close by." And when you ask them how they know that, they show you a piece of volcanic rock. Is that evidence that a volcano is nearby? It depends.

Where was the rock found? Was it close by? Are there other volcanic rocks in the area? Or did someone bring it into the area?

By itself a piece of volcanic rock is not evidence of a volcano. The rock has to be placed in context for it to be evidence of a volcano nearby.

This idea is easy to understand, but sometimes very hard to apply. Here I will give a few real examples of observations that when taken out of context can be considered evidence for a particular conclusion, but when put back into context do not support the conclusion.

In an article entitled Paleoindian ochre mines in the submerged caves of the Yucatán Peninsula, Quintana Roo, Mexico published recently in Science Advances, the authors were describing their work in a system of caves in Mexico. They found evidence of humans using the caves to mine ochre for pigment and paint. One of the things they had to determine was how long ago humans were using the caves.

They found charcoal in the caves near where the mining had taken place. If the charcoal was left there by the people who were mining the ochre then all they would have to do is use carbon dating to determine the age of the charcoal. The age of the charcoal should tell us when the mining took place. It would be easy to assume that the charcoal came from the people who were mining the ochre, but the full context must be taken into account before we can accept that conclusion. The age of the charcoal may not be evidence for the time when there was mining.

As the authors noted,

"Charcoal is a difficult medium for dating in the submerged caves of Quintana Roo because it may be produced by forest fires, then deposited by wind and rain, and remobilized repeatedly by floods during major storm events or, ultimately, by rising sea level. Archaeologists have often interpreted instances where charcoal concentrates in small catchment basins and litters cave floors as prima facie evidence of human activity. However, the mere presence of charcoal concentrations is insufficient to make this inference. Before submerged-cave charcoal can be interpreted as anthropogenic, it is necessary to establish that the sample materials are artifacts, that is, that they are representative of human activity and distinct from the products of natural processes."

In other words, the presence of charcoal is not automatically evidence for human activity. The charcoal must be considered in context.

In this case the authors could argue that the charcoal most likely came from human activity, and human activity at the time the ochre was being mined. To make this case they considered the broader context to see if there were other ways that the charcoal could get there, or if the cave formations showed that the charcoal had been there for a long time. Some of the charcoal was covered over by flowstone, which allowed the authors to get a rough date for when it was left there. This dating agreed with the carbon dating.

Only after all this could they use the carbon dating as evidence for when the mining took place. Before it was evidence for their conclusion they had to consider the evidence in context.

Now a second example. In a recent meeting at work we were discussing ways of detecting starburst driven galactic outflows using X-ray observations of galaxies. These outflows should produce strong X-rays which are easy to detect. The problem is that the things we were looking for are not thew only things that produce X-rays in galaxies. Just detecting a strong X-ray source is not evidence of a galactic outflow.

Before we could consider it to be evidence for what we were looking for we had to look at the context and see if other things could produce the X-rays and rule those out first. Only then we could use the X-ray detections as evidence for our conclusions. Just like the archaeologists with the charcoal in the caves, we had to consider the context.

Now a final example. In a discussion I had about the age of the earth, the person I was talking to brought up polonium halos as evidence of a young earth.

Polonium is a radioactive element and if polonium is mixed with melted rock it will collect inside micro-zircon crystals inside the rock. As the polonium decays the released radiation will "burn" the rock around it. This leaves a "halo" of scorched rock around the zircon crystal that held the polonium. These halos are very small and can only be seen under a microscope.

Young earth creationists argue that these scorched halos around zircon crystals are evidence of the rapid formation of the rock instead of the rock slowly cooling to its present state over thousands or millions of years. Their reasoning is that polonium has a very short half life (138 days) so the only way it can be in the zircon crystals is if the rock formed and cooled into its solid state in a matter of days. This fast formation would allow for the polonium to last long enough to freeze in the rock, and then burn the halo as it decayed.

There are a few problems with this, and all involve the context of these halos. First, assuming the source of these scorched halos is polonium, that would only show that the rock formed quickly, but it would not tell you how old the rock was. In order for the halos to be used as evidence for a young earth they have to show that the rocks are young, not just that they formed quickly.

Second, while polonium is highly radioactive, it isn't the only radioactive element. There are other elements with much longer half lives that can still do just as much damage to the surrounding rock. Most notably, uranium. Uranium is also found in zircon crystals. There is no proof that the scorched halos around zircon crystals were caused exclusively by polonium.

Third, even if the halos were caused exclusively by polonium there is more than one way to get polonium in the crystals without rapid formation. It turns out that polonium is a daughter product of uranium. In fact the only source of naturally occurring polonium is in rocks and ores with uranium content. So if the damage was done by polonium it could still have been done over millions and billions of years as uranium slowly decayed into polonium, and polonium quickly decayed into lead.

Young earth creationists argue that these halos around zircon crystals are evidence of a young earth. But when considered in context they cannot be used as evidence of rapid formation or especially young rock ages. In this it fails to be evidence for a young earth.

In these three real examples, before something can be considered evidence for a certain conclusion, it must be considered in context and scientists must ask the questions,

• How did it get here?
• Is there another possible source for it?
• Does its presence make sense in its environment?
• Does it actually support my conclusion?

If we do not ask these basic questions then we cannot claim that something is evidence for our conclusions.