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Written by David Gaddy
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Monday, 14 December 2009 12:59 |
Being that the Christmas Holiday is upon us again, I thought I'd include a little discussion about the celebration of Christmas. Each year many Christians ask the question about whether it is appropriate to celebrate the Christmas holiday given some of the pagan roots of the traditions that surround it. This a valid concern that I would like to look at in this study and address some of these concerns. Here are a few of the most common points made:
1) Many Christmas traditions are rooted in pagan practices and therefore they are sinful acts.
2) Many Christmas traditions including the word "Christmas" itself are products of the Roman Catholic Church and protestants should not adhere to them.
3) Jeremiah 10 specifically condemns the use of a Christmas tree.
4) Jesus wasn't even born on Christmas day
5) If Jesus wanted his birthday celebrated, he would've instituted it.
6) Christmas = Commercialism = Greed = Sin
Whew! Lots of reasons for not doing Christmas. However let's look at these closely because there are issues of bad information, misinterpretation, and the merits of the practices to consider. Over the next few days, we'll cover the above list. For today, let's start with the big one(s):
Part 1: The Pagan and Catholic Roots of Christmas Traditions
First let's look at the origins of the holiday and the claims of paganism. The first thing I'd like to be clear on is that these statements about pagan roots are only partly true. Many of our Christmas traditions could have been adopted from pagan practices, probably by the early church as well as Catholicism in an effort to combat pagan practices by substituting them for Christian activities. However, many have blown the origin stories out of proportion based on theories and myth instead of historical facts. The truth is, when Christianity began to spread, it landed on top of many existing cultures, specifically for our study, Roman and Greek. These were pagan cultures with many traditions, festivals, and celebrations. Many of these practices were adopted to reflect Christian worship instead. Thus supplanting pagan worship with Godly worship. If this is true, the paganism was purposeful replaced to help remove it from the traditions of the people. One surprising specific result of this is the very use of the word "church", which came from the druid practice of worshipping in a circle (church literally means circle). The Greek New Testament used the word, ekklesia which was translated as "church" during the middle ages, after the word had been adopted from the druids. Many protestant translators like William Tyndale preferred to translate this word as "congregation" but King James made a decree to his translators to translate the word into "church" so as to maintain peace with the Roman Catholic Church.
When the reformation occurred, protestants initially rejected the practice of holidays because of the Catholic endorsement of these holidays. But after moving to the New World and things began to grow here, eventually Christmas was reintroduced and practiced even by protestants.
In 1858, a protestant Christian by the name of Alexander Hislop wrote a book called "The Two Babylons". This book made the claim that all Catholic practices were derived from the ancient religions of Babylon and therefore made their way into Christmas and other holidays. This started a firestorm against Christmas among protestant Christians and to this day most of the claims of specific traditions and their origins come from the claims in this book. However, Hislop's information cannot be confirmed against any real historical records. Many believe his claims about the Babylonian religion to be mostly speculation. In 1966, a Christian named Ralph Woodrow wrote a book on the same subject largely based on "The Two Babylons", called "Babylon Mystery Religion". This book rekindled the war against Christmas among Christians, but after Woodrow saw how flawed history in "The Two Babylons" was, he recanted his stance on Christmas and wrote a follow-up book called "The Babylon Connection?" which argued against his previous writing. The point was not to say Christmas traditions do not have pagan roots. The point is that we can speculate on it, but the definite origins of these traditions are very much a mystery and not definitely tied to Babylon, the Goddess Semiramis, or her God Son Tammuz (which may or may not have even been worshipped in Babylon). Hislop's study often made leaps in logic that it should not have. Using his type of logic, you could argue that because the traditional snowman is shaped like an idol from pagan history then it must have pagan origins. Two unrelated items should not be given a relationship simply based on similarity. This however is exactly what the Hislop book did. There is however little doubt that these practices originated somewhere outside of Christianity. The question really is: Does this make the practice evil or sinful?
Idol worship is sinful and most of these pagan practices were derived from some sort of idol worship. What makes idol worshipping sinful? God tells us right there in the Ten Commandments, because He is a jealous God and He only wants us to serve him. Does practicing traditional Christmas activities result in you actually worshipping another god? What if you are praising the true God while doing it? What is the intent in your heart? By and large, no one is practicing paganism today while participating in these traditions and no one is worshipping false gods in their heart by doing so. So is practicing something with pagan origins wrong? If so, then we have a larger problem than Christmas. Almost every traditional practice you can think of has some sort of pagan origin, superstitious origin, or pagan similarity. Here is just a small list:
1) The word, "church" itself has pagan roots.
2) The word, "bible" itself has Catholic origins
3) The Gregorian Calendar we use today was commissioned by a Catholic Pope (Gregory) and retained the names of days and months which honor pagan gods. Sunday = Sun Day (Helios), Monday = Moon Day (Ishtar), Tuesday = Tiu's Day (Mars, Aries,Tiu), Wednesday = Woden's Day (Mercury, Hermes), Thursday = Thor's Day (Thor, Jupiter, Zeus), Friday = Frig's Day (Venus, Aphrodite), Saturday = Saturn's Day (Saturn, Chronos). The months also each come from a pagan god's name.
4) The seemingly benign holiday of Thanksgiving could just as easily be tied to pagan celebrations of the harvest season, if the same leaps of logic in Hislop's book are used.
5) Wedding traditions: white dresses, veils, trains, wedding rings, wedding cake, throwing the bouquet and garter, the intertwined glasses, unity candles, candles in general, brides not seeing the grooms before the ceremony, throwing of rice, throwing of flower pedals. This is one of the most pagan filled traditions we practice yet strangely no one seems to be concerned about it like they are for Christmas.
6) Dressing newborn boys in blue, girls in pink
7) It can even be argued that modern day sporting events are patterned after gladiatorial events which were also closely tied to pagan practices by making sport of sacrifices.
8) Any number of sayings we throw around like, "Knock on wood", "jinx", "bless you" (when someone sneezes)
9) Any number of gestures and habits like: covering you mouth as you yawn (although now seen as a courtesy, it was originally thought to hold your spirit in), tossing salt over the shoulder, crossing fingers as a hopeful gesture
This list goes on and on. Almost everything we do traditionally, either is or through unsubstantiated leaps of logic could be tied to a pagan origin. The point is, the origin of a tradition is not as important as the heart of the practitioner, especially when the tradition has been restructured purposefully to bring glory to God. In the case of Christmas, it is one of the few times of the year where the world actually (at least in some ways) acknowledges Jesus Christ openly. The non-believers in most cases do not know the origins of these traditions, they just see it as a Christian holiday. What message do Christians send to them, if we stand alongside the atheists and the socialists in their attempts to remove Christmas from the calendar? Can we not instead use Christmas as a tool and an open door to promote Jesus Christ to the lost?
To be continued in Part 2 - Jeremiah and the Christmas Tree |
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Written by David Gaddy
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Friday, 30 October 2009 12:46 |
Today I want to look at the first 3 verses of Proverbs 30. Why? Because Biblical scholars have been debating the meaning of these verses for years so that makes it fun ground to dig in. :)
"The words of Agur the son of Jakeh, even the prophecy: the man spake unto Ithiel, even unto Ithiel and Ucal, Surely I am more brutish than any man, and have not the understanding of a man. I neither learned wisdom, nor have the knowledge of the holy."
So the world of confusion begins with: who are these people? Agur, Jakeh, Ithiel, and Ucal. How does Agur get airtime in Solomon's book on wisdom if he claims that he hasn't got any? I don't pretend to have the answers, but I did find some interesting theories on this that I'd like to share.
The Hebrew in these verses is difficult to translate and it is speculated that most of the misunderstanding is due to translators not really understanding it. Where they could not catch the meaning they transliterated Hebrew words as proper names. But this theory of translation originally came from a Judaic Scholar and friend of Chuck Missler from khouse.org:
Verse 1: The words of Agur the son of Jakeh, even the prophecy: the man spake unto Ithiel, even unto Ithiel and Ucal,
Here, Agur is a word meaning "the collector". Rabbis consider it a reference to Solomon the collector of wise sayings. Next, Jakeh which means "obedient" would specifically be David the father of Solomon. Next is a very tricky Hebrew phrase that was translated "even the prophecy the man spake". An Interlinear Hebrew Bible reads "the burden (or prophecy) oracle the mighty". Perhaps better worded: "the mighty oracle prophesied". Then we have Ithiel, which is synonymous with Emmanuel or "God with us". Ucal is probably not a name at all, but it means "to be consumed". So if we put this all together, verse 1 becomes:
"The words of the collector, the son of the obedient, the mighty oracle prophesied that God with us will be consumed."
Verse 2: "Surely I am more brutish [means carnal or fleshly] than any man [Hebrew word Ish], and have not the understanding of a man [Hebrew word adam]."
So verse 2 can be retranslated:
"Surely I am more carnal than any man, yet have not the understanding of Adam."
The "understanding of Adam" is most likely a reference to the fall or sin specifically. So, we have a man who is as fleshly as any of us who has not known sin.
Verse 3: "I neither learned wisdom, nor have the knowledge of the holy."
The negative "nor" is not in the Hebrew. The verse should read:
"I was not taught wisdom, yet have the knowledge of the holy."
So the entire passage could be retranslated into a prophecy of Christ saying:
"The words of the collector, the son of the obedient, the mighty oracle prophesied that God with us will be consumed. Surely I am more carnal than any man, yet have not the understanding of Adam. I was not taught wisdom, yet have the knowledge of the holy."
This makes sense in reference to verse 4 which is clearly a prophecy of Christ. |
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