If you have a chance, go online and look up the Shroud of Turin. It is a single piece of linen, 14 feet long by 3 ½ feet wide that bears the faint image of a man, both his front and his back. It was first mentioned in 544 A.D., and a French knight displayed it in 1356 A.D. The claim was that it was the burial shroud of Jesus. People had to look long and hard to figure out that it was an image of a person.

But something remarkable happened in 1898. For the first time the Shroud was photographed, and an amazing thing was discovered when the photographer looked at the negative of the picture. He found that the Shroud itself acts as a photographic negative. In other words, if you take a picture of the Shroud and look at the photographic negative, that image becomes a positive record of the image on the Shroud.

The person on the Shroud appears to have been beaten in the face, jabbed in the scalp with small, sharp objects, crucified with nails through the wrists rather than the palms, stabbed in the side, and beaten on the back. If it was a fake, why would someone in the Middle Ages create it so that hundreds of years would have to go by before photographic negatives could be produced to truly see the image?

Of course, there are two big questions – Is it a fake? Is it the image of Jesus?  Archaeologists and historians have noted that very early paintings of Jesus show him with a face similar to the one in the Shroud. Tests show real bloodstains, rather than paint. Another test done in 1989, using carbon 14 dating methods, placed it as a medieval cloth. So that seemed to suggest it was a fake. However, newer carbon dating shows it to be roughly 2000 years old. Why the differences in dating? The first dating was made from an area of the cloth mended with newer cloth, plus there was a thin coat of bacteria that threw the dating off. Some believe it may be a natural evaporative process while others think it could’ve been a hoax in which the cloth was placed over a hot statue. There’s obviously much more that could be said on this topic, but go online if you want more details.

Here are another two words related to the Bible that get confused–Samaritans and Sumerians.

Samaritans are natives or inhabitants of Samaria, a distinct territory or region in central Palestine. This area used to be occupied by some of the tribes of Israel until Assyria came and hauled them off into captivity. The deported Israelites were replaced with foreign colonists who intermarried among the Israelites that had remained in Samaria. They were a mixed race, which ended up being despised by the Israelites concerned with racial purity.

It was important to note that Jesus talked to a Samaritan woman at a well–he treated her kindly, not something that Jews were supposed to do. In addition, he told the story of the good Samaritan, a shocking idea to the Jews of his day. He was indicating that our neighbors are not just those close to us in beliefs and geography. We are to treat everyone well.  There are actually Samaritans surviving today in a couple of small areas of the Middle East.

Sumerians, on the other hand, were ancient people existing in what is now the southern part of modern Iraq. This was in an area referred to today as the Fertile Crescent. In Sumer people developed the first high civilization in the history of mankind around 3000 B.C.  It was this culture that first developed writing, which consisted of a form of cuneiform (wedge-shaped symbols) script. One of the major cities of ancient Sumer included the biblical Ur, the city from which Abraham migrated.

I’m not brave enough to attempt an explanation for the book of Revelation. It’s an example of apocalyptic writing, a popular genre with particular characteristics that we have discussed during English 245 classes in the past.

Let me just say that there are several ways to interpret this book–the preterist view (most prophecies referred to events around 70 A.D.), future (the Tim LaHaye approach with his Left Behind series), and symbolic (a general picture of God’s ultimate triumph over evil).

I get irritated by those who tell me they have this book all figured out and here’s how it works. They need to be humble and explain that this happens to be their particular interpretation but that there are many other ways to see this puzzling book.

There are many intriguing prophecies in the Bible, which have created heated arguments. Take Isaiah 44:28, for example. If it was written in 700 B.C. as many think, it would truly be a miraculous prophecy  since Cyrus the Persian didn’t exist until the early 500s B.C. Needless to say, there is a raging debate over the dating of Isaiah.

Another puzzling prophecy is from Daniel 9:25, which seems to lay out a timeline from a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Messiah comes. It appears to be a reference to the decree of Artaxerxes in 444 B.C. (see Nehemiah 2:1-8). If these weeks referred to in Daniel are taken as groupings of seven years, this timeline takes us up to 33 A.D., the time of Jesus. Nobody claims Daniel was alive in the time of Jesus, so the controversy has to do with the way the weeks are interpreted.

Then there is Ezekiel 26, which is a judgment on the city of Tyre. The Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to the city. People moved from the city to a nearby island in 585 B.C.  Later, Alexander the Great in 333 B.C. tore Tyre down and use its broken structures to build a raised walkway out to the island to attack the people. Again, the controversy is on the dating of Ezekiel, because if it was written as many believe around 600 B.C., it involves miraculous prophecy.

Christians see many prophetic comments in the Old Testament as referring to Jesus. For example, Micah 5:2  suggests it will be Bethlehem from which a future ruler will be born; the indication is that he is an eternal being. Then there are the famous chapters in Isaiah (49, 50, 52, 53) that  Christians apply to Jesus – his life, sufferings, and purpose for his existence. One other interesting set of verses comes from Psalm 22, where it seems to speak clearly of someone’s death by crucifixion, a type of punishment, unknown in the psalmist’s  time.

Of course, the big question here is whether there really were such plagues, and, if so, were they natural or miraculous. Some suggest the Nile turning to blood may refer to red sediment in the late summer which comes down from Ethiopia. When that happens on occasion, frogs abandon the river and bacterial algae pollute the river. Then, when the frogs died, the area ended up with all sorts of gnats, which bred in flooded fields in late autumn.

Flies multiplied like the gnats, carried anthrax to cattle, and people were afflicted with boils from the anthrax. Then hail could be expected in January or February. Often Egypt was hit with locusts in March or April. Another plague, darkness, could have been the result of  blinding sand storms blowing in spring.

So, you can imagine Egypt suffering through disaster after disaster through one terrible year. I’m not trying to suggest there were no miracles involved, but it’s interesting to think about the natural disasters which could have hit one area over the span of a year.

There’s a papyrus called the Ipuwer text that mentions disasters like those reported in Exodus. Take a look at it when you have a chance.

Well, here we go again. This time, less controversy (see the Paul post last week). This one focuses on two peoples who often get confused in the Old Testament.

The Bible is filled with various nations, people, and places which are very confusing because they sound alike. One example of that is two groups of people: the Philistines and the Phoenicians.

The Philistines were an aggressive tribal group that occupied part of southwest Palestine from about 1200 to 600 B.C. They seem to have come from the area of Greece and Crete, ending up in colonies along the Mediterranean coast of Canaan. For a long time they attacked Israelites, and we read about some of the struggles in the stories of Solomon, Saul, and David. It was the fact that they knew how to work with iron that made them tough in battle.

The Phoenicians, on the other hand, lived further north. They were good seafaring people who achieved a golden age between 1050-850 B.C. It was the Phoenicians who set up the important colony of Carthage, which was to become a bitter enemy of Rome in later days. Sometime, read of the terrible wars fought between these two powers.  They’re credited for originating the alphabet and for pioneering the skills of glass-making as well as the dyeing of cloth. Scholars believe Solomon’s Temple and many of its furnishings were based on a Phoenician design.

Paul has a bad rap today. Many see him as anti-woman, and, in turn, they see Christianity in the same light. Is that true? Did he hate women? First, keep in mind that women were treated badly in first century; they were seen as inferior in every way to their husbands. Let’s take a look at two passages which critics of Paul and Christianity use as evidence that he was hostile to women.

The first one is 1 Timothy 2:11-12. He sounds pretty tough here – “she must be silent.” But many people see this as Paul’s dealings with a particular church at a particular time. We see an example of this just a few verses before the passage above. Take a look at verses 8-10 in which men are told to lift up their hands in prayer and women are told not to wear braided hair or pearls. People today recognize these were cultural norms that Paul was dealing with rather than eternal truths for all people of all times. Notice too that says it is okay for a woman to learn, which was quite a change from the society around Paul. In addition, verse 12 says, “I do not permit a woman”; the correct verb form actually is “I presently do not permit.” What he seems to be saying is that women should learn first before teaching others. In the same verse Paul uses an odd word for “authority.” Many scholars believe he is saying it’s wrong for women to “usurp” authority over men. If we put this all together, we get a statement from Paul something like this: “I am not presently permitting a woman to teach in a manner of usurping authority over a man.” This seems far different from the stereotypical picture of Paul as being anti-woman.

The other passage is found in 1 Corinthians 14:34-35. It sounds like Paul wants to keep women silent in the churches. But go back just a few chapters to 1 Corinthians 11:5 where Paul says it’s okay for women to pray and prophesy. Again, this sounds like a particular problem Paul was dealing with in that church.

The same writer, Paul, also wrote Galatians 3:27-28, which many people see as a Magna Carta for women. So the attack on Paul and Christianity is not as clear-cut as some would believe.

Many people think of numerology, and they imagine superstitions. But the Bible uses numbers to strengthen theological concerns in an interesting fashion.

Like many ancient peoples, Hebrews believed certain numbers had significance. The following list will give you a brief idea of what they believed: 1 – God, 2 – society, 3 – heavenly, divine, Trinity , 4 – earth, worldly, 5 – man, imperfection, 6 – evil, incompleteness,  7 – perfection, 12 – harmony, completeness, 40 – completing, finishing.

Consider places where these numbers pop up in the Bible. In Genesis 1, for example, there are several repetitions in Hebrew of the number seven as God creates. In Revelation, the number of the beast is 666. You can probably see why. Then there is the number 40, used often in both the Old and New Testaments. Take a look the next time you are reading the Bible and see how often key numbers are used and repeated for a shorthand method of revealing deeper issues.

OK, we have been looking at places/people/concepts in the Bible that have puzzled people. Let’s continue with a reference to how many Israelites were counted in the Old Testament.

There seems to be a problem when the total number of Israelites is discussed during the time of the Exodus. Verses in Exodus 38 indicate  600,000 men. Later references in the book of Numbers (chapters 1 and two) also suggest a similar count. If we add in women and children, we will end up with something like 2 million people. Here’s one way to visualize this number – if all of them were walking two feet apart with 10 in each row, you’d end up with a ribbon of people 75 miles long. That doesn’t seem possible, so alternatives have been proposed. It may be that a reference, for example, to one group of Israelites as 45,000 actually means 45 families/groups/tents. If that’s the case, you would end up with a total number of Israelites around 20,000. That seems reasonable. Another way of thinking about this has to do with the importance of genealogy to the Jewish people. Maybe those vast numbers include the dead with living. If we jump ahead to Joshua 4:13 and read about the Israelites as they crossed the Jordan River, we get a much smaller number – 40,000. One other place also suggests a smaller number. Take a look at Numbers 3:40-43 where there is a census of firstborn — 22,000.

Let’s continue looking at places and terms in the Bible that have confused people through the ages.

Lost tribes of Israel

In 722 B.C. Israel fell to the Assyrian army. Many of its inhabitants were deported to the Syrian territories. This event marked the end of the northern kingdom of Israel. Assyrians had a terrible policy to prevent future unrest in territories they conquered – they deported the inhabitants and brought in others from someplace else in the kingdom.

So the question for some is simple – what happened to the 10 lost tribes? Many have attempted to trace these tribes all over the world. For example, there was something called British Israelism in the 1800s which suggested these tribes somehow had settled in ancient Britain. This idea helped the British become much more pro-Jewish, and in turn led to England’s support for a Jewish homeland after World War 1.

By the way, the people brought into the northern kingdom of Israel to replace the Jews were called Samaritans. The remaining Jews despised them and considered them mongrels, so when Jesus told the story of the good Samaritan, his listeners were amazed.

Mt. Sinai

Where exactly was the mountain on which Moses received the 10 Commandments? Traditionally, it’s been located in south central Sinai peninsula. There’s an ancient monastery there that is spectacular. However, there is not one piece of hard evidence to link this site with Moses.  Other verses in the Bible seem to agree – Galatians 4:25 says “Arabia”; Exodus 3:1 plainly says Mt. Sinai is in Midian (Saudi Arabia today). Base Institute, an organization that pursues biblical archaeological claims, makes a strong case for a mountain in Saudi Arabia. You can check out their information on the Internet if you choose.