Bible Archives - Page 4 of 7 - Tales of Times Forgotten

Transgender and Intersex People in the Ancient World

It is popularly believed that transgender, intersex, and other gender-nonconforming people only started existing fairly recently and that they are an aberration of modern times. This could not possibly be further from the truth. It is true that the word “transgender” is fairly new, since it was first coined in 1965, but there have been people whom we might consider transgender ever since at least the beginning of recorded history.

In this article, I want to talk about some examples of figures from ancient history, mythology, and literature whom we might consider transgender, intersex, or otherwise gender-nonconforming. Some of these people are fictional; others of them are historical. Not all of them fit perfectly under our modern definition of “transgender,” but all of them are of interest to the discussion of transgender history.

Regarding pronoun use, in the following article, I will mostly be using the English equivalents of the pronouns that are actually used in the ancient sources, which may or may not be the pronouns that the individuals discussed here would have preferred to have been used. Unfortunately, the people I will be discussing in this article who actually existed have all been dead for thousands of years, so it is impossible for us to ask what their preferences are.

Steven Pinker’s “The Better Angels of Our Nature” Debunked

In our society we revere scientists far more than we revere historians. Consequently, people are often more willing to listen to what scientists say about history than what historians say about history. Unfortunately, often times, when scientists try to speak or write about history, they make glaring mistakes.

For instance, I have already written extensively about how the 1980 television miniseries Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, written and presented by the astronomer and astrophysicist Carl Sagan, promoted all sorts of egregious misconceptions about the Neoplatonist philosopher Hypatia and about the supposed destruction of the Library of Alexandria.

The book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, written by the linguist and psychologist Steven Pinker is one that has been bothering me for a long time. I promised that I would write an article about it in this article I wrote last year about violence in the pre-modern world, but I have been holding back until now because I am aware of how popular the book is and what an impact it has had on so many people’s lives.

Bill Gates, for instance, described it in a review as “one of the most important books I’ve read – not just this year, but ever.” Unfortunately, this book is filled with all kinds of historical inaccuracies and I think it promotes some ideas that, while they may seem comforting in the short-term, are actually deleterious in the long-run.

No, the Christian Cross Is Not Based on the Egyptian Ankh

The ankh is a hieroglyphic symbol composed of a T-shape with a loop on top that was used in ancient Egypt to represent the consonant sequence Ꜥ-n-ḫ. The Egyptian word for “life” was composed of this exact sequence of consonants. As a result of this, the ankh became widely used as a symbol for life. People would often wear the symbol on amulets for protection and it was used to decorate shrines, temples, and tombs.

In recent years, a claim has arisen that the Christian cross is, in fact, plagiarized off the Egyptian ankh. Despite its popularity, this claim is almost entirely false, for reasons that I shall explain shortly. Nonetheless, there is a very interesting kernel of truth behind this claim that many of its proponents are not even aware of.

The Modern World Isn’t Even Remotely Secular

In his 1882 work Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft (i.e. The Gay Science), the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche famously declared:

“Gott is tot! Gott bleibt tot! Und wir haben ihn getötet! Wie trösten wir uns, die Mörder aller Mörder? Das Heiligste und Mächtigste, was die Welt bisher besaß, es ist unter unsern Messern verblutet—wer wischt dies Blut von uns ab? Mit welchem Wasser könnten wir uns reinigen?”

In English, this means:

“God is dead! God remains dead! And we have murdered him! How do we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? The holiest and mightiest thing that the world so far has possessed, it has bled to death under our knives—who will wash this blood off from us? With what water could we purify ourselves?”

When he wrote this, Nietzsche did not mean that God had literally died, but rather that modern science had disproven his existence and human beings had entered into a new, secular age. Nietzsche believed that humans needed to find something to replace God to provide life with meaning.

Few academics today agree with everything Nietzsche believed, but they do generally seem to agree that, in the western industrialized world in the twenty-first century, religion is no longer important in most people’s lives and secularism and rationality now generally reign supreme. This notion, however, is entirely mistaken. Traditional religions of all kinds are, in fact, thriving in the western world, especially here in the United States, and belief in the supernatural remains widespread.

How Old Was Mary When She Gave Birth to Jesus?

The ages of Mary and Joseph at the time of Jesus’s birth attracted a great deal of controversy in November 2017, after the Republican Alabama State Auditor Jim Ziegler defended the Republican Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, who has been accused of pursuing a sexual relationship with a fourteen-year-old girl at a time when he was thirty-two. Ziegler said:

“…take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus… There’s just nothing immoral or illegal here. Maybe just a little bit unusual.”

Ziegler claimed that this fact absolves Roy Moore from all blame for his alleged ephebophilia. This is, of course, preposterous. Even if what Ziegler says here were completely correct, that still would not mean it is excusable for men in their thirties today to have sexual relations with fourteen-year-olds. We live in a very different society from the one that existed in Galilee in the first century BC and, regardless of what people 2,000 years ago thought, in our society, it is completely unacceptable for a man in his early thirties to seek sexual relations with a fourteen-year-old.

If we leave aside the whole question of Roy Moore’s guilt, however, we must ask, “Is Ziegler correct about Mary’s age when she gave birth to Jesus?” In other words, was Mary really a teenager when she gave birth to Jesus? The truth is, we really do not know.

What Early Christians Thought about Marriage and Sex

Christians have never completely agreed on anything, but the general view of early Christians towards marriage, sex, and procreation was that they were bad. Of course, even the Christians who believed that these things were bad disagreed over exactly how bad they were. Some of the more radical early Christians believed that sex was so evil that it was better for a person to be literally burned alive than for them to marry and have sex with their spouse.

Most early Christians were more moderate; they believed that marriage and sex were essentially necessary evils. They thought that it was morally acceptable for a man and a woman to marry and have sex, but that it was better for a person to remain unmarried and celibate if possible and that a person should only marry if they couldn’t control themself otherwise.

The Strangest Books in the Bible

The Bible is a collection of various ancient texts that are considered by Christians to be the inspired Word of God. The number of books in the Bible varies depending on which branch of Christianity you happen to belong to. The standard Protestant Bible only has sixty-six books, the standard Roman Catholic Bible has seventy-three books, and the standard Eastern Orthodox Bible has seventy-eight books.

Many of the texts that are included in the Bible seem rather strange—at least when you read them for the first time. There are some books in the Bible that are a bit peculiar in the sense that they don’t fit in well with the other books in the Bible. Then there are other books in the Bible that just seem downright bizarre—at least until you decipher what they’re talking about.

In this article, I want to talk about five of the most unusual books in the Bible. These are books that are striking either because they are so different from the others or because they employ such bizarre imagery.

No, Public Universities Aren’t Dominated by Evil Atheist Professors Seeking to Destroy Students’ Faith

The idea that evil, liberal, atheist professors are forcing their students to renounce their faith is an extremely longstanding and pervasive fear among conservative evangelical Christians here in the United States. Right-wing evangelicals have been blaming universities and their supposedly evil, liberal, atheist professors for increasing secularization in society since at least the late nineteenth century.

The trope of the atheist professor forcing his students to renounce God can be found in political speeches, cartoons, internet memes, and even films. Despite the longstanding prevalence of this idea, however, it is, for the most part, entirely unsupported by evidence.

Who Was the Pharaoh of the Exodus Really?

In popular culture, Rameses II (ruled 1279 – 1213 BC) is almost always portrayed as the pharaoh of the Exodus. He is most famously portrayed as such in the 1956 epic film The Ten Commandments, but he has also appeared in this role more recently in the 1998 DreamWorks animated musical drama film The Prince of Egypt, in the 2013 History Channel miniseries The Bible, and in the 2014 epic film Exodus: Gods and Kings.

It may come as a surprise to many people, then, that the Book of Exodus never actually gives the name of the pharaoh who supposedly tried to keep the Israelites from leaving. Instead, throughout the book, the pharaoh is merely referred to by the Hebrew word פַּרְעֹה (par‘ōh), which is the source of our English word pharaoh. How, then, did we all come to think of Rameses II as the pharaoh of the Exodus? And, more importantly, who was the real pharaoh of the Exodus? Let’s delve back into the mists of antiquity and find out the truth.

No, Easter Is Not Named after Ishtar

Around this time of year it is common to see people sharing memes claiming that Easter is really an ancient pre-Christian pagan holiday that was hijacked by Christians. I wrote an article all the way back in April 2017 debunking some of the more general claims that you often hear about various Easter traditions such as the Easter bunny and painting Easter eggs. This year, though, I want to specifically debunk the popular claim that Easter originated as a festival of the ancient Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar.

This is a claim that has circulated ever since the middle of the nineteenth century. Although it was originally only popular among the most die-hard of Protestant fundamentalists, it has, unfortunately, recently become very popular among atheists. It is, quite frankly, a completely ridiculous claim to anyone who knows anything about ancient Mesopotamian religion, but this sadly has not deterred the claim’s popularity.

In reality Easter is—and has always been—a Christian holiday. The only thing about the holiday that is verifiably of ancient pagan origin is the holiday’s name in English, but even the name doesn’t come from Ishtar, but rather from a totally different goddess worshipped half a world away from Mesopotamia.