Month: August 2023

More Evidence That the Early Church Believed in the Divinity of Christ

An early Christian mosaic found in the Megiddo church, near Tel Megiddo, Israel. Based on several clues, it is dated around AD 230.

For some reason, I missed the discovery of this amazing mosaic when it was announced. However, a pastor friend of mine recently shared this article, which indicates that the mosaic might be coming to the Museum of the Bible here in the U.S., so I looked into it and decided some of my readers might be interested.

The story begins in 2004 when a prison in northern Israel was planning some new construction. Archaeologists came to ensure that the construction wouldn’t destroy any historically-valuable material, and it’s a good thing they did, because they found that the prison had been built over an ancient Christian house of prayer. It is now thought to be the earliest known Christian prayer hall, dated to be from approximately AD 230!1

More importantly, a portion of the mosaic (shown above) says, “The God-loving Akeptous has offered the table to God Jesus Christ as a memorial.”2 The table isn’t there, but it probably functioned as an altar. However, the message of the mosaic is clear: Jesus Christ is God. This is important, because some popularizers of Christian scholarship claim that the early church didn’t believe in the Divinity of Christ. For example, in her book, A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Karen Armstrong claims:3

After his death, his followers decided that Jesus had been Divine. This did not happen immediately; as we shall see, the doctrine that Jesus had been God in human form was not finalized until the fourth century. The development of Christian belief in the Incarnation was a gradual, complex process.

If that sounds familiar to you, you might recognize it from Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. No serious scholar of early Christianity believes such nonsense, because there is ample evidence that says otherwise. Nevertheless, since it was in the popular book-turned-movie, I encounter a lot of people who believe it. Well, here is a mosaic that predates the fourth century by about one hundred years, and it says that at least those who came into this prayer hall knew that Jesus is God.

Of course, we don’t need this mosaic to tell us that the early church believed in the Divinity of Christ, since lots of early church fathers are on record about it. Here is a sampling:

Ignatius of Antioch (c. AD 50 – c. AD 110):

I Glorify God, even Jesus Christ, who has given you such wisdom. For I have observed that you are perfected in an immoveable faith, as if you were nailed to the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ…
[Epistle to the Smyrnaeans]

Hence every kind of magic was destroyed, and every bond of wickedness disappeared; ignorance was removed, and the old kingdom abolished, God Himself being manifested in human form for the renewal of eternal life.
[Epistle to the Ephesians]

Justin Martyr (AD 100 – AD 165):

And that Christ being Lord, and God the Son of God, and appearing formerly in power as Man, and Angel, and in the glory of fire as at the bush, so also was manifested at the judgment executed on Sodom, has been demonstrated fully by what has been said.
[Dialogue with Trypho]

…but now you will permit me first to recount the prophecies, which I wish to do in order to prove that Christ is called both God and Lord of hosts…
[Dialogue with Trypho]

…the Father of the universe has a Son; who also, being the first-begotten Word of God, is even God. And of old He appeared in the shape of fire and in the likeness of an angel to Moses and to the other prophets; but now in the times of your reign, having, as we before said, become Man by a virgin, according to the counsel of the Father, for the salvation of those who believe on Him…
[First Apology]

Irenaeus of Lyons (c. AD 130 – c. AD 200):

For I have shown from the Scriptures, that no one of the sons of Adam is as to everything, and absolutely, called God, or named Lord. But that He is Himself in His own right, beyond all men who ever lived, God, and Lord, and King Eternal, and the Incarnate Word, proclaimed by all the prophets, the apostles, and by the Spirit Himself, may be seen by all who have attained to even a small portion of the truth. Now, the Scriptures would not have testified these things of Him, if, like others, He had been a mere man…. He is the holy Lord, the Wonderful, the Counselor, the Beautiful in appearance, and the Mighty God, coming on the clouds as the Judge of all men;—all these things did the Scriptures prophesy of Him.
[Against Heresies]

Like many things we learn from our culture, then, the idea that the early church didn’t believe in the Divinity of Christ is demonstrably false. This Mosaic simply adds more evidence to the huge pile.

REFERENCES

1. Yotam Tepper and Leah Di Segni, A Christian Prayer Hall of the Third Century CE at Kfar ‘Othnay (Legio), Publication of the Israel Antiquities Authority, p. 50, 2006.
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2. Ibid, p. 36.
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3. Karen Armstrong, A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, (Ballatine Books, 1993), p. 81
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A Really Good Flat Earth Documentary

I have written a lot about the idea of a flat earth. While you might think that most ancient people believed it, that’s just not true. (see here, here, and here). I have also compiled a list of resources that have observations you can make today which clearly show the earth is not flat. Well, a reader of those posts made me aware of a documentary called Behind the Curve, which you can watch for free. I don’t watch a lot of documentaries, but the premise of this one sounded intriguing, so I decided to give it a try. I am glad that I did!

The documentary follows several flat-earthers as they try to make a case for their position. It allows the flat-earthers to talk and never attempts to refute any of their arguments. Between these scenes, however, there are scientists who discuss the flat-earth movement. Those scientists don’t offer any criticisms of the flat-earth arguments, either. They just discuss their impressions of flat-earthers. Refreshingly, the scientists don’t insult the flat-earthers. Instead, the scientists just discuss their impressions of how flat-earthers think as well as why they believe in such an easily-refutable idea. It’s a very interesting juxtaposition.

What I loved most about the documentary, however, is how it shows flat-earthers doing experiments that attempt to “prove” that the earth is flat. In one of the experiments, for example, a person bought a $20,000 ring laser gyroscope. Once it is set to point in a specific direction, it unerringly points that way, no matter how it is moved. Well, if the earth is flat and not rotating, the gyroscope would never change its orientation once it is set and left stationary. However, if the earth is mostly spherical and rotating, the gyroscope would have to change orientation to continue pointing in the same direction. Since the earth goes through a 360-degree rotation every 24 hours, the gyroscope would have to drift 15 degrees every hour.

The flat-earther discussing this experiment (Bob Knodel, an engineer) says that when they set it up, they did, indeed, see it drift at a rate of 15 degrees every hour. They didn’t like that result, of course, so they decided that there must be something else going on. Thus, they repeated the experiment, this time putting the gyroscope in a container that excludes magnetic fields. They thought that the dome of stars above the flat earth was influencing the gyroscope in some way, and the container should remove that influence. Unfortunately for them, they got the same result. Now they are trying to find a chamber made out of bismuth into which they can put the gyroscope. I am not sure why they think that might stop the dome of stars from influencing the gyroscope, but Knodel says it is the next step of the experiment.

The other experiment is much more direct. Jeran Campanella wanted to shine a laser down a nearly 4-mile stretch of canal. He wanted to put three posts along the way and measure where the laser hit the posts relative to the canal’s water level. On a flat earth, the laser would hit each post at the same height. On a curved earth, the laser would hit the middle post at a lower point. Of course, a normal laser pointer wouldn’t be visible over such a distance, so he bought a 3-Watt laser, which is very powerful. Unfortunately, when he and others did the experiment, there was just too much dispersion. As a result, the “spot” on the laser was so large that it was impossible to find where the center hit the post.

In the end, they did an ingenious variation of the experiment. They made two blinds with holes that were 17 feet above the the surface of the water. They put a camera on one end of the roughly 4-mile stretch of canal and a person holding a light on the other end. The camera was positioned level at 17 feet above the water, pointed at the hole in the nearest blind. With that setup and a flat earth, the person should hold the light at 17 feet above the water for the camera to see it, as shown in this diagram that is in the documentary:

On a curved earth, the person would have to hold the light higher for it to hit the camera, as shown in this diagram, which is also in the documentary.

The documentary shows them trying to see the light on the camera’s screen when it is held at 17 feet, and they don’t see it. However, when the person with the light holds it high above his head, they see it on the camera’s screen. Campanella’s comment upon seeing this demonstration of earth’s curvature was, “Interesting.” Another experimenter suggested that the light was hitting leaves, which is why it was blocked until it was raised higher.

If you are interested in trying to understand why people today believe an idea that was thoroughly refuted more than 2,300 years ago, this documentary might provide you with some insights.

Blood Clots Cast Even More Doubt on the Current Ancient-Earth Explanation for Soft Tissue in Dinosaur Fossils

Blood clots in a fossil that is supposed to be 270-300 million years old (Image from the article being discussed)

Mark Armitage is doing some of today’s most exciting research on fossils (see here, here, here, here, and here). He recently presented some of his research at the 2023 Microscopy and Microanalysis annual meeting, which published its proceedings.

To my mind, there are three important takeaways from the presentation. First, he finds blood clots in fossils that are much older that what has been commonly reported. Most of these reports are about fossils that are supposed to be 65-70 million years old. Some of the fossils he reports on here are supposed to be 270-300 million years old! That’s what the illustration at the top of this article shows. On the left is a standard microscope image of an early Permian amphibian fossil. The yellow material is bone, and the image is centered on a canal that runs through the bone. When the specimen was alive, the canal held blood vessels and nerves. The white area is empty, and the dark material between the empty space and the bone tissue is clotted blood. On the right, you see what happens when that same sample is hit with ultraviolet light. The dark splotches you see come from iron in the blood clot. When hit with ultraviolet light, iron emits light of a specific wavelength, and that’s the wavelength emitted here. Thus, we know this is iron, and since it is in the clot, it is iron from the animal’s blood. If you want to believe the old-earth timescale, then, you have to believe that a blood clot is able to exist for 270-300 million years without rotting away!

That brings me to the second important takeaway. In a desperate attempt to explain how soft tissue can be in fossils that are supposed to be millions of years old, Schweitzer and her colleagues published a paper suggesting that iron is the key to this remarkable preservation. In that paper, they show how iron from blood can reduce the degradation of blood vessels over a period of two years. However, the experiment required that the blood be treated with an anticoagulant. That way, iron could diffuse throughout the tissue that was being preserved. Armitage’s results show that’s not realistic. Instead, the blood clots trap the iron so that it is not available to the rest of the tissue. This adds to the other arguments which indicate that Schweitzer’s iron-preservation hypothesis is not valid.

The last very important takeaway is how these results affect research that has already been done. As Armitage’s paper says:

We also note that many histological dinosaur bone studies reveal unreported clots, thus we encourage workers to examine their sections for iron auto-fluorescence response under UVFL.

In other words, because of Armitage’s work, we can look at past images that have already been published and see that there are blood clots in previously-described fossils that were not recognized by the researchers who published the studies. Thus, paleontologists have the opportunity to learn more from the fossils that they have already examined. I truly hope that at least some of those scientists are curious enough to take Armitage’s suggestion!