Tonight we head into Part 2 of “The Boy from Mt. Rhigi,” where some hair clips just might disappear. Then Jack Pearson has a story/song about “Wild Man Bill.” After that we find out what the leaders of Israel want to do with the two rotten judges.
Tag Archive - Biblical history
Nite Lite 9/12/11 “The Reluctant Thief, Sue-Happy & Samuel’s Rotten Judges”
It’s the first Nite Lite of the 2011-2012 season! Pajamas and the Bible wrapped up in a half hour of adventure, music and laughter. We’re starting the year with a story from Lamplighter Theatre called “The Boy from Mt. Rhigi,” about a boy in training to become a thief. Then we’re diving into The Pond where a slick lawyer shows up and begins making trouble. After that, we’re starting a story about the tallest man in Israel. So here we go!
Bible in the Dirt: Ancient New York in the Bible
Why would a young woman go into a field and sleep on the feet of a man she hardly knew? And where did people go to the bathroom? And why would anyone want oil poured on their head? Good questions that require some digging. Lots of different ancient cultures collide in Scripture, and that’s what we explore on Wednesdays. Because your understanding of history affects how well you understand the Bible. So let’s dig in.
Genesis 11:31
“Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan.”
Abraham came from a city in southern Iraq called Ur of the Chaldeans. Not a very elegant name, sounds more like a backwater town than a thriving New York-type place. But the truth is that it was an ancient New York. They certainly lacked nothing when it came to style. To the right is the headdress worn by Queen Pu-abi around 2550 BC. Lady GaGa would feel right at home in a hat like that.
And they weren’t slackers about art either. Below is The Standard of Ur. Not only does it show us the beauty of their art, but it gives us a glimpse into life in ancient Ur. It has two sides, one for peace and one for war. The peace side has performing musicians, livestock and fish, and people bringing gifts to the king. The men are all bare-chested and wear something akin to a kilt; some are bald, some have long hair.
The war side (that’s the side you can see below) shows elegant chariots being pulled by noble donkeys (we normally think of donkeys as meek little animals, but they weren’t) and soldiers headed for battle.
Then there was the town’s main attraction: the Ziggurat of Ur (below). Almost sounds German, but it isn’t. A ziggurat is a huge temple made of mud bricks for the purpose of worshiping the gods, and the ziggurat in Ur of the Chaldees was first-rate. It was dedicated to the moon goddess, Nanna (no, not Nanna from Peter Pan).
So Ur of the Chaldeans was a thriving culture in Mesopotamia, which means that when God told Abraham to leave Ur and go to the place God would show him, he wasn’t giving up a dusty plot of dirt somewhere in Hickville; he was leaving New York to go into the unknown.
What would you have done if you were Abraham?
Bible in the Dirt Wednesday: Did Scripture authors copycat their cultures in dealing with demons?
Throughout history, people have been dealing with evil spirits, and it is no different in the pages of Scripture. Some would say that the writers of the Bible were merely mirroring their culture in the way that they dealt with demons.
Not true.
Ancient Near Eastern texts contain a multitude of incantations and magical spells whose sole purpose was to protect a person from evil spirits. These types of spells are called “apotropaic spells.” For example, in the Assyrian culture, a demon named Lamashtu was thought to attack pregnant women and kidnap babies as they breastfed. To protect themselves, women would wear a special amulet (see picture above) with a pendant of the god Pazuzu.
The famous Egyptian Book of the Dead contained almost 200 spells to be used in the underworld to protect oneself from demons, monsters and traps. These spells were crucial in helping a person attain immortality.
Demons were also present in non-biblical Jewish literature. In the apocryphal book of Tobit, a woman named Sarah is plagued by a demon named Asmodeus. Seven time she marries , only to be robbed of her husband on her wedding night – Asmodeus kills each of them. In the meantime, a man named Tobias has a foot almost eaten by a fish in the Tigris River. The angel Raphael tells him to catch the fish and take out its gall, heart and liver. If he burns the heart and liver in the presence of someone afflicted by a demon, the person will go free. Raphael then tells Tobias to marry Sarah. I’m sure Tobias wasn’t too keen on the idea, but Raphael assures him that he can overcome the demon with the fish heart and liver.
So Tobias marries Sarah, burns the fish liver and heart, beats the demon and they live happily ever after. Not only that, but Tobias uses the fish gall to cure his father’s blindness. The End.
Next up is the Testament of Solomon. This is a part of something called the Pseudepigrapha [soo-deh-pig-rafa], which is a fancy way of categorizing a story supposedly written by a famous Old Testament person, but in reality written by someone else. The Testament of Solomon was written around the third century. In the story, the angel Michael gives King Solomon a magical ring to control evil spirits and deliver people from affliction. With the ring, Solomon enslaves a demon named Lix Tetrax and forces him to throw rocks up to the workers in the temple.
Any of these stories would fit very well in a Harry Potter book, but would be ill at ease in the Bible because when we look at the way the authors of Scripture handle demons, it is completely different. Demons are not warded off by magic, nor are they utilized for work. They are overcome through the power of Christ.
In Matthew 8, Jesus casts a horde of demons out of two men and into a herd of pigs just by commanding them to go. Two chapters later, Jesus sends his disciples out into the countryside to preach the good news that the kingdom of heaven was near. They were to heal the sick, raise the dead and drive out demons.
And even though the Seven Son of Sceva (Acts 19) utilized Jesus’ name in their failed attempt to cast out a demon, it doesn’t appear that they were followers of Christ, therefore they had no connection to God’s power.
The authors of Scripture did not rely on the traditions of their cultures as they wrote about overcoming demons. They had experienced something totally new and all-consuming: the power of Jesus.
“Demons and Bible” (2005) in NIV Archaeological Study Bible (p. 1572). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan
http://www.king-tut.org.uk/egyptian-mummies/ancient-egyptian-magic.htm
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~pardos/ArchiveSolIntro.html
http://heritage-key.com/world/amulet-used-protection-against-lamashtu-demon
“Jak” is available for purchase!
“Jak and the Scarlet Thread” is officially available for purchase! I finished setting up the details at 2:30am last night, had the first sale come through at 10:43 this morning (my friend Matt:)), and everything seems to be working just fine.
I can’t wait for you and the young adults/tweens in your life to read it and see a picture of our Father that you may have never seen before.
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