[Mesopotamia] contains the site of the earliest known writing, in the lower reaches of the Euphrates valley. But in its western zone, in the coastal cities of Syria, it was also the first to make the radical simplification from hieroglyphs that denoted words and syllables to a short alphabet that represented simple sounds. The political effects of this were massive. For the first time, literacy could spread beyond the aristocratic scribal class, the people who had leisure in childhood to learn the old, complicated, system; positions of power and influence throughout the Assyrian empire were then opened to a wider social range.
The area also contains the first known museums and libraries, often centralised, multilingual institutions of the state. But by an irony of fate which has favoured the memory of this clay-based society, its documents were best preserved by firing, most simply through conflagrations in the buildings in which they were held, a circumstance that was not uncommon in its tempestuous history. These catastrophes were miracles of conservation, archiving whole libraries in situ, on occasion with even their classification intact, and have materially helped the rapid reading of much unknown history in our era.
-Ostler, Empires of the Word, p.34
Countless written sources from ancient history have been lost because the libraries where they were stored went up in flames. The tragic losses of the libraries of Alexandria and Baghdad come to mind as a couple of such catastrophes. What might we have known that is now lost had these libraries survived to pass on their priceless knowledge?
It’s interesting, then, to realize that it’s because even older libraries burnt down that many of their records were preserved. When clay, not papyrus, vellum, or paper, was the medium of preserving written records, ancient fires actually had the effect of helping to preserve some of these records for future discovery. Twice-baked clay buried in the dry climate of the Middle East tends to last a very long time.
This is especially relevant to Christians because so many of these ancient cuneiform records have gone on to confirm the accuracy and trustworthiness of the Bible. Just today, I read about a newly discovered cuneiform fragment in Jerusalem. This ancient record from the late First Temple period refers to a payment the king of Jerusalem owed to the Assyrian king. This discovery aligns very well with the Old Testament’s claims that later Judean kings came under Assyrian vassalage.
There are many parts of the world where the climate does not allow for the same sort of preservation of undiscovered artifacts over thousands of years. Perhaps part of God’s plan in centering his revelation in the broader Middle East was because of these unique possibilities for conservation – even conservation via catastrophe.
If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.
Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. Our kids’ TCK school is also in need of a math and a science teacher for middle school and high school. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.
Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
Ever wonder what was going on in Acts 14 when the Lystran crowds respond to a miraculous healing at the hands of Paul and Barnabas by proclaiming them Hermes and Zeus? Check out this helpful background context:
The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men. This phrase recalls a well-known mythological story. One day Jupiter (Zeus) and his son Mercury (Hermes) disguised themselves as mortals and visited a thousand homes in Phrygia. Each denied them hospitality until Baucis and her husband, Philemon, opened their humble home to the gods. After feeding the guests with their best food, the elderly couple soon realized they were hosting divine visitors after the wine flagon constantly refilled itself. When Jupiter and Mercury warned them about an impending flood that would destroy their wicked neighbors, Baucis and Philemon fled to high ground. After the flood, their lone-standing home was transformed into a magnificent temple. When asked their one wish, Philemon and Baucis requested to die together. Many years later, while caring for the temple, the couple began to sprout leaves, and the two were simultaneously transformed into trees in the sight of their neighbors.
It is little wonder that Paul and Barnabas were treated as they were, for the crowd thought Jupiter and Mercury had possibly returned. Barnabas, as the older of the two, was undoubtedly identified as Jupiter, while Paul, as the speaker, was perceived to be Mercury, the messenger god.
-ESV Archaeology Study Bible, note on Acts 14:11-13
As it turns out, the locals in Lystra did have a category for a pair of normal-looking men showing up and performing miracles. Recalling this myth that allegedly recounted events from neighboring Phrygia, the Lystrans put two and two together and wrongly assumed that Paul and Barnabas were the gods come to visit in human guise once again.
What I’ve heard said of children can also apply to the unreached or unchurched unbelievers – they are wonderful observers, but terrible interpreters. This story demonstrates the importance of explaining the meaning of our actions to the unbelievers as quickly as possible. Otherwise, they will use their pagan worldviews to project shockingly wrong meanings onto even the ‘normal’ Christian things we’re doing.
During our season of doing refugee ministry and living in a poor apartment complex in Louisville, we had all kinds of people regularly coming in and out of our apartment. This was because we were hosting game nights, weekly community meals, and Bible studies. Imagine our shock when an older African-American friend and ally, Miss Mary, informed us that the word on the street was that we were running some kind of prostitution ring – and that my wife was the pimp!
Unbelievers will come up with all kinds of wild and crazy claims to try to make sense out of the things we’re doing in ministry. In one sense, this is not entirely surprising. Believers sharing the gospel and making disciples are, after all, like the apostles, turning the world upside down. Until the Holy Spirit grants spiritual sight, it’s hard to know what to make of this.
In addition to this, the story of this crowd’s reaction in Acts 14 also makes a subtle case for the necessity of mother-tongue ministry. I believe that trade language ministry, like Paul and Barnabas are doing here in Greek, is valid, biblical, and often effective. But here we see how quickly things go wrong in part because Paul and Barnabas don’t understand what the crowds, speaking in Lycaonian, are saying about them. Once they find out, things have gotten so out of hand that their attempts to shut it all down almost result in blasphemy and do result in Paul ultimately getting stoned. Yikes.
No wonder Paul later asks for prayer that he might make his gospel proclamation clear (Col 4:4).
We should find out any day now if we’ve met our goal and are fully funded for our second year back on the field! If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can do so here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.
Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. Our kids’ TCK school is also in need of a math and a science teacher for middle school and high school. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
The earliest known painting of a biblical scene comes from a house in Pompeii, the Roman vacation town destroyed in a volcanic eruption in A.D. 79. Just as wisdom is one of the emphases of this blog, this first known biblical painting also focuses on wisdom, depicting one of the most well-known scenes where its power is put on display. The painting (which you can see here) is unmistakable to anyone who knows their Old Testament. It shows King Solomon discovering the identity of the true mother by shrewdly calling for the baby in dispute to be cut in two, which is recounted in 1st Kings 3:16-28.
In an unexpected addition, it seems the artist also painted Socrates and Aristotle into the bottom left-hand corner of the painting. These two foundational Greek philosophers are observing the scene from the margins, looking on in admiration or astonishment as the elevated Solomon dispenses his wise judgment.
What this curious painting seems to tell us is that the Bible and its teaching were present even in this holiday town beloved by the Empire’s rich and influential citizens. The fact that it was painted on the wall of a home like this likely means that there were well-to-do Jews, proselytes, or God-fearers who lived in Pompeii, perhaps even early Christians. I think it likely that whoever commissioned this painting was from a Greek or Roman gentile background, hence the inclusion of Socrates and Aristotle. Viewed in this light, the painting is a kind of apologetic, arguing that the apex of Greco-Roman philosophy points, from the margins as it were, to the superior wisdom found in the revealed Word of the God. This would echo the kind of approach that Paul takes when preaching in Athens at the Areopagus – “As some of your own poets have said” (Acts 17:28).
If a gentile was the one who had this scene painted so prominently in his home, it could be a way of him arguing that his believing in the God of the Jews was not, in fact, a betrayal of the Western pursuit of wisdom, but rather, its unexpected and true fulfilment.
If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? We need to raise 26k to be fully funded for our second year back on the field. You can help us with this here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.
Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. Our kids’ TCK school is also in need of a math and a science teacher for middle school and high school. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
Humans are not the only rulers or vice-regents created by God in Genesis chapter one. This fact jumped out at me this year when rereading Genesis again – more proof that no matter how well I might think I know a text, there are almost always things that I’ve missed. No, there are rulers other than humans in Genesis 1 that are created and given authority. These rulers are none other than the sun, moon, and stars.
[14] And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, [15] and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. [16] And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. [17] And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, [18] to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. [19] And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.
Gen 1:14-19
This text says that God created the sun, moon, and stars to:
Separate the day from the night, the light from the darkness
Be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years
Give light upon the earth
Rule the day and rule the night
These entities in the heavens are created to be separators, signs, givers, and rulers. These roles that God himself carries out directly in the first verses of chapter one, he will now do vicariously through his appointed rulers, similar to how he will rule through mankind.
As an aside, this shows the silliness of the objection that holds that Genesis 1 is in error because the creation of light comes before the creation of the sun and stars. Of course, the God who is able to create a light-giving star is also able to create and give light directly without that star. The order of events simply shows a logical movement from direct ruling and giving to mediated ruling and giving. Throughout history, great emperors in Central Asia tended to rule our mountain peoples through emirates, client kingdoms that ruled in the name of the great shah or pasha far away. To govern well, any emperor who conquered our area would, for a period, rule directly, but then quickly raise up representative kings who would exercise his rule locally. This is a helpful metaphor for what we see going on in the Genesis creation account.
Also, what a fascinating window this account gives us into what the sun, moon, and stars actually are, as opposed to merely what they are made of.
“In our world,” said Eustace, “a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.” Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of.”
-CS Lewis, The Dawn Treader
The sun is a separator, a sign, a giver, a ruler – one in the form of a giant ball of flaming gas.
The necessary implication of all of this is that there are things that fall under the creation mandate of the sun, moon, and stars that do not fall under the creation mandate of mankind. Yes, humans are tasked with multiplying and filling the earth, subduing it, and having dominion over the plants and animals (Gen 1:26-30). We are charged with tending and guarding Eden (2:15), and through it, eventually the whole earth. But it seems that this dominion does not trespass into the dominion given to the heavenly lights. They have rightful rule over some parts of creation. We have rightful rule over others. We have neighboring, yet distinct, client kingdoms.
Fallen man is, of course, going to attempt to usurp their rightful place and to take dominion in ways and spheres which do not belong to them, just like our first parents did. And this will somehow lead to disaster, just like it always does. In light of this, it seems like it would be helpful to have a better understanding of what those areas of creation are that are not part of our rightful dominion. True humility and freedom so often come down to simply being honest about what God has or has not given, and then seeking to live within those good, sovereign lines.
First, it seems that we must not attempt to rule the separation of day and night, their light and their darkness. This is one we are actually flirting with, at least in one direction. Advances in technology and the unprecedented affordability of artificial light in our modern age mean that humans are increasingly chipping away at the natural darkness, the nightness of night. This is allegedly resulting in greater economic productivity and physical safety, but it’s also playing havoc with our sleep, health, and happiness. No, the darkness of night is a good part of creation from before the fall. We ignore its importance or set out to conquer it at our own peril.
I have often thought about the fact that the generations living today are likely the first in the history of the world to be largely unable to see the stars in the night sky. Humanity is overwhelmingly an urban race now, living in cities and towns where light pollution means that, when we look up, we simply do not see what every other age of humans before us has seen – stars too many to number. What kind of effect might this be having on us? What happens to a humanity unable to feel how small it is because, when it looks up, all it sees is the haze created by its own electric creations? Does this mean we are losing one of the primary ‘preachers’ of the glory of God in creation (Psalm 19:1)?
To live wisely in this created world, we need to submit to the sun, moon, and stars’ separation of day and night.
Second, we must not attempt to usurp the sun, moon, and stars’ roles as the primary signs of the passage of seasons, days, and years. They set the rhythms of time, and we (and our calendars) are wise to honor that. Civilizations that have attempted to organize their time in different ways, which to them seem more convenient or efficient, have discovered this to be either impossible, illogical, or at least extremely inconvenient. Thus, the Soviet Union’s attempts to replace the seven-day week with a ten-day week, the Nepreryvka, ended in abject failure. Similarly, in order to better ambush his enemies, Mohammad did away with the sacred days that served every year to sync the Arab lunar calendar with the solar year. By doing this, he foolishly untethered the Islamic calendar from the solar year, meaning calendar dates were no longer reliably fixed to agricultural seasons, and events like Ramadan rotate through the entire year on a confusing 33-year cycle. In the opposite direction, our modern Western calendars contain evidence of a time when our months needed to be changed so that the West could better align with the rule of the celestial spheres. September, October, November, and December originally meant “seven, eight, nine, ten,” but the Romans had to insert July and August in there because they found their harvest festivals increasingly taking place further and further away from the actual harvest – something they correctly felt to be foolish and unsound. These ancient Westerners wisely sought to align their annual calendar with absolutely crucial things like harvest time.
In contrast to the annual calendar, one of the odd things about being a Westerner living in Central Asia is realizing that my Central Asian friends are still living in daily rhythms closer to the patterns of creation than I am. Their closing up shop and family dinner times are still attached to sunset, not to a fixed 24-hour clock. They know that the appearance of a certain star on the horizon means the hottest part of summer has come to an end. All of the mothers sense at once when the weather is saying it’s time to bring out the rugs for the annual autumn cleaning. In all of this, I can’t help feeling like they know and sense things about the heavens that I should also know and sense, were it not for the culture I hail from, with its relentless impulse to act like nature is irrelevant.
To live wisely in this created world, we need to submit to the sun, moon, and stars’ signs regarding the seasons, days, and years.
Third, it seems we must not attempt to usurp the heavenly bodies’ role as the primary givers of light. This is related to the first point, but it’s worth restating that even though cheap, artificial light is a great blessing, it needs to be stewarded carefully. It is not a good replacement for natural sunlight. Things like vitamin D deficiency, poor sleep, and depression are some of the more obvious consequences that come from pretending like LEDs or fluorescent lighting can replace the good old-fashioned light of our patron star. Our teams in Central Asia learned this the hard way as many of the houses we rented early on were like dark cement caves that only increased the mental health challenges otherwise faced on the mission field.
To live wisely in this created world, we need to submit to the sun, moon, and stars as the primary givers of light on the earth.
Fourth, we must not attempt to rule day and night, to rule time itself. What might this look like? Well, I like a time travel story as much as the next guy, but it would seem that Genesis 1 makes a case against humans seeking to manipulate time in ways like this. We may not be as far along in invading the heavenly lights’ dominion of time as we are invading their dominion of light and darkness, but stories of time travel continue to captivate our popular culture just as stories of artificial intelligence captivated it half a century ago – and look what’s happening with AI. No, it’s only a matter of time before humanity figures out how to mess with time itself. And when that happens, Christians will need to know and maintain that this is out of bounds, not a part of our creation mandate, the kind of thing that is sure to get very bad, very fast.
Just to clarify, I’m not speaking here about human efforts to organize time and to seek to redeem and steward it well. That is very much a part of our mandate (Col 4:4). But those efforts are attempts to measure and record and live according to something that is governed by another (see point 2). They are not efforts to take over its governance, to mess with the fabric of time itself. Governance of that fabric belongs to God and to some of his other vice regents, the heavenly lights.
No, to live wisely in this created world, we need to submit to the sun, moon, and stars as the primary rulers of time.
Strange as it may seem, and should Christ tarry, we may increasingly face ethical dilemmas that involve invading the rightful domain of the sun, moon, and stars. It seems, therefore, to face this kind of future, we will need to go back to the beginning, back to Genesis 1, to think carefully about what exactly is part of our mandate, and what is not. Yes, we are client kings, vice regents of creation – but so are those shining rulers in the sky.
If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? We need to raise 27k to be fully funded for our second year back on the field. You can help us with this here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.
Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. Our kids’ TCK school is also in need of a math and a science teacher for middle school and high school. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
If you talk to Muslims about the Bible, or if you read the Qur’an, you’ll very quickly realize that Islam doesn’t teach that there are four gospels. No, the Qur’an, and the vast majority of Muslims, assume that Jesus came and revealed one book, called The Injil, i.e. The Gospel (Surah Al-Ma’ida 5:46). The Qur’an seemingly has no idea about the four separate books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Why is this?
Some of this seems to be due to the Qur’anic worldview and its assumption that all true prophets bring their own heavenly book revelation with them for their specific people, such as the alleged ‘scrolls of Abraham’ (Surah Al-Ala 87:19). These prophets and their books are said to all contain the same basic message about turning from idolatry toward worship of the one creator God because the day of judgement is coming.
This is the narrative that Mohammad claimed about himself (Al-Ma’ida 5:48). Then, to try to defend his own prophethood when challenged, it’s also a narrative he forced onto the story every other prophet. Of course, everyone who has actually read the Bible knows that this is not true of every prophet, and not even true of many of the prophets the Qur’an is aware of, such as Abraham and Elijah. It’s not even true of Jesus. He didn’t come revealing a book from heaven; rather, he was the revealed Word of God, and his disciples later recorded his life and ministry in the four gospel accounts. This is yet another piece of evidence that Mohammed likely didn’t have access to a Bible he could read, though he does seem to have had access to lots of Jewish, Christian, and heretical oral tradition floating around in seventh-century Arabia.
However, this week I learned that there may be an additional reason why the Qur’an doesn’t seem to know that there are four gospels. This reason has to do with an early church figure named Tatian, who is a rather complex figure. Discipled by Justin Martyr, Tatian later returned to his home area of Adiabene, old Assyria, what is today N. Iraq, and proceeded to write a fiery treatise, “Address to the Greeks,” on why Christianity is superior to Greek beliefs – but also how he believed the East to be vastly superior to the West in general,
In every way the East excels and most of all in its religion, the Christian religion, which also comes from Asia and is far older and truer than all the philosophies and crude religious myths of the Greeks.
Significantly, Tatian seems to have been the first figure in church history to attempt to translate some of the New Testament into another language. Tatian combined the four gospels into one account, translating this work into old Syriac. This book was called the Diatessaron, and for several hundred years it was the primary form of the gospels used in the Syriac-speaking Christian world of the Middle East and Central Asia. A standard translation of the four canonical gospels didn’t take its proper place among the Syriac churches until a few centuries later. Tatian himself eventually drifted into some problematic asceticism and was proclaimed a heretic.
Here’s where Tatian connects with the Qur’an’s ignorance about the existence of four separate gospels. The Diatessaron was very popular in the broader Syriac-speaking region – a region that overlapped considerably with the territory of Arab kingdoms and tribes. Biblical scholar and linguist Richard Brown puts it this way in his paper, “ʿIsa and Yasūʿ: The Origins of the Arabic Names for Jesus,”
For several centuries, the Diatessaron was the standard “Gospel” used in most churches of the Middle East. When the Quran speaks of the book called the “Gospel” (Arabic Injil), it is almost certainly referring to the Diatessaron.
Why doesn’t the Qur’an seem to understand that there are four gospels? There is a good case to be made that this Islamic confusion about the actual makeup of the New Testament goes back to a well-intentioned project of an early church leader.
In this, there is a lesson to be learned about the unintended consequences of pragmatism in mission contexts. It’s not hard to see how those in the early church, like Tatian, might have felt that it would be more practical and helpful to have one harmonized gospel book instead of three very similar synoptic gospels and one very different Gospel of John. For one, it would have been much cheaper to copy and distribute. Books were very costly to produce in the ancient world, often requiring the backing of a wealthy patron. In addition, a single harmonized account would have also seemed simpler to understand, rather than asking the new believers in the ancient Parthian Empire to work through the apparent differences between the timelines and details presented in the four separate gospel accounts.
What could be lost if the Word of God were made more accessible in this fashion? Well, for one, this kind of harmonization loses the unique message and emphasis present in the intentional structure and editorial composition of each book. The authors of the Gospels were not merely out to communicate the events of Jesus’ ministry. They were also seeking to communicate the meaning of those events by how they structured their presentation of them. For example, consider how Mark sandwiches Jesus’ cleansing of the temple in chapter 11 between accounts of Jesus cursing the fig tree. This structure is intended to communicate to the reader that the cursing of the fig tree was a living (and dying) metaphor of the fruitless temple system of the 1st century – and its impending judgment.
Tatian’s pragmatic decision cut off Syriac-speaking believers from so much of this crucial meaning because he did not simply translate the four individual gospels. Further, he also inadvertently contributed to confusion among the ancient Arabs about the nature of the Injil, a confusion that was later codified in Islam and continues to trip up Muslims to this day, creating doubts in their mind about the validity of the four gospels.
If you find yourself in conversations with Muslim friends about this question of why there are four gospels instead of one, knowing this background might prove helpful. The Qur’an itself doesn’t know that there are four gospels. This is because of its own errant understanding of prophethood – an understanding, unfortunately, aided by some ancient and pragmatic missiology.
We need to raise 28k to be fully funded for our second year back on the field. If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can do so here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.
Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
Christians, too, were scattered by the catastrophe but with a significant difference. Theirs was a living Messiah who had called them to a world mission and whose good news of the gospel was for all peoples. Instead of turning inward, they moved out across the world. Most of them were Jews, however, and as they went they found that the Jewish communities of the Diaspora were a natural ethnic network for the beginnings of Christian advance. This was particularly true in oriental Asia. The surviving records of the earliest Christian groups in Asia outside the Roman Empire almost always have a strong Jewish-Christian tinge, as we shall see.
–Moffett, A History of Christianity in Asia, vol I, p. 10
The quote above, which refers to the scattering of Jews and Christians after the temple’s destruction in A.D. 70, describes a pattern certainly true of our own area of Central Asia. The earliest Christians here in Caravan City* 1,900 years ago, seem to have been Jews. This is evidenced by the fact that the earliest leader of the Christian community here has a Jewish name, a localized form of Samson.
When locals ask me why the Jews rejected Jesus and his message, I am always quick to point out that that simply isn’t the whole picture. Early Christianity was majority ethnically Jewish for its first generations, even though Gentiles eventually came to outnumber their Jewish brethren. The early church was very much a community characterized by what Moffett calls a “strong Jewish-Christian tinge” for a very long time (as an aside, this is yet another reason why any form of Christian anti-Semitism is so absurd).
This passage also reminds me of a pattern that keeps emerging in the church planting efforts among our focus people group. That pattern is that it’s often communities of displaced locals that are more open to the gospel and who provide the first foothold for communities of faith. Our people group is divided by multiple national borders. Those who live outside of the region/country where they grew up are almost always quicker to come to faith and bolder and more open when it comes to living out their faith when compared to those living in their original community.
I recently visited a nearby country where some of the most encouraging fruit among our people group is emerging. There, I saw that God seems to be significantly using this dynamic of displacement. Displaced members of our people group are coming to faith in surprising numbers and taking risks that allow others displaced like them, as well as the actual local locals, to see the love and power of the new birth and the local church. As these others see these things, they are then won by and to them and also then able to reproduce them. Here in Caravan city, we are seeing a similar dynamic in the church plant we are connected to – a church plant now reaching those of this city, but whose initial core was made up of foreigners and members of our people group from a neighboring country.
Much of this is because the power of tribe, family, and patronage network can be a suffocating thing. But when locals are given just a degree or two of freedom from those systems of social control (often through geographical distance or economic independence), this can free them up to more easily become a good core member for a church plant, which can go on to later reach and integrate those native to a given city or area.
Some missionaries might be concerned about this kind of method, since churches are being started primarily with transplants that aren’t fully indigenous, according to how most would understand that term. But both in early Christianity and in our own corner of Central Asia, it’s these very transplants who are providing the foothold that leads to the locals being reached. It’s an indirect investment, yes, but one that very much seems to be worth the risk in the long run.
We need to raise 31k to be fully funded for our second year back on the field. If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can do so here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.
Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
Who was the king of Assyria during the ministry of Jonah?
This isn’t a question I’ve really heard discussed before. Now, having looked into it, it seems we have a strong candidate. And that in part because of an ancient solar eclipse.
The biblical text of Jonah never names the king who presided over Nineveh during its great repentance, simply calling him “the king of Nineveh” (Jonah 3:6). But the Bible does tell us which king was on the throne of Israel during Jonah’s ministry – Jeroboam II. This king of Samaria ruled from 782 – 753 B.C., during a period of a resurgent Israel. Surprisingly – since we know what’s going to happen in a mere generation or two – this was also a period of Assyrian weakness.
While Israel was retaking territory from its former oppressors, the Arameans, things weren’t going so well for the Assyrians. Famines, plagues, revolts, earthquakes, and conflicts with the Arameans and Urartians threatened to overwhelm them. All the while, the Assyrian kings of this period were also steadily losing power to the governors of their own realm. In fact, during this period there were more kingly proclamations published by these officials than by the emperor himself. We know very little about the Assyrian rulers in these years, again, probably because they were weak and presiding over a realm that seemed to be falling apart.
However, this period of Assyrian decline has turned out to be unbelievably important. This is because it’s the key to orienting the history of the entire ancient world. A near-total solar eclipse occurs in the year 763 B.C., which the Assyrians so helpfully record. This eclipse functions as the solid timeline anchor for all the different dating systems of the ancient Near East. See, these societies didn’t use a dating system like ours that goes back to one great event that signifies a new age, but instead kept track of years relative to the beginning of such and such a king’s reign. For example, “In the twenty-seventh year of Jeroboam, king of Israel, Amaziah, king of Judah, began to reign” (2 Kings 15:1).
When you look back at all of these king lists that only reference themselves or perhaps the neighbors’ king lists, it becomes extremely tricky to align them accurately in world history – unless there is something objective and external, like a solar eclipse, that they can be attached to. This period of obscure Assyrian kings is when we get just such an event upon which we are able to then hook and build out the timelines of Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt, Israel, Judah, and so many others.
The specific Assyrian king ruling when this eclipse happened was not one I’d ever heard of before. His name was Ashur-dan III. In fact, there’s only one surviving inscription from his reign that even mentions him, although he is mentioned in later king lists as well. Crucial for our purposes, there is also a brief record of the eclipse from his reign, “[year of] Bur-Sugale of Guzana. Revolt in the city of Assur. In the month of Simanu an eclipse of the sun took place.” Notice the mention of a revolt in one of the empire’s royal cities hand-in-hand here with the mention of the eclipse. Clearly, this was a rough time to be king.
This same king, Ashur-dan III, is the Assyrian monarch with the greatest overlap between his reign and the reign of Jeroboam II – a full twenty-two years. Thus, this is the man most likely to have been on the throne when a gnarled Israelite prophet with hair and skin bleached by fish stomach acid showed up and started preaching doom. We can’t say this with absolute certainty, but when we compare the book of Jonah with the events of his reign, I think the case for Ashur-dan III is a strong one.
Ashur-dan III’s weakened realm alone gives us one possible answer for why the pagans of Nivevah were so open to Jonah’s message. Their society seemed to be falling apart, teetering from one disaster and uprising to another. Their patron gods Enlil, Ashur, and Ishtar seemed to have abandoned them. Now, add in a near-total solar eclipse, and suddenly the seemingly inexplicable mass repentance of Nineveh makes a lot more ancient Near Eastern sense. To the Assyrians, eclipses meant certain divine judgment. It meant that divine wrath was absolutely coming for them. Hence why it’s so likely that the eclipse played some part in Nineveh’s mass repentance.
If I had to theorize, I’d guess that the eclipse happened just before Jonah arrived in Nineveh. It could have happened while he was there preaching, but it seems the biblical authors would have recorded it like they do the sun standing still in Joshua 10, or the sun moving backward in 2 Kings 20. The Hebrew writers of the Bible are happy to record unusual events in the heavens as being caused by God’s sovereign hand and as an authenticating part of his message of repentance. But in the book of Jonah, we hear nothing about an eclipse. No, instead we merely see a city so ripe for repentance that they even put sackcloth on the cows. And this, at the preaching of a grumpy prophet who really didn’t want to be there. Clearly, this was a people divinely prepared for repentance.
If true, does a ‘natural’ phenomenon like an eclipse somehow nullify God’s direct spiritual involvement in Jonah’s mission? Not at all. Similar to the cosmic air burst that seems to have destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, if these natural events really happened then they merely give us more information about the means of creation God used together with his words of revelation. God is so sovereign that the fullness of the depravity of Nineveh and the ministry of Jonah around 763 B.C. perfectly aligned with a solar eclipse set in motion at the creation of the universe. It might seem fantastical, but God is doing stuff like this all the time, even though it stretches our brains to think about it. He is outside of time, after all.
I’ve always wondered about Nineveh’s repentance. If it was genuine and so widespread, why don’t we hear more about it? Surely an authentic society-wide repentance and turning to the true God of heaven and earth would lead to some kind of transformation, right? Perhaps this is another reason why there are so few records of Ashur-dan III’s reign. To someone like Tiglath-Pileser whose reign (745 – 727 B.C.) led to a revitalized, unified, and aggressive Assyria, the events of Ashur-Dan III’s reign may have been an embarrassment, something to cover up, an example of the kind of weakness and compromise that comes when you’re not devoted enough to the gods that made Assyria strong in the first place.
No, if there was any kind of genuine awakening that took place from Jonah’s ministry it must have been stamped out, replaced by an even more vicious and wicked Assyria whose scarlet-robed armies’ atrocities would go on to traumatize the ancient world so much that much of the later Persian propaganda was basically, “We’re not like the Assyrians.”
Sadly, if we’re honest about history, this is one pattern that does tend to repeat now and then. Sometimes, genuine awakening is followed not by a triumphant ‘Christian Nationalism,’ but rather by an increase in depravity, a demonic counterreaction that takes a society once full of light into places of terrible darkness. The Bible belt of Christian North Africa almost immediately turned to militant Islam. Lutheran Germany gave rise to Nazism. The Korean Pentecost gave way to the modern dystopia of North Korea. And Puritan New England is now one of the darkest places in the US. The Assyrian atrocities we hear so much about in the Old Testament may be in part because there actually was one generation that turned to God with all their hearts. And that repentance provoked even greater rebellion in a future generation. What a sobering thing to consider.
The message and events of the book of Jonah are true even if we don’t know the name of the Assyrian king, and even if there was no eclipse involved. According to Jesus, Jonah really went to Nineveh and Nineveh really repented (Matt 12:41). God’s mercy is not limited to one people but is for all the nations of the earth, even those as wicked as the Assyrians. Amen and amen.
But I find the possibility fascinating that such an obscure and struggling king like Ashur-dan III might turn out, in the end, to be so significant. One note from his beleaguered reign has become the keystone upon which our entire timeline of the ancient world is aligned. And the repentance which he possibly led would go on to be held up as exemplary by none other than the Son of God himself. Nor was any of this because of who he was or his own accomplishments. God sent the eclipse. God sent the prophet and then God granted the repentance. No, it really had nothing to do with Ashur-dan III at all. Instead, it was all of grace.
Just as it is with us.
For more on this topic, see the ESV Study Bible’s Introduction to the Book of Jonah, this helpful blog post by Tom Hobson, and Wikipedia here and here.
If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can do so here.
Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
This is a region of so many world firsts for linguistic innovation. Unlike Egypt, China or India, its cities and states had always been consciously multilingual, whether for communication with neighbours who spoke different languages, or because their histories had made them adopt a foreign language to dignify court, religion or commerce. This is the area where we find the first conscious use of a classical language for convenience in communication, as a lingua franca, an early apparent triumph of diplomatic pragmatism over national sentiment.
-Ostler, Empires of the Word, p.34
Here, Ostler is referring to ancient Mesopotamia. This is a region – like our own area of Central Asia – that has been ‘consciously multilingual’ for as far back as we have records. This is a different posture toward language than many of us are used to who come from societies more in the monolingual tradition of ancient Egypt or China.
In a multilingual culture, a person is raised to assume that multiple languages will be heard and used on a daily basis. To gain a competitive advantage, as well as just for the convenience and joy of it, many will pick up two or three other languages in addition to the mother tongue spoken in their home. These societies do not assume that language use is a zero-sum game, where the use of one language inevitably means the demotion or withering of others. Rather, there is often a pragmatic long-term bilingualism or trilingualism. In one city close to us, many are even quadrilingual, using four languages on the regular. And they’ve been like this for countless generations.
Given the strengths and weaknesses of different languages, I prefer this approach that chooses to have not just one, but multiple tools in one’s toolbelt of tongues. For example, English may be fantastic for its motley plethora of specific nouns and adjectives (case in point – motley and plethora). On the other hand, English is a rhyme-poor language. So, for poetry, I’ll take our Central Asian tongue.
The Jerusalem Talmud would also concur with this position that languages have unique strengths: “Four languages are pleasing for use in the world: Greek for song, Latin for battle, Syriac (Aramaic) for dirges, Hebrew for speech.” Even God himself must have, for reasons of his own, chosen Hebrew and a short detour into Aramaic for biblical revelation until the coming of Christ, and then chosen Greek for the revelation that followed. Among his many reasons for this, one of them must have had something to do with the nature of the languages themselves – not that they were more holy or somehow superior, but that they were somehow more useful.
When it comes to missions, all this means that when sharing the gospel with a multilingual people group, we should be like the ancient Mesopotamians. We should feel free to share as soon as possible in a language they understand, even while we gauge over the long term which language might lead to the strongest advance of the gospel among them. The ancient inhabitants of Ur had a ‘diplomatic pragmatism’ when it came to their language use. Our own ‘spiritual pragmatism’ in language use should be shaped by whatever leads to the clearest and most compelling proclamation over the long haul. That might mean learning two languages, perhaps first a dominant (and often easier) trade language to see some friends come to faith and then a much more difficult minority mother tongue to see those friends formed into a church that goes on to multiply faithfully among its people group.
We also need to be careful that those of us from predominantly monolingual societies don’t impose limitations upon our multilingual friends that simply aren’t present in their language worldview. For example, the churches of one of our sister people groups hold all their Bible studies and church services in two languages. Their mother tongue is used for worship, prayer, discussion, and preaching. But the Bible is always read and studied in the national language. This is because they cannot read or write in their mother tongue. Yet because of the school system, they are highly literate in the national language. So, they simply switch back and forth as needed. To outsiders like us, this may seem a highly inconvenient or unsustainable system. But to a multilingual people group, this is fine. “We use this language for this part and that language for that part. What’s the issue here?”
We need to be careful that when it comes to big decisions like who gets a missionary and who doesn’t, who gets a bible translation or not, and whether or not we will make the costly investment to learn a second language, we are truly seeking to understand how ‘consciously multilingual’ people groups actually function.
They have a kind of freedom toward language that may be hard for us to grasp at first. It may challenge some of our categories. But if we can join them in that freedom, then we may be able to leverage it for the spread of the gospel.
If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can do so here.
Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
As the weather gets wintery in our corner of Central Asia, I’m reminded of my first winter here back in late 2007. Like many, I had wrongly assumed that because this area was some kind of desert, it wouldn’t really be that cold in the winter. After all, I was coming from having just spent a year in Minneapolis. So, I laughed off the suggestions that I bring serious winter gear like long johns. This was a mistake.
Our first few weeks on the ground did seem surprisingly mild for November. But then the rains started. And with the rains, the city suddenly got very cold. Overnight, the ACs and swamp coolers were switched off and the kerosene and LPG heaters turned on. To this day, the abrupt shift to winter weather still surprises us. Here in Caravan City, it just happened this past week.
This will be our first winter living in a 24-hour electricity apartment. But for that winter of ’07-’08 in Poet City, we were living in a typical cement, plaster, and tile local home. These traditional homes have a peculiar ability to absorb and radiate the cold such that the inside of the house often feels colder than the outside. Add to this the drastic power cuts that are normal during the winter and the fact that you can’t safely keep kerosene and LPG heaters on overnight, and the winters of this high desert region end up feeling much colder than those in the US, even though it doesn’t technically get as cold or have as much snowfall as our home city in Kentucky.
No, the issue is that in Central Asia, your house is freezing. All the time. I learned quickly that the ability to reliably get truly warm at home during the winter has quite the effect on how severe you feel the season to be. Add to all this the fact that the winter of ’07-’08 was the coldest one on record here in forty years and that our hodge-podge group of Western dude roommates didn’t really know how to handle a Central Asian house in winter, and you can see why we were very much in need of finding some kind of refuge of warmth and comfort.
For me, one of these oases was the Central Asian bathhouse. My jaded musician friend, Hama*, had introduced me to this glorious descendant of Roman bathhouses, tucked away in the alleyways of the bazaar. The traditional pillar of community hygiene offered as much steam, hot water, and sweet chai as one could handle. But because the bathhouse was frequented mostly by elderly local men who tended to bathe naked, no one seemed to want to come with me. Not even when I told them about the giant hairy man in a Speedo who would scrub your back and give you a painful massage for a mere $3.
Thankfully, there was one oasis of warmth that we could all go to together. And that was The First Coffee Shop in Poet City. That winter, this establishment became like our second home.
The history of coffee shops here is an interesting one. Coffee was more popular than tea in this region during the Middle Ages and for most of the Western Age of Exploration. But according to one source I found, it was actually the American War of Independence that shifted our region’s preferred source of caffeine. The Americans famously boycotted British tea, turning instead to Brazilian coffee for their patriotic caffeination. And so America has been a majority coffee-drinking nation ever since. But the loss of the American market meant that the Brits were in need of new customers for all of their product. They turned to Central Asia, specifically, Persia. This caused all kinds of religious dilemmas for the Persian Islamic clerics, who scrambled to proclaim fatwas declaring how drinking the infidel-supplied tea in this way was sinful and haram, but drinking it in this way was fine and halal.
Eventually, the forces of the marketplace (and the fact that black spiced chai with lots of sugar is delicious) overwhelmed whatever strong opposition there may have been in the beginning. And so the residents of Central Asia have now become majority tea drinkers, swapping places with those rebellious American colonists. However, as recently as 100 years ago, travelers to our area still spoke of coffeehouses instead of teahouses. The beverage had changed, but the older name still stuck. But by the time I came around in 2007, even the name of these traditional establishments had shifted to be teahouses, chaihouses to give a direct translation.
Yet until 2007, there were no coffee shops, at least not in the modern Western sense of the term. However, some enterprising local who had spent time as a refugee in Europe came back to his home city and decided he would change that. This was just in time for our team, who would retreat to this coffee shop on the long dark days with no electricity so that we could get some hot coffee, use some internet, and even use a Western toilet instead of a squatty potty. One should not underestimate how refreshing this particular combination can be.
On dark evenings we would meet up there as well, enjoying fingir, the local form of french fries, plus local pizza – which comes without tomato sauce and instead with a criss-crossed drizzle of mayonnaise and ketchup on top. Adam* would often join us, entertaining us with hilarious stories from his childhood and encouraging us by recounting opportunities he’d recently had to share the gospel.
We Westerners are funny when it comes to our coffee shops. Like a moth to a flame, if you build it, we will come. We really do love ourselves some coffee, internet, and a cozy-productive atmosphere. In fact, if anyone ever wanted to collect serious intel on those Westerners (or missionaries) that live in a given city, setting up a coffee shop could be quite the effective method. Especially if said coffee shop also had its own generator so that it has power when the other neighborhoods have gone dark on winter evenings. Needless to say, we were very loyal customers and became very fond of that place. I wrote not a few emails there to a girl I (mistakenly) thought I was supposed to marry. And it was there that I tried to wax eloquent during my first attempt at blogging.
Today, the cities of our region are positively overflowing with Western-style coffee shops. The owner of the beloved First Coffee Shop in Poet City was truly ahead of the curve. Unfortunately, his groundbreaking business ended up eventually overshadowed by the newer, hipper, and shinier Coffee Shops of those who followed in his footsteps. The First Coffee Shop was still around during my vision trips with my wife during the 2010s, but it was noticeably emptier. Then, at some point during our first term, it closed for good.
These days I’ve been frequenting a legit third-wave Coffee Shop here in Caravan City, the first place where you can get not only decent espresso drinks but also offerings like good filter coffee, pour-overs, and bottled cold brew. As far as I know, it’s the first one to be opened in our region that truly operates at international standards of quality (or coffee snobbery, depending on your perspective). They’ll soon be opening a branch back in Poet City as well, meaning it took eighteen years to get from the first Coffee Shop of any kind there to the kind of place where you can saunter in and order a Chemex.
But I was there, long ago in the cold and dark winter of 2007, to witness the first one. Seeing these shiny new establishments the newbies take for granted I feel a bit like Elrond – “I was there, Gandalf… I was there… 3,000 years ago,” sipping a bitter and musty Americano as the black wind from the mountains moaned outside, thankful that any kind of Coffee Shop existed at all, that I could get warm, get online – and that they had a Western toilet.
The First Coffee Shop in Poet City is now long gone. But today, on American Thanksgiving, I raise a toast, a metaphorical cup of very bad coffee, to that pioneering establishment. You were an oasis of warmth during a brutal winter that was, in the words of an Irish teammate, “positively Baltic.” By sitting at your tables we were refreshed and strengthened in a season when we were new missionaries who were very much in over our heads – and freezing to boot. And for that, I will always be very grateful.
If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can do so here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
*Names of places and individuals have been changed for security
From the viewpoint of the empire the most troubling areas in Roman Asia were the two sore spots of Armenia and Judaea. Armenia was the focus of unending trouble with Persia. It had always been more oriental than Greek or Roman. Traditionally, despite its fierce pride in its own independence, it had come to be regarded as a fief of the Parthian emperor’s second son, and thus it was at first more a Persian than a Roman client-kingdom. Rome began to claim it as part of its own sphere of influence after a Roman victory in 69. B.C., in the days of the Republic, but only after three hundred years of tug-of-war between Rome and Persia did it finally turn Western, and then as much because of Western Christianity as of Roman power. Christian merchants are said to have been the first to introduce the new faith into the kingdom, but the “apostle to Armenia” was the great Gregory the Illuminator, who converted the Armenian king, Tiridates I (261-317) around the end of the third century. All Armenia, it is said, quickly became at least nominally Christian a decade or two before the conversion of Constantine. For this reason Armenia is often called the first Christian nation, though such a claim, as we shall see, must be qualified.
-Moffett, A History of Christianity in Asia, vol. I, pp. 8-9
Just tonight while having dinner with some Iranian believers I heard them use the term Gregorian Orthodox when referring to the ethnic Armenian Christians of their homeland. When they said this, I wondered which Gregory was being referred to. Well, it seems this would be him, Gregory the Illuminator, the one whose ministry led to the official Christianization of Armenia. However, let’s not forget the brave Christian merchants who were the true pioneers and ‘apostles’ of Christianity in that land who undoubtedly prepared the ground for Gregory’s later success.
The other ancient kingdom claiming the title of ‘first Christian nation’ would be Osrhoene, another small client state constantly fought over by Rome and Persia. Its capital was the city of Edessa, in modern-day şanliurfa, Turkey. It’s interesting to note that it was not Rome that first attempted the merger of Christianity and the state. Rather, it was these two minor border kingdoms, one of which most have never even heard of.
If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can do so here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
Entrusted to the Dirt 
,_1637.jpg){kind=link}
