The Nativity According to Matthew

 

Matthew begins his Gospel with the genealogy of Jesus. I’ll skip the genealogy and go straight to his account of Jesus’s birth.

 

¹⁸ This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. ¹⁹ Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

²⁰ But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. ²¹ She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

²² All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: ²³ “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).

²⁴ When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. ²⁵ But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem ² and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”

³ When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. ⁴ When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. ⁵ “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:

⁶ “‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for out of you will come a ruler
who will shepherd my people Israel.’ ^”

⁷ Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. ⁸ He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”

⁹ After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. ¹⁰ When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. ¹¹ On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. ¹² And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.

¹³ When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”

¹⁴ So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, ¹⁵ where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

¹⁶ When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. ¹⁷ Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:

¹⁸ “A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more.”

¹⁹ After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt ²⁰ and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.” (Matthew 1:18-2:20)

Most people think that the slaughter of the baby boys in Bethlehem involved the murder of hundreds or thousands of innocents. Remember, though, that Bethlehem was a small village at this time with a likely population of a few hundred. It is doubtful that more than half a dozen children were killed, not enough to make it into any other sources we have for Herod’s rule. Herod was certainly ruthless enough to order such a massacre. He had no trouble killing members of his own family if he thought they threatened his rule. In fact, Herod being an Idumean (or Edomite) and not a Jew, was a foreigner and so was as despised by many Judeans as a Roman governor would have been. If he had heard that there was a potential rival to his throne, even a child, that the Jews might rally around, he would have wasted no time in disposing of that rival.

 

The word Magi usually refers to Zoroastrian priests. In Greco-Roman usage, the term Magi had connotations of magicians or sorcerers, exotic figures from distant lands. It is not clear just who the Magi actually were. They may indeed have been Zoroastrians. The references to the Star of Bethlehem suggest that they may have been astrologers. The Babylonians had a reputation for being skilled in astrology and magic, so the Magi may have come from Mesopotamia. They may also have been Jewish since they were seeking for a king of the Jews. The fact that they were unfamiliar with the prophets may prove that they were Gentiles. The number of the Magi is not given in the Gospel. The reason that three are usually pictured is that there were three gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

 

It is also not clear just what the Star of Bethlehem was. There have been several theories presented, but none of them are entirely satisfactory. The star might have been a supernova, perhaps in a nearby galaxy. There is no way to know for certain since any supernova remnant so far away would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to detect. It might also have been a comet. This is rather unlikely. Although a comet would behave much as the star is said to behave, hanging in the sky over a certain location for several nights, comets were universally perceived as being harbingers of disaster in ancient and not so ancient, times. The most likely explanation is a conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn. The astronomer Keppler discovered that there was indeed such a conjunction in the year 7 BC. The following year, there was another conjunction of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. This might have been very impressive to the Magi. It may also be that the Star was a supernatural phenomenon and one that cannot be studied today.

 

Zheng He

The European Age of Exploration was one of the most significant series of events over the last millennium, perhaps the most significant events in recorded history. Beginning in the 1430s, brave Portuguese and Spanish explorers set sail into the Atlantic to discover new lands and establish new routes to the Orient. By 1498, Vasco da Gama managed to sail around Africa and reach India. Meanwhile, Christopher Columbus made his famous voyage to the New World in 1492.

These European expeditions changed the world in ways that cannot be underestimated. They transformed Europe from a beleaguered backwater into the masters of the world. They brought new crops and new technologies to every corner of the globe. They began the process that made the Earth into one world.

Yet the Europeans were not the only people who made voyages into new lands. Just a few decades before the Portuguese began sailing down the coast of Africa, the Chinese, on the other end of the great Eurasian landmass, were sponsoring their own great voyages. In the early years of the fifteenth century, the Chinese Empire sent seven great expeditions under the command of the great Chinese admiral Zheng He, beginning during the reign of the Yongle Emperor

Zheng He

Zheng He made six voyages between 1405 and 1422.  His ships traveled South to modern Indonesia and West to Malaysia and as far as India, the Arabian Peninsula, and Somalia in Africa, gathering information and tribute. Zheng He’s fleets were comprised of many large ships of various functions, including warships. supply ships, troop and horse transports, and treasure ships. Zheng He’s ships may have been among the largest wooden ships that ever sailed on the ocean, and some may have had as many as a thousand men as crew.

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The Yongle Emperor died in 1424, and his son, the Hongxi Emperor, decided to end the expeditions over the sea. The Hongxi Emperor died the following year, and his son, the Xuande Emperor, permitted one more voyage in 1430. Zheng He is believed to have died on that voyage in 1433. After that, the Chinese Age of Exploration ended. No more ocean-going vessels were built by the Chinese government. The records of Zheng He’s expeditions were neglected and forgotten.

This decision by the Ming Emperors to end China’s early efforts at exploration is generally viewed as rather myopic. China lost the chance to participate in the Great Age of Exploration with the Europeans. If only succeeding emperors had built on Zheng He’s voyages. China could have met the European explorers and colonizers on equal terms in the Indian Ocean. China might have established a hegemony over the East Indies. Perhaps China could even have discovered the New World and begun colonizing the Pacific shores of the Americas.

I think such a view is unfair. It neglects the real differences between the goals of the European and Chinese voyages of discovery. It ignores the vast differences in the costs and expected benefits between the efforts of the two civilizations. The fact is that the Ming Emperors made the correct decision.

Zheng He’s expeditions were not voyages of discovery. The Chinese already knew about Africa and India. They had been trading with these lands for centuries. Zheng He did not open new trade routes. The primary purpose of his voyages was to show off the power and prestige of the Chinese Empire. The fleets were expensive, and the voyages brought little tangible benefit to China. Moreover, China’s economy was largely self-sufficient. China had little need for foreign trade.

While Korean and Japanese pirates were often an annoyance to China’s coasts, the greatest strategic threat to China was always the semi-nomadic peoples to the north. China was conquered by the Mongols in 1269. China would be conquered again by the Manchus in 1644. An expensive vanity project that diverted resources away from the defense of the North could prove fatal to the security of the empire.

Mongolians attacking China

By contrast, the European voyages of exploration were funded on a shoestring budget, yet the returns of the voyages far outweighed the meager costs. The ships used by Columbus and the other explorers were not huge treasure ships with hundreds of crew members. They were small, leaky vessels; the Spanish and Portuguese could afford to lose. They were paid for by a combination of public and private means, with companies of merchant investors sharing the costs with royal courts. With these slender means, the explorers discovered new lands and new trade routes. They won a world for the nations they served.

Unlike China, Europe depended on foreign trade. The nations of Europe came to rely on products from the East, especially spices. The overland trade routes from East to West were long and arduous, making such products expensive. The rise of the Ottoman Empire threatened these trade routes. The Ottomans could charge extortionate tolls in peace and block trade altogether in war. Even if the tolls were reasonable, it must have galled the people of Christendom to contribute to the armies the Turks used to threaten them. It was essential for Europe to find alternative trade routes. For China, exploration was an expensive luxury. For Europe, exploration was a necessity.

While this bit of historical analysis is interesting. I have a reason for bringing it up. I was born in 1969, just two months after Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the Moon. I would have anticipated that half a century later, we would have gone much farther along with manned space exploration. Growing up, I expected to see colonies on the Moon and Mars by now. I expected to see huge space stations in orbit and manned spacecraft exploring the outer Solar System. Instead, we have remained in Lower Earth Orbit.

Don’t get me wrong. The exploration of space has been amazing. Satellites in orbit allow us to pinpoint our location on Earth within a meter. We can communicate all over the world more cheaply than ever. We can predict the weather with greater accuracy than anyone could have imagined before weather satellites. Unmanned probes have been sent to every planet, fundamentally altering our views of the Solar System. Yet the glory is in manned exploration, in establishing ourselves on more than one planet. Here, we have been negligent.

It seems to me that the reason for our slowness in reaching out to space is that we have adopted the Zheng He model of exploration. Putting a man on the Moon was a glorious accomplishment for the United States, one that likely will be remembered for as long as history is being written. Yet, it was expensive and brought little practical benefit. It might have been better if we had adopted the Christopher Columbus model. Perhaps instead of setting the goal of putting a man on the Moon, President Kennedy should have inaugurated a system of public-private initiatives to assist private companies in the exploration and exploitation of space. The result may not have been as glamorous as the Apollo project, but the results might have been more permanent.

Maybe things are changing. Elon Musk seems determined to go to Mars, and his company, SpaceX, is taking to lead in space travel. We may yet see a renaissance of space travel, this time funded by private enterprise with incentives to make space travel affordable and profitable. I may even get to see those Moon and Mars colonies before I die.

John Henry

John Henry is a figure in American folklore, rather like Paul Bunyan or Pecos Bill. Unlike those other larger-than-life characters, John Henry is believed to be based on a real person who lived in the nineteenth century. According to legend, John Henry was an African American “Steel Drivin’ Man” who worked for the railroads. His job was to hammer a steel drill into rock, making holes that explosives could be inserted into to blast a tunnel. It was hard work, but one where John Henry could take pride in a job well done.

John Henry

One day, the railroad brought a new steam-powered driller to the site. It looked like John Henry was out of a job. But John Henry did not give up so easily. He was sure he could do a better job drilling holes than any machine. He challenged the operator of the steam drill to a competition. Whoever made the best holes would get the job.

The Machine

So the two set to work drilling holes. It was man versus machine. The machine worked faster and made more holes in the rock face, but John Henry’s holes were deeper and smoother. Unfortunately, the exertion of racing against the machine proved to be too much for John Henry. The strain proved too much for him—his heart burst from the effort, and he died.

There are a lot of ways this story has been interpreted over the years. It could be taken as a tale of exploited labor contending with a greedy management out to save costs. It has sometimes been seen as a metaphor for race relations.  John Henry often stands for the dignity of the working man, especially the Black working man. The legend of John Henry is most often seen as a contest between man and machine, with the subtext of the threat that the machine will replace the man.

This wasn’t something that anyone feared before the nineteenth century. Before the steam engine came into use, towards the end of the eighteenth century, the only machines people used were simple tools and machines. No one feared being replaced by his ax or hammer, or even her spinning wheel. The most complicated machines were water wheels and windmills. For the most part, the tools people used were extensions of themselves and required continuous human or animal effort to operate. They supplement human strength rather than replace it.

This began to change with the Industrial Revolution. Steam-powered engines could operate to some degree independently. As technology improved, such machines required less human effort to operate. A machine could do the work of many men, often more efficiently, and with greater precision. Machines began to replace human strength. It seemed that they would replace humans altogether. We may look down on the Luddites as obstacles to progress, but they were fighting for their livelihoods and ultimately their lives.

It is some consolation, however, that man did have an advantage over the machine. Human beings think. Machines do not. The human advantage over nature has never been our muscles. The horse and the ox, along with many wild animals, outmatch us there. The human advantage has been our brains. The machines that relieve us of labor give us the freedom and leisure to think. A man who isn’t breaking his back can create. And in fact, advancing technology has created far more jobs than it has destroyed. John Henry may have been out of a job, but his grandchildren didn’t have to burst their hearts drilling holes in rocks. In the end, industrial machines have supplemented rather than replaced human beings

The development of computers and the electronics industry seemed to belie the optimistic idea that machines couldn’t truly replace human beings. Here, there were machines that seemed to think. A computer could perform mathematical calculations faster and more accurately than any human mathematician. Computers can be programmed to do many wonderful things. Surely computers would replace men.

Yet, a computer cannot truly think. Any computer, no matter how advanced, is not really much more than a glorified abacus. Everything a computer does, from video games to modeling the interior of stars, is nothing more than a series of calculations made very quickly. A computer can do nothing unless a human programs every step. There were white-collar John Henrys, accountants or mid-level managers, who found themselves replaced by computers. Yet, the enormous economic growth made possible by the electronics revolution more than compensated for the job losses.

Now, perhaps the machine has finally caught up with man. Recent developments in artificial intelligence have created systems that seem to be able to think as well as, or perhaps better than, human beings. Recently, an AI chatbot has even managed to pass the Turing test, according to this article in The Independent.

A leading AI chatbot has passed a Turing Test more convincingly than a human, according to a new study.

Participants in a blind test judged OpenAI’s GPT-4.5 model, which powers the latest version of ChatGPT, to be a human “significantly more often than actual humans”.

The Turing Test, first proposed by the British computer scientist Alan Turing in 1950, is meant to be a barometer of whether artificial intelligence can match human intelligence.

The test involves a text-based conversation with a human interrogator, who has to assess whether the interaction is with another human or a machine.

Nearly 300 participants took part in the latest study, which ran tests for various chatbots and large language models (LLMs).

OpenAI’s GPT-4.5 was judged to be a human 73 per cent of the time when instructed to adopt a persona.

“We think this is pretty strong evidence that [AI chatbots] do [pass the Turing Test],” Dr Cameron Jones, a postdoc researcher from UC San Diego who led the study, wrote in a post to X. “And 4.5 was even judged to be human significantly more often than actual humans.”

AI is watching us

Artificial Intelligence based on a large language model does not actually think. A large language model is designed to place words together in order, rather like an enhanced version of autocorrect. If it is trained on enough text from the internet and other sources, its output can come to resemble human speech, answering questions and giving opinions. A chatbot does not actually reason or know anything, except the information that it has been trained on.

Despite passing the Turing Test, the researchers noted that it does not mean that the AI bots have human-level intelligence, also known as artificial general intelligence (AGI). This is because LLMs are trained on large data sets in order to predict what a correct answer might be, making them essentially an advanced form of pattern recognition.

Nevertheless, it can mimic human cognition remarkably well. I have no doubt that ChatGPT could write this blog post better than I could.

Artificial intelligence will improve over time. Human beings will continue to research and develop better systems. Eventually, artificial intelligence will conduct the research, creating better models that serve human needs better. Artificial intelligence will be able to do anything a human brain AI will be able to do anything the human brain can—only better. The machine will outclass man.

I do not think that artificial intelligence will turn on humanity. There will be no terminators sent into the past to destroy a leader of the resistance as a child. Most likely, any system will incorporate some version of Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics. Our AI servants will be completely loyal, willing to satisfy our every need.

My fear is that humanity will be simply obsolete. What is there for men to do when the machines can do everything. An AI doctor can diagnose illness and prescribe treatments better than any human. With a robot arm, it can perform surgery with a surer hand than any human. An AI lawyer can cite cases and laws better than any human attorney. Given a voice, it can argue its case before an impartial AI judge. AI can write, create art, and manage governments and businesses better than any mere human. What is left for humans to do? Will we all end up like John Henry? Maybe with AI to do our thinking for us, we will lose the ability to think for ourselves. The human race may end not with a bang but a whimper as we sit on our couches being entertained.

 

The Nativity According to Matthew

 

Matthew begins his Gospel with the genealogy of Jesus. I’ll skip the genealogy and go straight to his account of Jesus’s birth.

 

¹⁸ This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. ¹⁹ Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

²⁰ But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. ²¹ She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

²² All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: ²³ “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).

²⁴ When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. ²⁵ But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem ² and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”

³ When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. ⁴ When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. ⁵ “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:

⁶ “‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for out of you will come a ruler
who will shepherd my people Israel.’ ^”

⁷ Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. ⁸ He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”

⁹ After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. ¹⁰ When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. ¹¹ On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. ¹² And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.

¹³ When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”

¹⁴ So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, ¹⁵ where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

¹⁶ When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. ¹⁷ Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:

¹⁸ “A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more.”

¹⁹ After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt ²⁰ and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.” (Matthew 1:18-2:20)

Most people think that the slaughter of the baby boys in Bethlehem involved the murder of hundreds or thousands of innocents. Remember, though, that Bethlehem was a small village at this time with a likely population of a few hundred. It is doubtful that more than half a dozen children were killed, not enough to make it into any other sources we have for Herod’s rule. Herod was certainly ruthless enough to order such a massacre. He had no trouble killing members of his own family if he thought they threatened his rule. In fact, Herod being an Idumean (or Edomite) and not a Jew, was a foreigner and so was as despised by many Judeans as a Roman governor would have been. If he had heard that there was a potential rival to his throne, even a child, that the Jews might rally around, he would have wasted no time in disposing of that rival.

 

The word Magi usually refers to Zoroastrian priests. In Greco-Roman usage, the term Magi had connotations of magicians or sorcerers, exotic figures from distant lands. It is not clear just who the Magi actually were. They may indeed have been Zoroastrians. The references to the Star of Bethlehem suggest that they may have been astrologers. The Babylonians had a reputation for being skilled in astrology and magic so the Magi may have come from Mesopotamia. They may also have been Jewish since they were seeking for a king of the Jews. The fact that they were unfamiliar with the prophets may prove that they were Gentiles. The number of the Magi is not given in the Gospel. The reason that three are usually pictured is that there were three gifts; gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

 

It is also not clear just what the Star of Bethlehem was. There have been several theories presented, but none of them are entirely satisfactory. The star might have been a supernova, perhaps in a nearby galaxy. There is no way to know for certain since any supernova remnant so far away would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to detect. It might also have been a comet. This is rather unlikely. Although a comet would behave much as the star is said to behave, hanging in the sky over a certain location for several nights, comets were universally perceived as being harbingers of disaster in ancient, and not so ancient, times. The most likely explanation is a conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn. The astronomer Keppler discovered that there was indeed such a conjunction in the year 7 BC. The following year there was another conjunction of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. This might have been very impressive to the Magi. It may also be that the Star was a supernatural phenomenon and one that cannot be studied today.

 

Immortality

Scott Pinsker at PJMedia writes that humanity could achieve immortality as little as ten years from now. 

It’s a shame Ray Kurzweil is such a dreadfully boring, unbearably monotonous speaker. Arguably, he’s the most interesting man on the planet. Everyone wants to know what the future holds, and for most of us, we must (checks wristwatch) wait, wait, and wait some more, and eventually, the future arrives. So, we still get to see the future… It just takes a while.

But that’s no fun. We wanna know what the future holds now — today!

And that’s where Ray Kurzweil steps in. He’s not a prophet or a clairvoyant; he’s untrained in crystal balls, divining tea leaves, or manipulating rabbits’ feet. Instead, he tracks technology the way Wayne Gretzky played hockey: What made “The Great One” so great wasn’t that he skated where the puck already was; he had a sixth sense for where the puck was heading next. That’s Kurzweil’s M.O.: He’s the most successful technologist in history at projecting the rate of advancement.

After a long section on advances in artificial intelligence and the Singularity, Pinsker gets to the point. 

In his assessment, we don’t need to “solve” immortality to live forever, as long as we reach the point of “longevity escape velocity.” This will occur when — thanks to AI — our life expectancy will increase by at least 1+ year(s) during each calendar year. As long as science keeps giving us extra year(s), we’ll be functionally immortal (barring sudden catastrophic injuries, of course).

If he’s right, then this is an astonishing advancement: 2029 and 2035 aren’t that far away. It’s within the grasp of all of us, even our more-elderly readers — and certainly within the timelines of all our children and grandchildren. Even if Kurzweil is “only” off by a few decades, this is a civilization-altering development.

I hope Ray Kurzweil is wrong. I hope we never develop an artificial intelligence smarter than we are. I particularly hope we never devise a way to become immortal. 

I wouldn’t mind living forever. Who wouldn’t? Nobody wants to die unless they are suffering such extreme pain or grief that death seems a pleasant release. Immortality, however, would be a disaster for the human race. 

Social and scientific progress largely occurs because the old die off and make way for the young. The old would never die off in a world of immortals, even after millennia. Worse, to avoid overpopulation, there must be very few children born. In such a world, with largely the same population existing for centuries, change would occur very slowly. 

What if the means to achieve immortality had been discovered a thousand years ago? What if there was still a significant population today that was born in the year 1000? Think of all the quarrels and controversies in history we have forgotten about. Catholics and Protestants no longer kill each other over religion. This is because the people who felt strongly enough to kill for faith died centuries ago. No one in Britain is a Jacobite anymore because no one who wants to restore the Stuarts is alive. No one in France advocates for absolute monarchy because the absolute monarchists are no more. No one wants to go on Crusade anymore. No one thinks burning heretics or witches is a good idea today. But what if the veterans of all these conflicts were still alive?

Imagine if Roger Taney were still the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, with no sign of retiring even after almost two hundred years. Would the justice who believed the Black man had no rights the White man was bound to respect support any civil rights legislation? What if we still had people serving in Congress for a century or more? Imagine how out of touch they would be with ordinary people’s lives. What if the segregationist governors were still active in politics? 

It is true that two of the most notorious segregationists, George Wallace and Strom Thurmond, later changed their minds and supported civil rights legislation. Perhaps they were sincere. I don’t have to be too cynical, however, to suspect that they wanted to appeal to a new generation that was repelled by racism. In a world of immortals, that new generation would never come. The old attitudes would prevail, perhaps forever. 

What about scientific progress? Scientists like to believe that they only follow the facts. Scientists are human and like all humans, they believe what they want to believe. New theories do not replace old theories because many scientists change their minds. New theories replace old theories because old scientists die or retire. What kind of reception would Einstein have gotten from a scientific community who still thought Galileo’s heliocentrism was radical?

Worst of all, imagine if Stalin or Mao were immortal. Tyrants like these could torment their subjects for centuries. At present, even the worst dictator must die and there may be hope his successor might be milder. In a world of immortality, such an expectation would be futile. As the centuries pass, such a despot would grow ever more cunning. Any prospect of his overthrow would be ever less conceivable. 

A world of immortals would be a stagnant world. It would be a largely unchanging world. It would be an old world almost entirely lacking the novelty of youth. It would be a world of people set in centuries-old ways. Since the world continually changes, it might be a world of people incapable of adapting to new circumstances. 

I have always been a lover of scientific discovery. I certainly do not object to medical research that leads to a longer and healthier life. But, perhaps there are limits to how far such research should go. Immortality is a desirable thing for an individual. Who wants to die? It would be a disaster for the human race.

Pro Life Purists

I have criticized the Libertarians for being more interested in losing while maintaining their ideological purity than seeing their ideas realized by compromising to win elections. It is time to criticize the pro-life purists for the same reason.

Donald Trump has been the most pro-life president in American history. Trump’s nominees to the Supreme Court led to the overturning of Roe V. Wade. Trump was the only president to address the March for Life in person. You might think his pro-life credentials would satisfy anyone. Lately, Trump deviated somewhat from pro-life orthodoxy. He asserted that he would not sign a federal abortion ban because abortion is an issue best left to the states. He has proposed federal funding for in vitro fertilization. Worst, of all, he suggested he might vote in favor of Florida’s Amendment 4 which overturns the existing ban on abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy and places a right to abortion in the state’s constitution.

The pro-life forces had a fit. Naturally, they had every reason to complain about this apparent turnaround in Trump’s position on abortion. They were correct to let the candidate know of their concern and disappointment. Many pro-life activists went further, however. Many loudly announced on social media that they would not be voting for Donald Trump after this stab in the back. Some even expressed hope that Kamala Harris would win the election.

Working to ensure that Kamala Harris becomes president is stupid and counterproductive if you want to reduce the number of abortions in this country. Even not voting in the upcoming election is not advisable if the goal is to fight abortion. However much Trump might backslide on the abortion question, Trump’s policies on that issue are preferable to Harris’s.

If Kamala Harris is elected, she will certainly seek federal legislation to affirm the right to abortion up to the moment of birth. This would overturn any state restrictions on abortion. Harris will probably be able to appoint at least one Supreme Court justice. She may well be able to replace Clearance Thomas and Samuel Alito, the two oldest and most conservative justices. If so, we may find abortion reinstated as a constitutional right, reversing all the gains the pro-life movement has made in the past decade.

The question for the pro-life purists is, do they want to reduce the number of abortions or not? I am afraid the answer to this question is not. Like the libertarians, they do not see politics as a means to get as much as the times and circumstances permit. They do not take the long view of slowly approaching the goal one step at a time, compromising when necessary. For them, Politics is a binary affair. They either get everything they want right away or not. They would rather lose everything and feel good about their uncompromising virtue than get part of what they want.

What the pro-life purists fail to understand is that they are not the majority in this country. Probably the majority of Americans are personally opposed to abortion. Certainly, a strong majority find late-term abortions abhorrent. The problem is that many Americans who personally dislike abortion are wary of abortion bans. They feel that such bans violate other person’s right to act according to their own values. It seems to them that the pro-life movement is made up of religious fanatics who want to impose their views on the country. While many feel the Democratic Party’s contemporary celebration of abortion as a sacrament is extreme. The older Democratic mantra of safe, legal, and rare is one that most Americans agree with.

While such opinions hold, the pro-life movement must move carefully. A federal abortion ban is going to be impossible. State abortion bans outside of the reddest Bible-belt states are more likely to arouse the opposition of pro-abortion forces than pass state legislatures. Opposition to the Republican position on abortion was at least part of the reason the expected red wave of 2022 turned out to be a trickle.

So, is the pro-life movement doomed to failure and irrelevancy? Of course not. Think of it like this. A general leading an army against a larger opponent does not attack his opponent where he is strongest in a bold frontal assault. He would be defeated. Instead, he fights his enemy where he is weak. He attacks smaller units away from the main force of the enemy. He cuts off his enemy’s supply lines. He wears down the enemy until he can strike. That is just what the pro-life movement needs to do.

The only strategy the pro-life purists ever use is the bold frontal attack. They are like World War I generals who ordered wave after wave of attacks against positions defended by barbed wire and machine gun nests and wondered why the front never moved forward. If we want to win, we have to be more clever. We have to attack the enemy where we can do the most good.

As far as legislation goes, it would be well to tackle the easy cases first. Almost everyone is opposed to late-term abortion. It should be feasible to ban third-trimester abortions in every state. By the twenty-eighth week, the fetus is clearly a human baby. A premature baby at that age is generally viable. Aborting a baby that could potentially survive outside the womb is clearly murder.

28 weeks

Once that is done, we can begin work on banning abortion in the second trimester. Even at that age, the fetus is recognizably human. No one could claim a second-trimester baby is just a clump of cells.  Banning abortion after the fifteenth week is the standard in most of Europe.

15 weeks

We might also get state legislatures to mandate strict health and safety standards for abortion clinics. The pro-abortionists claim that abortion is healthcare. Very well, let abortion mills be held to the same standards as clinics and hospitals. The standards could be made high enough to make compliance unprofitable.
While the legislative work is going on, the pro-life movement must work on the most important task of all, education. Right now, as I have said, even many people who are against abortion are against abortion bans. It seems to be an infringement on people’s freedom to make choices. This must change Before laws are passed, attitudes must change.

There is every reason to believe that time is on our side. Already sonograms give the lie that a fetus is just a clump of cells. A fetus is clearly a human baby by the second trimester. An embryo even earlier in pregnancy has recognizably human characteristics.

8 weeks,
This is a human being

But more important than pictures is cultivating an ethic of life preservation at every stage. The pro-life movement should not simply be anti-abortion, but truly pro-life.

The purist approach may be more emotionally satisfying. The purist gains the pleasure of feeling more virtuous. In the long run, the gradual approach I have outlined will save more lives. What is more important feeling good or saving lives?

TERF C**t

I have not paid very much attention to J. K. Rowling’s transgender controversy. That is because I seldom pay much attention to the views of famous people on any subject. If I want to know more about the world of Harry Potter, I am glad to consult Ms. Rowling. On any other subject, her opinions are irrelevant as far as I am concerned.

J. K. Rowling

I gather her controversial beliefs are something like the following. Men are men, and women are women. There are real physiological differences between the two sexes. It is not bigotry for a midwife to advertise her services to women, given that only women become pregnant, and the ability to become pregnant is part of what defines a woman. Because males are generally bigger and stronger than females, it is inappropriate and unsporting for a male to compete in an athletic contest as a woman, no matter how strongly he believes that he is a woman. Minors ought not to be permitted to make permanent changes to their bodies.

In fact, none of these sentiments are controversial. I would guess that they are the views of a great majority of the people of Great Britain and the United States. They would have been considered utterly uncontroversial just a decade ago. I would go so far as to say that not long ago, disagreeing with these ideas would be taken as a sign of madness.

Even if Ms. Rowling’s views on transgender are controversial or extreme, she still has the right to her opinions. There is no good reason for the many attempts to deplatform or boycott J. K. Rowling.  She is not harming anyone. She is not advocating discrimination or violence against transgender people. The fact that she has become the object of hatred perhaps says more about her detractors than the writer.

But I am not writing about J. K. Rowling in this post. I am writing about a clever play about J. K. Rowling with the charming title “TERF C**T”.  As you may guess, the play is not a panegyric.

Here are some details from the Scottish Daily Express:

An arts company based in Edinburgh is launching a new show about JK Rowling and her part in the transgender debate called TERF C**T.

Civil Disobedience, which has its roots in the Edinburgh Fringe and was launched by Barry and Josef Church-Woods in May 2016,described it as a “vital think-piece on Joanne, exploring just what could motivate a person with such privilege to take such a divisive stance on issues that affect her fans”.

It has been written by Joshua Kaplan, a “queer screenwriter and playwright”, and will be performed at The Actors Studio in New York City on Thursday, February 8. The plot involves Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson staging an “intervention” with Rowling.

A press release advertising the show claims: “Please note: TERF C**T is not a kill piece. It provides space for reflection and ultimately offers the audience time to explore some of the more contentious aspects of JK’s life.”

I have my doubts about whether a play called TERF C**T really provides space for reflection. It sounds like a “kill piece” to me.

The synopsis for the show continues: “Joanne led a blessed life – for a woman. Billionaire. Literary phenomenon. Natural ginger. And most importantly, beloved. Completely beloved. Until she blew it all to hell.

“Now, Joanne’s surrogate children – Daniel, Rupert, and Emma – have had enough. It’s time for an intervention. But Joanne isn’t in the mood for one, especially not one held at a Shoreditch ‘test kitchen’ organised by three overentitled Judases who know nothing about the world into which they were born with platinum spoons (thanks to her).

“From book deals to divorces, family dysfunction to broken friendships, TERF C**T goes beyond the headlines to explore the woman that captivated a world with her books only to unravel a legacy with her tweets.”

I suppose Mr. Kaplan believes his play to be edgy and courageous. But TERF C**T is neither edgy nor courageous. Attacking a woman for bucking established woke orthodoxy and repeating leftist convictions shared by all one’s peer group is hardly shocking and bold. Nothing bad is likely to happen to Mr. Kaplan as a result of his assault on Ms. Rowling. Even if the play is a failure, Kaplan will be lauded by his circle for his bravery.

If Kaplan really wanted to be shocking and brave, he might have had Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson stage their “intervention” and be swayed by J. K. Rowling’s eloquence and logic into realizing that she was right. They could then be shown apologizing to Ms. Rowloing for being such ungrateful twits. Of course, such a play could never see the light of day. If Kaplan dared to produce such a play, he would be ostracised by the theatrical community.

There was a time when artists such as Joshua Kaplan pretended to care about freedom of opinion. I don’t think they actually did care about freedom. The fashionable leftist idea of freedom seems to be the toddler’s idea of freedom. They seem to desire the inalienable right to shout dirty words, run about naked, and play with their own excrement, anything to shock the squares. They were never much concerned about the right of others to criticize them but at least they felt they should pretend to support the idea of freedom of expression.

These days, it seems that leftist artists do not even bother to pretend they support freedom. They have become Maoists who believe dissenters from orthodoxy should be subjected to struggle sessions. Since J. K.  Rowling is unlikely to engage in self-criticism for her heresy in real life, Joshua Kaplan resorts to an imaginary self-criticism where a repentant Rowling admits her crimes and begs for forgiveness.

It seems that TERF C**T is an awful waste of time and talent on the part of Joshua Kaplan. Perhaps in the future, he will have something truly original to say. For the present, all he can do is engage in the defamation of a woman vastly more talented than he is.

 

 

Blocking the Sun

The sixth century AD was not a lot of fun for most people, especially in Europe. The Roman Empire had definitely fallen, at least in the West. With that fall came barbarian invasions, endless wars, economic decline, trade collapse, and infrastructure deterioration. The year 536 was the worst year of a bleak century. In fact, the year 536 might well be the worst in recorded history.

A mysterious fog plunged Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia into darkness, day and night—for 18 months. “For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year,” wrote Byzantine historian Procopius. Temperatures in the summer of 536 fell 1.5°C to 2.5°C, initiating the coldest decade in the past 2300 years. Snow fell that summer in China; crops failed; people starved. The Irish chronicles record “a failure of bread from the years 536–539.” Then, in 541, bubonic plague struck the Roman port of Pelusium, in Egypt. What came to be called the Plague of Justinian spread rapidly, wiping out one-third to one-half of the population of the eastern Roman Empire and hastening its collapse

What happened? The most widely accepted theory is that a volcano erupted in Iceland and emitted ash and dust into the atmosphere. This volcanic debris blocked enough sunlight to cause the Earth to cool as much as 4 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit. Such a decline in temperature caused a devastating decline in agricultural productivity throughout the Northern Hemisphere leading to famine and plague. It took centuries for the population and economies of European and Asian states to recover.

The year 1816 was known as the Year without a Summer.

In the summer of 1816, the Northern Hemisphere was plagued by a weather disruption of seemingly biblical proportions. Following a relatively ordinary early spring, temperatures in the eastern United States plunged back below freezing, and communities from New England to Virginia experienced heavy snowfalls and crop-killing frost during June, July and August. Europe also found itself in the grip of an unseasonable chill. Winter snows refused to melt, and between April and September, some parts of the Continent were drenched by as many as many as 130 days of rain. The unrelenting gloom inspired author Mary Shelley to write her famous novel “Frankenstein,” but it also wreaked havoc on farmers. Crops failed across Europe and China, spawning deadly famines and outbreaks of typhus and other diseases. In India, the disturbances gave rise to a virulent new strain of cholera that eventually killed millions. The suffering in the United States was less pronounced, but many still felt the squeeze of soaring grain prices. Some poorer Americans were even reduced to eating hedgehogs and scrounging for wild turnips.

This time, a volcano erupted in Indonesia. Mount Tambora emitted ash and dust into the atmosphere. The volcanic debris blocked sunlight, causing the Earth to cool by .7 to 1 degree Fahrenheit, again causing a devastating decrease in agricultural productivity. 1816 was not as grim as 536, but the Year Without a Summer was enough to cause food shortages worldwide. The period of global cooling may also have changed American history by encouraging thousands of people to leave New England to settle in the Midwest.

In the twelfth century BC, the longstanding civilizations of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Fertile Crescent collapsed rather suddenly. Historians are still not certain what caused the Late Bronze Age Collapse. Many factors contributed to the Collapse, but it is possible that it was triggered by a volcanic eruption that emitted dust and ash into the atmosphere. This volcanic debris blocked sunlight causing the Earth to cool.

Do you begin to see a pattern here? Let’s not forget that the most widely accepted theory for the cause of the extinction of the Dinosaurs is that an asteroid hit the Earth, throwing tons of dust into the atmosphere. This dust blocked sunlight and caused the Earth to cool.

Clearly, any decrease in the amount of sunlight that reaches the Earth’s surface results in disaster for life and civilization. With that in mind, surely only a madman would suggest we pump aerosols into the atmosphere to block sunlight. This is precisely what some very influential people plan to do to fight climate change.

Bill Gates’s radical plan to “save the planet” from “climate change” by blocking out the Sun has officially launched as scientists began pumping chemicals into the sky this week.

As Slay News has previously reported, Bill Gates has long been advocating for the plan to fight “global warming” using experimental geoengineering to block the Sun.

The idea, promoted by Gates and leftist billionaire George Soros, involves pumping manmade white clouds into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight away from the planet’s surface.

The radical scheme would lower the planet’s temperature and allegedly “combat global warming.”

Soros claims the technology will help to prevent ice sheets from melting.

Ice sheets melting in Greenland in particular, he claimed, could doom human civilization.

“Our civilization is in danger of collapsing because of the inexorable advance of climate change,” Soros said.

“The melting of the Greenland ice sheet would increase the level of the oceans by seven meters.

“That poses a threat to the survival of our civilization,” he alleged.

The method pushed by Bill Gates involves increasing aerosol concentrations in the stratosphere to reflect solar radiation away from the Earth.

The people proposing this plan are either insane or evil. Most likely they are both. They are mad enough to believe they can control the climate. They are evil enough to aspire to become the worst mass murderers in history. If this plan is implemented, we will see a repeat of some of the worst years in history. Millions could die of starvation. We will not have to worry about the imaginary threat of global warming. We will experience the very real threat of global cooling. We will not have to worry about the ice sheets of Greenland melting. We will have to worry about the polar ice caps advancing down North America and Eurasia.

This is a really bad idea

I do not remember ever being asked to vote on this madcap scheme. There has certainly been little public discussion of the concept. Even if the idea of blocking sunlight to fight global warming was sound, I think implementing actions that might drastically alter the Earth’s climate ought to be decided in some form of democratic manner. It definitely ought not to be decided by a handful of powerful oligarchs whose wealth will protect them from the consequences of their folly.

The Gates-Soros plan to bring about a new ice age is as mad as it is evil. It has to be stopped.

 

Pi Day

English: Pi Pie, created at Delft University of Technology, applied physics, seismic and acoustics Deutsch: Pi Pie (π-Kuchen), hergestellt an der Technischen Universität Delft (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For all of the nerds out there, including me, today is International Pi Day, the day when we celebrate our favorite mathematical constant. Pi Day is best celebrated by pi memorization contests, walking in circles, and, of course, eating pies, or is it pis? I think I will celebrate by writing a little about pi.

Pi or π is, as everyone should know, the ratio between a circle’s diameter and its circumference. Pi is an irrational number. By this, they do not mean that pi makes no sense but rather that pi is a constant that cannot be expressed as a ratio of two integers. Numbers like 2 or .445 or 1/2 can be expressed as a ratio of two integers and so are rational. Numbers like pi or the square root of any number that is not a perfect square, the square root of 2 for instance, are irrational. An irrational number expressed in decimal form never ends or repeats but continues to infinity. Thus, there can never be a last digit of pi.

The symbol π was first used by the mathematician William Jones in 1706 and was popularized by another mathematician, Leonhard Euler. They chose π, the Greek equivalent of the Latin letter p because it is the first letter of the word periphery. Π, by the way, is not pronounced “pie” in Greek but “pee”, just like our p. I don’t think that international “pee” day would be nearly so appealing.

Although the symbol for pi is relatively recent, the concept is very old. The ancient Egyptians and Babylonians knew about it. Pi is even mentioned in the Bible.

²³ He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits^[o] to measure around it. ²⁴ Below the rim, gourds encircled it—ten to a cubit. The gourds were cast in two rows in one piece with the Sea. (1 Kings 7:23-24)

Properly speaking, the line around the “Sea” should have been 31.5 cubits but the ancient Hebrews were not very knowledgeable about geometry and measuring techniques were crude.

There is no particular reason to calculate pi to so many digits. No conceivable application of pi would possibly take more than 40 digits. Still, the challenge of calculating pi to the farthest digit possible has been an irresistible one for mathematicians over the years.

Around 250 BC, Archimedes was the first mathematician to seriously try to calculate pi. He used a geometric method of drawing polygons inside and outside a circle and measuring their perimeters. By using polygons with more and more sides he was able to calculate pi with more precision and ended up determining the value of pi as somewhere between 3.1408 and 3.1429. Archimedes’s method was used in the West for more than eighteen hundred years. The Chinese and Indians used similar methods. The best result using the geometric method was the calculation of pi to 38 digits in 1630.

With the development of calculus by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz in the 1660s, it was possible to calculate pi using infinite series, or the sum of the terms of an infinite sequence. The best calculations with these methods were done by the mathematician Zacharias Daze who calculated pi to 200 places in 1844 and William Shanks who spent fifteen years calculating pi to 707 digits. Unfortunately, he made a mistake with the 528th digit. Meanwhile, in 1761 Johann Heinrich Lambert proved that pi is irrational.

Computers made the calculation of pi much faster so pi could be calculated to more digits. ENIAC calculated pi to 2037 places in 1949. This record didn’t last long. A million digits were reached in 1970. As of  2011, pi has been calculated to 10,000,000,000,050 places.

Pi is not just used in geometry. There are a number of applications of pi in the fields of statistics, mechanics, thermodynamics, cosmology, and many others. Here is a list of just some of the formulae that use pi. It seems you can find pi everywhere.

With that in mind then, happy pi day! For your enjoyment here are the first thousand digits of pi.

3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510

  58209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679

  82148086513282306647093844609550582231725359408128

  48111745028410270193852110555964462294895493038196

  44288109756659334461284756482337867831652712019091

  45648566923460348610454326648213393607260249141273

  72458700660631558817488152092096282925409171536436

  78925903600113305305488204665213841469519415116094

  33057270365759591953092186117381932611793105118548

  07446237996274956735188575272489122793818301194912

  98336733624406566430860213949463952247371907021798

  60943702770539217176293176752384674818467669405132

  00056812714526356082778577134275778960917363717872

  14684409012249534301465495853710507922796892589235

  42019956112129021960864034418159813629774771309960

  51870721134999999837297804995105973173281609631859

  50244594553469083026425223082533446850352619311881

  71010003137838752886587533208381420617177669147303

  59825349042875546873115956286388235378759375195778

  18577805321712268066130019278766111959092164201989

The Nativity According to Matthew

 

Matthew begins his Gospel with the genealogy of Jesus. I’ll skip the genealogy and go straight to his account of Jesus’s birth.

 

¹⁸ This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. ¹⁹ Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

²⁰ But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. ²¹ She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

²² All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: ²³ “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).

²⁴ When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. ²⁵ But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem ² and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”

³ When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. ⁴ When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. ⁵ “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:

⁶ “‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for out of you will come a ruler
who will shepherd my people Israel.’ ^”

⁷ Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. ⁸ He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”

⁹ After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. ¹⁰ When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. ¹¹ On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. ¹² And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.

¹³ When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”

¹⁴ So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, ¹⁵ where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

¹⁶ When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. ¹⁷ Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:

¹⁸ “A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more.”

¹⁹ After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt ²⁰ and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.” (Matthew 1:18-2:20)

Most people think that the slaughter of the baby boys in Bethlehem involved the murder of hundreds or thousands of innocents. Remember, though, that Bethlehem was a small village at this time with a likely population of a few hundred. It is doubtful that more than half a dozen children were killed, not enough to make it into any other sources we have for Herod’s rule. Herod was certainly ruthless enough to order such a massacre. He had no trouble killing members of his own family if he thought they threatened his rule. In fact, Herod being an Idumean (or Edomite) and not a Jew, was a foreigner and so was as despised by many Judeans as a Roman governor would have been. If he had heard that there was a potential rival to his throne, even a child, that the Jews might rally around, he would have wasted no time in disposing of that rival.

 

The word Magi usually refers to Zoroastrian priests. In Greco-Roman usage, the term Magi had connotations of magicians or sorcerers, exotic figures from distant lands. It is not clear just who the Magi actually were. They may indeed have been Zoroastrians. The references to the Star of Bethlehem suggest that they may have been astrologers. The Babylonians had a reputation for being skilled in astrology and magic so the Magi may have come from Mesopotamia. They may also have been Jewish since they were seeking for a king of the Jews. The fact that they were unfamiliar with the prophets may prove that they were Gentiles. The number of the Magi is not given in the Gospel. The reason that three are usually pictured is that there were three gifts; gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

 

It is also not clear just what the Star of Bethlehem was. There have been several theories presented, but none of them are entirely satisfactory. The star might have been a supernova, perhaps in a nearby galaxy. There is no way to know for certain since any supernova remnant so far away would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to detect. It might also have been a comet. This is rather unlikely. Although a comet would behave much as the star is said to behave, hanging in the sky over a certain location for several nights, comets were universally perceived as being harbingers of disaster in ancient, and not so ancient, times. The most likely explanation is a conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn. The astronomer Keppler discovered that there was indeed such a conjunction in the year 7 BC. The following year there was another conjunction of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. This might have been very impressive to the Magi. It may also be that the Star was a supernatural phenomenon and one that cannot be studied today.