Tag Archives: Stable

Commentary

The top 5 myths about Christmas

4 Comments

From Take Two Apologetics.  It’s an interview with Krista Bontrager. I removed the links from the excerpt below, so you can click through to their site if you want the links.

Excerpt:

Krista, many of us were taught that Jesus was born in a stable because “there was no room in the inn.” Was He born in a stable?

Probably not. Nowhere in the Bible does it state that Joseph went from home to home looking for a place to stay. That story stems from many translations’ use of the word “inn” in Luke 2:7. From that, we extrapolate a whole slew of events—the innkeeper, innkeeper’s wife, a No Vacancy sign flashing. The problem is that the word used in Luke 2 (kataluma) is not the word for inn—that’s a bad English translation. The word is better translated as “upper room” or “guest room.” In fact, the 2011 translation of NIV makes that correction. Luke 22:11 also uses kataluma to describe the guest room where the last supper took place. In contrast, pandocheion (correctly translated as “inn”) appears inthe parable of the Good Samaritan.

Where was Jesus born, then, if not in a stable?

It’s much more likely He was born in a home. Mary and Joseph were going to their ancestral home, which means they had extended family there. It’s almost inconceivable that their family would not have taken them in considering the cultural practices of that time.

So if Jesus was born in a home, why does the Bible say He was placed in a manger?

That’s an important detail because it tells us what part of the house they were in. In those days, homes had an upper level where the family would sleep and a lower level where animals were kept at night for the animals’ protection and to provide heat. It seems that Jesus was born in that lower level where the animals were kept. And he was placed in a manger (feed trough) because they make for a great little cradle. In fact it reminds me of the makeshift bed my husband and I once made for our daughter when we stayed overnight at a hotel.

What about some of the characters often suggested as being present at Christ’s birth?

The shepherds were present, but the three wise men were not. Matthew’s account apparently takes place during a different time frame than Luke’s. One clue is that the Greek word Matthew used to describe Jesus is a paidion, which can mean anything from an infant to a toddler. This range of definitions would be consistent with King Herod killing all the Jewish  boys ages two and under (Matthew 2). This would mean that Jesus was probably two or younger when He was visited by the wise men.

Okay, so we’ve eliminated the stable and the wise men from the Nativity. What about the date? Was Jesus born on December 25?

Maybe. The standard story is that December 25 was adopted after Constantine’s conversion to Christianity because it was on a pagan holiday and the winter solstice. Christians then co-opted the holiday and Christianized it. What’s interesting is that the early church put almost no emphasis on celebrating the birth of Christ. They were much more concerned with the resurrection. It’s not until AD 200 where possible dates are mentioned for the celebrating of Christ’s birth. By about AD 300 there were two dates: December 25 (for the west) and January 6 (for the east). There does seem to be a tradition of December 25 long before Constantine’s conversion, so that’s why I say maybe. This article from the Biblical Archaeology Review gives a good summary of “How December 25 Became Christmas.”

I found this post over on Apologetics 315. Brian puts up a post with apologetics stories every Friday. There’s more in there – I am listening to the 5 part lecture series on church history right now. (It’s Calvinist, but polite)

Polemics

Which types of unions have the highest rates of divorce?

4 Comments

A quiz for you, from Ruth Blog.

Question:

Same sex couples have had the legal right to form domestic partnerships in several European countries.  Denmark was the first to introduce registered partnerships, in 1989. Norway was second, in 1993, then Sweden in 1995. Data from 2 of these landmark countries, Norway and Sweden, as well as California,  have been studied enough to answer this question:

What types of unions have the highest rates of divorce?

  • Opposite sex married couples: men and women are so different, it is a wonder they ever stay married.
  • Male unions: men are naturally less committed, and less monogamous, so their partnerships don’t endure.
  • Female unions: women get so emotionally distraught over things. A union of two women, without any male counter-balancing their roller-coaster, is very unstable.

Hint: the answer is the same in all three countries!

And here’s the answer:

Female unions seem to have the highest divorce rates, followed by male unions, followed by opposite sex unions.

“For Sweden, the divorce risk for partnerships of men is 50% higher than the risk for heterosexual marriages, and that the divorce risk for female partnerships is nearly double that for men.”

“For Norway, divorce risks are 77% higher in lesbian partnerships than in those of gay men.”  (The Norwegian data did not include a comparison with opposite sex couples.)

In California, the data is collected a little differently. The study looks at couples who describe themselves as partners, whether same sex or opposite sex. The study asks the question, how likely is it that these couples live in the same household five years later. Male couples were only 30% as likely, while female couples were less that 25% as likely, as heterosexual married couples, to be residing in the same household for five years.

The only contradictory data I have found to this pattern is from the Netherlands. In the Dutch data, same sex couples have a 3.15 times greater dissolution rate than opposite sex cohabiting couples, and a 3.15 x 3.66 or 11.5 times greater dissolution rate than opposite married couples. But, female couples seem to be more stable than male couples.

Do you know what else is bad for relationships? Premarital sex and cohabitation. And that’s not my opinion, those are the facts. (See the studies below) Either we are going to get serious about constraining our selfish behavior to protect children from instability, or worse, or children are going to suffer. When adults substitute their own selfish ideologies for God’s design for marriage, children suffer.

Related posts

News

Study finds that gay parents are more likely to raise gay kids

4 Comments

A new peer-reviewed study about gay parents raising gay kids in AOL News.

Excerpt:

Walter Schumm knows what he’s about to do is unpopular: publish a study arguing that gay parents are more likely to raise gay children than straight parents. But the Kansas State University family studies professor has a detailed analysis that past almost aggressively ideological researchers never had.

[…]His study on sexual orientation, out next month, says that gay and lesbian parents are far more likely to have children who become gay. “I’m trying to prove that it’s not 100 percent genetic,” Schumm tells AOL News.

His study is a meta-analysis of existing work. First, Schumm extrapolated data from 10 books on gay parenting… [and] skewed his data so that only self-identified gay and lesbian children would be labeled as such.

This is important because sometimes Schumm would come across a passage of children of gay parents who said they were “adamant about not declaring their sexual orientation at all.” These people would be labeled straight, even though the passage’s implication was that they were gay.

Schumm concluded that children of lesbian parents identified themselves as gay 31 percent of the time; children of gay men had gay children 19 percent of the time, and children of a lesbian mother and gay father had at least one gay child 25 percent of the time.

Furthermore, when the study restricted the results so that they included only children in their 20s — presumably after they’d been able to work out any adolescent confusion or experimentation — 58 percent of the children of lesbians called themselves gay, and 33 percent of the children of gay men called themselves gay. (About 5 to 10 percent of the children of straight parents call themselves gay, Schumm says.)

Schumm next went macro, poring over an anthropological study of various cultures’ acceptance of homosexuality. He found that when communities welcome gays and lesbians, “89 percent feature higher rates of homosexual behavior.”

Finally, Schumm looked at the existing academic studies… In all there are 26 such studies. Schumm ran the numbers from them and concluded that, surprisingly, 20 percent of the kids of gay parents were gay themselves. When children only 17 or older were included in the analysis, 28 percent were gay.

Here’s the paper entitled “Children of homosexuals more apt to be homosexuals?“. It appeared in the Journal of Biosocial Science.

Abstract:

Ten narrative studies involving family histories of 262 children of gay fathers and lesbian mothers were evaluated statistically in response to Morrison’s (2007) concerns about Cameron’s (2006) research that had involved three narrative studies. Despite numerous attempts to bias the results in favour of the null hypothesis and allowing for up to 20 (of 63, 32%) coding errors, Cameron’s (2006) hypothesis that gay and lesbian parents would be more likely to have gay, lesbian, bisexual or unsure (of sexual orientation) sons and daughters was confirmed. Percentages of children of gay and lesbian parents who adopted non-heterosexual identities ranged between 16% and 57%, with odds ratios of 1.7 to 12.1, depending on the mix of child and parent genders. Daughters of lesbian mothers were most likely (33% to 57%; odds ratios from 4.5 to 12.1) to report non-heterosexual identities. Data from ethnographic sources and from previous studies on gay and lesbian parenting were re-examined and found to support the hypothesis that social and parental influences may influence the expression of non-heterosexual identities and/or behaviour. Thus, evidence is presented from three different sources, contrary to most previous scientific opinion, even most previous scientific consensus, that suggests intergenerational transfer of sexual orientation can occur at statistically significant and substantial rates, especially for female parents or female children. In some analyses for sons, intergenerational transfer was not significant. Further research is needed with respect to pathways by which intergenerational transfer of sexual orientation may occur. The results confirm an evolving tendency among scholars to cite the possibility of some degree of intergenerational crossover of sexual orientation.

Comments to this post will be strictly filtered in accordance with Obama’s law restricting speech on controversial topics.

Related posts