[Dialogue] sPONG 4/30/08

[KroegerD at aol.com]

April 30, 2008 
The Universe, the Star of  Bethlehem and Professor Alex Filippenko  

Whether I am on the lecture circuit, where I spend most of my time, or in my  
home a normal day for me starts about 6:00 a.m., when I go either to the 
hotel's  "fitness room" or to the first floor of our home to spend an hour or more 
on a  treadmill. It would no longer be accurate to describe what I do there 
as  "running" since, except for my warm up and cool down periods, I average a 
pace  of somewhere between four and five miles per hour. My minimum goal each 
day is  four miles and I rarely go beyond five. My other ambition is to burn 
over 700  calories each morning. Together my wife and I put over 2500 miles a 
year on a  treadmill.  
I am confident that I would not keep up this long standing routine were it  
not for a second factor. While working on that treadmill, I am listening to  
books or lectures that come to me via tapes and CDs, or viewing and listening to 
 university courses via DVDs.  
Reading books on tape has been a passion of mine since 1976, when I became  
aware existentially that the life of a bishop required an inordinate amount of  
time in an automobile. That was when I discovered that I could rent books on  
tape from a company in Long Beach, California, or get them free from my 
public  library. The process transformed driving from drudgery into sheer pleasure. 
In  those years I "read" on tape an average of 80 books a year. I am not a 
devotee  of fiction, though I did read the complete works of Charles Dickens on 
tape  about 20 years ago. My tastes rather run to history, biography, 
philosophy,  science and studies in the fields of art and music. I like to read the 
classics  that everyone knows about, but few have read in their entirety. I 
think of  Charles Darwin's "Notes from the Voyage of the Beagle" and his On the 
Origin of  Species By Means of Natural Selection. I have also read the 
multi-volumes series  such as The Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant and 
The Second World  War
by Winston Churchill. Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was 
another reading adventure.  
When I retired in 2000 my time in the car diminished so I transferred my  
passion for learning through recorded books to a treadmill, to long walks that I  
take with my wife and even to my hobby of cooking. To bake a 
strawberry-rhubarb  pie while listening to a book being read on tape is a double source of 
joy. I  carry a tape player with me like a piece of clothing.  
About a decade ago, I discovered through my public library something called  
The Teaching Company. This company searches out the best professors in America 
 at universities and colleges, large and small, and contracts with them to 
put  their courses on tape, CDs or DVDs, so that people like me can sit at the 
feet  of the best teachers in this land, in effect returning to the university  
classroom. In this series I have taken such courses as the "Religions of the  
World" with Diana Eck of Harvard; the history of music, the history of opera, 
a  course on the symphonies of Beethoven, the works of Mozart and the operas 
of  Verdi all with Robert Greenberg of the San Francisco Conservatory of 
Music,  perhaps the finest teacher to whom I have ever listened; the "Great Artists 
of  the Italian Renaissance," taught by William Kloss of the Smithsonian  
Institution; "Shaping Philosophers of Western Civilization," a course that began  
with Plato and Aristotle and journeyed through Augustine and Aquinas, before  
winding up with John Locke, David Hume, Benedict Spinoza, Emmanuel Kant, Rene 
 Descartes, Blaise Paschal and many others, taught by Alan Kors of Princeton 
of  the University of Pennsylvania. All have been thrilling breakthroughs for 
me in  both acquiring knowledge and gaining insight. It is this learning 
experience  that keeps me dedicated to the routine of daily exercise on my 
treadmill or in  the hotel.  
I just recently completed the lectures, I think there were 48 in this series, 
 entitled "Understanding the Universe," taught by Professor Alex Filippenko 
of  the University of California at Berkeley. Seldom have I experienced a more  
expansive vision of the size and majesty of the universe and of our place 
within  it. Professor Filippenko is relatively young, obviously brilliant and 
clearly in  love with his subject. He travels the world to view full eclipses. He 
follows  every space probe, from the moon landing to the unnamed spacecraft 
that took  pictures of Jupiter, with the glee of a schoolboy eating a banana 
split. He  relates the debates among astronomers over such topics as whether 
Pluto should  be called a planet or not with the same passion that marks the 
Yankee-Red Sox  rivalry in baseball. He uses models to illustrate the 
relationships between  various heavenly bodies. He explains why the consensus among 
astronomers is that  the moon was created early in the earth's history by a 
collision with the earth  of a giant heavenly body about the size of Mars. This 
collision sent a massive  chunk of the earth's material into orbit around this 
planet, first as debris,  but over an expanse of time, this debris formed itself 
into a heavenly body  called the moon. Finally one embraces both the age and 
size of this universe.  Its age can be fairly accurately measured by the use of 
the decay rate of  Uranium 238 at about 13.7 billion years old, with the age of 
our solar system  pegged at about 4.5 billion years. The size of this 
universe is beyond the  powers of numbers to express. Our single galaxy, the Milky 
Way, one of more than  200 billion galaxies in the visible universe, is alone so 
large that it takes  light, traveling as it does at the approximate speed of 
186,000 miles per  second, about 100,000 years to go from one end of our 
galaxy to the other.  
Despite Professor Filippenko's brilliance, or maybe because of it, I was  
actually stunned in this course to listen to him pause to discuss what it was  
that might have caused biblical writers to describe "The Star of Bethlehem." He  
assumed that this was a legitimate topic for astronomers. I often worry when  
religious leaders speculate on scientific phenomena about which they know 
very  little, like evolution for example. This, however, was an experience in 
which a  scientific expert was speculating on a religious idea about which he 
apparently  knew very little. After going into several theories that have been 
advanced in  the past to account for the heavenly sign that was supposed to have 
marked the  birth of Jesus, Professor Filippenko placed his weight behind the 
idea advanced  by Michael Molnar, a computer programmer with a doctorate in 
astronomy, that the  planet Jupiter, which rose in the east into the 
astrological sign of Aries in 6  BCE., was what was behind the "Star of Bethlehem." 
Filippenko went on to explain  that Jupiter was thought of as "the star of kings" 
and that to the Romans the  sign of Aries represented Judea. So when Jupiter 
rose into the sign of Aries  that could have been interpreted as an 
astrological sign that a new king of the  Jews had been born.  
I watched this serious explanation with amused incredulity, recognizing once  
more the extent of the power that has been attributed to the literal Bible 
over  the centuries, and which was now still affecting the life of contemporary  
scientists. Why did I find this incredulous? There were several reasons. In 
the  first place, the idea that anyone would assert that a heavenly sign can or 
did  literally predict or mark an earthly event is unbelievable. It implies 
that  behind the sky is a supernatural deity who communicates with earthlings 
about  events in human history. Second, the suggestion that Jesus at the moment 
of his  birth was thought of as the king of the Jews is to accept as 
historical fact a  concept in Jewish messianic thought, which was not applied to Jesus 
until well  after his earthly life had come to an end. The biblical claim 
that Jesus was  descended from the royal line of David was first introduced by 
Paul in the  Epistle to the Romans about the year 58. This idea was later 
incorporated into  Matthew's gospel written in the mid-eighties (82-85) by moving 
Jesus' birthplace  from Nazareth, where the first gospel, Mark, assumed that he 
had been born (he  was called "Jesus of Nazareth"), to Bethlehem so that he 
could be born in the  city of David. Matthew introduced this Bethlehem story 
with a genealogy that  traced Jesus' ancestry through the royal line of the kings 
of Judah back to King  David, though Matthew clearly edited the genealogy to 
fit his needs. This same  Matthew, however, tells us in chapter 13 that Jesus 
was in fact the son of a  carpenter. Matthew, we need to note, is the only 
gospel to mention the "Star of  Bethlehem." In the only other birth story of 
Jesus, found in Luke (88-93), the  star has been replaced by a host of angels who 
break through the midnight sky to  sing to hillside shepherds about the birth 
of a savior, not a king. Jesus is not  called the "King of the Jews" in Luke 
until the scene of the crucifixion.  Apparently Professor Filippenko is not 
aware of the fact that a star in the sky  was a regular Jewish way of announcing 
the births of a significant life in  Jewish history. Examples in Jewish 
writing can be found of stars that announced  the births of Abraham, Isaac and 
Moses, to say nothing of an earlier biblical  account (Numbers 24:17) in which a 
star was anticipated to rise out of Jacob and  a scepter, the sign of a king, 
would rise out of Israel. Matthew would have been  aware of each of these 
references.  
Finally, given what we now know about the size of the universe and the fact  
that light we see from the stars today was emitted hundreds of thousands, in  
some cases even millions of years ago since it takes light that long to 
navigate  the distances involved, for God to send a heavenly sign announcing Jesus' 
birth,  God would have had to put that star into its place centuries before 
the event  being announced to get the timing correct. Even if it was only the 
light of  Jupiter that constituted the "Star of Bethlehem," it would still put 
the timing  off seriously.  
No, Professor Filippenko, there was no literal "Star of Bethlehem." That is  
nothing more than Jewish interpretive writing (based on Isaiah 60) composed 
well  after the fact of Jesus' birth, trying to find language big enough and  
significant enough to capture what the life of Jesus meant to the gospel  
writers, who were second generation Christians writing some 40-70 years after  the 
death of Jesus. Confusing history with mythology and facts with interpretive  
signs is to play into hands of biblical literalists one more time. That is a  
shame because the story behind the star of Bethlehem stands on its own merits.  
John Shelby Spong  
Question and Answer
With John  Shelby Spong 
Bob Cherner from Arizona writes:  
I have been learning from and enjoying your newsletter for four years. While  
I have not always completely agreed with you, I have not significantly 
disagreed  with you until recently. Your comment several weeks ago about the 
"integrity" of  John McCain was badly misplaced. I have been a resident of Arizona 
for over 30  years. I was concerned when McCain moved to Arizona with the intent 
of going  into politics, but I was very pleased when he became a "Goldwater 
Republican."  Early in his career he followed that path, but as he became more 
and more a  national figure he changed. To this day I proudly claim to be a 
Goldwater  Republican, but McCain no longer can be identified with the Senator's 
 libertarian views. While I disagreed with Goldwater's position on civil 
rights,  it was consistent with his desire for as little government involvement as 
 possible.  
Senator McCain has a perfect "Christian Right" voting record on women's  
rights, particularly on reproductive rights. His opinion on stem cell research  
and a number of other Christian Right issues is very much what they want, in  
spite of their current protestations. McCain has a temper and holds a grudge  
against those who cross him. If you know any Republicans from Arizona please ask 
 them. His record is far from clean on "helping" big business. He continued 
to  work for Charles Keating even after Keating's practices were suspect.  
Senator McCain is as pro-war as his new best friend George Bush; he is just  
smarter about how he expresses it. The only point I will give him on this 
issue  is that he has a son who is in the military. I have long felt that a 
president  or congressperson should have a child or grandchild in the military. I 
wonder  how long the Iraq invasion would have lasted if the Bush twins had been 
serving  on the front line.  
Thanks for listening and for your continued insights in the newsletters.  
Dear Bob,  
Thank you for your letter. I can disagree with the positions that a  
politician takes and still applaud his integrity. In John McCain, I see a man  who 
bore the indignities of imprisonment in Vietnam with courage and integrity.  He 
was abused badly by the Bush campaign in the 2000 primary, especially in  South 
Carolina, but he nonetheless was a supporter of the nominee of his party  on 
many issues. He called leaders of the religious right on their religious  
intolerance. Along with his close friend Senator Lindsey Graham of South  
Carolina, he opposed the Bush administration's policy on torture. He put his  
political life on the line for his belief in a larger military presence in Iraq.  He 
has apologized for his mistake in not backing a national holiday for Martin  
Luther King. Even when I feel he is totally wrong on an issue, I give him credit 
 for putting what he believes is in the best interests of his country ahead 
of  his own political future.  
If temper were to disqualify a person from the White House many, from Andrew  
Jackson, who fought duels with his opponents; to Richard Nixon, whose tirades 
 are on taped conversations for all to hear; to Bill Clinton, who was known 
to  explode from time to time, would never have served. I think McCain is  
intelligent and that he has integrity. Those are important considerations for  the 
one who will occupy the White House.  
I will vote for the person who most reflects my priorities for this nation.  
That will not be Senator McCain, but if he were to be elected, I would not 
feel  as despairing as I do about the present administration.  
John Shelby Spong 



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