Ring or no ring, Jesus stood before Pontius Pilate

Ferrell's Travel Blog

By this time many people have heard the report on the news or read one of the numerous   articles stating that a ring possibly belonging to Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect or procurator who condemned Jesus to be crucified, has been found.

The scholarly article on which the reports have been based has been published in Israel Exploration Journal 68:2 (2018). The popular article in The Times of Israel (here) includes a black and white photo of the area in the Herodium where the ring was found. I searched my photos and discovered a color picture I made of the same area in 2011. Even then some reconstructive work was underway.

Photo of the Herodium made from the garden where the ring was discovered. Photo by Ferrell Jenkins in 2011.

Our aerial photo below shows the Herodium in December, 2009. Additional excavations continue to be made on the…

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New BiblePlaces photo collection of Persia

Bible, Archaeology, and Travel with Luke Chandler

The fabulous BiblePlaces photo collection has a new addition most of us would not have expected to see. A 1,600 high-res photo volume on Persia is now available for purchase at the introductory price of just $25.

The new Persia volume of the BiblePlaces photo collection

Ancient Persia is of course modern Iran, which brings political barriers for many Western travelers, particularly from the United States. Todd Bolen was able to visit earlier this year and describes his experience in the new BiblePlaces newsletter.

… The trip was everything I could have hoped for and more. I was able to visit every site on my itinerary, following in the footsteps of such figures as Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes. I saw the famous Behistun Inscription, walked around one of the best preserved ziggurats, explored numerous museums, and marveled at the well-preserved tomb of King Cyrus. You can still see the…

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Trephination was not that uncommon

Ferrell's Travel Blog

Archaeologists working at Tel Megiddo excavated skeletons of two brothers from the Canaanite (Late Bronze) period dating to about 3,500 years ago,  who had a “complex medical procedure” known as trephination (or trephanation). An article in Haaretz includes several nice photos in the Premium Magazine here.

A few years ago Leon Mauldin and I traveled to some of the cities along the Turkish Black Sea Coast that may have been associated with the delivery of Peter’s epistles. See the  index of my articles here. In Samsun we visited the small archaeological museum and noted some skulls from Ikiztepe that had undergone the medical practice of trephination.

Ancient brain surgery that cut a hole in the skull to relieve pressure is referred to as trepination. A few of the skulls found at Ikiztepe are displayed in the museum. They are said to belong to Bronze Age III…

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Gaylor V. Mnuchin – 7th Circuit Oral Arguments

Gaylor v. Mnuchin – Oral Arguments

The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals sits at Chicago, occupying the 27th Floor of the Everett Dirksen Federal Building in the Federal Plaza downtown. On October 24th, I attended the oral arguments presented before the Court regarding Case # 18-1277, Gaylor v. Mnuchin, about which I wrote a bit last week. It is a reprise of a case brought by the Freedom From Religion Foundation which was dismissed in 2013 for lack of “standing” by the plaintiffs. After making some adjustments in their case, FFRF is back again.
Judge Michael Brennan presiding, joined by Senior Judge Daniel Manion, and Senior Judge William J. Bauer (nominated by Presidents Trump, Reagan, and Ford, respectively, and confirmed by the Senate).

I’m not an attorney, I don’t play one on TV, and I didn’t stay at a Holiday Inn last night – so take these “laymen’s” impressions with grains of salt.

FFRF has called this a David vs. Goliath campaign, imagining Goliath as the various religious bodies whose ministers would be effected by the elimination of tax-exempt housing allowances. But the real giant in the room, and the bigger challenge for them, may be that they are suing the US government itself – specifically the Secretary of the Treasury.
Representing the government today was an array of attorneys, led by Jesse Panuccio, Associate Attorney General of the US (the third highest ranking official at the Department of Justice, who oversees virtually all non-criminal matters). He was joined by 4 other attorneys at a table laden with documents and surrounded by document cases and still more attorneys seated near the table.

The chambers were “comfortably full” – each of the rows of spectator benches might have had room for one or two more persons if everyone move to the center.
Also arguing an amicus brief was Luke Goodrich, VP and Senior Counsel of Becket Law – a firm which argues religious liberty cases on behalf of believers in many religious communities, “Christian” and otherwise. They are representing a coalition of Chicago churches (ranging from Holy Cross Anglican Church to the Chicago Embassy Church, to the Chicago Diocese, Russian Orthodox Church), arguing specifically that the elimination of the IRC 107(2) would discriminate against poorer religious groups which cannot afford to provide a parsonage as allowed in Section 107(1).

Seated at the opposite table were two attorneys who argued that the ministerial housing allowance permitted under Internal Revenue Code Section 107(2) is unconstitutional. Speaking first was Adam Chodorow, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs for the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University brief filed by a coalition of tax professors. I thought he made the strongest and clearest case possible that IRC 107(2) is should be declared unconstitutional simply by singling out a special class (ministers) to receive a benefit not available to other citizens. Agree with the arguments or not, he made his case clearly and fielded effectively the questions asked him by the Justices.

Richard Bolton, who I believe is a general-practice attorney in Madison, WI where FFRF is located, spoke last, representing Annie Gaylor and Dan Barker, co-presidents of FFRF. My impression is that FFRF was not particularly well served by his presentation, which to my ears sounded rambling, disjointed, repetitive, and unclear. Agree or not, the other attorneys presented their cases clearly and concisely, supported by relevant court decisions and logic. Bolton, who seemed flustered by questions from the justices, also sounded exasperated at times that the simple assertion of the rightness of his case was not accepted as obvious. One man’s opinion. Presumably, such cases are decided on the merits of conflicting claims presented in the briefs, not so much on the eloquence and personality of the presenters.

Many of the issues raised in oral arguments were discussed in my post last week, reporting on a Loyola Law School seminar regarding this case. Some of them included whether the housing allowance passes the 3-prong “Lemon” test (including whether the law has “secular intent” – Judge Manion posed several questions about the secular effect, not merely the secular intent, of the law); whether “Lemon” provisions should take precedence over historical considerations in the legislative history, adjudicating such issues on a practical basis involves government entanglement in the usage of either parsonage or house exempted under the allowance, and much more. “We’ll see.”

A decision is expected sometime in the next two months. The oral arguments became available this afternoon online at the 7th Circuit’s page: media.ca7.uscourts.gov/sound/external/ds.18-12771280.18-1277_10_24_2018.mp3

Loyola University Seminar on Gaylor v. Mnuchin case

Gaylor v. Mnuchin

I attended a very stimulating seminar Wednesday, October 17th, at the Loyola University School of Law, regarding an upcoming hearing (next Wednesday) in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals regarding a lower-court decision concerning the tax-exempt housing allowances often granted to ministers in lieu of living in a “parsonage.”

The seminar was organized by Samuel D. Brunson, professor at Loyola who has taken an interest in the case, and whose recent book, The IRS and Religion: Accommodating Religious Practice in U.S. Tax Law (Cambridge University Press, 2018) I’m currently reading on my Kindle – it’s an excellent read. He was joined by another Chicago law professor, Anthony M. Kreis of Chicago-Kent College of Law. The questions from lawyers, law-school students, and other law professors was stimulating.

Some of his lecture today came straight out of chapter 5 (“Housing Clergy”) in the book. It concerns a lawsuit, brought originally in 2013 by the Freedom From Religion Foundation in Wisconsin, which was decided in their favor by Federal judge Barbara Crabb (a Carter appointee who gained some notoriety a few years ago for another decision upholding gay marriage in Wisconsin), but was then reversed and dismissed on appeal by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals a few years ago. FFRF made some changes regarding their standing to sue as suggested by the 7th Circuit, and again prevailed in Judge Crabb’s court, so here they are again, back at the appellate level. However decided this time, the issue seems likely to rise to the Supreme Court at some point.

The Constitutional issues are complex, and probably will take a boxcar of lawyers to sort out, but here is one layman’s understanding of some of the issues. Basically, the question concerns whether allowing ministers, but not other citizens generally, to exempt a designated portion of their compensation from taxation violates the religion clauses of First Amendment to the US Constitution (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …”

Some of the relevant issues which surfaced in the session include:
— The “standing” issue (whether FFRF has suffered damages or otherwise has “standing” to sue the IRS) is probably not significant this time since FFRF seems to have made the changes suggested by the 7th Circuit in the original case. Whether these would be recognized by SCOTUS if the case rises to that level is another question.

–Legislative history (see Chapter 5 and of professor Brunson’s book for details): while the history of how the housing allowance came to be and has been amended in ad hoc fashion almost from the beginning of the IRS itself is fascinating, the speakers seemed to feel that legislative history is less relevant in recent court decisions and may not play a significant role in the decision. “But we’ll see” was also a repetitive phrase during the presentations. The comments of Rep. Peter Mack in introducing HR 4275 are relevant in revealing an anti-discriminatory motive behind the legislation, but also portrayed the feelings of many in the 1950’s regarding the role of religion in anti-communist crusades. Prof. Brunson has blogged about this and other related issues at https://bycommonconsent.com/…/when-religious-tax-accommoda…/

–The “Lemon” test: Derived from a landmark 1971 SCOTUS decision (Lemon v. Kurtzman), creating a triple-pronged set of criteria to adjudicate “separation of church and state.” A statute (1) must have a secular legislative intent, (2) must neither advance nor inhibit religion, (3) must not involve “excessive government entanglement” with religion. If any of the “prongs” are violated, the statute can be declared unconstitutional. Often considered vague and cumbersome — what’s “excessive?” plus most good lawyers can probably find some secular (or religious) “intent” in many statutes. The sense of the room seemed to be that Gaylor v. Mnuchin might be the case that allows SCOTUS to replace Lemon with something more viable, or maybe just scrap it.

–Internal Revenue Code Section 107 (1) and 107 (2) – one of the most interesting features of this case is that, as I understand it, the suit challenges only IRC Section (2) which exempts a minister’s housing allowance from taxation. Section 107 (1) which allows a parsonage owned by a church and provided for the minister’s housing is not challenged in the present case (though it could be in the future if a group with standing were to bring such a challenge). Does this raise the possibility that churches (which for their convenience have largely divested themselves of parsonages in recent decades) might get back into the “parsonage business” again? “We’ll see”

— Churches of Christ and this issue (or, “Robert Baty, George HW Bush, Omar Burleson, and Pepperdine University’s ‘Basketball ministers’”). Though this did not arise in the seminar, the “backstory” to this case is intriguing. About 20 years ago, I became acquainted online with a fellow Christian, Robert Baty, who had taken an intense interest in these issues. An IRS Appeals officer (now retired), Robert was disturbed at some of the arguments made in support of legislation and/or IRS ruling 70-549 created at the behest of then-Congressman George HW Bush of Houston, and fellow Congressman Omar Burleson of Abilene, to allow colleges such as Abilene Christian University and Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA, to allow staff personnel (including athletic coaches) to claim tax-exempt housing allowances since the colleges portrayed themselves as “integral agencies of the church” – as several religious colleges do. Attempting to find Rep. Burleson’s papers for enlightenment on the issue, we discovered that they had been donated to ACU (where Burleson was an alum) but were sealed or embargoed until well into the 21st century. For more information, see the Forbes blogs of Peter J. Reilly, who has also turned a spotlight on these issues (see, for example, https://www.forbes.com/…/john-oliver-should-not-blame-irs…/… ).

(Full disclosure: like most ministers, I have taken advantage of the legal provisions for housing allowance, and in my work with one church, occupied a church-owned house. My arrangements, including years as a bi-vocational minister have survived IRS scrutiny through two audits. The case may possibly have future implications as well for other similar arrangements (university presidents and deans who are often provided housing, military housing, housing arrangements for US citizens living abroad, and other cases which may be similar though not exactly parallel).

This is an interesting case about which legal minds can reasonably disagree (as with many decisions which often have multiple dissenting opinions). I plan to be at the Dirksen Federal Building next week to hear the oral arguments before the 7th Circuit. Stay tuned.

Footnote 36 – Daniel Sommer Obituary by Frederick D. Kershner

Footnote 36 – Daniel Sommer Obituary by Frederick D. Kershner. Christian-Evangelist, LXXVIII:11 (March 14, 1940), p. 290 (from James Stephen Wolfgang, “A Life of Humble Fear: The Biography of Daniel Sommer” [MA Thesis, Butler University, 1975], pp. 165-167).

Daniel Sommer was the last of the great pioneers of the Restoration Movement. Born in 1850, only twenty years after the dissolution of the Mahoning Association, his life stretched back to the days of the Campbells and spanned almost the entire circle of the growth and development of the movement. As the successor of Benjamin Franklin in the editorship of The American Christian Review, he became a dominant protagonist of the right wing among the Disciples and was usually regarded as the very tip of the wing. Sommer was opposed to all “humanisms,” as he styled them, and believed that the only way to preserve the purity of the church was by forbidding even the slightest compromise with erroneous tendencies. Hence he opposed missionary societies, Sunday schools, Christian Endeavor societies and above all, instrumental music in the worship.
He was roundly denounced by various groups of conservatives who permitted the camel to put his nose under the tent, in one respect or another, but he always held his ground. He was opposed to Bible colleges or special training schools for the ministry because he believed that they undermined the faith of their students and taught them everything except the Bible. In one way or another, he isolated himself from the overwhelming majority of the brotherhood, a fact which caused him much sorrow, but which never shook his own convictions as to the rightness of his course.

Notwithstanding his rather extreme theological views, Daniel Sommer was one of the most tolerant and fair-minded men we have ever known. He had the Christian attitude toward the search for truth and the Christian spirit in his method of dealing with people with whom he disagreed. He had no trace of that ecclesiastical bigotry which refuses to sit on the same platform or speak at the same meeting with another individual suspected of heretical views. Instead of this widely prevalent Pharisaism, the editor of The Apostolic Review would go anywhere he was invited to speak, no matter how much he disagreed with the people who were managing the program or the general point of view prevalent at the meeting. He rightly reasoned that unfavorable circumstances of this kind made it all the more incumbent upon him to deliver his message whenever he had a chance to do it.

Hence he preached the gospel everywhere, to all sorts of people and under the most bizarre and unusual circumstances. Money was no consideration whatever with him and he never received more than a bare living for his untiring labors in behalf of the church. He delighted in real missionary work and only a few days before his death he insisted upon going forth again to take up the task of evangelism. He had a tonic influence upon all who came in contact with him and his obvious sincerity and disinterestedness gave weight to his words far beyond the tricks of the professional orator or elocutionist.

Even in his advanced age, Daniel Sommer was a forceful speaker and his thinking was logical and clear. He was one of the great preachers of the Restoration and his memory will be affectionately cherished by multitudes who possessed only slight personal acquaintance with him. Old as he was when he left this world, his more intimate friends will be conscious of a keen sense of loss in his departure, a feeling which will only partially disappear with the passing of time. He was a great soul, perhaps one should say more correctly, he is a great soul, and many of us feel that we shall not look upon his like again.

— Frederick D. Kershner Christian-Evangelist, LXXVIII:11 (March 14, 1940), p. 290.

Social Media and Spiritual Problems https://mindyourfaithblog.wordpress.com/2016/03/23/how-social-media-posts-can-signal-spiritual-problems/

Social Media and Spiritual Problems — from Doy Moyer’s Mind Your Faith blog