Reading the Bible in light of common sense - Did Solomon Really Take an Egyptian Bride?

 Did Solomon Really Take an Egyptian Bride?

What we learn from the Bible and archaeology

 Philip D. Stern  October 24, 2023 

Not Pharaoh’s Daughter. This coffin cover belonged to a woman who lived in Thebes during Egypt’s 21st Dynasty. Although her name has not been preserved, she seems to have been wealthy and belonged to the clerical class—as indicated by the style of her coffin cover. The woman lived around the same time as Solomon’s bride, the unnamed daughter of Pharaoh, would have lived. 

King Solomon was famous for his wisdom and, among other things, his many marital and extramarital relationships. His harem is given at 700 wives and 300 concubines (1 Kings 11:3)—surely an exaggeration. According to 1 Kings 11, he also took foreign wives, some of whom led him to idolatry. For example, to satisfy his Moabite wives, he built a shrine to the Moabite god Chemosh. The biblical writer trembles with indignation when reporting Solomon’s falling away.

https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/people-cultures-in-the-bible/people-in-the-bible/did-solomon-really-take-an-egyptian-bride/?mqsc=E4156042&dk=ZE33O0ZF0&utm_source=WhatCountsEmail&utm_medium=BHDA%20Daily%20Newsletter&utm_campaign=10_25_23_Who_Was_Miriam

Perspectives on Faith - The Flaw of the Excluded Middle - Paul Hiebert

 On the bottom level a holistic theology includes an awareness of God in natural history — in sustaining the natural order of things. So long as the missionary comes with a two-tier worldview with God confined to the supernatural, and the natural world operating for all practical purposes according to autonomous scientific laws, Christianity will continue to be a secularizing force in the world. Only as God is brought back into the middle of our scientific understanding of nature will we stem

the tide of Western secularism.

A second implication is that the church and mission must guard against Christianity itself becoming a new form of magic. Magic is based on a mechanistic view — a formula approach to reality that allows humans to control their own destiny. Worship, on the other hand, is rooted in a relational view of life. Worshipers place themselves in the power and mercy of a greater being.

The difference is not one of form, but of attitude. What begins as a prayer of request may turn into a formula or chant to force God to do one's will by saying or doing the right thing. In religion, we want the will of God for we trust in his omniscience. In magic we seek our own wills, confident that we know what is best for ourselves.

The line dividing them is a subtle one as I learned in the case of Muchintala. A week after our prayer meeting, Yellayya returned to say that the child had died. I felt thoroughly defeated. Who was I to be a missionary if I could not pray for healing and receive a positive answer? A few weeks later Yellayya returned with a sense of triumph. "How can you be so happy after the child died?" I asked. "The village would have acknowledged the power of our God had he healed the child," Yellayya said, "but they knew in the end she would have to die. When they saw in the funeral our hope of resurrection and reunion in heaven, they saw an even greater victory, over death itself, and they have begun to ask about the Christian way." In a new way I began to realize that true answers to prayer are those that bring the greatest glory to God, not those that satisfy my immediate desires. It is all too easy to make Christianity a new magic in which we as gods can make God do our bidding. 

https://web.archive.org/web/20150207083930/http://www.michaelsheiser.com/UFOReligions/FlawofExcludedMiddle.pdf

Introducing the Bible - William Barclay

 Here is a new situation with a very great potential. Augustine Birrell used to say that every student should be compelled to read books with the point of which he is in complete disagreement. In Bible study a very mixed group, with widely varying points of view, is much better than a holy huddle of like-minded people. Disagreement can be the way to new discovery and is always a stimulus to thought, for we can never be sure of any position until we have defended it from attack.

Another new attitude is that people have come to see that the Bible is a book, not only to be read, but also to be studied. The old system in which a person read a chapter a day, and just read it, will no longer do. The old battle cry that the Bible is its own best interpreter is no longer acceptable. The Bible is a difficult book, written in different languages, coming from a different civilization, talking about difficult things, and every aid to study great books that must be brought to it. The Bible is like all more we bring to it, the more we will get out of it.

In this book I do not wish to persuade people to think as I do; I only wish to make them think. It is my prayer and my hope that this book will enable people to understand the Bible better, to love it more, and in it to see Jesus Christ more clearly.

Glasgow University

WILLIAM BARCLAY

Dedication to the Gospel - John Livingston Nevius

 “When Christians feel that they are debtors to those who have not heard of Christ, and that the blood of the perishing may be found on their skirts, when they are brought into closer sympathy with Christ, and honestly and earnestly desire the triumph of his kingdom, so that they are willing to make sacrifices to bring about that glorious result, and when they pray with faith for the promised outpouring of the Holy Spirit—then, as believers in the sovereignty and faithfulness of Christ our Lord, we may look for results such as have not hitherto been witnessed.” 

John Livingston Nevius