The conflict between a certain grouping within Christianity…a certain movement that has been moving backwards for decades and has proven to be not only detrimental to American culture and society, but also a highly visible and embarrassing growth on the overall body of Christianity, to which I have applied the descriptor Evangelicalism, and Rock music is manifest. The Evangelical war against rock music began as early as the rise of Elvis Presley, picked up steam in the 1960s, and came to the fore during the late 1970s to the mid-1980s. But it was the seminal year 1966 that sealed the deal as far as that is concerned. The Beatles made a serious mis-step in the same year, which I discussed in A Somnambulant Mistake. That mistake prompted radio stations and record dealers to take a particularly hostile stance toward the 4 Mop-tops, which would reach a climax in that same year. This second mistake, although it wasn’t really a mistake at all, was rooted in comments made by John Lennon on March 4, 1966. During an interview with close friend Maureen Cleave, which was published in the London Evening Standard, Lennon made significant statements about Christianity.

The English people seem to have the innate ability to ignore ignorable things as ignorably ignorable. That may be due, in my opinion, to the fact that Christianity outside of the United States does not feel threatened by popular culture. In fact, this more accommodating mind-set may emanate from the ideas of John Robinson, Bishop of Woolwich, in his controversial book published in 1963:

To oversimplify, Robinson believes that a secular world requires a secular theology. The concept of morality is one that is not concrete…it changes throughout time. The different elements of human culture, not just the Bible or religion in general, are sources of divine revelation. But it goes much further than that. God must change…Christianity’s concept of God must change. For Robinson, the old Up There God is no longer sufficient.

To give my own paraphrase of this which, of course, remains my flawed interpretation...unless Christianity is able to free itself from the concrete cinder blocks holding it firmly anchored in the dim recesses of mankind’s past, the forces of change, which, certainly in the late 1950s and early 1960s, were crashing through with an ever-increasing velocity, then Christianity might become hopelessly outdated with a generation that would prove to be dramatically impatient with the hopelessly outdated. In other words, Christianity would have to change to survive. If Christianity became more open to change and adaptation, then its chances of survival could increase. I suppose one could see in my words a sort of Religious Darwinism…without continual adaptation, there is ultimately no survival.

The religious beliefs of rock musicians are essentially irrelevant. Most rock musicians are probably agnostic and indifferent. Rock music is a life-style that chases all the things that are very much things of this world: fame, money, sex, drugs…etc. It is simply a fact, in my opinion, that Evangelicals, with their lives so steeped in religion, don’t ever really grasp the fact that there are so many people with a pronounced disinterest in all the things that they themselves feel so interested in. Kids may imitate rock musicians in many ways, some of which may be deemed to be negative, but I would contend that almost no young people imitate, or accept, the religious views and beliefs of rock musicians for the very simply reason that many rock musicians…don’t really have any. That may change later in life, by which time they are Golden Oldie Guys anyway. Rock music has a driving intensity that moves at far too fast a pace for anybody’s religious views to keep up with. In youth culture, rock music is the fastest and loudest element…it drowns out everything, and races ahead of everything. And the rock music industry is a notoriously fickle one. A movement starts, becomes white hot, and then almost overnight, a decade of rock musicians wake-up to find that they are no longer steering the rocket ship. In 1991, the “life’s just a party so let’s party all the time” themed rock music that developed throughout the 1980s, was perhaps best exemplified by:

Poison…Nothing But A Good Time. But a far more introspectively dark form of rock music was busy taking over. The imagery utilized to make statements about itself gave way to an almost Anti-Rock Star kind of Rock star around 1992-1993:

From the beginning, a new, dark shift had taken place, kicked off by black-clad nihilistic cheerleaders, who are also agents of…Anarchy:

And I feel certain that the Anarchy Cheerleaders are far better looking than a certain Diabolical Nurse:

Introduce a little anarchy, upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos!

The definitive Joker was still a ways off. But Nirvana certainly introduced a little anarchy:

With the lights out, it’s less dangerous;
Here we are now, entertain us,
I feel stupid and contagious,
Here we are now, entertain us.

Then we end with a despondent scream..a denial!

And so, the impulses of youth culture were sent rocketing in another direction, and with a greater velocity. I would quote one particularly popular band from the 1980s:

Nirvana killed our career.

Actually, it wasn’t Nirvana who was responsible. It was the sudden and dramatic change in trajectory that killed your career. Nirvana was just the agent of chaos that upset the Established Rock Music Order and ushered in a new direction. And that was inevitable…it always is. A sock-hoppish music of the 1950s gave way to...

Yes! Gave way to a form of rock music that saw itself as not just entertainment, but also as a force to change the old world of the 1950s into a whole new world with no war and an expanded State of Consciousness. Of course, having the coolest Rock-chick ever didn’t hurt:

The protest and folk-rock of the 1960s eventually gave way to a 1970s type of rock music that was set free from the Counter-culture’s political “we are going to change the world for the better” moorings. Music, chicks, drugs…really fast cars…left the old ways of the Jefferson Airplane behind.

Nobody’s gonna take my car, I’m gonna race it to the ground;
Nobody’s gonna beat my car, It’s gonna break the speed of sound

We’re no longer concerned with changing the world. But in keeping with velocity:

When it all was over, we had to find another place;
But Swiss time was running out, it seemed that we would lose the race;
Smoke on the water, a fire in the sky…

So Deep Purple shot past at 150 miles per hour. One type of rock music ages and begins to slow down just enough to allow another type to race past it…seemingly breaking the speed of sound.

My application of Robinson’s view leads me to suggest that there is a truth that the Evangelicals simply will not accept…you must compete for the attention of young people…you must replace the Up There God with an In There God. You must show that you are relevant. If you feel that you are simply entitled to the loyalty of young people because you believe that you are right…you will lose.

Very few Evangelicals, who in some way are the great Ingredient Masters of the Bubbling Caldron, have a good feel for the works and ideas of the Higher Critical Scholarship World of the Bible. In my reading, the faddish natural religion vs. revealed religion battle that emanated from the upheavals of the Enlightenment could have been the end of a form of Christianity that was more palatable than the Great Deistic I-Don’t-Have-to-Call-Myself-an-Atheist-if-I-Call-Myself-This philosophy. There was only natural religion, but no revealed religion? That is wrong…and the Higher Critical Scholars set about taking into account the Undeniable, and yet in the course of doing so, bolstered the existence of Revealed Religion. Maybe…saved it. Who can say? At any rate, Fundamentalist Retrenchment moves at a snail’s pace compared to Higher Criticism. The fatal error lies in falling back on the Good vs. Evil lowest common denominator…God vs. Satan…Dualisms never work in the end. The generation that can’t adapt…ages…and will ultimately lose the race...Swiss time, aside. Embracing…not the Great Dualism, but rather…the Greatly Dynamic…will keep one from going the way of the…

Well, there aren’t any more of those around.

As far as rock musicians go, John Lennon was somewhat cerebral. And I think that Robinson is an important backdrop to the comments that Lennon made in 1966. But so too was something else.

The Enfant Terrible of the Biblical Scholarship of his day! A man who knew no bounds. Gutsy as the day is long. Karl Friedrich Bahrdt. A child of the Enlightenment, but one whose theory would live on in the work of those who sought to save Christianity from the Natural-Religion-Only guys. He suggested that Jesus did not die on the cross, nor was he resurrected from the dead. In fact, what Jesus did do was fake his own death, using the Pharmaceutical Trickery of Luke. Jesus, along with Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, among others, were members of a secret society called the Essenes. Their goal was to save the Jews by offering a Transformative Messiah who would shift expectations away from a political revolt against Rome. Jesus was to be this messiah, and so his death was faked in order that he may appear to have been resurrected, confirming that the Man from Nazareth was indeed the messiah. Other permutations of this basic idea found an echo, including the idea that Jesus had simply been believed dead, removed from the cross, and then revived. I could, though I would be wrong, tie the Enfant Terrible’s theory to Judas Iscariot, the erstwhile companion of Jacob and Aunt Mina. The Judas-Group believed that what Judas did was done in the service of Christ’s plan, and only Judas had been taught the real truth. One might suggest that Jesus’s arrest and crucifixion would still have to take place, and so, in a Bahrdtian way, Judas knew of Jesus’s plan to fake his death and resurrection, and was the one entrusted to arrange Jesus’s arrest with the Agents of the Sanhedrin.

A fascinating image that continues turning things on their head as far as Judas goes. I speak not for the Judas-Group, nor even for myself; I simply point out something that might momentarily seem interesting.

But one man who did accept the basic elements of Bahrdt’s theory was Hugh J Schonfield, author of... 

This book was published in 1965, and was later made into a movie roughly 3 years after the Exorcist:

Wait…this is a better poster:

In Schonfield’s version, Jesus hides his true plans from his 12 disciples, trusting only a special few among his followers, Lazarus and Joseph of Arimetha, in particular.  But the plan to fake Jesus’s death went awry after a Roman soldier stabbed Jesus in his side with a spear. And now I come to where I began. When Cleave conducted her interview with John Lennon in 1966, it took place in Lennon’s home. When she looked at the books on Lennon’s bookshelf, it turns out that The Passover Plot was one of them. And it would appear that he had read it:

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that; I'm right and I'll be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first – rock 'n' roll or Christianity. Jesus was alright, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.

This quote, as I pointed out, did not cause any trouble in the UK. In the US, it first appeared in the New York Times Magazine. Still no reaction. Then on July 29, 1966 a portion of the quote appeared on the cover of Datebook magazine:

John Lennon: I don’t know which will go first- rock ‘n roll or Christianity.

 
Now there was a problem. It started in Birmingham, Alabama. I am not particularly surprised that the trouble started there:

The darling of Alabama’s Evangelicals; stomping around on stage at his rallies waving a gun, dressed as if 2017 was a reincarnation of the Wild, Wild, West; spewing hatred and bigotry to his adoring, overly-devoted teenagerish fans. And like Donald Trump…there were serious moral issues. And yet Mr. Moore continued to cast himself as the Defender of the Bible, Christianity, and moral decency…all the while spewing hate toward anyone who wasn’t white, male, and a hypocritical Evangelical. And like Trump, having an exaggerated belief in his own importance in the universe:

He won’t concede losing the election to Doug Jones…the fate of American Civilization depends on a guy, who had been banned from a mall, being elected to the U.S. Senate. And he proved to be a sore loser. He also has a habit of sending out surrogates to spar with the mainstream media on his behalf that seemed to be somewhat nutty:

Janet Porter would have us believe that the chances of there being no voter fraud during the election that repudiated the Great Immoral Darling of the Evangelicals are 1 in 15 billion. Kooky people don’t ever seem to get the fact that as impressed as they are with their kookiness, and no matter how much their kooky comrades are impressed by them, they sound somewhat moronic to everyone else. And just how much they seem to have no idea what they’re talking about:

The interview with Ted Crockett, during which he seemed to have no idea what his hero Roy Moore had said in the past, or was actually not as dense as he clearly seemed to be by simply refusing to answer any of the questions, was hilarious; yet, deeply troubling at the same time. When Mr. Tapper asked Mr. Crockett how you could possibly justify Roy Moore’s proclamation that Muslims should be banned from holding political office, Dunderhead Ted declared that to assume your elected position, you have to swear on the Bible. The truth of the matter is that you can swear on any old book you want…maybe even Green Eggs and Ham. Mr. Crockett had no idea what he was talking about, making him a good, practicing Evangelical. But Ms. Porter did something that I found repulsively disgusting. When interviewed by Poppy Harlow of the Real Media three-letter word…CNN, Porter congratulated Ms. Harlow on her being in a family way. Extending congratulations to someone who would, before too long, add one more member to her family, is very dignified and laudable. But Porter then showed herself to be a fitting addition to the Roy Moore Evangelical family:

That’s the reason why I came down, is to volunteer to speak for Judge Roy Moore because he’ll stand for the rights of babies like yours in the womb, where his opponent will support killing them up until the moment of birth.

The Moral Degeneracy of American Evangelicals seems to know no bounds...well some at any rate...and manages to always find another low to plummet towards. Then, seeking yet another low, Porter accused Doug Jones of believing Poppy had the right to take the life of her baby. I’ll admit that I was amazed at the patience and restraint that the interviewer showed when telling Porter to leave her baby out of the matter. One might be inclined to tell it like it is…you’re a ...well, I suppose that you get the point.

The inability of Roy Moore’s self-defeating spokespeople to deal with his assertion that Muslims shouldn’t be allowed to hold office appears again:
 

Porter, quite wisely, avoided the ridiculously stupid answer that Mr. Crockett threw out during his interview. Porter stated that Roy Moore believes in the Constitution, not Shariah law. When Mr. Cooper put Porter on the spot and demanded to know whether Roy Moore believed that there are communities in the United States living under Shariah law, Porter responded:

There are communities overseas…

And I would point out that there is nothing in the Constitution that bans Muslims from holding office in the United States, nor anything in the Constitution that bans gay-marriage or supports outlawing forms of consensual sexual expression. Oh! Under-aged girls can’t consent…making any sexual contact with them…a crime. And Roy Moore does not believe in the Constitution. This is a man who was kicked off the Supreme Court of Alabama twice because he ordered lower court judges to refuse to follow a ruling of the United States Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions can only be overruled by an amendment to the Constitution. And he went so far as to state that he favored the removal of all the amendments to the constitution after the 10th amendment. It comes as no surprise that this would include the Thirteenth amendment, which outlawed slavery and involuntary servitude. Mr. Moore... 

had a lot of support from women. I’ll bet that many of those female supports didn’t know this man…

I know him! Well, not personally. He defeated James M Cox in the 1920 presidential election. The score? 404 to 127 in the Electoral College. Wait!

What do you mean that guy got more electoral college votes than me? I’m like, a really smart guy! And stable too! He only got more votes than me because Bill and Hillary Clinton arranged for fake votes for a fake president!

That’ not exactly true, sir…Mr. Harding was elected in 1920; the Clinton’s weren’t born yet.

I’m afraid it’s true, sir. 

Hey Trump! I won the popular vote too!

Sorry, I didn’t know you’d get so upset. But why is Harding important? Well, the Nineteenth amendment gave women the right to vote, and Harding was the first president to be elected with the help of female voters. Ah! Hey all you ladies who are so enthusiastic about Roy Moore! If he gets rid of the amendments after the Tenth, then Roy Moore wants your vote so he can turn around and take the right to vote away from you. Basically, what Moore did was to trample all over the Constitution of the United States. I would also point out that the Constitution overrules absolutely and every time any person’s interpretation of a book they seem to know nothing about…the Bible, as far as the government is concerned. The Bible is not, nor has it ever been, the law of the land…unless you harken back to the Middle Ages where Alabama Evangelicals would be most happy anyway. Adultery, whatever you think of it, is not illegal. Fornication is not illegal…assuming that it doesn’t involve minors. And as far as Porter goes…it is unconstitutional to enact Christian Sariah Law as well.

Why use the Bible as pre-text for outlawing homosexuality and not use it equally to outlaw adultery? Adultery appears in the Ten Commandments…homosexuality does not. Of course, it is simply a fact that many Family-Values Republican-Evangelicals get caught in adultery…perhaps that’s why they don’t have any plans to outlaw that particular vice.

You shall not copulate with a man as you do with a woman…it is an abomination

That is Leviticus 18:20. This is Leviticus 20:13:

If a man has sexual relations with another man, both have committed an abominable act. They shall surely be put to death; they die as a result of what they have done

Romans 1: 26-27:

It was because of this that God gave them up to their abnormal attractions; even the women did what is against nature, as did the men, shunning women, lusted for one another. They deserve what they get.

1 Corinthians 6:9:

Don’t you know that unrighteous people do not inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, the effeminate, nor abusers of themselves…

And that’s it. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah involves more than the question of homosexuality…there is also the very real element of rape. So, Evangelicals have four passages in the entire Bible to fall back on in the effort to purge humanity of same-sex oriented people. Four passages! And notice that 1 Corinthians, which if you never opened your Bible you might show your ignorance by getting up in front of a church congregation and calling it One Corinthians, lists effeminate as referring to only one sin among others, without claiming that it was worse than fornication and…drum roll for Family Values Hypocrites…adultery! But I would suggest caution when dealing with the word effeminate. A controversial convert to Christianity, around the year 135 A.D., was Montanus. He founded the New Prophecy movement. He claimed that he was a prophet, and was supported by two women, each dubbed a prophetess, named Priscilla and Maximilia. The trio was known as The Three. The movement was a Phrygian one, and Montanus claimed to know the location of the New Jerusalem. Montanus was labelled a heretic because of his belief that new prophetic revelations continued to emanate from God, which, as is clear, seriously upsets those obsessed with dogma. I suggest that another main point of contention between Christianity and Christian New Prophecy was the horrible crime of having women in key positions of leadership. Typically throughout its history, Establishment Christianity has sought to punish women who had the nerve to retain powerful positions in Non-Establishment Christian religious circles by calling them witches. Still, that is a later development. Instead, the dynamic Priscilla and Maximilia were labelled as…I’m sure this won't come as a surprise…demon-possessed. It was believed at the time that Montanus had been a priest of Cybele.

Ah, yes…the Great Mother…

Wow! I’ll stick with the first picture.

The Galli! The priesthood dedicated to Cybele were made up of males who castrated themselves while in a state of ecstasy during the Day of Blood celebration…

Ouch! They wore women’s clothes, head-dresses, and jewelry, including earrings. They also bleached their long hair, and blackened the area around their eyes, making them look like they were wearing too much eye make-up.

And:

The practice of self-castration as a sign of religious devotion was one that had staying-power in early Christianity. Of course, there is no such connection between self-mutilation and Judaism...whose sacred symbols generally dont' grace the covers of Rock albums. But the Galli most certainly practiced this, and it is well attested among early Christians. Basil of Ancyra (336-358 BC) lashed out at an increasing number of self-castrated men who had obtained positions of power within the church. He compared such Christians to the Galli. St. Augustine stated that the Galli continued to exist in Carthage, describing them as having painted faces and a characteristically feminine walk. So effeminate in One Corinthians would certainly be applicable to the Galli, along with numerous Christians during the early period of the Christian church. I suspect that cross-pollination between non-Christian Galli and Christian Galli continued for hundreds of years. In 1948, Alfred Kinsey published…

The book suggested that as much as 10% of the male population was homosexually-oriented. I suspect that number is far too low. But if we reckon with 10% of the male population, it is a tremendously shocking thing to observe that over thousands of years of divine revelation, the subject is undeniably unimportant in the Bible. Compare this to the approximately 50 references to adultery in the Bible. Now tell me…which is the bigger moral failing measured by how often sources in the Bible refer to homosexuality on the one hand, and adultery on the other? And I would also point out that if you take Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, rules and regulations about cultic procedures…sacrifices…altars…tongs…bowls…tents…priestly garments, to name only a few, far out-number the actual pronouncements related to purely moral principles. You know people’s priorities…those are the things to which they dedicate most of their time. That said…all you’ve got…is four? No…three! The effeminate reference in One Corinthians 6:9 refers to the presence of ex-Galli and Non-Galli castrated males in the early Christian church. Yet you build a whole Biblically mandated moral ethos around three verses, while you regard adultery as a relatively minor thing. Not to mention your addiction to out-and-out lying! I believe it unnecessary to run through all of the condemnations of lying found in the Bible. The prophets never refer to homosexuality. That’s not surprising, since their priority was a faithfulness to the worship of the Living God…and particularly…social justice. Yes! The measure of the godliness of a people comes down to how they treat the poor, vulnerable, and oppressed. Those who fail to live up to this are…pagans…they are heathen…at heart, and not followers of Christ. I don’t care what book they pack into their guns to use as bullets to fire at you. And as far as the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is concerned, the prophet Ezekiel specifically defined the sins of Sodom:

Now! This was the sin of your sister-city Sodom…she and her daughters were arrogant, overfed, and unconcerned. They did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. As a result, I destroyed them…as you know.

Ezekiel 16: 49-50. The prophet has listed doing detestable things in the same sentence as arrogance, lack of compassion, and not helping the poor and needy. Quick…ban the book of Ezekiel! Religious Extremists have simply incorporated their own, natural homophobia into their own twisted religious views. Homophobia is derived from a weak, male ego and uncertainty about one’s own sexuality. Applying all of three verses to it simply shows how pathetic it really is.

The depths to which Evangelicals will go in an effort to legitimize their respect for moral degeneracy was made clear by Roy Moore Sycophants:
 

More women are sexual predators than men. Women are chasing young boys up and down the road, but we don’t hear about that because it’s not PC.

First…young boys wish that was true! But the Evangelical impulse to lie…and lie…and lie..is absolutely amazing. And with all the practice they get…they still aren’t very good at it. They are, however, excellent at the game of misogyny:

There ought to be a statute of limitations on this stuff. How these gals came up with this, I don’t know. They must have had some sweet dreams somewhere down the line. Plus, there are some 14-year-olds, who, the way they look, could pass for 20.

Sweet Dreams? Another False Cleric serving a False God. Let me guess! The country is full of underaged girls molesting middle-aged men! Middle-aged Perverts wish it was so! Let’s see just how far Evangelicals are willing to go in their pursuit of blasphemy:

Take the Bible- Zachariah and Elizabeth, for instance. Zachariah was extremely old to marry Elizabeth and they became the parents of John the Baptist. Also take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus. There’s just nothing immoral or illegal here. Maybe just a little bit unusual.

Such testimony to the fact that there are many Evangelicals out there walking around spouting nonsense about the Bible which, it would seem, they don’t bother to read! The account of Zachariah and Elizabeth is derived solely from Luke. The story is simply a parallel to the story of the Virgin Mary that first appeared in Matthew. Luke’s intention was to raise the status of John the Baptist to just shy of the status of Jesus himself. In my opinion, this was due to the fact that, despite John’s claim that Jesus should baptize him, Jesus insisted that it was the other way around. To justify this, a second Miraculous Birth story appeared:

Joseph + Mary = Jesus

Zachariah + Elizabeth = John

The story of a second Miraculous Birth may have been created by reference to Isaiah chapters 7 and 8, in which Isaiah appears before King Ahaz to deliver a message and offer a sign at a time of impending military disaster. Jerusalem was under attack from two northern kings…Pekah and Rezin. All three kings had been vassals of the king of Assyria, in this case…Tukulti-apil-Esarra III...

Further back in time, in 853 B.C., at the Battle of Qarqar, the Assyrian king Shalmanu-asaredu III...

…was defeated and denied mastery of Syria-Palestine by a coalition of kings that included the Biblical king Ahab. It is likely that Pekah and Rezin were attempting to re-create the powerful coalition in the hopes of achieving a Qarqar of their own. And they were desparate…Tukulti-apil-Esarra III was a particularly brutal king who carried out sadistic and bloody punishments upon those who crossed him. Ahaz wisely refused to participate, and the result was a combined attack by Pekah and Rezin. Their goal? Replace Ahaz with a puppet king of their own…a man referred to as the son of Tabeel, whose name, like that of Rezin, suggests that he was a Syrian king. So all three were desparate…Pekah, Rezin, and Ahaz.

It is in this material that we find that the Greek word parthenos (virgin) was the translation of the Hebrew word almah (young woman). That is the source of the Virgin Birth story, although the Greek word choice was not correct. And it is from this material that we get the Miraculous Birth story involving a child named Emmanuel. Actually, and this is extremely important, it is technically not a Miraculous Birth story…the birth of Emmanuel is a Symbolic Birth story…the baby would be born very soon, and while he was still a baby, the king of Assyria would arrive to save besieged Jerusalem from the attack of the rebel kings Pekah (Damascus) and Rezin (Samaria). The baby’s name was symbolic…God is with Us! And so, Jerusalem would be saved. Saved very soon, since rebel forces were at that time close to opening a breach in Jerusalem’s defensive wall. To help make the point, Isaiah did something that is only encountered in this material…he took his son, Shear-Jashub, along with him. The child’s name means A Remnant Will Return. But in 8:1, we find out that there is a second child about to be born. His name is Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz…probably the longest name borne by anyone in the history of mankind! This child is specifically identified as Isaiah’s soon-to-be-born son. And like Emmanuel, his name has a particular significance: Hurry the Plunder and Make Haste with the Spoils. It works like this:

 1.  Emmanuel (God is with Us):

Before the child shall know to reject what is evil and to choose that which is good, the land that you dread will be forsaken by both of her kings.

 
2.  Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz (Hurry the Plunder and Make Haste with the Spoils):

Before the child shall be to say- father! Or…mother! The riches of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria will be taken away by the king of Assyria.

 
The summation of this appears in 8:16-18

Seal this message among my followers…and I will wait for the Lord; The one who hides His face from the house of Jacob- my hope is in Him. Here am I and the children whom the Lord has given me as signs and wonders!

Sealing the message refers back to 8:1, where Isaiah begins writing the material in a scroll. The children are Emmanuel and Maher-Halal-Hash-Baz. The latter was the son of Isaiah, and Emmanuel was the son of King Ahaz. That Isaiah would know about the imminent birth of Ahaz’s son is clear from the fact that in 8:1, when Isaiah begins writing the material in a scroll, he calls on two witnesses. One of these witnesses is named Zechariah. So what? Well, according to 2 Kings 18:3, Ahaz’s wife was Abi, daughter of Zechariah. That means Isaiah personally knew King Ahaz’s father-in-law. And that suggests that Isaiah had inside information about the royal family, including Queen Abi. Of all the kings of Jerusalem, Ahaz’s son Hezekiah was reckoned by the redactors who put together 1 & 2 Kings as the king who was the most loyal and faithful to God. Birth name...and throne name? Isaiah later threatens Assyria itself with judgement at the hands of God. It was during Hezekiah’s reign that Jerusalem was attacked by the Assyrian king Sennacherib. And when things looked as though Jerusalem was about to fall, a calamity befell the besieging Assyrian troops, and the attacked was called off. It may well have been dysentery, always a danger to stationary military forces in the ancient world. I believe that Luke crafted a second Miraculous Birth story on the basis of the Two Highly Significant Children in the Emmanuel material in Isaiah:

Emmanuel & Maher-Halal-Hash-Baz

Jesus & John

Oh, Jesus was never called Emmanuel, by the way. The Virgin Birth story does not appear in Mark, nor does the story involving the Nativity of John the Baptist. Joseph isn’t named in Mark, nor are Zachariah and Elizabeth. And Zechariah and Elizabeth aren’t named in Matthew. But regardless of one’s view of the historicity of the story in Luke, it is clear from Luke 1: 9-7 that…

And they were both righteous before God, strictly obeying all of His commandments and requirements;
But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and they were both well advanced in years.

Zechariah was an old man, and Elizabeth was an old woman. So much for Biblical Ignorance...Elizabeth wasn’t a teenager. Don’t quote the Bible until you know what is says! The reference to Joseph and Mary is equally flawed. First, in the Bible, Joseph is never described as a carpenter. Jesus was a carpenter, and Jesus’s father had been a carpenter. I believe that Joseph was Mary’s second husband. Secondly, the Bible never indicates how old Mary was when she married Joseph. There is no support for the idea of Mary as a teenager, and usually when this comes up, reference is made to Matthew and Luke, where Mary is described as a virgin. That, as I pointed out above, is flawed. Third, even if people married girls 14 years or younger in ancient civilizations, it doesn’t lend support for doing it now. Why not just go far enough back in time to a hand-picked ancient culture and argue that cannibalism should be legal…or human sacrifice…or fighting wars of extermination? Wait…sorry…I shouldn’t haven’t said that! I can just hear the Evangelicals of Alabama writing up petitions to…. But the truly disgusting part of this is that in justifying a middle-aged man in Alabama doing what it is alleged he did, you would hold out the Biblical Joseph as the example that makes the whole thing wonderfully appropriate. I’m being sarcastic, of course. Still, I thought it was worth getting a second opinion on these matters from my new favorite philosopher. Just how seriously should we take the strange voices emanating from Alabama…among other places? Socrates said…wait, he was my new favorite philosopher last month. I meant…the Enfant Terrible said…no, that was last week. Now I remember! When I asked the Little Girl in Big Trouble what she thought of my essay…

Well, nobody’s perfect.