f2PointEight

Misused History and Manufactured Certainty

I recently read an essay called The Truth Will Set You Free. It was written as a sincere critique of Christian participation in practices the author deemed impure. It spoke of divine names, corrupted traditions, and a call to return to a faith untainted by history or human hands. But the more carefully I read, the more uneasy I became, not because I reject truth, but because truth deserves better evidence than what was being offered. And when all was said and done, it left me with a question that matters far more than any festival date or sacred pronunciation.

What happens when our desire for certainty outpaces the evidence that can support it?

What I find myself returning to, again and again, is the simple idea that if we are going to make bold claims about history, Scripture, and divine intention, then those claims should be able to stand under the weight of scrutiny. Many people today are not hostile to religion nor dismissive of spirituality, they are wary of certainty that rests more on rhetorical confidence than on credible scholarship. If something is offered as truth, it should hold when examined. If it collapses under evidence, that is not a failure of scrutiny, but a problem with the claim itself.

There is nothing wrong with appealing to ancient history, biblical language, and archaeology as authorities provided those fields are represented honestly. Scholars such as Mark S. Smith, Karel van der Toorn, Frank Moore Cross, and William Dever have spent their lives immersed in these questions not because they wish to undermine faith, but because they are committed to understanding the world that produced the Bible with clarity rather than nostalgia or fear.

Their work, and that of many others, paints a picture that is far richer and more complex than the simplified narrative of “pure original faith” versus “corrupted later traditions”.

In The Name of God

There is nothing wrong with taking the Hebrew Bible seriously enough to care about how divine names appear in it. But the idea that one can identify a single unquestionably “correct” pronunciation and then dismiss all others as corrupt simply does not align with the realities of serious linguistic research. Claims that the divine name must be pronounced “Yahuah,” and that alternative forms are inherently invalid, have to be set against the backdrop of current biblical and linguistic scholarship.

It is true that the Hebrew Bible does not contain “LORD” as God’s personal name. Instead, the Hebrew text presents the Tetragrammaton (the four consonants YHWH). As scholars such as Emanuel Tov and Frank Cross repeatedly note, ancient Hebrew did not record vowels, and the precise original vocalisation of YHWH is therefore unknown. The divine name certainly appears in ancient inscriptions, including Paleo-Hebrew, and is archaeologically attested across the Iron Age Levant. But script form does not determine pronunciation. These ancient scripts lack vowel notation, and Hebrew vocalisation developed many centuries later.

Most scholars favour a reconstruction close to “Yahweh” because early Greek transcriptions (such as Iabe and Iaoe) point in that direction, and because it aligns with known West Semitic theophoric naming patterns (for instance, Yahū / Yahô forms in personal names). But even here, responsible academics are cautious. Favour is not the same as certainty.

For that reason, claims that studying Paleo-Hebrew alone can reveal the “true” pronunciation overstate what the evidence can sustain. “Jehovah” is widely recognised as a later development, formed when Masoretic vowel markings associated with Adonai were combined with the consonants YHWH. By contrast, there is no scholarly consensus at all supporting “Yahuah.” That form emerges largely from modern fringe religious movements rather than peer-reviewed linguistic research, and it simply does not reflect mainstream academic conclusions.

Similarly, insisting that the Hebrew letter waw must always be pronounced as “w” and never “v” oversimplifies a far more complex phonological history. Hebrew pronunciation changed over time. While many scholars agree the earlier sound was probably closer to “w,” later Jewish tradition reflects natural linguistic evolution. In any case, consonantal shifts alone do not fix the ancient pronunciation of the divine name.

The practice of writing “LORD” in capital letters in English translations is not an attempt to obscure or replace the divine name. It follows a long-established Jewish tradition. By the Second Temple period, many Jews avoided pronouncing the name out of reverence, reading Adonai (“Lord”) instead. English Bibles simply mirror that devotional practice. It is a historically documented development, not a modern conspiracy.

Finally, the suggestion that “Lord” is inherently equivalent to Baʿal is linguistically misleading. As every major Hebrew lexicon, HALOT, Brown–Driver–Briggs, and others, makes clear, meaning depends on context and usage. Baʿal can refer to a husband, a landowner, or a deity. It is not a mystical contaminant of language. The biblical text itself uses Adonai reverently for Israel’s God, and translation into English does not somehow invoke Canaanite religion.

In short, the evidence simply does not sustain the level of certainty some wish to claim.

Rethinking ‘Pure’ Worship

It is an entirely legitimate instinct to reflect on where festivals come from and how they develop. But the moment we begin appealing to history, we are obliged to tell the truth about what history actually shows. One of the most obvious realities, documented by church historians, New Testament scholars, and historians of religion, is that Christianity did not freeze in the first century. It grew, adapted, debated, and evolved. That does not automatically make it fraudulent, it simply makes it a product of human meaning-making.

The earliest Christian communities, as reflected in Acts, Paul’s letters, and the writings of the early Church Fathers, did not understand Gentile believers to be bound by Israel’s full ritual calendar. That is not a hostile reading; it is simply attentive to what the texts themselves record. Scholars such as John Day, James Dunn and N. T. Wright have traced these developments with care. This was not a matter of people defiantly rejecting God, but of a living religious tradition negotiating identity, Scripture, empire, and history.

It is fashionable in some circles to declare Christmas “pagan,” as though that alone ends the discussion. The truth is far more nuanced. Yes, ancient Rome celebrated festivals near the winter solstice. Yes, cultural influence existed. But early Christian reasoning for 25 December also developed internally, via symbolic theological reflection, not merely by borrowing whatever lay to hand. If we are going to appeal to history and Scripture as authorities in questioning inherited religious customs, we have to represent both with accuracy. A claim gains no truth simply because it feels spiritually urgent or rhetorically compelling.

The Torah festivals listed in Leviticus were never presented as a universal liturgical obligation for every future culture in every era. They belonged first to ancient Israel’s covenantal life, deeply bound to its land, agriculture, and national story. To collapse that historical particularity into a timeless litmus test risks doing exactly what good biblical scholarship warns us against: flattening the past to make it serve the present.

Whether one approves of later developments or not, it is historically inaccurate to claim that the Christian calendar is simply an act of rebellion. It represents a traceable religious evolution. To insist that Torah festivals “were never replaced” confuses two categories: biblical instruction to ancient Israel and the later liturgical identity of the Christian church. History shows divergence. It does not need to be rewritten to resolve theological unease. Scholars such as Ronald Hutton, Michele Salzman and others describe layered development, complex borrowing, theological reinterpretation, and changing meaning over time. The world is not divided neatly between holy people obeying and compromised people capitulating. History is not that obedient to our slogans.

Deuteronomy 12 is addressing Israel’s participation in active Canaanite cult worship. It prohibits imitating their sacrificial rites, ritual practices, and devotion to divine images. The passage is not about later cultural customs that have undergone centuries of change, nor about every human festival that ever existed thereafter. Applying it directly to modern observances without historical context imposes an ancient Near Eastern legal instruction onto settings it was never addressing.

The argument that Christmas is “precisely aligned” to pagan solstice worship is likewise more complex than often claimed. Scholars widely recognise two parallel developments rather than a single line of descent. Yes, December celebrations existed in Rome. But early Christian sources also rooted the date in symbolic theological reasoning, linking Jesus’ conception to March and therefore his birth to December. That does not make Christmas “purely pagan,” nor does it make it inherently divinely mandated. It simply makes it historically layered. And even where older cultural elements influenced later Christian celebrations, anthropologists and historians such as Hutton and Karel van der Toorn remind us that meanings change. Cultural adoption does not automatically equal continued spiritual allegiance. Otherwise, speaking the days of the week would constitute ongoing pagan devotion, and clearly it does not.

Jeremiah 10 is often cited as a prophetic condemnation of Christmas decorations. Biblical scholars are overwhelmingly clear that the passage is describing the carving of idols, overlaid with precious metals, fixed upright so they do not topple. These were common practices in the ancient Near East, a completely different historical, geographical, and cultural context. The text is not addressing medieval European winter customs, symbolic evergreens, or domestic decorative traditions thousands of years later. Projecting modern practices back into an Iron Age anti-idolatry passage is a category mistake.

It is historically correct that bells, greenery, seasonal songs, and winter customs existed before Christianity. It is also historically correct that cultural meanings change. Anthropologists, historians of religion, and liturgical scholars repeatedly emphasise that the adoption of earlier symbols does not automatically amount to ongoing pagan worship, any more than using days of the week named after Norse gods forces modern people to honour Odin.

Yes, Christmas was banned in seventeenth-century England. That part is historically accurate. But scholars are equally clear about why. The Puritan movement objected largely because Christmas had become associated with rowdiness and because they opposed anything smelling of Catholic tradition. Their judgement reflected their theology and their politics, not access to newly uncovered divine truth. One movement’s stricter conscience is not automatically universal revelation.

Questioning tradition is healthy. Calling people to reflection is fair. But a call that claims historical grounding must withstand historical scrutiny. Many of the assertions I have critiqued here rely on oversimplified narratives, selective framing, biblical passages lifted out of context, and assumptions of continuity where none can be demonstrated.

Critical scholarship paints a more nuanced picture. Religious calendars have always developed. Meanings are not static. Scripture requires historical context. A practice is not illegitimate simply because it has a past. Humans, cultures, and religious expression evolve.

Discernment is valuable. Discernment grounded in accuracy is better still.

Festivals, Myths and Pagan Misconceptions

It is true that January derives its name from Janus, a Roman symbolic figure associated with thresholds and transitions. But to leap from etymology to spiritual indictment overlooks both history and biblical reality.

First, there is no single “biblical calendar” imposed universally across Scripture. The Old Testament itself reflects multiple time-reckoning systems over Israel’s history (civil calendars, cultic calendars, and imported influences under later rule). Exodus 12 identifies a beginning for Israel’s cultic year within a very specific covenantal context. It does not prescribe a universal human calendar binding all societies for all time.

Secondly, historians emphasise that modern New Year observances are cultural, not religious rites to Janus. The meaning of practices shifts profoundly across centuries. Modern New Year festivities do not involve devotion to Janus, ritual sacrifice, prayer to Roman gods, or any continuity of Roman cult practice. To equate a modern civil marker of time with ancient religious participation confuses historical awareness with spiritual suspicion. There is no ritual continuity. There is symbolic memory, linguistic legacy, and cultural inheritance. That is not the same thing as religious devotion.

Easter is perhaps the clearest example of what happens when internet-level mythology is repeated until it feels certain. The imagined link to Ishtar collapses almost instantly under responsible philology. The English word “Easter” is an outlier among global Christian traditions, which overwhelmingly use “Pascha”, directly tied to Passover. The only ancient reference to Eostre appears in Bede (8th century), and historians still debate whether she represented a widespread cult figure or simply a local or literary construct. Scholars and modern historians wrestling with his testimony, confirm that even the English term’s pre-Christian elements are far less straightforward than popular rhetoric assumes.

Meanwhile, historians of early Christianity such as Mark S. Smith and Jaroslav Pelikan show that the celebration of the resurrection grew organically from within the Christian community itself. Its timing, its controversies (e.g., the Quartodeciman controversy), its meaning. These are documented from inside Christian theological reflection, not smuggled in from fertility cults. Yes, eggs and rabbits appear later in Christian European culture, but they emerge as folk customs, not theological declarations. They tell us about human culture, not secret pagan allegiance. The supposed straight line from fertility goddess worship to Christian resurrection celebration is not supported by archaeological or textual evidence.

It is historically accurate that Halloween has roots intertwined with Samhain, a pre-Christian Celtic seasonal festival. That festival did involve ideas about seasonal change and, in some places, beliefs about spirits. But two points are crucial from scholarly consensus. First, Halloween did not remain Samhain. It evolved through Christian reframing via All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, integrating remembrance of the dead and moral reflection. Second, modern Halloween is primarily cultural. Its current expression was shaped most significantly in North America as a civic festivity, later globalised. Mainstream scholarship recognises Halloween today as a cultural and commercial tradition, not a living continuation of ancient necromantic ritual.

As with most traditions, meaning is neither fixed nor timeless. Scholars who study religion and culture do not see an unbroken chain of occult continuity. They see change, reinterpretation, and more ordinary human behaviour than theological panic tends to permit.

It is entirely legitimate to choose not to celebrate certain festivals. That is a personal and sometimes theological decision. But when arguments claim to rest on history or Scripture, they must reflect what those sources actually demonstrate. The evidence indicates that biblical calendars were historically contextual, not universally mandated civil frameworks. Easter did not arise from Ishtar worship, and linguistic claims linking them are academically unsound. Halloween has historical complexity, and the modern practice no longer corresponds to ancient ritual religion. And cultural meaning changes. Historical development is rarely as morally stark or spiritually conspiratorial as selective narratives suggest.

If reflection is the goal, then reflection should include careful engagement with credible scholarship, not only certainty reinforced by familiar rhetoric.

Beyond The Altar: Rereading Cain and Abel

What I have always found so striking about the story of Cain and Abel is the certainty with which we have used it as a theological weapon. Cain becomes the archetype of “wrong worship”, a perpetual warning that God rejects anything not carried out according to strict ritual prescription. But when we return to the text of Genesis itself, and to the way biblical scholarship has wrestled with it, a very different picture emerges. One defined not by precision rules and divine rigidity, but by narrative silence, complexity and purposeful ambiguity.

Genesis tells the story with remarkable restraint. Cain brings an offering “from the fruit of the ground”. Abel brings “the firstlings of his flock”. Then the narrative simply states that Cain and his offering were not regarded. There are no divine instructions recorded beforehand. There is no indication that Cain has broken a rule. There is no explanation at all. The text refuses to tell us why, and that refusal matters. It has intrigued Jewish and Christian interpreters for millennia, and modern scholarship recognises that this silence is not oversight, but part of the story’s deliberate design.

Instead of reading the text on its own terms, later theological traditions often rush to fill the silence with certainty. They insist Cain must have been disobedient, that Abel must have followed some perfect ritual pattern, and that God was simply rewarding obedience and punishing liturgical failure. But that explanation is imported into the story. It is not found within it. Scholars like Gordon Wenham, Walter Brueggemann, and James Kugel consistently warn that we do violence to the narrative when we insist it is saying things it does not actually say.

The story moves its attention very quickly away from ritual to something else entirely. What becomes central is Cain’s inner life. His anger, jealousy, wounded pride, and his decision to turn frustration into violence. When God speaks to him, it is not to lecture him about sacrificial technique or ritual correctness. The divine words are about moral responsibility: “If you do well, will you not be accepted? … Sin is crouching at the door.” The drama here is not liturgical, it is ethical and deeply human. The issue is not primarily what Cain placed on the altar, but what Cain allowed to grow in his heart.

This is why so many scholars also read the story as a kind of aetiology (i.e. a narrative explanation for patterns that later came to define Israelite religion). In a world where blood sacrifice eventually became central to Israel’s cultic identity, it is perhaps unsurprising that a foundational story elevates the offering of the shepherd over the offering of the farmer. Some see here traces of earlier cultural tension between pastoral and agricultural communities. Others see a theological attempt to give sacred depth to practices that only fully developed much later. Whatever one concludes, the story looks far less like a timeless divine rulebook and far more like a deeply human narrative rooted in the ancient world that produced it.

This matters when the story is then used to insist that only certain religious observances are acceptable and that all other cultural or historical developments count as disobedience. It is one thing to have strong personal convictions about religious festivals or practices. It is another to claim that Genesis 4 proves God eternally rejects anything that does not conform to one narrow model. The Hebrew Bible itself resists such neatness. Israel’s own worship changed, evolved, fractured, and re-formed across exile, empire, trauma and reinterpretation. Even within Scripture, sacrifice is debated, questioned, reimagined and, at times, openly critiqued in favour of ethical living.

So rather than being a story about ritual correctness crushing heartfelt intention, Genesis 4 reads more like a story about jealousy, moral responsibility, and what people do when life feels unfair. If it functions as an explanation at all, it does so within the complex and evolving world of ancient Israelite religion, not as a timeless prohibition against any festival or practice that developed later in history.

If this story teaches anything, it is not the simple slogan that “obedience is life” in the narrow ritualistic sense suggested. It teaches instead that human beings live in a moral world where choices matter, emotions are dangerous when ungoverned, and violence and resentment lurk near the edges of disappointment. The text is richer, more ambiguous, and more deeply human than the certainty we sometimes attempt to impose upon it.

Good Faith Rests on Good Scholarship

In the end, none of this is about winning arguments or embarrassing those who feel differently. What I have tried to show is not that faith is foolish, nor that tradition is meaningless, but that if we are going to make bold claims about history, Scripture, and divine intention, those claims should be able to stand under the weight of scrutiny. Faith does not have to fear complexity, and devotion does not need to live in constant suspicion of history.

The people Christians claim most earnestly a desire to reach are not hostile to religion, nor dismissive of spirituality. They are wary of certainty that rests more on rhetorical confidence than on credible scholarship. If something is offered as truth, it should hold when examined. If it collapses under evidence, that is not a failure of scrutiny, but a problem with the claim itself. We should not fear that good scholarship diminishes Scripture, we should recognise that it helps us read it more honestly. Responsible engagement with history does not weaken faith, it rescues it from myth-making. If we are going to talk about obedience, then honesty about the past should surely be part of it.

If obedience is to be held up as a spiritual virtue, then honesty about the past, clarity about what the text does and does not say, and respect for the work of serious scholars should surely form part of it. The alternative is not greater faithfulness, but a faith made brittle by defensiveness and dependent on distortion to survive.

If anything remains genuinely worth defending in religious life, it is not dramatic claims about hidden truths or the comfort of slogans masquerading as certainty. It is the quieter, more demanding virtues: intellectual integrity, humility before evidence, and the courage to let truth speak even when it unsettles tidy narratives. If truth really matters, it should not require exaggeration or fear to sustain it. It should be able to stand, with dignity, in the light.