Okay. Let's go to our next question. And this was actually a very new one to me. Perhaps some of you have heard this before and I'm revealing my own ignorance. The question was concerning the tower of the flock and the person submitting the questions worded it this way. He said, " I was hoping the Matthew commentary would talk about this, the tower of the flock. " Micah 4:8 talks about the tower of the flock. That's a term. What was this tower?
I've done some research about it, but don't really know whether it is accurate. This was supposedly a tower where ewes that is EWES mother sheep were brought to give birth to their lambs. These lambs were then used for sacrifices. Supposedly, they would wrap these newborn lambs in swaddling cloths and lay them in mangers. The shepherds in Bethlehem were likely raising lambs for this specific purpose.
So when the angel announced that the babe would be wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger, they knew instantly where to go. The symbolism in this scenario is obvious. Now, this is a basic story I had been told since I was young. But if no mention is made of it by the early Christian authors, it makes me question its validity. I'm still reading you the question. Do they ever talk about the Tower of Bethlehem? Okay. Thanks, Micah, for submitting this question because it was certainly something new to me.
The reason I don't mention it in the Matthew commentary is for a good reason. Neither the early Christians nor the early Jewish writings make any reference to this practice. In other words, what you've just quoted to me is simply a myth. It's a lie that someone made up because it makes a feel-good story. And why do Christians do this type of thing? You know I'll never know. But it's a problem that's rampant that Christians I don't know.
They create things that sound so good and will really bedazzle you know a congregation or people reading a blog or something like that, a Sunday school class. And it sounds so good, and it's just totally made up. And usually, you can't even find out who made it up, where it came from. So that's the answer to your question, but I want to use it as a launching point to talk a little bit more about primary sources. When it comes to what the Israelites did or didn't do, our one best primary source is the Bible itself.
If it's not in the Bible, particularly we're talking about Old Testament, we should be extremely skeptical of any claims that we hear. I mean, if this was true, why doesn't Micah say anything about it? Why doesn't anyone else in the Old Testament say anything about it? When a person makes a claim about Jewish practices and they can't prove it from Scripture, then they have a heavy burden of proof to verify that what they are saying is true.
And like I say, normally, they can't meet that burden of proof at all because they have generally no proof whatsoever. And the only proof you should ever accept is from a primary source. A primary source is a term used to describe source material that is closest to the person, event, or practices that are being studied. It's sometimes called an original source.
To be more specific, it's a writing, a document, an artifact, or other source of information that was created at or near the time that you're studying, usually by a source with direct personal knowledge of the events being described. In other words, this quotation from Micah, if this is talking about mother sheep and giving birth to their lambs and they were wrapping them in swaddling cloth, you'd have to have something as old as the book of Micah that talks about all of this. Well, there aren't any such writings.
We have the Bible, and that's it. I mean, there's nothing contemporaneous with it. So like I mentioned, when it comes to a supposed practice in biblical times, our first and best primary source are the Scriptures themselves. I mean, who else beyond the Bible writers would have direct personal knowledge of the events or practices that took place in the Bible? Not very many people.
Now, before I personally recognize the absolute need for primary sources, I mean, I used to read Bible dictionaries and commentaries and various Christian reference works, and I received the impression from them that we have all these writings and sources of information outside the Bible about Jewish and Christian practices during the Bible period. I mean, I didn't assume they were making this stuff up. I assumed they had all of these writings. I thought, " Boy, it'd be neat to read those for myself.
" And then when I went to dig for them, I found out that they don't exist. So there really are very few sources outside the Scriptures concerning practices that take place during Bible times, particularly that relate to Israelite or Jewish life in Old Testament times. I mean, we have a few inscriptions on you know stones here and there, things like that. And they usually don't add any information to what we already have in the Bible.
They typically verify the existence of certain persons mentioned in the Bible, and usually, that's it. Now, when we get to the first century, when the New Testament was written, we have the writings of Philo and Josephus. But these are primary sources only as to what was happening in the Jewish or Roman world in the first century. I mean, what Josephus says happened in the days of Moses, I mean, that carries no weight, whatever.
I mean, perhaps it's a testimony of Jewish traditions that were floating around in the first century, but that's 1,500 years after Moses, so it really doesn't mean much. The early Christian writings talk about a few of the Jewish Christian or not Christian, but the Jewish practices in their day, but not a lot. So when I read this account about the Tower of the Flock that you sent in, I mean, I knew it was false without having to go any further.
I mean, the Bible describes no such practice, and I knew I'd never read of any such thing. And the story about this tower and the lambs being born, it just simply isn't the type of information that you would find in, say, Josephus and Philo. When these extra biblical accounts, like the story you sent me, when they fit so perfectly that they sound too good to be true, well, that's exactly what they are. They're too good to be true. Real history never is anything like that.
But you know if you want to verify the matter, all you have to do on that or anything else is to look for the source of information. Knowledge doesn't just exist out there in the atmosphere somewhere. There's got to be an original source, some original evidence. Where did you get this story? I don't mean you, but you know where you heard it from? Of course, you mentioned you heard it from childhood. So yeah, you probably can't go back and ask your minister, " Where did you get that story?
" Yeah, I did a quick search on the internet to see if I could find anything. I couldn't even find the story on the internet, and I didn't spend a lot of time on it, but it wasn't something very common. It's probably not in any commentaries. So yeah, when there's just stories floating around and no source whatsoever connected to them, then you know that it's simply a myth.
Because when something's real and if somebody in a commentary has some extra biblical information that is genuine, then they'll normally give you a citation. You know Philo says this and there will be a footnote or something like that. When there's no source given, it means this person is either passing on hearsay or they're just making it up from scratch. And you can just safely ignore it. Okay.
Now, if the person giving the information and I'm talking about any of these rumors, I could name we've all heard the one that the eye of the needle refers to a small gate you know that was there within the main gate. That one floats around. Another one I've heard so many times is that the high priest, when he went into the most holy, he had a rope attached to his ankle. So if he did something sacrilegious and he was struck dead, then they could pull him out by the rope. And people pass this on.
They assume it's true because they've heard it in Sunday school or something like that. Well, in each of those, I heard them. And of course, the one on the high priest, I thought, " Huh, I don't remember reading that in Leviticus. " But yeah, I'll go back. I'll look through the Old Testament. Nothing there. So yeah, I checked early Christian. No sources there. I finally dug it out.
That one is somewhere like 1,000 years after Christ that it was actually a Jewish person made it up, and we actually got the name of who made it up. And it was long after the temple was destroyed. Like I say, about 1,000 years later, someone just makes up a story and it sounds good and it gets passed on. But if you do look something up, if you're really curious if something is true and you can find a source, see what that source is.
Like I say, often they just quote a Bible commentary or some writer, or sometimes they just say scholars say, and they don't tell you what scholar, who. And when they do that, you know they don't have a source. They're just going from hearsay. So if you're interested in discovering the truth, then if they do have a source, then you want to check it out and see. You might learn something new. But I'll tell you, and like most commentaries, 99 times out of 100, they don't give a source.
Or if they quote someone, they're quoting someone who lives recently, they don't have an ancient source that would be a primary source. And like I say, my experience is that there almost never is a primary source to any of this information that is what's supposed to be a practice or custom in Bible times. The Bible commentator is just giving his speculation or he's repeating something that he heard from someone else.
So like I say, I'm going beyond your question and just giving some general counsel on any story that you might hear.
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