Today’s Scripture Reading (January 25, 2026): 2 Chronicles 9
Alexander the Great changed the way we wage war. He
conquered the known world, but his genius lay in what happened after he had
finished conquering. Alexander was a genius in the area of cultural diffusion.
After he had conquered an area, he made it culturally Greek. And he was so good
at that task that for generations, the places that he had conquered hundreds of
years earlier, places that were now subject to a new Roman Empire, continued to
be culturally Greek. The Christian, or New Testament, was written in Greek because
of Alexander the Great’s ability to spread Greek culture.
Alexander the Great was a student of Aristotle. Often
Aristotle is referred to simply as “The Philosopher.” Aristotle, alongside his
teacher Plato and the philosopher Sophocles, has revolutionized the way we
think. They are the founders of Western Philosophy and have impacted all
Western Religions.
Later, during the early years of the Roman Empire, Caesar
Augustus would build on the ideas of Alexander the Great and Aristotle,
developing a system for governing a vast empire. The Roman Empire of Augustus
changed our expectations about this world once more. There is a thought that
while the Holy Roman Empire lasted for centuries, if those kings that followed
in the footsteps of Augustus had only ruled in the way that he ruled, and if
many of the kings of Rome had not been insane, then maybe the Roman Empire
would have been a force for generations longer, and might even still be a force
today.
The Queen of Sheba comes to Solomon. The reality is that,
from our historical perspective, we do not know much about either of these
people. We know that Solomon was the son of David, and that he was reputed to
be wise, and that he had many wives and concubines. But of the private Solomon,
we know almost nothing. About the Queen of Sheba, we know even less. We do not
even know from where she originated. Today, we debate whether she called
Ethiopia or Arabia home. But we do know that she came to Solomon, drawn by the
stories that she had heard about him. In Solomon, she found a man who seemed to
be part Alexander, who would change the world culture around him; part
Aristotle, who would change the way people thought; and part Augustus, who
would change the way an Empire could be ruled.
However, the test the Queen of Sheba brought to Solomon was
actually a spiritual one. The test explored whether this king only possessed the
knowledge of the time or whether he also possessed the wisdom to use that
knowledge correctly. The idea behind the test was that anyone could pursue
knowledge and gain significant amounts of information, but true wisdom meant
being able to use that knowledge in a way that could only come from God. We do
not know the questions that Sheba asked Solomon, but historical gossip has left
us with three possibilities. One possible problem was that Solomon was
presented with real and fake flowers and that he was asked to discern between
the two by sight alone. Another was that he was presented with a group of boys
and girls, dressed alike, and the King was asked to discern between them, and
the last was that he was asked to gather a cup of water that came neither from
the clouds nor from the earth. Solomon’s rumored responses to these problems were
to unleash some bees and see which flowers they went to, to watch the children
as they washed their hands to see which were boys and which were girls, and to
run a horse hard, almost to the dropping point, and collect the sweat of the
horse in a cup. These may not have been the actual questions, but whatever the
real questions were, Solomon convinced this mysterious Queen of Sheba that he
was wise and that this wisdom was a gift that only God could give to a king.
Tomorrow’s
Scripture Reading: 1 Kings 11
No comments:
Post a Comment