Tracing Your Ancestors in Church or Synagogue Records

The Mormons do genealogical work as part of their religious activities called Temple Work. The concept a non-Mormon would most readily recognize is "baptism for the dead" which is mentioned in  1 Corinthians 15:29. What "baptism for the dead" might actually mean is not an object of discussion in this particular post.

I am not a Mormon and it is not necessary for you to be a Mormon to be interested in your family history. Your ancestry is a large part of who you are. It is your link to history. You love your parents. Why not also learn of and love your great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents?

There are many techniques genealogists use to trace family relationships. One of them is studying church and synagogue records. These are as much primary source records as are public civil records.

Jewish genealogy seems to present particular problems since there is very little centralization of the records. The following repositories may be helpful: The Center for Jewish History, the American Jewish Archives at the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion, the Douglas Goldman Jewish Genealogy Center, and the Jewish Genealogical Center. The New York Public Library has a Jewish Genealogy Collection. If your family has a long connection with a particular synagogue there may be records available of some family specific information.

Christian church records are also highly fragmented because of the existence of over 200 different religious denominations in the United States alone. 

Many of today's Christian religious denominations have gone through highly contentious times, with multiple mergers, splits, mutinies, power battles, excommunications, shunnings, relocations, etc. Many splinter groups declared themselves to be the original pre-split group. The groups often took with them as many historical documents as possible. Lawsuits over ownership of property and documents produced court records which are also primary historical source material.

Organizational records may include payroll information, property rental and purchase documents, tax records, employment records, records of disciplinary actions, chains of command and job descriptions, etc. The records may also contain personal records (births, marriages, deaths, burials, consecrations, and ordinations.

When individuals shifted their allegiance from one group to another their church-held vital genealogical records usually were not shifted with them and remained with the parent group. The records may now be stored in the archives of the original body (which may or may not be in their original geographic  location.)

If you know the dates when organizational shifts occurred or the approximate dates when your ancestors moved from one group to another, you may be abler to infer the likeliest place to begin searching for a particular record. Early public records are often spotty and incomplete or even totally lost due to floods,  ,fires, or wartime rapacity. The only extant record of the marriage of your great-great-great-grandparents, who lived in California, may be housed in church archives in Florida for a group which originated in Minnesota.

Many universities and colleges with denominational ties have extensive records. Samford University (Southern Baptist) and Birmingham Southern College (Methodist) are two examples. Contact the national headquarters of your particular religious denomination and they may be able to steer you to their own historical repositories.

Messianic Prophecies from the Old Testament: Today This Scripture Has Been Fulfilled in Your Hearing

Luke 4:16-28New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

The Rejection of Jesus at Nazareth

16 When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

    because he has anointed me

        to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

    and recovery of sight to the blind,

        to let the oppressed go free,

19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

20 And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 22 All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” 23 He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’” 24 And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. 25 But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; 26 yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. 27 There were also many lepers[a] in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” 28 When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage.

Footnotes:

Luke 4:27 The terms leper and leprosy can refer to several diseases

New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

That the quoted text (from Isaiah 61:1-3) is a Messianic prophecy is evident because Jesus Himself used it in this way.

The scholars who insist that Jesus never identified Himself as the Messiah obviously never read this passage. Why else was the synagogue so quickly filled with rage? They understood exactly what He meant and they believed that He was speaking blasphemy.

Verse 28 says they “were fiiled” ἐπλήσθησαν  with rage. This is from the verb πλήθω I am filled (to the top; to full capacity. )  Strong categorizes the word ἐπλήσθησαν (e-plees-the-san) as V-AIP-3P (verb-aorist indicative passive- third person plural).

In English and many other languages, tense has primarily to do with time. In Koine Greek, tense has primarily to with the type of action. The aorist tense expresses action without any further definition. It carries the idea of sudden action. The people were suddenly filled with rage

Boy Scouts to Allow Homosexual Members

The Boy Scouts of America on 23 May 2013 voted (by a 60% to 40% margin) to change the organization’s regulations to allow homosexual boys to participate and be full members. Homosexual adult leaders will still be banned.  Since the Boy Scouts are a private organization they were not required to make this change but they have been under increasingly intense public pressure for years to take this step.  A problem is that many of the sponsors of scout groups are churches.  Not all of them are delighted with this development.  The only official church responses so far are from the Mormons, who say the change will not affect their involvement, and the Catholics, who say that they need time to consider their response.

My thinking on the issue: the Boy Scouts are a private group and can do as they wish.  Individual parents and individual denominations, congregations, synagogues, and mosques should decide for themselves if they wish to continue their involvement.  Hopefully, the Boy Scouts will allow individual local groups to decide whether or not they will implement the new policy.  That would spare them the decision of whether or not now to withdraw from the Scouts altogether.  

The pressure on the Scouts and on religious groups has been subtle and not so subtle.  An example can be found in this article from the USA Today newspaper for Friday 24 May 2013 on page 12A (the editorial page).  The editorial calls the prior Boy Scout stance a “wrong-headed ban on gays,” Two paragraphs later, it says this:

“Much of the angst that has riven the Scouts for the past year can be attributed to Scouting's close affiliation with churches, some with strong tenets against homosexuality. Fully 70% of troops are religiously sponsored.”

The logical implication is that the newspaper’s editorial staff is insulting the churches by calling them “wrong-headed.”

Recognizing the Scriptures

From yesterday’s post, Paul said: “Wherefore he saith also in another psalm, Thou shalt not suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.”  Acts 13:35

Paul here did not give a page and verse citation for the quotation.  Those would not exist for centuries.  Instead, Paul assumed that his listeners would be familiar with the verse.  Jewish men of Paul’s day could be expected to know the passage, having spent every Sabbath listening to scripture reading in the synagogue.

The books (actually the scrolls) of Scripture did not have names but were known by the first few words of the first sentence.  The listeners had heard the readings so many times that they knew the book and the passage being disvcussed as soon as the words were spoken.

How many modern Christians (or Jews) can identify the book and passage from which a random scripture text is taken? 

Typographical Errors

In my post yesterday on The Big Book of Church Jokes I made a typographical error, even though I check every post for spelling and grammar before I release it.  It is very easy to misspell a word, double your “ands” or your “thes, ” leave out “of,” or to  say something which seems logical when written but which really makes no sense.  In yesterday’s post, I spelled “silly” as “sily.”  I apparently totally missed the red underlining provided by my word processor’s Spell Checker program.

Knowing how easy it is to make a mistake when one writes, it makes it even more amazing to know that the first five books of the Bible (the Torah) have been preserved by the Jews at the LETTER level for thousands of years.

Each synagogue which can afford one owns as Sefer Torah, a handwritten copy of the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.  This is in the form of a scroll which is used in formal religious ceremonies.  When not in use, the scroll is stored in the holiest spot in the synagogue.

Each of the scrolls is produced under extremely restrictive conditions, on a particular type of parchment using a particular type of quill pen by one specially trained rabbi.  The entire scroll must be produced by that one sofer (scribe)..

The number of letters must total 304,805 with each letter in its proper position, each one perfectly formed, sized, and placed.  The ink of a random imperfect letter may be scraped off the parchment and replaced by a perfect one.  If any error of any sort involves the name of God, that page must be cut from the scroll and a new perfect page must be sewn into its place.  The removed page is buried with respect.

A Sefer Torah can take as long as a year and one half to produce and cost as much as $10,000.  Parchment is a perishable material; still, the oldest known surviving are over 700 years old.

The Jews have done us a great service by their historical insistence on preserving the purity of the scriptures.

Jesus: Child Genius

Child geniuses or prodigies are children who exhibit, often at extremely young ages, abilities equal to or surpassing those of adults.  Surprisingly, there are many thousands of these children.  Here are a few of them:

Jackie Evancho

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKhmFSV-XB0 (child operatic singer)

Kaitlyn Maher (4 year old singer)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwAbtizFCzo&feature=related

Dhannat Plewtianyingthawee (4 year old painter/violinist)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3bW9P5Z6sI&feature=related

Matthew Brown  (4 year old drummer)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98ZMDnuMeEI&feature=related

Brianna Kahane  (6 year old violinist)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fXufBMkrEg&feature=related

Emily Bear (6 year old pianist)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUx4t4W4eVY&feature=related

Marko Celasari (computer genius)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMHjf9Z7GKE

Adora Svitak (10 year old author)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lowYW2HlMZc&feature=related

Lady Xeona  (preschooler who can write in cursive)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkQiA_aZkEg&feature=relmfu

Moshe Kai (admitted to college at the age of 8)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPXZgWlpfwE&feature=related

Lim Ding Wen (computer and iPhone programmer)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8G4o_9Ojks&feature=related

Akiane Kramarik  (child painter, poet)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzKz3RuZXU0&feature=related

Gregory Smith (nominated for a Nobel Peace prize)

http://www.hiphopmusic.com/best_of_youtube/2010/01/child_prodigy_gregory_smith_photo.html 

Willie Mosconi (professional pool player at age 6)

http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=55267 

Wolfgang Mozart (concert pianist and symphonic composer at the age of 4)

http://www.8notes.com/biographies/mozart.asp

John Stuart Mill (read Greek and Latin before the age of 5)

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill/

Added to the list the next day, amazing!  A three year old Korean violinist playing Vivaldi!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C01QUSEONOg&feature=related 

And a warning:

William James Sidis (IQ estimated at 250-300)

http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi969.htm

Jesus of Nazareth was such a child and his abilities were just as shocking as those of the children above.  As the son and apprentice of a carpenter in Nazareth he would have had little opportunity for advanced study of the scriptures, yet, at the age of twelve, he amazed the scholars in the Jerusalem synagogue.

"Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the passover.   And when he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the feast.   And when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem; and Joseph and his mother knew not of it.   But they, supposing him to have been in the company, went a day's journey; and they sought him among their kinsfolk and acquaintance.   And when they found him not, they turned back again to Jerusalem, seeking him.   And it came to pass, that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions.   And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers.   And when they saw him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing.   And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?   And they understood not the saying which he spake unto them.   And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them: but his mother kept all these sayings in her heart.
  And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man."  Luke 2:41-52