Courtney McGrailBy the Book’s Editor
Dr Ben Carson, who is running for the Republican Party’s nomination for President of the US, has been having a tough time in some quarters. It is not his ignorance of the issues, his attitude to refugees, or any of the other things that journalists habitually challenge candidates running for office with. No; his troubles are with the Old Testament.
Dr Carson is a Seventh Day Adventist, a denomination which is popular in the US, and in West Africa and the South Pacific thanks to the labours of missionaries. Now the sixth largest religious movement in the world, they derive from the Millerites, a millennial sect of the 1840s whose appointed hour for the return of the Lord passed without ushering in the Final Judgement. The movement broke apart and from a remnant developed the Seventh Day Adventists.
At a speech 17 years ago at the flagship University of the Seventh Day Adventist church, Dr Carson remarked in a graduation day speech, apropos of the patriarch Joseph as a leader: “My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain. Now all the archaeologists think that they were made for the pharaohs’ graves. But, you know, it would have to be something awfully big if you stop and think about it. And I don’t think it’d just disappear over the course of time to store that much grain.
“And when you look at the way that the pyramids are made, with many chambers that are hermetically sealed, they’d have to be that way for a reason. And various scientists have said, ‘Well, you know there were alien beings that came down and they have special knowledge and that’s how they were’ – you know, it doesn’t require an alien being when God is with you.”
Even for a right wing Republican this was drifting into strange territory. The quote having been retrieved by a maverick journalist (which is what maverick journalists were created for), the media in general have made hay with it.
The Seventh Day Adventists hold by the Bible and the Bible alone, but this belief about the pyramids is not a biblical belief at all. It derives from the first centuries of the Church as an opinion, but not a matter of faith.
What was amusing about all of this was that this was not an oddball idea he thought of all on his own. It has a long pedigree.
Gregory of Tours, in Book I of his History of the Franks (written towards the end of his life in 594) had claimed of the pyramids: “They are wide at the base and narrow at the top in order that the wheat might be cast into them through a tiny opening, and these granaries are to be seen to the present day.”
However, just because a theologian suggests something, even a canonised theologian, does not make it true. For Gregory it was merely an incidental remark. He was in fact more concerned with Moses and the crossing of the Red Sea. But this idea became widely known through medieval times.
The claim was contained in one of the most widely read books of the late Middle Ages, the Travels of Sir John Mandeville (Penguin Classics, £9.99).
To a modern reader the book is a wonderful read. The earlier parts seem actually to be based in part on some journal of a pilgrim to Palestine. But beyond that the author weaves together fragments of legends and snatches from Marco Polo’s’ better known Travels (Penguin Classics, £9.99), Oderic of Pordenone and other Christian travellers into inner Asia, to create an image of the world that is truly enchanting.
Indeed it in some ways outclassed even Marco Polo and remained a popular read down to the 18th Century, even eclipsing the relations of real travellers.
But I suspect that Dr Carson has little time for reading such things, for even Mandeville mentions that others thought the pyramids were used, not for storage, but as royal tombs.
Oddly enough, the companion of Oderic on part of his journey to the court of the Great Khan was an Irish Franciscan named James. Our people get in everywhere!