Part 3: What is the definition of a nation?

What is a nation?

This is an anthropological question as well as a political one. Every society has building blocks. In many places around the world this is the extended family. In some places, it is a nuclear family (although this is an exception historically and geographically). Still in other places the extended family is quite large and better referred to as a clan. A tribe is best understood as clans living in close proximity to one another with interaction. There is some blurring between the clan and the tribe. There is also an unclear distinction between tribe and nation. Each of these designations are best understood on a spectrum.

Many of the world's earliest cities started to appear as early as 9,000 years ago. Archaeologists now view some of the earliest as large villages rather than cities. The earliest were Jericho (modern day Palestine) and Catal Huyuk (in modern day Turkey). These "cities" had populations of up to 6,000 people, but they did not have the social structure to make them cities. The earliest cities that all archeologists seem to agree on are Uruk and Ur, both in ancient Sumeria. Their history can also be traced back earlier, but they reached "city status" by around 3000 b.c or 5000 b.p.

The city is an important element in the question of what a nation is. The city was the next stage in political development after the tribal village system. It was in the city that early nations consolidated their identity. Each city was independent from the next. One thing that can be certain from scripture is that God took notice of cities. A prime example is Nineveh, of whom God said "how can they not be important to me? 120,000 people live there."

In the broad sense of the word a nation is an ethnic group that shares a language, culture and geographical location. There are plenty of varying debates about when a nation is defined distinctly from another, if any of these criteria change. I wrote an article a few years back about the birth of the modern Australian nation, and the seeds of the gospel within the nation. This serves to show that new nations can be born, and that the Australian nation does differ from its roots. I would definitely differentiate between the modern Australian nation, and the some 200 Aboriginal nations that existed before 1788.

In the earliest historical sense, when individual cities rose up, they were often separate nations from other cities around them. This was not always the case, sometime a nation had more than one, in the case of Ur and Uruk, but most nations did not have multiple cities. Each nation has its own distinct identity and is entitled to it as such. 

Conservative and Liberals: both in error in their approach to the Bible

*Disclaimer: I completely believe that all the words of the Bible are true and are the authoritative word of God.  (Having said all that, don't forget that Jesus IS the word.)

The Conservative Fundamentalist error:
- Scripture was written down by Moses in ~1400 b.c.
- All texts are to be understood in their very literal form.
- Any correspondence into this point of view is considered heresy.

The Liberal error:
- Most scripture in the Old Testament was written down after the exile, that is after 500 b.c. Some dates even get pushed as late as 140 b.c.
- Since scripture was written down so long after the events were purported to occur, they are really just texts that are made up to serve a political purpose.
- The texts can not be trusted as true, and have no bearing on the God of the universe.

I happen to believe that both of these positions are wrong. The two sides debate off against each other, throwing mud at each other thinking that the others side's agenda drives their scholarship. There is something significant though that is completely missing from the argument. Both sides of the argument are so embedded within a world view of literacy that they can not imagine another world view.

What do I mean by a world view of literacy? 
Let me give some parallel examples from the modern world. Try asking a 10 year old to imagine a world without the internet,  a 40 year old to imagine a world without the television, a 70 year old a world without radio, anybody you know a world without electricity or the car. Each of these people would find it hard to imagine such a concept. A time in the world when these things did not exist being before our lifetimes. There are still people around who speak of a different world so we can consider their claims with wide eyed wonder.

Consider a world without writing. Now such a concept is so much further removed than the birth of the car, electricity, radio, tv or the internet. In fact as we consider such a concept we only know of such a world from books and written records. None of us who comes from a world of literacy can easily imagine a world without writing. The world view of literacy so strongly pervades our thinking that some people draw the conclusion that the world is no older than 6000 years. Writing itself has its birth about 5000 years ago.

What is a world of orality?
The oral world is one where all knowledge is transferred to the next generation through the means of oral stories. Oral cultures have a strong structure to their stories. Their forms are secure and the stories do not get forgotten or lost. Oral languages use hundreds and thousands of elaborate word pictures to explain concepts. These word pictures link together easily in a chain. The story teller does not have to remember a string of hundreds of words, but rather a set of well known word pictures to tell a story.

What connection does the Bible have with orality?
Far more of the Bible is oral than we care to acknowledge. This means that many, many of the early stories were carried in oral form for centuries, even millennia. All of Genesis has its roots in early oral stories. Many of the stories right through the age up to King David are also oral stories. We from a literate world view need to be careful how we respond to this claim. We need to recognise that an oral text is not invalid in anyway. We need to realise that it carried great strength for the people who passed these stories on, more strength than it does for those of use who look the stories up in a book.

What about literary criticism and scholarship claims that the Old Testament was written in the post exilic period?
Peter Enns in his essay for the BioLogos Foundation says that:

...the Pentateuch as we know it is the end product of a complex literary process—written, oral, or both—that did not come to a close until the exile (586-539 BC) and post exilic period...


There are many source texts for the early books of the Bible. I tend to think that originally many of them were oral texts. Through out the history of the people of Israel, many of these stories began to be written down at different times for different purposes. It is hard to determine exactly at what point various texts and stories were written down. This is largely because they were then put through a final editing stage around the time of the exile.


Consider the stories of the Kings. Each time the story closes the chapter on the reign of a king the editor writes:
As for the other events of Solomon’s reign—all he did and the wisdom he displayed—are they not written in the book of the annals of Solomon?  


This is because the writer(s) was working from source documents that recorded the activities of the king, called annals. These are very much like the notes kept in parliaments today. In Esther it talks about scribes, whose full time it was to write down everything that the king did. They had rooms full of documents. It would have been a massive task to put together texts like Kings and Chronicles. The writers basically sifted through the documents and included the highlights and lowlights (as the case may be).

So even if there is a late date of compilation of the old testament, this does not mean that the stories are not a lot older. It does not mean that they are not true.


The liberal error, based in a literacy dominated world view thinks that the stories only came into existence when they were written down. These are the seeds of disbelief. This error is a result of completely failing to understand the world view of orality and a long oral tradition.

The conservative error also thinks that the stories only came into existence when they were first written down. So they therefore must cling to a belief that a great prophet like Moses received the story from God and wrote it down in dictation style. This world view also completely fails to acknowledge the oral world view.

The liberals say "we know that the text was written at a date much later than the conservatives admit, therefore their claims are completely wrong". The fact is though, on one hand many stories are much older than conservatives admit (because they are oral), and on the other hand written down much later.

The controversy comes in most of all with the stories of creation. I have no doubt that these stories were oral tradition for millennia. This is easy to believe because there are many cultures around the world that also have creation stories. The striking thing is that there are many similarities in the other creation stories, from peoples who are removed from the middle east for many thousands of years.

Arguments are made from both the conservative and liberal side on how these stories should be interpreted. But when they are interpreted on an oral spectrum there is much that can be understood even in a scientific sense. I tend to think that the creation story of Genesis 1 says that everything was created from hydrogen. The word for hydrogen in the story is simply water. Read my earlier essay on this topic here.

The Old Testament is all about people interacting with God. Bono explains the purposes of the Old Testament very well:

I accept the Old Testament as more of an action movie: blood, car chases, evacuations, a lot of special effects, seas dividing, mass murder, adultery. The children of God are running amok, wayward. Maybe that's why they're so relatable. But the way we would see it, those of us who are trying to figure out our Christian conundrum, is that the God of the Old Testament is like the journey from stern father to friend. When you're a child, you need clear directions and some strict rules. But with Christ, we have access in a one-to-one relationship, for, as in the Old Testament, it was more one of worship and awe, a vertical relationship. The New Testament, on the other hand, we look across at a Jesus who looks familiar, horizontal. The combination is what makes the Cross.


 This is an excerpt from the book "Bono on Bono: conversations with Michka Assayas". You can read a portion of the interview here.

It is God's nature to work through people. He therefore does this as much as possible, not as little as possible. The same is true with how the Bible came together. There are many more people involved with the development of the Bible than we will ever know. All of the oral stories come together from the people who were in the midst of the action movie. There is nowhere in scripture that actually says that Moses wrote down all of the pentateuch/ Torah. We are not required to believe this to be a follower of Jesus. But as I said earlier, this does not discount the stories as being holy scripture still.

It should not be surprising that the Old Testament did not come together in its entirety until the post exilic period, the Torah in its current form at a similar time. When the people in the Bible referred to the "law" they were likely referring to the actual legal documents found in Exodus and Leviticus. Deuteronomy repeats much of those two books anyway. It is only a later term of Jews to refer to the law as all of the first five books of the Bible. I had always thought it strange that Genesis would be referred to as the "law".

The New Testament did not come together in its entirety until the fourth century. This does not make it any less true. Conservative Bible scholars readily admit that the New Testament came together in stages. There was a growing and common understanding of what scripture was, but it was only finally defined in the Constantinian era. People in the first century saw "scripture" as all of the Old Testament. People in the pre-exilic period would have seen scripture as a lot smaller, a collection of some stories and some writings. In fact they may not have even seen them as scripture apart from the actual law itself (the legal documents of Exodus and Leviticus). The rest of the stories may very well have been viewed as simply history. (We still view history books today from more recent times as true.)


I would loathe to be labeled as a liberal in my faith for writing this. I very much hold to all of the precepts of God's creation and the gospel and Jesus' death and resurrection. Before some protestants begin to try labelling me as a liberal, please consider what Catholics or Orthodox people would say of protestants. As protestants we do not recognise the apocryphal books of the inter-testamental period as scripture, even though they are true. Catholics and Orthodox people could easily turn around and label us all liberal in the faith for picking and choosing what we consider scripture to be.


The very concept of scripture is connected to the fact that it is (a) preserved from ancient times and (b) is true. The Bible is full of God's interactions with people and people's interactions with God, it is true. It does not need to be subjected to the narrow world view of literacy that says people practically dictated it from God. The Bible firstly went through the filter of messy human lives before it ended up on the pages we have today. The Bible we have today is a result of the intersection in world history between oral and literal cultures.


*(I feel I need to start writing disclaimers these days, in case people misunderstand what I write or say.)

The coming Mongolian expansion and Muslims coming to Christ

I've spent a fair bit of today sitting around listening to Wolfgang Simson talks. I was feeling really encouraged on Saturday after we were able to share the gospel with the family we visit every week for language learning, and a few hours of hanging out after our lesson. This new friend of ours had not appeared to be searching spiritually much before. But it seems the Holy Spirit woke up in her a memory of a time in her life that she was searching. Back when she was 27 she spent a large sum of money on a Bible, as it had previously been impossible to buy one. She read through the whole Bible and said, "This must have been written by my ** people group, as the ***(dominant people group) would never behave that way." Immediately the stories of the Bible spoke to her as if they were directly for her own people. We are praying that the Lord is reminding her of her spiritual search and that it is now restarting.

Sadly, I then got quite discouraged yesterday. Another friend of ours, who has so much potential to do huge things in God's kingdom is struggling with alcoholism. Despite initially appearing to be ready to do something about his problem, he is not admitting that he needs to. Until he takes the step of humility, he will be stuck in this stage that he is in. I don't know why, but I got my hopes up that he was ready to seek healing. At the moment, I'm feeling a bit lost for him, but will continue to pray. The Lord is a miracle worker and things are not finished for my dear friend.

Today was a day off, which means I haven't even done my homework. Arrgh. I was so tired I just lay there on the couch this afternoon and listened to Wolfgang Simson. His talks about God's revolution in the church were very stimulating and eventually had me on the edge of my seat instead of lying down. Wolfgang was getting excited, "if you want to know where the most number of people are coming to Christ in the world, it is definitely the Muslim world."  Exciting stories of over 4000 house churches in Egypt and a new movement sprouting up in Iraq are just a start.

I remember a story that came back from the Lausanne Worldwide Evangelization Congress held in 2004 in Thailand.  An Afghan believing husband did not know that his wife was also a believer. Muslims in Afghanistan were so afraid of persecution that they were hesitant to tell their spouses they believed. They both happened to be at an underground meeting together, and discovered that they were both believers. They had of course been maintaining their regular appearances. This means that there could be so many more that are maintaining their appearances, but beneath the surface they are believing in Christ. I like describing the Muslim world as a mountain. On the outside it seems formidable. But on the inside thousands of tiny ants are eating away, until one day the exterior will simply collapse when the Muslim world turns to Christ in its majority.

God is definitely doing exciting things in the world. I was talking to a friend who lives in Mongolia. Back in 1990 there were 2 known Christian believers in Mongolia. Today there are over 100 000 and the church is beginning to explode there. Mongolians are excited about their new found faith in Jesus. They have the highest ratio of believers from the church going out in mission of any country in the world. Many of them are going to their brothers in China. They are beginning to talk about going into Buryatia to their north. I hope they keep heading north after that, to the Siberian peoples. They are also talking about going west to Kazakhstan. In fact, the Mongolian Christians like to hang a map of the Mongolian empire on the wall and say "there is our mission field." Mongolian people are nomads and they aren't afraid to travel.

It excites me to think of this map. The Mongolians have a big view of the world. They are aware of the terror that their empire brought to the world. They are also aware of the healing message of Jesus Christ. I think it's a spiritual principle that the people the Mongolians hurt, they will need to bring the gospel to. This is what redemption means for the Mongolian people. It is probably a spiritual principle that applies to every nation on earth. An even more powerful spiritual principle, that of forgiveness, is when a people take the gospel to those that have hurt them. This would mean that the Koreans and Chinese should be seeking to take the gospel to the Japanese.

There are coming waves of expansion in God's kingdom. The devil is about to lose some big battles. Things are hotting up. That is why we live in such turbulent times.

Who is the evil empire?

I feel compelled to comment on the current conflict that has been occurring within the Caucasus. The media have the wool pulled over our eyes. They want us to believe that the USA, EU and NATO are wonderful benevolent forces that are above approach.

Let me postulate a few ideas for you:

1) The US and OPEC countries formed an agreement in the 1960s that led to all oil being traded in US dollars. This has led to unprecedented wealth for the US and for the major oil producing countries.
2) Iraq was the first country to threaten to break from this agreement. Aside from America's many reasons for going to war in Iraq, no one can dispute that oil was a part of the equation. If Iraq broke from the agreement and did not trade in US dollars it may have started a chain that would see the collapse of the US economy. Iraq was suggesting they would trade in Euros instead, a point which put France and Germany against the military actions of the US. Interestingly, USA's biggest ally, Britain does not have the Euro.
3) Iran are a large oil producing country, they are also considering breaking from the 1960s agreement.
4) The US would love to have a strategic and secure military base in Georgia, which would put them on Iran's doorstep.
5) Georgia has been enemies of the Abkhazians and Ossetians long before the Russian empire.
6) The conflict is really two empires rubbing up against each other.

South Ossetia have a legitimate claim to independence, just as much as Kosovo does. They voted for their independence in 2006. They have operated as a de facto country since 2006, with the protection of Russian peacekeepers. Georgia attacked South Ossetia first in an attempt to gain "territorial integrity" to secure their bid to join NATO and ultimately the EU.

Anyway, please have a look at the videos and read the article and have an open mind.

Western media use pictures to tell lies.
Twelve year old girl tells the truth about Georgia.
Well reasoned historical explanation about Georgia and why they are guilty.

Early history of Australian Rules Football, and the future expansion of the game

Australian Rules Football will celebrate its 150th anniversary this year on August 7th. This is actually an inaccurate reckoning of history. It is more accurate to place the origin of a code of football at the date of the codification of rules which was first done on May 17th, 1859.
Some historians like to argue that Australian football can be traced back to the Ballarat goldfields in 1853. There can be no doubt that games of football were played there, but these were likely of varying rules just as the many varied games played by public schools and clubs in England at the time. It has been argued that Gaelic Football had an influence on Australian football, and if this is true, the goldfields are certainly a place where this could have happened.
The only code of football that existed in 1853 was Rugby. Some schools and clubs played by Rugby rules and others had their own rules. Before a game of football the two teams would have to agree upon the rules of the game. Agreeing upon the rules was actually a tradition for a long time even after rules had been codified. Such traditions could allow for a New Zealand Rugby team to play some Australian Rules games when touring, or a Melbourne Aussie Rules team play Rugby rules against a Sydney club. So the various games of football played on the goldfields would likely have been played to varying rules.



(An Australian rules football match at the Richmond Paddock, Melbourne, in about 1866. The building in the background is the Melbourne Cricket Ground pavilion.)


Tom Wills is credited with being one of the original inventors of the rules to Australian Football. Tom Wills' life is an indicator of how important the game of Australian Rules is to our culture. He was the grandson of a convict, and as such his influence was denied in the early decades of the game. Wills was born near Gundagai, NSW 1835, but spent most of his childhood in the Ararat District of Victoria, moving there at the age of 4. He grew up with the Tjapwurrung people and even spoke their language. He knew the dances and games of the Tjapwurrung people. Although there is no direct evidence that he played the game of Marn Grook, it would be very likely. Wills was sent to the Rugby School in England at the age of 14 (1849) and returned to Australia in 1856 at the age of 21. By that stage in his life both the games of Marn Grook and Rugby were a big part of who Tom Wills was as a person.
Tom Wills also had an extensive cricket career, representing the colony of Victoria on numerous occasions. Great significance should be attached to the fact that Wills was the coach of the first Australian touring cricket team to England in 1868, which was made up of all indigenous players. Wills had a close relationship with many indigenous Australians and it is clear that his relationships were genuine. The stake holding of indigenous Australia in the game of Australian Football was high from the beginning and this can be seen today in high representation in the AFL. (2006 figures place the indigenous representation at 10% in the AFL, where as indigenous people in the general population are at 2%. See Traditional Recreation.)
Sadly, Wills later life ended in tragedy. His family moved to Queensland in 1861 and were massacred by a group of local indigenous people while Tom was away for a couple days. The perpetrators of the massacre had no idea who they were hurting, their vengeance poorly placed it only resulted in more pain and suffering. This tragedy caused Wills to turn to alcoholism and although he maintained good relationships, (the 1868 cricket tour was after the massacre), it took him on a path towards suicide in 1880 at the young age of 44. His contribution to Australian sport was none the less invaluable, and his efforts still provide today one of the strongest possibilities of reconciliation between European and Indigenous Australia.



(Aboriginal cricket team with Tom Wills at MCG in 1867.)


The AFL would like to celebrate the game between Melbourne Grammar and Scotch College on August 7th, 21st and September 4th, 1858 as the first Australian Football Rules game. In reality it was a game with few rules, similar to many public schools in England, but with perhaps even less rules. Wills was one of the umpires in this game and it would have had some similarities to Rugby. The rules of the AFL game we know today were still under development.

The codification of the rules is the true birth of the game. Events prior to codification were simply formative and embryonic. The rules were drawn up at the Parade Hotel in East Melbourne by Wills, W. J. Hammersley, J. B. Thompson and Thomas Smith on May 17th, 1859. These rules were established on behalf of the Melbourne Football Club, three days after its founding. The game was based heavily upon Rugby with some obvious influence from Marn Grook. Other creators of the rules had experience at Irish games, which also had some level of influence. The original Melbourne rules did not require the ball to be bounced. Geelong Football Club formed on July 18th, 1859. While they did not codify their rules as Melbourne FC did, they did play with a rule that the ball needed to be bounced every 20 yards. In 1866 agreement between clubs led to the Victorian Rules, which required the ball to be bounced.

The game spread to various parts of Australia at a fairly rapid pace. Adelaide formed a club in 1860 (now defunct), by 1877 the South Australian Football Association was formed, months before the Victorian Football Association. The game was played in Tasmania by 1864, Queensland 1866, New South Wales 1877, Western Australia 1881, Northern Territory 1916. While the game continued to be successful and grow in most parts of Australia it had greater competition from Rugby League and Union in Queensland and New South Wales.


The New South Wales Football Association was formed in 1880. A game was played against Victoria in 1881. The first recorded game in NSW was between Carlton Football Club and the Waratah Rugby Club in 1877. The Waratah club enjoyed the game so much that they switched codes in 1882. The NSW Football League was formed in 1903. By 1911 it was more popular than Rugby Union in Sydney. Rugby League was formed in 1908 in NSW. The NSWRL was denied access to many grounds by the NSWRU. The NSWFL graciously allowed the RL two weekends at the SCG in 1908. Rugby League performed very well infront of healthy crowds over those weekends and Australian Rules lost their impetus. As the Rugby League game was professional many players switched to that code. Professionalism was approved by the Australasian Football Council in 1911, for a limit of 30 shillings per game, but by that stage Rugby League had taken a big lead in Sydney. Australian Rules never caught up again. The game has always been popular in the Riverina region of southern NSW.

The history of Australian football in New Zealand is largely another unknown story. The game in New Zealand also had an early chance of success. The Christchurch Football Club played a game very similar to Melbourne Rules in 1863. Many men from the Australian colonies first came to the Otago region in the 1860s for a gold rush. There was another large migration of Australians to New Zealand in the 1890s, some of those men looking for work had played in the VFA and VFL. By 1882 there were 36 clubs in New Zealand, by 1901 there were 115 clubs in New Zealand. The game was so popular in New Zealand that they were a founding member of the Australasian Football Council in 1890. The name of the game was officially changed to Australasian Rules Football to reflect this change. The highpoint of New Zealand football was the Jubilee Carnival in Melbourne in 1908. New Zealand defeated NSW and QLD and finished fourth out of seven teams. World War 1 halted the development of the game in New Zealand. For what ever reason. many of the Australians who migrated to NZ in the 1890s returned to Australia after the war. Many of the NZ players of Australasian Football were killed in WW1. Australasian Football never really recovered in New Zealand and it died out by the 1930s. In 1927 when the Australasian Football Council met, there were no delegates from New Zealand, so it was voted to change the name to the Australian Football Council. (The council no longer exists. The game is now administered internationally by the AFL.) Australian Football was reestablished in New Zealand in the 1970s, and there are now three leagues in the country.



The New South Wales and New Zealand stories are interesting accounts of what could have been. AFL is a minor code of football in today's world. It is however a force to be reckoned with in Australia. It is now undisputedly the largest code of football in Australia based upon attendance figures. It is second to soccer in terms of participation, which is largely due to many parents feeling that soccer is a safer game for children. AFL games regularly attract more people than Rugby League games in Sydney and Brisbane.

The market for football codes is by no means fixed or saturated. Soccer and their A-League have had some real success in the last few years in Australia. While Rugby League may be expanding on the Gold Coast in Queensland, it is not growing as a game in Australia. It was greatly hurt by the Super League division of the 1990s. Rugby Union turning professional in 1995 has further eaten into the Rugby League market with the introduction of the Super 14 competition against New Zealand and South African teams. Soccer is AFL's biggest threat in Australia in the long term. The AFL still have a clear lead, but they can not afford to rest on their laurels. They are well aware of the situation, thus their current expansion plans for Gold Coast and western Sydney. The AFL plan to have a Gold Coast team in the league by 2011 and a Western Sydney team by 2012. These plans of expansion are wise and will keep the AFL on a strong course of growth, by taking in new markets.



The AFL's recent rejection of a Tasmanian government petition for a team seems harsh in some ways. The issue of debate is whether the AFL is an open market and if anyone should be allowed to compete. The AFL have no desire to stretch themselves too thin, They will need to inject a lot of capital in the early years to the 17th and 18th teams before they turn a profit independently. Tasmania have not lost their chance for an AFL team. Either they need to be prepared to wait longer until the new teams are established or they should continue to court a Victorian team. The Hawks have a good relationship in Tasmania, but may be unwilling to leave Hawthorn behind. A second Victorian team could set themselves up for 4 games a year in Hobart like the Hawks have done in Launceston. A total of 8 games for the state would be only a little less than the 11 they would have with their own state team. A state team would likely split their games between Hobart and Launceston anyway.

The game of AFL (the official international name now) has established leagues in 14 countries. This is a long way behind Rugby Union which is played in 129 countries and Soccer which is played in 207 countries. But the game of AFL is expanding healthily none the less. Over the last couple decades there have been a handful of players recruited from Ireland, as the game of Gaelic Football is similar to Australian Football. The exciting new success story is in South Africa. There are currently 10000 people participating in the sport. The exciting factor is that people from all races participate, where as only white people play Rugby and only black people play Soccer. AFL is becoming the game for all people and has even been officially recognised by the South African government as the football code of reconciliation. It is not hard to establish AFL in South Africa as it is best suited to cricket grounds which have remained unused in the Winter (Rugby and Soccer have their own stadiums.) The business plan in South Africa is to see 30000 people playing the sport within 3 years. It is widely hoped that players will be recruited to the AFL even within the next 5 years and that the competition there will be as strong as South Australia or Western Australia within 20 years.

To be continued....

References:

Laws of Australian Football.

History of Australian Rules Football.

Geelong Football Club.

Australian Rules Football.

Indigenous Australians.

Australian Rules Football in New South Wales.

Oldest Football Club.

"Rules" almost had Sydney's paddock.

Aussie rules almost had Sydney.

History- Australian Football.

History of Australian football in New Zealand.

History of the game in New Zealand.

International Leagues.

AIS tour of South Africa.

Australia's battle of the codes- statistics.

The English origins of Australian Football.

Australasian Football Jubilee Carnival.

The great FIFA lie: that the Chinese invented soccer (football)

(Note: After reading this you may like to read The history of expansion of football codes)

Quote: FIFA says its historians have proof that the game -- then called cuju or "kickball" -- originated in China some 2,000 years ago. It was even played for emperors.

Read FIFA's story here and here. This particular story apparently says that it is an "historical fact" that the Chinese invented the game of soccer.

Whooah, what a lie from the apparent victors in world football at this point in history. We all know that the winners like to rewrite history, but the Chinese did not invent soccer. This is a gross lie by FIFA designed to give them market presence in China, so that they can continue their cultural and economic conquest of the world.

Many, many ancient societies have their own versions of ball games and football games. It is important to examine the historical facts, Read my previous post on the development of football codes to understand the accurate historical story.

Some tribes in the Americas had a game where two opposing tribes played in a very large area with a ball. The object of the game was to make the opponent drop the ball on the ground. The captain of the losing team would have his heart cut out. This was a kind of "friendly" war to minimise the number of deaths.


Australian Aboriginal peoples in the South East of Australia played a game called Marn Grook, which was a football game played with a possum skin. The game of Marn Grook is most likely a lot older than the Chinese game of Cuju.


In south east Asia in the countries of Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Laos, Philippines and Indonesia, a game called Sepak takraw is played, it is a game descended from Cuju, but it is not soccer.

The Mesoamericans had their own ballgame, using rubber balls.


The Choctaw people in North America has a stick ball game with sometimes as few as 20 players but also up to 300 players. Although they used sticks, the object was to score a goal, much like mob football.

There is also the Roman game of Harpastum, which was related to the Greek game of Paganica. Harpastum apparently was similar in appearance to Rugby.

It is true that the Chinese game of Cuju, did sometimes involve kicking the ball "through an opening, measuring only 30-40cm in width, into a small net fixed onto long bamboo canes". But other variations of the game also involved kicking the ball at a post in the middle of the field.

Proto forms of football and other various ball games existed in many parts of the ancient world. As inventions go, humans often independently come up other with similar ideas in completely isolated locations. The Chinese did not invent Soccer (football) anymore than the Greeks invented running.

The true ancestor of Soccer is actually the old English game of Mob Football, Mob football had very few rules. As a result, by the time of the 19th century there were very many variations of the rules of football. Football was played by boys in public schools across southern England. Each of the schools had separate rules. This did not matter when they only played amongst themselves. It only became an issue when the various schools wanted to play against each other. They were then forced to agree on a set of rules before a game began. Two of the most famous schools to come up with their own sets of rules were Rugby and Eton. The game of Rugby is essentially descended from the Rugby School and the game of Soccer from the Eton School. Nevertheless there was a period of 40 years when various schools played against each other that the rules of football were up for debate. These 40 years were the smelting fire that turned mob football into the two games of Rugby and Soccer, with the final split happening on December 8th, 1863.

It is very clear that Soccer was invented by the English and is a game descended from English mob football. While many ancient games may bear resemblance to modern forms of football, this does not mean that they are the "invention" of modern forms of football. The Chinese invented their own game 2000 years ago, that while it has some very vague similarities to modern Soccer, had no influence on the invention of the game what so ever. FIFA have simply tried to rewrite history for their own purposes.

A history of the development of football codes from proto football (the Rugby and Soccer split)

An early Australian Rules Football game in 1879.

I find the history of football interesting, no less because Australia is poised for the great football wars. What many people do not realise is that the sport we call "footy" in most of Australia is actually older than soccer. It always helps to have an understanding of history before making judgements in these issues. Recently I read a blog about soccer by an American who claimed that Americans didn't like soccer because it is an "ethnic sport" (i.e Mexicans). There have been similar arguments about soccer in Australia in recent decades.

To understand the history of all football codes better, it helps to understand the concept of "proto-football." Much like an ancestral language such as Proto Indo-European, there was a proto form of football that no longer exists today, and is the ancestor of all modern football codes. In fact there were proto football games in many cultures around the world, just as there were proto versions of bat and ball games. However it is the English proto-football that all modern codes are descended from. No other versions were ever formalised in other countries.

Proto-football was a game with sometimes a round ball and sometimes an oval ball. The basic concept was to move the ball to one end of the field. Sometimes this was done with only feet and sometimes with hands too. There were not a lot more rules than this. Modern sports began to be formalised within the 19th century. There are perhaps many reasons for this, which I have not researched closely, but emancipation is probably a big one.


Rugby School, 1859.

Rugby Union is actually the oldest of the formalised codes. Perhaps its history could be traced to 1823, when during a game of proto-football William Webb Ellis picked up the ball and ran with it. This story has been disputed though. In 1839, the world's first formal football club of any kind was founded, the Barnes Club in London, it was a Rugby club. Then in 1845 the rules of Rugby were formalised. These rules were accepted by some football teams and not by others. Also in the 1820s, boys at the Eton school made a rule that the ball should not be touched with the hands, which could be seen as the embryonic development of soccer. At that stage there were still many varieties of football played and teams often had to agree on the rules before the game began.

I have mentioned in a previous post some of the story behind the development of Australian Rules Football. There are perhaps many factors involved in the birth of Australian football, but it was definitely a descendant of proto-football. There was even a proto-football game called Marn Grook played by Australian Aboriginal people with a possum skin, which was a foundational influence in the game. Considering that the Australian Aboriginal peoples are the most ancient peoples on earth, proto-football could possibly have existed for millenia.

Australian Football Rules were codified in 1859 by Tom Wills and the Melbourne Football Club. Geelong had their own rules which did not require the ball to be bounced, but by 1866 they accepted the Melbourne rules. The Melbourne Club was founded on May 14th 1859 and the Geelong Club shortly after on July 18th, 1859. Australia being so far from the rest of the world, and transport being what it was, Australian football began to develop on its own. The game was played a little in South Africa and Scotland circa 1900. In 1900 there were 100 clubs in New Zealand. New Zealand was a founding member of the Australasian Football Council. (See- Australian Rules - from Colonial past-time to World Footy.) The biggest reason why soccer did not take off in Australia is that it was only birthed as a sport long after Australia was formed. This is different from cricket, which was well established before Australia was ever settled by the English.

Soccer, or "Association Football" was not codified until 1863. There were many football clubs in England at the time who had to agree on the rules of the game before it started. Some played a game more similar to Rugby, some more similar to Soccer. An association of clubs came up with the rules for the game that is soccer or that much of the world call football. It is important to understand that even though this code is considered "the world game" it has no stronger claim on the name football than any of the other codes. It's birth came in the same time period as Rugby and Australian Rules Football (indeed a little later). Soccer is a derivative of the word association, from Football Association.

During the codification of rules for the Football Association there was a dispute at the final meeting on December 1st 1863. The initial treasurer for the FA withdrew the club of Blackheath over two important rules that had been withdrawn. These two rules were 1) being able to carry the ball in the hands or under the arm and 2) being allowed to kick, trip, tackle and knock a player down (hacking). These are the fundamental differences between Rugby and Soccer. F.W.Campbell the treasurer of Blackheath was recorded to say, "hacking is an essential element of the 'football' game that this club (Blackheath) wants to play. To eliminate hacking would "do away with all the courage and pluck from the game, and I will be bound over to bring over a lot of Frenchmen who would beat you with a week's practice". These differences began in the 1820s and were still being sorted out in the 1860s. The game of soccer as we know it today did not exist before 1863. This dispute lead other Rugby clubs to break from the Football Association and to form the Rubgy Union in 1871.

Australian Rules Football and Gaelic Football have an interesting relationship. There are arguments that each sport was influenced by the other. What ever the case, the Gaelic Athletic Association codified their game in 1887. Rugby and Soccer had been played in Ireland during the 1860s and 1870s and were both influential in the game of Gaelic Football. Hurling probably also has some influence on the game and controversially also Australian Football.

American Football diverged from Rugby and no other sport. Rugby was played in both America and Canada in the second half of the 1800s, but with the development of their own versions of Football, Rugby faded in both of those countries and is only beginning to increase in popularity now. American Football can trace its history back to the first recorded game in 1892. The American Professional Football Association was not formed until 1920.

Rugby League split from Rugby Union in 1895 over a dispute regarding payments. Northern Rugby teams in England were mostly made up of coal miners who could not afford to take time off work to play without compensation. The southern clubs believed that Rugby should remain an amateur sport and disagreed. This led to the formation of the Northern Rugby Union. The rules gradually changed over the next 12 years. In 1907 the rules were codified separately from Rugby Union and in 1922 the name of the NRFU was changed to the Rugby League.

Soccer may be the most popular version in the world, but it is not the oldest form of the game. Rugby has a stronger claim than soccer to being the older game. Soccer does not have an exclusive claim on the word football. It would in many ways be more accurate to use the word "football" as an umbrella term for the 7 codes of the game (Rugby Union, Australian Rules, Soccer, Gaelic Football, American Football, Rugby League and Canadian Football). Each of the seven codes have terms to refer to themselves. I resent the marketing approach of Soccer in Australia, that they claim to be the true version of Football, and that they have a greater claim on the name. This is historically, grossly inaccurate. Australian Rules Football or Footy is an older game than Soccer and Soccer did not even exist before 1863, when it split with the then dominant version of the game, Rugby.

Footnotes:
Further evidence that Aussie Rules is the reconciliation code of football.

A history of Rugby, demonstrates that proto versions of football from around the world are common ancestors of both Soccer and Rugby. Soccer does not have an exclusive claim on this.

Australian Rules - from Colonial past-time to World Footy- www.worldfootynews.com

Wikipedia articles were consulted on the history of all football codes.
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Appendix: Codification of major world sports:

1571: Tennis. The game was popular in both England and France and dates back to Norman times. Modern rules have diverged from this earlier game, which was clearly none the less Tennis. Historians now refer to the historic game as "Real Tennis." The first modern tennis club was formed in 1872 in England.
Golf- dates back to the 1100s, but the laws were codified in 1754 by the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrew's in Scotland.

1716: Curling- popular in the 1500s. The first club, Kilsyth Curling Club in Scotland constituted the laws in 1716.

1728: Cricket- Articles of Agreement, 1728. Laws of cricket codified, 1744. Amendment of Laws (LBW and middle stump added), 1774. Cricket was popular from the 1600s onwards.

1845: Rugby

1845: Knickerbocker Baseball rules. The Knickerbocker club was founded on September 23, 1845. The 20 original rules were written down at the same time. Earlier claims to baseball games played are made before this date, such as a June 4, 1838 game in Beechville, Ontario, but this can not be deemed to have been played to the same rules. A game was played on September 11, 1845 in the New York area, and it is more possible that it was played to similar rules to the Knickerbocker club. The first official game after the Knickerbocker club was formed was on October 6, 1845. First professional club (Cincinatti Red Stockings), 1869. National Association, 1871. National League, 1876.

1848: Lawn Bowls- this would have been a lot earlier. It was already popular in the 1300s, but was banned by the King in the fear that it would detract from Archery practice, needed for battle. The law remained a long time after gunpowder.
Croquet- 1868 (also popular from the 1300s)

1849: Field Hockey- Blackheath, England.

1859: Australian Rules Football (AFL, Footy).

1863: Association Football (Soccer), England.

1871: Rugby Union.

1877: Ice Hockey- the origins of Ice Hockey are hotly disputed as it could have originated from many European versions of the game. In fact a Society for International Hockey Research has been founded to come up with a definitive historical answer to this question. It developed throughout the 1800s in Canada and the first official club was formed in 1877 at Mc Gill University in Montreal, Canada, they are credited with codifying the laws.

1884: Hurling- Modern Laws by the Gaelic Athletic Association in 1884. Evidence of the game dates back to 400 AD.

1887: Gaelic Football

1907: Rugby League- Yorkshire, England.

1920: American Football.

1946: Basketball- the game was deliberately invented in 1891. The Basketball Association of America was established in 1946. Significantly however, dribbling was only introduced in the 1950s, when the modern ball was introduced. Originally a soccer ball had been used.

1961: Canadian Football- first club University College, University of Toronto.

1984: International Rules Football. (A hybrid between Gaelic and Australian rules for the purpose of matches between Australia and Ireland.)

Chronicles of the Kings- Lynn Austin

My wife has convinced me to read some of the books she has been reading. Normally I don't read a lot of novels from the Christian book market. I usually find them too tame. The truth is that the evangelical market can be easily offended and therefore the content often strays from the depths of reality.
Anyway, the books that were put into my hand were a series called "Chronicles of the Kings." The author, Lynn Austin has chosen to portray the life of King Hezekiah in fiction. Hezekiah was one of the few kings in the history of Judah to truly honour God and his law. As far as the novels have been concerned (I am reading the third book in a five part series), the over all enjoyment factor for a good read has been reasonable. I guess I would give them a score of 7/10. A couple of things have annoyed me though. The prophets seem rather weak. When Micah came to Hezekiah at the start of his reign he "prophesied" on his academic knowledge of the Torah, rather than by a burning of the Holy Spirit inside of him. This seems to all to easily fit in with an evangelical stream that would rather have the Father, Son and Holy Book, rather than the Holy Spirit. So many evangelicals seem to be afraid of the power of the Holy Spirit, and it certainly comes through in Lynn Austin's books. Secondly, there is no doubting that these books are written for women, as much of the Christian fiction market is (perhaps why it is seen as impotent by people like me). There are far too many times when the heroine of the story dreams of her love for her man, and of being held in his arms etc. Now this is all very good when these books are mostly read by women, but when is someone going to have the courage to write something a little more palatable for both genders?
Aside from the fictionalisation of the story (which I will not spoil for you) one of Lynn Austin's obvious goals was to get people to pick up their bible's and read the stories of the kings in a new light. This is something I am greatly appreciative to her for. She has put faces on the characters of the bible. This is necessary because the biblical stories are set so far in the past and in such different cultures, that it is often difficult to relate to them. It certainly encouraged me to read the stories of the kings again to get a better context for the story I was reading in a novel.
Lynn Austin manages to make the Assyrians seem rather mean, but not as ghastly as a writer like John Grisham or Steven Lawhead would have the guts to do. But then those writers (Christians as they are) have been given the cold shoulder by much of the evangelical world for publishing in the secular market. It does give the reader a better impression of why Jonah wanted to disobey God when he was called to prophesy to Nineveh, the capital city of the Assyrians.
So, I read the books of 1st and 2nd Kings. I decided to skip Samuel on this occasion, as I know the stories of King David better. A few things stood out to me as I read these books. (I calculated that they would be about 250 pages in normal paper back spacing, but the bible pages are rather thin with tiny type on them.) Firstly, Solomon was at once the biggest success and biggest failure that Israel ever had. It would be fair to say that God has accommodated our mistakes many times in his plans. Solomon is a big example of God doing this.
Let me digress. God never intended for sin to be in the world. But he lovingly decided to give us free choice. When sin entered the garden of Eden, God decided to come up with a salvation plan. Very early on God promised he would send a Saviour, who was yet unnamed. Later on, after many more human mistakes God let the Israelites know that it was his preference for them to not have a king like the other nations, because he wanted to be their King. Yet God showed grace to the Israelites and allowed them to have a king, even though it would be their down fall in the end.
Saul may have been Israel's first king, but David was God's choice for Israel's king. David was a man after God's own heart, yet even he had a lot to learn about God's will. Israel prospered under David. Israel began to fulfil its purpose as a light among the nations. Under Solomon, Israel prospered beyond imagination. Gold was so plentiful in his kingdom, that silver was considered worthless. He kingdom stretched up to the Euphrates river, just as God had promised Abraham. Kings and queens from all over the known world came to Solomon to seek his wisdom and hear where his wealth had come from. Israel was the most prosperous nation in the world under King Solomon.
But Solomon had a fateful flaw. He took on foreign wives. In fact the Torah already gave instructions that a king should not have many wives. It seems that Solomon did not know the law well enough. As Solomon took on 700 wives, many of them to form alliances with other nations, they also brought their foreign demigods. Solomon was tempted into worship of gods other than the true Creator God Yahweh. As he was tempted, he led his nation into the same sins. It was as a direct result of Solomon's sin of idol worship that Israel was split under his son Rehaboam. Rehaboam remained the king of Judah, and Jeroboam (not in the line of King David) became the king of Israel.
So many of the kings of Israel and Judah worshipped idols because Solomon led them into sin. So much of the old testament story is about Israel's struggle with temptation and God's desire for them to be a light to the world. Imagine if Solomon had remained a godly man and had not taken on extra wives. Imagine if his son had been a godly man too. It would stand to reason that a godly son would have inherited his kingdom and not only maintained it, but would have seen it prosper even more. The fame of Israel would have spread even further through out the world. Israel would truly have been a light to the nations. A succession of godly kings that did not take on idol worshipping wives would have made for a very different history.

The second thing that stood out to me, was that God promised that there would also be a son of David sitting on the throne of Judah. God promised that he would reserve a remnant for himself in the nation of Judah for "the sake of David." David is a "type" or a foreshadow of the Messiah Jesus. When God promised that he would do this "for the sake of David" he was in many ways saying he would do this for the sake of his Son, the coming Messiah.
When Jesus was born, he was the last King in the line of David to be born. He inherited the "throne" of Judah. This was declared to the world as he hung dying on the cross under the sign "King of the Jews" (Jew, being a derivative of Judah). Since Jesus rose from the dead, and lives for evermore, he continues to be the King of Judah, of the new spiritual Israel. No nation of Israel or Judah can exist without God's king in place.
Many believed that Israel being established in 1948 was a fulfillment of Ezekiel's prophecies that the Jews would return to Judah. But it would pay to read the return to Jerusalem in the days of Nehemiah and Ezra as a fulfillment of these prophecies. The modern nation of Israel does not pay any attention to the King in the line of David, therefore they are not the biblical nation of Judah. They are not some special fulfillment of prophecy. They need a saviour just like the rest of us, they need to call on King Jesus.
Reading 1st and 2nd Kings also helped me realise that I have both an earthly and a heavenly King in Jesus. He will return to establish his reign on earth some day. It is clear though, that Israel failed in being the light to the nations that God desired. The nation of Judah was destroyed in AD 70. His plan now is for the spiritual nation of Israel with Jesus as King to be his Light to the nations. But I do not buy into some notion in the middle east having a special part to play in that plan.