What is happening? Everything!
1. Trumpism continues its strange evil spell over too many Evangelicals and Right-to-Life Catholics: "only Trump can save us."
2. The Hamas October 7 surprise attack on Israel.
3. Trump receives indictments for his Georgia and related Election interference activities.
4. Trump - FOR NOW - flatters and praises Evangelicals while hurling insults at just about everybody else (and those Evangelicals not under his spell.)
5. Curiously, pro-Maga and Qanon people along with substantial parts of the Republican Party who communicate with Trump and take his advice favor abandoning Ukraine.
6. Reportedly, Putin hangs on in the Ukraine wars in hopes that Trump will return to the Presidency and remove all USA resistance to his mass-murdering invasion of that country.
7. Trump promises to OBLITERATE his opposition.
8. Trump believes he can override this portion of the Constitution (14th Amendment) with an "Executive Order":
Amendment XIV
Section 1.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Donald Trump has declared in his recent ranting speeches that if he is elected to the 47th Presidency of the United States that he will end the citizenship of children born in the United States to undocumented aliens!
I am becoming increasingly wary of Trump for whom I once supported and voted for in two elections. He has no compunction about lying, he has an almost hypnotic, perhaps even demonic hold over naive Christians who think he will continue to be their friend once he has achieved his obvious dictatorial aspirations. One thing you should think about is the nickname he has attached to Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida of "SANCTIMONIOUS". "Sanctimonious" is a term usually applied to people considered "churchy" or "pious".
I am horrified at Biden's stance on abortion, same-sex marriage, trans-genderism, and the like. However, I ask you to please remember that of "'transgender' BRUCE JENNER, now known as "Caitlyn Jenner," Trump during his first Presidential campaign said "she may use any restroom she wants in my buildings." Trump has spoken out of both sides of his mouth on these issues.
Donald Trump pursues his political base with little regard for truth. One of his top advisors, self-proclaimed "Dirty Trickster" Roger Stone is courting the New Apostolic Reformation crowd, including Elijah List with prolamations that he is now a born again Christian attending Coral Gables Presbyterian Church and that he and Donald Trump often "pray together." I believe given his reputation and the obvious tactics employed that what he and Trump are really up to is "PREYING TOGETHER."
If Trump returns, I pray I am wrong, but I strongly suspect I am not.
Constance
774 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 601 – 774 of 774In Entrepreneur (and reported elsewhere):
This Influencer Has Nearly 150,000 Instagram Followers and Makes Over $10,000 a Month. There's Just One Catch—She's Not Real.
Aitana López has over 149,000 Instagram followers and brands love her. Is she the future of social media marketing?
Aitana López, an AI-generated Spanish model, is in high demand.
She was created by The Clueless agency to avoid unreliable human influencers.
Critics say she creates unrealistic beauty standards.
-------
Matt Taibbi: This Was 'The Most Alarming Thing' Discovered In The Twitter Files
Forbes Breaking News
At today's House Weaponization of the Federal Government hearing, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) questioned Matt Taibbi about the Twitter Files.
Also included 'pre-bunking' the Hunter laptop story.
RayB,
You really ought to just go back to specifically identifying yourself in your comments. Your idiolect gives you away.
Meatball Ron vs Greasy Gavin (this is funny) . . .
How COULD Meatball Ron miss such an open goal? Greasy Gavin shamelessly dodged every killer fact Hannity hit him with... and DeSantis let him get away with it. Now read KENNEDY's merciless verdict.
Did someone dose my chamomile last night or did we really watch two big state governors go toe-to-toe in a substantive debate over the issues that actually matter to America?
It wasn't a dream!
Governors Gavin Newsom – who is clearly not running for president (wink!) – and Ron DeSantis duked it out in front of my friend Sean Hannity over issues ranging from COVID lockdowns and homelessness to barely blurred cartoon porn and poop maps.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12815023/fox-news-sean-hannity-ron-desantis-gavin-newsom.html
10:35 PM
It would be nice if Trump were elect again so he could and bury some of these miscreants but that's a pipedream. They got him by the short hairs and always have or he would've never been elected the first time. All a person can really do is live right and prepare to stand on your own because, I've noticed, it's now the government's job to try to kill you.
Bombshell: New Zealand Whistleblower Reveals Over 20% Who Took Pfizer Jab Died
A database administrator who helped the New Zealand government catalog vaccine recipients has come forward revealing the spike in deaths associated with the Covid-19 jab campaign, which resulted in hundreds dead.
https://www.infowars.com/posts/bombshell-new-zealand-whistleblower-reveals-over-20-who-took-pfizer-jab-died/
Fr. Malachi Martin on Angels - "Our Invisible Guides" (1997)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKdUuXIqo28
Interesting comment on TV Angels
6:33 pm
The leaked New Zealand information actually evidences the safety and efficacy of the covid vaccines in New Zealand (and, by extension, the world).
For a detailed understanding (and debunking of Steven Kirsh's nonsense)
https://twitter.com/thereal_truther/status/1730672444032360450
x
X pimping for his, and Constance's god Satan 24/7/365
It's incredible to hear some people, even Trump critics, who don't understand that a second Trump term would be nothing like the first. "We survived 4 years of Trump in the WH. We'll survive 4 more years.", they say.
They totally ignore the fact that unlike 2016, Trump is likely to be a convicted felon on election day, and he has made it very clear that if he gets elected again, he’s going to spend his time and use the government to retaliate against his domestic enemies in government, media, and beyond.
In a second Trump administration, we won't see anyone like Jim Mattis, John Kelly or Bill Barr. Trump will hire only die-hard MAGA loyalists. People like Steve Bannon, Kari Lake, and Steve Miller will run the show.
Axios revealed today the exact questionnaires Trump allies are planning to use for appointees and employees in case he wins back the White House.
Here's one example: "What part of Candidate Trump's campaign message most appealed to you and why?"
Another question: "Briefly describe your political evolution. What thinkers, authors, books, or political leaders influenced you and led you to your current beliefs? What political commentator, thinker or politician best reflects your views?"
As Liz Cheney said: "People who say, if he’s elected is not that dangerous because we have all these checks & balances don't fully understand the extent to which Republicans in Congress have been coopted. One of the things that we see...is a sort of a sleepwalking into dictatorship in the United States."
Anyone who doesn't subscribe to the MAGA ideology, anyone who doesn't believe Donald Trump is "The greatest president in American history" will never get hired.
A second Trump term would be the end of America as we know it.
Never Trump
Luciferian @ 10:27 am
Thanks for the validation. Calling out satan's lies & disinformation is a hobby of mine....all in the name of Jesus Christ.
You hating truth doesn't surprise me.
x
10:29 AM posted:
From Liz Cheney: "one of the things that we see...is sort of a sleepwalking into dictatorship in the United States"
First off, we have a dictatorship now. It is RINO filth(Cumbeys Idols), that are icing that cake, by enabling the uni-party. There is only a remnant of the constitutionalist remaining, in the Republican party! It is a biblical thing, The Remnant! It is all there ever is! The Kingdoms of this world are NOT the Kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ! There is no political solution to the corrupt Luciferians who run the governments of this world! BUT, to sling mud on well meaning, and lesser evil conservatives in political circles, just goes to show who the god is, that Idolatrous warmongering Cumbey, and her tool X worship.
The clowns that these two Luciferian pharisees swallow, while straining at Trump and company, show the depth of psychosis that results from having a form of godliness void of the Holy Spirit!!!
Your phoney, woke + spiritless jesus, won't save you from the wrath that is to come, and fairly soon!
Unprincipled, compromised, Liz Cheney wants her power back.
She got a taste of it and greedily lusts for more. And she has lots of company in that.
America and it's people who still believe in free speech, and do their own thinking, are thrown under the bus.
It's what our modern times have come to. She is part of globalism's hive mind and they'll protect their right to lord over others. The wild ride that goes with lustful proud "do-gooders" is about to commence
They are the real danger, with a crooked mask trying to hide their evil intents------and death comes to everything they touch.
Bye bye Miss American Pie.
Trust the Lord and no one else.
Trust the Lord like your earthly life and eternal soul depend on it, because they do.
Craig, Good catch! RayB can't chew the cud any other way but idiotlect.
December 2 ~ Saint Bibiana, 4th century martyr during the reign of Julian the Apostate.
https://gloriaromanorum.blogspot.com/2020/12/december-2-saint-bibiana-4th-century.html?m=1
Skip to the last paragraph. . ."It is especially interesting to note that the condemned charioteer, Hilarinus, sought refuge in a Christian church, and also that he was dragged out by the magistrates of Apronianus who, apparently, had little respect for said churches as places of sanctuary. This may also indicate that Apronianus was using the accusation of sorcery—a crime that even Roman pagans had condemned for centuries—as a way to incriminate Christians. It should be remembered that Julian had specifically enjoined his officers not to persecute Christians directly in the style of Decius, Valerian, and Diocletian, but to act against them with more subtlety. "
+++
Sounds like now) - :
Shamelessly nicked from arrre.co.uk
Ightfield. Tell me more about Ightfield.
https://www.westoverward.co.uk/town-diary/ightfield-tell-ightfield/
Excerpt. . ." Even as the new friends whiled away peaceful days in their rural idyll, at Cholmondeley Castle preparations for a dangerous operation to be known as ‘Anthropoid’ were underway."
+++
Sounds like now
*arrse.co.uk
A Christmas Message from Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HAFPZuKwyg4
+++
December 9th: Is the Pope Catholic?
https://www.barnhardt.biz/2023/10/26/december-9th-is-the-pope-catholic-a-free-conference-seeking-the-truth-about-the-two-popes-speakers-include-vigano-fr-altman-fr-kramer-dr-mazza-liz-yore-mark-docherty-and/
Alfa Bravo: 2nd coolest person ever.
Constance I would like to focus your attention on the COP 28 meeting. These guys talk about it. Not a pre-trib rapture person myself but they make some important points about the meeting which I have not looked at yet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfZPDC51e18
I would also like to point you to the Coronation.
https://www.youtube.com/live/7teF2AYK9CI?app=desktop
I would love to hear your thoughts on this if you pay close attention to the details.
p.s. Constance ,watch Tim Cohen first.
Big Fun at the Met!
"Get The F*ck Out!" Elites Rage over Climate Protesters Disrupting the Met Opera
Breitbart News
People booed, screamed at, and eventually booted out climate protesters from Extinction Rebellion after the activists repeatedly disrupted the Met Opera during opening night using signs, chants, and by yelling during the performance. "Do you know people spend hundreds of thousands to come here?!" one man screamed at a protester being dragged from the venue.
House RINOs expel a Republican based only on indictments-not convictions. Is this a precedent to block President Trump from running?
tierneyrealnewsnetwork.substack.com/p/house-rinos-expel-a-republican-based
https://twitter.com/_aussie17/status/1730151291937280468
Bears repeating.......the stats don't lie.
NZ Whistleblower on Vaccines
When in Rome St. Augustine asked who were these fair skinned slaves? His answer: Angles. He replied (legend says) not Angles but Angels.*
1,400 Year Old Book In King Charles's Coronation - YouTube
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2KZRKR6oZIU
A little more. . ."Like many medieval manuscripts, the Gospels were written in Latin on vellum (prepared from animal skin) by Italian monks in the late sixth century. In 601, they were sent from Rome by Pope Gregory the Great to help Augustine, who had been dispatched from his monastery five years earlier to convert the pagan English to Christianity.
Augustine landed in Thanet, Kent in 597, subsequently settled in Canterbury and with the permission of King Ethelbert of Kent, began preaching to the local populace. Within a few years Augustine was successful in his mission when Ethelbert became the first English king to convert to Christianity. Augustine himself became the first Archbishop of Canterbury.
Dr Philippa Hoskin, Director of the Parker Library and Donnelley Fellow Librarian said: “This book is a key formative moment in British history. Books were fundamental to the success of Augustine’s mission. Without this volume we would lack a tangible connection to the point in British history where the influence of the Roman Church began through the teaching of the Gospels.”
Unlike more lavishly illuminated Gospels, this volume appears to have been primarily intended as a teaching aide, as evidenced by the size of the book itself (quite portable), the generous height of the text (readable whilst being held) and the presence of the illustrations, of which only two survive. These are the frontispiece for the Gospel of Luke and a further page of twelve framed vignettes depicting scenes from the Passion of Christ.
These illustrations have been studied by Professor George van Kooten, Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. He notes that “It’s very easy to follow Christ through the succession of scenes from the Gospels, from his arrival at Jerusalem to the carrying of the cross to the crucifixion.”
The Augustine Gospels will be carried in the Coronation Procession by the Master of Corpus Christi College, Professor Christopher Kelly. The Master will be wearing full academic dress. Later in the service, prior to the Anointing, the Master will stand holding the Gospels for the reading of the New Testament lesson.
Established in 1352, Corpus Christi College is the sixth oldest College in the University of Cambridge. It does not have a founder. Corpus is the only college in either Oxford or Cambridge to have been founded collectively by townspeople"
https://www.finebooksmagazine.com/news/sixth-century-augustine-gospels-be-used-king-charles-iiis-coronation
+++
*perhaps a lost tribe scattered by their greedy brethren? It happens ) - :
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/epidemiology-and-infection/article/association-between-face-mask-use-and-risk-of-sarscov2-infection-crosssectional-study/0525AD535D10FDCDF0C52603B50E7A1E
Peer reviewed study from Norway
"Recommendations to wear face masks in the community are largely informed by low certainty evidence from observational studies.”
"Several studies have questioned the use of masks to prevent viral transmission. A review published in late January at the Cochrane Library that analyzed 78 randomized controlled trials found that they didn't show “a clear reduction in respiratory viral infection with the use of medical/surgical masks.”
The fear-demic softened up it's target and many unsuspecting people got caught up in the globalist game.
I support Trump because he supports removing illegal aliens. The constitutional amendment which allows anchor babies is destroying America. As a physician I have cared by the thousands for illegal immigrants whose healthcare has been paid for by those whose country they are stealing
The country will not control its borders and allows people to come in and give birth producing anchor babies. No country such as that will long survive. It doesn't matter who wins the next election if either allows the situation to continue
A country that will not control its borders will not stand. A country that allows illegal aliens to have babies in the country and become legal citizens will not stand. This is why Trump has support no one else is worried about the failure of the United States due to this accidental result of the 14th amendment. People who wrote the Constitution in the 14th amendment never imagined a nation so stupid as to not control its borders. They never imagined a nation so stupid that they would not control their elections. Barack Obama and Kamala Harris are both ineligible to be president and no one has the ability to challenge it. Of course Donald Trump has major flaws. Why are you concerned about the illegal aliens? They are stealing the country by the millions and it's finances probably by the trillions now
Let's Cheney is more concerned about illegal immigrants than her own country. Trump won the 2020 election but we will have to wait for judgment Day to see it's proof
The Jews of Israel today are lost without Jesus as are the Palestinians. There cannot be peace between the two people groups because of the Jews are culturally successful endeavor and the Palestinians are not. There will not be peace before both say blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord
Trump won but I think it's beyond the possibility of proving now. There are literally too many liars baby murders sodomites fornicators adulterers for the nation to put together 12 honest people in a jury
Can we find 12 honest people commenting here?
Craig 9:41 AM,
I let it sit over the week-end.
Anon 9:37 AM,
What part of "count me out" do you not understand?
Okay, Craig. You counted yourself in when you responded to my comments; but if you prefer, "what happens in Constance's blog, stays in Constance's blog."
I have been doing more study regarding Paul. One of the baffling things to me had been the source of his teaching in Galatians that the law of Moses was given by angels. Such a teaching could have reflected Paul's reading of the Book of Jubilees, a book that belongs to Jewish Second Temple Literature.
The teachings of Gnosticism, regarding the low of Moses having been given by inferior spirit beings to inferior grades of human beings, have some similarity with Paul's teaching in Galatians. But what is baffling is that full-blown gnosticism appeared on the historical scene long after Paul had died.
Gnostics developed an affinity for their own interpretations of Paul, just as the Docetists had before them. Gnosticism taught that the law of Moses was given by the Demiurge. In this regard Gnosticism was a precursor to Theosophy, which likewise doesn't regard Jehovah as God Almighty.
Paul, himself, may simply have believed the Book of Jubilees.
Private Jets Headed for Dubai Global Warming Conference Reportedly Seen Frozen, Grounded in Munich Due to Heavy Snowfall
https://www.ibtimes.sg/private-jets-headed-dubai-global-warming-conference-reportedly-seen-frozen-grounded-munich-due-72600
Heaviest snowfall since 1933
6:55 AM
You can't hold dishonesty against the brainwashed. . .
News Channels all saying the same thing - youtube.com/watch?v=adXsewvlU0c
(. . .up to a point ) - :
Tesla Cyber truck BEAST Mode - Dyer/Hanshaw on A.C. and the Hidden God
theopenscroll.blogspot.com/2023/12/tesla-cyber-truck-beast-mode-dyer-hanshaw.html
Newt Gingrich: It's time for decent people to say ENOUGH
youtube.com/watch/watch?v=mALLsCExaPE
That's actually kind of hilarious...luciferian, heretic, opus dei operative and decades-long unrepentant adulterer Newt Gingrich classifying himself as "decent people".
He/they couldn't make their war against America any more obvious.
x
12:48 PM
They used to say: Every Jew a .22
I'm afraid a .22 would only make those guys madder. With whatever drug they're on you'd need more stopping power.
Stay alive with a .45
3:43 am said: The country will not control its borders and allows people to come in and give birth producing anchor babies. No country such as that will long survive. It doesn't matter who wins the next election if either allows the situation to continue
You are probably a russian troll but I'll bite...
The US is a country nearly entirely made up of anchor babies and babies/grandbabies of anchor babies.
Such policies have catapulted the US from a colony 250 years ago to currently the most powerful & prosperous country in the world.
It is NOT the immigrants dragging us down this luciferian hellhole but, rather, the uneducated, lazy & feeble-minded who are seeing hard-working immigrants surpass them economically and socially that are dragging this country backward & into a hellscape of their own design (false kingdom now partnered with roman catholicism).
Fear and hate will not win a culture war.
x
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnWmK8SlVmA
Dedicated to our dear Marxist x.
Nobody does it better than Tim Conway (of Carol Burnett Show).
;)
"Fear and hate will not win a culture war." (@ 2:21 PM)
Oh---but comedy might!
Check out 2:25 PM LOLOLOL
10:14 AM "you can't hold dishonesty against the brainwashed."
Folks get brainwashed because they don't love the truth. Having heard the truth, they believe a lie. Kinda like leading a horse to water, but ya can't make him drink.
An old man told his grandson, "A fight is going on inside you, me, and every man -- a terrible fight between two wolves. One wolf is evil: he is lustful, proud, lazy, angry, envious, greedy, gluttonous, and morose. The second wolf is good: he is prudent, just, brave, strong, temperate, humble, merciful, and joyful."
The grandson listened, then asked, "Which wolf will win?"
The grandfather replied, "The one you feed, son. The one you feed."
Learn More Here
https://www.fisheaters.com/becomingvirtuous.html
7:09 pm said The fear-demic softened up it's target and many unsuspecting people got caught up in the globalist game.
What a weird thing to suggest after reading that small Norway study done by largely self-reporting cohorts in January-February 2022 in the height of the Omicron variant which clearly indicates there are many unknown confounding factors surely affecting these observations.
The biggest to me has got to be that these were surely a lot of anti-mask "volunteers" responding to survey questions in the midst of a highly policitized pandenmic. The second biggest is likley the "almost always" or "always" masked in public group was surely more likely to be in public spaces, including health care, where they would be more likley exposed to covid virus even while wearing a mask. Finally, in this small study, there is no way of controlling over where they actually got infected. The "always" masked in public could have all caught covid unmasked at home.
I'm not saying I think masks were ideal or perfect...they also weren't the ONLY public health response but rather part of trial and error multi-faceted approach to save lives using lock-downs, travel restrictions, masks, social distancing, vaccines, etc which, in the end and though imperfect, saved millions of lives.
To me -- masks are/were common sense in 2020 and 2021 when we, including "public health experts" didn't know exactly what we were dealing with. Masks created a natural social distancing and certainly, in my opinion, would minimize spread somewhat from an infected individual (who doesn't recognize they are infected) from seeding an even bigger covid transmission event. I think masks were effective in medical buildings treating patients and small public spaces without adequate or good ventalation. They were probably very moderately to nuetral effective otherwise for this Covid virus...particularly once we got to variants delta and omicron (which was dominant in this study period in the study cited above).
Mask effectiveness is just about impossible to confirm (or entirely disprove) -- especially in hindsight. None of us wore them perfectly or appropriately all the time and there were way more non-symptomatic infections, who were probably contagious for some smaller amount of time, than were previously known at the time. There are just too many confounding factors.
Regardless...to act like or perceive mask mandates as some pre-planned "globalist" agenda is just kind of a history rewrite and quite a stretch. Talk about "fear-demic"...how paranoid do you have to be to believe a public health (often recommended by experts AND permitted/enacted by politicians everywhere of all sorts until it became a symbol of maga macho not to wear one) mask mandate for an airborne virus is a globalist conditioning campaign.
Ole Santa Klaus Schwab would love your post.
Spoken like a true believer in the NWO.
Covid and Climate Change are the very impetus to the Great Reset you don't believe in but coming to your neighborhood anyway.
It wasn't fear that didn't make me comply with the things you heartily approve of, and as I recall wanted the government to punish those who didn't agree with that narrative. You've gotten a lot of practice persecuting people already, you'll be going places with that in the upcoming global government.
It was common sense and a healthy understanding of how real and precious my freedoms are, that by the way came from God, not political ideology.
But "lotsa luck" with that One Worlder @ 3:32 PM.
Why do so-called intellectuals love Socialism?
Brilliant Thomas Sowell says:
"Intellectuals may think of themselves as people ho "speak truth to power" but too often they are people who speak lies to gain power"
6:26 pm
Isn't Sowell an "intellectual" and supposed former Marxist himself? That quote sure fits him.
Sowell's Austrian school philosophies are directly and sharply anti-Christian.
It's basically a heresy on the ontological level of not seeing a community and common good, only individual.
On the political level it favors the infinite wealth of a very few even if many/most don't have the very basics - that's directly opposed to ages of Christian tradition.
Also, none of the Austrian school classics are/were Christian, not even a religious person among them: they were rather proponents of post-enlightenment reductionism and atheism. Even if they were somehow opposed to its mainstream 'leftist' bent, they were really closer than further of each other.
They adhere to some aspects of 'conservative' lifestyle, but it was purely cultural: it would not be a problem to boost off of having lovers along having a wife. Sowell, of course, had affairs and left his first wife in favor of another. It was rather about participation in some Vienna elite than of any conservative values.
But boy do the faux-religious "conservative" white nationalists love Sowell....as a black man, he can say racist stuff and they can just clap along and call him "brilliant".
Anon 7:00 PM,
You wrote: ...as a black man, [Sowell] can say racist stuff and they can just clap along and call him "brilliant".
Would you mind providing an example of the "racist stuff" Sowell has said?
Time to update your Khazar=Azhkenazi Jew theory, because this theory has just gotten holes poked in it with new evidencewrong!
Germanic Jewish Ashkenazi communities dating back to 300s... That is before the time of the Khazarian empire's mass conversion to Judaism in about 740 C.E.
Meeting the ancestors
DNA from a medieval German cemetery opens a window on the history of today’s largest Jewish population
https://www.science.org/content/article/meeting-ancestors-history-ashkenazi-jews-revealed-medieval-dna
ARCHAEOLOGISTS HAVE UNCOVERED evidence of Jewish communities in Germanic provinces of the Roman Empire as early as the 300s C.E., particularly in what is today the city of Cologne. During the medieval period, a trio of German cities—Worms, Mainz, and Speyer—was known as the cradle of Ashkenazi culture, with records of Jewish life going back to about 900 C.E.
7:04 pm
I do not like Vaush generally (or much at all)...but he nailed Sowell's dumbness and inherent racism in this video.
"
He's racist when he, as an psuedo-white "intellectual" pretends to speak for all black people and ascribes them all his opinions (simply because he's black).
Pardon the language but to get a general idea of where I stand on Sowell I happened to go way left to get this good take.
https://youtu.be/kQxXPjiW1k0?si=3IKYwoAqZFaw8rFe
But I do find it ironic that his "black redneck" schtick has found a home among real rural redneck maga America even moreso now than in 2006 when this critique was published.
Thomas Sowell's Quixotic Quest to Denigrate African American Culture: A Critique
https://www.jstor.org/stable/20064129
x
X,
Now you've just contradicted your own statement: It's basically a heresy on the ontological level of not seeing a community and common good, only individual.
So which is it? only individual or a collective?
Regarding the JSTOR piece, I don't have library access (and I ain't payin' for it), but the title is making a sweeping claim that clearly isn't true. What exactly is "African American Culture" and does it really pertain to all African Americans?
What Thomas Sowell Said About European Immigrants Is the Most Racist Thing I’ve Read, Ever
https://timdenning.com/thomas-sowell/
Excerpt:
“Europe is belatedly discovering how unbelievably stupid it was to import millions of people from cultures that despise Western values and which often promote hatred toward the people who have let them in.” Thomas Sowell
.... What he’s saying is immigration is stupid.
I can’t for the life of me figure out why he would think that. The story of human history is one of immigration and blended culture.
It’s the most racist thing I’ve ever read and I wish he hadn’t said it. The idea he’s spread will ultimately cause innocent people to believe certain races need to be eliminated (which we’ve never successfully done). Or that certain cultures and their beliefs are poison.
This is how the Holocaust happened. We must reject these ideas at all costs if we want to ensure humans don’t nuke each other to extinction."
X,
Regarding the Vaush clip, what exactly are referring to that has to do with racism? Just cut to the chase, for I ain't gonna listen to this guy for 20 minutes.
Right in the beginning: I know Sowell's position on Equality/Equity is Equal opportunity, NOT equality of outcome.
@ 8:37 PM,
How is Sowell's discreet statement racist, exactly? It's a statement about CULTURE, not race.
Thomas Sowell will forget more about being a human being (and not a color) than X will ever know about that because X thinks as deeply as an amoeba, and cares even less than one. His words always ring hollow like the good Socialist Marxist he is. His axe to grind is so predictable.
X's schtick is loudly squealing how much he cares.
Trolls troll. Caring isn't on their radar.
Craig at 8:30 pm
Perhaps if you were attending a church or a actively practicing member of "the church" you might understand the (nonmarxist) collective common good I'm speaking about?
In other words, the Christian persona is individual because the Christian community participates each in a fallen world, not against it, like Sowell & so many other atheist economists and philosophers want you to see it.
Christian “individualism,” in short, is nothing less than an instance of individual personhood and agency within a collective of Christians, fundamentally distinct from the possessive individual of modern secular society. We are His. It is His will we seek individually and collectively.
Perhaps I'm going out too far with this?? Suffice it to say I think Sowell's old tired racist tripes are out of date, oversimplified and unempirical and that he is, in fact, a jackhole.
x
Craig,
I seem to recall you taking offense one time when I used the term "redneck" (maybe it was cRAYb), but Sowell's labelling, degradation and gaslighting the supposed "black redneck" is the same thing.
Sowell's broad brush racist tropes are then taken and expanded upon by white nationalist maga qanon types as all blacks are "black rednecks" (I mean...who can tell the difference, right? Just lead with and provide a quick links to every news story about a black and other color crime/criminals you can muster to perpetuate the myth "we" are being "invaded" and supplanted by "redneck" persons of all colors.
Largely as I imagine RayB, Sowell is a very old, hateful, unrepentant curmudgeon...out of touch, assuming he ever was "in touch" with anything.
x
Luciferican Rayb at 8:58 pm
Figures you love another adulterer.
X @ 9:39 PM,
Yeah, maybe you are going too far with this. It seems you're off the ledge.
At least we all here know I've won the argument. The evidence is when the loser tries to disparage his winning opponent.
Loser.
In 2006 Sowell wrote that the Judeo-Christian tradition has been a major force for good in the world, that this tradition upholds the value of human life.
That's more than can be said of you, x, because you were mad when Conservatives on the Supreme Court overturned Abortion at the National level (as the law of the land).
Your hypocrisy is off the hook.
X,
You wrote to me: I seem to recall you taking offense one time when I used the term "redneck"...
Nope.
Sooo...: but Sowell's labelling, degradation and gaslighting the supposed "black redneck" is the same thing.
...nope.
Sowell is talking about a SUBCULTURE--just like "redneck" is a SUBCULTURE.
The mark of racist is one who sees 'racism' everywhere...
Whine on, X..like the loser you are.
You know you love the attention.
Skip to the last paragraph. . ."Lastly, for those concerned about Miss Markle’s heritage, her father is a direct descendant of King Edward III. She receives a sacrament, and the Royal Family gets a few more drops of real Plantagenet blood: a win-win deal, as we say in Tinseltown."
The Catholic roots of Harry’s princess
https://catholicherald.co.uk/the-catholic-roots-of-harrys-princess/
Thomas Sowell: The Left has its pope
https://www.twincities.com/2015/09/25/thomas-sowell-the-left-has-its-pope/
"Pope Francis has created political controversy, both inside and outside the Catholic Church, by blaming capitalism for many of the problems of the poor.
Pope Francis is part of a larger trend of the rise of the political left among Catholic intellectuals. He is, in a sense, the culmination of that trend...
...A landmark in the evolution of the ideological left among Catholics was a publication in the 1980s, by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, titled “Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy.”
Although this publication was said to be based on Catholic teachings, one of its principal contributors, Archbishop Rembert Weakland, said: “I think we should be up front and say that really we took this from the Enlightenment era.”
+++
Figures
The Advent hymn Veni Veni Emmanuel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRi1GDoaQu4https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRi1GDoaQu4
Bluegrass version: O Come, O Come, Emmanuel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XhbofNjmzk
Donbas 2
"Putin has issued a direct threat to Latvia, warning of a reciprocal response if the “mistreatment” of the Russian-speaking population in the country continues."
https://twitter.com/yasminalombaert/status/1731788581113401766?s=61&t=rmEeUn68HhlFHGKbTPQr_A
Why can't/won't they assimilate?
In order to 'Save Democracy'™
Dems Go FULL AUTHORITARIAN: Rig Florida Primary
Breaking Points
Krystal and Saagar discuss Dems straight up rigging the primary for Biden in Florida.
(Just disregard Krystal's statements re J6...)
In the Old Testament the year of Jubilee was supposed to be corrective to set bond slaves free and debtors free and restore ancestral lands to families. In practice I think it seldom or maybe even never really happened. Jesus' words that he came to set the captives free in the acceptable year of the Lord are ignored, while Jesus' words that the poor will always be among you are quoted as if it meant that Jesus approved of taking an "Oh, well, too bad, so sad," attitude toward the poor. Paul's words that he who won't work won't eat have been further quoted as support for capitalism.
In contrast, for over 1,000 years of Hebrew history, the sages repeatedly emphasized lovingkindness and almsgiving. It was regarded as living the summary of the law as love, and it was meant to be actively lived, that was the emphasis, actively lived. It was regarded as a blessing in this life, right here and right now. Yes, that's right, the law was a blessing, not a curse. Not a burden.
It's immediately a blessing to you and to those around you, right here and right now, if you have lovingkindness. It's just like the stories of Scrooge and Grinch.
Jesus was the Son of God. He was also the foremost rabbi of a third rabbinic school, the Pious rabbinic school. Hillel was liberal. Shammai was conservative. Jesus was pious. His Pious Rabbinic tradition should be foundational for the Christian Church throughout all of its ages.
How could we be "under grace, not under the law?" The law is grace. The law is love. God's Grace is love. The law is summed up as loving God first and loving your neighbor second. Your neighbor must even be extended to your enemy; yes, and even to the strangers and sojourners among you, for the children of Israel were once sojourners.
We should have "kingdom now," as a verb, not as a noun, in the sense of living according to the Pious Rabbinic values and commandments that Jesus taught, in the way that He perfectly taught them, in the sense of His kingdom not being of this world, and in the sense of being in the world but not of the world. He prayed to His Father that His disciples would not be taken out of the world but that they would be kept from the evil one.
Faith was never meant to be reduced to: save me, me, me, me, me--because I have blind faith in you that I am your favorite, that my group is your favorite group. Just don't ask me to obey you; I know you won't, Lord, because Paul told me that I'm under grace, not under the law. Lord, I know you will punish our enemies and send them to hell very soon! Worse yet is the prosperity gospel: make me, me, me, rich, rich, rich and now, now, now.
Jesus was frequently moved by compassion, and He still is. He still blesses people who pray rightly, for the right things, from the right motives, in His good time and in the way He deems best. It doesn't mean He won't ever answer prayers in the face of financial plight or hunger or that He won't ever answer prayers to do with health. He frequently healed people, and He frequently fed people. He wanted them to feast on His words and to realize they were meant to live on more than bread alone, but He fed them real bread and real fish, too.
Why wouldn't He? He was the Word of God Who created all of the "property" and "resources" in the whole world. He created the "Goldilocks Zone" of planet Earth. He created the sun and the water and the plants. He created the elements, including gold. All of this He did out of His infinite lovingkindness and bountiful and undeserved generosity. Since He did this for us, He expects us to follow Him in lovingkindness and generosity. After all nothing we have is truly ours. It is His. We're just temporarily borrowing it or stealing it.
Anon 8:51 AM "After all nothing we have is truly ours. It is His. We're just temporarily borrowing it or stealing it." You will own nothing and be happy. Right?
9:16 AM,
The problem is obvious and is fully displayed in the history of communism, which didn't come from God. Obviously "communism" led to oligarchy and kleptocracy plus a black market plus organized crime.
I was trying to speak the language of God and not of fallen humanity's false dichotomies. I have a heart for God's will, and God doesn't force people to do things violently; although He withdraws His protection and allows violence to happen at times, following it up with His judgment upon the violent.
Anon 9:22 AM,
You wrote to me: …You counted yourself in when you responded to my comments…
No, not at all. I DID NOT count myself “in” to be used in the manner you would have liked. I merely responded to—corrected—the faulty info you relied on to further this bizarre Hebrew-original-Synoptic-Gospels.
Candidly, Bivin’s desire to ‘prove’ his thesis (of Hebrew original Synoptics) exceeds his grasp of even basic Greek grammar (or worse). Therefore, I’d be wary of using any of his writings.
Had Bivin’s consulted the most comprehensive Greek lexicon, the LSJ, he would have found their definition for ἀόριστος (aoristos), which means: without boundaries, limitless, indeterminate, without limit of time. Then he would have found early Greek grammarian (170–90 BC) Dionysius Thrax’s use of the term as a substantival in definition 3 to refer to ‘the aorist tense’. All this certainly would have provided a clue about the function of the aorist tense-form.
Had he consulted probably the most popular first year book (and one of the most basic), namely, Mounce’s Basics of Biblical Greek, he would have found the following on p 181 (2nd ed.): …the aorist (chapter 22) describes an UNDEFINED action USUALLY occurring in the past… [all CAPS for emphasis].
With this most basic knowledge, Bivin would not have blundered the following assertion, as you quoted earlier: The Greek aorist tense, like the simple past tense in English, conveys simple action in the past: for instance, "I hit the ball" (a one-time occurrence at some past time).
If this short mention in Mounce did not suffice, Bivin could have proceeded to chapter 22 to find a more expansive explanation:
The aorist (ἀόριστος) is the indefinite tense that states only the fact of the action without specifying its duration. When the aorist describes an action as a unit event it may accentuate one of three possibilities, as, imagine, a ball that has been thrown: 1) let fly (inceptive or ingressive); 2) flew (constative or durative); 3) hit (culminative or telic).
…The student is well advised, then, to pay careful attention to the contextual meaning of the larger sense unit and interpret the aorist as the pericope or paragraph would suggest.
Then, as I mentioned to another ‘anon’ (RayB in thin disguise), he could have read Stagg’s precautionary article “The Abused Aorist” or Smith’s “Errant Aorist Interpreters”. He could also have looked to D. A. Carson’s Exegetical Fallacies, specifically pp 68–75.
Perhaps you could just do Bivin a favor and send the works mentioned in this post in your own format and manner, thereby leaving me out of the middle? The Stagg and Smith articles are available free in pdf form online.
9:16 AM,
Mishnah and the Words of Jesus, by Roy Blizzard, will show you that the lovingkindness taught by the ancient Hebrew sages was not pie-in-the-sky. Look at number 8 on the list. It goes along with our old saw about giving a man a fish vs. teaching a man to fish. You'll see that the maxim that "charity begins at home" was also taught. This is just meant to serve as cultural context for the Sermon on the Mount, so that we can better appreciate what the original audience would have been likely to have heard and understood. Look how well developed charity was, and how active it was, and how practical.
Maimonides took all of these various laws of Talmud and the Mishnah and codified them. He listed eight ways tzedakah was to be performed. They are progressively more virtuous, each one becoming more virtuous than the other. As you read, reflect back on some of the sayings of Jesus relative to the subject and see if it does not ring a bell in your mind.
1. To give, but sadly (Remember, Jesus taught that the Lord loves a cheerful giver.)
2. To give less than is fitting, but in good humor.
3. To give, but only after having been asked to.
4. To give before being asked.
5. To give in such a manner that the donor does not know who the recipient is.
6. To give in such a manner that the recipient does not know who the donor is.
7. To give in such a way that neither the donor nor the recipient knows the identity of the other.
8. To help the poor to rehabilitate themselves by lending them money, taking them into partnership, employing them, or giving them work, for in this way, the end is achieved without any loss of self-respect at all (Maimonides, Yad Mattenot Aniyyim 10:7-12).
Maimonides continued that when necessary, accepting charity is perfectly legitimate. Do not be embarrassed. Do not be ashamed, because no shame attaches to the poor who are otherwise unable to support themselves. However, one is advised to do everything within one’s power to keep from accepting charity if at all possible, and so the quote from Jeremiah 17:7, “Blessed is the man that trusts in the Lord.” In other words, even if a person has to endure some kind of physical suffering such as hunger, if he can just go as far as he can without accepting charity, it will be a special blessing for him if he trusts God instead of others. But, if there is no other option available, then there is no shame in accepting charity.
One important principle of charity is that it was to begin at home. The broad family circle was the primary unit for receiving relief, and beyond the family circle was the community to which the individual belonged. There is, however, a higher form of tzedakah – gemilut hasadim, which means the practice of charity. It comes from the Hebrew word chesed. In the Mishnah, Order Nezikin, Tractate Avot, Chapter 1, Mishnah 2, Simon the Just was one of the last survivors of the Great Assembly (circa 200 BCE). He used to say, “Upon three things is the world based, upon the law, upon divine service, and upon the practice of charity (gemilut hasadim).” Gemilut hasadim might be translated as the practice of acts of loving-kindness. It is the most comprehensive and fundamental of all Jewish social virtues. It encompasses the whole range of the duties man has toward his fellow man.
Blizzard, Roy B.. Mishnah and the Words of Jesus (p. 12, 13). Bible Scholars, Inc. Kindle Edition.
Craig 10:41 AM,
Bivin has taught Koine Greek college classes. After years of teaching it, he took it upon himself to learn to speak it so he could internalize it. (I provided a link where you could have quickly read a short article about this.) His book was written for a popular, not an academic, audience. I'm sure he would have written it differently had he been writing a Koine Greek textbook. He had a main point to make, and I'm not qualified to nitpick away at the way he worded his main point, in his popularly written book, that no doubt also passed through the hands of an editor at the publishing house, before being published. As far as I'm concerned this discussion became a dead one, after you made it clear to me that you don't want me to quote you in an email to the author, as well as making it plain and clear that you have no interest in learning anything at all from this author.
Anon 11:00 AM,
I read through the link you provided earlier.
Let me blunt: I pity the students in his classes. If Bivin cannot even understand the parameters of the most-used tense-form (aorist), he cannot adequately teach Koine Greek. It's either that or worse: He understands the various functions of the aorist, yet deceptively, dishonestly portrays it selectively to advance his 'Hebrew original' thesis.
I've provided plenty of evidence to prove Bivin wrong as regards the aorist tense-form. You don't have to believe me, a non-scholar. Believe the evidence. I can cite much more material, for you or anyone to investigate, in order to illustrate just how wrong Bivin is in this regard.
So, why would I (or anyone) care to 'learn' anything at all from this guy? That's not to say he is always wrong, of course. But when he is so clearly wrong in something so elementary, it's hard to know where he may be right in things one just does not have any particular knowledge in.
https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1732073794775241046
Come into this country the right way and you don't have to be sneaky.
It's an invasion--and it's not peaceful what comes in their wake.
Craig 11:38 AM,
You can have any opinion you want about Bivin. I'll stand by my own, different opinion, based on workshops like this, the type of thing that he has been participating in since 1996:
https://www.biblicallanguagecenter.com/happened-jesus-jerusalem-2012/
What Happened at “Jesus in Jerusalem”, Koine Greek Immersion Workshop (2012)
A group of sixteen facilitators and participants recently gathered in Jerusalem (Dec 28, 2011-Jan 6, 2012) to speak Koine Greek, while reading select New Testament texts associated with Jesus in Jerusalem and visiting the ancient sites connected with those narratives.
The group gathered in Jerusalem’s Old City for over 50 immersion Koine Greek hours, interacting with stories, maps, props, and texts. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) techniques, such as TPR (Total Physical Response) and TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling), were employed to prepare the gospel texts which were read on site. Occasional smaller groups led by facilitators allowed for more speaking practice and contextual communication.
The first workshop trip was to the Mount of Olives, where Jesus’ triumphal entry (Lk 19:28-40) and Olivet discourse (Mt 24:3-14) were read and discussed while overlooking the Kidron Valley and the Temple Mount. Jesus’ prayer in the garden of Gethsemane (Mk 14:32-42) was read in an olive orchard on the mountain’s descent.
The second workshop trip was to the southern part of ancient Jerusalem, also known as the City of David. There, at the pool of Siloam, discovered in the past decade, the group read Jesus’ healing of a blind man (Jn 9:1-41). Afterward, the group walked past recent excavations outside of Dung Gate and up through a newly opened tunnel into the Southern Steps of the Temple Mount. Texts associated with Jesus and the Temple (parable of the wicked tenants, cleansing the Temple, taxes to Caesar) were read later and discussed in their historical and cultural context.
The third workshop trip began at the Western Wall of the Temple Mount, where the group entered an underground passageway into a great meeting hall from the Second Temple period. There, Jesus’ trial before the Sanhedrin (Mt 26:57-68) was read in the cavernous, low-lit room. Via tunnel, the group traversed the western face of Herod’s expansion of the Temple Mount, exiting where the great Antonio Fortress once stood. In the lower levels of the Convent of the Sisters of Zion, which still retains the Roman pavement stones from the ancient fortress, the group read Jesus’ appearance before Pilate (Mk 15:1-20). Afterward, the group visited the close-by Pool of Bethesda and read Jesus’ healing of the invalid (Jn 5:1-17).
Beginning with the “Jesus in the Galilee” Koine Greek session (Apr, 2010), and then followed by the first “Greek Instructors Fluency Workshop” in Fresno (Aug, 2011), this recent gathering in Jerusalem was one more step in the Biblical Language Center’s goal of stimulating Koine Greek fluency among the academy and beyond. Moving forward, Fresno will host their second fluency workshop this July, 2012, and there are tentative plans for another Koine Greek workshop in Jerusalem (“Jesus’ Last Week”) with New Testament texts and field trips in March, 2013.
^"Don't confuse me with facts, my mind's made up!"^
8:51 AM
. . ."We're just temporarily borrowing it or stealing it."
I was feeling all deep one day going to the spring and so when I arrived I said to the spring 'I would like to borrow some water'. Later a Nigerian woman stopped to fill her water bottle and I mentioned to her I was borrowing some water. It took her a half-a-tick then she smiled. I suppose the concept of borrowing water may ring truer in some cultures then others.
Jesus on "borrowing":
And He said to them, "But now, whoever has a money belt is to take it along, likewise also a bag, and whoever has no sword is to sell his coat and buy one" (Luke 22:36, NASB).
True Christianity is non political. People should dump Constance Cumbey for supporting Cheneyism. Liz Cheney is a politician and a liar who only wants to be President. The Jan. 6 Committee is not legal and Cheney knows it along with her colleagues who are corrupt. Donald Trump won the 2020 election and the Constitution says it's the people's vote that counts more than anything else.
Constance Cumbey said that she supports the vaccines and has had "several booster shots". Those vaccines are full of abortion fetuses and saved Christians should not be taking them. She is an attorney and she knows better than to support a kangaroo court that seats people like Adam Schiff. I also heard Cumbey say that she listened to a software program that told her who the Anti Christ was going to be. AI is satanic.
You don't need to be a fan of Trump or a Q anon cult follower to know that the 2020 election was rigged. Joe Biden did not win the 2020 election. Liz Cheney has failed to tell the truth about it. Liz Cheney is a liar and a corrupt politician. If she were to be president it would be political corruption because no one wants her to be president.
I stopped listening to Constance Cumbey. She is confusing people by campaigning for Liz Cheney. Christian brothers and sisters should not be divided by politics. We need to truth of the matter. Cheney is lying about Jan. 6 and You can't tell the truth while campaigning for president. That is impossible.
2:15 PM
Regarding Artificial Intelligence
it's more like artificial ignorance
{Chorus}
Joe Plays with your insanity....
He Shatters our realities.....
Wading through your blood.....
Joe can satisfy their greed,
says all their debts are free!
He has all eternity,
to drink the death he feeds!
Always changing the rules of play,
From now on things are done his way!
No one's EVER won his game......
Dunks all his babes in Flames!
lyrics by paul, Richard, RayB
Have you ever had the need?
To get more than ya see?!
Impervious to uncertainty,
Ignore your own treachery?
He says you can leave the world behind,
Immortality to find;
He can sell you sweets like lies,
Joe takes your soul and then he flies!
New 2024 lyrics dedicated to X (enjoying his Lollypop)
Craig 12:09 PM,
From one Christian to another, please don't put words in my mouth.
Craig 1:51 PM,
The larger point was that the apostles were going to be on the move and have a hard life after Jesus departed from them. Eleven of the twelve became eventually martyred. They were dependent on the hospitality of the houses they visited, and if there were no hospitable houses in a town, they moved on. If they encountered a hospitable home, they stayed there for the duration of their time in a village, giving the household blessings of many kinds in return, including the miraculous blessings that were in their power. There were thieves along the roads, and people had to carry swords for self-defense. They took no money from people for spreading the Gospel, for they were not working as hirelings. They cared for the flock of the Good Shepherd.
There is no need to render big meanings petty and nitpicky if what you want is support for property rights or second amendment rights. You can find support for those in the Old Testament. It doesn't mean that we can't think even bigger, since God does, or don't you believe He does?
Jesus on "borrowing":
And He said to them, "But now, whoever has a money belt is to take it along, likewise also a bag, and whoever has no sword is to sell his coat and buy one" (Luke 22:36, NASB).
"Donald Trump has declared in his recent ranting speeches that if he is elected to the 47th Presidency of the United States that he will end the citizenship of children born in the United States to undocumented aliens!"
Flooding the country with an ocean of human suffering will not help the children anymore than Jimmy Carter did when he allowed the Cubans come over and start drug wars in Florida. It will cause their suffering to become worse and there will be more drug wars and terrorism on American soil. Islam is a lost culture that cannot be saved. Their children only learn antisemitism and Jihad.
There are children from those countries who have learned to behead people before they are 10 years old.
Not many people likes Liz Cheney and she will not be elected by the people. If Trump is not elected you might end up with someone else installed like Kamala Harris or Michelle Obama. Anyone form the Democrats will be a major disaster.
The more you campaign for Liz Cheney you will waste your time. Donald Trump had ISIS on the run in the middle east. Liz Cheney will not have enough support from the people.
Does anyone know what happened to Brother Paul? The website isn't accessible, youtube hasn't posted anything for two months.
Donald Trump had planned on deporting violent gangs (AKA MS-13) and their families and children as a result of what was called "anchor babies" and "chain migration". There is a sea of suffering and terrorism coming across the border that has been orchestrated by evil billionaires and dictators for destructive purposes. Human trafficking does not meet any child's needs but it will make the suffering worse here in the US.
Any increase in the suffering that we already see happening on a massive scale will only make it worse and the children will end up on the streets and grow up in gangs and prostitution. The schools are already overrun with violent third world children and it's overwhelming US. Islam is a lost culture that cannot be saved and will only put pressure on a desperate situation. Liz Cheney cannot be elected by the people because they don't want to support her. The only way she could be president would be because of some political corruption. Joe Biden was not duly elected. He was installed because the election was rigged and Trump was the real winner. Constance, You should stop mustering support for Liz Cheney human trafficking.
The antichrist is a vegan?
New Translation of the Bible Sheds Light on Daniel 11:37 and the Gay Antichrist | Bible Prophecy
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zEbzJrp88_o
Pretty good for a Brother Paul video
If you think 13.53 billion doses was profitable check this out. . .
Quote
"Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. It quickly became clear that the war's material needs were enormous. Demand skyrocketed, and most clearly when it came to artillery ammunition: Ukraine said in March 2023 that the country needs around 600,000 artillery shells a month. This corresponds to just over 7 million a year.
Many NATO countries donated large quantities of artillery ammunition – often from stockpiles that were small to begin with. They quickly realized that they had to replenish. Nammo's estimate is that NATO's European ammunition needs are in the order of 13 million shells. This is a conservative figure that only covers 30 days of war readiness.
The overall need in Europe is thus at least 20 million grenades, which the states want within a short time. Unfortunately, it is impossible for the industry to deliver this quickly. Nammo estimates that the total annual European production capacity is under half a million grenades.
The consequence is a European defense crisis: at today's production rate, it will take at least 40 years to make this. Both Ukraine and NATO may very well go virtually empty.
We will not deal with missiles and air defense in the same detail. But the situation is disturbingly similar. we have seen that in some cases the entire year's production has been used in a single day."
https://www.stortinget.no/no/Hva-skjer-pa-Stortinget/Horing/horingsinnspill/?dnid=36468&h=10004922
By the time this is over there will be several more new billionaires in the world and possibly a couple trillionaires.
1:39 am your link doesn't connect to brother paul
The CIA is green-lighting assassination
tierneyrealnewsnetwork.substack.com/p/the-cia-is-green-lighting-assassination
Read this, and ask yourself why Mrs. Cumbey dislikes Mrs. Tierney????
The CIA is green-lighting assassination
tierneyrealnewsnetwork.substack.com/p/the-cia-is-green-lighting-assassination
Why does Constance dislike Mrs. Tierney?
The law of Moses was simply amazing. I believe Jesus purified and simplified it and poured new wine into new wineskins, and that as He said, His kingdom is not of this world. But the law of Moses really doesn't look so bad to me, the more I read about it. It's simply amazing how often people express their paranoia about the spectre of impending "dominionism" or "theocracy." (It's not amazing they would fear the church whoring around with worldly power, because of knowing medieval history. It's just amazing that almost everybody--both professing Christians and their ideological opponents--is ignorant of everything stated in the law of Moses. Then there is the issue of the Reconstructionists' penchant for being highly selective.)
Leviticus 25:10-17
King James Version
10 And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubile unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family.
11 A jubile shall that fiftieth year be unto you: ye shall not sow, neither reap that which groweth of itself in it, nor gather the grapes in it of thy vine undressed.
12 For it is the jubile; it shall be holy unto you: ye shall eat the increase thereof out of the field.
13 In the year of this jubile ye shall return every man unto his possession.
14 And if thou sell ought unto thy neighbour, or buyest ought of thy neighbour's hand, ye shall not oppress one another:
15 According to the number of years after the jubile thou shalt buy of thy neighbour, and according unto the number of years of the fruits he shall sell unto thee:
16 According to the multitude of years thou shalt increase the price thereof, and according to the fewness of years thou shalt diminish the price of it: for according to the number of the years of the fruits doth he sell unto thee.
17 Ye shall not therefore oppress one another; but thou shalt fear thy God:for I am the Lord your God.
There are massive communist armies, terrorists and drugs coming across the US Southern border. These people are also being given $5000 gift cards and plane tickets. We need the truth from Liz Cheney that the election was rigged, stolen and Biden was installed. The Jan. ^ committee is illegal. If the U.S. Constitution is to be followed then we need to understand that Trump did win the election by the vote and will of the people.
It's also time for Constance Cumbey to stop campaigning for Liz Cheney. She is a crooked liar. Christians need to stop being politicians. It will only divide Christian brothers and sisters in a time of crises.
This is evidence for a Hebrew origin text for the Greek Gospels. For supporting details I refer to the book, Understanding the Difficult Words of Jesus, by David Bivin and Roy Blizzard.
First is the linguistic evidence from the texts of the Gospels themselves. 1) Hebraic word order of Greek text of Mark. Syntax and word relationships make more sense in Hebrew than they do in Greek. 2) Literally hundreds of Hebrew idioms. 3) Hebrew literalisms. All of these serve as linguistic evidence for a Hebrew undertext. 4) The poor Greek of the Synoptic Gospels is found basically only in literary works that are translations from Semitic originals, like the Septaguint. Many Gospel expressions are not just poor Greek but actually meaningless in Greek.
Second, Aramaic words entered Hebrew as loan words and do not prove Aramaic was the popular spoken or written language of the time and place of Jesus. 1) Many more Hebrew than Aramaic words appear in the Gospels (examples: mammon, rabbi, corban, Satan, moreh, kor, amen). 2) Evidence exists of bilingual people who spoke Aramaic, Hebrew, Latin and Greek in the Palestine area during the time of Jesus. 3) Since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls the proponents of the Aramaic theory have been modifying their scholarly perspectives. Nonbiblical texts show that Hebrew was a living language not confined to rabbis. Hebrew vastly predominates over Aramaic in the Qumram evidence. 4) Even the foremost Aramaic theorist Matthew Black has said, "We must nevertheless allow possibly more than has been done before for the use of Hebrew in addition to (or instead of) Aramaic by Jesus Himself."
Third, many scholars in Israel are now convinced that the spoken and written language of the Jews at the time of Jesus was Hebrew and that the Synoptic Gospels were derived from original Hebrew sources. Names include David Flusser, Jehoshua M. Grintz, Moshe Bar-Asher, Pinhas Lapide, Harris Birkeland, William Sanford LaSor, Frank Cross, and Abbe J.T. Milik.
Fourth, evidence of early church fathers contradicts an Aramaic origin of the Gospels. Names includ Papias, Irenaeus, Origen, Eusebius, Ephiphanius, and Jerome.
Fifth is evidence from coins and inscriptions found in archaeological excavations that Hebrew was popularly used, because inscriptions would have been made by close family members on tombs.
Sixth is evidence from Josephus about the prevalence of the use of Hebrew in his time and place.
Seventh is evidence from Rabbinic literature, showing written material from the time of Jesus. Mishnah, for example, was oral law committed to writing about 200 A.D. It is valuable for many reasons including its numerous examples of Hebrew idioms, literalisms and parables.
Amendment XIV Section 1. has been exploited by the left for the purpose of human trafficking and chain migration also including terrorism and slavery. Third world migration and anti christian globalism is causing a serious problem in America.
Cults are cults and America has always been full of them. Flooding the US and other countries with third world suffering, gangs and terrorism will only make things worse chaotic and disorganized. They will be turning even our own military against US soon.
The US Constitution says that the people get to decide their leadership. Trump won the election and Biden was install instead. Liz Cheney should come clean about it and stop lying about Jan. 6.
Liz Cheney won't "come clean", she is a cesspool swimmer like her fan base.
Englishman's Concordance
ἤλθομεν (ēlthomen) — 9 Occurrences (sometimes translated "have come" and sometimes "came")
ἦλθεν (ēlthen) — 90 Occurrences (almost always seems to be translated "came" but at least once was translated "is come")
At issue is whether it would be a better translation into English to translate ēlthen "has come" at least in some instances. The issue is that the translators have rendered ēlthen into the simple English past tense "came" in most cases. This frequently does not make the best sense in the context of a passage. The reason could be due to imperfect ancient Greek translations from a Hebrew original. (See my 11:44 AM post above in this thread.)
To prove to you I wasn't creating contentiousness or contradiction out of thin air. Opposing Jesus' gospel to Paul's gospel is very far from original to me or my sources.
Here is an example for you so you can see I wasn't making any false claims or exaggerating. If you read the comments you'll find a number of commenters stating their belief in Dispensationalism's doctrine of a separate gospel given for a "dispensation of grace" applying to gentile believers.
I realize you can be selective with your Paul quotes to make his gospel teachings harmonize with Jesus' gospel teachings. The reason for this is because Paul was inconsistent, and few laypeople have examined all of his words in all of his letters, which are quite long and rambling, frequently relying on his use of techniques of Greek oration and Stoic argumentation, as even Paul's theologian scholar fans have noticed in admiration.
Jesus vs. Paul
https://doctrine.org/jesus-vs-paul
Controversy has arisen regarding Jesus versus Paul as scholars debate the different emphases and messages of Jesus and Paul.1 Jesus preached the kingdom of heaven. Paul did not. Paul preached justification by faith alone. Jesus did not. What are we to make of this? Can the two be reconciled? The answer depends on what is meant by reconciliation.
Let us be clear from the outset. The messages of Jesus and Paul were fundamentally different. Reconciliation of their messages cannot be done by harmonization. This is a fact we must accept. No one is helped by attempts to lessen the differences by declaring that the gospel is a salvation story for both Jesus and Paul. The differences remain. No benefit comes from theological gibberish that the gospel is the kingdom and the kingdom is the gospel. No light comes from attempts to show that Paul “betrayed” Jesus or “perverted” His message. No value comes from those who maintain Jesus and Paul contradicted or disagreed with one another. Such offerings of strange fire move us further from the text and sound theology. Instead, we must seek a biblical understanding of the Scriptures for reconciliation.
Good News, Bad News
The good news is that this matter is receiving attention. For almost 2,000 years, Paul has been forced into the Gospels and the Gospels have been forced into Paul–and this continues. Some theologians have recognized problems in this but most fail to provide sound, biblical solutions to resolve the differences between Jesus and Paul. The bad news is that most theological professionals misunderstand why we find differences between Jesus and Paul. Because of this, they do not have a sound foundation on which they can reconcile the differences. Here’s a clue: let the reader consider why God kept Paul separated from the Twelve after his conversion and why Paul’s contact with them was extremely limited (cf. Galatians 1.1, 11-12, 15-19). The purpose of this brief study is to answer the question about how Jesus and Paul can be reconciled (what that means) and end the confusion.
The Messages of Jesus and Paul
The below chart identifies the chief differences in the ministries and message of Jesus and Paul. Each will be analyzed.
Has Joe ever danced with the Devil? His temptation ever summoned you?!
Has Joe ever penned his name in blood? Nighttime demons slowly swallow you?!
Ole Joe's under the full moonlight, the attraction mesmerizes you?!
Has Joe ever wondered why? Satan's evil is what he's attracted to!!!
lyrics by RayB
Douay-Rheims Bible 2nd Epistle of St Paul to the Corinthians Chapter 5 (on Purgatory (I think))
He is willing to leave his earthly mansion to be with the Lord. His charity to the Corinthians.
1 For we know, if our earthly house of this habitation be dissolved, that we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in heaven. 2 For in this also we groan, desiring to be clothed upon with our habitation that is from heaven. 3 Yet so that we be found clothed, not naked. 4 For we also, who are in this tabernacle, do groan, being burthened; because we would not be unclothed, but clothed upon, that that which is mortal may be swallowed up by life. 5 Now he that maketh us for this very thing, is God, who hath given us the pledge of the Spirit.
6 Therefore having always confidence, knowing that, while we are in the body, we are absent from the Lord. 7 (For we walk by faith, and not by sight.) 8 But we are confident, and have a good will to be absent rather from the body, and to be present with the Lord. 9 And therefore we labour, whether absent or present, to please him. 10 For we must all be manifested before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive the proper things of the body, according as he hath done, whether it be good or evil.
[10] "The proper things of the body": In the particular judgment, immediately after death, the soul is rewarded or punished according to what it has done in the body.
+++
Only the pure can appear before The Almighty (I heard)
On a similar note our old horse has been rolling in the mud today. He got his rain-sheet absolutely caked. I asked her why does he do that for? She says I guess he thinks it keeps him warmer. I said I don't think he thinks.
Maga qanon Republicans are supporting & protecting insurrection terrorists.
As they slow roll the most favorably videos they can find from Jan 6th more and more Jan 6th terrorists were getting recognized and arrested. Thus, in order to protect their terrorist friends the gop has now taken to blurring out their faces. Harboring & protecting criminals IS criminal behavior itself.
Republicans to blur faces in January 6 footage as ‘we don’t want them charged’
Speaker Mike Johnson to release Capitol riot video but his office later acknowledges that justice department already has footage
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/06/mike-johnson-january-6-blur-faces-footage
Excerpt: The House speaker, Mike Johnson, said he would blur the faces of the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6 before releasing new footage to the public, in order to shield the rioters from justice.
In a Tuesday press conference Johnson, who was personally involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 election, said: “We have to blur some faces of persons who participated in the events of that day because we don’t want them to be retaliated against and to be charged by the DoJ.” …
https://twitter.com/RadioGenoa/status/1732395993843294662?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1732395993843294662%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=
By Peter Kwasniewski, PhD
Exactly 750 years ago on this date—December 6, 1273—Friar Thomas Aquinas received his supreme mystical experience that led to what Josef Pieper called “the silence of St. Thomas.” I maintain that more than coincidence unites this divine crowning of Thomas’s life with the devotional cultus of St. Nicholas, whose feast has always been celebrated in the West on the 6th, certainly long before the Angelic Doctor was born. Indeed, Thomas, toward the end of his life (c. 1269–71) preached a homily on the feast of St Nicholas, which begins with the verse: Inveni David (“I have found David, my servant”).
In accord with a Thomist whom I admire, it seems to me worthwhile “to enliven dogmatic and pastoral theology with an infusion of hagiography and iconography—to see, with the eyes of faith, the marks of the bishop of Myra’s decisive intervention on that momentous day. While there is no question that the copious legends of yore should be approached with intelligent discrimination, it is in many ways worse if one loses the childlike capacity to accept the miraculous, revere the heroic, laugh at the comical, feed on the wisdom and follow the examples lovingly preserved in the accounts of God’s ambassadors, His holy fools. . .
https://onepeterfive.com/nicholas-aquinas-750/
8:04 PM
That'd be funny if someday they took down the statues of George Floyd and put up statues of the insurrection terrorists ( - :
Pretty good video from Roger Buck
(28 minutes long)
Roger Buck: Ep 17 - The Secular Religion, Feminism and the Alt-Right
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aCR9VPOIvI
"In this video, I also speak about how secularism, along with feminism, operates covertly as an almost de facto religion in contemporary Western society.
The Alt-Right or New Right would seem to be, at least in part, an almost inevitable reaction to the imposition of a secularist-globalist creed which has absorbed feminist thinking.
However, this is hardly a defence of the Alt-Right! Like others, I am deeply disturbed by the Alt-Right’s tragic and terrible emphasis on skin pigmentation – race. I am simply saying the reaction is understandable.
The great Chesterton and Belloc saw Socialism as the bastard child of Capitalism. I suggest the Alt-Right is the bastard child of Socialism. I am not a socialist, nor do I belong to the Alt-Right. Nor am I particularly interested in bastard off-spring."
10:13 PM said:
"I am deeply disturbed."
That's obvious. Just like your disturbing bias.
Anon 11:44 AM, and etc.
Would you provide David Bivin’s educational credentials for Koine Greek? I’ve looked online and have found none. In order to teach at a seminary level, a PhD in Koine Greek is the usual prerequisite. Surely he has studied under/in some institution somewhere.
You cited Bivin/Blizzard: Hebraic word order of Greek text of Mark. Syntax and word relationships make more sense in Hebrew than they do in Greek.
On the surface this does not make any sense, when one knows that word order in Greek is very flexible, given that Greek is a highly inflected language. In other words, e.g., the same noun is spelled differently if it is functioning as a nominative, or an accusative, or a genitive. Because of this, word order is quite fluid, for the spelling tells the reader its function, whether accusative, genitive, etc. Moreover, while there is a general syntactical ordering, when units are placed outside the ‘norm’ it can indicate emphasis for that unit. But, like all speech, each writer has his/her own distinctive idiolect, which, in Greek, may be reflected in their syntactical ordering.
Can you provide 1 or 2 examples they provide in reference to this point?
As a side note, while searching for info on Bivin, I found that he references one of his own books, and it was published on Destiny Image, which is the same publisher that NAR errorists like Bill Johnson, Todd Bentley, Bill Hamon, etc. have published under. In each one you’ll find only other Destiny Image ‘authors’ recommending each other’s books.
Craig 11:36 PM,
While doing a search I found this. I was glad you challenged me because I would never have found it otherwise. Although it doesn't precisely answer your questions, I'm very excited about it, and I'm going to leave this discussion so that I can read the entire thing and think about it. You may not appreciate it as much as I do, but that is your prerogative.
Hebraic Analysis for Mark 1:9-13 with Sermon
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344671069_Hebraic_Analysis_for_Mark_19-13_with_Sermon
Once a student becomes aware of these two teaching styles, the student will be able to
determine if the class attended or if a book read, whether the teaching method is either
a Greek or Hebraic method. In the Greek manner, the instructor is always right because
of advanced knowledge. In the college situation, it is because the professor has his/her
Ph.D. in some area of study, so one assumes that he or she knows everything about the
topic. For example, Rodney Dangerfield played the role of a middle-aged man going to
college. His English midterm was to write about Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Since he did not
understand any of Vonnegut's books, he hired Vonnegut himself to write the midterm.
When he received the paper from the English Professor told Dangerfield that whoever
wrote the paper knew nothing about Vonnegut. The professor's words are an example
of the Greek method of teaching. Did the Ph.D. English professor think that she knew
more about Vonnegut's writings than Vonnegut did?
The professor of David Bivin was Robert Lindsey who wrote a book called, Jesus Rabbi and Lord: The Hebrew Story of Jesus Behind our Gospels
The introduction to the book on Amazon states:
In 1945, Robert Lisle Lindsey from Norman, Oklahoma, found himself the pastor of a small Baptist congregation in Jerusalem, Israel. With his Hebrew-speaking congregants in mind, he began a translation of the Greek texts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke and soon concluded there must lie behind these Gospels--even if distantly--an early Hebrew story of Jesus. To his surprise, he also found that Luke almost always showed Greek texts which could easily be translated literally to Hebrew. The same was true of Matthew, wherever he was not copying Mark's Gospel.In 1962, Lindsey met Professor David Flusser of Hebrew University and the two pursued the question of whether we can get back to the earliest semitic story and words of Jesus. "It is clear," say Lindsey and Flusser, "that our synoptic texts originated mainly in one Greek translation of a Hebrew biography of Jesus, probably written by the Matthew of tradition. The materials are too Hebraic to have originated in Greek, as many scholars mistakenly think today. Happily, if we use the right tools we can still hear Jesus speak as his fellow Jews of the first-century heard Him.''Lindsey tells here the warm, personal account of how he and Flusser struggled over many years to discover the earliest form of Jesus' words and narratives of His life. They believe that the records, when properly analyzed and studied, show us an authentic picture of Jesus interacting with the people of Jerusalem and Galilee. Jesus clearly heads a movement, the ''Kingdom of Heaven,'' and is a Divine Figure whose actions and words are fully Messianic.
I am not purchasing it at this time, as I need to curtail my spending on books. Nor will I purchase a subscription to read this whole article written by Robert Lindsey:
Introduction to A Hebrew Translation of the Gospel of Mark
https://www.jerusalemperspective.com/16547/
We are at an impasse. You can claim victory if you like, Craig. I don't care. I am passionate for the research but not rich. Some day I will read these things. My heart is to understand the Bible, not to win online arguments. I understand that you feel like you are Superman and I tugged on your cape, so now I'm gonna get it.
Introduction to A Hebrew Translation of the Gospel of Mark
Robert L. Lindsey [1917-1995] 2014Feb24
My Hebrew translation of the Gospel of Mark[1] grew out of an eight-year personal encounter with this Gospel. Not long after Israel’s independence, I came to the conclusion that a new Hebrew translation of the New Testament was badly needed, especially by the Hebrew-speaking Christian congregations of the State of Israel. I chose to begin with the Gospel of Mark, under the impression that it was the earliest of the canonical Gospels and because it contained the kind of simple Greek text that would make translation relatively easy. According to the widely-held theory of Markan Priority, which I had no reason at that time to doubt, Matthew and Luke used this Gospel as one of their principal sources. According to this theory, Matthew and Luke wrote independently of each other and used not only the Gospel of Mark, but also a second common source usually called “Q.” It is also generally held that the author of Mark derived much of his information from Aramaic oral sources.
To my surprise, however, examination of the Greek text of Mark revealed that its Greek word order and idiom were more like Hebrew than Greek. This gave me the frightening feeling that my translation was “restoring” an original Hebrew text rather than creating a new one. This experience caused me to wonder whether Mark might be a literal translation of a Hebrew original.
At about this time I was introduced by M. K. Moulton of the British and Foreign Bible Society to Professor George D. Kilpatrick of Queens College, Oxford. Professor Kilpatrick, whose research on the Gospel of Matthew is well known,[2] was kind enough to invite me to Oxford for a few days as his guest and spent many hours listening with a critical but patient ear to my theories and questions. Professor Kilpatrick introduced me to a series of valuable linguistic studies on the Gospel of Mark written by his predecessor at Queens College, C. H. Turner, and printed in volumes xxv-xxviii of the Journal of Theological Studies.[3] From Turner’s articles I learned that Mark’s Gospel includes a number of parenthetical notes that are best explained by supposing that Mark used written Greek stories but decided to annotate them in an attempt to make them clearer to his readers. In the months that followed I had occasion to investigate the style of these “parenthetic sections,” as Turner called them. I discovered that in at least one of these annotations, Mark 7:3-4, the word order was far less Hebraic than the usual Markan word order.
[continued]
Following this lead I began to see that there were many additional phrases and expressions in Mark’s Gospel that could not be translated to Hebrew without idiomatic distortion. These “non-Hebraisms” in Mark’s text caused me to suspect that although Mark had used a Greek source that had been translated quite literally from a Hebrew original, Mark thoroughly edited this source by frequently inserting expressions and phrases that were more like ordinary Greek than Greek translated from Hebrew.
At first I suspected that the secondary elements in Mark’s text might have been introduced as glosses long after Mark composed his Gospel. Perhaps there once existed a version of Mark that was free of the secondary phrases and explanations and, if so, perhaps manuscript tradition would reveal the earlier and simpler story. To test this possibility, I examined the text of Mark in Codex Bezae (D) and other manuscripts where Mark’s wording differs significantly from most modern editions of the Greek text. For a time I thought this search held some hope, for some of the “non-Hebraisms” were not present in texts related to Codex Bezae. But as I pursued the matter further, it became clear that the disappearance of non-Hebraisms in these manuscripts of Mark could usually be traced to the influence of Matthew and Luke, or to scribal corrections. Codex Bezae and its kindred manuscripts attest certain ancient and important readings, but as far as my inquiry was concerned, they only show a revision of the Markan text at the hands of early copyists who were annoyed by the same idiosyncrasies in Mark that had caught my attention.
Since I could not dismiss the non-Hebraisms as later accretions to the text of Mark, I decided to compare Mark’s text to the text of Matthew and Luke. If Mark is closely related to Matthew and Luke, as scholars have long held, one must determine to what extent Matthew and Luke have copied the text of Mark. Perhaps I would discover that Matthew and Luke did not use Mark directly, but the pre-synoptic source that Mark had used, or perhaps I would find that Matthew and Luke used both Mark and his pre-synoptic source.
I therefore turned to a story-by-story, word-by-word study of the Synoptic Gospels, using the ninth edition of Albert Huck’s Synopsis of the First Three Gospels. To my surprise, it turned out that Luke’s Gospel contained almost none of the non-Hebraic expressions so common in Mark. On the other hand, Matthew, when parallel to Mark, appeared to reject almost half of Mark’s non-Hebraisms. Having long assumed that Luke, as the non-Jewish companion of Paul, would have modified his source to make it more understandable for Greek speakers of pagan background, I was even more surprised to note that Luke’s text was almost always easier to translate to idiomatic Hebrew than was Mark’s. I was quite unprepared to discover that, of all the Synoptists, Luke best preserved the more authentic texts.
[continued]
Even stranger was my observation that where Matthew was parallel to Mark and Luke in any given story or sentence, many—but not all—of the Markan translation difficulties reappeared in Matthew, but where Matthew was not parallel to Mark (whether in the stories only Luke and Matthew share or in those unique to Matthew), Matthew’s text showed the same ease of translation as Luke’s.
The Synoptic Problem
I thus found myself questioning whether Mark could, in fact, be the principal source standing behind Matthew and Luke in their parallels to Mark. It appeared that Luke faithfully copied his Greek sources, and that these pre-synoptic sources were translations of Hebrew originals. It also appeared that Matthew had used Mark’s Gospel, but had rejected many of Mark’s redacted expressions. On the other hand, it appeared that Matthew preserved his sources fully as well as Luke in his non-Markan passages, which led me to think that Matthew did not ordinarily alter the wording of his sources.
Originally, I had assumed that Matthew and Luke used Mark in composing their Gospels. It seemed clear that if Matthew was the author of the non-Hebraisms common to his Gospel and to Mark’s, Matthew would scarcely have limited their use to immediate parallels with Mark—Matthew had therefore been influenced by Mark, and not vice versa. With regard to Luke’s failure to use any significant portion of Mark’s odd expressions, I theorized that Luke was mainly dependent on a Greek text that was parallel to Mark. Indeed, if it appeared as if Mark rewrote an early source, inserting his non-Hebraisms, I could see no reason why all three Gospel writers might not have known this pre-synoptic Greek source, however else they may have been dependent on one another. The main difference between my theory and the assumptions of most Markan priorists lay in the necessity of my supposing that Matthew and Luke shared, in addition to Mark, a long documentary source that was in its outline similar to Mark.
Although I was not aware of it at the time, my hypothesis bears a remarkable resemblance to the earliest form of the theory of Markan Priority. Proponents of this early form of the theory of Markan Priority, among whom the name of H. J. Holtzmann must be mentioned as the most important, admitted that many phenomena of the Synoptic Problem suggest that prior to Mark there existed an Ur-Markus, or proto-narrative, very similar in extent and language to our Mark, which may have been used by Matthew and Luke in addition to, or possibly instead of, Mark’s Gospel. The tendency of recent scholarship has been to minimize the difference between the Gospel of Mark and the so-called Ur-Markus to such an extent as to deny this proto-narrative’s existence. Having started from this latter form of the theory, I had returned to a belief in an Ur-document!
[continued]
The Minor Agreements
The main features of this early analysis came into being before I recognized the importance of the minor agreements of Matthew and Luke against Mark. These agreements consist of words and phrases common to Matthew and Luke that are not found in their Markan parallels.
Let me illustrate this phenomenon by supposing that our three Synoptists had a story about Socrates making a trip to the Acropolis. To make the illustration slightly more typical, we will suppose further that this story appears in exactly the same place in the outline of stories common to Matthew, Mark and Luke. We place the texts opposite each other:
Matthew Mark Luke
Now Socrates rose And Socrates got Now Socrates rose
up early the next up quickly the next up early the next
morning and morning and morning and
walked briskly to hiked briskly to walked brisly to
the Acropolis. the Acropolis. the Acropolis.
In the pink-colored words [bolded here] in Matthew and Luke we have clear evidence that if these writers have independently used Mark in writing their texts, both must also depend on another common source in addition to Mark.
Having reached the conclusion that Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source yet also knew a document parallel to Mark, the minor agreements goaded me to conduct a survey of their frequency and importance. I soon found that there are hundreds of Matthean-Lukan “contacts” of this kind evenly scattered throughout the majority of the 77 Matthew-Mark-Luke (i.e., Triple Tradition) pericopae of Huck’s synopsis. Moreover, these agreements are not confined to common Matthean-Lukan words or phrases not found in the immediate Markan parallels, but also include: 1) agreements of Matthew and Luke to omit a Markan word or phrase; 2) agreements of Matthew and Luke to use synonyms for Markan words; and 3) word order and phrase order agreements of Matthew and Luke against the word or phrase order of Mark.
The minor agreements have always been an embarrassment to Markan priorists, especially to those who have wanted to simplify the theory by rejecting Ur-Markus. It would certainly make for a neater synoptic hypothesis if we could limit the sources of the Synoptic Gospels to one known source and one unknown source, that is, to Mark and to Q. Surprisingly, however, it is often the theorists who demand such simplification who in the end arrive at far more complicated source theories than the earlier Ur-Markus advocates.[4]
[continued]
9:42 AM
"My heart is to understand the Bible"
Try praying for understanding before reading.
This worked for me
Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful
and kindle in them the fire of your love.
Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created,
and you shall renew the face of the earth.
You can't spend the rest of your life squabbling over translations and still never understand without instruction.
The minor agreements presented me with the fascinating possibility that parts of the pre-synoptic source known to Matthew, Mark and Luke could be restored by simple observation of the Greek texts. The glimpses of this pre-synoptic source afforded by the minor agreements could then be tested for authenticity by reconstructing the Hebrew text in order to approximate the conjectured base text of the pre-synoptic Greek source.
The Significance of the Minor Agreements
With the assistance of a literal (but unidiomatic) English translation, let us examine a verse from the Healing of the Paralytic story (Mark 2:1-12, and parallels):
[table below]
Matthew 9:2 Mark 2:3 Luke 5:18
L1 καὶ ἰδοὺ καὶ καὶ ἰδοὺ
and behold and and behold
L2 ἔρχονται
they are coming
L3 προσέφερον φέροντες ἄνδρες φέροντες
bringing bearing men bearing
L4 αὐτῷ πρὸς αὐτὸν
to him to him
L5 παραλυτικὸν παραλυτικὸν
a paralytic a paralytic
L6 ἐπὶ κλίνης ἐπὶ κλίνης
on a bed on a bed
L7 βεβλημένον αἰρόμενον ὑπὸ τεσσάρων. ἄνθρωπον ὃς ἦν παραλελυμένος
cast carried by four a man who was paralysed
The agreements of Matthew and Luke against Mark in L1 (“behold”) and in L6 (“on a bed”) are prominent.[5] Indeed, the absence in Mark of “behold” in narrative contexts stands in strong contrast to its frequency in Matthew and Luke. Mark’s redactional discarding of the phrase in narrative contexts (he does not completely discard “behold” in sayings contexts) is clear.[6] The expression can easily be restored to Biblical Hebrew as וְהִנֵּה (vehinēh, “and behold”).[7] “Men bearing” (L3) gives the normal Hebrew word order in which the present participle is preceded by the noun. If we drop the relative pronoun “who” (L7), which the Greek translator may have inserted for Greek taste, we have אִישׁ מְשֻׁתָּק (’ish meshutāq, “man paralysed”), which is the kind of expression, with its emphasis on “man,” we would expect at the beginning of a Biblical story. A word-by-word translation of Luke 5:18 into Hebrew would thus yield the idiomatic וְהִנֵּה אֲנָשִׁים נוֹשְׂאִים עַל מִטָּה אִישׁ מְשֻׁתָּק (vehinēh ’anāshim nos’im ‘al miṭāh ’ish meshutāq, “and behold men carrying on a bed/stretcher a man paralysed”). The versions of Mark and Matthew cannot be so smoothly translated to Hebrew.
It is clear that Matthew depended on a source like Luke, but it is also clear that Matthew was so thoroughly influenced by Mark that the more Hebraic sentence of his pre-synoptic source has been lost. Thus, Matthew recognized Mark’s use of φέροντες (ferontes, “bearing, carrying”; L3) as equivalent to προσέφερον (proseferon, “they were bringing”), and improved Mark’s ἔρχονται φέροντες πρὸς αὐτόν (erchontai ferontes pros avton, “they come bearing to him”) by using the imperfect of a verb meaning “to bring to.”
My investigation of the minor agreements has led me to the following conclusions, most of which can be observed even in the short example given above:
1. The minor agreements clarify the strong dependence of Luke on a non-Markan source.
2. The minor agreements clarify the redactional methods of Mark, for they show us some of the words and phrases Mark rejected from his pre-synoptic source, which enables us to study his replacement terms and expressions.
3. The minor agreements clarify Matthew’s treatment of his two sources. When Matthew was faced with two parallel accounts, one in Mark and one in the pre-synoptic source, he combined them by alternately choosing phrases, first from one source and then from the other, achieving an interwoven account.
4. The minor agreements clarify the nature of the source that lies behind all three Synoptic Gospels. For reasons I have discussed elsewhere,[8] I refer to this pre-synoptic source as the Anthology. The Anthology is best seen in the minor agreements of Matthew and Luke in the Triple Tradition, in the Double Tradition, and in the unique Matthean and Lukan material.
[continued]
Triple Tradition
Matthew-Mark-Luke story units (pericopae) are known as the “Triple Tradition,” while Matthew-Luke pericopae that lack Markan parallels are known as the “Double Tradition.” Using the ninth edition of Albert Huck’s Synopsis of the First Three Gospels, we find that the Synoptic Gospels share 77 pericopae, and that they agree to place 59 of these pericopae in the same order. Of the remaining 18 Triple Tradition pericopae, Matthew and Mark agree in the placement of 8, Luke and Mark agree on the placement of 10 in their common story order, while Matthew and Luke do not agree against Mark in their placement.[9] In other words, there is a great measure of agreement in the placement of Matthean-Markan-Lukan pericopae. The following table gives the Huck pericope numbers reckoned as Triple Tradition and notes other order details:
[table]
Several things are made clear from the above table. First, by dividing the common synoptic material into two parts, a first division in which Mark and Luke share 9 locations against Matthew, and a second division in which Mark and Luke share only one location against Matthew, it is possible to emphasize the important observation of the Markan priorists that Matthew is out of Markan order in the early part of his Gospel (in the First Division). It also can be seen that Luke, too, is often out of order with Mark in the early part of Luke’s Gospel. The usual suggestion that Matthew departs from Mark’s order only when he wishes to insert his extensive quotations appears to be correct. On the other hand, the Markan-Lukan disorder is far more serious.
Second, the positions at which all agree in their placement of the Triple Tradition are marked under the heading “Mt-Mk-Lk.” The headings “Mt-Mk” and “Mk-Lk” refer similarly to Triple Tradition units whose position is dually attested by either Matthew and Mark or by Mark and Luke. The dual attestations (“Mt-Mk” and “Mk-Lk”) are in every case disagreements with the placement by the third Synoptist. Thus, Luke disagrees with Matthew and Mark in the placement of Huck 10, while Matthew disagrees with Luke and Mark on the placement of Huck 94. The absence of any Matthean-Lukan common placement of a pericope against Mark is significant, for it suggests that Matthew and Luke were not aquainted with the other’s work.
Third, the inclusion of columns marked “Unique Mt,” “Unique Mk” and “Unique Lk” is meant to underline the fact that a Triple Tradition pericope never appears in three separate slots. Thus, Mark is never out of order in the Triple Tradition with more than one of the other Synoptists. Unfortunately, Markan priorists have misunderstood this phenomenon, supposing that it strengthens the Two-source Hypothesis to say that “wherever Matthew departs from Mark’s order Luke supports Mark, and whenever Luke departs from Mark, Matthew agrees with Mark.”[10] What the Markan priorists have supposed they are proving by this statement is that Mark was the source of both Matthew and Luke. What they have overlooked is that Matthew and Luke, who are described as independent of each other, could hardly have supported Mark against each other if both derived from Mark! In other words, if Luke did not know the Gospel of Matthew, how could he know that Matthew had departed from Mark’s order at Huck 12, 13, 14, 72, 94, 105, 106, 107, 109 and 200? Surely he would have had to know this if he wanted to “support” Mark’s order against Matthew. Matthew’s “support” is even more problematical when Luke “departed” in pericope order from Mark in 8 instances, almost all of which appear in Mark and Luke at the widest imaginable distance from each other (at, especially, Huck 143, 149, 164 and 178).
[continued]
If Matthew and Luke independently relied on Mark as the source of their pericope order in Triple Tradition contexts, yet each occasionally departed from Mark’s order, one would expect there to be some Triple Tradition pericopae that are not at the same location in any of the Synoptic Gospels. But this does not happen. Two Gospels always agree in pericope order against the third—Luke and Mark against Matthew, or Mark and Matthew against Luke. When it is understood that Matthew and Luke were unaware of each other’s work, it becomes necessary to explain Mark’s failure ever to stand alone in Triple Tradition as due to Mark’s middle position among the Synoptic Gospels. Either Matthew or Luke wrote first, Mark then deliberately changed the order of the first Evangelist, and the third Evangelist followed Mark’s order, but occasionally made changes of his own.
The question now becomes, which Evangelist wrote first, Matthew or Luke? The following observations may point to the correct answer: Mark and Matthew share a total of 15 pericopae[11] that have no Lukan parallel, and, what is more, Mark and Matthew agree to place these 15 pericopae in the same order. On the other hand, there are only 3 Markan-Lukan pericopae[12] unattested by Matthew. Mark and Luke agree to place these 3 pericopae in the same order.
If we total the triply attested and doubly attested pericopae, we arrive at the following totals:
[table]
59 common pericopae in same order, as Matthew Mark Luke
8 common pericopae in dual order, as Matthew Mark
10 common pericopae in dual order, as Mark Luke
15 dual pericopae in dual order, as Matthew Mark
3 dual pericopae in dual order, Mark Luke
The middle member is always Mark.
A simple way of explaining all these facts is to suppose that Mark followed Luke in the placement of 10 pericopae, but that, at these points, Matthew abandoned Mark temporarily, while in every other place he carefully accepted Mark’s order. As we have noted above, Mark and Luke also share 3 pericopae unknown in Matthew, but these pericopae are scattered and might be stories Matthew skipped over for some reason. Matthew skipped the first story of demon possession (Synagogue in Capernaum: Mark 1:23-28; Luke 4:33-37),[13] but later, in the story of the Gadarene Demoniac, Matthew reports two demoniacs instead of one (cf. Matt. 8:28 with Mark 5:2), just as he appears to have combined two different stories about blind men into one story about two blind men (Matt. 20:29-34; cf. Mark 8:22-26; 10:46-52).
[continued]
Thus, the Markan-Lukan relationship is vastly different from the Markan-Matthean relationship. With respect to verbal identity and pericope order, Mark and Matthew show intense agreement, but Mark and Luke, although clearly interrelated, show intense disagreement. The suggestion that Mark deliberately made radical changes in order and wording as he rewrote Luke, and that Matthew largely accepted Mark’s revision, is the simplest solution that can account for the wide variety of observations noted above.
Double Tradition
The Double Tradition pericopae number 42 according to Matthew’s story order:[14] [15]
1. Matt. 3:7-10 = Luke 3:7-9 (Huck 2; Aland 14) John’s Preaching of Repentance
2. Matt. 5:1-2 = Luke 6:12, 20 (Huck 18; Aland 50) Intro to Sermon on the Mount
3. Matt. 5:3-12 = Luke 6:20-23 (Huck 19; Aland 51) The Beatitudes
4. Matt. 5:13-16 = Luke 14:34-35; 11:33 (Huck 20; Aland 52-53) Salt and Light
5. Matt. 5:21-26 = Luke 12:57-59 (Huck 22; Aland 55) On Murder
6. Matt. 5:38-42 = Luke 6:29-30 (Huck 26; Aland 58) On Retaliation
7. Matt. 5:43-48 = Luke 6:27-28, 32-36 (Huck 27; Aland 59) Love of One’s Enemies
8. Matt. 6:9-15 = Luke 11:2-4 (Huck 30; Aland 62) Lord’s Prayer
9. Matt. 6:19-21 = Luke 12:33-34 (Huck 32; Aland 64) On Treasures
10. Matt. 6:22-23 = Luke 11:34-35 (Huck 33; Aland 65) Good Eye
11. Matt. 6:24 = Luke 16:13 (Huck 34; Aland 66) Serving Two Masters
12. Matt. 6:25-34 = Luke 12:22-31 (Huck 35; Aland 67) On Anxiety
13. Matt. 7:1-5 = Luke 6:37-38, 41-42 (Huck 36; Aland 68) On Judging
14. Matt. 7:7-11 = Luke 11:9-13 (Huck 38; Aland 70) Ask, Seek, Find
15. Matt. 7:12 = Luke 6:31 (Huck 39; Aland 71) The Golden Rule
16. Matt. 7:13-14 = Luke 13:23-24 (Huck 40; Aland 72) The Narrow Gate
17. Matt. 7:15-20 = Luke 6:43-45 (Huck 41; Aland 73) Test of a Good Man
18. Matt. 7:21-23 = Luke 6:46; 13:26-27 (Huck 42; Aland 74) Warning Against Self-deception
19. Matt. 7:24-27 = Luke 6:47-49 (Huck 43; Aland 75) Hearers and Doers of the Word
20. Matt. 8:8b-10 = Luke 7:6b-9 (Huck 46; Aland 85) The Centurion’s Slave
[continued]
For Constance Cumbey to say that Trump lost the election and has been lying is the same as saying Joe Biden was rightfully elected. Liz Cheney needs to tell the truth and stop lying. The Jan. 6 Committee is illegal because it only exist for the purpose of stopping a candidate from being elected president and *falsely accusing* him (Satan) him of insurrection. Using children to justify human trafficking, drugs and terrorism coming across the border is the sane talking points used by leftists, New Agers and terrorists all the time.
I do remember some time ago that Constance she said she had "several booster shots". That would certainly cause brain fog for a woman her age. Christians should not take mRNA vaccines because they have abortion fetuses.
21. Matt. 8:18-22 = Luke 9:57-60 (Huck 49; Aland 89) Foxes Have Holes
22. Matt. 10:26-33 = Luke 12:2-9 (Huck 60; Aland 101) Fearless Confession
23. Matt. 10:34-36 = Luke 12:51-53 (Huck 61; Aland 102) Divisions within Households
24. Matt. 10:37-39 = Luke 14:26-27 (Huck 62; Aland 103) Conditions of Discipleship
25. Matt. 11:3-6 = Luke 7:19, 22-23 (Huck 64; Aland 106) John’s Question to Jesus
26. Matt. 11:7-11, 16-19 = Luke 7:24-28, 31-35 (Huck 65; Aland 107) Jesus’ Words about John
27. Matt. 11:21-24 = Luke 10:13-15 (Huck 66; Aland 108) Woes on the Cities of Galilee
28. Matt. 11:25-27 = Luke 10:21-22 (Huck 67; Aland 109) Jesus’ Thanksgiving to the Father
29. Matt. 12:39, 41-42 = Luke 11:29b-32 (Huck 87; Aland 119) Against Seeking for Signs
30. Matt. 12:43-45 = Luke 11:24-26 (Huck 88; Aland 120) Return of the Evil Spirit
31. Matt. 13:16-17 = Luke 10:23-24 (Huck 92; Aland 123) Blessedness of the Disciples
32. Matt. 13:33 = Luke 13:20-21 (Huck 98; Aland 129) Parable of the Leaven
33. Matt. 18:10-14 = Luke 15:3-7 (Huck 133; Aland 169) The Lost Sheep
34. Matt. 18:15-20 = Luke 17:3 (Huck 134; Aland 170-171) Rebuking One’s Brother
35. Matt. 18:21-22 = Luke 17:4 (Huck 135; Aland 172) On Reconciliation
36. Matt. 22:1-14 = Luke 14:16-24 (Huck 205; Aland 279) Parable of the Great Supper
37. Matt. 23:37-39 = Luke 13:34-35 (Huck 211; Aland 285) Lament over Jerusalem
38. Matt. 24:26-28 = Luke 17:23-24, 37 (Huck 218; Aland 291) Day of the Son of Man
39. Matt. 24:37-41 = Luke 17:26-27, 30, 34-35 (Huck 224; Aland 296) The Need for Watchfulness
40. Matt. 24:43-44 = Luke 12:39-40 (Huck 225; Aland 296) The Watchful Householder
41. Matt. 24:45-51 = Luke 12:42-46 (Huck 226; Aland 297) Watchfulness and Faithfulness
42. Matt. 25:14-30 = Luke 19:12-27 (Huck 228; Aland 299) Parable of the Talents
Of the 42 Double Tradition pericopae, 18 (Type 1) have extremely high correspondence in wording (that is, exhibit high verbal identity):
Type 1 Double Tradition Pericopae (according to Matthean story order):
1. Matt. 3:7-10 = Luke 3:7-9 (Huck 2; Aland 14) John’s Preaching of Repentance
2. Matt. 6:22-23 = Luke 11:34-35 (Huck 33; Aland 65) Good Eye
3. Matt. 6:24 = Luke 16:13 (Huck 34; Aland 66) Serving Two Masters
4. Matt. 6:25-34 = Luke 12:22-31 (Huck 35; Aland 67) On Anxiety
5. Matt. 7:7-11 = Luke 11:9-13 (Huck 38; Aland 70) Ask, Seek, Find
6. Matt. 8:8b-10 = Luke 7:6b-9 (Huck 46; Aland 85) The Centurion’s Slave
7. Matt. 8:18-22 = Luke 9:57-60 (Huck 49; Aland 89) Foxes Have Holes
8. Matt. 11:3-6 = Luke 7:19, 22-23 (Huck 64; Aland 106) John’s Question to Jesus
9. Matt. 11:7-11, 16-19 = Luke 7:24-28, 31-35 (Huck 65; Aland 107) Jesus’ Words about John
10. Matt. 11:21-24 = Luke 10:13-15 (Huck 66; Aland 108) Woes on the Cities of Galilee
11. Matt. 11:25-27 = Luke 10:21-22 (Huck 67; Aland 109) Jesus’ Thanksgiving to the Father
12. Matt. 12:39, 41-42 = Luke 11:29b-32 (Huck 87; Aland 119) Against Seeking for Signs
13. Matt. 12:43-45 = Luke 11:24-26 (Huck 88; Aland 120) Return of the Evil Spirit
14. Matt. 13:16-17 = Luke 10:23-24 (Huck 92; Aland 123) Blessedness of the Disciples
15. Matt. 13:33 = Luke 13:20-21 (Huck 98; Aland 129) Parable of the Leaven
16. Matt. 23:37-39 = Luke 13:34-35 (Huck 211; Aland 285) Lament over Jerusalem
17. Matt. 24:43-44 = Luke 12:39-40 (Huck 225; Aland 296) The Watchful Householder
18. Matt. 24:45-51 = Luke 12:42-46 (Huck 226; Aland 297) Watchfulness and Faithfulness
[continued]
However, the remaining 24 Double Tradition pericopae (Type 2) have extremely low correspondence in wording (that is, exhibit low verbal identity):
Type 2 Double Tradition Pericopae (according to Matthean story order):
1. Matt. 5:1-2 = Luke 6:12, 20 (Huck 18; Aland 50) Intro to Sermon on the Mount
2. Matt. 5:3-12 = Luke 6:20-23 (Huck 19; Aland 51) The Beatitudes
3. Matt. 5:13-16 = Luke 14:34-35; 11:33 (Huck 20; Aland 52-53) Salt and Light
4. Matt. 5:21-26 = Luke 12:57-59 (Huck 22; Aland 55) On Murder
5. Matt. 5:38-42 = Luke 6:29-30 (Huck 26; Aland 58) On Retaliation
6. Matt. 5:43-48 = Luke 6:27-28, 32-36 (Huck 27; Aland 59) Love of One’s Enemies
7. Matt. 6:9-15 = Luke 11:2-4 (Huck 30; Aland 62) Lord’s Prayer
8. Matt. 6:19-21 = Luke 12:33-34 (Huck 32; Aland 64) On Treasures
9. Matt. 7:1-5 = Luke 6:37-38, 41-42 (Huck 36; Aland 68) On Judging
10. Matt. 7:12 = Luke 6:31 (Huck 39; Aland 71) The Golden Rule
11. Matt. 7:13-14 = Luke 13:23-24 (Huck 40; Aland 72) The Narrow Gate
12. Matt. 7:15-20 = Luke 6:43-45 (Huck 41; Aland 73) Test of a Good Man
13. Matt. 7:21-23 = Luke 6:46; 13:26-27 (Huck 42; Aland 74) Warning Against Self-deception
14. Matt. 7:24-27 = Luke 6:47-49 (Huck 43; Aland 75) Hearers and Doers of the Word
15. Matt. 10:26-33 = Luke 12:2-9 (Huck 60; Aland 101) Fearless Confession
16. Matt. 10:34-36 = Luke 12:51-53 (Huck 61; Aland 102) Divisions within Households
17. Matt. 10:37-39 = Luke 14:26-27 (Huck 62; Aland 103) Conditions of Discipleship
18. Matt. 18:10-14 = Luke 15:3-7 (Huck 133; Aland 169) The Lost Sheep
19. Matt. 18:15-20 = Luke 17:3 (Huck 134; Aland 170-171) Rebuking One’s Brother
20. Matt. 18:21-22 = Luke 17:4 (Huck 135; Aland 172) On Reconciliation
21. Matt. 22:1-14 = Luke 14:16-24 (Huck 205; Aland 279) Parable of the Great Supper
22. Matt. 24:26-28 = Luke 17:23-24, 37 (Huck 218; Aland 291) Day of the Son of Man
23. Matt. 24:37-41 = Luke 17:26-27, 30, 34-35 (Huck 224; Aland 296) The Need for Watchfulness
24. Matt. 25:14-30 = Luke 19:12-27 (Huck 228; Aland 299) Parable of the Talents
[continued]
The source of the Double Tradition pericopae is usually referred to as Q. The radically different order in which Matthew and Luke separately placed the Double Tradition pericopae (except in the parallels Matt. 3:7-10 = Luke 3:7-9; Matt. 3:12 = Luke 3:17, 18; and Matt. 4:3-11 = Luke 4:3-13) is one of the pillars of Synoptic observation. The exceptional instances where Matthew and Luke do agree to order the Double Tradition pericopae occur toward the beginning of each Gospel. The overall lack of agreement with respect to the placement of these 42 pericopae strongly suggests that Matthew and Luke worked independently.
Unique Pericopae
Each of the Gospels also has “unique” pericopae, that is, story units that are attested in only one Gospel. Of such pericopae, Mark has only two (Huck 95 [Mark 4:26-29] and 121 [Mark 8:22-26]), but Matthew has 29 and Luke 46.[16] For the most part, these unique pericopae do not differ in style or Hebraic quality from either the Double Tradition or the Triple Tradition. The unique Matthean and Lukan pericopae indicate that Matthew and Luke had access to non-Markan sources, while the Double Tradition indicates that Matthew and Luke may have shared at least one of these non-Markan sources. For this reason, the interdependence of the Synoptic Gospels cannot be argued from the evidence of parallelism alone; it could be that the parallelism of two or three Gospels is to be explained as due to the writers’ independent use of a common source. Nevertheless, the unique pericopae of each Gospel do not help us in determining the patterns of interdependence between the Synoptic Gospels. To determine the nature of the synoptic interdependence, we must return to the Double and Triple Traditions.
The Markan Cross-Factor
The Triple Tradition shows us that where Mark is present Matthew and Luke largely agree on pericope order. The Double Tradition shows us that Matthew and Luke have not influenced each other’s story order.
Based on this evidence, we would expect a great deal of verbal similarity between Matthew and Luke in the Triple Tradition and much less in the Double Tradition. Just the opposite, however, is true: in Triple Tradition contexts Matthew and Luke are rarely identical in wording for more than a few words or phrases. On the other hand, in a number of Double Tradition pericopae, Matthew and Luke show such high verbal identity that we must either suppose that one copied from the other, or that both copied a common source, such as the hypothetical Q, with great fidelity.
Let us restate these observations:
1. The Triple Tradition shows high agreement between Matthew and Luke in pericope order, but low verbal identity.
2. The Double Tradition shows low agreement between Matthew and Luke in pericope order, but high verbal identity.
I refer to this phenomenon as the “Markan Cross-Factor” because it is only the presence of Mark that distinguishes the Triple Tradition from the Double Tradition.[17] The Markan Cross-Factor, if not adequately explained, can by itself destroy the finest synoptic hypothesis.
The strength of the Markan Priority hypothesis is that it comes close to supplying an adequate explanation for the Markan Cross-Factor. The Markan Priority hypothesis states, first, that in the Triple Tradition the source for Matthew and Luke is Mark, and, second, that in the Double Tradition the source for Matthew and Luke is Q. (For this reason, the hypothesis of Markan Priority is often referred to as the Two-source Hypothesis.) According to this view, Matthew and Luke looked at their copies of Mark and decided to follow the Markan outline. Into this outline they inserted Q pericopae, and, because they were working independently, they almost never placed a Q story into the same slot of their Markan outline. The independence of Matthew and Luke from one another, a key tenet of the Two-source Hypothesis, is almost unassailable.
[continued]
However, concerning the problem of the varying verbal identities, the Two-source Hypothesis is weak. Why do Matthew and Luke treat Mark’s pericope order with respect, but his wording with disrespect? The Matthew-Mark verbal identity in parallel is about 75%, whereas the Luke-Mark verbal identity in parallel is nearer 50%. Markan priorists can explain this percentage variation by saying that since Matthew and Luke used their sources independently, it just happened that Matthew copied Mark’s wording with greater fidelity than Luke. But, if this is so, how does it happen that the use of Mark separates the wording of Matthew and Luke from each other so dramatically that in Triple Tradition contexts their difference in verbal identity in the same parallel story is often as high as 60%? On the other hand, Matthew and Luke are capable of copying a non-Markan passage word by word for many sentences, for we often see this occur in their Double Tradition stories.
If it is true that Matthew and Luke independently used Mark and Q, the only possible conclusions are either:
1. Matthew and Luke independently came to the conclusion that (a) Mark’s pericope order is excellent, (b) Q’s pericope order is poor, (c) Mark’s wording is bad, and (d) Q’s wording is often splendid, or,
2. Matthew and Luke have some mechanical reason for diverging verbally from each other in Markan contexts, such as a common source parallel to Mark.
The first of these explanations taxes the credulity of any student of ancient texts. If there are additional reasons for accepting the second explanation, it is certainly to be preferred.
It is at this point that the Two-source Hypothesis fails, and the minor agreements, if used as indications of Matthew and Luke’s knowledge of a source parallel to Mark, provide a corrective to theories of Markan Priority. Such a corrective requires that both the minor agreements and the Markan Cross-Factor be treated seriously. This is not a retreat to the belief that Matthew and Luke knew a different recension of Mark, but the recognition that a pre-synoptic source parallel to most, if not all, of the Gospel of Mark was used along with Mark by Matthew and Luke.
The Hypotheses of Augustine and Griesbach
Various attempts have been made in recent years to revive the Augustinian and other early solutions to the Synoptic Problem. In his De consensu evangelistarum I.2, Augustine writes that Mark depends on Matthew, and Luke on Matthew and Mark. Until recent times, the Augustinian hypothesis was the accepted teaching of Roman Catholic scholars. A modern defense of the Augustinian hypothesis was made by B. C. Butler.[18]
Late in the eighteenth century, Johann Jakob Griesbach, while not the first to propose the theory, suggested that Luke used Matthew in writing his Gospel and that Mark combined both Matthew and Luke.[19] The Griesbach theory was widely held by scholars in the nineteenth century, and was largely supplanted by the theory of Markan Priority only at its end. Farmer recently argued the merits of the Griesbach hypothesis.[20]
[continued]
Do these theories adequately explain the minor agreements and the “Markan Cross-Factor”? Let us first examine the Griesbach hypothesis. If Luke used Matthew, and Mark combined Luke and Matthew, all one must say about the Matthean-Lukan minor agreements against Mark is that Mark just happened to avoid writing down many words and short phrases found in parallel in both Matthew and Luke. This explanation is unquestionably an impressive point in favor of the Griesbach solution. When the Markan Cross-Factor is applied to this theory, however, difficulties immediately become apparent. The principal problem lies in Luke’s dependence on Matthew before Mark used both of them. Luke would have had to look at Matthew and decide to treat the Triple Tradition material completely differently than the Double Tradition material, yet, according to the Griesbach hypothesis, Luke did not have Mark to help him know where the Triple Tradition was yet to be! Even if we assume that Luke decided to treat part of his material from Matthew as worthy of careful word-for-word copying, yet, for some unexplained reason, to almost never place this material where Matthew put it, and then decided to treat another part of Matthew as if the order was usually good but the wording mainly unacceptable, we would still have to imagine Mark managing to record only those portions in Matthew and Luke that are verbally distant. By what streak of genius did Mark succeed in avoiding all those word-for-word parallels between Matthew and Luke in the Double Tradition? To ask the question is to point out the central fact that the presence of Mark has produced the Markan Cross-Factor. The probability is that Mark preceded at least one of the other two Synoptists. An advocate of the Griesbach theory can escape this criticism only if he or she can prove that the Markan Cross-Factor is not an accurate statement of part of the synoptic evidence.
The Augustinian hypothesis can explain the minor agreements just as well as the Griesbach theory, but can explain the Markan Cross-Factor data far better. Mark could be said to have abridged Matthew by selecting only certain pericopae from him (although Mark must be said to have verbally expanded most of the pericopae he selected from Matthew, since Mark’s parallel stories are almost always longer than Matthew’s). One could then imagine that Luke sometimes chose the wording of Matthew, and sometimes chose the wording of Mark. Where Luke saw Matthew and Mark agreeing on pericope order, we may imagine that he found it difficult to combine their verbal dissimilarities, but found it easy to follow their pericope order. The high verbal identity between Matthew and Luke in the Double Tradition might then be explained as the result of Luke’s dependence solely on the text of Matthew.
[continued]
The Augustinian hypothesis has merit. Its flaw appears to be its failure to explain Luke’s treatment of Matthean pericope order in the Double Tradition. We have to ask why Luke so often refused to place Double Tradition pericopae where Matthew did. Luke records his Double Tradition material in blocks, as Streeter noticed,[21] while Matthew often does the same, but just as often scatters bits and pieces of this material in contexts that, when compared with Luke, appear to be far less original. How did Luke manage, for instance, to pick out Matt. 24:26-27, 37-41; 10:39; 24:28 and 40, and present them in the remarkable form they occupy in Luke 17:22-37, as a coherent description of the Day of the Son of Man? Or, how can one say that Luke built Jesus’ discourse on the Cost of Discipleship (Luke 14:25-35) out of the fragment in Matt. 10:37-38; or that Luke constructed Luke 15:1-10 out of the fragment in Matt. 18:12-14? The Markan priorists are surely correct when they argue that there is no need to claim direct borrowing by Luke of the Matthean Double Tradition sections.
So far as the Markan Cross-Factor is concerned, the Augustinian hypothesis comes much closer to a solution than the Griesbach hypothesis for the simple reason that Mark is placed chronologically before one of the other two Synoptists. A hypothesis that proposes the order Luke→Mark→Matthew has the same strength, in this regard, as the Augustinian hypothesis. The only problem with such a Lukan priority hypothesis would be the disparate placing of the Double Tradition pericopae. But if a theory of Lukan priority were combined with the solution offered by proponents of Markan Priority, namely that Matthew and Luke relied on a common non-canonical source for the Double Tradition, we might have a viable explanation that accounts for all the data.
We are obliged to note the failure of synoptic theories that attempt to explain too much by supposing parallel words and passages invariably mean direct dependence of one Gospel on another. The unique pericopae of Matthew and Luke suggest there is no reason to adopt this doctrinaire stand: obviously the Synoptists had access to independent sources. The disparate order of the Double Tradition pericopae indicates the same thing. No synoptic theory can explain all the evidence exclusively on the basis of the literary interdependence of the Synoptic Gospels.
Just as mistaken, however, are attempts to ignore the evidence for the interdependence of the Synoptic Gospels. A few theorists have supposed that each of the synoptic writers was completely independent of the others. The Markan Cross-Factor suggests something quite different: the Markan text has influenced one or both of the other Synoptists and brought about the verbal disparity between their texts. The evidence of direct interdependence is inescapable.
[continued]
Questions Not Answered
It may appear surprising that nearly three years passed from the time I began my investigation of the Markan text until it occurred to me that Mark used Luke as a source rather than vice versa.[22] I had considered the possibility that Mark had used Matthew’s Gospel, but had rejected this idea on the basis of the evidence discussed above. My failure to ask whether the Markan-Lukan relationship had been correctly understood undoubtedly was the result of my ignorance of any serious contenders to the Two-source Hypothesis, and probably also was due to my predilection to think of Luke, on account of his being a Gentile Christian, as the modifier of the earlier Gospel sources.
The fact that Luke preserves a text that normally retranslates easily to Hebrew and usually fails to give a hint of an expression that could be interpreted as the remnant of a Markan non-Hebraism should have led me to recognize that Luke was not influenced by Mark, but derived his excellent translation-Greek text directly from a pre-synoptic source. I should also have asked why a writer like Mark, who enjoyed rewriting as much as he did, should not be suspected of having deliberately changed the wording not only of his pre-synoptic source, but also of Luke, thus becoming the cause of the strange verbal distance between Matthew and Luke in the Triple Tradition.
A general rule of textual criticism is that if two parallel texts show interdependence, the shorter text is more likely to be the original. Markan priorists argue that since Luke and Matthew are the longer Gospels, they must derive from Mark. But apart from the possibility that an author may abridge another author’s work as well as expand it, the difficulty with this contention is that Mark’s pericopae are almost always longer than those in Matthew and Luke. Therefore, arguments based on the fact that Mark is shorter are valid only if we are talking about the overall length of Mark’s Gospel, but not valid if we are talking about the comparative length of individual pericopae.[23]
Another question I should have asked is why the minor agreements are “minor.” Streeter, who was unquestionably anxious to minimize their importance, was apparently the first scholar to use the word “minor” to describe the Matthean-Lukan agreements against Mark. However, the value of the minor agreements is of major importance for revealing the exact usages of the pre-synoptic text. It is, nevertheless, true that the minor agreements are rarely more than two or three words in length. If Matthew and Luke were using Mark and finding his text so highly redacted in comparison with the pre-synoptic text that Luke had to break with Mark’s wording 50% of the time, and Matthew had to break with Mark’s wording 25% of the time, why is it that, in spite of this, Matthew and Luke do not have many more long verbal agreements against Mark? Would Matthew and Luke’s independent correction of Mark from another source sufficiently account for their literary characteristics? In other words, since Luke has a highly consistent Hebrew-Greek style while Matthew seems to be weaving together Markan redacted phrases and expressions from a pre-synoptic source, the likeliest explanation is that Mark redacted the earlier text best preserved by Luke and that Matthew is the only “corrector” of Mark. If this conclusion is correct, we are freed from the notion that two authors working independently hit upon the same method of editing Mark, namely, by correcting his text with the help of a second source. The “minor” aspect of the minor agreements could then be attributed to Matthew’s practice of accepting both the pericope order and wording of Mark, while treating Mark’s wording more critically than his pericope order. Matthew added words and phrases from the pre-synoptic source and deleted many of Mark’s redacted phrases because they were not found in Matthew’s second source.
[continued]
My suspicion that Mark redacted an earlier text best preserved by Luke, and that Matthew is the only corrector of Mark, is confirmed by the observations Herbert Marsh made early in the nineteenth century.[24] Marsh’s first observation was that examples of exact sentence coincidence in the Triple Tradition are “not very numerous, and contain in general only one or two, or at the outside three sentences together.”[25] The second was that in Triple contexts Matthew and Mark show exact sentence agreement very often and “several of them are very long and remarkable.” The third was that, in contrast to the second observation, there is not “a single instance of verbal agreement between St. Matthew and St. Mark” in those pericopae given by Matthew when he is out of Markan order.
Marsh’s first conclusion underlines the fact that Matthew and Luke are unable to demonstrate extended verbal agreement in the Triple Tradition. Marsh recognized that this was extremely strange, for in his study of “whole sections,” in which Matthew-Mark, Mark-Luke and Matthew-Luke were compared, he records that the Double Tradition is in respect of sentence identity “the very reverse” of that known in the Triple Tradition.[26]
The close verbal agreement between Matthew and Mark when both are in the same order, and their lack of such agreement when out of common pericope order, suggests that the dependent writer felt less need to be verbally exact when breaking away from the other Gospel’s order. Marsh also noted that while there is considerable sentence exactness between Matthew and Mark in Triple Tradition, the verbal disagreement between Mark and Luke is much greater—the verbal agreement of Mark and Luke in Triple Tradition is characterized more by disagreement than agreement. Despite this, wrote Marsh, “Throughout all…[Triple Tradition pericopae] St. Mark never fails to agree verbally with St. Luke, where St. Matthew agrees verbally with St. Luke.”[27] In other words, Matthew and Luke agree verbally only when Mark agrees with both.
If Marsh’s observation is correct, then it was Mark who made changes to the text of either Matthew or Luke, and these changes were subsequently adopted by the other Synoptist. If Matthew and Luke can reach high verbal agreement in their independent use of a non-Markan text, yet cannot reach significant verbal exactness in Matthew-Mark-Luke contexts except where Mark agrees exactly with both Matthew and Luke, it is clear that Mark followed a procedure of deliberately rewriting the text of one of the Synoptists and that the other Synoptist, coming later, copied Mark so closely that he achieved great verbal agreement with him, yet also great verbal disagreement with the first writer. Marsh’s observation eliminates the need for Mark to have preceded both Matthew and Luke. Only one of the Synoptists depended on Mark. The other wrote before Mark, and Mark depended on him. Mark must be seen as the cause of Matthean-Lukan verbal disagreement just as he must be seen as the cause of the common pericope order we see in the Triple Tradition. This causality is such that no two writers, depending equally on a third, could have produced the pattern of agreement and disagreement we find in the Triple Tradition.
By accepting Marsh’s observations we are forced to conclude that it cannot be Matthew or Luke who has made the verbal and pericope order changes. It can only be Mark. If so, the author Mark copied must be the first Evangelist. As we have seen, the only candidate for this position is Luke. Matthew, as Markan priorists have convincingly argued, is dependent on Mark, and this is confirmed by Matthew’s constant repetition of Mark’s modifications of the text of Luke.
[continued]
Confirming the Priority of Luke
When I discovered that Mark, in writing his account, had used the Gospel of Luke, my knowledge of the history of the Synoptic Problem was very limited. Perhaps this was fortunate, for I began to explore scholarly literature to see if anyone else had suggested that Luke was the first-written of the Synoptic Gospels. After considerable searching, I found in McNeile’s An Introduction to the Study of the New Testament a note stating that William Lockton had proposed that “Mark was formed out of Luke, the earliest Gospel, and Matthew out of both Luke and Mark.”[28] This was all, the barest reference, and I was thousands of miles from the nearest copy of The Church Quarterly Review, published in England.
Several months elapsed before I was able to get a British friend to read Lockton’s article and send me a resume of its arguments. In the meantime, I began to search my concordance and synopsis for any evidence that would challenge or confirm my discovery. The work was tedious, but confirmation of Luke’s primacy of order began to accumulate. For example, Mark placed the Accusations Against Jesus (Mark 3:20-22) and the Beelzebul Controversy (Mark 3:23-30) at the point in the Triple Tradition story outline where Luke gives the so-called Lesser Interpolation (Luke 6:20-8:3). Matthew records the Accusations Against Jesus in both Matt. 9:32-34 and 12:22-24. In the Healing of a Dumb Demoniac (Matt. 9:32-34; Aland 97; Huck 57), Matthew is completely out of Markan story order, but in the story’s doublet, Accusations Against Jesus (Matt. 12:22-24; Aland 117; Huck 85), Matthew is clearly following the order of Mark. This Matthean story doublet is one of the best examples that demonstrates Matthew’s dependence on both Mark and the Anthology (the name I have given to the pre-synoptic source Matthew shared with Luke). In both instances, Matthew shows acquaintance with a text like that of Luke, and in the second instance (Matt. 12:22-24), when he is in Markan order, he shows dependence on both Mark and his second source by interweaving the two.
Streeter insisted that Mark’s version of the Beelzebul Controversy (Mark 3:20-30), and its Matthean parallel (Matt. 12:22-37), are less original than their Lukan parallel (Luke 11:14-23).[29] Streeter further supposed that Mark had a tradition which, at this point, was an “overlap” with Q.[30] An examination of the Lukan version confirms Streeter’s evaluation of the originality of Luke at this point in the text: the word order and idiom of Luke’s text are distinctly Hebraic (with the exception of verses 21 and 22, which cannot be translated easily to idiomatic Hebrew).
If we suppose that Mark drew on Luke for his version of the Accusations Against Jesus and the Beelzebul Controversy, there is no need to postulate an “overlap.” Instead, we can imagine that Mark saw Luke departing from his pre-synoptic source to insert his Lesser Interpolation (Luke 6:20-8:3). Mark read through this Lukan section, but was only interested in Luke’s description of the criticisms leveled against Jesus and John the Baptist (Luke 7:33-34): although John had neither “eaten bread nor drunk wine,” they said, “he has a demon.” Jesus, on the other hand, had both “eaten and drunk” and, capriciously, they said that he was a φάγος καὶ οἰνοπότης (fagos kai oinopotēs, “glutton and drunkard”; Luke 7:34). These criticisms reminded Mark of another story in which Jesus is criticized: the accusation that he was in league with Beelzebul. Therefore, Mark then turned to the story of the Beelzebul Controversy in Luke 11:14-23, and noted various texts in and around this passage (including Luke 12:10 and Luke 14:1, as we will see). Mark was also reminded of the story of Jesus’ mother and brothers who wanted to see Jesus (Luke 8:19-21).
[continued]
Mark collected all these passages and then picked out various expressions he wanted to use for rewriting the Accusations Against Jesus. For example, from Luke 14:1 where it says “he came to [a] house [εἰς οἶκον, eis oikon][31] of a certain ruler of the Pharisees…to eat bread [φαγεῖν ἄρτον, fagein arton],” Mark selected the phrases “to [a] house” and “to eat bread” and wrote: “And he came to [a] house [εἰς οἶκον, eis oikon] and the crowd again came together so that they were not even able to eat bread [ἄρτον φαγεῖν, arton fagein]” (Mark 3:20).
In the next verse, recalling that Jesus’ mother and brothers had been unable to get past the crowd to see him (Luke 8:19), Mark wrote that Jesus’ relatives, upon hearing that Jesus could not even eat because of the crowds, “set out to take hold of him, for they said [ἔλεγον, elegon], ‘he is beside himself’ [ἐξέστη, exestē, a non-Hebraism found in the New Testament only in 2 Cor. 5:13 and here (Mark 3:21) in the sense “lose one’s mind”].”[32] Because Mark introduced Jesus’ family in this way, he proceeded to tell the story of Jesus’ mother and brothers (Mark 3:31-35) immediately after his version of the Beelzebul Controversy—against Luke’s order, which places the story somewhat later (Luke 8:19-21). The family thus sets out to get hold of (κρατῆσαι, kratēsai, a Markan stereotype) Jesus, saying “he is beside himself,” and when they finally come to where Jesus is they find him in a house and stand outside asking to see him. Luke’s distant parallel (Luke 11:14) and Matthew’s double introductions of the accusation that Jesus was casting out demons by demonic power (Matt. 9:32-34; 12:22-24) report nothing about a house, the impossibility of eating bread, or that Jesus’ family thought that he had gone mad.
[table]
While Luke reports only that “some” in the crowds accused Jesus of using the power of Beelzebul to cast out demons (L7; Luke 11:15), Mark identifies the “some” as “the scribes” (L5; Mark 3:22). Matthew (both in Matt. 12:24 and 9:34) identifies the “some” as “the Pharisees” (L7). Bultmann noted this progressive identification and that it was more to be found in Matthew and Mark than in Luke,[33] but failed to recognize the bearing of such an observation on his theory of Markan Priority. Mark’s identification of the “some” as “scribes” may be attributed to his use of Luke 14:1-6, for, as we have seen, Luke 14:1 was the source of “to [a] house” and “to eat bread.” Luke 14:1 mentions the house of a Pharisee and Luke 14:3 mentions “lawyers and Pharisees.” Since the phrase “the scribes and the Pharisees” (or the reverse, “the Pharisees and the scribes”) is fairly common in Luke,[34] Mark may have equated “scribes” with “lawyers and Pharisees.”
While Matthew and Luke agree that the only charge against Jesus in the Beelzebul Controversy is that he casts out demons “in”[35] the prince of the demons (L8; Matt. 12:24; Luke 11:15; cf. L13, L14), Mark adds the information that the scribes said (ἔλεγον, elegon), “he has Beelzebul [Βεελζεβοὺλ ἔχει, Beelzeboul echei]” (L8; Mark 3:22). Mark then proceeds to tell the story with significant omission of material given by both Matthew and Luke (L14, L15, L18), adds at Mark 3:28-29 (L19-20) an expanded version of a saying found in Luke 12:10, and finally adds his conclusion: “for they said [ἔλεγον, elegon], ‘An unclean spirit he has [πνεῦμα ἀκάθαρτον ἔχει, pneuma akatharton echei]'” (L23; Mark 3:30). Not only is Mark’s redactive activity indicated by his constant insertion of elegon, but the additions, Βεελζεβοὺλ ἔχει (Beelzeboul echei) and πνεῦμα ἀκάθαρτον ἔχει (pneuma akatharton echei), are in exactly the same word order as the accusation against John the Baptist in Luke 7:33: δαιμόνιον ἔχει (daimonion echei, “a demon he has”)! The most original version of the Accusations Against Jesus did not contain a charge of demon possession against Jesus. This was the charge against John the Baptist, the great ascetic who preached with such dramatic color that hundreds repented by the banks of the Jordan.
[continued]
These observations suggest that we have in Mark an author who could survey a passage or series of passages, note expressions that are the same (or nearly the same) in meaning or form, find connections between them, and then rebuild a story with the help of these expressions. That Mark’s method was mechanical is confirmed by the saying he added to the story of the Beelzebul Controversy (L19-20, L22; Mark 3:28-29). As we learn from a comparison of Matthew with Luke, Jesus answered his accusers by pointing out that no sensible leader, not even Satan, would work against his own self-interest. This prompted Jesus to add a further argument (absent from Mark): “If I cast out the demons with the help of Beelzebul, by the help of whom do your sons cast them out?” (L14). To this Jesus added: “They themselves will thus judge you!” Again he added (also absent from Mark): “Now if I by the finger of God cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (L15). At this point Mark’s version rejoins the story and all three Synoptists give Jesus’ illustration of the strong man who is overcome by a yet stronger man (L16-17).
Mark omitted Jesus’ final statment, “Whoever is not with me is against me and whoever does not gather with me scatters” (L18; Matt. 12:30; Luke 11:23), in order to introduce Jesus’ saying concerning blasphemy of the Holy Spirit (L19-20, L22; Mark 3:28-29; found in its original context in Luke 12:10). Mark apparently turned to this saying in Luke, rewrote it in his typically expansive way, and added to it an elegon note, ὅτι ἔλεγον πνεῦμα ἀκάθαρτον ἔχει (hoti elegon pneuma akatharton echei, “because they were saying, ‘He has an unclean spirit'”; L23; Mark 3:30), in order to justify inserting Jesus’ saying. Mark’s normal synonym for Luke’s “demon” is “unclean spirit,” a term he appears to have first picked up from Luke 4:33,[36] but used often afterwards as a replacement for “demon” (see the Lukan parallels to Mark 1:26; 3:11; 5:2, 13; 6:7). Thus, Mark’s pneuma akatharton echei at Mark 3:30 is simply his replacement of the daimonion echei of Luke 7:33.
In the Markan rewriting (Mark 3:28-29) of Luke 12:10, the Hebraic form and idiom of Jesus’ saying has almost disappeared. Luke has preserved the beautifully Hebraic, “Everyone who will say a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever has blasphemed the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.”[37] The following Markan editorial habits are discernible: 1) there is the tendency toward word-redundancy. In the Lukan version, “sins” and “blasphemies” are not mentioned, but Mark has both these nouns and twice uses the verb “blaspheme” against Luke’s single use; 2) Mark has a tendency to play on words. He creates out of “the Son of Man” an imitation Hebraism, “the sons of men,” thus losing the basic distinction of the original in which Jesus said men could criticize the Son of Man with impunity, but could not deny the working of the Holy Spirit in the call of the Son of Man;[38] 3) we observe Mark’s penchant for dramatization and exaggeration: to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit is not only unforgiveable, but is an “eternal” sin and, therefore, will be “eternally” unforgiveable.
The Matthean parallel (L19-22; Matt. 12:31-32) provides an excellent illustration of the way Matthew combined Mark with his second source, the Anthology. Although Matthew is in Markan story order, the interwoven character of the Matthean parallel can be quickly discerned when the words or expressions of Matthew are identified as belonging either to Luke (Luke 12:10) or to Mark (Mark 3:28-29).
[continued]
1. Like Mark: “I say to you” (λέγω ὑμῖν).
2. Like Mark: “every sin and blasphemy” (πᾶσα ἁμαρτία καὶ βλασφημία).
3. Like Mark and Luke: “it will be forgiven” (ἀφεθήσεται).
4. Like Mark: “to men” (τοῖς ἀνθρώποις).
5. Like Mark: “but the blasphemy” (ἡ δὲ…βλασφημία).
6. Like Luke: “and” (καί).
7. Like Luke: “will speak a word” (ὃς ἐὰν εἴπῃ λόγον).
8. Like Luke: “against the Son of Man” (κατὰ τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου).
9. Like Luke: “it will be forgiven” (ἀφεθήσεται).
10. Like Luke: “to him” (αὐτῷ).
11. Like Mark: “but whoever” (ὃς δ᾿ ἂν).
12. Neither like Mark or Luke: “will speak against the Holy Spirit” (εἴπῃ κατὰ τοῦ πνεύματος τοῦ ἁγίου). Here Matthew breaks with the literal use of the verb “to blaspheme” found in both Mark and Luke, but he has preserved it in his first verse. It is clear that he supposes that to “speak against” (i.e., “criticize”) and to “blaspheme” are the same sin, another sign of his secondary operation.
13. Like Luke: “it will not be forgiven” (οὐκ ἀφεθήσεται).
14. Like Mark: (in ideas but not in words) “neither in this world nor in the one to come” (οὔτε ἐν τούτῳ τῷ αἰῶνι οὔτε ἐν τῷ μέλλοντι).
As can be seen by comparing Matthew 12:31 with 12:32, Matthew conflated two versions of the same saying. The result is a doublet in which the Markan version is placed first and the Luke-like version second, but there is just enough influence of the Markan wording in the second version, and vice versa, to prove that Matthew did not simply copy one version after the other, but rather allowed each text to influence the other as he conflated the two.
[continued]
Mark’s Midrashic Technique
At first, I did not recognize Mark’s love of word play. However, this love became more and more evident to me as I studied Mark’s Gospel. Mark saw “the Son of Man” and changed it to “the sons of men.” He saw that occasionally Luke used “unclean spirit” as a synonym for “demon,” and so he decided to use the synonym “unclean spirit” in preference to the much more frequent “demon” in Matthew and Luke. He saw Luke occasionally use elegen to introduce a saying, regularly refused to copy it in an immediate parallel with Luke, yet of the two times he does parallel Luke in the use of elegen,[39] he deftly copied the word while removing the Parable of the Mustard Seed from its Lukan context (Luke 13:18-19) to insert his rewritten version of the parable (Mark 4:30-32), and then proceeded to use elegen nearly 50 times, often as a vehicle to introduce some expression found in a distant Lukan context. Luke used the Greek word meaning “teach” (διδάσκειν, didaskein) 11 times in parallel to Mark. Mark accepted only 2 of these parallels (Mark 1:21, opposite Luke 4:31; Mark 12:14, opposite Luke 20:21). Yet Mark used didaskein in 15 instances where Luke has parallel material, but no “teach.”
This pattern of rejecting-only-to-accept-and-use-elsewhere is usually accompanied in Mark by a concomitant practice of replacing a rejected word with a synonym in the immediate parallel. This synonym is in turn, like the “unclean spirit” mentioned above, usually traceable to another written text. Thus, Mark examined his immediate written source, accepted some of the words, but tried to remember other texts that contain similar expressions or synonyms, turned to these passages, and methodically used them as supplementary material for his rewriting.
Had I been better acquainted with the midrashic method of the early Jewish sages, I might have recognized Mark’s practice of borrowing words and phrases as a normal Jewish editorial technique. One could give thousands of illustrations from the midrashic commentaries. For example, according to Genesis 38:18, Tamar asked Judah to send his “seal, cord, and staff” as a pledge. Each of these words reminded the midrashic commentators of another distant biblical verse in which the same word appears. Why the staff? “This refers to the King Messiah,” says Midrash Rabbah 85:9, “for it is written, ‘The LORD will send forth your staff from Zion'” (Ps. 110:2). Another example of midrashic word association is the treatment of אָנֹכִי (’ānochi) and אֲנִי (’ani), which are simply synonyms in the Hebrew Bible for the pronoun “I.” The sages saw in each use of the fairly rare ’ānochi a reference to God because the word ’ānochi was the word for “I” used in the first of the Ten Commandments (cf. Pesikta Rabbati 33, 153a).
[continued]
The rabbis were not directly rewriting biblical texts, but then, neither was Mark, at least, we may suppose, not as far as he was concerned. Mark was simply retelling a well-known story. He enjoyed words and their synonyms. He enjoyed discovering literary allusions in his sources. He saw nothing wrong with borrowing words and expressions from unrelated and distant texts if they could give a more interesting, dramatic, or elaborate design to a familiar story.
The Confirmation of Lockton’s Work
When I finally received the resume of Lockton’s article from my friend in England, the first thing I noticed was Lockton’s insistence on the importance of the Matthean-Lukan agreements against Mark. Lockton had obviously collected this evidence over a period of years and had observed some hundreds of these agreements. Three years later, when I acquired Lockton’s three books on synoptic relationships,[40] I found that he maintained that there were at least 600 of these minor agreements. He was, quite correctly, critical of the list of only 230 Matthean-Lukan minor agreements collected by Abbott.[41] Abbott’s enumeration of the agreements seems to have limited the work of Streeter and others on the subject.
But of even greater interest to me was the discovery that Lockton noted the Markan conflation of Lukan pericopae and verses I had observed, and in his article Lockton pointed out a number I had overlooked. Particularly impressive was his analysis of the Lukan parallels to the so-called Little Apocalypse in the thirteenth chapter of Mark.[42] Noting first that Mark 13:1-37 and Luke 21:5-36 are clearly parallel accounts of the same discourse, Lockton proceeded to point out the significant differences between these two texts, differences that cannot be explained as Lukan dependence on Mark. Nevertheless, the following verses in Mark and Luke are textually similar enough to argue for some kind of direct dependence of one writer on the work of the other.
[table]
But other verses of the two texts differ radically from each other, even when the ideas of each are roughly parallel. Lockton pointed out that where the missing Lukan verses occur in the table above, no verbal Markan parallel of any kind can be located, but, where at least six of the Markan replaced verses appear, close verbal parallels exist in the twelfth, seventeenth, nineteenth and twenty-first chapters of Luke. These parallels are:
[table]
Lockton failed to notice that a parallel to Mark 13:35-37 is absent from Luke 21, but, as Huck noted,[43] Luke 12:38 and 40 are very similar to Mark 13:35-37. (These verses should, therefore, be added to the list above.) Here is a diagram to aid in the presentation of these phenomena:
[chart]
[continued]
I am so sick of Donald Trump.
I am sick of his face, his voice, his lies, his actions and his crimes.
Too many years of chaos, gaslighting, alternative facts and MAGA Republicans.
I am looking forward to him going to prison or even Russia.
He absolutely did not make America great.
He took us to a dark place and we just can't get out of it as long as his voice and hate are displayed daily every place we look.
Now he wants to be a dictator and is saying it out loud.
He wants to end America's democracy.
Yet, his cult doesn't give a damn!
I gave a damn!
Let's raise our voices and get out the votes needed to stop him from being president again.
While we are at it, let's get the votes to remove every one of his fascists followers out of every office in America ASAP.
Lockton’s conclusions from these facts were exactly those I had reached on other passages. One can explain how Mark dropped verses and replaced them with pick-ups from Luke’s scattered Second Coming material, but it is extremely difficult to argue that Luke used Mark in constructing his version of Jesus’ prophecy (Luke 21). In Luke, Jesus’ discourse is almost exclusively a prophecy of the destruction of the Temple and the Holy City, and as such hangs on the various references in the text to Jerusalem (e.g., Luke 21:20, 21 [αὐτῆς…αὐτήν, avtēs…avtēn], 24). In every instance, Mark has what appears to be a replacement for “Jerusalem”: once in a reference to Daniel’s “abomination of desolation” (Mark 13:14), once in the borrowed verse from Luke 17:31 found in Mark 13:15, and once in a long pick-up (Mark 13:19-20) that includes a quotation from Daniel 12:1 and, apparently, a lost apocalypse that emphasized the “chosen” and “the shortening of the days” in a way unknown in any New Testament parallel. This is a clear pattern of conflation, but the more important point is that we can trace most of these conflations to literary sources, which include the non-Markan portions of Luke.[44]
Having found Lockton confirming my observations about the Markan-Lukan relationship and the extent and importance of the minor agreements, it was disappointing to discover that he had taken the same simplistic approach to verbal and pericope parallelism that weakens the common synoptic hypotheses. Having succeeded in demonstrating Mark’s use of Luke and Matthew’s use of Mark, Lockton accepted the explanation that the minor agreements could be explained as due to Matthew’s use of Luke, as well as Mark. This solution to the Synoptic Problem is the opposite of the Augustinian solution, and has much to commend it, but breaks down because it fails to explain the disparate order of the Double Tradition pericopae.
Collaboration with Professor Flusser
[The article continues much further]
1:09 PM
LOL
His play on words triggered you from here to the moon!
His enemies already accuse him of such so he just a well enjoy the fallout!
Thanks for the fun of watching you implode!
Anon 8:32 AM,
I have to ask: Why do you now wish to use the Zohar and the Kabbalah as a means by which to read and interpret the Christian Scriptures. Are you aware that the Zohar/Kabbalah is Jewish mysticism and that this ideology is AGAINST Christianity?
@ 9:42 AM,
OK, it seems pretty apparent that Bivin has no educational background to be teaching Greek. In numerous places he has provided educational credentials for other disciplines, but has provided none for Greek. The way I see it, he’s got the cart before the horse. He’s bought into the Hebrew-original theory, and, in circularity, is attempting to back-translate portions of the NT Greek to Hebrew trying to ‘prove’ it.
You wrote: My heart is to understand the Bible, not to win online arguments.
Understanding the Bible is a worthy goal. There are numerous free materials online to assist you in that endeavor.
As far as online arguments, after you started the voluminous posting, I initially pushed back on its viability. You continued to assume it was correct rather than listen to outside critique (mine). Then you set to argue with me regarding my critique.
You then wrote something rather bizarre: I understand that you feel like you are Superman and I tugged on your cape, so now I'm gonna get it.
Wait, what?! What’s with this whole ‘Superman’ thing? Since, I don’t have the time or the inclination to read everything posted here, I skimmed through some of your posts and caught what I deem to be problems in them. I happened to have studied some Greek, so I have little knowledge in it. I’m no authority, for I have no educational credentials, as I’ve stated a number of times here; and, anyone can challenge what I write in this regard, and if I’m indeed wrong, I would correct it.
And now you are using even more voluminous posting, though this time in a somewhat related vein as some sort of vendetta? For what purpose exactly? To get the ‘cape’ that I don’t have or want?
Moving on, I did look to see what someone could possibly mean by “Hebraic word order” in reference to the Greek NT. This is the closest thing I could find: Apparently Biblical Hebrew is typically Verb-Subject-Object. Koine Greek is (Conjunction-)Verb-Subject-Object, but rarely actually fits that format. Did Bivin find V-S-O in Mark and call this “Hebraic word order”?
In any case, this article (and great accompanying video) I just found will provide some clarity. It adds to what I wrote above, and Bill Mounce has been teaching Koine Greek at the seminary level for many years:
Greek Word Order and Nuance (Eph 2:8-9) – Mondays with Mounce
Wow, what a story
https://cumbey.blogspot.com/2014/03/from-my-archives-important-struggle-for.html?m=1#comment-form
+++
Regarding Malachi Martian's 1991 prophecy - Ann Barnhardt
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VkNzih0v0vM
A Military Loyal to Trump
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/01/trump-defense-department-military-loyalty/676140/?utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
I'd tolerate Trumpism before radical Islam any day. Muslim children being born in America are connected to some bad people over seas (anchor babies). This is how we managed to get Illhan Omar and Rashida Talib in the House of representatives. C.A.I.R. is Hamas.
Thanks to Constance Cumbey for fighting for radical Islam and Jihad merits badges the Boy Scouts of America.
Don't forget your next vaccine booster Constance.
People like 1:09 (dark place) PM make me like Trump for no other reason then just because.
I know, that's a bad attitude, but I can't help it ( - :
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-in-court-today-new-york-fraud-trial-nears-end/
They got nothin'......
https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2023/12/08/ibram-x-kendi-gets-applause-for-race-remarks-at-netflix-screening-whiteness-prevents-white-people-from-connecting-to-humanity/
One of x's many progressive socialist global-minded heroes.
Saul Alinsky trained, living high on the hog in the land of opportunity he and others of his ilk, claim keeps certain races of people are horribly downtrodden. Free to use his free speech to trash others with who he disagrees.
Complete ingrates, self-righteously disgusting up to their eyebrows.
Only in America....
Joe Biden has been the US President for almost 3 years.
Joe Biden has been a vice president for 8 years.
Joe Biden has been in politics for 51 years.
And during all that time, during all the digging, searching, rummaging, subpoenaing, using the best minds in the GOP who examined Biden's every year, every day, every minute of his entire political career, the best the GOP can come up with...
The very, very best is...
They got Hunter Biden on tax charges!!
Joe Biden might be the most upright politician of our generation. Never mind, the most effective.
My apologies to Marge, Bo, Jordan, Comer, Johnson, and the rest of the Scooby Doo Detectives.
You get an E for effort.
Now please get back to doing the damn job we pay you for.
6:46 PM (you sound very familiar..)
From head to toe you are inflamed!
Your eyes are bugging out and your hemorrhoids are flaring!
But stay tuned, as they say, O'Biden goin' down, down, down..
Be careful or your Big Guy take you with him ;) LOL
This mother should be locked up for cruelty against her daughter. Is it too unreasonable to ask for a pink Mercedes for her Sweet 16 Birthday, and instead get only a brand new Tesla? Just try to imagine the disappointment? I can't.
You will not believe the reaction from this girl who received a Tesla for her 16th birthday
https://notthebee.com/article/this-girls-reaction-to-receiving-a-tesla-for-her-16th-birthday-is-just-classic/
I don't really keep up with politics generally but I noticed trends like we are approaching 1,000,000 war dead since Biden took office. If Biden somehow ended the slaughter then the scandals would begin. That's just how it is. Evil
Russ turns the spotlight on the diseased minds of CINO/RINO Cumbey types, and her cult hero, demonic Liz Cheney. New Ager 'Trumps' Pharisee.
youtube.com/watch?v=OUKPXIAcgBs
12:26 PM,
9:42 AM
"My heart is to understand the Bible"
Try praying for understanding before reading.
This worked for me
Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful
and kindle in them the fire of your love.
Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created,
and you shall renew the face of the earth.
You can't spend the rest of your life squabbling over translations and still never understand without instruction.
12:26 PM
The Holy Spirit and prayer are important, but Jesus said that the Law and the Prophets can be summed up in two great commandments. The first and most important commandment is to love God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind. There is a doctrinal, Biblical aspect. Study is good, because it helps you to love God with your mind, although it's useless if it is not applied actively--enlivened, lived. Producing fruits, works, deeds.
But yes, I hear you about the squabbling, and in a sense, of course, you are perfectly right and justified. Here's one of our main problems as 21st century Americans, Europeans, Westerners, etc. We have a heritage of complex, learned philosophy that goes back to the ancient Greeks. But the people to whom God revealed Himself historically were a simple people with a simple philosophy. A simple philosophy is one you are born to, that comes naturally, that you don't have to be educated into.
A simple philosophy is concrete, not abstract. It is active, not static. It pays attention to functions, not appearances. The entire language comes from life experience. For instance, the ancient Hebrews didn't even have the abstract word "forever" in their vocabulary. Instead they had a term that meant, "as far as you can see to the horizon, until it becomes blurry." They had another term that meant, "generation after generation."
Their nouns included verbs. For example, "father" really meant, "he who gives strength to the family." "Mother" really meant, "she who binds the family together."
They were a nomadic, agricultural people who wandered in the wilderness for forty years before coming into the promised land. They didn't have the abstract word "righteous" in the way we know it in English. Instead, it was a concrete and active word that meant to them, "staying on the path." They didn't have the abstract word, "wicked" as we know it in English. Instead, it meant to them, "getting lost from the path." The "commandments" were more like "directions" on how to be sojourners traveling through life to stay on the path or to find the path again after getting lost.
As you can see, when you understand the simple philosophy and language--and I know I'm only learning breadcrumbs and I'm far from a master of the ancient Hebrew language--but still the rewards have been very great for such a very little bit of effort to learn so very few breadcrumbs and follow their trails...As you can hopefully see, the Old Testament God does not have a different personality and a different voice than the Jesus of the New Testament.
You can of course immediately hear the echoes, right? He said He had come for the lost sheep. It flows together with the Old Testament Hebrew language perfectly. He said, "I am the Way, the Life and the Truth." Right away, "the way," makes you think of a "path," right?
One of the hardest things for we modern Christians to do is to abide in the simple philosophy of the Bible rather than reading a complex philosophy back into it. Abiding in the simple philosophy in this way is being like a child, as Jesus said we need to be, if we are to be in His Kingdom, which is active in Hebrew and is not a static noun connoting territory. As you can see, if you are following Him as He guides you in the Way, you are in His Kingdom already in the active Hebrew language with its simple philosophy. The end of your journey if you stay on the path will be eternal life.
This is just scratching the surface. The Jesus we can know in Greek and English isn't that different than the Jesus we can know by learning Hebrew idioms, but it's just that we can obtain a much fuller and more detailed and clear understanding. Because Jesus was so redundant in what He said, if you don't understand one thing, you can still get the main points by understanding other things He said. But if you want to understand all of His words, it is extremely helpful to understand Hebrew idioms and a few key terms in the Hebrew language, like "kingdom" in the active sense. And it is certainly possible to wander off the path by misconstruing something Jesus said by recasting it too much into Greek or English or German or another language, not only in tongue but in philosophy with chains of inferences.
But the Old Testament is another matter. It makes a big difference to understand it in Hebrew instead of English or another language. I'm just getting started and already my change in comprehension is profound.
After having noted Jesus' expression, "I am the Way, the Life and the Truth," I realized I hadn't yet studied the Hebrew word for "truth." I watched a short video explaining what you can learn from the Hebrew letters that comprise the word, "truth" in Hebrew. Hebrew is a language that lends itself to this sort of analysis of its letters.
https://hebrew.learnoutlive.com/decoding-structure-truth-hebrew-word-emet/
If you watched this video, did it make you think of Jesus' saying that He is the Alpha and the Omega? The first and the last? The origin and the fulfillment?
As you go along with learning the Hebrew, it's like pieces of a puzzle falling into place with little effort.
Another piece effortlessly falls into place as well. This is the Hebrew concept of time, which is a simple philosophy concept of time. There are just two aspects to time for an ancient Hebrew mind--or, indeed, for the mind of any people anywhere in the world who have a simple philosophy. Today that would be very few hunter gatherer groups, along with the remaining Bedouin, and a few peoples.
The Hebrew concept of time, reflected in their language, is that there are just two aspects to time. What has already manifested, and what has not yet manifested. The Hopi saw time in just exactly this same way, as a simple people with a simple philosophy. This is the natural philosophy of any uneducated people in the world. It's the philosophy that humanity seems to be born to and can be educated out of but otherwise is always the same.
Notice how well it goes together with an infinite God who exists eternally and outside of time but Who chooses to manifest Himself in human history.
The word Hebrew word "Torah" is the same as "the Law" but it literally means "direction" or "instruction." Of course it means "direction," direction for staying on the path and not getting lost in the wilderness on the way to the promised land.
The root of the word "Torah" means "point" like a finger pointing and can also mean to throw or to shoot, like an arrow, but it can even mean seeing rain in the distance that means where you can go to find water. So it's even inseparable from rain water in Hebrew!
The word "grace" in Hebrew, "hhen," means an "oasis" or a place of beauty, rest or comfort. It is related to the word "mahhaneh", which is derived from it. It would make sense for a people who pitched their tents in or near an oasis.
How can it make sense in the Hebrew tongue to say that somebody is under grace, not under the law? The law is the directions to get to the oasis! It's the way to grace!
It makes me wonder if Paul knew the Hebrew language. It is known that he relied on the Septaguint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament. In Greek it is possible to oppose "law" and "grace." In Hebrew it makes no sense at all!
It would be like separating the words of Jesus out from each other and opposing them to each other, when He said, "I am the Way (the path, the directions), the Life (the oasis, the promised land, grace), and the Truth (the beginning, middle and end)."
I have tried to think of ways to continue seeing Paul as inerrant, but if he was inerrant, his scribes or collaborators corrupted or misunderstood his words in dictation, and his poor eyesight prevented him from catching onto it. Something went very badly wrong with some of the words in some of his epistles.
The only way I can think of "the law" being "condemning" is that the Jews had finally come under the "covenant curse" at that last generation in Judea and Jerusalem. Could this be what Paul could have mean? Could one or more of his scribes of collaborators have misunderstood it and misconstrued it in Greek?
It doesn't help at all to call me names or to gaslight me.
9:10 AM
You make it sound wonderful and I bow to your learning. . .but, yeah they were simple people you and yours would be too after 400 years hard labor and the 40 years wandering was ipurgative not idyllic. I heard something the other day about how people view the Old and New Testaments two different ways. Some try to understand the New Testament though the len of the Old Testament but it is just the opposite.
Hope this helps ( - :
Darn calf, got on the wrong side of the fence yesterday looking for grass cause the lower field's flooded. So I had to go out extra early this morning and fill up the feeder so they won't wander off, (and they got a dozen day-old donuts just because). And here's a lesson from the Book of Nature: it's a wonder how that old horse is perfectly content just to stand there and watch his cows eat hay.
10:34 AM,
Thank you. You are the wiser one than myself because you have kept it so simple!
Tangentially, I continue to try to figure out where Paul got some of his sayings and ideas that are not found in the canonical Old Testament. Previously, I shared that he could have gotten from the book of Jubilees the idea that the Torah was given to Moses by angels.
Now I'm seeing one more non-canonical source he could have borrowed from, and that is the book of 1 Esdras. https://www.gotquestions.org/first-second-Esdras.html
I have been puzzled about what is meant by his saying in 1 Corinthians 11:7-12 that "woman is the glory of man." One paper claims that Paul is alluding here to 1 Esdras.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/new-testament-studies/article/abs/pauls-allusive-reasoning-in-1-corinthians-11712/EDE6D54A62D2265EA2C22291B6F2BA39
If you read "The Speech about Women" in 1 Esdras it is liable to make you laugh out loud. I will let the curious find it on their own if they are interested.
As I look, I see scholars have gone here before me. This student found that Paul used Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon for sources of his ideas eighteen times in his Romans and Corinthian letters. The student concludes, "This study demonstrated that Paul considered both canonical and noncanonical wisdom literature as authoritative sources for his ministry, and that this literature deeply influenced Paul's thoughts and composition."
Paul's Use of Canonical and Noncanonical Wisdom Literature in Romans and the Corinthian Letters
https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/dissertations/68/
Problem . Although Paul's use of wisdom literature has been widely acknowledged, the relationship between the apostle and wisdom literature has not been thoroughly investigated. Scholars have tended to deal mainly with the function of wisdom traditions in general in Paul's argument. Furthermore, no one has compared his use of canonical and noncanonical wisdom literature. This present study sought to determine the nature of Paul's use of wisdom literature by comparing his use of canonical wisdom books (Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes) with his use of noncanonical ones (Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon) in Romans, and 1 and 2 Corinthians.
Method . The present study adopted the intertextual approach, which detects components of the wisdom books in Paul's letters and examines the significance of the use in the Pauline context. In order to make objective judgments, after numerous criteria were suggested and examined, the appropriate criteria were applied to Paul's texts.
Results . This study found eighteen most likely or probable cases of Paul's use of the wisdom literature and seven significant parallels between Paul's texts and the wisdom-book passages. Numerous similarities are shared between Paul's use of canonical and noncanonical wisdom literature. This suggests that Paul did not have any bias toward canonical or against noncanonical wisdom literature.
Conclusion . This study demonstrated that Paul considered both canonical and noncanonical wisdom literature as authoritative sources for his ministry, and that this literature deeply influenced Paul's thoughts and composition.
12:42 PM
Thank you. If I tried to write like you I'd
only be fooling myself and no one else
The Three Ways John the Waymaker Liturgically Prepared for the Advent of the Lord - READINGS: Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11, 2 Peter 3:8-14, Mark 1:1-8.
https://www.saintdominicsmedia.com/second-sunday-of-advent-year-b/
Nun Komm der Heiden Heiland / Saviour of the Nations, Come
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y0sjI5kDJ4
https://dailycaller.com/2023/12/10/kentucky-senator-rand-paul-slams-anthony-fauci-orchestrated-coverup-covid-pandemic-calls-out-central-intelligence-agency-visits/
Good on ya, Rand Paul!
Buy form Me gold, white garments, and eye salve - News, Commentary, and the Scriptures
theopenscroll.blogspot.com/2023/12/buy-from-me-gold-white-garments-and-eye.html
To all in latest dialogue re Romans, St. Paul, etc.
I will note for the record that hatred of St. Paul is a common trait and believe in those who made the New Age "paradigm shift." Paul was the one who took the Gospel to the Gentiles, for the most part. About the only place where I might be tempted to quarrel with Paul was over his statements of keeping women in their places.
Constance
Constance,
Thanks for that information. I didn't know that that hatred for Paul is a common trait amongst New Agers.
I would disagree with this statement though:
"About the only place where I might be tempted to quarrel with Paul was over his statements of keeping women in their places."
Constance
10:32 PM
I'm sure if you gave that more thought, you wouldn't 'qaurrel with Paul' about anything, being that his writings were inspired by the Holy Spirit and therefore represent God's sealed, and perfect Word.
This chart breaking down the leading cause(s) of death in the US from 2015 through 2022 really demonstrates a lot of things. Some people here should look at and really think about.
https://twitter.com/Truth_in_Number/status/1734295858923917605/photo/1
Notice:
1. The baby boomers are aging so overall mortality rates had been growing slightly for years.
2. Covid is a new leading cause of death and underlying causes, like heart disease, has likely been exaccerbated by such (and such increases started well before the vaccines);
3. Overdoses are categorized as "accidental deaths" so that explains the uptick there
4. "Turbo Cancer" is not a thing as cancer death rates have remained steady.
5. Absent vaccines --- it would have been MUCH worse, especially in 2022 when the more virulent and contagious Delta variant made its way through the pockets of substantially unvaccinated populations.
And Covid is still killing people today. Infection case rates are increasing again and unvaccinated people are still being hospitalized and dying at slightly higher rates. If you've never been vaccinated and never caught covid (which is rare, most have caught it by now but maybe didn't incur any symptoms that made them aware of such) the virus would be novel to you and you'd still be at a higher risk than others.
Be careful out there.
x
Mrs. Cubey,
I want a President, I already have a Savior and his name is Jesus. Trump has not claimed that he is the Messiah and the wound is in the head. I know you believe the bible and I know that you are one of us who saw the New Age coming and sneaking into the church. But I am not afraid of Trump why should I fear. If he becomes president and if he turns out to be a tool of the anti-christ praise the Lord! If he fixes some things in America, praise the Lord. Whatever happens praise the Lord. This world is not my home. I became a sojourner here in 1979. I only fear Him who can cast both body and soul in hell! Thank you for your stellar work exposing the New Age Movement and the infiltration of the church. I and my flock are aware and working for the Kingdom.
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