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Fragment of a 1,750-year-old New Testament translation discovered
#Fragment of a 1,750-year-old #NewTestament translation discovered
#ÖAW @oeaw @grigory_kessel
The fragment of the Syriac translation of the New Testament under UV light Credit: Vatican Library
About 1,300 years ago a scribe in Palestine took a book of the Gospels inscribed with a Syriac text and erased it. Parchment was scarce in the desert in the Middle Ages, so manuscripts were often erased and reused. A medievalist from the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW) has now been able to make…
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#Antico Testamento#Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften#discoveries#English news#Gospels#manoscritti#manuscripts#medieval#Medioevo#Old Testament#palimpsest#palinsesto#scoperte#siriaco#studies#syriac
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“Be on guard, so that your hearts do not become
heavy with the eating of flesh and with the intoxication
of wine and with the anxiety of the world, and that day
come upon you suddenly; for as a snare it will come
upon all who dwell upon the surface of the earth.”
(Jesus, Luke 21:34, Evangelion Da-Mepharreshe — Old
Syriac-Aramaic Manuscript of the New Testament
Gospels)
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Previously, on Apocrypals part 5: The Fifth One
As we begin our sixth (!) calendar year of Apocrypals, here is a list of the texts we have covered so far on the show in case you want to read along or catch up. They’re arranged in a way that appeases my systematic nature.
Tanakh/Old Testament:
Genesis (episodes 16-20)
Exodus (episodes 33 and 35)
Leviticus (episode 59)
Numbers (episode 62)
Deuteronomy (episode 65)
Joshua (episode 73)
Judges (episode 80)
Ruth (episode 45)
1 Samuel (episode 89)
2 Samuel (episode 90-91)
1 Kings (episode 99)
2 Kings (episode 106)
Esther (episode 37)
Job (episode 101)
Ecclesiastes (episode 52)
Song of Songs (episode 34)
Isaiah (episode 4)
Jeremiah (episode 43-44)
Lamentations (episode 48)
Ezekiel (episode 55-56)
Daniel (episode 2)
Hosea (episode 108)
Jonah (episode 31)
Micah (episode 74)
Nahum (episode 74)
Deuterocanon/capital-A Apocrypha:
Tobit (episode 13)
Judith (episode 22)
Greek Additions to Esther (episode 37)
1 Maccabees (episode 27)
2 Maccabees (episode 28)
3 Maccabees (episode 53)
4 Maccabees (episode 78)
The Prayer of Azariah aka the Song of the Three Holy Children (episode 2)
Susanna (episode 2)
Bel and the Dragon (episode 2)
The Prayer of Manasseh (episode 6)
New Testament:
Matthew (episodes 8-9)
Mark (episode 7)
Luke (episode 10)
John (episode 11-12)
Acts of the Apostles (episode 1)
Romans (episode 5)
1 Corinthians (episode 25)
2 Corinthians (episode 42)
Galatians (episode 72)
Ephesians (episode 81)
Hebrews (episode 104)
1 John (episode 49)
2 John (episode 49)
3 John (episode 49)
Revelation (episode 50)
Pseudepigrapha (Jewish apocrypha):
The Testament of Solomon (episode 24)
The Story of Ahikar (episode 14)
The Ascension of Isaiah (episode 6)
1 Enoch (episode 39-40)
2 Enoch (episode 61)
3 Enoch (episode 86-87)
Jubilees (episodes 82 and 83)
The Letter of Aristeas (episode 70)
The War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness (episode 71)
Joseph and Aseneth (episode 93)
New Testament apocrypha:
The Protevangelium aka Infancy Gospel of James (episode 29)
The Acts of Pilate/Gospel of Nicodemus (episode 23)
Mors Pilati/Death of Pilate (episode 23)
The Acts of Paul and Thecla (episode 22)
The Acts of Peter (episode 3)
The Acts of Peter and Paul (episode 3)
The Acts of Andrew and Matthias (episode 60)
The Acts of Thomas and His Wonderworking Skin (episode 66)
The Life of Xanthippe, Polyxena, and Rebecca (episode 57)
Questions of Bartholomew (episode 41)
Resurrection of Jesus Christ by Bartholomew (episode 41)
The Book of Bartholomew (episode 67)
Acts of John (episode 46)
The Acts of Andrew (episode 97)
Syriac Infancy Gospel (episode 47)
Infancy Gospel of Thomas (episode 54)
Infancy Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew (episode 79)
The Adoration of the Magi (2020 Christmas bonus episode)
The History of Joseph the Carpenter (episode 103)
The First Apocryphal Apocalypse of John (episode 68)
The Second Apocryphal Apocalypse of John (episode 68)
The Third Apocryphal Apocalypse of John (episode 68)
The Apocalypse of Peter (episode 75)
The Apocalypse of Paul (episode 95)
The Gospel of Philip (episode 92)
The Gospel of Mary (episode 92)
The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife (episode 92)
The Gospel of Judas (episode 100)
The Greater Questions of Mary (episode Secret 69)
The Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine:
The Life of Saint Nicholas (episode 26)
The Life of Saint Lucy (episode 26)
The Life of Saint Christopher (episode 15)
The Life of Saint Benedict (episode 15)
excerpts from The Passion of the Lord (episode 23)
The Life of Saint Sebastian (episode 58)
The Life of Saint Blaise (episode 58)
The Life of Saint Agatha (episode 58)
The Life of Saint Roch (episode 63)
The Life of Saint Catherine of Alexandria (episode 77)
The Life of Saint Barbara (episode 77)
The Life of Saint Dunstan (episode 85)
The Life of Mary Magdalene (episode 94)
The Life of Saint Martha of Bethany (episode 102)
The Life of Saint Margaret of Antioch (episode 102)
Other:
Historia Trium Regum/The Legend of the Three Kings by John of Hildesheim (episode 30)
Muirchu’s Life of Saint Patrick (episode 36)
The Life of Saint Guinefort (episode 63)
The Life of Saint Mary of Egypt (episode 69)
The Life of Saint Pelagia (episode 69)
The Life of Saint Martin by Sulpicius Severus (episode 76)
The Life of Saint Columba (episode 84)
The Life of Saint Wilgefortis (episode 94)
Lives of cephalophoric saints (bonus episode cephalo4)
Stories of the Baal Shem Tov from The Golden Mountain (episode 96)
More stories of the Baal Shem Tov from The Golden Mountain (episode 107)
Solomon and Ashmedai (bonus episode double chai)
Listener questions (episode 32)
Bible trivia questions (episode 38)
Halloween-themed Chick tracts (episode 51)
Christmas-themed Chick tracts (episode 98)
Bible Adventures and the Wisdom Tree catalogue of video games (episode 64)
The Da Vinci Code, the movie (episode 88)
Guess the Bible character from Persona 5 (bonus episode Persona 5)
El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron (episode 105)
You can find links to all these episodes with show notes and more on the Apocrypals wiki
#apocrypals#podcast#podcasts#religion#bible#christianity#judaism#apocrypha#old testament#new testament#hagiography
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Vegan and Veg Passages From Unexpected Sources (Middle East, and Christianity)
Image Above: Abu al-ʿAlaʾ al-Maʿarri (973–1057) Vegan, Secular Philosopher, Born in Syria:
“Do not unjustly eat fish the water has given up,
And do not desire as food the flesh of slaughtered animals,
Or the white milk of mothers who intended its pure draught
for their young, not noble ladies.
And do not grieve the unsuspecting birds by taking eggs;
for injustice is the worst of crimes.
And spare the honey which the bees get industriously
from the flowers of fragrant plants;
For they did not store it that it might belong to others,
Nor did they gather it for bounty and gifts.
I washed my hands of all this; and wish that I
Perceived my way before my hair went gray!”
Vegetarian Saying of Jesus from An Early Aramaic Manuscript of the Gospel of Luke
There’s a very old Syriac-Aramaic manuscript of the Gospel of Luke that even predates the Syriac Peshitta called Evangelion da-Mepharreshe. It contains some “textual variants”, differs from the Greek gospel manuscripts, and the now standardized, conformist approach used by most New Testament translators. There are two surviving editions of Evangelion da-Mepharreshe, the Curetonian Version of the Four Gospels as well as the Sinai Palimpsest, also known as The Old Syriac Gospels. Evangelion da-Mepharreshe represents a translation and “one of the earliest witnesses”* of an even older collection of gospel manuscripts that no longer exist but once were “in circulation between the second and the fifth centuries”*.:
“Now beware in yourselves that your hearts do not become heavy with the eating of flesh and with the intoxication of wine and with the anxiety of the world, and that day come up upon you suddenly; for as a snare it will come upon all them that sit on the surface of the earth.” — Yeshua, Luke 21:34
*Note: Page xviii, “Peshitta New Testament, The Antioch Bible English Translation”, Gorgias Press, discussion from the Preface about the history of the early Syriac-Aramaic manuscripts of the gospels.
“Probably the most interesting of the changes from the familiar New Testament accounts of Jesus comes in the Gospel of the Ebionites description of John the Baptist, who, evidently, like his successor Jesus, maintained a strictly vegetarian cuisine.” (Prof. Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, pp. 102, 103)
“The consumption of animal flesh was unknown up until the great flood. But since the great flood, we have had animal flesh stuffed into our mouths. Jesus, the Christ, who appeared when the time was fulfilled, again joined the end to the beginning, so that we are now no longer allowed to eat animal flesh.” (St. Jerome, Latin name Eusebius Hieronymus, 345–420 A.D., Christian monk and scholar whose outstanding work was the production of the Vulgate, the principal and official Latin translation of the Bible)
Jerome knew about the Gospel of the Hebrews and early Ebionite Christian sects who were vegetarians. He embraced their views about ethical vegetarianism.
For More About Vegan and Vegetarian Ethics Among the World Religions, including Christianity by the way, see the Vegan Section of my E-Library: https://santmatradhasoami.blogspot.com/2019/01/vegan-and-vegetarian-ahimsa-non_8.html
“The steam of meat meals darkens the spirit. One can hardly have virtue if one enjoys meat meals and feasts. In the earthly paradise [Eden], no one sacrificed animals, and no one ate meat.” (Saint Basil the Great)
VEG/VEGAN Podcasts
PODCAST: Vegetarian Sayings of Jesus:
https://youtu.be/tg6c14De__s
PODCAST: The Vegetarian Apostles and Scriptures of the Original Jesus Movement...& Prayers for a Vegan World:
https://youtu.be/LfuezdWESNo
PODCAST: Loaves Without The Fishes in Early Christian Writings (Loaves Before the Fishes Got Added to 2nd Century Greek Manuscripts):
https://youtu.be/wUwVahvj3sU
PODCAST: The Karmic Law of the Vegetarian Diet by Hazur Baba Sawan Singh... Simran Practice... and Sach Khand:
https://youtu.be/jqJkO_sxbxI
PODCAST: The Ebionites Recognized Those in India Who Worship the One God, are Vegetarians, and Follow Ahimsa:
https://youtu.be/L3aNyo_XUdM
PODCAST: The Vegetarianism of Guru Nanak and the Sikh Scriptures:
https://youtu.be/wx7oM5j5n-U
PODCAST: Vegetarian Sayings of Jesus, Rumi, Rabia & Bawa Muhaiyaddeen in Sufi Islamic Sources:
https://youtu.be/PTW5XN5Sqls
PODCAST: World's Oldest Passages Referring to Being VEGAN:
https://youtu.be/UzwluCLITX4
#vegan#veganism#veg#vegetarian#vegetarianism#middle east#christianity#lost christianities#found christianities#veg rumi#veg jesus#ebionites#vegan philosophy#vegan podcasts
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New gospel of Matthew just dropped before winds of winter
#syriac#syriac gospels#winds of winter#new testament#matthew#gospel of matthew#textual criticism#greek#language#scholarship#bible#christian#atheist
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Beelzebub - Wikipedia
Hebrew Scriptures
The source for the name Beelzebub is in the Books of Kings (2 Kings 1:2–3, 6, 16), written Ba'al-zəbûb, referring to a deity worshipped by the Philistines. The title Baal, meaning "Lord" in Ugaritic, was used in conjunction with a descriptive name of a specific god. Opinions differ on what the name means.
In one understanding, Ba'al-zəbûb is translated literally as "lord of (the) flies".[2][3][4][5] It was long ago suggested that there was a relationship between the Philistine god, and cults of flies—referring to a view of them as pests, feasting on excrement—appearing in the Hellenic world, such as Zeus Apomyios or Myiagros.
This is confirmed by the Ugaritic text which depicts Ba'al expelling flies, which are the cause of a person's sickness.[6] According to Francesco Saracino (1982), this series of elements may be inconclusive as evidence, but the fact that in relationship to Ba'al-zebub, the two constituent terms are here linked, joined by a function (ndy) that is typical of some divinities attested to in the Mediterranean world, is a strong argument in favor of the authenticity of the name of the god of Ekron, and of his possible therapeutic activities, which are implicit in 2 Kings 1:2–3, etc.[7]
Alternatively, the deity's actual name could have been Ba'al-zəbûl, "lord of the (heavenly) dwelling", and Ba'al-zebub could have been a derogatory pun used by the Israelites.[8][9][10]
The Septuagint renders the name as Baalzebub (Βααλζεβούβ) and as Baal muian (Βααλ μυῗαν, "Baal of flies"). However, Symmachus may have reflected a tradition of its offensive ancient name when he rendered it as Beelzeboul.[11]
Testament of Solomon
In the Testament of Solomon, Beelzebul (not Beelzebub) appears as prince of the demons and says[12] that he was formerly a leading heavenly angel who was[13] associated with the star Hesperus (the normal Greek name for the planet Venus (Aphrodite, Αφροδíτη) as evening star). Seemingly, Beelzebul here is synonymous with Lucifer. Beelzebul claims to cause destruction through tyrants, to cause demons to be worshipped among men, to excite priests to lust, to cause jealousies in cities and murders, and to bring about war. The Testament of Solomon is an Old Testament pseudepigraphical work, purportedly written by King Solomon, in which the author mostly describes particular demons whom he enslaved to help build Solomon's Temple, with substantial Christian interpolations.[14]
Christian Bible
In Mark 3:22, the scribes accuse Jesus Christ of driving out demons by the power of Beelzebul, the prince of demons. The name also appears in the expanded version in Matthew 12:24,27 and Luke 11:15, 18–19, as well as in Matthew 10:25.
Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, "Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand. If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand? And if I drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your people drive them out? So then, they will be your judges. But if I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you."
—Matthew 12:25-28
It is unknown whether Symmachus the Ebionite was correct in identifying these names. Zeboul might derive from a slurred pronunciation of zebûb; from zebel, a word used to mean "dung" in the Targums; or from Hebrew zebûl found in 1 Kings 8:13 in the phrase bêt-zebûl, "lofty house".
In any case, the form Beelzebub was substituted for Beelzeboul in the Syriac translation and Latin Vulgate translation of the gospels, and this substitution was repeated in the King James Version, the resulting form Beelzeboul being mostly unknown to Western European and descendant cultures until some more recent translations restored it.
Beelzebub is also identified in the New Testament as the Devil, "the prince of demons".[15][16] Biblical scholar Thomas Kelly Cheyne suggested that it might be a derogatory corruption of Ba'al-zəbûl, "Lord of the High Place" (i.e., Heaven) or "High Lord".[17]
In Arabic translations, the name is rendered as Baʿl-zabūl (بعلزبول).[18][19]
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Almost finished this book. Putting in a lot of coffee now and disconnecting again for the weekend. Just wanted to share a few revelations from the meditation and introspection that comes from writing about mysticism.
First point, Christianity was birthed in Jewish mysticism- second temple Hekhalot and Merkhavah specifically. All those writers of scriptures were Jewish and there is no separating the roots of the faith from that. Every western interpretation that puts God outside of us and in outer space takes you away from love. What happened at Nicaea was a tragedy.
Next, Kabbalah and hermeticsm are twin flames. Merkhavah is an Egyptian word. Moshe and Akhenaten teach the same lesson. The thrice greatest Trismegistus is a lesson- Enoch, Thoth, and Hermes all taught the same unitive consciousness.Middle Platonism influenced Philo. Plotinus created Neoplatonism explaining how everything emanated from the One via four worlds of creation. Al-Kindi, ibn Arabi, all of those Arabs that fleshed out Kalam- the Logos of Muslim philosophy. Jewish philosophers like Saadi Goeb, ibn Gabirol lived in Muslim countries discussing Neoplatonist forms and continued what Philo started and expressed Judaism in Greek philosophical terms. Gabirol wrote “the source of life” and changed the Greek concept of “thought” being the source of the all to ration- divine will. Kabbalists fleshed out this concept of divine will and ran that line throughput the middle ages. Maimonides battled this interpretation for his entire life.
Somewhere in the 12th century in France the Midrash gets blended with Solomon ign Gabirol’s Neoplatonism and Kabbalah as we know it today gets formed. Multiplicity and dualism begins to be seen as a sort illusion from the shattering of the vessels we see in the Zohar. Non dualism- God is One and Kabbalah and really gets started on awakening and meditations in the sephirot lead to some of those most beautiful metaphysics we’ve ever seen.
Meanwhile, the Syriac Christians who continued teaching the centering prayers of Christ in its original Aramaic were writing texts like the Odes of Solomon as their brand of interpreting Yeshua headed East. The philosophies we call Hinduism became intertwined with the bridal mysticism of the gospel of John and the Songs of Solomon. It grew and flourished and the mystical instruction found in The Gospel of Thomas gave them a common language.
Mysticism is mongrelized. Our best and brightest servants of the Infinite One have looked past all of these religions of the world and found commonality. All of this cultural bravado we have divides us. Kemet, Israel, India, Dominican Friars like Ekhart, German shoemakers like Boehme, Beduizzam Said Nursi, Jesus, The Shakyimuni Buddha, all of them teach the same thing:
We are expressions of the Divine reality. The more we divide and argue the further from the truth we go. Mystics have never opposed their notions of rightness or insisted that, let’s say, Taoism was any less important than St Francis or Abraham Abulafia.
You want to draw close to God and really love 💗 one another? Then forget everything you cling to and let go of the need to speak “truth.” Rightness is ego minded. It divides.
I say this understanding a very old mystical truth I’m going to say in relatively crude terms: “we don’t actually know shit!” We’re afforded glimpses of Union but we can’t comprehend existence and describe it. The collective unconscious of Jung is the same ocean Buddhists feel pulling them into when they’re close to death.
The universe expanded from a singular source that even most scientific had to come to grips with when they realized that spooky action at a distance is real. We’re all the result of quantum entanglement and literally expressions of whatever all of this actually is.
Don’t fight it. Just love one another. It’s what we’re here for.
#kabbalah#hermeticism#Christianity#Kemet#taosim#buddhism#philosphy#neoplatonism#kalam#Union#unitive consciousness#mysticism#inner transformation#spirituality#wisdom#we don’t know#acceptance#unity#singular source#god is all there is
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A clue to the mystery of this Gospel’s predisposition can be found in John 8:44, where we discover that the single preposition of can make all of the difference in the world. Buried in this verse is the tiny, seemingly innocuous of, a word that has been forgotten in English translations but remains in the Greek original. John 8:44 is traditionally translated in our English Bibles as:
You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
But this is not what the Greek actually says. It reads instead:
You are from the father of the devil, and you want to carry out the desires of your father. That one was a murderer from the beginning, and he did not stand by the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks from his own nature, because he is a liar, and so is his father.
The father of the devil? Who the devil is that? During the first four centuries of Christianity, the translation and interpretation of these words was hotly contested. The Apostolic Catholics, and then later the Catholic and Orthodox Christians, came to read it as it has been traditionally translated for us in our English Bibles. But all the various Gnostic Christian groups who used the fourth Gospel in antiquity favored the literal reading of the Greek, which clearly posits an evil God who fathered the devil. These Gnostic groups argue that Jesus’ own words here in the Gospel of John testify to the presence of an evil cosmic ruler, who was none other than YHWH the God of the Jews and the father of the devil. They believed that the fourth Gospel supported their own worldview, in which the God of the Jews is an evil subordinate creator god quite distinct from the sublime God that Jesus preached.
The Apostolic Catholics complain bitterly about the literal translation of this verse, arguing that although the verse might literally say this, it cannot be true, because the Christian scripture cannot contain such blasphemy. So they read it against its actual grammar, dropping the preposition and reading it “You are of your father the devil.” When they discuss it in their own literary works, they prefer to paraphrase it as “You are sons of the devil,” rather than quoting the actual Greek. What is going on with this startling passage in the fourth Gospel?
The early debate over the interpretation of this verse suggests that the Gnostic reading is the oldest, if not the original, whereas the Apostolic Catholic understanding of this verse came late to the game, to tame and domesticate it. The Apostolic Catholic understanding alters the textual fabric of the Gospel and dismisses what the verse actually says, because in their opinion what the literal words denoted simply could not be true.
Origen, one of the earliest Apostolic Catholic interpreters of this verse, admits that the literal reading says that “the devil has a father,” and the Jews appear to be from this father. Yet Origen goes on to explain that it is better to read the text “from the father, the devil,” even though this reading would be clearer if the preposition of in the Greek were erased (Origen, Commentary on John 20.172).
In fact, some scribes felt the same. In at least two manuscripts of the Gospel of John (Codex Cyprius and the Old Syriac version), the preposition was eliminated by scribes who were certain that the Gospel could not be making reference to the devil’s father. The primacy of the Gnostic reading is further supported by the context of the verse, which delineates between the God of the Jews and Jesus’ Father.
In the larger passage surrounding this verse, Jesus is presented by the author of the Gospel in a debate with some Jews over his identity. In this narrative, Jesus is described as the light and life of the world (John 8:12). He claims to have come from above, having descended into the world (8:23). His Jewish opponents are confused about his identity and the identity of the Father he keeps talking about. Jesus responds in this passage by telling his opponents that they know neither himself nor his Father (8:19). He goes on to contrast the Father he has been talking about with the Father the Jews follow (8:38).
His Jewish opponents, who are monotheists, are unhappy with the polytheistic direction that this line of reasoning is taking, so they respond by insisting that there is only one Father, God himself, and that they are his children. But the Johannine author is relentless. He persists in the narrative, maintaining that Jesus and his opponents must be talking about different Gods, because if Jesus’ opponents knew Jesus’ Father, they would love Jesus rather than hate him (8:41–42).
The author thinks that the Jews’ father is different from Jesus’ Father. In the climax of this narrative, Jesus says, “You are from the father of the devil.” It is clear that the author believes that Jesus’ Jewish opponents are like their sibling the devil, who was a murderer and a liar from the beginning. The devil’s nature is that of a liar, as is the nature of the devil’s father (8:44). The author’s logic underlying this passage appears to be that Jesus’ Jewish opponents share in the same nature as the devil because they share the same father, the God of the Jews, whose nature is evil. This God is different from Jesus’ Father, who remains unknown to the Jews (8:54–55).
So if we grant this literal reading of John 8:44, we are faced immediately with two gods commonly found in later Gnostic Christian mythology: the God of the Jews, whose nature is evil, and Jesus’ Father, whose nature is love. If we track Jesus’ Father throughout the Gospel, we find further traces confirming this dualism in the fourth Gospel. Jesus calls his Father “the only true God,” as if the author of the fourth Gospel is making some distinction between this true God and some other god who is falsely worshipped as God (John 17:3). Jesus’ Father is the “righteous Father” whom the world has not known but whom Jesus knows and reveals (17:25). His Father is described as a God of love, who wishes to save the world by sending his son into the world to judge and redeem it (3:16–19, 7:29, 17:18, 21, 23, 25).
Where does Jesus’ Father reside? Repeatedly we learn that, before his descent, Jesus resided with his Father in a heaven very distant from the world. It is a place identified in the Gospel as “above.” Jesus has exclusive knowledge of his Father, which Jesus reveals to a world that has no prior knowledge of this God (1:18, 5:37, 6:46). In the narrative, Jesus informs various Jews that the Father who sent him is the true God, whom they do not know (7:28, 8:12–44, 54–55, 14:7–8, 16:2–3).
The fourth Gospel also presents us with a contrast between the unknown Father who sent Jesus and the God who spoke to Moses. They are treated as separate Gods in the narrative. Some Jews in the story describe themselves as disciples of Moses who know the God who spoke to Moses. They are worried about people who follow Jesus, because he claims to be from a God and a place they don’t know (9:13–34).
Correspondingly, the law of Moses is distinguished from the message of Jesus throughout the fourth Gospel, just as it is in all later Gnostic Christian systems. The distinction begins in the opening of the Gospel, where it is declared that “the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (1:17). Jesus gives commandments that differ from the Mosaic law. The Gospel describes Jesus’ laws as coming directly from God his Father, and declares a new commandment of love (12:49–50, 13:34).
Every chance he gets, Jesus distances himself from the Mosaic law, even referring to it as “your” law whenever he is speaking to the Jews (6:32, 7:19, 10:34). Why does the world hate and reject Jesus? The explanation is reduced to prophecy, as the fulfillment of what is written “in their law,” where it says, “They hated me without a cause” (John 15:18–25; Psalms 35:19, 69:4).
In addition to the Mosaic law, the traditional cultic practices of the Jews are censured, a criticism shared by subsequent Gnostic Christian groups. Jesus is portrayed as a harsh reformer of the common sacrificial cult, taking up a whip and driving out of the Jewish temple the sacrificial animals and the merchants who were selling them. He demands that his Father’s house cease being a place of trade (John 2:14–16). At the same time, he teaches a Samaritan woman that his Father is “spirit,” a God who must not be worshipped in the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem or in the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim (4:21–24).
It appears that the author of the fourth Gospel understood Jesus to be purging the Temple of the worship of a false god who required sacrifices, so that he could set up the proper way to worship his Father. From this perspective, Jesus came to cleanse the Temple of impious people who were offering sacrifices to a false god.
-- April D. DeConick, The Gnostic New Age
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Un científico descubre una traducción "borrada" del Nuevo Testamento de 1.750 años de antigüedad gracias a la fotografía ultravioleta
Kessel, Grigory. «A New (Double Palimpsest) Witness to the Old Syriac Gospels (Vat. Iber. 4, Ff. 1 & 5)». New Testament Studies 69, n.o 2 (abril de 2023): 210-21. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0028688522000182.
Un científico afirma haber descubierto una antigua traducción oculta que contiene fragmentos del Evangelio de San Mateo y que, al parecer, es el único “resto conocido del cuarto manuscrito que…
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Archaeologists Discover a Sixth-Century Old Syriac Version of Matthew's Gospel
Brent Pollard
Archaeologists discovered a new copy of Matthew’s Gospel written on ancient parchment beneath two other copies of the same Scriptures, in Greek and Georgian. (Georgian was the last language in which Matthew was written.) Researchers found the text using ultraviolet light. The newly discovered Gospel, written in the Old Syriac language, is thought to date from the sixth century and…
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#Christian Evidences#Georgian#How We Got The Bible#Latin#Matthew#skepticism#Syriac#translation#transmission
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Vegetarian Christianity: No Fishes With Their Loaves - Spiritual Awakening Radio Podcast
The earliest references to the story of Jesus Feeding the Five Thousand do not include any mentions of fish, only bread. The early church father Irenaeus, writing between 180 and 188 AD, does not say anything at all about the fish, only bread in connection with this Miraculous Feeding of the Multitude as if the gospels he was reading at the time didn't include anything about fishes with the loaves. The historian Eusebius, Arnobius, and several other early Christian writings also never include anything about "fishes" with the loaves, only the loaves, only the bread. It was originally an account about people being given bread. This has lead to some, including Keith Akers, author of the book, The Lost Religion of Jesus: Simple Living and Nonviolence in Early Christianity (also see his wonderful scholarly book, Disciples), to conclude that the making of this popular miracle story into a fish tale must have taken place sometime after Irenaeus and 188 AD. After that date must be when the final edit took place, when fish got added to the story about the Feeding of the Five Thousand, transforming it into the more familiar Sunday School version people are acquainted with. Today, we examine the case of the missing fish, as well as textual variations between different manuscripts of the New Testament, including the spectacular example of a vegetarian saying of Jesus present in the Old Syriac-Aramaic Evangelion Da-Mepharreshe manuscripts of the Gospel of Luke but not present in the Greek manuscripts. This is another installment in a series of podcasts documenting the vegetarianism of the original Jesus Movement, also known as the Ebionites, Nasoraeans, grandchildren of the Essenes, Hebrew Christians, The Apostles, the Disciples, Christianity-Before-Paul: the folks in the early church Paul was arguing with about diet, including James the Just of Jerusalem.
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‘Until recently, only two manuscripts were known to contain the Old Syriac translation of the gospels’
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Next up in The Who Is? series, we have everyone’s favorite second brother Mammon!
These are actually a lot of fun for me since I enjoy history, different religions, and etymology… and I’m an otaku and simp…
Etymology:
Means money, profit, wealth
-The word mammon comes into the English language from post-classical Latin, which borrowed from the Hellenistic Greek word μαμωνᾶς, which appears in the New Testament. This was borrowed from the Aramaic מָמוֹנָא māmōnā, an emphatic form of the word wealth, or profit, perhaps specifically from the Syriac dialect.
-The spelling μαμμωνᾷ refers to "a Syrian deity, god of riches; Hence riches, wealth"; μαμωνᾶς is transliterated from Aramaic [ממון] and also means "wealth". However, it is not clear what the earlier history of the Aramaic form is.
(I tried researching this dirty for more info, but sadly it all lead in a circle… if you have info about the Syrian deity, please send it to me… I’m a huge nerd, don’t judge)
-There is no Old Testament Hebrew references to the word mammon.
-In the New Testament, the Syrian deity μαμμωνᾷ is mentioned in the book of Matthew during The Sermon on the Mount, but the Aramaic word μαμωνᾶ is used in the book of Luke, leaving little consistency in the overall intended meaning.
Personifications:
Buckle up Buttercups, this goes kinda everywhere…
(All references to Mammon & Beelzebub being the same have been left out, for the same reasons I did not lump Satan & Lucifer…)
-Beyond the Syriac reference above, it is argued that Mammon is taken from the Greek god Plutus, due to similarities between the two.
it was the 4th century where we next see Mammon personified as greed, and an evil master that enslaves.
-In the Middle Ages, it became commonplace to associate Mammon with being the demon of greed and wealth.
-Common literary identification of the name with a god of covetousness or avarice likely stems from Spenser's ‘The Faerie Queene’, where Mammon oversees a cave of worldly wealth.
-Milton's ‘Paradise Lost’ describes a fallen angel who values earthly treasure over all other things.
-Later occultist writings such as Jacques Collin de Plancy's ‘Dictionnaire Infernal’ describe Mammon as Hell's ambassador to England.
-In Thomas Carlyle in ‘Past and Present’, the "Gospel of Mammonism" became simply a metaphoric personification for the materialist spirit of the 19th century.
The artist weren’t all bad to our boy… admit it fellow lambs, we’re all a bit like this aren’t we?
That’s as far as I got without having too much repeat… it’s safe to say that Mammon’s history is as confusing and varied as the gorgeous demon himself ^_^
Hope you all enjoyed it! Next up will be my adorable Levi!
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The Little Known History of Transgender Christian Saints
Roland Betancourt, an historian of the first millennium and a half of Christianity, takes a look at transgender Christian saints over at Advocate.
Given the current religious attacks against transgender people, it might be a bit of a surprise that Christian churches have celebrated gender variance as a sign of holiness.
They did not use the word “transgender”, obviously, and might not have been supporters of modern day transgender activism. But Betancourt’s story proves that gender identity is not such a simple as some Christians would want you to believe.
Roland writes:
From the fifth to the ninth century, a number of saints’ lives composed across the Greek-speaking Mediterranean detail the lives of individuals assigned female at birth who for a host of different reasons chose to live out their adult lives as men in monasteries.
The popularity of these stories across the Christian Mediterranean is palpably evident as they were translated into Coptic, Syriac, Ethiopic, Armenian, Arabic, Latin, and other European dialects.
For example, the night before her execution, the early-third century Christian martyr Perpetua had a dream about her impending death. There, Perpetua looks down upon her naked body, and exclaims: “My clothes were stripped off, and suddenly I was a man.”
Similarly, in the early second century Gospel of Thomas, Jesus rebukes Simon Peter for suggesting Mary Magdalene is unworthy of their company, stating that He “will make her male” and that every woman who “makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Roland does not accept that this is solely the result of a negative view of women (although the lack of MTF saints may point in that direction). There are after all a lot of female saints. – including the most esteemed of them all: Mary, the mother of Jesus.
Moreover, there are too many details in the stories about saints, whose birth-assigned gender was female, yet lived out their lives as men, for this to be just a dismissal of female spirituality.
Despite extensive late antique prohibitions against women dressing as men, such as in the canons of the Council of Gangra in 345, in the Council of Trullo in 692, or even in Deutoronomy 22:5, these saints were venerated with due respect, demonstrating that even legal or Old Testament prohibitions did not impede the space for their worship and praise.
The potent transformations of the body as well cannot be disregarded, as these stories sought eloquently to describe how the saints’ secondary sex characteristics changed throughout their lives, detailing ... the withering of breasts, the ceasing of menstruation, and the darkening of skin.
Roland compares this to medical practices in Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. These were mainly targeting cis people, but there are examples of both “top” and “bottom surgery”. In other words: The Christians could put their understanding of the gender variance of the saints into a broader medical context.
Roland concludes that we need trans affirming literatures that promote and champion the rich and complex history of gender variance in our world. Not only looking to modern authors, but looking deep into our ancient and medieval pasts to think about the place that trans figures have played in history.
See Roland’s book: Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender, and Race in the Middle Ages
The illustration is of St.Marinos (in red) being brought to a monastery by their father Eugenius. Marinos was assigned female at birth, but lived as a male monk. 14th century French manuscript.
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